#and thank you for making the console in black again

[endless-ineffabilities]

chemical override (5)

Ewan Mitchell x actress!reader

a/n: the support for this fic has been amazing, so trust me when I say that I take no pleasure in all the angst and heartache that follows (or do I?) I'm sorry, readers. I'm sorry, Ewan. We'll sort this out somehow - all my love, Freyja <3

series masterlist ▪︎ main masterlist

A beginning. A first date. Whispers, sightings abound. Falling in love. A necessary lie. Hearts breaking. An end.

Ewan stands in a studio backlot in LA, bouquet of flowers clasped in one hand while the other is nervously stuffed in his tracksuit pocket.

He's itching for a smoke, but he stops himself from doing so, in some lovesick attempt to keep himself as clean and nice-smelling as possible when he sees you again. He already mentally kicked himself for not dressing better, clad in his staple Adidas blacks. But he couldn't wait any longer.

His flight from New York to LA hadn't been the most pleasant. His mind raced for hours, the thought of you being his only consolation. His meeting did not go well.

But enough of it. There is you, here, now.

In this moment, you are all that matters.

The first couple of workers make their way out the studio doors, chatting enthusiastically despite their tired faces. Ewan shuffles on his feet, keeping an eye out for you. Soon enough, your assistant Clara exits, and he waves in an attempt to get her attention.

"Ewan!" she greets brightly. "She'll be out in a while. Are those flowers?" A blush materialises on her face, and she looks so excited Ewan awkwardly thinks she would take them for herself.

"Yeah, do you think she'll like them?" he asks, giving the bouquet a once-over. The classic dozen long-stemmed red roses, kept together with black-dyed muslin wrap.

"She'll love them!" As if perfectly timed, the doors open again, and they spot you walking out with several of your co-stars. Clara smiles to herself as she walks away to give you two some space.

When your eyes land on him, it's like everything falls into place, the ear-splitting smile you give him enough to quell any worries he might have. You meet each other halfway, melding together in an embrace so tight he nearly drops the flowers to the ground.

"Look who it is," you say, still wrapped in his arms, "the internet's babygirl."

"Just your baby, darling." He pulls apart, but only just enough to look at you. "I missed you."

"Mmm, I can see that."

You're about to comment on the flowers, but he can't hold back any longer.

And so your first proper kiss happens behind an LA studio, adjacent to the parking lot and surrounded by prying eyes. The burnt orange haze of the sunset peers from the horizon, casting a glow on the scene. And it's perfect. His lips are gentle as they dance with yours, his warm breath fanning your face when he breaks apart for mere milliseconds, only to resume the kiss as if he can never get enough.

A moment later, there's a couple of woohoos from a distance, your costars oooing and aahing at the sight, making you giggle against Ewan's lips.

"Shall we, then, darling?" Ewan asks.

"Shall we?" Your brows raise, mirroring his question.

"Our first date." He takes a step back, but only to ceremoniously hold his hand out for you to take. "Will you do me the honour?"

"Why, good sir, are we going on a regular date or some super fancy ball?" you laugh, lacing your fingers with his anyway.

He only smiles, planting yet another kiss on the corner of your mouth. "God, I missed you."

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You can't help but cast glances at him every now and then. Ewan, effortlessly cool as he drives the both of you across LA, with one veiny hand gripping the steering wheel while the other envelops yours on your lap.

His thumb draws circles on the back of your hand, and you're thankful for it; you need the comfort because you're growing nervous. A first date.

A first date! And not just with anyone.

"What is it?" he smirks, his eyes finding yours as the car idles at an intersection. There's a smugness there. He caught you staring.

You avert your gaze, a pleasant wave of heat rising to your face.

"Hmm?" he leans across, pecking your cheek and resting his forehead against your hair, eager to get a rise out of you. "I mean, I've been told I'm handsome, darling. You already know, something of a babygirl. But it's even more special that you think so."

The light turns green. You grab his jaw, and lightly push him away, raising your eyebrows. "Careful, baby," you smile knowingly. "Your Aemond is showing."

"Oh, yeah?" The car revs up again, rows of palm trees speeding past in a blur. "Does that - uhh - turn you on?"

Your head snaps to him at his bold insinuation. He gives off an unaffected air, smirking to himself in an undeniably hot what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it way. But you make him nervous too. He swallows, and clears his throat, anticipating your response.

"Maybe," you bite your lip, squeezing his hand harder, "but you don't need to put on your Aemond to turn me on."

"Just me, then?" he chuckles lowly, feeling lighter.

"Yup," you shrug. "But if you ever wanna put on a blonde wig and an eyepatch, I won't stop you."

"For when, darling?" Oh he knows what you meant. It's been a constant on his mind too. He's lost count of the nights when thoughts of you consume him, and what happy news it is that you might have been going through the same.

"Mmm... " You look out the window innocently, but you guide his hand higher up on your thigh, allowing his fingers to splay open and squeeze at the flesh covered only by the material of your jeans.

A minute passes. Driving past a street of exclusively only mansions and expensive cars. Then downtown, low-rise buildings as far as the eye can see. Another minute, slow and steady.

Then he says, "You're going to fucking drive me insane, baby."

A soft sigh escapes your lips. "Well, you started it."

He sneers, accompanied by a humourless shake of his head. "I think you overestimate my self-control." The air is thick, but it's quickly diffused when he pulls into a clearing. You realise you're out of the main road, the car slowly coming to a halt in an empty lot beside a low brick building.

"We're here, darling," he says, but he gives you a look that clearly means this matter isn't over. You have something of his, and he's going to claim it.

He half-jogs over to your side, opening the door for you and taking your hand in his.

"Where are we?" The building is nondescript, with a plain white facade, a small cafe and a laundromat on street level, both of which happen to be closed.

"Had to call in a favour from an old mate of mine. His family moved here from Derby a couple of years ago, and they own that laundromat over there," he explains, leading you inside through a door in the side alley.

You're met with a narrow flight of stairs and he gestures for you to go ahead. "What have you got up your sleeve, Mitchell?" you ask, excitement taking root as you climb up to the very top.

It only takes three floors before you reach the heavy steel door of the roof deck. He shuffles to your side, one hand on your back to keep you steady, and pushes the door open which relents with a loud squeak.

You're met with something you have only seen before on Pinterest boards - the rooftop is softly aglow from hanging string lights. In the far side, a screen projector is set up, and in front of it is a low plush sofa cocooned amidst throw blankets and cushions. There's a wooden tray on one on the blankets, containing treats of all sorts and a bottle of wine glistening in its ice bucket.

You take in the magical ambience of the scene with widened eyes. The haze of faint LA sunlight only serves to make everything more beautiful, though it seems hardly necessary.

"Do you like it, darling?" he asks and what a ludicrous question it is. Do you like it?

He continues, "I admit I didn't have to lot of time to set it up, and I had a bit of help but - mmmpph - "

You lace your hands around his neck, silencing him with a searing kiss. He moans unto you, his tongue dipping past your lips as he nearly relinquishes control. He could forget about the set up, the date he had planned, and just take you here on the rooftop. Would you let him?

"I take it that everything is to your liking?" he purrs, watching you in adoration as your head swivels on its own accord to canvas the scene yet again.

You spot something in the corner - a bouquet of fresh flowers surrounded by some lightweight paper lanterns.

"Oh no!" you moan. "The flowers you gave me... I left them in the car!"

He laughs fondly at the sheer panic on your face. "Don't worry about them, my love. I've got more flowers for you here." He points to the bouquet you just saw.

"But those ones... won't they wilt or something? I don't want them to go to waste."

His heart swells at your genuine concern. The furrow between your brows, the way you chew on your lip in worry, your fingers absentmindedly clutching his wrist - it all makes him fall even harder.

"They'll be fine, darling."

"Are you sure?"

He nods once, pulling you in, "Mhmm, just... come here, please." Another kiss, gentler this time.

This is bliss, he thinks, sweet solace after his days in New York, days he aims on forgetting from now on.

You eventually find yourselves on the velvet seat, the tray of food nestled on your laps. He pours wine into the paper cups as you reach for a chocolate-covered strawberry and bring it to his lips.

"Thanks, love," he mumbles with his mouth full.

"Oh, baby, you've got chocolate on there," you motion to his bottom lip.

He sets the cups of wine on the tray, making a move to wipe it off, but just as his fingers hover, his mind takes on an alternative action.

"You do it, then," he leans close, tilting his jaw.

"Okay." With a smile, you begin to oblige him, but you halt when he playfully says, "Not with your hands, darling."

You feel your heart race at his teasing, and at the way he stares at you with blatant desire. Never mind the fact that you were just making out moments ago. The rush of being with him has not subsided. Maybe it never will.

You kiss him, paying mind to the smudge on his lip, licking your own lips afterward to savour the taste.

You pull back slightly. "All better," you say, patting his cheek lovingly.

"Hmm," he hums, "I suppose I'll just have to make a mess of myself more often."

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Nightfall had already descended when the credits to The Princess Bride start rolling, dotting the sky with twinkling stars.

Ewan has his arm wrapped around your shoulders, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, before he declares, "If they ever do a remake to this film, I'll only take the role if you would be my Buttercup."

"As you wish," you smile, nuzzling closer against his black hoodie. "I remember watching this when I was a kid. Believe it or not, it was one of the films that inspired me to get into acting."

"Did you wanna be Buttercup, my Buttercup?"

"No," you respond. "I wanted to do what Inigo Montoya was doing. He's so insanely cool."

"Of course you did," he says affectionately, "my darling."

"What about you, hmm? Did you always want to be an actor?" you ask. You might have read an interview of his where he explains something to that effect, but he doesn't need to know that now.

"As far as I can remember, yes. It was always going to be acting for me. Even when everyone laughed it off when I brought it up in primary school." He shakes his head, the once bitter memory reduced to an anecdote. "I... I find purpose in what we do, being able to slip inside different skins, different lives. It allows me to explore the human psyche, you know, and to make sense of all this madness."

You listen intently, in awe at his words and his sheer sincerity. The world is made better with Ewan able to live his passions. And you feel fortunate that his life is one he may be willing to share with you, if everything goes well down the line.

"I almost forgot - you have to tell me about how your big meeting went."

He shifts slightly, eyes darting downward as he pouts on instinct. He realises he can no longer keep the subject under wraps.

You sense his reluctance, and immediately try to soften your approach. It could have gone either way, and though rejection is part of an actor's bread and butter - you certainly would know - there are some instances where you just let it get to you.

"Is this producer as scary as they say?" you ask lightly, poking his chest.

He smiles, but his expression is still clouded. "You know those mafia dons in Scorcese's movies? This guy practically inspired them, I'd say."

"Goodness."

"He did try to give off a welcoming air, but there was still something... sinister underneath."

"I suppose when anyone is afforded this much power..."

"Especially in this industry..."

"Mhmm." Face half-burrowed in the soft material of his hoodie, you tilt your head up at him. "So it was a bust, huh?"

He shrugs, "The role just wasn't for me. It's all for the best, I reckon."

You hold his hand tight, eager to soothe any worries he might have. "That's a shame. They would have been damn lucky to have you."

He smiles, flattered by your comment. "I am lucky to just be here with you, darling."

You smile in return, tilting your lips to his, coaxing him to lean in close and seal the kiss.

And he does.

And this is the most perfect first date there ever was or ever will be.

"Darling?"

"Hmm?"

"I think I've fallen in love with you."

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The next few weeks pass blissfully slowly, you and Ewan caught in the euphoria that only a fresh relationship can bring.

Rehearsals for your upcoming movie had ended, and you get a month off before filming begins in Atlanta. Ewan also stays in LA, keen on spending every waking minute with you. His team takes advantage of the situation, booking him for several interviews and a feature with Esquire. You were more than happy to accompany him - or rather, distract him - on these occasions.

Once, the team even jokes that you had to stay in the other room because Ewan keeps looking over at you behind the camera and forgetting what to say. Ewan, of course, quickly protests. "My girl stays with me," he confidently says.

It doesn't take long for news to spread. Rumours, at first. Allegations bred from blurry fan photos and supposed encounters with yourself and Ewan while out in LA.

They were holding hands!

They're not just friends, I swear. He was kissing her the whole time in the restaurant!

What about her and Jacob? I thought they'd been dating all this time?

House of the Dragon stars spotted on a date in Hollywood!

Headlines. Gossip fodder. Statements made by people who claim to have seen you.

Sure, you do meet some of the sweetest and friendliest fans during all this, who only gush at the sight of their favourite actors getting together.

There are others, especially online, who are less pleasant, accusing you of cheating on your supposed lover Jacob Elordi.

Jacob, already used to rolling with the punches, gives you a call so the two of you can laugh it off together.

"I'm happy for you, mate," he expresses, voice muffled from the other line. "You and Ewan... you guys just make sense. Do you remember that night when he stormed in all jealous like? Holy shit..."

As if on cue, Ewan shifts underneath the sheets from behind you, peppering your naked back with soft kisses. "Tell him I said hi," he whispers, his tone doing nothing to mask his possessiveness.

And so the days roll on, and it couldn't be more perfect.

That is, until the first cracks started to show. As they always do.

You're in a meeting with your publicist Mallory, at one of the many quaint hipster cafés in LA, discussing your upcoming filming schedule and the other things you have booked in between.

"You've got a busy few months ahead, but the film is of course top priority," she says. "It's slated to be the top rom-com of next year."

"That's great, Mal."

"I mean, I think you know that Ewan was meant to lead that romance-fantasy franchise? That's a big deal, and people are saying it'll be bigger than Twilight!" she gestures wildly with her hands. "But since he had a falling out with Bruce Haversham - and trust me, if he ever sets up a meeting with you, you do not want to go against him - what was I saying? Oh yeah, the release for that will be delayed so your film will get prime spot for a summer premiere."

You grow apprehensive at her words. Ewan never got into detail about that meeting, and you didn't really want to pry. But if that producer's reputation is indeed accurate, it doesn't bode well for Ewan's career that he might have done anything that displeased him.

With a sickening dread, you realise that Haversham might have something to do with Ewan failing to book the two films he went for in the past month. Despite the fact that the local casting director practically raved about his audition, and stated that he pretty much had both of the roles in the bag.

"Mal, you know Donna right? Ewan's publicist?" you ask, knowing that she and Donna are under the same agency. "Does she talk to you about Ewan at all? About what went down in New York?"

"A little, honey, yes," she admits. "But about that meeting, I thought you would know. He didn't tell you?"

"Not in too many words, no. Just that it didn't work out, and that the film wasn't meant for him."

"Oh, I see," she smiles, almost ruefully, like she feels sorry for you. That look compels you to ask, "What do you know, Mal? Tell me."

Her hand reaches and clutches yours atop the table. "From what I heard, he refused the role because of you."

"What?"

"It's rare with young actors like you guys, to be so devoted so early on."

Growing impatient, you say, "Mal, please, what are you saying?"

"Look, I don't know the details of it. But apparently Haversham wanted him to get into a PR stint with his love interest for the film, and to hide whatever real relationship he has going on with you. This ordeal was going to be more restrictive than the arrangement you have with Jacob, which is more or less over at this point."

"I didn't know that," you whisper hoarsely.

"Honey, don't worry about it," she consoles you, taking a sip of her coffee. "Like I said, I don't know much. I can get you in touch with Donna if you want to speak with her? I'm 100% positive it's not all bad. There's one thing we can be sure of, at least!"

You look at her expectantly, unable to formulate a guess.

"That boy loves you!"

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With only a few days left before filming, you had begun to make the final preparations before moving to Atlanta.

It's a late night, one laden with anxiety and nervous jitters, and the several shots of whiskey you had just taken do little to keep the walls from closing in.

Although, perhaps, it is better if they do. If they imprison you, even just for tonight, to keep you from whatever it is you plan to do.

It's for the best. I have to do this. I'm doing this for him, you keep telling yourself. You keep repeating the lies, letting them bounce relentlessly in the walls of your mind, until you fool yourself into thinking them to be true.

You had met with Donna a few days prior, and the whole situation was made clear to you. You didn't know for certain when the decision formed in your mind, but it's there, as real as the love you feel for Ewan.

The love you will have to bury.

He picks you up in his rental Rover, after you told him that you wanted to go for a drive. But you ask him to park his car behind the private apartment building where you're staying.

The car grinds to a halt, like a signal for you to get it over with. There is no going back now.

"Ewan... I - " You can't push the words out, more so when he reaches for your hands and squeezes. He looks at you with those eyes, expecting anything but what you're about to say.

"I'm sorry," you try again, and your voice breaks. His face slowly drops, the mood instantly changed, but the worse is yet to come.

"What are you sorry for, darling?" He rubs his thumb along your cheekbone, the sensation willing you to just abandon your plan completely. To abandon the lie.

"Whatever happens..." Just get it over with. "...I want you to know that I'll always be here for you. We are friends first, aren't we?" Peel the bandaid. Rip it off. Let it bleed.

"I'm afraid I don't follow," he says.

You sound robotic, emotionless. But one wrong turn and the floodgates may break. There's a lump in your throat and you push it down. Reminding yourself to act - use your fucking acting skills if you actually have any. Now's the time. "We can't be together, Ewan."

There it is, sounding itself into existence, ruining the love you have in front of you.

His hand drops, as if he recoils back into himself. Away from you. It's cruel, but you know you will have to do more damage. You have to make it stick. This becomes clear when he says, "No", with conviction. "No, darling," he repeats. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Ewan - "

"You're not being funny, darling." He tilts his head, testing you, giving you the chance to retract your words and start laughing at your twisted joke. Darling comes out a mockery, something to say out of spite.

He takes a deep breath, leaning back in the driver's seat. "I don't... I don't accept this." He looks straight ahead, his lips pursed and jaw taut. "Fucking... why ?"

"I just... don't think it's going to work out."

"Bullshit."

Your words come out rushed, "You should take that role. I don't want you to hold back just for me. This could be something really great for you, Ewan. This could be it! Most actors pray for an opportunity like that to come along and I wouldn't want you to - "

"That's the reason?"

" - refuse it because of me. So we should - "

"Stop."

" - end this."

Silence. Not a single sound in the near-empty parking lot. No sirens in the distance, no pedestrian chatter. Just slow, heavy breathing in this rental car, both of you looking out the windshield. It feels stuffy all of a sudden, and not in the heated way when your limbs entwined in a jumble in the backseat a mere week ago.

"Please. I... I don't want to end this," he pleads. His knuckles are bone white, harshly gripping both sides of the steering wheel in an attempt to anchor himself. He shakes his head, and with some sense of hope, he says, "I don't care about that role. Okay? It's not the end of the world if I don't accept it. Have some faith in me, darling. I'll make it work. Surely there are plenty of other things down the line."

"Ewan," you whisper. You knew he would say this, which is why you prepared something worse. If that were even possible. You suck on your teeth, pulling on whatever poison you keep hidden away. You sigh and look away, a gesture that lets him know nothing will change your mind. "This fucking PR relationship business... it gets to you, you know? We don't know any better. I for one never expected to feel this way about - "

"About?" he finally turns to shoot you a look of betrayal, the pain in his eyes clear as day.

"I might have feelings for Jacob," you lie, "or I might not, I don't know. But there's something there, and I... I can't let this - us - go on while I'm conflicted about everything. It wouldn't be right."

Nothing about this is right.

But you go on, "I'll be off filming, with him, for a couple of months. And it's only going to make everything more confusing, and it wouldn't be fair to you, I know that - "

"I love you."

It's the first time he ever utters those three words, completely and without any doubt. He says them, despite everything you said before. And he means it.

A tear falls down your cheek, and you squeeze your eyes shut to keep the rest at bay.

"I'm sorry," you look at him, in finality, and you want nothing more than to passionately kiss him hard on the mouth, to hold on to him tight and plead for him not to let you go. With your quivering form, you amble out of the car. Every step worsens the weight of what just transpired. His side of the car opens, and he calls for you, but you can't bear to look back.

He catches up to you, breathless and with a wild look in his face. His blue eyes swell with tears, but his brows are scrunched down as if he isn't bothered by them.

"I want you to look me right in the eye and tell me we don't matter. I want you to tell me you don't love me," he says, and it's the most vulnerable you've ever seen him. He searches your eyes for something, anything to hold on to. Part of him is still desperate enough to grasp at straws, on the hope that you will change your mind.

But the other hardened part, has become angry. Indignant. Because how could you do this to him? The only girl he has ever loved. So he needs to hear it from you, clearly. He needs you to drive the final nail on the coffin.

"I do love you," you croak, and you do nothing to stop your tears from flowing freely.

"Darling..."

"But I can't be with you," you turn away, one last time. "Goodbye, Ewan."

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Some time ago, during the meeting in New York...

The lush office was laden with expensive wooden furniture, one side with built-in shelves displaying film awards and plaques of varying degrees of prestige. A full glass minibar occupied the other side.

The casting director introduced himself as Bruce, insisting that Ewan call him by his first name and not any of that "sir or similar stick-up-the-ass names". Ewan can see him as a mentor or maybe even a friend, Bruce insisted.

After all, they were going to help each other out a lot...

(to be continued)

Taglist: @sprinklesprinkle888 @namelesslosers @skymoonandstardust @valyrianflower @luckyfirebasement @omgsuperstarg @elissanatok @callsignwidow @sinistersnakey49 @darkwriteracademia @yyrzmomo @queenofshinigamis @luvaerina @shamelessblazecrown @mirandastuckinthe80s @elleinex0x0 @pierrotlu @aegonswife @strangersunghoon @lunampacheco @writer-ann-artist @gaiaea @of-swords-and-words @ateliefloresdaprimavera @m00n5t0n3 @helaenaluvr @peachysunrize @annie-ruk @luvly-writer @ananas26t @athenafaes @lovelyteenagebeard @mamawiggers1980 @moongirl27 @katherine93 @barnes70stark @justbelljust @cloudroomblog @somestufftoday @esposadomd @girl-in-the-chairs-void @insideyourimagination @hotdismylife @vyctorya @wildrangers @livcookesgf @dracaryxzs @aemondwhoresworld @aisselasstuff @onlyrealjoy

Update! Read the second bonus chapter here ~

💌 next chapter

HOW DARE YOU, reader. How dare you.

The gif above paints a clear picture of Ewan's heart breaking in the car 🥲 just in case you guys needed a visual aid 🥲🥲

Next chapter - the meeting in New York, the reader's conversation with Donna, and.... we see them move on from each other (?) You know these bloody actors, one relationship in the first half of the year and then another right after...

Feel free to come for me in the comments <3 it was the most heartfelt chapter, after all. Also, let me know what yous want the bonus chapter to be about!

[moonstruckme]

Omg Mae now that I’ve been taken by the throat by Sirius, could you write something about him reacting to his gf getting her belly button pierced, please? I did mine yesterday and truthfully, I’ve forgotten I’ve got it done cos it doesn’t hurt or ache or anything😭

Ahh Fawn that's so cute!! I'm glad it's gone so easily, thanks for requesting my love <3

cw: new belly button piercing (no mention of the piercing process)

Sirius Black x fem!reader ♡ 423 words

However giddy you are as you exit the piercing studio, you’ve got nothing on Sirius. Your boyfriend is all but skipping alongside you, but sideways so he gets to keep his eyes on your stomach and you get to worry about him smacking into a pole. 

“Fuck,” he groans, not for the first time. “It looks so fucking good.” 

You’re finding it impossible to quell your smile. It’s starting to make your cheeks hurt. “I really like it,” you agree. 

“You should, baby.” Sirius has to drag his gaze forcibly up from your abdomen, but his grin only widens when he meets your eyes. “You really wanted this, and it looks killer. You’re making me want one of my own.” 

Your mouth pops open. “Oh, that could be fun! I’m sure it’d look so good on you.” 

“Probably.” Sirius shrugs smugly, opening your car door for you. “But let���s wait and see how yours heals up first. I’ll let you be my little guinea pig.” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

You twist to reach into the backseat, grabbing the sweatshirt you’d stashed back there before going into your appointment. When Sirius gets in and sees you pulling it on over your sports bra, he freezes. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” 

You stop with the hem of the sweatshirt just above your stomach. “Um, getting dressed?” 

Sirius tsks, reaching over to try and tug your sweatshirt off your head. You hold fast. “You’re not supposed to be covering it, you know that,” he chides. “Don’t be stubborn.” 

“They said it’d be fine if I wore loose clothing.” 

“I meant for me.” 

You laugh, and your boyfriend’s stern facade almost breaks, the tiniest twitching of his lips. “Sirius, I can’t go shirtless forever.” 

“Don’t see why not.” 

“I’ll get cold! I’m already cold.” 

Sirius softens. “Aw, you should’a said, lovebug.” He leans across the console, giving you a lewd, scorching kiss. In your distraction, he rips your sweatshirt the rest of the way off. “I can always keep you warm,” he says with a pat to your cheek. 

You huff, both incredulous and amused. “You’re incorrigible.” 

“Don’t think you’re going to derail me with big words,” he teases. He sets a hand on either side of your waist, swooping down to press a kiss just above your new piercing. Before you can complain, he’s back at your lips again. This kiss is sweeter, Sirius’ mouth firm but gentle on yours. “I’ll make sure you get warmed up, sweetheart. Just let me get us home first.” 

[artsninspo]

"CHEERS 🥂 "- RIO X READER

Summary: Rio's planned date night. Finally, you get a front row seat to who he is and a taste of what he's capable of. This one's steamy 🌶️

Pairing: Rio (Good Girls) X Black Reader

Word-Count: 2.5K

Full Masterlist

RIO MASTERLIST

Read the first three parts of this Rio miniseries:

“Baby-Girl”

“Whisky, neat”

"Jealous Type"

Rio’s been applying pressure. A quality you enjoy in a man. He’s been a great communicator, texting and FaceTiming you when he’s free for the past four days. His cool demeanour is never ending. Neither are the lazy promises about what’s awaiting you the next time you see him in person. After that kiss you know it’ll be good, straight to the point, signed, sealed, delivered - sincerely Rio. In the past few days you’ve come to appreciate him. There were no forever promises snapping you out of the thrill of the here and now with him.

8:30 Sharp. Don’t play with me either baby girl. 

-Rio 

 The way he’s asserted himself leaves little room for anyone else to be entertained. He’s a handful. It’s the last message he’s sent you hours ago now. Clad in your robe you turn to face your closet. Your hair and make up is what it is already. Now onto the conundrum of what to wear? Did it really even matter? Swallowing you walk from the nudes to the colourful section of the closet. Pausing you shake your head with a finger to your lips turning around to the blacks. You don’t want to clash with him, you want to blend in to his low-key air. You don’t want to do too much at all. You skim over dresses better suited for wow factor and settle on one that will do the trick. Accessories are easy and you choose simple ones that flatter your dress. With a final turn you look yourself over. It gives calm cool and collected, simple, not too fussy. Checking your watch you see you have thirty minutes until Rio arrives. You ensure your necessities are in your purse before spraying perfume.

The thrumming in your chest is a pleasant reminder of wants to come. You don’t remember a time outside of adolescence where someone had this kind of effect on you. Only this time you aren’t sneaking out of the house, you’re ignoring your brothers warnings. Deciding against games or grand entrances you head down to the lobby to be on time and step out five minutes early to see Rio in the parking lot of your condo leaning against his G-Wagon giving his phone his undivided attention. You're halfway to him when he senses you. You smile first allowing his raised brows and caution to settle into a pleased smile.

“Who were we texting?” You ask making him chuckle. His eyes drink you in making their way up slowly before he looks displeased. His jaw settles and when his eyes meet yours again he looks angry.

“Don’t disrespect me with this simple shit. I know you have way better up there” he comments acutely. There’s little to be said about his choice of clothing, nor are you his personal barbie.

“Didn’t think it mattered when you’re just going to take it off me?” You shrug leaning against his car to match his nonchalance. His frustration fades quickly and Rio doesn’t know exactly what to do with you. He tries his best not to smile as you snicker. He gets the door helping you in. When he gets in he reaches in the glove box and takes out a jewelry bag handing it to you.

“Instead of flowers” he says. You open it to see a pretty tennis bracelet. It’s definitely a first.

“Much better than flowers, a consolation for your asshole remark just now” you tell him holding out your wrist. He takes the bracelet putting it on and you admire the shine.

“You not going to accuse me of buying you fake diamonds? No smart remark?” He asks pulling off.

“It’s no fun when you expect it” you shrug leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Thanks”

Rio turns reaching for your chin he takes it between his thumb and index finger to kiss you properly, claiming you as his for the moment. “You’re welcome” he says having given you two reasons to smile tonight..

Your dinner is on the water, just the two of you on a nice boat sailing around the cities skyline at night. Each of the dinner courses are delicious and conversation with Rio is easy so long as the conversations float over the personal. He keeps his guard up setting a clear boundary you're comfortable respecting. He gives you his jacket when you shiver playing the role of a gentleman well. You feel none of the first date jitters or dread, it’s like you’ve known Rio for some time. He’s meticulous in having things perfect for you. You don’t get the sense he’s showing off but more like he’s a stickler for order and satisfaction which bodes well for you later. Away from the dinner table and rnow outside on the deck you pour two shots of tequila.

“Truth or drink?” You say raising the glass and taking a shot for good measure. Rio throws one back nodding - ready for whatever. He opens the bottle pouring out another two shots.

“When’s the last time a man made you cum?” He asks being the forward asshole he is.

“Awhile” you respond evasively.

“A few months or a few years?” He asks.

“Months, now I get two questions” you tell him.

“Go on baby-girl” he says like he’s talking you through it leaving you to blush because he is hell.

“Why doesn’t my brother like you?” you ask and he grimaces; it’s a surprise. In Rio’s mind there are too many reasons to name. Reasons that’ll have you off the boat and ironing his calls.

“That’s between us, nothing to do with you” he responds taking a sip.

“If the roles were reversed would you want your sister sitting where I am?” You ask and Rio smiles, you know the answer before it leaves his lips.

“No” he confirms. “What to you like most about me?” Rio asks and it’s a surprise to you. His confidence makes the question seem a little out of place. Racking through your brain you try to narrow it down. There are more physically attractive guys, taller guys, richer guys, better dressed guys… Losing yourself in your thoughts you look back at him looking him over.

“I don’t know, that you have yourself together and you’re not afraid to put in work.” you shrug surprising him.

“What do you do for fun, hobby wise?” You ask.

“You don’t want to know what I like about you?” Rio asks.

“No” you tell him outright and he laughs.

“Boxing, helps me put the stress away” he responds and you feel the boats engines stop. Turning you realize you’re back at the dock and turn to find Rio watching you intently.

“Don’t kill the fun now by falling in love” you tease getting your bag.

“You’d fall first baby-girl” he taunts smoothly.

“Not likely” you comment heading off of the boat.

“Not likely?” he chuckles like it’s a first. “Keep playing with me.”

“Or what? I’ll probably like whatever punishment you can think of,” you shrug being forward turning back you see a blush on his cheeks as he smiles. You stop walking to let him catch up and find him chuckling a little like he’s broken character.

“Most likely, if I’m nice” Rio says into your ear as he holds you from behind. Chuckling you allow him to lead the way forward to his car. His cologne is perfect, the entire night has been perfect.

“Don’t call me unless you’re being nice” you respond.

“Mhm?” Rio raises a brow as he gets in.

“I thought you might like me being mean?”

“No, I don’t intend to underestimate what that means. Not my kind of surprise” you shrug looking over at him and his smile turns into contemplation. There you were right again. He’d passed curiosity, the cat and mouse was over and now he was considering your words a valid warning. Having a son and family were enough of a liability in his work. Things with you could get complicated especially with his involvement with Ruby and Stan. The pussy will be good; that Rio is for certain but now’s not the time he needs to be spending wide open chasing his next hit or the next thrill. He already knows you don’t know how to behave, taming you won’t be as fun as coming in and shutting shit down every time. For now there was a very clear scheduling conflict as well as ethical concerns.

Besides, Rio can’t quite decide your type of crazy yet. One round won’t suffice and after a few … would you slash his tires for his involvement with Stan and Ruby? Would you ignore him or worse? He could see the promise of mutually assured devastation in your eyes should you have to go head to head.

“Second thoughts, wow. Didn’t think Mr. Christopher would bitch out first” you taunt.

Fuck it

Rio mutters leaning over to kiss you. It’s not what you expect. The switch from contemplative to sensual heats your body in an instant. Unbridled passion, no time for logic.

Its on.

You can feel the seat going back and steady Rio as he maneuvers the seat flat not letting up. His tongue spelling promise of his other talents. Better than in the bathroom. You feel your body relaxing into it, the sensations rushing to your core as it readies itself in anticipation of pleasure. His hands run featherlight touches up your legs before lifting them to wrap around his torso.

It’s a first, sex in a car.

The thought of it flushes you sending goosebumps to cover your flesh. You feel pliable under his touch as he takes the lead. “Quiet now huh?” His voice is low as he peppers kisses on your neck. Before you can speak you feel him pressing into you and a moan of pleasure is your response. “Doesn’t feel like you’re the whore you pretend to be” he whispers enjoying the grip on his fingers.

“Shut up” you moan before your eyes close he comes in for another kiss that is messier an more frenzied. The nights foreplay has come to an end. Honestly there had been other plans but there was no way either of you were doing anything other than getting what you came for. His size is impressive and leaves you reeling to catch your breath as he uses technique that tells he’s no novice. He hits all of the right spots leaving you a pillow princess as he gives and takes until you're both sated and breathing hard. He slides off the condom leaning back and you smile seeing the fogged glasses until flashing lights snap you out of the fantasy. A knock Rio’s glass startles the both of you as a figure peers in. Instinct makes Rio shield your indisposed body from view. It’s a frenzied rush to cover yourself and Rio manages to put his dick away.

The cop demands you to get out of the car and you both do. Rio makes no effort to hurry, his aura reeks disgust and impatience. So much so that there’s no charming your way out of a seriously tacky potential charge. You rage silently as you’re cuffed and placed in the back of the cop car with Christopher.

“Bonnie and Clyde huh?” Rio whispers earning him an elbow. Rio chuckles not understanding the gravity the situation or your embarrassment.  “Relax, love I have a few more rounds in me” he continues ready for more as you seethe by his side. The precinct is lit in tacky fluorescent lighting that is jarring on the eyes after a night of warm romantic hues. All eyes are on you and so is the chatter. Your stomach falls in your ass the moment you realize Stan was once one of them.

“Would you like your phone call or do we head outback and you take care of me like you did him?” A portly cop propositions.

“Fuck did you just say?” Rio snaps finished with his call. Cops pop their heads up and the phone rings.

“Buddy don’t try to look tough for the girl” the pig says balling his fists.

“Stop!” A female cop says popping her head up holding a phone. “Stop now and let them go” she demands and there is some shuffling as the phone is passed around. Rio waits impatiently seemingly bored by the process until the cuffs are removed from his wrists and then your’s. The look he gives the dirty cop makes you nervous for the mans well being as he takes your hand walking you out. You stop now feeling the gravity of it. A man who can fuck like him and stay that cool under pressure is dangerous. A man cops tread lightly with is something else entirely. The big leagues, very major. Looking up at him you curse yourself knowing the date and any romance between you is done. For the first time your brothers protective instinct really was trying to shield you from serious trouble. The part of your brain that loves a thrill is ready to fight against it but you stand firm. Instead of making a scene you re enter the car once the two of you are returned to the marina with profuse apologies. Reveries of how he felt wash over you, the feeling of being kissed and the fresh memories dance around your mind. You don’t have to ask - Rio drives you home and parks in your parking lot.

This time the silence between you both is thick once the engine shuts off. Its like all the progress and familiarity has been washed away in spite of you still being able to feel the effects of him on your body.

“I’m sorry, I planned to take you to my place. Everything will be wiped your record and reputation will be fine” he says speaking first. Everything about him screamed he wasn’t fond of apologies. Turning you see his eyes are sincere and you swallow letting your seatbelt loose.

“Rio...”

“Don’t say it” he smiles looking down into his hands. “Don’t say it baby girl” he sighs holding your gaze. You want to invite him up and ride him till your frustration fades. You want rounds two three and four if your bodies can take it but for once your head is resigned against the thrill.

“I had fun” you admit earning a disappointed nod from Rio. He gets out of his car with you and heads into the trunk and walks towards you with a large bottle of Ace of Spades champagne.

“Cheers” he says bidding you goodbye with Champagne what was supposed to kick off the fun in his hand. Looking up at him as the gold bottle sparkles along with the newly gifted bracelet in the light you look at the forbidden fruits contemplating a few more rounds or if you plan to kick the habit cold turkey.

“Cheers” you respond with a smile.

_________

Author's Note: Thank you for all your support and patience on this series. It means more than you know. I love writing for character I feel like we should have got more of. Hope you enjoyed, leave a comment, like and reblog to let me know 💖

[revelboo]

Are you okay writing for tfp Knockout or Breakdown? Maybe they are either another (human) racer or heck even someone who works at the car wash who gives some of the best cars waxes, Knockout befriended. That or maybe they’re a mech experiment (mostly) human survivor that helped Breakdown escape MECH. Or literally whatever you see happening these where just some of my suggestions. The floor is yours if you’re okay writing for them? Thanks either way 😄

My Favorite Accident

Knockout x reader-race

• Huh. Of all the ways you might have imagined you’d die, death by a furious, alien pimp car wouldn’t have made the top ten. Or hundred. Fingers going white knuckled on the helmet in your hands, you feel curiously numb. Drag racing was dangerous and sooner or later, you’d push your luck past the point of no return. But this?

• When you’d managed to pass that stupidly gorgeous, red sports car for the third night in a row, you’d wanted to laugh your head off. Maybe dance a victory jig because your old, rusty Trans Am looked like an ad for tetanus and it’d still beaten all those other pretty, expensive cars. So yeah, when the candy apple red car had followed you and stayed right on your bumper after the race, you’d sucked it up and pulled over. Letting the guy follow you to your house wasn’t happening. If you were going to get screamed at, it was going to be on your terms.

• You grab your switchblade out of the center console and slide it into your back pocket in case wealthy sports car guy decided he could try and bully you out of your winnings. Hip cocked and arms folded across your chest, you wait for the guy to get out and yell- probably accuse you of cheating.

• That sound was something you’d never forget, almost a musical thing as metal shifted and rearranged. And grew to tower over you in the form of a sleek robot.

• An infuriated robot as it takes a thunderous step your way and your helmet hits the asphalt. More than anything, you want to run. The problem is your body isn’t on board. You can’t move at all as it crouches down. “Mind telling me how you beat me in that scrap heap?”

• Cold fury sparking through him, Knockout glares down at the human staring up at him. “Well?” He demands. “You cheated didn’t you?” Because there’s no way a human beat him in that… abomination. It’s not even a car, more a mobile scrap heap. And that just makes it so much worse.

• Huh. Indignation wins out over common sense. “I’m a better driver,” you say. Those strange black and red eyes narrow and you have the thought that you can duck, grab the helmet and sling it at the robot. Maybe buy yourself a whole thirty seconds before it stomps you to death.

• What you don’t expect is for it to throw up an arm in all too human exasperation. “Hardly. I’ve been driving long before you were even alive,” it says, walking past you to stalk around your car. “Do you have any idea how mortifying it is to lose to… this? What it does to my reputation?”

• You can breathe now that it’s not glaring down at you, because it’s popping the hood on your car and shaking its head in disgust. “That’s gotta hurt, huh?” You snark, wincing as it glowers at you over its shoulder with murderous intent.

• “We’re going again. Now.” Because he can’t stand it. And it’s been a long time since anyone’s given him a real challenge. A thrill of electric anticipation makes him smile when your uneasy expression smooths into a cocky sureness, because he knows you won’t just let him win- you’ll fight him tooth and nail for it. A kindred spirit.

Next

[hannahluvsbillie]

was it ever casual?

part 1

✮ pairing : billie eilish x reader

✮ cw: nothing too heavy, angst (kind of)

ᡣ𐭩 a/n: sorry for the wait!! my tumblr hasn’t been letting me post anything! but we’re here now and that’s all that matters. thank you sm for all the love on part one, it means everything to hear you like my writing 🥺🥺

the rain pitter patters on the window of billie’s car, it was pitch black with the exception of a few small streetlights in the empty parking lot.

it was damn near silent in the car, only the sounds of soft music playing were heard.

at least it was, until you got a notification.

you pick up your phone from the console, seeing a text from some random person you gave your number to at a party last week because he wouldn’t stop bugging you.

“hey, wanna meet up soon? still in la for the week.”

the text read.

billie’s eyes glance over at your phone, out of your peripheral vision you see her brows furrow at the message.

your eyes dart to billie, and you immediately put your phone down. not wanting her to see the message.

this just makes her brows furrow further, and her face contort a little.

“who’s that?” she asks, her voice stern. the hand that was once on your thigh moves back to her own, silently telling you she’s suspicious.

“don’t worry about it.” you say, glancing over at her and putting your phone under your thigh. you didn’t intent to mock her statement from the last meet up you had, but it just came out.

these past few times you’ve hung out with her, you’ve been noticing the abundance of notifications she gets while you’re together. you try to comfort yourself by saying it’s just her friends, or her family blowing up her phone. but you know, you know it’s other girls.

“im worried about it, who else is talking to my girl?” she states, the smallest hint of playfulness in her voice.

“my girl.” the nickname always seemed to find its way into her words while she was with you, but the once meaningful nickname that used to give you butterflies has lost meaning. how many other girls does she call “my girl” ?

you look away, you find yourself feeling annoyed at her words. she does the same shit to you, so why should she be mad about it?

“it’s not like we’re dating.” you say, glancing over at her only to see her brows raised at your comment. you were never this feisty with her, what did she do?

she moves her head just enough to look into your eyes, her brows still raised in surprise. “yeah, we aren’t. but i wanna know if my girl’s talking to someone else.” she says coldly.

your brows raise, matching her expression. you shake your head in disbelief, how could she be so dismissive?

“billie, you do the same fucking thing.” you say, your voice seems to have lost that soft, sweet, gentle tone it regularly has when you speak to billie.

“that’s- that’s different ma.” she says, feeling like she’d just been called out on her bullshit.

you shake your head once again, your hands fiddle with themselves in your lap.

“how is that any different? they blow up your phone constantly and when i ask you about it you brush me off.” you say softly, turning your head to meet her gaze.

she rolls her eyes at your response, starting to get agitated with you.

“because you’re my girl y/n. no one else’s.” she says, her eyes shooting darts into yours.

that doesn’t sound very causal, but to hell with causal at this point.

“i wish i could say that about you billie.” you say, shooting her a glare.

“oh my god- baby. we’ve been through this a million times. they don’t mean anything to me.” she says, her voice starting to get more cold by the second. how could she just lie to you like that?

you turn to face her, you can’t hold back anymore.

“bullshit.” you say coldly, her eyebrows raise in response.

“if i meant anything to you i wouldn’t be sitting in your car at 1 in the morning- let alone letting you eat me out in your car, or only meeting with you in secluded places, or the fact you won’t text me back for a week. it’s like im only here when your bored.” you ramble, finally letting your feelings spill out. it felt nice to call her out, even though you knew she wouldn’t tell the truth.

“baby- y/n- you know damn well it’s not like that.” she says, looking at you with furrowed brows.

in all honesty, billie didn’t know you felt like that. so what she’d talk to other girls, you were still the one she saw the most.

“so what is it then?” you ask sharply, furrowing your brows at her. you had to swallow the lump that was forming in your throat.

she looks away, trying to think of a way to possibly answer that question.

“we’re just- a casual thing y/n, don’t act like it’s more then that because it’s not.” she says coldly, her response shooting daggers into your heart.

a moment of silence falls between billie and you, neither of you knew what to say, or what was the right thing to do.

but you knew one thing, you couldn’t keep doing this with her. if that’s how she really feels, then you two aren’t on the same page.

it’s not causal when you look at her like she hung the damn stars every time she speaks.

“just- take me home billie.” you say, looking into her eyes. you were so tired of begging for her to choose you. it’s all that you’ve done is beg for her attention this whole- situationship. or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it.

she scoffed in disbelief, shaking her head. her hand went down to the shift and put the car into drive.

“god damn it- fine.”

[word-wytch]

Don't Stand So Close To Me — Chapter 17

Eddie x Teacher!Reader

Chapter 17/? 19k. Series Masterlist

✏︎ Finally alone, tensions come to a head and feelings erupt.

✏︎ Series Summary: Forced to move back home to Hawkins after your fiancé cheats on you, you begin to fall in love again with an audacious 20 year old metalhead, only there’s one problem — he’s still in high school and you’re his English teacher.

While you struggle starting over in a place you never thought you would return, Eddie struggles feeling stuck in a place he can’t manage to leave — until you offer to help him. Of all the lessons learned, the most important are the ones you teach each other.

✏︎ Chapter CW: smut (18+ nsfw), emotional first time, heated conversations, hurt/comfort, love confessions, heavy petting, dry humping, body worship, unintentional edging, nipple play, cock stroking, piv sex (protected), aftercare

✏︎ For reference, here is a bingo score card map of Teach's apartment

✏︎ Special thank you to @the-unforgivenn @munson-blurbs @rip-quizilla @ladylilylost for holding my hand behind the scenes and rekindling my light with your own on a daily basis.

It was nothing like you had imagined. 

In your countless daydreams involving Eddie’s van, it was always things like the breeze gusting through a cracked window, or the bones of his knuckles as they stretched between yours that drew your focus. The details were always fuzzy. Staring into the open passenger door, they were coming into full view now under the yellow interior light. Cigarette butts crowded the ashtray beneath the radio. A nest of candy wrappers cradled naked tapes in the center console. McDonalds bags littered the seat that would soon be yours. Eddie crinkled them into hasty balls beneath his fists, arcing them over his shoulder to clatter against a cymbal somewhere in the back. 

“Sorry, I uh, wasn’t expecting company,” he said with a shameful shake of his curls. Bracing the seat cushion, he reached toward the floor before chucking two empty Mountain Dew cans into the rear abyss. French fry crumbs clattered to the weather mat with a brush of his hand against the plaid fabric. Coyly glancing from under his lashes, he sat back in his own seat and gave the space a final look. “Ok, should—should be good now.”

Like an open maw of caramel leather, it could have swallowed you. Securing your thumb under the strap of your bag, your boots left the salty pavement and found the ledge, lifting you out of the darkness and into the dim chaos. With a gracious smile, you slid into your place beside him. The seat was a comfortable cradle at your back; spacious and sturdy. Sliding your bag between your knees and feet, it found a home on top of the fry crumbs and other mysteries you decided not to entertain. 

You sat there for a beat as the details enveloped you; the scent of old cigarettes and leather, the stale hint of fast food, the exhaust on the cold night air wafting in through the open door. It squealed on its hinges when you shut it, sealing you behind its jaws as the light above you faded to black. 

Then it was just you and him. Just you and him in the dark leather cavern with nothing but the light from the dashboard and the soft floodlights making a halo of his frizz. Nothing but the engine rumbling idly, and the rush of your pulse in your ears. Nothing but short bursts of breath, and eyes that roamed with cautious amazement. 

It was strange for Eddie to see you here. You, in the passenger’s seat of his van. Out of your usual context. Surreal, like a dream he’d woken into. 

“Thank you,” you muttered into the silence, “for the ride.”

Eddie blinked hard, snapping from his trance. “Yeah—yeah. Sure thing.” Chains rattled against the zipper of his sleeve as he shifted the gear to reverse. Reflexively, his right hand braced your headrest, peering over his shoulder as he slowly backed out. “So uh, where are we going?”

His scent sucked the words off your tongue — the acrid remnants of grease on his fingers, the warm musk of his leather-clad wrist. Tearing your eyes away from his tendons flexing inches from your face, you eked out a response. “Oh—just make a left onto Randolph.”

With a nod, he hit the brake, removing his hand to shift forward toward the parking lot exit. Tail lights caught the soft glitter of snow as your small white sedan faded in the ample side-view mirror. There was a view from up here, like the van was swallowing the pavement as it careened out onto the road. Like you were seated in a leather throne, watching traffic below surge like a sea of subjects on the rush hour wave. 

Eddie tapped his hands against the wheel to a nervous rhythm before one of them reached toward the stereo—which might as well have been a button labeled detonate—because the thundering sound could have blasted you both back into 1984.

“SHIT—” he screeched with a manic twist of the volume dial, a stray curl wavering in his ragged breath. “Sorry.”

A laugh bubbled out of you. A wild, cackling thing, as if you were a toy wound up by nerves and the noise had released the crank. It was absurd—surreal—watching traffic lights change from the passenger’s seat in Eddie Munson’s van as Iron Maiden squeaked out the quietest guitar solo you’d ever heard. 

Eddie’s shoulders slacked in relief, hand relaxing against the wheel as he breathed a chuckle. The stoplight painted his cheeks even redder, and your spinning world stilled to a single focus as you gasped for air: his wild eyes, glimmering with soft bewilderment like you were an angel or a ghost he’d picked up along the road. Like he was struggling to believe you were real. Like he was struggling to believe you were here.

And just like that it was quiet again. The van rumbled idly beneath your seat, kicking up a smokescreen of exhaust. His soft lips parted and twitched. Straightening your shoulders and dipping your chin, you prepared to receive any words he had to offer. You even thought a soft smile might encourage their release, but nothing came out. The light turned him green, and with a sharp sigh through his nose he shifted his attention back to the road.

Smoothing your hands across the wool in your lap, you chewed at your own stubborn words as you did your bottom lip. But they were too big to make it out. Too loud, even with the rumble of the engine. Instead you cast your attention over your shoulder with a heavy sigh. Lately it was rare to find yourself out past dark. Even rarer that you looked past your own pained reflection in the glass. Passing below you like a panorama, Christmas lights wrapped stout bushes and glowed under a fresh blanket of snow. Plastic reindeers and light-up Santas crowded lawns amongst nativity scenes. Bright colored bulbs wrapped porches and rooftops. Through these dirty windows, you could almost call it beautiful. 

“Straight?”

You blinked out of your daydream. “Mhm, until Chester, then make a right.”

Eddie gave a single nod, keeping his eyes on the road. Typically by the time he made it past Melvald’s he would be fumbling in the pocket of his coat, pinching a cigarette out of the box and feeling for his lighter on the dash while his knee kept him out of a ditch. Today he had precious cargo. Chin locked dutifully forward, he still couldn’t keep his eyes from staying, from catching the lights as they danced across your holy form. You were watching them intently, lost in some daydream he could only speculate about. It was a vision he could get used to. Secretly he hoped you’d stay distracted, just a moment longer. Long enough to snap a mental polaroid, to shake it and save it for later. Tension splayed his hands on the wheel, and he firmly adjusted his grip with a slow exhale.

Shifting against the leather beneath you, your fingers found the stitching, running nervously along the smooth piping, filing it somewhere deep in your memory. It was good like this. Cruising like a tall ship above the sea of cars as Eddie palmed the wheel. Feeling his presence in the seat next to you; solid and stable like a captain at the helm. It was better than a dream. Absent of clasped palms and open windows, but rich in realness. 

Tin cans rolled hollowly in the back as the van veered right, and you wondered how many other lucky people had been given this place of honor after shows at The Hideout, or parties on the weekend, or long summer nights that bled into day. You could almost picture him pulling up to a gas station; the smoke wafting out of the doors as they opened, the crinkling of Snickers wrappers and cracking of pop cans, the laughter over the roar of the stereo. You were surrounded by remnants of good times past. Closing your eyes, you imagined for a moment that he was taking you somewhere else. Somewhere fun and exciting, somewhere you would surely leave behind remnants of your own.

When the van passed the baseball field and approached the tidy row of lights outside of each apartment door including yours, you wished he would just keep driving. Way out past the farms and forests, straight into the stars. You wouldn’t even look back.

“This lot here,” you gestured as a crushing feeling crept into your chest.

With a solemn nod, Eddie did as he was instructed. He braked and cranked the wheel, drove all the way to the end—to the last apartment on the single-story strip—and pulled into the empty spot in front of it. 

You sat there for a moment, idling as the large headlights illuminated a single red door, the number 8 beside it. Suddenly it was like you were a child again, being dropped off at home after a weekend with Janet. It was the same sinking feeling. With a slow exhale, you worried your lip between your teeth.

Eddie killed the engine. His hand splayed the wheel, brows pinching as his thumb dug into the leather with a heavy sigh. Your eyes connected, and the staring match began. It sucked the moisture from your mouth. All you could taste anymore was your heartbeat. All you could see were those eyes—dark and brimming with a million words behind them, almost loud enough to hear. Let me in, they begged. Please, I’m so close.

The door was right there, glowing and red. All it needed was for you to unlock it. Only you could do that. Words wrestled on your tongue. They grappled with each other, flung each other from the ropes and into the ring. You can come in, one side said. Help me find a mechanic. The angel—or was it the devil—pulled that voice into a headlock, gritted thank you, goodbye in a voice that sounded an awful lot like your mother.

Goodness was a mantle. A weight that kept your shoulders back, your lips pressed tight. In the end it was goodness that moved your hand, grabbed the leather from between your legs and slid the heavy burden onto your lap. It was goodness that placed your fingers on the cold plastic handle and pulled. 

“Wait—”

There was a sparkle in your eyes. It flickered in the darkness as you turned over your shoulder. 

“We need to talk.”

Your fingers left the handle as you settled back into your seat with a sigh. “I know, we do.”

“Like, now.” It was loud and insistent, much more than he intended, but it just leapt out. “I want to talk to you now,” he repeated softer this time, thumb digging into the leather of the steering wheel.

“Okay, yeah. Yeah—no you’re right.” Your stomach did a summersault at the admission.

The knot in Eddie’s gut released slightly. He chewed his lip for a second before continuing. “I mean, we could talk out here I guess but it’s like, twenty degrees out and I’m running low on gas.” 

Your front door glowed in the halo of his headlights. He didn’t have to spell it out. You weren’t going to make him. But it had to be him who was asking, because all your lips had space for were four words, pinning their opposition to the mat, buying just enough time to sneak out. “You can come in.” It was quiet, but clear as you tugged the plastic handle, nodding over your shoulder for him to follow.

Eddie’s eyes grew wide, and in an instant he was throwing off his seatbelt, fumbling his keys into his pocket, and scrambling out the door into the cold.

It was like your fingers were moving through molasses, like they’d never held a key before, less found the right one on your keychain, placed it in the slot, and turned. It didn’t help that he was watching so intently, that you could feel his breath in clouds over your shoulder. Still, despite your churning nerves and roaring conscience, one of the voices—whether it was the angel or the devil, you hadn’t decided—rose up in hope as you turned the handle and pushed in.

It was nothing like he had imagined. 

Then again, he wasn’t really sure what he had imagined, just that there was something—some sign of life—like posters, or paintings, or something that suggested you even lived here. Instead as you flicked on the lights to the narrow hallway, he saw nothing but white walls. He froze for a moment, glancing down at his boots weeping onto your clean white carpet. He was struck by the impulse to remove them, to preserve the cleanliness of such a sterile environment, but when you kept on walking, the impulse was greater to follow. 

In a few strides he was passing a kitchen to his left; plain with a small formica table and chairs. He couldn’t get a glimpse of much else before the hallway emptied into the living room. This space looked slightly more lived in, but barely. There was a crocheted afghan in shades of brown draped over the cream floral couch. A remote and papers on the coffee table. A TV in the center of the room. In the corner by the sliding glass doors were few cardboard boxes labeled with words he couldn’t make out. Even the Christmas tree beside them was bare. It was amazing to him how much nothing there could be in a place somebody lived, how it was even possible. The only piece of furniture that seemed to hold some fragment of personality was the long record cabinet pushed up against the wall to his right. On top there were even a few records leaning between the speakers and the record player. It was hard to make out what they were from the track list on the back, not that he had much time before you turned around.

Eddie Munson was standing in your living room. Right behind the TV. You had to blink a few times to believe it. The dark, broad angles of his shoulders jumped out against the stark wall behind him as if he was a cardboard cutout. Out of place, out of time. He was moving though; stuffing his hands in his coat pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels as he chewed his bottom lip. 

You’d really done it now—invited a wolf inside your den. And now you were alone with him. Truly alone. Hidden from the outside world behind a door you’d locked yourself. You could say anything—do anything—you wanted. Fingers moving to the top button of your coat, they froze just as they did when you passed the front closet. As if removing it would render you vulnerable, would encourage him to do the same, encourage him to stay. Goodness drew your fingers from the plastic, tucked them safely inside your pocket.

“Thank you for the ride, I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, no problem.” He took a step forward, and a knot began to twist low in your belly. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said last week. About it not being a big deal,” he began with a slow, deep breath. “It was like, really fucking stupid a-and just—god,” he pinched the bridge of his nose, “insensitive of me and I’m sorry.”

You could tell he’d really thought about it. By the look in his eyes you were sure it had eaten away at him ever since you’d left him in your classroom. “Thanks, I appreciate the apology.”

His shoulders relaxed a little.

“I’m sorry too, honestly. This whole situation is…” you shook your head, breaking his gaze with a bitter sigh, “a mess. I never—” you sucked your teeth, searching for the words like they were stones on a dark path through the woods. “This is my fault.”

Eddie blinked in disbelief, offering a hollow laugh. “No, it isn’t.”

“No, it is.”

He rolled his eyes, unable to mask his annoyance. “What, like I didn’t ask you out? Ask you to smoke with me? Ask you to kiss me?” The last question lingered in the air between you, hanging for a second before you cut in.

“I should have said no,” you doubled down. “It’s my responsibility—”

“Stop.”

“I never should have put you in this position—”

“STOP.”

“No, it is my fault, Eddie. I’m your—”

“What, you’re my superior?” He strode forward, spitting fire like a volcano. “What like—like I’m some helpless child?”

“No—”

“Then talk to me like I’m an adult, because I am.” He was yelling now. Suddenly it felt like you were shrinking, dwarfed by his imposing silhouette. He must have seen the fear flicker in your eyes because he doubled back, raking his hand through his hair with a ragged sigh. “I’m twenty years old,” he leveled. “I’m twenty years old and still in fucking high school for some reason.”

Folding your arms across your thick coat, your lips twitched but nothing made it out. It was swallowed by the emptiness of the room, by the silence he left you in, by his dark eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t come here to argue, I—” he balled his fist and lowered it with a sharp breath through his nose. “I’ve barely been here five minutes and I’m already fucking everything up.”

Tentatively, your boot met the carpet in front of you, approaching as if he were a wounded animal. “You’re not,” you soothed.

Eddie took a deep breath, eyes smoldering like coal. “I hate this.” 

“Yeah, me too,” you stated quietly.

“I hate that has to be like this. That I’m like this and you’re—” he gestured toward you, hand falling dejectedly as if the next word was too painful to speak, “that I can’t—” he swallowed the wavering threatening his voice, “can’t be with you the way I really want to be.”

The heat in his voice could have melted you—leaked you out of your coat, and your boots, and your blouse until you seeped into the carpet. Until there was nothing left but the puddle he had rendered you. “I know,” you breathed. “So do I—”

“Then why don’t we just—?” He stepped forward, a hunger growing in his eyes like he’d glimpsed his first meal in days. Like he wanted to devour you.

And you wanted it. More than you cared to admit. The heat creeping up your neck didn’t lie, but your feet were far more self-preserving, treading backwards on the carpet. “It’s dangerous.”

He took a deep breath, straightening his shoulders with a frustrated sigh. “You know what, how ‘bout I just drop out?”

“Eddie—”

“No, really. As soon as we come back from break.”

You shook your head, pulse pounding in your temples. “I can’t let you do that.”

“Why not? It would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”

Your coat was suddenly suffocating, the room closing in like the narrowing space between you as he encroached with another step. “No. I’m supposed to be helping you a-and now I’m just getting in the way.”

Eddie fumed, nostrils flaring. “Getting in the way of what, some stupid piece of paper? I mean what the fuck do I need a diploma for anyway?” He gave a hollow laugh. “W-what you think I’m gonna be like, a doctor or some shit?”

His words were like daggers, aimed at himself but they sank into you. “It’s important to you. I know it is because you would have dropped out a long time ago if it wasn’t. I’m not gonna let you throw that away. Not when you’re this close. Not for me.”

The anger was rising again, building like steam in his chest. “Then what do you want me to do? Stay in school, risk your job?”

You paused for a moment, eyes flicking back and forth over the carpet. “Even if you did drop out, how do you think that would look to this whole town? You suddenly drop out of school and then… what? We just happen to start dating? You don’t think that would raise a few eyebrows? Most of my coworkers know that I’m tutoring you. It’s easy to put two and two together. People talk.”

Eddie heaved a sigh, glaring at the tidy stack of papers on your coffee table, the neatly folded afghan on your couch, suddenly swallowed by the order, the evidence of both of your positions. “Then what should we do?” He felt like he was on trial, like you held a wooden hammer, like he was waiting for it to fall. 

In the end, all you could offer was your honesty, like a hollow whisper. “I don’t know.”

It sunk like an arrow in his chest, shocked him with the depth of its sting. “Why not?” The words just shot out, and the pinch in your brow let him know where they landed. “I’m sorry—I mean of course I know why not—like practically speaking but—” His retort was drying up on his tongue, pounding feebly in his chest. “I just thought that, I mean we both—we both have feelings for each other.” A tangible pain flickered in his eyes. “Don’t we?”

“Yes, but—” The words caught in your throat at the sight of him. Those enormous almond eyes that haunted you whenever you closed yours. The way his lips twitched and trembled and begged you to capture and still them. And those hands, capable of so many things. Under stage lights they were sure and nimble, plucking complex melodies with ease and precision. Under fluorescents they fumbled carelessly, left everything they touched either bent, broken, or beaten. Did you trust them to protect you? Trust them with your career, your reputation, your heart? Did he know what he was truly asking you? When you finally collected the words, they came out low, and quivering. “You could ruin me.”

He wasn’t sure what hurt more, the fear in your eyes or the sting of your mistrust. Eddie took a step forward, placing a hand on his chest in earnest. “I would never do that.”

Anger startled you as it rose up, clawing its way out of the grave you buried it in when you slammed your car door shut outside the pawn shop. “I’ve known you for four months, Eddie.” Your lips formed a hard line, tears threatening behind your eyes as you gestured to the boxes in the corner. “I knew him for five years.” 

Eddie seethed, a fury rising in his chest at the man who’d hurt you, at the whole situation. “I can’t change that,” he snapped. “I wish I could. I wish I could just-just wave my hand and make it all better. I wish—” he breathed a hollow laugh, “that everything was different. That we’d met at some bar and I was some—some… I don’t know, just some guy instead of some fuckup who needs your help with his chemistry homework.” His voice betrayed him, fracturing the last few words. He swallowed, tears welling behind his eyes. After a deep breath, he finished. “I wish I could change a lot of things, but I can’t. All I can do is ask for you to trust me because the only thing I want in this world is a chance to show you how much I love you.”

The words bloomed in your chest, stung behind your eyes, hung like the aftershock of a bomb in the space between you. All your life you had wanted so many things. All of them ended up stored in boxes, sitting in drawers, held in secret daydreams. Remnants collecting dust. Fantasies no one would ever know. Eddie Munson stood there in your living room and told you that he loved you, and never in your whole entire life did you want something as badly as you wanted to believe him. To tell him that you loved him too. To crash into his arms and never leave. But fear held its icy grip, kept you frozen in place. Tears burned behind your eyes but you buried them too. “Those are big words, Eddie,” you whispered. 

Molten feelings churned in his gut, came spewing out before he could stop them. “I’m not illiterate,” he snapped.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know what this probably looks like to you,” he wavered hotly, nostrils flaring as his mouth became a thin, hard line, though his eyes were welling and wounded. “That—that I’m just some young, reckless guy who has the hots for his—” the last word caught in his throat.

“I don’t think that,” you whispered.

“Then what do you mean?”

The pain in his voice fractured the ice around your heart. “I just...” You breathed a deep sigh, searching for the words in the carpet before meeting his gaze again. “I just need to make sure you mean them, like really mean them, because—” your voice snagged. Through the hot blur, you glanced at your full moving boxes. Your empty Christmas tree. Your empty walls. Empty as the day you left Indianapolis. Empty as the day you moved in. “I can’t do this again.”

The crack in your voice could have shattered him, much less the image of you, shrinking in your stiff wool coat, swallowed by the sparseness of the room. You, trembling like prey, smaller than he’d ever seen you. 

“I mean them,” he uttered hotly. “I can’t do anything about your position, or mine, or your past, or how difficult this is for both of us. But…” he drew a deep breath, treading his words like rocks on a river. “I want you to give me a chance. A chance to be like—like a real person with you. Someone who can take you on a real date a-and—” The rest of it snagged in his throat, eyes welling as he swallowed back tears. He clenched his hand into a fist. Steadying himself with a deep, convicted breath, he continued. “I promise you will never have to worry—at least about how I feel—because I love you. And I mean it.” He let it hang in the air for a moment, straightening his shoulders. “All I’m asking for is a chance to show you.” 

You closed your eyes, tears cascading down your cheeks as you stifled a sob. When you opened them to a blurry room, Eddie was standing there, waiting for you. In your whole life you could count on one hand all the truly bad things you’d ever done. This, by any technical account, would be the worst of them all by a long shot. But when you searched your heart for the right answer, all you could find were fragmented dreams of the wind in your hair, and your feet on the dash, and his hand clasped in yours, and the wild open road, and every soft, quiet want you had ever locked away. When you finally opened your mouth, all you could manage were two words—broken, half-whispered, terrifying, and true. “Show me.” 

Swiftly, like a summer wind, Eddie crossed the room in two quick steps, snatched your face in both his hands, and kissed you. And just like that you were swept away. Stunned and breathless and whole all at once. Crushed between his hands and mouth, hot tears pinching through your lashes to cascade over the rough pads of his thumbs. You blindly grasped for him, fisting the leather of his coat to keep him from evaporating, to keep you from floating away. An exhale shook from both of you—wet and shuddering—as he parted just a fraction, just enough to capture you again. You melted there against his lips, wept like melting snow into his palms, dripping toward the carpet as his thumbs swiped the remnants from your cheeks. It was sniffling and sloppy, messy and real, and here—in the absence of bells, and desks, and lights that made everything wrong—it was the rightest thing that you had ever known.

With both his agent hands, Eddie kissed you for every time he wanted to but couldn’t. A thousand fervent daydreams pressed against your lips. One for every time he saw you in the hall, every time you’d brushed against his arm, every time you’d looked at him with kindness when everyone else saw a freak and a waste of their time. 

“I love you,” you whispered against his lips. A shallow sob escaped through the corners of his mouth and you kissed it away, thumbs soothing over his wet cheeks. “I love you.” Kiss. “I love you.” Kiss. “I love you.” And you meant every word.

Eddie stilled against the bridge of your nose and sighed, eyes closed, relishing as the words washed over him like a balm. Your breath mingled in soft pants as you rocked against his forehead, swaying to a rhythm only the two of you could hear. As if on cue, you opened your eyes together and were swallowed by two massive brown spheres. 

His thumbs gave your cheeks another swipe before dropping from your face, and yours did the same. You both took a moment to reset yourselves, wiping your eyes and noses on your palms and sleeves, soft chuckles escaping through giddy, disbelieving smiles at one another. His lashes were wet and clinging in a way that made him impossibly more beautiful.

Until now, your touch had belonged to the shadows. A timid trek across the ridges of his knuckles under the cover of a desk. A fenced exploration over the landscape of his ribs in the dark outside The Hideout. Now—in the gentle glow of the lamp beside your couch—you boldly cupped his face with both your hands. 

He was real, all of a sudden. The oval face that shot you smirks in the hallway and haunted your waking dreams, now here in the palms of your hands. Dragging your thumbs over the apples of his cheeks, they dimpled with a smile. Warm and flush in the golden light, softer than you’d ever imagined. Every subtle angle of his face, drawn together to make him—the ridge of his jaw under your fingertips, the phantom brush of stubble as you traced it. With gentle awe, your thumbs grazed over the crinkles in the corners of his dark, roving eyes. Real. Here. Yours. Now.

“I read your assignment,” you softly admitted. 

Eddie’s eyes widened with a gentle puff through his nose. “Oh yeah, how’d I do?” he murmured playfully. “B minus? I mean I didn’t exactly finish so it’s probably more like a—“

You silenced him with your lips. After a breathless, five second eternity, you parted with a heavy smack and looked him dead in the eyes. “A plus.”

Eddie melted between your palms. Trailing your hands down the soft contours of his cheeks, jaw, and neck, they flattened against his chest for a moment as it rose and fell beneath his black hoodie; steady and strong. He glanced down at your hands through gentle lashes, and then back up at you. With a coy flick of your eyes, you slipped up and over his shoulders, fingers diving under the silken liner of his coat. With both palms, you traced the strong angles, guiding the leather off of them until it thudded to the floor.

There was a single beat before he kissed you. Hard. Drawing the air from your lungs and the sense from the rest of you. When his tongue asked for admission there was no hesitation. You let him in, parting your lips to accept his wet heat, swept away by his current—breaking and cresting over and over. Hands hanging limply at your sides, he captured and devoured you, drawing you into his maw with every slip of his tongue against yours.

Your chest lurched forward as he tugged the buttons of your coat, working them from the thick wool eyelets with an urgency that bordered on frustration with the garment’s existence. His lips parted slightly as he glanced down, noses still touching, panting into the fractional distance as the eagerness of his fingers threatened the strength of the thread. Your mantle fell to the floor in a heap, and his hands—greedy and splayed at your waist—pulled you close.

His kiss came in waves, taking you under, again and again. It was the most delicious thing, to drown. To go slack and let the slick heat of his mouth take you under. You were learning to love drowning. Learning to love the darkness and the lack of air, the crushing of his body, the lapping of his mouth—bringing you to surface just enough before plunging back in. It was safe, to drown with him. 

Both hands twisted into his hair, tugging with fervent desperation as need rose up in you like a bubble that had been trapped at the bottom of the ocean, so sudden and consuming. Your teeth dragged along his bottom lip, tugging the plush membrane with a boldness that earned you a groan, a tightening of hands around your waist, a warm, wet tongue which you eagerly accepted. Yours danced against the gummy muscle, tasting everything—the hint of acrid smoke, the wistful sighs that echoed in the cavern of your mouth, the satisfied fulfillment of being truly alone.

His hands were burning through your blouse, splayed open at your waist like he was trying to make contact with every atom, pulling you so close it stifled your breath. There was a whole landscape here, a hill under your soft red cardigan where your back dipped toward your spine. He trekked it with his fingers, up and over, back and forth, feeling the muscle bend to his touch, and the subtle arch in your back when he did.

A feeling prickled through him. Up through his fingers, low in his belly. Desire—so familiar, and yet foreign as it ignited in a way that satisfied this time. There was something else too, rippling through his chest, seating somewhere in his sternum as he dipped his fingers—just the middle and ring—beneath the wool barrier of your skirt. The zipper grazed his knuckles, and he tasted something even sweeter than the strangled moan that ushered past your tongue:

Power.

He did it again. Pressing his fingers into the curve of your spine, splaying beneath the wool and pulling back in a firm grip around the muscle of your lower back, letting his fingers drag firmly over your skin like he was trying to claw through the cotton. 

It burned in a slow, delicious way. Burned in a way that made you dizzy, made your pulse jump from your throat and thrum in that low, forbidden place, beating life into a space that could no longer be ignored. You clenched your thighs together, arching your back at the demand of his touch, dipping your tongue into his sopping mouth as a helpless sigh escaped you. 

He lapped it up eagerly. Again, fingers splaying, clawing, burning. Like a sorcerer weaving a spell through the fabric—drawing you nearer, making you pliant. He met your sighs with approving hums. Bright, like the timbre of his voice, but the color was deeper, thick with a coaxing desire. They slipped down your throat like water in a desert, leaving you thirsty for more. 

There was an animal in you. Eager and starving. Pawing at his chest as his lips slid between yours in a rhythmic cadence. His hand burned at your back, clawing with insistence, warring with the few remaining shreds of his decent will. You obeyed with a cant of your hips, more than was proper, more than was chaste. Your rational mind flickered in for a moment, but the throaty, approving hum it earned you and solid mass of his waist molding and conforming to yours hushed it quickly. 

Eddie nipped at your bottom lip—testing, eager. A tingling rush flooded your core, tugged at your wrists like marionette strings, draped them over his shoulders and around his neck. Do it again, you begged with an arch of your back, pressing your chest to the contours of his. Eddie obliged with a drag of his teeth.

There was an animal in him too. Stirred by rocking of your hips, taunted by your boldness. It was like a waking dream, more unbelievable than any fantasy he’d ever had. You, draped around him like a doll, begging him to play. Boldly, he splayed his hand, starting between your shoulder blades and dragging firmly down your soft cardigan as he traced the length of your spine. You, bending like a string on a guitar, molded by his touch to sing the sweet release of your sigh. It ghosted hotly on his tongue, swirled in the pit of his belly. What other melodies were locked inside, waiting for his hand to be expressed?

Boldly, he breeched the barrier of your skirt, palming past the ridge of rough fabric, down, slowly down, over the mound of your rear. He rested there, grabbing with the full spread of his hand. It was sinful, how taught and plump the muscle was, how he’d watched it move for countless days from his station in the back of your classroom, eyeing how it shifted as you leaned on tired feet, etching words onto the board while he memorized your figure. Eddie tightened his grip, drawing upward, letting the swell of it pinch through his grasp.

Music—in the gasp of your mouth against his, the quick suck of air hushed by his lips, relinquished in a sigh. Guiding you closer, rocking you into him with the strength of his wrist, repeating the motion, reveling in the waves he made with every grapple of his palm.

The ice in you was melting, tingling to life like a limb half asleep, radiating through the pinch of his hands to that dormant place again. He was using both of them now—spreading and massaging as his tongue probed deeper. Your arms relaxed, limp on his sturdy shoulders, eyes closed, letting him do as he pleased—mold you like putty in his palms. Letting him lead you with the dance of his lips. Letting him sway you to his own silent rhythm. Letting him, letting him. 

It was like a waking dream to feel him in this way. To feel the angles of his body rock into yours, timed with the rhythm of his mouth. Such sensual movements coming fromthe man whose heated glances often gave you pause to wonder. It was a fantasy you could get lost in. Words—as they had been since you had met—were too bold, too brash, too loud. But here, you could tell him anything you wanted. So you told him, whispered the deep desires of your heart with a slow grind of your pelvis. He answered with a moan—sticky sweet, rippling across your tongue and down your throat. 

Your arms released slightly from their seat atop his shoulders, unable to mask your delight in the softness of his curls against your wrists and fingers, how the ringlets slipped through them like silk. How desperately you’d longed to touch them. How suddenly evident that was. 

It felt so good to feel him with the wholeness of your hands—free now to wander wherever they pleased. Possessed by the animal stirring inside you, they padded up the ridges of his neck, tangled in the hair at the nape and tugged. 

Eddie groaned into your mouth, surprise and delight ghosting hotly on your tongue. It jolted in the space between your legs, aching alive with every movement of his body, every sigh and sound. It ached for more, curious about what else you could coax out of him. Breaking from his lips, yours traveled south, over and under the ridge of his jaw, delighting in the barely-there brush of sandpaper stubble as you tracked it, the way he tipped his head to expose the pale column of his neck. 

His scent was so present here—concentrated, rich, and sweet all at once, clinging to him in the delicate oils of his skin and hair. It spoke to you in a silent language, one that the animal in you was fluent in. Heady and intoxicating with green lights, and safety, and irrepressible desire. You pressed your lips to his neck, inhaling deeply as his pulse thrummed with life beneath them. It was a chaste and reverent gesture, honoring his life-force with your mouth as you trailed slowly down. 

Eddie sighed at the contact, closing his eyes, presenting his neck to you like a feast. It occurred to him here—in the fuzzy, swirling mush his brain was becoming as the blood rushed south—that he had never been kissed like this before. So reverently and lovingly, as if you painted worship with your lips. 

Tendons rippled as he swallowed, and the animal in you stirred to gather a taste. Starting with kitten licks, innocent flicks of your tongue peppered between kisses against his beating flesh, so salty and musky and sweet. His chest dipped in a sudden exhale against yours. Tightening your grip in his silky curls, you angled him to you, jaw unhinging with a mind of its own before swiping a long, greedy trail up his tendons.

“Ohh—” The sound leapt out of Eddie’s throat, surprising even himself. Not that he would have wanted to catch it. He wanted to let you know, wanted to ensure that you continue.

You tasted the velvet vibration under your tongue. Felt the release of his hands, the warmth at your waist, dipping under your cardigan to feel you as closely as he could. Buried in the shadow of his hair and scent, you continued your trek—licking and kissing while his palms pressed you closer. 

Eddie was turning to putty by the second, all logical thoughts escaping out his rushing ears like steam. The animal was stirring below his belt; stretching and yawning, tingling awake. Suddenly he was clawing at the starchy cotton barrier, digging up the fabric from where it was secured beneath your skirt. 

The air was cool all of a sudden there, tingling from exposure but quickly soothed by a clammy warmth. The animal in you preened, arched into his touch, dizzy from the contact with your skin. It bared its teeth, dragging them slowly along the column of his neck with the next pass of your lips.

“Oh fuck,” Eddie groaned, unsure in his haze whether it was from the rush of your teeth or the bareness of your flesh under his fingers. Finally. Lids twitching as his eyes rolled back in his head, a memory flickered in—a bustling, crowded hallway. You, standing front of his locker clutching books in your arms. Him, ushering you forward. The first time he’d ever touched you here. He had stored the memory away safely, memorized the dip of your waist under his palm, played it over and over until it wore out like an old tape. Your skin was alive under his fingers now—smooth and warm and real and reacting. 

With one hand resting on his shoulder, your other twisted deeper into his hair. Silk between your fingers, nails grazing up the back of his skull. You mumbled nonsense into the wet trail of his neck, nipping and kissing and licking, tasting his swallow as his hand splayed across your skin. There was a whisper of perspiration at his hairline as the room became incredibly hot all of a sudden. 

You were reacting. Arching under his fingers, growing bolder and bolder with every pass of your mouth across that incredibly sensitive spot. It made him dizzy, stupid. Absolutely set his blood on fire. With a slow, upward swipe, his hand climbed the column of your spine—up, up, up—until his fingers grazed the clasp of your bra. Jesus Christ. It was hardly the first time he’d touched a bra, but it was your bra, and you were the one reacting beneath it.

Eddie was reacting too. He could feel himself unfurling in his boxers, rising fully to attention. God damn it, Munson. It’s just a bra for crying out loud. But there was no hope of taming it now, not when your teeth were grazing that sensitive spot that made his entire body flush with heat. It throbbed as your tongue dipped below the collar of his shirt, your hips so dangerously close. He wasn’t exactly ready to give you an anatomy lesson, fearful it scare you with its realness somehow. 

But you were gone, lost in the smoke-acrid scent of his clothing, in the salt of his skin yielding under your tongue, in the hiss of his breath as it left his lungs. Lost in the warmth of his hand sliding down your bare spine. Pressing raw, wet kisses to the humming stretch of his neck, you concluded that you couldn’t feel nearly enough. 

You captured his mouth again, and this time the kiss was open and hungry, sweeping and led by your tongue. Hands breaking from around his shoulders, you trailed over the firm swell of his pecks, down his ribs, around his waist. You pawed down his back with a slow, greedy swipe, admiring the firmness of his muscles under the thick cotton, the way his hips tilted from the pressure as you neared his belt. You did it again, more pressure this time, trekking your pelvis upward across the landscape: stiff denim zipper, steel belt buckle, and—

A hard jab to the hip. 

Eddie gasped into your mouth and drew back in horror, lips gaping and sputtering the beginnings of an apology. “I—um—”

Your eyes flicked down at the tent in his jeans, unable to stop yourself. “It’s—it’s ok, we were just—” 

“Yeah I know, but—” he swallowed, face like a roaring furnace under your gaze. His hand twitched with the impulse to cover himself, but he redirected it behind his neck, wringing it through his hair with an embarrassed laugh. “I got a bit carried away.”

Your eyes shot back up to his and you fought to keep them level. “No, it—it was me. It’s ok, we can stop—”

“I don’t want to,” Eddie blurted out.

Your eyes widened, lips parting as the gravity of his words set in. It was suddenly quiet enough to hear the clock ticking in the corner, the heat rushing through the vents in the floor. 

“I think that’s um,” he sucked his lip, glancing to the side before meeting your gaze again, “kind of the problem.”

The look in his eyes was darkly threatening, brimming with a wild heat. A feeling stirred deep in your core, something like fear but it fluttered and trembled like yearning. 

“We can if you do though—want to stop, I mean.”

It was suddenly so real—Eddie Munson standing in your living room, offering himself to you in this very bad way. You wanted to think you’d be good, but as the words left his kiss-swollen lips, all you could think about was how badly you wanted to know how it felt.

Eddie just stood there, forcing his shoulders back against the fear closing in around his heart as he awaited your possible rejection. He followed your eyes as they slowly scanned his form, flushing under your gaze, suddenly so aware of himself. It was a look he’d never seen on you before, a heat that simmered beneath curious amazement. 

He wanted you to look.

In all your years of discipline, there had always been a series of events in between you and a moment like this. Coffees, dinners, chaste kisses outside the door of your apartment. It was a long time before you let anyone in, and even still, it had only been one man. One whose cues and advances had become familiar. Predictable. Monotonous. Boring.

You wondered what he looked like under there; that forbidden line protruding under denim, attentive and alert, made ready by your touch. An offering to you, if you would have it. You thought about his skin under the bulk of that sweatshirt as his chest rose and fell, how good it would feel pressed to yours in the dark. How you ached to feel him move in that way. How badly you wanted to know. So terribly bad. 

Finally, you whispered the truth. “I don’t want to stop.”

Eddie’s eyes widened, face falling in near disbelief. Suddenly he felt like a dog that caught a car. 

Show me, your voice echoed in his mind as the carpet, and your records, and your tree came into focus. Show me, as the lamp beside your couch painted your features with soft anticipation. Suddenly, a dam broke, flooding him with images of Fs thrown face up on a small desk in front of him. Of folded arms and disapproving glares. Of a corner somewhere with his back to his classmates as they played with blocks and snickered as he sulked in time-out. 

Show me.

The memories coiled in his belly like a serpent, struck him with a fear that if he did, you might be disappointed. But the way you were looking at him—like a virgin on prom night with your wide eyes and fingers tangled in a knot in front of you—made it all subside.

Slowly, he closed in, umber eyes flickering with a blended hue of want and trepidation. His hand came to your cheek, delicate fingers tracing your jaw as if you would disintegrate beneath his touch. When you didn’t, his thumb grew bold enough to swipe across the apple, palm sure enough to cup your face, angling it upward to meet his lips. It was chaste. Reverent. Different, somehow, than any other kiss you’d shared. His exhale mingled with yours as you melted against his mouth, hand snaking around your waist to pull you close. Every angle of you against every angle of him. No gaps. 

And then he showed you. Open mouthed, tongue scooping in a desperate rhythm with yours. The kind of kiss that left you bruised and breathless. You tasted every aching unsaid word between you, cupping his face to capture all of them. Tasted the power of his want, the demand of his tongue dancing against yours. The taste was deep, heady and complex with the knowing where all of this was heading. He showed you with his palms, clawing at the fabric of your blouse, bunching it up to slip his eager hands beneath it. 

He showed you with a roll of his pelvis, hardness pressed against your hip, splitting your mouthes into a shared sigh from the satisfaction of the friction. It rippled through every dormant part of you, blooming deep and low. Heat raced to your cheeks, heart thumping in the cage of your chest. It occurred to you then, how deeply love and fear were intertwined. How tangled fascination was between them. How desperate you were for him to show you. Desperate to feel every inch of him. Desperate to experience it all. You responded with a tilt of your hips, reveling in the feeling of his length as it dragged, in the delicious sin of it all. And his touch transformed you, made that deeply-buried need rise up in you full-force. 

You kissed him deeply. Eyes closed, swaying under the direction of his palms, tongue dancing in time to his rhythm. How good it felt to just be led, how satisfying his leadership tasted. Abandoning all thoughts, listening only to the soft desires of the animal in you. Yes. Good. More, it whispered. You arched your back, grinding your pelvis sinfully along his length, lost in the feeling. 

Eddie was gone. Consumed. Possessed. Directed solely by the need to feel that delicious friction spark and soothe. He braced you, tightly gripping your rear, guiding your movements just how he wanted. Suddenly—as if something snapped in his brain—he was pivoting you in a 180 motion to trade places. Lips breaking only to glance where he was going, he backed you into the wall shared by your kitchen. 

“Mmnh!” The noise was pressed out of you as your back met the solid surface. Eddie descended on you, lips locking with your neck, pelvis pressing you firmly to the wall. His hand wandered down your right leg, hiking it up around his hip for better leverage. And you just let him. Pliant like prey, encouraging his savage nature with your sounds. 

It was a position you had never been in before—skirt pooling at your hip, thigh-high stockings and panties exposed like a scene from a book you’d gotten in trouble for reading back when you were in high school. It was something you’d resigned to fantasy, to dog-eared pages illuminated by a flashlight under your blankets. Suddenly you were on the cover—chin tipped toward the ceiling, head dragging against the plaster as Eddie trailed a dizzying path down your neck. He pressed you into the wall with a grind of his pelvis, dragging his stiffness along your most intimate seam. You groaned, eyes rolling into the back of your head as the last remaining shred of goodness dissolved. What was left spoke only the language of desire. A language that felt native, yet foreign, like one you learned before words. Before rules and desks and pencils and report cards and curfews and diplomas. Before your goodness forced you to forget. 

It almost hurt, in the best way though—his fingers digging into your thigh, the muscles threatening to cramp as you squeezed your heel under his ass to hold your position, sweat tingling the back of your knee. A fair price for how good he felt there. Even under the barrier of the stiff denim, you could feel the way he tapered off, the fat ridge of his cockhead as it rutted over your mound. Firm and insistent.

There was a fire in you—alive and insatiable. Stirred awake with every pass of his hips, by the look on his face when you met his eyes—savage and dark, pinching in pleasure, mouth hanging open like he wanted to devour you. His curls were a curtain between you and the light, a shadow both of you could hide in, swaying in his ragged breath. You snaked a hand over his shoulder, tangled it in his mane and gripped hard at the back of his head.

The sound he made was somewhere between a purr and a whine, thick and desperate as he met flesh below your ear again. It rushed through every cell of your body—dizzying, pulsing through the veins in your hand as you raked your fingers across his scalp. You arched against the wall, straining to present your neck to him. 

It was almost too much. You, in his clutches, writhing under the drag of his teeth, the scent of your skin and clothes, the tingle of your nails against the base of his skull. Eddie’s hand wandered down your thigh, swept up in the current of that doughy flesh and the mound of your cunt with only cotton and denim between you. He broke from your neck to get a look at you—stiff blouse disheveled, wool skirt rumpled, skin sinfully exposed, that heavy-lidded, fucked-out look you wore better than all of it. All by his doing. Your breaths exchanged in silence for a moment as his pelvis kept the pace; slow and undulating. His mouth became a gaping O, brows pinching as he reached the apex of his movement before drawing back again.

There was a scent hanging in the air between you. Warm and heady. Deep and complex. One you recognized surely as your own. It was emanating from under your skirt, from that slick, throbbing place. Heat burned your cheeks as Eddie inhaled deeply through his nose, eyes pinching, mouth parting in recognition.

You. So warm and rich and you. Even through the barriers he could feel a slickness, a non-resistance as he thrusted upward over your mound. It drove him absolutely crazy, made the part of his brain that spoke only the language of friction and pheromones take over, made him tingle and twitch and clench with that tell-tale sign of immanent conclusion. Eddie had to brace the wall, close his eyes, collect himself before he lost all sense of control. 

“Oh Jesusfuck—” he panted, “I—ohgod—mmm-hmm-hmm—” Eddie trailed off with a crazed and slightly nervous chuckle, biting his lip as he mustered every fleeting ounce of self-control to draw back from the edge. His cock protested, weeping furiously at the denial. Blood was racing through him at an alarming rate. Sweat tingled his forehead, his chest, his hand still locked under your knee. The animal in him was chomping at the bit, pleading for him to unlatch his belt, undo his zipper, push aside those white cotton panties and slide home. He stiffened his jaw. Clawing into the wall, he hung his head with a sigh. “I want you,” he gritted. “You want me?”

The words throbbed. Buzzed. Ached. You looked up at him fuzzily and responded without a second thought. “Yes.”

“Here?” he breathed before sobering to his own suggestion. “Fuck—sorry.”

The lewd heat of his question sent a pulse deep and low, a question that the animal in you had no qualms about answering. But the human in you wanted so much more. 

“Forget I asked that, I’m just—hah.” He lowered your leg with a deep sigh. Delicate curls clung to the sides of his neck, tingling from perspiration. He cleared them with a wring of his hand, chest heaving beneath a sauna of clinging cotton. “Just need to cool down.” Suddenly he was tugging up sweatshirt from behind his shoulder blades, pulling it up and over his head. It hit the floor with a thud. His shirt went with it.

He stood there for a moment, filling the silence with his breath as you drank him in; a landscape of smooth, pale skin. You swallowed a rush of feelings coursing through you at the prospect of his bareness. A whole new world to your eyes. Ink mapped the space under his collarbone. Delicate curls dusted the valley between his pecks—subtle hills which plateaued to rows of heaving ribs. You followed the trail of dark hair below his navel until it disappeared beneath his belt. A breathtaking vista. 

His skin drew you in like a magnet. Stepping into the sphere of his radiant heat, you traced the swell of his pecks with your fingertips, flattening your palms against the smooth, warm terrain. His heart pounded beneath them. Living, breathing, and bare. With a coy, tentative finger, you traced a path over the ink beneath his collarbone, offering a soft chuckle at the cartoon zombie there. 

“I think he likes you,” Eddie joked, mentally kicking himself the moment he said it. But your smile only grew.

“That’s good, I think I like him too,” you offered playfully, tracing the lines of its wispy hair as your teeth caught your bottom lip.

“Good, ‘cause uh,” Eddie snaked a hand around your waist, eyes crinkling warmly, “he’s not going anywhere.” His words were so suddenly earnest, trailing to almost a whisper.

You melted, eyes flitting to his with a foreign but effortless sultriness as your fingers walked the ridge of his collarbone down into the valley between his pecks. You raked over the delicate curls dusting the path, nails dragging bluntly against his skin. A wonder to explore.

Eddie’s expression darkened at the gesture, filled with a sudden awareness of his own body, his own solid strength reflected back at him through your eyes. Carding your fingers through the whisper of hair, you flashed him a glance before trailing lower. The sensitive skin of his stomach rippled softly under your touch before you hopped the ridge of his navel, entering new territory. 

Thick, dark hair spread between your fingers—down, down over the swell of his belly, following the trail until it disappeared below his belt. There was a hesitance, a coyness that colored your pause before you tucked them curiously beneath it, feeling soft curls against your knuckles. Eddie swallowed thickly, eyes growing wide with anticipation, flitting to yours like a dare.

A strange, thrilling darkness coursed through your hand, gripped his belt buckle and tugged. You were mesmerized by the flex of his abs, by the buck of his hips in response. His nostrils flared, and a sharp puff ghosted over your arms. The tip of his cock almost grazed your palm, flexing against the black denim, perfectly outlined, flooding you with that darkness again. Pulsing deep and low, it bared its teeth and purred its next command.

You obeyed, dropping your hand to the space between his legs. Eddie’s breath hitched, hands freezing in flexed position at his sides. The denim seam stretched out like a runway beneath your fingertips, bulge heavy and round on either side, hot and humid. It was sinful, the way his balls drew upward under your touch, how clearly you could feel their outline, their weight. It filled you with that irresistible darkness, a badness that swelled as your hand trailed upward. His anatomy was evident even through his jeans—roughly six inches, stiff and thick, veering off to the side to seek space inside the tight cage. The ridge of his tip plumed under your palm, fat and damp as your fingers trailed behind. You swallowed, throbbing at the realness of it all.

Eddie hissed, rapidly disintegrating as he watched your hand trace his cock like it was the most mesmerizing thing you’d ever seen. And it was. Watching him fall apart as your fingertips reset themselves under his package, as they drew slowly across every aching inch. The way he twitched as you neared his leaking tip, the strangled sound trapped behind his bitten lips. You pressed against him firmly, dizzy from how sinful this all was, from the ridge of his tip so evident under the denim, from how badly you ached to feel it raw, feel it sink between your thighs and fill you. A purr rippled in the back of your throat as you offered him another slow stroke, pausing at the tip to draw a slow, firm circle with your thumb.

“Holy fuck—“ he breathed, tipping his head back toward the ceiling as his most sensitive nerve endings wept alive. He was desperate—for you, for your touch, for any friction you could offer. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he should stop you. But that voice was distant, tiny, barely a whisper. What was louder was the rush of satisfaction emanating from under your thumb. 

The darkness was growing in you—coiling in your abdomen and stretching through your fingers as you watched his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow. Fluid seeped through the denim, and your contact with it flooded you with feelings that made you want to rub harder, faster, to draw other things out of him.

A strangled groan caught in the back of his throat as Eddie tried to tamper down the feelings rising up in him again. The ones that tightened deep within his body, made him twitch and buck his hips to seek your hand. The friction was delicious, overdue, a feeling he was both desperate and fearful to chase. 

“Mmm, yeah?” you purred with a voice you almost didn’t recognize, sliding your thumb right under his heart-ridge where it met his shaft, rubbing up and down in short bursts.

“Yeah,” he choked. It was his favorite spot. The one that sent fireworks straight to his brain, made his brows pinch and knees turn to jelly. He closed his eyes, lost in the feeling, drifting away until the sudden absence of your hand had his eyes snapping open. He whined, flooded with equal parts relief and disappointment.

The rise and fall of his stomach had your body suddenly—violently—crying out for the warmth of his skin against yours. Fumbling with the top button of your cardigan, you slipped it free, working the others until it peeled off of you to join Eddie’s sweatshirt on the floor. Heart hammering with eager anticipation, your fingers met the starch of your blouse.

“Wait—”

You froze over the top button. 

“I wanna do it,” he uttered. 

Hands falling to your sides, you granted him permission with a dip of your chin. 

Slowly, delicately—as if sudden movement would cause you to flee—he feathered the stiff collar with his knuckles, brushing it back to expose the slope of bone beneath it. Tracing the stitching down to the first button, he padded the bone-white plastic, ushering it through the slit with his trembling thumb. 

You swallowed, heart pounding under the intensity of his gaze as the V in your shirt grew deeper. How soft his eyes were—wide and alive but dipping in a way that could only be described as reverent. 

He worked the next button free, exposing a pink satin bow at your sternum, breath fanning the skin beneath it in awe. Like a pearl in the shell of your blouse, nestled between two heaving cups. Unable to help himself, he brushed it with the ridge of his knuckle, smiling as his chocolate eyes lit up.

It was beautiful to watch—the subtle twitching of his cheeks, the angles of his working hands, the curious amazement hiding under his lashes as he exposed you. Such careful movements from a man who could destroy you. 

It was nothing like he had imagined. In his countless daydreams involving him taking your clothes off, he’d failed to capture the subtlety in it. The shy dip in your eyes, the rippling of your heated skin as it met the cool air, the brush of peach fuzz hair under his knuckles as he slowly worked you free. So alive. So real. 

When he was finished, he stepped back and admired his work, checking in with a meeting of your eyes before continuing. With a warm brush of his hand, Eddie slipped the stiff fabric over your shoulder, exposing your bra and the soft, forbidden slopes of it all. You shrugged off the blouse like a shell you’d outgrown, let it fall from around you till it crumpled at your feet. 

You stood there a moment as he drank you in, a sense of power rising in your stillness like a statue at a shrine. With a dip of your eyes, you granted him your divine permission.

Eddie traced the strap with his finger; a shimmering runway of elastic. He’d seen it once before, stored it safely in his memory—black and daring like caution tape, taunting him at a distance as your lips popped from a bottle in The Hideout. Here it was baby pink, rising and falling with the swell of your breath as your lashes dipped shyly toward his roaming hand. He tucked a finger beneath it, impossibly soft skin gliding against his knuckle as he ushered it off of your shoulder. 

Your smile was unstoppable, puffing softly through your nose at such an innocent gesture, the way it made his eyes light up with boyish wonder as the straps yielded to his touch. 

Eddie swallowed thickly, heart racing as his fingers walked along the underwire ridge, across the well-washed pilling satin under your arm and around your back. He located the clasp, eyes dipping down into your cleavage with anticipation as he pinched you free.

The cage fell, straps trailing down your arms until it landed on the ground between you. The chill of the air had you reacting; puckered and alert as you bravely drew back your shoulders.

Eddie’s mouth fell open. 

There was a coyness in your smile that surprised even yourself. A sudden rush of girlishness watching his hungry eyes roam your figure. Not because it was the first time a man had seen you like this, but because it was the first time a man had looked at you like this. Flickering between boy-like awe and man-like heat, you realized that you had never felt more beautiful exposed. 

They weren’t the first pair Eddie had seen. Between all the magazines under his bed and the few real girls that had been desperate or curious enough to show him, he had seen all shapes and sizes. Yours were different. Yours he had memorized from the back of the classroom, dreamt about with his elbow propped against the small desk. Yours had existed as only speculation from stolen glances in the small chair next to yours, as a fantasy just out of reach. 

Jesus.

Christ.

Eddie blinked hard and swallowed. The details were mesmerizing. Holy in their you-ness. The pebbled skin which puckered into hardened peaks, their unique color, the soft flesh around them. Full and round. Rising and falling with shallow, anticipating breaths. Impossibly real. Impossibly you. You, who he adored from far away, trusting him enough to bare yourself up close.

Tracing a featherlight knuckle along the soft underside, Eddie flicked up to your eyes with a heat that could have melted you. All you could muster was a fluttering sigh, and he took his cue. Cupping your breast with his whole hand, he drew his thumb upward across your nipple, watching the peak of it bend to his touch and pop from underneath it. Mesmerized. On the downstroke he captured it against his forefinger, pinching and rolling the sensitive peak. 

A soft hiss escaped you, strangled and desperate to escape. His touch sent a jolt that buzzed through your whole body. All rational thoughts were just noise now, fading away as the angles of his hand came into focus. His hand. There was a roughness to it, a calloused graze that sparked pleasure with every pass. Timid at first, but growing bolder. Through the thickening haze, you watched him watching you—those lust-blown eyes under heavy lids, his features pinched in reverent disbelief. A look he wore unspeakably well.

Eddie swallowed. It was absolutely brain-blanking—the soft, supple skin yielding to his thumb as he cupped that forbidden curve. How your back seemed to arch as though you were a puppet and he held the strings. How your chest—your chest—rose and fell to a rhythm of his making. So much power in a single digit. He extended it in tight circles, studying you, committing every atom to his memory. But watching you slip between his fingers was nothing compared to the look on your face. Your pinching brows, your bitten lip, your begging eyes. A puddle, rendered by his touch.

With sudden animation, both his hands splayed wide, palms clamping over your breasts to grapple in a firm squeeze. Your skin dimpled like dough between his slowly tightening fingers. He did it again, relishing in your fullness, watching with rapt attention the way they yielded to his digits; heavy, soft, and round. Licking his lips, he removed his hands, hovering just above your nipple to rasp a question. “Can I kiss you here?”

“Yes,” you managed, struck with a sudden pang for the fact he even asked. Your answer barely faded out before he descended on you, pressing his pillow lips around your peak, flicking out his wet tongue, taking you into his furnace mouth. You heaved a deep sigh, eyes rolling back into your head. It tingled like a limb that was asleep. You hadn’t known it though, not until he’d kissed you there. It occurred to you—in the thickness of your haze—just how many parts of you had been sleeping. For how long was uncertain, but as you thawed under his touch, the rest of you begged to know what it was like to feel awake.

Eddie lathed his tongue around the peak, pressing his hands to your back to draw you closer, as if he couldn’t possibly be close enough. A hunger had arisen in him, one he’d suppressed on a daily basis since he first laid eyes on you. It coursed through his veins as he latched, surged into his fingertips as he dragged them down your back. His lips locked tight, tongue flicking over that attentive bundle of nerves, sucking it. He was gone, lost in he arch of your back, the heave of your breast against his chin on your sharp inhale, the reward of your moan on your exhale. And just like that, he devoured you. It was sloppy, careless, and yet somehow deeply reverent. The unhinging of his jaw, the way he dragged his whole tongue across your nipple as his bottom lip trailed behind, lathing and sucking again and again until he’d had his fill of one and transitioned to the other.

You’d never had a man consume you in this way; devour you like he was starving. No desire had ever possessed you this badly. But for him, you were a willing feast, and it had never felt so good.

Your nipple left his lips with a pop, eyes darting darkly to yours as he panted through the hanging O his mouth became. This sparked a hunger in you; a fierce desire to taste him again, to feel his bare skin against yours. As if both of you shared the same thought, your bodies collided, slotting at the hips like a puzzle as his arms coiled around your waist. You captured those puffy lips again, delighting in the wet heat behind them. They pressed fervent wishes to yours, ones too bold to utter but distinctive in their taste. His mouth found a rhythm, ferocious and insistent, tongue sliding home against yours, in and out. 

Excitement turned his body to a live-wire at the feeling of your bare curves pressed to his, animated with a sudden urge to rid you of the rest of your clothing, to drag you to the bed and make you his. Images zapped through his brain at lightning speed, raced through his blood with every pump of his pounding heart. Suddenly his lips were at your collarbone, lathing a hot trail up the ridges of your neck as the heat sung through his veins. It came out as a mumble against the skin below your ear. “Bedroom?” 

It was one word. His voice. So heavy and colored with lust that it tingled through your entire body. A million images shot through your head, rippled and throbbed with the want to experience every one. Eddie paused there for the answer, breathing hotly against the skin of your neck, pressing insistently into your hip. It was a sobering word, and yet the weight of it clouded all logic. The clock ticked on in the corner. Your pulse hammered in your ears. The animal in you responded, met his eyes, took his hand, and led him down the hallway through the door on the left.

It was dark in there. Between the glow coming in through the cracked door behind him and the street lamp shining through the slats of your blinds, Eddie could make out the shape of a dresser, a desk, a bookshelf, the rectangular mass of a bed against the wall to the left. And you—a soft silhouette—stopping in the center of the room to look at him. 

There was a small part of you that still could not believe you were about to do this. That Eddie Munson was standing in your bedroom, shirtless and heaving his breath as the faint hallway light made a halo of his frizz. He shut the door behind him, leaving you both in near darkness. There was a pause. A space filled with both your anticipating breaths for just a beat until he descended on you, and then there were no thoughts anymore.

Suddenly it was like you were drunk at a party. Between the wet smacks of his crushing lips, you could almost hear the thud of the bass from the living room, the din of voices bleeding into one outside the door. Every party you had never attended, every bad thing you had always craved to do—flashing behind your eyelids as his kisses intoxicated you.

You surrendered completely. To the fantasy, to desire, to him—parting your lips, receiving his tongue, giving in to the rush of his skin pressed to yours, the waves of him taking you under, his crushing arms around you. In the dark, all hesitance dissolved, all trepidation vanished. His mouth was hot and insistent. His hands, completely in charge. A whine escaped your lips, one that you had never heard before. It was needy and desperate and only stoked the fire in his kiss.

Desire spoke plainly, simply. A language you were learning with each pass of his demonstrating tongue. Soft syllables of “yes” and “good”. Sounds that transcended meaning, reverberated in your chest and throat, distilled down to its essence—love. Pure and true. Rising with each breath. Singing in your veins. You were learning to listen. Learning to forget all you had been taught. Learning to remember. When all was dark and there was nothing left but desire, there was so much to hear, so much to feel, so much to learn, and he was a masterful teacher.

Desire spoke volumes through your fingertips; clawing across the thick muscles of the back of his neck as you collided. It spoke in verses in the breath exchanged between you. Soft stanzas in the rush of skin-on-skin. It moved in daring undulation, a dance laid dormant in your bones, sparked to memory by the soft hair below his navel, by his strong arms around you. 

In the dark, there were only feelings. The tangle of his curls around your fingers, the angle of his jaw between your palms. The friction of your dewey bodies pressed together, nipples dragging against the sparse hair of his hammering chest. The muscles of your hands and mouth burned with desperate heat. Every nerve heightened. Every cell aware. 

Eddie lead the dance with his hips, his tongue, his impatient fingers—free to seek and roam. It was like every fantasy he’d ever had about you was coming to life beneath his palms. In this one he didn’t need to imagine. It could have been any of them—backstage in a dressing room after a sold-out show, at a hotel somewhere along a desert highway, right here in your bedroom just being real people. There was a boldness that came over him, an agency the darkness provided, one where he could be the sort of man he always dreamed he was. One where his hands were sure and stable, never fumbling. One where he impressed you with his prowess, rendered you awestruck and proud. 

Breaking to kiss his neck, you savored the oily sweetness of his skin, the richness of the scent emanating from under his arms—musky and spicy and so indescribably him. You’d caught it a few times in the past when he’d propped his head in his hand on the desk, or stretched toward the sky against the stiff wooden chair. It made you dizzy, filled you with a pang so deep you had to bury yourself in the textbook to sober you human again.

Presently, all rational thoughts were clouded by the tightening of his biceps around you, the tendons rippling under his skin as he swallowed. You flicked out your tongue to taste them, pawing down his smooth back, dragging your nails over his shoulder blades, down, down, down over the dip in his spine, the muscles of his lower back. 

In the dark, only the animals in you remained; ferocious and insatiable. Yours felt like nipping at his jaw, his clawed impatiently at the zipper of your skirt, yanking it down, working it free to pool at your feet. You stepped out of it like an old skin, kicking it toward your dresser. Feeling for the zippers on your boots, you steadied yourself on Eddie’s shoulder, tugging them down with a few clumsy hops before toeing them off. Tossing them into the darkness, they clattered against your dresser before thudding to the floor. The same with your stockings, which landed somewhere by your desk.

Eddie’s kisses became sloppy, erratic, barely a split second before his sweaty palms descended on your rear. They clung to the thin cotton fabric—one at each cheek—and dragged slowly, tightly upward. The burn was delicious, stoking the fire in you as the delicate cotton bunched under his palms to expose you. 

“I have a condom in my wallet,” he mumbled into your neck.

The words struck you dumb, dizzy, rippled up your spine to loll your head backward. He reset his hands, fingertips raking over your naked flesh, clawing into you like dough. All you could respond with was a thick, fuzzy laugh as your cheeks splayed under his touch—back arched, chest sparking against his, brain quickly turning to putty. 

There was no masking his delight as he clawed the cotton fabric, spreading your cheeks like dough under his palms. How pliant you were. Eager. A willing landscape for him to explore. His fingers trekked lower, dipping under your cheek until they brushed a hill of wet cotton. Eddie choked on the sound leaping out of his throat, zapped senseless with need. Snaking his arm around your back, he swiped his fingers slowly over your mound. You were saturated. Soaked through to slick between your thighs. For him. 

The thickness in his breath could have rendered you to ash. You arched your back like a cat in heat; fluttering open, throbbing with emptiness. The sound that came out of you was unrecognizable, rising from that deep, foreign place to purr against his neck. You were learning how much you liked this position—like a ragdoll in his arms, eyes closed as his finger dipped under the seam of your panties, as it slipped against your folds. You loved the way he explored you—heated but tentative. Loved how it made you feel—desired, craved. Loved most of all how it made him react, his breathless cursing, how now two of his fingers were spreading and sliding, parting your folds, exploring your heat. It felt unbelievably good. You spread your legs a little, hoping to encourage one of them inside you. 

But he didn’t. Instead, his hands retreated. Eddie sucked his fingers, eyes pinching as he savored your tang. They left his mouth with a pop. “I need you, now. Like—like right now,” he wavered thickly. Metal jingled, leather snapped against his palm. There was a pop of a button, the sound of a zipper, a sigh of relief that ghosted over your face. He shoved his jeans down around his ass before pausing with an irritated huff. “Fuck, my boots.”

“Let me,” you offered, crouching down until your knees met the carpet. You felt for the laces, padding around his ankle to find the loops, impatiently digging your nails into the tight double knots to work them free. 

It was all he could do just to look at you. You, kneeling before him, fumbling and cursing and so incredibly real. When you finally pried the boots off his ankles, you stood up on your knees, eye-level with his open zipper.

The moonlight bleeding in from behind your curtains made his pale skin glow, accenting the dark trail below his navel. It looked delectable—the swell of his belly before it tapered off to dip below the waistband of his boxers. You pressed your lips to it, nuzzling into the hair before your teeth caught the swell of fat under his navel. It flinched against your lips with his gasp.

You couldn’t help yourself anymore. Your fingers—so trained in good behavior—were suddenly behaving very badly; moving on their own, dipping between his legs to cup his balls. They lurched against your hand, sliding up on either side of the humid cotton. Show me, you begged with your hand as it tracked slowly upward. It felt so bad, in the best way bad could feel. The carpet burning into your kneecaps, the jagged metal zipper grazing the backs of your fingers as you traced upward, the burning stretch of his hardness underneath the cotton, the soaked plume of his tip. So unbelievably bad. Your eyes darkened, and your nose dove into the checkered fabric without a second thought. All remaining fragments of your rational mind were melted by his musk into a fuzzy haze that only understood one thing. It spoke in flutters and wet, aching throbs. Your hand returned beneath his package as you began to track kisses up his clothed, attentive length.

Eddie’s breath hitched, belly ripping in your peripheral as your lips met the ridge of his tip. You pressed a lingering kiss against the soaked cotton. “Fuck,” he hissed, tipping his chin toward the ceiling. He gasped when he felt the warmth of your tongue bleed through the fabric. “Oh—ohhhmyfuckinggod.” 

His whine was almost enough to unravel you. Dragging your fingers coaxingly under the weight of his sack, your tongue got acquainted with his tip, flicking up under the fat, heart-shaped ridge, tasting the slick reward which you lapped through the fabric. It was bad. So terribly bad, yet nothing had ever tasted as satisfying or sounded as sweet as the ragged sighs your bad behavior earned you. 

You purred, giving him a couple generous pecks before your fingers wedged under his waistband. 

Show me, you said as your cool fingers met his molten skin, and Eddie found the strength to open his eyes and look down at you. You, from a thousand aching fantasies kneeling before him with heavy lids and mouth agape as you peeled down the fabric to free him. 

It was a proud thing. Holy in its him-ness. Like a singular painting, the motifs were consistent; a collection of lines and shapes that came together to make him. In the plume of his tip you could almost glimpse echos of the wide, pink bow of his lips, the ball of his nose. It curved attentively upward, bobbing with his breath as you admired it with equal parts reverence and heated curiosity until your hand closed the gap.

There was a breath you both let out together, a silent oh breathed in unison at such intimate contact. Eddie had to bite his lip, close his eyes, tip back his head toward the ceiling as your fingers—the ones he’d ached to touch a thousand times—so intimately explored him. He assumed he was not the first man you’d touched in this way, but the way you were grazing with such delicate wonder gave him pause to consider. 

Desire flooded your entire body, heightened and exhilarated, tingling with curiosity. Fingers trailed over velvet veins, eyes alight as your knuckle swiped upward along the underside, testing its weight and reactivity until it met the dimple of his weeping ridge. A whine left Eddie’s downturned lips; a guttural plea to continue. Obliging, you gripped him, tightening as he bucked into your hand, velvet skin gliding under your firm grasp. “Mmmm,” you purred on an upward stroke, a darkness rousing in you from his complete undoing.

Eddie half-buried his face in his hand, fingers raking across his scalp as your thumb breeched the ridge, padding over his most sensitive spot before circling his slit. “Ohh fuck,” he moaned. “Jesus fuck.”

It wept under your thumb, sticky and gushing another wave of arousal as you squeezed. “You like that?” came a voice you’d never heard before but liked the sound of.

“Ahhhh-hah,” he breathed a crazed laugh as his balls twitched from the friction and the sound of your voice saying that.

His tip was soft and rigid all at once. Slick and inviting to your thumb. You couldn’t stop yourself from rubbing it, from delighting in the way he bucked and melted and breathed under your touch. Your other hand dipped curiously, zipper scraping your knuckles, hair so soft against your palm as you cupped his sack—heavy and actively tightening against his body. 

Eddie’s eyes rolled back into his head, heaving a breath from the pressure mounting inside of him. The animal in him was desperate to chase it—to clench, and spill, and explode—but he wanted to be good for you. Good like he always imagined. He wanted to make your back arch, your toes curl, to drill you till your claws drew down at his back until you howled with your own release.

Mesmerized by his display of pleasure, you pumped your hand, twisting slowly at the top, delighting in the way he rutted into your grip, how effortless his hardness slid within your grasp, the way his breath hissed from behind clenched teeth. 

It felt so good. Ungodly good. Too good. Biting his lip, he sent a silent prayer toward your popcorn ceiling, searching for something—anything—in his bank of horrible memories to bring him back to Earth. But as your thumb settled into the spot that had him seeing stars, a sudden wave of fear crashed over him. “Stop,” he barked, hand clamping tightly on your wrist. “I’m gonna—hah—oh fuck.” Eddie hissed a long breath, drawing himself back from the edge with every last ounce of his will.

“Sorry,” you breathed, releasing your grip. His clammy grasp lingered a second before letting go.

“No, don’t be sorry, fuck, I just—” he released a slow, steadying breath through pursed lips before continuing, “I just don’t wanna totally ruin this. Know what I mean?”

You did, and you imagined it for a second; pumping his cock, feeling his balls twitch against your palm as he exploded to paint your chest white, how it would cream under your fingers as he painted the ceiling with the colors of his voice. It drove you mad with wanting, but the throb between your legs was more demanding. 

“Don’t get me wrong, it—it feels really good. Just… a little too good,” he said, wringing a hand behind his neck. 

With a sensual flick of your eyes, you tugged his jeans and boxers down until he was able to step out of them. Eddie extended a chivalrous hand, and you rose to your feet. Effortlessly, as if they belonged there, your lips found his in the dark, drawing his face between your palms and planting a kiss that lasted a whole breath. His lips parted, tongue seeking yours as his fingers found the waistband of your panties. He looped them through the leg hole with a pointed tug that had you stumbling into him. 

“Mmm?” he mumbled against your mouth.

“Mmhmm,” you sighed. 

He peeled them off of you, leaving a wet trail that clung to your inner thighs as they passed your knees and ankles. Breaking the kiss, you kicked them aside. 

There was a single beat as you both stood naked in the darkness, just breathing as you drank each other in. Bathed in moonlight, stripped away to reveal the truth of what you had been all along: simply a man and a woman. Then, suddenly, as if a trigger snapped in both of you at once, there was a collision. A smashing of lips, a tangle of arms, a slotting of hips as you entwined. 

Your whole body came alive at once, zapping with life as his velvet length pressed to your hip, zinging as his lips tracked down your jaw to seek your neck. It was bliss to come undone, to loll your head back and just give in. To let him lead the dance toward your mattress. To let his hands cup your rear, spread your legs and wedge his thigh between them. To let him do whatever he wanted. The sparse hair of his leg sparked along your delicate flesh. It had you clawing at the muscles of his shoulders, arching your back, grinding your pelvis in a way that would have put the novels you kept in your nightstand to shame.

Eddie propped his foot against your the boxspring of your mattress, kneading his hands against your ass as he made a meal of you. The wet trail you left against his thigh had his brain short-circuiting, leaving nothing but the animal in him to grapple with the living fantasy of you, naked in his arms. He could not possibly touch you enough. There was not enough flesh on his palms, nor nerves in his whole body to feel you in the million ways he wanted to at once. All at once, every fantasy he’d ever had, crashing like a tidal wave as his hands steered your hips in real time. 

It felt better than you’d ever imagined; the rush of his bare skin under your palms as they glided down his back, the estranged pleasure mounting where his thigh met your most intimate seam, the friction of his teeth against your neck. You were drowning in the most delicious way. Drifting toward some place on the horizon that spoke only the language of heavy palms and panting breaths. Letting him carry you there.

You whined when he lowered his leg—quickly replaced by his hand, spreading and exploring, breaking from your neck to watch it happen as his mouth became a silent, hanging O. There was a fire in his blood that was mounting, throbbing in his temples, blinding him with need as his fingers parted slick hair, carded through your folds, slipped against your eager entrance. Every inch of you. The fever broke, and the sliver of his brain that had urged patience snapped silent. Now, a much deeper voice barked. No more waiting. No more wanting. 

Your calves hit the edge of the mattress, sending you tumbling backwards onto the chilly comforter. Eddie was quick to pounce, climbing on top of you, prying your legs open with his. You fluttered eagerly, melting into the heat of his chest as he pinned you to the bed—trapped in the sweetest cage of his arms. 

In the course of your relationship, it was always your position that had wedged itself between you. Yours, behind the big desk. His, behind the small one. Your position—a thing at risk of being lost. A mantle. A standard for you to uphold. This one defied them all. Wrong, by all technical accounts, but in all your life, nothing had ever felt so right as your position beneath him. 

You breathed together for a moment, chests expanding into one another, foreheads pressed together, exploring the bridge of his nose with your own. Thighs splayed open, heart beating rabbit-fast, completely at his mercy. A faint terror whispered in the back of your mind at the prospect of his bareness, at the ways he could ruin you. And yet you ached for ruin all the same.

Eddie’s tip kissed the wet heat of your lips and the animal screamed from the base of his brain to push. But he caught the hitch in your breath, the way your hips flexed backward in response. He bucked reflexively but stilled, biting his lip with a pained huff. “I’m not—I’m not gonna, I just…” 

A soft sense of trust flooded in as Eddie drew a deep breath, dragging himself through your folds. It was a delicious sort of torture, the ache enough to drive you mad. Empty and thrumming with anticipation at the prospect of fullness so near. Drowning in the fantasy of him sinking deep, of feeling him leak from you later. You whined, drawing your fingers down his back as his hips rolled slowly. So dangerously close.

It took all of his strength to hold his position, all his control to keep from sliding in. He liked how it felt; you beneath him, writhing in the cage of his arms. He liked the little sounds you made, how evident your wanting was, how he could feel you almost take him in, how his cock would dip ever so slightly against your entrance like you wanted to. He was stunned by it, delirious from the rush of sensation. “Hmm—” he winced after a few more agonizing seconds, “fuck, I can’t take it anymore.” Peeling himself from your body, he shifted off the side of the bed with a creak of the mattress and into the darkness. 

You laid there on the comforter, staring dazed at the ceiling as he padded across the room. Lifting your head to glance, it struck you just how real this was, and yet more startling than his naked form making his way across your bedroom was how comfortable you felt with all of it. How at peace you were as his belt buckle jingled from the darkness, as his pants returned to a heap on the floor, as his wallet snapped shut. 

It was suddenly all very real—the cool sheets under his knees as you drew back the comforter, the condom wrapper crinkling between his fingers as he felt for the jagged grooves, the anticipating silence filled with both your breaths. The soft metal split, and he fished the rubber from the package with a trembling finger. Tossing the wrapper into the darkness, he felt for the nub that indicated the tip, the ridge that indicated which direction it should roll. He’d done this enough times to know by now but for some reason it felt like a foreign object; clumsy, slippery in his hands as he grasped himself. Finally, he got it; pinching the nub to roll it down over his flinching tip, he unraveled it until it was flush with him.

You watched his silhouette quietly through the frame of your legs, heart kicking up with a sudden, surprising nervousness as you felt the warmth of his hands on your knees. He resumed his position, settling between your thighs, propped on his elbows. The return of his warmth was a welcome thing; comforting and soothing, familiar and indescribably correct. You both laid there a moment just breathing. Just being. Sobering to the tickle of his bangs against your forehead, the sweat beneath them as you rocked against it, the tang of salt when you captured his lips. 

A sudden wave of nerves coiled through his belly as his tip kissed your entrance again, how it gelled with the rush of desire, the fire licking through his veins. His arms trembled under his own weight, the anticipation, the now-ness of it all. “Ok,” he breathed, “you want me?” 

You swiped down his face, clearing the stray hairs that clung to the sides of his mouth and sweaty temples. It was easy to answer. Easy to admit. “I want you.”

It soothed him like a balm, washed over his trembling shoulders, his hammering chest. Imbued him with an urgency that had him splaying his knees, rocking his hips, and inviting himself in.

There was a pressure at your entrance—a filling of that aching space that had you seeing stars. When he asked for admission there was no hesitation. You welcomed him with open thighs and hands that tracked the muscles of his back as you received him in one slow thrust. Your inhale stuttered at its crest, caught in your throat before hissing from your lips as you ached alive, ached awake. Finally, with no resistance. Only the sparks of ineffable pleasure as the emptiness inside you was filled at last. 

A shudder escaped both of you at once, something closer to a sob. Yours directed toward the ceiling, his ghosting over your neck. You stayed like this a moment—locked, seated, stunned by the pleasure of your joining. 

Eddie hung his head with a groan, curls waterfalling around your face as he rutted impossibly deeper. He could have died here, buried himself and made you his tomb. He was crumbling, coming apart, actively deteriorating from the warmth of your body around him, from the all sensations of you, from the stunned satisfaction flooding through every inch of him. Finally, it cried. Finally, finally. The edge was close, a few pushes away. He could feel the components preparing, desperate for release, begging the rest of him to push, push, push. His whole world was spinning, threatening to collapse in on itself. Dragging himself away from the edge with a deep breath, he reeled in the parts that threatened to unravel at at the way you accepted him. How effortless it was, how tightly you hugged him, both inside and out. How your palms gripped his shoulders, soft inner thighs like a cradle for his hips. He swallowed thickly, blinking hard to open his eyes up to you, beneath him, around him like a home he’d been missing his whole life. Finally, he allowed himself to relax into the feeling, to let his weight fall against your belly. Flush with every angle, gasping into the soft crook of your shoulder.

You drew him impossibly closer, tucking your ankles under his rear, raking your fingers across his scalp as he settled. The fullness was ecstatic, the stretch so deep it was like he was burrowing behind your navel, radiating dull pleasure from the space he occupied. It was a perfect fit. Tailor-made to reach the points that pined for pressure in both of you. So full you felt like you could burst. So full it prickled at the corners of your eyes, exited your downturned mouth in a gasp—a silent prayer, a thank you toward one that was answered. One you had asked for in secret, pressed into the folds of linen napkins, whispered into the ceiling of The Hideout as the stage lights touched your face. You could have stayed like this forever, merged and crystalized. Deliriously, you prayed you would, and yet you ached to feel his love animated. To be battered by it. Bruised by it. Bullied by his fierce, frenetic love. By an energy you had glimpsed in stolen moments, witnessed him harness on stage, tasted in the smoke on his tongue.

Eddie raised his head to look at you, admiring the shading of your features in the near darkness, the bliss painted across your lips, your heavy lids. A waking dream. You tipped your chin, feathering his mouth with yours; sensual, playful, eager. He brushed against your parted lips, twin breaths mingling in soft pants before an urge arrested him. It was loud and all-consuming, shouting from the base of his brain, seizing his hips to draw back and roll forward. It had both of you seeing stars, grunting soft exclamations into the fractional distance between you. The sound and the friction gelled like a gas to feed the fire coursing through him, igniting a fierce urge to move, to show you, to deliver his promise. 

And just like that he was gone. Possessed. Arrested by a driving need that had him hunkering forward, rocking his hips to a rhythm older than either of you could imagine. Familiar, ingrained, and almost involuntary. The pleasure had him drilling down to chase it; open-mouthed, eyes pinched, swept away by the current of his own making. He was dizzy with it. Lost in it. Fisting the sheets as his hips met your thighs with quick, heavy smacks. Desperate and frantic, hurtling toward his edge at a terrifying speed.

A moan was punched out of you—guttural, gasping. One that had your neck craning against the pillow as your chin reached toward your headboard. And you just held on; winding through his hair, dragging drown his back, drowning in feeling. Tight ripples of pleasure radiated from every thrust, stirring something so deep you had forgotten you had buried it—the fear that you would go your whole life and never feel this way. It bubbled up through your sternum, burned at the corners of your eyes, surfaced in strangled sounds at the back of your throat. 

The friction roared like wildfire between you, and a tightening deep in his body warned him with flashing lights that looked red but felt green. A blended hue of pleasure and fear coiled its way through his abdomen, but he was consumed by you—warm and wet and tight around him. Gasping to his rhythm, making music that he’d never heard before. He harmonized with it, quickening his pace with grunts through gritted teeth. His mind was a swirling mess, forearms burning and trembling, sweat dripping down his neck, but none of it even registered in the wake of blinding pleasure. So good. So fucking good. How badly he wanted to show you, to hear those sounds escalate to screams. 

You sobbed a moan, splitting at the seams as time and sense slipped away down the current. Unraveling like a spool of thread rolled down a hill. Becoming blissfully undone after a lifetime of being wound so tight. Pleasure sparked through your channel, tears flickered in the corners of your eyes. It felt as though you might break open. “Eddie,” you whined, clawing into his shoulders as you arched against the mattress.

It swirled between his ears, rushed down his spine to throb in that deep, low place. His name, your voice, this way. There was a kick inside. A switch that flipped. An urge that he was helpless but to follow, unable to control. His heart rate quickened, breath heaving as he spiraled down a tunnel with nothing to brace but the mattress. “Oh fuck, oh god, oh no, OH—”

It was the moment right before the release that was the sweetest. The tingle he could feel radiating from deep inside like a big yawn. He drew a deep breath with a skyward tilt of his chin, and for a few precious seconds there were no thoughts; no guilt, no shame, nothing at all in the midst of his blackout collision with pleasure. Eddie fisted the sheets, lurching forward as he slammed into you. 

Colors. Vibrant and rich. Painting the air between you with each shallow gasp. Escalating in pitch toward a spectacular display. It poured out of him. Every ounce of frustration, every bottled feeling, every unlived fantasy, erupting all at once. He buried it inside you. Hips pressed flush against your thighs, burrowing deeper with every pulse. Wave after white-hot wave. Crashing over him, coursing out of him with open-mouthed gasps. Waves of relief so good it threatened tears. 

It was breathtaking—the hue of each pitch. Sharp inhales through gritted teeth that melted into deep grunts on the exhale. Each twitch ignited inside you—sparks that had your eyes rolling back, had you drawing your knees toward the mattress to take it all. You grappled his shoulders, nails bluntly dragging down his sweat-kissed skin, grazing up the back of his neck as his moans faded to soft whines. So full. 

There was more. Still more. Coming out in dribbles now, petering to heaves with nothing left behind them. The spasms sent sparks inside you, and you fought to savor them—spreading wider, tucking in your ankles under his rear to draw him deeper. Finally, he collapsed, ragged with relief. He stayed like this a moment. Spent. Deflated. Chest expanding into yours as sharp pants dulled to steady breaths. 

Slowly, Eddie raised his head from where he’d hung it, sobering to the clock on your nightstand. It mocked him with glowing red numbers, of which he hazily calculated that only three had passed since he’d put the condom on. A surge of guilt rushed into the vacuum that pleasure left behind. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t—” he winced, hips jerking in the echoes of his climax. 

His words almost didn’t register through the fog of your bliss. “Sorry?” you breathed, blinking back into the room. 

“I—” he flinched again, fisting the pillow beneath you. “I came like, immediately. And you didn’t.”

“Oh—oh no it’s ok,” you soothed, running a hand down his back. “It felt unbelievably good. Like… the best I’ve ever had.”

Eddie heaved a sigh, overtaken by a strange mixture of shame for himself and pity for you. Suddenly he felt like he was back in your classroom, like you were ignoring his spelling mistakes, praising the C he got on his chemistry test. He shifted his weight, becoming increasingly aware of his chest sticking to yours, of the hair clinging to his neck, of the rubber around him straining with his own fluid, tight in the midst of hypersensitivity. 

He was quiet. A tense sort of quiet you’d seen from him before. Slowly, gently, your fingers found his temple, stroking away the sweat, tracking down to cup his jaw, settling just under his ear as your thumb busied itself with his soft cheek. “Eddie,” you whispered. 

It was soothing. Attentive. The kind of touch a hurt child might receive. A touch he’d craved for longer than he cared to admit, yet in this context, it was the last way he wanted to feel. “M’ gonna make it up to you,” he mumbled. Drawing on his quickly waning strength, he peeled himself from your body to sit back on his heels, still inside you. 

It was almost a shock—how chilly you felt in the absence of his weight. How bare and vulnerable. A soft cry escaped you, arms drawing around your body to shield against the cold creeping in.

The sound stirred him, dredged up and compounded the gnawing disappointment in himself. The nagging sense that he was fucking this up too, just like he did everything else. Desperate to hear something more satisfied, his fingers found your clit, drawing tight circles there. But you were still reeling in the pain of his absence, could still feel the shame radiating from him, and it dulled any chance of good feeling. 

“Stop, Eddie—” You grabbed his wrist. Eddie sighed sharply through his nose, stilling his hand. 

It was flooding in now, that hot tingling feeling he’d felt countless times under the fluorescents. How he’d fucked it all up, how he was making it even worse now. He could feel himself start to go soft, the condom becoming loose, sticky and uncomfortable. He drew back his hips to exit, but your knees locked around him.

“No, please—” The tears were close, right there. Stored from moments before in the height of your pleasure, just waiting behind your eyelids. You took his hand and tugged it gently toward you. “I just want you.”

There was a twinge in his chest that burst at your words, at how they wavered and threatened to crack. At how honest they were, how they felt to hear coming from you. Lead by your hand, he gave in—to gravity, to exhaustion, to a weight he’d carried for so long it seemed to be a part of him. Settling on top of you, resting his cheek against your sternum as heart thrummed steadily in his ear. The pain in your voice still echoed there, the thought that he’d caused it, unbearable. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—” 

You shushed him, stroking over his temple, clearing the hairs that clung to his face. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Your lips found the crown of his head, pressing a long kiss there, inhaling the soft scent that filled you with an indescribable warmth. “I love you,” you whispered. “I love you.”

The words reverberated through your chest into his ear, softening the clench in his jaw, the tightness in his shoulders. Eddie took a shaky breath through his nose. “I love you so much,” he wavered thickly, “I just—I just want to show you—”

It nearly broke you; the pain behind his words, the sudden realization of where they came from. You shushed him again, thumb soothing over his cheek. “You have.”

A knot released in his chest, undone by your careful fingers, exiting as a shallow sob he’d been harboring for longer than these last few moments. For longer than he could remember. The weight of it shook you, but you still remained. Solid, tangible, real as he collapsed into you, a haven for his tired bones to rest. It was all ebbing now—the adrenaline pounding through his veins since the moment you got in his van, the heightened sensations across every inch of his body, the sudden rush of pleasure, crashing all at once. Softening everywhere. A numbness settled over his limbs, all doubts ushered away by your thumb.

And then it was quiet. Absent of even the hum of the heat through the vents. Engulfed in a protective darkness with nothing but the sound of your own steady breathing—slow and soothing. Chests rising and falling against one another, lulled by a rhythm only the two of you could hear. 

His hand found yours in the dark, trailing across your wrist, sliding up your palm to lace his fingers between yours. The bones of his knuckles filled the empty space with a comforting stretch. Just like he’d done a dozen times in the shadows, like he’d done a thousand times in your daydreams. You squeezed back tightly, and for a still, silent moment, there was no separation. No gap to close between what you had and what you wanted. 

It was good like this. Alone. Together. Stroking his temple, feeling the crinkle of his smile against your palm, the cadence of his breath as it slowed nearly to sleep. Drifting off to some place on the horizon where neither of you had been before. Who knows where it would take you, what perils awaited out over the edge, when the sun eventually rose, when the halls filled once more with the echos of a hundred voices watching. But for now, there was only the soothing sound of your breaths, the rhythmic thrum of your two tired hearts as you drifted there together. 

______

Taglist: @mermaidsandcats29 @toxicjayhoo @ooo-protean-ooo @jadequeen88 @wroteclassicaly @kissmyacdc @raccoonboywrites @storiesbyrhi @trashmouth-richie @carolmunson @keeponquinning @blueywrites @alottanothing @bebe07011 @alizztor @godcreatoreli @ethereal27cereal @munsonsgirl71 @mrsjellymunson @emxxblog @siriusmuggle @sidthedollface2 @dollalicia @lma1986 @catherinnn @eddiemunson4life420 @readsalot73 @big-ope-vibes @3rriberri @princess-eddie @nightless @eddieswifu @thew0rldsastage @chaoticgood-munson @hanahkatexo @eddiemunsonsbedroom @beep-beep-sherlock @averagemisfit03 @vintagehellfire @haylaansmi @sllooney @lunaladybug734 @callingmrsbarnes @ajkamins @mimsthebannished

There will be a celebration hosted by the lovely @teddiemunson86 and @ladylilylost on their discord server next Sunday, Sept. 1st at 2pm EDT where I will be talking about the chapter and what the future has in store for our forbidden lovebirds! If you're interested in joining, the link to the server is here. I also frequently post snippets and memes in the discussion channels. Hope to see you there!

📝 MASTERLIST ⎮📖 AO3 ⎮☕️ KO-FI

[manicpixieyandere]

Representation in Splatoon

For the Grand Fest can we just take a moment to celebrate the amazing representation in Splatoon? First of all, it's a game led by women! Name another game with a cast of mostly women.

All of the idols share a different culture with the mainstream audience.

Callie, Marie, Pearl, and Shiver are Japanese. Marina is black, Frye is Indian, and Big Man is Brazilian. All of this is show, don't tell. It's present in their music and designs, not hidden away! It's celebrated.

Pearl and Marina are lesbians. Marina is especially an incredible feat we never thought we'd see in a Nintendo game of all places! A black autistic lesbian! Off The Hook also seems to be Nintendo's favorite of the bands, which again is shocking! In terms of queer representation, Acht is also nonbinary, and Shiver is allowed to be androgynous. It just makes us happy knowing how many kids can grow up with these characters and feel seen!

This isn't even to mention the story Splatoon tells. The story of the inklings and octolings isn't scared to show struggles like class issues or even racism sometimes. But in the end everyone is brought together through art! Culture is what connects everyone. We think it's quite beautiful!

This was a sort of thank you letter to Splatoon! We started liking the franchise as kids because, haha colorful squid game. But it soon became an amazing story about art bringing people of all walks of life together.

As a random side story, we'll never forget the day gay marriage was legalized in the US. This was back during Splatoon 1 and Miiverse. Every single person in the plaza had a post above their head saying "Love Wins". We didn't know what that meant at the time, we were raised in a very sheltered catholic school. But the accepting community of the game is what lead to us discovering the queer community and learning more about ourselves. Happily genderfluid and pansexual now! We hope Splatoon was able to provide others with a similar or even better experience!

So thank you Splatoon! Hope to see you again on a new console for round 4!

PS; Also, sorry to Team Present, We are loosing all our games, please send help. The losses hurt the ego, we are being beat up by children.

[cherrysurf]

“gentleman”

ushijima, akaashi, osamu, kageyama, daichi, semi, suga, iwaizumi, kuroo, tsukishima, kita

“got love struck when straight to my head,got love sick all over my bed,love to think you’ll never forget. Will pay the price i guess….in a world of boys he’s a gentleman”

You came back from a lovely girls night because clearly one or two more shots and you would’ve blacked out, you reek of alcohol and all you want to do is be with your boyfriend, after getting dropped off to your house by your friend and her boyfriend, your boyfriend is there waiting for you your bath prepared, food for after and your night clothes all set up. Truth be told he does this because he knows how much you do for him and he respects you and praises the ground you walk on. As you greet him with a sloppy kiss and clinging to him like a koala he swiftly picks you up and asks you about your night out as you go on a rant he takes you to the bath and washes your hair for you scrubs your back and gets you all cleaned up just enjoying this moment even if your on a rant he likes knowing he gets to see and be with you during all your moments vulnerable or not. As he takes you to your shared bed room to help you get dressed you can’t help but laugh finding it so cute that your boyfriend is taking care of you, Then he takes you to the kitchen where there is a nice cozy meal ready for you. Soon after you both head to bed, as your laying there ready for bed because your head can’t stop spinning you can feel the food coming back up, he can notice this luckily he assumed this would’ve happened especially after knowing you for so long he grabs the mini trash bucket he had at his sides and puts it right by you just as you were about to vomit on the bed. You start to cry “i’m so sorry babe i’m sorry you have to see me like this” you say with tears in your eyes, he puts the bucket down on his side once more and consoles you. “hey it’s okay it happens it’s not your fault just next time don’t drink as much promise?” he says in a softy voice “what if we go brush your teeth again and then hangout in the living room, while i make you tea? sounds good?” you nodded in agreement. Even though you are super drunk you can’t help but wonder how greatful you were for such a gentleman. As you two are in the living room cuddling as you’re drifting off to sleep you say softy “i’m so thankful to have a gentleman like you.” and fall asleep with a smile.

[dilemmaontwolegs]

Summer in the 305 || LS2

Pairing: Logan Sergeant x fem!reader Summary: Logan comes home to Miami (305) for the summer break and you surprise him by meeting him at the airport. Warnings: fluff, doggo parents, hints of sexual tension. WC: 1.7k F1 Masterlist || One || Two || Three

No one noticed you as you sat half asleep in an oversized hoodie on a bench, assuming you were just another weary traveler in Miami International Airport. The arrival lounge had been busy when you arrived hours earlier but it had grown quieter and quieter as the night grew so late it could have been considered morning. Logan was meant to have landed at 11pm and he would have expected you to be at home fast asleep but you had wanted to surprise him.

The surprise came fittingly at 3:05 when the frosted glass doors opened with the next disembarkation of passengers, led by Logan as he desperately tried to get home to you sooner. Your eyes were burning from forcing them to remain open for the extra four hours that his flight was delayed and you rubbed them as you rose from the bench. 

Caps and shirts were thrust in his path but he was too polite to decline a fan so he paused to sign his autograph and nearly jumped out of his skin when your fingers wrapped around the handle of his suitcase. The shout to call for security almost passed his lips, thinking he was being robbed, before his sleepy brain recognised you.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing here?” he asked as a grin chased away the exhaustion on his face and he bundled you into his arms.

You kept one hand on his luggage since there was a crowd starting to gather but the other curled around his back and your head tucked into the crook of his neck. “I wanted to surprise you. I missed you.”

Logan pressed his lips to your forehead until you tipped your head back and he captured your lips as cameras flashed. “I missed you too.”

Thankfully it wasn’t always like this and most of the time when he came home to Miami you were left in relative peace. It was a different story when you went with him to the races, those were full-on mobs of Williams fans that demanded almost all his attention. “Go on, babe, finish up signing those so we can go home.”

The pen flew across whatever passed in front of him before he caught you struggling to hide your yawn and made an apology as he handed a boarding pass back with his autograph before waving. “Thanks for the support everyone.”

There was a collective groan from those who had missed out but Logan was focusing on taking back his luggage with one hand and draping the other over your shoulders as you fell into step.

“Looks like the 305 missed you too,” you commented as his hand lifted every now and again to wave at the younger fans until you reached his Range Rover you borrowed for the night. “There’s a treat waiting for you at home.”

His hand found your thigh as he started the engine and sent you a smirk as it drifted higher. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Not that,” you giggled, turning down the music that had played loudly while you drove. Logan enjoyed a quieter atmosphere when he was at the wheel, one where he could hold a conversation. “I wasn’t sure if you had eaten so I picked up some Carbone’s. I will admit I had to name drop, but they wouldn’t make a takeaway order otherwise.”

His warm laugh filled the SUV. “Did they even know who I was?”

“Of course! Everyone knows the hometown hero.” You leaned across the console and kissed his cheek, feeling the short prickles of his blond beard on your lips. “Are you planning on giving me beard burn, Lo?”

“This is all the rage in Europe. You don’t like it?” he asked as he ran his fingers over the three day growth. You weren’t sure if he was playing with you or not before a grin split his face and you sighed with relief. “Don’t worry, honey, I just haven’t had a minute spare to shave it this week.”

By the time 4:00 am arrived you should have been dead on your feet, but having Logan home energised you almost as much as Sooty. The black labrador scarpered all over the polished wooden floor when he saw his daddy walk in the door, his paws struggling to find traction in his excitement.

“There’s my good boy, come to daddy,” Logan cooed as he dropped his suitcase and caught the bounding dog as he jumped up. “Have you been protecting, mommy? Yeah? Of course, you have, you’re such a good boy.”

“He never gives me that kind of welcome home,” you joked as you locked the door and wheeled the suitcase down the hall to the bedroom.

A pair of hands came to rest on your waist as you emptied the entire case into the laundry hamper, knowing he wouldn’t have had the time to do it himself. His lips brushed over your nape before finding their way to your jaw as he turned you in his arms. “But you don’t go missing for weeks at a time.”

Hooking your arms around his neck you nodded in agreement as Sooty padded into the room with his favourite toy, dropping it at Logan’s feet.

“Someone has to be the stay-at-home parent in this relationship,” you chuckled, releasing him so he could pick up the squeaky toy.

“Not tonight, Soot, we’ll play in the morning,” he said, giving you a quick kiss with the promise of more. “Let me put him to bed, leave everything else until morning, sweetheart.”

He disappeared down the hall to the living room where Sooty’s bed was set up, but whenever Logan was away you would let him sneak into bed with you. You always slept better when you could cuddle something warm, but you definitely preferred waking up to Logan’s morning kisses than Sooty’s slobbery ones when he wants to be fed.

“Lay down, buddy,” you heard Logan’s quiet words in the still of the night. “You can take a break from looking after mommy, you did such a good job for me, yes you did.” You heard a smooch followed by a soft whine as Logan turned off the lights, then the pitter patter of paws. “Back to bed, Soot. Good boy.”

You heard the bedroom door close before Logan stepped into the ensuite, leaning against the doorway while you filled the sink with warm water. You returned the smile you found in the mirror and patted the marble vanity top before searching the drawers for his cut throat razor.

“It doesn’t look that bad, does it?” he half joked as he jumped up onto the bench, parting his legs so you could step between them.

“You could have a 70’s porn ‘stache and I would still think you are handsome,” you promised, making him laugh.

He tipped his head back as you soaked a face cloth in the warm water and squeezed the excess out before placing it over his face. “This is my favourite part of coming home.”

“Out of everything we do when you’re home, this is your favourite?”

His laugh made the face cloth fall away but it had probably been there long enough to open his pores so you lathered up the shaving cream next and massaged it over his cheeks and down his neck, feeling the thick cords of muscles beneath your palms.

“Okay, third favourite,” he corrected as his hands shifted from where he leaned back down on them to curl around your waist and rest comfortably on the swell of your ass. “But it’s still up there.”

“You are a strange man, Lo. I don’t think most people enjoy having a blade to their throat,” you murmured as you opened the razor and tilted his head to the side. 

“I trust you.”

“Thank you. Now no more talking.”

He didn’t dare make a sound or even swallow as you angled the blade against his cheekbone and started to glide it carefully down to his jaw before rinsing it off in the sink. He kept perfectly still for you but you were hyper aware of his eyes scanning your face for any little changes he might have missed while he was away, re-committing it all to his memory for the next time he left. 

You closed the blade up after finishing his throat last and placed it on the side before grabbing the face cloth and wiping away the excess shaving cream. Running a palm over his jawline you nodded at the silky smooth skin and took a kiss as payment before handing him the bottle of aftershave. “All done, handsome.”

By the time you had turned down the bed, and changed into one of his shirts, the light leaking in around the edges of the curtains started to turn pink as dawn approached. Your eyelids were heavy but your heart was light as Logan climbed in his side and wrapped his body around your back, the weight of his arm reassuring on your waist and his leg wedged between yours. 

“Come with me,” he murmured sleepily. 

You could hardly coordinate a reply as your lips quivered with a suppressed yawn until it finally passed. “Where?”

“Everywhere: Zandvoort, Monza, Singapore, all of them.” You felt his small shrug before his arm tightened around you and he kissed your shoulder. “I hate being away from you.”

Your immediate reply was to admit how much you hated the distance too but that would only make him feel worse if you couldn’t join him. “What about Sooty?”

“Hamilton brings Roscoe to some races, or maybe Mom can look after him…you don’t have to give me an answer now, sweetheart. We have three weeks to think about it.”

“I want to,” you said as you laced your fingers with his and drew his hand up your body so it was tucked into the valley of your breasts where your heart beat steadily in your relaxed state, “but we can talk about more in the morning.”

He nodded and pressed another kiss to your skin, the touch smooth and soothing thanks to the close shave. “Sweet dreams, honey.”

“Hmm, you too,” you said as your muscles relaxed even further and your tongue barely moved. “Love you, Lo.”

His voice followed you into your dreams and you smiled as it took hold in a future you couldn’t wait to see come to life, “I love you too.”

Click here for part two.

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[rosieswriting]

Barty Crouch Jr x Hufflepuff!reader

Summary: After the birthday of your dear friend, Pandora Rosier, Barty doesn´t seem as bad as he did before

Note: I took one of the request of reader "tutoring" barty not knowing he doesn´t need it by @treefairy-28 thank youuuu. And english is not my first language so it probably has some mistakes! And i will do a part 2 to where things get really interesting

Words: 3,2K

You’d always hated Barty Crouch Junior. Everything about him grated on your nerves—the way he spoke too loudly in class, yet still managed to top every exam; the infuriating pet names he used for you; his smug belief that being a Slytherin somehow made him superior, especially to Hufflepuffs like you. His walk, his talk—everything about him seemed designed to annoy you. Luckily, you’d always managed to ignore him. Until now.

You’d recently been paired with Pandora Rosier for a Potions project, and to your surprise, you’d quickly grown close. How had you not been friends before? She was sweet, caring, and easy to talk to—similar to you in so many ways. When her birthday rolled around, she invited you to a small celebration at the Three Broomsticks with her twin, Evan, and a few of his friends. Including him. You’d thought long and hard about it, knowing you’d have to deal with Barty, but in the end, you decided to go. After all, it was for Pandora, and you could always try to ignore him.

The Three Broomsticks was packed, busier than you’d expected. It seemed half of Hogwarts was out celebrating. Just as you were scanning the room, you heard Pandora’s cheerful voice calling your name.

“Happy Birthday!” you said warmly, pulling her into a hug and handing her a small box containing a silver necklace.

Pandora’s eyes lit up as she opened it. “Oh, I love this! Thank you so much,” she beamed, hugging you again. “Come on, we’re over here.”

She led you through the crowded room toward a cozy corner table. And, of course, as you approached, you saw Evan Rosier, Regulus Black and Barty leaning back in his chair, already watching you with that familiar smirk.

“Hi” you mumbled a bit shyly to the slytherin as you sat next to Pandora, and to your luck, Barty was seated right in front of you. Regulus and Evan gave you a slight nod of acknowledgment and continue their conversation.

“Look who decided to join us” Barty teased raising his eyebrows “Dindt think you would show up, Treasure”

“Barty” Pandora said with a warning tone to his friend, trying to shut him up. But he only raised his hands in self innocence and exuse himself with a poor “just trying to start a conversation”

“I wouldn’t miss Dora´s birthday just because I have to deal with you, Junior” you said with a fake sweet smile to him.

“Deal with me? You wound me Badger” he said and you rolled your eyes at the nickname.

“If its any consolation, im actually impressed that your ego managed to fit through the door” is the last thing you say before turning to talk to Pandora and ignore him.

You and your blonde friend talk for some time, she telling you about how her birthday has been and all the presents she got. At some point you start to get thirsty.

“Im gonna ask for something to drink, ill be right back” you say kindly as you stand up from the chair.

“I’ll go with you” you hear Barty says as he stands up as well.

“Great” you whisper under your breath as you start to make your way to the bar, him following behind you.

You ordered a butterbeer, and Barty, naturally, ordered the same, positioning himself so close that his shoulder brushed against yours. The warm, subtle contact sent an unexpected flutter through you, though you tried to ignore it.

“I must admit,” he began, leaning down just enough to speak directly into your ear, “when Evan told us Dora would invite you, my expectations for tonight went up higher.”

“Good for you,” you muttered, turning to face him with an eye roll, only to find his face so close that you could feel his breath on your cheek. You quickly turned your gaze forward again, pretending to study the bottles lined up behind the bar. He chuckled, catching the slight blush that had crept up your cheeks “When Dora mentioned you were coming, I almost declined her invitation” you continued, doing your best to sound unfazed

 “If you say so. But, can I just say, you show up here looking like this, put me in my place with that sweet, sassy voice of yours… you’re killing me here.”

Despite yourself, you feel warmth creeping up your cheeks.  Thankfully, the bartender hands you both your drinks before you have to answer. You turn to make your way back to the table, but Barty steps in front of you, forcing you to stop short as he smirks down at you, close enough that you catch the faintest spark in his gaze.

“You know, I think you secretly like driving me a little mad,” he murmurs, amusement flickering in his eyes. “It’s cute, really—seeing you pretend to be so above it all.”

“Pretend?” you scoff, raising an eyebrow as you try to sidestep him. “Trust me, Junior, I’m not pretending anything.”

“Oh, really?” he asks, following you smoothly, keeping pace as you try to dodge around him. “Then explain why you look so flustered.”

“I’m not—” You stop, realizing he’s caught you, the faint blush on your cheeks betraying you. You try to shrug it off, holding your head high. “In your dreams, Junior”

He grins, leaning in close enough that his voice is a murmur just for you. “Oh, Treasure. In my dreams we are doing more than talking. Belive me”

You huffed, finally brushing past him and making your way back to the table. “Idiot,” you muttered, though you couldn’t ignore the faint thrill left in the air.

Sliding back into your seat next to Pandora, you tried to steady yourself as she happily dove back into conversation, thankfully distracting you from the lingering heat in your cheeks and Barty’s lingering gaze across the table.

As the night wore on, you and the slytherins stepped out of the warm, bustling atmosphere of the Three Broomsticks into the chilly night air. The sharp bite of winter nipped at your skin, making you shiver as you wrapped your arms around yourself in a futile attempt to keep warm. You hadn’t brought a jacket and now you were regretting it.

Pandora was chatting animatedly with Evan and Regulus, blissfully unaware of your growing discomfort. Barty walked alongside you, his familiar smirk already playing on his lips. You knew he was about to make a comment, and you braced yourself.

Without warning, Barty slipped off his leather jacket and draped it over your shoulders, pulling it tightly around you before you had the chance to protest. “Here, wear this,” he said, his voice low and smooth, ignoring your startled expression. “You look like you’re about to freeze to death.”

You blinked at him, flustered. “You don´t have to-” you start but he cuts you off.

“Please, like I’d let you suffer while I stand here all warm and toasty.” He chuckled. “You show up looking all stunning, and I won’t let you ruin it by turning into an icicle.”

Your cheeks flushed at the unexpected gesture, the warmth of his jacket enveloping you like a shield. You tried to regain your composure, shivering slightly as you adjusted the jacket to fit more snugly. “Thanks, but I don’t need your charity, Junior.” You weren´t willing to give up that easily.

“Oh, is that what you’re calling it? Charity?” he teased, falling into step beside you again, his grin infuriatingly charming. “I thought it was more of a gentlemanly move, if you will.”

“Gentlemanly? You?” You scoffed, shaking your head in disbelief. “You must be joking.”

“Why so skeptical? I can be quite the gentleman when the mood strikes me,” he said, leaning in closer again, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Besides, I can’t have my favorite Hufflepuff catching a cold now, can I?”

You felt a rush of warmth flood your cheeks at his words, and you tried to deflect, “You’re just doing this to annoy me, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” he replied, a cheeky glint in his eyes. “But I also happen to enjoy the view when you’re flustered. You should see your face right now. It’s adorable.”

“Adorable?” You repeated incredulously, fighting the urge to smile. “You really think you’re charming, don’t you?”

He leaned back slightly, feigning deep thought. “Well, I wouldn’t say charming. More like irresistible.”

You shook your head, biting back a smile as you shot him a glare. “Keep dreaming, Junior.”

“Trust me, I will,” he shot back with that devil-may-care grin.

Pandora turned to you both, her eyes sparkling with delight. “Oh my gosh, you two are so cute! You’re practically flirting!” she gushed, completely unaware of your desire to bury your face in your hands.

“Flirting?” you exclaimed, turning to Barty in disbelief. “This isn’t flirting; it’s sheer torture!”

Barty chuckled, his gaze locked on yours, mischief dancing in his eyes. “Torture? Maybe I’ll have to keep it up then. Can’t have you getting too comfortable, can we?”

As you walked back to Hogwarts, you could feel the weight of his jacket around your shoulders, and though you’d never admit it, the warmth was more than just physical. Despite the banter and the bickering, you couldn’t shake the flutter in your stomach. Barty Crouch Junior might drive you mad, but maybe—just maybe—there was something nice about having him around after all.

You arrive to Hogwarts and everyone makes their way to their common room, the boys to Slytherin´s, Pandora to Ravenclaw´s and you to Hufflepuff´s. You get into your dorm quietly, because even if it was a Friday night, your roomates were sleeping.

As you began to undress, you suddenly realized you still had Barty’s jacket draped over your shoulders. Great, you thought with an eye roll. Now I have to see him again. You sighed, folding it neatly and placing it in your wardrobe alongside your other clothes.

After a quick trip to the bathroom to wash off your makeup and change into your pajamas, you settled into bed. The comfort of your blankets enveloped you, but no matter how hard you tried to shake it off, the memory of Barty's teasing grin lingered in your mind.

You hated that the last thought before sleep was that goddamn smirk of his—so infuriating yet somehow captivating. With a frustrated huff, you turned over, determined to banish thoughts of him, but the image of his charming arrogance persisted, a playful reminder of the night’s events.

You woke up the next day, the soft sunlight filtering through the windows of your dormitory. The quiet of the weekend morning was a welcome contrast to the usual hustle and bustle of school life. You moved through your routine slowly, knowing you had no classes to rush to today. After freshing up, you dressed casually and made your way to the Great Hall for breakfast. You decided to take Barty´s jacket with you, so you could return it as soon as possible.

And thanks to Merlin, when you enter the Great Hall you immediately spotted him at the Slytherin table with his friends. You wave at your own friends and make them a signal to wait for you as you approached the green table, your friends staring at you like you had gone crazy.

“Junior” you call out softly from behind him.

Barty´s head whipped around, his grin widening when he saw you “Treasure!” his voice was full of amusement as he looked you up and down “Miss me alredy?”

You rolled your eyes and extended his jacket over him “Im here to return this, and to say thank you again” even if he was insufferable, you were always polite.

He raised an eyebrow, clearly pleased by your words, as he took the jacket from you “You know, I was hoping you would keep it for longer. You did look amazing in it. Not that I didn’t like you in your top, of course”

You felt the heat increasing in your cheeks at his words but try to hide it with a scoff, your hands instinctively moving to fold your arms across your chest. “Whatever” you muttered, stepping back and already starting to turn away “Goodbye”

Some days later you were sitting with your friends in the courtyard, laughing as you discussed the latest mishap in Potions class, when you noticed a familiar figure making his way toward you. Barty Crouch Jr, in all his swagger, had that unmistakable smirk as he approached your small circle, his eyes already fixed on you.

"Treasure," he greeted smoothly, nodding to your friends before focusing entirely on you. "Got a minute?"

You raised an eyebrow, a bit taken aback that he’d be seeking you out in broad daylight, in front of witnesses no less. “Depends. What do you want, Junior?”

He chuckled, unfazed by your tone. "Pandora said you’re somewhat of an expert in Magical Creatures. Thought maybe you could help a struggling Slytherin with a few... basics.”

Your friends exchanged glances, one of them biting back a smile as they elbowed each other. You tried to ignore it, focusing on Barty. “Struggling?” you echoed, skeptical. “You’re one of the top students. Why do you need my help?”

He shrugged, managing to look both innocent and mischievous. “Call it an off week. I could use some extra guidance.”

One of your friends couldn’t resist chiming in, “Are you sure you don’t just want to copy her notes, Barty?”

“Oh, I’d love to copy,” he said, giving you a pointed look, “but I think I’d learn more if we… studied together. Say, this afternoon?”

“Fine,” you said, ignoring the snickers from your friends. “The library at six?”

“Or my room?” he suggested, not missing a beat. “Much quieter. Comfier too.”

You rolled your eyes, even as your friends burst into laughter. “Nice try. The library will do just fine.”

He placed a hand over his heart, feigning disappointment. “Heartbreaking, really. I was hoping for a more… private lesson.”

“Guess you’ll just have to settle for learning in public,” you replied, a smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. “See you at six, Junior.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, his smirk widening.

With that, he turned and sauntered off, leaving your friends barely containing their laughter.

“Oh, Merlin,” one of them said as soon as he was out of earshot, “did Barty Crouch Jr. just ask you for a tutoring session?”

You sighed, trying not to show the flutter of nerves in your stomach. “Apparently. And he’d better actually need help with Magical Creatures.”

But even as you turned back to your conversation, you couldn’t shake the feeling that this “study session” was going to be anything but ordinary.

That evening, you made your way to the library with a stack of notes on magical creatures and a determination to focus—no matter how distracting your “student” might try to be. When you arrived, you saw Barty lounging at a back table, idly flipping through a book that looked suspiciously unrelated to magical creatures.

“Good, you’re here,” he said with a grin as you sat down. “I was starting to think you’d stand me up.”

You rolled your eyes as you sat in front of him “Almost did” you mumble under your breath as you opened your book and notes. The library was quiet as you huddled over a hefty tome on magical creatures, quills and parchment spread across the table between you. It seemed like he was genuinely focused—or at least, he pretended to be.

“Alright, Junior” you said, pointing to a section in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, “why don’t you tell me everything you know about hippogriffs?”

He gave you a thoughtful look, scratching his chin as if deep in concentration. “Hmm… majestic creatures, proud, can be very dangerous if approached incorrectly… does that sound right?”

You tilted your head, eyeing him suspiciously. “So you do know about them, after all. That’s a decent start.”

“Well, I have the basics,” he said with a little grin, “but I wouldn’t call myself an expert. That’s where you come in, Treasure.”

You rolled your eyes but smiled anyway, nudging the book closer to him. “Alright, fine. Hippogriffs are proud, but there’s more to them than that. They’re highly sensitive and require respect—bowing to them before approaching is essential.”

He nodded, trying to keep a straight face, though you could tell he was amused. “Bowing. Got it. Sort of like dealing with you, isn’t it? Respect, admiration…”

You huffed, fighting the warmth creeping into your cheeks. “Keep it up, and I’ll leave you to fend for yourself next time we have a test.”

“Anything but that,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender, though his grin didn’t fade. “You’re far too charming when you’re lecturing me on magical creatures.”

You ignored him and went over a few more creatures, each time finding him surprisingly attentive. He asked questions—good ones, actually—and seemed engaged in a way you hadn’t expected. You started to think maybe he genuinely did want to learn more about the subject.

As the library began to empty, you glanced at the time. “We should probably get some dinner before the house-elves clear the tables,” you said, gathering your notes.

You started to walk to the Great Hall, still in conversation about the finer points of bowtruckles, when something slipped out from under his arm and fluttered to the ground. You instinctively bent down to pick it up, and your eyes widened as you caught sight of the parchment. It was an essay titled “The Lifecycle of Thestrals” with “A” scrawled at the top in red ink. The neat handwriting and the perfectly structured points left no doubt: Barty had known exactly what he was doing in Care of Magical Creatures all along.

You blinked, looking from the essay to Barty, who wore a guilty-but-unbothered grin.

“What’s this?” you asked, eyebrows raised. “You didn’t need my help at all, did you?”

“Guilty as charged,” he replied, his smirk widening.

You scoffed, folding your arms. “Unbelievable. So you wasted my time?”

He leaned in, voice dropping to a low murmur. “Come on, can you really blame me?” His eyes held that familiar glint. “When Pandora mentioned you were the go-to expert on magical creatures, I knew I couldn’t miss the chance. I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours with someone as pretty as you, Treasure?”

Heat crept up your cheeks, and you looked away, trying not to let him see how flustered you felt. “You are unbelievable,” you muttered, but your voice came out softer than you intended.

“Unbelievably charming? I’ll take it,” he said, grinning as you approached the Great Hall. “I had a great time, by the way. Maybe next time, we can have a... more private study session.”

He threw you a wink before sauntering off toward the Slytherin table, leaving you standing there, cheeks flushed, speechless, and—if you were being honest with yourself—a bit confused. Because somehow, despite his insufferable arrogance, the idea of spending more time with him didn’t sound half as annoying as you’d expected.

[stubz]

"Human Kim's mate is dead?!" cries Calis.

"What?! Kim has a mate?!" cries Max

"She is your comrade! How did you not know she has-had a mate?!?"

"But what about Fenrir-wait is Fenrir dead???"

"Human Kim had her bonding band before courting Fenrir, I'm talking about her other mate."

"She's cheating?? Fenrir is the other man...orc???"

"Do humans not have multiple mates?"

"I mean...not usually no...but wait lets back up a minute. How do you know Kim's mate is dead and what do you mean by bonding band, do you mean a ring that goes on a finger?"

"I cannot believe you, her comrade of 5 years, have not noticed her longing rubbing her ankle. How she no longer has the bright orange band on her left ankle. How she looks at her communication device...phone? and looks at what I guess is a photo."

"...wait the orange band? Made out of fabric? Like string?"

"So you have noticed, why have you not consoled her then??"

"...hold on a sec. I'll be back in a moment."

"Are you getting her? Bring her to the command room then, we shall have something for her."

"....how many people think her mate is dead!?"

.

"Why are we going to the command room?"

"Just keep walking. I have a question for you but I need you to answer in front of a lot of people."

"Ookay?" the humans enter the command room and see it decorated dark and somber. Friends and close co-workers are there dressed in black or their respective mourning attire. Calis steps forward.

"Hu-Kim...Kim we are so very sorry for the loss of your mate...may they join the galaxy as a brilliant star and may you both reunite someday in the great beyond..." They slowly grab her five fingered hand with their four fingered hand.

"...If anything were to happen to Gala...I can't even begin to imagine what you are going through. If there's anything you need, anything at all, just ask."

"...Calis...thank you so much...but I don't have a mate?"

"That's what I was saying!" exclaims Max. "If she did then she would've told me, her work best friend!!"

"...but the band on your ankle and your sadness?"

"...Kay I did not notice that but yeah what's up? You alright?" he turns to his short friend

"Ohhh, you mean my friendship anklet?"

"Friend-ship anklet? ...not a bonding band?"

"It was made by my best friend, no offense Max, on Earth the last time I saw her in person 'bout...almost 2 years ago? Anyways it finally fell off since its string and I just miss having it."

"None taken."

"So no one died? She's still alive?"

"Yeah, I just texted her yesterday about the anklet and she said she'll just tattoo one on me cause it'll ward off Max...no offense Max...she just can't accept that I have more than one best friend."

"Again none taken...wait is this the friend who hated you at first and you didn't know so you kept being friendly to her until eventually she accepted you and you've been best friends for like almost 10 years?"

"She...hated you?"

"Oh yeah, she thought I was really annoying but I'm pretty dense so I just kept being nice and going to eat lunch with her throughout high school until after like...2-3 months she gave up and accepted my friendship. Oh! and I didn't know any of this until like this year." she grins

"That's a beautiful friendship right there...makes me jealous about how boringly we met and bonded over anime and musicals."

"On most planets beings would maul you over your annoyance...would you like some of the cake we got you before we knew no one died?"

"Yes please! Also thank you everybody but sadly...and luckily no one died!!" she calls out to the dozen or so aliens and humans in the command room.

"...wait you thought I was having an affair with Fenrir!?" cries a horrified Kim

"That's what I was saying!!" screams Max

[stuckinthesun]

༝༚༝༚ Tic-Tac-Toe ༝༚༝༚ — Part Two

Part One

Black suit mod!Leon x Fem!Reader

Warnings: nsfw mdni, drunk sex, p in v, semi-public sex, pet names, riding, spanking, fingering, handjob, unprotected sex (please wrap it jfc)

wc: 2.8k

Ashley got dragged away from you again by another group of people just dying to know about her experience. You honestly felt bad for your friend and you would’ve stayed with her, but with how much you’ve drank you couldn’t trust your mouth right now.

So instead you decided to get some air.

The cool night air hit your face the moment you stepped out of the banquet hall, instantly making your head feel clearer.

Well, almost clear.

It seemed no matter how many glasses of champagne you drank, you couldn’t get Leon out of your head. How good he looked in that dark suit, the sound of his laugh, the feeling of his fingers trailing up your thigh.

God, you’re blushing just thinking about it!

Subconsciously you look down at your leg, at the unfinished game of tic-tac-toe still marking your skin. The one X he left on you stands out against all your markings, and you brush your fingers over it.

“Hey, there you are.” A deep voice startled you, making you jump and turn around.

Leon stood there with an easy smile and a half-empty glass of champagne. He looked the same as before, except his tie was loose and his cheeks were tinted pink with alcohol.

So sexy and disheveled, great.

You blink at him for a second as his words sink in, “Were you looking for me?”

The pink on his face deepens, “Well, I wanted to know if you were up for finishing our game of tic-tac-toe. Would hate to leave it unfinished on your leg.”

You look down at your leg again before smiling at him, “Well I hope you brought a pen because I left mine back inside.”

“I have one in my car,” He shrugs, looking out into the parking lot of the hall toward where you assume his car is.

“Mr. Kennedy,” You say dramatically, pretending to be scandalized, “Are you inviting me to your car? Alone? In the middle of a party while we’re both intoxicated?”

Leon lets out a surprised chuckle and you notice the color on his face deepen more, “You’re making it sound like high school.”

That makes you laugh before you shake your head and smile, “Alright well, as long as you don’t plan on driving, then I’d love to join you in your car for some leg tic-tac-toe.”

“I promise I won’t be driving,” Leon smiled back at you before nodding his head in the direction of his car.

“I’m surprised you were able to escape the vultures inside.” You joked as the both of you snuck away toward Leon’s car drunkenly.

The blonde smirked, “I’m damn good at my job, Miss. If I couldn’t escape a bunch of drunk old men, then I wouldn’t have been able to save your friend.”

“I guess you have a point,” You hum, noticing the nice car you’re approaching.

Leon pulls out a set of keys from his dress pants before unlocking the vehicle. Stepping up to the sleek black car, he opens the passenger door for you.

“Thank you,” You blushed slightly before slipping inside, and you made sure your dress was completely in the car before Leon carefully closed the door.

You looked around the interior of the car as Leon jogged around to the driver's side, it was fairly clean. So clean in fact, it made you wonder just how often Leon was away on those scary missions like the one to save your best friend.

The car door slamming shut brings you back to the moment and you look up to see Leon placing his champagne glass in the cup holder, “Oh my god, did you steal that?”

“No? I’ll probably take it back,” He shrugged, opening up the middle console and pulling out a pen, “Besides we know the President, it’ll be fine.”

“This is true,” You nod and shimmy yourself in your seat so you can once again prop your legs up in his lap. The stretch across the console was uncomfortable but you would make it work, “Alright Kennedy, enough chitchat. It’s game time.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re competitive?” Leon raised an eyebrow as he popped the cap off the pen and grabbed your leg.

The awkward angle made it difficult for him to see the game of tic-tac-toe, so you tried to shift yourself again, “I’ve always been competitive, you just didn’t see it before because we were so rudely interrup- huh?!”

You were cut off mid-sentence by Leon, apparently frustrated with the angle of your legs, leaning forward to wrap an arm around your waist, the other around your leg, and pull you to straddle his lap.

“That’s better,” Leon hummed, quickly marking your skin with another X before looking up at you with a smirk, “Your turn.”

You stare at him, completely caught off guard by his actions. He just continues to smirk at you, pushing the pen into your hand as he indicates toward the game of X’s and O’s.

A blush heats your skin as you feel his hands on your thighs, his fingers once again tangling in your tights and making your breath hitch.

“This okay?” Leon asked, voice teasing but you could tell the question was genuine. If you said you were uncomfortable and wanted to get off, you truly believe he would let you without a second thought.

This thought brings you reassurance for some reason and you smirk back at him, “Course, just need to get comfortable.”

Leon doesn’t get to reply before you’re sitting up a little, and pulling the skirt of your dress out from under you. Honestly, it had been uncomfortable, the fabric pulling tightly against your skin since Leon hadn’t bothered to adjust it before moving you. Now the skirt of your dress pools around your waist, and your warm center sits on his lap only covered by your panties and some string.

His grip on your thighs tightens, making his fingers tug at your tights and tearing them ever so slightly. Your smirk just deepens, “That’s better.”

Finally, you take your turn drawing an O right below his, successfully cutting him off. You hand the pen back to him with a triumphant smile.

“Don’t get too excited,” Leon says, quickly drawing an X across from his previous one.

“Why not? I’m obviously going to win.” You quickly take back the pen and make your move.

“Oh you think so, do you?” Leon’s marking your skin again, the drag of the pen almost hurts.

“Yeah, I do!” You cry out as you draw a messy O and look up at Leon who’s already looking at you with something close to wonder.

Then suddenly, he’s kissing you.

Leon’s hands grab the sides of your face and tug you closer, smashing your lips together. You kiss back without a second thought, dropping the pen in your hand to run your fingers through his hair, pulling him into you.

The kiss is desperate, it’s exactly how both of you have felt since the first time you met inside the banquet hall. His tongue runs along your bottom lip and you're quick to give him access, opening your mouth and moaning at the feeling of his tongue against yours.

Leon’s hands slide along your body, feeling every curve of your smooth skin. Your hands slide down his shoulders, pulling his suit jacket with you. Understanding, Leon sits up without breaking the kiss and quickly shrugs out of his coat.

Flinging the article of clothing to the back of the car, Leon leans back into his seat. His hands glide up your back, following along the teeth of the zipper until he finds the handle.

You feel him start to pull on the small piece of metal, exposing your upper back, before he pulls away from the kiss, “Is this okay?”

It’s the same question he asked before, except the teasing tone is replaced by a breathy grunt. Your answer is the same as before too, just instead of answering verbally, you nod frantically as you tug his tie off from around his neck.

You throw the piece of silk into the passenger seat as Leon finishes unzipping your dress, letting it hang loosely off your shoulders as he kisses your neck. A soft sigh passes between your lips and you tilt your head to the side to give him better access.

“Oh fuck,” You moan, rolling your hips down against his and feeling his bulge pressing against your barely concealed center.

“Fuck baby,” Leon groans, his head thumping back against the headrest, “Don’t roll your hips like that till I’m inside you.”

“Then hurry,” You whine, reaching between the two of you to start undoing his belt. The straps of your dress slip from your shoulders as you do so, exposing your bra to Leon.

As you make quick work of pulling the leather strap from the metal buckle, you feel his large hand cup your breast. You whine again and push your chest out so he can get a better feel, and you can’t help but close your eyes when he squeezes.

“God you’re really beautiful,” Leon whispers, leaning forward to press open-mouth kisses against your collarbone as you finally pull his belt free from his dress pants, “I’ve been wanting to do this since I first saw you. When I first brought Ashley back.”

That has you pausing. You open your eyes and lean away from him furrowing your eyebrows, “Really?”

“Yeah.” Leon nodded, looking at you with lust-filled eyes, “I didn’t say anything for obvious reasons.”

“You didn’t even know my name earlier,” You pointed out, frowning even more.

“Like I said before, you never told me your name!”

“Yeah, but why didn’t you ask anyone or I don’t know get your spy people to look it up?”

“First off, I’m not a spy.” Leon said chuckling and you just rolled your eyes, “And second, I wanted you to tell me your name.”

Your eyes widen as your chest fills with a sudden warmth. A line like that shouldn’t be all that romantic, and yet for some reason you’re blushing.

Throwing the belt next to the tie in the passenger seat, you grab the collar of Leon’s shirt and pull him into a kiss. It’s messy and heated, much like the first one, but it doesn’t last as long. You quickly pull back, leaning away from the agent as he tries to chase you for another one, and beg, “Please fuck me.”

Leon stops in his attempt at trying to capture your lips again and smirks, “I will, sweetheart, don’t worry.”

Suddenly your dress is over your head and being thrown into the back of the car. You shiver a little, at both the air on your skin and the feeling of being exposed, before you pull his vest off.

His hands glide along your thighs as he kisses your neck and collarbone, stopping at your ass and squeezing. You moan, unbuttoning his pants and untucking his dress shirt.

You feel his fingers lace in between the wide gaps in your tights, and you barely have a second to realize what he’s going to do before he pulls. A loud ripping sound fills the car as you feel Leon rip the crotch of your fishnets wide open.

“Been thinking about doing that all night.” Leon hums, pushing your panties to the side through the gap he made, exposing your dripping pussy.

You gasp, rolling your hips to push back against his hand and you feel him slip his middle finger inside of you, making you cry out, “Already so wet and I hadn’t even touched you yet.”

“Please Leon,” You beg, rocking back against the digit inside of you.

“Need to get out of these pants first.” Leon mumbles, bucking his hips up as if to remind you that his cock is still tucked inside his pants.

You nod, leaning your forehead against his as you look down and begin unbuttoning his slacks. His finger inside of you begins to thrust, curling up just right and rubbing against your G-spot. You let out a long moan, your fingers stuttering against his zipper, causing Leon to hiss and thrust up.

“Come on honey, pull me out so I can get inside this pussy.” Leon says, pushing another finger inside of you and making you see stars.

Quickly you pull Leon’s cock from his dress pants, him lifting his hips slightly so you can pull both the slacks and his underwear down his thighs a little. Once he was finally free from the restraints of his pants, you spit in your palm before wrapping it around his shaft and pumping.

Leon let out a surprised groan, his grip on your ass tightening and his fingers inside of you suddenly reaching deeper, “S-shit baby. Won’t last long if you keep doing that.”

“Then fucking fuck me,” You huff breathlessly, impatient and so turned on.

A loud smack sound rings out, followed by a burning pain on your right asscheek that makes you cry out in a mix of pain and pleasure.

Leon spanked you. Leon just fucking spanked you and you moaned.

Leon looks at you with amusement, “You’re the one who wrapped your hand around my dick instead of your cunt.”

“I can’t exactly get your dick inside me with your fingers in the way,” You glare at him, squeezing the base of his cock just to see his face pinch in pleasure.

“Fine,” Leon grits, removing his fingers from inside you and pulling your hips to align better with his. Your hand fell away from his cock and you quickly gripped the back of the seat as Leon pushed himself inside of you without warning.

Both of you cried out, you louder than him, as he bottomed out, seating himself fully inside of you. Neither of you moved, you trying to adjust to the size of him, and him trying not to cum instantly at the feeling of your warm, wet cunt wrapped so tightly around him.

“There, that better?” Leon asked after a moment of silence and all you could do was nod. You felt his hands on your thighs again, rubbing up and down, every once in a while pulling at the fishnets and letting them snap back against your skin, “Yeah? Then why don’t you try moving those hips for me like you did earlier.”

Slowly you begin to roll your hips around his cock buried inside of you. Leon’s hands instantly stop to rest on the juncture between your hips and thighs, fingers squeezing into the meat of your skin and encouraging your movements, “Fuck there you go, good girl.”

The stimulation and the praise make you moan and ride him faster, your hands move to grip his shoulders as you begin bouncing a little. Leon curses and thrusts up into you, somehow reaching deeper and pushing against your cervix.

“Holy shit,” You moan when Leon pushes a hand between you and begins rubbing your clit, his other hand cupping the back of your head as he presses kisses to your jaw, “Leon, I’m gonna- fuck I’m gonna cum!”

“Cum baby, cum on my cock. Show me how good I make you feel.” Leon groans against your skin, his fingers moving faster against your clit and his hips thrusting up harder.

With a shout of the agent's name, you came, hard, your body tightening up and shaking from the amount of pleasure you felt. Leon fucked you through it, trying not to cum until he could pull out, but the feeling of your walls clamping around him was too much and he was tipping over the edge right with you.

You felt Leon’s hot cum spill inside of you, filling you up and causing another wave of pleasure to shoot through your body. His arms tightened around you, pulling you closer and the two of you sat there together as you came down from your highs.

After a moment you pull away from the embrace and look at the man beneath you. Leon’s blue eyes were hazy as he stared at you and puckered his lips, asking for a kiss. You giggled and gave him one, hand sliding up his neck and cupping his cheeks.

“I have a hotel not too far from here if you want to get cleaned up,” Leon mumbled into the kiss.

You smirked, “You have an entire hotel? What exactly do they pay you?”

“I have a hotel room, smart ass.” Leon huffed, rolling his eyes and pulling away from you.

A chuckle escapes you, “Yeah I’ll go to your hotel room with you, on one condition.”

“Oh?” Leon raises an eyebrow, his hands resting on your thighs, “And what’s that?”

“We actually finish this game of tic-tac-toe.”

Taglist : @cassiecasluciluce @ymrai @admirxation @chessysourcandy @cinnamonminni @uriynne @rottenrosethorns

I did it guys I finally finished it!!! Hope it was worth the wait😭

[seriouslysnape]

Aftermath of a Full Moon

Remus Lupin x Sirius Black x James Potter x Fem! Reader Tags: Fluff. Remus recovering after a full moon. Word Count: 2.8k "You sure you feel alright?"

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✮⋆˙✮⋆˙✮⋆˙✮

Remus' head had been pounding all day.

The sting from the frozen ice pack over his eyes was nothing compared to relentless pounding inside of his skull. It had been going on for hours now, creeping its way in as a mild headache early that morning to escalating to a full blown migraine attack as the day went on.

Now it was an hour past dinnertime, and Remus wasn't any better. Remus hadn't eaten a single thing that day, but with how horribly sick to his stomach he felt, he wasn't sure he would've been able to hold anything down.

This wasn't the worst migraine he'd ever experienced, but it was bad enough to knock him out of commission for the day. He had skipped all of his classes today, too exhausted and too miserable to even attempt to attend.

Remus was nauseated beyond belief. His eyes felt like they were borderline burning they were so hot. He was achy in his neck and shoulders -- and not to mention, the throbbing pain in his head hadn't let up in the slightest.

The most recent full moon had been a hard one. Some months were simply better than others, and this hadn't been the best...nor the worst.

Remus hated how inconsistent he felt after each full moon.

Some months he would bounce back in a day or so. Other months, the recovery could last for weeks -- and by the time he felt better, it was time for the full moon again.

This one was rough on him, and he was definitely feeling it.

He had been in bed all day. He was still wearing what he slept in the night before, and he was lying in nearly the same position that he was in when Sirius and James left for the day.

Remus hadn't seen a stitch of daylight that day. Both because there were a series of thunderstorms rolling through for the next couple days and because he had drawn the curtains, leaving himself in the dark for the entirety of the day.

Any kind of light or noise agitated him, and at this point, Remus was willing to do anything to make it stop. Remus had done nothing but lie still and listen to the rain and thunder. He knew it would pass, but that wasn't any kind of consolation when he was going through at in that moment.

Remus didn't have any clue as to what time it was. It felt like it had been days, but he knew that once James and Sirius returned, that would mean it was the end of the day.

You, James, and Sirius left early that morning when they caught on that Remus wasn't feeling well, and they hadn't been back since to give him some quiet and space. You were worried about him because it always broke your heart to see any of them not at their best.

Remus hadn't given any of you much of a proper interaction that day, which all three of you understood given how bad he was feeling. Still, Remus felt a tinge of guilt for being so distant.

As if on cue, he identified two heavy pairs of footsteps outside the door, which he knew meant the arrival of his two best friends.

Remus was glad his eyes were covered when they opened the door because the light beaming in might've pushed him over the edge.

"Hey mate," James spoke as quietly as he entered, knowing that any kind noise just made it worse. "Any better?"

Remus could only shake his head, swallowing hard and continuing to focus on his breathing.

"If you're still feeling sick," Sirius reached into the pocket of his robes to retrieve a small vial of a medium orange colored potion. "I snagged you a dose of this stuff. I think it's a hard swallow but will settle the nausea."

Sirius left it on the top of Remus' trunk that was on the floor at the foot of his bed, and Remus croaked out a thank you.

"Thanks, Pads. I'll get to it in a minute," He shuddered. "I'm scared to move."

Remus had finally found a position to lie in that was semi-tolerable. He hadn't moved an inch in hours, and he was beginning to lose sensation in his limbs.

Sirius and James left the lights off, using their wands to navigate the room.

You were always a bit nervous whenever Remus was having a hard time after a full moon. He was so sensitive in every aspect after a moon, you always worried you'd make it worse.

That's why you were extra quiet when you moved around and didn't say much -- and when you did speak, you were very soft spoken.

Remus hadn't heard you walk in because of this, and he was feeling bad for not paying you any attention for the last couple days...particularly today when he really went down for the count.

"Where's baby girl?" Remus asked, and your head perked up. "She in her dorm tonight?"

"No, she's here." James flashed you his movie star smile.

"Hi, Rem." You said softly, sticking close to Sirius and lingering around him.

"Hey pretty girl," He responded genuinely, but not even a ghost of a smile appeared on his face. "I didn't hear you come in."

You didn't say anything else, only listening to Sirius and James talk to Remus.

"We brought your assignments," James said, referring to what he had missed in class that day. "It's not that much. You'll have the weekend to do it."

"Yeah. And [Y/N] brought you some leftovers in case you get hungry." Sirius said.

You indeed were holding a wrapped plate of food from dinner, which you had forgotten about until Sirius mentioned it. You left it next to the potion for Remus to get when he wanted it.

"Thanks, bun. You didn't have to do that for me," He said, pressing the ice pack further down onto his eyes. "I'll get to it when I feel more settled."

"Drink that potion, mate." Sirius said. "Promise it'll work wonders."

"Why don't you take it to him, baby?" James suggested, and you silently obliged.

Remus heard your feet creep to the side of his bed, glass vial in your hand and uncorked. Remus reached his hand out, taking it into his grip when you placed it in his palm.

Remus raised his head just enough to gulp down the bitter potion, setting his head back down as soon as it was in his system. He handed the now empty vial back to you, giving your wrist an appreciative squeeze.

He noticed that you scurried away as soon as he dropped your hand, which only made his guilt of neglecting you worse.

"You're staying the night, yeah?" James asked you, referring to how you still had your school bag and shoes on.

You only nodded, setting your bag down gently next to Sirius' bed and unlacing your shoes to go with it. Sirius and James shared a look, both of them picking up on how you were acting.

And maybe, just maybe, you had a bit of a soft spot for Remus that was different from Sirius and James. Seeing Remus like this was hard on you.

And Remus knew he wasn't the most pleasant to be around after a bad full moon. He was irritable, short-tempered, and just overall not feeling well. And there had been a time or two where Remus had snapped at you or said something that hurt your feelings.

Remus always came around and had a conversation with you, apologizing and explaining that it wasn't your fault.

But all it took was one time for you to be pretty shut down when Remus was coming off a full moon.

They knew you were pretty reserved when Remus was like this, so they didn't think too much of it.

It was going to be a quiet night for everybody, since Remus was going to need the quiet and darkness to keep his head from exploding off of his shoulders.

The next hour or so went by, and the three of you were silent as you traversed through the room, choosing tasks that didn't require any noise or high energy.

James was stationed at his desk, using nothing more than his desk lamp to do his homework and work on some Quidditch things. Sirius was sitting on his bed with a deck of cards, working on some new trick he had learned from somewhere. You were laying on your stomach, flipping through a new Muggle novel that you had picked up from a friend.

Remus hadn't said a word, still lying flat with his eyes covered and head pounding. As the minutes passed, you couldn't stand to see him like this.

Most of the time, the best thing to do was to leave Remus alone and let it pass -- but it pained you to see him so pitiful. You closed your book, shifting to go to get off the bed. Sirius caught your gaze on Remus and knew what you were headed to do.

"Hey, pup." Sirius whispered, grabbing your ankle that was next to him to stop you from approaching him. "Moony's not feeling so good. Let's give him some more time, yeah?"

Remus heard Sirius, of course -- it was so quiet there was no way he couldn't. Remus couldn't deny you like that, not after he'd been so far the last couple of days.

"No, s'alright," Remus sat up very slowly, tossing the useless ice pack that was beginning to turn room temperature at the foot of his bed. "C'mere, bunny."

Your eyes looked to James, who only gave you a nod of approval. Still, you didn't move.

"I don't want to make it worse." You fiddled with your fingers, bending them nervously and hearing them pop.

"Not gonna make it worse, my love." He shifted to make room on his mattress, groaning at the aching in his muscles. "Come sit."

Sirius gave your backside a light tap, pushing you into motion. Your feet shuffled to Remus' bed, your body slowly crawling onto his mattress and snuggling next to him. He wrapped an arm around your waist, his hand resting on the outside of your thigh.

"You could never make it worse," He pressed a kiss to your temple, sighing as he held you close. "It was just a rough moon this time."

"Do you feel any better?" You asked.

Truthfully, he didn't. The potion had settled his nausea, but for the most part he still felt like he had all day. But he could tell you were worried, and he didn't see any sense in worrying you further.

"A little bit," He said. "I think I'll drink a dose of Sleeping Draught tonight and be good as new tomorrow."

Sirius was still shuffling his deck of cards, giving you a reassuring smile.

"He's gonna be just fine," He said. "Promise."

Remus nodded in agreement, chuckling when you snuggled closer to him. In a way, he felt better having you close to him. He always loved having you around, and knowing that you weren't sore with him made him feel better.

"I'm sorry I haven't seen you much this week," He apologized, kissing the crown of your head when you rested your head on his shoulder. "I owe you one, hm?"

"No, it's okay. I knew you weren't feeling well." You said.

"You're so patient," Remus laughed. "I don't know how you put up with us sometimes."

Sirius and James both laughed at that because they agreed...and found it ironic considering Remus was the least difficult of the three.

"Can I sleep with Rem tonight?" You asked James, since it was technically his turn to have you tonight.

Remus' heart did a joyful leap, but he looked at James for a response. It wasn't often that there was a change in the rotation, but there were special occasions where you wanted to switch it up -- and most of the time, it wasn't an issue.

"Up to you, mate. I don't mind." He grinned.

Remus looked at you, smiling at your eyes that were all lit up at getting to spend time with him.

"Sure, doll. How about you get one of your blankets from your dorm so you don't get cold tonight?"

The suggestion hung in the air for only a moment, a gentle reminder of the care that was woven into the fabric of your relationship. You were up on your feet in seconds, giddy with excitement as you rushed out of the room to make the journey to your dorm to return with what you would need for the night.

The three of them laughed at your eagerness, taking that as a sign to start winding down for an early night in.

Remus knew he needed to eat something before bed, since he would feel sluggish in the morning if he didn't. Remus reached over the end of his bed, taking his plate of leftovers into his lap.

"You sure you feel alright?" Sirius asked, reaching into his trunk to toss Remus a plastic utensil.

Remus caught it, and started taking small bites and chewing slowly.

"As good as I'm gonna feel tonight," He sighed. "A night of sleep should set me straight."

Remus hadn't realized how hungry he was, which wasn't surprising considering he hadn't eaten all day and had been preoccupied trying to get some relief.

"Do you need anything else?" James asked.

"Nah. I'm alright," Remus replied. "Just don't tell her I'm still feeling bad."

They understood what he meant. Remus never wanted to cause any trouble, and he definitely didn't want anyone making a fuss over him. If he needed help, he would ask.

Remus did his best on eating, clearing about half of what you had brought him from The Great Hall. It wasn't much, but it was enough to provide him some fuel.

Remus showered too, which was the most he had done all day. He stood under the stream of hot water, hoping it would melt away some of the tension and pounding in his head. It didn't do much other than refresh him a bit, but even that was a nice feeling to have.

Remus re-entered the dorm with a fresh T-shirt and sweats, laughing when he saw you were already snuggled and settled in his bed, curled up with your book to get a few more pages in before it was time to go to bed. Sirius and James were also in their beds, finishing up their tasks for the night.

"You always know how to make yourself at home, huh?" He teased.

You looked up from your book, a small smile on your face.

"I guess it's a habit now." You closed the cover and set it aside.

He moved towards his trunk, opening it and retrieving a vial of Sleeping Draught. He swallowed the dark blue potion with ease, hoping it would kick in quickly.

He moved towards the bed, the exhaustion from the day still evident in his movements. But there was a spark in his eyes now, a spark that hadn't been there before. He climbed into the bed next to you, his body sinking into the familiar comfort of his mattress.

His hair was still damp from the shower, the droplets of water catching the faint light in the room. He looked at you, his eyes reflecting a quiet kind of happiness.

He kissed your cheek when he pulled you close, whispering in your ear as you got settled.

"Did you tell Siri and James goodnight?" He asked, and you nodded.

"She did. With plenty of sympathy kisses for little Jamesie." Sirius laughed, and James launched a pillow at his face.

Sirius shrieked and continued to cackle and poke fun at James who really wasn't hurt in the slightest.

"You're fine, baby. Enjoy being with Moony tonight," James smiled genuinely. "I'll have you tomorrow."

You weren't listening much to their conversation. You were more focused on Remus, watching his eyelashes flutter as he kept his eyes closed to keep his head from pounding worse. He could feel himself growing sleepy, and he hoped that sleep would surely take him.

"Are you sure you're okay?" You asked, eyes wide and full of concern.

Remus had been asked that question for what felt like a million times that day -- but he appreciated the care.

"Yeah, my love." He kissed your forehead. "I am."

And Remus would be okay with a little more time. He would wake up the next morning with a clear and pain-free head, with nothing more than some mild fatigue and a desperation to see something other than the walls of the dormitory.

And over the next few days, he would spend his time making it up to you -- spending every spare moment he had with you and giving you as much affection as he could spare.

Remus would be alright. With you, he always would be.

[writtenbymoonflower]

Shaken Soda

You have therapy and Remus is too kind. Remus Lupin x fem!reader. mondern!au

cw: mentions of therapy/mental health issues. Slight mention of unintentional self injury.

780 words

“Thank you, see you next week.” You muttered politely, exiting the small visiting room. 

“See you then.” Your therapist smiled warmly at you. You appreciated the gesture, but wrapped your arms around your middle protectively anyway.

"Bye." The word was just barely a whisper as you turned to walk down the hall, but you were interrupted.

“Oh by the way, we covered a lot today. I’m proud of you, Y/N. Just, make sure to look after yourself extra.” They gave another polite nod and skirted back into their office. You gave a tight-lipped smile at the now closed door before walking down the hall to the waiting area, dreading the walk home in the pouring rain and shivering cold. You pulled the hood of your coat over your head before checking your phone, stalling. 

Hey, dovey. It’s pretty nasty out so I’m going to come pick you up. Be there when you get out. x

You were equal parts grateful and distressed. Happy you wouldn’t be soaked down to your bones, but worried about your boyfriend seeing you in such a raw state. You checked the mirror by the entryway, wiping away mascara residue and pressing your cold hands to your cheeks in a desperate attempt to reduce the redness splotching over your eyes and nose. 

Though Remus would likely see through any attempts at sweeping your struggles under the rug, he was far more perceptive than anyone gave him credit for. 

You listened to the ding of the bell as you swung the door open, walking under the awning to where Remus’ black car was parked. You opened the door, being hit with a wave of toasty AC. 

“Hi lovely.” His amber eyes greeted you with their usual warmth. (Warmth that was pretty much reserved for you).

“Hey Remmy.” You said, much to quiet and reserved for his liking, leaning over the center console to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Thanks for the spin. You didn’t have to drive in the rain.” Your comment earned an eye roll from Remus, though he was still smiling as he pulled out onto the road.

“Don’t. I get to spend extra time with you, and I’ll never complain about that.” He placed a large hand on your thigh, gently kneading the flesh there. “Almost forgot,” He reached into the cupholder. “Got this for you.” You were handed a to-go cup full of coffee. Your favorite. You swore you could sob all over again. 

“Rem… You didn’t have to.” 

“I wanted to. Anyway it wasn’t completely selfless, I was craving a fog.” You still looked at him all glossy and doe eyed. 

“Thank you.” Your voice was so small. It was only when he looked over at you that he noticed your swollen features and red-rimmed eyes. He could swear there were burns on your cheeks from the scratchy material of your sleeves after being rubbed and wiped raw and cruelly. 

“You doin’ okay, sweet girl?” He tried hard to keep his eyes on the road and stop a notch of concern from appearing between his dark eyebrows, knowing it would only push you more into your shell. 

“Yeah, ‘m okay.” You picked at your nails. Remus took a deep breath. 

“I’m not gonna make you talk about it,” He started and you tried to keep from wincing. It wasn’t that you didn’t trust him or didn’t want to tell him what you had discussed, the emotions it brought up, but you knew that when you cracked the lid on your frayed feelings, everything would come out all at once. Tears, murmured fears and all. You were like a pop bottle that had been violently shaken, one wrong move and a mess would be everywhere. “But I want you to know I’m proud of you.” He checked the road around him before making brief eye contact with you. “Really, really proud. I know it can be scary. But also, please know, I’m here if you every need to talk about anythin’. I’ve got you, sweet girl.” 

You nodded as he turned onto your street. You were still feeling raw, but you could feel it subsiding, just by being in his presence. “I know you do.” You looked over at him as he pulled up to your place and put the car in park. It didn’t take many long for you to unclick your seatbelt, leaning over your drinks and wrapping your arms around his shoulders tightly. Remus stiffened in surprise, but then hugged you back, smoothing his hands up and down your thick coat. “Thank you.” You whispered into his neck. 

“It’s what I’m here for, lovely. I’m always gonna be here.” 

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Jan behind the cut; "YJ packs up and gets pupped". (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Kon feels like an idiot, but he’s fucking embarrassed. He’s going into heat and–and–Superman knew he was presenting, yeah, but it wasn’t, like–it wasn’t this far along, and he doesn’t know if Superman knew what he was presenting as, because– 

But he definitely, definitely smells like an omega now. And he doesn’t even know if the Super-Cycle can tell about that kind of thing or even has a way to register anyone’s scent or pheromones at all, but . . . but it’s still embarrassing, being around somebody else when he’s–when he’s like that for the first time. Being . . . being an omega around somebody else for the first time. Even if the Super-Cycle can’t tell or can’t talk about it or . . . 

“Uh,” Kon tries, and swallows roughly, feeling his face burn as he tries to hide his weird scavenged mishmash of nesting stuff behind his back, suddenly embarrassed by it too. The Super-Cycle beeps at him, wriggling its back again. It’s–excited, he thinks, so maybe it thinks there’s an adventure or a mission to go on or maybe it’s just happy to see one of them when it wasn’t expecting to, maybe, but–but he doesn’t– 

It’s just–embarrassing. 

“Uh,” he tries again, digging his fingers into his nesting stuff where it’s all bunched-up behind his back. “Hey, man, do you . . . do you know if . . .” 

He swallows, and the Super-Cycle tilts to one side with a maybe-questioning little trill of its horn. 

“IneedsomeofRob’sblockers,” Kon blurts, and his face burns. “I–I–do you know if he–if he left any in–in any–” 

It’s not gonna answer him. It doesn’t even understand the stupid question, probably. It’s just gonna realize he’s not here to take it on a joyride and get bored and–and leave, and–and– 

Kon grits his teeth and doesn’t cry about the idea of the damn bike ditching him. He’s not–he’s not that pathetic. He’s just–not. 

He definitely is. 

“Sorry,” he manages. “Sorry, I–I just–didn’t mean to, like–” 

The Super-Cycle trills again, its headlights flashing a few times, and then rolls up to him and makes–a weird noise, suddenly. Kind of a . . . pop, almost, coming from the console and . . . 

Oh, Kon realizes, and feels his eyes dilate. 

He bolts into the driver’s seat and leans down over the console, and there’s a sort of–like, a hidden little . . . glove compartment kind of thing, almost, and it’s popped open. Inside it there’s a neat, careful little row of stuff that’s either recognizably Robin’s or generic to a fault, and tucked in at the very end of the neat little row of stuff, there’s four flat packs of scent blockers all sealed up in matte black foil wrappers. 

Kon snatches up all four of them and tears one of them open in his teeth so he doesn’t have to put down any of his nesting stuff, and gets an immediate noseful of the same neutral, barely-there blocker scent that means Robin in his head. And then, like–and then he does cry again, kind of, but it’s relief again, because–because that means– 

That’s all of them, he thinks, crumpling up the unwrapped blocker in his fist so the scent spreads out a little more, and feels so much better. And Robin’s blockers last for, like, for-fucking-ever, so . . . 

Kon sniffles a few more times, and then curls up around his collected little pile of stuff–Cassie’s shirt and Cissie’s towel and Suzie’s blanket and Bart’s weird cowboy outfit and Robin’s blockers–and sort of . . . shudders, kinda, feeling all shaky and overwhelmed and relieved. 

“Thanks,” he manages to choke out, and then cries some more. The Super-Cycle trills in concern, and he feels the driver’s seat adjust a little bit under and around him, like it’s trying to–like it’s trying to fit him better, maybe. 

Almost like the Super-Cycle’s trying to figure out how to hug him, kind of, though Kon doesn’t know if that’s actually what it’s thinking. 

He squeezes himself tight with his TTK, because that–that helps a little, still, and makes him feel like . . . makes him feel a little more . . . 

The Super-Cycle doesn’t usually get scent-scrubbed, so it smells a bit like everybody too. Not as much as his nesting stuff does, but–definitely it still smells like them. 

That’s–it helps, kinda. The base doesn’t smell like anybody at all, just all–empty and neutral and . . . like, it smells like him a little now, probably, but . . . but that just makes him feel even more stray than he already knows he is, and the Super-Cycle smelling like everyone else is–is really–

[macfrog]

moneyball cowboy like me chapter four

part iv of dbf!joel is yours!!! check out my masterlist to find the first three chapters for all your dbf needs. as always, thank you all so much for all the love n support. you guys make writing this series so much fun!! 🤍 i lowkey don't know whether or not i hate this chapter but i had to write it once the idea was in my head 🤷‍♀️ enJOY

pairing: dbf!joel x fem!reader

summary: when joel double-books you and your dad, you decide to teach him a lesson

warnings: 18+ minors dni!!! oral (f receiving), praise kink, lotsa teasing, lil bit of bratty reader, lil bit of dom!joel, age gap (reader is 23, joel is 48), consumption of alcohol, cursing

word count: 4.2k

series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist

You raise your eyebrows at Joel innocently as you push the popsicle deep into your mouth, sucking as far as the back of your throat will allow, before dragging it back out with a pop. A thread of sweet, fruit-flavored saliva strings between the tip of the popsicle and your bottom lip as you pull it away. You run your tongue slowly over your lips and smile at him. He looks pissed. He can’t take his eyes off of you, or your swollen lips, but he looks ready to snap. “I found snacks, by the way,” you lull.

How slutty is too slutty? When you’re going over to your dad’s best friend’s to…Well, you’re not quite sure what yet. You’ve picked out a short blue summer dress, strappy back, with black lace panties underneath. If you’re looking, and the light is right, you can see them through the blue fabric.

Joel would, you know that much. That’s all you really care about.

You’re putting earrings on in the mirror when your dad knocks and edges into your room.

“Where you headed, kiddo?”

“Just out for a drink with Sam. Said we’d have a catch-up at the barbecue, so.”

He narrows his eyes.

“It’s not a date.”

“Hey,” he lifts his hands, “I didn’t say anything. When will you be home?”

“Dunno. Why?”

“I’ll be at Joel’s, so remember your key. Just in case.”

Excuse me? Did he just say –

“Joel’s?”

He nods, sitting down on your bed behind you. You stare at him in the mirror.

“What’s happening at Joel’s?”

“Rangers game. He’s having Bill and Hank and me.”

Just then, your phone buzzes. You subtly lean over and catch a glimpse of the screen before it fades to black again.

Joel: Call me when you’re alone. ASAP

You roll your eyes and let out a low sigh.

“Can you give me a sec, Dad? I think I wanna change my outfit.”

“Sure. I’ll give you a holler when I’m leavin’.”

He shuts your door behind him and you wait until you hear his footsteps recede to call Joel.

“Hey, baby, listen, I’m gonna have to raincheck.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Something’s come up.”

“Right.” Your tone is muted and flat. On purpose. Joel notices.

“So…we’ll figure somethin’ out, right? You workin’ much this week?”

You scoff. “I dunno, depends on when the next Rangers game is, doesn’t it?”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath. “Kid, I’m so sorry–”

“Here I am,” you throw your arms up and march around your room, though you know he can’t see you, “getting ready, putting together the sluttiest-within-reason outfit I own, and all the while you’re gearing up to host my dad and your buddies.”

“…You’re wearing somethin’ slutty?”

“Not anymore,” you huff as you pull the dress off. “I’m changin’ into sweatpants.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’d still be into you in the sweatpants.”

“Shut up.”

He laughs. “I will have them out and gone as soon as the game’s done, and then you can come over, okay? Sound good?”

“And you’ll make it up to me?”

“I intend to.”

“’kay. Just know you’re gonna pay for this.”

He says through a chuckle, “See you later, baby.”

You hang up.

You rake through your drawers for something a little more comfortable to wear, settling for a floral skirt and off-shoulder top. Equal parts casual and suggestive. Perfect for payback.

Joel knows he’s gonna pay. He just doesn’t know when.

“Hey, hon, that’s me headin!” your dad calls up the stairs.

“Wait up!” you reply, grabbing your shoes and hopping out of your room. “I’m comin’.”

“You want a ride to Frank’s?”

“No, I’m coming to Joel’s.”

He watches you struggle down the stairs with one shoe on, brows furrowed. “You wanna…come watch the game? What about Sam?”

“He just cancelled.”

Your dad looks tickled. “Cheatin’ on ya, is he?”

You stand straight, finally having pulled your shoe on, and punch his arm. “I’ll be in the car.”

“Alright…” he mumbles, following you out.

----------

Joel’s face when he opens the door is a picture you never want to forget.

“Hey– I – did not know you were comin’.” He ushers you both in.

“Neither did I,” your dad replies, “she decided last minute. Blew off some date with that boy from Frank’s for this.”

“It was not a…” Your sentence ends with a sigh as you follow him inside, looking up at Joel as you pass. He knows damn well you didn’t even have plans with Sam, never mind a date.

“Big Rangers fan?” Joel calls from behind as the three of you head for the living room.

“Yes,” you reply, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible.

“Big enough to schedule a date during the game?”

“I’m sure I’m not the first to do that,” you hiss through your teeth, and he gives you an amused grin.

Bill and Hank haven’t arrived yet. Your dad sits in his usual recliner seat and sighs. You and Joel share the couch, where he turns on you to interrogate you more.

“So, what’s with the change of heart?”

“I, uh…I didn’t know it was this game.”

“And what game’s that?”

“The…Uh…You know. Rangers.” You shrug.

“Name three players.”

“That’s sexist,” you reply, pointing a finger at him.

Your dad cackles, rocking back and forth in the chair. “Beers, Joel?”

“In the fridge,” Joel answers, eyes still on you.

Your dad, who’d be oblivious to a hurricane outside if it weren’t for the warnings on the news, waltzes past the pair of you, locked in a death stare.

“You’re here to cause tr–”

“Trouble, yeah.” You flash him an innocent smile. “You caused it first.”

The doorbell rings and Joel doesn’t move, eyes still dancing all over your body; your shoulders, your hips, your thighs peeking through the slit in your skirt.

Your dad calls through from the kitchen, offering to get it, and you hear the rumble of Hank and Bill’s voices.

When Joel’s eyes meander back up to meet yours, a dangerous look in them, he leans in close. You tilt your jaw to allow him access, but his lips never touch you.

Breath hot on your skin, his Southern drawl whispers, “I started it, and I know how to finish it, pretty girl.”

Then he stands and heads to the hallway to meet his guests. You clamp your legs together.

Bill roars your name when he sees you. “I didn’t fuckin’ know you liked the Rangers!”

You stand and nervously accept his arms over your shoulders, squeezing you so tight it takes your breath away. Joel stifles a laugh in the doorway.

“I just wanted to be around for all the fun,” you almost gasp when he releases you.

Hank is older and smaller in frame, and he gives your hand a little squeeze as he passes by to the couch. “We’re up for it tonight, kiddo,” he smiles sweetly, “it’ll be a good’un.”

“Bill, beer? Hank?”

“Bourbon for me, Joel. Brought my own bottle.” He hands it over.

As your dad squeezes past to join his friends, Joel clicks his fingers at you and jerks his head toward the kitchen. Your jaw falls open with mock offense.

“Dick,” you whisper as you pass.

“Needed help from my waitress with the drinks,” Joel murmurs with a smirk, the two of you heading through.

He opens the fridge and reaches up to grab three beers – Buds, you notice – from the top shelf. His shirt lifts a sliver from the waistband of his jeans, exposing the tan skin beneath.

Your head cocks as you stare at him, gripping onto the worktop, probably more to stop yourself from approaching him than to look casual. But when Joel turns back around, he reads you like an open book.

“Quit starin’,” he mutters, nudging you to shift out of his way.

You don’t budge, so Joel shifts further up the counter. When you slide up to follow him, pinning yourself between him and the marble surface, he scoffs.

“Stop that,” he whispers.

“Stop what? Thought you knew how to finish this?”

“Alright,” he hums, arms reaching around yours to crack the beers open in front of you. Your back is flush against his chest.

“Then,” he mumbles, chin hooked over your shoulder, “we take this,” he reaches for a whiskey glass and Hank’s bottle of Yellow Rose, sliding them over in front of you with one hand. He takes your hands in his, using you like a puppet to pour Hank’s drink.

You can’t help but giggle as his stubble grazes your cheek.

When you turn your head to look at him over your shoulder, you feel an unmistakable swell behind your ass. Joel’s breath falters for a brief second.

You want more. To be frank, you’d take him here and now if it weren’t for his buddies in the next room. But this isn’t about what you want right now. Not yet.

You push off the counter gently, your ass touching Joel’s crotch, grinding into him. His jaw tightens, teeth lock together, and he emits a low growl. He doesn’t move; just stands with his arms around you, hands gripping the worktop, holding you in place as your hips rut on his hardening bulge.

The TV is switched on and you hear a familiar commentator’s voice.

“Joel!” your dad yells from the living room.

“Had your fun?” he grumbles in your ear.

You shake your head. “Not yet.”

He moves his arms then, letting you go, taking his and Bill’s beers and Hank’s bourbon, and backs away. His eyebrows are cocked, and you can’t help the grin that spreads across your face.

You watch him until he disappears into the living room, and snap out of your daze. I’m not here to be wooed by him.

I’m here to make him finish what he started.

When you enter the living room, beer in hand, all four men are literally on the edge of their seats, as far forward as they can get without actually sliding off of Joel’s couch.

You notice a space between Joel and Hank, and slip between the coffee table and Hank’s legs. He moves back to allow you the space to squeeze by and slot in on Joel’s left.

As you fall down into your seat, all eyes glued on the TV screen, your right hand comes up to balance yourself – Who are you kidding? – on Joel’s thigh. The inside of Joel’s thigh.

His head jerks down to stare at your fingers, locked around his leg. Checking nobody’s looking, you move it slightly upward. Closer to his –

“What are you doin’?” he whispers through gritted teeth, low enough that the other men don’t hear.

“Watchin’ the game,” you reply, innocent and sweeter than sugar.

His free hand takes hold of yours and slides it off of his thigh without looking, eyes always on the room around him.

You breathe a laugh as he readjusts in his seat, sitting up awkwardly straight and keeping his legs a safe distance away, parallel to yours.

You’re just getting started.

----------

Let’s be frank about it: baseball is fucking boring.

Well, let’s rephrase. It’s not that you don’t like watching it; you’re sure that, in more appropriate circumstances – relaxing on a lazy Sunday, or at an actual game, where the atmosphere buzzes with excitement – you could enjoy it.

But right now, you’re sat with your dad’s buddies, an ache between your legs that you can’t fix, and the only person who can fix it, is refusing to even look at you.

Given the situation at hand, you can’t really fault him for that. But you’re still a little mad.

When they roar at the screen for what feels like the thousandth time, you decide to take yourself for a quiet jaunt to the kitchen.

“You got snacks?” you ask Joel.

“Cupboard above the microwave,” he replies, gaze locked on the game.

You saunter out of the living room, finishing the dregs of your beer, and place the bottle in Joel’s sink.

Reaching up to search his cupboards, you find one bag of Cheetos and another bag of pretzels. You toss them both on the counter, and they land a little bit away from Hank’s bottle of bourbon.

You pick it up, reading the label. You’ve never really been much of a whiskey drinker, but you’re bored, and it’s here, so you may as well.

You pour a little into the bottom of a glass and lift it to your lips, giving it a good sniff before you take a sip. Your face screws up immediately, swallowing just to get the liquid off of your tongue, feeling it burn its way down your throat.

“You okay in there, kiddo?” your dad calls, hearing your coughing, and you splutter a “Yep!” in response.

Would it taste better with ice, you think? Maybe if you could get used to it, it wouldn’t be that bad. You amble over to Joel’s refrigerator and haul the freezer door open, in search of ice cubes, but finding something even better.

You lift the box, sliding one of them out and unwrapping it. When you knock the freezer door closed with your hip, you strut through to the living room and stand behind the couch in the doorway.

No one notices you sneak in; they’re all waving their fists and yelling curses at the TV.

“What’s goin’ on?”

Four heads turn to give you an update on the game, and three hastily turn back when the crowd suddenly begins cheering.

One head, though, whips straight back to you. Stood in his living room doorway. Sucking on a popsicle.

You raise your eyebrows at Joel innocently as you push the popsicle deep into your mouth, sucking as far as the back of your throat will allow, before dragging it back out with a pop. A thread of sweet, fruit-flavored saliva strings between the tip of the popsicle and your bottom lip as you pull it away. You run your tongue slowly over your lips and smile at him.

He looks pissed. He can’t take his eyes off of you, or your swollen lips, but he looks ready to snap.

“I found snacks, by the way,” you lull.

“Yeah? Good.” He twists back around to face the television, a hand running across his jaw. He shuffles in his seat again, just as awkward as he is uncomfortable.

You let out a quiet giggle and meander gleefully back through to the kitchen.

Not long after, you’re at Joel’s counter eating some of his pretzels when he and your dad stalk through, followed by Bill and Hank.

“Game over?”

“No, kid,” Bill chuckles, “seventh-inning stretch.” He yanks open Joel’s refrigerator and takes three more beers, passing them around.

He perches on a bar stool next to you, bringing a hand down on your back – loving, of course, but in typical Bill nature, kinda painful.

“We ain’t doin’ too bad,” Hank muses as he pours another whiskey, and your dad nods silently.

Your eyes flit between the men, now deep in conversation about the game, then land on Joel, leaning against the doorframe sipping on a beer, his eyes on you.

You lean over the counter, popping your ass out, and make him watch as you open your mouth, extend your tongue, and place a salty pretzel on it, closing your lips around your finger and licking it clean.

His expression never changes. Just watches like you want him to, beer bottle clutched in his fist.

“I’ll take these.” Bill’s hand swings across and scoops up the Cheetos, and before you know it, they’re making their way back out of the kitchen.

Joel’s eyes bore into yours as your dad, Bill, and Hank filter out past him. He’s mad, you can tell that much. He paces over to you.

“Knock. It. Off.” His voice is a low growl.

You shake your head. “No can do.”

He sighs, gripping your wrist. Before you can take a breath, he’s dragging you out of the kitchen and upstairs, where he makes a right and almost shoves you down the dim hallway.

“The hell is your game?” he hisses when you’re out of earshot of the others.

“Having fun, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to keep everybody from seeing the fun you’re having. Touchin’ and rubbin’, lookin’ at me like that in front of everyone. The damn popsicle.”

“You liked that, huh?”

“You gettin’ off on this?”

“Mhm.” You nod a little too desperately.

“Well, quit it. When we’re alone, fine, do whatever you want. Not when your dad’s watchin’.”

“My dad ain’t seeing none of it and you know it.”

He runs a hand through his hair and brings it down over his eyes. Seeing him this stressed and undone over you, over what you’re doing to him, sends pulses of electricity through your body.

“What the hell am I gonna do with you, girl?”

You shrug. “Maybe you should punish me.”

“Maybe I fuckin’ should,” he spits, turning away from you.

As if just hearing what you said, he turns on his heel, staring you down with an expression you read to mean one thing: he’s fucking considering it.

“Maybe I fuckin’ should…” he whispers again.

You try to keep your cool façade up, but the way he’s looking at you, eyes dark, jaw clenched, towering over you and cornering you against the wall, has you so wet and needy that you can’t pretend anymore.

“Joel…”

Whatever you were about to say is cut short by the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Joel reacts before you do, reaching behind you to pull a door open and backing you into his linen closet, quietly following you in and closing the door again.

There are just inches between you both, pressed chest to chest in the tiny confines of the closet. Joel’s head tilts and listens for Hank’s figure, stumbling back and forth across the landing in pursuit of the bathroom.

“Where’d you say it was, Bill?” he calls downstairs.

“First door on the right, dumbass!” Bill’s voice shouts back up.

Joel’s fist suddenly wraps around the handle, his eyes glued to the wall above your head, listening intently. He’s making sure Hank doesn’t try the wrong door.

Which, of course, he inevitably does.

It rattles some, but Joel’s grip stops the handle from turning. He glares up, shaking his head, mouthing profanities. First door, you fuckin’ moron. You stifle a laugh behind both hands.

“Hank!” your dad’s voice shouts from downstairs. “Not that one, idiot, the one next to it!”

Finally, the door stops trembling.

“I see it now, sure enough,” Hank mumbles, and you both listen to him spill into the bathroom next door.

You let out the breath you’ve been holding in your chest. Joel lifts his hand off of the door handle and places it around your jaw.

“You’re gonna be real quiet, alright?”

He’s speaking so low and so quiet that your eyes track his lips to read the words he’s saying.

“Gonna do what I say and keep that pretty little mouth shut.”

You squirm under his touch, hands gripping his shoulders, desperate for him to kiss you.

Instead, he holds your jaw tight and forces you to look at him.

“Say it.”

“I’ll be quiet,” you breathe, “I’ll be good. Just fucking touch me.”

He runs his tongue along your bottom lip then, asking it to part, and when it does, pulls you roughly against him, free hand dropping to your ass. His tongue battles strong against yours, bittersweet with the taste of beer.

You feel yourself intoxicated with the taste of him, the smell of him, the feeling as his hips purposefully rut into yours. You want him to mark you again, give you something to hide, something to make half-assed excuses over when people spot it. You want him to make you his.

You moan into his mouth, hands finding his hair, and he grips you tighter.

“Shut – the fuck – up,” he snaps between kisses.

He pauses only to listen to Hank tumble out of the bathroom and back downstairs, then gives you a peck on the lips with a cocky smile.

Suddenly he’s at your neck, lips kissing, tongue licking, teeth grazing, and then he’s making his way down, over your breasts, breath hot and unsteady on your heaving chest.

You can hear the booming laughter of the men downstairs. Their shouts and calls at the television. It all echoes up the stairs, floating in under the slit of light from the hallway outside.

Joel’s on his knees now, placing delicate kisses up your thighs. His hands pull your weight onto his shoulders, fingers taking hold of the hem of your skirt and hiking it up. When he reaches your underwear, he looks up, a dark look in his eyes. A question.

“Quiet,” you mutter, nodding, and buck your hips toward him in attempt to hurry him the fuck up.

He smirks at your neediness and kisses you over the lacey fabric of your panties. You bite your lip to keep a moan from escaping your lips. Joel’s eyebrows raise, waiting for you to make a sound. When you don’t, he pulls the fabric back.

He positions himself perfectly at your sex, pulling your thighs a little wider apart over his shoulders. Your head falls against the wall behind you, but your eyes stay locked on him, watching every little move he makes.

He starts by placing his lips against your clit gently, and your eyes roll to the back of your head. He’s soft, warm, but with a hunger for more.

He sucks there for a minute, your hips rolling against his mouth, vision becoming clouded with stars in the darkness of the closet. Your hands tease his hair, gripping and pulling harder the more pressure he applies to your core, the closer he drags you to your high.

When he pulls away, a tiny gasp passes your lips. You expect him to get mad, punish you for making noise, but he just grins to himself and dives back in.

His tongue licks along your folds and you have to bite down on your sleeve this time. It’s no use, your moan breaks free and fills the tiny space, but Joel’s groaning too as he tastes you for the second time in three days.

“So – fucking – good for me, darlin’,” he whispers when he comes up for air, then gets right back to it.

His fingers grip your thighs so tight it almost hurts, keeping you steady. His head drops a little lower, and you feel his breath across your lips.

“Joel,” you moan, and he looks up. “Need your tongue.”

When he drags it between your folds and dips ever so slightly inside you, your back arches, shoulders digging into the wall. You’re doing everything not to scream, his tongue lapping you up, nose rubbing against your clit, but you’re nearing closer and closer to your orgasm.

“Keep – going – fuck, Joel,” you breathe, eyes screwed shut, hands tangling in his hair, pulling his head closer against you.

“Shh,” he’s cooing now against your cunt, pulling a hand under your thigh to insert two fingers as his tongue massages your clit. “I know, I know,” he says, lifting his chin. “Poor baby just wanted some attention, huh?”

You smile, eyes closing in bliss as his tongue reattaches to your core. You whimper his name as your walls start to close around him.

Just then, a roar lets out from the living room, and the coil snaps. You cry out, moaning Joel’s name as you cum on his tongue, your sweet noises drowned out by the thunderous cheers from downstairs.

You swear you feel Joel smirk against your wetness as you unravel for him.

You’re panting, hands still clinging onto his hair for stability, as he pulls away from your cunt and leans back. He gently rolls your thighs off of his shoulders and helps you to stand, before his tall figure straightens up in front of you.

You instinctively grab his shirt and pull his lips against yours, wanting to taste yourself on his tongue. Joel’s breath hitches when your teeth graze his bottom lip and you pull away, releasing it.

“I fucking love this,” you mutter, and he laughs.

“Yeah? I just missed a whole inning ‘cause of you.”

“Worth it.” You smile as he opens the door, checking the coast is clear before letting you out first.

“Where the hell you two been?” your dad asks as you both rejoin the group.

“Missed one hell of a play, you pair.” Hank raises his glass toward the television.

You sit a little distance from each other on the couch, your needs fully satisfied, and Joel clears his throat.

“Was showin’ her my new six-string.”

You notice him out of the corner of your eye licking his lips. Fucker.

Your dad shakes his head with a laugh, spinning the recliner back to face the screen. “First baseball, now guitars. What has gotten into you, lately, hon?”

“Hey, Joel?” Bill sits forward, leaning over the coffee table to Joel, who lifts his head in reply. “You mind showin’ me that six-string after the game?”

You choke on your beer and Hank’s hand comes up to clap you on the back. “You alright, girl?”

“Maybe, maybe,” Joel replies, trying to ignore you, coughing and spluttering at his side.

With a few more good whacks from Hank and a clean sip of your drink, you recover just enough to join the conversation.

“It’s a really neat guitar, Bill.”

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