#housekeeping essentially | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alnilaem · 14 days ago

Text

coyote head and the body of a man — (e)

ghost/fem reader There's a killer on the loose. But your logging town is small and quaint and doesn't even appear on maps, so you know you're safe. That all changes when a gruff, big, taciturn man shows up at your workplace one day. Or; Simon is a fugitive serial killer, and you're the housekeeping girl that caught his eye.

cw for explicit content, graphic violence, possessive behaviour, size difference, cunnilingus, stalking

pinterest board | ao3 | for @spidehpig <3

Sometimes, you believe you were born in the centre of a dying star.

Born on the crest of death and fated for a bleak life. Dead, before you even had a chance.

The universe sweeps before you. Infinite. Expansive. Hungry. You float at the mouth of the galaxy and it swallows you whole, but doesn’t seem to like the taste of you—too bland, too trite—so it spits you back out and sends you tailspinning.

You land with a lack of courtesy. Tossed between trees and dropped in a basin. You find yourself in nowhere, Oregon. In a town flecked by a lake inlet and a clement fjord, where the moose population outnumbers the people population. It has a maritime allure but strangely enough, isn’t commercial enough to be a tourist hub. It’s too hidden in the thicket. Too deep in a borehole.

Every day here is the same. It's an abyss that yawns before you with no end in sight, lacking undue entertainment and vividness and excitement. There’s no light pollution so far off the beaten track, so oftentimes, you’ll wish upon shooting stars for someone to come for your deliverance.

There’s a reason they say be careful what you wish for.

The day isn’t even halfway over and your bone tips already ache with hard work.

It isn’t to say your workplace is busy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. A cut-rate motel with more vacancies than residents found far-removed from the highway, taking only cash, no card, which is good for deterring paper trails and welcoming the transient but is bad for providing records when the police come knocking.

You’ll get the occasional trucker, the sparse backpacker. In any case, folks stay here when they don’t want to be bothered. They’ll drive past the splintery welcome sign and stop at the diner for earthy, full-bodied coffee and a slice of famous rhubarb pie. They’ll recuperate in the motel and leave before sunrise, and you’ll be there to clean up what they leave behind, scrubbing the memory out of the fibreglass bathtub for whoever’s next.

It’s a place where time fleets away. Hallucinatory. Where people pay their due and you hang your head because after all, you’re nothing more than the housekeeping girl. Cottony pinafore and a black dress. Mary Jane flats. Fingers desquamating from years of bleach and vinegar stuck in your nail beds. You get handed dog-eared tips and in return, you don’t ask questions. But maybe you should have.

You’re sliding the window cleaner back into its compartment on the cleaning cart just as your boss scales the veranda. He’s grinning and sporting sweat stains across his armpits. A patchy beard. A loose tie.

Your nerves lock up tight when he grasps your shoulders. His razorous fingers and the pinchbeck of his wedding band saws under your skin. The dregs of his afternoon drinking knocks into you, and you try not to let your body betray you. Despite that, your eyes water and your nose crinkles. You white-knuckle your dress and almost pop the fabric of your pinafore.

“How’s my favourite employee?” he grins. “Is she workin’ hard?”

There’s an irreverent innuendo somewhere in his smile. You ignore it and opt for a stale smile.

“I’m working,” you eke out. “I've got to restock the bathroom, then I’m done.”

“That’s good, peach. Real good,” he watches you collect toiletry essentials, then tacks on, “there’s a man in the lobby.”

You falter. The travel-sized shampoo bottle almost slips between your forefinger and thumb.

“An outsider.”

It’s an observation, not a question. If the man in the lobby were a local, Phillip would have given you a name because in this town, everybody knows everybody. The fact that a name was bereft tells you your new guest came from elsewhere. Maybe he’s cutting through the main road on his way to Yachats for your town’s cascade mountains and bigleaf maple, or for the diner’s famous rhubarb pie. In any case, he's in need of a rest stop.

“Mh. I’m gonna check him in. Just wanted to let you know I’m givin’ him this room, so try to hurry it up, okay peach?”

You blink slowly. This motel holds twelve rooms—there’s never been a need for any more—and currently, nine of those are occupied. That leaves three. There’s no reason for your boss to put up the new guest in Room 11, especially when you’re still cleaning it.

Phillip reads the question in the bend of your eyebrow. He smiles knowingly and pats your head. “He requested a room on the higher level. Room 9’s aircon is busted and Room 6 shares a wall with the Pettie’s. They’re loud.”

You sigh. “Ah.”

“Sorry peach,” he smiles like he’s apologetic, but you don’t think that’s the case. “Just get it done, alright? And add some extra coffee packets."

You furrow your lips. Displeasure flutters over you but you wash it away with a smile, refusing to irk him. You nod and pivot, bones bending against your skin for an escape as his hand whispers against your bum in an encouraging caress.

Anger simmers in your marrow. Phillip simply chuckles, disparaging.

“That’s a sweet peach.”

His voice gets muted by the tinny, rattling radiator as you make it to the bathroom. You stock it up dutifully—perhaps taking extra long to ensure he's not waiting outside for you—and spritz air freshener around the room when you finish. It’s a flaky, expired bottle of Platinum Ice which barely masks the town’s deep-seated smell of old-growth forest, petrichor and woody debris. You hope the new guest doesn’t have a sharp nose.

You make sure to stuff the coffee station with extra packets before stepping out of the room. Off the mysteriously stained carpet, onto the veranda. You putter around with your large keyring, thumbing through the nickel-brass since you also have a key to the elementary school, post office, and city hall (aptly titled shitty hall by locals, since this town isn’t much of a city and the building’s roof is held together by nothing but rusty rivets and tassels of sprig collected in the corners). You’ve got so many keys because again, everybody knows everybody, and it isn’t rare to see the housekeeping girl at the motor lodge supplementing her income as a part-time teaching aid.

Finally, you find the master key. You lock the room and roll the cleaning cart into the utility room before locking that too. Your wrist drags across your forehead, wiping away sweat, and you tug on your dress because perspiration has pasted it onto the pert curve of your breasts, the squish of your thighs. You furtively glance down your bodice and watch how the sweat pocks your skin, knotting your nipples against your cheap bra. Lament catches you in regards to your shower after work—it’s going to be freezing since the heating system here is so fickle—and in the paroxysm of your grief, the sound of heavy breathing eludes you.

You don’t hear his footsteps. He’s an ambush predator. Stalking and shadowing in the tall grass, waiting for the moment your hackles melt to bite into your neck like an unripe stone fruit. You don’t see him, but you feel him. His breath tickling down your neck. The erogenous zone behind your ear.

A gasp parts your lips and you whip around, coming face-to-face with a paunchy chest plated by moth-eaten flannel. You heft your head up, exercising the hinge in your neck. Paling at the sight that greets you.

He has a Cabela’s cap on. It’s pulled over his eyes, but a few blonde curls peek out from under the crown of his hat. He has a damaged, blistered face. A cauliflower ear. Nicks on his cheeks that distend from his skin and have turned pallid with time, rippling like seafoam petticoats on waves as he flickers his jaw. He wears jeans and mud-clogged boots and holds a duffel bag.

His gaze unties you. You slowly find words, fitting them in an orderly queue in your mind as you avert your gaze and stare at the floor. Squirming. Preening. Sweltering.

“Welcome to Sockeye Inn, mister…”

Silence. He lets your words awkwardly trail off. Doesn’t do anything to belay the discomfort in your belly. The man simply stares at you with brown eyes.

Humiliation crawls up your spine and settles on your cheeks. It burns through your skin, withering you away, to which you fidget with your fingers and baldly nod towards the door.

“Your room is ready,” you murmur. “Enjoy your stay, sir. Uh– if you need anything just give us a shout. Phone’s on the bedside table.”

Foolishly, you wait for a response again. Nothing. He towers over you, owlishly blinking, one slower than the other because he seems to have a lazy eye. You clench your skirt and softly shoulder past him, heading for the stairs as you hear him putter with the keyhole.

You’ve halfway scaled it when a rasp distorted by what seems to be years of cigarettes stops you dead in your tracks.

“Bring me a BLT and root beer.”

You burn up at the muscle in his voice. The drag. Just as you’re about to reply, his room door slams shut and rocks across the veranda.

Your dress is stickier than it was before. Perhaps an ice cold shower isn’t so bad after all.

The end of your shift slowly arrogates.

After delivering food to Simon Riley—you glinted at the logbook while waiting for his order, reading his name—you left his room as soon as possible. You set the food down and found yourself plugging your nose. The Platinum Ice you sprayed before didn’t accost you— instead, it was pomade. Lucky Strike cigarettes. Decaying heartwood. Bleach.

You pointedly breathed through your mouth. It didn’t actually help though, since you could taste it then. The ethanol in the air drizzled over your pockmarked tongue and glided down your throat. Collected in your stomach.

You almost retched it back up at the sight of him.

Through the foggy shower wall, the colour of his hazy contour was striking. It seemed to be a tight fit for him, hemming in his lumberjack build. The shampoo bottle looked like a damn accessory in his large hands and his chased shoulder blades pressed soap against the glass pane, sudsy.

Your curiosity pulled your gaze lower. Down to the heavy mass between his thighs, thick and fat. Bulbous.

His spine suddenly went erect, straightening like a chary animal. As if by the agitated pappus of his skin, his chin lifted in your direction, and that’s when the earth collapsed under your feet and you beetled for the door.

You distract yourself in the kitchen. Emptying the dishwasher. Taking the garbage to the bear-proof receptacles. Putting the oven on steam clean. Kate, the kitchen supervisor, stares at you oddly under her hairnet but she isn’t going to reject a set of helping hands.

You scrub at a pan hoping it will erase the image burned into your mind. Hoping that the steel wool will have the same effect on your temporal lobe as it does on the pan. You don’t realize your hands are chafing and the pan is flaking, not until Kate is passionately complaining beside you, her spit dashing onto the side of your face.

“—fuckin’ freeloaders. They drain our taxes but can’t even do their damn jobs. Wait until one of their family gets butchered, you’ll see, that’s when they’ll start taking this seriously.”

She waves a newspaper in your face. The paper stack fans in front of you, blowing you with cool air. You’re just barely able to read the big, blocky headline.

Connection Made Between Ventura, Gilroy and Eugene Serial Killer — Aptly Coined the Ghost.

“Eugene!” Kate slaps the newspaper, frazzled. “Not even three hours from us!”

You scarcely listen to her, her voice ripening into white noise as you scrutinize the police sketch on the newspaper’s margin. The offender is drawn with an overripe balaclava and probing eyes. Dark brown, as if his corneal opacity has laid claim before death. His eyelids have no tension, but a furl of crow's feet gather at the corners. It’s uncanny. Eerie. And even though he’s pressed on paper, you can’t help the unease welling inside you.

A part of you waits for the other shoe to drop. For him to manifest and crawl out of the paper, dripping ink and viscous tar, ruining your Mary Jane flats and the floor you’d just mopped.

Hemlock hits the back of your throat. Lemony, sedgy. Your eyes fixate on the information detailing his crimes. Spines broken and necks snapped with inhumane strength. Pieces of flesh carved with the precision of either a surgeon or a butcher. Rigour mortis locking the victims in a scream, nail beds caked with skin which implies a struggle, but leads nowhere since the Ghost’s DNA hasn’t been found on any database.

(He’s as elusive as his name suggests. Investigators say he could be foreign, or that he has a clean record. The latter seems unlikely for the violent calibre of his crimes.)

There’s also his modus operandi—slicing off his victim’s ring finger, taking it with him. A cruel reward.

“They say he’s taking Route 101,” Kate tacks on. “That he’s a long-hauler. How the hell will they catch a long-hauler?”

You shake your head, shrugging. Your tongue is too heavy and your gums rub against the round of your cheeks when you try speaking. The sentence gets snagged on your molars, and all that comes out are sparse words, lamely falling to the floor with how out of breath you are.

“…They’ll catch him.”

“They better,” she shortly huffs. “I don’t want this town making the paper for all the wrong reasons.”

Death comes to you in a cornfield.

You’re sprinting through the crop, barefoot and scantily clad and pricked by thorns. Your clothing catches on thistle and corn husk, slowing you down, but the quick-footed trampling at your tail keeps your pace steady and stable.

Your lungs burn. Your bones rasp. Your eyes well up with how fast you’re moving, with how your retinas strain to see more in the pitch black than just reflective corn silk and the crescent moon.

The midnight sky is close to swallowing you whole, but at this point that would be an act of mercy. The whistle of his cleaver slicing through the air and the stomp of his boots are promptly catching up, heckling you, barely whispering against the flowy cotton of your dress.

By a cruel twist of fate your foot catches on a tiller and sends you flying. Your nose softens the impact, the crack of cartilage reverberating through your skull, glutinous red spurting down your chin as you try scrambling to your feet.

But true to his name, Ghost, he slips through matter and suddenly, he’s standing in front of you.

Black, sweaty tank top. Freshly sharpened meat cleaver. Stout arms. Predatory eyes. Rotting balaclava—which at this point, you’re starting to believe was grafted onto his face, fitting him like skin.

You raise your hands for mercy.

But you should know dead stars have exhausted all their luminosity—that after death, they hold no power. That space is a graveyard. That’s why the Ghost poises his cleaver behind him. That’s why the last thing you see is his cleaver handle swinging towards you, about to collide with and shatter your cheekbone into a million pieces—

—but daylight strikes you with no clear trajectory.

It’s your alarm that rings, waking you up from a nightmare, telling you to brush your teeth and scrub yourself down and pop your supplements before biking to work. You do so sluggishly, standing under the shower spray as you massage your cheekbone. Burning your toast as you scour the news for developing details on the Ghost case. Ordering a cup of coffee from the local diner and gulping it down behind the motel lest Phillip catches you.

Your nightmare—omen, prophecy, portent of death?—pursues you like the persistent stench of fish on an angler’s hands all morning. You flinch at the slightest noise while scrubbing toilets, you constantly look over your shoulder while sweeping floors.

Malaise builds in your blood vessels like creosote. It doesn’t thin into fluid, flowing in and out of your appendages and around your sex until you situate yourself in front of Room 11. Fluffing up your skirt and puffing out your chest.

You announce your presence and rap the door with your Mary Jane flat because your hands are occupied with new bed sheets. Your knuckles blanch around the linen, quivering, struggling to keep it in your grip. The sheets almost flutter to your feet when a voice penetrates the door, abrasive and husky. Rough. Grating against your spine and shaving down the vertebrae.

“Door’s open.”

You wait a few seconds before contorting yourself against the threshold. You try the handle and lo and behold, it’s unlocked, swinging open when you press your weight onto it.

You step inside and toe off your flats. Next to Simon’s boots, they look fit for a doll, and a dizzy spell ricochets through you at the size difference. At the stark reminder that he’s as big and packed as a thick tree stump.

You walk inside and heed the CRT television playing the news.

It does nothing to soften the scream that rips out of you as you round the corner.

Simon is in bed, pulling on a cigarette. His pudgy tummy and bristly chest are bared, the steel wool of his happy trail disappearing into the bed sheets furled around his hips. The flat sheet is thin enough to outline something stirring. Something thick and pressed against his inner thigh.

He stares at you, eyes of Argus. It’s so intense you’re sure he can sense the slick running down your back. The dew that settles in the gusset of your panties.

You stutter. “I can come back later.”

Simon sits up with a groan. It rattles you. His joints must be fettered with age, or hard work, but in any case your head goes cottony with the picture of him splitting wood and hauling heavy bovine flanks.

You swallow thick as he shakes his head. “It’s no problem, sugar. I’m not even here.”

The pet name makes you squirm. You sure do feel like it—sugar, that is—with the way you could melt on his tongue, wedge yourself between his teeth. Turn syrupy and sappy at the back of his throat.

He takes another drag of his cigarette. You watch raptly as his jaw feathers around it, lips proffering another plume of smoke.

He blinks. “Well?”

You eke out an apology and fiddle with your hands.

“I’ll have to, um, change your bedsheets first.”

Simon shakes his head. He taps the ashy casualties off the tip of his cigarette and you watch as it sinks onto the bed sheet, almost burning through the floral motif. “No need.”

“Well,” you cough, forcing your eyes away from him, “if I don’t, my boss…”

Simon pricks up. The hind of his spine straightens the same way a dog would sit straight and plumb after hearing rustling in a bush. His muscles tighten, thick, and his face twists into a sneer. The bed sheet around him falls and you lock up tight lest it bare his pubic bone.

“Is he a minger?”

“I’m sorry?”

He huffs. “‘s he a bully?”

“Oh, no,” you blandly laugh. “Mister Graves isn’t a bully. He just…”

“Makes you uncomfortable?”

There’s a lapse between acknowledging his question and spitting out an answer that makes you kick yourself. Simon already looks dubious. You hug the sheets closer to your chest and smile, your cheeks feathering like beeswax.

“He’s a kind man.”

“Not wha’ I asked,” he says. The bed creaks as he leans forward, the sheets slipping lower, scarcely covering his sex. “I asked if he does stuff he shouldn’t be doin’.”

Your heartbeat quickens. Briefly, you wonder if he can hear it. He probably can, albeit softly, due to his lumpy cauliflower ear.

“He’s a married man,” you mumble. “He doesn’t touch me if that’s what you mean. Not like that.”

“There’s only one way to touch someone,” Simon grunts. His chest starts churning a little, as if he’s agitated. “Does he put his hands on you?”

Your skin burns, remembering. A phantom scar runs through you, long and creeping, mapping all the places in which Phillip’s pinchbeck wedding ring has burned you. The suture of your spine, the pappy flesh of your neck, the rise of your hips where his palm has melted through your dress and smarted your skin.

Your silence makes Simon grunt.

Panic surges up your throat. You feel the need to defend Phillip, in some approximation of gratitude and fear since you’re on his payroll and you don’t want to reap the consequences should you rat on him and he find out.

“No!” you hurry. “Mister Graves isn’t like that. He’s a good man. Honest.”

Simon’s eyes push against your skin. He scrutinizes you, tests you. Waits to see if you’ll fidget too much and flake away and sink into the carpet.

He growls. “You fancy him, is tha’ it?”

Answering yes is the only way to shake him off your leg. You do so archly, so it seems as though the thought of your boss has you flushing when really it’s Simon. He’s fully upright, and now you can see the girthy base of his cock. Stirring, twitching. You suppress a moan.

“Yeah…” you murmur. You can feel your makeup turning blotchy, running down your cheeks. “It’s just a bit…embarrassing, is all.”

He lapses into it again. Staring at you. Razoring his way into your head and thumbing through your consciousness, searching for an Achilles’ heel. A crack he can break into a hole because he has the size for it—barrel-chested, stupidly thick fingers.

Simon slips out of bed and disturbs the coiled aches of the mattress. He holds a washcloth over his crotch. It’s crusty and keeps shape and covers almost nothing, confirming your inkling.

His bulbous cockhead winks at you from under the hem. It’s heavy. Leaky. Dripping precum that laves down his legs and gets caught in the wiry hair of his thigh.

Anxiety pools in your armpits and around your groin. Or maybe that’s just arousal. Brackish and sticky, rubbing your pussy lips together, hugging your clit.

Simon pulls on his cigarette once more and then folds it into the bedside table. You should scold him. You should tell him that he’ll have to pay for damages even though the wood is already degraded and mouldy. You should scuttle out of the room and call for Phillip, but that would be a crueler fate. Instead you stay fixed to the carpet as Simon steps forward. Cock swinging between his legs, tummy jiggling.

You don’t know whether he’s going to pull you in for a kiss or rip off your dress or—and you’re unsure why you think of this—take you by your skull and smash it against the television stand. He has the muscle to, surely, but somehow you know he won’t. And the thought of that makes your skin hot.

You’re at his mercy.

You gird yourself for his lips or for your dress to be torn off, but your preparations flux away as Simon steps close and crowds you against the television stand. The stench of Lucky Strike cigarettes and gamey meat impair you, as he reaches behind you and increases the television volume. You want to say something but cotton fills your mouth and the news report floods your ears. It’s fragmentary—you can only heed oddments of the news anchor’s latest updates.

The Ghost is still at large. Corpses keep popping up around California and Oregon, each with their ring fingers sliced off. The tipline has been leading investigators nowhere, shepherding them to the end of the earth and over the edge, floating, where they’ll move through molasses and will never be able to catch him.

White male. 6’4”. 196 centimetres. Brown eyes. Heavyset. Likely military background. Likely a surgeon, or a butcher. A dangerous, ruthless individual.

If spotted, do not approach.

Simon’s breath fans against your neck, rousing the bristles of your warm cheeks. He turns off the television and steps back. An ether opens up in the pit of your stomach as your gaze falls on his bulging pelvis, on the purplish veins and webbing muscle, sitting like a tuft under his navel, disappearing behind the washcloth where his cock stirs.

Simon tuts. “World’s goin’ to shite.”

You nod.

“You shouldn’t be out here anyway,” he tacks on. “Should be at home takin’ care of your man’s house. Keepin’ safe.”

You flash your naked ring finger embarrassingly fast. “I-It’s just me…and my cat.”

His eyes darken. His head tilts down at you. He purrs.

“Better get started on mine then,” he breathes. “Put yourself to good use.”

You shyly get to cleaning his room.

You try to ignore his hand disappearing behind the washcloth, pumping his cock. You can’t ignore the silk ruining your panties. Scarcely, you manage to ignore the caution creeping up your back. Your lower instinct that screams at you as you feel his stare tracking you across the room, burning. Smouldering. Warning.

Daylight scissors into you.

It melts the sleep in the corners of your eyes. It clears the haze in your head. It interrupts the sultry dream you were having. Your flesh is still pocked and your clit is still peaked, as you rehash the contents of it.

You can still feel Simon’s weight on top of you, sweat compressioning you, the sheets gathering under your slick back. Your underwear had dangled from one of your ankles, flapping and swaying as Simon pounded into you. Your head bobbed over the lip of the mattress. Your tits bounced, nipples caught between his gnashers. Your slick ran down your cunt and over your asshole, pooling onto the floral bed sheets. You just quit your job. You didn’t care about the sheets. Or the Pettie’s down the veranda. Phillip was on the other side of the door too, and he could hear everything. Your moans. Simon’s balls dragging over your furled hole. His groans—

—And the sudden tearing of cartilage and skin stretching, rubbery, as Simon shifted into something else above you. Something larger. Deadlier. His drool dripped onto your chest, and his cock was suddenly too big for your pussy, popping back out until only his tip managed to squeeze inside your puffy hole. He snarled down at you, but it got covered by a creeping balaclava. You still reached your orgasm, quivering around his cockhead. Watching him go spotty and graphite-like in your vision, as if he were a composite sketch.

You get out of bed and wash the absurd dream away under the shower. The nozzle hits your clit weakly, and you never reach your high. You show up to work pigeon-toed and sweaty. Pent-up. You scrub harder at bathtubs and almost snap at Phillip when he swats your bum. Almost. Simon is watching from the dining hall, and he makes you skittish.

The day rolls by sluggishly. There’s a Do Not Disturb sign dangling from Simon’s door, so you don’t get the chance to see him in his room. You huff and puff at the Pettie’s and give Kate attitude. It’s the peak of afternoon when you’re sent home, shoulders stiff because Phillip squeezed them and tacked on, ”I can always help out if you’re stressed, peach,” before shepherding you out the door.

You bike into town. Indulge in the diner’s famous rhubarb pie because the motel’s cherry pie is nowhere near as good, though you’ll never tell Kate that. You polish off your treat then ride to the beach (which is more of a graveyard for birds and braided, washed ashore sea meadow), and prop your bike against the wooden bollards.

The beach is familiar with you. It sees you when you're overwhelmed by the monotonous colour of your life. You never worry about meddling kids or loud teenagers or anything, because the stench of fish usually keeps them away anyway. It's your own Shangri-La. Your little Eden. Albeit overcast and greyscale, with an ocean spray that gets into your hair and dries out your mouth.

You slip out of your Mary Jane flats and wade through the sand dunes, breathing in salt and sulfur and tasting it on your lips. You maneuver around seawrack and driftwood and eventually find yourself seated behind a tussock of seaoats, watching as the waves lazily beat against the shore.

It's easy for you to lie down and get comfortable among the scent of iodine and the feel of pillowy granules. It's also easy to let your eyes flutter shut, lulled into limbo by the ebbing tide and murmuring waves.

You stir awake with flaccid lungs.

Presentiment hangs in the air, thick, like a blanket of smog. It interrupts your breathing pattern and makes you light-headed. Vertiginous. Makes you see things that aren't there…

…Such as the off-white scleras and twists of dilated blood vessels that stare at you from the foreshore.

They approach you eerily. Two pieces of driftwood floating over the waves, jolting slightly as it hits the sand, splintery and mossy and heavy.

The man feathers toward you from the blue glow of the beach. You squint through the darkness, because maybe it's the sheriff, but you know he walks with a drunken gait and he…strides like a bear on its hind legs.

The way he lurches for you says otherwise. Perhaps he's rather a panther or a coyote, or some crude backyard breed of all three.

A large palm splits itself over your mouth. An arm lays beside you and secretes a musk of sweat and iron. A knee digs into the plush of your cunt, agitating your clit, as a warm breath fans over your pulse point.

"Waited for me, didn't you?" he rasps against your neck.

In your stupor, you brace your hands against his shoulders. A sticky substance coats his skin, too viscous to be sweat.

Nausea knots in your throat. Tremors wash over your body. You dig your nails into his flesh, and when your hands don't fall through it like you hoped, you gravely realize he's made of muscle and skin instead of your drunken, sleep-inspired imagination.

You experience a cruel loss of equilibruim. If you weren't already lying down, you'd collapse to the ground. You go limp in the sand, thawing into his hands which you unwillingly notice are caked with that sticky substance too.

"There's dangerous folk 'round here," he grunts. "What if someone else followed you? A big, bad man?"

A chord of recognition stirs in your brain at his voice. That brash accent.

"Simon…?"

He chuckles. "It's me, sugar."

You squeeze your thighs together but it's abortive. He pries them apart anyway, and cups your pussy through your panties.

He rubs you through the gauze, knuckling your soft lips. Through the darkness you barely see the misshapen silhouette of his mouth. That snarl, curling off him as if he suffers from some chronic wasting disease, slowly atrophying and turning into some vestigal cadaver.

He kisses down your sternum. Grips your hand and forces it over his crotch. Your fingers brush over the solid mass. It's hard due to both stiffened denim and his thickening cock.

"All for you," he mumbles. "Take it out, sugar."

You fumble with the metal teeth of his zipper. You pull him out with both hands and your mouth goes dry. Tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth. Deadly nightshade hitting the back of your throat. Despite you, your thighs squish together, and a rumbling chuckle slips through the seam of his lips.

He's huge. Fat and heavy, so much so you need both fingers to wrap around him.

"Give it a kiss, yeah?" he coos. "Like a sweet girl."

You spread your lips against his cockhead. You pull away and a string of precum chases you, but Simon is pushing your head back down and bucking his bristly pubic bone into to your nose.

"There it is," he grumbles. "Such a big girl, aren't you?"

You look up at him with wide, wet eyes.

The stiffs of hair on his pubic bone tickle your nose. You smell sweat and iron, but you can't tilt your head away, because the stout muscle of his arms keep you in place.

Fighting is futile. His cockhead hits the back of your throat like oleander and he holds your jaw in place, dimpling your cheeks with his rough fingers, letting his balls slap against your chin.

Just as you're getting used to his size, he pulls out, breaking the strands of saliva and precum between you.

"Take off y'panties, sugar."

You pull them off and squirm at the way the gusset clings to your pussy lips a little while longer. Simon takes it against his nose and sniffs it, running his fingers through your pussy, spreading your slick.

You don't get a warning before he's curling one of his fingers into you. Massaging your walls. Scissoring you open. Thumbing your clit.

He adds another and twists them deeper—meaner—into you. He swallows your whimpers but spits them back into your mouth when he empties his saliva down your throat. He keeps stroking the inside of your pussy, your sticky walls, and rubbing your clit.

He squeezes your cheeks together and gives you a big kiss. He coos condescendingly into your lips, and licks away your fresh track of tears. "It's supposed to hurt, baby. Don't be mad, alright? It'll feel good soon."

He gets deeper and deeper. Knuckle-deep, when he curls his fingers inside you. You lock up tight and thrust your hips through the bulk of your orgasm, trembling and quivering around him.

Your lips quiver around a plea when he pulls his fingers out. It's a lapse of judgement on your part—you know it—but you can't help it anymore.

"Please what?" He grins. It's ugly. Like a truss of stitching falling off his face, mangled and chewed up.

"Can you g-go…" you squirm when he rolls his tumb over your clit, agonizingly slow. "Can you go–"

"C'mon baby," he whispers against your lips, "spit it out. Big girls use their words."

"Canyougodownonme?" you gasp and grip onto him, bucking your cunt into his palm.

He chuckles against your mouth. He kisses down your chest. He crinkles his nose against the husk of your pussy. He deeply inhales and vibrates at your scent. He darts his tongue out and flattens it against your dewy folds, licking a stripe up your slit.

You writhe but he holds you in place with those big, thickened hands of his. They're wet but at this point you can't tell if it's your arousal or that mysterious substance on him. You can't even think about it, not with your thoughts melting away, escaping you like the humming waves.

Simon's a bit too aggressive in how he eats you out. It doesn't come from a juvenile attempt influenced by sex-on-screen with undue emphasis, but rather his tongue spelling devotion into the fat of your cunt.

Your fingers flex into his blonde head of hair. It's closely cropped, but you still manage to pull him closer, grinding yourself down on the bumpy bridge his nose. You pull on his hair and he growls and sends a quake up your spine. He wraps his lips around your clit and swirls his tongue further into you, softly suckling your juices out.

The waves fold over each other, beating against the shore. They crest and crash and just as they race up the sand dune, teasing your flexing toes, your second orgasm crashes into you too. You twist and twirl Simon's hair in your grip and almost miss the feel of something cold being slipped onto your finger.

You're shaking, trembling, as you raise your hand. You're hazy and the moonlight is shrouded by clouds. It makes the mystery object look smeared across your vision, blotchy and spotty.

You hold it a little closer to your face, examining the twinkle as Simon massages your thighs to ease the quiver.

You turn your hand over and whisper your thumb over its curve.

You bristle when you realize what it is. It hangs off you a little loosely, burning your knuckle.

A pinchbeck wedding ring.

Stained with red, and still warm from the body it was pulled from.

Bile gathers in your throat and burns your mouth. Tears gather in your eyes. A small gasp parts your lips, billowing out of you like the mushroom-head of a flare just as realization fully commits itself to you.

You shiver. Both through realization, and your orgasm. "…What did you do to him?"

"Took care of him," Simon grunts, caressing your hair. "I'm supposed to handle the monsters under your bed, ain't I?"

You spare him a glance. You heed the white of his teeth and a smudge of—you know it's blood—across his cheek. His eyes, hidden in the shadowy canopy. His nose, bent out of shape and speckled with blood.

"You're not going to hurt me."

He brushes your hair back. "No."

You pant into him when he captures you for a kiss. "…Why?"

"I'm supposed to take care of ya," he grunts. "That's what couples do, no?"

He pushes something in your grasp—a folding knife. Your thumb slips over the two initials engraved into the handle—your initials.

"How do y'feel about Kate?" he asks.

Your coworker flashes into your mind. "I like her"

Simon—the Ghost—grunts. "And what about that bloke at the diner? What's his name?"

"I– Franklin?"

"Hn. Does he bother you?"

You thumb through your memory. Perhaps what you say is an embellishment, giddy of what Simon's going for.

"He did steal my bike once…" you mumble.

Simon pricks up. His chest puffs out and squishes against your arm. "He married?"

"Yeah, um," you swallow, "for about ten years."

"You want his pretty ring? Or his wife's?" Simon asks, then kisses you. "Anythin' you want."

Your lips stretch into a smile.

Simon cups your cheek, blood rubbing off on you. For the first time ever, you feel exhilarated at the thought of the future. At the thought of being taken care of. Doted on.

Suddenly the town doesn't feel so cold anymore. It doesn't feel like an invisible barricade is hemming you in. Simon is your ticket out of here, and a ticket to your new life.

You can abandon your pinafore and Mary Jane flats and maybe he'll spoil you with frilly socks and a cute sundress. Maybe he'll fuck you in his truck or in gas station bathrooms as the corpse of a man who wronged you rots in the truckbed. Maybe you'll get caught but at least you'll be together and at least your name will finally be known.

Not as the housekeeper girl, but Mrs Riley.

#simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #ghost/reader #simon riley smut #ghost smut #cod x reader #cod mw2 #simon riley #simon ghost riley #cod smut #orion writing

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kyuureimu · 2 years ago

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sorry for the radio silence lately dashboard Adulting has been really trying my patience these past couple'a weeks so aside from brain fog and trying to catch up on my neverending sleep debt i'm just trying to relax for once yfm

#ive been lurking! but also doing some housekeeping in the bg #chiefly: actually dusting off my carrd. brainstorming essential hc posts to write. etc etc #[ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏꜰ ʙᴏᴜɴᴅꜱ ] :: ooc.

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hughungrybear · 3 months ago

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I think what hurts me the most while reading the danmei is that Sheng Wang is essentially an orphan. After his mum died, his dad made an effort for a few years before finally leaving Wang's entire care to their housekeeper.

They don't even talk with each other unless his dad remembers that Wang exists, in which case, he tries to bombard him with questions as if that would compensate for all the years that he ignored his own son.

When Wang's mum died, he had a habit of taking his blanket and squeezing into the same bed with his dad - as if his dad's body heat would be enough to warm the coldness in his heart.

But Wang grew older and their house has become emptier with his Dad always away on a business trip somewhere. He no longer has anyone to squeeze into bed with when his heart is feeling a bit cold. Wang's dad, for all intents and purposes, has stopped being family to him the minute he left him alone to fend for himself.

After a while, Wang found that he no longer needs to be close to anyone. He doesn't get involved and puts boundaries and yet...

Here is a boy he was forced to live with, who his dad insists he must call Ge (Big Brother) because the boy is a few months older even though they are both strangers to each other.

The boy is cold, yet also inexplicably warm. You can count the words he utters with one hand, but is still always there when Wang needed a rescue or a helping hand. He might stare, but you won't hear the boy judge. The boy might complain but he will still carry a drunk Wang home when needed. Or buy medicine to treat Wang's colds unprompted. The boy is NOT big brother. He is not even blood-related — but he is warm.

Excuse me, while I sit in a corner and cry.

#mou mou #the on1y one #chinese danmei #the only one #taiwanese bl #me: 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭#tianwang

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romana-after-dark · 1 year ago

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Cry Harder

Dark!Joel Miller x fem!reader

Masterlist : Taglist (NEW TAG LIST)

A follow up to Keep Cry'n, but you don't need to read it to read this. But you do need to read the warnings lol.

For my event, Dead Dove December which is still open until January 1st, and there's no sign up! Plenty of time to join <3

Summery: While keeping you captive, Joel's sex drive is insatiable, and the sex seemed to be never ending. You tried to warm him you needed to use the bathroom... he didn't listen.

Warnings: DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT. Non con. Piss kink. Dacryphilia. PIV sex, oral f!recieving. Smoothing via pillow. Threat of murder, threat of necrophilia (Joel's just trying to scare her.) little smacking. Degredation, daddy kink.

Immersabilty: Reader is fem.

1k works

A/N: I'M BACK!!! I'll chat a lil more in the notes at the bottom and be sure to read the housekeeping but thanks for sticking around <3

You don't have to like piss kink but don't make fun of me okay lol

Support writers! Reblog and comment

******************************

“That’s it baby, cry harder”

As if you had much of a choice. Joel had you here for 2 days by this point, and the man was fucking insatiable. He had explained to you, not that you asked, that he goes in and out of “shifts”, essentially. For a few weeks, he raids and stocks up on all he needs. Then, if he’s got somewhere decent to stay, he’ll take a pretty girl for a week or so and just go insane on sex, food, and any drugs or booze he could get. You were well fed at least, and sometimes Joel let you take a few hits of weed or sips of alcohol to numb you, but other than that he wasn’t giving many mercies.

It had been hours at this point, no refractory period except sometimes to go have a smoke, but 5 minutes later he came back hard and thrusting into your swollen lips.

You were exhausted, spread out naked on your back as Joel knelt before you, thrusting. You just wanted it to be over, sobbing into the pillow you pulled over your face.

“Awwww, little babies embarrassed? Wassamatter, little baby, don’t want me to hear you moaning again?” Joel taunted you with a laugh. He liked laughing at you. He did make you moan, that was the embarrassing part. Joel wasn’t necessarily trying to make you cum, but he did get giddy and gleeful when the stretch of his cock was enough to make you orgasm.

You weren’t entirely sure that’s what was happening right now, but something was off. “Joel…” You whine into your pillow. “My stomach hurts…”

“Why -thrust- the fuck -thrust- do I care?”

“It feels funny…” You hoped maybe he’d stop if you were sick. Not that he cared about your well being, but rather he wouldn’t want you getting sick all over him. Or maybe he was into that.

“Just shut the fuck up and -mmmph- just fuck’n take it. Always fuck’n whining like you got a hard job.” Joel smacked a tit, making you whimper and clench down.

Then you realized what the feeling was. “Joel, I gotta- MPH!”

Joel shoved the pillow into your face. “Tired of your fucking voice. ‘Joel I need this, Joel I need that!’” He mocked you in a high pitched voice. “Just shut the fuck up before I smoother you and use your cold pussy instead. Bet the rigor would tight’n you up a bit.”

Fresh tears wet your pillow as you wriggle, trying to keep quiet. You needed to pee. Or maybe you were going to cum. Joel had gotten you pretty drunk this time and his dick jamming into your cervix made everything a little hazy, but you needed to pee, and you needed to pee BAD. Still, the struggle to breath was the first concern. It wasn't cutting off all your hair, but it was getting difficult.

You tried to warn him, but Joel simply kept the pillow over your mouth and he filled you up again and again, thick cock stretching you so far you weren’t sure how you were supposed to be any tighter, but men were never satisfied. The pressure continued to build and suddenly you were very confused; was this an orgasm, pee, or both?

Joel was growing erratic above you, and you wondered if he got off, if this would be it for today. You tried to hold it back, never wanting Joel to have the satisfaction, but the combination of the feeling and Joel in your stomach were too much. Unconsciously, you let go.

Joel stops, not pulling back enough to pull out but enough to see you and you release the warm liquid onto him as you cum. “Oh shit” He chuckles. “Did you squirt?” You remove the pillow the your face to catch him looking at your sore cunt as the liquid isn’t stopping and he realizes what was happening. “Ohhhh fuck!” He says gleefully, thrusting into you with renewed vigor.

“That’s it baby, piss on my cock, ooooooh yes, fuck yes, pee on daddy’s fuck’n cock, mmmmm god, gonna- fuuuuck, gonna cum, gonna cum in daddy’s little piss baby.”

You cover your face with your arms as you cry, sensitive as all hell from cumming hard as you relieve yourself, humiliated but knowing he’s close. Just gotta power through.

Huffing, Joel pressed his hand down on your lower stomach, pushing out more pee as you yelped.

“Goooood DAYUM!” Joel shouts loud in your ear as he cums inside you, filling your tired pussy with his cum.

Joel falls on top of you, laughing, his heavy weight nearly as suffocating as the pillow was. A light chuckle turned louder as he laughed harder and pulled away. As Joel pulled his cock out of your soaked folds, he was all but cackling, derangement in his eyes as he looked at the disaster that was the shitty bed you slept on.

“Such a messy girl…” He eyed your cunt, and you whimper. Joel didn’t go down on you. This was for him to get his dick wet, nothing else…

But soon, his mouth was between your legs, lapping at the mix of cum and piss and sweat between you two, his beard a rubbing irritant against your puffy skin. “Such a pathetic little girl” He muttered between breaths, rutting himself against the bed, and you knew he was hard again. “Fuck’n weird, can’t even keep from making a mess of yourself” He growls, licking you clean. “Fuck’n- ohmygod- fucking disgusting little piss Wh-who-oooooremmmm.” Joel came against the bed, just as you were about to come again, and pulled away.

You can’t help the way your body wriggles as the “Nooo” You whine, ever so quiet. You hated how much he made you want him sometimes.

Joel giggles, awfully pleased with himself. “Nah, baby, I’m done with you for now. Maybe next time you’ll learn to appreciate when I give you this cock.”

Butt naked, Joel exited the room, telling you to clean yourself up. “You smell.”

*************************

TW depression, skip to the bold for romana housekeeping

I havn't posted much outside an occasional Blessed Be the Fruit and if you follow my main, you kno why. This semester has been incredibly hard on me, a genuine deep depression i han't experienced in a long, long time. It was awful. I nearly hospitalized myself a few times and I should have but I am american and not insured. I was not safe, and was a danger to myself.

Yet, somehow, I managed to get my course work done and I finished the semmester on friday ;-; now i have 2 weeks approximately off from work which isnt ideal but hey, traveling and shit. Then for about a month I'll be working back at day care again before coming back for second semmester soooooo im hoping this free time will allow me to catch up on writing and reading

Housekeeping

As linked above, this is for my event dead dove December! It's for the Oscar Isaac/ Pedro Pascal fandom, and we got so many fun entries including lots of Joel, some triple frontier (santi AND frankie) William tell, and soon some Jack from mojave, rydall keener and more!! Would love for you to join me! if you dont wanna write but like dead dove, search #deaddovedecember2023 I didn't realize at the time there was a similar event for the bucky barnes fandom but they have the same hastag, so if you like bucky, check them out too!

Also, i'm gonna be working on a new series once Blessed be the Fruit and a few on my main end, a dark!triple frontier. Check out the coming soon info, and comment if you'd like a tag!

Be sure to join the new tag list, as i changed my tag options just a little!

@m0nster-fvcker @miraclesabound @fandxmslxt69

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heyitslapis · 6 months ago

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Oh things kept Happening

its a fucking shitshow at work tonight

so we have two groups in-house until Monday. We had 6 no-shows but checked them in anyway because lots of reasons i wont go into cause its unimportant.

A few hours ago a guy left his room and after the door latched the keypad lock DIED. We spent an hour and went through plan A, B, C, & D to try to get the door open. No such luck. We called and woke up our manager, and after telling her everything we tried, she said theres nothing else we can do short of disassembling the door lock, but then he wouldnt be able to latch his door. Have to wait for Maintenance in the morning (8am). We'd normally move him to an empty room but were sold out. Cause he can't sleep in the lobby, we made the decision to move him into one of the no-shows rooms. Two hours later, and guess who shows up? The ONE room out of the 6 no-shows that we gave to the guy who got locked out. So the only way we could move her to a different room was to checkout one of the no-shows (who again, all of them are supposed to be staying through Monday). So i checked her into the room that i just checked out. Now thats a fucking mess and a half to sort out as it is, so god fucking forbid any of the other no-shows show up, because we'll have to do more checkouts and transfers, which will only dig deeper the sinkhole of a situation.

Mind you right after all this is happening and im still frazzled as fuck, one of the ladies who lead one of the groups comes to checkout but is asking to make sure her employees with the group are set to checkout on the 2nd. She doesnt know the room numbers. Only other way we can look up the right rooms is by searching the rate code (employees and students were checked in under the same code, so that wont help), by searching the company name (again, students and employees have the same company name, so that wont work) or by searching the last names. She gave me like 4 different last names. Two of the names werent even in our system, the other two of them had completely different first names than what she told me. She said thats not them. Only other way i could help her is to use the confirmation number, which she had. Found one of the rooms using the confirmation number, and turns out it was under a completely different name. The confirmation number was correct, so i changed the name. The departure date was wrong, so i pushed it through our system, which is gonna oversell us for that day (oh fucking well im leaving that shit for the managers to figure out). She asked about the other rooms, and i asked for those confirmation #s. Apparently she only received ONE confirmation for the 4 rooms, so i literally cannot find those other rooms. She was definitely frustrated and needed to catch her flight, so I asked her if she can have her associates stop by the desk whenever theyre able so we can use their keys to pull up their room numbers and fix all this (sales dropped the ball on that, because if the one room had an incorrect departure date, it means the other rooms do too, which is going to fuck up our inventory even MORE. Yay.) After she leaves, i check her out, only to realize her departure date was the 1st. We're not supposed to check group rooms out early unless sales gives the ok. So i fucked up yet another thing.

To add on all this shit, because ive been running around half the night i didnt get to do my paperwork when i was supposed to, which takes me about an hour and i usually finish it around 3am. Its currently 5:30am, i only just finished my paperwork 10 minutes ago, and im finally on a very short break. Fuck my stupid baka life

#thankfully nothing else on that scale happened but yea after all this like every 30 min a guest had an issue that needed immediate attention #i left work 30 minutes later than usual #also i want to take a second to bitch because while IM dealing with all this shit my coworker did essentially nothing #only one time during those few hours did she ask if i needed anything & she printed the departures list for housekeeping #which i usually do but since i was way behind on my work she did it without asking me so that was nice #still wish she wouldve offered to run around instead of me cause she finished her paperwork pretty fast #but oh well. the night's done. im home now #i dont really want to work tonight but if i make it through it i have sat/sun off so thats nice #emma rambles #work tag

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inky-duchess · 2 years ago

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Fantasy Guide to A Great House (19th-20th Century)

(I know, I've been slacking but I'm still alive)

When we think of the Victorians, the grand old Gilded Age or the Edwardians, we all think of those big mansions and manors where some of our favourite stories take place. But what and who did it take to run a great house?

Meet the Staff

Large numbers of staff were always needed to run great houses. Every department had its own management and its own teams, all working together to ensure everything ran smooth. There was both an interior and exterior team.

Interior

You can split the interior of the household into three departments: Service, Upkeep and Food Preparation.

Service

Butler: The Butler was the Head of all the household staff. He acted essentially as the manager of a great house, directing the staff on a day to day basis or at events on the command of the lord/lady/employer. Make staff would report mostly yo him and he would be in charge of keeping an eye on them. The Butler had charge of the wine cellars, the dining room, sometimes the pantry as well. As the manager of the house, Butlers were afforded the title of Mr. X. Our favourite examples being of course Mr Carson and Mr Pennyworth.

Valet: The valet was the male servant who handled the dressing of the men of the family. He would be in charge of his master's clothes, ensuring he was always dressed in the right outfit for the right activity (there was a lot) and be in charge of helping him into the outfit in question. The valet would also be in charge of cleanliness, sometimes shaving his master or running his bath. Valets were referred to as Surname and ranked in how their employer's ranked, for example the Lord’s valet would outrank his son's.

Lady's Maid: The lady's maid was similar to the valet. She was in charge of keeping the ladies of the house looking their best and handling their needs. She would style hair, care for jewels, mend clothes, care for clothes and often act as a companion, accompanying her lady on visits or day's out. The lady's maid was referred to by their surname.

Footman: The footman was a male servant who served at table, fetched items, handled heavy lifting such as luggage, opened and closed doors. Most footmen were young men and en chosen for good looks. Footmen polished the silver services at great houses and when called upon would often take on the role of valet to guests without a servant to help. Footmen were referred to as their firstname. Footmen were denoted by rank, the highest being first footman who had charge over the others and would assist the butler in some tasks.

Upkeep

Housekeeper:The housekeeper was second in command but she ran her most of the interior staff, especially those who took care of the house itself. She supervised all female staff. She helped the lady of the house when it came to running events and caring for guests. The housekeeper is always Mrs. Surname even when she's unmarried.

Housemaid: Housemaids clean the house. They would dust, make and strip beds, straighten things up and keep the house looking it's best. The housemaid was a servant that was almost never seen, usually rising early, lighting the fires, cleaning the house as the family moves from room to room. She was called by her Firstname.

Scullery Maid: The scullery maid is the lower ranking maid. She would also have been younger and less experienced. She was in charge of the more unsightly work: laying the fires, scrubbing the floors, emptying chamberpots, cleaning servant's chambers. She may even do mending and washing for other servants. She was called by her first name.

Hall boy: The hall boy was also young and handled the worst jobs. He would polish boots belonging to the family and sometimes staff, cempty the servant's chamberpots and waited on on the higher ranking servants. He was called by his name.

Food Preparation

Cook: The cook or chef was the third highest ranking servant downstairs and they ran their own department. They were in charge of the kitchen staff. All cooks and chefs would meet almost daily with the lady of the house to discuss menus and ordering but would answer to both housekeeper and butler. As with the housekeeper, a female cook or chef is Mrs Surname despite martial status and make cooks/chef are Mr.

Kitchen maid: The kitchen maid helped the cook/chef in preparing the food. She would be one of the first servants up, in charge of lighting the ovens and starting the breakfast for the family and servants. She would clean the kitchen, boil water when needed and bring food up to the servery when needed. She would be called by her first name.

Exterior

The house would needed a team on the outside to handle the stables, the gardens and any outdoor activity.

Gardeners: They would be responsible for the upkeep of the grounds itself, caring for the gardens. There would be multiple at a great house led by a head gardener.

Stableboy/groom/kennelmaster: They would take care of the family's horses and dogs. They would take care of tack, help plan hunts and riding pursuits and handle carriages.

Chauffeur: As automobiles became popular in this period, a chauffeur was needed to drive the family and take car of their motor.

Lives of Servants

Servants were paid very little at this time, mainly because most staff got free room and board. Most of the interior staff would live in the house itself and be supplied meals. Chauffeurs, gardeners etc would live nearby on the estate either as locals or be supplied a house as a staff member. Staff uniforms were also supplied. Days off were rare but not withheld. Permission was needed to leave the house either to visit the shop or take a few days off.

Servants were expected to be obedient, modest and humble at all times. They were expected to stand in the presence of their master's, speak only when spoken to and never question an order. They had to be ready for anything at the drop of a hat. You've set for a dozen guests but now there's five more coming? Tough luck, change the table settings. You get seasick? Nevermind that, your gentleman is going across the sea and as his valet you're going with him, like it or not.

Servants from one house often travelled to with the family to their other residences: the butler, footmen, chef, kitchen maids, lady's maid, valet would all go with the family while everybody else would get left behind. Every house would have its own housekeeper if it could be afforded. Housemaids and other staff needed could be hired locally when needed.

The Daily Routine

The working day of a servant in a grand house was a long arduous one.

Morning: At 6am, the servants rise. The scullery maid gets up and begins lighting the fires, starting with the kitchen. Then she cleans the kitchen top to bottom before the staff get in to cook. The kitchen maid would rise at the same time, helping with the cleaning. She would set for the servant's breakfast and start cooking it. The footmen open the shutters upstairs, cleans whatever tools they will need such as glasses and silverware, tend the lamps and sets for breakfast upstairs. The housemaids go about the house cleaning up after the night before, starting in the rooms that aren't being used (any room that's not the bedrooms). At around 8, the cook rises and starts the day. The kitchen maid serves breakfast to the other servants before returning to the kitchen to eat her own breakfast with the other kitchen staff. After breakfast, the housemaid will change her apron and deliver hot water to each of the bedrooms for the family. At 9, the family rise. Married women have breakfast in bed with all other family members and visitors eating in the dining room. Valets and lady's maids would have dressed them prior, gathering up any clothes to be mended or washed. The footmen and butlers will serve while the housemaids go into each empty room and begin their chores.

Midday: Just before midday, the chef would speak with the lady of the house to discuss menus. At around 11, the staff were permitted their first break, just enough time for a drink usually a cup of tea before they started again. The chef would start preparing for the main dinner of the evening with the lady's approval. Footmen would take their places at entrances or attend the family where he may be needed. At noon, the servants would have their dinner. At 1, the family would sit for their lunch. Once lunch is over, a footman might be permitted to attend personal business (with permission from the butler first) or be sent on errands out of the house such as delivering messages. While the family sit for breakfast, the maids tidy up any room they have been using since getting up.

Afternoon: The family take tea around 4. The footmen clear the tea before heading down to take their tea - a light meal- with the other servants around 5. Afterwards, the footmen will start to light the lamps, close the shutters and draw the curtains. The butler would oversee the laying of the table for dinner with the footmen. The first footman carries the silver, the second the china, while the butler sets the silver and glasses. If a guest is coming, a footman will remain on the door to see them in.

Evening: At 8, the footman or butler signals the start of supper. This is done by the rinibg of the gong or bell which gives the family and any staying guests, 15mins or more to get ready. Valets and lady's maids would already be upstairs at this point, helping their master/mistress. When the family head downstairs, they linger in the drawing room to chat while a footmen keeps an eye on them. Any guests visiting for dinner would be let in by a footman and announced upon entry. The butler announces dinner and escorts the family in. The footman serve the food while the butler pours the wine (chosen by the Lord with the butler's help). The footman stay in the dining room all throughout dinner, excepting when they go to the servery to collect the food from the kitchen maid. They serve and clear the plates for every course. When dinner is over, a footman will stay with the men while they drink their port while another serves the ladies their coffee in the drawing room. While dinner is on, the housemaid would tidy the empty rooms, check the fires and turn down the beds. At 9, the servants eat their supper while the family chill. When supper is over and the family is done for the night, the valets and lady's maids would ready their masters for bed. A footman would wait in the hall with candlesticks for the family and show any departing guest out. The kitchen staff would start to clean up while the butler starts locking up the house. The staff would get to bed about 11:30 - 12.

#Fantasy Guide to A Great House #Guide to A Great House part 1 #Staff #Employment #Historical reference #Writing reference #writeblr #Writing help #Writers guide #Writing research #writers resources #writing resources writing advice #Writing advice #19th century #20th century #Edwardian #Gilded age #Victorian era

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johnwickb1tsch · 3 months ago

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Sympathy for the Devil ~ Part 11

A Donaka Mark x housekeeper!Reader fic, based on @discoscoob 's concept & bot! Though this is where the c.ai help ended because I was breaking the bot's pea pickin' mind. 😆

Warnings: Donaka Mark is a bad man with a soft spot for you. dark romance, possessive behavior, nonconsensual voyeurism, red flag red flag girl!🔺, psychological games, power imbalance, eventual dubcon/nsfw. PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS!!!

one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten.

Eleven. 十一

You wake with a start.

You’re naked, and Donaka is sprawled out in his bed beside you. Your eyes roam over the long lines of his powerful body, taking in his angles and curves. His broad muscled back, and tapered waist.

A more bitable little ass was never created by God or man.

That bit of sanity you’d been hoping for once the hormones subsided mercifully returns to you. No matter how gorgeous this man is–no matter how good he fucks, or how many times he made you cum the night before with his hands and his cock and his tongue (sweet Confucious, Buddha, and baby Jesus, his tongue)–you have got to get out of here.

It’s early morning, the blue light of pre-dawn. You slip out of bed, nearly dying of a heart attack when he stirs beside you–but does not wake. Quickly you throw on the tatters of your dress, and on bare feet you race as quickly and quietly as possible out the door, and down the hall.

With your heart thundering in your ears you start rummaging through your drawers for that most essential of travel documents: your passport. The servants were not given access to lockers or any way to secure their belongings, so you’d hidden it in the bottom of your suitcase, inside a slit in the lining. As you stick your hand in it, fishing around, your hopes drop like a stone.

It’s gone.

You feel again, frantic this time, finding once more–it’s not there.

“Missing something?”

Donaka’s voice from the doorway makes you start; you lose your balance, tumbling over on the floor.

Anything you might say turns to ash on your tongue, as you look up at him, forbidding in a pair of black lounge pants, and nothing else. Why oh why does he have to be such a beautiful bastard?

You realize there’s no lying to him, so you stick out your chin. “Where is it?” you demand.

“In a safe place,” he answers, his lips pursing as he tries not to smile. “You have to admit…that wasn’t exactly secure.” He nods at your suitcase, and you clench your fist, the desire to hit him burning real in your bones. He made sure you didn’t have a safe place to put it.

“How dare you?” He just rolls his eyes, and crosses the floor to you in two strides, pulling you up off the floor.

“Come back to bed, darling. I was sleeping so peacefully before you had to go skulking around.”

“You can’t do this.”

You’re not sure who you’re trying to convince–him, or you?

He just lifts an eyebrow, sweeping one of those big hands across your cheek, into your hair. His hold on you is just this side of menacing. “There’s not a place in the world you could hide from me, y/n. Remember that.”

He tugs on your hand…and fuck you, if you’re not so flabbergasted, you don’t follow him like a starstruck idiot, absolutely flummoxed by his nerve.

Fine, you think. No passport? You just have to make it to your embassy. Surely they would put you in protective custody or something?

“You’ll never make it that far,” he tells you conversationally, his arm around your waist as you walk together down the hall.

“Where?”

“The Embassy, of course.”

Motherfucker.

He makes you pause at the window in the living room with him, the first rays of dawn beginning to shine through the massive windows. The forest looks like a gilded emerald; the water beyond it a blanket of diamonds. He follows your gaze, taking in the marvelous sight. Shouldn’t it be storming outside? Rain falling down, on this bleak day?

“How can you live with such an awful view?” he asks wryly, turning your attention back up to him. Before you can answer he kisses you, claiming your mouth for his as he presses you back against the window. His hand makes its way beneath your skirt, unimpeded as you did not take the time to even pull on your panties before making your escape from his bedroom.

“Donaka…” you protest, feeling utterly exposed like this, in the big open room, with nothing but glass behind you. The rest of the staff will be waking soon. The thought of one of your colleagues walking in on you like this makes you want to die all over again. “Please not here…someone will see.”

He scoffs at you, of course. “No one will interrupt us. This is my house. You are the only one here who never knew your proper place. We’re fixing that now.”

A small sound escapes you, something between a whine and a growl. All it earns you is a hushed, dark laughter, and this terrible man lowers himself to his knees before you, pinning you against the glass with one large hand spanning your torso. He smirks up at you, delighting in your self-righteous rage, your tears of frustration glittering in the corners of your eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he taunts you. “Isn’t this what you wanted all along? The bad man on his knees for you?” His smile is like a baring of teeth, and you both know who holds the real power here, no matter who is on their knees. His other hand has made its way up your thigh again, cupping your ass, squeezing hard enough to make you squirm against him, almost hurting you.

“No,” you whimper, fighting the urge to cry, your legs about to collapse out from under you.

“No?” he demands. “That’s not what I read.” His long fingers reach to test your center, finding your treacherous little cunt has cast her own vote for him yet again, moist and willing. You try to shy away but he pins you with his superior strength, utterly and completely.

“You missed the subtext,” you choke out, your heart breaking all over again. You were so resolved to fight the night before. That fire seems to have suffocated under the wet blanket of hopelessness again.

“Were there underlying themes in all that filth?” he asks incredulously.

Feeling idiotic all over again, your words lodge in your throat. But Donaka has paused in his ministrations, looking up at you with that laser-sharp gaze. “This isn’t what you wanted?” he asks with a deceptive gentleness. “My hands?” He pops the last buttons at the bottom of your dress, the garment gaping to bare all of you to his possessive gaze. “My mouth?” He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the curve of your lower belly, those plush lips upon your flesh making you tremble, curling your toes. He strums at your slick center, his sultry voice dropping low. “You didn’t want my cock to fill that aching emptiness inside you?”

You writhe against the window, crying out as two of those clever fingers press up inside you, pleasuring you and pinning you as his tongue seeks out your needly little clit. You could murder him, for the way he makes you hate him and want him all in one breath.

He stops as suddenly as he started, looking up at you expectantly. “Well?”

You feel like the dumbest woman who ever walked the earth–but then, you suppose he already knew that about you. He’s had your measure from day one, and has simply been playing with you like a cat with a mouse ever since. Yet now, you would rather die than tell him what you’re really thinking. You shake your head tearfully, locking your heart up tight.

It doesn’t matter, because it seems this man can read your fucking mind.

“Did you hope I would fall in love with you, y/n? You young, sweet thing.”

His words slide past your ribs and pierce your heart, deadly as a stiletto. You really were a fool.

“Maybe I did want your love,” you admit, voice rough as you force it past the lump in your throat. “But all you want is submission.”

He told you as much, over and over the night before.

Yet he does not laugh at you, the way you expect him to. He looks up at you with such a weight in that dark gaze, you cannot breathe. “What is love, y/n? Do I not provide for you? Protect you? I let you talk to me with insouciance I would never tolerate from anyone else. I am not a tender man, but what little I have, I have given to you. Tell me, what is love, y/n?”

It’s almost as though he’s truly asking you.

Suddenly you feel as though the floor has dropped out from under you. Does he love you? Or is he just fucking with you, the way he has been the whole time you’ve been here? You need to make up your mind about this, because the whiplash of wondering is going to be the end of you.

“Donaka…”

Then he narrows his eyes, that fire returned therein. “You are the one who taunted me with talk of leaving. Do you love me?”

“You scare me,” you finally answer, which should be a no…but isn’t exactly.

“You knew all along what I am, deep down. You sensed it, even without proof. You could have fled, but you stayed. You know why, bunny?”

You make a keening sound as he curls his fingers inside you, tormenting you with another wet kiss to your clit. “Do you know why?” he demands again.

You can hardly find your voice. “Why?”

“Because I fascinate you, the same way you fascinate me. I’m more than willing to try to fuck it out of our systems, but I suspect–” He presses your clit with his thumb, tearing a sob from your throat, stealing your ability to think, to breathe. Your head rocks back against the glass, hard enough to bruise. “I’ll be keeping you for a long time.”

Then his tongue dips into your slit, lapping at your clit, and you forget everything for a long while.

#donaka mark #donaka mark x reader #donaka mark x you #donaka mark x y/n #keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves #dark romance #plz be warned

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idkwhatimdoinghere1655 · 3 months ago

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(1) Hotel Girl - Carlos Sainz

Finally. A holiday. 5 days of some much needed and well deserved rest. Well, apart from the occasional email he'd have to send and phone call he'd have to take. But, it was a small price to pay for a working week of pure bliss.

Carlos had decided to spend part of his summer break by himself in the bougiest hotel he could possibly find. He would have rented a villa to himself, but then he'd have to cook, hire a chef or go out every night.

Cooking was not his idea of relaxing, a chef would be a waste for just him, and going to restaurants every night by himself was the literal definition of sad. He didn't want photos of him dining alone circulating the internet, no way.

At least in a hotel, he had room service, housekeeping, and food served on site so he wouldn't have to venture far. He might explore the local town if he felt like stretching his legs, but he wouldn't force himself just for the sake of tourism.

After spending what felt like hours travelling, going through menial airports and checking into the hotel, Carlos was finally able to switch his mind off and relax in his hotel room. It was too much room for one person, but he was in the position where he could treat himself without batting an eyelid.

Once he had unpacked, he figured he'd take a little wander around his home for the next few days. The hotel was a relatively new build, lots of glass and neutral greys and whites. The glass allowed for views of the stunning scenery in pretty much every area of the hotel.

The hotel was located on a vast and secluded beach somewhere in the Bahamas, which was plenty far enough away from anyone who could personally know him, as well as far away enough from the press. It was out of the way, so much so that there was only one road to go in and out of the hotel.

He wandered through the lobby, smiling back at the personnel on the desk before turning away to mind his own business. He walked past the different restaurants on offer, even if he didn't think that he'd be utilising them too much during his stay.

He also strolled by the spa, which he made a mental note to pay one or two (or more) visits to. Carlos could smell the essential oils from a mile away, and the soft tones of the typical spa music soothed his soul instantly. Well, for the meantime, anyway. God did a massage sound good right about now.

Having the stress and tension worked out of his muscles was exactly what he needed. Reading the board, he saw that he'd need to book at reception for his massages. He'd probably be spending every day in there, but that wasn't a problem for him. It was his holiday, and he could do whatever the hell he wanted to.

Now all he really had to check out was the pool, but he'd seen plenty of pictures when he booked online. He was too tired to walk down to the beach today due to the jetlag, so Carlos ultimately decided to take himself off to his room so he could rest properly.

Once he was back in his suite, Carlos wanted to relax on his balcony for a moment. He took himself over to the mini fridge and selected an ice cold water which he would undoubtedly be paying through the roof for, but he'd deal with it.

The balcony had a stunning view of the pool, and he could see the golden sands and the sun setting behind the horizon as it glittered on the surface of the water. There was a light breeze to try and combat the still sweltering heat that was emanating from the sun.

As he nosied around, he spotted couples on their terraces, entangled in each other's embrace. Now that was a view he could be doing without. Luckily for Carlos, all he had to do was turn his head left, and the rest of the world faded into obscurity. He could focus on the mesmerising view of the ocean and the pure silence that enveloped him.

He heard a few screen doors open and close, the patter of footsteps quietening down after the click. For a while, it was just him and his thoughts. No racing, no people, just him and the silence. It was a welcomed change, his mind finally allowed to stop rocketing around like it was on a track and it could just lull into a calm tranquility.

He didn't know how long had gone by before he heard a soft hum carried on the wind. He thought everyone had gone inside, or to dinner. But he only heard one set of footsteps on the tiled terrace surface.

Carlos would normally have just ignored the other person making their way outside, but something inside him told him to turn his head. His intuition was fully correct when his eyes landed upon her.

He couldn't quite tell whether he was thankful for noticing her, or very very ungrateful for having found something that could take up his thoughts and replace the peace he was supposed to have. She had taken a seat on her sun lounger - just like he had.

Her hair was pulled back in a bun at the back of her head, a few curls springing out from the uniformity. Her body was wrapped in a dress of colours swirling around her figure as long legs protruded from the skirt.

It was like her skin was shimmering under the light of the setting sun. Her eyes were hidden from him behind sunglasses, but from what he could see, the rest of her face was gorgeous enough to intrigue him.

She was reading a book, he couldn't see the title from where he was, but she seemed to be pretty engrossed. He tried to tear his eyes away, avert his gaze back over to the ocean and the small waves rippling across the top of the water, but he couldn't.

There was a view that he was much more interested in, and a view that he could have watched until the moon took its place as the beacon in the sky. She was breathtaking. The sight of her was like seeing the Aurora Borealis for the first time, an encapsulating experience that could never quite be forgotten. She was like a goddess, put there purely to tempt him.

Carlos' mind instantly took him down the dangerous rabbit hole of asking too many questions. He became his own detective, interrogating himself on the minimal information he had on her. From what he could see, there didn't appear to be a ring on her finger, and there wasn't a towel on the sun lounger beside her.

It seemed as if she was all alone. Maybe she was like him: taking a vacation away from the chaos of her life. Maybe she too had been entranced by the pool, the spa and the beach. The peace, the quiet and the serenity.

Even if this was the case, unknowingly, she had taken away his ability to experience those things. He was mentally scolding himself for suddenly becoming so interested on some random girl he had seen on her hotel room balcony, since he was supposed to be having some well-deserved him time.

Yet, he wasn't that lucky.

In a moment of weakness, Carlos coughed slightly. He wanted to see if she'd look up to see where the noise had come from, but she sat unmoving. Her eyes were seemingly still glued to the pages of the book, which she would turn every now and then. He couldn't see past the sunglasses.

As the sun set further behind the horizon, she still stayed on the balcony with her book. And so did Carlos. He would only go in once she did, even if that took him until the early hours of the morning.

While he was staring, he took the time to run through the myriad of questions that he was asking himself. Why the hell was he so enticed by this random girl on the balcony? Why was he letting himself get so worked up by her? Who was she? Her room seemed to be nearer reception, so that must have meant that her room number was below the one hundreds- no. Stop.

He would not stoop to borderline stalking the girl on the balcony. No. That wasn't the kind of guy he was. If he was really interested, he could try and talk to her if he saw her around. He wasn't going to go full Joe Goldberg on her. Yet.

Checking his watch, he saw that it was nearing on eleven pm. She had shuffled around in her seat a few times, the hardness of the sun lounger becoming uncomfortable after prolonged sitting. But, she was making good headway in her book.

She had gotten through a chunk of pages, maybe a quarter of the full thing. He wondered if it was interesting and if she was enjoying reading it, or if she was just reading it for the sake of finishing it and would then not recommend it to her friends.

Was she the popular one among her friends? She seemed to be. She seemed like the nice one that everyone would lean on for help, or the reliable one. He probably just thought that because that was the girl he wanted her to be. For both of their sakes.

Who was he kidding, he was unbelievably captivated by the girl on the balcony.

As the minutes ticked towards midnight, the girl put her bookmark back in her book and closed it, swinging her long legs over the side of the lounger and standing. He watched her hips sway as she took the few steps into her room, sliding the door shut with a soft click that sounded a lot louder in the quiet of the night.

Carlos was left as the only person sat outside. His mind was conflicted, to say the least. He was annoyed that he was so attached by this girl he had seen across the hotel complex, and it was so aggravating. Here he was, trying to relax, but no. The universe had other ideas.

It just had to throw a beautiful woman in the mix to rattle everything up. The weariness he felt was definitely exuberating his thoughts of her, but now he had to find some common sense, get a grip, and act like a normal, completely sane human being.

With a sigh, Carlos took himself back inside as well. He brushed his teeth, took in his own weary expression and went straight to bed. A relieved groan escaped his lips as he collapsed down on the bed, his body quickly succumbing to the grasp of sleep.

There were no dreams plaguing his mind through the night, and he woke up to a light knocking on the door. His back cracked as he got out of bed and slowly stepped over to his hotel room door. Opening it, he saw a small, old lady with a large kart behind her.

"Housekeeping?" she smiled, her eyes wandering up and down his body.

She had a light blush on her cheeks, clearly slightly flustered by the shirtless, handsome man that she was looking at. "Could you come back in half an hour, please?" he asked, and she nodded immediately.

"Of course, sir, of course. Have a nice day."

"You too," he returned, closing the door behind him. He'd just head down to breakfast so he could let the nice lady do her job. The room wasn't messy at all since all he had done was sleep and sit on the balcony to watch- oh yeah. Her.

He had escaped the thought of her during his rest and the few minutes of his morning, but his mind had become tired of running away from her. He wished he could just ignore her, but there was that small part of him that wished he could catch another tantalising glimpse of her.

Carlos dressed himself and sorted out his hair somewhat before heading out of the door with his room key and wallet in his pocket. He would have just done room service for breakfast, but he wanted to give the woman some space.

She was in the room next door and she flashed him a kind smile as he peered in the door. The walk through the opulent lobby was short, and he could feel a small sniffle coming on due to the aircon.

And just out of the corner of his eye, he could've sworn he had saw her. He turned his head, only to see another relatively pretty woman. But, she didn't hold a candle to the girl who was reading the mystery book on her balcony the previous night.

He shook his head, trying to waft away the thoughts of her as he tried to have a peaceful breakfast. Carlos continued to walk, keeping his mind fixed on the thought of breakfast as opposed to visions of her.

Just as he thought he had torn his mind away from the wonder that she was, he saw her. The real her, this time. Not a random woman who had some similarities to her when he didn't have the chance to look at her properly. There she was.

She was wearing just a pair of blue wash shorts and plain white top, but it didn't matter. She was the single most stunning creature he had ever laid his eyes upon. He watched her walk down a corridor, and he spotted a sign that they were serving breakfast at one of the cafes in the hotel.

Carlos couldn't help himself but follow on, keeping his distance so he wouldn't seem like too much of a creep. But, who was he kidding? He was being creepy, practically following her to where she was going just to eat breakfast. He couldn't help but be entranced by the way that her hips swayed side to side as she walked and the way her figure looked. Awe-inspiring was all he could attach to her.

She settled down at a table, all by herself yet again. The woman picked up her menu, her shining eyes scanning over the contents. Carlos strategically picked a table that wasn't too near her, but near enough that he could happily see her. He just saw the first thing on the menu and decided on that, since he had much prettier things to be looking at.

As the waiter approached her table, his ears picked up to try and suss out the language she was speaking. English, Spanish or Italian, he would be fine. His French was questionable at best, but it was similar enough to Italian and Spanish. Plus, he could always ask Charles if he was in need of any urgent lessons. Well, Charles or Duolingo.

He heard snippets of her conversation, some 'no's' and 'yeses' as well as a nice, polite bout of 'pleases' laced in the exchange. But, even if she was speaking English to the waiter, that didn't mean it was her mother tongue.

But from what he could hear, her accent sounded pretty English, so he felt it was safe to assume that if he did end up talking to her in some delusioned parallel universe, he could aptly communicate with her. As if he would ever get the opportunity to talk to her, though.

Even just the idea of her focus being on him while they engaged in small talk about the weather sent his heart into a spiral of undefinable emotions. It was something he so desperately desired, but also needed to resign himself to the fact that it wasn't going to happen.

When the waiter came to his table next, he was at a loss for what he was supposed to be ordering. He flipped the menu open, his mouth just reading out the first option his eyes found. He didn't mind eggs benedict, he could live with having that for breakfast.

The waiter was gone just as quickly as he came, and Carlos was left with just his jug of water and his thoughts. Again. God, this holiday was such a bad idea. He tried to take in the surroundings of the restaurant, the theme being beachy, but still with a hint of luxury.

He allowed his eyes to flit over to her every now and then, taking in the way her eyes studied the room around her and the way in which she sipped at her cappuccino. From the distance, he saw the slight lipstick mark that was left behind on the white ceramic.

Her food got there before his did, and it was exactly as he had ordered his. Eggs benedict. Yes, he had only ordered his since it was the first thing he could make out, but the delusional part of his brain saw it as fate.

Her smile was enchanting as she thanked the waiter, small dimples on her cheeks as her kind eyes looked up at him. He wanted her to smile at him when she looked at him, not some waiter who just brought out her breakfast.

Shortly after, the waiter was back with his eggs benedict, which he wasn't even hungry for anymore. He was hungry for something else. Something a hell of a lot sweeter.

He scarfed down his eggs benedict like a man starved, just so he could be gone before she was. He didn't want to allow himself to stoop to the point of waiting to watch her leave, just so he could see the tantalising way in which her body moved.

He forced himself to walk straight through the hotel, straight through the lobby and right into the elevator before he even had chance to think and wait. By the time Carlos arrived back in his room, the lovely cleaning lady had made the bed and done some general tidying.

He was not going to allow this random girl to ruin his relaxation time, no way. This was about him. No one else but him. So, why not take some time to lounge around the pool? He could go for a swim, catch a little sun, maybe do a sudoku or two. Now that was a proper version of repose.

The quicker he did things, the less his mind would drift back to her, so he quickly packed some things in his backpack. A book of sudokus, sun cream, a towel, and his phone. He checked the room, making sure there was nothing that he was missing before he set off on his leisurely stroll down to the pool.

His footsteps echoed off the tall ceilings of the corridors and the lobby, and he really was appreciating the luxury of the hotel he was staying in. Of course, he had only picked the best for himself, but he was cognizant of the ability to spoil himself a little.

Carlos had the choice of 3 pools around the resort, the first of which being the one located in the spa. Now, it would have been quiet, but he wasn't interested in the soothing music and smell of lavender right now. Instead, he opted for the soft splashes of water and scent of suncream.

The first of the other 2 pools was located by the beach, and the views were absolutely breathtaking. But, there were quite a few people there, so he finally decided on the other pool. There was nothing wrong with it, you could still see the ocean and take in the sights, so he didn't think it was too much of a compromise.

Settling on a sunlounger, Carlos stripped his shirt off and stuffed it into his backpack, allowing himself to soak up the sun. He'd hold off on the suncream for a short while, hoping he wouldn't get burnt on the first day of his holiday.

Leaning back on the lounger, Carlos took a deep breath, taking in the surroundings. There weren't many people around the pool, just the odd couple lazing around with a few people swimming laps. Now this was the peaceful atmosphere he was looking for.

He closed his eyes, feeling his skin soaking up the rays of sunlight. The palm trees around the pool rustled softly in the sea-side breeze, and it took the edge off of the pure heat that was felt all around.

The voices around him were hushed, people conversing in soft tones as to not disturb the quiet of the pool. Around an hour had passed of Carlos lying around on his sun lounger, he decided a dip in the pool was what he was wanting.

He left his stuff where he was sat, knowing it wouldn't get stolen or anything. He took the stairs one at a time, and the temperature of the water was perfect. Carlos swam over to the edge and rested his back against the cool tiles.

He was thoroughly enjoying people watching, mostly just couples their on their holidays. He had seen a few people who seemed to be alone like him, as well as a few families with older children.

He was thankful for his sunglasses so he could observe without being noticed and without seeming like a creep. Well, he might have been slightly creepy towards the girl from the balco- and there she was again.

He scoffed to himself, annoyed that he was letting himself think back to that. She was omnipresent practically, even if she wasn't there physically, she plagued his mind. He thought if he didn't fight the thoughts so much, then they wouldn't be so aggressive in their push to the forefront of his mind.

And just as he thought nothing else could go wrong, he heard the patter of feet on the tiled walkway through the near silence of his surroundings. His heart knew before he had seen her, and as soon as he had raised his head, he was greeted with the sight of the goddess he had seen.

She was wearing a sheer throw over her bikini, and she had a body that looked like it was sculpted by God himself to make her absolutely perfect for Carlos. She sat down at a lounger that was dangerously close to his, and he fully contemplated just sitting in the pool until she eventually left.

As she shrugged the throw off her shoulders and stuffed it into her tote bag, he couldn't help but marvel at the way her skin shone in the sunlight. If only he could just run his hands over her, feel the smoothness under his fingertips...

Alas, that wouldn't be happening.

Again, this was one of those times where he was unbelievably thankful for the genuins invention of sunglasses. His head may have been sat square on his shoulders, but his eyes were looking slightly to the right.

She readjusted her sun lounger, sitting back as she rummaged around in her bag for something. There it was, the book. The colours on the cover were the same, yet he still couldn't quite catch the title of the book. If he could hazard a guess, it was some sort of mystery, based off of the dark blues of the cover.

He couldn't help but see her as the type of girl to read a romance novel, but he wasn't sure. Maybe it was a book about romance, the deep intricate facets of love and devotion to someone. But he wouldn't know.

If he could, he would offer to rub sun cream on her back, his hands lingering for just a little longer than necessary. He knew he wouldn't be able to resist peppering a few kisses down her neck and across her shoulders. Carlos tried to imagine her laugh as she playfully told him to stop it.

He wouldn't stop, leaning his head down and kissing her more just to prove his point. Maybe he'd make a suggestive comment - it would have depended on the mood of the day. Even if that had never stopped Carlos before.

He had to snap himself out of it before his mind went to darker places, not wanting the physical effect of said thoughts to become evident. Now that would have been really really embarrassing. He'd never forgive himself if he let himself go that far.

Every page she turned was like an indicator of time passing by, the bookmark moving through the pages like a stop-motion picture. He wondered if she was enjoying the book, who her favourite characters were. Maybe there were some quotes that she'd remember, some more philosophical or meaningful ones.

If he could figure out the title, he'd give it a read. See if he enjoyed it too.

It was seeming like she was never going to leave, and Carlos could feel his skin becoming dried out by the chlorine, rippled and rough like unconditioned leather. He swam his way over to the edge of the pool, hauling himself out of the water with as much grace as he could.

Water droplets ran down his body as he made his way back over to his sun lounger. Unless he was losing his mind, which was highly likely, he could've sworn her eyes flicked up from the gripping words on the page and onto him.

He saw the blue of her irises, her pupils constricting as she momentarily looked at him. He could have sworn his heart was going to break through his ribs and skin, pouring out for everyone to see. As he sat down, picking up his towel and lazily running it over his body, he tried to take a few deep breaths.

'Get it together' he thought to himself, 'you're being stupid.' He really felt idiotic as he sat there, trying to calm down from something as simple as his random hotel crush looking at him for a moment as he walked by.

It was just human curiosity. That is all it was. She wasn't checking him out, she wasn't looking at him with particular interest. It was plain, simple, inquisitivity.

He draped his towel over the back of the chair so that it could dry in the heat, and he leant back, closing his eyes to try and chill himself out. As he sat there, his thoughts were running wild. He was so consumed by the simplest action, a teeny little look in his direction, and he was already getting frustrated at himself for letting himself feel this way.

"Hey, sorry, excuse me?" a voice broke him out of his thoughts.

A/N - Hey loves! Would really appreciate if you could reblog this, still think I'm shadowbanned for some absurd reason. Hope you enjoyed, been working on this for a short amount of time, and I quite like this one. Love y'all! 💖💖

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