#I'm fairly certain that's a thing right?

[pushing500]

Bold to start a fight when you're immediately postpartum, you're relying on your opponent's (already very limited) hospitality to keep you and your new baby alive, and you have a horrendous melee ability.

Brown's religion is a nudist, cannibal, high-life cult. Not sure it'll be the best environment for Wombat to grow up in, tbh, and it certainly isn't helping Brown recover any faster.

A fight on one side, a shuttle crash on the other, a deathly ill newborn baby lingering in the back of his mind... What a day for poor Kwahu.

The sole survivor of the shuttle crash was an Avaloi named Yuki. She's very pretty and looks to be healing up fast, thanks to Kwahu's expert care. Hopefully she'll leave quickly, as her genetic dependency on alcohol might be tricky to manage in a colony that focuses all its beverage-production on coffee.

Of course, once Randy starts he just doesn't stop, so he decided the Jones boys needed a nice psychic drone on top of everything else. Very rude.

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[housederiva]

Coffee Bean anon get over here, your drink is in Veilguard

[secondsonaym]

(blinks my eyes cutely)

you want to buy some of my adopts sooooo bad

no, but seriously, my disabilities are currently at the point where i can work maybe a couple hours, then fatigue as well as a migraine hits me, forcing me to stop everything and spend a good chunk of time in bed so i reaaalllyyy need the support

I also have commissions open and am more confident in being able to get through them, albeit at a pretty slow pace, so if you want some pretty art from me then by all means <3

My adopts

My commissions

You can also become a ko-fi supporter to get previews/preclaims to my adopts and discounts on commissions

[sskk-manifesto]

:/

[wolfiewhiskeybutch]

With all of the animosity I am capable of...WHY SET OFF BIG FIREWORKS WHEN THE SUN IS STILL HIGH IN THE SKY?! IT'S NOT EVEN THE 4TH!

It's bad enough I have to deal with this shit on the 4th and at night but jfc it's 4:46 IN THE AFTERNOON

[euclydya]

Soooo. A question.

Am I/Would I Be considered a bad person if I have little to no empathy, and have a very hard time showing sympathy for others. I don't even know where I stand w compassion either also.

like. Does that inherently make me evil or some shit lmao

[chalk-homunculus]

I've been once again maining Klee throughout this Veluriyam Mirage questline a nd while exploring the mirage, both because I did get her skin, but also because it cheers me up so much to see her having fun.

[ev-n-learning]

Duolingo's doing some WEIRD shit right now. Put me Very Slightly ahead in the course again???

When i last checked in with this on tumblr i was at unit 6 of 28.*

I'm now... wait for it... on 12 of 32?!

I don't think that's "new and improved", duolingo. How about old and improved instead... i would like that, at least.

*(czech course, section 3)

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[maniculum]

Medieval Scorpions Effortpost

So yesterday I reblogged this post featuring an 11th-century depiction of the Apocalypse Locusts from Revelations, noting the following incongruity as another medieval scorpion issue:

The artist, as you can see, has interpreted "tails like scorpions" as meaning "glue cheerful-looking snakes to their butts".

Anyway, it occurred to me that the medieval scorpion thing might not be as widely known as I think it is, and that Tumblr would probably enjoy knowing about it if it isn't known already. So, finding myself unable to focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing, I decided to write about this instead. I'll just go ahead and put a cut here.

As we can see in the image above, at least one artist out there thought a "scorpion" was a type of snake. Which makes it difficult to draw "tails like scorpions", because a snake's tail is not that distinctive or menacing (maybe rattlesnakes, but they don't have those outside the Americas). So they interpreted "tails like scorpions" as "the tail looks like a whole snake complete with head".

Let me tell you. This is not a problem unique to this illustration.

See, people throughout medieval Europe were aware of scorpions. As just alluded to, they are mentioned in the Bible, and if the people producing manuscripts in medieval Europe knew one thing, it was Stuff In Bible. They're also in the Zodiac, which medieval Europe had inherited through classical sources. However, let's take a look at this map:

That's Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Scorpiones order, i.e., all scorpion species. You may notice something -- the range just stops at a certain northern latitude. Pretty much all of northern Europe is scorpion-free. If you lived in the north half of Europe, odds were good you had never seen a scorpion in your life. But if you were literate or educated at all, or you knew they were a thing, because you'd almost certainly run across them being mentioned in texts from farther south. And those texts wouldn't bother to explain what a scorpion was, of course -- everyone knows scorpions, right? When was the last time you stopped to explain What Is Spiders?

So medieval writers and artists in northern Europe were kind of stuck. There was all this scorpion imagery and metaphor in the texts they liked to work from, but they didn't really know what a scorpion was. Writers could kind of work around it (there's a lot of "oh, it's a venomous creature, moving on"), but sometimes they felt the need to break it down better. For this, of course, they'd have to refer to a bestiary -- but due to Bestiary Telephone and the persistent need of bestiary authors to turn animals into allegories, one of the only visual details you got on scorpions was that they... had a beautiful face, which they used to distract people in order to sting them.

And look. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I would say that a scorpion's face has significant aesthetic appeal only for a fairly small segment of the population. I'm sure you could get an entomologist to rhapsodize about it a bit, but your average person on the street will not be entranced by the face of a scorpion. So this did not help the medieval Europeans in figuring out how to depict scorpions. There was also some semantic confusion -- see, in some languages (such as Old and Middle English), "worm" could be a general term for very small animals of any kind. But it also could mean "serpent".* So there were some, like our artist at the top of the post, who were pretty sure a scorpion was a snake. This was probably helped along by the fact that "venomous" was one of the only things everyone knew about them, and hey, snakes are venomous. Also, Pliny the Elder had floated the idea that there were scorpions in Africa that could fly, and at least one author (13th-century monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus) therefore suggested that they had feathers. I don't see that last one coming up much, I just share it because it's funny to me.

*English eventually resolved this by borrowing the Latin vermin for very small animals, using the specialized spelling wyrm for big impressive mythical-type serpents, and sticking with the more specific snake for normal serpents.

Some authors, like the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, therefore suggested that a scorpion was a snake with a woman's face and a stinging tail. (Everyone seemed to be on the same page with regards to the fact that the sting was in the tail, which is in fact probably the most recognizable aspect of scorpions, so good job there.) However, while authors could avoid this problem, visual artists could not. And if you were illustrating a bestiary or a calendar, including a scorpion was not optional. So they had to take a shot at what this thing looked like.

And so, after this way-too-long explanation, the thing you're probably here for: inaccurate medieval drawings of scorpions. (There are of course accurate medieval drawings of scorpions, from artists who lived in the southern part of Europe and/or visited places where scorpions lived; I'm just not showing you those.) And if you find yourself wondering, "how sure are you that that's meant to be a scorpion?" -- all of these are either from bestiaries or from calendars that include zodiac illustrations.

11th-century England, MS Arundel 60. (Be honest, without the rest of this post, if I had asked you to guess what animal this was supposed to be, would you have ever guessed “scorpion”?)

12th-century Germany, "Psalter of Henry the Lion". (Looks a bit undercooked. Kind of fetal.)

12th-century France, Peter Lombard's Sententiae. (Very colorful, itsy bitsy claws, what is happening with that tail?)

12th-century England, "The Shaftesbury Psalter". (So a scorpion is some sort of wyvern with a face like a duck, correct?)

13th-century France, Thomas de Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum. (I’d give them credit for the silhouette not being that far off, but there’s a certain bestiary style where all the animals kind of look like that. Also note how few of these have claws.)

13th-century England, "The Bodley Bestiary". (Mischievous flying squirrel impales local man’s hand, local man fails to notice.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (A scorpion is definitely either a mouse or a fish. Either way it has six legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Wait, no, it’s a baby theropod, and it has two legs. (Yes, this is the same manuscript, that’s not an error, this artist did four scorpions and no two are the same.))

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Actually it’s a lizard with tiny ears and it has four legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Now that we’re at the big fancy illustration, I think I’ve got it — it’s like that last one, but two legs, longer ears, and a less goofy face. Also I’ve decided it’s not pink anymore, I think that was the main problem.)

13th-century England, MS Kk.4.25. (A scorpion is a flat crocodile with a bear’s head.)

13th-century England, "The Huth Psalter". (Wyvern but baby! Does not seem to be enjoying biting its own tail.)

13th-century England, MS Royal 1 D X. (This triangular-headed gentlecreature gets the award for “closest guess at correct limb configuration”. If two of those were claws, I might actually believe this artist had seen a scorpion before, or at least a picture of one.)

13th-century England, "The Westminster Psalter". (A scorpion is the offspring of a wyvern and a fawn.)

13th-century England, "The Rutland Psalter". (Too many legs! Pull back! Pull back!)

13th or 14th-century France, Bestiaire d'amour rimé. (This is very similar to the fawn-wyvern, but putting it in an actual Scene makes it even more obvious that you’re just guessing.)

14th-century Netherlands, Jacob van Maerlant's Der Naturen Bloeme. (More top-down six-legged guys that look too furry to be arthropods.)

14th-century Germany, MS Additional 22413. (That is clearly a turtle.)

14th-century France, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers's Breviari d'amor. (Who came up with that head shape and what was their deal?)

15th-century England, "Bestiary of Ann Walsh". (Screw it, a scorpion is a big lizard that glares at you for trying to make me draw things I don’t know about.)

I've spent way too much time on this now. End of post, thank you to anyone who got all the way down here.

[ddejavvu]

can i request for multiverse monday where hotch is the coach of the little league team that the reader's son is in, and they develop feelings with every meeting they have <33 thank youu

"Orange slices, Mr. Hotchner?"

Aaron turns, the breeze blowing his t-shirt tight against his stomach. He feels the wind against his bare skin, and adjusts the hem so that it's not rucking up his abdomen.

"I think those are for the little leaguers," Aaron smiles, warmly, kindly, accompanied by a soft pinkish hue to his face and neck. It's homey, the bright blue of the sky, the vibrant green of the grass, and soft like the material of his tee that juxtaposes the stiff suits in his wardrobe at home.

"I cut them, I can hand them out," You shrug, extending a small plastic bag of oranges towards him, "Besides, I hear they help with your skin."

He takes them, opens the bag and pinches one between his fingers before he teases, "Are you telling me I've got wrinkles?"

"No!" You laugh, and then you reconsider, "Well, frown lines. Probably from telling Manny to stop catching butterflies instead of balls. But I meant that you're gonna get sunburnt, Mr. Hotchner."

"I put on sunscreen," He shakes his head, absentmindedly tugging the flesh of the orange away from the rind with his teeth, his eyes drifting lazily over the kids playing catch.

"Not well."

He's broken out of his focus by your hand braced against his cheek, your thumb rubbing against the bridge of his nose. He stiffens, caught in the feeling of your gentle caress. He's fairly certain orange juice runs a sticky line down his chin. When you pull your hand away again there's a white paste on your skin, clearly sunscreen he hadn't applied as thoroughly as he'd thought.

"Oh." He mumbles sheepishly, swallowing the sour fruit in his mouth, "I thought-"

"Did Jack do it?"

"No," He admits, and he'll take the hit to his ego for the way your nose scrunches with glee as you laugh.

"Use a mirror next time, Mr. Hotchner," You suggest, bumping your shoulder into his as you begin surveying the kids like he was. One nearly trips over her own cleat and you tense, ready to spring into action, but she rights herself and you settle again.

"You're not one of the players, you know. You can call me Aaron." He hums.

"Oh, yeah? I think," You cock your head to the side, eyeing him, "That you just want one of the otter pops in my cooler. Orange slices weren't enough? You've resorted to buttering me up for a blue raspberry popsicle?"

"I do not want an otter pop," He chuckles, "Or maybe I do, but not to eat. I just want to hold it against my sunburn."

Your laughs combine into a sweet thing, a brief symphony among the thwacking of baseballs on leather and the huffing of little players. You reach down to the cooler and withdraw a pink popsicle, handing it out to him with a soft smirk.

"You're lucky I'm a team player, Aaron. Pink is my favorite, but since it matches the color of your face, I suppose you're welcome to it."

He thanks you for the popsicle as he settles it against his warm cheek, but he willfully neglects to tell you that the strawberry tones of his face are less from sun damage, and more from the way your shoulder comes to brush feather-light against his own, barely there but unmoving all the same.

[pathologicalreid]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeTkmpNy/ SPENCER MF REID 🙏🙏 can I pretty please request a one shot based on that video ITS SO CUTE

dewey decimal system | S.R.

in which spencer does the most spencer activity first thing in the morning - reorganizing your bookshelves

(tiktok link)

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: fluff content warnings: i'm fairly certain there aren't any word count: 619 a/n: the beauty of this being my account is that, even though my requests are closed, i was able to exercise free will and write it anyway. because reorganizing your bookshelves unprompted is so something spencer would do.

The other side of the bed was cold when you woke up. Your desire to roll over into Spencer’s arms before getting ready for the day squashed by his absence. Aimlessly patting your bedside table for your phone, you checked your notifications.

You hadn’t received a text, there was no note left on his pillow.

Sitting up in bed, you frowned before climbing out of bed. Cringing at the cold laminate under your feet, you hugged your arms around yourself and mourned the feeling of your comforter over your skin.

To your surprise, Spencer was wide awake, standing in front of your bookshelf like he was an opponent ready to strike. Padding across the living room, you approached him from behind and wrapped your arms around his waist, depending heavily on his body heat to give you the courage not to run back to bed.

“Good morning love,” he murmured, voice gruff from lack of use. With a morning slowness, he skimmed his palms along your arms, swaying gently to the soft sounds of dawn. “Are you alright?” He asked you when you didn’t respond, too caught up in the feeling of him to speak.

Pressing your cheek to the fabric of his plain white t-shirt, you sighed, closing your eyes and breathing in the scent of him, the scent of your laundry detergent on his clothes.

“What’s wrong, angel?” He whispered, softly squeezing your arms before turning himself around while trapped in your arms.

You didn’t let up, forcing him to twist himself within the circumference of your limbs just to see your face. The maneuver was so notably ungraceful that you couldn’t hold back your smile, “Nothing’s wrong,” you mumbled, now pressing your cheek to his chest while he tenderly cupped your head. “What are you doing up?”

Spencer dropped a kiss to the crown of your head, keeping his arms casually slung around you while he nodded at your bookshelves, “I was reorganizing your bookshelves.”

Furrowing your brows, you looked at your previously unruly shelves. They had now been adroitly redone, no longer having books stacked horizontally and being put off for another day, “What do you mean you were reorganizing my bookshelves?”

“Well, initially I had planned on using the Dewey decimal system, which is how my books are organized at home, but you had such an uneven ratio of each category that I ended up doing it alphabetically,” he explained to you, lazily using a hand to gesture to your collection.

Catching a glimpse of the titles, you asked, “By title?”

He shook his head, “Author’s last name,” he responded as if it should’ve been obvious to you. Spencer’s arms tightened around you as he craned his head to nestle his face in the crook of your neck, “Did you sleep well?”

You hummed contentedly at the proximity you had to him, “Right up until I woke up and you weren’t there.”

“I was reorganizing your books,” he emphasized, reminding you what he had spent his morning doing.

Nodding, you shut your eyes, savoring the feeling of his fingers as they now skated their way along your spine, “It looks nice, Spence.”

“Did you want to read a book together?” He asked you, continuing his ministrations on your back.

Pulling away slightly, you rested your palms on his shoulders as you looked up at him, “What?”

He jutted his chin in the direction of your shelves, “There are some books that I shelved, I think we could have a good time reading one together.”

You raised your eyebrows, “You’ll finish way before me though,” you hinted at his reading speed.

“Then I can read aloud to you,” he offered, beaming down at you.

[chronically-ghosted]

i'm empty without you, so come grow within me

AO3 Link | main masterlist | Joel Miller Masterlist

rating: explicit (18+)

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

word count: 9K

summary: with winter approaching, joel takes stock of what he wants and what he has in his life. he wants you, but he's not quite sure he has you, not in a way that only a life in Jackson can afford. joel's an old-fashioned guy, so he's looking for an old-fashioned love . . . if he can only remember how to do it right.

inspired by the songs 'why don't we just dance' by Josh Turner and 'the kind of love we make' by Luke Combs, this fulfills a request from @handsomehelmet for my 1k celebration (creativity struck and now i'm going to make it everyone's problem)

warnings: the nastiest thing i can possibly imagine which is romance and sincerity, some willie nelson lyrics, established situationship, no age of reader specified, body insecurity, feelings of unworthiness/shame, survivor's guilt, blatant disregard for old man knees by eating pussy on the floor, unprotected piv, a teenager bullying fully grown adult to quit being stupid.

a/n: i know everyone gets into a tizzy when Joel doesn’t name what Tess is to him in front of Bill and while there probably was a heaping amount of guilt that accompanied that omission, i wonder if it might be a bit more complicated: he simply couldn’t name one thing because she was all things to him. A friend, a lover, a guide, a support system, a protector, a partner. So he says it the best way he can: “she’s mine.”

come see what else we've done to celebrate 1K followers

By the fourth bag, all you can think about is a warm shower. 

A chance to scrub away the dirt smeared on your arms, your neck, probably your face. You’d brought your own work gloves to bag fresh dirt for the greenhouse, but the longer you work, more sprinkles of dirt find their way down the lip of your gloves. You can feel it against your palms, under your nails. The cold winter air lurks beneath the crack of the door, stifled from invading by the artificial heat provided by the generator just outside, and it stifles you too with its oppressive weight. You’re fairly sure the dirt on your forehead has turned to mud, sweat and damp earth encrusted on your dry skin. 

By the sixth, you doubt your shoulders will ever move again without popping. 

You know Joel’s already do. 

Never a particularly chatty man even in his best moods, the greenhouse had become stuffy with heat and silence, both you and Joel too lost in the work to find the energy to even fake idle chatter. But, knowing this about Joel and a certain degree yourself, silences with him were never a bad thing. That was one of the things you enjoyed most about being with him; you two could do your own things together. Many snowy days were spent with him stretched out on the couch, reading, and you working on writing your sheet music on the floor, his knee hovering over your shoulder with your back to the cushions – spent in total silence, and they are some of the fondest memories you had since coming to Jackson and falling into the third and final piece of the Miller-Williams household. 

Like with the end of the world, you weren’t sure how you got there until everything had fallen into place around you; Joel and his adoptive daughter had been just another group who were taken in by the town of Jackson . . . until they weren’t. Ellie was just another foul-mouthed kid who had seen too much and had too much taken from her . . . until she wasn’t. Joel was your occasional patrol partner and a fellow Willie Nelson fan. . . until he wasn’t.

Until that unmistakable line, one that seemed to be lost on a global scale beneath the blood and the gore and the grief, had been crossed when he asked you out for drinks and the both of you knew the evening wasn’t going to end in a nightcap. 

And then you were partners, even outside of patrol. Partners in re-enforcing a weakened part of Jackson’s outer walls. Partners in cooking, attempting to recreate an enchilada recipe Joel only vaguely remembered from a Tex-Mex hole-in-the-wall fifteen minutes from where he used to live in Austin. Partners when it’s snowing heavily outside and there’s not much to do except to read and, well . . . Joel was a fantastic partner in that.

Joel Miller was a great partner for a lot of things. He worked diligently, quickly and, unless the conversation was started by someone else, silently. 

He, in short, was not someone who was easily distracted.

Which, in combination with your own exhaustion and a desire to scrub the first layer of your skin off with a loofah, is why you feel a flare of annoyance when you look up and see him staring off into the distance. His fingers loosely grip the handle of the shovel, his palm resting over the curved point, Joel’s expression is nearly unreadable, except for the small crevice between his eyebrows. He stands, fixated on the greenhouse wall, as if watching the blurry Christmas lights from the town square, suddenly oblivious to the work you two have been doing for the past hour and a half. 

“Joel.” Nothing. “Joel!” 

You raise your hand to smack him on the leg when, without looking down, he asks:

“When was the last time I took you out?” 

“What?”

His weight shifts, holds the shovel by one hand now. You catch a sliver of frustration in those deep brown eyes as he looks at you. He wears what you and Ellie secretly refer to as his “pouty-mouth”, a classic expression when he isn’t getting his way about something but won’t draw attention to the fact that it annoys him.

“Tell me about the last date I took you on.”

You huff, standing up with a pop in your hips. Your knees are aching from kneeling on the cold winter ground and your skin fluxes between overheating under your jacket and stiffly frozen on your extremities. 

“Joel, c’mon, be serious. We’ve got three more –,”

“I am being serious.” Dumb-founded, you watch as he digs the tip of the shovel into the ground with a hollow chunk. Crosses his arms and continues to frown at you like you just suggested doing away with the Christmas holiday entirely. “We’ll get to this, but I want you to tell me right now what we did on our last date.”

You roll your eyes, humoring him. “Fine, I don’t know what crawled up your ass, but okay. On our last date, we . . . we did . . . you took me to . . .”

It’s your turn to frown. He raises a petulant eyebrow and it’s eerie how many times you’ve seen that exact expression on Ellie. 

“Okay, fine, so it’s been a while. We’ve been busy – we’ve all been busy with the winter season coming. All of Jackson has been out battening down the hatches. What does it matter if we’ve let things slide a bit?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, quiet in his Joel way. He glances out through the blurred greenhouse glass and maybe he was actually staring at the string lights hung over Jackson’s square. Normally, you didn’t mind being unable to dissect his every expression, every sigh, every carefully wielded silence, but when it came to you and his feelings about you – feelings that were always implied in those silences – you wished you had a little window, some hint, as to what rumbled on behind those earth-dark eyes. 

Joel drums his fingers on the handle of the shovel, unease rolling through his body as he shifts his weight. 

“Matters some,” he tells the ground. “With the holidays comin’ around . . . matters for Ellie – her first winter here in Jackson. Matters for Tommy, with that new baby of his . . .”

“Your nephew,” you supply as much as prod. Sometimes the only way to get an honest answer out of him was when he was just a bit pissed off and less guarded. Instead he just nods, gloved hand on his hip, thick jacket widening his already confounding broadness.

“It matters because it’s important. To me. It’s important to me.”

He meets your gaze and you’re struck full force again with that feeling like you drank too much of the Tipsy Bison’s shitty whiskey too fast. Same feeling that couldn’t be drowned even with the Tipsy Bison’s shitty whiskey when you shared a drink with him for the first time. When you managed to laugh when he bet you a whole day of stable cleaning duties that Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton survived the apocalypse somewhere in a shack in Tennessee. Joel Miller was disarmingly funny when he wanted to be.

And even worse, disarmingly sincere.

You take his gloved hand in yours. You feel the sensation of his fingers threading through yours but not the heat you’ve grown so accustomed to. 

“Alright, then. What do you want to do about it?” You ask quietly, to the upturned collar around his neck, his green flannel peeking out from behind the zipper of his jacket. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a lot of snow on the ground so that makes our options for date night kinda limited.” You scrunch your nose at him because you like to see the light in his eyes bloom when you do.

He chuckles, a rumbling sound, and he drops his forehead against yours, fingers tightening their grip around yours. Suddenly in your throat, your heart pounds. He’s never this affectionate in public. Maybe it’s those miraculously blurred greenhouse glass walls. 

His breath smells like that peppermint toothpaste that came in last week, infused with the warming-coil smell from the greenhouse. 

“Dunno yet.” He admits. “I’ll think of somethin’.”

“No ideas yet?” You raise your eyebrows against his forehead and he grins, shaking his head.

“Not yet.” 

“Then can I make a suggestion?”

“‘Course.”

“We finish bagging this dirt, then head home for a shower. In a really sexy way, obviously.” 

He huffs, smothering a laugh, and quick as lightning he kisses you on the cheek. But in the same movement, steps away and grabs the shovel again. You don’t have time to react to the fact he just kissed you for the first time outside of the four walls of his house before he’s scooping up dirt. You drop to your knees to pick up the bag again, your legs already weak.

“We both know you’re going to pass out on the couch the second we’re home.”

Your voice is steadier than you feel, as you look up at him. His face is flushed and that worry line between his eyes is gone. 

“You got me pegged, Miller. You got me pegged.”

Two days later, he stands in the middle of his living room, hands on his hips, surveying his handiwork. All of the furniture has been pushed to the far ends of the room, up against the walls or against the staircase out in the hallway. He’s kept the overhead lights off and put the standing lamps in the corners, bathing the room in a despondent glow. He thinks, after a quarter of a century never even entertaining something like this, it might be interpreted as romantic. He hopes you’ll see it that way at least. 

He hears it now, in his head, even though she’s out in the disconnected garage, snug and warm as he could have possibly made it – you worry too much, old man. 

Ellie knows there’s something going on between you two. Hell, the entire town has cottoned onto whatever this is; you’re often seen leaving his house early in the morning, and he’s been seen on occasion strolling up to your house with flowers. It’s not new, it’s not a secret, but it is . . . it just is and that’s about as far as he’s gotten. 

He hasn’t had you over for dinner with Ellie in that very specific way that very much needs to happen, as it often does when there is a new presence added to an established dynamic – as Maria often reminds him. But that almost feels like presenting your head on a silver plate to Ellie to either sniff with disinterest or tear into – both terrifying scenarios, even though they seem unlikely. Ellie does in fact seem to like you very much, as her riding teacher and occasional greenhouse buddy. But would she continue to like you in the context of you being one half of “You and Him” as a pair? Together. As a couple . . . of people who are seeing each other, whatever that means in a world filled with the most aggressive form of fungus imaginable. 

This life in Jackson, this fragile second chance to remember and rekindle his own natural instincts, is too precious to bet on a question like that. 

So he doesn’t ask it. At least not out loud. 

That’s one of the things he likes so much about you: his silences aren’t entirely indecipherable and often are encouraged by your own. Except this silence about this particular thing doesn’t feel like one of your shared, comfortable moments and instead it’s encroaching rapidly into avoidance. 

Standing in that greenhouse and seeing the string lights over the town square reminded him of a long ago Christmas, dancing with his favorite person under a Christmas tree, and how good it made him feel. How special it made him feel. All these years later, safe in a way his body has almost forgotten, there’s an urge he has to share that feeling, to recreate it under entirely different circumstances, with someone new. Someone else. To not try and fight the smile that constantly threatens to buoy up every time he’s around you. 

It’s foreign, that feeling in his chest, but it’s not entirely alien, at least not of late. 

He knows he’s white-knuckling it because he knows firsthand how painfully quick it can all be gone. Taken away. Left and buried by a black river while the world burns.

But he’s worried he’ll crush it with how tightly he holds on. How hard he begs a silent universe for it to last just a little bit longer. 

His knees ache, his left shoulder goes tight when it rains, his body is not what it once was, but his mind is still there, still clear, and he remembers how romance used to feel, where it used to reside in his younger body, and as he stares out at the cleared room, listening to your footsteps overhead as you attempt to follow his vague instructions to “make yourself feel pretty” (because you already were to him, even covered in dirt and sawdust), he thinks this feels like the old world. An old world romance. It’s foreign, that feeling, but for the first time in a long time he doesn’t want to hold it at arm’s length.

“Joel?” You call from the top of the stairs, your voice tentative and cautious. But not cautious like you peeking around a corner to look for clickers. But cautious as in unsure, doubtful. You are a woman made up of a lot of things, with foundations unlike he’d ever seen before, but doubt is not a part of you. You never doubt him. 

“Yeah, baby?” Your nerves make him nervous and he futzes with a lampshade while waiting for you.

“Are you done down there?” 

He has to breathe slowly through the fluttering beneath his breastbone before he can answer. “Yeah, baby, all finished. You can come down now.”

“Okay . . . but you can’t laugh.” Him, laugh at you? There’s the instinct to smother the faint grin that spreads out across his mouth, but he told himself he wasn’t going to fight whatever came across his face tonight. If you see it, then you see it and he’s come to accept that. 

(Maybe even want that.)

He shakes his head, his only pair of nice boots (a thank you from a former rancher when Joel fixed his family’s heater) clicking on the hardwood floor as he stands at the bottom of the stairs. You must be hiding behind the wall because he can’t see you. 

“I’m not gonna laugh, sweetheart. Why d’ya think I’d laugh?” 

Silence faces him at the top of the stairs, and then:

“Because quite frankly I forgot my tits could look like this and I don’t know how to feel about it.” 

The snort that comes out of him is a poor attempt to muffle the chuckle. He thumbs the wood finial at the top of the bannister. 

“Can’t remember ever having any complaints before and I don’t think I’ll have ‘em now, no matter how they look.” 

“Whatever, Miller, you’re just a horn dog.” 

He rolls his eyes, fingers rubbing anxiously together at his side, as if he could tug the fluttering out of his chest. He leans on the other foot, the one with the bad knee, to adjust the slightly uncomfortable tightness in his jeans. A dark swirl in the second step of the stairs has become wildly interesting.

“Baby, just come down here. I’m not gonna laugh. Promise.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” you grumble, still out of sight. “I know where you keep your feral child and I will not hesitate to let her loose on you.”

Joel nods, grinning faintly, still focused resolutely on the whorl in the floor. “That’s a real big threat from someone who –,”

The words die in his throat.

In fact, he’s quite sure he won’t be capable of speech for a very long time. 

That foreign feeling – that feeling he’s worked for twenty years to suppress – is ignited in his chest. 

You walk, no, maybe you float down the stairs in the most stunning red dress he’s ever seen. It’s definitely not yours – he knows every inch of your closet because he had inspected it studiously when you offered to keep some of his clothes at your place and he was trying very hard to delay putting a handful of his belongings beside a woman’s things in a move that felt heart-stoppingly domestic. 

No, he has never, ever seen you in this dress. 

Come to think of it, he’s never seen you in any dress and you were entirely correct that your tits look wildly different. Fantastically different, but –

“Maria didn’t have any heels that fit me to go with the dress,” you announce airily, your chin up. But your eyes dart over his face as if looking for something you need to find. “But it’s fourteen degrees outside, Joel, and I’m not doing whatever this is in just socks because that’s ridiculous so you’re just going to have to deal with the boots.”

The Boots. The ones you wear while crushing clicker skulls and tending the stables. They still bear damp spots from where you tried to clean the blood and dirt from the leather.

It’s rather incapacitating how arousing he finds this particular combination.

So much so, he doesn’t realize he hasn’t said anything in a full minute until you bark at him, a cold tinge of panic in your voice.

“Joel!” His eyes snap to yours. Of course, you’re fucking beautiful – your eyes seem bigger, cheeks pinker, mouth wet – fucking Christ, where did you get make up? 

“Say something!” Those rosy lips drop down and to his horror, you’re upset. “Please!”

“B-baby, you look . . .” He doesn’t mean to grab your entire ass in one hand; he just wants to feel as much of that velvet on your skin as possible. You stumble into his arms, another something that is so unlike you, as he tugs you forward. Bends his lips to your ear to discover how fast you’re breathing. How fast your pulse races in your neck. The shudder that breaks the rigidity of your body when he brushes his mouth, the short bristles of his beard, against your skin is no surprise; you told him exactly what that sensation does to you in no uncertain terms the first night he ate you out on the table of your kitchen. “You look incredible.”

Your fingers bite into his biceps. Push back out of his arms, despite the obvious warmth in your cheeks. You level his arousal in a single glare. “Joel, I asked you not to tease.” 

Tommy once told him he was a pain in the ass to be around sometimes because he displays every negative emotion as anger and so it’s damn near impossible to figure out whatever it was he was so bent out of shape about.

Sadness as anger.

Shame as anger.

Guilt as anger.

Fear as anger.

With your fingers balled up, it's the tremor in your fists that gives you away. 

He had genuinely intended this to be a quiet night away from the cafeteria, away from the Tipsy Bison, away from anyone else. He wanted you all to himself and in his greed, he didn’t see it until he saw it in your eyes. 

How vulnerable being pretty made you. How vulnerable privacy made you. 

How being vulnerable made you so deeply, deeply afraid. 

Almost as afraid as he was. 

Without a word, he turns to the record player, strategically hidden behind the couch and puts on the carefully selected record. The silent scratches for a moment before –

Your eyes widen as Nelson begins to sing his most beautiful love song (in Joel’s humble opinion). Your shoulders slacken, hands lose their grip, you blink up at him in total bewilderment. You aren’t an indecisive person, you’re quick as a whip, rarely confused – so this befuddled look on your face is kinda cute. 

Tucking that rare look on your face away for another time, Joel wanders to the center of the room, in the heat of the light from the fireplace, his good boots clicking over the wood. He opens his arms, hand out to you.

“Let’s try something new tonight.”

I'll always be with you for as long as you please

For I am the forest but you are the trees

The decision you make is a visible one. 

Your palm is warm, weighted as it slides over his. This time his hand respectably settles on your waist, then on your low back when (to his surprise) you come closer. He’s delighted to watch you smile at him, distantly aware of the stretch of his own on his face. 

Willie strums on his guitar, crooning softly, the sound warm and deep. With the weight of you against his chest, that feeling crackles like the flames over the wood logs in the fireplace. You drop your head, turn your cheek, and just before you come to rest on his shoulder, he sees your smile slide into a smirk.

“New, huh? What’s new look like for a sixty-five-year-old man at the end of the world?” Even with teasing, your voice is soft and sweet, the soft powder of cinnamon. Slowly, as if not to startle either one of you, he leans his chin against your forehead.

“You n’ I’ve been burning both ends, keepin’ the lights on. New to us is having a goddamn break.” His voice is low, meant only for you, and in the tremble of his deep bass, the words elongate in his mouth. He brings your intertwined hands just under his chin and when that goes well, he tightens his grip around your back, drawing you flush against him. It reduces the dancing to more of a sway but Joel can’t find a single thing to complain about. You gently tap the pad of your middle finger in the hollow of his collarbone to the beat of the song.

I'm empty without you so come grow within me

For I am the forest and you are the trees

And the heavens need romance so love never dies

“‘N ‘m only fifty-six, jackass.” 

You grin, twisting in his grasp, rub your nose on his chest to wrap your arms around his neck. He clutches to your back like a key finding its lock. 

You'll be the stars dear and I'll be the sky

And should any of this find us let them all be forewarned

That you are the thunder and I am the storm

“This is nice, Joel,” you murmur in his ear. The backs of his arms are growing warm by the fire. He presses his lips to your exposed shoulder, unsure of what to say, or what not to say, only nodding. He closes his eyes, trying to hold this moment forever in his memory. The soft flare of your waist, the winged-spread of your ribs, beneath his hands brings him back into your arms.

"Yeah?" Quiet, into your skin as if to muffle the question entirely, to muffle the unsure wobble in his voice. "It's good?"

He feels you nod beneath his chin, the smell of fresh soap escaping from the back of your neck, and the clamp around his throat loosens. He breathes, unimpeded for the first time all night, a low exhale taking the tension from his body as the air leaves his lungs.

Relief. A sinking down into the moment, into your arms.

You chuckle with your cheek against his chest and he feels the vibrations down to his stomach.

"Yeah, Joel, you did good. Really good." With the hand he holds in the air, you rub your thumb over the knuckle of his thumb, soothing. It used to bother him you could read the lines of his emotions as well as you read a book, as well as you write your own name, effortlessly, as if you had been given a guide no one ever thought to show him. But now, now that you understand how much this means to him, that you know he needs to be told he made you happy, it's more than relief. It's an unburying – a resuscitation of pieces of himself (seed-like bone fragments) that he thought had long since died in the soil of his ribs. "Thank you. I needed this."

He wants you to see the whole of him. Lift up an antiquated silver plate and show you the dents and scratches in his reflection. When you kiss his cheek gently, the hope floating in his chest flares, a solar explosion with tendrils that reach into the blackness of space and it asks him, what would you do to keep her?

Everything. Anything.

He shuffles closer, feels the warmth of your body lined up against his, the clean scent beneath the edge of your jaw blooming in his nose and throat. The hope hums, pitches dark like the forest floor in the rain, and grows teeth. His want for you digs into his skin and evolves into a needy, unsatisfied thing.

“Where’d you get this dress, hm?” He asks, lips half an inch from your shoulder. It falls and rises, never catching on your skin as he plays with the fabric. He runs his palm up your spine, the velvet coming with him, and watches as the swell of your thighs and the tease of your ass is revealed. Dirty old man. “‘N who do I have to kill to get you to keep it?”

You laugh into his neck. He wonders if you’re intentionally twisting his curls at the base of his neck to send sparks of arousal down his spine or if you are completely unaware of the cause of his insanity. Your hands are littered with scars and calluses and every time you touch him, he could melt through the floorboards.

“They found it in some strip mall and were actually going to strip it down for material. But Aaron at the sewing center owed me a favor and you said wear something nice, so . . .” You thumb the lip of his collar, your fingertips brushing the knot of his spine every time you drag your fingers back and forth. 

And I'll always be with you for as long as you please

For I am the forest and you are the trees

He knows you well enough to know that something lingers in your mind, but even after all this time, even after what he’s seen with you, been through with you, the things he’s done to you – he isn’t quite sure if he has the right to ask. 

Instead, he squeezes you. He means to do it just with his hands, but ends up swallowing you in his arms. 

Your mouth is pressed up against his chest when you finally go on. 

“It just seems silly to keep, Joel.” 

The high he’s been riding on all night falters, since you first walked down those stairs to him. Your eyes are wet when he pulls back and cups you by your cheek. He stops swaying with you.

“Why’s that?” 

There it is, that all too familiar flicker of fear. You can’t look at him, despite his every touch, his every glance pulling you into him, to be near him. 

“Because other people should have it. They should have a chance to . . .” 

You withdraw your head from his hands, his thumb brushing your jaw as you retreat. He might actually lose a piece of himself if you let go now, but instead you clasp his wrists in your fingers. You stare at your hands and his between you, as if this whole thing between you could solidify at your feet, finally real. 

Willie has stopped singing, only that musky drone on an empty track.

“Someone else should have a chance to feel pretty, to feel this way, because it shouldn’t be wasted and I’m afraid – I wonder if –,”

He knows he’s being a bit too rough when he takes your jaw and straightens your gaze to him, but his heart might fly out of his chest before he has a chance to say anything. His stomach turns, not knowing he’s not at the peak of a roller coaster drop, that he’s standing on solid ground, even if it swims under his feet.

“What you feel is not wasted.” A murmur, stern, as steadily and as serious as he possibly can be.

That feeling aches in his chest and you haven’t even gone anywhere. You haven’t left . . . yet. “What this is, is not wasted time. I spent twenty years wasting time, looking for something that wasn’t there, and with you . . . I can’t say I’ve found it –,”

“Why? Why can’t you say you’ve found it?” Your grip around his wrists tightens, eyes hard. “Why can’t you name it, Joel?”

“Can you?” He pulls his hands out of your grip and you let him go. “How can you ask for what you want when you can’t even ask to keep this dress?” 

“Because I don’t deserve it!” It’s not silence that follows; it’s emptiness. You face away from him, pressing the heel of your hand into your brow bone, teeth slightly bared. Your arm bars across your stomach like you are literally holding in your guts. Finally, you lift your head, the few scant tears on your face sparkling in the firelight. “I don’t deserve you, Joel. I don’t deserve any of this. Ellie, the way she . . . I’m here, warm and happy, acting like the fucking world hasn’t ended. Playing house, playing pretend. Pretending like I’m your –,”

You swallow the words caught in your throat, gaze leaping away from him. At your side, your hand trembles again. 

Oh, honey, the shit I’ve done . . . 

With wide, wet eyes, you watch him approach. He doesn’t look at you, instead seeing exactly where he’d like to put his lips on your stomach beneath the fabric. 

“Then what do you want, hm?” There’s a fold in the front of the dress and he runs his fingers along the edge of it. “We can’t fix it. Can’t go back ‘cause there’s nothin' to go back to. I don’t care what you had to do to get here, right here, with me because I’m so fuckin’ glad you are. I’m not pretending, not wasting my time, never was. ‘Cause you’re right.” 

Your hand over his stills his endless roving and then it stays, scarred hand over scarred hand. Your gesture says something to him, something so meaningful he has no idea how to put it into words. He swallows his attempt and instead, slowly, drags both hands over your hips, where they stay. Heavy against the velvet. 

You rest your own against his forearms, neither pulling him in or pushing him back. 

“I was right about what?”

His eyes flick to yours and maybe it’s presumptuous, maybe he really is an old man afraid of his feelings, or maybe living this long – despite everything that ever tried to make it otherwise – living this long has granted him the privilege of knowing with perfect clarity what you’re thinking when you look at him like that. How he wants to whisper it back to you and he decides he will the next time your skin is warm and tacky, body helpless beneath his. 

Your eyes shamelessly track the brush of his tongue against his bottom lip.

“That you’re mine. Just like I’m yours.” 

The hands at his forearms glide up to his chest. The rims of your irises have gone a bit blurred, a bit unstable, and you can’t decide whether to look at his mouth or his eyes.

“Joel?” Suddenly breathy, all begging, pleading.

“Hm?”

“Get me out of this fucking dress.” 

When your lips crash into his, his entire world narrows down to where on his body, yours touches: 

your rough hand cradling his cheek, the other fisting the collar of his shirt. His fingers digging into your skirt, the heat from your thigh nearly driving him to tear straight through the fabric to get to you. Your sweet, perfect mouth smeared against his, lips puffed pink, nose to your cheek. 

That warm, wet cunt he thinks he can feel through his boxers, jeans, the dress and your underwear. 

It’s not enough. 

The cry you let out is some mangled mix of a moan and his name when he licks the soft supple skin behind your ear and nips your earlobe.

“Baby, please – please – bedroom, we have to–,”

He grunts his disapproval at your words, overwhelmed by the scent that makes his mouth water as he stains the column of your throat with wet, humid kisses. 

“Joel, c’mon, honey, just upstairs –,” 

The last flickering tiny speckle of logic in his brain fights with itself; take your right here or haul you over his shoulder – which isn’t great for his back and, quite frankly, he intends to spend most of the night on his knees. 

First option it is. 

You mumble in confusion, eyes shut, chin brushing the thread of gray curls on the top of his head as he purposefully sucks a bright hickey into your collarbone, one hand cupping your breast, the other pushing you backwards. You go willingly, of course. 

Until the backs of your legs hit the couch and there’s nowhere else to go. In the stumble, your dress rides up even higher and those thighs he’s actually lost sleep over appear to him. He drops to his knees, hands like meat hooks as they squeeze your waist, pulling that warm cunt even closer to him over the edge of the couch. You groan when he pushes the skirt up even higher, practically to your tits, as he explores your outer, then inner thighs with soft strokes of the back of his hands. He presses his nose to the crevice between your thigh and hip and inhales. 

“B-baby, the windows,” you swallow thickly, slurring like you’re drunk, grabbing at his shoulders like you’re trying to steady yourself, or turn him towards the windows. “I mean – the curtains, baby, the curtains are –,”

“It’s a fucking blizzard outside,” he explains tersely with his eyes still closed, as if irritated to have a conversation instead of focusing every ounce of concentration he has to the heat and smell beneath your black panties. He drags his teeth over the elastic band around your hips and makes you whine his name for an entirely different reason. 

You don’t make him stop or wait when he tugs those panties down your hips. In fact, you help, lifting your hips, the irises of your eyes so wide and black, you look halfway out of your mind.

Good.

He gathers the skirt he was once so fond of and stuffs it into the cushions behind you. You watch him as he moves, eyes half-lidded, finger scraping your bottom lip. Around his ribs, your knees dip back and forth, moving targets, like he’s forgotten why he’s here and needs reminding. 

His big paw, the size of which makes you feel indescribably small, catches your knee and stills it, gaze dark and heavy. Do not test me right now. You try not to moan. 

“Can’t believe I’m going to let you fuck me with my boots on,” you whisper airly, watching with delirious fascination as he puts one of your slender legs over his shoulder. His mouth is actually watering at the sight of your damp curls. 

“Not gonna fuck you. Just gonna eat your pussy. You’ll know the difference.”

“Semantically, it’s the sa-a-me thi-ng, Jo-e – ah, Joel!” 

His tongue up inside you turns you into a whiny, high-pitched, feminine mess. He eats like he does everything else: diligently, quickly, and silently. 

Until you bury your fingers in his ash-flecked curls and tug. 

That first deep, loud moan ripples through his body, rolling him up just off his heels, his crotch seeking some kind – any kind – of friction. 

The feel of his mouth humming against your cunt has your eyes rolling back in your head. “Please, oh fuck, please –” 

You are a grown woman. You should not be making these noises. 

You also shouldn’t be using a man’s face to get off . . . but you do it anyway.

“Tha’s it, baby,” he mutters when your hips grind against his face. His nose catches your clit and around him, your thighs wobble. “Use me, fuckin’ use me.” 

His grip around your calf over his shoulder turns rough and he knows he’ll bruise you, but fuck, the thought of you walking around town with a mark in the shape of his hand where everyone can see —

He briefly lifts his grip from your thigh to adjust his iron-hot cock in his jeans. From his view over your cunt, it doesn't seem like you noticed, or even saw him leave your skin. He watches you writhe, try to capture your breath, eyes crammed shut as your hips rock almost without your control. He takes a chance to lick the musky dampness from his upper lip when your cunt rolls back from his face a fraction of an inch — and then he sinks in again.

Call it age or the fact that you both are here at the end of the world, but the first night he ate you out, you told him exactly how and where you like it, unabashed and in control and honestly it’s the hottest thing he can think of in recent memory. 

He would have written it down on the backs of his eyelids if he could. 

He follows it to the letter.

“Joel – Joel, baby, please don’t stop –,” You buck and moan beneath him as he spells out your instructions with his tongue along your cunt. He dots the i’s with a tap of his tongue or a lick on your clit. Just inches above his head, your chest heaves, your fingers locked into his curls, gently pushing him closer to your puffy pussy as if he’d ever waste a drop of what leaks out of you. 

With a flat-tongued brush against your suffering clit, you arch off the couch, your sighs now verging on desperate, high and whinging, because it’s just not fair how good he makes you feel. He can feel your foot curl against the planes of his back, the rubber heel heavy, your mouth open and wet, with your eyes locked on the ceiling as you try to ride out your humming orgasm with a semblance of control.

“Look at me.” 

No other man has ever been able to make you come with just his mouth, you told him once.

And no other man ever will. 

It’s sweet, the way your eyes soften briefly when you lock eyes with him, crouched between your thighs — before your head tips back, lips wrenched apart in a silent scream, and you come, as hard as he has worked for the flush of slick down his chin.

There’s goosebumps on your thighs, he notes. He rubs his thumb against your raised skin and you shudder, head rolling against the back of the couch.

He’s already feeling a slight twinge of shame at the noise his knees will inevitably make when he stands, but for now he’s content watching you glide down from your high, his head against your knee, shoulders still stretching your legs open wide. 

To his delight, you manage to laugh, your hand draping over your eyes. You can see the shine of the dull light all across his lips, his chin, his nose and you have to close your eyes. He should make you lick it off him, but not tonight.

“Top marks, Miller, as usual,” you mumble, “but the threat of voyeurism really deserves the extra credit.” 

He grins. Still waiting for your breath to slow, he wipes his mouth with his palm and slides the leg over his shoulder down in between his own thighs. Propped up on one knee, he begins to unlace your boot. He holds your calf like it’s delicate as he gently drags the boot over your heel. 

He’s just as reverent with the other side. 

And then your boots, the pair, sit at the end of his couch, like they were always meant to be there. 

His heart, easing down from its own thunderous beat, squeezes and that feeling, that strange-not-so-strange feeling, the one that dictates practically every action with you, dribbles into his veins. 

You open one eye. A flutter of lashes, coy and playful, the curve of your mouth guarding a hoard of secrets.

“Now, Joel Miller . . . will you take me to bed?” 

It’s a question. A request. Your eyes, as dark as ever, on his warm his chest, all the way down his spine. You’re asking, politely, for a thing you both know he would never, ever deny you. 

He cannot lose you, he just can’t. 

He stands and, yes, his knees crack and pop, but he regains stability when he toes off his only good pair of cowboy boots. He nods, grinning, and offers you his hand.

The walk, half-run up to his bedroom is something his brain designates as not important enough to store away. 

Instead, it languishes in the way you stretch out on his mattress before him, ass in the air, knees spread over his blankets and arms sliding through crumpled sheets towards the headboard. 

The room is dark, the only light fighting its way through the downpour of snow comes from the lamp posts that dot the street outside. But the veil of snow warps the light and everything in the half-darkness is doused in blue. 

The shadowy, blurred curve of your shoulder, blue. 

The spread of your fingers on his mattress, blue.

The swollen bottom of lip of your mouth —

“Joel.” 

The snow falls so fast and hard, it patters against the windows and the sides of the house. It’s the only thing he can hear over the pounding of his heart and the short breath in his lungs. He stares at you, soaking his blankets in your scent and slick, and you stare right back in utter and total silence. 

You sit in the center of his bed, bare for him beneath the velvet dress that is red like blood, your patchy white socks at complete odds with your smeared make up and the fucked-out look in your eyes. But there’s something else there too. 

Something softer. Gentler. 

You reach out a hand to him and he goes to you, like always. The instant your skin touches his the instinct to fuck you hard until you’re bruised and crying evaporates. He doesn’t think you want that anymore either. 

No, you need — 

“Joel, please come here. I need you.” 

You need him.

The mattress squeaks when he settles one knee and then the other on top of it, his fingers stroking your ear, brushing the tips of your hair, while he kisses you with an ache that is not physically manifested. Instead, it resides —

“I love you,” you whisper. 

You pull back infinitesimally, just enough that your eyes are all he sees. 

A patient silence hangs from the ceiling. The sound of snow falling. Of baited breath. The scratch of your fingers against at his beard —

“I love you too.” You smile and his body is no longer big enough to contain his heart. “I feel like I’ve always loved you. Is that strange?” 

Your gaze traces the same path your fingers take when you think he’s sleeping; it runs over his nose, his forehead, his eyebrows, the plush curve of his lips. Like you can’t believe he’s there with you. Like you can’t believe he’s real. 

That feeling — that feeling he had been fighting because it always was the only thing that would ever really do him in — is love. He loves you. 

He loves you.

And you love him. 

Didn’t think they told stories like this anymore, not in a world like this. So maybe, for once, Joel Miller just got lucky. 

“No. It’s not. Just be sure you mean it.”

He can't tell if the glow in your eyes comes from within you or it beams out of him. “Every word.”

Eventually, he sheds you of his favorite dress of yours, your only dress, and he lays you back, fully bare in the nest of his blankets. In the corner of his bedroom, the heater hisses like the wind from a purple storm, the static crackle of warmth hovering in the air. You watch, with eyes that shine like stars, as he pops apart the pearl-snaps holding his shirt together. 

And then his white undershirt goes next. He used to worry what he looked like, until he found someone else who had done exactly what was necessary to survive. 

When he goes to unzip his pants, you sit up, hair mussed and the hickey he gave you earlier throbbing like a dream. 

“I wanna do it.” 

He lets you unbutton his jeans, slide the zipper down, at the edge of the bed, but your hands are shaking, your breath stunted.

“I’m fumbling like a teenager,” you huff, a small, flustered smile on your face. “It’s like I’m nervous, but what is there to be nervous about —,”

His mouth pressed up against yours creates the most beautiful silence of all. 

How do you want me, you ask him and he thinks, all the time. But he takes you both under the covers and settles in next to you. He positions one leg over his hip and immediately you know exactly what he’s asking for. Quick as a whip, you are. 

There’s a rustle of covers, the bed slats squeaking, and then he’s nearly nose-to-nose with you. You kiss him again, maybe nervous still. 

He disconnects, when you slip between his legs and take his thick, leaking cock in your hand. 

“Baby, wait, do you need — I know it’s a lot — I’m a lot –,”

He can’t fathom why he’s so nervous either. But you chuckle, shake your head, smile at him. 

“Don’t need anything but you.” 

Your leg wraps tighter over his hip, knee up to his ribs, as he sinks inside you. The palm wrapped around the back of your knee grips roughly only once.

This is true silence. The instant where the world goes muted, everything distant and muffled, when he’s first buried deep in your heat. 

Your fingers thread through his curls and suddenly all sound is cranked up to an eleven. Your rapid, stilted breathing, the groan of the bed, your soft smothered moans, or are those his? —

“Fuck me, Joel.” 

Eyes never leaving yours, he does. 

Your fingers dig into his skull, nails biting, hand wrapped around his neck to hold yourself steady as he thrusts up into you. He thumbs your stiff nipple, half of his hand still grasping your ribs. 

You meet him thrust for thrust, a slow steady pace that draws sweat to his hairline and endless gasps from his mouth. But your gaze stays strong, never falters. Your hand slips to his shoulder, to stabilize just a bit more, but then it's on his chest, twisting his chest hair and he thinks he feels that sparkle of sanity, of rationality, any restraint to hold back crack and shatter between the clench of his teeth. 

“Goddamn–,” 

He rolls, taking you under him and demanding a faster pace. You push your hand against the headboard, the bed knocking against the wall in rhythmic, hypnotic thuds. 

He thinks you hiss his name before you bite down his shoulder. 

The sharp shock of pain lights up his brain, channeling the sudden awareness that he liked that so fucking much all the way down his spinal cord where it presses hot against his groin. 

He lifts up onto one elbow, skin sweat hot and sticky as it splits from yours. 

“Tell me what you need to come,” he pants.  

You whine again, your throat dripping sweat, but that’s not an answer. Knowing he has about a half-a-dozen to a dozen good grinds before it puts too much strain on his back, he uses every single one of them to drag you to the knife’s edge. 

“What–,” grind, “do you need –,” grind, “to come?”

The wail you let out nearly makes him come on the spot. Your eyes have that same, out-of-this-world, off-this-planet unfocused gaze, any sort of language impossible. You plead with him in the silence. A silence loaded with damp moans, grit teeth, and skin against skin against skin against skin against skin. Best sound in the world, as far as he was concerned.

You arch until he lifts above you and, taking the hand that was by your head, tuck it down between your legs. You let him grasp around with spread fingers where you are wet, where his cock rocks into your body, watch as that pulls him apart faster with dark eyes, before pressing his thumb against your clit. 

There, you say without words. There is where I need you.

Once, twice, he circles – he can feel the tightness in his back already settling in, his jaw fixed and locked, his body battling the two overwhelming sensations of dull pain and fierce, wild pleasure – and you hit your release and you soak him in it. 

He falls then too, falls just as hard and as fast as you, the chronic pain he holds in his shoulders, his neck, his back, his knee fleetingly gone in the rush of heat that branches out of his body from his groin and it feels divine.

When he lies on top of you, face buried in the curve of your neck, the heat from your humid skin warming up the breath in his lungs, the throb of your body matching his, his mind wiped clean, the thought occurs to him:

It’s not silence he’s found with you, it’s quiet. 

It’s peace.

Eventually, some awareness seeps back into his trembling body and he rolls off of you, but takes the curve of your jaw in his hand as he goes. He can’t settle into the pillows because he can’t stop kissing you, love bites occasionally against your lip, as if where his body fails, he proves his love for you won’t end so easily.

Eventually, you press your fingers into the base of his skull and, like a reset button, he groans and drops onto his back. 

Eventually, the quiet returns. Only soft noises, murmurs of existence outside of this perfect little room, fill the space. 

Eventually, he falls asleep with you curled up next to him. 

He knows you love waking up in bed together, but he also knows you love fresh coffee even more. 

Which is where Ellie finds him the next morning. 

He nearly adds too much ground coffee to the pot because he’s distracted, lost in thought about the way your curves looked in the bright morning light, when the back door slams open and a little creature made of entirely scarves, mittens, and an oversized purple jacket stomps into his kitchen and clomps its snowy shoes on the rug. 

“Joel, we gotta go!” She’s a little breathless, red-cheeked too as she unwinds the scarf around her head and her face is revealed. “We don’t wanna miss it!”

“Miss what?” Joel asks, this time carefully measuring how much water the pot needs. 

His question is not met with her usually buzzy chatter. Instead, she’s stopped undoing her scarf and just stares at him like he’s been beamed down from another planet. 

He realizes all too late that he’s still in PJs at 9AM (basically a sign of another apocalypse), he’s making more coffee than just for himself, and he’s smiling. 

Shit.

“Ellie, um, I –,”

She rolls her eyes. Her scarf is flung off her neck and she starts yanking off her gloves, her plucky attitude back, if not a bit smug.

“Get your girlfriend up too. They’re lighting the big tree in town square in an hour. I know she’d be pissed if she missed it.” 

So definitely caught. Time to be “The Adult” here and put it out on the table. 

“Don’t call her that.” Joel eyes her. Coffee percolating, he grabs a slice of bread and Ellie’s favorite jam. “Makes it sound like we’re fourteen.” 

She frowns at him, classic “pouty-mouth”. 

“I’m fourteen — rude. But seriously, and I say this because I care, get over yourself. Call a spade a spade. You’re dating her, fucking her–,”

“Ellie!” 

"– and you make gross ga-ga eyes at each other when you think I’m not looking."

She slides into the seat at the island in front of him as he pushes the toasted bread with jam across the marble to her. She takes a bite, chews with her mouth open, and shrugs. “That’s a girlfriend, dude.” 

Joel turns back to the eggs that might be burning, his shoulders hunched and fist tight around the spatula. Hate it when the kid is right. 

He salvages what he can of the eggs, plates them along with two strips of bacon on two plates, and balances a mug of coffee on each. He tries to salvage some of his dignity with a glare. 

“When you’re older, you’ll see some things just don’t need labels.” 

At that, she rolls her eyes again and snatches up the last strip of bacon from the folded, greasy napkins. “Whatever, you dork.”

Argument soundly lost, he gathers up the plates and heads back up stairs. She’s still mumbling to herself as he goes. 

“'Girlfriend', pfft . . . much better than fuck bunny!” She yells to no one in particular.

You hear the entire conversation from bed, the door cracked open enough for the sound to travel. Muffling a giggle, you snag his white shirt from the floor and draw it over your head. You should probably be more embarrassed that Joel got caught in his Walk of Shame, even if it was to his own kitchen to make breakfast. But . . . you’re just not. 

The smile is still on your face when his footfalls approach the door and he sticks his head into the room.

“Sounds like we’re busted,” you smirk. 

Joel almost chuckles. “'Bout as busted as you can be.” He hands you one plate and sits on the end of the bed with his own. He takes a low, slow sip of coffee and you follow him. The eggs are nibbled at and the bacon is perfectly crunchy.

“So . . . girlfriend?” 

He rolls his eyes. “Not you too.” 

“I mean," you slip the plate and coffee onto the bedside table, then hug the sheets around your knees, "I agree with you on the bit about labels. It seems silly. And not wasteful silly. Just . . .”

“Silly.” Joel’s eyes are as dark as his coffee, warmer than it too. “Doesn’t really capture the whole thing, does it?”

An apocalypse and a half later, and a boy’s sweet eyes on you can still make your stomach swoop. 

“No, it doesn’t.” 

“Then what do you wanna say, if people start askin’?”

You bite your lip, eyes up in faux-thought. “Truth be told, I'm kinda partial to fuck bunny. Cute like with a little tail and ears —,"

The groan from Joel and subsequent head shake makes you laugh enough for you to take pity on the old guy. You crawl closer and his eyes slip from your face to where the sheet tucks under your knees. But a hand on his cheek returns his gaze.

"I like what you said last night." Your smile is soft, pleased. "That I’m yours. Like you’re mine.” 

Joel’s warmth bleeds from his whole frame as he leans in close to put his mug on the bedside table, then leans in closer still to you. He drags his nose over your bare, exposed shoulder, in a way that is sweet and sensual all at once. He stops with a kiss on the hinge of your jaw. 

“I like that too. I like saying that you’re mine.”

Ignoring the shiver that rockets up your spine at the low hum of his voice, the flutter of his lips barely against your cheek, you tuck an errant curl around his ear and it immediately springs back up again. You smile and he smiles back, a youthful shine in his eyes.

“Wherever you are, I am too.”  

Listen to: I am the forest by Willie Nelson

[vanessagillings]

I’m posting the ever-so-rare photo of myself alongside one of my characters based on my childhood because today is World Autism Acceptance Day, and I wanted to show my little corner of the internet who this particular autistic person is:  

I was officially diagnosed in February, at age 38 (I’m now 39). A lot of people thought I couldn’t be autistic.  Some people who know me in real life still don’t.  And until around 10 years ago, I didn’t think I could be either, because I was nothing like the stereotype media portrays. I was told that autistics lacked empathy (untrue), and never played make-believe (also often untrue) and only enjoyed STEM.  I was — and am — an empathetic artist -- and make believe?  I can spend days sketching finely bedecked bears brewing tea or carefully choosing the right words to weave tapestries of fiction — though perhaps my hyper focus was a bit of a red flag.  Even so, how could autism describe me?  I was a good student.  I got straight A's. I didn’t act out in class.  I can make eye contact…if I must.  And lots of girls hate having their hair brushed with an unholy passion, right?  Clearly I swim in sarcasm like a fish, so autism couldn't be why I was so anxious all the time, could it?

If someone had told me when I was younger what autism ACTUALLY is — instead of the nonsense I���d seen on screens — I would have seen myself in it.  I didn’t hear that autistics have sensory issues until I was in my mid-twenties, which is when I first began to really research autism symptoms, and I had almost all of them:  sensitivity to light, smells, fabrics, temperatures, textures, and certain touches, all of which make me feel anxious, I fidget (stim), I never know what the hell to do with my hands or where to look, I talk too little or too much, I have special interests, I have entire animated movies memorized shot-by-shot and can remember the first time and place I saw every movie I've ever seen but I often forget what I'm trying to say mid-sentence, I echo movies and tv shows (my husband and I have a whole repertoire of shared echolalias, making up about 20% of our conversations), I was in speech therapy as a kid, I have issues with dysnomia and verbal fluency, I toe-walk, I can't multitask to save my life, I like things just-so, I’m deeply introverted but not shy, I need to recover from all social interaction — even social interaction I enjoy — and I find stupid, every day things like grocery shopping, driving and making appointments overwhelming and intensely stressful, sometimes to the point where I struggle to speak.  It turns out, I am definitely autistic. My results weren't borderline. Not even close. And while these aren’t all of my challenges, and not everyone with these symptoms is autistic, it’s definitely something to look into if you present with all of these things at once. 

So why did it take me so long to get diagnosed? The same bias that exists in media threads through the medical community as well, and because I'm a woman who can discuss the weather while smiling on cue, few people thought I was worth looking into. Even after I was fairly certain I was autistic, receiving an official diagnosis in the US is unnecessarily difficult and expensive, and in my case, completely uncovered by my insurance.  It cost me over $4000, and I could only afford it because my husband makes more money than I do as a freelance illustrator — a job I fell into largely because it didn’t require in-person work; like many autists, I have been chronically underemployed and underpaid, in part due to physical illness in my twenties, which is a topic for another day.  But it shouldn’t be like this.  It shouldn’t be so hard for adults to receive diagnoses and it shouldn’t be so hard for people to see themselves in this condition to begin with due to misinformation and stereotypes. Like many issues in America, these barriers are even higher for marginalized groups with multiple intersectionalities. 

It’s commonly said that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.  This is why it’s called a spectrum, not because there’s a linear progression of severity (someone who appears to have low support needs like myself might need more than it seems, and vice versa), but because every autistic person has their own strengths and weaknesses, challenges and experiences, opinions and needs.  No two people on the spectrum present in the same way.  And that’s a good thing!  No way of being autistic is inherently any better than any other, and even if someone on the spectrum struggles with things I don’t — or can do things I can’t — doesn’t make them more or less deserving of respect and human dignity.

But speaking solely for myself, the more I learn about autism, the happier I am to be autistic.  I struggle to find words and exert fine motor control, but my deep passion and fixation has made me good at art and storytelling anyway.  I find more joy watching dogs and studying leaf shapes on my walks than most people do in an entire day.  More often than not, the barriers I’ve faced weren’t due to my autism directly, but due to society being overly rigid about what it considers a valid way of existing.  My hope in writing this today is that maybe one person will realize that autism isn’t what they thought — and that being different is not the same as being less than. My hope with my fiction is to give autistic children mirrors with which to see themselves, and everyone else windows through which to see us as we actually are.

If you’re interested in learning more about autism or think you might be autistic, too, I recommend the Autism Self Advocacy Network  autisticadvocacy.org and the following books:

What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic by Annie Kotowicz

We're Not Broken by Eric Garcia

Knowing Why edited by Elizabeth Bartmess

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD

Loud Hands edited by Julia Bascom

Neurotribes by Steve Silberman

(trigger warning: the last two contain quite a lot of upsetting material involving institutionalized child abuse, but I think it’s important for people to know how often autistic children were — and are — abused simply for being neurodivergent).

Thanks for reading 💛

[ayyy-pee]

Discord 18+ - Bluesky - Part One of OUTLAW Series

Pairing: Ex-Outlaw Toji Fushiguro x Outlaw Reader

WC: 8.7k

Summary: Shit luck. That's the unfortunate reputation branded to ex-outlaw Toji Fushiguro. That is, until tonight, when a reunion with an "old friend" turns his luck on its head.

Story Warning: Bar Fight, Gambling, Cheating (at gambling lmao), Violence and Blood and Broken Bones, Implied Rough Sex, Rough Oral Sex (M. Receiving), Implied Ass play, Misogyny, Protective Toji, Marking, Profanity, Smut obviously, Outlaw pt.1 references, No Y/N usage here

Art by: shesdeny on X

A/N: I had Backroads by Tanner Adell on repeat the entire time I wrote this ON REPEAT. I didn't proofread i'm so tired yall

Word on the prairie is there’s been one hell of a train heist.

It’s the talk of the town right now, and Toji’s soaking up every word of it as he sits at the parlor poker table. 

One man places a card down on the table, taking a drag of his cigar. “I heard they cleaned the locomode right out. Not even a silver spoon left at the scene.”

‘Thorough,’ Toji thinks. 

Another slides his chips into the center, where the dealer takes them. “Yup, heard that, too. An’ I heard it was a broad that did it.”

This piques Toji’s interest. He slides more chips forward, taps the table to check, letting them know he’s not adding any more money to this pot. Not that he has anymore to offer. He’s really hoping the shit luck he’s been having lately turns tonight.

“A broad?” The cigar smoker asks, thick smoke falling from his lips. “Can’t imagine a woman bein’ able to pull that off.”

At this, Toji snorts under his breath. These men don’t know what a determined and smart woman is capable of. But he does.

Another man laughs hard, tapping his fists on the table. “Thought so, too, but they caught a outlaw at the scene, too.” He tries to catch his breath, chuckling when he describes the scene. Apparently, the poor sucker was picked up from the train car with his hair knotted around the seat bar and his dick out for everyone to see. This makes Toji shake his head, amused, because he has a strong feeling he knows exactly who could have pulled something like that off.

A clean sweep? Leaving the other party humiliated just because they can? Toji’s fairly certain about who the culprit is for this one.

“But they say the outlaw escaped on the way to hoosegow,” notes the man. “Ain’t been able to find him. Probably gonna kill the broad when he finds her.”

Toji shakes his head, the slightest smirk sitting on his lips. That tracks. Leaving the scene with enemies left behind in embarrassing situations? Yeah, he knows exactly who pulled this heist off.

The men go on and on about the heist and the rumors circulating around the town. To everyone else, it all seems impractical. How could some woman possibly have the wits and the courage to be able to face off with one notorious outlaw and come out on top both literally and figuratively? 

Toji only knows one woman capable of achieving such a feat — you.

You’re the one who got—

“You in or you out, Fushiguro?” The dealer calls impatiently. “Hurry up.”

Toji checks the spread across the table, what’s laid out to determine if he’s going to stay in the game or not. And as his eyes flit across the cards, he kisses his teeth.

He lost, as usual.

”I’m out,” he grunts, standing from his seat. “Gonna take a piss.”

-

The streets are alive with activity. Brothel girls stand on the porches of their building, batting their lashes and waving their handkerchiefs in an attempt to lure each and every man inside. They call out to Toji, blow him kisses and offer him the “night of his life” while waving their fingers flirtily in his direction. Toji ignores their advances, not in the mood after taking yet another hit to his already dwindling funds.

This streak of bad luck has been following him all his life. Small inconveniences, minor problems that have built up and taken a toll on him over time. It seemed as if being an outlaw was the only thing he was good at, though he wouldn’t call himself one now. He’s not sure why he ever thought hanging up his hat as an outlaw and taking up gambling would change his luck. He’s never won, not once. But he can’t seem to stop himself from putting it all on the line in hopes that he’ll hit big, just one time. So far, no luck.

Toji strolls into the back alley of the parlor, nose wrinkling at the rancid smell of sweat and piss that fills the area. He finds what he thinks might be a cleaner spot than the rest of the alley and pulls his pants to his knees, grabbing hold of himself just before he begins to relieve himself.

The sharp sounds emanating from the piano keys throughout the many saloons can be heard and Toji finds himself tilting his head back and staring up at the night sky, letting a little tune fall from his lips in a whistle. It’s when he’s shaking the remnants of his bathroom break off that he feels the cold press of metal against the back of his head, effectively cutting his whistling short.

Shit.

Just his luck. Of course he’d go out to relieve himself and end up with a damn gun to his skull.

“Ya know what they say ‘bout whistlin’ at night, don’t ya?” A familiar sweet voice sings behind him. “Brings bad luck.”

Toji chuckles, shaking his head - and the extra piss - off. “That’s a cowboy’s belief,” he remarks. He pulls his pants back up, securing them around his waist. “And I ain’t one.”

The stranger hums, the pressure of the gun easing just slightly, but it’s enough for Toji and he takes this moment to spin around swiftly. His large hand catches the weapon in his palm and he yanks forward, pulling its wielder with it. He holds the barrel of the gun against the center of his forehead, a sick grin sitting on his lips.

“Just kill me if you’re gonna do it. But just know…I ain’t got shit for ya to take.” In the dim lighting of the alleyway, Toji can just make out the way this person stares up at him through hooded eyes, teeth digging into their bottom lip as they have this short standoff with him. Then they sigh, unceremoniously lifting their skirt and holstering their weapon between their thighs. 

“I see shit ain’t changed since the last time I saw ya, Toji.”

Toji only shrugs, a lopsided grin on his face. “Creature of habit, I guess.”

And there’s that laugh he hasn’t heard in some time. One that he won’t admit he’s missed because it reminds him of a different time in his life. One that he also won’t admit that he’s missed.

Standing before him is the earlier topic of discussion amongst the men inside. You’ve got your hands on your hips, dressed in the pretty little get up you usually wear when you’re up to no good, and Toji knows you’re about to have one hell of a night. And he has a feeling that you’re going to be dragging him into whatever plot you’ve cooked up. 

He takes in your appearance, the fancy new gun you tucked away and a very nice hat that probably sells for a hefty price.

Toji motions to your new possessions. “Keepsakes from your last job? Heard it was a damn good ride.”

You lift a hand, running your fingers along the brim of your hat, giggling as you play dumb. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

He knows better than to pry, at least not in the open where just anybody can hear. So instead he tells you, “You look pretty tonight,” and basks in the smile you give him. Soft and genuine, but only for a second before you’ve shifted into the little facade you put on.

“D’ya wanna show me ‘round here?” You ask sweetly, looping your arm through Toji’s and tugging him along. 

Toji slips his hands into his pockets. Truth be told, he hasn’t been in this town long, just arrived a couple days ago when he heard there was easy money to make at the parlors. But he hasn’t found that to be true. He was actually planning on heading out soon anyway. “Not much goin’ on in this town ‘round this time of night. Same ol’ gamblin’, drinkin’, fuckin’ and fightin’ that happens in all the others.”

“Hmm,” you nod, peering up at Toji with the false innocence he’s familiar with. “And what about you?” You’ve switched on your proper speech as well, Toji notes, but he doesn’t miss the suggestive tone behind your words when you ask, “Which one are you gettin’ into tonight?” 

He wants to tell you that he’ll be in whatever shitshow you start, just how he always is when you two run into each other in whatever middle of nowhere town you end up in. But instead he just smirks as he leans down to your ear where he whispers, “Let's see how the night goes.”

-

You’re careful to make sure there are no watchful eyes when you both emerge from the alley arm in arm. Toji leads you back towards the parlor, not missing the salacious looks you’re getting from the other men and cowboys while he holds onto you. And you, ever the actress, offer a demure smile and nod to each and every one of them that has them melting beneath your gaze.

And it’s a ridiculous thing, really, how Toji also finds himself melting for you. Although it’s for different reasons. You can offer all the innocent and pretty smiles you want. It may fool the average man, but it’s never fooled Toji. You two are cut from the same cloth, and that’s what brought you two together in the first place all those years ago.

You’re a beautiful woman, of course. A perfect face with a perfect body to match, filling that outfit of yours just the way Toji has always liked. But it’s your mind that draws Toji to you. Your ability to easily cook up a scheme that you rarely fail to pull off. The way you can slip on a manipulative mask like the one you’re wearing now and wrap anyone around your finger. How you can lure people into your traps and get anything you want. Any time he’s in your presence, Toji’s convinced that he’s sick in the head, because he can’t fucking get enough of watching you conspire against whatever poor person you’ve deemed your target.

It brings him back to his outlaw days, when he’d met you mid-scheme and almost threw a wrench in your plans. But somehow, it ended with you two teaming up to pull off one hell of a heist. And the aftermath? Well, let's just say you left Toji more than satisfied with the outcome.

When you two enter the parlor, it seems the gambling table has changed as well as the dealer, Toji notices. You both observe the dealer, placing three cards face down on the table. He shows one card - the 4 of diamonds - to the players around the table before setting it down and wildly shuffling them. When he’s finished and all three cards lie in a line on the table, one of the men selects a card, and they all erupt in a string of curses when it’s wrong.

Beside Toji, you scoff. “This’ll be a easy night, looks like.” You glance up at him, a teasing smirk on your lips. “Please don’t tell me ya lost all your money gamblin’ on goddamn Three-Card Monte,” you murmur just loud enough for Toji to hear. “All ya gotta do is find the damn card.”

“Can’t lose what I ain’t got,” Toji chuckles. “Come on.”

Of course you’d enjoy this game, he thinks. Three-Card Monte, or Find the Lady. It’s a card game in which the marks, or the players, are tricked into thinking they can find the “money card” among three face-down cards. It seems so simple, but if the dealer is anyone worth his salt, it’s easy to fuck the players over. Make them think they have a chance, so they just keep betting until they’ve got nothing left to lose. 

But of course, you’re a step ahead. This dealer thinks he’ll be playing you, when it’s really the other way around.

“Ya ready?” You question. “Let's make it quick.”

Sounds like Toji doesn’t have a choice. Looks like he’s pulling off a heist tonight. His ex-outlaw heart sings.

He approaches the table with you on his arm just as two men free up seats for you when they opt out of playing any further. You take a seat beside Toji, carefully adjusting your skirt, removing your hat and setting it in your lap. The dealer eyes you, he eyes your bosom unabashedly, grinning when you tilt your head and fix him with a curious look.

“Good evening, sir,” you speak softly and Toji watches you work your magic. “What are we playing tonight?”

The dealer chuckles, shuffling his cards in his hands. “We are playin’ Three-Card Monte, pretty darlin’.” He leans forward, the thick and nasty stench of his cigar breath making Toji’s nostrils burn. “I’d explain how to play it to ya, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to keep up with the rules. This fine gentleman here, however,” he turns his attention to Toji. “Would you like to buy in, sir?”

Toji’s gaze cuts to you. If the dealer’s statements bother you, it doesn’t show. Your smile doesn’t falter in the least. “You’re so considerate.” Your voice is soft and sweet, but Toji hears the bitterness behind your words. “I’m so fortunate my darlin’ husband here…” you reach over and caress Toji’s arm, nails dragging along his skin in a way you know will leave goosebumps in their wake. “...He took pity on poor lil’ me and taught me to play. Right, dear?”

You beam up at Toji, all soft and loving, and he wants to laugh to cover up the way his heart races – one, because you’ve referred to him as your husband which he’s embarrassed to admit doesn’t sound too bad. Two, because you involving him in your little game tonight excites him in more ways than one. He hasn’t felt the thrill of pulling off a heist in some time, his luck almost never panning out the way he wants. But now that he’s run into you, he’s sure it’s going to take a turn for him.

“Yep,” he affirms. “And I’ll teach ya whatever else your lil’ heart wants, angel.” Toji grins, enjoying the way your brows rise just barely at the pet name, some emotion he can’t place behind your eyes. He can’t dwell too long because he’s eyeing the dealer, whose gaze is glued to your breasts again. Toji roughly clears his throat, grabbing the man’s attention. “She’ll buy in.”

“If ya say so.” Of course the dealer isn’t going to argue. You’re what he thinks is the easiest mark of his night.

The first game goes exactly how Toji imagined you’d have it play out. The dealer tells you he’ll be generous and do a practice round for you so that you can “wrap your pretty head around the rules”, and you agree. You of course don’t find the card, or so the dealer is made to believe. But you enthusiastically agree to an actual game.

The first real game, you bet low, telling the dealer that you’re just too nervous to bet too much money, and you’re not sure if your dear husband would approve.

“Put down as much as ya like, angel,” Toji pushes eagerly, earning him a quick scowl from you, covered by a sweet giggle.

“Do you want me to lose all of our money, dear?” You ask, the real question hardly concealed beneath your words.

It’s not your money to bet, so shut the fuck up.

Your foot connects with Toji’s leg beneath the table, just to drive the message home. Toji grunts, covering the pain with a clearing of his throat.

The dealer places the cards face down on the table, then picks the one on your left up. He shows it to you – the Queen of Hearts. 

Fitting, Toji thinks, what with the way the dealer winks at you before he shuffles the cards around quickly then settles them into position. A cocky smile spreads across the dealer's face. He knows where the card is. And knowing you, you probably do, too.

So Toji sits back and lets you play cards while playing dumb in the dealer's face. 

You lose this round, and he can tell it’s on purpose this time, pouting cutely and making the dealer blush a deep red as he shakes his head. “Chin up, darlin’. Why don’t ya place another bet. See if your luck changes.”

“I think I will,” you declare, nodding. 

You place the same small bet and let the dealer do his job. When the cards are settled, you tap your index finger on your chin, pretending to think really hard about it. Then, in feigned hesitation, you select a card. Toji watches proudly, relishing the way the dealer’s eyes widen when he lifts the card and turns it in your direction.

“Oh! I won!” You grab hold of Toji’s arm, your mouth slightly agape as you motion for him to look.

“Look at you,” he purrs, taking hold of your hand. He lifts it to his lips, turning it slightly to press a kiss to your wrist, right where your pulse lies, grinning when you inhale sharply. “Knew ya could do it, angel.”

Your teeth press into your lip, a shy look on your face now. Only for a moment, then you’re shaking it off as you turn back to the dealer. “I’d like to bet more, please.”

He deals you in again, a slight look of displeasure on his face when you somehow end up winning once more. And then you win again, and again. The dealer’s fingers drum rhythmically against the table in annoyance, eyeing you suspiciously.

Now, Toji gambles, but he doesn’t gamble the way you do. His days as an outlaw involved doing anything that involved brute force. He was good at that. Need someone manhandled? You pay the right price and he’ll take the job. Got a bounty out on someone’s head? Dangle a bag of money in Toji’s face and he’ll do it. But when he left his outlaw days behind, and fell into a habit of placing bets he couldn’t make good on, he quickly figured out that all the sneaky counting cards and sleight of hand shit was beyond him. He did, however, pick up on a few things.

Like now, when he notices two random men have joined either side of you and Toji to play the game. They’re obviously shills, there to try and assist the dealer in trying to cheat you out of your winnings. The shill beside Toji places his bet, the dealer shuffling the cards quickly to confuse him. He loses, pretending to be upset when the dealer moves onto you.

You place your bet - a large sum, larger than any you’ve put in tonight and Toji’s brows rise.

“You sure about that, sweetheart?”

It’s your money, sure, but you must feel pretty confident in your ability to win if you’re willing to put so much on the line. 

You nod, lips curling in a smile while you watch the dealer shuffle. “Yes, dear. I think this will be my best round yet. I just know I’ll have fun with this one!”

There’s something about that sentence that puts Toji on edge. Especially when the other man on your side leans over, engaging you in conversation while the dealer shows you the target card – the King of Diamonds. It’s a ploy to distract you, even Toji knows that. They want you to take your gaze off of the cards so that you can’t keep track of where the target is. But you stay focused even as you entertain the man, nodding along to the conversation as you pay attention to the way the cards are moved around.

It feels like forever before the dealer stops and sets the cards down. He waves his hand over them, waiting for you to pick.

You think hard, seriously this time. Toji watches the way the dealer eyes you, sweat beading along his forehead. Likely from nerves, because you’ve been sweeping the floor with him for the last few rounds and he’s sure he doesn’t want to lose more money. If you lost this large bet, you could walk away clean and go on with your night. Toji doubts it’d put a dent in your pocket. With all the heists you’ve pulled off, especially your most recent, he’s pretty sure you’re set for quite a while.

But your eyes meet the dealers, your hand floating back and forth above the cards before coming down to point to a card and the dealer makes a noise that sounds something like a mixture of a scoff and chuckle. There’s certainty in his expression as his fingers flip the card over, shaking his head.

“Sorry, Miss. Looks like you’ll have to –” he swallows his words when he sees the King of Diamonds sitting beneath his fingertips. “H-how?!”

You bat your lashes innocently. “How what, sir?”

The dealer's hand slams down hard on the table, shaking the winning bets and silencing the parlor. The pianist freezes on the keys, the bartenders stop making their drinks, the guests stop speaking, all heads turning to the table where you and Toji sit. The shills now stand, and Toji’s eyes track their movements. One directly behind you, the other to the side of him.

The dealer grits his teeth, face red with rage as he now screams. “You’re cheatin’!”

You gasp, hand coming to your chest to clutch your imaginary pearls. “I beg your pardon, sir!”

“Oh, shut your fuckin’ mouth! I know you’re cheatin’!” 

“I-I’m just playin’ the game, sir.” You turn to Toji, mock concern on your face. “Right, dear? Did I do somethin’ wrong?”

And Toji nods, keeping the ruse going. “Of course, angel.” He sees the anger continue to rise for the dealer the more this drags on, his hands flexing into fists repeatedly. Does he plan to try and hit you? He hopes not, for his own sake. “That’s a serious accusation,” Toji tells the dealer. “You’d better have good proof of my wife cheatin’. You know cheatin’ at cards means hangin’ in the town square.”

“Ya want proof? Look!” The dealer flips all three cards laid out on the table, and there lies the evidence with only one Three of Clovers lying there, and two Kings of Diamonds in the spread. “See?! I knew somethin’ wasn’t right with this broad! Ain’t nobody ever won Three-Card Monte this many times when I’m dealin’ the cards! You’re slippin’ cards onto the table!”

So he’s a cheat, too. Toji should’ve called that. There’s hardly a noble and honest person working in these establishments. Even still, it boils his blood for some reason. 

It may be the fact that Toji has lost most of his savings in this very building tonight, or it may be the way this slimeball has been eyeing you up and down all night trying to see how many times, how many ways and probably in how many positions he could take advantage of you, or the fact that he’s now speaking to you like tar stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Regardless, he’s getting pissed.

Toji’s gaze catches yours briefly, and you purse your lips together. He can see the wheels turning, trying to think of an excuse as to how this could happen. Everyone in the building is holding their breath, and more staff have gathered around to see what the commotion is. Toji counts about three more men around you that he believes may be with the dealer. Jaw tight, he waits for your next move.

You giggle, shaking your head as you sit your hat back atop your head, and Toji watches your mask slip off in real time. “Can’t believe this shit,” you sigh. “This damn shill,” you gesture to the man standing behind you. “He’s good.” The dealer sees your change, too, finger jutting out to point straight at you.

“I-I know you! You’re that outlaw bitch! The one that’s wanted all over for cheatin’ at cards, murder, breakin’ out of jail, and–”

“Aww, the train robbery ain’t at the top of the list yet?” You interrupt, leaning back in your seat with a pout. “Feel like that’s my best work.” You grab hold of the dealer’s finger - swift and easy, bending it back roughly, the man screaming out in pain and doubling over onto the table. “Ya got me,” you whisper teasingly in his ear. “Gimme my earnin’s and I’ll just be on my merry way. No need to cause a ruckus.”

“You fuckin’ whore, I’ll-” The man winces, crying out when you bend his finger further. 

“I’d think real careful ‘bout your next words if you don’t wanna lose a finger.”

“Okay! O-okay!” The dealer concedes. “Just take it ‘nd get the fuck out of here!”

Toji can’t help but watch in awe…and arousal…witnessing you in your natural element again. You’re wild, impulsive, insane. So much so, you’ve got everyone else in this parlor frozen in shock as you pocket your winnings. They can’t seem to wrap their heads around a woman being so outwardly bold to commit a crime out in the open, and proudly, the way you are. It’s admirable; it reminds Toji of when he was at his best as an outlaw, maybe better. 

You glance at Toji, tilting your head towards the money and he snaps out of his reverie and begins to move, pocketing what he can, too.

“Keep whatever ya grab,” you offer, and Toji grins. His adrenaline is pumping, heart pounding behind his ribcage as he grabs all he’s able to. This is a feeling he hasn’t experienced in so long. The feeling of winning. He doesn’t ever want to come down from this high.

When your pockets are full, tied tightly and secured, you finally release the dealer who whimpers as he holds his finger to his chest. He looks about ready to rip your head off, but his eyes dart to Toji who looms over him, daring him to say something and the dealer thinks better of it.

Now all that’s left to do is leave this place quickly and quietly. Maybe grab something to eat and find some place to sleep.

You tip your hat, and just as you turn to leave, the dealer reaches over the table and grabs hold of your dress sleeve. He yanks you forward harshly, dragging you across the table.

“I’ll kill ya, bitch!” He raises his fist and you laugh, covering your face with your arms, anticipating the hit.

You wait for him to make contact, but the hit never comes. You only hear the sickening crack of bone meeting bone, and then you’re falling hard onto the floorboards a second later. Women gasp and race out of the establishment along with some men, but the remaining people step back to take in the scene. Peeking through your arms, you see Toji’s large body standing over the unconscious and bleeding dealer. 

You scramble to your feet and dart over to Toji. His eyes are hard, jaw clenched as he stares down at the man. “Toji,” you whisper, shocked yourself at what he’s done.

“He should watch his fuckin’ mouth when he speaks to ya,” he grunts, and you can’t help but erupt into laughter. And you laugh hard, until you’re doubled over and holding your stomach.

You lean against Toji’s arm, grinning as you nudge him. “You soft for me or somethin’?”

The question doesn’t even register to Toji, because in that moment, one of the shills finally finds his courage again, rushing towards you and Toji with a beer bottle in hand. “You son of a bitch!” He shouts, charging at Toji, but you’re quick to grab hold of a chair, using all your strength and swinging the piece of furniture at the man. You miss, but it buys Toji enough time to grab a chair of his own and launch it across the parlor, slamming into the back of another man at the bar.

He spins around, face contorted in rage, barking out, “who the fuck threw that?!”

You point to the shill, who points to Toji, who points to himself.

The stranger looks confused, but still furious. And he rushes towards you all, elbowing his way through the crowd as he barrels forward. He shoves several men around, all of whom are too drunk off their asses to realize what’s going on. They only know it’s getting rough here and they need to defend themselves. It only takes one drunk bastard to throw the first punch, and then it’s all out chaos. Arms are being thrown, furniture is flying, the floors are slippery with the mixture of alcohol and blood. 

Toji ducks, avoiding a stray punch aimed at him, only to receive a shove in the back. He spins around, catching a man by his collar and easily tossing him aside and knocking the lights out of another man who lunges at him. It’s complete insanity here, so loud and chaotic and in the midst of it all…he finds himself having a good fucking time. This is fun for him. His fist meets the stomach of one man and his heart soars. A knee to the face of another man and his lips spread in a wide grin. His palm comes down to slam someone’s head against the table, rendering them unconscious and Toji chuckles.

Even with the cacophony of punching and screaming and cursing, Toji can hear your wild laughter floating throughout the space.

You’re going toe to toe with grown men, using whatever weapon you can get your hands on and it’s not even about defending yourself anymore. You’re simply enjoying the frenzy. You don’t care if the sheriffs show up, if they put cuffs on you and throw you in the slammer. You’re used to that. You don’t care if your involvement here means a death sentence. Why would you when you’ve been sentenced to death in multiple towns across the prairie and have managed to escape every attempt to put you down?

Toji admires that about you, admires that you don’t give two shits. You’re only interested in doing what you love and if lying and cheating and violence is what you love, then hell, he loves it, too. So Toji lets himself have fun with you.

He throws another punch, relishing the disgusting sound of a nose bone being crushed beneath his fist.

He erupts with laughter when he wraps one of his large arms around a man’s neck and he squeezes until Toji feels him fall limp to the floor.

He lifts a leg, smirking when his foot connects dead center in the chest of a man wielding a blade and sends him flying across the room.

Then in the chaos, his back connects with yours and you both swing around, ready to take out the next person. But it’s just you. You, and your jagged whiskey bottle that you’ve busted over someone’s head and hold out defensively in front of you. The poor victim of the impact lays unconscious at your feet. 

Toji takes these few seconds to drink you in, the way the shy and innocent mask you had on upon entry to the parlor is long gone, leaving behind the wild outlaw he’s come to know over the years. He takes in the way your chest heaves, breasts barely contained within the confines of your corset. How you’re covered in blood and grime that he’s certain isn’t yours.

The violence and commotion behind you makes for quite the backdrop to this image he’s committing to his memory. He’s never seen a woman so beautiful.

Your lips part just slightly and Toji’s eyes dart down to the movement. You drop the liquor bottle, not caring that it knocks against the unconscious man on the floor’s head and shatters next to him. Your feet move, carrying you over to Toji until he’s just within arms reach. You’re giving him that same look you had in the alley just earlier, chewing your lip and looking like you want to eat him alive.

And he’ll let you.

Because the feeling is definitely mutual, evidence of his desire only growing in his pants. He shouldn’t be surprised that this is where the night is heading, as it’s led to this many times. But something about tonight has Toji particularly excited. So, he reaches a hand forward, hooking his fingers in the front of your corset and yanks you forward. You throw your arms around his neck, and your lips meet in a sloppy kiss, full of tongue and teeth and groans. His hands palm your ass, lifting you easily and you wrap your legs around his waist. Toji presses your core against him, at the same time he feels your holstered gun press into his side and it only makes him harder. He moves your body, dragging your center along his hardening length.

“Where’re ya stayin’?” You gasp into the kiss, and Toji steps to the side just in time for a bottle to whizz past your heads.

“Brothel up the street,” Toji groans when you dip your head low to drag your lips along his neck. You break away to stare down at him, only smirking in response.

Yes, this night is headed exactly where he thought it would.

-

Your back hits the wall hard, knocking the wind out of you and sending a painting that hangs on the wall to its demise as it falls to the floor and shatters to pieces. You barely have time to catch your breath after Toji has broken away from your nipples, courtesy of him freeing them from your corset halfway up the stairs to his room.

“Fuck, ya always feel so good,” Toji lets out of a garbled moan, his lips finding your neck as you grip his hair.

“Thinkin’ about me a lot, huh? So, ya are soft for me?” You ask, a giggle falling from your lips, only to be cut off when Toji presses his thick length to your core. “Ah– fuck, Toji,” you cry out. You moan when he sucks hard. 

He’ll surely leave a mark, and some part of Toji finds that he likes the idea of you strolling around with the brand he’d left on you on display for all to see. He wants men to see you, see you’ve been marked up by someone else and wonder who you go home to at night. Even if it’s not Toji, at least it was him who made it crystal clear that you laid with someone who wasn’t them the night before.

He loves the idea that he gets to have you, because you choose to let him have you. It’s not a part of some scheme you’ve come up with, you don’t have some ulterior motive. You don’t want anything but to get your fill for the night, and you want to get your fill from him. You want him to have you, and the thought has him grinding his clothed erection against you in a desperate attempt to gain some friction between the two of you.

You tug at Toji’s strands, moaning at the way he ruts against you, how his tongue slides smoothly across your pulse. “Shitttt, don’t hold back,” you gasp, and Toji can’t help but chuckle.

“When have I ever, angel?”

The pet name has you looking at Toji the way you had earlier. A flash of something unfamiliar behind your gaze, gone as quickly as it appeared and your hands crash down on Toji’s chest, shoving him back. He sets you down and you shake your head, wasting no time in falling to your knees without him having to say so. He watches you lift your skirt, unholstering your gun and carelessly tossing it aside. Then you undo his pants, pull the fabric down until his clothing sits in a pool at his ankles.

Your hands wrap around his cock, thick and veiny and pump him slowly. Toji grunts, placing his palms against the wall as he enjoys the view of you kissing the underside of his dick.

“Like that, angel,” he sighs when you run your tongue over the fat vein that runs all the way from his balls to his tip. “Fuuuck…”

Your tongue reaches his head, where a bead of precum sits and you lap it up greedily, grinning when Toji’s legs tremble just slightly. “Like this?” You ask, swirling your tongue around him slowly just before you take his entire length to the base.

Toji hisses, hips bucking forward on instinct. He grits his teeth, eyes rolling to the back of his head when you swallow around him. Your throat squeezes him deliciously and he can’t stop the pathetic groans falling from his lips. You bob around him, hollowing your cheeks as you suck and take all of him with every bob of your head.

When Toji’s cock nudges your throat and you gag around him, Toji hisses. “Yes, yes, stay there,” he grits out. You hum around him, eyes alight with mischief and Toji’s back stiffens. The vibration shoots straight through to his cock and Toji leans his forehead against the wall to keep from losing his balance at the sensation. “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me.” 

Toji’s mouth parts slightly, a rough groan leaving his lips. You’re toying with him, the way you toy with everyone. You love this shit, love having whoever you set your sights on going crazy over you. You’ve got those cute lips of yours wrapped perfectly around his cock, working him closer to his release and you’re enjoying every second of bringing him to the edge. It doesn’t help when you hold eye contact with Toji while you take him in your mouth, all the way down until your nose is buried in his soft pubic hair while you lift your skirt and slip your hands into your undergarments.

Your brows knit together, moans muffled by Toji’s dick in your throat while you touch yourself. The image is so arousing, your lips stretched around him while your mouth is full. He can’t help but buck forward – once, twice, and then he’s fucking your mouth all on his own.

“Yessss, play with that pretty pussy for me,” Toji groans. He’s fucking your face at a frantic pace, and you’re taking every stroke he gives. “Ah, fuuuuck –” Toji pants, a hand coming down to hold the back of your head. He pushes your head down, forcing your throat open to take his entire swollen length down your throat, occasionally holding you there for a moment, loving the sound of you choking on his dick and your saliva more than any sound he’s ever heard you make. The mixture of your fluids drips messily down your chin, and still, Toji keeps fucking your face until you’re gagging and squeezing around him.

He pulls out, holding the base of his cock tightly. Because he’s watching you - mouth agape as you gasp for you, chin glistening and lips swollen with her hand in your pants. The sight is so sexy, so arousing, he thinks he could paint your face right this second.

You inhale sharply, swallowing as much air as you can. Your fingers tease at your clit, dipping inside your walls just briefly before your breath hitches and you whimper a pathetic challenge. “Don’t tell me you’re done already.”

And Toji grins, easily shoving himself back into your mouth. He’s even rougher with you if possible, and you seem to love it that way, keening around him as your fingers rub tight circles on your clit. He pulls away from you once, brows pulled together as he tries to catch his breath while he makes you take him down to the hilt over and over again. “Fuckin’ hell, angel. Takin’ my dick so good for me. Your throat feels so fuckin’ good. Don’t move–”

Toji scrambles forward, grunting and pressing his length all the way down your throat, so far, so desperate to feel you squeeze around him again that he’s got your head up against the wall. There’s nowhere for you to go as his hips buck forward. 

“Fuckin’ take it, swallow my cock, fuck–” 

Your hand finds his thigh, squeezing tight while the other works you closer and closer to your release. It feels way too good, better than any woman, any mouth Toji’s ever been in. His balls are tight, slapping loud and wet against your chin as he slams into your face.

He hears you, hears your moans as the rise in pitch, getting higher and higher with every thrust of his hips, every press of your fingers against yourself.

“Gonna cum, angel?”

You whimper in response, unable to nod or speak, while Toji’s got his dick stuffed into your throat.

“Cum for me, then. Make a mess on your fingers while I fuck your mouth,” he grunts, hips snapping forward.

Your eyes roll back, nostrils flaring as you dip your fingers into your core and feel your walls fluttering around them. Your release washes over you with such intensity, your legs begin to shake, tears begin forming at the corners of your eyes, drool falls in thick strings from your lips. And all the while, Toji is still fucking into your mouth. 

The sight is one he wants to burn into his memory. You - the woman who just a few hours ago knocked men on their asses, cheated and won and still somehow escaped without punishment - now getting off on getting him off. 

He’ll be sure to remember you on your knees for him, bringing yourself to ecstasy while your mouth is stuffed with his cock, tits bouncing with every thrust and –

Oh, he’s gonna cum.

Toji tells you as much, then moves to pull out, but you press your hands to the backs of his thighs and pull him back into your mouth, staring up at him as if begging for his cum.

And when you look at him like that, how could he ever say no?

He presses forward, mouth falling open with a loud and guttural moan as he finally reaches his peak. Toji’s body tenses, cock stiffening and thighs trembling as he twitches in your mouth. You hollow your cheeks, sucking him deeper if that’s even possible, and Toji’s moans only grow in volume. His cum shoots from his swollen tip, straight into your throat and you gag on the sheer amount of it.

“Fuckin’ swallow,” Toji growls, watching the way you struggle to handle all he’s giving you. “Don’t waste a fuckin’ drop. Swallow it for me, angel.”

And you do as you’re told, gulping down every thick rope of cum that paints your esophagus. When you finally release your hold on Toji, his cock softening between your lips, you gasp for air, coughing and sputtering while you wipe away the remnants of you and Toji’s deed.

“Almost killed me,” you jokingly complain, voice rough from the abuse your throat just took.

Toji chuckles, stepping back and taking your hands to help you stand. “Guess we’re even, then. I mean, ya almost got me killed tonight.”

You giggle and shake your head, pressing your palm to his chest, pushing Toji backwards until his knees hit the end of the bed and he falls back with a loud oof. You lift your skirt, climbing atop Toji and straddling his hips, and Toji would be lying if he said he wasn’t hard all over again.

“Hope ya ain’t got all that gettin’ even feelin’ out just yet, because I can think of plenty of times ya almost got me killed.” You lean forward, a hand on each side of Toji’s head and his hands find your breasts, still free from your corset. He cups both soft mounds, idly running his thumbs over your nipples and drinking in the expression you make when you moan without your mouth being stuffed full.

Toji grins, eyes honed in on the way your breasts feel in his hands. “Like the horse stealin’. That rancher almost blew your top off.”

Your lips spread with a smirk. “Well, if ya hadn’t been so fuckin’ loud when we were in the barn, he would’ve never woke up!”

Toji scoffs, “Well, ya snuck a finger in my ass! I ain’t ever had that happen! How the hell was I supposed to know it’d feel like that?!”

You both burst into a fit of laughter, reminiscing on all the crazy shit you two have gotten into over the years. You make Toji miss his outlaw days, almost make him want to go back to it. But that life’s not for him anymore. Though, it is fun to dabble in it from time to time, only with you.

Your lips find Toji’s, tender and sweet. Until - like all things you do - it’s not. It quickly turns heated, your hands dipping into Toji’s dark tresses while your lips lock in a searing kiss. You both make quick work of ridding each other of any clothing, hands roaming each other’s bodies once you’re bare.

It’s a fight for dominance in this bed. Who can kiss harder, who can leave more marks, who can pull the most moans from the other? The bed rocks with every movement, the headboard banging against the wall as Toji flips you over, pinning you to the bed with his body weight.

You hum, your hand ghosting across Toji’s muscular ass. “This looks familiar.” You take a finger along the seam of his behind and Toji inhales sharply. “Ah…by that ya meant…it felt good. Should I do it again?”

Toji’s head dips down, the tip of his nose touching yours as he breathes, “let's see where the night goes.” He slips inside of you, both of you moaning into each other’s mouths.

You move together, losing yourself in the passion of the night, disregarding the way the bed shakes.

And the way the photos and paintings fall from the walls.

And the way the headboard beats dents into the paint.

And the way the head mistress bangs on the door.

And - 

-

The morning sun blazes high in the sky, shining through the thin curtains of Toji’s room. He stretches his noticeably sore body, yawning as he lets himself slowly wake up. 

What a night - and morning. He knows he needs to hightail it out of town soon to keep from being identified as your accomplice at the parlor last night. He can’t sit around dawdling all day.

Toji sits up in his bed, already knowing it’s pointless to glance at the other side and wonder where you went. Of course, true to form, you’d made a smooth and quick exit. You’re probably long gone by now, wreaking havoc in another town. He tries not to take it personally that you likely didn’t even bother to say goodbye.

He slides off the bed, wincing when he feels a sharp sting of pain in his foot. He lifts his leg, pieces of wood falling to the floor where remnants of what appears to be a broken side table lie. His eyes scan the room, and the absolute mess all over. It looks like a damn tornado ripped through here.

Chairs thrown aside, a shattered mirror and pieces of glass all across the floor, broken art all over. He doesn’t remember you two being that rough with each other last night. 

His stomach grumbles angrily, not allowing him to dwell on the mess he’s already planning on leaving behind. He searches his room for his discarded clothes, slipping on the items before he finds his bag. He’ll make a quick exit and slip out, hop on his horse and get the hell out of this town.

Toji’s not sure what he was expecting when he went to find his belongings. Maybe that you’d have taken them with you, just because it would have made you laugh to know you had your way with him then took all he owns. He certainly wasn’t expecting to find the fancy cowboy hat you wore last night sitting beside his bag, or to find a pouch of silver in his bag with a note inside. Toji unrolls the piece of paper, green eyes skimming the words.

“for the luck you keep sayin’ you ain’t got. hope that changes”

He shakes his head, a goofy smile on his face as he counts the money left for him. And it’s enough for him to get by for a while, enough for him to enjoy a bit of gambling, too.

Toji will have to thank you the next time he sees you. If you survive that long. But he doesn’t doubt that you will.

He slings his bag over his shoulder, exiting his room. He’s sure to close the door, hiding the horrendous disorder he’s leaving behind. Toji’s feet carry him down the stairs to the main floor of the brothel where it’s already bustling inside, people sitting down to enjoy breakfast. He’d have a seat, too, but he can’t risk sticking around in case someone recognizes him from the parlor. Or sees that damn room. As hungry as he is, he needs to go.

Toji maneuvers around those who stand around the room, idly chatting with each other. He’s about halfway across the room when someone calls out to him - a man’s voice. He could keep walking, ignore the man, but that would only make him look suspicious. It’s important for him to not draw attention. So Toji stops, spinning on his heel and coming face to face with the man calling out to him.

“Pardon me, sir. I’ve asked everybody in here, but no one knows a thing,” he explains as he approaches. He stops in his tracks, gaze locked on the top of Toji’s head. “Nice hat…” The man points towards the new item Toji wears.

“Thanks.”

The man stares for a few more seconds before he inhales sharply and continues. “I got word of a bar fight here last night…started by a woman.” The man reaches into his pocket, pulling out a sheet of paper and unfolding it. He holds the paper out to Toji, who just glares at it. 

It’s you. Your face on a WANTED poster, beaming happily in your mugshot with the largest bounty he’s ever seen on your head.

Toji eyes the younger man - long, black hair, violet eyes and strangely stretched ears. He wonders why he’s asking about you. To collect the bounty? No, he doesn’t look the type.

“What about her?” Toji asks.

The man runs his fingers through his hair, sighing. “I’m lookin’ for her. Ran into her once and…” He sighs again, like it pains him to think about his run in with you. And Toji is sure it does. That’s typically how you leave men (and women) in your wake. Spiraling and chasing any trail you may leave behind. “I just need to find her.”

Toji adjusts the weight of his bag on his shoulder. “Ain’t seen her in my life,” he answers simply. He doesn’t wait for a response from the man. He turns, making his way out of the brothel before the stranger has a chance to follow.

The man stands there, unblinking as he watches Toji’s form retreat from the brothel. His violet eyes narrow, the rage he feels bubbling in his chest. He could act now, because he’s fairly certain that what he feels is correct. 

Whatever happened last night, it involved you.

Whoever that scar lipped man is, he knows you.

He has his hat, the one you stole from him the last time he’d seen you.

But acting on his hunch would only bring unwanted attention. So he takes a deep breath, exhaling any anger he feels. After all, he’s positive that he’s one step closer to finding you again.