#even reading this I know I just sound like a desperate junkie

[selfish-saturniidae]

I had a dream that a dispensary opened across the street from me and they would make custom blunts. I got a huge backwoods stuffed with a gassy Indica and bright blue violets. I could taste it in the dream and it was incredible.

It’s been over 4 months for me since my last hit and the cravings are so strong I dream about them now. I would give my left hand for even the shittiest pre roll rn. I haven’t felt this pathetic since my first week of sobriety

[jakescakeislateforourdate]

Hey girly!! Im too shy to ask this without the anonymous filter but first of all I’ve been reading through your blog and I love it honestly. I was wondering if you are open to requests if you’d be able to write up something about joe rantz (I am absolutely LIVING for blonde callum) and maybe a coaches daughter trope? he saw her when he went to sign himself up, at the practices all that jazz and just them like becoming friends then more than friends, the boat scene where he gets his seat taken away from him maybe? thank you so much and again I love your work! xx

Hello, my lovely anon. Glad to see you in my inbox. I apologize for the wait but I've been coming out of an awful slump and I was trying to make this piece not total garbage. I hope you enjoy it and I hope I see you in my inbox again.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Joe Rantz (Callum Turner’s) x reader

wc: 4,600

Joe finds himself utterly gobsmacked when he discovers that the pretty face he’s seen at the shell house is the coach’s daughter and not his wife.

Enjoy this garbage!

…

Joe Rantz had come to the shell house in search of work. He’d hoped that making the team would cover his tuition and get him a room and he needed it so desperately. Roger Morris stood next to him, chewing nervously at his nails. “Sorry, Joe, didn’t realize competition would be so tight.” He mutters, spitting out a shred of his fingernail. Coach Ulbrickson was going over the basics of practice. It sounded like absolute hell to Joe but he was out of options. He fidgeted with the number painted on his jersey. Sure, he was strong from a lifetime of rough labor but so were the other boys. Most of them were broke too and just as desperate. Joe didn’t know if he had what it took to stand out but he’d be damned if he couldn’t make a life for himself because he couldn’t muscle up some money for college. 

As Ulbrickson speaks, a shadow appears in his office window. It’s too far for Joe’s nervous gaze to actually study the figure. He tries to focus on coach but the shadow continues to draw his attention. Roger notices too. “Who the hell is that?” Joe just shrugs. The shadow never leaves the window even as Ulbrickson finishes up and the boys get split up. Joe can’t dwell on the figure any longer because he’s being herded into the middle of shellhouse. He begins a horrible set of workouts. His body is made for hard work but he’s never actually worked out before. His muscles aren’t used to straining this way. 

It’s not long before his breathing becomes labored and sweat is pouring down his back. His curls hang down his forehead, sticking to his skin uncomfortably. And just when the pain is becoming unbearable the coaches are swapping them out and Joe is put on a junky old boat and an oar is pushed into his hands. They start rowing and instantly, the only thing on Joe’s mind is how bad his back hurts. Pained grunts and groans echo across the water as the boys struggle to keep pulling the oars. 

Eventually, it’s all over. Joe stumbles onto the dock in front of the shellhouse and feels his knees shaking with excursion. Men begin to drain away from the shellhouse and as the numbers dwindle, the shadow in the window of Ulbrickson’s office reappears. It moves through the glass panes like a swan through water. Then the office door opens and Joe sees your face for the first time. 

“That was some tough practice, huh?” Roger bumps Joe’s shoulder, a crooked smile on his face. Joe cannot respond and Roger follows his gaze. “Washington, Washington, what finery you enjoy.” 

You descend the steps and take a place between Ulbrickson and Bolles. Ulbrickson puts and arm around and Joe feels his heart wither a little. You’re probably Mrs. Ulbrickson. Though he can’t shake the impression that you look a little too young to be with Ulbrickson. 

“Alas,” Roger throws up his hands, “Finery we cannot also enjoy.”

“Don’t be crass.”

“I’m not! How was that crass?” Roger purses his lips and nudges Joe. 

Joe just buttons up his jacket and picks up his books, “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

The very next day, Joe is suffering through practice. He aches all over and his muscles scream at him. He’s already shaking when he gets done with the basic strength building exercises. Most of the boys are. There are fewer numbers today but this does not better Joe’s odds by much. They clamber into Old Nero and start rowing away. His wrists twinge and his knees spasm. He rows and rows until he thinks his body will give out and then Ulbrickson is directing them back to the shellhouse. Jow crawls out of the boat, soaked to the bone and stiff as a board.

Then he sees you again, this time your sorting registry papers with Pocock. Your back is turned to him, so you don’t notice his longing stare. He keeps telling himself that you’re a married lady and that he should be focused on making the team, but nothing seems to chase you from his mind. 

Coach Ulbrickson sweeps across the dock and places a hand on top of your head, an odd gesture between husband and wife but Joe wouldn’t know about those things. Since his group was the last to use Old Nero, they get the privilege of stowing the oars. Joe begins unlatching the mechanism when he shifts on his knees.

It happens so fast he can’t clock what’s happening. First there’s the sensation of slipping, the horrible thrust of his legs flying out from beneath him. He twists mid slip, and his side smacks the dock painfully before he’s swept off the dock by his own weight. He plumets into the cold water with a catastrophic splash and agonized shriek.

When Joe resurfaces a dozen hands are reaching for him. He grasps onto George Hunt’s forearm and allows Shorty to hoist him onto the sodden wood planks. A fluffy white towel is draped around his shoulders; firm hands rub his chilled biceps. “Are you alright?” You face appears before him.

Joe is almost too stunned to speak, “I—yeah, yeah I’m okay.” 

You tuck the ends of the towel into his hands, “Better get showered up and dressed.” Joe just nods and stumbles past you and into the locker room. Roger follows closely behind, teasing Joe relentlessly.

“You’re fallin’ harder than I thought.”

“Roger!” Joe grinds his teeth, huffing and puffing. “You need better jokes.”

Joe spends that night struggling to focus on his schoolwork. He has math homework that needs doing. He has books to read. The one in his hands now periodically goes in and out of focus as Joe’s mind wanders. On the page is the story of a western novel, a man had found a girl walking alone the road at dusk, all on her own. He didn’t want to leave her to the coyotes, so he offered her a ride into the nearest town. They were riding horseback across the prairie. Her arms wound tightly around him; her hands splayed over his chest. 

Her hands—

Her hands—

What is wrong with you, Joe?

Joe reads this line over and over again. Each time he nears the end his brain short circuits and all he can think about are your hands on your shoulders. You hadn’t even really touched him, at least not his skin.  Yet the only thing shooting through his neurons are the sensations of your fingers along his skin. That imaginary touch he can conjure up so perfectly. He eventually gives in and skips down a few paragraphs. He reads late into the night and the phantom touches are still nagging his senses when he closes the book and rolls over to sleep. 

…

Day after day, Joe sees you at practice. You congratulate him when he makes the team and help him with his technique every once and a while. “Roll your wrists just a bit more.” Your fingers would poke at his forearms and direct him in graceful strokes. It fries his brain. You give pointers to the rest of the team too, working closely with Bolles and Pocock to get them in racing shape. It’s not long into the season when Ulbrickson decides to switch coxswains. 

“This is Bobby Moch. Your new jockey.” Bolles announces one day. Bobby is short and slender and sharp tongued.  The second he climbs in the boat and starts barking out commands, Joe is flabbergasted. Who is Bobby to talk to the team this way? But they all find themselves obeying his every word. What really irks Joe about Bobby is how friendly he is with you. You exchange jokes and poke fun at each other. Joe tells himself that he just thinks it’s inappropriate to flirt with the coach’s wife but beneath it all he’s incredibly jealous that Bobby can make you laugh so easily. It makes Joe pine for attention in a way that he never has before. 

The day of their race against California, Joe is all jitters and nerves. He bounces on the balls of his feet and shakes his hands, trying to loosen the anxiety. Streamers and garlands of flags decorate the locker room and the campus. People have gathered in clusters along the course and wave flags of purple and gold. The smell of popcorn and peanuts permeates the air and Joe promises to indulge himself if they win.

As the crew carried their shell down to the water, they begin chanting to themselves. “Bow down to Washington!” They neglect the varsity’s jeers and clip their oars into position. They spot Coach Ulbrickson in the stands, you at his side. And then there’s another woman. And Ulbrickson hugs her. And then he kisses her.

Right in front of you! What is going on?

“Rantz! Eyes on me!” Bobby hollers. But Joe can’t help stealing another confused glance. “I said quite drooling over coach’s daughter and LOOK AT ME!”

Joe feels like an idiot. He puts his head down in shame and tightens his grip on the oar. Ulbrickson joins them on the dock and gives one of his famously encouraging speeches. Joe is only half paying attention. They push off and are left with lovely Bobby hyping them up while they wait for the race to start. They lean forward, like a bow drawn for a shot. And then the white flag flies and the boats shoot away from the docks.

There’s nothing but blur as Joe rows. He can only focus on the muscled shoulders of Don Hume in the stroke seat as Bobby screams at them. “28!”

About halfway through the course, Bobby demands the stroke rate be upped and Don performs. The shell lurches forward, eating up the distance between Washington and Cal until the JV boat surpasses the Berkeley blokes. Then the boat is cutting across the finish line, a clean win. Adrenaline rushes Joe’s veins. He throws his fists in the air as the team splashes and roars. They’re inevitably drowned out by the crowd who bursts up in a shower of peanuts and Washington flags. 

Coach Ulbrickson, the new woman Joe assumes his Ulbrickson’s wife, and you rush the dock as the boys climb out of the boat. “Excellent job.” Mrs. Ulbrickson shakes their hands as they unclip their oars. Bolles is compassionate enough to give them each a pat on the back as they hoist the boat over their heads and haul it off. 

Joe can’t help but notice the copious amounts of onlookers pooling around the shell as they carry it back to the shellhouse. They set it down on the stands and before they can even take their hands off the shell, they are bombarded by Washington fans. Girls reaching out to stroke their biceps or kiss their cheeks. Joe has never received attention like this once in his life. He’s as polite as possible, brushing off a few girls here and there and shaking the hand of the occasional fellow. Shorty has accumulated a few lipstick stains on his cheek. Don Hume is blushing from the tips of his ears down to the point of his freckled nose. Chuck and Roger accept a few hugs. They bask in the winners’ glory for only a few moments until the varsity team strolls by. They make a comment to Moch that Joe doesn’t catch but judging by the way Bobby’s shoulders square he can make obvious conclusions.

“You rowed so well today, Joe.” He hears your voice, and his palms start to sweat.

“Thanks, I uh—” It occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know a thing about you. “Sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten your name.” You smile at him, and syllables fall out but the crowd is too loud. “What?” Your grasp his shoulder and lean in, the sound of your name echoes off the shell of his ear. 

When you pull away, you’re still smiling but before Joe can ask you another question, Bobby is buzzing by with a play-by-play of exactly what happened in Bobby’s world. 

You shade your eyes and peer down at the docks, “Looks like dad is almost done with the varsity. I should get down there.” You say, and Bobby turns around to talk to Shorty. “Hey. Will I see you at the party tonight?” Your hand rests on Joe’s shoulder. He prays you can’t feel his heart skip a beat. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Good. You had better save a dance for me, Joe Rantz.”

You leave him breathless, the butterflies in his stomach so vicious that he shudders. He watches you disappear down the pathway to the dock and his heart starts hammering with anticipation. You want to dance with him. You want to touch his hands, touch him. And then he remembers that you already did that, he was too focused on the motion of your lips that he’d hardly registered the sensation of your hands on his arm. Damn! What had it felt like? He’d remembered it’d made him flabbergasted and choked his speech but he couldn’t remember how the grooves in your palm felt as they brushed over his skin. The warmth of your fingertips. He curses himself out and vanishes into the locker room to get changed.

…

The dance rolls around rather too quickly and Joe is swimming in nerves. He has to tie his tie twice because he messes up so badly, he can’t even draw it tight to his neck. Roger found out all too quickly and hasn’t let Joe catch a break.

“A date with coach’s daughter. Careful Joe, Ulbrickson might throw you off the team if he catches the wrong look in your eye.” 

“Shut up, Roger, I’m not greasy like you”

“Ouch, that hurts me.”

“Clearly not enough.” Joe hisses as he finally gets his tie right. 

“Feels like I’m a father about to send his kid off to prom.” 

Joe sighs and throws on his suit coat. “Oh, please—”

“Look at you fly, shooting out of your league.” 

Roger works a smile onto Joe’s face, and they set off for the party. Spring is finally warming the campus up from a brutal winter and a few couples mull around outside. Joe and Roger find their way into the crowded gymnasium, both shocked by just how loud it is. Joe can’t even hear his own thoughts. They spot the team almost immediately, clustered around tables, drinks in their hands. A few of the boys are dancing with some lovely dames, a few are leaned against the wall having close conversations. Don is sitting by himself on a bench a few feet away from the refreshment table, watching the dance floor. Joe is turning to follow Roger towards the other boys but an arm loops through his, “Thought you weren’t going to show.” You practically shout. 

Joe can’t help but grin as you capture his attention. “You weren’t joking.”

“Not a bit, Rantz, didn’t have any other dancing plans except for this one.”

“Guess I should make it worth your wait then.” Joe leads you into the thicket of bodies.

He prides himself on the laugh you let out, “please do,” you say as he takes your hands and spins to face you.  He places his hand high on your waist and cradles the other gently in his palm. He can feel the smooth plains of you hand against his. Each crease and each callous. His are no doubt unbelievably rough from the rowing and he would feel bad but right now all he can feel are your fingers lacing through his. “You’re not half bad.” You tease. Joe knows his cheeks are heating up to a flaming red. Probably his ears too. 

His hand migrates to the small of your back as the music changes into a soft slow song. “I’ll be completely honest,” he starts, “I had no idea you were the coach’s daughter.”

“Then who else would I be?” 

“I thought you were his wife.” He looks away sheepishly, but your laughter is so unrestrained and whole that Joe’s heart melts. You can’t stop laughing either and it’s contagious. 

“You’re an engineering student, right?” Your shoes brush as you sway with him. 

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Joyce.” Joe’s heart drops. In his infatuation he’d forgotten all about her. “She was trying to hit on you, but she figured out that your attention was elsewhere.”

“You too are good friends then?”

“Just since the start of the year. We have an English class together.” You and Joe talk for a while, it forces you to be close and neither of you care to separate. Eventually, you move outside and sit with sit with Joe on the steps of the gym. It’s still chilly out and you sit close to Joe which he doesn’t mind one bit. At some point your head rests on his shoulder and you close your eyes. Joe can do nothing but stare down at you, his mouth agape. 

“Why is your heart beating so fast?” You trace his knuckles with your pointer finger.

Joe’s head pounds, his mouth dry, “This has never happened to me before.”

“None of the girls from high school? Never?”

“Not one.”

You look up at Joe and reach to smooth back a blond curl. “Shame, they were missing out.” This makes Joe smile again and he’s immensely pleased with how easily you do that to him. Make him happy. He hasn’t felt like this since… he can’t remember when. Sure, he was happy when the team won but that was different. That was pride. So was making the team. This feels more affectionate, closer to the heart. He wonders if this is what love feels like but that would be silly; he’s only known your name for a day. He’s also never been flattered quite like this. Besides Joyce, he can’t think of anyone else who’s actually been interested in him. Certainly not one who compliments him the way you do. 

People start to drain out of the gym very slowly and Joe checks his watch. “So late already?”

“Guess I should get home; my dad will be wrought with worry.” You joke and straighten out your skirt. 

“Can I walk you home?”

“I would love that.”

Joe offers you his hand, “Where does coach live?” 

“Not too far.” You accept his calloused hand and direct him off campus. Surprisingly, Joe has read the book you’re reading for English and time flies as you discuss the book. Then Joe makes a sobering comment that makes you stop and study him. 

“His parents remind me of my own.”

Joe realizes what he’s let slip, “Don’t worry about it too much. I’m okay.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

Joe presses his lips into a line and stares down at his worn shoes. A wave of self-consciousness washes over him as he realizes how ragged of a life he has lived and just how much it shows. “Well—”

“Is this why you have a hard time trusting your team?”

“Hey now,”

“Sorry.” You take his hands.

He grimaces and squeezes your soft palms. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.” 

Joe sighs and swipes a thumb across your knuckles. “My Pops just… left me one day. Told me I’d be fine on my own.” Joe gives you parts of the story. Mostly what he feels like stomaching at the moment.

When he’s finished you let go of his hands and cup his cheeks. He sinks into the touch, soaking it up like a flower budding in sunlight. You don’t say anything, you just look at him. You look at him like he’s the only thing that’s ever mattered and his heart trembles because he has never once known what it’s like to be that for someone else. And then you stand on tip toes and plant a hearty kiss on his forehead. “This is it actually,” you gesture behind you at the hosue that must be the Ulbricksons’. “I’ll see you tomorrow at practice?”

“Yeah.” The spot on his forehead that you kissed tingles. “Nowhere else I’d want to be.”

…

The Poughkeepsie Regatta rolls around all too quickly and Ulbrickson has to make a decision. The varsity boat who deserves it. Or the JV boat who could win it. His hands sweat as he stands on at that pulpit and reads off his preplanned speech. As he talks, he thinks about the future of the rowing program. The jobs it has provided him and Bolles. About how Pocock would have to find work elsewhere and it’d kill Al Ulbrickson to send him away. 

He leans into the mic and spits, “and that boat is our JV boat.” It has to be them. They have to win. Moans and groans blow his way as the crowd rejects his announcement. Regret washes over him but he cannot take this back. He has to be right about his crew. He tips his hat and hustles off the podium as the JV bursts into celebration. He has to be right.

…

Joe is more than pleased to see you on the train to Poughkeepsie. He slides into the car with you, and you chat away. You were fast friends the night of the dance and have since become closer. The kiss on the forehead still lingers sometimes, especially when Joe sees your lips form your smile. You entice him into some card games and eventually a game of chess. At some point, he decides that he needs to sleep and bids you goodnight so that he can find a train car to sleep in. But before he does, he sneaks a chaste kiss onto your knuckles. 

His good mood is stamped out the very next day when the team takes to the water. They don’t row good, and frustration starts to build. Bobby and the coaches try and get them working together, telling them that it’s just nerves and new water. But tensions rise regardless. The days start to dwindle, and the crew is getting worse and worse. 

Blame starts to turn to him, and Joe is at a loss. He doesn’t want to believe that he’s holding the team back, but he thinks back to what you said that night he walked you home. But the most awful feeling creeps over him, not an ounce of care. What’s wrong with him. This crew has been the only family he’s had in years. He needs them. But he can’t bring himself to admit it. 

Before he knows it, it slips and Ulbrickson is exiling him from the boat. As the crew watches Joe storm away, their spare crawls in and they set off for another row. Bolles taps you on the shoulder, “you had better see if you can do anything. Enlist Pocock if you have to.” Your father nods along.

You set out to find him, not that it was hard there’s not many places he can go alone. He’s stuffing his suitcase when you find him. “Don’t start.” He snaps. Then he sees your expression and his anger sours. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t—”

“Don’t give up on your team, Joe.”

“I’m not.”

“You are, you’re quitting and throwing everything you’ve worked for away.”

“Don’t, don’t even start to pretend you know me.” He realizes too late that he’s made everything so much worse and before he can fix a thing Pocock is at the door.

“I could use some help putting another coat of oil on the shell.”

You duck past Pocock and leave Joe with a painful pit of remorse in his stomach. He follows Pocock and takes the talking to straight to the heart. As he lathers on a thick coat of oil, he figures he can bargain with Ulbrickson in the morning, but he should make a proper apology to you now. He racks his brain for anything that would make it right, but he’s horrifically inexperienced and it’s crippling him now. He feels like a child having a tantrum. He feels miniscule and insignificant.

After Joe dunks his brush into the whale oil can for the last time, he figures he’d better just confront the issue head on since he has no way of handling it delicately. He has no grace and he’s sure you’re aware of this. Pocock gives him an encouraging pat and takes the can from him. Joe winds his way back to the hotel and through the halls. Your room is on the second floor, third door down. He knocks gently, eyes lingering on the hideous carpet and tacky sconces. The door swings open after a moment and Joe is met with your disapproving glower. His tongue seems to swell in his mouth so badly that he worries it’ll flop out when he tries to speak. 

“Coffee?” You ask when you realize he will stand there silently forever if you don’t let him in. 

“No… I just wanted to—to apologize.”

“Oh really.” Your eyebrow quirks.

Joe is fumbling for words. You stand aside and motion for him to step inside so you can have this discussion in privacy. “I know that was wrong to take out my frustration on you. That wasn’t fair and none of it is your fault.” He twiddles his thumbs. How does he go about this without absolutely butchering it? “I just—” As he trails off, he notices a hurt dullness in your eyes. He recognizes it as pity. “You and the crew are really all I’ve got, and I’m so scared I’m going to lose it.”

“These boys aren’t going to leave you behind unless you separate yourself from them like today.”

“I know.

“Really?”

“Pocock made sure I know.”

The edges of your lips tilt up. You pull him down onto the foot of the bed and take his hand. “Are you actually going to try and trust them?”

“Don’t have enough faith to put it in anyone else.”

You squeeze his hand and trace a finger along his jawline, sweeping a knuckle under his chin. You force his stubborn gaze to you and find nothing but desperation. Wanting things like this doesn’t come natural to Joe and it shows, but he’s not so different from the other boys in that boat. 

You reach up and fiddle with a curl, “apology accepted.” Tears pool in the corners of his eyes and he tries to choke them down. You place a hand on his chest and rest your forehead on his. His breath fans over your cheeks. The tip of his nose brushes yours. His shoulders sag inwards and he reaches for your waist. 

“Can I—may I kiss you?”

Joe’s sweetness never fails to amaze you. You cradle his face and bring him closer. “Yes, Joe.” His breath hitches and his lips finally meet yours for the very first time. He’s gentle but generous and lets you kiss him for as long as you like. His arms wrap around you fully and hold you to his chest. He gets the feeling that he’ll be craving these moments all the time now, finally understanding what Roger and Chuck rave about. He’s hooked on your lips and your weight against him and when you pull away it breaks his heart. 

“You should get cleaned up before you talk to my father, you smell like whale oil.”

...

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading this. If you'd like to request, feel free to do so. I always love you in my inbox. I hope you enjoyed this fic and if you like it please check out my masterlist for more. Have nice day.

-the author

[campingwiththecharmings]

hellooooo!! congrats on the one year anniversary<3<3

could I request “how mad would you be if i kissed you?” with poe?

(thank you for doing this event!!!!)

All Your Fault

AN: OMG IT'S A FIC-AVERSAY REQUEST!! lol Told y'all I was still gonna answer all of these! That said, I'm betting you probably don't even remember sending this lmao but I hope you can still enjoy it all the same though. Thanks for your patience 💖

(Un-beta’d)

Rated: T Words: 1,068 Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader (written with f!reader in mind but I'm pretty sure this could be read as GN. please correct me if that's wrong) Warnings: kissing, arguing...nothing else I can think of (please let me know if I missed something) AO3

——————

Commander Poe Dameron is, quite literally, the bane of your existence.  

Sure, he’s a great pilot and, okay fine, he’s not a terrible leader but, damn it if the bastard doesn’t drive you absolutely crazy with his needlessly risky plans. You’re not sure if he has a death wish or if he’s just an adrenaline junky, but what you do know is that if the storm troopers chasing you don’t kill him, you just might. 

You run down the narrow hallway of the First Order compound you’ve infiltrated, Dameron in tow, desperately searching for an escape. You spot a door, thank the Maker when it’s unlocked, and pull Dameron inside with you by the lapels of his jacket, glaring at him when he opens his mouth to complain. 

“Shut up,” you whisper harshly, pushing him against the back of the door. 

He watches you in the dim light for a moment, lips parted, breath leaving him in pants. Your eyes drop to his mouth, lingering longer than you’d like, and you wonder briefly if they’re as soft as they look, how they’d feel against yours, how they’d taste— 

Okay fine, so you’re a little attracted to him. That didn’t mean he didn’t still infuriate the hell out of you. 

The thundering of boots crescendos outside the door, (blessedly) breaking you from your staring contest with his mouth. Still pressed against Poe, you swallow thickly, your face warm as you forcibly avert your gaze. Your eyes land on his neck, and you have to ignore the sudden urge you feel to lick the bead of sweat running slowly down the side of it. 

You’re both still as the troopers pass, as if making even the tiniest movement might alert them to your presence. Poe is still breathing a little heavy, the air puffing against your cheek just another reminder of his closeness. You try to ignore it, ignore him, ignore how good his body feels against yours, how amazing he smells. In an effort to stave off the sudden urge you have to bury your face in his neck and breathe deep, you think of literally anything else: your bunkmate’s dirty socks, General Leia screaming at you, taking a blaster bolt to the shoulder— 

The sound of the troopers fades slowly and you breathe a quiet sigh of relief, backing up as much as you can in the small space.  

“That was a close one, huh?” Poe mutters, looking at you warily, as if you might attack him at any given moment. 

Your anger at him rekindles in your chest at the comment and you can’t stop yourself from punching him in the shoulder. He grunts, glaring at you half-heartedly as he rubs the spot where you hit him. 

“No, Dameron, that was stupid. Completely and utterly stupid,” you quietly scold, pointing at him in accusation. 

He scoffs, almost rolling his eyes and it sends another flare of anger through you.  

“Oh, you don’t think so?” you counter, stepping closer to him. “You think your little stunt helped us?” 

He glares at you, leaning back against the door with an annoyed look on his face. “We got what we came for, didn’t we?” 

“Yes, and we’d be out of here and on the ship right now if you’d just followed the plan.” 

“You mean followed your plan,” he mumbles almost petulantly. 

“Is that what this is about?” you ask, chuckling humorlessly as you take another step closer. “Still sore that the General went with my plan instead of yours, flyboy?” 

His jaw tightens and he moves even closer, his voice so low it’s almost a growl. “Your plan is the reason I even had to pull that ‘stunt’ in the first place, sweetheart.” 

It’s your turn to scoff now, rage flaring in your eyes as you move so close to him his chest brushes against yours. You ignore how incredible he smells, even after all the running you’ve done, ignore how good he looks this close— 

“You are unbelievable, do you know that? Absolutely unbelievable.” 

Poe opens his mouth to retort, a mischievous look in his eyes, but you cut him off by continuing, your voice a harsh whisper. “You’re reckless, hot-headed, impulsive—” 

His finger on your lips stops you, your eyes widening in both shock and rage. 

Unfortunately, you’re silent long enough for him to ask, “How mad would you be if I kissed you right now?” 

Your brow furrowing in confusion, lips parting as much as they can with his finger still pressed against them. Instinctively, your gaze falls to his mouth, eyes dragging over his plump bottom lip as your brain reminds you of all the times you’ve fantasized about a moment just like this one. You watch as the corner of his mouth quirks slightly in a smile and know you’ve somehow given him all the permission he needs. 

He leans in, spanning the meager distance between you as he pulls his hand away, tentatively pressing his lips to yours. He’s giving you a chance to push him away, you realize, to decide you don’t want this but…You do.  

You melt into him, pressing your body against his and pushing him back against the door. He groans softly, the sound going straight to your core and you wonder what else you could do to pull sounds like that from him.  

You hope he gives you a chance to find out. 

His hands cup your cheeks, holding you in place as he presses his tongue against the seam of your lips. You part them without resistance, shivering when he licks inside. The taste of him is divine, a mix of sweetness and spice and something so inherently Poe. You could spend hours, maybe even days, like this, just kissing him, enjoying the taste of him, the feel of him. Already you can’t get enough, can feel your need for him clawing at the base of your spine as your fingers plunge into his soft, dark locks.  

You’re forced to break for air, foreheads pressed together as you both try to catch your breath. 

“This isn’t over, you know,” you pant, pulling back to shoot him what you hope is a stern look. 

He chuckles breathlessly, reaching out to trace the curve of your cheek with his knuckles, his lips quirking slightly when you unconsciously lean into the touch.  

“I’d be disappointed if it was, sweetheart.”

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[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) Part 19.

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 7.8K

Warnings: oh hey, everybody likes smut, right? Good. Phone sex and swear words for grown-ups. Texting without proper spelling or punctuation.

A romance between two adults with an unspecified age difference between them, an English story that uses the word Noona for lack of another word in English that carries the same feeling, if you don’t like this, then don’t read this story.

Part 1, ….. Part 18, Part 19, Part 20

Links: Masterlist

It was the first morning in a long while that you woke up alone.

There had never been any definite decision made on which side of the bed was yours and which side was his; but Baekhyun’s side of the bed was cold.

It only took you a second to recover from the disappointment that surged through you. You’d reached a hand out to touch his skin and all that brushed over your fingertips was the flat lifeless bedspread that covered your bed.

After the disappointment came a quick judgment on your own silliness.

You’d just been with him yesterday. You ought to have had your fill of him by now, with as much of him as you’d had lately.

With the slip of your hand over the expanse beside you on this bed, your fingertips brushed higher over the soft plushness of the pillow; his pillow. He hadn’t purchased it himself, nor had he played any part in its selection yet if there was anything in this bed that belonged to that man more than you, it was this pillow.

You turned toward it, scooting yourself over the bed and feeling like an addict desperate for a fix, you turned your face into that pillow and you inhaled a deep breath through your nose and through your parted lips, desperation at its lowest point — a day after the party junkie licking every last speck of white dust left on the glass coffee table — catching the slightest, and I really do mean slightest hints of the smell of his shampoo. You inhaled again, deeper and slower this time and all hints of that fragrance vanished as if you had only imagined smelling it in the first place.

What a silly human being you were.

You rolled again, this time away from his vanishing scent, you reached for your plugged in cell phone and your hands moved of their own volition easily finding the one and only contact that sat at the very top of your most recent message history, opening his chat window and you typed out a quick message to your Assistant Byun.

‘I woke up alone and hated it.’

Your message to Baekhyun sat unread for exactly ten seconds before the status changed and your stomach fluttered to hear the tiny hopeful ticking sounds that accompanied those three rolling dots as he typed his response.

‘aww… :(‘

‘u miss me?’

‘already?’

‘i was just there last night’

‘you cant posibly miss me alredy’

‘big baby’

His responses came in rapid succession. Baekhyun texted like he talked. Rapid fire messages one after another; sometimes stream of consciousness thoughts of his with typos and most times, a complete and probably intentional disregard for spelling and punctuation. He was your favorite.

‘I even smelled your pillow :(‘ You tried out the emoji he had used, even going so far out of your comfort zone as to remove the period at the end of your sentence. Your next attempt at casual chatting with your boyfriend had you reverting to your old ways. You just couldn't do it — the shortened words and silly faces. It made you feel like an imposter.

‘I miss you. Yes, yes, I know. Already. I feel silly enough having smelled your pillow.’

‘so…’

‘did it smell like me?’

‘Not really.’

‘hehehe’

‘u miss me XD lemme see’

’Wait… what do you want to see, Baekhyun?’ It felt like such an abstract concept that you weren't quite sure what he was asking of you.

‘u’

‘u missing me’

So you leaned into it — your own little silly pity-party. You lifted your phone up, opening your camera to snap a quick selfie. Before you had a chance to scrutinize yourself too much for the obviously barely awake face that was still puffy from sleep, you sent it to him, knowing he would see your bare face and pouting expression.

You hoped he wouldn't immediately know the truth behind that dark look in your eyes that told of things like interrupted dreams of his lips and his touches; dreams that retold memories of the love-making from the night before. Memories that sent goosebumps over your skin and flooded your veins with heat and desire.

There was a noticeable silence after you sent the picture. It went on for longer than you thought was necessary. The longer the silence dragged on the more this feeling inside of your body crested and surged. It was a frustrated sort of feeling; kind of like being on the verge of a sneeze that just never came.

It wasn’t as if it was a racy picture or anything. This was just you missing him. He had asked for it and everything.

After several moments you heard a sound come from within your chat window and his dots were moving.

‘how do you do that to me?’

‘do you want me to come back?’

‘hmm?’

‘i’ll just cancel everything i have today and just come back to you’

His messages had you reeling. A hundred emotions and memories flooded you at once. The shocking way he always gave in to you. The particularly recent things he had done simply because he could not and would not say no to you. He babied you and gave into your every whim. It felt unsustainable.

‘do u need me? i’ll come’

Surely this man couldn’t keep giving into you this easily. With the memories came the tinge of guilt and slight shame you felt when certain things came back to you; like the sex in your office yesterday, but at a deeper level even something as life altering as him asking you to marry him that night. It had all started with some tiny words from you and just like that, as if the man’s head had only ever been filled with you — Baekhyun had given in so damned easily.

You couldn't be so selfish with his love. You surely couldn't take and take from him without giving back to him tenfold. Your heart wouldn’t allow it.

‘baby?’

He was busy today. He had told you about it already. He had some appointments and some things to take care of. Today was the day for him to get it all done. It was the first weekday he’d had off in such a long time; everything that he had been putting off was backed up and scheduled for today. It was important to him and it should also be important to you that the man was free to do whatever he wanted to do with his free time.

‘No, I have things to do today too. I’m just being a brat. I think waking up with you for so many days in a row has spoiled me.’

It was true. You did have things you had been neglecting. You had laundry to finish and your apartment needed cleaning. There were also some personal hygiene things you needed to take care of like shaving your legs and other similar things to get ready for the sexy dress you’d be wearing tonight. It wasn’t as if you didn’t also have things that you really ought to be doing other than guilting your sweet boyfriend into coming back into your bed just because you woke up from that dream kind of needy and desperate for the warmth of his lips.

‘just say you want me there’

’fuck it all’

‘i will come’

‘Baekhyun. Don't you dare. Didn’t you say you had important things to do today? You don't have to come over every time I complain about something. Sometimes I just need to say it outloud so I can get over it. Yes, I miss you. Yes, I love you. Yes, I just woke up from a dream about you but I’m an adult and I will take care of it. I will see you tonight at the wrap party.’

Your fingers typed out a quick paragraph and the moment you hit send you knew you had said too much. Both literally with how very long that entire message looked with the giant block of letters that practically filled up your phone screen and figuratively with all that you had revealed. You knew your suspicions were right with the incredibly long silence that took over the conversation the moment the message was sent.

He must have still been reading it. But then you saw no signs of life after the message status had changed to read.

Your eyes slid over your words once more and you felt a heat and warmth flood over the back of your neck as you read one particular bit of your embarrassing confession — the dream about him. You’d told him that you’d woken up missing him after the dream. There was only one kind of dream that could have possibly had this sort of an effect.

But where was his response? Was his long silence due to you rebuking him?

You read through the message again.

Baekhyun, don’t you dare.

Had your quick reaction been too much? Did you sound too much like an overbearing manager to him?

You don't have to come over every time I complain about something.

Nagging and admonishing. You could hear it yourself the more times you replayed the words in your own head.

Could he possibly be …upset by your words?

After a full ten minutes of staring at your screen, you had to put the phone down. The long silence had gone on for long enough to make your mood go from worried to genuinely anxious.

Another ten minutes had passed as you puttered around your bedroom trying to distract yourself with gathering occasional bits of laundry that needed attention before you heard your phone buzz.

You hadn’t been the type of woman to leap across your bedroom, plopping down hastily on your bed to reach for your buzzing telephone before. Baekhyun had changed so much about who you thought you were.

Sitting inside your text window, silent and unassuming was a voice note complete with the graphic ups and downs that represented the words he had recorded.

You pressed play, turning up the volume on your speaker so you could hear his voice.

Baekhyun was whispering.

“I nearly walked out the door. I almost left and came to you. They called my name the moment I stood up and I made eye contact — I had to go in — but baby…baby,” he dropped his whispers down even lower with the second ‘baby,’ you heard the smallest whimper turning into a whine.

This was a complaint, it seemed.

“Babyyy~” he went on again, “did you really just tell me you had a sex dream about me and you’re going to take care of it alone? You’re making me fucking crazy. How am I supposed to go on? I can’t stop thinking about it, but I really need to stop thinking about it.” His voice was speeding up. “Shit. I hear someone calling my name.” Between the whispers and the rapid speed with which he pushed the words out of his chest you had trouble actually making out what he was saying.

You could make out bits of it like, “Isweartofuckinggod,’ followed by unintelligible mumbles, then “—popaboner—teethcleaned—fuckingarrested,”

The last bit was said in a single dramatically whispered breath.

His message had you giggling and all at once whatever silly doubts you’d been feeling about your boyfriend had vanished. When the message finished playing you instantly wanted to play it again, only when your phone returned to his message window, you saw another much shorter voice message waiting for you. This one was extremely brief. You were certain he was by now, being ushered into some dental exam chair to deal with whatever internal battle he was fighting all on his own.

The second message from him sat there at only an innocuous and unassuming 7 seconds in length but it beckoned to you so intensely. You pressed play.

“Please,” he began with that same whiney begging tone you heard occasionally from him. It was a familiar sound to you at this stage in your relationship. He used it when he wanted something from you and he wanted to be particularly convincing. You couldn’t think of a single time it hadn’t worked on you. Honestly it didn’t take much from Baekhyun for you to instantly want to give him whatever he wanted. He didn't have to go so hard on the begging; even if you did really enjoy the way it made you feel inside.

His begging though…It felt somehow more desperate this time. “Please-please-please—I would give you anything. My entire fucking soul. Please take care of it and let me — oh fuck — please let me hear you do it.”

This request from him had a slow moving effect on you. At first it didn’t seem like much, but you found yourself transfixed by it. You stared at the tiny voice note with your finger hovering over the play button and before you could help yourself you pressed the button again, holding the phone up closer to your ear so you could clearly make out every stuttered breath between each word he spoke. Between each of his desperate pleas you could make out the labored in and out of the air from his lungs. You could hear the stuttered throaty groans that preceded the next words and the sounds of his begging; the way he seemed to lose control of himself entirely with the curse word that slipped in.

You knew what he wanted.

This wasn’t something you had ever done before.

How would you even manage letting go of yourself enough while also somehow recording the sounds you might make for him.

First and foremost the logistics felt like a pain. Were you supposed to record a voice message just as he had done? Was there some way to record yourself and send it back to him after you listened to yourself? Could you even reach your release knowing you were recording yourself. What about the timing of it all? You weren’t exactly a professional performer. Most of the sounds you made lately had felt entirely outside of your own control; had been pulled straight from within your chest by this very man.

Was he busy? Maybe you just could just call him.

You knew you were overthinking it, but Baekhyun had been so sweet with his request, you had a strong desire to give him what he asked for.

You rolled around on your bed, carrying your phone along for the ride feeling just a little frustrated with yourself now.

It wasn’t as if you didn’t know how to pleasure yourself. Hell, you’d spent the last year desperately single and pathetically alone; too busy with work for a relationship; too burned by the last one to have much interest in any of the men who’d approached you. When you’d finally given up on ever being touched by some other human being Baekhyun steamrolled into your life completely redefining everything you thought you had known about intimacy and sex.

It was the attention he paid to you. It was the way his eyes always bore deep into yours as he held you; as he touched you; as he filled you. He gave you everything without you having to ask. He anticipated what you wanted; he paid attention to your cues and when you didn’t give him everything silently, he straight up asked you what you wanted; sometimes with his words, sometimes with his hand pulling your own hand down to show him; until you felt yourself giving up every single little secret desire you’d ever dreamed of and at last, as the waves of overwhelming pleasure washed over you, you’d be rewarded by his sweet, self-satisfied smile as if he’d unlocked some new secret of the universe; of you, his universe. It was the vulnerability you could see inside his eyes as well.

His vulnerable raw honesty was maybe the sexiest thing about him. He was your very own open book. And the stark contrast between what he showed you and the false bravado or professional persona that he gave to everyone else in his life made you feel as if you were the chosen one. His very special very privileged precious person; the only person with whom he shared his actual true self.

The dream that had started all of this had been just as all-consuming; just as pleasurable; just as vivid. You’d been so overwhelmed lately that this man had seeped deep into your unconscious mind and even at rest, it seemed, you could not escape the magnetism of Byun Baekhyun.

Your hands were roaming over your body. You’d dropped the phone somewhere in the bed sheets. You found that your skin felt hotter under your palms. The short sleep shorts you wore left your legs bare and the silky fabric of the camisole felt smooth under your palms; your skin was flushed below the thin fabric and a pass of your hands over your breasts made your nipples below the shirt pucker and respond to the light touches of your fingers.

The rolling around on your bed landed you somewhere around his pillow and you inhaled a deep breath from the center of it. You could smell him there right in the center of the pillow. It was very slight again, just the tiniest hint of the scent of his shampoo but the smell was undeniably him. He smelled so good. Everything about this man felt so good; but your sniffing over his pillow wasn’t enough. You wanted more of him. If not here in person, you at least wanted his voice in your ear.

“I want you to listen”

“I want you to hear me”

You’d found the phone and keyed out some rapid words to him.

To hell with it all.

“but”

The status of messages quickly changed to read. There was no sign of him typing a response.

“I don’t want to just make a recording to send to you”

He was reading them as soon as you sent them.

“I want you here inside my head”

“You don’t have to speak I just want you to listen”

Your fingers had slipped down to the waistband of your shorts and you slipped your fingertips beneath the elastic of your panties as the scene played out in your head.

Him looking down at down at this phone trying to keep his face neutral for some professional who made notes about his next appointment. Smiling their friendly smile at his handsome face.

“I want to hear you breathing on the line”

“I want you to listen to me cum”

The inaudible curse under his breath as his cheeks darkened. You knew how weak he always was to you. You had first-hand knowledge of the effects you had on him. Although you’d never admit outloud how much you enjoyed playing these little games with him, you were certain he already knew. Certain social rules would also keep him from openly admitting how much he liked this as well and you fully expected a half hearted scolding from him later for teasing him like this while he was out in public.

After too long of a stretch of his silence your phone buzzed. One short buzz and then quickly followed by one more.

“5 min”

“gimme 5 min”

The first few passes of the soft pad of your index and ring fingers within your own substantial wetness had your breaths quickening. How very turned on you felt wasn’t really a surprise to you. You found yourself so attracted to him that some of your days were spent in a constantly needy state of arousal. It was a miracle you had managed to get anything else done at all. The gentle nudges against the most sensitive parts of you felt better — felt even better than anything you’d done alone before, simply because of your knowledge of what Baekhyun knew.

Baekhyun knew exactly what you were doing with those recent thoughts of him coursing through your veins; prickling your skin with goosebumps and heating your skin with desire and arousal and a steady buzzing against your bare thigh pulled your eyes open.

Baekhyun was calling.

You reached for the phone with your unoccupied hand and answered the call; pulling the phone up to your ear to listen for the moment the call connected; for when the sound in your ear brought him to you. You heard the change in audio. Sounds of the world outside of your bed. He was here now. He could hear you.

“Hi,” you let the low breathy single syllable slip off your tongue followed immediately by a quiet sharp inhale of breath. Try as you might, your breathing had already taken on a rather uneven rhythm.

“Are you the only one who can hear me?”

“Ohh…yeah-yeah. Hyung, I’m on my way out. Sorry you had to wait.” Baekhyun was talking into the phone so you could hear him, but not only for you to hear; although he did answer your question in a roundabout way. He was wearing headphones. You’ve seen him do it before; slip one wireless earphone into his ear to take a quick call.

“Good. Only you can hear me.”

The false words he spoke sounded lifted and forced, “Yeah, I’ve been good. Just trying to get out of here quickly. A-Are you close by?”

His veiled question had your eyelids closing and you felt the smile erupt on your face. You bit down on your lip and you hummed out an answer for him.

“Mhmm, I am close.” The words pushed through the airiness in your voice; giving in so easily to your arousal.

“I miss you,” you dropped your voice and whispered into the line. Out of a sense of secrecy, the words came out softer. Even the long drawn out exhale was a tiny gnat buzzing around the room.

“I want you, Baek.” There was a slow moan that built up in the back of your throat as you dipped your fingers lower, slipping one inside of yourself before you pulled up again. The journey up, your fingertips dragging slowly over the center of your clit made the sound erupt. It broke free. It made your words catch. It made them stutter. And punctuated by another soft moan, the words “I wish you were here fucking me right now” slipped up the back of your throat. “I wish this was your dick instead of my fingers.”

On the other side, you heard the tiniest whimper come from your boyfriend’s chest. The next sound was a hiss through gritted teeth and he quickly turned it into a small cough.

“Do you even realize how wet I am?”

Somewhere in the far distance a wordless voice reached your ears. Just enough for you to register the owner's gender; a young female with a polite inquiry.

You heard a hitch in his breath. You heard a helpless moan. It was extremely quick and short lived. “Mmmm,” Baekhyun oh so quietly hummed; against his will. He could not stop it. Air huffed out noisily through his nose. His soft and delicate answer pulled your lips into a satisfied grin.

That same voice as before spoke again; the tone of voice lifted up with a more insistent inquiry.

“Sorry, No. No, thank you.” Baekhyun cleared his throat noisily and you heard a few labored breaths blowing over his phone speaker, his “hooooo” trembled. He made a small blowing sound through his lips with the smallest guttural whine ghosted just under his breath and the voice asked something again.

“No-no I’m fine. I was…I was just leaving.”

Another question sounded out from much farther away now. “I’m leaving now.” His voice sounded closer to you for a second. Low and throaty and desperate around the edges. “No—no, I don’t need it.” The sound of the man shouting back over his shoulder.

A bell sounded out. A door clanked. Footsteps were moving and lungs were laboring. A curse was whispered just under his breath and repeated. The meaningless expression of wild frustration muttered through gritted teeth, ‘fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.’

“Are you still with me Baekhyun?” The high pitched whine that came out of your mouth after holding his name on your tongue for a moment that happened was out of your control. You could feel the heat just below your skin building into a fever. Your fingers felt too good with how very wet you were.

“Yes, Ma’am. I am here.” he whispered and you could hear how his lips remained parted and he breathed through his open mouth.

“I asked you a question, my love.”

A new sound echoed out. The sound of a car door opening and closing quickly. A low grunt from the back of his throat and the deep roar of a powerful sports car engine coming to life.

“My brain isn’t working right.” He was back to you. His voice was clear inside your ear and you could hear the strain to keep himself level sounding.

“What am I going to do? What the fuck — do I do? What do I do? Ohh — I’m in over my head.” He was whispering under his breath again. He was breathing quite hard all by his lonesome and the sounds of his lungs sunk hard and deep inside your eardrums, making every pass of your fingertips hit harder.

In the back of your mind, you registered the sounds of his car engine speeding up and slowing down, taking corners with a quickness and soon you heard a change as he seemed to stop driving entirely. It was nearly impossible to keep your focus through the sounds he made. Low whines, short puffs of air and complaining grunts.

Whatever motion you had been hearing from his side of the phone call quit with the next sounds from him. It was a deep throaty moan spoken in your boyfriend’s low register quickly followed by a sigh that blew air across the phone speaker and then a slower longer whiney moan. “F-Fuck, baby, what have you done to me?”

“What did I do to you, Baekhyun?” It was too much. It had already been too much for a while and you were trying to focus more on his voice than the building fire inside of your body, even going so far as to pull your hands away from yourself. You’d been too close to a climax and the burning fire spread into a burning curiosity more than a need for an immediate release. You could draw this out for a while longer. It was too much fun to end it now.

“You’ve made my dick so hard I had to pull over to jerk off. Again. Fucking — again. You make me lose my goddamn mind. You have any idea how many times I’ve had to do this because of you?”

This felt like another one of his confessions — let slip during a moment of weakness. Or given to you purposefully because he wanted you to have every single one of his secrets. This was the vulnerable man who destroyed your every inhibition; weak only to you — raw and honest and telling and unbelievably sexy as all hell.

“How many times, Baek?”

He was moaning again. It was rhythmic. The perfect pace for your fingers to slip down between your thighs again. You could not help but match the pace you heard coming from him. It felt like maybe, maybe if you closed your eyes and left your mind drift maybe it felt like he was here; here doing this to you. Making you desperate; bringing you closer.

“I didn’t — keep count. At least — hundreds. Every time — before I had to work around you and then,” there was a definite hitch in his voice, “of course, after. You had no idea. Sometimes I-In the car, right after — Sometimes other places. Once even in your office after you had left. But again and again. And over and over — more than a year.”

This was news to you. He was right; you had no idea. This man, so very affected by simply being near you that he had to deal with the arousal after every encounter. Pre-gaming sometimes, just because he knew he would have to be around you and keep his sanity intact

You recalled a moment, it felt like lifetimes ago before the kiss and the confession and the sex and the obsessive love. Back then, he’d saved you from the speeding motorbike. Back then, you’d felt it, the deep inhale he’d taken from your skin as he held you in your arms after the near death close call that nearly instantly changed into something else when he let that low moan escape. The undeniable heat you’d felt built up to intolerable levels between your bodies where they touched. You’d suspected as much at the time and now, well, you could probably publish your findings for publication. Fact checked, peer-reviewed, and proven.

“What is it about me?”

It was such a stark contrast to every other relationship you’d ever been in. Those men seemed to have a mild passing interest in you. At best, just in it for the sex; at worst, merely tolerant of you until someone else came along, not even bothering to end it with you before beginning something long lasting and meaningful with someone else… someone much better than you. Someone easier than you who worked less or had less pride than you or nagged less or who was easily satisfied in bed; didn’t expect an orgasm every single time and was perfectly happy just to fake it to satisfy a man’s ego.

But Baekhyun was in love, obsessed even, with every single detail about you. Baekhyun begged on his knees just for the chance to please you. Baekhyun was your rare diamond. You would never let him go.

“It’s You. It’s everything — everything about you. Your eyes. Your smile. Your lips.” His breaths had grown ragged. You could hear each stroke of his hand “Fuck — Your hot mouth — your wet t-tongue and ass and tits and your pretty fucking pussy and how good it feels to fuck you. Your scent — My God — your scent. I want to smell you for the rest of my life.” He was lost.

He was lost. You heard him cry out. It tipped you over the edge. The mess between your legs was so substantial you felt it dampen the bed sheets below you. Through the panties and the sleep shorts you hadn’t even bothered to remove.

You shared the oblivion with him and only him.

It felt like ages until you could speak again. After the heavy breathing settled on the other side of the line you heard sounds of movement. A quiet grunt that sounded like he might be reaching for something. You frowned down at your own state, realizing you’d have to get some more laundry done before you got ready for the wrap party tonight.

“Did you make a mess?” Your quiet question to him reflected your own state of affairs and Baekhyun responded with a tiny giggle.

“No, I keep a big box of jerk-off tissues in my car. I wasn’t always so prepared. I once had to hear, with my own ears, my car detailer mention having to break out the precision tools to get the ‘stubborn, dried-up gunk out of the all cracks in the steering wheel,’ and I knew I had to fix my life.”

You were already laughing.

“I don’t care who you are or what goddess you might be jerking-off to. Something like that changes a man.”

Your giggling blended like music with his and lasted long enough for a very recent thought to dawn on you.

“Wait a minute — In my office, Baek?” The abrupt realization interrupted your own laughter but had an opposite effect on him.

He laughed even harder.

“Baekhyun, when did you do that? Where did you do that?” Your voice had a half joking tone and half genuine concern. There wasn’t some secret stain you didn’t know about somewhere, was there?

“Well, I didn’t do it on your Official Employee Performance Review, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

His joke was unexpected and it pulled out a genuine wheezing laugh from deep within your belly. It left you cackling and struggling to catch your breath and you could hear him laughing that deeply satisfied noisy laugh that he did when he knew his joke had landed particularly well.

After the giggles settled and you were up and about within your apartment; beginning to clean up both your filthy body and your bedsheets, the time on the clock began to nag at both of you.

You knew you had taken up to much of his time. You knew he had more errands to run before he had to return home to get ready for tonight. You didn’t know the specifics but it sounded like a tight schedule.

“I’m sorry I took up so much of your time.” The apology from your lips was genuine but his response began with a dismissive scoff.

“I’ll always have time for you.”

It was a cheesy sort of line and had it come from anyone else, it would’ve had your eyes rolling; but the sincerity you heard in his voice had you squealing internally instead. You really had fallen in deep.

He inhaled to speak again, “Baby, what do you have planned for today? Just lazing around until the party?”

You were probably only imagining the judgment you heard in that word he used.

“Excuse you, Assistant Byun, I have so much to do here at my house. Do you know what happens to a home when the owner is kidnapped by her sexy boyfriend and locked up in his ivory tower for a week? I have dishes in the sink, a dirty kitchen, a filthy bathroom, a ton of laundry to do. Plus I have to somehow shower and shave my legs and do make-up and hair and get all pretty for tonight. How will I finish it all?”

He gave the occasional hum of understanding as you ranted; letting you know that he was listening to you being dramatic even if each of his hums did come further and further apart and the sounds of his big engine speeding drowned out quite a bit of the important emphasis you had placed on certain syllables for dramatic effect.

The whole thing made you huff in annoyance and you crossed your arms over your chest with an eye roll as you grumpily repeated, “lazing around…” under your breath but not soft enough that he couldn’t hear it.

You lifted your volume for the next bit. You could not help how defensive you felt for being criticized by the most privileged man in the history of privileged men. Has he ever even washed one dish in his entire life?

“Some of us have to do our own chores, you know?”

“Okay, okay. I got it. I understand. You big baby. You are very adulty and very busy and very hard-working and very responsible and not being lazy today even though you stayed in bed until ten in the morning.”

“Nine.” You were quick to correct him.

“9:55 in the morning,” he pandered.

“Nine. O. Clock.” Your emphasis on each word as a separate entity gave you a temporary spike in your blood pressure and you had to stand back a bit from the phone; holding it just a little further away from your face as you briefly considered pinching him the next time you saw him.

“Oh, are we not counting the extra hour in bed and all that transpired therein? Because, my darling, it is 10:25 right now. I am 10 minutes late to my next appointment because somebody, let’s call her Schmanager Smoona, decided that 9:05 in the morning on a Thursday was a good time to send pornographic text messages to her boyfriend —”

“I’m hanging up.” You interjected the moment there was a pause. He’d inhaled a breath to keep talking and you managed to squeak in three quick words mid-speech. But it was useless. You could tell there was no end in sight. He was complaining about being late and yet he had time for the longest speech in history about how needy and inappropriate you chose to act instead of washing your dishes like a normal person.

“— while he was in the dentist chair with a strangers glove-fingers in his mouth, tasting like latex and artificial grape flavored fluoride—”

You let out the longest sigh.

“—what happens the next time I drink grape soda? What if Fanta Grape gives me boners now? Should I seek counseling for this? Should I seek a settlement?”

You had your fingertips pressed firmly over your forehead, rubbing hard as you tried your best to keep a hold of your sanity.

“Baekhyun, didn’t you say you were already late for —-”

“Oh my God, Noona. I already told you I have to go. I don’t have time for this right now. Why are you, like, so obsessed with me? Maybe I’ll call you later. If I feel like it. Kay, byeee.”

The line went dead.

He won.

The animated voice he did quickly interrupted whatever it was that you were saying. He spoke fast and used some sort of silly accent. By the time you had any of your mind in tact to realize what was going on you heard the click and he ended the call; cutting off whatever futile response you could possibly give him.

You stared down at your blank screen in mild disbelief and before the phone could time out a single buzz alerted you to a new text message from him.

‘i love u so much. ill see u tonight. don’t look too pretty i can’t promise ill behave if u do.’

If anything has ever felt like a challenge…

If only you had less housework to do, you could manage to sneak in a trip to the salon. If only you hadn’t just added a whole extra load of laundry to your list of chores, thanks to your mid-morning phone sex adventures.

You frowned down at the fitted sheet, knowing full well that you had to wash and dry the thing separately, else you risked the danger of having it grab up everything else you threw into the machine and catch it all deep within its corners; a tangled and twisted ball of filth and moisture that would not only ensure that nothing in the load got cleaned, it would also include the added feature of keeping everything, including itself, wet and wrinkled as well.

Halfway through your sorting efforts your doorbell rang. You hadn’t been expecting anyone and it had been a while since you’d ordered anything online, so the sound came as a bit of surprise. Perhaps someone was lost?

The view through your doorbell camera gave you more mystery than answers because standing at your door were three young women, all dressed in what seemed to be white long sleeve cotton shirts and black skirts. It looked like it might be some sort of uniform. You hoped they weren’t here to talk about your soul’s eternal damnation. That ship had sailed long ago.

When you didn’t answer right away the doorbell rang again and one of them was leaning forward and speaking into the microphone.

“Excuse me, Madam Byun? We have been sent by Young Master Byun for the cleaning.”

One of them whispered to the one who was speaking.

“My apologies, Miss Madam Byun. Cleaning the whole house,” she said after conferring with her co-worker.

Unbelievable.

Your boyfriend was unreal. You felt mildly amused by this. A genuine laugh broke free from your chest and you leaned forward to press the button so you could respond.

“I didn’t order any whole-house cleaning. Thanks, anyway.”

There was some whispering amongst the three and one of them was holding a phone that she typed a few words into. The one with the phone leaned forward next to speak.

“He said,” she was leaning forward with the cell phone in her hands and she seemed to be reading directly from a conversation she was having with Baekhyun.

“tell her that you will all be fired if you don’t clean the whole house today you won’t really be fired but tell her that you will all be fired if she doesn’t let you inside to clean oh also tell her that you all have been properly vetted so anything that happens is strictly protected and insured not that I think anything will happen I’m not saying you guys will do anything you know I am not that kind of person tell me what she says after that”

She read the entire thing word for word to you. Without paraphrasing. These were your sweet boyfriend's words read without any pause for punctuation or any changes in voice inflection.

You felt as if you were having an out-of-body experience.

The man was both incredibly thoughtful and incredibly ridiculous.

You were tempted in a way you hadn’t felt in a long while. Thoughts of heading to the spa for a full body refresh filtered through your head. Thoughts of simply walking by the sink full of dishes and the piles of sorted laundry and the soap scum covered shower door and walking right out that door for some pampering led you to reach for the door and turn the handle.

When you opened the door two of the three faces smiled at you. The girl with the phone was still looking down at it. She inhaled to speak again.

”well what happened did she open the door did you tell her about being fired all three of you have a family at home tell her you have six kids each that will starve to death there are twenty one lives in her hands no that's too many she wont believe that she is very smart it is not believable for someone so young to have six kids how about two what age do people start having kids look up into her eyes and look sad and say please I have six kids or two kids whichever you think she will believe”

“Stop. Tell him it’s fine. You all can come inside and clean. Tell him we will talk about this later, though.”

Her fingers were moving and she was typing furiously as she took a few steps inside of your apartment to stand behind the other two girls carrying boxes of cleaning supplies as they looked around surveying the place.

The girl with the phone was still talking. You wished she wasn’t.

“oh good make sure to tell her this part tell her we can only talk about this in her office with some fanta grape soda tell her that period”

She looked up into your face and leaned forward as if she was revealing something vital to the meaning of the message, “he put a period at the end,” she said with a small smile.

You lifted your hands, palms facing out to stop the girl. You shook your head back and forth, “Just…don't respond to him anymore. In fact, can you block him?”

”I cannot Miss Madam Byun. He is my boss. Please accept my sincere apology.” Her expression was serious and you responded with a hopeless shrug and a laugh. At least now, she’d tucked the phone safely away inside the pocket of her apron and quit relaying his insane text messages verbatim like that.

“Is this the entire home? Is there more somewhere?” One of the girls stood at your open bedroom doorway and had turned back around to face you with this seemingly innocent, yet strangely insulting question. You noticed her first destination was to open and close a closet door on the opposite side of the living room before she peered questioningly into your bedroom, confused as to where the entrance to the rest of your enormous mansion could be.

“No, it’s just one bedroom and one bathroom.”

Her posture straightened out and her eyes flew to the other girl who was standing at the kitchen. The two girls smiled at each other.

“We will be finished in an hour, Madam Byun. Would you prefer to remain on the premises or can we lock up for you when we leave?”

You hadn’t considered that you could just…go.

You could simply leave the unsavory bits to them and just head out to the spa or salon or out for a quick stroll in the park with a to-go cup of coffee from your favorite coffee shop.

Baekhyun had just given you an amazing gift. The gift of time.

You smiled a genuine smile and let them know that you would get dressed quickly and head out for the day. They were already busy finishing up with the mess in the kitchen when you headed toward the door.

They hailed your exit with dramatic 90 degree bows and passive smiles on their faces and you shook your head as you left, catching the eye of the one you figured to be the leader on your way out with an instruction for them, using your very best authorities manager voice so they knew you meant business.

“Make sure you tell him you all worked for, at least, 4 full hours today and make sure he pays you for it. I won’t accept any less. Let me know if he gives you any trouble. I can be even more annoying than he is. Got it?”

At last, the smiles on their faces were real and pulled as wide as their surprised eyes were. You closed the door to a chorus of their cheerful farewells ready to venture out into the world on a mission now to make yourself as sexy and beautiful as humanly possible.

You were going to absolutely kill that man tonight.

Part 1, ….. Part 18, Part 19, Part 20

Can I Stay? Masterlist

[lezzballer]

Any update to your LJ story?

Do you have any fic recs involving any combination of LJ/DT/SB/PT that you've read? I'm trying to find things but get very few results since most of it's on livejournal and a lot of pages have been purged.

I have more Lauren in my notes app!

My Lauren/reader fic is actually just a Lauren/Diana fic with the reader in Diana's shoes. I know the player/reader format is more popular than player/player. So that's why I wrote it that way.

I haven't found anyone else that writes LJ/DT, DT/PT, DT/SB, or any other combination. But I do LOVE to think about every single combination of those four!

Writing is hard and I write slowly. I haven't figured out an ending for the Lauren Jackson meet cute story. But here's what I have in my notes app right now! Unedited and unfinished with no conclusion. I haven't touched this in weeks! I barely remember what I wrote here. But I'm sharing it with you because I love you for sending me asks!!!

You pick up your pace and hoof it back to campus. It's dangerously cold but you know you can make it to the gym before the cold defeats you. You've done it hundreds of times before.

...there's only one place in the world where you belong. The gym...

You take a shortcut through the woods. It's an old stoner trail that leads to the service road behind the gym. Cold slimy branches tug at your clothes and skin and hair. But all your attention is laser focused on the gnarled roots on the path ahead of you. If you sprain your ankle in the woods right before the conference tournament, Coach Auriemma will kill you.

The woods thin out and you can see the gym through the gaps between the trees. There's light pouring out from the gym windows. The janitor must still be closing up.

A branch gives your hair one last tug as you step out of the woods and onto the service road. You can't wait to get inside that gym. The thought of the ball going through the net makes your pulse quicken. You're like a junkie desperate for a fix. You pull your gym key out and unlock the back door with your shaking quivering hands. As you step into the building, the familiar sights and smells of the hallway make you feel human again. And then the sound hits you. Dribble dribble swish. There's someone in the gym already. You hurry down the hallway and peer through the glass windows on the gym doors.

Lauren Jackson is alone in your gym drilling threes. Swish, swish, swish. You stand there in awe watching her. You've never seen a post player hit threes in your life. In that moment, you realize she's the greatest player in the world.

You push open the gym doors. Lauren turns to face you. She's grinning from ear to ear.

"I thought you might need a rebounder" you say as she walks towards you.

"I do need a rebounder" she's standing in front of you now. You're tall enough to be a D1 basketball star. But Lauren absolutely towers over you. She's simply massive. And she seems a lot bigger in this gym where height matters.

She steps close to you and moves her hand towards your face. In that moment, you feel absolutely out of control. God, family, team, media, society, none of it matters to you right now. You'd throw it all away just to feel Lauren's hand on your face.

Her hand moves past your face and pulls a huge twig out of your tangled hair. She then finds a second and third twig in there and frees them from the mess on your head.

"Do you need a hair tie?" She asks. You say yes even though you have several hair ties in your jacket pocket.

She pulls a green hair tye out of her chaotic pony bun and hands it to you. The pony bun changes shape but it doesn't lose its structural integrity. She must have about 10 other hair ties in there. You tie your hair back with her green hair tie and look down at her shoes. She's wearing the same Jordans she had on at the house party but they're absolutely spotless. They look like they're fresh out of the box. And you're wearing a pair of nasty old hiking shoes.

"Let me get my shoes" you say. You dash over to the locker room, retrieve your gym shoes, and return to the court. As you're lacing up, you remember there's supposed to be some semblance of security around here. "So Lauren, how'd you get in here?" you ask.

"I stole Sue's key." That's probably a security breach of some kind.

"You know, I think you two might be the most dysfunctional teammates I've ever seen."

"Really?" Lauren laughs. "I've seen worse."

"Sue told me I'm supposed to help fix your problems."

"Well, good luck with that." She passes you the ball.

You dribble casually out on the perimeter. "So tell me. Why do you hate UConn?"

"I don't hate UConn." Lauren says, shifting her feet to keep her body between you and the basket. "I'm doing charity work for you, aren't I? I'm teaching the humble people of Connecticut about basketball."

"I think we already know a few things about basketball." You fake a pull up, drawing Lauren out to the perimeter. Then you take a huge first step and drive hard to the rim. But Lauren stays with you. Your feet are just barely ahead of hers. Her torso pushes down on your shoulder. No problem. You can finish through contact. But every step feels 100x heavier than the last. She's trying to grind you down into the court. You plant your final step and launch towards the finish. Lauren blocks your shit so hard it feels like she's ripping your shoulder clean off. She twists her hips and hits you with her body while you're still airborne. You go flying into the back wall. The tattered old padding on the wall barely softens the blow.

"You know a few things" she smirks as she stands over your crumpled body.

"I know that's a foul"

"Not in the WNBA. Not in FIBA. Not in Australia." She reaches down and pulls you up off the floor.

Well, two can play at that game. You get in a defensive stance in front of Lauren and prepare yourself to do some damage. As she steps into the paint, you launch your entire body into her. You grab her and hold her and try to pin her arms down. You foul her in every way. She still manages to get a shot up but the shot rattles off the rim.

"That's not basketball, that's rugby!" Lauren says as she pushes you off of her. She says it with a laugh but you can see a mean fire flash in her eyes.

You take the ball out to the perimeter and turn to face Lauren once again. You start your drive with another huge step. And Lauren is on you like glue, running with you. But this time you stop on a dime, step back, and hit a fadeaway midrange jumper. You make eye contact with her as the ball swishes cleanly through the net. She looks at you like she wants to kill you. It's intoxicating.

You and Lauren play a few more rounds of one-on-one but you can't get another clean shot off on her. The gap between you is more than just height. Right now, she's simply better than you. You're around the same age. But she's been playing pro since she was 16 and you've never touched a pro basketball. You start to think maybe she does have something to teach Connecticut.

You pause the one-on-one game to catch your breath. Lauren's face is slightly flushed. You can feel her eyes on you, challenging you, daring you to get beaten again. "Do you still need a rebounder?" You ask.

"Always," she replies. And just like that, the killer inside her eases back into her subconscious. The tension drops.

There's something so soothing and meditative about shooting practice. The rhythm of the ball, the focus of the shooter, the encouragement of the rebounder. Time slips away from you as you and Lauren take turns shooting.

[buzzdixonwriter]

Movies You Don’t Think Of As Christmas Movies (revised and updated for 2022)

Yeah, yeah, It's A Wonderful White Christmas Carol Story On 34th Street instantly springs to mind whenever somebody says "Christmas Movie" but here are a few you should give thought to as alternative programming for the season.

 L.A. Confidential

 The movie opens with a renegade LA cop going through his naughty list then spreading a little holiday cheer in a liquor store before answering the musical question, “Does the LAPD knows how to throw a Christmas party or what?”

 Die Hard / Lethal Weapon / Gremlins

 Oh, yeah, like you didn’t see these coming…

 On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

 The only James Bond movie with a Christmas song.

 Hell’s Heroes

 Hell's Heroes is the first sound version of The Three Godfathers, most famously filmed in 1948 with John Wayne.  Based on the novel by Peter B. Kyne, Three Godfathers has been filmed officially six times (2 silent versions, 3 talkies, 1 TV movie) and unofficially more than can be counted (see below).  Hell's Heroes is my favorite take on the tale, a story of three doomed desperadoes who sacrifice themselves to bring an infant to safety across the trackless desert. 

 Tokyo Godfathers

 So how in the world does a novel set in the American West translate into an animated feature set in 21st century Tokyo?  Very well, thank you.  The time and setting and characters have changed but it remains essentially the same story:  The desperate, the doomed, and the damned prove their humanity by saving an infant on Christmas Eve.  Highly recommended.

 The Junky’s Christmas

 Now, I know what you're thinking: You're thinking "Buzz has finally lost his pea-pickin' mind.  A story about a petty criminal drug addict trying to score a fix is his idea of a Christmas story?!?!?"

As a failed veep candidate would say:  "Hew betcha."  'Cuz The Junky's Christmas is William S. Burrough's meditation on the act of compassion even when it runs contrary to one's own self-interest.  It's the story of a jonesin' user who has the choice of feeding his addiction or helping a total stranger who needs his fix even more than he does.  Read the original short story, then watch the marvelous animated puppet film.

 Christmas On Mars

 No, this is the film where I finally lose my pea-pickin' mind.  Christmas On Mars is an indie sci-fi feature by the Oklahoma alt rock band, The Flaming Lips.  It's a clever, well made, intelligent, thoughtful, and ultimately uplifting tale of human colonists on Mars just trying to get through their daily routines without collapsing into despair and depression.

I recommend Christmas On Mars highly, but if you are among my many friends who are easily offended (and remember, if I think something might be a little iffy you can guess how far on beyond zebra it must be) take heed:  The aliens are modeled on something that's incredibly NSFW.  Santa Claus Conquers The Martiansthis ain't...

 Tangerine

 A story of two transgender Hollywood street hustlers on Christmas Eve, with everything you could want in a holiday film:  Inventively obscene language, rampant prostitution, startling displays of nudity, and horrifying-yet-hilarious street violence.

And compassion.

And loyalty.

And love.

For several characters, their Christmas ends in heartbreaking despair brought about by their own weaknesses and failings, yet in the end Tangerine focuses on the two hustlers mutual support providing them joy and peace that none of the others can know.

 © Buzz Dixon

[the-hollyday]

Jazz Bars. Undergrads.

"So New York has to be next on your list, right?"

The most notable evening in Tokyo, for myself personally anyway, was the night I went off on my own to try to find some live music. Jethro was out with our friend Sean on a Boys Night, and after a day of Sean showing us around Shibuya I was very much on the fence about whether or not I was going to get dinner somewhere in Ikebukuro and go to bed early. I was desperately tired still after all. As much as we had talked about wanting to take things as they came during the trip, Jethro and I very much became small experience junkies, and every day ended in us realizing that we had once again run ourselves flat out by accident.

"Here's a really pretty spot, and here's a spot where you can go to make yourself so overstimulated you cry in public."

I got back to the hotel room by myself just as it had started to rain; we very fortuitously planned this trip right at the exact time Typhoon Shanshan was doing his terrible thing across the island from us. So for the first week of the trip at least a small portion of each day was devoted to a rain storm with humidity like I have never experienced before. I tucked myself in to bed for the time being to bask in the air conditioning.

I thought about finding a cool spot where I could do a little more writing about the trip, but I was really unsure of restaurant and café etiquette in Japan where there seemed to be more public and restaurant courtesy rules about how long you stayed, or whether you were ordering food, or just drinks, and I was so desperate not to offend or trouble anyone. When you’re anti-establishment and anti-social at home it’s cool and rebellious, but it feels kind of hollow to be accidentally rebelling against societal expectations that you don’t even really understand. Rebel without a Comprehension. So my thoughts turned to my list of exactly two things I really wanted to do in Japan: I wanted to visit an onsen, and that was already taken care of with a Ryokan reservation in Yamanouchi later in the trip.

I also wanted to have an indoor cigarette at a live jazz bar.

I started my usual process of finding indie music venues: I googled “tokyo live music tonight”, “best live houses tokyo reddit”. Finding your niche indie show via a listicle someone wrote in 2017 is not chic or a hot tip, but it works. I scrolled in vain for around an hour, finding plenty of venues that sounded super cool, but none with shows on that evening. I resigned myself to bookmarking a show on later in the week and bringing Jethro along with me.

But all of a sudden the prospect of having spent so much money to be on the other side of the world and NOT going out somewhere that night was the most disgusting thing in the world to me. I couldn’t live with myself if my memories of this trip included Bed Rotting while Jethro was out experiencing Shibuya nightlife while catching up with his best friend. Like I was someone who was unable to conceive of fun things to do if my partner wasn’t with me. I put my boots on and decided that if there wasn't a show on that night I would at least go to the city where all the “coolest” recommended live houses were. I set off for Shimokitazawa.

I don’t read Japanese, but I assume this sign is advising me to say “fuck it” and go.

I did not know at the time that Shimokitazawa was known as a kind of “played out” tourist hub for American Hipsters who make thrifting their entire personality. And I’m really glad of that fact; I got to experience my time like I was seeing something new. Sometimes I think knowing too much can trick you out of your fun.

Anyway ironic detachment is over, and I’m something of an American hipster tourist myself.

It was raining properly now, fat rain drops running down my arms as I held up my umbrella with two hands. The compactness of Tokyo streets and buildings makes even the most mundane storefronts seem cozy and romantic at night, like you’re being held gently in the palm of the city’s hand as you’re exploring through its creases like a tiny fortune teller. Every window and doorway is a little pocket of warm light, and you don’t go long without smelling something delicious. I walked around for a bit, mostly just doing a lot of touristy marveling at buildings, how close doors were to the street, getting glimpses of everyday life inside. There was one space where you could look through ground level windows into a checkered linoleum basement peeking in on a singular man sat sprawled on a couch. I was fairly sure it was a café, and I badly wanted to go in, but the pressure of being the only other person in the establishment was too much for me. Especially when all I knew how to say was “eigo o hanasemasu ka”, which always felt like a desperate plea for forgiveness that I had not bothered to study any Japanese in the year it took to plan the trip. I moved on down the street.

Eventually I decided to get brave and walk into another bar anyway, even though it was empty. And besides, the neon sign outside proclaimed “sweet vibes”.

It was just me and two Japanese women behind the bar. I tried to suppress the feeling I was a horrible intruder and I ordered a drink (“nama biru onegaishimasu”, I knew that one at least) before getting Incredibly Brave.

“Sumimasen,” both girls looked over at me and I started to sweat even more than I already had been outside in the heat. “Eigo o hanasemasu ka?”

The one woman, wearing blonde braids, a pink t-shirt, and fantastically glittery eyeshadow, grimaced apologetically. “Chotto…”

I decided to bank on how apologetic everyone up until now had been about their perfectly adequate English. “Are there any shows on tonight around here? Live music?” I feebly mimed playing a guitar. In my mind’s eye I was simultaneously a pathetic wretch and The Coolest Girl In The World.

I got no response. The two women turned to speak to each other quietly.

For some time.

Quite long.

I had been frozen out.

I had always suspected I was Not Cool Enough and to be honest there was an amount of peace in finally knowing. I had been judged, and found wanting of that certain je ne sais quoi. I worked on my beer in silence. A bowl of curry in a warm shop sounded quite nice as well. I had just started thinking about pork cutlets when the woman with the glittery eyeshadow turned her phone to me to display my question in google translate for confirmation: “are there any music shows playing at live houses?”

I was elated. “Yes! Tonight?”

“Ahh!” The two women turned to confer with each other once more in hushed tones. Some suggestions back and forth, head shakes, “ehhhh, I don’t know” faces. Resignation. They both turned back to me and shook their heads apologetically.

“That’s okay! Thank you anyway! Arigato gozaimasu!” At that exact moment the sky opened up and it really began to pour. I picked up my drink and spun around on my stool to watch torrents of rainwater stream off the awning. The streets were completely empty.

“Sugoi”, one of the women said softly behind me.

----

I cleared out from the first bar as soon as the rain storm abated. It was time for some food. I can usually tell how drunk I’ve gotten purely by the confidence level I’m feeling, but this night I did not clock that a pint on an empty stomach had elevated me to “barge into a business that has no clear indication what it is” territory. I had walked a bit down the street to come across a black and white checker staircase that felt like it only existed in that moment I was seeing it. There was collage art all over the signage, staircase, and door, and the street sign had old bits of wire and circuit boards attached to it. But no roman characters in sight. I had the vague thought that I should bring Jethro back here to explore with me before realizing I was here, now, somewhere where I likely never would be ever again. And I wanted to go inside.

There was an English speaking European couple inside the bar when I got up to the second floor, on a date where he was explaining how interesting his photography was. I decided not to disturb them. The bartender wordlessly offered me a seat, and a menu which only had had alcohol types in English as page headlines. I flipped to the “GIN” page and pointed to the second least expensive listing

“Onegaishimasu.”

The bartender nodded and busied himself behind the bar. It took me a couple moments of staring at chandeliers made out of playing cards, multicoloured string lights, and photographs of old starlets before I realized I had ordered gin on the rocks, and not a gin cocktail. And not to be dramatic but I would have rather thrown myself down the stairs than refused the hospitality of something I had asked specifically for.

“Arigato gozaimasu.”

It was really good gin.

I paid up and came back down the stairs, truly drunk now, seeking food in earnest, and not wanting to overstay the moment. I stopped to take a last look at the bar staircase, which I was sure was going to pop out of existence the moment I turned the corner, and decided a photo was warranted. I was rewarded by having the European couple follow me down and immediately begin a romantic photoshoot on the stairs. I waited for just long enough for it to start to feel voyeuristic before deciding it wasn’t mean to be.

Food. I needed food. But also I…. heard music? I was definitely hearing music. I was hearing….

Jazz?

I listened closely past the sound of rain hitting my transparent konbini umbrella and walked down the street towards it, getting louder and louder until I was certain it was coming from another stairwell, this time painted bright red and leading down into a basement. I closed my umbrella and followed it down like my life and street cred depended on it.

Inside was a bright red basement bar with a live band. The walls were covered in peg board, and there was stepped bench seating built right up to the bar, so you had to kneel to get to bar height on the patron side. I ordered a corona (the time for trying to get fancy with the drink menu had passed) and settled in to enjoy the show.

It was everything I had hoped and dreamed. The music was hot, the vibes were youthful and laid back, the bartender was friendly. And also, there was a handful of other young English speakers at the other end of the bar. I was drunk and feeling chatty, so I tried to catch an eye to get a hand on the conversational ball.

No bites.

Between sets the bartender came over to have a chat, but we quickly found I didn’t know enough Japanese and he didn’t know enough English to make it work, so he did the next best thing:

“Where are you from?”

“Vancouver, Canada!” I said.

“Ahh, Canada!” He motioned over to the boys at the end of the bar to get their attention “America…… Canada!” And then turned and left.

I will admit, I took a bit of glee in these boys being forced to talk to me. It’s hard to explain why. I think part of it is that I have a nose for when someone thinks they’re hot shit, and I also don’t have much time for it. And there was just something about being at a small establishment like this and choosing to keep to your own so tightly that made me want to jam a proverbial knife in their clique and pry it open. If only to satisfy my own curiosity.

“Hi! I’m Holly!” The closest one to me was trapped.

“Oh hi, I’m John.” John stole a furtive look back over to his boys.

“Bartender said you’re from the states! What part?”

“Connecticut, you?”

“Vancouver, Canada.” I don’t know why it was so important to me that I continually specified Vancouver. Like anybody I talked to knew where that was*.

“Ah, cool. You traveling alone?”

“No, I’m here with my partner, we’re visiting a friend who lives here, they’re just off on a boys night.” Like I would ever answer any differently if that wasn’t the case. Hi, I’m Holly, and I’m here in Japan totally alone. Nobody is expecting me home tonight, and I don’t know how to call the police.

John was taken aback. “A ‘boys night’? Dick move, I’m sorry.”

“Wh…. no? You gotta have some time to explore on your own, right?” It was my turn to be taken aback. What was he talking about? What crime had Jethro committed in his eyes by wanting to spend some private time catching up with a friend he knew way better than I. Was the thought of couples having time to themselves on a trip…. tragic, somehow? Confused, I plowed ahead anyway, gesturing to the rest of his friend group. “You guys all travelling together?”

“Oh yeah!” John looked back at his friends again, as if willing one of them to come join him. “We all just graduated so we thought we’d take a trip together.”

“Nice, what program?”

“Computer science.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Yeah, I suppose. What do you do?”

I love talking about my work. And maybe he felt like I needed it and was putting on a show, since I had been so tragically and unceremoniously left alone by my beloved on this stormy night, but John was suitably impressed by my descriptions of assessing talent riders and hiring stage hands.

At that moment, as if the social convention prophecy of Having a Polite Conversation had finally been completed, John’s friend Quincy arrived at his side to relieve him. John immediately dipped to the bathroom and I did the entire conversation over again with Quincy, though in a slightly different order.

We had just gotten to my motives for being in Japan in the first place when John returned. I ordered a second corona.

“This is actually my first time off continent,” I explained. “I’ve been to the states a bunch, down to Mexico, but never out of North America.”

“Oh wow!” Quincy was a better conversationalist than John. Or at least new how to fake enthusiasm better. "So New York has to be next on your list, right?"

I was confused again. I’m sure New York is cool, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll be honest, it’s not even in my top five. I haven’t been to France, or Thailand, or Germany, or, or, or.

Am I exoticizing Japan to say that it is vastly incomparable to New York? Absolutely. But that’s why we travel, right? To experience new things completely foreign to us, to gain new perspectives. In New York my credit cards work, I speak the language (for the most part), and I know the intricate social differences between a bar, a pub, and a lounge.

I thought about whether I would recommend Vancouver or the rest of BC to a world traveler with the same self-assured enthusiasm. Did I think these boys should expand their horizons with Western Canada specifically? I don’t know. My limited knowledge and swiftly judgmental opinion of them told me that they were already on the other side of the planet and still thought their own back yard was the coolest place in the world.

The band started their third set with “Superstition”. I was done being chatty for the night so instead of answering I just smiled politely at Quincy before turning my attention back to the band. I’d bothered those boys enough. I finished off my last drink of the night before realizing I was missing a key part of the experience I had sought out.

I quickly located a couple at the other end of the bar with an ashtray between them. “Eigo o hanasemasu ka?”

The man leaned in so we could hear each other better. “We’re from Hong Kong!”

“Oh! Sorry!” The embarrassment didn’t last long, as it often doesn’t when you’re drunk. And besides, I had seen the very same thing happen to Sean in a conveyer belt sushi restaurant earlier that day. “Could I buy a smoke off you?”

“Oh no no, here”, he handed me a cigarette out of a pack of Seven Stars.

We chatted about travel while we smoked, they were much more excited to have someone to talk to in the bar than the Connecticut boys were. In fact, the second I lost interest in John and Quincy they had closed ranks completely and moved to the other side of the room, far away from the immense sadness and intensity of a solo feminine traveler. The couple from Hong Kong had come in on a four hour flight and were blown away by the nine hours Jethro and I had endured. They asked me if I spoke any Japanese, I was flattered by them making that assumption after hearing me clumsily ask if they spoke English in a language they didn’t know.

“Oh! No, not at all, haha!”

“Us neither! You know, ‘sumimasen’, ‘arigato’, that’s it!”

I finished the cigarette while we enjoyed the last of the set together; I was getting a bit too close to the train cutoff time.

“Thanks again!” I said, slipping my phone into my bag. “And safe travels!”

“Thank you, you too!” It felt good. Bolstered by finally feeling genuine connection I caught the bartender’s eye before pressing my hands together and giving an awkward shallow bow.

He returned the gesture and I gave a quick sweeping hand around the room before an enthusiastic thumbs up to indicate “this place is great!”

He smiled and placed a hand over his heart. I waved goodbye and climbed up the staircase into the wet night air once more.

I hadn’t thought about it since, but my walk back to the train station brought me past the little eccentric bar I had been to earlier, this time without an amorous couple in the staircase. I got my photo.

I know a guy I think would be a regular here if he were a character in a Tim Burton movie.

When I got back to the hotel room Jethro had walked in seconds before me. He was carrying a fat bag of konbini snacks, so enthusiastic about our synchronized arrivals, and absolutely soaked to the bone.

“How did you stay so dry!?”

“How did you get so wet!?”

We hung up his clothes (and passport) to dry overnight and tucked into bed with the food to trade stories about our evenings.

“I’ve never met a Quincy before”, Jethro mused.

“Nor I. Until now I suppose. Maybe they’re only in Connecticut.”

----

*There was one person who knew exactly where I was from: a bartender at an “Irish” pub who upon hearing “Vancouver” beamed and gestured to my nose ring “ah Vancouver! I could tell!”

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

So I don't know how in-depth this is, but I will try.

Edit: Wow, this turned long. It is an ESSAY! Okay, all information under cut.

Spoilers for THE ENTIRE MAGNUS ARCHIVES below. Read at your own risk.

First: What the heck are the Fears?

Gerry's example of the Fears being like colors is the best way to understand them, IMHO. There are a lot of shades we might call "blue," even though they're wildly varied. Robin's Egg and Navy are both BLUE.

So Robert Smirke essentially created modern day color theory/fear theory by codifying these colors/fears into fourteen broad categories (e.g. "hunt").

A little like Neil Gaiman's American Gods, wherein belief in a thing creates the thing, these Fears are responsive to the human condition, mutating when human fears do. They exist whether we want them to or not.

Since each Fear is, lives on, feasts on a specific kind of response from living beings, those Fears do their best to get living beings to give that response.

This includes the ability to take some humans who respond well to fear (adrenaline junkies, etc.) and basically make them agents to cause more fear.

So, example: the Hunt is a fear that began in animals, and very much still exists there, as well as in humans. With this fear, if you resonate with it at all, you will either find yourself hunted (prey, chased, desperately needing escape), or a hunter (the one DOING the chasing, unrelenting pursuit, most often to kill, but sometimes just to chase and cause that fear).

So far, so good? On we go.

The Fourteen Fears

The Buried: fear of small spaces, suffocation and drowning, being buried alive or compressed, being crushed by the weight of life itself (hello, capitalism), being trapped without enough space. This can be physical - stuck in a box without room to stretch out your legs. It can also be metaphorical - Sam, from season 5, who felt the crushing weight of his job and bureaucracy and bills and a life where he could never get ahead and never get free.

The Corruption: fear of disease, filth, rot, feeling disgust, feeling revulsion. Jane Prentiss is a perfect example. Being FILLED WITH HOLES out of which worms come wriggling, which can then attack and infect other people to become filled with holes and worms? WTF that's horrifying. But it also expresses itself in people like John Amherst, who was a walking plague blanket, literally infecting people with super!gangrene.

The Dark: a fear of what the unseen, a fear of something just out of sight - a fear of losing sight, not just physically, but mentally finding one's thoughts shuttered. It's one of the simplest fears, and somewhat childlike, but powerful because of that. This is everything from monsters under the bed to the fear of a sound in a dark alley, when you can't see what's in there, what might be after you. Epitome: the blanket never did anything. Holy fuck.

The Desolation: this is destruction. Loss. This is the ruination of everything for no reason than to watch it burn. This is emotional and physical; Jude was devastating people's financial lives before she ever got hold of fire. It's about inflicting loss through complete destruction, the fear of that loss ruining one's life.

The End: the fear of death. Of things coming to an inescapable conclusion. Of inevitability. This one is interesting because, unlike the rest, it IS unavoidable. It manifests as loads of dead things like zombies, and has at least one spooky avatar that plays dice with people to ensure they cannot die - which is a twisted way to learn to be afraid of death and cause that fear in other people.

The Eye: paranoia, the fear of being watched, the fear of being exposed and judged, the fear of not knowing something - which, weirdly, is identity-shattering. On the fear side, MAG 60 nails this one with that horrible words, "BEHIND YOU." Nothing quite like feeling something is watching you, is there? On the avatar side, Jon is actually a perfect example of this fear; even when it threatened to destroy him, he could not stop seeking for answers. Not knowing was, to him, worse than any other fate.

The Flesh: this is about the fear of viscera, being food, of blood and bones, of twisted blood and bones, physical mutilation and manipulation. Tom Haan and Jared Hopworth show the variety in this weird and gristly fear; Haan was a believer, relating it all to religious history, and he tried to do a ritual with a big old pit and just truck-loads of meat. Jared, on the other hand, uses it as he needs and gets jobs out of it, and also makes his body what he wants it to be, causing fear with his size, strength, and what he can do to YOUR flesh and bones.

The Hunt: the fear of being chased, of being prey, which dehumanizes you, which strips you of your rights and your identity and makes you an object to be used. It's fairly horrifying, though the Hunt avatars honestly seem to have more fun than anybody else. Which makes sense; it's like a game from their end. You chase stuff. You don't actually want to catch it - it happens, but then it's less fun. This is why their ritual, the Everchase, actually never worked. Why end it? The pursuit is too fun.

The Lonely: the fear of isolation, of being cut off, disconnected, resulting in manifestations like empty rooms, and crowds of faceless people with whom you have NOTHING in common, and cannot even communicate. Often associated with depression, this is one of the crueler fears (IMHO) because, unlike many of them, it involves INTENTIONALLY placing victims within the Lonely's grasp. (Contrast to the Hunt, which is focused on the chase and prey is incidental, or the Eye, which burns for knowledge and often doesn't even realize whom it's hurt). Peter Lukas is a perfect example. He became an avatar when, one night, some guy dared to smile at him, and Peter damned him to isolation forever because of it.

The Slaughter: this is fear of mindless, senseless violence; whenever you've seen a murder or terrorist attack that was so fucking pointless, or the devastation of war that killed people who didn't deserve it - that was this fear. This has to do with the fact that you could be targeted and killed for NO REASON AT ALL. Horrifying; and it's where Melanie was headed, thanks to that bullet. It took her genuine, honest, justified rage against unjust people, and turned it into something random against anyone without warning.

The Spiral: this is the fear of losing one's mind, of madness, of being unable to trust one's own senses or reason. The fear that your own mind is lying to you is horrible; if you cannot trust your perception or thoughts, what can you trust? Nothing, because even if someone tries to help you, you won't perceive it right. Illusions are big with this fear, along with hallucinations. The Spiral targeted Father Burroughs (MAG 19, 20) because the man's CERTAINTY in his own faith and understanding made him absolutely delightful to twist. Falling into doubt regarding his own perception filled him with constant, weighty fear.

The Stranger: this is the fear of the unknown - the uncanny and unfamiliar. The sense that something is not right, but you cannot put your finger on it. Spooky mannequins are perfect for this, as well as clowns. The key difference with this fear is it (unlike the Spiral) depends on you NOT knowing things, rather than knowing and doubting. It's a terrifying, unnameable thing, impossible to define; the fear of looking at your own body parts and not knowing what they're called, the fear of no longer knowing your name or who you are. Not fully dissimilar to a fear of dementia.

The Vast: the fear of insignificance, of enormous heights and open spaces, of deep water so big that you are lost. So this can manifest as fear of an impossibly huge being, or of space with stars too distant to see, or of falling in forever-sky without ever landing. In this fear, you are reduced to pointlessness; which is something some people love (e.g. Simon Fairchild), but for others, it ruins all their life, all their effort, and renders everything they've ever done meaningless.

The Web: this is the fear of being controlled, trapped, without true control over one's life. The fear that nothing you do is actually your choice, but part of some grand scheme you cannot ever escape. It's another one that could be comforting (there might be a point to all the pointless things, after all) or horrifying (do I actually make decisions at all, or were they all ordained, or nature-only, inevitable and chemical reactions).

(Honorary mention) the Extinction: an interesting concept, embodying the fear of destruction of nature, ruination of the world, extinction of humanity (not as in the End, or the Hunt), and being replaced by something that came after us, inheriting the world we destroyed. It's the fear that we are damning ourselves.

OKAY! So how does all this play into the Magnus Archives?

The concept of TMA, with this background, is pretty simple. The avatars (those sold out to their fears, who love the terror and adrenaline rush) each hate having to SHARE the world's fear with other entities.

They would like to perform a ritual that brings THEIR Fear into the world, crossing whatever inter-dimensional boundary keeps them at a distance. When that happens, the Fear in question will literally rewrite the world so that ALL fear belongs to them.

However, no one's been able to pull it off, even though there's evidence that folks have been trying since the Indus Valley days.

There's a very good reason why.

You may have noticed there's a lot of overlap between Fears. Not all of them, of course - some contradict each other keenly. But many are connected.

Jonah Magnus actually figured that out.

It's implied Gertrude did, too, though I'm inclined to think (given that she was not THAT in tune with the Eye) that she did so because her manager/boss/watcher/whatever the hell Elias is did first.

Elias realized that because the Fears are connected (like the circle of fifths!), it was actually impossible to bring ONE Fear into the world.

That connection with the others would rubber-band that sucker right back outside the gate before it got too close.

And since Jonah himself is terrified of death (the End), and had long suspected SOMEBODY would pull off a ritual some day and take over the world, he was determined not to suffer in whatever was coming.

The only way not to suffer was to be the ruler of that new world. To be the one who brought the Fear (later, Fears) in, and thus benefit, instead of being a victim.

However, in order to call all fourteen, you'd have to be MARKED by all fourteen.

Jonah is a coward, and was too afraid to do this to himself.

It's damned near impossible. People just don't survive that. It's heavily implied that it's rare to even see someone marked by more than one - the Fears tend to be territorial over the people they've chosen. (E.g. Father Burroughs - the Desolation was not allowed to mark him in MAG 19 because the Spiral already had.)

Well... the Web (being brilliant) also knew that someday, someone would succeed, bringing in all fourteen fears coming at once.

The Web did not want this. She likes the world the way it is, easily manipulated - and therefore, the Fear in charge would have to come into power in such a stupid way that it could be undone.

The Web chose Jonathan Sims, when he was just a child.

The Web ensured they marked him early, and guided his path to make sure he was exactly the kind of person needed to make this happen (MAG 197).

They ensured Jon ended up with Elias Bouchard/Jonah, whose drive to be the king bastard ensured Jon continued to be marked.

It took a LOT to keep Jon from dying in the process of all this.

And - I think it's clear, given all this - the Web fully planned for Jon to have to go out the way he did in order to end the Eyepocalypse.

The web had an opening to another world on Hill Top Road, a world in which there was no apocalypse at all. The plan was to use the tape recorders and Jon's voice (think about that for a moment) to sort of lure all the Fears after them, into the pit, and away.

To do this, someone would have to kill Elias.

CASUALLY put aside is the fact that (though Jon SAID IT) the moment Jonah died, Jon would be put in Jonah's place. That was inevitable.

HOWEVER, if Jon and Martin really grasped that fact, that Jon's sacrifice was necessary (if he was here, the tether wasn't cut, and they'd follow HIS VOICE, so he had to go with the tape recorders), they wouldn't have been willing to go back to the Panopticon and do what was necessary.

Thus: the Web dangled the idea that they could do it with just tape recorders, sending the Fears away.

The Web did this knowing that Jon was depressed as all hell, absolutely burdened with guilt for the whole world, and didn't want to make some other universe suffer, too.

The Web did this knowing that Martin loved him enough to take that last step and stab him, which not many people would do - which not many people would even have stuck around to do.

It had to happen the way it did. All the pieces then fell into place, and the tape recorders went into the pit, and Jon went into the pit, and the Fears went into the pit to another world, freeing this one.

And inflicting the whole mess on another, which is implied to be ours because we "found" the tapes. However, delightfully, it's left unclear; Somewhere Else could be real, and could be good, and there could be a happy ending.

Doubtful, but it could be. It's the beautiful kind of tragedy, inevitable and yet just a little bit unsure.

And that's the story of the Magnus Archives, genuinely one of the best tragedies I've ever encountered, brilliantly written and acted, and... I think I'm gonna go listen again.

Does anyone want to explain the tma entities in depth so I will finally understand what the fuck is going on in the whole podcast?

[lucy-sky]

Monsters in the Dark (vampire!Braxton Wolff x f!Reader)

You were attacked and stabbed on your way from work, and Braxton saves you... But at what cost...

Warnings: vampire AU; mentions of blood, injury and violence - it’s a rather dark story comparing to my usual stuff; hurt/comfort; The Reader just became a vampire and it’s quite overwhelming for her; smut - rather rough sex against the wall; Brax calling you “sweetheart” A LOT with different intonations... probably too much, but I couldn’t help it :’)

Words: 2872; gifs by me; AO3 link if you prefer reading there

A/N: Well fuck... I’m really scared to ruin your expectations, so I worked a lot on this one :’) The Reader goes through a rollercoaster of emotions, but... I just think if I were her I'd feel about the same, really. And Brax, well... When I look at him I can't decide if I want to punch or to snog him, or both, so yeah... :’) The story includes a bit of Braxton's POV just because I wanted to give him a bit more depth and show that he's pretty much capable to have feelings too. I didn't want to make him too nice though, hope I managed. I also apologize for using the same cliche phrases when I write sex scenes - in my head everything looks really hot, but sometimes I have problems describing it :’)

By the time Braxton appears with a fresh portion of donor blood, your hunger is practically unbearable. You’ve never dealt with hard drugs… Hell, you don’t even smoke, but now you think you know exactly how drug addicts feel. You have no idea where he got the blood packs, or if it’s legal or not, but you don’t care one bit, as you practically tear it from his hands.

When the hunger is finally satisfied, all of a sudden you feel disgusted and scared of yourself, as the realization hits you: if there was a human being in front of you instead of the blood pack, you could easily rip their throat. What kind of a monster have you become?..

It was your typical working night. You closed the bar at about 1 a.m. and headed to your car, like you always did.

Everything happened very fast.

The man looked like a hobo, or more like a junkie. He appeared from behind the dark corner and gripped onto your bag in a desperate attempt to snatch it out of your hands. Instinctively, you pulled the bag back, and that’s when a sharp pain spiked through your side, somewhere beneath your ribs. You gasped, knees quaking, as you fell down on the pavement. Looking down at your body, you saw that your white t-shirt is slowly turning dark red. You were bleeding.

The knife fell on the ground near you - the man who stabbed you, was apparently shocked by his own impulsive act. The next second he turned to run away from the crime scene. You anxiously rummaged your eyes around, hoping he dropped your bag in panic so that you could reach for your phone… Of course he didn’t. You tried to get up, but your legs betrayed you, pain hitting you again at the attempt to move.

What happened next reminded you of horror movies. You saw how a tall dark figure blocked the junkie’s way. You heard his stifled cry followed by a crunching sound - and the body fell on the ground.

You wanted to scream but your throat went dry and you couldn’t utter a sound. Paralized with fear, you watched the stranger coming closer. But when he crouched down in front of you, you realized his face was familiar. You saw this handsome dark-haired man in your bar way too often. Sometimes you even allowed yourself to casually flirt with him, which he obviously didn’t mind. The man frowned, his brown eyes examining you carefully.

“Please…” you rasped, desperately grabbing hold of his coat, “Help me… please!..”

“Sh, sh, sh… You’re gonna be alright,” he hushed, his voice strangely soothing.

“You’re gonna be alright, I promise you that.”

You drop the empty pack on the floor and stare at your hands. There’s blood on them, and there are also stains of blood on the huge Brax’s t-shirt you had to borrow because yours is ruined. Everything is like a fever dream, and you can’t believe this is your life now and you can do nothing about it.

“You could say thank you, you know… Like a good girl.”

Snapping out of your stupor, you realize he’s been watching you. Brax’s dark eyes lock with yours and his lips curl into a smirk. It takes a huge effort from you not to slap him.

“I didn’t ask you to do this to me,” you say instead, not even trying to hide the anger in your voice.

“Right. So you'd prefer to die than, huh?”

“It’s not the fucking Interview with the Vampire, Braxton!” You’re yelling at him now, unable to hold yourself together any longer. “You could have taken me to the hospital, or called an ambulance, or…”

“Or you’d bleed to death before getting to that hospital. You had no chance, sweetheart. I’m your lifesaver, no matter if you admit it or not,” he snarls.

“Lifesaver? Bullshit! You’re a monster, Brax! I saw what you did to that guy…”

“So now you feel sorry for that piece of shit?! Bet he didn’t feel sorry when he stabbed you! The bastard got what he deserved.”

“It’s not about him and what he deserved, it’s about you! You killed him just like that, without blinking an eye, you… You’re a monster, and you made me a monster too!”

“Hey, don’t you make me a fucking villain, okay? I’m the reason you’re here, not lying on that pavement in the puddle of blood.”

“Well maybe that wouldʼve been for the best! Because I don’t wanna live like that, I-I simply can’t…” You trail off, breathing heavily.

“Easy there, girl,” Braxton steps closer, reaching out to put his hand on your shoulder. “You’re shaking…”

“Don’t fucking touch me,” you hiss, jerking away from him. “I hate you so much, you have no idea.”

With this, you turn on your heels and storm out of the room. You feel like you’re about to sob, and you don’t want him to see you crying.

Braxton watches her disappearing in the bedroom, door slamming shut behind her.

“She just needs some time,” he thinks as he walks to the kitchen to put the rest of the blood packs in the fridge. It’s all too much, of course she’s overwhelmed. He should really be more patient with her. The poor girl didn’t deserve any of this. Especially being stabbed by some piece of scum who tried to steal her bag to buy another load. Son of a bitch. Brax was too disgusted to drink this junkie’s blood, so he simply broke his neck in one swift motion. The bastard barely managed to scream.

Taking off his coat, he sits down on the couch, closes his eyes, leaning his head against the backrest.

She’s a nice girl.

Brax has always been a loner, and he was okay with it. He never had problems finding a woman to spend the night with, if he needed to satisfy his sexual needs. He got pretty much used to being on his own. But this girl… There’s something different about her, something he can’t quite catch, but for some reason she, for once, made him really feel something. An odd, forgotten feeling, somewhere from the past, from his previous life. When he still was human.

That night he could drink her up - he actually was tempted to. Her smell was truly intoxicating. But when she looked at him, begging for help, it hit him - he didn’t want to let her go.

Brax has always been a loner, and he thought he was okay with it. But when he met her, something changed deep inside him. Made him softer. Because when he thinks about what happened, what he did to her, he feels something he hasn't felt for ages - a pang of guilt.

He wasn’t completely honest with her. Maybe she actually had a chance to survive. A rather slim chance, but still. Maybe he could really manage to bring her to the hospital alive if he was fast enough, or at least he could try… No, that night he didn’t even think about it, driven by his selfish desire not to be alone, now that he suddenly got this opportunity.

He shakes his head, chasing away this thought. Guilty or not, it already doesn’t matter. What’s done is done, and there’s no way back. He did that to her, and he’s responsible for her now.

He has to make it up to her.

When you hear him knocking at the door, you don’t answer, but he enters anyway.

“Hey.”

You don’t even turn to look at him as he sits down on the opposite side of the bed, his back turned to yours.

“You alright?”

From all the possible questions he chose the dumbest one.

“How do you think?” You mutter under your breath, quickly wiping your tears as you stand up and take a step towards the window. Braxton lives not that far from your bar, which is definitely not the friendliest neighborhood. But the last rays of setting sun make the gray apartment buildings look warmer, soften their shapes, and the view is surprisingly peaceful. Crossing your arms over your chest, you let out a deep sigh. How the hell are you supposed to be alright? Will you ever be?..

“Look uh… I’m sorry, okay?” He says after a pause. The bed creaks softly as he gets up to approach you at the window. He stands right behind you now.

“I know it’s real hard, I’ve been there… It’s too much for you, I understand.”

You can feel his hand on your shoulder again, but don’t move away this time. After that outburst you’ve just had, all you feel right now is emptiness, and you desperately need some comfort.

“I don’t wanna fight.”

Braxton sounds concerned. Maybe he really cares for you? He could have killed you after all. In fact, he could have killed you the night you first met if he wanted to - you would be an easy target, because well… You can’t deny it - you sort of had a crush on him. So if he asked you out, you most certainly wouldn’t say no.

He could have killed you and drunk up your blood, but he chose to save you instead… What if he’s right and it was the only way?.. And even if it wasn't, does it matter now? You have to find a way to live with it somehow, and you don’t want to take this journey alone.

“Me neither,” you reply quietly.

“It gets better. Promise,” he says as he nuzzles into the crook of your neck, making you shiver at the sensation.

“Better? Really?” You finally turn to face him. “I feel like I’m losing my mind, Brax! This hunger… It’s driving me mad. What if… What if I kill someone? I’m… I’m scared I-” Your voice breaks on the verge of panic.

“Shh… not gonna happen, sweetheart, look at me,” his hand cups your jaw, thumb brushing gently to wipe away the tear from your cheek. “You’ll learn to control it soon. I’ll help. You don’t have to kill anyone to survive. Trust me, okay?..”

And probably you shouldn’t, but when you look into his deep brown eyes, you really want to trust him. It’s crazy how just about a half an hour ago you felt like you hated him with every fiber of your being, and yet…

You need something to hold onto. Or someone. Simply to stay sane.

“Okay,” you whisper, nodding slowly.

“Attagirl, there you go.”

He pulls you a bit closer, pressing his lips against your forehead. You close your eyes and lean into his touch, filled with sudden tenderness you didn’t expect from him. He kisses your cheek, still damp with tears, before drawing back, his gaze trailing down to your lips.

“You uh… Got some blood right there.”

Braxton leans in, and you gasp in surprise when you feel his tongue at the corner of your mouth. You thought the vampires are supposed to be cold, and yet the touch of his lips is surprisingly warm and pleasant. He pulls away for a split second, his eyes searching for yours, silently asking for permission, and then his lips are back on yours. You melt into the kiss, shivers running down your spine as his tongue slowly explores your mouth.

Your fingers instinctively tangle into his hair, pulling him even closer, and he hums in approval, kissing you deeper, more and more urgently. Another gasp escapes you when he suddenly pins you against the nearest wall, seizing your wrists above your head. His lips are now trailing down your jaw, to the side of your neck. When he reaches two small, already barely visible scars, he traces them with the tip of his tongue.

You’re completely at his mercy right now, and the memory from last night instantly pops up in your head - the moment his fangs sank into the delicate skin of your neck. At that moment you didn’t feel scared any longer. You felt a rush of adrenaline, something close to sexual arousal, sharp pain mixed with pleasure to the point of euphoria… Something you’ve never experienced before.

You let out a soft moan, feeling the heat rising up in the pit of your belly, your hips bucking involuntary in search for some pressure and friction to relieve your sudden aching need.

“You like that, huh?”

His voice is hoarse, eyes dark with lust, and there’s this cheeky smirk on his face again. He looks dangerous, and yet so incredibly attractive.

“Yes,” you breathe out, earning another hungry kiss from him. Braxton’s free hand reaches to wrap around your throat as he kisses you. He doesn’t choke you, but the grip is firm enough, and this gesture of possession sends another spark of arousal through you.

It’s so unlike you, but this man… He evokes something feral, something primal and animalistic deep inside of you, and right now you don’t care how well or how long you know him, or if he’s good or bad… You just want him to ruin you.

“Love the way my shirt looks on you.”

Letting go of your throat, his hand slides down your body, snaking underneath the t-shirt to squeeze your breast.

“Brax!..” you moan out his name.

“What do you want, sweetheart?” He rasps against your ear “Tell me.”

“You… I want you,” You whisper breathlessly.

“Gotta be more precise, darlin’.”

“I… I want you inside me… I want you to fuck me, Brax!”

“Good girl.”

Braxton releases your wrists from his tight grip to quickly unzip your jeans and yank them down together with your panties. On shaky legs you step out of them when they slide down to your feet, and instantly reach the buckle of his belt. He tugs his jumper over his head and tosses it away, while you manage to undo his pants.

“Open your legs for me, sweetheart.”

Pressing you against the wall again, he urges you to bend your knee and pulls your leg over his hip. You bite your lip, breath hitching somewhere in the back of your throat, when he lets his deft fingers slip between your folds, groaning into the crook of your neck at the wetness he finds there. A shameless whimper escapes your mouth when he starts rubbing your clit in fast circles, and Brax muffles your moans with another sloppy kiss.

He brings you to the very edge like this, but doesn’t let you fall over it, and you almost whine in frustration as he smirks at you, licking his fingers clean.

“Attagirl. You ready?”

“Want me to beg?” You ask back defiantly. He chuckles at your boldness.

“Not this time, darlin’.”

With this, he seizes your hips, lifting you up. You grip onto his shoulders, clinging to him as he gives his cock a couple of pumps before finally slamming inside you with a hard thrust, letting out a low grunt. You gasp at the sudden sensation of fullness, but he doesn’t even give you a chance to adjust, setting a rough, punishing pace. You hold onto him for dear life, scratching his back and his broad shoulders, obscene moans falling from your lips every time he hits that spot deep inside you which makes your back arch and your toes curl. Pleasure coils in your lower belly, pulsing and throbbing, threatening to burst.

“Come on, sweetheart, give it to me.”

When his thumb presses against your clit, you lose it. The climax hits you like an explosion, so intense your vision turns blurry as your muscles clench around him and you dig your nails even deeper into his skin. Brax is quick to follow. A few more thrusts and he spills inside of you, a deep groan rumbling in his chest. You lean your head against the wall, completely blissed out. Brax’s face is buried into the crook of your neck as he holds you close, both of you panting heavily, trying to catch your breath.

When your breathing is finally back to normal, you let your fingers run through his dark curls absentmindedly. Braxton makes a content hum at your caress, and for some reason your heart flutters with a sudden surge of tenderness towards him. It surprises you how fast you went from hating him to something like this. It’s weird, but you can’t help it.

Then you notice the scratches you left on his shoulders and upper back. Carefully, you start tracing them with your fingers, causing him to shiver slightly at your touch.

“Sorry for this,” you blurt, and he lets out a breathless laugh.

“Don’t be. We heal up way faster than uh… Humans.”

This phrase brings you back to reality.

“Brax?”

“Yeah?”

“Look at me.”

He tilts his head up reluctantly, meeting your gaze.

“You’re not gonna leave me, are you? I mean… I don’t wanna go through this alone. Don’t think I can…” There’s a slight tremble in your voice, but he cuts you off, pressing his lips to yours.

“I ain't gonna leave you, sweetheart. Told you, you’re gonna be alright. I might be a monster, but I do keep my promises.”

Thank you for reading!

Yes, I know, there's bed in the room and they fuck against the wall... I have no idea how it happened, but it just happened, don't ask :')))

tags: @darlingshane, @anna-hawk, @sweetieswiftie, @skvatnavle, @fictionalnerdery, @anaaaispunk (i mean... you tag me, i tag you... let’s call it a fic exchange :D), @slavic-empress​ because it’s her birthday and i don’t have a better present xD

[golddaggers]

midnight rendezvous

pairing: louis tomlinson x f!reader

warnings: filthy smut with hints of fluffness. period sex. petnames. him calling you baby doll. defo nsfw +18, so my dudes, read carefully.

a/n: it's your renegade writer back with her fantasies. i've written this a while back and though it'd be such a shame to share. if you do like it, make sure to reblog and like. thanks and enjoy *wink* leth x

word count: 3k+

xx

It’s just a bit past midnight when I park home, no one wandering the streets, or children playing about, there’s just the chilled breeze fumbling with the leaves. I don’t notice a second car on the driveway until I’m up close, I blame the dim yellow streetlights and my exhaustion. It had been a particularly busy shift at the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to sleep for about two days straight.

The cold crisp air makes me tremble for a split second, but I am soon welcomed by the warmth of the inside. I kicked off my sneakers, trying to be as silent as possible, I didn’t want to wake him up. A second car meant Louis had come home and he must be tired, it had been weeks since he had a break, we hadn’t seen each other for even longer. The weekends he happened to be around, I couldn’t work my schedule to spend them at home with him. It sucked, and I missed him more than I could put it into words.

A frustrated sigh slips while I walk to the kitchen, filling up a glass of water. After so many years, I should be used to it: the busy schedule, the months spent apart. I’m not, though. And being honest, I don’t think it’s possible to not be in pain when waking up to an empty bed beside me, to not hear the soft humming when he’s doing the dishes, to not miss the press of his lips on mine. I just wanted us to buy a bunch of lands somewhere, live a quiet, happy life, have children, and grow old. Just the two of us.

This was something I would never tell him. Robbing him of his passions wasn’t on my mind. I knew he’d oblige if I did say so. If I asked him, but I couldn't.

I leave a half-drunk glass behind, and go upstairs, taking off my plain white shirt then unbuttoning my jeans. Before I got to the bedroom, however, I froze, strangled sounds coming from there startling me for a second. It's followed by a smile creeping in, I’m very much aware, and familiar, with them.

The door isn’t closed, so I peek in. I see him naked, sheets pooled by his feet, and one hand wrapped around himself, moving up and down with ease, his thumb applying just enough pressure. I feel my mouth watering at the sight, a cramp twisting my belly. Desire gathers quickly, I was so touch-starved that I might as well come undone just by watching him get himself off.

His eyes are closed, thin lips parted. I slide off my pants, throwing both them, and my shirt away, walking inside in just my black lingerie. Even that was starting to be uncomfortable.

“Lou?” I call him, standing with crossed arms. He’s quick to drop everything, shooting me a wide, surprised glare. “Sorry, didn’t mean to spoil your good time.”

I’m half-joking at this point.

“I thought you’d only be home in t’ mornin’,” Deep blue eyes, sparked with lust, stare up at me. I'm very aware of how much I want to be near him again. “C’mere.”

He pats the space on his right side, it’s mesmerizing how quickly he can go from a sex god to a warm loving man. I go, but I don’t stay beside him, instead, I take my seat on his lap, which makes him laugh, rough hands on my waist, squeezing the flesh. I shift, uncomfortable, feeling him beneath me. So hard, so ready. It’s been so long I might just assume I'm a virgin all over again, shamefully responsive to anything he might do to me.

Louis leans in, planting a kiss just between the curve of my breasts. The prickle of his bead makes my pulse rise. It’s the intimacy that gets me hooked. He feels like coming home. A warmth that springs from the tip of my toes to my head, flushes my cheeks, and makes my forehead sweaty.

A “missed ya” whispered on my skin makes me shake, he then kisses the soft spot where the shoulder meets the neck, I let out a groan, moving, seeking friction. His smirk is taunting, both hands going up to my cheeks, four eyes meeting in the middle of a tired night.

“What now?” I say, unsure, panting as his thumb toys with my lips, pushing inside for a moment.

“Do you want a shower first?” He asks, staring at me, a boyish smile on his face.

“I should. I’m disgusting.”

“Nonsense,” The tip of his nose is pressed to my cheek, a ghostly kiss left behind on my jaw. “You look amazing anyway. Why d'ya think I’m so worked up?”

“Were you thinking of me? Getting yourself off imagining my hands around you? My spit and my lips, hmm?”

Louis pants when I grind down on him, slick with the throb of him against me. The fabric of my panties still forbids me from knowing his skin on mine, from sinking and swallowing him whole.

“Yeah, I was. Always think abou' ya', love.”

“I think about you too,” The friction makes me lean forward, sighing against his warm neck. “Nights get so lonely… I miss you so much, you know.”

“Darling…”

“Mmhm, I have to touch myself, grab my boobs,” I place his hands on them, and he squeezes, promptly. Fills his hands. It’s swollen, sore even. I’m burning up.

“Do you say my name when you come?” Louis asks, quietly, sucking a patch of skin. I’ve got goosebumps, I’m reeling from the build-up.

“I do. Over and over and over,” The room feels warmer if that's possible. Sweat drips down my back. I’m aware as to why I’m so sensitive, besides the yearning when it’s been months since he last touched me, my period heightens things up.

For a moment there, I almost forgot it.

“Can I just fuck you now, doll?” It’s a hoarse whisper, I clench in frustration. I’m hot, nearly suffocating. “Want t’ feel yeh so bad.”

His accent thickens, I’m lost, too into the moment to think coherently. I go for his lips, kissing him with passion, biting down on his bottom lip, still moving my hips, rolling against his. He pushes back, groaning into my mouth. It’s sinful. Everything about him is.

“Can’t, sweets,” It slips out, breathlessly. “‘M bloody down there.”

He smiles, soothing, hands firm on my hips. My stomach somersaults, it’s amazing how Louis manages to make me feel 17 every time he gives me that gorgeous smile of his. I feel like one of his groupies.

“Never cared ‘bout that before. C’mon, help me out.”

“Lou…” A strangled noise followed. I’m reaching a point where pleasure mixes with pain, I’m too aroused, too sensitive. He touches me there, trained fingers light to not hurt me but enough to stir me on. “You’re trying to bribe me, aren’t you?”

“Am I getting there?” The double entendre makes me chuckle, nodding. “Good. Let me take those off, hmm?”

“Come,” I untangle myself from him, the cold, empty feeling brings a pang to my lower belly. “If we’re doing this, let’s do it in the shower.”

I slide off my panties, tossing them at him. Louis laughs wholeheartedly, balling it in his hand while kicking the sheets away to follow me into our bathroom.

It’s bright, with mirrors everywhere. My hair looks an absolute mess, strands falling down my shoulders, I’ve got flushed cheeks, and glistening skin, perspiration all over. Five minutes with him just does that to you. He looks impressive from behind me, his brown hair was thrown back, wide blue eyes staring right at me from the reflection. I can see the extension of his tattoos, the tanned skin from being under the sun a little too long last weekend.

Louis is a sight for sore eyes.

We exchange a look then smile. The kind of intimacy that only comes when you love someone, beyond passion, beyond attraction.

He undoes the clasp of my bra. I sigh in relief, gasping when his hands cup my boobs, pinching my oversensitive nipples. I can’t help but toss my head back, resting it on his shoulder. He’s good at this, playing with me, edging me out.

“Missed them even more,” Louis expresses, a half-smile on his face. “You’ve got the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.”

“You know you’re probably the only man on earth that can get away with saying stuff like that, right?” We share a laugh. “Turn the water on, sweets, yeah? I need to take the tampon off.”

While he busies himself with getting things ready, I put my leg up on the toilet and gently pull it out, being careful not to spill any blood on the floor. I’m mentally grateful it’s not an extra heavy day. I wrap it up in toilet paper and toss it in the bin.

“Water is warm, baby,” Steam starts to fog up the room. “Come.”

“I hope I will.” I wink at him. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so cheeky.

“Don’t tease me,” Lust soaks up his voice, eyes stern. He’d punish me for sure. When I wasn’t expecting him to do so. When we weren’t so desperate for each other. Whenever he’s back home, there’s no games, just tension relief.

He goes in, standing beneath the shower rain, his back facing me. I look at his ass, all perky and round. It’s no secret that I got a thing for it, and I might’ve bitten it a few… hundred times. Whenever I get the chance, really. I grab them, squeezing the muscle, a hoarse laugh falling from his lips. Louis thinks it’s silly, doesn’t see how it’s so great.

We kiss, then. In a brief moment, he spins and pulls me in, tongue rolling ‘round with mine. It’s wet, crude even. I make sounds that would mistake me for a pornstar, groaning when his tip brushes where I’m aching with need. He pulls my hair back, exposing my neck to him, sucking and biting. Leaving behind bruises I’ll have trouble covering. The adrenaline high doesn’t let me focus on that, though.

His hand slides between us, lodging between my legs, his palm pressing my pulsating clit. I call out for him, squeezing his shoulders, whimpering. Just this faint touch sends me into overdrive. It’s borderline ridiculous. How good he is. Or how much I want him. How I crave for him like a junkie craves a fix. It’s the trip of a lifetime when he’s inside me.

I go for his dick, so painfully hard it could cut right through me. There’s something about watching his eyes snap close, or how he moans, but I wobble, my breathing going fitful. He says my name, pressing his soft lips to my forehead, still rubbing me out. My hand seems smaller when it’s wrapped around the width of him. Louis feels heavy and scorching hot.

“I want to do something,” I whisper, high on the pleasure he was giving me. “Would you let me?”

“I want to fuck you, darling,” It’s raw, doesn’t sound dirty, more like a pleading question. “Please let me, hmm? I want to fill you up. Watch it drip down out of you. My pretty baby with cum all over her legs.”

A pained whimper comes out.

The tip of his fingers are stained red, they never really slipped inside me, just circling, creating a build-up that leaves me in discomfort. It’s unusual how much time we are taking with this, at this point, we would’ve fucked about three times already. Either way, I like it. The glint in his eyes, eyes that I adore. Diamond beauties staring down at me, so full of desire. It’s powerful. To know you have such an effect on a man like him.

I place him in the tight space between my thighs, both of us groaning with the stronger contact. I’m dripping and it’s not just blood, he’s thrumming, hips sloppily jerking forward. I feel him almost in me, but not quite. I scream, I’m sure our neighbours would make complaints. I don’t find it in me to care. It's way too heavenly.

Tattooed hands land on each of my love handles, our bodies are almost one at this point. That’s when he lifts my leg, we both can’t do any more foreplay, no more waiting. I help him inside, a little bit of blood gushing before he’s deep within. It takes a while for me to get used to him again, two months can be enough for things to shrink back up.

“God, your cunt is so fucking tight,” He mumbles, out-of-worldly. “You’re gonna make me come and I barely even started.”

“And you’re so fucking big, gonna split me open,” I shoot back, gripping tight on his forearm, trying to balance myself as he starts to pound, slowly at first. “Fuck, baby. This is so good.”

“Tell me who can make you feel so good, baby doll,” A particular hard snap of his hips makes me sway on my step, but his iron grip steadies me. “Use your words. I want to know.”

“You!” It’s a desperate squeal, I feel full, he stretches me to a burning point. Pain mixing with pleasure. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell me I’ll have trouble sitting down tomorrow. “You, baby.”

Louis lifts my other leg, both on the crook of his arms, and presses me against the tiled wall of our bathroom. His teeth clamp around my nipple, biting, sucking. I feel dizzy with the torrential rain of emotions. The water keeps falling on us, warm. It splashes when he thrusts.

None of us is lasting longer. I wasn’t particularly known to do so, not when he was the one handling me anyway. Some people are just skilled. Just know how to push somebody else’s buttons. And Louis knew how to push mine. He knew how to push me into the fucking edge. Coax a string of orgasms out of me if he so wanted. With his fingers, with his tongue, with his dick.

I moan, one hand tugging the hair at the nape of his neck and the other going to where our bodies met. It’s a fucking sight. Watching him go in then out of me. I start rubbing myself.

“You have to be quieter,” He says, our foreheads glued together, still slamming into me like I’m his favourite rag doll. “We don’t need people calling the police.”

“It’s your fault,” My reply is followed by a curse word. “Giving it to me so good like that.”

“Mmhm,” Dark blue looks at me, I can feel him getting sloppier. It’s close.

In urgency, he kisses me, I’m too frail, too putty in his hands. A numbness starts on the tip of my toes, it makes my eyes roll back, I can’t even voice anything anymore, entirely surrendered to him. To the vulnerability of this moment. Being his as much as he’s mine.

Time stands still whenever I’m with him. And right now, I can’t even keep track of it, too lost in him. That’s why I don’t know how long it took, it could’ve been seconds or minutes or hours. But I broke. Went up screaming. Barely registering he was telling me to shush, that it was too late in the night to be so loud. If that was what he was saying at all.

I’m shuddering, that I can tell with conviction, convulsing. That doesn’t happen often. I mean, it’s always fucking good, but like this, like I’m on something, that’s exceptional. At one point, he growls, squeezing me tighter. His hips stutter, face squashed against my chest. He spends himself inside me, as it was promised. I’m beyond satisfied, I’m in a state of bliss no one can reach me. Where the world doesn’t exist, only him.

Louis stays in for a while longer, nuzzling between my breasts, I play with his hair, a bubbly smile on my face. No high higher than this. He helps me down, I don’t trust my feet, clinging to him like a child. A chuckle falls from his lips.

“That good, huh?”

I just nod.

“I’ll help you clean up.”

With a sponge and a bit of liquid soap, Louis rubs down my body, taking his time to bubble me up. I’m still sensitive to touch, I have to pull his hand away when he tries to touch me down there, where I’m probably red and still swollen. I can feel the burn. Good burn, though.

When we both finish cleaning ourselves up, we step out of the shower. He still has a protective hand around my waistline. I wince at the thought of moving away, but I have to, I can tell I’m one second shy of making a mess on the floor.

He fetches us towels while I go deal with the bloody problem. Pun intended. I clean the dripping blood mixed with cum on my thighs, and when I look up, deep blue is fixed on me. As if entranced.

“What?”

“You just look hot.”

A little laugh slips.

“Thanks. You don’t look so bad,” I groan, it’s still sore-ish when I slide the tampon in. “You really did a number on me.”

“Eh, who’s counting?”

Louis winks, helping me up, I’m still weak on the legs. There’s no need to get dressed, so we wrap ourselves under the sheets, our sopping hair making stains on the pillows.

It’s so painfully intimate.

“I love you,” I whisper, half-asleep, minutes later.

“I love you more.”

His voice is the last sound I hear before I drift to the first night of sleep where I feel full, happy, and satiated. Slept like a queen, his arms wrapped around my waist, cheek pressed to my back. I was on my little piece of heaven and no one could ever snap me out.

[beskar-cowboy]

Stolen Goods

Part 1 of the Nowhere Girl Series 

Summary: The Mandalorian is sent to capture you, he finds the task more complicated than expected. Maybe you two can help each other out. (9.4k words) read on ao3 here

Pairing: The Mandalorian x f!reader

Warnings: NSFW, slightly dub-con for a moment but they both want it i promise, smut, canon typical violence, enemies to lovers, blood, hurt/comfort, a dislocated shoulder, PIV sex, rough sex, dirty talk OBVIOUSLY, major praise kink, fingering, age difference (not specified), me making a bunch of shit up, this takes place right before Episode 1 so no baby

A/N - this was supposed to be really rough hate fucking with Mando but it just turned into him endlessly praising you…. idk what happened but enjoy <3

The Mandalorian is pissed.

He’s worked with Karga for a while now, known him for years. He knows sometimes things get quiet, that there’s slim pickings for the more than eager bounty hunters who will pick up anything and anyone - just like him - for desperate credits.

But this? This was a new low. Even for Karga.

Up and coming Coruscant senator, Karga had informed the Mandalorian, she’s on the run from the Imps.

Mando had rolled his eyes underneath his helmet as he was filled in on details of the only puck Karga had for him. Ridiculous, sounded like a babysitting gig.

“Oh come on, don’t give me that look.” Karga huffed, rolling his own eyes at the emotionless beskar helmet.

The Mandalorian said nothing.

“Look, it’s a job, you want it or not?”

A waste of his fucking time was what it was.

Karga huffed again and removed the puck from the tabe but Mando was faster, his gloved hand slamming it back down and gripping it into his palm.

“This is all you have?” The Mandalorian pushed, voice weary through the vocoder.

Karga nodded solemnly. Mando tilted his helmet at the Guild leader, annoyed and unimpressed.

The man scoffed, he seemed amused, “Think she’ll be easy?”

“A kid who’s runaway from home… I’m not a babysitting service-”

“No one’s been able to track her down. I’ve got multiple pucks on her and no one’s come back for months. I’m running low on bounty hunters.” Karga nearly chuckled.

The Mandalorian felt his adrenaline spike. He needed a challenge, it wasn’t a hunt if it wasn’t a challenge.

“She’s no easy feat, Mando. She’s wanted for armed robbery, embezzelment and suspected murder. She’s a slippery one” He sighed, running a hand down his face in astonishment, a devilish smirk pulling at his lips, like he couldn’t help but be impressed.

Now that’s what piqued Mando’s interest.

You’re dangerous. It’s always more fun when they’re dangerous. It’s more of a challenge, it’s more rewarding.

The Mandalorian had been craving a challenge. Meaningless bounty after the other, cowards, pathetic con men, easy takedowns. All of it, it was becoming mind numbing.

He missed the tracking, the spying, the surveying, the chase.

The Mandalorian is pissed.

And that’s how he found himself here - fuming, chasing after some kid, the tracking fob lead him all the way to you.

You’re on Sriluur, one of the most grimy, crime infested planets in the system. Seems like a pretty obvious place to look, almost too obvious.

What would a wanted bounty be doing herer? Then again, nearly everyone on this forsaken planet is probably a wanted bounty somewhere, by someone. 

Maybe this is a very calculated move, hiding out amongst a never ending crowd of lowlifes and criminals, you just blend in, become faceless in a way.

But you, you couldn’t be more obvious even if you tried.

Mando finds you in a cantina: grimy, dingy, damp and dark. He’s confused, to say the least. You…. you don’t belong here.

There’s no way that you’re the one he’s chasing, the one he’s hunting, the one accused of robbery, embezzelment, suspected murder, on the run from the fucking Imps. The tracking fob went berserk when it landed on you, he had thought it was broken because there was no way it was you.

A runaway from Coruscant, an up and coming senator.

That all makes sense now that Mando’s looking at you. You fit the part, you’re clearly young, beautiful, fucking beautiful - Mando stays on that thought for a while, trying to make sense of it, make sense of you.

Why are you doing this? What do you have to gain, what are you running from?

You stand out from everyone here on this fucking planet, you’re a light amongst black holes, how do you not immediatetly make yourself a target?

He watches you for the most part of the afternoon from a dark corner of the cantina. He wonders what, or who, you’re waiting for. You’re armed - heavily armed for someone your size - like Karga said you’d be. Two blasters and some sort of rifle slung over one of your shoulders, three daggers and a vibroblade stashed in your jacket, all probably stolen, Mando decides.

Your eyes shine bright like suns, like jewels, glossy even in the low light of the cantina, they shine with something Mando knows too well: some sort of emptiness, bitterness, the need for something no one will give you, something you have to take yourself.

Two men step into the bar, they spot you before you spot them, Mando clocks. His heart rate picks up and he keeps his hand over his blaster, watching you, watching them. They sit themselves down at a table across the cantina from you.

The air shifts, it becomes too quiet and heavy with unsaid potential and Mando can’t be the one to move first, he’ll ruin whatever it is that’s building right now.

A blaster goes off.

One of the men falls face first onto the table he’s sat at - shot through the stomach, a singeing red, burning hole left on his lower half from underneath the table.

Things seem to move in slow motion: you rise from your corner, blaster outstretched towards the now lone man, him rushing towards the back entrance. Mando follows behind you as you chase after the man, shouting out at him, shouting out a name, one Mando doesn’t recognize and he feels so out of place.

He stays near the doorway, watching as you corral the man out in the alleyway, in plain daylight and hold him at gunpoint.

The good thing about being on a planet like Sriluur is that no one bats an eye at street violence, no one’s going to snitch on a good alley fight.

You cuff him almost too easily, knocking him to the ground with an easy kick of the leg. You’re good, clean and swift - Mando guesses you have to be since you’ve been on the run for so long.

It also doesn’t hurt that you’re stupidly pretty, he can’t help but think.

“Where’s the loading dock?” You interrogate the man, blaster pressed to the back of his head as your boot stomps him into the ground, hands cuffed behind his back.

Your voice goes straight to Mando’s belly igniting something akin to a volcanic eruption or a swarm of butterflies - which one, he’s not sure but fuck did you sound sweet. To sweet to be so fucking fierce.

“Y-You won’t reach it before the shipment.” The man groans, face grimaced in pain as you press into his back harder, jamming the nozzle of the blaster into his neck.

“Where is it?” You grit from behind clenched teeth, cocking the gun. The man quivers, lip trembling as he tries to wriggle out of your grip but you’ve got him right where you want him.

“Out- out west! Past the badlands, into the desert but you won’t make it on foot-”

Like an idiot, Mando’s tracking fob slips from his pocket and both the man and you snap your heads in his direction, like he interrupted some sort of performance.

Your eyes land on the tracking fob before Mando can say anything, your blaster goes off and the man’s head thuds against the ground, dark syrupy blood pouring out from the back of his skull.

You got what you needed, so you make a run for it.

The Mandalorian calls after you but you bolt quickly down the alleyway, making as many sharp turns as possible to throw him off. You run with no particular direction, no set route in mind. You’ll head west once you’re sure he’s gone but you have to lose him first.

A Mandalorian, you can’t believe they sent a fucking Mandalorian after you.

You whiz down the streets of the criminal planet, pushing past vendors, scammers and junkies alike, trying to lose yourself in the crowd. You’re quite good at it actually, making a run for it, losing a hunter, but he’s got a tracking fob. That’ll be a challenge.

Glancing behind you, you see no shiny helmet bouncing through the crowd, you don’t want to be so bold to assume you’ve already lost him so you keep running. You decide to run towards your speeder, if you can’t out run him you can definitely gain some distance between the two of you this way.

Looking around you, you situate yourself, trying to figure out which way to run in order to make it to your speeder as quickly as possible and out run the fucking Mandalorian.

It must be a few blocks down, you run further south into the downtown area, knowing you hid it in an alleyway near a picked over fruit stand.

You’re close, you’re so close to your bike, just a few more blocks.

You round another corner, searching your pockets for your keys and that’s when he smashes into you, knocking you to the ground.

Pain radiates through your body from the impact of unforgiving beskar, your ears ring and your eyes go blurry.

You reach for your vibroblade, managing to knock his helmet with your elbow in the process. The Mandalorian goes down and you roll yourself over, trying to disarm him only to find that he holds neither a blaster nor cuffs.

What?

Was he not after you? Was he not just hunting you down?

Your lapse of confusion breaks your concentration and he manages to pin you down, rolling you over and pinning your hands above your head as he sits himself on your chest. The wind is nearly knocked out of you as he crushes you into the dirt with his weight, stars fog your vision as a headache sets in, ears possibly bleeding. You feel like you’ve been hit with a gong.

“W-Who sent you?” You try to ask, voice fuzzy as your head pounds. You can barely focus on him, on the intimidating T shape of his visor as he pears down at you from above.

You should be terrified, you should be trying to push him off of you but you don’t feel threatened. He’s unarmed. You're still trying to figure out why.

Mando has a moment to take you in now, realizing that Karga was right; you really are young. Not that young just, younger than him and sparkling in the daylight where he can see all of you now.

Your face, your eyes, perfect eyebrows, a scar on your cheek that Mando finds himself wanting to touch. You’re pretty and... dirty. Gritty. Like you coated yourself in something in order to fit in better amongst the scum here.

“Doesn’t matter.” He grunts, easy up his hold on you once he realizes he’s practically smothering you.

You groan, eyes squinting, the sun suddenly seeming harsher now, hurting your eyes. Your vision slowly comes back, things aren't as blurry and you’re overwhelmed by how close he is.

“Why are you doing this?” The Mandalorian asks.

You don’t know what he means by ‘this’, so you grunt and push him off of you, he lets you, rolling off to the side. You’re dizzy as you stand up, trying to find your footing and shooting the Mandalorian and more than confused glare. What the fuck is he trying to pull right now?

You both know he’s here for you, he’s literally got your tracking fob beeping on his holster.

But he’s not cuffing you, he’s not threatening you. You’re both just… starring. At each other.

Maybe it’s a moment of recognition, acknowledging whatever it is that’s going on here. He’s after you, but he’s… not? You should be the one asking questions.

You let your hand slide up over your shoulder, reaching for your rifle but you’re stopped short by a flashing bright pain in your shoulder. You wince, hissing and bringing your arm back down to your side.

You give the Mandalorian a daggering glare before you turn to inspect your bike, checking to make sure nothing’s been stolen from your satchel which you stupidly left slung over the back while you were in the cantina.

Fuck, he really had slammed into you, hadn’t he? He came at you full speed, knocking you down to the ground with his entire body weight and then fucking sitting on you, like an idiot. He hadn’t necessarily meant to do that, he’s not quite sure why he feels so bad but, he does.

“Why are you running away from Coruscant?” He presses and you roll your eyes, even though your back is turned on him now, trying to ignore the late onset pain searing through your shoulder.

You stay silent, just focusing on making sure everything’s in your bag so that you can head out to the -

“What loading dock are you looking for?”

You whip around towards the Mandalorian, hand on your smaller blaster, prepared to pull it on him.

“What do you know about the loading dock?” You seethe.

The Mandalorian keeps a steady watch on your hand, twitching over your blaster. He raises his hands in surrender. Maker, you’re jumpy.

“Nothing more than you do.”

You fling your blaster from your holster, finger on the safety trigger and aim it at the heavily armoured Mandalorian.

You mentally curse yourself, how ironic would it be if your blaster fire ricocheted off of his arm and came back at you.

Better have good aim then. You flick it over that spot near his belly, where the armour separates. Maybe you should shoot him in the arm, get him back for what feels like a dislocated shoulder.

Even Mando can notice how your arm hangs heavy by your side, how you hold back from moving it too much, your balance nearly thrown off due to the now useless limb. That needs to be popped back into place.

“Who are you?” You seethe, trying to get him to focus, take you seriously.

“I just want to help.” He speaks softly, voice coming out low from his vocoder. Maybe it would sound nicer if you weren’t on the verge of shooting him.

You roll your eyes, switching off your safety and cocking your blaster. “Better think of something fast, shiny.”

“I can help you get there. I-I can help you reach the dock.”

That piques your interest. Fine, you’ll humor him.

“I’m fine with my speeder-”

“It’s broken.”

What?

You squint in the Mandalorian’s direction, not quite believing him and not wanting to take your eyes off of him to inspect your speeder.

“How do you know it's broken?”

The Mandalorian can’t help but grin underneath his helmet. You take his silence as your answer and you growl something incoherent, chucking your blaster onto the dirt and turning around to inspect your bike.

Mando had managed to track your speeder down before he found you in the cantina. He saw you pull up on it and followed your dark figure into the city before he even got a good look at you, just trusting the fob.

He took out your engine, destroyed it, you see pieces of it now scattered amongst the alley. You kick the now useless speeder, much like your useless arm. Was he trying to take you down slowly? Break you apart piece by piece like a slow and easy kill? He’s toying with you.

“I have a ship.” The Mandalorian speaks, breaking the tense silence.

You turn to face him again, he leans against the opposite side of the narrow alley. “What’s in it for you?”

The Mandalorian says nothing, he keeps his visor trained on you but he nervously fiddles with his own fingers.

“What do you gain from helping me? Aren’t I just a bount-”

“I have a feeling I’m after the wrong person.”

Oh?

“Bold of you to assume.” You scoff, nearly laughing at him but you don’t want to waste this opportunity. It’s not everyday you’re offered the services of a Mandalorian. You’re just not sure if you can trust him yet.

“Tell me what you’re after.” He presses again.

You’re reluctant to talk. Opening up isn’t your… speciality, so to say. Especially not with strangers. Especially not strangers who have a fucking tracking fob on you.

Fuck. You don’t see how you have any other options right now. A broken speeder and a useless arm, you realize it’s this guy or nothing.

You groan something frustrated and slightly pained. “Fine. I’ll fill you in on the way, shiny.”

//

You were born into it, as most people are on Coruscant.

Born to a cold, unforgiving family focused on politics and appearances. You were always going to become a senator or something of the sort, you had informed Mando.

None of the kids had a choice and no one cared to do anything about it, no one cared to change things, help the planets that were being robbed and forgotten about. So you had decided to do something about it.

You broke free a few years ago and have been robbing from the Imperials ever since. They have these fancy, luxurious, expensive getaway houses and cottages all across the galaxy and you follow them like bread crumbs on a trail.

The cottages usually indicate some sort of side business, the Imperials leaving their families to go on a ‘business vacation’ - which really means illegal government shit, obviously.

Planets which house their cottages also house their loading docks, outposts, trading posts, anything that helps them keep the wealth in this incognito backtrade, away from the official systems and taxes, just continuously fueling the 1%.

But you, you’d been stealing from them. You infiltrate the loading docks and outposts, you reroute the goods to the planets and communities that the corrupt government forgets about, like Sorgan, Kashyyyk and Endor to name a few. You make sure they get what they need, what the higher ups try to keep for themselves.

You steal it from them and redistribute it equally, fairly - leaving none for those in Coruscant.

He doesn’t feel sorry for you; you’ve had nothing but privilege your whole life, you chose to leave it, to fight for something. You took it upon yourself to stand up and fight the only life you’ve ever known.

He doesn’t feel sorry for you, but Maker are you good.

You have a purpose, something to fight for, something that drives you every single day. Something you care about. That’s not something a lot of people can say they have, definitely  not some criminal on Sriluur, or even a bounty hunter like him.

No wonder the Imps are after you. You’re killing men left and right with such ease it seems. You’re fucking good to have been on the run for this long, to be this successful.

Mando’s just thankful he didn’t turn you into them with what limited information Karga gave him. It’s a good thing you’re pretty.

“Not everyone can be a mindless cog in the machine, one piece breaks loose and the whole thing falls apart.” You explain while you and the Mandalorian trek through the cool, dark and seemingly never ending desert of Sriluur.

You had told him that you couldn’t fly too close to the loading dock. They’re armed, they have men on the lookout, radars searching for ships flying overhead. You had said they would see you coming from a mile away, way before you would even see them.

So Mando landed the ship quite a distance aways, just outside of the Badlands. You would have to walk the rest of the way, through the night so that you make it there in the early morning.

“I realized it was either going to be me or someone else who was going to have to make the first move, and I was tired of waiting for something to happen so I just… I just ran.” You shrug, as best as you can with your fucked up shoulder but you wince at the dull pain.

You’d been walking for hours now, and your arm was only hurting more and more. Mando would have to do something before you reached the dock, there was no way you’d be able to fight, or even shoot, in this condition.

“Let me look at yo-” The Mandalorian reaches out to you but you jerk away from him, grimacing again at the dull pain which radiates throughout the heavy limb.

“I’m fine.” You groan, supporting your arm with your other one, trying to hold up the dead weight.

“You’re not.”

You groan. He’s right, you know it. You know he is but you don’t want to go through with having a stranger pop your arm back into place.

Weighing your options, you come up on a dead desert tree and you quickly lean your weight on the dead and hollow bark, trying to calm yourself down and breathe through your nose.

“I can help.” He offers, hands twitching near his sides.

You glare at him, look him up and down as he slowly approaches you. You say nothing, he takes this as confirmation.

Gently, the Mandalorian takes your forearm into his gloved hands, taking some of the dead weight for you and you sigh a bit at the relief.

“You ever done this before?” You ask, trying to make small talk and distract from the way he’s touching you so preciously, how close he’s standing to you. Whatever, whatever, whatever, this is totally fine.

“Nope.” Great.

Mando can see the fear in your eyes, the fear of the sudden pain that’ll come with snapping your arm back into its socket, the fear that he might fuck it up. He knows you don’t trust him, he knows you’re letting your guard down for this, to let him help you. He thinks you’re brave for that.

So he takes off his gloves.

And you watch in a mix of amazement and shock at the tanned and calloused skin which is slowly revealed to you. “H-Hey isn’t that not allow-”

“Shut up.” The Mandalorian grunts, voice deep and gravely and regrettably making your stomach flutter. You swallow your protests and let him do what he needs to do.

He inspects your arm and you let him, somewhat losing yourself to the touch of another, skin on skin - his warm and weathered hands on your hot flesh. It feels good, a nice contrast to how he body slammed you earlier today.

The Mandalorian sighs. “Mando.”

“What?”

“My name, call me Mando.” He tells you, visor trained heavily on you, gauging your every reaction.

“O-Okay.” You gulp, unable to look away from the pitch black, intimidating T of his visor. You didn’t realize how close he was to you, you think you can hear him breathing under that helmet of his.

“Let me hear you say it.” His hands wrap around your bicep, testing the muscle it seems and your face burns at his tone, how deep his voice has gotten.  

“M-MandOH!” He jerks your arm upwards right as you say his name and he watches your face twist in pain. That fucker. He was trying to distract you and it worked.

“Okay, okay- is it in?” You ask as a sweat breaks out on your hairline from the pain, your body quickly overheating as you breathe heavily.

“No.” Mando answers. You’re about to go off on him when he continues, “Y-You’ll have to take your shirt off… I can’t see the muscles like this.”

“You’re kidding me.” You groan, eyes closing tight as you try to calm yourself down, your mind growing heavy.

You can’t believe this is fucking happening, this day is not going at all how you planned. Regardless, you use your still intact arm to reach for the hem of your shirt and pull it over your torso as much as you can before the pain from your other arm stops you with a pained moan.

“Here-”

Mando moves closer and nearly pins you to the tree, grabbing the hem of your shirt into his hand and gently pulling it the rest of the way, careful to remove it from your injured arm before he tosses it over his shoulder so it doesn’t get covered in sand.

Mando doesn’t look - he swears he doesn’t…. Until he does.

His burnt red breast plate is nearly grazing against your chest, barely covered by the thin material of your bra.

Your chest heaves with pain laced breaths, your body trying to regulate something to get anything under control again. The curves of your breasts shine with sweat, you glimmer in the moonlight and Mando finds himself wanting more and more to put you at ease, to lick you, taste you, clean you of your sweat with his own tongue - you pretty, young thing.

His head is getting foggy, he needs to focus on the task at hand but that isn’t so easy when the task is you.

Mando looks up to find your eyes growing heavy, your body growing tired with exertion and going numb to the pain.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay.” Mando reassures, the hand which isn’t supporting your arm coming up to hold your jaw, hold your head up, thumb caressing your cheek. You smile groggily.

“Y-You’re… you’re fault.”

Yeah, he knows that. He could have looked where he was going and not have rammed you into the ground and this whole ordeal could have been avoided.

“I know. I… I’m sorry. We’re almost done.” You take it he doesn’t apologize often and you giggle dopily.

Your eyes droop and Mando gets nervous. He taps your cheek a few times, your skin hot to the touch and it worries him.

“Okay eyes on me, pretty girl.” You hum something content, trying to wiggle your body closer to his but he holds you tight, keeps you pinned against the tree. That’s hot.

“You called me- called me pretty.”

“Yeah, yeah I did, now keep looking at me, okay” Mando flushes underneath his helmet but he returns his attention to your supple arm, grabbing the fleshy area near your shoulder tight. His touch is so wicked, it burns. You hate it.

“Okay, shiny.”

Mando grabs your shirt off of his shoulder and brings it to your mouth, ordering you to ‘bite’. He shoves it into your mouth, your saliva quickly soaking into the fabric and Mando has to look away from your pretty little mouth.

“It’s going to hurt.” He tells you and you grumble something back to him but it's muffled by the pretty fabric he tucked into your mouth.

Your eyes are nearly glazed over, shiny and heavy and he’s so fucked for thinking about how you’d look just like this if he fucked you until you were numb, rendered dumb and thoughtless at the end of his cock. All fucking shiny, wet and-

You scream as he whips your shoulder bone back into its socket.

Tears slip past your eyes and drool spills from between your lips and into your shirt. The skin of your arm is hot to the touch but it’s there, it's back in place. Mando did it.

He lets you cry, lets you fall forward into him and sob into his cowl. Mando holds you against him and gently rubs the muscle of your shoulder through your flesh, making sure everything is okay and in the right place. You twitch in his hold, trying to get away from his touch by retreating back further into him. It makes his cock twitch.

Mando shushes you, massaging up and down your arm as you shiver in his hold, overcome with adrenaline and exertion. You feel completely wiped out from the pain alone but your body jitters with energy.

“T-Thanks.” You tremble, voice exhausted but it seems like your senses are already coming back to you.  

You pull away from Mando and take your shirt into your hands again, carefully shrugging it back on and ignoring the giant wet spot from your own spit. That was fucking humiliating.

Mando doesn’t respond, he just nods and watches as you cover yourself back up again. He already misses the fleshy warmth of your body against his hard and cold one.

You breathe a bit heavily, still winded from everything that’s just happened: your arm being snapped back into place, how close Mando was to you, how he touched you, manipulated your body so easily.

He called you pretty.

You mentally scoff at yourself, so fucking what?

You try not to care, you try to move on from that, but you tuck it away first; the way his voice sounded as he tried to soothe you, calm you down. You tuck that away for later, for when you’re alone again after all of this is over.

You grunt as you sling your rifle back over your shoulder, “Let’s keep moving.”

//

You reach the loading dock as the sun threatens to touch the horizon, the sky only starting to become a lighter shade of blue, signaling the early morning.

The perimeter is easy to breach, you get inside with few casualties. They only seem to have a few men patrolling this early in the morning - their weak spot, so it seems.

Mando willingly helps you and you’re grateful for the second pair of hands, you’re not used to having backup. You usually go in and come out alone. But you welcome this, he makes it too easy, it was already easy enough on your own, save for a few close calls over the years but he makes it easy.

With the two of you, you take them down and make good time of it too. You should be out of here, with the shipment of goods rerouted in under an hour.

And you do.

Everything works: you get the shipment out and you run out of the loading dock without much trouble, escaping blaster fire as you run back off into the desert, towards Mando’s ship.

He covers you, shields you with his armed body as you make a run for it, avoiding the open fire which has begun to rain down upon you. Someone must have sent a distress signal. It doesn’t matter though, the money is off to a deserving planet and you’ve got a Mandalorian shielding you with his own body. You did it.

You’re practically vibrating as you run up the open hull to the ship, losing the Imps and their men through the Badlands. You’re safe, you made it.

Mando closes the ramp before you’re even up all the way and you fall into him. He gives you no time to recover, hauling you further into the ship, dropping you in the copilot seat, setting coordinates to who knows where as the Razor Crest lifts into the air, beaming into hyperspace.

You’re panting, you’re both painting and breathing heavily. You barely notice that he’s up from his seat, crouching below you as he feels you over, squeezing your arms, like he’s trying to make sure you’re okay and you want to push him away for it, push him off of you but you can’t. You can’t.

That was so good. You did it.

“H-How’s your arm?” Mando asks, visor staring through your very being.

You nod your head affirmatively, unable to produce any words right now, staring down at his vacant visor without a thought in your mind except that you did it. You both did it.

Mando’s hand comes up to your face, holding your cheek and the back of your neck gently and it surprises you.

“Come on, words pretty girl. Need to know you’re okay.”

“I’m good, I’m good- promise.” You smile shakily, still reeling with adrenaline, your limbs still shaking.

You’re shocked at his insistence on calling you that. You don’t want to admit it but... you like it. Sort of.

You think Mando chuckles underneath his helmet, the vocoder distorts it but you hear the exhale of breath he lets out, the way his shoulders bounce lightly. He lets his hand trail down to your knee - subtle.

You feel giddy. We did it, you giggle to yourself, unable to contain the burst of energy pulsing through your body.

“You did it.” Mando adds and fuck -  did you say that out loud?

“I- no. I mean, you were there, you helped-”

He stops you mid-sentence, voice low, hushed and squeezing your knee tight. “Don’t be so fucking modest.”

You feel hot suddenly. Not just your face, you feel hot all over, your whole body coursing with it - indignation.

Whatever, you scoff, rolling your eyes and shoving at his shoulders. “Shut up, Mando.”

He moves both of his hands, letting them come to grip both of your thighs now and you hate the way it makes your eyelids grow heavy, threatening to roll back into your head if he adds just a bit more pressure.

“You’re difficult, you know that?” He grits even though you know it's not frustration or annoyance coursing through his blood.

You try to move your legs, push him away from you but he’s got you in this vice grip, pawing at you through your clothes.

“Only when I want to be.” Mando chuckles again, he’s amused.

Fuck do his hands feel good, it’s been so long.

“I don’t believe that.” He purrs, voice low and bassey and it goes straight to your cunt, which he’s growing increasingly closer to.

“Y-You don’t know me.”

His hands trail up your thighs, feeling the warmth seep through your pants and through the worn leather of his gloves as he nears the zipper. The helmet tips upwards to meet your completely dazed stare.

Gone is your fierce and biting tongue. You’ve gone quiet, all because of him - this stranger, this Mandalorian, a bounty hunter who has your fucking fob.

“You’re right, I don’t. But I know you’re good.” Mando tells you, fingers dancing up to the seam of your pants. You just stare at him, eyes wide and shining bright with hyperspace in their reflection. Beautiful. “How are you so fucking good?”

You know he’s not really asking, you know it’s a rhetorical question but -

“I’m not good, M-Mando.” You quiver as he rips the zipper down. 

You’ve stopped trying to push him away but you’re not encouraging him either, completely frozen in place by the intimidating black visor of his helmet, like some dark angel tempting you with death.

Rushed and hurried, Mando’s shucking down your pants and chucking them somewhere onto the floor of the cockpit. He bites the tips of his gloves, pulling them off and throwing them away just as carelessly.

Mando growls something fierce and terrifying, taking both of your knees in each hand and pulling you down the chair till your ass nearly hangs off the edge, spreading you so wide its fucking embarrasing.

“But you are.” He presses, so certain of this ‘fact’.

Then he’s spreading you again and it’s so lewd and wet. You can feel yourself dripping, making a mess all over yourself and you go hot, embarrassed as you try and look away from the black of his visor that’s intently trained on you and your soaked panties.

“Don’t you wanna prove to me how good you are?”

You can’t help the pathetic whimper that’s released from your throat as you nod your head too eagerly and without thought. He’s got you right in his line of fire, right where he wants you. It’s been too long since you’ve had someone take care of you.

You can’t bear to look at him as he hooks his fingers into the crotch of your panties, pulling them to the side to reveal your glossy cunt to him.

Mando can’t remember the last time he fingered someone’s cunt open to get them ready for him, all of him. He feels dizzy, sees literal star whizzing past him as he parts your lips, watches how your dark hole flutters and seeps for him, all dark and flushed and swollen for him, for his touch. You’re perfect.

Maker, does he want to taste you, to feel you cum on his tongue, on his face, feel how fucking hot you are on his lips but he can’t, he knows he can’t. So he’ll do what he can with his fingers, for now.

Slowly, he takes his index and sinks it into, your walls fluttering to let him in, suffocating the single digit already. Mando curses underneath his breath - you’re so fucking tightt, he can hardly believe it.

You cry out at the sensation, having had nothing but your own fingers for the past few months, one of his felt so much better, thicker and rougher. Tears are already welling in your eyes from the sweet relief.

Mando adds a second, not wanting to waste anymore time and starts scissoring you open for him, curling his fingers against the ridged wall and beckoning you towards him. Your back curls against the copilot seat, your hands flying upwards to grab the headrest of the seat, pressing your tits up and outwards underneath your thin shirt.

Even through your thin bra, Mando can tell your nipples are hard. He thinks about twisting them, biting them, licking at them, at you. Fuck, you’re so sexy.

“Dangerous girl,” Mando praises, growling and unrelenting in his thrusts, “how many men do you think you took out back there? Ten?”

You whine, eyes still squeezed shut, unable to take in the fucking Mandalorian between your legs, fingering your weeping cunt open.

“C-counted fifteen actually.”

Mando chuckles darkly, “Of course you did, show off.”

You laugh too but it’s cut off by a whine as he curls his fingers again, digging them into you and you see stars everywhere.

“Don’t have to- to show off when you're good.” You smirk, trying to give him your best shit-eat grin, finally opening your eyes and looking down at him beneath you like this.

He glows with the light of hyperspace, all the beaming stars reflecting off of his helmet, it nearly takes your breath away. His fingers are shiny with your slick as he drags them in and out of you, you can hear the way you pussy squelches for him, begging for more while you wither wordlessly for him.

“Hmmmm that’s right you - you good fucking girl, you’re such a good girl.”

There’s nothing you could have possibly done to contain the absolute wanton moan that leaves your chest at his sickening praise.

You never did any of this for attention, for praise, to make you feel better about yourself. You just felt it was your duty, to fix inequalities where you see them like those stupid senators claim they do but don’t. You never did it to be congratulated, to be thanked.

But when Mando praises you like this, calls you a good girl - fuck does that feel good.

He picks up the pace, his fingers fucking you open and you could cum just like this if he doesn’t stop soon. He feels it, feels you squeezing his fingers tighter than anything he’s ever felt before and he momentarily worries that he won’t fit, that he won’t be able to ram his cock deep into you but he knows you can take it, knows you’ll suck him in all desperate and wet for it.

Mando wrenches his fingers from you and you nearly scream at him for the sudden emptiness, your body convulsing and panting against the chair. He hasn’t even fucked you yet and you’re already completely debauched. Eyes glassy and skin glistening, you’re beautiful.

He stands to his full height, towering over you and casting you in his shadow. You look up at him through your lashes, chest heaving and legs spread wide, your core wet, shiny and flushed dark with arousal. You’re eye level now with his more than prominent bulge, cock straining against his pants and your mouth drools for it.

“Up, turn around.” He orders deep and low through his vocoder and you can’t scramble fast enough. Mando would chuckle at your desperation, degrade you and slap you around if he wasn’t so fucking desperate for it himself.

You do as he says, facing the other way and clutching the headrest of the set again as you look over your shoulder at him, watching, drooling as he pulls his flushed and heavy cock from his pants. You nearly choke on your breath - he’s huge, red and angry and you’re worried it’ll shred you from the inside out, but you want it - you want it rough, mean, fucking primal and gross. You want him to ruin you a little bit.

You watch him as he knocks your knees further apart on the seat of the chair, opening you up for him. You stick your ass out, wiggling it at him in a desperate presentation and he grumbles something before he’s grabbing handfuls of your flesh into his hands, grabbing you hard and tight and it pinches - you wail something high pitched and pathetic, whining like a bitch for him.

Mando hooks your soaked underwear high on your hips, watching the fabric pull tight against your own skin. He plays with the band, making sure it’s still sufficiently pulled to the side, to let his cock just glide right into you.

Resting your chin on your shoulder, you look back at him from under your lashes as he lines himself up, notching the spongy head of his cock at your entrance and you could cry, you could actually fucking cry you want it so bad. But your tongue isn’t as easily tamed as your body.

“You ever- ever fuck a bounty before, Mando?”

He growls mean and gritty before he’s grabbing you by the hips and sheathing himself all the way to the hilt in your tight cunt, a moan is punched out of you from deep within. He reaches the end of you almost effortlessly - literally pushing the boundaries of your body. You feel him in your stomach, you feel him making room for himself.

“Maybe.” He grunts, blushing furiously underneath his helmet all the while thinking “no”. He’s never done this before. And it shows in how he nearly forgot that you were - still are - his bounty.

He forgets that he tracked you down, hunted you, dislocated your fucking shoulder while chasing you down on a gritty planet. Your pussy made him forget all of that and he’s embarrassed by it. Maker, you could kill him right now if you wanted to and there’s nothing he could do to stop it. He thinks he’d let you.

So he fucks you harder for it, pulls back out until just the tip of him is at your entrance before he’s spearing you in half, breaking you open on his thick cock and fucking you mean, like he’s angry with you.

You try and scoff at his feigned smugness but it comes out as a broken moan, your knuckles going white from how hard you're gripping the headrest trying to gain some stability from his punishing thrusts, the way he pulls you back onto his cock over and over again. “D-Doubt it.”

Mando’s vocoder distorts his voice, or maybe it really has dropped that low but he’s grumbling something animalistic and fucking feral, wrapping his forearm around your shoulders and hauling you back into him - until your back is flush with his rough and cold breastplate.

He holds you tight against him, hips snapping against your ass as you bounce in his hold, the velocity of his thrusts sending you reeling. You feel lost, thrown out into space without a lifeline - all you can do is hold onto his forearm for some semblance of stability as Mando fucks you into oblivion.

The cool metal of his helmet kisses your cheek and you hiss but let him press it against you anyways. You can feel his eyes on you from behind the visor, you know he’s watching every expression, hearing every pathetic little noise he’s pulling from you - a front row seat to your destruction.

“Why are you so- worried about it? Hmm?” He coddles, as if he were talking to a child. It’s condescending and you’re so fucked out of your mind already that you can’t even respond, can’t even bite back at him.

You’ve never been fucked like this before, never had someone reach so deep, spread you so wide, fuck you hard and open like a decimated fruit. It’s perfect - fuck, it’s so good.

“Am I not - shit - am I not fucking you hard enough, pretty girl?”

Mando’s hips grind up into you, shredding your insides and you cry; you feel legitimate tears spring from your eyes as you bend to his will, bend as he molds you to his cock. You let him.

Mando scoffs, or chuckles - you can’t tell. He leans in even closer, you swear you could feel his breath against your face if it weren’t for his stupid helmet digging into the side of your face.

“I know you like it when I call you that, g-get so fucking tight.”

You nod your head fervently, unable to produce any words as your pussy and stomach clench around him, that familiar fire burning so rampantly you feel like you could cum with one more word out of his mouth.

“Tell me.”

“I- I like it.” You barely manage to get out, voice gone and the wind fucked out of you. You have no energy or willpower to be able to speak properly - you’re on the edge of a mind-shattering orgasm.

Mando’s forearm flexes against where he holds your shoulders against his chest, his tanned hand moving to come and wrap around your throat, squeezing tight and angling your back like you would a bow. He fucks you deeper and harder and ruthless at this new angle, like a dagger to your insides - a warning.

“I-I like it when you - fuck! - when you call me p-pretty girl.” You wail, pussy squelching around his length embarrassingly loud as proof of your words, of his power against you. He hums, satisfied.

“Yeah? Yeah, you want it h-harder, pretty girl?” He asks and it's mean. It’s evil this time when he asks you, like he’s making fun of you as you tremble at the end of his cock, tired and wet and fucked out of your mind.

You nod your head pathetically, not caring anymore how desperate you are to cum, you just need him. You need Mando to keep fucking you.

“Yes! Yes, please just- just keep fucking me. D-Do whatever you want.”

Mando’s heart and cock flare at your words, igniting something deep inside him and he’s hauling you around, pulling his sopping cock from your cunt with a disgusting wet pop, your juices leaking all over him, the chair, the durasteel floor.

If he were being any meaner, if you were anyone else, he would have you lick it up, lick yoursef off the fucking floor but - Maker, he can’t think like that right now, he’ll get too light headed and pass out before he’s had a chance to cum.

He picks you up and lifts you onto the ground, laying you on your back less than gracefully before he’s shucking your top off of you along with your bra, leaving you in nothing but your soaked and drenched panties which still sit pulled to the side of your abused pussy.

Fucking look at you, eyes bleary and wet, fucked out of your mind like the rest of you. All shiny and wet with him, and your tits. You’re so pretty, naked on the floor of his ship like this.

Mando takes your nipples into both his hands and twists, pulling and groping at you like a brute and all you can do is arch your back, pressing yourself further into his touch like a mindless whore.

He lines himself up again, leveraging himself on your breasts and splitting you open again with too much ease this time, you’re so wet and dark and flushed like a pulverized fruit.

“P-Perfect pussy, you’re so fucking good.” He moans, sounding delirious.

His body is hard against your fleshy one, he revels in the way his armour makes you bounce and jiggle, how you take him so fucking well on the fucking floor. Shit, he won’t last long like this - you’re too good, you’re too good for him.

Mando paws at your tits, pulls at the flesh and gets lost in how soft and squishy they are as he pummels your poor pussy, squelching and spilling all over the both of you.

He swears he can smell you, even from underneath the helmet he swears he gets a whiff of your cunt, of your sweat, your skin. He wants to taste you so bad, lick every inch of you until there’s nothing left. Mando wants to devour you, he wants to keep you here, just for him to use like this. You’re too good, you’re too good at taking him, he can hardly believe it.

“Need you to cum.”

You nod your head, tears spilling into your hairline and Mando leans over you, gripping both your hands into his and holding them above your head, your legs wrapping high up around his waist.

Looking down, you watch him spear you over and over again without relent. Your world spins, it's thrown off kilter by the strength of his cock and you marvel at yourself for taking something that big inside of you. Mando’s thrusts are strong, deep and punishing, they’re fucking aggressive and you feel yourself tightening up at the mere sight of him - he’s huge, in every sense of the word.

It’s too much, he’s so much and your senses light up like a control board with nothing but him - nothing but Mando and before you know you’re crying out his name into the dead silence of hyperspace.

You pulse around him, suffocating his cock tighter than he thought possible and Mando’s head pounds in his helmet. He watches as you wither underneath him, fucking yourself on his cock as you work through your orgasm, moaning his name like it’ll bring you salvation - Mando, Mando, Mando, Mando.

For a split second he finds himself wishing it was his name, his real name that you were moaning, crying out like you’re wounded and you need him.

He imagines the way it would tumble off your lips, curl around your tongue and how it would taste to drink it from your mouth - Din, Din, Din.

Fuck - he’s cumming.

Mando doesn’t know why that did it for him, but he’s cumming. Feels his balls pull up tight and his cock twitches and pulses painfully hard and he’s drawing out of you and painting your tummy white with his seed.

You gasp when you feel his hot spend land on your heated skin, your eyes fly open and you lift your head to watch him jerk himself onto you.

He looks like a vision, a fucking pillar of silver, a monolith, towering over you. Except you’ve brought him to his knees, this fierce warrior, trembling as he finishes himself off, emptying himself onto your flesh instead of deep inside you. You can’t help but smile at him, drunk off of his cock as you watch him cum all over you.

“I have the implant.” You smirk, sitting up on your elbows now to admire his work.

“H-Huh?” He pants, chest heaving and cock still twitching. Fuck, he’s gorgeous.

“Could’ve cum inside me, Mando.” You tell him like you’re disappointed. You are.

Mando growls, lunging for you and groping your belly, smearing his seed into your flesh, painting you where he missed - your chest, breasts, collarbones, he rubs it as far as it’ll go.

He’ll offer you a shower once you’re both up, he tries not to think about what it would’ve felt like to cum deep inside your tight little pussy, how it would have seeped out around him, spilling out the sides and onto the floor along with the rest of your mess.

He would’ve fucked it deep, deep inside of you and watch you take it like the good girl you are.

Next time, he thinks. 

“Shut up.” He tells you.

//

Mando didn’t land in Nevarro like you thought he would.

Instead, you’re on another isolated, a far off one like you usually stick to - Kal’Shebbol.

You’re both quiet as you exit the Razor Crest, letting the noise of the planet fill in through your ears and Mando’s helmet as you walk towards the city.

The planet is nice enough, nicer than you’re used to actually. Tall and far off rolling hills and mountains which surround a modest city. It seems pretty modern from what you can tell as you approach it. Shining lights, even in the daytime, neon signs and loud bustle.

There’s crime here, you can tell, you can practically fucking smell it, you’ve become so familiar with its tang - you’ll do good here, that is… depending on what Mando’s got planned for you.

He doesn’t have you in cuffs, he’s not escorting you, you’re just simply… walking next to him and it’s confusing. You take a side glance at him and he just walks forward with a too-confident stride, seemingly not even worried about you.

So you let him walk with you, closer and closer to the border of the city before he slows down, ultimately coming to a halt. You keep walking however, testing him, wondering who will make the first move.

You make it about ten feet from him before he’s calling after you, your name never sounding so sweet. Stupid, you sound like a lovesick little girl. But you can’t help but smirk as you turn around to face him.

“I have to bring you in.” He calls out, yet there's no malice in his voice, no threat.

You smile at him, it feels genuine, you fucking devil. “Not if you can’t find me.”

Mando approaches you again with that saunter of his, like a true bounty hunter, a true threat. Fuck, why did he have to be so sexy?

Only you know that you had brought this Mandalorian down to his knees. You try to block the image of him on top of you, fucking you out of your mind only hours ago, making you cum harder than you ever had, painting you in his own spend.

Your soaked underwear sits wet and cold against your aching pussy, a painful and uncomfortable reminder of the mess you both made of each other.

When he’s gotten close enough to you, Mando tilts his helmet teasingly.

“You can’t outrun me, remember?” You know he’s smiling all smug underneath that helmet, you can hear it in his voice. It’s chilling and you shiver at the edge, the deep grit of his voice while your shoulder throbs at the memory.

“Well then I better get a head start.” You smile back, feeling hot underneath his gaze.

Grabbing his gloved hand into yours, you squeeze it tight, unable to say goodbye to him for some weird reason. You really don’t know him at all, you’ve only been with him for a day but you think you’ll miss his stoic quietness. Either way, you feel like this doesn’t merit a goodbye - he still has your puck.  

Mando stares in disbelief at your gesture, burning hotter and more embarrassed than ever, even though he was buried deep in your cunt only hours ago. He looks at your hand, engulfed in his and Maker, he doesn’t want to let go.

But he watches you drop his hand and walk away from him, lost to the crowd within seconds.

When he’s sure he can’t see you anymore, only then does Mando turn on his heel, heading back to his ship and back to Nevarro.

He tells Karga he had no luck finding you and manages to get another puck from him without much hassle. The new tracking fob takes him all the way out to Maldo Kreis to find some blue guy - as far away from you as possible.

Mando will take the long way getting back to you, hoping you stay out of trouble: from the Imps and the bounty hunters like him.

Your puck burns hot in his holster. It’s where he keeps you close, always on him until he tracks you down and finds you again.

[helliontherapscallion]

Winner Takes All (Adrenaline Junkie Part 15)

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5     Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10     Part 11     Part 12     Part 13     Part 14     Part 16     Part 17

Spotify Playlist (collaborative)

Warnings: blood, the Warden (that thing needs it’s own warning), gore, violence, swearing, stitches, death (?)

Word count: 2,442

You crouched against the wall as the slow thundering footsteps got closer and closer to you. The footsteps came closer and closer, nearby puddles of water rippling in succession. Despite the swirling fear and anxiety threatening to take complete control of you, you felt overwhelming anger at the creature. This thing set your life back for years on end! It was a ruthless killing machine that deserved no mercy; there was no way of telling how many it killed. How many other lives it ruined. 

You hovered a hand over the TNT launcher on your hip and anticipated the creature’s presence soon. You took out some flint and steel and placed it in your pocket in an impromptu Plan D: blow this place to smithereens when all else fails. 

When the footsteps became louder, you took out the launcher and cocked it, the whirring of redstone waiting to fire sounded throughout the cave. The sculk blocks writhed and glowed, casting a green glow through the darkness. The footsteps grew faster and you fully extended your wings ready to take off in a moment’s notice. You took aim and your finger twitched on the trigger. Adrenaline was coursing through your veins and you languished in the feeling. It was what kept you on your feet and going. 

The second the thing came into your line of sight, your finger pressed down onto the trigger. You slid backwards slightly at the recoil and watched as the TNT shot through the sky and exploded on impact. The creature stumbled backwards with a small grunt. 

Oh dear Ender, this thing was massive. It was now (if you were to estimate it) at least twenty feet tall if not taller. If you were to stand next to it, you would barely be taller than it’s leg. The sculk stalks sprouting from it’s wide head were a foot or two shorter than your full wingspan with vines and moss drooping from the protrusions. If you thought this thing was terrifying when you died for the first time, then this thing was a being from your worst nightmares. It was like this thing wasn’t real; the sheer size of it alone was overwhelming. 

The TNT did absolutely nothing to it. The stalks on its head twitched and the sculk blocks thrashed and glowed. You stayed absolutely still and held your breath praying that it wouldn’t notice you. When it started to unexpectedly run at you, you yelped and shot into the air flapping your wings as fast as they could go. You reached the ceiling by the time it got to you. You stayed there hovering for a moment trying to figure out how the hell it knew where you were. You panted as you hovered over the cave floor and watched it look up blindly at you, it’s stalks twitching. 

You were completely still, you made sure of it! So how did it know your position? The only possible reason could be if it heard your heart beating out of your chest because you certainly did. Or the blood surging through your body and roaring in your ears. Maybe you were shaking? That doesn’t matter, it could always hear you no matter how quiet you think you’re being. It made sense; if this creature lacked eyes then it had to have an extraordinary sense of hearing and navigation system. If Plan A was destroyed before, then it was completely out of question now. 

It stood unmoving under you as you hovered over it. The permanent gaping frown dripped with drool onto the floor endlessly, the bioluminescence disappearing after a bit of being on the ground. Your mind flashed back to what you read about it; the adults are more calculating while the juveniles are more brash. It knew you were too high for it to reach so it was saving its energy. 

You could hear an endless stream of whispers from the spirits entrapped in it’s chest:

“Run while you still can”

“Wake up, we need to get you out of here”

“Don’t leave me”

“Free us”

They sounded like they were in agony. Their voices were very diverse ranging from masculine to feminine, young to old, familiar to unfamiliar (for some reason that you didn’t have time to ponder. You just chalked it up to your mind playing tricks on you). Hugh was in there somewhere. You were going to set his soul free. You were going to set all the souls free. 

You set your jaw and reloaded the launcher. You pointed it and fired. The creature did nothing to move away from it, getting hit in the face and not reacting at all. This thing was seemingly unbeatable. You grit your teeth and kept firing at the creature. By the tenth time, it was still unscathed. The rage you felt at the creature overpowered all rational thought. You needed it dead and you were going to stop at nothing to achieve your goals.

By the time you fired at it for the fifteenth time, the back of your head smacked against something making your vision blur and dazing you. You stopped flying for a second with a gasp and wide eyes, feeling yourself start to fall. You heard it move quickly under you before you steadied yourself in the air once more and flew closer to the ceiling once more. If you looked behind you, a large stalactite met you. You quickly remembered that every single time you shot the launcher, the ricochet would’ve pushed you further and further upwards closer to the ceiling. This was something you mentally kicked yourself for. You needed to be more diligent. 

You remembered what the book said about it’s weak points being the open chest and the heart. You needed to fly closer to it in order to aim for it’s achilles heel. It was the only way you had even the slightest chance at beating this thing. 

You swooped downwards and fired at it’s chest, grinning in triumph when it grunted and almost fell over. It ran at you, but you were quick to maneuver your wings so that you swooped back upwards. It was working, it was doing more damage than previous attempts did. 

You continued your dive bombing and it was quickly realizing your pattern, dodging things faster and getting dangerously close to setting off the TNT you planted. You need to lure it away so you don’t accidentally blow yourself up. You darted to standing forty feet away from it on the ground and started to run. 

“COME AND GET SECONDS! GET EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT! LIMITED TIME OFFER!” You shouted over your shoulder and heard it run after you, catching up quickly with it’s long legs. You started to fly, tucking your legs in close to your body and darting parallel to the stone and dodging stalagmites that sprouted from the ground. You were about five feet off from the ground, these stalagmites were getting hard to dodge. You weaved through the protrusions, twisting and turning your body. You could hear them crumbling behind you as the Warden stepped on them, reducing them to nothing more than dust with very little effort. 

When you glanced behind you, your mind flashed back to the moments before your first death; the Warden was chasing you with it’s clawed giant hand that was as big as your entire body was outstretched ready to grab you. This time it was more sure of it’s movements, not blindly flailing its arms around and now reaching out straight for you. Your body was jerked to the right as you turned around only to be face to face with a stalagmite racing towards your face at a fast pace. You shrieked and brought your arms up to protect your face before you collided with the stone. 

When you did, you felt something crack in your forearm and grunted when you fell to the floor a few feet below you. You could hear the booming footsteps behind you get closer and closer. You quickly glanced at your metal wing. It was completely busted, bent in places where it should be straight and the metal feathers crumpled. So that leaves you with Plan D, there was no out running this thing on foot. 

You pulled out the flint and steel and lit a spare torch before it finally got close to you. It’s hand wrapped around your lower body and it brought you up to its grotesque face. You threw the torch over to the nearest cluster of TNT and grinned wickedly at the sound of it starting to go off. It brought your head up to its mouth, but you didn’t struggle; your job was done here. You cackled and felt a tear escape your eye, “see you in hell, motherfu-” Just as it’s jaws snapped shut, an explosion sounded and everything went black. 

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“(Y…”

“(Y/n)...”

“(Y/n) please wa…”

You could hear a faint whispering? What the hell, you were on your last life, so why could you feel yourself breathing? Why did everything hurt? Your entire body was in agony. You split your eyes open and the sight of the cave ceiling met you? Just what was going on here? 

Green and white flashed in your vision before you felt yourself being lifted up. You cried out weakly as you felt your ribs grind together. “I know, I know. We’ll have you out of here in no time. Don’t close your eyes.” Philza?

“Dad?” Your breathing came out in a series of rapid short, desperate attempts to get air in your lungs. It sounded awful; every breath you took was accompanied by a soft moaning sound coming from the back of your throat with the occasional mixture of a gurgling and rattling noise escaping you. You couldn’t imagine what it sounded like to Philza.

You whimpered when your body was jerked as he took flight. “Yes, I’m here. Don’t talk, focus on staying awake kiddo.” 

“Warden… Run.”

“It isn’t around here right now. I-I don’t know where it is, but we’re leaving the cave. We’re gonna go home, patch you up, and you can show me what you’ve been working on with that TNT launcher.” You furrowed your brows and looked up at his concentrated expression. You had two of them, the portable one and the stationary one. Besides, he already knows everything about both of them. “Which one?”

He glanced down at you before his eyes flickered back up. “There’s… there’s only one and you’re not done with it yet.”

“No… that’s not right. There’s the portable and stationary ones. I have patents.” You said between wet breaths. He said nothing, only flying faster through the cave. You could feel something warm dripping endlessly from your back, a vast contrast to the coldness of your skin on different areas of your back. The entirety of the base of your nub felt uncomfortably hot. You reached around with your left hand and felt for your metal wing. It wasn’t there. 

“Didja take my wing off?”

“No.”

“Metal can be fixed, just gotta blacksmith it. Go grab it, it was hard to make” You felt your eyes burn from forgetting to blink, so you closed your eyes for a bit before you were shook. “Keep your eyes open, we’re almost out.”

“Where’s Arthur? Did you leave him alone?” Your speech was growing more strained as you went on. It was getting harder to breathe. 

“Stop talking.” You saw light enter your vision. The dull blue sky met your vision. It was half past midnight when you left, were you passed out for that long? Why didn’t the Warden kill you when it had a chance to?

You felt fresh air work it’s way around your body and through your hair. You hissed when air met with the wound on your back. Blood was dripping into your eyes and down the side of your head dripping down to the ground several feet below you. You reached up and wiped the blood out of your eyes before a cough shook your entire body. When you pulled your hand back, an alarming amount of blood was splattered on it. You could feel more drip out the corner of your mouth. You could feel Philza’s breathing pick up and watched as he glanced down at you. His eyes widened at your bloodied mouth and hand, “fuck. Stay awake. Just please,” his voice cracked, “stay awake.”

“Am I dying again?” 

“You aren’t dying,” he set his jaw and his face hardened in determination, “you aren’t dying. You’re gonna live.” 

“This isn’t what it felt like the last two times. I-I feel… at peace. More calm. Is this what losing your last life feels like?”

“We’re home, can you see the house?” He impossibly flew faster. Before you knew it, you were being carried inside and set on the dining room table on your side. You felt Philza put pressure on your back and cursed under his breath, muttering something about an infection. You shrieked in pain, the hoarse, ear splitting noise ripping itself from your throat. You could hear several footsteps thud on the ground before your three brothers appeared in your vision. They immediately paled at the sight of you lying broken on the table with gurgles and rattles coming with every painful shallow breath screaming in pain.

“Techno, healing potions and golden apple. Wilbur, needle and thread. Tommy, bandages and alcohol.” They did nothing but stare at you weakly writhing on the table. “NOW.” They sprung to action grabbing the necessary supplies. You screamed when you felt a sudden stinging hit your back and the edges of a wound being pushed together. Hands held you down as you felt a needle pierce your tender skin repeatedly. You begged and pleaded for them to stop, you were already dying. You looked up to see Wilbur and Tommy holding you down on the table. 

Tommy was avoiding looking at your face, instead watching them stitch your back up. Wilbur was looking down at you with the most heartbroken expression you’ve ever seen on a person. His eyes were glassy behind his skewed glasses and his hair a mess. When he saw your eyes focus on him, he leaned down to put a soft kiss on the tip of your nose (which was probably the only place on your face that didn’t have blood on it). That was the last thing that you remembered seeing before you passed out from the pain when more alcohol was poured on your wound. 

(A/N): tell me, what do you think?

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[ai-luni]

Magic Man

Sam "Merlin" Wells x fem!reader

Summary: Merlin puts a spell on you as the two of you try for a baby Warnings: Suggestive content, pregnancy, underrated Character Word count: 1.4k A/N: I love Merlin, he's just trying his best. I was heavily inspired to write this after reading this fic. I really recommend.

Sam never failed to make you giggle, even in the most intimate or serious moments. He always had something in his sleeve that would break the tension whether intentional or not. 

A lot of the time he makes the funniest faces in response to things you tell him. Like he has lost control over his face. Your favourite is when you try to surprise him and his eyes grow wider then you even thought possible. It’s truthfully quite impressive.

His voice cracks when he gets nervous (which in his defence was usually never. The boy was a junkie, nothing on land seemed to make him nervous). You liked to whisper suggestive things in his ear in public and watch him choke on his water (and as much as he’d make a little scene over it, he loved it). And of course you would die of laughter every time his face went completely grey after hearing you say “I had a fantastic chat with your mother.”

He wasn't awkward though. He was a man deeply in love with you and he never hid from those feelings. 

His arrival home after a deployment for a couple months was a surprise to you. You arrived home from work in the evening to find him in the kitchen, still in his uniform and two plates of food prepared in front of him. You weren’t expecting him back for another good month or two.

You hate to admit it but your first thought was ‘what happened?’ Your second thought however finally was one of excitement and relief to see him back. 

He hugged and kissed you like he dreamt of touching you every night he was away. You sat down and ate and finally it dawned on you.

“What about Top Gun?! That was a big thing, no?” His head hung and his fork played with a carrot for a few silent moments. Something was on his mind. You placed your hand on the centre of the table for his to meet you halfway, encouraging him to open up.

“Cougar handed in his wings.” He let out but that didn’t seem to be what was troubling him. 

“No, really!” Your mouth hung open in shock, encouraging him to continue. He nodded solemnly.

“Couldn’t handle the pressure, thought he’d lose his wife and kid but goddammit if he wasn’t the best pilot I knew.” Your eyes watched his mouth, hooked on every word. That was until his eyes met your, an intense seriousness in them you only imagined came out when he flew. 

“It made me think. Maybe I need a reason to…” he took a deep breath, thinking of his next choice of words, “fly slower.” 

“That’s what all this was for.” His smile grew as he watched your face drop. He knew you always wanted children, he just wasn’t sure if he was ready. He was ready. With a chuckle, he pushed his half eaten plate further into the table. 

“You didn’t need all this to get me.” You stood up and comfortably placed yourself behind the pilot. Hands sliding down his uniform while your chin rested on his shoulder, nose nudging his ear. Boy did he miss you, “So what are you waiting for? You got a job to do, lieutenant.” 

“Yes Ma’am.” No way was he going to stop himself tonight, not when you smelt so good and sounded so inviting. Those plates were washed the next morning and while the kitchen smelt a little funky for the rest of the day, it was worth it.

You two kept trying for about two month and had little luck. You tried as many positions as you could physically fit into and while it got a little frustrating considering you didn’t know when Sam may be sent out again, it was the most fun you’d ever fit into two months. 

He finally got a call for a sudden deployment, flying with Maverick of all pilots. He had one night left with you all of a sudden and something within you snapped. The two of you felt so desperate that night. 

He received the call from the landline next to the kitchen door, you were leaning against the kitchen counter, sun just starting to set outside. You watched him intensely as he nodded and then “Already?”, “What happened to Goos- oh…”, “Tomorrow?”, “Alright.” and with a huff, he put the phone back in its placeholder. 

His eyes met yours, he didn’t need to say anything, your eyes told him you already understood. He met you in the middle of the kitchen, hands holding you tight around your waist, yours holding a solid grip on his collar. 

“You have to take me from behind again.” You whispered in his ear. His face was beat red at how random this outburst was but he knew you needed this. You practically moaned in his ear, “ooh how I felt it last time, you have to take me from behind.”

“I’m used to sitting in the back as I work anyway.” You could help the laugh that made you let out. He laughed too, proud of that one and just held you for a while before you got busy one last time for a while. 

He had a good go at you. You stayed perched on the bed after Merlin finished, he didn’t exit you with your hips up against him and head resting on the bed in front of him. 

“Allakhazam.” The man tapped your ass with enthusiasm. With the little energy you had, you tried to lift your head to peer at him behind you. He held a cheeky smile, “And just like magic, it’s a boy.” 

“Thank you Merlin.” You rolled your eyes letting your head drop back on the bed. Even if you laughed at his joke, you still prayed in that moment, you really did hope he was right. 

“You really waited this long to put that spell on me?” You mumbled, mouth barely able to open being smooshed against the bed sheets. 

“We had fun didn’t we?” His voice cracked being out of breath and you turned into a giggling mess. 

And just like that, you spent your last night together again for sometime. He was flying with Maverick, you’ve heard stories of Maverick and you weren’t happy about it. You just needed him safe with you. 

The cycle started all over again, he left and you sat alone for a while in pure worry for the next 48 hours. It wasn’t until a week later you started to feel different and it dawned on you… did you finally do it? Immediately after word that day, picked up a couple pregnancy tests and surely enough, you had done it. You were overjoyed and started preparing yourself to be alone for the next few weeks so as to not put any pressure on yourself in case you would get sick a lot.

You got a call one morning however of their successful mission and safe return to base. You cried at the realisation you’ll get to tell the man you love that he’s going to be the father of your child. 

– 

“I know you think you know why he’s called Merlin but… I’ve seen that man do magic. And no, this isn’t a euphemism. Actual. Proper. Magic.” You were sitting at a table with Maverick and a few other pilots, getting to know Merlin’s possibly new pilot partner. The lot of them a few drinks in already when you called your boyfriend over, “Merlin! Do you remember when you put that … spell on me?”

“Yeah…” Merlin, a table over in a different conversation, halted what he was saying mid sentence to meet your eyes. Wide and doe-like, he knew exactly what his spell was. His speech was weary and slow, he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions on why you brought it up and look so cheery about it, “I thought about it every day.” 

“Well, I felt it everyday.” A smile creeped its way onto your face as your hand instinctively landed on your stomach (to which would become a more regular occurrence). He stood up from his chair, eyes wide in the way you’d find funny most of the time but today it was so endearing. The two of you were making a little bit of a scene now but you didn’t really care. Even the surrounding tables had overheard and gone quiet.

“I- '' He choked out, his hand trying to wipe away a building tear before anyone could notice. You only nodded, standing up to meet him and pull his hand to your stomach. “I’m gonna be a dad!” 

“You’re gonna be a father!” You choked out right after.

[writethelifeyouwant]

Make Him Look - Ch 1 / 2

Pairing: Cordell Walker x Reader Rating: 18+ Tags: flirting, many many drinks, jealousy, dancing, slow burn Word Count: 3k Created for: @walker-bingo - In Vino Veritas | @anyfandomgoesbingo - Jealousy A/N: Written with the lovely @thinkinghardhardlythinking in mind ❤️and y'all can also blame her for the fact it got so long I split it into two 😂

Cordell swings his leg over a barstool and settles into his usual spot. The bar is busy but not crowded. There’s a few more empty stools awaiting occupants for the night, and Cordell hooks one with his foot and draws it closer, popping his hat down to save the seat for Liam, who’s on his way. But there’s no reason to wait for Liam before he orders – they get the same thing every time.

“Barkeep! Can I get some queso, hot wings, and whatever Pinthouse you’ve got on draft?”

“Sure thing, man,” the kid behind the bar drawls, his accent thick and voice lazy. Cordell would bet anything the guy had had a joint on his break earlier, but he’s off duty – tonight is not about busting people for drugs, tonight is about letting loose. He checks his phone to see if Liam had texted him that he’d left the office yet, but there is nothing there. Taking a sip of the drink that has just been plopped on a coaster in front of him, Cordell scans the room. It’s a bad habit that every law enforcement worker he’s ever met has developed. Even when he’s trying to relax and blow off some steam, he can’t help being a little vigilant.

He takes in the tableaus around him; the groups of kids from the local community college, the gaggle of mid to late aged men in awful polos that Cordell recognises as the inner city bowling league, a couple of less savoury looking guys playing pool, the cluster of women those guys keep eyeing up – he’ll keep an eye on that one.

Checking his phone again and taking another drink, he still hasn’t heard anything from Liam. He opens his brother’s contact and is about to give him a call to tell him to get his ass in gear when someone suddenly reaches down beside him, picks up his hat and drops it back on his head while they slide into the seat he’d been saving - except it’s not Liam.

“Hey you,” the stranger says familiarly, bumping her shoulder against his. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”

You shrug out of your jacket and sling it over your arm as you head up to the worn wood counter of the bar. You don’t see your friend yet, so you decide to go ahead and order a drink while you wait for her to show. She’s always late, you should have just assumed and shown up fifteen minutes from now. You play on your phone as you wait for the bartender to finish serving the gang of people at the other end of the bar. When you feel someone in front of you, you look up, about to order a glass of wine, except one is already being placed on the bar top in front of you.

You stare questioningly at the kid serving you the drink. You’d been here before, sure, but you’re hardly a regular, and even if you were you don’t recognise this server – so why does he know what you were about to order?

“Um, I didn’t–” you start but the kid interrupts you.

“From the gentleman at the end of the bar, milady,” he gave a geeky little bow, “Sorry, he told me to say it like that,” he grimaces at himself. You chance a fleeting look back to the group you’d noticed him serving a few minutes ago and to your horror, you recognise your ex, Dirk, grinning back at you. He tips the brim of his ball cap and gives you a wink, like he’s expecting you to be impressed that he remembers you drink red wine. Shit, this is not how this night is supposed to go. You’re supposed to be here to get drunk with your best friend and have a bit of a dance, not be looking over your shoulder the whole night hoping that jerk leaves you alone.

Panicking a little now, you check your phone but there’s no text from Lea telling you when to expect her. Knowing her like you do, you would bet anything she won’t be here soon, and you don’t want to wait on your own and risk Dirk coming to talk to you. Desperately, you scan your eyes around the bar, cataloguing your options and escape routes. Someone catches your eye a few seats along from where you are. Tall, broad – dark and handsome, your mind supplies unhelpfully – but what really catches your eye is the badge hanging from his belt. He’s a Ranger.

Normally, you’d pick a group of girls who you know would happily pretend to know you so you don’t have to wait alone but you know Dirk, and you know he won’t be shy enough to let any number of girls stop him from coming to ruin your night. But a guy - and a Texas Ranger at that – Dirk wouldn’t dare. He had an outstanding DUI, and he’d always been a bit of a chicken around cops anyways.

Choice made, you grab the wine he’d bought you – hey, you’re not made of money, free booze is free booze – and you march purposefully over to the Ranger, who’s checking his phone and not paying attention until you grab his black cowboy hat off the chair next to him. Clearly he had been saving it for someone, and you want Dirk to think that someone is you.

“Hey you,” you chirp, placing his hat back on his head as you slide into the seat he’d been saving, “Thanks for saving me a seat.” You smile at the Ranger long enough to see him looking at you completely perplexed before you glance back to Dirk and see him watching you with a scowl. You let yourself feel inwardly triumphant and turn back to the man you’d just decided to befriend, if only temporarily.

Swivelling back towards him, you let yourself get a good look at his face for the first time. His bright hazel eyes are staring back at you, confused but not unkind. Tall, dark, and handsome is definitely apt, and now you’re seeing him properly you’re a bit speechless. You hadn’t counted on him being this freakin’ attractive.

“Sorry,” you finally manage to choke out under your breath. “I’ll leave you alone soon, I promise, I’m just hiding from my ex,” you explain, and understanding melts across the man’s face.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asks sympathetically.

“Just pretend like you know me until my friend gets here?” you propose hopefully.

“Happy to,” he smiles, grabbing his drink and holding it out to clink against your wine glass. You tap your glass against his, relief flooding your body as you settle onto your stool a little more comfortably.

“Thank you…” you trail off leadingly, hoping he’ll fill in his name.

“Cordell,” he supplies.

“Now there is a Texan name if I ever heard one,” you giggle.

“If you’re gonna laugh at my name do I at least get the chance to laugh at yours too?” he grins jokingly.

“Y/N,” you give him your name, tucking your hair behind your ear and taking a sip of your wine.

“Well that’s no fun, how can I tease you for such a pretty name?” Cordell takes a sip of his own drink, mirroring you. Jeez, this one is a smooth talker.

-

When you finish your glass of wine, probably a little quicker than normal due to your anxious state, you check your phone again and see a missed call from Lea. “Crap,” you sigh, drawing a concerned look from Cordell, who is happily munching away on some chips and queso next to you.

“Everything okay?” He asks, muffled, mouth still full of food.

“Yeah, s’just my friend bailing on me,” you gripe, listening to the voicemail she’d left on your phone a few minutes ago. “Sorry I gate crashed your night for nothing,” you apologise, popping your phone back in your bag and planning on just going home to turn in early and watch some junky tv show in bed now that your ‘girls night’ wasn’t happening.

“Hey, you aren’t gate crashing.” Cordell shrugs, like he’s hedging his bets with his next statement. “I’ve had a good time so far.” His smile is shy and sincere, and you soften just a little in your annoyance at the world.

“I totally am though, you were clearly waiting for someone,” you gesture to the stool you’d taken up residence on.

“Just my work-a-holic brother, who, as luck would have it–” Cordell pulls his phone from his pocket and holds it up to show the message on the lock screen “–also pulled out on me.”

“Oh,” you blink, not sure what to make of that. It sounds like he’s asking you to stay but… “Well, thank you for being my knight in shining armour for a bit, seriously, but I don’t really want to stick around just to have my ex looking at me all night.”

“Well, if he’s gonna be a creep and keep watching you all night, we could make that fun, give him something to watch,” Cordell offers, his smirk incongruous with the almost hopeful expression in his eyes.

“What?” You’re perplexed.

“I mean, I don’t know what happened between you, but it’s pretty obvious to me that he wants you back, and you seem pretty pissed at him for that. I’m guessing the bastard cheated on you?” You huff in response, a little bitter that he’d read the situation so easily.

“Yeah, he did,” you admit, slumping against the bar, feeling downtrodden at the memory.

“So don’t let him chase you off,” Cordell shrugs like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He messed you around – you tellin’ me you wouldn’t like to mess with him right back?” he raises an eyebrow in temptation, a knowing smirk twitching at his lips.

“And you’re proposing that instead of not wanting him to look at me all night–”

“You make him look,” Cordell finishes your sentence for you. “We’ve already pretended to know each other for the past–” he checks his watch “–twenty minutes. May as well just do the whole pretend date.” Cordell looks at you with so much honesty, you believe that he really does just want to help you screw with Dirk. And you cannot say the idea isn’t appealing.

“Alright,” you concede, shaking your head slightly in disbelief that you’re actually agreeing to this, and Cordell’s face splits into a wide smile. Honestly, seeing that expression alone made agreeing to this worth it. “So, if we’re on a pretend date, you gonna pretend to buy me another drink?”

“No,” you insist, shaking your head vehemently.

“C’mon,” Cordell chides, grinning madly.

“I did not agree to this,” you shake your head, finishing off the last bit of wine in your glass.

“Come on,” he urges again, leaning against the bar and tilting his head close to yours pleadingly.

“I am not dancing,” you repeat, wholeheartedly meaning it. You think if you have to come into genuine skin to skin contact with Cordell, you might actually melt into a puddle. Now three glasses of wine into your fake date, you can feel yourself loosening up and really enjoying yourself with this handsome stranger. He’s kind, and funny, and a little weird but in a charming way – exactly your type. And him begging you to dance with him wasn’t helping your self-restraint. This is a fake date, you keep reminding yourself firmly every time he flashes you that little half smile that makes his eyes light up.

“Well, I don’t know what kind of boring fake dates you usually go on, but mine aren’t complete unless I get to show off my two-step and knock back a tequila shot.”

“Oh, we’re doing tequila now, are we?” You laugh – this guy is actually ridiculous, and you kind of love it.

“That wasn’t a no,” he jumps on your ‘non denial’ and waves at the kid behind the bar. “Two tequilas, two limes?” he holds up two fingers and the bartender nods to him, quickly pouring out the shots and dropping two lime wedges onto a plate. Cordell grabs a salt shaker from the condiments rack on the bar and sets everything up between you. You let him work, watching incredulously but enjoying the show nonetheless.

“Give me your hand,” he holds out his own hand expectantly once he’s arranged all the pieces to his liking.

“Why?” your voice is nervous but your hand reaches out instantly of its own accord. Without answering he proceeds to rub the edge of the lime over the inside of your wrist, then puts the lime in your fingers and shakes some salt over the trail of juice he left behind. He does the same thing to himself, then passes you your shot, which you take in your lime-free hand.

“Right, you wanna do this the normal way or the ‘make Dirk jealous way’?” Cordell asks with a smirk once he’s oriented himself.

“I’m gonna regret asking this, but what’s the ‘make Dirk jealous’ way?” you groan exaggeratedly, like he’s put some great burden on you, but the truth is you’re really enjoying yourself.

“Like this,” Cordell steps up to you and links your right arms together. Catching his drift you smile and try to hold back the snort of laughter that bubbles up inside you – a nervous reaction to feeling the warmth of his body against yours, even through the layer of his shirt. “One, two, three,” he counts off and you go to lick the salt off your wrist except that’s what Cordell is doing. You freeze momentarily, heat shooting up your arm from where his tongue and lips are laving over your skin. You don’t think to move until Cordell puts his own wrist against your lips and you lick obediently.

Your linked arms pull you closer together as Cordell lifts the tequila to his lips and you follow suit in a kind of trance, both knocking back your shots. The tequila hits you harder than you remember it ever doing before, and you scrunch up your face, disoriented for a moment until you once again feel Cordell’s lips on your skin. This time they’re wrapping around your finger tips as he sucks the lime into his mouth. You stand frozen, the burn in your mouth and your fingers meeting in your chest and ratcheting up your heart rate as if you’re trying to run away from the oncoming flames. But it’s hopeless, you’re stuck in the blaze now.

“You want your lime, darlin’?” Cordell laughs at your stock still frame and holds his fingers to your lips, gently pressing the fruit inside and urging you to suck. You’re sure you must have physically combusted into fire by now, but Cordell isn’t jumping away like he’s been singed – he’s pressing closer. “Dance with me,” he rasps, voice hoarse from the burn of the alcohol. It’s not a request anymore, it’s an order, and you don’t question it.

Drawing his hand down the arm of yours linked with his until your fingers lace together, he pulls you away from the bar and out onto the dance floor. It’s an upbeat country song, the kind you’d normally jump around to, but he pulls you in and wraps an arm around your waist like a proper partner dance calls for – except he’s ignored the social convention of leaving room for Jesus. He pulls you after him in tiny circles and you let him lead happily. When the song changes to something a little slower he pulls you just a little tighter, and you can’t stop yourself from moving your gaze off his shoulder up to his face.

His eyes dart over your shoulder, then smile down at you wryly, and you feel yourself blush. “He’s watching,” Cordell grins mischievously. You go to look but he puts a hand on your neck and holds you still, keeping your eyes on him. His fingers are strong and warm against your collarbone, ironically causing you to shiver. “No, don’t look at him,” his voice is low as he leans in conspiratorially, “you wanna make him look, remember?”

“Why are you helping me?” The alcohol swimming through your veins is making you comfortable and fuzzy, and you let yourself lean against him familiarly, your head resting against his chest as he continues to move you both around the dance floor. You feel him shrug as his grips on your hand and the nape of your neck tighten a little.

“The truth?” he asks. You can hear the nerves in his voice, even if you can’t see them on his face.

“No, I want you to lie to me, please,” your voice manages to stay serious through the end of the joke before you burst into giggles, and you feel your laughter move into his body and trigger his own, making his chest rise and fall unevenly beneath your cheek.

“You are one hell of a gal, you know that?” You’re glad your face is buried in his chest so he can’t see just how brightly you smile at the compliment. “Truth is, I’ve been trying to get you drunk and have my wicked way with you.” You can tell by how expressionless his voice has gone that he’s winding you up, but you pull back and slap your hand to your chest in mock horror.

“Well Cordell Walker, I have never met such a rogue in my life,” you gasp in your best Scarlet O’Hara accent. It’s not a good one. Neither of you can keep a straight face for more than a few seconds, and you both double over in laughter after your minuscule standoff.

As your laughter dies down, Cordell grabs your hands again and pulls you back to him, swaying entirely out of time to the song that’s playing. He looks like he’s about to say something but the words haven’t quite found their way to his tongue, and when you catch his eyes you suddenly don’t want to hear what he has to say and you pull away from him. He looks at you, puzzled and just the slightest bit hurt as you try to find some cover for your sudden movement.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a bourbon fan, would you?”

Part 2 Here!

We’re All Mads Here: @vulgar-library @tintentrinkerin @negans-lucille-tblr @fandomfic-galore @petitgateau911 @schaefchenherde @kickingitwithkirk @little-diable @laxe-chester67 @kassyscarlett @austin-winchester67

All Walker: @lovealways-j @delightfullykrispypeach @stoneyggirl @thinkinghardhardlythinking @sams-sass @walkersbabygirl

[the-chicken-or-the-banana]

Hi! There's a headcannon that has been circulating that I never saw fully written, and I love how you characterize the foxes! Basically, Andrew living the setbacks of being short (either privately or publicly), getting frustrated, and Neil comforting him

THIS IS SO FUNNY SKDJFHK also i have always wanted to write a 5+1 so tyvm for this (again, this ended up so goddamn long but. what else is new.)

read "shortcomings (honestly, fuck you tilda)" on ao3 hereeeee

———

1.

Andrew gripped the edges of the counter. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Eye on the prize.

He squinted at the offensively orange mixing bowl that Kevin had placed far too high on the shelf earlier that day. He had planned on baking cookies (for no reason other than that he was bored), and that bowl was his lucky one: every baked good he made using it always rose perfectly.

Andrew had tried everything — stretching as far as he could, trying to move things with his mind, even going as far as going on his toes (after a cursory glance that no one was around).

He eyed the step-stool on the other side of the kitchen. He could always use that and put it back and no one would be the wiser. But no. Andrew was a fully capable adult with a reputation to uphold and he would get that bowl down by himself, dammit.

Andrew had been through hell and back, and then some. He would not be bested by cabinetry.

He rubbed his hands against his shirt before placing them back on the counter and took a running crouch. Andrew bounced lightly on his toes, mentally counted to three, and leapt up, hand reaching forward to grip at the bowl.

For one glorious moment, it really seemed like it would work.

Then the counter whacked Andrew in the gut, he smacked his head against the cabinet, and he slowly slid down to the floor, no bowl in hand.

Hmm. That wasn't supposed to happen.

He jerked his head up to glare at the stupid bowl and promptly felt extremely dizzy, slipping even further until he was collapsed entirely on the floor, limbs splayed.

That wasn't supposed to happen either.

Oh well. If he couldn't ruin his health with cookies, he might as well do it by laying on the most unhygienic piece of property he had ever seen. He supposed this was an acceptable way to go.

Andrew lay there on the dorm floor for a solid 15 minutes, willing the bowl to come down, until he heard the dorm room unlock and the sound of Neil's quiet humming filled the room. He didn't have the energy to get up though, so he flopped his legs around as Neil passed the kitchen to catch his attention.

"Oh, hey Drew," Neil shuffled further into the dorm after giving Andrew a quick glance and smile. A few seconds later, the humming stopped and Andrew saw the outline of Neil's body slowly move back into the kitchen doorway. "Um. Can I ask why you're starfished on the floor?"

Andrew sluggishly pointed upwards. "Bowl. High. Jumped. Fell."

Neil nodded knowingly. Andrew stared at him purposefully. Neil blinked.

Idiot.

"Get it for me," Andrew scowled with a well-aimed kick at Neil's ankles. Neil's eyes widened before filling with mirth. He walked forward and sat down next to Andrew's side, running a hand through his blond hair. Andrew hated himself for leaning into the touch.

"Aww, what's wrong?" Neil cooed. "Can't reach it?"

What a fucking asshole.

Andrew shot Neil a glare — he could admit that it probably wasn't super effective considering that he was on the floor with his not-boyfriend carding his fingers through his hair, but it was the thought that counted, okay! — and Neil gave him an amused look before pushing himself off the ground.

He shuffled around Andrew's limp body before giving an exasperated sigh.

"Andrew."

"Junkie."

"There is a stepstool right here."

"Yes."

"You didn't use it."

"No."

"... Why?"

Andrew shrugged in response.

He heard Neil grumbling under his breath and, a few seconds later, was rewarded with Neil's gross socks in front of his face as he went on the tips of his toes to grab at the bowl. Andrew glanced up and noticed that Neil's shorts were delightfully loose around his thighs.

Nice.

He indulged himself in the view until Neil dropped back down on the balls of his feet, holding the bowl proudly.

"Got it!" he grinned down at Andrew and flopped back down on the floor, pulling Andrew into a sitting position. Neil pressed up against him after a quick 'yes or no?' and handed over the bowl so Andrew.

"That was not fair," Andrew grumbled after a few minutes of calm silence. "You did that so easily. You're barely taller than me."

Neil nudged his shoulder and planted a kiss to the side of his head. "It's okay," he gave an annoyingly soft look. "I'll always be there to help you, whenever you need it."

Andrew huffed. "I did not ask for sentimentality, Josten. Just a bowl."

Irritatingly, this caused Neil to laugh a bit. "Okay, okay, I'll leave you with your precious bowl." He moved to get up and pressed a chaste kiss to Andrew's lips. "But for what it's worth, I think your size is perfect."

He left Andrew missing the warmth of Neil's body beside him before his brain caught up to what Neil just said.

"Josten. Josten! Was that a fucking dick joke?"

2.

There were moments where Andrew desperately wanted to burn Neil's clothing. He understood that they were remnants of past habits that were hard to break, but surely having this many gray and brown shirts had to be criminal.

Andrew refused to be seen kissing such a heathen in public but he really only knew how to put Neil in hot club clothes rather than hot casual clothes. And so, for the sake of humanity (and his dignity), he swallowed his pride and met up with Allison Fucking Reynolds.

Their plan to snatch up Neil from the Exy court to take him shopping at the mall appeared to be going well. So far, they'd bought him some shirts, artfully ripped jeans, denim jackets, and an actually functional pair of shoes. Neil, for all his stamina, looked like he was about to collapse from the weight of the bags, so Allison and Andrew took pity on him and decided to take a lunch break.

The three of them reached the food court and made their way to a noodle shop (after Andrew extracted a promise that he could get some ice cream afterwards). He and Allison sat Neil down on a bench to guard their massive pile of bags before going up to order.

By the time they were at the front of the line, Andrew was fully prepared to stab Reynolds in the middle of the mall. In a span of five minutes, she had managed to ask him about his and Neil's sex life, when they got together, what Neil's exact sexuality was, and had Andrew ever painted his nails?

He resolutely refused to answer any of those questions, on the principle that she didn't need more money from bets than she already had.

They ordered quickly, Andrew eager to get away from Reynolds, when the cashier said something that made him stop in his tracks.

"We actually have a discount right now for kids under 12!" she said smiling. "Is that something you'd be interested in?"

Andrew squinted. Why the hell would they—

Oh. Oh no, no, no.

Allison seemed to come to the same realization that he did, because she smiled wide and tapped her nails against the counter.

"Oh, that's just perfect!" she exclaimed. "Aaron here just turned 11 a few months ago. We'll take the discount."

Aaron?!

Andrew was going to kill her.

He was still planning bloody murder as Reynolds brought their tray of food to the table. He sat down with a scowl, and though Neil shot him a curious glance, he didn't push it.

Stupid considerate junkie.

Andrew muttered a percentage under his breath and proceeded to poke Neil in the cheek with his chopsticks. After a few moments of this, Neil turned to him with a scowl.

"Andrew," he grumbled. "What are you doing?"

Andrew glared at Reynolds.

Neil gave a resigned sigh and turned to her. "Allison. What happened?"

Reynolds smirked. "Oh, nothing much. Just that the cashier thought that your boy was a literal child and gave us a discount for kids 12 and under. I told her that it was great because Aaron over there," she jabbed a finger towards Andrew. "just turned 11."

Neil looked like he was biting back a laugh but then frowned. "Okay, but arms."

"True," Reynolds conceded. "However, consider this: tiny."

The two idiots nodded like they'd figured out some indispensable secret of the universe.

Frustrated, Andrew went back to poking Neil's face; when he finally glanced back, Andrew nudged his arms and shuffled a bit closer. Thankfully, Neil actually got the hint for once and scraped featherlight fingers into Andrew's hair.

"It's okay," Neil tried. "I mean, at the end of the day, all of us are just broke college kids—"

"I'm not," Allison interrupted.

Neil rolled his stupid, pretty eyes. "Okay, most of us are broke college kids—"

"Don't you have a bunch of mafia blood money and stuff?" Reynolds asked.

"Beside the point," Neil huffed. "Fine, Andrew, you are a broke college kid—" "Gee, thanks." "— and so you should be grateful that your height is saving you some money."

"That is dumb."

"You're dumb."

"How creative."

Neil scowled and tugged on Andrew's hair. "Shut up. Drama queen."

Andrew stabbed a piece of stir fry into Neil's mouth to close that damn mouth and resolutely ignored the click of Allison's phone camera.

3.

This was proving to be a problem.

Andrew stared at his $150 jeans, the bottom of the legs frayed and pale. He had just bought these two weeks ago. What a waste of money.

There really was only one thing left to do.

Minutes later, Andrew slammed open the door to his brother's dorm and dragged him out with Aaron demanding to know where they were going. By the time he had wrestled his idiot doppelganger to the car, Andrew was reaching. his. fucking. limit.

"Andrew, if you don't tell me where we're going, I swear I'll bite you. I'll push Neil off a treadmill and dump a bucket of mud on him. I'll throw all your ice cream in the trash. I'll—"

That last one was simply too far. He'd have to give Aaron some ground.

"Get in, loser," Andrew glared. "We're going shopping."

Thankfully, he managed to keep Aaron quiet until they reached the mall by letting him pick the music (it was country! Southern heathen). What a child.

Rich coming from you, a voice told him snidely. You can't even buy clothes for yourself properly.

Shut up, he scolded himself.

"Andrew," Aaron sighed exasperatedly when they reached the parking lot. "Can you finally tell me what we're shopping for?"

They got out of the car and Andrew raised an eyebrow as he faced Aaron. "Sex toys."

"WHAT THE FU— "

Andrew watched his brother's face turn red as he sputtered, before noticing the amusement in his face.

Aaron deflated. "Asshole," he grumped.

"Yeah, that is generally where the dildo goes."

"Shut up. I'm begging you."

Andrew decided to take pity on him and stabbed a finger towards Aaron's legs. "When did you buy those."

Aaron squinted. "My jeans?" At Andrew's nod, he looked confused. "Uh, like three or four months ago maybe. Why?"

Three or four months?! That was simply unacceptable.

"They are still in good quality," Andrew said slowly.

"...Yes?" Aaron looked lost for a few moments before his face brightened with pure, evil glee. Andrew hated the world more in that moment than he ever had before. "Oh my God. Oh my God. Are your jeans too long for you?"

"Be quiet," he snapped. "You just need to show me where you buy yours and never mention this to anyone or I'll stab you."

Aaron didn't seem as concerned as he should have been. "I don't need to do anything, dumbass. Why don't you just cuff them like me?"

"I refuse to look like a bisexual disaster."

"Hey," Aaron looked mildly offended. "That's not a bisexual thing. Right?" At Andrew's blank look, his eyes widened. "No. Oh shit. Is that why guys keep hitting on me at Eden's?"

Andrew actually blinked at that. He had not realized that his brother was really that stupid. "Aaron. Eden's is a gay bar. Obviously men will hit on you."

"Wait, it's a what— "

"Be quiet. You are coming with me now." He dragged his brother to the mall entrance as Aaron bumbled along behind him, swearing incoherently.

They weaved their way through what seemed like a million stores until Andrew walked out hours later, finally satisfied with his new haul of jeans that Aaron had oh-so-considerately helped to pick out, a few hundred dollars poorer, and two churros and an iced coffee fuller.

Andrew trudged up the stairs to his floor (perhaps this was a workout he should regularly implement in his exercise regime) while Aaron split off to find some study group or other.

By the time he reached his dorm, Andrew felt far more exhausted than the situation warranted and he blindly chucked the bags on the sofa, belatedly realizing that Neil was already sitting where the bags would land. Oops.

He sat down by Neil like the throw was entirely intentional as Neil sputtered when the plastic smacked him in the face.

"What's all this?" the junkie questioned. For fuck's sake, why did his eyes have to be so blue?

Andrew just gestured for him to take the clothes out and saw as Neil's face grew confused when he saw what he was holding.

"Jeans? Didn't you literally buy some like a week ago?"

"Two," Andrew corrected, because he was a petty bitch if nothing else. Neil rolled his stupid eyes at that but waited for Andrew to provide an explanation. Andrew heaved a regretful sigh. "The bottom of them are all frayed now"

"Frayed?" the striker's brows furrowed before his face cleared and a shit-eating smirk crossed his face. "Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying you were too short for your jeans?"

Andrew nearly stabbed him right then and there.

"Shut. Up."

"Oh my gosh. Andrew. Andrew."

When Andrew got up (not grumpily. never grumpily. (okay, maybe a little grumpily)), Neil tugged on his shirt sleeve with an apologetic grin. "Sorry, sorry, I'll stop making fun," but his eyes were squinted as he tried not to laugh and his face was flushed and his lips were red as he bit on them, and honestly, how was Andrew expected to stay annoyed after seeing that?

"I mean," Neil continued. "You're paying with whatever you have left of Tilda's life insurance, right? And it's technically her fault you're so, uh... vertically challenged because of the drugs and shit. So you buying all these jeans are like a big "fuck you" to her!"

Andrew blinked slowly at his not-boyfriend's not-cute not-endearing hand-waving and decided he could take a hit to his reputation if it kept Neil glowing like this. "Josten. Are you saying that being short is literally in my jeans?"

"Holy shit, yes."

4.

To be fair, he had been warned. This was probably his own fault. Which he would never admit, but whatever.

It had started fine enough.

Andrew had been smoking by the windowsill as he waited for Neil to come back from his class. It was raining heavily and he felt a comfortable laze settle in his bones, so he didn't bother to open the window, despite Kevin's complaints.

"Andrew, stop smoking in here. If you want to destroy your lungs, at least do it away from me."

"Shut up and watch your damn Exy, Day."

He shut up and watched his damn Exy.

Andrew let the sounds of the game wash over him as he let his eyes droop (when did Exy become... relaxing to him? That was moderately concerning), so by the time he realized that there was an incessant beeping sound in the background, everything was too far gone to not have gone to shit.

His body finally jolted into action when he finally registered that the smoke alarm was blaring in their dorm and he heard yells coming from outside in the hallway, which probably meant an RA or some other Foxes were about to burst in and see him smoking where he wasn't supposed to. For the third time this month.

Crap.

"Day. Day! Get off your fucking computer and turn off the alarm," he hissed as he (gracefully) scrambled to the kitchen to find a towel.

"Hmm?" Kevin hummed blearily. "Oh. That. Well, I told you so."

Andrew simply could not believe it. (Well, maybe he could a bit. Kevin was just that kind of asshole frie— person.)

By the time he dampened a towel (wow, they really needed to do the dishes sometime soon), the shouts were right outside the door and he heard keys jingling in the lock. Quickly he scrambled up the table, but in his haste, kicked over a glass of water (vodka? Sprite? whatever).

He tripped over slightly and his foot splashed into the puddle on the table, causing him to cringe internally. His sock felt horribly wet and tingly, and it was nearly enough to distract him from the creaking of the door opening. Quickly, he reached up, flapping the towel near the smoke alarm to turn it off.

It wasn't enough. He couldn't reach the alarm.

In a split-second, he decided to just fuck it and leapt up to see if that would work. However, the uncomfortable feeling in his feet and the stupid smoke alarm and the fucking banging of the door made him severely misjudge his strength.

Andrew jumped a lot further forward than he expected. He flew through the air, one foot catching on the top of a chair, the other stabbed by the edge of the table. In a futile attempt to gain his balance, Andrew flailed his arms around, but that just caused the towel to smack him in the face.

Eventually, gravity took hold of him and he (and the chair) crashed into the floor, the towel mockingly flopping on his hair. Blearily, he raised his head up and saw Neil and their RA staring at him concernedly from the doorway.

Well, this was awkward. At least the beeping had stopped.

Their RA, an unfortunately attractive tennis player named Richard Addams (Nicky found it hilarious that their RA's initials were R.A.. Andrew called him 'Certified Dick™'), stepped in cautiously. "Andrew, everything okay?"

"Just peachy," he grumbled.

Neil ran to Andrew's side at the sound of his voice and pushed his blond hair out of his face. "Why peaches? They're honestly not even that good; I can only stand the really big and thick and juicy ones."

Andrew froze and even Kevin closed his laptop that. "Neil," Certified Dick™ said slowly. "Do you know what peaches are?"

"Duh," he rolled his eyes. "Fruit. That's why Nicky has a peach next to my name in his contacts. Because I like fruits."

Idiot.

"It means 'ass,' " Andrew informed him. Neil gaped.

"It means wha— "

"Okay," Certified Dick™ exclaimed cheerfully. "I'm gonna leave y'all here. Andrew, I'll assume you weren't doing anything against the rules because you are a kind person who always listens to what I say."

"Of course," Andrew said blandly. "I am a wonderful student." He fingered the edges of his armbands.

Certified Dick™ slowly backed out of the room.

Neil let out a breath and blew his hair out of his eyes. "Okay," he started. "We'll talk about the ass thing later. But first, what the hell just happened?"

Andrew pointed up at the smoke alarm.

"Well, yes, I got that, but why were you jumping around like an absolute idiot?"

"Kevin is useless," Andrew announced.

"Not true!" Kevin protested immediately. "You just never listen to me. It's not my fault that I'm always right."

Andrew glared at him and turned back to Neil. "I couldn't reach the stupid smoke alarm," he finally gritted out, bracing for someone to mock him.

It never came.

Instead, Neil gave him a cheeky grin and a wink (at least, Andrew assumed it was a wink) and turned to Kevin with a faux-annoyed stare. "Seriously, Kev? You didn't help him?"

"He got himself into his own mess," Kevin shrugged.

"Okay, and what if someone had caught him? They might have not allowed him to play Exy for a bit! Or maybe while he was trying to shut off the alarm, he could have really hurt himself!" Neil was really laying it heavy on the dramatics, brandishing his arms wildly.

Kevin's eyes widened in horror at his words. "Shit."

"Yeah," Neil nodded graveley. "Us Exy players have got to look out for each other. How else will we live to our potentials?"

Kevin looked like he was going to be sick. Quickly, he whipped open his laptop and began muttering questions on how to secretly disable smoke alarms.

"Junkie," Andrew muttered to Neil. Neil just hummed and pressed a kiss to the crook of his neck.

"Yeah," he whispered a few moments later. "Only for you."

5.

Hmm. This was nice.

Andrew never could have imagined he would be the kind of guy to stumble over furniture while kissing his way through a room, and yet, here he was, crashing into tables and upturning chairs and tripping over bags.

He had Neil's fingers intertwined with his and was dragging him through the dorm, the kisses constantly pausing because Neil kept breaking off into small smiles and laughing into his neck. Every few steps, Andrew would take a look at his flushed junkie and absolutely forget about his plan to reach the bedroom, choosing instead to kiss him ferociously right there.

They were lucky that no one else was in the dorm.

When Andrew realized that it had taken them a solid seven minutes to walk about 15 feet past the door, he realized they would probably never reach an actual bed at the rate they were going. He told Neil as much and was rewarded with a shrug.

"I literally don't care where we end up," Neil said breathlessly before pulling him into another heated kiss. "I just wanna kiss you."

Andrew nearly snorted at that. How predictable. "I got that" he muttered. "But what do you want?"

Neil raised an eyebrow and deepened his voice mockingly. "I want nothing."

"You are actually so insufferable."

"Yeah, yeah," Neil waved him off and latched his mouth on Andrew's neck. Fuck. "Hmm," he said a few moments later. "Carry me?"

Andrew resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Ever since the junkie had seen how much he lifted at the gym a few weeks ago, this had become one of his favorite requests (and really, who was Andrew to deny him?).

Nevertheless, he leaned down and grabbed both of Neil's thighs, pushing him up until his legs were secured around Andrew's waist and Andrew could comfortably hold him up, his body flush against Andrew's.

Yeah, he got why Neil liked this so much.

He wasn't sure how long he'd be able to hold Neil up for though, considering that they actually had a game tomorrow and he didn't want to put up with Kevin's annoying complaints if he didn't try at least a bit. Andrew glanced around for a second before his eyes caught on the perfect place.

He adjusted his grip on Neil, causing him to let out an oof in surprise and carefully made his way to the kitchen (with only a slight amount of kissing in the middle). Andrew messily deposited Neil on the island counter and was promptly faced with another problem.

Neil was up there. Andrew was down here. How the hell were they supposed to make out now?

Andrew frowned slightly and tugged at Neil's collar. "Lean down," he commanded.

Neil complied and pressed a searing kiss to his lips, tugging at Andrew's hair, but too soon he pulled back.

At Andrew's 'yes or no?' Neil smiled down sheepishly. "It's a yes, but this angle's going to end up destroying my back."

That made no sense — whenever Andrew sat on the counter, he never had to lean down that much. He reasoned that the weight of being an Exy junkie was finally catching up to Neil's spine, though.

"Well," Andrew huffed. "I'm not going up on my toes."

"Why would you need to go on your toes?" Neil looked genuinely confused as Andrew frustratedly gestured at the air between them. "Wait, wait. Can you not reach me if I'm sitting up here?"

Andrew's thoughts came to a halt.

He pulled back (well, as much as he could while still staying in Neil's arms) and squinted suspiciously at his not-boyfriend. "Can you normally reach me when I sit up?"

"Well, yeah," Neil blinked. "I mean, I have to stretch a little bit but it's usually fine."

What.

Unceremoniously, Andrew yanked Neil off the counter and sat himself up (he pretended not to notice the stare that Neil gave when he flexed his arms). He hooked his ankles around Neil and dragged him closer, coming nearly forehead-to-forehead.

Forehead-to-forehead. Neil could reach him.

Andrew let out an uncharacteristic groan and dropped his head on Neil's surprisingly comfy shoulder. Neil snorted quietly and patted his head.

"It's okay, Drew," he said, his voice muffled but teasing as he pressed a kiss to the top of Andrew's head. "Maybe next time we can get you a stool or something. That'll be real attractive."

Andrew scowled and kicked him in the leg.

Neil's voice softened as he lowered his arms to rub soft circles on his back. "But I'm serious Andrew, it's okay." He pressed a soft kiss to Andrew's collarbone, the underside of his jaw, the corner of his lips. "Does this feel good?"

Andrew swallowed. Hiding from Neil was a fight he knew he'd lose, and there was no point prolonging the inevitable. "Yes."

"Then that's all I need. Making you feel good makes me feel good," he whispered. "I really like this, what we do right now. And if you want, we can still find more positions that feel really good. Don't stress, we have time."

"Hmm," Andrew said a few moments later. "That is all fine and well, but actually, we now only have about 20 minutes until Kevin comes back from class, and I would highly appreciate it if you could get me off sometime soon."

"Asshole. We were totally having a moment."

"Next to a bowl of apples."

"Rude. I bet those apples appreciated the conversation."

Andrew rolled his eyes at Neil's idiocy, but kissed him hard to convey everything he felt: you care, you listen, you are okay with me, you are safe for me. Neil seemed to get the message, because his body softened under Andrew's grip as he kissed him back eagerly.

When they finally pulled apart, Andrew felt heavy and sated and secure in the way he only associated with Neil. He looked into Neil's blown-out pupils, the blue peeking brightly at the edges of his eyes as he slowly brought Neil's hand to the waistband of his jeans.

"Right," Andrew tried for a nonchalant tone. The slight voice-crack may have betrayed him, but whatever. "Take off my pants now?"

+1

South Carolina winters were shit.

Growing up in Oakland meant that he was pretty used to cold winters and hot summers, but usually things only got unbearably chilly at night, when he could pile tons of blankets on himself. Unfortunately, winters in the South brought biting wind and snow. All day long.

Andrew hated the cold (sure, he could walk around with a blanket draped over him like a cape in his dorm (he did. occasionally), but alas, he actually had a reputation to uphold)

And yet, when Nicky and Dan enthusiastically told Neil about their stupid plan and Neil had sent a stupid questioning gaze to Andrew's stupid face, he sure as fuck couldn't use "the cold" as an excuse to deny those eyes.

So he bundled up into a turtleneck, a sweater, a thin jacket and a snow one, a beanie, a pair of gloves, leggings and then sweatpants, and his warmest socks (Andrew decidedly ignored Neil's snickers, who was annoying dressed in just a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. how rude.)

The so-called Monsters trampled down to the parking lot outside the Tower, boots sinking deep into the snow. Andrew shivered at the sudden wind and if he walked a little closer to Neil's hot warm body — well, no one needed to know.

Within seconds of their arrival, Andrew was regretting coming out.

A massive snowball soared through the air and slammed into Aaron's face, who promptly fell on his ass from the force of it.

"What the fuck?" he sputtered, wiping snow out of his eyes.

"HA!" Reynolds hollered. "Take that!"

"Oh dear," Neil muttered. "I didn't expect this much violence from the start."

"We are Foxes," Andrew scoffed. "Violence is the whole point."

"Actually, there's this one piece of shit in my Stats class and he tried to tell me I was wrong — I wasn't, by the way — and instead of punching him, I just very mathematically proved how incompetent he was and I told him that his parents' miscalculation when it came to conceiving him evidently got passed on to him in the form of his nonexistent math skills. So. No violence."

Andrew wasn't sure if he should kiss Neil or smack him. "Right. Because verbal annihilation is a very tame response."

"Since when have you been such a peacemaker?"

"Renee."

"You two literally beat the shit out of each other every week."

Andrew shrugged. "Semantics."

"I really don't think— "

Their conversation was rudely interrupted by Matt throwing a snowball mere inches away from Andrew's face. At his glare, Matt promptly ran behind a car.

"Neil," Andrew sighed. "I hate you."

"I didn't force you to be here," Neil pointed out. "Could've said no. What did Nicky call you? 'Whipped.' So ha." With that profound statement, Neil ducked and dumped a handful of snow down the back of Andrew's shirt.

"Ha," Andrew said back smugly. "Layers." Neil looked betrayed.

"Layers. I forgot."

"I didn't."

"Asshole."

"Yup."

Neil scowled and kicked at Andrew's highly sturdy snow boots petulantly. Andrew refrained from rolling his eyes turned towards him. "Yes or no?"

"Oh," Neil perked up. Junkie. "Yes, yes."

Andrew jabbed him in the stomach and when Neil keeled over groaning, he pressed a kiss to his lips and shoved his head under Neil's chin.

"Personal heater," Andrew explained. Then he grabbed Neil's arms and tucked them around his waist. This was good.

"Right," Neil snorted. "Naturally. I can't wait until someone throws a snowball at your face and you get all cold and wet."

Andrew scowled. How rude.

"Oi, Minyard!" Dan called and Andrew sighed before wiggling around until he was facing her, back flush against Neil's front. "This is for drawing mustaches all over the pictures in the Court!"

Andrew raised an eyebrow. "You have no proof— "

His protests were cut off with the sight of a snowball hurtling full speed at him. He made to jump out of the way (maybe Exy was good for something after all), but Neil's arms around him proved to be a real hindrance.

As it was, he got jerked back into place, the snowball inches in front of him. Andrew shut his eyes, hoping he could use this as an excuse to drag Neil into the dorm to warm up, when he heard an "oof" from behind him.

Andrew twisted around to find Neil's face covered in an explosion of snow, water dripping down his shocked expression.

His eyelashes were nice. Hmm.

"Wh- What?" he shivered. "How is there snow on my face? Wasn't it supposed to land on you?"

Oh.

Andrew brushed off some snow that had settled on his cheekbones before stepping back a bit (still in Neil's arms. that was necessary). And Neil was right, it was odd, the snowball was supposed to hit him and instead, it had smashed itself on Neil.

"I believe," Andrew said slowly. "My height has proved to be advantageous."

"Advan— you mean you were so short the snowball literally missed you and hit me?!"

"Yup," Andrew felt extremely self-satisfied. "See, had you been shorter, this wouldn't have happened. Alas, there's just more of you to hit when you're tall."

"That— I— Andrew!"

"That's my name."

"Ugh. I am cold and wet and very much not liking this," Neil grumbled.

"Bet you wish you had as many jackets as me, huh?" Andrew crowed.

"You could always give one of them to me," Neil said as he yanked Andrew back against him.

"I could. Not feeling it, though."

"Bastard."

"Just a little," Andrew agreed. He tilted his head up to look at Neil and oh, that angle was good, his lips were right there, how did Andrew never notice that Neil's eyelashes framed his eyes so nicely?

Hmm. If this was the view, maybe his height had some... unforeseen perks that extended beyond snowball fighting.

"I win," Andrew told Neil seriously. At his confused expression, Andrew was forced to sigh out an explanation. "You are very pretty from down here."

"Oh?"

"Shut up."

"I think you're pretty too."

"198%."

"Kiss me?"

"Ugh, if you insist."

Andrew leaned up to press his lips to Neil, dutifully ignoring the cheers from behind him, as Neil placed a hand under his chin to tilt him up further, which felt very nice.

Yeah, Andrew was living the good life. He had a maybe-boyfriend who was the perfect height and a brother and cousin who might actually stay, and he was content and safe and— really fucking cold because there was a ball of snow sliding down his neck what the fuck what the fuck what the fu— .

"NICKY."

"Shit. Sorry!"

[yamithediaperdork]

Welcome to baby land (Ben 10)

it was a tale as old as time, one that had happened before, would happen this day and despite the fall out from today's events would happen again in the future.

A young boy, fueled by fetish desires and spending hour after hour, day after day bringing himself to the peak as he looked at his chosen fetish, only to pull back last second.

Because the boy knows for what he wants, for what he's going to do.. he needs that desperate pent up denial of release to shut down his common sense. to make him nice and dumb.

His name was Ben Tennyson, and up until a short while ago he had been the hero of the universe and earth. But that was before the watch had been taken, and given to his cousin Gwen who had been picked as being a most reasonable hero. with cutting remarks that he would of never gotten the watch for as long as he had had it's marker realized who was wearing it, and being called to immature.. was it any wonder a bitter and dejected Ben cut himself off from his extended family and drove into the world of porn?

never mind he had beaten off a alien invasion, a 'pants peeing doofus' couldn't be trusted with the watch.

Fine. whatever. if they wanted to look at him as a stupid big baby.. that's what he'd become.

He didn't even like diapers at first when he started, but well.. porn has a way of warping a young boy's mind. Looking at picture after picture, caption after caption and reading the stories Ben for all intents and purposes turned himself in a diaper boy, and a humiliation junkie.

Taking birthday money he even found and brought a package of punishment diapers meant for shaming (though he got it at a discount as the shop was being put out of business) that were super thick, boasted how they could hold any mess.. and also claimed they didn't keep any stink from being contained and guaranteed diaper rash if used.

For a porn addicted loser like Ben, this was pure gold and since he paid for rush devilry he got a enema bag and a small bottle of little crampers, the enema for brats.

Ben knew what he wanted, total, public humiliation but he kept ruining it for himself with self pleasure driving the need out of his mind before he could do it.

finally, Mid October the little porn fueled loser decided enough was enough, he was gonna stop wasting his time and the diapers he'd paid for and set himself up to goon. For a week strait he subjected himself to it, and by the time he was done on Sunday night, Monday morning the little loser set himself up to fail.

waking up early, Ben used the whole bottle of little crampers even though it said to just mix 1/8 with a litlre bag for a enema kit, and groaned and whimpered as he used it, hot water and a dash of castor oil in the big enema bag, only his bulky white and black t-shirt hid the preggo belly he gave himself.

getting back to his bedroom and cramping, the soon to be ruined diaper loser looked at the pack of his punishment diapers and having not worn one till today, toyed with layering at first but they just looked too thick.

Settling on one of the bulky diapers with it sobbing crybaby design, he taped it on then tried the tapes, blushing as the package lived up to it's name.

Once taped on it would take 2 hours for the tapes to come back off, he was truly trapped. again a normal boy of Ben's age would of been panicking, realizing they had gone too fair but Ben just breathed fast, and smiled as he picked his baggiest pair of pants and was delighted that they still only JUST hid the diaper, if he bent over his padded shame would be CLEAR.

Getting down stairs and getting breakfast in himself, he was already seated as his parents came down and made small talk with them even as the delightful cramps started to build. (he'd never admit it, well at least before today's events unfolded but he'd grown to like pain, it made his heart beat fast and smile)

Still he couldn't help but squirm and groan a little bit, and got looks of concern from his parents as he finished his bowl of cereal.

"Benny you feeling alright?" His mother asked, coming over and putting a hand to his forehead. "You can stay home today if your not feeling good."

"N-No I'll be alright. just worried about a math test." Ben said, mixing truth with lies,then added: "Besides, you and dad said you were BOTH gonna be out all day today. who'd stay with me?"

"Heh, He's got a point there.. and good on you Ben. I'm proud your being mature enough not to try and get out of a test." His dad said, totally misunderstanding the happy giggle Ben let out.

His father might of thought it was Ben was so happy he was proud of him, But for diaper bitch Benny, the irony of the comment almost made him ruin the fun early.

If Ben's plan had one flaw (well one he'd admit to) it was the fact that he hadn't taken into account how much slower he'd be having to waddle his massive diaper butt to school with the added fun of having to stop 3 times to force himself not to spoil the fun early.

He'd even left a little sooner then normal, his parents had been quick with their breakfast and he 'accidentally' left his house key on the desk in his room and after making sure the front door was locked, went out the back door as you could lock it from the inside while the door was open.

'No getting out of this by running home!' Ben gleefully thought.

He barley made it into homeroom before the bell rang, though since he was known to be tardy from time to time it didn't raise too much attention, get getting a snide comment from his homeroom teacher about gracing them with his presence.

Even better, home was also his math class and that was going to be first period (which was a good thing for the ever so full little perv as his 'chocolate mud baby' wasn't going to stay in him much longer.)

Mr. Fillawick wasted little time in handing out the tests and after a standard warning that he'd tolerate NO cheating and there was going to be NO bathroom breaks, he offered anyone who had to go a chance to use the potty now.

'OK..this is it..your last chance.. you could just say you need to go, and sneak out the school.fill your diapers in the woods and get out of them once the tapes give up.' Ben thought to himself, biting his lip.

it wouldn't be destroying himself in class and getting him labeled stinky baby for the rest of the year, but it would land him in hot water with the school and his parents and he'd run the risk of being seen outside right?

He almost started to raise his hand when his inner pervert took over and he just turned it into brushing his hand though his hair.

"Alright, don't say I didn't warn you. you'll have a hour to do the test. good luck." Mr. Fillawick said and shrugged, going back to his desk and sitting down, doing whatever it was teachers did.

Five minutes later and Ben was in a mixture of heaven and hell. he was twitching and sweating a little bit, his pencil twitching in his hand even as he started to leak in little bursts against the front of his diapie.

the cramps were at the point of no return and even if Ben said fuck it and got up to run, he wouldn't of made it more then five steps.

all he'd managed to do so far was write his name on the test and the date, then the cramps had gone over board.

'Ok..Ok.. this was a mistake.. I've leaked enough boy milk to see that.. maybe.. maybe I can still just.. get out..of..' Ben thought, going white knuckled as he gripped the side of his desk with his left hand as a powerful cramp hit, a low rumbling fart coming out his backside though the sound was mostly muted.

the smell however was not as the diapers lived up to their claims and Kids around Ben wrinkled their noses and looked around looking for the source of the smell and eyes zeroing in on his as he was blushing.

"Mr. Fillawick? I think Ben needs to go to the bathroom." A redhead boy behind him said. "Or at Least can he be moved to the back of the classroom.

"Mr. Tennyson had his chance for that Mr. Randal. and I prefer he stay where I can keep a eye on him." Came the teachers amused answer.

even as the class giggled and laughed, two more rotten poots escaped and there was open cries of disgust.

"Gah, at least open a window!"

"What did you have to eat this morning, a skunk!?"

Ben whimpered and squirmed, he had the whole class basically looking at him now and the teasing and taunts had brought his pervert side back up to full power.

'It's now or never.' Ben thought, though he also knew wasn't really a option. it was more like Now or never if he wanted a semblance of control over the act.

it helped he was trembling lots now but Mr. Fillawick who'd never cared for Ben much since he was a rowdy student only watched with sadistic glee.

Ben's Pencil 'accidentally' shook out of his hand and rolled off the desk and onto the floor, and Ben made a show of just reaching into his desk to find anther one.

"Mr. Tennyson, whatever your habits in your own room may be, I run a clean Classroom." the smirking teacher said. "Bend down and point up that pencil."

"Uh..but..If I-" Ben started, putting the perfect crybaby whine in his voice.

"You'll what? fart? like you haven't been doing that already?" the teacher shot back.

Putting on a show of being embarrassed and scared (he was embarrassed but his heart was beating fast) Ben leaned over the right side of his desk and there was a gasp from the students behind him as one thing he hadn't planned on happened.

"BEN'S WEARING A DIAPER!" Hooted Crash.

"A BABY DIAPER!" a blond girl added.

"More like a BIG baby diaper!" Randal noted with amusement.

Somehow his pants must of lowered enough to flash off his embarrassing diaper! Oh god! for all of 2.4 seconds trued to stop what was about to happen but the act of leaning over had been the final trigger.

as the enema finally worked it's magic and the back of his diaper started to swell up Ben could only hear the roar of his mess and though tear filled eyes almost could swear he could see image of him in just diapers and a bib, tapping a shovel on a grave that had been filled in. the tombstone read:

RIP Ben's self respect.

as the force of the mess made Ben fall forward, landing face down and ass up, his pants failing down more so everyone could watch his diapers load up in the back (thankfully they wouldn't be able to tell what he was doing in the front!) The image of baby Ben came over and looked down with a grin at the real one.

"Welcome to baby land~ no going back now."

As Ben's life was ruined, and he was designed to never be able to get that 'excited' again unless he was crapping brains out(heck, he was going to be pulled from school and his parents would begin his new big baby life, treating him like the baby they thought he wanted to be, not knowing he was just a humiliation junkie) Charmcaster smirked in her jail cell.

Sure having to watch all the events unfold from sitting into of a toilet wasn't the way she'd hope to see the spell play out, not to mention it had been that bitch Gwen she had targeting, but this worked out in the end.

Gwen would suffer being the cousin of the big stinky baby and would likely end up having to change him and it wouldn't be too long now before her uncle broke her out. wincing as Ben started to baby babble though she did have one moment's regret.

'I mean, I'm evil and wanna take over the world but was making him a diaper perv too far?' She wondered, then smiled. 'Naaaah!'

The end