#i just need to keep it to myself for a bit

[araybiaaa]

❝ temptation.❞  ‎ elias ‘stack’ moore x black!fem oc

ooo. 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔… modern!au, tension, flirting, cunnilingus (cause every man in this movie is a muncher!) black!fem oc, explicit sexual content.

ooo. 𝒔𝒚𝒏𝒐𝒑𝒔𝒊𝒔… where a good girl falls into temptation after she meets elias ‘stack’ moore.

ooo. 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔… soooo i wanted to try something different and do a modern!au with stack. (smoke’s still my favorite twin. the real girlies get it!) but i wanted to challenge myself a bit here.. this idea honestly came out of nowhere. i opened a03 and just started typing and somewhere down the line it became a one shot with 5k+ words?? 😭 also just wanted to say tysm for all of the love on my other fics. smoke and annie are near and dear to my heart and i’m glad you guys enjoyed my interpretations/writings for them. just a fair warning, the girl in this is very unserious but who wouldn’t be if you saw a vampire that looked like mbj! requests are open so send in something if you’d like — just keep in mind of my rules. anyway. likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated! ◡̈

“he’s dangerous. if you had any common sense you’d stay away from him.” their words seemed portent at first; a precautionary warning that had her wary of him. she didn’t know him but she’s heard enough stories about him to know that he was feared by everyone. his reputation was something akin of their town’s own boogeyman or freddy kreuger — he was dangerous, menacing and someone to be fearful of.

cleo hadn’t been in town long enough to know if his reputation superseded him or if the rumor’s held some weight of validity in them but her curiosity was piqued to meet the guy that had people hurriedly locking their doors when the sun went down and removing the welcome mats off of their front porches.

at first, she wondered if everyone in town had collectively decided to pull a prank on her as some sort of initiation or simply for their own amusement. because to her elias moore seemed more like a ghost than a vampire. she lurked outside after hours, even against their warnings — completely foolish and naive, but she never saw him around.

she doesn’t know why she wants to see him so bad, maybe it’s because everyone else has and she feels strangely left out. or maybe it’s because she needs to see for herself if there was a world where mythical creatures existed outside of the cheesy television shows she used to watch and the books that she read. but much to her dismayed defeat, time continued on with her being the only one who had yet to meet the feared elias moore.

“what does he look like?” she asked, feigning innocence behind her curiosity that her best friend, naomi easily sees through and narrows a pointed glare at her. “what? i just want to know in case i see him around somewhere!” she murmurs with a halfhearted shrug. it didn’t seem like an actual possibility with how she hadn’t so far, but she didn’t want naomi to know that she was willingly seeking him out.

naomi sighs, pursing her lips as she tapped her manicured fingers against her thigh. after a moment’s contemplation, she reveals: “i’ve only seen him around a few times. he doesn’t look like any of those sick looking vampire that you see on tv. he’s actually…fine.” at this, cleo’s eyebrows raise in amusement at her friend’s description. “he has this look about him that makes you weak in the knees whenever he smiles at you. it’s effortlessly sexy and his eyes — just don’t look in them too long cause you’re gonna find yourself wanting him to turn you into a vampire too just so you can spend the rest of eternity with him. i’m only telling you this because you asked, but don’t go around asking anyone else about him. you don’t want your daddy finding out about it.”

cleo nodded in agreement, but still found her mind wandering about him. she knows that naomi’s right, her overly religious father would have an aneurysm if he’d found out that she was asking questions about the town’s social pariah. but that didn’t stop her from visualizing him through naomi’s description.

she’s only ever heard of naomi speaking negatively about elias so for her to refer to him as fine despite her disliking of him had intrigued cleo. “yeah, you’re right. i was just curious but now i know.”

naomi’s pointed glare deepens, like she doesn’t fully believe cleo. “girl…stay away from him for your own good. trust me. i know another girl who was curious about him just like you are and she got turned.” cleo wonders if she’s just saying that to scare her away, but surprisingly it doesn’t.

“i hear you,” naomi hums in acknowledgment but thankfully doesn’t reprimand her any further about her curiosity.

…

sometimes cleo makes smart decisions.

when it came to school and her grades, everything was always calculated in her mind for her to choose the best possible outcome. she was annoying obsessive like that — always planning ahead, analyzing and assessing even the most mundane things that infiltrated her life. but other times, on seldom occasions, she makes not-so-smart decisions; one’s that has her acting impulsively and deviating from her normally pristine behavior.

she was supposed to be going back to her dorm room to get ready for a party that she was planning on going to with naomi. it was twelve o’clock and she had just finished an exasperating nine hour bartending shift with annoying alcoholics flirting with her and their heady, glossed over eyes staring at her ass in the tight fitted jeans that she was wearing.

her dad was less than pleased about her place of employment, but he knew that she needed extra money to pay for her clothes, shoes, hair and other miscellaneous items so he refrained from making any comments anytime she she complained about a customer or the minimal pay that she was getting.

cleo was closing the bar; wiping down the sticky counters, recounting the money in the register and overturning the chairs when she looks up and sees him. he’s standing across the street but even with the distance set between them she can feel the smolder of his gaze as he looked at her. cleo stands there for a brief moment just staring back at him until she mustered enough courage to make her way to the front door.

the overhead bell rings in a soft bellow as she pushes the door open. the humidity of the mississippi air sticks against her skin as soon as she steps outside. but even with its scorching temperatures, elias’ stare pierces deeper and has her skin burning. when she steps outside, she sees him making his way towards her — his gait was stealth and calculated.

she feels goosebumps prickle along her skin, air catches in her lungs and warmth curls around her neck as he sauntered closer. the first thing that she noticed was that although naomi had been right in her description of him, she had greatly undermined it. he wasn’t just fine; he was handsome and she could already feel her knees buckling weakly beneath her just at the sight of him. the second thing she notices is his eyes and the phosphorescent glow of red in his pupils. when he finally reaches her, he stands athwart from her and slowly drags his eyes over her body. his eyes find hers again and for a moment she wonders if she could hear the hastened beating of her heart.

“it’s kinda late for you to be out here ain’t it?” he posits and the deepened drawl of his southern accent somehow makes him more attractive.

cleo swallows a shaky breath, nodding. “i’m closing up the bar. we just closed about ten minutes ago,”

he raises his brows, trailing his eyes somewhere offside. “and they just left you to do it by yourself? don’t they know it’s dangerous people out here? vampires walkin’ about like they’re humans.” he says with sarcasm lilting in his voice and clicks his tongue against his teeth with a reprimanding tsk that follows.

cleo juts her chin outwardly. “i’m more than capable of handling myself.” she rebuttals, her hand perched on her hip as she looked at him.

his eyes find hers again and he smirks impishly, nodding his head. “i’m sure.” he says; and it’s something hidden in the way that he says it that has her cheeks warming again. a moment passes between them as he stares at her with an intrigued expression worn on his face. “you ain’t scared of me,” it’s more of a statement than a question, though she knows it’s intended to be the latter.

he sounds and looks surprised by this, that he’d finally encountered someone that didn’t run away when they saw him. “am i supposed to be?” she was more attracted to him than anything, unable to stop looking at his lips and his bared fangs that peeked out from his mouth.

he shrugs, “everyone else is.”

“well i’m not everyone else,” at that he doesn’t respond, only smirks at her again making the butterflies she feels in her stomach somersault deeper. cleo bites her lip as she looks over her shoulder towards the bar. ‘don’t ever invite him in anywhere, that’s how he gets you.’ she ignores her father’s words, pushing them to the back of her mind. “you wanna come in?”

he raises another brow, “you want me to come inside?” this time it’s her that shrugs and he only gives her a brief dubious look of contemplation before he’s following her inside of the bar at her open invitation. she could feel his eyes honed in on her ass and unlike with the drunken middle aged men from before, she isn’t repulsed at the realization.

“you know, at first i thought people were lying about who you are. it seemed like everyone knew what you looked like except for me.” she says, folding her arms against her chest and watching his eyes lower to her perked breast. she bites on her lip, intrigued.

“you were lookin’ for me?”

she nods briefly, “i wanted to know what you looked like.”

he walks towards her until he’s standing directly in front of her; way closer than he was when they were standing outside and it catches her slightly off guard. “well now that you have…whatchu think?” the remark is undeniably coquettish — the soft murmur of it accompanied by the lascivious look that he’s giving her has her pinned beneath his gaze.

“i think you’re not as scary as people make you out to be,” she responds; avoiding the answer that she knows he was truly searching for. but he settles for this one too, indulging in her retreat.

“you think you can make that assumption from a five minute conversation? what if i am like everyone says?” the air between them shifts into this palpable tension; hot and undeniable. he takes a few more steps forward until he’s hovering his heightened figure over her. she cranes her neck to look up at him, “i could bite you right now and you wouldn’t be able to do anythin’ about it”

“if you wanted to you would’ve done it outside,” she rebuttals, seeing the twitch of his curled upper lip.

“maybe i like playin’ with my food before i eat it.” and the innuendo behind his words has her breath hitching.

her skin pricks with goosebumps again at his teasing words. elias takes immediate notice of it; his nostrils flare as he inhales sharply with his heightened senses. and it takes a moment for her to realize that he must smell something radiating off of her body — arousal? excitement? — because he’s chuckling and licking his lips as he reached his hand out and brushed it over her hip. she shivers, not out of fear but of arousal. “and you sure as hell look and smell good enough to eat.”

cleo’s mouth gapes the only audible sound that comes out is a soft gasp. it’s the sound of her phone ringing that suddenly clefts through the tension hanging in the air. she jumps, startled, looking at elias whose eyes narrow at her phone like he’s inwardly cursing it for its intrusion. she reluctantly moves out of his grasp and walks over to pick up her phone that was sat at the edge of the counter.

picking up the phone she sees that it’s a text from naomi asking where she’s at. she’d gotten so distracted with elias that she forgot that she was supposed to meet naomi at their dorm room half an hour ago. she types a quick message in response, telling her that closing up took longer than expected and that she should go ahead to the party without her and that she would just meet her there instead.

she looks up from her phone at the same time elias is already walking out of the door, the sound of the bell ringing announces his departure as cleo stands there with her mind replaying their interaction.

…

a week passes before she sees him again. he’s standing outside of the door; staring, watching, waiting. she walks towards the entrance and holds the door open, beckoning him forward. “come in,” he walks inside as she closes the door behind him.

“you weren’t here the other night.” he says, catching her slightly by surprise. had he been looking for her this time instead of the other way around?

“oh, yeah. i was off. i don’t work on tuesdays and thursdays,” she explains watching as he nodded before looking away with a sheepish expression. after their last encounter, she spent the entire week thinking about him — how he looked at her, how his hand felt against her bare skin. cleo didn’t understand how she developed such a quick attraction for him, especially when she didn’t even give human boys any time of the day, but something about him was different.

naomi was right, all it took was one look from him and cleo found herself a fallen victim to his charm. “why aren’t you scared of me?”

she’s taken aback again, even more so than the first time. “why do you want me to be?” she challenges, noticing the pull of his jaw as he clenches it shut.

“your daddy’s a preacher ain’t he?” she furrows her brow, curious to know how he’d figured that out without her telling him. “how you think he’d react if he knew you were stayin’ behind after work to talk to me?”

ah, so that’s what this is about.

“well aside from me being grown and fully capable of making my own decisions, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” and she would definitely keep this secret from him for his sake and hers. “elias—”

“stack.” he interrupts to correct her.

“elias,” she says, unmoored by his correction. he gives her a look but listens as she continued. “i’m not talking to you because i’m trying to prove something to my dad or anyone else here.”

“then why are you?”

“because i want to.” she exasperates, frowning slightly. “why is that so hard for you to believe?”

“because you don’t know what you’re gettin’ yourself into,” elias retorts through a forewarning tone that sounded all too familiar of her family and friends who initially warned her away from him. he was right, aside from the fictionalized information that she got through old cw shows she used to frequently watch, she didn’t understand the depth and complications that came along with being a vampire. but her interest in elias made her want to know more — she wanted the truth and all its ugliness.

“then show me.”

…

elias stack moore had a tarnished reputation way before he got bit and transformed into a vampire. albeit he was the more level headed of the two, the smoke-stack twins were well known for their violent behavior and short fused tempers. their involvement with the notorious al capone and then stack becoming involved in a near ritualistic slaughter hadn’t done anything to ease anyone’s perception of him. his reputation expanded over the near century with people reciting tales of his life; often times dramatizing it completely.

but regardless of the half-truths or stack’s solemn search for penance — he still remained feared to the point where people would refrain from staying outside at night too long just to avoid him. he kept mostly to himself, only indulging in his sexual needs with a few other vampires that lived amongst the town. if he did leave his house, he made sure it was brief just to avoid any inadvertent run in’s.

he knew he was feared and had stories told about him that would give kids nightmares. but she was surprisingly the only one that didn’t tremble in fear when she saw him or tightly clutch her cross necklace and recite scripture from the bible in hopes it would protect them and keep him away like everyone else did. instead of running she gravitated towards him; accepting and intrigued by him in a way he hadn’t felt before.

he was wary at first of getting close to her.

she had a reputation as the preacher’s sweet and innocent daughter. he could only imagine the outcry that would erupt if anyone were to find out that she had been talking to him. but cleo insisted that she didn’t care and expressed interest in wanting to see/know him — all of him. so he invited her to his house.

she came over at work — still dressed in those tight jeans and that cropped shirt that accentuated her lithe physique — all wide eyed and innocent and fucking gorgeous.

as soon as she stepped over the threshold and inside, he felt something shift in the air as he realized that she was the first girl he’d ever invited into his house. he watches her as she looks around spectatingly, crouching over a bit with her hands on her knees to look at the display of photos that he had. “your brother?” she asks rhetorically as she looked at the candid black-and-white photograph that he had of him and smoke taken years back during the time of their youth.

stack nods tersely, pursing his lips in a moue.

and he’s grateful that she notices his reluctance and doesn’t prod any further because even though it’s been over a century since his brother’s death, it was still hurt carrying him around in his memories.

it’s stack who segues the conversation, now turning the spotlight on her. “you said you wanted me to show you, so what do you wanna know?”

cleo bites her lip in thought. stack’s mind is briefly distracted with how sexy she looks that he doesn’t initially hear her question until she asks it again.

“it took me a while to learn how to do it. i taught myself most of what i know, the guy who turned my ex that turned me didn’t teach me much. but it’s the first thing i taught myself.”

she nods, biting on her lip again as she lowered her eyes in a shy chagrin. “so that night at the bar…when you sniffed me what did you smell?”

“you really wanna know?” she looks up, almost contemplative, but nods. “lust. your hormones were all over the place.” her expression’s caught somewhere between mortification and a grimace. “my hearin’ is heightened too…i can hear your heart beatin’ fast as hell. you nervous?”

at her nod, he posits. “cause of me? why do i make you nervous?” he takes a preemptive step towards her, closing the distance between them. he hears her pulse quicken. smells the saltiness of sweat underneath the floral saccharine of her perfume.

she doesn’t respond, only looks at him underneath her lashes. “what else do want me to show you, cleo?” her breath hitches, eyes flit from his lips back up to his eyes in a quick maneuver. her heart beats louder and the smell of her arousal is so thick that he can almost taste it on his tongue. he inhales her scent; feeling his own arousal mix with hers.

he sees her throat stretch as she swallows.

…

it’s almost feral how he bares an arm around her waist and tugged her body closer to his. she gasps a bit at his onslaught — startled by the abruptness of his movements, but she’s immediately relaxing into his embrace the moment he brushes his mouth against hers. he kisses her with a ravenous vigor, sliding his tongue over the cupping of her lower lip as a terse plea for entry. she whimpers before she succumbs to his prowess, slacking her jaw wider as he intertwined their tongues.

his kisses are bruising and greedy to the point where he steals all the air that was in her lungs. it’s a slip of tongues and a crash of teeth messily colliding, through guttural groans and breathy whimpers. stack’s arms tighten their hold around her before lowering to her ass. he squeezes her through her jeans before giving it a firm smack; smirking at the way it ricocheted. he gives it another hard squeeze as his mouth nipped at the exposed flesh of her neck. “tell me what you want,” he rasps; gruff and throaty, his breath hot against her skin.

his lips pucker as he nipped at her skin; sucking deep, purple love-bites all over. (and it feels so good that she doesn’t even care that she’ll have to cover up the evidence of his markings with makeup to hide from her father and naomi.) she grips the back of his head, holding him against her as she fluttered her lashes and indulged in the pleasure.

“this,” she whispered, voice shaky, body trembling with an intense want. he groans against her neck; alternating between nipping and sucking. and he gets too into it because she hears a low sound that mimics a growl and feels the sharpness of his fangs grazing her clavicle. she gasps, taken back and he’s immediately recoiling — looking up at her with his swollen lips and lidded eyes.

“fuck. i-i’m sorry, i didn’t mean—sometimes when i get too excited it happens. but i wasn’t trying to…” he’s panicking, careening apologies to her. but she’s sliding her mouth over his and kissing him deeply with fervor.

“it’s okay,” she whispers, still pecking at his lips.

stack furrows his brow, “yeah?”

“just don’t bite too hard.”

he nods, lightly grazing his teeth into the softness of her flesh. he nibbles at her neck with the tip of his bared fangs biting deliciously into her skin. the pain is sharp but still pleasurable enough to have her eyes rolling to the back of her head. his hands make their way to the front of her body, sliding over her abdomen and hovering at the waistband of her jeans. she breathes softly through her parted lips, emanating a whimper when he bites into her lower lip. “you smell so fuckin’ good,” he murmurs, reaching his hands between the crux of her thighs and sliding his thumb over her slit — passing the pleasure over the seam of her jeans.

her underwear suddenly becomes sticky with her arousal and knowing that he could smell it on her was sending her over the edge. she feels this incessant pleasure building; coiling in her stomach and spreading through the heat of the place where she desired him the most. “can i taste you?” at her consenting nod, he maneuvers them towards the couch and eases her down onto the cushion.

he pries their wet lips apart with a ‘smack’, a string of saliva draws at their disconnection. she holds the smother head of his gaze, watching as he lowers to his knees. “lift your hips up for me,” he murmurs, already working at the buttons and zippers of her pants that loosen around her hips.

she concedes, arching her hips off of the couch just enough so that stack’s hands are able to tug the tight fitted fabric over her hips and down her thighs. “look at you,” he says; marveling at the sight of her arousal. the dark spot is visible against her pink underwear — soddening through the fabric. “already so wet and ready for me.” he kisses the inside of her thighs, nudging the bridge of his nose against her cunt.

she shivers through a moan, it’s just the barest of contact but she’s hypersensitive to his touch. his deft fingers pull at her ruined underwear, sliding them down her legs and absentmindedly throwing them aside so that she’s sat completely bare in front of him.

her cheeks warm at her vulnerability.

stack’s hand brushes against her calf as he gripped her leg and hefted it easily over his left shoulder. his eyes hone in on her cunt as she spreads open; staring in awe at the slick that’s gathered between her folds. he grabs at her other leg, barring it around his right shoulder until he’s got a perfect position of her cunt displayed in front of him.

cleo arches her hips slightly, holding herself upright as she rests the palms of her hand against the cushions. her heartbeat quickens at the desire that grows, palpable and thick in its emerging, sending another jolting throb directly into her cunt. she could feel the wisps of his breath as he leaned in. he brushes a teasing kiss against her thigh, humming softly at the way she shivers in response.

he nudged himself closer towards her cunt; pressing soft kisses against her skin in passing before he finally reaches the place where he could smell the the evidence of her want. he presses a kiss against it and she shudders, feeling the tension roll down her spine and curl into her toes. she doesn’t even have a moment to gather her bearings, because then he’s flattening his tongue and licking her up from the back of her perineum to her clitoris. “oh—fuck. s-stack,” she bellows a soft cry of pleasure, her hands grip into the couch to seek purchase.

and when he reaches the over sensitive bud, he puckers his swollen lips and sucks her into his mouth; skillfully using his tongue to massage her clit. she feels the texture of his tongue stimulating her clit, sending an overwhelming wave of pleasure burning through the crevices of her body. her breath catches in her throat and she’s shivering so hard that stack has to pull his mouth away to remind her to breathe.

she nods numbly, blinking through the fogginess of her vision. she parts her lips and exhaled shakily; attempting to lull her breathing. “grind your hips against my face,” she whimpers, reaching a hand up to hold the back of his neck to anchor herself as she slowly rolled her hips against his face.

“ohmygo—” the added pressure of his nose and tongue assaulting her clit has her dizzy. his hands grip her hips, fingers dig into the meat of her thighs holding her against him.

he makes his way up her vulva; pausing right before he reached her clit and increased the pressure so that the base of his tongue was forced slightly under her clit. he slows his movements, unrelentingly in his ravenous feat as he holds the pressure there. she grinds against him again, shaky, still trembling through her movements as she buried his face deeper into her cunt.

she could hear the lewd stickiness of her slick as he licked up her pussy; could see it glistening over his face — a messy mixture of her arousal and his saliva dripping down his chin. she’s already shaking towards her release but then he grazes his fangs softly against her clit and she’s suddenly bellowing out cries of pleasure as she cums.

she pulsates around his tongue, the tension tugs in her lower belly. he slides his thumb through her slickness, watching as she haphazardly falls backwards against the couch cowering away from the overstimulation. stack pulls away, lapping his tongue around his mouth as he licked up the remnants of her slick. “you okay?” he asked through a rasped breath, watching as she laid there in a dazed stupor.

she nods, just barely, feeling the heaviness of her breathing begin to lull. cleo never thought that someone as smart as her would be drawn into the temptation from a vampire, but here she was — with her cunt still throbbing around nothing, legs and body completely spent, eyes looking at his face that’s covered in her juices, and it entices her.

and it’s then that she realizes that she was totally and completely fucked. he’d warned her that she didn’t know what she would be getting herself into if she became involved with him but with the way he ate her pussy out so good and had her wanting more, cleo realized that she was willing to test the boundaries of her restraint.

…

cleo didn’t like lying, she’s always prided herself about being a truthful person regardless of the repercussions that could follow. she didn’t like people lying to her so in return, she treated everyone with the same decency of respect and remained truthful about everything. it’s not until she starts dating stack that lying easily becomes integrated into her life.

she goes to church with her father every sunday, sits in the front pew and listens as he recites sermons and scriptures about demons and evils that plagued the world. it guilted her knowing that he was wistfully unaware of the fact that she was bedding with someone he referred to as one of the demons that walked amongst them, but the way he made her feel was better than anything she’s ever experienced before.

so she keeps the secret buried deeply, and listens halfheartedly at his preachings as she finds her mind wandering on stack again. it’s easier to hide behind her fib with her father, but naomi’s naturally pestering curiosity always gets the better of her and a simple response of “i already have something planned.” does not offer enough of a rational explanation for her.

“you’ve been acting weird these past few weeks…” she acknowledges with a skeptical brow and pursed lips. she narrows her gaze in on cleo who desperately hopes that she doesn’t look too hard enough to see the hickies stack sucked on her shoulder and breast the other night. “you’re here during the day, but always sneak out to go somewhere at night like you’re meeting someone,” she accents, her perception’s dangerously close to discovering cleo’s secret.

“i’m not.” the lie falls disbelieving to both of their ears. naomi gives her a narrowed look, tilting her head. she bites on her lip in contemplation, sighing softly as she concedes. “okay! but you can’t say anything to anyone especially not my dad.”

naomi gives her a bemused look but nods.

“i might be seeing someone,” cleo murmurs, averting her eyes to naomi to see her eyebrows raise. “i am seeing someone. but don’t ask who! because i’m not going to tell you who it is. i’m only telling you this because i know you wouldn’t stop hounding me if i didn’t.”

naomi stands there quiet, considering her words. “is he married?”

“what!?” cleo beseeches, frowning at her friend’s absurd accusation. “girl, no! i am not a fucking homewrecker!”

“hey, it’s a fair assumption!” naomi rebuttals, raising her hands in the air at her defense. “you’re being sneaky and sleeping over at his place at night… it made me think that you only go over there because that’s the only time that you’re allowed to.”

“no. i’m not fucking a married man.” cleo states. she continued to stuff her clothes in her overnight bag, avid to get to stack’s place. she could feel naomi’s he eyes still piercing through her, curiosity sits on her tongue wanting to inquire further about the guy’s identity. but she thankfully relents, only giving cleo a hum of acknowledgment when she grabs her bag and clamors a parting bye as she walks out.

when she arrives at his house, she’s greeted with a smile and kiss, his arm wraps around her waist as she melts softly into the embrace. he maneuvers her bag from her hands, allowing to to fall absentmindedly to the floor with a loud thud. his hands are groping her everywhere; sliding over her ass, squeezing her titties, palming her cunt through the flimsy pair of leggings that she wore. it’s almost feral how both of their bodies aligned with the same wanton desire.

she loves how the outside world becomes a distant memory for them as they remain secluded in the privacy of his house with no worries of interruption or ridicule waiting. “if you had any common sense you’d stay away from him,” had been a warning, but she found herself gravitating towards him despite their attempts of deterrence. and she had no intentions of letting go of this feeling or him.

[gr4cier4cie]

♡ i'm a shameless caller (she's a full machine ♡ 2

or: you're the best thing that had ever happened to him. lando can't help himself from reminiscing a bit. or a lot. or all the time. (can be read as a happy standalone or a flashback from part one of this!!) fem!ex!reader x lando norris pt 1

warnings: none just a lil fluff and angst!! THIS IS A FLASHBACK TO WHEN LANDO AND READER WERE IN A RELATIONSHIP TO HELP FIX THE DAMAGE I CAUSED W PART ONE IM SORRY!!

♡

voicemail 1: — [1.10]

"hey, love, just got back to the hotel. [pause] quali was a killer. missed you like hell the entire time. can't even sleep without you anymore. [laughs] mum just sent me that video of you two baking at the house yesterday. she really likes that blue scarf on you—she told me to tell you to keep it. says it looks better on you than her. [laughs] she'd probably kill me if i said i agree, but i do. love you lots. hope you're, uh, sleeping well. even if i'm not. see you soon, baby."

voicemail 2: — [00.52]

"oh, baby, you would not believe what just happened in the drivers' meeting! [laughs] max tried to—actually, no, this is too good for voicemail. please, please, please call me the second you're out of work. it's absolutely mental. also! good luck on your presentation today, baby. you're going to smash it. i'm crazy proud of you. miss you lots. love you forever."

voicemail 3 — [1.12]

"hi, lovely, just got the care package you sent. [pause] how'd you know i was missing home? thought of it this morning, actually. feels like.... like you know me better than i know myself. sorry i didn't get a chance to call until now. had to stop carlos from eating all the biscuits you made me. [laughs] i stole a bunch of the tiny hotel soaps as a present for you when i get home. call me when you're done with work, yeah? love you."

voicemail 4 — [1.13]

"baby! wake up! i just had the best dream—it was you and me at home, and you were wearing my old race jacket and you were... cooking, maybe? i dunno, i'm already forgetting it. [laughs] but it was.... good. we were happy. simple as that. [sighs] i miss that. you, in the kitchen, in my race jacket. send me a picture of you in it when you get a chance. i miss you like crazy over here. anyways. love you forever."

voicemail 5 — [00.53]

"hi, lovely girl. i'm hiding in the bathroom of that gala thing i told you about. you would love it—they have the mini strawberry shortcakes you're obsessed with. ate like, four of 'em, just for you. [pause] keep reaching for your hand when i'm talking to people. keep thinking you're here with me. [pause] anyways. call me when you get a chance."

voicemail 6 — [0.50]

"hi, baby. i just found that note you left me in my bag. [sighs] you're really... something, aren't you? it's, uh, been one of those days. i really needed it. i really needed you. kinda pathetic, yeah? [laughs] sometimes i wonder what i did to deserve you. [pause] call me when you wake up? just... wanna hear your voice. love you."

voicemail 7 — [0.51]

"morning, lovely. just had breakfast with the team and... [laughs] you'll never believe what happened. you know the bracelet you made me? the beaded one, with my number on it? everyone else wants one, too. said it's giving me luck, or something. [laughs] you should charge them, if you ask me. anyways. love you lots. see you soon."

voicemail 8 — [00.21]

"hi love. it's properly miserable here in silverstone. raining like hell. my hair's all messed up, now. [sighs] don't laugh when you watch me on tv, yeah? i'll know if you do. [laughs] love you, baby."

voicemail 9 — [1.12]

"baby? just got your text about your day... wish i was there with you. would've made you that awful tea you pretend to like when you're stressed. [pause] i'm sorry it wasn't good today, baby. you don't deserve that. i'm so proud of you and... [pause] god, you deserve everything. everything good. i promise tomorrow will be better, yeah? i love you so much. hold on, okay? i'll be home soon."

voicemail 10 — [1.16]

"hey, baby. i know you're in the air right now, but... [sighs] i just watched the sunset from melbourne. took a couple pictures for you. can't wait till you're here so we can watch it together. [pause] i keep, uh, thinking about how you... how you changed everything for me. i didn't know life could get this good, you know? didn't know it was possible to love someone as much as i love you. [laughs] i was thinking maybe after the race... [pause] we could talk about you coming to more of them? like, all of them? permanently? [laughs] anyway. call me when you can. love you. so much."

♡

note: so... for those of you who read part one im sorry i tried to make this happier but i am now realizing it's not much better 😭 i want to apologize but what can i say?! angst IS my specialty!! MWAH LOVE YOU ALL!! taglist: @f1fantasys

[keykoso]

Formula 1 drivers as High School students

To spark some creativity and to practice drawing faces I challenged myself to draw all the current and some retired F1 drivers as if they where high school teachers or students for my F1 spiderman AU. So let's start from the begging.

The Seniors

Max Verstappen: A little bit of information on Max. He sits outside the music classroom because the piano music calms him down but he always leaves before Charles exists the room because doesn’t want to admit that he enjoys it. Max has big anger issues and a talent for boxing. Because Daniel, as the PE teacher, noticed that Max was potential he gave Horners number. Daniel was Horner’s pupil back in the days but they had a falling out. However Daniel knows that only Horner can shape up Max to his full potential. In this AU Horner has a boxing school.

Charles Leclerc: Charles has the best face card in school but his fashion sense is his downfall. Also Charles was bleached tips (00s vibes). Also also Charles is convinced that Artur started that rumor but Arthur pleads innocent. Lando is having the best time in the world because of that.

Lance Stroll: Lance is like the super rich but Esteban sees the real him, this introverted kid that just wants peace and quiet. Lance adores Estebans non stop talking that is way they are always sitting together at school assembly and at lunch. Basically, Lance let's Estaben do the talking.

Estaben Ocon: Esteban is the go to guy at school if you need any help especially if you can’t reach something.

The Juniors

Oscar Piastri: Oscar is the Spiderman of my f1 spiderman au. He has the personality of Andrew Garfield Spiderman. Smart smart kid. Lando is always copying homework from him. Hamiltons favorite student. Lewis looks out for Oscar because he sees that the kid has brains but for some reason the brightest pupil is always sleeping in his English class. Oscar noticed that Alonso is interested in him, but his spidey sence is saying that something is up whit him. So as the story progresses Oscar is keeping a distance from his science teacher. However, Lando works for Alonsos lab so that makes it complicated because Oscar wants to protect his best friend

Lando Norris: Lando has this Harry Osborn portrayed by James Franco vibes. HE IS NOT THE GREEN GOBLIN in my au. I'm sorry but I will not hurt my precious baby. The class clown who's always dragging Oscar along with his pranks and antics.

Yuki Tsunoda: The short kid with anger issues. Car guy, always talking about them and dreams about owning a Nissan Skyline car. Has a mood board for his dream cars. If you missed a school fight he's the guy whit the tea.

Logan Sargeant: The exhange student. Keeps it to himself. Only here for one year. Oscar befriended him at science class.

The Sophomores

Liam Lawson: The Lightning McQueen kid, he's the type for guy that would do anyting to be popular and play the guitar to the girls on there first date. Barbie movie reference. An if anything happens to him, Liam runs to the teacher to complain about it. If any of the school teachers see him coming they start running away.

Franco Colopinto: The girls guy, absolute romantic, can get away with anything because he knows how to smooth talk his way out of trouble. However, for some he disappeared for a period of time. Nobody knows here he went. But when he got back Franco acted as if nothing had happened.

Jack Doohan: Because Jack wants to be tiktok famous he shaved his head in the school bathroom while Liam filmed it. It did go viral and he got called to the principals office. Also Jack is like the biggest sunshine and I alot of girls adore him but he's clueless why that is, so he usually never notices the attention he gets.

The Freshmans

Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman they met in preschool. Oli was dressed as a bear for halloween and because he was already the tallest kid in class Kimi really thought that Oli was a bear. Of course the teacher had to explain to Kimi that that’s just a costume. Since then they’ve become friends. Oli always laughs at that moment and Kimi as a shut up gift have Oli a teddy bear that he keeps in his locker. Also Lando believes that Oli and Kimi will become the next pranksters after he and Oscar graduates. That’s why George is absolutely terrified and tries to befriend the younger freshman so that we could discipline from the start. However, the fact that Kimi for some reason has a get out of jail card from Toto him and Oli absolutely abuse this power. Lando noticed that and is super jealous because he’s always sitting in detention.

Gabriel Bortoleto: Gabriel and Oli got drunk together and forgot that they have an exam at Alonso’s science class. Fernando understood that the boys were shit faced but he pretended not to notice Oli sitting in class with sunglasses and drinking energy drinks while Gabriel was as pale as a paper sheet.

Isack Hadjar: because he was this foreign accent he got confused with Logan and was placed in the junior class. Nobody even questioned his existence but Yuki noticed that Isack is absolutely lost at the curriculum. Isack explained that he’s not the exchange student and after lunch break he was back with the freshman. That’s the story how Isack befriended Yuki.

NEXT PART - THE TEACHERS

[hatosaur]

this show sucks and i'm angry

i'm back on this blog for the very specific reason that i'm filled with spite and rage. i Must talk about how bad tlou hbo season 2 is. spoilers (and lots of hatred) ahead.

(i know i stated before that i wouldn't be watching; that was a fuckin lie)

the show is so...pretentiously written in the second season because they keep adding insignificant fluff that overall weakens the story beats. the game story is neat and clean in that it doesn't waste any time, because, go figure, it doesn't make for a good game story. the player wants to get in there. tv shows don't have the same needs but god, that doesn't mean that you can stretch everything and fill in the gaps with frivolous, drawn out dialogue that explains EVERYTHING that the characters are thinking.

the game really shines in the brevity of its dialogue -- its quiet, contemplative scenes that allow you to sit in the emotions of the moment. the show does the exact opposite and tells us TOO MUCH. first episode, we re-acquaint ourselves with these characters; what have ellie and joel up to? surely we get bits of the sudden iciness between them. nope, dina has to straight up ask joel, "why is she mad at you?" how's joel feeling about it? surely, it's up to viewer interpretation. maybe we can read joel's expressions and interactions with other characters -- nope, he goes to ✨therapy✨ now, and we have to be told what ellie and joel's relationship is through a brand new, useless character who adds zero impact to the story's themes/messages. great. cool. i love being told what's happening instead of just seeing it for myself.

each episode is worse than the last (and there are only three out at the time of me writing this!) with completely bizarre writing choices and massive tonal issues. abby is perhaps the most egregious example. i won't talk about my gripes with the casting because it's a dead horse. instead, let's talk about how she killed joel. abby prefaces the act by going on this longgggg speech about who exactly she is, what she's there for, who joel killed to make her do this, xyz, everything under the sun. then as she grabs the golf club and continues her speech, joel tells her to "shut the fuck up already and do it." joel saying the game's version of this ("save whatever speech you got and get it over with.") is badass, because it implies that it could've been anyone related to someone he's killed in the past, but it just happened to be abby that day. the ambiguity of whether he knew who exactly he killed or not adds to the tragedy of the story, because this was the one guy he had to kill to save ellie. in the show, it's almost comical, because we're fed this long speech that is entirely unnecessary and kills the flow of the scene; she JUST shot him in the fucking leg, you can't just go into a monologue after that. him knowing it was jerry he killed means fuck-all to the story. it works to the story's detriment, in fact, because it's a story about blind revenge, and it's a recurring thing in the game that these characters don't know what the fuck the other's motives are; they just know each other's actions.

the final blow on joel lacked the brutality and rage of the game. like, impaling him? is it meant to like, show that this scrawnier abby has a different set of abilities now that she doesn't have muscles to prove her prowess as a killer. in fact, what is it now that makes abby a daunting character? is it her drive to kill? is it her obsession? is it her being slightly more fucked up than her friends? because none of this was telegraphed to the audience. she just read as a hurt person. which SHE IS. but again. we're not meant to know this much about abby this early on. the show flouts the game's use of perception and throws everything it possibly can at the audience all at once, sacrificing the mystery of the narrative.

episode three is the worst of the episodes that are out (again, how are things this bad at just episode three?). we fast-forward to jackson three whole months after joel's death. it's implied that ellie was...committed to jackson's equivalent to a psych ward and that's the reason. i don't mind setting the stage for ellie's trauma as it's a huge part of the story. but three months? that takes so much of the wind out of the sails of the story. (the story is so bogged down by modern expectations of mental health. no, we don't need to see joel in therapy. no, we don't need to see ellie in the psych ward. these moments literally, literally don't matter.) dina has withheld info about joel's death (let's not get into the weird choice to swap tommy and dina for patrol; yet another nonsensical choice), and the two go through fucking LEGAL AVENUES TO GET AFTER ABBY? what the fuck?? you have ellie, a character who throughout the entire course of her life as a young person has seen absolutely no reason to respect authority figures, systems, or processes, and yet she has to wait for the people of jackson to vote on whether she should go after abby or not. ellie gets her own speech on what her motivations are. again, we know what her motivations are, it's pretty easy to tell, considering it happened in the previous episode. AGAIN, this entire scene doesn't impact the story in any way whatsoever...except in one way, as perceived by craig mazin.

seth (homophobic asshole) vocally supports the proposal, and this leads to him later giving ellie one of his guns as she's leaving jackson (which she does regardless of the vote, fuck fuck fuck why are they doing this). they share, i guess, a "meaningful moment" and they left. because do you guys get it yet? the show's about clashing forces needing to get along. because if we all just understood one another's intentions a little bit, maybe we'd be alright in the long run, right?

maria is the one who intercepts the girls as they leave, in the game. go figure, they make her black in the show and shelve her completely in the second season. i would think if they wanted to press a little more on the domesticity of jackson life, they would've kept this connection but...no. give the screentime to the white homophobe. because his actions totally needed to be justified, right? (for those who don't watch the behind-the-scenes featurettes, neil druckmann paints seth as a character who, in his own eyes, seeks to protect his community "in his own way." fuck off.) progressing the story in this way through a homophobe is so fucking morally corrupt. i get that they might be wanting to make a point about a perceived "unforgivable" person having the chance to redeem himself, but come the fuck on. we're in the middle of one of the worst moments in modern history for queer people and you choose to do THIS.

on the note of how they're depicting queer issues, LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY DO TO DINA (beloved, proudly bisexual partner of ellie). ellie and dina's relationship in the show is very different from the game. i'll maybe save the whole can of worms for a different post, but in episode three in particular, dina (in the game, an assured character; a rock for ellie's instability) doesn't confirm her feelings toward ellie. in fact, she dances around it; she poses the question about rating the kiss, the two banter, and dina confirms to ellie instead that she went back to jesse. what. the fuck? she plays off the kiss as something girls do when they're high, or drunk, or whatever. giggles and says, "you're gay, i'm not. i wanna know how good i was." which is the most insane fucking line in the show so far.

now, the present theory is that dina will realize she's bisexual later. but why? what room is there in this story for that? why did craig mazin make the significant change to explore dina's sexuality, and why does he think he's the guy to do it? because he's already fucked up. he's made dina ditzy, he's affirmed ellie's insecurities about the kiss, he's made her go back to jesse (ensuring she gets pregnant because of that fuckass timeskip). i won't deny that these things might happen to bi people irl, or that exploring a character's realization of their sexuality is something that could be depicted more. but why make this change from source material to adaptation? why add this to the ever-growing list of plotlines added on top of the base one?

at present, ellie and dina's relationship is left up in the air, removing the stability that both would've been able to rely on as the story progresses, and effectively making them "gal pals." tale as old as time, i guess.

the show will inevitably be praised for its queer rep anyway, because it's bolstered by the bill and frank episode (a positive example of original content from the show) and the kiss scene from episode one (more racy than the original's slow and sweet kiss because i think girls should makeout on screen more anyway), but genuinely? it's not hitting this season and i don't have hope it (nor the previous issues) will get better.

[seungsluv]

collision

── .✦ content warning : SMUT! MDI!! fem!reader; mentions of drugs; weed; handcuffs; flirting; dubcon (?); explicit sex; kinda enemies to lovers but in a silly girly pop way;

✮⋆˙ pairing: dealer jisung × fem!reader

✮⋆˙ word count: 8,9k

✮⋆˙ synopsis: you were suffering from the pressure of needing to be perfect, so you reached for jisung's help, turns out he helped you in a different way.

✮⋆˙ A/N: heyy!! so... I had this idea and decided to write it! this is my first post and English is not my first language so pls be gentle ;) if you enjoyed it pls reblog and lmk what you think!! ૮ ․ ․ ྀ��ა

Han Jisung was a disaster — no doubt about it. That messy black hair, that lean but strong body, and that infuriating attitude... But despite everything, Jisung was weird. He always had his headphones on, wore band tees no one knew, and had that distant look in his eyes. Being seen with him could ruin my reputation. So I buried that dark desire — that twisted balance between playing the good girl and craving the loser.

That was six months ago.

Back then, I was considered perfect. Perfect daughter. Perfect student. Perfect girlfriend. But I wasn’t. Or at least, I didn’t feel that way. The pressure they put on me constantly made me question whether all that perfection was real or just a well-constructed mask. Perfection was suffocating. And while I was trying to escape this, I ended up getting close to him.

I was leaning against the wall outside the biology classroom, waiting for the bell to ring. I wanted to find a discreet way to approach Jisung without anyone noticing. When the bell rang, he walked out – eyes down, headphones on, as always. I deliberately bumped into his shoulder, slipping a folded note into his hand, and kept walking as if nothing had happened.

As I walked away, face blank like a well-rehearsed mask, he, on the other hand, took one second too long staring at the crumpled paper in his hand, frowning with that confused expression he always made when something didn’t go as planned. The note said something simple, direct, but impossible to ignore:

"Behind the school. Today. No questions."

And he showed up.

When the final bell rang, I was already behind the schocolate – that hidden corner everyone avoided. The wait felt like forever. It was only when you heard the familiar, off-key roar of his van that your body, against your will, reacted with a jolt of anxiety. I bit my lip, annoyed at myself. He stopped the vehicle and rolled down the window with lazy slowness. His eyes scanned me with an expression that mixed curiosity and disbelief.

“You wanted to talk to me?” he asked, like it was the most unlikely thing in the world, ‘cause it was.

I crossed my arms, keeping my posture firm, even though my heart was racing.

“I hope you can keep this between us.” I walked around, sliding into the passenger seat without waiting for an invitation.

Jisung turned in his seat to face me, one eyebrow raised.

“Okay… that was intense.” He smirked, a little surprised, a little amused. “Planning a kidnapping?”

I let out a short, dry laugh. “If I wanted to kidnap someone, it’d be someone more useful.”

He genuinely laughed this time. A light sound, like he didn’t care about the provocation. I hated that about him. The way he seemed immune to my acidity.

“Touché. So, Ice Queen, what do you want?”

“Drugs.” I said it bluntly, keeping my gaze on the window as if that way would make it all less ridiculous.

“What?” He coughed slightly. “You want… drugs?”

I sighed, turning my face to look at him.

“What did I write in the note? No questions, Jisung. Just drive.”

He let out a muffled laugh when he noticed me glancing around nervously.

“No one saw you, relax. If they had, I think they’d be at the gates with torches and pitchforks by now.”

The drive was quiet, except for some punk band playing softly on the van's radio. In the passenger seat, you tried to pretend I was in control. Jisung, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease — one of those qualities that irritated and intrigued me in equal measure.

The van rumbled on for a few more minutes until he said:

“Huh. Funny. I always thought you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you. I just avoid socializing. Especially with people who are better at it than I am.” My voice came out more honest than I meant it to.

He shot me a quick glance.

“Was that… almost a compliment?”

“More like a ‘don’t piss me off.’”

“Fair enough.” He smiled, eyes back on the road.

Arriving at his place, I walked in without hesitation, my eyes scanning the chaos. Nothing really surprised me: mess, the smell of old wood, cheap incense, weed, and forgotten microwave pizza created a weirdly cozy atmosphere.

“Make yourself at home… or stand there judging my lifestyle, if you prefer,” he said, walking to his room with his hands in his pockets. “Though I should warn you, standing’s way less comfortable.”

I scoffed but sat on the edge of the couch, fingers tapping your leg.

“What is it you actually want?”

“Something to make me stop thinking so much, to turn my brain off. A sedative, a downer… anything to shut my mind up.”

He hesitated. For the first time, he seemed to really see me. Not just with his eyes, but with actual attention.

“...You okay?” he asked.

“No. But I didn’t come here to talk about that,” I answered, cutting it short.

Jisung disappeared down the hallway, and I followed him into the room, watching as he pulled out a kid’s lunch box full of pills, baggies, and lighters. I walked closer, glancing around. His room was the perfect reflection of him: cozy chaos. Posters of indie bands, old video games, a guitar in the corner, and… handcuffs hanging from the closet door.

Seriously, Jisung?

I approached, twirling the cuffs on my forefinger.

“Do you like being tied up or tying others up?” I asked, laughing, but he turned serious.

“Wanna find out?” he replied with a crooked smile, making me freeze for a second.

I hadn’t expected him to fire back. I put the cuffs down, pretending to be indifferent.

He stood up, showing me two bags of pills.

“Let’s see… I have diazepam… lorazepam…” He slowly looked at me. “... Do you even know what these are?”

I didn’t answer right away, but the silence spoke for itself.

“You’ve never used anything, have you, sweetheart?” He said in a tone that was almost… gentle.

I crossed my arms. “What if I have?” I tried to sound confident.

“You’d be asking differently.” He smiled, not mockingly, almost kindly. Almost.

There was a pause where he just watched you. His dark eyes scanned you like he was trying to solve a puzzle. “Want to try something lighter?” he asked, picking a smaller bag. “Weed. Natural. No mixing. I promise you won’t be seeing unicorns… unless you want to.”

I rolled my eyes.

“How much?”

“On the house, princess. Just this once.”

“Can you roll one?”

“Of course.” He pointed to himself. “Full service. I accept silent gratitude.”

I sat beside him, watching as he ground the weed and rolled with practiced ease. It was ridiculous how even this he did so calmly, like he had all the time in the world. I noticed his fingers, his rings, the way he bit his bottom lip while licking the paper to seal the joint.

“Are you gonna just watch or want to learn?” He asked, handing me the joint. I tried, failed and coughed. He laughed.

“Breathe in slowly. Like this.” He was surprisingly patient.

After a few hits, I started to feel lighter, my thoughts quieter. We stayed silent, passing the joint between us, sitting side by side. As the high settled in, the silence between you two shifted — lighter. I looked at the ceiling, then at him.

“Are you always like this?” I asked without thinking, my voice low, a little slurred from the joint still burning between my fingers.

“Like what?” He didn’t look at me right away — just stared at the ceiling like the answer might be written there.

“I don’t know… comfortable with everything. Like nothing affects you.”

He gave a soft chuckle, lips curling around the smoke before exhaling it toward the fan in the corner that barely moved.

“Honestly? I just look like it. I adapted.” He paused, eyes drifting lazily toward mine. “It’s easier to laugh at the mess than get stuck in it.”

I turned my head to look at him, eyes half-lidded. “That's… deep. Wow.” I said, mockingly impressed, taking the joint from his fingers.

He smiled, already expecting the sarcasm.

“Trust me, I hate myself when I say shit like that too.”

We both laughed, and this time the sound didn’t feel so strange coming from me. It cracked something in the air — something that had been stiff and loaded a few minutes ago.

I looked back at the ceiling. The shadows danced there, soft and slow, as if the room had its own heartbeat.

“I think I’m the opposite,” I murmured. “Everyone thinks I’m holding it all together. But really, I’m just duct-taped perfection over a panic attack.”

He glanced at me again, a little longer this time. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” I paused. “But it keeps people off my back.”

“You ever think about letting it fall apart? Just once?”

I let the smoke sit in my lungs a second too long.

“Yeah. I just never thought I’d do it in your bed.”

That made him laugh — loud, genuine, surprised.

“Well,” he said, voice rough from both the weed and the honesty, “if you’re gonna fall apart, might as well do it somewhere messy.”

I looked at him. Not the stoner loser everyone avoided. Not the cocky idiot who flirted like a dare. Just… him. A little ruined. A little sharp around the edges. Real.

And weirdly, I liked that.

“Why do you sell this stuff?” I asked suddenly, not really expecting an answer — just trying to keep the silence from swallowing me whole.

He didn’t look at me. Just stared at the ceiling like it was a question too.

“Because it pays the bills. Because it’s easier than getting a real job. Because it gives me an excuse to meet people who’d never talk to me otherwise.”

I turned my head to look at him. “Like me?”

He smiled, soft and slow. “Exactly.”

I smiled back — barely — and passed the joint back to him.

“Why did you want to stop thinking?” he asked, voice gentler now. “Too much in your head?”

I hesitated. He wasn’t pushing. Just waiting. His eyes didn’t feel demanding. They felt… safe. Still stupidly high, but safe.

“I don’t know,” I said eventually. “I just thought it could help. Everything’s always too loud. Like I have to be perfect. For everyone. All the time.”

He was looking at me now. Really looking. His gaze steady, focused, like I was saying something worth hearing.

And maybe for the first time in a while… I felt heard. I felt seen.

I sighed, the words spilling before I could stop them.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a natural. At anything. I just try, try and try. And fake it. And force it. I don’t even remember what it feels like to be myself. Whoever that is. I change everything about me — the way I speak, the way I look, the way I breathe — just to fit into places I don’t even like. Just to make people think I’m what they want me to be. And in the end… I’m not anyone.”

The silence that followed stretched a little too long. Long enough for me to regret saying it. I opened my mouth, already preparing to brush it off, to laugh it away like everything else.

But he beat me to it.

“Damn. That was deep.” He blinked, his voice low. “How does your brain sound so poetic and miserable at the same time?”

I laughed — mostly out of relief. “It’s a Taylor Swift lyric, actually.”

“Oh fuck me,” he groaned. “You do look like the type.”

“Uhm? Thank you?” I narrowed my eyes.

“It wasn’t a compliment.

“Go fuck yourself, then.

“I could never fuck myself after talking about Taylor Swift. That’s irreversible damage.”

“You’re ridiculous. I hope you know that.”

He laughed, of course. Like he was proud of annoying me. “I know, I know. We all have our flaws, right?”

“Is yours being insufferable?” I muttered, annoyed but not moving away.

“Don’t act like you don’t like it.”

His voice was softer now. His eyelids heavy. Those stupid round brown eyes blinking slowly like the universe had finally stopped spinning.

I didn’t answer. Just turned back to the ceiling and let the silence settle over us again.

But this time… it didn’t feel heavy. It felt like a pause between two people who finally dropped the act. Like the kind of silence you don’t want to fill — because for once, it’s enough.

The high still lingered. Everything felt slower, softer, louder. My body was still buzzing in places I hadn’t known could buzz. And then reality crept in.

“Fuck, I don’t think that was as pure as you said,” I muttered, half-laughing, half-panicking, my head sinking deeper into the pillow. My heart was still beating like it hadn’t gotten the memo we were done.

He laughed too, breathless, his chest rising slowly next to mine. “I did warn you. You were just too busy being terrifying to listen.”

I closed my eyes, let the afterglow mix with the haze still hanging in my bloodstream. Everything felt soft around the edges — too warm, too quiet, too... peaceful.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, not turning to look at me.

“Good,” I said before I could second-guess it. And then quieter: “For the first time in a long time.”

He was quiet for a second. Then: “You should smile like that more. Without thinking.”

I turned my head toward him, surprised. There was no sarcasm in his voice. Just that calm, low softness he rarely used — like he was saying something real and didn’t want to scare it off.

“You’re not what I thought,” I said, honestly, before I could stop myself.

He finally looked at me. Eyes heavy, but sharp. “What did you think I was?”

“Just another weirdo with no sense,” I smirked.

“Fair.”

“And now?” He asked, still watching me like I might disappear.

I rolled onto my side, propped my head on my arm. “Still a weirdo. But… a cool one.”

He smiled — lopsided and slow — and looked back at the ceiling like it had something to say about us.

“You’re pretty different from what I imagined too,” he said. “Always thought you were boring. Uptight. The perfect girl with the perfect answers.” He paused, eyes still on the ceiling. “But now I think you were just acting the part. For everyone else.”

I didn’t respond right away. Because he wasn’t wrong. And because hearing someone see you like that — so simply — was more intimate than anything.

“Maybe,” I murmured, voice low. “Maybe I was just waiting for a reason to stop.”

He turned to face me again. Not smiling now. Just looking.

“And was I a good enough reason?”

I didn’t answer. Just reached out, pulled the blanket up around us both, and settled back into the silence. Not because I didn’t have anything to say. But because for once, I didn’t need to explain myself. And he didn’t ask again.

The room felt slower now. The smoke had faded, the high turning to a thick, sleepy calm. I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of everything still hovering between us.

Just before drifting off, I heard him whisper, like a secret he hadn’t decided to keep or not: “If you ever want to stop pretending again… come back.”

I didn’t move. Just let the words settle somewhere inside me, warm and dangerous. “I might,” I murmured, barely audible. “If you promise not to fall in love with me.”

He huffed a laugh, sleepy and soft. “Too late.”

I covered my eyes with my arm, still too high to function properly. Everything felt like it was floating — the walls, the sheets, even the weight in my chest.

“I don’t think I can go home tonight.” My voice came out hoarse, like I had borrowed someone else’s mouth. I didn’t mean it as a plea. It was just the truth.

He didn’t hesitate. “It’s okay. You can sleep here. I’ll take the couch.”

That made me lift my arm and look at him. His face was flushed from the heat, the high, the... everything. His hair was messy, the way it always looked better after being ruined.

“You can sleep here,” I said, more tired than bold. “I don’t take up much space.”

He laughed, rubbing a hand over his face. Then he looked at me — actually looked. Not with lust. With something warmer. Softer. “Don’t know if I’ll survive being next to you all night.”

I frowned, confused. “What?”

He shook his head, still smiling. “You get incredibly dumb when you’re high,” He said through a laugh, laying back on the bed.

I blinked at him, trying to process whether I was offended or amused.

Probably both.

I sat up slowly, the blanket I forgot it was around me slipping off my shoulder. The cold air hit my skin, and I shivered without meaning to. “You didn’t seem to mind earlier.”

He looked away for a second, almost shy, which was ridiculous coming from a guy who had just heard me yapping about my life problems.

“I didn’t mind. Still don’t.” Then, quieter: “That’s the problem.”

We fell into silence again. But it wasn’t awkward. It sat between us like a third body — warm, sleepy, honest.

The mattress dipped slightly as I leaned back beside him. My shoulder brushed his. Neither of us moved. He tilted his head toward me. “Do you always let people get this close?”

I shrugged. “I don’t let people do anything. They just don’t try.”

He nodded like that made perfect sense. Maybe, at that moment, it did. “Well… I’m here. Not going anywhere. At least not tonight.”

I looked at him — really looked — and for the first time, I didn’t feel the need to push back.

We lay down, not touching, but close enough to feel each other’s heat. The ceiling stared back at us. The fan clicked in the corner. The air was thick with silence — the kind that meant something had shifted.

And it had.

That’s when he leaned in, face close to mine. Close enough to piss me off, but not enough to do anything about it. Typical.

“Can I kiss you?” His voice was low, slow — like asking was just part of the performance. Like he didn’t already know I’d let him. He didn’t move. Just stayed there, torturing me with his breath and that look, like he was waiting for me to cave.

“You planning on kissing me, or just starting a staring contest?” The taste of the joint still clung to my tongue — bitter and sweet. Just like him.

He gave me that infuriating little smirk — the kind only people annoyingly sure of themselves wear. “You’re surprisingly composed for someone who almost coughed up a lung ten minutes ago.”

“I can still faint.” I run my finger through his hair. “Just not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

He swallowed — and yeah, I saw that. Saw him trying to play it cool.

“What’s the hold-up? Need a signed permission slip from God or something?”

He laughed, short and smug. “Didn’t think golden girls kissed before marriage.”

“Guess I’m overdue for a little sin.”

The kiss came fast, no warning. It was messy, off-balance, hot — everything a kiss should be when you’re too high and too pissed off to care. His mouth tasted like weed and disaster, and I held onto that.

He bit my lip, deliberately, and when a moan slipped out of me, he pulled back just to gloat.

“Ms. Perfect moans? Didn't have that on my bingo card.”

“If you're done being proud of yourself, you could try using your hands.”

He didn’t hesitate. His hands went straight to my waist, gripping like he meant it — rough, grounded, like he wanted to leave proof I’d been there. No gentleness. No question marks. Just skin and pressure and ownership without the label.

Everything slowed. His breath on my neck. The scratch of fabric. The way the mattress dipped under us. I felt all of it. Every tiny fucking thing. He pulled back just a bit, eyes half-lidded, mouth flushed.

“You kiss like someone who skips church and lies about it.”

“I kiss like someone who’s been pretending to be okay her whole life.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Aww. Miss Perfection’s cracking?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re just the nearest distraction.”

“Right. Because clearly I’m a huge threat to your emotional repression.”

I sighed, tired of performing even when I was pissed.

“Tired of your perfect life, huh?” He muttered, in that voice that drips sarcasm like venom.

“Perfect for who? My mom, who thinks good grades equal happiness? The teachers who treat me like a walking GPA? The ex who thought he had me figured out because he bought me coffee and pretended to like indie rock?” I stared at him, deadpan. “I fake it. That’s all I do. Because that’s what they expect. But inside, I’m always one second away from setting everything on fire. They just don’t see it — because I smile pretty.” I gave him a skeptical face.

He didn’t say anything. But the look in his eyes changed. Less mockery. More weight. Like he’d finally caught on.

But I didn’t let the silence turn into something dramatic.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered. “You’re not special. You were just nobody — in a good way — and that’s exactly why I picked you.”

He smiled. This time, not smug. Just… understanding. Like he saw the mess and didn’t mind sitting in it with me.

I rolled my eyes, exhaling like the weight in my chest didn’t just get louder.

“God, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” My tone was dry, flat, like armor. “Careful. You almost look like you give a shit.”

He raised an eyebrow, unbothered.

“You say that like you didn’t just pour your trauma out on my face five minutes after sucking it.”

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Then added, quieter — but not soft: “Maybe I do give a shit. So what? You gonna run or insult me again?”

I leaned in slightly, eyes locked on his like I was about to expose another one of his carefully hidden flaws.

“Run? Please.” I smirked. “Why would I run from a guy who gets emotionally attached after one blowjob?”

His mouth opened like he had something to say — but nothing came out. I watched the hesitation flicker behind his eyes. It only made my grin sharper.

“Relax. I won’t ruin your reputation. Your secret's safe with me, Romeo.”

He blinked, half offended, half aroused. And for a second, he looked like he might kiss me just to shut me up. Which, honestly, would only make things worse for him — and for me.

I tilted my head.

“Unless you want me to be gentle now. Is that it?”

He let out a dry laugh, no real humor in it — just teeth. “You really don’t know how to shut up, do you?”

I raised an eyebrow, daring him to keep going. He leaned closer, too close, eyes dark and sharp. “You talk like you’re untouchable. Like none of this means anything.” He scoffed.

“But if I kissed you right now, you’d fall apart in my hands again, and we both know it.”

My breath caught, just for a second — and he saw it. Of course he did.

“Go ahead. Prove me wrong,” He added, voice low, taunting. “But you won’t. Because you liked it. You liked not pretending for once.

He was close enough now that I could feel the tension between us crackling — not soft, not romantic. Charged. Dangerous. “So go on, princess. Say something clever.”

I kissed him like I was trying to silence everything. My doubts. My anger. The noise in my head that never shut up.

His mouth was warm and reckless, matching mine. It wasn’t about sweetness — it was need.

"You really have no idea what you're asking for," I whispered against his lips, already breathless.

"Oh. I do." His hands slid to my back, and I hated how easily he made me forget myself.

For a second, I pulled away, just enough to look at him. “What exactly makes you think I'm worth your time?” I asked, my voice laced with sarcasm.

He smirked, clearly amused. “Because, unlike you, I don’t overthink everything.”

That answer shouldn’t have worked. But it did. Because deep down, I was tired of being the girl people expected — and he wasn’t expecting anything. He was just there, wild and flawed and irritatingly real.

I took a deep breath and let it all go. The fear, the rules, the performance.

And then I kissed him again — not for escape this time, but to finally feel something that was mine.

I grabbed the collar of his shirt and crashed my mouth against his, hard. No hesitation, no softness. I kissed him like I wanted to hurt him. Like I wanted to erase every version of myself that had played by the rules. My teeth caught his bottom lip, and I didn’t care when I tasted blood — or maybe it was mine.

He let out a surprised sound, something between a groan and a laugh, but I didn’t give him room to speak. My hands tangled in his hair, yanking just enough to make his breath hitch. His fingers had started to slide to my hips, but I pinned them down against the bed cushion.

“Not yet” I whispered, hovering over his lips, breathless.

His eyes widened slightly, dark and glazed, the kind of look that begged. But I wasn’t here to beg.

I kissed him again, slower this time, dragging it out. My tongue moved against his like I was learning him, claiming him. Every touch was deliberate. Every second, I felt more alive — like my skin was buzzing under the weight of control. The power shift was electric. He melted into it, into me, and I loved that. Loved the way he stopped trying to take over. Loved that he let me burn.

When I finally pulled back, his lips were red, slightly swollen, his breath uneven.

“Holy shit,” He muttered, dazed.

“What is it? You like being bossed around or something?” I said, voice low and steady.

He smiled, something lazy and reverent in it. “Ah yes, ma’am.”

He said “Yes, ma’am”, and that should’ve broken the tension — turned it into a joke. But it didn’t. It just made something snap inside me.

My fingers gripped his jaw. “You talk too much.”

His breath hitched, eyes flicking down to my mouth again. “And yet, you’re still here.”

I kissed him again, rougher this time. My hand slid under his shirt, nails scraping skin, earning a sharp gasp. I smiled against his lips — a wicked smile, one that tasted like control.

“You’re kind of terrifying when you’re like this.” He said panting.

“Don't act like you don't like it.”

I pulled his shirt over his head in one move, not caring when it caught on his elbow again. He laughed, stupid and breathless. I saw the skinny body, the chest marked by old acne scars and a poorly done tattoo that looked like an alien holding a guitar.

I shoved him backward until he fell onto the bed with a soft thud. I stood over him for a second, breathing heavily, eyes dragging down his chest, down to that ridiculous tattoo.

“Is that an alien tattoo?” I asked, staring at the deformed figure on his shoulder.

“It's a rocker alien. Done by a drunk friend.”

“That’s even worse up close” I said, smirking.

“I was drunk. And fifteen.”

“You’re still an idiot.”

“You're terrible at foreplay.”

“And you're terrible at tattoo choices.”

“And yet you're on top of me in my bed. Paradoxical. “And you’re still fully dressed. Which seems unfair, considering how bossy you are.” He emphasizes.

“You don’t get to make demands. Just lay there and shut up.”

And he did.

I was still on top of him, knees on either side of his hips, hands pressed flat against his chest. He looked like he was about to say something, then hesitated. I raised an eyebrow.

"Gonna speak, or just keep drooling?"

He laughed, breathless, that dazed look still in his eyes.

"It’s just... I didn’t expect this from you."

"Didn’t expect what?" I leaned in closer, my hair falling to one side, my lips almost brushing his. "That I’m more than a perfect little checklist?"

"I expected you to be perfect. Untouchable. Annoying." He smiled, but there was something honest behind it. "Now I just think you’re dangerous. In the best possible way."

I let out a low laugh and bit the corner of his mouth, just enough to make him flinch.

"So you’ve got taste after all." My hand slid down to the waistband of his jeans, slow and deliberate. "And what if I really am dangerous?"

"You are." He closed his eyes for a second, inhaling sharply. "But I’ve never wanted to get hurt this badly."

I paused, watching him — vulnerable, breathless, completely mine, and not because I forced it.

He laid back, watching me with that maddening mix of curiosity and anticipation. I could feel his breath catching even though he tried to look relaxed.

He wasn’t.

Not anymore.

I slid my sweater uniform off in one slow movement, not to tease — not exactly — but to make sure he saw me. Not just my body, but the choice. That I was there because I wanted to be.

His gaze darkened the second my shirt hit the floor. I watched him watching me. His chest rising a little too fast, lips slightly parted. I didn’t rush. I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my skirt and let it slide down my legs.

“Holy shit,” He muttered, leaning back on his elbows and straing, like the words escaped without permission.

“Don’t talk,” I warned. “Just watch.”

I stepped out of the skirt and unclasped my bra, tossing it carelessly at his face. He caught it with one hand but didn’t dare break eye contact. Not once.

“You still hide all this under that ridiculous uniform?” He asked, voice low, rough.

“Guess I like zero expectations.”

He grinned, but it was shaky — off balance.

Good. I wanted him undone. I wanted him unprepared.

I straddled him slowly, letting my thighs press against his semi hard erection, my hands on his chest. I felt his heart beating wild under my palms.

“Still think you’re in control?” I whispered.

“I surrender,” He breathed, eyes locked on mine. “Completely.”

I leaned down, letting my lips brush his, but not giving him the kiss. Not yet. “You should.”

Then I kissed him again — deeper this time. Slower. And everything else fell away. The noise. The rules. The fear. There was only heat, skin, and the sound of him falling apart under me.

But then his grip on my hips tightened—no hesitation this time. In one swift motion, he rolled us over, his body pressing me down into the mattress. His thigh slid between mine, grinding up deliberately, and the friction pulled a soft gasp from my throat. I arched instinctively, and he caught my wrists, pinning them above my head with one hand. The other traced down my side, painfully slow.

“You were saying something about control?” he murmured against my neck, lips brushing skin already too warm.

I let out a low breath, the air suddenly heavier.

“Too much for surrender,” I muttered.

He smiled, dark and slow. “Changed my mind.”

I smirked, my chest rising and falling with quick breaths. His lips were just a breath away, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a kiss — not yet. His gaze was so intense, like he was lost in me, unsure whether to give in or keep fighting.

I let out a low chuckle, voice sharp with irony. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m indulging you.”

The air thickened between us, charged with frustration and desire. His eyes flickered, losing some of that confident control he’d tried to hold onto, his body betraying him as he hovered, waiting.

“Are you going to keep staring, or are you going to do something useful with your mouth?”

He didn’t answer. He just went down, using tongue and teeth. Not subtle at all. Every lick was a challenge, every bite a warning. And I felt alive. Burning. His hands and lips explored me with almost frantic curiosity, as if he couldn't believe the realness of the moment. Each touch felt like an electric current, sending shocks of pleasure through me.

He slid my panties off slowly, his finger brushing up my leg, tracing the length of my thigh before finally reaching the place he knew would make me tremble. He paused there, his face hovering between my legs, just looking. For far too long. His gaze was like fire, but he didn’t move, didn’t touch.

“Are you going to pray or...?” I teased, voice barely a whisper, the air thick with anticipation.

“I’m just admiring the miracle,” he replied, his voice husky, barely controlled. “Trying to understand how the straight-A student turned into this apocalyptic vision of desire in my bed.”

“The weed is hitting hard, isn’t it?” I smirked, my body humming with the need for more, but I wanted him to keep looking, to stay in this moment of uncertainty.

“It’s hitting everything,” he muttered, his eyes never leaving me. There was a hunger in them now, darker than before.

I let out a cynical sigh, rolling my hips slightly in impatience. And then, finally, he moved. His tongue touched me, tentative at first, exploring, but it didn’t take long for his curiosity to turn into something deeper. The strokes were slow but purposeful, the heat of his breath mingling with mine. His tongue found my spot, and though there was no finesse, no delicate dance — it was enough. The rawness of it, the hunger in his touch, was almost overwhelming.

I moaned loudly, a mix of pleasure and disbelief. And then, somehow, I couldn’t help but laugh. The absurdity of it all, the way he looked so lost, so desperate, trying to keep his composure while devouring me like a man starved for far too long.

“Don’t laugh, damn it.” He groaned, frustration making his grip on my hips tighten. His fingers dug into my skin as he held me still, keeping me exactly where he wanted me.

“It’s just that you look like a hungry dog discovering that food exists,” I teased, my voice barely a whisper between the breaths. I could see the shift in his eyes, a mix of irritation and amusement. But his mouth didn’t stop moving.

He raised his face from between my legs, lips glistening, and his eyes were darker now, a challenge in them, but there was something more — almost as if he didn’t know how far he could push before I broke.

He hesitated, his breath ragged, but I didn’t give him time to recover. I grabbed his hair, tugging hard, pulling him back to me, needing more, feeling the fire between us burn too hot to ignore.

“Ah… damn, Jisung…” My voice cracked with the intensity, my body arching up, unable to stay still any longer.

“Now we’re talking,” He grinned against my heat, his voice thick with satisfaction, but there was a warning in it too. “The saint knows how to curse.”

He didn't stop. His hands moved to my hips, holding me firmly as he kissed his way back down, his mouth now more determined, more insistent. Every movement was calculated, controlled, but the hunger behind it was undeniable. His grip tightened on my hips, pulling me harder against him, each stroke of his tongue sending shocks of pleasure through me, igniting every nerve.

His free hand slid down, fingers dragging over the curve of my ass like he was memorizing the shape, before gripping my hips harder — tight enough to bruise. He pulled me even closer, like the space between us was unacceptable. His mouth stayed locked on me, relentless, like he had no intention of letting me breathe, let alone think.

His pace quickened, tongue moving with a hunger that felt personal, almost angry. I could barely keep up. My legs trembled, my entire body shaking with a need that felt like it might rip me apart from the inside.

I fisted his hair tighter, yanking him closer with no shame, my voice coming out in a raw, broken whisper. “Don’t stop…”

It was more of a threat than a plea.

I arched off the bed, hips grinding into his face, needing more friction, more pressure — more. His tongue worked in rhythm with the movements I forced on him, each glide of his nose and teeth sending shocks straight through me. I whimpered, the sound helpless and filthy, echoing through the room like something sacred being ruined.

“Fuck, please, Ji…”

The moment his name slipped out like that — cracked and needy — he moaned into me. The vibration made me jerk, thighs snapping around his head like a vice, trapping him there. I didn’t care. He didn’t complain.

His tongue slid in and out, slower now, teasing, dragging me along the edge on purpose. He knew exactly what he was doing — and he liked that I was unraveling for it.

My hands were tangled in his hair, pulling, clutching — like if I let go, I’d fall apart completely.

Then suddenly, he stopped. Just pulled away.

“No—” I groaned, frustrated, chasing his mouth with my hips. But he was already rising, his face slick, flushed, lips swollen. His eyes caught mine.

They were wild. Dark. And annoyingly satisfied. Like he’d just won something.

His mouth glistened, and there was that damn look again — not just lust, but *pride*. Like he liked seeing me like this: desperate, wrecked, and still trying to act like I wasn’t.

And the worst part?

He was right.

“Want to continue?” he asked, like he didn’t already know the answer. Like he wasn’t reading it right off my face.

“If you stop now, I’ll kill you.”

He practically tripped over himself getting his pants off, stumbling like a drunk idiot, nearly face-planting off the bed. I couldn’t help it — I laughed.

“Sexy. Super sexy.”

“Shut up,” he muttered, crawling back up and pinning me down with his full weight, his hands braced on either side of my head. “You talk too much.”

“And you take too long.”

Our bodies moved like they’d had this conversation before — long before we ever did. Like this rhythm had always been waiting, just under the surface. We didn’t need to find it. We were already in it.

The condom appeared, wrinkled and half-lost in the mess of clothes and blankets. Even stoned, with our fingers barely cooperating, we managed. Barely.

“You took so long I thought you were impotent.”

“I just didn’t want to scare the princess with the size.”

“Hmm. More like the economy version.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

He bit down on my shoulder with a laugh — muffled, breathy — and then he pushed in all at once, not gentle, not slow. Just full contact. No hesitation.

I gasped — loud, sharp — and gripped the sheets like they might keep me grounded. But they didn’t. Nothing did.

The weed made everything stretch. Every sensation melted into the next — the drag of skin, the burn of stretch, the electric crackle in my stomach. Every second felt soaked in heat. My brain couldn’t keep up with my body. I didn’t care.

He started slow, almost hesitant, like he was still mapping out how we fit. But his eyes didn’t leave mine — wide, dark, blown-out with something between awe and disbelief.

Like he couldn’t figure out how we got here.

Each thrust landed heavier than the last, turning pain into pleasure fast — too fast — and I welcomed the burn. It made everything else shut up.

“You’re looking at me again.”

“It’s just that… you’re fucking beautiful.”

He panted.

“Even with that face like you’re gonna kill me after.”

“I probably will.”

His rhythm picked up — sloppy, intense, all heat and friction. Our skin stuck together with sweat, the sound of it obscene in the room. Every push sent a wave up my spine. Every time he bottomed out, I felt a piece of me melt into his.

It wasn’t tender. It was needy. Like we were using each other to survive something neither of us could name.

My nails raked down his back. I didn’t hold back. I wanted him to feel it tomorrow.

He laughed, shaky, breath hot against my cheek.

“Marking territory?”

“Trying to erase your questionable past.”

He thrust harder after that, like he took it personally. Good. I wanted him to.

We moved without coordination — a mess of hips and mouths and limbs. High. Sticky. Laughing between moans. No elegance, just raw want. The kind of sex that’s louder than it should be and too much and still never enough.

“This is so wrong,” I whispered, almost laughing.

“So right,” he replied, panting against my lips, his breath unsteady. “You should’ve come after me earlier.”

“I would’ve… if you weren’t so you.”

He laughed — then choked on it when I clawed down his back again.

He pushed deeper, harder, every thrust punching the air out of my lungs, driving me deeper into the mattress. My body locked around him, tight and slick and restless. I couldn’t find my voice anymore — just gasps, broken syllables, half-formed curses.

He groaned into my neck, his mouth sliding down, trailing heat, teeth scraping over my skin. Then he found my breast, and sucked hard, messy, desperate — like he was trying to brand me with his mouth. I arched, sharp and instinctive, grinding against him, my hips searching for more, even when there was nothing left to take.

Our rhythm had collapsed into chaos — not smooth, not perfect. But real.

It was a high all on its own.

We changed positions amidst laughter and stumbles, nearly falling off the bed in the process. Our limbs tangled, breathless and high, like we were trying to outrun gravity. He pulled me from behind, hands gripping my waist tight — too tight — like he was afraid I’d slip away if he didn’t hold on with everything he had.

Our hips collided with that same obscene rhythm — raw, wet, uncoordinated, but so good. The kind of rhythm that wasn’t about beauty. It was about need.

“You moan so beautifully I should record this,” he said, voice thick with ego and breath.

“You should shut up before I kick you out of your own bed.”

His breath hit the back of my neck, hot and sticky. Then one of his hands slid between my thighs — fingers bold, confident, slipping between folds slick with everything we were. He found my spot like he’d been there before in a dream, pressing just right, just enough to steal my balance.

“Fuck, just like that…” I gasped, breath hitching hard. My body lurched forward as he worked me with his fingers, the rhythm between us turning rougher, messier.

“The saint is becoming a heretic.”

“Shut up and make me come.”

I barely recognized my own voice. It was too raw, too exposed.

“This is good, right?”

He was panting now, voice hoarse, hands gripping my hips tighter, dragging me back into him harder, faster.

“Of course. I’m just waiting for you to put in a little more effort.”

That did it. His grip shifted, and suddenly he pulled me upright, his arm tight around my torso, forcing me to sit on top of him. It wasn’t gentle. It was possessive. Fast. Almost clumsy in his rush to feel me again in a different way.

I settled on him easily, like I belonged there. Our bodies aligned in seconds, and he slipped back inside — hot, hard, perfect. My hips rolled instinctively, slow at first, dragging over him with measured pressure.

He looked stunned — wide-eyed, flushed, lips parted — like he didn’t expect it to feel *this* good. That made me smile. I leaned in, letting my breath graze his ear.

“At this point, just admit you like me being in control.”

He didn’t flinch. Just stared — glassy-eyed, helpless under me.

“I like how you feel in charge,” he muttered.

“It’s like… you actually know what you're doing.”

I started to move faster, testing the rhythm, building it with each roll of my hips. I felt every twitch of him inside me, every sound he tried to swallow but couldn’t. His eyes never left my body — fixed, entranced, like watching me fall apart while holding the leash.

His thrusts were softer now, less certain, as if he was waiting — giving me room, letting me take. His hands hovered at my hips again, then clamped down, trying to slow me.

I didn’t let him.

I pressed down harder, grinding against him with more intent, chasing the friction, chasing that point where the line between pain and pleasure disappears. I was burning — thighs shaking, nerves screaming. The high made it feel like I was moving underwater, slow but unstoppable.

He tried to meet my rhythm, tried to guide it — but I wasn’t giving that up.

“What’s wrong?” I said, between breaths. “Not enjoying?”

“Of course I am,” he muttered, voice strained. “You just don’t know what you’re doing.”

I leaned forward, close enough to brush my mouth over his ear.

“You just hate that you like this,” I whispered, almost cruel. “I can feel you throbbing inside me.”

He groaned, broken and loud. His hands slid lower, gripping my ass, pulling me down harder. His hips began to buck up with more urgency — not enough to take over, but enough to fight back. Just barely.

The tension between us snapped taut — the balance of power shifting and pulling with every movement. Control. Surrender. Want. Pride. Everything colliding in our bodies like it had nowhere else to go.

He pushed me back onto the bed, fast and rough, like he couldn't take the lack of control anymore. My body arched with the impact, the movement pushing him deeper inside me — sharp, sudden, right. The stretch of him hit just the right spot, and I gasped, my breath catching on the way out.

He slid back in easily, as if my body had molded itself around him, the fit seamless, filthy, perfect. His hands clamped around my waist like he owned it — like he needed to hold me down just to stay grounded.

He picked up the pace. No more teasing. The thrusts were quick, relentless, each one sending shockwaves through me, making my breath come out in broken moans I couldn’t hold back anymore.

“Is this what you want?” he whispered, voice shredded, thick with need.

“Deeper.” I pull his hair again.

His gaze darkened, and the smile that curved his mouth was wicked — not playful anymore, but almost dangerous.

“You have no idea what you’re asking for.”

And then he gave it to me.

His pace turned brutal — fast, deep, every thrust pushing the air out of me like a punch to the lungs. I could feel his muscles flex with every movement, his body grinding into mine like he couldn’t get close enough, like he wanted to disappear inside me.

I couldn’t hold myself together. Couldn’t even pretend. The pressure inside me was twisting tight, coiling with every snap of his hips, building into something that felt like it might burn me alive from the inside out.

He leaned down, his weight pressing me into the mattress, one hand gripping my hip to hold me still, the other sliding up to my chest — fingers spreading, squeezing, grounding me in the chaos.

Then, like he sensed I was right on the edge, he changed the rhythm — deeper, slower, crueler. The drag of him inside me made my eyes roll back, and I whimpered, head falling to the side, hands flying to his hair, yanking hard.

“That’s it…” I breathed, barely able to form the words. “Fuck, don’t stop.”

He laughed, but it cracked halfway through — a broken sound, desperate, strained. His rhythm faltered for a second, like he was trying to hang on, but failing beautifully.

He grabbed my thigh suddenly, pulling it up, pushing it higher until my leg was draped over his shoulder. The new angle made everything sharper, fuller, deeper. He fucked into me like the world had disappeared — like nothing existed beyond the heat of our bodies crashing, the friction, the sound of skin on skin echoing through the room.

I couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. Just moved with him, wild and instinctive, chasing that edge like I’d die if I didn’t reach it. My hands clawed at his back, his arms, whatever I could find. My mouth was open, breath shallow, moans spilling out uncontrollably.

The sound of it all — my voice breaking, his low groans, the obscene slap of our bodies — was overwhelming. And perfect. It felt like this was what my body was made for. To be here. With him. Like this.

And then he slowed.

I didn’t expect it. One moment he was pounding into me like a fucking storm, and the next — he was moving slower, deeper, every thrust long and punishing, dragging pleasure from the pit of my stomach until I couldn’t breathe. But there was nothing gentle about it.

It was control. Intensity. The kind of fucking that says I want to ruin you.

And he did.

When I came, it was with a choked, guttural moan that ripped straight from my chest — no filter, no control. My whole body convulsed, shaking underneath him as the pressure finally shattered. My nails dug into his skin, holding on for dear life.

He came right after — buried deep, panting against my neck, body twitching as he spilled inside the condom. His breath was hot against my skin, and he was smiling. That lazy, fucked-out smile that made him look half-gone, half-proud of himself.

The world was quiet after. Too quiet. The kind of silence that feels earned. Heavy with sweat, breath, and something neither of us could name.

When I turned to face him again, still dizzy, still buzzing, he was a wreck — sweat dripping down his temples, hair sticking to his forehead, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. He looked at me like I was a mistake he wanted to make again and again, until it didn’t feel like one anymore.

Then he collapsed onto me — heavy, warm, skin still damp, the full weight of him pressing our chests together. His breath ghosted over my collarbone, shaky and hot.

“That was…”

“…amazing.”

“Horrible.” I said at the same time as him.

“I want to do it again.”

“Me too.”

We shifted to the side, limbs tangled, our bodies still slick and stupidly close. The sheets stuck to our skin, the air smelled like weed and sex. And we laughed.

Not because anything was funny. But because we were high, and spent, and had no idea what the hell just happened.

The sex felt like a slow-motion crash — chaotic, messy, half-graceful in that stoned, instinctive way. Our bodies had found each other like magnets with no real aim, just urgency. Every movement had been clumsy and loud and *so* real. There were teeth, gasps, stupid moans, out-of-sync kisses, sweat dripping into places it didn’t belong — and none of it was perfect.

That’s what made it work. That’s what made it feel like we weren’t pretending anymore.

“I should regret this.”

“But you won’t.”

“Not today. Today I just want to forget that tomorrow I'll be succumbed to the same chaotic mediocrity.”

He rolled onto his back, one arm lazily reaching for me.

“With me, you can just be… chaotic. And naked.”

“Ideal combination.”

He pulled me closer until my cheek met his chest. His skin was still too warm, still pulsing from what we’d done. His heartbeat thumped against my ear — uneven and fast. I let myself rest there. Just for a second.

The silence between us was thick, but not awkward. More like… surrender.

“You're going to hate me tomorrow, right?” he mumbled into my hair, voice quieter now, stripped of its usual sarcasm.

“If you tell anyone, for sure.”

“Who would I tell? The tattooed alien?”

“He seems more reliable than you.”

“You’re not reliable either. You’re here. Naked. Screwing the weird kid from school.”

“Because the weird kid from school is the only one who seems real enough to really screw me.”

That shut him up for a second.

When he turned to look at me again, his eyes were red-rimmed, half-lidded from the high, and his mouth was still swollen — bitten and bruised from too much kissing. Or maybe not enough.

“If this is a dream, don’t wake me up.”

“This is a collective delusion caused by drugs and accumulated frustration.”

He smirked, but didn’t deny it. We lay there in the aftermath — sweaty, naked, exhausted — and yet completely still. No rush. No talking. Just breathing the same air like it wasn’t borrowed time.

His voice broke the quiet one last time.

“Let’s use the handcuffs next time?”

I didn’t answer right away. I just turned my face toward him slowly, one eyebrow raised, lips twitching with the threat of a smirk.

“You say that like I wasn’t already thinking about it.”

[hyukascampfire]

let me put my clothes back on and fix my makeup the way this fic just fucked me. on a srs note, first of all, hyukascampfire nation go read this!! right now!! it has been a long time since i’ve found a fic series that i’ve latched on to. there’s something about having a fic that you dedicate to a time in your life, and i fear that it is going to be this one.

beomgyu especially is going to stick with me. his character is raw and brutal, and there’s no way he couldn’t. he tears a spot in your mind so easy that it’s honestly DISGUSTING. i quite literally don’t think i’ll be seeing beomgyu the same for months cause now it’s just cc beomgyu living in my mind and i NEEEEED it. i seriously cannot fucking wait for the rest of this series. not only am i blessed to have serene as a best friend, but to have the author of this fic as a best friend casually is actuLly insane and i lowkey forget how crazy that is what the fuck >.<!!

he’s constantly sort of described as a drug/addictive substance himself. you know that, inherently, he is bad for you. you take him anyway, because the hit you get from it is euphoric. he is euphoric in the dark, dirty sense that only a drug could be. what a brilliant way to characterize a character like him. i honestly could wax poetic about how you write beomgyu and how it’s going to honestly stick with me for a long time for literally forever. are you joking? personifying him as a drug himself?? “He refused to leave your system, no matter how many times you tried to get clean.” and he exactly did. it’s just fucking insane how this fic reads as a hellish battle with a drug addiction and all the highs and lows it drags you through the muck and dirt. it’s poetic in a way that literslly makes me want to take my eyeballs out of my head and throw them like bouncy balls cause WHAT DO YOU MEAN??? i’m literally fucking mad at myself that this isn’t my fic like jealousy is CONSUMING ME i need to own your brain. :333

it’s like, MC is constantly doing things that id consider stupid, but i wouldn’t call her a dumb character. she recognizes when she’s doing dumb shit in the same way any addict knows that they’re destroying themselves in their hunt for an ‘eternal high’ that will never come. beomgyu will never be permanent, never be what she wants him to be, but of course she’s still going to chase him. she’s dependent on it. i for real would consider the fact that he still shakes her in the present just a side effect of withdrawals, or even the threat of relapse. OH GOD, seeing him in that interrogation is literally a battle against relapse as she quite literally has to remind herself of what he’s done. no, she is not stupid at all. she’s just fighting a battle that was genuinely never meant for her to win. beomgyu knows that.

He constantly makes me wonder if he’s keeping her at arm’s length to protect her, or if he’s doing it because he doesn’t actually care about her enough to bring her any closer than arm’s length. which is perfect, because that’s exactly the effect that choi beomgyu has. it’s exactly how MC feels. I CANNOT EXPLAIN TO U HOW WELL YOU’VE PUT US IN THEHER SHOES. i literally feel like i’m in the same boat as her. he gives her just enough to make her wonder, and then he recedes, and what are you supposed to think of that? obviously, from the outside looking in, it’s easy to assume that somebody who does that is only toying with you in a purposefully manipulative way. and i do think that if him. but i’m also right in the MC’s head when he offers those fleeting moments that you forget about the frames of the rose-tinted glasses he’s placing on your face, and instead all you can see is the pretty pink shade of everything. these are those ‘highs’ he offers, and that MC is constantly chasing. the idea that things could be good. but isn’t it all the more sour that he could be good and yet isn’t, rather than that he is all bad? it’s all so bittersweet and tragic. beomgyu is a bit slimy, awful, and red flag incarnate. a yet again, in this subtle and nuanced way that i even find hard to describe, he isn’t like the others he surrounds himself with. i mean, he is, but he isn’t. LMAO SEE?? i feel you MC. i really do. i’d let choi beomgyu walk me like a dog too, tho!

AND YOU ARE SO INCREDIBLE AT PORTRAYING AN UNRELIABLE, BIASED NARRATOR. “Maybe Kayla had been wrong about him, after all she didn’t know him, not like you did” this is so real and visceral. such a real thing that those that have been thoroughly manipulated tell themselves. she keeps moving the goalposts, making excuses for things that do not deserve excuses. this is exactly how somebody with that type of seized mindset would behave. not that it’s the correct mindset, because goodness she’s being walked all over, but it is entirely real, and that is the beauty of this fic. it doesn’t pull punches to make it a cute love story. it doesn’t claim to be one. i cannot explain to you how much i appreciate that as another author. am i making a little voodoo doll of you and doing dark magic so that i can steal your thoughts and talent in little increments so that you won’t notice? no… don’t worry abt it…

AND ANOTHER THING! (no dont drag me away to the padded white room yet pls i have more to say) The scene where the gross drunk guy comes up on MC?? i feel like it makes it even less clear whether or not Beomgyu actually cares for her, or to tell whether or not there actually is a better side to him. did he save her just because the dude insinuates that he can have what beomgyu considers his? because he called her a doll, and that’s beomgyu’s name for her? is it a pride/ownership thing, or did he swoop in because he genuinely was worried for her safety? if he was, why would he be bringing her around the slummy types of places that he thrives in, seems to own, knowing what could happen to her? and then eating her out afterward because he got jealous? so he’s actually the king of mixed signals and it is SICK. i’d be as twisted up as MC i swear to god, because what? i literally could not tell you if it’s a ‘don’t touch her because she’s mine, and how dare you think you can touch what is mine’ sort of thing, or a ‘don’t touch her because i won’t let you hurt her’ kinda thing. which i mean, it could be both IDFK??? everything he does is so convoluted and it’s so incredibly stifling. it’s to the point that even finding out which it is becomes intoxicating. like the mystery of it is almost the most addictive part.

and godd, it’s so frustrating when he just knows inherently that, like when he asks if Kai was her boyfriend, it couldn’t be true. cause he knows exactly what he does to her (in the worst way possible). like i just hate when a man KNOWS it’s INSUFFERABLE UGH. it should be that she has the power over him—the detective with sway over the case in which he is being questioned over MURDER. not even to mention the fact that it’s alluded to the idea that she already is completely aware that he has committed murder before. in front of her eyes, nonetheless. she should hold all the power. but being who he is, he maintains the upper hand inherently. it’s frustrating to see, and even more frustrating to experience. to have all that and still know that he owns the space between you. literally what are you supposed to do about that? cuz the moment a man ESPECIALLY one like beomgyu knows that he can walk u like a dog it’s over for you. sorry, you’re cooked. why couldn’t kai be her boyfriend? because beomgyu knows he’s not. THATS SO FUCKING INFURIATING BECAUSE HE’S RIGHT AND HE KNOWS FOR A FACT HE IS.

IM NOT DONE YET! you defy the logical conclusion that because he is the love interest in this fic, he couldn’t have been the murderer. there’s a lot of points where i inherently want to assume that obviously he couldn’t have done something like that, because he is the main love interest in a fanfic. and in most fanfics, that would seem starkly true. it just doesn’t really happen. usually, even if it was proposed that a major character that the whole story is centered around was possibly the murderer, it would be made clear later on that ‘no! they weren’t! they would never, because they were framed!’ or whatever. and then i’m reminded brutally by beomgyu’s own behavior that he quite literally couldve, and that’s who he is. somebody who will draw you in and turn on your initial blinders when you see what kind of man he is, all the way until you’re saying ‘no, he couldn’t.’ but he really, really could. i literslly can not tell if he did it or not, and that’s the effect of him. it’s just substantial and honestly not something i’ve seen and it’s SOOO YUM.

even just the fact that he is so absolutely sure that after all these year’s he’s still got her on a leash is just unbelievable. “Just how deep does your loyalty still run?” And you know what? he isn’t even wrong. STILL! he’s not asking, ‘are you still loyal?’ no. he’s asking, ‘how deep does your loyalty still run?’ because he just fucking knows what effect he has, and how thoroughly he has fucked her up to the point that him saying this is truthfully cruel. how could he love her, if he knows he brings her to these lows, brings her down to his level? but then again, doesn’t it seem like he really does sometimes? it’s not fair. he knows he has her at his beck and call like a pet. strings her along fully intentionally, knows that she longs for something more emotional, and still he does. it’s mean. and i can recognize that, and even then i don’t think i can completely cast him away. like, fully aware that maybe he doesn’t really love her, but still hang on to every second of their conversation and interactions, beyond the sex. it’s completely ironic and is exactly what MC struggles with.

i also noticed that, when beomgyu appears, shes always pretending that he’s not there for at least a little bit. staring straight ahead, forcing him to speak or acknowledge her first. it seems like a subconscious thing she does to at least try and gain some semblance of power of him. as if he’s coming to her, and not her to him, even if she knows that’s not the truth at all in reality. cue ‘why’d you only call me when you’re high?’ by the arctic monkeys, thank you!!! because he only calls on her when he desires it it, when he deigns her worthy of his time. and she’ll come almost every time, unless she’s doing this. trying in small, inconsequential ways to try and reclaim any sense of power that she can scramble together, even if it’s completely fabricated and to not effect on somebody as floaty as Beomgyu. how could it hurt him when he literslly doesn’t give a shit already? making a point by intentionally not seeing him for two weeks does not dent him. making him speak first does not dent him. i understand her need to try, though. i’d feel like i was losing my mind if i was dealing with him, too.

throughout this i was just like… visualizing him so viscerally. like, if i could describe him, itd be smoke. dark, toxic to breathe, fleeting but potent, and impossible not to breathe when you’re caught in the middle of the fire. and just the imagery portrayed, the smoke kisses and all that i feel just solidifies it. unfortunately, it is completely sexy and hot and i hate it! “If I was available right now?” He holds out the cigarette for you to take. Eyeing it with disdain for a moment, you decline by shaking your head, “I don’t smoke.” — Beomgyu cocks an eyebrow at you, “You’d be the first to decline.” He studies you for a moment, the corner of his lip twitching into a faint smirk. “But you’re the first of many things, dollface”, he says as he brings the cigarette to his lips. one of my fav passages. LIKE? he’s insane, first of all him smoking is just SEXY i’m sorry it’s fucking HOT and i’d take that right from his lips but ANYWAY, this scene is absolutely a lot more than a quick exchange, and it’s clear that it’s supposed to be more. it almost seems to sum up their entire relationship in a way, but let me stretch before i reach. it just feels so monumental. if i could sum up the fic with one passage, it would be THIS one. the speaking, but really they’re saying something else, the nuance, the symbolism of the smoking and him offering her something that could harm her much in the same way he does with a plethora of other things, and him making little comments and doing little soft things that make her wonder if maybe she is special. ‘but you’re the first of many things, dollface.’ i believe that it’s the small moments like this that keep this relationship going, that keeps MC suspended in enough belief to put herself through what Beomgyu offers her. just art. like i’m fully slobbering over this I EFFING LOVE YOU

ladies, take this as a warning! cast men like this out of your life! demons! all of them! they consume your souls! not all of them are as sexy and worth it as choi beomgyu!

AND LIKE I SAID. he is seriously good at making her accept little to nothing. and i’ll say it again and again. you do it SO realistically. “At least he was here with you and not the woman he’d been feeling up not even an hour prior. You were all that mattered to him. Right? That’s why he’d gone after you, only you.” settling for less and less. it is such a classic example of how somebody who’s not being treated good at all by somebody that they value the attention of will accept less and less over time, filling in the gaps with excuses. it’s so realistic and SO GOOD. first, it’s ’oh, maybe i’m the only girl.’ then, it’s stuff like thsi. ‘it’s okay, because he left her for me.’ GIRL STAND UP. but also, how could you blame her? i mean, obviously she has some blame in this. of course she does. but i understand her completely. yeah, she’s fully cooked… do NOT let that man break your spirit!

and let me say. and i mean, LISTEN TO ME. i have to tell u that DOLLHOUSE THE WEEKND AND LILY ROSE DEPP IS LITERALLY SO PERF AND I NEED U TO HEAR ME ON THAT. it’s so them. just the essence of the song, the lyrics paint SUCH a dynamic and it is so SO SOS O them. please and thank you.

BACK TO BUSINESS. the scene where she’s investigating him and asks him why he did it, but is actually insinuating the man that he killed in the first scene where she was terrified of him without even having to mention it out loud because yeonjun was listening, shows how in tune they are with each other despite it all, and definitely why shes best and worst to be on this case. because he knows exactly how to tug on that leash even if she thought she took it off ten months ago, and yet… quite literally nobody will get a word out of him besides her. AND, i don’t believe that anybody even knows him better than her. it clashes, but i can’t even tell if her being on this case is the best or the worst. i am so enthralled by the murder case, by the way. a lot of fanfic writers are really, really good at writing the romance aspects of a fic. and it’s okay, because a lot of them don’t need to be more than that. but then there’s fics like these that are more than that. this is how i spot the best of the best writers—who can keep A B and C plots all interesting and worth paying attention to, beyond just whether or not they fuck and get together. it takes a higher level of writing skill that i’m not saying EVERYBODY has to have as a fanfic writer, but it is something that i believe set certain fics apart as something just a little different. i love it.

like, just the fact that we watch how she’s changed by beomgyu. he infects her. he actively ruins her, and i can’t even tell if it’s intentional. and the cycle kinda continues, we see her using taehyun to get at beomgyu. it’s not fair, stringing him along as beomgyu does her. it’s the concept of being the victim of a situation and then recycling that pent up toxicity into another person, and now, are you even better than that person at all? do you deserve how they treated you, now? my heart honestly did ache for taehyun cuz that’s bae, but ALSO god he was just so sweet and willing to go out with her, and she drug him right to the same shady places that beomgyu dragged her. it’s almost melancholic seeing her become that, even if in less intense ways. this is the effect of what beomgyu does to her, and again. she is not entirely a victim. doing the same to taehyun was not fair. but reality isn’t fair, is it? and you do reality so SOOOO well. i’m opening my notes app rn thabk you very much. just this toxic, heady kind of consuming relationship where it infects you and corrodes you on the inside. changes who you are for the worse. like a drug. CAUSE HE REALLY IS A DRUG IN THIS FIC AND IM STILL GAGGED OVER THAT.

also, i think i know why cc beomgyu gives you as much pain as tsfawc taehyun gives me. the both of them are very much internal characters. they say and act in ways, and could say anything, but their mind could be something completely else. they watch their words so painstakingly closely that you have to write them that painstakingly closely as well, because every word means something else with them. the do not say what they mean, and when they do, it doesn’t seem like they are because they never do. they’re definitely not the same in any capacity— but they def are both cold in very different ways. beomgyu is the absolute leading force in this fic, coupled with the main storyline: the murder of baekhyun, which he is intrinsically tied to as a suspect. but he also just has such a gravitational force that he makes it that way. it’s clear that his role isn’t actually main love interest like i wrote earlier. the more you learn about him, the more you see that he is a driving, enigmatic force in the story than anything else. something potent and so real that it’s kinda uncomfortable, but certainly too far out of reach to be a love interest. especially toward the end, jumping between the flashbacks where the walls are slowly coming down between them and then to the future where they meet as interrogator and interrogated is both jarring AND it emphasizes that fact. as good as it seems things might’ve been going, choi beomgyu is as choi beomgyu is. believing that he’s something he’s not, projecting your own preconceived notions onto him, whether it’s the idea that he’s nothing but a street rat or even on the flip side that he’s anything more than that, is a mistake. he cannot he pinned down, and to try is to fail. that’s what MC is both slowly learning and forgetting, and it’s why we see them where they are in the future. strangers but not.

it’s so crazy that she and even us as readers are so used to bare minimum that even him relenting something so simple as a contact to text him with feels almost romantic. this is how beomgyu operates. he gives so, so little, knowing that you’re hooked, so that even the littlest something is hard hitting. but he’s sowed such mistrust in us and MC that giving something like this, seemingly letting down walls even just the littlest bit, feels bittersweet. could you even let yourself enjoy it when you fear that it’s for nothing?

it feels like such a journey. in the present, only five days have passed, but because we go through so much in the flashbacks it is SUCHHH a journey. so even though we are discovering so much past, we are still so entirely lost as to the happenings of the present. the dual-plot points and storylines is GENIUS. like i need to give you all your flowers for that. it gets you so invested and, even though you’re finding so much out about their history, all it does is lend you clues to the still enigmatic present. so genuinely set up.

“He appears almost bored, but you knew that he was listening intently, for he had stop playing with his rings.” ALSO PERFECT!! perfect. always acting, feigning nonchalance no matter what. but there’s one person that got close enough to spot the tells. how ironic is it that the one person that he let close enough, no matter how minimally, is now in charge of a case he’s accused of murder in? nevertheless, he had the fact that she is clearly, to everybody including herself, both emotionally resistant to harming him AND wishing he was locked tf away forever. oh it’s messy alright!

and let me say again, just the fact that shes literally watching herself change, becoming someone less like herself and more like him, able to see it but not at all able to stop herself from craving the hit that the drug of him gives her. hurting the people around her, like taehyun, hurting herself, but she will crawl to him on her hands and knees for a fix because she’s allowed him to bring her down to this place. to the drugs and the nasty people and places that choi beomgyu exists in, and it’s lowkey started to take root in her too fhe more she exists in it with him. dragging taehyun to a place like that? using him? is that not a reflection of beomgyu in some ways? and then all of a sudden she’s at this new low, sitting in a sweet little park on a sweet little bench watching him fucking snort drugs off the back of his hand, escaping the sight in a grimy bathroom where the light’s flickering, and even in a moment of reflection like this, it isn’t enough to wake her up.

so, after that whole yap festival, i literally do not want to wrap this reblog up, but i fear it literally will not load to post if i don’t. even though most of this was kinda like coke-induced rambling, i am thoroughly invested in this fic from hereon out. this is now my fic for the year thabk you! serene i love you brain and just OMFG i cannot believe i’ve taken so long to get to this. until the next part..

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐀𝐏𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 [ every single tape recorded for Criminal Conscience, listed in order ] ⎯ this series is still being updated !

Criminal Conscience contains sexual content. The story portrays substance abuse and acting under the influence as well as both unhealthy and toxic relationships. It also includes other triggering topics such as attempted SA and violence/gore along with character death. ⎯ Each tape is carefully tagged with individual warnings, read them all properly before continuing.

this series has been revamped, find the archived version here.

ִֶָ𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ wc, 44.1k and counting ་༘࿐

📼 TAPE 01 ⎯ STAY AWAY FROM CHOI BEOMGYU “Choi Beomgyu”, he says, the smirk on his lips widening as he does. The name fit him, oddly enough. Perhaps it was a bad idea to give out your own name. He was a stranger, not to mention one that Kayla had specifically warned you about not long ago. Still, this man intrigued you beyond limits.. 

📼 TAPE 02 ⎯ RED LIPSTICK STAINS The red lipstick that you had accidentally brought along this morning, the one you were supposed to get rid of. It had been but a mere coincidence right… The way it had presented itself so nicely on your dresser earlier that day.

📼 TAPE 03 ⎯ TO KNOW IS NOT TO LOVE The cool metal of his rings sting your naked skin as his hands caress your thighs. He’s silent, and for a moment you thought that he might be angry with you. But then his eyes lift to meet yours, they’re dark, but in the pale light of night, they seemed to be almost glowing. “Dollface?” His breath is hot against your legs. 

📼 TAPE 04 ⎯ I DON'T SMOKE He holds out the cigarette for you to take. Eyeing it with disdain for a moment, you decline by shaking your head, “I don’t smoke.” — Beomgyu cocks an eyebrow at you, “You’d be the first to decline.” He studies you for a moment, the corner of his lip twitching into a faint smirk. “But you’re the first of many things, dollface”, he says as he brings the cigarette to his lips. 

📼 TAPE 05 ⎯ BLOODY BODIES Immediately you jerk back, your gaze flitting down to your now stained fingers. It was fresh. “Oh my god”, is all you can muster and before he has the chance to object your hands are insistently bunching his shirt up above his chest. — “Dollface”, Beomgyu tries, his fingers gently wrapping around your wrists but you merely shrug him off, all too focused on the blood smeared across his skin.

📼 TAPE 06 ⎯ A BUSINESS KIND OF DEAL His lips stretch into a smirk when he notes the increasing frown on your face. “Think of it as a business deal”, he says as he motions toward the two of you. — “Business?” You echo, the confusion in your voice evident. Beomgyu nods, his tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. “No deals go through until both parties consent to it of course.”

📼 TAPE 07 ⎯ $5 FOR A ROLL With slight reluctance you pluck the piece of paper from him, trembling fingers rolling it up and creating a makeshift straw. Beomgyu watches you with an amused smirk, his tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. You don’t say anything when you hand him back the now rolled dollar bill, and he doesn’t either as he takes it from you.

taglist remains open for this series, send me an ask or reply under this post to be added !

header made by talented @heesmiles<3

[tiannasfanfic]

Busker

Astarion x Reader (Fluff)

| Astarion Masterlist | AO3 Link |

Summary: When the party discovers they don’t have enough gold to rent the room at the Elfsong Tavern, you come through for your friends by channeling your Bardic talents into an unforgettable performance.

Rating: General Audiences

Author Note: Gender neutral Reader/Tav, they/them pronouns (if any). No physical description given of Reader, race neutral and body type neutral. Reader wears a Bard’s outfit, but no description is given of the outfit, just a mention of what the outfit consists of (blazer, shirt, trousers, boots).

CW: None.

Word Count: 3,916

“We’ve only been in Baldur’s Gate for five minutes, how are we already out of gold???”

That was a little bit of an exaggeration on your part. It had been a couple hours since you all had passed through the archway into Baulder’s Gate proper, but your companions understood the sentiment.

Despite the exasperated look on your face, the question was mostly rhetorical. Everyone knew why the gold reserves had dwindled so quickly. It was due to a combination of upgrading equipment and restocking camp supplies. Both of these had been desperately needed as battles had gotten increasingly difficult as you made your way to the city and Gale could only make potato’s so many ways before you were all sick of them.

Which was saying a lot since you all normally loved potatoes.

But the idea of a balanced meal wasn’t that comforting when you’d finally found an inn that not only could accommodate you all, but could also accommodate you all for as long as you needed for a single flat fee when you discovered you couldn’t even afford that.

Everyone was looking forward to being out of the elements, to sleeping in real beds again and to having access to a hot bath. Eating potatoes for a few more days would’ve been a small price to pay for those luxuries.

“I could part with some of my books,” Gale said, hesitation in his voice. “Sorcerous Sundries pays well for magical tomes. A few of my rarer ones should be able to get us the room.”

“Absolutely not,” Karlach said, shaking her head. “You’ve worked your ass off on that collection.” Gale looked visibly relieved. “Ya know, back before I started working for Gortash, I used to fight at the arena. It was always a good way to make some quick coin.”

“No,” you said, sighing. “Your heart could go out at any moment. We’re better off with you saving your strength for the fighting we still have ahead of us.”

Karlach thought about this then nodded with a sigh.

“Good point, Solder,” she said, looking visibly disappointed.

“Perhaps I could -“ Astarion started saying as he wiggled the fingers of one hand in the air.

“No!” everyone said at the same time, shooting him looks of disapproval.

Astarion scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at them.

“You don’t even know what I was about to suggest!” he said, an indignant tone in his voice.

“You’re not picking pockets again,” Wyll said, also crossing his arms over his chest and glaring right back at him.

“Tchk, you think we forgot what happened the last time?” Lae’zel scoffed.

Astarion threw his arms up in exasperation.

“That was not my fault!” he exclaimed. “How was I supposed to know that guard was going to round the corner right as I was lifting a wallet?”

“Regardless, we lost more gold bribing the guard to keep you out of jail than we would’ve gained from the theft,” Jaheira said.

“And you shouldn’t have wasted the gold!” Astarion protested loudly. “Honestly, I could’ve broken myself out!”

The argument quickly grew heated, as it always did whenever this topic got mentioned, so much so that no one noticed when you slipped away from the group and to your tent.

However, they did notice when you strode past them towards the road that lead back into Rivington. It would’ve been hard not to notice you since you were now decked out in your most colorful Bard finery and stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Darling, where are you off to?” Astarion called towards your retreating back.

“To make us some money!” you called back over your shoulder, not breaking your stride.

The companions all looked at each other incredulously, shrugged at each other and began following you, the argument forgotten for the time being.

By the time you stopped at a particularly busy corner near the Circus of Last days, Karlach had put two and two together and was nearly buzzing with excitement.

“Are we finally getting to hear you play?” Karlach asked as you rummaged in your pack.

“Looks like it,” you said, pulling a tin cup from the bag and depositing it on the ground in front of you.

The Tiefling squeed in excitement and clapped her hands.

Outside of combat, the only times they’d ever heard you play was while tuning your lyre, which didn’t really amount to much, just some casual strumming. Whenever they asked if you’d treat them to a song, you always declined, saying you weren’t particularly inspired for real music at that moment.

But, like most people, you were highly motivated by small luxuries and, when faced with the choice of sleeping outside versus in a nice room, you had found a burst of inspiration.

Once you’d gotten yourself situated, you made shooing motions with your hands to your companions. The party retreated a short distance away to a short wall where they could relax and watch the show.

If you were nervous, there was no indication on your face. Astarion watched as you readied your lyre, closed your eyes, took a couple of deep breaths to center yourself and then strummed your fingers over the chords of the instrument.

But rather than a beautiful melody, the most god awful sound he’d ever heard was produced. Everyone within earshot cringed and a few people passing by stopped to stare.

Your eyes flew open and you glared down at the lyre.

“Now now, we talked about this,” you said to it.

You flashed an apologetic smile to the people nearby who had stopped, then turn back to the lyre with a serious look on your face.

With fluid motions, your fingers glided between the tuning pins and the strings, getting the sound in order. More people had stopped to watch, looks of apprehension on some of their faces. Bards in Baldur’s Gate were a gold a dozen and were either fantastically amazing or astonishingly terrible. There was no in between. But even the terrible ones were usually somewhat entertaining and, with the threat of an invasion looming, people seemed to welcome this brief distraction, even if it cost them their eardrums.

Once the tuning was complete, you smiled triumphantly to the gathering crowd, raised your arm theatrically and then strummed the strings with a flourish.

But all was still not well with the instrument. While some of the strings elicited a beautiful melody, the others sounded somewhere between nails on a blackboard and a dying cow.

The small crowd gasped, a few people made curses of shock. Some covered their ears, including Karlach.

A look of horror came over your face at the sound, which you quickly turned into another apologetic smile for the crowd before turning to your instrument with an almost comical glare.

Astarion narrowed his eyes at you. The lyre shouldn’t have still been out of tune. You had adjusted every pin, plucked every string one by on. It’d taken you a bit longer than it would’ve at camp, he’d watched you do it many times, but the result was the same. It sounded perfect even to his ears and he knew instruments just don’t go out of tune on their own. He leaned forward where he sat, watching your hands carefully as you began tuning it again.

As your fingers began to make adjustments to the pins, he was able to catch onto what was happening. While you turned one pin to tune its corresponding string, you managed to knock the next pin out of tune with your pinky and ring finger. At first, he thought it might be an accident, but then it happened two more times and he began to suspect it was on purpose. You did have some skill in Sleight of Hand, though you rarely used it.

His suspicions were confirmed when you turned back to the crowd with a triumphant look on your face, once again raised your hand with a flourish and confidently rang your fingers over the strings.

This time, the lyre made a sound reminiscent of metal grinding on metal, making your entire body stiffen up in a cringe and illiciting cries of pain from the growing crowd. Some shook their heads as if to clear them, while others stuck a finger in one ear as if working something out, and the kids all covered their ears. Everyone in the crowd had an expression of regret on their faces, ruing the fact that they’d stopped. Yet, none of them left, curiosity now winning out over self preservation.

“I guess we can look forward to another night sleeping in the dirt,” Shadowheart said with a deep sigh.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Astarion said, still watching you closely.

The others all looked at him quizzically and he tilted his head towards you, indicating they should keep watching.

Once again, you hit the crowd with an apologetic smile and laughed nervously, but Astarion could see now how exaggerated it was.

“My apologies everyone,” you said, your voice ringing out loud and clear to the gathered people, then slightly shook your instrument. “Thing’s got a mind of its own sometimes.”

Then you turned towards the lyre with a glare and then pointed an admonishing finger at it.

“Behave,” you said to it, a tone of warning in your voice, earning a few weary chuckles from the crowd.

Once again, you began to tune the instrument, this time turning the pins but not plucking the strings to test them. Your fingers darted back and forth along the pins, working out of sequence but adjusting each one to a slight degree. Once that was done, you flashed a nervous smile to the crowd, then readied yourself to play.

Just as you were about to start playing, your fingers mere inches from the strings, you froze in place, glanced at the audience, then made two more adjustments to pins.

You stood there for a moment afterwards, looking at your lyre with a worried expression, then turned another of the pins, but then you shook your head rapidly, as if in disagreement with yourself, and turned the same pin back to its original position.

After a couple of more worried looks towards the audience and a couple more pin adjustments, you gave a small nod of satisfaction. With one last nervous smile to the crowd, you took up a playing stance that looked more like you were bracing yourself for an explosion rather than playing a lyre, which earned a few apprehensive chuckles from the crowd. You took a few deep breaths, crossed the air with your free hand as you offered up a prayer to the gods, closed your eyes in a tight squint and cringed as you began to play.

This time, instead of some god awful noise no one knew a lyre was capable of producing, a beautiful melody floated off of the strings. Everyone recognized the opening tones of “The Queen’s High Seas” and Astarion could see the crowd visibly relax.

As the temperature of the crowd changed, you opened one eye to look down at your lyre and watched yourself playing for a second before looking up at the crowd in shock. You shook your head as if to clear it and a bright confident smile overtook your face as your posture relaxed. The crowd, now having caught onto your game, laughed appreciatively and a few people clapped.

“Well I’ll be,” Gale said, laughing and clapping his hands along with the crowd. “We might just get that room after all.”

Astarion couldn’t help but chuckle himself. You’d had played the crowd just as skillfully as you were now playing the lyre.

Once the first song was over, you easily transitioned into the more lively tune of “The Bard’s Dance.” Now that you were playing something more upbeat, your swaying turned into dancing and soon your audience was clapping along with the rhythm.

After two more songs, the impromptu performance was broken up by the city guards. There wasn’t anything in the laws of Rivington that prohibited busking, but the crowd had grown large enough it was spilling out into the street and blocking traffic.

You took your bows as the crowd began to disperse, dropping gold coins into the tin cup as they left.

The companions made their way back over to you as you were counting your earnings.

“That was incredible!” Karlach exclaimed, clapping you on the back and nearly knocking you over. “You’re really good, Solider!”

“Indeed!” Wyll said, beaming at you. “That was as fine as any performance I’ve ever seen!”

“With talent like that I’m surprised you don’t play more often,” Shadowheart said.

“I reserve it for special occasions,” you said with a shrug, then shook your coin purse. “Good news though. We’re a quarter of the way there. Shouldn’t take much longer and the room will be ours.”

That news brightened everyone’s spirits considerably.

A few hours, and a few street corners, later, you were all sitting round a table in the tavern at the Elfsong. Not only had you made enough gold to pay for the room upstairs but also a veritable feast for the party and several rounds of drinks. Since no one could decide what they wanted, the wooden surface was laden down with one of everything that was on the menu.

While Astarion didn’t partake in the food portion of the evening, he could tell it was good by how none of you really spoke as you dug in. There was the occasional yummy sound or one of you would tell the others to try a particular dish, but apart from that, talking was kept to a minimum.

As everyone’s bellies began filling up, regular conversation resumed and soon turned towards planning the next steps of their journey. Now that you all had made it Baldur’s Gate, it was time to decide where to go from here. Since the day had waned into the evening, everyone agreed to an early night and to set out for Sorcerous Sundries in the morning.

But planning an early night and actually getting an early night were two completely different things. Once the tavern bard took to the stage and the drinks continued to flow, this plan was quickly forgotten. Several hours passed in the blink of an eye.

As the bard was leaving the stage for a break after his second set, Astarion realized you’d been quiet for a bit and turned towards you only to find your chair empty. That took him a bit by surprise. It wasn’t like you to slip off without saying anything. Concerned, he excused himself from the table and went looking for you. It took a few minutes, but he finally located you when he checked the room upstairs. You were face down on your claimed bed, arms down by your sides with your still booted feet hanging off the edge.

“Darling, are you alright?” he said, voice laden with concern as he came over to sit next to you.

“Mmhmm,” came your response, muffled by the pillow you had your face in.

“Are you sure?” he said, placing one hand on your back to start rubbing it in a circular motion.

“Yeah, I am,” you said, and then moved your arms under your body so you could prop yourself up on your elbows and look at him. “I just always forget how exhausting performing is.”

Now that your face was visible, it was very apparent how tired you were. You looked even more worn down than you had after fighting through Moonrise Towers with the Harpers, which was surprising considering how prolonged that battle had been.

Having never been a stage performer himself, Astarion couldn’t relate to your current predicament, but he tried his best to be understanding.

“With all that dancing it’s no wonder,” he said, a soothing tone in his voice as he continued to rub your back. “I’d be more surprised if you weren’t tired.”

“It wasn’t just the dancing,” you said, moving your arms so they were folded on top of your pillow and then laid your head down on them. “Engaging with the crowd, keeping the energy going to keep their attention, making eye contact, talking with people at the end…I’m just as drained mentally as I am physically.”

Now that was something Astarion could understand. Back when he was still under Cazador’s thumb, he had to work the parties that regularly got thrown at the estates. Mingling with the nobles, engaging with guests, working with the servants to fix any problems that arose so the night would go off without a hitch…it was all incredibly exhausting.

“Is that why you don’t play at camp?” he asked.

You nodded.

“Yeah,” you replied. “Once I get started, I can’t help but go into a full performance like that, even for a small audience. It’s against my nature as a performer to do anything simple.”

Astarion couldn’t help but chuckle. He could see that considering how theatrical you get when casting spells during combat.

“Would you like for me to get a bath ready for you?” he asked, now running his hand up and down your back.

You thought about it for a moment then shook your head.

“I’m too tired for that,” you said, your eyes closing. “Could you keep rubbing my back though? It feels really nice.”

“Of course,” he said.

It didn’t take long before your breathing began to take on a slower rhythm indicating you’d soon be asleep. Astarion took a hold of your shoulder and gently shook you.

“Can you roll over for me, darling?” he asked, his tone soft and gentle. “Let’s get you more comfortable.”

You grumbled, but did as he asked, turning over to lay on your back, eyes still closed. Now that he had better access, he rose from the bed and started taking your boots off. Once that was done, he helped you sit up to remove your blazer.

“Do you want to change into your night clothes?”

You shook your head again, so Astarion unbuttoned the collar and cuffs of your shirt, as well as the first few buttons down the front, and helped you untuck it from your trousers. While it wasn’t as loose as the shirt you normally slept in, that gave you more room to move around.

Once he’d helped you squirm under the covers, you immediately curled up underneath them into your normal sleeping position. He sat back down then, leaning over to kiss you on the forehead.

“Stay with me for a bit?” you asked, your voice quiet and on the verge of sleep.

While he knew how you felt about him and you never made any secret about how much you cared, sometimes he had his doubts. It was hard to believe sometimes that he could be so lucky. But in moments like these, moments when your thoughts slipped out as you teetered on the verge of wakefulness and sleep, his inner doubts quieted. It made him feel what he could only assume was the feeling of butterflies.

“Of course, my love,” he said, his voice soft as to not disturb your relaxation.

While he wasn’t quite tired enough to go to sleep himself, he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to hold you while you slept. It had become one of his favorite things.

Forgoing his normal sleeping clothes in order to quickly lay down with you, he made himself more comfortable in much the same way he had helped you. His boots were removed, the collar and cuffs of his shirt unbuttoned, and he untucked his shirt from his pants.

As he climbed under the covers, he noticed you were fighting to keep your eyes open to wait on him. Once he was situated, you scooted over to curl up against him, resting your head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around you.

“Goodnight, my love,” he said softly, kissing the top of your head.

You muttered something that sounded like goodnight and it wasn’t long after that you fell asleep.

As the sound of your breathing slowed into the low rhythm of sleep, Astarion couldn’t help but think of the future. Now that you all had reached Baldur’s Gate, he imagined things would begin to escalate quickly, but there was still so much to do. There were quite a few people the party needed to meet up with, you had a lead on where to find Shadowheart’s parents, plus your new friend at the circus had asked you to find Dribbles the Clown. Or, rather, what was left of him, at any rate. And then there was the small matter of killing Cazador.

Astarion’s arms unconsciously tightened around you as his thoughts turned towards his former master.

Despite all of the confidence and bravado he displayed whenever he talked to you about it, the prospect of returning to the Crimson Palace unsettled him. He was terrified, but he knew if you knew that you’d try to talk him out of going, to let you and the others handle it while he stayed behind at camp. You’d already floated the idea to him once, but there was absolutely no way he was going to miss out on Cazador’s bloody and, hopefully agonizingly painful, last moments. After two hundred years of torture, he’d more than earned that right.

And then there was the matter of the Rite of Profane Ascension. Was he really going to take Cazador’s place and ascend in his stead?

He still had no idea. Despite the determination he showed you whenever the topic came up, he was deeply unsure if it was the right thing to do. He didn’t want to lose what little humanity he had left, become a hard and cruel monster as his master was. But what choice did he have if he wanted to keep you safe, to keep himself safe? Once the tadpoles were gone, he’d be nocturnal once again, relegated back to the shadows and unable to protect you in the daytime hours. He shuddered at the thought of something happening to you just because he couldn’t go outside half the time.

All of these thoughts combined into a loop of despair in his mind, only broken when the sound of your drunken companions finally coming upstairs to retire for the night. The noise startled him from his thoughts, and you stirred in his arms.

While you didn’t fully wake from your slumber, your sleep was disturbed just enough that you moved around into a different position. You turned onto you other side within the circle of his arms, facing away from him. Astarion moved his body with yours, turning with you so he was curled up behind you, the front of his body pressed against the back of yours. In this new position, he was able to bury his face against the side of your neck and breathe in your scent. Your smell was comforting to him and felt himself relax.

Now that the spiral of his thoughts were broken, he took this as a sign to stop thinking for the night get some rest. It took a little while, but between the lullaby of your soft snores and the steady beat of your heart, his worries about the coming days fades and he eventually drifted off into a meditative state.

[ahgasegotarmy116]

Still With You | A Jeon Jungkook Series | Chapter Eleven

Summary: Making up with Jungkook isn't something you want to do first thing in the morning but you've kept him waiting for far too long Pairing : Luna (reader) x Jungkook and Jimin, f2l love triangle Word Count: 3.7k~ Warnings: Explicit language (barely lol) a/n: I know I put a poll up and this was the last choice in the rankings but this was already finished so I figured I'd just post it 😅 Start from the beginning

Opening my eyes I'm greeted with the warmth of the sun on my skin, shining through the curtains where I've fallen asleep on the couch in my living room. 

Reaching for my phone I check the time and see that I've woken up just five minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. I'd prefer it this way honestly if it could save me from being jolted awake by that incessant ringing signaling the start of my day. 

Taking a deep breath I look up at the ceiling and start coaching myself in how this morning should all go down. Confronting someone after a fight is never pleasant but in this situation it's necessary. 

'I don't want to lose him', that has been the reason for my inaction and now it has to be my motivation to take action.

Jungkook can be hardheaded when he wants to be (sometimes even more than me), but I can't let the fear of not being able to reach him keep me from fighting for us. 

I know I need to show him how much he means to me, I know I've fallen short and I know for sure it's my turn to step up and make things right.

Sitting up I'm hit with a sudden feeling of wooziness and realize that in all the upset I forgot to eat last night. 

Well, I guess that's another motivation added to the list for getting me up and out of this apartment. I make my way to my bathroom to take a quick shower and get dressed to go before I can chicken out of this. 

I'm reminded of some of the horrible things he said to me last night as I continue to wake up but the reason they cut so deep is because most of them are laced with truth. 

I was stringing him along, I did spend time with Jimin, but I'm not dating him. I don't like the attention as much as he thinks I do, I only really care about him and it's been like that for years.

I guess since I haven't really entertained a guy for a while neither one of us knows how to act, especially since I know that he loves me now. 

Or loved...

Arriving at his door I find myself hesitant to knock since the action itself seems foreign. Between the three of us including Grey we've kinda dropped that formality, or at least Grey and I have. 

Jungkook still is a bit more respectful and texts before letting himself in. I hope we can go back to those days and that the damage that has been done can be repaired. 

Making moves to knock I'm interrupted by the sight of Hoseok coming out of his place a few doors down. 

"Oh Luna, hi! I haven't seen you in a while. How have you been?" he asks looking bright eyed and bushy tailed, a tell tail sign that he probably wasn't aware of Jungkook's drunken stupor from last night. 

"Could be better" I say now reminded of Jungkook's same response just hours ago. 

"Are you here to see Jungkook?" he asks, clearly seeing what my intensions are. "Yeah, do you know if he got home last night?" I question now concerned as to why he's asking.

"I heard from Jin that he crashed at his place after showing up drunk off his ass. He said he was mumbling something about you so I figured you might be showing up sometime soon" he relays, knowing that there's no real reason to hide the information from me. 

"Oh okay, I guess I'll go ahead and talk to him another time" I say making moves to retreat. "I could take you there if you want? It's on my way anyways" he says and I'm just now noticing he looks like he was on his way out. 

"Oh I don't want to impose" I start trying to decline his offer. "Don't worry about it, he's been out of sorts for the past week so I know that seeing you would probably help him out. I don't mean to sound nosy but we all kinda found out what happened".

I nod my head in understanding and ultimately accept his offer. 

The journey to Jin's house isn't too long but with every passing second I feel like my airways are closing up, my throat going dry. 

As I try to listen to Hoseok's rambling about some sort of new figurine that he collects I see the minutes on the gps get smaller and smaller as we get closer to our destination. Once it hits zero and he parks the car we sit there for a second. 

"Do you want me to walk you up? I told Jin we were on our way so he's already expecting you" he says hoping to encourage me to take that leap to finally try to work things out.

"No it's okay, you've already helped me so much. Thank you Hoseok really, I know I hurt him but I really do want to make it right" I say with a sad smile. 

"I know, friendships are hard and they're even harder when love gets added to the mix..." I widen my eyes and I see an amused look on his face. "Yes he told us that too, believe it or not he's been gushing about you to us for years, and it's Hobi, Hoseok is too formal" he chuckles. 

"Thank you Hobi, hopefully next time I see you it'll be under happier circumstances" I say with a pained expression. "I'm sure it will, we all know what he's like but please, don't stop fighting for him" he says pinching his eyebrows together in a pained expression. 

"I won't" is the last thing I say to him before walking up to the house. 

"Hi Luna" Jin says after answering my soft knocks on his door, doing my best to keep quiet incase Jungkook is still sleeping. "Hey" I say and he brings me in for a hug. "He's not awake yet but you can wait in the living room and we can catch up for a bit if you're up for it" he says and offers me a cup of coffee while he walks over to the kitchen, to which I accept and take a seat on his wrap around couch. 

"Here you go" he says and also brings milk and sugar so I can fix it to my liking. After doing so he retrieves the items and finally comes over to sit down on the opposite side of the couch making sure to keep a respectful distance, knowing what Jungkook's reaction might be if he found us any closer.

"How have you been? Hanging in there?" he starts taking the pressure off of me of initiating the conversation. "As best as I can be I guess. Did he tell you what happened last night?" I ask hoping to see where his head was at after our argument. 

"Well he was way too far gone when he got here so not a whole lot of it made sense other than telling me you guys had a fight and that you were cheating on him" he says recalling the sight. 

"How could I be cheating on him if we're not even dating?" I groan throwing my head back against the couch. 

"You know him, he's always been very protective of you, and I guess that with his confession he couldn't help but let out some of that possessive energy along with it" he explains plainly.

"Yeah I can tell. I got used to him being protective but everything has gotten out of control since then. You saw what happened that day on the boardwalk. How else was I supposed to react?" I ask, hoping for some sort of validation for my actions. 

"Maybe you shouldn't have shut me out" I freeze hearing Jungkook's deep morning voice that is drenched in hostility, still clearly upset with me. 

"Jungkook that's not fair" Jin says trying to come to my rescue. "It's okay Jin just let me talk to him" I talk him down, hoping that he'll give us some space to talk. "I'll be in the other room if you need me" he says and gets up to go, granting us a sense of privacy.

"What are you doing here?" Jungkook grumbles as he makes his way over to the kitchen and I decide to follow him there. 

"I came to see you" I say stating the obvious. "How did you find me?" he continues only asking surface level questions as he gets the coffee pot and pours himself a cup. "I passed by your place first and I bumped into Hobi so he told me where you were and gave me a ride here" I explain. 

"Don't call him that, only his friends get to call him that" he says clearly not happy that I've had contact with his hyungs without his prior knowledge. 

"He asked me to call him that..." I say trailing off deciding it's best not to push it. "Well I don't want you to. They're my friends, not yours" he says sternly still giving me the cold shoulder. "Noted" is all I say and do my best to give him a peace offering instead.

"I brought over some hangover soup, I thought you might like some" I say nodding towards the bag on the counter. 

Having his back to me, now looking for something that I could only guess would be some painkillers from the sight of the different medicine bottles in the cabinet, he only grunts in acknowledgement not really making an effort to show any sort of gratitude. 

"Shit" he mumbles. "I brought you some painkillers too if that's what you're looking for" I say hoping to get him to see that I really am here to help and not hurt. He lets out a deep sigh and looks over at the water bottle and the pain meds in question that I had placed on the counter and decides it's best to give in. 

"Thanks" he mumbles and takes the pills immediately. "You should probably eat something though so let me just heat up the soup for you too. I don't want you to end up with a stomachache on top of it all" I say gathering the takeout containers and assembling the meal before he can refuse.

After the food is ready I sit at the table and keep him company as he eats. 

"Aren't you gonna have some?" he questions, curious as to why I haven't served myself as well. "No that's okay, I ate something before I came here" I say making sure that he'll eat his fill and still have some left over for later. 

He shrugs his shoulders and continues to eat until I see that he looks like he's feeling a bit more alive again. He sits back and takes another drink of water before finally speaking. 

"So I'm guessing you're here to talk?" he says getting up to clear out the dishes, to which I jump up and help right away. "Yeah" I trail off hoping to have a more stable setting unlike last night. 

He nods his head and we both make our way over to the couch and end up sitting at the same distance that Jin and I had just been at before.

"So talk" he says and waits for me to explain myself. "Do you remember what happened last night?" I start off. 

"Bits and pieces. I do remember that you've been seeing another guy though, I wasn't drunk enough to forget that" he answers saying the last part under his breath. 

"I just want to clear that up real quick first so we can establish the reasons why I did what I did" he nods in acknowledgement and lets me continue. 

"His name is Jimin first off, and I met him a few days before the night you told me you love me, or loved me based off of what you said last night" he opens his mouth to interrupt but I hold my hand up telling him to wait until I've said my piece.

"He came into the store one day and flirted with me and we hit it off. He asked me to go to a cafe with him, which I did and he tried to kiss me at the end of it. I stopped him and told him I wanted to get to know him better and that we should take things slow, to which he agreed so we just kept things chill from there but he made his intensions known right away" I say and watch as his expressions change, seeing he wants to get a word in but he respects my wishes.

"In case you're wondering we haven't gone out on a proper date and we haven't kissed. On the night you and I had that fight on the boardwalk Jin brought me home and when I walked up to my doorstep there was a red envelope addressed to me" I continue and I can tell his interest is peaked.

"I picked it up and brought it inside and when I opened it I saw pictures of me with you and Grey. Some were from work, others were from us or just me inside my apartment and some were of us in random places where we were just spending time together. It even had pictures of when we went stargazing and from the day we went to the boardwalk"

I reach into my bag to take out the picture of us kissing with the first note that said 'I'm Watching You' with Jungkook's face crossed out. 

"All of the pictures had your face crossed out like this and I got scared so I grabbed my phone to try to call you but I somehow ended up calling Jimin on accident" I say and I see the way his hands grip the picture I had given him a little tighter.

"I started spiraling and by the time he picked up the phone he could already tell that something was wrong. I couldn't bring myself to hang up and call you because of what had happened between us so when he offered to come over I said yes" Jungkook tongues his cheek, a muscle in his jaw feathering.

"When he got there he helped calm me down and it felt so wrong to have someone else do what you've done for me time and time again but I knew it would've been selfish of me to ask you to come over after I had just asked for space".

I clear my throat before I keep going and I notice now that he's got his eyes trained on me, not missing a single word, needing to know what happened. 

"He spent the night, initially sleeping on the couch until I woke up from a nightmare later on that night so I asked him to sleep in the bed with me but that was it. Nothing happened" I explain and although he's still clearly tense I can tell he's happy that nothing happened. 

"I'm telling you in explicit detail because I want to be honest with you. I don't want there to be anymore misunderstandings between us. After that night I felt like we had gotten a bit closer so he asked me if I wanted to spend some more time together but I told him no because I wanted to figure out where things between you and I stand and he understood that but again told me that he still wanted to date me if I gave him the chance" if looks could kill...

"He ended up stopping by the store sometimes to just say hi and we would text occasionally but that's what the state of my relationship with him is at at the moment"

I think for a second trying to formulate my words carefully, the next part is one that could make or break our relationship. 

"I did ask for space that day for a few different reasons" I start off and I can see him squirm a bit in his seat. 

"One being that both you and Jimin confessed your feelings to me on the same night so my emotions were all over the place which is probably why I reacted the way that I did, so I apologize if I scared you" I explain and he nods, waiting for the other reasons on the list. 

"Two was that I felt like a switch flip between us even before you confessed to me. I could sense the tension building so I didn't know how to act. Third was from the way that things went down the day we fought. I do admit that I had fault in it too so I don't want you to feel like I'm blaming it all on you because I'm not" I back track a bit and he nods again.

"I had been teasing you from the start because I liked the way you would react to it. I liked the way you were getting jealous and possessive over me. It made me feel wanted and I hadn't really experienced something like that before" I confess, owning up to my fault. 

"I let things get out of hand when I kept on provoking you so I'm sorry. I didn't realize that something like that would make you so upset so it's my fault that that fight happened in the first place" I finish and take a deep breath, waiting for him to say something, finally giving him the chance to do so.

"That's a lot" he he breathes out, still trying to process it all. "I probably said some mean stuff to you last night didn't I?" he questions. I nod my head and he rubs his temples and thinks for a while before he finally starts to respond to everything. 

"That fight wasn't all your fault Luna, I played a part in it too. If anything I escalated it because of how blinded by jealousy I was. Having my feelings out in the open made me feel vulnerable and the guys knew that but they messed around with you anyways" he sighs and I nod, realizing that we were teaming up and trying to provoke him. 

"It wasn't a good decision on my part to bring you and I should've known that so I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for the way I treated you then and I'm sorry for what happened last night. Even though I don't remember everything I do know that what I did was fucked up and I should've just  turned around and left when I saw you. I wasn't ready to talk and I knew that but I missed you so much I couldn't pass up the chance to see you again" he says looking at me with true regret in his eyes. 

"I missed you too" I say quietly so I don't interrupt him too much.

"That stalker...well until we get to the bottom of that you're not leaving my side" he growls, leaving me protesting but now he's the one that's putting his hand up to stop me. "We'll work that out later but after all of this where do we stand?" he asks, slightly grimacing at the end.

"I don't know why I would ever say that I don't love you because I do. I love you so fucking much it hurts Luna" he lets out a shaky breath. "No matter what I've said in the past or what I'll say in the future I will always love you" he finishes showing so much regret. 

"I don't know...but maybe we could start off by being best friends again?" I suggest hoping that he'll be satisfied with that for now. "I'm not saying that I don't want to try and make us work, but for right now I think our feelings are too raw so we should probably take some time to heal what's been hurt" I explain, hoping I've gotten my point across. 

"I think I'd like that...but let's try to heal together this time okay? Don't push me away again. I don't care how mad you are, just stay with me" he pleads, reaching out for my hand.

"Always" I reply, squeezing his hand. 

"You've said that before" he gives me a stern look. 

"Okay but I really do mean it this time" I hold my hands up laughing at his attempt to be mad at me again. 

"You better" he chuckles before ruffling my hair. 

"I guess I deserved that" I say while blowing the hair out of my face. "Oh you definitely deserve more than that" he says standing up and stalking towards me. 

"What do you mean by that?" I say standing up and backing away from him. 

"Why don't you come over here and find out" he chuckles with a devious smile, lunging towards me which I narrowly evade and run away from him.

"Jin! Jin, help! He's trying to kill me!" I yell laughing at how silly Jungkook looks while running after me. 

"YA! I leave you two alone for 10 minutes and you're already disrespecting my home?" he scolds. 

I make a bee line for him but Jungkook cuts me off and pulls me in by my waist, my back up against his chest. 

"Jin please save me. Please don't leave me with him" I beg while he backs up into his room seeing the playful manner that has been revived between us. 

"Just don't break anything Jungkook" he chuckles and sends us an amused smile before he closes the door 

"No" I whimper out before Jungkook whispers in my ear. 

"Seems like we've gotta make up for lost time" he purrs before pinching my sides, making me squirm in his embrace. 

"Jungkook stop please you know I hate this!" I whine before he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. "Aw pretty, we haven't even started" he smirks and starts tickling me mercilessly.

"JIN! HELP!" I yell out through gasps desperate for a savior, my prayers forever going unanswered.

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[babydoll372]

Pleasure

Pairings: older!natasha romanoff x younger!reader (nat is around her late thirties, early forties, r is early 20’s)

Word count: 2223

Warnings: age gap relationship, r is honestly cringe blame that on me alone, sexual insecurities, age gap insecurities, oral (r receiving), r is a virgin, mentions of scissoring, inexperienced!r

Natasha sighed in relief as she closed her laptop, clocking out of her shift and rushing to leave the office before her boss could dive into a long conversation with her. She got into her car and waited for it to warm up, shivering a bit at first and grabbing her phone to call you. She smiled as she saw your face appear on the screen as she started pulling out of the parking lot.

“Hello, my beautiful girl..how was your day?” She glanced over and saw you shrug a bit as you stirred a spoon, she was guessing you were cooking her dinner for when she’d be home.

“Y/N? Is everything okay?” She asked with more worry this time, and you couldn’t help but bite your lip as you stared upon her beautiful, chiseled jawline.

“I’m okay..uhm, how was work?”

“Eh, it was the same as usual. How was your doctor's appointment today? Everything go okay?” Today you had to see your primary care physician for a regular checkup, but it ended up going in a different direction. You nervously released the fact that you were not sexually active, even though you showed your doctor photos of you and Natasha earlier in the appointment. She didn’t question obviously, knowing many different reasons could be of cause, and wrote down what you told her. However, when you explained some worries to her was when she brought it up.

“So you can’t reach an orgasm with masturbation, why not try with your partner? I don’t know if you are waiting until marriage or what not-“

“Oh, no, no, definitely not planning to wait until marriage..I’m just, you know, a bit scared. It’ll obviously, uh..be the first so I’m just worried I’ll embarrass her and myself by feeling absolutely nothing.” The woman chuckled and placed a hand on your knee, patting it gently.

“I personally, and professionally, don’t think you have anything to be afraid of. It will be hard at first to adjust to, it’s definitely uncomfortable having another person see you so intimately and insight different physical reactions, but actually making love is so much different than masturbating, my dear. And I know it’s uncomfortable to hear or talk about, but you don’t need to fear it. I am sure that when the time comes you will be quite pleased, and so will your partner, and if not then I can refer you to a gynecologist and we can go from there, alright?” You nodded at her reassuring words, fiddling with your hands to ease your nerves as now the idea was imprinted into your mind for the rest of the physical. Maybe you really were just inexperienced and couldn’t bring yourself to experience an orgasm, but maybe she would? She had been with multiple women in her years, you zero, considering your age gap, but what if she didn’t enjoy it with you?

“It was fine..uhm, I- I was hoping to talk to you when you’re home about something.” You said, blurting it out before you would forcefully hold it in any longer. It had already felt like years keeping it in for ten hours.

“You don’t want to talk now? Is it serious?”

“I would just prefer talking at home, is that okay?” Once again, Natasha glanced at the camera with worry, trying to read your face in a quick few seconds before looking back at the road.

“Of course it’s okay..I’ll see you at home then?” Usually the call on her way home lasted the entire ride, but you both could feel the heavy tension and knew it needed to end there. You said your goodbyes and about fifteen minutes later, she came home and you greeted her at the door with a kiss. You walked her into the dining room where you had dim lighting and a candle lit on the table. The table was always up against the window looking out to the city, and now it looked even more romantic since it was dark out, and the only lights illuminating the sky were from the homes of other people living their own lives. Along with the candle were two plates of steak and potatoes, making Natasha’s eyebrows raise. Steaks weren’t something you two could afford often, clearly this was an important night.

“Wow, this must be something really important you need to discuss, huh?” She joked, sitting down across from you as you didn’t even laugh. You just bit your lip anxiously as you started to cut your own steak. Usually, Nat would cut your food for you, whether it was meat, pancakes, desserts, or anything else, she’d be the one doing it for you while you happily awaited.

“You sure you don’t want me to cut that for you, baby?”

“I’m okay, I’m not a baby, y’know.” You chuckled, only making her tick her head to the side in worry again.

“I know you’re not a baby, I just like doing things for you. I’m sorry if it came off that way..are you sure you’re okay?” She tried to calmly speak, not wanting to cause an argument of any kind but also getting a bit frustrated at your inability to communicate your problem with her.

“I-…I just don’t want you to think of me as some child, I’m a grown woman and I don’t need anybody to do things for me. And just because you’re older or have slept with loads of women doesn’t mean I’m some incompetent- thing!”

“Woah, woah, woah, what is going on? Why are you treating me like I’m some whore who’s slept with hundreds of women? And why are you suddenly so worried about this?”

“Because I want to have sex with you! And I- I want to be comparable to the, I don’t know, supermodels you’ve been with! And I don’t want you to think you can’t make a move just because I’m younger or because you cut my steak for me..” Natasha covered her lips to hide a chuckle at your obviously wrong guessing, and quickly put on a face of care when you were looking.

“Y/N, that is completely inaccurate! First off, the very few women I’ve slept with were nowhere near supermodels. Second off, you have no idea how badly I want to have sex with you! I have been holding back since we got together because I respect you, not because I don’t find you desirable or hot, it’s just because I’m not going to push you into anything. I do not think you are too young for me to have sex with…and I wish you would’ve come to me sooner about this, sweetheart..” She said as she kissed the back of your hands, smiling at you as you slowly cracked a grin, realizing how foolish you sounded.

“I’m sorry- gosh I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be so rude, I don’t think you’re a whore at all! I think you’re awesome and the best girlfriend I could ever ask for..who I really hope will still accept my offer to have sex with me for the first time..tonight?” Natasha smiled wide, staring into your eyes as if they were never ending. She nodded as she verbally agreed, and you blew out a breath. You slowly pulled your hands back from her and went to finish your steak so that you two could start soon, however, Nat had different plans. She stood up abruptly and went to your side of the table, turning your chair around to face her and effortlessly lifting you so your legs wrapped around her waist, and her hands were placed on your butt as she teasingly squeezed it. She kissed you repeatedly along the way, having to stop back at the table after your insisting of blowing out the candle, and once you did, she just went for your neck. Any open area of skin she was following with her lips, sometimes leaving small purple marks in its wake. Once she got to the bedroom, she comfortably laid you on the bed and stared down at you, grinning from ear to ear.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that?” You bit your lip as your cheeks tinted a deep shade of red, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away. “I am the luckiest woman on this very planet, my love..and I am never letting you go. I am going to make love to you today and every single day after that you let me, because I cannot get enough of you, my beloved..” She leaned down to kiss you passionately before her hands trailed down to your hips, teasing your waistband. She trailed her lips to your chest until you nodded, allowing her to remove your shirt. She grinned, teasing her tongue around the soft, supple plush that was your skin, and sucking softly on your nipples, one and then the other. Your fingers found her hair as your raked through it, humming softly. You felt an ounce of panic rise when you thought back to what you told your physician and how you truly had never felt much pleasure, and you were worried this would be the same. You felt a limited amount of lust from her actions, but you felt loving pleasure.

“Nat..?”

“Hm?” She kept her lips wrapped around her desired object, looking up at you from your chest.

“Do you think you could try, like..rubbing me a bit? Or something like that..please and thank you.” She slowly pulled away from your chest, planning to go back as she grabbed a hair tie from the bedside table and put her long red hair in a bun. She used two fingers to gently caress your clit through your shorts, her free hand on your thigh rubbing soft circles.

“Tell me how that feels, sweetheart. Do you want me to move your shorts aside?”

“May you please? I- it feels close to good but not quite there..“ She nodded, understanding the difficulty you might have for your first time and she pulled the shorts over a bit to reveal your well tailored cunt. You fiddled with your fingers as you watched her face for her reaction.

“You look gorgeous, my love. But you don’t ever need to change a thing for me, okay?” You nodded, biting your lip as you felt her wet fingers draw circles over your clit. She focused on how much pleasure she was bringing you, her free hand moving to your breasts as she fondled them softly, tweaking your nipples playfully. After the same movements and eventually a slightly quicker pace, she wanted to go further.

“Is it alright if I use my mouth now?” She could see your hesitancy and how your legs instinctively closed an inch at the thought of her so close. “It’s alright if you don’t want me to, I just want to make you feel good, this is about you tonight.”

“You-..you can use your mouth, yeah..” She didn’t waste much time and put her hands on your thighs to hold them in place, bringing her tongue to your clit as she followed similar patterns from her fingers. She hummed at the taste of you, making you moan quietly as you gripped onto her hair. You could feel your legs shaking a little bit as you tightened them around her, and she only quickened the pace of her tongue. She rode off of your whimpers, both the quiet and loud, and she watched as your upper body heaved up and down the quicker she went. Her jaw started to ache, but she wasn’t finding it in her to care as she drowned out the pain and focused on your confused pleasure. It didn’t come in a matter of seconds, nor only a few minutes, but she continued until she heard the words she had been desperate to hear.

“Nat-! I- fuck, I think I’m gonna-“ She pulled away for mere milliseconds to respond, not wanting to waste a single moment away from your delicious juices.

“Cum for me- do it for me, baby!” She moaned loudly into your desperate heat as your legs shook even quicker and tightened even further, your body unraveling as you let yourself slip. Your eyes shot wide open as you stared at the ceiling, your orgasmic state washing over you intensely as you clung tightly to the back of your older girlfriends head while you muttered ‘fuck’ over and over under your breath.

She eased you out of your high by delivering slow licks to the sensitive bud until you were whining for her to stop. She slowly got up and removed her underwear before settling in front of you.

“Take all the time you need, there’s no rush..but once you’re ready, I want to teach you something.” She took your hands in her own, kissing them softly as you looked up at her, still in a completely disheveled state.

“What do you want to try?”

“You might’ve heard of it before, it’s called scissoring.” She grinned at the thought alone and ran her hands up and down your thighs, humming at the feeling of your soft skin as she could only imagine what it’d feel like rubbing against hers.

[theeeveetamer]

So in case you didn’t know, about two months ago I started playing Punishing: Grey Raven for the sole reason that they teased a DMC5 collab

So they just dropped an official announcement and gameplay footage for it (it’s coming in May for the Chinese server, probably not until September for global), and there’s a few interesting bits they showed off that I wanted to talk about. At one point they show off some dialogue for each of them

Interestingly, they pull the idea from the DMC4 novel that the two of them can sort of sense each other’s presence

(Alright it might have been mentioned elsewhere, but it’s a big point in the DMC4 novel and part of how Dante puts together that Nero is Vergil’s son)

Anyway they have matching lines about this which is kinda cute, they really are just like each other:

“Wait… feels like Vergil… huh, I guess he’s also here. Well, talk to you later. I have something I need to do… VERGIL!” (As he grabs his sword and runs off screen, presumably to go kick Vergil’s ass)

“Hmm… I can feel his presence. [laughs] DANTE!”

But the thing that REALLY piqued my interest was this line from Vergil:

“In the pursuit of power I once forsook my humanity, yet still found myself unable to defeat him… Here’s some counsel for you. Remember the inner fire that propels you toward strength, and always keep in mind the purpose for which you fight.”

I’ve been trying to get into Vergil’s head now for a while, and I think this matches my sentiments regarding Vergil’s character and motivations. He’s someone who initially wanted power to protect himself and the people he cares about, but in the quest for it he lost sight of why he set out on the journey to begin with. His single-minded obsession with power is what led him to throw away everyone he would have wanted to protect (including himself). So kind of a fascinating exploration of his mentality post-DMC5

Also he reads out a William Blake poem like a total theater kid and then gets all embarrassed about it, the fucking NERD

[wolfish-trickster]

People pleaser(s)

Astarion x f!reader/Tav

Word count: 5.8K

Summary: Astarion pleased people to survive, you pleased them to keep them with you. What happens when one people pleaser meets another? Trauma is what.

Warnings: angst (like heavy amount), trauma (lots of it), typos, grammar mistakes

A/N: based off of this. A random 3am motivation hit and i thought why not write the whole thing myself 😅

Observe, listen, learn, use, lure. Those were the tactics Astarion used while under Cazador's reign.

Observe: go into a crowded space, usually a bar or a tavern, look for people, preferably lonely or loners.

Listen: sit close to them, listen to the conversations they are having, either with their friends or bartender.

Learn: if his new target is a regular and a hard nut to crack memorize every detail about them for future use.

Use: talk with them, compliment them, tell them what their heart yearns to hear, use his aquired knowledge from previous steps to his advantage, mold himself into the person they desire

Lure: give them a night of passion, promise them more, and while they're still drunk on the pleasure he gave them, take them back to Cazador's palace.

This was the regime he lived under for around two centuries. A flawless plan no one was able to escape nor evade. Until one fateful night he got kidnapped by mindflayers. Those retched tentacled beasts. And yet he was grateful. Even death or changing into one of them was better than his life so far. But fate had other plans.

It lead him to you, among other people. You were sharp, aggressive in just the right amount, but soft and caring when needed. It was obvious you were the leader of the group he stumbled into. This new status quo gave him a new perspective of life, of his situation. He was still undead, still tormented by sanguin hunger, but he could walk on the sun now. He could cross rivers and enter buildings without needed invitation first. Small things, but they made him feel much more powerful, more in control of his life. Once he realized it, it made his head spin. For the first time he was free.

And he could be even more. If only...

If only he played his old tricks on you. To get you to like him, love him even. You'd aid him greatly in defeating his former master.

And so, reluctantly but partialy out of habit, he fell into his old ways.

Observe: some days it seemed like you were everywhere at once, helping everyone with everything and yet no one has done the same for you

Listen: there wasn't much listening on his part. You were the one to listen to your companions. Whatever bothered them, their opinion, their life story, the topic varied but you always listened, never spoke.

Learn: from his observing he has learned, well, practically nothing about you. You never talked about your past or your interests. And yet that has told him everything he needed to know.

Use: when you walked up to him and asked him anything, he always turned the conversation back to you. Oh him? He's good today, how are you doing? Late at night when you volunteered to keep watch (of course you always did) he kept you company and gave you the space to talk your heart out. It was to make you see him as a trustworthy companion, someone all he sees is you. And even though it was all part of his plan, very deep inside he has started to quite enjoy the alone time he had with you

Lure: it didn't take much convincing to take you to his bed. Or rather to take you to a forest. True, you've refused him the first time, no doubt playing hard to get. But the second time he only needed to use a charming word or two and, even though an expression he couldn't quite put a finger on flashed through your face, you agreed. You came. Several times in fact.

And that was it. Nicely wrapped around his finger. Or so he thought.

"You will come to my bed tonight, won't you?"

You took a sip of the wine he so generously shared with you and shook your head. "No, sorry. Too tired."

"Come now, don't be coy. Or do you need a bit of enticing?"

You pondered a bit. With a held breath he waited for your answer, already preparing some of his favourite lines that would definitely work on you in case you insisted on your previous answer. The last few days you have been spending more and more time with everyone else rather than him. Astarion found it quite odd, people like you usually get attached to people like him. Nevertheless, he needed to remind you what he can give you. In return for your help and protection, of course.

Eventually after looking around a bit, most likely checking if your companions were asleep, you nodded with a sigh. Not an enthusiastic one, as he observed.

"Is something the matter?" He asked.

"Huh? Oh. No, nothing. I'm just really tired. But, I mean, you want to, so..."

"Oh my sweet," he took your chin between his index and middle finger and tilted your head up to look at him, "trust me, after some time with me you'll fall asleep faster than a babe. You'll never have a better rest than in my embrace," he purred.

*

Paradoxically after that night you avoided him even more. And Astarion has put such a work into pleasing you! What went wrong? Will you not sleep with him anymore? Not that he'd complain, but to think about the consequences it could bring him. Any misstep, any minor inconvinience and you could chase him off the camp. Others merely tolerated his presence, none of them would stand up for him if his exile was ever brought up. Well, maybe Karlach would, but she seems to mindlessly love everything and everyone, like a huge beastly looking puppy. A true enigma, that woman.

Since sex was no longer working he tried to at least be useful to you. However every help, every assistance, every chance of him spending even a minute longer than needed in your presence was met with a "no, thanks Astarion, I can handle it."

His position? Hopeless. His skills? Useless.

As he was drowning in despair he didn't even hear the conversation with a drow you've discussed some potions with. Until the word spawn was mentioned.

"What's your name, spawn?"

"Astarion," he said.

"Astarion," the woman repeated. The way she prolonged the wovels in his name made him shudder. Even more when he finally registered the stench that has been enveloping them and which his mind was ignoring for the past few whiles. It was coming from her. Her blood. Astarion surpressed the need to gag.

"I can give you a potion of incredible power. It isn't for sale, but it's yours," the drow told you and then turned her head towards him, "if you bite me."

"What? You want to be bitten?" He must've hit his head. Or has Gale put a spell on him to make him a complete fool?

He glanced at you but your face remained emotionless. No indication of what you wanted him to do. Or if you even wanted the potion at all. Though, he promised himself to win you over by any means possible, he simply couldn't push himself to drink that foul excuse of a blood in that drow's veins.

"I would have to decline," he tried. It's been a long time since he had said similair words to anyone. It felt foreign, but powerful in a way. He liked it.

"Excuse me?" She exclaimed. "This is a chance of a lifetime."

"I gave you my answer," he growled. This, the ability to say no. To finally be the one shaking their head and declining. It made him higher than any passionate night ever did.

"Ugh, can you talk some sense into him?" The drow turned to you.

You blinked at him and he finally could read your expression: confusion. Well, better that than anger, right?

"I kinda thought you'd jump at the opportunity there."

"Can you give us a moment?" He said way too sweetly as he took your shoulder and fully turned you away from everyone to have some privacy with you.

"Are you seriously asking me to do this?" He asked and prayed to all gods you'd tell him no, just like you always did.

"Why? What's going on? You're not hungry?"

"It's her blood. It's," he inhaled to get a better grasp at what it actually reminded him of, "rotten. Drinking it wouldn't kill me, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant."

You shrugged. "It's your life. Your choice. Do as you want."

"Really?" He was taken aback. Do you even realize what you just said? What amount of power you just gave him? After nearly two centuries he was given his will to choose for himself. Free of consequences, with no conditions or threats of violence. "Thank you," he told you before turning back to the drow and releating his proud no.

As all of you were leaving back to the camp Astarion couldn't surpress the smile blooming on his face. He has done it. He said no. He declined someone access to his body. Granted, only to his fangs, but even that's a wonderful start.

Then his thoughts went back to you, as it was a custom since he joined your group. It was some weeks since the two of you layed together the last time. Even longer since he was usefull to you in any way. Even in battles the one with the most blood on their hands was Karlach and not the charming rogue. He hasn't given you a reason to stand up for him like that. Or to care for him in any way. He was almost sure you've even grown to hate him. And yet your actions proved otherwise.

He observed you again. You still helped wherever you could. Still listened and played therapist for everyone. Wait, that's it!

"Y/N dear," he aproached you one night, "can we talk?"

He took in your doe slightly startled eyes. How the stars twinkled in them. It made his chest twist in this unknown way.

"Sure, what do you need? You don't want to sleep with me again," you took a small defensive step back," do you?"

"What? No, don't you worry. Even masters of the horizontal tango need some rest. I wanted to ask you," he wasn't even sure what is it he wanted to know. "I wanted to ask..."

You waited patiently for him. No interuptions, no hurrying him to just spit it out. As if you were the immortal one with plenty of time on your hands.

"Do you hate me?" He spat out almost as a one word. There, it was out.

"What? No. How did you even come to think of that?"

"Do you want it alphabetically or chronologically?"

"No need for that," you halted him. "Just... did I do something you didn't like? Was I annoying? Just tell me and I'll stop."

"What? You think you've done something to me?"

You nodded.

He laughed. "Oh my, how funny you are. No, you haven't done a thing I didn't find absolutely indearing. It might've been me who overstepped. But no need to nitpick about the past. You don't hate me and that's all I needed to know. Have a pleasant rest of the night, dear," he waved you goodbye but before he could go back to his tent you called out for him.

"Astarion wait," you tugged at his sleeve to stop him, "can you at least tell me what I did to make you think so low of me?"

He was quiet for a while. Now that he thought about it, the reason was quite silly. Or maybe that's just his mind playing with him. "You weren't spending as much time with me anymore," he admitted and now that it was said outloud he cringed. He sounded like a whiny teenager with a crush rather than an experienced rake.

"Oh," you let go of his sleeve. "I'm sorry. It wasn't on purpose."

"I know, how can anyone neglect this wonderful bastard on purpose after all," he ran his hand through his curls and made them a bit more puffy.

You chuckled and bid him goodnight. Back in his bedroll he kept replaying your chuckle in his head. Was it just him or did it sound sweeter than usual? And what is this twisting in his chest again? It must be just delusions from his hunger. Even though he has sucked dry one huge deer an hour ago he must've become hungry again. But even when hunting for a new prey he barely focused. His mind kept doing what it did since he joined your group: thinking about you.

*

His feelings grew from minor twisting and turning into a full body reaction whenever he was close to you. Which is all the time nowadays. You must've taken his complaining about your lack of companionship to heart since you've practically become his shadow from that night forward. Not that he minded, of course. You fed his ego wonderfully and at times Astarion had difficulties remembering he was supposed to be doing that to you, not the other way around. He was supposed to make your heart sing for him, your hands itch to be on him, your eyes stealing glances at him and shyly turn away once you notice him staring back. How dare you reverse the roles he planned for the two of you!

Then again it wasn't so bad. Waking up and having thoughts of anything else rather than survival was a nice change, especially if those thoughts were of you. Especially now that the two of you spend so much time together. It felt like getting to know you all over again.

He was more than sure you were discussing your mutual fear of snakes with Gale a few months back. Now you excitedly tugged on his arm and pointed at any legless reptile you spotted on your path. Maybe he had a therapeutic effect on you.

Nearly everything he learned about you before was wrong. But that made you that more exciting. And that more easier to care for.

He couldn't bear it any longer. He needed to tell you the truth. You were much too good of a person to be left in a lie. Even though the loving words he told you before as a lie became true. You still deserved to know.

"You see I had a plan. A nice simple plan. Seduce you, slelp with you, manipulate your feelings so you'd never turn on me. It was easy. Instinctive. Two hundred years of charming people kicked it and all you had to do was fall for it. And all I had to do was not fall for you. Which is where my nice simple plan fell apart."

Throughout his whole confession he closely studied your face. It changed from curiosity to shock to sadness. But never anger. A good sign to continue.

"You deserve something real. I want us to be something real."

Your expression was still sad. How come? It was supposed to turn into hapliness. He just opened up before you, poured out all his feelings and gave you his heart on a silver platter. Then again he should've seen this coming. You were much like Karlach. A fearsome fighter but pure as a lilly. And what he has done to you, what he has just confessed to... you truly deserved something better than him. He wouldn't even hold it against you.

"Well, since we're admitting to secrets and all that, I don't want to leave you hanging," you nervously played with your fingers, "I also have something to confess to."

If Astarion still had a beating heart it would sink to his feet upon your next words.

*

"People come and go. Some decide to stay, some don't. That's life, Y/N. You just have to accept it and move on. Someone great will show up for you soon, I'm sure of it."

Those are the words your parents used to tell you everytime a friend of yours distanced themself from you or outright left you. When you were little you believed their words and always held hope that someone will show up and finally stay. To fulfill your dreams of a big friend group, fooling around under the summer sun, talk spooky stories around campfire. Things you saw other people do, living your dream.

But no matter who came across you they always left one way or another. It started to seem like athe whole world was against you. Once you couldn't bear the unfairness and you outright asked a friend who started to avoid you for a reason. Why they all started to avoid you.

"If it smells like shit everywhere you go maybe you should check under your shoe," they snickered, as if they haven't spend the past few momths with you, as if you were a pest.

But they were right in a way. Compared to your peers you were quite odd. While others steered clear of corpses you had no problem poking their eyes out, no matter what species or size your macabre plaything was. Most people would stay away from fights with people twice their size, but once you got riled up enough you weren't affraid to throw a punch yourself, even tricking bigger oponents so you weren't the only one with a busted lip. Your fashion sense and taste in music wasn't much better.

Over the years you perfected your abilities to see through people. Look for what they wanted. If a soft spoken friend was what they desired there you were, telling them flowery words you studied night before in a cheap romance novel. If a drinking buddy was needed you experimented with different types of alcohol to see which one can your body tolerate the best and then off you went to the pub with your new friends, making youself look like the biggest expert. If any as much as glared at something you found utterly indearing, whatever it was, you completely agreed with them. You even had to stop wearing some of your most favourite accesories. It broke your heart but it was a neccessary sacrifice.

As years passed you learned even better to expect people's needs ans fulfill them before they even voiced them. You even found a bit of a fun in it all. Putting up different masks depending who you were with. If birds of feather fly together was literal, your flock of friends was the most diverse in the nature. You had obtained friends of any kind, size, personallity, race, rank, gender, sexual orientation, quite everyone to be honest. You never had this many friends. None of them knew the real you but you couldn't care less. None of them left you. It was all that mattered. You swore you have forgotten what being abandoned even felt like.

Until Astarion.

When he first joined you didn't feel much about him. Blood thirsty, flirtatious, most likely dark past. You've had at least three people like him and they all became your friends in under a week. Getting him would be easy.

And it was. Few compliments here, some ego strokes there and he was happily sitting by the fire with you, even right next to Gale if you arranged it so.

You seemed to go up a level in his eyes when you offered him to drink from you. Despite all your instincts yelling at you to get the hell out of there you pushed through it and gave him as much of your life force as you could. He became tamer than Scratch after that day. Not that you've used it against him. You were just glad he took a liking to you. So what if you were dizzy the whole day afterwards.

But then it all changed when he asked to bed you. In all your life you've had friends who mistook your kindness for flirting but you've always turned them down. By the time they even worked up the courage to ask you've built yourself into such a good friend to them that even a romantic rejection wouldn't make them leave. Pleasing them and telling them what they wanted to hear was one thing but being intimate, letting them close to your body, was completely different. Even you had rules and boundaries you simply refused to change.

His first request was met with a harsh rejection. He was sulking for couple of days but you were sure he'd be like before in no time. He still fought with all his might and joked around but more often than not you've felt his piercing gaze on you. As if he was studying you. For sure trying to figure out why you've rejected him. He looked like the type that wasn't told no often after all.

Then you noticed how closer he grew with Karlach. Of course he did, she was the most lovable person you've ever met. You could even be yourself around her to a degree. Her ruthlessness in battles always came as a whiplash to you though. The duality of her, a true mystery she was.

She started to gush about him more too. No doubt viewing him as a quirky little guy since he couldn't harm her at all. Even enjoying his stupid jokes the most.

By the time Astarion's second proposition came you've been trying to make up your mind. No doubt if you refuse him again he'll grow bored and leave. He's too proud to stay after being rejected. When his question finally fell you glanced around and took a sight of Karlach. That huge warm ball of pure joy. If her favourite jokester left the camp, you couldn't bear the sadness on her face. So you agreed.

You drank a whole bottle of wine on your way to the agreed place in the forrest. Far away from the camp. You couldn't figure out why. Was he a loud lover? Would you be? Only one way to find out.

Or not.

He kissed you and that's the last thing you remember. The next thing you know you were laying on the grass, naked and sweaty, with Astarion standing afar, taking in the morning sun. Was it morning already?

Without a sound you gathered your clothes and sneaked off. You passed a small creek on your way, in it you've washed away the previous night. Despite the cold water bringing you back to reality you still felt touched, tainted. Your brain couldn't remember a thing but your body did and it disgusted you. But Astarion was apparantly happy. He wouldn't leave. All was good.

*

It was all a mistake, you told yourself. Of course now that he has had a taste he wanted more. Even though you gently turned him down and even suggested someone else or outright offered to go to the nearest town and search for a brothel, hells you'd even give him some of your gold if needed, he still only asked you. Why? It was beyond you. The same scenario played out again. He asked, you declined, he insisted, and even though you were quite curious about his was of enticing people you caught a glance of Karlach again, reenacting some funny scene from her life for Shadowheart. The smile on her face...

You agreed, again. This time you at least wanted to feel good. You didn't drink in hopes of remembering at least the pleasure. That was what the sex was about right? Pleasure, climax, a feeling most of your friends quickly got addicted to and gushed about infront of you.

You felt nothing. Mentally you were there, but more like an autopilot. He kissed your neck, so you tilted your head to give him more space. Not because it felt good being kissed there, becuase of how he moaned while he licked up your pulse. When he made a sound so did you. When he caressed you, you caressed him bacm. You mirrored him as best as you could to make him not suspect a thing. However there came a moment when you just needed to cry. You quickly pulled his head into the nape of your neck so he didn't have to see and question what kind of a weirdo you were. Crying during the most pleasurable part. Truly weird beyond belief.

The next morning you couldn't even look him in the eye. He did nothing wrong and you knew it. It wasn't worth it. Torturing yourself like this. Not for Karlach, not for him. You were done. If he ever asks you again you'll reject him. You didn't care if he stayed or left anymore. He must've had his fill of you. You won't give him anything more.

*

"Do you hate me?"

That question was like a punch to the gut. Completely out of the blue too. "What? No. How did you even come to think of that?"

Your own thoughts were racing as well as his. You did most of the chores around the camp, even those you agreed would be his. Just becuase you won't let him use your body as he pleases doesn't mean all your people pleaser instincts will leave completely. If you can't give him your body you'll at least gift him your own free time. Still even after that he tried to come and take som chores off of your hands but you wouldn't let him. You had to keep on moving, it distracted you from what he did to you. Or rather what you did to yourself.

Even later at the drow you stood up for him when she just treated him as a peace of meat. You just didn't have the heart to let her.

"Do you want it alphabetically or chronologically?"

"No need for that," you halted him. "Just... did I do something you didn't like? Was I annoying? Just tell me and I'll stop."

"What? You think you've done something to me?"

You nodded. What else could be the reason? It was always your fault others left. Maybe you've slipped up on accident and showed him a part of you that annoyed him. For some reason keeping up a mask around was harder and harder with each passing day.

He laughed. "Oh my, how funny you are. No, you haven't done a thing I didn't find absolutely indearing. It might've been me who overstepped. But no need to nitpick about the past. You don't hate me and that's all I needed to know. Have a pleasant rest of the night dear," he waved you goodbye but before he could go back to his tent you called out for him.

"Astarion wait," you tugged at his sleeve to stop him. You needed to know. "Can you at least tell me what I did to make you think so low of me?"

He was quiet for a while. Then he spoke. "You weren't spending as much time with me anymore."

"Oh," you let go of his sleeve. "I'm sorry. It wasn't on purpose."

"I know, how can anyone neglect this wonderful bastard on purpose after all," he ran his hand through his curls and made them a bit more puffy.

You chuckled. He must've figured out you loved his hair. It looked even better under moonlight. You shook yourself from admiring his hair and bid him goodnight.

How could you have been so careless? Neglecting him like that. You felt hurt, true, but it was your fault you felt like that, not his. He didn't do anything wrong. None of them ever did.

After you were done beating yourself up over your stupid mistake you promised yourself you'll spend more time with him. Hells, you'll become his tail if needed.

And as you were falling asleep you thought to yourself that maybe being that close to him won't be so bad.

*

Astarion was truly weird. But in a good way.

First you halt all intimacy after he has had a taste of you. Then you avoid him to the point he thinks you hate him. And yet he's still there, every single morning you expected him to be long gone he still greets you and compares your hair to a birds nest, offering his hair taming services for you.

You started to ease up a little around him. Being with him all the time was a bit overwhelming in the begining but the more time you spent together the more slip ups you made. And the wider his smile seemed to become.

Sooner or later you've dropped your mask completely around him. Told him what you thought, freely got excited about anything you encountered on the road, talked endlessly about topics most found boring. But Astarion? No boredom ever showed itself in his eyes. He only looked at you as if you were his whole world. Even when you were in a city negotiating something you could still feel his gaze on you.

His touches began to linger too. Before you just bit your cheek and let him touch you as he pleased. As long as his hands didn't wander you didn't exactly mind, if he wanted to you let him. But something has changed about him. Or rather the way you see him. His touch was less calculated and more... friendly? Sort of shy? When he was trying to get inside your pant the first time he usually brushed his palm along the small of your back with a wink but now, all he needed to slightly blush was for the backs of your hands to make a contact while you walked. Did you misread him in the begining?

The answer came like a lightning from clear blue sky.

Here you were now, listening to the rogue vampire who you grew to love despite how much pain you suffered through just to keep him from leaving, telling you about he was forcing himself as well all along. At first you wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but you could only feel sadness and sympathy for him. He never truly talked about his master and what he had to go through under his rule, but whatever he decided to share with you should've concidered more carefuly when coming up with ways of pleasing him. You should've known he was trying to manipulate you, just like you were him.

"I also have something to confess to," you took a deep breath. "I never wanted to sleep with you. I only did that becuase you would've left otherwise."

"Wha-" he took a step back, bewildered. "What are you saying?"

"I never wanted to do it with you. After you asked me the first time and I rejected you I noticed how Karlach grew to like you and I thought you would've left if someone didn't fulfill your needs. Since nobody really liked you back then, well aside from me and Karlach, and you only ever asked me I felt like I had to. You would've left otherwise and Karlach would be sad to see you go. Me too in a way... It is quite funny if you think about it," you chuckled a bit.

"Funny? In what universe is this funny?" He said with a slight anger in his voice.

"Just think," you tried to explain, "you manipulated me and at the same time I was kind of manipulating you back. You were right, this group really is full of wierdoes."

He didn't share the same humor as you. What was on his face was a mix of anger, disgust and horror. But he quickly hid those feelings away. "Well, seems like we are truly fated to be together then. If you'll have me that is."

You smiled up at him. The past is past now, you only focused on the fact that he grew to truly care about you, despite his plans. "Of course I will Astarion. But I do have a request."

"Anything, my dear."

You smiled at the pet name. Many people gave you cute or silly nicknames but this was the first that felt genuine. "No sex. For now at least. Please?"

He nodded. "Even though it would almost be a challenge, I would greatly appreciate it as well."

You smiled at eachother like two idiots in love, which you believed you were. Two broken people as well, but now you have eachother.

"I also have a request: no lying, no telling me what I want to hear. Only truth from now on," he said.

You agreed. He then extended his hand to you and you gladly took it. The feelings you held towards him from the first night you slept together still lingered but not as strongly as before. You could see the situation more clearly now. The world broke both of you in different ways, but together you could heal again.

That night you dreamed of what could be. After his master is defeated, after you're both freed from those worms. For the first time in your life you had someone by your side who wouldn't leave. And for the first time in your life you were excited for the future with him.

The same couldn't be said for Astarion that night. He couldn't close his eyes without seeing your face, your lovely innocent looking face, telling him how you forced yourself to be with him. You were even pure enough to find humour in that. Maybe that was the way you coped.

He felt disgusted in himself. What was supposed to be a romantic bonding moment, changing your lives for the better, became an ugly memory.

Night after night he talked with you, truly talked. Admitted to everything Cazador has did to him. He also pried out the truth from you, how you came to wearing hundreds of different masks for hundreds of different people. You were right in a way, it was a bit funny how similair the two of you were. But while he wore those masks to survive you wore them to not be alone. He understood regardless.

However, on the nights when his racing mind wouldn't slow down he saw all the pain and suffering he caused and now with your face added among them all in the worst way possible. Making you do as he asked, you not being able to decline. How was he any better than Cazador?

[misfxtteam]

Bucky can feel himself warm up just from the way Tony looked him up and down. He had lost count of how many times he had thought of the first time he had come down here. Even right now, he couldn’t help but look at the spot where they had been on the floor.

He laughs as Tony warns him not to be shy, pulling his tshirt up and over his head so that he was shirtless. He flexes his metal arm a bit before holding it out for him, “I don’t think I could even pretend to be shy around you, I got no defense after what happened last time we were alone down here,” he teases, glancing over the schematic with interest.

But Tony’s last questions had him focusing on the other again properly. He looks away for a second before realizing he didn’t really want to keep things from Tony. He downplayed things for Steve but he didn’t feel the need to do that with Tony. It didn’t feel like anything he said would make the other man panic or overreact. “Uh..yeah, I mean.. I’ve been having nightmares every night the last few weeks and lately I’ve just..I haven’t felt like sleeping every night. Sometimes if I can exhaust myself I sleep every other day or every two days or something,” he explains quietly, keeping his eyes on his arm because it was difficult admitting a weakness like this.

As he was walking down, Bucky had been thinking on the flirtatious nature of their interactions going forward. He knows Tony loves to flirt, he flirted with pretty much everyone, so he doesn’t let it go to his head or anything like that. But flirting back was more fun than he liked to admit. And Steve had been picking up on it too, but the blonde had just dismissed it as Bucky getting back to being himself, which wasn’t really true. Bucky had been a huge flirt back in the 30s, but he doesn’t think he could be like that today, not with strangers. Flirting with Tony was different because he knows the man properly, and it was fun to push back a little.

Bucky grins as he can hear the usual rock music blasting from the lab, heading towards the sound and just standing in the doorway for a moment. Tony was dancing, and it was fun just watching him for a second because he never saw him let loose like this when anyone else was around. He doesn’t even realize it but he feels more relaxed already, it was impossible not to be when he was watching Tony have a great time. When the song ends, and there’s a moment of silence, he walks in properly, “Looks like you’re having a midnight party of one, is it alright for me to join?”

He grabs a seat on one of the stools near where Tony was working, and a glance at the schematics was enough to tell him that it was for his new arm. He was glad Tony was on the project, he didn’t have any issue with the Wakandans but he just barely knew them. He had worked with Shuri to break the conditioning so he knew she wasn’t a threat. But he trusted Tony, as far as his arm went he trusted him pretty much 100%, so knowing he was involved in the process made it easier to tell himself nothing bad was going to happen. Plus he remembers how Tony had talked about being interested in Wakanda’s scientific work, so hopefully he was enjoying being able to work with them.

[uncuredturkeybacon]

𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 || 𝚊𝚣𝚣𝚒 𝚏𝚞𝚍𝚍 𝚡 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

in which a motorcycle ride changes everything

The bar was quieter than usual. A slow Tuesday night. Jazz playing low through the speakers, old barstools creaking under the weight of regulars nursing beers, and you—leaning on the counter with your arms folded, tattoos peeking out from your sleeves as you wiped down a glass more out of habit than necessity.

That’s when she walked in.

You noticed her right away. Hood up, hands in the pocket of a UConn basketball hoodie, shoes scuffed like she’d been walking for a while. She looked...tired. Not just physically. That kind of mental exhaustion you recognized—like she was trying to outrun her own thoughts and not doing a great job of it.

You straightened a bit and offered the practiced, low-toned, easy-going smile you always saved for newcomers.

“Sit anywhere you like,” you said, voice calm.

She chose the far end of the bar, almost like she was hoping no one would notice her. But you did.

She glanced up as you approached, offering her the menu.

"Can I just get a water?" she asked, voice quiet, eyes a little distant.

"Sure thing," you nodded, filling a glass from the tap and sliding it across to her. "Rough night?"

She let out a breath, almost like she wasn’t planning to answer—but then her shoulders dropped slightly.

"Yeah. Game didn’t go the way we wanted. I needed to be alone for a bit. Just...somewhere that’s not my dorm, or the gym."

You didn’t push. You just nodded, leaning your forearms on the bar across from her. “You found a good spot for that. This place is the graveyard for bad nights.”

That got the smallest, faintest curve of a smile out of her.

“You the bartender or the therapist?” she asked.

You chuckled. “Bit of both, depends on the tip.”

She laughed softly, almost to herself, then took a sip of her water.

“I’m Azzi,” she said after a pause.

You tilted your head. “Fudd, right?”

Her eyes flicked up in surprise.

You shrugged. “I keep up with women’s hoops. You’re a legend in the making.”

Azzi exhaled, and for a second you saw her expression soften. “Not tonight.”

You tapped a knuckle gently against the bar near her glass. “Hey. Even legends have off nights. MJ missed shots. Serena had bad matches. Doesn’t mean they weren’t great.”

Azzi looked at you for a beat, like maybe she hadn’t had anyone say that to her in a while.

“You always say the right thing?” she asked.

You gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Nah. Just been in enough tough spots myself to know the wrong thing when I hear it.”

She looked down at her hands. “Feels like there’s so much pressure lately. Like...if I’m not perfect, I’m failing.”

Your voice was low, steady. “Perfection’s a moving target. You show up, you play hard, you get back up the next day. That’s what matters.”

The rest of the night unraveled in warm tones and easy conversation. She stayed for hours, talking about basketball, expectations, even music and random stories from road trips with the team. You shared some of your own too—life behind the bar, growing up, how you found peace on two wheels with wind in your face.

By the time the clock hit 1:30 a.m., the place had emptied out, and Azzi glanced at her phone.

“Crap. I should call an Uber.”

You reached for the bar towel on your shoulder, wiping your hands. “Or,” you said, “I could give you a ride.”

She blinked. “You have a car?”

“Nope.” You grabbed your keys from behind the bar and gestured toward the door with a small smirk. “I’ve got a bike.”

Azzi followed you outside, her hoodie pulled tight around her as the night air hit. Her eyes widened as you stopped next to your matte black motorcycle, sleek and shining under the streetlamp.

She stared. “That’s yours?”

You nodded.

She hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

You handed her your leather jacket, noticing the way she shivered in the cold. “First time for everything.”

She looked at the jacket, then at you.

“You’re not gonna wear it?”

You smiled as you handed her your helmet. “Your safety’s more important than mine.”

Azzi looked at the helmet, then at you again, eyes scanning your calm, assured expression like she was trying to decide if you were serious.

You reached out gently, securing the strap beneath her chin.

“Trust me,” you murmured. “You’ll be safe with me.”

She took a breath, then nodded.

She climbed on behind you—tentative, unsure—until you glanced over your shoulder and said softly, “Hold on tight.”

You felt her arms wrap around your torso, and once the engine rumbled to life, you kicked up the stand and peeled away into the empty streets of the city.

The wind whipped around you both, but you could feel her holding on, warmth pressed to your back, her head against your shoulder. The ride was quiet except for the hum of the engine, the rhythm of city lights flashing by.

When you pulled up in front of her dorm, you killed the engine and turned to look at her.

She was smiling—genuine, relaxed in a way you hadn’t seen earlier.

“That was…” she laughed breathlessly. “Actually amazing.”

You swung a leg off the bike, holding out your hand to help her down.

“Told you,” you said, grinning.

She pulled off the helmet, handing it back to you as her curls bounced loose.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said, voice softer now, sincere. “Really.”

“Anytime,” you replied. “You got my bar, and now you’ve got my ride. You’re basically VIP.”

She laughed again, then bit her lip. “Can I…have your number?”

You raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t even have to bribe me with a tip?”

She rolled her eyes playfully, pulling out her phone. You gave her your number, watching her type it in.

“I’ll text you,” she said as she backed toward the doors of her building.

You nodded. “Looking forward to it, Azzi.”

She paused at the steps, glancing back one more time.

“Oh, and… thanks for the jacket,” she said, still wearing it, snug and oversized on her frame.

“Keep it,” you called. “Looks better on you anyway.”

Her smile stayed with you long after she disappeared inside.

Your phone buzzed between shifts.

Azzi: Still think I look better in your jacket? Because I kinda want to test that theory again.

You grinned.

You: Only one way to find out. I’ll pick you up. Hold on tight.

You picked her up again two nights later.

This time, she was waiting for you on the steps outside her dorm, your leather jacket already on. She looked...confident. A little less guarded. Like the weight she’d been carrying around was starting to loosen just a bit.

You pulled up to the curb and flipped up your visor, eyes crinkling at her.

"Ready?"

Azzi smirked, strapping on the helmet you held out for her like she’d done it a hundred times. "Let’s see if your first date game is as strong as your getaway driver skills."

You chuckled. “So we’re calling this a date, huh?”

She swung onto the back and slid her arms around your waist like it was second nature.

“Depends where we’re going,” she teased.

You revved the engine. “Guess you’ll have to trust me again.”

You didn’t take her anywhere flashy. That wasn’t your style—and she didn’t seem like she wanted glitz anyway.

Instead, you took her to a cozy rooftop spot you knew downtown—one of those semi-hidden gems with fairy lights strung overhead and mismatched tables that felt more like a backyard than a restaurant. They served fire-grilled street tacos and horchata that tasted like someone’s grandma made it, and best of all, no one bothered you there.

Azzi looked around as you parked the bike, her eyes lighting up.

“This is perfect,” she said, voice soft as she removed the helmet. “How’d you even find this place?”

You helped her off the bike and gestured toward the staircase leading up to the rooftop.

“Used to bartend up here before the owner expanded. I helped them set up the patio lights one summer. Got paid in tacos and sunburns.”

She laughed. “That’s kinda romantic.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Sunburns?”

“No,” she rolled her eyes, nudging your arm. “The way you say stuff. Like you’ve lived three lives already.”

You tilted your head. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Dinner was effortless.

You sat across from each other at a small table tucked into a corner of the rooftop. Azzi pulled her knees up onto the chair halfway through the meal, laughing with her whole face, totally at ease.

You talked about everything—basketball, sure, but also your favorite songs growing up, your dream cities, worst injuries, best tattoos (she was still fascinated by the one that curled along your forearm in delicate black ink).

When the food was gone and the stars were fully out, Azzi leaned forward on her elbows.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“Why’d you give me your jacket that night?”

You shrugged, watching her with a steady gaze. “Because you looked cold. And because you looked like someone who needed to be reminded that people still do kind things without expecting something in return.”

Azzi stared at you for a long second. “That’s… I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” you said, quiet. “You just looked like you hadn’t had someone look out for you in a while.”

Azzi’s smile faltered, but not in a bad way. It just softened. Grew more real.

And when you walked her back to the bike, she hesitated before putting on the helmet.

“You didn’t kiss me,” she said, eyes twinkling as she held your jacket a little tighter around her.

You stepped in close, tilting your head slightly. “Wasn’t sure you wanted me to.”

“I wouldn’t have worn this jacket again if I didn’t,” she murmured.

You smiled and leaned in, slow and deliberate, giving her every chance to pull away.

She didn’t.

The kiss was gentle, warm, and just a little bit shy—her fingers curling into your collar as yours brushed along the side of her jaw. You pulled back after a few seconds, your forehead resting against hers.

“Worth the wait,” you whispered.

Azzi nodded, breath catching. “Yeah… yeah, it was.”

Over the next few weeks, she started to post you on social media. It started small—your hands on the handle bars, a blurry shot of your body across from her on lunch dates.

But the real shift happened after a home game win. She spotted you waiting just outside the players’ tunnel.

She jogged over, sweaty and beaming, crowd still roaring behind her. You held up a Gatorade with a knowing smirk.

“You really showed out tonight,” you said, handing her the bottle.

“Guess someone inspired me,” she replied, taking a sip.

You turned to walk her toward the locker room entrance, but she stopped you.

And right there—in front of fans, teammates, media—she tugged on your arm, pulled you down slightly, and kissed you.

It wasn’t long. But it was real. Certain.

The internet broke an hour later.

You didn’t expect the attention—but Azzi? She just laughed when the team group chat exploded with heart emojis. Paige even sent a picture of a leather jacket emoji with “👀” underneath.

You texted her later that night.

You: You okay with people knowing?

She answered almost immediately.

Azzi: I don’t care what anyone thinks. You make me feel like I can breathe again.

You stared at the screen for a long moment, heart tugging at the honesty in her words.

You: You make me feel like I’m finally home.

[electrosuite]

where no one would see us

warnings: swearing, fingering, oral sex, descriptive sex, rough sex

word count: 2k

masterlist

"What the hell are you doing here?" Peter asked, trying to keep his voice down the best he could. He dragged you back into the alleyway he was hiding in, getting you both out of view.

"I knew you were doing this shit again, Pete. You promised you were done. Stalking escaped convicts, for what? To see if they're putting the city in danger?"

"Yes!" You tilted your head in frustration. "Baby, it's my job."

"No, your job is to take pictures for the newspaper. That's it! You don't even have your camera on you."

"I have my phone."

"Which is in your pocket."

"What do you want me to say? Huh?"

"I want you to admit that you broke your promise and are doing the Spider-Man shit again."

"Hey, baby, don't disrespect the suit." You just stared at him, clenching your jaw. "I know I promised you I was done, but if I can do something to help catch bad guys, you can't expect me not to do it."

"Yes! I can! You promised me. You're this close to getting yourself killed, and I can't just stand by and let you do it. And you're doing this right before our dinner reservations. I put on a nice, sexy dress for you, you're in a suit! If you needed to were you gonna just ditch me at that restaurant?"

"Please calm down and lower your voice. You're gonna get us caught."

"Oh, I'm gonna get us caught? Says the guy stalking a criminal in plain clothes. I might as well just walk up to him and tell you who you are myself."

Within a split second, his hand was clamped tightly over your mouth and he had you pushed up against the wall.

"Peter!" you exclaimed, your voice barely audible past his hand.

"Baby, please just be quiet for one second."

From a distance, you could hear two male voices talking. "I heard his voice from over here."

"You sure it was him?" This voice came from the man Peter was following.

"Oh yeah. I'm sure."

"Shit," Peter said, scooping you up and swinging the two of you through the alley and a few buildings down. You landed in a different alleyway, this one with a brick wall blocking the other men's path to you. "You almost got us killed, Y/N."

"Wouldn't be the first time, would it?" There were a few seconds of silence between you two. "Look, Pete, I'm not upset about you being Spider-Man."

"Oh, could've fooled me."

"I'm upset because you lied to me." He sighed. "I don't want to lose you. And I don't like being lied to. And I really don't like the idea of you not showing up for dinner because you're fighting someone."

He nodded. "I know. I shouldn't have told you I was done, and I shouldn't be doing this before our plans. I just wanted you to feel better about all of it."

"I know. And, I mean, it doesn't matter how hot I think you are in that skin-tight suit." Your voice had changed, your tone sultry and low. He looked up at you, squinting a bit. "Or how good you look webbing up those bad guys."

"Is that so?" He slowly stepped toward you. You walked backwards at the same pace, eventually bumping into the wall.

"Mhm. Or how good your arms and your thighs look in the suit, too." He was only inches away from your face, his eyes darting from yours to your lips. "It's so private here."

"It is, isn't it?" He placed his palms flat against your sides, his mouth latching onto your throat and leaving gentle yet firm kissing to your skin.

"Mhm. You could do anything you want to me and no one would hear. No one would see us."

"What do you want?" he whispered. "Tell me."

"I want you to pin me up against this wall and fuck me so hard I can't walk home."

Within a second, he was on his knees, pushing your dress and underwear out of the way. He immediately attached his tongue to your clit, and you whimpered shakily. You lifted your left leg and propped it in his shoulder, giving him more access to you.

Goddamn, he was good at this. And he knew just how to overstimulate you. Two fingers entered you, and you were already so wet they went in with ease.

The sounds echoing in the alleyway were unholy and disgusting, your moans mixing with them to create the sound that Peter loved so, so much.

Normally the two of you would be as quiet as possible so as to not wake up his aunt May or your parents. It, admittedly, wasn't very sexy. But the times you guys would fuck while home alone, he was sure his neighbors hated your guys' guts.

Your hands pulling his hair and your thighs shaking was how he knew you were getting close. And as you began thrusting your hips to grind on his face, he knew you were teetering over the edge.

Fucks left your mouth like breaths and he had to hold you up to keep you from falling over. But he didn't stop once your high ended. In fact, he kept going until you had another orgasm, and then another.

"Peter, please, just fuck me already," you begged after your third.

He shot to his feet, quickly spinning you around and pressing your chest into the wall.

"I don't have a condom with me," he whispered as his lips attacked your shoulders.

"Good."

He almost growled at this, the thought of fucking you raw making him almost feral. He pulled your dress back up above your ass, moving your underwear back out of the way, and reaching in front of you to begin fingering you.

You were so sensitive at this point that you couldn't stop your hips from bucking backwards into his crotch, feeling how hard he was.

"Goddamn, you are dripping," he whispered. And it was true. It was like a leaky faucet, your thick juices covering your thighs and running down your legs.

You wanted to lean back against his chest but he had you pinned to the wall, keeping you perfectly still and submissive.

"Peter, please, just fuck me."

He clicked his tongue three times. "No rushing, baby. You have to be patient."

By the time your fourth orgasm washed over you, you were screaming, tears welling up in your eyes.

"Such a tease," you breathed.

He was fully holding you up at this point, your legs too weak to support yourself.

You heard him undo his belt and then his pants, the anticipation making you take a shaky breath.

Feeling his dick glide up and down your pussy lips, soaking himself in your wetness and sliding across your unbearably sensitive clit drove you insane.

But the feeling of him effortlessly sliding into you, stretching you out and filling you to the brim and then some, it almost made you collapse.

He didn't start slow this time. He immediately picked up speed, slamming into you at a speed he normally reserved for rougher sex like this. He was like a fucking machine, knowing exactly what spots to hit to make you turn to puddy in his arms.

His right hand reached up to grip your neck and pull your back against his chest, then took you a step forward so your stomach was flush with the wall. He kept your head pinned back against his shoulder so he could kiss your neck and cover your skin with hickeys.

He pulled your arms behind your body, crossing them and gripping your forearms where they overlapped. Every time he slammed into you, your body hit the wall. It took the air out of your lungs, and that combined with his hand firmly around your neck made it so it was difficult to breathe. But it turned you on to unimaginable levels.

This is the type of rough sex you loved. Being completely at his mercy and being completely controlled by him. Not even being able to reach back and touch him, almost as if you were tied up, made you antsy. You needed to be able to grip him in some way, and he knew this. Taking that away from you only established his dominance and gave him control.

The sounds of his skin slapping against yours and echoing around on the concrete walls of the alley was much louder than he meant for them to be, but he was so distracted that he barely heard it.

He moaned and groaned in your ear as he drilled you, your cries of pleasure only pushing him to go faster and harder. You squeezed him so tightly, making it a slight challenge with every thrust. But he was so strong that he barely noticed, only able to focus on fulfilling your request to make it hard for you to walk home.

Peter was the only person you'd ever had sex with that could make you cum during just penetrative sex. At first you thought it was because you were already sensitive from him eating you out, but the first time you guys had sex where he didn't go down on you he still got you there just by fucking you. And typically you only had two or three orgasms during sex.

But you were approaching your fifth one in just a few minutes, and you honestly weren't sure you could handle it.

"P-Peter, fuck, I don't know if I can take another."

"Ooh, but you can, baby. I know you can."

You shook your head. "Too much."

He knew your safe word, and so did you. But you didn't want to say it. You wanted to be fucked out of your mind, to cum so many times you're out of it for hours. You wanted him to push you to your limit and see how much you could take.

"Nothing is too much for you, baby. I know it's not."

The second he pushed you over the edge, the hand on your neck went to your mouth, covering it tightly. You screamed into his hand, seeing stars and feeling him have to keep you on your feet. He didn't slow down to give you a break afterwards, in fact he somehow went even faster.

But this didn't last for long, as he could feel himself getting there too. His thrusts were becoming ever so slightly out of rhythm and his grip was tightening on you. And you noticed.

"Peter, please, cum inside me."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. Fill me up, baby. Please."

He was so focused, so driven by your begging. Your ribs were slamming into the wall but you didn't care. The pain felt good. Him using you as nothing more than a fuck toy felt good. And the idea of him filling you with his warm cum was something you needed.

You squeezed down on him once more and he slammed so hard into you it hurt. With a long 'fuck' he emptied his balls into your pussy, the white substance dripping out of you, onto the ground and onto his pants.

He leaned against you for a moment, not moving either of you. You were both so dizzy and so tired that you just needed to catch your breath.

"Fuck," you whispered.

"Was that what you wanted?"

You nodded. "So good."

When he eventually let go of you, you leaned your back against the wall. You situated yourselves back to look relatively normal, aside from the sweat. He checked his watch and grimaced.

"I think we missed our reservation."

"Ah shit. By how long?"

"Ten minutes." You nodded. "Wanna just go home and shower?"

"Yeah, we need one."

He kissed you deeply and you both smiled at each other.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you, too."

"Let's get home before the cops show up, yeah? I think we were pretty loud."

"Yeah, please."

And with that, you were wrapped around his back as he swung you two back to his apartment.

[hunxi-after-hours]

"...As a kid, I trained myself to save things, to keep the one nice shirt for later, for a special occasion; to eat my M&Ms one at a time by color in order to make them last. This kind of self-training sticks in your head: I need to save this for later. I might not get more. But it runs up against the idea that the time is always now. Read the book you’ve been saving. Tear through it in hours if you want to. Make the nice tea, eat the nice chocolate. Enjoy the thing.  "The answer is both; the answer is neither. The point is that if you find yourself a bit frozen, lately, a bit unsure whether you ought to be doing, how you ought to be: pace yourself. Read the book, but also call your reps, but also take care of yourself, but also don’t read all of the news if it makes you not want to, or not feel like you can, do any of the rest of the things that matter to you. No one can do everything at once.  "Trying to do everything at once leaves me feeling breathless and alarmed, which, to be fair, lately everything leaves me feeling breathless and alarmed, whether I am doing things or merely thinking about them. I read The Raven Scholar so quickly partly because I felt breathless and alarmed, and partly because it was just that compelling, and partly because while I read it, I forgot to feel terribly about everything else. Some part of me feels like that wasn’t fair to the book; some part of me feels like that wasn’t fair to me."

—Molly Templeton, "Pace Yourself"

[ghostgirl-22]

My version of road trip AU preview for the handful of ppl that gaf <3 there’s a bit more than this written… but here are 2 states :) I personally love it and am mostly writing it for me so if y’all don’t fuck with it I promise I’ll keep the rest to myself lol. Side note: how do y’all make your fonts all pretty and colorful outside of what tumblr offers?

—-

New York City

Tashi lies and pretends she’s road tripping with girlfriends from the tour so her parents don’t book a flight out to New York and insist on escorting her back to Palo Alto themselves which they absolutely would do if they knew her plans. Driving across the country with two boys. (Both of them she made out with— one of them her boyfriend.) God forbid. Even she can’t believe she’s doing it.

They’re late picking her up from the hotel the tournament put her up in. Somewhere in the middle of Queens. She’s sitting in the lobby with her suitcase and tennis bag. Awkwardly waving goodbye to some of the girls she just beat in the tournament. 

Patrick’s coming from his house in Rhode Island and he’s already picked up Art in Massachusetts early this morning.

“Boston rush hour traffic was hell and he’s a horrible navigator,” is Patrick’s explanation as Art flips him off and jumps out of the passenger’s seat of the double parked car to help her load her suitcase in the trunk. “You have a tomtom dude… you just don’t fucking listen,” Art snaps back.  

As annoyed as she is she can’t help smiling thinking maybe they’re more annoyed. She carves out her own little space in the trunk amongst their messy half zipped suitcases and scattered clothing and clutter. It looks like Art loaded some things he had at home that he wanted to take back to school. He lifts her suitcase into her designated space for her. So chivalrous. 

“Do you care if I sit in the front?” She asks, biting her lip. 

He cares, it’s obvious but he shakes his head no anyway. “Of course not.”

”Thanks… we can switch later,” she offers.  

They’re supposed to be driving from New York City to Palo Alto. Nearly 3000 miles in Patrick’s little Jeep. He’s got a full tank of gas. A cooler full of water and sodas.  “We also have lots of chips and pretzels,” Art explains. 

“But no food food?” Tashi asks. 

“Uh peanut butter and honey,” Art says weakly. “And wheat bread.” 

It’s supposed to be a three day drive but it’s summer break… they’ve got nothing but time. no games, no practice, no school, no plans. “It takes as long as it takes,” Patrick shrugs. Setting the Tom Tom gps. 

It’s so hot Tashi feels like she’s barely dressed— short shorts and a tank top which she can tell Patrick really appreciates as she slinks into the passenger seat. The way she appreciates his thighs in athletic shorts, his biceps in a crisp white t-shirt, his freckles in all the sunlight. Art dressed nearly identical except with a stanford t-shirt and a baseball cap. He’s sleepy, soft and beautiful like always. Sexual tension between the three of them, already so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

The air conditioner is blasting but Patrick’s got the windows down. A lit cigarette in hand.

”I think we need rules,” Tashi says. 

“Rules? Why the fuck would we do that to ourselves?” Patrick asks, before taking a long drag of his cigarette.  

“Oh I dunno, so we don’t fucking kill each other… like rule number one… you can’t do that the whole time,” Tashi snatches the rest of the cigarette pack out of his cup holder. “Maybe 1 per state.”

“Oh fuck off,” is his half hearted response but he throws her a sideways glance and a little smirk as she pockets them. 

“Just ask me if you want one and I’ll consider it.” She says, biting back on a little smile of her own.

He reaches for her hand and links their fingers. Pulling her close to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back of her hand. 

“I missed you.” 

She kinda melts a little bit a lot. She loves the way he doesn’t let go of her… notices the way he catches Art's eye in the rear view mirror, a little smirk on his lips. As if this is also about him somehow. Then there’s a loud honk of someone jamming on the horn behind them.  

“Okay okay, I’m fucking going! Jesus.”  

Patrick puts the cigarette to his lips and starts the drive out of New York City. They turn down street after city street. One lined with row houses and flooded with water. Kids and teens playing around in front of an opened fire hydrant. Water splashing the car windows on the passenger side as they pass. On the next street they pass kids playing basketball at the open air park. A loud car sitting outside a bodega blasting Spanish music. The rumble of the overground train as Patrick weaves in and out of traffic, avoiding bicyclists, pedestrians, double parked cabs and the city bus like its a video game. All while he turns up the radio playing “Lady Marmalde” with Christina Aguilera, Missy Elliot and Maya. 

It’s Patrick’s music. Loud and brash, silly and unapologetic. Like him. They listen way too loud. “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”  Singing along mostly making up words like they’re already in the best part of the road trip. Patrick racing steadily towards the beltway as  they escape the city via the Verrazano bridge all the way at the bottom of Brooklyn. Tashi gazes out the window at the sparkling water of the Hudson. The New York City skyline getting further and further away in her side view  mirror.   

New Jersey

“How do you know how to drive like that in the city?” Tashi asks as they enter the New Jersey turnpike. 

“Why? It’s kinda sexy right?” Patrick smirks. 

“He’s a city kid,” Art chimes in. “His sister and her surgeon husband live in his parents old New York City townhouse.” 

“Oh fuck… so you’re like…really, really rich,” Tashi says. 

Patrick shrugs, there’s a little color in his cheeks, “I mean… they are sure. I just have my jeep.” 

“That they paid for.” Comes Art from the backseat. 

“It was a birthday gift actually. so technically...” 

All through the Jersey turnpike and on towards  Pennsylvania they argue talk too much and eat too many chips. They share sodas and stories about family, how many siblings do you have? And all the annoying sibling stories. She knows Patrick but not the way art knows Patrick. All the people Patrick brings up Art knows and vice versa. Then Tashi, curious about their lore, starts asking them about boarding prep school. It’s like an avalanche of inside jokes. Some things she asks to know more about… some she lets them keep to themselves. They speak in riddles… they mention one word or say a name and thats all they need. Giggling with each other off of little to no context. They do it so often it’s like they aren’t even aware they’re talking in code. It’s adorable (and annoying) and maybe she’s a little envious. Wishing she had a friend that close. 

They get gas on the turnpike. “God bless Jersey we’ll have to pump it ourselves the rest of the way,” Patrick says. Which is just another invitation for her to call him a spoiled rich kid which always makes him blush. Even after they go into the food court for the bathroom and snacks, Tashi sits shotgun. She stays in front all afternoon even though she knows it makes Art jealous (she’s still unsure of who he’s more jealous of but she loves to play around with the idea of who he wants more in her head. Currently she thinks he wants Patrick more). 

As for Patrick, he has to hold her hand whenever it’s free. She’ll never admit to him… but it absolutely gives her butterflies. It’s like he still needs to touch her if he can’t be in her face. Needs to hold her hand up near his mouth within kissing distance. She can sense it… that  Art is anxious for their flirting. Sitting in the backseat one shoe up, tapping on the center console, biting his thumb. She glances back at him often just so he feels included… and not because she likes to flirt with him too. Maybe she does make eyes at him… but only a little bit. She knows she should behave herself but she does get a bit of a rush knowing they’re both so into her.

Patrick’s playlist, now background to their chatting, is beginning to transition from pop music and some R&B with artists like Nelly Furtado, Britney, Usher and Justin Timberlake, to random classic rock tunes. Stuff Tashi heard her grandpa… her mom’s dad… play a lot when she was younger. “Ramble On” by Led Zepplin, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas she’s vaguely familiar with all of them  and when she explains how she knows them— it sends them all down a rabbit hole about old music they know. And Tashi takes over the music rig plugging her iPod in and running a playlist of Motown songs some she’s certain they’ve never heard (Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, some of her grandma… dads side… favorites like the Temptations. They’re both delighted to hear “My Girl.”  

They stop at the last turnpike exit before Pennsylvania for “real food” and more gas while their at it. Patrick stretches his legs. Pulling her into a real kiss before she can go inside, tongue slipping into her mouth big hands on her shoulders, her waist, her ass…then he’s slipping them into her pocket as he steals his cigarettes back with a grin. 

“Loser,” she tells him only mildly breathless as he puts one to his lips. 

“Takes one to know one,” he grins back. 

Art lingers awkwardly before she links her arm with his and drags him inside. They both get salads. Patrick meets them inside after his cigarette and gets a Nathan’s chilli dog. They eat in the car… in the parking lot. Seats reclined. Patrick arguing with them about why he should be able to just kick his shoes off.

“absolutely fucking not,” is Art’s response. 

“Come on, you’d get used to the smell. After like an hour or two you won’t even notice the difference.” 

“No fucking way… thats rule number two. Keep your shoes on. I mean… unless you’re wearing sandals all day of course” Tashi says… stretching her bare feet out onto his lap. 

“Now you’re just rubbing it in.” He teases his knuckles over the pads of her feet and she pulls away quickly because she feels it all over, tingling in places she shouldn’t be. He smirks at her, his gaze going dark and she looks back at her salasd… feeling her stomach start to do little impatient flips. She’s been so close to him all day. Touching him, smelling him, hearing his voice. She can’t act like it hasn’t had an affect on her. Maybe if art falls asleep first or they book a room in a motel she can get it out of her system. Otherwise it’ll be a long night.

(Forgive any anachronisms i beg. I think all music is from on or before 2006 — was gonna use telephone by Beyonce and gaga but I stopped myself… and the gps came out in 2004 i looked it up i promise)