#ford semi truck

[flmboyz]

Showing some Ford LTL 9000 LOVE ❤️

[historictruckingsociety]

[cartransporterworld]

Associated Transports' 1965 F-series Ford with a load of six Mercury Marauder and Montereys on a W&K trailer

[jellyfishbug]

POP THE HOOD F'ME

pairing. chris x reader genre. smut with plot. MDNI. word count [5.2k]

content; mechanic!chris, flirty!chris, smoking (they share a cig), sex with a stranger ig? semi public, car head (m recieving), face fucking, big dick chris, reader has an eyebrow piercing, use of pet names, dirty talk, swearing

Maybe it was just dumb luck.

My dad has been promising me that his old ford pickup was gonna be mine when I got my license since I was ten. However, not long after my sixteenth birthday, he randomly decided that his promise had conditions.

I had to fix it myself.

I had been putting off working on it for years. I just didn't have the time, and it needed a lot of work. The list of things to be fixed was long, and I knew if I started then, I wouldn't have finished.

Finally, the time presented itself for me to start. I finally had a summer that wasn't so busy, so I decided in May of this year I was finally going to do it.

I was finally going to get my own truck.

So I did; I worked on it for two long months. Two long months spent in the garage on my back under the heavy pickup with my hands covered in soot and oil whilst sweat dripped down my face. Two long months spent fixing the paint job and fiddling around under the hood, my hair tied back to keep it off my neck while the sun beamed through the opened garage door.

I finally felt confident enough to take it out for a test drive today. It was starting fine in the garage, and I'd driven it around the block a number of times without fail.

I excitedly hopped in the driver's seat and shut the heavy door, jamming my keys into the ignition and grinning at the sound of the roar when the engine started. I made it pretty much across town without a single problem, and I thought I was in the clear.

So, maybe it was just dumb luck when not even an hour later, here I am, standing on the side of the road next to said pickup with the hood popped and smoke coming out of the cabin.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was dumb luck when I realized I was only three blocks away from an auto shop, and a guy pulled over to help drag my car there.

It felt like forever when we finally reached the parking lot. The red and white sign that hung over the opened garage doors read 'sturniolo's auto-repair".

For the most part, the slots were empty, except for a 58' baby blue Impala that was suspended off the ground, and a brand new silver Subaru outback that sat right next to it.

As we finally pushed it into the open slot on the far end of the garage, I let out a sigh of relief, wiping the sweat off my forehead with one hand and letting them both rest at my sides.

I thanked the stranger for his assistance and he wished me luck, mumbling about how much a repair on a truck like this was going to cost before wandering off. I scowled at him as soon as he turned away from me.

Walking away from the smokey and damaged shell of a car, I pushed open the clear glass door into the entry-way of the shop, and the sound of the ringing bells that were carefully tied at the top of the door filled my ears.

Near the desk stood two boys, both were brunettes that roughly stood at the same height. The first was wearing a red toyota nascar cap backwards over his brown hair, as well as a black tank top and a navy blue mechanic's suit that hugged his frame. The name patch on the chest of it read "Matt". He was speaking to another customer, flailing the rag around as he emphasized his points with his hands.

The other was standing behind the counter, a gray bandana tied around his head. He wore a navy blue button up that he left completely open with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, making the white tank top he wore under it visible.

The name patch on his chest read "Chris", and a white rag was thrown over his shoulder. A plethora of keys were hooked to a red carabiner that hung around the belt loop of his jeans. The desk hid his lower half below his waistline, and as I stepped closer, I saw a toothpick in between his teeth and his eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he jotted down words on a yellow notepad with a pencil.

I slowly walked up to the desk, my arms at my sides. He didn't raise his head to look at me, he just continued writing, so I cleared my throat.

His head shot up, and his expression fell into embarrassment.

"Fuck- sorry, I didn't hear you come in. How long ‘v you been standing there?"

I laughed lightly and shook my head. "Not long, I just walked in."

A smile painted itself onto his face as he set the pencil down and put his hands in his pockets just far enough that his thumbs still stuck out. "What can i do for ya?" He asked kindly, the toothpick in his mouth moving as he spoke.

"My truck broke down three blocks ago and wouldn't start. I tried looking under the hood to see the problem, but it was smoking, so I pushed it here." I explained, my hands finding each other and clasping together at my front.

He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head slightly. "Jesus, you wheeled it all the way here?" He asked, laughing breathily when I nodded my head in response. "Atta girl. What kind of truck is it?"

"A ford pickup," I responded all too quickly, my voice strained as I tried to ignore how my heart swelled in my chest from the impressed look on his face. He nodded as he opened the drawer next to him and pulled out a ballpoint pen, picking up the notepad once again to start writing. "What year and license plate?"

"85', boston plate, the number is 289 BTO. " I watched as he wrote mindlessly, the handwriting barely coherent.

"'M kay, I'll take a look at it for you." he said, setting the notepad and pen back down on the counter. He opened his palm, gesturing for my keys, and I dropped them into his grasp. He hooked the ring that held them together around his index finger.

"Wait here, should only be a couple minutes."

I nodded as he circled around to the end of the desk, walking past me and pushing open the door to the garage.

His absence gave me a chance to examine the decor of the office space. Family and baby portraits crowded on top of the counter below the window behind the desk. A mickey mouse clock sat above the side door, and a large OPEN sign hung in the window.

The wall was crowded with plates and signs. One that caught my eye was an eagle with its claws digging into a hanging mirror, the name HARLEY DAVIDSON displayed in bright orange letters above the eagle's head. Next to the register was a small bell with a sign that said "ring for service" and the words 'don't actually' were scribbled in sharpie above.

Just when I was getting lost in thought, I heard the door bells jingle a second time, and Chris walked back in. The rag was now hanging loosely in his palm as he approached the counter. He stood right next to me, reaching over for the notepad and throwing the rag back over his now bare shoulder, which is when I realized he had discarded his button up. My eyes dart down to see the keys to my truck now hanging on a different belt loop on his jeans.

"From what I can see," he starts, popping the cap of the pen off and leaving it in between his teeth as he spoke. "It looks like a coolant leak. The combination from the antifreeze leaking and the heat of the engine is enough to make it smoke, but it's not enough to cause the engine freeze up." he explains, his eyes meeting mine every couple of words to make sure i understand. "So, it could also be a fuel pump problem combined with the leak."

I nodded, chewing my lip nervously as he went on to explain the time the repair would take as well as the cost. When the words, "not finished until at least tomorrow" left his lips, I huffed in defeat, and tried to make my disappointment less evident as i crossed my arms in front of my chest.

"How long have you had it?" He asked, now leaning against the counter next to us with one elbow, crossing one foot over the other.

"I've only started to work on it this summer, but it's been my dads since before i was born."

He nodded. "It's a pretty ride," he confessed. "I honestly expected it to look worse when you said 85', but the conditions not bad. You been workin' on it a lot?"

"As much as I can." I shrugged.

He complimented the paint job, to which i confessed i'd done it, and he gushed. "Christ, you should work here. Matt can't paint to save his life. You could probably get him out of a job,"

Matt sent a glare his way. "Shut up, kid. Dad would fire you over me any day, especially if you keep sleeping in."

Chris laughed, a genuine sound that made Matt's glare turn into a small smile before he went back to rifling through the file cabinet.

He turned back to me, pausing to look back over the notes he'd written down. "If i had to guess, I'd say we can probably have it to you by tomorrow evening." he said, looking away from the paper and averting his gaze to instead look me right in the eye. "That work for you?"

I nodded slowly. Suddenly, the issue of a ride home became extremely apparent, and an anxious feeling started to blossom in my chest.

"Good. Just one more thing. . ." he pauses to take the pen cap out of his mouth and place it back on the pen, tapping it against the curve of his hand and grinning wildly at me.

"i'm gonna need your number to let you know when its finished."

He's just asking because he's supposed to; because he literally has to in order for me to get my car back. But regardless, i felt heat rise to my cheeks as i started shifting uncomfortably in place.

"Right," I said, moving to reach for the pen. He points to a blank part of the notepad, tapping lightly to tell me where to write it.

Quickly and shakily, i write out the numbers with dashes. I hand it back to him, and a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. He rips the sheet off the notepad in one swift motion and folds it in half, placing it in his back pocket.

He glances towards the clock. Its nearing seven. He turns back to me, "d'you have a ride home?"

My eyes went wide. I'm reminded of my attempt to call my dad three times when the truck initially broke down, and how my shoulders slumped in defeat at the sound of his voicemail playing repeatedly.

I glance back over to him, ". . . Not exactly. I'll probably just catch the bu-"

"I can drive you,"

I swallowed, my lips slightly parted in surprise. His grin was still wide, awaiting my response.

It was a sweet offer, really. But considering my house was across town, partnered with the fact that he was literally on the job, i shook my head. "That's really sweet, thank you, but I'm far. And you're working, anyway." He shrugs, glancing at the clock once more. "It's fine, Matt's on desk duty and he's closing tonight. I don't mind."

I chew my lip. I'd be stupid to pass up on a ride, but i barely know this kid, and if my dad sees me rolling up with him and no truck, it wouldn't look great.

And then I think about the hour long bus ride that would be in the near future if I declined.

I screw my eyes shut. "You know what? Why not."

Despite the scenario i was in, my mind was pushing out any and all nerves as I watched Chris collect his things from behind the desk. He pulled his wallet, shop keys and jacket out of a cubby.

The two of us walked back into the garage and over to Matt, who was washing his hands in a sink bellow the tool shelves.

Chris bid goodbye to his brother, who looked at the clock and then frowned, turning the faucet off and reaching for the roll of papers towels.

"You're seriously slacking off? I already covered for you and Nate leaving early last weekend." He complained, discarding the wad of paper towels he'd used to dry his hands into the trash bin below.

Chris shot him a look. "And then i covered your sunday morning shift because you were hungover. You owe me."

Matt rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just put your tools away when you open tomorrow. It drives me fucking insane when you leave them everywhere."

Chris salutes. "Roger that." He turned to me and winked, gesturing to follow him through the garage with a tilt of his head.

I followed behind him as he went out a different exit; this one leading to a parking lot on the back of the building. A large EMPLOYEE PARKING sign hung on the fence near the driveway.

He fiddled with the many keys on his carabiner before finally finding his and walking towards a car near the opening in the gate.

A blue, four-seater, convertible 65' mustang. The light from the setting sun literally reflected off of it. He mindlessly stuck the key into the passenger side door, twisting and pulling it open with a faint click.

He gestured his hand towards the seat playfully, "Ladies first."

I rolled my eyes, placing one foot on the floor of the car and ducking my head to sit down. "How gentlemanly of you,"

He grinned at me, closing the door and walking around the back of the car before popping into the driver's seat.

"This is.. wow." I mutter, admiring the small details and cleanliness of the car as he closed his door and threw his belongings in the back. "Jesus, this is yours?"

He smiled proudly, his tongue darting out to dampen his bottom lip. "All mine,"

His fingers twisted the key into the ignition and the roar of the engine made the car buzz against my feet. He rolled both of our windows down, the summer air blowing smoothly through the car.

His smile was wider and prouder than ever as he glanced into the rear view mirror, throwing an arm over the back of my seat to glance behind him as he reversed. We pulled out of the parking lot and turned left onto the main road, Chris letting the steering wheel slide back into place under his palm by itself once he'd done so.

"You said you were far," he mumbled. "What area are you in?"

The question pulled me back into reality. I'd gotten so distracted by the way he drove so carelessly, like he was completely relaxed and in control of everything movement the car made, like fear didn't even exist to him as he pressed harder onto the gas pedal with his foot, my eyes choosing to ignore the way the tic on the speed meter start to spike.

His jawline was illuminated in the dim light, and the toothpick that was still resting on his lips stayed moving as he spoke gently, waiting patiently for me to answer.

I started giving him directions, and he listened carefully and intently, glancing over to look at me to make sure he understood my instructions. Once we were on the freeway, he went even faster, lane switching if someone in front of him wasn't going as fast as he'd like them to.

Soft giggles left me as he did, basking in the view of his lips parted into a smile, showcasing pearly teeth between pink lips.

Once he pulled onto the off ramp and we were stopped at a red light, he turned to look at me again, the bright red turning the car a faint shade of crimson.

"What time do you need to be back?"

He asked with a tone of voice he hadn't used till now. The sudden lowness caught me off guard as I shrugged, "'Dunno, not for a while."

He hummed in acknowledgement. "You wanna stay on the road for a bit?"

I pull my knees up to my chest and let my head fall against the headrest, a careless smile on my face. "Definitely."

And we did; we ended up back on the highway pretty quickly, blasting music through a speaker Chris had propped against the dashboard.

His speed only got higher and higher as time went on, carelessly resting one hand on the wheel whilst the other gripped the gear shift. At some point, his hand had mindlessly traveled to rest on my upper bare thigh below the hem of my shorts, cold and partially ringed fingers pressing against my skin.

"Will you do me a favor?"

I raised my eyebrows and hummed in response. He gestured towards the glove box. "Theres a pack of camel blue 99s in the glove box, would you grab em for me?"

I bit my lip. "Depends, you sharing?"

"Duh."

I leaned forward, feeling my stomach flip when his hand didn't much as move an inch on my thigh, brushing against my lower stomach as I lurched forward to fiddle with the glovebox.

I propped it open and grabbed the pack and paused, "d'you have a light?"

He nodded. "Should be one in there."

I learned more forward and reached farther back, glancing around before locking my eyes on a silver flip top lighter and grabbing it. Once i lean back up, Chris is pulling into an empty lot. His hand leaves my leg to push the gear into park, and i try not to frown.

I flick the top of the cig carton open and hastily pull one out, dropping it into Chris's palm.

He places it hazardly between his lips and turns to face me, silently asking for me to light it.

I pop the lid of the zippo open and hold the flam to the end of his cig, waiting to pull away until his expression signifies that its lit enough. His expression relaxes as he breathes in before pulling it away from his mouth with two fingers and exhaling, the smoke filling the car.

"If I'm honest, I prefer marlboro reds." I say quietly in an attempt to break the silence, watching Chris flick the ash out the window lazily with his thumb and index finger. He shakes his head. "Camels are undeniably better."

I laugh lightly and raise my eyebrows in amusement. "No accounting for taste, I suppose."

He takes another drag before holding it in between his fingers in front of my face, and Instead of reaching for it, I place my lips around the filter while it's still in his hand. Our eyes lock while I breath in sharper, the cool feel of the smoke filling my chest.

He licks his lips, and for a moment, his eyes dart down to look at mine, and he's starts he's studying my face. I'm doing the same.

His eyes are bright blue, surrounded by thick lashes, which are barely visible with stray pieces of his hair hanging down below the bandana on his head. Freckles lightly paint his noise, and his pink lips are slightly parted as his eyes scan my face.

"I like your piercing," he finally says, pressing his one hand to his eyebrow as if he had one himself. I breathe out the smoke i'd been holding in my lungs and smile at him. He's still looking at it as he speaks again, "Did it hurt?"

I shrug. "Not really," Because it didn't, but also because I'd feel like an idiot saying it did. "Just a pinch."

He nodded slowly. "Hm."

I take another hit from the cig which he's still holding up to my lips. Our faces are closer now. One of my elbows is resting on the center console as I look at him through my lashes.

"You should get one." I say.

He laughs, breathy and genuine. "Yeah? You think so?"

"Mhm," i reach my hand up to graze above his eye with two fingers. "It would look good on you." He watches my movements. "We'd match, too."

He digs his teeth into his bottom lip, finally moving the cig back to his own lips and taking one more long drag before carelessly discarding it out the window.

All too quick, he's facing me again, and he leans even closer. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face. My heart is thumping loudly in my chest, and a part of me thinks he can hear it.

Before I can even blink, he places his fingers on my chin and tilts his head, smashing his lips against mine hard.

Its all teeth at first, clashing messily as his hand leaves my chin and rests as the base of my neck. My hands are on his face, my fingers messing with the curls at the back of his neck while he grins against my lips.

He lightly bites my bottom lip, taking the opportunity to slide his tongue into my mouth. He tastes like cherry and camels, and I feel myself whimpering at the contact.

"Fuck," he mumbles into my mouth, and his tone is exasperated, partly because the console between us is making it harder for him to kiss me like he wants to, and partly because his attempts to pull me close enough for our chests to press together have been unsuccessful.

His hands reach down to tug at the belt loops of my shorts, trying to pull me onto his lap. I pull away for a second to push myself over the console, Chris's grip on my hips staying firm to assist me. I duck to avoid hitting my head on the roof of the car, and Chris giggles lowly.

I finally relax once I'm comfortable in his lap, straddling his legs below me. One of his hands is across my lower half, sliding his hand into my back pocket, and the other rests in the middle of my back, holding me in place.

We're kissing again, and this time it's more lips and tongue then teeth, but he's still lightly tugging at my lip.

I'm tugging at his hair as I push myself closer to his lower abdomen, pressing down, which elicits a groan from him. He pulls away from me, and I try to follow his lips with a whine, but he tugs at the back of my hair lightly so he can press kisses from my jaw down to my neck.

I'm already whimpering as soon as his teeth press against my throat, and he digs them deep, kissing the mark once he's satisfied with the shade of purple its turned before finding a different spot to do the same thing.

"Chris, fuck- please."

I can feel him below me, and it's making me crazy. He doesn't budge, even as I continue to whine breathlessly at him.

He only grins as he continues to nip at my skin, and i felt the smirk on his face against my throat. I tangle my fingers in his hair and tug as a silent plea. "What s' it, baby?"

Baby.

I practically keen at the nickname. He finally pulls away, a string of saliva connecting his lips to his previous spot on my neck. He grins proudly at the marks he's left before looking at me again.

"What d'you want?" his tone is cocky and assertive. His lips look red and bitten, and I start to feel embarrassed at the fact that we were sucking face so lewdly in a literal parking lot.

I want to squirm and writhe away under his gaze, but his knuckle tight grip on me won't let me. I fiddle with the neck of his shirt and avoid looking at him as i whisper, "I need you."

He grins madly. "How d'you need me, sweetheart?"

I lean forward and press my lips back against his, and he entertains for a little before tugging my hair lightly to pull me back. His fingers grip my chin, holding me in place to look at him.

"Tell me what you want."

I brush my hand against his belt buckle. "I wanna suck you off,"

It came out in a mumble, but he understood, nodding somewhat cockily with a shit-eating grin on his lips. A groan left him as he tugged me even closer so our chests were pressed together. "Yeah?"

I nod eagerly, another 'please' ready to escape my mouth as my impatience grows. He ducks his hand between the seat and the door to push it farther back, "On your knees, then."

I obliged immediately, sliding off his lap to rest on my knees below him. My elbows rest on either side of his legs as my hands flew to his belt, unbuckling it and tugging at his jeans and boxers.

He lifted his hips lightly to assist me. I pulled them down until they rested around his ankles, and I feel myself gawk.

He's big. Bigger then I expected.

A nervous feeling bubbles in the pit of my stomach, but the way he's looking down at me through hazy vision makes it vanish even quicker, and I wrap my hands around his length.

"You okay?" He asks, moving his hand to rest on my cheek, his thumb soothingly pressed on my temple.

"No- yeah, i'm good." I breathe. I hover myself over him, finally taking him into my mouth. A string of curses leave him in a hushed breath, and his head moves to rest at the back of my head to coax me farther down.

I pull back slightly, wrapping my lips around his tip and sucking lightly. His chest is rising and falling quickly above me, and his labored breathing is music to my ears.

His cock is heavy on my tongue, and its addicting. I take him farther down my throat, hollowing my cheeks to fit as much of him as i can while my hand is in a fist around his base. I bob my head and twist my hand, looking up at him to see his flushed face as he pants.

"Fuck, you look so pretty like this." He babbles, a throaty moan leaving him when I twist my hand faster, swirling my tongue along his cock as my head rises and falls.

I hum around his dick at the compliment, the slight sting on my scalp from him pulling my hair only pushing me to do more. He pushes me down slightly, and i choke at the burn of his tip making contact with my uvula.

I moan loudly on him at the feeling, tears building in my eyes as the vibration from the noises i'm making cause him to throw his head back, a blissed out expression on his face. "Fuck, so good. Just like that, god."

Drool seeps from the corners of my mouth as I speed up all my movements. Chris is a breathy, moaning mess above me, watching me through lidded eyes as I glance up at him.

He moves his other hand to rest on the side of my face, grinning at my fucked out appearance. "Fucking filthy girl, aren't you, baby." He says through gritted teeth. "You love this, don't you?"

I whine at him, furrowing my eyebrows in pleasure to say "yes', and watching as his eyes roll lightly back in his head when i start to suck lightly at his tip again.

My hand falls from his base to lay on his leg, the other holding the bottom of his shirt in my fist. I try to push my head farther down, whimpering faintly at the stretch.

Chris's hips jerk up lightly at the sensation, causing him to push himself down my throat until my lips hit the base. I start to choke, but I breathe heavily through my nose, screwing my eyes shut and hallowing my cheeks out to stop myself from pulling off.

"Fuck!" he grunts loudly, his grip on my hair turning animalistic. He mindlessly mutters out curses and praise as he pushes my head up and down with his hands, 'good girl', 'don't stop', 'takin' me so good, baby' 'just like that' . . .

My hands are resting completely at his sides as he guides my mouth on his cock, slightly bucking his hips to push himself as far as I can take him. His strokes turn sloppy, and I look up at him again to see him looking at me with a broken glance, bottom lip between his teeth. "Fuck, gonna cum," he gasps.

I begin to swirl my tongue around him, moaning messily on him as if to say, 'in my mouth, please', but he's already reading my mind, digging his nails into my scalp as he spurts coats of white down my throat, an incoherent string of "fuck fuck fuck"'s spilling out of him. Im swallowing as quickly as i can.

I pull off of him with a lewd pop, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I know i look completely ruined, but I'm still focused on catching my breath and looking at Chris's flushed pink face above me.

His hand rests on my face again, and his thumb soothingly rubs my cheek. "You okay? Was that too much?" he asks, his expression full of concern as he wipes the tears from under my eyes.

I smile, leaning into his touch. "I'm good, it was really good."

He nods, smiling dumbly. "Good."

He pulls his jeans and boxers back up, bucking his belt before pulling me off my knees and back onto his lap. He presses a soft, passionate kiss on my lips, and then trails kisses down the side of my face, pulling my hair back off my shoulders as we both catch our breath.

We're both startled by the loud ringing of my phone in the passenger seat. I reach over the console, sighing in relief when i flip it over and see my dad's name at the top of my screen.

I put the phone up to my ear, watching as Chris rubs circles into my side with his cold fingers.

"Hi," I breath out. I listen as my dad apologizes for not answering earlier. He tells me he heard my voicemail and asks if I'm okay. "M' fine, I just wheeled it to a shop a couple blocks over. I'm on the bus home now, should only be a bit."

Chris pouts at me, and i roll my eyes at him. My dad talks for a couple for seconds before hanging up, and i leave my phone in the drink compartment next to Chris's forgotten lighter.

"D'you need to get home?" He asked. I nodded, and he frowns. "I was gonna get you off in the backseat,"

part two? :)

thank you for reading! reblogs are DEEPLY appreciated. I hope you enjoyed. links below !

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[grapejuicestyless]

What If I Don’t Know?

JJ Maybank x fem!reader

Summery: In an alternate universe where the pogues gave up the hunt after their win with El Dorado, Y/n breaks free of the island dream and runs off the college. Only to find that maybe, being away isn’t what she wanted after all.

My boots danced across the thick yellow lines on the deep black pavement. The traffic lights were flickering yellow, reflecting off of the void and rippling across the building puddles by the clogged sewer drains. An intersection at midnight, no dead stop and no definite go. Just the trust that the other cars wouldn’t blow past the warning signs. The trust that metal was made to bend, to rupture to save a life.

I didn’t have a car, I couldn’t afford one, and I never needed one. Everything I ever wanted was always just a few steps away. Laughter used to echo through the halls and cold rings hit the doors repeatedly. You grow used to people that way. Used to the sound of their footsteps, of their breath. You know who’s on the other side of the door always when you memorize the pattern of their movement.

JJ promised me once that we’d make one. We would run our way down to the junkyard and pick out old parts of cars and Frankenstein them together into a piece of shit that would run like a dream.

That was something I missed. The smell of gasoline. Maybe that’s why I stumbled down through the college town, balancing between the thin stripe of black between yellow and twirling in the center where road met road. Maybe I was looking for that bitter smell to remind me of home. The image of JJ bent under the hood of a truck. The same Ford that sat broken in the front yard for years, the sound of metal twisting and the breathy grunts with each violent twist of the wrench. It would run like new one day, he swore. I never doubted him, and I still don’t. One day, we’ll run down to that junkyard, a graveyard for cars, and we’ll find that missing piece.

Rain dripped from the bridge of my nose, falling on my soaked shoes and flattening out my fuzzy socks. Everything up North was colder. Maybe it was because of how bitter people were. The semi-warm summers and the sweltering months of autumn, only for the two week beach bliss to be swiftly replaced with a harsh winter that didn’t let up until the next summer. Cold nipped at my nose. I felt bitter the longer I was here, which was weird because when I was sixteen, I could have sworn this place was home.

Then again, I had never really been anywhere long enough to know what home really was. Everywhere I went became rushed by the sweet adventure that was chasing riches. Maybe it was the idea of settling down that intrigued me. To be sat in one place for a while and to slow down, to increase my chances of living through my twenties without some pirate knocking on my front door, a gun to my head. But this wasn’t home, this wasn’t settling. This was restlessness mixed with a deep urge to find something like home. An emptiness emotionally that I just couldn’t understand.

Like a dog chasing its own tail, I felt stupid, and I myst have looked drunk dancing among the silence of my college town. I should have been happy, this should have been home. I got out, I got what Kiara always dreamed of, I sought out a higher education, a dream that Pope had thrown away. My record was clean and my future had meaning. I should have been ecstatic to receive this opportunity, after all the grief and death and scandals of my childhood, a stage in my life that was stripped away by all the realities that unraveled with each new treasure found. But, I wasn’t. Even then, sick, dirty, and cold, I wasn’t happier than then now.

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. In the dormitories, in the bathrooms, in the halls. It’s me, or, a version of that girl. She has my hair, and we share the same eyes, same curve of our lips too. But she’s hollowed out, gutted, and so indescribably not me. Different, not greater, but worse. I think of packing my bags quite often. Going quietly and without a fuss. To swallow my pride and withdraw my debt I would surely acquire if I stay any longer here at some institution I knew I couldn’t afford the moment I sent in my letter.

My roommate would be disappointed, but she’d move on. She doesn’t know me, she understands the concept of me, but she doesn’t know me. She’s nice enough, keeps her room clean, which inspires me to do the same. She brushes her hair regularly, almost obsessively, and is really pretty. We get along fine. We are friends, to a degree, but we are sure to find other roommates and never speak again. Still, I wonder if she would be mad if I left without telling her.

JJ was mad when I told him. He didn’t like the idea of abandonment. Though, I promised I would return in just a few months, and then a week after, and a few months later. It would feel like I am forever home, only with short intermissions where he gets to enjoy all the things that the island could offer with the others to hang off of his arm. He didn’t even indulge in that idea. He thought even an hour apart was too much.

I promised him it wasn’t abandonment, and swore to call him every night. I do. Sometimes I call him in the morning, and I almost always call him in the afternoon. I like to hear his voice. It sounds like home, it makes me feel warm. I forget about the redness of my nose and the tingling numbness in my fingers. He sounds like the waves crashing against the shore and the sound of wet spaghetti hitting the walls during dinners at midnight. He is laughter and the summer sun, the swells that ripple in mid July and the best seashells on the beach.

My knees bend beneath me, kneeling against the wet cement beneath me. I feel the wetness soaking through my jeans. It’s cold. Like it could be snow if it were a degree cooler. I kneel in the middle of the intersection, and I look up at the sky. It’s dark. I check my watch, it’s nearly morning again. The yellow light flickers against my skin, illuminating my face and leaving me in pitch black again. Everyone is sleeping in my college town. All is quiet.

My neck stretches out, upwards and I open my mouth. My tongue touches my chin, and I can taste the dirt in the droplets that swallow down my throat. My eyes are closed, because I have nothing to fear but loneliness itself, and whether my eyes are opened or closed, the feeling will still be there, and the fact will be too. I am alone, in this journey. I have nothing friends to lean on and no campfire to light. Nobody here knows about the existence of Kildare, of the marsh, and the restaurants that line the cut. They wouldn’t care, they don’t care about an environment they are not accustomed to. They only have so much space to consume what they need to know. To drink up their studies, they have no space for empty thoughts of a life they never lived.

I have my old phone in my pocket. The keypad is burned into the screen because it’s all I use it for now. My life revolves around nothing but the stress of failure and the relief of my best friend’s voice at the end of the day to ease my stress. The truth is, I understand the void in my passion now better than I did when it first appeared, the black hole that seemed to swallow up all my excitement for the new beginnings. I understand the bitter feelings I have for my new house, because I refuse to call this place home. Home is not a place you reside, though, familiarity breeds contempt, home is a connection to the people who reside in respect of you, who stand by you. So though the people I surround myself with here are perfectly friendly, they are not my friends, and they will never come close to the feeling of home I feel with them.

“Hello?” His voice is thick with sleep. He has that rasp men get early in the morning, a rich deepness I rarely hear anymore, but something I once bathed in with his arms wrapped around me through the night.

Theres a soft rhythmic ticking that comes with the flickers of light, and the soft patters of rain drenching the pavement create solemn acoustics around me.

“Hey, JJ.” It comes out in one breath. A sigh of relief that he even heard the buzzing of his phone in his usual dead-to-the-world like sleep cycle. My fingers slip on my phone case and I have to catch it, the rustling on my end of the line echoing back through the speaks to me. I can hear the playback of my breathing through a short delay that spans over a vast distance.

“Is everything alright? It’s…three in the morning. I don’t know a lot about time zones but, I think we’re both on the east coast.”

“No, it’s the same time zone, Jay.” My cheeks already hurt with how big my smile was. He just had that effect on me. His goofy, unknowing attitude always managed to make me laugh, especially because deep down I knew he was a lot smarter than he led on to be. When he let that mask slip to reveal his true self, it was always a wonder the ideas that spewed from his lips. He had one of the greatest minds I’d ever known, only to be undermined by the tragedy of his last name.

“Is it a crime to miss my best friend?” My eyes found a home on my wet knees, and my free hand began to play around in the water. Dragging my nail through the small puddle forming around my body.

“At this time? Yes.” He chuckled softly. “Somethings up, what are you speculating? Whats the word? Observations? Because I can’t help you with that.” He made himself clear, smiling through his sentences.

“What? No! Why would I call you of all people if I was Ob-ovulating?” I corrected myself with a laugh.

“Don’t knock it until you try it. I happen to be irresistible.” JJ defended himself with a teasing tone. Our conversation was light like it always was, even though my homesickness ran deep, and the sadness I felt was heavy, he made it feel like even the rain pouring down around the city I lived in was letting up.

“Lord knows John B’s walls are too thin for me to not have some kind of clue.” I snickered, pushing back the wet strands of hair that had fallen down upon my face.

Rain clung to me in every crevice, drenching me completely until I felt nothing but cold wash over me. It was a shower I didn’t need, one that did not cleanse me but instead poisoned me with the reminder that this was reality, I was miles away from the voice that was soothing my hearts ache momentarily. I would mull over it later.

“Nah, you got off on that shit.”

“Don’t be a pig, I’ll hang up.” I threatened half-heartedly. We both knew I never would. I could never cut the calls first, so the responsibility fell to JJ, who suffered the same inability to let go. Our calls usually stretched for hours, and the voicemails left in my inbox from the few times I would pass out with my cheek pressed firmly against some dusty book in the library took up all remaining storage in my phone. Right along side the folders of photos of us that collected by the thousands.

“So why’d you call?” He asked finally. I had no real answer. I used up all my excuses. Could he check for a sweater I left behind, the very same one I had on, or if he could just catch me up on what the others were up to. As if I didn’t call to hear all their stories daily, hourly if possible. What was I to tell him? What excuse could serve as something plausible without bearing a burden on his wide shoulders.

“You’re my best friend. I love you, I don’t need a reason.”

“You always have a reason.” He argued softly.

“Well, tonight I don’t.” I hummed. He hummed too, and silence filled the line.

The homely yellow flicked was accompanied by the blinding lights that came in pairs, growing brighter and wider with each passing second. Like a deer, I stood quickly, tall in my path but frozen in fear. I couldn’t meet the eyes of the man behind the wheel, recklessly racing across the intersection with no caution. Yellow meant slow, yet in the night, it only called for feet hitting the floor.

Puddles splashed violently, wheels screeching against the wet cement, leaving trails of where wet met soaked. I could see the distance between the wheels, I could lay my chest against the ground and measure it with my wingspan. The car swerved, laying down on the horn until the sound sputtered away into the distance, and nothing but the soft ticking of the lights and the sound of rain smacking the pavement filled the silence of the line again.

“Are you outside?” JJ asked finally. The sound of sheets crinkling and shuffling of legs against the mattress told me the loud alarm had stirred him from his relaxed state. I nodded at first, forgetting he couldn’t see me, and then I cleared my throat.

“I’m standing in an intersection.” I confessed quietly.

“Why?”

To clear my mind, to escape everything that was bothering me. To find peace with the silence, to try and find comfort in a home that wasn’t mine. There were a lot of minor reasons. The smell of gasoline was high on the list. I rationalized a lot of reasons in my head. Maybe I was looking for that bitter smell to remind me of home. Still, my gut wouldn’t settle.

I had left home to find something good for myself, to do myself the favor I always promised myself I would if I ever had the chance. But now, now that my feet had carried me to a place that was usually bustling with life, life that felt dull compared to even the most calm days on the island, I felt like I could never go back. A chance, a life, a future that I craved, I was throwing away because my feet refused to lift from the ground until I was sure I would only take my next steps home.

“I miss you.”

My answer was clear. It was true. I missed the waves, I missed the concrete roads freshly paved down in figure eight and how they met the old dirt roads of the cut. I missed John B’s chicken coop, though the chickens were long gone. I missed the dying tree carved with his name, and the rusted latch on the chateau’s porch door that left a yellow stain in the crinkles of my palm. But more than anything, I missed being no more than a breath away from JJ Maybank.

“Come pick me up?” I asked with uncertainty. Not because I even doubted for a moment that JJ wouldn’t come running to me if I even for a moment doubted where I stood, but because the morning was still young and tropical paradise was far away from the whistling winds of the North. Ferries only ran during certain hours, and money was hard to come by, even when we scrape together our pennies. Thats what happens when you drink up your success, you’re left with the repercussions. So, even if he did catch the boat, where would he get a ride from? How much more would it cost to bring the Twinkie alongside hime and ride it all the way to the hills where the colleges welcome signs were illuminated by colored lights, shining in school colors and pride.

He let out a stifled breath. He was choking on emotion I couldn’t read over the phone.

“I’ll be there, yeah.” He promised.

“Okay…I’ll go pack.” I said, suddenly and awkwardly. Yes, I dreamed of this day, kissing everything goodbye and running back to my roots, but now it was real. I could hear JJ slipping on his boots already. Why waste this chance?

“Pack?” He questioned.

“I’m leaving for good, Jay. I know I tell you that this is great and all, but I hate it here. This isn’t…this isn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not what I want.”

“So, you’re coming home?” He asks even though my answer has always been obvious.

“Yes.”

The line falls quiet again. I can hear the shuffling of his feet quickening against the rotting wood floors of the old Maybank property. A broken home flipped into something good. We share a bed there, I imagine he’s already grieving the loss of his starfish sleep position now that he’ll be bound to the same mattress as me again.

“I’ll be there soon.” The line falls dead.

Water splashes around me. If I wasn’t already soaked, I would be now. I can see why John B loved having a car so much now. The cold was fine at first when it was numbing, but now that I had feeling back in my chest, it was too much for me. My feet hit the pavement in harsh slapping movements, I pump my arms for some kind of friction against the wind. My lungs burn, they taste metallic. I want to wheeze and stop running, but I don’t think I could if I tried. I should feel embarrassed how quickly I up and left the place I was once stuck in, how I turned on my heels to run far away. But I’m not. I feel nothing, actually. Nothing but cold, determination, excitement. I have the energy of a child. I am an olympic runner, I have the right motivation. Get the fuck out of here, run myself right into JJ’s arms. I pray I don’t wake my roommate up when I reach my room.

The room is empty when I get there. I open the door so slowly, not even the rusted hinges make a sound. The carpet groans under my weight, even on my highest tip-toes. But the beds are empty and neatly made like they were left this morning. Rains pelts the windows. Theres a fan running. It’s my fan. I can’t sleep in the heat, not even in the winter. My bedding consists of borrowed blankets that I buried myself in, subconsciously trying to suffocate away the homesick feelings.

I barely had any clothes to pack, anything to throw into my duffle bag and my old backpack that was once Kiara’s. I never really got around to unpacking anyway, because there was so little to fill the bags I brought. Looking back on every decision I made before even stepping foot on campus, I should have known I would never stay. This was merely a vacation from hell. I don’t get the privilege to relax, I am worked and forced to prove myself over and over again among my peers who will never know me. I can’t wait to go somewhere where I am known again.

Somewhere along the way, I begin to collect up the posters on my walls. I rip them down hazardously, crumpling them and leaving them in the empty trashcan. It’s empty because there’s nothing I’ve touched in this room. Not the books, or the pens. I have a singular pencil up on my desk that’s much shorter than it once was, only half of its once lengthy size, and a nearly full set of flashcards. I don’t need the memory of this place to follow me. I consider it a favor to my roommate. To gift her with all the supplies she will ever need. She is nice enough, and a lot smarter than me. She’s sitting here on a full ride, though, the collar of her shirt says she could afford it without a penny. I convince myself she deserves it even though I do not know her.

I check my phone repeatedly, and I sit on the bench under the old overhang by my dorms. I stay out of the rain, I stay near the warmth and huddle up. I feel anxious waiting for him. It’s only been a few hours. I swept over the room for the few things I did want to keep. Like one of JJ’s bracelets, though it never even left my wrist. Or the soap I used in the shower. It was brand new, I had just bought a new one. I wait for his call. I wait for the familiar honking of the rusted horn. I wait, and wait as the sun rises. Time ticks by. I am impatient, I wasn’t bred this way, but good things have made me this way. I cannot wait.

“Popes probably gonna kill me.” I mumbled softly.

The car was warm, but my hands still lingered with the outsides touch. I sat on that bench for hours waiting for him. I saw people rise from their beds and lean out the window, taking in the smell of the dewey morning. A few gave me puzzled glances. A drenched girl, dripping down on the bench, wetting everything she touched.

But then, he came. I could see the rusted van before he even put it in park. Just between the brick lined buildings and the paths decorated in dying shrubbery. There was a small gap between the campus lawn and the visitors parking lot. A small slice of the outside world creeping into the sheltered space that was college.

I ran. I ran faster than I ever had in my life. Faster than when I used to race for desert back when Big John used to ruffle my hair and let me sleep over if I wanted, faster than when Ward held a gun to my head and made me pray for some kind of miracle. I ran until my feet couldn’t keep up, and I fell into JJ with a gasp.

He held me back, lifting my feet from the ground they stood on. I swore I heard him mumble something sappy under his breath, but he quickly shrugged it away when he saw the look in my eyes. I never felt love until I felt the desperation in the way he wrapped his arms around me. The way he squeezed the air from my lungs and only let me breathe when he was sure that the feeling between his elbows and his chest was really real, until he knew that this was for good.

He had slung my bags into the back seat and laughed as he told me to get in the Twinkie. When he started driving, he played the old CD we burned together in middle school filled with soft rock and Bob Marley. Occasionally, a song I had written into the playlist without him knowing would play. He always acted angry that I’d done that, but his fingers tapped the wheel and he couldn’t help but hum along. He would never admit to liking trashy pop songs, but the pink on his cheeks gave him away.

When the CD was spun to an end, we debated playing it again. We fell into silence, into the comfort of company. We both took the time to process the fact that this was real now, this was the decision I had decided to make. The thoughts that ran through my mind, what if I took off? What if I packed my bags, what if we moved back home? Let’s adventure down the coast, let’s live our youthful dreams that are unrealistic. Let’s make a home. They were real now, in this car, in him. We sat comfortably knowing that there was no limit on our company now, no restrictions on how much time there was left to borrow.

My socks tapped against the dashboard, my toes tracing the outline of the stickers scattered along the interior. Wet residue was left over, soggy folds gathered at my ankles. My body folded into itself slightly. I let the warn air from the dusty vents dance across my skin. Goosebumps faded like the sinking feeling in my gut. The smell of gasoline filled my nose once more, the smell of his deodorant reminded me that he was close.

“No doubt about it. Don’t know how you’re gonna talk your way out of this one.” JJ sighed contently.

“Well, you’re pretty good at sweet talking.” I buttered him up. Compliments were his weakness, I knew it all too well.

“I love you, but no.” JJ laughed.

“What! Oh, come on, please!”

My hands wrapped around his right bicep. My chin sat perched on his shoulder, batting my eyelashes at him and tickling the peach fuzz on his jaw that he had missed while shaving. I wanted to rub my palm over it, tease him for it with a smile. He had a toothy grin that I could see reflecting back in the rearview mirror.

“I get shit done, but I’m not a miracle worker, ‘kay?” He lifted his arm out of my grasp reluctantly, waving his finger to make his point.

“I thought Papa J was a miracle worker?” I teased with a raised brow. My arms crossed over my chest with a huff. My back fell gently against door. I turned to face him, a pout on my face and lines between my furrowed brows.

JJ let out a breathy laugh, his resolve quickly breaking at my endless begging. He had soft spots and I knew just where to aim.

“No, no! Don’t use my ego against me!” He laughed. I held my stomach this time, trying to keep my ribs together while I struggled to contain the fits of giggles bubbling up my throat and fighting past my lips. If love was a sanctuary, I was certain I had both feet in it. If it was a fire, I was burning up, and if it was the waves, they had crashed down relentlessly against my shivering body, bringing relief with each blow.

I bit the inside of my cheek and chewed at the skin. Laughter faded into even breathing, and my limbs curled up against the wrinkling fabric of the passenger seat. It had just barely started to rain again, a soft pattern of droplets hitting the windshield every so often. The closer we got to the dock, the more it lightened up. Though, the storm came in waves in the shape of the clouds that covered the blue skies. With each opening with sun peaking through, the tapping on glass stopped. When the grey swallowed us whole, it resumed. I didn’t mind it again. Not for the reasons that I wallowed in just hours ago, not to seek comfort in my homesick nature that cane purely from the soul of a homebody. But this time, because the swelling my my heart made me want to pull over to the side of the highway and spin around until my half-dried socks were coated in mud and my skin didn’t recall what the dryness felt like.

“Can I tell you something?” I murmured, my eyes locked in to the passing view that was the trees speeding past the windows.

“Yeah.” JJ hummed.

“I only came back for you.”

JJ hesitated on what he thought he wanted to say. He was biting his tongue. I shook my head.

“That sounds bad.” I laughed. “I only decided to leave because of you. I guess…just sitting in the middle of the road, I already felt really far away from everyone. I missed everyone more than I’ve ever missed anything in my life, but I was convinced that maybe I could suffer through it. But…just being with my thoughts, and hearing your voice after thinking for a while…kinda just convinced me.”

JJ took it all in. I saw the whites of his knuckles deepen the harder he pressed his fingertips to the wheel, the vast expanse of road ahead daunting now. This was beyond quality time together, and he knew it now that the newness began to settle and he began to realize it was the same old me. This was my future, and I had tossed it all away.

“I just…I guess I always thought you’d be the one to make it out. To really go for it. Kildare’s big enough for me, but I always kinda thought you’d go somewhere…more.” JJ spoke softly, eyes glued to the road.

“Maybe I already did get out. I got out and I tried to change everything about me to be that girl who wanted to get out, but she’s dead. Getting out sounded so freeing when we were younger, but now…now that we’ve seen the world and…and done so much in such little time, I’ve already lived a whole life, I’ve seen the world and I still feel like I don’t know who I am yet. But I know what I love, and I know that I hate every second that I’m away from it.”

JJ hummed again, raising his brows.

“You don’t need to explore every single corner of the earth to be something or-or someone. And maybe I didn’t realize it when I sent my letter in but I know now and I know that, I feel only half as good when I’m anywhere but where I should be. I’m sorry if that’s disappointing or if Pope is going to lecture me for days and you have to listen to it, but I know I have such a better chance of being who I want to be where I can be her than in some Northern University where people wear coats year round.” I rambled. My hands moved quickly. I cut through the air with each slice of my palms, and my eyes ran wild across the landscapes and the curve of his nose down to the bend of his jawline.

“I’m just trying to make sure this is what you want.” He finally cracked a smile. His head turned for a moment to meet my eyes, and I could see the flickers of light brightening up his affectionate gaze.

“Jay, I sat in the pouring rain in the middle of the road and begged you to come get me.” I deadpanned, but a small smile still graced my face.

Truthfully, I couldn’t wait to stick my toes back in the warm sand back home. To look down at my boots and dance along the gravel roads instead of balancing between two yellow lines that shot straight down the neat pavement.

Home was a foreign concept for a long time. The idea that it was something that could be bought. Through a mortgage, monthly rent, out of pocket. I never had those kinds of expenses. What was pocket change for some felt like gold to me, so maybe when people sat around talking about how they craved a big house to reside in, I never fully understood. Then again, I was never anywhere long enough to know.

I wouldn’t change a thing, how I ran around with my friends for years looking for gold that seemed to become buried under more and more stories, leading us to an even greater prize. I wouldn’t change the way I threw it all away to be with them. Subconsciously, I was smarter than I thought. Pope talked about packing up his bags, skipping town and moving to Idaho. Somewhere where he meant nothing to nobody and could start over. But I never indulged in it, or the fantasies of having a little more money. Being stable out be nice, but I always knew I had what I needed. I had a home and it was built on the structure of my four best friends that soon grew in size to six, and they had toothy smiles and stupid jokes.

“Do you think they’ll be mad?” I asked suddenly. Sure, this was right and it was what was true, but this was a dream that nobody else ever got to experience.

JJ pulled his lip between his teeth.

“Nah.” He sighed. “Pope will have your head, but Pope gets wound up easily. Could use him as a fishing pole.” JJ joked. It made me laugh and I felt any stress melting away. It was funny that he could do that anytime he pleased. I didn’t know if he ever knew he could do it, but he had a smart mouth, and a funny bone that always seemed to tickle me just right.

“But not you?” I asked once again.

“Not me what?”

“You wouldn’t? Be disappointed in me, that is.” I clarified softly, the roads becoming softer the more me drove along them. It was only moments until we’d soon roll onto the metal bridge connecting us to the boat that would send us home.

JJ breathed out through his nose.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” I responded plainly.

“And it makes you happy?”

“Yes.” JJ sighed, his eyes flickering from the wheel, to the road, and back to me. But only for a moment.

“Then no.” He answered just as plainly as I did, but there was a twinge of happiness itching at the corners of his lips. Selfishly, he wanted me to come home, and selfishly, I did too.

“Well, are you mad at me?” I continued to press him.

He laughed. “I could never be mad at you.”

“Not even if this is the wrong choice?” I picked at the skin by my fingers. My skin hurt a lot less now that it was shedding the smell of foreign land and letting the faint smell of the Twinkie stick.

“Who am I to tell you if it’s wrong?”

“Well, Pope would tell me it’s wrong.” I argued weakly.

“And am I Pope?”

I shook my head silently, and my eyes glued to my fingers. Blood stained my cuticles, where skin met nail. It stung, but it hurt a lot less than what I felt before.

“Y/n/n, you could send me into bankruptcy and act like we’re rich and I don’t think I’d even have it in me to blame you.” JJ smiled. I focused on the slopes and curls of his hair.

We sat in silence for a moment. It wasn’t like he was Shakespeare, but it wasn’t often JJ said something truly sappy. Usually, his philosophies revolved around excuses for his own stupid actions, which, now that he had explained his view on me, I had come to realize I never fully saw the extent of his behavior because I had never had the courage to blame him. I never would.

“So, you’ll talk me out of trouble when we get back?” I smiled sweetly, leaning my head on his shoulder and batting my eyelashes desperately.

JJ let out a laugh from deep in his stomach, his cheeks turning pink from his gasps of oxygen.

“I love you, but no.”

“I thought JJ was the reckless one, but holy shit, Y/n/n!” Pope ran a hand over his hat, pulling it off by the brim in one quick motion. The hard fabric hit the wooden counter of the bait and charter shop, the slap echoing through the homely space.

“Can you blame me? It’s so far away, and we just got back! I haven’t been in one place for more than a month in years, and I’m so god damn tired of feeling homesick all the time!” I tried to argue against the growing rally against me. I pleaded my case, but they all looked at me like I was brain dead.

“You had a chance, Y/n. A really good one too and you blew it, for what? To sell bait? To slum it in the cut? You can do that when you’re done earning your other options!” He scolded me like I was a kid. But I’m not a kid, and the worry lines slowly creeping up onto my once vibrant face are only evidence of the ever growing number attached to my bones.

“Yes, but a chance I didn’t ever really want! I mean, how could I even know if I ever wanted it, I don’t know who I am!”

“Thats what growing up is for! Not growing down. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re not a kid anymore, Y/n. And you never will be again!”

Silence fell over the small room. Even the waves rolling against the dirt didn’t dare to whisper through the large windows and gaps for doors.

“I sacrificed that for you.” I spoke softly, bitterly. For so long, I’s bitten my tongue for everyone. Hidden my resentment for chasing after a gold, I never really wanted because in my eyes, I already had it. But it was what they wanted, so I let myself age out of the period of my life I had dreamed of since I was a kid.

“I gave up my childhood so that you could figure out yours! You got to know who you are, I never got that because no one ever stopped to ask me what I wanted! Nobody! You were all too caught up in your greedy treasure hunt to ever look around and think about if everyone wanted to do this!”

“No one made you come along.” Kiara stepped forward, the same disapproving look in her eyes. She was only defending her wordless friend, but my feet felt heavy and my joints were warm. I felt myself creating sentences I should have never admitted out loud.

“Well I did! I did, and it’s too late to change that, and I did it because that’s what friends do. But what do we have to show for it? Nothing! We didn’t get the cross, we didn’t get the gold, hell, we already spent all of the nuggets John B managed to grab!” It fell silent again, and suddenly, I was standing in the center of a circle I didn’t want to be a part of.

“So what? Because we failed, it condemns you to leave college?” Kiara always had a smarter mouth than me. She was quick witted and observant. Yet, she failed to understand that my choice to come home wasn’t something merely because of the way the treasures slipped through our fingers. It was a homesickness she never had to feel because she had plenty of homes where she was consistently welcomed.

“Why is it so wrong for me to be unhappy with something that everyone else enjoys? Just because my dreams do not inspire yours does not make them any less important. A-and honestly I’m sick of standing here and listening to all of you yell at me for getting out of there instead of letting myself waste away! I’d be dead if I didn’t leave, I’d be dead because you all mean a lot too much to me for me to be away from you guys for so long. In four years I might be rich, but I would be unhappy. I would be bored. But you guys—us; we will be interesting, and funny, and bold, and unpredictable forever.”

I swallowed hard, and my eyes met the blues of the boy who had the courage to go against the majorities better judgement and bring me home. He had the same wild look on his face.

I hadn’t expected JJ to speak for me, to try and mellow out the anger I knew I would receive and backtrack against the backlash I would surely face. But out of everyone, I thought I could count on him to have my back.

And he just, didn’t.

I decided then I wouldn’t stay in the eye of the hurricane when I knew what it was capable of. I wouldn’t let myself become part of its destruction if I knew I could separate myself from it for just a moment, to remove myself from all the disappointed stares.

My feet hit the wood of the long dock, the bottoms of my shoes echoing through each plank of wood, all borrowed from the destruction of a past home.

I thought of packing up, leaving, heading over to some other place I could call home temporarily, but my fingers hesitated to reach under the bed, and my knuckles curled away from the zipper that connected to the duffle bag that was squished between dirty clothes and shoe boxes filled with memories.

A hand spun me around, pulling me from the daze I had put myself in the second I walked into the new bedroom that was mine to keep in the newly fixed home. It was calloused and warm, yet the coolness of the rings decorated on each finger revealed who the strong hold belonged to.

“Why couldn’t you say something?” I asked bitterly before my eyes even met his. It was just JJ and I in the confinement of our bedroom. The door shut without a crack and the windows sealed off from the outside.

“I told you I wouldn’t.” He smiled. I didn’t find it funny.

“No, but you could have defended me. I would have done it for you.” My lip wobbled. My throat stung, and JJ’s eyes softened. He must have believed it was because he hurt me, but it wasn’t his fault. It was just the idea that nobody would ever deal with what I felt because they hadn’t been burdened with the feeling of it ever before. And therefore, nobody would ever get it, nor have an inkling of an understanding of why I had to come home.

“Y/n/n, come on. It’ll blow over. They’ll be happy to have you back as soon as they get over it.” He tried to comfort me.

When his hands found my shoulders, it felt belittling, condescending, though I knew it wasn’t the case. I convinced myself it was because I was angry. Spiteful, maybe.

“No, JJ, stop. Stop touching me like you care, I can’t…I can’t stand it right now.” I stepped away, throwing his hands off of me like they were poison, or fire, or both.

“Everyone is looking at me like I’m a failure! Like…like I’m something to be embarrassed about. But who are they to say that I failed? Right? I spent my whole life, the years when I’m supposed to be finding myself licking the dirt off of other peoples shoes! And I took it and I didn’t complain because I thought that maybe my day would come, and it hasn’t! How is that fair? And to think I was stupid enough to think that something good would happen to me. But the truth is I hate being out of this stupid town, and this stupid town hates me. I-it’s like they’re all spitting on me and blaming it on the wind. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy because I love you too damn hard to be looked at like that by a boy I would give my whole life for!”

I breathed heavily through my teeth, and my chest raised with so much vigor in my voice, I shook the air with a desperate anger I had felt marinating for decades beneath my skin. Yet, the manhunting and the blaming had pushed it down, and the failure and the fear had only boiled it back up. But it was always there, simmering. JJ just laughed.

“I’m only looking at you like you’re crazy because I think you’re too good to care what anyone has to say about you.” He explained with a smile.

“To you, maybe. But that doesn’t make it true. Whats true is that they all had some image of me painted for them the second I made the decision to go to college, and it was wrong. Because I’m not nearly smart enough to be as interesting or independent as they want me to be. I can’t do organic chemistry, I’ve never passed a calculus test, I’m not a doctor. Nobody ever supported those dreams anyways, not even me, because as amazing as it would be to become those versions of myself, it’s not me.” My face crumpled in defeat finally.

“I’m not…good enough for anything outside of this town.”

For the first time in my life, I saw something in JJ’s eyes as I confessed how I saw myself, how I let my friends—no, my families anger affect how I saw my decisions. I saw dapples of disappointment flickering in the sea of his eyes.

“Do you really think thats true?” He asked calmly, softly. He ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to reach out for me, but he too shared that feeling of uncertainty that had consumed me in the past months.

“Good god, maybe they were right. Maybe you are a failure.” JJ sighed, and my breathing halted. “How can you for one second believe that anything they have to say is true? How can you believe that these things you think about yourself are true?”

“Well what am I supposed to believe? We were all raised to believe the same things, right? The engineers and the scientists are necessary but nobody needs the family man or-or the artists to carry on, right? So why should my dreams of just simple living be tolerated when everyone else craves so much more?” I cried.

“Do you even hear yourself? It’s contradictory in every sentence!” JJ yelled furiously back at me. But his anger wasn’t placed at me, but at the things that led me to believe what I thought.

“Just a few hours ago you were excited to come home. You were certain that this is what you wanted because it was your dream and your life! You wanted to find yourself, to know who you are. And you were right! More dead on than anyone had ever been in my life, and hearing you speak about what you knew inspired me to think more for myself than for the benefit of everyone else! College, or some fancy job, or money won’t make any of us know who we are, that’s your job!” JJ’s eyes were wide. He had decided now, and his hands found a home on my arms, squeezing hard and passionately.

“Anyone can be those things they want you to be, but I promise you, if you stick with what you know you want, everyone you touch will remember you for centuries.” He promised me softly.

“And how do I know if I even know myself? What if I’ve never been home enough long enough to know?”

“Then you’ll find it. You’ll find it, and I’ll find it too. We can find it together.”

My eyes searched his. I could no longer blink away my tears. The liquid was much warmer than the rain that had pelted against my skin, that had slipped down my back and under my shirt to touch the most painful and terrifying parts of myself that I had refused to acknowledge or recover for some time. It was hard to recognize it all, to know exactly who I wanted to be, so, I did what I did know.

I wrapped my arms around JJ tightly, burying my head in the wrinkles of his shirt and let the patterns his arms rubbed circles in my back guide the way I swayed. I let him hold me, because if anything could be uncertain then he was nothing. He was the one thing I’d always known, and maybe that was why I had called him that night. Because in every memory I ever had, he was the one defining memory of home. He was home.

“Will you be mad at me if I never find it?” I asked pathetically against his chest.

“No.” He responded softly, muffled by the way his lips pressed into the top of my head affectionately.

“I could never be mad at you.”

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 5

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Time flies, in room number 2. How much longer do you have, just for the two of you?

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 see series masterlist for extensive tw.

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange bedroom besties 🧡 It's been a hot minute, I sincerely apologise. Thank you to everyone who stuck around, I hope it was worth it, and thank you to everyone who just passed by 🧡 @frannyzooey my love, thank you for your help on the Americanisms, invaluable as always 🧡

Word count: 13.8k

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Chapter 5: Time in a bottle

It’s late when you pull into the parking lot. Dusk cloaks the motel in its fuzzy veil, the surroundings fading in diffuse shadows. The single-story building stands out in the twilight, akin to an old ship. Wooden poles for masts, hanging lamps swaying gently in the briny breeze, their lights blurry in the muggy air. Tacky and warm, it wafts in through your car’s open windows, dampening the exposed skin of your forearms and the back of your neck. 

On the passenger seat, your iPhone’s screen glows in the semi-darkness with an incoming call. 

Adrian.  

“What now?” you sigh, through clenched teeth. 

Your eyes dart up to Frankie’s truck parked in front of you. The word FORD stretched in chrome letters on the tailgate, shining bright in your headlights. 

The familiar pull awakens between your constricted lungs. A pounding, greedy little tug compelling you to get out of your car and cover the distance to the room as quickly as your step will carry you. But you want to calm your nerves first. Slow down your heart rate, deepen your breathing. 

That discussion you had with your father, earlier this afternoon, still clings to your frame. The humiliation conveyed by his carefully chosen words like tar, black and viscous. You can almost smell its foul stench. And you don’t want to bring any of it inside. 

It’s only the third time Frankie gets here before you, if you count that very first Friday back in September. And the second, since you came back from Colorado earlier this month. The pressure in your rib cage eases at the memory of that sweet evening. 

All day long, you had rushed through your counting routine. Through the long, icy corridors of your glass prison. Rushed on the 589 northbound. Rushed to strangle the uncertainty of his presence there. 

It was a few minutes past 7pm when you parked next to his truck, his early presence cranking up your anxiousness. You got out of your car with an anguished scowl, and you all but ran toward the porch, toward the brass number 2, shoes scuffing the gravel. 

The door swung open the very second you stepped under the overhang. A flash of dimple, and his arms wrapped around your waist. He scooped you up from the floor, swift and easy, carrying you inside. Hungry kisses, teeth scraping at your jaw, down the line of your neck. A throaty husk of Happy New Year, Lee Abbott, as he tugged your clothes off your body that thrummed with his scent and his voice and his arms and his taste. 

With the density of him. 

He lifted you again, your short, giggly yelp bouncing across the room as he hauled you over his shoulder with an easy force. His steps long and balanced, as if your weight was inconsequential to his strength. 

In the dim bathroom, he put you down directly into the tub. There, he unbuckled his belt and slid down his jeans, looking at you with a mischievous grin you’d never seen before and that fitted his gorgeous face a little too well. 

“Told you I’d fuck you in this shower.” 

Thirty seconds later, you were standing together under an aggressive stream of scalding water, his broad back shielding you from the high pressure, steam blurring the tiles and the mirror. You pressed your face into his neck, hands splayed over his chest, feeling it heave with his low, rumbling chuckle. 

“ That’s the best I could do. This place is trash,” he scoffed, lips grazing your ear. 

“ It’s perfect,” you laughed. 

Another notification lights up your screen, yanking you back into the stifling cab of the sedan, to the nagging cramp poking your rib cage, to your hindered breathing. 

It glowers at you, bold black letters over a steel gray rectangle. 

MESSAGES 

Adrian

Your eyes flicker back to the red truck, your face crunching into a grimace. 

“Shit,” you grit, grabbing the phone and quickly pressing the home button before you can change your mind.  

The lock screen fades as the message app pops open. You squint against the brightness of the glowing white screen. 

I made it, babe. I fucking made it. You’re talking to the new senior partner of Balmer & Steigt.  Fuck yeah. I finally get what I fucking deserve.  

The gray ellipses start blinking underneath the bubble. You frown, bracing yourself. 

I couldn’t have made it without you. This is your victory as much as mine.

You scoff, but the dread-inducing ellipses keep bouncing happily. Fantastic. There’s more coming.

I got you something. Something fancy for my fancy girl.

“Oh, hell no.”  

Leaning down, you pick up the roomy I ❤ NY tote bag Ava got you as a Christmas present and dump your phone into it, before stuffing the bag under your seat. 

If only you could take a full breath. If only your chest would expend. It’s not that bad, really. A few months back, you would have been physically unable to keep going with your day after that conversation with your father. Let alone drive. You’d have suffocated, chocked up on your panic, until you’d been left with no choice other than to gulp down a pill, or two, or three, topped off with a swig of gin. The bitter taste of surrendering. 

Is that what it means, to give oneself some grace? You’re doing good, you’re doing better, you’re doing your best.

Closing your eyes, you exhale through pursed lips and ease down your shoulders. 

He had you called into his office by his secretary, as you were about to leave, bag in hand, counting steps. 

But you were expecting it. In all honesty, you’re surprised it’s taken him this long. Four weeks since you came back from Beaver Creek. Four weeks of defying his strict, outdated, misogynistic dress-code. 

The very first morning, you stepped out of the mirror-lined elevator on the 15th floor wearing high-waisted, wide-legged slacks and a loose button-up, the sleeves folded high on your forearms. And flat derbies.  

Nervousness, sitting heavy and queasy in the pit of your stomach, beating loud against your eardrums. Prickling under your armpits, raising the hair on your nape. 

Kaytee’s eyes widened as she caught sight of you walking by her office, before she remembered to police her expression. The shock on her face turned into something else, something worse. Lurking in the lift-up corner of her lips, in the smugness coloring her cheeks. Something sardonic. Condescension. 

“ You can’t spend your life trying to be someone else. ” Ava’s words through the receiver the previous night were a dizzying swirl inside your head, as you walked down the glass corridors, coworkers and subordinates watching you with a similar shocked expression, that blurred their features into one subdued, frightened face. 

But who the fuck am I, Ava? you wanted to ask, the only sound on the line that of your short breathing. How did you know who you were? Always. From the very beginning of your life. How did you know how to be so unapologetic about it? 

Had it been your gift to her? Does self-confidence require love? Or guidance? Is it innate? 

All you know, at this point in your life, is that wearing clothes that you chose for yourself seems like a sound first measure. One that you can actually undertake. 

And with that in mind, you stepped into your father’s office, your heart pulsating in your throat, to take a seat across from him, his clear desk standing like a wide canyon between you.

Now, your steps are nearly silent on the shifting gravel, as you walk across the parking lot, fingers brushing along the cool metal of the truck as you pass it by. That pull toward Frankie propelling you forward, inescapable, irresistible despite the nasty sensation oozing down along your legs like thick-flowing tar, weighing your gait. 

On the porch, you pause. On Friday evenings, this is when you shed your old skin. Healing wounds, scar tissues. When you set your eyes on the canopy as it swallows the sun, pink-orange dusk fading to dark. Grainy photographs, forgotten vacations. This is when your spine straightens, when you take in the horizon and let it deepen your breathing. When you ready yourself for the life you’ve chosen, between the brown carpet and the yellow curtains and his arms. 

But it’s already night. The darkness has erased the horizon and your old skin won’t shed. 

The door opens, a draft ruffling your hair.  

The first thing you see is the crease between his brow. The tick of his whiskered jaw, and then, his dark brown eyes, appraising the tension that winds up your body, appraising your silence. His grunt, like an echo, distant. 

“You sat in that car forever. I was about to come out and get you.”

The concern in his voice rattles something deep inside your belly. You’re not bringing any of it inside that room of yours, you think, as he pushes away from the door to let you in, as you cross the threshold, but it’s stuck to you. Your father’s voice. The tremendous power it still holds over you. His disappointment. Your failures, plural. All the wrong choices. 

His hat is set on the desk. His suede jacket is draped over the back of the angular wooden chair. Your gaze lingers on it, you can almost feel the comforting softness of the fabric under the pads of your fingers.

He stands a few feet away from you, giving you space. Dark mahogany searching your features, your posture. His hands propped on his hips, like that other night in the parking lot, after he’d seen the fresh scar in your hairline. 

You face away from him. The smell of the room is familiar, in a comforting way. Musty. Dust and the faintest perfume of industrial laundry detergent coming from the starched sheets. He’s pulled the bedspread off the bed. It’s folded neatly on the floor underneath the window. It rises tears along your throat, the idea of him prepping himself, prepping the place, alone in this room where you’ve waited for him countless times and hours. Guilt scrambles your brain, over what, you’re not entirely certain. Keeping him waiting? You failures, plural. All the wrong choices. 

“Lee.”

His voice seeps in through the blackness coating your skin, like warm and persistent little droplets of sweet amber.

You turn to face him, at last. An awkward upper-body twist, feet rooted to the brown carpet, teeth clenched around the lump in your throat. He’s wearing that gray threadbare t-shirt you love, the one with a v-neck, and your eyes find the dip at the base of his throat, the fireworks of freckles between his collarbone. Tears well up, too strong to hold back, and you shut your eyes to the muffled sound of his booted steps on the matted carpet.  

You’re drifting, enveloped in his warmth, his scent, leather and musk. The contact of his skin as he curls a large hand around your nape, tucking your face into the curve of his strong neck. 

His arm wraps around your waist, drawing you closer, flush to his chest, and he presses his chin to your temple. You let go, surrender, honey dripping thick and golden along your loosening limbs. 

His pulse beats solid and steady against your cheek. You breathe him in, a hindered inhale at first, and when your shoulders begin to drop, a deeper one. A single tear escapes. It rolls down the round of your cheek into his skin. Your palms skim up to the plane of his back, soaking in his heat, and he presses you in harder, his forearm aligning with your spine, fingers spreading at the base of your skull. 

Time stretches. He holds you. You lean in. 

Later, after he’s helped you climb into the cab of his truck, you keep your eyes on him as he rounds the red hood.

Sitting behind the wheel, he puts the key in the ignition and, looking at you, tilts his head to the left. 

“C’mere,” he says, and you scoot next to him, biting down a relieved sigh as you slide over the seat bench. 

He leans over your lap, grabbing the middle seat belt, and buckles you in, then himself. You settle in, with your head against his shoulder, and your hand on his thigh, soft cotton, worn denim. Under your touch, his firm muscles ripple as he drives you into the night, into oblivion. The steady motion lulling you to sleep.

Alongside the deserted road, trees and bushes roll out in the headlights as the truck swallows miles and miles of asphalt. 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble after a while, fighting drowsiness.

“Don’t be. You wanna talk about it?” he adds after a pause.

“No.” 

You shake your head, your voice so low you’re not certain he’s heard your answer.

“Doesn’t have to be now,” he says. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Your head bobs with his bunching muscles as he releases the wheel to bend his arm at the elbow, fingers threading through your hair. Without lifting his eyes off the road, he leans in, and pecks a pointed kiss on the crown of your head. 

Your eyes close. The image of the bedspread neatly folded underneath the window flashes through your mind. You can’t seem to get used to his tender gestures, to his attentions. You hope they will never stop. You hope you will never get used to them. 

The emotion washes over you, a soft wave, and you float with it. In the cab of his truck, in his scent and his hold, you feel free of all doubts. Fear and pain cannot find you here. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced so far, a strange feeling, potent and all encompassing, albeit one that doesn’t need to be dulled or tamed. 

The words come out of your mouth as a surprise. 

“I think I don't want it to define me anymore. My family, I mean. Where I come from.”  

This is a new state of mind. Or perhaps it’s been there for a while, a mere shadow on the wall, something you couldn’t clearly discern. Suddenly simple to comprehend and articulate.

“Yea. I get it,” he says.

And you know he does. 

You open your eyes, and take in a deep breath, fill your lungs with that distinct old leather scent that clings about him, and the smell of vintage Bakelite from the dashboard, so specific to his truck.  

“Music?” you ask.

“Sure, good idea. You like Jefferson Airplane?”

You nod, brushing your cheek against the cottony fabric of his t-shirt, leaving a little bit of you there, for him to find later.

“Yes. I like them.”

“Jefferson Airplane it is, then,” he answers. 

Gently, he bends forward, mindful not to nudge you too much, and turns on the stereo. His thick fingers push the tape that’s already there into the slot, and your lips curl with an explicit thought, unlike any you used to have before meeting him. Crude, but welcome pictures that now constantly crowd your brain. 

He keeps the volume low, and with the round rumbling of his quiet humming, your mind slowly drifts off again. 

You’re about to fall asleep when a thought surfaces, skirting the edges of your consciousness. 

“Frankie?” you quietly call. 

“Mmh?”

“Are you… Were you in the military?”

The humming stops, his silence abrupt, and his shoulder tenses under your cheek. Pushing away from it, you risk a sleepy glance at his face, plunged in the semi-darkness. It’s not dark enough that you don’t recognize the cocking of his jaw. 

“Frankie?” you ask again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“I’m a pilot,” he cuts in, pausing to inhale deeply. “I was in the Army for nearly twenty years. I got a discharge a couple years back.” 

You remain silent. His eyes flicker quickly between you and the road, and you give his thigh a strong squeeze with your left hand, before resting your cheek against his shoulder, eluding his searching gaze.

Volunteers is crackling through the speakers, but you don’t hear the music. Fully awake now, your mind is reeling with those scattered, minute parts of him you picked up Friday after Friday to stash them away in your subconscious. His puzzle of shadows. All the things that now make perfect sense, and the ones you’re dying to unravel. 

His quiet assertiveness. His hands, quick and sure. His silences. His commanding tone. That long, sideways scar etched on his left flank. 

His early rage, and his anger too. The flight forward, dimming his eyes, where deep rich mahogany now glimmers. 

The zip ties. Your eyes grow wide, a gasping sound catching in your throat. You’re not ready to address how much you appreciate this particular skill of his, considering where he picked it up.  

Your imagination produces a clear vision of him in a US Air Force uniform, the fabric stretched over his broad shoulders, and you bite your lip, your entire body covering in chills. 

Frankie has yet to say another word. Something raises your consciousness, something in the scowl sharpening his features as he scanned your face for a reaction. 

Images flash through your head. The 8 × 10 picture displayed in your father’s office in its platinum frame, for every visitor to admire. Smooth faced and confident, his sleeves rolled up high on his lean forearms, your father’s shaking hands with Reagan in front of a colorful assemblage of containers, in the industrial quarter of the Tampa Bay Harbor, during the 1984 campaign. His coldly handsome face split by a smile, larger and more genuine than any of those he ever addressed you, let alone Ava. 

Recollections of those dragging hours you spent in church as a child, beads of sweat dripping along your spine as you sat in the sweltering heat on a hard wooden bench, rigid and still like a marble statue for fear of being reprimanded. 

The hateful, vehement speeches your father would burst into at random, your mother pinching your arm for you to listen, this is important. The uneasy feeling sitting in the pit of your stomach, like bile, like nausea. Wrong. This is wrong. A feeling, not an idea yet. It grew with you, expending, to become impossible to see past by the time you started high.

The list of names in your father’s neat handwriting, scrawled on a crisp piece of paper, that he handed you before driving the entire family to the polls for your very first election. The sheer terror, primitive in its hold over you, prickling on your nape as you systematically disregarded his instructions, choosing the names followed by the three letters DEM. 

The rare political meetings you secretly attended in college, the pamphlets in loud colors and bold letters, that you read hidden from your roommate’s prying eyes, as if they were satanic verses. Reproductive rights! Demilitarization Now! No to privatized prisons! End gun violence! 

Petitions you signed with a shaking hand, because what if your parents found out? What if they heard of it? A dread so profoundly anchored at the very core of your psyche that you have never told Ava any of it, even when she would chastise your lack of interest in politics, your lack of involvement, lest she’d reveal your treason to them in the heat of an argument.

Could this be when you started finding yourself? In your diverging convictions? Could it be enough? Could it count? 

“Do you want to talk about it?” you ask tentatively.

He huffs a short, bitter laugh, shaking his head. 

“You’re a hell of a fast learner, aren’t you?”

“I have a very good teacher,” you shrug, trying to ignore the sharpness in his tone. 

Curiosity overthrowing your ingrained fear to displease, you ask, “What kind of aircraft do you fly? Planes? Helicopters?”

He simply nods, and your cheeks heat again at the notion, your heart racing. 

“I’m very impressed,” you whisper. “I can barely parallel park.”

“I’m sure you got plenty of other skills,” he answers, softer. 

“No. I really don’t.”

—

Frankie walks briskly across the parking lot, carrying a take-away bag and a six-pack of beer. His head hung low to shield his face from the thin, mid-February drizzle. His denim shirt sticks to his back with humidity, and sweat from the drive. It’s pulled uncomfortably taut across his shoulders. 

He steps onto the porch, hands too full to open the door or even knock on it, so he gives it three light kicks. A tiny screw pops out from the curved top of the brass number two. The whole thing swivels upside down, swinging like a pendulum.

“Jesus christ, this fucking place,” he scoffs.

The door flies open, and you’re here, with that bright, earnest smile and your wide, luminous eyes. You’ve tied your hair up in a casual do, but you’re still fully dressed. He likes those slacks on you, snug on your curves, wide on your legs. It fits you so much better than the tight pencil skirts you used to wear when he first met you. Those made you look like an 80s porn producer fever dream. But these trousers transform your gait, your entire demeanor, into something more relaxed. More confident. He could watch you strut around the room for hours. If only there was more time.  

He catches a glimpse of the mesh fabric of your bra, peeking out from the cleavage of your open shirt, and he mentally curses the corporate fucks who get to work all week around you.

“Hey, Frankie.”

The sharp, familiar pang rips through his chest at the sound of your voice, light and cheery. That ache he waits for seven excruciatingly long days to experience again.

“Hey, baby.”

As you let him in, he feels the tip of your fingers brushing his thigh, as if you need to make sure he’s here in the flesh. The miracle of you wanting him, still. 

“What’s in the bag?” you ask, dragging the chipped chair away from the desk, so he can set down his bounty. 

His eyes fall on your graceful nape as you crane your neck to see what’s inside the bag, too well-behaved to touch it without having been invited to do so. 

“Didn’t have time to eat. I took something for you too, I hope you don’t mind. Did you eat? Are you hungry?”

“I don’t usually eat before I come here,” you admit. “I drive in straight from work,” you add, heat visibly creeping up your neck and ears.

He takes off his hat, ruffling a hand through his hair to conceal a smug smile. 

“And you’re not starving, by the time I’m finished with you?”

“Quite the contrary, actually. I feel pretty full when you leave.”

Your lips stretch into a wide grin you’re ineffectively trying to hold back. 

“That so?” he chuckles, propping his hands on his hips. For countenance. 

Pride glimmers in your eyes, as it does every time you make him laugh. He knows it’s mirrored in his eyes. Your levity is his reward. 

Everything about you is unbearably endearing. He’s not sure if he’s hungry for food anymore, or if he’s not going to go straight down on you. You’ve already prepared the bed, that ugly bedspread neatly folded under the window. He could lay you prone on your stomach, lower your trousers to your knees, perk up your pretty ass and eat your sweet cunt from behind.

His hunger for you sizzles along his spine, sparkling in his loins, imperious and distracting. The sensation is delicious, and for once, he takes the time to revel in it. He’s so used to barging in here and just taking. He doesn’t savor, not really, not until after he’s had you at least once. 

He’s not proud of his unbridled hunger, the consequence of seven days’ worth of pent-up frustration, chasing your perfume on his clothes and the ghost feeling of your cool, smooth skin under his palms. That ever-growing obsession for your scent, for your eyes, and that crippling craving for the sounds you produce when he moves inside you. That high he gets when he makes you feel good. Every time he gives you what you want. 

And there’s the absolute black-out on all communications between you throughout the week that drives him out of his mind. He knows that’s the tacit deal the two of you struck at the very beginning. No phone number, no address, no marks. Hell, he didn’t even know your name until you gave it to him at Christmas. Only, he’s left in the dark for seven consecutive fucking days, with no means to check up on you, and no way to make sure you’re safe. 

He understands the necessity for secrecy. But the more time passes, the less it makes sense. 

So come Friday night, he needs to crush you under his weight. Needs to feel your flesh gushing through his splayed fingers and hear you mewl his name, eyes rolling to the back of your head, your body tensing up in his hold before it shatters around his cock. 

He needs to fuck you deep and full, find you in that place within yourself and wreck you there. He needs to make sure you’re alright. Make sure you’re real. Make sure you’re his. 

And his control might be tenuous, but he sure loves the way you lean into it. 

You’re still smiling when he takes a step closer behind you. Lowering his face into the curve of your neck, he inhales you there, that spot behind your ear, where your subtle scent becomes heady. He feels your chest rising with your own deep breathing, and he pictures your eyes fluttering shut. His hand skims the curve of your hip, sliding up to the swell of your breast over the smooth fabric of your shirt, gripping you roughly as he takes your earlobe between his lips and sucks on it. His hips move against your ass of their own volition, his cock half-hard, fucking twitching.

“Frankie,” you whine.

“Yea?”

He licks a broad stride up your neck, collecting the tangy taste of your skin, mixed with the chemical one of your perfume. 

“What’s in the bag?”

“What bag, baby? Oh, right.”

It’s a beat before he can detach himself from you. His cock is beating hard and angry against the confining fabric of his jeans. With a light brush of his knuckles along your side, he reminds himself there’s also pleasure in the anticipation. The word sits in the back of his throat, like a knife ready to bleed him dry. Concupiscence. 

Ripping the paper bag open in the middle, he smooths both sides neatly over the desk, and points at the three rolls wrapped in tin foil.

“Took three burritos, and some fried beans. There’s one beef, one pork, and one vegetarian, in case you don't eat meat.”

You look at him with a twinkle in your eyes, your grin getting wider than he’s ever seen it. He braces a hand flat on the desk. 

“Oh, I eat meat, I thought you’d know that.”

The words have barely left your mouth that you burst into a fit of giggles, covering your face with both hands.

“Christ, woman!” he laughs. “Alright, sit down. Let’s get proper food into that mouth of yours, for once.”

Together, you unfold the bedspread and arrange it over the foot of the bed. The thing is already stained, and you mutually agree there’s no need to make a mess of the white sheet just yet. 

Letting you pick between the two richer ones, he takes the vegetarian burrito, and you start eating together, two open cans of beer at your feet. 

His bites are ravenous, while you nibble gingerly at your food, holding the burrito with two hands, the foil crackling between your fingers. After a few bites, however, you start eating in bigger chunks. 

“This is delicious,” you moan with your mouth full. 

Is he getting jealous of a fucking burrito now? Is that where he’s at?

“What, you never had a burrito in your life?”

You wince, and he immediately regrets the teasing skepticism of his tone. 

Setting the food down, you dab a paper towel to the corner of your mouth, catching a fleck of sauce. There’s grace in all your movements, even the tiniest ones.  

“My mother monitored everything I ate. God forbid I put on any weight,” you explain, a hint of bitterness in your voice. 

He lowers his hands, eyes trained on your averted gaze. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” you tell him, looking up at him.

There’s that quiet resignation painted all over your face. 

“Try me.”

“You’re thinking I’m a grown woman, old enough to make her own decisions.”

He shakes his head. “Was actually thinking your mother sounds like the exact opposite of mine.”

Your mouth curves into a sad attempt at a smile.

“I don't judge you, Lee. We all do what we can with what we got dealt with.”

A slight frown knits your brow, as you seem to consider his words. 

He has spent a lot of time, lately, reflecting over his own choices, and the many places where they’ve led him, for better or for worse. 

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. Libya and the most dangerous places in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly everywhere in South America. Twice over.

Over the fucking Andes, and to Tom’s funeral. 

Choices that also made him Lua’s father. 

Crossroads that have taken him all the way to that shithole bar, last year at the end of August. Conscious decisions that brought him here, into this room. Into your arms. Into your life.

A chain reaction he wouldn’t alter, he knows it now, even if he was given the chance for a do-over. 

He used to consider things as definite. Choices as absolute and irrevocable. It took him becoming a father, and meeting you, to understand his mother’s words. Paso a paso, she’d say, watching him with a tender, knowing smile as he rushed toward his life. Paso a Paso, Francisco. 

You eat in silence for a while, and he keeps watching you. That sharp pain solidly entrenched inside his chest, blooming through his heart, he has to make a conscious effort to breathe around it. 

He bought you the food you’re eating right now. Drove to his favorite place, stood in line and placed his order with you in mind. And you’re enjoying it. In fact, you’re demonstrating an impressive appetite, hungrier, messier with every bite. Sauce dripping down your chin. Pink flashes of tongue licking it from between your fingers. 

He could get used to that. Providing for you. Taking care of you. In more than just one way. Sharing the mundane routine of a daily life together. 

But this is not real. Whatever is happening between the four walls of this shitty motel is not ground for life-altering choices. 

“Do you want to share the pork one?” you ask, crinkling the tinfoil wrapper into a compact ball. 

“I’m good, baby,” he answers with a soft smile. “You can have it. Just make sure you’re still hungry for more meat when you’re done.”

—

Adrian has gifted you a new purse from another French luxury brand. It’s a square-shaped thing cut from some grayish reptile skin, with a matching tag and a decorative lock hanging from its handle. It looks insanely expensive and ridiculously vulgar, its tackiness almost cruelly ironic. Like a rich people’s inside joke.  

Somehow, you’re vaguely aware this model is exclusive and can’t be bought online or even in stores, however high-end. It has to be ordered, and there’s a waiting list. Useless knowledge you probably gathered from one of your mother’s magazines. A family of four could most likely live comfortably for a whole year for the price of this thing. 

Incidentally, there’s a new perfume clinging to Adrian’s clothes when he comes home late at night. The first time you caught a whiff of the heady fragrance, intense vanilla and white musk, it reminded you of the stunning blonde with feline hazel eyes. 

The gift immediately felt less like an expression of gratitude for your support than like a reward for your silent compliance. But it’s of little to no importance. The bag sits idly at the bottom of your walk-in dressing. Unused, containing what’s left of the love and respect you once harbored for the man. 

Every so often, you think about it, as you cruise along the 589. It makes you smile. A wide, Cheshire cat grin, one that bares your front teeth, and you wonder if it’s cruel of you to smile about the end of something that used to mean so much. Something that meant nearly everything. You wonder if you’ve ever been cruel before. Intentionally, that is. 

Then, you conclude you don’t care. This particular kind of cruelty feels far too good. Too righteous. You could get used to it. 

And you keep cruising along the 589 northbound. 

—

“Mark Twain or Lewis Carroll?”

“Oh god, Frankie, I don’t know…” you moan, too distracted to think straight. 

Teeth ghosting a bite over your neck, he wraps a kiss around your skin, sucking on it. Not sharply enough to bruise, but enough for you to clench hard around him.

In the past few weeks, he’s become playful. It’s new to you. Was it always a part of him, constituent but buried underneath the scars and the years, or was it born from your touch? 

He’s become talkative, too. Talkative, and curious. But then again, perhaps he always was. Only, not with you. 

Thus, there are new rituals between you. Secrets exchanged behind the shielding partition of the yellow curtains. Murmurs shared underneath the droning of the ceiling fan, in the golden lighting from the quaint bedside lamps.

Some of his questions can pose a challenge. You’re not always certain about the proper answer. The right one. You were raised to say what was expected of you. Taught to speak to please, not to speak your mind. To wait for your cue, and hold your thoughts in between.

Frequently, you hesitate, afraid to trip on your words. 

But he doesn’t easily relent. He’s playful and curious. But above all, he’s patient and persistent.

“I don’t know,” you repeat.

“You know. Come on.”

“Okay, um… Lewis Carroll. I love– I love Alice.”

“Oh yea? You do? You like following big white rabbits to strange places, huh?”

His chest shakes with his raspy chuckle, and you laugh, until he pulls you in closer, sheathing himself deeper inside you, and your laughter plummets into a throaty groan.

Seamlessly, these new ceremonials have replaced the old ones, the ones that were carried out under wary gazes, in appraising silence.  

Now, you don’t always count your steps on Fridays, but you leave work earlier, and when you arrive at the motel, you try to engage Raul in conversation. His discomfort is obvious, bordering on annoyance, as you disrupt his concentration while he’s busy drawing charcoal landscapes of jagged mountains. But these past two weeks, he seems to have loosened up a bit. Either you’re wearing him off, or he’s trying to get rid of you faster. 

On the porch, in front of room number 2, you watch the sun slowly sink into the canopy of trees in an explosion of tangerine pink. Every week, the sunset creates a different palette of orange, but your emotion continues to be whole and unaltered. 

Before stepping in, you flick the upside-down brass number. It smiles in greeting, swinging on its one remaining screw.

You wish the place carried Frankie’s scent. It never does, of course. As you fold the comforter and prop it under the windowsill, the only smells wafting around are that of laundry detergent, dust, and the faintest hint of mold. 

There’s nothing tangible for you to hold on to in his absence, and this is by far the most difficult. It creates a vacuum, a fertile soil for foul, festering thoughts. Doubt, dread, agitation. During those seven days apart, there is no text or voicemail on your phone you can turn to for reassurance. No photo booth pictures stashed inside your wallet. No clothes of his to drape over your body and keep you warm and safe. Keep you sane. 

Every so often, when you cannot find sleep, you convoke the memory of his gray t-shirt, the one with the v-neck and the pilled fabric. The sensation of the slightly rugged cotton under the pads of your fingers. The immediate comfort gently lulls you to sleep. 

There is one thing, one thing only: the receipt from the burrito place, that you retrieved from the wastebasket after he’d left, that one time he brought you food. It’s tucked between two pages of your Moleskine planner. You’re not sure whether it’s cute or downright pathetic.  

You had thought the want, the yearning, would ease with time. It only kept spreading to every corner of your existence, every aspect of your life. Instead of only missing his touch, you now miss his voice, too. His choice of words, the cadence of his speech, the pace of his gait. His crinkled-eyes, dimpled smile. The way he rolls up his sleeves, leaves the top buttons of his shirt open, and the way he undresses. His three-finger hold on his glass. His long reflecting pauses before he speaks. The freedom and safety you experience with him.

You just became better at handling the longing. Recently, you have become very good at handling numerous things. Quietly but steadfastly defying your father’s injunctions to comply with his dress code. Adrian’s glaring eyes of blue, their silent judgement. Ava living a life of her own, far away from you. 

Reading helps. You hadn’t read in years, and you hadn’t realized how much you’d missed it. Now, you carry a book with you everywhere in your I ❤ NY tote. In these last moments before he walks into the room, you lie on your side across the motel bed, your head propped on your hand, and you read.

And when Frankie arrives, everything makes sense again, everything is justified. 

The wooden door creaks open, the brass number swiveling frantically, and his relief upon seeing you lights up the dim room. Hushed greetings, his large hands curling at your waist, pulling you into him, a husk of Hey, baby, his lips barely leaving yours while he tugs at your clothes, undressing you already. 

There’s rarely any other form of preamble beyond an occasional variation of Fuck, I really missed you, Lee , his teeth trailing down the line of your throat, sinking in just shy of a bite. Out of breath, out of time. 

The wait is over. 

Does he still come here to escape? Does he come here for you? His urgency hasn’t abated. But his intent feels different.

Stop me, skin on skin, chest to chest, the weight of his body covering yours, calloused hands hooked on your shoulders for purchase, pounding into you loud and ruthless. 

Stop me, crouched over you like a devouring beast, his face buried into the crook of your neck, shallow breaths and gripping hands, grinding deep inside your heat. 

Stop me, and what you hear is, I trust you. 

Deep grunts thrumming out of his throat, tumbling from his plush lips into your skin, a searing branding, an invisible mark. 

His plea. Lee.

He comes right after you do, pulling out just in time to spurt hot and thick over your arching body, or inside your wanting mouth. 

Later, when his spend has dried on your skin, when he’s kissed the soreness better, when your breathing has slowed, he brings you a glass of water, and waits until you’ve drank it all to bury his face between your legs, or fuck your throat if you begged him to. 

And on some Fridays, he goes by the desk to sit on the rectangular chair. He positions it sideways from the framed mirror. Says the reflection distracts you. It’s true. 

You could spend hours watching him. Watching him move, watching him sleep. Watch the care he puts in the way he handles his clothes and his truck and your pliant body. Watch him button up his jeans or tie his belt around your wrists. Watch his curls catch the light as he combs his fingers through them, the working of his throat, the pulsating throb of his heartbeat in his strong neck. The dip in his collarbone. The darker scar on his side. The muscles of his shoulders and his back, rippling under his freckled skin. Watch, and map those freckles with your lips. 

You could spend the rest of your life with him.

“C’mere,” he beckons, with a little tilt of his head, and a light pat on his thigh.

You get up from wherever he left you lying, the bed, the rough carpeting, the bathroom tiles, and walk over to him on wobbly legs. There, he draws you into his lap in a face-away straddle, his hands on your waist guiding you, firm and gentle, as he makes room for himself inside of you. The tip of your toes barely reach the carpet once you’re seated, and you have to rely entirely on him for balance. You like that. 

He braces his strong arms around you, and you keep your fingers curled around them, reclining against him, against his warmth. You like the sticky sensation of your combined sweats gluing your loose bodies. Your back molds to his chest like it was shaped for this very purpose. 

Your head tips back onto his firm shoulder, and he props his chin in the curve of your neck. The slight swaying of your hips is languid and slow, barely perceivable, in the same way the earth’s revolution around the sun is imperceptible to its inhabitants. 

Time lingers, in long lazy stretches, infinite moments in the amber lighting of the room, in the friendly shadows. In the heart of the night, and the folds of your existence. The low husk of his voice like honey in your ears, his words vibrating from his chest to your back, to your core. 

You can hear the smile in his tone. If you close your eyes, you can see it.

He asks about your taste in books, music or movies, food and entertainment, and tells you about his. Silly games of Would you rather? and Never have I ever. 

Scrunching up your nose under your pinched brow, brain cells scrambling back together inside your hazy brain, you try to produce coherent answers as his lush lips trace intricate patterns along your skin, your throat, your shoulders, nimble fingertips rolling your nipples into hardened peaks. A scrape of his teeth, followed by the wet glide of his tongue, soothing over your flushed skin.

Sometimes, you feel so full it’s overwhelming. The sensation, the emotion strangles the air out of you. Your cunt flutters around the thick, stiff girth of him, and he lets out a gravelly groan, cock throbbing inside your snug walls. Your slick pools down onto the coarse curls at his base. It’s like a virtuous circle. Everything feels right with him. 

After a while, when you’ve melted inside, when amber twirls in your bloodstream and your thoughts have turned to swirling molasses, his hand slides down along your stomach. His calloused fingers parting your folds, he starts rubbing at your clit, telling you that it’s time to come for me, baby. 

And when you do, he comes with you, shoving you down and deep onto his pulsating length, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your hips. His mouth pressed to that sensitive spot over your pulse point, his feverish grunts sizzling against your damp skin. 

When he comes inside you, when you come together, you are made brand-new. Anything’s possible. There’s nothing you can’t do. 

The elating sensation is your favorite daydream, sitting at your desk, over dinner, stuck in traffic, or in the blue hours before dawn. It sustains you throughout the week. The promise of it tingles in tense anticipation, from the crown of your head to the tip of your toes, when you watch him walk over to the desk and fold his tall, massive figure into the ugly chair. 

Week after week, question after question, you come into focus between his arms. It’s terrifying, and exhilarating. You keep getting better at it.

It’s a bittersweet ache, tender and addictive, to learn about his existence outside this room of yours. The borderless confines of his life. Of him. The details he chooses to confide in you, about his childhood, his past, and his present, in the dead of the night, his body wrapped around yours, chasing the contact of your skin. Chasing your touch, your softness, your understanding, when he used to grunt away from it. Like a threat, with bared teeth, and a shake of his head. A forbidding. A not yet. 

It makes sense to you now. There’s an absolute about him. An all or nothing. You’re not sure when it happened. The tipping point. Perhaps in the bathroom, on that sunny morning after Christmas, when he crowded you against the sink with a wolfish look turning his gorgeous face dark and threatening. You think it was meant to scare you. One last attempt. Your last chance to recoil and escape. 

You didn’t. You kept blooming, unfurling into your own limbs under the dark depth of his gaze, reflected in the black-edged mirror. You pressed back into him, the solid, steadying bulk of his body, of his broad chest. You pushed back and sunk deeper into his world. 

Today, he had to scoop you up from the floor where you were lying, boneless, in the wet mess he drew out of you. 

When he stormed into the room, you could still hear the engine of the truck revving. A scowl shadowed his face. Fidgety, tightly wound up, he began undressing you without a word. Unceremonious in his need, an echo of those early days, when he was imprisoned in his past, when his strength was unrestrained, when violence was his sole language. 

Fingers digging into the tense muscles of his shoulders, carding through his hair, you sought eye contact, softly cooing, I’m here, Frankie, I’m here, until your voice got through him. Until he heard you, slowing down, drawing you close. His forehead smearing sweat over your temple, his ragged breathing fanning the shell of your ear. His fist clutching the fabric of your shirt in a ball, with a push-pull motion, torn and primal, I need it, Lee. Please, I need you.

You relented, gave into it, lose and pliant as he bent you over the desk with a press of his palm, flat between your shoulder blades, as he pulled your panties to the side and lined himself up, as he thrust into you in one ruthless shove, down to his base. The clasp of his watch biting into your flesh. He was still fully clothed. 

Pulling on your wrists with an iron grip, he drilled into you at a brutal pace, skin catching at your entrance along his length, and you bit your lips through it, nearly drawing blood, until, at the very center of you, the pain turned into something blindingly pleasurable, bright and searing. A shockwave, erupting from your core, fast spreading along your limbs, lighting up every nerve-ending. 

Tensing under his constraining hold, bucking against his grip, you cried out his name, your back achingly stiff. Slick gushing out of you fast and hot, as your legs trembled uncontrollably, and through the din of it all, his rumbling growl, a guttural string of Fuck, before you slumped onto the desk and he fucked his own release into you. 

When he let go of you, he had to lay you on the carpet, where he collapsed next to you, chest heaving with exertion. Time blurred, you might have spent the whole night lying there, staring blankly at the popcorn ceiling, but he got up to undress.

He’s cradling you on his lap now, gently rocking into you. The slow and steady rhythm of his heartbeat aligned with yours, you’re bathed in his warmth, enveloped by his musky scent. You play along, searching your brain for answers. To his questions, and yours.  

There’s no evidence of his earlier outburst, saved for his thumbs drawing circles on your wrists where his fingers left a bruising indent. And of course, the wet spot on the carpet. 

Nuzzling your jawline, he trails a path of messy, lazy kisses down the column of your neck, capturing the tender skin between his plush lips, his tongue peeking through them.

“I should read it again. Alice. Read it so long ago. When I was a kid.”

Humming distractedly in agreement, your head lolls back on his shoulder. 

“Did I hurt you, earlier?”

Your eyelids fly open. His voice is barely a murmur, no more than warm breath grazing your ear, and you feel him throb inside you. 

“I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you.”

The vulnerability in his words shoots through your heart like a bullet. You free your arms to twine your fingers with his. 

“What happened today, Frankie?” 

His chest stiffens underneath you. 

“Nothing. Nothing happened. It’s more… It’s the date.”

The overhead fan hums over the room, louder than your breathing, louder than his. 

“A year ago, I agreed to a mission. With my former teammates. It was… It was bullshit. From the start. Nothing went as planned.”

He pauses and you wait, still and silent. 

“One of us got killed.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, squeezing his hands with all of your strength.

A chilling, bone-deep dread settles over your body in the sweltering heat, so cold he can probably feel it. You don’t want him to. 

“You said you resigned a couple of years ago?” 

“I did. I worked for the private sector, on occasions. It’s over now.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Fuck no,” he snarls. “But some of my friends did. I– I had to go.” He clears his throat. “I chose to go.”

“Do you miss him?”

He doesn’t answer for a while. Lifting his hand in yours, you give his knuckles a long, open-mouthed kiss. His forehead rests heavy against the back of your head, his eyelashes a fluttering caress on your nape. 

“For a long time, I felt responsible for his death.”

His words are dense with defeat. With sadness, and fatality. They sink heavily into you, into your bloodstream. You don’t need a mirror to know what his face looks like at this very moment. Your body will remember it, even if you live long enough to forget your own name. The pitch-blackness of his beautiful eyes, the stern crease splitting his brow, imploring for your touch. The tightness in his jaw. The downward curve of his plush lips.

That first night at the motel comes back rushing like a flood, like a wildfire. His roughness, the urgency saturating his actions, the anger in his grief. His bleeding wounds, invisible, evident, glaring. He reached for you through his despair, clutching your body, clinging to the idea of you. 

Are you real?  

I don’t know. 

A dry sob wells up in your throat, but you swallow it down. 

“What do you think now?”

“I think it doesn’t matter who’s responsible for his death. His girls are still orphaned.”

Between your lungs, the wild creature curls up into a ball. Its tears fill up your heart. There isn’t any pill or alcohol strong enough to numb this pain of yours. But it doesn’t matter. You want to feel what he feels.

You turn around. You kiss him.

—

“What about this one?”

He should be leaving soon. But your body’s soft and relaxed, curled into his side on the rumpled bed. Pleasantly cool in the muggy atmosphere of the motel room, in the dawn’s indigo hues. Your thin fingers hover gracefully over his skin, tracing the outlines of his scars, and it’s like you’re reshaping his entire body, all of his wounds, and his whole life, with the gentle touch of your fingertips.

“Frankie, what’s this one?”

He should be leaving soon. The sun’s about to come up. 

“Did you save it for last because it’s the largest?” he deflects with a smirk.

Folding an arm over his chest, you prop your chin over it, frowning exaggeratedly with your jaw shifting to the side. He laughs so hard that your head bobbles with his shaking belly.

“That supposed to be an impression of me?”

“You recognized yourself,” you smile, sitting up next to him.

He should be leaving soon. And you know it. You’re giving him the space he needs to get up and get out. He fucking hates it.

“Stay here,” he says, curling his fingers around your arm as you’re about to get down from the bed.

The look you give him awakens the pain in his chest. You peer through the curtains, into the blue morning sky, and your gaze returns to him with a silent question. 

“Come on. Please. Just a little longer.”

It’s not lost on him that he should be the one getting up. Not pleading.

The mattress creaks in protest as you move over it on your knees, sitting in a straddle across his hips. 

“Yea, that’s better,” he smiles, smoothing his palms over your thighs. His left hand slides up to palm your breast, and he notices he hasn’t taken off his watch, tonight. It’s the second time this month.

“What’s this one?” you ask again, entirely undistracted, measuring up your hand to the length of the darker patch of skin. 

“Okay,” he sighs, “I crashed a chopper near– wait, I can’t actually tell you that.”

“Jesus, Frankie,” you gasp, spreading both hands over the old wound, as if to stop a ghost bleeding. Your eyes have grown so wide, they eat up half your face.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s old. Wasn’t a big deal.”

It had been a big deal, at the time. There had been talks of awarding him a Silver Star for that mission.

“Did it hurt?”

“Mostly my pride. It wasn’t that bad, don’t worry. Nothing compared to what my sister threatened to do to me if I didn't leave the Army.” 

“I can’t say I blame her. I would have probably done the same.”

“Ok, my turn. What’s this one?”

His left thumb skims along the thin line on your inner thigh, and he feels you tensing under his touch.  

“It’s nothing,” you snap, taking your hands off his skin as if you just got burnt. 

He presses his thumb into your soft flesh. The pain in his chest accentuates, radiating down to his stomach. 

“You’re cheating,” he says, as softly as he can. 

You face away from him, gaze flickering up to the window again, and you start moving away, but he holds you firmly in place with both hands on your waist. 

“Lee. Tell me what it is.”

Seconds turn into minutes, the only sound in the room that of the ceiling fan’s motor, and the pain grows stronger, pulsating from his neck to his gut. Your eyes remain trained on the window, lost somewhere beyond the curtains. 

“I had several more like this,” you start. Your tone is detached, your voice distant. “Smaller ones. On the back of my arms. When I was 17, my mother took me to a dermatologist. He removed them with laser treatment.” 

You pause, and look down at him. 

“She got me fixed, so I could find a good husband.”

His fingers dig into your flesh. It’s a full minute before he remembers to breathe, through his nose, because he can’t unclench his jaw. The chest pain turns into blinding, white-hot rage. His truck is parked outside and in his mind, the sequence of actions is crystal clear. Get you dressed. Get you in the cab. Drive away with you as far as the road goes, and never come back here. 

“It burnt like hel—“

“You’re perfect, you know that?” he cuts in. 

“I’m really not, Frankie,” you calmly answer. “What I am is a coward.”

He sits up with a cinch, cupping your face so you can’t recoil from him. Somehow, this would be easier if you looked upset. If you were crying. Showing any kind of emotion, really. But you’re far beyond that. 

“I can’t let you say that. Not when you risk everything to come here every week.”

“Alright, so I’m a selfish coward,” you say with a joyless little smile. 

“No. You’re perfect. You’re my perfect girl. Say it.”

It’s there. Your unbending will, your steel-hard determination. In your defiant gaze and your pinched lips. In the distance you're trying to put between your body and his. 

“Okay, fine. Don’t say it. I’ll keep repeating it until you believe me. I can be fucking persistent, you know?” he adds, falling back onto the pillows.

“I know you can,“ you say, lifting a leg off the bed.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he nearly growls, a bruising grip on your thigh, “I’m not done with you.”

His clipped tone appears to be more effective on you. You sit back down, let your shoulders relax, and the palm of your hands find his skin again. Distant gaze, cold touch.

“What’s this one?” he asks, the blunt fingernail of his thumb grazing the grid-shaped scar on your left knee, his tone barely a question, and to his surprise, you come alive with a spark in your eyes. 

“Oh! This one’s a good scar. I like it.”

You adjust your position over him, slotting your folds over his resting cock, and a coiling heat stirs in his loin.

“I had a bicycle when I was a kid. The most beautiful bicycle in the entire world. Red, the exact same shade as your truck. With a round cushion protection on the frame, I don’t know how you call that, and the letters MBK painted in white over it, you know the kind?”

He nods, and you continue talking. 

“I would spend hours riding it. I would disappear for entire afternoons. It was heaven. And maybe you’re not going to believe me, but I was pretty reckless on that thing.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

You’re smiling again. 

“Well, one day, I was too reckless. I hit the brakes too abruptly and I skidded over gravel. I flew ten feet away from the bike and I tore my knee open. I got home covered in blood, my parents were furious.”

A vengeful smile curves your lips, one he’s never seen on your face.

“They confiscated the bike. My mother said it wasn’t ladylike, and my father said– I can’t remember his exact words, probably 'you can’t damage my property,’ or something along those lines. They never let me on a bike again after that.”

“How’s that a happy story?” he frowns.

“I didn’t say it was a happy story. I said it’s a good scar. I got to keep this one. It reminds me of what I’m capable of. Even when I want to forget.” 

The sun is rising. A new day colors the sky in vivid bronze. The light filters into the room through the yellow curtains, dust particles suspended in the air, suspended like Frankie’s life when he can’t be with you. 

He should leave, but instead, he’s going to fuck you one more time. Pump you full of his come. Brand you with his essence, mark you as his in the only way he can before he has to let you go back to face those people who put murder on his mind.

His hands skim along your thighs to the swell of your ass, roughly kneading the round of your cheeks. His grip settles on your hips, and he bucks up into you, ever so lightly, his length hardening between your lips. He sees it on your face, on your profile bathed in the first ray of sunlight. The moment when you register his intention. The shift in your body, the echo to his desire. So powerful, so immediate, it’s almost like black magic. Your mouth parts open, your back arches. You press down on him. 

“That serves him well, your father,” he says, sliding you slowly over his cock.

“How’s that?” you ask, voice laced with lust. 

“Look what you’re riding now.”

—

The pillow is damp underneath your back, sweat exuding from your every pore. The last days of March have been unforgiving. You find yourself longing for a room with a proper air conditioning system, instead of the motel’s weak, outdated fan that only swishes hot air. 

Frankie’s searing touch doesn’t help. Stroking the back of your arm in a repetitive up-and-down motion, he’s laying across the bed, his head resting heavy on your lap, his long hair curling in every direction in this sweltering atmosphere. 

Instead of shying away from the discomfort, you embrace it. With your fingers twined in his locks, you lean into his touch, focusing on his high forehead, and the crease in his brow. On his long eyelashes, the curve of his lips as he speaks, the working of his throat. 

Ignoring the dark blue rectangle of night sky, gradually lightening up behind the musty curtains.

Dawn used to be a deliverance. From your thoughts that the night painted black. From the wait, when Adrian wouldn’t come back. From a forced rest that never really came, another disappointment, another let down, another part of your life requiring the artificial help of chemicals. 

Now, you resent it. Dawn is when Frankie leaves you behind to go back to his family. Dawn is when he’s the happiest, with his child, without you, in a realm over which you have no grasp. 

A rational part of you acknowledges that it’s easier if he leaves before the sun rises. It prevents you from yearning for things you’re afraid to want. Things you cannot have. A life with him in broad daylight. A life without shame. 

Recently, he’s become increasingly reluctant to let go of you. Dawn finds him wrapped around your body. Last week, he stayed past daybreak, and fucked you in the sunlight. 

The brighter tone of his skin, the lighter shade of his curls, the depth of his mahogany irises hit by a sunbeam, everything was like a knife through your chest.

“Lee?”

The caressing timber of his husky voice brings you back to the soft amber light from the dusty lampshades, to the humming fan, and the blue rectangle. 

“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“I asked if you like it. Your job.” 

“God no, I hate it! Sales productivity statistics and accounting manager, can you picture me?”

He huffs his breathless chuckle, the one that sends tremors rippling through your chest. 

“Not really, no.”

“I’m terrible at it, and it’s a problem, but no one says anything because daddy runs the company. I don’t understand why he insists on maintaining me in this position. It’s like a power play. He needs me to be miserable.”

Frankie’s hand pauses, fingers digging into your flesh, and he cranes his neck to peer at your face. You give him a reassuring smile. A genuine one. 

“Is that what you studied at university? Accounting and statistics?”

You wipe your sweaty brow with the back of your hand, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“Yes. But university was a golden parenthesis. I minored in Russian literature. Not a skill that easily translates to the employment market, but Richard was thoroughly pissed,” you say, wiggling your eyebrows. 

“My little punk.”

His smile is brighter than the midday sun. Your index finger darts to the dimple in his right cheek. 

“I really like this,” you whisper, your voice dropping, thick with heat and arousal. With affection. “And these,” you add, scraping your fingernail over the bare patches on each side of his jaw. 

“Mmh. I’ve noticed,” he says with a smug expression. 

“Oh, you have?” You try to laugh off your embarrassment, but what comes out is a quivering sound, betraying the want that hinders your throat. 

He grabs your hand and brings it to his mouth, closing his plush lips around your index finger, wrapping his tongue around it. Your belly quakes. You clench around nothing. 

He releases your hand, and you hope he’ll get up and move over you, but instead, he reaches for your arm again, resuming his rhythmic strokes. 

“So what would you do, if you didn’t do this?” he asks. 

You sigh, glancing up, and you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the mirror above the desk. 

“I’ve no idea, really. I never allowed myself to consider the possibility.” And before he can prod any further, you add, “What about you? What would you have liked to do, if you hadn’t become a pilot?”

The diversion doesn’t fool him, you know it. You’re acutely aware of his gaze, scrutinizing your face. You picture the familiar, pensive frown. His hand leaves your arm as he suddenly gets up, air hitting your damp skin where his head was lying. 

A few strides, and he steps into the bathroom, disappearing behind the partition wall. The tap runs for a moment, and there’s the distinct sound of wrung out fabric before he comes out, holding the hand towel. 

You watch him walk back toward you, his naked body glistening with sweat, highlighted in shadows in the warm lighting. You think about how beautiful it is, about your extensive, intimate knowledge of it. How it feels under your touch, every single part of him. How this knowledge is now constituent of the woman you have become. 

You know the callousness of his palms that catches at your clothes. You know the silkiness of his curls around your fingers, the smoothness of his chest against your breasts, the taste of his mouth and the bobbing of his pebbled throat between your lips. The thicker skin of his shoulders, tanned and freckled. The coarseness of the darker hairs under his navel, and how they feel rubbing at your clit. You know the weight of his cock in your hand, on your tongue, inside your walls. 

And if you know all this, then, isn’t he yours? 

He circles the bed over to your side, by the window, and sits next to you. 

Delicately, his fingers circle your wrist. He lifts your arm, and brings your hand to his lips, nuzzling the relaxed curl of your fingers open, to press a kiss inside your palm. His eyes briefly flicker shut as he inhales the transparent skin of your inner wrist. 

Lowering your arm, he starts running the towel along it and you jolt at the contact of the cold, wet fabric, letting out a short whimpering sound.

The sensation is sudden, seizing like an electrical shock, but the relief is immediate. The coolness radiates on the surface of your feverish skin, soothing your thoughts. Eyes fluttering shut, you relax into it. 

“Maybe an architect,” he starts, the towel gliding up to your shoulder, “or a carpenter. Build stuff, for a change. Instead of destroying them.”

Goosebumps break out along your arms, on your nape, as he skims the towel over the plane of your chest in slow, meticulous movements. As he rounds your breasts with reverent care, one, then the other, your nipples tightening in peaked buds, the low rumble of his voice filling your mind, his words boring into your heart.

The towel brushes up, tracing your collarbone, left, then right. Higher along the column of your throat, curling to the side of your neck. A droplet of water rolls down between your breasts, running along your stomach to end its course into your navel. You sigh.

“I could… run a small business, building houses or crafting furniture. In a small town, somewhere up north. Somewhere with seasons,” he says. 

The towel wipes over your trembling belly, over your mound, down your inner thigh. He’s slow, precise, thorough. Careful and gentle with your limp limbs. You’re sinking into the mattress, and floating over it all at once. 

You lift a heavy eyelid, your dazed gaze landing on his gorgeous face. He’s solemn, focused on his task. 

He readjusts his position on the mattress, so lightly the bed barely moves, and twists his torso to reach down your leg. 

“You could be my accountant.”

Your eyes shoot open. He’s facing away from you, wiping the towel under the arch of your foot.

“The last thing you want is to have me as your bookkeeper,” you whisper, your heart beating in your throat. 

He turns around, looking straight at you. Soft sad eyes, cold hard stare. 

“That’s all I want for the rest of my life, Lee. Be with you night and day.”

—

Everything seems to hinge on you now. 

His balance, his happiness, his redemption.

You filled a void, a hollowness inside his chest, he carries you with him wherever he goes. A pale shade of yellow and celadon green. 

He tries to convince himself it’s harmless. That he’s not doing anything wrong. That it’s easier this way. Easier than the drugs, easier than placing that burden on his daughter’s shoulders. He tells himself the peace you bring him makes him a better man, and a better father. Makes him worthy again. There might even be some truth to it. 

He’s not so sure if he deserves the second chance. If he deserves the parts of you that you confide in him. Your past, your regrets, your secret victories. Your hindered aspirations and the shores of your inner island, within his reach. The touch of your cool skin. The strength of your embrace. The veneration in your eyes. Your trust, your faith. Your time. 

But he wants to believe it. It’s more of a fundamental need, really. 

And as long as he’s with you, the illusion holds. When you’re sitting next to him in the truck, singing along to the tunes playing on the old crackling stereo as he drives to nowhere, when his body’s wrapped around yours in the dark, when he murmurs against your temple everything and anything that runs through his mind, when you’re coming undone between his hold, with his name on your lips. He believes he can be as good for you as you are for him. 

But it’s a thin fabric. One that tears the very minute he steps outside the room, leaving your sleepy form tucked under the starchy sheet. 

Day after day, until the next week, he’s left on his own to fence off the thoughts that plague him. 

The voice inside him, relentless, somber, asking how much longer this can last. How long before the consequences on your life are irreversible? How long until that man who’s not your husband finds out, and takes action? What repercussions would you face, then? 

He knows what he’d be capable of if he ever met him. He doesn’t like to think about it. 

You won’t open up about your life with him, no matter how much he prods and pry. He knows your strength. And he chose to trust it.

Seven months, and one week. He sat down with the cardboard calendar hanging above Lupe’s desk at work, and counted. His mind crowded, overflowing with what ifs. 

What if he took you out of this shitty motel, for once? Not just to drive into the night, but on a proper date. Dinner. A movie. Fucking lunch. A weekend somewhere. An entire vacation. 

What if he took you out of your life? 

Lupe started dating this Marcus guy back in December. Now she’s staying at his place every other night. The man is decent, one of the best paramedics he’s worked with, honest, reliable and steadfast. The kind of man Lupe deserves, and that he doesn’t mind around Lua. 

He should move out of the house. Lupe hasn’t said anything yet, but it’s just one more grace she gives him that he hasn’t earned. Every time they see each other, Will hints at it, the allusions becoming increasingly less subtle. 

The truth is, he sees no point in moving forward with his life if it’s not with you. If it’s not to take care of you, and provide for you. Watch you thrive, keep you safe.  

A couple of weeks back, when he’d first thought about it, he’d deemed the idea crazy, painfully aware of all the frustrations a couple’s daily life entails. 

Now, it’s the only choice that makes any sense to him. 

—

The airport terminal is bustling with flocks of tourists. Noisy families with children too young to travel, transient businessmen and women, groups of youths of dubious soberness flying out after spring break. 

Ava stands out in the crowd, her tall frame topped with a short bob of bright purple hair, and you spot her immediately. Standing on your tiptoes, you wave at her until she sees you and starts running in your direction.

She all but leaps into your open arms, and you both grab at each other, leaning into the embrace, laughing. You inhale her scent, searching for that baby smell in the crook of her neck.

“Oh my god, pup, your hair!” you exclaim. “You look terrific!”

“Yeah? You like it?” she asks with a broad smile, running her fingers through her locks. 

“I love it! It’s perfect for you!”

In turn, she takes you in, looking you up and down, and lets out a low whistling sound.

“You look good, too. You look better than good. You look gorgeous!”

“Oh shush,” you gesture bashfully, but you can’t hold back your own smile.

The two of you walk to the parking lot to retrieve your car, immersed in bubbly conversation, oblivious to the moving crowds around you.

Driving out of the airport, you glance at the sign indicating the 589 northbound and smile at your precious secret, before making a left turn south.

“Where are you taking me?” she asks, “I’m hungry! Feed me! Feedmefeedmefeedme!” she chants, before breaking into a high-pitched giggle.

“Alright, alright! Hold tight, I’m taking you somewhere special. Do you like burritos?”

“Who doesn’t like burritos? Wait, what? Burritos? Do you even eat burritos? Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

You had to type the address from the crumpled receipt into your GPS. Until today, you’ve never allowed yourself to go there. Not on your own.

It’s a small cantina with tiled walls and concrete floors, colorful trinkets arranged in pyramidal displays behind the counter, chalkboard menus and an endless list of drinks. Star-shaped lanterns are hanging from the ceiling, and the staff is busy but jovial.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, the place is packed with couples and kids, and your pulse accelerates. You hadn’t considered the possibility of running into Frankie and his family. 

You place your orders, and after a short wait, you secure a spot in the back of the restaurant. Sitting on high metal stools behind a round table, you catch up on the past three months as if you hadn’t texted every other day, speaking with your mouths full, sauce dripping down your fingers.

The life she’s built for herself in New York treats Ava better than anything you could have hoped for, anything you could have helped her achieve, had she stayed here. A job in a cutting-edge art gallery, where her vibrant personality and her flair for networking are not only recognized but valued, a bustling social life, more thrilling projects than you can keep track of, all of it balanced by Polly’s grounding presence by her side. 

Your choices and sacrifices, justified.

Ava puts down the crumbling remnants of her vegetarian burrito to wipe her mouth, and takes a sip of her margarita.

“You sure you don’t want to drink anything?”

“I’m drinking something,” you answer, pointing at your iced tea.

“Whatever you say, girl,” she shrugs.

“It’s too bad you’re not staying with me. It’s idiotic, you’re only here for a couple of days and you have to sleep over at Jules’.”

“Listen, even if your douchebag of a fiancé had agreed to have me, which I know he didn’t, I don’t want to see his ass face.”

“Alright,” you concede, “valid.”

She nearly chokes on her margarita. Setting her glass down, she gives you a pointed stare, emphatically scrutinizing your face.

“Okay, seriously, what’s going on with you? How are you? I mean, that’s obviously the wrong question, you’re fucking thriving. What happened? What’s happening? New medication? Are you finally leaving him?”

“I’m not taking any medication,” you answer with unexpected satisfaction. “But no, I’m not leaving him.”

You catch yourself before you can add another word. 

“Are you still seeing that other guy?”

You nod, dipping your head, heat creeping up your neck. Why are you like this?

“I take it he likes burritos, am I right?

“You are correct in your assumption, detective,” you quip with a grin.

There’s a pause as Ava seems to consider her next question. It’s always so easy for you to forget that she’s a grownup now. That she knows you at least as well as you know her. That she has the capacity to outsmart you. The notion flares pride in your chest.

“Is he married? Is that why you haven’t run off together in the sunset yet?”

“I’m not sure if he’s married or not.”

“What does he do in life?”

“I don’t know.”

Ava throws up her hands. 

“Girl! What do you know?” she exclaims with only half-feigned exasperation.

I know what’s important. He’s a father. He’s a friend and a brother. A pilot and a veteran. He's thoughtful and observant. He’s organized and practical. And a reluctant sentimental. He learned to swim in the Pacific Ocean. He’s capable of cold-blooded violence, but it will break him. He’s capable of infinite tenderness. And it will save him. 

You pull a face, communicating how little you care about what you don’t know. Your sister shifts on the hard stool. She frowns, and when she speaks next, her voice is low, her tone conspiratorial.  

“Adrian doesn’t suspect anything?”

“Of course, he does. Or he did. His attention is elsewhere, for now. Seems serious.”

“Again?”

“Again,” you nod. 

Ava squirms on her stool again, probably trying to restrain her temper. 

Your mind wanders, jumping back through time at light-speed, to when you first met Adrian. To the way he used to hold your hand when you started dating, squeezing your fingers with his. Letting you choose the wine, opening doors for you. To the affection in his smile, and how fast he started calling you babe . The glimmer warming his cold blue eyes when he introduced you to his family. The way he leaves the bathroom mirror splattered in toothpaste every time he brushes his teeth. The way he lets his alarm ring off forever after he’s gotten up even if you’re still in bed, even on weekends. 

The ease with which he admitted to all his flings, whenever you confronted him, but never confessed to the one with his coworker, the ambitious young lawyer. 

Would you admit to having an affair? Would you use that ugly word that make you crawl out of your skin? Would you deny it? Could you answer No, I’m not seeing anyone? Could you bear the betrayal of denying Frankie’s existence? The truth of what you share, but can’t define?

“Your fiancé is a bag of dicks,” Ava finally says, shaking her head. 

“His obliviousness suits me for now,” you remind her.  

“I don’t understand why you don’t leave him,” she snaps back, forsaking her reserve. “He got his big promotion, he got what he wanted! And Richard loves him, it’s not like he’s going to fire him just because you two broke up, right? You don’t really love him anymore, do you?” she adds on second thoughts.  

The words spill out of you unchecked, once more. Just like in the truck with Frankie, back in January. Months, years for the idea to mature below the surface of your conscious thoughts, the reflective process unbeknown to you. 

“I’m scared, Ava. I’m scared shitless. I want to leave. I’ve been wanting to leave for so long. Adrian, the company, that fucking ugly apartment.” 

“Well then fucking do it, Lee!”

“If I leave, I have nothing. No job, nowhere to go.” 

And if you could give up a relatively comfortable life, would you be able to renounce the refuge of your sadness? Of your life between the folds? 

“You have money,” Ava counters. “You have shares. Sell them. Richard can’t stop you. Get a lawyer, if you have to. One that’s not on Adrian’s payroll. And then you can fuck your man Friday every day of the week, how’s that?”

You think about the folded bedspread under the windowsill. About the wet hand towel brushing up your skin. The trucker hat on the desk, and his fingers splayed on the steering wheel. The pleading arch of his brow. 

You think about that space between Frankie’s chin and collarbone, that contains your safety, your desires, and all of your hopes.

“I don’t… I don’t know if I should leave a man for another one,” you whisper. 

Ava’s eyes widen. She sits up straight, a smirk tugging the corner of her lips. 

“I don’t know either, but it looks like this one fucked some sense into you. The irony.” 

She’s withholding something, you realize. It’s in her uncharacteristic pauses, her sideways glances. Surprisingly, human interactions were simpler when pills kept you numbed and oblivious. Being attuned to everyone’s minute expressions is a daily trial. 

“Why don’t you move to New York with us?” she eventually asks. “We can take you in until you find a job there, for as long as you need.”

There’s that we again. People talking about you in your absence, judging your choices, plotting your future. 

“I don’t know how to do anything, Ava. I have zero skills.” 

“First off, that’s not true,” she retorts, relentless with her well-rehearsed arguments. “And then, Polly can help you find something. Lee, if you can leave this company, there’s literally nothing you can’t do.”

Suddenly, you feel exhausted. Weary and old. A bone-deep lassitude. And at the heart of it, the realization that this is a liminal sequence in your life. 

“Is that why you flew here for the weekend? To ask me to come away with you?”

“Are you mad?” she asks with a face. A little girl’s expression, afraid of being scolded. Your little girl. 

“No, I’m not mad, pup. I can’t be mad. You came back for me.”

“Of course, I came back for you. I was never going to leave you behind, silly.”

****

[ckret2]

I read and read but I still don't get it so I have to ask: Gompers ate the flashdrive last year. How has it not been digested yet? How is the tracker still working?

For the same reason the power's still connected to the Dusk 2 Dawn and the sodas are still fizzy and the ice is still frozen even though it's been out of business for 17 years; the same reason that Dipper & Mabel replaced their past selves when they time-traveled back to the start of the carnival but didn't replace their past selves when they briefly time-traveled through the events of the first few episodes; the same reason that Gorney's alive at the end of Summerween even though Soos drove his truck straight through the Trickster; and the same reason Ford didn't suffocate the instant he fell into the Nightmare Realm even though the fact that people get sucked into the portal any time it opens means the Nightmare Realm is clearly a vacuum.

Disney magic.

Like specifically when I was plotting this arc I looked at that plot hole and asked myself: would Gravity Falls care about that plot hole? Would Alex Hirsch pulling an all-nighter to finish a script 20 minutes before deadline care about that plot hole? I don't think so. Gravity Falls has never let rigid adherence to realism stand in the way of telling a story.

I decided it would have been less true to the spirit of the show to take time to provide an explanation for how it hasn't been digested and/or pooped.

But if you need a better explanation than "Disney magic": goat magic. Semi-canon side materials suggest Gompers is a cursed immortal wizard. Things inside his body inherit his immortality.

[jacobsbigmelons]

Roadside Favor

Jacob Custos x Male Reader

cw: Nsfw, top! jacob bottom! reader, jacob canonically drives a ford f-150 trust i’ve had conversations and it’s true, semi-public sex.

The sun blazed down on the interstate highway as your boyfriend drove with his typical backwards baseball cap, one hand on the wheel and the other holding onto your inner thigh. You raised a hand up to block out the sun from your squinting eyes as you watched the occasional car pass along with the buildings, never too dull when you’re in New York.

“How long until we get to this lodge or whatever” Jacob groaned as his eyes stared straight down the road making sure not to be too careless especially on a highway. “We still have another hour but in 30 minutes we should start seeing forests, there’s already less buildings than when we left so just hold out for a bit longer.” You softly said trying to reassure your boyfriend who was becoming increasingly more and more impatient as the time went by. It’s already been 30 minutes since you left your shared apartment with all your packed clothes and essentials to stay at these cabins for the summer, Jacob was really interested in participating especially since he would also get to meet up with a friend from high school. Kaitlyn.

“The sun is really killing my vibe right now, it’s way too hot for such a long drive…an hour long drive might I add.” Jacob pouted as you rested a hand in his hand that held your thigh. His hand rotated as he felt yours touch his in order to hold hands correctly. “Don’t whine, we’ll be there soon, then you can rest all you want.”

You couldn’t help but admire the way that he had this glare to him, a calm one but the way his eyes look off into the road, his vascular hand gripping the wheel as what little sun that gets past illuminates his stunning eyes. “I am not whining” Jacob retaliated, his brows visibly creased ever so slightly, even when he’s just a bit annoyed he can be a sight for sore eyes, truly.

Jacobs fingers wiggled out of your grasp as he playfully put his fingers in the rips of your pants which caught you off guard, “someone’s handsy aren’t they?” You questioned your boyfriend as a devilish smirk lit up his face “well. Since I have to wait a stupid hour before I get to have you all to myself, I think my hand in your pants isn’t too bad.” Jacob had a point, he was pent up and couldn’t indulge in any intimate act until you guys got to these cabins.

“I mean…you could…y’know. Pull over” You said with a shrug and a grin, Jacob looked back at you as you felt the car turn towards the shoulder of the road which slowly led to a full stop. You didn’t actually expect him to pull over but if Jacob was in your shoes, you know you would’ve pulled over immediately to have him in the moment. “You deadass wanna go at it? I mean i’m down for a bit of exhibitionism on the highway if you are.” You said as you felt a tightness around your groin as your hard on made sitting slightly uncomfortable.

“Don’t play with me right now, you said we could pull over and i’m pulled over. Be a waste if we didn’t use this time we have to ourselves.” You grabbed Jacobs phone which was on the console as the current song paused only for a more mood fitting one to play. The low yet strong bass all throughout the speakers of his truck set the mood as you unbuckled your seatbelt to get closer to your boyfriend.

“Climb into my lap” he said as you maneuvered the best you could onto his lap as he began to run his hands along the sides of your body, keeping you close while feeling you up. Your tongue glided across his neck as you left kisses everywhere and an occasional hickey down more toward his shoulders just so it wasn’t too exposed. “Oh…your tongue feels so good” Jacob said, his lips creasing as he began to grind his bulge into you, sometimes going faster when you kiss or lick a sensitive area of his neck. His hands on your sides eventually took your shirt off, the A/C washing over cold air which contrasted with the summer sun.

You pulled Jacobs tank top off as well though at this point, you were already aching to get out of your pants. You went for Jacobs belt as he started to unzip your bottoms as well, his bulge already rubbing against the side of your palm as you pull his pants down made the precum on your tip only come out more. His hands grabbed your now mildly exposed ass from the pants and made sure to hold on tight, your moaning only made him grip harder while you were grinding your dick on top of his. “Aw shit…oh fuck, wait…wait, get on my dick or else i’m gonna bust in these fucking boxers…” Jacob panted as you hoisted yourself up with your knees to let Jacob take his pants and underwear all the way off, leaving his dick now shown off.

You brought your pants and boxers down to your knees as you aligned yourself above Jacobs cock, the head was slapping against your ass as it was something Jacob always loves to do. “Fuck your ass is so hot” he said now teasing your hole considering you moved down a bit, he was even grinding against it, you wanted him in badly and you couldn’t help but slightly whine a bit when he was doing all this teasing. “Fuck babe just…mngh- put it in already.” You whined out as you looked into your boyfriends eyes, he was already hot as hell with his normal looks but when he’s stripped down, eye contact going strong, you could’ve busted right then and there.

Jacob eventually maneuvered the head directly in front of your hole and finally let himself begin to enter you, the noise you made had Jacob going in more and more, which meant more moans on your end. He was practically gone at this point, all he wanted to do was keep those pretty noises coming from that mouth of yours. “God you take my dick so fucking good babe.” Jacob let his hips move as you felt him moving inside of you, hitting every spot just right.

You went back to using your knees as support just a bit which Jacob took full advantage of as he grabbed your ass and started thrusting what seemed to be faster and faster. “Fucking…hell- Jake i’m…i’m close.” You struggled getting the words out with just how fast you were being drilled at the moment, but all the pleasure was welcome especially since Jacob was just so vocal with both words and just sounds. Each second he was filled with a loud moan and the occasional curse word.

“Aw f-fuck! as shit i’m- i’m really close babe.” Jacob whined out as he basically had his nails dug into the sides of your ass as he somehow went just a bit faster to bring him over the edge. Jacobs hips began to slow down as the sloppy and wet sounds from him finishing inside you slowly quieted down, you were basically right there with him as you finished yourself off with your trusty hand as you shot cum all over his chest and stomach, heavily panting in the process. “Holy shit…you really wanted that bang sesh didn’t you?” you breathily spoke, trying to let the endorphins fade away. “I haven’t nutted in like…3 days so i’m kinda pent up you know?” Jacob doubled down as you let him stay inside for just a bit longer.

Your head eventually rested on the front of his shoulder, your breathing much more steady as Jacob lightly ran his hands across your back along with your hands resting on Jacobs thighs underneath you.

“You’re so lucky you got tint on these windows” You giggled a bit as you looked out the window to see cars going back and forth, after all, without the tint, every car coming your direction would’ve been able to see through the windshield…though the thought of being watched while being fucked is something to think on.

“Why? Afraid someone would peek?” Jacob teased

“You’d probably let someone watch us fuck wouldn’t you?” you replied

“If I know them sure” Jacob shrugged

“You’re a freak” you playfully scoffed

“I’m your freak” he softly said giving you one more kiss before it eventually came time to clean each other up…somehow.

[pines4thetwin]

I love the idea of ford being all angsty and self hating about his feelings when he was younger because ya know... incest is wrong.

But then he travels the multiverse and sees so many different types of relationships and loves and majority of the dimensions he visits dont even have incest as a concept so he just forgets about it all together.

And then he gets back home and his feelings hit him full force. And it doesnt help that the youger pines twins are sneaking around with all the subtly of a semi-truck. So he doesnt even question the morality of it when he starts aggressivly pursuing Stan.

Anyways one day after everythings settled and theyre sailing away on the boat, he's sitting drinking his coffee and just looks up from his journal and goes "oh was that this dimesion?"

And stan just shrugs cause what is his twin even talking about.

[smutinlove]

rq

Can u do carl grimes angst

after glenns death, negan has an impact on carl and y/n so they have very bad angst every day then negan notices and makes the situation worse so like he makes y/n try to k1ll carl to make her feel guilty

IM SO SORRY

"Rage Filling-up Semi-trucks"

You could still remember his face, Glenn's face. His sad and pleading eyes looking at his wife, Maggie, as he said the words, "Maggie—I'll find you." Those were the finals words that he spoke, those words haunted you and everyone.

Carl wanted to kill Negan, he hated him for what he did to both Glenn and Abraham. Both were strong and honest men who were loved to the moon and back. And now they were gone. And what really was the icing on the cake was that Negan would come by Alexandria and take resources, leaving the Alexandrians with barely anything.

And this enraged everyone.

You sat on the sofa, feeling helpless and miserable. You wished that he wasn't gone. Glenn was a father that you never had and always wanted. He was the light of your life. You didn't know how you were going to spend the rest of your life without him.

As your thoughts spiraled into a tornado, Carl walked by, his hair was dripping wet. He must've gotten out of the shower. "Are you okay?" asked the boy hovering over you.

Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you fucking okay?

Simply, no. You weren't. "Do I look okay, Carl? Do I fucking look okay? Glenn was a father to me. He was my best friend too. And now he's gone and I'll never seen him again!" You yelled with the force of a hundred thunderstorms. Your voice was unshaken.

"I miss him too! It's not just you, okay? I loved Glenn. He was family! I miss him all the time, every waking moment, I yearn for him." Carl replied.

He was right. It wasn't just you that missed him. Everyone missed him. Everyone who was present at the lineup missed him. Glenn was someone that was unforgettable. He changed and saved lives, including yours.

"Fuck. Congratulations, Carl! You were right, again! You're always right, aren't you? You and your smug smile," you scoffed. "Y/N, don't. Don't do this to me," he pleaded, his eyes watery, bringing you back to the night filled with terror.

"Fuck you for being right. Fuck you for being you." You ran out of the house, tears pouring down your cheeks. You couldn't believe it. He was being an asshole.

You heard a loud rattle of metal. "Rick, come on out! Let me in, baby! I need my shit now!" An all too familiar voice yell. Negan wasn't supposed to come for another week. Well, that's Negan Smith, the murderer of Glenn Rhee and Abraham Ford. So, you couldn't expect much from him anyway.

You watched as Rick went over and opened the gates of Alexandria. Negan, along with his crew, came in. "Woah, Rick! This shithole stinks. You ever use a bit of Febreze every now and then?" Negan joked.

You couldn't stand looking at him. You wanted to kill him and rip both his eyes out. But you needed a better plan. A plan that would guarantee Negan dead.

You went back inside and saw Carl putting his gun into his holster and a switchblade in his boot. You glared at him. You hadn't forgiven him yet.

It was definitely too early. "Y/N."

"What?" you replied.

He went closer to you, "Come on, we can kill that motherfucker together."

"You know what I want to do? Yeah, I wanna torture him. I want to rip his eyes out and cut his tiny little dick off. Then, I wanna bash his skull in like he did to Glenn."

Carl tilted his head.

"Y/N, we can do that together."

"No! Fucking no! I'm doing it alone. I don't want you with me. I'm not fragile. I never fucking was!" You yelled. You pushed him away.

"Y/N, you can talk to me."

"But do you listen? You just make it about yourself. Always trying to relate to make ME feel better. God, fuck you." you slapped him.

You went into the kitchen and opened a cabinet, you pushed away few boxes of stale cereal and grabbed the undocumented guns and knives. You picked a pistol and a switchblade.

You hid the switchblade in your boot and grabbed a holster from a different cabinet and put it on and tucked your gun in there. You adjusted your shirt, letting it hide the gun.

As you started to leave the house you said, "Carl, don't you think about following me."

You left, slamming the door. As you made your way down the porch, you heard someone call your name. "Oh, Y/N Rhee! It is Rhee, right? That's your last name."

The way your name rolled off his tongue, gutted you in a hundred ways, all ending with the same thing. Rage.

Y/N Rhee. He called you Y/N Rhee. Rhee. That was Glenn's last name. And he was using your name to ridicule Glenn's.

"Fuck you, Negan," you muttered.

He heard it. "Woah, the little miss can bark."

You looked around, no one was around. Not Rick, not Carl, not even Negan's goons. You discretely lifted your shirt up and grabbed the gun. You cocked the gun and ran to him, tackling him to the ground.

You put the gun to his forehead.

"I know you're sad. I've felt that pain before."

"No! You don't get to tell me about said. You do not get to do that. You're a monster. You are the fucking devil, Negan. And I'm ending it for you. Not tomorrow or later. But today."

Negan chuckled.

"No, you won't, dear. You're too pathetic and weak," said Negan.

It wasn't true. He was wrong. You had a strong will to kill him. And there was nothing preventing you to kill him. Nothing. You already had your finger on the trigger. You just needed to put a little bit more weight and he'd be bleeding out on the hot and rough ground, staining it.

"Do it. I dare you."

You couldn't. You got up and tucked your gun back in your holster.

"You know, you should never have your finger on the trigger if you're not ready to shoot. Have you ever even shot someone?" He asked.

You had. A few times. To you, those people you'd shot before were meaningless enemies. But to someone else, they were family.

"Yeah."

Negan nodded and sat next to you on the porch. "You know, kid, I'm sorry," Negan said with a smile.

"No, you're not," you replied. "You know that boyfriend of yours, Carl, right?"

You nodded.

"I heard you two fighting. Y'all were fucking loud! And I gotta say, that sounds like a fucked up relationship. Maybe It'd be better if he's dead." Death is something we all near each year and yet we try and stray far from. But now you had the opportunity to do it.

It'd be better. You two fought a lot. "Think about it, Y/N. It'd be freeing," and with that, he left.

You went back inside and grabbed your switchblade that you'd tucked in your boot earlier. Carl sat on the sofa, he looked angry.

"Oh, hey, Carl," you called out. "Hey, Y/N, listen, I'm sorry."

Everyone was sorry, but did they fucking mean it? No.

You charged at him and pushed him off of the sofa. You pinned him to the ground and brought your blade up to his throat.

"Y/N, don't do this."

"Stop telling me what I can and cannot do!" You yelled.

You brought the blade closer.

"I heard everything Negan said!" He blurted out.

You looked away, mortified. You listened to Negan Smith. You actually let him get inside your head. With that thought, tears streamed down your cheeks. "I'm sorry, Carl," you said.

You tossed the blade aside and the two of you got up and hugged each other.

"I let him get into my head. I let him... I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry."

"You don't have to be. Negan is just another fucked up, psychopath with parental issues who murders innocents for fun."

You laughed.

It was so fucking true.

───── ❝ authors note ❞ ─────

hey, whats up?? anyway.. i havent written in a long time so i decided to grace yall with my presence. HAHAHAH

anyway could yall tell i was listening to all too well and because i liked a boy?? HAHAHHA there are so many silly little references.

anyway send me more reqs!!

[flmboyz]

Rate this Clean LTL 9000

1 - 5

[historictruckingsociety]

[coldresolve]

Moneymakers, pt.xlix // Pinned

Previous / AO3 / Wattpad / Masterlist / Next (coming soon)

I didn’t hit the heart.

The back tires slide sideways on the road, whining through the corner of an intersection. The sound is soon replaced by the engine accelerating to the peak of second gear. In the rearview mirror, flashing lights momentarily disappear behind the cover of an office building. If Renee keeps hyperventilating, he’s pretty sure he will pass out.

A punctured lung isn’t fatal. He’ll be okay. I didn’t hit the heart.

It feels like he’s running low on adrenaline, or maybe the cumulative stress is finally breaking through the brunt of his body’s defenses in the wake of actually fighting. The pinky of his right hand is either broken or dislocated. He has no idea when or how it happened, but it bends unnaturally at the base knuckle, and he can’t close his hand properly around the steering wheel. The pain there is only just starting to make itself known, and it fades in comparison to his knee, his elbow, the back of his chest just under the shoulder blade where he bumped off a branch in the fall. There’s no way his finger is the only part of his body that didn’t make that fall. The pain is making him sweat.

So much of his headspace is split between frantic self-reassurances and the struggle to stay alert through growing agony, his attention to where he’s actually headed takes on a negligible role. The last wave of the morning rush hour traffic is mostly aimed downtown, so Renee automatically drives in the opposite direction. The main roads alternate between double and triple lanes, giving him plenty of room to overtake, and on red lights, he slips past the queues via turn lanes, barely slowing down to look for crossing traffic. He doesn’t have a plan. There’s what’s directly in front of him, and not much else.

Meanwhile, they steadily accumulate in his mirrors. What started as two by the apartment complex turns into five, six, seven, trickling in from side roads or catching up as the minutes tick by. Four-wheelers and SUVs, or the standard Dodge Chargers. Renee is a good driver, but he knows it doesn’t take much horsepower to keep up with a fucking Clio. When he veers off a ramp to the highway, he doesn’t feel an ounce of relief. Still, he kicks down the accelerator hard enough to make the pain in his leg spike. Every movement feels shaky, disorganized.

I didn’t hit the heart. He’s going to be okay.

His cheeks puff up at several unsteady exhales, and he blinks hard, wiping his forehead. The wind rumbles around the carrosserie. In and out between the commuters. Suburbs make way for scattered woods and fields, and the highway divides to accommodate a wide, grassy median. His pursuiters have kept a relative distance so far, but as the traffic gets lighter further out of the city, they slowly creep up closer. Close enough that he can actually hear the sirens over the Clio’s engine, the tires on the road, the rushing in his own head.

Renee has fled from cops before, but never in a car, and not always successfully. He can’t think. They’ll probably try to pit him. Await the authorization like dogs, and then eagerly watch for an opportunity.

Slaloming between other commuters. He’s going fast enough that the occasional semi doesn’t take more than two or three seconds to pass, and for all he knows, they’re driving the limit. A few tight squeezes rather naturally make him seek out the shoulder, where he can drive unhindered, and he speeds up exponentially – a passing glance in the rear view mirror tells him that at least one of the cops had the same idea before he did. He grits his teeth.

Would they do a pit at speeds this high? Do they even care if they kill him?

Up ahead, a little grey Ford blinks towards a coming exit ramp, turning directly onto his path. They’re not expecting someone overturning from the right, and even when Renee lays on the horn, the driver doesn’t react. To his left, a larger truck is blocking his way, effectively boxing him in. With a hiss, he finds himself forced to brake – but he still closes in on the Ford, tailgating near enough that he’s pretty sure the bumpers come within mere inches of each other.

“Move,” he says under his breath. “Move.”

As he knocks his fist into the horn again, right at the beginning of the exit ramp, the Ford’s driver freaks out. Contrary to any semblance of reason, the driver doesn’t move out of the way – instead, they suddenly slam on their brakes.

Renee barely has time to react to the flash of red light before the Clio rams into the Ford, momentum lurching him forward, halted sharply when the seatbelt snaps taught over his chest. The rebound makes every part of his body scream out in pain.

“Shit! Fff—”

Both cars swerve. While the Ford drifts toward the shoulder of the ramp, Renee’s only focus is to keep himself from overcorrecting as the back tires slide. He succeeds, but only so far as to not crash into the guard rail. By the time he regains control of the Clio, he’s far enough on the exit ramp that any attempt to veer back on the highway would be suicide, so he steadies his new trajectory. Sweat stings his eyes.

The unexpected route starts up circling a large patch of grass, then thankfully merges with another highway running perpendicular to the first. North, south? It doesn’t matter.

As Renee accelerates again, beneath the sirens and the roar of the engine, he starts to hear a faint rumbling sound. He thinks it’s the Clio at first. It’s doing remarkably well, doesn’t drive as though anything major broke in the fender bender, but his eyes still search the dashboard for hints, finding nothing. Meanwhile, the sound grows louder, and takes on a deep, rhythmic quality. It's not until he’s on the next highway proper that Renee realizes, and his stomach drops.

The seatbelt bites his neck as he looks over his shoulder, eyes scanning the sky. It must be behind him or on the passenger side, hidden by the Clio’s ceiling – he can’t see it, but the clearer that sound becomes, the harder it is to conclude otherwise.

They’ve got a fucking helicopter on him.

 Swiveling back to watch the road, Renee locks his jaw. “God,” he wheezes, sound rough in his throat. His breathing has far from settled, and he’s starting to feel a prickle in his limbs. Traffic continues to thin out before him, and the whine of the sirens grows stronger. It’s always the same car in front, a jet black box of a four-wheeler, close enough now that Renee can see the outline of the driver and a passenger, although he can’t make out any details.

Something vibrates in his pocket. Steadying the wheel with the root of his bad hand, he manages to maneuver his phone out without swerving too much.

It’s an incoming call from Davin.

Renee sneers, quickly tossing it in a cup holder.

One patrol car surges ahead, rapidly gaining more and more space in his mirror. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what it’s trying to do, and Renee tries his best to stay directly in front of it, aligning bumper to bumper – when a second cruiser joins in, weighing the odds unevenly.

The one to his right manages to get up halfway beside him, and before Renee knows it, the crush of metal against metal accompanies a swift loss of control, as a Dodge forces the back tires of the Clio sideways. The impact sends it spinning violently, and for several seconds, the world beyond the windows is reduced to a blur of light and shadow, and his knuckles are white against the leather of the steering wheel. Twisting it and sharply tapping the brakes, Renee fights the skidding tires, but the Clio still shudders sideways. The rear end grips the asphalt, halting the spin, but when he finally manages to steady the car, he’s facing the wrong way on the highway, glaring at the steady approach of his pursuers.

As his momentum rolls him backwards, a split second passes in which Renee is paralyzed, watching wide-eyed as flashes of red and blue creep forward with a threatening, relentless thirst. For what feels like an eternity, all he can do is stare, barely comprehending the enormity of his situation.

Without thinking, he yanks the gear into reverse, barely losing further momentum as he slams the speeder to the floor. Several seconds, he stares in disbelief at the swarm of cops on his heel, raspy gasps escaping from his throat. It doesn’t feel real, but somehow, it is.

His heart is racing as, in quick succession, he whips the steering wheel sideways and yanks up the handbrake, locking the rear tires. Rubber burns on tarmac, suspension whining as the Clio pivots on its axis, swaying at the end of the J-turn, when Renee releases the clutch, accelerating as fast as he can to steady the car’s trajectory. In less than two seconds, he’s facing the right way on the road and rapidly increasing his speed again, one gear at a time. Behind him, the cop cars lurch forward on his heel.

Shit, shit, shit.

Staying on a highway wide enough to accommodate a maneuver like that suddenly seems like a terrible idea. The first exit ramp Renee spots, he zeroes in on, air whistling through his teeth.

After a dead intersection, it veers off to a smaller road splitting rows of plowed fields, some of which still shelter patches of snow between the crevasses.  Five, six miles pass without another attempt to pit him, although with almost zero traffic, they’re no more than twenty-odd yards on his ass at all times. As the landscape changes, waving across the horizon, patches of trees becoming more and more frequent, he gets a glimpse of the helicopter, swaying back and forth across the road, field to field, seemingly having trouble keeping up with the pace – because it’s too slow.

Renee knows he needs to lose it, but he doesn’t know how. Part of him is settled in the idea of driving until, magically, some genius solution will spontaneously offer itself up. But it’s been, what, twenty-five minutes, now?

At some point, the cops suddenly shrink in the rearview mirror, distance emphasized by the dust thrown up by the Clio’s tires. Renee should’ve been suspicious, but he isn’t – he feels mindlessly hopeful. Not long after, the phone rings again, hum amplified by the cup holder.

Renee’s eyes snap to it, lips retracted in a growl. “Fuck off. Fuck you.”

It causes enough of a distraction that, although he spots the car parked on the side of the road, Renee doesn’t see the spike strip until it’s too late to dodge or brake. The only thing he has time for is a sharp inhale, and a grip that tightens on the steering wheel.

Two loud bangs and a whole lot of hissing. Running over the strip itself is no worse than a minor speed bump, but the moment the tires are back on asphalt, the Clio begins to swerve. Not violently, but it’s enough to make Renee curse. Steering has instantly gone to shit – there’s a delay between him pulling the wheel and the car actually turning, and when it does, it wobbles in either direction, never quite going where he wants it to go.

They picked the spot well. Less than two hundred yards from the spike strip, the road makes a turn to the left.

He’s sure he brakes before the bend, but the Clio doesn’t fully respond. The front wheels don’t have enough friction with the road to cause a ton and a half of metal to turn nearly enough, and the back wheels can’t slow its momentum. What should’ve been seventy degrees is instead eighty.

The car leaves the road for a short patch of grass, bouncing off the ground so hard, Renee’s seatbelt snaps taught again. In an instant, it breaks through heavy underbrush, narrowly missing the larger trees closest to the road, continuing down a wooded embankment. It’s a blur of jolting movement. A trunk clips down the driver’s side, breaking all windows and shearing off the mirror, altering the car’s trajectory, and the Clio snaps sideways and begins to roll.

Renee loses consciousness.

He thinks he does, anyway, because the next thing he knows, the world is completely still.

Silent, apart from the hiss of snapped hydraulics, the click of hot metal rapidly contracting as it meets the open air, the slow whirring down of a fan somewhere.

He's hanging upside down in his seat, arms hanging above his head, legs resting on the bottom of the steering wheel, struggling to comprehend what just happened. The seatbelt’s pressure on his body makes him breathless as he blinks, sparks dancing across his vision. It feels like his lungs can’t fully inflate, as if the air is barred from reaching further than his collarbones. Blood is quickly rushing to his head, veins pulsing at his temples. Renee let’s out a choked cough, arms swaying with the movement of his torso.

The windshield, almost entirely opaque with cracks, has collapsed and partially dislodged from its frame. All the contents of his car not nailed in place lays strewn about the ceiling. About half a year’s worth of empty soda cans and greasy takeout bags, receipts and tissues and paper cups, all mixed with dirt and leaves and shattered glass, fragments of bark and plastic and twisted metal. Bits of the forest, bits of his Clio.

Turning his head further reveals a space that has caved in on one side. Half the seats are gone, replaced by an almost perfectly rounded door wrapped around the trunk of a tree, from which large wooden splinters look like they’ve exploded into the cabin.

Somewhere outside, sirens approach, the whining noise echoing off the hills.

Renee lets out a small sound, struggling to swallow. He looks down at himself – up, technically.

A branch an inch and a half in diameter has shot through the windshield and now presses against his stomach, just below his ribs. It doesn’t move when he breathes, which is odd. When he wraps his good hand around it and tries to push it aside, it doesn’t budge; instead something warm runs up his chest at the movement, diffused in his shirt. He blinks up at the blood steadily spreading through the fabric. When the muscles of his abdomen flex with an involuntary gasp, he feels a tugging in his back, too.

His back…?

A slow realization makes him dizzy. Blinking a creeping vignette from his vision, he manages to squeeze his hand through the gap between his back and the seat, a movement that feels revolting enough to nearly make him gag. Just next to the small bumps of his spine, his fingers hit something rough again: bark.

The branch isn’t pressed against him. It’s going through him.

Letting out a small sound, Renee lets his arm drop to the car’s ceiling, watches the blood on his hand drip steadily on the ripped canopy. Swallows repeatedly. He’s breathing hard and shallow, wide eyes occasionally drifting to nothing, only to return to focus, with no real rhyme or reason.

He can feel it clearer now. There’s a horrifying pressure in his abdomen, a sense that his insides have been pushed away to accommodate the foreign object. Small twitches of ripped muscle, the harder spasms of a body battling shock, it all writhes around a new axis. The branch carries some of his weight, tugging at his organs. The fact that his lungs can’t fully expand isn’t just in his head – it must be adjacent to his diaphragm, close enough to get in the way of movement.

With as deep a breath as he can mechanically take, he wraps both hands around it, tries to push it out and away from himself. It doesn’t move an inch, and the pain is creeping in, like the corrosive gnarl of an acid, churning its way through his guts. It doesn’t move, no matter how hard he tries to push or pull. He makes a couple attempts to snap it, but even if his arms weren’t so weak, it would’ve been a fool’s errand.

Renee lets out a low groan, cut short when his throat closes up, and drops his arms again, awash with exhaustion and a dawning panic.

Nailed to the seat. He’s nailed to the fucking seat.

Buried somewhere midst the debris on the ceiling, his phone rings. The sound makes him look up – down, whatever – and although he can’t immediately spot it, his eyes catch on the gun lying above the passenger seat, aimed directly out the window.

A grim thought passes through his head.

Reaching out makes his vision darken, raw flesh shifting across wood. The tips of his fingers barely brush over metal, nails tracing the seams to draw it close enough to properly grasp. He lets out a shaky breath when he finally manages to pull it closer, then wastes a precious moment to gather his bearings, gasping in pain. Warm blood trickles up the side of his neck. The gun is heavier than it was five minutes ago.

Renee’s voice is raspy as he groans, shutting his eyes. “F-fuck,” he bites out. A quick heartbeat drums at the sides of his skull. “Fuck, fuck…”

He can hear them shouting in the distance. Barking at the sight of broken underbrush, the trail he left behind.

As Renee tries to lift the gun to his head, he heaves in a breath that sends a sharp jab of agony through his core, triggering a spasm of his body, which in turn triggers another wave of pain. The back of his head bumps the headrest, air blocked as his throat constricts, and both his hands divert, wrapping as best they can around the branch to steady his movement. Still, it takes a while before the pain fades enough that he can open his eyes. Through a haze, his blurred vision locks on his left hand, struggling to grasp both gun and branch in one crooked grip.

Gun, branch.

He’s not thinking through it, and it’s a wonder he doesn’t accidentally send a round going through his own legs in the process. But by some miracle, when he presses the lip of the barrel against the branch, a mere inch or two from his stomach, he awkwardly points it sideways, perpendicular to his body. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to close his mouth before he shoots.

It's an instant, violent jerk of the branch, instant recoil’s lash to his hand, instant ringing in his ears. Renee drops the gun, biting his tongue hard before he shouts hoarsely, lets it echo in his throat for every inebriated gasp that follows. Through a flash of blindness, it takes a second for the world to return, creeping back from the void, only for the dark to linger in his periphery as he manages to look up at himself. He can barely keep his eyes focused.

The branch is shattered, long splinters tracing up the grain of the wood, and the route of the point-blank shot has left a half-cylinder across its diameter, singed black from the heat. More notably, the blast has shattered it in two – the part jabbing through the broken windshield, and the part still lodged in him.

First, a sense of despair, a desire to listening to the voice in his head beckoning to either give up or give in. There hasn’t been hope in this endeavor for a while.

Still, Renee finds himself tucking the collar of his shirt between his teeth, biting down hard as he leverages both hands on the back of the seat. Shutting his eyes, he pushes his body forward, dragging himself off the branch.

He's aiming to get it over with as quickly as possible, but the sheer scope of agony instantly radiating through his body turn his efforts weak, unsteady. Renee is vaguely aware that he’s screaming through the self-imposed gag – at least whenever he has enough air to do so. There’s no words for it, really. It’s pain that reaches a crescendo so high that, like sound, it occasionally slips out of his ability to even sense it. The feeling of blood beginning to flow more freely as the internal pressure offered by the foreign object is reduced. The feeling of coarse and splintered wood dragging through his body a fraction of an inch at a time, hitching on whatever tissue it meets – organs, muscle, skin...

How much time it takes, how long he struggles to free himself, there’s no telling. It feels like an eternity before something gives – with a final, agonizing tug, he falls a half-inch, seatbelt digging deep around one shoulder. The branch presses against the small of his back, still hitched in the fabric of his shirt. Renee is barely conscious when his shaky hand fumbles for the clasp, eventually finding it. The first press is too feeble to release the seatbelt, but his second try is followed by the sound of tearing fabric, and he suddenly crashes down. He lands on his head and shoulder, body flopping sideways once his legs clear the wheel. He’s lying flat on his back on the ceiling suddenly, bits of debris digging in.

Hungry, starving, he gulps down air. Each lungful is marked with some noise or another: a half-moan or a grunt, a whine, a choked-out murmur. Through every spasm of his body, he moves, and eventually ends up on his side in the mess of debris, curling around himself – around the wound, now freely bleeding.

And his phone rings again.

It’s somewhere above his head, buried beneath a handful of leaves and a soda can. Unseeing, he instinctually reaches for it, dragging it down in front of his face as he gasps.

Pressing his good hand to the seeping hole in his abdomen, he lifts the phone to the side of his head with the other, and lets the majority of its weight simply rest there to spare his energy. Part of him starts pitting a sarcastically cheerful greeting against a myriad of insults, but the only thing that escapes his mouth is a half-hearted, raspy sigh.

Davin wastes no time on niceties. “They’re at the spot where you veered off the road,” he says. “The forest is pretty thick, and you can’t see anything from the air. They perk up sometimes, but I think they’re waiting for a canine unit. You need to get going.”

Drawing in a deep breath, Renee lets his cheek rest in the debris. “… bleeding,” he mutters on the exhale.

“Tie something around it.”

He lets out a weak laugh. Immediately frowns, confused.

“More cars are pulling up, man, you need to move.”

The bloodstain has grown under his hand just in that short period of time, slipping down his side as opposed to his chest. His back feels wet, too. “I have… nowhere to...”

“Go in the opposite direction of the cops. There’s a road down the hill. You need another car.”

“… didn’t mean…”

“Are you listening to me?”

Renee blinks. “Y-yeah…”

“Then do as I say, and call me back when you’ve got a car. I’ll tell you where to go.”

The call is disconnected.

Renee swallows. Lets his arm flop to the ground, phone clutched awkwardly in his broken hand. Some distant part of him still capable of humor notes that him feeling drained is getting truer by the minute. The urge to laugh at it, though, is quick to wash clear.

It takes a while, but Renee eventually musters up the energy to push himself off the ceiling. Crawling slowly on his hands and knees, he squeezes out the broken passenger side window, small shards of glass hooking in his shirt, scratching at his skin. His hands sink in the wet earth, leaves and bits of rotting wood sticking to the blood on his palms. It’d be soft to lie down and die in, he thinks, if it wasn’t littered with torn sheets of metal and plastic, or the occasional exhaust pipe.

His eyes distantly drift across the wreckage. The Clio has taken on a new shape, panels dented or ripped off, a wheel or two missing. It’s a brief glance, but he can’t spot a single thing on it that doesn’t look broken. The first thing he bought with his own money is now too tanked to even sell for parts.

Using a tree for balance, Renee slowly manages to haul himself to his feet, an effort that makes the pain in his abdomen flare exponentially, and he shudders. He can’t stand up straight, has to hunch over. His legs feel too weak to support him, but they nonetheless do, albeit shaking with the effort.

Between his shoes, a steady drip of red on the leaves. Pat-pat-pat-pat.

Who’s bleeding faster? Me or…?

It’s the last place his mind should’ve gone. Not now, not when all the barriers are gone.

It seeps into him as he tries to move forward, hands clutching his torn shirt, not putting pressure as much as just guarding. A burning in his throat, and a sense that gravity gets stronger. He hasn’t walked two steps before the pressure in his chest becomes overwhelming, and his legs give out. Painfully dropping to his knees on the forest floor, he clamps a hand over his mouth in an attempt to stop himself from sobbing.

Finally, he lets out a hoarse scream and slams his broken hand into the ground, once, twice, and then a third time in quick succession, until the pain drowns out most of everything else. As he raises his arm for a fourth strike, it’s as if his body’s visceral reaction to the pain, the lingering instinct for self-preservation, becomes a force that physically prevents him from bringing it down again, however much he might want to.

So Renee screams his lungs out instead.

Previous / Masterlist / Next (coming soon)

[pocket-lad]

CH 1- Origin: Mystery Shack, Gravity Falls, Oregon (Gravity Falls g/t)

In which a borrower forms an unlikely alliance with Ford Pines.

~~~

Everything was fine until the new guy showed up.

Life wasn’t necessarily cozy beforehand - she still had to keep an eye out for the nosy humans that milled about (especially the boy) - but this guy took nosy to a whole new level.

One day, everything was normal. The next, gravity just stopped working in short bursts. The next, there was a new, mysterious man in her home that snooped around, studied the supernatural, and shared a face with the man that already lived here. Quinn’s life was certifiably weird.

Weird enough that one night, she found herself atop this guy’s journal, reading his musings. It was a bad idea. Quinn knew that well before she even climbed up the table. But she always had this yearning deep inside her, this need to know more. The town they lived in was full of strange, magical beings, and she wanted to know all about it. Maybe she’d finally find out where she came from or why she was so different. And it wasn’t fair that humans got to have all the answers, just because they were bigger. So a few moments of reading wouldn’t hurt.

At least, that’s what she thought. The more Quinn read, the more her mind strained, which gave her a massive headache. According to this guy, he came out of an interdimensional portal that he was stuck in for thirty years because his twin brother Stanley (the old man whose walls Quinn lived in) wanted to bring him back after accidentally pushing him in. There were mentions of a memory ray, the U.S. government, dimensional rifts…Oh boy.

The page ended with:

First, I must focus on the present and on the problems created by a man who is responsible for my latest twist of fate…

And that was it. That was all Quinn would get to read for now. She likely wouldn’t be able to turn the heavy page, and even if she could, the racket would definitely wake the sleeping human nearby.

Speaking of, the room was suspiciously quiet, outside the ever-present buzz of machinery. The man’s faint snoring had stopped while she was lost in the book.

As the reality of the situation set in, Quinn turned around just in time to be knocked off her feet by a solid wall longer than she was tall. It slammed into her with the force of a semi-truck, squeezed her tight, and swept her into the air. She then found herself freefalling, and at last collided with the ground.

Quinn thought she had a headache before, but the impact with the wall and the hard ground combined with the dizzying speed with which she was yanked around made it infinitely worse.

She blinked open her eyes, wondering what could possibly have happened. And the sight was so horrific that she retched, on the verge of throwing up. She was caught. She was caught by the human and was thrown into a jar and he had her right where he wanted her.

He studied her with squinted eyes, scanning her whole body up and down and up and down. He hummed to himself, then wrote some notes in his journal. The process repeated.

Quinn had to force herself to breathe. In and out. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. His face was so big, his demeanor so intense, his attitude so…detached. In and out. But all knowledge of how to breathe fell out the window when he addressed her.

“What are you? Can you speak?”

His voice echoed inside the jar, bouncing around and assaulting her ears. She cried out, covering them.

The man’s eyes widened. “Fascinating.” He wrote something down in the journal.

“Wh-What are you writing?” Quinn asked hesitantly. He couldn’t document her there. Nobody was supposed to know about her. She learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago.

The man’s head snapped back toward her at full attention. He looked at her expectantly, but Quinn didn’t know what he wanted her to do. “Say something else,” he prompted, his pen at the ready. So he heard her, he just didn’t listen to her.

“What are you writing?” she repeated, louder.

“Yes, yes, you said that already. Say something different.”

Oh, so he didn’t actually care what she had to say, too tickled by the notion that she could even speak at all. She could say anything in the world and it would have no impact. She watched as he thoughtfully tapped his pen to his chin. And that’s when she noticed perhaps the strangest thing she’d ever seen. “You have six fingers!” she blurted.

This seemed to delight the man, and yet again he wrote something down. “Observational skills…” he muttered under his breath.

Six fingers. As if she wasn’t already scared of a normal human hand. This one had one more digit just to knock her over with, to hold her captive, to obscure her from the world. “It’s like you were specifically designed to terrify me,” she laughed wryly.

“Tell me,” he said, ignoring her, “Were you a human that was shrunk? Did you find the crystals in the forest? Or are you some kind of wingless fairy?”

“What the heck is a fairy?”

“Hmmm.” With that, the man grabbed the jar with both hands, casting Quinn in a dark shadow. She eyed each of the twelve fingers coiling nearly all the way around the jar, the only barrier between her and the fingers, the only thing stopping the fingers from closing in. He picked it up and set it on a high shelf, then left the room.

“Wait! Wait, you can’t leave me in here! WAIT!” she cried. Once the rumbling footsteps faded, Quinn collapsed to a seat, defeated. So this was her life now. Some experiment of a mad scientist in a musky, old basement. Would he study her and poke and prod her all day? Would he take her through an ‘interdimensional portal’? Or would he forget about her and leave her here to die, distracted by some newer, more exciting creature? Whatever the case, it was completely out of her hands. Her life belonged to a crazy giant.

BANG !

The loud noise startled Quinn out of her pity party. Next to her, a large, green, slimy being with tentacles had thrown itself into the walls of its own jar. It had one menacing eye that told her all she needed to know. It wanted to eat her.

Quinn instinctively retreated to the other side of her prison, as far away from the monstrosity as she physically could. It seemed contained, but if it broke the glass, she was done for.

She sighed, watching it repeatedly ram into the walls. It was another one of the man’s specimens, just like her. She wondered if it had once been a normal, peaceful creature, but its time in the jar drove it mad. It was probably starving. She couldn’t say she blamed it.

Quinn looked around. She was done moping. She needed to work on an active solution. And she might have just found something that could work.

The lid of the jar was closed tight, but the man at least cared enough to use a lid with holes in it so that she could breathe. They were tiny, tiny holes, but there was only one way to find out if she could squeeze through them.

Quinn easily pulled out her hook, caught it on one of the holes, and climbed to the top. Just as she thought, the holes were indeed too small. She could fit her arm through, she could fit a leg through, but nothing would get her fat head through.

But she climbed all the way up here. She wasn’t going to let this man make her into some plaything. With all her might, Quinn shoved at the hole, trying to loosen the lid from the inside. Needing more leverage, she squeezed her climbing thread with her legs, balancing precariously as she used both hands to push.

The ground shook. Footsteps sounded in the distance, getting closer and closer with each second.

Come on! Push!

Quinn made the mistake of looking to see who it was. She locked eyes with the man. He had returned, and she was caught trying to escape.

“Holy molasses!”

The frighteningly loud exclamation startled Quinn right off her thread, and she fell to the bottom of the jar, letting out an unintentional exclamation. She shakily pushed herself to her feet and backed up, hands raised as if she could legitimately fight off the giant.

But when she really looked at him, she faltered, her balled fists dropping a hair. This wasn’t the man. It was his brother, Stan. And it was worth a shot.

“Please,” Quinn said, running to the side of the jar closest to him. “Please, you’ve gotta get me out of here. That man put me in here, and I can’t-”

“Woah, Ford put you in there? Yeah, I’m not surprised. What are you, some kind of fairy?”

“What? No, I’m not - I’m scared there’s not much time. Please!” By now, Quinn really wanted to know what a ‘fairy’ was, but there was a larger issue at hand.

Stan looked hesitant. “I don’t know…Who’s to say you’re not some supernatural being that’ll kill me as soon as I let you out?”

Quinn was baffled. “Look at me!” she cried. Her eyes started to well up, and she could feel the tears about to spill over any minute now. She sniffled.

Stan suddenly looked very uncomfortable, like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “Oh - oh, gross, it’s crying. Uh…If I let you out, will you stop doing that?” But he was already moving toward the jar. He slowly unscrewed the lid, set it to the side, and plucked the little creature out by its leg.

Quinn yelped as two massive fingers pinched her foot, hoisting her into the air. She dangled in front of his face, trying to catch her bearings while fighting the fingers that held her captive.

“Haha, you are small! Say, kid, you want a job?”

“Huh???” It was hard to think with the blood pooling in her brain.

“Yeah, yeah, come to the Mystery Shack to see the world’s smallest person!” His eyes lit up as he saw it all play out before him. Crowds, money, fame, more money…

If Quinn heard that right, it sounded like she would be put on display for all the world to see like those other strange things scattered throughout his weird mystery museum. That was not going to happen.

“Stanley! Put that down!”

Uh oh. The man was back. Ford, Stan had called him.

“C’mon? This thing? It’s harmless!” He gave Quinn’s leg a little shake for emphasis, and she grasped her stomach to keep from throwing up.

“You don’t know that!” Ford came rushing at them, and Quinn flinched away as best she could. She now dangled by the leg between two giants who were very close to an argument. Claustrophobia crept up on her.

Stan lifted her up further and held her out to Ford as if to show how non-threatening she was, and it felt like her ankle ripped out of its socket from the quick movement.

Now out in the open air, Ford took the opportunity to snatch her out of Stan’s hands. Quinn groaned, then remembered she was supposed to be fighting back. But once again, she was unceremoniously dropped back in the jar. Back to square one. This time though, she had two giants peering in at her, both wearing the same face. It was eerie.

Before Ford could screw the lid back on, she held up her hands placatingly. They shook so hard she was sure the humans could see it.

“Wait! Okay, hear me out. You’re curious about me. I get that. But I’m curious about me too. I - I don’t know why I’m smaller than every other person in the world, but I want to find out, and I could really use your help. I just - please don’t put me away in a jar. Please.”

Ford hummed again, deep in thought. Quinn’s fate was up to him. This one decision.

“Alright,” he shrugged. He turned the jar upside down and Quinn came tumbling out, head over heels, onto the desk. She took a moment to catch her breath. Her plan worked, but she didn’t feel much better.

***

Quinn’s time with Ford was rough, to say the least. He had no qualms about poking and prodding her. The only real advantages she gained from her negotiation were regular access to food (which she had to remind Ford of, as he was often blind to the passage of time) and freedom to move around. At least, to an extent.

Quinn was suddenly yanked back from her position on Ford’s desk, all six of his fingers closed tight around her, and she was deposited in the center, right under his nose.

“Don’t wander too far. I’ll need you,” Ford said, but his eyes didn’t leave the journal. He had this uncanny ability to never let Quinn out of his sight without even looking at her. He always had her right where he wanted her, and she’d hardly gotten a moment of privacy since the day he caught her.

Quinn threw her arms in the air, exasperated. It wasn’t like she would’ve gotten far. If Ford needed her, he could just say, “Hey Quinn, I need you,” and she could use her own two legs to walk the negligible distance. But he still never bothered to ask her name and he just grabbed her whenever he pleased. He didn’t see her as a person. It was humiliating.

Quinn thought about standing up to him, or even just asking him politely not to do any of the things on the laundry list of annoying things he did. While Ford seemed to have no ill intent and he never purposefully harmed her, she felt how strong he was in the way he handled her. The thick muscles flexing beneath the skin. It wasn’t uncommon for him to squeeze a little too tight, to push a little too hard. And so any time she thought about speaking up, images of what could happen flashed through her mind, and the words died in her throat.

Lost in thought, Quinn didn’t notice the intruding fingers until they touched her. They held some kind of wire and wedged themselves under her arms to wrap that wire around her middle. Even then, Quinn could feel the force with which her arms were shoved upward. It wouldn’t take much more effort to snap them off completely. This was why Quinn didn’t speak up.

But she did want to know why wires were being wrapped around her. She jumped when the cold casings touched her skin. She jumped again when a loud, rhythmic beeping started up behind and above her. It picked up pace, and she soon realized that it echoed in time with her heartbeat.

“Your heart’s going a mile a minute!”

At the sound of Ford’s booming voice, the speed of the beeping increased even more. More still when they made eye contact.

A realization struck him. “Oh, I see. There’s no need to fear. You’ll be fine,” he said matter-of-factly. On the word ‘fine’, the beeping got faster.

Ford frowned and hummed to himself. (That annoying hum. The one that showcased to the world that he was thinking. And he was never not thinking.) With much slower, restrained movements, he reached toward her. Quinn had been willing him to move slower ever since they met. Everything humans did always seemed to happen at a blinding speed, and for once, she wished they would just slow down. But now that he did, Quinn hated it. Sure, she also hated the whiplash from being whisked around at human speed, but as she sat there, feeling the seconds drag on, dread blossomed in her chest. It grew with each passing moment. Each moment was a moment closer to getting grabbed - each moment the hands grew and grew and grew as they got closer and closer and closer, towering over her, casting her in their shadow - and she found herself wanting him to get it over with already.

Quinn backed up, confusion and fear duking it out in her head. She was vaguely aware of the ever-accelerating beeping.

Ford snagged one of the wires wrapped around her chest, stopping her in her tracks and holding her in place. Quinn let out a shaky breath and watched as he carefully undid the contraption. His hands were so big that they blocked her whole field of view. All she could see was a mess of fingers working in front of her, jostling her this way and that, until they pulled away and let the wires fall to the surface of the desk.

“I can assure you that I am careful, precise, and intentional. These experiments will help me get a baseline understanding of what you are and how your body and brain function. I didn’t intend to scare you.”

He didn’t intend to scare her? He could’ve fooled Quinn.

Regardless, when she didn’t respond, he returned to his journal. After an awkward pause, he said, “You may go.”

That was it.

“I may go? You haven’t told me anything about what’s going on!”

Ford looked up, mildly surprised by the long sentence and the angry tone within it. He hadn’t seen anything like this from her yet. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said, disappointed. The slow pace with which new discoveries arose was disappointing.

“Yeah, but you grab me, you wrap me in wires, you take measurements, and I don’t even know what they’re for. You write little notes in your journal about me but don’t tell me what they say. I mean, I’m a person! You know I’m a person, right?”

“Of course you’re a person. The real question is whether or not you are human. My knee jerk reaction is to say no. But a person? I have no doubt-”

“Well I don’t feel like one when you’re around.”

Silence filled the air and Quinn wondered if she’d gone too far. She tried to read his face, but it was blank, as per usual. And somehow that was even more terrifying than anger.

Suddenly, Ford pushed his journal along the desk toward her. Quinn backed up in surprise, but the journal stopped a couple relative inches away from her feet. She glanced up at Ford again, who nodded at the book. He wanted her…to read it?

Tentatively, she climbed on top and took in the words on the page, as well as a drawing of her with measurements written alongside it. It looked exactly like her. It was no different than the other illustrations in the journal, she was just another strange anomaly of Gravity Falls. The notion left an uneasy feeling in her stomach, but she was too curious not to read what he thought about her.

The girl appears human in all regards except for size. Is this enough to categorize her as a separate species entirely? She insists that she did not meddle with the height-altering crystals hidden deep within the forest, but further testing is required. Could it be genetic? A curse passed on through the generations?

“Quinn,” Quinn said.

“Pardon?”

“My name is Quinn. Not, ‘the girl’.”

“Ah, yes, where are my manners? Stanford Pines.”

Quinn couldn’t help but laugh. It had already been a number of days spent together, but she wasn’t so sure Ford knew that. He hardly left the basement. In any case, it was more than enough time to learn his name. And it should have been more than enough time for him to learn hers. If he wasn’t over one hundred feet tall and holding her captive, this behavior would almost be endearing. Almost. “I know.”

“Well, Quinn, feel free to add any contributions you deem necessary. There’s scrap paper everywhere. Please try and write as large as possible.” Ford pushed himself to his feet and began gathering equipment.

“Where are you going?” Quinn asked.

“To collect a sample of crystal.”

“I want to come with you.”

Ford laughed. “No, no, it’s too dangerous for me. It’s much too dangerous for someone your size.” With that said, he left.

Quinn didn’t waste too much time sulking. Ford hardly listened to her to begin with, so there was almost no chance he would take her with him. It was for the best, though. That would be putting a lot of trust in a man who forgot to feed himself on more than one occasion.

So, instead, she busied herself with the journal. A particular passage stuck out to her.

She is very reactive to my every move. I would describe the behavior as anxious and fidgety, not so different from Dipper’s default state of being. Perhaps over time, I can gain her trust and she will calm down.

Yikes. Part of her was angry at the fact that he acknowledged her anxious behavior and still chose to act the way he did, but a larger part of her was just embarrassed. Next time, she’d insist on going outside with him. To show him that she wasn’t just some small, skittish animal. She could be a helpful resource. And to prove this, she filled in a spot in the journal, writing as large as possible but still falling short of the man’s big, curvy lettering.

Origin: ??? Mystery Shack, Gravity Falls, Oregon

The now familiar sound of footsteps tromping down the stairs made its way to her ears.

It was Stan, who Quinn hadn’t seen since that first day. Her defenses were instantly up, especially without Ford around to stop anything from escalating.

But Stan seemed to be in a good mood. “Hey, glad to see my brother didn’t kill you!” Before Quinn could ask for clarification, he continued. “Where is the loser, anyway?”

Quinn stammered, trying to find words. “Um, uh, he went…outside.”

“And left you down here? Yeesh.” As he spoke, Stan picked up a piece of paper (that looked like it had mostly been eaten away by some kind of acid) by the corner and regarded it with distaste. He let it fall to the floor and returned his attention to Quinn. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

Without waiting for an answer, he scooped Quinn up and set her on his shoulder. She screamed. Even though she should have been plenty used to this by now, this was a virtual stranger who, last time they met, wanted to make her an exhibit in his wacky gift shop. His hands also felt distinctly different than Ford’s. Quinn didn’t like that she could tell the difference.

What wasn’t any different though, was the sheer strength in each hand, so whether it was Stan or Ford, she wasn’t getting out until they let her out.

And he let her out…right on his shoulder.

Quinn felt the cushioned fabric underneath her and wondered absently if the man wore shoulder pads. That thought vanished when he started to move, and she was left clinging on for dear life as he climbed up the stairs.

This was unlike anything she’d ever done before. To her left was a giant ear about as big as her. To her right: absolutely nothing. Open air. And underneath her, a living, breathing human, taking her…somewhere. Anywhere. Out of the basement.

A strong mix of excitement and anxiety filled each and every one of her bones to the point that they felt like they were vibrating. She was getting out of the basement! She would get fresh air! Sunlight! God, she missed sunlight.

But to leave the basement was to enter a whole new world. She’d seen the entire ‘Mystery Shack’ from her vantage points in the walls, but to be in the middle of it, out in the open among other humans milling about with only Stanley Pines as her protection, was not for the faint of heart. And Quinn’s heart was feeling pretty faint.

***

A high pitched shriek so ear piercing that it ruptured the sound barrier poured out of one of the small children. Well, small being relative. The girl regarded Quinn with a bit lip and sparkling eyes. “Oh my gosh!” she squealed. She immediately tried to jump up and snatch Quinn off Stan’s shoulder.

Stan angled his shoulder away, but if Quinn thought he was trying to protect her, she was dead wrong. “Woah, easy kid,” he laughed. The sensation of his voice rumbling underneath her at such an amplified volume made her jump. He wrapped his hand around her and set her on the table so the twins could get a better look. 

“Nonononono, hang on!” Quinn blurted, but it was useless. She was surrounded on all sides by humans, two of which were literal children. A strong force shoved at her back and she stumbled forward. Stan had nudged her.

The girl, Mabel, leaned in close and rested her chin on the table. “You’re adorable ! You’re like, so tiny I could put you away in my pocket and take you on adventures and we could solve crimes together! Quick question: Do you have any tiny hats?”

Quinn let out an uneasy laugh. “Uh…no.” She backed up a little, afraid that Mabel would just shove her in her pocket anyway, but the boy, Dipper, spoke up from behind her.

“Why are you so small?” His inquisitive eyes reminded her of Ford’s.

“I don’t know,” Quinn whispered. “That’s what your…grunkle,” She looked at Stan for confirmation on the strange word, who nodded, “Ford is trying to figure out.”

“Wait, that’s what he’s been doing? How long have you been down there?”

Quinn shrugged. Her neck was starting to itch uncomfortably under the scrutiny.

“Boring!” Mabel whined. “Let’s show her big people things.” Her eyes brightened. “Have you ever had popcorn?”

***

The twins found it incredibly amusing to watch her eat human sized food. Every time she hefted up a piece of popcorn, Mabel let out the same shrill noise that Quinn learned indicated joy. Dipper seemed to find it funny too, though his reaction was much more subdued. But she was just eating. She wasn’t sure what was so ‘adorable’ about it.

At one point, the kids tried to convince Quinn to ride Mabel’s pet pig like a knight on a horse going into battle, but she saw the way that pig chewed on everything. She would be lucky to make it out unscathed. The comments, she could put up with. The fawning over her interactions with food, she could more than put up with. (Food was food.) But this was where she drew the line.

The front door slammed and, before anyone could catch him, Ford stomped right past them and straight into the basement.

Quinn thought about calling out to him, but despite all odds, she was kind of having fun up here. They invaded her personal space without qualms all the same, and if she thought too much about the future (particularly whether Mabel would let her go), she got antsy and nervous. But they were having fun with her, not at her expense. Quinn got the feeling that, if she truly freaked out, they would ease up. That was not always the case with Ford.

They were in the middle of a game to see who could launch the most walnuts into Stan’s mouth (Quinn was losing horribly) when the basement door burst open. Quinn leapt what felt like twenty feet in the air and only relaxed slightly when she saw it was Ford.

“Ah, there you are,” he said when he located her on the table. “Come along.”

Everyone booed him.

“Ducktective will be on in a couple minutes, and Quinn said she’s never seen TV before. Can you believe it? TV!” Mabel said.

“I have a crystal waiting in the basement. It’s at its strongest when-”

“I don’t want to,” Quinn said firmly. Her voice sounded very quiet compared to his, but her stance was firm. Perhaps she was emboldened by the fellow giants around her, who all seemed to want her to stick around. Perhaps she was just sick of Ford’s ‘experiments’.

Ford didn’t waver. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He made a move toward her, like he was going to snatch her up. Quinn instinctively backed away, but as she did, Stan shot to his feet and placed himself between her and Ford. One second, Ford was coming at her, and the next, a solid wall blocked everything from sight. Stan moved so fast that Quinn wasn’t even sure what happened until he spoke.

“The lady said no.” His tone was impressively combative. Quinn stayed on guard. With so much tension in the air, she couldn’t be sure she was entirely safe in this situation. If a fight started, she wanted out.

Everyone held their breath.

“Fine,” Ford said shortly, though Quinn couldn’t get a read on his inflection and she couldn't see his face. As soon as he disappeared, Stan flopped back into his worn, yellow chair.

“Um…thank you?” she tried, still trying to shake off the stress.

“Ha! Don’t flatter yourself. I’ll take any opportunity I can to pick a fight with my smarty pants brother. And win.” He popped another walnut in his mouth and ruffled Quinn’s hair with his knuckle.  Her neck cracked and she nervously pulled away from the massive finger.

Mabel announced that the TV show was starting, so they all quieted down. Quinn tried to follow along. She really did. But there was a duck that definitely quacked like a duck, yet apparently all the characters in the show could understand it anyway, and there was mystery and murder and a twin duck and honestly she had a really hard time keeping everything straight.

It didn’t help that she could hear each breath the giants took, could hear them munching on food as big as her. They had been nothing but kind, albeit touchy, but it was hard to forget the way Ford and Stan easily plucked her up whenever they wanted her to be elsewhere. The anticipation of even the possibility that that would happen again was enough to keep her on edge and distracted.

And occasionally, her mind wandered to Ford. Did she do the right thing, standing up to him? Was he mad? Did she care if he was mad?

Cursing her inability to ‘stay out of it’, Quinn got to her feet, lodged her hook in the table, and began her descent.

“Do you need any help?

Quinn jumped, then compensated by clenching the string tighter with all four of her limbs to keep from falling. She slowly lifted her gaze to make eye contact with Dipper. His huge face rose before her, a kind smile on his lips.

“No…thanks. Just watch your step. Please.”

“Okay,” he said, then returned his attention to the TV. And that was it. No push back. No grabbing. He just let her go about her business. (Though she did notice the way he watched her descent. It was unnerving, but overall harmless. He was just curious.) Quinn relaxed a hair, then finished her long, arduous journey to the basement. The old door was easy to duck under, but each stair felt like it took a lifetime to navigate.

When she made it to the concrete floor, she took in the state of the lab around her. It was an absolute mess. Papers everywhere, drawers pulled out, boxes upended. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that Ford tore the place apart trying to find her. And speaking of Ford…

He sat at the desk, his head once again buried in his journal. He absently twirled a crystal in his hand and muttered unintelligible phrases to himself.

Quinn cleared her throat. His head snapped up and it took him a couple seconds to locate her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Ford strained to hear her, but he was pretty sure he heard an apology. “Ah, no reason to be sorry. I am quite alright.”

Quinn kicked her feet at the ground. “Well, thank you for helping me figure this out. I want you to know I do appreciate it, but… I can’t continue to live like this. It’s demeaning.”

Ford glanced away, maybe in embarrassment, maybe disinterested, maybe just thinking, it was hard to say. His eye caught something in the journal. “You’re not from the Mystery Shack.”

“Wh-”

“I wrote ‘origin’ in reference to your species, where you began. Not where you specifically are literally from.”

He picked up his pen to cross it out, but Quinn stopped him. “My mom lived here her whole life. Her dad lived here his whole life. But even before this place was built, we’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Stories dating back from my great-great-great grandma passed down. We’ve always been in Gravity Falls.”

Ford’s face lit up. “Interesting.”

“And I can tell you all about it, if you’d like,” Quinn added sheepishly. “I can tell you anything about me or my past or my family…if you promise to ask before picking me up and you tell me what you’re doing before you do it and you let me go about my own life.” She took a deep breath before continuing. Down on the ground, looking up at him, even from across the room and even while he was seated, was daunting. “I’m not gonna run away. I like you guys. You’re just big, and I’m gonna need time to get used to that. I can’t stop you at this size, and I can’t imagine you’d like to get whisked away by a giant with no idea what its intentions were.”

“Ha, it’s funny you mention that! The nightmare realm had quite the-” He stopped after he saw that train of thought would not prove useful. Instead, Ford stood and approached the impossibly tiny girl on the floor.

To Quinn, each step was a small earthquake. She thought about making a break for it, but Ford moved slowly, an attempt to appear non threatening. She knew logically that he could see her - his eyes never left her - but they were so high up and his dirty boots so big, it was hard not to retreat a couple defensive steps. Ford bent down next to her and reached for her.

Quinn let out a surprised yelp and tucked into a crouch, covering her face. This served the dual purpose of blocking the imposing sight of six fingers barreling toward her while also keeping her arms from getting pinned to her sides. The seconds dragged out, but still nothing happened.

Tentatively, Quinn peeked between her fingers. What laid in front of her was a large hand, over twice her size…But all it did was lay there. Confused, she looked up at Ford, whose face was neutral. “I think I can abide by those terms,” he said.

Quinn glanced between his face and hand repeatedly, to the point where it felt comical.

A faint smile spread across Ford’s face and he elaborated. “You know, I happened to come across the most curious creature while I was out looking for the crystals. I could use a hand hunting it down.”

Quinn jerked away when he wiggled his six fingers in invitation. But was this not what she asked for? She asked to go outside with him, and she asked him not to grab her. This was it.

After one last hesitant glance at Ford’s expectant face, she slowly inched toward the waiting hand. And then, she took her first step on the waiting hand. As soon as both feet were firmly planted, the hand skyrocketed into the air and Quinn fell to her hands and knees. She didn’t even have time to catch her bearings before the world tilted sideways and she fell, hollering all the way until she landed softly in a dark, dank enclosure.

As she tried to fumble her way to a stand, the ground shifted unpredictably. Each step threatened to send her sprawling again, and the fabric contorted around her every move. She had no idea where she was, but the faint light that poured in told her she should be able to climb ‘up’, and so that’s what she did.

Only when her face made contact with the light did she realize Ford had dumped her in the breast pocket of his coat. Wind rushed at her as he walked and the steady thumping behind her made itself known as his heartbeat.

Quinn didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. It made sense logically - Ford would need his hands free and she would be in no danger of falling to the ground, but the overwhelming bigness of everything around her made her feel unbelievably small. Even the pen that was clipped to the lip of the pocket was larger than her. His heartbeat drowned out her own thoughts. She could completely disappear in this pocket.

But maybe it would just take time to get used to. After all, she had a front row seat to all the action. She was close in case anything went awry. And more important than anything, she had a real chance to discover the reason for her small size. A chance to finally find answers.

When the fresh, outside air met Quinn’s face as Ford opened the front door, she knew that everything would be alright, and her life had certifiably changed for the better.

.

Last

[seat-safety-switch]

When I was growing up, people used to get all froggy about how many cylinders their car’s engine had. Mine’s a V6. Well, mine’s a V8. Nowadays, that doesn’t matter so much: if you have a V8, that’s cool and all, but technology has moved on. Now, automakers will sell you cars that come with little three-cylinder lawnmower engines. With enormous turbochargers attached.

All these big automakers are finally returning to the glories of turbocharging, after having abandoned it in the 1980s for being “too dangerous” and “kind of crap.” Modern technology has made turbocharged engines more reliable, smoother-driving, and easier to live with in general. Those of us who never abandoned the forced induction lifestyle are wondering: what took you folks so long?

I remember the first time I strapped a turbocharger to an engine. We’d lured in a handful of art-college students and made them create an intricate turbo manifold for a 1993 Plymouth Breeze. The Breeze, as you may remember, was not any good at acceleration. Adding a turbocharger made it really good at acceleration. Eventually, one of the art students defected, becoming a mechanical weirdo like ourselves, having transitioned to the cult of boost from whatever pitiful religion he used to follow. I don’t remember his name. Let’s call him Choo-Choo.

Here’s the problem with a turbocharger: once you get bored of how much power it makes, you can tell it to make a little more power, but then you will get bored again. Then, you realize that since you’ve put in infrastructure to support a turbo, you can pull it and put in a bigger turbo, very easily. Say, one from a semi truck. And then one from a bigger semi truck. And then one from a Komatsu heavy loader that requires you to cut a hole in the hood just so that the compressor housing can fit.

Choo-Choo learned the limits of human enterprise on that day, when the Breeze ejected its pitiful automatic transmission into the heavens while on its way to what we all believed would be a 10.16 pass at 139 miles an hour. He survived, albeit forever changed. The last thing he told me was that he was going to go work for Ford, to spread the gospel of the snail to them, too. We laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and yet here it is. Ford’s greatest performance monster: the base-model 1.0-litre EcoSport.

[foolishfoolsgold]

Fuck it. Official CaW car headcanon post

Red blood cells: Anything at all as long as it’s red and not too big (I’m looking at you, Honda Accord). They have a pizza-guy thingy on top shaped like a real RBC with a light inside that goes on when they’re oxygenated. Instead of decals they just have that and like a little Lyft driver sticker on the dash. Also all cells have their “names” (codes) on the back license plates. Often times the drivers will personalize their cars like crazy with bumper stickers and dashboard plushies and shit

Neutrophils: white Ford explorers (any year) all decked out w/ identifying decals and gear like cop cars. All immune cells have sirens btw

Killer Ts: Black Chevy Tahoeesssss, 2021 or newer. Have minimal decals but a front ornamental plate that says KILL like their hats

Eosinophils: any modestly sized pickups really, but Toyotas are a favorite. Usually pink with some kind of camo thing going on

B cells: this one’s probably my favorite. Subaru Bajas with giant antibody machine guns bolted to the bed. And Memory rides shotgun

Macrophages: gigantic Ford F-250s because yes. What if they were like super pale pink with a pearly finish and crazy spikes on the front bumper

Regulatory Ts: Shiny new Lexus RXs for powerful rich lady vibes. And also because this rosy bronze color specifically is just so beautiful I’ve seen it IRL a few times

Dendritic cells: SEMI TRUCKS!!!! A. Real dendritic cells are huge in general and B. they gotta carry all them antigens