#damn there's such a high money bar for this show now though :(

[tartrazeen]

This is absolutely exquisite.

SAPPHIRA CRISTAL •  drag race 16.07 i can buy myself flowers runway

[lieutenantbatshit]

your favorite crime. (Hwang In-Ho x Reader)

Plot: Given the age gap, you and In-ho had a lot of differences but one thing's for sure - you love each other so much it's destroying the both of you. As the relationship progresses, the fights progresses as well. In your last fight, you break up with In-ho. After two months of no contact, you and In-ho meet again in a local bar. But, he's with someone else this time.

Tags: angst, you and in-ho break up, in-ho finds someone new but still has feelings for you, on-off relationships, age gap, violence

>> Masterlist

"God fucking dammit!"

You slammed the door to your apartment then went on to your knees, letting out the tears you were holding in from earlier.

He was unfair. SO UNFAIR. Sure, he spoiled you with a lot of things to make up for his absence. You wanted new shoes? He would wire over some money and send it directly to your bank account, or he would go out of his way to buy it and give it to you as a surprise. You wanted a new bag? He would give it to you in an instant, even those that needed to be shipped for a few days. You craved for something? He would either deliver it for you, cook for you, or just wire some money to your bank account for you to buy whenever he was busy.

That was the problem. He was always busy.

You've been singing at bars for awhile, something to start off with your music career. You've always been musically inclined as you learned a bunch of instruments since high school. You sang, played the drums, bass, guitar, piano - name it. It was fulfilling to be able to go out of your comfort zone, thanks to In-Ho who motivated you to start singing again.

But what happens if the one who motivates you couldn't even at least watch your show, at least once?

You respected his choice of continuing and working for the games. Despite you not being exposed to the games, you understood the concept of it. You shared ideals with In-ho, at least there was something similar between the two of you despite the age gap.

But what you couldn't understand was how he constantly missed watching your shows. Couldn't he at least spare a little of his time to support you? He argued that he overslept, the games were all he had to work on as he had to come up with new games or at least rotate the gameplays, he was tired, and he was still supporting you from afar even if he wasn't physically present.

You sniffed, wiping the tears away from your face. You proceeded to go to the bathroom to at least try and fix yourself up. As you looked at your reflection in the mirror, you couldn't help but miss the person you were before meeting In-ho. This person you're currently looking at, whose mascara and eyeliner were all over your eyes, your lipstick smudged - you vowed to never let a man make you look like this, or even put you in this state.

You sighed, opening the faucet to splash some water on your face, letting sadness take over as you replay the memory of you breaking up with In-ho.

"Y/N," In-ho said, touching a part of your shoulder trying to calm you down. Though he failed, as it made you angrier - knowing damn well what he was about to say again.

"I'm tired of your goddamn excuses," you said as you swatted his hand away from you. He looked at his hand as if he couldn't process the way you acted. He kept his stare at his hand, his jaw clenching. You knew he didn't like it when you become physically violent, or even just a tinge of pushing him away. But right now, you didn't care. You were mad. "What's your excuse this time? You overslept? Been working all night? Tired? You support me in other ways instead by buying me stuff? Treating me outside after my show to 'make up' for your absence? What, In-ho?!"

He glanced at you, his eyes becoming dark as he slowly looked to your eyes. You knew what his look meant - he was becoming angry too. If you had anger issues, he had it worse.

You were taken aback as he grabbed the glass of whiskey on the countertop and slammed it to the floor, its shards spreading around the floor. You didn't flinch, but you felt a glass graze at your leg. With your anger, you couldn't feel the pain yet. It was gonna sting for sure, but you were too angry to care.

But then he started coming towards you, his hand aimed at your neck. His grip wasn't tight enough to choke you, but he had that look in his eyes that if you triggered him once more, he wouldn't hesitate to grip it harder. You held his arm, gripping it with your nails as you tried to get away from him, but he was too strong.

His breath hitched as he continued to look at you with darkness in his eyes. He started to speak up, "You're ungrateful." His jaw clenched while tears started to dwell upon your eyes, but you held them back. "You think I love missing your shows? You think I don't try to at least watch one of them? As much as I want to give you a time, you know damn well that I couldn't. The demands of the games were so high, and it's not my fault that you schedule your shows whenever the games start!" His grip tightened more, this time, making you breathless.

"Then you could've at least made time!" You shouted as you removed his hand successfully, touching your neck. His hands felt like it was imprinted on you, not realizing how he gripped it tighter before letting you go. You coughed, collapsing to the floor as you tried to catch your breath. You felt your legs shake out of anger, feeling the sting of pain from the graze you had earlier. In-ho seemed to notice as your fingers went on to the wound, blood imprinting on your fingers. "If you think this could be fixed with sex, then you're not in luck. I'm done with you."

"What did you say?" He asked sternly, his fists clenching as his eyebrows furrowed.

"I'm done with you, In-ho," you finally stood up, looked at him in the eye as you did so. Your legs were still shaking, but you managed to walk to the door. You gave him a last glance, enough to tell him that you were leaving his life for good. "I'm fucking done with you."

His face hardened as you blurted out those words, his heart beating through his chest harder than ever. While on the other side of the door, you continued to walk away with tears streaming down your face. You hoped to at least hear the door open and for him to chase you and say that he was going to make up for his absence.

The door stayed still, unopened. Instead, you heard the door locked from the inside.

----

It's been two months since you've heard about In-ho. You and him didn't contact each other at all after the fight. Though last month, you noticed the salesman on the subway again, playing ddakji with a random person. You only looked at them for a bit, to which the salesman immediately noticed. He gave you a small wave, unbeknownst to the man he was playing with who was awfully paying attention to the game. Probably someone who's in bad debt that he was too focused on playing the game. The man had hand imprints on his face, knowing damn well that the salesman was winning.

You only gave the salesman a small nod. You didn't like being associated with anyone who's closely related to In-ho. He nodded back and focused his attention to the man he was playing with.

You've been doing fine for awhile. Though you didn't date anyone after In-ho. It's not because you couldn't find someone else, but you didn't have the energy to "market" yourself to other people. Even dating apps didn't work for you. You didn't like starting over again, having to tell your favorite color, food, or whatnot to someone else again. It was too tiring. You accepted the fact that you're gonna live alone for the rest of your life.

But you'd be lying to yourself if you didn't think about In-ho sometimes. You wondered how he was doing, or if there was anything new about the games. He may have not had time for you that much, but you always made sure to at least give yours for him. You would listen as to how he carefully crafts the new games, or how he rotates the games for more thrill. Which angered you more, thinking how unfair that you were giving all of your time to him but he couldn't at least give you his. Sure, he spoiled you with anything materialistic - he made sure that you get all the latest trends, but you wanted more of his time. Maybe it was your way of telling him that you loved him for him, not for his money. Time was all you wanted, yet for a man who had everything, he couldn't give you at least that.

You sighed on the balcony of your apartment, enjoying a nice cup of tea and enjoying the cold breeze outside. Despite you and In-ho's differences, you still missed the bastard dearly. You missed how his fingers touched your skin, touching your back in circles that made you fall asleep better. You were battling insomnia, and you couldn't help but feel that In-ho was the reason you were sleeping peacefully at night. Even though he missed your shows, he was always present after. It made you think if you were ungrateful, but it didn't matter. He still didn't come to your shows to at least show support.

You went back inside your room and decided to look for an outfit to wear outside. When you find yourself thinking about In-ho, you drag yourself to the bar where you two both first met. You don't expect to see him there, knowing damn well he didn't have the time to do so. You knew yourself that it was impossible for him to come there. Hell, he probably doesn't remember that it's where you both first met.

You hailed a taxi cab on the way to the bar. The bar was packed, but you knew the owner so he would just save you a seat on the bar counter. You entered the bar and was met by the smell of alcohol around, people conversing with each other, and the sound of glasses clinking with each other. You went over the counter, ordered your favorite whiskey, preferably on the rocks.

"You alone tonight?" The bartender asked, pouring you a glass of whiskey as she put the ice.

You gave her a small smile. "Yep. No more plus ones."

She chuckled. "I hear you." You gave her a nod and raised the glass to her, thanking her as your drank it in full. She whistled, pouring you another drink. "Someone's getting wasted tonight, huh?"

"You could say that," you chuckled, staring at your glass being poured. The bartender said something, but you couldn't decipher it that much. You were too blinded with the hurt, with the thought of In-ho, and with the emptiness you've been feeling for the past few days.

You looked at the seat beside you, remembering how In-ho looked as he sat beside you. Back then, he didn't realize you were there as he was in too much of deep thought. You were also sitting right where you are, finding no hope in the world as you drink your sadness away. You wished for a family to look after you, a friend to turn to for comfort, or just be with someone. You've always been financially stable and independent. You never knew who your parents were, all you know is they disappeared all of a sudden and never came back. You never approached people first, but with In-ho, you gathered confidence to talk to him. He didn't acknowledge you that much then, completely ignoring you whenever you talk to him.

What he didn't know is that him ignoring you was better as you were used to not talking to a lot of people that much. It didn't feel like talking to a brick wall, but he became more of an outlet for your feelings. It became a tradition for you to go to this bar every night, drinking your sadness away, talking to In-ho (or at least, speaking to him), then going home drunk. You wouldn't know exactly how you got home safe, but knowing you made it to your apartment is enough assurance for you already that you made it safely.

As for In-ho, as much as he doesn't speak to you that much, he still listened. Your voice became a white noise for his thoughts, but he remembered every detail. Suddenly, he found himself coming to the bar every night just to listen to you. He found you amusing but interesting. He couldn't complete his night without you, and he enjoyed every single time you blabbered to him about stuff. Sometimes when the alcohol starts to get on you, you slur at your words. The moment you do that, he knew it's time for you to go home. You may not know how you get home safely, but at least to him, he knew to take care of you. He was the reason you've been going home safe, unbeknownst to you how you taught him the way back to your apartment as he drove at dawn, while you laying on the passenger seat as the alcohol took over you.

A tear fell from your eye as your heart sank with the thought of In-ho. He was a man of few words, but still did a lot for you. The door opened and saw a man wearing a long black coat, his hands tucked in its pockets. His hair was slicked back with gel, a strand of hair down to his face. You thought it looked exactly like In-ho as you chuckled to yourself, looking away as you drank your glass, asking the bartender again to pour you another. You've been thinking about him too much, thinking you've been imagining things.

Wait, what?

You looked back to the door and looked intently at the man you saw earlier. You froze, feeling your heart drop with the realization hitting you that it was indeed In-ho.

God, you hated how good he looked.

In-ho looked through the crowd. You weren't in his line of vision, just glancing around. You were on the other side where the counter was. You looked to where he was staring and saw a stage set in front, with a microphone on stage with one stool chair. A guitar was placed on top of the chair, ready for anyone to play. It seemed like an open mic night is happening and would be starting anytime soon. You noticed In-ho looking there intently. Was he thinking of you? Did he remember you singing there?

You gathered the courage to approach him, fixing your coat as you stood. As you were about to take a step forward, In-ho looked back to the door and smiled.

Smiled.

At someone else.

He gave her a nod as a sign of greeting, his hands touching the back of another woman as he guided her to a table. You feel your body freeze, your hands running cold as you looked at how he held her. You saw how he sat properly, his back touching the chair as he talked to her.

He looked at her the same way he did to you. He touched her back just like he did to you. He took her to the bar where you two first met. The woman whispered something to him, which made him chuckle. His eyes were glued to the menu as the woman continued to talk to him, only giving her small glances.

You sat back on your chair, staring at their table. You couldn't believe your eyes. While it's true that the both of you haven't been in contact with each other for two months, but how can he see someone else already? Were you that easy to replace? You can feel your heart breaking into pieces as you realize how you begged for his time, while he easily gave it to someone else.

You drank your whiskey once more and asked for another pour. The stinging heat of the drink glided through your throat and felt your tears fall, your lips pressed as you sniffed.

"Good evening, ladies and gents," someone on the stage announced through the microphone. "Tonight, we're hosting an open mic night. Feel free to come here on stage if you'd like to sing. The guitar is here and free for you to use for the night. Please enjoy, everybody."

The host bowed before exiting the stage, earning small claps from the crowd. You glanced at In-ho again, who was now talking to the woman he was with. Normally, you would've confronted him right then and there, but you still had your dignity. You would rather break internally instead of making a scene with a random woman. She probably doesn't know, but still, she had your In-ho.

"Got something to sing?" The bartender spoke up as she wipes their bar equipments. You were a regular singer at the bar. You did it for free for the bar, as it was the first avenue that gave you a chance to sing. "You may want to sing your heart out. People are drunk already, they won't probably notice if you cry."

You gave out a small laugh. "Am I that transparent?"

"I poured your glass a few times already, I noticed it very much," she laughed and hovered her hand to the stage. "Go on. Sing your heart out."

In-ho, on the other hand, wasn't having a great time at all. He felt lonely, having no contact with you for over two months. As much as he wanted to contact you, he was scared that you wouldn't want to see him. You telling him that you were done with him was a constant reminder that he fucked up. He didn't mean to oversleep at times when you had your show, he was just simply tired. And when he sleeps, and even a short nap could take him hours. It was a bad habit of his, he knows, so he tries to make it up to you in ways that he can.

Though what he failed to realize is to meet you in ways that he needed to, and how you wanted to.

In-ho didn't know what occurred to him as to why he went on a date with this woman. He knew he was being more unfair knowing how you begged for his time then him giving his time for someone else freely. It was true that he never wanted to miss your shows. He became too invested and busy with the games that he failed to prioritize you at times. He couldn't talk to you when he travels to the island as signal was nowhere to be found in that area. He knew you understood that, but he also wished that he could give you more of his time.

And so, In-ho made a deal with Il-nam to at least give him more days off. He did so well for the games, serving it for years now. At this point, his mind was scattered. But all of it leads to you.

In-ho took his date here only for the fact that he wanted to remember you. Something he could still remember you. He wished so hard for his date to be you instead, finding you in others. But there was no one else like you. Hell, no one was as close as you. In-ho looks at his date's eyes, catching a glimpse of you in his mind. He knew he was just passing time in her arms, but would rather be in yours.

"Annyeong," a voice echoed to the room. In-ho froze, the familiar voice catching on to him. He immediately looked at the stage and saw you, holding a guitar as you continued to fix the microphone leveling it for yourself. "I'm Y/N. Tonight, I'll sing what my heart feels as I wish that someone in here catches of a glimpse of me in someone's eyes."

The crowd murmured with excitement, the environment becoming lively. Curiosity filled the room as they looked at you. The crowd claps for you, including In-ho's date who became invested on to what you were going to sing.

"That's a bold move," In-ho's date said, her eyes locked to the stage.

In-ho adjusts his seat, his eyes never leaving you. He picks up his glass of whiskey, turning the glass around. "It is."

You begin to strum your guitar, feeling lost to the tune as you let your feelings take over you. You closed your eyes, hearing its rhythm as the strings glided to your fingers.

Know that I loved you so bad I let you treat me like that I was your willing accomplice, honey And I watched as you fled the scene Doe-eyed as you buried me One heart broke, four hands bloody

You opened your eyes and saw In-ho, his eyes fixed on you. You looked at him intently as you carefully sang each line, pouring your heart out.

The things I did Just so I could call you mine

In-ho stiffened, remembering how much you put up with his shit for a long time. He hears his date saying something, but he deliberately ignores her. In his peripheral vision, he could see his date's smile falter.

The things you did Well, I hope I was your favorite crime

In-ho's job wasn't easy at all. Hell, it couldn't even be considered a real job. It's an actual crime, slaughtering countless lives as if he was the one who gave them life in the first place. You knowing about what he does make you an accomplice already. Still, you chose to be with him. Despite agreeing with the fact that it's wrong, the concept of running the games still made sense.

You used me as an alibi I crossed my heart as you crossed the line And I defended you to all my friends And now every time a siren sounds I wonder if you're around 'Cause you know I'd do it all again

A tear fell from your cheek, letting it flow freely as you continue to sing. In-ho still kept his gaze at you, but this time, his eyes softened. There was longing - something that both of you had for each other as you parted ways.

It's bittersweet to think about the damage that we do 'Cause I was going down, but I was doing it with you Yeah, everything we broke and all the trouble that we made But I say that I hate you with a smile on my face

How bittersweet it was for him to finally watch you sing live. If only In-ho didn't have a date, and only you weren't broken because of him. If only he made more time. If only he could've been better.

Your voice broke as you sang, adding more emotion to the audience. They all watched you intently, but your eyes were only focused on In-ho.

Oh, look what we became....

You continued to strum your guitar and let your emotions take over you. As you finished the song, you looked at In-ho once again, his eyes still fixed on you. You saw him bit his lip as he looked down, his shoulders tense. You looked at the audience as they clapped, cheering for you. They asked for one more, but you politely declined, giving them a bow as you exited the stage. You could feel In-ho's eyes following you, but you hovered over to your seat fast as your glass of whiskey was waiting for you. You drank it with all your might, asking for a refill to the bartender once again.

You glanced at the door and saw the woman In-ho was with leaving. You looked back at In-ho's table, only for him to appear right beside you as you felt his coat brush against yours.

The two of you sat in silence once again right after the bartender finished pouring your drink. In-ho looked at you intently while you stared at your glass, turning it around as the ice clinked with each other along its whiskey.

Somehow, it felt comforting that he was right beside you. You gathered the courage to look up to him, and god, you wished you didn't.

His eyes were full of worry, as if he was on the brink of tears. He took a sip of his whiskey and placed it on the counter, not leaving his eyes on you. You felt his hands cup your face as you surrendered to his touch. You touch his hand as well, bringing it closer to your face as you took a deep breath, feeling more of his touch.

Without a second thought, his lips meet yours as his hands glided to your waist, pulling you closer to him. Your other hand held his arm, gripping on it as if you missed him.

You missed him so much, just as he did. Hell, he missed you more.

He broke away from the kiss, staring at your face as if memorizing it. He tucked your hair away from your face, "Y/N, I'm so sorry."

You pulled his collar and kissed him more, deepening the kiss. You felt him sniff, feeling a tear from his eye glide down your face. His hands were all over you, not caring if everyone sees the both of you.

"I love you."

----

A/N: This is my first fanfic of In-ho ever! I hope you guys like it. Also, I've been obsessed with writing fanfics based on songs, so feel free to request oneshots or series based on songs as someone who's a music lover. 🤗

>> REQUEST HERE

[lover-of-mine]

Lady Whistledown. I totally understand if you don't post this. Huge no worries because honestly, their fandom is on fire, and it makes me sad the hate they send you. Like it's a damn ship, people. Just stop.

But to get where we are now you sort of have to go back to the beginning of epsiode 4 last season then repeat after every sentence their copium after 24 hours of rage was "well duh the Buddies are crazy so of course ". Oliver only posted he and Eddie for his coming out episode. Oliver never followed or promoted Lou and now they even admit there is bad blood. Oliver never talked to them only Lou took the money. Oliver gave too much attention in the BTS of the medal ceremony to Ryan. Oliver didn't talk about bisexuality in regards to Tommy only to the fact he is. Oliver never promoted interviews. Oliver posted more of Gerrard this season. Oliver flirts too much with Ryan. They didnt get Hen approval scene. No JLH scene after she said they filmed in the same building. They never got the family scenes of Christopher with his 3 dad's. Got more Eddie and Tommy. More Tommy and Eddie. Tommy was supposed to be a main. And as always they would throw Buck off a bridge to get Eddie and Tommy.

So now we lean into Narnia. They had a high after the first episode. OK he's there. But honestly after the initial time. It was a nothing scene. It was about Eddie. It could have been 2 friends teasing each other. Then everything fell apart after that. He wasnt with Athena. He didn't save the day. He didn't have a double date breakfast with Bathena the day after. The worst? They used his truck and he wasn't even there. There is a lot of chatter of the story is narrowing. All they wanted was a 118 family dinner. But he was iced out. Now it's pretty excepted he's not part of the 118. He will be regulated for however long to just Bucks partner. Saw one rage that at least they used Taylor in her job and they couldn't here. We are clearly going into Eddie's isolation arc. They hate his interviews that came out today. He won't be the one to get Christopher back. They basically lost all of their hopes. His story now is how Buck resolves Gerrard issues. Oh and weird fact they seriously thought that when Lou came out of hiding for ABs birthday that it was proof the Athena Tommy connection. She had his back. And well we know how that worked out.

Back on grass. Its been sort of wild to see them keep lowering their bar to make themselves feel better about the story. Well we didn't see Karen sort of thing. Oh but also an annoyance at Josh with Maddie. Apparently in their world there's a limit to queer people and it can only be BT and Henren.

Hello my love 🩷🩷

This made me giggle, ngl. Each episode proving their spec wrong was awesome lol. He was there for 30 seconds and had 2 lines and they were expecting him to be everywhere. It was extra sweet to see a black child do the thing they were convinced he would. He wasn't on the plane. He wasn't on the highway. He wasn't lowered through the hole in the cockpit. He wasn't on top of the truck. Buck didn't even mention a little plane fact he learned from him. He was only in the story when he was on screen and he was barely there. And now the conflict with Gerrard can't be good for the relationship considering his past. Of course they hate Oliver even though Oliver is the main character and he's made it very clear where he stands when it comes to them, but the flirting too much with Ryan made me scream. They are so mad they rpfing. I kinda love that they want more of Tommy and Eddie but even though he was in a scene about Eddie, he did not interact with Eddie, not really. I guess living of "you're a vision in a cone" is not good when there's a plane emergency and he's not there. And yeah, the show did find a way to incorporate the journalist, if they wanted to incorporate the firefighter pilot, they would, too bad they don't. I did not see the bathena breakfast spec, that one is funny as hell. I wanna say I can't believe they actually thought the comment was a message but, I totally can, and that obviously didn't go anywhere. And of course they are turning on Josh, why wouldn't they. I will say their cope has been glorious to read, like my god you guys are so close to the point and missing it. I can't imagine how mad they must be behind closed doors.

[michellegariepy]

High Stakes - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - No Cameras

Charlie sighted at the view of her uncle’s phone number on her smartphone’s screen. She closed her eyes for a moment, before reopening them and finally taking the call.

‘’Charlie? It’s your uncle Damian, Abigail isn’t there tonight, and I can’t allow the restaurant to run with just three waitresses tonight, can you come? I’ll give you off on Sunday evening…’’ 

Charlie was never working on Wednesday evenings, and she hated being disturbed when she was off, and especially by her uncle Damian. Once again Abigail didn’t show up at work, because she had probably got drunk last night, and decided to take off tonight for not feeling well. Even though Charlie didn’t know the exact reason why Abigail didn’t make it to work, she had an idea.

‘’Alright, let me get dressed and I’ll be there in 20 minutes!’’ Her tone of voice displayed how annoyed she was, but at least she would make money.

‘’Alright, make it fast, the restaurant is getting full rapidly!’’ Her uncle rapidly ended the call with her, and Charlie hurried at getting dressed with a black t-shirt, a black skirt  and her work sneakers. She wasn’t in the mood at all to come to work, but she had told her uncle that she would come, she needed to assume her choice.

Stepping in her white Subaru, the 26 year old woman headed to her Uncle’s restaurant  ‘’Damian’s Bar and Grill’’ which was located 10 minutes from her apartment in Albuquerque. She parked her car in the Restaurant’s parking lot, and just like her uncle had mentioned to her on the phone a few minutes ago, the restaurant was indeed getting packed rapidly as the parking lot lacked spaces to park her brand new 2024 Subaru WRX.

‘’Great…” She sarcastically said as she finally found an empty spot in the parking lot for her car. Once Charlie entered the restaurant, her uncle spotted her from afar, throwing his arms in the air as Charlie made it inside the building. 

‘’Finally, you’re here! Come on, hurry up! I’m giving you the section near the bar.’’ Charlie passed her hand in her short blonde hair, she knew what it meant, that section near the bar meant that she would be the one closing for the night with the barmaid!!!

‘’That’s not fair! I’ll be the one closing if I’m working in that section!!’’ Charlie couldn’t help telling her uncle how unfair it was. She had accepted to help her uncle for tonight, but she would’ve thought he’d have been smart enough to let her go first since it was her day off.

‘’Arghh come on Charlie, don’t start!!!’’ How could he do this to her? She wasn’t in the mood at all to close the restaurant with the barmaid.

‘’I’m not starting anything, you damn know it’s my day off!!’’ When Charlie began raising the tone of voice at her uncle, Damian quickly approached her, shaking his index finger at her face.

‘’You’ll do as I say, without me, you’d be jobless and you wouldn’t have this lovely car, because you wouldn’t have enough money to pay for it!! Now, it’s up to you Charlie, you either stay and work or you leave and let me tell you something, young lady, if you leave, don’t even think about coming back in here!’’ Charlie clenched her teeth through her closed lips, her blue eyes glued on the stern look of her uncle’s face.

‘’So, you’re staying or leaving??’’ Asked Damian before rubbing his thick dark blonde mustache. Charlie decided to remain silent and headed toward the Station’s computer to punch a clock to begin her shift.

“Great, that’s what I thought!” Charlie tried to ignore as her uncle spoke to her as she stood angry in front of the computer screen. She closed her eyes for a moment, knowing well that she just couldn’t leave like this. The urge to take off her waitress apron and to run away from this place had crossed her mind many times before tonight, but where would she go?

Just to make things worse, her uncle Damian made sure to anger Charlie more than she already was during the middle of her shift.

“You will have to work on Sunday evening… Abigail just called a few minutes ago and she’s leaving. She found another job!” The small woman was boiling in anger at her uncle as he had told her two hours ago that she would have off on Sunday, but with Abigail who had left her job, Damian couldn’t give his niece off on Sunday.

Darting toward the kitchen, frustration growing inside of her, Charlie was almost on her way to freak out.

“FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!” Screamed Charlie as she entered the kitchen to get those plates that needed to be delivered to table #33.

“Let me guess… Your uncle???” Charlie wasn’t in the mood at all to speak with Felix the cook and of course he had noticed how angry she was as she stepped inside the kitchen.

“Yeah… The Usual! I came here tonight to help him, because Abigail never showed off, and I was supposed to have off on Sunday, but I was just told that I would have to work on Sunday!!! I’m so tired of him, I just wish I could get the fuck out of this place.” As Charlie vented, Felix smirked at her, wondering what she was waiting for.

“I got a contact in Las Vegas, a friend of mine, he works at the Venetian at The Maggiano’s, it’s an Italian Restaurant, let me know if this is something that could interest you!”  She looked up at Felix as he returned to the oven to keep on stirring the pasta. The plates for table #33 were still under the heat lamps and it was just a matter of time until Charlie’s uncle would pop up in the kitchen and spill his anger on her again.

She sighed and grabbed all of the four plates waiting to be delivered to table #33. At least the customers were nice tonight, this was helping Charlie to stay calm… That was until she crossed regards with her uncle who stood behind the bar with the barmaid. Charlie rolled her blue eyes and walked toward table #33.

“There you go guys, is there anything else you need?” The customers at table #33 were all set and ready to eat as Charlie brought their food. She couldn’t help thinking about Felix’s idea about leaving for Las Vegas. It was easier said than done though as Charlie needed money in order to move away from Albuquerque. As her Uncle still stood next to the barmaid behind the bar, Charlie grimaced at this sight. The barmaid next to him was indeed younger and prettier than him, once again he was being the creepy restaurant owner trying to hit on a woman that could obviously be his daughter.

She watched with rapt attention as her uncle departed the bar section with the barmaid following him to his office at the back of the restaurant. Her uncle was far from being Brad Pitt with his hideous facial features that really stood out. Damian was hard to miss as most people remembered him and not for the good reasons.

“Come on, go back to work! Go keep an eye on the bar for a minute…” Why was he bringing the barmaid to his office? Charlie didn’t care that he had once again yelled at her. She had a feeling that her uncle was the reason why all the women he was hiring were leaving almost a month later of being hired.

Slowly but surely, Charlie headed toward the restaurant’s women restroom and picked the last stall that stood under the restroom vent grill. Being a small woman herself, Charlie got herself up on the toilet bowl to be able to reach the vent and have a view of her uncle’s office through the vent grill.

Something was off with him and she needed to find out. She narrowed her eyes as her uncle entered his office with the barmaid.

“Come on Jessica, take a seat…”

He had this smirk plastered over his wrinkled face, and Charlie could tell that Jessica wasn’t at ease at all as she sat down on a chair.

“Alright, now that you’re working for me, would you like to make more money??”

Even though the Cook in the kitchen kept buzzing her pager, Charlie didn’t care at all, she wanted to know why her uncle kept bringing these women in his office. Because, there was obviously something going on as all of them were leaving a few days or weeks after.

“I don’t know Mister Callaway, I’d say, that yes, I’d indeed love making more shifts!”

Charlie had to stand on the tip of her toes to have a better view through the grill of the scene from her uncle’s office.

“No, I don’t think you understand! Tonight, instead of finishing the night with just 200$ in your pockets, you could leave with 400$!”

It was easy to understand what Uncle Damian had in mind with Jessica. Charlie was so disgusted, and so angry with him.

“Look Mr. Callaway, I’m having a boyfriend, and I’m not interested in making money that way!”

Even though Jessica clearly stated that she didn’t want to have sex with Damian, the 57 year old man still got closer to Jessica and even caressed the side of her face with his strong hand.

“Aww Come on Jess, I have no cameras in my office, no one will know and I won’t tell!”

He winked at her and once again tried forcing her to kiss him, but the barmaid pushed him away from her and quickly stood up from the chair, freeing herself from his strong embrace.

“Never try to do this again Mr. Callaway, or else I’ll tell my boyfriend and he won’t hesitate at paying you a visit…”

Charlie gulped loudly at the very scene taking place before her eyes, her heart’s beat getting louder through her chest. Even though she had never witnessed her uncle doing these kinds of things before, she had a feeling that it wasn’t the first time that he had tried something as vile as this on the women working for him. What a relief thought Charlie as Jessica was seen storming out of the office, leaving her uncle confused as his approach with the barmaid didn’t go as planned…

‘’Bitch!!”

Not wanting to be yelled at again, Charlie returned down from the toilet bowl and washed her hands before returning to the kitchen to retrieve the other plates that needed to be brought to the customers in her section. Charlie was indeed shocked by what she had just witnessed with her uncle. She was ashamed to be related to this man… Ashamed that this man was related to her father, who was quite the opposite of her uncle. It’s in these moments that Charlie was missing her father who had passed away 4 years ago from a heart attack at the tender age of 51 years old.

“Where were you?? It’s been five minutes since I've been beeping you!!” Felix was indeed annoyed as Charlie wasn’t showing up at the kitchen.

“It’s a long story Felix…Sorry!” The 26 year old woman took the plates and delivered them to the tables in her section. One of the customers wanted another beer and Charlie told him she’d bring him a new bottle in the next minute… As Charlie selected the beer in the alcohol menu on her computer, a ticket was being printed and sent to the bar’s section where Jessica was working. As Charlie headed toward the bar counter to retrieve the beer for her customer, Charlie could tell that Jessica wasn’t feeling good at all. Her face was pale and Jessica was clearly on the verge of crying.

Of course Charlie just couldn’t tell her she had seen everything in the office, she pretended that she didn’t know what was going on.

“Are you ok Jessica?” Charlie was obviously really concerned with Jessica, but the barmaid quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and gave Charlie the bottle of beer she had ordered for her customer.

“I’m fine…” Even though Jessica stated that she was fine, Charlie knew it wasn’t true.

“You’re sure? You can talk to me, you know?” Charlie was simply trying to be nice with her co-worker, but she quickly realized that it was a bad idea.

“Leave me alone for Christ Sake, I’m telling you I’m fine, so stop it!!” Charlie froze on her feet when Jessica snapped at her, not wanting to share with Charlie what had just happened with Damian in his office.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to…” Ill at ease, Charlie grabbed the beer bottle and departed the bar.

As the night progressed, Charlie ended up being the last waitress with Jessica in the restaurant. From her main station, Charlie could see that Jessica was speaking with someone on her smartphone, probably her boyfriend. Damian, her uncle was seen leaving and he sternly told Jessica not to forget to put the register cash in the safe in his office and that he would take care of counting the money next morning.

“You heard what I’ve just told you??!” Asked Damian to Jessica as this last one was speaking with someone on her iPhone. She rolled her eyes at her boss and nodded her head, only wishing for Damian to leave.

Charlie didn’t say anything to her uncle as this last one left for the night. Felix was seen coming out of the kitchen and leaned against the wall near the Computer station where Charlie was busy with filling up the Mayo and Ketchup bottles.

“Are you going home after work?” Charlie’s blue eyes shifted in the direction of the 35 year old cook and the young woman chuckled at Felix.

“For real? Felix… I thought I told you before, I’m not interested…” It was Felix’s turn to laugh at Charlie.

“Aww come on… I just want to be friends with you, nothing more… I swear!” Charlie rolled up her eyes and returned to her amusing task of refilling the condiment bottles.

“No, for real, I’m headed home in a few minutes and I will relax for the rest of the evening.” When Felix understood that Charlie wasn’t going to join him at his place, the man gave up and got the message. He had no intentions of annoying the young woman… Especially since she was the Boss’s niece.

“Alright, see ya tomorrow then! The Kitchen’s closed, don’t forget to tell Jessica…” Charlie nodded at Felix and as soon as she was done with her condiments bottles, the young blonde woman knew it was time to cash out her tips, so Charlie made sure to count all the payments from the credit cards correctly from her report and she placed in an envelop the money she was owing to the restaurant, leaving her with 154$ in tips. Not bad for a night where Charlie wasn’t even supposed to work. Grabbing her backpack purse, Charlie made sure to put her tips in her wallet.

Charlie walked to her uncle’s office where she would put the envelope through the safe’s drop slot before leaving for the night. The young woman stopped dead in her tracks when her eyes caught sight of the safe’s door wide open, exposing all the money bills found in the safe. Her blue eyes widened  as Charlie couldn’t even believe it. Why would her uncle have forgotten to lock his safe?? She carefully approached the safe and kneeled down next to it, hesitating as her small hands touched the safe’s door.

That’s when the voice of her uncle echoed in her mind, remembering how he had told Jessica that there were no cameras in his office… Charlie wasn’t the one closing tonight, Jessica was. Even though Charlie wasn’t the kind of woman to steal money or other stuff, the thought of taking 5000$ from her uncle’s safe crossed her mind. She knew it was a bad idea, but she just couldn’t help it. The young woman smirked and felt her heart pulsating loudly through her chest as she inserted her right hand in the safe, making sure to look around her before grabbing the fat stack of cash and nervously pushing it in her backpack purse before closing the safe’s door and pushing the envelope of money she was owing the restaurant through the safe’s drop slot, so her uncle wouldn’t suspect her.

She just couldn’t believe what she had just done… At the same time, she knew it was a perfect plan as her uncle wouldn’t be able to accuse anyone since he had no cameras in his office… Plus accusing Jessica of stealing him wasn’t really something he’d try, knowing well what he had tried to do with her.

As Charlie strolled out of her uncle’s office, Jessica was seen standing behind the bar’s counter, talking to a man, probably her boyfriend, thought Charlie as she seemed to be quite familiar with the man.

“Jessica? I’m gone, are you going to be alright?” The tall barmaid shifted her brown eyes on Charlie and nodded at her.

“Yea, I’m fine you can leave. I’m almost done too.” Even though Charlie was carrying that fat stack of money in her backpack, she appeared calm in front of Jessica, not wanting to catch the attention of anyone. Charlie had also made sure to close the safe’s door, so nobody else would be able to open it unless they had the Pin code.

Charlie felt relieved when she stepped out of her uncle’s restaurant. Even believing that her uncle would probably not even notice the missing bills in his safe. She actually had no idea how much money she had stolen, but she knew she had enough to pay what she owed on her credit card, and maybe use the rest for a small trip in Las Vegas, who knows, perhaps Charlie would try to contact Felix’s friend and get a job in Sin City, not having to work anymore for her ugly uncle Damian.

Locking herself in her car, Charlie breathed out and placed both of her hands on her steering wheels, trying to calm herself by breathing normally. She knew she had crossed the point of no return, she just couldn’t return inside the restaurant and put back the money in the safe. 

“Come on Charlie, relax… He won’t even notice it” Charlie convinced herself that her uncle wouldn’t even know, perhaps it would take him days, even weeks to notice the missing stack of cash. Starting the engine of her Subaru, Charlie headed back home for the night, thinking that soon she would finally be out of her uncle’s life…

[heliads]

Okay, this particular request has been on my mind for a hot minute and I feel like I have to send it to you before I forget again, SO:

May I please request Han Solo with a gender-neutral Reader?? Reader travels with him and Chewie on the Falcon as a smuggler and is really good at what they do, but is also pretty quiet and doesn’t really talk much, which Han’s kind of always playfully teasing them about. One night the three of them are at a bar on a small planet when they get in trouble and for some reason Reader… has to sing for the entire bar to get them out of it?? (I don’t know, maybe someone at the bar suggests getting one of them to put on a show so they can humiliate them or something.) But it turns out that the Reader, who’s always so quiet, actually has the voice of an angel, and the entire time they’re singing Han is looking at them with a mixture of shock and heart eyes. And then when they’re done and come back to Han and Chewie Han asks what the hell that was and the Reader just shrugs and is like, “You never asked if I could sing.” And Han Solo, Big Bad Outlaw, knows right then and there that he is totally screwed and in love.

I am so sorry if this request is stupid or if it makes no sense, I promise you don’t have to write it (😅). But if you do decide to, thank you so much, and I hope you’re doing well, gorgeous!! 💛💛💛

raven i LOVE YOUR REQUESTS SO MUCH

masterlist

Space is cold. Dark. When you’re stuck in a smuggler’s usual shuffle from planet to planet, offworld to onworld to the nothingness of space again, it’s easy to think that you’re the only one out there. You see a thousand stars, and they’re different each time you blink. You’ll never find your way back, if there was a place to return to. You find people you can tolerate and cling to them, hope they’ll stop the restless churning of your heart to start running and never slow down.

Space is lonely. That’s why you stopped doing the solo smuggling act and joined up with two other outlaws in the hopes that it would make you relax enough to sleep at night. It’s worked well for the most part, and then some twilights are like this one, when you’re perched up on the roof of your ship, staring at the sky above and wondering if anyone, anyone, is looking back at you.

Your shipmates can’t blame you for sneaking out. They’re messing around in the nearby township right now, probably landing themselves in debt or coming up with a brilliant plan to get themselves out of it. That sort of stuff isn’t really your scene; gambling must be taken in small doses, by your preference, so you elected to stay behind and watch the ship.

That wasn’t a problem in the beginning, but recently, one of your business partners has been starting to smart at the fact that you don’t want to go wreck some credits with him. Han Solo has been a lot of things at a lot of times, but you never took him for sentimental.

In all honesty, you’re not quite sure how to describe him, nor this recent change in his opinion. When you first met Han, he was sort of reluctant to take you on. It had been him and Chewbacca for the longest time, and although Han makes his bank by being versatile, change like that is hard to accept. You’re damn good at what you do, though, and soon enough he had to admit that having someone else watch his back couldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

It was easier after that, once the contracts were signed and you swore with all a smuggler’s honor that you would never steal his goods and money and leave him high and dry on some world neither of you recognized. Honor among thieves is a treacherous sword with which to guard your hopes, but you and Han operated around the same sort of moral codes, so you figured you could trust him pretty well.

You were friends after that. Sort of. Han’s Han, of course, he’d charm anyone out of anything. By contrast, you were perfectly content to hang back in the shadows, or hide up on the roof of the Millennium Falcon to watch the stars burst in the sky instead of heading to another gambling den.

That didn’t bother Han in the start. Half the time, he’d win a little too quickly and the rest of his card players would chase after him, guns blazing, so having someone available to fire up the ship and get him out of there was a nice ace in the hole.

Lately, though, he’s started wheedling you a little more to come with him. Says he gets lonely when he can only count on one other life form present in a room to not want him dead. You’re a quiet person, always have been, but that doesn’t stop Han from trying to convince you to come with him anyway. Doesn’t matter, though. He’ll tease you half to death but still give up eventually when he knows there’s no changing your mind.

He’s started coming back earlier and earlier, though. Sometimes he’ll stagger into the Falcon past dawn, eyes still bright with happily won credits, but you don’t think you’ve seen him out there later than midnight in quite some time.

Take right now, actually. He’s only been gone for a standard hour or two when you catch sight of him traipsing back to the ship. Chewie barks out a greeting up to you when he gets close enough, and Han raises a hand, cheeky like always.

To your surprise, though, Han climbs out of the top access port to join you within a few moments. He takes a seat on the roof of the ship next to you, hands propped up behind him so he can stare at the sky.

“Nice night,” he remarks casually.

You arch a brow. “I never took you for a stargazer. Are you going to write a poem or something pleasant about it, too?”

Han chuckles. “I’ll leave the romantics to you, sweetheart. I’m sure you’ve got a rhyme or two stuck in that introverted head of yours.”

“Mmm,” you pretend to agree, “they’re all about the nice, kind boys I’ve met on other planets. Totally unlike the card shark I’m stuck with right now.”

“Hey,” Han protests, “I’m more than a card shark.”

“Yeah, you’re a flyboy too. Head stuck in the clouds even more than me.” You reply.

A beat after you say them, you wonder if the words are a little too mean, crossing the line from banter to plain insults. When Han starts to laugh, though, you get this odd feeling that if it were anyone other than you saying them, he would be mad. Instead, he grins, does the thing where he closes his eyes and shakes his head derisively as if he couldn’t possibly believe that you were saying such a thing to him, nor that he would be so proud that you did.

“I always love your fire,” he grins, “Remind me why it’s always directed at me, though?”

“You’re the closest,” you tell him.

“I am,” he says affectionately.

You’re looking at the stars. He’s looking at you. Out of the corner of your eyes, you can see him opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to rally his spirits to say something. It’s important, whatever this is, but instead–

“D’you want to go drinking with us tomorrow night? We found a good place. Great place. We probably won’t even get shot upon arrival.” Han sort of winces as he says it. This might not have been what he truly wanted to say, but he’s said it anyway.

“Sure.” The word is out before you can stop yourself. It’s not usually your scene, but you get the feeling that there’s more riding on this than just a round or two of watered down drinks.

“Really?” Han asks, surprised.

You swat him on the shoulder. “No need to seem so stunned. I do go out on occasion.”

“Oh, I know,” he says, “Just glad it’ll be now.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

A growl sounds from the inside of the ship; Chewie saying that he needs your help fixing up a part of the Falcon that’s been shoddy and sparking for some time now. You take it as a sign of both their trust that they’ll let you poke around on their beloved starship, even if you wish you hadn’t been wanted inside right now. Judging by the look on Han’s face, he’s thinking along the same lines.

“Well, I’d better go,” you say. It’s somewhat unnecessary to tell him this, given the fact that Han heard Chewie just as well as you did, but it fills the empty silence for at least a few more seconds.

Han nods, looks away, and you slip back inside the ship. You wait for the sound of his footsteps on the metal surface, but he stays out there a while longer, quiet. Unlike himself. You try to distract yourself with spark plugs and egregious amounts of rust in control panels, but the thoughts return soon enough, chasing themselves over and over in your head with thoughts of what could have and should have been if you had not left at that very moment.

You do your best to push the whole affair out of your head soon enough. Han’s your friend, sort of; your business partner, definitely. He makes his money off of convincing people of things and feelings that don’t exist. You can’t trust a single flirt or joke until he says something for sure.

Still, you know things. You know how he looks at you when he thinks you can’t see. You know that Han hasn’t stayed the night with a single girl in a long time. Stars, he doesn’t even dance with them unless he has to, and when someone buys him a drink, half the time he’ll just give it to you.

This is all just improper speculation, though, and it would do you good to ignore it all until something real happens. Until then, you keep up with your business contacts, you focus on what you’re supposed to be doing, and when Han reminds you that you agreed to go drinking with that night, you try not to feel like the whole world is falling to pieces.

It would be fun to get out of the ship, though, to have some fun in between risking your neck on endless jobs. You put on flashy clothes you haven’t worn in a while, you clean the engine grease out from under your fingernails, and when it takes Han several moments to pick up his jaw from the floor when he sees you before you leave, you count every one of the heartbeats that passes before he stammers out that you should get going soon.

He hasn’t been to this bar in a while, Han admits. He heard good things about it, but who really knows around these parts? You remind him that his criteria for ‘good things’ only include cold drinks and not getting killed on sight. He tells you that anything more than that is picky, and you laugh. It’s easy. It’s not something that you have to worry about, and you don’t have to double-check your every word to make sure you’re not embarrassing yourself. You’ve never had to think like that before, and it’s strange to do it now.

Han points out the club, reaches it first, holds the door open for you, which is strange. Everything feels new. You feel like a teenager who’s overgrown their welcome at home just enough to set off for brighter, more distant worlds, someone without the slightest clue how to operate on a planet that isn’t theirs. There should be a travel guide in your back pocket, a map in your hand, and memorized helpful phrases on your tongue, but instead all you have is the presence of mind to walk through the door and pretend that nothing is wrong.

You order a drink, which is something you can do without needing to watch Han out of the corner of your eye. You do it anyway. He is too present in this transformed world of yours. You are conscious of every word you say, how you thank the bartender for your drink, all the muscles necessary to down a swallow or two.

Han gets a drink too. The light is dim here; it makes it easier for patrons to lose track of time, their peace of mind, how many credits they’ve spent already. It makes it easier to forget just why you don’t come with Han every time. His knuckles are white around his drink like it’s a stuck knob on his bank of controls. He can straighten out, straighten up, if he just tightens his grip enough.

Before either of you can figure out where you’re going from here, the restless chatter of the bar turns to sharp, hard-edged syllables. There’s a man in front of the two of you, he’s come out of the back room to yell at the two of you. He’s the owner of this place, or so he claims, and he’s just about had it with smugglers coming in his town and drinking his product and wasting his money.

Turns out Han swindled him a few days ago, and now the owner wants payback. Han stands up slowly, raising his hands in mock surrender as if that gesture does anything but get his hands closer to his blasters, but the owner isn’t having any of it.

The bar owner scoffs, spits on the ground. “None of your tricks, Solo. You’ve given me too much trouble already. Years of it.”

Han frowns exaggeratedly. “Years of it? You’re crazy. This was just one bad time, that’s all.”

The owner shakes his head. “Wrong. You were here just last year, broke five of my glasses and convinced my best singer to resign.”

You glance over at Han with a surprised laugh you’re only barely able to hold back, and mouth five? at him. He purses his lips and whispers back that he’ll explain later. You can’t wait to hear that story.

It might have to come later, though, because the owner of this place is getting more annoyed by the minute. “Do you know how hard it was to replace her? Sales have been down ever since, and it’s all because of you. Empty stage tonight since she went and told everyone lies about my business practices.”

“I don’t think they were lies–” Han begins, but you cut him off before he can land you in even more hot water.

“You said you needed a singer?” You ask as innocently as you can, “I can sing tonight if we can go home without trouble afterwards.”

The owner and Han both turn to you with identical expressions of confusion.

“You will?” The bar owner asks.

“Sure,” you tell him, “but I want your word that we’ll leave without a single injury and no more credits paid than for our drinks tonight. Two songs and I’m done.”

“Three,” the guy argues.

“Three it is,” you say, and thankfully the owner backs off.

The second the tension ceases, Han turns to you with a bewildered expression on his face. “What is this about? Why are you telling him you’ll sing?”

You put a hand on his arm. “Relax, Han. I’m handling the situation, which you weren’t, by the way. Just roll with it and don’t start any more fights.”

“I don’t start fights,” Han retorts indignantly, “that guy totally came up to us first.”

You roll your eyes. “Same difference. This’ll be over in a heartbeat, don’t sweat it.”

Han looks like he wants to contest that, but you’re being directed up to the stage and then you’re up there with everyone looking at you and maybe, just maybe, Han was right about this being a mistake. You know one thing that Han doesn’t, though, and that’s that you’ve been singing for a while. It was a hobby of yours before smuggling became your main career, but you’ve been keeping up with your voice for a long time.

It’s just enough for you to get through the agreed upon three songs without much difficulty. They’re easy, especially since you convince the guy to get you some backing tracks so it’s not just your voice alone in all that stillness. By the end of your little show, you’re honestly enjoying yourself. It’s fun, and the dizzying round of applause that greets you when you’re finally done is certainly something to behold.

The bar owner sticks to his word, letting you and Han go without a fight. He even encourages you to come back any time you want, provided you repeat this sort of performance, that is. You just laugh and tell him that you’ll have to see about that.

You’re distracted, honestly. You’re not thinking about the bar or the show or anything, actually. All you can see is the expression on Han’s face, the way his eyes widened when you first started singing, how he had this awestruck look that stayed up throughout your whole performance and is still there now, even after you finished.

It’s like he’s never seen you before. Yes, that’s right. Like he thought he knew everything about you just to be totally blown out of the water. Even as the two of you walk back to the ship, Han keeps tripping over smooth ground because he can’t stop looking at you. Like he never wants to stop.

“What is it?” You ask at last, once the adrenaline rush of the show wears off and you start to question everything; if it had been good or not, if this is something that will change how the two of you speak forever.

“Nothing,” Han says quickly, “nothing. I just didn’t know you could sing. You never told me.”

You shrug as casually as you can. “You never asked.”

Han doesn’t seem to think this is an acceptable explanation. “Well, how much else is there about you that I don’t know just because I never asked?”

You smile. “A lot, actually.”

A pause. He looks back at you again, and then you see something click in his eyes, a realization of what you have not said and what he has not asked.

“Damn it,” he says all of a sudden.

You stare at him. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Han mutters through a flurry of avoided glances and dismissive gestures, “Nothing at all. Just. Get back to the ship, will you? We’ve got places to be. You’ll be there, right?”

“Sure I will,” you tell him, “Aren’t I always?”

“You are,” Han says, and then his face loses that wide-eyed, frenzied stare it had wielded only seconds before. He’s calm again, sure of himself, but not as arrogant as usual. Just– happy, almost. Content in a knowledge that had not been his to cherish before. “I know you are.”

requested by @starlit-epiphany, i hope you enjoy!

star wars tag list: @rogueanschel, @callsign-scully

[chaoscrotchdemon]

Fuck you. A letter to my parents.

Why was I the problem? Why was I lesser than second best to you? Why was my little brother treated better than I ever was? What was the reason? Was it me being a girl? Cursed from the first breath to be second place in everything I have done, or will ever do. Would it have really been that hard to treat me as an equal? You of all people should know that favoritism can leave permanent damage, but - oh. Right. You don’t care. You never did. Because my little was your special little boy, who deserved to be put on a pedestal and treated like royalty. But he turned into a flaming dick because of it. Why was I treated like a servant for most of my life, while he got to do fuck all? Why did he get all the expensive gifts that were supposed to ‘be for both of us’? Because - and you’ve known about it - I never got to use any of it. Ever. Why was he allowed to go to friends houses when I couldn’t? Why was he allowed to go and work for Randy when I couldn’t even get my damn permit? But he got to make money, and he got to keep that money. You never made him pay for gas, or groceries, or snacks that weren’t for him. Why did I have to use my money from the only job I ever got to do all of that? And yet he got himself a VR headset, and this-that-and-the-other, and you never said a word to him about ’fiscal responsibility’, but I had to make sure to put my money away and save as much as possible. He made upwards of $300 (three-hundred dollars) every time Randy had a job. I mean him no disrespect, this isn’t about Uncle Randy. I just want to know why I get treated worse than dog shit, but he gets to do whatever he wants. You couldn’t even keep him grounded for more than two (2) weeks after he set off a smoke bomb on a school bus, but I get grounded for a year straight because I was talking to people you didn’t want me to, even though I had every right to do so. And —guess what— I’m better off now than I ever was. I don’t have to worry about what I did wrong, and be scared about forgetting things and being yelled at. I don’t have to come home with my stomach in knots, or feeling like I’m going to throw up because of something I either didn’t do because I didn’t know I had to, or something I did wrong that I didn’t know I did wrong. You never let me explain, and you spoke to me like I was some stupid toddler instead of having an adult conversation. And you wanna know why I think that is? I think it’s because of the fact that I don’t have a dick to measure, and that means that I’m mentally and physically inferior to you, and to Tucker. That I’m only worth what work I can do, and because I apparently couldn’t do any of that right, I’m not worth the time of day. I’m not good enough for you. How could I have ever been good enough when you both set the bar so high I could never even hope -let alone dream- of ever even coming close. And I get it, kind of. It’s just your sick, twisted way of showing that you care. But did you ever pause to consider how your words and your actions affected me? How what you did would make me feel? And let me tell you, I felt like shit. Worthless. Because how could some stupid child like me be anything close to your expectations? No need to answer that, I already know. I never could. And I think, in some small part of you, you enjoyed watching me suffer. Because now, someone else could finally understand how you feel. Yet, you never once asked me ‘how are you?’ sincerely. Never once asked how I felt about anything if it didn’t benefit you, or whatever project you had going on. Because, in the grand scheme of things, my feelings never mattered. I was some stupid kid, my feelings didn’t matter. I figured that out real quick, whenever you yelled at me for something small until I cried, and still didn’t stop. Whenever you thought I did something, and interrogated me about it until I fessed up, whether I actually did whatever it was or not. And then, you got even madder when you found out I didn’t do anything wrong, and I still got punished for lying.

[laztpictureshow]

Cocoa, FL

circa 2010

by me

notes:

this is a film photo from the first short i ever directed. we rented out these dingy hotel rooms in some backwater called cocoa, right next to cocoa beach—if that matters. needed space, so we yanked the bed and mattress into the next room where we did makeup, prepped, and drank. always drinking.

the cast? amateurs. just some bodies i’d picked up, like this guy here (name slips me now, yeah, i’m a bastard). the other was a kid i knew from high school in texas, of all places. he randomly showed up at some dive bar in orlando. fate, or just dumb luck, but who gives a damn.

day of the shoot, i woke up to brad, my friend and shooter, banging on my door. he brought me a red bull and some powder we’d scored in miami, and that was that—off to the races, no questions asked.

the film? who the hell knows where it is now. probably lost on some fried hard drive from 2010, like a lot of things. i’d still like to see it again, though. it was about these two idiots trying to pull off a drug deal, and of course, it all goes to hell because they’re a couple of amateurs—maybe a little too close to the bone. we used fake blood, tried to light it, made something happen.

godard said, "all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."

me? i had a gun and a pile of real money. a classmate’s granddad was some hollywood big shot, and he yanked a stack of cash from an atm, handed it over. "don’t lose it," he said. sure, like that was even an option.

and that was it. i was hooked.

[deuterosapiens]

Just finished the new Planet of the Apes. In the event I've not said anything about these films before, the summary is this: I did not much care for the original 1968 (if I'm remembering my years correctly) film, or its sequels, though I've seen them all; I have no opinion on the Tim Burton one; I love the reboot series. Now you are caught up.

Going in, there was one unfortunate thing I needed this film to do. And I'll admit, this is an extraordinarily unfair thing. Wes Ball's Maze Runner Trilogy impressed me as much as the books did (that is, I've read them, and I've seen them, but really, there's nothing the films can do to straighten out these books when they are themselves just completely balls to the wall insane), so Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes had to be the film by which I'm required to judge his direction ability before he helms the biggest fantasy film I will ever anticipate the release of ever: The Legend of Zelda. I mean, I wanted to enjoy it as a follow-up to Rise/Dawn/War, but it couldn't just be a good Planet of the Apes movie- it has to be a good demo-reel for what it is that Wes is going to specifically being to the table when adapting to film my favorite video game franchise of all time.

No pressure!

I'll always be impressed by how damn good the ape effects are in these movies. Every one exceeds the high expectations of the previous one. Can you believe this was the same Visual Effects Studio for The Frighteners, of all things? The money, time and resources were used very well here, so the same legendary credit Weta is always due is due here. The incredibly low bar you set for VFX work to me is: is the film comfortable enough with itself to show me this creation in the daylight? Yes, yes it is!

I'm a sucker for what reddit users would call "abandoned porn": abandoned things, buildings, structures or whatnot that have been reclaimed by nature. Massive semi-collapsed buildings covered in planet growth, street lights hidden in foliage, wild animals roaming through desolate streets. Those sorts of things are peak setting to me. Worlds which have moved on and which have been allowed to flourish without further interference. This movie has so much of that and I just cannot get enough of it. The first half is just all sorts of beautiful structures and lavish green. The second uses an abandoned ship as a major set piece and it's quite pleasing to behold. A plus movie, your world is beautiful and alive!

I liked Noa well enough as a protagonist. He's not a leader, he doesn't want to be a leader and the movie doesn't force him to be the Second Coming of Caesar. This is honestly a pleasant relief. His arc could have ended with him taking over Proximus' Kingdom after his defeat, but honestly, all Noa wanted was to bring his clan back home, no lofty ambitions. It's the goal of his quest from the beginning, and while he does grow quite a bit, the scope of that quest never changes and this works well for him. He's not a fighter or a revolutionary or a leader or a messiah, he just wants to go back to the home he left.

There's a particular way most Apes in this movie speak. They're more verbose than in the previous movies, but you can tell complex speech isn't something they've had for a significant amount of time. Owen Teague is very good here, and I'm happy to see him as a noble figure. He's good at playing disgusting villainous sleezebags (IT, The Stand), so I'm glad he's given a chance to show a more human-side (ironically enough, in a non-human role).

I was very sad to see (the ambiguously gay) Raka leave. I liked him! I suspected he wouldn't last long, I was right, he will be missed. As a companion, his role is primarily to introduce Noa to Caesar's teachings. On doing so, he sets the foundation for Noa's mire complicated relationship with humans.

Which of course brings us to the thing I consider the film's biggest... I'm not quite sure "flaw" is the word I want to use, but. Okay, so I understand why the film has Mae in it. An intelligent human companion to reframe Noa's understanding of the world. I just really don't understand her actual role here. Yes, she's deceiving Noa into leading her to the weapons vault and whatnot. Yes, she does establish that not all humans have succumbed to the harmful consequences of the Simian Flu. I think having one scene, perhaps as a flashback, with her and her group would have given me a better understanding of who she is and what her actual goals are. Where Noa's goals are quite clear, Mae's feel like they exist primarily for the purpose of allowing the movie to introduce us to the Survivors at the end. I can't clearly wrap my thoughts around how I feel about her, but I think a better approach to this character would have been for her to be fully mute, but also obviously intelligent. If she signed all of her dialog instead of speaking, I think I might have found myself understanding how she actually exists in this world better. That's it I think: she feels out of place to me, and not in the way the movie wants her to, before it sets up the Reveal.

William H Macy is a talented actor.

Why is he here? His character contributes very little to anything, and he dies quickly. I understand he's a traitor teaching Proximus and that he represents a foil to Mae, showing her a possible path where she might live with the Apes. But he's here, he adds little, he dies quickly. We forget about him afterwards until Proximus makes a joke about him. He could easily have been a Ape teaching Proximus about human history from a flawed understanding passed down to him by previous Apes. If Raka hadn't died, these two could have discussed differing viewpoints on the nature of Humans and Apes, and this could have influenced Noa and Mae's thinking. Nope, he's just kind of there. He's about to sound the alarm and inform Proximus of Noa and Mae's plans, but even that doesn't actually have a chance to happen because Mae kills him.

That's right, technically, Mae has a higher kill count than Noa because she does directly kill Trevanant (I'm not going to bother remembering his, incredibly stupid, actual name), and technically Noa doesn't kill either Sylva or Proximus. Sylva drowns, Noa just doesn't help him (father avenged!); Proximus is thrown off a cliff after being attacked by eagles which Noa did summon to aid him, but I'm considering this an odd form of self-defense.

I'm going to suspect that the humans at the end are going to evolve into the bomb cult from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. That seems a fairly safe assumption. After all, I suppose in order to have that bomb cult exist, there must be intelligent humans around to become it.

To wrap this up, with the right script, I strongly believe Wes has the potential to really blow me away. He has the right experience with the right VFX team with the right pedigree necessary to bring that fantasy world to gorgeous life. I think the biggest hurdle He has as a director is in figuring out precisely where his supporting cast's motivations are. He's definitely come a long way from The Maze Runner and this one's still a very nice follow-up to the previous Apes films.

If he can get that one thing down, I suspect we'll ne in safe hands. Further research may be needed though.

[dancersmirrorball]

Taylor Swift Folklore Sentence Starters

Tracks 1-4

"I'm doing good I'm on some new shit, been saying yes instead of no."

"I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn't though."

"If you wanted me, you really should have showed."

"But we were something, don't you think so?"

"If my wishes came true, it would have been you."

"If one thing had been different, would everything be different today?"

"When you are young, they assume you know nothing."

"You put me on and said I was your favorite."

"A friend to all, is a friend to none."

"To kiss in cars and downtown bars, was all we needed."

"You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding."

"I knew you, leaving like a father, running like water."

"How did a middle-class divorcée do it?"

"The wedding was charming, if a little gauche, there's only so far new money goes."

"Their parties were tasteful, if a little loud."

"There goes the last great American dynasty."

"Who knows if she/he/they never showed up, what could have been?"

"I had a marvellous time, ruining everything."

"And it took you five whole minutes, to pack us up and leave me with it, holding all this love out here in the hall."

"I think I've seen this film before, and I didn't like the ending."

"You were my crown, now I'm exile seeing you out."

"There is no amount of crying I can do for you."

"You didn't even hear me out, you never gave a warning sign."

"I gave so many signs."

Tracks 5-8

"If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too."

"I swear I loved you, 'til my dying day."

"I didn't have it in myself to go with grace, cause when I'd fight you used to tell me I was brave."

"And if I'm dead to you why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed, look at how my tears ricochet."

"I can go anywhere I want, just not home."

"And I still talk to you, when I'm screaming at the sky."

"I'll show you every version of yourself tonight."

"And when I break it's in a million pieces."

"Hush, I know they said the end is near."

"I can change everything about me to fit in."

"And they called off the circus, burned the disco down."

"I've never been a natural, all I do is try."

"Are there still beautiful things?"

"Cross your heart, won't tell no other."

"Love you to the moon and to Saturn."

"Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long."

"I've been meaning to tell you, I think your house is haunted."

"Then you won't have to cry, or hide in the closet."

"Whispers, of "are you sure?" Never have I ever before."

"I can see us lost in the memory, August slipped away into a moment in time, cause it was never mine."

"Your back beneath the sun, wishing I could write my name on it."

"Back when we were still changing for the better, wanting was enough, for me it was enough."

"To live for the hope of it all, cancelled plans just in case you called."

"Meet me behind the mall."

Tracks 9-12

"I've been having a hard time adjusting, I had the shiniest wheels now they're rusting."

"I have a lot of regrets about that."

"I'm here in your doorway."

"I just wanted you to know, that this is me trying."

"My words shoot to kill when I'm mad."

"You're a flashback in a film reel, on the one screen in my town."

"What started in beautiful rooms, ends with meetings in parking lots."

"And that's the thing about illicit affairs, and clandestine meetings and longing stares."

"Take the words for what they are, a dwindling mercurial high."

"Don't call me kid, don't call me baby, look at this godforsaken mess that you made me."

"You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else."

"And you know damn well, for you I would ruin myself, a million little times."

"I used to think I'd meet somebody there."

"Time, curious time, gave me no compasses, gave me no signs."

"Isn't it just so pretty to think, all along there was some invisible string, tying you to me?"

"Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire."

"One single thread of gold tied me to you."

"Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven."

"They strike to kill, and you know I will."

"What do you sing on your drive home? Do you see my face in the neighbours lawn?"

"Fuck you, forever."

"Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy what about that?"

"It's obvious that wanting me dead, has really brought you two together."

"The master of spin has a couple side flings."

Tracks 13-16 + The Lakes

"Some things you just can't speak about."

"Only twenty minutes to sleep, but you dream of some epiphany."

"I think it's cause of me."

"This time it was true."

"The worst thing that I ever did, was what I did to you."

"Would you tell me to go fuck myself? Or lead me to the garden."

"The only thing I wanna do, is make it up to you."

"So I showed up at your party."

"Our coming-of-age has come and gone."

"And it's just around the corner, darling; cause it lives in me."

"No I could never give you peace."

"All these people think love's for show, but I would die for you in secret."

"You paint dreamscapes on the wall, I talk shit with my friends, it's like I'm wasting your honor."

"Give you the silence that only comes when two people understand each other."

"I'd give you my sunshine, give you my best."

"But the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me."

"My twisted knife, my sleepless night."

"My winless fight, this has frozen my ground."

"Stood on the cliffside screaming, give me a reason."

"Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in."

"Don't want no other shade of blue but you."

"No other sadness in the world would do."

"You knew it still hurts underneath my scars, from when they pulled me apart."

"Darling this was just as hard."

"I'm not cut out for all these cynical clones."

"Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die, I don't belong, and my beloved, neither do you."

"I'm setting off, but not without my muse."

"I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze, tell me what are my words worth."

"I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet."

"While I bathe in cliffside pools, with my calamitous love and insurmountable grief."

[nightcitytruecrime]

Episode Transcript: March 17th, 2061, Sundance Bar

It’s August 16th, 2060, in Night City, California, and it’s Jane Doe’s thirtieth birthday. Thirty is a big milestone. Especially around these parts. Not everyone makes it that far. Most of us would be content to celebrate at home, surrounded by friends and family and maybe a cake picked up from the local Oasis-mart. The more adventurous among us might go for a night on the town. If you have money, you might visit a rooftop bar in Pacifica — I’ve heard Villa Nouva is particularly nice! It’s on a high rise tall enough to get you out of a lot of the smog — if not, maybe just a local joint, or a club. Few would willingly venture into the festering bowles of the combat zone, at least not anyone sane. You’d have to be a special type of adrenaline junkie to plunge straight first into the prowling grounds of Night City’s nastiest gangs and cartels. 

But Jane Doe wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Jane Doe was a Beavervillian. She grew up in the suburbs with a white picket fence, went to NCU to study engineering, got a stable job at Rocklin Augmentics, moved up the corporate ladder until she was solidly middle management. She had probably been in the combat zone maybe five times in her whole life, if even. So it begs the question: why on earth would Jane Doe — country-club corpo kid Jane Doe — of all people, choose to spend the night of her thirtieth not at her executive zone con-apt, not a fancy Marina boardwalk strip, not even at Pacifica Playground, but in the middle of the god-damned combat zone? 

[intro song]

This minisode is brought to you by our sponsor Rent a Grizzly. Want to impress your friends and family by showing up to the function with a new, exotic pet? Want to feed your annoying mother-in-law to a wild beast? Want to temporarily up the security of your home while the lawmen are hot on your heels? With Rent a Grizzly, now you can do all of that and more, and do it affordably! Go to Rent-A-Grizzly-dot-com and check out with code SIDEOFSALT61, that’s capital S-I-D-E-O-F-S-A-L-T-6-1 for 20% off your first booking. Thank you Rent a Grizzly for making this show possible. 

Garden Patch Kids, I know you hate it when I do this, but I have to start the episode with a quick disclaimer. This case is high profile. I’m talking high high profile. And after the legal fiasco with the California Kitchen Killings last year, I’m really not looking to get sued. So, just keep in mind, all of this is alleged. I’ve also given all identifiable people and places pseudonyms, so please respect the victim’s privacy. Anyways, do as the show says, and take all of this with a grain of salt. Let’s get into it. 

If you ever find yourself in Little China, there are a few places you can go where you’re less likely to be caught in a gang war — that’s not to say you won’t be caught in a gang war, it’s Night City, but the chance is less. The Sundance Bar, as I’m going to call it, is among them. 

Sundance Bar is the go-to spot for all you corpo-rats looking to chase serious thrills without getting into serious danger. This place is the ultimate vice-den, let me tell you. It’d make even your hot alt input clutch their pearls. But this place is popular. Line out the door and around the block popular. You better be rich, famous, or smoking hot if you want to get in on a Friday night. Good thing Jane Doe’s birthday was on a Monday, so they would actually admit her. Or maybe not so good. Not so good, indeed. I want to be clear when I say this, because we’re not here to slander victims, so you all should know that Jane Doe was not a junkie. Sure, sometimes she’d microdose speed at work — but let’s be honest, who high up on the corporate ladder hasn’t — and sure, she liked to get loose sometimes, but she wasn’t a junkie. She was just your standard, fun-loving, thrill-seeking choom. Jane Doe’s friends, though? They would have called her a junkie. They were prudes. Real stick in the mud, what crawled up your ass and died, types. Someone could be drinking smash and they’d turn up their nose and scoff like bougie aristocrats. So going to Sundance with her friends was kind of a no-go. And Jane Doe wasn’t social enough to find a new crew to join her bar-hopping for a night. Especially not since she broke up with her mainline of 5 years. Our girl was going through it. 

But of course, she really wanted to go to this bar. Dead set on it, heh. We’re not entirely sure why? Some of her friends on the patch claim she wanted to meet a celebrity who frequented the place. Personally, I think she just wanted to go and get wasted in her best dress surrounded by hot people and blasting music. Whatever her motivation was, though, Jane Doe went to the bar alone. She told a few of her friends she’d be going — she wasn’t an idiot. She took the N-cart in with her nice heels and some hangover-cure in her bag. She was last seen by the CCTV walking down East Water Street in a sparkly black cocktail number at 9:13 PM. She would not come out of the bar again. A lot of people really want to know just what happened to Jane Doe inside Sundance. After all, that’s kind of the juicy part of the story, right? But in all my research, and trust me, I did a lot, I could not find a single person who had any clue what went down that night besides the usual bar affairs. In fact, I went to the place myself, scoped it out, and I was pretty unsuccessful in finding anything too strange. I did see that the mirrors in the bathroom were all two sided, but that’s not super unusual in these types of places. Anyways, point is, we have no clue what happened in that bar. 

What we do know, however, is that Jane Doe went radio silent following her 30th. Garden Patch Kids, you know when you have someone you talk to daily, and suddenly, you’re not hearing from them for a little bit? Some of you might freak out after the first day, but I’d say most of us don’t start to worry until we see that they’ve been inactive for a week or so. Stuff comes up in people’s lives, sometimes you’re just not on the phone. But the thing about Jane Doe was that she didn’t really have people she spoke with on a daily basis. Her job was cushy enough that she could live alone in her executive zone con-apt, she had just broken up with her mainline, they weren’t exactly on speaking terms, she called her family maybe once a month. It took two weeks for anyone to file a missing person’s case. How come? Jane Doe was using the PTO she’d saved up to take some time off around her birthday. It wasn’t until a few days after her vacation expired that her job got antsy enough to send their lackeys to her door and drag her into work. Only, when they got to her house, she wasn’t in it. And it’s not like it looked like she had freshened it up in preparation for some long trip. Her car was still in the driveway, she had leftovers in the almost fully-stocked fridge, her laundry hamper was packed with clothes, she still had suitcases in her closet. Rocklin reached out to her family, called every line they could, sent emails. Nothing. Nada. Poof! She disappeared. 

Her parents find out about the whole missing thing, and they obviously freak the fuck out. They file a missing persons report and they’re all up in the lawmen’s faces asking every question under the sun about how the investigation is going. At first it seems like they’re making really good progress. They find a string of text messages between Jane Doe and her mainland about a week before her disappearance. Jane wants to come over and get her designer handbags back. It’s hers, and it’s expensive, and she wants it. When her mainline tells her no, quite firmly, she calls them a bitch. It’s an ugly conversation. The cops speculate that maybe, drunk and under the influence of whatever cocktail of substances she consumed that night, she went over to her ex’s, got into a tussle, and left with a body bag in place of her Prada. 

But the issue is that Jane Doe didn’t show up on the CCTV footage leaving the place. For all they know, she’s still inside Sundance. But the lawmen, for whatever reason, they’re hung up on this whole mainline thing. They keep hounding this angle, but it becomes increasingly clear that they’re making no progress. And eventually, after a few months of this, the cops just give up. “You’re daughter’s probably dead. Deal with it.” Not their exact words, but that’s definitely what it must have sounded like to her parents. 

So her parents go to Garden-Patch and start a little awareness campaign, hoping to raise some funds to hire a private detective. They get about a couple hundred eddies into their campaign when they shut it down. That garden patch just gets deleted, out of nowhere. And suddenly, they stop posting anything about their daughter. They’re still active on their accounts, it’s not like they disappeared or anything, but it’s a strange shift. Call me a conspiracist, but I’m finding it incredibly suspicious. Especially with the fancy body-mods they started getting not even a full year later. 

Unfortunately, that’s kind of where our story ends. With minisodes like this, things can be a bit abrupt. We really don’t know what happened to Jane Doe; there are a bunch of conspiracies, of course, but I’m not here to get into those. But oh! This Sundance place. It has a bit of a reputation. Jane Doe wasn’t the only corpo-kid to get whisked away after going there, at least allegedly. The other cases are much murkier, Jane Doe’s was the only one with anything legal filed under its name, but I want to say that there are about five other missing persons cases connected to this joint? So yeah, maybe the combat zone isn’t the best place for a night on the town. Not that any of you needed a reminder of that. But yeah, salt fiends, that’s it for the day. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll catch you Sunday for the full episode. By popular demand, we’re going to be covering the most infamous bozo incidents in honor of reaching 10k followers, so make sure to tune into that! As always, stay safe out there. I’ll see you in the next one. 

[majorgarrett93]

Vengeance of Mr. Gray

Tim Gray: forties, successful businessman, loyal to the company he works for, more than enough money, lives in an expensive apartment in the city, recently engaged. Everything is going perfect until one day he hears from his boss Kurt that the company's letting him go. Everything would go to hell, for Kurt though and not Tim. Problem with Kurt is that he avoids conflict and lets people walk over him, so he had an extremely hard time letting Tim go. Threatens how he's going to tear his life apart and the threats get more severe before he takes off. He goes home to his fiancé Valerie, doesn't tell her that he got axed, had a reservation for a nice restaurant.

It was late Friday night around midnight and cops showed up to their doorstep. "Timothy Gray, you're being legally detained for making a death threat!" He starts acting erratic as one officer replies, "going to have to ask you to put your hands behind your back and stop reaching for your pocket, now sir!' Which he was rather incompliant. 

Valerie shows up suddenly demanding that they let him go. Tell her to go back inside but she steps out further, getting into a verbal argument and suddenly shouting, "GET THE HELL OFF MY PROPERTY, COCKSUCKER NAZIS!", Kicking an officer right where it hurts. Tim fled but surrendered once surrounded, both spent the night in the slammer. Val, for assault and Tim for death threats and fleeing. 

Val had a good attorney; Tim would represent himself in court as well as his side of the story which was convincing at first... First just mentions what happened, losing his job and everything. Then begins going on with his life story and how it was his and Val's anniversary, one year they were celebrating and to have her in tears about losing his job and everything was a soul-crushing experience that no one could imagine. 

He keeps changing the story, gets a little out of control until the judge has to slam his gavel down, "Mr. Timothy Gray! Did you make those threats to your former boss or not? Do you plead guilty or not guilty?", "Not guilty your honor. Damn right I said what I said to that bastard!" 

Tim got some time in the county jail and walked off commenting how jail is lucky and undeserving of his presence and if the shit-stains, scum off the street he shares a cell with are people then that means he’s God.

Decided to hire a good attorney for his next court date. He was released with only a restraining order from Kurt and anywhere within fifty feet of his property. Val was let out, got a fine and her charge of misdemeanor was reduced. It was late night, 11pm when Tim was released from the county jail and hit a bar downtown, while drinking fantasizing and getting ideas how he could make Kurt suffer so much that the only mercy he'll find is when he dies and reaches the burning inferno, what he could do with getting the shortest sentence in jail. 

Val was spending the night in a hotel that night drinking Dom Perigone to recover from the trauma which Tim sees the text on his phone, planning on heading over after his last drink until he runs into his old friend Rick. Tim and Rick were best friends in high school as well as years after until he met his wife Angela who would spend all of his hard-earned money and never let him order more than one drink when they went out to a restaurant or bar. They both went their separate ways until running into each other for the first time in twenty years. Get into conversation, Tim asking Rick "No longer Angela's bitch?" He laughed and replied, "Unfortunately, no." He knew that a divorce wouldn't work, court would all be in Angela's favor, and she'd get to keep the house as well as everything they own. He then gets an idea of the perfect plan, "You want your boss to suffer, how about we can swap favors? Take care of each other's problem in their life?" 

Both too drunk to drive, so they walk to the hotel while coming up with the perfect plan. Tim notices all the homeless smoking foil on the streets, places his hand in his pocket and shouts "hey Ricky! Watch the roaches scatter!", while throwing a handful of change all over. Thought it was funny and starts remembering the times he used to give junkies Monopoly money and they were so high that they tried to spend it, then he comes up with a good idea to the plan, "Lets hire the homeless to threaten your boss. Cheaper than a pro, do anything for some dope and it's not like a hitman, we're not going to kill him. Just scare the hell out of him at first. Who'll know we were behind it?" 

He agrees on it, Rick said he'll take care of the money and everything as long as if he takes care of his problem, hesitant at first but he agreed upon the deal. Rick studied forensics in school so he knew what not to do that could leave evidence behind. Found a couple hardcore junkies and offered them a couple hundred upfront and even more after their task he assigned them to: break into Kurt's house in the middle of the night, threaten and assault, then leave and where to hide so cops don't find them, had it all planned out. He was telling Tim a little of his past and last holiday season, having to spend it with Angela and her family, stating that it made Nikki Sixx's Heroin Diaries look like Dr. Seuss. "Now I understand why suicide rates go up this time of year." It had been a few days; Tim found a part-time job to get by. One evening cops show up on his doorstep which he is detained and taken in for questioning. Spends one night as they believe he's behind the attack of his former boss yet there was no direct evidence. He sat in his cell loving that he made Kurt suffer, put in the hospital and terrify his wife and children. Up all night unable to sleep in his cell, reading James Patterson and visualizing what happened to his boss. Val posted bail for him and there was no evidence at the time that either him or Rick were behind it, ruled out to be a burglary/home invasion only. 

Later out for dinner that night, went to the Red Robin which was packed but Angela insisted. Rick suggested that they sit in the bar which had plenty of open seating, but she demanded they get a booth to sit at, "bars are full of drunken whores, all you care about; drinking, cheap whores and watching sports!" She shouts, so they waited for two hours. Tim gets to witness his best friend's perfect life in front of him. If it wasn't her bitchin' non-stop, it was all the screaming children in the restaurant. 

Angela got up to use the bathroom, waiter showed up asking if they'd like anything else. Tim had an extra beer; Val had a vodka on the rocks...Rick went for a quadruple whisky on the rocks and finished it quick. Angela is back which Rick especially but Tim, Val and everyone in the restaurant were verbally assaulted, even the screaming children were scattered in the corner terrified and covering their ears. 

She stormed into the room and shouts, "You ordered another drink?", "Damn right bitch! It's my money, in fact I ordered four while you were gone!" All hell breaks loose, manager shows up telling them that if they aren't out within thirty seconds, he's calling the cops. Tim felt less hesitant towards doing his end of the job after that night, doesn't tell Rick to have a good night, just says "I'd be honored." Had been a couple weeks, gets a call from Rick mentioning how he's been watching Kurt a lot lately, done a few extra things to tear him apart, things going south and his relationship with his wife is falling apart. Mentions how he'll be gone on vacation soon, already has a new plan and apologizes for the incident with Angela that became a viral video on TikTok, "don't be shocked if cops show up at your house again." Weeks later was detained at the "revolving door" after his boss’ home was broken into and robbed within a short distance of time of the last incident. Was found dead in his home later, shot in the head but was ruled out to be a suicide. Tim is released and gets more info on what happened to his house while on vacation. House was broken into, now makes a boarded up meth house look like a five star suite, cars in garage completely totaled, all windows in house broken, holes in walls, carpet all soiled, traces of urine throughout, paraphernalia as well as traces of various illicit substances, graffiti, empty bottles of liquor, multiple stolen goods, broken TV as well as a collage on the table made of pics from pornographic magazines...and it wasn't glue they used to make them stick. Rick was out of town, Angela was alone, it was now Tim's turn, time to do his favor and take care of her. He pulled it off quick but not thorough, used an old shotgun that was given to him by his grandfather. When returning home, he found his problem was a little more than "taken care of". He would report to police, but his shock was somewhat real that made it believable, he expected an execution, not a bloodbath and brains on the carpet. 

He was taken in and questioned by authority about the last time he saw his wife and start laughing but quickly stop and apologize after questioning if it was after the Red Robin incident? There was no evidence on either Tim or Rick, the couple people they caught breaking into Kurt's house couldn't identify a real hundred from a Monopoly hundred. Police department were pissed that they couldn't get Tim behind bars, murder of Angela was taken as a joke due to the viral video, even people openly joked about not getting on Rick's bad side. After months of investigation, police department got desperate, so they tried to find any reason to arrest either. They finally caught Tim, arrested for drunk and disorderly behavior, repeat offense and he would be in jail for a long time; 364 days was the max sentence they could prosecute him with. 

Tim sat in his cell, waiting for his release date, knew he’d be out within only weeks. Proud that he drove his boss to ending his life. He didn’t hold grudges, believed in forgiveness and was even with the man that wronged him.   

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 268, Replies Part 2

1) “Oh fuck`s sake, it already found out the trick. And Aizawa immediately noticed that their attack doesn`t have the element of surprise on their side anymore.

That window closed, now the fight is on equal grounds.”- Nope, because the high-ends still have the advantage of several Quirks of their own to surprise the heroes with. Their own surprise attack was evening the battle, not allowing them one one-sidedly subdue their foes. 2) “Although, I don`t think the intention here was to cause damage, per see. I think this was only a way to get Aizawa to slip and remove the effect of his quirk. Because now all the others can also fight on equal grounds.:- As Izuku’s shown before, the best way to win a team fight isn’t necessarily to beat the opponent yourself, it’s to make the best move to allow your teammates to fight at their maximum potential to overwhelm the opposition, and Woman made the best move she could to let her allies break free. 3) “ENDEAVOR YOU STILL HAVEN`T KILLED THAT FUCKER?!”- Well, it is quite hard to burn through bones more than skin, but I think he was getting close to it. 4) “DAMMIT I WAS JOKING IT WOULD STAB HER AGAIN

IT EVEN GOT THE OTHER LEG NOW.”-

Still didn’t stop her though. Hell, Mirko would have bitten that tube open if she had to.

(MHA ch 262)

5) “And we`re back  to Mirko showing why she`s ranked so high, she`s really keeping all those High-Ends at bay all on her own, good lord. It`s a good thing for them that they still have the absurd healing factor, because christ she would`ve killed all of them before the shiggyloading bar managed to hit 75%”- Honestly, if not for the blood loss caused by her missing arm, I fully believe Mirko would have killed them all and still made it in time to crack Shigaraki’s container right on the 75% mark.

6) “I always wondered why evil scientists rig their computers to explode in case someone damage the main experiment. Those people have way too much money for sure, that shit is expensive, not to say the ecological impact it has as waste.”- You can’t beat the classics.

7) “wait, why “crap”? Didn`t you already broken the tube? You fulfilled your mission Mirko, now you can die in peace”-  She only partially cracked it, and Mirko doesn’t half-ass a job. She’s gonna climb out of her grave and have another go at it

8) “And I think that`s a strike. Damn that nomu`s pull is mad strong tho.”-  He’d probably have made a great fisherman.

9) “Oh, okay, so it was a ~delayed collapse~ kind of situation with the shiggytube.”- Damaged, but still operational for the moment. Gotta bust that sucker wide open to make the procedure fail, especially before Tomura can be resuscitated by the machines therein.

10) “Oh yeah, fear not, those two ain`t gonna let him escape this building. If they are going down, they`ll make sure he gets his ass beaten all the way down to hell.”-There’s a special spot in hell reserved for him, but before he gets there he’ll have to answer to them

 11) “For starters that woman nomu. holy shit, what is up with that thing? Again, I know that those models are supposed to be smarter, but jesus fuck man- that thing was probably smarter than Kurogiri, and he`s already off the charts on that aspect in comparison to the other ones.”- I got the impression she and the other high-ends are smarter in terms of battle strategy, since they’re designed for fighting first and foremost, but not so much in cases of day-to-day socialising like Kurogiri is. Kurogiri more or less passes as human if you didn’t know he was a Nomu, and by his own admittance he’s not really a fighter, but he’s an invaluable support asset and can reasonably care of other’s needs. These guys are all about the fighting and the killing, and would struggle to process a task like ‘mixing a drink’. @thelreads

[ladyfogg]

Hands-On Experience

Hands-On Experience

Fic Summary: You’ve been bartending at The Hideout for months now, more than a little interested in the guitarist from Corroded Coffin. When you finally get a chance to talk to Eddie, he’s too cute to let get away and you suggest having some fun together. Eddie Munson Oneshots Masterpost. 

Fic Rating: 18+ (Minors DNI)

Pairing: Inexperienced Eddie Munson/Experienced Female Reader (Reader is over 18)

Warnings: Language, Canon Divergent, Fingering, Oral (Male & Female Receiving), Safe Sex, Sex in Eddie’s Van because of reasons.

A/N: This is my contribution to Eddie Munson Appreciation Week. Enjoy!

You love bartending at The Hideout. It’s one of the easiest jobs you’ve ever had. Unless it’s Friday or Saturday night, things are pretty chill. Coming from a big city to someplace like Hawkins has its benefits. A job that you don’t have to break a sweat over and still get good pay plus tips? Priceless.

Thursday nights quickly become your favorite.

The crowd is non-existent, only the same five or six drunkards who come every day. But the music, that’s what you like.

Okay, maybe not the music per se, but the band.

Alright, not the whole band, just the guitarist.

He’s so fucking pretty. You’re not usually one to call a guy pretty but there’s no other word to describe him. His smile, his big brown eyes, the excitement he has when he gets on the stage is infectious. You can tell he loves music and he plays like a beast. You’ve seen enough bands in your time to recognize talent and he has it.

You ask around, trying to learn more about him. When you hear that he’s in high school you automatically ignore your attraction. Then you learn he was held back twice and is over eighteen, and you breathe a sigh of relief. After that, you keep staring with appreciation. He doesn’t notice at first. Honestly, he’s so into the music he doesn’t seem to notice much once he’s on stage.

One night, he catches your eye when they finish their set and his mouth splits into a grin. You smirk back giving him a blatant once over, then going about your business.

After that, he hangs around a lot more. First, it’s by the stage with his bandmates, all of them still riding the high of performing even though there aren’t many people in the crowd. Eventually, they move closer to the bar. Well, Eddie does.

It's a couple of weeks later when you finally have a conversation with him.

You’re too busy settling up a tab with a customer to notice at first. When you turn to put the money in the cash register, those brown eyes are staring right at you.

“Hi,” Eddie says, propping his chin on his fist as he leans on the counter.

“Hey, yourself,” you say, slipping the money away and closing the drawer.

“I’m Eddie.”

“I know.”

His grin widens. “And your name is…” he trails off, practically batting his eyelashes. You chuckle, telling him your name. He says it back and you love the way his voice wraps around the word. “I like it.”

“Me too. So what can I do for you, Eddie?”

“A beer would be great.”

“Cool. Let’s see some ID.”

“Orrr…you can pretend you saw my ID.”

Ballsy. Normally you have zero tolerance for people trying to get a drink out of you when they’re under the drinking age. For some reason, it’s different with Eddie. Maybe it’s those puppy dog eyes or his full lips that haven’t stopped smiling at you.

Damn, he really does have nice lips. They’re red and plump, begging to be kissed.

You can’t believe you’re actually considering. “That’s a pretty bold request so brownie points for that,” you say, resting both hands on the counter and giving him your full attention. “What’s in it for me?”

“What do you want?”

“What are you offering?”

Eddie bites his lip which is such a coincidence because you were thinking of doing the same thing. You wonder what he’d do if you did. If you two kissed and you took that bottom lip and rolled it between your teeth. He’d probably moan. He seems like a moaner.

“Well, how about, at our next show, I’ll dedicate a song to you?” Eddie suggests.

You laugh, you can’t help it. Not only is his offer super adorable, there is a slight naivety there that you aren’t expecting. Most musicians you’ve come across would have instantly suggested something sexual. You’d been outright flirting, more than ready to consider hooking up with him. Yet, that didn’t seem to be where his brain went. Or if it did, he’s playing coy.

“Tempting,” you say. “Very tempting, but a song for an illegal drink isn’t exactly a fair trade when my job is on the line. If you think of something else, let me know.”

And with that, you throw him a wink and turn away to get back to work. You can feel his eyes on you, watching you walk and you make sure you sway your hips a little, trying to give him a hint.

The two of you fall into a routine.

Every Thursday after the show, Eddie inevitably saunters up to the counter and tries to get a free drink out of you. Sometimes he has an offer, like the time he said he’ll write a song about you. Other times, he’s more interested in conversation, seemingily determined to make you laugh. You enjoy every minute, waiting for him to take it a step further. He never does. And it’s not because he’s not interested. He very clearly is.

You start to get the sense that this isn’t something he’s used to doing. Which, if you’re honest, makes him even more endearing. You’re perfectly happy matching his flirty attitude, learning bits and pieces about him each time. His bandmates are typically unimpressed with his flirting and always end up dragging him away after a time since he has to drive them and their equipment home.

Finally, after the fourth or fifth Thursday, you realize you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands.

The following Thursday, you watch Corroded Coffin take the stage. Tonight there are actually a few people in the audience which means it’s busy for a Thursday. Eddie catches your eye and grins as he plays the first chord. After that, it’s like he can’t take his eyes off you. Usually, when he plays, he’s completely focused on the music and his band’s little bubble on the stage. Tonight is different, tonight there’s this energy about him that you haven’t seen yet. His looks are heated, filled with longing and promise. You know yourself and the low heat building in your belly can only mean one thing.

You’re going to fuck Eddie Munson tonight.

With that decided, you go about your shift as usual. Every time you glance at the stage, he’s staring right at you. It makes you feel like he hasn’t looked away.

Perfect.

This time, once they finish playing, his bandmates scatter into the crowd to talk to the few friends who came to see the show.

Eddie comes up to the counter and leans on it, per usual, waiting for you to finish what you’re doing before grabbing your attention. With a smile, you copy his stance, bringing your face very close to his. “Yes, Eddie?”

This close, you can see a blush start to form across his cheeks and those brown eyes shamelessly flit between your eyes and mouth. “Saw you watching me while I was on stage.”

“I always watch you on stage. It’s about time you noticed.”

“Decided to give me that drink yet?”

“I would but there’s one thing you haven’t offered.”

“Oh, really? What’s that, sweetheart?”

You act like you’re going to kiss him but at the last second, you lean further to the right so that you can whisper in his ear. “How about, you take me into that van of yours, and we have some fun?”

You can feel him exhale excitedly and hear how he swallows and clears his throat. “That’s…uh…yeah. Yeah, definitely. Seems like a fair trade.”

“Oh, I’m still not giving you a drink. But we’ll see how things go after.”

You pull back and the look on his face is priceless. Those wide eyes are somehow even wider and there’s an adorable smile playing on his lips. The same lips you’ve been hopelessly thinking about over the last month or so. Is it finally going to happen? Are you going to have a chance to kiss that smirk away?

“What time do you get off?” he asks.

“That’s entirely up to you, Eddie.”

You can see the flush spread, watch as the tips of his ears turn bright red. His foot starts to bounce, making his whole body twitch. You can’t tell if it’s from excitement or nerves. Probably a combination of the two.

"What time are you done with work?” he amends, his tongue darting out to swipe at his lips.

“In about an hour.”

“Meet you in the parking lot?”

“Can’t wait.”

You pull away, leaving him standing there, red-faced and breathing heavy. Your night just got a million times better. You expect him to hang around, however, shortly after your conversation, you catch him rounding his bandmates up in a flurry that’s equally charming and comical. Normally, they’re the ones to urge him along so it’s entertaining to watch the opposite happen. He literally pulls one of them away mid-conversation and you can hear him above the crowd going, “We have to FUCKING go! Get your shit so I can take you home!”

Laughing to yourself, you imagine him throwing his friends and their stuff into his van and gunning it so he can drop them off in time to get back to you.

Knowing it’s going to take him a bit, you’re in no rush and move slowly through the rest of your shift. Not many people hang around once the live music is done so you leave the task of closing up to the other bartender. When you finally grab your jacket and head outside, most of the parking lot is empty.

You don’t drive to work. Your apartment isn’t far and to save money you prefer walking. So when Eddie’s van comes careening around the corner, tires squealing as he slams on the brakes, you’re still there, leaning casually against the side of the building, watching him in amusement.

He puts the van in park and gets out, rushing around to the passenger side so he can open the door for you with a deep bow. “After you,” he says.

“Did you let your friends get out on their own or did you throw them from the car?” you tease, climbing in.

“They’re lucky I even stopped,” he says. You laugh and he slams the door, jogging around the front of the van to get back to the driver’s seat. He grins at you when he does. “Where to?”

There’s no way you’re taking him home. Not yet at least. As much as you’ve gotten to know him, he’s still a relative stranger. “There’s a little park up the road,” you say, leaning back. “Nice, quiet…secluded.”

“Say no more.”

Eddie peels out of the parking lot. You have the windows rolled down and enjoy the cool breeze whipping through. After being in a stuffy club for hours, you welcome the fresh air. The radio’s on, Iron Maiden blasting from the speakers as Eddie drums his hands along to the beat. You can sense his excitement, and apprehension. You start to wonder if the drumming is actually to the music or a nervous tic. He keeps glancing at you, smiling as if he’s amazed you’re sitting there next to him. However, there isn’t much conversation.

When he turns down the road to the park, he lowers the radio. “Anywhere in particular?” he asks.

“Yeah, just keep following the road until it forks. If you go left there should be some privacy.”

Eventually, he finds a spot where the trees can obscure you guys from view and he parks the van. Once he turns off the ignition, you’re met with silence. “So…” he says, leaning back in his seat. He turns to look at you. “What did you—?”

You don’t let him finish. You’ve already undone your seatbelt and spring into action. You yank on his leather jacket, tugging him into a kiss.

You can feel his body tense for a moment as shock takes hold. A second later, he’s relaxing and kissing you back, his hand cupping your cheek to draw you in closer. His mouth opens instantly and you find his tongue jabbing passed your lips in his excitement. Eager for more, you straddle him right then and there, your fingers dragging through his wavy hair.

Eddie lets out a noise of surprise, almost a whimper, and it makes you feral. The things you want to do to this guy. It’s been weeks of flirting and build-up, all leading to this very moment. You can feel his dick through his tight jeans and you grind down onto it, moaning against his mouth when the friction sends tendrils of desire to your core.

Drawing back to catch his breath, Eddie is already panting, staring at you in wonder. “Shit, that feels good,” he groans, his hands falling to your ass. He squeezes hard before holding you in place, stopping your grinding. “Can we just…” He swallows and nearly gasps for his next breath. “Just…um, slow down for a second?”

You pause, breathing heavily though not quite as out of breath as he is. Your mind races with everything you want to do to him. Yet, you can sense his hesitation. His nervousness hasn’t gone away and it makes you worried.

“Everything okay?” you ask. “Sorry, I thought you wanted—”

“I do, I do!” he says hurriedly, nodding his head in his excitement. “It’s just…shit, sorry, it’s all really intense, and I…” He trails off.

“Eddie, are you a virgin?” You haven’t considered he might be even though he’s only a year or two younger than you are. It would not bother you, either way, however if he is, you’d want to do something a little more special for him than riding his dick in the front seat of his van.

Eddie laughs nervously and even in the darkness, you can see the flush returning to his cheeks. “No, no I’m not,” he says. “But I haven’t…it’s only been a couple of times and they definitely weren’t like you.”

“Like me?”

“Hot, like really smoking hot,” Eddie says bluntly. “And apparently really eager to jump me. I mean, obviously, they were into it, didn’t mean to sound like a creep. Shit, now I’m babbling and you’re looking at me weird…fuck, I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”

You can’t help it. You laugh at his adorable mutterings, your body relaxing as you pump the brakes on your raging libido. “You’re not fucking anything up,” you assure him, pushing his hair back from his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so intense right out the gate. If you want me to get off—”

“No!” Eddie clutches you in place as you start to shift. “I mean, yes I want you to get off but not in the way you meant.”

Laughing again, you settle on his lap and slide your arms around his neck. “Take it slower?”

Eddie nods excitedly. “Yeah, yeah slower…for now.”

Happy to oblige, you lean in and steal another kiss. This one is the complete opposite of the one before, almost chaste by comparison. It starts with a simple press of lips, both of you getting acquainted with the other. As time slips by, you open your mouth, darting your tongue out to lightly brush Eddie’s before teasingly drawing back. He follows, licking the inside of your mouth, groaning when you finally let your tongue glide along his.

He’s rock hard between your legs and the rough fabric of your jeans presses into your clothed clit. You let out a low moan and Eddie cups your face again with one hand as his arm wraps your waist.

When you break to catch your breath, you two stay close, gazing into each other’s eyes. “Better?” you ask, breathless.

Eddie grins and nods. “Way better.”

“How far do you want this to go?”

“All the way. God do I want to fuck you.”

You kiss him, unable to stop yourself. Hearing that he’s inexperienced has stirred something inside you that you aren’t expecting. Your desire to take care of him is now competing with the desire to fuck his brains out. Until they merge into an amalgam of the two.

“Tell me, Eddie,” you say between kisses. You let those kisses travel down his cheek to his throat. He sucks in a breath when you do and you can feel him shudder beneath you. “What’s something you haven’t done yet that you’ve been dying to do?”

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “Can I…can I go down on you?” You pause in surprise, drawing back to look him in the eye. “Is that…is that too much to ask? Is it a weird thing to ask right away? You know what, it’s fine, forget I said anything. I totally get it, we don’t have to—”

You press your finger to his lips. “You don’t need to backtrack, you just took me by surprise. Usually, guys want a blow job.”

“Well, I mean, I’m interested in that too. Haven’t had one before,” he says. “But I really really want to get my mouth on you.”

Fuck that’s hot. Here you are, making out and dry humping him, willing to help him experience a thing or two and the first thing he wants is to make you feel good? Eddie Munson needs to be careful or you may just keep him after this.

“That is the hottest thing anyone has ever said to me,” you say.

His cute grin returns. “So is that a yes?”

“Munson, that’s a hell yes.”

You slot your mouth over his, cradling his face in your hands to keep him right where you want him. He kisses back excitedly, instantly opening his mouth to let your tongue go exploring. You’re acutely aware that the front seat is no longer an option for what you two are planning. Thankfully he has a wide open space in the back.

It’s Eddie’s turn to drag his lips down to your throat, nipping, licking, and kissing the area until he finds a spot that sends a shudder through your body. Excitedly, he latches onto it, sucking greedily, almost too hard yet staying on the pleasurable side.

“Maybe we should move this into the back,” you gasp when his other hand comes up to wrap around your throat, firmly holding you in place like he’s a vampire desperate for his next meal.

“One second.”

You realize that he’s trying to mark you, trying to leave a hickey behind. And you’re more than happy to let him. What started as a night to relieve some stress and have fun is quickly turning into something else, something more significant.

“Easy,” you groan, fingers burying into his hair again. “Use your lips more and be careful with your teeth.”

Instantly, he responds and it rips a loud moan out of you. Shit, you’re already so wet you can feel it soaking through your panties. When Eddie’s satisfied, he draws back to appraise his work. “Not bad,” he deems, running his fingertips across the tingling spot. “We’ll have to see how it looks tomorrow.”

Oh, wow, he’s already in that mindset. Yeah, this is definitely going to be something more.

And, honestly, you’re totally okay with that.

Giving him one more quick kiss, you slide from his body and into the bed of the van. He must have stopped by his home or something because his equipment is nowhere to be found. In fact, you smile as you see a few pillows and blankets haphazardly thrown about. Alright, that’s fucking adorable. Eddie Munson keeps checking off boxes you didn’t even know you had. He takes a second to collect himself before he follows you.

By then, you’ve kicked off your shoes and socks, and shrugged out of your jacket, piling all of them into the corner. Watching his lanky body slide into the back makes you chuckle. You lean on your elbows and watch him, taking in his features for the thousandth time. God, he really is a pretty man. Such a metalhead and yet so fucking pretty you want to stare at him for hours. Which, honestly, is what you’ve been doing ever since you first saw him on stage.

Eddie shrugs out of his leather jacket, leaving him in a black tank top with the words Corroded Coffin drawn across the front in white. He crawls over you, mouth eagerly searching for yours. The two of you meet, the radiating heat palpable. You’re glad he’s left the windows down because the cool breeze brings relief as well as the smell of the trees and grass. Everything outside the van is silent and it feels like you and Eddie are the only two people in the world.

As far as you’re concerned, you are.

Eddie draws back, his fingers tweaking the button of your jeans. “Can I—?”

“Absolutely.”

He kisses you excitedly, his fingers tugging until the button comes free. You lift your hips to help as he drags them down. He breaks the kiss to pull them off, chucking them into the corner with the rest of your stuff. You’re sitting there in your black t-shirt and black cotton panties. Faint moonlight filters into the van, giving you a better view of Eddie’s face.

His eyes are locked onto the spot between your legs, staring shamelessly.

You decide to give him a hand, and a show, slipping your thumbs under the hem of your panties and pulling them down. When you lift your knees, Eddie takes over, sliding them the rest of the way. They fall from his fingers when you slowly spread your legs.

“Holy shit,” he groans, hands coming to rest on your thighs. “You’ll tell me if I do something wrong, right?”

You can feel the anxiety coming off him and you sit up, cupping his cheek. “Hey, look at me. It’s just you and me here. You don’t have to get into your head about this, don’t worry about right or wrong. Use your mouth and I’ll let you know what feels good.”

He kisses you and you feel the tension melt from his body. Part of you is a little annoyed at his previous partners. Did they not take their time with him, make sure he’s had some goddamn foreplay? Or was he too excited to be with someone that he jumped right in? Either way, you’re determined to make this good for him. You lay back down, fisting his shirt to bring him with you.

Eddie settles his weight onto your body, kissing the life out of you as his hand travels. He cups your tit through your shirt and you hum in appreciation, your own hands doing some exploring of their own. You find the hem of his tank top and slide under it, reveling in the hard muscles of his back. He breaks the kiss and moves down your body, pausing where your shirt has lifted to place hot kisses across your exposed stomach.

Anticipation builds and you settle into one of the pillows, your hands weaving their way into Eddie’s hair. You don’t know what it is about that crazy mop that makes you want to keep running your hands through it or grab fistfuls and tugging. You’ll decide when you see where the night takes you.

Eddie lays the softest of kisses on your thighs, one hand stroking the tender flesh. You feel his thumb gently glide through your wetness and you suck in an excited breath. He does it again, a little firmer before his thumb wanders upward and presses to your clit. It makes you gasp, your body rocking from the sudden pleasure. The next thing you know, his mouth is on you and his tongue is soothing the over-sensitive nub. The sudden switch turns your body to jelly and you melt underneath him.

His mouth is aimless for a few moments as he moves from there to your slit, tonguing and testing, getting himself acquainted with your taste. Vibrations from his moan make your heart rate spike and your legs fall open further. His tentative licks become bold swipes, falling into a somewhat steady rhythm. You glance down and his eyes are closed. Fuck the way he’s moving his mouth and the little wrinkle between his eyebrows is killing you. It looks like he’s savoring it, losing himself in the task. That tongue returns to circle your clit and you moan loudly, your thighs snapping closed to trap him in-between them.

Eddie’s left hand wraps around your thigh, the cool metal from his rings searing into your heated flesh. You can feel his tongue circle your hole, either teasing or working up the courage to venture further. You lift your hips in encouragement, desperately needing to clench around something. Eddie, sweet Eddie, gets the hint loud and clear and slips his tongue inside you.

Your moan is louder this time and your hands clench, tugging on his hair. “Yes, Eddie,” you moan. “Just like that.”

Spurred on by your encouragement, he starts to slide his tongue in and out. His right hand reaches around your thigh so that his thumb can give your swollen nub constant attention. You’re fucking gone.

How? How is this his first time doing this? It can’t be. He’s way too good, too quick, and responsive. You know he has zero reason to lie to you and obviously, you’re taking his word for it. Still. The man has skills, that’s for sure. Your eyes fall close and you lose yourself to the pleasure. A thin sheen of sweat is already coating your body, making you wrestle your t-shirt off in your impatience. You’re moaning and writhing constantly now, and when his hand disappears, you whimper at the loss, dragging your eyes open to see what the fuck is going on.

Brown eyes stare up at you from between your thighs, wide with wonder and dark with passion. Eddie pulls back to suck in a breath and you can see the slick glistening from those plump lips. “Shit you taste amazing,” he moans, leaning down for a quick lick. “I didn’t…fuck, I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

You open your mouth to speak but then he’s sliding his finger into you and you dissolve into a series of moans and whimpers.

You’re so fucking turned on it hurts. All the blood has rushed south and none is left in your brain. Eddie groans and his mouth falls back to your clit, sucking greedily as he fingers you. He’s harsh, unpracticed, yet it still feels so fucking good. He adds a second finger, pumping them roughly in and out of your aching core. Your hands run through his hair, petting him in encouragement.

“Leave…shit…leave them in,” you tell him. “Leave them deep…yes, yes like that. Just…fuck…just wiggle them.”

Eddie does as you say, burying his fingers in as far as they can go and it’s so goddamn good you know you’re going to cum. Your orgasm is approaching fast and your hips are in a constant state of motion, lost between grinding against his face and his hand.

You don’t even get a chance to warn him. The next thing you know, you’re cuming hard. Definitely harder than you’re expecting. Your body clamps down around Eddie’s fingers and your thighs hold him in place, leaving him no choice but to keep tasting you through your orgasm. Which he happily does.

Seconds later, you’re limp and panting beneath him as he lifts his head, this time with a huge fucking grin. “Good?” he pants.

“Fuck, Eddie!”

Eddie groans and gives you a few more licks. “Fuck is right. Shit, I’ve never felt a woman cum like that. I’ve never been able to taste a woman cuming.”

“I call bullshit.”

Eddie’s grin softens and his eyebrows draw together. “What do you mean?”

You force yourself onto your elbows so you can look him in the eye. “There is no fucking way that was your first time going down on someone.”

The grin is back and he wags his eyebrows. “So you’re saying I’m a natural?”

“I’m saying, take your pants off because I need to return the favor right now.”

His reaction is priceless. He scrambles to do as you say, rising onto his knees. His head almost hits the roof of the van in his excitement but he manages to duck at the last second. Body still trembling, you sit up to help. His belt is tossed away and he’s barely managed to unbutton his jeans before you’re lifting his shirt, trailing your lips down the dark happy trail you know you’re going to become obsessed with.

Eddie groans, pushing his jeans down and then sitting back. He kicks out of his sneakers and manages to wiggle his socks off. You’re eye to eye with him now and can smell yourself on him. It makes you dive forward into a kiss, attacking those lips you’ve been admiring for so long. He kisses back eagerly, whimpering in the back of his throat as you nip at him.

“Do you want to know a fun fact?” you ask, mouth still pressed to his as you work his underwear down over his hips.

“What’s that?”

“The shade of a man’s lips are almost exactly the same shade as the head of his dick,” you say, drawing back yet leaving your forehead pressed to his so you can look into those beautiful brown eyes. “Which means every time I’ve been staring at your lips I’ve had a pretty good picture of what your dick looks like.”

As if to drive home your statement, you look down. Sure enough, your gaze takes in the swollen red head of his dick. Your body clenches in excitement, desperate to take him in and squeeze the life out of him.

Eddie swears, watching you hungrily stare at his dick. “Do you…holy shit, do you do that often?”

You look back up at him with a smirk. “All the time.”

He kisses you and you give him a few firm strokes. The way he twitches and pulses in your hand makes you feel powerful, desirable. When you break the kiss, it’s to gently push Eddie onto his back, making sure he’s comfortably spread out underneath you. The visual is going to be burned into your memories for decades. Eddie with his hand tucked behind his head, staring at you with excitement, his black tank top riding up, showing off that delicious happy trail that leads to his gorgeous dick, framed with dark curls. Seeing him hard and needy makes your mouth water.

A voice in your head reminds you it’s his first blow job, which is the only thing that stops you from sucking him down the base in one go. You kiss away the drop of precum, letting your tongue dart out to lick a teasing circle. He swears and his hips automatically jerk up, seeking more. You wrap your lips around his red tip and suck gently, letting your tongue do all the work to start. You want to warm him up, get him used to the sensation.

Eddie moans, allowing his head to fall back as he surrenders to the pleasure. None of that nervous energy is here anymore. It’s replaced with excitement and raw desire. You can tell by his urgently rolling hips.

That’s what is drawing you to Eddie, what’s making your mind a hazy mess in the cramped bed of his van. He’s completely transparent, not laying there trying to act tough or cool by hiding his emotions. Nah. You don’t have to guess if he’s liking it or you don’t have to guess what he wants next. If he’s not outright telling you words, he’s doing it with his body, showing you in the way he keeps thrusting up, or how he fists the blanket under his hand.

“More,” he moans. “Please, more. I…fuck…I can take it.”

You bet he can. Which is great because you’re getting greedy. Now that you finally have your mouth around him, you need it as much as he does. You work your mouth a little, first taking the head of his dick, then doing more, taking more in, until you’ve set a smooth up and down rhythm. Each time you go down further, suck harder, press your tongue along the underside of his dick. Your hand follows your mouth with firm strokes, alternating between a tight and loose grip to see which pulls the strongest reaction out of him.

Turns out he prefers tight.

Eddie is a babbling mess. “Shit, holy shit, your mouth feels so fucking good,” he moans. “God damn, this is amazing. God damn. Fuck!”

You pull off to catch your breath, still stroking as you smirk up at him. “Tell me how you really feel, Munson,” you tease.

Eddie doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m so fucking turned on it hurts. It’s taking all of my fucking willpower not to fuck that fucking mouth of yours. I can’t tell if you’re an angel sent to take care of me or the devil sent to destroy me.”

“Sweetheart,” you say, squeezing harder. “I’m both.” You swipe at the head of his dick with your tongue. “Feel free to grab my head. You won’t hurt me. I won’t choke on your dick…unless you want me to.”

Eddie swears. “Jesus H. Christ, you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“No, just suck your brains out through your dick.”

You take him into your mouth once more, as far as you can until he hits that back of your throat. He says your name, hands flying down to grab your head. His hips jerk up and you do gag for a second. But it quickly passes and you let him keep doing it, until he’s fucking your mouth like you know he’s been dying to. The only thing stopping him from going faster is that his underwear and jeans aren’t all the way off. You can tell that they’re constricting his legs, hear the way he shuffles them in the fabric. He huffs in annoyance.

After a quick pause to free him from his clothed prison, you get right back to it.

Now things really start to heat up. He’s coated in spit and precum, making every thrust into your mouth slick and easy. His whole body is in a constant state of movement, between his gyrating hips, grabby hands, and mouth chanting your name. Fuck his thickness is going to feel so fucking good when you finally take him into your cunt. You reach down to cup his balls, squeezing and massaging them while sucking hard on his pulsing shaft.

“S-Stop,” Eddie suddenly says with urgency. “Stop, stop!”

Immediately, you pull off and break all contact. “Are you okay?” you pant, your heart racing though now it’s from fear and worry than excitement.

Eddie pushes himself up on his hands, his arms shaking. “Y-Yeah sorry, it was just…I was going to cum.”

You relax and smile. “Dear god, Eddie, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” you resume, now jerking him off. “You can cum in my mouth. I want you to.”

Eddie groans and desperation. “Fuck, I want to. Trust me, I do. But I want to fuck you more and if I cum right this second I’m going to be fucking useless for the rest of the night.”

Laughing and still breathless, you sit up and stretch your tense back. “Works for me.”

Eddie struggles to sit up but once he does, he draws you close to kiss you. You sigh into the kiss, holding his face in your hands as your tongues dance together wildly. Your body is still humming, still wanting more even after his amazing oral display. Eddie draws back and looks down, as if noticing for the first time that your shirt is gone. He slides his hands up your back to unhook your bra and watches as you take it off.

Making a noise that sounds like a strangled moan, he bends his head, taking one of your stiff nipples into his mouth. He grabs at your tit roughly, sucking greedily at the same time and sending liquid heat down to your aching cunt.

“Do you have condoms?” you ask, voice breathless with need.

Eddie draws back and nods excitedly. “Yeah, in my wallet.”

You break apart so you can find them while he gets rid of his tank top. The wallet is in his back pocket, poking out as if it too is ready for more. You pull out a condom. When you look back at Eddie, he’s staring at your body, his hand making light trails up and down your side. You admire him right back, seeing him completely naked for the first time.

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he says. “I still can’t believe you’re here with me.”

“Well believe it. And if you play your cards right, maybe I’ll invite you to stay at my place tonight.”

His eyes light up and he bites his bottom lip. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

Eddie kisses you hungrily and you grapple with each other, eager to feel skin on skin. He lays you onto the pillows, and when he does you can feel his dick twitching against your thigh. Drawing back, he takes the condom from your hand and you watch him rip off the foil wrapper and toss it carelessly to the side. He rolls the condom onto his dick, giving himself a few strokes while he stares hungrily at you. He rises up to kneel between your legs.

“Take your time,” you tell him. “We’re not in any rush. We can go as slow as you need.”

“I think I’m done with going slow.”

Shit, how does that phrase sound hot?? It shouldn’t be! But when Eddie says it, standing there with his hard dick jutting out towards you and his bedroom eyes, you lose all your senses. Suddenly, he grabs your thighs and uses them to yank you towards him, while simultaneously pressing your knees into your chest.

Your heels slam against the roof in surprise and then, he’s pushing into you and fucking hell this is the best god damn thing you’ve ever felt.

Even as turned on as you are it’s a stretch. A delicious, torturous stretch that rips a gasp out of you. It’s like something inside of Eddie snaps when he hears the sound. With hands placed on either side of your waist, he starts to fuck you, hard, barely giving you a chance to get used to him, absolutely drills himself into your willing body, going from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye.

The van shakes from the force. Your tits bounce and you desperately reach up to try to find something to grab, something to keep you anchored but there isn’t anything. Your hands slide uselessly across the carpeted floor until they hit the wall. It’s solid enough, it’ll do. You press your palms to it and all you can do is lay there and take it, take Eddie’s pounding while your feet dig into the metal roof.

And do you ever want to fucking take it from him.

Your body is consumed by the hot lava of desire that Eddie suddenly fucks into you. He’s staring at your face the entire time, taking you in, tongue poking out between his lips in deep concentration. What’s he thinking when he sees you this way? You don’t know. His words have stopped as his entire focus is drawn to the way your cunt feels. His guitar pick dangles from his neck and you want to grab onto it, so you do, using it to pull him into a harsh kiss. It throws off his momentum while he hungrily accepts, but then he’s right back to it a moment later.

For a moment, you worry, thinking he’s going too hard, too fast to be able to last. However, seconds turn to minutes and his pace doesn’t let up in the slightest. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. How can he fuck you this hard for this long?

His hooded eyes never leave your face, those plush lips parted as he pants. His gaze has switched from awe to unfiltered hunger. This isn’t the Eddie who stared up at you in wonder from the front seat. No, this is Eddie unhinged. And you love every fucking second of it.

Your knees start to cramp and as fucking spectacular and deep as this is, you can’t let him have all the fun.

You lower your legs and push yourself up, breaking his rhythm and knocking him onto his ass. His back hits the front seat and you don’t give him any time to react. You scramble onto him and your hand digs into the faded leather as you impale yourself on his dick. If he doesn’t want to take it slow anymore, you’ll show him what going fast means.

You ride him. Harder than you normally ride a one-night stand, harder than you would ride someone with as little experience as Eddie has.

Something tells you he can take it. Maybe it’s the groan that’s ripped out of him or the way his hands grab at your ass, metal rings pressing into your flesh. Mostly it’s the way his hips shoot up to meet yours. One arm suddenly wraps around your waist and he yanks you close so he can take your nipple into his mouth.

The van rocks and groans along with you and outside, the quiet of the park is broken by the sounds of skin on skin, moans of pleasure, and your wet arousal. Eddie is moaning constantly, his mouth switching from one tit to the other before he throws his head back.

“Fuck, holy fucking shit,” he warns, his chest heaving. “I’m not going to…shit, I’m not going to last much longer.”

You barely can focus on what he’s saying, your eyes drawn to his chest. You can see his chest tattoos now, something you hadn’t noticed earlier in your excitement and the low light. His eyes stray down and you realize he’s staring at the place where your bodies connect, watching you grind desperately on his lap. Shit, he’s so fucking excited, so eager to watch what’s happening. Seeing his expression squeezes your heart, threatening to crush it within your chest.

You don’t stand a chance.

You yank on his hair to get his attention, needing to feel that mouth on yours. His kisses are sloppy and wonderful, everything you want from him in that moment. When he draws back, the moonlight hits his face. “Close,” he moans. “Babe, I’m close.”

“Are you going to cum for me?” you pant, greedily soaking in his appearance. His bangs are stuck to his sweaty forehead and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. You catch it before he can pull it back in, sucking greedily on it and making him gasp.

“Yes, fuck yes, I am,” he responds while taking your harsh kisses. You finally get to sink your teeth into his bottom lip and his hips jerk up a final time. “SHIT! FUCK! I’M CUMING.”

His entire body rocks with the force of his release and he yanks your hips down, keeping himself buried all the way as he grinds himself into you. A second later, his hand is between you both, thumb rubbing your clit a little too hard.

It doesn’t matter. It’s more than enough.

You cum and this time, you’re doing the grinding, trying to keep him in place even as he starts to get soft. You ride out the waves of pleasure, milking him for all you can until you collapse against his chest, sweating and panting.

Eddie’s arms are like a vice around your waist. He nuzzles your cheek, places kisses on your throat, and purrs like the most satisfied cat in the world. “Fuck that was everything I wanted it to be.”

You’re too spent to say anything at first, perfectly content to lay there while he starts to rub your back. Eventually, you withdraw from his chest, seeking a sweet kiss. “I am not going to be able to walk right for a few hours.”

Eddie gives a breathless laugh, lips pressing quick kisses to yours. “Sorry I got a little rough there.”

“Never apologize to me for fucking me hard. It was fucking amazing.”

“Yeah?”

You pull back to look him in the eye, seeing a hint of self-doubt. You push his hair back from his face, stroking his cheek as you do. “Fuck yes. You were spectacular.”

He grins, looking incredibly proud of himself. “Are you going to finally give me that drink when I come in again?”

Humming and pretending to ponder his question, you slide your arms around his neck. “Hmm, I don’t know,” you tease. “If you bring me home we can discuss it further.”

“Does this mean you want me to spend the night?”

You nod, hugging him close and pressing your forehead to his. “Absolutely. I don’t work again until tomorrow night. That leaves plenty of time for me to give you more hands-on experience. Unless you have somewhere to be?”

“Fuck no. If you’re asking if I’m going to choose between having a bunch of sex with you or sitting in a stuffy classroom listening to shit I don’t care about, I’m going to choose sex every time.”

Laughing, you rest your head on his shoulder, not quite ready to move yet. Eddie seems just as eager to stay there for the time being, his hands still stroking your back. He reaches around for a second until he finds one of the blankets, which he wraps around the both of you.

“Can we stay here like this for a bit?” he asks, kissing your forehead.

His voice is suddenly so soft and unsure. Fuck, how does he do that? How can he be sexy and feral one minute then gentle and goofy the next? There’s so much more to Eddie Munson than meets the eye. And you’re determined to experience every side of him.

“Only if you keep kissing me,” you say, smiling up at him.

Eddie trails his fingers along your jaw, before tilting your chin up with his forefinger and bringing your lips within reach. “Sweetheart, I couldn’t stop even if I tried.”

[wispstalk]

six bears

In the Temple’s great hall, at the table nearest the fire, ducks are proliferating. Paper ducks— Martin showed Coradri how to make the folds, to keep her shifty little hands occupied with something other than messing up the carefully-orchestrated chaos of his translation notes.

“Not that one, please,” he says, and swipes a freshly-inked page out from under her hand. Only then does he notice that she’s run out of paper, and his desk is covered in ducks. “You’re fretting.”

“You’re fretting,” she fires back, and rubs at the bridge of her nose, a mimicry of the nervous tic that Martin has been indulging in for quite some time now.

They exchange mirthless smiles. The Hero of Kvatch has been gone for three days longer than his projected return. Tanis is fairly new to writing; Martin supposes he can't complain that it doesn't occur to the man to send a damned letter once in a while.

“It’s only that it’s so dull when Irathi’s gone,” she says with a huff. “You’re really boring, do you know that? At least Irathi will play bar luvahr with me.”

He rakes a hand through his hair, sighs, and pushes the Xarxes away. “Oh, go on and get your tiles, then.”

“Brother! Gambling is hardly seeming for a priest.”

Martin smiles. Does she think he’s never cheated at a hand of cards? “I’m afraid we’ll have to forgo the bets, my dear. You know I haven’t any money.”

“You will have money, though. Lots of money. See, you haven’t even got the right mind for gambling. You’ve got to take some big risks if you want big wins.”

And so the books and the ducks are cleared away, to make room for a set of numbered clay tiles.

It must be near midnight by the time the doors to the great hall swings open, and both of them jolt to attention, their high-stakes game forgotten.

Vast swaths of Imperial wealth change hands: upwards of two hundred thousand septims, the Dragon Crown, the province of High Rock. They’ll have to keep notes if they make this a habit; at this point, Martin can’t remember which of them is supposed to be sitting the Ruby Throne.

--

“You’re back,” Martin says, the same asinine observation he makes each time Tanis returns, but he can’t help it, the way the relief washes over him. “What kept you?”

Tanis sits down heavily, looks between the two of them, and heaves a sigh. “Bear-hunting.” He glances to the side and clears his throat. “For a farmer.”

Coradri wrinkles her nose skeptically. “You’re not even a hunter.”

“No,” says Tanis, with a pensive nod. “No, I am not. I tried hunting one bear with a sword, and, ah… well, that’s a stupid way to hunt, I learned. So for the next one I tried fire. Worked better.”

“The next one,” Martin repeats. “You faced down two bears?”

“Six bears.” He shifts in his seat. “The bears kept breaking into his sheepfold, see, and he said if I helped him deal with the problem, he’d reward me.”

After a silence crawls by, Coradri leans forward in her seat. “And?”

“He gave me a book.”

“A book,” Coradri drawls.

“For six bears?” Martin blurts.

“For six fucking bears!” Tanis throws his hands up. “You know, when someone says they’ll reward you for killing six bears, you hope they mean gold. Sometimes they mean their dear departed gahata’s gravy boat. I didn’t ask. I took the gamble.” He shakes his head. “And I got a book.”

“Well,” Coradri says, rubbing at her chin, “I think the idea is you can sell the book—“

“Yeah, for gold, right? It’s a whole— I would’ve had to go all the way back into town, and—” He swats at the air. “Well, I’m back, anyway, and I’ve hunted six bears, and I’ve got a book now. Does that answer your question?”

The three of them are silent, turning this over in their minds. Martin tents his hands over his mouth. “Was it a good book?”

“Haven’t read it.”

“I just think if I’d gone to all the effort of killing six bears, I’d at least crack it.“

“I’m in the middle of another one, all right?” He puts on his spectacles with a martyred air and snatches up his rucksack, producing the book. “History of the Fighters’ Guild,” he reads off. “It looks fit for tinder, maybe.”

Martin plucks it from his hands. The leather cover is mottled with a dark patina, dust settled in the crevices of the tooling. “This is a first edition,” he marvels, tapping the inscription on the inside cover. “Nearly two hundred years old, I’d wager—“

“Oh? What are we wagering?” Coradri says brightly. Greedy thing, she’s already laid claim to half of Tamriel.

Martin ignores her, carefully turning the yellowed pages. “By the Divines, there’s notes in the margins and everything. Illustrations of some second-era armor... what a stunning little piece of history. And, there, see, in the back? The names of the owners listed. Former guildmasters, that’s my guess. Do you think this farmer of yours might have been a descendant?”

Tanis gestures across the table. “And now the priest is going to steal—”

“Borrow! Borrow.”

“Sure.” He pulls a braided leather loop from his pack, hung with six bear claws, and tosses it toward Coradri. “So there’s the last of my earnings.”

She eyes it with glee, and slips it over her head, all six trophies splayed against her chest in a graceful, brutal arc. It pairs nicely with the slaughterfish fang dangling from her bejeweled ear. “You made this for me?”

“No. But if I leave it lying around you’ll ‘borrow’ it anyway, won’t you?” He kicks his boots up on the table, scattering the game tiles, and surveys the two of them. “Six bears and nothing to show for it now. But you both like these things, eh?”

Martin looks up from the pages. Coradri pauses in her admiration of her forbidding new adornment. Tanis shoots a smug grin across the table and shrugs. “Well, then. I took the gamble, and I won.”

[looooooooomis]

F I N A L  G I R L |  S E V E N

You were his final girl. And there was no chance in hell that anyone or anything was going to mess that up.

p a r t   s e v e n |  b l o o d

masterlist here

pairing: Billy Loomis x f!reader word count: 6k warnings: s m u t (18 +!!!!!) lets just say this gif is a teaser as to what takes place in this chapter. major blood kink in this chapter. period play?? lmao sorry about it.

There was a shift after that weekend at Billy’s cabin, and you knew he felt it too.

It was never really that casual between you and Billy, that much you knew, but there was something that changed when the two of you got back to Woodsboro. There was something to be said about being able to openly show affection to the person you loved, to hold them and kiss them in public and you’d gotten that treatment in that little lakeside town. You felt like Billy’s actual girlfriend, not his plaything, not the bitch who was backstabbing her own best friend for a fucking boy, you were it.

And while Billy had always said that you were his girl, you hadn’t truly felt like you were until now.

Which was precisely what made tonight so fucking awkward.

Not only had you been coerced into going to the movies with the gang but, unbeknownst to you, Sid had taken it upon herself to fix you up on a blind date with one of Randy’s annoying friends from the video store.

Why had you agreed to this? You were a cold, calculating bitch behind the scenes when it came to fucking your best friend boyfriend and yet saying ‘no thanks, I’m not up for it tonight’ was beyond you? Were you just plain stupid or a closet masochist that thrived on dicey situations?

Either way, you’d never wanted to throw yourself into oncoming traffic more than you did tonight because not only were you trapped into an uncomfortable blind date with a guy you were fairly sure was frothing at the mouth at the idea of getting you alone in the car after all of this was said and done but you just so happened to be seated directly next to Billy.

You were smack dab in the middle of hell. Between a man you were fucking, a man you were disgustingly in love with and had just spent a weekend away with and a man you’d just met today but couldn’t stop playing handsy on your lap whenever he thought the others weren’t looking.

But Billy was always looking.

You knew that better than anyone. He had this innate sense of finding you in a crowded room. You could feel the weight of his brown eyes on you nearly every second of the day, soaking you up, taking every inch of you in, no matter who was around and tonight, as your ‘date’ smacked on his popcorn all the while feeling your thigh up any chance he could, Billy’s dept stare was tuned in and you knew it.

This had to have been karma. Karma for going away and having a beautiful weekend away with the guy you loved so wholly. The one whose girlfriend was on the other side of him with her pretty head on his stupid shoulder as you suffered in silence at just how fucking laughable this entire situation was.

“See that actress?” Your date, Anthony, whispered into your hear. He smelled like movie theatre butter. You wanted to scream. “Have you seen any of her other stuff?”

You were watching The Crucible and the actress in question was Winona Ryder. Everyone and their left nut had seen Winona Ryder in at least a dozen movies. Frowning, you blinked across at the man and blinked. “Yeah. I’m familiar with her work.”

Focusing ahead on the movie, you tried your damnedest to focus on what was going on but when you felt his slithery palm slide up your thigh, you were this close to pouring your Coke on his lap. Why the fuck had you agreed to this?

Pushing the man’s hand away as subtly as you could to avoid any unwanted attention from your friends, you bit down on the side of your mouth and heaved a quiet sigh. You deserved this. This was your punishment.

“She’s hot.” Your lovely date quipped, squeezing the area of your thigh just above your knee. “In that goth-girl next door kind of way.”

Was he getting off to Winona Ryder all the while coming on to you? Was he picturing Winona as he squeezed your thigh? You truly didn’t want to find out. Once again, you pushed his hand away and, this time, crossed your legs and leaned into the arm rest you were sharing with Billy.

The move was subtle, and you were barely even touching Billy but you needed to create a distance between yourself and Butter Fingers if it was the last thing you did.

With a subtle nudge to your arm, Billy’s eyes flickered towards you as his brows furrowed in question. The muscle in his jaw was pulsing in his cheek, that you could see even in the darkness of the movie theatre, and there was murder in his eyes as he sized up the man just over your shoulder. It was as though you could feel his blood pressure spike just looking at the guy and, as you held your breath, silently pleading with him not to make a scene that would undoubtedly give the two of you up, those brown eyes slowly found yours.

There was anger in his eyes, a palpable rage, but it was the look of pure despondency in his stare that made your own heart break. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He wasn’t supposed to be holding hands with Sid and you weren’t meant to be dealing with the idiot to your right.

How it felt up at the cabin, the freedom of loving each other and holding each other and kissing each other in broad daylight was how it was supposed to be. How love was supposed to feel.

Not this.

You were both hiding in plain sight. Putting on a façade to your friends, to each other whilst in public, and it was in that moment, in the middle of a crowded theatre, looking at each other knowing there wasn’t a damn thing either of you could do about it, that you felt that pain so intensely that it was hard to breathe.

Tears burned behind your eyes and you hated yourself for it.

You weren’t going to cry. You refused to cry over a situation you were willingly putting yourself in. This entire thing could have been avoided had you had a stronger backbone here. You weren’t the victim in this scenario. That was Sid. Sid was the one completely getting fucked over in this situation, not you. You had no damn right to feel this shitty because you were doing it to yourself.

This was just the high of the weekend wearing off and reality settling in. Until circumstances changed, this was your norm.

Swallowing back your nerves, it was all you could do to give Billy a small, barely-there smile before focusing ahead on the movie.

“I’m going to grab us another Coke,” you heard Billy say to Sidney. “Anyone want anything?”

“More popcorn,” Stu waggled his empty bag. “Maybe some Milk Duds, man.”

“Candy.” Tatum mumbled, not taking her eyes off of the screen. “Surprise me, I don’t care what kind.”

Billy nodded and took Stu’s money before he gently nudged you. “You want anything?”

You opened your mouth to speak but was cut off but Anthony. “You mind keeping it down, buddy?” He popped another handful of popcorn in his mouth. “We’re at the movies, not here for snacks.”

It was as though Billy’s wrath was physical as his dark eyes scraped over Anthony’s face. His mouth was pulled into a thin, hard line as Anthony’s pompousness sank in. Why couldn’t it be Randy beside you? Why had that dipshit agreed to take this asshole’s shift in order for you to go on a blind date with him? This entire fiasco could have been avoided had it been Randy.

“Yeah, I could use a drink.” You slinked out of your seat. “I’ll help you carry everything back.”

You didn’t wait for Billy as you marched down the aisle but, as you walked down the stairs and out of the theatre, you weren’t at all surprised to see him broody and annoyed as he followed you out.

“If anyone should be looking like that, it’s me,” you groused, falling in to step beside him as you made your way to the snack bar. “I’m stuck on a date with that asshole.”

“Don’t get me started on that,” he grumbled, grabbing his wallet out of his back pocket. “I told Sid to leave well enough alone, but she insisted.”

You hummed and lined up at the concession. “Lucky me.”

Again, you felt his stare before you actually lulled your head to the side to face him. Intense, searching eyes sweeping over your features in both concern and possible envy. “One word,” he muttered, stepping closer towards you. Too close. Not because you didn’t want him that close but because you were in public. Sid and Tatum and Stu and fucking Anthony were a stone’s throw away. “One word from you, baby, and I’ll take you home. Fuck that guy.”

You glowered across at him as though he’d grown a second head. “While I appreciate the sentiment, shit for brains, we’re in public right now. Your girlfriend could walk out any second and see or hear you.”

He seemed to mull over your words for a second but didn’t bother moving away from you. “Maybe I don’t care.”

“You do,” you rhymed off, shuffling closer to the front of the snack bar.

He ignored that. “Also, you’re my girlfriend. Stop calling her that.”

This was not a conversation the two of you should have been having in the middle of a fucking movie theatre. Looking across at him, you raised your brows and blew out a puff of air through your lips. Trying to keep up with Billy’s rationale of staying with Sid to ensure he doesn’t hurt her any further after her mother’s death all the while being with you was giving you whiplash. You knew he loved you and, begrudgingly, you loved him right back. And, a part of you knew, that he was struggling with being back in the real world just as much as you were since coming home from the cabin.

But this was not how he should have been handling it. Not out in the open like this. Especially while you were on a triple date with your friends in a theatre down the hall.

“Billy,” you muttered quietly, ensuring no one was listening in, “please let’s talk about this later. Not here. Not now. Let’s just get the fucking concessions and go, okay?”

He licked his lips and you watched his brown eyes flitter down your face before briefly looking at your own lips. He wanted to kiss you and fuck, did you want to be kissed by him.

But that wasn’t the deal.

So, instead, you watched as he took a hesitant step away from you before nodding his head once. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked down at his shoes. “Tonight.”

“Sure,” you smirked, “I mean, if I’m not with Anthony, that is.” You almost laughed at how wide his eyes got as you uttered those words. But, when he saw the playfulness in your stare, he visibly relaxed and rolled his eyes as you continued. “The way he’s been mowing down on his popcorn all night has me wet as hell, so I might be busy with him later.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled with a shake of his head. Then, he turned to you and gave you a crooked smile. One that almost made this horrific ordeal worth it. “You’re a real bitch when you want to be, you know that?”

“Yeah,” you laughed, nudging him with your elbow. “I’ve been told.”

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

True to his word, Billy slipped in through your unlocked window a little after midnight that evening with a bag of stale licorice and a drink he’d swiped from the gas station on the way over to your house.

“We didn’t get our movie date.” Was his explanation as he popped The Lost Boys into your VCR and all but hopped in bed beside you. When you’d remained standing by your dresser, eyeing him with both curiosity and sheer happiness radiating off of your face, all you got was a confused look out of Billy before he patted your mattress. “You going to get that ass over here or what?”

So, naturally, you’d joined him.

And it took all of thirty-two minutes of watching the film for the two of you to end up pawing at one another as the tension of the day slowly peeled off of you with every layer of clothing the two of you tore off one another.

In no time, you were both stark naked on your bed as The Lost Boys played on without an audience. All Billy cared about watching was you. Watching you writhe and moan. He could watch you do just about anything, but it was that dreamy look you got on your face whenever he touched you that he had imprinted into his skull. It didn’t even have to be sexual. You just had a certain look whenever the two of you connected, one that he felt but managed to keep stowed away inside of him, but one you expressed. It was happiness.

Pure, unadulterated, bliss.

He knew you. Knew your body in and out, knew how to get you to come undone, knew what made you tick, what made you squirm.

You were muscle memory to him, at this point.

He knew you better than he knew himself.

Which is why, when you subtly stopped him from slipping his fingers inside of you, that Billy’s focus went to your ass. The only time you pushed his hand away after he’d spent minutes sucking and biting and focusing on those perfect tits, was when you were on your period.

So, he didn’t push it.

The two of you had fucked a few times whilst you were on it but you were deadest on limiting that to the lighter days. The very beginning or the end. Never in the middle. But god, did he want to experience the middle days.

You were so fucking horny when you were on your period and why you thought he’d give a shit about how much blood came out of you as the two of you fucked was beyond him.

So, he’d focus on your ass. Something that drove you to the brink of insanity and something that made him harder than anything.

But tonight, it wasn’t enough.

He needed all of you.

Ever since the cabin, he’d needed more of you in his life. It had become nearly impossible for him to show any iota of affection for Sid now that he’d had a taste of what life felt like with you at his side. You were his Final Girl. His everything, if he was being completely honest. And, while he knew he couldn’t open himself up to you to that extent, not yet, he needed you to feel that raging darkness inside of him. Not too much of it, but just enough to gauge your reaction.

If you could handle a shred of it, maybe he could share more of himself with you.

The darker parts.

His hands stilled as they trailed down your body and, as he hovered over you, he bit his lip and slowly drew tiny circles into your hips. “You’re on your period, right?”

You nodded, your lips swollen from the amount of kissing having gone on since popping the movie in. “Yeah, but it’s not a light day.”

He nodded in understanding as he bit his lip. “You think we could try it, anyway?”

Your eyebrows raised in mild amusement. “By not a light day, I mean its kind of heavy, Billy. It’d look like a crime scene in here.”

Billy made sure to keep his face stoic, but the idea of the two of you fucking whilst covered in blood was nearly enough to make him come on the spot.

“Aren’t you curious?” He asked, dipping his head down to lick your painfully hard nipple. “It’s got to feel so fucking good, right?”

You ran your fingers through his hair and sighed in contentment when he began to suck your tit again. “It’s messy, though.”

“Lucky for you,” he released your nipple and kissed the sensitive flesh of your breast. “I like messy.”

Your head flopped back against the pillow as you thought over his request. I did feel good, but did you want Billy to have to witness you cleaning up a fucking homicide scene once he was through with you?

Blowing out a quiet raspberry, you eyed him with mock suspicion before he gave you those goddamn puppy dog eyes. “Ugh,” you groaned with a laugh, “fine. Let me take this fucking tampon out and I’ll grab a towel to put underneath me because it is heavy, and you will be grossed out.”

Billy’s cock twitched as he watched you roll out of bed before disappearing in the bathroom. Within a few moments, he heard the toilet flush and the sink run before you re-emerged with a towel in hand.

He could watch you parade around like that all day. Naked, eyes hooded from desire, nipples and lips red from where his mouth had staked its claim.

You were perfect.

A vision.

You were fucking everything.

“I’ve been wanting to try this with you for a while.” He admitted, watching you carefully roll the towel onto the bed before perching your ass directly on top of it so as to avoid any potential leakage onto your sheets.

“I wish I could say I was shocked.” You teased, laying back down. Spreading your legs, he watched you slip a finger through your folds to tease your clit.  

He swallowed as he watched you finger yourself. But then your words sank in and a panic settled in his chest as he swept his eyes up your body to meet your amused stare. “What’s that mean?”

You shrugged so casually as you continued the tirade on your own pussy. “All the scary movies we watch and stuff. You get hard as a rock if there’s a scene with a pretty girl and some blood.”

Billy froze. This was only supposed to be a peek inside of his darkness, not a full-blown window. But you didn’t seem all too fazed by it either, which confused him endlessly.

Rather than deny it, Billy hesitantly reached for your cunt to replace your fingers with his own. He didn’t delve inside of your pussy just yet, just circled your clit the way you’d been doing seconds prior. “And that doesn’t bother you?” He whispered, placing a kiss to the side of your neck.

“Nah,” you hummed, “we’ve all got our kinks, I guess.”

You released a quiet moan as he pinched your clit, but his eyes never left your face. He knew you were talking about blood in respect to the movies, but your casual tone still caught him off guard. There was no shame in it, no doubt. Just an honest to god shrug as he circled your clit with his middle finger.

Testing the waters, Billy slipped his fingers down your pussy so that his thumb coaxed your clit as he slipped two fingers inside of you. At first, it simply felt like you were soaked on account of all of the teasing and, maybe you were, but as he glanced down at the base of his fingers as he pulled them out of you, Billy nearly moaned.

Blood.

Your blood.

All over his fingers, pooling along the top of his palm.

Billy was fascinated. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt blood between his fingers, but not like this. When he’d killed Maureen Prescott, there was so much fucking blood that he’d been sick afterwards. He hadn’t expected that level of destruction but, after puking a few blocks away, he didn’t exactly shy away from it. He thought about it often, thought of the carnage that had surrounded him once he’d finished with Sidney’s mother, thought of the way the blood felt between his fingers, splayed and smattered across every inch of his body.

But this was euphoric.

Because he didn’t have to hurt anybody to feel that warmth on his palm. In fact, as he slowly slipped his fingers inside of your hot cunt, he was doing anything but. You were gyrating into his hand, unknowingly spreading your blood further and it was killing him. He was so fucking hard, too fucking hard, but he didn’t want to rush a damned thing.

He’d thought about this far too often for it to be over so soon.

“Fuck,” he whispered, slipping his hand out of your pussy just long enough to slowly spread your blood down your inner thigh. It left a fine red trail that he had every intention of lapping up in a few seconds if you were to allow it. “You feel so good, baby.”

He’d half expected you to make a comment about making a bigger mess than what your piddly little towel would allow but, as he slowly found your hooded eyes through the dim light of your bedroom, only hunger marred your pretty face.

Desire.

Intrigue.

Leaning in, Billy placed a small kiss to the apple of your cheek as his fingers continued to fuck you. “Does this feel good?”

“So good,” you rasped out, leaning your forehead against his as you bit your lip to swallow back a moan. Between your arousal and the blood, the natural lubrication that coated your pussy as he slowly pumped his fingers inside of you all the while rubbing your clit was killing you. “So fucking good, Billy.”

He smirked and quickened his pace on your clit just enough to drive you to madness as he bit down on your earlobe. His breath was hot against your cheek. “I want to taste you tonight.”

Though the promise of his tongue replacing his thumb enticed you, the fact that you were on day two and a half of your period was not a good plan. So why were you intrigued? A part of you wanted to see if he’d put his money where his mouth was but a much larger part of you wanted to see how feral Billy could get where you were concerned.

Torn, you pulled back and searched his eyes. “It’s going to be…messy, Billy.”

His dark chuckle was velvet against your skin. “I already told you,” he curled his fingers inside of you and admired the way your entire body twitched. “I like messy.”

He began to kiss his way down your body. You tried not to get lost in the feeling of his tongue swirling across every inch of your skin on his way down or the way his teeth nipped and bit at your stomach and hips as he positioned himself between your thighs. But mainly, you tried not to focus on how fucking bloody it was between your thighs because you knew that Billy wouldn’t be down there long on account of it.

“You don’t have to do this tonight, Billy,” you tried to reason, chest heaving in anticipation as he settled between your legs.

Something flashed across his face as he held your stare. For a second, you were almost sure he was going to back out and leave well enough alone, but then you watched as the bastard leaned into your pussy and raked his tongue from the base of your pussy right up to your bloodied mound.

He held your stare the entire time.

“I want you like this,” he assured you, yanking you further down the bed so that you were right at the edge. His voice was hoarse and breathy and as you chanced a look down at him through a pair of hooded, drowsy eyes, you watched him pump his cock with his free hand as he licked his lips. “I love you like this.”

You opened your mouth to respond but the words died in your throat when he buried his face between your thighs. You gasped at the contact but didn’t shy away from his touch for a single second as he slowly lapped at your core. With the one hand still gripping your hips, holding you firmly against his tongue, you knew there would be bruises where his fingers carved into your flesh, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. He was desperate to get you closer into his face and you were desperate to feel that perfect fucking tongue on your pussy.

It was as though he’d been possessed in those few moments. Billy couldn’t get enough of you on a good day but tasting you like this was enough to make Billy wild. Your pussy, the blood mixed with your slick, tasted so fucking good on his tongue. Burying his face further into your folds, he nuzzled at your clit and, now forgetting about his own pulsing cock, pulled you even closer.

Throwing your legs over his shoulders, Billy moaned into your pussy and bit down on your clit just enough to entice a moan that was probably a little too loud for your parents being home. But, he didn’t care. He refused to care in that instance.

All he wanted, all he cared about, was tasting as much of you as humanly possible before making you come on his tongue.

His name tore out of your throat as you gripped his hair between your fingers and pulled. You were being rougher than normal, and he fucking loved it. You were pulling on his hair and bucking into his mouth with such hunger that he could barely breathe but fuck he didn’t care. If this was how he was taken out, so be it.

“Baby,” you whined, voice low. “Fuck, I’m going to come.”

Your grip on his hair was vice-like as the veins in your neck swelled. With wild, laboured breaths, you found yourself bucking into his mouth as a white-hot orgasm rippled through your entire body. You moaned and groaned and cursed into the bed, but Billy’s mouth was relentless.

It wasn’t until he was absolutely sure you couldn’t take another second of torture, that he pulled away and allowed you to collapse back onto the bed. Your cheeks were flushed, and your lips were parted as you attempted to catch your breath. With a quiet chuckle, he kissed his way up your body, grinning against your skin as your legs continued to twitch.

He could feel your blood all over his chin and nose and as he licked it off, using his fingers to swipe at the areas his tongue couldn’t quite reach, Billy was coasting on a high that only you could provide.

“Oh, god,” you buried your face into the pillow with a quiet laugh as you moved to get off the bed. “Hang on, I’ll grab you a towel for your face.”

“No,” Billy shook his head and grabbed for your wrist. “I want to see it.”

You blinked and scraped your eyes along his bloodied face. Your nipples were still rock hard and your cunt was still pulsing on account of his tongue, but it was the look of pure ecstasy on his face that made you clench.

He was being serious.

“Come with me,” he hummed, slipping off of the bed to head towards the small bathroom attached to your room. His fingers threaded through yours as you both walked across your bedroom before flicking the light on.

The vision that he was met with made his cock twitch.

Your blood coated almost everything from his nose down his chin and as you stood beside him, looking at him through the mirror, still fully naked and still housing bloody handprints left behind from his busy hands coating the lower half of your body, Billy had never wanted to bury himself inside of you any more than he did right then and there.

He found your curious stare through the mirror. Your pretty eyes swept over the mess of blood left behind on account of you and as you turned to face him, he found himself hypnotized as you reached out to sweep his hair back and away from his forehead.

“Blood suits you,” you teased with a small smile. “Horrifically enough.”

He said nothing as those brown eyes soaked you in but as he stepped into you, cornering you against the sink counter, the look on his face said everything. He didn’t kiss you though. He seemed to hesitate, as though gauging if you’d kiss him whilst covered in your own menstrual blood. “Is this okay?”

“I don’t know.” You admitted almost sheepishly.

He nuzzled your neck and slipped his knee between your thighs to allow himself better access to your pussy. With his hand wrapped securely around his cock, he slipped the head of his dick along your folds and swallowed hard as he watched your blood coat the head of it. “Fuck,” he whispered as his forehead fell against your own. “You’re going to make me come before I’m even inside of you.”

You were watching his face as he once again slipped the head of his cock through your folds so it teased your clit. His eyes were so dark and there was so much desire in those warm eyes that it almost caught you off guard.

“You’re really into this,” you remarked quietly. When his eyes found yours, you could see blind panic cross over his face as he instinctually took a step away from you. You stopped him before he could think of stopping himself. “Hey,” you cooed, reaching out for his face. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing, relax.”

You felt the tension in his shoulders disperse as you played with the curls at the nape of his neck. “You’re too good for me,” he muttered, cradling your face. “You know that?”

“Oh, yeah,” you goaded with a smile. “I know.”

He barked out a quiet laugh and ground his hips into yours. “A smartass, too.”

You hummed as his hands slid down your body to hold you against the counter. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.” Billy nipped at your neck.

You leaned back to allow him full access to your neck. “How did I taste?” Your words seemed to make him still as he slowly pulled back to search your eyes. “With the blood. How did it taste?”

The look on Billy’s face was primal as his grip on your hips tightened. Leaning in, he nudged your nose so that your lips were perfectly aligned with his. “Kiss me and find out.”

You weren’t sure at first, but as he closed the distance between you, you found yourself leaning into the kiss both curious and slightly mortified by the taste of your blood on his lips. It was strange and you weren’t sure if you liked it at first, if you were being honest. It was coppery and a little sticky and yet as he walked the two of you out of the bathroom and back towards your bed, you found yourself hungry for more.

With your fingers tangled through his hair you gave it a tug, garnering a low growl that rumbled in his throat as he continued on with the bruising kiss. When the back of his knees hit your bed, the two of you fell into a jumbled mess on your mattress, never once breaking for air as your tongues battled for dominance.

Expertly, knowing the way your body moved better than anyone, Billy moved you in such a way that he was sitting up in the middle of your bed as you straddled his lap. And as you lowered yourself onto his pulsing cock, the gruff low moan that tore out of his lips was enough to kill you.

His large hands splayed out across your back, guiding you further into his hungry mouth as your bleeding cunt teased him beyond belief. You were so wet and with every twist of your hips and every gentle moan, he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on anything else besides just how fucking good you felt.

Digging your nails into his shoulders, blood slowly pooled in the wake of your crescent moon shaped nail markings. He hissed at the sensation and squeezed your tits rather roughly as he tried to stop himself from coming right then and there.

But then you lowered your lips onto his shoulders and he felt your hot tongue trace over every last cut and he almost lost it. There you were, with dried blood all over your chin and parts of your cheeks from having kissed him after going down on you, licking the blood that gathered along his shoulders.

He was in a state of euphoria.

“You are so fucking gorgeous.” He pushed out, revelling in the feel of how warm and wet your pussy felt.

Rather than say a word, all you did was bite down on the reddened area of his shoulder as you quickened your pace on his dick.

Drawing more blood.

Licking up more of his blood.

Something in him snapped to life in that instance. An almost ancient need bubbled to the surface as he held you there against him. Your tits bounced as you writhed on top of him and as he began to meet you halfway with violent, earth shattering thrusts, the outside world ceased to exist.

The sound of his balls hitting your sopping pussy combined with the sound of your wetness, both slick and blood, squelching all around the two of you was all that surrounded you as you whined out his name. You could barely breathe as he pounded into you, barely function.

“Billy, fuck, I—”

His mouth buried your words with another hungry kiss. You were both breathless and desperate to be as close to the other as humanly possible as you sat on your bed, fucking each other raw. His tongue slid along your bottom lip, gently tugging at it as his forehead fell against your own.

There was a shift after the cabin that you’d both felt inside of you, but there was a shift in the air tonight, as well. An unspoken trust, of sorts, that went beyond anything the two of you were prepared for.  

His hips bucked into yours one final time before he came undone inside of you. A flood of warmth settled in your belly as he came and as his thumb continued to circle your clit, rubbing and pinching at it every step of the way, you soon followed suit.

With one last shaky pump, Billy held you there as he slowly pulled out of you. He kissed your lips, your cheek, down your neck, and along your shoulder before his eyes found yours once again.

His thumb skirted across the apple of your cheek. “You’re my girl,” he whispered, revelling in just how fucking gorgeous you looked in that instance. “You know that?”

“I do,” you affirmed, kissing him softly. “You’re helping me clean my fucking bedsheets in the morning,” you muttered, “do you know that?”

Despite everything, Billy found himself smiling across at you before glancing down at the bloody mess of your sheets. “Yeah,” he chuckled, “I do.”

“Good,” you gently smacked his cheek and crawled off of your bed towards the bathroom.

“Where you going?” He asked, watching your naked body pad out of the room.

“Shower,” you merely said before popping your head around the corner. “Care to join me?”

Billy was at your side within the blink of an eye.

hehehehehehehe let me know if yall like it 

[moon3thereal]

I have a request with Nat x reader. It’s a party at the compound and nobody has ever seen Nat drunk but this night she was completely gone like blackout drunk. So you end up having to carry her to her room and take care of her but she accidentally admits her love for you, you end up sleeping on the armchair in the room and in the morning you wake up to a Nat that’s throwing up on the floor, at first she don’t remember shit but later during the day she remembered what she said and gets really flustered and embarrassed but it ends I fluff reader admits her love for Nat to

Title: Drunken Confessions

Pairings: Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: alcohol

a/n: thank you for the request! happy reading <3

1.4k

Everyone knew Tony Stark loved the glamour of his extravagant parties often threw in the Avengers tower. Everyone also knew that while everyone else got batshit drunk, the black widow never got even slightly tipsy after several rounds of drinking games when everyone else was drunk enough to strip to their undergarments and start pole dancing. She always only watched with a hint of amusement glinting in her emerald eyes

That led to the bet going on amongst the other Avengers, Tony threw in a solid 500 dollars to whoever got Natasha drunk while the others put in smaller amounts. Thor had been lurking around with a smug grin for a whole 5 minutes since the party had started, you had no doubt that he’d been up to no good and opted not to touch the alcohol at the bar for tonight.

Spotting a certain redhead, you sidled up to the bar in your new dress that you definitely haven’t bought to impress her and new heels that again, you definitely didn’t buy to awe her. “Someone put in effort for tonight’s party” Natasha said, dropping her gaze to your heels and all the way up until she met your eyes “trying to impress someone?” she winked teasingly. Damn it, were you that obvious “Steve maybe?” she pressed, seating yourself on one of the rotatable, red leather stools you laughed “I don’t swing that way”

Natasha hummed in acknowledgement “me neither” she said. You turned to look at her so quickly that you thought you may have given yourself whiplash “Then…You and Bruce?” you asked cautiously “there’s a reason that didn’t work out” she said, taking a sip of her martini and sending her glass a peculiar look “you’re new?” she asked the bartender “no ma’am I’ve been working here for three years” Natasha’s lips formed into a silent ‘oh’ and you stifled a laugh

After a few more glasses of alcohol, Natasha was clearly very drunk, the rest of the avengers who hadn’t seen Thor’s expression of obvious smugness had drunk the alcohol unknowingly too and Tony and Steve were challenging each other to a dance off. In their boxers. You watched with amusement and second-hand embarrassment. Meanwhile, the Russian that was the heart of all this chaos was standing across the room apparently having an argument with Clint about whether the walls are green or red. The walls are white. Then it suddenly clicked in your mind, the only alcohol that could get her so shockingly drunk, Asgardian liquor

Of course, why hadn’t you thought about it before. Thor was incredibly competitive even if he didn’t look it. You continued sitting aside from all the havoc erupting on the party floor taking tentative sips from the water you’d brought, keeping an eye on Natasha before she does something stupid. Normally that was her job, unbeknownst to you, Natasha always looked out for you during Tony’s parties, knowing your alcohol tolerance wasn’t exactly high.

Glancing at the clock, you could see that it was almost 3 in the morning and the noises had died down and all the Avengers were splayed out on the couch only half awake, Natasha was half laid half seated on two bar stools barely keeping herself upright. Deciding that you really didn’t want her to fall off and give herself a concussion, you tugged at her sleeve “come on Nat, we’re going back to your bedroom” she smirked at you with her painted lips which were normally perfect but tonight, they were slightly smudged, you liked the look on her though

“Bedroom? Getting frisky already y/l/n?” you raised your eyebrows while helping her off the chair and draping your jacket around her shoulders “getting concerned about how drunk you are” you corrected. Natasha hummed and after a few steps let her head slump onto your shoulder, you were half supporting and half carrying her but you were glad she wasn’t sober right now because your heart was probably going a million miles a minute, her hair smelt so nice, her tresses were gently tickling your neck

Caught up in your thoughts you had to abruptly steer Natasha towards her bedroom before she walked directly into a wall. Practically dumping her onto the bed with a huff from the exertion of dragging her all the way back to her room, you pulled off her heels and hung up the jacket “I love y/n, don’t you think she’s just so pretty, she’s so smart too and how she fights, it’s soooo hot” she slurred and your cheeks heated up.

You were ready to dismiss it as a hallucination, you had feelings for the redhead, you’d been harboring them for a good 2 months because you thought they’d never be reciprocated. But Natasha turned to you “do you think she likes me too?” she asked “yeah, yeah I’m sure she does” you whispered. Natasha seemed to hear it, she sighed contentedly and let her eyes close. Making your way out of the room, you heard her say “stay” it was barely a whisper but you heard it and you could never refuse her

So you slumped onto her chair with your chin supported by the heel of your hand just appreciating how gorgeous she looked even blackout drunk, ginger hair all over the place and smudged makeup. It sounded creepy but you were really just taking the advantage of being able to stare at her now before she’s sober again tomorrow and your act of indifference had to come up again.

You didn’t know at what point you fell asleep but you woke up to Natasha rushing to the bathroom and throwing up in the toilet. Hastily pulling her hair back into a ponytail, you rubbed her back in an attempt to soothe her. She glanced up at you when she was done and flushed the toilet “why are you here?” she asked while rinsing her mouth in the sink and holding a hand to her head while wincing. You tried to hide your disappointment, last night it was the alcohol speaking, not her, it didn’t even make sense that she would remember it, really. “you couldn’t stay on your feet on your own, let alone walk back to your room, I wanted to make sure you were okay so I slept in that armchair” you gestured to the armchair at the corner of her room

“You didn’t have to do that” she said “but I’m glad you did, thank you” sending you a tired smile. You squeezed her shoulder “I’m gonna go make some breakfast you want some?” you asked at her doorway “please” she said while removing the makeup from the night before. You nodded and made your way to the kitchen

Once you step foot in the kitchen, you saw Thor with a triumphant smile on his face and the rest of the Avengers grumbling, you slapped a 50 dollar note on the table, shaking your head amusedly as you passed by. Thor’s grin widened further as he stuffed the money into his pocket. There were pancakes in the pan, courtesy of Wanda most probably. You put two each on separate plates, slathering Nutella on yours and drizzling syrup on Natasha’s. you made some coffee and poured out two mugs

When you came back to the table, Natasha was already seated wearing a hoodie, one of yours you realized with a skip of your heartbeat, and sweatpants. Setting the plate and mug of coffee in front of her, you took a seat and dug in.

It was only in the afternoon when you and Natasha were working on reports that her cheeks suddenly went pink and she stared at you with an expression of mortification. You frowned at her sudden distress and walked over to her “what’s wrong?” you asked, genuinely concerned. “last night, what I said, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I didn’t, I mean, I do feel that way, but if you don’t it’s completely understandable and I-” you cut her off by pressing your lips to hers, the feeling of her lips against yours was heavenly, they were soft and tasted like her vanilla and cherry chapstick.

“I love you too” you whispered slightly dazed from the fact that you’d just kissed Natasha and that she hadn’t pulled away “show me how much” she said and kissed you again.

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