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gayandfairycore · 7 months ago

Text

But it’s better if you do

Summary: Being Jennifer checks human girl friend and being best friends with needy, instead of Jennifer finding needy when she freshly turns she finds you. You struggle to find the right time to confess your love for the demon girl, when People of devils kettle go missing you can’t bring yourself to care when the succubus’s lips are on yours.

Warnings: reader doesn’t really care about anyone but Jennifer, homoerotic gay friendships are my fav, Jennifer killing and eating boys normal succubus things, arson, a complicated relationship with Jennifer where she kisses reader w/o consent, stalking, breaking and entering, probably more but I’m not sure!

A/n: I love Jennifer check so much I’m only like 80% proud of this fic but man Jennifer is so hot & what else could I do aside from using a patd song!

✧༺༻∞

Melody lane, a shitty little jukebox club in the middle of devils kettle usually filled with drunk old men, crusty teenagers, and Jennifer’s flings.

But occasionally they had a half decent band playing. And okay alcohol when Jennifer actually managed to convince the bartender. the only way you’d ever hear any of them was when Jennifer managed to drag yourself and needy along with her to the club to watch as she seduced either a new fling, or an old one.

You never minded Jennifer dragging you to places, you liked the company, I fact youd jump when the girl invited you to one of hers and needys sleepovers, it was usually filled with sinful thoughts, movies you’d rented, and shroud gossip about your drab peers. To you Jennifer and needys were the most interesting people in devils kettle.

But there was something especially, special about Jennifer. from her sensual smile, to the way she’d bite her lip when you were near, the the taste of her lip gloss, and the nights her lips were on yours. You’d deal with the disappointment of going back to friends the next morning as long as you got to feel the girls cold hands on your body.

she was addictive. so addictive, you’d stay in a constant loop of the girls lips on yours as you shared a bed with each other, her touch delicate and light over the skin of your chest. It was the only time her words were ever gentle and not piercing alone with you was the only time she’d let her guard down.

But you loved her in public too, when she was mean and cold. you didn’t mind when she was mean to you, infact you liked her meanness, her spirit, her beauty, her love for fun, her piping hot gossip. You liked Jennifer not just for her banging body but for her soul.

The way her hands would rest on top of yours underneath the table in geography, the way her perfect nails would scratch against your back on your sleepovers.

You loved Jennifer, like you loved breathing.

the night melody lane burned down and the freaks from that band wanted a virgin and some how hypnotised Jennifer to join them in their creepy van needy had to hold you back from chasing after the girl, but from the sound of people’s bones breaking and the smell of their skin burning off when you three were briefly trapped in the club it left you in the wrong headspace. It left you unable to think straight.

the only thing repeating in your head over and over, “where’s jen? Why did I let her go with them? I should have done more.” Over and over again

But from the burning bodies, needys quiet sobs, and watching as your best friend get in a van with freaks all you wanted to do was go home, sit on your bed, and cry. Your ride home in Jennifer’s sea-bring left you itchy and uncomfortable. it felt wrong to sit in Jennifer’s car without her. But still you sat there with the aircon blasting because you couldn’t handle the heat You still felt the residual burn from the fire.

It felt wrong to be safe in a car with needy When Jennifer was probably suffering in the hands of emo guys from a shitty band out of state that decided to lay their seedy sights on devils kettle and take your best friend from you. It felt like one big cruel joke.

“Are you gonna be okay without me?” Needy asked resting her hands on the steering wheel pushing her glasses up against her face. Snapping you out of your thoughts

“Yeah yeah… I’ll be okay will you?” You asked your arms tightly wrapped around yourself the chill of the night air against your uncovered arms was welcomed.

The nerdy girl observed your face, not quite believing you’d be okay by the far off look in your eyes she wasn’t even sure she knew where you were. She was wrong. you knew exactly where you were but your head was out of it. Part of you still left with Jennifer in the van Still fighting needys grip still being held back in needys hold as you watched the girl you love be carted away with strange men.

“Yeah I’ve got chip.” Needy smiled awkwardly your voices quiet in the silence the small car light basking you two in warm orange. Watching eachother in awkward in silence, you were just grateful for your lives. And you’d talk about the effects of this eventually, but not tonight.

“Drive safe needy.” You smiled hand squeezing her shoulder tightly before unbuckling and getting out of the car. The walk to your door had been quick the buzzing silence and the illumination from the street lights left an eerie feeling to chill your bones. Or maybe it was the chill of the night air cooling your burning skin.

slotting your key into the hole and sliding the door open you’re met with your home drenched in darkness. The usual warmth and safety of your house felt unnerving.

The warm yellow lights from your ceiling and the sounds of the tv that sounded like childhood was gone only filled with aching silence. It was like even your home reflected your mood.

The only light was what came from your porch and needys headlights as she left down your street.

you wandered to the kitchen in the dead of night, the familiar creak of the floorboards and the buzz of your fridge calmed your racing thoughts, the only light source from the beeping green timer on the oven that stayed on no matter what you did. This was good.

This meant you were safe. You were home.

As you Pulled out a glass cup and filling it up with sink water, resting against the counter you downed your glass quickly the smooth liquid cooled the dryness in the back of your throat, the smoke from the fire coated your throat and making swallowing difficult.

You felt so sick, climbing the stairs to your bedroom and collapsing on your bed you flick your dated lamp on the warm light illuminating your room you finally let the tension from your body the sound of a creak made you crack your eyes open straining your ears to hear anything else after a few minutes of silence

it was probably nothing climbing under the plush comfy blankets of your bed you felt like a little kid again. safe under the blankets tucked in where nothing could touch you.

Despite your blanket force field you didn’t dare turn off the lights. You keep them on and let them light the room.

You were always terrified of the dark. The only darkness you liked was the back of your eyelids

So you shut your eyes tightly and tried to ignore the horrible stench of smoke littering your clothes and staining your sheets. It would be your mother’s problem in the morning.

✧༺༻∞

When you cracked your eyes open again you were met with the sight of your light turned off and your room shrouded in darkness, Odd.

The world outside your window was also silent no crickets, no cars, just nothing.

Sitting up on your bed your blanket clutched to your chest you strained your eyes to look through the darkness, to adjust to the dimly lit room as you blindly reached your hand for the lamp switch turning it on despite the click you’re only met with darkness.

So you tried again,

Click

Still darkness?

“Fuck sake” you muttered the age of the lamp clearly took its toll and of course it chose today of all days to die.

Pulling the cord to you you’re met with a jagged edge, not the plug pulled out from the Power Point under your bed. But a cord that’s been cut the edges fraying dangerously.

Panic swirls in your chest any semblance of tiredness in you disipates as you observe your room, straining your eyes demanding them to focus. Your heart racing you can’t help but imagine a horrid monster under your bed that’s going to grab your ankle the moment you hop down.

Letting out a quiet whimper at the thought you push yourself against the headboard you’re met with two options: brave getting off the bed, and making a run for the light switch Or…Jumping out the window from the second floor, and splat on the veranda. no.

You’ve got one option,

You’d have to brave the darkness.

Taking a shaky breath you push yourself from the safety of your bed you become alarmingly aware of every step, every sound, every creak. You can hear your breaths in the silent room but something in the back of your mind swears you heard the breathing of something that wasn’t you.

you wonder if you’re being pranked, “ok needy, chip. Not funny!” You call shakily into the darkness.

but when a hand grips your foot and tugs you hard to the floor, you slam painfully against the wood Groaning at the impact it only takes you a minute before your mind is clear again.

And you realise there’s some monster under the bed that tugged you to the floor. And their hands still holding your foot. you scream and tug your leg from their hold with force but still your eyes don’t adjust to the darkness and your scrambling to get back up but the monster doesn’t let you tugging you again to the floor. their hand grips your upper calf leaving a wet, sticky hand print.

What the fuck.

You feel their body crawl over you their cold hand trails your body with force but

Before you can scream again hand is covering your mouth tears well in your eyes at the feeling all the worst scenarios come to mind as you lay there frozen in fear, tears well in your eyes spilling down your cheeks.

“P-please” you whimper in its hold and the monster laughs. It laughs. Or what you think is a laugh it sounds like a horrible gurgle but it must be amused by the way the pressure holding you down lets up only slightly.

Just as quick as the laugh came it’s gone replaced with silence and a monster straddling your hips it feels human.

And in away that makes it worse. When the monsters hands trail your body from your hips to your chest where they settle over the little silver bff locket Jennifer gave you, it brings its wet slimy lips to your cheeks and its tongue slips from its mouth and you come to realise it’s licking your tears from your cheeks. It’s hold lightens immensely as it places a light kiss over your lips and you cry harder unable to see what this thing is, before its pulling back and it’s stopped straddling your waist instead it sits with its hands on the floor and its knees to it’s shoulders.

In the dim moonlight you catch a glimpse of black hair, and a sickly smile

“Are you afraid of me?” It asks with a voice like Jennifer’s and you swallow the bile in your throat

“Yes.” You hoarsely whimper, you’re left with a horrible realisation the lips that just kissed you feel the same as when Jennifer does. Before you can confront this thing masquerading as Jennifer it replies.

“good” just when you think you’re safe the creature skitters back to toward you, you finally see what this creature is, the light a passing car that shines into your window gives you enough time to see the creature and you’re right.

it’s Jennifer, just Jennifer she doesn’t look like some permanently deformed monster she still looks beautiful despite Her face covered in mascara streaks and an inky black substance that littered her pale skin and what looks to be blood on her shirt jennifer smiles and she crawls towards you her hands trailing your chest to her necklace. And she leans near you her lips hovering over the shell of your ear and she places a kiss And it doesn’t feel like it did when you and Jennifer sleepover, or the way she leans towards you to whisper something in your ear at school this is intimate.

But this leaves you questioning If she was Jen why did she go so far to tug you to the floor? Why Did she hold you down? Why did cut your lamp? You had so many questions and by the way the girl observed you it unnerved you, it made it abundantly clear you weren’t getting any answers tonight but still you couldn’t help yourself.

“Jennifer?”you say through tears finally sitting up “Jen…what happened?” You ask tearfully she’s crouching on the balls of her feet her her arms holding her ankles and it’s impulsive but you can’t stop yourself you reach out to touch her cold cheek with a shaky hand.

“Why were you under my bed? What are you covered in?”Your hands still hold the girls face before venturing to her shoulders and you pull her to stand up with you and to your surprise she does it. she watches you with a familiar glint in her eyes and you can see she wasn’t some bogey man. Just Jennifer. covered in what you assume is blood, and an odd black substance, but she was still Jennifer.

“What did they do to you?” You whisper before you can stop yourself, tell yourself that is was just shock. Like shock did this kind of thing to people. You couldn’t trick yourself with lies something happened.

It would do no good to question the girl about it just yet, so you Lead her to your kitchen you filled up a glass of water for the girl and watched as she downed the entire thing before going through your fridge, tugging through all of your food, finding nothing of value.

She turned back to you and she watched you hungrily like she wanted to consume your soul like you were prey and she was predator, like a lion and an antelope on a nature documentary. It made your skin prickle.

“Jennifer? What’s going on?” You pleaded your eyes watching her every move, Jennifer stalks up to you with speed that makes you back track into the counter, and her body entraps you against the counter and her lips ghost yours before she pulls away and you fight the urge to chase her lips you watch as she dashes out the back door, the slam of a screen is the only thing that even told you you were not crazy That and the black goop drying to your body.

✧༺༻∞

The next morning you arrive late to school having missed first period, staying awake into the long hours of the morning too afraid to sleep. from the fire, to your odd encounter with Jennifer it left you shaking, sitting for hours in an extra hot shower trying to pull yourself together although the heat seemed to make your skin prickle and the fire in melody lane burn brighter in your mind. You needing to feel clean, you needed to shower off the grime, and the incident with Jennifer.

Maybe it was The mild case of smoke inhalation in your lungs that made you hallucinate last night but the black goo on your body made you question that theory.

when you finally arrived to your first class of the day you sat beside needy and the girl looked as traumatised as you felt and you don’t have to ask to know she’s had a night similar to yours.

“Hey” you greet and the girl greets a quiet “hi y/n” back but you don’t pay much mind not when you’re teacher begins to talk about the fire and the people who died who went to school with you.

At the mere mention of melody lane needy and yourself share a look with eachother a sense of guilt and dread that you three survived. It wasn’t dread over the fact you survived, you all were happy to be alive but you felt somewhat responsible for the fire despite not even setting it.

Why did three girls who are the most unlikely group of friends survive? Why not everyone else? Were they not equally important? What if one of them were going to cure cancer. Why did you live you weren’t going to cure cancer.

When the door to the classroom swing open and Jennifer walks in looking as perfect as ever, you can’t help but think the girl looks absolutely stunning (like always) your cheeks prickling with the feeling of her hand caressing them last night and you fight the urge to chase the imaginary feeling. Making sure you don’t raise your hand to your cheek over the feeling.

Instead you shake your shoulders like it’ll put your back in the present. It works. But you can’t shake the feeling of your hairs that stand up on the back of your neck as Jen pulls up a seat beside you and her warmth heats your side and her addictive perfume wafts around you, and you can tell she’s watching you with the same look as she always does. A sensual look thats different than the looks she gives her flings, it’s a look that makes you feel like you can’t breathe.

She slathers lip gloss over her plush pink lips as needy attempts to talk sense into Jennifer, you didn’t even realise she was talking. Only catching the final bit of her conversation

“Anyone we know?” You hear Jennifer ask like she doesn’t really care, but there’s a twinge of annoyance in her voice.

“We know everyone…” needy says her eyes watching Jennifer like she’s foreign. And you watch the desk like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

You don’t pay much attention when Jennifer talks about how amazing she feels and how she doesn’t care about the fire. It shocks you truthfully because told but you don’t have the energy to pay attention to anything but the guilt when Craig’s friend, Jonas, starts crying in the middle of class.

You look down at your lap playing with your fingers as Jennifer talks to both yourself and needy you catch sight of needys hands. her nail beds caked with the same inky black substance that assaulted your body and for the first time since Jennifer walked in you look her in her eyes with a sort of horrified intrigue, it wasnt a dream that you conjured up in your fucked up mind. when your eyes flicker to needy something passes between you both. A shared Understanding.

✧༺༻∞

You spent the first day back at school in a weird headspace like your drifting through the hall’s hollow. Like your energy’s stagnant, like a ghost. It’s like you died in that fire.

It’s like you’re not actually here anymore you walk the halls seeing but not observing. Clutching your book to your chest as you walked the halls with needy the sounds of sobbing filled the halls, friends embracing friends it made the scene even more intense.

You were counting every minute down until the end of the day until you could go home watch some tv and stare into space, you stood beside needy looking through your locker as needy told chip about what she witnessed with Jennifer. You couldn’t help but pay attention to her story despite your hands searching for your school book.

“It was like evil…” needy shook her head unable to come up with words to describe it, chip watched the girl with something akin to awkward concern? Although chip was always awkward.

“I think you need to see the school shrink. I love you needy but that’s a little…crazy?” Chip shrugged defiantly before placing a kiss to needys cheek and walking to class.

“Well, I believe you needy. Something happened to me too last night she cut the cord to my lamp and she was under my bed…she pulled me to the floor- Somethings wrong.” Your voice shakes as you lowered it to a whisper confiding in needy with a nod of the blond girls head

“We need more information” needy spoke pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose

✧༺༻∞

When needy called you that night that Jonas had apparently been murdered and eaten it felt like time stilled, What curse was plaguing devils kettle stealing away its people it was odd. It was like melody lane was the one thing that caused a chain of events.

It was no time before news broke again there was another murder.

then another,

then finally Colin gray died after Jennifer agreed to go out with him.

Each murder had the same mo, a cannibal killing. murdering only boys. it was poetic As it was confusing, now you didn’t particularly care for any of these boys why would you? Who needed boys when you had Jennifer and needy? but you would admit to be eaten alive, left in a half finished houses, nothing but carnage with their pants down, rosary clutched in their bloody hands. It was pretty disgusting.

You empathised for these guys but truthfully you didn’t care, not one bit. The only people you cared for was needy and Jennifer and Jennifer had been glowing recently despite the murders, the girl waltzed around not a care in the world, she was living her best life. until she wasn’t.

Then there’d be another murder.

and then Jennifer would look beautiful again (not like she ever stopped but she’d look inhumanly beautiful.) And then shortly after she’d find another boy to toy with at school and in her fling with that boy she’d spend her nights in your bed, her soft fingers playing with your hair as you rested on her knees listening to the latest fall out boy cd And her strawberry lipgloss would leave a sheen on your lips that you’d be tasting for hours after.

And a scent on your tshirts that had you sniffing them for weeks, Then she’d disappear from your hold again. for weeks, she’d leave the sheets cold and her absence ever growing.

And you lay in your bed re-listening to fall out boy, and smelling her perfume on your tshirt to quench the Jennifer shaped hole in your life.

And she’d stop glowing, and she’d look tired, at school hair lifeless compared to its previous glowy form only a week ago.

And it began to make you wonder if maybe it was something more than just pms. It solidified your theory that something darker happened to Jennifer the day melody lane burned to the ground.

Maybe it changed Jennifer so much it made Jennifer kill these boys, you didn’t forget that night at your house where she looked inhuman. where she tugged you to the floor and her lips pressed against yours with force. like she’d have you right then and there like you’d be her last meal.

You had to confront her, Something was wrong with Jennifer check.

✧༺༻∞

It was a normal school day, nothing particularly special happened the morning your house empty by the time you woke up, the heater of your car blowing the same warm air against your cheeks as it always did, then you’d be at school the lively chatter of your fellow students excitement over the upcoming school dance was the only thing buzzing through the hallways

The various murders had become old news, by the time Colin grey died it was no longer of interest to be focused on the maneater “tormenting” devils kettle.

Just as quickly as the chatter came it left, and in its wake left nothing but a trail of murders behind and the horribly popular song released by low shoulder that seemingly took everyone in devils kettle by storm.

You couldn’t give a shit about the murders, these guys never cared about anyone but themselves, plus who needed boys they were useless anyway.

You’re infatuation with Jennifer grew but By this point in time you began to decipher by the help of needy, that Jennifer was a succubus. The blonde had been horrified to learn her friend had been killing these boys. That Jennifer virtually died the night the band shut the van door. Leaving Jennifer trapped with them.

The realisation that you indirectly killed the girl made you want to throw up, you’d never dream of harming the girl so learning you kinda sealed her fate left you wallowing.

The school library was chilly its plastic blue chairs and sad grey carpet left you rolling your eyes. The plain white desks and rows and rows of books left you and needy hidden from prying eyes

Shutting the occult book needy and your self discovered in the library both your hands shook with the realisation your friend was infact a demon, both needy and yourself shared a mildly horrified look and in no time the both of you departed the library the blonde to chip. And you to Jennifer.

✧༺༻∞

Rushing through the halls of devils kettle highschool you didn’t care to observe the faces of your peers opting to instead hurry through the halls to the change rooms Jennifer would have been only now finishing getting changed back from her flag girl practice and she’d always stay later for a long shower, so the room would be pretty much deserted. Perfect.

Flinging open the door to the change rooms you’re met with Jennifer tying her shoes on a small wooden bench the black haired girl lifts her head as you enter the room her usual bored expression plastered on her face her lips perfectly glossy and her eyes watched you with a sense of unnerving pleasure.

Like she enjoyed reading you to see when you’d figure her out.

“I know what you are” you tried to hide the shake in your voice when you spoke closing the change room door and stepping towards her. cringing inwardly at how blunt you seemed you refused to let the facade of fearlessness die so easily so you watched as Jennifer’s perfect lips tipped upward as the revelation

“Do you?” She dragged tucking hair behind her ear and standing up to stalk towards you bumped into the door as you stepped back you stopped the shuddering breath from leaving you when you felt her body creep in front of you her wicked eyes watched you.

“You’re a succubus. You’re the one killing the boys.”

“Boys are just placeholders, they come and they go.” The girl sneered her glossed lips bright as she watched you.

Steeling yourself beneath her gaze you took a breath filling your lungs with humid changeroom air;

“do you deny it?”

Your voice was strong as you stood your eyes boring into eachother you knew your icy tongue wouldnt do the girl any real harm, she’d had her fill she was immortal. Regenerative.

When you were met with silence Jennifer’s cold gaze calculating whether she should confess or kill you now. But the brave look in your eyes and the familiar feeling of your lips on hers she’d grown far too fond of you.

“Do. you. deny. it.” There was no doubt in you, now you were sure, Jennifer was a succubus you just needed her to confess to ensure you were not insane. Staring the girl in the eyes you hardened your gaze and you waited on baited breath for which of you would crack first.

This time,

it was Jennifer.

breaking eye contact she turned her gaze to the ground sighing. “Yes I’m a succubus god.” The girl groaned bored

“how did it happen?” You felt the flood gates open it had been involuntary for your concern to slip out through your cold facade

“The band freaks like totally sacrificed me, when I got into their creepy van it was like the fog on my mind cleared and I realised the trouble I was in, they took me to the falls and I tried to run but they caught me and…” the girl dragged the last bit out before plopping herself down on the bench sitting crisscrossed you sat next to the girl you felt tears well in your eyes.

Jennifer was murdered by the band freaks, and you didn’t try harder to stop her from entering that van, She died because of you.

You felt a lump rise in your throat, “they sacrificed you” you nodded and it felt like you were going to implode looking at your best friend and imagining her bloodied corpse all alone at the falls.

“Mhm, When they caught me they gagged me, and then sacrificed me to Satan- how fucking lame is that!” Jennifer rolled her eyes yet there was a hint of pain shining in her eyes maybe Jen wasn’t completely gone.

“And well after everything happened I managed to find my way to you… I was so hungry but I couldn’t bring myself to kill you, I like you too much.” Despite her bored tone her fingers fiddled in her lap she was nervous to confess this.

“Jennifer” your eyes shone as you watched the girl this was the closest you’d get to Jennifer telling you she loved you, atleast right now. But you understood what the raven haired girl was telling you, and it was like everything she’s done up to this point didn’t matter to you.

“Jen. I don’t care that you have to kill and eat boys, i don’t care that you’re like a demon now? I don’t care about any of it.” You shook your hands as you spoke with volition any confliction you held washed away.

“Jennifer I have loved you since we were kids. you were always my girl. Fuck those guys! The boys you’ve eaten, the band freaks, every pathetic morsel in devils kettle! fuck all of them! I want you, Demon and all.” You exclaimed your warm hands enclosing her cold ones your eyes booring into hers, the shiny sheen of lipgloss on her pink lips made you want to kiss her

It had been months since the fire, months since the girl had caressed your body like she was starving. Like your soft skin bled life itself into her undead heart.

You couldn’t wait any longer, you only had now.

“Can I kiss you?” Your hands hovered over the girls cool cheeks as you asked in a whisper, Jennifer didn’t respond instead the girl shot forward catching your lips into a kiss her lipgloss sticking to your lips as Jennifer had her way with you the girl certainly was a great kisser finally snapping out of your stupor, you kissed her back feverishly.

Both lips fitting together like pieces to a puzzle you hope to never pull back from her lips again. You’d put all of your fears behind you even if it was just for now.

#jennifers body #jennifer check #jennifers body x reader #jennifer check x reader #Jennifer’s body fanfiction #Jennifer check x fem reader #needy lesnicki x reader #needy lesnicki #Jennifer’s body x you #Jennifer check x you

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v6quewrlds · 18 days ago

Text

❝ nothing on me, d. booker. ❞ ‎ ‎ ┉

‎ ‎ ⁎⠀┉⠀summary: you and your girls decided that november will be dedicated to self-discovery. as innocent as your pact is, devin can't wrap his head around why you need to "decenter men".

‎ ‎ ⁎⠀┉⠀author's note: a little devin fic for all my book girlies <3 can't believe there aren't more devin fics on here but we ball! day four of my no nut november series.

‎ ‎ ⁎⠀┉⠀warnings: smut, please do not interact with my work if you are under 18. language, established relationship, unprotected sex, fingering, creampie.

‎ ‎ ⁎⠀┉⠀pairing: devin booker x reader.

‎ ‎ ⁎⠀┉⠀word count: 3k.

"Damn, you looking good enough to eat," Devin murmured, his eyes tracing the curves of your body as you stepped out of the bathroom, the steam wrapping around you like a seductive embrace.

You rolled your eyes playfully, a knowing smirk playing on your plump lips. "Don't start, Devin. You know the next three weeks is about self-care for me and the girls." You padded over to the bed, your skin glowing from the warm shower, and slipped into a pair of oversized sweatpants and a tank top.

Devin sat up, his expression a mix of surprise and annoyance. "Come on, babe, that's some bullshit some losers came up with to last a month without jacking off." He threw his hands up in exasperation, his gold necklace glinting in the soft light of your bedroom.

"It's not 'No Nut November', Devin," you corrected him with a laugh, your pressed hair cascading over your shoulders. "It's about us focusing on ourselves, not just sex." You grabbed your phone from the nightstand, scrolling through social media as if his whining was a mere background noise.

"But what about me, baby?" Devin whined, his voice dripping with false innocence. He reached for your hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You know I need you."

You glanced at him, your brown eyes sparkling with mischief. "You'll survive, boo," you said, your voice a sweet, teasing melody. "Besides, it's not like you're gonna be celibate or anything. You can still jack off, just not around me. I'm decentering men, remember?"

Devin pouted, his bottom lip sticking out in the most adorable way you had ever seen. "But it’s not the same," he complained, his voice taking on a child-like whine that you couldn't help but find endearing.

You couldn't help but laugh, your light, airy chuckle filling the room. "I'm sure you'll manage," you said, leaning over to give him a quick peck on the cheek. "Besides, I've got a girls' trip in two weeks, so you'll have plenty of time to handle your own business."

Devin's face fell, but he quickly recovered with a smirk. "Alright, I guess I can handle that." He leaned back against the headboard, folding his arms behind his head. "But when you come back, all bets are off, right?"

You just winked at him and said, "We'll see," before leaving the room.

The weeks passed by in a blur of work and preparations for the girls' trip. Devin did his best to respect your boundaries, though he couldn't help but drop hints here and there about what he had in mind for when you returned. You, on the other hand, remained steadfast in your commitment, focusing on yourself and your friendships. The anticipation grew like a slow burn between you, the tension palpable.

When your week-long escape to Miami with your friends finally came to an end, you practically waltzed through the airport, your skin kissed by the Florida sun, and your spirit rejuvenated. Devin had arranged for a luxurious ride home, a sleek black Escalade with a bouquet of your favorite roses waiting inside. You couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement when you saw his text message confirming his surprise.

"Welcome back, baby," he'd written, along with a heart emoji.

As you stepped into the car, you couldn't help but smile. Devin had always been good at surprises, and you were eager to see what he had in store for you. When you walked into your apartment, you were greeted by the heavenly scent of your favorite comfort meal. The living room was lit with the soft glow of candles, and a bottle of your favorite wine chilled on the counter. You could tell he'd been waiting for you, the pent-up energy in the air was thick with anticipation.

Devin emerged from the kitchen, his tall frame backlit by the stove's warm light, a chef's apron tied around his waist. "Welcome home. You hungry, baby?" he asked, his voice a low purr that sent shivers down your spine. Despite your best efforts, you felt the heat between your legs begin to build.

"Starving," you replied, dropping your luggage by the door. You watched as Devin sauntered over to you with a confidence that could only come from knowing what awaited you. He wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you into a kiss that was both tender and demanding. His lips tasted of mint and the faint hint of something sweet you couldn't quite place, making you crave more of him.

The two of you broke apart, and you looked up into his eyes, which had darkened with desire. "You didn’t have to do all this," you said, your voice thick with lust.

Devin smirked. "I wanted to make sure you had something to come home to. Show you what you been missing out on, decentering men and shit." His hands roamed down your back, slipping under the waistband of your linen pants.

You giggled, pushing his hands away gently. "You're such a fool, you know that?" But you couldn't deny the way your body responded to his touch. You stepped back, taking in the sight of him in the apron. "Maybe I should decenter men more often if this is the kind of treatment I get."

Devin's smirk grew into a full-blown grin. "You say that now, but you know you missed this." He winked, his dimples deepening, and you couldn't help but melt a little inside.

"Maybe just a little," you admitted, your voice breathy with desire. He took your hand and led you to the kitchen table, which was set with your finest silverware and adorned with more candles. The food looked like it had been plucked from the pages of a gourmet magazine—grilled chicken with a side of asparagus and perfectly seasoned rice.

You ate in a comfortable murmur of conversation, occasionally exchanging heated glances that spoke volumes of the passion you had stored up. You felt the tension between you build with each bite, like a simmering pot about to boil over. After dinner, Devin cleared the plates away and turned the music up. The bass thumped through the walls, setting the mood as he approached you with a slow, deliberate stride.

"Ready to get re-centered?" he asked, his voice low as he poked fun at your earlier declaration. The corner of your mouth quirked up in a half smile, your eyes brushing over the clean, empty plates. You took a deep breath, the scent of the meal lingering sweetly in the air, and nodded.

Devin didn't waste any time. He pulled you to your feet, the warmth of his touch sending a jolt of electricity through your body. He spun you around, pressing you against the counter as he kissed your neck, his breath hot against your skin. Your hands found his chest, your fingers digging into his muscles as you arched into his embrace. You could feel his hardness against you, a promise of what was to come.

"Take your top off," he whispered in your ear, his voice a seductive rumble. You complied, the top of your linen set sliding off your shoulders and falling to the floor. Devin's eyes raked over you, his desire for you clear as day. He traced the curve of your features before leaning down to press chaste kisses along your shoulder, making you shiver.

As the music filled the room, Devin's hands slipped lower, caressing your hips, pulling you closer until there was no space between you. Your hands wound around his neck, your nails lightly scratching his skin. He groaned, his mouth moving down to suck on your neck, sending waves of pleasure through your body.

"I missed you," Devin murmured against your skin, his teeth grazing your earlobe. "Missed this." His hands began to explore, cupping your breasts through your bra, fitting them perfectly in his palms. You gasped, your knees slightly buckling at the sensation. You leaned into him, your body begging for more.

With a deft flick, Devin unhooked your bra, letting it fall to the floor. His thumbs brushed your hardened nipples, teasing them into peaks as your eyes closed, your head falling back onto his shoulder in pleasure. "You're so beautiful," he whispered, his voice a gentle caress that sent goosebumps skittering across your flesh. He kissed the nape of your neck, his tongue flicking out to taste the salty sweetness of your skin.

Your breath hitched as Devin's hands continued to wander, sliding down your abdomen to the waistband of your pants. His fingers danced there, tracing the fabric before slipping inside, finding you wet and ready. You moaned, your hips rocking back into him as he touched you with the expertise of a maestro playing a melody. The ache within you grew stronger, the need to feel him inside you becoming unbearable.

With a playful growl, Devin scooped you up into his arms, carrying you to your bedroom as if you weighed nothing at all. He laid you down on the velvet comforter, your body a canvas of passion waiting to be explored. He stripped away your pants and underwear, his eyes never leaving yours as he took in the sight of you. "You're mine," he said, his voice filled with a possessive hunger that sent a thrill through you.

Your breath was ragged, your chest rising and falling with anticipation. Devin knelt beside the bed, his eyes feasting on your naked body. He took off his apron and shirt in one fluid motion, revealing his sculpted chest and abs. The candlelight danced across his skin, giving him an almost divine glow. You felt your body responding to the sight of him, your thighs quivering as he leaned over you, his mouth watering at the sight of your wetness.

Without a word, Devin began to kiss you, starting at your ankles and moving upwards. His lips traced a fiery path up your calves, his tongue darting out to taste the salt on your skin. He reached your inner thighs, nipping gently, making you squirm with pleasure. When he finally reached the apex of your thighs, your breaths were coming in short gasps. You could feel the heat of his breath on your sensitive flesh, and you were close to begging.

"Devin," you panted, his name a plea on your lips. He looked up, his eyes locked with yours as he pushed two fingers inside you. He watched your face contort with pleasure, his eyes glued to yours as he stroked your pussy with a precision that left you breathless. The room spun around you, the candlelight blurring into a sea of heat and desire.

Devin chuckled against your skin, the vibrations sending aftershocks through you. He kissed his way up your stomach, his teeth grazing your flesh as he went until he reached your lips.

The kiss was deep and hungry, a declaration of his need for you. You could feel his erection pressing against your thigh, and you reached down to stroke him through his sweatpants. With a sudden movement, you pushed him onto his back and straddled him, your wetness slick against him.

Devin's hands slid up your waist, gripping your hips as you rocked against him. "Take it off," you demanded, nodding to his pants. He complied eagerly, his cock springing free and standing tall between you. You bit your lips, your eyes dark with desire as you took him in your hand, stroking him with a firm, steady grip that made him groan.

"You been missing this, too?" you taunted, your thumb brushing the bead of precum at the tip. Devin's only response was a nod, his eyes hooded and his breath coming in pants. You smirked before leaning down to kiss him, your tongues dancing together as you lined him up with your entrance. With a slow, deliberate motion, you slid down onto him, your walls enveloping him in a warm, tight embrace.

"Fuck, baby," he groaned, his hands coming up to cup your breasts, his thumbs playing with your sensitive nipples. You began to move, your hips rolling in a sensual dance that had Devin's eyes rolling back in his head. You took your time, savoring every inch of him, your muscles contracting around his cock in a delicious rhythm that had you both panting for more.

Your kisses grew more fervent, your bodies moving together in a symphony of passion that had been denied for too long. You felt Devin's hands tighten on your hips, urging you faster, harder, as he matched you stroke for stroke. The sound of your skin slapping together filled the room, mingling with your moans and gasps.

"You feel so good," Devin managed to murmur between breaths. His eyes were glued to your bouncing breasts, the sight making him throb with desire.

"Mmhmm," you agreed, your voice a low, sultry hum that vibrated through your chest and into his. You leaned forward, your wetness smearing on his abs as you took his face in your hands and kissed him deeply. The taste of wine still lingered on his tongue, a tantalizing mix of sweet and savory that only served to fuel the fire burning within you.

With a growl, Devin flipped your positions, his hands gripping your waist as he thrust up into you. The sudden change in angle sent a jolt of pleasure through you, making you gasp. He took your hands in his and pinned them above your head, his eyes never leaving yours as he began to move. Each thrust was deep and purposeful as if he was trying to claim every inch of your being.

Your bodies moved in a perfect harmony, each stroke bringing you two closer to the edge. Devin's abs flexed with every movement, his muscles rippling under your fingertips. You couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of him, at the raw power and passion that he brought to the bed. It was like watching a masterpiece come to life, each motion a stroke on the canvas of your love.

Your nails dug into his skin as you met his rhythm, your hips rising to meet him, welcoming him deeper. Devin's eyes were dark with lust, his breaths coming in harsh pants. "You're so fucking tight, baby," he whispered, his voice hoarse. You just smiled up at him, your teeth sinking into your bottom lip as you reveled in the sensation.

"I'm gonna cream this pretty pussy," Devin murmured, his voice thick with desire as he pounded into you. You threw your head back, your hair fanning out on the pillow, and let out a whispered moan. Your nails dug into his back, leaving trails of red against his caramel skin as you urged him deeper.

"You better not stop," you warned through gritted teeth, your eyes meeting Devin's. The challenge of the past few weeks had only served to amplify your desire for each other, and now that the dam had broken, you were both eager to dive into the depths of your passion.

"Baby, you're so wet," Devin murmured, his voice thick with need. He increased his pace, his cock sliding in and out of you with a delicious ease that had you moaning his name.

Your eyes rolled back in your head, your body lost to the feeling of Devin's thick cock filling you up. You had missed this, the way he made you feel like you were the only woman in the world, the way he knew exactly how to touch you to make you come undone. "Harder," you begged, your voice a desperate whine.

Devin obliged, his hips snapping against yours with a force that made the bed shake. The headboard slammed into the wall in time with your frenzied movements, the sound of skin on skin echoing through the room. Your legs pulled him deeper, urging him to take everything you had to give.

"Oh, shit," Devin groaned, his strokes becoming erratic as he felt himself nearing the edge. Your pussy clenched around him, your orgasm building like a crescendo. "Keep squeezing me like that, baby," he managed, his breath hot against your neck. "Make me come."

Your eyes snapped open, and you met his gaze with a fierce determination. You clamped down on him, your muscles tightening as you reached the start of your climax. Devin's eyes rolled back, and with a roar, he emptied himself inside you, his cock pulsing with the force of his release. You both lay there, panting and trembling, your hearts beating in time with the pounding bass from the speakers.

For a moment, there was only the sound of your heavy breathing and the occasional crackle of the candle flames. Then, Devin leaned down to kiss you, a soft, gentle press of his lips to yours. "Damn, baby," he whispered, his voice a warm caress. "That pussy's a weapon, I swear to god."

You chuckled, your body still trembling from the aftershocks of pleasure. Your hands gently caressed Devin's back, feeling the sweat that had gathered from your intense lovemaking. "Is that a compliment or?" you teased, your voice a sultry whisper.

Devin grinned down at you, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight. "Both," he said, his voice a gruff rumble. "You always know how to make me lose control."

You giggled, feeling the stickiness between your thighs as you snuggled closer to him. Devin pulled out gently, rolling over to grab a towel from the nearby chair. He wiped you both down, taking care not to disturb the delicate post-orgasmic bliss that had settled over the two of you like a warm blanket. You lay there, your limbs tangled together, basking in the afterglow of your passionate reunion.

"Mm, I guess I do have that effect on you," you purred, your body still quivering from the intense pleasure Devin had brought you. You couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that you had the power to reduce him to a puddle of desire.

Devin chuckled, his chest rising and falling with his deep breaths. He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close. Your bodies cooled as the candles continued to flicker, casting shadows that danced across the walls.

#&. cassie writes.#&. nnn masterlist.#devin booker #devin booker x reader #devin booker imagine #devin booker fanfic #devin booker smut #nba imagines #nba smut #x black reader #x black fem reader #black!fem!reader #black!oc #black!reader

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traveler-at-heart · 1 year ago

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Secrets

Summary: You try to keep your relationship a secret!

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!R

It was fun at first.

The thrill of sneaking around, secret glances, hidden touches. It had been quite a ride to get to where you were with Natasha, and knowing how the team could be, you both wanted to keep your relationship to yourselves, at least for a little while.

One of your secret spots were the stairs. With a building so big, it was natural that everyone took the elevator. It was the perfect place to meet the redhead and more often than not, the conversation progressed into an intense make out session that left you breathless.

“Is the elevator broken?” Steve asks as you come back from one of your little escapades. You jump at his presence, your mind still thinking about the feeling of Natasha’s lips on yours.

“Uh… no. It’s working just fine. I like to take the stairs to… exercise”

“That’s a nice idea. Maybe I’ll try it one of these days” he nods.

Cap and his obliviousness, sweet old man. He has no idea you’re all flushed for reasons that have nothing to do with coming up the steps.

Still, you think nothing of it. He was probably trying to be nice when he said it was a good idea. The next day, when you’re lost in Natasha, intoxicated by her supple lips and the way they move against your own, you miss the sound of heavy footsteps and an off key whistle.

“Crap” Natasha is the first to react, breaking apart. You turn to look down, Steve taking the steps two at a time.

Fit bastard.

“Morning!” he says, too happy for your liking.

“Oh, hi, we were just…”

“We?” he echoes, and you look around. No trace of Natasha.

“I mean, me. I was just taking a break. I think I’ll go back to taking the elevator”

“You sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah, just a bit agitated. Nothing to worry, Cap”

Steve nods and smiles.

“I told everyone about your great idea. I think people will start using the stairs more”

“Oh, that’s just peachy”

Once again, he is oblivious to your actual feelings. After he’s gone, Natasha jumps from behind the staircase.

“Jesus, how did you manage to do that so quickly”

“Well, you always have to be ready for a quick escape, detka”

Natasha leans forward and pecks your lips, but before she can do anything else, you drag her back to the hallway.

“You heard Cap. Our secret spot is no longer secret”

—

So far, you haven’t found a decent replacement for the stairs, except for a supply closet. And by God, you are not that desperate.

As you cook dinner, Natasha comes up behind you, and you relax against her.

“I’ve missed you” she says against your shoulder, placing small kisses that tickle you.

“I missed you too, love”

A hand goes around your middle and she toys with the hem of your shirt, lips kissing your neck, and that sweet spot behind your earlobe that makes you shiver.

“Nat” you moan, and you don’t know if you want her to stop or keep going.

Yelena answers that for you as she steps inside, eyes widening. You draw blank, because honestly, how can you explain this?

Natasha takes matters into her own hands, literally, as she hugs you and pretends to do the Heimlich maneuver.

“She’s choking” Natasha says and Yelena scrambles around.

“Oh, my God, Y/N, please don’t die”

The redhead pretends to help you, squeezing your middle and you cough.

“I think I’m…”

Unfortunately, the blonde is too freaked out and pushes Natasha away, thinking she’s helping you.

As she presses against your sternum, you are suddenly out of breath and you swear you can feel your ribs cracking.

“Ok, I’m fine, Yelena, thanks” you break free of her hold, sure that your sides will be bruised next morning.

Yelena doesn’t let you cook anymore, so you end up with a dinner of mac and cheese, and Natasha’s sister sitting in the middle while you three watch tv.

“I’m sorry” Natasha says when her sister gets up to grab another soda.

“Just for the record, this isn’t the type of choking I had in mind”

—

“They’re gonna be here any minute” you say against Natasha’s shoulder.

“I know” she bites your neck and you sink further into her lap.

The Quinjet, out of all places is where you find some privacy. The rest of the team will join shortly, as you have a recon mission.

But you can’t keep your hands to yourself and you end up naked, straddling Natasha’s lap as she moves her fingers inside of you.

“God, you look so pretty like this” she says against your chest.

“Nat, more” you plead. It’s too much and too little at the same time. She listens, moving her hand faster and your hips match her pace.

“God. Yes” you collapse in her arms.

“Request to open gate” FRIDAY informs and you curse, because you want more than a second to catch your breath.

Sneaking around is getting old now.

“Come on, let’s get cleaned up” Natasha says, helping you up. She looks proud when your legs shake.

“Shut up” you say, which only makes her smile wider.

While the team enters the Quinjet, you go back to the bathroom with Nat as you hurriedly put your suits on.

“Red? Y/N?” Tony calls for you.

“Here” you raise your arm, feeling a bit tense. Maybe you pulled a muscle.

Stark nods your way and starts the Quinjet, while Steve goes over the plan with everyone else. You stay seated, vaguely aware that something feels different but you can’t tell what it is.

“Be careful” Natasha says when you part ways, squeezing your hand.

Your job is to keep an eye on the guards at the south gate and stop them if they are called to attack the intel team.

Which unfortunately does happen, so you run to shoot, kick and punch at every one of them.

There are two guards left, and as you reach for your gun, something incredibly unexpected happens.

Your suit opens right in the front, revealing your red lacy bra.

“What the fuck” you shout, looking down.

The guard in front of you opens his mouth, completely enthranced by your cleavage.

“New strategy?” Tony flies over, knocking him down. He sends the last man standing across the room.

“No! I don’t know what happened!”

You try to cover but the leather is not giving in.

“Ok, well. We’re done here so you can put all that” he gestures to your chest. “Back in the Quinjet”

Rolling your eyes, and with your arms crossed in front of you, you walk back to the jet.

As you lock eyes with Natasha, you finally notice how her own suit is loose on the shoulders.

You switched when you were getting dressed.

“I like this new look” Sam wiggles his eyebrows and Natasha sends a widow bite straight to his ass.

“Oops” she shrugs her shoulders as he glares.

Feeling a little better after that, you go inside and find a t-shirt to cover up.

When you leave the bathroom, everyone is silent.

“Ok, it’s not like you all haven’t seen boobs before. So get over yourselves. Except Steve, he gets a pass” you bark at them.

“I’ve seen boobs before” he tries to say but no one pays attention.

Natasha stays silent and you think she might be upset or reconsidering this whole thing.

You expect the worse as you land and she leads you back to your room.

“Nat…”

The redhead holds her finger up, taking your shirt off and sinking her face in your breasts.

“Really?”

“Mine” she grumbles, her hands squeezing possessively.

Well, at least some good came out of it.

—

The atmosphere is tense.

Clint, Wanda, Peter and you are playing Jenga.

Honestly, you are the one at a disadvantage here. With Clint’s aim and the enhanced individuals, you don’t stand a chance.

The way Natasha looks at you from across the room doesn’t help either.

It’s been a few days since you were together. Fury called her for an urgent mission and you had to resist the urge to sneak into the Quinjet and beg her to fuck you against the console.

And now, she’s back and you can’t wait for the night to wrap up so you can wrap your legs around her while she eats your…

“Gah!” Wanda screeches, knocking over the tower. “My mind, my eyes”

Crap.

“Wanda, a word?” you plead, dragging her out of the living room while Clint and Peter stare.

“You” she slaps your arm. “And you” she glares at Natasha as she approaches, pushing you both to her room.

“Sorry, we are keeping it a secret for now”

“But your thoughts are so loud” she massages her temples, clearly distraught. “I was so focused on the game and still I could hear everything, see everything”

“Sorry” you grimace. “Do you think you could… not tell anyone? For a bit”

“Oh, trust me, I’m very eager to pretend none of this happened”

“Thanks, Wanda” Natasha says and the girl nods.

“It’s nice to see you both happy. Just try to keep your thoughts to yourselves”

“We’ll try”

Wanda nods, walking out. Natasha’s quick to push you against the wall, eyes darkened by lust.

“Wanna tell me what was on your mind?”

“Can you at least wait for me to leave the hallway?!” Wanda screams from outside.

“You have ten seconds, Maximoff”

“Thanks, I hate you”

—

You figure a little distance from everyone will do you good.

So, you get tickets to a Yankees game and spend the day in the city with Natasha.

Even if you are only a half hour away from the Compound, among the sea of people, no one looks at you when you hold her hand, or share a kiss in the middle of your walk.

“This is nice” you smile, bringing her hand to your lips.

The first half of the game is slow, but you enjoy the time eating popcorn and making comments with Natasha about the score.

During the break, several people in the audience are featured in the screens. A girl chugs an entire beer while the crowd goes wild.

“Damn” you laugh, but the next image you see is you, next to Natasha.

The kiss cam.

“No, we’re fine” you wave your arms and the crowd boos. “Ok, not nice!”

“Don’t be such a baby” she smiles, pulling you closer.

“Pretty sure Steve and Bucky are watching the game back home”

“You jump, I jump” she leans forward, allowing you to decide if you wanna do this or not. As your lips meet in a short kiss, everyone starts clapping and cheering you on.

“Are you sure about what we just did?”

“Very. I’m tired of hiding. You make me happy. What’s wrong with that?” Natasha says and you smile against her lips.

“You are so getting lucky tonight”

But before you can kiss her again, both of your phones go crazy with texts from everyone on the team.

Tony: Is this why Wanda asked me for a way to erase her memory?

Sam: Now I know why you electrocuted my ass, Red!

Wanda: DONT COME NEAR ME

“Still think we made the right call?” you roll your eyes as the texts keep coming.

“Absolutely, detka” she says before kissing you softly.

Yeah. It’s gonna be ok.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha romanoff fluff

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themaclean · 8 months ago

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We Don't Have To Be Friends (1/2) Characters: Cooper Howard/Lucy MacLean. Summary: 3,507 words, Post Season One -- character study that was meant to be PWP, but then ended up being entirely plot. Part two will be smut or I will krill myself. Warnings: Nothing you wouldn't see in the show. ( Ao3 ) > Part One | Part Two | Part Three <

Cooper never thought much about Hollywood anymore.

He had no reason to and no time either— but the thoughts bubbled up when he saw how the gold thread of his shirt dulled and familiar street signs melted into slack arches. Sometimes, he’d catch sight of a tattered newspaper with names he recognized or faces of people long since dead.

But nothing made him think of Hollywood the way Lucy did.

It hit him one afternoon with a nasty churn, that flash of the old world that locked his knees mid-stride. It was pathetic, really, when he thought about it now.

It was the flash of Lucy's Vault-Tec-sponsored smile over her shoulder, her thin hand with a necrotized finger pointing ahead of them at some landmark she’d heard of. With her head turned at just the right angle, and the sun was low as it caught the edges of her cheeks and lashes…

She had the sort of face girls in the movies had: clear skin, big eyes, and neat hair. Pretty — beautiful, actually, but not as a matter of compliment. Beautiful in the way she’d make a good price at any given market if he was inclined to sell her. Beautiful in the way people loved to exploit.

That’s the lifeblood of Hollywood—that churning mass of young talent desperate to prove they had what it takes. They’d sweet talk whoever they needed to, go to the parties, and chat his ear off about how amazing he’d been in whatever movie had come out lately, about the sponsorships they’d been offered, and about the dresses they got sent. They’d slip him their number and hold his bicep too long like they’d been taught to by managers and mothers alike.

Dozens of pretty women rushed to audition for the role of arm candy. They’d audition to play the mayor's daughter, the farmer's daughter, or so-and-so’s daughter. They’d always been the damsel. Then, whatever cowboy he’d been hired to play would toss the pretty woman onto the back of Sugarfoot and ride off into the sunset. The sort of girl who'd be gone by the next movie or end up married to a director, so she'd quit acting.

And, much like all the girls in Hollywood Cooper had spent time with, Lucy had changed. She had the same optimism, but it’d dulled; her marketable face now held tired, empty eyes. It was like she finally caught onto the world’s current: no sunset and no next movie.

Cooper couldn’t fault her. It's a strange journey to discover what to do to survive.

“Hey Cooper — is that it?” Lucy asked, repeating herself. The sprawl of buildings ahead was dotted with torches and candles.

Cooper nodded, his hand firm on Dogmeat’s collar.

A short strip of buildings stood out against the expanse of desert and dry shrubs. Each building leaned towards another, with sheet metal fastened with unskilled welding. Several turrets puttered away, seeking whatever wasn’t humanoid enough. Strips of fabric and tin cans garlands peppered the buildings' front. The smaller buildings on either side were your standard fare: a repair shop, a medic, a trader with a little diner area.

But the one Cooper was after stood out for its neon sign—Hell’s Oasis.

Hell’s Oasis served its purpose—it was a decent place to get information, and the people minded their business. They weren’t too bothered with ghouls or mutants as long as you had caps. The place often served as a meeting ground for bounty hunters and their contractors. It was also one of the more upscale places, as they wouldn’t harvest organs unless you died of natural causes.

And, if you couldn’t fight or forage for survival, you could fuck for it.

(Not that Cooper ever wasted caps on the whores who took residence within Hell’s Oasis. He’d sooner pay people to fuck off than spend the night with him.)

Cooper grabbed Lucy by the nape of her neck to yank her close and keep her firmly by his side. Most people he brought here, he left here — call it a force of habit to handle her so roughly.

“I can walk, y’know,” Lucy hissed.

“Stick close,” Cooper clicked his tongue at her, and a slight hiss followed. His grip flexed to further the message that she’d do well to follow his guidance.

They made their way through the hotel lobby, the moldy carpet slick against the floor with dirt and grease from the world outside. A few people chattered away in the attached bar, laughing at jokes Cooper couldn’t make out. Casino chips clattered on the table as they played made-up card games.

Long dead plants clung to arid dirt, the sticks of old ferns wilting against one another. Metal crates were lashed together in each corner of the alcove where the front desk sat, providing a makeshift cage between the staff and the patrons. Several girls rushed past Cooper and Lucy, jeering and cackling as they approached the bar. They were clad in lacy nightgowns. He couldn’t tell if they knew they were lingerie rather than clothes or if they’d even care.

“It’s so lively here,” Lucy said, a pang of something in her face.

“It happens in pockets,” Cooper said with a shrug of his shoulder. Little uh… spots of life.”

“Must be why they call it an oasis.”

Cooper rolled his eyes as they reached the front desk. Magazines sat in thick stacks with information about local tours in the area and a guide to the national parks. An abandoned handbag was tucked against the desk, which Lucy eyed with curiosity.

Cooper slapped the front desk bell a few times, a gargling growl low in his throat.

They needed this break after a couple of weeks on the road together. Water was getting sparse, and he wanted to be ready to meet with whoever the fuck Hank had run off to. And in such an open desert, there’s no sense traveling at night, and all manner of dumb shit came up along the way.

It was always something. People needed help or some dumb cunt trying to pick a fight, resupplies, rest… He didn’t like helping people much, but Lucy argued with him whenever they tried to go on without at least trying. And whether the people lived or died, at least they tried. That was her argument.

But Lucy listened to him a little more now, and he was as patient as he could be with her.

Cooper rang the bell again. He wanted a room, and the chattering laughter in the bar was only making his aches worse.

Priscilla appeared from behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain. Her hairline was hidden beneath a thick headscarf with puffy blond curls bouncing beneath it. The last time he’d been here, her hair had begun to rot out of her skull. He guessed it’d only gotten worse. She’s still pretty, mirroring that old-world red lip with pin curls.

“Oh my God, is that you, Coop? I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Priscilla said in a slow, low voice. She had a rasp to it, always had, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the radiation or a smoking habit.

“Was underground,” Cooper said with a lazy smile. He wouldn’t mention that he’d been underground in a literal sense, trapped in a coffin.

“Well, it’s nice for you to come to see us and…” Priscilla’s gaze slid to Lucy, that usual surprise swelling up at the sight of a genuine Vault Dweller. They weren’t hard to spot. “Ah, you turning her in for a bounty?”

Lucy’s head snapped towards him, a mixture of shock and disgust.

“No,” Cooper shook his head, his grip firm on Lucy’s neck to turn her head away from him. His fingers tensed before they dropped away altogether, brushing across Lucy’s shoulder. “Tag-along. Helpin’ her uh…” He picked through the words that came to mind, cautious not to share too much. “Adjust to the surface.”

Priscilla’s jaw squared as she stared Lucy down.

“We’re just lookin’ for a room, some food,” Cooper said before she could pry further. “Usual fare.”

“Please,” Lucy said, like Cooper had forgotten, and it was important to say. “The usual fare, please.”

“She speaks,” Priscilla said in a purr.

Cooper had to give Lucy credit. She’d stayed quiet much longer than he’d expected.

“Oh, we’ll also need water,” Lucy said, looking up at Cooper. “For cleaning and drinking. I’m not sure if you separate it that way or if you reuse it unless you have showers.”

Priscilla narrowed her eyes. “Running water? We can get you a bucket of water, sweetness. That alright with you?”

“It works great for me. Big fan of buckets. They’re the backbone of agriculture and cleaning, really, if you think about it…” Lucy agreed, her smile as bright as the neon sign by the front window.

Priscilla looked at Cooper and then at Lucy, repeating the loop before she sauntered behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain strung up with zip ties. The distant hum of a generator underscored the silence as Cooper picked over the board of caricatures. Plenty of people were banned from the premises or with a bounty on their heads — no one stood out on the board, at least.

“She was giving us a weird look,” Lucy leaned closer to Cooper, feigning a swipe of her hand through her hair. The floor creaked as she shifted her weight closer to him. “Is it the bucket thing? I panicked.”

Cooper scoffed from the back of his throat.

“It is safe here, right? You trust her?”

“It’s safe,” Cooper bared his teeth at Lucy, begging her to return to the docile silence she’d thrived in.

“Then why — ”

Cooper hissed for her to shh through clenched teeth.

Priscilla pushed past the curtain. She gripped a little blue card with faded gold edges. A key with a golden ball chain was attached to the edge. It felt strangely archaic to be so formal about lodgings, but it was why he liked this place.

“I guess it makes sense,” Priscilla said as she slid the key to Cooper. She nodded to Lucy. “You wanting a girl who’s more… Old—world flavor. It reminds you of the golden years, hm?”

“Six, right?” Cooper ignored her question, his gaze fixed to the card.

“Six,” Priscilla repeated, her gaze on Lucy.

Cooper tossed a few caps onto the front desk, the clatter of metal their own punctuation. He notched his head towards the stairs, and Dogmeat and Lucy followed in stride. He was eager for the simple things — water, food, and a moment to let his bags rest.

“Wanting a girl…” Lucy smiled, mumbling more of Priscilla’s words under her breath.

After several flights of stairs and a few hours, Cooper felt all the better. He’d eaten his fill and enjoyed the peace of an enclosed room. He didn’t often allow himself such a luxury, as being in a settlement put a target on your back for any larger groups. But it’d been two weeks since they’d had proper rest out of the elements.

Tracking Hank wasn’t easy, either. That suit meant he could skip over all the pocked landscape and roaming threats. What would take him an hour to travel by air was a day for them sometimes, a fact that spurred Cooper on. But they couldn’t rush, as rushing would only get them killed.

One wrong step and you were deathclaw chow.

“God, more, please!”

And there went the silence. Cooper’s eye twitched; his lipless mouth sneered at the screeches.

Whoever had taken up residence in room five was making the most of their money — an hour straight of screams and moans, an hour straight of Lucy pretending to read. She’d picked up a holotape at the last outpost they’d stopped at; something about a sequel she’d always wanted to continue reading.

By the second hour, it wasn’t so much that room five stopped fucking. But they at least got a lot quieter about it. The occasional shriek or moan rattled through the air vents, but it was far and few between.

Lucy lay across the double bed, her boots discarded beside the door. Her vault suit hung from the defunct radiator. Her washing was all done, and she’d freshened up, the usual Lucy shit. She’d helped herself to the water and changed into some pajama set she’d pilfered from a house a few days back.

“I think it’s nice,” Lucy said into the open air of the hotel room.

Cooper looked up from his shotgun, teeth bared like he was trying to smile. “The quiet?”

“No,” Lucy smiled at the wall between them and room five. “That people can find love, even now.”

Cooper couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that. The cackles shook from low in his lungs and caught him so off-guard he hacked up some foul muck into his palm. He hissed through a wheezed breath as he fumbled with his RadAway puffer.

“I mean it! It’s not funny!”

“That ain’t love, Vaultie,” Cooper coughed out, his eyes narrowed as drool and tears mingled on his cheeks. He wiped his face, fine skin catching against the scarred, leathery mess. “That…” He pointed to the wall. “S’probably a whore and her John making the most of the caps.”

Lucy’s eyes darted as she picked apart what he’d said. “John..?”

“John’s a term for uh…” Cooper’s jaw strained against a smile, though it was far too cruel to be kind. “A guy who pays for sex.”

“Ah, wasteland slang,” she said with a solemn nod, as if it made sense she hadn’t caught on immediately.

“Old world slang,” Cooper corrected.

Lucy looked around the hotel room anew, like she’d finally caught on to what this place really was. She scooted to the edge of the bed, to sit with her legs angled towards him. “That woman at the front desk said you’d want a girl who’s old world — she thought I was a prostitute. ”

“Maybe.”

Lucy crossed her arms as if she had more to say on the matter. But then she remained quiet, uncharacteristically so.

“S’waste of caps.”

“Hiring me to have sex with you? Actually, I know all about sexual gratification, so I think it’d be a great use of money — caps.”

Cooper stared Lucy down as if he couldn’t parse what she’d just said. “Paying anyone money to fuck you is a waste.” Cooper tongued his lips apart. “Bullets. Meds. There’s shit worth paying for. Sex is — ”

“Important.”

“Sex ain’t worth much.”

“To you, maybe,” Lucy frowned. “It’s an act of love and intimacy, and… It’s how humanity continues, and it’s — fun if done well.”

“You wanna waste your caps on some cock?” Cooper snapped, his hand flapping at the door. “Be my guest.”

“No,” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to, but I’m saying that I… I think killing people is probably worse than sleeping with people for caps. If it’s to survive, I think it makes sense. Morally speaking.”

“Don’t,” Cooper snarled.

Cooper didn’t like how Lucy spoke to him most days, but this was a new, worse permutation. Her Vault-addled morality was sickening enough on its own, as she embodied whatever bullshit had been drip-fed to her by the company who’d bought her vault. Not that he was without sin, given the shit he’d done to survive this long.

But sex and love and all that shit was not front of mind. He needed to find his family and to know what happened to them. He didn’t need a two-cap blowjob from a stranger in the dim light of some bar. Though, in all honesty, his drug habit mixed with the amount of alcohol he’d drowned himself in, some nights got hazy.

There’s that animalistic, self-destructive part of him that won on his worst nights. The same part of him that kept him alive, the same part that let him do all the miserable shit he needed to do to survive.

But it’s certainly never been love. Not since Barb.

Never again, he’d wager.

"I had sex once," Lucy said this like it was a point of pride, now on her feet. She idled beside the bed, her gaze settled onto the empty space she’d been lying. "With my husband, but…" Her face twisted with this delayed amusement. She turned towards him, closing the gap between them.

Lucy’s eyes remained unfocused as she stared at the marked table between them, where his shotgun lay across a dirty cloth. "Does that make us both widows..? You said you have a family, right? So, you were probably married and had at least one kid. Not trying to presume, so tell me if I’m wrong, but… You said that in the observatory. That’s what you’re after."

Cooper parted his lips, a nasty tilt to his hairless brow.

Lucy gave a tight smile. "I was married. Only for a few hours, but… It was an arranged marriage, I didn’t meet him until the wedding. It turned out he was a raider from the surface posing as my match from Vault 32 and…" At this point, Lucy caught herself. “I feel for you, if you lost someone. That’s all.”

“You ain’t a widow.”

“Technically — ”

Cooper stood up, unable to stay seated. “You say you’re a widow like it’s a fact outta some book. The shit you went through — you’re an experiment gone wrong, not a damn widow,” Cooper said, his voice flat.

Lucy’s face twitched at his words as if she struggled to keep her smile. “Well, guess what? We’re all an experiment gone wrong, whether you’re in a vault or not.”

Cooper’s eyes twitched, narrowing in the dark of their hotel room. Room five was quiet, which made this moment all the worse. He didn’t like how she spoke about him, as if she knew what was happening in his mind. He wasn’t some wounded man looking for sympathy.

He wasn’t anything.

“Go back to your holotapes,” Cooper said with a jut of his chin. “You’ve been up here a few weeks, acting like you know how it is.”

“Well, I know we’ve all been screwed over by people hundreds of years ago, and I’m sorry if I’m not as beaten down by it as you, but — I’m just trying to share things with you, to…” Lucy struggled through her words, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. “We don’t have to be friends, but we have to be — something.”

The couple in room five screeched. Cooper tensed out of habit but relaxed again when he reasoned what the noise was. It didn’t solve the fierce look on Lucy’s face as she stared him down, her fists clenched by her pajama-clad thighs.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Lucy said, shaking her damp hair out of her face. She stood idle by the table as if she had just realized she had stepped towards him in their argument. There was a bird-like shake to her chest, her heart and lungs quick beneath bone.

It was moments like this that made his nature crystalline to him — that thin line she couldn’t perceive of how easy it’d be to string her up by the ankles and bleed her dry. Of how easy it’d be to slide into that ache for warm flesh between his teeth and blood down his throat.

Ghouls aren’t welcome in most settlements for a reason, and Lucy is too damn optimistic to learn that lesson.

Cooper tongued the inside of his cheek, and his teeth gnashed at the frayed edge of his lip. “We have to be something, huh?”

Lucy’s brow twitched, and her jaw strained as she tried to stand taller. She nodded as something like hope softened her stern expression.

It wasn’t hard to close the gap. It was even easier to grab that ponytail she always wore and yank her head close, fist tight in her hair as he brought her close. Her hand scrabbled against the table, and nails dug into the wood as their eyes met.

“Don’t you ever talk about my family again,” Cooper said, his voice level. “We clear?”

Lucy’s breathing redoubled, but she nodded. Her nostrils flared as he let her go with a firm shove. There was a real sense of satisfaction as he felt her perception of him shift as if she’d forgotten she was dealing with a monster rather than a man. As if the rotted skin and exposed tensions, or the gaping hole where his nose had once been, weren’t enough warning.

Pretty girls in Hollywood were overlooked as much in his time — all in the name of survival in a race that no one really won. You took your part and played it until the work dried up. Then, you prayed for sponsorships, deals, and other things to spare you from the real world.

He watched it with co-stars, time and again. It wasn’t much different now, just less rhinestones and more rads.

#cooper howard #lucy maclean #fallout spoilers #fallout #vaultghoul #cooper x lucy #my writing

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therealslimshakespeare · 6 months ago

Text

Even my Friends just Love Her

|| Dear John Series 💌

Warnings: 18+ sexual and thematic material, not a lot in this chapter but some brief voyeurism and mention of naughty photographs, letters and imagined sex acts

Coauthored: honestly bless my baby Bri who I begged to beta read this when I was stumped three quarters of the way to completion and she went above and beyond and gave the ending of this segment so much life, pretty phrasing and a beating heart. It was a total joy to work on this with you, darling, thanks for your lovely idea that spawned this whole series in the first place.💋 so many thanks to Christi and Ashley who endured my screams about Spangles and writers block

April-May 1945

Her tenth night in Paris found Marge Spencer hard at work earning her keep as a trusted member of The Lana Tierney’s retinue.

She didn’t mind the labor, it had paid for a boat ride and a plane over the pond and the prettiest shared suite in the Ritz, with a view of the iconic skyline and more macaroons than Marge knew what to do with. An American girl of average means, moderate schooling and a vast imagination, Marge felt like pinching herself that her view consisted of the Eiffel Tower; instead, she applied herself more earnestly to her occupation and diligently set about petting the soft white fur fringing Spangles’ little pink nose.

That was the extent of Marge’s job description, pet Spangles, feed Spangles, brush Spangles, wash Spangles, walk Spangles, carry Spangles; anytime Julie Jean couldn't tend to Spangles herself, Marge was at the ready.

Spangles, you see, was a white bunny rabbit of the masculine sex given to Julie on her latest War Bond tour by a Marine gunner and nothing short of death could part the two. He had a blue velvet collar, a fetching little name tag hanging from it and a very active set of whiskers.

“Spangles was my dearest friend before you.” Julie had told Marge when she first introduced them and Marge had done her best to not crumple at that unwittingly dismal revelation.

There had been a lot of those. Julie Jean, as Miss Lana insisted Marge call her, was a unicorn of sorts. Very magical, very shiny, very fragile, dubiously real even to herself. For someone so universally adored she was the loneliest creature Marge had ever encountered, before meeting her she had assumed that waifish little fairies like Julie didn’t exist outside of rather maudlin novels. That felt like a very cruel denial of a very real predicament in retrospect. Julie's happiness was unbounded, universally ignited and childlike in its exuberance, her sadness was without a bit of restraint beyond some brittle and fleeting acting capabilities of keeping it together until she got to the powder room.

During their brief friendship, Marge had already spent a great deal of time hugging the starlet and patting her milk white shoulders in powder rooms. Anyone else indulging in such frequent fits might have caused Marge to give them a little shove and advice to ‘chin up’, but Julie did “chin up” so thoroughly and profitably in between -more than anyone Marge had ever known- that Marge felt rather unentitled to that specific sermon. When Julie was up, she was really up and so was everyone within a mile radius of her. And when she was down -only the single person with her or Spangles knew it. And Marge figured that was a pretty decent way to live; as were three room suites at the Ritz and more flowers on flat spots than a funeral home.

What was missing was someone specific to channel it all into. But that, Marge knew, was why they were in Paris: so that Julie Jean could pour out what she had to offer to an entire crowd of furloughed GI’s or else the recently liberated POWs still waiting for transit and looking altogether too thin and too shocked by their first female sighting in over a year. Julie managed them all beautifully, standing under hot afternoon suns and chilly evening spring breezes like a champ, in spindly heels and fetching chiffon straps, collecting flowers and kisses and horror stories with unfading aplomb.

Tagging behind her each day, cradling Spangles and the overflow of flowers not even Herb could manage, Marge grew tired just by observing. You had to have some kind of heart to keep doing what Julie did day after day. Wake up looking forward to it. You had to have an awfully large receptacle to receive what she had to give, too.

A revolving crowd of hundreds of GIs -or Bucky Egan.

Tagging behind, ever watchful for threatening Hollywood acquaintances or freshly liberated boyfriends in the crowd, Marge had no luck so far. She went to each show, mingled in each press of the crowd before and after, scanning, always scanning for blue eyes and golden hair and the sweetest face she’d ever known.

Gale. There was no reason to think he’d be here, but it had been ages since their last letters, only word had been that they’d been moved and that was from some other pilot in the same gargantuan holding place. As the flurry of a world war wrapping up took hold of bedraggled Europe, no one knew where anyone was. Unless you were a world famous starlet residing at the Ritz in a very promoted continental tour -then folks knew how to find you and serenade you under your hotel window.

Communication lagged terribly and it was a roll of the dice whether your next bit of news would be the most tragic or joyful you’d ever received. Whether you’d hold the person you missed or the telegram regarding them first.

So Marge scanned the crowds and tried her best to receive the overflow of flowers -and the occasional kiss- from the men around her with half the grace Julie showed each. It was really all very flattering, very exciting, and while back home in America there was felt the buzz of approaching victory, nowhere exuded it in such frantic merriment of expectation like Paris.

“Everything’s better in Paris.” Julie had told Marge on the way over, dreamy and giddy herself that her plan had worked, that they were headed over to the same land mass as their men, and that Marge was with her, “Even the best things in the world get magnified in Paris. That’s why everyone doubts it’s real. But it is Marge! It is!”

So far, even sitting on the carpeted floor of the suite, staring out the balcony after ten nights spent here, and petting Spangles wet fur for a living, Marge had to agree it felt more than a little magical.

“Laaaa!” Julie’s exclamation interrupted her reverie, silver belled voice matching the atmosphere to perfection, “Wasn’t that a bop?”

She’d been soaking in that tub for two hours, tap turning and on and off to add more hot water and Marge thought her poor, no doubt sore, feet deserved every second of the extravagance. Plus the room now smelled of bath salts that Marge was pretty sure were the very distilled essence of seduction. And that complimented her view of the Parisian skyline, too.

“Always is with you at the mic.” Marge swore, meaning it, too. Nine shows in ten days and even though she had ulterior motives for attending Lana’s shows -scanning, always scanning- Marge was astounded by the variety and interest the entertainment retained after repeated tastings.

“Yeah? Really? Honest?” Julie sat herself cross legged on the fluffy duvet at the foot of their shared, king sized bed, and chewed her lip like it was her first performance ever. There had been another suite with another bed, and after the second night when Julie heard Marge crying her little heart out over Gale, the consolation had been made. Julie was eager for sleepovers. Never had them before, she swore.

Now these chats happened each night.

“Honest.” Marge got up from seat on the floor and came over to the bed, setting Spangles between them, “You gotta know that? Like those screams and yells were all hoo haa. Trust me, Julie, it was electric. You were electric. Again.”

They sat and pet Spangles in silence for a few moments before Julie spoke up again, soft and sweet as she watched Marge’s dimple deepen, “You’ve made this trip so much better than any other I’ve taken, you know that, Margie? Paris is how it should be with you.” she proclaimed triumphantly, “Lovely and pretty and makes me feel like I can float.”

“You can in my book.” Marge drawled, chucking under Julie’s chin, the girl looked half too young without the makeup and Marge felt it was easier to be friends like that.

Just two girls and a bunny in Paris.

“What do you think they’re doing right now?” Julie whispered.

They spent most of their sleepovers talking about them -the boys. Speculating happy little comforts for them and spinning happy little ever-after’s for themselves when this all wrapped up.

“Hopefully cuddling for warmth.” Marge’s grin grew sly, the mental picture too amusing even if it was bittersweet.

A small commotion in the hall outside sent both girls into high alert suddenly, Spangles’ whiskers twitching in solidarity for their anticipation. This had been happening most nights, too.

“Is it them do you think?” Julie gleefully whispered, untangling her legs and tiptoeing to the door with Marge begrudgingly protesting but following nonetheless.

Julie was generous with the peephole and Marge had given up pretending to be above the jovial pastime of people watching -especially when their swanky floor at the Ritz meant they had the most shocking sort of neighbors. Ingrid Bergman for one, and as of the last six days; accompanied by a man who was not her husband.

“He’s dark.” Marge reported, finally getting a better look at the man in question as the illicit lovers grappled in a kiss and fumbled longer than usual at their key.

“Lemme!” Julie shoved at Marge’s giggling frame and tiptoed to line her eye up, “Ooooh, lord! Marge, Marge I think that’s Capa!”

Marge made a disgusted little face. “Frank Capra? ‘Why We Fight’ Capra? Isn’t he old?”

“No, no.” Julie swatted at her without tearing her eye from her spying view, “Robert Capa -life magazine. War Photographer, Hungarian, very dangerous profession.”

“Being hungarian?” Marge snorted, “Or stealing wives?”

“Oh hush they’re so in love.” Julie whined, rapt attention until the door of the opposite suite banged shut with a decisive crash. “They’re so in love.” she moaned, letting her forehead thud against the door, allowing herself to dramatically slide down the length of the door to the plush carpet.

“He’s very hairy.” Marge was amusedly unimpressed.

“I don’t want him for meeeee!” Julie whined and Marge sensed another little fir coming on and cast a furtive glance at the macarons and tissues across the room on the side table. “It just reminds one of being in love.”

“Well, don’t fret, that’ll be you and John Egan in no time, clawing wallpaper and ruining respectable people’s evenings.”

Julie looked up at her unimpressed and Marge could have recited from memory the next fussy little cry: “He’ll probably hate me.”

Marge sighed and knowing this was going to be a little bit of a moment, sat down beside her, back to the door, matching pajamas a cool silk rub against each other as she hugged the poor girl. “No he won’t.” She insisted, “He’ll think you’re a silly little goose for crying so much over him and he’ll think you’re smart as anything for all the money you’ve raised -and the good you’ve done. He’s an ambitious man, he’s not one to knock a good idea. I bet he’s proud as anything. If he knows about acorn -he’s proud. You can count on it.”

They did this every evening, too.

Julie had never known a lovelier creature more convinced they were unlovable. It helped that the comforting sentiments she dished out like tranquilizers were firmly true; in fact, if anything, Marge was a little braced for the shock of Julie being quite happily eaten alive by the most voracious man she’d ever had the fortune to meet.

“I might as well jump into the Seine if not.” Julie commented casually.

“Yeah, well,” Marge tempered with a squeeze, “maybe don’t come on to him with that one.”

After some time of more innocuous conversation, a commotion startled them, the triple rap of knuckles on the door behind their backs -Herb’s special little knock. They shared a spooked look. Marge, quite settled in her protector mode, rose first. She gave the peephole a cursory little look to make certain before sliding the lock and cracking the door open as wide as was respectable in silk pajamas.

“Herb?”

“Miss Spencer, Miss Julie,” he gave a nod, something odd in his bearing, a simmering thing near to nervous excitement that jarred with his sober expression, “sorry to bother, but there’s been a development in the lobby -I, ya see, I’ve been turnin’ all the young bucks away after you go up, as you asked but -there’s one down there now-“

“Does he need a room?” Julie inquired anxiously, she’d put up about ten refugee families in various little suites and over a couple dozen servicemen, “That silly concierge not letting you put it on my tab?”

“No miss, this one’s not lookin’ for a room.” Herb’s keen eyes skittered to Marge, an almost cautionary expression on his face, “He says he recently escaped a camp and by the look of him I’d belive it. He’s asking for -for Miss. Spencer, Miss.”

“What?” Marge was not one to be cautioned against hope, “Herb! What did he say? Where is -what’s he look like? What did he say his name-“

“Gale.” Herb let it drop gently. “Said his name was Gale Cleven, and that Miss Turner didn’t know him but her Bunny Friend did. That he saw Miss Spencer’s face in the papers when he got in this evening, he’s meant to be flown out tomorrow.”

“Julie’s Bunny Friend!” Marge repeated with a hysterical little cry, watery smile gone megawatt, “Julie!! Julie it’s gotta be him!”

“Well, well should we-“ Julie patted her pajamaed self down in a bewildered state of companion joy, “-should we go down? Should he- Herb!” too flustered she begged for some direction.

“Up here, I’d think miss.” he advised, “If he’s not the one, there’s no scene made, I can keep him in the hallway while Miss Spencer’s makes use of the peephole -as she is so fond of doing ages after I knock.”

Marge gave him a wry face which he returned in kind.

“Herb, is he -alone?” Julie asked suddenly, voice quite small and Marge could have knocked herself over the head with the ice bucket for being so very callous.

“Yes? Is there a dark haired, tall, big, loud-“

“-American major with him named John?” Herb supplied, ever astute and dampening in the extreme, “No, he’s alone. Or that is, besides the army man who drove him in.”

“Right.” Julie wiped her sweating palms on her thighs, sitting heavily on the bed but doing her damndest to maintain a bright smile. “Don’t leave poor Major Cleven down there any longer, Herb! Bring him up! I’ll wring for room service.”

“He -he may not be-“ Herb cautioned once more but Julie was adamant, already dialing:

“No, no more buts, it’ll be him. And he’ll have news of John. Go! Go go go!”

Marge gave Herb a pitying shrug of solidarity but the minute he was out in the hall she gave all pretense of calm, turning in a giddy spin that spooked poor Spangled and took out an already precarious floral arrangement. “Should I dress? Should I-“ Marge patted herself down now, but Julie, having primly placed her order and tipped it with a sugar coated thanks came over to her, and merely began to take Marge’s blond strands out of their rag curlers.

“No, you should have your hair undone.” the actress proclaimed, “And your top button, too.”

“Julie!“ Marge gasped, somehow it all felt so very likely, with him possibly downstairs, maybe in the elevator now, all their naughty little girls chats suddenly leaving the realm of hypothetical at the likelihood of Gale actually seeing that extra sliver of skin in mere moments.

“Marge.” Julie gave it back to her, fingers insistent on the silk, “It’s up to you to welcome him home.” she preached with girlish simplicity, “And as you’re not home yourself, you must make do, bring home with you.”

“How?” Marge stressed.

“There is nothing more domestic than a lady in a carefully crafted state of repose.”

“There’s not?”

“No, there’s not. ‘Me? Just rolled outta bed to welcome ya honey!’ See?” Julie parroted her alter ego with a little shimmy that sent her own curves jiggling beneath the shiny fabric in such a blatant way that even Marge had to admit she had a point. “Besides,” she added with practicality that sounded very much parroted from Marge herself, “we don’t have time and there’s nothing sexy or welcoming about a woman struggling into her house dress.”

“Ohhh shooo!” Marge began to hit at her when another knock sounded.

“Oh god.” Julie vocalized for her, squeezing Marge’s hand encouragingly, “It’ll be him.” she rallied.

“Yes.” Marge set her chin firmly and having plucked up her bravery, strode to the door purposefully. Somehow it felt like a doubt unworthy of their love for her to use the peephole, so without even a moment's delay in turning the handle, Marge flung wide the suite door and stared back at the two men outside in the hall.

He was pale as spector, those dear and onetime soft features nearly gaunt from deprivation, a criss-cross of purpling scars cutting across parchment skin; but the eyes were the same, sunken and dulled as they were, the same soul stared back at her and the thread between them held firm.

“Marge?” that voice was just as deep and thrilling and homey as she remembered, it had melted her belly and filled her with devotion from his first greeting in Texas. She had not stood a chance, not then and not now.

She was throwing her silk clad self against his filthy overcoat before she could fully comprehend anything else beyond it being him -it was him.

“Gale, Gale, Gale it’s you!” Marge panted in his embrace, the heavy feeling of his hand cradling her head a long imagined thing that winded her in reality.

Julie stood back mildly stunned. She fiddled with her own turban, having forgotten to see to her own appearance. If watching Capra and Bergman hurt so good this- this was bone deep beauty that hurt like a hundred little cuts soothed by a warm bath. Major Cleven was muttering about dirt and redefining what missing her meant into something eternal and something else comparing Marge to angels.

Julie and Herb exchanged the communicative glance of well satisfied colleagues over the lovebirds’ shoulders. If she looked hard she thought she could see commiseration in his face, too. It was intolerable, and she turned her back on the scene and fumbled on the bureau for her cigarette case. The latch was being pesky, it made a clatter as she tried to wrestle it open on the tortoiseshell table top. She’d dropped the thing one too many times, and now the latch was busted just so that it was a bore to get it open.

“Miss Turner.” her real name spoken by a man made her jump, all the more so as he was so close behind her, suddenly deep into the suite as Julie had let too many moments go in her fight with the case.

Julie braced herself on the bureau and turned round to give Major Cleven his deserved smile. He really was as beautiful and ethereal as Marge talked of, recognizing in him some matching features to her own made her want to giggle in embarrassed disbelief at Egan’s obvious preferences. But her quips and greetings died on her tongue at his intense stare, a pink flush making it into his sallow cheeks the longer he looked at her and she recalled how he had seen her picture. But still he held her gaze and behind him Marge looked encouragingly expectant, and as if he could feel his girl’s prodding, he rallied.

“Miss Turner I-“ Gale Cleven looked at a loss for a brief moment, “-for everything! Thank you, for everything.”

“Why, whatever for? I-“ Julie’s batting little laugh was smothered by a sudden and engulfing hug of her own, and while she’d endured and repaid many a hug from soldiers and men alike, this one was different. “Oh Major Cleven, it’s alright, it’s a joy really.” She patted at his back and tried to grin back at Marge’s watery eyed happiness. Herb had gratefully closed the door behind the bedraggled major.

“You saved his life, ya know?” Cleven had pulled away suddenly, very emphatic hands on her shoulders and Julie caught a glimpse of something fatherly like she’d only imagined. “You’re what kept him going.”

“Did he-“ Julie felt her voice grow thin, in aggravation she about stomped her foot in his embrace, “-did he hear? I tried to send messages after-“

“He heard, ‘em.” Gale’s little nod shook her, too.

“He did?” Some chipped and unsettled hope was suddenly falling right into place in her heart, cemented and sure, “He did. But, he’s not with you?” she couldn’t help the little beg.

Cleven’s face fell and so did his hands. Marge approached them, feeling a presentiment. “What happened?”

“We planned to make a run for it together.” Cleven sounded guilty as hell, “Had to be that night. Two went over the wall just fine and I was following and he was behind and they spotted us.” If Julie could have found it in herself to hate him, the wretched look he flashed her would have compelled forgiveness on the spot, “He told me to go -and I did. And I heard shots after and I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Stunned, not at all expecting something of that nature, Julie clung to her furniture a little harder and tried to lean on that newly fastened hope in her heart. They had been connected all this time, she had felt it and now Gale had confirmed it and, she may be insane for it but- “It’s alright, we don’t know, which means we don’t know anything bad either.”

“Yes!” Marge’s voice was a little overly emphatic for the quiet moment, “That’s true! Nothing bad.”

“I know he’d take care of himself,” Gale offered, “-he has been. Just for you. Only thing keeping him on the straight and narrow.”

“Then I think,” Julie dared, feeling her cheeks growing hot and wet, this night being altogether too much to pretend at something close to sanity when with dear friends, “I think we’d know, don’t you? Me and you, we'd

know if he wasn't ... here anymore."

Gale looked at her like she was crazy but at the same time, understanding unfurled behind his eyes, as if he wasn’t used to relying on feelings like this, but it didn’t mean he didn’t know they were real.

Julie meant it, and believing it made some loathsome part of himself calm under the comfort of it. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I think we would.”

“Now!” Julie clapped her hands, Lana’s mask coming to smooth her face and brighten her smile, it wasn’t fair to Gale or to Marge to make this a somber evening, late as it was -this was Paris! The Ritz! If a celebration couldn’t be had and comforts procured, where could they be? “What we do have on our hands -is you! And you look as if you could use a burger and coke and a bath! And I’ve got all of them here, don’t argue, don’t you dare, Marge deserves to see you fed and moderately clean, don’t you think?”

Put that way, as a service to someone else, Gale Cleven only had weak thanks and pale rebuttals about needing to be at the newly rebuilt airport outside the city to get back to Thorpe Abbots tomorrow. He was still enthralled to military time, he hadn’t counted on this, not at all, but it didn’t change things-

“I’ve got a valet, Major, he could get you to Siberia tomorrow if you needed. Now hush, I’ve rung for food. Where are they? Herb! Herb!”

“It’s best to just go with it.” Marge teased him as he catatonically watched the starlet boss about the waiters and her valet, bewildered and bamboozled at the sudden luxury. The sudden proximity of his girl, too.

Suddenly there was nothing else on his mind but one thing, “You said yes.” he reminded in the middle of the chaos swirling around them.

“Yeah,” Marge’s dimples popped, “yeah I did.”

“You still of that mind?” he nudged closer, noses brushing and he was aware that he was filthy, but she was magnetic and willing.

“You’d have to drop off the earth to get out of this one, Major Cleven.”

Gale refused to sit on anything while Julie and Marge fed him from a sumptuous buffet off the cart. He swore he was too dirty to even stand in such a nice place like this but he was also shaky, pale and in dire need of food and with two little blondes plying him with the first bits of American cuisine he’d had in years, he wavered and stayed. His insistence on going to his original billet grew weaker with each passing moment as Marge smiled at him and fed him fries. By the time Herb had been sent down to inform Major Cleven’s jeep driver that his passenger was lost to welcoming arms, Gale had quite forgotten much of anything beyond the feel of a full stomach and the promise of a bath.

For a long time he sat in the cold porcelain shell and ran the water over himself, such a terrible amount of filth and grim didn’t deserve a bath, it would turn even his hardened stomach to sit in the juices of a year and a half’s captivity. So after being shooed by Julie Jean into her intolerably bright and ornate en-suite bathroom, complete with a star’s assortment of toiletries and the bunny’s monogrammed food and water bowls, Gale gingerly let his ratty clothes fall to the marble floor and stepped into the tub.

Over the roar of the faucet he was unaware of the tittering whispers at the door -still slightly ajar and unlatched as Julie Jean was nothing if not a little wicked. And concerned.

“People drown in bathtubs where I come from all the time!” She refuted Marge’s scandalized objections.

“Yes, because they’re pickled with booze!”

“After what he’s been through he’s in about as good of shape.”

Marge knew that statement wasn’t false exactly but her hand still fluttered over her belly in nervousness at the impropriety. “Alright.” she went with it, breathlessly anxious and a little flustered at the blurry something beyond that chink in the hinge.

“Aren’t you going to peak?” Julie unfolded the rest of her play with an alarming smirk. “Come on, he’s going to marry you, how many times will you see him in his natural state at the ritz?”

It wasn’t fair to put it like that, to remind Marge she was living on borrowed fairytale time. It was a deep seated fear she had shared with Julie once as they had the covers tucked up to their chin’s and their hearts out on their pillow cases -that she woke sometimes with a feeling of terrifying urgency and nothing but regrets for a laundry list of bypassed chances she had not taken. Upon waking further and regaining some sanity, she couldn’t for the life of her recall what these fateful omissions that startled her so badly had even been. But times like these, when she went to be good but then was asked if that really was worth her time, such urgency crept back, nagging. “Go on then.” Julie slipped aside, her battle won as Marge surrendered and delicately placed her cheek against the door frame, an eye to the crack.

She had spent many nights imagining the whole of Gale, a beautiful back she had only seen beneath drab olive, the nipped waist and the lanky legs that sent his trousers on a mile long spill of fabric. Her breath hitched at the pale expanse now before her, each proportion how she lovingly recalled but this time without obstruction or disguise, a strange dichotomy: the youthful taper and swell of his backside jarring with stark ribs and a mottle of ugly bruises and festered creases. She didn’t know if her gasp came from desire or commiseration, jerking her face back from the sliver of light as Gale turned his head sharply, as if feeling her observation even as the water had hid her inadvertent noise. Either uncaring or convinced he was mistaken, she watched as Gale stepped into his tub and promptly sank his head beneath the splash.

Julie watched Marge as she watched Gale and she wondered if this is what it was like in fairytales when the gates of the kingdom are thrown open, everything wanted and wished for is there. The protagonists never know what to do with a dream come true, do you eat it? Fondle, crush, preserve it in a glass case? Such a cruel kindness, dreams that come true; Marge’s twitching fingers and gasping lips suggested a torture going on inside her, heavy lidded love and belly hot want.

Julie swore to herself then, she’d feel it too. Soon, she’d be watching the man who owned the jacket as he showed her himself, just as he’d written his heart out for her eyes alone, one day soon he’d be naked and hers and she could watch him and do what people do with dreams.

Perhaps feeling vindictive for being ignored, or perhaps merely thirsty, Spangles suddenly made a series of determined little hops across the suite floor, threaded the blockade of the girls’ feet with ease and, perhaps seeing his chance, nudged open the crack of the bathroom door only to bounce along the marble floor in a cacophonous clatter of little paws that even Gale could hear over the faucet’s roar. Like a slippery fish, he skidded to his side along the bottom of the wide tub, a pink, bath-warmed hand clutching at the edge and hauling his sopping head above the lip to observe his long eared visitor -and the guilty little audience of girls in their night clothes at the threshold.

The look he leveled Marge made Julie’s toes tingle and second guess how chaste these two’s reportedly tame trysts pre-war had really been. “We merely wanted to make sure you didn’t-“ Marge clasped and unclasped her hands, “-drown.” it was a deflated little excuse by the time she got it out.

Spangles had begun to sneeze, ever sensitive to steam and Yardley’s lavender soap, his poor little legs skidding apart further and further on the damp floor. Gale bit his lip from laughing at the cute little creature’s plight.

“Oh laa!” Julie gave up all pretense and entered to save him -the bunny, that is- causing Gale to flail a little harder as if there was a deeper level to the bottom of his tub where he could take refuge. “Add in the bubbles, Major,” Julie always had a remedy, “it’ll hide everything nicely. Don’t ruin poor Marge’s first evening with you by being a prude, she misses you. It’s been years, you know.”

They spent much of that evening in the following way, Gale in his topped off tub, Marge with a mostly useless cloth beside him on the ledge, and Julie primly sat with Spangles in her lap on the closed toilet seat.

“Bucky’s confirmed as best man.” He told Marge, sheepish grin breaking out until both girls laughed at the thought of the boys indulging in their own wedding planning.

He tells them about the radio he built, about the first time they heard her broadcasts, of the photo she’d sent which Bucky and him divided in half each keeping their girl in their pocket,

about Brady and the liturgy of devotion he made up for Egan to recite to Julie’s printed picture on the combine wall. The particulars were left out, Gale being a gentleman to the last, but Julie glowed and wept under the obtuse assurance anyway.

“I trust you kept him warm.” Julie demands, “Seeing as how it’s your fault he didn’t take his jacket.”

Gale tells her of Egan’s presumptuous bunk sharing, how strange things were happening every day and that grew to be commonplace. At her inquiring look he only blushes and stares down at the water, the bruise on his throat blooming under the flush, and for once Julie thinks she knows Gale Cleven better than his Marge.

“I’ve gotta be on that flight tomorrow early!” Gale had just enough energy left to fret even as he was led in a fluffy terry cloth robe to the sofa and made to lay down on fluffed pillows under a velvet duvet.

“Don’t worry about it major, I’ve got everything sorted. We’re coming with you.” Julie insisted, without having even discussed it with anyone as it didn’t require it -of course they’d be going to England with him! And no, she had nothing sorted but as soon as she had Gale deposited on the sofa with Marge’s hands entwined with his from her place on the floor, Julie Jean sent for Herb and summarily entrusted him with sorting it.

“Before seven thirty am tomorrow, please.”

Alone in bed, as Marge had made a poor showing of joining her only to go “check on his breathing” and predictably not returned, Julie lay awake and thought of John. Fat, hot tears rolled out the corner of her eyes and into her ears, tickling her, making a miserable spot on her pillow. Whispering prayers with her eyes on the skyline, she begged him to stay alive for her. “We’re so close, sweet man. We are so close and I love you too much.”

By next morning Herb did indeed have things sorted. Or close to it. There was a small hitch. “Mr. Huston is confused by your change of plans.” Herb informed her as he oversaw the bellman with the last of the trunks. He had ensured Major Cleven’s threadbare uniform had been cleaned and pressed in the night, and when Gale appeared out the en-suite bathroom this morning he looked a modicum closer to how Marge recalled him shipping out.

“What doesn’t he understand?” Julie asked, feeling cross and dreadful suddenly.

“He asked to hear it from you. Room 608.”

“Well I, I suppose I should run by it and then we can be on our way.” Julie decided with brave sprightliness, fixing the little net on her hat to cover more than just her eyes.

“We’ll go with you.” Marge decided with forceful kindness; her pull on his arm was all the command Gale needed not to protest.

“Who’s Huston?” he asked as the elevator whirled them one floor higher.

“My business partner in the broadcast.” Julie replied, “And the man paying for this excursion. I suppose he’d like to make certain I’ve not gone looney.”

Mr. Huston’s cuban valet opened the door and behind him, despite the fresh morning hour, was a scene out of one of Gatsby’s parties. Multiple women in little clothing and a significant amount of discarded booze littered the place, and Huston, smoking a cigarette and flicking through the paper, did not even bother to leave his perch against the headboard. Julie suddenly felt as if she were seeing the scene through newcomers eyes and her face burned to be associated with it.

“Jack.” She greeted, knowing that despite how he had moved on for the most part, he would have teased her maliciously for trying to distance herself in front of her friends.

“Baby.” He flopped down his newspaper, “What’re you doing in here wearin’ tweeds? You know how I hate tweed, does nothing for your assets. God take off that jacket and pour a drink -who’re your friends?”

Julie clutched the donned sheepskin even tighter and could almost sense Gale Cleven shifting from one foot to the other, a loose stance of being on guard. “This is Major Cleven of the mighty eighth, and you know my dear friend Marge -she’s is his fiancé.”

“Ah, a fellow airman!” Jack perked up, rising off the bed with his full chest on display under a gaping embroidered robe and approached Cleven with a smug sense of equality. He stuck out his hand and Gale made him wait five whole seconds before he returned the grip, tightly. “Pleasure, Major.”

“Do I know your squadron?” He drawled.

“Oh, I’m an observer mostly. But I’ve seen some combat.” Jack didn’t have a group, those wings on his uniform meant about as much as Lana’s broach collection in regard to brave service.

It was like Gale could smell the costume party off him, and Lana admired him immensely for that. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Pacific theater mainly”

Gale was smiling sympathetically and it was the most unsettling thing Marge had ever seen, and it satisfied something deep inside her that had loathed Huston since she first met him in the lobby ten days ago, his hand encroaching down her back and his language towards Lana so territorially possessive it gave the impression of her friend being a collectors item instead of flesh and blood.”Heard it was real windy on those atolls.” Gale remarked.

Huston’s smile wavered but only in confusion, no shard of doubt finding its way into his mind that it was derision curling Gale’s lip. “So- London?”

“East Anglia, actually.” Julie dared, “Major Cleven is in need of a ride” that wasn’t exactly true but “and I thought it would mean a great deal to give him a lift.” After a lengthy pause where Jack just stared at her with a smokescreen between them from his cigarette she added, “Great press, too.”

“You soft hearted little dolt.” Jack barked a laugh and it made Julie jump like all his rash emotions did, he pinched her cheek and tickled her ribs right beneath the swell of herbrassier as he went around her to his desk. “Ok, ok, you can have it. I’ll swing by to collect it and maybe get some footage for the documentary. What’s your group?” he asked Cleven.

“100th.”

“Oh, hell, I’ll definitely be swinging by.” Huston whistled, mind already ablaze with prospective press. “And you,” he pointed at Julie with his checkbook poised like a loaded gun, “better find something to do over there besides playing chauffeuring cupid, something that’ll make your mother think you aren’t going off script.” Julie gave him a frantic nod as victory was in sight and he went on, “But I’ll definitely be swinging by, I’ll pick you up, we’ll go back home out of London. Say, first week of May.”

Julie had no capacity to argue with her benefactor and meekly accepted his proffered momentary advance. She could only pray that John Egan would be in East Anglia by then, and she’d know something of her future: whether ‘home’ would depend on men such a Huston and their fickle lust or a steady ever after with an honest man like John.

“Thanks Jack I-I-I won’t forget t-this.” she managed, before they all dashed out the suite, Cleven having to be pulled from measuring up his seedy benefactor, and down to the taxi stand -England bound.

————————————————

Harry Crosby was taking sharp turns down the long runway at a pace and tempo Rosie Rosenthal did not find suitable but they made it alright, just as the anomaly of a jet came to a full stop on the runway, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the utilitarian bombers stacked alongside on the hardstands. When the radio tower had gotten buzzed for landing instructions from a foreign craft everyone had gone a little bizerk with speculation, but the pilot himself put them out of their suspense when he told Kidd that his cargo included The Lana Tierney and a Major Gale Cleven.

Harry had raced Rosie down the stairs to the nearest jeep and had begun to accelerate before his friend even fully landed in shotgun. Now they were just in time to see the hatch opened and the lanky and familiar figure of Gale Cleven drop to the tarmac in a graceful crouch.

“Harry!” He greeted as he straightened, his voice robust even if his constitution appeared battered by captivity, “They still got you at this dump?”

“Fresh outta the stalag Major,” Harry gave him grief back, “and getting dropped off on base in a private plane with Lana Tierney?”

“Yeah,” Rosie added, “What kinda war you been runnin’ anyway?”

Gale laughed off their backslapping greetings before suddenly recollecting, “Oh, right I forget. Ladies?” and turned back to offer his arms for Marge to take and he swung her gently to the ground.

“Boys, this is Marge.”

“Of course it is.” Harry admired with a hand outstretched to shake hers before he peered up into the plane, not being disappointed when he caught sight of a pair of ever so delicate ankles. “Holy mackerel, it is Bucky’s girl.” he blurted loudly as Lana’s angelic face peered back at him, as pristine and fuckable as her photographs but the delectable whole of her was swathed in Egan’s goddamn sheepskin.

“Aren’t you pretty.” Julie Jean admired Crosby right back, liking him immensely already for the fact he recognized her as Bucky’s girl. “Are you also strong?”

“I- I mean, sorta, not as much as-“ Harry stammered before realizing her meaning and so stretched out his arms to be of use, “allow me, Miss Tierney.” he helped her to the ground with a swing that was perhaps the most graceful of his life, gods be good. She was holding a little white bunny and Harry was instantly charmed.

“Thank you.” she kissed his flaming cheek.

“Who’s this?” Harry pet back the floppy ears, if only to have something to do besides gawk, he knew he needed to not gawk at Johnny Egan’s girl in Johnny Egan’s coat even if the girl in the coat was about as mouthwateringly perfect as—

“This,” Julie proclaimed with all the pride of a mother, “is Spangles.”

“You guys weren’t joking when you said Major Egan was pen pals with Lana Tierney?” Rosenthal shot Cleven a bewildered look.

“No, we weren’t.” Gale agreed.

“We should get you situated again.” Crosby rallied after Lana had sent Major Rosenthal siren red from a cheek kiss of his own, Harry was still vibrating under Lana’s assessing looks and the fond weight of her hand in the crook of his elbow, “We did not expect the company of ladies but I’m sure something could be sorted and uh, well, uh, we’ve got your billet, Major and we’ve got your footlocker. Bucky wouldn't let us ship it back to your folks. He kept saying ‘I expect him back.’ Heh, yeah he said his buddy was just MIA is all. Yeah.” Crosby trailed off before asking in a watery voice, “He not make it with you in the breakout? He ok?”

Julie watched Gale’s face go wretched again, truth dangling off his tongue too close to a damnable thing and she gently cut in for him, “He’s alive.” was all she supplied. “When have you ever known Major Egan or Major Cleven to leave behind their boys without either one of them?”

Harry’s eyes glittered dangerously close to tears before he gave a curt nod that so poorly disguised his emotion Julie immediately felt a kinship to him, “Probably just laggin’ behind, primpin’ his mustache for ya. He’ll be here in no time when he catches wind of our esteemed visitor.” Harry had also gone a little drunk under the influence of Julie’s perfume and Rosenthal had to admit it made him a little charming even if the balance could tip into cringeworthy at any moment.

“Oooh a Jeep ride.” instead Julie bounced Spangles gleefully in anticipation of utilizing the boy's regular mode of conveyance, taking a seat between Rosenthal and Crosby, the gearshift between her legs much to Harry’s driving distraction so that- “Gale and Marge can canoodle in peace” in the backseat.

Harry took the scenic route to Cleven’s old barracks, perhaps to give Gale and Marge more time, to brush Julie’s knee more often in shifting down or out of genuine desire to show her each storied handstand and Nissen hut. Probably a mixture of all three knowing Crosby. But the end result was Julie pink cheeked and wide eyed as a child, soaking in every bit of lore about the man she loved and never recalled, a hanky dabbing at errant tears now and again and Spangles being happily allowed to roam between her lap and Rosenthal’s.

Near the end of their little tour they stopped at one hard stand where Major Cleven seemed close to beside himself in joy to reunite with one of the mechanics, there were two children lagging about as well, civilians and Gale was very eager for them to meet his Marge. Not wishing to be aloof, Julie alighted as well and extended her hand to each of the ground crew, learning of their contributions and their marital status. There was a giggly stir amongst the group when suddenly a bouncing ball of fur attacked Gale from the back, bouncing on hind legs and nipping joyfully, it would appear the loving assailant was an overgrown husky.

“Meatball.” Gale sounded about as fond as he had when he first saw Marge and it made the girls titter behind their gloved hands.

Meatball, having exhausted his greeting of his old friend, turned to inspect the other newcomers, licking at Marge’s outstretched hand before turning with great interest to Julie. She was also inclined to stretch out her hand to him and give the pretty baby a good ear scratch when a sudden perk in the husky's face warned of a different interest: Spangles. If Gale had not noticed at the same time, there might have been a rather gruesome outcome but between Julie’s careful pivot with her precious rabbit and Gale’s strong restraint on Meatball’s collar, both pets lived to be reconciled another day.

“Guess we’re gonna have to train him not to think of Spangles as dinner.” Rosie laughed.

Their final stop was at Buck’s old hut, average in every way from the outside as the next cylindrical skinned hut, muddy path outside that the boys kindly spared the ladies by carrying them to the threshold, even if they protested they weren’t scared of a mired heel. Julie walked up and down the rows of beds, feeling the chilly air inside the metal shelter, footlocker names catching her eye as she scanned them. Somewhere behind her Gale was opening his footlocker, sounds of Marge’s pleased murmurs over finding her picture there reaching Julie from the end of the row. They deserved a minute to themselves and Julie had a specific thing she was searching for.

“Lookin’ for something in particular?” Crosby’s kind voice was very near her.

Julie turned and gave the mild mannered major a soft smile, shrugging her shoulders and her bunny before admitting her sentimentality, “I was trying to find John’s bunk. Felt like I might- know it somehow. But I’ve come up at a loss.”

“Oh he wasn’t in here.” Harry informed her, he always seemed beyond eager to talk about Egan and it warmed her, “He was with the 418th, you know, so he bunked with his boys. When he bunked at all.” He added as an afterthought and Julie’s mind went to all the letters she’d gotten from John dated with a slash between entries, as he wasn’t sure which date to sign as he began most of them at night and finished them at dawn. “Though he hung out here plenty to be with Buck and the other way around.” Harry added.

“Do you, do you think-“ Julie began, feeling shy despite how moderate she knew her request was.

“Wanna see his bunk?” Harry lept at her unspoken desire, “We kept his footlocker, too. We were all too scared to open it after he’d threatened us about your property in it.” Crosby’s creasing cheeks were flaming pink and Julie wanted to pinch them, then he went on, “And for the same reason we hated to send it to his mother. I mean, who knows what was in there, I mean, you’d know what but, I’m not saying there’s anything bad I just, we just-“

“Major Crosby, Harry, I’d love to see it.” Julie took his arm and he swallowed his tongue to shush himself, “Have you got the key?”

“I know a man with the keys.” Harry demurred his own influence yet his smile was sly.

“Major Crosby,” she murmured again as they slipped away from Gale and Marge’s preoccupied chat on his bunk and back out into a misting afternoon, the jeep left for them by a considerate Rosenthal, “I want it known I like you very much.”

Another metal hut. Nothing remarkable from the rest, but to Julie, stepping inside with Crosby at discrete hovering distance, it felt as hallowed as a cathedral. He stood here, he slapped this doorframe, knocked his fool head on that beam, paced a hell of a furrow between these bunks. Crosby had been generous with the anecdotes on the way over, and Julie had allowed herself to pester him, he liked it she could tell, and so she knew that Major Egan spent little time in here anyway, except to occasionally sleep, to dress and to read her letters.

Three of the most intimate activities she could conjure up, one’s she’d laid in her own room and imagined him doing. Basic, human, unpretentious necessities, she imagined John at them all the time until she felt like she’d truly played voyeur: the straightening of a tie, the scratching of an itch, the bleary coming to with a face down in the pillow.

He did those things here. Crosby was scraping a hefty metal thing from under one of the nondescript beds, and with a catch in her breath Julie realized it was his footlocker. “We couldn’t bear to stow it away, all the rookies who slept here after him had to deal with it. This was Major Egan’s bunk, they were just passing through.”

All the rookies. All of them. That meant many had slept here and then, truly passed through, passed on, a fiery death and mud hard landing. Sometimes she felt like the only girl in the world who’d lost something, and then she got told of rookies passing through his bunk and she thought of their mama’s who’d never allow their rooms to become the “spare.” Those rooms would always be theirs, even if they never came back. Just like John’s bunk.

But he was coming back. He had to.

“I-I imagine you’d like a moment to go through it.” Crosby had turned the key but left it dangling there, lid ponderously shut, Egan’s threats of evisceration and testicular imbibement still hanging loudly in the air for Harry, as if not a week had gone by since the last threat. No one looks into Major Egan’s footlocker.

“Yes, I would.” Julie whispered.

“Think you can manage the lid?” Harry hoped she’d not ask him to open it for her, that was too close to losing his balls for comfort. Jean needed them.

“I think I can.” Her voice was weak and her hands a little shaky but she wanted it, and what she wanted she always managed to find strength for. “I’d like to spend a little time in his bunk. Just -just to think of him.” she found herself saying, forgetting to blush under Crosby’s understanding gaze.

“Of course.” he didn’t bat an eye. “I-I could, I could take Spangles for you.”

A laugh bubbled out, “Why, you think I’ll need both hands?” Julie teased.

“Major Egan always did.” Crosby teased right back and Julie never would have suspected so puppyish a man could wear so lewd a look, it made her heart flip flop pleasantly.

“Shh, you’re awful!” She swatted at him with a beaming smile that she knew did the opposite of discourage him. “Take care of him, and get him somewhere warm.” she charged him with her pet, handing over the dear bunny.

“The officer’s club is two huts down.” Harry told her, “Turn right and it’s the second hut, you can’t miss it. Silver Wings. You’ll need to warm up too and that’s where we’ll be.”

“Alright.” she muttered and watched him leave before the slam of the door confirmed her as alone in vast space. It was chillingly sterile and looming as she turned to his footlocker in desperate need of something less monotonous and impersonal.

The lid was heavy and it had his name printed nearly on it. She kissed the C that stood for Clarence -what kind of middle name was that for a young buck anyways? It made her choke on her laugh before she bruised her fingertips by forcing the metal open. It was well stocked, all various sorts of items one might find in any man’s footlocker, soap that she had already become intimate with the scent of from the fleece of his jacket, a baseball, ever so many playing cards, razors, photographs of what she assumed were his family, a brown parcel that screamed of his mother so she left it untouched and books. A lot of books.

Guys and Dolls by Runyon was on top. He’d said that he was reading it in one of his last letters. She put it on the bunk. And then took out another book, and another, admiring the breadth of his taste, the way knowledge was balanced with humor in the collection, just like him. At the bottom of them she found an odd little wrapped thing in silk that her heart whispered was the thing it was secretly pacing its beats for.

His scarf came undone under her cold fingers and from its little makeshift bundle her envelopes poured out. Not a single one unaccounted for. She scooped them up and sat on the bed, allowing them to fan out, testimony and evidence of how much she cared, confession and declarations inside that could damn her a thousand lifetimes over.

-I love you.

That was the only line missing in them. Oh how she hoped he knew it. One envelope was an oddity. Blank, not from her, conspicuously fresh and unbattered by the postal system. She opened it and with a zap of arousal spied her photographs inside. She took them with her as she carefully laid back on the pillow. Sheets had been changed, pillows no doubt swapped, it wasn’t his bunk in more than metal and history but she laid there and held up the black and white prints and imagined him doing the same. The way her figure silhouetted against the hut’s curving ceiling, the patter of rain on the metal roof, the dismal gray light filtering through.

The fact he’d found inspiration to write her such stirring things from so blank a place suggested what kind of mind he had and she had ached, ached for him to not be restrained to suggesting only, but to doing, acting on every wickedly wonderful impulse his pen had confided. The throb grew so badly she wept, clutching and creasing the photographs to her breasts -they were so worn from his constant tracing and kissing and sticky with his smearing that a few more bends would be of no consequence. She pressed them to her face, wondering if she could smell his appreciation off the lewder ones. She could not, if she were being honest, but she felt her nose smudge against something tacky and imagined swallowing.

At the Silver Wings, Harry was trying to recollect if he’d ever been so popular. Maybe when he returned from Breman, they’d all slapped his back and joked about his charting them into a tree and they’d all meant it so admiringly he’d finally felt like he belonged a bit. But that was mostly Ev’s day, as it should have been. And then he’d been promoted, and he’d sent all his friends off into hell, and now days no one but the bartender and Rosie cared for him here as much as he’d have liked.

He should have brought a white rabbit with him sooner.

“The hell did you get that from?” Ev asked him, more intrigued than shocked at this point in the war, little bunny rabbits were a mild apparation.

“This is Spangles Egan.” Crosby informed him, being obtuse just to prove he could be funny when he wanted.

“Egan?” Jack barked from beside the bar, “Who’s naming their pets after Bucky?”

Harry grinned, “Well see, it’s his girl’s rabbit. Which makes it sorta their rabbit. Which means it’s an Egan.”

Ev didn’t look impressed but Jack just looked ever more concerned.

“Lana Tierney is on base and this belongs to her.” Harry finally fessed up although his original explanation still stood as true in his mind.

A repetition of her name and “Acorn? the Acorn?” rose up in the club, a battle between acorns and their varied associations rising up between the old timers, who recalled movie night with John Egan, and the youngsters, who’d spent their recent nights with an ear pinned to her broadcasts.

“Yeah, the ACORN.” Harry confirmed as both stood.

By the time Julie Jean had wiped her cheeks of tears and carefully folded her letters into her coat pocket for safe keeping, snapped the lid of his dear locker and set her sights for the outdoors, she had her face back in place: by the time she entered the Silver Wings, she was everything those service boys had ever dreamed of.

Platinum and cherry lipped and ever so thrilled to see and hug each and every one, Lana Tierney was well and truly in the house and those who knew it whispered amongst themselves about “Bucky’s girl.”

Upon meeting Jack Kidd he received a smattering of kisses on his face as she thanked him endlessly for sending her his jacket.

His laconic, “Glad it made it, ma’am.” was perhaps a little thicker than usual.

The newer arrivals couldn’t share any stories they personally had with Major Egan but they were more than happy to share stories told to them regarding the leader. Like how he paid off that one farmer after Meatball slaughtered his chicken. Or how he let a man from the village throw a dart at the apple above his head. From then on it continued and Lana delighted in hearing stories of her man told over and over again, of the impact he carried with these brave men and the life he brought to the crew. She sat in the middle of all of them as they regaled her with tale after tale, and she only wished he was there to tell the story from his perspective. She was sure he would have the most vibrant commentary.

“… told me he’ll buy me a jacket just like his,” one of the boys was telling Lana when Gale and Marge entered the Silver Wings. They were both flushed and her lipstick was on the collar of his jacket. “Major Cleven!” The soldier stood to attention at the sight of his superior being back.

Gale patted him on the shoulder, “At ease, soldier. And don’t go buying another ugly jacket like his. One on base is enough.”

“Major Egan said it’s about how one wears it.”

“I’m sure he did,” Gale returned, looking over how it currently cocooned Lana’s form. He took in the sight of her surrounded by over a handful of young boys and men, all eyes gawking at her and vying for her attention. Even Ev Blakely was seated beside her with his chin propped on his fist. He looked close to a lovesick idiot. “Now I’m sure you boys don’t want me telling Bucky you were all over his woman while he’s away. I trust you are being polite and proper and nothing else.”

Once again Lana beamed at being labeled as Bucky’s woman or Bucky’s girl. She had never felt so damn proud than in those moments; not even the achievements of Lana Tierney compared. If it was up to her she would gladly belong to Bucky Egan for the rest of her life.

But she also couldn’t shake the feeling of how wrong it felt to be there without him. He was supposed to be the one showing her the base. He would have loved to invite her to his bunk. He would take her to his favorite pub and introduce her as his girl to all the people in his life and having to do any of those greetings and events without him was only managing to further break her heart. Bucky would be so proud to show her around; she wouldn’t take that chance from him. As much as possible, she’d save that for him or not have it at all.

“Rosenthal says he knows a family who can put you and Marge up in the countryside,” Gale informed her. “They’re real big fans of you, he says. It only takes about twenty minutes to get there and back so you ladies can come down to base any time or, uh - I could go visit up there, as well.”

His cheeks tinted pink at his last admission, like anyone would bat an eye at Gale Cleven taking a day’s leave to visit his girl after everything he had recently endured. Julie Jean had half a mind to lock Gale and Marge in a room and let them have at each other, all propriety and waiting for marriage be damned. She didn’t begrudge their beliefs one bit, she saw the passion the two carried for one another and although she had never been in her Johnny’s presence, she knew all the longing and desire and love she had for him would have her undressing and bowing before him in seconds. She would gladly kneel before her man and knowing John Egan would just as happily do the same, settled any feelings of womanly resentment or weakness. Gale and Marge’s pent up passion made one wonder at the fire and electricity that would erupt their wedding night. Julie felt hot under the sheepskin collar simply thinking about it.

“I’m sure Marge would love having you come, sir,” she cajoled, patting the fist he rested on the table between them. Gale didn’t seem all too amused by her sentiments as he narrowed his eyes at her. “Oh, hush! I mean coming to visit. Get your mind outta the gutter, Buck Cleven!”

Gale sent her a look that said he didn’t believe a word out her lying little rosebud of a mouth. She was all mischievous passion under the dusting of make-up.

“Uh huh. I’m going to have my hands full with you and Bucky,” he states with a head nod, like he’s already resigning himself to the fact. There’s a comment on the tip of Julie Jean’s tongue - something about how happy Bucky would be to fill Buck’s hands and how she’s sure he’d enjoy watching Buck touch Julie - but she bites it back. She means no disrespect towards Marge and her loyalty is only to Johnny. She’s also no idiot and the love the boys carry for one another knows no bounds or familiarity, yet, if they wanted to choose to be blind and ignore it, who was she to step in on what they had going on?

Her eyes settled on the bruise on his neck once more and Gale seemed to feel her looking, tucking his neck further into the collar of his coat. Julie Jean bit back a smile. She didin’t want Bucky’s best friend to think of her as mean.

“John Egan is my best friend,” Gale started suddenly, and for a moment Julie Jean wondered if this is where he professes his love for the man or if he was going to interrogate her on behalf of his best friend’s best interests. Turned out to be the latter. “He’s got a real big heart, Bucky. Wears it on his sleeve and gives and gives and never expects anything different than what you give him back in return.” Gale had pondered that a lot over the years. How Bucky was always so openly affectionate and loud in his love and trust in their friendship and how Buck never managed to give that back to him until the end during the train ride. Curt was like that too and Buck wonders if that’s why the two men clicked so easily and never shied away from any of the jokes or weird looks. “If you aren’t here to stay, Miss Turner -” and by stay they were both aware he meant for forever. “- then maybe you shouldn’t be here when John gets back.”

Julie Jean clocked Marge at the center of the club, preoccupied under the arm of Douglass as he no doubt regaled her with stories of their brave Majors, and for Buck to stay away from Marge -she wondered how long he had been planning to say this. Waiting for a moment of privacy to lay it out on the table and not upset Marge while doing so, because this was between them.

“I don’t feel comfortable sharing my feelings with you when Bucky himself hasn’t had the chance to hear them,” she admited, tears burning the back of her eyes again. She took in a deep breath. “He had to have known though, right? Be honest with me, you know him better than anyone and he loves you the most and you him. Do you think he knew, Buck?”

Once again Gale wondered what on earth John must have written in his letters for this woman to understand and suspect the deep nature of their relationship so completely. It was just like him - a stone in Gale’s shoe even when he wasn’t aware.

There was a hope in her glistening eyes that Gale was aware can be crushed by him. He’d never felt so much like father than he did now.

He had no interest in hurting this sweet woman who embraced John and Gale and Marge exactly for who they are. This selfless woman who he was so thankful brought Marge to Paris. A gorgeous woman who kept John mildly sane in the camp when there was no hope - an, admittedly, tempting woman as Buck recalled the photo he picked up from the floor all those years ago. His thumb pressed against her black and white nipples -it had a flush setting in and he had to avert his gaze.

“He knew, Julie. He knows.” Truth of the matter is, Gale knew John was aware. John, who was self deprecating and going crazy stuck in the camp, with not enough sky or land to keep him occupied but who woke up every day and tried to stay alive and out of trouble because of a pinky swear he had made to the woman sitting across from Gale currently. John was frightened and he fought against believing it at his darkest times but Gale remembers times when John would stand too close to the fence and guards would point their guns, images of John getting pushed and provoked but one thing always brought him back from that point of no return. Julie Jean Turner. If John didn’t believe he had love to return, he wouldn’t have bothered.

Julie released a breath neither realized she’d been holding waiting for his response.

“What about your fiancé?” Buck asked.

“What about him?” Julie returned. “In my line of work, Major Cleven, a fiancee is the only guarantee against a husband. One ya don’t want. I can tell you this, there’s one man in my future, there’s only been one man since the one letter I got on the 18th, years ago. One sweet man who calls me acorn and tells me he adores me and asks me for naughty pictures in exchange for him staying alive.”

“And you’re okay with that? With him asking?”

“He doesn’t need to ask. I’d do it anyway. But he loves me so he still asks.” Sitting across from his best friend, she’m was near glowing in the love Johnny had for her. Gale wouldn’t give her the time of day if it wasn’t real.

“I’m glad we had this chat,” Julie slowly eased back into being Lana Tierney before Gale’s very eyes, a charming smile on her face with white teeth glinting behind her red stained lips, looking every bit the movie star like when he’d seen her on film or in magazines. She looked different than in the photos she sent Bucky. In those she always looked younger, vulnerable, needy even. “Now that I've got your approval I can breathe easier, Major.” She teased him and he managed a bashful smirk.

“He’s got two protective sisters and a momma who turns his world,” Buck warned in jest and that was how Marge found them at the table. Julie warm and beaming at the thought of hearing about his family and getting to meet them one day. Bucky hadn’t been shy to tell her his mom was his best friend before Buck came along and she was the only one able to keep him out of trouble.

—“Not scared of no Colonel’s or SS officer’s - they haven’t met my momma he wrote in a letter one time. She’s a one woman army.”

Julie took the conversation she had with Buck and held on to hope even when time continued passing and no word of Bucky reached them. She kept the promise she made to herself - she refused to spend any more time on base or at the officer’s club or at any spots Bucky wrote about in his letters to her, because she wanted to wait for him. Instead she spent time with the boys when they visited her and Marge at the swanky estate with the kind English family. In order to appease her mother she booked performances at local bars where they are more than happy to accommodate her and the hordes of army boys that followed her around.

The first week of May arrived and Julie found herself white knuckling her mic in anticipation of Huston showing up any minute and whisking her off. She was not sure if she was sadder about being torn away from her vigil as she was terrified of being stuck back in an enclosed plane cabin with that man for over a day. Marge too, began to fret a little on the second day of the month when Gale told her he was going to be flying mercy missions to Holland. He was too happy about and too assuring about its safety for her to question him, but it was hardly assuring with a war still on.

But Marge knew better than to show that, so she went to Thorpe to wave him off and watched him at his craft while Julie went further north to help co-host a charity event for servicemen’s families. The joy had gone out of it, worse than Paris, she used to be decent at distracting herself with the task at hand but as her days flitted by as uncaring and ephemeral as dreams, the end of the first week of May came in sight, and nothing could keep her mind off John Egan and the heartbreaking notion of not meeting him. Not even the supreme pleasure of dueting with Vera Lynn. All that honored pleasure made her think of was how much her John would have enjoyed listening to it.

Huston came on the sixth. He also left on the sixth. And he didn’t loiter at Thorpe to interview anyone. There were bigger fish to fry out near the Solomon Islands, according to him, and he was off to film it and at his side was an intrepid little secretary he’d met in Paris and thoroughly vetted in between his sheets.

Julie wondered if he’d entirely forgotten her own existence, an unlikely thing, seeing as how she was the entire reason his plane was in East Anglia, but as she was removed at a distance from Thorpe and he had a new adventure and a new lover, perhaps it was a happy case of out of sight out of mind. She breathed easier the minute she heard that he was off in a roar over to another hemisphere.

And right after, or later that evening to be precise, interrupting a charming dinner of rationed butter and plentiful pheasant, was a phone call from mother. The gig was up, in as many words, Huston had lost interest, the fiancée had only gained more and that of the suspicious sort, and mother wanted to know what on earth there was in bombed out England for Julie to find time and payment for. Julie had to list a growing set of fabricated engagements for her mother to even countenance another day spent there, working her name-dropping way up from canteens to a dazzling venue in London which gained her a hem-hawing allowance of three more days.

All the while keeping her sane and functional was one singular thought : John Egan coming home. It was terribly cruel and unfair of the world to have him be within her fingertips, to finally allow her to land in Europe, and then to take him so far away again. Sending his best friend back and leaving him behind felt like the punchline to the joke that was so obviously her heart.

Take that, the universe was saying, you still don’t get to have him, spoiled girl. In her lowest of times, right before she went on stage or nights that she spent having everyone around her praise her she wondered if fame was the price for her man. She didn’t want it either way; she wanted him always.

“Take it all away,” she prayed one night, once her tears had dried and her pillow was soaked and the smell of him on his jacket had wafted, “I only want him. I only need him.”

Meanwhile mother chided, “Have them send me the details on the honorariums, you’ve lost your head over there girl, just like I knew you would, I warned you, remember how I warned you? You’ve lost your head and you’ve grown very lax about these things. Make them send it to me before you even put your foot out for them to applaud, if it’s not top notch we aren’t doing it. And afterwards, you’re coming home and we’re getting this wedding settled. I’ve already got the dressmaker holding a nice dove gray-“

It all blended together in the end, her own lies and her mother’s requirements and in abashed desperation she had managed to plead and finagle Herb to actually book her into “something swanky in London, anything Herb, I just need it to be legitimate to stave her off!”

It was cruel torture to say goodbye to everyone at Thorpe, Julie took her sweet time with it and permitted herself to get a little sniffly about it. This prompted a flurry of produced tissues and solicitous hugs and assurances of Major Egan’s love. It made her sorely tempted to curl into a ball of sheepskin and hide in a footlocker in this nice place till doomsday -let the world try and find her if they dared.

“Send me word!” she charged Gale and Croz, gripping jacket sleeves for extra emphasis, “If he gets back -I’ll still be in London until late tomorrow. Send a telegram, call, whatever you must. Even if you just hear of him, you must tell me, you must! I’ll -I’ll change everything for him. If he comes, I’ll leave it all and come back. Tell him that.”

On the way to the airport Julie Jean only had their promises to do so reverberating in her head and Spangles on her lap to keep her warm. Croz’s eyes had been sadder than she’d ever seen them, sadder still then when he had asked Gale why Major Egan hadn’t followed him back home. And Buck - oh, sweet, virtuous Buck Cleven who had pulled her into his arms tightly and whispered promises of Bucky’s love and intents for their future in her ear. He had spent the entire week thanking Julie for making it possible that Marge stay with him longer with no worry for money or anything back home but in the moments where they had said goodbye, the last words he had left her with were only of Bucky.

Leaving Marge was no easy feat either. The girls had wobbled in their heels and held onto one another tightly and cried and laughed whilst feeling so ridiculous because they were aware the friendship they had formed was for life. Julie wasn’t sad to leave Marge - the only sad part of leaving was losing another piece of John - most of her sadness stemmed from having to be thrusted back to the land of selfish vultures with no care for her after being around the loveliest humans she had ever met. Everyone had been sure to level Spangles with kisses and cuddles and assuring him they would tell his father stories of the joy he brought to base.

“I’ll be sure to give him a stern talking to for getting back so late!” Marge had insisted, clutching at the jacket she had never seen Julie without. “That Bucky Egan - it was bad enough when he changed my Gale’s name. I’m not the pen-pal type, that’s what he told me the night he shipped out. He had no idea you were right around the corner, Julie Jean.”

Her heart beat with the hope that she would never make it to the airport but now here she was. Julie Jean had convinced herself there’d be something happening that would stop her reaching their destination. The driver wouldn’t arrive. Her mother would call to inform of a high paying job. The sky would fall. Bucky would run in front of their vehicle and announce he was back. Anything. But no, none of that happened. The traffic was light and the drive was quick and every step she was taking was a step further away from the future she wanted. Away from her Johnny.

Julie Jean would have to marry Vincent. None of her future children, if they allowed her any, would be safe. Her mother would never relent. The studios would never stop demanding. With each passing thought her vision began to blur and the breaths she was taking came out quicker. On her own accord, she felt herself reach for Herb’s arm in order to maintain her stance. Paparazzi were snapping photos and journalists were yelling and a few regular folks had came out to speak with her - everyone unaware she was losing the love of her life and any chance of happiness.

Bucky had promised her babies. Bucky had promised her safety. “I’d marry you first chance I got,” he had written one letter when she teased possibly visiting Europe. They had been hopeless fools in love and the world wouldn’t relent to them it seemed. She was never going to get any of that.

“We’re almost there,” Herb reassured with a sympathetic pat to the hand gripping his suit, opening the door to allow her entry. “The cameras will know you were poorly from the change in weather and tired from the shows.”

Inside the airport she didn’t feel any better but at least there were no people there to yell in her face. Herb had led her inside a private room and had been sure to lock the door behind him and now he was allowing her silence and her grievance for what might have been. She clutched the jacket tighter around herself where she had curled up on a reclining chair, Spangles asleep on the open spot beside her. This would be all she ever had. And even maybe this they would take away. After all, they had taken away her letters.

The only way they will get this off me is if they pry it off my cold, dead body.

There was a knock on the door and whispers following it. “If it’s the press I’m not pretty enough to be looked at, Herb.” She said. Her make up was running and her hair was disheveled and hiding inside the thick coat of the jacket certainly wasn’t helping the heat in her face but Julie Jean didn’t care.

She was allowed to be heartbroken. John had always told her he would take all her moods, even when she wasn’t behaving like the Hollywood starlet her mom conditioned her to be.

Herb answered the door then, but only a crack so that he was able to see the person on the other side but allow no one to look inside. He excused her, saying the traveling and working hadn’t left her feeling her best but offering her apologies to England. Whoever was on the other side of the door was clearly disconcerted. Star-struck, possibly at getting so close. Their words were breathy and they were stuttering. Julie Jean could faintly make out them saying they adored her but actually - and everything else couldn’t be discerned. Whatever it was, it held Herb’s attention long enough that the door remained open a couple more seconds before he thanked the person and turned to Julie Jean.

“Well,” the tone in his voice, amusement for the first time all evening, had Julie Jean turning in her seat. Taking her face out of his jacket for the first time. There was a paper held in his hand, brown with an approval stamp from the army and the English postal service. “This certainly changes things.”

Julie Jean quickly stood to her feet, approaching Herb with her hands outstretched so she would reach the mail even before she was next to him. She startled poor Spangles who had been deep in sleep, causing him to hop to the floor. Herb wasn’t a cruel man, not to Julie Jean he wasn’t - he extended his own arm so it was within her grasp even faster.

Julie Jean [stop] hope this finds you well and in Europe [stop] Major John Egan is back [stop] Has returned to Thorpe Abbots [stop]

Sincerely,

Major Harry Crosby

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steddieas-shegoes · 1 year ago

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hiiii could i possibly request something with the good ol' "steve is insecure with his place in the group/his intelligence/his worth compared to the rest of the party" cliche with reassurances in the form of copious amounts of cuddles and kisses and pet names from eddie? you're so great for doing these and i'm eagerly waiting for the next chapter of call me sunshine <3

Not Steve "self-doubt" Harrington convincing himself he can't be loved because he doesn't fit in or provide "useful" things to the group!!! I am lowkey hoping someone maybe adds to make this explicit because something about them having to be quiet in a tent just sounds like it has potential idk. Eddie is so in love in this it makes me SICK. - Mickala ❤️ (@scoops-stevie)

----------------------------------------------------

When Steve suggested that they do something fun together for the weekend, he meant maybe going into the city or renting a lake house maybe.

He definitely didn’t mean camping.

Outdoor camping was Dustin’s idea, and all the kids had agreed quickly. Robin bowed out the moment she could come up with a decent excuse and he could tell that Eddie wanted to do the same but wouldn’t abandon him.

Hopefully.

Eddie had quietly offered to steal another RV, but Steve turned it down.

“You just started getting back in the good graces of most of the town, let’s not give them a reason to hate you again.”

So they packed up the van with all the camping supplies they collectively had: three tents (one for the girls, one for the boys, one for Steve and Eddie), a couple coolers full of drinks and food, a few chairs, flashlights, sleeping bags, and clothes.

Steve wasn’t great at reading maps, so he let Dustin ride passenger to help Eddie find where they were going.

He sat with the girls, mostly because he liked the way they just ignored everyone and everything and talked amongst each other about mundane things.

He may not always understand what they’re talking about, but he liked being a part of it.

He almost never understood what they were talking about actually.

But it was better than having everything the boys were talking about go right over his head.

Especially when they started arguing about stuff and talked so fast that Steve had no chance of keeping up.

Steve just kind of watched as everyone around him had conversations.

He tried not to think about how everyone was existing without him in a way.

He was here, but he wasn’t needed.

—-----------------------

When they arrived at the campsite, it was even more secluded than they thought it would be.

It was also only a couple hours until sunset and they all had to make sure the tents were set up properly before it was too dark to see.

Steve got started with his tent while Eddie helped the girls. Max still had limited movement in her wrists so she was given the task of setting the chairs around the fire pit that Lucas and Mike had formed.

Steve was struggling.

He’d only put up one tent before, and it was at summer camp where the counselor and four other boys had been helping. In all honesty, he’d pretty much managed to watch the whole time instead of help.

He would manage to get part of it up, but it would fall apart when he tried to do the other side. He kept losing the pieces to keep it tied down to the ground.

He was losing against an inanimate object.

Everyone else was doing fine; Joking and laughing and finishing up their tasks like they didn’t have to put all their focus into one thing at a time.

El wordlessly started helping him, and he knew she wasn’t judging him, but he couldn’t help the small part of his brain that was telling him that she thought he was stupid.

He was quiet for the rest of the evening.

They cooked hot dogs over the fire that Will started, then made s’mores since El had never had them before.

He watched and listened, smiled when everyone else was.

But he felt overcome with sadness that he just didn’t belong here.

He was the babysitter, he took care of them, and drove them around, and helped them survive alternate dimension monsters.

He didn’t know how to talk to them about the stuff they liked, or play their stupid dragon game. He could barely keep up with half the things they said.

“Hey guys, I’m gonna turn in for the night,” he said suddenly, interrupting something Mike had been saying to everyone.

Everyone looked at him with sad looks, but Eddie looked concerned.

“You okay? Is it a headache?” He asked.

Damn, he hadn’t even thought of a good excuse. At least Eddie was providing him one for free.

“Yeah, just a little one. I think if I sleep now it’ll be fine by morning.”

The taste of the lie in his mouth made his lip curl slightly. The words “friends don’t lie” replayed in his brain as he stood up and made his way to his tent at the far end of their setup.

No one tried to stop him, but he could feel their eyes on him as he unzipped his tent and then zipped it back up behind him.

They’d set up lamps inside each tent so that they could reserve flashlights for bathroom trips or emergencies. His was the kind you can dim, so he did. He took off his shoes and jeans, changing into the t-shirt he brought from home that was probably Eddie’s now that he was looking closer at it.

He’d brought his pillow from home because he couldn’t possibly sleep flat on the ground, and Eddie had brought one of his own because he still had some back pains when he slept wrong.

He curled up in his sleeping bag, holding Eddie’s pillow against his chest.

He felt a tear start to run down his face without his permission, not even sure why he was crying right now.

He heard the zipper and tried to shut his eyes quickly, hide his face in the pillow in hopes that Eddie would think he was really asleep.

“Hey darlin’. Mind if I join?” Eddie whispered.

Steve couldn’t ignore him, so he nodded and started to move the pillow from his chest and face.

“Oh, sweetheart. Why are you crying?”

Steve shook his head. He couldn’t even begin to explain.

“Can I hold you?”

Steve let out a sob, and Eddie didn’t wait for him to answer.

He was laying down next to Steve, pulling him against his chest and running his hands up and down his back.

“Is it a migraine? Do you need me to get some ice from the cooler? Or medicine from the van?”

“No, not a migraine.”

“Okay. Is it just a bad night?”

Steve couldn’t help the fondness he felt at that.

Eddie was so understanding, and incredible, and perfect. Steve didn’t deserve him just like he didn’t deserve the rest of these people.

“Stevie, it’s okay to have a bad night. Sometimes they just happen, right? That’s what you always tell me.”

Eddie’s hand had found its way to Steve’s hair, slowly running through the strands, occasionally looping the ends around a finger.

It sent chills down Steve’s spine when his fingers brushed against his neck so gently.

“I just don’t belong here.”

“I’ll admit the outdoors is not really my favorite place either, but-”

“No, not. Not the outdoors. Here. With everyone.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Eddie’s hand had frozen in his hair and on his back.

“I’m not smart. I’m not good at putting things together or fixing things. I can’t even be in most of their conversations. They keep me around because they don’t know how to get rid of me. I mean, they don’t even need a babysitter anymore!”

Steve’s tears were dripping onto Eddie’s shirt, making a mess.

Another reason he shouldn’t be around.

Eddie tilted his face up, nothing but love in his eyes.

“I want you to listen to me. You are needed in this group. You are wanted in this group. You are loved in this group. Do you really think a bunch of teenagers would be wasting a weekend camping with you when they could be going to the movies or the arcade or getting into trouble?”

Steve didn’t answer, but he sniffled as he watched Eddie get more passionate.

“And it is absolute bullshit that you’re not smart. How many times have you been the one to figure out something, whether it was during Upside Down shit or not? How many times have you been the one with common sense? You’re more than a babysitter, my love. You’ve always been more than that to all of them.”

They laid there in silence for a few minutes, Steve soaking in Eddie’s words as Eddie continued to comfort him in the way he needed.

“I just feel like I need to be more useful. I don’t want them to get bored or annoyed because I can’t be part of their world,” he finally said, his voice shaking.

“Angel, they love you for who you are. Just like I love you for who you are. You fit where you fit because that’s what the group needs. They don’t need another Dustin to always make connections because of one obscure fact relating to something he read once when he was nine. They don’t need another El to fight their battles.They need the Steve who is going to go along with whatever they want to do so he can protect them if and when things go wrong. They need the Steve who is always there to support them even with the most mundane things.”

“I couldn’t even set up the tent by myself.”

“None of us could. I had help. That’s why I told El to help you. None of us can do stuff alone, love. You’re putting expectations on yourself that no one else is putting on you.”

Steve shuddered.

He’d been pretty famous for doing that for years.

Once his parents stopped caring at all, he started caring too much.

And now he expected more of himself than anyone else ever would.

He’d set himself up to fail. At least in his own eyes.

“Did that finally get into that concussed brain of yours?” Eddie said, smirk evident in his tone.

Steve playfully slapped his chest and hid his face against his tear-soaked shirt.

“I guess maybe it did. A little,” he said.

“Good. You know I love you more than the stars, right?”

“And the moon?”

“And the galaxies in space.”

Steve settled further against Eddie’s side.

“I love you, too,” he sighed out, feeling content for probably the first time this entire trip.

In the morning, he’d start over, let his brain rest. He’d make everyone breakfast and then help them all make sure they were prepared for their short hike. He’d pack them sandwiches and extra water bottles in case they ended up walking further than they planned. And when they all got back to the campsite the next night, he’d make s’mores with them.

He’d ignore the voice telling him that he wasn’t enough for any of them, and he’d be enough for himself.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #the party #request #ficlet #hurt/comfort #i ship steve's self doubt and eddie's overwhelming need to tell him he's perfect

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drakaripykiros130ac · 4 months ago

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So, now I read insane posts that Mysaria becoming Rhaenyra’s lover makes perfect sense in terms of how the White Worm managed to manipulate her in the book.

Excuse me????!!!

So, the only possible way to manipulate someone is through a sexual relationship?

Maybe for people with one or two brain cells max.

In actual canon, the Dance had been chipping away at Rhaenyra’s mental health since the moment it started. Because first she lost her father (with the Greens covering it up and not even letting her see him), then she discovered the snakes stole her throne, and then she lost Visenya. These three in one blow. Not long after, Luke had been murdered.

At this point, Rhaenyra was not only physically incapacitated (the miscarriage did some damage and she was not allowed to ride Syrax for a long time), but mentally as well (she lost a father and two children).

Then, as the Dance progressed, she remained isolated at Dragonstone, not mentally capable of leading the Black Council and her husband could not remain there and be by her side either, (because how else were they to win the war if no one actually left the island to gather support)? Rhaenyra and Daemon did not have any quarrel. The Queen could not leave Dragonstone, and Daemon had to go, secure Harrenhal and ensure the support of Great Houses.

Then came the Battle of the Gullet, where Jace died. His death is what broke Rhaenyra for good. She was never the same after she lost her firstborn. Afterwards, she lost Viserys too (she believed he was dead).

And I do not recall Mysaria being at Dragonstone at all during this time. She helped Daemon with Blood and Cheese, but she came in the picture and became the Mistress of Whisperers only after the Blacks took King’s Landing.

After the Fall of King’s Landing, Daemon had to leave again, because the war had not yet been completely won. And so, that was when Rhaenyra was left alone with Mysaria advising her in King’s Landing.

Nowhere is there any indication whatsoever that there was anything going on between these two. And Mysaria, very easily, took advantage of Rhaenyra’s emotional state (and her Consort’s absence) in order to turn her against Daemon. And let’s be honest…it’s not some big achievement. Between Daemon’s “questionable” actions and Rhaenyra’s mental state, it was very easy for Mysaria to get the job done with just a few whispers.

Stop trying to defend a shitshow of a scene, which the showrunners themselves admitted came out of nowhere and was not scripted (therefore, intended for queerbaiting purposes alone).

Nothing like shipping Rhaenyra with the woman who literally tips her over the edge and destroys her life, right?

I repeat, girl on girl action is easy to find online. It’s not that rare. If you’re that desperate, find a decent site, a quiet space and work out…whatever you have to work out.

#I hate these people. Rhaenyra and Daemon were my favorite Targaryens and HBO destroyed them!#Stop pulling insane ideas out of your asses and attempting to justify them after #anti hotd #anti house of the dragon #canon asoiaf #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #anti hbo #anti ryan condal #anti sara hess

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nicolesainz · 11 months ago

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Tricks and champions (SV5)

Sebastian Vettel x f!reader

Summary: Retired Sebastian means he’s all the time at your house, hanging with your father ever so casually. There no denying that even with an age gap, you two fancy each other but try to keep it low key. What happens though when you become a passenger in one of Seb’s crazy rides?

warnings: massive sexual tension, angst, fluff, age gap

"God's sake Y/n, go put on something more decent. Sebastian is coming over." My dad said before I could even walk down the stairs. What a nice way to wake up.

"Good morning to you as well dad." I roll my eyes and walk up again to put on some jeans since he so politely asked.

I look through my wardrobe thrice in order to find a fitting one that won't have my dad raging over it. I finally manage to find one that not only won't have my dad protesting over it, but certainly will have Seb staring at my ass for quite some time.

The bell rings as I am trying to put on some light make up. A touch of red lipstick and a hint of eyeliner is what a girl needs at 10 am after a night of doing tequila bodyshots off her best friend.

Its insane how the entire night I was thinking of Sebastian, dancing with me in the middle of the club, his hands all over my body, holding me firmly and laying kisses on my neck, leaving marks of his ownership on me.

But it's a pity this was only a fantasy. Even though many guys came up to me to make their move, I rejected them easier than the way colleges reject my brother's applications. Sebastian was probably with my dad again, showing off his brand new Porsche 718 Boxster, a gift that he got from his former teammate Mark Webber.

"Y/n, can you come down for a moment please?" My father shouts and I clench my fists in annoyance. I swear to god if he asks me to be a servant again and make him coffees every now and then I will spit in one of them.

I walk down the stairs one more time and I can see in my father’s eyes the relief of me wearing something decent, more importantly my eyes fall on Sebastian who is scanning my body for head to toe, giving enough attention to my slightly showing cleavage after wearing the push up bra.

“Good morning Sebastian. How can I help you dad?” I say in a very polite manner, crossing my arms under my breasts, enhancing the volume and shocking Sebastian even more.

I know it’s filthy, I know it’s dirty. He’s 36 and I am 21, but it’s not my fault Sebastian is an extremely handsome man, with beautiful blue eyes, soft blonde curls and a mustache that not only makes him very fuckable but also fitting to my type.

“Actually, Sebastian was looking for volunteers to test out his new car. He wants a passenger so he can try out some new tricks he’s learned or test some he already knows from the formula one car.”

“And since you were always very keen on sports cars, I thought you’d be very fitting for the job. What do you say?” Sebastian adds after my dad, and all I do I smirk at the idea of him flexing his racing abilities whilst I am teasing him so badly.

“Of course! I’d be more than happy to help you out!” I smile and exclaim proudly, whilst putting on my jacket.

“We will talk in three hours. Y/n, behave yourself, I know you’re a lady and obey to what Sebastian tells you to do” Oh I for sure will obey to his commands. Whether that’s me praising his skills or sucking his dick.

“Let’s go! The track is clear now and I’m allowed free access.” He grabs his keys and we walk outside together.

“Wait, what do you mean track? The Nürburgring? Really?” I reply shocked and Sebastian nods excitingly.

“Oh god you’re gonna kill me, aren’t you?” I say with fear in my voice, once we get into his Porsche, Seb’s hand lands softly on my inner thigh, caressing it.

“Oh no Liebling, I would never hurt you. At least not like that.” His grip is more intense, as I flinch but do not remove his hand from my thigh. The touch is affecting me more as I feel my cunt slightly watering with the thought of his fingers inside me.

“Not like that? You have other plans Vettel?” I look at him and with a twist of my body, my breast slightly show even more now, my bra almost popping out. That causes Seb to groan a bit as his eyes land on them and then swerve back on the street.

“Let’s just say my torturing methods include pleasure. And especially when it comes to you.” His hand moves up more than it should, caressing up and down my fully clothed womanhood. Oh dear god that feels good and you can barely tell his touching me.

“And who says I’ll allow you to torture me?” I softly moan accidentally and try to bring myself back into my senses.

“You heard your father. Obey to what I say.” he lowered his voice and I gulped hardly. For most, Sebastian was a sweetheart but who said he wasn't a secret devil?

Once he removed his hand and placed it back on the wheel, I instantly regretted on agreeing at this ride. He is a massive soft spot for me and I am way too vulnerable when I am with Sebastian.

He knows me ever since I was a kid and he was rocking the formula one world by winning four consecutive world championships with red bull. Even though he retired last season, I still see him as one of my favourite drivers.

And I see him as my secret temptation as well.

Sebastian always told me that I would have a bright future in motorsport. Whenever me and my dad would visit him during the race weekend, I’d always spit random facts or stats just to show of my intelligence.

I will never forget the moment when Sebastian won this third world championship in Brazil and after he got out of the car, the first person who he hugged outside of his team was me. He picked me up, because I was wearing a jersey with the phrase “Weltmeistet 2012!” Followed by a picture of him, posing with the infamous index finger.

The exact one he dares to finger me with if I misbehave.

Luckily, my house is close to the circuit, so in less than 20 minutes we have arrived. The gates are fully open and we pull up from behind the garages, whose gates are open and probably have been since 2020.

When he enter the pit lane and the bar is open as well, he drives slowly all the way to the start-finish line. We sit there in silence for a moment before Sebastian looks at me with a devilish look in his eyes.

“I need you to be completely honest with me. I need to know if grandpa Seb still has it in him.” He says and a giggle escapes my lips with the characterization he used for himself. Grandpa.

Daddy? Sure. Not Grandpa though.

“Come on Seb. You’re not that old. You left Formula One a year ago. I don’t think a four times world champion gets rusty this easily.” I reply to his statement with all honesty.

“I’m not old enough to fuck you sweetheart. But to pull the tricks you’re about to witness, maybe.” I gasp at his comment and my eyes widen. Did he really say what I heard?

He turns on the engine once again and the quickly speeds through turn one but instead of drifting, I feel the car balancing on Seb’s side only.

“Stay still schatz.” He says, fully focused on the road.

I am even trying to hold my breath, besides my balance. What is he doing?

The car steadies itself back after turn 4 and speeds once again without breaking through turns 5 up to 7. After that, he breaks slightly and the car swerves at the front and drives with the two front wheels only.

“Are you trying to get us killed? What did I ever do to you?” I hold on to my seatbelt as Sebastian laughs out, trying to be extremely careful simultaneously.

“For you my dear, death with be slow and sweet. Don’t you worry.” I don’t know what is going on inside his mind and whether I like it or not.

Thankfully at turn 12, we balance once again and I let out a loud sigh. Slowly the drives up to turn 13 when I suddenly notice a ramp in the middle of the straight, closing on turn 16.

Sebastian fully floors the speed and I shut my eyes, as I feel the car levitating from the ramp, but surprisingly not falling down as abruptly as I imagined, drifting into turn 17 and then straight to the start-finish line once more.

Once I open my eyes, I look next to me and Sebastian is eyeing me with a raised eyebrow, waiting for my reaction.

“If that was your plan to kill me, then I’m glad it didn’t work. Nevertheless, I was surprised and weirded out on how you know all these tricks. Also, I was a bit fascinated, not going to lie.”

“Do you really thought I was going to kill you? My baby? I’m not as cruel as you think. And thank you for the compliments.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Who taught you these tricks?”

“I think the person you should refer to, is your father.” He unbuckles his seatbelt so he can turn to face me more comfortably.

“Impossible!”

“And yet true. Why do you think we are this close? Near death experiences bring people together.” He winks at me and my eyes roll all the way back to my fluttering heart.

“My old man has impressed me.”

“And now it’s time for this old man to as well.”

“Weren’t these tricks enough?”

“So you want me to stop then baby?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“So definitely not huh? Haven’t seen you this sure about something ever since you decided to dump this pathetic boy of yours. And I still don’t know the reason why.”

“If only you could look inside my thoughts.”

“I can look inside your thighs if you want me to.”

“Is that an offer Vettel?”

“More like a statement, but take it however you like. As long as it comes true.”

Sebastian brings his face closer to mine, his lips are ghosting over mine and his hot minty breath filling my lungs with joy and extreme desire. His tongue swipes my lower quivering lip and a moan is my reaction to his actions.

“Care to share your thoughts darling?”

#sebastian vettel smut #sebastian vettel x reader #sebastian vettel fanfic #sebastian vettel

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axelsagewrites · 1 year ago

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Hey Sage! If you're taking requests, could i get a Dom! Daemon x poc wife reader, where they have a great relationship, but for some reason (maybe she just wants to tease him) reader is acting like a brat (maybe..she answers him rudely in front of Viserys or Otto) and Daem punishes her. With some spanking, shocking, degradation, marking, aftercare and whatever else you want, please?

Daemon Targaryen*In Charge

Pairing: Daemon x f!reader

Summary: reader decides to act out and Daemon reminds her who's really in charge (kinky sex occurs)

Word count: 3164

Warnings: Teasing, under table stuff, m receiving oral, hair pulling, p in v sex, nipple play, spanking, degradation, marking/hickeys, bratting, begging etc very kink sex smut 18+ (i think thats all)

A/N at end

Masterlist Here

High Valyrian translations Avy jorrāelan - I love you ñuha qēlos – my star Riñītsos – little girl

When you first arrived in Westeros the court was wary of you to say the least. It was rare enough for them to have the Dornish visit but you had travelled by ship with some of your family and allies from the far depths of Essos. It was all in aid to start trade relations with the silver hair dragon riders across the sea. When you’d first heard of these violet eyed silver haired people holding the dragon’s captive you had imagined them as sickly monsters lurching in the background. Daemon Targaryen was anything but a slimy beast.

Otto Hightower however was another story. To say you weren’t fond of him was an understatement. But during your supposedly temporary stay you managed to bite your tongue. Somehow. It helped that you were able to stare across the great table at Daemon. His long silver hair flowed down his back like the water falls back home. You had expected the lilac eyes to be unsettling but instead their violet hues just drew you in.

Unlike your companions you did not conceal your stares. While others cleared their throats and turned their eyes when Daemon looked lazily at them you stared back, the corners of your lips twitching. It was a silent flirtation, a competition even.

It was one of Daemons favourite things about you. There was a challenge in your eye, the same look caraxes used to give him. “Would you like to see my dragon?” he whispered in your ear, his chest pressed into your back as you both waited to exist the bustling council meeting.

“Only if I get to ride it,” you whispered back, the smirk evident in your voice. This was going to be fun he thought.

When the trade deals were almost over another question arose. What’s to stop one of you from backing out? What was the collateral? How could we trust these foreign friends? “Might I suggest,” Daemon drawled, his voice instantly hushing the bickering between the sides. “a marriage pact? It’s how we usually do these things after all,” he said, eyes flickering over to you.

The Westeros men were all content with the idea however your uncle had other thoughts, “We do not sell our women,” he spat across the table.

“Let’s hear him out uncle,” you whispered to the man, “After all if it’s how the Targaryen’s do it who knows? It might be a halfway decent idea,” you said, eyes glued on Daemon.

It didn’t take long for the decision to be made or for the match to be suggested. When your family rode east you stood to wave them off by Daemons side. It was the first any of them had seen of you both the last three days since you entered your new chambers after your wedding night.

While Daemon made for an excellent husband, showering you with gifts, passionate in the chambers, praising each of your features and keeping up with your wit, the other Westeros men left little to be desired. You knew it would take time to adjust to the new ways, but you hadn’t expected the rules to be so mind numbing.

Daemon was supposedly a rebel among these men but yet even he abodes by rules. Do this do that say this like this not this then otherwise you might as well have tried to eat his baby. Honestly none of the protocol made any sense. You had been in Westeros for a year now and everything with Daemon was perfect; apart from one little thing. You had the audacity to view yourself as an equal. Daemon insisted he valued your opinion and took it deeply to heart, but the other lords were beginning to take issue with your bold opinions.

Despite not wanting to hear your opinions you were still required to attend all council meetings as an ambassador. During one particularly long drawn out one where all the lords did was rattle off their idiotic ideas you began to zone out. Your mind wandered till it landed on the idea of your husband bending you over this table right now. The way his hands would feel as they-

“Are you alright my lady?” Otto Hightower interrupted right before the good part of your fantasy. You looked up, head tilted before nodding and assuring him everything was fine, “I know our talks can be a little bit…out of your area my lady,” he apologised with that stupid fucking grin.

Daemon shot him a deadly glare, “Thank you my lord,” you said with a sicky sweet smile as you placed your hand on Daemons leg. “Perhaps you could explain it for me,” your hand began to move up his thigh beneath the table as you spoke.

“Of course, my lady,” The Hightower smirked as he over explained a simple known fact, all while your hand crept further up Daemons leg. He was used to you trying to push your luck so was doing his best not to react but when your hand suddenly squeezed his crotch he swallowed thickly as his hand shot out to hold your wrist under the table.

Luckily for you no one had noticed. Yet. You squeezed his balls lightly over the fabric of his trousers as Otto drowned on now in deep discussions with Viserys. Daemon tried to move your hand, but it only made your grip tighten. If you hadn’t felt him harden in your hand you might’ve felt bad.

“What say you brother?” Viserys turned to a wordless Daemon who did his best to stutter out his objections. It was the first time Viserys had ever seen him at a lost for a words. You removed your hand silently, placing it back in your lap with a slight smirk as Daemon was finally able to speak properly.

Viserys had the lords vote on the issue. Daemon of course rejected the idea; Otto insisted it was the right choice. It wasn’t. however, 2 of the lords sided with him for some idiotic reason but the other two with Daemon. “You haven’t voted sweet sister,” Viserys said, causing all eyes to turn on you. during your marriage your new brother tried to be sweet and kind though it often came off as clunky and bumbling.

You glanced at Daemon who was glaring down at you when he saw the way your lips dragged up into a slight smirk, “Lord Hightower did make a very interesting proposal,”

“An idiotic proposal,” he cut you off, glaring at the smirking lord across the table, “We both know it will backfire,”

“Do we?” you asked, eyes only on Daemon who glowered down at you.

“We do,”

Your eyes stayed locked, his filled with the fire of a dragon while yours glinted with excitement. The rest of the room was tense as you drew out the moment before turning to Viserys, “I agree with Daemon,” you finally said.

Viserys let out a sigh of relief and nodded, “Okay good well the matter is settled…” he began to drone on when you suddenly felt Daemons fingertips digging into the flesh of your thigh. This was not going to be a short night.

“Care to explain what that little display was all about?” Daemon all but yelled after slamming the door to your chamber shut.

You ignored his yells as you sauntered over to sit at your vanity to remove your jewellery, “What display?” you asked, smirk lingering in your voice as you took out your earrings.

Daemon looked up, letting out a brief dark chuckle before marching over to you, “You know exactly what I mean riñītsos,” his hand shot out to grab your jaw harshly, forcing you to look up at him with a glare, “Are you that much of a whore you wanted me to fuck you in front of those old cunts?”

You took a moment to pause and stare into those rage filled lilac eyes, “Yes,” you finally replied, a smirk still etched on your lips, “It’s all I could think about,” you said, your hands going to his hips, pulling him to stand between your legs, “Fucking me dumb while they all watched,” your fingertips began to run along the edge of his trousers waist line, “I think I’d quite like that,”

“You think so?” Daemon asked, gripping your jaw tighter, “Wanna know what I think?”

“Not really,” you said, trying to pull his arm away but with no success.

Daemon grabbed your wrist, pulling your hand off his arm and pulling you to your feet, “I think I need to teach you are not such a brat,” He said, letting go of your wrist, pushing your head back before releasing you making you stumble back into the table, “Get on the bed,” he said but you didn’t move. Daemons eyes narrowed, “Now,”

“Or what?” you asked, unfazed by the wild stare in his eyes.

He all but growled as he paced over to you, grabbing your hair and forcing you to your knees, “Who said you were in charge?” he asked, and you couldn’t help but wince as his fingers tangled in your locks.

“I did,” you said with a grimace as your knees finally hit the floor, Daemons hand forcing you to look up at him.

Daemon laughed quietly to himself, “You really are a silly little whore then, aren’t you? A little whore who needs to learn” he said as his hands worked his laces, “Remember the word?” he asked as he was almost freed from his trousers, you nodded repeating the safe word you had decided on early into marriage.

When his cock sprang free of his trousers it was already hard and its tip an angry red, precum already coating the tip, “Open,” he said but you refused. That was till Daemon slapped your face causing you to gasp and your mouth to open. He quickly grabbed your face, shoving his thumb in your mouth to keep it open. “Im going to ruin this pretty little mouth of yours,” he said as he began to try pull your mouth open.

Finally, you caved, opening your mouth fully for him, your tongue waiting for his cock, “Look at you,” he said in a tone that made you think all was finally forgiven, for a moment. You gagged lightly when he thrust his cock into your mouth, the salty taste of his precum on your tongue, “Such a pretty little whore,” he said as he began to fuck your face.

You looked up at Daemon through watery lashes as you tried not to gag from his persistent pace. His face had contorted from anger to pleasure as his eyes scrunched shut and groans fell from his lips. His thrusts continued until you tapped his thigh, your throat unable to keep up with his pace any longer.

Daemon pulled out, a trail of saliva and precum dripping from his cock and around your mouth, “Not such a brat now is you,” he said as he moved his hand from your hair to your jaw, cupping it lightly as you regained your breath. “Still think you’re in charge?” he asked and all you could do was shake your head not as you gazed up at him. “Good,” he smirked, “Now strip,” Daemon said stepping back.

You shakily climbed to your feet, your knees aching from the hard floors. Your hands slowly began to work on the laces of your dress. Daemon was tapping his foot quicker the longer it took. Once the dress was lost you pushed it of your shoulders allowing it to pool around your feet, your shift coming off with it. your nipples hardened as the cold chamber air washed over them.

Daemon stepped closer, his hands trailing up your thighs to your hips, squeezing your waist before caressing your breasts, “What are you?” he asked as his fingers trailed gently over your nipples.

“A whore,” you said, gasping when he suddenly squeezed your sensitive buds, “Your whore,” you half moaned as he began to roll the buds between his fingers.

“That’s right,” Daemon said, his hands falling away making you whine, “Now be a good whore and get on the bed, like I told you too,” he said as he began to pull his own clothes off.

You nodded, quickly crossing the room to lay on the soft furs of your bed when you heard Daemon began to tut. You watched his slender frame as he sauntered across the room, his abs toned from his adventures, he truly looked like a dragon as he circled his prey. “I never said lay down,” he corrected. Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and you went to ask him what he meant but Daemon cut you off, “Hands and knees. Now,”

“But my knees hurt- “

“Im sorry,” Daemon said as he stood at the edge of the bed staring down at where you sat naked on the bed, “Did I fucking ask?”

You whined dramatically as you moved to your hands and knees, Daemon remaining quiet as you did. “Happy?” you asked sarcastically as you lay your cheek against the furs, your ass on display.

Daemon didn’t reply as he moved to kneel behind you, his hands rubbing your ass. His fingers squeezed your hips as Daemon took in the sight. you figured you had gotten off lightly so far but a harsh slap to your left cheek made you gasp. “That’s for not paying attention in council today,” he said, his hand rubbing the area to sooth the red mark.

Another slap rang across the room, “That’s for under the table,” another, “for your little display,” Daemon continued to list off your sins, leaving another slap with each crime he read off. Your ass was stinging by the end of his list, a bright red mark on your cheek.

Daemons hands moved from your ass to your hips, gripping them tightly before one of his hands moved to your shoulder to pull your back against his chest, “Have you learned your lesson?” he whispered, his breath fanning your ear.

“Yes,” you said quietly. One of his hands moved back to one of your sensitive buds while the other went between your legs. “I’ll be good,” You moaned as his fingers began to circle your clit.

“I don’t believe you,” Daemon purred as you felt his hard cock pressing into your ass, “I’m not done with you yet sweet riñītsos,”

Your soft pleads fell on deaf ears as Daemon let go of your sweet spots to shove you into the furs. Within seconds he had grabbed you by your hips to flip you on your back, his fingertips digging into your flesh. Daemons eyes roamed your body, and you took the opportunity to scan his; how his toned chest heaved, the wildness in his eyes, and how his painfully hard his cock looked.

Daemon crawled over your frame, your legs instantly wrapping around his hips as he lined his tip up with your entrance, “You want me to fuck you?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper. He chuckled when all you did was nod, “If you want me to fuck that pretty little hole of yours, you’re going to have to beg better than that,”

“Please,” you whined, your hands moving to hold onto his muscular shoulders, “I need you please just fuck me already I’ll be good I promise,” your whining intensifying as he began to rub his tip up and down your folds, “I’m sorry okay please just fu-fuck,” your begging was interrupted by Daemons sudden thrust, his cock hitting deep inside.

“You’ll be sorry alright,” he grunted between thrusts as he set a relentless pace. His lips feel against the skin of your neck, sucking dark spots into your sensitive skin, “Who do you belong to?” he asked as he moved to your collarbone.

“You,” you moaned as the headboard began to bang against the stone wall, loud creaks sounding through the room, “I’m yours,”

Daemon lent up to look at the series of dark purple marks on your skin, “Mine,” he growled, his hand moving to hold your throat, “My fucking whore,” he said as his hand slipped between your body to rub circles onto your clit which only made your moans increase as a knot began to build in your stomach, “Such a needy little thing,” he grunted, “so desperate for my cock,”

The knot in your stomach tightened as Daemon sped up his pace till his thrust began to hit a certain spot that made shivers go down your spine, your body tightening around his cock. “Please,” you whined as your orgasm threatened to spill over you.

“What’s that?” Daemon asked, “You wanna cum? You think you deserve to cum around my cock?”

“Yes,” your whine echoed through the room, “Please,”

Daemon lent down, placing a harsh kiss to your lips, “Do it then,” he whispered, his forehead pressed to yours.

His words sent tingles down your skin and soon the familiar feeling washed over your body. “Fuck,” he whispered as he felt you tighten around him. Daemon lent up and moved both his hands to your hips, lifting them up and holding them tightly before he lost control and fucked you mercilessly, chasing his own release. It didn’t take him long to spill inside you, squeezing his eyes shut as he came before almost collapsing beside you.

A few moments of silence past as you both regained your breaths, “Are you okay?” Daemon asked, panting as he turned to look at you. his eyes were soft, and a timid smile painted his lips.

“Uh huh,” you nodded yes, still staring at the ceiling seeing stars from crashing so hard.

Daemon rolled onto his side, brushing the hair out of your face, “You’re perfect, you know that right?” he asked, placing a gentle kiss on your forehead, “Let me clean you up,”

“Wait,” you stopped him, holding his wrist gently, “Just lay with me, for a moment,”

“Of course, ñuha qēlos,” My star, he whispered, placing another kiss to your skin, “Whatever you want. Shall I call someone to draw you a bath?”

You nodded lightly as you shuffled into his arms, “Only if you join me,”

“Of course, I will,” Daemon said as his fingers gently stroked your cheek, “Whatever you want,”

You both allowed yourself to get lost in the silence as Daemon continued to press gentle kisses and light strokes to your cheeks. After a few moments you turned to him, “Are you okay?”

“Never better riñītsos,” he whispered back, “I’ll be back in one moment, let me up and I’ll organise that bath,” You allowed him to stand but then suddenly grabbed his wrist, “Are you okay?” Daemon asked, crouching beside you and stroking your hair.

“Avy jorrāelan,” you whispered.

Daemon lent over, pressing a sweet kiss to your lips before standing again, “I love you too sweet girl,”

taglist: @clairacassidy @fan-goddess

A/N: okay so i dissapeared for a lot longer than intended lol. i got really bad writers block but im gonna try push thro it bc i do enjoy doing this stuff so this is a reminder to check in with yourself occasionally to try avoid burning out or doing too much at one time

#daemon targaryen smut #daemon targeryan #hotd daemon #daemon targeryen x reader #daemon targaryen #daemon targaryen x you #house of the dragon headcannons #house of the dragon imagine #house of the dragon #house of the dragon x reader #house of the dragon smut #hotd #hotd smut #hotd imagine #hotd x reader #game of thrones smut #game of thrones #game of thrones imagine #game of thrones x reader

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pink-sparkly-witch · 1 year ago

Text

Just Like This

Summary: Working a second job in a bar to help pay for Sammy’s education, Dean finds a kindred spirit in bar manager Y/N. When a drunk Douchebag gets too handsy with her, Dean quickly jumps to her defence but faces harsh consequences.

Pairing: Bartender!Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Rating: Teen

Bingo Square: Getting Fired for @j3bingo

Warnings: tw: sexual assault (groping), fluff, angst, fighting, minor violence, Chuck is a complete and utter asshole in this, getting fired, quitting in solidarity, first kiss, friends to lovers

Word Count: 3k

A/N: Okay, it feels like an age since I’ve written anything that’s just pure floof. I hope you enjoy this fluffy, protective, besotted Dean fic. Please be kind. I’ve had my angst hat on for a long time, and though this was really refreshing, it’s also a little daunting!

My Masterlist AO3 Ko-Fi

Consider reblogging to spread this far and wide around this Hellsite, or leave a comment. It really does fuel a creative’s muse. If you’re too shy or too cool for people to know you read fanfic and you don’t want it showing on your blog, you can submit an anonymous ask or drop me a DM 💖

It wasn’t the best job in the world, but as part-time work went, Dean knew it could be a hell of a lot worse than this. He worked with his dad in the garage during the day and worked four nights a week and two shifts at the weekend in Shurley’s Sports Bar. His wages and tips went to his dad to help pay for Sammy’s education. Sure, the kid had a full ride to Stanford; however, he still needed to pay for accommodation after freshman year and the thousands of books he needed for his coursework. And at least this way, his dad didn’t put himself in an early grave by working all the hours God gave him. Lord knows he’d done enough of that when they were kids.

Shurley’s was a decent bar. It had a prime location between the University of Kansas campus and downtown, so it always has a steady stream of customers. It quietened during the summer when the students went home or on their travels, but the locals still made trade steady enough. The owner, Chuck, was a bit of a dick, but he barely showed his face around the place, and the other staff were decent, making it a great place to work.

“Hey, Dean,” Y/N said as she came out of the back office. Y/N was the bar manager and a great girl. They had a lot in common; both lost their mothers when they were young and looked after their younger siblings while their fathers worked three jobs to try and make ends meet. Y/N’d had to drop out of college when her father took unexpectedly sick, having to take care of him and her little sister. Now that her father had passed and her sister had a full ride to another prestigious college, Harvard, Y/N lived in the tiny apartment above the bakery where she worked four days a week and in the bar four nights a week and every Saturday night. The rest of the time, she studied part-time to finish her college education and sent every spare cent she had to her sister in Boston.

“Hey, Y/N,” he smiled at her. She was pretty, too, and Dean wasn’t afraid to admit that he had a massive crush on her. Not that anything would ever happen because she was her, and he was… well, he wasn’t good enough for a girl like that. “How are ya, sweetheart?”

“I’m good, Dean. How are you? Oh! Did you manage to get Sam’s apartment sorted?” Y/N asked, and he smiled that she’d remember such a thing.

“Yeah, it’s all good now. We managed to get the rest of the deposit together,” Dean said. “Thanks for the extra shifts, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” Y/N smiled. “I still can’t believe landlords can actually do that,” Y/N shook her head as she headed behind the bar and started filling the refrigerators with bottles of beer and wine to prepare for the busy Friday night shift.

“Yeah, us either. But it’s done, and he has somewhere to live,” Dean said as he put the last menus and condiment buckets on the tables. “What needs to be done next, boss?” he asked, smirking when Y/N chuckled. She hated being called that, but he seemed to be the only one she didn’t scold for it.

“I could use a hand changing over the barrels if you’ve got time?” she said, breaking up the cardboard that the bottles had been housed in.

“Sure thing, sweetheart.” Dean headed into the storeroom and started shifting the beer barrels behind the bar as Y/N continued putting bottles in the fridges and replacing the almost empty spirit bottles with full ones to accommodate the busiest night of the year: Friday night football and Freshers Week.

The bar was packed with customers, the warm, sunny weather drawing even more of them in than usual, and of course, Chuck had decided tonight was a good night to show face and ‘help’, putting the staff on edge. Dean had gone with the head down and get on with it attitude, glad it was three deep at the bar so he had an excuse not to have to entertain Chuck for very long.

Y/N had been running around after Chuck all night, finding this paperwork and that invoice and the employee payroll for the past six weeks. Eventually, when he couldn’t possibly ask for anything more, she’d escaped the office, having brazenly told her boss that she was needed front of house to help serve customers.

“I swear,” she’d said as she tied her little black server’s apron around her waist, “It’s like he fucking knew tonight would be the busiest night but still came to check months old paperwork! God, that man is insufferable!”

It wasn’t often that Y/N showed her annoyance, and Dean couldn’t help but think it was cute. Though, admittedly, that could be his crush talking, her furrowed brow and tiny pout were adorable.

“What can I do to help?” he asked as she took her place behind the bar.

“I should be asking you that question!” she giggled. “What do you need me to do?”

“We could do with someone collecting and cleaning the empty glasses, if you wouldn’t mind?” he responded, smiling as she picked up a basket, cleaning spray, and a cloth before he’d finished his sentence.

“You got it,” she winked and headed onto the floor to clear and wipe the tables down. And that, Dean thought, is what makes a good boss. Someone who works with the team to achieve the same goal. Someone who isn’t afraid of stepping in to help by doing the most mundane tasks that are below their pay grade.

Y/N was a breath of fresh air for him in so many ways. She was bubbly and caring, and no matter what was thrown her way, she responded with an air of calmness and dignity that he admired.

“Hey, man. What can I get ya?” Dean asked the next patron, finally taking his eyes off the girl slowly taking over his every thought.

“Be careful,” Dean said as Y/N headed back onto the floor to clear more glasses and tables. “It’s getting rowdy out there. You know what those college boys can be like.”

“Thanks, Dean,” she smiled. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

He knew she would be. He’d seen her handling every kind of drunk customer. Still, he’d watch her closely because he was more worried than usual. The crowd tonight seemed even more enthused thanks to the local sports team playing. It still surprised him how often the female staff got touched inappropriately and had the most vulgar things said to them by too drunk and far too confident men. More than once Dean had had to step in and stop something from going too far, and he’d do it as many times as he needed to for Y/N or any of the other female staff.

Y/N managed to get around most of the bar unscathed, but there was a particularly boisterous table of men who only frequented the bar when the Chiefs played. Dean had been watching them all night because they seemed to have forgotten their age and tried to out-drink their much younger counterparts. They’d already run their mouths off to the bar staff, and now one of them in particular had their beady eye on Y/N as she moved from table to table, collecting empty glasses and bottles.

Swapping her tray out for an empty one, Y/N made her way over to their table, and the second she got close enough, the balding guy with the beady eye was quick to rear his hand back and smack her ass. Dean’s hackles rose, and he was on high alert as he watched her give the douchebag a piece of her mind. But he didn’t stop. Douchebag wrapped his arms around her waist and tried pulling her onto his lap. All the while, his douchebag little friends laughed and cheered him on like he’d won a fucking prize.

Dean saw red as he ran around the bar and strode purposely over to the group of middle-aged men amid a mid-life crisis and pulled Y/N from his hold, dragging her behind him to protect her.

“The lady told you to leave her alone. I suggest you do that,” Dean fumed, only getting angrier at Douchebag’s smirk.

“Oh, ladies and gentlemen, we have a jealous boyfriend trying to protect his girl! You know, if she were my girlfriend, I wouldn’t let her out the house wearing something so…” he paused as he leered up and down Y/N’s body, “revealing.”

“Listen, asshole, you don’t want to piss me off right now. Why don’t you and your buddies call it a night and go home? You’ve clearly had too much to drink, and we don’t take kindly to people assaulting our staff here,” Dean’s jaw was clenched, but he’d somehow managed to keep his voice steady.

“Sorry, man,” Douchebag smirked as he stood. “Just can’t help myself when I see a pretty girl showing off half her body like a Goddamn little tease. She’s asking for it, really.”

That was the last straw, and as Douchebag made one final (and unfortunately successful) attempt to get his hands on Y/N, Dean pulled his fist back and punched him square on the nose. The resounding crack as Dean broke the guy’s nose was satisfying, as were the synchronised grimacing ‘oohs’ that the audience this little corner of the bar had attracted.

“You broke my nose, asshole!” Douchebag spluttered. “I’m reporting you for assault!”

“You do that,” Y/N said, “and I’ll have you arrested, too. This whole bar and the CCTV saw you grope me twice and clearly saw me trying to get you off me! What he did,” she pointed at Dean, “was save me from being sexually assaulted!”

“Come on, man,” one of Douchebag’s friends said, patting him on the back. “Let’s get you to the hospital. It’s not worth it.”

“Damn straight it’s not!” Dean yelled. “Any way you spin this, he doesn’t win, so get the hell out and don’t come back!”

Tail between their legs, Douchebag and his friends left the bar. The second the door shut behind them, Dean was next to Y/N, checking her for injuries.

“I’m fine, Dean,” she insisted, but her eyes told a different story. The encounter had shaken her up, and Dean wanted to fix it, needed to fix it.

“No, sweetheart, you’re not. You’re–” Dean began but was interrupted by the shrill voice of Chuck.

“Winchester, my office, now! You too, Y/N.”

Seeing Y/N sitting beside him on the other side of the desk was strange. This was where she did all the paperwork, payroll, ordering, and invoicing, so to see Chuck on her chair was disconcerting. And not good.

“I don’t know what was going on out there–” Chuck began, and Dean scoffed in disbelief.

“You’re bar manager was sexually assaulted by a customer. That’s what happened!” Dean sat forward on his chair, raising his voice. He only calmed when Y/N placed her hand on his forearm.

Chuck pursed his lips at his outburst and continued speaking as if Dean hadn’t interrupted.

“I don’t know what happened, but whatever it was, sexual assault or not,” Chuck looked pointedly at Y/N before he continued. “It’s no excuse for my staff to behave violently.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Dean fumed. “That… scumbag… touched her ass and her breasts and tried to force her into his lap! You see those bruises, right?” he asked as he pointed to the dark purple fingerprint marks on her arms.

“Inappropriate comments, slurs, even touching, is to be expected when you work in a bar–” Chuck was interrupted again, this time by Y/N.

“There are no touching policies in every strip club in the country for a reason, Chuck! You cannot expect it to be any different in a fratboy sports bar! No one should go to work expecting that being sexually assaulted is okay!”

“For God’s sake, Y/N! So what a guy touched your ass and tits! You should be flattered!”

“It was sexual assault, Chuck! That guy,” Y/N pointed behind her in the general direction of the bar, “touched me without permission, and I could have him charged! You too with how you’re behaving!”

“Oh, stop being so dramatic! I feel sorry for your boyfriend if this is how prudish you are!”

“Hey, that is–” Dean interjected, but Chuck kept talking.

“Dean, you’re fired. I cannot, and will not, allow a violent brute to work in my bar.”

“You can’t do that!” Y/N protested.

“Watch it, or you’ll be gone, too!” Chuck threatened, but Dean knew it was an empty one with her. He needed her too much. The bar would burn to the ground without her in charge.

“No need. I quit. Effective immediately. I cannot, and will not,” Y/N glared at Chuck as she repeated his words to him, “work in a place where I’m expected to be sexually harassed and assaulted and ignore it. I cannot, and will not, work for a man who fires a good person for helping someone in need.”

Standing, Y/N took off her apron and name tag and threw them on the desk. She unhooked the keys from her belt and pulled the cash box towards her, opening it and pulling out two brown envelopes, handing one to Dean and putting the other in her pocket. Once she’d locked the cash box, she tossed her keys down on the cheap metal desk with a satisfying clang.

“Really? You’re going to quit over him?” Chuck scoffed.

“Yes. Dean is worth a thousand shitty bar jobs like this one, and I’d choose him over any of them in a heartbeat,” Y/N said with her head held high. “I hope you know you’ve just lost your two best workers on the busiest night of the year. Come on, Dean. Let’s get out of this shithole.”

Dean didn’t protest. He stood up, smirked at Chuck because he just couldn’t help himself, and followed Y/N out of the bar and onto the street.

“Sweetheart, you didn’t need to do that. I’m a big boy, and I can look after myself,” Dean said after walking in silence for a few minutes.

“I know you can, and yes, I did. That was unfair and undeserved. Especially because it was my fault,” Y/N responded.

“Hey, don’t ever… it wasn’t your fault. Things like that are never the woman’s fault, you know that, right?” Dean couldn’t believe she’d ever think something like that would be her own doing.

“I know, but if I’d listened to you and let Marcus clear tables instead of me, none of this would’ve happened.”

“No. I won’t hear it. You didn’t ask to be groped by a balding douchebag going through a mid-life crisis, sweetheart. Don’t ever apologise for someone else’s wrongdoing,” he reassured her.

“So, what do we do now? We both kinda needed that job,” Y/N chuckled, but it held no humour.

“Well, I might know a guy who owns a wine bar downtown. A classy establishment, so the tips are better. And we’d be treated right,” Dean said, thinking of the bar Cas had tried to get him to work in for months.

“You have a buddy with a bar, and you chose to stay working in that shithole?” Y/N asked in disbelief. “Why? What would possess you to stay there? Willingly?”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Dean smirked. This wasn’t where he envisioned this conversation going–if it ever happened at all, that is–but the perfect opportunity had presented itself and he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t take it. “I got to see you almost every day.”

“Come on! You did not stay there for me!” Y/N scoffed, and Dean shrugged his shoulders, his lips tugging upwards in a shy smile.

“I did, actually. Can’t think of anyone better to spend so much time with.”

“Dean Winchester,” she grinned. “Are you flirting with me?” The teasing tone in her words was one he’d never heard before, and he liked it.

“Do you want me to be flirting with you?” he’d asked, needing to hear her say it before he did something stupid because he’d misread the signals.

“Yeah… I think I do,” Y/N giggled, stepping closer to him, bumping their arms together as they stepped in sync down the sidewalk.

“Yeah?” he asked, checking again because, quite frankly, she was her and he was him.

“Yeah.”

Dean stopped walking and gently grabbed her forearm to stop her from walking ahead. Feeling brave, Dean placed his hands on her cheeks and dipped his head, slowly lowering his lips to hers. Every inch closer he got, he switched his gaze between her lips and her eyes, making sure this was what she wanted.

When there was no hesitation and nowhere else to go, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to hers. They were as soft as they always looked, softer even, and tasted as sweet as he’d imagined they would.

Y/N pressed herself closer to him with a low hum and slid her arms up his chest, resting one hand on his pec and the other curling around his neck. Dean licked her bottom lip, encouraging her to open her mouth and let him deepen their kiss.

He failed to hold back a groan when his tongue met hers, the feeling so much better than anything his mind could’ve conjured up. Dean couldn’t remember how long he’d wanted this, and now that it was happening, he knew he’d do whatever he could to keep her in his arms, just like this.

Tags: @acitygrownwillow @akshi8278 @ashbatz @candy-coated-misery0731 @chriszgirl92 @deans-baby-momma @deans-spinster-witch @deansbbyx @deanwanddamons @duncanhillscoffeecups @foxyjwls007 @giggles1026 @globetrotter28 @hobby27 @hoboal87 @impala67rollingthroughtown @iprobablyshipit91 @jackles010378 @jamerlynn @jc-winchester @k-slla @kazsrm67 @kmc1989 @lacilou @ladysparkles78 @leigh70 @lyarr24 @maliburenee @michecolegate @mrsjenniferwinchester @nancymcl @negans-lucille-tblr @nelachu2423 @octoberclidan @perpetualabsurdity @roseblue373 @sandlee44 @sexyvixen7 @snackles87 @spnbaby-67 @spnwoman @stixnstripesworld @stoneyggirl2 @suckitands33 @synmorite @tristanrosspada-ackles @twinkleinadiamondsky @waters-2567 @winchestergirl1720

#j3bingo #just like this #au dean winchester x reader #bartender!dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #au dean winchester #dean winchester #dean winchester fluff #fluff

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