#claiming it tasted of sugar and not booze | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

an-ambivalent · 5 years ago

Text

Uchiha Therapist: Part I

Synopsis: Yandere! Madara x Reader x Yandere! Sasuke

[Name] is a struggling post graduate psychology student who has more on her plate than she can handle. Between her practicums to gain work experience and writing reports, to trying to maintain a decent lifestyle and look after her own mental health, there is little to no time left to work an actual paying job. Yet, money is essential for survival. So, she does the next best thing that has been trending recently to assure a good paycheck; she becomes a sugar baby. The only thing is, [Name] is unaware that she’s become sugar baby of the Madara Uchiha, the notorious CEO of Uchiha Corporation. She is also unaware of the fact that she’s the therapist of his nephew Sasuke Uchiha, who has begun treading over the professional boundary of a patient, and has started developing an abnormal fixation for his therapist since she seems to be the only one who actually understands him.

Warning: Although this story will come to contain yandere themes that can be triggering or uncomfortable to read, there are no yandere themes present in this chapter. It does have mentions of negative and tiring thoughts that may be triggering. Read at your own risk. This work is purely fictional and any yandere or other toxic behaviours that may be present in the future, know that I do not condone such behaviour.

Word Count: 4K

Story start; A day in the life of [Name]

On the night that started it all, when [Name] was feeling particularly disheartened and dissatisfied with her life, she had vented her frustrations and sorrow to her good friend Ino Yamanaka. Although many things in her life were going right, and she was privileged enough to have the chance to pursue her wanted career, it came at a cost. Her entire life schedule was fixed around her post graduation studies, other little spared time was for cooking and doing chores, and the rest was for sleeping. [Name] lacked the time for earning money, and doing things that were higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — dating to find someone to create a meaningful connection with, or working on her previous hobbies.

The two friends had been consuming enough booze to be a little more than tipsy but not enough to be drunk. Some words were slurred, the fine motor control had decreased a bit, and with their faces slightly flushed, Ino was convinced that she had the best idea to [Name]’s problems.

Giggling at her own idea, Ino had snatched [Name]’s laptop from in front of them, and tapped various keyboard keys for joogle to search up. Once she saw the results, she clicked on one of the many websites shown as a result, and after a few more minutes of more clicks and keyboard taps, she had turned the laptop towards [Name] to see, with a triumph grin on her face.

“A sugar daddy,” Ino claimed proudly.

[Name] raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“A sugar daddy — it’s the perfect solution for your troubles. Not only will you get to earn more than enough, it covers the dating aspect too! Someone to spend your time with, to sleep over with — just without getting too attached. You’ll have a social life once again that doesn’t consist of you drinking booze with me or our other friends and you can finally afford to look decent again,” Ino explained straightforwardly.

[Name]’s eye twitched. “What do you mean finally afford to look decent again?” she inquired in a low voice, and glared at Ino, who smiled sheepishly at her.

“Well you’ve been a fashion disaster for sometime now—“

“Sorry I don’t have rich parents like the rest of you to buy me extravagant brands,” [Name] retorted, and a tick mark of anger bulged on Ino’s head.

“Well Sakura is a commoner like you too and even when she was a starving student, she still had a fashion sense. You don’t need to buy something expensive like jucci to look decent!” Ino snapped, and [Name] scowled at her.

“Whatever. This discussion is pointless anyway since I’m not going to become a sugar baby,” [Name] responded, and went to grab a bottle to consume more alcohol. However, the uneasy and anxious expression that Ino wore made her halt amidst her movements. All of a sudden, a cold shiver ran down [Name]’s back, and she felt a sense of dread building up in her gut.

“Please tell me you didn’t,” [Name] pleaded and Ino winced inwardly, before she turned the laptop around to show [Name].

“I did… I already signed you up. You have a date with him this Friday night.”

“INO!”

That was the gist of how [Name] had become entangled in her predicament with Madara Uchiha, and what was meant to be nights for [Name] giving her daddy some casual sugar, turned into an diabetic sugar addiction.

It was baffling really, how as children, people can be better in following orders than they can be as adults. And for someone like [Name], who had been studying psychology for years now, and began to work with the theories, one would think that practicing what she preached would be easier; she was great at helping her clients, but not much at helping herself.

“Make sure you don’t go with strangers” — a lesson that had been engraved in children at school and from their parents for their own safety. It was one of the most basic rules of common sense to evade danger; however, it was the rule [Name] failed to follow. Instead of not going through with her fixed date with a sugar daddy, who was a complete stranger and who knows pose what danger, she had gone through with it. And she had not even taken any caution to have their first meeting in a public place, no. She had gone to his home, which was the only place he accepted for their meeting, because she was too anxious to say no or not go through with it.

She really wondered how she was able to help her clients so well when she could not even manage her own anxiety.

So, now, here she sat. Since by Ino’s definition, [Name] was a walking fashion disaster, the blonde had refused to let her go without her help. Their tastes differed, but even [Name] had to admit that Ino had done an incredible job in helping her choose an outfit that was suited to her tastes. Granted, it was skimpier than what she usually wore and more figure defining, but it did make her look really nice. She did not look like a savage mess with evident dark eyebags who appeared to have just gotten out of bed and went to work straightaway like she did on a daily basis. But she felt exposed and uncomfortable in the setting she was not accustomed to.

The penthouse she had been invited to was extravagantly luxurious; the small dining for the two of them (her and soon to be her sugar daddy) was right next to the giant window in the living room that showed a beautiful night view of the Konoha city. Lighting in the room was ambient and romantic, and there was a small pizza, that looked ridiculously expensive for what it's worth, and red wine settled before her. While she did not want to indulge in such luxury, feeling on the edge of the seat because of how her sugar daddy to be was scrutinizing her with calculating onyx eyes, and never being the one to refuse free food, she mindlessly ate it, refusing to meet his eyes.

“You know, usually you’re supposed to make conversation and sell yourself to try and convince me of why I should stick with you rather than someone else,” Madara spoke, and this was so abrupt and unanticipated on [Name]’s part that she froze half way through biting her food. Her cheeks felt hot in embarrassment, and she awkwardly coughed loudly before looking up at Madara. Although he found her antics to be somewhat adorable, he kept a straight face. After all, to gain the attention of a man of his status, there were many who did the strangest things to appease him. Madara was not a man to be tricked so foolishly.

“Why should I sell myself when you haven’t convinced me to why I should be your….uh, sugar b-baby rather than s-someone else’s?” [Name] responded. She had started off strongly, but near the end when it came to referring to herself as a sugar baby and realisation of the situation sunk in, she felt herself become more flustered.

Now, it was not odd for people to be intimidated by Madara. However, acting in confidence at the same time, and to question his authority, that was new. The corner of his lips twitched upwards in amusement. He leaned back in his chair and raised a fine black eyebrow at [Name].

“And why should I have to sell myself to you? I’m the one who, essentially, is paying for everything,” he challenged, and [Name] scoffed at him.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s really costing you,” she mumbled under her breath, before clearing her throat. “Someone else can pay me too.”

“You had no reviews on your profile, you’re lucky that I even chose to click on it. Usually, it’s hard to get started since no one bothers with anyone with no reviews.”

[Name] shrugged. “That was your own choice, don’t shift the situation onto me. And besides, how do you know it's only reviews that count online? I might know a lot of other sugar daddies I had in my past that desperately want me but it's lucky that I chose to give you, a stranger, the chance.”

Madara was amused by the fact that [Name] had used his own logic against him, and could not help but smirk. Even though it was more than obvious through her behaviour that she was an absolute newbie to this, he decided to humour her.

"Well, I am an Uchiha," Madara said simply, as if that sole reason explained everything.

[Name] blinked in confusion. "Uhhh, okay…? Well, I'm [Surname]. That explains why you should choose me.”

This time, her response really did leave Madara confused. His eyebrows were furrowed and there was clear confusion written on his face.

“You don’t know the Uchiha?” he asked incredulously. The urge to sigh in an exaggerated manner and snap at him was strong, but [Name] decided against it. With the way he spoke in that condescending tone, and expected [Name] to treat him as if he was of utmost importance, made it more than obvious to her that he was used to being treated as the highest authority. Perhaps he was of importance and not watching herself around him could lead her into a huge mess. But [Name] did not particularly care about his status or whatever he had going on that made him expect her to seemingly kiss the floor he walked on. If she cared about authorities and sucking up to people, then she would not be training to be a therapist in the first place. There were going to be times when she would have to fight authorities and regulations with her sweat and blood for the sake of her clients. And really, if [Name] did care, she would not have been here in the first place -- having dinner with a complete stranger.

“Uh I do?” she said, but it sounded more like a question. Madara opened his mouth to respond to her, but he shifted the focus of the conversation to another topic. He felt even more perplexed by [Name] now because how could she not know the Uchiha?

“Nevermind, it’s not of importance. Tell me, why are you in this line of business? You don’t seem,” fit for it, he wanted to say, but chose his words carefully. “The type to want to do this.”

In response, [Name] felt flustered. She wondered if it was really that obvious that she was not used to it and Madara was simply humouring her. She could very well tell him the truth that it was because Ino had tricked her into it. However, that would make her seem gullible. Now that she may be committing to this, she knew she needed to build a good reputation for herself. She decided to tell the half-truth.

“I need the money,” she answered in a murmur, before she brought the glass of wine to her lips, and took a huge drink from it.

Madara watched her with analytical eyes as she downed her alcohol, taking no moment to savour the taste. He had also noticed how she was on her third plate of their dinner and wondered if she had any decency and how she was capable of eating so much.

“Your job doesn’t pay you enough?” he asked in a genuinely concerned tone, before he followed [Name]’s example and downed his remaining wine in one go too. He had never done that before, and after finishing it, he had to admit there was an odd sense of satisfaction of not savouring its every taste and drinking it all together at once.

Madara was staring at her with anticipation and worry embedded deep in his ebony coloured irides. Frankly speaking, [Name] had not have someone look at her with such concern in a long time. Generally, on the rare occasions she did speak freely about her worries, whoever she shared her problems with would give her their own input rather than simply listening to her and asking her the right questions that would help her discuss or figure out her own problem. The sight of it made her heart beat faster, and she unknowingly found herself talking before she even what she was doing.

“It’s not that… Well, actually I don’t even work. I barely have time to breath, working is my last priority right now,” she murmured, nervously fiddling with her fingers, as she observed Madara from the corner of her eye.

“While I cannot relate to your financial struggles, I understand the situation you’re in. Becoming so busy because of a goal you once had, that you question whether it’s even worth pursuing it anymore. You lose sight of who used to be and the things that brought you pleasure. There’s always something to do that you can’t even remember the last time you truly felt alive,” Madara said thoughtfully, and his words caused [Name]’s eyes to widen.

“And no matter how much you want to try and change things, it just feels like you’ve been stuck in the same cycle and it keeps repeating over and over and over again,” [Name] murmured, sighing dejectedly. “I really hate the world.”

Madara chuckled at her declaration as he lifted another bottle of wine that was on their table.

“Me too. Why don’t we discuss more things we hate about the world and learn about what we in common over more wine?” he suggested. The edge of suspicion and tenseness he held before was no longer present. Instead, he was now feeling much more relaxed than he had in awhile, and felt intrigued about [Name]. The twinkle in his eyes in hopes to talk to her more caused her lips to stretch into a cute flustered smile.

“Sure.”

____________________

It was the week which was like the last and there was no change but stress levels felt higher. Even after a decent ten hours sleep, [Name] felt exhaustion crawling like bugs underneath the epidermis layer of her skin. Dark bags were swelled prominently underneath her eyes. Her hair was tied carelessly in a messy bun that fell to one side; it wasn’t pretty like the one’s beauty gurus showed. It was loose but the knot was tight enough to make the weight of the hair feel too evident with each passing moment. Taking a quick sip from her steaming mocha, she greeted the administrators on the front desk that were the first point of contact between clients and the therapists who worked further back in the office. This office was where [Name] was presently working to gain practice experience in her second practicum. Generally, students in training were simply meant to observe and learn. If permission given by their supervisor, they could step in. But in [Name]’s case, for the sake of the story’s plot, the office she had chosen this time were understaffed. And since she already had finished one practicum and had quite a lot of other experiences from volunteering under her belt, she was trusted to work independently with whatever clients may be assigned to her.

“Good morning Moegi and Konohamaru,” [Name] greeted, and the two looked up from their screens. When they noticed it was [Name], they beamed at her and returned her greeting in response.

“How was your weekend [Name]?” Konohamaru asked, as he handed her the appointment schedule of everyone she would seeing today.

[Name] was ready to give her autopilot response of it being "okay" and then quickly shooting a "how about you" like she usually did. However, before those words left her mouth she paused to ponder: truly, how had her weekend been?

It was okay. Actually, it had been more than okay.

It had surprisingly been a lot of fun. When she had went through with her sugar daddy date, she had somewhat expected that she may end up having sex with a rich man she would not have been attracted to and receive compensation for sleeping with him. But that had not been the case. Madara was quite attractive, and although the dinner date had begun with a few subtle jeers thrown at each other, she had ended up having a good time with him. The fact that she felt safe enough to be vulnerable with him in the way she didn't even feel that level of comfort with her friends, and shared things she hadn't even known she was bottling up - - it was such a profound experience. To go from discussing their hatred for many things, to confessing secrets and feelings they weren't judged for, but rather, listened to, to getting so drunk that they sang cheesy songs and ended the date with their own unplanned karaoke night, it left an odd feeling of satisfaction and joy in [Name]'s chest that she had not felt in a while. The knowledge of knowing that she would be seeing Madara again soon left her feeling embarrassed.

"It was," she began, and she covered her face with one hand to hide her embarrassment. "Really nice and fun. I had a good time," she murmured somewhat quietly. Then, right away, she scurried off towards her office before they could question her further or talk about their own weekends.

[Name] had left Moegi and Konohamaru surprised with her response, and the two turned to each other wondering if they had heard right.

It was after lunch when [Name] was indulging in some [favourite fruit] iced tea, hoping some sugar would help her stay awake when she had an appointment with a client she would be seeing for the first time. She had settled her drink on the table beside her, walked through the hallway, and into the main office with reception and waiting area for clients.

It was there she saw a young man not much older than herself. He had warm ivory skin and black hair bangs that framed his face. The back of his head looked like a duck’s butt. He must have heard her footsteps because before she even called out his name, he had looked up. When her eyes met his, she took a sharp intake of breath because he looked oddly similar to Madara. The way his obsidian eyes scrutinised her made her feel uneasy. Nonetheless, she gave him, what she hoped appeared to be a welcoming and reassuring smile.

“You are Sasuke?” she assumed, and he stood up.

“Hn,” Sasuke responded simply, and at the lack of any greeting or even a facial expression caused [Name] to sweatdrop. But nonetheless, she carried on like she did with all of her patients.

“Before we start your session, did you want anything? A hot chocolate, coffee, water?”

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at this before he replied nonchalantly. “A black coffee.”

[Name] nodded and just before she could speak once more, a head of messy black curls invaded her vision and she was greeted with a smile that was almost too falsely cheerie for her taste.

“Hello! I’m Shisui, Sasuke’s cousin. And stoic face over there is Itachi, Sasuke’s brother. You forgot about us Miss. Therapist,” Shisui greeted brightly. At his exuberant persona, Sasuke glared at him. The one who he had introduced as Itachi, sighed, and [Name] looked at them apologetically.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t notice you. Can I get anything for you as well? If you’ve been with Sasuke until this point, I can assume you’ll be staying with him.”

Itachi nodded and stepped up front and held out his hand for [Name] to shake, which she obliged to almost instantly.

“Yes. We are here to oversee my little brother’s recovery at my Father’s orders and make sure there is progress,” he explained simply. His words were harsh. It was evident in the way Shisui had become tight lipped, and how Sasuke had now averted his glare onto Itachi. [Name]’s eyes shifted to observe their reaction and then returned to Itachi who was looking at her stoically. It wasn’t too obvious. However, she noticed with the way Itachi’s jaw was clenched more tightly than it had been before. This change in his body language clearly indicated that he had not wanted to say what he did and he did not want to be here. And from the intense glare Sasuke regarded him with, [Name] safely assumed that whatever was going on with Sasuke, Itachi seemed to be a part of it. Underneath Itachi’s pretty eyes, she noticed a sense of tiredness that was all — physical, mental, emotional and more. She saw that same sense of exhaustion on her own face each day.

The session had not even started and this was already turning out to become so complicated. [Name] hoped she would still have her sanity by the time she graduated and came to do this full-time. There were some of her colleagues who never bothered with rules or following basic procedures to assure their clients comfort and wellbeing. Lucky for her clients, she did. And when she needed to, she would bend over backwards and willingly go beyond her capabilities for them.

She knew from the way they all held themselves, and particularly with how Itachi had spoken that they were of important status. Their ‘father asked [them] to be here’ was a subtle way of implying that she could get in huge trouble if she did not comply with them. But [Name] just didn’t care.

She turned to Sasuke with a stern look on her face and motioned towards Shisui and Itachi.

“Do you want them there to support you or would you feel more comfortable with just you? Either way is fine. It’s your decision,” [Name] said smiling at him.

The three raven-haired males that had been introducing themselves moments ago stilled and their eyes widened in shock. Shisui was the first one to snap out of it.

“Uh, Miss. Therapist, I don’t think you know—“

“I know what I’m doing. Please refrain from implying such things and let my client decide for himself,” she retorted, narrowing her eyes. Shisui went to warn once more, but he was stopped by Itachi, who shook his head.

Itachi’s gaze went to Sasuke, and then back to [Name] as he spoke.

“I’m sure she knows what she is doing. We all wish for Sasuke’s wellbeing. We won’t intrude if he doesn’t want us to,” he proclaimed. That was his way of hinting for Shisui to drop the subject, and reassuring both Sasuke and [Name] that he was on their side, particularly with Sasuke, letting him know that he would not let their father find this out.

“Aniki,” Sasuke murmured in disbelief, staring at his brother for a few moments. Then, he looked back at [Name] to see she was still giving him the same sweet and gentle smile she had greeted him with.

Maybe, perhaps, this time, signing up for therapy would be worth it. Maybe he could allow himself to talk to her and not fear judgement and consequences like he had with his previous therapists.

“I’d like it to be by myself,” he murmured, looking away from her with slight pink cheeks. As his eyes had drifted away from hers and met Shisui’s, who gave him a warning look, his shoulders tensed and his eyes snapped back to [Name] right away. “P-Please and t-thank you.”

He did not need to glance at Shisui again to know the oldest male was now grinning at him.

Seemingly, his politeness seemed to be unexpected and Sasuke wanted to scoff at how [Name]’s eyes had lit up in pride. It almost annoyed him because did they really think he was that dimwitted?

“You’re welcome. Now, follow me please. Shisui and Itachi, our session will be around an hour so you can come to pick him up in that time,” [Name] said. The two of them nodded and waved the two goodbye as Sasuke followed after [Name] to her office.

-------

A/N: (tbh, uhhh, I plan for this to be a yandere story [whispers: eventually] but this chapter is fluffy. I honestly don’t know where I’m going with this or if I’ll add more Uchihas as love interests and turn into a reverse harem for [Name], I’m gonna make shit up as I go along and hope it turns into something decent lol gang gang. I just need to write a story I can write without worries and just enjoy the process of it rather than caring about where it leads. So yeet. I hope you join me on this journey <3)

#yandere x reader #yandere sasuke #yandere naruto #yandere madara #naruto #madara x reader #sasuke x reader #naruto x reader #uchiha x reader #akatsuki x reader #naruto imagines #naruto headcanons #possessive #sasuke uchiha #madara uchiha #ambivalent writes #uchiha therapist part 1

867 notes · View notes

thoughtslikeaminefield · 5 years ago

Text

Summary: You want it to be love — but it isn’t. You want him — but you can’t have him. So you don’t want anything.

Characters: Dean Winchester x female reader (first person)

Warnings: sepia-toned angst ™ @boondoctorwho, not my typical Dean, mentions of alcohol, adult language, mentions of sexual activity

Words: 700

Author’s notes: written for @impala-dreamer‘s “Make Me Feel It” challenge with the song prompt Gravity by Sarah Bareilles.

WISH

The crowd bustles with booze and hormones, and weed. We watch the world go by from inside our bubble, bright and glistening. These people—they have no idea what it feels like to love him, to be loved by him.

But Dean doesn’t really love me.

I hook two fingers into his belt loop without a thought. My heartbeat makes my skin vibrate as I swing my gaze up to meet his.

“Found your spot, huh?” he speaks softly, his voice misting over me through the din.

He smirks and his eyes twinkle like peridot in the midnight rain as he lightly clasps a few of his fingers around my wrist, turning into me.

“So possessive,” he says, playfully scolding as he wedges a knee between my thighs. “Makin’ a claim.”

My back’s against the wall when he dips in to kiss me, it’s deliberate, precarious, on the surface but 20,000 leagues deep — and it’s fleeting.

Dean could kiss me for a day non-stop and it’d feel like a fraction of a second.

When he’s done, he steps away, leaving me raw and bereft against the wall.

“C’mon,” he says, nodding toward the door as he shoves his hands in his pockets and trots down the stairs to the street.

I descend behind him like a lead balloon.

He’s so smooth and he moves so easily, but I can never catch up to him. He’ll never be mine.

He takes me home, to my house. He locks my door behind him. When he turns to me, he smiles and he slides his fingers into my hair. He kisses me and calls me sweetheart.

Every touch is weighted, elevated. Every word...

Fuck, you smell good

You like that?

Like my hands on you?

So soft

So wet, princess

So tight

Can you take me?

Fuckin' come

Come for me

For you... just you

I think I’ve pulled myself up to stand on my own. I think I can say no but then he's there again, standing there like a ghost or a lie.

He’s like that liquor that your best friend bought last Christmas. The one with the gold flecks in it that’s 80-proof and tastes like candy. When you drink it, you feel like flying — can’t stop flying. Then the morning after, when it’s all gone, you’re thick with sugar, dehydrated, strung out, and vomiting.

Oh, but when he’s there...

“Drink?” he asks, rolling from my bed and stepping into his jeans.

Those legs, those hips.

“Yeah,” I answer, my voice hoarse from exertion and calling his name.

He disappears from my room and I close my eyes.

He never asks. We just drift toward each other. We end up together, sweaty and guilty and a stain I can’t remove.

It’ll fade, but when?

I don’t even know his last name.

“Here you go,” he says, handing me a beer and taking a swig of his own, as he settles on the edge of my bed to fit his watch to his wrist and scoop his socks from the floor.

I watch the same turn of events I see every time, 15 minutes after he finally comes — jeans, watch, socks, and boots. Those dirty, heavy boots, steel-toed and sturdy, beautifully worn.

I wonder where those boots have been, where they'll go next.

“Was good seein’ ya?” he says, dropping his foot flat to the floor and shooting me a sideways glance and a smile. “Thanks for the beer.”

“Sure,” I answer, rolling to my side.

I use the tip of my middle finger to trail his lower spine, as I inhale.

I won’t wash my sheets for another week at least.

Dean pauses and reaches for my hand before bringing it to his mouth and draining me dry with his tongue-damp lips brushing across my knuckles and whispering, “Gotta go. Get some sleep.”

He stands and crosses the room then shrugs into the rest of his clothes — t-shirt, flannel, leather.

I let my eyes close.

“Be safe, Dean.”

I hear his boots shuffle over my bare wood floor and his jacket rustle crisp in the air.

“Always am. You too.”

Then he’s gone.

And I’m left precious and used once again.

If you like what you’ve read, please let me know!

#dean winchester x reader

166 notes · View notes

letsgoravendors · 4 years ago

Text

Kiss - Parrlyn

Chapter 8 - Eggnog

Summary: Every important kiss Cathy and Anne shared throughout their relationship.

TW: Technically some nsfw? But also not really?

Ao3

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

As much as they thought about it, neither Anne nor Cathy could come up with an excuse or rationalization for why the next kisses happened. Other than the fact that they simply wanted it.

Christmas was over and New Years had passed, but winter was still in full force. Most mornings the queen woke up to a mix of snow and rain, their walks to the local coffee shop or pub required winter boots since the streets seemed to be permanently covered in a snowy slush (but it makes the best snowballs, just ask the back of Anne’s head right when Kat threw one at her).

The cold weather had also gotten Jane in a rather festive mood. Or at least that’s what she called it. Tea, coffee, and hot chocolate had apparently started to bore her and she announced coming home from the store one day that she would be making eggnog, a holiday classic.

But not eggnog you could buy at the store, no, homemade eggnog. Y’know, the eggnog Jane just couldn’t get right for the life of her. Maybe she hadn’t whipped the eggs enough or even over-whipped them, maybe she added too much vanilla or the wrong amount of sugar. Whatever it was, it wasn’t right.

To Anne and Cleves’s—and the rest of the queens, let's be honest—dismay, Jane refused to add alcohol. The one thing that could possibly drown out the odd after taste that the drink always seemed to have. Actually, even that wasn’t true, Boleyn and Anna had tried adding copious amounts of booze to the beverage but it somehow made it worse.

That evening, after the queens had said goodnight, Anne was downstairs playing a new RPG she had received for Christmas. She had been stuck on a level for a whole day and refused to put down the consul until she had beaten it.

Parr was also up, curled up on the couch with one of the many novels she’d been gifted for the holidays. She claimed it was so she could make sure Anne didn’t work herself to death, and if she simultaneously happen to spend some extra time with her crush, well what's the harm in that?

Yawning, Cathy made her way to the kitchen to refill her coffee mug. She knew it was a terrible idea to have caffeine late at night, but she has a problem so leave Parr alone.

Opening up the fridge for some cream, Cathy paused, staring at the bottle of eggnog that sat on the shelf like it was an animal waiting to strike. The newest batch of Jane’s eggnog, no doubt.

She knew she was going to have to try it, someone would force her or else risk hurting Jane’s feelings. The third queen tried, she really did, but brewing homemade drinks just weren’t her thing. So it was either now where she didn’t have to pretend to like it or later as Jane looked at her with that hopeful expression that Catherine hated to disappoint.

Misery loves company Cathy mused as she grabbed the container and reached for a glass from the cabinet.

“Annie, come here,” Parr called, sure to keep her voice low enough so only Anne would hear.

Boleyn paused her game and walked over to the kitchen, her headset hanging around her neck. A gift from “Santa” last Christmas—they all knew it was Aragon—and since then they’d become a part of the second queen.

“Wh—oh no.” The brunette grimaced, knowing what was about to happen.

“Oh yes.” Cathy countered, pouring the liquid into a cup. “You’re going to have to do it sometime, why not now?” Anne gave an exasperated groan, throwing her head back, and Cathy giggled.

“Who goes first?”

“Rock, paper, scissors?” Anne offered and Parr shrugged. It seemed fair that they handle this like real adults.

Anne threw scissors and Cathy threw Spock.

“Haha! I win!”

“You cheating bastard, what was that?”

“Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock. Spock smashes scissors, therefore I win,” Parr smiled proudly, offering the other girl the glass, “drink up, Annie.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, that does not count.”

“Fine, shall I explain the rules? Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock—“

“Alright, alright, alright, fine! I’ll take first drink. But for the record, you did cheat.”

“You didn’t specify the rules.”

Anne playfully squinted at her, “you’re lucky you’re cute, Cath.” A blush crossed Parr’s cheeks as Anne turned her gaze to the glass of eggnog.

“To be fair, throwing scissors first is far too predictable.” Cathy added, “That's why you should throw rock first because your opponent is more likely to pick scissors, since its the last word you say.” The sixth queen remembered reading something about that a while ago. The concept was intriguing, she made a mental note to research that more later.

“Are you saying I’m weak-minded?”

“Really more implying it—“ Boleyn gasped dramatically and Cathy stifled a laugh, “I kid, I kid. But you still have to drink that.”

“I know.” Anne grimaced then put the cup to her lips, taking a sip before resting it back on the table. Parr was prepared for the worst, but instead, Anne’s face relaxed.

“Huh. It’s actually not bad. I think Jane finally got the hang of this.”

“Really? Wait, let me taste.”

“Okay,” Anne said, drinking a bit more and in a rush of bravery, she quickly turned and kiss Parr.

Cathy gave a muffled “mmph” before deepening the kiss. Anne was right, Jane had improved her eggnog receipt, the taste of the beverage still one her lips, but that was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

Then, too soon for Cathy’s liking, Anne pulled away.

“Good, right?”

“Mhm, yeah...” Catherine answered, a little dazed, but came back down to earth at seeing Anne’s smirk, “I mean—what?”

“The eggnog? It’s good, right?”

Catherine blushed furiously, opting to stare at the floor instead of Anne. “Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s really good.”

A beat of silence. “And what about the kiss?”

“...That was gre—good too, yeah.”

A sudden timidness washed over the Boleyn girl. “Would you—uh—want to do it again?”

“Yes,” Cathy answered almost too quickly, but before she could recover, Anne’s lips were back on hers.

Parr’s hands grabbed at the green hoodie Anne wore, using it to effectively pull the girl closer. Boleyn’s hands still cupped her cheeks and their kiss went swiftly from sweet to passionate.

They finally crossed the line they’d been toeing for what felt like forever and neither of them wanted to stop. Maybe it was because they were scared the moment would be lost or just delaying what they assumed was an inevitable rejection (they’re idiots). If it was the last time they were going to kiss, they wanted to make it count.

Cathy’s hands flew up to Anne’s hair, attempting to run them through the brunette locks, but the gaming headphones still around Anne’s neck blocked her. Once Boleyn realized what she was trying to do, she parted their lips for a moment and hurriedly took off the headphones like they were burning her skin before feverishly kissed Catherine back.

Cathy heard the faint clunk of then headset on the kitchen counter, but she wasn’t about to stop just to check if they were still in one piece. She didn’t think Anne was about to either.

The second queen’s hands moved down from Cathy’s head to her waist. Parr felt the brunette’s fingers hesitantly play at the hem of her t-shirt and the shorter pulled her closer, hoping she would get the message to keep going.

Anne broke the kiss a second later, both of them breathless, “Is this okay? Do you wanna slow down?”

“No, please keep going, this is great,” Parr replied, nodding her head encouragingly before connecting their lips once more. She felt Anne smirk into the kiss.

A rush of heat shot through Catherine’s body as Anne’s hands explored her skin underneath her shirt.

Once more their lips separated. “Can we... take this upstairs?” Cathy asked in between staggered breathes and Anne nodded vigorously before tugging the blue queen up the stairs.

The green queen made no effort in being silent as she shut the door to her room before pushing Cathy up against it.

More kisses where shared, this time trailing across cheeks, jaws, necks, and shoulders. Marks that were tomorrow’s problems were left along their skin.

The two Queens made there was across the minefield that is Anne Boleyn’s room while the taller girl clumsy abandoned her hoodie. She then made quick work of getting Cathy’s own sleep shirt off, tossing it somewhere for them to find the next morning.

“No bra?” Anne mused a second later, a smirk on her face as she raised her eyebrows, making no effort the hide her wandering gaze.

“No one wears a bra to bed, you psychopath,” Cathy remarked before pulling Anne into another kiss that they laughed into as they fell back onto the mattress.

That night Anne and Cathy truly hoped the walls were thicker then they seemed. God forbid any of the Queens heard them, they would never hear the end of it.

Both knew they shared their eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth kiss—but, honestly, they lost count after that night.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Shit, I’m sorry you had to scroll through all of. But hey! Something finally happened! Yay thanks for reading! 🎉

I figured I had to make the chapter of them finally getting together a longer one, right? Sorry this is late, this long chapter caused so many writers blocks and honestly, I was lazy, I apologize.

*Did someone as for a Big Bang Theory reference? Well tada!

Also is the most g-rated “smut” (if you can even call it that) ever so I’m sorry if you thought I was going to be writing porn cause I can’t write that.

21 notes · View notes

reigning-rhapsody · 4 years ago

Text

Continuing this thread with @angelic-armory

Maybe I should’ve made it easier. Maybe, yes, but where would the buildup to a heartwarming reunion be? Angeal mysteriously and yet conveniently waiting right outside the cavern which housed him during his slumber- a happy end, but at what cost? There would have been a twist, something to flip it around on them, separate them in the end and make the happy tears shed take a depressive turn down their faces. Rather would he endure days, weeks, months more without his partner than to see him suffer as a payment for reuniting so soon.

They deserved to be together again.

And so they found each other, laying in one another’s arms once more in their lives, just like in all those nights they went stargazing during a pleasant summer or were huddled together in bed on a cold winter night. This time, it was much less romantic. On a tattered mattress laying askew on the floor in the middle of a near empty, rundown apartment, Genesis was kissing his teenage crush, comrade, partner. He would make it romantic, it was something he was sure of being able to do in this uncertain world.

Sweet cherry lips melted against sour ones to create the blissful flavor of adoration believed to be long lost when wings seemed to have given in a while ago. Like a praline, it was coated with luscious chocolate and the uncertainty to take it in fully just yet, like a teenager allowed to try one for the first time. Then the sugared cocoa liquidated and the alcohol flooded a curious mouth, trickling down scarlet kissed lips, numbing the taste buds into acceptance of this new and yet familiar experience. It simply had been a while.

Then he bit down on the cherry. He couldn’t feel the precious champagne tears run over his with wine dyed gloves but tasted his own as they mixed with the sweetness of the two warriors trying to heal their wounds and become whole again with honey. A near-sob masked as a gasp left him to realize he wasn’t the only one drunken off his significant other’s affection enough to spill his drink and gloved hands moved up with liquor flushed cheeks to let his thumb wipe away the result of their booze involving gathering that tender evening.

Angeal broke their kiss, Genesis let him. Mint-Mako marked pools were made visible once more and allowed to catch another glimpse of what is truly his ravenet guardian angel as thick lashes fluttered open. Every hot puff of breath hitting his paled porcelain skin and mingling with his own sent a shiver of anticipation running down the auburn stranded man’s spine as well as another affirmation that this was reality, he wasn’t having a cruel dream in the crystal he sealed himself in.

It was almost like an admonition to not play with fire, the words that came out of the taller one’s mouth. That he wasn’t the same anymore, that he was a changed man- it sounded like he wanted to warn Genesis of the monster he claimed to be ever since he defected from SOLDIER with a gaze of pure sincerity. It also sounded like he forgot that they were two sides of the same coin, and despite it being a warning, the fact that Angeal even assumed he needed to give one getting his chest to ache and tighten up, it also brought an immense sort of relief that, at heart, he still cared, he never stopped. He never would.

“Ah...” was all Genesis replied with at first, his tears having stopped the heavy flow as only wet trails remained down his cheeks. He allowed his eyes to take a look around the interior nothingness the apartment was. It was neglected, barely taken care of- just like the one who resided in it. “You don’t say.” His lips thinned and he focused back on said owner of the flat, his hands moving away from the scruffy face to let one sneak around his middle while the other went to his own face, subtracting the mess of tears still in the corners of his eyes to zero.

“Geal...”, a whispered reminder of who the divine being was to him, a nickname given to him as a child in return of being called ‘Gen’ when his full name was too difficult to process for a young mind. The shorter of the pair sighed and leaned in, kissing away any excess tears from fatigued eyes that matched his own in a neon glow, his now free hand brushing a stray strand of grey tinted black behind its owners ear, tangling in it, dark as a starless sky with the intense sterling shimmer reflecting off of each strand twinkling like the suns that lit up the sky.

The ginger’s burgundy wrapped hand gave Angeal’s head a gentle push from behind as anemic tendrils seeped through his fingers like ash, the clothed digits gently combing through the tangled mess and against the scalp, their foreheads resting against one another. “Quite visibly, things aren’t the same, you’re right. I have my doubts about them going back to normality anytime soon as well.”, a soft voice began, and despite barely being above a whisper in volume, it was oozing with a determination to not leave his partner behind, in the dust, let him rot in his own demise.

He lifted his head, lips a mere inch apart as the hue of the Lifestream searched the soul that rested in the matching pools it stared into with such sincerity and tenderness, “And it doesn’t have to, but we can start anew.”, he suggested, slender arm tighening in the half-hug it returned, eyebrows furrowing.

“Would you like to try, together?”

3 notes · View notes

thephantomofthe-internet · 5 years ago

Text

A Kiss from the Afterlife

Rocker!Billy Hargrove x Holloway!Reader

Word Count: 3,989

Warnings: death mention!, alcohol, swearing, angst

Author’s note: I haven’t written in awhile, hope you guys still like me and my stuff, I like this story a lot personally

Tag List: @carolimedanvers @hotstuffhargrove @thechickvic @alex--awesome--22 @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @so-not-hotmess @hawkeyeharrington @sunflowercandie @kaliforniacoastalteens @songforhema @spidey-pal @mickmoon @buckybarneshairpullingkink @marvelismylifffe @baebee35

The assignment was clear. It was stupid, but it was clear. A fluff piece for the Indianapolis Tribune, reviewing local Indiana bands for state pride or some shit. It felt totally out of your element. You should be reviewing the latest new wave flash in the pan or whatever Michael Jackson single had been dropped and hit high enough on the top one hundred to pay attention to, which was almost every single. Much more important work than some garage bands going to open mic nights on the weekend and would break up in a month over a girl who everyone else would call their Yoko Ono.

This wasn’t worth your time.

But what Chris said go. Chris, your editor, was working under the assumption that fluff pieces about local work get more local readers. A sort of self-flagellation for a crappy state. So, you did as little research as possible to find three up and coming acts from around greater Indianapolis, finding three of the most boring seeming hair metal bands that might get successful, and found gigs to watch.

You promised yourself that you weren’t going farther than Gary, but Chris insisted on you going down to Carmel, apparently the band there was really popular and missing them would get too many letters to the editor. You begrudgingly agreed, but only because Carmel was just far enough from Hawkins to keep your mind at bay. You found solace knowing that the band would probably be the worst. Amateur bands with really good names always failed, it was the rule. Good bands got good names later.

And Crown of Thorns was a really good band name.

You’d found a slew of fans to interview in Carmel, according to them they were like Guns n’ Roses had a baby with Madonna’s Like a Prayer video-all religious imagery and hard rock sensibility. Sounded too good to be true. No garage band was that good. You wondered what they actually liked. Usually, the intense fans were either friends with or fucking the band members; groupies don’t just appear they start as girlfriends and boyfriends and buddies from high school looking for free booze. You don’t how many ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, and friends you’d talk to for your interviews for the dumb piece.

You wondered how many ex-girlfriends you’d interviewed for the preamble for Crown of Thorns. All their fans seemed to be women, at least the ones who wanted to be interviewed were. It was strange, usually there was a couple beer bros wandering around looking to talk about how some band so fucking awesome or whatever.

Still, you didn’t bother to question it. There was one perk of this assignment and that was not having to work the awful nine to five in stuffy professional attire. Well worn jeans and a baggy tee shirt beat blazers and heels any day of the damn week. You wandered into the venue late that night, the bar called The Muddy Duck which looked as terrible as its name was; you made a note to describe the place as kindly as you could.

The bar was dim and awful. It stunk of beer spilled hours ago and puke. So much puke. The place smelt so bad you wondered if they filled the walls with the stuff instead of insulation. The floor was sticky under your boots and people kept bumping against you. The band hadn’t even come onstage and someone had already spilt a drink on you, sticky liquid trailing down your back and making your skin crawling involuntarily. Some sloppy girl muttered “Sorry…” dropping her sugar crusted martini glass on the counter before stumbling off. You pulled the drenched material off your back before pushing your way to the front. The crappy lights above the milk crates the place was calling a stage had flashed on and the entire room fell into a hush. You pulled out your notepad, jabbing your pencil behind your ear.

Three hulking men took the stage, each scruffier than the last, most hunched over with their instruments strung around their backs; bass guitar and guitar and drumsticks shoved as far away from their person as possible. They all looked as if they didn’t want to be seen, you wrote that down, noting their homemade band merchandise and stringy unkempt hair.

Then, the crowd cheered. The forth member was climbing the steps, fluffy mullet bouncing with each of his steps. He turned to the audience, throwing up the horns in a dramatic pose, hands held in a ‘v’ over his head and head tipped back up at the ceiling. The ring of feminine screams washed over your ears, causing you to throw your hands over your ears, trying to save your ear drums from their squeals.

An elbow jabbed into your ribs, bringing your attention to a spiky looking Siouxie Sioux knockoff who was smirking down at you “If you can’t handle that, you aren’t going to be able to handle this show.” She said, her voice carrying over the sound of the crowd.

“Thanks for the tip.” You called back, writing down the quote, making a note to find her before you left, to get one good interview out of this mess.

The drummer had taken his seat, the guitarists pulling their instruments to the front of them. The singer took the microphone in his hands like it was his lover, his eyes scanning the scene. They met yours for the briefest of moments and recognition hit you like a freight train.

Billy god damn Hargrove. You wanted to die.

Of course you had to interview Hargrove. Of course he had his own shitty hair metal band even though it was 19 god damn 91 and hair metal was dying off like flies on fly paper. Of course he was trying to fuck the audience with his eyes. You prayed he didn’t recognize you. You prayed you could get through this interview without any spill ups. You just wanted to disappear from Hawkins bullshit and the people who made it awful. Billy Hargrove made it awful.

Billy Hargrove destroyed your family.

Heather was your little sister, your bratty baby sister who stole your clothes and destroyed your makeup and followed you around helplessly. She was your stuck up, immature, callus, popularity obsessed sister. She was a kid. You left Hawkins to go to college, to get away from your fighting parents and your mother’s slow descent into alcoholism. You went into journalism because it was the only thing you could relate to your father about and you wanted that praise. You stayed away from your family when you could, the mess growing too big for you to tackle. You tried to keep up with Heather, but she didn’t want check in from her older sister. She was too old for a babysitter, to be babied by her older sibling. She stopped answering your calls, so you stopped calling.

And then, she was gone. They were gone. Lost to some stupid fire in a stupid mall. Your whole family, just gone. There were a handful of survivors, and you didn’t blame them, but in your heart one person shouldn’t have been saved. And that was Hargrove. Why did the universe save a philandering womanizer with a penchant for bullying get to live when your baby sister had to die? How was that fair? If you’d ever fully believed in God, you lost your faith in them the day you found out about your sister.

And you never forgave Hawkins. You turned your back on the place, sold your family home and the newspaper, packed up what was important and gave the rest to Goodwill. Life wasn’t in Hawkins anymore, it was anywhere else. Indianapolis didn’t feel far enough yet, but it held a decent paying job and a life away from what hurt you. A small change did more than enough to feel free of the ghosts chasing you from a joint grave plot.

The intro to their first song blared from the lead guitarist’s amp, filling the room with screeching metallic notes, far too fast to be the start of a song. You waited for the crash of cymbals or the mellow sound of the bass or even a note from Hargrove. The song opened with a minute long solo. You absolutely hated that, it stunk of the seventies psychedelic rock your older cousins would blast in the basement during Christmas parties, all claiming to be Satanists and against the holiday until their parents let them each have a beer. The sound left a sour taste in your mouth.

What didn’t help was the pure, wordless wail Hargrove let out as the guitar cut out. The audience was deathly silent, on the edge of their seats waiting for something. What it was, you weren’t sure, but you watched his hands as he adjusted his grip and pulled himself in close, his lips almost touching its centre, his icy blue eyes lowering to meet the gaze of the room again.

“I watched the blood pour from your eyes…” he crooned out, his eyelashes fluttering as if he’d sung something romantic. His voice wasn’t strong, but the way he held the microphone. There was a phrase for it; a term…it was on the tip of your tongue. It found you by the end of the song, which seemed to solely about watching the one you love fall out of love with you, which dark imagery.

As the room applauded, you found your mind again, his stupid stare and the way he held the audience in the palm of his hand. Frank Sinatra syndrome. You might have made up the term, but it made too much sense. Sinatra was a dreamboat in the forties and an emotional singer who owned a room and the hearts of his fan base, a majority of which were women. It said that in the cramped, warm venues of his early career of the late twenties and early thirties that you could smell the pheromones coming off the girls in the room. It seemed Billy Hargrove had found a way to do the same. He had the whole room wrapped around his little finger.

Now it made sense why you’d only been able to find women who were interested in the band, no straight man would ever be interested in them. And no gay man would get caught by reporters looking for a story, too dangerous. Now it made sense why the bar was so shit and the girls here were so hot-straight girls would go anywhere for a peak at a hottie like Hargrove, you remembered how the girls chased him in high school, how desperate they were for just a peak at him in his gym clothes or shirtless at the pool.

Billy Hargrove still had a way with the girls.

They managed four more songs, only one a cover, which impressed you a fair bit. The amount of kids you’d listen to play AC/DC and Metallica and Motley Crue in the week alone was enough to make you hate any song with an electric guitar in it. Hearing original songs, albeit trite drivel about love and losing girls and sex under God’s eye, was almost a breath of fresh air. Almost. If it hadn’t been Hargrove, it would’ve been completely worth the trip down.

But you had to deal with Hargrove.

His performance ended and the crowd erupted into uproarious applause as the group shuffled off the stage, save Hargrove who jumped off the front of the stage, landing directly in front of you.

“You the chick from the Indianapolis Tribune?” he asked, looking you over with a lazy look, half-hearted in both its intention and its purpose.

You tucked your pencil behind your ear, looking at him in pure annoyance “You see anyone else taking notes?” you asked. Billy chuckled drily, running a hand through his sweaty looking hair, pulling a black hair elastic off his right wrist, right above the black leather cuff he had on both his wrists, and pulling his tangled curls off the back of his neck.

“The boys are at the bar, come over when you want an actual interview instead of bitching.” He replied shortly, stalking off as a small hoard of girls followed behind him. He already had groupies. Oh my fucking god.

You took a deep breath, swallowed your pride, and walked over to the bar, ordering yourself a beer before pulling up a stool. Billy smirked slightly as he saw you turn to the group. He slung an arm over a girl in a tight leather skirt, causing the other girls to walk off; apparently, Hargrove had made his choice for the night and the other girls accepted it without verbal complaint to him.

“Guys, this is the chick from the newspaper.” He grabbed his brown bottle off the sticky rail and pulled it to his lips, taking a long sip, his eyes never leaving you.

“Hi, Y/N Holloway, I just have a couple of questions for you guys and then I’ll get out of your way.” You smiled. You watched out of the corner of your eye as your last name caused recognition flashed in his baby blues. In that moment, he knew you. Well, he knew your family. And he became a wallflower. You asked your simple questions, which were mostly about how they met and what their goals were, which the drummer declared to be ‘world domination’ while elbowing Billy in the abs, as if he would’ve laughed. He didn’t. In fact he didn’t speak at all; he just sort of stared at you, mouth open just a little, just enough to show the shock he felt. That was a confidence boost, knowing you could still shock.

You finished the interview with a sweet smile, tucking your notepad into your heavy black bag and hopped off your stool, grabbing your beer as you went. “Alright, best of look boys, see you in the papers.” You said with a wave, walking into the crowd. You had to find that spiky goth, she seemed to know more than anyone else in that room.

You found her in the corner of the room at a tiny table, fingers laced with a tiny mousy looking girl with short ash brown hair and a lazy looking smile. When you walked up, she dropped her hand out of the spiky girl’s, who simply smiled at you.

“What’s up, Holloway?” she asked, turning to fully look at you.

You furrowed your brow “You know me?”

She chuckled “Fellow Hawkins escapees don’t show up so close to hell that often, although I know you don’t recognize me. Samantha Baker.” She held out her hand for you to shake. After hearing her name, you did recognize her as the school’s only sullen goth.

“Hey,” you shook her hand, turning to address the little mouse. She seemed oddly familiar “Aren’t you Neil Buckley’s little sister? Robin right?” you asked with a grin. Neil Buckley was your first boyfriend; you spent most of your afternoons in freshman year at his house. Robin nodded, choosing to pull the cherry off her mixed drink and popped it in her mouth, pulling the red stem off and knotted it with fingers.

You turned your attention back to Samantha with a genuine grin “Look, I’m here doing a piece on local bands, specifically Hargrove’s group. You seem to know a bit about these crowds, can I get a couple quotes from you?” you asked, pulling your pad from your back pocket.

“Grab a seat, I’ll tell you anything you want.” Samantha chuckled once again.

“Sammy, what’s she want?” a strong, angry voice asked from behind you as you pulled out the high stool. You knew it was Hargrove, but you didn’t turn around.

“A couple quotes about the crazy girls who stalk you around.” She replied “You care?”

“I wanna listen and make sure you don’t say shit about me.” He muttered, grabbing an empty chair from a nearby table and pulling it close to yours. The blonde he’d been with before was gone now, to your surprise, and he was pouting in the chair next to you.

“The only thing I have to say about you is that you don’t write your own music.” Samantha replied with a shrug that made Robin roll her eyes.

“Who does?” you asked, pulling your pencil out from behind your ear.

Samantha’s chest puffed out proudly “I do. I’m their lyricist and composer.” You jotted that down fast, making a mental note to credit her for anything you liked in their music.

“Why don’t you just perform this stuff yourself then? There’s an open market for angry, gothic girl rock, much wider than the boy’s market.” You asked.

“Yeah, I can’t do what Hargrove can do to a crowd.” Samantha replied, watching as Hargrove puffed up with pride again.

“Specifically to the girls, that man can turn even the most devoted wife or girlfriend to cheat on their husbands.” Robin added with a smirk. There was clearly a story there, but you didn’t try to pull it out of them, letting sit on the surface of their knowing smiles.

“You gotta understand, these girls-they aren’t here for the music, they’re here for him. They can’t get enough.” Samantha explained, smacking him in the chest as she gestured to him. Samantha might have had too many drinks.

“So it’s just like high school again?” you chuckled, leaning your elbows on the table. You smiled at him, against your initial thinking. Sure, he was still a cocky fuck, but he wasn’t being an absolute ass now that he knew who were.

“Except, now all his songs are apologies to like three girls,” Samantha said “Instead of sex songs about whoever he’s with that week.”

You furrowed your brow “And who are these three girls?”

“Oh, that’s easy: the first one is me, his truest love thus far, a gold star lesbian,” Samantha held up fingers as she counted them off “His mom, gone but never forgotten, and Heather Holloway.”

Your mouth went dry as you between the trio. Robin looked to you apologetically as she took the martini glass from her hand. “You’ve had enough, sweetie.” She muttered.

You didn’t feel like you knew what to say, but words came tumbling out of your mouth. “What gives you the right to use my baby sister as your fucking muse? Her death isn’t something to write fucking songs about.” You snapped. Your whole body felt like it was vibrating, you were so upset.

“I didn’t know you didn’t-Hargrove you told me that she knew that she was the only one who knew.” Samantha sobered up fast, looking at Hargrove with blown out brown eyes.

“Of course you’re still a liar, Hargrove.” You scoffed, pushing yourself off the stool. You were done with this interview, screw this town and the band and any of the other ‘Hawkins escapees’ out there looking to market off your family’s pain. You pushed your way out of the awful bar and into the dark night. It had begun to rain and the air was humid. Well, there goes your hair, the rain and humidity would ruin it. You crossed your arms over your chest, protecting your bare skin from the cold rain giving you goose bumps.

“Y/N, wait a second, alright?” You turned to see Hargrove running up behind you. You wiped your face, ready to blame rain for your running mascara.

“What do you have to say now?” you bit out, slicking your wet hair back from your face.

“Look I thought Heather had told you…” he muttered.

“How the hell was she supposed to tell me about your band? She’s fucking dead.” You wiped your nose angrily, rolling your eyes at your own tears.

“No, not about the band, about…us.” He tried again and you raised an eyebrow at him. Billy sighed, his hand coming to rub the back of his neck. He looked away from you into the dark streets. There wasn’t a cab in sight. “I loved your sister. We were…seeing each other. Sort of. We weren’t official, but we were going to be. I was gonna ask her and then so much shit went down, you don’t even know the half of it. And then…she was gone.”

You didn’t know that. Heather hadn’t told you any of that. You wondered if it was in the diary from that summer. You had all her diaries bundled together in your apartment, you’d never read them; it felt too invasive to her privacy, even from beyond the grave.

“I lost my whole family, I lost my baby sister…” you muttered to yourself, unsure what else to say.

“I know and I’m sorry. But I lost her too.” Billy replied, placing firm hands on your shoulders, forcing you to look at him. For the first time, he looked like a man, not a teenage boy imitating adulthood. He looked strong and as if he knew who he was. He looked handsome, although that be the beer and raw emotion talking.

“I’m sorry…I didn’t know.” You muttered “You must miss her…”

“Yeah, sometimes…when something reminds me of her.” He replied “Like you, you remind me so much of her. Can I show you one song? It’s the one that means the most to me.” You nodded at his request and let him drag you back into the bar. He put you near the front of the stage and grabbed his guitarist, taking the microphone back into his hands.

“Hey, sorry everyone, I’m gonna do one last song. We’ve got a reporter here from the Indiana Tribune, gotta show off our best stuff, ya know?” the audience laughed at his week attempt at a joke as his bassist brought up two chairs for Billy and the guitar guy, whose name you’d forgotten.

The song itself was sweet enough, about a girl with big doe eyes and hair that always smelt like chlorine. It was totally your sister; if they’d played that first you would’ve been just as furious as you were outside, except you wouldn’t have finished the interview. This time around, you listened. You smiled at the line about her lavender perfume and how it was so strong it made you dizzy and held your breath at every chorus as he wailed “You’re all gone, you’re all gone…” with his hands holding the microphone for death life. It didn’t feel like a love song, but a dirge to a long gone muse, never forgotten and screaming from the depths of one’s soul, begging to be remembered, to be put into art. You never liked to think about your sister that way, but deep within your heart you knew this was how she wanted to be remembered. She wanted to be a model, a soap star and spokesperson. She wanted to be remembered for her beauty, to be admired. Being the muse of a budding artist would be good enough for her, she would’ve loved that.

You clapped when it was done. You let Billy pull you away from the crowd. You let him kiss you like he would’ve your sister, the lingering smell of lavender and vanilla on your skin a reminder to both of you of her. You let him hold you. It was nice to be held. It was nice for him to get to say goodbye.

You knew you looked strange to the groupies and bar goers, but he needed this. And in a way, so did you. You held him like he was your father, like you were hugging him for the last time. You didn’t like that your mind associated the two men, but you let it. You both said goodbye to your ghosts.

And were left with strangers in their places.

140 notes · View notes

chiseler · 5 years ago

Text

Puttin’ on the Ritz

No fame is more fleeting than the showbiz kind. Some entertainers are just too much in and of a particular time. In the 1920s Harry Richman was a big star, billed as the Greatest Entertainer In America. He could sing and play piano, dance and act a little; he ran a hugely successful nightclub, was the toast of Broadway and, very briefly, a star in Hollywood; he wrote or introduced several songs that are still sung. But most of all he just personified the Roaring Twenties. He was the sleek, rakish, vaguely smarmy bon vivant in top hat and tails who was enjoying the decade's non-stop party as much as you were. It's been said that he was to the 1920s what the Rat Pack were to their era. Harry's career peaked just as the party crashed to a halt at the end of the decade, and he faded out in the 1930s. If his name comes up at all today, it's probably less often as an entertainer than as a footnote in aviation history.

He was born Harry Reichman in Cincinnati in 1895. His dad, a Russian Jewish immigrant, started out peddling eyeglasses door to door, carrying all his equipment on his back. He worked his way up to a prosperous wholesale business and real estate empire, and developed a taste for the high life. It killed him by the time Harry was an adolescent. In his thoroughly entertaining (sometimes suspiciously so) 1966 autobiography A Hell of a Life, Harry paints himself as a fecklessly scheming kid who grew up quick. At nine, he writes, he was a weekend ticket taker at an amusement park, shortchanging every customer he could because he was saving up to marry his childhood sweetheart. One night he showed off his ill-gotten riches by taking the girl out on the town. They stayed out too late to go home, so Harry got them a hotel room. When the cops burst through the door in the wee hours they found the kids sleeping fully clothed on separate beds. A doctor confirmed that the girl's honor was intact. Her dad put the kibosh to their romance anyway.

Harry's mother bought him piano lessons, dreaming he'd be a concert pianist, but like most kids at the time he was more interested in ragtime and jazz. He left home at around fourteen and headed to Indianapolis. There he and a kid who played fiddle went door to door in the kind of neighborhoods where an upright in the parlor wasn't uncommon. They'd bang out a few popular tunes for spare change. As Remington & Reichman they were soon touring the very small-time Webster circuit of vaudeville theaters in the Dakotas and Canada, known to vaudevillians as the Death Trail. Harry kept working his way around the west, singing at the piano in saloons and whorehouses, working as a singing waiter in restaurants, as part of a "Hawaiian" hula act in a circus sideshow. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco he was in a musical act that opened for Harry Houdini, fifteen shows a day. Playing in Los Angeles clubs favored by the movie crowd he got to be pals with Charlie Chaplin and Al Jolson, whom he idolized. Jolson got him a shot at Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic, the late-night club revue that gave Eddie Cantor his big break. Harry raced to New York, but flopped and was canned after only one night. He was so despondent he ran off and joined the Navy.

He arrived back in New York in 1920, just when Prohibition did too. Now he and the city were ready for each other. On vaudeville stages he found work as an accompanist for headliners like the singer Nora Bayes and the beautiful twin Dolly Sisters, and for a while was Mae West's on-stage pianist and straight man. He was reluctant to speak lines at first because he had a lisp that he could hide more easily when singing. West convinced him it was a distinguishing feature. He soon got top billing on his own on the Keith-Albee circuit. He also played at ritzy speakeasies like the Beaux Arts, where, he claims, Prohibition's hostess with the mostest Texas Guinan stole her signature line "Give the little girls a big hand" from him.

Nils T. Granlund, known as NTG, was both a radio pioneer and the publicist for Marcus Loew's movie theater empire. He hired Harry to headline live radio shows from Loew's State Theatre, the movie palace in Times Square. Harry plugged new songs on air, like Billy Rose's "Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" With NTG's help he opened his own Club Richman just behind Carnegie Hall. Harry made it one of the most opulent and exclusive nightclub/speakeasies in town. A lot of Broadway and movie stars became regulars, as of course did Mayor Jimmy Walker, and the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, and foreign royalty -- you saw everybody who was anybody there.

Or wanted to be somebody, like the chorus girl Lucille Le Seur. Accounts vary as to how Lucille got into the swank club. In one version, she convinced NTG, her sugar daddy at the time, to get her a spot in the club dancing the Charleston. NTG introduced her to Loew, who arranged a screen test at MGM, where she'd get her first tiny roles in 1925. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer decided her name sounded like Le Sewer, so the studio ran a publicity campaign in which the fans got to give her a new name: Joan Crawford. She never liked it.

For his part, Harry claimed that he discovered Crawford. He did have an eye for the beauties. He was one of the first to spot Jean Harlow, Sally Rand and Maureen O'Sullivan. Harry was an infamous ladies' man, bedding a long line of beauties from chorus girls to socialites to Harlow, maybe Rand, and Clara Bow. According to Harry, his office at the club had a secret door for sneaking them in and out while their husbands or dates drummed their fingers at their tables thinking they were just taking a long time powdering their noses. He says that the Hollywood Bowl couldn't hold all the women he had, and classes himself "a specialist in man's favorite sport."

Between the club and his other gigs Harry minted money and became the playboy nonpareil. He wore the finest bespoke suits and carried a gold cigarette case with his initials on it in diamonds. He commuted in a Rolls from Manhattan to his big house out on the water in Beechhurst, Queens, where he had a yacht and threw Gatsby-like parties for celebrities, beauties and millionaires. He learned to fly and kept a growing fleet of planes at nearby Flushing Airport. Harry worked hard, played hard, drank oceans of booze and smoked whole fields of tobacco. Everyone marveled at his stamina and joie de vivre even in that over-the-top decade.

In 1926, while still playing the host at his club, Harry got a featured role on Broadway in George White's Scandals, one of several knockoffs of the Ziegfeld Follies. After a boffo year it toured other cities, including Cincinnati, where, he notes ruefully, it tanked. In 1930 he headlined Lew Leslie's International Revue, where he introduced "On the Sunny Side of the Street." And in 1931 he made it, finally, into the Follies as well. He got his choice of songs to perform, including "Lullaby of Broadway." He was at the top of his career in those shows, the king of Broadway; his friend Eddie Cantor memorably said he wore Broadway like a boutonniere.

He didn't do so well in Hollywood. He starred, playing himself as "Harry Raymond," in the 1930 musical Puttin' on the Ritz, in which he introduced the song by his pal Irving Berlin. The movie did mediocre business then and is barely watchable now except for that number, Harry gliding around in front of an army of dancers with his top hat tilted over one eye. His recording of the song, which some consider the best, was a hit. (Among his other records are Berlin's "Blue Skies," his own "Muddy Waters" and a pretty wonderful Jolson-ish rendition of "Ain't She Sweet.") While in Hollywood to make the film he met Clara Bow. Teamed up at first for publicity purposes only, they became a hot item and got engaged. Then she suddenly married someone else. Hearing the news, he says, was the only time in his life that he fainted.

He'd make only two more feature films and one short. He sums them up this way: "All were forgettable. It became clear to me that whatever I had was best projected in person, either on the stage or in a night club." By the time he made the last film, released in 1938, he was well past his prime. When the Depression hit and then Prohibition ended, guys like Harry, icons of the Roaring Twenties, just didn't fit the new reality. To his credit, he didn't hang around like some other ghosts of the 1920s did. He left New York and settled in Miami, which was booming and lousy with new nightclubs where he could coast for a few years on his dazzling past. He went fishing with Hemingway and played with his airplanes.

His real fame in the 1930s came in fact as a flyer. In the mid-1930s he'd set altitude and speed records. Then in 1935 he and the pilot Dick Merrill made the world's first round-trip transatlantic flight in a single-engine plane. They filled the plane with tens of thousands of ping-pong balls as flotation devices should they land in the soup. Harry being Harry, after reaching Wales on the outward leg of the trip, they flew on to Paris to party all night with Maurice Chevalier before making the return flight. They landed upside-down in a Newfoundland bog, but they made it. It wasn't as big a deal as Lindbergh's one-way crossing in 1927, but Harry calls it the high point of his life.

Harry didn't make much news after that. He played some clubs through the 1940s, his looks and voice rough from all that carousing and smoking. He still had lots of friends in the show business who tried to engineer comebacks for him, but the public had long since forgotten him. By the time A Hell of a Life came out in 1966 he'd spent the millions he'd made in his heyday and was living alone, quietly and frugally, in Burbank, an old guy who'd gone full-tilt as long as he could, had a hell of a lot of memories and not too many regrets. He died in 1972.

by John Strasbaugh

4 notes · View notes

knickknacksnack · 4 years ago

Text

PROBABLY UNNECESSARY AMERICAN SNACKS FROM WHATCOM COUNTY

In a simpler, less apocalyptic era, one of the great pastimes for residents of the Greater Vancouver Regional District was to cross the Canada/U.S. border, invade the parking lots of Bellingham WA, and keep the local Trader Joe's in business. And while I do enjoy an escapade to Trader Joe's for cheap spices, nuts, cider & speculoos bars (I HAVE A VERY SPECIFIC LIST), a trip to the local Target or Marshall's is also worth taking, just to remind me that the U.S. has an unreasonable amount of selection when it comes to snack flavours. I thought Canada’s half dozen Oreo flavours (golden, mint, birthday cake, cinnamon bun, carrot cake, chocolate peanut butter . . . . uh, those Oreos but with less Oreo) was a font of choice, but then you enter a U.S. grocery store with a mile-long cookie aisle and half of that aisle is dedicated to mad lib Oreo flavours like Jolly Rancher, buttered popcorn, or . . . cookie dough. Which: what? Eating a cookie dough cookie seems like a tautological exercise that can only end in a tragic existential quandary. (And now the mile long booze aisles in American grocery stores start to make more sense.)

Which, in a very long-winded way, brings me to Fruit Punch Oreos

So chosen because you couldn't pay me enough to eat Jolly Rancher anything. I did my time in the 90s; my taste buds are trying to escape through my teeth just thinking about them.

Fruit Punch Oreos are artificially flavoured because of course they are. The aroma is definitely one of artificial fruit, but it's familiar at the same time. Hawaiian Punch? Kool-Aid? Can't quite put my finger on it. Pink doesn't really work with the blond Oreo colour scheme. White, brown, even orange, sure, but deep pink looks so . . . inscrutable. The good news: the filling does in fact taste like Hawaiian Punch, which I didn't realize how much I had missed. The bad news: it's Hawaiian Punch sandwiched between two golden Oreo biscuits, and the overall taste just doesn't work. This would definitely be a cookie for those who twist apart Oreos and eat the filling first.

Larry the Cable Guy Tater Salad Flavored Tater Chips

Well, if I can't have redundant Oreos, potato salad potato chips will have to do. "Will knock out yer snack cravins like a cop kickin' down a trailer door" says the bag. “Boy, that's good eatin'!" says also the bag. I like the feasibly unmerited confidence.

Taste prediction: no idea. Sour cream and oniony? The photo of the tater salad on the bag looks like it's made out of potatoes, celery, and red onion. My favourite potato salad (my mother's) contains -- among other things -- Miracle Whip, yellow mustard, and lots of radishes. If these chips taste more like the latter than the former, then I shall be crossing the border soon to hoard these suckers. (SIMPLER TIMES --editor's note from the future).

The freshly-opened bag scent is kind of tangy, reminiscent of all dressed chips. First taste: mustard, ketchup and . . . celery? Celery might be my hopeful imagination. These chips are difficult to describe, and the ingredient list doesn't help beyond salt, spice, dry prepared mustard, onion & garlic powder and artificial flavours. They're kind of like all dressed chips except without the barbecue and with more ketchup flavour. What ketchup flavour is doing on a tater salad is beyond me, but I guess that's Larry the Cable Guy's tater salad style? Doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

Verdict: they're not bad. I think I like them better than all dressed chips because the various unidentifiable flavours aren't quite as incongruent.

Cinnamon Bun Bites

I don't remember where & when (or even why, to be honest) I got these, but I know I got them in the States due to the imperial weight measurement and the dedication to unilingualism on the box.

"Fresh From the Oven Taste!" it claims. They're not warm, so: no. But I was game to try, even though I wasn’t optimistic given they're coated with white chocolate. I had a feeling they'd be diabolically (diabetically?) sweet. The ingredient list was not too horrifying in terms of artificial colours, flavours and seemingly unrelated multi-syllabic components. One of the ingredients is actually listed as "cinnamon bun dough" which: unlikely. Also: who in their right mind would eat cinnamon bun dough? YOU CAN'T PRETEND RAW BREAD DOUGH IS RAW COOKIE DOUGH.

So there is white chocolate on the outside and what looks like cinnamon sugar in the middle. At first the cinnamon sugar is tasty, but then you realize that you're essentially eating a Cinnabun minus the dough. And it's precisely that sweet. Terribly sweet, plus with a slightly soapy taste that 1 in 10 candies seem to have. Verdict: in the 90 percentile range of awful.

#usa #potato chips cookies candy

2 notes · View notes

ofmurphys · 5 years ago

Text

✰ –– hero coffee roasters. 2pm, on a tuesday.

this bitch wants a frappu-fuckin’-ccino. murphy blinks and pastes on a smile. jesus. fake-owning this shithole’s getting real old these days. “ oh, hun, of course i can improvise that sugar rush for you. don’t even fret it. we totally keep vats of that fake java just lying around. ” honestly, murph can’t tell what’s worse –– the fact that this cardboard cutout vsco girl even asked, or the fact that she actually believes her.

hero coffee roasters loses a customer that day. as the doorbell jingles shut with the force of the girl’s slam, murphy pops a redhot into her mouth and chews. does nothing to hide her growing smirk. yeah, yeah.

good riddance.

or alternatively : hey demons, it’s me, ya gurl ! back at it again with my very snakey shadow gorl. click that read more to learn about this gorgeous amoral piece of ass. i’m trying out a new intro format, so... bear with me ! i hope y’all enjoy, and pls hmu on discord for plots !

murph is... straight up trouble. so if you want drama ? you want bullshit & compulsive lies ? you want ill-founded rage with no apologies later ? you’ve come to the right place .

this is the story of a girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world . . . just kidding. murphy berman doesn’t shed tears for shit.

— && guests may mistake me as ( zoe kravitz ), but really i am ( murphy berman + cisfemale + she/her ) and my DOB is ( 11/7/1994 ). i am a ( “ coffee shop owner ” ) and would like to stay in suite ( 306 ). i won’t be much of a bother because i am ( + cunning & fierce ), but i can also be ( - acetous & cutthroat ) at times. personally, i like to ( code, flick gum wrappers at pigeons, bring my pet turtle to the movies, sit back and watch shit burn ) when i have the time to relax, and my favorite snack is ( those purple doritos, y'know. chili or whatever the fuck ) to have in my suite. thank you for checking in !

i n s p o .

coffee shop –– hero coffee roasters.

pinterest.

soundcloud –– soul sounds.

soul anthem.

b a c k d r o p . ( tw: drug mentions, alcoholic tendencies, alcohol, crime, allusions to domestic violence, violence, murder. )

2am, bar’s closed. but braids still sits, forearms draped atop the counter, shades askew. as you restock new handles, she raises a finger, like she might say something, then pours herself another bourbon. cutting her off is the least of your worries –– it doesn’t take a genius to tell this cookie can handle her own. and the shit she’s spewing ? something tells you this has never been aired before.

“ so picture the fuck outta this, bub. ” a swig. “ you’re born and before you even got the wherewithal to speak, you’re shipped off to some graham cracker family in the ‘ burbs. you start leapfrogging –– my term, tee-em –– ” a tattooed finger traces the symbol into the air accordingly. “ and after a while, it’s a game. hop a house, stay a while, see how much of their shit you can pocket. ” nostalgic sighs accompany a litany of stolen goods : cash. jewelry. first edition tetris game, hand-fuckin’-held. the hoopers’ prized gold kazoo.

don’t believe her ? onto black marble slides proof.

“ then you land. hard. the fuckin’ landry’s. ” a scornful chuckle. “ miss me with that white picket fence ass shit. but they get you your first comp, so... when they ask to adopt you, you’re like. i dunno, man. sure, i guess ? and guess wrong. ” turns out the landry’s aren’t as warm or welcoming as they claim. their youngest kid dies, freak accident. monkey bars. “ family falls apart worse than that time you tried to make a ball from fresh cigarette ash. you were eleven. ” tattooed over the scar.

braids tells you ‘bout the party being over. the bruising. but she laughs through it, rolls her eyes like she’s talking ‘bout silly old friends instead of terrible old people.

her birth mother finds her. they meet up a few times in a local park, whisks her away when she’s twelve. is it kidnapping ? technically, who gives a fuck. they lived low. under the radar. in apartments above dive bars. spent a summer breaking into parked cars. finally landed with j.j., who turned out to just be a glorified drug mule.

“ new york was fine to me. y’know, fucked off in school. kid shit. ” she shrugs. you won’t know it, but she’ll astutely sidestep the fact that she hacked her first global system at 14. she won’t mention she started accepting paypal offers from obscure reddit threads two weeks later. by 17, she was contracting independently –– a business venture, she’d tell her high school counselor, assigned to keep her from winding up on the streets.

matty, her best friend since the move to new york, decided to kiss her silly after trying shrooms. she liked it. told him maybe he could do that more often.

“ he cleaned up, ” braids purses her lips. “ after high school. stopped messing with his crowd. our crowd. ” she grabs two stirrers from a container dangerously close to your hand. taps ‘em on the counter like she’s stomping out mini fires. “ let him put a ring on me. y’know make bey proud. ”

she won’t mention that while matty gets a job as a cook at a bougie french restaurant, she continued to deal with devils. woman in her high castle. under the guise of cpu-based tetris and a whole lot of freelance web design.

but then roosevelt savings bank gets robbed. and they somehow trace the ip back to her.

it’s an easy mishap to shake. showed ‘em the websites. the code. the computer usage logs. the blues believe her, but matty...

“ trust issues. sad, huh ? thought i was fucking around behind his back. ” with criminals.

“ and then shit gets good, homie. we’re tasting stupid fucking cake. red velvet... ” cue a laugh. bitter. the stirrers stop tapping. “ then i meet aamina and everything goes to shit. i brought it up, you know. like. hey, your fiancée might be a little bit into pussy. ”

for the first time all night, her eyes meet yours. and it’s only then you realize... there’s some heavy fuckin’ sadness swimming in those baby browns. worlds pass through them. alternative stories –– where matty wasn’t high. where he didn’t reach for the knife.

“ he lost it. ” silence. she looks away. “ anyway. ” she launches into why chicago –– why she studied pre-law for two years before tossing in the towel. because “ fuck a judge, man. ” and she’s into the finer things in life. ( she struck you as an arts type. what with the glasses. the vintage band tee worn like a dress. maybe you get a glimmer of pride knowing you were right. she won’t mention that the whole thing’s a farce. )

she launches into why a coffee shop. she’ll tell you the beautiful thing about coffee is it takes no shit. she’ll tell you owning a place gets fuckin’ wild, but she’s in it for the free java and coffee-themed booze. a perk all hourly baristas like her enjoy. “ and we made that top list or whatever. of fly places here. an honor. i’d like to thank god, and also jesus. which i hope you know are my boys bazzi and frank ocean. ”

you’ll google hero coffee roasters later. and find its registered owner goes by brian tubolino. but hey, maybe she’s married.

when braids finally decides it’s time to go, sunlight’s nipping at chicago’s heels.

“ you chill if i ... ? ” before you can answer, she’s takin’ a swig straight from the half-finished bottle of bourbon. picks it up and cradles it under one arm, precious cargo.

“ souvenir, man. in remembrance of you. ”

#intro.#✰ –– don't punish the tiger for taking its prey ! inspo.#✰ –– so ugly but you love me ! she speaks.

2 notes · View notes

lxveille · 6 years ago

Text

posture

mingyu x reader

word count: ~ 1950 warnings: alcohol, profanity, mild jealousy a/n: tall!reader, bc one can only read about members towering over mcs so many times. and also vee encouraged me. blame her.

You lean into the bar to order another drink. For a moment, you consider adding a shot on top of it. It only takes another glance out to the dance floor for you to think fuck it, and tack a tequila to end of your order before telling him the name of your open tab.

With a nod from the bartender, you stand back up straight and tap your nails against the bartop. The mood you’re in is hardly the one you’d intended to have when you were getting ready to go out tonight. Only half an hour ago, even, things had still felt as good when you’d first headed out.

The tequila shows up in front of your first, and you take it with a half-hearted cheers directed towards one of the strangers on bar stools you’d squeezed yourself in between. With the empty glass back the glossy wood of the bartop, you turn to look back out at the crowd. Looking out over the heads in the crowd, it’s easy enough for you to spot where the friends you came with are. Most of them are still gathered around the floor-side table the lot of you had claimed upon coming in. Except, of course, for Mingyu, who is still tucked into the middle of the dance floor with one hand on the hip of the girl he’s flirting with. He’s practically doubled over in order to talk into her ear over the loud music. You can’t help but roll your eyes and wish you’d doubled down on tequila.

There’s no reason for you to be jealous. Mingyu is your friend. Your funny, kind, handsome friend you have a huge, blistering crush on. And one of the rare guys in your social circle you consider to be in your dateable height range. But just your friend, all the same. So what if you were hoping the right song would come on tonight for you to make a move on him tonight? So what if you’d had intentionally chosen a dress he’d complimented once before?

“--- for those?”

“Huh?” You manage to make it sound like a curse word as you turn your head towards the voice. It’s the guy you’d vaguely directed your tequila at before downing it. He points towards the empty shot glass and the fresh cocktail in front of you and leans in towards you to repeat himself.

“Did you already pay for those?”

You look him over before rolling your eyes. “Yeah, they’re on my tab.”

“Maybe I can buy the next round?” he suggests. Some part of you says you could give this guy a chance; either to get your mind off how Mingyu’s probably only a line away from making out with that girl or to hope he’ll look over and see. But from the way you already stand more than a head over the stranger and how comfortably his legs dangle over the floor from his perch on the stool, you suspect he’d take back the offer as soon as he stood up.

“I’m good,” you shout over the music, and grab your glass to head back over to your friends. Making your way through the crowd, you hold your drink up over the swaying shoulders and heads of those already dancing and remind yourself not to look the direction you last saw Mingyu in.

It comes as a surprise, then, when you get back to the table and find Mingyu back with his own beer and seemingly deep in conversation with Soonyoung again. As if he hadn’t been out on the dance floor at all. You take a hefty sip out of your glass.

“I thought you were going to the bathroom?” Minkyung asks once she spots that you’ve returned. She’s halfway through her own drink, plastic straw stained by her lipstick and a few guys at the table over from you gawking obviously at her.

“I did,” you answer, “And then I got more to drink.” She sends a knowing glance towards Mingyu and then looks back at you with a sympathetic smile.

“Clearly, it didn’t work out for him,” she says, leaning into your shoulder, “You could still shoot your shot.”

You sigh and tilt your head to rest on top of hers. “What’s the point? He’s clearly into tiny girls.”

“Do you think his back ever hurts from bending down to their level?” Minkyung asks with feigned sincerity. It succeeds in drawing a laugh out of you, nearly risking spilling part of your drink when you sway away from her. She gives you a grin, though there’s a tinge of embarrassment on her face at her own words. Soonyoung turns around at the sound of your laughter cutting over the booming bass.

“What’s funny?” he asks, with the kind of eager curiosity for everything that comes entirely too quickly to him after only one drink.

It must be the tequila that motivates you to answer, “We’re just pondering whether or not Mingyu’s gonna give himself a permanent backache with the girls he hits on.” Soonyoung blinks, lips parting around a question he can’t quite seem to form. Behind him, Mingyu’s attention seems to have perked up -- though with enough confusion on his face for you to suspect he’d only just made out his name.

He takes the few steps needed to put himself in talking range with you and asks, “What?”

As if it took him saying that one word for you to even realize what you’ve said, you look over to Minkyung with mild panic. She shrugs and waves her free hand towards the two guys in a way that seems to say this is on you. Sure enough, Soonyoung is already repeating back your statement to Mingyu.

His brows crinkle and he looks quickly between you and Minkyung before apparently deciding to settle upon you as the main culprit.

“What’s that supposed to even mean?” Mingyu questions.

You bring your glass up to your lips, like the right answer could be found in liquor. Or least as a stall tactic.

“Did Soonyoung hear you right?” he asks instead of repeating himself, centering himself in front of you as Minkyung tries to make grabbing Soonyoung’s wrist and dragging him away from the two of you something subtle.

“Depends. What’d Soonyoung say?” You tap your nails against the side of your cup, keeping your drink only a few inches away from your mouth as if it were shield.

Mingyu hesitates, unsure if you’re playing oblivious or genuinely unsure. “Something about me fucking up my back…?” he decides to give into it either way.

Something in hearing him say it makes you smile, nearly giggling, in spite of what might be left of your better judgement. “Well, I mean, it’s not wrong with the way you have to slouch over for some girls.”

“Since when do you care about my spine’s health?”

There’s something purely strange with the universe that Kim Mingyu is asking you that at half past midnight in the middle of a bar blasting dance songs. And if the look on his face is any sign, he’s just as aware of that fact as you. Your mind traces back your earlier thoughts of just how little this night was playing out as you’d hoped.

“I’m just saying, like… It’d be better for your posture to pick on somebody your own size,” you find yourself saying.

Mingyu smiles -- possibly even chuckles, but it’s difficult to tell over the music. “People say that about fighting people, you know.” It’s a fair point, you know. It’s also, you decide, entirely the alcohol’s fault that you’d used that expression to begin with. Or least the alcohol’s fault that you’re saying any of this to him at all. Though if his tone is anything to go off of, at least Mingyu isn’t as annoyed by your commentary as you’d first feared he’d be.

You shrug one shoulder and take another drink from your glass before setting it down on the table behind you. “Whatever. You get the point.” With any luck, it sounds disinterested rather than bitter.

He looks skeptical. And then, he turns to look over his shoulder at the crowd on the dance floor. His eyes come back to yours, and he gives a slight shrug that feels like reflection of your own facade of indifference. “It’s not like there’s always a whole lot of options for girls I’m not a giant to, you know.”

Frustration threatens to bubble over inside you and have you saying something entirely too obvious. (Something perhaps along the lines of ‘I, you absolute fool, am right fucking here’). The booze has you settling for doing something dumb and even more obvious.

You take a single step up to him and curl your fingers into the front of his shirt and tug him close enough to kiss. There’s a small sound of surprise from him in that split second between your hand on him and your lips meeting his. Or perhaps it was the start of a word that you’d cut off in your sheer determination to get him to recognize you as a goddamn option.

Before anxiety or regret can creep up on you, Mingyu’s hand finds its way to your waist. You lean into him a little more, your grip loosening on him in favor of gliding up to the back of his neck. He’s warm, with the taste of his beer filtering into the kiss as he pushes back closer to you. There’s a sweetness to it all the same -- though perhaps it was only lingering sugar from the rim on your drink.

You don’t fully register your moving feet until your back hits the edge of the table. For a moment, nothing could make you break away from him. But then there’s the unmistakable feeling of something wet seeping through the fabric of your dress. You one hand on Mingyu’s shoulder as you pull away from him and look back at the table. Sure enough, your drink has been knocked over along with someone else’s.

“Shit,” you blurt out, and turn to set the glasses upright and scan the table for napkins. Mingyu’s fingers squeeze at your hip as he peeks over your shoulder to see just what had interrupted the two of you.

“That’s your fault,” he declares suddenly. You turn your head sharply to give him a look of disbelief. He’s smiling. A self-satisfied, delighted smile that has you wanting to forget what he’d said and kiss him all over again. He moves closer to your ear and adds a little lower, “I’ll take care of it if you go close out your tab.”

It only gives you all the more reason to give him an incredulous look. He raises a brow at you, and his expression shifts to something better called a smirk. You give him one good look over before letting yourself smile and nod once. “We’ll get back to the whole fault thing, though,” you claim, pointing an accusatory finger his way.

Mingyu moves the hand on your waist up to catch your lifted hand, and uses it to pull you in for a second, briefer kiss. “Hurry up,” he murmurs to you as he breaks it off. It’s tempting to fire some stubborn remark back at him, but the look in his eyes makes you more inclined to go ahead with his plan of getting out her sooner rather than later.

This isn’t exactly how you planned this night on going. But at this point, you’re not about to wish it went any differently. Except, perhaps, for wishing you’d worked up the nerve to go ahead and grab him by the collar a little earlier.

#seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #kim mingyu scenarios #seventeen fanfic #mingyu x reader #ive been posting things on here for a little over a year and i still never know how/what to tag lmao

126 notes · View notes

irwintry · 6 years ago

Text

Hallmark Movie Love Story

Warnings: swearing (he’s a potty mouth in this one folks)

Author’s Note: Christmas BABy!!! this was originally titled “the great snowmobile wreck of ‘18 and the hallmark christmas movie love story” lmao and there’s not even a snowmobile wreck in the story but that’s why i liked it

Word Count: 6.7k

Luke could read off all of the delayed or canceled flights by memory. He had seen them flash on every monitor he passed on the way to his terminal. Meanwhile, unhappy flyers were rushing by him to be the first at the information desk. Their holiday was ruined for sure, but his wasn’t, and that was all that mattered to him. He couldn’t figure out how his flight was one of the only ones on time, though he wasn’t complaining.

Even when boarding, he couldn’t believe his luck. The cruel part of him wanted to run off of the plane and rub the whole ordeal in the outraged flyers’ faces. His complimentary booze called his name, so he stayed put in the comfortable first-class cabin.

The skies didn’t look all that well, and turbulence had picked up right when they reached cruising altitude. If Luke didn’t know any better, he would say that the pilots miscalculated the possibility of the storm hitting their flight path. It didn’t matter to him now– he was up in the air, and everyone else was stuck in New York.

Luke had finished his first mimosa when the pilot announced over the intercom that the storm had pulled north, blocking the flight’s path and therefore preventing it from going farther west. His heart fell as he stared out of the frost-coated window, his eyes barely catching an inch of land below the clouds.

“Fuck,” he whispered and let out a breath. Luke believed he had a fairly strong intuition, and he trusted his gut. Right now, his gut was telling him that things were not going to go his way. If only it had told him that before.

The pilot informed them that they were landing in a town that started with S, but Luke didn’t care enough to register the information. He would buy a whole plane for himself if it meant getting home faster. The other passengers couldn’t say the same. If some of them were cute and desperate, he’d consider helping them, but certainly not the man beside him who reeked of B.O. and the burrito he chose to eat for breakfast.

Luke needed to get off of the plane in order to think coherent thoughts.

The plane touched down before noon, and already, the runway was slick and icy. The snow had started to fall only moments prior, and Luke knew that if it had been raining, it would be coming down in sheets. To his dismay, this was only the tip of the storm.

Karma was most likely going to fuck him up the ass.

There were no flights leaving from the tiny airport, and by the time he were to get onto the highway with the help of a taxi, it would be an hour into the storm. The roads would be closed by then. Luke had no choice but to go into whatever town was nearby and find a place to stay, and he was not happy about it in the slightest. He made sure everyone knew it by the look on his face.

All of his muscles were contorted in order to make a convincing irate frown. His mother would tell him his face would freeze like that, his cheeks all bitten in and eyebrows tightened together. He missed her, he really did, and he would love to see her if it weren’t for the lovely Winter Storm Dalton.

The ride into town was a nightmare– at least, it felt like it was to Luke. The taxi driver seemed content with the conditions, claiming that “not even an inch” had fallen, yet the occasional glance back through the plastic divider sent Luke into a minor panic. The radio station was a constant loop of Christmas oldies, and he wanted to reach up there and punch the off button, but he wasn’t that rude.

Luke didn’t hate Christmas, but if he couldn’t spend it with his family, he’d rather not have the holiday whatsoever.

There were only two motels within miles of the town, both with shiny new non-vacancy signs hung brightly in the office windows, and Luke wanted to tumble out of the cab and die. He tipped the driver a hundred before having them drop him off in the center of town. Before driving away, the driver told Luke about a few places to hit in the town before leaving tomorrow. This caused Luke to snort because he wasn’t even sure he would get out tomorrow, and he certainly wouldn’t be visiting any local art gallery.

He knew he looked fucking ridiculous. Everything on his body was designer, including his hat and coat. Even his luggage would cost most of the citizens of this town their arm and leg. Meanwhile, his shoulders pained him, and the tension had crawled its way up into his temples. He needed coffee.

Luke wandered for what felt like an hour, but it was really only two minutes when he stumbled upon a decent-looking coffee shop named The Coffee Pot. The windows were fogged, and it reminded him that warmth did exist, just not on his body at the moment. He could tell his cheeks and nose were bright red, and his ears were physically hurting his head even more.

The door chimed on his way in, and out of the many times Luke’s presence silenced a room, this had to be the most uncomfortable. All conversations ceased, and the only sound reverberating through the all-too wooden interior was the faint drone of Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”. He clutched his suitcase and started towards the counter.

“The west coast too warm for ya, son?” an older man shouted from the back corner, and Luke didn’t hesitate to glare at anyone who chuckled. “This ain’t Malibu, sweetheart.”

“Give him a break, Darryl, he’s probably tired from travelin’.”

Luke’s head snapped over to the counter where the next voice came from. Instead of finding another grumpy local, he found you, a soft and smiley barista that clearly would get on his nerves if he spoke to you long enough.

You were leaned up against the counter as he approached you, and you were still smiling as you asked, “what can I get ya?”

Luke wanted solitude. He wanted no one to speak to him ever again. But he also wanted the richest cup of coffee he could get in Buttfuck, New York. “Small coffee,” he muttered, already digging into his wallet for a few dollars. “Darkest roast.”

“Cream ‘n sugar?”

“No.”

“Okie dokie,” you said. “You can put the fifty-cents in the tip jar.”

Luke quirked a heavy, wet (from the snow) brow. “Fifty-cents?”

You nodded. “The coffee’s fifty-cents.” You had already poured the coffee into a to-go cup, and now you were standing with your arms crossed. Maybe Luke wasn’t the only one with an attitude. “Can I get ya anythin’ else?” A sigh followed your question.

“No.”

“Ya sure?” You smirked at him, and he didn’t like that one bit. “We got food. Airplane food’s not quite as good as my world-famous pressed paninis!”

Luke nearly snorted. You were annoying, yet funny. World-famous... he’d had world-famous, and he was positive you hadn’t even come close to knowing what it tasted like. “Got any salads?”

“Um,” you mumbled. “No, I’m– I’m sorry, we don’t.”

Great. Poor service and no salads. Luke wanted to get the hell out of this town. “Fine. Gimme a world-famous panini, then.”

“Oh!” You grinned, your entire body jumping as you leaned your elbows back onto the counter. “Which one? We got– “

He didn’t listen as you listed off the sandwiches, so when you stopped talking, he played the lottery and said, “the last,” before setting down his cash and walking away with his coffee. Luke was normally nicer than this, but his day had been so fucked up already, and he wasn’t terribly in the mood for talking to a cute yet chatty barista. However, he did feel guilty for not saying thank you.

Luke took a seat at a table by the wall adjacent to the counter. Every single one of your customers stared at him as he did so, but just as he opened his mouth to retort a snarky comment, they returned back to their conversations. They were more interested in his rich, LA vibe, and they definitely wondered why he was here instead of there. He would rather be there than here any day.

He winced as he took a sip of his coffee. It was watery like he expected. No good coffee is fifty cents. The person to his right had been staring at his luggage for a good minute now, which for some reason, pissed Luke off to no end. Every little thing that bothered him was heightened due to the incredulous turn of events of the day. It wasn’t even two in the afternoon.

The coffee sat idle as he began to scribble down his thoughts into a random journal he picked up in Munich just the other month. His life was too extreme for the people of this town. They wouldn’t last a day in his boots, nor would he want them to even breathe near his boots. Someone could glance at them and he’d spit.

Luke wrote for a while, his thoughts pouring out onto the handmade paper without even realizing that a hot unknown panini had been placed down right in front of his nose. Also, a few of his crumpled bills had been strewn beside it.

“Few dollars too much,” you said, your face expressionless as you prepared to back away. “This is Spruce Creek, not LA. The world isn’t as shiny as it seems.” And then you were gone, and Luke wanted to laugh.

Everyone here thought they were so philosophical– it killed him. He shoved the few dollars into his pocket before staring at the steaming sandwich. A growl emitted from his stomach at the sight of the pesto running down the crusty sides, and Luke didn’t realize how truly hungry he had been until he reached for the sandwich and took a great big bite. He nearly moaned at the warmth spreading on his tongue. If only the coffee had lived up to his expectations, then maybe he would give this place a little more credit.

Luke pictured you in a city like New York, but he wasn’t sure you could handle the hustle and bustle. You certainly didn’t belong in LA– you seemed like the type that thrived off of snow and hot chocolate. Plus, you also seemed satisfied with the community you created with this coffee shop. Everyone was speaking to one another as if they were longtime friends... everyone but Luke. He didn’t want to be friends with any of them anyway.

Time ticked away faster than he assumed it would. Come mid-afternoon, the sun had set, and people were flooding into the coffee shop for food. They all looked the same to him, and they all knew each other’s’ names. Mid-afternoon slowly turned into early evening, and before Luke knew it, the whole place had cleared. His coffee remained untouched from earlier.

“Hey Curly, we’re closin’ up,” you called from the other end of the café. You were stacking chairs, your apron now thrown over your shoulder like a proper barista would. He had noticed you scrubbing down surfaces, but he hadn’t put two-and-two together.

“Fuck,” he muttered, eyes widening and pen slipping from his grip, though he made no effort to move. Luke had slept in cars and vans and buses, yet not once had he slept on the street. If he truly wanted to, he could go back to the airport and stay there, however, conditions were worsening outside.

The chair in your hands fell to the table with a spine-shuddering bang. Luke was just thankful he didn’t have all that much caffeine in him or else the sound would have sent his nerves flying.

“Where we ya headin’ to?” you asked, continuing your round about the floor.

“Does it matter?” he sighed as he rubbed his temples. “Got no fuckin’ place to stay.”

You didn’t answer as you stepped back behind the counter to shut off the lights to the kitchen.

“’m stuck in this fuckin’ town with all you fuckin’ people,” he said, “and Spice Crete is so fuckin’ small that your tiny ass motels turned me away. Me. I coulda given ‘em triple their nightly rates! So fuckin’ stupid. I’d rather’ve stayed in fuckin’ New York City with everyone else whose flight was canceled.”

“Spruce Creek.”

“What?” Luke snapped. He imagined that his face looked awfully crude.

“The town,” you giggled, shutting off the lights that were behind the camera. You walked over to him and placed your hand on the leg of an overturned chair. “’s Spruce Creek. Although, I wouldn’t mind the Spruce changing t’Spice. Sounds festive.”

He rolled his eyes.

There was another moment of silence as you stared at him, and he was about to say something about it before you said, “so, stay at my place.”

Luke knotted his brows together. Every line in his face deepened with confusion. “What?”

“I’ve got a couch,” you replied with a smile. “It’s not a California king-sized, but it’s some cushion until the conditions clear up. Free of charge.”

He was about to snort. He was about to say no. But he had no other options. Luke was forced to nod and accept your kind invitation. He hated that you seemed so happy about it.

Luke was grateful (truly, he was), but he could not handle your constant chatter. Were all small-town people the same? Did they all talk about nothing that mattered to him just to get under his skin? After you had taken him down the road to the tiny apartment building you resided in, Luke decided he was going to lock himself in the bathroom for thirty minutes of peace. The idea of brushing his teeth and scrubbing off the airplane and coffee shop grime tempted him, though the jingling of a collar snapped him out of his thought process.

A stout and slightly chubby Pitbull waddled over to greet the two of you as you entered through the (god awfully creaky) door. It went right to you, but it soon cowered back into the hallway right when it noticed Luke.

“That’s Grape!” you exclaimed, meanwhile making baby sounds to summon the dog back. “She’s shy when it comes to men. The vet thinks it might be because of her past owner, or something.”

Luke felt the disappointed come and go. Memories of Petunia hit him like a freight train, and it only reminded him further that he wanted nothing more than to be home with her. His eyes fell on the tree in the corner of the living room, and fuck, what a pathetic thing that was. Had you only gotten it yesterday? You didn’t seem like the type of person that had to settle for the runts. The apartment was decked out top-to-bottom for the holiday, so it didn’t make sense that the tree appeared to be seconds away from catching flame.

Whatever. It didn’t matter to him anyway. He was going to be here for a day or two at tops. And, if it had to be any longer, Luke would rather walk home.

And then the tree kept bothering him. “What’s– why’s your tree like...”

You huffed, but you laughed along with it. “Sad?” You shrugged and plopped down onto the hardwood floor as Grape came ambling over. “Couldn’t afford the price of a pretty tree.”

Luke frowned. Now that was unacceptable. “Where’s the nearest tree farm?” he asked you, eyes narrowing on you and the tubby pup that refused to look at him. It truly crushed him that he was not getting attention by that dog. If anything was keeping him back, it would be Grape.

“Um, there’s one behind Martha’s candle shop, so just like a five-minute walk,” you said. “Why?”

“I can’t sleep on a couch facing that fuckin’ thing,” Luke grumbled as he hugged himself with his arms.

“But I can’t– “

“Think of it as me leaving my mark.” He shrugged. The closer he got to closing himself off I the bathroom, the happier he would be. “Buying a tree will hardly put a dent in my wallet.”

You nodded, your lips pulling into a small frown as you lifted yourself off of the floor to stand. “You know,” you mumbled, “you’re gonna find some of the nicest people here in this town. They’ll treat ya like family if you let them. The storm will be over soon, and you’ll go back to your sports cars and model girlfriends. But there’s a warmth you’ll get here that you’ll never get anywhere else. Don’t flaunt things in their faces. People may not be rich here, but they have more worth than you will ever know.” You grabbed your coat from the small hook beside you. “Let’s go.”

Luke didn’t like receiving the cold shoulder from anyone, and for some reason, he hated it coming from you. You, the cute, chatty barista who somehow knew exactly how to piss him off. Yet, now that you were upset with him, the entire town would be on his ass. How could he hurt the sweetheart who owned The Coffee Pot? How dare he? Luke hardly expected to come out of this alive.

He didn’t know how to pick out a Christmas tree– he just saw them in movies and always dreamt of the day he could cut one down and decorate it himself. You, however, knew exactly where to go as you stalked off to the way back. Sure, he was right about there being a lot of runts, but there were good ones too. You certainly had experience in shopping for trees. You handled the saw with ease on the walk through the trees while he stumbled over stumps while the tree wagon nicked his shins.

Luke hadn’t made a snarky comment since you snapped at him, which honestly, he deserved. He was being a bit cruel to the folks around town. They had no say in his matters– it was not their fault that he was stuck in this god-awful place.

“If this fuckin’ thing hits my fuckin’– “

“This one,” you said, pointing to a great Fraser fir standing a whopping six feet (he guessed considering he was slightly taller than it).

Luke’s forehead scrunched. “It’s so– “

“Short?” you wondered aloud. “Mhm. I’ll name her Patrice. Who’s cutting? You, or me?”

He stuttered out a pitiful, “uh, I– uh– I-I don’t– “ before you sighed and kneeled on the snow-covered ground.

His eyes widened at your audacious action, and he wondered if you cared about your pants at all. Luke, on the other hand, was freezing his butt off. He was lucky he had a hat to keep his delicate ears warm, but his hands were numb in his coat pockets. The snow was falling in fat, chunky flakes that greatly affected his vision. The two of you looked kind of hilarious, all covered in snow and such, and you were somehow already well into your sawing. You definitely did have experience.

The word “wait” uttered from his lips a moment later.

“What?”

“I-I wanna try.”

You chuckled and sat up. Your arms were coated in needles, and your entire front side was caked in snow. “Give it a go, then,” you said, handing him the saw.

Luke knelt on the ground as he did his best not to wince at the fact that his few-hundred-dollar pair of pants was now soaked in snow, mud, sap, and many other things he didn’t want to think about. He laid down, just like you had, and shit, he wanted to whine about it so badly.

The floodlights overhead hardly shed a speck of light through the needles, which meant he couldn’t see a single thing of what he was about to cut. You had sawed a little already, so he searched and searched for the itsy divot you created.

“I look fuckin’– how the hell do you do this?” he asked, somehow already frustrated. His arms were cramping, and they hadn’t even moved.

You chuckled from above. When he glanced up (as best as he could through the lower boughs), you had grabbed ahold of the top to balance it out for when he began sawing. “Back ‘n forth.” You motioned it with your hands, and honestly, it looked more like–

“A handjob?”

This made you burst into a fit of unforeseen laughter, and that actually caused him to smile, too.

“Like a handjob, yup,” you said.

He nodded and returned his gaze back to the dark underbelly of the fir. Here goes nothing.

It took a bit of time, coercion, and tears, but Luke finally managed to cut down the small fir. He insisted on lifting it into the little wagon too, but the blunt end of the trunk fell on his toe, so you ended up helping out with that one. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure the experience had been worth it, but he promised you a better tree, and hell, you were getting a better tree.

“Cool beans,” you muttered, out of breath. A few snowflakes had stuck to your eyelashes, and that made him smile a bit. You were really pretty. Brushing off your hat, you huffed out, “now, let’s go get Patricia straightened.”

“I thought it was Patrice.”

You pouted. “Oh. Yeah. Patrice.”

Luke had no idea how he remembered that over you, but he knew that in due time, he would hopefully forget Patrice and this entire experience.

Luke awoke to a slobbery grin by his nose, and before he could register the puppy’s stare, he was being attacked with big, wet kisses. He had almost forgotten where he was as he laughed at the dog’s sudden friendliness, and then he smelled the burning from the kitchen. The half-open French doors separating the living room from the kitchen only hid so much, so the dancing mess that you were could easily be seen. He recognized the song playing softly through your phone as some song from “10 Things I Hate About You”. Honestly, his life at the moment could have been so much worse.

The spatula flew from your hands, and you yelped, causing poor Grape to waddle off in fear.

“Shit, Y/N,” you muttered to yourself, clambering across the bench surrounding the table to fetch the fallen soldier, “that’s not how you make eggs.”

Luke snickered, but he hadn’t meant it to be as loud as it was. You slipped onto the floor, and he heard your dog’s collar jingle from down the hall.

“Mornin’,” you huffed, kicking your legs out and accepting your defeat. “Like eggs?”

“Got ketchup?”

You groaned. “You disgust me.”

Luke cracked a grin.

“But no, sorry,” you mumbled with a shrug. “’m not a big ketchup fan.”

“You disgust me.”

You leaned forward to peer through the glass of one of the open doors so you could view Patrice in her bare glory. “Thanks, again. For Patty.”

He nodded. “Thanks for giving me a place to stay.”

You nodded, too.

“Need any help in the kitchen?”

Luke found out that you burned some toast, and you were about to serve him watery eggs, which didn’t make much sense to him considering the masterpiece sandwich you crafted for him yesterday. Now it was his turn to show you his skills, although they weren’t all that great. He just wanted things to go faster so he could get the hell out of Spice Girl Creek. The weather didn’t appear all that better just from his observations, but maybe it would be okay by the afternoon.

He had plated your breakfast when you said to him,

“Roads are still closed. We’re only in the middle of Dalton.”

Luke nearly dropped your plate. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He set the two plates down and began to pace a bit.

You shook your head. “But you’re more than welcome to– “

“Leave me alone,” he snapped and raced in the direction of the bathroom. Grape followed after him, and she soon began whining after he closed the door in her face.

Luke wanted to scream or cry or something in between. He was stuck in this town with you and all of those other weird old people that only saw him as a fake movie prop. He was real, and he was so mad that everyone looked at him as if he were the oddest frickin’ man who walked the face of the earth. Sure, he was pricey, and sure, one of his outfits cost more than your monthly rent, but that didn’t give them the right to stare. Just because he was untouchable didn’t mean he had zero feelings completely.

Maybe he was being unreasonable. He wasn’t a fucking god. All of Luke’s feelings stemmed from the fact that he couldn’t get home, and he really had no right to take it out on them. He had no right to take it on you, the pretty stranger that was being too fucking nice to him and his ugly temper.

With a sigh, Luke rinsed his face and walked out to join you for breakfast.

You were sat at the table when he walked back in the kitchen, your one hand petting a snorting Grape, the other struggling to pick up a few bites of egg onto a fork. “I’m sorry,” you said to him as he walked in.

Luke shook his head. That was the last thing you needed to say to him. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I really don’t want you to think I’m this rude.”

“No, I get it,” you said. “Ya just wanna go home. I get it.”

He sighed and took his spot on the bench across from you. From what he could remember, his grandmother had a table and bench set like this at her old home. They were nestled between three walls just like yours, but in your case, the kitchen was within arm’s reach.

A thought popped into Luke’s mind. “Do you– do you really run The Coffee Pot by yourself?”

You nodded happily. “Well, sort of. My friend Charlie co-owns it, but he moved away last spring. It’s been me and a few other pals for months now.”

“Jesus,” he said, taking a bite of his bland eggs. Ketchup would have been great, and he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive you for not having ketchup.

“So, I work ten to close,” you said as you poured a bit of salt onto your eggs. Not much better than ketchup. “You’re free to sit in the seating area with the regulars. Darryl might give ya a hard time again. Or, you could see all that Spruce Creek has to offer! Although you might not wanna become an abominable snowman, so it’s up t’ya.”

“Hm, I might,” Luke mumbled. He truly did need a head-clearing walk.

“Waterman’s Bridge is pretty in the winter,” you said, “especially when the river is frozen over. It’s just a ten-minute walk east. The local art gallery is nice. I actually have a few works in there myself. And– “

Luke began zoning out when you mentioned the art gallery. He didn’t know it then, but he had been caught up in the movement of your lips as you spoke. That was the first sign, and after that, he lost track.

He dropped by Waterman’s Bridge briefly, but his cheeks were too chapped to withstand the brisk cold of Winter Storm Dalton’s fury. Unfortunately, though he did bring a few beanies and a singular pair of gloves, none of them were thick or warm enough to brace the harsh winter. The next stop was the art gallery like you said. He swore he wasn’t going to visit it, but after you mentioned you had a few pieces hung up, his brain convinced him to drop by.

The building was about the size of your one-bedroom apartment, and the artworks were all cramped and snuggled together like your vintage furniture. This made it easy to spot your creations, and when he did, he found himself going back to examine them. The curator of the place recognized him, but to his luck, they only bothered him for a moment before leaving him be.

Your work wasn’t the worst he’d seen, nor was it the best. Truth be told, he didn’t know what to think about it. He spent a good twenty minutes analyzing the film photographs only to realize there was nothing significant to be analyzed. All Luke knew was that he couldn’t tear his eyes away from your art, and that troubled him. They were special because you made them.

He pictured you stretched out on the floor of your living room, couch pushed against the wall as you painted whatever damn thing that came to your mind. You probably carried your film camera with you everywhere, but he suspected that, since it was a literal blizzard outside, your creative eye was being restricted.

Luke quickly shuffled out of the gallery in order to avoid the gaze of the curator. He started in the direction of your coffee shop, but then he remembered the candle store, and oh, did he love candles. Maybe he would pick one up for his mother. Maybe he would pick one up for you.

“Luke, what a pleasant surprise,” you said as he walked in.

The heat hit him like a sudden gust of wind, and he had to shake the snow off of his coat and boats before walking off of the carpet and onto the hardwood. “Need a coffee fix,” he muttered, glaring at a few strangers (or regulars as you would call them) that happened to stare a bit too long.

“Small coffee?” you asked.

He bit his lip and leaned towards you. “Gotta be honest, your regular coffee is more water than coffee,” he whispered. A part of him wished he hadn’t said that, but then you giggled.

“I told Emily that her coffee isn’t nearly as strong as Charlie’s was.” You took a mug from the rack by the espresso machine and faced him. “All right. Prepare yourself for the best coffee you’ve ever tasted.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “Bet?”

“Oh, I don’t need to!” you exclaimed. “I already know it’ll be the best coffee. If I’m wrong, then you can have Grape.”

“What?” Luke’s voice escaped him at a higher octave than he had hoped for. “You wouldn’t bet your dog on coffee.”

“Just you wait!”

Luke waited, and truly, he had to admit that you were right. The coffee was damn fantastic, but he wasn’t sure if it was the best he’d had. He would have to try every single cup of coffee he’d tried from around the world to put yours up to the test. But in the meantime, yes, your coffee was the best coffee, and he needed two more cups.

He stayed until close again, his stomach now stuffed with the same turkey pesto panini from yesterday. For the few hours he sat there, half of them were spent admiring you from afar, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Even the stranger next to him elbowed and teased him about it. Luke’s face fell, and he returned back to journaling.

Before exiting into the marshmallow world outside, Luke handed you a heavy brown paper bag.

“What’s this?” you asked, looking inside and fishing out a dark green candle.

“A candle.”

You knotted your brows together in confusion.

“For gratitude,” he continued. “’m not sure what scents ya like– “ He scratched the back of his neck, “–but I figured balsam and cedar was the best– “

Your arms were around his neck before he knew it, and he easily relaxed into your hug. Luke felt himself melt against you, his senses taking in your warmth and your scent purely for a memory stamp. He was slowing starting to realize that he did not want to forget about this experience or you.

“T-thanks,” you said, backing away as a great big smile grew on your cheeks. “This– this is the best thing you could have done for me. Thank you.”

“Course,” he replied. Luke began to smile as well.

Back at your place, you dug out boxes of ornaments. You had only just put them away yesterday once you got rid of your previous tree. A moment later, you invited Luke to help you decorate Patrice, and he jumped at the opportunity.

“What Christmas songs do you prefer?” you asked, stretching your arm out far so you could reach for your phone on the coffee table. The two of you had been untangling the metal hooks from the big ball they had forced themselves into. You let out a soft sound as you bent over, causing something to spark in Luke’s heart. “Traditional or gross modern?”

“I take it you got an opinion,” he muttered mockingly. “Traditional. Gimme that Bing Crosby shit.”

You grinned. “Man of my dreams.”

Luke wasn’t sure if you meant him or Bing Crosby. Whatever it was, it made Luke blush.

“Luke,” you whispered in his ear.

He groaned, rolling over and pulling the blanket higher on his bare torso to keep the chills from hearing your voice at bay. The shutter had already traveled halfway up his spine. In his dream, your fingers were tracing along his bicep as the other massaged his scalp. Your chests were pressed together, and the skin-to-skin contact was making his mind reel with pleasure and intimacy. God, you were so beautiful. How had he not noticed before?

“Luke,” you whispered again. Shit, did your voice get sexier?

Luke hummed, but it came out more like a moan as he imagined your lips sucking and biting–

“Luke!” you shouted, hitting his head hard with a couch pillow. “Wake up.”

His eyes snapped open to find you not in bed with him, but in fact, kneeling beside him fully clothed. Fuck.

“The roads are open,” you said. “Snow’s stopped.”

He jumped up, a grin spreading far on his cheeks. Before he knew it, he was lifting you up by the waist and holding you against him, his hand finding its way into your hair so he could press your head onto his chest.

“I take it you’re happy?” you mumbled against his hot skin.

“So fuckin’– “ His mind interrupted his tongue. That meant he could leave. That meant he had to leave. He had to leave you. Luke frowned and pulled away from you.

“What?” you wondered as you examined his suddenly worried expression.

His hands moved onto your cheeks, his thumbs grazing the soft skin underneath your eyes while he thought about what he was going to say.

“What?” you chuckled out lightly, but you soon lost your smile.

“Jus’ thinking about kissing you,” he said, “before I go.”

You were silent for a moment.

“’m sor– “

“I won’t want you to leave if you do,” you whispered, your hands reaching up to gently wrap around his wrists.

Luke nearly let out a breath, but he hadn’t brushed his teeth. “I gotta shower.”

You nodded, dropping your grip on his wrists as he dropped his on your cheeks. “Course.”

His heart was thumping loudly in his chest as he scurried around the small bathroom. He tossed his clothes to the floor, the toothbrush in his mouth nearly sliding back down his throat before he caught it with a gag. The water of the shower was hot enough by the time he had rinsed all of the toothpaste from his mouth, and then you knocked on the door.

“’m– I’m naked!” he shouted hurriedly.

“Yeah, um– I-I figured,” you stuttered out. He could picture you clutching your arms close against your chest like he knew you did when you were nervous.

Luke walked over to the door and opened it slightly so he could peak his head out. You were standing just how he imagined you would be, except he hadn’t expected to face the thick tension that he knew all too well. Your lips were pulled into a pathetic little pout, and it took every ounce of him not to tug you into the bathroom with him.

“I’m just– I’m– I’m gonna miss you,” you said. “I-I don’t– shit, I– “

Luke reached out and grabbed the back of your neck, pulling you in so he could press his lips against yours in a heated kiss. Maybe it was the steam from the shower, but every single nerve in his body ignited. You were kissing him back with as much fervency as he, and he couldn’t help but let himself taste what he had been missing these past three days.

“I’ll miss you,” he murmured breathlessly, nudging your nose and slowly kissing down your cheeks and onto your neck. “So much.”

You unexpectedly pulled away, your eyes frantic, and your lips tugged into a deep frown. “No, you won’t,” you said.

Luke rested his face against the door. “What d’ya mean?”

“Y-you won’t miss me.” You cracked a smile. “You’ll go back to LA– see your friends and family, and you won’t miss me. You won’t miss this town– you won’t even remember it. It’ll be like some dream to you.”

“No,” he said, “that’s not true.”

“Are you sure?” you laughed somewhat maniacally. “You’re famous, Luke. Famous people don’t belong in a town like Spruce Creek. This is for people who have no other choice.”

He shook his head, but you had already walked into your bedroom and closed the door.

You offered to drive Luke to the airport, but neither of you spoke the entire time. He wanted to say so much to you, though none of the words that popped into his brain seemed right. Nothing seemed right. Leaving you, despite knowing you for the few days he had, felt like the worst decision he was about to face. He trusted his intuition, and it was telling him to stay.

It continued to tell him to stay as he waited three hours for security to open. It told him to stay as he waited with the other five people at the wrong gate before realizing there was only one other gate to wait by. It told him to stay as he sat on his phone for another three hours, looking at all of the pictures he managed to take through the blustery snowfall. It told him to stay as he gathered his belongings and waited for his ticket to be scanned.

And lastly, it told him to stay as he turned around and rushed out of the airport, his belongings banging around on the pavement behind him as he hailed for a taxi.

His forehead had broken out into a dripping sweat by the time he made it to The Coffee Pot. It was minutes away from closing– he knew. Luke tipped the driver before clambering out onto the slushy road. He hoped you wouldn’t see him just yet.

What was he doing? He had a whole life waiting for him back home. What was he doing?

The door chimed as he stepped in, that familiar gust of hot air hitting him as Darryl shouted, “Ay! Malibu’s back! Give ‘em a kiss for me Stan.”

Stan made a disgusted face as every head turned to Luke. Every head including yours.

“Luke?” you gasped.

“My legs hurt,” he said, “so c’mere.” He nodded you over and watched you walk out from behind the counter. Your steps were wary as you neared. “’m done missing out on other chances. Who says I can’t fall for someone I just met? Who says I can’t drop a few things just to be with you for a bit? Who says it won’t work out?” He chuckled. “I just know I’m crazy about ya, and I don’t really know what else to do but stay.”

You grinned, pulling him down by the neck as you pecked his lips over and over. “See?” you mused. “Small towns ain’t so bad.”

He hummed, a lazily smile finding its way onto his lips. “With you, never.”

tags!

@lilhemmo @oh-annaa @youngbloodstyles @tommyswolves @lukeofmine @crystalisinfinite @dammitbands

314 notes · View notes

stagekiller · 5 years ago

Text

@angeledwings || RAM meme || not accepting

HE REMEMBERS. Pressure building behind shut eyelids, squeezed tightly under the weight of his arm. Draped across his face, lean muscle provides an oppressing sun shield. A few slow breaths are drawn as consciousness returns to him, mind still coddled by Morpheus; it’s 7AM. And today already feels like it’s going to be hot; sticky, sweaty, stinky. Not the kind of weather you’d want to be running errands in, not when those errands entail animal waste.

He’s always had this habit of getting out of bed the moment he’s awake. It’s not because he feels energetic. The sheets smell sweet & clean. The mattress is softer than he remembers. A leg dangles off the rim, fumbling for ground. And then — THUD ! He’s suddenly lying face up on the floor. Penetrating ringing claims his thoughts. A disgruntled glare finds its way to the top bunker, sheets unraveled - then it clicks. Right.

He hadn’t spent the night on his bed again.

A bitter snort is muffled through puffy lips, still pursed & soft & groggy, as is the rest of his body. He drags himself to the kitchen, which isn’t that far considering the caravan they live in only has three rooms and all three of them have entrances Jerome has to slightly tilt his head to pass through. It felt so much bigger when he was little. Now the walls suffocate him. And it’s not just the space.

It’s the familiar sight of a grease stained gas stove, Mount Laundry in a rusty sink, shattered glass & ashes on the floor. It’s the stench of booze and smoke that’s been etched onto the walls and Lila’s obnoxious snoring as she’s sprawled out on the couch, not even bothering to slip into something — Jerome won’t say ‘decent’, she’s simply incapable of decency — less revealing, something that won’t give him a full view of her diseased cunt. What a JOKE, that demented woman.

Then again, everything about this place is a joke. He doesn’t ponder over it too much, only hopes that a cup of hot coffee will spare him from the imminent migraine. Now, coffee is something a kid his age definitely shouldn’t be drinking; it stunts growth, they say. Jerome would argue that fourteen-year olds shouldn’t be lifting heavy crates or doing all the kinds of filthy mucking out Haly’s won’t pay his other starving personnel to get onto either. Even high school is starting to feel like a better prospect.

— naaaah, that’s a lie.

These jobs were supposed to be part of a plan. Starting from the bottom, climbing his way to the top; but that had been ‘Miah’s plan. Jerome would never admit it. He wasn’t one to keep up with plans, or have any kind of vision for the future, really. Age fourteen and the old creep next door was already foreseeing that he’d end up yet another deadbeat circus worker, presumably after he’d drunk his liver away and sprouted a bunch of bastards, much like mommy dearest. Hey. We are what we are.

Still, those awful awful chores would at least end with him pocketing some cash instead of going home to an empty fridge again. Cash that was mostly splurged in smoke ever since he’d picked up that awful habit as well. It was no secret that Lila scattered whatever coin she made in the wind; and by ‘wind’, one was given to understand booze, smoke & drugs. Of course, she’d jump a fella’ or two out of pure hedonism as well; Jerome had this theory that her cunt had loosened up over the years and she’d yet to find something that could fill it up and so everytime some big-boned jock passed by the trailer she’d spread her legs like a flytrap gapes.

“ Did you take my notebook? ” Jeremiah would ask, his voice stripped of the usual honeyed tone he’d dip it in around strangers - the ‘good boy’ act.

“ No. Lost it? Did’ja look into mom’s cunt? ” Jerome would respond. And he’d crack up in rattling cackles. ‘Miah’s face distorted in disgust, a TRAGICOMIC display of their reflective image. Somewhere under that exasperated huff lurked a chuckle; Jerome just KNEW it !

Murky brown lavished a stained mug. Some writing has faded away on the outside. He brings it close to his face and gets a whiff of grease around the rim already. Such things have ceased to bother him by now. Acid fills his mouth within a sip. It tastes bland. The sugar jar is recruited in his assistance. Even that does little to soothe his mouth; and even less for his empty stomach. Ah, he’ll grab something on the way to Uncle Zach’s food stand.

He slips into yesterday’s outfit quick; not bothering to fix the stray auburn strands that dance around his freckled complexion. A plain shirt that carries stains from Haly’s petting zoo. He remembers how he could smell his own dried sweat on it; a stench he’d have loved to rub in Jeremiah’s face while sneaking the usual headlock ‘embrace’ before heading out. His brother would be at the table ( Lord make that booze stained fold-up thing a table to begin with ) , having made himself some meager meal that would be offensive to call ‘breakfast’, revising for his tests before class. He’d give Jerome a pout and swat him away, complaining about how his clumsy early morning shot at strangling him got milk on his homework.

Yet, somehow he always made it work, even with what little their fridge was packing. Even did the shopping lists. Jerome avoided a glimpse at the table, because he’d spot that half-finished one again, still in the same place as ‘Miah left it. No one had touched it. And behind that, he’d probably catch a glimpse of the nasty trap between Lila’s legs again. No thank you, he’d like to hold his coffee down this once.

Jerome had never been one to count days or tear at the old fashioned calendar hanging by their trailer’s entrance. This month had little ducks decorating each corner. He would never turn the page or remember the week, always jest about how Mondays and Fridays were potato - potatoh for underage circus workers...

— but somehow he’d counted three days pass.

#{ headcanons }#// thanks for the ask !! UwU #You'd better not forget to clap! || {Asks answered}#child abuse //

2 notes · View notes

funkymeihem-fiction · 6 years ago

Text

The Halloween Party- Chapter 2 (NSFW)

He’d briefly cursed picking such a high-up place, climbing awkwardly up the ladder with his peg leg hanging to the side, relying mostly on his upper body strength to drag himself along, with breeze whipping at his vampire cloak and dragging uncomfortably at his throat. But at least it was a good spot, out of sight and out of mind of the Halloween party still raging across the base. Here out of the wind, behind the shelter of stacked crates and metal barriers, nobody would find them, or interrupt them again.

She was already waiting for him, and before he could even properly greet her or say something raunchy, she had taken the booze bottle from him and downed two solid swigs from it…and then all of a sudden she was upon him. He’d barely even arrived, but she acted like she’d been waiting for hours, stewing in impatience until she could get her lips back on his. Her clutching hands gripped at his costume, and he would have made some snappy quip about how he was supposed to be the impatient one and how she was stealing his bravado, but she was eating his words and eating his face and he probably wouldn’t remember the quip later on anyway.

Sexual frustration.

Those were the only words he kept coming back to, again and again. Sexual frustration. Not on his part, of course. He was a bloke who had his priorities straight, his ducks in a row. He was never above a good wank when he started having urges. And he had those urges very often. Sometimes multiple times a day. But when he was frustrated, he just wrangled his donger until it cooperated again, and spent his frustrations into his hand or a sock or a tissue, or one time into Roadhog’s favorite hanky, which had earned him such a whomping that he’d been bruised for weeks after.

No, the sexual frustration was not on his part at all.

But that was the only reason he could think of as to why Mei’s hair was tangled in his flesh hand, keeping a grip as her head moved back and forth in an unsteady pace, with him grimacing and grunting along with the wet sucking noises between his thighs. She’d been so eager to remove his pants that she didn’t even notice that one leg was still caught on his peg, inside-out and stuck on the joint. Poor girl, she was so cock-starved that she was all but devouring him, and drove herself so hard that she would occasionally have to cough, or choke down a rapid breath before pushing him right back in. It was almost a little concerning, really- though his concern was dimmed by the simple fact that it felt so fucking good and his constant need to tell her so.

“Fuck, darl, that’s good. You’re so good…Yeah, that’s my good girl, take it all, suck me, just a lil’ more…”

He could feel himself almost down her throat as she took him deep, and he wondered what it would be like to cum down her pretty little gullet. Right past her tongue and into her belly. If she couldn’t taste it, would she even notice he’d done it? Could someone like him cum stealthily? No, he was a bit of a noisy sort and would no doubt forget himself in the process. Probably not. And he couldn’t risk startling her and ruining a good thing, not with someone like her.

There was a soft jingling sound, tinkling in a steady rhythm and for a while he could not figure out from where. It turned out to be Mei’s hair pin, with the little jeweled grinning pumpkin swinging to-and-fro on the end of its beaded chain. It clicked against the metal rod holding her hair in its bun, where strands of hair were starting to escape, mussed from his fingers holding the bun with every downward motion of her sucking lips. His eyes darted to the winning smile of the jack-o-lantern, almost as wide as his own smile, and the way it grinned so cheekily. Junkrat and the pumpkin pin shared a very private and (admittedly) very odd little moment as their eyes met over her moving head. Seemed everyone was enjoying this.

He was distracted again when she finally pulled off him with a wet pop, those big brown eyes peering up at him from between his spread legs. The night air was cold, and her saliva made it colder. He could barely suppress a shudder and wished she’d put it back in the warmth of her mouth again, but she wiped at her lips and smiled a drunken smile as she sat up and started pulling off her belt for the second time that night, staring at him with a little squint. He couldn’t really be sure if it was her lack of glasses, or the alcohol in her system.

“You have...a really cute freckle. On your nose. I like your nose freckle,” she told him, voice still slurred.

“Ah…Heh! Yeah thanks, darl. And the doc says it’s non-cancerous!” he replied proudly.

“Um, okay. And your little curl. What even is it, this curl? So cute.” She reached forward, the plush rim of her sleeve brushing his cheek as she reached out to the little lock of hair where a cowlick might have once been before all the fire and radiation, springing out over his forehead.

“Uh!” He wasn’t used to anyone complimenting him, which was why he complimented himself so much. But he definitely wasn’t used to Mei of all people complimenting him. And now she was telling him he was cute, and for some reason it felt almost as good as when she was sucking his cock, but in a different way? Pinch him, he was dreaming. “What hair I got left, yeh? Hehe. Uh. You’re cute, too. Cuter, I mean. Blimey, you’re cute. But ya know that! And I know that you know! Uh-”

Grabbing the bottle to calm his nerves, he took another drink and then regretted it. The comfortable haze around his senses was nice enough, sure, but what if he got whiskey dick? He’d never had whiskey dick before, but he’d heard it could happen. What if this was his one and only shot with Mei, the only night he’d ever have the chance to be with her, and that weird Chinese booze threw off the angle of his dangle? What if she laughed at his flaccid cock and then told everyone on base about it?

No, that was a stupid thought, wasn’t it? Mei didn’t even want to be seen near him, much less gossip to the whole base about his inability to perform. Plus, she was still sweet-natured enough, even if it didn’t go all the way through her. Like a sugar coating that turned out to be salt. Everyone else might have been fooled by her syrupy nature, but not him. Not with the way she treated h-

“Gghhh!”

His back hit the floor, sprawled out atop his vampire cape. His throat closed up and all suspicions were driven from his mind when he realized he has been pushed there. Mei had one hand splayed across his bony chest, supporting herself as she straddled his lap, her legs clad in nothing but her underwear. When had she taken her pants off? Shit, he’d missed it! Stupid brain, worrying about flaccid performance when his favorite ice queen was taking off her pants right in front of him!

She sighed a little as she sat astride his narrow middle, shrugging off her fluffy coat to reveal the tank top that he’d been shoving his fingers into only minutes earlier. There really was no doubt about it: Mei had the nicest tits of anyone on the whole base. Probably the whole world. They also happened to be pretty much the largest (and he was a man who had an appreciation for large breasts and hips) and the softest, and basically the best things he could ever remember getting his hands on. He wished he still had his other hand, one with the full range of nerve endings and feelings of touch. Then he could grope her with that one too.

Her tank top was peeled away, and they bounced free of her bra a moment later. Instinctively he reached for her, sliding her up so he could began ravaging the pale skin with his kisses, though she pushed his face away when he bit too much at them. Right, he still had to control himself, could only bruise her softly. Capturing one of her nipples between his lips, he suckled at her until they stood to attention, and then pinched a little with his teeth until she squealed. She tasted like sugar and sweat. Perfect, perfect, she was perfect and she was all his at least a little while.

“J-Junkrat! Not where anyone can see!” she reminded him as he tried to leave a similar bruise to her throat.

“Right, forgot! Just…you smell so nice, taste so good. I wish I could-” He muffled anything further in the depths of her tits, burying his face in before he told her what he really wished. How he wished people would see them- the bruises. How he wished he could suck on her throat like the vampire he was dressed as, and mark her up, and leave pretty purple and blue claims all over, so that that fucking cowboy and anyone else knew to step off from what wasn’t theirs.

At least he could stop being concerned about the whiskey dick, it seemed. His donger was standing to full fucking attention, and the flared head was prodding insistently at the noticeably moistened crotch of her panties, right atop the wet spot where the cloth got darker. And it was him making her cunt drool like that, not the cowboy or the archer or the tiny weird bearded man- it was all him. He could feel it, especially when she shyly hunched her shoulders, almost as if she was still sheepish, but then began rubbing herself completely without shame along the length of his cock, until the cloth was positively sodden between them.

His mechanical hand kept its grasp on her hip, pushing her down as she rode his length, but the other slid up along her spine before flattening upon her shoulder blades and pressing her chest down towards him, long tongue dragging across the tops of her breasts and painting her with saliva, lifting up goosebumps as it cooled in his wake. She shivered under his fingertips. So the little ice queen could still feel cold? Interesting. Good thing that he was here to take care of that.

He couldn’t hold back a growl, gripping her around the middle and starting to grind himself up into her. Damn lady panties were in the way or he’d already be inside her, but there was something tantalizing about how she was keeping him at bay. Normally he didn’t bother with teasing. Either there wasn’t enough time or he simply was too impatient to care. But having her- the real Mei, herself- so close and yet being kept from his prize just by one thin layer of fragile wet cotton? It stoked the flames in him, to be sure.

But in the end, he hadn’t come to be teased- he’d come here for a round of booze-fueled fucking. Maybe if they were both sober and they were in a proper bed, maybe with ropes or cuffs or silk ties or things he’d read about, she could tease him until he exploded. But that was unlikely, wasn’t it? She didn’t even want to be seen associating with him, so why waste both their times? They were here for one reason only.

Pressing a hand to flatten her against his chest before it slid down the pale expanse of her back, he craned his neck to look over her, grasping the base of his cock as his other hand pulled her undies aside. She was slick. So slick. So slick that he slipped across instead of in, prodding blindly and inelegantly until he felt it catch. And then, grasping roughly onto her hip, he pulled her down just as he pushed up.

She uttered a noise like she was breaking, and panic flooded through him. Didn’t want to hurt her. He would never hurt her. Or at least, he wouldn’t mean to. He froze mid-thrust, looking at her wide-eyed before he went to withdraw. But to his surprise, her fingers curled into his chest and she looked up at him almost pleadingly, tightening her legs around his hips to keep him there.

“N-no! It feels good. Just…it’s been a little while,” she said haltingly, with the sour scent of báijiǔ still on her breath. “Keep going. It feels good.”

He was still unsure, and it must have been written all over his expression. Couldn’t keep a fucking poker face for the life of him.

“Please?” she finally muttered after a few moments, almost a whimper. “Please make me feel good…?”

It made the inside of his ribs hurt, the way she said it. And for some reason it made him a little angry? Not at her, of course. But at…the world? The kind of world that had done such awful things to the both of them, maybe. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just another one of those times where he got mad at nothing. Best not to think about it. And not thinking about it proved a little easier when she eased herself back onto him, trying to shift her hips even at her odd angle, sliding up and down atop his length. Breath hissed from his nose, nostrils flaring, and he put his hands back on her to help her move.

He tried to focus on the wet heat that hugged every inch of him, on the burn of friction as he began short little rabbiting thrusts to open her up and ease himself into the motions. He’d fantasized about this, so many times he’d lost count. Granted, his fantasies never involved pumpkins or vampire costumes or awful Chinese booze or Halloween at all. But he’d take it. He’d take it and he’d take her. Maybe she had a thing for vampires? If she did, maybe he’d make the vampire costume part of his whole…thing? Then again, didn’t that Talon bloke have the whole spooky costume thing already-

Focus. He needed to fucking focus. She needed this and he needed her.

“Fuck, you’re tight, you’re so tight,” he heard himself groaning. “Unngh, cunt’s the tightest lil’ thing I’ve ever felt. Been a good girl, huh? Kept all sweet and tight, waitin’ just for me-” He petered off at the end, hips still thrusting in small quick strokes. Fuck, maybe he shouldn’t say shit like that if she really was a good girl? Which she was. “Uh, I mean…Heh! I’ll shut my yap.”

“No! Keep talking,” she replied, and he thought he heard impatience in her tone. “Your mouth is…it’s dirty? But it’s good? It’s good. Keep talking.”

“Y’sure?”

“Yes! I came out here to…I won’t break, Junkrat. I want this. I want you to be you. Be rough and say strange things like you always do!” she demanded with such vehemence that it surprised the both of them, and she bit her lips inward and quickly mumbled a little, “Um…Please?”

He eyed her for a moment, eyes gleaming yellow in the blue darkness, in the shadow of the tower looming above them. But then his face split into his usual grin, teeth glinting white and gold. “Well! Can’t say no t’that, can I? Guess I’ll be a gentleman, then, since you said please and all.”

“Um…Thank you? I didn’t mean t- Aah!”

Her words were cut off as he suddenly surged upward, lifting her with a heave of both arms as he maneuvered his legs under him to kneel, the scrape of his metal peg kicking up a spark as it crossed the ground. With a few quick yanks, he slid her ruined panties down and tossed them away. Setting her back down atop his cock, she took to the new position and wrapped her legs around him, looking up in a rather shocked manner. But the shock was short-lived, when he spread her thighs wider apart with his own, and promptly began thrusting wildly up into her.

“Yeah, you like that?” He growled into her breasts, pressing her spine so it arched against him. “You wanted somethin’ a little rough so you came t’me, is that it? Heh, said I got a dirty mouth. Who’s the dirty one here, love, throwin’ me in a pantry and kissing me like that? Starting to think you might be more of a dirty girl than you let on.”

“Y-yes!”

Well this sure was a fucking welcome surprise. Sweet and salty little Mei also had a bit of a spicy side. Who knew? Was it just the booze? Nah, booze just made it easier for her to admit. That sort of thing was probably laying dormant for ages. In fact…that might have just been part of why she pretended not to like him so much. And while it might have been a bit sly and low of him, he decided that now -while distracting her by giving her a vigorous pumping- was a good time to ask.

Licking up her neck, he hissed into her ear as she jolted up and down atop him. “S’that why you’re always such a lil’ shit to me, Mei? Because you been wanting this and didn’t wanna say it?”

Her nails raked across his back, leaving red risen skin as they went, her voice uneven. “You’re a t-terrorist! And a bully!”

Nothing he didn’t know already, but he narrowed his eyes and bit down upon her shoulder. “So are half the folks here, you absolute prat. So why me!”

“Because you’re…you!” she snapped back, tightening her legs around his hips and pushing herself more fiercely atop his pounding length. “Why do you have to be you! With your freckle and your curl and- but all the bad things too!”

They were fighting again, and both had realized it. With his blood singing, he pried her legs off him and threw her onto the ground, atop his costume cape serving as their blanket. It probably stung a little, but he wanted it to. Glaring back at him, huffing in that adorably puffy way he loved, she lay back, thighs still spread and shiny with fluid and sweat. Repositioning himself, he dove right back atop her, reckless energy all concentrated in his thrusting…and arguing.

“I ain’t going to apologize!” he snarled, gripping one of her calves and hauling it over one bony shoulder, turning and biting his teeth into the meat of it as she groaned beneath him. “For the way I am! Which works because fuck knows you apologize enough for everybody! F-fuck! Ungh, fuck! Take it!”

“There’s nothing wrong with good manners!- Mmnh!” She gasped aloud, lips hanging open and panting. “Not that you would know!”

“Said the ice princess what came to me to plow her because of my ‘bad manners’!” He continued beating his hips into hers, sweat rolling off him now. The stink of aggression between them was making it far more intense than he’d first meant. “And you seem to be likin’ it, by the by. Clenching me like that…F-feels so good…”

She managed a distracted nod, even as she spat back, “You’re the one who tried flirting with me before you even knew my name, and wanted to give me an omnic skull as a flowerpot! O-oh, right there! Junkrat!”

“I thought you would like flowers! Who wouldn’t like that!” He focused on the spot she’d said, swallowing throatily as she called his name.

“Me! I didn’t like that, and you’re impossible! So why do you have to be so tall and have a cute freckle and that curl and…and all the nice things, too! Why are you like this?”

“I dunno! Why are you the way you are?” He saw how she had pivoted a bit onto her side to talk to him, and took advantage. Slinging one leg over her thigh, he pinned it beneath him as he stretched her other leg further over one shoulder, leaving her spread wide and open as he plunged back within. Bowing his long spine above her, he loomed above her face so they could glare at one another, even if it was getting harder. “I just wanted you to fuckin’…I dunno! Look at me! Talk to me! Give me a bloody chance, darl!”

“You could have just asked politely. Oh! Oh, that feels…so good…”

“You certainly didn’t ask politely before you started shoving your tongue in my mouth earlier tonight. Uh, ya know. Like this,” He sneered before leaning down and kissing her deeply, dragging her tongue out from her mouth and right into his. Grunting, with his breath hissing across her face, he held her legs open with one strong hand as he paused in his rhythm.

That must have displeased her, because she began undulating her lower body, and started thrusting herself onto him instead. And that sent him moaning into her mouth, eyes fluttering stupidly as he rested, and she took over. It wasn’t as deep or fast, but the feeling of her using him to pleasure herself was certainly worth a pause to enjoy. Even when she peeled her lips away just enough to breathe more insults into his open mouth.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have. Because you smell like gasoline.”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of petrol odeur, love. Besides, not as overpowerin’ as your damn Chinese booze. Nn- Yeah, yeah! Fuck, keep movin’, just like that...Good girl.”

She kept moving like that, her bangs sticking to her forehead and her eyes somehow even larger and darker than usual. For a while she was silent other than her breath and the little effort noises of sex. But eventually she sniped back at him, because that was just how they were.

“…And you’re too tall. You don’t even need to be that tall.” She smacked her hips up into him more sharply, enough that it knocked the wind out of him a bit.

“Nah, love. S’all these top ‘Straya genes at work, so we can get things down off the top shelves for you. It’s heaps good. Asides, I don’t think you should be complaining about how big I am when you’re currently enjoying it.”

That one got her, and her face lit up pink again. Perfect.

Grinning widely, he retaliated, grabbing her around the middle and hauling her up until he was kneeling again with her legs on either side of him, brutally pounding downward while he held her in place. She lay with only her top half on the ground, and he got a nice eyeful of the way her breasts bounced hard with their motions, her fingers clenched into the cape under her. She was panting loudly now, they both were, and he could feel the telltale pressure starting to build in his nethers. It made fighting with her that much harder.

“Not complainin’ about your size, am I?” he said, hips still smacking steadily and getting more short of breath. “Not when you’re all squeezing tight like that. Fuck, you’re so small and tight in there, chokes the life right out of me. S’perfect. Why haven’t we been doin’ this for ages?”

“I don’t know. J-just keep going! Please, I’m almost-”

She reached up between her legs, rubbing at her little clit where he could not, his hands full just keeping her in place. He focused instead on driving into her all the harder, hitting that spot that made her groan the most. She really was magnificently small and tight, and her core was gripping him so hard and so perfectly that he was ruined. How was anything going to compare after this one? He would need more, eventually. Soon. Extremely soon.

Her voice was singing below him, crying wordlessly aloud as she was tipped over the edge. Ladies first. But he followed soon after. With a few more rough strokes, he snarled and pushed deep into her and stayed there. It was a good one, nice and intense, able to feel every pulse as he flooded her with a particularly nice load. She deserved the best, after all. He waited, an almost pained expression on his face with brows knitted and teeth clenched, until he had emptied every drop.

He made a few more meek attempts at thrusting, but it was useless. Although they did sort of squelch and she made a pretty funny face at the noise. Heh. Unwilling to leave her snug heat, he covered her body with his and went limp, even if it made her oof and support his weight. He’d worked hard, he deserved a rest, and her tits were the perfect pillows. And he could listen to the wild rampage of her heartbeat and the hush of her lungs working inside her chest as they both recovered.

She wiped at her sweaty forehead. “That…That was really…”

“Heh! Yeah.”

Shit. He wished he had more to say than that. He’d finally gotten to root the ice queen herself, but any more snappy comebacks were lost in a wave of content and tired fog, even thicker and softer than the haze of the báijiǔ. He felt like he could just snuggle down into her like a downy comforter and pass out. Maybe he could take a little nap, then wake up and root her yet again, just to start making up for lost time.

So why was there regret in her voice when she said, “I can’t…believe I just did that”?

His eyes opened again. “Huh?”

“That was amazing. But…I can’t believe I…Why?”

“Because…you wanted me to?”

“I guess it was just the báijiǔ. Too much beer and everything else.”

Well so much for the pleasant haze he’d been under. He lifted his head to give her an irked stare. “Really? We still lyin’ about that?”

“I’m not! It’s not a lie!”

“And they say I’m a liar, eh?” he said. “Blaming it on the booze, oldest trick in the book. You utter tit, do you even realize that we could have been doin’ this all along if you’d just admitted-”

“Bì zuǐ! No, it isn’t like that. I didn’t want just…this!”

He paused to squint again, confused, and she shook her head quickly.

“Er,” she said, realizing her mistake. “No, I mean I did want this. I really did want that part.”

“But?”

“But I didn’t mean…I wanted it to be more than this,” she said, voice a little smaller. She was slurring less now. “It wasn’t supposed to happen until you were better. I thought maybe here at Overwatch, you would change! You would get better and stop being…you! And then…and then I could like you and it would be okay…”

Golden eyes stared down at her, pupils still blown from booze and (apparently much-regretted) sex. He felt a rivulet of sweat ooze down his temple, down along the edge of his cheek and off his pointed chin, dripping onto the girl below him. Mei looked up at him, then covered her face with both hands and shrank down.

“I’m sorry! I ruined it! I didn’t mean to! Just forget what I was s-”

He blinked down at her, and his grin warped into a frown. “Huh. Wow…Uh, that’s kinda- Well, it’s a bit shite, isn’t it?”

“I know! I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Fockin’ hell, love, you know how to ruin a mood. ‘If you would just change I could like you’. Yeah nah. Dunno if I can really get back to our little spitefuck, here. Damnit…” He pulled away from her, sitting back and running his metal hand through what was left of his hair.

“Then…Maybe that’s better,” she said, more mournfully. “I don’t want it to just be out of spite. Even if…I’m really sorry I ruined it, because…Um, you’re really, really good at it.”

His ego swelled a little at that, but he was still quite unsure of things. Shit, that wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He shouldn’t have even asked her, he should have plowed her and left, and then gone back to the way things were. He might have had a good thing here. Even if it meant just fighting and fucking her occasionally, it would have been something. Instead she was tossing addled and confused confessions at him while her tongue was loosened by booze and sex, and it turned out she was as big a liar as he was.

She was the one who had initiated everything with that kiss. Sexual frustration. It had been desperation. Desperation and alcohol. That was all. How fucking stupid he’d been, to think it could have been anything else.

He just grunted.

She sat up on both elbows, biting her lip. “But I liked it. I was really liking it, and even if we stop, I don’t want to stop?” She scrunched her face, her words garbled by alcohol, shooting a worried look to where he had withdrawn. “I don’t want to leave things there, or go back to how it was.”

He put his grin back on. “S’alright. Heh, not the first time I been shot down for being a junker. Or for, ya know, being…m’self. No worries! I don’t mind if ya hate me!”

“I don’t hate you. I’m just…I’m still getting to know you. And you are not what I am used to. Everything here has changed since I was…” She trailed off, either in some private thought or hesitation or who the fuck cared.

He looked out across the empty, desolate training yards, and wondered if maybe he should just leave. Maybe there was still time to head back to the party, even if he was in a shite mood now, and his post-orgasmic lull had so rudely been stolen from him. And the booze was still fogging his brains and his tongue was still thick, so maybe he should just scurry back to his room and sleep the rest of this shite evening off, and try to forget it. Even if he’d been so, so close…

He looked around for the rest of his costume, to get dressed. “Enh.”

The warmth of her clammy, naked skin was pressing against him again, holding herself to his back. “Wait. Please wait.”

“Why. Ya made your point, darl. I get it. I’m fucking off.”

“Please just wait for a minute. I know what I said was mean, and awful. And the way I treated you was… Junkrat…Is it okay if I call you Jamison? Your real name?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know…because it’s real? And calling someone names like ‘Junkrat’ or ‘Roadhog’ is really strange to me. Those are strange names. Especially to say during dinner. Which leads me to, um, would you like to go out to dinner? Or out for a boba? I’ll pay.”

Her fingers reached up and touched the side of his face where he’d been staring into space, and the yellow glint of his eyes darted back down to her. He’d heard that ladies were more complicated out here, out of the desert. And damned if he wasn’t used to being confused, but Mei was twisting his brain like a washrag.

“Are you askin’ me out on a date? Like right now? After all that?” he asked.

“It doesn’t have to be a date. If you want, it could just be an apology…?”

“Bloody…Mei, you’re chuckin’ mental ueys too fast here. First you hate me, then you like me, then you hate me again, but you’ve always sort of liked me…And then I should change but I should also be me because you like bein’ dirty but not…” He groaned, half collapsing atop her with his face wedging between her breasts again, so much so that his voice was muffled. “You gotta make up your goddamn mind, darl. Also I’d rather it be a date, thankyouverymuch.”

She pursed her lips down at him, reaching into her bosom to drag him out. “Then it’s a date. And it’s also kind of an apology, but it’s a date. And maybe it’ll be less confusing when we’re less drunk? I’m really sorry for tonight. Um. Except for the…you know. I kind of needed that. But I’m sorry for blurting out everything afterward. And some of the things before. And being…a bully.”

“I’m writing this down so I don’t forget it. This is ammo for next time you’re being a snit. You. Being a bully. Hehe!”

“Be serious, please. I really am sorry and I’ll make it up to you.”

He eyed her. He had to make it look like he was thinking it over. Because yeah he was still mad, but there was no way he was turning her down, even after everything.

“Arright. Twisted my arm just enough, love. Although just to warn you, get your wallet ready because I’m going to eat a lot. Like a lot.”

“Deal. And I mean it. I want us to figure things out…I mean, when we’re not drunk.”

It had been a hell of a Halloween. It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. But she was a complicated lady and maybe he just needed time to sort this shit out. And she needed time to sort her shit out. And maybe they could discuss the rest of it at their next meeting. Their dinner. Their date.

She pressed herself against him once more, wrapping her arms around his narrow frame. And he relented, wrapping her back up in his long arms and crushing her to his ribs, pulling her halfway into his lap. He sat with his nose buried into her hair and his eyes closed, until they shot open a moment later when there was a wet sensation on his thighs. For half a moment he was unsure what it was, until Mei squirmed a little uncomfortably and he realized that she was now sitting upright and it was his semen leaking back out of her.

There was a lot. That really had been a champion load, and it had all been inside her. And even if it was just a bit gross…Fuck, that was hot. That was really, really hot. And if he just had a few more minutes, there was more where that came from. Already he felt a familiar twitch, and Mei glanced down knowingly as there was a sudden pressure starting to prod at her hip.

“Jamison…”

Her voice was low and husky and they could figure out all the rest of this complicated shit afterward. Right now, her fingertip was swirling temptingly around the ridges of his gaunt abdomen, and he could feel himself starting to rise back to the occasion.

He was grinning again. “Arright, so…do you still want toooo…?”

“Yes please.”

She leaned up to kiss him again, and he lay her down and pulled himself back atop her.

#meihem #meirat #junkmei #mei #mei-ling zhou #pumpkin mei #junkrat #jamison fawkes #vampire junkrat #overwatch #fanfiction #writing #smut #not sure about this one #but I tried

116 notes · View notes