#hope is a prairie fire

[hedgehog-moss]

I received a BroomSlayer 3000 for Christmas!

Behind its jovial mien lies a cold-blooded killer. It's got merciless jaws to clamp onto the plant and a heavy pivoting handle to extract the roots.

I think Father Christmas saw the Christmas Broom held hostage in my living room, under which he was supposed to leave presents, and realised I had reached a breaking point. Last winter I removed all the invasive shrubs in the pasture. I cut everything! Down to the tiniest baby broomlets! And one year later the place looks like this

It's luxuriant. It's humiliating. It's a boundless undulating broom prairie. Clearly as far as they're concerned, I just gave them a nice trim which allowed them to grow back even healthier. So I needed to try something more violent. Get to the root of the problem. (Sorry.)

(I noticed that the spot of last year's broom bonfire is still completely broom-free, but I have not yet reached the point where I set fire to the entire pasture and hope for the best)

Now let me demonstr

—wait a minute.

Is Pampe eating broom??

Ah, no. She's eating pointless, flavourless, leafless brambles which she wouldn't look at twice if they weren't right next to the plants I'd like her to eat, thus emphasising how much she is not eating these.

For a second here I thought you were being helpful.

I saw Poldine eating brambles instead of broom as well. Bad Poldine!

Poldine recovered from this heartbreak after I let her sniff the snow boots I got for Christmas. Just like cats (her idols) she enjoys inspecting new things. (She also enjoys pulling on the laces delicately with her lips to untie them. This game never gets old, if you're a mischievous young llama.)

Anyway. The BroomSlayer 3000 works!! But it's hard work. I did not think it was going to be hard work, because the website made it look so easy.

I wanted to take a little video of me uprooting my enemies but then I thought an illustration would better convey my emotional state—there was a demo video on the gardening website which sells the BroomSlayer and it was the loveliest most bucolic scene, featuring a polite tree who basically picked up its skirts and scampered away with a contrite gasp the minute it realised its presence was unwanted. I really thought uprooting things was going to be a picnic, because I am not immune to propaganda.

To be fair to the gardening website, maybe it's just broom. With that said, it's incredibly satisfying to pull on the handle and hear the delightful sskkrrhh sound of roots being violently torn out of the ground. It's an exhausting whole-body workout but eventuaIly I will grow stronger than broom. I made a murderous Veni Vidi Vici playlist to put myself in the right mood and with this musical support and my new antibroom weapon I will prevail.

[ninsletamain]

Happy B-day to one of the sweetest people I know @quarantineddreamer! Much love from myself and @frostbitepandaaaaa!

We hope you enjoy your gift! A certain someone told me you’d like an X-Files AU. (:

“I think you’d have better luck interviewing the victim, Andor.”

Cassian turns around, undeniably relieved to see his partner, Special Agent Jyn Erso, perched on the bottom stair of the half-rotted stoop. She blinks up at him from under the brim of her almost comically large umbrella. Her eyes are knowing, her expression as lucid as ever. She had, no doubt, witnessed the entire debacle between him and the local law enforcement on her short trip from the car to the sway-backed and moss-fringed front porch of their newest crime scene investigation.

“Ah, that’s not my job, Erso, that’s all you,” Cassian tosses back archly. Jyn rolls her eyes and he comes to join her on the bottom stair. He assumes that she does not wish to venture inside the rotted, sodden prairie Colonial until absolutely necessary (and perhaps is wanting to dodge the ire of the local sheriff that Cassian had just pissed off in almost record time).

“Lay it on me, Andor. What is it this time?” Jyn asks, trying to sound bored but he knows better. His partner likes to evoke the straight-laced, no-nonsense career woman but Agent Jyn Erso is also the most accomplished forensic pathologist and scalpel wielder in the FBI… perhaps in the whole damn country. And one doesn’t reach such lofty acclaim by being squeamish. She had also quietly denied several career opportunities over the years that could be considered, well, more sane, in favor of chasing lights in the sky and slicing and dicing in backwater morgue bays.

Had stuck with him. But he tries not to think about that part.

He ducks under the umbrella and they venture out in the weedy front yard in tandem. Jyn makes no effort to accommodate his seven inch height advantage and Cassian does not expect her too. The rain is a dismal, steady drizzle and much of his back is damp within a few steps.

“The victim— 34, male— looks to have been frightened to death,” he announces as if commenting on the shitty weather.

“Cassian,” she groans, stopping to look at him like he had just expressed his desire to join the circus. He knows that tone well. It’s also never a good sign whenever she uses his first name. “Frightened to death?”

He nods, trying, and apparently failing, to keep the amusement off his face because Jyn’s eyes close and she sighs mightily as they continue on their way. “You ever heard of the Boogey Man, Erso?”

“There’s no such thing—“

“Look, I’ll leave it to you, Dr. Erso. Once you get the autopsy done and dusted then you can call me crazy.”

They reach the car and Jyn pulls the door handle on the passenger side. She drove here, but she is not fond of driving— especially when there is a perfectly good man to do it for her— and Cassian is always happy to oblige her in her few glints of prissiness.

She closes the umbrella, shakes out the rain and swings her sensible kitten heels into the car. “Cassian, I’ll save us both some time.” She leans precariously close to him, elbow on the center console of their little rented Cabriolet. He freezes in the midst of fastening his seatbelt (after having to push the seat back what felt like a good four feet). Her hair is damp and a bit wild despite the shelter of the umbrella (her hair always gets frizzy in the humidity— he thinks it’s unbearably cute) and he can smell her perfume. His heart stops in his chest.

“You’re crazy,” she pronounces sagely and falls back into her seat.

He puffs out a laugh, shakes his head, and fires up the car.

[bonefall]

Moorland Research Notes

I usually let these sit in my drafts because they're kinda messy, but no one actually knows anything about moorland, including myself shortly before starting this deep dive. So I'm just going to post this in the hopes that it's useful in some way

This post is about moorland in the UK, I have not done any research into moorland in other places, and then I focused more specifically on lowland heath.

Feel free to use this information for anything you so desire, and check out the sources I put at the bottom of this list if you'd like to learn more. I really hope this helps out WindClan Fans in particular

I do plan to condense what I've learned and chosen into a "Welcome to BB!WindClan!" type post at some point, but this is a REALLY broad post on what moorland is.

What is moorland?

Moorland is a broad term that lumps together several completely unique biomes, most of which are partially or completely reliant on the management of human beings. They are defined by low-growing flora and acidic soils, which makes them difficult for non-specialist plants to grow in.

These can be sorted further into upland or lowland, dry or wet.

Because many types of moorland are dominated by heathers, they are also called heathlands. Though the terms Moor and Heath are sometimes used interchangeably (and this is where a lot of confusion comes from), usually, Moor refers to upland/wet, and Heath refers to lowland/dry.

I have to stress a that LOT of the confusion is coming from this. Heather will grow in both, and the terms get used interchangeably, but an upland/wet moor is FUNDAMENTALLY different from a lowland/dry heath, down to the very soil.

Most specialists will open up an explanation by defining how they're using the Moor/Heath distinction, and will stick to those terms, but just keep in mind that in casual language, ALL of these biomes get called moors, and places without any heather will get called heath.

They can also touch. There are locations where upland moor slopes into lowland heath, or upland heath kisses lowland moor, and there can be very special species that exist in the transitional space between these areas. This too is yuri.

It is not a prairie. It is not a savanna. Please for the love of god stop portraying moorland as prairies and savannas

lots of purple. why he ourple? heathers and purple moorgrass.

Common heather is also called ling, flowery bell heathers are sometimes called erica, and gorse can be called whin or furze

Maritime heath, dune heath, blanket bog, upland moor, transitional upland heath... these are all frequently lumped under the same term even though they are very different.

How are moorlands managed?

Above 700 meters of altitude and in harsh weather conditions, you get montane heath. Near coastlines, you can find maritime heath. These are the only two that are completely "natural" and require no human management.

In wet moors, the elements will beat the vegetation down into peat. Above the peat is turf, the top layer which grows the visible flora. Peat = below, Turf = above. Peat has historically been used as a fuel, and if that bottom layer catches fire, IT IS DISASTROUS.

Because of this, most upland moors (which are usually wet and PACKED with peat) are managed primarily through grazing. There are even breeds of sheep and cattle who have been specially bred to thrive in upland moors-- such as the iconic highland cow. (Though overgrazing can be a problem, too.)

Sheep are used to graze back the heather (sometimes called ling), and in good modern practice, goats are brought out along with the flock to eat pioneering shrubs and saplings. Pigs are also used to control bracken and combat ex-pine plantations with scattered needles, because of their ability to churn soil.

However, controlled burns are still done in some circumstances and when required (LIKE BEFORE A HEATWAVE). Because of the serious danger, it's considered inferior to good grazing management. It's done carefully, in controlled patches, both to not set the underlayer of peat on fire and to make sure there is differently-aged patches of flora in one area to support different species of animals.

If peat catches on fire, it will burn for days or weeks... and can even smoulder underground after you THINK it's been put out.

In DRY LOWland heath, proper burning is common. Gorse and heather grows strong, woody, and flammable, and the thin layer of peat below can combine to devastating results when a wildfire does eventually break out. Large swaths of dry heather and gorse is an ecological powderkeg, even if it was only growing on mineral soil.

Worse, the older heather gets, the woodier it becomes. Woody heather can cause high-temperature fires that absolutely devastates new growth, leading to a slower recovery and causing a controlled burn to become uncontrolled real fast.

Burns are typically conducted in winter, when it's cold, and grazing animals are deployed in summer.

Cutting is also important in lowland management, literally cutting out squares of turf to expose the ground. This is good for mason bees, specifically.

Moorland. Is. Flammable. Fire risk = HIGH.

If you do not manage the moorland, the moorland will manage YOU. with FIRE.

Do NOT set the peat layer on fire. Whatever you do, do NOT let the peat get set on fire. PEAT FIRE BAD.

The controlled burning of moorland is "swaling", or a "muirburn."

Pigs and goats have special abilities when used in grazing management

Pigs are a tactical nuke

Sheep will graze heather a lot harder than cattle, causing grassy "sward". They should be kept away from it in winter.

MOORLAND IS NOT GRASSLAND. Sward BAD.

Cattle will graze moorgrass a lot harder than sheep and bite back any sheep-induced sward, but trample the soil with their heavy hooves.

Bones tell me about the funny cat environments

Victoria Holmes (the original writer of Warrior Cats, for those who have just walked in, still in your bathrobe and perhaps comically eating some sort of breakfast bagel, on a cat giving a detailed ecological lecture to a bunch of other cats) has spoken about how she based the environment of the Forest Territories on New Forest, Hampshire UK.

[ID: New Forest's heathland on a misty morning. It's dominated by common heather with a few sparse trees, and a New Forest Pony grazing alone.]

That means that WindClan's moor was a lowland heath, characterized by sandy soils with excellent drainage. This is consistent with the thin layer of peat, deeper layers of sandy soil and clay (as encountered by tunnelers), and lush vegetation that's seen in DOTC and Tallstar's Revenge.

If that's not enough evidence, it's also described after its destruction in these terms;

New Forest boasts some of the widest swaths of well-managed lowland heath in the entire UK. It's been managed collectively for hundreds of years, and exists in tandem with bogs and old-growth forest for miles. The heath is just as important as the trees, here!

In TNP, the forest is tragically bulldozed to create suburbs. While they were at it, they also bulldozed the geography of Great Britain because, suddenly, there is a MOUNTAIN in Southeastern England; a region notoriously flatter than the Onceler's ass

So once the Clan cats get to the Lake territories, we could be dealing with a completely different biome. They might have gone from dry, lowland heath, to wet, upland moor.

However, descriptions of the new territory are scarce, to put it lightly. In spite of the Lake Territory being the setting for the past 20 years, WindClan's land is rarely shown. When we do get a glimpse of it, like in Crowfeather's Trial, we only get told about the presence of certain species such as gorse. Because of there being no tunneling, we don't know what's exactly below the surface, either.

Occasionally though we are made aware of the presence of "moorgrass" (possibly Molinia Caerulea) and the smell of peat, pointing towards it probably being upland moor. The bigger question is actually where all the sheep are? There should be a lot of sheep here, but instead, there only seems to be horses.

Aaaaand lastly before I close out on canon material, Lungwort.

Lungwort is a herb that becomes a plot device in A Vision of Shadows. ShadowClan becomes sick with a variant of greencough, and it is said that Lungwort would be its only cure. However, it "only grows in WindClan" and the leader, Onestar, has refused to let them have this medicine.

But lungwort doesn't grow on moorland. ESPECIALLY not wet, upland moor, which we might maybe possibly be dealing with now.

Lungwort is a FOREST plant, it needs the absolute opposite conditions of a moorland. It requires moist but well-drained ground, FERTILE soil, and full or partial shade. There's no way that WindClan has it and ShadowClan doesn't, OR its neighbor ThunderClan, in the WOODS, who Onestar has no power over.

It would also poison a cat but honestly 75% of the plants they use in canon would also do that, so, whatever.

What they SHOULD have gone for is great mullein which prefers full sun and well-drained soils, so it could feasibly be found best in some parts of WindClan, regardless of which sort of moor or heath primarily makes up their territory.

What sorts of plants are found in moorlands?

In moorlands, you'll find plants that can withstand poor soil quality and full sun. In upland moors, they also have to be hardy in frequent heavy rains and high winds. Because it has conditions that so few plants are able to handle, moorland is chock-full of specialists and unique species that aren't found anywhere else!

Historically, moorland could not be used for agriculture exactly because of this. With the invention of artificial fertilizers and introduction of (invasive) pines from America, moorland is under serious threat. Even if it's just next to a pine plantation, the trees will attempt to spread.

COMMON HEATHER, also called Ling, is the big bad boy associated with most moorland, and used for a bajillion different things. First of all, it was used in construction for thatching. Second of all, it can be used as a yellow dye, especially on wool. Third, honey made from heather pollen is as thick as jelly. It's found on all sorts of moorland, and is an extremely hardy species.

BELL HEATHER, sometimes called Erica, is more commonly associated with lowland heaths. It's one of the best flowers for pollinators in the entire world, and attracts tons of insects.

GORSE, also called Whin or Furze, smells overwhelmingly like coconut. It is also covered in wicked thorns. It's highly flammable and can burn ridiculously hot, making it excellent to collect as kindle.

PURPLE MOORGRASS is associated with upland moor, but will grow basically anywhere nothing else could. It's scary hardy, surviving in acidic soil down to a PH of 2 (THAT IS THE SAME LEVEL AS YOUR STOMACH JUICE), and can grow as tall as 4 feet (and even taller, apparently, next to its bestie girls heather and gorse).

In heath, tormentil, milkwort, and heath bedstraw are indicator herbs, and wavy hair-grass, bristle bent, and vernal grasses are found here and there.

PLEASE remember that moorland is not grassland. When grasses go from sparse to common, it's a very bad sign. It means the soil is losing its acidity, and converting into a different biome.

Bramble, bracken, nettles, perennial ryegrass, and broadleaf plantain are some of the species that can indicate that a heath is becoming a grassland. A few patches or examples are fine, but if they're eating into the gorse/heather/moorgrass, it's time to call in some management.

There's also the fascinating, parasitic plant called dodder. Dodder likes to twirl around heather before suffocating it to death. Cool plant! I don't know where else to mention dodder. I just think it's neat.

Threats to Moorland

I mentioned the problems in passing through this whole post, but to restate, these are some of the major problems that moorland faces.

AFFORESTATION: When trees are added.

[ID: A sitka spruce plantation on upland moor in Scotland, followed by a clip of Markiplier who condemns it in no uncertain terms.]

American pines, such as the douglas fir and sitka spruce don't belong here. These are commercial plantations and they exist to make money, but are touted as "eco friendly" because uneducated rubes think 1 Tree = 1 Ecology Point. They provide diddly or squat to native wildlife, destroy valuable moorland which can negatively impact carbon capture, and let fools pat themselves on the back for doing nothing but put government money into a logging company's pocket.

(there are also only 3 native conifers to Great Britain-- the scotch pine, the common juniper, and the yew. All others are introduced.)

But even worse than being a wooden blight, these are wooden blights that spread. If there's a plantation nearby, it WILL begin to encroach on the surrounding moorland, and the traditional sheep and cattle will not eat the saplings. GOATS are being added to herds in modern grazing management to combat this new problem.

The native birches (silver and downy) plus the scotch pine will also move in when moorland is not managed! They are pioneer species, which success the moor into secondary woodland.

OVERBURNING: When moorland is burned too much.

Even if you don't set the peat on fire and cause an even bigger problem, too much burning is bad for the biome as well. This is often done to serve hunters, who want to perpetually keep common heather in the youngest state possible to support grouse populations... and grouse populations alone.

Properly managed moorland will be burned in sections, NOT all at once, so that there's a healthy mix of plants in different ages to provide shelter and food to the animals that live in the environment. Too much burning will decimate the insect population, and prevent peat buildup.

("Hold on Elder Bones, why is peat good?" Carbon capture and soil acidity! It's super efficient at combating global warming, and peaty soils will prevent the moor from quickly succeeding into a grassland.)

NUTRIENT ENRICHMENT: De-acidifying the soil and making the soil welcoming to other species

Specifically from dog and horse droppings, but also from the addition of fertilizers. The biggest thing that can be a problem here is how conservationists try to balance public access to these spaces with the "recreation pressure" from having too many visitors.

SOURCES

I have had to do SO MUCH READING. OH my god, this was not easy research, please appreciate this big, beautiful list of resources I am giving to you

GREAT BRITISH LIFE: A really good intro to heathland (This article was written by Katie Piercy from the Cheshire Wildlife Trust)

WILDLIFE TRUST: Heathland and Moorland, Moorland, Lowland Heath, Cheshire Heath, Bell Heather, The Roaches

BUGLIFE: Upland heath as it relates to insect populations (website contains insect-centric guides to many unique UK biomes)

NEW FOREST: Heathland information and history

NATIONAL TRUST: Bickerton Hill and the Restoration Work

WIKIPEDIA: The Roaches, Yorkshire Dales, Heath, Moorland (listen kids, wikipedia is always a great place to start. Just make sure to double-check the claims you see there.)

COUNTRY LIFE: A flowery article that describes the North York Moors (this one's just really pleasant!)

AN ACTUAL LOWLAND HEATH ECOLOGIST: Dr. Sophie Lake's Presentation for the NPMS (This is the most detailed and proper source on this list, if you want to learn some serious info, PLEASE check this one out)

[blerb-f1]

Junge - Sebastian Vettel x reader

Sebastians Parents hate his career choice but at least you're here.

This is like a prequel to THIS fanfic - please beware that Sebs actual parents are incredibly cute and supportive and also i didn't mean to make like consistent songfics yet here we are. Its about "Junge" by "Die Ärtze"

hahahahaha

America's West, the vast prairie

And right in the middle of it: A small house

And in it: A concerned mother

2023 - Sebastian has just announced his retirement. You, his trusty Engineer since the Toro Rosso Days have spent the day looking back and reminiscing. Throughout the years you’ve had people come and go in your lives, but only you two and Britta, his manager, were truly consistent. One Group of People you absolutely couldn't count on were his parents.

They happily supported his Kart Career but going into F1? Never, F1 was for nobodies and troublemakers. If asked in which Michael would fall, they’d just say “Schumi is an exception”

Throughout the BMW Sauber Testing Years Seb would exist in the car given to him by BMW, friends apartments or hotels rented by Sauber themselves but never anything consistent. Once the move to Torro Rosso happened, with you becoming his equally young engineer, Red Bull made the decision to rent an apartment for you to share. Although you weren't a Red Bull Junior, Fate brought it this way. 

You’d taken way too many angry calls of Sebs Parents, causing you to one day chuck his mobile phone down the toilet- He was enraged but life soon improved until the worst day  happened. Your apartment was small yet cozy with each of you decorating their room lively. His covered in trophies and race suits, yours with study notes and smart looking graphs. Both however representative of your interests, with your shared common space housing your gaming consoles, a popcorn maker you bought thinking you’d use it a lot and a massive pullout couch someone put out for free which you transported home hanging off Sebs BMW X3 

Boy (Boy), why haven't you learned anything?

Look at Dieter, he even has a car!

Why don't you go to Uncle Werner's workshop?

He'll give you a permanent employment, if you ask him about it

Boy (Boy, Boy)

That was the first thing barreling out of a phone held to your ears. 

Sebastian and You had just entered the Red Bull Factory during off week to test new parts on the car. You, additionally, had more classes on being a Race Engineer. While you already were supporting him during races, you still had to study more to become better.

Just as you were about to enter the elevator, Helmut Marko came angrily flying towards you. 

“SEBASTIAN VETTEL! THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'M TAKING CALLS FOR YOU!” he shouted, throwing his Motorola towards you both. His moms shriekky noisy voice echoed through the speaker. 

His Cousin Dieter was a useless POS, whom his Uncle Werner, the workshop owner, coddled until there was no tomorrow. You had the displeasure of meeting them both when his parents sent them to your shared apartment, in hopes of building bridges. You both however preferred the Fernando Alonso Bridge and set this bridge on fire with a can of gasoline.

They were horrible rude upon intruding on your shared space. Dieter insulting your gaming setup, Werner complaining about your general decor and moving in. You’d gotten very fed up with them, opening the door and telling them to Leave that exact second.

Afterwards you and Seb had celebrated by ordering expensive Delivery Pizza while watching 100% Pirated movies. Most likely an Austin Powers Movie.

And the way you always look, holes in your pants, and always this racket

(What will the neighbors say?)

And your hair too, words fail me - do you have to dye it?

(What will the neighbors say?)

You never come home, we don't know what to do anymore

"DON'T GET THE TUB DIRTY!" you shrieked as Seb was trying to wash the dye out of your hair. You'd attempted to dye your hair purple and black with Seb being the one doing the work. He was, however, not good at being cleanly. He'd gotten dye inside of his gloves, on his pants and covered half of the apartment in the process. The washing out process was equally catastrophic with him getting your old bathroom tiles covered as well. 

As some dye was left over, you decided to apply it to his beautiful locks. You both came out very matchy. His hair had him look like a black-purple Raccoon and as he was a skinny boy, he looked more like a hungry raccoon than the fat ones you’d usually see rummaging on TV.

The day after you had an appointment with a piercer to get further piercings, the guy immediately thought you were a couple because of the matching hair.  You got multiple Piercings, each of them becoming their own memory for the future. You still remembered Brittas Expression as you turned up on Monday with all the metal jingling of your ears and in your face.

What you hadn't however expected, was receiving an invite to Sebastian's Aunts Birthday Party.  The Raccoon dye in his hair greatly contrasted the grown up BMW you found yourself in as you two were approaching Heppenheim. Seb took you along as an emotional support animal to better endure the party. You had met his parents before, the day they turned up at your house and another when they turned up at the factory. The day they had turned up at your house, you had your lovely neighbor open the building's front door. She was a lovely lady with hearing issues so you could be as loud as you wanted without bothering her. She often would cook for you in turn helping her with heavy tasks. She shushed them away and made you a hearty meal.

As the car pulled into his old home's driveway, you clearly saw people rushing towards the front door and stumbling out. Seb was clutching the wheel tightly, you both had been driving all the way from Austria so you were already pretty tired.

As you stepped outside you could hear his mom let out a surprised scream, it getting louder as Sebastian stepped out. Your favorite Piercing (a chain connecting from your lips to the ear) was glittering under the porchlight as his little brother rushed out, pushing his mom aside. He jumped upwards into Sebs Arms, possibly being the one most excited for his return.

“Who is this…Woman?” his mom asked, almost snakelike. 

“My Race Engineer and Roommate, Y/N”, Seb stated while brushing through his brother's hair.

Boy (Boy) don't break your mother's heart

It's not too late to enroll at university

You used to be interested in animals, wouldn't that be worth pursuing?

Your own vet practice, Boy

The dinner was uncomfortable to say the least. His aunt was to your surprise the one married to Werner, so he, the aunt and Dieter kept giving you dirty looks. His grandparents were equally unhappy with your both looks. Meanwhile his little brother was trying to show him pictures and awards. His Mom didn’t miss a single Chance to insult his driving career, only his dad stayed quiet. Then she started, talking about his love for animals and proposing he should become a vet again. A proposal, she kept repeating uselessly. 

Finally she dragged him away and his little brother approached you with shimmering eyes, inviting you to his room to show you his collection of things. 

You happily took the chance to flee from annoying relatives as you settled onto Fabians Bed, the sheets with car print giving way under your bum. The quiet mumbling from downstairs being way more endurable than the massively loud chatter. You would always pick the sound of a screaming V10, even if it would blast your hearring away. It would at least protect you from the pain of being repeatedly and hiddenly insulted.

knock knock

His father came in, face pulled into a mildly sad expression as he sheepishly stood in front of the room's door. you eyed him, waiting for more insults of your person to be hurled at you.

Instead however, he gave you a bag.

“Y/N, right?”

“Yeah”

“Please” he was a quiet man, his age clearly visible on his face. “Please give this to Sebastian. Heike, she… She isn’t herself . This isn’t like her. But Seb, he should have this back.”

You take the bag and gingerly lay it on the mattress next to you.

“If she’s gotten so bad, why don’t you leave her?”

“I promised to stick to her, in good and bad times.”

And the way you always look, piercings in your nose, and always this racket

(What will the neighbors say?)

Electric guitars and always these lyrics

Nobody wants to listen to that

(What will the neighbors say?)

You never come home, so much bad company

We will disinherit you

(What will the tax office say?)

How is it all going to end, we are worried

Seb and You were finally back home. Home, yes that’s what Austria had become for you both.  

The apartment was quiet until you rummaged through the cupboard, pulling out an  Electric Guitar and its required equipment. You gave Seb a cheeky grin before proceeding to play Wonderwall by Oasis. “Not Wonderwall…” Sebastian moaned.

You handed him the Guitar. “Then play something Better, Starboy!”

“But I don't know how to?”

“Just let it out!” you screamed before stomping around the living room, tumbling over collections of varying junk and memorabilia. 

clinggggg

You’d stumbled over the long forgotten bag his father had handed you. The Guitar abruptly stopped as Seb dropped it onto the Sofa while staring the bags contents

His first trophy, his favorite stuffed animal and his laminated photos of meeting Michael for the first time.

“Where did you get those from?” Seb asked with anger lacing his voice.

“Your father gave them to me.”

He looked between you and the bag's contents, difficulty enshrining his expression as you bent down, picking up the trophy. You lifted it, brushing your shirt over it. After a serious glance you shoved his newest trophies to the side and placed it smack dab in the middle. You could clearly imagine the little, then blonde boy, bursting with pride upon being handed it by his childhood Idol Michael Schumacher.

And you were such a sweet child

And you were such a sweet child

And you were such a sweet child

You were so sweet

And always your friends, I bet you all take drugs

And always this racket

(What will the neighbors say?)

Think of your future, think of your parents

Do you want us to die?

[renegadesstuff]

“Just stop,” Wylan said. “Breathe.”

Wylan’s gaze was steady. Jesper couldn’t look away from that clear-water blue. He forced himself to still, inhaled, exhaled.

“Again,” Wylan said, and when Jesper opened his mouth to take another breath, Wylan leaned forward and kissed him.

Jesper’s mind emptied. He wasn’t thinking of what had happened before or what might happen next. There was only the reality of Wylan’s mouth, the press of his lips, then the fine bones of his neck, the silky feel of his curls as Jesper cupped his nape and drew him nearer. This was the kiss he’d been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of Makker’s Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart—or was it Wylan’s?—like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, Oh.

Slowly, inevitably, they broke apart.

“Wylan,” Jesper said, looking into the wide blue sky of his eyes, “I really hope we don’t die.”

~ Crooked Kingdom, T2. Jesper & Wylan ~

[wylanvanmoonlight]

I hope that if jesper and kuwei do kiss in the crows spinoff jesper tells wylan about how with kuwei he didn't feel a thing but with wylan, every time, it was prairie fire

[bestestspirit]

Bestest Spirit Showdown is over!

Congratulations to Belonging Guide!

My name is Fia, and I thank you for your participation.

(click the image to see it better)

64 spirits were elected in the preliminary round to participate in this tournament.

Who wasn't included: office spirits, npcs who aren't spirits, beta spoilers.

Links to the polls can be found under readmore

Preliminaries

Isle of Dawn • Daylight Prairie • Hidden Forest • Valley of Triumph • Golden Wasteland • Vault of Knowledge • Season of Gratitude • Season of Lightseekers • Season of Belonging • Season of Rhythm • Season of Enchantment • Season of Sanctuary • Season of Prophecy • Season of Dreams • Season of Assembly • Season of The Little Prince • Season of Flight • Season of Abyss • Season of Performance • Season of AURORA • Season of Remembrance • Days Events Guides • Redemption round

Round One

Part 1

Prophet of Fire vs Scarecrow Farmer

Frantic Stagehand vs Laughing Light Catcher

Scolding Student vs Confetti Cousin

Peeking Postman vs Manta Whisperer

Doublefive Light Catcher vs Jelly Whisperer

Pleading Child vs Cackling Cannoneer

Levitating Adept vs Timid Bookworm

Seed of Hope vs Jumpsuit Rainbow Guide

Chill Sunbather vs Tearful Light Miner

Tiptoeing Tea Brewer vs Stretching Lamplighter

Stealthy Survivor vs Sleepy Traveler

Admiring Actor vs Bloom Guide

Playfighting Herbalist vs Questgiver

Frightened Refugee vs Performance Guide

Prophecy Guide vs Fainting Warrior

Cargo Pants Rainbow Guide vs Sassy Drifter

Part 2

Crab Whisperer vs Rallying Thrillseeker

Warrior of Love vs Hide'n'seek Pioneer

Belonging Guide vs Praying Acolyte

Laidback Pioneer vs Flight Guide

Boogie Kid vs Bereft Veteran

Mischief Guide Samantha vs Mischief Guide Skidmore

Ushering Stargaser vs Slouching Soldier

Gloating Narcissist vs Saluting Protector

Troupe Juggler vs Abyss Guide

Bearhug Hermit vs Festival Spin Dancer

Blushing Prospector vs Rhythm Guide

Assembly guide vs Light Whisperer

Butterfly Charmer vs Cheerful Spectator

Young Skater vs Krab Walker

Bird Whisperer vs Daydream Forester

Backflipping Champion vs Gratitude Guide

Round 2

Prophet of Fire vs Frantic Stagehand

Scolding Student vs Peeking Postman

Doublefive Light Catcher vs Cackling Cannoneer

Timid Bookworm vs Seed of Hope

Chill Sunbather vs Stretching Lamplighter

Sleepy Traveler vs Bloom Guide

Old Questgiver vs Performance Guide

Prophecy Guide vs Sassy Drifter

Crab Whisperer vs Warrior of Love

Belonging Guide vs Flight Guide

Boogie Kid vs Mischief Guide Samantha

Slouching Soldier vs Gloating Narcissist

Troupe Juggler vs Bearhug Hermit

Rhythm Guide vs Light Whisperer

Butterfly Charmer vs Young Skater

Daydream Forester vs Gratitude Guide

Round 3

Frantic Stagehand vs Peeking Postman

Cackling Cannoneer vs Seed of Hope

Stretching Lamplighter vs Bloom Guide

Performance Guide vs Prophecy Guide

Crab Whisperer vs Belonging Guide

Boogie Kid vs Slouching Soldier

Bearhug Hermit vs Light Whisperer

Young Skater vs Daydream Forester

Quarterfinals

Frantic Stagehand vs Cackling Cannoneer

Stretching Lamplighter vs Performance Guide

Belonging Guide vs Slouching Soldier

Bearhug Hermit vs Young Skater

Semifinals

Cackling Cannoneer vs Performance Guide

Belonging Guide vs Bearhug Hermit

Final Round

Performance Guide vs Belonging Guide

Cackling Cannoneer vs Bearhug Hermit [for 3rd place]

Friendly matches

Bloom Guide vs Admiring Actor's Butt

Performance Guide's Booty vs Admiring Actor's Buttchecks

Sneezing Geographer vs Provoking Performer

The War

The Rose vs Void of Shattering

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

non-fic to-do list

hello, gamers! I'm trying uuuh something similar to my to-read public shaming, but with a slightly nicer name and a tiny bit more incentive than normal.

here's the short version: Judith Butler has a new book out! it's called Who's Afraid of Gender? and I'm very excited to read it! however I also know how Judith Butler writes, and how I digest their work, and I'm definitely going to have an easier time if I have a copy of the book that I can highlight and take notes in.

but first: despite my general objections to acquiring more books than I can read, I have managed to acquire QUITE A FEW nonfiction books that I have not yet managed to read. some I've purchased, some were gifted or loaned to me, one I downloaded for free and printed in its entirety.

and now they all have to go, by which I mean get read, and only once I've read them all am I allowed to buy Butler's new book. if this takes long enough it might even be out in paperback and slightly cheaper, although I'm not holding out too much hope for that.

so, without further ado, here's a reading list that is absolutely all over the place:

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (Caitlin Doughty)

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser)

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg)

Necropolitics (Achille Mbembe)

How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life (Mandy Naglich)

Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe)

Orientalism (Edward W. Said)

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians (Richard Sugg)

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture (Glen Weldon)

Orientalism is already in progress, and Doughty and Weldon's books will both be rereads, if that's interesting to anybody. anyone have any suggestions about where to start?

[inlovewithquotes]

Jesper's mind emptied. He wasn't thinking of what had happened before or what might happen next. There was only the reality of Wylan's mouth, the press of his lips, then the fine bones of his neck, the silky feel of his curls as Jesper cupped his nape and drew him nearer.

This was the kiss he'd been waiting for. It was a gunshot. It was prairie fire. It was the spin of his Makker's Wheel. Jesper felt the pounding of his heart---or was it Wylan's?---like a stampede in his chest, and the only thought in his head was a happy, startled, oh. Slowly, inevitably, they broke apart.

"Wylan," Jesper said, looking into the wide blue sky of his eyes, "I really hope we don't die."

-Crooked Kingdom

[purlturtle]

Untitled Post-Apocalyptic Fic, part 5

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

“Ingenious,” Helena commented, doing her best not to flinch at every flash of lightning, every crackle of thunder. She nodded towards the water bag in Myka’s hands that was filling rapidly with the rain water pouring down the tarpaulin.

“Thanks,” Myka said dryly. “Can you twist the nozzle open on the filter? The bag should be full enough by now; the pressure will push the water through and into the bag.” She, in turn, nudged her knee against the water bag attached underneath the filter.

Helena complied, and indeed water began to trickle, then stream, into the bag. “Safe water, in the middle of the Badlands, miles from any well,” she marveled.

“Yup.” Myka shifted her weight, grabbed the bag more securely.

There was another bolt of lightning chased by thunder. Helena gritted her teeth. “It’s right above us,” she remarked. “Any chance that it’ll blow over soon?”

Myka weighed her head. “We haven’t had a storm in a while. Could be it’ll be quick, could be it’s picked up a lot of momentum on the prairies. Hard to tell.” She cast Helena a sidelong glance. “We’re safe here.”

Helena bit her lips together so as not to mutter, “Says you.”

They were in a U-shaped cove up in the hills, miles from the road. Probably used to be a whirlpool on the side of a stream, millennia ago, Helena reckoned – now it was half-covered by the angled tarpaulin, which Myka had not tightened all the way at the lower end, so that water was pooling in the slack – and pouring into the filter’s bag.

Helena had to admit that it was reasonably dry underneath the tarpaulin, but she would most certainly have preferred a stout roof over their heads, for a storm as violent as this. The tarpaulin was the flimsiest she’d ever seen in her life.

“Second bag,” Myka said with a curt gesture.

Helena held it out and, at Myka’s nod, switched the now-full bag of filtered water against this empty counterpart. Soon they’d have two gallons of filtered water and another half-gallon of unfiltered. Thirsty as she’d been all day, that fact should be cheerful – but it was hard to feel cheer when thunder rattled one’s brain.

“When did you learn that your shifting included any item attached to that animal’s body?” she asked Myka, if only to distract herself. That was how they had acquired the tarpaulin, and the tent, and the bedrolls – Myka had shifted into what had clearly been a pack horse, after instructing Helena to take everything off of her once she did.

“Happenstance,” Myka replied, “and then trial and error.” She glanced at Helena and shrugged. “I hope you like club sandwiches. They’ve been eighty, ninety percent of my nutrition as of late.”

Helena, who had heard the term but didn’t remember what specific kind of sandwich it signified, simply nodded, in the assumption that Myka had a shifting-related source of said sandwiches. “Yes, of course.” When Christina had been an infant, before Charles had found it within himself to take his sister and her bastard in, Helena had subsisted on the scraps of eel pie shops. Anything with the word “club” in its name could not be bad.

Another crack of thunder sounded, loud and sharp and right overhead. Helena looked out into the darkness beyond their little haven, and saw nothing but night; she was glad that the pack horse’s panniers had also held some fire wood. When she turned back to the flickering fire, Myka had shifted into a dog – lying on its side next to the fire, tail wagging, a small square pack of plastic on its multi-colored rump. Helena dutifully picked it up and looked aside as the dog began to blur again. Not just attached, then, she mused, but simply on the animal. She knew these packs; Artie had eaten (and offered her) sandwiches out of these often.

A small woof made her turn around again; Myka was still – no, again – in dog shape, this time with an apple and two small plastic bottles of water on its side. Again the tail wagged; again Helena picked up the bounty. Again the blur; this time Helena simply closed her eyes, until she heard another woof: another box of sandwiches, for which she was glad: her stomach was growling, and the idea of sharing that one pack had not appealed.

[w3ath3r-0f-sw34t3rz]

˗ˏˋ cavetown songs. ´ˎ˗

i just wanna talk about em

this is home 💭 (what do you want from me? this song isn't even real it makes me feel The Most. the first note and i have ascended into the heavens above. there are no words)

just add water 🦕 (makes me feel like i'm underwater)

banana bread 🐝 (underrated. i hope you're alright i didn't wanna wake up last night but i quite liked the dream i had of holding your hand? oh my god it goes so hard)

talk to me ☎️ (the hug that i need)

boys will be bugs 🐛 (gender👍)

sweet tooth 💞 (BANGER this is what alchohol SHOULD taste like FORUUUUMYHONEYYDEWWW)

smoke signals ✨ (underrated AS ALL HELL. so fricken beautiful)

sharpener 🩹 (i have issues)

grocery store 🪫 (SO ME CODED FR)

we're alive 🪦 (theres a fire on my floor telling me to sleep some more. chilling and yet comforting in a way only cavetown can be)

hazel 🌙 (i wake up with this in my head often. there's just something about it)

devil town 👻 (it's devil town)

snake & the prairie dogs 🐍 (AUUGGGHHHHHH DIRTINYOURHEADNYOUDONTKNOWHOWTOGETITOUT vibe tm)

trenchh 🐚 (nobody anywhere has anything on this chorus)

nostalgia in my bedroom 🌸 (such vibe tm)

lavaicerink 🧊 (vibe tm)

sliipping lately 📼 (bop. and vibe tm.)

it's u 🌌 (my wedding song idc. ifufalldown2far&icantseeuthrutheesmarks&ureyesrcoveredinscars&myheadisfillingw/tardwwellfindanotherwayoutursilhouettedoesntlookquiteright&icanneverfindthetime2burymyhandsinwordsidgrowanewkindofevergreentreejust4u&meon2ndthoughtswilluevenrememberme.)

big bowl in the sky 🪽 (makes me throw myself on my dog and sob every time)

888 📀 (👏trapped👏in👏my👏tiny👏human👏brain👏 IF I MOVE MY HANDS FAST ENOUGH I WONT DIE???!?!??!?!"?!? BRO?!?#??#!?@)

poison ☠️ (i feel like i'm lying in the middle of the road in the rain at dusk and something is coming and i should be afraid yet i know everything is gonna be ok)

pigeon 🩻 (ya novel main character moment)

pyjama pants 💤 (my love language)

empty bed 🧸 (oof. this. this gets to me)

guilty 🦴 (insane bro just so good)

a kind thing to do 🌱 (OH MY GOD??? HUH??!?? the way this fuckin song tickles my soul)

wasabi 🧦 (wow. huh)

i swear to god 🦇 (aughhgh it's sog ood. so sgoodfs. sog)

juno 🐾 (one of my favorite things about cavetown is how many songs he has talking about connections with animals. that is just something so personal to me and this song in particular i just relate to on such a deep level)

juliet 💐 (shit he is so pretty.)

ty for ur time

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Margaret Renkl Op-Ed from the New York Times:

Until last fall, when PBS screened “The American Buffalo,” a documentary by Ken Burns, I had no idea bison were native to Middle Tennessee, where I have lived for 37 years. I just assumed that Nashville was part of the great temperate deciduous forests that once covered much of the eastern half of the United States.

I should’ve guessed that the picture was more complicated. When I went looking for the once-endangered Tennessee coneflower in 2019, I found them in a rocky glade surrounded by grasslands blooming with wildflowers. And if there are grasslands here now, surely there must have been grasslands here in the past.

Before the European settlers arrived in North America, the region we know today as the American South was home to seven to 10 million acres of prairie, according to Dwayne Estes, a botanist, professor of biology at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., and executive director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, which works to research, preserve and restore native grasslands across the South. Today nearly all those Southern prairies — along with nearly all the other types of Southern grassland ecosystems, and nearly all the plants and animals they supported — are gone.

The scope of this loss of is enormous. Until the early 18th century, the South had up to 120 million acres of grasslands — prairies, savannas, wet meadows, barrens, glades, fens, marshes, coastal dunes, balds and riverscour that collectively supported a truly breathtaking array of plants and animals. In a study published in 2021, a team of scientists including Dr. Estes identified 118 major types of grassland ecosystems in the South. Some are close to extinction.

The most widespread were the savannas, grasslands characterized by scattered trees and a wildflower-rich soil. Historically, what kept young trees from filling the grasslands and turning them into dense, closed-canopy forests were two things: fire and bison (or both). “If you take fire and bison off savanna grasslands, which we did for the first time in world history, they will naturally grow up into trees,” Dr. Estes said in an interview. “They will become what we call artificial forests.” By the end of the 19th century, both bison and fire had been largely eliminated from the Southern landscape.

We know the European settlers chopped down much of the Eastern hardwood forests to harvest timber, but the ecological devastation wrought by a belief in Manifest Destiny didn’t stop with deforestation. The grasslands began to disappear, too, as trappers and settlers slaughtered the bison and suppressed the fire and turned the rich soil into farms.

Between row-crop agriculture, urban sprawl, and the transformation of open woodlands into closed-canopy forests, among other human encroachments, there is almost nothing left of the original grassland ecosystems that once sustained the immense biodiversity of the American South, from tiny insects to grasslands birds to the great buffalo itself. The grassy places we still have — pastures, public parks, highway medians and the like — don’t serve the same ecological function that our native grasslands did. These days, “grass” means species imported from Europe and Asia, monocultures that don’t support diverse plant species or native wildlife.

Today, according to calculations by the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, less than 5 percent of our original grasslands still exist. “Yet the remaining scraps include more grassland plants and animals than the Great Plains and Midwest combined,” notes Janet Marinelli in the publication Yale Environment 360. Preserving these remnants is vital, and not just for the biodiversity they sustain. Grassland remnants tell ecologists what a nearby grasslands-restoration project should look like, and they can serve as seed stock for propagation fields that will in turn provide the seeds needed to return the landscape to itself.

[turtlesandfrogs]

I have a job in invasive species removal. Im trying to study on my own. But im not sure Where should i start? Its overwhelming tbh but since you also have ADHD im hoping you have a good perspective of where a good rounded starting point might be.

'Invasive species' is a pretty big category, and I'm not sure what aspect of it you're trying to study. It may be helpful to narrow in on what exactly you're wanting to learn. What species are invasive in your area? What species are most detrimental to the other species in your area? Ecosystem-specific removal strategies? The conceptualization of invasive species and how that effects how we interact with the ecosystems around us?

I would assume that who ever you're working for has given you a list of the invasive species/noxious weeds in your area, but in case they haven't (and for others reading) there should be a state/county/other local governmental body that maintains a list of the relevant plants in your area. For example, here's the one for my state:

https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/printable-noxious-weed-list

Narrowing down further, by county or city level is going to be more useful, depending on how diverse the ecosystems of your general area are. Like, I don't need to worry about a bunch of those plants, because they're adapted to the dry, hot side of the state, and they just don't compete here.

If you want to know which are having the biggest impact, well, learning to identify the species which are creating large monocultures, particularly if they're able to create monocultures in relatively undisturbed areas. Also looking up which animal species are struggling (threatened, endangered, etc), finding out what host plant(s) they use, and what those plants need to be successful may be useful. For example, Taylor's Checkspot is an endangered butterfly that needs prairie habitat, and depends on the (native) "harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida), marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), American brooklime (V. beccabunga)" and non-native "plantains (Plantago lanceolate and P. major) and thyme-leaved speedwell (V. serpyllifolia ssp. serpyllifolia)"*. So if you're in the area of that particular butterfly, you might want to leave the plantain and thyme-leaved speedwell, even though they're not native, depending on the local situation of host plants. Because a native and endangered butterfly depends on them. While also encouraging the native plants above and restoring prairie habitat in general.

As for creating a more nuanced perspective than "evil plant evil", here's a few things that broadened my prespective:

A talk called "Indigenous perspectives on invasive species" by Giniw Gary Pritchard, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pay6nAu62l8

A book titled "Beyond the War on Invasive Species A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration" by Tao Orion

And this article:

With all of that said, I beg of you, and all people reading and going out and personally interacting with ecosystems, understand that it's a matter of nuance, complexity, care, locality, and on going tending. Different invasive species are different, and have different effects on the ecosystem. You can't just rip out invasive plants and expect that the native plants will automatically come back and dominate the ecosystem again. There's replanting, selective weeding, prescribed fire, habitat restoration and more and it's an on-going process, not a one and done thing. People have a real tendency to either decide that ALL non-native plants are bad and evil and no one should plant them (while ignoring all of agriculture) or deciding that invasive plants aren't a problem at all and we should just let them do their thing. Please find the middle path. Nuance!

*source: https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/euphydryas-editha-taylori#desc-range

[poetess-trobadour]

I have seen boys that played men

And I've seen women who played along

Just to be with such boys,

And vice versa.

I think about how that's funny

In a truly heartbreaking way.

It made me make myself a promise,

A red cotton thread around my left wrist,

Where it's closer to my heart.

My promise, it says:

If I ever carry a girl into this world,

I hope I can teach her many lessons,

But above all others,

I hope I can teach her a lesson or respect.

I will teach her to respect herself enough

To never settle for a puddle

When her heart is loud and anxious with oceans.

And I will teach her to respect others

Enough to be genuine.

And if I ever carry a baby boy,

I hope I can give him plenty,

But above many things,

I hope I can give him reasons.

I will give him reasons solid enough

To withstand any storm

When his mind is shaken with quakes to the core.

And I will teach him to reason with others,

To be reliable enough.

And, as oceans and earthquakes are boundless,

I will teach him a lesson of respect;

I will give her reasons, as well.

And if they happen to live as brother and sister,

I hope that more than from me,

They will learn from each other.

Then, they will be a true power to be reckoned with —

Intertwined in their shared wisdoms,

Bearing their mother's oceans and mountains,

And their father's prairies and thunders —

Perhaps — I'm not sure yet,

Of whom or what my future holds,

Of where winds blow or which fires catch;

But while that part of it is yet mine to uncover,

I have certainty about them —

Unsinkable, unshakable —

As I know that, naturally,

They will be greater than I ever can.

Future, August 2018

[nemo-of-house-hamartia]

🌹🌹🌹🌹

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

🌹🌹🌹🌹

🌹

🌹

🌹

here is an entire bouquet for you. Love you , my spectrum sister ❤️ 💖

Hi there, my dear! <3

thank you so much for coming in with such beautiful bouquet of roses! <3 it looks beautiful! 😊

Allow me to share with you some sentences from my story (almost a wip, tbh, hope you don't mind :) )

thank you again! <3

(…)Running as fast as they could -Dorothea’s leg hurting and her chest on fire from the exertion - they passed by the crowded street that was coasting the river. It didn’t matter if they were both out of breath. It didn’t matter if the rain was pouring: they were running like deers in a forest, as Dorothea tried to apologize whenever she bumped into someone. “This way!” she heard Jacob saying, dragging her in a small secluded sideway. They didn’t stop to run until they found a refuge under a small porch. They waited and waited, lungs on fire as they tried to regain some breath and ears tensed to hear the voices of the brutes that were running after them. But only silence answered their scouting. They looked at each other, both their faces plastered with their damp hair, cheeks red from the run and before they could stop themselves, they burst out in a bout of laughter, the kind that makes you want to never stop, that makes you want to laugh even more, even louder. They were so caught up in their mirth, that neither had noticed they were still holding each other’s hand. “It looks like we lost them, Goldilocks,” Jacob chortled, between one laughter and the other. “It looks like we should have accepted that offer of an umbrella, Mr. Frye,” Dorothea breathed, unable to contain her giggles. “I will not be able to explain this to my parents, short of telling them that I decided to take a swim in the Thames,” Jacob belched at the thought, grinning. “I wouldn’t recommend that, doll, you wouldn’t be able to take of the stench for days,” Heart full, galloping in his chest like a wild horse in a prairie, he raised his hand, and as delicately as he could, he brushed one wet curl away from her cheek. Before she could do or say anything, she felt her cheek burning under his fingers, like fire in the rain, incandescent when his hand cupped her cheek in a sweet caress, as he moved away the rest of her curls from her face his eyes never leaving hers, not even for one second. And hers couldn’t leave his, eyes resembled the same color of the firs in her forests back in Sweden. They were home. Her home. “There, now,” she heard him say, once he was done. “There it is the uppity lady I have come to know,” “and love” he thought, without allowing the words to leave his lips. He scoured her sweet round face, his eyes lingering on her lips for a brief moment. Suddenly he felt his mouth dry, and he wished he could grip something to contain himself. “Now I can see all your freckles again,” he murmured instead, trying to calm his beating heart. Dorothea raised her eyebrows, feeling her breath stuck in her chest. Her freckles? she thought, blushing even more. He…he had noticed her freckles?. She swallowed hard. “Well, I may be an uppity lady, Mr. Frye, but one with an excellent sense of style,” she murmured. Tiptoeing, she took his top hat of his head and gracefully landed it on her own, trying it on to chase away her embarrassment. It was too big for her and fell on her eyes, but she wore it anyway. “So? Will you give me your verdict, Mr. Frye? How do I look?” she asked, tilting her head from side to side, giving him a complicit smile. "Breathtaking," he thoughts, lips parting just a little as if to contain all that he couldn't declare. Instead, The corners of his mouth twitched in a mischievous grin. "If I were a betting man - and I am not saying that I am - I'd wager that I might have to fight for my position as a gang leader in this city. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to start your own gang. The sheer audacity of being this fabulous—it's almost criminal.” Dorothea tipped the brim of the top hat, her cheeks burning from his word. “Are you joking, Mr. Frye?” “I never joke on Top Hats. Or Gangs. Or Beautiful Women.”

[weltraum-vaquero]

You could have it all (my empire of dirt)

2. it ain't the letting go (it's the things that you take with)

[Chapter 1] ↠ [Chapter 2] ↠ [Chapter 3] ↠ [ Chapter 4] ↠ [Chapter 5] (coming soon)

[AO3 link]

Western AU

18+

Jayce Talis x GN AFAB Reader

Word count: 12.6k+

Synopsis: Jayce is out to settle the score with you. You make it very difficult, in every way imaginable.

Tags/warnings: western AU, mastrubation (Jayce), yearny Jayce, brief mentions of drugs (1800s cocaine products), Jayce epically failing at being a bounty hunter, reader being emotionally constipated, then emotionally diarrheic, then emotionally constipated again, Handjob (Jayce receiving), brief allusions to non-con (nothing bad actually happens), Jayce being a weepy confused mess, Dirty talk.

Jayce should hate you.

Correction — he does hate you. 

Hates your eyes, their hunger, their heat, their knowing. Hates your smile, hates the shape of it, the confidence tucked somewhere neatly behind your canines. Hates your cutting wit, just waiting to be unloaded in one line that would make him weak in the knees. And he hates the shape of your lips.

Hates how wrong the shape of them looks on the bounty poster.

They’re flat and different and wrong, wrong, wrong. He knows, because they’ve been in places he hadn’t even dared putting his own hands, knows because they’ve sealed and sucked at his throat, his chest, and that wretched, lifeless stroke of ink could never hope to do the pleasure they’ve brought him justice. Could never do you justice, because you’re—

This is absurd. He should stop. Should put the damn paper away and have another go at finally falling asleep, maybe the third time’s a charm.

It’s not like he wants you to touch him. It’s not like his mind has been circling back to it the way a dog chases its tail, unending, unrelenting, stupid, pointless. 

It’s just — the prairie’s desolate, the night’s quiet, the fire’s out, and he’s alone. Laying on his back in his generously large tent — generous enough for two if you squeezed together tight enough  — and finding it achingly empty. Finding his hand achingly empty, so he fiddles with the button of his jeans, looks at your poster.

It’s not like he’s actually going to do anything. His hand just happened to — to drift there, really, and, well, you can’t exactly blame him for staring at your poster. In fact, you should count yourself lucky that he hasn’t hung it up somewhere and fired an entire round into your face. You’d deserve it.

It’s also not his fault that his thumb just so happens to slip, and, well, so does the button of his jeans, it just— it just slips out of its eyelet, and the zipper isn’t too far behind either. It just happens. He’s getting comfortable for the night. It’s not like he’s going to put his hand down his pants.

It’s not like the sight of you and your annoying, mean, stupid, no-good face makes the heat in his belly stir. 

Is he—? No, no, he’s not. He’s not jacking off to the thought of you, he just… needs some kind of release to put him to sleep. He needs the rest. Especially after following your trail into Zaun and spending a good two days tracking you down, he’s going to get his hands on you soon, if he gets a good night’s rest. He’s sure. Sort of.

He’s got a vague idea about what you’ve been up to.

Marcus had come by for dinner last week, and complained about a break-in at the Ferros pharmacy his lawmen had found no leads on. The store had not only been robbed blind, but someone had knocked out the clerk and the two guards that night and had disappeared with all of the cocaine products on the shelves. Not a small or an easy job by any means.

The issue, Marcus had pointed out, weren’t just the missing wares and money – but the increase of violent crime in Zaun as a byproduct, since it appeared the stolen, potent cocaine products had found their buyers there, where cocaine had specifically been outlawed for that very reason.

Jayce’s professional opinion? This entire thing practically reeked of you.

You’d gotten the money you’d needed, and caused a distraction all in one fell swoop. With everyone’s eyes already off of you, you just needed to wait things out. Until your next strike. 

Smart, simple, deceitful. It had to be you. 

And he could’ve told Marcus that, could’ve given him the semblance of a lead he seemed to be so desperate for, but this was personal. Jayce had a score to settle, and this time, he would not fall for your tricks. 

Wouldn’t fall for  your voice, your hands, your tongue, your cunt (fuck, why is his mouth watering?), wouldn't let anything throw him off his game. 

That’s why he inches his hand past the waistband of his underwear and takes his own, half-hard cock in his hand.

It’s a tactical choice.

He’d rather be distracted now, when he’s alone, when he can allow himself to be, than when he’s with you, and supposed to be doing his job. He won’t let you win again. Won’t lose sight of his purpose again.

This — getting off — is just a part of ensuring that.

Right. 

That’s all there is to how his dick twitches when he looks at your poster. It’s a conditioned response, it has to be — the pleasure you’d wrecked him with had been so entirely new and potent that it can only be normal for his body to want to chase it. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

Yeah, that has to be it. He just needs to… distance you from it. Needs to recreate the experience on his own, so that his brain might stop gravitating towards you and stop acting like a cat in heat. Problem solved, it had been so simple, really, hadn’t it? 

That’s it.

That’s right. That’s good. Good boy, that’s exactly what you need—

Oh, come on.

Jayce groans at the thought of your voice, encouraging him to do this with a ravenous but oh-so-pleased there you go, that’s an obedient boy as he drags his hand from root to tip. He knows you’d talk him through it, would praise him through it. 

Dry. Utterly unlike your mouth, his hand is dry and callused and too warm and not yours. He persists regardless, gives his cock another near-chafing tug before he’s propping himself up on one elbow and spitting onto his tip, and oh, that’s better. 

With the pad of his thumb, he rubs his spit into the petal-pink, soft skin. In an immediate response, his hips twitch up into his grip.

That’s much better.

A tingling spark of warm pleasure ignites in his lower belly, stroked to a small flame by the glide of his right hand and another glance at the poster he’s clutching in the left.

Maybe your lips aren’t true to life in that damn sketch, but your smile certainly is – a gnashy little smirk that promises trouble and delivers it through and through. You’d looked exactly like that when you’d told him you were going to take care of him; looked the same way when you’d lowered your mouth between his legs and sucked at his balls–

“Fuck.” He can feel his cock swelling in his hand with another jerk, now at full mast and red. The cold puff of his breath soothes the scorching heat of his flesh, hits his slick cockhead in a frigid wave of air that makes him shiver. 

All because he’d looked at your dumb poster.

Jayce shouldn’t do this. It’s not— he’s doing the exact opposite of what he set out to do. He can only pretend it’s for the sake of relief for as long as he likes, because he knows, he knows he’s only going to ache once it settles in that the best fuck of his life was a one-time-thing.

But why think about that right now, if he can think about your tongue, your lips at his taint, sealing and sucking to turn his brain into mush and make his back arch at just the thought of it.

He needs it again. But his fingers aren’t as good as your lips, his fingers aren’t even as good as your fingers, but he still pops them into his mouth the way you had slipped your thumb in, parts his lips wide, lets his index and middle finger sink in all the way to his knuckles. 

To think he hadn’t realized at the time how good it felt to be full. It’s blissful, how his fingertips lodge into the back of his throat and seem to pause his racing thoughts with just that. 

Then again, there had been better things to think about when you’d fucked his mouth with your fingers, like the texture of your thumb, or the taste of your juices lingering at the tip of his tongue. It’s satisfying, to have his throat stuffed and utterly relaxed, before he pulls both fingers out and feels something akin to relief with the first breath that floods his lungs.

He wonders how his fingers would feel filling him up elsewhere, but lacks the gall to find out. Recreating the night spent with you sounds significantly more appealing.

In an instant, his hand shoots back down, cupping at his balls with the rest of his dry fingers, while the slick index and middle finger prod at his taint. It’s a hopeless, clumsy attempt at recreating your technique, but it’s enough. The careful circles of wet finger pads at his perineum urging the thick, languid warmth in his stomach into hot pressure, the squeeze of the rest of his hand at his sensitive balls, his cock pulsing, it’s enough.

Enough to have his dick jerk so hard it hits his wrist, enough to have him throwing his head back in delight and peering down at your poster, imagining his touch is all yours.

That you’re occupying the empty space next to him, that you’re gently cradling his head with one hand and using the other to take care of him. You’d be kind, in spite of who you are — because you were kind, even then. Had told him multiple times to let you know if it ever was too much (as if it ever could be too much), had kissed him raw after he came a second time, had made him come a second time not because he’d asked but because you’d wanted to. Because just maybe, some part of you had cared that he enjoyed himself too. 

Maybe you still do.

Maybe right now, you’d be teasing him for how his body reacts to your voice, you’d be smiling at his contorted face, then at his leaking cock, before you’d wrap your hand around its base and lower your lips to kiss away the thick drop on its swollen tip.

You’d lap at it, at the sensitive ridge of the underside of his cockhead — closing his eyes and circling his frenulum with his slick index is nearly enough to be convincing — and maybe… maybe you’d let him taste you after he comes for you. 

Yeah. He’d fucking love that.

Maybe you’d let him feel you grind against his tongue, let him feel the warm gush of your orgasm in his mouth, let him bury his face into your waiting heat until there’s nothing but you in every crevice of his senses. Maybe you’d let him wrap his arms around your hips and kiss and lick your cunt until his lips and tongue buzz with raw, numb pain, until he knows nothing but the taste of you, your sounds, your slick, your warmth, all of you. 

Fuck.

His other hand, lets go of the poster, reaches for his waiting cock. Three dry, overstimulating strokes do him in, have him coming so hard he’s rolling onto his side to avoid soiling his own clothes and his sleeping bag, have him curling in on himself, whining out his pleasure to the lone prairie. He can feel his orgasm pulsing all the way up his fucking spine, exploding at his brainstem, loud enough to drown his thoughts out in a pleasant, hot buzz and makes his ears ring.

“Hnn—!”

Jayce grips his cock through his peak, gives a few more strokes that stop just below his sensitive, swollen tip, before he finally lets go.

His body sags with relief, head still pounding with his racing pulse, breath still coming out in sharp, quick bursts, limbs tingling with a fuzzy, syrupy high.

Yeah, this is definitely going to put him to sleep.

He cracks his eyes open just enough to look down at his own shirt and pants — both unsoiled, thank goodness, because they’re his last clean clothes after a not so pleasant incident involving a pile of manure out in Zaun yesterday.

Not so unscathed, however, is your bounty poster, with three fat, stringy drops of cum splattered across it, from your shoulder, across your face, to the rim of your hat. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

His first instinct is to use his sleeve, but that’s hardly a viable alternative, so he rushes, instead, to smudge it away with his palm — somewhat successful, but the splatters are still very, very obvious, curling the paper where they’ve soaked it.

Normally, it would hardly be a big deal. He’d just head over to the Sheriff’s, get himself a new one. It’s just a piece of paper.

But right now? A ride from Zaun to that part of Piltover and back would take a day, at best. And who knows that the hell you’re capable of pulling off in one entire day? He’s hot on your trail, he can’t lose it because he— well, because he came on your poster. That’d be absurd. He likely won’t even need to use it, anyway. 

It’s probably nothing worth getting worked up about. Caitlyn has told him multiple times that he’s prone to stressing out over things that end up bearing incredibly little importance, and this is probably one of them. 

He should take advantage of the grogginess and get some much needed sleep instead of winding himself up about a cum stain. 

—

He was right. There had been no use for your bounty poster, not when he’d spotted tracks of a lone horse and followed them, down into the forest quite a distance away from Zaun. 

You’d made his job easy, stuck to the main trail leading through it, left heavy hoof imprints in the mud, like a treasure trail begging to be followed.

And you’d confirmed, very much so, that it was you he’d followed because you’d left your horse (a seemingly reliable, but skittish appaloosa), loaded up on a set of guns so varied that it could only belong to an outlaw, tucked away safely between the trees. 

And you had left imprints in the mud, leading out of the forest. Jayce had dismounted off his horse not too far from yours and followed.

Followed them, all the way down to the Pilt offshoot passing through the valley, where he’d found your boots, neatly discarded beside the riverbank, and your clothes, folded and settled atop your boots to avoid the mud and oh—

Of course you’d be naked in a river.

Water splashes from ahead, where a willow tree hunches above the calm, trickling little waves and kisses its surface with droopy branches. And between them, a sliver of your skin peeks out.

His heart jumps up into his throat, comes tumbling back down heavily into his stomach at first, then, much to his dismay, dips further to pulse with heat in his groin.

All of last night’s hard work, gone to waste.

But you’ve not seen him yet, and that gives him the clear advantage he needs, and, not to mention, you’re naked — the tables have turned. His odds are good, for once. Karma is on his side, and revenge, although something he deems to be beneath him most of the time, will be so very sweet.

So Jayce advances, pushes the willow branches aside with the tip of his unshouldered rifle, sneaks up the precipice that should, by his estimation, overlook your naked form.

It does.

And gods, your back’s glorious in the filtered sunlight. Muscles flexing and bunching with vigorous movements of lathering soap across your front, skin sounding positively slick where you rub at it and for fuck’s sake he’s thinking about how you’d tasted and felt, soft and warm and ripe. 

He shouldn’t, but he does take a moment to simply watch, and let his mouth pool and heart ache and lungs tighten before he raises the rifle once more, almost regretfully.

“Hands above your head.” Tone heavy and low, Jayce means business, makes a clear point of it by audibly cocking his weapon.

And you don’t even flinch. You don’t even turn around for that matter, either.

“Already back for more?” You tease — thank goodness it’s you (it’s not like hearing your voice is making his stomach clench). As your hands raise, water dripping down your arms, bar of soap clutched in one hand, Jayce swallows.

This is going to be much harder than he anticipated. In every sense of the word.

“Get out,” he replies, although his voice falls terribly, awfully flat when you do, water sloshing with as you turn around, turn towards him. “Slowly.”

And then you do turn to look at him, and there is nothing but coyness and a complacent grin on your face. You look at him not like prey caught, but like your bear trap has just snapped shut around his ankle.

And in spite of the fact that your unbotheredness should sound off alarms in his head, should make him worry, there is little for his shortwired brain to think about when you look as good in the afternoon daylight as you’d had in the low candlelight. Perhaps even better, now, with sun rays and shadows bouncing off your still soap slick skin.

“Slowly?��� You repeat, grinning. “If I didn’t know you any better, I’d say you were hoping for a show, Mister Talis.”

He’s not. And even if he was, he wouldn’t— he wouldn’t give in to it. His demand is just a precaution.

“The only thing I’m hoping for is putting you where you damn well belong.”

When you chortle, amused, and take half a step closer, arms still raised, suds of soap dripping down your flexed forearm, fist clenched around the bar of soap, Jayce realizes last night’s release counts for nothing.

Focus. Focus.

“In your bed?”

Oh, fuck you. He should’ve known; should’ve expected it — why your flirty little question still makes his breath catch is beyond him.

“A prison cell,” he replies, although the mere thought of you rotting away behind steel bars makes his heart clench. What the hell is wrong with him? “Now get out, or I’ll shoot.”

“You mean the way you did for me that night? Twice?”

Fuck you.

“I’m serious,” he growls. “Out. Now.”

Your face drops subtly, but you regain your mental footing with dizzying speed. 

“You wouldn’t.”

He hates how convinced of it you sound.

He hates how right you are.

“The poster said dead or alive,” Jayce insists, making a show of moving his index to rest atop the trigger. You don’t seem to take the bait. “Don’t make me choose.”

“I think you already have.”

With that, you still comply, approaching him ever so slowly, as he’s asked.  It’s tantalizing, has him focusing at least half his mental capacity on not getting hard as you approach the riverside, and the water level slowly reveals more of you with every forward step.

Water clings to your collarbone, to your chest, to the part of your tummy he’d been aching to nuzzle against. Pearls down the flesh of you, drips off the grooves of your muscles like paint off a fresh masterpiece. And you’re smirking. Fuck you, you’re smirking.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” you coo, tone so saccharine it’s clearly fake. It takes Jayce a quick downward glance at himself to understand you can’t be referring to his bodily reaction. Not yet, at least. “I’m guilty of that just as much as you are. Why do you think I left you tied to that bed, instead of putting a knife up to your throat?” 

Water sinks below your hips, below — below, fuck, below the middle of your thighs, lingers at your knees, and then you’re there, right there, close enough for the nozzle of his rifle to nudge your hairline. And — and the rifle’s shaking, he’s shaking, goddammit, too taken with the mouthwatering sight of you to even think.

You’re looking up at him from where he’s standing, still on that precipice, and he can’t  understand how he’s standing above you, and yet feels so terribly below you.

“We both have a weakness for each other, Mister Talis.” Your head tilts with the statement, expecting a confirmation that does not come; not verbally.

It’s in the hitch of his breath, the way his index slips away from the trigger, the way his grip around the rifle tightens. You’re winning this confrontation; you are naked, unarmed, and still winning. How and when did he sink this low?

“My only weakness was trusting you that night,” he spits. 

Your nose scrunches, and you give an unimpressed hum. 

“One of your many weaknesses is not being able to stop thinking about that night,” you reply.

He tries for an unimpressed laugh. It comes out high, airy, nervous.

“And how do you know that?”

Everything about you — from the leaf-filtered sunlight catching in your damp lashes, to the way your smirk smoothes into a smile — is soft, genuine. “Because I haven’t, either.” 

It’s disarming, in the most literal sense possible.

You haven’t. Either. It reverberates in his skull, and it’s only on the third mental echo of it that his heart begins to burst. 

He’s been on your mind, maybe not as hauntingly and as obsessively as you’ve been on his, but you’ve thought of him, yearned for him, the way he’s yearned for you. It both soothes and strokes the flames inside him to new heights, you want him, you want him, you want him. You want him, too.

Not that he gets to give you a peace offering — and he shouldn’t, either — because you’re perking up at the distant sound of hooves. Bending just enough to peek through the willow tree branches, Jayce spots three armed silhouettes in the distance, mounted atop well-fed horses, the kind you don’t see much in Zaun. Definitely Marcus’ men.

Fuck. Now what? If they come any closer, it’s a matter of when, not if they spot you, the both of you, him standing high and mighty on the riverside, and you, stark naked and—

Fast, far too fast for him to process, you toss your bar of soap into the grass, place one foot against the slippery root of the precipice he’s standing on, just enough to boost yourself up to firmly grasp his belt with both hands, and, with your weight and momentum, yank him into the water with you.

Jayce drops his rifle and falls ungracefully, face-first, with a sound that sounds embarrassingly similar to a squeak, into the hip-deep water. Heaves as he’s dragging himself up and blinking the water out of his eyes for a few long, awful seconds, mind spinning with what the hell kind of maneuver you’re trying to pull right now, before your weight crashes against him once more, pushing him back. And his boots are slipping on the stony riverbed, ankle giving below his weight and your impact, bending until it hurts.

Jayce doesn’t get to groan about it, not as his back is shoved against the very precipice he’d been standing on seconds ago, and your hand comes up to cover his mouth, and you — you’re pressing him against the earthy wall behind him with what feels like your entire weight.

It shouldn’t feel this good to be manhandled. Fear, pain and confusion aside, he’d be a shameless liar if he claimed his stomach didn’t flip at being shoved into the dirt, or at how you press one thigh between his, forearm braced against his collarbone.

“Shh,” you whisper softly against his ear, hand at his chest descending, stopping at waist, rubbing a soothing circle into the skin below his ribs. His spine tingles, from the press of your naked chest against his soaked shirt — his nipples are hard, he hopes you can’t feel that — to the puff of your breath at his neck.

He could break free, if he wanted to. He could even call for help, if he wanted to.

He just doesn’t.

Jayce nods in compliance, but your palm still presses hard against his lips. You’re not taking any chances. It’s dreadful to think that if you had not chosen to make sure he’d stay quiet and hide, he would’ve vouched for you to Marcus’ men with little hesitation. 

Not because he likes you, or because he cares, of course. This is just a matter of pride. You’re his to catch, not Marcus’. The fact that you might return his feelings shouldn’t throw him off his game – because by now, he knows you’re a fantastic liar. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been thinking of him, not after you embarrassed the soul out of him that night, and soaked him to the core now. Capturing and turning you in is long overdue. 

Besides, retaliation aside, it’s also his responsibility.

The moment those incompetent bastards are gone, he’s getting the job done. For now, though, he’s going to savor the press of your thigh against his half-hard cock, and hope you don’t notice how he rocks into it once, just barely. Just to taste.

If you do, you don’t point it out. But you meet it with a nudge of your thigh, barely a forward twitch of it that has him wondering if it was a conscious choice on your part or not. It doesn’t matter, though, not when the press of his own jeans is flush against his cock, and leaves him brainless and desperate. He doesn’t dare grind again, simply settles for the mind-numbing pressure where he needs it, lets himself throb into the contact. You huff when he does, but your expression is unreadable.

The pounding of hooves grows louder ever-so-softly, then fades into the late afternoon buzz.

No wonder they’re useless at their job. How they didn’t think to check out the anything-but-subtle splashing sound he’d caused with his fall is beyond him, but, well, Marcus’ men have never been thorough.

He’s never been so thankful for that.

But now it’s time to do his job. And he’s anything but thankful for that.

“They’re gone,” you say, hand falling from his mouth, the other still pinning him to the wall along with the thigh placed between his legs. He could break free. He should break free, he needs to–

Your thigh moves, a slow drag forward, until your torso settles against the cradle of his hips, providing a maddening, slow friction against his cock. Unbidden, his hips twitch forward, chasing the heat. It earns a delicate, but no less devious smile from you, and the hand at his hip slides forward, to the front of his soaked shirt, then inches downward. “Look at you – already hard again. I’d expected more resistance after having a gun pointed at me, Talis, but you’re just terribly weak, aren’t you?”

He may be weak – especially for you – but he won’t fall for your tricks again.

If you reach your destination, he’s a goner. And he can’t have that.

“Don’t. Touch me.” His fingers are around your wrist in an instant, wrenching your hand away although he wants nothing more than to feel it trail into his pants, stroke him off better than he ever could, have him come undone until it hurts; he’s still got a semblance of mental clarity, and he’s hanging onto it for dear life. He can’t let you do that again. Not if he wants to do his job, not if he wants this (albeit pleasurable) torment to come to its end.

It’s only while you open your mouth to answer that he realizes he’s still got your wrist in his hand, and that he could twist it behind your back with ease.

And it’s only once he does so, then steps forward to gain the necessary momentum to incapacitate you, that his already painful ankle gives below him, and he takes a second nosedive into the river water.

For fuck’s fucking sake.

Jayce barely manages to brace his fall against the riverbed with both hands, coming up a spluttering, dripping, defeated mess. 

Strangely enough, your hands find his shoulders, and he takes the help you offer without so much as a second thought. Your grip slides under his elbow on one side, the other his waist, steadying him on his way up, soaked all over again, awkwardly hovering his hurt foot off the ground like a terribly ungraceful version of a flamingo.

Embarrassing.

You’re letting an amused chuckle slip, but are kind enough to not make any other observations. 

“Easy there, Talis. You alright? Twisted your ankle?”

No, absolutely nothing is alright. Ankle aside, you’ve taken his already shattered pride and pretty much turned it into fine powder. 

“Yeah.”

Jayce Talis. Piltover’s defender. Soaked fucking wet. Can’t stand on two legs anymore. Holding onto a criminal for dear life.

He’s not turning anyone in like this, much less you. Not when his entire calf and foot pulse at the slightest pressure, and anything more than a half-step makes him want to tear his lungs out in a scream.

“Nice try though,” you console, patting at his soaked shoulder. Asshole. “Let’s get you to shore, hm?”

“I can do that by myself just fine,” he grits out.

“You sure?”

What do you care? You’ve just caused all of this!

“Yes,” he hisses, not so much because he’s sure, but because he can’t stand the idea of taking any more of the help you’re offering.

So you let go, turn around, and drag yourself back up the precipice with little effort. Not that he would’ve minded if you took a little longer. You’re not… you’re not a bad sight at all. Even less so with your muscles at work, with your ass on display. He wants to trace the curves of your frame, wants to… god, he wants to lick the droplets pearling down your shoulder blades. Wants to follow their trail, lower, wants to tuck his chin between your legs and beg you to let him have a taste again, please, just once, or at least just smell you.

Fuck.

Atop the ground, you turn to look at him, expecting. So he limps his way to the precipice, steeling himself mentally.

It seems bigger now that he only has one leg to rely on — daunting. 

Goddammit.

If there’s anything smaller than fine powder, he’s just discovered it.

“Actually,” Jayce forces out, voice meek and going meeker still as you turn around and smile, “I could use a hand.”

It’s within his reach before he can get to lament the fact that he’s asking a criminal for help.

“C’mon, pretty boy,” you snort, planting your feet into the soil. Your nickname sounds far from being a compliment, and more like a taunt. “Let’s get you outta there.”

—

“As much as I appreciate the lovely sight, you oughta put some clothes on, sweetheart. Gets real cold around these parts after sunset.”

Scoffing, Jayce looks away, then scoots a little closer to the fire you’d so kindly lit while he’d taken off his clothes and hung them up to dry. It’s still beyond him why you did that, when you could’ve easily just hopped onto your stallion and galloped off into the sunset, with another successful getaway under your belt. Sticking around, helping him – surely, you realize it’s a risk. Or has he lost his edge that much?

It’s beyond him how you’d wielded your nakedness much like a weapon, and why now that the roles have switched and he’s wearing his birthday suit while you’ve slipped on a pair of jeans and a loose shirt, he feels at a disadvantage. It’s frustrating. 

You always come out on top, regardless of your odds.

“I’m not naked for you, sweetheart,” he hisses, sulks in on himself. Just to conserve some heat, mind you, not because you make him feel small with just a sideways glance and a smirk. “If it weren’t for my ankle, you’d be tied up and on the back of my horse already.”

“Right,” you grin.

When you cock a brow, skeptical, he sighs, then gives in. “If you have to know, I’m all out of clean clothes.”

You shrug. “Put them on anyway. Trust me, I won’t be put off by the chocolate stain on your other white shirt.”

“Trust me, this isn’t about putting you off.”

The words come out sharp and mean, and he fully expects you to say something fitting in return. Maybe even pack up and leave. It’s not like he could stop you. He’s not even sure if he can make the ride to Piltover tomorrow, not unless the swelling in his ankle goes down a miraculous amount. 

It’s fine. He’s still got enough supplies in his saddlebags. He can wait out the healing of both his ankle and his pride in solitude, then return to Piltover and, for the first time in his life, admit to having failed.

God. He’s failed. 

He’s failed, he’s cold, he’s hungry, he’s all out of clothes, he can’t even set up his tent for tonight in this state, and— and you’re still right here. You could’ve left, could’ve spared what little there’s left of his finely crushed pride, but no, you’ve decided to get both his and your horse, and set up camp here for tonight. 

To torment him, he’s sure. 

He just wants to be alone right now. Is that too much to ask?!

“Here. ‘S my only one.”

Fleece drapes atop his left shoulder, then his right, scratchy but thick nonetheless. You pull it around his shoulders tight, until both sides meet in front of his chest.

A blanket.

Surprisingly, you don’t take the opportunity to touch his exposed skin. Not more than necessary, your intentions aren’t predatory in the slightest as your hands run up and down his now fleece covered arms in an attempt to generate warmth.

A thank you scratches behind his teeth, but he decides against it. After all you’ve done to him, a scratchy fleece blanket won’t cut it. 

“‘S not a chocolate stain. It, uh— manure,” he blurts instead. He doesn’t know why he’s telling you this.  “My only other clothes are covered in manure.”

He appreciates that you try your very best not to laugh. It takes you a few seconds of hesitation, enough to get up and walk to your horse in the meantime, before you finally dare ask.

“Dare I even ask why?”

“No.”

He’s not about to say he hadn’t been looking and tripped into one while chasing down a Zaunite with a packet of Ferros cocaine gum in their hands. 

“Street brawl gone awry,” he replies, because he feels like he owes you this, at least. He owes it to himself, however, to spare what little he has of his dignity, so he adds: “I won though.”

“Mm,” your hum sounds complacent, satisfied. “I hear Zaun’s been unusually rowdy lately. Wonder why.”

Like you aren’t the very cause of it.

Asshole.

“I know it was you,” Jayce shoots back. “You robbed a Ferros pharmacy. And stole all the cocaine products to cause a distraction down here.”

You watch him for a moment, entranced, before your eyes widen and light up brighter than the sparks of the crackling campfire. The grin you crack is delighted.

“You figure all that out by yourself?”

He nods, scoffs, and pulls the blanket back up around his shoulders. It’s nowhere near big enough to cover the entire expanse of his back, but it’s certainly better than being naked. “The Sheriff’s lawmen haven’t even considered it might be you.”

Your head tilts. “And how did you?”

Jayce shrugs. He’s not about to tell you he spent an embarrassing amount of time mulling it over, thinking that it all seemed exactly like your brand of trouble. It’s much easier to write it off as a lucky hunch. “‘Twas a… guess.”

“I think,” you say, “that you should give yourself more credit for your smarts.”

It’s absurd that the compliment gets to him. 

He’s been called strong, useful, he knows he’s a threatening array of qualities made for catching people like you.

But it’s rare to hear a kind word about anything that lies below his strength.

Still not enough to warrant a thank you, though.

“If you’re hungry,” you change the subject, turning to search for something in your horse’s saddlebags, “you might have to wait a little while longer. This spot don’t seem like a good one for fishing, but I’ll have a go.”

Oh, for god’s sake. 

He can’t believe he’s doing this.

“There’s uh…” Jayce clears his throat, pulls the blanket tighter around himself to keep another wave of goosebumps from forming. “There’s two cans of soup on Topacio. Left saddlebag.”

“Topacio?” You ask.

“My horse.”

Your laugh rings out clear and pretty over the crickets. “Oh, no, I figured. I just…” you pause for a moment to coo something soothing to his horse, before you clasp the leather straps open. “I never heard that name before.”

It’s embarrassing to think that he’s so eager to explain the meaning behind his horse’s name, when he knows damn well you wouldn’t care. Nobody does, he knows, because he’s had people ask about things he cares about deeply just to make conversation, and found himself ranting for ten minutes straight. He knows, because he has a talent of picking up on the disinterested glances only when it’s far too late.

So he says nothing. Because he’s probably said too much already — and even if he hadn’t, he will.

You return with the two cans, place them both in front of him, then plop down next to him with an exhausted sigh.

“One’s for you,” Jayce says, rolling it your way. “For… the uh, blanket.”

You take it without fanfare, but with a thankful smile no less, and crack it open easily.

It’s surprisingly refreshing to eat around someone who has no notion of etiquette whatsoever. Sure, him and Caitlyn don’t abide by it when they go on their little camping trips, and he sure as hell doesn’t abide by etiquette when he’s eating by himself, but something about seeing you chug the soup with a complete lack of inhibition, unlike any Piltovan ever could is… entertaining. In a refreshing way.

He slurps away at his soup in silence, watches as the flames start to die and you make quick work of feeding more dry branches into it, wordless.

The quiet is far from threatening. 

With how high and hot passion had run between the two of you that night, he hadn’t expected to find lull anywhere near you. Even less so at your side.

It’s… nice. 

No, he shouldn’t— it’s not— he’s not enjoying the company of an outlaw. It’s just an observation.

“Y’know, Jayce,” you speak up from across the campfire, a smug little grin flashing white, “the light in the saloon never did your eyes justice.”

His heart shoots up into his throat, and Jayce actually has to suppress a breathy, subtle little gasp.

You don’t miss it.

He knows you don’t, because you chuckle, victorious and ravenous all at once, and his skin glows hot, from the tips of his ears to his chest.

That’s one way to combat the evening chill. He’d rather not think about any others right now, lest he gets hard under the blanket you’ve lent him.

“Save your cheap compliments for an idiot that’ll actually believe them.”

“I meant it,” you counter, meeting his gaze with lidded, but no less focused eyes that soften the exact same way they had when you were dripping, standing behind the barrel of his gun. “I remember when you first looked at me, all wide-eyed and eager, thinkin’ they looked much like a doe’s.”

His heart soars, to the point where he can hear blood rushing somewhere behind his eardrums.

Like a doe’s.

You’d have no way of knowing the significance that word carries. It’s not just about the characteristic fawn-tremble softness that permeates him and bleeds into everything he does, says, thinks. It’s that his mother used to cup his face and kiss his forehead and endearingly call him cervatillo when she wiped the tears from his eyes. Back when he was still allowed to be weak, when he still was weak, all bruised up and gangly legs and thin arms and ruffled hair and awkward, toothless smiles.

Back when the achy tenderness of his nature was considered a feeble thing time would solve, not something he had to remind himself to bury. It’s both terrifying and soothing that you spot it with such ease. Terrifying because he knows you will use it however you deem fit to suit you, soothing because you understand it, and you handle it — handle him — in ways he's long given up on hoping for.

No-one’s ever said anything about his eyes since his mother. And absolutely no one's compared them to an animal’s so delicate. No room for tenderness when there needed to be strength, duty, ruthlessness.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d been aching to hear something like this. Your compliment brings with it an aftertaste so bittersweet he can’t help but savor it, in spite of how his throat goes uncomfortably tight.

“You alright, sweetheart?”

Jayce blinks, swallows the knot in his throat he hadn’t even realized formed. “What?”

“You’re tearing up.” You’re not mocking him, you’re not even stating a fact, you just say it like you care. Like it matters to you that something hurts, like you want to make it better, like he’s important. “What’s the matter?”

Why do you have to make this so difficult?

“Nothing. ‘S the smoke,” he lies, “I’m just… sitting too close to the fire. And I’m tired. I should— I should set up my tent. And sleep.” 

Relying on just one leg to get up is no easy feat. He manages, he always does, but by the time he’s standing, swaying ever so subtly from putting most of his weight on one foot, he starts reconsidering sleeping under the stars.

“With that ankle, you ain’t setting up anything,” you joke, ever-observant. “Want me to help?”

“No.”

“Wanna share my tent? I could keep you nice ‘n warm.”

God, that’s tempting.

“Absolutely not.”

You shrug, the soft hurt behind your nonchalance hits his chest with an annoying, painful twang. Why does he care?

Why does he care?

And why does he want to say yes so desperately?

“Alright,” you say. The way you lean back on your elbow and stretch out your legs is a practiced emulation of detachment. “Offer still stands, though.”

In your dreams.

–

“Oh, come on.”

The first few raindrops hitting the back of his neck feel much like the punchline of a very bad joke.

A very bad and awfully cruel joke.

As he’s kneeling beside the scattered components of what should’ve been his tent in less than ten minutes' time, Jayce realizes that today’s torment is far from coming to an end.

There’s no way he’ll be able to set this damn thing up while limping, naked save for the blanket loosely wrapped around his shoulders, shivering so hard he can feel his own teeth clattering, and while it’s raining. 

Great. Now what?

“Talis.” The flap to your tent opens audibly, and you poke your head out with a sigh. “Swallow what’s left of your pride and get in here.”

Finely crushed pride should be easy to swallow. Turns out it isn’t. It sticks to the roof of his mouth like a handful of flour.

“I-I’ve got this,” he replies, “just a few more minutes and I’ll–”

“I wasn’t askin’.” For a criminal, your threatening voice sounds much more like scolding, rather than intimidating. “Now c’mon.”

He’d like to turn you down. You’ve already had the upper hand in far too many instances today, and he’d hate to grant you another, but what choice does he have?

So he awkwardly shuffles away from what should’ve been his tent, makes his way over to yours, where you await with a victorious little smile. You even generously offer your hand for support, which he ends up taking as he maneuvers through the tight space, and finally settles on the ground.

“Jesus, you’re cold,” you mutter, staring at where his hand rests in yours, huffing out a frustrated breath.

What do you care? Why do you care? What does his comfort matter, when you’ve left him tied to a bed for hours a little over ten days ago?

“‘S fine,” Jayce grits out, yanks his hand from your hold. Hastily, he tugs the blanket off his shoulders, and drapes it across his torso instead. “I’m fine. Let’s not pretend this is more than an unfortunate circumstance, yeah? Because what happened the last time we shared a bed isn’t happening again. Not after what you did to me.”

Part of him regrets flopping down on his side, facing away from you. He can’t make sense of your sigh, can’t tell if it’s angry or disappointed. 

“What I’ve done to you? You were going to turn me in,” you reply. “I was lookin’ out for myself. A lifetime in captivity is, by far, worse than spendin’ one night tied to a bed, sweetheart. Get over yourself.”

Jayce turns to look at you over his shoulder. Get over himself?! After how you’ve abused of his trust, after you robbed him blind, after, after–!

“You humiliated me.”

Your grin is venomous. “You seemed to quite enjoy it at the time.”

Asshole.

Bastard.

The— the goddamn audacity! 

“That’s it, I’m leaving.”

Jayce is sitting up before he’s realized it, dead set on not spending another second in your proximity. He doesn’t care what he has to do; put on manure covered clothes, limp through rain, hell, he’ll even crawl if he must, he doesn’t care, he’s not–

“Hey, hey, hey, I’m sorry.” Your hand wraps tight around the wrist he’s propped against the ground, and your thumb rubs a soothing circle into his pulse point. 

An apology? That’s… new.

A step forward, or just a new trick you’ll be using to win the upper hand once more?

Your gaze darts from his hand to his face in a frenzy, settles into a worried frown once he finally sits back down.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” you repeat it like the first time you said it didn’t hit him like a wall of bricks, “‘Twas just a joke, I didn’t mean– Just… stay.”

Stay? That’s a ridiculously high demand after you robbed him and left, with his heart, money and dignity. He hates that it should be outrageous, that he should be outraged, but that he rather finds himself growing warm and soft and pliant instead.

“Why?”

God, he’s weak.

Your smile is devoid of all its familiar coyness, shines with something new and tender and unsettlingly genuine. “I wanna make it up to you. Y’know, for your sprained ankle n’ all.”

Oh.

Of course it’s about you feeling less bad about the damage you’d done. It’s never about him, is it?

His shattered pride is by far a more pressing issue than his ankle, but, fine. Fine. He’ll let you have this. Just because he’s so terribly generous. Not… because his chest warms at the fact that you might be worried about making it up to him. This isn’t about him. He needs to get that through his head.

His frame slackens, and so does your grip around his wrist, lingering up his arm as he settles back down. Still facing away. He’s not going to give you the satisfaction of seeing his pout when you let go of his arm, and move away to a respectful distance. As much as the tent allows.

It stays at that. Laying next to each-other a distance far enough to not allow more than the occasional graze, but close enough to hear your breath, close enough to hear how it slows.

Nature isn’t usually this quiet. Certainly not quiet enough to hear even his own breath, much less someone else’s. There’s nothing to distract him from the truth, from how his stomach turns and lungs swell with an urgent, subtle warmth and yearning and want. Almost everything he’d wanted to have the night you’d left him in that saloon is right behind him, yet terribly out of reach. 

Your warmth, your breath, your skin, waiting and giving and warm and your sheltering arms, wrapped around him tight, tight enough to make him forget about what awaits and what’s expected of him outside of them. What he wouldn’t give for that.

What he wouldn’t give up for that.

At just the thought of arms wrapped around him, of a chest pressed up against his back, of– of you, breathing at his neck, instead of at the other side of the tent, his body gives an involuntary shiver, potent enough that it’s audible in his exhale.

“Still cold?” 

Dammit.

“No, just, uh,” unable to come up with an eloquent lie, Jayce sighs, shakes his head. “‘S nothing. Sleep.”

“I could hold you, you know.” You clear your throat after you say it, suddenly uneasy with the prospect of it. Or perhaps shy? You’ve never really been that, and you’ve done much worse than just hug. He doubts this is enough to work you up into anxiety.  “To share some body heat.”

It’s a punch to the gut.

You say it like it’s easy, like one night spent together isn’t the root cause of all your problems, like holding him isn’t going to lead to more of them.

He should know better. He does know better.

He doesn’t need to get his hopes up just to have them broken all over again – one time was enough, thank you very much.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he snarks. 

It’s unintentionally cutting.

“That’s alright sweetheart, no pressure.”

You don’t deserve to be talked to like that. Well— you do, because you’ve left him and humiliated him that night, but… it’s still not fair. You’ve given him your blanket, let him share your tent, and stayed for his sake. You’ve tried to make up for how you’d left him that night, and even though it still hurts to think about it, he can understand why. Behind all that buttery smoothness and salacious want, you had to be cautious.

And, besides, some warmth doesn’t sound half bad.

It doesn’t have to lead to sex. Right? It— it can just be exactly what you’d suggested, a sharing of body heat, and maybe a taste of the tenderness he’d craved so desperately after you’d left.

He wants that.

And there’s nothing wrong with just that, is there? It’s functional, it’s in his best interest to snatch up some warmth.

“Alright. Fine,” Jayce blurts. The pause he’s faced with after he’s spit out the words makes the heat in his stomach turn to anxious lead, weighing down in his gut as he awaits your response.

You snort out a laugh, confused. “What?”

“I meant that it’s fine for you to uh… share some body heat. You can— you can hold me.”

You hum, and when he turns to steal a glance at you over his shoulder, you’re fixating him with a wicked smile. 

“I know I can, sweetheart, but do you want me to?”

Of course. Of course you would pull this, why did he think you’d make this easy? He’d deluded himself into thinking you actually wanted to help, when you so clearly just wanted to find a new way to torment him. 

Why does he always do this? Always takes the bait, always—

The purpose of warming him up seems terribly distant when he damn near freezes at your arm snaking between the groove of his waist and the ground, while the other reaches to take his hand in yours, and oh, your chest seams to his back, warm and soft and your heartbeat is right there, a soft little thudding between his shoulder blades, nowhere near wild enough to match his raging one.

“Relax, I was jokin’.” He can feel your chest rumble with a little laugh. “How’s this, hm?”

The proximity between your lips and his ear makes him shiver in earnest now, entire body flooding with goosebumps that have very little to do with the cold.

It is working, if the heat zinging down his spine and gathering in his stomach and chest is anything to go by. And the slowly building pressure in his cock, scorching and gradually swelling into pleasant, pulsing hardness.

He doesn’t know what this makes him. A hypocrite, probably, for promising himself he would not want anything more while his body and subconscious are begging for it. Or an idiot, for thinking he'd be able to turn down whatever you offered, when he’s hanging onto every word, every inhale-exhale, every back and forth brush of your fingers.

Most of all, though, he’s scared. Scared to want more, scared that he does want more, and scared of what’ll happen if he ends up finding exactly that.

“Yeah,” Jayce croaks out. He has to squeeze his eyes shut to muster up enough brainpower for a second, marginally more eloquent response. “It’s fine.”

“Just fine?”

Jayce doesn’t answer.

He can’t answer, because he knows for a fact he won’t get out anything more than a shaky rendition of an affirmative word, or, worst case scenario, will wheeze out a soft, hushed whimper.

The hand that holds his starts rubbing at his palm, before it urges it into a lax fist, which you lift up to his shoulder, just enough to tuck your chin atop his collarbone and blow out a warm gust of air against it. The hand you’d wrapped around his waist is used as leverage to press the cradle of your hips up against his ass, steady but certain in how you smother him with your heat in spite of the fact that his frame is considerably bigger and wider than yours. 

The texture of your jeans is rough against his bare ass, your breath tickles that one blissful spot right behind his ear, your hand, splayed atop his tummy, scratches gently at the first few hairs of his happy trail, and he doesn’t know what this is, doesn’t know what you want it to be, doesn’t even know how he should–

“Breathe, you’re stiff as a board.”

You don’t mean— no, of course you don’t, there’s no way you could know, because you’re not… You’re still touching his stomach. Right. And he’s clenching it.

“Sorry.”

With a fortifying breath in, and an exhale so thorough it makes his lungs ache, he finally goes as lax as he can in your hold. It’s a fabricated, forced kind of relaxation, but it seems to satisfy you regardless. Your smile is palpable at the back of his neck.

Your fingertips twirl the thick curls between his hips, and your lips — still split into a smile — press a fleeting kiss to his nape. 

“There you go.”

That… is not helping.

At your saccharine praise, his hips give a twitch forward, the tip of his half-hard cock nudging the scratchy fleece just enough to have a soft moan catching in his throat. It’s hardly even contact, but it’s more than enough when he’s been throbbing, untouched, for torturous minutes. You notice. Of course you do.

“Oh?” you purr at the back of his neck, more of a delighted remark rather than a question. “What’s that, Talis?”

He doesn’t know why, out of all the things already rubbed up against him, particularly hearing his last name rubs him the wrong way – but it does. Has his stomach flipping with a new, heavy kind of heat, borne of both frustration and desperate need. He hangs onto the anger to navigate his foggy, pleasure-wired thoughts and come up with something to deflect from the obvious.

Not that it works.

“Stop calling me that.”

You steady him with the hand at his tummy, reel him back in, back against you, before your palm, callused, flattens and presses its heel into the skin below his navel.

“What would you prefer?” You ask, sweet enough that even Jayce — usually terrible at picking up on social cues — can tell it’s fake. You inch closer, pressed up so tight your heat permeates him down to his spine, before you whisper, taunting, “Pretty boy? Sweetheart?”

Jayce’s hand finds yours in an instant, wraps loosely around your wrist, realizing, to his utter terror, that the tension making his chest feel unbearably tight is not between him and you, but within himself.

You’re going to give him everything he’s been aching for, and he’s not sure he wants it.

That won’t matter, though, because he clearly doesn’t have much of a say in this, does he?  He can tell by how greedily your hand still inches further and further down, can feel it in how you grip his chest in the other, can feel it in how indulgently you squeeze, until your nails indent his pectoral and your fingertips brush the curls at the base of his heavy cock.

You’re going to take what you want. It all comes down to whether he’ll let you or not. 

Because you’re out to sate your hunger. This isn’t about him, never was about him. All of it — your choosing to stay, to talk to him, to look out for him — is faux kindness; hadn’t been anything more. He’d just deluded himself into believing otherwise, believing you, because he aches for it. Aches to be held not so that his body can be of use, aches to be held because he matters, because you care — but you don’t.

You take his cock in your hand and hum with delight at how he throbs, desperate and rhythmic like his heartbeat. His stomach drops, leaden with the realization that he’s nothing more than meat between your molars, but his body accepts it regardless, because it will suffice, it has to. Unwilling, unbidden, he thrusts into your fist, whimpers at the chafing grip of your hand on his buzzing nerves.

“You seemed to quite like being called a whore the other night as well, didn’t you, Talis?” Your voice muffles at the back of his neck, sinks into his brain like warm lightning, paralyzes thoughts, enables muscles. His spine bows for you, willing, as you stroke his foreskin back with the meat of your palm and press your thumb to his weeping slit. Your index rubs at the underside of him, nearly abrades in its certainty to hit the exact spot where his nerves burn at the slightest touch. 

The bow of his spine is undone promptly, in favor of curling in on himself from the pleasure-pain, sensitive spot rubbed raw with the white slick testament of his own body’s disobedience, his desperation. “Oh, darlin’, look at you, you’re leaking. All for me.”

“Please—“

He’s not even sure what he’s begging for. Less? More? 

“Shh, I know,” you soothe, although you don’t have the slightest fucking idea. 

How could you? If you knew how he burns for tenderness, if you had any idea that the noxious, synthetic affection you pour into every touch is toxic, you’d stop. But you don’t know, or you don’t care, you’re only rubbing him raw into an orgasm that feels taken, rather than given.

You’re using him. 

Jayce has half the mind to startle when you nudge his jaw, your sweaty cheek against his, your hand unrelenting in its pace and rhythm, wringing his nerves dry of all pleasure. Your tongue licks at the corner of his mouth, surprisingly tender, a taste of what he longs for. You’re husky when you say it, almost like you ache for it, too, slick at the edge of his lips. This is about as close as he’s ever seen you get to begging.

“Kiss me, sweetheart.”

So he does. Always rushing to please, to do as demanded not because he stops to consider the implications of it, but out of sheer habit. 

He pays the price for acting on muscle memory.

The first brush of your lips paralyzes. Has him going lax in your arms, feeling much like a rabbit in a spearhead’s deadly embrace – pliant and soft. Having no choice but to soak the sugary-bitter poison you so greedily feed into his mouth with the push of your tongue, even if it’s making him ache.

It’s laughable that he can’t even understand why something so warm and devouring makes him hurt, until there’s a zing of phantom pain in his wrists and a less phantomatic one in his chest – and he realizes that you’d kissed him like this before you’d left. Kissed him raw and genuine and then left him, tied to that bed, hurting and confused and alone and used.

And you’re going to do it again. Because that’s all you do, isn’t it? Take, and take and take.

He can’t let you keep getting away with it.

“S-stop,” he stutters out, fist going tight around your wrist, although you halt before he can force you into it regardless.

The lack of contact feels just as wrong as its presence had. 

“You alright?”

No. Nothing’s alright. From the painful, needy throb of his cock, to how his stomach and chest and throat go concave and tight and heavy and you don’t care; because if you did, you wouldn’t be doing this, you wouldn’t—

“Hey, Jayce—“ The hand at his lower stomach brushes up, presses to the space between his chest and stomach, right between his ribs, almost like you know that’s where it hurts the most. But you don’t, you couldn’t.

“Don’t touch me,” he hisses, for a second time tonight, although this time he sounds considerably less angry and more like he’s rupturing at the seams. Feeling like a startled animal, he scrambles to face you, and puts some much needed distance between you. 

You’re confused. That’s the first thing he notices — head tilted, brows furrowed, eyes wide — you’re staring at him like he’s a problem you can’t quite figure out, but you’re not— you don’t seem angry. You look him up and down, eyes lingering on his fists, clutched tight to the point of bony whiteness. If they weren’t, they’d be shaking. 

You reach out to settle one hand atop his knuckles, but you don’t force more contact than just the near-hovering brush.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

What’s wrong?! You’re acting like you care, touching him like you don’t, and he wants— he doesn’t fucking know what he wants, doesn’t know he should want because he doesn’t know what you want, he just knows he doesn’t want this.

Putting all of this into words is a distant dream. Jayce settles for silence, the heavy and alarming kind that has you shifting closer, reaching out.

Instinctively, he flinches away, hand shooting away from yours, down to… his hip? His gun. Where his gun would be. Should be.

At his reaction, you stop, retrace the distance you’d tried to close moments ago. 

That helps. Somewhat. It shifts the stifling weight from his stomach to his chest, anxiety to guilt.

“Jayce?”

Your tone pitches up high at the end of his name, and if he didn’t know you to be such a ruthless criminal, he might’ve classed your tone as guilty. But someone like you isn’t capable of that sort of thing. It’s something you’ve long had to discard to make it where you are right now. 

It’s not fair that you still pretend you feel even a semblance of it. It’s not fair of you to use him, leave him, belittle him, try to use him again, kiss him like nothing happened, and then say his name like you’re genuinely worried.

He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve to be thrown around and picked back up whenever you so desire to have your fun with him, he doesn’t deserve to be talked to like he matters just to be coaxed into submission and give you what you want.

“Will you just tell me what’s wrong?”

Everything’s wrong. You’re pushing every right button to weasel yourself back under his skin, because that’s what you do, don’t you? You have him figured out, you’ve had him figured out since the moment he shivered at the first word you addressed to him, and now you are going to abuse of that knowledge, because that’s all you know how to do.

Because you’re a criminal.

Because you don’t bother with the intricacies of emotions or even just the simplicity of giving a fucking shit.

“You don’t get to do that,” he says, can’t bring himself to meet your gaze even though he’s fuming. “You don’t get to treat me like this and then, and then just—!”

“What?” You ask, head tilting. “Treat you how?”

There is no malice behind your inquiry, at least not as far as his gut tells him. He’s not inclined to believe it – his instinct has failed him one too many times when it comes to you. Regardless, it just doesn’t make sense. He’s just had the most embarrassing outburst since the day he’s passed puberty, and you’re trying to understand, rather than kick him out of your tent?

Why won’t you just make him leave? It’d be a panacea to all of this, it’d make everything so much less complicated, much easier, but you won’t. Why?

“Jayce,” you say again, not any less gentle than the first time. Why? “Talk to me.”

Maybe talking to you and helping you realize he’s got all your cheap, predatory tactics figured out is enough to finally put a pitiful end to this. You want him to talk? He’ll talk.

He now understands how cats feel when they hack up a ball of fur. The sadness and loathing build in his throat, threaten to form a know that’ll go straight to his already watery eyes and do him in. But the words can be hacked up, and his tongue can be unstuck from the roof of his mouth, and then the truth comes easily. 

“You used me,” he finally spits out. Jayce’s voice goes strangled and quiet on the second word, and he realizes it’s — above all else — shame that weighs it down. “And you left. And— and now you’re pretending none of it happened, pretending you care, and I— I was stupid enough to buy it once, but trust me, I’m not—“

“You didn’t want this?”

You swallow thickly, the hand you’d touched him with shooting up to your chest, prodding at your own collarbone, almost curling in on yourself. Almost.

He doubts that someone like you is even capable of genuine displays of guilt, after all you’ve done, guilt does not seem like something you could afford, but this — watching him like the thought of having touched him against his wishes makes you hurt — this comes quite close.

And it’s absurd, overwhelming and flattering in a way that leaves his mouth feeling sticky and dry that out of all the heinous things you’ve committed, it’s him you’ve deemed worthy of your contrition. 

Jayce is going to throw up.

“You asked me to hold you, sweetheart, I assumed you—“ your sentence falters to a halt once the word is out, and there is regret and understanding and revelation all across your face and maybe — just maybe — you do care. Do you? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

Jayce has to look up to the tent’s ceiling, swallow back a sticky-suffocating mixture of vomit and tears. 

He can stomach skinning animals, can stomach the feel of teeth cracking under the pound of his fist, can stomach the guts pouring out of a gash he slashes across a criminal’s abdomen but this is where his body draws the line? At a goddamn apology?

“You should’ve told me, sweetheart, I would’ve stopped–”

“So stop now.”

“What?”

“Stop acting like you care about what I want, because we both know that’s a lie, stop pretending whatever’s between us isn’t wrong and stop— Just stop.”

You briefly watch him in silence, caught off-guard by the outburst. He can’t exactly blame you for that — he’s just as surprised.

He’s not— he’s not like this. He’s level-headed, he’s smart, he’s resourceful, can (usually) hold his own. But you bring out the worst in him, in all ways. Make him terrified and brainless and lusty and unfocused and pliant and needy.

“Alright,” you say, and it sounds less like a verdict, and more like an agreement. “What do I… would you prefer if I left you alone in here?”

He’s never wanted to answer yes and no to a question so much. Much to both his dismay and relief, there is no choice to be made. There never is — not when it comes to him.

This isn’t a matter of preference. Of course it isn’t— nothing in his life ever was. It’s all circumstance; sometimes he has to wonder if he even has a hand in anything at all, when his entire life feels like an unrelenting river current he fell into. Becoming a bounty hunter, a protector, leaving home, abandoning his wants to become who he needed to be, there had been no choice in that. He’d done it all because circumstance demanded it, and now… well, now is pretty much the same thing, all over again. 

Jayce scoffs. “Where would you go? It’s raining. And this is your tent.”

You don’t have an answer, and neither does he. 

“Stay,” he decides, not because he wants you to, but because alternatives are scarce. “Just don’t—“

His voice sticks to the back of his throat, right behind his tongue.

Don’t what?

Don’t touch me even though I so desperately want you to? Don’t talk to me even though I cling onto your every word, no matter how sharp or soft? Don’t act against my wishes, even though I have no idea what they are? 

“No funny business,” you interrupt. “You have my word.”

Jayce has no idea how much an outlaw’s promise is worth. He’s about to find out.

And he does. You keep it with uncharacteristic determination, you don’t say another word, don’t touch him, don’t even move. If it weren’t for the muted sound of your breath, you might as well be gone. 

And it hits Jayce that he doesn’t want that.

Doesn’t want you gone even though he should, because it’s the right thing, the logical thing to want. Your leaving, regardless if it implied locking you up or you getting away, would solve half of his problems, if not more of them.

Except for his longing.

And, as it turns out, that takes priority.

Because Jayce is weak, he peeks at your form over his shoulder, and his five o’clock shadow scratches the fleece blanket as his head turns. Your eyes slide open at the sound, catching him red-handed.

And you smile again.

That’s the last thing he sees before he turns away again, and you stick to your goddamn promise, because you don’t speak or touch or laugh or do any of the things he really wishes you would do right now.

He’s hopeless.

You make a sound, a little cut-off consonant that dies before it even leaves your mouth properly, and Jayce turns to look at you again.

“What?”

“Was gonna say somethin’,” you tell him. “But I remembered I promised you otherwise.”

“I doubt that after all the robbing and crime, a promise is where you draw the line.”

You smile. “I gave you my word, T— Jayce.”

“Give me… the rest of them, too.” He sighs. Weak. “What were you going to say?”

“Well, I was gonna say, that… for what it’s worth,” you pause for a moment, still hesitant, “if I hadn’t figured out you were the Jayce Talis then, that night wouldn’t have ended the way it did.”

It’s a question he shouldn’t ask, and one he wouldn’t need to ask if he had half of Cait’s capacity to read people, but he needs to know.

“How… would it have ended, then?”

“I don’t tend to stick around until dawn.” You swallow audibly. “But I would have liked to, for you.”

And Jayce knows that’s a lie, the same way those nomadic merchants passing through Piltover set up shabby shop at the market and ask his name, then tell him it’s a good name, a strong name, fit for someone like him, that they like him and they’ll make him a special offer. It’s cheap, transparent manipulation, and still it works, because it makes his heart leap a fraction. But it’s a lie.

“Sure,” Jayce snarks, because he can’t really come up with anything better. “Stick around for what? Another quick fuck before you left for good?”

You hum like you’d been expecting his answer. “Not without asking you when you’d like to see me again.”

And that shuts him up for good. Weighs and sticks heavy and bitter and pungent on his tongue like tar because he doesn't want to believe it, but tastes sweet after he swallows, because he does believe it. You say it like it’s a simple, single truth, and he can’t help the way his entire being tingles with delight. 

You would have wanted more of him.

“You’ve got all night to come up with an answer,” you add, smug, before you shift to turn away from him, too. “Take your time.”

You’re not wrong.

He does.

— 

He doesn’t. He does have the whole night at his disposal, and your question has him warm and awake and alive even though he tries so desperately not to be. 

And now he doesn’t have all night at his disposal anymore because he wakes from what little sleep he’d fallen into, and judging by how his bones ache like they’re going to crumble, the rest had neither been of quality or quantity.

So much for sleeping on a decision.

Jayce tenses what feels like every single muscle in his body, then, without giving his size too much though, flops onto his back.

And it hits him only after he does so that he should’ve been very much crushing you under his weight, had you been there.

But you’re not.

The spot next to him is empty.

You’re gone.

Sticking around until dusk his fucking ass. What’d he even expect? A kiss on the forehead and breakfast in bed? How typical of him to get his hopes up so very high that they shatter, how naïve of him, how deluded—

He wouldn’t be surprised if you’d taken everything and just left him with your shabby excuse for a tent and his naked horse. What’d he even expect from a criminal?

You’ve fooled him again and he’s let you. And you’ve used him, of course you have, because you don’t know anything else aside from that, do you? 

And in spite of it all, Jayce, in all his wishful thinking, still wants to believe you’re there, sitting beside the dead campfire and waiting for him as he crawls out of your tent.

But you’re not.

Topacio — his horse — is still very much there, and so is his gear, and his still damp clothes, and his satchel. Once he slips into his sticky jeans and slightly less sticky shirt, Jayce reaches for the satchel, prepared for the worst.

But it’s still as full as it had been yesterday.

No, that’s wrong. It’s fuller.

Your bounty poster is folded, around— around something. As he unfolds it, a wad of cash slides out, and Jayce manages to catch it before it spills from the paper and hits the mud.

It’s the exact amount you’d stolen after the first night you’d spent with him, all there. All tucked into a folded piece of paper, which you’ve hastily scribbled onto: 

I don’t want to make your job any more difficult than it has to be, Jayce. As of the moment I am writing this, I promise you — and you have seen how much my word is worth last night — that I will not cause you any more trouble. Not in Piltover, at least. 

I will, however, be visiting next month. I do want my tent back. What we do in it after you return it will be up to you.

Jayce swallows thickly when he notices that there is, unfortunately, something written on the backside of this paper: big, bold letters and numbers are visible through the paper, and so is what seems to be a dried stain — oh. Oh, fuck. Of course you’ve found it.

This piece of paper is the bounty poster of you with the obvious smear of his semen across your face. Before Jayce gets to agonize about not ripping the poster into shreds or using it to fuel his campfire, another scribble catches his eye.

Right below where the paper curls with his dried cum, you’ve written in pencil:

I will be missing you just as fondly.