#and on a sunday evening too 🥰

[anachilles]

-> fever pitch.

Jesus, this is rough. Something’s gotta give. He needs some relief. But… “Buck…” Bucky managed out, mournful and apologetic as Gale continued to grind down on him, shifting his hips back and forth in a growingly desperate, stuttering rhythm, like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and finding none of the blessed friction he was seeking.  Objectively, more than anything he wanted to give Gale what he needed, feeling the sharp sting of inadequacy at not being able to totally do so up to this point. For failing to take care of him as he needed to be taken care of in the most carnal, primordial of ways, one that facilitated their very beings and all that which made them who they were. As it was, though, he couldn’t stifle the instinct to jerk away as Gale stubbornly clenched and released around his achingly spent cock.

-> read on AO3! <-

[martyrbat]

[ID: an uncoloured drawing for a panel next to the publicized version. They're both from the comic Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #194. In them, Batman is shown from the waist up. He's looking at Jim Gordon, who's off panel, with a penitent expression after being accused of something he secretly did do. He has his palm pressed against his chest and is blocking the bat emblem as his other hand is clasped ontop of it. In the initial drawing, there's a halo floating above his head as well as several tiny hearts mixed in with the lights that surround him. In the publicized panel, the hearts and halo has been removed and two speech bubbles have been added. He's in front of a terra rose background and is starting to say, “Jim, I don't even know what you're...” But Jim cuts him off, saying, “Stop it. I'm tired of this.”

The third photo is a description of the drawing from the artist's (Seth Fisher) website. It reads: This is another page that the DC editors changed: no halos or hearts around Batman, no matter how (disingenuously) contrite he is. In the final edition, the halo and heart in the center bottom frame have been excised.]

[httpiastri]

ok he’s literally a racing driver so this is SO CLICHE AND SO like DUH?! but celebrating paul’s podiums and wins with him🥹 our boy has gotten 6 podiums in all 6 rounds so this had be said but like ITS SO FLUFFY AND CUTEEEEE!! im genuinely so proud of him cause seriously what an accomplishment. i just rewatched paul’s radio of him saying he was already crying cause he didnt think he made podium but he did and UGHHH it got me in my feels all over again. like him running up to you carrying his trophy and picking you up spinning you around with you telling him how proud you are. IDK HIM SAYING HE WON BC OF YOU?! (lets say him and y/n weren’t tgt last season but now they are) and everyone just staring at you guys all smiley cz ur so cute tgt but they can’t even cringe bc even they could feel how in love you are w e/o?!?!? im going insane. ITS GIVING “where’s the trophy? he just comes running over to me” -the alchemy tswift AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ok thats all (pa17 first win in austria this week🤞🏼)

-🧸

aaaaaaa "him running up to you carrying his trophy and picking you up spinning you around" is literally what i have written in a fic for him 🥺 no but fr i think it would be so cozy to be there with him during a race, especially when he does well... i mean ive cried just at the thought of his first f2 win, so imagine being there when he actually gets it?? there would be rivers of tears 😭 and him saying he did it for you ??? h e l p...... and god everyone around would be so jealous bcs yes indeed you're in love 🥰

also aaaa your ask got me thinking about like what if you got together towards the end of the last season, so you've been with him through everything bad that's happened... getting dropped by merc, not getting a prema seat..... and so it's so emotional when he wins because !! "this is what we talked about baby, you're proving them all wrong!!" 🥲

but god dont even remind me of the radio from his first podium... its so crazy how audio works because i was listening to it the other day and instantly got thrown back to the moment when it happened? and how crazy proud i was and the tears i cried and just...

[theplantqueer]

A little something for the emo kids on here (most of Famous Last Words by MCR)

Warning! Flashing lights esp at the end!

(I saw my chem tonight and belted out the lyrics with tens of thousands of other queers while gerard way did their little gay writhing onstage. very good.)

-

[Video description: An arena from high up and off to the side a little and almost completely full. The recording starts at the line "So many bright lights they cast a shadow" and the performance is high energy and earnest! There's two screens on either side showing closeups of all the band members and some shots of the audience singing along adoringly, and the various lights are whirling around and changing colours a bunch to add to the atmosphere and energy. The audience can be heard singing almost every word of the song! /end ID]

[avatardoggo]

i held a man’s hand today

[cheriafreya]

my brain at 4am: holy shit HSR x Fate Stay Night collab next year.......

[afterglowsainz]

bye | charles leclerc, alexandra saint mleux

pairing: charles leclerc x singer!reader x alexandra saint mleux, reader x ex!max verstappen

summary: when max breaks up with you, you find solace in his childhood rival and his stunning girlfriend

fc: taylor swift

request: here

a/n: guys i’m not even a charles girlie but he looked so happy in that podium i wanted to cry

—

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, francisca.cgomes and others

yourusername always the biggest pleasure, paris🤎

view all comments

username she’s unreal

username forever obsessed with this tour

username watching the video i record of vigilante shit over and over

username max verstappen can you fight??? 🤨

username the most magical night fr

alexandrasaintmleux 💗

charles_leclerc ☺️

username max not even liking this but charles and alex …

username they’re hilarious 😭

liked by redbullracing, charles_leclerc and others

maxverstappen1 free practice was okay, now we can focus on quali and the race

view all comments

username no but max being furious and still finding a way to post charles 😭

username no power on earth can separate those two

username can’t believe we’re watching the fall of red bull in real time

username FREE MY MAN FROM THAT TRACTOR

username time for me to suggest y/n going to the grand prix and bring max good luck 😁

username frfr she hasn’t been in forever

username lestappen is alive and breathing i see

liked by ynupdates, f1gossip and others

f1wags y/n y/l/n on saturday and sunday at the paddock for quali and the grand prix

view all comments

username glad to see she’s still alive 😭

username omg i thought she wasn’t gonna go with the tour and everything

username the best wag everrr

username so iconic

username OMG SHE SAW THE COMMENTS

username y/n in the paddock means a good race for max i know it 🧿

username the way i had completely forgot she was dating max 😭

username those two don’t interact with each other anymore i swear 😩

liked by f1wags, ynupdates and others

f1gossip max verstappen and girlfriend y/n y/l/n were seen fighting outside their hotel after the grand prix, y/n later walked away and left max alone

view all comments

username damn

username right after we thought everything was okay 😔

username no because the first gp my girl goes to after forever and they fight?

username idc what happened i’m blaming max

username lol agree

username guys be honest do you think they’re breaking up???

username my heart says no but my head says they haven’t been seen together for a while and when they do they always fight so…

username yes

liked by charles_leclerc, gracieabrams and others

yourusername fresh out the slammer … into the studio

view all comments

username HUH?

username miss girl ??? explain

username new music yay!

username is the caption a lyric or something ??? WDYM FRESH OUT THE SLAMMER

alexandrasaintmleux sooo excited! 💕

yourusername 💞💞💞

username alex what do you know

username is this like a happy song or is it going to make me hate men?

username no because i need to know too 😩

liked by yourusername, flavy.barla and others

alexandrasaintmleux with a full heart ❤���

view all comments

username i love their friendship

username guys charles made it to the feed!

yourusername pretty gorgeous beautiful everything

alexandrasaintmleux 🤭

username no but y/n in the last slide took me out 😭

username SAME i thought this was a charles post

charles_leclerc favorite girls❤️

alexandrasaintmleux 💘

username “girls” ????

username explain !!?

username is this a safe space to say what i’m thinking? …

alexandrasaintmleux’s instagram stories

[caption 1: 🍝] [caption 2: 💘]

liked by f1wags, pierregasly and others

ynupdates charles leclerc, alexandra saint mleux, kika gomes and pierre gasly at tonight’s show of y/n’s tour in milan

view all comments

username i love their friendship they’re so supportive of her🥰

username now THAT is an outfit

username alexandra the fashion icon that you are

username this is such a green flag for all of them

username friends who support y/n >>>>

username notice how max has been quiet since y/n won charles in the divorce

username i know that man is FUMING

username no but seriously i’m glad she still has supportive friends after the break up 😔

username was i the only one who noticed that she kept looking at the vip tent while singing the love/crushing songs? 🤭

username which could mean nothing!

username WHAT WERE THE SURPRISE SONGS

username invisible string and sweet nothing!

username :0

liked by ynupdates, f1gossip and others

f1wags alexandra saint mleux and y/n y/l/n today at the paddock, y/n used to date max verstappen but recently broke up and was seen today at the ferrari hospitality with alexandra and charles, with whom she stayed friends

view all comments

username 😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️

username they both look so hot

username and if i say power couple then what 🤨

username i’d say alexandra has a boyfriend and you’re delusional 😭

username messyyyy

username the amount of money i would pay to know what’s going through max’s brain

username imagine losing THE y/n y/l/n and not only that but your rival since you’re four years old stayed friends with her

username he lost the break up

username we got y/n at the ferrari garage before gta 6

yourusername’s instagram stories

[caption 1: alexandrasaintmleux 🫶🏽🫶🏽] [caption 2: 🍸]

liked by yourusername, carlossainz55 and others

charles_leclerc mes trois coeurs❤️

tagged yourusername and alexandrasaintmleux

view all comments

username DAMN

username what do you mean your three hearts? wydm!!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN

username honestly it makes so much more sense that they’re all dating 😭

username CONFIRMATION AT LAST

username the most drop dead gorgeous woman you’ll find and the cutest puppy on earth 🥰

username charles really won in life 😩

username and they called me crazy for even suggesting this 🙄

username POWER THROUPLE

scuderiaferrari the family as god intended🫶🏽

username ferrari 😭

yourusername gotta learn french asap!

alexandrasaintmleux we’ll teach you love💗

charles_leclerc de cette façon nous pouvons te dire que nous t'aimons dans toutes les langues chérie ❤️ (this way we can tell you we love you in every language dear)

yourusername ily both too much💘

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, charles_leclerc and others

yourusername monaco! you are one of the best crowds ever ❤️ i had too much fun singing from the top of my lungs with all of you and performing for the first time ever my two new singles, “fresh out the slammer” and “bye” 😽 i have the feeling we’ll see each other wayyy more often

view all comments

username STOP she’s so cute 😭

username i’m afraid “bye” is one of the best songs ever made and “fresh out the slammer” changed the trajectory of my life

username “boy bye it’s over its over oh yeah” GIRL-

username she had too much fun writing that one

username “didn’t think you’d lose me now it’s just too late to choose me” UHM

username if that song is not for max-

username RED DRESS FOR FERRARI IKTS

username “now pretty baby i’m running back home to you” the fact that she calls them home i- 🥺

username “another summer taking cover, he don’t understand me” i gasped

username y/n calling her relationship with max literal prision was not in my bingo card

charles_leclerc you’re incredibly mesmerizing love 😍 best concert ever!

alexandrasaintmleux the prettiest and most talented there is! 💗

yourusername je vous aime tous les deux❤️ (i love you both)

[sharlsworld]

⋆⭒˚.⋆ my dawg - ʟɴ4 ☆

✿ lando norris x influencer reader

✿ lando norris is down bad for his girlfriend and he has no shame about it

ᵃᵘᵗʰᵒʳˢ ⁿᵒᵗᵉ ୨୧ this is kinda pt 2 to walk em like a dog

🝮

yn

liked by pierregasly and 1,028,967 others

yn took my dawg out today

landonorris didn’t expect you to become a gymnast in the middle of dinner 😔

⤷ lilymhe HAHAHA

landonorris spit on me your so hot

⤷ yn kinky boy

georgerussell63 Perioddd 💅🏽

⤷ yn ok that’s enough

alexandrasaintmleux I miss you

⤷ yn i miss you more come over i’ll kick lando out

⤷ alexandrasaintmleux Walking to the door right now i’ll be there in 10

⤷ landonorris hello?

⤷ charles_leclerc Guess I’ll see you at the paddock then?? 😟

francisca.cgomes let him out the crate for a little bit

⤷ yn yeah he’s been behaving recently

⤷ landonorris 😈😈

oscarpiastri I think you need to take him on more walks he has to much energy

⤷ landonorris i know a way to get rid of energy easily

⤷ yn and back in the crate you go!

🝮

yn

liked by madisonbeer and 2,724,005 others

yn sushi dates with my love 🎀

alexandrasaintmleux My favorite date 🥰

⤷ charles_leclerc Uhm, alright then

landonorris but that’s our thing?? ☹️

⤷ yn you don’t even eat sushi?

⤷ landonorris i still take you out to eat it even though the sight of it makes me gag??

⤷ yn and then you make me brush my teeth before i can kiss you?

⤷ landonorris just say you hate me

⤷ yn i hate you

⤷ landonorris please take me back baby

francisca.cgomes i miss my girls 😣😣

⤷ yn we miss you more!!

alex_albon did lando stay at charles’ 😂

⤷ charles_leclerc Yes and he would not shut up about how he misses y/n

georgerussell63 Me next

⤷ landonorris no go away i’m next

⤷ lilymhe actually i am 🤣

🝮

landonorris

liked by maxverstappen1 and 1,113,562 others

landonorris hopelessy devoted to you ❤️

yn my one love 🤍

⤷ charles_leclerc Hold on…is y/n norris being sweet?? Did someone screenshot this?

⤷ yn did i get married and just don’t remember?

⤷ landonorris yes.

yn can we get a puppy

⤷ landonorris whatever you want baby

⤷ yn 🤍

francisca.cgomes ok, cute

carlossainz55 I remember when you were hopelessly devoted to me.

⤷ landolovesyn LMFAO NOT CARLOS BEING SALTY 😭😭

pierregasly down BAD

lilymhe hm. well, i guess this is cute

alexandrasaintmleux I approve of this post

oscarpiastri WE KNOW

chilipowder55 poor oscar 😭 he’s so done with both of them

flowers444yn all the wags don’t wanna share y/n with her bf 💀

🝮

f1updates

liked by landonorris and 28,001 others

f1updates lando & y/n out in monaco tonight

lordperceval lando’s always in the likes whenever a sighting of them is posted 😭

⤷ georgerussell63 he’s so unserious

⤷ alex_albon GEORGE?!

⤷ charles_leclerc ALEXANDER?!

⤷ maxverstappen1 CHARLES?!

⤷ carlossainz55 MAX?!

⤷ pierregasly CARLOS?!

⤷ oscarpiastri PIERRE?!

⤷ carmenmmundt OSCAR?!

⤷ lilymhe CARMEN?!

⤷ alexandrasaintmleux LILY?!

⤷ francisca.cgomes ALEX?!

⤷ lewishamilton So we all stalk every update about lando and y/n?

⤷ georgerussell63 LEWIS?!?!

sharls_lerklerk why did lewis just expose all of them

🝮

lando.jpg

liked by danielricciardo and 492,705 others

lando.jpg she’s getting it tonight

yn OH OK!! how sweet 😰

⤷ landonorris always for you 😉

yn guys i’m scared

⤷ alexandrasaintmleux i’m omw

alexandrasaintmleux My girl 💘💗💕💓

francisca.cgomes the prettiest girl ever

alexandrasaintmleux so that’s where my dress went

⤷ yn what dress? 😟

maxverstappen1 Hair is on point

charles_leclerc Alright I fw the fit

georgerussell63 Period my queen never lets us down 💅🏽

oscarpiastri Ate down or whatever 💋

danielricciardo Drop the hair care routine girl

lilymhe beautiful beautiful girl

carlossainz55 Slay all day 😻😻

landowonone what is going on 😭

🝮

yn

liked by georgerussell63 and 3,390,781 others

yn alexandra got a puppy, so i made lando get me a puppy too

alexandrasaintmleux Play dates everyday

landonorris 🤍🤍🤍

charles_leclerc Leo and lil Pete are gonna be the best friends

carlossainz55 So you get him Saturday and Sunday and I get him the rest of the week? 😁

⤷ yn um no ❤️

carmenmmundt How cute 🥹

alex_albon I think he would look cuter with me…in my house…in my arms

⤷ yn i don’t think so

maxfewtrell The chokehold you have on him isn’t okay 😔

⤷ yn neither was the one he had on me last night

⤷ maxfewtrell !?!? 😨

[buntanteen]

sweet and loving boyfriend!joshua headcanons <3 (sfw)

summary: shua and reader romantic relationship headcanons :3 (you can read as a stand alone or as a part of the upcoming jihan poly relationship!!)

contains: mushy romance. implications that reader speaks korean & english

✩ svt writing & fic rec masterlist ✩

boyfriend!joshua who'll let you cling and bite onto his thick ass arms and put your face in his tiddies😌

sunday mornings are exclusively quality time with boyfriend!joshua. y'all will be making a breakfast spread or sitting on the balcony soaking in the sunrise, just quietly enjoying each other’s presence. joshie’s absolute favourites are rainy sunday mornings (…WE KNOW WHY) and he will smoother you with in bed cuddles <3 🥹

boyfriend!joshua who is completely and utterly enamoured by you. the two of you will make eye contact and he'll hit you with that lil ◠‿◠ smile and then you're melting and now he's melting and you're both melting, and the members are disgusted at how ooey gooey y'all are being

disgustingly sweet boyfriend!joshua who always does cheesy shit to make you blush. he’ll ask "hey, can you hold this for me? ><" and then proceed to put his hand in yours fgjkdbs

having to compromise with boyfriend!joshua about texting back because why does this man not reply to people??

boyfriend!joshua who will always order food for you!! and will always feed you the perfectly made bites of his meal as well :3

boyfriend!joshua who likes to share his specific taste in things (furniture, perfumes, jewellery, etc.) with you. even if you aren't for fancy things, you'll show interest for him because it makes him happy 😊

an absolute sucker for seasonal or weather-based dates. especially water based dates...what can i say boyfriend!joshua likes water. is so so happy in the rain, just running around splashing puddles (what can i say...he likes water :3)

winter dates: going ice skating and when u fall boyfriend!joshua skates up to u in distress and asks if u need some ice for that😑will buy you snacks at the street vendors as an apology and to warm you up <3

summer dates: at the beach where boyfriend!joshua loves taking sunset pics of you to make his phone's lockscreen and background

boyfriend!joshua who can't meet you empty handed and will get you random things such as lil drinks, a pair of socks cuz they were cute or an expensive ass perfume cuz he thinks it'll smell nice on you :3

boyfriend!joshua who will sweetly serenade you with his guitar…and then bust out the sunday morning because he got too shy afterwards

on days where you don't feel the best, boyfriend!joshua will come home to you with a care package when you feel down and absolutely pamper you with whatever you desire until you feel better. he'll definitely do that head patting thing to you 🥹

boyfriend!joshua kissing your hand as he leaves for his schedules. you tightening your grip and pulling him closer, causing him to do that delighted laugh of his before he gives you a proper goodbye kiss gjkfbd

matchy matchy outfits and items with boyfriend!joshua 🥰 loves when you’re matching him with a phone case or a keychain or jewellery or the entire fit

boyfriend!joshua being a gentleman and you being a one right back at him. it becomes a competition atp for who can do the more chivalrous thing. you opening his car door after he's driven you to your date destination? he'll open up the door to the establishment for you (he waved open to the sensor door thing lmao)

boyfriend!joshua u find him not crazy but it turns out u just are the same level of freak as him :D he's just crazy and crazy for you <3

trying out different hands on activities with boyfriend!joshua!! y’all are on a mission to try to impress his momma with baked goods (cuz wdym making cookies is easy THAT SHIT IS DIFFICULT😭)

switching languages with boyfriend!joshua during conversations. pulling different english or korean words whilst the members just stare at you confused (vernon either joins in or is in his own world)

boyfriend!joshua sweetly calling you “baby” or “yeobo”. or will casually call you “babe”. calls you “my baby” “my darling” in very romantic moments or when he wants something really badly cuz he knows it'll make you fold 😌

always making boyfriend!joshua laugh because it makes you so happy to see him so happy. his laughter pierces you, blooming and spreading joy throughout your body

boyfriend!joshua who is just a soft lover with a glowing warmth to him. he's the rays of the sunset that warms you after a long day with the promise of a better tomorrow <3

ames note: i am so SOOOO down bad for this man it is crazyyy. his recent live was my first ever live of joshie and i was just?? giggling??? and smiling??? so much!?!? svt at lollapalooza is in just over a day!! i hope everyone can enjoy ittttt (it is at like 3am for me rip. i hope y'all enjoyeddddd the writinggg~ i'm gonna write a jeonghan and jihan poly headcanon at some point idk when tho <3 ς(.-‿-)

author note: do not distribute my work on other platforms without my consent. if you see my writing in places other than this tumblr account, please let me know. my writings are purely fictional fantasises for fun. the people i write about are real human beings and should still be treated as such. please do not take my writings seriously or as truth.

[planetpiastri]

pairing: oscar piastri x fem!reader [no faceclaim, reader is faceless] summary: oscar's girlfriend is busy getting her degree, but takes a surprise trip to visit her boyfriend notes: hi i made this like a month ago and it's just been sitting in my drafts bc i couldn't decide if i liked it or not but then i decided hashtag yolo so here it is! enjoy!

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, and others

ynusername exam season type beat

view all 187 comments

oscarpiastri Smart and pretty wow I'm a lucky guy

ynusername ☺️🥰😮‍💨

logansargeant Drop out of school join my emo band

ynusername williams doesn't want me

username1 wish you were coming to the race this weekend :(( it's been too long since we've seen you in the paddock

ynusername i agree :(

oscarpiastri

liked by ynusername, landonorris, and 302,137 others

oscarpiastri Bring it on race weekend 👊

view all 1,356 comments

ynusername ...should i be concerned?

landonorris i don't want him!!!!!

ynusername papaya boys 🧡

oscarpiastri Missing our papaya girl 🧡 ynusername AW

username2 what the hell this is so cute 😭

username3 what blackmail does oscar have on lando omg

landonorris bro why'd you make it seem like we're on a date??

oscarpiastri You pulled out my chair and everything 🥰 landonorris i'm never being nice to you again

username4 the flower behind lando's ear?????

oscarpiastri

liked by ynusername, mclaren, and 334,623 others

oscarpiastri What a crazy weekend. P1 in the sprint and P2 on Sunday. Couldn't have done it without my good luck charm 🧡

view all 2,013 comments

mclaren 👏👏👏🧡

landonorris get a room

ynusername we did landonorris ew you keep that to yourself i don't need to know that

ynusername i love uuuuuu ❤️

oscarpiastri Best surprise ever ❤️

ynusername alsooo i passed all my exams!! so it looks like you're my good luck charm too :)

username5 that's the cutest shit i've ever heard 😭 oscarpiastri Lucky us :)

username6 🐐🐐🐐🐐

username7 rookie of the year!!!

liked by oscarpiastri, logansargeant, and others

ynusername the return flight was a lot more fun

view all 193 comments

username8 UGH YOU GUYS ARE SO CUTE

oscarpiastri I could definitely land a plane

ynusername whatever you say dear

mclaren Are we gonna see you back in the paddock soon 👀

ynusername damn mclaren admin let me graduate first!!

username9 the official mclaren account being oscar's wingman???

landonorris am i invited to graduation

oscarpiastri No ynusername maybe

logansargeant Am i invited to graduation

oscarpiastri Yes ynusername Yes landonorris man what the hell

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, and others

ynusername I DID IT BITCHESSSSSSSS CERTIFIED HOT AND SMART

view all 268 comments

username10 YES BITCH YES

logansargeant Congrats!! Thanks for the invite!!

ynusername thanks for coming!

oscarpiastri So proud of you ❤️

ynusername thank u loooove the paddock is gonna get so tired of me now oscarpiastri Impossible

landonorris no tag?

ynusername bruh i didn't even tag my boyfriend

mclaren Congrats! Want to put that marketing degree to use?

username11 yo??? ynusername um oscarpiastri Say yes

[cdragons]

Fuck Everything, But Mostly Fuck You

Next Part

Summary: You have never, EVER, in a million years hated anyone the way you hated Felix fucking Catton.

Warnings- MDNI 18+, Felix is delulu, Reader is stressed and homesick and kinda crazy but she a baddie, Michael is Michael, Farleigh is Farleigh, Oliver will be Oliver (a creep), and author has spent too much time researching Oxford crap for this mess for a crack fic to be a crack fic

Author's Note: This fic is a follow-up to this post and I would like to thank grammarly for catching all my grammatical errors 🥲, @ethereal-athalia for enabling my crazy ideas 🥰, and @valeskafics for providing me Saltburn smut when I catch myself thirsting 😇

“FUCK!” you yelled at the top of your lungs just before your nose slammed down on the dewy grass.

Groaning in pain before the mortification of realizing what had just happened kicked in.

You didn’t know what was worse: the fact you had a full front view of the giant’s junk or that he body-slammed you onto the ground and caused you to land on top of the painting worth 30% of your final grade.

You wanted to scream your head off. The paint had finally dried, and you could finally leave the studio at two in the morning. It was close to finals, and pretty much anyone on campus who didn’t get accepted because of their daddy’s bank account was in their dorms. You had hoped that this fact would mean that the paths were empty and, therefore, safe to transport your 30” x 40” canvas.

“SORRY!”

You shot your head up to locate the person who just apologized. Lo’ and behold, it was the same plastered, pasty cunt with a bird’s nest disaster of a haircut drunken idiot who decided it was a good idea to go streaking across campus. His only other distinguishable features were that he was at least 6’3” and that he had a small steel piece pierced on his face.

After the “apology,” he and his friend continued running off to God’s knows where in the dead of night—leaving you behind on the lawn with a bleeding nose, bruised knees and palms, and an oil painting that was torn and caked in mud three days before its deadline.

There was no way to redo it. The project was assigned at the beginning of October. It took 5 hours to set up the models with the motifs and lights, 3 hours to take pictures, and 10 hours to underdraw the preliminary sketch. You didn’t even want to think about the sheer number of sleepless nights you spent in the studio mixing colors and layering. On top of that, you also had your other finals in other courses to study for.

You had practically been living in that studio for the past month. All of the custodians and security guards knew you by name. You got first dibs every day when they refilled the vending machines. It was a true godsend when you didn’t have time to visit the dining halls. Everyone had been so kind and sweet to you. It was a warm welcome compared to the snark and snobbery you experienced from most of your classmates.

Crying from the devastation of the loss of your situation, your shaking legs carried your body and what remained of your work into the building. You knew that your professor stayed in her office late for grading. You could only hope that she would sympathize with your pitiful appearance.

“Wait, so did you get the extension?”

Lifting your head from the sticky library table at Bodleian’s, you stared at your best only friend, Michael Gavey, with a blank stare. You didn’t react to his wince after he took in your haggard appearance. You didn’t need a mirror to know that you looked terrible.

Your eyes were puffy and bloodshot red with dark mulberry bags underneath them. You had paled since coming to dreary England, but now you looked straight-up sickly. And if that wasn’t enough, your eyes had less life than a dead fish rotting at a Sunday Market.

Your voice was so meek that you were sure he had to strain to hear you.

“Yeah…I got it.”

You knew you had no choice but to beg your Studio Arts professor for an extension. But it killed you doing it. Professor Daria Martin was your favorite teacher and the only faculty member who actually liked you. Her support toward you meant everything to you; the last thing you wanted to do was disappoint her, let alone be the reason why she lost her job.

Your usually so snarky four-eyed friend perked up at the news.

“So, is everything okay?” he asked with hope.

Your head fell on neon-yellow ink-stained pages that filled the paperweight your ethics professor called a textbook. A bitter laugh fell from as your lips lifted to a wry, dry grin.

“Oof, not that simple, is it?” he asked.

“Is it ever?”

“So what do you have to do now?”

“Well-,” you lifted your head to take a deep breath as you started to explain, “- I still have the photos and copies of the sketch. But because the canvas was so large, it was special-ordered. That means I need to wait until another one can be delivered, and since all the works need to be completed in the studio, I can’t leave the campus.”

As you finished your explanation, Michael nodded his head in understanding before he paused, and a look of devastation painted his features.

“Wait, so does that mean-”

“I won’t be able to fly back home for the holidays.”

Fuck, you were about to cry again. You had been so excited to see your old friends and family. You remembered how absolutely homesick you were at the beginning of the term. Because you were a scholarship student from America, your parents encouraged you to settle on campus by moving to your dorm earlier than everyone else. It was bad enough that you missed Thanksgiving, but you had really set your heart on coming home for Christmas and New Year’s. What made it worse was that your parents had told you all about the dinner they had planned for your homecoming. It was going to be a feast of all your favorites.

English food sucked balls.

Your only saving grace was the Crunchie bars Michael got for you when you studied together or when you had to rewrite edit his essays.

You really DID cry after first reading his essay for Introductory English class at the beginning of the year.

“Did you try to report it?”

“Report what? ‘Hey, there’s a wasted asshole running naked across campus, and he body-slammed me to the ground and tore my fucking massive campus that blocked my view of the jackass. He’s probably richer than the goddamn Queen, given how he’s wasted right before finals.’”

“Do you have any description of him?”

“He’s a giant with a small eyebrow piercing, and his fat ass looked like it had never seen the sun.”

Without lifting your head, you heard the scrape of Michael’s chair before he walked across the table to sit in the chair next to you.

“Hey,” he began, bringing you into a warm arm hug, “it’ll be okay. You called your parents about it, right?”

“Yeah -” you sighed before continuing, “- they told me they understood and would Skype me daily.”

“See! Everything’s going to be – wait, did you say that this guy was tall?”

Furrowing your brow in confusion, you looked at your friend at the change in his tone from light and supportive to sharp and interrogative.

“Yeah?”

“How tall?”

“Umm,” you had to think about that, “I’d say he was about 6’3” or above? He was really fucking tall.”

“And he had an eyebrow piercing?”

Ok, now you were really confused. “Yes? Michael, where are you going with this?”

“I think the guy who ran you over was Felix Catton.”

You shot your favorite idiot with a deadpan glare.

“Felix Catton? The same Felix Catton who just so happens to be the same Felix Catton you hate?”

Michael solemnly nodded. “It’s him. It has to be. The only person on campus as tall as him is his cousin, and he doesn’t have piercings.”

“And he’s black.”

“Yeah, that too.”

You were skeptical, and it showed. You didn’t want to callously dismiss your friend, but you knew more than anyone how much his hatred for Oxford’s Golden Boy could impair his judgment. You were by no means a fan of the guy, but accusing someone of anything they didn’t do just because your friend thought so went against your principles.

He grabbed your arm and dragged you to the bookshelf in front of the table where Felix and his groupies sat. Both of your books and bags were in your chairs, but you managed to keep your spiral notebook with you. It wasn’t hard to find them – they were the loudest table in the entire library. They also reeked of cigarettes and booze.

“See?” Michael hissed. “Giant, pale, and eyebrow piercing. It’s him!”

“Michael,” you softly groaned, “just because you hate Felix Catton doesn’t mean you can –”

An extremely shrill voice interrupted you.

“I can’t believe you and Farleigh actually ran around campus naked!”

A petite girl with full pink lips and dull red hair latched on the arm of the man of the hour. “It was so hot to watch!”

This girl has weird-ass tastes in guys.

“And then how you crashed into that dunce at Ruskin! Brilliant!”

Your blood ran cold while another one of Catton’s faceless droning puppets chimed in.

“God, what an idiot! It’s their own fault, anyway. Who the fuck walks in the middle of the walk path with a fucking big canvas in front of them?”

One of the lessons hammered into your skull young was never to move before you think. That lesson had saved you ten ways from Sunday. But this was not one of those times.

You’re pretty sure that you hear Michael calling out your name as you walk away from the shelf and towards the overcrowded table. Tunnel vision took over you as you made your way to the overgrown idiot who almost cost you your entire future.

Grabbing the back of his shirt collar, you dragged the 6’5” towering fool on his ass all the way outside. You finally let go when the two of you reached the back of the building that had no windows.

“Hey, what the fu –”

You didn’t let him finish as you brought your fist to hit him square in the face – and, fuck, did you relish the crunch that immediately followed your swing.

Fuck, was his head killing him.

Felix should have known better than to have gotten cross-faded last night, but Farleigh had practically goaded him to do it. It’s not like his cousin ever had to worry about his grades for any of his courses during finals – the little shit-starter had always been so fucking academically gifted.

He skipped pretty much all of his morning classes and barely made it to his afternoon schedule on time while completely zoning out the entire time.

If he bombs on all his finals, his dad was going to absolutely murder him. But chances were he and his mum were going to be too busy entertaining whichever new friend his mum brought in for shelter.

“You alright there, champ?”

Felix swiveled his head too quickly and immediately groaned in pain. The motion made his hangover even worse. Rubbing his eyes to try to soothe the pounding in his head, he slowly opened them to look at his cousin.

The slag didn’t have the decency to look even a little bit affected from last night’s event – the fucker. No, he was sitting there with all Cheshire grins and gleaming eyes while Felix was two seconds from heaving his guts out.

“Yeah, I’m alright, mate.” He replied in a tired groan.

“Must have been quite the night. Wonder if it had anything to do with that little cocktail you took from our sweet Annabel’s belly button?”

Disgust was clear on Felix’s face as he recalled the body shot he had taken from his ex-FWB’s navel. He truly must have been off his rocker last night – he thought he was over with body shots since graduating secondary, but apparently not.

If he somehow got an STD from doing it, V was going to kill him.

But even with all of his horrible actions that caused the raging war inside his skull, that wasn’t the main cause of his misery.

Farleigh’s grin dropped as judgment painted his features.

“Oh,” he moaned, “please tell me this isn’t about ‘your angel’ from last night.”

He didn’t just take the dare of streaking across the grounds just for the hell of it. He needed an excuse to pass through the art building – all for the chance of seeing you.

You. His angel of paints and books who lived in the empty studio rooms of Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Art and whose presence harangued him every hour of every day. Everywhere Felix went, he would unconsciously look for you.

It was his soul calling out for yours – he knew it.

Felix had never felt so drawn to another human being in his entire existence. He’d never seen you outside of the libraries, art building, and maybe the dining hall if he was lucky. You never went to any parties or even had a drink at the pub at King’s Arms. He didn’t even have classes with you, but he knew Farleigh did. Word was that you and his cousin had shared a few classes – what’s more was that you were likely the only person who could go head-to-head with him in academics.

And to make it worse, the prat refused to tell him anything about you – not even your fucking name.

“Believe me,” he told him after Felix had been begging his cousin for hours to share anything about you, “she is way above your league.”

Which really hurt his feelings, by the way – sure, you were probably way above in book smarts, but there wasn’t a girl that remained indifferent to his charms after a good talking fucking.

“I still can’t believe you won’t at least tell me her name,” Felix complained once more, “or even just give me her number!”

“She’s an American here on scholarship and a bore,” he quipped back, “what’s there to tell? And can you please shut up? I want to get some reading done before tonight. You do remember the in-class essay we have tomorrow, right?”

Bloody hell, he did not. Pushing down the bitter feeling in his chest, he and his cousin made their way to meet everyone at the back. As soon as he sat down, Annabel clung on to his arm. Thank fuck he had been wearing one of his thicker jumpers – otherwise, her claws that she called nails would have ripped open the fabric.

“Hey, Felix!” she made sure to offer a very generous sight of her cleavage, “are you ready for tonight?”

Felix chuckled lowly before responding. “Aren’t I always?”

And just like that – he completely zoned out the rest of the conversation.

Annabel was probably saying something to get him to notice her, and Farleigh was likely responding so he wouldn’t have to – but Felix couldn’t be bothered to pretend to care.

He was lost in the living daydream that was his angel that haunted the art studios of Ruskin School of Art.

He was desperate to learn everything about you.

If he asked you to talk about your favorite books, would your eyes sparkle in delight, or would your smile widen in glee?

If he grabbed your hand, would your palms feel marred by his rough skin, or would you press your callouses to his?

If he pressed his mouth on yours, would your lips feel as soft and plump as they look? Or was their luster forever damaged by your teeth biting them whenever you were in deep concentration?

If he breathed in your scent at the crook of your neck, would your skin smell like the paints forever on your brushes or the musky pages of heavy ancient books you always carried in your arms?

If he planted kisses from your throat to your breasts, would you mewl in pleasure or whimper in anticipation?

If he touched your cunt, would you arch your back in ecstasy? Or would your legs crumble, and you would have no choice but to sink into his arms?

Felix’s thoughts were rudely interrupted when Farleigh jammed his bony elbow into his ribcage and hurriedly whispered.

“Look alive, Golden Boy.”

Looking forward, it was better than any of his wet dreams combined. It was you.

Your hair was loose, and your fists were clenched. You reminded him of a ferocious lion goddess with how focused your gaze was on him.

But before Felix would prepare himself to make a good impression, you walked behind him and grabbed the back of his shirt collar before fucking dragging his ass out of his seat and outside.

Bloody hell, for someone so much shorter than him, you were fucking strong.

When you finally released your grip, he fell on the ground like an idiot before he tried to stand and steady himself as quickly as he could.

“Hey, what the fu –”

You didn’t let him finish as you brought your fist to hit him square in the face – and, fuck, you might have actually broken his nose.

After staggering back, you started using the spiral notebook in your other hand to land blow after painful blow on his body.

“YOU. STUPID. FUCKING. INGRATE –” Each word that left your mouth was emphasized with another hit from your notebook “– I. HATE. YOU. YOU. RUINED. MY. PAINTING. I. SPENT. SO. MUCH. TIME. ON. IT. AND. NOW. I. CAN’T. GO. HOME. FOR. BREAK. BECAUSE. OF. YOUR. STUPID. SELF!”

Felix was confident you had more to say, but you were pulled off him by your friend – he’s pretty sure it’s Mitchell – by the waist with you kicking and screaming out profanities to him as your friend called out your name to try to calm you down.

He wondered what it said about him if he told anyone how much you looked like an angry cat. His parents would send him to a shrink if he told them how adorable he found you right now.

If you were this wild while fighting, he could only imagine how riled up you would get in bed.

Fuck, you might have just unlocked a new kink in him.

Catching his breath as he watched your friend drag you away into the distance, he heard a slow clap to his left.

Farleigh was leaning on the corner – his smug expression making it clear that he had seen the whole thing – as he looked at his cousin with a bemused expression before walking toward him and giving a sympathetic pat on his back.

“Well,” he started to break the tension, “at least you know her name.”

“Yeah,” Felix agreed, “I know her name.”

And he knew that you smelled more like the paints on your brushes than the books you carried with subtle notes of gardenias.

Tagging: @aemondsbabe, @ethereal-athalia, @aphroditesmoon, @barbiedragon, @valeskafics, @lexyysworld, @punkiwiki, @saltburnedme, @arcielee

Let me know if you want to be tagged for future Saltburn fics!

[yanderestarangel]

Hi can I request Yandere Bi Han mortal kombat x male reader who is a normal human has no powers just lives his life normally headcanons of how he would be as a Yandere but you can also put a little smut in it.🥰❤️😍

yandere!bi han x male reader ౨ৎ ⋆🎀｡˚ [ HUMAN AU ]

TW ┆dark themes, au, violence, manipulation, non con, dub con, ftm reader, rough sex, age gap, stalking, emotional dependence, threat, v!sex, breedkink, praise, smut, mind break, eat out, anal, blowjob.

ʚɞ a/n: I need to make a bot on this concept.

♡ ┆I really like to think that Bi Han would be a martial arts teacher who works at some martial arts academy, he has always been extremely serious and stoic but has a love for his family roots of grandmasters and skilled fighters ─ he wouldn't differ too much from his persona as Sub Zero, without powers. The Asian would live a normal life in China and have a calm routine going to the gym teaching classes from morning until afternoon and going to sleep at night too tired to think about anything else.

♡ ┆He would go out on the weekends to visit his brother Kuai Liang who lives with his wife Harumi on the other side of the city and has a renowned clothing store in the city center. He can't feel many things other than coldness and is very closed to everything and everyone, being the typical "bossy" person in the room.

♡ ┆Bi Han couldn't take a life like this anymore, he tried dating but couldn't feel the same intensity as his former partners - which always led to nights of quick sex just to satisfy his carnal desires. Riding a motorcycle around was also his passion, something to distract him from intrusive thoughts on lonely Sundays ── He would also have several tattoos adorning his muscles and biceps.

♡ ┆But everything changed when you arrived in his life unexpectedly. You were looking for self-defense classes to feel safer but from the moment you entered his gym the long-haired man's cold heart practically melted and missed a beat momentarily, as if everything slowed down in his lap for moments and he just I could see you in front of me.

♡ ┆He was... Friendly with you, he managed to smile and even make small jokes which was new even for him, as if you had unlocked something in him. You talked about self-defense classes and he smiled widely for some unknown reason he offered private classes in the afternoon at no extra cost making you stay under the free and spontaneous pressure of the fight teacher.

♡ ┆So it all started there. You became his obsession and his point of fixation... He wanted to make you love him and make you just his. It was a crazy thought since he barely knew you, but not for long. You were his man, you needed to be his.

♡ ┆The self-defense classes started with Bi Han going easy on you, a few easy jabs and among them were the "innocent" questions that came out of his mouth, your relationship status, where you lived, how old you were, what your foods were favorites and your hobbies ─ a little interrogation disguised as a genuine concern from your coach.

♡ ┆You also noticed how he liked to press your body against his, keeping you close to his muscles while showing you how many times he could easily break you in half if he wanted. "You really are a cute creature aren't you? How long are you really uh?" Bi Han would speak in a deep voice as he stood behind you and held your body lightly with a muay thai movement making you look at the reflection of the two of you in the mirror ─ his brown eyes boring into you, he could make you scream and beg for him but... Not at that moment he wanted you to come to him because he wanted to, so he soon let you go and smiled sideways. "You need to improve your defense, little boy, let's practice the blow again ok?" he said, turning his back to you and adjusting his clothes slightly while trying to ignore how hard his dick was in his pants and how his pulse was racing just from touching you.

♡ ┆You would find yourself getting closer and closer to the older Asian, he would invite you to dinner with him, or a walk even offering to take you home, after all according to him "pretty boys like you attract wolves." And he was certainly one of those wolves a silent and effective predator in his goals.

♡ ┆He can easily manipulate you and get into your mind with lies, saying that the neighborhood is very dangerous, that delicate boys like you should stay alert and let him take care of everything and take you home every day, a less invasive way of enter your life without causing much suspicion for you or third parties.

♡ ┆When you least realized it, Bi Han would already be at your house, talking to your family and pretending to be the ideal companion you needed ─ a man who cared about you and only wanted the best for you. So he soon starts to put pressure on you, saying that he could help you more intimately, that you couldn't be alone in an unknown country and even offering to marry you so you could stay permanently in China ── things escalated so quickly it made you dizzy; but you were a strong man at first and ignored all the advances he made towards you until then. What led the man to use unconventional methods to make you his.

♡ ┆He started stalking you knowing exactly where you went and placing staplers in your house, always on alert in case you tried to find another relationship besides him. He would start playing psychological games with you, knocking on your windows in the middle of the night and entering your house at night to see you shaking in fear at every loud noise and dropped things he did, quickly hiding in the shadows and watching you like a damn ghost. It didn't take long for you to be psychologically shaken, mainly because he combined all of this with anonymous messages sent to your numbers with threats like "I'll see you from here" "there's no point in covering the windows" "I'm inside your house." You were so mentally fragile that you went looking for the only safe haven you could have at that moment in unknown territory... Your martial arts teacher, Bi Han, the same man who caused all this from the shadows.

♡ ┆So soon you would find yourself accepting his support, even leaving self-defense classes because he himself said he could protect you. He has been living at your house for a while ── However, he would soon change his mind, saying that it would be better for you to go to his apartment because your 'stalker' could come back there while he was away, it was the perfect excuse for him to have you under his control. Soon you lived more in Bi Han's house than in your own staying at his mercy, it was worth it for him to spend a whole month playing the terror in your mind, after all, now he finally had you all to himself. You will be spoiled with the good and the best, foods, clothes and the affection of the older man ─ movie nights watching movies and tight hugs with Bi Han's hair tickling your face... You've never had someone who cared about you as much as he did, so it wasn't difficult to develop an emotionally dependent relationship with him.

♡ ┆You would also marry him a few months later, convinced by him because you needed to stay in the country and have a better life, but with the marriage certificate also came his possession slowly climbing the surface... He calls you "cute hubby" and made a point of leaving you at his house when he left, under lock and key and away from the madness of the world. Bi Han had a perfect life now you were dependent on him in every aspect, especially mentally since he even took you away from your own family to keep it for himself and now he really he felt alive, with a beautiful boy by his side, the true love of his life in a completely sick and twisted way, just like his mind.

♡ ┆If you tried to leave his domain he would have to make you his carnally, biting you and holding you tightly to the nearest wall of the room and looking deep into your eyes. "I gave you everything, baby boy, You won't dare leave here, right? The world out there is cruel and dirty and you were born to be taken care of by someone, to be submissive to someone, do you hear?" And it wouldn't take long for you to become a trembling mess, clinging to his muscles for support as he pounded his dick into your pussy, with force and even cruelty to mark his territory in you ── he would hold your thighs and your neck with another hand, making you look at him with each rough thrust of his cock ─ the wet and obscene noise filled your ears and made you moan even more his dick was so good that with every kiss his tip had on your uterus you could feel your brain shut down for a few seconds making the asian laugh and whisper in your ear "good boy, a good boy for your owner hm? You're going to take all my cock with that beautiful pussy, aren't you? You're going to take all my cum and be a little slut who only thinks about sit on my dick until you get everything you want... So fucking beautiful..." He would leave you dripping with cum and with a sore clit.

♡ ┆On the bed, on the floor, in the bathroom, in the living room, even on the kitchen counter, Bi Han would fuck you all over the apartment. No hole of yours will be left out, you would have a sore throat from sucking his dick and having him force you to deep throat him or with him between your legs for at least an hour even if you were shaking and in pain he wouldn't stop eating out your cunt, until he left your flesh red and overstimulated by him. He will also fuck your ass while sticking two fingers in your pussy and making you moan loudly as he thrusts his hips against yours, praise pouring into your ears while you just moaned his name. "fucking hell-!, so beautiful and so broken ─ you're such a good slut begging for me like that, you want more, slutty boy? Want me to fill you up again?" He would moan hoarsely between slutty smiles and rhythmic skin-to-skin slaps ── After that you wouldn't think about leaving or going back to your old life, you belonged to him now and you were happy being his husband. Too broken to think about getting away.

[sansaorgana]

So I loved the way you wrote Buck with his scars! My heart was breaking! Could you maybe write one where he hates them and the reader comforts them and kisses his scars?

hi, sugar! 🥰 I am trying to write these requests chronologically but I couldn't wait to write this one, especially after seeing today's episode because domestic Buck is something I just NEED 😍 I added a whole plot around it, so you can also expect some of jealous Gale 👀 basically, his wife befriended some man when he was away and now he's jealous and insecure that he's not so handsome anymore lol like it's even possible

my inbox is open for blurb/short fic requests for major cleven 🤗

Buck stepped on the stool to take off the last of the Welcome Home signs as his wife stood below with her hand gently put on his thigh, making sure he wouldn’t fall. She didn’t want to miss any opportunity to touch him ever since he had come back.

Buck smiled to himself. It still felt odd to be back home and to be around his wife’s comforting presence, surrounded by her love and affection.

He furrowed his brows at the ceiling’s colour, though. It was oddly snow white and he remembered that it had been needing a renovation when they had moved in a few weeks before his departure to Europe.

“The ceiling’s been painted,” he pointed out as he handed his wife the paper sign and she took it from him to put it away.

“Yes. Ritchie’s done it,” she answered casually.

Buck froze for a second before stepping down from the stool and taking a better look at his wife. She didn’t look as if she was hiding some secret, though.

“Who is Ritchie?” He tried to remain cool. He had no right to be jealous. He didn’t want to be one of those husbands who didn’t want their wives to have any male friends.

Still, he was jealous.

“Oh, Ritchie, he’s just a… Just a friend, I mean…” (Y/N) chuckled and he could see her eyes sparkling. Buck’s jaw clenched at that reaction. “He’s a doctor, a local doctor, you know.”

“Do I know him?” Buck asked, trying to remember if he had known any Ritchies.

“No, no, honey, he was sent here when you had been… away,” she sighed. “I met him at the party…” (Y/N) got nervous explaining and Buck furrowed his brows at her. “I didn’t want to go, my friends forced me, I swear, Buck. It gave me no pleasure to dance and have fun knowing that you were… at some camp, I…” She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.

“Shh,” Buck put his arms around her and brought her closer to place a kiss on the top of her head. “I hoped you would go out sometimes and have fun. I never wanted you to sit at home alone and cry all day and night. I hoped you’d know that, baby.”

“I know… Well, Ritchie was there. He wasn’t sent to Europe because we need doctors here, too,” (Y/N) sniffed her tears back and looked up at her husband. “He offered me help around the house. He painted the ceiling and took care of that spare room that might be a nursery one day… He fixed the drain and helped to mow the grass. You know, that sort of stuff,” (Y/N) explained. “I don’t know what I’d do without him, Buck. And he did that all for free!”

“For free, you say?” Buck raised an eyebrow. She looked so sweet and innocent, he didn’t want to accuse her of anything but he didn’t trust other men as much as he trusted his girl.

“Completely!” She assured him and nodded her head. “I wanted to pay him, I really did. But he told me that my husband was serving the country and it was his duty to help. He’s a sweetheart, really, Buck,” she tried to convince her husband. “In fact,” (Y/N) took a step back and smiled, “I think you should meet him. I think you’ll adore him! And you should thank him, too.”

“Thank him?” Buck asked, surprised. Perhaps she was right. He should. After all, that man had helped his wife enormously. But the ugly jealousy was too overwhelming.

“Of course!” (Y/N) gave him a scolding look. “Don’t you think he deserves to be thanked? Let me call him! I’ll invite him for dinner. He’s usually free on Sundays,” she ran to the telephone.

Buck only watched as she excitedly dialled the number she had memorised by heart. After a short while, someone on the other side of the line picked up and she smiled widely.

“Hey-ho, Ritchie, darling!” She started and Buck chewed on the inside of his cheek. He leaned on the wall, trying to look cool about it but he was exploding inside. “I was thinking that perhaps you’d join us for dinner tonight? I’d make that lasagna you like so much!” (Y/N) told her friend.

Buck tried not to look surprised that the mysterious Ritchie had his favourite dish already.

The truth was, Buck didn’t have any favourite dish (Y/N) made. And he hadn’t done much around this house before his departure either. They had gotten married two months before. He had been away for more than a year. That Ritchie guy had spent more time with his wife than he had. And it was killing him inside to realise that.

His wife had been everything that made his will to survive so strong. To see her again, to smell her, to touch her, to hear her laugh. She had saved him hundreds of times without even realising. And of course, as he had said to her, he hadn’t wanted her to spend all her days crying after him. But it still stinged his heart that she had some gentleman friend around. Cooking for him, renovating the house together, God-only-knows what else…

“Oh, no, you won’t be a bother!” (Y/N) shook her head to the receiver. “Buck wants to meet you and thank you for everything,” she turned around to smile at her husband. “Well, in two hours perhaps? Great!”

She put the receiver down and approached Buck to hug him and kiss his cheek.

“I can’t believe you’re here with me again… It feels so surreal,” she admitted.

He only hugged her closer, trying not to say anything. All he could feel was jealousy and he didn’t want to open his mouth and accidentally hurt her with his words.

Doctor Ritchie Nelson was older than Buck had expected – around 40. And much more handsome, too. Buck had naively hoped it would be some senior man living down the street or something like that. But no, he looked like a fucking actor. He had shiny black hair and bright blue eyes. He was a few inches taller and his clothes were very elegant.

Buck shook his hand to greet him when he opened the door.

“Major,” Ritchie saluted and then he gave Buck the most wonderful smile. Buck swallowed thickly.

Fuck me, he thought.

“Just call me Buck, doc,” he only said.

“And you call me Ritchie, son,” Ritchie walked inside as if the house had been his.

Buck closed the door behind him. He didn’t like being called son by that man even if he was older. But he didn’t want to start an argument and make his wife sad. She seemed to be very excited about the two of them finally meeting.

“(Y/N)’s in the kitchen now. She will serve the food in a moment. Follow me,” Buck headed to the dining room, painfully realising how stupid his words must have sounded. Of course Ritchie knew where to go.

But Ritchie didn’t say anything to that and took his place by the table.

“Hello, (Y/N)!” He raised his voice in the kitchen’s direction.

“Hello, sweetheart!” (Y/N) greeted him back and Buck took a seat across the table so he could face the man.

Before he could open his mouth to ask about something, his wife went inside with the plates. She put the food on the table and joined them, sitting right in between. 

“So, your wife told me that you went down over Bremen,” Ritchie started so naturally. He had to be born with this charm and charisma. “That was hell of a mission, I’ve heard on the radio.”

“Oh, Ritchie, let’s not talk about the war, can we?” (Y/N) batted her eyelashes at him. “Please,” she laid her eyes on her husband and Buck nodded at her.

He also didn’t want to talk about the war. Especially with a man who had not been there.

“Of course,” Ritchie cleared his throat.

“I’d rather listen to your stories,” Buck told him. “What did I miss ‘round town?”

He quickly regretted asking that question. (Y/N) and Ritchie were telling him all sorts of stories and gossip about local women, drunkards, policemen, priests, divorces and marriages, new children getting born... He wouldn’t mind that itself but the way they interacted with each other made his heart sink deep in his chest.

(Y/N) was mostly looking at Ritchie and her eyes were sparkling whenever he said something funny. She would often touch his wrist when she was laughing and they had a ton of inside jokes that Buck didn’t even want to ask about.

“Oh, you tell that story. You tell it the best!” She would say often and then she would interrupt Ritchie all the time to add her own details. But Ritchie didn’t seem to mind.

Buck couldn’t handle it anymore. He stood up suddenly and they looked up at him, questioningly.

“Are you alright, darling?” (Y/N) asked him, worryingly.

“Yes, I just… I want water…” Buck said and she nodded her head.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass before leaning on the counter and watching his wife still talking to Ritchie. They looked so natural together, so comfortable around each other.

In fact, she looked more relaxed around Ritchie than around Buck. The truth was that things had been awkward between them. When they were alone, they would sit in silence most of the time. And she didn’t look as relaxed as she did now.

Buck clenched his jaw and joined them by the table again, even though he felt as if he was a third wheel.

“Oh, Buck, baby, I forgot to tell you,” (Y/N) grabbed his arm and then she pointed at Ritchie. “Ritchie used to be a model.”

Fucking wonderful, Buck thought. But he pretended to be surprised as he laid his eyes at the other man.

“Oh, please,” Ritchie rolled his eyes and chuckled.

The worst part of Ritchie was that he was not mean. He wasn’t teasing Buck or trying to show off. He really was a nice man... who just happened to have a good relationship with Buck’s wife.

“I mean it! Back in the 30s. He was on the cover of the magazine!” (Y/N) finished the story. “I mean, look at him,” she laid her eyes on Ritchie. “40 this year and face so smooth,” her voice sounded almost dreamy.

Buck moved uncomfortably in his seat. His face was far from smooth now with a few scars scattered on his cheeks. They were not deep but he could see them every time he looked in the mirror. A painful reminder of what he had been through. He would never have a face like Ritchie fucking Nelson. He had already been uncomfortable with the scars but now he hated them.

He took a better look at his wife. God, she was so pretty. So full of life. She deserved someone like her. Not a man broken by the war like him.

“I actually could sign a contract and go to Hollywood,” Ritchie confessed, a little shyly.

“But he chose to refuse and become a doctor,” (Y/N) shook her head and looked at Buck. “Can you believe that? I’d choose Hollywood,” she joked and Ritchie laughed.

Buck forced a chuckle. He couldn’t focus on her words anymore anyway.

“It’s getting late,” Ritchie took a glance at his watch. “I’m opening my cabinet tomorrow in the early morning. I should be going now.”

“Of course,” (Y/N) nodded and stood up to walk him to the front door. Buck remained in the dining room and waited for her to be back.

It took her quite a long time to say goodbye to her friend. He almost stood up himself to check on them but that was when she finally joined him and sat back by that table.

An awkward silence occurred between them.

“Isn’t he lovely?” (Y/N) started as she played with the food on her plate.

“Yes,” Buck nodded. “Damn, I forgot to thank him.”

“It’s alright. He doesn’t really expect that. You can do that next time, too,” she took his hand in hers and caressed it gently.

He hated to see her more stiff and awkward around him than she had been around Ritchie.

“I’ll wash the dishes,” she sighed and stood up, taking the plates from the table.

Buck stood in front of the mirror in the morning and looked at his freshly shaven face. Last night he had a nightmare again and he didn’t get a lot of sleep. His eyes missed the spark he had had before his departure to Europe. They were tired now and sadder, no matter how much he tried to be the same man as before. There were a few new wrinkles on his forehead, too. And those awful scars on his cheeks. His face was definitely not smooth.

“Knock, knock, baby,” (Y/N) opened the door gently. “What is taking you so long? I thought you were shaving,” she smiled softly at him. “I started to worry.”

“I got distracted, sorry,” he reached out for the towel to wipe the remaining shaving cream off of his face but (Y/N) approached him to do it herself.

“Aw, look at you, my handsome husband,” she gave him a warm and loving smile.

He hated that little voice in his head telling him that she had said that out of pity.

“Not anymore,” Buck chuckled nervously and put an aftershave on.

“What are you talking about?” (Y/N) furrowed her brows as she stared at his reflection in the mirror.

He only shook his head, scared that he would start crying if he said something now.

“Gale?” She asked softly as she delicately put her hand on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, look at my face now,” he turned around to face her as his voice trembled.

“I am looking, baby,” she bit on her lower lip and placed her hands on his cheeks to caress them gently with her thumbs. “Do you mean those scars, love?” She asked, nervously.

Buck only nodded as his eyes filled with tears.

“Can I be honest with you, my darling?” She asked and he nodded again. “Well, I didn’t want to mention them when you came back home. I didn’t know if I could, I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or sad… But I wanted to tell you…” she hesitated for a moment and his heart skipped a beat.

He expected her to tell him now that they were indeed ugly or making him less attractive. Of course, she would later tell him she loves him despite them and all that jazz. What else would she say?

“I know that they’re on your face because you’ve been hurt and in pain, so I don’t feel good saying this but… Well, I think they make you look even more handsome,” she admitted and Buck’s eyes widened a little. “Am I a bad wife for thinking that?” She asked, nervously. “I’m sorry if I am. But you look so brave, my darling. And so handsome. They make me feel so proud to be your wife when I see them,” she leaned in to place small kisses up and down one of his cheeks and then the other.

“I thought you liked Ritchie’s soft face…” Buck muttered out.

“Wh-what?” (Y/N) took a step back to look deep into his eyes, her hands still caressing his cheeks. “Oh, you’re jealous?”

“Well, how can I not be?” Buck held her wrists gently and moved them out of his face to place soft kisses upon her knuckles. One at the time. “He spent more time with you than me. You’re so comfortable around him. I’m glad you had a friend when I was gone. But I can’t help not to be jealous,” he confessed. “He’s not as broken as me.”

“Gale,” (Y/N) shook her head. “You’re the only man for me. I’ve been waiting for you here, each day and night. And those silly scars you’re so bothered about? Goddamit, I was praying to all the gods in the world to bring you back to me, even without arms or legs, so what do they even matter? They’re nothing. I just wanted my husband back with me!” She began to tear up.

“I know,” Buck brought her closer to hug her. “I’m not accusing you of anything, I know.”

“Oh, you’d be an idiot if you accused me,” she chuckled through the tears.

“Why?” He asked and rubbed her back.

“Because Ritchie… He…” She tried to find the right words. “Well, he doesn’t like women, if you know what I mean.”

Oh.

What a burden had just left Buck’s heart. He chuckled out of relief.

“Yeah, I should have… I should have known. There was something about him,” he admitted.

“He’ll be flattered that you thought of him as competition. It means you find him attractive,” (Y/N) giggled and Buck rolled his eyes before hugging her even tighter. “I love you, Major Cleven,” she squeezed him tighter too. “All of you, all the scars and all the breaks you claim to have.”

Buck was left speechless for a moment. He just kept holding her and kissed her temple before finally speaking up.

“I love you, too, Mrs. Cleven.”

MASTERLIST || BUCK MASTERLIST

[lxclerc]

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 | 𝐜𝐥𝟏𝟔

summary... romance is not dead if you keep it just yours. note... a gift for 5k followers bc you guys stick around even tho i don’t post anymore. faceclaim... victoria brono

liked by francisca.cgomez, charlesleclerc and others

yourusername romance is not dead if you keep it just yours <3

view all comments...

yourbestfriend you’re in love and stuff. we get it

lorenzotl ❤️

leclerc_pascale i simply adore the two of you ❤️

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⤷ pierregasly hey

liked by lorenzotl, yourusername and others

charlesleclerc Back on the front row for Sunday’s race. Great lap, amazing job by the team to bring the upgrades earlier than was planned

view all comments…

user1 forza 🙌

user2 you know everything is better when charles is posting after qualifying

yourusername …can we talk about this picture tho ─ liked by charlesleclerc

user3 YOU DESERVED IT TODAY BABY

yourusername added to their story!

liked by pierregasly, yourusername and others

charlesleclerc It feels good to be back on the podium. We’ll work flat out to be back on the top step as soon as possible 🇦🇹

view all comments…

joris_trouche VOILÀ ❤️

⤷ user1 as always, you’re absolutely right joris

user2 il predestinato ❤️

user3 missed seeing you on the podium 😭

user4 you may be p2 in austria but you’re p1 in my heart

yourusername from p12 to p2. bravo, mon dieu ─ liked by charlesleclerc

⤷ user5 this is the priv account that charles followed 👀

⤷ user6 MON DIEU???

⤷ user7 charles likes all of her comments on his posts and no one else’s

liked by charlesleclerc, lorenzotl and others

yourusername undercover

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charlesleclerc red suits you so well, pretty girl

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charlotte2304 gorgeous 🫶

pierregasly a walking red flag 🚩

⤷ yourusername it’s ok pierre, no need to be salty. we can share charles

liked by user1, user2 and others

charlesupdates CHARLES COZIES UP WITH NEW GIRLFRIEND IN AUSTRIA

view all comments…

user1 well there’s that

user2 i don’t like this at all

⤷ user3 believe it or not, no one cares

⤷ user2 i’m allowed to say my opinion

⤷ user3 and i’m allowed to shit on your opinion

user4 yeah no she can go

user5 yikes

user6 this comment section ain’t it

joris_trouche the complete invasion of their privacy is disgusting along with the comments 👎

⤷ user7 tell em, joris

liked by scuderiaferrari, yourusername and others

charlesleclerc p4 today and hopefully better tomorrow 🙃

view all comments…

user1 ferrari is just straight up draining this man’s soul

user2 fire xavi and we’ll be fine

user3 in lord perceval we trust

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yourusername lovie 🙌

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liked by charlesleclerc, pierregasly and others

yourusername me after charles mega hard launched us

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pascale_leclerc love you both 😘❤️

pierregasly about the damn time

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arthur_leclerc ha! i told you i wouldn’t be the one to reveal it

⤷ charlesleclerc are you expecting a thank you for that, arturo? 🙄

⤷ arthur_leclerc yes actually

[peachsukii]

hello! softie sunday !!

mha boys being a cuddle monster! how do you think each of them wrap you up so that you don't get up/move; especially if you’re angry?

thanks !💕

Hiya Jay!! I hope you’re having a good day 🥰

Oh this so sweet! They all definitely have their own ways of keeping you in their arms when you try to leave them too soon.

Midoriya

Midoriya is very gentle in his approach to get you to stay put. All he has to do is give you puppy dog eyes and whisper a measly “please?” before you give in and stay snuggled up to him.

Bakugo

The most passive aggressive clingy boy there is. Bakugo will latch onto you and not say a word, just groan and mumble until you stay put. Then he’s all smirk and smiles, nuzzling into you and holding you close because he got his way. You don’t even bother fighting him anymore whenever he gets clingy, it’s best to stay put and embrace his warmth.

Todoroki

Ahh, the sweetheart of the group. Todoroki will give you the *look* (aka pout), asking “are you getting up so soon?” but not stop you from leaving. His body language is enough to guilt you back into his arms, and when you do, he whispers, “thank you, princess” while kissing your forehead lovingly.

Kirishima

Another passive aggressive clingy boy! He’ll silently sulk until you come back and cuddle with him longer, often telling you that you owe him more cuddle time after whatever it is you need to get up to do.

Kaminari

He means well, but Kaminari is the ultimate beggar when it comes to cuddling with him and that time being interrupted. He isn’t afraid to complain about it, sighing dramatically when you get up to grab something and clawing at your clothes. “Nooooo, just another minute!” Is always the phrase, and it’s never a minute. It’s at least enough time for him to take a nap with you.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s homes.”

“Yes. And we’ve seen plenty of living ones too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

“You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio Junction up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio Junction to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a glimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.