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celestie0 · 9 months ago
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gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]
kickoff ch.9 words you've been wanting to hear
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ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader
ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.
ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot, marijuana use, sexism, sexual harassment (verbal only)
ᰔ chapter. 9/x (probably 12)
ᰔ words. 15.6k (WHY DO THEY KEEP GETTING LONGER)
a/n. HELLO MY DEAR KICKOFF READERS IVE MISSED YOU ALL SO MUCH i am soooo sorry for the wait on this one. this chapter felt very vulnerable to write for some reason lmfao, but i really hope it was worth the wait :''') see you at the bottom!! if there are typos or some things don't make sense i'm so sorry i literally gave up on proofreading this i just ended up raw-doggin it and then posting it
nav. masterlist
☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1
♬.*゚playlist
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an additional author's note. hellooo ellie here. there are some additional warnings/tags for this chapter, i added them to the tags above, so if you know you have any sort of triggers, please refer to them before reading! but if you don't have any and don't want to be spoiled ab anything then you can keep reading lol. thank youu <33
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The restaurant address that Kai sent you was just a ten minute taxi ride away, save for the five minutes you spent trying to evasively maneuver through the hotel lobby in order to avoid running into people you’re not too keen on seeing right now, a list that stacks up to just one person at this moment.
It’s a Korean barbecue place, it’s been ages since you’ve been to one, probably since they’re way too expensive for any sort of outing you could afford these days, but the crisp sizzling sounds of the grills and the savory air has your mouth watering in a way that makes you indifferent to the cost. Anything to get this churning feeling out of your stomach. 
It’s instantly brought to your attention that Hana’s tipsy off of Soju because she’s slid out of the booth the second you emerge to the tablestide, and she’s onto her feet to pull you into a hug. You hug her back.
“I’m ssssoooooooo glad you’re—hic—here,” she says, voice sounding loud near your ear, but her embrace is surprisingly calming to you.
Her face appears flushed when you pull away, and you give her a smile and a kind hold of her elbow. “I’m happy to be here, sorry for coming late, I just decided I wanted to have dinner with you all.”
Minato is pulling on Hana’s arm to get her to sit down, which she finally agrees to, and you glance to the left side of the table where Kai sat, meticulously turning over pieces of meat on the grill. His eyes are on you, and the seat next to him is empty.
“You look nice,” he says, eyes falling to your lap under the table once you’ve taken a seat next to him.
Your eyes fall to your lap as well. “Oh. Thanks. I wasn’t really trying to look any sort of way, though.” Just faded jeans with a few rips & holes you made yourself, way back in high school when that sort of thing was trendy.
“I know,” he says, smirk heard perfectly through his words, “I like that.”
You ignore him, a fleeting thought passing through your head of how annoyingly forward men are to women they’ve met within a day, just something you’ve noticed recently, and then you’re accepting the glass of Soju that Minato’s poured for you. Quick to tip it back, you feel a burn on your tongue that’s just enough to distract.
“Today’s game was pretty interesting,” Minato speaks up, picking up a few pieces off the grill with his chop sticks and placing them on Hana’s plate first before taking some for himself. You find the gesture sweet. “The first half was intense.”
Hana nods enthusiastically, elbows rested on the tabletop as she waves her hands around in the air. “Uh huh, uh huh, the boys kicked the ball like whoosh. Goes all over the place! Can’t get a—hic—can’t get a single shot. No, I mean me, I can’t get a camera shot. Not them, they can get the shots of goals. The goals of shots? Huh.”
“Alright, you’ve had enough,” Minato grumbles as he drags the glass of Soju that she was nursing away from her. 
Kai lets out a laugh beside you, his knee bumping against yours under the table. “I’ve watched so many of these soccer games for this job, and I’ve still got no damn clue what the rules are.”
You blink down at your empty plate for a second before grabbing the silver chopsticks laid neatly on your napkin, and taking some food from the center of the table. “Really? I’ve only been to a couple, and I feel like I get the gist of it.” Maybe it’s because you had a personal interest, though.
Kai lets out a low whistle next to you. “Okay, you’re a smartass then.”
You give him a sidewards glance. “Maybe you’re just dumb?” 
Your own words startle you a bit. Minato lets a laugh out, but under his breath, while Hana does absolutely nothing to conceal hers. Kai’s eyes just widen. You bite down on a carrot stick.
“Hey, hey, hey, y/n,” Hana chirps, tapping at your wrist, “do you know any of the soccer players? Utahime said you doooo.”
You swallow slowly to buy yourself time, but give a preliminary shake of your head before answering, “no, not really.” You catch a whiff of the cologne on your wrist when you lift your glass to your lips.
“Oh,” she sulks her shoulders and then sinks down into the booth again, her head falling onto Minato’s shoulder. The man stiffens a bit and then there’s a content smile playing at his lips. A hint of a smile develops on your face too at the sight when you put two and two together. What an adorable little crush. It makes you feel sick.
Kai pours you some more Soju the second you drink down the last of it in your glass, and you nod to him as a thanks. “Pretty sure most of my photos from the first half are fucked,” he says, dragging the opening of the bottle against the rim of your glass before pulling it away, “didn’t realize until way later that my aperture was way off.”
You bring the glass to your lips, inhaling before taking a sip. You’re about to speak up about that when Minato beats you to it.
“Are you serious?” he asks, disappointed, like they’re suddenly talking business now. “I better see some good shots. Your side was where most of the action took place. Like that through-pass, tight behind the defensive line, from Nanami Kento to Gojo Satoru before he sunk it a couple mins before the half ended.”
You choke a little on your Soju at the mention of Gojo’s name, and then all three of them are looking at you. You wave a hand in front of your face. “Sorry.” 
Kai grumbles something under his breath and then stuffs a piece of pork belly into his mouth. “Yeah, whatever, man. I’m pretty sure I got some good ones. Don’t worry.”
Dinner goes on like that, where you count the number of times Kai thinks that someone saying something funny across the table is an excuse to press his thigh against yours, but at least the cute way that Hana and Minato seem to inch closer to one another all night is enough to put you at some sort of bitter ease. But that unsettling feeling in your stomach from a couple of hours ago still lingers.
The four of you stand outside the restaurant, heels rocking back and forth in the cold as you all take up the last chance to debrief the day, and then Minato’s glancing at his watch.
“Alright, it’s probably time to head back. We can all share a ride to the hotel, it’s cheaper that way,” Minato says. Hana’s clinging to his sleeve.
“Oh, uh, I was going to stay here. There’s a cool camera shop around the corner. I was gonna check it out,” Kai says, pointing over his shoulder before glancing at you. “Wanna come? I saw they’ve got used film cameras.”
You twiddle with the hotel key card in your pocket. It’s cheap plastic, could break easily with just the right amount of pressure. Like your resolve right now. “Sure.”
He smiles at you.
“Alright, well I need to get this one back to her room,” Minato says with a sigh, pointing to Hana, “so I’ll see you all at the next game?”
You and Kai nod at him and then watch as he walks away with Hana on his arm towards the curb, pulling his phone out to call for a ride.
“Where’s this camera shop at?” you ask Kai once the silence between the two of you stretches out a little too long. 
“It really is just around the corner,” he says, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He starts walking down the row of miscellaneous shops and establishments under dim street lighting, and you follow after him before the two of you circle to the adjacent end. A tiny shop in the distance catches your eye. The LED sign above the storefront was blinking sporadically, and read 17th St Camera & Rentals, except half the letters were extinct of any light. Next to it was a 24/7 liquor store.
It’s only when you walk right up to it that you realize the sign dangling behind the glass door that says closed.
“Oh. Bummer,” Kai comments in a flat tone. “I swear it was open before I got to the restaurant.”
You sigh, pulling your phone out to glance at the time. “Yeah, at 8pm? It’s past 10 now.”
He looks at you and taps the camera case still hung at his neck. “That’s fine. I’ve still got a camera to show you, anyways.”
You blink your eyes at him, suddenly feeling a bit exhausted and then glance over your shoulder at the curb of the street to see if Minato & Hana were still there waiting for a ride. You don’t see them anymore. 
A distraction. Wasn’t that what you wanted?
“Yeah, show me.”
Kai seems to know the area better than you, since he walks down the haphazardly lain sheets of concrete across the ground with more confidence than a tourist would. The thought occurs to you that maybe the newsletter photographers have eaten here before during their time in Kyoto.
“What made you start working with the newsletter?” you ask, glancing at him as the two of you walk down further, into what seems like a neighborhood.
He shrugs. “First job I could find out of college. I had a lot of freelance experience, so I’m assuming that’s why they hired me.” He nudges your arm with his elbow. “What about you?”
“I’ve known Utahime for a while. She was impressed with my work.”
“Ahh, connections,” he muses, “smart. That’ll get you far as an artist.”
He suddenly stops walking and peers off to the right, into a darkness that you can’t really make anything out of until you’ve spent a few seconds staring too. He walks in that direction, the loud echoing stomps of his boots on concrete no longer audible once he crosses the threshold onto grass, and you follow behind to what seems like a deserted children’s park. You wish there were more trees in the city. There are a lot here in the countryside, and it makes you homesick for something you’re not even sure of.
A gust of wind brushes through, rattling the set of swings hung on rusty chains. The wood chips underneath your feet feel stale, with no snap to them at all as you follow Kai through the playhouses set up in connected fashion. There are two picnic benches, one looks like it’s been freshly painted with faux effort to improve its image in the line of sight of the street, while the other has red paint peeled back to reveal bronze underneath the moonlight, neglected and tucked behind a few trees. The latter is what he chooses.
He slides into the bench, and he shakes his head when he sees you try to take a seat on the other side before patting at the seat beside him. “It’d be easier for you to take a look at my side.”
He has a point, so you sit next to him instead. Although at this point in the night, you were feigning interest. He zips his camera bag open and you take a better look at the lens. There’s no way it was as cheap as he told you it was.
“There’s no way this was as cheap as you told me it was,” you say.
He laughs, pulling the camera out and handing it to you. “Yeah, maybe the guy cut me a deal since I’ve bought from him before.”
You’re smart enough to put the strap around your neck, even though you’re only holding it a few inches above the table, because a camera like this deserves the care and respect. The material is minimalist and sleek, and it’s heavy in your hands. You click the shutter button, screen coming to life with a few mechanic chirps. “Woah. Is it LCD or OLED?”
“LCD.”
“That’s nice,” you say, “paying for the OLED just seems silly to me.”
“I concur, Canon. Color accuracy is king.”
He shuffles to pull something out of his pocket while you continue to inspect the camera in your hands, and you see him fidget with said thing over the table in the corner of your eye. The flick of something and the light of something makes you turn your head to face him, and he’s pinching the end of a joint to his mouth, lighting the other end.
He gives you a glance when you stare for too long, inhaling from it before pulling it from his mouth. “What?” You can see the smoke leave his mouth in the chill of the air.
“Is that why you chose the secluded bench?”
“I did? Didn’t even notice.”
You blink at him, and he places his elbow on the table to lean closer to you. 
“Do you mind it?” he asks.
“No, not really.”
“Wanna smoke with me?” Two fingers pinching the origin of smoke tilt towards you. “This is my good weed, though, so, I charge by the drag.”
“That’s ridiculous, and no thanks. It doesn’t suit me.”
He lets out a laugh, releasing whatever tension he was building in your space, and the smell of weed is nauseating, but at least it's a new sensation to you.
“You’ve gotta be the only film major on the planet that doesn’t smoke weed. How do you manage?” he asks, the orange flicker of his joint being the only color you can distinctly see under the similarly flickering street lights. 
Your finger traces the rim of the camera lens and is careful to not smudge the glass. “I think I manage just fine.”
“Yeah. With delusion,” he says, coughing, scattering smoke into the air this time instead of a clean blow.
You turn a bit in your seat to face him more, placing the camera down. “You’re extremely blunt.”
His eyebrow raises in amusement and you close your eyes with annoyance at the pun. You brush it off.
“I mean, seriously, I get you’re probably just looking out for me, I guess. I appreciate that. But do you really think my dreams of becoming a filmmaker are that far-fetched?” you ask. There’s a crack to your voice at the end that you didn’t like.
He sighs, setting his wrist down on the table. There’s a long pause where he thinks about what to say. Probably the most you’ve seen him consider what words leave his mouth next. “I was in the same shoes as you, y/n. A couple years ago. I, too, had big dreams of making movies. I was going to apply to film grad school as well, although you’re shooting higher than I was at the time. There’s no way I would’ve gotten into UTokyo’s.” He tilts his head to the side a few times while looking straight off ahead. “I sent scripts in everywhere. To every fucking production company, creative agency, you name it. Never got a callback, not even once. While all my fellow grads were landing decent, respectable jobs.” He brings the joint to his mouth again, but he doesn’t inhale, just bitterly bites it. “I could’ve went on like that, but,” his brow furrows, “I’ve seen my peers torture themselves for years for those dreams of theirs. I swore I wouldn’t be one of them. Because they’re all delusional fucks.” He finally glances at you. “Are you one, too?”
Your shoulders drop a little and your lips purse. “I don’t know yet. It’s too early to say.” 
“It’s never too early to say, if the outcome is all the same,” he tells you. 
You consider his words for a moment. It’s the easy way out. You should consider yourself lucky. Everyone wants a reason, a sign, to turn away from the one thing they’re scared to think about. And here he was, giving that to you on a silver platter.
But if what you wanted was really all that fragile, then it means there’s nothing to show for any of it. For all the effort it took you to get here, and all the effort you’re still willing to give. 
“I’ll keep going until I fail,” you say, “or until I succeed.” It’s not really something you say for him, but for yourself.
He juts his bottom lip out and raises his eyebrows, slowly nodding his head, like he’s impressed by you. But his posture remains lax. “I mean, you’re working this job. You’ve got some sort of plan, at least. It’s not like I’m your parent to tell you what to do and what not to do.” He finally takes another drag, eyebrows pinching together at the same time his fingers pinch close to the burn of his joint to pull it away. “What’s that one saying? You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.”
“Wow. You don’t sound a day older than sixty-five.”
He smirks at you. “You’ve got a lot of attitude, Canon. Where does it come from?”
You sink a little in your seat, turning away from him to look down at your hands that were still messing with the features of his camera. “My annoying feelings lately.”
“Feelings about what?”
You consider telling the truth. But you don’t. “My car is in repair and I’m not sure I can afford to pay for the bill, since things keep coming up with it.” It was the thing at the top of your mind at the moment though, for some reason, so partially truthful.
He laughs. “Yeah, cars have a way of doing that when you’re finally getting caught up on bills.”
“At what point does spontaneously picking up random, obscure jobs go from omg I’m so excited to have this opportunity to I just need the money?” you ask.
“You mean you’re not already at that point yet?” he says with a scoff. “Soon, then.”
You sigh.
“Y’know I used to work at this lousy cinema a few miles away from Central,” he tells you, hand tapping the table with a rhythm that makes no sense. “Busted my ass working minimum wage on night shifts because I thought I’d catch a big break in conversation with a director, as if Martin Fucking Scorcese would choose to host his opening night at a random Edwards in Tokyo.” His tapping on the table stops. “Tell me that isn’t pathetic as hell.”
“That’s pathetic as hell.”
“The things you’ll do for money,” he says with a sigh. He sounds detached, like it’s really just a message for you.
You lick your lips, skin feeling dry from the wind that occasionally brushes by, and when you glance at Kai again, there’s a grit to his jaw.
“Should’ve been born as one of those damn college athletes,” he grumbles, sucking in fast through the joint that was close to withering away. “Those fuckers don’t pay tuition.”
The harsh colors of the soccer team’s color-coded practice schedule on your phone are visible when you blink, as well as the exhaustion under Gojo’s eyes in the warm lighting of the hotel lobby earlier tonight. “They work hard.”
He looks at you. “I work hard, too.”
Your shoulders tense. “I’m sure.”
“You work hard as well.” Just to include you.
“Yeah.”
“I mean, you can’t tell me that it’s fair.”
Your mind wanders to some of the people you’ve met on that team, who have been nice to you. You think of Gojo, and the memory of him makes you wish you were with him right now. Despite everything.
“I guess it’s not fair,” is all you say, a tactic to diffuse the conversation, one that you’ve had to use twice with him today. The sound of the swing chains clinking together from the wind in the distance runs a chill down your spine.
You feel heavy in your chest, and you glance at the joint pinched in between Kai’s fingers. He’s not keeping an eye on it, so it’s easy to steal, and you bring it to your lips before sucking in. You instantly let out a few coughs. He’s looking at you with surprise. And you’re still in desperate need of that distraction you’ve been craving.
“How long does it take for it to kick in?” you ask, coughing again and pressing a hand to your chest.
“Super long when you can barely stomach a single drag.”
You try again. He watches you. You swear you feel a buzz this time, and you hand the joint back to him. You feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Good,” you tell him, “really good.”
“That’s gotta be placebo, Canon.”
“No, really,” you sigh it. Even if it was, maybe your mind was just blessing you with a single moment of reprieve. “I feel…really good,” you say with your head in a haze. “Best I’ve…” you don’t know why you have to blink back tears, “best I’ve felt this whole week.”
Kai’s silent next to you. You look over at him, and he’s got a scrutinizing expression on his face. His eyes are glazed. “You seeing anyone right now, Canon?”
It’s the savory question you know has been on the tip of his tongue. Ignorantly asked, as if you would’ve been sitting here with him right now in the dead of night if the answer was yes. 
“No.”
He’s leaning towards you, and you’re dazed and also sleepy. His face is close now, there’s an urge to giggle, which means there’s no way this is all just placebo, and when his lips dip towards yours, you’re conscious enough to push him away by a weakly fisted hand pressed to his collarbone.
“Oh. I. Um,” you stutter.
“What?” he asks, eyebrow raised, still close to you.
“No. No thanks.” Because it felt wrong. 
He fully pulls away from you, and runs a hand through his hair, a deep sigh leaving him. “Alright.”
You’re breathing faster now, surroundings feeling vague, like you’re in sweltering heat but the air only bites cold.
You stand up suddenly. “I…I want to go back.”
“Go back where?”
“To the hotel. To my room.” You pause. “I mean, by myself. Not with you. We can share a ride, though.”
He stands up too, hands reaching for you, gripping the straps of his camera still hung around your neck and he pulls it off to place it back into the case. You feel like you’ve lost favor with him somehow. “Okay. Sure.” 
“But not with you.” You felt the need to clarify again.
“I get it, Canon. It’s fine.”
“Maybe you just need to fuck him aggressively without mercy.”
“I beg your finest pardon?”
You’re sitting in a booth inside this streetside KFC with Mina sitting across the table, waving a fry around in the air, and with Nobara next to you as she tries to open a packet of ketchup with her teeth. The hangout the three of you have been hyping up all week, just to be sat in the same place you always go to. You were about to take a bite out of your sandwich, but you set it back down on your tray.
Mina points the fry at you and shrugs. “I’m saying. Maybe you’re having such a hard time getting over Gojo because you got so close to fucking him in that bathroom, but you didn’t, and now you’re in, like, this constant state of edging.” She bites down on the fry. “The clit knows what the heart doesn’t.”
“Your theories never fail to amaze me,” you mumble, sinking further into the booth. 
“Perhaps it’ll take the edge off.” Mina sucks through the straw of her Diet coke. Nobara finally succeeds in opening her packet of ketchup.
“I doubt it. Besides, I technically already gave him an invitation to,” you say, fingers rubbing at your eye with a swipe as you wince from the memory, “and he rejected me, so, still swimming in the self hatred from that one.”
Mina hums. “There’s no way he’s not foaming at the mouth for it, y/n. Men never let a meal they were craving go unfinished,” she states, dramatically stabbing a chicken nugget with a fork.
“What kind of pigs do you guys associate yourselves with?” Nobara asks. She’s a lesbian, by the way.
“I raise another question. Why are we talking about this in a public restaurant?” you offer.
“Listen, babes,” Mina continues, like your words fall on deaf ears because she’s got some point to make, “it’ll either poof. Make your feelings go away like the drop of a hat because you find out he’s a bad lay. Or it’ll be so good that you realize you’re never getting over him and you’ll be thinking of his dick instead of your husband’s on your wedding night.”
“We’re. In. A. Public. Restaurant.”
Mina steals a biscuit from your tray. “If it ends up being the first outcome, then the whole thing was my idea. If it’s the second…then just know that Nobara has steered you wrong.”
“Why the hell do you have to drag me into this?” Nobara asks.
You’re about to take a bite from your sandwich again when you’re interrupted by the buzzing of your phone in your purse. You pull it out and glance at the caller ID, then let out a sigh.
“Sorry, I have to take this,” you mumble, slipping out of the booth and towards the restaurant’s exit, pushing the tense door open with a gust of fresh air brushed through you.
“Hello?” It’s the car repair man. “Really? I thought you said it was fixed.” Apparently something else came up. “Okay…how much longer will it be in repair?” Much longer than you had thought. “And how much will it cost?” Much more expensive than you had thought. “I don’t know what to say. I mean, really, I feel as though every time I’m on the line with you all, I have to wait longer to get my car back, and the bill just racks up higher.” They’re trying their best. “I know. Is it necessary to fix in order to drive, though?” State laws require it. “Okay…thanks for the update.” And then you hang up without another word, and with all the frustration in the world.
You head back inside and grumble about your car woes to Mina and Nobara, who try their best to respond with interest.
“Why can’t your insurance cover it?” Mina asks.
“Apparently they can’t claim it’s because of those rocks I drove over,” you sigh, “since it looks like it’s been a problem for longer than that.”
“Can you afford it?” Nobara asks.
“Not really,” you say. “I’ll just have to postpone having my car for a bit.”
You sigh with a glance out the window of this fine dining establishment, into the blue skies just beyond, head drowning out the voices of Mina and Nobara as they continue to grill you about all sorts of questions that you don’t have the energy to answer right now. You had another student loan payment to make once you got home today, and just the thought of it makes your heart drop a little. And you realize you just can’t afford to be picky about your financial situation anymore.
“Thanks for helping me out with this,” you say, footsteps over familiar grassy hills as you head towards the UTokyo’s practice field, your digital Canon EOS hanging from your neck. 
“Sure,” Kai says as he keeps pace next to you, “why the sudden mission, though?”
You’re gazing off straight ahead, a nervous pit in your stomach since it’s been a while since you’ve walked across this landscape towards the field. 
“I just feel like I need to diversify my income somehow,” you sigh, the buzzwords leaving a bitter taste in your mouth as you say them but it was the reality of your situation, “to make ends meet. When you mentioned freelance work during our conversation last week, it made me think it’s time for me to pick that up too.”
Kai hums. “Yeah, it’s a good plan. I’ll try to show you what I know.”
Once you’ve made it to the top of that hill, the one that oversees the field, your eyes instantly scan the field for familiar silhouettes, and your breath catches in your throat when you spot Gojo passively kicking a ball back and forth between one of his teammates for warm-ups.
It’s the second time you’ve seen him since that argument the two of you had in the hotel lobby, the first being at the post-game conference in which you did everything in your power to swiftly avoid him, and you plan on keeping that up. There’s also an urge to run away, but you’re starting to realize that’s not much of an option anymore.
“Honestly, you don’t really need to worry too much about shutter speed with freelance like you do for shooting sports,” Kai is mumbling next to you as he messes with the settings on his camera, the two of you making your way down the hill towards the field, and you’re not really listening because your eyes are on Gojo, who’s yelling something across the field to his teammates with a look of concentration on his face.
“Uh huh, I see,” you say. You see Kai glance at you in his periphery.
“You again!” you hear a familiar harsh voice call out, and you turn on your heel to face Coach Yaga who’s standing a few feet away in his custom UTokyo tracksuit with his arms crossed against his chest. “Why are you on my field?”
You hold your breath for a second. “Hi, Coach Yaga, so sorry, but I’m just here to take some more photos.”
He lets out one of his hmphs, unrelenting. “You’re a distraction. Get off my field.”
“D-Distraction?”
“Coach!” Suddenly, Geto’s in your line of sight as he emerges with a light jog up to your side. “You should really be nicer to our photographers, they give us a lot of publicity for our games. And publicity means funding.”
Coach Yaga narrows his eyes. “I need all my players focused right now. Even during practice.” He gives you a disapproving glance and you’re still confused, but also weirdly angered.
“Excuse me, Coach Yaga, but last time I checked, this field is technically open for all students. And I’m a student,” you say to him, crossing your arms across your chest now. “So, I can be here if I want.”
You have no idea if that’s true at all, but sometimes you’ve just gotta fake it ‘til you make it.
Coach Yaga grumbles something and then waves his hands in the air. “Fine! I’ve no bandwidth to argue about this anymore! Just don’t distract my players.”
You’re shocked that it worked, and Geto nudges you with an elbow to correct your expression so that Coach Yaga doesn’t catch on to the bullshit you just spewed. 
“Are you here to take some photos?” Geto asks, facing you. He’s got his hands on his hips, breathing slightly fast, some of his hair falling onto his forehead. 
“Yeah, I am, just for practice though. I’m here with—” you glance at Kai, who’s standing with his fists shoved into his pockets, “Kai. He’s also with the newsletter.”
There’s a moment where Geto studies the two of you for a second before speaking. “I know,” he says, extending his hand out for Kai to shake, which he does, “I think I’ve seen you around. Not sure if we’ve formally met, but it’s nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, likewise.” Kai’s hand is then shoved back into his pocket.
You feel awkward suddenly, and then quickly say something to Geto about how he should probably get back to practice, which he agrees to, and then you’re standing at the chalk sideline with Kai as he shows you the ins and outs about digital photography.
“Have you tried shooting in burst mode?” he asks, switching the feature on your camera and then handing it back to you. You sling the strap around your neck.
“Hm…” you start, pointing your camera across the expanse of the field to multiple areas. The trees off into the distance, the goal posts, Coach Yaga’s yapping Pomeranian. “Not really…” The grass beneath your feet, the sky above your head, and then blurrily focused before settling on Gojo who stood in the distance straight ahead.
You see through your viewfinder that he’s caught sight of you too, a look of surprise on his face seen only by the level of zoom, and you glance up from the screen to make eye contact with him in reality. He’s fully staring at you, and you can barely see the way his expression relaxes from that one of athletic concentration to something wistful and strange that you’ve had a hard time reading lately.
“Canon? Are you even listening?”
“Huh?” you snap out of it and look at Kai. “Sorry. Could you repeat that?” You quickly glance toward Gojo again, and his line of sight points towards Kai now.
“I was asking if you’ve tried panning before,” he says, reaching for your camera, pulling it towards him, but the strap around your neck means you’re pulled closer to him too. 
“Satoru!” Coach Yaga yells in the distance. “Eyes on the ball!” 
“Just got to set your camera to manual mode first,” Kai mutters, confusion in his voice. “Where the fuck is it?” He’s turning your camera in his hands, which only has you stumbling with another small step towards him, your chest pressed flush to his arm, and he looks down at you for a brief second with a smirk on his face.
You hear the sound of a ball being kicked on the field, followed by the shout of one of the players.
“Ah, here, found it,” Kai says, handing your camera back to you, and just as you’re about to say thanks and you hold your camera up, you’re hit straight in the face by a flying object and fall backwards onto the grass with a painful thud.
What the fuck?
Where are you?
Who are you?
Okay, that’s dramatic, it wasn’t that bad.
There’s shouting in the distance as you hold your head with a groan, eyes shut tight with images of your life flashing behind your eyelids, and when you open your eyes again from where you’re sat up on the grass, you’re surrounded by soccer players.
Gojo’s suddenly in your line of sight, knelt down beside you and he’s holding your shoulders, trying to get you to look at him but you’re still blinking away the stars you’re seeing. “Fuck, y/n, are you okay?” he asks, and you register the concern on his face.
“Dude,” one of his teammates kicks the heel of his cleat, “where the fuck were you looking? It was clear as day I was tryna pass to you.”
Gojo grumbles something to him, his brow furrowed, and he’s lowering his head to try to make eye-level contact with you but you’re still holding your head with a wince.
“Oh shit,” Kai comments, “she’s bleeding.”
You pull your hand from your face to glance down at the wetness that you feel, and bright red color stains the tips of your fingers.
The next thing you register is Gojo picking you up off the hard grassy ground into his arms, and starts carrying you away down the field.
“W-What the hell are you doing?” you ask, his pacing across the grass is fast and you have to wrap your arms around his neck to keep from getting dizzy.
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he says, voice strained in his throat, and you’ve never seen him look so worried before. 
“The hospital?! Please don’t, I don’t have health insurance right now.” His face is so close and you’re distracted from the pain of your headache.
“You’re bleeding on the face, I’m taking you whether you like it or not,” he grumbles.
You dig your nails into his shoulder through the nylon of his shirt, and he hisses from the pain before stopping in his tracks. “I don’t need to go to the hospital, Satoru, I just need a fucking bandaid.”
“You could have a concussion.”
“A concussion?!” You kick your feet for him to let you down but his grip on you only tightens. “You’re being ridiculous. Let me go, or I’ll bite you.”
He scoffs at that and continues walking forward. “You’re gonna bite me? That’s the most threatening thing you could come up with?”
“I’m being so dead serious, Gojo Satoru. No hospital.”
He grumbles something under his breath at your use of his full government name, and then says “fine” but he’s still walking down the grass until his cleats begin to tap on concrete, and then on what sounds like tile as he carries you into a building a few yards from the field.
He seats you on a cold counter, your hand gripping the faucet of a sink, and you finally take a comprehensive look at your surroundings. light blue, faint scent of chlorine in the air
“Is this…a locker room? The men's locker room?”
He sighs, bending his knees a bit to look at your face closely. You flinch when his hand reaches out, and he pauses, but you relax slightly and then he rubs his thumb over your cheek. You feel the smear of a droplet of blood. “Yes. I need running water.” He turns the faucet of the sink on to run his thumb under.
“For what?” you ask. His thumb is running over your cheek again.
“To take care of this cut.” He disappears behind a tile wall for a moment. You can hear metal clanking, probably of a locker opening and closing, and he re-emerges with a first-aid kit.
You slide your butt across the counter to the edge, about to hop off and make a run for it when he grabs your hips and puts you back into place. “Don’t even think about it,” he grumbles. He leans forward, grips you strongly, and you see that he’s still breathing heavily from practice, strands of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, and you can practically taste the salt on his neck. 
You press your shin to the front of his thigh, desperate to put some space between the two of you. “I don’t wanna be in here. Men are scary.”
“Well I can’t take you into the women’s locker room,” he says, ripping the packet of an antiseptic wipe open with his teeth, “I’d get registered as a sex offender.”
You attempt at an escape again, and he’s quick to get his hands on you to stop it.
“Quit manhandling me, or I’ll scream,” you threaten through gritted teeth, because you’re still mad at him. For everything.
“Go ahead,” he says, using his knee to spread your legs apart, then finds a place to stand between your thighs to get closer to you. “I’ve got a lot of ways I could shut you up.”
You blink at him, breath catching in your throat, and the expression on his face tells you he’s not interested in dealing with your stubbornness anymore.
“Just hold still,” he grumbles, placing the packet down on your thigh and then stepping off to the side to wash his hands under the sink.
“What exactly happened?” you ask, watching him dry his hands off with a few paper towels. One moment, Kai was trying to explain good digital photography to you, and the next you were dizzy from being knocked back onto the ground.
“You got hit by a soccer ball.”
“I know, but how?” You remember your camera hit your face from the impact too, and now you’re worried about it.
“I…wasn’t paying attention when my teammate passed it,” he admits with a sigh, finding his place in front of you again, the knuckles of his clean hand brushing across your cheek, caressing. Your expression softens slightly. He uses a hand spread across the small of your back to push you forward to him, then he gently passes the wipe over your wound.
“Oh okay so, you failed to protect me from a flying soccer ball.” 
He pulls his hand from you to read the lettering on the back of the packet. “I’m patching you up now, aren’t I?” he says, annoyed. “…oh fuck, I was supposed to go in with water first.”
“So glad to be in such good hands right now.” 
He gives you a pointed look, but you ignore it and turn your torso to see your reflection in the mirror for the first time. You had a small wound on your cheek, right over the bone, with some bleeding and it’s wider than it is deep. But when you look at Gojo again, who’s putting some ointment onto a Q-tip now, the look of guilt and worry on his face makes you feel satisfied for some reason, and you wanted to make it worse.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, brow furrowed, applying the cold gel to your cheek.
“Mhm. A lot.” Not really, no.
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” he sighs, head dipping towards you slightly to get a better look, “can you feel this?”
“Ahh, yeah. Ouch. So much.” Barely.
His other hand is placed flat on the counter next to where you’re sitting, and you allow it when his thumb starts to run soothing circles over your hip.
“Hmm…” you start, wide eyes looking up at him as he seems to lean closer and closer to you with every word that leaves your lips, “I really wonder if it’ll leave a scar.”
He looks tortured. His hand that was maneuvering the Q-tip in his hands drops to the counter now, and he brings his other one to your face, cupping your cheek. His eyes dart from the wound, thumb pressing at the plush of your cheek, and this time, it hurts a little so you wince. His expression is tense, some sort of inner turmoil you could read across his forehead, and then his jaw hardens.
“Who was that guy you were talking to earlier?”
You blink a few, then tilt your head slightly. You feel like you’re on a game show, where there’s four options and only one right answer. New boytoy, gay best friend, fuck buddy, or— “He’s my coworker.”
“That’s it?”
“Mhm.”
“Has he tried anything funny with you?” 
You almost roll your eyes. “No, dad, he hasn’t.”
“Woah. Say that again but make it daddy.”
“Hey just a quick question for you. Where do you get the audacity?”
His bent index finger finds a place under your chin, tilting your head up so you’re forced to look at him. “It’s your fault, really. I can’t help it sometimes,” he says, voice lower now. You’re squirming a little, wanting to push him away but his lips get close to your cheek, brushing near your wound, like he wants to make it all better somehow. “I really am sorry,” he whispers, near your ear. There’s a whimper you have to stifle in your throat. He pulls aways just enough to where he can look into your eyes. “A cut…” he starts, thumb now passing over your bottom lip, “on your pretty face.” He sighs. You shouldn’t, but when he prods, you tuck his thumb under your front teeth and your tongue presses slightly against the padded skin of it. He looks like he’s being driven to insanity, and his other hand has no shame at all in pulling you towards him, to seat you at the edge of the counter, and you miss the texture of his thumb on your tongue when he pulls it from your mouth. But it’s so he can dip his head down to kiss you instead.
Of course the sensation of his lips on yours only lasts for a second, because the universe really fucking hates (or loves?) you, so the loud clanking of a metal water bottle against tile interrupts with harsh reverberation throughout the locker room walls, and he pulls away from you when you jump at the sound.
You both turn your heads towards the origin, located at the curved end of the entryway hall, and one of Gojo’s teammates is standing there with his duffle bag slung around his neck and hanging heavily to his thigh, his water bottle clutched in his hand. He blinks at the two of you.
Oh. It’s the one you kissed at that party a few weeks ago.
“What—…Why is there a—” his teammate starts, panicked, turning his head to double check the sign on the locker room wall as if he’s hallucinating, and when his eyes land on you again, they widen with recognition. His gaze shifts, and his chin tips down at the sight of Gojo’s irritated side eye from where he was still all up in your personal space. “…you know what. Nevermind.”
His teammate’s eyes are on you again, and you give him a shy little wave, just a fluttering of your fingers in the air paired with a small smile, legs swinging back and forth under the counter. He lets out an amused scoff from the entryway, lifting his hand to return the gesture, some cheeky grin on his face as he then scratches the back of his head before turning on his heel to leave the locker room, out of sight. You let out a sigh, hand dropping to your lap, and you don’t need to look at Gojo to tell that he’s staring at you with disbelief.
“What the fuck was that—”
“You,” you interrupt him, finger jabbing at the center of his chest, “have seriously got a lot of fucking nerve,” you hop off the counter, “to not only allow a soccer ball to sock me in the face,” he’s taking a step back with every harsh jab of your finger, “but to also hold me hostage in a mens’ locker room,” his back is pressed up against cold tile wall now while he just looks down at you with wide eyes and something akin to fear, “and then, oh my god, the audacity to kiss me?”
“I—”
“I don’t wanna hear it!” you yell, which shuts him up. “You really are just a fucking player.”
He’s stiff, not wanting to catch a punishment from you right now.
“But it doesn’t matter,” you grumble, still drilling your finger into his ribcage with the intent to cause pain. You didn’t need to be this close, but his body is warm, probably due to the blood pumping from practice, and it feels nice to be pressed up against. “Because I don’t have feelings for you anymore, so just fucking get over yourself.” It was a lie if you’ve ever told one, but you wanted to believe it so much that it could come off as the truth.
His eyes narrow down at you, eyebrows flattening. “You don’t have feelings for me anymore?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
You roll your eyes. “Why? Because you want me to keep suffering?”
He grabs your hips, then makes a motion that is evident of his desire to pull you flush to him, but he stops himself. There’s a moment where he just takes a few deep breaths and looks at you with a hardened expression, then a split second where his eyes fall to that little cut on your cheek, and every single feature of his face softens, and then he lets you go.
You take a small step back, breathing heavily of your own, and you feel the ghost sensation of his fingertips wrapped around your hips. It makes you feel dizzy, and your thoughts are a mess. 
He sighs. “Sorry. For the soccer ball, and this locker room. But I’m not really sorry for kissing you, and if that makes me a jerk, then so be it.”
Your heart is beating fast. “You are a jerk, Satoru,” you say. He doesn’t like you, he doesn’t want you. A mantra played over and over in your head that you’ve started to hear it at night. “A real fucking jerk.” And you leave him standing there in a way that feels like the hundredth time.
2:34pm kaito (work): yo
2:34pm kaito (work): i had my guy look at your camera
2:35pm kaito (work): it’s pretty fucked up
2:37pm you: :( oh okay isee. does he have an estimate for the fix? the lens is okay though right?
2:39pm kaito (work): yeah lens is fine, you should really count your blessings on that. 
2:40pm kaito (work): but nah, fix would be around the same as the cost of it, so you’re better off getting a new one
2:42pm you: i don’t have thousands of yen laying around unfortunately. my car bill has sucked me dry
2:44pm kaito (work): well let me check with him. maybe he can hook you up with a good deal on a used one
2:45pm kaito (work): i got a 50% off on one of my canon cameras i bought from him a few years back. maybe he’s still got some like that
2:46pm you: yes could you check with him please? thanks so much, really
2:48pm kaito (work): sure. although i think the guy that kicked the ball to your face should be paying for your camera replacement
2:51pm you: they were just practicing. it’s their field
2:56pm kaito (work): alright. btw, you free tonight?
You blink at your phone screen from where you were sprawled across your bed. Before you have a chance to type out a response, your phone lights up with a phone call from kaito (work). You accept the call.
“Oh, hi,” you say.
“Hey, are you free tonight?”
“Oh uhh, I was just about to check my schedule.” You shake your head at your inability to come up with an excuse on the spot.
“Okay,” he says on the other line. You hear the sounds of cars honking in the distance. “Well let me know. I just left my camera guy’s shop, and he was telling me about how one of his friends does visuals for a short-film director, and that the director is looking for an assistant.” Kai grumbles something about someone he walked past being rude. “I think the director’s agency is Verve Films, so.”
You sit up in bed, eyes wide at the mention of the name. “Oh, oh wow. That’s insane.”
“Yup,” he says, “anyways, apparently the director is busy as fuck, so he left the hiring process up to my camera guy’s friend. I told him I knew someone that might be interested. Are you?”
You take a deep breath in and out. “Yeah, I am. Most of my experience on my resume lines up with short-film, so I’d be able to—”
“Alright great,” he interrupts, “so we can hold the interview tonight.”
“We?” you ask.
“Well yeah, me, my camera guy, the hiring guy. Maybe go for drinks or something.”
Your brow furrows. “That hardly sounds like an interview.”
Kai sighs. “Well, it’s not an interview for a desk job or something. It’s more of like—well, like building connections. I know you know all about that, since Utahime got you the newsletter job.”
Well, yes. She put a word in for you, which helped get the interview, but you still went against qualified applicants. “I guess.”
“It’ll be like that. Most opportunities you’ll get if you still want to pursue filmmaking are going to be like that,” he tells you, “if it feels informal, it means you’re doing it right. You might not think so now because you’re still in school, where they practically serve opportunities to students on platters, but it’s going to be different in the real world.”
You lay your head back onto the pillow, feeling like you’re receiving a lecture you didn’t ask for, and your first instinct is to pretend that you know better than he does. But when you think about all the stress recently, all of the not knowing, and the unsure, you question if you should start leaning into the advice of the people around you, and start to accept this career path for what it’s known to be. Unruly, unconventional, and a lot of times, unfair. 
“I see. Well, can I think about it? Tonight is too soon, I’d need time to research the director, put a portfolio together, and also do some interview prep,” you say, pulling your phone from your ear to glance at the time.
“Well, tonight’s the only night that works since their team’s shooting abroad for the weekend and they leave tomorrow morning,” he says.
You purse your lips together.
“But also,” Kai says, “it’s the nice thing to do, y’know, since my camera guy is taking the time to look at your camera for free, you could at least help his friend out. By the way, he just texted me, he does have some used Canons available at discount.”
You close your eyes for a second, just trying to process this conversation right now. Kai was speaking too fast, hardly enough time for you to even think.
“So do you want to do the interview tonight?”
“Yes, sure. Okay. Just— just send me the details. I’ll be there,” you say.
“Alright cool, will do.” 
You say bye, and then he hangs up.
A few hours pass by, where you spend some time putting together a flash drive of a couple of your best short films you’ve worked on in the past with other directors, as well as a portfolio of some recently developed film photography. The last thing to do was grab your emergency stash of print outs of your resume, and then you stuff it all into a folder before glancing at the mirror to take in your reflection. It felt extremely weird to show up to a job interview in something as casual as what you were wearing right now, but Kai insisted to not wear anything business. But at least you opted for jeans that don’t have any DIY holes in them.
Your face is glued to the navigation on your phone screen the second you get out of the taxi, and you walk down the bustling nightlife streets of Tokyo to get to this bar that Kai sent you the address of. But just as you’re about to turn the corner to your destination down the bar strip, you bump into someone’s chest due to lack of paying any proper attention.
“Ah— I’m so sorry,” you say, your grip on your phone tightening when you realize it was about to get knocked out of your hand, and then you look up to see a familiar face.
“Oh!” Geto exclaims from where he’s standing right in front of you, “You’re everywhere, y/n. What are you doing here?”
You open your mouth to speak, hesitate for a second, and then continue. “I’m here to…get drinks with some of my friends.”
He gives you a smile. “That’s nice. I am too.” He points over his shoulder to behind him. “Nanami got into his MBA program earlier this week, so, Satoru, Choso and I are buying him a few rounds. Or possibly a million. The plan is to incapacitate him as punishment for giving up on playing in the national league with us.”
You humor him with a laugh. “That’s sweet. Or not? Well anyway, tell him I said congrats.” Your heart starts to beat a little faster, because from the direction Geto came from, it meant Gojo was likely just around the corner somewhere. “Where are you heading to now?”
“We’re bar hopping, and I think I forgot my phone at the last one we went to over there,” he says, pointing across the street. “So I’m going to go look for it.” 
“Oh alright,” you say. “Good luck with that. I’m going to go find my, uh, my friends.”
Geto tilts his head at you and had a slightly more serious expression on his face, glancing at the folder in your hands. “Thanks. And stay safe.” 
You nod at him and then walk past him to round the corner onto the street that had groups of people loitering in front of restaurants, bars and all sorts of establishments as they wait in the cold to get inside or be seated. You recognize the name on one of the signs hanging as the one Kai sent you in his message, and when you’re a few feet away from it, you spot Kai. He’s wearing his typical street photographer wear, with a red flannel over a gray shirt and pants that are possibly a size too big for him, but that’s likely the style he was going for. He’s standing with two other people.
“Hey,” you greet Kai first, who has a pleasant look on his expression before he greets you back and gestures to the two people he was with.
“Yo, this is Junichi, my camera guy,” he says. “Don’t bother shaking his hand, he’s a germaphobe. Gotta keep ‘em clean for the electronics.”
“Oh,” you say. Junichi is a big man, broad shoulders and thick muscles. His neck is almost as thick as his bicep, and he has no hair on his head. His arms are crossed. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for taking a look at my camera.”
He nods at you in acknowledgment. “Sure thing. Pretty Boy here says you want to buy one of my used Canons. I don’t refurbish them, so you’d better know how.”
Kai sighs, nudging Junichi a little with a fist. “Relax, dude, we can talk about that later. Also, stop calling me that.”
Your eyes flicker to the right, where another man stood, who you assume was Junichi’s friend and this Verve Films director’s visual effects specialist. He’s similar in stature to Kai, with that casual artist look, and he has a scuffle of facial hair littering his jaw in less of an intentional fashion but rather a five-o-clock shadow fashion. You vaguely register the scent of weed, familiar to the one that lingers in the photo lab on campus after class hours. He reaches his hand out to you first.
“Hi, I’m Ren. I work in visual effects for director Akira Ko at Verve.”
Your eyes widen as you shake his hand.  “That’s amazing. I’ve studied a lot of his contemporary works, I’d love to learn more about his process.”
Ren lets a fast exhale out through his nose. “Yeah, you’ll learn a lot under him.” He pauses to shove his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Most of his assistants always do.”
“We’ve been waiting for too damn long,” Kai interjects before you could ask any questions about the assistant position, and he glances at his watch, “and there’s still a lot of people ahead of us.”
You glance around to the small groups of people gathered in front of this bar on a lively Friday night, eyes jumping from one area to the next, until a familiar silhouette catches your eye.
You see Gojo standing with Nanami and Choso a few strides away, near the lamppost. He’s mostly turned away from you, Nanami nudging his arm annoyed at something he said, and the sound of his laughter in the air makes your heart feel like it’s at stray. Like that was where you were supposed to be right now, not here.
You watch him from the distance as he sighs, shrugging his shoulders up and down slightly before crossing his arms when Choso gestures towards the entrance of the bar, and so he looks in that direction too. He’s frowning slightly and he brushes some of the hair fallen over his forehead away from his eyes, in that boyish way that makes your heart skip a beat, and you know he’s just doing it to see a little bit better, but it makes you want to cry. 
Geto walks up to them and rejoins their little circle, and holds his phone up in the air, and then there’s the melody of their voices bouncing off one another’s again. Geto rests his elbow up onto Gojo’s shoulder, leaning in a bit closer to tell him something, and when Gojo hears it, you see his entire body tense before his wide eyes are searching his surroundings, until those eyes land on you.
Your breath catches, and you hold his eye contact for only a moment before you look away, because it almost felt like too much to bear.
“What’s that folder in your hand?” Ren asks you, and you turn completely to face him so you can’t see Gojo in your periphery at all anymore.
“I just brought some of my work, for your—er, I guess Mr. Ko’s—reference if he’d like to see it after today’s…interview,” you say. “There’s a flashdrive, too.”
Ren has an amused look on his face and he shoves Kai’s shoulder with his palm. “Dude, you didn’t tell her?”
Kai shakes his head. “Tell her what?”
“Ohh, I see how it is,” Ren muses.
“What?” Kai asks, starting to sound annoyed.
Ren tips his chin up slightly to study Kai’s face, and then his look of amusement dissipates into one of understanding. “Nothing.”
“Tell me what?” you prod.
“Just that you didn’t really need to bring all of that with you,” he says. “Sorry for the trouble.”
You shake your head. “It’s fine, but if you could still give it to him—”
“I’m surprised Kai suggested someone when I asked if he knew anyone,” Junichi jumps in, “I’m used to him grumbling on and on about how shit the work is in filmmaking. Would’ve thought he’d convinced you to look the other way by now.”
You blink at the gruff man, then look at Kai, and he’s just staring down at the dirt of his shoes. “Well, we had a conversation about it. But I’m pretty set on what I want to do,” you say.
Kai lets out a scoff. “Yeah, I don’t really know how else to warn you about the shit show you’re in for, but if you want to be in debt to grad school for the next couple decades of your life, then it’s up to you.”
“Hey, jackass, try to be a bit nicer,” Ren speaks up. “She’s got some goals. Big fuckin’ deal.” He turns to you. “Although, he’s got a point sweetheart, school’s not going to get you anywhere in this industry.”
You frown. “A lot of directors I look up to went through graduate schooling. Most, I would say. I don’t understand where this rhetoric is coming from.”
“It’s coming from real people with real experience,” Ren says, and you dislike the way he takes a step closer to you to reiterate his point, “honestly, you should save yourself some time and give up on applying. It’s not worth it.”
“I’ve already put my application together,” you say, brow furrowing slightly, “I’ve asked professors for my references, spent the past four years working on my profile—” 
“But working under a director, I mean really getting to work under one, beats all of that. Which is why you’re here, right?” Ren asks, but it’s not curious, it’s testing.
You feel a sheen of sweat build at your forehead, even in this cold, and you clench your hand into a fist once, twice, thrice. You’re breathing fast, and the three sets of eyes that are staring so scrutinizingly into your soul right now have you faltering, like if they took another step forward, tried to intrude what you thought you knew one more time, you’d fall backwards over the cliff.
Suddenly, a hand wraps around your upper arm, and when you turn your head to the left, you see Gojo standing there.
“Hey,” he says to you, sparing one single sidewards glare towards Kai, who immediately averts the eye contact, before Gojo’s eyes are on you again, “can I talk to you for a second?”
You look at the three men in your circle, who suddenly adopt skittish body postures, and Gojo doesn’t really wait longer than a few seconds before he’s pulling you away from them over towards the edge of the curb towards the street.
“What?” you ask once he lets go of your arm.
“What are you doing here with those guys?” he asks.
“I’m—…why does it matter to you?” you ask.
“It matters to me because of the fucking absurd conversation I just overheard,” he says, “now answer me.”
His tone annoys you, and you cross your arms. “Are you eavesdropping?”
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he says, taking a step forward to you, “who are those guys, and why are you here with them?”
You blink at him, furrowed brows relaxing slightly as you drop your crossed arms to your side, and you stare straight ahead at the blankness of the white t-shirt he’s wearing, as your mind runs blank to his question. Why were you here with them? Was it because you had no other plans? Was it because the opportunity sounded too good to be true, and you just had to see for yourself? Was it because you’ve been unable to sleep at night from all the stress, the financial worries, the rejection, and you just want to finally feel like you’ve done one good thing for yourself? To feel like you’re at least making one step in the right direction, no matter the cost?
“I’m here for a job interview,” you say to him. Your tone is flat, and you feel numb.
“A job interview?” he asks, with just about as much incredulity you would’ve expected to hear from him at that answer, “At a bar? How does that make any sense?”
“It…” you start, “sounded fine.”
“It sounds shady as fuck.”
“This doesn’t concern you, okay? I’m—…I’m just trying to make my goals work for me, Satoru, and I really don’t expect you to understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I understand?” he asks. There’s confusion in his voice, and maybe even a little bit of hurt.
“Because you can’t even understand how unfair and painful it is for me that you keep—” you have to purse your lips together briefly to fight back the knot in your throat, “…that you keep interfering with my life everywhere I go.”
His expression softens, and he silently stands in front of you for a moment. His eyes dart across your face, and then he reaches out to grab your hand. “Listen, if you still want to get drinks tonight, then just get drinks with us. But don’t hang out with those guys. They’re bad news, especially the dude with the flannel, and I don’t think you’re in a good place right now to see that.”
Your eyes see white fury at that, and you all but snap. Because the irony of this whole situation, is that you’re not in a good place right now because of him. Because of all the pain that he’s put you through, for promising to stay away but then always being near, for saying he doesn’t want you but then acting like he does. 
“You know what I think, Satoru?” you ask through gritted teeth, yanking your hand from his grasp.
He’s looking at you, studying. “What?”
You take a step forward, threateningly, and he takes a step back so that he steps off the curb and onto the road, and you’re at eye-level with him now. “I think that you’re jealous,” you say, eyes glaring daggers into his.
He blinks at you, almost dumbfounded for a moment before he says “what?”
“You’re just fucking jealous that I seem to be moving on after you rejected me, because for some weird reason, you think it’s okay to not want me, and yet not want me to be with anyone else,” you say, practically hissing the words. “You don’t like seeing me with any guys other than you? You don’t want to believe me when I say that I’m over you? You’re not sorry for kissing me? Even after knowing,” you take a pause to breathe, because you feel like you can’t, “even after knowing that I like you,” eyes blinking fast because you don’t want him to see you cry right now, “you know that I like you so fucking much, and that it’s hurtful, and that it’s wrong— and even after all of that, you act the same, and still won’t promise me any commitment of your own.”
He’s looking at you with an expression you can’t read, but you’ve lost all interest in trying to understand it anymore.
“You don’t want me hanging out with them?” you repeat after him, “I’m not listening to that. Because it’s possessive. And it’s wrong.”
At the mention of them, Gojo clenches his jaw. “That has nothing to do with you and me, right now. What they’re trying to convince you of doesn’t make any sense, and it won’t help you achieve your dreams either, y/n.”
“You don’t know anything about my dreams, Satoru,” you say, just to hurt him. But you think about the sincere expression on his face the first time you met him when you told him that you wanted his help with your assignment. You think about the playful nudge of his elbow that night he stayed with you on the curb, and told you that you just had to try to put yourself out there, because you couldn’t accomplish anything without facing your fears. You think about how he’s always the first to like every single one of the slideshows you post of your pictures on Instagram. You think about the adoration in his eyes, reflected off the moonlight through the hotel window, when you told him about a little cottage on the countryside, one you’ve always wanted, and those eyes told you that he was really rooting for you. “You don’t know. Because you—” there’s an echo of words in your head. Someone else’s words, not yours, “Because you’re a college athlete. And—” you let out an exhale, “and you don’t pay tuition.”
His brow furrows. There’s a beat of silence as his confusion settles in. “What?”
“You were born blessed with talent, and you’re popular, and people adore you, and you don’t have to worry about internships, or jumping from job to job just to make something of yourself,” you say, picturing your life in your head along with all the strife, “or about all of the sinking debt, and the worry, and the— and the car repair bills,” you say, almost with a scoff, eyes sheening with tears, like you’re losing your mind, “all of the fucking car repair bills.” Your chest is heaving as you shake your head. “Because you’re set for life as long as you kick a fucking ball.” 
His lips purse together, like he can tell there’s more on your tongue to say, more hurtful words, and he wants to hear you say them. And so you do.
“You’ve never had to suffer or worry about a single thing in your life. So don’t pretend like you understand what I’m trying to do here tonight,” you say, inflection signing off on the end, to tell him that you’re done. 
He stands in front of you, practically motionless except for the slow movement of his chest as he breathes. His expression, tense and hurt, softens slowly, and you see him digging his nails into the skin of his palms through fidgeting clenched fists at his sides. And then he relaxes them, too.
“Does that make you feel better?” he asks.
His question confuses you, and for some reason, regret washes over you. “What?”
“Does thinking of me that way—…does it make you feel better about all of this? Between us?”
You’re breathing fast, eyebrows pinching upwards to look at him, and the defeated expression on his face makes your heart ache. He’s waiting for an answer, and so you give him one. “Yes.”
He glances down at the ground for a moment, then at your collarbone, before meeting your gaze again. “I’m sorry. For everything. And I—” the words catch in his throat briefly, “I’ll try to leave you alone tonight.”
His use of the word try doesn’t escape you, but you give him a furtive nod, and he studies your face for a few moments before he steps back up onto the curb and walks past you. You watch him walk all the way, no longer with that confidence or conviction you’re so used to seeing in him, as he steps back into his circle, to Geto’s side. Geto gives a small glance over his shoulder to look at you with discerning eyes before looking at Gojo again, and then he’s turned away from you. 
Heavy feet drag you back to Kai, Ren, and Junichi, and you feel feverish. They mention something about the table being ready, and you nod. The bar is rustic, with more tables than barspace, and the four of you are seated and then presented with a small food menu. You’re seated next to Kai, Ren is right across from you, and Junichi is to his right. You watch a waitress usher Nanami, Choso, Geto and Gojo to one of the tables as well, two away from yours, and you forcefully blur your vision so you don’t have to catch sight of the expression on Gojo’s face.
“So,” Ren speaks up as his eyes peruse the food menu and Junichi waves the waitress over to order a round of sake, “tell me more about your experience, sweetheart.”
You blink at him, eyes feeling heavy, heart feeling heavy. “I’d prefer it if you called me by my name.”
Ren lets out a coo, and you briefly glance at Kai who’s shaking his head with a sigh. “My bad, y/n. Your experience?”
Your hands play with the folder sitting in your lap. “I started writing screenplays for small-scale directors when I was a freshman, and was greenlit on a couple into my sophomore year. One of the films I worked on, I had directing credits for, and it was nominated for best screenplay at Etoile Film Festival the year following.”
Ren swallows slightly, shifting in his chair and pushing his shoulders back, like he’s trying to establish himself now. Kai is clenching a fist on the surface of the table.
Ren clears his throat before speaking again. “Wow, okay, so you’ve actually got some serious shit going on.” His voice is a faux octave deeper. “What do you know about being a good assistant? Ever worked in customer service? Secretary?”
“Oh, I mean I have worked in customer service, but I wasn’t done sharing about my experience—” you try to say but Junichi cuts you off.
“First round’s on me,” he declares, “for bringing her out here.” He tips his chin to you and then sends Kai a glance.
A waitress brings by a bottle of sake, and Junichi begins pouring drinks into the glasses, then slides them across the table. Kai gives Ren a pointed look. 
“Don’t get too wasted,” Kai says to him as he brings his glass to his lips, “you start running that mouth of yours a little too much when you do.”
Ren grins at him and immediately knocks down the glass Junichi barely finished pouring from him in one go, and the gruff man beside him is grumbling. “Whatever you say.”
Something had been bothering you since you came here. “Wait,” you say, pointing between Kai and Ren, “do you two know each other already? Because,” you turn to look at Kai, “on the phone earlier, you sounded like you didn’t.”
Kai’s eyebrows raise in surprise, as though he’s discovered you have some skill for foresight. You glance at Ren, and he gives Kai a puzzled look.
“Uh, yeah. I’ve known Kai for years,” he says, “we go way back. We went to highschool together.”
Kai shifts a little in his chair. “Sorry. Probably forgot to mention it.”
You glance down at the glass of sake in front of you, and the way it twinkles under the lighting of the bar. You slowly bring it to your mouth, taking a small sip, and the way it coats your tongue is less than pleasing. 
“Can you tell me more about the assistant position?” you ask Ren, who’s emptied out the bottle of sake and waving someone over to order more. He already has a slightly flush to his face.
“Yeah, yeah, will do,” he says, “but first, let me tell you about what I do in visuals.”
Another round of sake is dropped by, and then another, followed by another, as Ren continues to ramble on and on about what he does for work, and how it’s entirely integral to the final piece of the film, although you’ve never really had a terrible level of appreciation for visual effects in short-film craft, since it’s hardly much work. But you wouldn’t say that, you just continue to nurse your one glass of sake as the three men surrounding you knock back more and more, and there’s slurs to their speeches now.
“Sooo, I’m so sorry, sweetheart—I mean y/n, for cuttin’ you off earlier,” he says, “but what was that experience you wanted to talk to me about?” Ren asks from across the table, and his eyes are all traveling over you.
“I…” you start, “well, I started to work with one of my professors last year, she’s a two-time Cannes Film Festival winner, and she let me under her wing for one of her projects last year.”
“Who is she? Oh wait, nevermind, probably wouldn’t have heard of her anyways,” Ren says, but when you fail to laugh, he waves his hand in the air. “Joking, joking. What’s her name?”
“Naoko. Naoko Ogigami.”
“Oh shit. I have heard of her,” Ren says, followed by a shallow hiccup. Junichi shrugs his shoulders, and when you look at Kai, he’s nodding slowly and toying with the rim of his glass with a finger.
“Yes. Well, anyways—” you start up again, before Kai sets his glass of sake down particularly loud.
“This is all bullshit. Really. I told you, filmmaking is a waste of time. Just focus on your photography, and your freelance or whatnot,” Kai says, grit to his jaw, face looking red with possibly something other than just a tipsiness. 
Ren lets out a laugh. “Fuckin’ Kai. What a pessimist. Don’t listen to him, sweetheart,” he says, slurred, and you furrow your brow at him with a glare, “sorry. Don’t listen to him. Trust me, you’ll learn a lot under Mr. Ko. He’s a suuuper nice guy.”
“What’s the compensation?” you ask. It’s a brazen question, one you’d never ask so soon in a formal interview process, but this table was hardly anything formal.
“Real good. Mmm I think like…5200 yen an hour, and then also, you get your foot in the door.”
“Oh,�� you sit up a little in your chair. It was higher than most entry-level anything for undergraduates or even new grads. 
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he drawls when he sees you’re more interested. “Good stuff. Kai used to pick these kinds of jobs up, too, back in his college days. I remember. Although, he’s hardly Mr. Ko’s type, so I doubt he’d be any good for this one.”
Your head snaps to Ren again at his words, face tensing. 
“Tell her about what a job like this—hic—entails,” Ren says as he extends his glass out for Junichi to pour him another.
Kai glances at Ren once, and you watch him grind his teeth for a moment, and then there’s a hint of a smirk on his face.
“Oh. Y’know, clerical work. Stuff like printing scripts out,” Kai starts, Junichi filling up his glass and then he raises it into the air to watch the liquid swish around, “grabbing him coffee. Making sure his trailer is stocked.”
“Blowing him in said trailer,” Ren says. It’s something quiet, under his breath with a small laugh, where you could barely hear it across the table. But you heard it nonetheless. And your heart sinks to the core of the earth.
“Excuse me?” you say. The benefit of doubt sitting on your shoulder, watching in disbelief as well.
“He’s joking,” Kai says, quickly, “runnin’ his mouth.”
“Oh fuck off, Kai,” Ren says, throwing his hands up in the air, “don’t act like that’s not why you brought her here.”
Your head slowly turns to Kai, who can’t meet your gaze. Your eyes flicker to Junichi, who looks amused. 
Ren leans over the table, elbows resting on top, to look you straight in the eyes. He’s got a sleazy smile, and you can smell the alcohol on his breath, and he dips his tone down low enough to where you can hardly hear it over the sounds surrounding you in the bar. “That’s how you’ll make it in this industry, sweetheart. Whether you like it or not, you’ll be working under those directors until you make it.”
You stand up so fast that your chair falls behind you, hand raised in the air, and you swiftly slap the man across from you so hard across the cheek that it leaves his skin even more red than the flush from before, and your palm is stinging. 
There’s gasps all around the bar, hushed voices, eyes on you, but you don’t care. There’s not a single thing in the world you care more about right now than the anger swelled in your chest.
Ren holds his cheek, surprised, blinking like a pathetic animal. He almost looks like he’s about to cry, and you let out a scoff at the sight.
You turn to face Kai, whose eyes are wide and he’s staring up at you. Your fists are clenched at your side.
“Is this why you brought me here tonight?” you ask. Your voice is trembling, anxiety at the wake, the white anger spotting your vision. But there’s also pain. So much pain, and you’re just so fed up with all of it. “Because your belittling, condescending words weren’t enough to tear my hopes apart, so you had to humiliate me in front of your friends instead?”
Kai holds his hand up. “Woah, Canon, relax. He was just joking—…” Kai glances at Ren, who’s still holding his cheek and biting down on his lip, and then his gaze hardens. “Y’know what? It’s about fucking time you get this wake-up call, y/n. I’ve been trying to do the nice thing to steer you in the right direction, and the least you could—”
“Steer me in the right fucking direction?!” you’re yelling now, registering the way your voice echoes in the bar. “You know what I think this is all about, Kai?” You grit your teeth, “You’re a sick, stupid, sexist fuck who didn’t have the balls to go after what he wanted. So miserably pathetic that you’ve got no other fucking business than to pull people down to your level.”
Kai pinches his eyebrows together, hand on the table clenching into a fist. 
You lean down closer, an exasperated scoff leaving your lips. “Why don’t you go be his assistant instead? Since I’m sure you’re good at taking it up the ass.”
Kai’s eyes twitch, “you fucking—”
You grab his glass off the table and throw the alcohol into his face, eliciting another round of noises around the bar, and his mouth falls agape in shock before he gets up out of his chair, hand reaching out to grab for you. You close your eyes shut with a flinch to expect pain. Any sort of pain. But you don’t feel anything at all.
When you open your eyes, you see Gojo standing to your left, veins of his arm tense with the tight grip he has on Kai’s forearm, and you can see he’s practically shaking with rage. He steps in front of you, guarding, and you can’t see the expression on his face, but the fear in Kai’s eyes is enough to say it all.
“That’s enough,” he says, the clench of his jaw evident through the strain in his voice, “try to put your hands on her again, and I’ll split your fucking face in half.”
You can see Kai’s breathing pick up from where you’re peering over Gojo’s shoulder, and then Gojo shoves him backwards right as Choso kicks the fallen chair to his feet so he trips over it backwards then hits the ground with a loud and indignant thud.
Gojo’s hovering over Kai, his hands shoved in his pockets as he glares down at him, while Geto and Nanami put space between you and the other two men at your table. You feel a searing flush to your cheeks. You’re breathing fast, the peering eyes all around you are scrutinizing, looking at you with surprise, confusion, shock, and pity. Your mind is racing, and you wonder what your parents would think of all this. What your friends would think of all of this. What the people who support you would think of the fucked up situation you’ve found yourself in, and the humiliation courses so deep through your veins that you just want to run away and hide. The ground could swallow you whole right now, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
You take one step back, then another, before you turn on your heel to rush out the door into the night, and you barely register that it’s raining. You can feel your heart thumping fast in your chest and in your head, that familiar knot in your throat twisting tight as you walk fast down the street and ignore Gojo’s call of your name from behind you.
You don’t want to see anyone right now. You don’t want to be seen by anyone right now. Especially Gojo, of all people, because he was right about everything, and the fact that you had shut him down about it, and the way that you had shut him down about it makes your head numb and your breathing pick up fast.
“y/n,” you hear him call out from behind you, his pace is getting faster and so you’re resorting to longer strides as well, puddles of water splashing under your feet with every step, “just wait—”
“I’m seriously,” you start, and the tears begin to fall, “I’m seriously so, so, so, so, so fucking embarassed right now,” you gasp out the words with no air left in your lungs to breathe as you continue to run away from him, “so please, just leave me alone.”
You can picture it all in your head. Something like I told you so from his lips, because after what you’ve been put through tonight, you just want to assume the worst in people.
But just as you round the corner into an alley, feeling lost with the sight of a dead end, you feel a hand wrap around your arm and then you’re being pulled into an embrace.
Your eyes are blinking with tears streaming, your face buried in a chest that is warm, with a heart beating so fast that it’s keeping time with your own, and the fragrance that surrounds you is so painfully him that it makes you sob even more.
Strong arms wrap around you, pulling you closer, and Gojo rests his chin at the top of your head. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, and you can feel the rumble of his voice, “I just needed to stop you from running.”
Your arms are weakly raised, an outline over his torso but not yet grabbing on, until you hesitantly do. And when you hold onto him, it’s so tight and strong, and you realize that after everything between the two of you, it’s the first time you’ve been wrapped in his arms.
“I feel so stupid,” you start, already hating the words because you want to be stronger right now, but you can’t.
“You’re not stupid,” he quickly corrects you, “those guys are fucking insecure losers. You’re just trying your best. You always have, for as long as I’ve known you, and it’s something you should be proud of yourself for.”
You don’t know what to say to him, you just cling to the damp fabric of his shirt in the rain.  
“Things are going to work out for you, no matter what, because I know you’ve got what it takes and you’re willing to work hard for it,” he says, his chin nuzzling so you’re tucked into him even further, “and if things don’t work out, that’s okay, you’re strong and you’ll always get back up. And I want to be there to help you through everything.”
You pull your face from his chest to stare up at him, droplets of rain falling to your face and making you flinch occasionally. “I’m confused.”
His hand comes up to cup your face, swiping at a tear on your cheek, or maybe it was rain. “I thought that—” he starts, his thumb briefly running over the small cut still healing on your cheek, his brow furrowing, “I thought that I’d be okay with watching your life from afar, through cropped pictures on a screen,” he says, a chill running through you, “but I can’t. It’s killing me. And I’m really sorry that it took me this long to tell you this, but I like you so much and I really want to be with you.”
Your eyes widen at his words, and you don’t know how to feel. You push your face into his chest again. His thumb runs circles at your side through the dampness of your shirt.
“There are a lot of reasons I didn’t feel like I could date you, or show up for you,” he says, “but the pain of not getting to be with you, of not getting to hold you, and just share my life with you is way worse than whatever reasons I kept trying to convince myself of.”
You nod slowly, because there was a part of you deep inside that knew that all along. 
His grip on you relaxes slightly and you take that as a request from him for you to look up at him, so you do. “I know I’ve put you through a lot of pain, and I’m really not a perfect person, but if there’s room in your heart to forgive me, I promise you that I’ll do everything I can to make you feel happy and cared for.”
Your eyes study his face for sincerity. They’re words you’ve been wanting to hear, words you could’ve pictured in your head, but the adoration in his eyes makes you realize you never could’ve imagined the true sweetness of those words when they’re said from him.
You press your cheek to his chest again. You’re not crying anymore. “I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier. About kicking a soccer ball, and having it easy,” you bite down on your lip, because now there’s tears in your eyes again, “I didn’t mean it.” You sniffle a little, “I know you work hard. And it was a really mean thing to say.”
He sighs, holding you flush to himself. His cheek presses against the top of your head. “That’s okay, you don’t have to apologize for that.”
“But I do.”
There was no grudge at all. There was nothing withdrawn from you, nothing taken away as punishment. He just held onto you, exactly as you are, and you felt so safe in every second you spent in his arms.
You look up at him again. His hair is damp, strands clinging to his face in all the places they usually fall over, droplets of rain falling from his fringe onto your face and he does everything he can to wipe them away. “It’s too late,” you tell him, and he immediately knows what you’re referring to.
He just holds you closer. “I know.”
“I don’t have feelings for you anymore,” you say through a sniffle.
He knows you’re lying, and that you say it just out of spite, but he holds your head to his chest. “I know.”
“You’ll have to beg and grovel, and even then, I might not like you ever again,” you say, gripping so tightly onto his shirt for purchase, your voice sounding muffled as you breathe in the scent of him. “That’s your punishment.”
He presses a kiss to the top of your head. A firm press of his lips, lasting as he takes a few deep breaths. And then he kisses the same spot again, staying still in that position as he repeats himself.
“I know.”
--
a/n. phewww thank you for reading, i swear, this chapter felt like a goddamn war to write. my emotions were all over the damn place, i think cause i wrote from a place of bitter experience lol. i dedicate this chap to my lovely friend she’s a film major (she inspired me to create this story) and i srs wouldn’t be able to write kickoff without her 😭💕 dear M♥︎, i thought of you sm while writing this chapter, i can only hope i’ve captured even the slightest bit of the understanding i will always aim to have of you, and that you feel seen. i’m incredibly proud of you, always rooting for you, so often thinking of you, and terribly missing you so much rn (plsssssss visit meee😩💔 ) dedicated w sm love 💕 -bitchasshoe this chapter is also dedicated to anyone who’s going through a hard times n maybe just trying to figure themselves out :”) i am so proud of you, you should be so proud of yourself, there’s still so much to live and learn, and i hope the universe blesses you w everything you’ve ever wanted!! big thank u to my lovely m00t @quinnyundertow she pulled me out of my writers block for this chapter and also beta read a lot of it for me there’s only three chapters left for kickoff (i’m gonna cry just thinking ab it :”)) which doesnt sound like a lot but there’s still a lot i’ve got planned 😭 i’m just noticing that i very poorly planned the second half of this series. chapters 1-6 combined have less words than chapters 7-9 combined 😅✨ sooooo i may increase the chapters from 12 to 14 by splitting them up to make it easier on me, or just stick to the plan and come out with long chapters like the last two. idk. i’ll figure it out. thank u to everyone for reading i love you all dearly 😭💕 i’ll see you in the next one!!
➸ take me to chapter ten!
➸ wrote some kickoff headcanons here
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taglist: @who-can-touch-my-boob @therealestpussyeater @lost-resonance @hojoslutoru @foulprincesscycle @luniunia @alekssashka7 @bsdicinindirdim @tsukikourito @getitsatoru @slut-4-gojo @cactisjuice @kissofife @tiredflame132 @cliosunshine @ethereally-lyann @btszn @prince-wyiilder @semra4 @gojosimp26 @drthymby @ninitoru @bbyxxm @fvsm4x @sadmonke @zoinks1010 @bakuhoethotski @horisdope @sykostyles @aquaberrydolphin @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @ri-sa20 @purplehallow11 @mwtsxri @ritsatoru @bxddiebloss @chwesuh-imnida @mo0nforme @viware @still-fking-single @megumisthirdog @gintokhi @karvokr @cierocanteat @imjustaweirdnerd @ronniebird @bloopsstuff @mwtsxri @witchbybirth @tetsuski @fffinskye @gh0ulkz @beabadobeee @mandysfanfics @erencvlt @laviefantasie @sukunamylovexoxo @girlkissersco @itzjuliana @yell0wdreams @1dimas7 @strayedjeno @mo0nforme @yungbloode @sullybrothersmate @oaooaoaoaoa @swagangelllamawolf @banenemilk @inniesblog
(hope i didn't miss anyone thank u all sm!!)
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enhaheeseung · 6 months ago
Text
MAKE A MOVIE - L. HEESEUNG
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PAIRING: Heeseung X fem reader
WARNINGS: smut, unprotected sex, dirty talk, edging, cream pie, missionary position, filming.
WORDCOUNT: 1,1k (Another drabble hoping for more engagement on my blog)
~
“God baby, you look so fucking beautiful. Wish I could stare at you like this forever,” he groans, staring down between your legs where his girth splits you open. The sight of his cock slipping in and out, coated in your creamy wetness, was his favorite view.
You giggle in a seductive manner, your fingertips tracing his hips as he slides in and out of your silky walls. “Take a video, and you can,” you wink at him playfully.
He inhales a sharp breath at your words, his hands gripping your waist harder. “Fuck” his eyes rolled back in his head at your dirty suggestion, and the mischievous smirk on your face was not helping the current twitching of his cock. Just the idea was getting him so close. “Really?” He asked breathlessly, his pace slowing down a bit so he wouldn’t cum just yet.
“Yeah,” you bite your lip seductively. “Wanna watch how good you fuck me” you moan, intentionally clenching around his shaft, watching him fall apart above you.
His lips parted, a whiny moan slipping out from the feeling of you encased so tightly around him. “Baby….” He warns, knowing exactly what you’re doing to him. “At least let me get a minute's worth of video before I cum” he laughs softly, and so do you deciding not to tease him anymore.
He reaches over to the nightstand and quickly grabs his phone, his hips never stopping while he unlocks it. He turns the flash on, pointing it right between your legs, filming up close where his cock repeatedly enters you balls deep. “So wet,” he murmurs low enough for the video not to pick it up.
You let out a soft breath, eyes closing in pleasure as he thrusts into you at a steady pace. Even though you’ve been going for at least twenty minutes, every slide of his cock felt better each time, a new layer of creamy arousal coating his thick base and abdomen.
“You look so perfect,” he whispers, tracing your rib cage with his fingertips.
You arched into him, sliding your body down on every single inch of him till his tip reached your cervix. “Hee,” his name comes out in a quick pant, and he can tell you’re as close as he is.
He quickly pulls out, staving off both your orgasms so he can record more your body squirms at the loss of fullness, your hips rolling and desperately chasing for his cock so you can feel him again. His cock jumps at your eagerness for him, and he places his length against your clit thrusting his hips back and forth, edging the both of you without penetrating.
So much for holding off orgasms cause this felt almost as good as being inside you. “Fuck baby, I’m so close,” he breathes out his palm, gently pressing your lower stomach to add to your pleasure.
“Me too.” Your toes curl, a tingling heat coursing through your body as your high approaches. He grabs the base of his cock, pressing his tip to your clit over and over again, smearing your vulva in his sticky precum. “Want it inside hee.”
“Yeah? Want me to cream in this pussy, baby?” You nod your head frantically, wanting nothing more than for him to cum in you and fill your insides with his white creamy liquid.
“Yes baby cum deep inside me” Your fingers grip his waist tightly, causing him to let out a low hiss. He fastens the pace a bit, the sticky squelching of your conjoined bodies turning both of you on even more.
He aimed his cock head at your entrance slipping back into your pussy with ease cause it was still so slick and creamy he swears you’ve never been wetter. “Gonna stuff you so full, baby.” You both moan in pleasure when he hits your cervix again.
Your eyes roll back from the stretch he always filled you up so good, his thick tip brushing past your gummy walls in all the right spots that made you beg for more. “Hee, need your cum in me, please” The pure want dripping from your voice made it hard not to fuck into you faster and just pleasure you the way you deserve.
“Yeah, gonna give it to you so good.” The wet sounds between your bodies fill up the room, all of it being picked up on the speaker of his phone, and neither of you can wait to play it back and watch it later.
No more words were spoken. Both of you forgetting about the recording while losing yourselves to the euphoria.
His hand slipped down your sweat-sheened waist to your little throbbing clit rubbing it in tight circles making your back arch and your hips instinctively match the rhythm with his as his cock got buried even deeper in your soaking cunt.
The sheets were definitely gonna need a change after this.
“Fuck, I’m cumming” you huffed out, your voice getting lost in your throat as your orgasm hit you harder than it ever has cause the way he edged you.
“Y-yeah baby cream on this dick, it’s all yours, fuck!” he groans, head momentarily tipping backward, his hips moving erratically to chase his release as he did his best to keep the recording as steady as possible.
“Cum with me,” you squeak, your orgasm building and building with every stroke to your walls. Your limbs were shaking in pleasure, and this was the longest orgasm you’ve ever had.
“Yes, baby,” he grits through his teeth, staring you in the eyes, and with one final thrust, he stills in you, his cock throbbing as he fills you up with his semen. “Feels so good. Take all this cum, baby” his balls tense with every rope of pearly cum that stains your insides.
“Oh yes,” you shudder, a chill running up your spine as you feel his warmth overtaking your insides.
When your highs start to fizzle out, he focuses the camera again, giving you a few deep strokes to stuff you full just like he promised. It begins to spill out past his base, your pussy lips getting stained in his cream. “Oh yeah,” he whispers shakily, catching the sight of his twitching cock, stuffing your swollen pussy once brim.
He lets out one long breath as he pulls out, and you moan softly from the feeling of him slipping out, clenching your walls on purpose to push out the remainder of his cum for the video. “Perfect,” he ends the video. The last scene was his huge load dripping from your hole to the crevice of your pretty ass. “Damn baby, that was so good” he tosses his phone aside, laying over your tired body and cuddling you.
“It was.” You run your fingers through his damp hair, and you both chuckle while lying there breathlessly.
“Can’t wait to watch it back,” he mumbles against your chest as you bask in the post-orgasm bliss together, sleep slowly but surely taking over.
~
Thanks for reading likes comments and reblogs are always appreciated sorry for any typos or errors I hope you all have a good day/night♥️
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marigoldenblooms · 8 months ago
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That's a Wrap - One Shot
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Pairing: Director!Natasha x Fem!Actor!Reader x Actor!Wanda (MINORS DNI - 18+)
Summary: You and Wanda can’t seem to get this scene right. With your director’s help, you manage.
MINORS DNI - 18+
Tags: Is Y/N in the room with us right now (They aren’t), Dom!Natasha, Switch!Wanda, Bottom!Reader. Dub-con, power dynamic (Director/Actor), voyeurism, degradation, praise, semi-public sex, semi-orgasm denial, light edging, objectification, oral (W receiving), fingering (R receiving), strap-on use(R receiving), some pet names (baby, sweetheart, darling, ma’am, Tasha(For N), Wan/Wands(For W), Mommy(For W, used loosely)), Nat calls her strap her dick, semi-previous established relationship? Porn with plot, clothed sex, sextape, light aftercare, fluff at the end. 
A/N: Welcome to the first issue of Smut Saturdays! Want to really create some good shit in this genre, so I'm posting at least one spicy fic every Saturday (if I can help it)! This came to me in a vision (called the five minutes before my math class)- After my last smut fic did well (An Important Lesson, Prof!Wanda x Reader, which you can read here), I thought I’d do some WandaNat practice! Not proofread, written in the span of an evening. This is a crime against intimacy coordinators, I’m so sorry. Asides over. Natasha wears a strap to her films and she can dick me down with it, please and thank you!
Word Count: 2.4k - Read Length: 8 minutes, 49 seconds.
~~~
It was never fun when the producers came by. 
They’d always arrive in droves of two or three, never the top dog- as if Natasha’s ‘avant-garde chick flick’, as they called it, wasn’t worth their time. They certainly treated it as much. Today was the worst day for them to arrive, in pressed jackets and always on a phone call, because today you were filming the sex scene. It was more of a ‘romance’ scene, with alluring cinematography and enough passion to make your eyes fall out, yet you hadn’t even gotten to remove any clothes from your beautiful costar- Wanda. You knew she was incredible, her previous films as a fem fatale showing her dominant streak, however the spark couldn’t burn when interruptions from the suits kept happening. You weren’t on a porn set, and yet sometimes you wish you were. Might’ve been faster, or at least more fun. 
“From the top,” A groveled voice muttered, Natasha’s steely gaze breaking into your skull-  though a part of you wished she’d break your back. The redhead had always been an inspiration, one of the leading reasons for your participation in her project, besides her being so fine. But now, she looked pissed, worn down by hours of appeasing the producer’s half-baked suggestions and guarding you and Wanda from their prying eyes. “Yes Ma’am,” you replied, earning a slight chuckle from your director, the twinkle in her eye not lost on you- she was on her last legs, but it was yours and Wanda’s compliance that kept her going.
You’d return to your blocking, centered in the middle of your ‘apartment bedroom’, with Wanda’s hand placed gently on your waist. Your roles were lovers, reuniting after a long day of hardship, slowing down after it all. You’d stare up at her, the mild exasperation in your expression making her smile. She’d send a wink down to you, muttering something about being ‘bored too’, but ‘not hating kissing you again’, or the like. She’d invited you out to coffee tonight, and especially after a day like this, you’d take it. Perhaps you’d even forget the paparazzi and really kiss her as you’d been wanting to do this whole shoot. Throw a bone to the fanfiction writers and make their canon comply with reality. Maybe. It was Natasha’s words which startled you from your thoughts, a look of tenderness overcoming your face as you’d sink into your character, “Action!” 
Within an instant, Wanda hiked her hands under the hem of your shirt, eyes darting down to your face. Her palms were warm against you, smooth against your soft skin, as your head rested gently on her shoulder. She’d tug at the fabric- and you’d send her a quick nod, smiling as you’d lean up to capture her lips in yours-
 “Well that’s not very marketable!” A producer would crow, scoffing with both his hands outstretched towards the two of you. You’d freeze, feeling all of the passion drain out from the scene, no more than a shell of itself. His bald head wasn’t very marketable, looking like a morally dubious Mr. Clean- and yet you didn’t comment on it. He’d look at Natasha, the woman pinching the bridge of her nose with a stern sigh, and you gulped. Oh, shit. She was going to lose it. “Can’t you get their clothes off faster? Our focus groups won’t wait around for-”
“Fucking Christ, get- out!” Natasha shouted, a growl in her tone bringing heat to your face. She scowled, roaring to the surrounding suits, “Leave, get off my set- it’s my fucking turn to direct them.” Her hands would fan away their deer-in-headlights looks, ushering them out before locking the door. Her fiery gaze would bore into you then, jaw locked as her heels would click towards you and Wanda, many feet apart. 
The two shared a knowing nod- And before you could speak, your director grabbed Wanda by her shirt collar and pulled her into a bruising kiss. Your jaw would drop as the brunette’s eyes widened, fluttering shut as Wanda moaned into the embrace- Natasha’s hands planted firmly on her tits. She’d squeeze them, earning a gasp from Wanda, your costar’s head swung back as Natasha swiped her thumbs across her nipples. Your director’s gaze would strike yours, and you understood why Wanda’s submission was so quick. You shuddered at the redhead’s gleaming smirk, her voice a husked whisper, “Get those clothes off and get on the bed for me, baby. Now.” 
“Yes, Ma’am.” Your reply was instant, Natasha’s grin only widening as you’d shed your layers, kneeling on the mattress’s soft sheets. They were cold, goosebumps settling up your spine yet you wouldn’t move, eyes trained obediently on Natasha. You were so perfect for her. 
Natasha’s mouth would return to Wanda’s, pressing her into the faux wall that had outlined the bedroom. Her hand would splay against Wanda’s stomach, and you saw how she hiked up the shirt there, continuing to palm her tits while unclasping Wanda’s bra with the other. She’d pepper kisses across the brunette’s neck, sucking hickeys the lower she’d go. 
They’d part only so Wanda’s top could come completely off, your director keeping a claiming touch on Wanda’s hip as she’d look back at you over her shoulder. Her hair was wild, mused from Wanda’s hands slung loosely around her shoulders while her expression remained flushed, dark eyes darting down to the slick that pooled between your legs. Wanda’s voice would ring to you, almost reverent as her hips would stutter against Natasha’s, “She’s fucking drooling for us, Tasha..” 
The redhead would bite back a smirk as she’d watch you twitch. You ached to touch them, yourself, anything- your hands already balled into fists on your thighs, legs rubbing together, desperate for friction. But neither had given the command, and you had an inkling from their hungry looks that they wanted you needy, right where they had you. Natasha’s rasp came second, “Then show her what I taught you.”
Wanda would reach you first, discarding the rest of her clothes in the process. Her hands trailed warm touches up your legs and to your chest, digging into your soft flesh as her lips would meet yours. It was explosive, sweet and tender yet with a ferocity that claimed you quickly, heating up your skin as her knee would slot between your thighs. You’d feel Natasha’s calloused fingers on the small of your back, the sinking of her weight in the mattress behind you, and her tone husked in your ear, “Stretch her out for me, Wan- like we practiced.” Your director’s words sent a buzz to your core, cunt grinding mercilessly into the sheets below as Wanda’s hand would trail there, dragging two fingers along your folds before arcing dazzling circles around your clit. 
You’d eagerly press your hips into her touch, moaning lowly as she’d chuckle, “So wet for me, sweetheart…bet I can just slip right in.” She’d coax her fingers inside, your pussy walls taking her gladly as Wanda curled her digits against that spongy spot. Your back would arch, head growing fuzzy as you’d feel your slick drip down her hand. Her thumb would press into your clit as you’d buck your hips against her, cursing a quick “Fuck-” which was quickly swallowed up by Wanda’s mouth. She’d bite your lip, dragging it with her teeth as she’d settle into her rhythm, spare hand palming your tits with a rougher grasp, “Been waiting for this, haven’t you sweetheart- pretty whore, just for us.”
 “Mhm, good girl just wants to be fucked, don’t you?” Natasha would grit, and you could see her stroking something behind your back. She’d unzipped her slacks- her strap heavy in her hand, glistening with the spit she’d gathered in her palm. Natasha bucked her hips against her hold, cursing as the cock’s base would rub against her clit. She looked incredible, sweat across her brow as her hand would clench around the toy, like she could feel it. “Keep going, Wands- want her perfect for my dick.”
 Natasha would pant, breathing ragged as her hand moved in time with Wanda’s fingers- curling into you almost torturously, feeling your cunt clench around her. The brunette’s kiss would claim you again, moaning into her warmth as her thumb would circle your clit. She’d sigh almost lovingly, fondness overtaking her expression as your head found the crook of her neck, “She’s already perfect, Tasha-” She’d coo, although her hand wouldn’t stop, gasping at the squelching sound of her fingers up your cunt, “This pussy was made for us, darling.” 
Their words and touch brought you so close, yet Wanda’s hands slowed down when she felt your legs quiver or your breathing seize up, never giving you what you needed. You’d squirm against Wanda, begging for more, a lingering touch, anything-  “Please, Wan- I‘m so close,” You whined, earning a tut from your costar. She’d devour your pleas, lost to time as her mouth would reach yours, softer than before. You felt her sympathetic smile against you as she’d shake her head, locking eyes with Natasha’s heavy stare, “Not yet, sweetheart..It’s not my turn anymore.”
The redhead groaned when Wanda slid her fingers out of you, her fingers shimmering with your arousal. Your walls fluttered around nothing, aching for anyone’s touch as you felt Natasha’s rugged grasp on your hips, pulling you up and back so your pelvis was against hers. The strap had warmed in her hand, dragging between your legs. You were dripping for her, soft sparks of pleasure seizing you as her tip would brush against your clit. Her voice would thunder through you, almost delirious with her own need, “Fucking finally..want this pussy all to myself…” 
Wanda would chuckle at that, your director kneading at your hips as Wanda’s thighs settled in front of your mouth, your arms propping yourself just above her soaked cunt. “We promised to share, Tasha..” She’d croon, face flushed and touch softer than Natasha’s as she’d cradle your face in her palms, “Such a pretty girl..are you ready for your reward, darling?” You nodded, a flurry of sensation hitting you all at once- Natasha’s strap sinking into you as the redhead would push your shoulder blades down, pressing your face between Wanda’s legs. 
The stretch was incredible, the woman behind you vicious as she’d drive her dick into you, bottoming out as your mouth would be smothered against Wanda’s cunt. Each thrust would drive Wanda crazy, your gasps and whimpers vibrating right into her core, especially as you’d flat your tongue against her clit, suckling on the sensitive nub. Her thighs would threaten to shut on you, her stretched words lost in your pussydrunk haze, “Yes, like that sweetheart- such a good girl..-” Natasha would rock her hips into yours, pace bruising as she’d pull your thighs flush to hers. You’d hear her muffled curses as she’d bottom out again, sighing as if she could feel you clench around her. “Baby..fuck, so perfect for us…” Wanda’s hands would thread into your hair, anchoring her hold on you as she’d press your face further into her cunt. 
The sight would echo a curse from Natasha’s mouth, her hips growing a little more erratic, “Fucking christ, she’s our perfect little whore, aren’t you baby-” You’d try to nod, moaning as Natasha’s hand would press further into your back, keeping you from moving an inch, “Don’t even think, baby- just fucking take it, fuck-” 
Time would seem to slow, your brain fuzzing into blissful static as you’d feel Wanda’s thighs tremor around your head, her grip tightening as she’d see your body tremble in Natasha’s touch. “Come with me, sweetheart- be a good girl and come for Mommy.” Her saccharine words spurred you into a blinding release, your tongue working Wanda through her orgasm as your body quaked with your own. You’d feel Natasha follow shortly thereafter, cursing aloud as she’d pull herself out of you, watching as you’d clench around nothing. Her hands would immediately find your waist, bringing you gently up to kneel with your back against her clothed front. 
Panting, your arms would shake as you’d catch your breath, leaning up to wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. You could feel both women’s eyes on you as you’d suckle on your fingers, cleaning up with an exaggerated moan, looking towards Wanda as you’d pop your hand out of your mouth, your words almost dreamy, “Mmm, so good, Wan..” You’d giggle as Wanda’s face would alight in blush, although the clink of metal and fabric drove you away from your teasing.
Natasha’s hands would be rushed as she’d pull her pants and harness down, eyes heavy with a lust that made you shudder, “Switch with me, Wands-” She’d grit, thrusting the strap in her general direction before settling calloused palms on your still quivering thighs, her gaze boring into yours, “It’s my turn for her mouth.” 
Wanda’s smirk was immediate, sending you another sly wink, “Gladly.” 
------------------------------------------
Unbeknownst to the three of you, the cameras had never stopped rolling. That film would never be seen by the public, kept hidden once you left the building. Not to say it couldn't be enjoyed by you three, though.
Natasha and Wanda took you out to coffee afterwards as the brunette had promised. They explained their prior agreement to ‘test the waters’ with you, Wanda working with Natasha on a plan to woo you both in and out of character. The date went well, although with much less lingering glances and more almost-fucking in the back of Wanda’s car afterwards. It was there that the public and paparazzi learned of your relationship, although their camera flash thankfully stopped any romance before it got good. You weren’t on a porn set, after all- and Wanda kept your half-nude form hidden while Natasha cursed out the press. All in a day’s work. 
Unfortunately, the day’s work began anew the next day. Filming the romance scene was no difficult measure now, but Natasha’s grin and Wanda’s wandering hands blurred the lines of professionalism. The film crew couldn’t care less, a few of them- such as Kate, a script supervisor- mentioned how they knew it would happen eventually (and won a bet with Peter, who said it’d take until the award show for you three to get together). 
However, once you three escaped into Natasha’s office for some ‘paperwork’ as she’d called it, it didn’t matter. They were yours, and that was enough.  ~~~
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hoshifighting · 1 month ago
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Whai kind of camboys would svt be? What content eo of them would offer?
       seventeen as camboys
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WARNINGS: smut, public sex, fingering/handjob, sub/dom, degradation, porn, tantric sex, porn asmr, dirty talk, edging, denial, sex toys, porn filters, amateur, sex partners, masturbation, forced orgasm, hand fetish...
seungcheol dom daddy af pov. full-on bdsm content. he’s got the handcuffs, the restraints.. he’s the type to sit back, shirtless, broad shoulders on full display, he’s telling the audience when they’re allowed to touch themselves, making them wait until he gives them the okay. sometimes he’ll tease by stroking himself, not showing his cock on camera. uses a mask too. and prize draw a fan for him to fuck on the channel's birthdays.
jeonghan edging and denial. always with someone new on cameras, he’ll start his stream fully clothed, just smiling that devilish grin, playing with his hair, “oh? you want me to take it off?” but he’ll drag it out for so long, giving lil’ peeks of skin here and there. sometimes he’ll straight up dip after a tease. he moans all breathy, making eye contact with the camera.
joshua hear me out.. asmr & dirty talk. joshua’s got a voice that’ll melt you, so ofc he’d be doing those long, drawn-out sessions where he’s whispering right into your ear, breathing heavy like he’s right next to you. audio experience—close your eyes, and it’s like he’s fuckin’ you with just his voice. “you want me louder? fuck, i’ll give you loud.”
junhui body worship. there for the visuals, his streams are all about him showing off—slow, oiled-up body shots, flexing, maybe even a lil’ self-praise thrown in. “yeah, you like what you see?” it’s basically softcore porn for your eyes, just… him flexing and jerking off like a fuckin’ greek god. “fuck, i make you so wet, don’t i?”
hoshi messy sex, rough sex & overstimulation. everything with hoshi is physical af, like he’s tryna fuck you through the screen. the type that even gets the camera dirty. absolute chaos. every stream is like a workout, sweat dripping down his body while he’s all breathless, flexing between rounds. “fuck, lemme catch my breath,” he’ll say, grinning at the camera, then he’s back at it, moaning loud enough to wake the neighbors.
wonwoo public sex. wonwoo’s always in public spaces, daring his partner to keep quiet while he fucks them somewhere they could get caught. or just masturbating in public. “don’t make a sound, or we’ll get in trouble.” dirty whispers, his hands everywhere while people walk by, totally unaware. pure adrenaline. all of that with him looking around, and them looking at the camera through his glasses.
woozi hands-only content = fingering&handjob masterclass/tutorial. man’s got skills, and he’s showing them off. finger-fucking a silicone cunt or fisting a dildo, or his cock, while he mutters filth under his breath. it’s like a fuckin’ anatomy lesson. he’s so damn precise with it, it almost feels unfair. you know he could make you cum in record time.
minghao tantric sex & roleplay. minghao’s streams are straight-up sensual. artful af. his streams are like some softcore art film, everything in slow motion, dim lights, silk sheets, slow burn. it’s less about the dirty talk and more about the vibe. but when he does speak, it’s smooth, deep, and straight to the point. “you’ve been waiting for this? let’s make it worth your time.” every moan perfectly timed, like he’s orchestrating the whole experience.
mingyu sub humiliation. big puppy turned sub, tied up, begging for more while he gets humiliated. he will moan pout, getting all flustered when called a good boy. the humiliation only turns him on more—loves begging. the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
seokmin sex toy review. mr. too sweet, all polite, “hi, how was your day?” then he gets into it and fuck, you’re blindsided. he’s got this wholesome look, but once he starts testing the toys, he’s so vocal too. moaning, breathless, almost embarrassed at how into it, because he needs to talk about the whole experience, he gets but also loving every second. the type that reads mostly of the streaming comments. “i hope you have a good night.” he’ll flash that sweet smile, by the end of the stream.
seungkwan mean dom, forced orgasm. this man is cruel in the best way. he’s tying someone to a chair, not letting them cum until they’re crying, pleading with him. “aww, baby, you’re all messed up, huh? too bad, i’m not done.” won’t stop until you’re a wreck. every tear is a turn-on for him.
vernon twitter-porn-style, faceless porn. faceless, purple bedroom lights, and it’s just his giant cock on display, no face, no extra fluff. the vids speak for themselves. slow strokes under fuzzy lighting, letting you focus on just the action. simple but devastating. maybe a low grunt or two if you’re lucky.
chan amateur couple content. chan’s a full boyfriend experience—enthusiastic af, experimenting, maybe even bringing in a partner sometimes. he’s loud, whimpering when he gets close, showing off how excited he is to try new things. you’re in it together, and his moans are infectious.
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majorblinks · 1 year ago
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DOWNRIGHT ICONIC (aespa karina)
(smut, male reader, screenwriter you, stranger karina, public sex, rough sex [choking/slapping/biting/spanking/hair-pulling etc], oral, anal, facefucking, titfucking, facial, bondage, degradation, name-calling, other weird stuff, 26k words, it's been 1 million years..., BUT WE'RE SO BACK BABY <3)
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Hey, turns out the critics really are onto something:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this.
You aren’t surprised when the nominations are announced. It’s all anyone’s been talking about. You’re this up-and-coming screenwriter, this newly-minted visionary, and - cue the applause - you’ve just made the movie of the year. Clips go viral everywhere; the reviews are calling it extraordinary. They all want to know how you - a relative nobody - managed to pull it off. What’s your secret? What’s your inspiration? Where’d you get this billion-dollar box office idea? 
And here’s one version of the truth:
“Well,” you’re quoted saying in every single interview: “honestly, it’s about a girl.”
Everyone eats this up, of course. It’s so fucking romantic.
You’ll tell an abridged version of this story for the rest of your life. A blip in time in early January - a certified slow-motion movie moment. You’ll say things like she was the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. You’ll say things like, I know it sounds lame, but that’s how it went. She took my breath away. She fascinated me. I saw her and I don’t think my life has ever been the same. 
You’ll never once say her name. 
“It’s weird, actually,” you’ll say in an interview after the news of the nominations drops. “Making this movie about her. She’ll last forever there, you know? She’ll always exist in this film, in this one moment in time. She’s in all of it, basically - every scene, every line. It’s all her.”
“You make it sound like she’s dead,” the interviewer will say, all open-mouthed melodrama.
You’ll laugh. “Oh, God, no,” you’ll say. “She’s alive and well.” As if it hasn’t been years since you last saw her face, watching you from down the corridor, looking lost and torn apart and very, very small. “She’s okay. I mean - I think - yeah, she’s okay.”
As if you’d know. 
Because here’s another version of the truth:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’re going to stand up on that stage and thank your family and your friends. You’re going to stare at all those faces until they swim together into one golden, glittering blur, and then all you’ll see is her - her dark eyes, her glossy hair, her wrist in your grip, her throat between your fingers - her in your sheets, her smiling in your doorway, her shivering in your shower, her sobbing into her hands, her bleeding in your bed, her walking away. Her, her, her. Immortalized forever in this perfect thing you made, winning awards off the reconstruction of a memory. Art imitating life; reality warped into something magnificent, and beautiful, and better. 
And the only thing you’ll feel like doing is throwing up. 
Sure, you’ll bask for decades in the thrill of it: the fame, the fortune, the glory; the adoration, the worship, the attention; the eternal, endless love. You’ll be able to look back on your life when you’re decrepit on your deathbed and know that you - brilliant you, utterly superior you - were divinely blessed with earth-shattering success, and no one will ever be able to take that away from you. You made your mark. You meant something. You were the best, for fuck’s sake, and you have the accolades to prove it - you really, really were. 
So here’s the full truth - the final bottom line:
You’re going to win an Oscar for this. You’ll live the kind of life people beg God for. You’ll get everything you ever wanted. 
It won’t be worth it at all. 
-
First, though, there’s this. 
-
Disturbingly enough, you’re in the romance section of a bookstore when everything starts. 
This is really not your genre - that’s the funniest part. Historically, you’re bored to death by the cartoonish pastel covers; you don’t get your kicks from seeing the same delightfully quirky heroines fall for brooding bad boys, or whatever the fuck goes on in those books. You have your standards. You prefer your art a little gritty, a little fucked up, a little more interesting - the kind of thing that can leave you shellshocked in a movie theater, overcome with the sort of full-body, lightning-struck epiphany only truly good work can manage. It’s not a judgment call - you’re not trying to be pretentious. It’s just that you prefer something with some fucking bite.
The second funniest part is this: 
You’re pressed against the shelves, surrounded by the cutest, chastest love stories ever told-
“Are you serious?” 
-and Karina’s on her knees, about to take your cock down her throat. 
Maybe this is what your contemporaries call cinematic irony.
That’s gotta be the only phrase for it, really. The scene itself dripping with classless, crude, erotic filth - the way she ducks her chin to spit on her hand, the slow pump of her fist around you, the rough hum in her mouth at how achingly hard you are - nasty and irredeemable, too fast and too loud. The gross lack of subtlety in her sex appeal: all pale thighs and porn-star tits, the wet pink flash of tongue. Seductive in a way that screams at you. It’d be so easy to write this off as some deliberately controversial opening scene, gory shock value, horror-film suspense - starring you and the slut you’re about to ravage and ruin and potentially leave for dead. 
“Baby - are you sure?” 
It’d be so easy, if Karina didn’t look like an angel incarnate.
“I mean, you-” You’re stammering. You’ve got both hands in her hair, fingers sliding through the glossy black in petting, soothing motions - your clumsy attempt at reassurance. “You don’t have to, if you don’t - we’re in public - I’m not expecting you to - I don’t need it-” 
Karina’s fine, sculpted eyebrows twitch upwards. Her lips are a twist of scarlet, distinct and amused. She doesn’t quite smirk, doesn’t give a voice to the sarcasm, but the sentiment is the same - yeah, right. 
And then she lowers her mouth to lick. 
“Jesus fucking Christ-” 
Scratch that, then. This is the funniest part. The most inhumanly beautiful girl you’ve ever seen, debasing herself in public like some sort of desperate common whore - come on, bring in the laugh track. 
Not that anyone’s laughing now. 
You’re no poet - they’re a few sections over, Plath and Yeats and Dickinson - but Karina’s the kind of thing that makes you understand the motivation completely: only capable of being captured in metaphor, without context, painstakingly interpreted hundreds of years from now by people who will never get this right. All carved-out cheekbones, fluttering lashes; tight fuckable body clad in a little low-cut dress, feet tucked neatly behind her like she’s simulating worship. Dirty and religiously devoted in how she stretches her full glossed lips around your cock and lets your grip tangle in her hair and- 
“Karina,” you get out, but her only response is to blink sweetly up at you and suck. 
Well, who gives a shit about the poets, anyway? You doubt any of them ever got to fuck a mouth like this. 
There’s an unfamiliar caution to the rut of your hips, a wincing fascination every time she gags - and she gags loud, choking and heaving, saliva dripping slick around you and down her chin - that seems to both entertain and confuse Karina. A skeptical crease in her forehead, saying everything she can’t: you don’t wanna fuck me up? Ruin me? Cloudy spit falling in strands to her tits, seeping into the crimson fabric of her dress; she’s wearing a worn black sweatshirt that’s slipping off one shoulder, exposing the clean line of her collarbone. The hollow of her cheeks, the obscene painful sound of your cock clogging her throat - it’s subtext, explicit suggestion. A preternatural understanding. I know what this is. I know what you want from me. 
Which - she couldn’t possibly. 
“Baby.” You sound so wretched that it’s humiliating. Karina’s sharply lined eyes seem to flash with humor, smug and lazily self-satisfied. “You’re gonna make me fucking cum.” 
The thick, sloppy, choked noise she makes is the closest she’s gonna get to a laugh. 
Oh, sure, whatever, it’s not like you’re not thinking about it: digging your fingertips into her scalp and really fucking her face, relishing in the way those eyes would go wide and glassy with unshed tears; refusing to let her have control, to let her lick and lap and breathe. You’re scripting it in your head already. You’d strip her bare and make her sob. You’d wreck her throat and cum all over her face and force her to walk out like that: coated in the sticky, filthy evidence of everything you’ve made her - look at this, you’d say, look at what I have. Look at what I did - all this, all me. 
“God.” Your thumb braces against Karina’s temple, like the gentle stroke of a brush, like you’re painting her right into existence. “You’re just-” A harsh gag; a fall of dirty, drooling spit. “You’re really enjoying this, huh? Getting on your knees in public for a fucking stranger?” 
That’s why the fantasy of fucking her into brutal submission is actually so understandable. You don’t know her. You don’t owe her shit. You could destroy her and it’s not like she could do anything to fight back - not when she’s already below you, looking up. When she asked for this. 
Except-
“Karina.” You can’t stop saying her name. “You’re - fucking perfect.” 
And it’s true.
So you cum. 
Karina swallows it all with the same amount of sultry grace she seems to do everything - how she laughs and walks and talks and takes your cock like a fucking professional - languishing in the practiced bob of her throat, the preening flicker of her eyelids, her face shiny and pale. It tugs the same feeling out of you as a flawless shot in a film, a well-timed bit of dialogue: watching an expert at work, pulling out all their stops. One hand through her hair. Her nails the same rich color as her mouth and her dress. Nasty, slutty, impressive attention to detail - Christ, get this girl in front of a camera, get the moon to be her limelight - you’re breathless, you’re enthralled, you’re so fucking far gone. 
Then: the sticky retreating glide of her pouty mouth, lipstick smeared badly down her chin, stark and arresting as blood. 
“In my experience,” Karina says, finally, “being perfect’s never gotten me anywhere good.” 
She pulls the sleeve of her sweatshirt up and wipes her face with her wrist. 
“You’re unbelievable,” you say, dizzy.
“Thank you,” Karina says, sweet like she means it, and sits back on her heels. 
You can’t help yourself; you’re petting back her hair again, cupping her face softly in your hand, caught on the dark glint of her irises. Angel was an understatement. She looks more than that - looks like something holy and all-powerful, something omniscient and blindingly beautiful, something who knows exactly what you need and knows exactly how to follow through. Something worthy of mythology. Something like a god.
And any sort of rough, ruthless, fucked-up fantasy - it’s never going to happen. 
You just can’t ruin a girl like her. 
“So?” Karina’s voice is a smoky bombshell lilt, like she’s just stepped out of some film noir from the 1950s. Hands folded primly in her lap, fingers interlocked like a lady. She could be a pop culture icon, an eternal sex symbol - a Marilyn, a Bond girl, a timeless universal beauty. “What now?” 
You think your brain actually short-circuits. “Sorry?” 
Head tilted, lids dropped low. Smirk still sharp and scarlet. “Are you gonna take me home?” 
You open your mouth to respond, but then a customer walks by the aisle. 
You’re a panicked flurry of motion - zipping up your pants, turning away, frantically patting down your clothes - but Karina just stays kneeling on the floor, little chin on an incline, utterly incriminating. It doesn’t matter. The customer passes you by. The world returns to the way it should be: just the two of you.
“Karina,” you say, flabbergasted by her composure. 
Karina’s lips quirk. “What?” 
You shake your head and offer your hand to help her up, but Karina laughs instead - actually laughs. It’s peculiar, beautiful: raspy like a chronic chainsmoker, as though there’s something foreign she’s trying to dislodge. The raw, gravelly aftermath of a skinned knee, a grisly scrape over skin. 
“Wow,” she says, and stands all on her own, tugs the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her fingers. “That’s a yes to taking me home, then?” 
“What are you doing?” You’re laughing too - you can’t help it - reaching for Karina’s tiny waist to pull her in. “What are you - what do you want?” 
When Karina smiles, it seems to set her eyes aflame. Bright and dancing, lashes like a shroud of smoke. “What do you mean?” 
“You just met me.” It sounds feeble, somehow: a thin, useless excuse. Nothing against the way her body slots between your hands, a smooth effortless fit; nothing compared to how she kisses you between sentences, so quick and easy it already feels like a habit. “You don’t - you don’t know me.” 
Karina’s mouth puckers, coy. “No?” 
“No,” you shoot back, grinning, but it doesn’t sound convincing at all. “Come on, baby, seriously. What do you want?” 
There’s gotta be some motive, you’re thinking. There’s gotta be a reason. Karina is so still, so soft and pliant under your hands, all the carved porcelain perfection of a marble sculpture but with none of the cold stiffness. Spine curving under your fingertips, jaw tilting into your touch. 
A complete stranger, maybe - but every part of her body is begging to be known. 
“Don’t you get it?” Karina says. “I want whatever you want.” 
It’s so simple and earnest it takes your breath away. 
“I - Jesus.” You’re biting on the inside of your cheek, drinking her in. “What if I told you I don’t know what I want?”
Another rasp of a laugh, sound like the serrated edge of a blade. “I’d say fine, okay.” Karina’s voice is low, conspiratorial. “But I’d think you’re lying.” 
And here’s the thing you know for sure:
The very second you saw Karina you swear you saw the next hundred pages of a manuscript unfurling in front of you, lines and themes and gorgeous dark-eyed heroines, tragically beautiful endings and stunning cinematography - infinite narratives in the glossy sweep of her hair, in the seductive stretch of her legs, in the way she looked at you in a crowded room and smiled a lovely, secret smile and told you she’d follow you anywhere. She’s worth making art about. She’s worth devoting lifetimes to. The most honest thing you could say to her right now is baby, I’m writing a movie about this one day, and I think you’re really gonna like it.
Karina couldn’t possibly know any of this, but it still feels like she does - impractical knowledge in how she loops one arm around your neck and kisses you again, no hesitation. Like she actually knows you. 
“I want to fuck you,” you murmur against her mouth, because it’s the next most honest thing. “Is that enough for you?”
You’re a screenwriter. You know your horror movies. A small part of you recognizes that this is precisely how they start: fanged vampires, wicked succubi, femme fatales out for blood. Karina’s so gorgeous she can’t be human - teeth so sharp there’s no way her intentions are pure.
“Sure,” Karina says, smirk glimmering like starlight. “Then I want that, too.” 
It’s a murder plot waiting to happen. 
You take her home anyway. 
-
(Oh, and about your Oscar-winning script-
In theory, this is how it begins.
It’s classic. There’s a stranger and there’s a beautiful girl and they’re both sitting at a bar, talking for the very first time. The girl has a rose tucked behind her ear; it matches the crimson color of her lipstick perfectly. The stranger had asked her what the deal with it was, but she’d said something vague and nonsensical about it being a gift, so now they’re talking about normal, average things. Jobs, names, flirtatious pickup lines. It’s obvious because it’s meant to be, like a set-up to some predictable porn - everyone watching knows they’re going to fuck. 
She keeps getting closer to him. At one point he thinks she’s going in for a kiss.
Instead, all she does is pluck the rose from behind her ear, and hand it to him. 
It’s okay, she says. No thorns. 
He stares at the rich furled petals and the whittled-down stem. 
Thanks, he says, amused, charmed. He thinks there’s something odd about her. He likes it, though; if she were as beautiful as she is - which is very beautiful, exquisitely fucking beautiful - and she behaved like most people do, he’d find her terribly boring. 
He takes it from her. Turns over the rose in his hands absentmindedly as she keeps talking. She’s got all this hair: wild and glossy black, pouring over her thin shoulders, her ribs, her tiny waist. After a moment he feels the sharp prick of a thorn against his fingertip and releases the rose in surprise. 
You said there weren’t thorns, he tells her, laughing. Ow. 
Whoops, she says. Then: Did it get me too? 
She turns her head, pulls her hair out of the way. There’s a scarlet bead of blood trickling down the side of her perfect pale neck. He can’t quite tell where the point of entry was, where the thorn had dug in and broken skin. It’s bleeding a bit too heavily. Covering its tracks. 
She swivels, slightly. She sees the look on his face. Is it bad? she asks.
No, he says, though he can’t really tell. But - couldn’t you feel it, though? The thorn? 
The girl presses her hand to the side of her throat. It comes back bloodstained, a neat smear of red along the lifeline of her palm. 
No, she echoes, though this can’t possibly be true. Hey, you wanna get out of here or something? 
Alright, he says, smiling. They both stand. They leave the rose where it is. Let’s go. 
He cups her cheek instead of her neck when he kisses her for the first time, so he doesn’t have her blood on his hands.
It starts simple like that.) 
-
Karina’s so out of place in your apartment that it’s almost laughable - or it would be, if you were capable of thinking about anything but her mouth and her hands and her tits crushed up against your chest as you pin her to the doorframe. She keeps making these little sounds into your mouth: low and throaty, almost agonized. You swallow all her moans off her lips - oh, baby, you’re okay - and you only kiss her harder. She doesn’t belong, among your carpet worn-down from pacing and your laptop still open and idling and the mess of incoherent colorful post-it notes pasted to your fridge. She doesn’t fit here. Here kissing your mouth, here in your arms, here on fucking earth with the rest of you heathens-
“You wanna fuck me so bad,” murmurs Karina, chin on an incline, staring up at you, “then do it already.” 
She doesn’t squirm or fidget; she doesn’t get needy or start begging. She stays pinned down by your body, lips parted, and stands completely still. 
It’s like she’s telling you to make your move. Waiting for something inevitable. 
“What happened to patience?” you say, anyway. 
Karina’s mouth curls. She palms your cock through your pants. “What the fuck is that?”
You try to laugh, breathless and turned on, but all she does is kiss you again.
You’re a creative - you’re ready to attribute meaning to every movement - but there’s nothing so profound about it when you get Karina on your bed, all that thick black hair fanned out on your sheets, her hands grasping to get your shirt off - off, she murmurs, off. Even that comes out measured. She never shakes. She’s so sure. You kiss her everywhere you can reach, her face and her neck and her collarbone and her tits, drunk on the soft, humming sounds she makes when you do. You’re so fucking gorgeous, you can’t stop saying, and Karina keeps laughing that same raspy laugh, like it’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard. 
“You told me you already know that, right?” You’ve got her face cupped in one of your hands and your other one at the neckline of her scarlet dress. “So what’s so funny?” 
“Everything.” Her teeth glint the way fangs would, a deliberate trick of the light. She’d be villainous if she weren’t so content to be trapped underneath you. “All of it.” She presses her palm to the side of your neck. “You’re too nice.” 
“Fuck.” Your thumb accidentally digs too hard into her cheek. She doesn’t wince, but you feel it - the stomach-turning thrill, the possibility of leaving a bruise. Your hand drops low - lower, down her throat and her tits and her flat midriff - and slips between her thighs, up her dress. It feels safer, somehow. “How do you manage to make the word nice sound like an insult?” 
“It’s not,” she says, simply, and spreads her legs. 
And it must not be - because Karina’s so wet. 
She makes another low velvety sound when you first touch her, seems to melt into the stretch of your finger in her cunt - just one finger, and her back arches faintly, prettily, hips lifting to take more. “Jesus,��� you mutter, but Karina’s not looking at you: her eyes are shut tight, lashes fluttering black, tits heaving in her dress with each draw of breath. You’ve fucked girls who’ve seemed unsure of themselves - embarrassed by their own wantonness, how wet they are, how bad they want it - but all Karina does is wrap her hand around your wrist and tug, once: a clear soundless plea for more.
For a second you’re actually, positively certain that you’ve lost it. 
It’s abject fantasy. It can’t be real. You in your apartment with the dream girl - the personal Aphrodite - the muse; God, if anyone was ever made to be a fucking muse, it’s her - underneath you with her ridiculous tits and her tight little pussy, face like a Hollywood dream. Ludicrous. Impossible. Bucking as she tries to fuck herself deeper on your fingers, all the way to the knuckle - slowing down only to say you wanna fuck my cunt open with your big fat cock or what? 
“I,” you try to say, strangled - her mouth’s so fucking filthy. “I was - I mean - we could take it slow-”
“How romantic,” says Karina - and this, too, sounds like a heinous insult coming from her - but she drags your wrist to her lips and sucks her own slick off your hand anyway. 
You choke on your next breath. “Karina-” 
She looks up at you, unflinching, tits half out of her dress and cunt dripping down her thighs. Lipstick worn-down, kissed-off. All over your mouth, or your throat, or your shirt. Mouth chapped from the cold and stained marvelously pink. There’s something in the way her smile forms slight and crooked every time you say her name, as if there’s some private joke you’re not in on. 
“You’re such a gentleman,” Karina purrs, all syrupy-sweet condescension. Then: “You really don’t have to be.” 
She licks the pad of your finger. She’s so completely shameless. You feel monstrous on top of her, in this sick, superior way, like she’s just too small to be so sopping wet and slutty and fuckable - too beautiful to be anything but treated just right. 
“If you want me to fuck you like a whore, baby,” you tell her, half-joking, “then just say that.” 
It’s a mistake the moment it leaves your mouth - a line crossed. Because all Karina does is cock her head, your wrist gripped delicately in her hand, her legs parted underneath you, and stares. Almost droll, bemused. Like you’re so goddamn predictable.  
“Didn’t you hear me?” That perfect face sears right through you. You’d nearly fucked that face. Not quite. Not yet. “I want whatever you want.” 
She’s even tinier than you originally thought she was. You only realize this now, tracing her stomach under your fingertips, feeling the sharp relief of each rib straining beneath her skin. You don’t know it until you touch her, but you can span the width of her thigh under one hand. It sends a strange shiver through you: mapping every jut of bone, every startling edge. She’s tiny. Breakable, practically. Men meaner than you have probably thrown her around, fucked her up against walls, used her like a toy. 
“So,” says Karina. “What do you want?” 
Your fist clenches tight in her grasp, right in front of her face, knuckles going horrifically white.
Like you - like you’re going to-
An accident. A primal sort of gesture, like you’re less than human, turned under her touch into some feral hot-blooded animal who can’t control itself: carnivorous, predatory. You stare at your own hand and then the sharp scythelike curve of her mouth and feel revolted embarrassment crawl straight up your spine. 
It’s abhorrent. 
It also doesn’t even seem to matter.
Karina doesn’t go wide-eyed and nervous; she doesn’t look at your wound fist like she’s scared of what it could do to her. She clicks her tongue, once. Like this, too, is something she already saw coming.
“I thought so,” she says, anyway. Maybe this is it, what does it for her; looking the devil full in the face and begging to be burned. “Then do it.” 
“I can’t do that to you,” you mutter, but you tug her dress up, and you fuck her anyway. 
-
She’s a stranger. This is the point of fucking strangers. To do things to them that you’d never do to anyone else - to take out your worst impulses and tell your best lies and know that none of it matters, in the end. Because they’re nobody, and because you’ll never see them again. 
But you just can’t. 
She’s too indulgent and stunning and soft, with her low moans and the addicting drenched heat of her cunt, hand gentle and careful on the nape of your neck so she can keep pulling you into a kiss. She’s made up of curves, delicate edges - those hips and those tits you can’t keep your hands off of and her lips in a dreamy smile - and you find yourself stroking her hair back from her face so you can drink it all in: the blush in her cheeks, the almost serene way she lets her eyes slip shut and her mouth drop open, slack and enticingly wet. So good, baby, you keep telling her, because she is, her entire body warm and wanting and so easily fucked open, little pussy swallowing your cock right up. She doesn’t fidget or plead. She’s so sweet, such a perfect fit, humming into your mouth as your cock eases her open; so wet you can hear it, the sloppy squelch of her cunt when you bottom out. Your voice comes out coaxing. You like that? That feel good? Taking my cock so nicely, huh?
“Mmm,” Karina breathes, in an exhilarating moan, right into your mouth, against your tongue. “Mm, mm-”
She never quite manages full sentences. Never finds it in herself to make any more obscene demands. Just gets all small and soaking underneath you, licks messily at your bottom lip, and lets you do all the talking - lets you draw a careful hand through her hair and drop your other one between her thighs, clenches tight around your cock when you rub at her clit, keens low in her throat and listens. To the good girl, to the I got you, baby, to the that’s it, there you go, this is what you wanted - I know, honey, I know, you just needed to get this cunt fucked right, you just needed to cum real bad. I know what this is. I know what you need. 
“Fuck.” She’s flushed pink to her chest, delightfully ineloquent. “Yes-” 
Well - good thing you’re decent with your words, when it counts. Let Karina blush and drool and slick up your cock with every stroke. That’ll work just fine with you.
It’s the kind of juxtaposition you’d really lean into - the kind of thing you’d write just to get so self-indulgent with, a personalized note to the director, a wink and a nudge to every audience member. Look at that. Look at her eyes like something straight out of poetry. Look at her body like a pornographic fantasy. Look at how she gets so tamed and docile and compliant when she gets her tiny pussy stuffed full, creaming all over that cock, huge tits bouncing - look, that’s art, isn’t it? What else would you call it? What else could it be?
“You gonna cum, baby?” She’s so fragile underneath you. Color staining her cheeks apple-red; lips swollen and begging to be kissed. Fictive little fairy tale. “You gonna cum for me?”
“Yeah.” It’s breathy and barely-there. Her chin trembles, jerks in a weak nod. “I’m - I - fuck-” 
See: you just can’t rough her up. It’d be blasphemous. Sacrilege. Taking one single look at the stained-glass windows of a church and tearing it all to the ground.
Still, you’re mesmerized by how utterly vulnerable she looks: the glossy shine to her irises; the way she inhales all slow and shaky, body slipping from some sort of precipice. Not just like she’s near-tears, but like she’s stunned - struck dumb from a violent blow, mouth wide open in the aftermath. And it’s just sex - and, fuck, you’ve said it, you see things the way every obsessive artist does; sex is never just sex. Every one thing means something more. A metaphor. An allegory. You get nasty and debauched and dirty because you know exactly what you can spin it into. Put the entire scene in a silent film and everyone can swoon about the things you might be saying to her, this impossibly captivating stranger in your bed with her graceful name, her dizzying moans, her shuddering frame in her orgasm. Don’t you get it? you could be telling her, hand brushing gently over her sweat-damp hairline. Don’t you feel that? You’re a stranger to me, baby, but you don’t have to be. There’s a reason we met. There’s a meant-to-be here, somewhere. I’m not a believer, sweetheart, but you could make one out of me - I swear you could, I promise-
But that’s the reason why these things are best left to the imagination, anyway. 
A million scripted sweet nothings - and none of them manage to make it out of your mouth. 
“Karina.” Your hips jerk hard. You sound half-possessed. “So pretty, cumming all over my cock like that. Such a perfect little cunt, baby - so fucking good-”
Her eyes suddenly shut tight; her body arcs into your touch, lips parted in a silent gasp. And for a second it seems like such a snapshot of innocence, like she’s brand-new to getting fucked quick and rough and dirty - though you know this can’t possibly be the truth, not with the way she flirts and whines and drips for more like she’s made for it - but she’s trembling under your fingertips, and you can dream. She’s your beautiful stranger, your pristine muse; you can pretend she’s whatever the fuck you want. 
“God,” Karina murmurs, so soft and weak it makes your head spin. 
Before you know what you’re doing - before you can even think twice about it - you’re pulling out, and cumming all over her stomach. 
You can’t help it. You shouldn’t have had that thought about innocence. Jesus. This is what you mean, about you and your own painful humanity; you’ve got all the same vile desires. When you see a pure thing - all that porcelain skin, all that thick glossy black hair, all those gleaming white teeth in her open mouth - your very first instinct is to fuck it up bad.
You’d do worse, if you were worse - you’d make a real fucking disaster out of her. 
“Baby,” you say, breathlessly. “Are you…”
And Karina, then, does something truly evil: 
Sighs luxuriously, stretches her arms above her head, eases those gorgeous eyes open, and smiles. 
As if she’s reveling in it. The scent of sex - the defiled tautness of her tummy - the way you’re not sure where her little red dress or her shoes or her panties are, how her cunt’s dripping wet onto your sheets, her hair a glorious mess. Grinning in the face of utter filth. 
“You,” you exhale, running your palm down her side. “You’re so…” 
Karina’s mouth pulls up at a corner, like she’s daring you to finish the sentence, but you never do. 
You can’t stop staring at the stretch of cum-covered skin before you. Coating her belly, pooling into her navel. You realize with a start that there’s a new bruise blooming on her chest, a vicious sort of bite mark. You can’t remember when you did that. You’d been kissing her - of course you kissed her - her mouth and her neck and her tits, but you’d been so gentle, sucking light and soothing her skin with your tongue after-
“You didn’t want to cum inside me?” Karina asks, hoarsely. 
You blink so hard your vision blurs. “What?” 
“Right.” Her eyeshadow’s smudged dark underneath her eyes, making her look deliciously used up. “You did want to cum inside me.” 
“Karina,” you warn - or, at least, you mean to make it sound like a warning - but her name comes out too faint. It’s horrific. Your hand traces her hipbone so reverently. You’re no match for her. 
Karina arches a brow in unhurried challenge, ghosts her hand across her tummy. Takes two fingers and drags them through the cum you spilled, pulls back with it clinging thickly to her skin. Drifts down, down, down. 
“Karina,” you try to say again, even more pathetic than last time. “Jesus-” 
But you saying her name holds no weight here; she’s made that more than obvious. Nothing to stop her as she smears her cum-slick fingers across her glistening pussy, gaze locked amusedly on your face, tracking your reaction. She’s still so fucking wet - she rubs your cum in circles across her clit - tossing her head back a little, chest heaving and falling, fingertips just barely dipping inside her cunt-
“I can’t.” Karina lifts her hand to pop her fingers in her mouth, sucks them clean. Pointedly flashes her too-sharp nails at you like she’s unsheathing claws. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”
“You,” you say, though your hand’s already pressing hard into her ribs, “are fucking cruel, baby.” 
“And you,” replies Karina, head tilting, “just want to see my cunt all filled up and leaking your cum.” 
Oh, she hasn’t been wrong about you all night. She certainly won’t start now. 
“What?” A sly, languid smirk tugs at her lips. “Afraid you’re gonna knock me up or something?” 
Your breath halts right in your lungs.
You’d been right about her too, it seems. Succubus. Vampire. She must be; she’s bloodthirsty. Tits gleaming with sweat, the scarlet stain of that bite mark you can’t remember leaving, cunt all dripping wet and desperately empty - body like a fatal fucking blow. 
Karina’s eyes glint. I want what you want, she’d said. 
With the way she spreads her legs, she’s gotta be ready to prove it.
So you never stood a chance. You give in and scoop up cum with one finger and sink it deep inside her aching cunt, feeling as she clenches down, as she takes it so well; like a good girl, you tell her, letting me do whatever I want with this needy little cunt; that’s my good girl. Karina lifts her hips - goes so still and so obedient - and lets you repeat it over and over again, fucking into her with your fingers until the plane of her stomach is bare and sticky and her cunt’s dribbling your cum onto your sheets. It’s completely nasty. It’s hot. It’s Karina craning her neck back and shutting her eyes as you bury three fingers inside of her and fill her with your cum, every part of her in utter surrender, entirely at your mercy, breathing out hard through her nose until your thumb rubs at her clit and she’s cumming again, all over your hand. She gets this look on her face, afterwards - exhausted, every line of her face gentle and lax - staring up at you like you’re the only person still left on this planet. Adoring, almost. As if you’re something out of another world. 
It’s an expression too sweet for a scene like this - and it’s exactly what men like you make art about. 
“There,” you say, soft and mesmerized, wiping your hand across her chest. “Satisfied?” 
Karina laughs her strange, gravelly, gorgeous laugh. 
“No,” she says, shamelessly. “But that’s not your fault.” 
Your fingers curl around the curve of her jaw. “No?”
She barely looks like she belongs in your bed - she must be something divine, lit from within, god-blessedly gorgeous. She’s a fucking fever dream: stunning eyes and the bob of her throat and her tits and her curves and all that hair. Stay, you think of telling her. Let me see what I can make of you. I don’t know you yet but I could, baby, I really could. 
“Nope.” Karina smiles, and somewhere, soliloquies are writing themselves. “I always want more.”
“Okay,” you say, mouth hovering over hers. “Then stay.” 
-
So she stays.
-
(An update on your script:
The stranger and the girl are back at his place. They’re sitting on his couch. Nobody has cleaned off her neck. He’s been too busy pawing at her: at her face, between her legs, at her tits in her tight dress. I need you, he’s been murmuring to her, and it feels like he really means it: like he’ll die if he doesn’t get her desperate and whining underneath him, his cock stretching her tight little cunt wide open. He doesn’t feel too bad about it. She’s a dirty slut. She’s said as much. She’s got her own needs, too. 
What happened to your window? she asks, suddenly.
He pulls back from her chest, his spit clinging shiny to her skin. 
She isn’t looking at him. He has the sudden, unnerving feeling that she hasn’t been looking at him the whole time. Not like she’s had her eyes closed in blinding, overwhelming pleasure - but like she’s deliberately been trying to look at anything else. 
But his hand falls between her thighs, and he realizes she’s already wet. 
A bird flew into it, probably, he says. That happens, sometimes. 
They’re talking about the stain on the once-clean glass of his window. The backdrop of the night sky behind means it’s barely visible, but the suggestion of it is enough. Implicit gore. Tiny little black feathers, caked in blood from the impact, dark and dried. It’ll be scrubbed off soon enough, he knows. It’ll be all gone eventually. 
Oh, she says. She doesn’t apologize for potentially killing the mood. She hasn’t, anyway, not really. She’s still wet and small underneath him, begging for it. Poor thing. 
Yeah, he says. 
She turns back to him. Her hair’s everywhere, all over the arm of his couch, wayward strands beneath his fingers. She’s clearly expecting something - to be kissed, to be fucked hard, to be called baby and angel and good girl. It doesn’t really matter either way. Those are the only things he can give her. 
He stares at the blood on her neck. 
Let me clean that off for you, actually, he says, and goes to the kitchen to get a washcloth.)
-
Much, much later:
“I admire you,” Karina says, all tucked up in your bed, underneath your sheets, half-buried into your side. Moonlight bleeds into the room. Her eyes gleam like galaxies. “For showing some self-control.” 
“What?” 
Karina’s hair pours over your pillowcase. She takes your hand and brings it close to her face, working your fingers into a tight fist. 
“Fucking bitch,” you mutter, and then regret it immediately. It lands too harshly, too strange and serious. “Sorry. I didn’t - that came out weird. I don’t think you’re a bitch.” 
Karina’s lips brush your knuckles. “Not the meanest thing I’ve been called.” Her voice twists with humor. She shouldn’t be so comfortable curled up with a man she doesn’t know in the middle of the night. You think of kissing her hard, of scraping her neck with your teeth, of warning her about self-preservation - sweetheart, you could tell her, this is how people end up dead. “Not the meanest thing I’ll be called, either.” 
You shift. Your fist, unconsciously, goes tense in her hand. “What’s your deal?” 
Her mouth tilts. “What’s yours?” 
You huff out a laugh. “You’re unbearable,” you say softly, which feels much kinder than calling her a bitch. “What are you - what do you mean?” 
I’m not hard to figure out, you want to tell her. I’ll let you in if you ask me to. But you - you, you imagine saying, cupping Karina’s face in your hands and saying her name like you’re praying to her, drafting scenes in your head with each whispered syllable - you. Look at you. I’d fill a thousand pages trying to find a way to understand you. 
“If you want to hurt me,” Karina says, “then hurt me.” 
Your throat dries up. Your fist falls open. “What?” 
“I wouldn’t blame you.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. You see her tongue dart over her bottom lip, the slick glimmer of spit. “If that’s what you wanted.” 
You stare at her, hard. 
It’s not difficult to make out her silhouette in the dark; she’s illuminated so distinctly by the moon, like it’s her own on-set spotlight, professionally arranged - she’s got the cosmos calling her shots. You think about how careful you’d been with her: doing what she wanted and making her cum and kissing her like you have history and maybe fucking her like you love her, just a little.
You think about that bruise you left on her chest, her skin between your teeth, the feeling of biting down. 
“It’s not,” you say, and the lie tastes acrid in your mouth. “It’s - it’s not, Karina.” 
“You fucked my face in public within like an hour of meeting me. And fucked me and came on my stomach. And fingered your cum inside of me.” It’s far past midnight. She sounds more alert than she should. “You’re gonna start being polite now?”
It sends an odd knot to your gut, the way she puts it. Equating all of that to hurting her. Laughing in the face of your clenched fist - not because she thinks you won’t do it, but because she knows how bad you want it. 
Hurt me. She says it like it’s so easy. Fuck me. Let me stay the night. Hurt me; you’ve earned it. 
“I’m not polite.” The truth doesn’t taste much better. “I just have, you know, common fucking decency.” 
“Hm,” Karina says, a nonchalant little noise, and nothing else.
You brush her hair off her neck and your fingertips graze the hollow of her throat. You feel her swallow under your touch. You open your mouth, though you’re not sure what you’re about to say - Karina, like a chant, like she’s consumed you in a matter of moments, Karina - but she shuts her eyes delicately, and curls close to you, and just like that the moment is over. 
I have common decency, you’d said. I won’t hurt you. I promise. I can control myself.
So maybe you weren’t right about everything. You’re not the devil. That’d be a delusion of grandeur - the idea that you’d ever have that kind of power over a girl like her. 
Not for long, she’d replied, in the knowing tilt of her smile. Not if I can help it.
-
In the morning, it’s a picture of crime-scene proportions. It takes a little work to piece it all together.
Karina’s not in bed when you wake up, but there are traces of her everywhere - telltale, incriminating bits of evidence. Strands of her hair on the pillow. Blood-red lipstick stains on the fabric. Her crimson dress crumpled on your bedroom floor, sporting a tiny tear in the hem that you don’t remember leaving; you can still smell her perfume all over your sheets, like a calling card. If this was a TV drama - a clichéd police procedural - she’d probably be dead in your living room right now, blank-eyed and beyond saving, rigor mortis deforming her perfect body into something grotesque. 
This is also probably not a thought you should ever relay to Karina, but you do anyway.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she replies. She’s perched on your kitchen counter, dressed in one of your t-shirts, bare legs swinging. “I’m very much alive.”
“I was being dramatic,” you try to say, gesturing with your hands to set the scene - the lighting, the fake blood and the special effects, the potential pallor of her face. “I’m - I’m a screenwriter. It’s in my nature. I didn’t mean I wanted to find your fucking corpse out here-”
“It’s okay if you did.”
You choke. “What?”
“I’m right with you, babe.” Karina leans forward conspiratorially. There’s a sharpness to the dark glint in her eyes that kind of makes you think she really does understand: that she has the same tendency to jump to the worst possible conclusions. A kindred, morbid spirit. “I get it. I’m pretty devastated that I’m still breathing, too.”
She says this all in a scratchy, sultry voice, hoarse as though she’s been sleeping for years instead of hours. Lashes fluttering like she’s just told you something very adorable and sweet.
“God,” you say, desperately charmed, and laugh until you feel light-headed. “You’re sick.”
Karina’s mouth curls. “Right.”
“I’m serious.” It’s surreal: her wearing your clothes and sitting on your counter like this is an everyday occurrence, indulging every fucked-up thing you say to her. Maybe you’re still caught somewhere in a dream, just waiting to wake up. “You’re, like - not normal.” 
“Hey.” A light, careless shrug; her palm rests over the back of her neck. “No arguments here.”
You rub a hand over your eyes, smiling like an idiot, and take a breath. 
It’s late January, and cool sunlight drips into the room, over your furniture and your floors and the angel right in the middle of your kitchen. It should wash her out, blur her at the edges; it doesn’t even come close. Turns her to a freeze frame instead, carefully color-graded, every hue just a bit too intense: skin ghost-pale, lips pouty and pink, hair jet-black and tangled to her waist. Your shirt hangs off of her slender frame like it aims to swallow her up. You thought you’d been stunned by Karina before, lulled by the late night, the electric rush of touching her - you’d assumed you could blame it on the alcohol, the slutty dress and the sultry makeup and the long-held habit of artistic romanticization-
But it’s nothing compared to seeing her now. 
Karina crosses one leg over the other, and waits as though expecting a rating: to be starred out of five like a film. 
Face scrubbed clean. Bone structure a study of faultless symmetry, delicate in a way that feels both inhuman and invulnerable. She’s so classically breathtaking - a miraculous second coming of a tragic, iconic movie star, a phenomenon back from the grave; jaw and nose and mouth all clean lines, aesthetically precise art - but God, those eyes. Enormous without the thick liner, suggestive only of impossible innocence. Like some darling baby animal, some long-lashed lamb to the slaughter - something pristine and completely untouched. 
The morning after, the direct light, the exposed behind-the-scenes - she’s still beyond beautiful. 
And somehow she’s still here with you. 
“That’s insane, by the way,” you say, unable to stop yourself. “That you stayed.” 
There’s a loud cracking sound. 
You squint, disoriented. “What-” 
Karina blinks at you, wide-eyed; her jaw shifts. The sound echoes again, startling and sudden. “What?” 
“Are-” You step closer. “Are you chewing on fucking glass or something?” 
“Or something,” Karina replies, smile’s tiny and closed-off. She gestures to the cup next to her. “It’s just ice.” 
She’s so calm watching you approach her. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the freakout, for the breakdown - or, at the very least, the scrambling excuses before the walk of shame. Here’s the truth: she doesn’t know you. Here’s an even worse truth: judging by her hickey that looks like you might’ve tried to rip her throat out earlier, she’d have every right to take one look at you and run. 
Karina doesn’t do any of it. Just raises her cup to her lips and tips it back, the arc of her neck so inviting. 
“That’s so fucking bad for your enamel.” You’re laughing again. You’re in front of her now, settled between her legs. “You’re gonna break a tooth.” 
Karina sets her glass down. Wipes the corner of her mouth with her wrist, eyes locked amusedly on yours - heavy-lidded enough to seem lazy, but pupils blown enough to be a siren call, a deliberate suggestion.
“Oh, no,” she says, all smoky sarcasm. “Who’d ever want me then?” 
She parts her thighs the second you touch them; her body’s so obedient under your fingertips, like a doll’s, something to be dressed up and posed and played with. Daring you to do everything you’re already thinking about doing. 
“You’re ridiculous,” you murmur, and give in completely.
So:
Look, you know exactly how the movies would frame this. Pandering to the wide-eyed teenagers and hopeless romantics; adding the swell of strings every time your eyes or hands or lips meet, each motion accompanied with unsubtle cues - there’s the meet-cute, there’s the moment, there’s the love-at-first-sight. It’s ridiculous to drag any of that into your real life, of course. It’d be like believing in God. Giving up logic to put your faith in something silly and mythic and implausible - to follow true love like a religion, expecting it to save your soul; to pray to the one like a healing property, a benevolent higher power. 
You can’t believe in that. You can’t. 
But-
Karina pulls back the barest amount, eyelids fluttering open like a new day dawning, and smiles when she sees the look on your face. So sweet and gorgeous; so struck and adoring. So comfortable wrapped up in your arms.
“Hi,” she murmurs. 
And - as though it’s some bone-deep instinct, saturating your bloodstream - you just have to kiss her again. 
Don’t you feel that? you think of telling her again, your hand slipping to cup her cheek - the sentiment always seems to come back around. You swear you can see scenes flashing behind your eyelids, the beginnings of a creative epiphany; it must be seeping through your fingers, staining her skin with ink, every possible action depicted neatly between brackets. A laugh, a look, a touch. A version of Karina projected across the silver screen to a wild, wanting audience. Don’t you see what you could do for me? What you’re capable of becoming? 
You can’t believe in any of this, but it’s gotta be something close. 
The feeling doesn’t end when the kiss does: only intensifies, made tangible somehow. Sculpted into the spit-slick curve of her lips, the flinty gleam in her eye. Like she feels it too. Like she knows. 
“And it’s not insane that I stayed,” Karina says, belatedly. “You asked me to.” 
For a moment you just stare at her, seconds from her mouth and speechless. 
It’s the truth without difficulty. It’s a confession with no strings attached. It’s the fucking dangerous way she says it - as if whatever you want extends to a lot more than sex. 
“And you don’t-” Your throat closes over a swallow; you find your eyes darting between hers, searching for anything but honesty. “You don’t think that’s insane? Doing whatever a stranger tells you to?”
Karina only laughs her strange laugh, gritty the way good music is, demanding to be heard.
“Nope,” she says, like this is all so simple. “That’s just what I do.”
It’s unbearably filthy in its implication - and it’s exactly what you need. 
The room seems to fill with potential, fantasies pouring in from the ceiling, enough to bloat any manuscript to its breaking point. You let out a breathless laugh, loud and unabashed. You think of pushing for even more, pressing your nails in and digging deeper - why me, why this, why now - but Karina leans in close before you can and slots her mouth to yours, and you’re no fool: there’s no line of questioning worth giving that up. 
Seems like you’ll have to come up with this character motivation all on your own. 
-
“Look at us,” she murmurs against your lips - meaning this very minute, the chemistry, how every glittering star must’ve conspired to get you here. “Kinda feels like this was meant to be, huh?” 
She’s clearly kidding, because it’s too soon and too fucking crazy, but-
Well, the way you kiss her then is absolutely your version of a yes. 
-
Here’s something people should probably know about artists like you:
You’re rather enamored with the idea of a magnum opus. 
It’s a natural thing to reach for, to visualize - the concept of your one great masterpiece. Something you can pour years and years into, water into roaring reckless oceans; time transforming the things you make into something worth remembering forever. Everyone you know - your sculptors, your songwriters - has their own version of this, somewhere. When I finally create this one perfect thing I’ll be - go on, fill in the blank. Fulfilled. Gratified. Happy. When I finally do this, I’ll feel whole. 
It’s strangely fantastical. A lifelong dream a kid would have - a childlike, storybook aspiration. 
Yours - as far as you’ve figured out - looks a little like this:
“It’s not as romantic as it should be,” you admit, now. “I’m not really into that as a theme. True love, I mean. Or optimism. Or hope. I want something more…” Something rougher, you mean. Something with pain. Something with blood and bruises. “Nuanced, you know? Complicated, messy.” 
“I get it,” replies Karina. She has her hands twisted in her lap, watching you very closely. You’re obsessed with the way she looks at you - like she’s drinking every word in with those smoldering dark eyes, greedy for more. For you. “All the best art is about pain, huh?” 
You snap your fingers, pleased to be understood. “Exactly.” 
Karina smiles, small and knowing, and gestures you on. 
In your vision, your magnum opus is always about a girl. Like you said, it’s the way it goes with all the best films ever made: not about love, but the futility of it lasting. Think of all the famed examples - think of the filmmakers and their obsessions, sneaking the great loves of their lives between each line: there’s something she said, there’s a dress she wore, there’s a conversation they had in the middle of the night, tangled up in sheets and whispering against skin. Your future muse will be just like that. A reincarnation of the infamous women who haunt all the greatest artists - an amalgamation of their bodies contorted into narratives and replicated in loving, graphic detail. Someone with skin like marble, a statue you could take a sledgehammer to. Someone who looks unfathomably pretty when she cries. 
Someone like-
“Uh-huh,” says Karina. She must’ve just gotten out of the shower before you found her, because her hair’s damp enough to have left wet patches on your t-shirt. She licks her bottom lip, once. “Sure.” 
Someone to be what you’ve always wanted: a flawless girl to fall from the sky into your lap. To fulfill your promise to yourself: when I meet her, I’ll know. I’ll be able to make this movie. When I meet her, everything will slip exactly into place. 
Karina cracks another ice cube between her teeth.
“So,” she says, low with insinuation. “When you told me last night that you found me inspiring…”
She doesn’t need to finish the question. She knows exactly what you want.
“You’re…” You shake your head. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I saw you and I just - I felt like I knew. I knew. I wanted you.” You shrug helplessly, smiling. “Do you think I’m nuts?” 
She should, probably. You’re a total stranger, a practical lunatic, an artist talking of your visions like you’re possessed. You don’t know her - that’s the reality of the situation. You don’t know her. 
But then there’s everything else.
The unbelievable sex, the staying the night; the way she lets you touch her, blinking slow and subservient, like you already have a claim to her body. You think muse and you think in abstract concepts, glittering stars, guiding lights; you think of skin cut up and sewn together, of creators and their finest monsters, of the implicit poetry in the undoing. You think muse and you think of the way Karina smiles at you now, full lips and frail bones, a painter’s portrait reference. Unmoving, unafraid. Too otherworldly for your day-to-day but just right when she’s in your arms, like a trial-run demonstration: this is what we’re capable of. You could make it happen. You could make me fit.
You swear you’ve been dreaming of someone like her your whole fucking life. 
You think muse, and now you can only think of her. 
It’s a sign. It must be. And this, the next one:
“No,” Karina says, easily. “I think you’re just like everyone else.” But she raises an eyebrow, so you know it’s a joke. “I think you’re all the same.” 
You laugh, delighted; Karina’s smile widens, shows her teeth. “Shut up.” 
Karina acquiesces immediately - claps a hand over her mouth like it’ll keep any other words from escaping. It’s so adorable that you can’t keep yourself from pouncing, suddenly all over her like an animal: wrenching her thin wrist down, fingers threading through her hair, tugging her lips to yours as if you’ve been starved and she’s something to devour. She’s so cold, ice still melting on her tongue; even her body feels glacial, more porcelain than real. It drives you wild - the stunning impossibility of her. The desire to see it all reworked, unwound, shattered. 
“So,” you breathe over her mouth. “I can write about you?” 
“Babe.” Karina’s dark eyes sparkle, frozen-over streets in the mid-winter sun. “You can do anything you want with me.” 
That’s the whole point of having a muse, after all. Everything they are becomes yours. 
-
“But,” you can’t help saying right after: “you don’t have to be, like - concerned. About what I said. About art and pain. I mean…” You falter. You’re standing in between her spread legs now, thumbing the sharp curve of her jaw. “It’s fiction. I’m not that kind of guy in real life - I’m not going to hurt you.” 
Karina just stares at you, sentiment clear and unspoken. 
“Not like - not seriously.” You roll your eyes, laughing it off. “Not like that.” 
“Not like that,” Karina echoes. The hickey on her neck seems to flush redder every time you look at it - a photograph in a darkroom, developing. “But in other ways.”
Your mouth opens, but whatever defense you might’ve had gets traitorously stuck in your throat.
Karina laughs hoarsely, lets you trace her bottom lip with a finger. She seems to get the picture - that you’d love to see it bitten and bloody, but only ever in the name of art. There’s a kind of sick, sadistic beauty in destruction, battles waged and lost. She leans into your touch like she’s seen all the war films and knows precisely why they’re so well-loved. 
“For the record,” she tells you, arms looped loosely around your neck: “I look very pretty when I cry.” 
“Jesus Christ.” You’re smiling. She couldn’t be more perfect if you’d dreamt her up yourself. “Then I guess I’ll have to make it happen.” 
-
It’s like fate, probably. 
-
(Up next in your script:
The girl is standing in the stranger’s bathroom. She’s turning a little glass perfume bottle over in her hands when he stops in the doorway. He’s perfectly content to watch her; she’s the kind of beautiful that deserves to be observed, like some exotic wild animal caged between four walls in an elaborate exhibit, mildly unaware of all the attention. Her hair is messy; her head is tilted down. Unseeing. 
Oh, he says. That was my-
Except he doesn’t even get the rest of the sentence out before the girl whirls around, and the bottle slips from her hand and shatters on the floor. 
Jesus. The stranger jolts back. Jumpy. He’s not too concerned about the broken bottle; it’s not his, anyway. Why the fuck did you do that? 
Sorry, the girl says. She’s leaning rather casually against the counter, observing the glass covering the ground, the sickly-sweet smell of the perfume sticking to the tile. Honeysuckle and the sharp note of alcohol, rendered unrecognizable. You scared me. 
He looks down. A crystalline stretch of tiny little shards - if she tried to move she’d slice her foot open. 
No worries, he says. Hold on. 
He ducks into the kitchen to get a broom and when he comes back he stops in his tracks. There’s something slightly off about the picture in front of him. She’s small against the background counter, frozen, barely blinking. Everything about her looks suddenly frail, fair skin ghostly underneath shitty bathroom lighting, cheekbones gaunt and sunken-in, hair pouring ink-black in endless waves. A vengeful spirit. An incorporeal haunting. 
Did you…? he starts to say, thrown. 
She blinks, finally. Did I what? 
He pauses, reassesses. She’s gorgeous. She’s art. She’s vibrantly alive. 
Never mind, he says. 
It seems kind of like she’d moved, but he can’t tell. He forgets about it. She’s still beautiful and she seems okay and so he steps forward and clears the worst of the glass out of the way. 
It’s silly, she says, watching him. I used to know someone who wore that perfume. 
It was my ex-girlfriend’s, he says. She left it here a while back. I think it’s a common brand or whatever. Hey, let me help you. 
He’s very chivalrous about it, sweeping her off her feet, cradling her bridal-style across the possible remnants of glass. She laughs all the while, playing into it - a princess out of a fairy tale, being carried to safety by some gallant knight. But then he sets her down and cups her ass and says, You gonna pay me back for the property damage or what? and she laughs harder, because there’s nothing funnier than that: sweet moments turned filthy, a startling hairpin turn in intention. 
Or - conversely - a revelation of the absolute truth. Because what else could he ever want from her?
So she says, Yeah, sure, take everything, and leans in to kiss him.
It’s a normal kiss, mostly. It’s just that it begins pointedly erotic but seems to turn strange after a second, like he might be gripping her hair too hard, like she might be corpse-limp in his arms, like at any moment he could unhinge his jaw and sprout fangs and swallow her whole, cannibalistic, viperous. There’s too much spit and sound. There’s too much teeth and selfishness. It stretches on too long and lingers where it shouldn’t and overstays its welcome terribly - the score seems to fall off-beat, the lighting seems to shift dark and discolored-
But then the kiss breaks, and it’s over. 
When he pulls off of her she looks like the perfect picture of flushed contentment. Eyes half-lidded and lashes fluttering, her pouty lips swollen and rosy. Smiling like she wants more, like she wants it so, so bad. 
It didn’t get you? he asks finally, looking at her neck, thinking of thorns and pinprick pain and the rivulet of crimson that’d decorated her throat. The glass? 
No, she says. Don’t you wanna fuck me now? 
Oh, God, he says, grinning, and every other thought melts away into nothing. He likes how she doesn’t play coy. He likes how she’s smaller and has to tilt her chin up to look at him. He wants to fuck her, so he does. 
It’s excellent sex. The blood on the tile doesn’t really matter.)
-
Before you really start writing, there’s just one singular problem: you don’t know anything about her. 
“That’s not true,” Karina replies, right away. 
You open your mouth, then close it, because - okay, she’s not completely wrong. 
For about an hour now you just haven’t been able to stop talking to her. About anything, everything: your start into screenwriting, your favorite novels, your greatest inspirations, your neverending passion for eerie, erotic art. You can’t seem to shut up. And it would be bad - would be making you feel self-conscious right now, if it were anyone else - but it’s just not. Because it’s, well-
It’s you, you told her, thoughtfully, watching as the sun climbed higher into the sky, golden light grazing each scalpel-sharp edge of Karina’s body. You’re easy to talk to. Has anyone ever told you that?
Karina blinked at you. Tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear and looked away, considering it. 
She has this way about her: this serene openness to her big eyes, her body language. Leaning back on her hands, humming and nodding and saying I get it, I feel that way too, I understand with such sweet sincerity that you can’t help but believe her. Like a Catholic confessional, a pristinely blank page - something you could pour hours and hours of words into that would never, ever complain. 
Yeah, Karina said, finally. She pulled one leg up to her chest; you could see the lacy black of her panties. I get that all the time. 
Just one of those people, huh? Her character was taking shape already. A vault for everyone else’s thoughts and ideas, cradling them between her fingers like something infinitely precious. A listener. Such a lovely trait; a perfect protagonist characteristic. An observer. 
Yeah. Her cheek rested gently against a knobby knee. Exactly. 
It’s something of an art study. You’ve been filing away these details about Karina since the moment you met her, unraveling her bit by bit.
She always seems to think deeply before she speaks, a sort of charming self-scripting, like she wants to make sure she gets every sentence just right. She makes silence seem like the most natural thing in the world. She doesn’t laugh nervously or blush or get embarrassed, ever. She’d mentioned offhand during one of your tangents about your most beloved movies that she tends to like films about gorgeous, dangerous, scarily self-possessed girls: Thirteen and Black Swan and Girl, Interrupted. She seems both intensely present and consistently lost in thought, there one moment and gone the next, her long-lashed gaze falling in and out of focus like a camera lens. A contradiction, you think to yourself. An enigma, even. Profoundly complicated. Not just a girl but something more. 
Art in and of itself, displayed deliberately on your kitchen counter, waiting to be understood. 
“No, you’re right.” Your fingers have strayed to your open laptop; you’re seconds from typing Karina’s name like a title, something you’ve created all on your own. “I know…”
You’re trying to think of something nonchalant to say and failing. I know you - the first instinct, somehow. I know you’re something brilliant and remarkable and new. I know I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I know there’s something here, I know what I feel, I know what I want - you, you, you. 
Karina stares at the ice melting in her glass. 
Then she says, mouth tripping up at a corner: “You know I’m a world-class fuck.” 
“Jesus.” You laugh out loud, surprised. “Okay, yeah. That.” A pause. “And, obviously-” 
“Obviously,” Karina echoes, like she knows where this is going. 
“I know that you’re, like - outrageously fucking beautiful.” 
Karina hums once, letting the compliment wash over her, and turns to look out the window. 
You bite down on your lip - bite back all the other too-soon things you could say about her, threatening to claw their way out of your mouth - and go in on your script instead. 
It’s shockingly easy to write with her in the room. The details seem to stitch themselves together on-page, the restorative aftermath of an autopsy: sealing the slit chest cavity back up, prepping a corpse for an open casket, making something disconnected whole and beautiful again. You’d pulled these specifics from her like pulsing, throbbing organs - her tits, her tone, her tiny waist - and now all you’re doing is repurposing them. You know her body now. You turn stretches of pale, bruised-pink skin into prose, the curl of her little fingers around her thigh into dialogue. You imagine taking that perfect frame and picking it apart again, bit by bit; not just undressing her but peeling back layers of flesh, familiarizing yourself with the stark scarlet of her bloodstream. Until there’s nothing to hide and you can finally say it - I know you - and it’ll feel earned, and real, and honest. 
All very melodramatic, of course. It’s just the process: the natural consequence of being a writer. 
Your eyes trace the jutting protrusion of muscle in Karina’s throat, and you think about fucking her again. 
“Also,” you say, as though your earlier conversation isn’t long over. “I want to know-”
Karina makes a huffy, half-impatient noise.
You grin, gaze flicking back to her face. “What?” 
“You want to know more?” Her brows furrow in exaggerated confusion; her smile is absurdly self-deprecating. As if there’s anything she could possibly be insecure about. “You already got the two most interesting things about me, babe.” 
“Stop.” Your mouth twitches. “No way.” 
Karina’s smile stills in place, expectant. “No?”
“Come on.” Your hand slips from the keyboard to trace her knee. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of interesting things about you I haven’t learned yet.” 
The laugh she lets out is quiet and nearly secretive, legs parting to let you touch her. You’re already half in some faraway daydream, wondering if you can bottle the color of her eyes and turn it loose on the page.
“Okay,” Karina says, easily. She nudges your laptop away, scoots closer to you, her sharp chin pointed down at you. “Come and learn them, then.” 
“God.” As if that’s what you’re doing. Memorizing her body as some private education; taking her apart in a classroom dissection. “Can I - I’m trying to write, Karina. I’m being productive. I…” You’re shaking your head as though you’re not already giving in, fingers slipping up her thighs - she’s smirking at you like she knows it. “You’re fucking insatiable, you know that?”
“Then satiate me.” Karina’s head tilts, lids heavy. “Fuck me. Use me.” She leans down like she’s telling you a filthy, sordid secret. “Cum in me like I know you want to.” 
There’s something surreal about how certain she is: never tripping over her words or waffling over intentions, the most practiced actress you’ve ever seen. Every move - her tongue wetting her bottom lip, her hand sliding gracefully through her hair, her mouth forming a sweet little pout - all clean, choreographed precision. 
I know you, she says - like it’s earned, real, honest. Inexplicable, but there anyway. I know you want to. 
“Karina.” Her name comes out embarrassingly strangled. You’re pulling her thighs further apart, toying with the edge of her underwear. “You’re such a fucking - you’re so needy.” 
Her smirk sharpens even as you tug her panties roughly to the side. “I’m what?” 
“Needy.” 
“No.” She’s so wet - she’s probably seconds from dissolving into a whimpering breathless thing, begging to be underneath you, begging for more. That damn smirk is probably seconds from shattering completely. “What were you going to call me?” 
“Nothing.” You drag a finger down the slick drenched heat of her cunt.
“A slut.” Her voice is a purr, gravelly and sensual. “You think I’m just this fucking slut who needs your cock all the time, huh?” 
But it’s the kind of question that you already both know the answer to. Karina takes your finger-fucking so well, hips raised and rutting, hair cutting across her cheekbones - seems to give herself over to desire so fucking easily, with her whole body, back arching and neck craned and hot little cunt a sloppy mess. Never puts up a fight, never demures or acts shy; never says wait or don’t or stop. Only spreads her legs, and drips down your hand, and waits to be fucked good and hard.
And - hey, there’s one dirty word for a girl like that. 
“Well.” You raise your eyebrows at her: a challenge. “Are you?”
It’s dangerous. This is all dangerous. Stumbling down a treacherous path, asking a stranger something like this. Are you what I think you are? Do I know you? Do I really? 
Karina makes a low, luxurious noise at the stretch of your fingers in her cunt, buried to the knuckle. 
“Sure,” she says - and the gleam in her eye tells you she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. “I’m whatever you want me to be.” 
-
So, it’s possible this is really the most interesting thing about her: she’s the kind of girl who never says no. 
-
That scene goes down how all scenes should:
“Fuck, fuck, fuck-” 
Karina’s choking out curses like she can’t recall any other words, head lolling back to expose the pretty bob of her throat. You thrust deep right then and she lets out a sound like an aching gasp, like you’ve doubled down with a fist to her gut, like you’re knocking the the air right out of her; you might as well be - oh, she moans, like she could be in shock or awe or pain - with the way you’ve got one of her thighs pulled up so you can fuck deep into her tight dripping cunt. It’s not nice, not really. Her back keeps hitting your counter. You keep staring at her neck and her hair and her face: the faint flush of her cheeks, the flawless construction of her bones underneath - there’s so much unmarked skin - God, she’s so clean, it’s like she’s never been fucking touched-
“You gonna cum for me?” you murmur, voice coming out thick and half-animalistic. 
She has one hand curled around the back of your neck. She’s got those ridiculous clawed nails on her but she never presses down. Her pussy can’t stop clenching around your cock but she takes it so well, lets you make room inside her little cunt, shuts her eyes and trips over her own breath as you force her spine hard against your counter over and over again. 
“Karina.” 
“Yeah,” she exhales, raspy and strained, as your cock stretches her out. “Fuck, yeah-” 
“Cum for me, honey. Cum all over my cock - oh, there you go, good girl-” 
It’s hypnotic. The tiny bitten-off sounds spilling from her ice-cold mouth - that small pristine face and all that hair tangled to her waist, just available to be knotted and tugged and fucked all the way up - Karina clings to you when she cums, and you feel so much bigger than her when she does, like you’ve got her sloppy and open around your cock and you could do anything to her, that’s what she told you, and even if she hadn’t, it’s not like she could stop you - she’s gorgeous but she doesn’t have it in her - she’s just too fucking delicate-
It happens too fast to process. 
One minute you’re buried inside her pussy and the next Karina’s on her knees, on the ground, and you’re jerking your cock until you’re cumming all over her. 
It’s obscene. It’s fucking inevitable. Thick ropes of creamy cum coating her forehead, her cheekbone, her nose and mouth and getting all in that hair-
Her hair. You don’t realize how hard you’re gripping her hair with one hand - balled in a brutal fist at the back of her head - until you disentangle your fingers from it and Karina sinks to the floor like she’s just been cut loose from marionette strings, breathing fast and hard. She doesn’t even say anything: doesn’t comment on the fact that you’d just shoved her straight to the ground or complain when the head of your cock smears cum across her jaw. Doesn’t even flinch when your cock slaps heavy across her cheek, at the indecent sound of the impact. 
You’re staring at her, open-mouthed. At her gorgeous, breathtaking, defiled face. 
Karina’s not looking at you. Instead, she’s preening in the most lewd, pornographic way possible: swiping her thumb through the cum streaking across her forehead, popping it into her mouth to suck. Halfway through she seems to remember you’re still in the room - seems to recall the value of a performance - and she redirects her gaze up at you, lids heavy, and smirks. 
“Did I…” you start, without knowing how the sentence will end. “Did I - was I-”
Karina lifts a cum-covered eyebrow. Her mouth’s an arresting pink, puckering around her thumb like it puckered around the cubes of ice, how her lips formed a ring around your cock back in the bookstore yesterday. She lets it slip free, shiny with spit. 
“No,” she says. “You’re good.” 
You can’t stop looking at the cum caught in her hairline. She’d been so fucking clean. 
You glance down and realize there are strands of black hair broken off in your clenched fist. 
Karina’s looking at her hair in your hand too, now, but with a sort of amused detachment. She stands shakily, using the counter for support. There’s cum all over her. Her knees are red from how hard she’d been pushed down.
“You’re so cute,” she tells you, grazing the side of your neck with her fingertips. “There’s no shame in being rough with me, babe.” 
“Right.” There’s an unnamed pressure coiling in your chest. “But - but you-” 
“Hey.” The word comes out in a rasp, and then Karina laughs, pushing the low hoarse lilt of her voice to its limits. She steps closer, angles her little cum-stained chin up at you. “Are you really gonna tell me you don’t like seeing me covered in your cum?” She’s tonguing the corner of her mouth. “Turning me into a-” her smirk pulls wicked; your next breath hitches so badly- “messy fucking whore for your cock?” 
“God,” you get out, because she’s winding an arm around your neck, and her pretty face is still sticky with your cum. “I-” 
“It’s what you wanted.” Karina blinks, in a show of such doe-eyed naïveté that saliva begins pooling hot in your mouth - like you’re feral, like you’re rabid. “Isn’t it?” 
You’re looking down again. Her knees are going to bruise. Black and blue, as if someone’s bullied her in the schoolyard, pulled her pigtails and knocked her to the asphalt. An echo of something teachers could’ve told her years ago: oh, look, he’s mean to you because he’s got a crush. It’s okay, really - he only hurts you because he likes you.  
“You like me like this,” Karina murmurs, dangerously low. “All sloppy and slutty for you.” Her gaze is trained on your mouth. “Marking me up.” Her hair slips from your hand. “Owning me.” 
Her name clogs your throat, cloying and candy-sweet. “Karina-”
Karina’s head tilts. “Yes or no?” 
She’s too close to you. She’s so filthily beautiful she seems somewhat alien, some kind of foreign invention. Her jaw is smeared with your cum and her flawless teeth shine like jewels and she’s like every creative vision you’ve ever had cut in clips and playing back in a movie theater, made to be scrutinized. 
“Yes,” you tell her, winded. “You’re fucking - you’re unreal, you know that?”
You’re smiling like it’s flattery, like it’s an exaggeration. Like she’s not living, breathing, visionary art. 
She smiles back, like she knows just how much you really mean it.
“So I’ve been told,” Karina says, and taps your neck, lightly. “Go make breakfast.” She shakes her hair out; some of it gets stuck to the cum on her cheekbone. “I’m taking another shower.” 
“Right.” You bite into your bottom lip, hand skimming down her side. “Go get clean.” 
“Clean?” She steps back and flashes a disbelieving grin, gestures pointedly at herself - her creamy thighs, her porn star tits in your t-shirt, her body like sex itself. Dirty by design. “Never happening.”
Some cynical part of you keeps waiting for a slip-up, some mistake in a masterfully crafted script - no one can be that gorgeous and still be here with you. But Karina moves and your eyes are hopelessly drawn to the disheveled curtain of her hair spiraling down her back, the sharp distinct lines of her calves, the flex of muscle in her thighs. Her hands, balled into little fists. She’s alluring as if manufactured that way: engineered to be perfectly bruisable, ruinable. It defies logic. It’s movie magic.
“Well.” You snort with laughter, swat at Karina’s ass as she turns to go. “At least you can try.”
You don’t even think she can help it - that’s the thing. It’s just what she was made for. 
-
“What would you have done if I said no, though?” you ask after a moment, as she wavers in the doorway. “Like - what if I told you I didn’t like you like this?” 
Karina shrugs.
“I would’ve been something else,” she says, and closes the bathroom door behind her. 
-
(Next:
The stranger and the girl fuck and afterwards he promises her breakfast and then he realizes his cabinets are bare, his fridge painfully unstocked. Sorry, he says, as she pokes around his kitchen. I don’t know how that happened. I usually have something to eat here, I swear. 
I don’t mind, she says. Her fingertips sweep his shelves. She seems fascinated by the emptiness, admiring the vacancy. Oh, wait, look. 
She finds a half-eaten jar of honey that she ends up scooping up crudely with her fingers, dripping sticky amber down her hand. He’d tell her that’s disgusting but she makes it - as she seems to make everything - into a pointed seduction, her tongue pink and wetly visible, her skin gleaming as she licks it off. It’s funny. He’d never thought it possible to turn eating into some sort of sexual performance but she manages it anyway: meets his eyes, sucks loud and lewd, smacks her lips and wipes her mouth with her thumb, ill-mannered and stunning. 
I can’t imagine that’s very filling, he says, delighted by her commitment. 
Yeah, well, she says. It’s a good thing I hate feeling full. 
But it seems like a moment of hilarious irony when ten minutes later he’s got her bent over his kitchen counter, tits pressed punishingly to the flat surface, honey stuck to her neck and collarbone as she’s fucked hard again and again, stuffed with his cock, his fingers everywhere, like her own body barely even belongs to her - all mine, he keeps saying, and means it; you’re all mine. All filled up. Overfed. Bursting. 
Sex is a manner of consuming, it seems. He might as well be eating her alive.)
-
“Do you do this a lot?”
Eventually, it turns into one of those lazy Saturdays. An afternoon of sitcom plot points. 
It’s just so easy to fill the time, the space, the page - you tell Karina some inane story from your college years and she reacts in all the right places like your own built-in studio audience; she says something off-handed and enticingly vague and suddenly you have a new thread of dialogue to explore. You’re both sprawled out over your couch, Karina’s got her thighs tucked over your legs, wearing another one of your t-shirts, a fresh hickey bruising over her throat. There’s something delightfully domestic about it - like you’ve been doing it for a lot longer than you have, or like you could do it eternally if given the chance, holding all the silken comfort of an old routine. When you’d mentioned it - I kind of feel like I could do this forever - she’d laughed her scratchy laugh and said forever’s nowhere near as long as you think it is, babe. A perfectly cinematic line. You stared at her, leaned over, and added it immediately to your draft. 
“This whole…” You’re trying to elaborate now, staring at the blinking cursor on your laptop screen. Your knuckles skim her bare, bony knees. “You know.” 
“Eloquent.” 
“Shut up.” 
“I thought you were a writer.” 
“Karina.” You’re charmed by the drawl of her voice, the raspy roll of sarcasm. “I’m just wondering.”
Karina shifts in your lap. You’ve got one hand sneaking up the hem of her shirt - your shirt - skating up her tummy, her ribs. You’re probably about five minutes from snapping your laptop shut and pulling her on top of you and saying something crass about her tits and passing it off as a character study. 
“What do you mean?” She’s as close to clean as she can be. You made sure of it - licked the hollow of her collarbone earlier after she got out of the shower, tasted nothing but soap and skin. “Do I have a lot of sex with strangers? Or do I stay the night a lot after I have sex with strangers?”
“Both.” You think of taking her hair down, sifting your hand through it, wrapping the strands around your fingers. “All of the above.” 
Karina shoots you a look, fluttered lashes, suggestive understanding. You hear it without her having to say it. You want me to tell you that you’re special. 
“I’ve kind of been going through a phase,” she says instead, nonchalantly. 
Your eyebrows fly up. “A phase?” 
“I’ve been, you know.” She gives an airy sigh. “Trying to find myself in the big city. Running wild. Terrified of monogamy but being very brave and quirky about it. Sordid past with love and romance and general human connection. Doing the whole manic pixie dream girl thing.” Her eyes flick to your open laptop, abruptly too wide and innocent. “That sound about right?” 
“Fuck off.” It’s a complete non-answer. You run a hand past her stomach, laughing. “You’re fucking with me.”
“What?” Karina inches closer. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Your textbook rom-com love interest?”
You make a rather disparaging sound in the back of your throat. “Ugh.” 
“Oh, my bad.” Her mouth curls, contradictory. There’s nothing apologetic about her. “I forgot. You don’t believe in art about love. You wanna see broken people and broken people only.” 
“See?” You’re obsessed with her tone; all flirtation, some distorted version of come-hither charm. Talking of suffering like it’s a seduction tactic. “You get it.” 
Karina rakes a hand through her hair; her fingers fall to the back of her neck and linger there. She pulls herself out of your lap and turns, hooks one bare long leg over you until she’s straddling you. Your hands find her hips. You’re disarmed by her strange weightlessness, like she’s seconds from either shattering or taking flight.  
Then she asks, “Is that what you’re doing with me?”
It’s gotta be a very roundabout request to fuck her stupid, because she follows it up torturously: ducks her chin, parts her lips, rocks her hips down until you groan. You watch her throat, the way muscle works over bone, picturing unspeakable things: taking her by that pretty neck and pinning her to the wall, ripping your shirt right off of her with your fingertips leaving bruises - bending her over to fuck her fast and cruel until her cunt’s raw and aching and leaking your cum - until she’s begging pathetically, saying please, God, please - and you’re triumphant, victorious. Telling her you asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything. You said anything I want. 
“Depends,” you reply, when you can breathe again. “Are you a broken person?” 
Karina stops, moments from your mouth. 
“Depends,” she echoes. “Is that what you want from me?”
It actually takes a beat for the question to sink in. Then two, then-
“No,” you say, loudly. “Obviously not, Karina, Jesus. Why would I…”
You falter. 
Karina only looks back at you, patient, tolerant. Like if right now you said that’s exactly it: I want you broken, I want you ruined, I want you decaying and dead and buried, she’d smile and say do your worst. Flashing those white, white teeth, perfect like pearls, ready to be knocked right out and strung together. 
You blink the bloody vision away. “Why would I ever want that?”
Karina studies you for a second longer, expression indecipherable. 
“Okay,” she agrees, breezily. “Then I’m not broken. I’m just going through a phase, like I said. I don’t like being tied down.” Her shirt rides tantalizingly high up her thighs; her hand slips down to palm your cock. There’s a twist to her lips, a dirty sort of smirk. “You understand that, right?”
You stare at her.
“Right?” Karina prods, again, low and sultry. 
“Right,” you say, unable to fight your sudden smile. 
The pout of her mouth’s an inevitability; her little body in your lap’s a seductive form of foreshadowing. You dig your fingers into her protruding ribs, playful, and you don’t quite get the squeal of laughter you were expecting - all Karina does is curl closer, expecting more, expecting harder. She knows what you’re capable of. You’re both just biding your time until you cross the same line you’ve been crossing and you fall back into bed again.
“A phase,” you add, considering. It intrigues you, anyway - the casualness, the connotation. “So - I’m not special, then. That’s the moral of this story.” 
Karina’s fingers sift gently through your hair. “You wanna be special?”
“I mean, yeah.” Your palm falls to her neck, presses down. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Doesn’t everyone?” 
Her eyebrows rise in vague, unconvinced amusement. It makes sense: she’s the most special of all, a cosmic glitch, an angelic fluke. Someone like Karina wouldn’t understand the aching, clawing, consuming desire to be extraordinary. She’s already there. 
Your hand on her throat looks even bigger now, tendons straining from underneath skin.
“I think we all want to feel important,” you mumble, thumb grazing gently across her jaw. “Don’t you?” 
You’re pretty sure the wry, glittering smile that sits at Karina’s mouth is an answer in itself. 
-
Alright, forget your television metaphors - you’re not sure there’s any sitcom out there that goes quite like this.
“By the way,” you say, grinning against her hair as you pull her to the bedroom. “Did you say you don’t like being tied down?” 
Karina turns in your arms and doesn’t even flinch when you force her too hard against the doorframe and its edge smacks into her shoulder blade, digging in hard. You should apologize but you don’t; the possibility of her in pain seems laughable, a distant fantasy. This is how it goes, fucking a girl who looks like a god - your brain is convinced she’s wholly immune to hurt. The universe wouldn’t actually let someone so pretty bleed. 
“Oh, sorry,” she says, voice raspy with insinuation. “Let me rephrase.” 
“Karina,” you say, not really like a warning - more like you’ve got something to prove. This is real. You’re really here. You’re really this perfect, gorgeous, greedy thing. You’re really made for me. 
Karina only lets her lips tilt in a smirk, devilish and knowing.
“I meant that I don’t like commitment,” she says. “I love being tied down.”
She’s still smiling when you shove her through the doorway, across the threshold - across that same old fucking line.
-
Not that it makes a difference now, but one of the reasons you and your most recent ex-girlfriend broke up was because of what you’d both referred to as sexual incompatibility. Actually, there were about fourteen other things, too - she was a trainwreck and a textbook attention whore; you spent all your time writing and she took offense to the fact that you found your scripts more interesting than her - but the crux of the sex problem between the two of you was that she thought you wanted too much power over her. She seemed to assume that was the point of potentially tying her up and shit like that: to exert power. To put you and only you in control. To make her into this helpless little toy - and I hate that, she’d said, working herself into a fit, I hate feeling helpless. 
You hadn’t pushed her. You’d also tried to justify it in a number of ways. It isn’t about that. It’s not about control. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. But it hadn’t made a difference and she hadn’t believed you and you’d come to the reluctant, inevitable conclusion that that particular dream would never actually get fulfilled. 
Until-
“Look at you, baby.” 
Until now, when you’ve got Karina stripped bare and tied to your bed, thighs parted as you kneel over her, pretty little cunt glistening wet and tits heaving with every breath as she waits, and waits, and waits. 
Eyes half-lidded. Utterly fuckable. A curated collection of every salacious desire you’ve ever had. 
“You’ve been looking at me forever,” murmurs Karina, her tone still humorous, like the reason her voice is run so ragged is because she’s holding back a fit of giggles. “You gonna fuck me anytime soon?” 
To Karina’s credit, the idea of tying her up didn’t seem to bother her one bit. She’d let you knot her wrists to your bedframe and only grinned sharply when you asked her if it was too much. She didn’t seem to care about feeling helpless or feeling bad. Actually - judging from the wetness that collects on your fingers as you rub two of them over her cunt - it all seemed to turn her on either way. 
“You’re so fucking mouthy.” You lift your hand only to ghost it over her stomach, leaving a lewd shiny streak across her skin. “It’s like you want to be punished.” 
“Well, you put in all this work.” Karina yanks at the ropes tethering her wrists to the bedframe until they bite so severely into her skin that it turns white. “I’d hate to see it go to waste.” 
“Not a waste.” 
“No?” She’s got that seductive little smirk on, legs spread shamelessly, head back and throat bared. 
“Nope.” Your eyes rove down her body. “It’s a great view, actually.”
You’re shocked by the sound Karina makes, then: harsh and derisive, scratchy and painful, like she’s choking badly around some injury in her throat. You’re half-expecting her to turn her face and spit blood onto your sheets - all murder-scene evidence, horrifically vibrant gore. Coughing up her own vocal chords. 
It’s so awful it actually takes you a minute to realize that she’s laughing. 
“Karina?” you say, perturbed.
“Oh, please.” Karina hacks out one more horrid laugh. “Cut the shit.” 
You draw your hand back uncertainly. “What are you-”
“Come on, man.” There’s a glint to Karina’s gaze as she looks up at you: bored, mocking, infuriating. Irises flashing like the darkest corners of haunted houses, set-ups for a summoning; lashes like cobwebs, self-spun and delicate. “Fuck me or leave me alone.”
For a second you just stare at her, unmoving, something caustic and furious threading up your spine. 
And then-
Look, none of this next part is on you. You can’t blame yourself. It’s her - her tiny hands in tight clenched fists, tummy so flat it seems caved-in, hollowed-out; her own glimmer of slick smeared on her belly, physical proof of how desperately slutty she really is. The bruise on her chest; the one on her throat. Her goddamn eyes. Her lazy, lilting drawl, the exact matter-of-fact casualness she’d had last night when she’d told you to hurt her - fuck me or leave me alone. 
It’s so obvious what she’s trying to do - provoke a reaction out of you. It’s gotta be the only reason she’s talking to you like that. Like, what else are we here for? Like, what else could I possibly want from you? 
So - no, God, it’s not your fault. 
But-
It’s over before you can even think about it. Before you’ve even rationalized doing it, before you recognize the sound ricocheting through the room as the perfect violent land of a blow, the hot whiplash of skin on skin, your palm connecting with its target. Before you blink, and recalibrate, and you take in the rapid reddening of her cheek, and her angled jaw, and her hair falling starkly past her chin - it’s too late. It’s already done. 
Because you’ve just slapped Karina clean across the face - hard. 
“Oh.” You’re babbling as if on autopilot, all your nerves on shutdown. “Oh. Oh, God. Karina-” 
Karina licks the corner of her lip, like she can taste the impact. 
“Jesus Christ,” you’re saying, panicking; you can’t shut up. You don’t know what to do with your hands; you find yourself kneeling carefully in front of her, cupping her face, stroking her temples with your thumbs like it’ll soothe the sting. You can’t believe you hit her. All the things you could do to a girl like that, and you - “I’m sorry. I didn’t - fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”
Karina blinks up at you, expression placid and blank, porcelain-doll cool. 
“For what?” she asks. 
You freeze, her face still between your palms. “For-”
But the serene tilt of her mouth makes the words die in your throat. 
“Seriously.” Karina’s voice is softer now, a kind twist of mirth. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do with me this whole time?” 
Her features seem to fall out of alignment, occurring to you in cut, edited fragments - the baby-animal eyes, the bone-white glint of teeth, the pretty blooming flush of her cheek, blood rising underneath skin but never breaking through. No evidence of a limit breached; she doesn’t wince or wail or cry. She wears the hit so well. She’s smiling. A you-don’t-need-to-be-sorry smile, a you’re-forgiven smile: I’m strong, I’m good, I can take it. Whatever you need. Whatever you have to give. 
You blink and Karina reassembles, stitched up at the seams, beautiful and uninjured and intact.
“You want this,” you exhale, a wondrous revelation.
“Of course.” Karina’s shoulders rise as much as they can with her arms so tightly tied back. “You do, don’t you?” 
The panic recedes, and something else - something electric and brutal, visceral, intoxicating - takes its place instead. 
It’s the way she says it: rhetorical, all-knowing. As if she’s seen exactly what’s in your mind - what repulsive daydreams have settled right behind your ribcage, clawing to be set free - and she’s offering her own body in sacrifice. Saying here, put them here. 
So you do. 
She doesn’t even look surprised when you slap her again. 
“See?” Karina’s chin tips upwards in delicious, submissive invitation: eyes darkly pleased, pale skin a burning wildfire, curled mouth a beckoning. Like it’s been what she’s waiting for, all along. “There you are.” 
And when you’re finally able to catch your breath:
Oh, you think, in some exhilarating epiphany. Here I am. 
Every single reservation falls out the window. Karina’s smirk slants viciously and then you’ve got your hands all over her, on her shoulders and her tits and her hips and her throat and her face, thumb digging hard into her cheekbone. Any sort of gentle caution is gone when you’re getting on top of her and burying your cock deep inside the suffocating vice of her aching little cunt, half-drunk on the high mewling moans you’re forcing out of her, head swimming at the drenched audible sound of her pussy every time you fuck into her - at how tight she clenches down around your cock. Fuck it all, then, it’s not like it means anything - hurt me, she’d said, running through your head on loop; I want it so bad, I need it, hurt me - and so you do, wrapping a hand around her delicate neck and pressing down, slapping hard against her heaving tits, salivating over the marks that you leave. She doesn’t even struggle. Takes it like a good girl, an obedient girl: something meant to be hit and torn up and pulled apart. A hands-on art piece. A disassembling, made purely for audience consumption; a sign hung around her neck that says leave your mark, that’s the point. You’d been so naïve, thinking of being careful with her - like she’d ever even fucking want that-
“You like it like this.” Your voice sounds raw, almost unrecognizable; your fingers press into the base of her throat. “This is all you needed, huh? You just needed to be roughed up real hard.” Your hand trails up to grip a fistful of her hair, merciless. Karina shuts her eyes. “Like you’re just a slutty fucktoy-” 
Karina chokes out a small, wet gasp.
“Oh, baby.” You yank harder at her hair. “It’s okay to admit it.”
But in a way, she already is. Doesn’t fight against the restraints tying her wrists, doesn’t flinch at how rough you’re fucking her, doesn’t whine or blink back tears at the harsh graze of your thumbnail against her nipple. Like she’s a plaything, here in your bed for your pleasure alone. Like-
“Like you were just fucking made for this, yeah?” She comes undone so easily: cunt a wet sticky mess when you reach down to rub her clit, teeth pearly-white where they’re caught on her bottom lip - though nothing can hold back the anguished noise Karina lets out at your pace, the thick stretch of your cock, your palm smacking at her tits over and over. “Look at you. That face, these tits, this little fucking cunt-”
Like it’s her one and only purpose - to have all her fair skin turned searing red and bruised under someone else’s hands. Her cunt just begging to be split open and stuffed full, railed so hard she could break. It’s gotta be what she was created for. She’s more than mortal, so above the concept of imperfection; a nasty little fuckdoll of a girl, meant to be used hard and licked clean. She looks too irresistible all fucked-out and ruined. It has to be in her nature. Made for this, you keep telling her: to be fucked until she can’t walk. To be treated forever how you’re treating her now. 
Your ex-girlfriend couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s not about power or control at all.
“You’d really just let me do anything to you, huh?” you murmur, awed, but you’re holding her throat too hard for her to reply. 
You fuck her, and fuck her, and fuck her. Rub at her clit until she clamps down and cums around you, until you can really get on top of her, force her to hold those huge tits together so you can fuck them. You can’t handle how tiny she is underneath you, her face and her mouth slack with lust, eyes glazed over entirely. She squeezes her tits around your cock. She’s hardly even human. It’s the best thing about her. 
“That’s how I know you’re a fucking whore.” Your grin feels wide and manic on your face. You’re gonna cum all over her - again. “None of this even matters.” 
And it’s only after - after you’ve painted her collarbone and chest creamy white and let up on her throat so she can fight for air; after you’ve groped her tits and grabbed her face after just to see your cum glistening all over her perfect slap-marred cheeks; after you’ve rolled off of her and you finally leave her alone - that Karina gives you a response. 
“No,” she says, hoarsely, staring up at the ceiling. “It really, really doesn’t.” 
-
Power just isn’t the right word for it. It’s something much more beautiful than that. 
Desire. You’re dozing off, halfway in a sleepy fantasy. You imagine rolling the word around in your mouth, using it in speeches, citing it as an obvious central theme. It’s about desire, you’d say, in interviews, at film festivals, patiently explaining your motivations to the masses. That irrational animal instinct. That innate human greediness. You’ll maybe even throw in some fun anecdote about how people in past relationships never agreed with you. It’s never been about power, though, you’d explain: how foolish, how crude. It’s about the ache of truly wanting something. Isn’t that so much more romantic?
So you’ll make a movie about this one day. So you tied Karina to the bed and slapped her hard and fucked her senseless. Actually, you picture yourself explaining, foggy and on verge of falling asleep: actually, it’s about hunger. Irrepressible, all-consuming hunger. That’s why I did this. That’s why I’ll keep doing it. You’re all like me; you get it. That makes sense, doesn’t it? 
And it will, to raucous, riotous applause.
Good. You’ll laugh so hard. You’re dreaming, now; you can’t tell if you’re talking about the sex or the hypothetical future movie. I’m glad you understand. Anyone would’ve done what I did. 
Because - honestly - what’s the point of starving yourself of something that’s right in front of you?
-
(Let’s pull back from your script for a second. Here’s a real story:
A few months back you were visiting a museum with one of your friends when you got into this conversation about performance art. He’d told you about a woman back in the seventies who walked into a gallery and laid out various objects and let the audience do whatever they wanted to her for six whole hours. Her as the artist, in title only; herself as the art. A free, untethered canvas. 
And what happened? you asked, morbidly curious. 
Your friend grimaced. What do you think happened? 
It was a rhetorical question. The performance had been a test of what the general public was capable of - a reflection of their moral compass, of what they’d do if left unchecked. The setup spoke for itself. You didn’t have to get all the gory details in order to understand. 
Seriously, though, your friend said, about the artist: I don’t know what’d compel someone to do something like that to themselves. He’d shaken his head, baffled. Like - I think it takes a deeply fucked up person to just give up their body like that. Like it doesn’t even matter to them. 
It’s strange. It’s an almost universally accepted fact that, at least on some level, artists are inclined to put pieces of themselves into the things they create. A memory; a feeling. Condensing twenty different emotions into a single acrylic painting, or a lyrical reenactment of heartbreak into a song - something personal and unique and lovely. Often inspired, sure, but yours. 
I think that’s what’s funny about it, you told your friend, before you realized that funny was a fucked up word to use here. There’s nothing personal about that. It’s so detached. It’s about the rest of the world, whatever they might make of her - it’s not about her at all. 
You were both quiet, thinking. Visualizing what it might’ve been like. To be there, one of many in the audience, watching this woman who had thrown herself to the wolves and asked to be ripped apart. 
She’s just - material for them to use, I guess, you said, after a moment. A blank page. 
Removing her own identity; becoming nothing, no one. A ghost. An empty vessel. A slab of clay, taking on the impression of everyone who’s ever touched her: the ridges of fingerprints, the half-moon cuts of nails, molding her into something new. Even if it took some force. Even if it hurt. 
Still, it’s what she’d asked for. 
You can’t imagine she’d ever expected anything else.)
-
There’s this fascinating complaint people have about films these days, you’ve found. It’s actually quite the phenomenon. You talk to your colleagues and scroll through social media and read comments on movie trailers trying to get a grasp on it all: market research. This isn’t realistic, people gripe. It’d never sound like that. She’d never look like that. This would never, ever happen - God, are you kidding? Who are they trying to fool? As if they’ve somehow missed the point of fiction - of a sweet, escapist fantasy. As if they’ve convinced themselves that the real world is better. 
Which is moronic, obviously. 
“So what’s the solution?” Karina asks.
Well, you’re no expert; it’s been a while since you’d finished your last movie.
“But you have an idea,” Karina interpets. She’s perched on the edge of your coffee table, nursing a new glass of ice. She’s watching you with her head at an angle, eyes shrewd. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me this.” 
As with most of her guesses about you, she’s right. 
“It’s all about the details,” you say, after a moment. “It humanizes a person. Having little bits and pieces about who they are - it makes them alive. Their likes, their dislikes. Embarrassing stories. Things that make them laugh. Diary entries, favorite foods - first loves, first heartbreaks. So on and so forth.” You’ve got one of Karina’s ankles between your hands; your thumb brushes against the bulbous protrusion of bone. “It’s what makes people real.” 
Karina’s mouth twists, sharp and strange; it takes a second for you to realize that she’s grinning. 
“Oh, right,” she says. “You want me to spill my guts to you.” She pushes her ankle further into your grip. Her legs are just like the rest of her: thin and pale, waifish. Like a nineties catwalk model. “That’s how you’re gonna make me real. In your movie.” 
You pull a face, letting her ankle slip from your hands. Spill her guts; what an ugly figure of speech. As if you’re doing something much more invasive and violent than just writing about her. 
“Basically,” you agree, anyway. “I mean, it helps that you’re already, you know - a real, whole, living person.” 
“Ugh,” says Karina, dry and amused. “Barely.” 
You wonder if she’s also thinking about this morning; you, stunned and staring at her cum-streaked hair, calling her unreal.
She’s got a point, in a way. There’s something slightly uncanny about her sitting in front of you, as if she’s been taken straight out of some wildly different scene - some spotlit stage, some movie set, some glossy high-budget existence - and haphazardly edited into your life. You reach out and press two fingers to the side of her neck, like they do on television if they think someone’s bleeding out. 
Karina tips her head to allow you access. Her pulse throbs hotly under your touch. 
“I don’t know,” you say, smiling at the swanlike line of her throat. “You seem pretty alive to me.” 
“Sure.” Her hair tickles your wrist. “But you want more.”
She says it like it’s this given - as if she’s always faced with people wanting more from her. You wouldn’t doubt it, little tease she is. You can picture her in motion so easily. Always running. Letting people pine and plead for more. 
“Yeah,” you say. It seems pointless to lie to her. “I want more.” 
Karina leans in closer. She reaches up and touches one of your knuckles with the pad of her thumb. Without makeup, you can see the shadows of dark circles underneath her eyes, but even those look painted-on, pre-planned; a study on the aesthetic allure of bruises. She lets her gaze drop to your mouth, then bites down on her bottom lip. Impish.
“Karina,” you say, grinning wider now. 
It’s one of those unspoken things: the translation of body language, the transcription of the tilt of her mouth. Then have me, she’s saying, almost certainly - like a swooning melodramatic heroine, throwing herself into your lap, wanting to be saved. You want more? You want me? I’m right here. I’m yours.
“Fine,” Karina purrs, and kisses you again, like sealing a contract. “Take it all.” 
-
You don’t fuck her again - not at first. There’s more than one way to take someone apart. 
Karina says she’s got a story for you and then she pulls out her phone. 
“This was back in high school,” she explains, scrolling back through her photo gallery. There don’t seem to be a lot of recent additions to it; you’d expected selfies, pictures of her with friends. There are more photos of food than anything: plates of pasta and donuts and burgers and pastries piled with whipped cream. It’s cute. It makes you laugh. “When I won prom queen.” 
You splutter. “When you what?” 
“What?” Karina gives you a bemused, sideways look. “Does that surprise you?” 
It floors you, actually. At first you can’t quite put your finger on why, but then you look at Karina again - at her intense dark eyes and pouty fuckdoll lips and the exaggerated pinup proportions of her body - and you realize you’re making that mistake writers often do: buying into archetypes. It just makes sense that she’d be some kind of brooding bad girl. Mysterious, promiscuous; in your creative vision she’s probably cutting classes and chainsmoking in the girls’ bathroom. A favorite of the rumor mill. A pretty little delinquent.
“Wow.” Karina makes a funny noise in the back of her throat when you tell her this. “No. I was - I did fine in school. Perfect attendance, almost. And I can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.” But she doesn’t look offended, either; you imagine people make these assumptions about her all the time. “The prom queen thing - it wasn’t my idea, though. My best friend did all the campaigning for me.” 
“That’s sweet.” You watch as she reaches the year she’s looking for. Flashes of her in a sparkly dress with her arms thrown around another girl - a tiny doe-eyed brunette - slide by. In one of them, Karina’s got her head tipped back, clearly mid-laugh; in another, she and the girl have their heads bent close together as if they’re trading secrets, unaware that they’re being photographed. “Well - I think it’s sweet.” 
Karina’s fingers stall. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 
“I’m just saying-” You shrug. “It’s a nice gesture if it’s something you wanted, I guess. Seems like a lot of attention, otherwise.” 
“Oh.” There’s a pause. “Yeah. It was - I didn’t get to go to junior prom, so it was kind of - this was - senior year. Senior prom.” Another pause. “Yeah. She did it to make me happy.”
“And did it?” She passes by pictures that fill up with more people: friends with big grins who stick close to her side, wrapping her up in an embrace. “Make you happy?” 
“Of course.” Karina’s thumb pauses on a video, the preview dark and unfocused. She says it like she doesn’t even have to think about it. “She was my best friend. She always knew what I wanted. Hey, look at this.” 
The video’s of her in the back of someone’s car, prom queen tiara askew on her head, satiny sash falling off one shoulder. She’s yelling, laughing; the sound isn’t on, but her mouth’s wide open and her dark eyes are crinkled to half-moons, creased underneath heavy false lashes and glittery makeup that’s begun to smudge and fade. It makes her whole face look very soft. Young, too - cheeks full and flushed pink with excitement, hair blown-out and everywhere, glossed black. As if she’s having the time of her life. 
“How old were you here?” you ask, in awe. 
“Eighteen. Just turned, I think.” 
“You look-” Like a baby, you almost want to say. It’s true, though. Big brown eyes, scrunched little nose - grinning like the rest of the world hasn’t quite dug its claws into her yet. Skin unmarred and infant-smooth. “You look pretty.” 
Karina doesn’t look at you, but you can see the slight, entertained upturn of her lips. All the nasty things you’ve called her - all the irredeemable ways you’ve touched her - and now, inexplicably, you’re going for pretty. 
“Thanks,” she says, and clicks the volume up.
“Shut the fuck up,” baby Karina is saying, delightedly. Her voice sounds high, childish and carefree. “You’re so dumb. It wasn’t - it wasn’t even like that, I swear!” She flaps one hand in the air, her nails all short and painted the same rich deep maroon as her dress. “No - you’re just saying that because you’re jealous, you idiot, I know you - you just-”
The person behind the camera says something that you can’t quite make out. 
Baby Karina presses one hand to her sternum, pearl-clutching, and gasps. 
“I would never,” she admonishes - over-the-top like an actress from a movie - before she throws her head back and laughs. 
It’s a startling, wonderful laugh. A little-kid laugh. A mess of wild, unabashed giggles, hiccupy and sweet, so loud and infectious you can hear the other people in the car start cracking up with her; out of frame, someone reaches out to interlace their fingers with Karina’s, waving their joined hands until they smack against the car window and Karina only laughs harder. With her whole body, shoulders shaking and all. Streetlights flashing across her face, making her look sort of blurry and surreal, like something out of a painting. 
“Your laugh,” you find yourself saying, stunned. 
Karina’s touching the back of her neck, completely engrossed in the video. “My what?” 
You don’t laugh like that anymore. That’s what you mean to say. That scratchy, almost painful laugh that she’s been gracing you with since the moment you met her - there’s no trace of that in how baby Karina wriggles with laughter in the backseat of the car until her happy, breathless blush spreads to her neck and her chest. Head tipping back against the seat, like she’s all tuckered out. 
“Um,” you say, voice caught in your throat. 
On the screen, her eyes fall shut, lashes fluttering so delicately. 
You can’t do anything but stare. Brilliant, past-life, prom-queen Karina - grinning at nothing, and sleepy from a perfect night, and laughing as if she’ll exist as this version of herself forever. As if she just doesn’t know any better, yet. 
“You,” you start to say, again-
Karina shuts her phone off, and turns.
And you’re about to say something - something about the gnawing, uncertain feeling you get when you watch this former self of hers. It’s on the tip of your tongue. You don’t laugh like that. Something happened to you. For a moment the whole image just seems off - like the way people make posthumous holograms of pop stars, superimpose faces of long-dead actors on stunt doubles. A kind of intense wrongness. A murmured, uncomfortable: that’s not really you, is it? It can’t be. I barely recognize her. 
“What?” Karina asks. Her smile reveals her teeth. “Why are you looking at me like that?” 
Then reality hits you, all at once. 
“Sorry.” Your hand finds her thigh. You laugh because you’re being ridiculous - how would you know who she really is, anyway? “I was just thinking - I don’t know. Never mind.”
She seems to take that at face value. You like that about her. How she seems to trust so easily - going home with you, winding up in your bed, staying when you ask her to stay. Giving you whatever you want: her body, her story.
“So,” you say, eventually. “I can put in my movie that you totally peaked in high school, huh?” 
Karina snorts. “Yeah,” she says, playing along, and taps her dark phone screen with a clawed nail. “Say it was the last time I was happy.” She pulls a face, like the thought of it is just unspeakably pathetic. “That’s a tragedy if I’ve ever heard one.” 
“Shakespearean,” you agree, and let her clamber into your lap. “It’s perfect.” 
But you know she’s kidding. You’d like to think that you understand girls like her. They live in a different world than the rest of you - the kind of world where every person on earth looks at them and falls to their feet, falls madly in love. You’ll write about it one day; you’ll feel out the narrative for her, a curious exploration. That rose-tinted life she must flourish in, closed-off and flawless like a snow globe, her spinning and protected in the glass.
“Perfect,” echoes Karina, and kisses you - like she’s proving she really means it. 
That’s the reality, here. That’s it. This is all there is. 
-
Well, almost.
-
Karina lets you scroll through the rest of her photo gallery, front to back. You take the opportunity, because you’re greedy for as much as you can get. 
There’s a lot of photos that are just her, funnily enough - selfies posed in front of the same full-length mirror, over and over again, clad in unholy outfits. Swimsuits, sports bras and little running shorts, lingerie: shit that makes your mouth water, eyes lingering, groaning out loud as she laughs at you. But it’s also her in faded old t-shirts, holding the hem up to expose her stomach. Body angled to the side in girlish sundresses. Hair pulled up, showing off her neck, her gorgeously sharp collarbone - in makeup or out of it, stare intensely focused and sultry. 
“That’s hot,” you comment. “Self-obsessed as fuck, but hot.” 
Karina smiles - her tiny private-joke smile - and doesn’t say anything at all. 
There’s one video in particular that catches your eye. It’s recent, relatively - the date reads late December, last year. Less than a month ago. Christmastime. You click on it, curious. 
Karina’s immediately recognizable in it, black hair winding past her shoulders, drowning in a large black sweatshirt. She’s smiling, but it looks sort of tense and tired - bags under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept in a while. She’s got both hands balled up into fists, held close and protective to her chest; her sharp chin rests on her pale knuckles. There’s a tiny smear of red across her mouth, lower lip bitten bloody. 
“You just got here,” she says. She’s looking at something behind the camera. “The first thing you wanna do is hear me sing?” She laughs once, scratchy and hoarse. “Why are you even filming this?” 
The answering strum of guitar strings, a pretty, perfect chord. An invitation, or a demand.
“You’re kidding.” Karina’s voice is flat.
Another chord - evidently not. 
“Wow,” says Karina. Her smile, out of nowhere, goes very soft at the edges. “You just do this because you know I can’t say no to you.”
“What?” you ask Karina now, laughing. “Is this - what is this? Do you - are you really going to sing?” 
And then - crazily enough - she does. 
“Oh,” you say out loud, adoring, and Karina turns her face into your shoulder. 
Her voice in the video is breathy, sweet. Shyly unpracticed, raspy from disuse, completely and utterly gorgeous; lids slipping shut and open again, laugh leaking into her melody line in lyrics about black eyes and kisses and wanting someone who’s just so, so bad for you. But what surprises you more than anything is the look that dawns on her blurry on-screen face - irises sparkling and smile bashful, hiding her mouth behind the sleeve of her sweatshirt, curled up with her knees to her chest. You see now that she’s wearing pajama pants, fuzzy and patterned with snowflakes. 
She looks radiantly pretty. She looks vulnerable. And not even in a sweaty, satiated, filthy post-fuck kind of way - actually, genuinely vulnerable. Soft and wide-eyed and tender.
Suddenly, you just can’t tear your gaze away. 
“Stop.” 
The song’s over. On-screen Karina’s fully grinning now. Porcelain-fragile, but undeniably happy, too. 
“I hate you,” she says. “Baby, I really do.” 
“You love me,” says the person behind the camera. “You’ll love me for the rest of your life and you know it.” 
And in the video - in vivid, fluid motion - Karina laughs. 
Whole-hearted, lovely. Familiar. For a moment, you swear she’s still that girl sitting in the backseat of a car with her prom queen tiara on, giggling free and uninhibited, unhurt, untouched. A month ago - less than that, even - looking like she’s coming back to life. 
That’s where the clip ends. 
It doesn’t change anything, if you actually think about it. It’s just another version of reality. A Karina from a whole other universe, laughing like a child, and so, so far away from whoever she is now. 
-
(Back between the lines of your script-
The stranger and the girl drink to get drunk and that’s about it. She reads the label of his wine; he makes fun of her for being a snob. She doesn’t really drink, she says at first, but he laughs like this is a challenge, and pours her a glass anyway. She flushes pink and fidgets around. She seems to shed hair like a cat and he thinks this is the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, picking up thin black strands off of the arm of his couch, teasing her about girls and how they really like to leave their mark, huh?
Leave their mark, she repeats. There’s some trick of the lens here, some sort of strategic camera work - he’s in the forefront and she’s in the background, and she looks so much smaller than him. Why do you say that? 
He still had his ex-girlfriend’s perfume in his cabinet. He probably still has some of her clothes in his closet. Not out of any particular emotional attachment, but sometimes this is just the way things are: when you spend years intertwining your whole existence with someone else’s, it’s hard to rid yourself of that connection. You’ve grown into each other’s spaces, tangling limbs and heart lines, putting down roots. It’s gonna take a little force to get them out. 
They’re just so much, he says, gesticulating with his hands. And they affect everything in your life, like a fucking infection. And then it doesn’t work out, and you - he makes a wide, sweeping motion here, attempting to encompass the wreckage. You have to fix everything they broke. Purge them from your system and all that. It’s so fucked up. 
It’s like this, he means to say - you love someone and then they leave you behind and you’re left staring at the blown-up decimated crater that used to be your life together. You love someone and they don’t love you back and all you have now is the debris.
They’re both drunk. There should be music here and there isn’t. It’s only eerie, too-still silence, suffocating the both of them with every passing second. 
Well, she says, laughing, and takes another sip. You and I can agree on that, at least.)
-
It happens like this:
There’s a monologue you want to write. 
You tell Karina this after you’re finally fucking her again, when she’s balanced on the edge of your glass coffee table with her legs spread and your mouth slick with her cum. Well - not after, technically. She’s between orgasms and you have your thumb on her clit, tracking the expression on her face, the split-second moment where she comes apart. It’s then when you realize so badly that you want to write some great speech for your heroine - something about the sweat beading on Karina’s midriff and her tits that you can’t stop touching and the jerky movements of her hips, trying to get your tongue back on her clit, panting and delightfully desperate. Something about desire. 
“Desire,” repeats Karina, voice halfway into a raspy, worked-up moan. 
“Yeah.” You’ve replaced your mouth with your fingers, fucking up into the obscene tight heat of her cunt. She’s trembling, dripping everywhere; she’s the very picture of what it means to want, probably. “But I just can’t figure it out.” 
Karina laughs roughly, and then she cums. 
“Is that funny?” you ask her, after, when you’re wiping your wet mouth with your wrist and she’s sucking on your glistening fingers, licking the taste of her own cunt off your skin. Her eyes big, lips all full and pink - slutty angel on her pedestal, perched above you. “Me writing about desire?” 
Karina lets your fingers free with a loud pop. She’s still clutching your hand close to her mouth, thumb dragging through the sticky gleam of her spit. “No,” she says, eyes distant. “It just reminded me of something. There’s this Anne Carson quote, about men and desire…” She shakes her head. Presses her lips once to your fingertips in a small, startlingly sweet kiss. “It doesn’t matter. Tell me more.” 
There isn’t much to tell, truthfully. Except that you’ve got this love for movie lines that are just so utterly quotable - things that make their way into the pop culture consciousness. That’s the kind of work you want to be doing: creating something that has an impact, something that’ll exist long after you’re gone. Everlasting. If you had to pull for an example, you’d say-
“You ever seen Closer?” 
“Yeah.” Karina drops your elbow into her lap. “Oh, I get it. He tastes like you but sweeter. Lying’s the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off - et cetera.” She hums the melody line. “So you want an early 2000s pop-punk band to make a song about your movie? Ambitious.” 
“More or less,” you say as she shimmies her shirt back down, hem falling back over her midriff. “But like I said, I’m kind of stuck.”
Karina rolls her neck. Her hair is everywhere, sweet-smelling; snapped-off strands decorate your table, looking like cracks in the glass. 
“Any suggestions?” you ask, thumb skimming along the pale bruised inside of her thigh. 
She smiles, mischievous. “Maybe.” 
That’s how you both end up curled on your couch together with your laptop in front of you, Karina’s eyes glued to the movie playing on the screen, watching as the four main characters fuck and flirt and cheat on each other and scream at the top of their lungs. Melodramatic dialogue. How do you feel about him using your life? You’re lying; I’ve been you. This will hurt, which Karina laughs at - as if announcing the pain will make it better, playacting at exoneration. 
It’s also - predictably - how you end up fucking again. You barely make it an hour in, and then-
“Hey.” Karina’s breath tickles your ear. She’s already seconds from climbing in your lap already; her thigh is hooked over yours, bare and inviting. “Are you inspired?” 
You’re swallowing back a grin. “Sure.” 
“Oh. Great.” She’s no actress herself, clearly. She couldn’t be subtle if she tried. “Do you wanna be more inspired?” 
And - whatever. It’s a movie about sex. If anything, at least you’re sticking to the theme. 
The dialogue plays in the background as Karina rocks her hips down on your lap - you can feel how wet she is again, like she never stops wanting to be fucked. You’re telling her something about how she’s the most insatiable girl you’ve ever met; the sound of the film saturates the room, setting the tone like it knows its purpose. How? How does it work? How do you do this to someone? This big, infidelity-ridden confrontation. Did you phone her? Beg her to come back? Asking him why he falls for another girl, getting this ridiculous answer - it’s because she doesn’t need me.
“Huh.” You smile into the curve of Karina’s neck, already palming her ass. “That one’s funny.”
“Is it funny?” Karina’s sharp jaw brushes against your cheekbone. Her eyes are so dark, shadowed by her long lashes. “I think it’s pretty realistic. People don’t like needy girls. It’s a burden to be loved so hard.” Her tongue darts across her teeth; her smile’s somewhat caustic. “Too much to handle, I guess.” 
“What are you talking about?” This strikes you as fairly fucking ridiculous, too. “What men have you met who don’t like needy girls?” 
Karina just laughs and leans in for another kiss. 
It’s easy to let the rest of the film float away in the background, the lines coming disjointed, unconnected. A spoken-word soundtrack, tone perfuming the air: the angst and pain and eroticism seeping into your clothing. Once in a while you’ll pull back from kissing Karina’s neck or tits or mouth and see a thoughtful little quirk to her mouth. Like she’s genuinely listening, even as you’re taking off her shirt, slipping a hand back between her legs. Where will you go? Disappear. I can’t still see you - if I see you, I’ll never leave you. I amuse you, but I bore you. 
“I bet you’ve never felt that,” you say, half into the silk of her hair. 
Karina pauses. Her shirt’s on the floor; she’s gloriously naked on top of you. “Felt what?” 
“I amuse you, but I bore you,” you recite. You already sound sort of fuck-drunk, far gone. “You’re the farthest thing from boring.”
Back in the movie, the female lead sobs into her fists. Karina studies you, fingertips grazing the nape of your neck. You try to imagine it - her as one of those heartsick heroines, crying herself to pieces, begging a man not to leave her - but you draw an utter blank. Some people just aren’t breakable in that way. 
“You’d be surprised,” Karina says, after a moment. “People get bored of me all the time.”
“Oh, please.” Even when she’s the one top of you, you can’t help feeling so completely in control. It’s gotta be the look in her eyes, dying to be obedient. “I bet you have lots of ways of keeping guys interested in you.” You smack her ass hard just to make a mark. “I bet you let them fuck you however they want.” 
“Exactly,” Karina agrees, without missing a beat. She moves in close until your noses bump together. Lets her voice go all smoky and suggestive. “Wherever they want, too.” 
You open your mouth - probably about to say something very rude about what a dirty whore she is and how you should’ve realized it the second you saw her; I knew it, I know you - but then your hands slip lower and Karina presses her lips to yours and licks into your mouth, over your teeth, making you swallow your words. Filling you up until there’s nothing but her and the movie, playing on.
I think I’ll be happier with her. 
You won’t. You’ll miss me. No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn’t love enough? 
“Romantic, right?” murmurs Karina, sweet against your tongue. 
“Shut up,” you say, and grab her by the hair, tugging her off your lap as you stand. “Bedroom. Now.” 
Later, you’ll take the time to consider the different ways filmmakers illustrate a power dynamic - it’s playing on your laptop screen right now. The heroine’s sitting on the arm of the couch, clutching desperately at the hero’s jacket. Gorgeously emotional and pleading for another chance, her tiny chin tilted up, eyes so large and watery. Made fragile and fearful by everyone: the protagonist, the narrative, the director, the audience beyond. By herself, even. It’s a stylistic choice - she wants to look that pathetic.
And you-
Well, you’ve got Karina’s long hair wrapped up in your fist, tits bouncing as she stumbles to her feet, ankle knocking hard and horribly loud against the leg of your table. Cute little ass all red from your hand. Thighs shimmering from how drenched she is, cunt dripping from how you’ve treated her. She hasn’t managed to work her mouth into a trademark smirk fast enough: when she looks at you over her shoulder, her eyes are abyss-dark and bottomless, crease between her brows, lips parted in pained surprise. 
The definition of pathetic, too - but that’s exactly the point. She’s just so much more fuckable like that. 
“Ouch,” you say, touching her hurt ankle with the side of your foot. 
“It’s fine.” Karina’s skin feels clammy and cold. Her smirk’s intact now, camera-ready. “I’ve been through worse.” 
Her ankle throbs under the pressure of your touch; you still haven’t let up on her hair. You’ll go through worse, too, you think of telling her: a sly comment about how rough you’re about to fuck her, what vicious marks you’re about to leave. How you’re gonna hurt her exactly like she asked you to. 
You don’t say a thing.
She must already know all of that, anyway.
-
So, Karina’s not breakable like the helpless, weepy, soft-hearted girls in the movies - but that’s alright. She’s breakable in much more enticing ways.
Case in point:
“Oh, get real, baby. Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”
Well, breaking someone down doesn’t really get better than this.
It’s all a scene of your own making, a perfect pre-arrangement. You on your bed, Karina limp and bent belly-down over your lap - you in control and Karina as the most impressive toy you’ve ever gotten your hands on, creamy ass and needy cunt and skin that turns bruises to artwork. You’re goading her and failing - trying to get her to just admit to what she is, what a filthy slut, what a nasty eager fuckdoll - but it’s hard to get a response when even breathing seems to be a chore for her right now. Every noise out of her mouth is nothing but a gasping, choked-out whimper. Her face is buried in her forearm, hidden. And through the shine of lube dribbling down your hand and her ass and into the sticky wetness of her cunt, you’ve got two fingers stretching out her little asshole - and you’re just getting started.
“I know you fucking need this.” Your other hand slides up her back, slips to tangle in her hair. “You’re just too good at it.” You pull hard, wrenching her head from the crook of her elbow. “Too good at being an obedient fucking whore for me, huh?”
Karina’s whole body stiffens when you fuck your fingers deeper, as if tugged taut on a string: the flex of her feet in the air, shoulder blades straining, neck craned back almost painfully. You pull harder. It’s a buzz at the base of your skull, live-wire thrilling: the knowledge that you can yank her into whatever position you want - fuck her anywhere, work her ass open with your cock, fill her up with cum - and she’s just going to have to take it. Like she’s this pliant, powerless thing. Like she’s yours. 
Your self-satisfaction seeps right into your voice. “Answer me.” 
You hear Karina gulp down a breath. “I,” Karina mumbles, but she can’t do anything but babble. “I - fuck-” All teeth-clenching nonsense; she shoots a baleful glance over her shoulder, desperation clawing its way into every word. “Please-”
Your fingers pause. “You want more?” 
Her cheeks are splotchy and pink; you swear there are tears wobbling in those big dark eyes. The heavy arousal in your stomach turns to violent hunger, as though your mouth could start watering at any second. You can’t help it. The thought of seeing her cry is fucking exhilirating. “You - oh-” 
“Answer me. You want my cock?” You’re waiting for the breaking point. “You want me to really fuck your ass?” 
“Fuck-” 
But that’s not a proper reply and Karina knows it, so she doesn’t protest when you pull your glistening fingers out of her and smack your palm hard across her ass. Once, then twice, and then you just don’t stop. She yelps like a hurt animal - trembles uncontrollably, her thighs and her shoulders and her quivering bottom lip - and makes a sound in the back of her throat that might be a sob, but she still lets you hit her: gives into the harsh crack of skin on skin, over and over again. Listens as you tell her that she deserves this, that she wanted this, that you’re making her into a good girl and this is what good girls get when they’re too cock-hungry to follow orders or answer a fucking question, you know that - you know I’m this rough for a reason. It should hurt. It’s so much more fun that way.  
“I’ve been too fucking nice to you,” you mutter, teeth gritted in an effort to hide your grin - as if you even need to. It’s obvious how much you enjoy this. It’s the point. “That’s the problem with girls like you - you never learned your fucking place, huh? Never really been punished for anything?”
Karina mumbles out something unintelligible, slurring from her drooling mouth to the sheets.
“Yeah.” Your hand comes down again - she flinches just before her body goes slack. “That’s what I thought.” 
And after you’ve spanked her so hard that her fair skin is ravaged and raised with goosebumps along the slope of her back - her whole body in revolt - you finally, finally stop. 
Karina doesn’t budge except to breathe, and even that releases shallow, unsteady. You read it all in the shaky lift and fall of her thin shoulders, her hands in white-knuckled fists, her face pressed to your sheets and hidden - her hair coats everything, all ink, all words written but left unsaid. She shivers beneath your fingers. Her cunt’s dripping all over your lap. She’s a masterpiece. She’s a wreck. 
You’re filled up with thick, swollen pride. “Karina.” 
Karina. Your own personal creation, transformed under your touch. Might as well have your name carved into her, too. A brand right across her back, slicing through tissue, scarring to seal her fate - this is who you fucking belong to. 
“Poor baby.” You follow the sharp ridges of her spine, tracking notches, keeping a tally: counting how many times you’ll hit her, how many days she’ll stay in your bed. How many movies she’ll let you make out of her, being your brilliant muse for decades. “It’s painful when you don’t listen to me, huh?”
But then - inexplicably - you think of her bruising ankle. Her twist of a smirk, detached and humorless. I’ve been through worse. 
You’re abruptly glad you can’t see the look on her face. 
“Come on, sweet girl.” You dig the heel of your palm into her lower back, half a warning. “Pull it together.” 
Between the strands of glossy hair tumbling over Karina’s skin and your sheets, you spot a reddish mark on the back of her neck. Like the impression of a thumbprint, small and round. Blurry enough in the dim light that your brain starts conjuring up strange theories; an old wound, maybe. A birthmark or a burn, a childhood injury.
You graze her shoulder blades with your fingertips, exploratory. She feels so small draped over you like this, a tiny wet wisp of a girl. A doll. 
She still hasn’t moved.
“Karina.”
Nothing.
“Karina,” you say again, suddenly uneasy. Your hand stops. “Are you-”
For a few terrible seconds, you can’t even hear her breathing. 
But then Karina shifts. Slow, sensual, deliberate. Pushing herself up off your lap, arching her back, the slick pucker of her asshole obscene from where you fucked it open with your fingers. Her bruised knees dig into your mattress as she straightens up, and her gorgeous pale face seems to glow in the midday light - heavy dark eyes, bitten-pink mouth, black hair curtaining her cheeks like a frame to a portrait.
“You,” you start to say, feeling suddenly like you’re looking at her for the first time. 
“I’m really sorry,” Karina murmurs.
She doesn’t look close to tears at all. She’s so unfazed, as if having her ass spanked punishingly raw is something that happens to a girl like her on the daily. A run-of-the-mill occurrence - a consequence of having a body like that, made to be brutalized. She’s already reaching towards the nightstand for the lube. 
“I just wanted it so bad I couldn’t think straight,” Karina tells you, with erotic-film certainty - reciting all the lines that’ll make her seem the most insatiably slutty. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her lips form a pout; she leans down to press them to the tip of your cock, all sweet and demure, like she thinks she needs to convince you. Eyes flicking up at you through her thick lashes, molten-hot. “I should’ve listened.” It’s only a breath, warm and torturous. “I deserved that, I know.” 
Your hand winds tight in her hair. You want to force your cock down her pretty throat, make her gag and choke over her simpering apologies, spitting up your cum until it trickles down her chin, her tits, her tummy. Both a game and a power play: prove how sorry you are. 
Karina pulls back before you can, and holds up the lube. 
“Babe,” she says, the term of endearment almost a singsong - a lilting reminder. “I thought you wanted to really fuck me now.” 
“Uh-huh.” Her tits heave as she moves, crawling closer, offering herself up. “And I always get what I want, right?” 
You feel drunk with power. You forget that this isn’t supposed to be about power. You watch as Karina coats her palm with lube and pumps your cock, her fingers slick and hot, her veins starkly blue at her delicate wrists. Expression delighted at how hard you are, pink little tongue poking out between her teeth - seduction down to an art form, meticulously calculated. 
“With me?” Her smile burns. “Obviously.” 
You pull her in by the neck to kiss the smirk off her mouth. 
It’s interesting. There’s this other thing regular critics and moviegoers have been saying about films these days: sex scenes need to have a purpose. Some sort of coherent motivation. Strip your lead actress down to nothing and get her keening and moaning and you’ve got to explain it away somehow. It forwards the plot, you could insist, pitching it to producers and directors. It does something for the character dynamics. It’ll draw in just the right audience, the ones dying to see their favorite celebrity debauched and getting dirty on-screen - they’ll see it over and over just to get a taste. Isn’t that enough? To satisfy the masses? Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Because otherwise all people are staring at is a play at pornography: useless half-convincing make-believe. The heroine can writhe and whine and arch her back all she wants. Everyone knows she doesn’t feel anything. 
“Tell me the truth.” 
Oh, if you two were a movie - you don’t know how anyone could justify a sex scene quite like this. 
It doesn’t matter what artsy angle you take. It all comes down to the same unforgivable details: Karina face-down ass-up on your bed, the perfect bowed curve of her spine, the depraved wide stretch of her asshole around your cock - the sweat shining along her shoulder blades, the hard smack of your palm against the red raw skin of her ass, your other hand at the crown of her skull with your fingers wrapped entirely in her tangled hair - her cunt fucking ruining your sheets, wet all the way down her thighs, each brutal shift of your hips sending her little body into full-blown shudders-
“Tell me that you fucking love it.” Your hand slips lower until you’ve got her pinned down by the back of the neck, fingers pushing down: a grip she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to. “Whoring out your slutty little ass like this for a stranger. Getting on your hands and knees for me just because you’re so fucking needy for cock, baby - don’t even try to deny it, you’re so wet, nasty fucking girl-”
You just can’t stop yourself. It’s so easy. She really is so fucking pathetic. Too fragile to get free - too easily manipulated and manhandled. Trembling and drenched and giving way as you make room inside her, forcing space. She’s just so tight - it’s godless, how you make your cock fit in her lube-slicked asshole, how she moans like a bona fide bitch in heat over it: needing faster, needing harder, needing more. Cheek pink and pressed hard to your mattress, sharp nails digging into the sheets rough enough to tear through the fabric. Giving herself up to be fucked cruelly and stupid and senseless. 
Like she’s a real-
“Natural fucking cockslut, huh?” 
Look, seriously - you can’t be held accountable for the things you say to her here. 
Because when you say shit like you’d just let me do anything - like you’d let me fucking tie you up and keep you here forever, be an eager fucking cumdump for me whenever I want you, I know it, I know you - that’s just the moment talking. The circumstances. The pretty arch of her back and the drooling wetness of her cunt and the indecent tightness of her ass, conspiring to make you lose your mind mid-fuck - that’s the whole reason you even tell her any of it. You think you’re good for anything else? Right at her ear, your body covering hers, your cock buried deep. You’re not. Just made to get this slutty ass fucked open, and your mouth, and your cunt - this is all anyone’s ever gonna want from you and you know it - better get used to it now, baby. This is all you got. This is all you are. 
It’s Karina’s fault, really. She just takes it - all of it. She doesn’t even try to fight it. 
“But that’s okay,” you murmur, as she gasps and squirms and cries out like you’re killing her. “I’m still gonna make you cum.” 
And with your cock filling her ass and your hand between her legs, slapping hard at her sopping cunt until she can’t do anything but collapse - shaking, shattered - her whimpers fucked-out and drool-soaked and bleeding into one big nonsensical mess, everything about her used and ruined-
“You’re mine,” you tell her, laughing as she falls apart. “You get that? You’re mine.” 
-then, you do.
When it’s all over, Karina rolls over to face the wall, breathing hard. She’s slick everywhere, sweat and saliva and lube, your creamy cum dripping out of her well-fucked asshole and trickling down her thigh. You trace her lower back and grin at the way her skin seems to give into you, turning pink with a press of your fingertips. You’ve come to realize you adore her like this, the fugue state after you fuck her: utterly dead to the world. 
Like she could become a permanent fixture in your bed. Too tired to move. Too tired to ever leave. 
“Mine,” you say again, softer.
Karina doesn’t argue. 
It’s basically all the confirmation you need. 
-
So, really, if you two were a movie-
It goes like this: life can imitate art, too. It happens all the time. The line between fiction and reality blurs together until it’s indistinguishable - until you can’t tell where the fantasy ends, or if it ever did at all. 
-
(It goes like this: the heroine smiles sleepily and tells the hero he’s the best she’s ever had. You’ve seen this film before. The movie stars with their fake on-screen fucks might not feel a damn thing, but at least it’s still fun to pretend.)
-
Also, the mark you saw on the back of her neck isn’t actually what you thought it was. 
“It’s a tattoo,” you realize out loud, drowsily awed, brushing her hair away so you can get a better look. You’re both tuckered out, an inevitability when you fuck like you do; you’re seconds from dozing off. Karina’s looking away from you, on her side to escape the soreness of her ass, sheets loose across her chest. She lets you touch her wherever. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before.” 
“You don’t know me,” mumbles Karina, half into your pillow. “It’s not your job to notice anything about me.” 
The tattoo’s crimson-red, all delicate linework. It really does look like it hurts: like someone painstakingly cut the shape into her skin. It’s of a heart, rendered in anatomical detail - valves and ventricles and arteries. It’s beautiful, you realize belatedly. Bright instead of faded, and obviously cared for. Lovely. 
The only permanent stain on her perfect body. You press your thumb against the ink, fascinated. 
“What does it mean?” you ask, but Karina’s already fallen asleep. 
-
(In your script, the girl and the stranger watch some gory crime show, except they don’t pay very close attention and he tugs her into his lap and makes her ride his thigh. The episode they’ve got on is about a serial killer who murders so-called sinners - liars, adulterers, the like. Slaughters them like sacrifices, cutting their throats with vicious efficiency. Fake blood drenches the screen with every crime scene: a form of fucked-up baptism, a psuedo-religious cleansing. 
The girl’s putting on an equally decent show on top of the stranger: head thrown back, eyelids fluttering, high-pitched little moans. He sinks his teeth into her shoulder and keeps watching the TV.
Hey, he says, a murmur against her skin, a close-up on his mouth. You’re a sinner, right?
She’s got her hands on his shoulders, hips rolling. Sure am. 
How do you think this guy would kill you? 
He thinks this’ll shock her, but she doesn’t even pause. Like he kills all the rest, she says. Like an animal.
I think he’d be more careful with you, the stranger muses. You’re too gorgeous. He’d have to use, like - a scalpel, or something. Something cleaner. Something that’d keep you intact. 
It’s no use. Nothing he says seems to scare her. Her eyes are far-off, almost glazed in recollection. Like she’s thought about it too - her own untimely end. Her own vivisection, skin flayed and organs visible, viscera and bone. There, hold the shot: now the audience can consider it with her, ponder all the ways she could be torn apart, all the repulsive things they could do with her desiccated body. All the ways flesh can warp under a human touch: the blue-black yellow-green purpling of bruises, a whole palette on one tiny girl. There’s value in that, isn’t there? There’s something intimately, incomparably beautiful in suffering. There’s art. 
Isn’t that why everyone’s watching? 
I get it, the girl says, still soaking his thigh, smiling as if it’s an inside joke between them. You want me dead. That’s been obvious since the moment you met me. 
I don’t want you dead, he says, and grabs her by the jaw. I just want to fuck you. 
Okay, she says, uncaring, like there’s barely a difference. Fine. Whatever you want. 
They don’t turn the TV off. They let the characters scream and bleed out in the background; he fucks her like she’s got a death wish. It’s funny - he expects her to get louder the harder he fucks her, ruthlessly working over the tight clench of her cunt - but she keeps getting less and less responsive, as if he’s pushing her little body into some sort of trance: expression vacant and blank, body limp and lifeless, mouth open and speechless. It makes him angry. Give me something, he’s saying, frustrated, clawing at her hair: baby, it’s not fair, it’s no fun like this. The on-screen shrieks aren’t enough - he wants it from her. Actually, he keeps saying he needs it - as if fulfilling desire is on the same level as food or air, as if he’ll drop dead in seconds if he doesn’t get her sobbing. He gets his overlarge hands on her face and starts contorting it, pushing her mouth open, her eyes wider, his fingers down her throat until she spits and gags and chokes. Oh, the audience will love this one: it’s reminiscent of those filthy exploitation films with their cult followings, so cleverly referential. Look at her pathetic and pinned down. Look at her helpless and struggling. Think of your favorite on-screen murder scenes, and then think of this.
Anything I want, the stranger reminds her, yanking back her hair as she drools down his wrist. You asked for this, didn’t you? You said anything I want. 
Except now the girl can’t say anything at all. 
This moment will start rumors, invite horrified scandal the same way some purposefully marketed horror movies are passed off as snuff films - that really went down, they really died like that. This scene’ll get a similar response. Did he actually fuck her? Did he actually hurt her? Did everyone - the writer, the director, the crew, the captive audience - actually just stand by and let that happen? 
Sure. Or she might just be a really, really good actress.
There. The stranger’s murmuring to her now, watching her manufactured expression, watching the tears fill her eyes. There you go. There’s my girl. And she is his, she really is - transformed into something all beautiful and new under his clumsy fingertips, molded right into art. The camera will zoom in close on her gorgeous, cadaverous face, a perverse little gift for the audience: here, have this, take a look. She’s all yours now. 
There’s something to be said here about the manmade link between sex and violence - inescapable, brutal, primeval; bodies in all shades of red - but he forgets it the second he touches her, and she’s being fucked too hard to remember.
Maybe they’ll get to it next time.) 
-
AND WE'RE BACK!!!!!!!!!!! <33333
all my luv ever to @capslocked @worldsover @passingnotions @braaan for beta reading my dumbass shenanigans and also for being the best ever I LOVE U!!!!!! AND ANYONE WHO IS READING THIS I LOVE YALL TOO.................. PART 2 COMING SOON!!!!!!!!!!!
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joocomics · 2 months ago
Text
ಬ scaredy cat
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pairing: non-idol!yeonjun x fem!reader
genre: smut — mdni! wc: 1.9k
contains: friends with benefits trope, sub!reader, dirty talk, pet names, fingering, overstimulation (f!rec), hickeys
[ txt masterlist | general masterlist ]
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During the slow boring hours of work the other day you created a list with the pros and cons of possibly dating Yeonjun.
For a while now he’s been throwing you signals about getting serious (more often than not), so you thought it would be a good idea to look at this more thoroughly, and kill some time until your shift is finally over. Aware of the already strong feelings you have for him you grab a pen and start writing…
�� funny and reliable
likes to cuddle but not clingy
great sense of fashion
(extremely) good at sex
has a super cool tv …
“Is this why you've been coming over more often these days?” Yeonjun returns into the living room with drinks in hand. After sitting down on the edge of the couch which he transforms into a comfy bed every time you're here, he turns to you with a raised brow. “To watch your disgusting movies on my new TV?”
“My disgusting movies are well written cinematic experiences that you're too big of a scaredy cat to recognize the full worth of.” You explain, crossing arms in front of your chest. “And they're even cooler on your TV, so to answer your question, yes.”
Yeonjun rolls his eyes at you, but you can notice there’s a half-smile creeping up on his plump lips as he looks away with amusement.
“Actually,” you say almost through laughter which brings Yeonjun’s attention back to you, “recently I made a list with your good and bad qualities and your new TV made it.”
“That's not a quality.”
Now you’re the one who rolls eyes before glancing back at the screen.
“Just be grateful it's there to fill up space in the pros column.”
“So what are my bad qualities?” Yeonjun asks intrigued just when the main character of the horror film screams hysterically at the sight of yet another body, causing his heart to jump. He flinches at the sudden sound and instantly turns his back to the screen. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, who watches this kind of shit for fun?!”
You watch him scooting over and laugh at his attempts to avoid seeing the screen while doing so as the horrible scene unfolds on the large TV.
He positions next to you and now you're shoulder to shoulder.
“I still haven't gotten to them.”
“Don't waste your time,” he sighs, adjusting against the pillow, “I don't have any.”
“Don't be so sure about that.” You quickly respond, “I had to get back to work and then I forgot.”
“Because I don't have any.” He repeats after tittering. He finally dares to glance at the screen as it seems that the gory scene has passed.
“You get jealous pretty easily.” You state cautiously, wanting to shoot him a discreet look so bad, but you resist.
You also want to add, and pretty obviously, but you keep that detail for yourself as you remember how overprotective he was the other night at the birthday party you were invited to. It resulted into you getting asked the same question over and over again. Your friends were having a hard time believing you’re not dating.
Yeonjun remains silent for a moment as he tilts his head to see you. He leans in, just a little bit, to make your cheeks warm from the sudden closeness; to bring goosebumps across your skin from his mouth being close enough to your ear as he speaks through low voice.
“So it’s a bad thing that I don’t like sharing what’s mine?”
His gaze holds onto yours causing the fireworks into your stomach to ignite even harder. It’s like your heart stops for a second, and your brain as well, making the task to come up with a good answer on time challenging. It’s so obvious at this point that you’re taking too much time; too fumbled by the last word in his sentence. And especially by how much you like its presence there; how you’re already getting used to the sound of it in his voice.
Your lips part, not to speak, but to kiss him instead when another jumpscare makes him wince.
Too busy to hide his face into your chest, he only groans in despair, simultaneously pulling the blanket over your tangled bodies. One airy shit! slips from beneath it. The dramatic spine-chilling soundtrack overpowers the cussing, but you catch it nevertheless.
He sounds as if he's the one being tortured.
“Poor baby,” you tease him by cooing. “Is this too scary for you?”
He murmurs something about you shutting your mouth, but the anguish is making his frustrated words incoherent.
“How much left till the end?”
“Like an hour and a half,” you start running your fingertips through his dark hair as he adjusts even further into your arms. His head finds a comfortable spot onto your chest.
“I’ll just close my eyes for a little while…” his voice is slower than a moment ago, and you hum softly in agreement.
It’s almost like your familiar scent can lull him to sleep despite the scary movie playing in the background. He can feel his muscles loosen up, his mind relaxing with each peaceful breath you take.
Until the noise of a new jumpscare comes to frighten him again.
“I will add this in my cons list by the way.” You cackle.
Yeonjun’s brows furrow, but you can’t see his irritated eyes, because his face is hidden into your neck.
You can feel his warm breath caressing your skin once he speaks up.
“I know what will help me calm down.”
As the words slip lazily one by one from his lips, his hand slides down between your thighs. His fingertips feel the nice fabric of your little cotton shorts that seem too tight around your curves. They keep roaming around, rising your body temperature, until he guides them to your clothed clit, putting just enough pressure on it while his mouth nibbles on the skin of your neck.
“But… I want to finish the movie,” you whine softly before shutting your eyes at the thrill he’s causing you to feel kiss after kiss.
“You keep watching, baby.” His lips detach from your neck and curl up into a sinful smirk.
You centre your head again, watching him pull down your shorts as the screen behind him paints his silhouette in dark blue and purple hues, turning his features even more seductive.
Half of the fuzzy blanket is now almost on the ground as you keep your legs spread open. Yeonjun’s hand rubs in continuous circling motions that he synchronises with your breathing. Focusing entirely on your body helps him completely ignore the on going movie you keep watching with interest. He’s giving his full attention to your little squirming movements, to your rhythmical breathes, and to the erotic sounds that start escaping your mouth more frequently only to mix with the background noise in the room.
There are fresh bruises forming on your neck, but he continues to suck, making himself drool from how much he enjoys doing it. The only time he backs away is when he pushes two fingers inside you for the first time and he gets the urge to taste them, as it often happens when he’s pleasing you.
“Mmm, you always taste so good.” He humms after unwrapping his lips from his fingertips. His mouth has a red tint to it, glistening with moisture. “So fuckin’ wet for me, can you feel it?”
“Fuck, don’t stop—“ The only thing you’re able to say when he slips back into your arousal is to keep going. His fingers curl up perfectly, and aiming for the right spot they start thrusting in a steady pace causing your moans to shake. “Yeah, just like that... yeah—“
Yeonjun buries his face into the crook of your neck while starting to breathe more heavily too.
You keep closing and opening your heavy eyes at the screen where an intense moment is looming, filling the room with an intense instrumental music, but all he can register is the noises you keep losing control over. His hand flexes while increasing its speed in order to push you closer to the desired peak and it swiftly succeeds.
Your attention level drops and your head falls to one side with your eyes fluttering shut in bliss.
“Sounds so pretty,” he comments at your ear as the wet lewd noise keeps erupting with the nonstop slamming of his palm against your slick folds. Just the way you like it. “You’re close, doll.”
His fingers, stuck between your pulsing walls, get squished tighter as the seconds pass by. He keeps up the quick and smooth pacing until your breaking point comes in, forcing it to turn sloppy and rigid.
“Fuck, there you go,” Yeonjun’s chuckle rings out with a husky tone, only adding to the ecstatic effects of your intense climax.
Your whole body squirms as Yeonjun lets his fingers, wet and sticky, rest still on your throbbing clit. The fluids slowly spill out of you, forming a dark spot on the couch as the sensation turns more light and mellow, but he doesn’t mind it.
You’re still regaining your normal breathing when his fingertips start skidding rapidly along your soaked folds. You whimper at the unexpected contact with your clit that’s now extra sensitive, causing intense reactions from your body at even the smallest touch.
As he doesn’t show any signs of slowing down you whine his name, but without being able to utter any other word.
“Give me one more, baby.” He whispers, effortlessly sliding his fingers up and down your slickness in an indescribable way; so fast, so determined to receive more from you. “C’mon, doll.”
You pant uncontrollably under his tireless touch. The dancing of his fingers keep up the same energy, making you clench as they create another burning knot of pleasure in your core. Once it bursts, you’re not able to stay still and Yeonjun tries his best to keep his hand on your puffy lips so he can rub till the second orgasm washes over you.
Your legs tremble when he enters you with the same eager fingers, curious to feel how wet you are. The pool of arousal welcomes him with ease, and he cannot help but start fantasising how good it would feel to have his cock deep inside you right now. He can give it to you, but making you cum multiple times like this is just as exciting.
He notices your eyes are half-closed while gazing down between your thighs.
“Keep watching, sweetheart.” He says softly, but with a slight hint of demand which makes you look up on the instant. “You don’t want to miss anything from the movie, that’s why you’re here, right?”
He glides slowly through your tight walls and you both sense how they keep throbbing against him from lust and sensitivity. You take a deep shaky breath, trying to concentrate on the story line, but it’s so hard when he’s in the middle of building up a new wave of rush while hiding in the crook of your neck. Running his tongue over his own love marks now and then.
You bite your lip at the realisation of how much is still left from the movie that is about to become the reason your brain is going to turn completely numb and your pussy sore by the end of this Halloween night.
But the thing you will always associate it with first, from this day forward, is you officially becoming his.
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! please do not repost, copy or translate my works
! please keep in mind that english is not my first language. i apologise for any mistakes i’ve might missed
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leth-writes · 4 months ago
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SOULMATE AU
-inspired by the mind-reading prompt from the soulmate prompts I reblogged
-also inspired by the posts of the lovely SlasherScream!
-the idea is essentially that once you meet, your minds merge
Bruce Wayne
Oh no. OH NO!
All i can picture is Bruce panicking. He’s terrified by the idea of you seeing into his head, of seeing how broken he feels he is. Bruce is ultimately dictated by his trauma and his love for his family, and these two forces are in constant conflict in his mind, leading to a mindscape that can be incredibly jarring. Sometimes it feels like his brain is being pulled in two between the logical and emotional halves, though the logical side often pushes the emotional side far, far down. He really suppresses those emotions in an attempt not to get hurt again.
Bruce has spent so much time suppressing his emotions that his mind is overly logical. Being in his mind is like being in an episode of an investigative show, constant thoughts and a whirlwind of deductions. It feels like he’s got the entire world figured out, especially before you’re able to really connect. He tries so hard to force you out of the darker corners of his mind, boxing them away in the deepest reaches so you can’t stumble into his deep, dark thoughts, worries, and memories.
When you first meet, his mindscape feels almost… shallow due to the boxing away of so many parts of him. It feels almost like you’re seeing Brucie, rather than Bruce; just a shallow facade meant to draw your attention away. This can be remedied by showing how much you trust him. Get comfortable around him, don’t show any judgment, and open up some of your own forgotten memories. Seeing such a display of kindness and trust will help convince him to be fully honest with you, but it takes a couple of months for him to grant you access to the totality of his mind. It’s slow-going, but it’s definitely worth it.
Bruce’s mindscape feels like a black and white detective film, funnily enough. It’s sharp and cold at first, but those edges meld together the more you unravel his hidden corners, creating a more impressionistic mindscape full of fleeting emotional impressions. It surprises you just how smart he can be; you knew he was a master detective but you weren’t expecting the level of deduction he’s truly capable of. He’s got you fully figured out in minutes.
When you blend together, it’s like a wonderful impressionistic melding of more logical and more empathetic mindscapes into one full world. Spend some time getting to know him, spend some time slowly opening up, and you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful experience. Moving forward, he’s going to be even more protective than he normally would, mainly out of fear; you know everything about him, which definitely puts a target on your back. Having someone who is mentally connected to one of the most powerful men in the city, both in and out of the cowl, is tantalizing to both supervillains and his enemies in his daily life. Don’t let the harsh words and rumors get to you, Bruce defends you in the public eye constantly. It becomes almost an inside joke among the press in Gotham; ask Brucie about his soulmate and you’ll see a cold side to him no-one’s ever noticed before.
Dick Grayson
Dick’s mindscape is, at first, seemingly one-note. When you first meld, it feels like his mind is a deep, clear pool; you feel like you can see right to the bottom. You both spend a lot of time just cuddling, exploring your shared mindscape together, feeling like you’ve found an oasis in the desert. It feels calming, like soothing balm to your overworked mind. Dick often compares your mind to a burst of color in the dark, feeling like you light his mind up, bringing positivity and light when he’s trapped in his dark thoughts. Don’t be fooled by the depths you’re able to access right away; Dick has some hidden compartments of his mind he’s not even consciously aware of.
Dick has locked his true longing for his parents, and his desire to lead a normal life, deep in the recesses in his mind, to save himself from emotional harm. He loves his parents to this day, and visits their grave to update them on his life all the time. It hurts him to think they aren’t there to see his accomplishments, but he knows deep down they would be proud. He begins writing letters and taking pictures of the two of you, all to place at their grave, so it feels they’re connected to him even now, with their deaths so far in his past. Please visit their grave with him; bring some flowers or some food, tell them about yourself and how much you love him. It’ll move him almost to tears.
Dick also feels a deep longing for a normal life. He’d never truly act on these urges, he can’t imagine ever giving up Nightwing, and feels a deep sense of responsibility for his city, but he does have some desires to experience the intimate, domestic life. He feels even more responsible for the safety of the city after he meets you, and might drive himself ragged trying to keep you safe by clearing out every villain in the city. He doesn’t stop until he’s almost killed, and he feels the panic and despair in your mind as you clutch his hand in the medbay, sobbing your eyes out. Afterwards, he spends more time on the domestic aspects of life, and reveals those hidden desires. Seeing you so upset, feeling your mind almost shatter under the weight of your fear and grief, motivates him to keep you safe by keeping him safe. He’s less likely to take risks, and sometimes even passes up the more dangerous missions to the Justice League as a whole. 
He totally gets you cheesy gifts. I think that, in a world of mind melds, there’d be stupid little keychains that say stuff like “I met my soulmate and all I got was this lousy keychain”. You hate it, but you use it as a keychain to remind yourself of him every time he’s away. He buys you a lot of Nightwing merch as well. Please wear it, even if it’s just to feel his mindscape stutter out of shock and awe. He loves how cozy you look in that oversized Nightwing sweater; he begs you to make it a permanent part of your nightly wardrobe.
Dick is known for his long rants to the press about how amazing you are, even though in actuality he gives them no identifying features. The press feels they know you so well they don’t even realize they have no idea who you are. He’s known for his smitten, lovestruck sighs and swooning every time they ask about you, beaming so hard his face hurts and filling everyone in on how you “just looked so cute wearing that oversized sweater, so cozy, I thought I was gonna die!”. It’s part facade, part reality. He’s just letting his true feelings out with the mushiest language possible.
Your melded mindscape is like a deep lake, mainly clear and visible, with some darker murkier parts you can explore together. It’s like a balm against overactive minds, calming and cooling down any tempers and giving you a space to explore yourself and your past with someone who’s truly welcoming.
Jason Todd
Jason’s mind is really intense, really quickly. It’s like a burst of color and noise, all of his worst feelings and thoughts being forced to the forefront by the surprise of the meld. He would do well with a calmer presence who can soothe his mental energy, bringing him down from that overactive constant anger and worry. It’s important to realize that Jason isn’t always gonna be like that, but the lazarus pit has really messed with his mental state in a lot of large, and even more unnoticed, ways.
The mental bond really goes a long way to calm him down. Having another person sharing his mindspace gives him a reason to see a therapist and work through his trauma, trying to make himself more appealing and less scary to you. Please let him know he doesn’t scare you; being able to feel that warmth and affection will go a long way in his journey to change. Jason ultimately wants to do better for you, even though he feels the lazarus pit has corrupted everything. He gets really emotional, knowing his death and the pit have even corrupted something so sacred as a mental bond. Help him acknowledge that it isn’t his fault, and that you truly care for him, no matter the state of his thoughts, and you’ll unlock that softer, more tender side.
Jason deals with a lot of intrusive thoughts due to the pit. He’d love it if you helped, though he always reminds you it’s okay if you don’t feel able to do so. Just helping him let them pass, rather than trying to suppress them, will do wonders for his mental state and really help lighten up his mindscape.
Jason’s mindscape, at first, is like a storm over the north sea; huge, crashing waves and whipping, howling winds strong enough to split him in half. It can feel overwhelming, like you’re a little boat lost in this huge force of nature, with the threat of capsizing constant. However, please know that Jason would never, ever hurt you. He’d rather never see you again, no matter how much it would hurt him, than make you scared. As you two work together, going to therapy and doing calming exercises, Jason’s mindscape will eventually reveal itself to be a calm night at sea, the waves like glass; clear and smooth, but still with that slight possibility of harm. It can be really nice just spending time with him, him reading aloud his favorite Jane Austen novel, being gently rocked by the soothing wave of the mind meld.
Jason is intensely private. The press quickly finds out not to so much as mention his soulmate, as it sets him off into an angry rant about privacy and what it means to be a public figure. Jason has never hated his fame more than when he wasn’t able to go out with you without fear of being discovered. Uncle Clark offers to fly you both out to another country, giving you opportunities to date without the threat of the press breathing down your neck. He’ll take you to a French restaurant, surprising you with his perfect French, and then eat ice cream with you while you stare into the waters of the Seine as the sun sets. He’s a true romantic at heart.
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coeurify · 1 year ago
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ok but what do you think about making a sex tape with ellie 🧍‍♀️
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an: this has been reworked over and over since this request came in in march… so enjoy! its very lovey dovey and sm plot sorry :3
warnings: 18+. filming. jackson!ellie. fingering and oral!r receiving. mostly lovey but some teasing and rough language :3 ellie is obsessed and lovesick and so is reader soooo they make a sex tape. unedited gimme time.
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When Ellie first brought up the idea, you had recoiled into her old beat up couch, scoffing as she waved the old camcorder around, a shiteating grin on her face.
“I doubt that thing even works El,” you shrugged your shoulders under the blanket you had stolen off her bed. It wasn't unusual for you to hole up in her small homey garage while she was on patrol.. but what *was* odd was her little.. Souvenir from this particular trip.
“C’mon babe,” Ellie pouted, “Let me try on you..” she wiggled the little camcorder, slipping her hand into the attached grip, flipping open the small screen. Despite your complaints that there was no way it worked, Ellie just could never be wrong. Of course she knew you would fight back, and so she had made sure she fished some batteries too. Of course they came from Maria, the cost three days of stable duty.. But it was worth it for the immune woman, who ducked her nose down and watched the screen flicker to a slow start.
The quality was no better than that of what you could expect from a decades old camera, the film grainy and muffled, each corner covered by symbols Ellie didn’t really understand. But it was no roadblock in the trek of her wants. She smiled when your hands immediately came to slap over your face, voice serious behind your palms as you spoke, “put that down.”
Eventually however, you got a little used to Ellie’s newest fixation. The little hums she made were always a dead give away that she was filming you. During a video game tournament against Dina and Jesse, squished so closely to the two on the floor of the garage that you literally bruised the taller man during a particularly aggressive round of a fighting game. When you were trying your best to compete against your girlfriend’s art skills, tongue poking out the corner of your lips as you worked on a very detailed stick figure that dawned pointed down eyebrows, a large frown and red pencil hair. Even just when you were organizing Ellie’s closet for her, sorting through the tens of sweatshirts with a judging pout on your lips at the mess.
Each time you heard the distinctive sound of El’s attempt at holding back laughs, a small little choked up ‘hmm’ sound. You usually turned your head, quick to flip off your girlfriend-turned-filmmaker. But by the fifth time of catching her smiling behind the little object, you just let her. Whenever you could see her a little less tense, you took it.
Even if that meant starring in all of her little five second shitty clips. Her excuse always, “Just something to look at when I miss you.”
In some ways it made you feel weak legged, slightly lovesick by the thought of Ellie loving you so dearly she just had to steal little memories of you. Every small grin that broke onto freckled cheeks wherever she filmed coaxed you into the haze built up by her new hobby. You became so covered in adoration soon that you resorted to tiny only half mad eye roll when the click of the camera sounded.
Small clips turned into Ellie’s free hand wrapping around your bare waist as you looked in the mirror of her bathroom, the camcorder pressed near your cheek, the auburnette on the other side. You wiped the condensation from the glass, the room still slightly foggy from your shower. “You are not filming me out of the shower,” you huffed. Ellie didn’t answer, the familiar sounding hum stopped only when she pressed a kiss to the base of your neck, lips pulling up into a smile against the skin. “Won’t point too low..” she promised. “You just look so pretty..”
That time, the camera had been closed and discarded on a random bedside table as the two of you stumbled across her floor, giggling as Ellie cursed, stubbing her toe on the corner of the bed she tried to press you down into.
It continued like that, the limits of what you allowed Ellie to film seemed to blur further with every day.. Every curl of her fingers around the object that had become so central to this small haven of her home. Your own neck hot for reasons very different from embarrassment each time the filming light blinked a little too long. The line that you and Ellie had drawn in the sand of your mind was looking a lot less precise with every new memory saved into the device.
Even further along into the passing weeks, you had settled comfortably into yet another night spent at Ellie’s. Your own bedroom had remained untouched for nearly a week this time, bed spread likely just as cold as the air outside. But the garage was warm. The air inside thick as you pressed two fingers against your lips to keep a laugh from spilling out. Glasses of half empty wine, stolen from Tommy and Maria’s cupboard, balanced on the table that sat directly in front of the couch you were cuddled into.
The feeling of wine drunkenness always made you giggly, but your girlfriend parading around her small living space with her camcorder, well, that made you even more prone to bursts of laughs. She had gone from filming and rambling on about what wine you were drinking to zooming into your face, chuckling with breath that smelt like red wine. “See how pretty?” Ellie gaped to no one, stepping closer to you on the couch. The whole garage was painted a light orange from the setting sun outside, but it didn’t stop Ellie.
“El, you’re being a dork,” you chide, shaking your head as more compliments spilt from her. She shoos off the bitten remark with a sound that boarders on a coo, leaning over you as the lens of the camcorder sat close enough to pick up the smaller details of your face the grainy film usually could not.
“I’m just showin’ how perfect you are..” Ellie explains, a softer tone edging into her lungs as she presses her thumb to your cheek, drawing a new heat under the digit. “Perfect cheeks…” her finger traces over your jawline next, and then your chin. Each new landmark of your face that Ellie doted on swept closer and closer to your soft lips. You were no idiot, you saw how the green of her eyes fell to the fat, watched as you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth and then out again. You made no move to stop what came next.
That next move was your girlfriend’s finger following like a moth to a flame to the one spot that teetered on that blurry line again, thumb pressing softly around the curve of your lips.
“Perfect lips,” Ellie continued, eyes flicking back and forth from the camera screen to you. Soon the pad of her finger is right against your bottom lip, and the room seems to slow.
The both of you hold bated breaths as you mull over your options. But this mulling is no longer than a few seconds, feeling overwriting the more logical side of your brain with a gushy type of tightness in your chest.
Your lips part, eyes meeting the lense as you suck the tip of Ellie’s thumb into your mouth. Lips wrap around the soft skin, salty and cold, and Ellie has little to say other than a slow and breathy, “Fuck..”
Your tongue peaks out just for a moment, lavishing over the wet skin, but Ellie is quick to pull away, leaving your shining lips parted in confusion. The camera falls to her side as her free fingers wrap around your wrist. Just like last time, the little red light twists away from your face. Ellie’s toes step backwards from that oh so mysterious line you two made.
“You know what you do to me, hm?” Ellie questioned as she hauled you up by your arm, a sharp giggle following as she stomped to the bed. The camera is discarded on the table near her pillows as you are thrown back on it.
“No,” you tease, your next giggle cut off by a thump noise that was Ellie pushing you back against grey sheets, you make a sound that almost sounds like “oof” as you try to readjust. Ellie clambers on top of your squirming frame as another sputtered laugh escapes at the messy, and not very seductive, way you two found contact against the creaking mattress.
“Tell me,” you prompt, meeting Ellie’s narrowed green eyes. “Why should I? You’re laughin’ at me.”
Your eyes roll as Ellie’s lips fall into a pout that you want to kiss clean off. “Stop being a baby,” you mutter before letting your impulse win, your hands cupping the freckles cheeks of your girlfriend and pulling her down for a soft kiss. Her pouted lips quickly shape to your own, and you sigh in approval as the hand not holding herself up traces down to your waist.
“I’m not a baby,” your girlfriend complains when your lips part from each other, and you nearly pinch her cheeks from just how lovely you find the whiny drawl in her voice, instead you just shrug, biting back another half bubbled up laugh, “mhm, prove it.”
Ellie does just that. One tug on your hips has you flatter against the bed, one poke at your side has a squeal leaving your mouth. You see how Ellie’s lips quirk up, but before you can admire the sight, she kisses you again.
“So,” Ellie punctuates the word with a kiss, the sort that makes a loud and annoying smacking noise, before trailing her lips to your cheek. “Fuckin” Ellie’s lips find home on your jawline next, and act that has a simmering heat grow between your legs. “Perfect.” Ellie finishes the repeat of what her fingers had done earlier by nudging your head back, lips pressing softer kisses to the flesh of your neck.
Your eyes flicked to the side table, pupils finding the little camcorder as the auburn haired girl bit at your neck, your attention pulled away as your eyes flutter closed at the feeling. “El,” you breathe out, a hand finding her messy hair, nails scraping at her scalp as she bit harsher at the column of your throat. You aren’t sure why her name had been your first thought to say after seeing the camcorder, swallowing as your fingers itched to reach toward the side table.
“Hm? Tell me,” Ellie taunts, words muffled as her next target becomes your collarbone. Your own words biting at you again as your eyebrows furrowed together, watching as your girlfriend’s fingertips find the edge of your shirt, pushing it up as your hand falls from her hair to help take it off.
You pull her back for another kiss before you can even think to answer her question, one you weren’t even sure you could explain. Ellie’s needy fingers come into contact with the fat of your tits, tweaking at the perked nipples, nails pressing in just a little too hard, earning a mewl directly against the spit slick kiss. As Ellie kissed you, you tried your best to focus on the feeling, and not how you were acutely aware of the camera beside you.
Her tongue swiped at your bottom lip, warm against your parting lips as she searched to deepen the kiss, messy sounds of half breaths and kissing all sounded through the small area, your hips rolling up as her knee slotted itself between your trembling thighs.
You can’t help but wonder what this may look like on camera, and as Ellie pulls back, you notice the green of her eyes had dimmed, pupils blown as the pretty eyelashes fanned lightly. The freckles splattered over the apples of her cheeks were particularly prominent tonight, and you suspected it had something to do with the blood that rushed there, rosy and all around causing that same lovesick feeling to creep up your weakened bones.
You wonder if she would look as pretty on that grainy screen too.
Before your mind can even form another thought, Ellie is pulling away from your lips, a small whine the response she received. You can’t complain for long as she moves down, wet lips trailing sloppy kisses to your soft stomach, planting the ember of a growing fire in your groin, causing your hand to flex. Your eyes are pulled by an invisible string to the side of you again, the black material of the camcorder your gaze’s target. Ellie grumbles in response, and a small pinch on your hip has you yelping.
“What’re you looking at? Look at me.”
“Ellie,” you try again, lip quivering nervously as she ushers you to lift your hips, tugging off the bottoms you wore. “Fuckkkk,” she drawls, lost in her own little world as a large hand presses your thighs open. “You see that?” she marvels, a finger pressing against the wet spot on your panties. When she presses, you can feel the fabric stick to you, nearing translucent as she teases, your lips hugging the now soaked panties. It has your hips stirring in their spot, the flame in your stomach burning your liquid feeling stomach. “Ellie,” you sigh again.
Finally her gaze looks up, “Yea?” she asks, her voice softening. You can see the flash of confusion, her hand falling from your thigh as she searched for any apprehension. “You ok?”
“I can’t—“ your voice comes out whinier than you would like to admit, harsh against your ears with a feeling of embarrassment. “Can’t say it,” you finish, eyes moving to the camera sitting on the small wooden table beside you for the umpteenth time.
Ellie follows your eyes, and when you look back to her, there’s a flash of surprise in the shade of green you loved so much. It was replaced quickly, her eyelids drooping as her chin tilted up. “Hm. Don’t know what you mean,” she shrugs, fingers going back to teasing your panty line.
Her tone is laced with sarcasm, the teasing tilt to it is a voice you had heard many times before, many times in this exact position. Ellie liked to make you say things, liked to watch you squirm. You were convinced at this point she got off on your embarrassment, and she probably wouldn’t even deny that.
“Gonna have to spell it out for me, babe,” Ellie added, dipping down to place soft kisses at your hip-bone, pink muscle licking over a mark there.
A low and annoyed sound escapes your throat, and your girlfriend chuckles against your flesh, one finger curling around the fabric of your panties, tugging it down a little ungracefully, your shaking thighs to thank for that.
“Barely even touched you yet and you’re shakin,” Ellie teases again, whispering softly, “Such a pretty pussy..” as the sight of your weepy folds meet her eyes. “This all for me, baby? Or somethin’ else on your mind?”
Your eyes squeeze shut again, hoping to rid your mind of the film reel like thoughts of the camera pressed in Ellie’s hand as she did this. They played over and over behind the black of your eyes, and another frustrated sound fills the garage.
“Not gonna answer?” Ellie was quieter now, repositioning herself, parting your thighs even more. A finger ghosted over your dripping cunt, a hum following the action. “Can’t make you feel better if you don’t use your words, y’know?”
The warm air hit your folds as Ellie exposed you more, thighs burning from the stretch, from the tight grip of one of her hands, fingers digging into and squeezing the fatty flesh.
The blanket beneath your bare ass is no comfort as you move around, and Ellie’s nose bumps against the softness of your thigh. So close, so fucking close to giving exactly what you were searching for, so close to your aching center that your resolve cracks lightly, head tilted back and against the pillow.
“The camera,” you croak, your mouth dry as your lips part, refusing to look at the other girl.
“What about the camera? Look at me and tell me what you want.”
The crease between your eyebrows likely was gaining small droplets of sweat just from how hard you were attempting to avoid this entire fucking conversation, but Ellie kept pressing you further, and who were you to deny her?
“Wanna film this,” you eventually admit, head dipping down to meet her darkened eyes.
“Yea baby? Wanna see what a mess I can make you?” Ellie’s words start to blur together, the idea surely muddling any coherent thoughts together in her mind, licking her lips as she awaits your response.
“Fuck— mmph, yes El. Please.*”
Ellie’s lips curl into a smile that’s more wicked than loving, “Red button starts it, you can hold it.” She instructed, and you scramble to reach your arm out, grasping at the little hand strap connected to the camcorder.
“There you go babe,” she nods, “give it a go, let me see what you’ve got.”
Your fingers are shaking so badly it takes a moment for your thumb to hit the button, to see the soft little red light noting the start of the film.
The grainy screen doesn’t pick up on all the freckles adorning Ellie’s face. The ones that made you feel all gooey, that you wanted to kiss until her face was a pretty shade of red. But it did capture her parted lips, the expanse of your thighs, and your shaky grip tilted the camera down as Ellie’s head dipped between your thighs.
Her mouth latched to your achy cunt, tongue licking up the drops of arousal that covered your slit, pearling on the petal like lips that she spreads with her fingers.
Your arms almost immediately gave out.
Clearly, you were not as skilled in the art of film making as Ellie had been, the camera dropping almost completely to your tummy as Ellie sucked at your cunt. Her eyes flicked up, and she unlatched from the saccharine slick that pooled on her tongue.
“You keep that camera steady,” she muttered, thumb rubbing tiny, tight circles on your throbbing clit. “Or I stop, yea?”
You nod quickly, hips grinding into the slow and steady motion of her thumb, wet with your sticky . You would have agreed to anything she demanded of you right now anyway. Too needy, too desperate to feel her lips on you again.
“ ‘M counting on you to make a pretty movie for me.”
The sentence tapers off as she disappears to the space between your thighs again, and you nearly and truly sob as her nose bumps your clit, her tongue poking experimentally against your hole, feeling as it clenches against nothing.
You know your whimpers and quick little puffs of air are being picked up by the camera, but you’re too focused on keeping the lense directly focused on the auburn tendrils of hair, on where her face was covered by your thighs caging her cheeks in, keeping her in the place she most needed to be, drinking down every single single drop you gave her.
“Ellie,” you whine, toes curling when she presses away from your clit, two long fingers coming to part your folds, admiring the sticky sight.
“Shhh,” Ellie coos, eyes glancing up at the camera again, the burning sight of her fern colored gaze through the tiny screen has your stomach clenching even harsher, hands trembling lightly.
The air on your exposed center lasts no longer than a few seconds, Ellie’s head dipping down as the warm, wet feeling of a glob of her spit trails down your clit, finding your pulsing hole. Her tongue swipes it quickly after, suckling gently at the shiny bubbles. The sound that follows, the loud wet squelch of your wetness mixing with her spit is enough to make you want to cover the speaker of the camcorder, fingers gripping tightly at the little contraption. She focuses on licking at your sopping cunt, her head moving slightly, moaning against your folds.
“Oh—nnh—El!” you cry, your chin trembling in tandem with the hand you try desperately to keep still. Your hips rut up, and Ellie’s face moves up with you, an arm detaching from its place on your squishy thigh to instead wrap around your waist, pulling you closer. Impossibly closer.
You can feel yourself closer, closer to that delicious peak, Ellie’s nose bumping your clit, tongue working mind numbing ministrations on you.
Then she pulls back.
“Fuckin made for me,” Ellie groans, taking a deep breath as she unlatched from your pussy, her fingers sweeping through your puffy lips. “Was fuckin’ made to let me taste you.” Her eyes flick to the camera, her tone louder than usual— a little less breathy. She wanted the microphone to hear.
You cry pathetically at the loss of her tongue, lip quivering.
“Tell me,” she demands, voice overpowering the slick noises of her now shiny fingers rubbing between your folds, the tips pausing at your pulsing hole, dipping only a little in, teasing. “Tell me this pretty pussy was made for me.”
And then Ellie is reaching forward, letting go of her grip on your hips to grab harshly at the camera, maneuvering it to show your trembling body, her fingers pressing open your lips, giving the camera a pretty close up of your soaked cunt. She croons at the sight, her fingers pressing together to land a short and sharp slap against the swollen lips. “S’pretty.”
“Ellie,” you choke, chest heaving up and down as the embarrassment creeps up, making that coil in your tummy even tighter.
“Tell me,” she says again, smoothly.
Desperate to have her fingers opening you up, to have her filling you and breaking that tightly wrapped tension in your groin, you break.
“I’m yours el. ‘m all yours, was made for you,” your voice is restrained, quiet as you chew at your lips, stirring in your spot as she continues the teasing.
“What else? Tell me more, baby,” she insists, one long finger sinking into you, hissing at the feeling of your cunt molding to her, perfect for her as you clench.
“A—ah!” your voice is a sweet little cry. You grind down into the feeling, searching for more. “It’s yours El,” you babble— louder now, head thrown back. Ellie captured the moment with a quick tilt up of the camera. “M-my pussy s’all yours.”
“Fuck,” Ellie breathes, her own, usually steady camera hand, wavering as you speak. She grants you with another finger as she thrusts harshly into you, a shriek pulled from your open mouth.
“So—s-so fucking perfect,” she grunts, curling her fingers gently, hitting that squishy spot in your walls that has you keening, eyes rolling back. “Love this pussy so much, shit—shit, love you so much.”
“Love you too El,” you blubber, your chin tilting down to stare directly at the camera for a second. That awkwardness, the fear from the early days of when she’d film you completely gone as you moan pathetically, eyes shiny with complete and utter adoration.
She only pistons her fingers into you harder, faster, relishing in how you moan, how your toes curl and your chin wobbles. You’re the prettiest fucking thing she’s ever seen.
The camera points down to where she’s thrusting into you, watching through the screen as you meet her thrusts, your hips moving against the grey sheets, your thighs squeezing her hand in between them as you sob out.
Ellie meets your eyes, stealing your attention from the camera she keeps focused on your squirming frame, pounding her fingers into your cunt. “Cum for me, you can do it baby, go on. Give me a pretty show.”
And you do. Your sweaty back lifts off the bed with a sharp sob as the cord in your tummy snaps, gushing around Ellie’s fingers, pulsing around her as she thrusts shallowly, riding you through it.
Your vision goes black for a second as you heave, hands shaking as you reach out for Ellie, fingers looking to curl around her warm skin.
You don’t even notice the off click of the camera, of how she lets it softly drop to the side as she climbs up your shaky form, pressing a sweet kiss to your cheek.
“So pretty,” Ellie hums, “Prettiest movie star ever,” she mumbled, and you pour your lips— getting another soft kiss as she continues to plant tiny loving pecks around your face.
“Never should’ve let you keep that camera,” you whisper gently, smiling right when she does against the corner of your mouth that she pecks at.
“Yea fuckin’ right, we just made the movie of the year babe.”
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kutyozh · 6 months ago
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not only langblr music resources
people irl often ask me where the heck i find the music i listen to, so i figured i might as well make a handy resource masterpost!
Radio Garden: Listen to radio stations all over the world. You can save your favourite stations, explore radio playlists, and search for stations in specific countries or cities. Love this one. You can download the app (android and apple) or listen via your preferred browser.
Radiooooo: Lets you choose a country, a decade, and a 'genre' (slow, fast, or weird) to listen to. You can download the app (android and apple) or listen via your preferred browser.
Charts: Charts can be tricky if you're looking for music in a specific language since there are multiple languages present in most country specific charts. It is nevertheless worth checking them out. Spotify charts or Top 40 Charts are your places to go.
Tunefind: Heard a song in a film or tv show that you enjoy but can't find it in the credits? This is the website for you! I use it when shazam fails me or when I'm at the cinema and can't use it or w/e. The songs sometimes come with a description of the corresponding scene for easy checking. Just very handy to have on hand.
Local events: Check for concerts etc. in your area. I know this is not an option for everyone for a bunch of reasons, but if it is for you, visiting local concerts can be a gold mine. I got like ten whole new songs in spanish and one in rapanui from one event I went to (it was like a culture fest with singing, dancing, and poetry). Also listening to live music just connects you differently to the art imo.
Friends & Acquaintances: Last but not least; sometimes my nosiness beats my social anxiety and I simply ask people what they like to listen to. If I'm being extra confident, I ask if they listen to music in languages other than english. Go forth and ask people about their music, go go go!!
Spotify specific recs:
Every Noise At Once: Sounds overwhelming - and tbh it can be. For this reason I personally prefer to look at 'Genres by Country', although there are many other interesting playlists to look at, such as 'We Built This City On' or 'The Sounds of Places'. You can find more if you scroll all the way to the bottom. Unfortunately, due to the layoff of the creator of this site, some features are not available anymore. This website is entirely based on Spotify.
LindsayDoesLanguages. Individual language playlists + more
Shameless self promo - my own account with individual language playlists. Also on YouTube !
700+ Languages. A playlist by Matthew Bofenkamp that contains one (1) song per language, and as it says on the tin, Matthew has so far collected songs in over 700 languages. Might be a good starting point for more music in your language of interest! Accompanying g0ogle spreadsheet with youtube links here.
One Song in Every Language. A community playlist by looky_dooky that aims to collect one song in every language. Everyone with a spotify account can contribute.
Another research tip: If you're on desktop, a good way to find language specific playlists is to go to any artist's profile and scroll down to the "Discovered on" section, then click "show all". Voilà!
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(These showed up when I visited Haleluya Tekletsadik's page)
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catsgut · 1 year ago
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how scumbag jjk characters fuck
ft. gojo, yuuji, geto, toji, and megumi. all 18+
warnings : honestly just nasty men
-gojo
ok so scumbag gojo seems like any other fuckboy, but believe me when i say he’s completely different. he knows he’s hot so he doesn’t bother trying to be nice to girls. they will sleep with him either way, so why would he fake it?
always video tapes his hookups. doesn’t matter where or with who. once he filmed himself fucking a girl in an alleyway, flipping the camera around from the pov angle of your ass bent over to his face, flashing the camera a peace sign and a silly face
cums inside without asking and moans i love you everytime without fail
missionary is his favorite, but he also isn’t picky. any position where he can show off his pretty face works for him
moans like a little bitch and says things that aren’t even really that hot, but it’s gojo…. “take this long fat cock!!” “gunna creampie your cooch!”
always makes sure to eat your pussy like he is starved! he moans into it so loudly like he’s the one getting head. honestly the best part about hooking up with him.. i can see him doing that thing where he shakes his head side to side really fast with his tongue out lmfao
tells you to leave .5 seconds after he cums. does not want to cuddle after but will tell you to text him!
doesn’t text back
anyway, you aren’t leaving unsatisfied, but you’re definitely getting that post nut clarity on your way home. was it worth the second hand embarrassment?
-yuuji
lives with his mom and seems like a sweet boy, but gojo and geto have corrupted him. kinda a ladies man… he’s so sweet like a little puppy dog. hard to say to to him.
does not care what position, but he is an ass man. asks if you wanna try anal like every time you guys see each other. when you tell him yes, and you will, he doesn’t like wearing a condom. kinda gross, but he’s cute so you let it slide
he fucks hard and fast with 0 rythme. you ask him to slow down, but ten seconds later he is back to his original pace.
another moaner like gojo. he will be whining in your ear the whole time
he has such a big mommy kink it’s crazy. will suck your tits and ask you to call him a good boy, but if he’s around his friends he’s telling them how nasty you were for him.
cums inside, but when he does pull out, it shoots the back of your head into your hair. will proceed to cuddle you after. it’s very confusing because he tells you he likes you, but once you leave don’t expect a text back unless it’s him asking for nudes.
honestly the nicest out of all of them, but in no way does he care about your feelings. his only concerns are when he’s going to get laid next.
-geto
the way geto will have you FOOLED. like he can be just as rude as gojo, but he’s nice about it?? you at first believe him to be an alright guy, until you show up to the trailer him and gojo share. it’s dirty and smells like blunt ash. he doesn’t seem to have a problem with his bare mattress being on the ground in the living room area, patting the spot next to him
plays music loudly and honestly his playlist is pretty good so you don’t mind.
loves fucking you in doggy and will stick a thumb in your ass. thinks it’s funny to “accidentally” try to stick his dick in the wrong hole
pulls out and cums wherever, but never inside. he claims it is because he’s “too much of a gentleman” yet he refuses to wear a condom.
he fucks so good though you can’t even complain. the dick is immaculate
doesn’t eat pussy, says it’s gross but will ask for a blowjob 10 minutes into hanging out with him. “i let you smoke my weed i think i deserve something in return.” he will ask you to politely please leave if you say no.
let’s you shower afterwards, but honestly after seeing the state his bathroom is in you don’t know if you want to
-toji
idk where to begin. the scummiest of scummy men. hits you up on his friends phone because he doesn’t own one himself… you know he’s a piece of shit, but this dick is so good?? it’s unreal..
he can’t hold a job down, but he knows how to beat that pussy up. he’s so sloppy and gross with it.
degrades tf out of you! pulling your hair, spitting on you, ect.. anything downright dirty he’s into it. lowkey likes feet and probably sucks toes while he’s balls deep in you
doesn’t use lube, but soooooo much spit wooo man salivates so much
EATS ASSSSSSS i just know he does. will spit on it and try shoving his tongue as deep as it’ll go
his favorite position is pushing your knees to your chest. he’s able to fuck into you deeper that way. takes rearranging your guts to a whole other level.
PULL OUT GAME STRONG AF. man does notttt!! want another kid. he doesn’t even take care of the one he has now. still no condom though
you will most likely get a uti no matter how many times you piss afterwards, sorry. thats just the chance you have to take, but its honestly so worth it.
he is the one dipping out after sex because it’s never his house he fucks you at. (he doesn’t have a place of his own)
-megumi
you know he isn’t very nice, but he also isn’t down right mean? like geto, will smoke you out in his car and expect head afterwards. doesn’t tell you to leave if you say no, but will jerk off anyways.
boob man all the way. he doesn’t care about size, but likes to make you feel insecure about them. he’ll tease you about having a chest too small/big
likes when you squat ride him. he’s lazy and doesn’t feel like putting in the work. he won’t make eye contact what so ever, eyes only focused on your tits and pussy.
if you get tired in your position on top he will sigh and just lay there till you’re ready to start bouncing again.
doesn’t dirty talk or moan really. it’s mostly grunts and heavy breathing, but when you’re sucking his dick you can sometimes squeeze a whimper or two out.
like his daddy, his pull out game is above and beyond. doesn’t even want to take a chance with getting you pregnant and honestly doesn’t mind wearing a condom. if he isn’t wearing one then he likes to cum on your face and in your eyes.
he’s kind of sadistic, but just way too lazy to do anything about it.
let’s you shower after sex, but he only has a bar of soap that has pubes stuck to it in his shower. you wonder why his skin is so clear…
doesn’t care that much if you hang out after sex, but he won’t talk to you. just sits there on his phone. he’s actually not horrible about texting back, but don’t get attached because he is absolutely talking to several other girls.
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astrcmoni · 6 days ago
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★ᯓ say you trust my loveᯓ★
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pairing: billie eilish x fem!reader
MASTERLIST
synopsis: In the quiet tension of a rainy evening, you and Billie navigate the fragile cracks in your relationship, her unspoken fears and your quiet persistence threatening to collide. Through tender words and honest vulnerability, you begin to bridge the emotional distance, proving that love—yours and hers—is worth the effort.
warnings: cussing here and there …
wc: 2.4k
authors note: finally caught a break to write again. this is inspired by the songs ‘trustworthy’ and ‘bending my rules’ by flo (literally in love with their entire discography) anyways hope you enjoy this💋
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the faint plink of the faucet echoed through the quiet room, irregular but persistent. each droplet hit the metal sink with a sharp, hollow ring, like a tiny clock ticking in no set rhythm. the sound seemed louder in the stillness, a soft but nagging reminder of something left unresolved. Occasionally, a bead of water would gather on the edge, hanging for a moment before falling with a heavier, more deliberate splash. It was the kind of noise that got under your skin, subtle at first, then impossible to ignore.
the air around you felt heavy, as if an invisible weight pressed against your chest. every breath came shallow, as if the room itself had grown too small to contain the silence. the space between you two buzzed with unspoken words, each one sharp and electric, but stuck just out of reach. It was the kind of tension that settled in your stomach, coiling tight like a spring, leaving you both restless and paralyzed. Every little sound—the creak of a chair, the faint hum of the fridge—felt magnified, filling the void where conversation should’ve been. The longer it stretched on, the more unbearable it became, like holding your breath and waiting for a storm that might never break.
the distance had been growing between you for weeks. it was subtle at first — billie canceling plans here and there, zoning out mid-conversation, brushing off your attempts at figuring out what’s wrong with simple “i’m fine’s”. But now it’s undeniable, overtime you’ve grown to be sick of the bullshit. something in your gut was telling you that something was up and you weren’t going to let her run away this time.
your head was held up by your closed fist as you sat on the end of the couch. the hairs on your skin stood up slightly as the cold air washed over you. the mugs of tea sat on the coffee table, untouched and long gone cold. the faint film on its surface shimmering under the dim light. outside, raindrops trickled down the windowpane, their slow erratic paths leaving streaks that blurred the world beyond. the dark clouds above hung heavy, threatening to burst at any moment but for now they held back— just like the words between you two. the air in the room felt damp, not from the weather but from everything that’s been left unsaid. even the clock on the wall seemed hesitant, its ticking faint and uneven, as if time itself were unsure whether to move forward or to stop entirely.
her eyes bore into her phone as she curled into herself in the corner of the couch, phone illuminating her face and casting a faint glow in the dim light. she’d been sitting like that for nearly an hour, scrolling through her screen as though it could distract her from whatever was on her mind. and all you could do was watch, watch as she avoided you—avoided the conversation that clearly needed to be held.
It wasn’t unusual for her to retreat in to herself when she was overwhelmed. It’s something that you’ve come to learn as the deeper your relationship developed. learning that her walls weren’t going to be the easiest to break down and you weren’t one to force them either. but this time it was different. this wasn’t just some stress or a bad day. it was bigger than that and you both knew it. it was a fear…a fear that she wasn’t ready to face, even when it ate away at your relationship the more the problem was ignored and you were determined to figure it out.
‘this can’t keep happening’ you thought as you let out a tired sigh.
“what?” billie responded, not caring enough to look up at you. “you’ve been quiet all day. what’s going on?”
“i’m fine” she murmured. her tone flat and words unconvincing.
“my god- here you go.” you sucked in a sharp breath as your eyes shut, trying to calm down your building frustration.
“what?” her brows quirked up in confusion as she finally looked at you. eyes as blue as the seven seas bore into your own, for what felt like the first time in forever.
“you’re giving me the same rehearsed bullshit billie..that’s what. you shut me out and you hope that I don’t notice but I do.”
perplexity flickered across her face, as she set her phone down. brows knitted together as her eyes widened slightly, darting back and forth searching for a plausible explanation. her lips parted, but no words came out at first, just a shallow breath, as though she were trying to catch up to the accusation. The furrow in her brow deepened, and her head tilted just enough to show disbelief, like they were trying to piece together how things had gone so wrong. “Wait, what?” she finally stammered, their voice shaky, as if the accusation itself had knocked the wind out of them.
“just tell me what’s wrong.” your words left your mouth, ending off in a small plea as you scooted on the couch. close enough to give you comfort but far enough to give her her wanted space.
billie shifted her weight, discomfort written all on herself. “nothing i’m just tired”
“you’ve been “tired” all week babe. just talk to me…please.”
Billie’s gaze flickered briefly, like a shadow passing across the room, before she quickly turned away. Her lips pressed together, tight and unreadable, as if the words she wanted to say had been swallowed whole. A slight shift in her posture—shoulders drawn in, a subtle retreat—spoke louder than any denial. When her eyes met yours again, it was only for an instant, a look heavy with something unspoken, a silent plea. Her brows lifted for just a fraction of a second.
“Can we not?” she muttered softly under her breath, before her gaze darted back down, focusing intently on her hands or anything but the conversation. The space between you stretched taut, and with a delicate sigh, her gaze dropped, focusing on anything but you—a quiet invitation to let the silence speak for her, to walk away from the subject before it unraveled any further.
“no. we’re going to have this conversation. wether you want to or not, it’s as if you keep waiting for me to fuck up.”
you knew her to well, if you didn’t address this right now it’ll only worsen until it’s too late. instead of letting it go you decided to come up with a compromise, subsiding your frustrations and coming with a softer approach. “look people have bad days, i get it. you’re allowed to have them but don’t act like you have to deal with it all by yourself anymore. i’m right here”
she reached for her phone once more as she swallowed hard, eyes flicking back to the screen. “you always say that,” billie’s voice barely audible, the sound so soft as if they weren’t meant for you to hear. words caught in the space between you two. fragile and vulnerable, like glass. as if she was testing the air before allowing them to fully fall open. “But what if you don’t mean it? What if one day, you wake up and decide that we’re…that i’m not worth the trouble anymore?”. the weight of her question lingered in the air like a quiet storm, too heavy to ignore.
your eyes slowly blink as you take in her mere confession. surprised at her honesty but not the fear behind it, because you understood it, you once lived it.
her gaze flickered around the room before landing on you once more. “it’s not you..believe me it’s not. you’re doing everything right, and that scares me. I’m not used to this—someone being so steady. I keep waiting for you to prove me right, to show me I was stupid for thinking I could trust you.”
Your chest tightens, a sharp ache slicing through your heart as Billie’s words settle between you. It’s sudden, unexpected, the kind of pain that makes your breath catch, like something fragile inside you has just been cracked open. You knew she was afraid, but hearing it—hearing her voice, trembling with vulnerability—hits harder than you imagined.
a frown etched itself onto your face as you finally spoke up, your words gentle but firm. “now baby that’s not fair. i’ve bent my rules for you—things i said i’d never do, i’ve done because of how much i care about you. i’ve bent over backwards to show you i have no plans on going anywhere. what do i have to do to make you believe that? doesn’t it mean anything?”
reaching out you took her hand into your own. thumb mindlessly caressing the ink that was etched into her skin. it was an act of comfort, for hers or your own? that you weren’t sure of.
“It does. but it’s like everytime I start to believe you, something in my head is telling me to just not trust this. like maybe i’m fooling myself again.” looking down at your intertwined hands she grabbed them and placed them in her lap, opting to play with your fingers as she spoke. this subtle gesture letting you know that although nervous— she felt safe enough to let you in.
“I don’t know…it’s not something you can necessarily fix. it’s….me. I’ve been let down so much, i don’t even know what it feels like to completely trust someone.”
your fingers lifted to her head, brushing back strands of auburn hair that fell astray behind her hair. lifting her chin with your knuckle causing her eyes to meet with your own. “I get that. And i’m not magically stop feeling like that overnight. But I need you to meet me halfway, billie. I’ve changed how I do things because I want this to work out. Because I want you, all that i’m asking is that you at least…try”.
“and what if I can’t give you everything that you need?”
you breathed out, words falling from your soft lips. “then i’ll stay here and prove you wrong…” you leaned in closer, voice steady. “I’ve never done this with anyone but i’m willing to for you, just let me in a little more. I don’t need perfect billie— I just need you to be honest.” the words came out with ease, the weight of them grounding you both. making you feel more certain than you had in days.
Billie’s gaze flickered to yours, her eyes softening just a fraction, but her lips remained pressed together, caught somewhere between doubt and hope. You could see the hesitation in the way she inhaled, as if every breath she took was a decision. She opened her mouth, but the words faltered. A small sigh escaped her, her shoulders slumping slightly as she leaned back, hand covering her eyes acting as another wall and shielding her from everything, as if the fight had drained from her.
“You think you can just… wait for me to change?” Her voice was quieter now, almost lost in the space between you. She didn’t look away this time, though. “I’m not sure I can be what you need.”
You felt the sting of her words, but you didn’t pull away. Instead, scooted closer, your hand reaching for the one covering her face without thinking, needing to make that connection. “You don’t have to be perfect,” you repeated, your thumb brushing against her knuckles. “Just be real with me. I can’t make you trust me, but I’ll show you that you can. All I need is the chance.”
For a long moment, she didn’t speak. Then, slowly, as if testing the waters, she squeezed your hand just slightly, a quiet admission that she might be ready to believe.
“you’re so…steady. It’s like you’re this constant— and i’m just chaos. How are you so sure?”
“Because I know what I want. and I want you, chaos and all.”
“you really think i’m worth all this effort?” billie’s eyes soften as she looks at you but she’s still hesitant. the hue of her eyes reminding you of swimming pools. so full of emotions that you can drown in it.
your head moved on its own without hesitation. “yes. i wouldn’t be with you if i didn’t. To be honest…I get scared too, sometimes i wonder if you’ll ever trust me the way i do you? but then i look and i know you’re the one for me. i’ll do whatever it takes to show you that.”
for the first time in days billie relaxes just a little. letting herself fall into you, allowing you to truly connect with her. a few beats pass by as you both fell into a comfortable silence. your hand combed through her hair over and over while you watched the rain.
The soft pecks on your neck pull you out of your thoughts, and you feel her smile against your skin. It’s a quiet, unspoken apology—a gentle way of saying she’s finally letting go, letting herself be here with you. You turn slightly, just enough to meet her gaze, and for the first time in days, there’s a softness in her eyes that you haven’t seen in a while.
“I’m not perfect,” she says, her voice almost too quiet, but it doesn’t feel like a confession anymore. It’s more like a surrender, like she’s finally giving herself the permission to just be—to let you in without the weight of all her walls.
“I never needed you to be,” you reply, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “I just need you to be here, with me, right now. That’s enough.”
Billie exhales, her body relaxing into yours once more, and this time it’s different. There’s no hesitation, no fear creeping back in. She’s just here, in this moment, with you. For the first time in a while, there’s peace in her touch, the steady warmth of her presence grounding you both.
The rain outside has softened into a light drizzle, the world outside feeling distant and muted, as if nothing else matters but the quiet connection you share now. You press a soft kiss to her temple, and her eyes flutter closed for a moment, the weight of everything finally lifting.
“Thank you,” she whispers, her voice small but sincere. “For being patient with me.”
You smile, a soft, tender curve of your lips. “I’ll always wait for you, Billie. As long as you need.”
And in that moment, everything feels like it’s finally falling into place. There’s no more rushing, no more wondering if things will work out. For the first time, you both just exist together—imperfect, but real—and that’s enough.
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celestie0 · 10 months ago
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gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]
kickoff ch.7 to lose someone you love
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ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader
ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.
ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, mentions of weed, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot
ᰔ chapter. 7/x (probably 12)
ᰔ words. 8.5k
a/n. sighhh i'm rly sorry for the wait. and thank you sooo much to the love for the last chapter omg :') this chapter is gojo pov and it's a bit different than the rest, but i still hope you enjoy and that it was worth the wait. if there are typos, they're not typos they're actually 100% intentional and you are the silly one
nav. masterlist
☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1
♬.*゚playlist
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When Gojo was just four years old, he called for the paramedics for the very first time. 
He had wandered around the house, wide and innocent blue eyes searching the room for the landline in the dim light of the evening, his lip quivering in a pout. His small arm reached up to pet around at the top of his parents’ dresser before his fingers wrapped around the phone. He couldn’t remember what the number was at first, the one his mother always told him to call in case of an emergency, but he remembered he scribbled it down somewhere with red crayon in one of his coloring books. By the time Gojo first realized he needed to call for help, located the landline, looked through all of his little portraits of dinosaurs and spaceships sprawled across the carpet of his room, found those three numbers, and then finally dialed them, his father had already been seizing and shaking on the bathroom floor for longer than twenty-four minutes.  
He was just a child. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know any better.
Gojo spent the remainder of that night hugging his mom in the hospital’s emergency room, his tears soaking through her shirt as she gently rocked him back and forth in her lap while whispering soothing words in his ear. His father lay motionless on the hospital bed before them, eyes shut, and Gojo will never forget the haunting sounds of the machinery that was keeping his father alive. It was a sudden onset seizure, likely stemming from the traumatic brain injury his father had suffered a few years ago, and the prolonged convulsions he experienced on the bathroom floor that night had resulted in severe brain damage. Gojo could still hear the echo of his mother’s silent cry when the doctors informed them that it’s unlikely his father would ever fully recover from this.
No reasonable adult would ever look a four-year-old in the eyes and say if you had called for help sooner or knew what to do, maybe your father would’ve still had the chance to live a long life. Yet, even at his young age, Gojo was aware of the energy in the room, and that explanation was the only truth his mind could grasp onto to make sense of what he had just witnessed.
After two weeks of clinging to life, his father miraculously woke up from his coma and persevered for the sake of his wife and son. Shortly after the incident, he began to have recurring seizures but fought through them each time. Without fail, he made Gojo breakfast in the mornings, even if it meant having to clean up the spilt orange juice on the counter every now and then because of how his hands could not stop trembling. He always walked Gojo to the bus stop, waving him goodbye, despite how troublesome and embarrassing he found it to use his cane. The love he had for his son was so palpable that it eclipsed the bitterness over how his life had ended up because of the blessing it had brought him.
In his prime, Gojo’s father was a renowned soccer player, so incredibly talented at the sport that he left a lasting mark on the way teams strategized, his presence on the field commanding respect, and he was one of the greatest talents the entire college division had ever seen.
He met Gojo’s mother at one of his freshman year games, a pretty lady in the stands that caught his eye from the sight of her laughter among her friends, her radiance drawing him to her from the field, and that’s how their love began. Exactly one year following that day, he stole one of his grandmother’s thrifted rings from her jewelry collection and that was what he used to propose. Gojo’s mother had accepted it with so many tears and so much snot running down her face, and he had never found her more beautiful. They married young and sweet, like most people back then.
During the thrilling semifinal match between Keio Uni, Gojo’s father’s team, and Yokohama Uni during the end of his senior year, spectators witnessed a game that most college soccer enthusiasts would deem was a once-in-a-lifetime watch. Both teams engaged in relentless offense, and Gojo’s father was on his way to shatter the record of the most goals scored in a single championship match within the history of the league, but when he received a call from his wife during a timeout with the most life-altering news he could have ever heard, he abandoned everything on the field that day to go home and be with her. Grainy footage from the televised broadcast still exists online today—the moment he sprinted across the field, confused players glancing in his direction, amidst the uproar of the crowd. She called to let him know she was pregnant. 
No one knew that would be the last game of soccer he would ever play.  
It was a freak accident, a distracted driver behind the wheel of a gray Chevy on a dark and rainy night, veered straight towards Gojo’s parents car to avoid a branch on the road. In a moment that could only be described as his instinct to protect, he quickly swerved his vehicle, taking the brunt of the impact on his side. His family surrounded him at his hospital bedside as they grappled with the news that he would be unable to play the sport ever again due to his traumatic brain injury that would lead to lifelong motor function loss. According to the doctors and police, had he not swerved to shield his wife and unborn child, the outcome would have been far more disastrous. After months of rehabilitation, he regained enough ability to walk and just enough function in his extremities to welcome his newborn son in his arms.
When Gojo was just six years old, two years after witnessing his father’s first seizure, he stumbled upon a dusty, forgotten soccer ball tucked away in the corner of the garage. When he eagerly presented it to his father, excitement gleaming in his eyes, he was only met with a scowl and the demand to discard it, to never bring such things like that to him ever again. His mother protested, ensuing in an argument, and as Gojo lowered his gaze to the ball in his hands, he noticed his father’s faded signature adorned with a heart and message of love for his mother. The ink, once vibrant, now faded with time.
It wasn’t until Gojo turned seven that his father finally relented to teach him more about the sport, knowing it was all his son wanted for his birthday. With determination in his heart, Gojo pleaded for his father’s guidance, eager to kick around a nearly deflated, weathered ball. His father watched his son, expression morphing from reserved and stoic, softening to surprise, then hopeful, and he found himself cheering on his son’s clumsy endeavors on the field despite how many times he tumbled and fell. Because that was his son, his pride and joy, reminiscent of him embracing the sport that he himself had cherished so many years ago. 
As Gojo grew older and excelled at the sport, securing victory after victory in every youth league, his father’s health steadily declined. The recurring seizures caused by the brain damage from his prolonged convulsions on that fateful night exacerbated over the years and started to take an increasing toll on his body. Yet still, he never missed even a single one of his son’s games. Whenever Gojo swiftly sent the ball flying through the net, the first person his eyes would search for on the field was his father, the joy in his eyes being all he cared about in the world. Gojo lived to make his father proud, because it was the only thing that made him feel like he could make up for what little he had done to protect his father that night.
You were just a child. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know any better.
The day following Gojo’s eleventh birthday, his father had his second major seizure, falling into another coma, but this time he never woke up. Two years later, his mother made the tough decision to end his life-support, and then he was gone from their lives. Gojo’s mother was inconsolable, and he knew that his father took a piece of her soul with him to heaven that night. The piece that allowed her to smile. 
one day, you’ll lose someone you love. and everything following will fail to have meaning. 
But why was he remembering all of that now? 
The shrill of Gojo’s alarm clock woke him up from the intrusive memories that were washing through the fore-front of his mind, and he grumbled to himself before whacking at his nightstand haphazardly to shut the thing off. He ran a hand across his face in an attempt to wipe the sleepiness away, features instantly settling into an annoyed scowl as he blinked his eyes open and the filtering sunlight through the windows harassed his vision. 
He laid there for a few seconds, mending to the pounding headache at his temples with his fingers rubbing circles, and then he finally sat up in bed. Blinking at his sheets, the images of last night start to flash through his mind. The heavy music, the dim lighting of the bathroom, the dizzying jealousy, and the taste of you on his tongue–
The memory is supposed to arouse him, and would on any normal day, but because you had left him standing there stunned with no release of his own at all, he instead just feels a pulsing, soul-deep throbbing pain at his crotch that could really only be due to the fact he was left high and dry by you last night. He groans at the sensation, palm pushing down on his lower abdomen to try and relax the torture, which barely helped. It’s either he jerks off or takes a cold shower, and given the former was likely not possible for him right now since his god-forsaken brain decided to push the traumatizing experiences of his childhood to the forefront of his headspace first thing in the morning, meaning it’s unlikely he’ll be able to settle into the memory of you bent over that bathroom counter for him, he decides on the cold shower. And it’s safe to say that today already fucking sucked.
The moment the chill water hits the skin of his body, he recollects the look you had on your face right before you walked out on him. Soft, searching, to him almost seraphic, but you also looked wounded. And something from your anger with him since before he even had you in that bathroom, to the agonizing moment you left him in there by himself, told him he’d messed up big time with you somewhere along the lines. 
He knew he had been a jerk last night. He didn’t really have much of a right to be seethingly possessive of you, but the sight of you kissing another guy had him seeing red and his knuckles turning white. He finds himself clenching his jaw at the unwelcome memory even now. He figured he probably ruined what would’ve otherwise been an enjoyable night for you, and so you decided to get revenge by walking out on him. However, he can’t shake the feeling that things are messy and complicated now, primarily because of him, and he felt like he needed to apologize for dragging you into his weird, confusing emotions.
He gets himself dry and dressed, grateful for the barely sufficient relief he had down south, and sighs as he grabs his phone and taps on your name, thinking about what to say to you, and just settles on typing out Hey, can we talk? and then presses send. He turns the ringer of his phone off, tosses the device onto his bed and then heads out the door. 
Geto was sitting on the couch in the loft, rubbing an ice cube across his forehead as he sprawled on the cushions and let out low and consistent groans to himself. Gojo flopped down on the armchair across from him and assumed a similar position, rubbing at his temples to nurse his own headache. Geto opens an eye to look at him.
“Morning,” he grumbles. 
“I take it I’m not the only one that feels like they’ve been hit by a truck?” Gojo asks.
Geto makes a disgruntled noise and throws his head back on the cushion. “I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. God knows how much I had last night.” He reaches over to the console table in the center for the bottle of Ibuprofen and tosses it to Gojo, who catches it and stares down at the label. “I didn’t really see you drink that much though. Don’t know why you’re hungover.”
Gojo sighs. He wasn’t hungover. His headache was from the fact that had a lot on his mind. Like the feeling of your skin last night. And then the pain of being blue-balled. And also for some reason his father’s death. Very exhausting to juggle those thoughts at once. 
Gojo twists the cap off the bottle of Ibuprofen and pops two pills, drowning them in his mouth with Geto’s glass of water, then runs a frustrated hand through his hair. The man across from him raises an eyebrow.
“You good?” he asks.
“Super peachy,” Gojo replies.
He sighs. “Well, whatever it is, just make sure it doesn’t affect your play today,” Geto warns him, sinking further down into the couch. Gojo lets out an exhale through his nose. Geto usually pushed further for answers whenever he was in a mood, so the fact that he didn’t this time meant that hangover was bad.
“I’m more worried about you. You think you’ll be fine in a few hours?” Gojo asks. Geto just waves his hand in the air in response as he grabs the hand towel on his chest and drags it up over his face, shielding himself from the light of the room.
“I have no choice but to be fine. We have to win this game,” is all he says through muffling cloth.
Gojo nods, resting his elbows on his knees and looking down at the carpet. It was finally the game of the 28th, arguably the second-most important game of the season. If they take home the win, they’re automatically seeded into top sixteen teams, which means they’ll only have to win four more matches after today to take home the championship. But if they lose, they’re seeded to the bottom, and then four turns into a daunting eight. In the history of the league, not a single team has ever lost their pre-seed game and still continued to win the playoff championship. So Geto was right, they have no choice but to win today. Otherwise, they could kiss goodbye to a 12-year UTokyo championship streak.
“Not going for your run?” Geto asks, interrupting his thoughts.
“Nah, not feeling up for it,” Gojo replies.
He clicks his tongue. “Never skip the pre-game ritual, man.”
Gojo groans, knowing that he’s right, and so he reluctantly gets up off the chair and heads back into his room. His phone lay there on the bed, facing down, and he felt so tragically taunted by it that he weighed the options of whether or not he should check if you replied back before his run or after his run. And then he’s wondering why you affect him this much in the first place.
He resolves to check after his run, and only gets one arm through his shirt before his hands betray him and he snatches his phone, eagerly tapping the screen to turn it on. 
He sees your name at the top, where you had just replied barely a minute ago. Sure, we can talk. He blinks at his phone when he sees the polite period at the end of your message, and the proper capitalization, not to mention a vocative comma? He was starting to feel really nervous.
He didn’t care that you had only replied a minute ago, he quickly typed out his response and sent it.
|| 10:35am Gojo: Do you know how to get onto the stadium field today?
He sees you typing, and he’s holding his breath.
|| 10:36am you: yes, I do. I’m going in w the newsletter journalists. Was this what you wanted to talk about?
What did he want to talk to you about exactly? Something like I’m sorry about being an ass last night, totally not cool for me to be that territorial over you, although I can’t say I wouldn’t do it again because seeing you kiss someone other than me kind of made me want to die. Also, I’m sorry for acting like you’re just someone I know, I don’t know why I did it. I guess it’s because I didn’t know if you thought of me as any more than just someone you know either, and that thought was frightening. Did I mention I hated seeing you kiss someone that wasn’t me?
He’s never really been good with words. Or feelings. 
10:37am Gojo: No, it’s not, it’s something else. I’ll come find you on the field before the game starts
He stands there, gaze fixed on his phone screen for the minute-long pause you took to respond, that for him felt like tortured eons, just for you to send-
10:39am you: k
Gojo finishes getting dressed for his run, anxiety brewing in his stomach drearily, and when he heads out the door of the house, the fresh morning air doesn’t help calm him down like it usually does. Of course, as he’s running, his thoughts wander to you. He’s thinking about the smell of your hair–or was it the perfume on your skin?–either way, it was intoxicating. The curve of your neck, that spot that made you whimper– fuck. Think of other things. Like the sound of your voice, soft and sometimes needy, but he enjoys it that way–makes his head spin. Or when you’re being sweet and thanking him for something you shouldn’t, because to him everything about you was a privilege and never a task. Even in the hot spring sun of the late morning, he finds himself missing the warmth from your body, and that look. That goddamn look in your eyes when you’re peering into his like you want him to–
“I’m sure he’s really proud of you.”
His legs stop him on their own, like they know something about the feelings in his chest that he doesn’t, and he’s standing still on the sidewalk of the neighborhood now. Short puffs of air escape his lips from his blood pumping fast through his body, and he could physically hear the sound of you in his head. Intimate enough to where he turns to the side slightly facing his surroundings, like there was no way it was just a memory and you weren’t actually near. He finds himself swallowing hard and having to consciously keep moving forward.
Gojo makes it back to the house, freshens up for the second time today, and gets dressed into his UTokyo soccer uniform with his signature #10 jersey. He leaves with Geto to campus, where all his teammates gather before eventually boarding the bus to the UTokyo stadium field ten minutes away. Coach Yaga yells their ears off in the locker rooms in an attempt to get their plays for today through their brains, and the exhilarating noises from the stands as they make their formal entrance through to the field fills Gojo’s senses, along with the obnoxiously loud music playing as pre-game rituals settle in. Gojo sets his bag down on the bench and joins the others in warm-ups for about fifteen minutes, before catching a chance to sneak away and look for you across the expansive pristine grass.
After lightly jogging around the perimeter of the field for a couple of minutes, he finally spots you, his raised eyebrows now flattening under the fringe of his hair as he relaxes. He didn’t realize he was tensing his shoulders until now. You were just beyond the sidelines near a hydration station, fidgeting with something in your camera case, lips pressed together in a frustrated expression, and he saw your body sulk with the sigh you let out as you must’ve realized you had forgotten something. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards into a slight smile, an unconscious reaction to seeing you look so damn cute from your troubled face decorated with a pout. And then he remembered he had been looking for you, and he had found you, and the only thing to do next was to be near you. 
He ambles up to you, and you only catch sight of him when he’s just a few feet away and finally standing in front of you. He sees your eyes widen slightly, lashes blinking once, twice, and then there’s a blush of color to your cheeks as you fidget with the stadium access badge hung around your neck. He noticed there were grass stains on your jeans over your knees when he looked down.
“Hey,” Gojo greets you over the loud music playing on the field.
“Hi,” he sees you say, and he realizes he can barely hear you.
“Let’s go over there,” Gojo yells, jerking his head over to the side.
He leads you over to an area tucked near the east side entrance, a corner slightly underneath one of the sectioned stands where the loud cheers of the stadium somehow reflected off less. It was about as private or silent of a place that the two of you could manage to have a conversation on a soccer field before a match, if you could just ignore the dressed up school mascots rehearsing their walk-ins and walk-outs through the entryway.
You take a few steps backwards until your back hits the concrete slab wall, and he’s in front of you as he watches you study him for a second, taking in the sight of his uniform, before your eyes finally meet his.
“Are you ready to take your photos today?” he asks you, poorly attempting to make small talk despite the images of you with him in that bathroom last night flashing through his memory. Now was seriously not the time to be turned on.
You nod, and respond “I am”, giving him absolutely nothing to work with.
He sighs. “Listen, about last night, I just wanted to apologize. For dragging you into that bathroom with me, although you did ask me to-” He sees you narrow your eyes and cross your arms across your chest. “Sorry,” he sighs, “Seriously, I just…I don’t know what got over me then.”
“You don’t know? Or you just don’t want to tell me?” you prod at him. He briefly considers pretending he doesn’t hear your question over the sound of the stadium, but he knows he wouldn't get away with that, not with the way you’re looking at him like he’s just one more fuck-up away from making you storm off.
He looks at your lips. “I guess the only thing I know is that I didn’t like seeing you kiss someone else.”
You shake your head and close your eyes. “I know you didn’t, Satoru. Otherwise last night wouldn’t have happened. What I’m asking is why.”
He’s struggling now, searching his head for answers, like he’s fighting for his life on a test that he didn’t study for. When he looks down, he notices your foot has been tapping impatiently. And when he looks back up, there’s that wounded expression from last night again. “I don’t know,” is all he can offer.
You uncross your arms from your chest, lips parting slightly as your eyebrows pinch upwards with a disheartened look. He sees your gaze shift slowly across the features of his face, searching, and he wonders if you can see something within him that he can’t. The thought terrifies him. “Fine. It’s my turn to speak.”
He nods slowly. He wasn’t sure what you wanted to say to him. He imagined you would just cuss him out with a few choice words for being a raging asshole last night and then you’d be on your merry way. But he senses sincerity in your voice. Not that he was phenomenal at reading people, though.
He watches as you clench and unclench your fists at your sides nervously, then twiddle with the strap of your camera, then tuck your hair behind your ears, then blink rapidly as you look up at him, then worry your bottom lip between your teeth, then open your mouth to speak just to close it again.
“Do you need me here for any of this?” he says in an attempt at a joke to ease you, but when all you give him is a glare, he’s fearful enough to be serious again.
“I like you.”
He blinks. “Thanks? I like you, too.”
“No, no. I like you as in I have feelings for you,” you clarify. Gojo’s eyes widen at the confession, and he stands up straighter. 
“Oh,” he finally replies when he realizes he hasn’t said anything yet, “I…I wouldn’t have guessed that.” Holy shit, if that was how you felt, then he really has been a raging asshole this entire time. 
You roll your eyes. “I know. You’re a hopelessly dense, menacingly flirty, sleazy frat dude college athlete,” you sigh, “But I still like you. Unfortunately, tragically, annoyingly, much to my dismay, against my better judgment,”
“Okay, I get it-”
“I think it started that night you stayed with me when I was stranded with my flat,” you confess suddenly, your chest rising a little bit faster, and his expression softened. “I just really appreciated you being there for me.”
His voice is gentle when he speaks next. “You don’t have to thank me for that. I would’ve been there if it happened ten times over,” he pauses, “although I’d seriously question your ability to drive if it happened that many times.”
“And I think it started when you walked me out to the practice field for the first time, and you told me you cared about my dreams,” you say with a slight step forwards to him, unable to acknowledge his words at all, as if there was a script you needed to stick to that was the only thing keeping you from falling apart in front of him. 
He finds himself instinctively leaning towards you, close enough to where he notices you’re wearing a different perfume today. “But that was before the night of your car incident,” he reminds you.
“I know,” you nod, and there’s that look in your eyes that he loves, “and I also think it started that first night we met and you looked sad when I said we weren’t friends.”
Gojo’s eyes widen, his heart skipping a beat in his chest, and he finds himself breathing shallowly as he listens to your words. “y/n…I think you’re working backwards here.”
“I’m trying to say I’ve had feelings for you this whole time,” you say to him, “they were tiny at first, I didn’t really see them, but now they’re too big for me to hold all by myself.”
Gojo nods slowly, and he already knows what you’re going to ask of him next.
“I like you in a way that makes me want more from you,” you admit, eyes steadily on his with resolve, “I don’t want to be just someone you know, or someone only for sex-”
“y/n-” he tries to interrupt you.
“And I certainly won’t be someone that sits around to wait for a guy if he doesn’t want me back,” you say, but there’s an apprehensive look in your eyes when you speak next, “so, I need you to answer to my feelings.”
Gojo blinks at you, his heart beating fast in his chest from your confession, and he feels like with every testing second that he fails to answer you back, you slip further and further away from him.
He knew he had affection for you. He always wanted to be close to you, even when he already was, as if he couldn’t get close enough. He wanted to take care of you, and see that softness in your expression when he knew you felt safe and happy. He couldn’t stand the thought of you with someone else, and it took him this damn long to realize as he stood in front of you that he had no interest in being with anyone else either. So then why did his chest feel so tight? And why was he struggling so much to give you an answer?
one day, you’ll lose someone you love. and everything following will fail to have meaning. 
Gojo’s eyes widened as the memories of his life flashed through his mind, a chill running down his spine as they knock the wind from his lungs and he feels that same sense of dread that has been following him like a ghost since that day when he was just four years old, standing in the hallway, wondering why his father was having a nightmare on the bathroom floor when he should’ve known it was something far worse than that.
Gojo blames himself for so much that had gone wrong in his life. And he should know that it’s not his fault, but all of his grief was greedy to breathe and live, desperate to find a reason for why he had to lose someone he loved, and his grief found a home in all of his guilt.
And he was terrified to lose someone close to him again. Even if he decided to see what could become with you, even if he thought for a moment that he was allowed to feel any sort of happiness with you, the thought of falling short and failing frightened him. He was so tired of adding to a long list of regrets in his life. And he knew he wasn’t what you needed— what you deserved.
“I…” he starts, swallowing the lump in his throat, “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the same way about you.” He knows he sounds convincing enough from the way the light in your eyes dimmed, anticipation faltering and replaced with a sad expression over your features. He needs to take a shaky breath to continue speaking. “It seems I’ve led you on in a lot of ways, and I apologize for that. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen anymore.”
You’re silent for a long moment, twiddling with your fingers as you look up at him. “I see…” you say, and when he sees your lower lip quiver slightly, he feels sick. His instinct is to reach out for you, pull you closer to him, but he knows that’s not a luxury you would allow for him, and he knew it wasn’t one he deserved either. 
Your voice is trembling when you speak next. “I appreciate you letting me know. And you don’t have to worry about not leading me on anymore, because this will be the last time you see me.”
His entire body runs rigid. 
“Why?” It’s a stupid question, but he asks it anyway.
“So I can get over you.”
All he can do is stand with the feeling of a chill in his bones.
“And I ask that you’ll respect my space while I do,” you add on at the end.
He’s silent for a long moment, then lets out the breath he was holding in. “I will,” he says, the promise leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
There’s a moment where you both just look at each other, as though the two of you were trying to hold onto the moment, but you’re the one to break out of it first, and he’s the one to wish it would’ve lasted a little longer.
“I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.” The words already sounded like goodbye. “I’ll make sure you look nice in your photos,” you say with a small smile, holding your camera up slightly, “and good luck today.” 
He wonders if he’ll regret this moment.
“Thanks.”
He steps aside so that you can walk past him and back out to the field. Gojo takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly, and relaxes his shoulders. Well, that was intense. Definitely not the direction he thought that conversation was going to go in at all, but that’s fine. He handled it fine. Totally fine. Things were going to be totally fine. He just has to play the match now.
The first step he takes back towards the field, he feels his uneasiness return, with the second step the feeling of his heart beating becomes violent in his head, with the third step he swears he can’t feel the tips of his fingers, with the fourth he feels severely nauseous, and with his fifth- was he seriously about to throw up?
He barely makes it back onto the grassy field cutting across the obstacles of people at the sidelines, using all his strength to not double over before he reaches a table and grabs one of the water bottles. He sees a group of men, all dressed in suits and loitering near the team manager’s station, perk their heads up at the sight of him and he’s groaning internally. The last thing he wanted to do right now was talk to any damn recruiters, but he sees one of them bold enough to approach him in his periphery. He sighs, taking one last gulp of water, and tries to stand up straight and look like he wasn’t going insane.
“Hi, I’m Jousuke Tsuda, recruiter for Tokyo Metropolitan’s national league team,” he says and stretches his hand out for Gojo to shake. The man looked aged, with thick creases to his forehead that could only mean he’s witnessed a hell of a lot of life and he has the soul to prove it.
Gojo’s eyes widen at the mention of Tokyo-Met’s team, and he grabs onto the man’s hand in as firm of a handshake he could manage. “Gojo Satoru.”
The man laughs. It’s deep with a slight crackle. “I know your name, son. Every recruiter in the country does. You’ve got a lot of eyes on you right now.”
“I’m flattered.”
The man raises an eyebrow at him. “Surely you feel pressured.”
Gojo only hums to himself.
The man glances at his watch. “I know the match starts in a few, but if I could have a moment of your time. Take a walk with me?”
“Sure.”
The two trail down the line of the field. “I’ll get straight to the point, kid. Tokyo-Met’s really keen on scouting you for the national league following your graduation,” he says.
Gojo feels like he should be excited about that news, actually, he should be ecstatic and groveling at this man’s feet, but instead he just feels empty and hollow inside. 
“Forget the fact that you’ll be playing in the nation’s most revered team,” the man continues, “but compensation is high, too.” He pulls his phone out from his front suit pocket, tapping away at his calculator app, then turns the screen towards Gojo. Holy shit. “I’m talking about a 350 million yen per year contract here. I could advocate for higher based on how well you perform the rest of the season.”
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Gojo responds.
The man is silent for a second then sighs. When the two of them reach a somewhat secluded bench near the corner of the field, he sits down on it and expects Gojo to do the same, to which he complies.
“You know, I’m used to much more enthusiastic reactions from players that hear this kind of news, although they’re usually ecstatic for barely a hundred million a year compared to what I’ve just offered you,” the man says.
“I guess it’s the pressure,” Gojo says to him, “it’s got my emotional response circuit all fried up, y’know?” He was pulling excuses out of his ass. 
A small hmph noise is heard beside him before he sees the man pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his slacks. “I know your father has left big shoes to fill, kid. I can’t imagine the fear of feeling like you’ll fail, or the anxiety of an injury taking you out any time you’re on the field, not wanting history to repeat itself.”
Gojo’s eye twitches and he narrows his eyes at the man seated beside him. “My dad got injured in a car accident, not while playing the sport.”
“I know,” he responds, finally pulling a cigarette out of the pack, holding it between his two fingers as he rests his wrist on his knee. “The story touched the hearts of everyone in Tokyo, and the entire soccer community in general. I remember reading about it in the school newspaper. Back in the day when they still printed those things out.” Gojo’s surprised, and he’s only given a sideways smile before the man continues. “I knew your father, went to the same college as him.”
“I don’t think he ever mentioned you,” Gojo says.
He lets out a hearty laugh. “He despised me. I was a money-hungry finance major that saw a huge opportunity in mediator sports recruitment agencies. Figured if I could sign a player like your father to my start-up, I’d be set for life. He was a smart man not to sign, regardless of how things turned out.” He shakes his head musingly. “I gave up after that and got a real job. You’ll find a lot of your hopes and dreams die in college.”
“I see,” Gojo says.
The man leans forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and looks over with a serious expression on his face. “Tell me, son, what does this sport mean to you? Why have you dedicated your entire life to playing it?”
Gojo only gives him a cursory glance.
“Is it the fame and attention? The pride? The thrill? The prospect of earning millions and then retiring at thirty, and you get to watch your wife and kids playing in your grand estate’s pool on a sunny summer Sunday while you’re swirling around a glass of ‘90s scotch in your hand?” he asks, tone derisive but luring. “Or does it mean something more to you?”
Gojo looks down at his hands that were clenched tightly into fists. He relaxes them so that his fingers fall open weakly and his palms face the sky. He remembers the feeling of being a kid, the smell of freshly cut grass consuming his senses, the sight of bruises on his knees from how many times he fell on the field chasing after the ball, and the admiration in his father’s eyes every single time he stood back up. “It’s a chance to prove myself,” he finally says.
“Prove yourself of what?” the man pushes.
“That I’m capable of greatness,” Gojo admits, “like my father.”
The man nods slowly in acknowledgment. “Yes, your father was a great man. But not because of how he played the game. He was a great man because he knew which sacrifices were truly important.”
Gojo looks at him wearily. “Are you trying to tell a player you’re attempting to recruit that the sport isn’t important?”
He shakes his head, looking straight ahead. “No, it’s important. But it’s the meaning you give to your life outside of it that gives it importance.”
Gojo raises an eyebrow at him, not really sure what to make of the cryptic sentiment.
The man claps his hands together and stands up. “Alright, I’m sure that’s all the time you’ve got for me. Think about my offer, and if any other recruiters approach you with better ones, just know I’ll push for higher.” He hands Gojo his business card and brings his cigarette to mouth, balancing it between his lips. “Reach out if you have any questions.”
Gojo looks down at the card, his finger tracing the edge of it as he studies the shimmering gold lettering. “Why not just hit me with your best offer and leave? Why bother having this kind of conversation with me?”
The man pulls his cigarette from his mouth, pinching it between his two fingers once again. “We’ve all got regrets we want to make right, kid,” he says. And with his hands in his pockets, he walks away. 
Gojo watches the man as he makes his way down the sidelines back to the cluster of men in suits. When he hears the referee whistle, he shoves the business card in the pocket of his uniform shorts, and makes his way towards the center of the sidelines.
His teammates instantly come up to him with optimistic smiles and encouraging pats on his chest and back, trying to keep the energy high to manifest a win for today, but Gojo just feels exhausted and like he’s drowning. He has so many thoughts swimming around in his head, he can’t even begin to explain, and he just wants someone to see through him at this moment. 
The teams stand on the field for the national anthem, and then Osaka Uni’s team disperses while UTokyo’s alma mater plays. Coach Yaga yells for all the players to huddle before the coin toss and reminds them of their plays for the afternoon.
Nanami pulls his sweatbands onto his wrists, Geto pulls his hair back up into a bun, Chosou pulls tightly on the straps of his goalie gloves, and Gojo pushes his hair up off his forehead to snap his headband onto his face. He looks around to his other teammates and that sense of pride he feels to be a part of this team swells dully despite his emotions.
UTokyo wins the coin toss, choosing to kick, and Gojo finds his place in the center of the field. The crowd is already cheering preemptively, their pride in their home team evident in the passion of the filled stands, and Gojo peers across the large expanse of the field as he rests his foot on top of the soccer ball. It’s a scene he’s seen a hundred times in his life, but the sight is daunting today. He takes his foot off the ball when he hears the referee signal the start of the match with a short piercing shrill of his whistle, and the second Gojo draws his leg back and his foot makes contact with the ball, sending it flying forward, he can already feel that something feels very off.
Every single time he had the ball in his possession, his footwork felt heavy and delayed. His teammates had set up more than three chances for him to score, and he shot wide every single time. The crowd’s cheers started to diminish, and he could feel the growing discontent and exasperation from all eyes on the field. Ten minutes before halftime, they were down 1-0, and stakes were starting to feel high. 
One of his teammates passes a ball right to Gojo’s favored foot, the crowd instantly erupting with noise and stands to their feet as Gojo shuffles the ball past the penalty line, through Osaka’s defenders, eyes locked with the perfect opportunity to strike. This was good, he had his rhythm back, even if just for a moment, and he can see it, clear as day–the trajectory to the goal. With the feeling of slick sweat on his face and determination in his veins, he withdraws his leg back to kick the ball. The world went silent in his head, the only sound being the beating of his heart, and-
“this will be the last time you see me.”
When he recalls your voice, everything moves in slow-motion as his ankle slips slightly on the grass from his moment of hesitation, and then the ball is swiftly stolen by an opposing team player and maneuvered past him. 
“Fuck!” he hisses, immediately turning his head around as he helplessly watches the opponents players move with fervor in pursuit of another goal. The crowd hushed in horror as Osaka passed the ball through UTokyo’s defense, swiftly steadying down the side and sending the ball flying through Chosou’s outstretched arms. 2-0, and the lead ref calls for halftime. 
“Dude,” one of his teammates comes up to him as they walk back towards the benches and throws his arms up in the air, “what the hell is wrong with you today?”
“Seriously, man, not a single goal in the first half? You know how many times I’ve set up a shot for you?" another one of his teammates chimes in, nudging Gojo’s shoulder way harder than he’d usually warrant, and shortly after, a blaming fest begins among the players.
“Enough!” Coach Yaga yells out. All of the players quiet down and look at him, some grudgingly gulping down water while others just try to regain their breath. Gojo’s arms just hang at his sides in defeat. “We’re pushing everything on offense now, we can’t afford to miss any more shots,” Coach Yaga says, his fear of losing the match evident too despite his rough tone, “Satoru, I’m switching you out. Dai, take his place.”
“What?” Gojo asks incredulously, charging forward so he’s in front of the older man. “I’m not getting benched.”
“You will, because I say so,” Coach Yaga says sternly, “you’re distracted, boy. I can see it all over your face.”
“I’m n-”
“Just sit down,” Coach Yaga lets out a disgruntled noise. “When players are distracted, they get injured. Have faith in your teammates.”
“Coach,” Gojo asks again, this time almost pleading. He hardly ever questioned Coach Yaga’s calls, he had a great deal of respect for the man. But something within him just absolutely refused to get benched today.
Coach Yaga stares at him for a long moment, and it’s only when one of the refs chirps their whistle that he finally exhales and gives him a reluctant jerk of his head towards the field.
Geto sets up the perfect shot for Nanami to sweep for a kick that barely lands through the goalie’s lunge for the ball, and then on the next play, secures another goal himself. The score is tied, 2-2, with eight minutes left on the clock. Gojo manages to steal the ball on a defensive play, and it’s only really a stroke of luck that he manages in one solid pass the entire game, straight to Geto’s foot, crowd roaring, and he watches his best friend shoot and sink within the last minute and a half of the game. 
3-2. UTokyo’s win. 
Gojo sighs, exhausted as he makes his way to the bench, crouching down and zipping open his duffle bag. Spirits are low among the team despite the excitement from the crowd over their win because of how hauntingly close the loss felt during the last moments of the match, disinterested in celebrating at all as they meekly dispersed across the field. Gojo knew he was going to get a massive yelling-to from Coach Yaga and he could feel the searing disappointment from his teammates for not carrying the game more. This was just a bare win, could’ve gone either way, and his performance today wasn’t a good look for any recruiters either. He felt so emotionally and physically drained from this entire day, and he wasn’t sure how the hell he could feel any better.
Shuffling through his bag for a water bottle, his knuckles hit something cold and metallic-sounding tucked away inside. He hums to himself curiously before grabbing it and pulling it out.
strawberry vanilla soda.
Hm. This wasn’t the one you gave him a couple of days ago. He already drank that one. Did you sneak this into his bag? His brow furrows, and he stares at the sparkling smiling sloth on the label. When he turns the can in his hand, he sees a little note messily scribbled in black ink. 
good luck today! u got this :) ur a star
His eyes widened.
And putting his heart through a shredder would’ve hurt less than when he realizes what an idiot he’s been this entire time.
He’s instantly searching the field, peering through crowds of people, mascots, banners, flags, for any sight of you. He’s not sure how or why he goes in the direction that he does, but deep down it’s because he knows you like taking millions of pictures of flowers, and the west side exit has endless blooms of them. And so when he runs out that way, cleats tapping against the concrete pavement that leads out into the courtyard in the front of the stadium, and spots you standing there, he finally lets out the breath of air he feels like he’s been holding in his chest all day.
You’re aiming your camera at teal and orange petals scattered across the decorative florals lining the raised concrete planters, then pull it down from your face and twiddle with the settings, tilting your head to the side. You then pluck at one of the blooms that was spilling over the edges, bringing it to the tip of your nose curiously. And he just watches, chest heaving from the urgency that he rushed to get to you, heart aching from the desperation of wanting to be near you. He wanted to ask you how you were feeling, he wanted to know how your pictures came along, he wanted to know what you were doing after this, and he wanted you to be with him. But most importantly, he wanted to make sure that this wasn’t the last time he ever saw you again. 
It isn’t until a minute after that you seem keen on his presence too, and you swiftly turn your head in his direction, surprised. “Satoru?” you say. He wonders if he’ll melt. He wonders if those ice-cold barriers he’s built over the years could thaw just from the way you say his name.
But when he takes a step forward, you take a step back. And he halts. The expression on your face was unfamiliar to him. Once soft, curious, trusting. Now you looked at him like you were guarding something, keeping it safe from him, and he no longer had the right to intrude. And then he realizes the hell he’s put you through all this time.
He regrets pushing you away.
“I know I said I’d respect the fact that you want space,” he says through bated breath, “but I…I just can’t stand the thought of never seeing you again.”
You’re solemn when you look at him, reading the plea in his eyes, and then slowly shake your head. He feels like he can’t breathe. 
“I’m sorry. Goodbye.”
And then you walk out of his life.
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a/n. thank you for reading! i have a few more author notes that explain a few things that i couldn't really find a way to fit into the chapter organically, but wanted to address before moving on, if you're curious you can find them here. hope to see you in the next one! pls lemme know if i missed any tags i'm sorry if i did :')
➸ take me to chapter eight!
taglist: @who-can-touch-my-boob @lost-resonance @foulprincesscycle @purplehallow11 @tsukikourito @getitsatoru @erencvlt @slut-4-gojo @cactisjuice @kissofife @tiredflame132 @cliosunshine @ethereally-lyann @prince-wyiilder @semra4 @gojosimp26 @hojoslutoru @drthymby @ninitoru @btszn @bbyxxm @fvsm4x @sadmonke @zoinks1010 @bakuhoethotski @fvsm4x @colouringfrogssittinginleaves @ri-sa20 @cierocanteat (thank you to everyone <3)
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upsidedownwithsteve · 1 year ago
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Steve Harrington x fem!reader
18+ a little happy birthday blurb for @loveshotzz 🧡
Steve’s breath was a ragged thing, gasping and ruined. “Honey, we’re gonna be late.”
You only hummed, leaning over the centre console of Steve’s car until the stick shift dug into the soft of your tummy. The awkward angle didn’t stop you from mouthing at Steve’s jawline, pressing dirty kisses to his throat, nose nudging into the space under his ear until the car lurched a little.
“Easy on the gas, Harrington,” you murmured. “You’ll put us into a ditch, never mind late.”
Steve huffed out a laugh but the sound got choked off as your hand ran up the length of his thigh, denim rippling under your fingertips until they were climbing over his crotch, the material tightening as he got harder with every passing minute.
“Nancy’s got a dinner planned,” he groaned, lips parting and cheeks turning rosy as you kept up your kisses, palming over the metal of his zipper. The road was quiet, thankfully, because Steve was crawling at fifteen miles under the speed limit. Hopper has been unfortunate enough to pull you both over too many times now. “Robin baked a cake,” he added weakly.
“And that’s very sweet of them,” you murmured. “We’ll get there, eventually. You don’t wanna pull over?”
You were being awful, touching and teasing and kissing and relishing in the way Steve breathed a little heavier when you slid back into your seat and let your skirt skin up your thighs.
“S’your birthday,” Steve tried to reason, but his gaze was flickering from the road ahead to the sight of your fingers pulling at your hem. “Baby. You’re gonna get me in trouble if I don’t get you there on time.”
You grinned, unbothered because knowing your friends, Eddie would be late, Jonathan would be scrambling for a new roll of film, Robin would’ve dropped something and Nancy would be cleaning it up.
“Exactly,” you pouted. Your fingers curled into the soft material of your skirt, hitching it upupup until you heard Steve swear. “I’m the birthday girl. Shouldn’t we be doing what I wanna do?”
Steve couldn’t bite back his smile and he conceded, nodding, the car slowing to a stop at a traffic light. “What does the birthday girl wanna do then, huh?”
You grinned back, taking the few seconds you had left as the light sat at red to curl your fingers between Steve’s. You tugged, gentle, guiding his hand to your bare leg and risking upwards, his knuckles bumping under your skirt until his fingers were pressed with yours against the seam of your cunt.
“You.”
Steve pulled over not even half a mile down the road, the car kicking up dirt as he crunched into a space between some trees, letting you pull him into the backseats with a litany of cursed. He said your name like a prayer, demanding that you lay back for him, greedy as he spread your legs and put his mouth on you. He hummed the tune of ‘happy birthday’ as he kissed across your thighs, licking at the lacy band of your underwear until you squealed and laughed at his nonsense.
The noise died when he tugged then aside, though, pressing open mouth kisses to your cunt, tongue licking across your clit, his big hands holding your hips and pinning you to the chair when you tried to buck up.
And if you were a little late, well, it was worth it.
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willowsnook · 23 days ago
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When Love is Left Unspoken pt. 3 (MV)
max verstappen x reader
tags: @shelbyteller @formulaal @maluzets55 @dying-inside-but-its-classy @what-a-curated-mess @anilovessadbooks @how-what-why-huh @abbyandersonstargirl
pt. 1, pt. 2
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After Brazil, you flew back to New York to catch up on brand content and the stack of books waiting for you. It was a rainy afternoon when just after filming your October reads, your phone pinged. Max was streaming. You'd turned the notifications back on after Austin but hadn’t actually tuned in.
Setting up your phone in the kitchen, you half-listened to him playing Minecraft as you started dinner. Then you heard him say your name, and you froze.
“Lots and lots of questions about y/n, I see. I’m trying to win her back, guys, so I need your help. Any suggestions?”
You smiled as you scanned the chat comments.
Move to NYC
Let her drive your F1 car
Fly her out to all your races
Propose
With a grin, you couldn’t resist joining the fun. Typing quickly, you sent a comment that lit up the chat.
Y/N: $500 worth of books is a good first step, I think.
The next morning, your doorman called. “I need you to come down and get these packages. There are way too many.”
Confused, you walked downstairs—only to be met with a pile of Barnes & Noble boxes and realization hit. Back in your apartment, you opened them to find 25 books from your Goodreads “want to read” list. Your heart swelled.
Y/N: Max! This was too much!
MV: Nothing is too much when it comes to you.
Later that day, you went live on Instagram, answering questions. Predictably, most were about Max. Your fans were torn, with some excited at the idea of you two rekindling and others still wary.
“Look, I get it. He did me dirty, but it’s complicated. It’s easy to say I shouldn’t even consider this, but we have 15 years of history. He’s… still my Max.”
A comment caught your eye.
Maxverstappen1: Glad to know I still have a chance.
The chat erupted, and before long, gossip accounts were tagging you in posts speculating on your relationship.
That evening, you were winding down with a glass of wine, just about to turn on the Thursday Night Football game, when there was a knock at your door. With a sigh, you shuffled to answer it, already irritated by the interruption—until you opened the door to find Max standing there.
“What are you doing here?” you asked, surprised.
“Oh, I was just in the area,” he said casually, his eyes gleaming, though you spotted a duffel bag at his feet.
“In the area? With your luggage?”
“Mmmhmm.” He grinned as you laughed, letting him in. He set his bag on the counter and pulled you into a warm hug, resting his head on top of yours.
“We’re supposed to be taking it slow, Max,” you reminded him, your voice muffled against his chest.
“Whatever, schatje.” He rolled his eyes as you led him to the couch. He plopped down beside you, lifting your legs onto his lap, and you couldn’t help but relax into the moment.
“How long are you staying?” you asked as he pretended to watch the game.
“Until Monday, if that’s okay.”
“And you just assumed I’d drop everything to host you?” you teased.
“Yeah,” he replied, turning back to the screen.
“Ugh, you’re impossible.”
He smirked. “Cheer up, schatje. I got us tickets to the Bills game on Sunday so you can see your team. And I get to see Daniel.”
Your face lit up. “Daniel’s going to be there?”
He narrowed his eyes, a hint of jealousy flickering. “Yeah. Don’t act too excited.”
You laughed, entwining your fingers with his, grateful for these small, familiar moments.
The next two days were spent showing Max around NYC, and you started to fall back into your old habits with him. He refused to let go of your hand anytime you were walking somewhere, and you felt his eyes on you everywhere you went. 
It was Saturday night, and you were waiting for a table outside of a restaurant, watching as Max took a selfie with a younger fan. 
“Is that your girlfriend? She’s pretty,” the young girl said, and you blushed. Max shot you a big smile. 
“She is pretty, but not my girlfriend. She will be soon,” he replied, and the girl giggled. 
Max led you to your table with one hand resting on your lower back. You’d chosen one of your favorite Italian restaurants, and you're eager to put a nice bottle of wine on his tab, of course. 
Sitting across from him, you felt nervous at the intimacy of the setting. His eyes were swimming with emotions of the past and where you were now. 
“I want to hear everything that has happened to you since I last saw you in Australia,” he said inquisitively. You took a sip of your wine before diving in. 
You told him about your channel growing and getting famous guests on the podcast. How you’d moved to New York a year ago for a change of scenery but still visited back home often. You told him about your friends who had started getting married and having kids, but you weren’t jealous of them; you were very content in your life. You described NYC at Christmas and how the first time you experienced it, you felt like you were in a different world. He listened as you mentioned a few guys you had briefly dated, and he was pleased to hear that none of them had worked out. 
Finishing up your monologue, you meet Max’s gaze and notice the lingering sadness in his eyes. 
“What’s wrong?” You asked concerned. 
“I’m just thinking about all the stuff I missed,” he admitted, looking down. “All the stuff I should have been there for. How could you ever forgive me?” 
His eyes glistened, and you thought for a moment before replying.
“Because I want to believe that the Max of the past is still there,” you said softly. “You broke me down, but I survived and kept going. As much as it hurt, good came out of it. Maybe we needed time to be away from each other to grow up. I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened, Max, but I can try and forgive.” 
He reached across the table to grab your hand, “I don’t deserve you.”
“You definitely don’t,” you teased, trying to lighten the mood. 
—------------------------------------------------------
The next day, you bundled up in your Bills gear and headed off to meet up with Daniel before the game. He was supposedly at some random person’s tailgate, so you and Max wove through the hoards of people to get to him. Watching Max in this environment was very amusing as it was just another world of people; not a single person had stopped him to ask for a picture. 
“Hey man,” Max greeted Daniel, pulling him into a hug. “Enjoying retirement?” 
“I get to do this now, so of course,” Daniel joked before turning to you. 
“What’s up y/n? It’s been a while,” he said, eyebrows raised, and you knew a million questions were running through his mind. He had been Max’s teammate for a little while back then, so you knew him well. 
“It has,” you agreed. More and more people joined the tailgate, and you could tell Max was getting on edge. 
You were conversing with Scotty and Daniel when you grabbed Max’s hand, pulling him closer to you to ease his discomfort. He took your invitation, sliding behind you with his arms wrapped around your chest, his head resting on the top of yours. Daniel gave him a big smirk, and you rolled your eyes, moving your hands up to hold on to Max’s. 
Max had no idea what was happening during the whole game but he still enjoyed watching you get so excited. The way your face lit up in excitement was something he was committing to memory, hoping he would get that same look from you soon enough. 
After the game, you walked back to your apartment, the city lights twinkling as you strolled through the crisp November air. Max kept your hand firmly in his, his thumb brushing against your knuckles in a way that made your heart race.
Inside, you set your things down, still buzzing from the excitement of the game. Max shrugged off his jacket, glancing around the apartment as though trying to memorize every detail.
He looked over at you, his expression softening. "You know, this place really suits you."
You smiled. "Thanks. It finally feels like home."
There was a pause, a comfortable silence settling between you. Then, he spoke again, his voice laced with a vulnerability you rarely heard from him. "I want you to come to the Netherlands with me for the holidays. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d love for you to see my family again and… just, maybe, have you close."
You looked at him, surprised. His gaze was steady, unwavering, but there was a hint of nervousness in his eyes. You could see he was waiting for an answer, for you to trust him again enough to take this step.
“Max…” You hesitated, your mind racing. A part of you was scared of what it would mean to spend Christmas with him and his family—to be a part of his life again. But then you looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the man who had always been there, in some way, over the years.
A smile crept onto your face. “Alright. I’ll come.”
His face lit up in a way you hadn’t seen in a long time. He pulled you into his arms, kissing your forehead softly. "You have no idea how happy that makes me."
You laughed, suddenly feeling warm and at ease. "I guess we’ll see how much Dutch I remember."
As he held you close, you knew that whatever lay ahead, you were ready to see where this new chapter with him would lead.
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lara4eclipze · 1 month ago
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“take a chance with me”
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sypnosis; "damn it i love you—how hard is that to understand!" you exclaim
cw; angst , fluff , slow burn , dream academy contestant!reader , crying, erm not proofread , angst with a ____ ending
now playing: “take a chance with me” by NIKI
train , eat , sleep and repeat , this was basically your daily routine, it was boring? tiring and overall exhausting not only physically but mentally, every end of mission you get the gruesome privilege of watching your friends get eliminated — not only that you can get eliminated too
you question if this is even worth it, I mean this was your dream right?—only reason you stayed was for her
you made a promise to Lara that if she gets eliminated you would leave too , but as long as she's in the competition your in it too
you couldn't leave her , over the course of weeks and months of being together you developed a crush on her— shes perfect really
—★
"y/n—please step forward and receive your invitation" the voice says , it felt unfair — yet you stood up and got your invitation, going back to your seat Lara held your hand noticing how you were about to cry
"hey are you alright?" she says after the cameras stopped rolling
"i hate it here—Lara I don't wanna do this anymore" you said as tears fell onto your cheeks , she quickly hugs you resting your head onto her shoulders
"we can do this—don't give up" she reassured you , you felt her kiss your head while patting you'r back
"don't leave me" she says , you heard her voice crack , as she started tearing up aswell
"hey don't cry" you said finally looking at her , you wipe away her tears and held her cheeks in your hands
"I won't i promise" you said hugging her yet again
—★
as you and the rest of the girls made your way back to the dorms — there was tension or just silence
everyone was tired and upset over the eliminations yet what can they do
as you walk back into your room it felt empty with some of your roommates eliminated
"y/n" you hear Lara from behind you , you turned around seeing her in some pyjamas, her eyes half lidded and about to close
"why?" you ask she should be in her room by now , so why was she here , she looked adorable with her hair messy and how she's practically about to pass out from drowsiness
"can I sleep with you? — please" she looks expectantly, I mean who are you to reject that right?
you nod , after so going to the showers to freshen up , as you made your way back to bed you saw Lara already in there using her phone
"thought you were tired" you chime , she giggles , god her voice was like a bandage to your wounds
"just waiting for you" she replied hugging you till you fell in bed next to her , she was very clingy awfully so , but a small part of you screamed that it was more than clinginess
as she fell asleep you held her close , enjoying the warmth that she provided , you hum out of relief
"i love you goodnight" you doubt she heard it but you hear her hum so that's something
—★
the house was silent and so was the dance practice for mission 3 , you got paired up with Laras group (confident)
at this point you really doubt if you will ever make it to the finals or even in the group
"from the top!" missy exclaims , as you made an mistake in the choreo causing you to be in the wrong position
"sorry everyone" you said as the rest of he girls groan out of frustration
after perfecting the choreo it was finally time to film it , you were a nervous wreck and so were the other girls , before shooting everyone got a 10 minute break
you went to the restrooms as you try your best not to break down , the toll this has in you was crazy , every single move was getting critiqued and one mistake can lead you to go home
"y/n?.. you in there" Lara knocks , you sniffle up and straighten your voice
"yeah?" you replied
"it's filming time— you need to be ready"
—★
after 10 plus takes , you guys finally got the perfect video, by this point you were exhausted your chest was heaving and your covered in sweat
one by one you all left the set , and went back to the dorms , the girls planned to eat out which you politely decline
you slum in bed , wearing Lara's t-shirt , doom scrolling in tiktok
until you heard the door clicked , the girls are home , you heard endless chatter and laughs
as you waved them in , you saw Sophia and Lara was still in the car , Lara was facing away from you but you saw them — they got closer to eachother eventually kissing?
oh.
oh.
you felt your heart ache , why can it not be you who does that to her — instead of dwelling and risking getting caught you ran back to your room drawing some attention to you
you lied on your bed your face hidden beneath some pillows as you tear up
"why am I crying" you question yourself, after all you and Lara weren't anything
—★
"y/n-" you heard Lara outside your door
"go away" you huff out it came out harsh but you didn't want it to
"why are you acting like this?" she says , surprised by the way you answered her
"can't you hear me i said go away!" the last thing you want is Lara coming in seeing you crying over her, you heard the footsteps fade away as she walks away
you let it out , but soon your roommate Daniela came and knocked on the door , you forced yourself up and wiped away your tears it's obvious you cried but you just hoped she wouldn't question you
"hey" you said letting her in
"is it true?" she asked , you were confused on what was true
"what?" you ask
"you screamed at Lara" the latina sighs
was it that loud? , did she tell anyone? why does Dani know?! god why
"yeah..." you said guilt chewing you up
"great job Sherlock , shes crying now — WAIT are you crying too?!" the older exclaimed
"wait shes crying?! — but I didn't mean to make her cry" why did she cry god you were supposed to comfort her not make her feel like this
"where is she?" you ask
"in Sophias room" the shorter explains
you debate whether to go there or not , first you didn't wanna see Sophia , second you didn't wanna see her with Lara
"are you going?" she asks
"fine"
—★
as you enter Sophias room you're met with a crying Lara hugging Sophia
why did you even go here , to hurt yourself?
"Lara—I'm so sorry I didn't wanna scream at you I was just not in the mood I'm just tired" you exhale
"everyone here is tired y/n! why are you acting like your the only one" Sophia cuts you off patting Lara's back
"this isn't your business—plus I'm talking to her" you snap
"oh really?! , the last time I checked Lara's my friend too" Sophia stands up , yes she was intimidating and yes you were scared
"just give her some time with Lara" you heard Manon behind you say to Sophia , before leaving the room Sophia glares at you
can this day get any worse?
"Laru — I'm sorry" you said sitting down beside her , she looks at you wiping away her tears
in a blink of an eye she hugs you tightly, her tears getting soaked up by the shirt you wore , you cradle her making sure she felt safe
"I'm so sorry okay?" you repeat as she nods , understandingly
"what were you doing anyway" you hear her sniffle , shit now what would you say? oh I was crying cause I saw you kiss Sophia and I liked you so it hurt me?
no that sounded stupid and so immature
"nothing" you said , as you hug her tighter , was it gonna get ruined? your friendship? you didn't want that nor any tension
"I know you , don't lie to me" she says , pouting , and huffing
"I swear it was nothing, now quit crying okay?—ill let you sleep with me if you do" you knew Lara loved sleeping with you , she was just very affectionate and clingy
"really" her voice low and mellow
"yes" quickly her demeanor changed all smiley and giggly
"what the fuck" you heard Manon and Daniela at the door , they looked astonished i mean who wouldn't be , that's all it took to make her stop crying?!
"shut up" you mouth to the duo , who quickly left
—★
obviously tension was still there , afterall you saw what Sophia and Lara did— every time you closed your eyes it's all you can see
anytime Lara approached you it felt , weird and forced
little to your knowledge it also hurt Lara, she didn't know why you acted like this
"tell her" Marquise pipes up
"how? — I can ruin our friendship if I do , and I swear to God I saw her kiss Sophia" you said sighing out of frustration
"you never know—plus Sophia is taken man"
"What?! are you serious!" you exclaim, so your practically imagining shit now??
"by yours truly" marquise giggles
"you're as gay as me" you point a finger at her , still in shock with the news
but still didn't they kiss?! , was it just because of your angle?!
—★
as you and Lara got further away from eachother it was like everyone noticed
everyone knew , Lara barely left her room it was really weird , but as the finale approached you had to put a game face on and do your best
"hey y/n" Megan sighs entering your room
"why?" you knew why she was here , you just couldn't tell her why your drifting away from Lara
"what's up with you and Lara" Megan scolds
"nothing" you nonchalantly reply
"shes been isolating herself from the rest of the girls , whatever is happening between you two — fix it " Megan says before leaving the room
you grunt in frustration , how did you get yourself into this arrangement?—not thinking much you just wanted to leave this place and run to her , to what you know is real
—★
you'll regret this you know that but Is there any other way?
"are you serious?" Daniela says as tears appear on the corners of her eyes
"it's for the better" you sigh , urging the latina for a hug
"why are you gonna quit— how about us being in the group?" the shorter sniffles
"trust me I'll support you no matter what" you sigh
"ill tell the rest , you stop crying it's not like I'm dying" you giggle
—★
"it's alright?" you sigh after explaining why your leaving and how you would still support them
one by one the girls run to you hugging you as they shed their tears
except where is Lara? — thats okay you'll just tell the other girls to tell lara
"tell her" Manon says
"I can't - I just can't do that" you stammer
"your gonna break her heart even more" Manon tsks
—★
now standing outside the indians room , your hands were sweating your heart was racing
before even knocking Lara opens the door , she looked tired and almost like she hadn't slept in a week
"what" she coldly ask , okay so we're off with a great start
"can we talk for a moment" you exhale
she lets you in the room , mess is an understatement there where hoodies all over the room you spot yours aswell but chose not to speak on it
"what do you need" she huffs sitting on her bed
"I-Im leaving..." you said , you hesitated for a moment , fiddling with your shirt , eventually looking up
was she crying? , her hands covered her face as you heard endless sniffles and hiccups
"hey don't cry"
"how can I not! , we promised eachother— you've been acting like I'm the dirt on your shoe! your ignoring me like I did something so bad! just tell me what I did!!" she retaliates , angry tears leaving her eyes
you were stunned , the sweet Lara you knew who barely would hurt a fly snapped at you
"you didn't do anything—its me I'm the problem"
"I want you to continue in this shit academy and win , obviously it's gonna be hard but you can do it right" you said
"I know I did something to upset you!— why are you lying to me!" she says , you try to hug her but she pushes you away
"why are you acting like an idiot! — god we promised eachother to stay in this shit of an way to fame now your leaving me?!" she screams
"it's not like that!" you finally break
"you make me feel like you like me but then I see you kissing another girl how does that make me feel?!— and yes if sounds selfish but don't you get it , I like you how hard is that to understand!" you scream back , your voice slur and it silenced the room
"I didn't kiss anyone" Lara says
"so what did I see that night when you and her were alone in the car?" you sniffle , was she lying to you now?
god you wanted to run and jump out to oncoming traffic , you loved her — yet it felt like you were wrong for doing so
"we didn't kiss y/n , shes my best friend" Lara calms down collecting herself
"yeah and I'm blind now apparently" you said chuckling at her blatant lie
"believe me" Lara says her voice softening
"I'm so tired of doing that—it just makes me think I have chance with you — it messes me up can't you see?" you said , standing up from her bed you get your bag and got all her shirts out of it
"here" you said giving her the shirts you pick up your sweater from the ground and left her room
—★
talking with Missy and Mitra was another story , they didn't allow it due to some contract problem
"but"
"sorry but we can't do that" Missy replied
going back to the dorms the girls obviously knew why and they helped you understand more
"I don't know anymore —i feel trapped in this place" you sigh
Megan and Daniela exchange a look which you didn't fail to notice
"what" you ask
"nothing..." the two drags out their words
"i know that stupid look you guys have what is it"
"you'll see"
—★
you woke up to a empty house and a note at the fridge
"out eating see you later xx" the handwriting was like Megan's , it was messy
"but I'm hungry too" you sigh , you open the fridge and get some leftovers heating it up before eating it
ring ring
you answer your phone
"what" it was Megan who called
"soo we won't be home till like 8pm , it's currently 12 so figure it out" Megan says ominously
"what do you mean?" you ask
"also can you bring home some gummy snack" you follow
"guess who's home aswell" the older says
"wait..LARA?" instead of replying they hang up gigglibg
—★
it's alright, you don't have to interact with her
you hid in your bathroom, since you thought maybe doing your make up would distract you
"shit" you swear under your breath as you had to do your eyeliner for like the fifteen time
click
was it already 8? who's in your room , what if it's a buglar , wait Lara's alone!
you check your phone and there it is , it's only 2pm
you creek the door open just giving you a view of who's in your room
black hair , tan skin , belly button piercing — wait that's literally Lara what is she doing in here
before you got to leave the bathroom she goes into your bed , was she gonna sleep here?
"I miss you" you hear her whisper , the familiar scent of her perfume wafted through the room , it threaten you to just run out and hug her assure her that you love her yet you couldn't you felt too nervous to
she stayed there until you heard her soft snores , heaving breathing
you walk out of the bathroom quietly trying not to startle her
she looked peaceful almost as if it's her first sleep in weeks , her face was relaxed as she hugged your pillow
you sat next to her slumbering form , and brush some stray hair off her face , you enjoyed the moment of silence, all your thoughts and worries washes away
"hmh?" you hear her hum , she pulls you towards her with surprising strength, you laid next to her as she snuggled her head in your chest
"I'm sorry , I still love you — please don't leave me" Lara whispers
"I won't , and I'm sorry if I doubted you i should've just told you how I felt insteadofhidingititwassostupid" you blurt out , you got cut off when you felt her lips on yours as she hushes you
she smiles into the kiss
"relax silly" she chuckles as she feels your heart pounding , you were as red as an tomato and about to scream out of excitement
"I can't help it"
"so.. uhm what are we" you ask
"nerd" she giggles you start to get playfully defensive
—★
you were hopelessly captivated by her , who isn't right?
you heard a knock on your door , but since sleeping Lara was clung onto you , you decided not to open the door
until the knocks fade , you wait and then
1..
2..
and there they are , the rest of the girls were outside as Megan opens the door smirking
she pulls out her phone followed by the others and took pictures of the scene
"oohhh" Yoonchae and Ezrela gasps
"guys no pictures no pictures" Daniela says acting like a bodyguard as if she didnt take pictures too
"you all look stupid" you said chuckling
"yeah? and what are you doing there.." Manon teases
"hmh?.." Lara wakes up a bit and sees the girl she flushes and hides her face at your chest
they all gasps in faux surprise
"i won the bet Manon give me my money" Sophia says to Manon
"what bet?" you question
well soon you found out they took a bet on how they're gonna see you two when they came home—atleast you took your chance with Lara
funny how you thought that love was overated yet here you are inlove with her with Lara
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charlessainzz · 9 months ago
Note
can do like reader with charles getting quite a few feature on dts here and there moments. thank you! i don't really like dts but I love the ferrari bits!!
My first request! Thank you for requesting this, it was fun to write! I hope it’s good! 
Drive to Survive’s Newest Star is… Not a Driver?? 
Take One: 
Cameras were everywhere. It was another Drive to Survive filming day. These days always made you nervous. More cameras than usual, more eyes than usual, and more opinions than usual. Luckily you were feeling good. You were decked out in head to toe Ferrari merch. White lace cami, vintage red leather Marlboro pants, red peep toe Manolos, with a number 16 cap. You looked the part of a die hard Ferrari fan. More importantly you looked the part of a die hard Charles Leclerc fan. And you were. His wonderful, supportive girlfriend of 2 years. His biggest fan. 
You felt the camera pan to you as Charles made his way through the garage you. He had just finished FP1 and well lets just say it wasn’t looking great… He needed you now and Charles could care less if the DTS cameras were watching. Your eyes light up as you see him getting closer to you. He grabs your waist and nudges your nose with his. 
“Hi,” you squeak, anticipating a kiss. 
“Hey..”, he whispers. “That was pretty bad wasn’t it”.
“Mmhmmm car looks pretty rubbish”, you giggle. “But that driver…. He’s pretty great. Makes a worthless car worth driving”, you say as you give him a peck. 
You both embrace in a tight hug and another kiss. Feeling the cameras rolling and hearing the photographers clicking away, you both start laughing. Oh this will be Netflix gold. 
Take Two:
Rain in October and in Austin, Texas. What are the odds! A usual dry race with an unrelenting sun had turned into a gray, storm filled race. The track was almost flooded. The radios of drivers shooting off justifiably angry that the race hadn’t been red flagged yet. The DTS cameras were here of course. Another perfect scene for them, they’d definitely be getting the footage they wanted.
Your hands enclosed in a prayer, begging for the officials to do something. To call for a pause, to cancel! There was no way the race could continue like this. Visibility is almost next to zero. You intensely listen to the radio, checking for Charles’s voice. He’s mad, he can’t see, and he’s ready to get out of the car. 
You’re watching the screen as the cars begin to slow around a turn, you see Charles and Pierre bump sending Charles off the track. It was all in slow motion. His car and your reaction moving at the speed of molasses. While the bump seemed minor, there were more cars headed his way. That’s what scared you. Just as that thought enters your mind, Checo’s car shoots down the track and narrowly misses Charles sending water crashing into him. You let out a shriek and cover your face crouching to the ground. The cameras all turn to you, documenting your reaction. You peek through your fingers seeing everyone staring and the lens facing you. At first you feel embarrassed but then you remember, that’s your man! You stand back up, straightening your posture, and brushing your hair off your shoulder. Arthur envelops you in a hug and points to the screen. 
Charles is being rescued by the emergency crew and he’s making his way back to you. He’s coming back to the safety of the garage and the safety of your arms. The DTS cameras know what’s coming next, and they stay on you waiting for the paddock’s favorite couple to reunite. 
Take Three:
Silverstone was always packed. But this year felt different. The crowd looked like sardines packed into a tin can. No room to move or even breathe. 
Charles held open the car door for you and grabbed your hand. He knew you didn’t love these crowds. He held your hand tight as you walked into the paddock. Cameras flashing, fans screaming, and DTS film crews lurking. You and Charles had one mission. Get to the Ferrari building as fast as possible.
Hands stuck like glue, you’re both practically running through the paddock. Of course, Charles being the man he is, has to stop and take pictures. But this leads to more attention and bigger crowds. You don’t mind, you know they love him. He deserves the love. Yet, the crowd becomes more…. pushy, more desperate for a glimpse at the Ferrari man. 
As he takes the millionth picture, you feel someone clench your arm and rip you from Charles. Letting out a scream, you fall into the ocean of the crowd. A man, desperate to get a picture, had done the unthinkable. He put his hands on you. Charles felt you instantly leave his presence. He snaps around grabbing your hand once more, and focuses his attention at the man. 
“Don’t you dare touch her!”, Charles growls with a finger in the man's face. That’s when you notice a boom mic over you capturing every second of this interaction. You let out a groan knowing that this will probably be in an episode. But hey! Your man was protecting you! 
His arms wrap around your shoulders and you both rush through the crowd heading towards the Ferrari hospitality. To the safety of your second home. Fans still hot on your tails screaming, “Leclerc! Y/n! Wait!”. Unknown to you both, DTS cameras are right behind you. Capturing the knight in shining armor protecting his princess. After what felt like a marathon, you see the Ferrari crew waiting at the entrance to welcome you in. Like deer leaping through a field, you both jump through the front doors. Doors closing, the cameras catch you both hunched over trying to catch your breath still clinging to each other. Like a wildlife documentary they sit at the door documenting two creatures that had just escaped a near death experience. 
After taking that moment to pause, you turn and see cameras pressed against the door recording you and Charles. You can’t help but let out a big belly laugh tapping him on the shoulder to look. Charles sees, grabs your hand, and flips off the camera pulling you towards his room. 
This episode will definitely be talked about! 
Take Four:
He takes the checkered flag! Charles Leclerc wins the Las Vegas Grand Prix!
The whole garage erupts into celebration. Charles wins! Carlos in 2nd. It’s a 1-2 result for the Ferrari team. What more could Fred have asked for. The whole garage runs towards the podium, awaiting their boys. You take off running towards the barrier followed by a film crew of course. Unsurprising to anyone, the Drive to Survive team is here to capture the lavish race that is Vegas. 
The podium waiting area is front to back red. You want to see him, you need to see him. But how can you get to the front? Not wanting to be rude, you tap shoulders and whisper ‘excuse mes’. As people turn ready to shout at the person cutting through, they recognize you. With sheepish smiles they usher you through to the front. Cameras following, but you could care less. 
Finally, you're at the front waiting for the drivers to exit the cars. Barriers crushing your ribs, you can feel your heart ready to leap out of your chest in anticipation. Then there he is! He leaps out of the car and throws his hands up. He points to the sky, and then points to the team. Jumping down he sprints to the Ferrari team ready to welcome back their champion. He leaps into the arms of the first team members he sees. Everyone reaching to touch him, to congratulate him, to get a glimpse of their driver. He scans the front row looking for you. He knew you’d be there but where are you? As he takes off his helmet he sees you. Tears have stained your cheeks and hair a mess from running. 
Charles jumps to you and grabs your face. Hands over your jaw, he brings your lips together. The kiss says everything and more. Cameras push in closer and closer as you continue kissing your driver. You break apart and laugh knowing what they’re capturing. Charles looks you in the eyes and says, “Another kiss for the winner?”. 
“Always”, you beam and bring him back into you. Charles takes a hand and pushes the lens away from you both. Trying to get some privacy in the most public situation ever. The film crew lets up knowing they just got their shot. They just got the money shot of their number one F1 driver and Drive to Survive’s newest star… who’s not a driver. Who would’ve thought!
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