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ceilidho · 3 days

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take me home, country road

[ao3]

You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description. Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au (chapter 16 + 17) tw: violence, injuries, and misogynistic language

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Sinking into fear is the body’s natural response. You let it envelope you without putting up a struggle. It wouldn’t be one that you’d win anyway. Resistance already leaks out of you like tar, pooling around your quivering legs.

It makes you feel lighter than air, almost buoyant; and conversely, heavier than lead.

You can’t feel the cold metal of the gun through the layers of fabric separating it from the skin of your back, but you can feel its weight. And you can imagine it burning into you, burning a ring into the flesh, the muzzle leaving faint depressions behind, circular indents.

“Don’t feel so clever now, huh?”

Fear chokes as well as it binds. When the man you remember as Graves (appropriately named, you think, the gravity of the situation sinking into you as well) drawls the words into your ear, any moisture in your mouth dries.

“Well?” he prompts, shoving the gun harder into your back, almost sending you toppling into the shelf still in front of you obscuring you from sight. “Got anythin’ to say?”

You open your mouth but nothing comes out.

“You a mute, girl? I know you ain’t deaf since you heard I’d been sniffin’ around lookin’ for ya. ‘Least I’m guessin’ you did, since you managed to give me the slip for the whole time I was in town.” He sniffs. “Took me a while to find out you were shacked up with the sheriff. Hiding in plain sight. Couldn’t believe I missed ya when Sheriff Price was damn near the first person I met in this two-bit town.”

You finally muster up the nerve to speak. “Y-you’re making a mistake.”

The furled upper lip is audible in his voice. “I’d try not to piss me off too much, sugar. Lyin’ just rubs me the wrong way is all.”

“No, you—you really don’t—”

He shoves the gun harder into your back, making you wince. “Now, I know you’re a slippery little bitch, so I’ll level with you, alright?” Graves murmurs, pitching his voice low to ensure that only you hear. “You make so much as a peep—so much as a fuckin’ whisper—and I’ll shoot. Wink and I’ll shoot. I am dyin’ for you to give me a reason to go with the better half of the dead or alive question.”

There’s no point in lying. It might’ve worked had it been anyone but the man holding you hostage; not a man as stubborn and mulish as him. You nod when he asks if you understand.

“Now get to steppin’.”

He doesn’t tarry long, leading you out of the shop with a hand on your shoulder and . You stare at Miles with mounting horror, wordlessly begging him to look up from the ledger open in front of him on the counter. Your prayers go unanswered though; he doesn’t so much as glance towards the door before it’s swinging shut behind you.

“Remember,” Graves says in a low voice as the two of you step out onto the porch, “not a word. I will shoot anyone that tries to interfere.”

That kills the impulse to shout for help.

The thought of letting Graves take you away without voicing so much as a single plea fills you with horror, but you can’t see any other way out. He walks you through the streets like an old friend, the pistol still wedged into your back obscured by his coat. No one seems to notice the wild look in your eyes or the strained edge of your smile.

Your behavior infuriates you. Demural and soft and wretched. You’ve only allowed one man to put you under their thumb; only one has ever earned the right.

The thought of your husband is an ache in your chest that doesn’t abate. It thumps with the terrified flutter of your heart. You half wonder if he’ll suddenly appear from around a bend and wrench you into his arms, gun already drawn and aimed at the man attempting to take you away from him.

“My husband—” you start, tripping over your words. Almost tripping over a rock as well since your spine is too stiff to let you look down at the ground while you walk. “—He can—he can pay you.”

He laughs, a nasty, mocking sound. “I’m sure he’d like to, sugar. Jus' ain’t sure he’s got the cash to pay your price.”

“At least let me ask—”

At that, he jams the gun violently into the small of your back, making you wince agaun. Petrified. Sweat sluices off your brow and drips down your face. “What part of shut the fuck up don’t you get?”

That silences you. Hard to muster up the nerve to retaliate with a gun lodged against the base of your spine. Still there’s so much that bears asking. Why did he come back? Why here—why now?

The town takes on a dull, listless quality as he steers you away from the more crowded areas. It’s almost like looking through muslin; a veil between you and the world.

Your eyes dart from person to person as they pass by in the opposite direction, but even those that bother to meet your gaze only smile politely, a couple passing gentlemen chirping, “Morning, Mrs. Price” before sweeping by in a hurry.

None question the wild, frantic glint in your eye, the look of a horse about to bolt. If they paid you more than a moment’s notice, they might, but even the lady who frowns curiously at Graves, his hand still resting gently on your arm as if he were an old, dear friend, abandons her momentary curiosity when her companion says something of interest, pulling her back into their conversation. The flicker of hope in your belly dies a soundless death.

There’s something almost phantasmagorical about the entire ordeal. Almost like it isn’t quite happening, like you can’t quite make yourself believe that this is, in fact, real. Like you’re watching from outside of yourself. Though you can see the wooden facades of the nearby buildings and smell the scent of hay and manure from the livery stable, it doesn’t resonate within you as real.

He meanders through town with you stationed in front of him. A meat shield. Collateral damage. Simply by the way he maneuvers you through the crowd, he reduces you to a body, stripping you of any semblance of personhood. You’re less than meat to him, less than human even—no more than a meal ticket.

When you muster up the courage to open your mouth the next time someone passes you by, Graves’ hand slides up to your shoulder and he digs his fingers into the bone. A warning.

“If you think I was kiddin’ before, just try me,” he sneers into your ear, thumb pressing into your shoulder blade until you wince.

Again, his voice dispels any thought of getting someone’s attention.

He doesn’t lead you towards the train station like you expect. Instead, he heads to an awning beneath the saloon on the periphery of town where a couple horses are leashed to a post, waiting for their riders to come untie them. The roof of the awning is strung with a dense cluster of overlapping cobwebs. A spider scuttles across the web and into the dark inner recesses of the canopy.

This far from the center of town, there’s hardly anyone. When you give your surroundings a quick glance, you can’t find a single other soul within earshot, only a single man pushing open the batwing doors on his way into the saloon. Then you’re alone again.

A tawny gelding chuffs when Graves approaches. When he suddenly unhands you, it doesn’t click until he’s several paces away from you, running his hand down his horse’s neck and rifling through the saddlebags, emptying the contents of his coat pockets into them. You have to glance down at your shoulder just to be sure. He sheathes his gun as well, tucking it into the holster fixed to his belt.

“Bought the horse off a drunk three towns back,” Graves explains while loading up the horse.

You don’t respond, still unsettled. It’s the first time since he led you out of the general store that his gun hasn’t been aimed at you. It wouldn’t be practical for him to dress and load the horse one handed. The sun beats down on you, burning the top of your head. This could be your moment—a moment to scream or run away.

But you don’t. You don’t scream and you don’t run because you are, above all else, a coward. Through and through. You’ve been running from your problems for months now, leaving someone else to take care of the mess you left behind.

Fear paralyzes you; it makes you think too much or not at all. Even now, with Graves giving you the perfect opportunity to turn and run, you can’t stop thinking about the potential consequences. What if he were to shoot you? What if he were to haul you back into town and expose your sins to everyone who gathered around? What if the people in town that have come to see you as one of their own were to gather around your crumpled form and stare at you with vitriol and disgust?

“How did you—” you start, then pause to breathe, the nausea building again. “I thought you’d left town.”

“You’d’ve liked that, huh?”

You don’t answer that. You know better than to antagonize a man with a gun.

He sighs when you don’t rise to the bait, almost pettish. “Wedding announcement. I saw it in the paper—by then, I’d moved on to Lexington, so it took me awhile to backtrack, but I just knew somethin’ about that bit in the paper about the sheriff’s wife hailing from the east coast didn’t sound right. Too big of a coincidence. Had to at least be sure—retrace my footsteps. Lotta money on the line, you know.”

You stare straight ahead at that. You ought to have known.

(“In the paper. The county sheriff got hitched—of course it’d be a story.”)

“To be honest, that kinda cracked me up. Murderess marrying the county sheriff.” He snorts out a laugh, shaking his head. “Sorta thing you’d read about in a dime novel.”

A new emotion wells up within you. It simmers in your belly, hot and cold at once. Righteous fury. All this time, you’ve been betraying yourself with your silence, allowing men to read your fear as guilt. Complicit in your own ruin.

“I’m not a murderer.”

The look he gives you is withering. “Sugar, I hate to break it to you, but you did kill a man.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Nothing ever does, it seems. But the more you hold it in, the uglier the thought seems, until it erupts from your chest like Vesuvius, lava and tephra shooting out.

“He deserved it,” you finally spit out, the words coming from deep in your chest.

Graves doesn’t even pause in his ministrations, back to tightening the saddle straps.

“He deserved it,” you repeat, spittle flying out of your mouth and landing in the dirt between the two of you.

“That’s not somethin’ I usually concern myself with,” he finally says, looking distinctly unimpressed when he meets your stare. Bored blue eyes.

You’re struck by the sense that your life means so little to him that the circumstances surrounding your bounty hardly merit more than a passing thought. If he could spare less, he would.

It’s the vilest thing in the world to be regarded with such bored contempt.

“He would’ve—he would’ve raped me otherwise. I didn’t have a choice.”

At that, Graves pauses. When he looks towards you, his eyes are curiously blank.

“Better that than what’ll happen now,” he says, the words so perfunctory that it takes a moment for them to sink in. When they do, you have to swallow back bile.

His glibness shatters whatever hope you’d had left.

In that moment, you finally acknowledge that appealing to his sense of decency won’t lead you anywhere because it simply doesn’t exist within him. You’ve known men like him before—those more concerned with lining their own pockets than taking care of the vulnerable people around them. The archetype is not uncommon. You should’ve expected it even, especially from a bounty hunter.

There won’t be any bribing him or talking your way out of the situation you’ve found yourself in. Whatever facinorous end awaits you back east, he’s happy to shepherd you there so long as it earns him his thirty coins.

How many times do you have to ask yourself if you’re brave enough to do something before you answer?

When Graves turns to face you again and takes a step towards you, likely to urge you up onto the saddle, you recoil, stumbling away from him. His eyes sharpen at your movement, fulvous wolf eyes narrowing on you.

“And here I thought you’d stopped pissin’ me off,” he says lightly, a hard edge underlying his words. His hand lifts to rest against the handle of the revolver tucked back in its sheath, thumb flexing over it.

“What’s the point?” you retort, nostrils flaring. “You either kill me here or I die there.”

You sound braver than you feel, fear making you shake so hard that your knees almost knock together.

Graves’ smile is all lip, no crinkling around the eyes. “Oh, I won’t kill you, sugar. I’m a better shot than that.”

Your heart pounds against your ribcage, stomach turning over at the thought of him putting a bullet through your shoulder or leg.

“I’m surprised you won’t just come quietly. You think the sheriff wouldn’t hand you over to me himself if he found out what kinda woman he married?”

That’s been your fear from the very beginning. The one thing that’s kept you awake at night, the nightmare shaking you out of a dead sleep. You’d convinced yourself that him calling the authorities or even escorting you back east himself was an inevitability. That John Price, paragon of virtue, wouldn’t bend the rules for anyone, much less you.

But the more you think about it, the less sense it seems to make. Every tender word and touch rises to the forefront of your memory. If John has shown you anything, it’s love. He’s proven his devotion a thousand times over, shown you time and again that were you to leave, he’d come running.

Suddenly, the thought that your husband would let someone take you away from him seems preposterous. It doesn’t align at all with the man you know. He’d go to hell and back for you, would rip out a man’s tongue for speaking to you the way Graves speaks to you now. Hindsight makes that clear.

You meet his eyes, intention set. “I’d rather just ask him.”

Blue eyes turn to flint, flat. Droll candor shed for ruthlessness. Silence before a storm.

He’s on you before you even have a chance to whirl around and make a run for it, arm cutting into your windpipe when he wraps it around your neck. He drags you back into the shadows of the awning, out of sight from anyone on the street; your heels score lines in the dirt. You choke, wheezing on your next breath, but his arm tightens, trapping the scream in your throat.

“Shoulda done this before,” Graves grunts, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out the pair of cuffs he had tucked away.

When he unhooks his arm from around your neck, you gasp for breath, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. Panic swirls and rises in your chest.

“Get your hands off—” you hiss, beating his arm with your fist to no avail. He yanks your arms in front of you until your wrists are pressed close together. Your blood curdles at the feeling of cold iron against your skin and the gut-wrenching sound of handcuffs being fixed around your wrists, tightened to the point of pain. You can hardly flex your hands with how tight they’re bound. “Let me go, let ME GO—”

He pulls you in close again. “Don’t think I won’t tape your fuckin’ mouth shut too,” Graves snarls in your ear. Nausea swells in your belly.

“Please— please don’t do this—” you beg, a sob breaking from your chest now.

He sighs, long suffering. “Lord knows I tried to warn you.”

Despite the threat, Graves doesn’t tape your mouth shut. Instead, he fastens a rough piece of rope around your head, fitting it between your teeth like a bit. You don’t have it in you to be thankful for small mercies this time. The hemp cord scratches the corners of your mouth when you try to move your lips around it.

“There,” he says, giving you a rough shake, satisfied. “That’s better. Can finally hear myself think.”

The tears leak out of the corners of your eyes in big, fat droplets, clouding your vision. When he wipes your cheeks with a calloused hand, the nail of his thumb catches on the delicate skin under your eye, leaving a thin cut. The pain makes you flinch, staring daggers at the man in front of you, but he doesn’t apologize for his rough handling.

Graves heaves himself up onto the saddle first, swinging a leg over with practiced ease. You yelp when he hauls you up after, setting you on the saddle in front of him. Heat crawls up your neck when your skirt billows around your waist, horrified.

“Save your tears, sugar,” he tells you, gathering the reins in one hand. “You’ll need ‘em for later.”

The horse whinnies when Graves pulls upward and guides him towards the road leading out of town, hooves clopping against the dirt. Your heart shoots up into your throat.

Galloping out of town, you chance a glance back, head spinning as the world blurs around you. A man stands under the awning you just left, his head cocked as if stupefied. He’s too far away for you to get a proper look at his face though, no way to tell if he’s someone that might recognize you and alert John. You try to scream or wave your hands—anything to get his attention, to let the stranger know that something is wrong.

You watch until the figure melds into the surrounding town.

You keep waiting for someone to appear from behind you. A tall figure to darken the horizon, blot it like the moon passing over the sun.

The last bastion of your hope collapses into rubble the farther away you ride, no man nor horse following you in pursuit. And then a hand grabs a fistful of your hair and wrenches your head back around, cutting off your view.

The plan is to leave the horse in the next town you reach and take a train back east. Graves would’ve done that back in the town you just left, he tells you, but he wanted to put as much distance between you and the sheriff.

“You never know with men who’ve gotten a taste of married life,” he says when he finally deigns to stop miles from town, sitting on a rock and having a drink while he leaves you tied to the horse by your wrists. You shift from foot to foot, a cramp winding up your legs. “They get themselves a little pussy and lose all sense of dignity or morality. Can’t be trusted to do the right thing.”

Steam practically billows out of your ears. You have the good sense to keep your mouth shut though, cognizant of the fact that you’re alone out in the middle of nowhere with a man who’d be happy to bring you back dead or alive. Though he hasn’t been quite so explicit, it’s apparent in the way he doesn’t offer to untie you or let you rest as well. The skin under the cuffs on your wrists are rubbed raw from your attempts to free yourself, and from the journey itself, with all the jostling and the persistent cramp in your right shoulder.

The animal awareness dawns on you during that first rest. He’d taken the rope out when you were far enough outside of town that it didn’t matter if you screamed or not. That’s what stays your tongue now—the creeping notion that you are far from anyone that would be remotely sympathetic to your plight.

“How much was the bounty?” you ask, more out of morbid curiosity than anything. You balance on one foot to shake the cramp out of the other.

“Now, I hate to be rude, sugar, but what does it matter to you? It ain’t you collecting the reward.”

Your lips flatten into a taut line, already regretting prying. It’s not like knowing would change anything.

The break ends sooner than you’d hoped, Graves urging you back onto the horse before taking a seat behind you. It troubles you because you’re not far enough away from town that you couldn’t still be rescued. There’d be more of a chance of John or someone else—one of his deputies, perhaps—coming across you out here. But you don’t have much of a choice.

Out here, the land stretches on without end. Only the faint blue of a mountain ridge paralleling your route breaks the horizon. The land is flat, sparse apart from the dense shrubbery and trees twisted and bent by the wind. Cottonwood and boxelder. Chokecherry. Dogwood and hawthorn. Lush blooming saltbrush.

The clear blue sky overhead is almost mocking, the rain from earlier long since abated. There’s hardly a cloud in the sky now. It’d be scenic if you could abstract it from the circumstances. A perfect day for gardening or a brisk walk after being kept indoors because of the rain. You’re still damp from riding through the rain earlier.

A few bison congregate in a small dip in the terrain, grazing on the wild grass. You stare at them wide-eyed as you gallop along the upper ridge, startled by the sight of so many in one place.

Despite the sublime beauty of the land, you remain on edge, unable to take anything in or truly enjoy it. Panic and revulsion leave you as gnarled and knotted as the krummholz trees out in the middle of the open plains. Riding with Graves feels nothing like the few times you and John shared a horse. It’s impersonal; transactional. Entirely against your will.

The sun has only just begun to descend under the horizon when you and Graves approach a ramshackle house situated by itself in the middle of the open plains. Barely more than a barn, and long since abandoned by the looks of it. Age has done the place no favors; wooden slats sag and separate from the exterior of the house, the gaps in between the boards letting in all manner of insects and rot.

Graves dismounts his horse about a stone’s throw from the hovel. His brow furrows with dissatisfaction as he surveys the abandoned property.

“Shit,” he remarks, sucking his teeth. “A local back in town swore a family still lived here. Don’t look like anyone’s lived here since Abraham.”

Part of you wishes the former tenants still resided here, on the off possibility that one might take pity on you, but a much larger part of you is grateful for the dwelling’s vacancy. You’ve heard stories before, of families living out in the middle of nowhere. Rumors. Not all bad, of course; it’s common enough for families migrating west sometimes to stop along the way for a generation or two, building more permanent dwellings than the caravans they began their journey in. Many such families were also known for putting up travelers passing through in exchange for goods or help with chores.

But you’ve also heard other stories. Like the Riley family out near Cherryvale and their homestead just off the Great Osage Trail. They lived out there for more than two decades before the number of lone travelers vanishing off the trail within walking distance of their property pointed the finger of suspicion at them. When the authorities finally got around to procuring a warrant for their property, they found the house deserted apart from the furniture that couldn’t be loaded into the wagon and an infant boy, dehydrated and petrified.

You shake the story from your head. “…Are we spending the night here?” you ask tentatively.

He looks at you from the corner of his eye, nostrils flared. “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas in that head of yours. Jus’ because a man’s gotta rest his eyes, don’t mean I gotta give you a peaceful night’s rest. No, I’m leavin’ those hands of yours tied.”

Your hopes deflate at that.

He helps you dismount before hobbling his horse with a pair of leather straps around its front legs to keep it from darting off in the middle of the night. You wince sympathetically; you have more in common with a horse now than any man.

The inside of the cabin is just as derelict as the exterior. At the very least, he feeds you. A couple scoops of pemmican straight from the tin. The fact that he insists on feeding you instead of letting you feed yourself puts you on edge. Your spine is stiff as a board through it all, your mouth barely opening up to receive the spoonful of pemmican, the metal clanking against your teeth. You wince, the sound itself tasting of rust.

At all times, you are aware of the precarity of your situation. You can’t imagine there were any stipulations in the bounty to bring you back unscathed. Though he hasn’t tried anything untoward so far—not so much as made a licentious remark—you don’t know how long your luck will last. You flinch every time he so much as twitches in your direction, sure at any moment his mood will flip and he’ll drag you across the floor and haul himself over you.

It’s enough to make your stomach hurt, turning over itself. He doesn’t try anything though, and for that you exhale shakily, the tension running off you in rivulets.

One hour drags into the next. Night blackens the sky, seeping in through the crumbling walls of the cabin.

“Well,” Graves says, wiping his hands together to dust off any lingering crumbs. “I’m gonna hit the hay.”

“Do…do I get to sleep as well?”

He cocks a brow. “Not much I can do to stop you.”

“It’s just that…” You lift your hands as you trail off, silently pointing out the handcuffs still secured around your wrists, the implicit assertion being that you won’t be able to sleep with the metal digging into the bones of your wrists.

Graves scoffs. “You can’t think I’ll just uncuff you ‘cause we ain’t in town no more. I got a little more sense than that, sugar.”

“You could use rope instead?” you suggest.

The seconds he spends considering it are long. You hold your breath as you watch him weigh the pros and cons.

Finally, he shrugs. “Alright.”

The relief that washes over you is almost palpable.

He pulls a blanket out of one of the saddlebags to function as a makeshift pillow, setting it up on the floor in the center of the room. True to his word, Graves uncuffs you and loops a double knotted rope around your wrists instead, fastening the rope tying your hands together around his own wrist. Your stomach sinks as he pulls the knot taut.

He levels a heavy stare on you after giving the rope one last tug. “I don’t usually repeat myself, sugar, but I will this one time. Don’t go tryin’ anythin’ stupid. I’m gettin’ a good night’s rest and so help me if you wake me up—” his eyes flash, gray going steely “—you won’t like the consequences.”

You nod. Swallow back the phlegm clogging your throat.

True night plunges the old house into darkness, cricket songs slipping in through the cracks in the walls. The temperature also plunges with the setting sun. It gets cold at night, even in the summer months; the draft makes you shiver, the rotting exterior letting in the elements.

You keep to the wall with the least amount of rotting boards, as far as the rope tethering you to Graves will allow you to go. It would probably be in your best interest to try and get some sleep, but you’re far too restless to calm down. The atmosphere in the house is far too eerie to settle your nerves either; you can’t help but wonder about the family that must have left this place to rot and fade away into memory.

It’s all you can do to blink back the tears that spring to your eyes when you think about the memory of you that John will have to carry into the future now that you’re gone. It isn’t fair. After everything you’ve had to endure in this lifetime, you thought maybe that this might have been your reward. That John was your reward.

Your hands drop from your chin to your knees, hopelessness plaguing you again. The thin, sharp whistle of defeat. High and reedy as a death rattle.

Then your eyes drop to your wrists.

The cord is fastened in a bowline knot around your wrists, difficult to undo without considerable effort, but the material is softer than the cuffs Graves had you in before, and it gives when you pull one hand down while pushing the other up. Your skin bunches around the cord, but it doesn’t cut into you the way the metal did.

Graves is still fast asleep when you glance over at him. He doesn’t snore, but the rise and fall of his chest under the blanket is steady. Stable.

The fatigue dissipates from your body the second you put it together. That there’s a sliver of a possibility of slipping your hands out of the rope tying you to Graves. The exhilaration is almost overwhelming. You have to sit with it a beat before acting, wary of letting your guard down too fast.

Time passes slowly as you fiddle with the knot, reaching your fingers as far as they’ll go and gritting your teeth through the ensuing cramp in your wrist. You nearly groan in frustration when your hand twitches and you accidentally retighten the knot. A near crushing blow.

Please, you mouth more than whisper, frustrated tears clumped in your lashes. Teeth sinking into the flesh of your bottom lip, pinching off the wail rising up your throat.

Your heart skips a beat when the rope loosens around one of your wrists, enough for you to wiggle a pinkie underneath and slowly shimmy it up the length of your hand. A cramp makes your pinkie spasm, almost causing you to lose your grip. Sweat pools in the cup of your palm.

When your wrists are finally free, the rope clutched in trembling hands and the basal joint of your thumb scrapped raw from the fibrous rope, you can only sit there, heart beating wildly in your chest. You have to force yourself to remain calm, wary of waking Graves up after all that effort. His eyelids quiver only with his dreams though.

You glance towards the door on the other side of the cabin. It seems either farther away now that you know it’s within reach. You know better than to just run straight for it though. Weeks of being on the run before finding John have taught you to pace yourself, to push down the fluttering evocation in your chest to make a mad dash for the closest way out.

Instead, you take a deep breath out, closing your eyes until you’ve calmed down. Then you rise slowly to your feet.

Your eyes, having long since adjusted to the darkness, scan the room for any loose floorboards. Aside from one obvious corner of the house which has begun to rot away and collapse, it’s hard for you to discern at a glance which boards will groan under the weight of your feet. You have no choice but to guess.

Each step has you on edge, heart in your throat. Your focus shifts quicksilver between the floor and Graves. Waiting for any sudden movement.

Halfway to the door, you take another cautious step forward and the floorboard creaks under your foot. Your heart stops, eyes flitting instantly over to Graves’ sleeping form. He doesn’t so much as shift. It’s another beat before you’re able to move again, confidence shaken by the noise. You keep imagining him suddenly shooting up from the floor, pistol in hand, the hammer striking the primer, the hiss of gas escaping the barrel.

The door gives a faint creak when you push it open, so you open it only enough for your body to slip through, wincing when you twitch and accidentally push it open another inch, dragging out the creak. Still, he doesn't wake. You slip past the door, shutting it quietly behind you.

The moon glows cornsilk gold in the sky. A vast, uncharted land stretches out around you, untouched by human hands, or so changed over the years that any human presence has long since been buried beneath the loam. But when you stare out into the distance, you realize that you have no idea where you came from. Everything looks the same in each direction, no landmark familiar enough for you to orient yourself. You’re out in the middle of nowhere and nothing looks right.

If you had less strength, you’d fall to your knees. The despair is so immense that you hardly have the strength to hold it all at once.

The silence lulls you into a false sense of security. You linger for too long, stuck contemplating your options. Coyotes yip in distant packs, their barks carrying across the plains. You shiver at the sound. It reminds you again that you’re on your own now. No husband to come chasing after you if things get sticky.

Your first few steps away from the cabin are tentative, gliding your legs through the grass and staring up at the cornsilk moon. A combination of indulgence and bewilderment. If you knew the right way home, you wouldn’t waver, but these days, you have no faith in your instincts. They’ve only ever led you off course.

The gelding that Graves rode in on sits in the grass with its hind legs folded underneath it. With its legs still hobbled, you know removing the leather will take more time than you'd like, but you figure it'll be easier to make your way across the plains on horseback, with the added bonus of leaving Graves stranded. If God were just, he’d starve out here and leave his corpse for the coyotes to feast on.

You approach the horse cautiously, conscious not to make any sudden movements. Its ears angle towards you as you draw near. Attentive to your presence.

“Hey there, honey,” you whisper, reaching out a hand and trying to show that you aren’t a threat. Its nose twitches.

Another step forward. Easy does it. One leg in front of the other.

“I won’t hurt you. I promise.” You try to mirror your memory of John in your voice, honeysuckle soft words.

You aren’t John though. Not even close. You take another step towards it.

It brays when you get too close, skittish. The sound pierces through the night, louder than the coyotes in the distance. Louder even than the creaking door.

The hair on the back of your neck raises, lips numb. Then the prickling awareness of movement in the house, like an itch on a phantom limb.

Behind you, the door to the cabin bursts open with a bang, slamming off the wall and ricocheting back. You whip your head around to look only to find Graves’ towering form under the shadow of the doorway, his hair mused and clothes askew. And he looks enraged.

“Hey!” Graves bellows from the doorway, breaking into a run towards you. “Get back here!”

There’s no time to sit with the regret, no time to bemoan the fact that you didn’t exercise enough caution, that for some reason without a gun leveled at your head, you allowed yourself to forget the very real danger this man posed to you.

All you can do is run.

The grass whistles around you. You run so hard that your lungs burn, your arms pumping furiously beside you, dress swishing between your legs. You don’t have to look behind you to know that Graves is gaining on you. His body is built for pursuit. Still, you push yourself past your breaking point, not stopping even when you taste blood in your mouth. Mindless; directionless. No idea where you’re going—just away from him. You’d jump off a cliff if you came across one.

He’s close enough for you to hear now, heavy breathing right behind you. But by then it’s too late. A heavy body rams into you, sending you careening towards the earth, the ground rushing up to meet you halfway. The dirt hardly cushions the blow.

You hit the ground hard. Head knocked loose of thought, agony ripping across your face. The double blow of a body heavier than yours forcing you into the dirt, so solid that it crushes the breath from your lungs.

Blood leaks from your lip, most likely split. When you breathe in to fill your lungs, you taste dirt and rust and earth.

“Insufferable bitch,” Graves snarls, putrid breath wafting under your nose and making your eyes water. He grabs a handful of your hair and wrenches your head up before slamming it back down. Something crunches. Distantly, you wonder if your nose is broken.

Your ears ring, the rest of his words drowned out by the blood rushing to your face.

“Please—” you beg, blood dripping from your split lip.

“Knew I shouldn’ta trusted you—conniving little cunt—c’mere now, get up—”

He rises to his feet over your body, big hand curling around your wrist. You hear your shoulder pop when he yanks your arm behind your back. A rush of cold. A sweat breaks on the nape of your neck. Shock sets in the moment after, adrenaline flooding your body.

Then a sharp, focused surge of pain. It radiates from your shoulder outward, so intense that you can’t believe it at first. Your whole world reduces down to it. Feathering out down your back; irradiating waves of it. Thoughts scattering and then coming back together around the pain. If you scream, it comes out unbidden.

“Ah, hell, I didn’t mean to do that,” he grumbles from behind you, likely staring at the unnatural jut of your shoulder. “Alright, sugar, one second—I’ll pop that back in.”

“Nononono—” you gasp, panic lancing through you, but he pays no attention to your words.

The pain of popping your shoulder back in is excruciating. Relief follows shortly after, but the time between dislocating and relocating your shoulder is so short that it hardly comes as a balm to the pain.

“You…bastard…” you gasp.

“Wouldn’ta had to do that if you hadn’t run,” he sighs, the sight of your pain subduing his rage.

It doesn’t stop him from grabbing you roughly by the arm he just dislocated when he finally gets you on your feet though, steering you back towards the house. The pain that radiates up your arm is almost blinding.

He drags you back to the cabin with a punishing grip. There’s no sympathy when you stumble. Moonlight illuminates the path back to the cabin and shows you the trenches in the wild grass made by your feet. Hardly more than a couple rods.

The defeat that courses through you upon being dragged through the ramshackle front door is ten times that of earlier. When he lets go of your arm, you collapse in a heap on the floor, aching and sweating. A bag of bones and blood. You’d rattle if someone shook you.

“I hate you,” you mumble from your spot on the floor, shaking through the pain. “Rot in hell.”

Graves doesn’t respond, but you can almost hear the way he grins.

No rest for the wicked or the good this time. Graves wakes intermittently throughout the night to check up on you, wary now that you’ve tried to run. Your regret is palpable. You should’ve waited. Bided your time. There won't be another chance now, not after you played your hand so soon.

The ache in your shoulder keeps you from finding sleep. Every time you get close to it, the pain radiates down your arm and it slips from your grasp, your hand closing around the empty space it leaves behind. Teeth grit, breathing through the pain. Loosening your jaw and panting because the pain overwhelms you when you so much as shift onto your side, the hard floor digging into your elbow.

Right on the edge of sleep, just as you're about to latch on, a boot catches you in the ribs, jostling you back into the realm of pain. You wheeze, breaking into a coughing fit.

“Get up,” a hoarse voice grunts above you, empty of sympathy. “We got places to be.”

He has the two of you back on the horse as soon as dawn breaks. Your escape attempt the night before must have spooked him, and you regret it now in the light of day because you know he won’t let you out of his sight again. The metal handcuffs digging into your wrists assures you of that.

There’s no time for breakfast or time to wash up. Graves makes it a point to be back on the road as fast as possible, repacking his bedroll and stuffing it back in the saddlebag before dragging you up with him.

The pain is a dull throb after sleeping most of the agony away. It comes back when you move too quickly though, which is hard to avoid on horseback when each gallop echoes through your sore bones and joints.

The arching sun immixes with the heavens above, rising higher as the hours pass. You ache for a hat; something to keep the heat of the sun off your head. On the horizon, the mountain ridge sits like a spine bursting out from the earth. It’s all wastelands and portents. Evil omens.

Your heart feels swollen and bruised, like something trampled under elk hooves.

“Cheer up,” Graves says, tipping your chin up when the sun reaches its peak around midday, the gesture making you so uncomfortable that you almost shudder out of your skin. Your face still throbs with pain. “You should be glad I didn’t jus’ shoot you.”

Your lips pull back, baring your teeth to nothing.

A shot rips through the air at that, his words commanding it into being. Your head instinctively ducks and even the horse under you staggers, spooked by the sound. Graves curses, tensing up behind you.

"What in the hell—"

You whip your head around to stare behind you, looking for the source of the gunfire. When you find it, your eyes widen.

#this is a long one because it's 2 chapters that i didn't feel like posting separately #but they're separated on ao3 if you wanna go read there #ceil writing #cod x reader #price x reader #john price/reader #john price x reader #price x you #john price x you

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zoofzoofxx · 5 months

Text

„OH MY GOD THAT’S JOOST KLEIN!”

(pt.1?????)

Pairing - Joost Klein x Fem!reader

Summary - As you and your little sister walk home, you notice a commotion near a car where a group of people is shouting excitedly. Your sister catches the name of a famous singer and eagerly wants his autograph. However, Joost seems more intrigued by you and proposes a compromise.

Genre - Fluff

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"Thank you very much,” I heard my sister express while embracing me. We were presently walking home; the evening was approaching, and we still had quite a lengthy distance to my flat. Several months back, I turned 22 and purchased a lovely apartment and moved out from my parents. My sister recently turned 16, so I invited her to my flat for the weekend, to go shopping, and then enjoy a delightful dinner as a gift. We were discussing the time my sister prefers to depart tomorrow because the journey to my parents' home is rather lengthy. Suddenly, we heard a cluster of individuals shouting and congregating near a rather luxurious car.

"What is happening back there?" my sister asked, wanting to go and see, but I grabbed her arm. "Let’s just go," I said while pulling her.

“JOOST CAN I HAVE AN AUTOGRAPH?!” “JOOST KLEIN PLEASE SIGN THIS!” “SMILE JOOST I’M MAKING A BEREAL!!!”

"Wait, was that Joost Klein?!" In a matter of seconds, my sister was by the car, fangirling like the rest of the group.

"Lorelei, let's just head back, I'm exhausted," I expressed, pulling on her jumper. The surroundings began to darken, and I had forgotten to bring a coat or a hoodie, assuming we'd return home early, but the chill was intensifying by the minute. I started to rub my hands together to generate some warmth. Lorelei continued to call out for the Dutch man who was sitting in his car, disregarding my words. I let out a sigh and decided to wait for her to meet Joost before we could head home. As time passed, the crowd dwindled, with many leaving, yet a few lingered. Eventually, it was Lorelei's turn, and she seized my wrist, pulling me along for moral support.

"HI JOOST, I’M SUCH A BIG FAN!" my little sister exclaimed. Joost chuckled at her excitement until his friend nudged him and pointed directly at me.

“Ey zij is echt mooi! (Ey she’s really beautiful!)” His friend grinned at me. I felt puzzled, so I returned the smile. Joost gazed at me, and we locked eyes for a moment before he looked away.

“Inderdaad. (Indeed.)” Joost said while nodding to his friend and then turning back to me.

"Feeling chilly?" the blond guy inquired, swinging open his car door and walking towards me. As he towered over me, he took a cigarette from his pocket and ignited it. He took a drag, glanced away, removed the cigarette from his lips, and exhaled the smoke. Then, he locked eyes with me, placed the cigarette back between his lips, and waited for a reply. I was at a loss for words. In the background, I caught my sister's amused chuckle, and I noticed a few onlookers capturing this moment on film.

“I’m not cold.” I say looking away. Joost didn’t hesitate to grab my hand.

"False. Your nose is pink and your hands are chilly. And I saw you rubbing your hands and attempting to heat yourself up," the blond man remarked as his strong Dutch accent was evident. He chuckled, unzipping and removing his coat, then passing it to me.

"I-I can't accept that," I stammered, motioning for him to put his jacket back on, but he remained still. My sister gently nudged me, signaling to take the jacket. I glanced at her, seeing her thumbs up, and suddenly, it felt like I was back in high school chatting with my crush and getting support from my best friend. Joost nodded for me to accept his jacket. After a moment of hesitation, I finally took it. He blew the smoke in another direction, placed the cigarette back between his lips, and helped me zip up my jacket. The scent of his expensive cologne filled my lungs. He turned to my sister with a smile clapping his hands together.

“Sooo… You wanted a picture and an autograph?”He inquired of her, and she enthusiastically nodded. He strolled back to his vehicle while his friends chuckled. He retrieved a sheet of paper and a pen, passing them to my sister.

“Can you write your sister her phone number?” He said gazing at me, giving me a wink as I averted my gaze sensing that my face would blush a light shade of pink. My sibling didn't even pause. She penned down the phone digits and aimed to pass it over but halted him.

"I want a hug too," she utters, and he chuckles.

"Let’s compromise, will you write her name and surname for a hug?" He said pointing at me, as I could hear his friends laugh, and I buried my face in my hands due to embarrassment. I could also sense the excitement among Joost's supporters who were laughing heartily.

"Of course! Her name is Y/n!" She mentioned writing something down and passing the paper and pen to him without any delay to offer her a significant, extended embrace. I caught her whispering something, and he burst into loud laughter. I simply grinned, relishing the sight of my sister's joy. Joost murmured something in return, and Lorelei stepped back and approached me. She began to quietly murmur something in my ear.

“No way-.” I said backing away and furrowing my brows.

"Please for my birthday!" She pleads, casting me those adorable puppy eyes.

"No Lorelei, that's an excessive request," I utter firmly, feeling utterly exhausted.

"Please." Joost emerged alongside my sister, giving me pleading eyes. I turned my head and exhaled deeply.

"What will you receive in exchange?" I inquire, exhaling and turning towards my sister.

"A meet and greet for an hour after his concert," she says, pleading with me and giving me those puppy eyes. I sigh and walk over to Joost, who's already lowering himself to my height. I glance at my sister, who's holding her phone out, waiting for the perfect photo opportunity. I just shake my head no, and she pouts. Looking at Joost, I notice he's smiling, his cigarette is gone. As I get a closer look, I realize he's actually really handsome. He gives me one last look and winks. I give him a light peck on his cheek, leaving a faint pink mark. The people around us go wild, especially his friends in the car. I glance at my sister, who's snapping a picture. I furrow my brows and turn back to Joost. His expression is gentle, and he's blushing, as am I.

"You smell pleasant." He chuckled, and I playfully hit his shoulder.

"Lorelei, go get the autograph and the image, and let's head back." I express, glancing at Lorelei as if nothing has happened. My sibling nodded, and a short while later, she bid her final farewell. Joost walked towards me, coming closer with outstretched arms for an embrace. I embraced him, then stepped back and started unzipping the coat Joost had given me.

"What are you up to?" He inquires as I glance up at him.

"Returning your coat. I'm warm, and it belongs to you," I mention, but he took my hand halfway and zips it back up.

"Take it, please, I insist." He casts those pleading puppy eyes once more. I exhaled in surrender, feeling weary and not in the mood for a conversation with anyone at the moment.

“Jij bent echt schattig. (You are really cute)” he said and I tilted my head to the side in confusion and he grinned. Embracing me once more and walking back into his car.

“Ik hou van jou! (I love you!)” Lorelei mentions, and Joost chuckles while glancing at the paper my sister handed him earlier.

“Ik hou van Y/n. (I love Y/n.)” He speaks, and my sister shrieks and pinched my arm while I remain confused. I simply grasp my sister's shoulder, and we depart. Glancing back one last time, I notice Joost Klein still gazing at me with a smile. He winks, offers a small wave, and raises his phone, indicating that I should check mine. I acknowledge with a nod, thumbs up, and a wave as we turn the corner..

After a few minutes of silence I heard a phone notification coming from my phone.

“Send me a message once you arrive home safely with your little sister.”

I passed my phone to my little sister so she could check the message, and she burst into screams of excitement once more. After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at my place. Then, I heard yet another notification, this time from Instagram.

“@joostklein ✓ started following you.”

As we stepped into my apartment, the initial thing Lorelei did was play the track "Buurman Uit Berlijn" by Joost Klein and MCR-T. I strolled into my room and overheard my sister say:

"Y/n, remember to reply to Joost!" I just sighed and took my phone, sending him a brief message saying: "we got back home alright, appreciate the autograph and photo with my sister."

In less than 10 seconds, Joost replied, saying: "I have a lipstick mark on my cheek, thanks for that and the hug. You smell really good. If I were you, I'd check the jackets right pocket. I left a little surprise." With my toothbrush in my mouth, I headed to the living room, picked up the neatly folded jacket, and looked through the pockets. It was a letter that said ‘Y/n’ I opened it and inside were 2 passes for the Eurovision Song Contest… I almost chocked on my toothbrush, quickly grabbed my phone, and messaged Joost: “When did you slip those in!?” I hit send quickly and immediately got a reply: “When we embraced. Give one pass to your sister. I'll cover the flight and hotel, unless you'd like to stay with me in the same hotel room ;)” I knitted my brows in confusion. I hastily texted him: “I'm truly grateful. Goodnight.” And received a swift response: “Slaapzacht schat. (Sleep tight darling.)” I just left him on read going into sleep thinking about the kiss with Joost.

A/n- HELP THIS WAS MY FIRST STORY EVER ON TUMBLR DON’T HATE PLS 😭 HAVE A NICE DAY YA’LL 😊☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

#JUSTICE FOR JOOST

#x fem!reader #x female reader #x you #x y/n #fluff #joostkleinxreader #justice for joost #stand with joost #joostice #joost #joost klein #compromise #cute #couple #free joost #joost klein x you

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 3 months

Note

So I’m a minor (16 to be specific) and I frequently watch and read stuff with explicit sexual or 18+ content in it. I live in an extremely conservative Christian household and things like explicit fanfic are pretty much the only option I have for learning about sex that isn’t abstinence only. I do feel bad about it, especially when I see adults online say stuff like “oh i watched lots of inappropriate things as a teen that i really shouldn’t have” and it makes me feel like I’m ruining myself in a way that I won’t realize until I’m an adult? Right now I don’t see what the big deal is but i get the feeling that when i’m 24 or something I’ll wake up one day and be ashamed of this for some reason i’m not mature enough to know yet. Should I just stop and wait until I’m 18 to continue or what?

hi anon,

okay. I'm gonna hit you with something:

turning 18 does not actually change the way you feel about porn or sex or anything. the difference between being seventeen and 364 days and being 18 is nonexistent. there's not a magical switch that changes you as a person; that comes from lived experience. if you're 18 and your experience is still that porn and smut and what have you i something that you should feel bad about, it's still going to feel that way and a birthday won't change that.

look, the whole notion of "I saw [x] that I shouldn't have when I was young" is like. okay. so you saw something that was a little mature for you that you didn't quite get? awesome. did you die? no. most people's hangups about sexuality don't come from seeing a rogue titty when they were a teenager, they come from the culture that person was raised in that made seeing a rogue titty feel like something to be ashamed of instead of a completely natural part of life.

story time! when I teach my 4th-6th grade OWL classes (Our Whole Lives, great human development program) I always start by holding a meeting with the kids' parents. I've been doing this for seven years, and every time without fail some of the parents will recall seeing porn for the first time as a kid. these guys were kids when printed porn magazines were still a thing, so they were discovering them in all kinds of places - the bedrooms of their parents or their friends' parents, at bus stops, in the woods, once even stowed in some farm equipment. and they remember it feeling illicit and exciting, sure, and possibly making them confused or even horny for the first time in their young lives, but like... that's it. none of these people are irreparably damaged by seeing porn. in fact, they've grown up to be the kind of people who go out of their way to make sure their young kids are enrolled in a queer-friendly, body-positive, diversity-embracing sex ed class to counter stereotypes and misinformation they might receive elsewhere.

looking at things that arouse you is morally neutral. it can be a great way to help you learn about what turns you on, and even if it's not the best source of factual, realistic depictions of sex, it can still help you discover things - hell, I only figured out what the clitoris was by reading Young Justice fanfic (shout out Snaibsel).

you can't ruin yourself, at any age, with the media you like to consume. what makes you uncomfortable and anxious is the attitude you've been taught to have about that media, which is something that has to be actively unlearned, because it's certainly not going to just disappear on its own when you become a legal adult.

tl;dr obviously no one is making you watch porn and you shouldn't if it makes you uncomfortable, but if you drop it right now and come back when you're 18 don't expect to feel any different if you haven't done any more unpacking re: the conservative Christianity of it all.

#sex edventures 2024

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theemporium · 3 months

Note

YAYYYYY I FOUND IT FINALLY

hi love hope ur doing well

can i request 💛and no.16 with lando?

thank u sm i love ur work🤍🤍

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

16. massaging them

“Oh fuck, that’s the spot.”

You couldn’t help but snort, the noise joyful and bashful. “Shut up, I have neighbours!”

“Not my fault you’ve got hands crafted by the gods themselves,” Lando retorted, his words slightly muffled by the way he buried his face in one of your pillows. “It feels good. I might have to replace Jon with you.”

“I’ll pass,” you laughed, shaking your head in amusement even if he couldn’t see. “You seem like a needy client.”

He let out a high-pitched noise of complaint. “I’m a fucking delight, I’ll have you know.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly why you barged into my apartment demanding a massage,” you replied, sarcasm dripping from your words.

It was only partially an exaggeration to the truth.

With summer break in full swing, it meant that Lando finally had time to relax and step away from the crazy, intense world that is Formula One. It meant he had time to spend with his family and friends that he didn’t usually get during the season, even when they came to race weekends. It meant he could pretend to feel a little normal, even if his life was far from it.

Except for the fact he still had to train like a Formula One driver.

Which he was insistent he could do without the help of Jon. He insisted the man deserved a break of his own, to enjoy his vacation before they had to return to Woking later in the month. He insisted he would be able to follow his routine without the man watching over him.

And he could do it. He just forgot the aftermath of it all, which was how he came storming into your apartment after his latest workout, whining and complaining about how stiff and sore he felt. And somewhere in his complaining, you agreed to do Jon’s job for him.

“People don’t complain this much about helping their friends,” Lando commented, turning his head to the side so his cheek was squished against your pillow and his words were no longer muffled.

“People also don’t sound like they are filming a bad porno when they are getting a massage,” you shot back, finding some pleasure in the way Lando’s cheeks burned pink at your words.

“Please,” he huffed out, clearing his throat in bed. He tried to stay light-hearted, playful, jokey. He tried to focus on the banter, rather than the way your hands felt across his skin. “This isn’t even close to what I sound like in bed.”

“I know.”

“I sound so—” He paused, his brows furrowing as he processed your response before snapping his head back to look at you. “What do you mean, you know?”

“Carlos was your teammate,” you shrugged, trying to bite back your smile. “And he was always in the room next to you in hotels. He’s heard some stuff.”

“I—” Lando tried to speak but words failed him. Memories flashed through his mind, nights he had spent in his hotel room alone. Nights where his hand was wrapped around himself with you on his mind and your name on his lips and—

“I’m kidding!” You laughed, unaware of his internal dilemma as you pushed him back down on the bed, your hands smoothing along the backs of his shoulders. “Carlos didn’t hear shit. I’m just winding you up.”

“Pfft, yeah, I knew that,” Lando laughed nervously, his heart hammering in his chest despite your reassurance. “Carlos wishes he knew what I sounded like in bed.”

“More like you wished you knew what he sounded like,” you snorted. “Your crush on Carlos wasn’t subtle.”

“Yeah,” he murmured, burying his face into your pillow once again. “My crush on Carlos. Totally. That was it.”

#cece's cocktail celebration #lando norris #formula one #f1 #lando norris x reader #lando norris x you #lando norris x y/n #lando norris fic #lando norris one shot #formula one x reader #formula one x you #formula one x y/n #formula one fic #formula one one shot #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 x y/n #f1 fic #f1 one shot

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a-lexia11 · 23 days

Text

Pequeniña

FCB Femini x teen!reader

Alexia Putellas x teen!reader

Word count:2,8k

Summary: At 16, Y/N joins Barcelona and earns the nickname “Pequeniña” due to her youth and her small height. As the youngest member of the team, she receives a lot of attention from her older teammates, who are particularly protective of her.

Based on this request.

The moment I stepped off the plane in Barcelona, my heart was in my throat. Everything felt larger than life—the airport, the city, and most of all, the opportunity ahead of me.

At sixteen, I was about to join FC Barcelona femini , a team filled with players I’d idolized for as long as I could remember. It felt surreal, like a dream I was about to wake up from at any moment.

I clutched the strap of my bag tightly as I navigated the bustling terminal, my mind spinning with a mix of excitement and nerves.

I had visited Spain before with my family, but this time was different. This wasn’t a holiday; this was my life now.

My Spanish was decent—good enough to get by—but the rapid conversations around me made me feel like I was back in school, struggling to keep up.

I could understand a lot, but speaking it fluently was another challenge altogether. Every word felt heavy on my tongue, and my nerves didn’t help.

The club had made arrangements for me to stay in a small hotel for the time being, which was intended as a temporary solution until a more permanent living situation could be established.

My parents had to remain in England due to their work commitments, and they also had the responsibility of caring for my younger siblings.

As a result, I found myself needing to adjust to this new environment on my own while waiting for a more stable and lasting accommodation to be found.

The room was nice, but it felt empty, cold. Every night, I missed the comforting chaos of my home in England—the noise of my younger siblings, the constant presence of my parents. I video-called them as much as I could, but it wasn’t the same.

They tried to reassure me, reminding me that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. They were right, of course, but that didn’t make the loneliness any easier.

Each morning, I would take the bus to the training ground. The ride was long, and I often found myself lost in thought, staring out the window as the city of Barcelona rushed past me.

The streets were vibrant and full of life, but I still felt like an outsider. On the bus, I tried to blend in, hoping no one would notice the nervous English girl clutching her bag like a lifeline.

The training ground was a different story. It was a place where I felt both at home and out of my depth at the same time. I was surrounded by football legends—players like Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmatí, Caroline Graham Hansen.

They were the best in the world, and here I was, trying to prove that I belonged on the same pitch as them. My shyness didn’t help. I kept to myself during those first few weeks, not wanting to draw too much attention.

My teammates quickly noticed this about me, and before long, they started calling me “Pequeniña” which I soon learned meant "little one" in Spanish.

At first,I did not really like but then I realized it was their way of showing affection, of letting me know that they had my back.

One day during training, I was paired with Fridolina Rolfö for some drills. She was kind but focused, her movements precise and powerful.

I watched her closely, trying to emulate her technique, but I was still a bit hesitant.

“Y/N, relax,” Frido said, her voice gentle yet firm as she passed the ball to me. “You’ve got the skills, you just need to trust yourself.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m just… I don’t want to mess up.”

“You won’t,” she reassured me warmly, stepping closer and gently placing her hand on my shoulder. “And even if you do make a mistake, that’s a natural part of the learning process. We’re all here to support and guide you through it.”

Her words gave me a bit of confidence, and I focused on the drill.

By the end of the session, I felt like I had improved, even if just a little. As we wrapped up, Irene Paredes came over, smiling warmly and wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

“Good job today, Y/N,” she said, squeezing me lightly. “You’re getting there. Just keep working hard.”

“Thanks, Irene,” I replied, feeling a bit more at ease around her. Irene was someone I admired for her creativity on the pitch, and knowing she believed in me meant a lot.

Despite their encouragement, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was out of place. It wasn’t just about the football—though that was a huge part of it—it was everything.

Living in the hotel, navigating a new city, trying to fit in with a team that had already established itself as a family. I was the outsider, the youngest, the shy little girl who didn’t quite know where she belonged.

But Keira and Lucy were incredibly supportive; they are the other English girls on the team. It was really reassuring to converse with them in English and have some familiar company around.

Their presence made me feel more at ease and provided a sense of camaraderie.

——

One evening, after a particularly tough training session, I found myself alone in the lounge area of the training complex, scrolling through my phone. My fingers hovered over the screen, debating whether to call my parents.

I missed them more than I wanted to admit. That’s when Alexia Putellas found me.

“You okay, pequeniña?” she asked, sitting down beside me and putting her arm around my shoulders pulling me closer. Her presence was calming, and I immediately felt a little better just having her near.

“Yeah, just… thinking,” I replied, trying to downplay the homesickness that was gnawing at me.

Alexia looked at me for a moment, her eyes filled with understanding. “You know, if you ever need anything, you can always come to me.”

“I know” I said, though I still hesitated to lean on her too much. She was the captain, a legend—I didn’t want to burden her with my problems.

But Alexia wasn’t one to take no for an answer when it came to looking after her teammates, especially someone she had taken under her wing.

——

A few days later, she spotted me making my way to the training ground. The bus stop was only about a fifteen-minute walk from the facility, so I had to walk the rest of the way.

As I was walking, I suddenly heard a car honk behind me. Turning around, I spotted Alexia in her car, her familiar smile greeting me as she pulled up beside me.

She stopped and rolled down the window. “Hola, Pequeniña, are you walking to training?” she asked, her tone light and playful.

“Hi, Alexia. Yes, I am,” I responded with a small laugh. “The bus stop is about 15 minutes away, so I’m walking the rest of the way.”

She nodded thoughtfully before getting out of the car and grabbing my bag without hesitation. “Come on, get in. We’re going together,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument.

I watched as she walked to the trunk, placing my bag inside with care. A warm smile spread across my face as she opened the passenger door for me, and I slid into the seat, feeling grateful for her kindness.

During the final ten minutes of the car ride, Alexia asked me why I didn’t have anyone to take me to training and where I was living.

I hesitated, feeling a bit uncomfortable about sharing, but eventually, I confessed that I was staying alone in a hotel while my family was back in England.

Alexia's expression softened with concern, her brows knitting together as she said, “A 16-year-old shouldn’t be living alone, especially in a city you don’t know well, in a hotel, and where you’re still getting used to the language.”

Her sympathy was clear, and I could tell she genuinely worried about my situation. I simply shrugged in response, unsure of what else to say.

She was right, of course, but I didn’t have any other options at the moment. I had to manage the best I could.

After training, I was in the changing room getting ready to leave when Alexia came up to me. “I’m taking you to your hotel so you can pack your bags,” she said with determination.

I looked at her, puzzled. “What?”

“You’re moving in with me,” she replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I was taken aback. She wanted me to move in with her? It seemed our conversation in the car had made an impression on her.

“Oh, it’s really okay, Alexia. You don’t have to do that,” I said, offering her a gentle smile. “I’ll manage living in the hotel. Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I’m not taking no for an answer,” she insisted firmly. “You’re too young to be living on your own. You’re coming home with me,” she declared, leaving no room for argument.

"But… I don’t want to be a burden," I protested, already feeling like I was intruding on her life.

"You’re not a burden, Y/N," she replied, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You shouldn’t be living alone in a hotel. It’s not right. You need a place that feels like home, and I want you to feel safe and comfortable. And, it’ll be easier for you to focus on football if you’re not worrying about all of that."

I tried to argue, but Alexia was insistent.

And so, I found myself moving into her apartment.

——

It was a bit strange at first, adjusting to living with someone who wasn’t family. But Alexia made it feel like home.

She cooked for me, made sure I was eating properly, and even helped me with my Spanish.

Living with her made everything easier. She wasn’t just my captain anymore—she was like a second mother, someone I could rely on.

During training, Alexia kept a close eye on me, always offering advice and encouragement. She wasn’t the only one, though.

Vicky, who was around my age, quickly became my closest friend.

Vicky had this infectious energy that made it impossible to be shy around her for long.

She was always cracking jokes and making everyone laugh, and it didn’t take long for her to pull me out of my shell.

“Vamos, Y/N, no puedes estar seria todo el tiempo. Divirtámonos un poco” (Come on, Y/N, you can't be serious all the time. Let's have some fun) she would say with a grin whenever she wanted to do something mischievous with the older girl.

Or she would always invited me to go out with her and Martina, who is also around our age.

“¿Has probado la comida de ese lugar que está al final de la calle?” (Have you tried the food at that place down the street yet?) Vicky asked, out of the blue as she dribbled the ball around me.

“Not yet,” I replied, trying to keep up with her quick movements.

“Deberíamos ir después del entrenamiento algún día” (We should go after training sometime) Martina suggested, her voice calm and measured as she passed the ball to me. “Tienen tapas muy buenas” (They have really good tapas.)

“Suena bien, pero tendré que preguntarle a Alexia” (Sounds good, but I’ll have to ask Alexia) I agreed, feeling a little thrill of excitement.

“Oh, es verdad—tienes que pedirle permiso a Mami Alexia antes de hacer cualquier cosa” (Oh, that's right—you need to ask Mami Alexia for permission before doing anything) Vicky teased, and I responded by sticking my tongue out at her.

I had developed a new habit of asking Alexia for permission every time Vicky invited me out, just like I used to do with my mom back in England.

——

As the season went on, I started to find my footing, both on and off the pitch.

The more I trained with my teammates, the more I felt like I was part of something special. And yet, there were still moments when my confidence wavered—especially during matches.

One game in particular stands out in my memory. We were playing against a tough, physical team, and I was struggling to hold my own.

I had the ball, trying to maneuver past a defender who was easily twice my size.

She shoved me hard, and I went down, hitting the ground with a thud that rattled my bones.

For a split second, I was stunned, the wind knocked out of me. But before I could even gather my thoughts, I heard Alexia’s voice, sharp and protective.

She was already there, standing between me and the other player. “¡¿Qué te pasa?!” (What’s wrong with you?) she snapped, her eyes blazing with a fierceness I had never seen before.

Aitana and Ingrid quickly joined her, forming a protective wall in front of me. The referee blew the whistle, but the message was clear—no one was going to mess with their “Pequeniña.”

I struggled to my feet, my heart pounding in my chest. I was grateful for my teammates’ protection, but at the same time, I felt a bit embarrassed.

I didn’t want to be the reason they had to stop the game or the one who needed defending all the time.

As I brushed off the dirt from my kit, Alexia turned to me, her expression softening as she placed a hand on my shoulder, bending down a little.

“Are you okay, nena?”she asked gently, her voice no longer laced with anger but concern.

I nodded, even though my pride was a little bruised. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks, Alexia.”

She smiled at me, the tension from a moment ago easing into something warmer. “Don’t let them push you around. You’re stronger than you think, Y/N.”

I took a deep breath, letting her words sink in. I knew she believed in me, and that meant a lot.

As the game continued, I tried to focus on that belief, using it to fuel my determination.

The rest of the match was tough, but I kept pushing, determined to show that I belonged on this team.

After the game, we all gathered in the locker room, the air filled with a mix of exhaustion and relief.

We had won, and everyone was in good spirits. As I was unlacing my boots, Caroline came over and sat down beside me.

“You did well out there,” she said with a nod of approval. “It’s not easy going up against players like that.”

I looked up at her, surprised. “Really? I feel like I could’ve done better.”

Caroline smiled, a hint of amusement in her eyes. “We all feel that way sometimes. But trust me, you held your own. And next time, you’ll be even better.”

Her words made me feel a little lighter, and I smiled back. “Thanks, Caroline.”

The locker room was bustling with activity, everyone chatting and laughing as they packed up their gear. I was about to head out when Vicky and Martina caught up with me.

“¡Hey, Y/N! ¿Te gustaría acompañarnos a cenar esta noche?” (Hey, Y/N! Are you up for grabbing dinner with us tonight?) Vicky asked, her eyes bright with excitement. “Estamos pensando en probar ese lugar de tapas que mencionó Martina” (We’re thinking of trying that tapas place Martina mentioned.)

I glanced at Alexia, aware that she was listening and silently seeking her approval. She responded with a gentle nod and a warm smile.

I looked back at Vicky and Martina before nodding my head happily.

“¡Genial!” (Great!) Martina chimed in, her calm demeanor a perfect balance to Vicky’s energy. “Será agradable relajarse después del partido” (It’ll be nice to unwind after that game.)

As we left the stadium, I couldn’t help but feel grateful for these moments of normalcy. Despite everything—the challenges, the homesickness, the pressure—I was starting to find my place here.

I wasn’t just the shy English girl anymore; I was becoming part of the team, part of this family.

——

As the weeks went by, I continued to settle into my new life. Training was intense, but I was improving every day.

My Spanish has improved significantly, to the point where I no longer require translations during training sessions.

I’ve become much more comfortable and fluent, allowing me to understand and participate in conversations and instructions without any difficulty.

My teammates were amazing—both on the pitch and off. They treated me like family, always looking out for me, always pushing me to be better.

But it wasn’t just about football. Living with Alexia had given me a sense of stability, something I desperately needed.

I could not say it enough but she really was more than just a mentor—she was someone I could rely on, someone who cared about me as a person, not just as a player.

One evening, after a particularly long day of school and training, I sat on the couch in Alexia’s living room, scrolling through my phone.

Alexia was in the kitchen, making dinner. The smell of something delicious wafted through the apartment, and I realized how much I had come to appreciate these quiet moments with her.

“Hey, Pequeñina ,” Alexia called from the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready. Want to help me set the table?”

“Sure,” I said, putting my phone down and heading to the kitchen. I grabbed some plates and cutlery, setting them out on the small dining table.

As we sat down to eat, Alexia looked at me with a thoughtful expression. “You know, Y/N, you’ve come a long way since you first got here.”

I smiled, feeling a warmth spread through my chest. “Thanks, Alexia. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

She shook her head, her eyes soft. “Eres más fuerte de lo que piensas, nena. Solo me alegra haber podido ayudarte a darte cuenta de eso” (You’re stronger than you think, nena. I’m just glad I could help you see that.)

We ate in comfortable silence for a while, the bond between us stronger than ever. I realized then how lucky I was to have her in my life, to have all of my teammates.

They weren’t just protecting me—they were helping me grow, helping me find my place in this new world.

FIN

#woso community #woso #woso soccer #woso appreciation #women’s football #futfem #woso x reader #fcb femení #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas x reader #fcb femeni #barca femini x reader #woso one shot

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0o-junebug-o0 · 1 month

Text

What if?

summary: You have some fears surrounding sex, you and Spencer talk it out.

genre: angst and fluff, hurt/comfort

cw: suggestive 16+! talk about/discussion about sex, insecure reader, reader is afraid of sex, understanding spencer, completely gn reader (reader is not described at all), no use of y/n, reader takes unspecified medication (implied to be an SSRI), bi spencer, autistic!spencer (because every spencer is autistic!spencer)

wordcount: 2k

note: venting in the form of a fic? who me? anyway, this is for everyone who, like me, is scared of having sex for the first time and wants someone to comfort them and ease their fears. you are not the only one out there.

Spencer’s hands slide from your cheeks to your waist, gripping you firmly yet gently. The feeling of his hands makes you shiver and you gasp into the kiss. He moans in response and nips on your lower lip before running his tongue over it. He pulls away for a moment to breathe before kissing you again with a fervor you’ve rarely experienced in your months of dating.

You kiss him back just as desperately, curling your hands into his hair, tugging unintentionally. He moans loudly, his mouth falling open into the kiss. You pull again, deliberately this time, and the sound he makes drives you crazy. Your whole body feels like it’s on fire. Spencer’s hand slips under the hem of your shirt and you pull away to allow him to tug it over your head.

Unwilling to part from him for too long, you grab the front of his shirt and pull him back toward you. Your fingers fumble with the buttons as you try to take his shirt off, distracted by the feeling of Spencer’s hands running up and down your sides. He chuckles and kisses you again before helping you finish unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his shoulders.

Your hands slide across his chest and he gasps again. His hands hold tight onto your hips as you kiss along his jaw and down to his neck. You nip at a spot along his pulse and his hips buck up into yours with a moan. You freeze for a moment as a pang of anxiety shoots through you. You move away from that spot and continue to kiss along his neck as Spencer whines your name.

You smile, pleased at the reactions you’re getting as you kiss your way back up to his mouth, keeping your hands pressed against his chest. Spencer kisses you with desperate, open mouth kisses and the feeling of his hands sliding over your bare skin makes you shiver.

But then Spencer’s hands are tugging at your pants. Your eyes shoot open, having slipped shut while kissing him, and your whole body goes cold like a bucket of ice water had just been dumped over your head. Involuntarily, you tense, your lips freezing against Spencer’s. Spencer stills and pulls away, removing his hands and opening his eyes, looking at you with a furrowed brow.

“Are you alright?” he asks softly.

A wave of guilt rushes over you and you press back in to kiss him, grabbing his wrists and returning his hands to where they had been, hoping he’ll just forget about what just happened. He seems to move on instinct for a moment, kissing back, before he gently grabs your shoulders and pushes you away. His eyes dart around your face, his expression full of concern.

He whispers your name gently and you turn your head away in shame. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Did I hurt you?”

Your eyes widen and you whip back around to look at him, shaking your head frantically. He looks so worried. Tears well in your eyes and you swipe them away violently, climbing off of Spencer’s lap.

He watches you for a moment before grabbing your shirt from where it had landed and handing it back to you. You clutch it to your chest and sob. “I-I’m sorry!” you gasp. “I’m sorry!”

“Hey, hey,” Spencer says softly. He reaches his hand out but freezes before he touches you, clearly worried that doing so will make things worse. You press your body into his hand and he seems to relax as he starts rubbing his hand up and down your back. “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for. You did nothing wrong.”

You tuck your legs against your chest, still cradling your shirt, and bury your head in your knees.

“Can you tell me what happened, sweetheart? I don’t want to upset you or make you uncomfortable but I need to know what I did so I don’t do it again.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” you cry. “You’re perfect! It’s just me! There’s just something wrong with me!”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, baby.”

“There is!” you insist, lifting your head to look at him. He gazes back at you with a kindness you don’t deserve. You look away from him. “I want to have sex with you, I promise.”

The movement of his hand on your back stutters slightly but quickly continues. “Okay,” Spencer says carefully.

“I-I don’t want you to think I don’t want you or-or love you because we haven't had sex yet, because I do! I really, really do! I’m just scared,” your voice trails off into a whisper as you finish speaking.

“Hey, look at me,” Spencer says. You tilt your head and look up at him. “You’ve done nothing to make me think for even a second that you don’t love me. Whether or not we’ve had sex plays no role in that for me. Honestly, I don’t care if we ever have sex. I know we’ll both love each other just as much.”

“I do want to,” you whisper, your voice cracking slightly on another sob.

“I know. I believe you.”

You sniff and wipe at your eyes again. Spencer smiles sweetly at you and guides you to lean against his chest, holding you close and rubbing your arm.

“Can you tell me why you’re scared?”

“I-It’s stupid,” you mutter.

“It’s not stupid, especially if it’s bothering you. And being nervous about having sex for the first time is completely normal.”

“I know, but it feels like more than just being nervous,” you try to explain, unsure how to put the feeling into words.

“And that’s okay too.”

“There’s a lot of things,” you admit timidly.

“We can go through them. One at a time, okay?” Spencer offers.

You nod and press your head harder against his chest for a moment in thanks. “One thing I’m worried about is, um, how I look,” you mutter. “What if, once you see me naked, you don’t think I’m attractive anymore, or-or you think my, um, my genitals look gross or disgusting.”

Spencer is silent for a moment and you can feel panic starting to build in your chest. You shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have said anything. What if you’ve messed all this up? This wonderful amazing thing you have with Spencer, just because you can’t get it together.

“I-I’m sorry,” you start. “I don’t think you’re shallow or mean like that or anything. I—“

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I know you don’t,” Spencer reassures you.

“It’s— I know you won’t think those things but my brain won’t stop worrying about it.”

“That’s because anxieties are often irrational. We know that they’re untrue but they still exist. I don’t think there’s anything I could really say to prove to you that I won’t think those things but I can still promise that I won’t. No matter what, I will always think you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

Fresh tears steam down your cheeks and your lip wobbles. You untuck your legs and let your shirt fall into your lap as you wrap your arms around Spencer. He presses a kiss to the top of your head.

“I love you,” he whispers.

“I love you, too,” you respond.

You stay in each other’s arms for a moment before you pull away again. “What if I can’t cum?” you whisper, speaking so softly that you’re almost unable to hear yourself.

“I couldn’t hear you, I’m sorry, sweetheart. Can you say it again?”

Your face feels like it’s on fire and you bury your head in your hands out of embarrassment. “What if I can’t cum?” you say louder. There’s a moment of silence before you realize what that statement might sound like. “N-not through any fault of your own!” you rush to insist. “But because of my medication. Or-or because there’s something wrong with me! And what if I can’t make you cum. I want you to enjoy yourself when we have sex! I don’t want to let you down or not make you feel good!”

“Okay, I’m going to start with the first thing you brought up, alright?”

You nod.

“This might not be what you want to hear, but being unable to cum is a possibility. There’s a condition called anorgasmia which results in orgasms that are less intense, delayed, infrequent, or absent altogether. And it can be due to taking certain medications. Though it’s unlikely because it only affects less than five percent of people, we won’t know if that’s something you experience until we try. If you do experience it, there’s nothing wrong with you, and there are ways to treat or work around it. But, to be honest, given the statistics, it is unlikely that you will be unable to cum. Your medication might make things a little more difficult but if that’s the case, and if we have sex, that just means I’ll get to spend even more time making you feel good.”

“But I don’t want it to all be focused on me. I don’t want you to have to put in extra effort you shouldn’t have to give just to make me feel good,” you respond.

“That leads me to your second concern.” Spencer pauses for a moment before saying, “Can you look at me, sweetheart?”

You lift your head to meet his eyes.

“Sex is not transactional. Just because I do something for you that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to do the same for me. And I can guarantee you that regardless of what we do, I will enjoy myself. And if I want to spend extra time or even a full night just focusing on you, that would not subtract from my pleasure at all. Making you feel good would make me feel good too. And if you’re worried about not knowing what to do when it comes to anything about sex, I can show you or we can do research together. Alright?” You nod and Spencer smiles at you. “Is there anything else that scares you?” he asks patiently.

You open and close your mouth. Anxiety clogs your throat and seems to physically prevent you from speaking. You bow your head. Of all the worries you have about sex, this is the greatest. “What—“ you pause and take a deep breath. “What if I try to have sex and then don’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would? Or-or what if I hate it and never want to have sex again?”

You look back up at Spencer with wide, pleading eyes. The tears once again forming and sticking to your lashes make his face swim before you.

“Then that’s okay,” Spencer responds like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“What?” you ask, unable to help but feel surprised.

“If you try having sex and decide you never want to again, that’s okay. If you change your mind midway and never want to try again, that’s okay. If you never want to even try, that’s okay. Nothing you do or don’t do could ever disappoint me or make me love you any less. I love you for you. I’m with you for you, not for sex. Sex is not necessary for a relationship to me. And I don’t want you to think it is for a second.”

Tears stream down your cheeks as you nod.

“I will love you no matter what we do or don’t do. Okay?” Spencer says softly.

A sob of relief bursts from your chest and you launch toward him, wrapping your arms around his neck and burying your face in his chest. “Th-thank you,” you cry weakly. “Thank you.”

“You have nothing to thank me for, baby,” Spencer says, pressing a kiss to your head.

You shake your head in disagreement and feel him chuckle against you.

“I love you,” you whisper. “So so much.”

“I love you too,” he responds. “So so much.”

_____

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