#and many fucking columns are written by readers

[glompcat]

Reminder that most anti-intellectual posts are part of antisemitic bs.

Honestly and truly a large reason why I have a bug up my ass about the way people talk about newspapers online is if you look further in the notes of any given post bashing papers the unmasked antisemitism shows up pretty fast.

[pedrospatch]

strawberry

Daddy Dom! Joel Miller x Sub! Female Reader

summary: You feel ashamed for using your safe word with Joel during a session—he assures you you’re his good girl no matter what.

warnings/tags: 18+ only, MINORS DNI. (TW) daddy kink, lots of dd/lg lifestyle elements, reader is collared (day collar) age gap that is self indulgent, reader is mid to late 20’s and Joel is in his 50’s but tweak that to your imaginations if you like. SMUT; p in v sex, rough sex (that reader asks to try), spanking, possible overstimulation (if you squint??) Joel basically fucks reader too much and too hard. USE OF SAFE WORD. aftercare and lots of fluff, references to a pop culture film that i haven’t seen in forever but it’s fine. PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF TAGS AND WARNINGS. if this isn’t your thing, no worries just scroll on by.

MOODBOARD FOR AESTHETIC PURPOSES ONLY, READER HAS NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION.

word count: 2.4k

a/n: this is totally self indulgent, all for me as someone who has dabbled in the lifestyle before. if this is not your thing, no problem at all but kindly keep any negative comments to yourself. huge shoutout to the lovely @swiftispunk for inspiring this with the snippets of her own upcoming series that i am oh so excited for, darling han thank you for not only inspiring this, but for listening to me talk about it and encouraging it! and also to sweet mya @cavillscurls because truth be told her own fic brought back so many memories of a time in my life where i was genuinely so happy, in love, and felt safe with a partner. okay, i am gonna run away to the gym now to listen to 1989 tv (again) and pretend posting this is not nerve wracking as hell.

He’s fucked you plenty of times before.

But never like this. No, never, ever like this.

He’s relentless.

His thrusts are coming quicker, sloppier, harsher.

It doesn’t hurt, but it’s intense. Too intense.

Joel Miller is truly testing your limits tonight.

No, he was pushing you past your limits.

Because that’s what you’d asked him to do.

“Alright, sweet girl. This is the last time I’m gonna ask you before we get started. Are you absolutely, one hundred—no, one thousand percent sure that you wanna try this out tonight?” he had asked you beforehand, skimming the strap of your light pink, lace lingerie with his index finger, his feathery soft touch sending a plesant little chill down the length of your spinal column. Of all the sets you owned, it had to be Joel’s absolute favorite. Normally, it was him who would pick out what you would wear, but tonight he’d decided to let you choose for yourself and oh, you did not disappoint. He fucking adored you in the color pink; loved how sickeningly sweet, precious, and innocent you appeared in the hue as you did the filthiest things to him, with him. When you nodded eagerly in reply to his question, a sigh fell from his lips, the doubt written all over his face as he remarked, “I really don’t think you’re ready. I think we should wait just a little a while longer.”

“I’m ready,” you’d insisted, stubbornly. “I promise. I wouldn’t be asking for it if I thought I wasn’t. But I am, I promise, promise, promise I am.”

“Daddy knows what’s best for you, sweetheart—”

Fingers curled around his bicep, you’d batted your eyelashes, giving him those eyes that brought him down to his knees for you a lot more often than he cared to admit, those eyes that made Joel feel like he was learning his role all over again, despite over two decades of experience under his belt. He used to pride himself for his ability to stand firm against pouting lips, fluttering lashes, and pleading gazes. And then you come along and suddenly it’s like he is in his thirties again and he’s navigating this kind of dynamic for the first time. Even after a year and a half with you, he’s still trying to figure out how to completely unwrap himself from your little finger.

“Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

Christ, you made things so goddamn difficult.

“You really think you’re gonna be able to handle it? You think you’re gonna be able to handle me when I get real rough with you, baby? Hm?”

Without missing a beat, you replied, “Yes, Daddy. I can handle it. I know I can.”

You had been so certain that you could.

Confident, even. So confident that when he began going over the rules and reminded you to use your safe word if you needed him to stop, you’d giggled and stated, “I’ve never needed to use it before and I don’t plan on using it tonight.”

Oh, how very wrong you had been about it all.

You’d overestimated yourself, and underestimated Joel. Severely.

His hips snap roughly into yours without an ounce of mercy, over and over, again and again. Beads of perspiration start trailing their way down the sides of his face, the tip of his nose. His chest is flushed, red, and also slicked with a thin sheen of sweat.

You’ve already shattered, unraveled, come undone all over his cock several times—every time with his granted permission, of course. Because you knew better than to come without Daddy’s permission.

Your cunt is swollen, sensitive, too sensitive and at a point where it could start aching if he doesn’t let up soon. However, it seems like Joel’s only getting rougher and rougher as he chases another release.

“Joel—Daddy,” you manage to correct yourself at the very last second through a slew of frantic little gasps for air. “Daddy, please! Daddy please—”

His large hand tightens around both of your wrists pinned to the mattress above your head. Surely he must think you’re begging him for more, when the reality is you’re about to start begging him to stop because it’s just too much and you can’t handle it; but there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to stop, the part of you that doesn’t want to disappoint the man who means the whole, entire world to you.

The man you belonged to, the man you loved.

Even through the haze, you try telling yourself that it’s all mind over matter, mind over matter, mind—

“Stop,” you whine, squirming underneath him. “I—can’t take it anymore, Daddy, I can’t take it—!”

Releasing your wrists, Joel pulls himself out of you and you breathe out in relief, until he flips you over onto your stomach without warning. You let out an audibly loud gasp when his hands reach down and take your hips, pulling them up off his bed, putting you on your hands and knees. He brings down one of his hands on your ass in a stinging slap. “That is just too bad, ‘cause Daddy ain’t done with you yet, darlin’ girl. Not even close to bein’ done with you.” Wrapping his other hand around his base, he grins to himself as he glides the head of his cock up and down your slick folds. When it grazes your clit, you jerk forward, away from him, and he tuts, bringing you back to him, his fingers digging into the pillow soft flesh of your hips. “Oh no baby, you ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“But Daddy, I just can’t—”

You’re cut off by your own cry when you feel Joel’s length stretching your walls all over again. It’s just too much.

And you really, really can’t.

He leans over you and presses his lips to your ear. “You asked for this, didn’tcha? Asked to be fucked like a big girl, huh?” He bucks forward into you, eliciting another strangled cry followed by a string of pathetic whimpers. Bringing his palm down in a second strike, he demands, “Answer me when I’m takin’ to you. You wanted this, said that you could handle Daddy bein’ rough with you, ain’t that right now?”

“Strawberry.” You say the word so quietly, you can hardly hear it over the ringing in your ears.

Joel spanks you for a third time, in the exact same spot—so hard, there was simply no way you would wake up without a mark in the morning. “I need’ya to speak up. You’re such a big girl after all—”

“Strawberry!” You grasp fistfuls of bedsheets and the signal for it all to end tears itself from the back of your throat. “Strawberry, Joel! Strawberry!”

It’s only a millisecond that he freezes, if that.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Joel curses under his breath, pulling out of you. The bed shifts as he climbs off of it and scrambles to pull on his sweatpants before he’s at your side—you’re still on your hands and knees, an unmistakable look of panic on your face. He puts a gentle hand on your back. “Baby, are you alright?”

Your heart is pounding, your breathing labored but you manage a small, tight nod of your head. “I-I’m fine. I just—” Stopping, you grip the sheets tighter, warm tears brimming your eyes. Shame over what you’ve just done is already creeping in and sinking into your bones.

“Are you hurt, sweetheart? Did I hurt you?”

Joel’s voice is calm, but you can hear the concern that laces his tone.

“No.” Your own voice is small. “No. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Is it alright if I move you?” he asks. When you nod your head, he reaches out for you and helps you to sit on the side of the bed. Dropping to his knees in front of you, he takes your hands and his and feels his stomach sink when he realizes they’re ice cold; he begins rubbing them between his own to warm them up. “Baby if I hurt you, you need to tell m—”

“I promise, you didn’t hurt me,” you reassure him, swallowing the thickness rising in the back of your throat. You clock the skepticism in his dark brown eyes and a tear slips out, rolls down your face, and splatters onto your bare thigh. “I’m not lying, Joel. I swear.” Tugging one of your hands out of his, you reach up and instinctively clasp it around the blue sapphire pendant hanging from the delicate, gold chain around your neck—he’d presented you with his birthstone last year, not only as a symbol of his ownership of you, but also as a beautiful reminder of your commitment to one another. “You believe me, don’t you? You believe I’m telling the truth?”

Joel’s expression softens. “‘Course I do, baby.” He cups the side of your face gently, brushing away a second teardrop with his thumb. “But I’d really like to know what happened so I can figure out how to best help, okay? Can you tell me what happened?”

Embarrassed, you try turning your head away, but he holds your cheek in his hand, gentle but firm.

“S’okay. You can talk to me,” he encourages softly, his gaze meeting yours once again. “Tell me.”

“It was just too much,” you mumble, meekly. “And too intense.” Heat floods your face as you admit to him, “You were right. I just wasn’t—I wasn’t ready for that yet.”

In an effort to lighten your mood, Joel lightly gives your cheek a delicate pinch and chuckles.

“Daddy’s got that real annoyin’ habit of bein’ right ‘bout a lot of things, don’t he?”

“I’m sorry.” Your bottom lip quivers. “I’m so sorry.”

His smile falters. “Sorry for what?”

“For using the safe word—”

Joel’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Y’know you ain’t supposed to apologize for needin’ to use your safe word, right? That ain’t how it works, darlin’.”

Dropping your necklace, you place your hand over his on your cheek. “But I feel bad,” you confess. “It makes me feel like—like I let you down, you know? And that’s the last thing I want to do. I just wanted to be really good for you.”

“Oh baby.” Joel lifts himself from the floor. He sits on the bed and pulls you onto his lap, brushing his lips against your temple. “You are such a good girl for me, sweetheart.”

“But I couldn’t take it,” you sniff. “I had to stop.”

“And that’s okay,” he assures you. He wraps you in his arms and gives your body a gentle squeeze. “It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed ‘bout. You’re still really new to a lot of this stuff, y’know? S’why I told you I didn’t think you were ready.”

“I should’ve listened to you.”

He winks. “You should always listen to Daddy.”

You offer him a tiny, watery smile. “I know.”

“And say we try this again one day and it’s just not somethin’ you like or that makes you feel good—or maybe you never wanna try it again at all,” he says with a nonchalant shrug. “That’s okay too. You are still my good girl no matter what—my perfect girl. Always. You understand me?”

“Really? You promise?”

Joel holds up his pinky.

“Oh, you’re being really serious,” you tease him.

“Sure as hell am, darlin’.”

You lock your finger around his and he pulls you in for a sweet kiss.

“I love you, Joel,” you murmur against his lips. You giggle again when he clears his throat and smacks your ass lightly, playfully. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, baby.” Joel pulls away and touches the tip of his nose to yours. “How’s ‘bout we get in the bath and get all cleaned up? Hm?”

“A bath?” You instantly perk up. “With bubbles?”

“With bubbles. And I’ll even let you throw in one of those smelly ball things you fuckin’ love so much.”

You swat at his chest. “Hey! My bath bombs smell really good, thank you very much!”

Joel doesn’t particularly like emerging from a bath smelling like a petunia, but for you, he’s more than happy to bathe in a sea of them, glitter and all.

You trace his collarbone with your index finger.

“Daddy? After our bath can we just cuddle in bed? Maybe watch a movie?” He raises an eyebrow and you smile sheepishly, adding, “Please?”

“‘Course. Pick any movie you want, sweetheart.”

“And can we have ice cream while we watch too?”

He pins you with a stern look. “Alright, now you’re just pushin’ it and takin’ advantage.”

You jut your lower lip. “Please, Daddy?”

There’s no arguing with that, not tonight.

Joel decides to let you have your way. “Alright.”

The two of you spend quite some time in the bath; normally a bath together ends with him inside you all over again, but tonight, all he’s doing is running a soapy wash cloth with your favorite shower gel—japanese cherry blossom—all over your body as he sits behind you, lips pressed against your ear. Joel washes you slowly, carefully, and all the while he’s whispering sweet, tender praise.

My good girl.

My perfect girl.

I’m s’proud of you.

I’m the luckiest man in the whole world.

After the bath, once you’re both dried and dressed in comfortable clothes—him in a clean pair of gray sweatpants and you in nothing but his t-shirt, Joel gives you the remote and instructs you to pick out a movie to watch.

“Make yourself real comfortable, baby,” he says to you, kissing the top of your head. “I’ll be back with that ice cream.”

You shoot him a hopeful glance. “Strawberry?”

“You tryin’ to be funny with me, darlin’?”

“No! That’s just my favorite flavor, silly.”

Joel grins to himself as he leaves the bedroom.

He knows that. Of course he knows that.

It’s why he always keeps a pint of it in his freezer.

You hop into bed and pull the blankets around you as your scan through the guide for a movie—you’d just decided on The Notebook when Joel appears again, a bowl and two spoons in his hands.

“You picked The Notebook again, didn’t you?” he asks without even looking at the flat screen that’s mounted on his wall over the fireplace.

“You said I could pick any movie I wanted.”

“Was just hopin’ you’d pick one we haven’t seen a thousand times,” he chuckled, sliding into his bed next to you. Joel places the bowl of strawberry ice cream in his lap and hands you a spoon. “C’mere, my sweet girl. Come closer.”

You snuggle up to him, and the two of you dig into the frozen dessert as the movie begins to play.

“Baby?” Joel speaks after a while, just as Allie and Noah share a passionate kiss in the pouring rain.

“Hm?” you ask, your fixed eyes on the flat screen, your mouth full of ice cream.

“You sure you’re okay?”

Swallowing, you look up at Joel, meeting his gaze.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you answer honestly.

“‘Cause if there’s anythin’ else I can do for you…”

You purse your lips together and let out a tiny hum as you mull it over for a moment.

“You can hold me closer?” you finally suggest.

Joel shifts in his spot. “I can definitely do that—”

You stop him and point to the empty bowl.

“After you go and get us some more ice cream?”

He exhales an amused snort through his nose and shuffles out of bed, taking the bowl with him.

“Don’t get so used to bossin’ Daddy around,” Joel warns you playfully over his shoulder.

“Too late.”

divider credit to @saradika 🍓

[lotusbxtch]

Juno

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!Reader Word count: 2.2k (lol this was supposed to be a drabble) Rating: Explicit - 18+, MDNI

Summary: Your honeymoon with Joel is off to a bang.

Warnings/tags: honeymoon sex (it’s very feral), unprotected PIV sex (they’re trying to get pregnant but be smart IRL!), oral sex (m and f receiving), big fat breeding kink, pussy pronouns, creampie, cumplay, mentions of foreplay over the clothes, sort-of/accidental voyeurism, very loud sex, rough sex, mentions of marriage/family planning/birth control use, dom!Joel, feral!Joel, references to pregnancy, no outbreak!AU, cursing (but honestly swear words should be the least of your worries for this story lol), Reader is female, has hair that is long enough to put into a ponytail, and able bodied but otherwise not described (it’s you, boo!), no use of y/n

a/n: This is what happens when a horny invasive thought is allowed to take root in my brain. My darling menace @for-a-longlongtime sent me this Reel and it made me… think about things. Combined with the inspiration of the song Juno by Sabrina Carpenter, this is FILTH. Just… filth. But since @mountainsandmayhem and @alltheirdamn literally begged me to write this, here you are, written in a near-fugue state. Not beta’d, we’re doing this thing unprotected, just like Joel lmao. Banners by @saradika-graphics.

MASTERLIST

a/n pt 2: psssssst. Do you like Joel Miller? Do you want *more* Joel Miller? How about a series where not only Joel is your husband, but Frankie is your boyfriend? If so, tap here for SoCal to NorCal, my ongoing series!

I should have closed that damn sliding door.

You knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as you stepped foot into the immaculate, stylish Greek vacation suite you’d booked for your honeymoon with your new husband, Joel Miller. You’d spent the long flight teasing each other incessantly - the lightest of caresses, lingering kisses, surreptitious groping and heavy petting under the luxe blankets afforded to you by your first class seats. Joel couldn’t keep his hands off you most days, but now, fresh from your beautiful wedding as his darling wife? He was absolutely insatiable.

Joel had barely shut the front door on the endlessly kind bellhop before he was on you, ravenous with desire. His large hands began peeling off the soft layers of clothing you’d worn on the airplane, kissing you fervently and moaning into your mouth. You wove your fingers through your hair, tugging lightly when he kissed down your neck. 

“Fuck, Joel,” you whined, and you felt him growl lowly before nipping at your pulse point.

“Been waiting hours to take you apart, baby,” he murmured. Sucking a hickey onto the column of your throat, he laved the spot with his tongue to soothe the light pain. “Teasing me when you knew I couldn’t do shit about it.”

You pulled back on his hair with a yank, making him hiss. “You asked for it. You were the one rubbing circles against my clit through my sweatpants. My panties are ruined because of it.”

“Not my fault your pussy is so juicy,” Joel chuckled. “Especially now that she knows she’s gonna getting dicked down as many times as she can take it in a day.”

A couple months before your wedding, you and Joel discussed your desire to start trying for children. You’d thrown away your birth control after that conversation, but resolved to use other forms of protection until after the wedding.

You nor Joel had packed a single condom for this trip.

“Fuck me, Mr. Miller,” you breathed, moving your hand from his hair down his body to his rock-hard cock. He groaned when you made contact.

“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Miller,” Joel hummed, walking your naked body backwards towards the bedroom as you pulled at his clothes.

Now, you’re realizing that the sliding door to the ocean-view balcony is cracked open, allowing a lovely coastal breeze in but also letting your cries of pleasure float into the wind. Joel’s face is buried in your drenched pussy from behind you, his slurps and smacks obscene, not to mention his moans of ecstasy at the taste of your juices. You lay your chest onto the bed and take it - that’s all you can really do. You’re trying to stifle your sighs and moans, but your husband’s expert tongue is making that increasingly difficult.

“Oh god, right there,” you whimper, and your first orgasm of the day rolls through your body slowly, unfurling like the fragrant blossoms in the white-washed courtyard of the villa. He continues moaning and lapping up every drop of your essence while your body shakes.

One more hard suck on your clit, and then Joel is pulling you back onto your hands and knees on the plush cream bedding. He crawls towards your body, grabbing your hips with one warm hand while the other loosely grips his shaft, rubbing the head of his cock through your folds. 

You whine. “Please, Joel.” You’re not above begging when it comes to Joel’s cock.

Joel growls in arousal and begins to feed you his length, inch by inch. You bite your lip, trying to quiet the involuntary moans that the stretch of his girth seem to rip out of your throat. The villa is private, but you still have neighbors - you’d rather not have to face them at the dinner buffet later after they heard exactly how well your honeymoon was going so far.

“Such a good girl, taking my cock so well,” Joel praises you, his eyes never leaving how good his length looks sawing in and out of your soft pussy, shiny with your slick. The phrasing makes your cunt clench on him, which nearly shoves him off the proverbial ledge. He throws his head back, attempting to collect himself, and then notices you drawing circles around your aching clit. 

“Desperate to come again already?” he questions, quirking an eyebrow at you. You nod your head, pressing harder and swirling faster around your nub. 

“Then fucking come for your husband,” Joel grits out, punctuating each word with a harsh thrust of his hips. On the last word, you explode yet again, burying your mouth in the crook of your elbow to quiet your cries. Your pussy spasms over his length, nearly sending him over the edge, and you’re absolutely gushing for him, slick and juices running down your thighs.

Joel yanks himself out of your body, not ready to come yet. You cry out in disappointment, but he hauls him and yourself up off the bed.

“Kneel,” he commands. You drop to your knees onto the plush sheepskins rug, legs like jelly already. His hard cock bobs in front of your face, coated with the evidence of your orgasm. Your mouth opens and you drop out your tongue like a welcome mat.

Joel nearly comes at the sight before him.

“Suck,” he says simply. Grabbing your hair into a ponytail, Joel guides your blazing hot mouth onto his shaft, controlling the speed of your blowjob with his hands. He tries to avoid thrusting into your throat too hard, but he knows you like it rough. The taste of your own pussy is all over his dick, and it makes you dizzy with need.

You play the good girl, sucking and licking as directed by Joel’s moans and hand, but soon enough he’s hauling you off your feet to put you back onto the bed. His cock is an angry red color at the tip now, precum continuing to bubble out of the slit. 

“Wanna try out something new,” he mutters, laying you down on your back. He pushes your legs to your shoulders, nearly folding you in half, and guides your hands to the back of your thighs to hold them open. You feel so exposed, but it makes a thrill run up your spine. Joel kneels with his knees just under your ass, leaning over you, before taking his hand and running it through your soaked folds, reveling in the filthy wet sounds your center makes for him. You whine, desperate for more. Joel places your calves on his shoulders as he leans forward, caging you with his body. One hand drops to the bed to steady himself, while the other grabs his cock and lines himself up again.

“Have you ever tried this one?” Joel asks you with a smirk.

You smile wickedly back, knowing what you need to say to egg him on. “Can’t say I have. Wasn’t exactly trying to get bred.”

You see Joel’s eyes flash at the last word, a ferality burning in his irises. A near-snarl erupts from his mouth as he bottoms out in one powerful thrust. A loud moan rips from your throat, and you slap a hand over your mouth to quiet yourself, remembering the balcony door is still open. Joel shoves your hand away, grinding deeper into your cunt, brushing against your cervix. You can barely breathe with the intensity of pleasure racing in your veins.

“Oh yeah?” he challenges, pulling out almost all the way before slamming back home, eliciting another loud cry from you. “If you wanna be bred so bad, I’m gonna make everyone at this resort know exactly how much you want it.” With that, Joel sets a punishing pace, his hips and balls slapping against your slick skin. The wet sounds of your mutual pleasure ricochet through the room, and probably outdoors. In this position, all you can do is lay there and moan and cry and take it. Your pussy continues seeping slick, wave after wave running down your ass and thighs, dampening the heavenly bedding.

You’ve never been so fucking wet in your entire life, and Joel knows it.

“God, this pussy is so fucking juicy for me, huh? Just want to get bred that bad, huh?” He mutters to you as he fucks into you so deep that you nearly feel him in your throat. You’ve long since lost your ability to silence your noises, a steady stream of loud gasps and cries emanating from your mouth. Joel just feels so fucking good inside of you, and suddenly you start babbling.

“Yes, baby, I’m so fucking wet for you,” you moan, the pleasure coiling in your bones with every thrust of Joel’s thick girth inside you. “You’re so deep, you fill me so good, don’t stop don’t stop don’t stooooopppppppp –” Your words are cut off by a silent scream as you come for a third time. The pleasure shimmers across your limbs and a shaky moan finally snakes its way out of your throat.

He growls, fucking into you even harder. “Good fucking girl, let me hear you,” Joel grits out. He picks up his pace, clearly getting close to his own orgasm. The increase in speed releases a surprised scream from you, your loud cry stuttering from the sheer force of Joel’s thrusts into you. His hips are a blur, and your third orgasm begins to build into your fourth, the intensity ratcheted to new heights.

“That’s right, scream for me,” he moans, his thrusts getting erratic as his peak approaches. “Want me to fill up this messy pussy, get it even messier? Gonna fuck you so full it has no choice but to take.”

Joel’s words cause a riot of tingles to cascade across your skin. “Yes, please, fuck me full, Joel. Give me your cum, make it stick, give me a baby, please,” you cry, and Joel slaps your ass hard, and you scream again. There’s no doubt that everyone within a mile radius can hear the two of you, but your head is so full of pleasure that you really couldn’t care less. All you can think about is Joel, his cock, and how badly you want to be dripping with his cum.

“Oh god, honey, I’m gonna come,” Joel whimpers, and to send him over the edge, you clench down on his cock as hard as you can. He gasps. “I’m gonna come, I’m gonna cooooooo–”

Joel shoves his cock as deeply into you as possible, bellowing loudly in ecstasy, triggering your own orgasm to crest at the same time. His release is so intense that it feels like his hot cum is jettisoning directly into your uterus, filling you to the brim. He pumps shallowly into you, prolonging the pleasure for both of you.

When the last spurt of his spend lands in your womb, Joel collapses on top of you, rolling you to the side, still buried within your clutch. Your sweat-slick limbs tangle as you both try to catch your breath. The gentle breeze flutters the curtains.

Everything feels hazy and perfect.

Eventually you come to, pressing kisses to Joel’s completely blissed-out face, eliciting a soft smile across his plush lips. You kiss your husband softly, slowly, and sensually. He gives your nose a peck, and then buries his face into your neck, breathing in your scent deeply.

“Fuck, that was…” Joel starts, lost for words to describe what just happened.

“... incredible,” you finish his sentence, beaming at him. You intertwine your fingers, so elated that Joel is really yours forever.

Joel nods and kisses you one more time, then moves to untangle your aching limbs, massaging your muscles with his strong hands. He pulls out of your messy center slowly with a groan, watching as his cum begins to seep out of you. You watch as he scoops away the runaway seed, pushing it back into your cunt. A brief flush of arousal pulses in your veins at the sight.

“Gotta keep it where it belongs,” Joel croons, winking at you as he walks towards the bathroom to rinse off and grab you a towel. You giggle, moving to prop your legs and hips up on your pillows, allowing his release to pool & settle inside you. The idea of finally having a baby with the love of your life makes your insides flutter with joy.

While you rest, you pull up Snapchat, curious to see what other fellow travelers are up to in the area. You tap around the map, watching stranger’s stories of sailing excursions, lounging on the shore, and eating delicious food. You notice a Snap story in the same vacation complex as your rental, and you tap on it excitedly, hoping to get a sense of some fun things to do in the area.

The video opens up in selfie mode as a blonde, sunglasses-wearing traveler records himself outside on his villa’s patio, laughing quietly and rubbing his arm awkwardly with the caption “Sounds like our new neighbors on holiday in Greece are having a whale of a time… Only been here 10 minutes!” In the background, a woman can be heard screaming with ecstasy, clearly having sex, her voice stuttering as whoever she’s fucking is giving it to her hard. You then hear a slap, then another cry of pleasure.

Wait a minute.

Not a slap… a spank.

Your nerves frost immediately and heat blazes up your neck as your mouth drops open, realizing that the couple having very loud sex… is actually you and Joel.

Oh no. 

...I REALLY should have closed that damn sliding door.

MASTERLIST

Tagging in case you, too, are horny for Joel (please let me know if you'd like to be removed from the tags!): @mermaidgirl30 @sin-djarin @perotovar @qveerthe0ry @nerdieforpedro

@itwasntimethatdidit40 @yxtkiwiyxt @almostempty @almostfoxglove @guiltyasdave

@legendary-pink-dot @arcanefox207 @dancingtotuyo @musings-of-a-rose @milla-frenchy

@yopossum @polaroidpascal @chippedowlmug @magneticecstasy @reggiesfilthylittlesecret

[puck-luck]

thinking about reader who gives a hell of a lot of hickeys during sex, especially on Quinn's inner thighs and his neck/chest...

there would be sooo many, and Quinn would be at the rink the next day getting changed for practice and all his teammates are just like "what?? the fuck???" and joking ab how Quinn has a vampire for a gf LMAO

anyways :)

warnings: lotsss of hickeys, cockwarming, quinn coming inside fem!reader (DAMN y'all tryna get PREGNANT or something??????), mentions of oral (f receiving), mentions of shower sex, implications that quinn and reader don't mind their sex life being a little public... pairing: quinn hughes x fem!reader request: duhhhh see up above? wc: 1099

You’ve been feeling extra needy lately. Quinn blames it on preseason starting so soon, indulging you with a little smile on his face. He knows that in just a few days, he’s going to have his first practice back with the team, and then things will kick into full gear. He won’t have all the time in the world to lay around with you, so in his own way, Quinn is treating himself by indulging you.

And it is a treat, because if he hadn’t indulged you, he wouldn’t have the weight of you on his lap. You wouldn’t be grinding against his growing cock in languorous motions as you suck a hickey onto his jaw. His hands wouldn’t be on your hips, helping guide your motions. It feels so right that Quinn can hardly imagine leaving you for a few hours– not when things like this are happening.

“Q,” you mumble into his neck, lathering a kiss over the red mark you just made.

“Hm?” Quinn replies, opening his eyes just enough to take you in when you pull away. 

“Can I sit on your cock?” You ask, blissfully innocent. 

Quinn almost dies of a heart attack then and there. It’s written all in your voice– all you want to do is sit on his cock, have him inside of you, keep him warm. You just want to be close, and who is Quinn to deny you?

“Yeah, baby,” Quinn agrees. “Just let me get out of these shorts, yeah?”

You nod and swing your leg around so you’re tucked into his side. As Quinn lifts his hips to discard his clothes and reveal his length, you lean into his chest and press a kiss over his heart. Tilting your head up a little more, you kiss over his neckline and take some of his skin into your mouth, biting softly. You leave another mark on his chest, to match the one on his jaw.

Once his cock is free from his clothes, Quinn wraps his hand around it and pumps himself slowly. It jerks in his hand when you move your mouth to the column of his neck, petting over his stomach. He makes a soft little noise as you suck.

You pull away and admire your handiwork, tilting your head and smiling at the bruise with hooded eyes. You clamber back onto Quinn’s lap, pulling your panties to the side, and sink down. Your eyes roll back as the bulbous head of his cock sinks into you, past your entrance and settling deep in your core.

Quinn lets out a long breath as you lower yourself, eyes trained on your face through his eyelashes. You’re above him, but when you’re finally seated again, your lips are just in front of Quinn’s. He can’t help but lean in and capture them, not when they’re looking so pink and plush from marking him up.

“You look pretty,” Quinn tells you, smiling like a dope.

“Mmm,” you tease, giggling a little. “You said the same thing when I had to pick you and your brothers up last week because you got too drunk.”

You reach up and trace a finger over Quinn’s nose, biting your lip to hold in a laugh when he nips at the digit and pulls your hips forward, rocking you a little bit. He fills you to the brim, pressing into you in a satisfying way that no other man has. Quinn’s it for you.

“You’re sweet,” you concede, leaning in to kiss Quinn again. 

When you part, he breathes in deeply and leans his head back on the couch, still holding your hips tightly. 

You reassume your earlier position, kissing down his neck and marking him until his skin is littered with little bruises of varying shades of red and purple. Some are sizeable, like the one on the side of his neck where his pulse raced under your tongue and you couldn’t help but dive in for more, desperate to feel him throbbing beneath you. Other hickeys are smaller, just a pinch of a mark, like the heart you artfully sucked onto his pec. 

When you’re done, you start to rock back and forth on his cock, your hands pressing against his chest for leverage. Quinn’s eyes practically fly open, a wounded groan leaving him as he flexes his muscles involuntarily. 

“I made you mine,” you tell Quinn in a low voice. “Now, you’ve got to make me yours.”

Quinn keens at that, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you close. His hips stutter up into you, finding an aborted rhythm because he doesn’t want to draw himself out of your heat. He needs to feel all of you, and needs for you to feel all of him. Quinn buries his face in your neck and your hands find his hair, cradling the strands and keeping him close to you.

Quinn’s other hand finds its way to your ass for leverage, grabbing the skin and kneading it with desperation. He’ll leave his own fingerprint-shaped bruises there from the force of it, and he’ll admire his marks in the shower later, when he convinces you to let him eat you out from behind. 

He whimpers when his orgasm hits, filling you with his warmth until his cock is overstimulated and spent. You kiss him, soft and slow, swallowing the groans that leave his lips.

“You’re perfect,” Quinn praises, chest rising and falling in even breaths. He continues to stare up at you like he’s kneeling at an altar. 

You smile down and push his hair out of his face, leaning in to pepper kisses over every inch of his face. He laughs and eventually pushes you away, pulling out and standing to grab a towel to clean you up. 

You cuddle on the couch for a while after, legs thrown over Quinn’s lap and head tucked against his chest. 

Three days later, when Quinn arrives to practice, the bruises still haven’t faded completely into his skin. He grins down at the little heart made of hickeys on his chest, catching his final glimpse of your marks before he pulls his pads on and prepares for practice. 

“Jesus, fuck,” Petey says from the stall next to Quinn. “Is your girlfriend secretly a vampire?”

Quinn grins at him, impish. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He sticks his tongue out at Petey like a bragging sibling, then turns back to his locker. He smiles to himself.

You’re getting your nails done right now, and he’ll have the marks on his back to show it tomorrow.

notes: hi quinn hughes i miss u and also what r the odds u and i could recreate this fic at a future date, be honest

[esggs]

[Martial arts coach! Sukuna x down bad!reader, huge age gap, couple of god-complex maniacs pining for each other, Sukuna being a tough coach]

“You won’t make it.” Sukuna spits carelessly, unwrapping his sweaty gloves post training. There are promising students he’s scouted in his gym, his favoured ones who’ll be the cash cows winning tournaments, buzzcut boys with tight abs who laugh mid-fight. Growing in his shoes. You’re not one of them. “You’re not good enough.” It’s a statement. 

No, you grit your teeth, it's a challenge. 

Sukuna the Ryomen: beastly calamity in the ring. Raw talent picked off the street, 80 international tournament wins over 25 years, bachelor villa bought with notoriety money. The Undisputed King of the Curses. 

Two-faced, he’d play by the rules as much as he wanted to– ran his tongue over the cheek of an opponent while choking him in a headlock, jammed his knees into countless shattered ribs, snapped spines into halves. He once bit a chunk out an opponent’s neck, goopy blood running down his chin and pecs as he laughed at the horrified screams of the audience, medics running, judges whistling, TV ratings shooting up like firecrackers.

He keeps that piece of chewed flesh, big as your fist, preserved in formaldehyde, on display in his office behind the locker room. It’s oddly captivating– you want to pull his lips up, matching his teeth to the canine marks on the chunk. 

Nutcase. Martial arts fiend. Often disqualified, but never for long: handsome money-maker was he. No one would turn up at a competition if not to watch the fiery Sukuna. His posters filled your childhood bedroom walls, unsupervised access to his gruesome fights on the internet, early 2000’s gossip columns of his many affairs with thin-thighed supermodels, little you copying his moves in front of the mirror. 

So yes, he could be as harsh to you as he wished, who gave a shit now when you’re lucky enough  to bask in his glow? You work just as hard as those boys, deserve his attention just as much, regardless of how cruel that attention comes. If you want to make it, Yuuji tells you, you callus your heart more than your achy knuckles. 

Sometimes at 3.45 am you wonder that if you had gotten more parental love and attention, you wouldn’t have attached yourself so deeply to this retired monster. Too late now, you suppose. 

A few days ago,  Megumi, one of Sukuna’s prize boys, said over a bowl of tteokbokki after practice, “Kamo Noritoshi likes you. So you can go after him and leave the elderly alone, okay?”

“I beat Kamo to a pulp, remember?” You pointed with poked tteok. “There’s only one of you losers I can’t beat and that’s who I’m fucking. Don’t go ruining my ambitions, Megumi-chan.”

The boy just sighed, ordering another bowl to go. Megumi, content being the sacrifice bunt, will never understand and it's not something you can explain. 

It’s that hunger that keeps you awake at night; you don’t want a trophy, you want the trophy– Ryomen Sukuna himself, the greatest one to be won. To be fucked, chewed, swallowed, surpassed. You want to have him, you want to be him. He’s you and you’re him and it’s written fate and oh god you need to go to therapy megumi was right you need to start taking your damn meds on time why is it 3 am again?

……. 

“Sup, coach!” 

You’re a cockroach. You arrive half an hour before session starts, practising kata moves by yourself, grappling dummy puppets double your weight to the ground, turning extravagant somersaults. Standing in front of the line. Every new move Sukuna demonstrates, you ask a billion questions, getting it right exactly as he does it. Running the extra lap, the extra sparring bout with your friends, the extra push-up. 

Sukuna peers inside Megumi's mouth, poking his finger into his gums, checking for any bleeding. Despite his actions, he’s not blind to you, the itchy teeth in your maw. 

It’s not just a sport for people like you and Sukuna. People a little fucked in the head. People whose names, announced out loud, get the audience jumping and cheering, the main attraction of the night. Hurricanes out to flatten the competition. 

See, it’s not about the points. Just the gold doesn’t satisfy: you want blood and broken teeth on the floor after you’re done. You want your opponents to refuse to fight you. You want them crawling, begging for time-outs, their coaches throwing the towel in to save their lives, their teary mothers cursing your very sight. Just like Sukuna.

Sukuna who relishes in your eyes on him. The way your breathing quickens childlike when he wrestles your face to the dirty mat, arms twisted behind you, his heavy foot pinning you down. The way you linger a bit longer when he shrugs his gi off, thick biceps flexing against the overhead lights. What a nut, he thinks: bitten fingernails, daddy issues, all the wrong things that excite you. This one’s gonna kill.  

Your hunger he rears by starvation. The harder you fight for a scrap of his attention to prove yourself, the sweeter you get. He can almost see his own tattoos on your eager face. 

So narcissistic, the way his pants tighten when he watches you fight: it's his devilry that flashes in your young eyes. Too young for him, some noble nonsense of not fucking your student, like he gives a rat’s ass. A rising Alexander, he’ll pick you for himself the second you’re good enough.

He knows to wait for it. Latchkey kids like you, raised to fight for love, you’d never want something you could have. The unreachable glory of Sukuna was what made having him worth it. 

He also knew that once you had him, you’d dig your teeth into him so hard that you’d tear right through him. Maybe preserve him in formaldehyde too. 

Not that he’ll spoon-feed you chances for that. Not that he has to, when you do it for yourself.

“Coach, could you spar with me?”

He’s terribly pleased, but the frown he wears for you remains on his face. “Aiming too high, brat.”

“Sorry,” an apology that you don’t mean in the slightest. “But I think I can qualify for the next tournament, coach. I can start cutting weight tomorrow. Put me in this time, please, coach!” 

“You’re not good enough.”   “Let me convince you, coach.”

“Convince me?” He sounds so bored, as if you’re the greatest waste of his time. I’ll change your mind, you promise. I’d like to see you try– he’s amused. “Oi, Todo! C’mere, beat this one for me. You–” he bends down to hold your chin, privately delighted at your blushing face. “– you score six points in sixty seconds against him, maybe I’ll think of putting you on the tournament roster.”

Right. Aoi Todo, brawler build, has the height and weight advantage on you, which means he’ll go for grappling techniques and try to pin you down to the ground. He’s not the type to go easy on anyone, and he likes to show off, so he’ll keep it short distance and try out some fancy kicks– he’ll waste time on performance and then you’ll get time to return attacks. Here’s the M.O. then: you keep light on your feet, dodge every single attack of his, and go for the head. Amen.

Todo squares up, entering the ring, dabbing you up in a show of good faith before assuming his fighting stance. Just as you predicted, his arms are open to take you down. 

You hold your ground. Todo, my friend, you grin at Sukuna, who for once has all his attention on you, I’m going to kill you. 

Sukuna blows the whistle, and immediately Todo lunges for you. A feint, for he changes tactics immediately and is punching you from the left. You have to jump over his shoulder to avoid it (Yuuji whoops), land behind his back, and before he can turn around, kick his spine so hard that he stumbles forward a bit. 

“2 points!” Sukuna checks the time: it’s been 6 seconds. 

Todo’s impressed too, you can tell. You’re distracted: Sukuna nodded at you! Both of you come back to your original positions, ready for the next point match. The whistle blows. 

He’s cautious this time– you kick his shins but he doesn’t yield an inch, so you attempt an upper-cut, but are caught unawares by his hook straight to your mouth. 

“Todo–1 point!” Your jaw feels dislocated, there’s tears threatening to brim in your eyes. Did you forget your meds again? Why can’t you stop giggling? 35 seconds gone.

Restart. You’re playing dirty now, tripping his ankle as he comes forward to attack. You pass through between his legs (using his height to your own advantage) to get behind him again. As if he was expecting it, you dodge his back kick, taking the moment where he’s off balance to land a 360 kick– right on his face. He groans in surprise, but you’re not done.

This isn’t about winning fair or showing sportsmanship spirit, you remind yourself as you pull Todo’s face into your knee, repeatedly, the sick sounds of his nose cartilage crunching. This is about you, Sukuna. 

He blows the whistle. 42 seconds, the match is over, Todo’s burst his sinuses open, bleeding too badly to avoid medical intervention. A K.O. you’re calling it. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you’ is Megumi’s opinion. 

“Decent.” Sukuna’s smiling. Buzzed giddy on adrenaline and sweat, you want to kill the both of you. “Fine. Start the diet tomorrow.” He’s already leaving, other students to tend to. You’re a tad disappointed: you thought it’d be him checking your bleeding jaw, not the medic. Still, you’re happy taking what you can. It doesn’t come by often. “Come by my office after practice.”

a/n: i wrote this while looping bread by anya nami, really elevated the experience

[zhonglisbeloved]

wheres the ayato smut im eating my own hand rn

CLAN HEAD AYATO & HIS FAVOURITE MAID <3

I didn't realise how much you all liked that idea? (crying rn). I'm not really satisfied with this but it's been a while since I've written something this long :') @komelrebi-san hi my love Kamisato Ayato x fem! reader (his pov?) WARNINGS: NSFW, mentions of marking, tummy bulge

the day was finally here, the announcement of the young Kamisato Ayato taking over as the head of the Kamisato Clan. The blue haired bachelor shouldered many responsibilities now, most obligatory annoyances, and some just annoyances that would take time to subside; like the ladies from other clans oggling him and begging to be married to him. He had spent his entire celebratory feast swarmed by partner clans and such and being gawked at by the ladies, it was uncomfortable to say the least but all these feelings of unease vanished when his eyes landed on the newly appointed maid, (name). oh she was beautiful, gorgeous, so innocent yet so otherworldly he swore he had fallen in love then and there. he wasn't someone who didn't have needs but he was also someone who hadn't had sex, he was a proper man, a reserved man. but seeing (name) had lit a fire in him, the next thing he knew he was asking the head maid to appoint her as his own personal maid. she was to only attend to him and no one else. of course as the head of the clan his word was valued and the changes were made immediately, after his shower that night he called for her. (name), I need your assistance, he told her as soon as she entered. the clan heads are given a special service by their personal maid on the day of their taking up the position his eyes roamed over her body, taking in the curves and the dips as he said so, watching her innocently nod. how can I fulfil my duties? she answered dutifully. he bit back a smirk and cleared his throat strip. his order was simple and direct, and (name), who had no idea that the so called "tradition" was made up, obeyed. she felt the heat rise to her cheeks as she nodded and stripped out of her clothes, standing bare before him and clenching her thighs in hopes of satiating the growing wetness. she was innocent yet not unknown to sexual desires. he practically eye fucked her as he took off his robe, exposing himself and his huge girthy cock that was hard and stood tall.

he pushed her to lay down on the bed and spread her legs, eagerly taking in her wet pussy, fuck you're so pretty (name) he groaned, his cock twitching as he pressed a soft kiss to her lips, another to the column of her throat, down the valley of her breasts, to her soft tummy and then finally, a lingering kiss to her swollen, needy clit. she whimpered softly, n-ngh master her whiney voice ringing in his ears as he felt himself get drunk off her essence and sweet smell.

he practically buried his face in her wet cunt, slurping and licking at her juices. he sucked on her clit and nibbled on it before thrusting his tongue in that tight hole, groaning against her pussy and sending waves of pleasure over her. she moaned and whimpered absolutely lost in the pleasure he gave her when he fucked her with his tongue and rubbed her clit with his thumb. s-sir- please- 's so good don't stop she begged as tears welled up in her eyes, how could anyone humanely eat her out so good that she was already seeing stars.

he made her cum on and in his face twice before sitting up and positioning himself between her legs, his cock head pressing against her clit as he slapped it on her pussy a few times before sliding it teasingly against her slit. p-please- put it in she begged, looking up at him with teary eyes and tears running down her cheeks as she spread her legs wider and spread her pussy lips using her two fingers master please 'm begging you- wan' your cock so bad I can't take it anymore a soft sob escaped those pretty glossy lips as she bucked her hips, trying to get him to enter that needy cunt while all he did was chuckle at her feeble attempts, slapping her cunt once. twice. thrice. patience is a virtue my dear he leaned down and purred in her ear, pressing a chaste kiss to the lobe before kissing her lips. he bit her lower lip and his tongue entered her wet cavern, claiming her mouth as his own.

he was mean. so mean, kissing her like he owned her, rubbing up against her, and groping her, marking her body with hickeys and love bites but not pushing his cock in her cunt. this went on for almost half an hour before his patience snapped, seeing her all marked up and begging him through soft sobs like a little bitch in heat. he growled lowly pushing his hard, throbbing cock in her cunt and moaning as her warm and tight walls enveloped his big cock. mnghp- so big master!! you'll split me in half he wasn't even half way in and she was already scratching his back complaining about how big he was. shh pretty, he cooed, you gotta take it okay? gonna be good f'me and fulfil your duties right? he whispered in a loving tone as he pushed in further until he was completely sheathed in her, the tip of cock kissing her cervix. y-yes master she whined, her tummy had a small bulge because of his cock. his eyes darkened and he was overtaken by a primal need to mark her with his cum as he saw the bulge. he pressed down on it and started moving; slow, deliberate thrusts at first which gradually became feral and uncontrolled as he drilled his cock into her sobbing pussy relentlessly.

his hands pinned hers above her head as he fucked her filthy, making out messily with her and marking her up more until she was screaming his name and cumming all over him again and again, overstimulated to heavenly extents. he came inside her again and again, marking her with his hot seed, filling her up and making a mess of her.

that night perhaps the entire Kamisato household learned that their reserved clan head was insatiable when he truly wanted something.

[jellyfishoreo1206]

Shush (Sebastian Solace x Reader)

Notes: Part Three of Painter and Sebastian on the surface, small bit of angst in the beginning? But it's not really angst. I apologize if Painter really isn't written that often in this little series of mine, little computer needs the attention :(

Anyways, I seriously cherish all of you who read the last ones! I hope you guys have an amazing day and a wonderful sleep :33

Also! Series will be named Slice of Life, it's a bit boring but it fits

Credit for the dividers to @cafekitsune

The distant squeak of a door opening wakes you.

Eyes snapping opening, you hurriedly sat up, glancing around your room to see if anything is out of place. Oh god, oh god what is it? Where is it? Is it a Wall Dweller? God those things can't even leave you alone-! You stopped when you realized you're still in your room, you're still in bed. Wrapped up in blankets. Nothing is coming after you anymore, nothing. Eyes still darting around the room in confused panic, attempting to find anything out of place.

Dresser by the door, your messy desk pushed up against the wall, your coats hanging off the coat hanger in the corner of the room; turning your head, spotting the potted plants growing by the window, the dark sky speckled with shiny lights. You're home, not down underneath the sea anymore.

Letting out a sigh, you slumped down, using your hands to cover your eyes. It's tiring. This has been a routine for several days now; you wake up in the middle of the night to the slightest noise, thinking you're back down in the facility back with Sebastian and Painter scavenging for supplies, attempting to avoid death and survive.

~~~

"Fucking shit-!" You turned too late, a Wall Dweller jumping onto you, the force of it causing you to fall towards the ground. Damnit, you were too busy with the circuit that you didn't hear the damn thing! Its blood-stained claws dangerously close to your throat, your arms pushing back with all the strength you could muster.

Panic swells in your whole entire body, your heartbeat beating loudly in your ears as you struggled to push that damn thing off. But to no avail, its claws were barely touching the column of you neck now.

Tears began pricking at the edge of your eyes, no no no no nononononononononono-! This can't be how it ends, you're so close to your goal-!

~~~

A light knock startles you out of the memory, head snapping up to the door. Did you imagine it? A few seconds passed.

*Knock knock*

Getting out from underneath the covers, you cautiously walked over to the door, slowly opening the door knob as you peeked in through the gap. Only did you open it fully once you saw the tear-stained face of Sebastian, concern written all over your face.

"Seb?" Calling out gently to the man, he looked down at you, a sadness in his eyes. Silently reaching up, you cup the side his face, slowly swiping your thumb underneath one of his eyes to rid of a stray tear. "Seb what's wrong?" He merely nuzzles into the palm of your hand, his eyes shut, a frown tugging at the edges of his mouth. His other hand merely grabs at the your unoccupied hand and intertwines his larger fingers with yours, the third merely resting on your forearm.

A rush of heat flushes across your cheeks, but you quickly pushed that down, scolding yourself. Sebastian needs comfort right now, no need to get flustered. You've done this several times!

But no matter how many times it happens, butterflies still erupt in your stomach.

There has been several instances where you seen Sebastian like this— all rare—where he just couldn't hold in the stress he felt or the amount of nightmares he attempted to endure by himself. So in order to combat that, you suggested something like physical touch, since that was something that helped when you when you were stressed. He rejected it at first, saying something along the lines that he, "wasn't a baby that needs to be consoled whenever it cries". But when it happened again, he went up to you and silently held your hand, eyes purposely avoiding your gaze.

A small frown settles upon your lips, your hand currently intertwined with his giving it a soft squeeze. "You wanna come in?" You whispered, sweeping a stray hair behind his ear fin. Flickering his eyes open, he merely nods, half-lidded eyes looking down at you as he nuzzles deeper into your palm.

~~~

"Careful, don't want the whole entire thing to fall on us.." Dresser pushed to the side, coats laid on your bare bed, your chair missing from your desk; all used to make a cozy blanket cove. Since your bed wasn't big enough for the two of you, this would have to suffice. You even dug around a few old boxes in your closet and found some fairy lights you had, using them to give the inside a feeling of warmth. Pillows large and small and fluffy blankets scattered the inside of the fort, even a few plushies scattered around.

You even went out of your way to grab a few snacks and drinks from the kitchen, said snacks in a little corner of the cove.

"This is stupid." The man remarked, lying down on his back, a good portion of his tail peaking out the entrance of the fort. His head resting his on your stomach as he pops in a piece of dried mango into his mouth, your legs spread out comfortable.

"Shut up, it's not stupid," Using the brush to comb out the small knot in his hair, "-it's genius." That earned a playful scoff from Sebastian, small grins appearing on both your faces. "Oh it so is stupid." He counters, offering a piece of the dried fruit up to your mouth, a quiet thanks slipped out of your mouth before you ate it.

"Shush, none of that." Once his hair was combed and fully free of knots, you began separating his hair into three sections to be braided. Now that you think about it, this kind of feels like a sleepover, the whole blanket fort, the snacks, hell even the braiding.

"What are you smiling about?"

"Just . . . this kind of reminds me of a sleepover." A chuckle leaves your lips right when you're finishing Sebastian's braid, looping the hair tie one last time before letting go, "Done."

Sebastian stays laying in your lap, now looking up at you, an unreadable expression present. You gotta say though, he looks very pretty with his hair up, all his eyes present with a few stray hairs here and there.

". . . I never had a sleepover." He mumbled sitting up, adjusting himself so he was lying down on his stomach, bringing over a pillow to rest his head and upper arms on. His third one looked for your hand, quickly intertwining them once he did. The fluttering feeling came back tenfold, a blush threatening to appear as he peered up at you with those half-lidded eyes.

Quickly brushing it off, you leaned over to the small corner, grabbing a juice with your free hand before leaning back, "Really? Not even as a kid?"

"Nah."

Silence overtook the fort, mulling over a response as you took a swing out of your juice, "Well, we're going to have to fix that now, aren't we?" You smiled broadly at Sebastian, giving a squeeze to your intertwined hands.

Genuine surprise overtook his face, the fins of his ears perked up at your statement, a blue flush flooding his cheeks. "R-Really?"

"Yes, absolutely." Turning on your phone, you took a glance at the date, "How about this, every Friday, we'll make a blanket fort. I'll go out and buy whatever snacks and drinks you want, and we'll put on a movie. Hell, even let Painter join, let them have some fun too." Turning back to him, you grin, "How about it?"

He merely stares in silence, eyes wide as the words process in his mind. "You're . . . really serious about this?"

"Of course, we'll make up some other things you missed out on as well!"

". . . you're so stupid."

"HEY!"

". . . yeah, I like that idea."

Last Part, Next Part

[iepurasdepraf]

I'm posting something, I know....shocking. The first part of likely many. No warnings as of yet. Gender Neutral Reader and Jonathan Crane. No specific one, just my version of him. Well, one of my versions of him. I hope you enjoy.

How did you get talked into this? How did you get here? Playing with the slowly warming steel of an industrial chain from the privacy gate you had to unlock on your way up the drive. Between the jangle of the chain between your fingers and the fight to keep your supper down from the greasy spoon diner you had taken a pit stop at you were in a strange state of near prayer, the links serving as the beads of your impromptu rosary. The only other sound besides the none too gentle roar of the old pickup you were sat in was the constant gnawing of your driver on a splintered toothpick. The mint taste was probably completely leached out by now. You had to wonder how he wasn’t getting splinters in his tongue and gums, but it seemed to help with his anxiety so who were you to wonder too much about it?

The remaining headlight of the Ford cut through the pitch black that had been suddenly dropped on you both like two kittens trapped under a moving box. The smog and light pollution from Gotham choking out the night sky. No stars. No moon. Even the few miles you were outside of her. Sometimes there would be a reflector or two on the edge of the old once gravel now near entirely dirt road and you could catch a glimpse of the silver crowns glinting as they sat atop his crooked greyed teeth in the scant glances you dared to take of him. There wasn’t a pattern to what had been either capped or entirely removed and replaced. The contents of his mouth were like if God threw dice in his mouth and they’d been left where they lay. You’d never seen anyone with grey teeth like his, but it didn’t seem like something polite to ask about. You didn’t want to make him anymore self-conscious than he already was.

How in the hell did you talk HIM into this? Never mind you getting there. That made sense. Sometimes you just got obsessed with stupid shit and did something impulsive. Ending up going ghost hunting wasn’t the most out of pocket thing one could do. But him? How had you talked Jonathan Crane into tagging along? Really, there hadn’t been too much talking him into anything. You’d mentioned it off hand as a way to prove once and for all to him specifically that ghosts were real. You’d written him an email, asking him for his professional opinion on ghosts. Why not, right? It couldn’t have really be his email address you found on that forum page. You hadn’t expected him to even get it, let alone read it and reply. He was the fucking Scarecrow! Who knew why he did. He wasn’t giving any answers. Maybe there simply wasn’t anything else to do in Arkham. Maybe he had just been in a silly goofy mood.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’ That simple reply had led to a twice weekly back and forth for months via messenger and email. And it hadn’t taken long for you to grow to enjoy the electronic head butting. Looking forward to that little green dot appearing next to his profile on your friend’s list, that giddy ping of the messenger, of the email notification. Every Monday and Friday, like clockwork. He got an hour on the computer and you two would go back and forth nearly without blinking so as to not waste the milliseconds until his hour was up. If your day was ruined and, God forbid, you happened to miss his message you’d have a small book of an email impatiently waiting on you, no doubt chastising you for your poor time management in the subject column.

Then one day you got a happy little ping on a Wednesday. No one else messaged you that way so it could only be one person. “I’m being released.” Your first phone call with him was breathless and near entirely stammered while he hardly said a thing. He was being released early for good behavior. Seems the model inmate act he’d put on for those precious hours of computer time had paid off in spades. So here he was, ankle monitor and all, next to you in his old hunk of junk pickup that he’d given you the money to get out of the impound for him the day of his release. The day you’d met in person for the very first time. The day you agreed to prove ghosts were real to him while you drove him to his group home while he clutched all his remaining worldly possessions in a brown paper bag. He had nothing and you’d wanted to give him a reason to wake up in the morning. You’d wanted to make sure he knew he had a friend. Good lord, where had that gotten you? After the adrenaline wore off you were left drenched in sweat and maybe some tears alone in your apartment after you’d gotten an Uber back not knowing if you’d wake up in the morning or what because you’d never actually thought about what you were saying. It never occurred to you he’d get out. That he’d want to actually meet you.

You shiver and snap out of your mental oubliette, getting Crane’s attention on accident. “You alright, pumpkin?” His voice was low and wispy. Nearly hadn’t heard the question over the truck at all. He was making a point to speak gently. Likely so he didn’t spook you, ironically. You’d looked him up on Youtube. Listened to some of his old interviews and lectures. You knew how he sounded and the way he’d always spoken to you wasn’t what he sounded like. Not even slightly. You weren’t entirely sure if the softer tone was worse or better for your frayed nerves.

“Yeah!” You assured with a quick smile “Just zoned out.” His eyebrows arched slightly. “Saw you shiver. Not too cold, are you?” You shake your head “No, no, no. I’m okay. I promise.” He gives you a glance of a look then his eyes are back on the road. Hming slightly before saying “Alright.” and not pressing further. You actually were freezing, but this was the first time he’d been able to enjoy ac in God knows how long so you weren’t about to take that from him, especially after looking into Arkham on your own and seeing how completely miserable it was.

As you tried not to let your mind dwell on him calling you pumpkin you went back to fiddling with the chain. It was harder than it should have been because he’d said it all soft and sweet. No. Stop that right now. You’re not a hybristophiliac. He’d taught you that word. That’s what he thought you were before he read the “funny little email” you’d written. Didn’t help you’d titled it ‘I could use your expertise’. Probably should have ‘I’m here to argue’ or ‘How can you believe in aliens, but not ghosts?’ Well. You wouldn’t have known to name it that at the time, but-

“We’re here.”

You jolted and apparently you weren’t just there, but you’d been there for a while because the truck was off and he was just sitting there looking at you with his hands folded neatly over his tummy. Amused. So deeply amused by you and wherever your head was that obviously wasn’t beside him. He didn’t ask again if you were alright. He just waited quietly to see what you’d do next. Like a cat watching a fish in a bowl or at least that’s how it felt. You could nearly make out those hazel eyes in the darkness of the cab of the truck, even with their color tainted by the glow of the dashboard lights.

“Ah..hm.” You let go of the chain and let it clank to the floorboard with it’s padlock to put your hand on the slightly out of place handle “Let’s get this bread!” You…fucking idiot. Why did you say that? What’s wrong with you? He didn’t react at all which didn’t make it worse, but didn’t make it better either. What did make it worse was when you went to push the door open it only opened slightly with a loud shunk. Leaving you sitting there for a minute with wide eyes. You looked back at him and gave a nervous laugh then started jiggling the handle, but it wouldn’t open anymore than it was. Fuck. Then you had the second fright of your life when his long-fingered hand slowly crept into your peripheral vision. You might have yelped. You did. Don’t pretend you didn’t, especially to yourself. You’ll look crazy.

He eased into your space, closer than he’d ever been before. A few locks on his auburn hair spilling onto your shoulder because as lithe as he was naturally, he was still reaching across the cab of a large truck. Crane took hold of the lock latch and plucked it up, unlocking the door for you, then sat back. Making a little motion with his hand for you to go on. “Aha, ah…thank you.” You hurried out of the car knowing if you lived long enough, you’d be thinking about every second of that dorkass event with shame that would keep you up for years to come. The night couldn’t get worse…

Could it?

[summer-of-bones]

❓FAQ❓

❓Summer of Bones? Papyly? Sansgust? What??? Summer of Bones is the name for the combined events of Papyly and Sansgust, so all the information can be found in a single place instead of having to check out different accounts. Papyly is a Papyrus-centric event taking place in July, where participants choose a prompt from a bingo card to write for. The more they write, the more tickets they can earn, which they'll be able to exchange for a chance to win a prize. Sansgust is basically the same event as Papyly, but centered around Sans and taking place in August. Check out our About page here! 👉😎💀😎

❓What kind of prompts are there? We have 100 prompts in total and there is enough variation that all the participants should find one they'll enjoy writing for. Some are fluffy, other naughty, and we also have angsty ones. Popular tropes, a single word, detailed or very broad, we can assure you that you will get inspired!!!

❓Which ships are allowed? What if I'm not interested in any ship? For Papyly: Papcest, Papyrus/Reader, Papyrus/OC, solo Papyrus, or Papyrus' platonic relationship with his friends. The focus of the fic should be Papyrus. For Sansgust: Sanscest, Sans/Reader, Sans/OC, solo Sans, or Sans' platonic relationship with his friends. The focus of the fic should be Sans. AU versions of Papyrus and Sans are more than welcome!!

❓So no fontcest? No Sansby? Papgore? There are other events and ship weeks dedicated to or that allow other popular ships (fontcest, Papby, Sanster, etc…), and we would like this event to focus on showing love to the allowed ships mentioned above, so not this time, no!

❓If the event is 18+, does that mean that I must write NSFW content? Absolutely not! The event is 18+ because we mods aren't comfortable hosting an event with minors present, but that doesn't mean that we don't enjoy gen or SFW fics! So you can write SFW, NSFW, or even dark and fucked up fics during the event! Whatever the rating you choose to write for, just remember to tag everything accordingly!

❓I'm not good with words and I don't write, can I still join the event? Unfortunately, the discord server will only be open to participants at this time, but feel free to follow our accounts to get updates and see reblogs of the participants' works! We also have 2 dedicated AO3 collections for both Papyly and Sansgust, so you will be able to easily find the fics written for the event, as well as past entries!

❓What do you mean by 'bingo card'? On top of earning tickets by simply writing a fic according to the prompt they've chosen, participants will also get a bonus ticket each time a row or a column on the bingo card (where all the prompts are written) gets completed! So this is a collaborative effort to complete the whole bingo card!

❓How do tickets works? Each time you write and post a fic that fits the prompt you've chosen, you will earn tickets. The number of tickets you get depends on how many words you wrote. These tickets will be used in a raffle at the end of the event (see below). You can also get bonus tickets, but shh!! Those are secret!🔑

❓Raffle??? At the end of the event, the mods will calculate how many tickets each participant has earned, and then participants will be asked how they want to distribute their ticket into several 'pots'. There is one pot for every contributor who will offer a prize. Once all the tickets are distributed to all the pots, we will stimply hold a normal raffle with a wheel of fortune for each pot. Participants cannot win several prizes, so we will ask any participant whose name has been drawn multiple times to pick which prize they want. We will then pick another winner for the unchosen pot.

❓Who's in charge of the event? At the moment we have a team of 5 mods, Cognito, LB and MsMK (who were already mods for the event last year), and Mage and Skelebunny, our 2 new additions. On top of the mod team, we have 3 Reading mods ('rods') who will help us read ALL the fics participants will come up with during the event: Anjel, Ryu and Tomato. Please do direct all your questions regarding the organization of the event to the regular mods and not the rods! Find more about our mods here! 👉🫶

❓When you say that you are going to ID check participants, what does that entail? Do we have to send an ID somewhere? I don't really want to show my face... ID checking participants means that a mod will look at an official, valid ID to check if the participant is indeed 18+. The ID can be a state identification card, passport, driver's license, etc... anything that shows a date of birth. Any other sensible information (face, name, address, etc...) can be blurred or hidden, and once the mod has checked your ID, you'll be allowed to delete the picture from the convo on discord. All ID checking will be done through DMs with a mod (don't be afraid to request to be ID checked by a specific mod that you are comfortable with!), NOT in the event's server.

🖋️This FAQ is subject to updates 🖋️

[dankusner]

Now that Cat Marnell has left her post as beauty editor at xoJane—where, as the site's "beauty and health director" she infamously chronicled the intimate and more fucked-up details of her life like her drug abuse, mental health, and strained relationships—readers are wondering: What Will Happen Next?

After all, the bread and butter of Jane Pratt's site has been first-person, experienced-based essays, with interoffice activities and conversations between staffers providing fodder for posts that read like reality TV (one source told us that Pratt has been pitching a show about the office).

The more compelling, dramatic episodes revolved around Marnell's addiction and her brief absence due to employer-mandated rehab—sometimes written by Marnell's coworkers.

But weren't those her stories to tell? She seems to think so.

I spoke to Marnell the day her departure from xoJane appeared in Page Six. It quoted her as saying:

Look, I couldn't spend another summer meeting deadlines behind a computer at night when I could be on the rooftop of Le Bain looking for shooting stars and smoking angel dust with my friends and writing a book, which is what I'm doing next.

While Marnell doesn't deny her drug use, she attributes her exit to "creative unhappiness."

Having honed her editing skills at Condé Nast—as an intern at Teen Vogue and later, a beauty editor at Lucky—Marnell seems to prefer print to online media.

"I love magazines," she gushes.

In the spirit of her professional pedigree, Marnell firmly believes in some diehard women's magazine conventions, telling me, "Beauty is supposed to be aspirational."

It's a philosophy by which she lives her life.

"I threw up everyday because I was afraid of getting fat," she declares, without any hint of shame, referring to when she took a break from stimulants during her recent stint in outpatient rehab.

Even if she recognized how aspirational beauty has fucked her up, she wouldn't care.

She hated being referred to as a "lady blogger," and she's made no bones about vocalizing her distaste for the genre's earnestness or its body-positivity focus, nor is she a fan of the "gross out" stories that have become the hallmark of many women's interests' sites.

I'm not some girly blogger that's part of a sugar and spice and everything nice community, okay? I hate that. I hate that on principle.

That last quote was from one of her beauty columns for xoJane that was ostensibly about perfume, but was actually an essay outlining her aforementioned "creative unhappiness" and how it, coupled with her drug use, was affecting her behavior in the office.

She illustrated her self-proclaimed "bitchiness" by detailing a fight she got in with the site's managing editor Emily McCombs, whom she made cry.

It lifted the curtain and gave readers that inclusive feel for which Jane Pratt's publications have always strived, but have never achieved so effectively.

Watching—or rather, reading—events unfold became irresistible.

About six weeks later, a New York profile on Marnell revealed that SAY Media, xoJane's parent company, mandated that she take disability leave to attend outpatient rehab.

Her absence from the site was noticeable.

(According to SAY, she was the most-read writer on staff.)

Technically, Marnell's choice—or coercion—to seek treatment was nobody's business.

But the personal nature of the workplace at xoJane had become the business.

It seemed like it made sense to address the matter on the site.

In a piece titled, "On Dealing with Active Addicts," posted 11 days after the New York profile came out, McCombs name-checked Marnell in the dek ("This is only a little bit about Cat"), but wrote mostly about her own experience of working with an addict.

But she also shared a private phone conversation she'd had with Marnell just before she'd decided to accept the offer of treatment.

One source told us that Marnell was furious and had not given her permission for such a post.

When I pressed her about the issue, Marnell only said, "I wanted it to be completely quiet."

She's full of contradictions, though.

McCombs told me that it was Marnell's idea.

"When Cat's New York magazine feature came out, she suggested that we might want to capitalize on its traffic by having a staff member write a 'brutally honest' article about what it's like to work with an addict.

In response to that request, I wrote a draft that was more explicitly about Cat and the difficulties of working with her when she was using.

She was hurt when she read it and so we didn't run it."

I read some of the unpublished piece.

It was nasty—shockingly so.

An entire paragraph was dedicated to describing, in great detail, Marnell's physical unattractiveness and smeared makeup.

It was undoubtedly mortifying for a beauty editor to read.

McCombs reworked it, made it less about Marnell and published it.

"I didn't ask her permission to run the 'Dealing with Active Addicts' piece, but she didn't ask my permission to write about events in the office either."

Therein lies the problem with creating a group narrative amongst writers.

Who owns the material?

McCombs often writes about her own sobriety for xoJane.

When I questioned her about the ethics of being in AA and publicly discussing another person's addiction she said, "I would never, ever have told anyone about Cat going to rehab, but once she had already announced it in New York and on her Twitter, I didn't see any problem referencing it."

The back and forth made for some compelling reading, but the danger in relying so heavily on a cult of personality for material is that the lines become blurred on what's fair game for personal show-and-tell.

In an email, Marnell told me, "'Fair game' is not really how one would expect a managing editor would view an employee on disability for addiction but I had been behaving badly and I do respect her honesty—disconcerting as it is to this day."

Because Marnell's exploits had become almost synonymous with xoJane, it appeared that Pratt was forced to address the end of Marnell's employment in what came off as her own version of the site's popular feature "It Happened to Me", and was at once self-aware and self-absorbed:

I know there has been some radio silence on my end with regard to the whole issue ever since she got back from her time off. I wrote a draft for you of what happened in the last week at xoJane and it was roundly and rightfully trashed here internally.

It had heavy paragraphs in it like this:

Right now, Cat is tweeting from Soho House and I am feeling the sadness of everyone I've ever known whose use of drugs/food/sex/whatever habit limited their abilities (or desires) to fulfill their potential. From my dad, who was left on the side of the road to die and left my step-mom to clear out the s and m equipment (should s & m always have an ampersand? seems so) from under his bed and the box of wine from the shelf in the artists' colony room where he was staying, to so many others I've believed and believed in.

Oy, said my publicist.

Oy, indeed. At this point, the business model is not unlike a snake eating its own tail.

Not that I'm saying that Pratt is a snake.

In fact, Marnell only had lovely things to say about how much she respects her former boss.

"I love Jane. We have a special Duke parents blond prep school magazine-y bond and we are both very skinny naturally."

It will be interesting to see where xoJane goes from here.

With the identity of the site wrapped up so tightly in the identity of its staffers and their relationships with one another, there is clearly an endless font of stories to tell. Who has the right to tell them, however, is much murkier.

Drugs more fun than work [Page Six] Cat's Gone [xoJane] Cat Marnell on Jane Pratt, Her Book, and Splitting From xoJane.com [New York]

"Between you and me," writes Cat Marnell in the book proposal which netted her a $500,000 advance from Simon & Schuster, "half the time I feel very little remorse. AND I have a massive ego, if I really think about it."

In her proposal, which was leaked to us, Marnell details her life so far.

In case you haven't been keeping up with New York, the , the Wall Street Journal, Page Six, or any of the other media outlets that enjoy a good young-woman-in-peril story, Cat Marnell is an ex-Lucky staffer, an ex-XOJane.com health editor, an ex-Vice columnist, and a self-described glamorous drug addict. Spoiler alert: she came from an unhappy home.

The proposal is divided into two sections: a 35-page "outline" of the book, which tells the story of Marnell's life so far, and a 38-page essay that appears to be a sample chapter. ("Appears to be" because it has no title, no clear relationship to the outline, and begins with an epigraph from the poet Chard DeNiord, whose name Marnell misspells. Organization, like proofreading, is hardly Marnell's strong suit.)

Marnell begins the outline with a section called, appropriately, "Beginnings."

It details her childhood in Bethesda, Maryland, and her relationship with her psychiatrist dad ("a rage-filled narcissist to us but an upstanding conservative Republican and Washingtonian magazine 'Best Psychiatrist' to everyone else") and therapist mom ("a diabetic, anorexic…an emotional vacant lot, 95 lbs. all the time with dead eyes.")

Her childhood sounds like a monied, WASP-y kind of hell: domestic violence, a father screaming "Real silver doesn't go in the dishwasher," and filet mignon in a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house.

Marnell mentions the family dining table cost $5,000.

"All I've ever wanted my whole life," she says, "was a way to escape and get numb."

At 15, Marnell is sent away to boarding school in Massachusetts:

I went right for the hottest, richest, most popular senior and was blowing him in his car in three weeks flat.

Social climbing through sex has always been one of my specialties.

I don't fuck for love, I fuck to put my name on any given particular New York map.

I lost my virginity to a hockey player on a bathmat during a weekend hotel party at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston.

Then I slept squished on a bed with three dudes.

The next day I caught a ride to Cape Cod from school acquaintances and slept alone on the beach.

Prep school is insane!

So insane, in fact, that Marnell ends up getting kicked out:

Senior year was more of the same.

I bought ecstasy in bulk from legendary teen drug lord Sketchy Ralph, and sold it to underclassmen at an AIDS Day Awareness dance.

I was kicked out — "asked to leave," as they say — a month before graduation, over three months pregnant with the student government president's baby.

At the time of my dismissal, I had the top GPA in the class (tied with the German genius Marcus, natch) and was Tatania [sic] in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." […]

Oh yes, and that pregnancy?

Turns out I'd let it go to the second trimester and had to have a violent, no-anesthesia abortion in a ghetto clinic somewhere in the District, where I shook, wept, and sobbed in agony on a table.

My mother accompanied me and in the "recovery room" said very little — she is not a nurturer, that one! — but did hand me a bottle of Xanax prescribed to me by my father, a prescription written in advance that I didn't ask for.

And that, my friends, was how I was introduced to my good friend benzodiazepines, a family of pills I have taken daily nearly every day of my life since.

When she moves to New York to attend the New School, Marnell's parents pay her rent and give her "about $1000 bucks in the bank every month to spend on whatever I pleased," which naturally allows her drug problems to worsen.

"I was doing Adderall and coke and a little heroin still of course, but I was in the city, the great love of my life, and I was part of it, and I spent many years like this fantastically in love with myself," Marnell writes. "I used sex, drugs, nightlife and men, and I let them use me. We were all together, snorting up life like a line."

Marnell does everything she can to get drugs.

Though her father stops prescribing her Adderall when she turns 24, she had no trouble "doctor-shopping" for new scripts.

Scripts for everything: amphetamines, benzos, sleeping pills, anti-narcolepsy medications.

I started visiting plastic surgeons to book fake nose jobs and things, because when you book a surgery you get your painkiller scripts written in advance to fill pre-surgery.

Then I would cancel the nose jobs. Easy!

The proposal is also stuffed with blind items.

A particularly compelling one is regarding "the son of one of the most famous living Democrats," who was an acquaintance of Marnell's from the period after she left prep school and was finishing high school in D.C. Allow Marnell to explain:

I sat with the politician's son in a parked Oldsmobile crushing beers and taking mushrooms with him and my boyfriend on dark secluded streets with the Secret Service parked behind us, watching, watching.

Later, at her 18th birthday party:

The son of the famous unnameable politician was there too; the secret service camped outside out hotel suite door. We binged on every drug and no one cared; no one got in any trouble.

Any guesses?

Marnell brags about her dishonesty in college — "I was a non-fiction writing major, and I turned in the same pieces over and over again to all my different professors and never got caught" — and her ease in finding a job as an assistant beauty editor at Lucky after graduation.

Marnell outlines how she manipulates coworkers, doctors, and friends into enabling her addictions.

At Condé Nast, she has her interns fill her prescriptions for her.

She goes to rehab ($1000/day for 30 days; dad pays), relapses, dates a heroin addict, goes to a mental hospital.

Throughout the proposal, Marnell displays an obsession with weight.

She sizes up and catalogs the body size of virtually every woman mentioned, and chronicles her own dwindling weight with something like pride.

Marnell's interest in drugs is broad and catholic.

Here's Marnell on taking anti-psychotics, which are "easy to score from psychiatrists" because they're not narcotics:

"I always welcomed any feeling that legitimate mental illness was finally overtaking me (it's never stuck, alas), for this would explain my bad states and also protect my pills, my pills, my pills."

Marnell seems to want very badly to be seen as a victim — of her parents' emotional distance, of their preference for expressing care in the form of pharmaceutical prescriptions, of her user boyfriends.

But her proposal describes her being afforded the kinds of second, third, and fourth chances that most people don't get.

Coworkers cover for her when she can't even bring herself to write "200 words, say, on the new spring lipstick shades."

Frankly, Marnell gets the kinds of first chances people not of her background are rarely offered.

Her bosses defend her to higher-ups.

Media companies she works for — Condé Nast, Say Media, and Vice — pay for her stints in rehab and hospital care.

Even as Marnell remains the type of person who stops to apply "some sort of gooey red raspberry mask" to her face when she wakes at 9:37 on the morning of a very important 10 AM meeting, for which she is completely unprepared.

Drug abuse, says Marnell, starts to turn her skin "no-joke Nixon-vs.-Kennedy green."

"To be clear," writes Marnell at the end of her outline, "this book is not a recovery memoir."

She intends to write about her "ambivalence" about drugs, which she still uses.

"Addiction is a glittering disease as much as it is a devastating one. Rehabs and healthy daylight life have bored me to death every time I've tried them. I've spent the last fifteen years feeling, alternately, like I was drowning in addiction or that the black magic of drugs and being high was literally my life force, making me perform better than everybody else. And so I keep using (or do I? — stay tuned; I don't even know myself)."

The proposal closes with a glamour shot of Marnell and the words:

I will write a New York Times #1 Bestseller. Swag!

[peakyltd]

Wow, just wow. What a hell of a ride this has been and I've been so impressed by this story!

I loved how you went very into detail with her actions and movements! The fact you got me angry by his words within a minute of this story is just another example of how amazing your writing is. "Reading?" he cocked an eyebrow as he took the paper from you." Daily Mails business column" he said clearing his throat as he read the page." Y/N you can barely fucking spell, yet you're reading this" I'm not even recovered from her discovery of his little black book and now this dick starts to downtalk her right away. Anyway, this together with the lines about the fence, remarks about her mother and finally about his horse were perfectly descriptions of the manipulative/narcissictic man she's dealing with. You did a great job on that!

His sly ways to let her know that he's aware that she's pregnant gave me shivers. The things he would do to just drag the words out of her mouth are insane but also so well done. I must say enjoyed the part where John and Arthur visited them (and they were both so sweet 🥺) and Tommy forbids her to drink the alcohol, it's a great assembly of both the control he has over her but also the fact that he wants to let her know that he knows. No matter what.

When Arthur let her hold his gun, I knew it was going to come back somewhere in the story. It's just a pity she missed 😩 How Tommy stood behind her while pointing the gun at her reflection in the mirror was so chilling and intense. At this point I was almost convinced he would hurt her but then I remembered he wouldn't want to hurt his own child.

The discovery of the silencer in the stables and Arthur explaining her what it was plus her holding the gun was a great way of foreshadowing! I knew something was going to happen but at some point so many things went trough my mind that I for sure didn't know what to expect anymore.

Also before I forget, I loved how you described the part where a puzzle pieces fell together and she realized was the one who shot himself.

"the distant sound of autumn leaves blowing in the wind, and then silence total silence as if for a brief moment the world stood still and watched as everything played out." When I finished this line, I thought it was done for a second, until I continued...

"Anyone could have made that shot" he said as he grabbed your head between his hands. " Yet you missed, you missed! See, you love me Y/N. I knew you fucking loved me!" The fact he has to belittle her first (and once again) before telling himself that she actually loves him. She's such a sickening obsession for him and he's so delusional to think she really missed because she loves him.

I've read some horrible lines coming from this man but this was just a whole other level. " When this one is born, I'll put another in you then another until that whole house is filled" Poor, poor girl. If life couldn't become worser for her, this is going to happen and there's nothing she can do about it.

Honestly, this was so intense. I love happy endings and stuff but in my opinion you couldn't have written a better ending! As a reader you hope that things will get better and to be hit with such an ending like this makes you feel for the character and leaves you wondering how it's going to be the rest of her life. I know for sure that I won't forget about this series and will probably think back about this ending for a while.

Brummie, you can be so proud of yourself because this was such an incredible story! You described dark!Tommy like no other and you kept me on edge every chapter. I can't wait to see what your excellent writing will bring us next 💓🥰

So here it is everyone, the last part to my Dark!Tommy series "Killing Me Softly". It has been a wild ride with lots of twists and turns, but like all things we've sadly come to the end. I want to thank every single one of you for your comments, reblogs and likes. I have been overwhelmed by the love and support you have all shown this series! I really can't thank you enough. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, if you liked the final chapter, if it finished the way you expected it to or even the way you wanted it to. Thank you to all of you once again, I couldn't have finished it without you!

Brummie xxx

PREVIOUS PART

Killing Me Softly (DARK!TOMMY/ PART TEN)

Summary: After the troubling discoveries you made the previous night in Tommy's office, everything finally comes to an end when you learn of one more sadistic act your husband made in his cruel crusade to make you love him.

Warnings: Language, toxic marriage, psychological abuse, controlling behaviour, manipulative behaviour, psychological mind games, Dark!Tommy ( This is a dark fic, please read the warnings before continuing)

" Phenobarbital, fuck where is it?" you mumbled under your breath as you sat on the sofa, frantically searching through a dictionary you had found in the study the next morning, your head turning to the door every other minute afraid your husband would walk in.

Rubbing your forehead you brought your fingers to the space between your brow, pinching the skin as exhaustion started to take over. You hadn't slept last night and had been throwing up on and off all morning. The strain pulling behind your eyes from searching through countless books for the past hour had started to give you a thumping headache, you were drained, desperate to close your eyes and sleep. Trying to relieve some of the tension throbbing against your head, you massaged one of the sides of your temple as you continued to look through the book resting on your lap. Turning the next page your eyes scanned down the text until finally, you found it " Phenobarbital from the barbiturates family. A white crystalline powder often used by patients suffering from epilepsy. Also used in small amounts to subdue those suffering with anxiety and sleep deprivation in the form of a sedative" Sedative...there it was again. Your mother didn't suffer from epilepsy and neither had sleep or anxiety problems. He was having her sedated, but why? Had she angered him? Had he grown tired of paying for her care? Or was it simply another way to get back at you? Running your hands through your hair, fear and panic started to quickly rise within you, your stomach turning at his unforgivable actions. You was scared for your mother, not only for her ongoing care but now for her life. He had played you again, fooled you one last time. If you was ever going to escape this marriage you would have to play along until you found a way out, if there even was one.

"Y/N, what are you doing in here?" You heard your husband say walking into the room. Quickly shutting the book you pushed it under the cushions beside you as you reached for the newspaper in front of you.

" Just reading" you said looking up at him as he sat down next to you, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

"Reading?" he cocked an eyebrow as he took the paper from you." Daily Mails business column" he said clearing his throat as he read the page." Y/N you can barely fucking spell, yet you're reading this" he scoffed throwing it on the coffee table in front of him. Turning your head away you brought your fingers up to your mouth as tears threatened to escape, his childish dig at you striking deeper than you thought it would. Already in a heighten state of emotions you felt that you was on the verge of breaking at any given moment. All you desperately wanted was for someone to comfort you and and take you away from the hellish nightmare you was living. Yet here you was, stuck with a man crueler than the Devil himself, all hope within you being crushed with every word he spoke.

" I've made an appointment for you" he said as he turned to face you lighting a cigarette. " A doctor downtown" he finished leaning into the sofa, his thumb brushing down the back of your neck." You listening to me?"

" Hm?..oh, yes. A doctor. Why would I need a doctor?" you questioned pulling yourself away from your worries, your fingers digging into the soft fabric of the sofa as you looked up into his insistent stare. It took every part of you to hold back the questions burning within you, the revelations you had learnt last night forming a knot in your already uneasy stomach.

" Why would you need a doctor?" He repeated as he lent forward tapping the ash from his cigarette into the glass tray in front of him. " Well darling, i think you might have come down with something. Heard you throwing up most of the morning. Now what could possibly cause that, hm?" he asked, taunting you, waiting for you to crack and tell him what he already believed he knew.

" I'm fine Tommy it must have been the champagne from last night" you dismissed unable to look at him as your eyes fixated on your fingers playing nervously with the hem of your dress.

"We're going Y/N. Tomorrow at noon" he said taking your chin with his thumb, lifting your head to face him.

" We? Tommy..."

" Yes we, you're my wife. I'll be in the room with you, that's not a problem is it? It's not like I haven't seen everything already" He said as his eyes quickly darted down to your stomach then back to you. Shaking your head you brought your hands into your lap, as you mentally tried to figure out how to get out of your now impending appointment.

"Good" he said as he let go of your chin. " I'm going out, I won't be long. Some men will be arriving soon to do some work around the property" he told you as he stubbed his cigarette out.

" What work?" You questioned as you watched him stand up, straightening out his waist coat.

" Fencing for around the house, and a new gate. A big one" he said as a small chuckle left his lips. "You should rest darling, your little late night reading session looks like it's warn you out" he advised as he bent down placing his hand firmly to the back of you neck, pressing his lips to yours as his tongue brushed into your mouth. " Oh sweetheart, you really do get me going" he laughed darkly as he looked down at his trousers, sending you a wink. " Ta-ra!" he said as he strolled out the room with his hands in his pockets, leaving you in a state of worry and confusion at his sly comments and clear change in behaviour. Had you angered him?

For the better part of an hour you had been walking aimlessly around the property, one of Tommy's henchman back surveying you, his eyes never leaving you. Leaning against the cold stone of your home Arrow House you nervously bit your nails as you watched the workmen Tommy had hired to build the fencing around the house stack bricks on the ground. In less than twenty- four hours everything had dramatically changed, Tommy's calm loving temperament along with it. Did he know you had found out what he had been doing, what he had been doing to your mother? Or had he discovered that you was carrying his child? As you watched one of the large metal gates being lifted, one or both of the questions you had been mulling over had to be the answer to his sudden change in demeanor, why else would he be doing this. It was now a race to see which one of you was going to break first, which one of you was going to confront the other.

"Harry!" you shouted as you watched the stable boy walk into the barn in the corner of your eye. Jogging over to him you held your coat around your chest from the cool autumn breeze, Tommy's man watching your every move. "Harry?" you said again as you entered the barn when he quickly turned around taking his flat cap off.

"Mrs Shelby" he replied glancing up quickly only for his eyes to dart back to the hay he was breaking up in front of him.

" How are you?" You questioned, seeing the hestiation in him to even look your way. Walking over you tried to catch his line of sight as he continued busying himself, ignoring your attempts to talk with him. " Harry, is everything ok?"

" Oh yes Mam, very well. Mr Shelby wants me to clean the stables out, lots to do" he said as he picked up a handful of hay placing it in a large tin bucket.

" I can see that" you replied with a chuckle as you looked around the barn. " What's this?" You said as you picked up a strange looking black barell on top of a stack of hay.

" Don't know Mam, found it as I was mucking out. Looks like part of a gun" Harry said as he walked over to Tommy's stallion.

"It does doesn't it" you replied as you furrowed your brow, turning the object around in your hand. "Oh please, let me help" you said putting the unusual find back down without giving it a second thought as you walked over to Harry feeding Tommy's horse.

" Can I ?" You said as you put your hand out for the bucket, which harry handed over with a small smile quickly returning to his other jobs.

" Hello you" you said as you stroked down the stallion's mane. He was a beautiful horse with the most hypnotizing eyes you had ever seen. He had gained quite the reputation among the people working at Arrow House. His temperament was unpredictable, the only person he would let ride him was Tommy. Reaching into the bucket you pulled out a handful of hay, stroking his neck as you fed him.

" Fuck, he bit me!" you said as you pulled your hand away, staring back into the darkness of his eyes as he flared his nostrils at you.

" Mrs Shelby!" Harry said, dropping the broom he had been using to sweep the floor as he hurried over to you.

" It's alright Harry, he didn't draw blood" you said as you looked back at Tommy's horse staring at you, his eyes as dark as coal.

"I'm sorry Mam, he's been acting up all morning. I should've warned you" the young stable boy said as you turned to face him.

"Maybe he misses my mare" you told him, trying to ease the worry in his eyes " But nothing could be done, she was lame the poor thing" you said as you looked over to her empty stall.

"Lame? She wasn't la.." Harry started to say until the voice of your husband interrupted him.

" Darling, there you are" Tommy said entering the barn, as your eyes widened at the words you was sure the stable boy was about to say. " What happened there?" Tommy said approaching you, a cigarette hanging between his lips as he took your injured hand into his.

" Your horse bit me" you said bluntly pulling away from his hold, tears welling in your eyes at the latest exposed truth in Tommy's cruel unstoppable mission to torment you.

" Well did you upset him?" Tommy chuckled as he stroked down his horse, whispering words into his ear.

" Fuck off Tommy..." you said pushing past him, cradling your hand as you glanced one last time at the black barell still sitting on the side, a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by your husband.

"What did you just say, eh?!" Tommy shouted as he stormed out the barn grabbing the object Harry had found, placing it in his coat pocket. " Hey! What the fucks a matter with you?" Tommy said as he caught up to you, taking you by your wrist.

" You killed my horse!" you said turning around, pushing him away from you.

" Fucking hell" Tommy muttered under his breath. " Darling, we've already gone through this. Yes, I shot her, she was lame"

" She wasn't though, was she Tommy? Is that what you do? Drug and kill when something becomes an inconvenience to you?" you shouted letting the information you had learnt slip out as Tommy tilted his head in response. You had read more than his black book, he quickly thought to himself. "You're a bastard " You said bringing your hand up to slap him, when he grabbed you by your arm.

" I wouldn't do that if I was you darling. You're In no place to judge me. Not with the news I received last night. You want to tell me about it or shall I just wait until I get confirmation tomorrow hm?"

" Don't know what you're talking about Tommy, didn't see it written down in that secret little book of yours. You're slipping!" you shouted back, refusing to answer his question, your own anger at his twisted behaviour boiling over.

" Tut tut tut, well haven't you been busy. Have you been going through my things sweetheart? Tommy said pulling you into him, his eyes piercing down at you.

"Tommy lad!" Arthur shouted out the car window, honking the horn as he and John pulled up beside you. Letting go of you Tommy stepped back, turning to face his brothers.

" I need whisky, and a lot of it after the bellowing I just got from Esme" John said as he got out the car walking over to you both.

" That makes two of us. Must be a full moon tonight brother" Tommy replied with a laugh as he looked back at you with a smirk whilst him and John walked into the house.

" Y/N love, come on" Arthur said putting his arm around your shoulder as you reluctantly followed them in. The last thing you wanted to do was endure a night of watching the three of them all drink themselves into oblivion, but once again it looked like you had no choice in the matter.

For the past two hours you had been sitting on the sofa begrudgingly listening to John and Arthur talk about all the various women they had been with and men they had killed, tallying them up to see which one of them had the most, the whisky clearly doing the talking for them when the conversation turned even more graphic in every sense. But Tommy...he was quiet, he had barely uttered a word the entire time. Instead he had been watching you, staring at you relentlessly as he sipped on his whisky. One sharp look to him had him scoffing at you as he shook his head, downing the rest of his liquor whilst he walked over to you. Just as you reached for a glass of whisky yourself Tommy grabbed it from your hand, throwing the alcohol into the fire next to him.

" I don't think so Y/N" he said looking down at you as your face reddened in embarrassment.

" Here, I'll make you a gin and tonic" John said as he stood up, nearly falling over, the warm lull of the whisky numbing his movements.

" Or just the tonic" Tommy sneered as he stared you down once more before walking away.

" I'm fine John, thanks" you said as you collected your hair to one side, bringing your knuckles up to your mouth as your elbow rested on the arm of the sofa. He knew, he had to. Why hadn't he confronted you?

" Right, everyone shut up and take a look at this" Arthur said as he pulled out a gun. " Brand new, never been shot, acquired under... illegitimate circumstances" he sniggered, holding it up for everyone to see.

" Bloody hell here he goes again, nobody cares about your new gun Arthur" John laughed as he leant back into his armchair looking up at the ceiling.

" Well I bloody care!" Arthur replied stubbornly as John continued to laugh." Y/N, take a look. Beautiful ain't it?" Arthur said as he walked over to you, presenting it like someone would their newborn child.

" Yeh, it's erh...nice Arthur" you replied smiling back to him.

" You ever held a gun before Y/N?"

"No" you shook your head as he held it out for you take.

" Go on, hold it, she won't bite" Arthur chuckled as Tommy and John watched on. " Heavier than you'd think ay?

" It is" you said, surprised by the weight of the cool piece of metal in your hand. "What does this do?" you asked as your thumb rested over a small lever at the top.

" Ooh, no no don't touch that" he laughed looking back to his brothers. " That's the safety, we don't want to shoot anyone's balls off tonight" he chuckled as he clicked it up and down showing you how it worked. " Hold it like this" Arthur motioned to you as your eyes quickly darted to Tommy leaning against the mantle of the fireplace, his chin lifted as his eyes narrowed in on you, watching your every move. "Good" he praised as he helped you up, turning you to look at yourself in the mirror hanging on the wall. " We'll soon make a Peaky out of you" Arthur laughed winking to you as he walked off in search of more whisky.

Lowering your hand you looked at your reflection in the mirror as Tommy walked behind you, wrrapping his hand around your stomach.

"Like this" your husband said, placing his hand over yours, moving your finger under the trigger as he raised it back up to both of your reflections.

" Bang" he said quietly in your ear, aiming the gun at your heart in the mirror as his thumb rubbed over your stomach. " You think you could take a life sweetheart?" he asked as he turned his head into your neck, his lips inches from your skin.

" If my own was in danger" you replied turning to face him, a tear falling down your face. He was scaring you, his questions leaving an unsettling feeling in your stomach.

" Your life's never been in danger darling" he said as he lowered the gun in your hand, his other coming up to brush the tear from your cheek.

" But everyone I have known or loves me life is" you replied as you freed your hand from under his. "Tommy why, why would you do that to my mother?" You quietly sobbed as you stared back at him, searching his eyes for an answer, the first to finally break.

"You're tired Y/N, you don't know what you're talking about. Come on let's go to bed" Tommy replied ignoring your questions as he took your hand.

" No. Stop treating me like a child Tommy, answer me. Everything was perfect, but you just couldn't stop yourself, why?" You asked as you pulled your hand away from him stepping back.

" We'll talk about it tomorrow? Now come on" he said taking back your hand as you resisted once more. " You're making a scene Y/N. Do you really want to do this in front of everyone?" He said through gritted teeth as he placed his palm on your lower back pushing you with him to the door as you shook your head in response, reluctantly following him. The last thing you wanted to do was anger him, you knew what would happen if you did, and with your mother being in a vulnurable situation you feared what he would do next. " We're going to bed" Tommy announced as he put Arthur's gun down on the coffee table, his brothers chuckling in resposne.

" Alright Tom boy. Nighty night, have fun" Arthur smiled as he pulled a black barell out his jacket attaching it to his gun.

" What's that?" You said stopping, pulling your hand from Tommy as you turned to face Arthur.

"Y/N, come on" Tommy insisted his grip on your back firmly pushing you forward.

" It's a silencer love, so our little...missions go unheard" Arthur replied as you was half-way out the door when you turned to look at Tommy, his eyes darting between you and Arthur as he cleared his throat. A silencer. It looked identical to the object Harry had found in the barn. Why would there be a silencer in the stables? Tommy's sudden uneasy behaviour had you quickly believing whatever the reason was it was to do with him.

Sitting at the small kitchen table the next morning you buried your head in you arms. Another restless night, two days of almost no sleep, you was barely able keep your head up. Not only was you worried for your mother you had this ongoing feeling in you stomach that something wasn't right. The way Tommy reacted last night when you saw Arthur's silencer had unsettled you. Looking up at the clock you realised you was only a few hours away from the appointment Tommy had made for you, one you knew you had know way of avoiding. Tommy would soon learn you had been keeping the news of your pregnancy from him. Would he go easy on you with his punishment, now you was carrying his child? A part of you already believed he knew your was pregnant, the small touches to your stomach his eyes lingering on your belly, the remarks he would make. What you didn't understand was why he hadn't said anything, what was he waiting for?

" Would you like some tea Mam, let me serve you a cup in the dinning room" Frances said as she walked into the kitchen with an armful of items.

" Oh, no thank you Frances, I quite like being in here watching you all" you said as you lifted your head, the busy noise from the kitchen calming your nerves.

" Mr Shelby will be waiting for you though"

" Let him wait" you said as you brushed your hair back from your face as she gave you a small smile, placing the items on the table in front of you.

" Frances...where did you find that?" You said as you reached your hand out to a small bottle she had placed on the counter.

" In the guest room Mam, I've only just got round to putting it away"

" Which guest room?" You questioned as you held the bottle in your hand, your leg bouncing up and down at the sudden surge of anxiety coursing through your limbs.

" The small one, where Mr Shelby slept when he was sick" she replied as she scrunched her brow at the tears now welling in your eyes, your head shaking in disbelief. The bottle was still sealed, Tommy never took the medicine the doctor prescribed him that night. He let himself get sick. The silencer, the medicine, the vague explanation he gave that night...it suddenly all made sense. He shot himself.

"Mam are you ok?" Frances asked as she reached her hand out to you when you abruptly stood up, bolting out the kitchen into the foyer. Your head was spinning, the sudden realisation of events churning your stomach as a crescendo of panic overwhelmed you. He shot himself, the sick bastard shot himself. He said he was coming back from the stables that night. The same stables where harry just so happened to find the strange black object as he was clearing out the barn, the object you now knew was a silencer made for a gun. He shot himself in almost the exact same place from a previous bullet wound. He knew he wouldn't die, he survived it once he would survive it again. As you tried to make sense of everything, the words Tommy left you with that night suddenly rang in your ears "You will learn to love me again". The man who would stop at nothing to keep you under his control, to keep you hoping for the boy he once was executed the most ultimate act of desperation for your love.

Running to the phone you frantically tried to form a clear sentence to the operator on the end of the line as you desperately asked her to put you through to Polly.

" Yes Miss Polly Gray, try Watery la..." You started to say when you felt a warm hand take the receiver from you, placing it back down onto the table.

" What are you doing love?" Tommy said, breathing against the back of your neck as you slowly turned around to face him, his eyes boring into you as he watched the tears fall down your face.

" Stay away from me, you fucking stay away from me!" you shouted at him as you walked backwards to the front door.

"Y/N" he warned you, unable to hold back the smirk forming on the corner of his mouth.

" You sick twisted bastard!" You screamed as your back hit the large wooden door.

" Now I know you didn't mean that " he replied pointing at you as he started walking slowly towards you. Turning around you fumbled to undo the lock, pushing it with force as your ran out the house down to the bottom of the path.

" Should we go after her?" one of Tommy's men said stood in the foyer.

" No leave her, she won't get far" Tommy replied as he lit a cigarette walking out the front door. " Come back inside darling, it's cold!" he shouted as he watched you run to the large gate at the end of the drive pushing it back and forth as you tried to open it. " It's locked sweetheart" he said as he approached behind you like you would a wild horse.

" Get away from!" You cried as you started walking along the fence in the hopes of finding an exit.

" Alright then, we'll go on a little walk eh?" Tommy chuckled as he caught up with you, reaching his hand out for you to take as if you was going on a romantic stroll through the countryside. Slapping it away you glared at him as he laughed in response, amused by the whole situation.

" Stay away from me Tommy. You're fucking insane! What kind of person shoots themselves for their wife's sympathy" you said as Tommy grabbed you by the arm spinning you around to face him.

" You're loosing it sweetheart if you've convinced yourself of that"

" You're not so clever Tommy, I figured it out. Harry found the silencer in the barn. You shot yourself that night and you didn't take the medicine the doctor prescribed. Why...because you couldn't stand the fact I hated you, so you forced me to take pity on you, to give you a second chance, forced me to feel something for you again. You seethed, pushing his hand away as you stormed off.

" Think you've been reading too many novels darling" Tommy chuckled as he caught up to you, standing in your path, mirroring your movements with each step you tried to make.

" Im so stupid, I can't believe I fell for it. Fell for your lies" you said coming to a stop, brushing the tears from your cheeks.

" Lies? I never lied that night Y/N, when I told you that you kept me alive, kept me going in France I meant it.

" So much that you've been following me for the past decade. You're a freak Tommy!" You said as you pushed past him.

"Yeh alright, I admit it. Guilty" he replied putting his hands up in a mock gesture as he jogged up to where you was again " You did something to me in France, put a spell on me, bewitched me" he said with a smirk on his face as you scoffed at the ridiculous excuse for his madness.

" And my mother Tommy, what did she do to deserve your cruelness?"

" Your mother is fucking crazy, maybe it's genetic" he replied looking at you from head to toe, insinuating you was also" Your dear mother was being sedated because she was pissing everyone off, trying to escape the facility she was in, causing hell for all the doctors and nurses. But that's no longer a problem. She saw a new doctor you see, one found by me. She's been declared clinically insane, now she will spend the rest of her days locked up in the local madhouse." he viciously stated, knowing how much the news would anger you.

Grabbing the gun from his holster you pushed him away as you raised it to his face, your whole body shaking as tears blurred your vision. Chuckling, Tommy threw his cigarette on the ground, stubbing it out with his boot.

" You've got more attempted murders than me" Tommy laughed as he walked over to you, not caring you had a gun pointing straight at him. "Now give me the gun, we both know you're not gonna do anything"

" No!" You said pulling down the safety like Arthur had shown you, the expression on Tommy's face suddenly changing.

"What? You gonna shoot the father of that baby growing inside you" he said as he gestured to your stomach. " You're not so innocent Y/N are you, hm? Was quite the shock I had when one of my men told me you had visited that old hag in London. Was you going to get rid of my child eh, my fucking child?!"

" I...no Tommy" you cried, feeling the barrier of the gun protecting you suddenly evaporating as you unconsciously lowered the pistol in your hand, your secret now spoken, exposed.

" You thought about it though. See, I was waiting for confirmation from a doctor since you wouldn't tell me yourself, but you just did that for me didn't you? Now what you're gonna do right.." he said as he pointed his finger at you, his face reddened by anger. "Is give me that gun. Then we'll go home and talk about this like adults" he ordered as he stepped forward.

" No!" You screamed back as you raised the pistol in your hand once more. " You've ruined my Life, you've taken away everyone i love and care about. I won't let you ruin this child's life as well! You cried as you stood your ground your whole body trembling as a surge of adrenaline rushed through you.

" Give me the fucking gun Y/N! " Tommy shouted as he stormed over to you. " Now!"

It happened so quickly, you didn't think twice about doing it, you weren't even sure you thought at all when your finger pressed down on the trigger sitting beneath your skin. With your eyes firmly shut you listened to the last echos of the gunshot fade around you, the distant sound of autumn leaves blowing in the wind, and then silence total silence as if for a brief moment the world stood still and watched as everything played out. Lowering the gun, a wave of relief left your body as you stood there, the chilled breeze of winter approaching cooling the anger within you. Peace had finally descended on the grounds of Arrow house, or had it?

" You missed..." you heard through the crisp country air, your eyes darting open to see your husband standing in front of you, staring you down. Dropping the gun in your hand you collapsed onto the ground below you in tears as you watched him charge towards you, pulling you up from the grass. " Anyone could have made that shot" he said as he grabbed your head between his hands. " Yet you missed, you missed! See, you love me Y/N. I knew you fucking loved me!" he said reasoning with his own madness, pressing his lips to yours, his hands wrapped tightly around you, the only thing holding you up as the life drained from you.

" Fuck.." he said letting go, sighing as all the anger he was holding in left him. " We're made for eachother Y/N. You and me. It was always meant to be" he said cupping your cheeks once again, as you nodded, crying tears you no longer thought you had left, giving in, no more strength left to tell him otherwise. Pressing his forehead to yours Tommy brought his hand down to your stomach, rubbing his thumb over the small swell under your dress.

" When this one is born, I'll put another in you then another until that whole house is filled" He smiled unnervingly as his eyes darted back to Arrow House in the distant. " You and me yeh, our own little family"

" Tommy, I..I want to go home" you said as you looked up at him your eyes pleading one last time to be free of him.

" This is your home sweetheart. You belong with me you've always belonged to me" he said pressing your head in his hands his eyes inches from yours. " I will never let you leave, never. You're mine Y/N"

He will never let you go. He will hunt you down and live forever through you...the words you heard all those months ago would now cruelly haunt you until your last breath. It was over, your childhood love was gone, there was nothing left of you. You were shackled to him for the rest of your life, bearing his children so his legacy could live on. The game had come to an end, the ultimate prize won. He had played by his own rules for so long there was only ever going to be one outcome. An unchangeable fate had been sealed from the very moment you had met, it was always going to end this way. For you and everyone else knew, Tommy Shelby always wins, always.

The end.

Tag list: @litteltourtius (unable to tag) @aesthetic0cherryblossom @swordofawriter @casa-boiardi @muhahaha303 @fmo166 @call-sign-shark @priyajoyy @gypsy-girl-08 @missbeeentertainment @cryptidscool (unable to tag) @warrior-of-justice @runnning-outof-time @camilleholland89 @amberpanda99 @scarwxrld @pleasant-meadow @fleurfatale89 (unable to tag) @strnqer @hope4rain19

[roscoerieux]

Entry 001: The Courteous degenerate

These illustrious and dreamy pages have been an unwavering companion throughout the last decade. They've been a haven where both my vices and virtues dance freely, have spirited discussions and dine to the fluctuation of my wellbeing.

Posting these entries have no goal, no desired outcome. It'd be appropriate to call these entries an online archive of sporadic thoughts that may resonate with some, and annoy others.

There are many wise conclusions that have come to fruition in this very place just as the many writers have arrived at, before me.

I've read the stories, seen the characters, and the many lives to pattern my life after. But it is a new dawn, and a new experience that is all my own.

So who am I to become? And what shall this life entail?

Is it a dangerous life, brimming with drugs, sex and money. Or perhaps merely a dream of such a life, written in the prose of a man, distant from the danger.

I don't believe I was ever one to stray too far from the dangers of the world. There is truly a homely essence about them. The dealers and degenerates, the violent and conflicted, there's an honesty there that I appreciate, and respect.

Many men and women who preach safety, tend to swim in pools of opulence, and hardly wear their souls upon their face. They hide it, even from themselves, shameful in their debaucherous acts, no matter how abundant.

Why do you think sex workers are still employed? Politicians and shit.

The nature of the wealthy is not far from the decrepit. The only difference is they do it a little more blatantly.

***

My roots are far from luxurious. I come not from wealth, nor extreme poverty, though the middle end of the latter.  The sacrifices of some have permitted me tools that I wield to speak with you, and tools I use to find this hidden path, buried in an empty page I'm yet to write.

A diagram that paints the infinite path, woven into the fabric of my DNA, that takes me from bedroom ponderer to visionary artist.

Of course I say money is not the goal, but I'd be kidding myself, the readers and listeners if I said the thought was not in the room. It is not the focus, but a blurred character in the background.

Dare I say the second desire is a bit more polarising - The freedom in debauchery. Again, I'd be kidding myself if I said I don't dream of self expression and a higher consciousness. Of soul quenching fucks and spiritual awakenings.

I suppose I justify myself in saying that such desires are not to the detriment of anyone. More a collective debauchery, of degenerate poets, and intellectual muses. Women of power and Men of wisdom dining to the words and sounds of beauty.

As of the late the cities seem to be overrun with far more gremlins than usual. I've seen the gutters of a foreign city, and strolled the marble columns of nowhere. And still the beings I've seen lately have remained rather conventional.

Where are they, these debaucherous clans of courteous degenerates? Where are they hiding? And where may I find them?

[greenishghostey]

It's Fantasy, babe

Pairing: Eddie Muson x fem!reader

Summary: You decide to indulge in a fun fantasy with your boyfriend: Eddie, sneaking into your room and cumming inside you.

Warnings: This fic contains graphic 18+ content. Please do not engage with you are underage! Unprotected sex, penetrative sex, rough but with lots of love, established relationship, fingering, fluffy smut, Eddie cannot shut up ever, enthusiastic consent, Eddie just trying rock your world as best he can

A/N: This is the first smut I've ever written and I promise I tried my best. The idea had been rolling around in my head for a while so I bit the bullet and just tried it. DO NOT REPOST OR EDIT MY WORK

///

The discussion between you and Eddie had been a long time coming. You’d found a particularly filthy romance novel about a princess and her noble knight. They’d shared a night together rolling around in her royal quarters, and he came in her until she was dripping, full and shaking. He had snuck into her rooms after the castle fell asleep, embraced her in her soft, flowing nightgown and showed her heaven and hell simultaneously.

You wanted that too. You wanted to be the princess. You wanted Eddie to push your legs back, knees to your ears and fuck his cum into your cunt as many times as he wanted to - possibly even making love to you at the same time. You weren’t going to be too picky. You wanted your soft pastel blue bedsheets to be stained and sticky under your ass as he. Just. Kept. Going.

Eddie had jumped at your request for him to sneak in on Friday night after your parents fell asleep. They’d had busy weeks at work. They wouldn’t be stirring until at least 10 am the next morning.

And that was how you found yourself under the gorgeous weight of Eddie’s naked form. He was smiling down with immeasurable happiness. He was so warm and solid and beautiful. Dreamy was the word that came to your mind. So dreamy, so pretty, and all yours.

His thick, calloused fingers were deep in your soaked cunt, massaging and stretching your puffy walls. Eddie always did this thing with his middle and ring finger, crooking them up to push you to the edge of orgasm and keep you there for a while. You said he only did it to show off his guitarist fingering skills; he said he did it because he just loved you that much.

“Gotta get you ready for me, princess. You wanted a long night, and you’re gonna get it.” He teased before licking a long, fat stripe up the column of your neck. “God, babe, I’m gonna slip right in. She missed meeee.” Eddie chuckled as you gripped his fingers and wiggled your hips. He had to appreciate that his being a little goofy during sex still got you squirming. 

“Eddie,” you whined, groping your tits and gazing up at him through half-lidded eyes, “Hurry. Up.” You moved to knot your fingers in his shaggy hair, now grinding desperately on his fingers - one of his rings bumping against your clit and fuck. You came with a muffled moan, Eddie having quickly silenced you in a deep kiss. He made sure that his tongue tasted every pretty noise you were making for him.

Eddie’s chest heaved as he pulled away. Like it was agony.

He ran the head of his swollen cock up and down your hole, pressing the tip in ever so slightly to have you claw at his forearms. You were going to draw blood from the bats, but, shit, it felt phenomenal. Nothing got his blood running hotter than seeing his lady all desperate. Craving, yearning, maybe even a little feral, much like himself.

“My girl wants it so bad, huh? My dick, my cum, me. Fuuuck, I love you.” He groaned, continuing to push his angry tip in and out of your cunt. He liked the tease of sex with you. The raw feeling of pushing both of you to the point of nearly mauling each other.

“Ed - Eddie, come on, please. I need you. I’ll ask so nicely if you want. Just-“ your pleas and begging were cut short by the glorious stretch of Eddie’s cock as he seated himself fully inside. It usually took some time for him to get in fully, but he was right; he slid right into the hot, sticky bliss. Your head slammed back into your fluffy pillows, and you had to bite your hand to contain the urge to scream. After two years of being together, he was still just so big. Fucking perfect, but still big. It would be best if you guys had done this at his place. Sure, the entire trailer park would find out that the Munson boy was getting his dick wet, but you would be able to be loud. However, the fantasy required your soft double bed and floral bedspread - your “chambers” that he would sneak into. 

The pace that was set immediately was brutal, like animals, like in the book. Yes, God, yes. It was all skin slapping skin and the obscene squelch of fucking without any barriers. Eddie leant down to press his forehead to yours so he could pant, whine and grunt into your mouth. He was so considerate when he was at your place and knew you guys had be quiet - well, quieter.

“You’re so so tight, baby. Is this what you wanted?” he whispered, hot breath fanning across your burning cheeks, “raw and fucking filthy in your nice, cosy bedroom, yeah?” He laughed breathily and moulded his full lips to yours. The slam of his hips never faltered as he grabbed and rubbed your waist - still maintaining a level of tenderness while splitting you open on his cock. He was chasing his orgasm with more desperation than usual. You made it clear that you would need to be leaking and creamy to fulfil this fun little fantasy, and who was he to deny the princess her requests? You’d been so damn polite when asking him for this too. 

“You said you wouldn’t laugh, Eds,” you murmured, pulling away from the searing kiss by literal millimetres. Legs wrapping around him and feet digging into his ass, he wasn’t going as deep as he could, and that needed to be changed. You could feel yourself gushing with every hard thrust, dangling on the precipice of cumming.

“Would never laugh at you. I’m having the time of my goddamn life here.” He sighed, a wide beaming smile spreading across his sweat-covered face. He was glowing under the light of your bedside lamp. Wow. Eddie’s big hands moved from your waist to the backs of your thighs. Yes, yes, yes, he hiked your legs up and back until you were folded in half. If you wanted deeper, then he was going to go as deep as physically possible. Eddie needed you to feel him in your fucking stomach.

Never in your life had you been so thankful for getting rid of your old spring mattress. Because the force behind Eddie’s thrusting was insane. He prided himself on having impressive stamina that only seemed to come out when he was inside you - quite frankly, Eddie never wanted to leave your cunt. That was especially the case now, with your toes accidentally tangling in his hair. “Oops, sorry,” you muttered, breaking away from your sex-induced haze to angle your feet differently. It would have been awkward, but this was with Eddie. Awkward was never even part of the conversation.

“You could kick me in the head right now, and I’d say thanks, don’t worry.” Eddie giggled, running a thumb over your sweaty cheek. He shifted slightly to get more comfortable for what he had planned - it might be a little risky, but it would be worth it. You reached up to fix the hair you’d messed up with your feet and giggled, but Eddie’s face showed that he was deep in thought about something. Before you could ask if anything was wrong, he spoke, “What’s on the other side of that wall?” He nodded his head towards the wall behind your metal-barred headboard.

“Linen closet, why?” you asked, the gears in your head turning quickly and figuring out his plan. He was calculating risk; you were so proud of him.

“And how far away is your parents' room?” 

“Other end of the hall.” Your breathing had moved onto panting now. The headboard had already started to knock against the wall a little, but Eddie was about to make it a whole lot worse. 

“Perfect. Hold these pretty legs back for me, please?” He was grinning like a horny maniac. You did as he asked almost a bit too quickly, holding your legs back and as wide as you could get them in your current position. “Atta girl. First load’s gotta be an extra special experience, right?” One of Eddie’s hands got a strong grip on your headboard while the other moved to flick and massage your clit in tight little circles. You whined at the contact, knowing that your fantasy was about to reach the first of several climaxes.

Eddie started up his almost punishing pace again. But this time, he had more leverage to force his cock into you and mould your walls to the shape of him. The squelch of fucking was somehow even louder than before. Now mixed with the sloppy sound of Eddie playing with your clit and grunting like an animal in heat. You weren’t much better with your whining and mewling. Reaching up to hold his ecstasy-coloured face as best you could.

“Aw, she’s all sensitive and weepy for me, isn’t she, babe?” Eddie groaned straight into your ear. Your legs had started to shake from just how deep you could feel his cock as it pounded into your g-spot. The reply he got from you was a sniffled nod and your big wet eyes staring up into his. “You wanna beg for it? I think you wanna beg for me to fill you up.” Fuck, he was so right. You hated when he was right.

“I-I need you to cum, Eds. I wanna feel it so fucking bad,” you hiccuped; it felt like you were on the verge of crying from how deliciously overwhelmed you were. “I’ve been good.” Eddie’s gaze snapped down to meet yours, and the look on his face was beautiful. His big eyes widened, and his jaw was slack as he whined at your comment. You had been such a good girl for him. You always were.

That did it. Eddie slammed into you with a few more, and his rhythm was pretty much gone by that point. When he came, he silenced his guttural wail by biting down on your shoulder hard. Normally, you would have scolded him for leaving a mark, but right now? It made the whole experience so much better as you came with him. 

The two of you stayed together, panting, for a while after that. Eddie didn’t want to pull out of you until he absolutely had to, and you relished in feeling his sweaty weight press you into the mattress. The intimacy for the moment was your favourite. For all that Eddie tried to make the world believe that he was mean and scary, he was far from it. He was practically purring as you ran your fingers through his hair and massaged his scalp - a big dorky smile on his face and everything. 

Eddie untangled himself from your body and sat up, scraping his hair out of his hair and fanning himself. The demon head on his chest was staring at you like it was proud. Bastard. Before you could form words to ask if Eddie needed water or anything, he flipped you over onto your stomach and pulled your ass up, back arching all pretty how he liked it. He stared at his cum oozing from your cunt in fascination. Yeah, you guys were going to be doing this again.

“Good for round two, sweetheart?” Eddie chirped, giving your ass a sharp smack. You whimpered and nodded - words wouldn’t be possible for the rest of the night; you could feel it in the throb of your clit. 

[jackdaw-kraai]

Jack! I need urgent assistance!

Why the fuck is it so hard to make a realistic fictional language?!

I have literally scoured the deepest, darkest places of the internet to try and understand how to make my own fictional language that is important to story but I just don’t get it.

I have watched behind the scenes Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Avatar to try and understand how they came up with such beautiful and articulate languages but once again, came up empty, it’s like trying to explain physics to a donkey AKA me.

Can you help me? And if you can, please explain it to me like I am a dumb toddler trying to learn how to write my name for the first time?

Oof. Now, there's many conlang guides out there, but they're all for people who actually like conlanging and I, dear reader, do not. I hate conlanging, I suck at it, and analytic grammar is a consistent foe of mine that I cannot beat. But, conlanging is one of the best ways to introduce a whole heaping helping of realism to your setting as well as getting you to really think about how said setting works as you need to figure out what would have an individual word and why. Now that'll make sense in a moment, I promise.

But first...

Jack's Quick 'n Dirty Guide To Conlangs For If You Hate Conlanging

Step One: sounds.

Sounds (ha!) easy right? Weeeeeell... yes and no. Now, the easy part is making the sounds, really. Just start babbling in a way that you want your conlang to sound like and get going! Sing a bit, put on whatever accent you want, really have some fun with it until it sounds right. You got that? Good, now note that down in plain text as best as you can. Do whatever makes sense to you, but make sure you know exactly how to pronounce the sound once you've annotated it so you can reproduce it later, trust me on this one. But now comes the hard part.

Step Two: IPA

If you don't know what IPA is, bless your heart you innocent soul, you're about to learn something that will make you lose a bit of innocence today. IPA stands for the International Phonetic Alphabet and it can annotate the exact pronunciation of any words in any language in the world. If you've ever had a dictionary in front of you and you see that little section underneath the word where it's written again but like, with upside down Es and symbols that look like æ and đ and even ɮ? Congrats, you know what IPA looks like. Now, this thing was designed by some very clever people with an eye for thoroughness but not for practicality. See, it can notate every pronunciation there is, but boy oh boy, will it not make that easy for you. Read up on it anyway, learn how to use it, pull out an afternoon for it, you're gonna need it. IPA Chart is a good website that will help you out here, it's an interactive version of the IPA alphabet with short pronunciation sound clips attached to each symbol. Done all that? Good. Now we get to the really bitchy part.

Step Three: notate every funny sound you made down in IPA

Yes, every single one. Pull up an excel spreadsheet, notate the plain text in one column, a pronunciation in the second, and leave a third open for later. Notate every single word as best as you can, and make sure to save your work. This is gonna be long work, this is gonna be tedious work, and it's gonna be necessary work. You won't like it, you won't have fun, but future you will thank you and you would do anything for that bitch so get notating until you get to

Step Four: What does anything even mean????

Finally, some fun again. Now we get to the part where you get to assign meaning to each sound you've produced. Remember how I advised you to sing a little song? Yeah? Excellent. A quick and easy way to get a bunch of words sorted is to write a roughly similar song in a language that does exist and one you preferably understand already, and use that as a "guide" of what each word is "supposed" to mean. Make your own rosetta stone! Give yourself a break, trust me, it's much easier this way. And don't be afraid to get creative. See one sound or syllable you used a lot? Great, that can be a pronoun or an article or something else that's often used in a language.

Example: I liked the word "ra" a lot, so that's the word for "I" in Karilaa. From there I picked a few other words I liked and roughly hashed out the following

Ra = I

Ta = You

Su = We

Vu = They

Easy, good, simple. I don't bother with gender because fuck gender, but if you want it, go for it champ, now's the time. And you know what else I noticed while doing this? I was using "ra" and "ta" a lot in the last syllables of words, so I figured out how tenses work in my language as well in one fell swoop and made them affixes to verbs.

Really, there are no rules, so make them up to suit whatever aesthetic you want your language to have, but make sure to write everything down. No exceptions. Everything has to be written down.

Step Five: Rinse and repeat

Congrats, you now have some basics of a language! You can basically use and reuse this recipe to get More Language of the language you already have and guess what! Now you already have some language so you won't have to start from scratch! It's like a sourdough starter! Now ain't that neat. Now, if you do this and keep meticulous notes like I told you to you'll essentially be building up your own dictionary as you go, ready to consult for all your future conlanging needs.

Now, is this how good conlangers do it? No! Hell no! Absolutely not! But I'm not a good conlanger, and if you want this guide, neither are you. I'm sorry, but I'd rather you hear it from me than them when they invoke J.R.R. Tolkien's ghost to roast you. This is a guide for people who want a conlang but suck at conlanging. This is a guide for people who can't do it all neat and according to the rules but need to brute force a bitch in order to get some practical results for immediate use.

Now go forth and create!

[tteokdoroki]

all the love in the world | k.bakugou.

⇝ pairing: katsuki bakugou x fem!reader.

⇝ word count: 5.1K

⇝ rating: 18+, mature.

⇝ genre: pro hero!au, engaged!au, fluff and smut.

⇝ summary: as hard to believe as it may seem, bakugou lives for time off, where the days begin with him waking up by your side and  end with him falling asleep right next to you, while he thinks of all the ways he can love you during the hours in between.

⇝ warning(s): please read ! fluffy domestic bakugou ( i think this needed a warning okay? ), smut ( characters aged up to 20s ), soft morning sex, fingering ( female recieving ), dry humping, light!praise, heavy!breeding kink, switch!reader, dom!bakugou.

⇝ author’s note(s): hellooo my loves ! as a celebration of me reaching 100+ followers, i bring you my very first written imagine !! i love the idea of domestic baku so i hope you enoy reading as i did writing !! special thanks to @ozzy-bozzy​ for the teddy bear bracelets idea hehe

⇝ masterlist | requests

katsuki bakugou considered himself to be a very lucky person.

when he was younger he’d been blessed by a powerful quirk which only lead him to exceed his classmates back in U.A. he’d graduated said school’s hero course top of his class, even if he’d failed his provisionals the first time round— nothing could stop him from becoming the best.

so when the hot headed blonde bagged the role of side kick at a top hero agency and then launched himself to the highest points in the hero charts as a pro later on, katsuki felt like all of his dreams had come true.

that was until, he’d proposed to you.

you were katsuki’s final dream, for him to wait for you at the end of the aisle— your watery smile just for him. 

that’s the vision he saw in his sleep. when you had said yes to him, the night you got engaged under the stars and amongst the roses, it was then that the explosive hero had realised how lucky he truly was.

he had loved you for a long time, katsuki had— he almost couldn’t remember the time when he hadn’t. in the time that you’d spent together; soft gazes and lingering touches, you’d taught him a lot and he’d learned through your tolerance and generosity, something that had rubbed off on him, something he’d so desperately needed to cool down his hot demeanour.

he was grateful for a lot of things, all of the things you’d taught him— but mostly the entirety of you. while you’d always said that neither of you completed each other and only made one another better, bakugou knew that his life would be complete with you in it forever.

 he knew  from the moment you’d pinned him down underneath you during training back in high school— that he was going to make you his wife someday.

“jesus katsu, why’re you up s’early? it’s supposed to be our day off,” you mumble into your silk sheets; his scent sewn into your pillows. katsuki likes the orange silk that lines your bed; mostly because of the colour and partly because other fabrics irritate his skin. with sleepy eyes, you blink up at the blonde and catch him staring mid act. like always, bakugou looks away with a heated blush and paws it away from his cheeks. “whatcha lookin’ at dummy?”

one of kastuki’s favourite things is the way you look when you first wake up, groggily rubbing the sleep away from your eyes with a pout on your lips as the sun hits your face just right— creating a halo effect around you, like you’re his guardian angel…but he wouldn’t ever admit that to you, at least not until his wedding vows. “it’s the only time i get to look at you without hearin’ the dumb shit that comes out your mouth, woman.” katsuki grumbles back, finally meeting your eyes again.  

he can clearly see the love glittering your irises and the faint smile that plays teasingly on your lips as if you know that he’s joking. unwillingly; bakugou feels himself mirror the grin that you bare and a happy warmth then spreads across his chest.

“we still have the whole day ahead for you to ogle me like that katsuki bakugou,” you hum sweetly, the tail end of your words falling into a light giggle. the ash blonde feels his heart flutter just from the sound; a candied melody to his ears that he could never get tired of hearing. 

reaching over your shoulder, katsuki uses his warm hands to roll you over onto his awaiting lap. 

your arms instinctively wrap around his neck as the sheets fall from your body to reveal yourself in one of his shirts with an old merch design and your fingers weave their way into his pretty blonde hair. 

now that you’re in his lap; the pro hero can see the smirk making its way into your face as you look down at him lovingly. “seems like you were doing more than just looking baby…”

your hips grind down against your lover’s now prominent erection that sits hidden in his dark sweats— earning a slight gasp from the man himself. “s-shut up, dumbass…” bakugou growls through gritted teeth while you move above him. 

his words stay lodged in his throat, he wants to tell you that you’re always on his mind no matter what he’s doing or looking at but instead they die down as he drops his head to your neck, leaving sweet kisses along the column of it.

early morning love making with you was what katsuki bakugou considered one of his many blessings. he loves being this close to you— feeling every dip in your skin and kissing every mark on your body, his lips work their way up from your jawline to your chin and finally attempting to land a solid kiss to your own lips.

“nuh, katsu—“ your breathless whine fills the air, sending shivers down the spine of the man below you. he moves up to kiss you again, gripping your hips tightly while your movements begin to sync. “no, morning…morning breath…”

bakugou huffs, hand finding the back of your head to tilt it down into a soft liplock— contrasting with the harshness of his earlier movements. “fuck morning breath, i haven’t made love to you properly in a fucking week so let me kiss you. fuck.” usually, katsuki would have added his salty pet name of ‘shitty woman’ to the tail end of his phrases but he bites his tongue, saving it for later.

you give into your fiancé then, falling in love with the way his lips meld against yours so passionately all over again. fingers that belong to bakugou dance underneath your shirt, finding you bare within the fabric. one hand slips between your plush thighs, smoothly rubbing circles into your swelling clit ever so gently.

your breath hitches as katsuki traps you under his touch, playing with your folds as they begin to grow slick and form a wet patch on his deep grey sweats, making him groan. 

the explosive pro pushes two of his digits past your entrance, curling them and watching with sparkling scarlet eyes as your mouth hangs open in of the prettiest moans katsuki’s ever heard— his mouth falls open with you while your head tilts back, exposing your sweat glimmering skin to the sun’s rays. “feel good baby? yeah, you like that?” he mumbles condescendingly, slowly pumping them inside of you. “yeah you do,  yeah you fuckin’ do.”

“yeah, katsu...more…” a  breathless moan escapes you with every thrust of bakugou’s hot fingers, the cheeky bastard setting off small scale explosions to stimulate you from within. he’s hot, the heat from his body filling the space between you and spreading right down to your glistening mound— causing slick to gush from your tiny abused hole. 

you can feel his cock pulse beneath you with every twist of his fingers to reach that spongy pleasure spot deep within your leaking hot walls.

katsuki’s thick fingers stretch open your tiny hole, making your mouth water at the thought of his weighty cock being the next thing press into you but your raging thoughts are swiftly interrupted by your fiancé— who pulls from you completely and sucks the two fingers into his mouth to lick them clean of your sweet nectar.

katsuki keeps his vermillion eyes locked on you, the lewd action making saliva pool on your tongue. his own pink muscle darts out to wet his lips, no doubt spreading the taste of you across them before making a move to kiss you. 

the pro is quickly stopped, your hands that once roamed his bare back and messed hair, now pinning his own above his head.

bakugou is a strong man, he wouldn’t have been a top hero if he wasn’t— he trained constantly and sparred often with his fellow heroes but he doesn’t resist when you grip his wrists in your free hand, releasing his hard cock from it’s restraints before it slaps against his well toned stomach.

milky precum leaks against his warm skin, while you prepare yourself to mount him. the pair of you let out a groan in unison as you sink down on the hero’s thick length— as if the tensions and stresses of the week have melted away just him being sheathed inside of you.

“mnnn, so fuckin’ tight baby, gonna need to fuck you open again…”

bakugou’s voice is low and gravelly from the early morning, just how you like as his hips roll up into yours— further pushing his fat cock into you. his tip barely grazes your cervix  as you set the pace, lifting yourself up and down to bounce on your lover’s length. 

the way you feel inside, your soft velvety walls and gushing pussy make him buck up into you with more fever, as his own symphony of moans and weightless gasps dance through your ears. “yeah? take this pussy katsuki…m-make it yours,” you sigh, grip on his wrists loosening to the point where you set him free.  the blonde’s hands immediately move to grip your ass tightly— smirking at you lazily while the pads of his fingers sink into your flesh.

you look beautiful to him, bouncing on his cock and dripping all over his pelvis under the early morning sun, the way the gold lights up your hazy lust filled eyes.  

the fire of desire burns brightly in the depths of katsuki’s stomach, love finds its way into each of his thrusts from then on— mind clouding with the desire to fill you up so good with his love as the leaking  head of his thick girth drags against your walls, prodding at the spot that has you seeing stars. “that’s right yn baby…fuck that cock, fuck yeah baby,” he whispers brokenly to you, chest rising and falling desperately while sweat beads on his hairline. “love you, love you s’much...”

bakugou watches your gaze on him soften at his confession, the words he doesn’t say often but shows you everyday still hanging in the thick, warm air.  “i love you katsu, p-please,” your erratic thrusts slow to somewhat of a passionate grind, two lovers pressed hotly against one another as the sounds of your moans twist with that of skin on skin.

knot in your stomach tightening, katsuki can feel your release creeping on you from the way you clench around him at every plunge deep inside your sweet hole. strong arms wrap around you, katsuki noticing how you shake from pleasure above him while he brings you down onto loving thrusts as if to draw you closer. 

“gonna cum!”

your fiancé nods into your neck, rubbing smooth circles over your back as he pulls out of your heat completely and earns a needy whine from you. your hole spasms around nothing, right on the edge of release before bakugou forces his girth back into your accepting pushing. “cum for me angel, right on this cock,” he pants, holding you close while he rocks into you. “i've got you baby, let it all out…”

“mph, baku-! oh !”

hips stilling above his, you scratch and claw at any part of bakugou’s skin that you can— shaking as your release splashes against him, sending your eyes rolling to the back of your head and white spots dancing across your vision. the tightness of your heat drives the pro right over the edge, hot ropes of thick cum painting your insides white as his release reaches your womb.

the pair of you lay still, catching your breath as you collapse forward on your lover’s chest. while your breathing slows, katsuki rubs warming circles into your back to help calm you down— only smiling softly when you look up at him with clear, affectionate eyes. “did so good for me yn, fuckin’ love it when you take my cock like that first thing in the morning,” his words are soft on his usually sharp tongue, bakugou smoothing a thumb over your cheek while using a forefinger to tilt your head up into a sweet kiss

“always and only for you, my love,” you hum, eyes fluttering shut at the simple gesture even after you pull away. “and if you keep cummin’ in me like that katsuki ‘m gonna end up pregnant one of these days…”

bakugou smirks, pressing smaller kisses all over your face to make you giggle. you smile and greedily accept each one, loving the these tender moments between yourself and your fiancé.  “maybe that’s the fucking point, dumbass,”  he quips, biting on your cheek after landing a kiss there. “trying to put a shitty little brat in you.”

despite the small bite to his words, a blush still manages to creep its way onto katsuki’s face as you lay your head down on his chest with a smack to his waist. the ash blonde means every word and you know it too, he can tell by the knowing smile and slight gleam in your eye.

you fall back asleep not long after bakugou cleans you up.

he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy counting every mark and bite he’d left on you as he tenderly wiped between your thighs and massaged over your skin. 

but he loved how cute you looked when curled up on his chest more, your hand clings to bakugou’s shoulder as if to check he’s still there even in your sleep— giving the hero ample opportunity to play with the ‘teddy bear’ bracelet thats cuffed to your wrist. you’d made it for one of your anniversaries; matching the ‘grizzly bear’ one on his own.

prying himself from your arms is no easy task for katsuki, your grip on him like an adorable iron vice or a child with a teddy bear. after setting himself free, the ash blonde with the crimson eyes heads down to the kitchen to make breakfast for the two of you— it was some what of a routine on your days off together, you always got the munchies after sex and bakugou knew just how to soothe your roaring appetite.

as he worked with the eggs and other breakfast ingredients, katsuki thought back to how much you praised him for his skills in the kitchen— he knew how much you loved his cooking and he would do anything to see you smile.

“god katsuki, i might have to start taking more days off it means i get to see my grizzly bear in the kitchen like this,” you hum from place leaning against the door frame. 

your fiancé turns round to face you with a light smirk, glimmering eyes inviting you further into the room. the explosive pro holds the sizzling pan he’d taken off the stove high above your head as you cuddle into his side, breathing in his warm caramel scent.

katsuki clicks his tongue, staring down at you fondly. “tell that to the fucking villains who fuck up the city every other day, maybe then we’d have more time to relax.” he counters, pulling a sweet chuckle from your sweet lips.

“if we start handing out your cooking, they’ll probably start turning themselves in!” you tease your lover back, swiping a bit of the pancakes from the pan above your head. katsuki grumbles and pats your ass indulgently— the supple skin peaking out from under the shirt that’s found it’s way back over your form. it’s a silent scold for eating before he’s fixed you a plate of all your favourites.

as usual bakugou pulls out your chair at the table, pressing his lips to your hairline before putting your steaming plate in front of you. your mouth waters while katsuki takes his seat opposite you with rolling eyes as he watches you tuck in to your breakfast. 

the entirety of your meal is filled with lingering gazes and hums of delight while you eat, almost as if you’re back on your first date ( bakugou spent half of the time watching you eat rather than doing so himself, but he just wanted to see if you liked the place ). 

leaning over the table to wipe syrup from your chin, the blonde smirks— quiet words falling calmly from his lips. “what do you want to do today, sweetheart?”

the birds chirps lovingly outside of your window, dancing under the sunshine— they remind you of your early mentor and often patrol partner hawks, who you needed to remember to invite to dinner soon. 

the weather is nice today and that gives you an idea. “let’s go out,” your eyes sparkle with a million dreams, each one bakugou wants to live out with you. “to the park with the roses, the pink ones where you—“

“where i proposed, got it,” katsuki smiles, the fond memory catching the tail end of his words. “i hear they introduced some new blooms too.”

you mirror his expression; stabbing your fork through a strawberry in the bowl of fresh fruit your lover had prepared for you. you hold the fork out to his lips and watch amusedly as he chomps the fruit from its place. “care to escort me, lover bear?”

“who else is going to? dumbass.”

“miss nightsky ! will ya sign my bag!”

“that’s a nice bag sweet one, you sure i can sign it?”

katsuki loves the way you are with kids, even though you’re a massive child yourself.

the pair of you decided to walk to the park; since the nice weather held up and it wasn’t too far from your private neighbourhood— even though it took a little longer to get there than expected. 

not that either of you minded, but many curious fans stopped to talk and ask for pictures; some even asked for autographs which you happily gave them. while the mighty ground zero was slightly grumbly about it, he adored how kind and patient you were with everyone you met no matter how old they were.

his vermillion eyes, though brownish looking under golden light, sparkle as you ruffle the little kid’s hair and wave politely to their awaiting parents. bakugou wants to have kids with you one day. 

it was something he hadn’t really thought about until recently, he knew it would be difficult, with both of you reaching the heights of your careers and the pair of you were still very private about your relationship as well, with word of your recent engagement already slipping into the tabloids.

there was no doubt that they’d speculate about your marriage too, no matter how private you kept it. keeping a child secret would be even harder. 

and yet; the thought of you holding a baby…his baby would, on some nights lull him to sleep.

you squeal like a little girl when the ash blonde stops to buy you an ice cream from a van by the entrance of the park; he can’t stand how much you love mint chocolate chip but buys you a towering double scoop anyways.  “how do you even eat that toothpastey shit?” bakugou grumbles, finishing off his orange popsicle as you walk into the flower garden.

“says the one who likes orange, you have no taste katsuki bakugou.” you chide but take his freehand nonetheless. the explosive pro’s thumb brushes over the back of your hand while you make your way through and he can’t help but pluck one of the pretty blooms from the bushes to tuck behind your ear.

you scold him for taking the flowers but your smile betrays you as katsuki dips you for a honeyed kiss on the lips. 

he’s never one for PDA but this was your spot, here just last year bakugou had sunk to his knees in front of you with an expensive diamond ring you were eyeing months before ( you would never say anything but katsuki always picked up on these things ). 

he would also never admit it, but his hand shook with every word that passed his lips and you were sure he had been crying harder than you were while he slipped a ring on your finger.

your secret kisses and tangled limbs hiding deep in the rose bushes are soon completely soaked by an onslaught of unexpected rain.

you shriek at the rain while katsuki grabs your hand, free arms thrown over your heads as you make a dash from the flower garden and head for the main streets in order to catch a bus.

the pair of you giggle as you stumble onto the vehicle, ringing out your drenched clothes and wiping at your wet faces as it heads home. bakugou pulls you into his arms, head resting atop yours to draw you closer— the heat from his quirk allows him to keep you warm and you get a load full of his sugary scent as well ( not that you mind ).

you stay like that on through the rustling traffic, cuddling like a cat to your heated fiancé but a tug on the bottom of bakugou’s wet shirt captures your attention. the pair of you look down to catch the innocent eyes belonging to a darling little girl. “u-uh h-hi mister gwound zewo!” the little one stumbles through her words and in the corner of your eyes you can spot the girl’s mother and give her a reassuring grin.

bakugou’s gaze softens at the curly haired girl and releases you to crouch down to her level despite the shaking bus.  his hand still holds onto yours though. 

he ruffles her hair with his free hand, making your heart warm— there was a side of katsuki the public never really got to see, where the hotheaded pro could be tender and quiet and often quite reserved. 

the media got a kick out of playing on the ash blonde’s explosive nature but moments like this let the real bakugou shine through.

“hey there kiddo, whatcha’ got there?” katsuki mumbles delicatley, noticing the girl hiding something behind her back.

“tisswue! for my favouwite hewo!” the little one says, gingerly holding it out to the blonde’s wet face for him to use. bakugou taps his cheek and cleans closer to let the little girl wipe his face with a tiny chubby hand. they chatter for the rest of the ride home— the girl bashfully twirling her hair around her fingers as katsuki compliments her quirk.

leaning your head on katsuki’s soused shoulder while you walk home, you look up at him with an adoring expression, wondering what he’d be like with a little girl of your own. “that was quiet adorable mister ground zero, you stole my hear away!” you tease, kissing your linked hands.

“yeah? well don’t get used to it shitty woman.” he says through gritted teeth and marches you both through the rain to get you home but the blush on his face tells you otherwise. if you ever had a daughter, you could only imagine what he’d be like with her.

katsuki heads straight for the shower when you get in, leaving you to pick a movie and order takeout as you’d discussed on the way home.

it was a regular routine for you both on nights off; you always picked the movie because if you left it up to your fiancé you’d end up watching some boring documentary on all might or cooking ( he was a closeted nerd at heart ). 

you settle on a cheesy romcom that you’ve seen about a hundred times because for one;  it’s your favourite and two, you’ll never get tired of seeing bakugou cry towards the end of the movie.

“take out should be here in twenty!” you call to your lover, when he passes by you to enter your living room.

“got it, now go wash up before you catch a cold, stupid—“ the ends of katsuki’s words are cut off by your stream of giggles, bouncing off your cream coloured walls. your ash blonde fiancé has half a mind to curse you out for slapping his ass through his fresh set of sweat pants but rolls his eyes nonetheless. 

he finishes pulling his tank top over his head while heading deeper into the room, not wanting to answer the door without one ( as much as your regular delivery driver would like that ).

while in the shower, you manage to scrub away stains of the rain and soreness from the day— washing over sweet love marks from katsuki with pride. a temporary reminder of his eternal love for you and you only. 

there’s already a change of clothes waiting for you when you step out of the shower; one of his old shirts and a set of boxers that you slip into comfortably. your nostrils are filled with nothing but the alluring scent of burning sugar, the traces left by bakugou himself.

he’s already munching on a box of tempura by the time you’ve headed back downstairs, crimson eyes light up when they land on you and you make a dive for the couch— rolling into katsuki’s side. “did you tip the delivery driver?” you ask, watching as your fiancé dips a piece of the food into some sauce before he holds it up to your lips.

“damn right i did, i didn’t wanna though…they kept staring at my arms,” bakugou revels in the way you laugh around the piece of food he pushes into your mouth. you chew with a grateful smile, the look of amusement never leaving your pretty face. “whatcha laughin’ at dumbass?”

“i think you forget how much the public loves your arms, ground zero.”

as soon as you press play on the movie, time seems to fly away from you both— the air is filled with streams of laughter and moments where you swipe from one another’s plates, picking on one another fondly. somehow by the time the film reaches it’s climax the food has been devoured and you’ve ended up huddling into bakugou’s chest. 

fingers laced with yours, bakugou twirls the diamond engagement ring you have on, around your finger, smiling at the precious reminder that you’re to be his forever and always.  “where do you think we’ll be in the future?” you question quietly, nuzzling into your fiancé’s side.

“married, of course.” crimson eyes find yours in the dimly lit room, almost rolling annoyance as if your question is the dumbest thing in the world. in response, you lean up and squish the explosive pro’s cheeks together and beam up at him while he scowls at you.

“stupid, you know that’s not what i meant,” the words despite harsh, leave your lips dreamily and a contented expression crosses your face. “i see us with kids, in a house much bigger than this one and a backyard that stretches for miles and miles—“ your words die warmly in your throat, figuring that you’ve gotten slightly carried away with the fanticies you’ve made for yourself and katsuki. 

in your mind, you can’t help but conjour up a litter of tiny bakugou’s running around a plush green garden— maybe a little dog too and your heart swells in your chest at the idea.

the hot head squeezes your hand, resurfacing you from your sea of thoughts. “you want kids? with me?” his voice is barely above a whisper, all of his vulnerabilities splayed out in the tone as he looks at you warmly.

“a whole family with you, as many as you want.”

suddenly, bakugou has you flipped onto your back and pinned underneath his muscular frame. 

his warm breath fans across your face making your eyes fall heavy with adoration. “four.” the blonde grunts, swooping down to brush his lips gently across yours, not quite kissing you much to your dismay. “i want four of those snotty little gremlins with you, maybe have the fifth by accident and then we’ll get a big fucking house for them to destroy—“

“f-five kids katsu?” you gasp out your words at katsuki starts to press increasingly harsh kisses to your jawline, settling on your neck while he licks over bites he’d left earlier today. 

bakugou murmurs something about ‘you said as many as i want’ before he’s growling at your hands that find their way into his blonde locks, tugging on them tightly as pleasure overwhelms your senses. 

he hums against your sweet skin, finding his place between your legs at the same time as his thoughts take him away from you. he’d love to see you pregnant, so full of his love and his children.

the movie is long forgotten by now as lust settles in every corner of the room. hands push beneath your shirt, groping and massaging your breasts to pull all sorts of sounds from you. 

bakugou forces a knee between your thighs, finally capturing your lips in a hungry and heated kiss— his tongue slips in your mouth after he pinches your thigh, fighting yours in a passionate dance for dominance. “gonna fuck a shitty little brat into you, yn,” katsuki almost whines as he pulls away from your inviting lips to press your foreheads together. you look gorgeous beneath him, flustered with swollen lips from each of your rough kisses and there’s no doubt in his mind you’re thinking the same about him. “gonna fill you up so good, gonna make pretty babies with you, hah?”

“ka-katsuki!” you can’t help but mewl at his breathless sinful words while you fist at his tank top. everything is hot, burning hot and you grind up into him with a newfound desperation, the friction against his hardening length sending your eyes rolling with ecstasy.. “we’re not even— mmm god, right there— we’re not even married yet!”

“gonna be at some point, why waste time fucking trying? not when i can cum in you and give you one right fucking now—“  bakugou moans heavily into your ear, diving back into a sloppy kiss as he fumbles around with the string of his sweatpants. 

you’re whimpering out for him, pulling the blonde into a lustful trance while you make a move to kick off your underwear when the sound of shattering glass pierces through the bubble of horniness you’ve both created. “shit.”

you both freeze and your matching gazes drop to the floor; a rapidly growing stain of red wine spilling onto the carpet under the coffee table your take out was on. 

the fluffy white rug had been a housewarming gift that katsuki begrudgingly accepted from your old school friend and fellow pro, izuku midoriya— so the sight of the now ruined rug makes you both burst out into harmonious laughter. you’re sure the number one wouldn’t mind. it’d make a great wedding story too.

you focus your eyes back on katsuki, cupping his face as that same love filled smile from earlier returns to your face. ”let’s start trying tomorrow, then?”

“tomorrow it is.” bakugou grins back, dotting your hairline with sweet pecks before cuddling into you.

baby making can wait for now, he supposes, for with another day off— he has all the time and all the love in the world to give to you.

[mxpothos]

Drawn To Each Other: Chapter 1

Summary: 

"Crap, sorry, I'm going to be late getting back to the office. I'd better get going." She looked up at him and gave a shy smile. "Thank you, again. I think I needed to hear that today." Steven felt his heart flip over in his chest.

"O'course, I'm glad to have helped."

She started to walk away slowly and gave Steven a small wave.

"Well, have a good day, Steven. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow?" she said hopefully.

Steven felt his heart fly up into his throat.

Pairing: Steven Grant/Original Female Character, Steven Grant/Reader Word Count: 3k Rating: General, future chapters will be 18+ Tags/Warnings: Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Eventual Romance, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut

Notes: This is intended to be a reader-esque fic written in the third person. I had thought about posting alternate versions of this story using different pronouns for the main character (he/him, they/them etc)? If anyone has interest in that please let me know! 

Read Chapter 2  here

To: T, Jess <jess.t@evtinc.co.uk> From: Management <mgmt@evtinc.co.uk> Subject: data audit Attachments: DataCleanUpReport.xls

Jess,

Please see the attached document with the results of our data audit for last month. The items noted in column G need to be corrected to the items listed in column H. These corrections need to be input into the system by the end of the week. Please advise once complete.

Sincerely, Management

“Really? Again? Thanks a fucking lot” Jess huffed while slouching back into her desk chair. She was sick of leadership offloading their busywork onto her. It felt like everyone else in the department was assigned to some interesting project or another, except her. Nope, Jess was left to tidy up other people’s mistakes and deal with the drudgery nobody wanted to do.

Jess could feel a snarky reply itching its way out of her. She opted to lock her computer and depart for lunch before she did any damage. It was days like today that she was glad her office was behind-the-times enough to still have cubicles, so no one could see the agitation in her movements. Every other company Jess had worked for embraced the “open office” mentality. Being elbow to elbow with your coworkers without a sliver of privacy quickly made a bad mood so much worse.

Jess yanked her bag out of her desk drawer, and grabbed her umbrella for good measure. It was always rainy this time of year in London. She finally felt her shoulders start to relax as she walked out of the building’s front doors. She stopped at a kebab shop down the street to get a doner wrap, and wolfed it down during the rest of her walk.

Her office was only a few blocks away from the famed British Museum, and Jess had taken to spending her lunch breaks there a few times a week. Doing so had several perks -

1) It was free

2) It was relaxing and educational

And, most importantly,

3) It was the last place any of her coworkers would ever go during lunch.

Jess had recently started bringing her sketchbook along to practice drawing the many sculptures, statues, or even other visitors. It helped her feel more human, being surrounded by art and artifacts while practicing an art herself. Being an office drone will wear you down if you don’t fight it somehow.  

Today seemed to be a bit busier than usual. There were throngs of people crowding the information desk as Jess walked inside. She had hoped to grab a museum map to keep on hand, but didn’t feel like contending with the horde of people. Jess cut around the crowd and walked towards her usual corner of the museum. She had been working her way through the many Ancient Greece and Rome rooms for the last few weeks. Today, she felt like something different.

Jess paused at a sign listing the exhibits in this wing.

“Assyrian sculpture… Egyptian sculpture…hmm that sounds about perfect” she muttered to herself.

It was much calmer in the Egyptian sculpture exhibits. Maybe a dozen or so people were spread throughout the interconnected rooms. Jess took in the gorgeous statues as she slowly walked through, waiting for one to catch her eye as today’s sketch subject. She noticed there was a gift shop to her right. She glanced over and scanned the front of the counter, hoping to see a stack of museum maps like the information desk had.

“Oh, ah hello there! Can I help you?”

Jess turned to see the source of the, rather cheerful, query. The museum employee standing behind the counter looked up at her eagerly, dark wavy hair falling above his brow as he leaned over the register. Jess blinked, and finally realized she hadn’t responded to him yet.

“Oh um no, no thank you, just looking!” she stuttered out. “Well… actually, I was wondering if you had any of the exhibit maps here? I meant to grab one up front but there was such a big crowd. I know I can just pull it up on my phone… but, I prefer to have a physical copy, you know?”

Jess mentally kicked herself as she over-explained to this man who certainly didn’t care why she wanted a map.

“Ah, I’m afraid we don’t keep any of the maps or pamphlets back here," the man said in an apologetic tone.

"That's fine, no worries! Just wanted to check." Jess reassured him.

"Pretty stupid not to, now that you mention it eh? I should say something to my boss. Those would be more useful than half the stuff back here, like all these jelly scorpions. I mean what does that have to do with Egyptian history? Honestly I -”

The man cut himself off and shook his head, eyes closed.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to get going on a rant there” He looked at her again with an embarrassed smile.

Jess gave what she hoped was a sympathetic smile.

"Not at all, I mean I can't say I disagree with you. Though, admittedly, those hippos over there are pretty cute" she nodded to a pile of hippo plush toys and chuckled.  

"Well, technically, those are the goddess Taweret.” The man said with a teasing glance, “But, yeah, I s'pose they are cute. I think she would approve of them, actually.”

He paused for a moment before looking back at Jess.

“Right! So, er, no maps unfortunately. But I’d be happy to help direct you myself! I know this museum backwards and forwards by now.”

Jess chuckled softly. “Sure, I didn’t really have anything specific in mind. I like to come here on my lunch breaks and sketch the artifacts. I’ve been through most of the Greek and Roman exhibits, so I decided to come through here today.”

The man instantly perked up with excitement at hearing this.

“That’s just lovely! Well there’s loads to see and draw here. Over there is the sculpture of King Ramses the second, and down here we have -”

As the man animatedly explained what and where seemingly every artifact in the exhibit was, Jess took a moment to properly observe him. He wore a simple gray jacket over a slightly rumpled but brightly patterned shirt. A nametag on the front jacket pocket revealed his name was Steven. He was very handsome for a gift shop worker, with striking features and an attractive build obscured by his frenetic energy and ordinary clothing. Dark circles under his warm brown eyes hinted at some unseen stress in his life, but you would never guess it otherwise. He spoke with more passion than Jess could ever remember having in her own workplace.

“- and of course you simply MUST see the Rosetta Stone down there. Although, ha, I s’pose it wouldn’t be much for drawing would it?”

He suddenly looked bashful again, glancing back at Jess.

“It's just a big old block with some writing on it, innit?” He chuckled hesitantly “But… it did allow us to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. So, er, it’s a rather useful big old block I’d say.”

He looked down at the counter and fiddled with some of the merchandise, the confidence he’d shown just moments ago seemed to evaporate.

“Well, er, I’ll let you get to it then.” He suddenly reverted to customer service mode, “Is there anything else I can help you with, miss?”

Jess flashed her best you’re-doing-great-sweetie smile at him.

“No, thank you, I really appreciate your recommendations.” She remembered less than half of what he’d told her, but his enthusiasm was incredibly charming.

He smiled back at her shyly “Always glad to help. Have a great day, miss.”

Jess started to walk away but thought better of it. Before she could think it through, she found herself turning back to the gift shop clerk.

“If you’re still here when I’m done, I can show you whatever I end up sketching. If you like…”

She surprised him as much as she did herself. He perked back up and grinned at her.

“I'd love that! I won’t be going anywhere ‘til closing tonight, so, you know where to find me -” He paused for half a beat “- right here. Yep.” He chuckled timidly.

“Great! Well, I’ll see you later - “

Jess pointedly glanced at his nametag again.

“- Steven.”

She gave him another warm smile and turned on her heel down the hall. She did not see Steven gazing after her with a flustered grin on his face.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Steven watched her walk away and waited for his heart rate to go back to normal. It was several minutes before he realized he still had a goofy smile plastered on his face, replaying the interaction in his head.

He made a mental note to ask for her name when she came back. Then, he felt a small lurch in his stomach at his next thought.

If she comes back.

Of course, he was getting ahead of himself. She was just being kind to him. He'd spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of museum visitors since working here. None of those interactions went beyond surface level. None of those people would remember him or think about him once they stepped away from the gift shop counter. There was no reason to expect this time would be any different, right?

No, this was just an unusually pleasant interaction with an unusually pleasant patron. Nothing more. At the very least, it had brightened his day significantly.

And… it was the closest to anything resembling flirting he had experienced in ages.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Jess meandered through the exhibits and settled in front of a row of lion goddess statues. The plaque indicated they were representations of the goddess Sekhmet, and were likely commissioned by King Amenhotep III.

There was no bench so Jess sat on the floor. She pulled out her sketchbook and pencils, and looked up at the artifacts in front of her. She started out with a rough impression of the four statues together. Then she moved on to more detailed sketches of one statue's lion head, and then her hands resting on her lap. She captured the damaged sections as well as the skillful carvings in the stone.

Her mind wandered, not for the first time, to the sense of awe at being surrounded by works that were carved thousands of years ago. How many hands had touched these statues? How many people had played a part in their creation? Had gazed upon them where they once stood in Egypt? And then, how many had helped steal them away from their homeland to be put on display in a stuffy museum in England? Had they heard the bombs falling during the blitz? These Sekhmet statues had literally seen kingdoms, empires, rise and fall. The stories they might tell.

Jess checked the time on her phone.

Crap, better start heading back to the office.

She put a few finishing touches on her sketch and packed up to leave. Without thinking, she automatically started heading towards the museum entrance. Then she remembered her conversation with the gift shop clerk - Steven.

"Shit…" she hissed under her breath.

Why did I say I'd show him my sketches? I'm such a dork. He was probably just humoring me.

Still, she didn't want to leave him hanging. He'd seemed genuinely interested in seeing what she drew. And besides, if she was going to keep coming here she didn't want to make things awkward with any of the staff.

She walked back towards the gift shop, slightly hoping there would be a line of customers to give her an excuse to leave.

Jess rounded the corner into the gift shop area. There was Steven sitting behind the counter, not a customer in sight. Great.

Steven did an absurdly comical double take as Jess walked over. He stood up so quickly that he sent a pile of sticker packs flying across the counter.

"Oh, hey, you're back! Er, I mean, did you find everything you were looking for today?"

Jess couldn't help giggling in amusement. She had never seen someone look so weirdly cute while stumbling over themselves. She also couldn't remember the last time someone had such a reaction to her entering a room. It was a heady feeling.

"Yeah! I ended up settling on the row of Sekhmet statues around the corner there."

She tried to make eye contact with Steven as she spoke, but found herself unable to hold it for long. He gazed at her with such a rapt look on his face, hanging on her every word. Jess felt a blush creep up her neck, and made a show of digging her sketchbook out of her bag as an excuse to look away. Much to her relief, Steven quickly filled the space left by her silence.

"Lovely choice. Those Sekhmets are some of my favorites. Really interesting, Amenhotep was apparently obsessed with her. He commissioned hundreds of those statues and put them bloody everywhere, even in his tomb. I believe the ones in the museum here were originally from Thebes? Or was it Karnak?" Steven furrowed his brow and looked up towards the ceiling while searching his memory. After a beat he looked back at Jess and the sketchbook in her hands.

"D-did you find them to be good drawing subjects, then?" Steven fidgeted his hands together.

"I did, they're so beautiful. Even with the wear and damage. Um, if you wanted to see…" Jess half heartedly gestured towards her sketchbook.

"Please, absolutely!" Steven answered a little too quickly.

Jess looked down, trying to hide her growing blush. She opened to the pages she had sketched today and put the book down on the counter, rotating it to face Steven. He bent over to examine them, careful not to touch the sketches themselves.

"Brilliant, these are just brilliant, wow." Steven said in a low voice, shaking his head with a grin. "Someone here is hogging all the creative talent, - "

He looked up to lock eyes with Jess, and gestured towards her,

"- you." He chuckled self consciously.

If Jess wasn't blushing before she certainly was now.

"That's really sweet of you to say. They're just simple sketches." Jess thumbed the strap of her bag and looked at her sketchbook sitting on the counter. "I'm not a real artist or anything… it's just something I like to do in my free time. "

"No way, you're really talented! These are gorgeous. They're not just life-like but they feel… alive, like you captured a spirit hidden in the stone itself."

Jess looked up to meet Steven's gaze as he continued.

"There's something special here. I see those statues every day… but, looking at what you've drawn, it feels like I'm seeing them in a new way."

Steven paused and held Jess's gaze. Jess couldn't tell if she wanted to hug him or just burst out crying from his unexpectedly thoughtful compliment. The best she could muster was a small, quiet -

"...thank you. Really. You're… you're very kind." She gave him an embarrassed smile.

Steven beamed back at her.

"I mean, I'm no artist myself. I'm just a gift shop clerk, what do I know? But I think these are brilliant and that you're very talented."

He handed the sketchbook back to Jess. She got a glance of her watch as she put it back in her bag.

"Crap, sorry, I'm going to be late getting back to the office. I'd better get going." She looked up at him and gave a shy smile. "Thank you, again. I think I needed to hear that today."

Steven felt his heart flip over in his chest.

"O'course, I-I'm glad to have helped."

Jess started to walk away slowly and gave Steven a small wave.

"Well, have a good day, Steven. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow?" she said hopefully.

Steven felt his heart fly up into his throat.

"Sure! I'll be exactly right here, again. Well, unless my boss puts me on inventory, but hopefully not." He chuckled nervously and waved back to her. Then he remembered his mental note from earlier.

"Wait, ah, miss, d'you mind my asking what your name is?"

"Oh, right, not at all! It's Jess."

"Jess, lovely to meet you. I'm Steven, with a V." He pointed to his nametag.

To her continued embarrassment, Jess heard herself giggle in response.

"Lovely to meet you too, Steven with a V. See you tomorrow."

She turned and walked out of the exhibit towards the exit. It felt like there was an electric current humming through her body. She couldn't stop smiling to herself the whole walk back to the office.

Jess got back to her cubicle and settled into her desk chair with a sigh.

Steven with a V.

She was already looking forward to tomorrow’s lunch break.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Steven watched Jess walk away and collapsed back into his chair behind the counter.

He looked at the glass encased artifact sitting opposite the gift shop.

"Tell me that really just happened, please?"

His reflection in the glass crossed its arms and laughed

Oh yeah bud, that definitely just happened.

"D’you think she'll actually come back tomorrow? Do you think she'll actually want to see me again? I mean…" Steven trailed off with a sigh.

She came back today didn't she? I think she might.

"Well, hopefully I don't make an ass of myself again." Steven sighed and sank deeper into the chair.

His reflection uncrossed his arms and took a few steps forward.

Hey, despite all odds I think you actually did pretty good back there. She seemed to like you! Try not to worry about it. If it's meant to be, it'll come naturally. And… at the very least, I think you made her day by complimenting her art. That counts for something.

Steven smiled weakly.

"Thanks, Marc."

Any time, Steven.

______

Chapter 2