#New Heavy Rock Single | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hairmetal666 · 9 months ago

Text

They start kissing on stage as a joke.

The night before the first time, they're at an afterparty, pounding shots, and Eddie is reading aloud a piece that just came out in Rolling Stone. "'One of the most noteworthy parts of Munson and Harrington's unlikely pairing is their chemistry on stage. It's like these two men--one on his way to being the latest metal god, the other an indie rock wunderkind--are two parts of one musical whole. Their singing, their playing, even their bodies twine and flow with assuredness; where one goes, the other follows without question. They share a single brain-cell and that cell is music'."

Steve giggles, pours some more Grey Goose into the glass. "If they say that now, could you imagine what would happen if we, like, kissed on stage or something."

"What the fuck, Harrington?" Eddie splutters, having just thrown a drink back.

"I don't know, other bands do it!"

Eddie snorts. "I'm cutting you off." He reaches for the bottle and the suggestion is forgotten for wrestling over the liquor.

Steve barely remembers it in the morning. Doesn't think about it at all as he gets ready to go out on stage.

They're playing one of the instrumental breakdowns when it happens. They're leaning into each other, Eddie smiling over his shoulder at him, their eyes locked, bodies moving together. "You wanna?" Eddie mouths at him.

Steve nods before the question actually registers and by then Eddie's warm, soft mouth is against his and he just-- completely forgets what he's doing. His hands still on the guitar strings, and he melts a little, going completely boneless when Eddie grips the back of his head, pulls him deeper into the kiss. t's over almost as quickly as it started, Eddie pulling away and swirling to the mic to start the next verse.

The kiss sinks into Steve's bones, and that's before it becomes a regular feature of their performances. After that night, they're never at the same time during the show, all initiated by Eddie, all over before he can catch his breath; each one chaste and surrounded by people but somehow more intimate than any make out.

He and Eddie, they're friends, bandmates, collaborators. They've known each other since they first started out, forging an immediate connection with they stumbled upon each other hiding out in the garden at some industry bigwig's party. And as much as he loved his friend, never once in that time had Steve considered wanting Eddie.

But now, now he falls asleep with the ghost of Eddie on his lips, goes into each show with a thrum of anticipation, catches himself thinking how beautiful his friend is when he's all rumpled and disheveled from a night in the tour bus bunks.

They've always been easy with physical affection, but once the kissing starts they're constantly in each other's space, idly playing with hair, laying across laps, heads on shoulders, twisting together on the tour bus couch. Steve is ruined with every touch, every moment; he can't get enough.

The first time Eddie uses tongue destroys every last piece of Steve's composure. They've added a new song to the setlist, a remixed version of Eddie's hit "Prince Charming". It's hard, heavy, sexy, one of Steve's favorites. And in the middle of it, right in the middle, Eddie shoves him against a low platform, kisses him like he's trying to own him, tongues twining eager and wet and full of sinful promise. It's like that every show after, Eddie kissing him deep and thorough, like he's trying to lick up every drop of Steve.

He is, unquestionably, fucked. Unquestionably falling. Can't properly fathom how he'd gotten himself here, desperate for Eddie's kiss, as performative as it may be.

They're packing up equipment after a show. Eddie's hair is piled in a messy bun and Steve is trying not to blatantly stare at the curve of his neck, the stray curls against his pale skin. Eddie's gesturing at something, says, "Can you grab those cords, swee--Steve?" He hands them over without thought, notices that Eddie's face is shining red. He's called away to deal with packing the guitars, forgets all about it, but at their next show, Eddie doesn't kiss him.

They don't talk about it.

Eddie doesn't try to kiss him again.

A week after Eddie stops the kiss, they have a night off between shows. He needs to get out of his head, goes out with Robin. He gets back fairly early, but all the lights are off in the bus. It makes him panic in a way it shouldn't; they've always done their own things. Still, he rushes on board, flips on the lights, his absurd heart beating too hard.

Eddie is curled up on the couch, face pressed to the pillows and covered with his hands. The panic kicks up a notch.

"Eddie?" He steps closer, slowly reaching out to grip Eddie's shoulder.

He jerks upright, earbuds slipping free, phone sliding down his hip. "Steve?"

His face is wet, tears actively slipping free from his eyes as Steve watches.

"What happened? Are you hurt?" His hands flutter around Eddie's arms and face, searching for bruises or wounds.

"I'm fine, Harrington," he chokes out. "Though you were out with Robin?"

"Yeah, I was, but Chrissy called. You know how useless she gets. But that doesn't--you--you're crying. What's wrong?"

Eddie's smile is a wobbly little thing, refusing to stick on his face. "Oh, you know, the usual. Fell for the wrong guy."

Steve forces down the gut churning hurt at hearing that Eddie's in love with someone, intent on comforting his friend. He tries to slip his arm around Eddie's shoulders, but Eddie shrugs him off. It jostles Eddie's phone again, slipping it toward Steve and activating the screen. He has a split second where he's looking at the cover of his own first album, before Eddie's snatching it out of reach, scrambling up from the couch.

"I'm fine." He swipes his sleeve over his face. "It's nothing."

And Steve is putting it all together, the being in love and listening to Steve's music, the kissing and how it ended.--

"Eddie." He sounds all wrong, choked and garbled.

Eddie doesn't turn around, is stuffing his feet into his boots. "I'm--I gotta go clear my head."

He walks towards the door and Steve just--"I've been obsessed with you since the first kiss," he says. Eddie stops, hand curled against the door. "We've been friends all this time and I didn't--I never realized. And then we kissed and--it's all I've been able to think about."

Eddie turns then, facing him, expression unreadable."Steve, what are you--"

"I love you. I'm in love with you." It comes out fast, all jumbled, but he can't stand Eddie leaving, not now.

"You--?" Eddie blinks, bites his lip. "That's not possible."

Steve smiles, can't help it. "It is, though. Turns out, I can't get enough."

Their eyes lock; neither speaks. Steve's heart pounds so hard it might spring free of his chest. Eddie moves first, crosses the small distance between them to pull Steve into his arms.

It's not a kiss, but Steve buries his face against Eddie's neck, breathing him in, feeling the echo to the pound of his own heart. "How long?" Steve asks.

Eddie's soft laugh vibrates through him. "Since I saw you walking in that garden and thought, 'jesus christ, Prince Charming is real'."

Steve pulls away to stare at Eddie in disbelief. "But that's--your--the song?"

"They're kinda all about you, Stevie. But that one most of all." Eddie whispers. His eyes glisten.

"Fuck, Eddie." He doesn't mean to whine, but he's not in control of his voice anymore. "I'm sorry I didn't--" He shakes his head. "I'm all yours, Ed. Whatever you want."

Eddie's thumb catches against Steve's bottom lips, eyes transfixed on his mouth. "Everything, sweetheart. I want it all."

#steddie #steve x eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #ficlet #bandmates steve and eddie #musician au #fluff #angst #eddie munson has a crush on steve harrington #oblivious steve harrington #eventual mutual pining #kissing on stage #it's a joke. until it isn't #this is because boygenius won a bunch of grammys #all award shows are fake and the grammys are the most fake of all but still #if the tour bus is rockin' etc etc etc #grey goose got your girl feeling loose

2K notes · View notes

rockrevoltmagazine · 2 years ago

Text

INTREPID BLOOM Releases New Single, "Above the Storm," Off of Upcoming EP, 'Missing Link'!

Heavy rock artist INTREPID BLOOM has released his newest and fifth single off of the artist’s upcoming sophomore album, Missing Link, set to release March 10, 2023 via WURMgroup, “Above the Storm”. “‘Above the Storm’ is a fast-paced blend of hard rock and electronic about anticipation and the split-second-moments before taking a chance..” – INTREPID BLOOM Purchase / Stream “Above the Storm”…

youtube

View On WordPress

0 notes

eowynstwin · 26 days ago

Text

Lilies

Price x f!Reader. - Dom/sub dynamics. whipping. vivisection as a metaphor for love. boot riding. throat-fucking. angst. aftercare. 18+ MDNI.

The bedroom is dim when you enter, lights turned low. Price watches you stop in your tracks at the unexpected darkness; watches you look around and catch sight of him.

He’s in the chair in the corner of the room. Hasn’t been waiting long—expected you to arrive, in fact, around this very moment. Your schedule and all of its minute quirks, tiny variations you might insert out of hunger, or boredom, or fixation on some new hobby, play out like clockwork in the back of his mind, no matter when or where he is.

A mnemonic. More accurately, a memorare. Entreaty to some higher power, as if to remind Death that he has someone far more important to get home to.

You take him in. His ankle is propped up on the opposite knee, glass of scotch hanging carelessly from his fingers, crystalline bottom brushing the carpeted floor. Your eyes focus on the orange-red cherry of his cigar—

—you startle a little when you meet his gaze.

He doesn’t blame you. His pulse beats heavy through his veins. Every breath he takes is slow and controlled, miasmic as it leaves his lungs. He feels less a man and more a vessel for something seething and wrathful, smog rolling in and in again on itself, eddying when it hits the boundaries keeping it contained.

Noxious. Fetid.

The glow of his cigar probably reflects in his eyes.

Borderline pyrolic.

You look at the coiled whip resting ophidian and black over his thigh. His free hand rests along it, thumbnail toying with the braided leather.

“Not a word,” he says evenly. His voice leaves him like it’s coated in sandpaper, debriding the column of his esophagus.

Your gaze snaps back up to his. Holds it.

Searching, maybe.

Your lips do not part. Instead, you wait.

The next breath he takes comes and goes a little easier—but only just.

“Strip,” he says, “and cuff yourself to your post.”

On a better night—a kinder one—he would’ve asked if you needed more directions. Checked in first, even, or warned you ahead of time of his intentions. This thing that exists between the two of you was cultivated in the open, fertilized with his own candor as he told you what he wanted, needed, like turning over a rock to see what squirmed beneath it. It grew as you trellised it together and discovered, through trial and error, what you needed to survive it.

Reward incentives. Good reason to give a damn about what he tells you to do.

But tonight is not a kind one. Venom pumps through his veins—caustic. Acrid. Hissing and spitting in his chest, already drawn back and ready to strike.

Maybe you can tell, as you stand there, watching him. Maybe you don’t feel like protesting. Or, just maybe, you need this, too, need it in the way you’ve begged him for in the past when the present moment felt ephemeral and unreal—because you obey.

You toe out of your heels. Pull your shirt over your head, your skirt down your legs. It’s an outfit he’s expressed appreciation for in the past; the wide drape of the collar exposing your clavicles, the long seams down your hips that buckle as your thighs hold the fabric taut.

You fold everything like a good girl and set them aside on the bed, and then remove your bra and panties—nude silk, no lace, sensible and comfortable and paid for with his card—to place them atop the pile.

Price isn’t in a mood to care why you acquiesce. All that matters to him is that you walk to your nightstand and remove the padded cuffs from the drawer, then to the bedpost on your side of the bed. You remove the endcap hiding the loop of steed embedded into the wood, fasten yourself with a padlock only he has the key to—

And then you kneel, naked, on the carpeted floor.

Giving him your bare back, the dim light sinking shadows into the notches of your spine.

Price says nothing. He doesn’t have a kind word anywhere in his alveoli. There usually aren’t any, when he first comes home, nor could a single one get past the bars of his vocal cords if it tried. This has grown too nacreous, too hypergranulated in his mantle, and it demands excision. He taps the ash from his cigar and sips at his scotch, the dregs burning a line hot and corrosive down his throat.

He sets the glass aside. Rises.

Brandishes the whip once with a sharp snap.

You flinch; your skin is filmy and thin in the gloaming. Horripilation lifts the follicles along your bare arms; the scant light of the bedroom catches your hair standing on end.

He watches a slow tremble work its way to your suspended fingers. Your back expands as you take a deep breath in, and contracts as you exhale, shadows the width of his fingers pooling into and draining away from the valleys between your extruded ribs.

You pull in another deep breath, one, two, three, four, five, and let it go at the same meter. Calming the anticipation the way he taught you.

He draws his arm back, lunges, and the whip cracks against your bare back.

You gasp sharply and go rigid in shock. Price watches the pain spread outward from the lash into your limbs. Bleeding down into the fibers of your muscles; sinking through osseous matter into your marrow like dye takes to cloth. You shift on your knees, a shiver snaking its way up your back.

It’s always cataclysmic, that first bite of pain. Every nerve ending suddenly alive and on high alert. Charged up. Inadvertently destining the next strike to fall even harder by sensory comparison.

Then, the welt appears, rising in reply to the scourge. A clean, sharp return stroke, an echo of the braided leather just beginning its reverberation.

Something cleaves in Price’s chest. Some tight membrane splits open, seeping felsic, hot and black, dripping steadily into his bloodstream. Effusive. Not a dam breaking, but a fissure in the stone.

Your breathing quickens—

And then he whips you again, harder, laying the stroke right next to the first. You cry out when it lands, but he leaves no time for you to prepare for the third, drawing, lunging, and lashing again at unspoiled skin.

You shake in your bonds. He whips you again, laying another diagonally from shoulder to hip as fog blooms across his vision. You wail like breaking glass, china falling from the cabinet, cut crystal flowering in pieces on hardwood floor.

The same tenor he hears when he has you on your back, cock burrowed in your cunt and bullying the plug of your cervix.

Too much, too hard, but your nails dig into his arse and you cry even harder when he lets up.

He whips you again. Welts lift across the known topography of your back—intersecting every angle of your shoulder blades, orogenies shifting and transforming the landscape into something new.

Only passing familiar with the dips and curves he often walks the tips of his fingers across.

Again. The planes of your back tighten, as if solidity will lessen the impact of the lash. Again, right across the tight line of your shoulders—you shriek, thrashing, hands fisting as you pull and swing futilely in the cuffs.

Geography added to. New land raised like it was beckoned by the hand of God. Hot and magamatic on the inside, too delicate to touch without collapsing in on itself.

Again. He snaps the whip, shaping the parabola with the jerk of his arm, shaping the line of a hill like a child’s drawing, then brings it down, sharply, cutting the fall across the meat of your hip. A hillside he often dwarfs with the ugly size of his hands.

Price envies the whip sometimes for its privilege. He’s never been able to lay hands on you directly for its purpose; not easily, at least. The flat of his palms have known the meat of your arse, have made ample flesh ripple like tossing stones across water, but he can’t employ them for much else without turning his own stomach.

He can pull your hair, wrap your throat in his grasp, shackle your wrists or the slopes of your hips in an iron grip, dig his fingers into your thighs and stomach like trying to tunnel through wedges of clay. Often afterwards he’s transfixed by the marks he leaves behind—dotted bruises aligned with the arc and spread of his fingers, or blotchy oblongs fitted to the heel of his hand.

Indelible evidence that Price Was Here.

He’ll try to match the grip that left them, his touch as light and gentle as a dove’s wing; a paintbrush without pigment, remembering the strokes it left behind. Synapses in his brain firing colors to match, claiming them for himself.

He put them there. That makes them his. That makes you his.

But striking you barehanded is beyond even his limits. No matter that you’d allow it. Have allowed it—

He whips you again. Draw. Lunge. Crack. You jolt against the bedpost, throw your head back, buck your entire body to work the pain through it.

One scene, similar to this, tephra building up in his craw and threatening to catalyze if he didn’t find some hurried way to exorcise it.

Some mission gone bad; some idiot disobeying his orders. People dying who didn’t need to.

He’d slapped you across the face, after forcing you to your knees with his fist in your hair—sent you tumbling to the floor. The next thing that had occurred to him had been to swing his foot back—

And the bile had risen so quickly up his throat that he’d frozen. He’d stared at you, on the floor. Lying there, sprawled and waiting. Fear in your eyes—but you weren’t moving.

His collapse after had been swift. He’d fallen to his knees and crawled to you, gathered you up like a stuffed toy and buried his mouth in your hair and hadn’t let you go for nearly three hours. Price can count on one hand how many times he’s cried in his adult life, and this had added one more to the tally.

It’s one thing to send his fury along through leather or wood or crop, and quite another to deliver it to you like you actually deserve it.

So, the whip.

You moan as the next stroke hits. Something long and stretched-out. Caramelized—molasses subducting the bite of the fall, sucrose splitting in the phreatic churn of draw, lunge, lash.

He pauses briefly to look you over. Claw-mark weals, like he’s been dragging his blunt nails down your back, hatch the skin paralleling your spine. Your heels press divots into the bare cheeks of your arse; you squirm in his gaze, drawing them together as you tighten your thighs.

There’s a moment when pain transforms. When heat fills the empty spaces between moving, frantic particles and melds in around them. Capturing them in place.

The calcaneus of one foot finds its way between your folds as you shift; your whole body twitches from it, and you lift your hips a little. There’s an obscene squelch as you settle down again, slick dribbling down your heel into the arch.

Price lunges. The whip cracks. You low like a trapped animal, grinding, and the pitch of your voice swoops upward when he lays another lash right on top of the previous.

Dangerous. Taunting something welling up to the surface, testing what it can take before it breaks. Price knows better.

Knows better, but the roil and hiss in his gut yawns wider with every lash, trembling as a fed appetite is only whetted. Horrible feedback loop—the cry of your voice, he often thinks, is the only thing that could possibly satisfy him, but when he gets it, Price can’t be satisfied.

A taste demands mouthful. A meal demands a banquet. When he hears you wail, he wonders how many different ways he can make you do it, how many octaves are there, hidden away, for him to tease out of you.

He knows everything about you. Everything. He knows every dip and curve of your body, every jutting bone, every creaky joint, every fold and roll and wrinkle. Sometimes he thinks he's got individual hair follicles memorized.

With the whip, or the scourge, or any other tool, the reward for his greed is ephemeral. The known plains present themselves as blank canvas, and for a while, after his work is wrought, there’s something new for him to fixate on. New patterns to trace his fingers along.

Sometimes he thinks he wants to cut you open, just to see what more of you he’s been missing.

Stomach. Lungs. Intestines. Arterial pathways leading to your soft, beating heart. All he wants, he thinks, is to see them. Say hello to them. Run his tongue along their membranes, caress each tiny capillary webbing them together with the lightest brush of his teeth, if only just to organize his experience of them into the archives of you that he keeps locked behind his ribs.

More of you. He always wants more of you.

He lunges again. The whip sings in the air, and the cracker bites again into your flesh. You undulate like rippling water, breath coming out in erratic stops and starts, and then you give a full body yank against your cuffs—

This time, he’s broken skin.

You curl in on yourself, suddenly going still. Your thighs tighten; your scapulae rise, shoulders touching the lobes of your ears.

As you’re if holding onto something that will escape; balancing, on an unsteady surface, something fragile. Delicate as spun glass.

It isn’t deep. A pearl of crimson wells up in the trough, collapsing when the mass betrays the surface tension. It trails a thin, straight line down your back as it slips between stark weals still yet to split open.

You haven’t moved; your body is a trembling fist.

Price takes a long, ragged breath. He asks the question, although he already knows the answer.

“Did you come?”

You shake your head.

Of course not. His good fucking girl—you’re waiting for permission.

Price extracts the little key from his trouser pocket and goes to where your wrists hang limp from the bedpost. The lock turns with a small click, and your arms drop like heavy stones. A breath of relief, involuntary, leaves you.

Price wraps your hair around his fist and yanks you back a little like pulling a dog on a leash. He rounds you, looming above your kneeling form, and wedges the tip of his boot between your knees.

It’s not a new pair. He’s had them for years, and the leather shows it, even despite regular maintenance. They’re brutish things, squarish and unkindly shaped, rough at the edges. Meant to trample underbrush and kick through teeth. A scratched-up battering ram between the soft skin of your thighs.

You lift your hips immediately to open the way for him. Automatic. Pavlovian.

He lifts the toe against your clit in reward, circles it, dragging your folds around. Your lips fall open; glittering, rheumy eyes stare up at him as your cuffed hands circle his knee.

Something soft in Price’s chest touches the inside of his sternum.

His hand goes to the zipper at his groin, and he draws his cock out. In the furor of the lash, he hadn’t even realized how hard he was, but he feels blistering in his own palm, the head ruddy and ugly with it, the veins thick and pulsing. Equally as inappropriate to subject you to.

He drags your head to his cock with his firm grasp in your hair. You don’t need to be told—your mouth drops, and he pushes in without preamble, grunting short and hard when the flat of your tongue melts along the broad artery on the underside of his shaft.

“Rut,” he husks, shifting his boot beneath you, “until you come.”

You moan around him. The vibration of your vocal cords travels up his cock, reverberating with an intensity that has him shoving into your throat with a snarl. You choke at the intrusion, saliva bubbling at the corners of your mouth, but your hips bear down on his boot, thighs clenching it at the sides.

Your whole body rolls and humps against his leg, cuffed wrists coming up so your hands can wrap around the meat of his thigh. You scrabble at the canvas, dig your nails into the weave of his trousers like you want to tear through it to get at his skin underneath.

The whole time, your eyes never leave his, glistening with tears that shiver on your lashes as they threaten to fall. He grits his teeth as your lips pull out around him as he withdraws, and then thrusts short and hard into your mouth in time with the frantic cant of your pussy up and down his boot.

He can feel the heat of your sex even through the leather, could swear that he can count the contractions as you clench around nothing, the tiny bud of your neglected clitoris rasping against the unkind fibers of his boot laces.

Obedient to perfection.

You’re past the threshold as you lean back a little, levering your body to change the angle at which your pussy engulfs his foot, and he half-steps forward to follow you so his cock doesn’t escape your mouth. You roll against him, a full-body wave that lifts chest, then stomach, then hips—

And then he sees it take you as you freeze in place, muscles tensing all at once.

Your eyes roll back, throat convulsing around him as quick, reedy mewls travel up his shaft in quick succession. Your whole body shakes with it, frenetic as you hump his boot to prolong it, loosening the knot he’d tied with your vigor.

He pulls out a little to let you breathe through the end of it, but when you realize what he’s doing you dig your nails into his thigh, following him back. You catch his gaze with yours, eyes pleading, brows knitting together in entreaty. The claws become cupped hands, stroking up and down, and you bob your head a little, hollowing your cheeks.

Price huffs a breath. He hadn’t planned for an orgasm for himself for this. Rewards are for people who earn them.

This—this isn’t that.

But your eyelids lower in pleasure as you take him deeper, saliva slicking the way to his base, and Price has never been able to deny you anything.

His grip around your hair becomes a soft palm on the back of your head, guiding you steady, and he props his shin up along your stomach, knee between your breasts to give you balance.

It’s an orison; tossed into the caldera, something precious given to gravity and the incandescent fate at the other side of it. Your lips melt around him softly, tongue skimming his length like the reaching strand of a candle flame twirling around the tip of his finger.

He loves you so frightfully much.

“That’s it,” he huffs. “Such a good girl for me, aren’t you?”

You moan in your throat, eyes closed, lashes against your damp cheeks.

“Yeah,” he continues, digging his fingers into your hair. “Too good for the likes of me—mmm—”

You suckle around him, pulling all the way back to mouth at the head of his cock before engulfing him again, cuffed hands rising higher to nestle one into the crevice of his groin and thigh and to spread the other over his hip. His breath quickens, and he brings his other hand to the back of your head, digging the fingers of both into your scalp.

You accept the roll of his hips with a little laugh that escapes through your nose, opening your jaw wide; making room for him to take what he pleases, again, how he pleases, as he thrusts faster, harder, taking what you give freely and delving harder for even more—

The head of his cock bullies your soft palette as his pubic hair tickles your lips, and then it shoots through him, up and down his spine, and he rams into your throat, forcing your nose to his mons as his cock pulsates, erupting hot and viscous, heartbeat forcing his cum out in deep, rhythmic pulses he feels across his whole body.

When you swallow around him his whole body heats up, balls clenching as they empty themselves into you, and he punches his hips in again short and hard as the last vestiges of his climax play out.

You hold him in your throat until he pulls you away, and then you take a long, wet gasp, hot breath fanning across his softening cock as it falls down, drained out. Tear tracks are silvery down your face, lashes stuck together with lipids and salt.

He brings one hand to your cheek, caressing beneath your eye gently with one callused thumb. Sweat beads along your hairline, and your skin is sticky and humid, glistening with perspiration that pools in your collarbones.

He feels his own sweat running down his chest, along and around the follicles of his chest hair and down toward his navel. Your eyes follow each drop; he thinks you’d lean forward and lick them up, if he told you to, even though he can see the exhaustion pulling at you.

“You good?” he finally asks, his voice coated in grit, but steady as it leaves him.

It’s what he always says, after.

You open your eyes to meet his, and this, too, is a moment repeated. He searches. Waits for doubt or fear or dismay to flicker in your gaze, some omen that he’s gone too far, that this, finally, has been too much for you to take from him.

You grace him with a little smile. The lines of your face are slack and loose. Your expression is smooth—languid, floating on satisfaction.

“I’m good,” you say, calm and tranquil—

And the smoke clears from his eyes.

He rubs the indent around your finger, branded by your wedding ring in your clenching fist, and brings the knuckle to his mouth to kiss his apology into your skin.

“What happened?” you ask.

You’re boneless, splayed on the mattress with your belly to the duvet. Your head rests against the pillow, face turned toward him.

Even in the haze of afterglow, filaments of oxytocin and dopamine unspooling, your eyes are sharp. Insightful.

You know him too well.

John kisses your ring finger again and returns to the oblations he owes for his violence. The lines on your back are ugly, dotted with broken capillaries and set to linger for weeks. He applies aloe gel, cooled in the fridge, in a thick, generous layer with a soft brush. The kind your aesthetician uses on the rare occasion you treat yourself to some time at the spa, dragging the bristles lightly across your face, around the apples of your cheeks and the corners of your lips.

Softer than he can possibly touch you right now with his callused fingers. A consequence of his vice; flayed skin, lifted weals, cannot tolerate the weight or heat of his hand, no matter how curative or contrite. He destines his own gentle touch to futility.

The one place he broke skin will probably take a month to heal.

A puff of air zips by his ear again. So close as to be your gasp. The rock behind him explodes around a .50 caliber round. Fragments of dry stone, osseous and pale, shower his neck and back.

“The usual,” Price says.

With a q-tip, John dabs bacitracin along the open gash down one side of your back. It isn’t very long or very deep. It might not even scar.

When John is gone—deployed or dead, the difference is negligible, really—there will be no evidence of his presence in your life that you can’t get rid of. It kept occurring to him throughout his deployment, after the near miss.

Everything of his in the house you share, you can box up and donate. Deep clean the place to eradicate whatever traces of his scent are left behind. You can cut your hair in some new style he’ll never see, wear all new clothes, choose a new perfume.

You can take off your wedding band. Shove it in a box in some forgotten drawer, or just pawn it.

It’s childish. Downright adolescent. Snapping your bra like a pimply cunt in secondary school, because the only way he knows how to etch himself into the bedrock of your memory is with pain.

“I’m sorry,” you say, reaching out with one lolling hand.

He leaves the q-tip on your back and clasps it between both of his own, bringing the curl of your fingers to his mouth. He kisses down the side of your palm, trails his lips down the soft skin of your forearm. Squeezes so hard he feels the bones in your hands shift.

You’re sorry. He took a whip to your back, made you hump his boot like an animal, and fucked your face like a whore, all because he couldn’t stand the thought that you would someday be without him. And you’re sorry.

“You’re somethin’ else,” he murmurs, scratching at the soft part of your wrist with his beard.

It seems even the softest version of his affection must somehow be abrasive.

There’s a little smile playing across your lips as you close your eyes. A deep, serene breath leaves you.

He places your hand back on the bed and dips the brush back into the aloe, loading it generously up to the ferrule. The brush make little furrows in the gel as he lays it down, the layer already thick; he floats the flat of the bristles overtop, smoothing over his contrition, and then, idly, he wedges them in again, carving runnels down through the clear to your skin.

You must fall asleep as he does, or at least you enjoy it enough to indulge him. John follows the lines of each lash from beginning to end, tracing their length, mapping the way they’ve changed your skin.

In a few weeks, as he cares for them, they’ll fade away completely. Left only to memory—both his and yours. But for now, you’ll feel them every day. Feel him every day, even when he’s not there, brushing along the inside of your shirt, stinging with every light touch.

Remembering the hand that held the lash.

He smooths the painted lines over and begins again.

a/n: this started as a casual one-off and became a loose masterstudy of @yeyinde's writing style. Lev, affectionately, you are insane. I know this because in writing this I also went insane.

Also dedicated to @391780. Please never stop being kinky online. I live for it.

Also that one part was inspired by this piece of art.

#john price x reader #john price x you #john price smut #john price cod #captain john price #captain john price x reader #captain john price x you #captain john price smut #captain john price x female reader #cod smut #madi writes #mwritesprice #i'm not exactly satisfied with this one but if i spend any more time on it i'll never want to write again

585 notes · View notes

longnewmedia · 3 months ago

Audio

Listen/purchase: In the Backrooms of the Mall 🎧 by Johnny Long

LongNewMedia.net

YouTube.com/@JohnnyLong6939

JohnnyLong.BandCamp.com

bnd.link/johnny_long

0 notes

thejoyofviolentmovement · 9 months ago

Text

Formed in 2016, Hamilton, Ontario-based dreamgaze outfit Basement Revolver — Nim Agalawatte (bass, keys) (they/them), Chrisy Hurn (vocals, guitar) (they/them), Jonathan Malström (guitar) (he/him) and Levi Kertesz (drums) (he/him) — can trace their origins back quite a bit earlier, to the longtime friendship between Hurn and Agalwatte. The band hit the ground running with the release of their breakout single “Johnny Pt. 2,” which led to the band signing to British label Fear of Missing Out and later, Canadian label Sonic Unyon Records. The Canadian dreamgazers closed out 2016 with their self-titled EP. Over the next few years, the band were quite prolific releasing 2017’s Agatha EP, 2018’s full-length debut Heavy Eyes and 2019’s Wax and Digital EP. They supported that recorded output with touring across Ontario, the States, the UK and Germany. 2020 was tumultuous and uneasy year for most people across the planet — and unsurprisingly, it was also a tumultuous year for the Hamilton-based outfit: They had written and recorded a batch of material. The band then went through a lineup change in which one member left and was then replaced by another. But because of the pandemic and pandemic-related restrictions, they couldn’t rehearse or record in the fashion they had become accustomed. And of course, touring was completely off the table for the better part of about 15-16 months in most parts of the world. Much like countless others across the globe, the enforced off-time resulted in moments of serious, individual reflection for the band’s members — including a reconsideration of who and what the band was. According to the band’s Nim Agalwatte, the band had planned on working on their sophomore album back in 2021, but they wound up waiting and working out what to do, eventually making changes to the material they had originally written. “The world was shifting around us – and there was some global trauma – with that, we decided we wanted to fully express ourselves. So far we had kind of held off sharing political views, but we were realizing that our silence was actually just violence. We realized that to be who we are fully and authentically, we needed to share our voice.” For the band’s members, that meant they had felt the need to share things in public that they had long held close to the vest: Both Agalawatte and Hurn came out. According to Hurn, the pair came out against what they describe as homophobic and transphobic environments, much like Redeemer University, a private Calvinist university, which has been the meeting place and birthplace of countless local acts in Hamilton. Back in 2020, Redeemer University announced a policy that would discipline students for any sexual behavior outside heterosexual marriage. “While we were in the studio, the CBC released an article about Redeemer University, and their homophobic and transphobic policies. I realized then and there, I had to come out. . . ” Hurn explained. The Canadian outfit’s sophomore album, 2022’s Embody thematically saw the band wrestling with the serious questions of identity, sexuality, faith and mental illness in an unapologetically honest, self-aware and explicit fashion. Arguably, the most personal album of their growing catalog, Embody is rooted in hope — to physically be with and see your friends, to play songs in a darkened room with others and for others, to engage with the world with a hard-fought understanding of yourself and your much different place within the world and more. Sonically, the album’s material features a much deeper sound and a crisper production to adroitly express the complexities and uncertainties of the world. “Red Light,” the Hamilton-based outfit’s first bit of new material since Embody is a a breakneck and anthemic bit of 120 Minutes-era MTV indie rock featuring A Storm in Heaven-like guitar textures, thunderous drumming paired with enormous hooks and Hurn’s dreamily yearning delivery expressing the annoyance and frustration of someone, who realizes t...

View On WordPress

#Basement Revolver Agatha EP #Basement Revolver Embody #Basement Revolver Heavy Eyes #Basement Revolver Johnny Pt. 2 #Basement Revolver Red Light #Basmenet Revolver Wax and Digital EP #dream pop #Fear of Missing Out #Hamilton ON #indie rock #New Audio #non-binary artists who kick ass #shoegaze #Single Review #Single Review: Basement Revolver Red Light #Single Review: Red Light

0 notes

doyoulikethissong-poll · 4 months ago

Text

Madonna - Like a Prayer 1989

"Like a Prayer" is a song by American singer Madonna and was released as the lead single from her 1989 fourth studio album of the same name. Written and produced by both Madonna and Patrick Leonard, the song heralded an artistic and personal approach to songwriting for Madonna, who believed that she needed to cater more to her adult audience. Along with the parent album, "Like a Prayer" was a turning point in Madonna's career, with critics starting to acknowledge her as an artist rather than a mere pop star.

"Like a Prayer" is a pop rock and gospel song that also incorporates elements of funk. The lyrics contain liturgical words, but they have been interpreted by some people to have dual meanings of sexual innuendo and religion. "Like a Prayer" was acclaimed by music critics upon release and was a global commercial success, becoming Madonna's seventh number 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, topping the Hot 100 for three consecutive weeks and also topping the charts in many other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the UK. It was Madonna's fifth number 1 hit on the Eurochart Hot 100, and stayed at number one for 12 weeks.

The accompanying music video for "Like a Prayer", directed by Mary Lambert, shows a white woman being sexually assaulted and subsequently killed by a group of white men, but a black man is arrested for the crime. The video depicts a church and Catholic symbols such as stigmata. It also features the Ku Klux Klan's burning crosses and a dream sequence about kissing a black saint. Leon Robinson was hired to play the role of a saint; the part was inspired by Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony. The Vatican condemned the video, while family and religious groups protested against its broadcast. They boycotted products by soft drink manufacturer Pepsi, who had used the song in their commercial. Pepsi canceled their sponsorship contract with Madonna, but allowed her to retain the $5 million fee.

While most TV stations banned the music video, MTV notably continued to air the video on heavy rotation. The controversies leading to her "Like a Prayer" video introduced the concept of free publicity and became a turning point where Madonna was viewed as a shrewd businesswoman who knows how to sell a concept. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Like a Prayer" was nominated in the Viewer's Choice and Video of the Year categories, winning the former. It was number one on MTV's countdown of "100 Videos That Broke the Rules" in 2005, and for the channel's 25th anniversary, viewers voted it as the "Most Groundbreaking Music Video of All Time". In addition, the video was ranked at number 20 on Rolling Stone's "The 100 Top Music Videos", and at number two on VH1's 100 Greatest Videos. In a 2011 poll by Billboard, the video for "Like a Prayer" was voted the second-best music video of the 1980s, behind only Michael Jackson's "Thriller". According to Screen Rant, "Like a Prayer" is one of the most used Madonna's songs in movies and television, most recently notably featured in the 2024 film Deadpool & Wolverine.

"Like a Prayer" received a total of 87,9% yes votes! Previous Madonna polls: #18 "Who's That Girl", #184 "Live to Tell".

youtube

#finished #high votes #high yes #high reblog #80s #madonna #english #o1 #o1 sweep

1K notes · View notes

inkonparchment · 2 months ago

Text

American Wedding | Part 1

Leon Kennedy x f!Reader

You've never seen him, you’ve never met him and yet here you are, Mrs Kennedy, a fate that was always to be yours since the day you were born. The golden band on your finger catches dust at the train station, hoping that at the very least, he's kind.

warnings: this is set in late 1800s. reader is described as having long, silky hair. allusions to mental and physical abuse (not by Leon). misogyny. marriage of convenience. arranged marriage. implied age gap. absolute zero research for era appropriateness.

word count: 3k

a/n: ink write something normal for once challenge = FAILED. i saw an edit of Leon to the song american wedding where the lyric goes "M-R-S dot kennedy" and thus i went insane. enjoy whatever the hell this is. or dont idk man sometimes i confuse myself.

next.

You’re alone.

There’s not a soul in sight at the train station, the bench creaking under your weight when you had sat down, hot wind blowing up the dust. There’s nothing but barren land stretching on for miles, littered by small rocks and shrubbery. A tumbleweed had passed when you had been the only person to get off at the station, heavy suitcase in hand, tugging your hat firmly on your head. Steam had exhaled from the engine, the slow rumble of the wheels startling you as it took off.

You has pursed your lips, squinting against the harsh sun as you scoured your new environment. Signage indicating the town you’re in, a decaying wooden shed with old benches and a bored looking clerk snoring behind the barred opening indicating ‘Ticket Counter’.

So you sit and wait. Because what else can you do? You take your hat off, afraid it will blow away by the strong wind, placing it on your lap, hands neatly folding on top of it. Your hair has loosened up from the neat bun your mother had made for you, the strands tugged and pulled by the winds. You glance down at your hands, the gold band glittering on your finger, the familiar sensation of nausea burning at the back of your throat.

It’s a stark contrast against the pure white of your most perfect dress over the most delicate looking corset you had ever seen in your life. You think back to this morning, almost feeling like a lifetime ago, numb to it. It flashes by in your mind in messily taken snapshots; the church, the white dress, your father standing over your shoulder with a stern look on his face, watching like a hawk and ignoring the way your hand shook when you signed the papers.

It was the most luxurious ink pen, black with silver indentations, acquired by your father from his travels. It was perhaps his most precious belonging, cradling it with much care and only brandishing it out to sign all his important deals. And wasn’t that what you were? A deal to be signed away?

So you wrote your name next to the man's who was to own you now, in the pretty cursive you had painstakingly learned under your father's tutelage. You flinch, remembering his screaming when one single line would be out of place. I will accept nothing less than perfection, he would bellow at you, vein throbbing at his temple.

And that’s what you do like the perfect daughter you are.

M-R-S dot Kennedy.

You’re confused why you felt so remorseful, sitting like a hollowed out version of yourself, unable to register your mother’s congratulations, her tears wetting the shoulder of your pristine dress as she held you, your father triumphantly receiving his congratulations from the pastor. You knew this was going to happen, the idea reinforced since the day you could understand words. After all hadn’t your mother met your father like this too?

Your mother had done your hair, delicately twisting your long locks up and decorating them with flowers. Men are kind to pretty things, she had said to assure you, glancing at your blank expression in the vanity of your room. She had softly patted make up on your face, stumbling over her words as she tried to explain what to expect at night. Just...try not to move much, it’ll be over soon.

Your mother had given you a lick of girl hood, doing what she could to let you live past your teenage years without a husband to weigh you down. You were allowed to frolic in the estate on your horse, but not for too long. You have to keep your skin perfect, you don’t want to look like a wrinkled prune for your husband.

You had learnt the ways of the kitchen, mastering dishes after dishes, a reprieve from your father’s tempers, a room he would dare not venture in, instead choosing to snap his fingers at his wife to fetch him whatever he wished.

It was a sanctuary for you and your mother, a place where the shadow of her past self would glimmer, a version you had never known, the version who would tell you stories of the Greek heroes and their tragic ends. She had fought hard for you.

At least that’s what the blue and black bruises on her skin would say.

Your father had glanced at you with pride flashing in his eyes and that had soothed you. Finally you had done something to please him, the soft, awkward pat of his hand at your shoulder, snapping you awake. You couldn’t even revel in it, suddenly finding yourself standing at the train station, ticket in your hand. Your father had said that your husband would pick you up, gruffly saying that it would not be wise to run, to attempt to escape your fate. There would be no kindness then.

Tears gather in your waterline, difficult to discern their cause. The barren landscape makes you want to vomit, a stark contrast from the grassy green pastures of your home. And you consider running, your father’s warning echoing in your ears, just taking off in the direction of the sun, abandoning your suitcase. You won’t survive if you do, with no money or precious jewellery on your person, knowing that you would collapse under the scorching sun. But perhaps that end would be better than whatever life waits for you with your husband.

Leon Kennedy.

The man- your husband, that was supposed to pick you up. Your grip tightens on your lap. Maybe he has forgotten, owing to his graying years, his memory not the way it used to be. You’ve conjured up an image of him, someone old and graying, hair missing from his head but his eyes still full with his youthful lust, scouring his prize up and down like a hungry dog. It makes you retch, panic bubbling in the pits of your stomach. That has to be it. Someone who is too old to be on horseback. Why else would he not be present at the church? To whisk you away himself? To have you as soon as he could?

But its fine, you soothe yourself, you’ll be fine. You’ll keep your head down and be a good wife, no delusions of romance set in your mind. What use was it anyway? Love never saved those Greek heroes, you would be a fool to think it could save you. Maybe if you play up the role of a perfect little wife, swollen with his children, he may allow you some breathing room, some books if he is generous. But its okay, you’ll steel yourself and survive, you’ll leave no room for error. You’ll be his most prized possession.

The sound of crunching gravel makes you snap your head up, the sun piercing in your eyes through your tears. You turn your head to see a horse pulled carriage come to a stop. The man commandeering the vessel hops off from the seat, dust clouding around his pristine shoes. He is sharply dressed, you notice, clad in his black suit. The hat hides his face from you, holding it down with his left hand on his head as he walks over, the shimmer of gold catching your eye. You feel your heart hammer in your chest. The wooden floorboards creek as the man steps up on the platform, taking off his hat when he does and straightening up to his height.

Your breath catches in your throat. He is beautiful, glittering in the afternoon sun, his sun bleached hair falling perfectly across his face. He sports a small stubble, face sculpted like a devoted art piece, cool blue eyes stark against the bronze of his skin, wrinkles decorating the corner of his eyes. His suit is pristine, the white of his inner shirt nearly blinding, hiding a well muscled torso from your view, arms bulging against his jacket. He holds his hat against his chest, standing with his hips thrown out, one thigh straddled with a leather holster holding an ivory black revolver. He regards you calmly, eyes stuck to your form before flitting to your suitcase.

You look away, tearing your eyes away from his enraptured form. You feel yourself already failing your promise to be the perfect wife, enamoured by a strange man when a husband awaits for you. So you sit prim and proper, back straightened like you had been taught, ignoring how your heart leapt with every single step he took.

You hope he saves you, takes you roughly by the arm and force you on his carriage, never to be heard from again. After all isn’t that what angels do?

You hold your breath when he comes to stand near you. But still you don’t dare to look at him, hurriedly tugging your hair behind your ear. It’s the way he says your name that freezes you, fingers still against your hair. You’ve never heard it like that before, almost in disbelief, convinced that you heard him wrong. It sounds...sweet, like it means something in the low baritone of his silky voice.

You turn to look at him, the pink of his lips catching your eyes before you avert your eyes, instead focusing on the golden band wrapped around your finger. You nod, spine stiff.

Wordlessly, he picks up the suitcase and shuffles to the side, gesturing towards the carriage with his hat. A world of confusion explodes in your mind, limbs arrested as you struggle to decide what to do. He can’t be him just because he knows your name. Maybe your husband sent someone else in his place, his ranch hand perhaps. You purse your lips, palms slick with sweat as you heave yourself up and begin to walk with shaking steps towards the carriage.

You fix your hat atop your head before stepping into the sun, hiding your hands from the harsh rays should they taint you. You admire the stallion, graceful in his poise, its brown coat gleaming under the afternoon sun, walking around it and reissuing the urge to trace his coat against your fingertips. He looks well loved, well taken care of. You’re too busy staring at the brilliant creature that you don’t notice the man stowing your luggage in the back, hat back on and taking in your dazed form.

He approaches you like how a person would approach an easily startled animal, slowly and silently. He watches as you stiffen up at his presence, holding out his hand to you to help you up. You take it, your soft hand a contrast against his roughed skin, slotting perfectly in his palm. He hold you steady as you climb up, sitting demurely in your seat and wait as he rounds up and joins you. And with a click of his tongue and a tug of the reigns, the two of you begin to move.

This is it, a ball forms in your throat, my last moments of freedom. You close your eyes, feeling the wind fan against your cheeks, savouring the dust that catches in your eyelashes. You blink, watching as the landscape remains unchanged, jostling in your seat against the rough landscape of the road. The man’s presence is burning against you, the cloth of his suit brushing next to the sleeve of your dress. Your eyes flit to his tan hands, fixating on the ring on his left hand. You glance down, admiring how similar it looks to the one you are wearing, yours just a bit thinner than his.

You dare to look up at him, focusing on his side profile. Freckles dot his sun kissed skin, his hair long and caressing his high cheekbones. His eyes are what take you, so blue that it makes you want to drown into them, cool contrasting the suffocating heat. He turns his head and locks gazes with you, heart stuttering in your chest.

“Who are you?” You blurt, unable to stop yourself.

He releases the reigns from his hand closest to you, tipping the brim of his hat, “Leon Kennedy.”

You blink, your heart stuttering. “I… I thought you’d be older.”

He smiles faintly, his gaze turning toward the dusty horizon. “You’re not the first to think that.” There’s a pause. “I suppose I expected…different too.”

If the shock is evident on your face, he doesn’t acknowledge it. But you can feel it in your bones, flooding your whole being. This man is your husband and he is so far beyond from how you imagined him. Your insides twist, forcing you to look away, heat burning your ears.

At least he isn’t hideous to look at. But you don’t let it sway you, knowing that sometimes the prettiest faces hide the ugliest facades, stomach lurching at the thought of various women that he must hide under his arms. And suddenly you find yourself praying that some kindness falls your way.

“I’m sorry for being late,” Leon addresses you softly.

All you can do is meekly shrug your shoulders, mumbling out a “It’s alright.”

The rest of the ride is silent, the sun moving down as the hours pass by, now turning the sky into a deep shade of orange, wisps of cool air around you. Fences start to come in view, the outline of a house appearing in the distance.

Leon pulls the reigns, bringing carriage to a stop, pulling up to grand looking house, clean and proper, the walls a deep shade of brown, looking heavenly against the backdrop of the sky. Your mind is abuzz, throat dry, hoping and pleading that the sun does not leave . You’re frozen in your seat, curious looking laborers gazing at you, suddenly feeling at display.

The carriage jostles as Leon steps off, immediately at your side, looking at you earnestly, more kindly than what you’re used to. He hold out his hand to you and it takes you a few moments before your brain spurs into action, your hand once again enveloped by his. You stare at how your golden ring clicks against his, cool to touch and shining together. He helps you down and you stand like a good wife, waiting as he disappears to grab your luggage, waving away the ranch hand who comes up to offer.

Leon comes to stand next to you, watching you as you watch the house. He clears his throat, your eyes finding his, jutting out his elbow to you. You gulp, slide your hand in the nook of his arm, fingers splayed against his strong bicep, his eyes searching for something in your face before he leads you inside.

Your heart is thundering in your chest. The material of the dress agitates your skin, nervousness grabbing a strong of you. Your mothers words come back to haunt you, remembering what she had said when she laid out the corset and dress on your bed. I...chose this so that it’ll be easier for him, men tend to get...impatient.

You see nothing, smell nothing and feel nothing, eyes rigidly on the floor as you feel yourself slip away like with practiced ease when your father’s loud voice could be heard echoing in the walls, the soothing sensation of paper under your fingers enough to satiate your nerves.

When you blink, you stand in a decent sized room, a four poster bed with cloth draped over it on one side of the room. The colours of the curtains are a soft, pastel blue. There is a dresser, the most beautiful and intricate designs decorating its surface, its size more than sufficient for you to stow away your belongings.

There is a vanity too, grand and delicate looking, a row of expensive looking perfume vials sitting atop the desk, a silver hair brush and a humble selection of make up. Leon sets your suitcase down without a noise, standing at the doorway, hat now gone as he watches you glide around the room admiring the paintings decorating the walls.

A breath hitches in your throat when you finally approach your bed side, eyes widening at the bookshelf tucked away in the corner with a cushioned chair next to it. You trace your fingers against the spine of the books, gasping and pushing your hair behind your ears to get a better look when you spot the book of Greek fables. You clutch it to your chest, tears once again collecting in your eyes as you twist around to look at Leon.

He offers you a small smile, nothing but fondness and gentleness behind it. He grasps the doorknob, beginning to close it behind him. “This is your room. I hope everything is to your liking.”

He glances at you, a flicker of concern crossing his eyes. “If there’s anything you need… anything at all…”

You stiffen at the gentleness in his voice, uncertain of his meaning. “No please, this all is more than enough,” you murmur.

His notices the tear that escapes your waterline. “Rest. You must have had quite the journey to come here.”

And so you dare. “Mr. Kennedy," You call out, making him stop in his tracks, “I...Are we to not...” You lose the strength, letting out a shaky breath as he patiently waits for you to finish your sentence, “We are husband and wife, are we not?” And you hope he understands, mortified at even thinking to speak on the subject with him.

His expression softens, looking at you tenderly, understanding dawning on his face. “Yes, we are. But that is not something you need to worry about. I will never force you to do anything that you do not wish to do.” His smile returns, reassuring you. “And it’s Leon. Only Leon.”

The door shuts and with it you crumble to the floor, pressing the book closer to your chest, the rug soft under your fingers. And you can’t tell if these tears are of despair.

Or if they’re of relief.

#leon kennedy #leon kennedy x reader

463 notes · View notes

hedgehog-moss · 1 year ago

Text

Last Sunday in October, a story in five parts :)

i. The guy who owns the pasture next to mine took his cows back to their winter lodgings the other day, and told me I could let my llamas eat what was left of the grass if I wanted. That was sweet of him but his pasture's fence is cow-proof, not llama-proof, so I had to wait for a sunny day, so I could sit with a book nearby and keep an eye on the llamas Pampe. Today was the day!

Pampy looked happy about this unexpected change of scenery and started grazing peacefully, meanwhile Pampe started with exploring the whole pasture, including the patch of woods at the back, hoping to find a flaw in the fence.

(Note Poldine below, desperately running after her mum so she won't be left behind if Pampe does find an opportunity to escape)

ii. I found some impressive coulemelles in this new pasture (I don't know any mushroom names in English sorry.) I cut one to take to the pharmacy and ask if they're the good kind (here with my hand for scale)

They're also known as nez de chat, cat's nose mushrooms, in some regions...

I found some girolles nearby last year, but not this time. The llamas seemed to be on their best behaviour so I thought after lunch I'd go look for mushrooms farther away in the woods, down by the torrent, instead of watching them all day.

Poldine, watch your mother.

I asked Merricat if she was volunteering her services as a llama-sitter (it looked like it)

—but she suspected I was going home where the fire is, so she followed me. (I don't make a fire on sunny afternoons, though... she had to nap in my cardigan instead. Not as good, but a tolerated second-best option.)

iii. I took Pan with me after lunch so he wouldn't encourage Pampe in mischief, and he was uncharacteristically audacious in his frolicking! He doesn't like water and he's usually quite prudent when we're near the torrent, even scolding me if I climb on mossy rocks, but today he was jumping from one slippery rock to the other very boldly.

As I was taking this nice waterfall photo, I heard a very dramatic high-pitched squeal followed by a dramatic splashing sound, and when I turned around Pandolf was dragging himself out of the torrent, looking, as we say in french, honteux et confus.

I'm sorry that his bout of audacious frolicking had to end this way :( Back to frolicking gingerly for at least a couple of years... (His fur is magical though, he looks like a drowned rat at first but then shakes himself twice and is immediately back to a normal volume of floof. So his dignity doesn't suffer for long, at least.)

iv. I found no mushrooms but something even better!

I love chestnuts so much, I've been hoping to find chestnut trees for years but was starting to think they just don't grow at this altitude... But I suck at identifying trees so it's very possible I walked past them dozens of times and never recognised them when it wasn't chestnut season.

You really have to earn every chestnut, even with the crushing-under-your-boot method to squeeze them out you still have to extricate them from their burr going ow ow ow the whole time. The worst thing is when you kill your fingers opening a reticent burr and it resentfully spits out a bunch of sad deflated worthless chestnuts.

Still, I ended up going home with chestnuts in every single one of my pockets. When we got out of the woods and back on the road Pandolf and I ran into a woman we don't know (so, not a close neighbour) and we started talking about foraging and I wondered if I should tell her about the nearby chestnut spot. But those things are private. No one told me about the chestnut spot even after I made increasingly heavy casual hints about how much I love chestnuts. After a while though I started suspecting this lady knew about the spot and was on her way there. Or on her way back, through a different path. She looked shifty. So did I. It's very possible that we were both standing there in the middle of the road with our coat pockets crammed with chestnuts, making pointedly non-chestnut-related small talk.

v. I went home and started making chestnut-pumpkin soup while dodging constant coordinated chicken attacks. At first they act like they're napping on a conveniently-nearby chair, or looking the other way, and as soon as you stop distrusting their intentions, they pounce, often from two different directions.

Side plot: Pandolf spent this whole time desperately trying to catch a cat, to restore his self-confidence after falling in the torrent.

Morille went from strolling casually on top of the fence to lounging casually in the hazel tree above my head, making it look like she hadn't even noticed she was being chased, which was very frustrating for Pandolf. Nothing wounds a dog like going unnoticed.

I told Morille it would make him happy if she let him catch her, and she was like eh, fine, and elegantly jumped from the hazel tree to the top of the stone wall.

Pandolf immediately followed, poked her a bit brutally with his big nose, and then he didn't know what else to do with her once he caught her so he just wagged his tail like "Well played, cat!! It was nice chasing you" and left.

v. bis (or ter) I want to reassure Pirlouit fans (who might have noticed that he wasn't allowed to graze in the neighbour's pasture with the llamas) that he knows he's entitled to fair compensation as a donkey, and he stood behind the fence the whole time I was preparing my soup, patiently waiting for his pumpkin benefits. Which he did get.

I found some leftover chestnuts in my trouser pocket tonight, that I'd forgotten about, so I'm having stove-roasted chestnuts for dessert after the chestnut soup! Chestnuts were 90% of my dinner and were also the reason Pandolf got dinner. I ran out of dog kibble and I was thinking of giving him a hard-boiled egg and some rice tonight, and go buy kibble tomorrow, but on our way back this afternoon we stopped by our closest neighbour's house and I humbly offered a handful of chestnuts in exchange for one serving of kibble. The neighbour's dog didn't look enchanted with our offer but his human agreed. I usually trade with my chicken's eggs but this woman has hens so I'm glad chestnuts are also accepted as valid currency.

#crawling along #i love numbered lists but i really should stop using them in my posts because i always end up adding extra stuff at the end 😭

2K notes · View notes