#i was not expecting the yearning jesus

[godnattakatta]

i'm literally ill right now !!!

@junkyard-gifs idk if you still wanna be tagged for vienna gifs but here you go

[mermaidgirl30]

✨Caught In the Act✨

Pre-outbreak! Joel Miller x Roommate! fem reader

A/N: Thank you to @littlevenicebitch69 for showing me that video that sparked the inspiration for this fic 😘 No beta, but I had so much fun writing this one!

Summary: Thinking you’re home alone, you decide to unwind in bed, but the last thing you expect is to have Joel Miller, the man you’re renting a room from, find you naked in bed.

Word Count: 4.1k

Rating: Explicit 18+ Only MDNI

Tags: Vibrator use, porn with plot, yearning, feelings, infatuation, fingering, unprotected piv, creampie, dirty talk, roommates

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

The sunlight trickles against the sheer curtains as the room swelters with heat. The buzzing sounds fill the bedroom as your hips rock against the silk sheets, your fingers curling with every meticulous circle the vibrator makes against your swollen clit. 

   “Joel,” you moan freely, knowing he isn’t home, not at this hour of the day. It’s just you and your breathy whispers of his name, pretending the vibrator is his thick fingers stifling an orgasm from your needy clit, pretending the dampening sheets are his greying tousled curls as you tug and pull, pretending his large tongue is consuming you entirely as another moan slips from your lips.

   You shouldn’t be thinking about the man you’re renting a room from like this, shouldn’t be moaning his name while your vibrator is pressed firmly against your bundle of nerves, but you just can’t help yourself. He’s just so hot the way his veiny hands open whiskey bottles as his strong muscles clench tight around his button-up flannels he always looks so damn good in. And he’s so fucking sexy the way he smirks while his Southern drawl falls from his plush lips every single time he talks to you with those big brown eyes that you just want to sink into. You can’t help but want him all the time, even though you really shouldn’t.

   “Ohhh, fuck,” you whine as you hit that spot, right where it feels like you’re about to shed your orgasm at any second. So you speed up your motions, pressing down harder as you moan his name again, letting it fall off your lips like he’s here with you now, like he’s taking you exactly how you like it. 

   You’re breathing so hard and focusing on your ragged breaths and the sounds of the whirring vibrator that you don’t even hear the door being jarred open or see the brooding man that stands against your bedroom door. You don’t notice until you hear that thick, undeniable voice that only belongs to one man. That man being Joel fucking Miller.

   “Jesus Christ, sweetheart. Moanin’ my name and I ain’t even touchin’ you? Must want it bad,” he chuckles, a large smirk pressed on his mouth as he leans with crossed arms against your painted door frame.

   You jump from the sudden intrusion and shut the vibrator off, panting and sweating from your almost orgasm as you work to throw the covers over your naked body. “Jesus, Joel! I didn’t know you were home. I'm sorry… I.” Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to see you like this! 

   He stops you mid sentence, holding up his large palm as he clears his throat. “Ain’t gotta apologize, sweetheart. Why don’t you just carry on? Besides, I could hear you moanin’ my name the moment I stepped in the house. Not gonna lie, it kinda turned me on. And then walkin’ in and seein’ this? Well, jus’ pull those covers back and let me see that pretty glistenin’ pussy. You want a little assistance there?” he nods, eyes darkening into black pits as you see the outline of his hard cock beneath his worn jeans. 

   You swallow and choke on your own spit, eyes widening as you slowly reveal your slick center to him once again as you spread your legs wide. “There ya go, sweetheart. Look at how fuckin’ wet you are. Goddamn,” he groans as he rakes a large hand slowly over his greying scruff. “Go on, be a good girl and turn the vibrator back on for me,” he replies in a raspy tone that sets your core on fire.

   You slowly press the button, letting the vibrations slow your pounding heart rate as you stare up at the man you’ve been dreaming about from the moment you stepped foot into this house. “You want me to…”

   He nods, dropping his jaw open as he takes in just how wet you already are for him. “Yeah, put it back on that pretty clit, sweetheart. Wanna see.”

   Your mouth parts open the moment you place it on your throbbing mound, your mouth dropping open as you gaze up into pitch black eyes that want to consume you whole. You hold in a moan, spreading your legs wider as the vibrator circles against your puffy clit, but what feels even better is Joel standing there drinking down the image of you getting yourself off while he watches. 

   “Goddamn, darlin’. Look at you,” he whistles, untucking his flannel shirt from his jeans as he stalks over to the edge of the bed, kicking his boots off as his body weight makes the bed cave as he crawls on top of the sheets.

   “Joel,” you whine, watching his big black eyes come closer as he props himself up beside you, one hand coming down on top of yours while the other tucks a lock of hair behind your ear.

   “Let me jus’ give you a hand there, sweetheart. Let me take control,” he growls, grabbing onto the end of the vibrator as he presses it further into your folds, circling slow, meticulous circles as he draws a breathy moan from you. 

   “That’s it, Attagirl,” he praises as your back arches off the bed, taking the vibrator a level up as he grinds it against your slick folds.

   “Ooooh, fuck,” you whine, twisting your fingers into the soft material of his flannel while his gorgeous face hangs just over yours, his big eyes making another wave of slick slip from your center.

   “Feels good, don’t it? Yeah, right there,” he purrs as he pushes it down close to your dripping hole, hitting that one special spot that makes your legs start to shake.

   “Yes, Joel. Please, don’t stop,” you beg as you grip his forearm with a tight fist.

   “I’m not gonna stop till that pretty pussy’s soakin’ my hand, sweetheart,” he smirks, turning the vibrations up even higher as your body hums with electricity from his touch. “If I would’ve known sooner that you’ve been wantin’ this, I would’ve already been on my knees with my mouth between your thighs,” he groans as another moan comes crashing through the room.

   You start to feel the coils snap in your belly, and then hot heat starts to slide down your spine as your orgasm starts to break. “Joel, I’m not gonna - fuck, I’m coming!” you scream as you let the floodgates open and latch on to his veiny wrist.

   “Jesus Chris, you’re fuckin’ soakin’ me,” he says in awe as slick sprays from your pussy, coating his hand in your release as your back arches off the mattress and your body hums with your intense orgasm. Joel works you through it, calling you a good girl as he shuts the vibrator off and just slowly circles it over your aching center until you’re coherent enough to open your eyes and breathe normally again.

   He throws the vibrator to the side and slides a calloused hand carefully from your neckline, in between your breasts, skating down your abdomen, and ending right above your mound. He smiles down at you as he takes his time to ghost his fingers over your soaked folds, stifling a whimper from your lips as he hovers over your puffy clit. 

   “You look so pretty comin’ undone, darlin’. Wanna see it again, this time wanna really feel it.” He presses the pad of his thumb down on your bundle of nerves, drawing meticulous circles, making you cant your hips up as you soak in the way his fingers feel like pure magic. 

   “Oh god, please,” you beg, throwing your head back as he slips a finger inside your dripping hole. 

   “I got you, sweetheart. Gonna make you feel real good now, jus’ hold tight.” Before you know what’s coming, he crashes his lips down on yours and swallows a moan as he curls another finger inside, stretching your walls as he reaches that soft spongy spot that you can never reach yourself.

   You lean into the kiss, breathing in his woodsy scent, tasting the sweat of the Austin sun on his lips, feeling the way he slips his tongue inside your mouth and swallows every sound you make while he repeatedly fucks his fingers deep inside your pussy, making you feel like you’re floating on thin air. 

   You wrap your arms around his neck, pushing your fingers through his dark tousled curls as a groan leaves his lips and enters your mouth while he repeatedly takes the breath from your lips. He licks inside you while his thick fingers make wet, obscene sounds as he fucks deeper, uncoiling that same tension he already snapped just minutes ago as he repeats the process all over again.

   He unhooks from your lips, finds a steady rhythm as he slips from your hole and full on rocks his fingers up and down your folds, brushing the heel of his wrist over your puffy clit that screams for him to take you over the edge again. 

   The room is suddenly too hot with his weight on your chest, his expert fingers moving at an impossibly fast pace as your core burns hot and bright, begging for him to make you come again.

   “Jesus, fuck - I’m right there. God, it feels so fucking good, Joel,” you stifle as your jaw slackens and your body starts to vibrate the more his fingers work and work at your core. 

   He slips two fingers back inside you, hitting that one spot that makes you see stars, and then he’s whispering filthy words against your parted lips. “Such a good fuckin’ girl lettin’ me use these fingers on that pretty pussy, wonder what you’d feel like takin’ my cock next,” he smirks as he nips at your bottom lip, pulling another moan from your throat. 

   “Please, Joel,” you beg.

   “Is that an invitation, sweetheart?” he chuckles, raising a thick eyebrow as he looks you deep in the eyes with those beautiful brown eyes that are blown wide.

   “Yes, want your cock, Joel. Want you to - oh, fill me up - fuck,” you whine as you feel your release start to flow down your insides. 

   “Yeah, fuckin’ spill for me, that’s it. Atta fuckin’ girl,” he growls as he presses deep inside that spongy spot, and then you’re completely done for. The slick pools down your core, covering Joel’s knuckles and the inside of your thighs as the orgasm takes a hold and knocks your head back against the cotton pillow.

   “That’s it. So pretty, baby,” he coos as he works you through it once again. 

   The fog fills your brain as every euphoric feeling takes its hold on you, holding you down against the damp sheets as you focus on the man that hangs above you. When you finally come to your senses, Joel uncurls his fingers from your core and pops the digits into his mouth, sucking and groaning as he indulges in your sweet taste. 

   “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, you taste better than a shot of whiskey,” he groans as he delves his fingers back inside you, collecting slick on the tips of his calloused fingers and brings it up to your lips. “Open up, sweetheart. Try a taste,” he purrs.

   You part your lips and allow him to enter. You take his two fingers and suck, glancing at him with glazed over eyes as your sweet taste slides down the back of your throat. 

   “Goddamn. That’s picture worthy, sweetheart. You suckin’ on my fingers while you lick off your own slick? Jesus Christ, you’re gonna fuckin’ ruin me,” he murmurs as he looks at you with wide, blown out eyes.

   You giggle as you tip your head up, wrapping your fingers around the collar of his flannel as you tug, pulling just enough to expose a trail of dark chest hair that’s saturated in sweat. “Just like you’ll ruin me. But I’m okay with that. Just need you right now,” you pant out, popping open more of the buttons of his flannel until he gets the hint and throws it off, exposing his broad, muscular chest that’s beaded in glistening sweat, and his happy trail disappears under the material of his dark jeans.

   “You want me inside you, sweetheart?” he whispers as you hurriedly unbuckle his belt and start popping open the top button. 

   “Yes, want your cock inside me. Please, I need you,” you beg as he smiles down at you with glossy brown eyes.

   “Need me to fill you up? Want me to fuck you nice ‘n deep?” he smirks as he unzips his jeans and slides them off his legs, his boxers following swiftly after.

   You gulp as his massive cock springs up against his soft tummy, taking in just how big he is as precum spills from the slit. You gawk at him when he wraps a hand around his large length and starts spreading the precum up and down his shaft meticulously. 

   “Mhm,” is all you can get out as you watch him stroke himself up and down. Fuck. 

   “Spread those legs then, sweetheart,” he smirks as he positions himself right between your legs. You can only whine and knead your breasts together as he takes the tip and slides it along your folds, collecting slick on his swollen tip that’s red and throbbing just for you. He rubs it along your overstimulated clit and chuckles when you pant his name out. 

   “So fuckin’ beautiful,” he drawls as he positions himself at the entrance of your sopping wet hole. “Such a messy girl, too. All this for me? Goddamn. Gonna fill you up real good.” Before you have time to say anything, he thrusts inside you, filling you so full as you gasp at the wide stretch he makes.

   “Jesus Christ, you’re tight, darlin’. Jus’ needed this big cock to stretch you out, s’that right?” he groans, caging you in with his muscular arms as he ruts deeper inside you, filling you to the brim with every languid stroke of his massive cock.

   You throw your head back, clawing your nails down his broad back as you moan nonsense while he generously slides his thick length back and forth, slipping out just enough to ram back inside you with a sting to your insides as his tip continually kisses the back of your cervix. 

   It’s like you can’t get enough, need more of him, need every inch of his skin to crawl into yours as he takes you to the edge again. You’ve never felt a stretch like this, never been so cock hungover, not until Joel fucking Miller slipped inside you, and you’re afraid you won’t ever get enough of him now. 

   “More,” you beg, panting from every motion of the snap of his hips, moaning every time he’s deep inside your clenched walls, splitting them open with every single rutting motion he gives.

   “You want more, sweetheart? I’ll give you more. Yeah, give you jus’ what you want,” he smirks as he bends your knees up, folding you into a pancake shape as he crawls over you with his beautiful, broad body. “Careful what you ask for. Might not be able to take it,” he chuckles, eyes darkening with trouble written all over them. 

   He spears inside you, thrusting so deep that you swear you feel him inside your stomach, hitting that spongy spot that makes you gasp as your back arches off the damp sheets. “Fuckkkk,” you moan, your voice carrying through the entire room as his deep grunts collide with yours.

   “Yeah, s’right. Take it,” he growls, nipping at your collarbone as your fingers fist in his tousled curls. “Be a good girl and come on my cock,” he demands as his hips thrust violently against yours.

   You have no more control. The room is heavy and hot as your musk and sweat collect over the other, your fingers dragging down his back as you clench up and let your sweet release slip out, coating him in your slick. “Joel, feels - fuck, I’m coming,” you moan into the shell of his ear.

   He stills his thrusts for a few seconds, feeling your walls clench around his cock as you start to soak him, the flow not stopping even as you tilt your head back and scream from the blistering heat that settles in your core.

   “Oh, that’s a good fuckin’ girl. Squeezin’ so tight, milkin’ me with that slippery cum, Jesus Christ,” he moans as he thrusts back into you, not wasting a moments time as he chases his own release.

   You settle into a fog, his deep pants and groans reverberating off the walls as his heavy hands settle on your hips, fucking into you so deep that you feel drunk and so full of him that you swear you should be satiated, but you’re not. You’d let him pump you full of his cock all night in every different position, if only you could continue to do this night after night.

   “‘M not gonna last, sweetheart. Where do you want me?” He grinds his teeth together in concentration as he tries to hold it in just a little longer.

   “Inside me. Fill me up, handsome,” you purr.

   His jaw ticks, and something like fire lights in his glossy eyes, and a devilish smirk forms on his plush lips as he thrusts once, twice, three more times and then pounds you as hard as he can. He leans his forehead against yours and lets out a guttural groan, feeling the white ropes of cum paint the back of your cervix as he gushes all inside you.

   “Fuck me,” he moans, not willing to move till he has all of him spilled inside your walls. He slowly pulls out of you, and you feel the warmth of your own slick and his release mix together as it gushes outside your pussy and down your thighs.

   “Look at you, such a pretty little mess you are, ain’t ya,” he smiles, staring at your legs splayed wide as he dips a finger down against folds, collecting the mixed cum together on his index finger. “Open up, pretty girl,” he smirks.

   He takes his index finger and slots it between your glossy lips, letting you lick and suck on his finger. You swear his eyes widen even further as his black pupils expand into pure lust. “So good,” you moan, wrapping your lips around his finger as you tease and suck on his slick covered digit.

   “Goddamn, look at you. You’re jus’ a wicked little tease, ain’t ya?” he groans, dragging the finger from your lips and pulling it into his warm mouth, sucking with a deliciously hungry groan that makes your eyes widen with heat. “Delicious,” he smirks as he pops his own digit from his mouth, grinding out another moan from your throat as he topples on the bed beside you.

   You both breathe raggedly as you look from one to the other, both locked in a heated staring match, his fingertips lingering on the back of your neck as he pulls you closer to his glistening chest. “That was…” 

   “Unexpected, but amazin’ all the same,” he finishes with a smile curled around his mouth. “You’re tellin’ me you’ve been livin’ in this house for moments, and you weren’t plannin’ on tellin’ me you thought ‘bout me in bed?” His eyebrows raise, and he looks at you square in the eyes, a sly smirk crossing his mouth.

   “I didn’t wanna risk getting kicked out,” you say with your lips molded together in a tight gesture. 

   “Kicked out, huh?” He chuckles and shakes his tousled curls. “Sweetheart, I found you in your bed moanin’ my name. Hell, you could’ve told me that first day you walked in. Think I would’ve taken you right there on the counter if I knew you were into me,” he chuckles.

   “Get out of here,” you laugh as you playfully push him in the chest. “You would not have.”

   “Oh yes I would. Thought you were a knockout from the minute you came through the front door with those little daisy dukes and those beautiful eyes. Shit, I’ve had a thing for you since day one, sweetheart.”

   You purse your lips and give him a once over, assessing his genuine brown eyes that seem covered in softness. Holy shit. He’s being serious. “Really?” you ask breathlessly.

   “Really,” he nods, curling his fingers through your hair and pulling you forward, till your mouth collides with his in a long, sensuous kiss that sends music running through your ears. His lips feel like velvet, and his tongue tastes like cinnamon. 

   When you fall away from his lips, he smiles. “We gonna make this a habit?”

   “Do you want to make this a habit?” you ask with a raised brow, hope stirring in your chest.

   “I mean, ‘course I do, darlin’. A pretty thing like you should be fucked well and taken on nice dates. Think we got the fuckin’ part down, jus’ gotta take ya to dinner now.” He winks and flashes his honey-glazed eyes, and you feel as if you could drown in those syrupy eyes. 

   “That what you tell all the girls who turn into your roommate?” you giggle.

   “Now, sweetheart. You’re rentin’ a room from me. If you wanna be roommates, then technically you’d need to stay in my room, in my bed, in my arms,” he smiles as he pulls you flush to his broad chest, draping an arm around the back of your hip as his fingers softly tease at your soft skin.

   You hum into his touch, giving him a dreamy smile as you drag your nails against his silver scruff. “Roommates, huh? Is that what we’re gonna be?”

   “Roommates, fuck buddies, lovers… s’hard to say, darlin’. But I like you, and I’d like to explore whatever this is.” His tone is so sincere that it makes butterflies flit through your stomach at the possibilities of what this could turn out to be. 

   You push your fingers through his messy curls, reveling over his deep groans as you drag your nails down his scalp. “I like you too, Joel. A lot, actually,” you blush.

   “Figured as much when I caught you moanin’ my name while usin’ that little vibrator on your pretty pink pussy,” he winks, making you blush at the way he drags out the words and keeps his brown eyes locked tight on yours. 

   You shake your head and groan when he drags his thick thumb over your lower lip. “Bet I’m not the only one. What have you been thinking about at night, in the shower, in your bed?” you smirk, making his cheeks redden at the mention of it.

   “Yeah, yeah, sweetheart. You know I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout you, too. Been wonderin’ how sweet you were. Turns out you’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever put my lips on.” He curls his lips into a delicious smile and flips you over to where your back is flush with his sweat-covered chest, lacing his calloused fingers with yours as he nuzzles into the crook of your neck, his scruff scratching softly along your jawline. 

   You lay there in the twisted sheets, inhaling the musk that makes up Joel Miller, embedding his woodsy pine scent deep into your memory. This feels… right, like this is where you’ve always belonged, in his arms.

   “How’s ’bout I take you on a date Friday night? We could go see a movie, I’ll buy you a big thing of popcorn, hold your hand, maybe pull you into my lap so I can kiss you all I want, then I’ll take you back home and make love to you in my bed all night long.” He places a gentle kiss to your cheek, and you melt into the feel of him. 

   You squeeze his hand and brush your lips over his knuckles, giving him a lazy smile as you turn to look back at him over your shoulder. “Okay, cowboy. You’ve got a deal.”

   He brushes his lips over yours and pulls you close so he can trace his lips over the shell of your ear. “Alright, pretty girl. It’s a date. Now, how ‘bout we go take a shower, and I can make you some dinner. Maybe go for round two after with my mouth between those pretty thighs of yours,” he whispers as a chill runs down your spine, heat building back in your core.

   You huff out a laugh and stifle a groan. “Mmmm, alright then, cowboy. I’m all in.”

   He presses his lips against yours and then tugs you up from the bed, lacing his fingers with yours as he leads you to his room. “Gonna take you for the ride of your life, sweetheart,” he smirks.

   “I’m counting on it,” you smile. 

   And so it begins.

[angelsforthenight]

BEYOND SALVAGE — ellie williams x fem!reader (pt. 2)

a catholic boarding school AU… read pt. 1 here! ೀ⋆｡˚

after the humiliating sports day accident, ellie seems to take direct notice of you. your uncontrollable desires and bodily reactions cause you to feel horrible, until one night in the chapel.

cw: mdni!!!, long (but worth it 😛) heavy religious (catholic) talk, hinted religious trauma, ellie has piercings, inexperienced!reader, dom!ellie, sub!reader, player!ellie, v brief masturbation, brief drugs, fucking in an inconvenient place, intense foreplay, teasing, cursing, finger-sucking, nipple-sucking, cunnilingus, fingering, sorta mean!ellie, kiiiinda brat!reader

taglist: @shewantstoknow @iluvgrlsblog @kitaanah @yumimak @babesmwah @lawofblla @elliesfavgf @4ftergloww @circe-is-struggling @seraphicsentences @we-loveebony @marrycv @lavenderhazelsworld

“…God forgives all, does He not?”

days go by and within each one, ellie plays a more prominent role in your routine. everywhere you go she’s just there. you also catch her looking at you: whether it’s in class or in church service. this begins to be a massive bother since she’s making things incredibly difficult.

your body is also starting to experience changes. every single time without fail, whenever your gaze would meet hers, you would feel your heart start to pick up the pace, and a strange yet eerily familiar throbbing sensation between your legs occur. whenever your cunt would flex, you would try to squeeze your thighs together, hoping to ease it, but it’d only make things worse.

as much as you’d hate to admit, you subconsciously know exactly what’s wrong with you. these nights, whilst trying to fall asleep, you’ve been letting your mind wander. thinking all these sinful thoughts surrounding ellie that you in the past would’ve never even dared to. you don’t even know where this is all coming from — all because of the sports day incident, really?

you feel disgusting, but you can’t seem to stop. it’s as if a little creature inside you has been roused awake and is starving.

it’s currently 12 in the morning. every girl in your dorm is overcome with drowse — gently snoozing away and filling the room with the sound of soft breathes. every girl but you, who’s wide awake. you, who can feel the creature within you snarl and whine with hunger, you who can’t stop imagining what it’d feel like if ellie were to fuck you and you who’s fingers are starting to creep down your white cotton night-gown. your head begins to be overclouded by yearn and arousal as your fingers prudently brush up against your clothed cunt. your breath hitches and you slightly squirm; ellie’s face and her demeanour embellished in your mind. you’re about to continue trailing down this path of wickedness until you hear somebody stir in their sleep, making you jolt and immediately pull your hand away; snapping you out of the indecent daze.

your eyes glance up at the huge crucifix held above the door. you can feel Jesus’ hard, judgemental gaze cast upon you and you feel morbid. this influences you to get up and skulk to the school’s chapel. you need to thoroughly apologise for your godless actions after all.

as you kneel, you feel your knees sink against the cold cushion of one of the pillars. you take a deep breath, doing the sign of the cross and clenching your eyes shut.

“forgive me, father, for i have sinned…”

but then your mind goes blank. you have no idea what to say, too afraid to mutter what you’ve been doing aloud. your mouth slightly opens, expecting words to spill out, but there’s nothing.

as you’re still figuring something to say, you suddenly smell a strong poignant scent of earth and musk. your eyes immediately shoot open. it’s way too smelly to be incense. you scan the area only to see that there’s nobody there, but the smell is just way too distracting for you to continue your prayer. you feel compelled to figure out where the scent is coming from — leading you to an abandoned curtain in the far corner of the room. you immediately draw the curtain open.

ellie stares up at you like a deer caught in headlights, a lit blunt hanging out of her lips. she’s sat on a plastic stool, wearing a fitted black tank top and flannel pyjama bottoms. your jaw slightly drops at the sight of her. her eyebrows raise as she stares you down, seemingly relieved it wasn’t one of the sisters that had caught her.

“nice nightgown.” you frown. you couldn’t believe what she was doing. in the holiest place in the building, to add!

“you want?” she continues, holding it up to you. you gasp softly and vigorously shake your head.

“what are you doing?” you ask dumbly. ellie chuckles amusedly.

“if you’re gonna tell on me, just tell.” cockiness oozes from her tone. it pisses you off.

“why are you smoking?” you hiss, “i mean, do you have at least an ounce of respect?”

ellie stares at you with half-lidded eyes, carelessly taking another drag. she exhales a little plume of smoke.

“sorry princess…” she drawls, her gaze trained on you as the corner of her lips arch up into a small smirk. lo and behold, the same old throbbing makes itself known again — only this time with such intensity that it surprises you. you’re speechless.

the cocky little smirk never leaves ellie’s face. she gets up, flicking the joint away. besides, it’s clear she’s now interested in something someone else. she walks over to you whilst you feel your brain slowly turn into mush.

“joint’s gone… you happy?” she mutters, her tone low and sultry. the air suddenly feels too thick. ellie slightly cocks her head to the side when you don’t respond. you can sense the starving creature inside you salivate for the taste of ellie’s lips. you helplessly wonder if they taste sweet, or maybe bitter from the weed.

you sigh, your eyes briefly fluttering closed.

“it’s all your fault…” you find yourself muttering.

ellie’s eyebrows raise. “oh?”

“do you know what you’ve been doing to me?” you continue, your rage beginning to re-surface. you’ve spent years trying to resist the constraints of sin yet ellie’s brought that all down in a week.

“enlighten me.”

“you’re—“ you purse your lips, feeling butterflies furiously swarm in your stomach. “you’re driving me insane.”

ellie’s smile slightly falters, shifting into a more serious look. she steps even closer to you, now only mere inches away.

“well, the feeling’s mutual.”

“that’s not supposed to be a good thing.” you retort, despite the inner storm brewing inside of you. you’re great at playing it cool, though you subtly sink your nails into your palm to check if you’re not dreaming.

“mmh… you wanna know what was a good thing though? when you sat your pretty ass on my lap the other day.” she gauges your reaction, biting her lip in amused anticipation.

your jaw drops before you look around as if anyone else is in here but you two. “don’t say stuff like that!”

ellie giggles, the sound of it echoing through the chapel. it sounds like vanilla. she enjoys how flustered you look. her eyes drift down to the way you’re not-so-subtly squeezing your thighs together: one leg in front of the other.

“you good?” her gaze hinting to your legs. you glance down, not even realising you were doing that.

“i‘m fine.” you spit, lying through your teeth. you ask yourself if you should leave, staring at the floor so not even realising how close ellie has just stepped right now.

she stares at you before her thumb and index cup your chin, making you look back up at her. your eyes slightly widen, clearly not expecting that. ellie’s eyes drift to your lips.

“it’s okay, you know? God forgives all, does He not?” she whispers, her thumb tracing along your bottom lip. you don’t pull away. the devil was chipping away at your chastity and you were letting it. you were letting it.

“not much of a talker…” she mutters, her thumb slightly dragging your lip down. you feel something unleash inside of you.

and then you do the unthinkable.

way too stimulated and awoken, you abruptly lean in and press your lips against ellie’s. turns out they do taste sweet after all. ellie’s eyes widen in surprise before happily kissing you back; latching her hands against your back and pulling you closer. your creature hums in satisfaction as what was once a light kiss quickly shifts into a sloppy make-out sesh. tongues gliding together, the sound of smooches filling the room. you can feel her spider-bites plink against the right side of your face. its coldness feels both refreshing and ticklish. you have no idea what’s come over you, but you’re enjoying this. a muffled whimper escapes your lips as you cup ellie’s cheek, feeling dizzy. ellie pulls away; a line of drool briefly connecting your lips. she grabs your hand and sniffs it. you stare at her in bewilderment — is this what people normally do before fornicating?

“you been playing with yourself or something?” ellie snorts. and here you were thinking that there’s no possible way you could embarrass yourself more…

“keep talking and i’ll change my mind about this.” you return, so obviously avoiding the question. ellie giggles, before leaving a small wet kiss on the back of your unclean hand. your blush deepens. grinning, she decides to take things a step further by putting your middle finger in her mouth, sucking it as she makes sure to maintain eye contact. your lips part, staring at her in disbelief. she‘s clearly teasing: her flattened tongue curling against the tip of your finger. you’re so turned on that it’s hard to think.

“you were playing with yourself. it tastes good.” she murmurs in a smug manner before pulling you into another kiss — this one, a lot more intense. everything seems to be going so fast, but you don’t care. you thread your fingers through ellie’s hair, chest pressed against chest.

whilst you two practically eat each other’s faces off, ellie’s hands slowly snake down your back; grabbing your ass. you gasp but before you’ve got the time to properly react, ellie’s already gently pushing you down onto the discarded altar behind you two.

the small cross on your necklace is merely an accessory by now; you’re far too gone, way beyond salvage.

“close the curtains.” you mutter breathlessly, your eyes glazed over, pupils dilated. you prop yourself up on your elbows.

“yes ma’am.” she then comes back, shifting attention to your neck. you let out a shuddered sigh as she peppers your neck with sloppy little kisses. when she finds your sweet spot, your breath hitches. she smirks against your flesh before abusing that spot some more; nibbling and sucking on it. you bite your lip as to suppress a loud whimper.

at the same time, her hand finds your breast; lightly cupping it between her palm. her thumb brushes against your dressed nipple and you shiver. next thing you know, she has her mouth on it — which, at this point, is as hard as a pebble. your body jolts when you feel her tongue slowly circling around the bud; the fabric covering it turning transparent. she does the same with the other nipple. you feel your warmth mingle in with hers; her scent invading your nostrils. she smells like a forest, and you’re willing to burn in it. with a “pop” she pulls away, staring at you.

“you sure you want it?” she asks, her gaze never leaving yours. she needed to make sure. losing your virginity in a chapel is a pretty huge thing after all…

yet you don’t just want it, you need it. hence why you nod in an almost frantic manner. ellie beams, planting a tender kiss on the top of your knee before slowly spreading your legs apart. you’re glad you’re in a secluded space in the chapel. you weren’t up for seeing emblems and statues of Jesus leering at you. nor Mary, nor Moses, nor Gabriel.

ellie raises your dress up so it’s laying on your stomach. her thumb traces circles on your outer thighs whilst her lips are set on the inner part; implementing kind kisses. you can already feel tingles coarse through your body, and you appreciate how ellie’s taking her sweet time, but you do also want her to get on with it already.

“hurry.” you whine. ellie chuckles.

“am i not allowed to make this the best experience for you?” she quips. her lips are starting to enter dangerous territory; pecking the edge of your panties. your body involuntarily jerks, evoking yet another amused reaction from ellie.

“so sassy for someone who’s so sensitive.” she taunts. you pout and clamp your legs shut in response — too embarrassed at the way ellie’s staring at your crotch and poking fun. ellie giggles.

“oh no, no, no.” she says, forcing them back open again. “act like a brat and maybe i’ll be the one changing my mind about this.”

she then places a heavy kiss right in the middle of your crotch. despite your underwear still being on, you felt that strongly. an uncontrollable moan escapes your lips; a noise accidentally too loud.

“shhhh… you know what? open your mouth.” you do as she says, and she leans up and stuffs the raised up section of your gown in your mouth; like a gag. you stare at her with big eyes.

to tease even more, ellie leans down and slowly trails her flattened tongue up your dressed pussy. you let out a muffled moan, your back slightly arching.

“yeah… that’ll shut you up.” she says smugly before her finger twirls itself around the side of your panties, pulling it down. you feel the fresh breeze hit your cunt and your eyes momentarily clench shut. this is it. finally.

ellie never stops with the kissing. it’s pretty damn obvious you’ve never done this before so she wants to be initially polite; saving the roughness for later. she kisses your clit, the tip of her tongue swirling around the nub. you groan in pleasure, your teeth sinking hard against your dress. despite her obnoxious behaviour, ellie’s pleasing you like you’re a goddamn queen: head slowly bobbing up and down, lips tugging at your folds.

she’s savouring you as if you’re a precious meal. your hand quickly finds itself in ellie’s hair; gripping it tightly the more ellie goes down on you.

“fuck.” ellie groans. your hand on her hair increases her arousal and it drives her to slightly pick up the pace. you don’t notice, but she’s lightly grinding against the table; letting out a few muffled moans of her own.

she increases the pressure on her tongue — to which you respond to delightfully: arching your back and your moans beginning to crescendo. you twitch and quiver as ellie devours you; going to town on your sensitive cunt. you start to feel overwhelmingly good, causing you to unintentionally squirm away from ellie’s mouth.

“don’t run away…” she coos. as she pulls your thighs back to her, she plunges her middle finger in your cunt. caught off guard, you let out a suppressed cry. ellie smirks as she resumes the movements with her mouth. you feel so good that your hips buckle up: desperate for more. her finger curls up against your g-spot and your eyes roll to the back of your head.

eventually, ellie adds her ring finger too. the erotic noises of ellie finger-fucking you fills the room. ellie grips your thigh with her free hand so that you don’t escape again; pleasuring you relentlessly.

your head is completely blank and you’re pulsating with pleasure. you can’t stop shuddering. ellie can tell by the way your walls are eagerly squeezing around her fingers that you’re getting close, so she leans up and takes the dress out of your mouth; a thick tendril of saliva clinging from your mouth. the sight of it turns her on in unimaginable ways.

“feels good, huh?” she mutters, her fingers banging up against your g-spot repeatedly. you bite your lip, trying not to be too loud but it’s hard. you’re a hot mess; eyes half-lidded, needy whines escaping your lips, jaw slack.

“can’t even speak…? come on, i wanna hear you.” ellie taunts, fucking you harder. you squeal; feeling a knot starting to untie in your stomach.

“feels so good… i love it. sweet jesus…” you babble, almost incoherently.

“jesus? jesus isn’t making you feel this good, i am. say my name.” she demands.

“e-ellie… something’s happening…” you mewl. ellie smirks before planting wet, sloppy kisses on your chest. “good girl… such a pretty fucking girl…” she mumbles, leaning down and sucking on your pussy yet again. she can’t seem to get enough of how you taste. your hand grips the back of her head and you push it closer, her nose rubbing against your vulva.

you swear you’re starting to see stars, your muscles beginning to unclench. you scream ellie’s name; forgetting how loud you’re being.

“let it out. make a mess all over my mouth, my fingers.” ellie sounds like she’s almost pleading, her voice hot and husky, fanning your aching cunt.

and that was your cue. you feel your wind get knocked out as you attempt to cry out, feeling as if you’ve lost your breath. your eyes once again roll to the back of your head as you endure an insanely pleasurable orgasm; trembling as if your life depends on it. ellie keeps going just for a little moment in order to extend your high. tears stream down your face. ellie takes her fingers out, and even that feels good.

“haa… you okay?” she whispers, wiping the tears from your face with her thumb. you don’t even feel real. too weak to speak, you simply nod.

ellie smiles: a warm, tender smile compared to her usual conceited attitude. like a gentleman, she pulls your panties back up and your dress back down. she glances at you — enjoying the spent, hazy look on your face. she’d like to see that more often.

“that’s weird… i thought the guilt would kick in by now.” you mutter, feeling exhausted instead. ellie giggles.

“shit, maybe tomorrow.”

“maybe.”

a/n: omfg i swr i got possessed whilst writing this JFC!!!!! also such a coincidence i’m posting this on sunday… the day of the lord… hhahahaha….

— free gaza from the river to the sea 🇵🇸 please remember to keep talking about it and spreading awareness!!

[c0ffeejelly1]

I can’t help but stare…

-Bros the type of guy to think, no believe full heartedly that you’re the most ethereal being in the word admiring you whenever he has the chance to

Cw: kinda spicy? Idk..just neck kissing bro.

* There you were, leaning back against the frame of the double bed you usually slept on.

* Your attention was glued to your phone, occasionally chuckling at something amusing you found on your feed.

* However, you weren’t alone on that cozy mattress.

* Another figure was nestled beside you, seemingly in a deep sleep—or so you thought.

* Unbeknownst to you, the figure who appeared to be dozing was actually wide awake, quietly watching you.

* you felt a gentle shift in the bed as he propped himself up and rested his head on your shoulder.

* Initially taken aback at first, due to you expecting him to be asleep, you quickly brushed off the surprise, paying no mind to it.

* returning to your aimless scrolling through your phone, you felt a light kiss being pressed onto your shoulder.

* It’s not that you minded nor was it not unwelcomed.

* you just found yourself curious where this sudden affection was coming from..

* “You good babe? Thought you were tired..”

* You could feel a gentle buzz on your skin from the soft sound he made to agree.

* He was worn out, but still wanted to be with you.

* It was pretty cute..

* “You don’t have to stay up for my sake y’know?..”

* You sort of felt bad.

* He must have been stirred awake by the laughter you were letting out while watching those videos on your phone...

* You could feel him mumble softly into your skin

* “..jus wanna see your face..”

* You noticed him slightly raise his head from your shoulder as you turned to face him, feeling a bit flustered by his directness.

* You really wanted to believe it, but deep down, you knew he was only awake because you were being loud.

* Maybe it was just his drowsiness, but to him, you were the most stunning person he’d ever seen, like you were crafted by the gods…almost as if you were made just for him.

* In that moment, he felt like the luckiest man alive as the two of you simply gazed into each other's eyes.

* He chose to break the silence by gently placing his hand on your cheek and leaning in to give you a tender kiss.

* Jesus you tasted just as good as you looked..

* He craved more. yearned for more.

* More of this incredible feeling.

* More of your lips.

* More of you.

* He wanted you. And he needed you badly.

* His kiss grew even more intense as he gently guided his hand to the back of your head, holding you close.

* You instinctively responded, resting your hands on either side of his face.

* It was surprising how someone who’d apparently never been in a relationship before could be such an incredible kisser.

* The kiss lingered on until you both found yourselves breathless.

* He finally pulled back, soft breaths escaping his lips as your eyes met.

* “Sorry..I can’t help myself, you look so beautiful...”

* You couldn’t help the small flutter in you chest at his words.

* You hadn’t really done anything special for yourself that night, just your usual skincare routine, but there he was, looking at you like you were the most stunning thing on the planet.

* You felt your mouth go a bit dry, unsure of what to say, while your phone played a video in the background.

* He pulled you in for another kiss, but this time he laid you back flat, his arms framing your head.

* For someone who was meant to be exhausted, he certainly had an abundance of energy.

* His kisses began to wonder from your lips to your chin, then your jaw, and eventually down to your neck.

* He took his time, savouring every inch of your face, ensuring no part went unnoticed before leaning in close to your ear and planting a soft kiss on your earlobe, a small desperate whine leaving his mouth.

* “..please baby..I need you.”

* Who were you to deny him of his needs?

* I mean you made him like this..

* The things you do to this man.

Characters I had in mind while writing this:

REIGEN (mob psycho 100)

KUROKO, kagami, Akashi (kuroko’s basketball)

Rengoku, TENGEN, Giyuu (demon slayer)

KAGEYAMA, TANAKA, nishinoya, akaashi, BOKUTO, hajime, osamu, kita (haikyuu)

CHOSO, Yuji, MEGUMI, gojo (jujustu kaisen)

REINER (attack on titan)

DENJI (chainsaw man)

- any character you would like

[tremendum]

Mr. Miller’s House 

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader (afab, use of she/her, use of the word girl)    

rating: explicit. (18+. mdni.)      

word count: 7.6k  requested: yes  summary: “Joel was a mean, mean man. and you eat it up like a woman starved for months.” warnings: mentions of food/eating, drinking alcohol, age gap (unspecified), Jackson era, Ellie gets a splinter, Joel is honestly rude to Ellie in this and reader is judgy about Joel’s parenting practices lol. but really,  this is just filthy smut (PiV, unprotected), dirty talk, sir kink, use of the word slut a LOT, one use of the word bitch, humiliation/degradation, hints of masochism, choking, exhibitionism, public smut, rough sex, dom!Joel, mean joel, lots of fighting/anger, cumplay, dirty talk, ass spanking, pussy spanking, mentions of blood (reader gets scraped knees), throat/facefucking, rough oral (m!receiving), overstimulation, dacryphilia, multiple orgasms. lmk if i missed any please lmfao

notes: okay jesus fucking christ!!! i wrote this so fasst lol but it was fun and highly requested. hope yall like it.  as always reblogs/asks/comments are always great motivations :’) this is not reread because as i have said before im lazy and INSANE! 

[this is a sequel to Mr Miller.    part three   other Joel fics:     fever       landmines  ]

★  

this was a mistake. you shouldn't have done this....this was a terrible idea. 

fuck. 

the chair is stiff beneath you. there's a hard coolness about it that is welcomed on the skin of your bare legs, the shorts you wear helpful in the heat of summer but futile against the slick of sweat that sheens your skin. the chair is hard, but yet still strong, sturdy.

 you swallow dryly, heart beating fast. it's the same chair you sat at just a few weeks ago, signing the log with Joel leaning over your shoulder, before he-

you look away, around, anywhere in order to avoid the memories, hot and boiling and clawing at your mind and suffocating you until you stop breathing- and then your eyes settle, they glue themselves across the kitchen table. 

they glue themselves to him. 

fuck. 

Joel's already staring at you; his lips are downturned in that permanent grimace he always sports, the muscles of his torso rigid with immobility - perhaps he thinks if he's still enough, the ground will just swallow him whole and he won't have to do this. 

you yearn for that escape as much as he does. 

then, out of the silence; "see, this isn't so bad." 

speak for yourself, Ellie. 

both heads in the room turn to the speaker slowly, the girl watching between the two of you, more than willing to ignore the obvious disdain in the air. she's grinning like a damn devil. 

this girl's going to kill you. 

it is that bad, contrary to Ellie's statement. 

it'd been days of her begging you, with a tug on the hand, a punch to the shoulder, and countless pleads and threats until you finally caved in and accepted her proposal to have her and Joel over for dinner. 

no matter how much you detest her guardian, you just can't resist those big puppy-dog eyes, or that gigantic, youthful smile. 

for the last few months, Ellie has grown to be quite the little farmhand for you; though you like to keep to yourself on your days in the gardens, it was nice to have the girl buzzing around you and the other gardeners, pollinating each person she sees with questions like what really happens in germination and is this ripe? can I pull it? 

it's cute, how excited she is to show Joel all of the crops you've grown with her in the last few months. but what isn't cute, is that it's him that has to be here. of all people, why did Joel have to be the one Ellie chose as her father? 

because.... things weren't okay between you and Joel. 

you're not sure if you were childish for expecting for him to warm up to you after - well, after the time he bent you on this table and fucked you stupid - but you hadn't been prepared for the coldest shoulder you've ever gotten in your measly life for the last few weeks. 

it didn't help that the summer was kicking up and you needed more crops than ever for the commune; your patrolling had dwindled into maybe one or two every week or so, usually with Maria - so you didn't have to face Joel, really, at all. 

but he avoided you like the plague when in town or on your street (though, he did that with everyone) and even at the Tipsy Bison, where your presence would clean him from the room before a drop of condensation could even slide down his glass of whiskey. 

hell, maybe he even put a word in with Maria and Tommy that the last patrol together didn't go as planned; you'd even considered doing it at one point. you're not sure, but it just made you all the more irritated when you'd catch glimpses of their porch in the afternoons, Joel holding a guitar around Ellie's chest, chuckling as she strummed horribly. as if everything was okay. like you didn’t exist. 

the anger and hatred grew awful. 

it festered, grew when Maria mentioned off-handedly to Tommy that some woman, Dahlia, had taken a liking to Joel. you'd nearly shattered the glass you were holding in your fist at that; Joel, with Dahlia? that grumpy piece of shit, taking a liking to someone sweet and kind like her? 

you ought to punch his fucking face. 

you're zoned out when Ellie suddenly comes into your line of sight; reaching over your chest to grab a slice of the fresh bread you'd picked up earlier that day. you blink back into reality as Joel grunts, "E-Ellie, hey." he's shaking his head as he gestures to her arm, "use your manners." 

he sounds almost embarrassed; annoyed. your mind betrays you as it whirls back; when Joel had you pinned down on this very table, commanding you in a different way, his eyes dark with delight as you cried and writhed for him. 

but at his chastising, you send Ellie a sneaky look, rolling your eyes when Joel's looking down. the girl chuckles at that and an untrusting Joel stares daggers between the two of you. Ellie clears her throat with a smirk,  "sorry. can you please pass me the bread?" 

you grin, "why, yes, ma'am." you hand her the basket, "thank you for asking." you add to the girl on your right, your eyes on Joel's. he stares back harshly, hand grabbing for the glass of wine that sits in front of him. 

another few moments of tension before Elie decided to take it upon herself to introduce as much of the food that sits on the table in front of you as she can remember. 

peas, spinach, lentil and cabbage stew, beet salad, goat cheese and roasted carrots, cauliflower mash. fresh bread.

proteins from animals are scarce and are typically served in only the dining hall, so you decided to skip the meat and serve roasted artichoke instead. Joel doesn't look too thrilled about that as Ellie explains. you hide your scoff behind a sip of your dark wine. 

"-and, look, I planted these beets." Ellie points to the bowl on the table which houses arugula and beet salad; you smirk down at the plate as Joel hums as if interested. his eyes flicker to yours from across the table as Ellie delves in on a tangent about how bloody beets look, those dark pupils flickering over your face before flitting back to the young girl. his eyes were swimming with something else, something.... seductive. 

a shiver runs down your spine.

does he ever think about it? 

you do. you think about it every night - how his hands felt, rough, unforgiving; the look on his face, that dark smirk when he'd made you beg for him to ruin you... the frenzy in his eyes when he'd ‘taught you some goddamn manners,’ when he'd taken you apart brutally and quick. Joel was a mean, mean man. and you eat it up like a woman starved for months. 

your name calls you back to Ellie, whose eyes are wide and tracing over a rough, splintered notch in your table, "the hell is this from, is it-" her fingers jolt away at the rugged piece that slides into her skin, "shit!" she yelps, shaking her hand. 

your brows furrow, rising to help her as Joel pulls her hand towards him.  "I have tweezers." you mutter, disappearing into your bathroom to pull out your tweezers, returning to see Ellie smiling in embarrassment and Joel sitting with his arms crossed, amused irritation lacing his face. his beard is growing in more recently - you can hear the noise of the short bristles scratching his hand as he rubs his knuckles over his jawline. 

nodding, pleased that Ellie's discomfort has subsided, you set your tweezers on your right, spearing some salad on your fork as silence cradles you three yet again. 

it’s only tense and silent for a moment. then Ellie speaks, and it’s just tense.

"why is there a notch like that in your table?" she finally wheezes, as if she'd been summoned to be silent until she couldn't handle her curiosity anymore. 

you don't have to look up to know that a pair of dark eyes pin you to your chair, daring you to say something about it. 

your throat dries as you swallow your mouthful of salad, coughing a bit. 

a rip in your flannel, the grazing of your soft skin with the blade. a hand pulling hard to dislodge the knife from its home against you; the thick slide of Joel as he drags his length through your destroyed, spent core. 

"um- I-I" perhaps it's your panic, of the knowledge that his eyes are glued to you, but soon your eyes meet his; unwavering. "well. someone likes to threaten people when they can't find patrol logs." 

"Joel!" Ellie hisses, smacking his arm, "you fucking stabbed her table and didn’t do anything about it?” she’s grinning. 

"yeah, Joel," you smirk, swirling with desire as his hawkish gaze pins you to your chair, "you really should use your manners. you've ruined my table." 

"shut the hell up right now." he snaps at you, hand slamming his fork down harshly onto the plate. you and Ellie both jump at the sternness in his voice. 

you listen, for once. 

and honestly, ten minutes ago feels like heaven compared to the tenseness of this silence. 

several minutes go by, the sounds of scraping forks and knives and the meager attempts by you and Ellie to salvage a decent dinner conversation ringing soft in your kitchen. 

at least you and her are trying. 

you ignore the notch from the knife like a wildfire and pretend Joel isn't even with you; Ellie is more than enough life and laughter for you, and your playful disposition matches hers perfectly despite the joy-damper of a man sat across from you. 

he's stewing. arms crossed, chewing on food here and then, mostly listening and sighing, brushing off Ellie's jabs or playful questions or stories. he won't do anything except eat and glare at you. 

the wine bottle is nearly gone and you're not sure if it's his fault or yours. probably both. 

you snap when he just outright ignores Ellie, shaking his head with a sigh and taking another bite. the audacity. 

"-she asked you a question, Miller." you snap, fed up with his dissociative disposition. you don't even intend to say it; even Ellie looks up at your words, surprised. 

his head turns to face you too slow to be safe. his eyes are fucking furious as he mutters, "excuse me?" 

"hey, guys-" Ellie's hands are out in front of her, but you can't take your eyes off him. 

"I'm just saying, you could at least try to pay attention." you spit, crossing your arms defensively, "we made this dinner, we're just trying to have a conversation, the least you could do-" 

"you don't tell me what to do." he states, calm and cool, pointing at you. his nose flares as he breaths heavy, your own breath quickening. arousal rushes to your center and you shift on your seat. 

"-listen, maybe this was a bad idea. I knew you weren't the best of friends, but this is-" Ellie starts again, eyes flickering between you both. "this is too awkward." 

"no, Ellie, I'm sorry-" you start to say, breaking. 

you don't want her to be caught in the cross-fire of your problems with Joel; it's unfair. the further this goes, the more she'll be put in a position of mediator, so you figure it should just end now. 

"Ellie, go home." 

Joel growls the demand, eyes looking to her, his hand falling gently to her shoulder. her eyes widen, as if asking him if he's serious. 

"what?" she asks, "no! you'll-you’ll fucking stab each other or something." 

yeah, you think. you might. 

Joel's shaken off her shoulder but he's resilient, "go on, go see the kids for the movie. I'll come later. we just need to sort something out." he mutters, eyes falling to you at the tail end of his sentence. 

shivers roll down your spine; fuck, fuck - a flood of arousal hits you again, and you swallow, willing the feelings to go the fuck away. 

Ellie's scowling, but still has the decency to thank you for dinner before slamming the door hard on her way out of the threshold. 

Joel's eyes stay locked with yours until her footsteps are gone. 

it’s silent for a moment before he speaks. 

"do not fuckin' disrespect me like that in front of her again." he snaps. 

you narrow your eyes, "you're concerned that I- what, I undermined you in front of your girl?" you hiss incredulously. "come on, that's pathetic." 

"I don't like you." he snaps, shoving his plate away from him in an almost childish act of defiance. it’s shocking, the immaturity of his words so sudden. barely prompted. 

it's clear he intends to continue this little confessional of his, but you have no intention of allowing that. 

you roll your eyes, "big fucking deal. what do you want me to say?" you hiss, "sorry that I was rude, Mr. Miller! let me just cook you fucking dinner and invite you over to make up for it." 

his nostrils flare, "never wanted to do this in the first place." he mutters. 

you nearly rip out your hair in frustration. "obviously you didn't! christ, why do you always act like everything you do is a goddamn chore?" you snap, "Ellie wanted to have a nice night and show you what we've been doing- what she's been doing for this community. and all you can do is sit here and act like a fucking asshole because you don't know how to enjoy anything. it's a miracle she's still around with you, when you treat her like that." 

his jaw clicks in anger, "you have no fuckin' clue what we've been through together." his voice is close to a yell, "you don't know how much that girl means to me." 

"then why won't you show her!?" you yell. 

it quiets the room for a moment and a fleeting feeling of pride is squashed when he speaks again. 

his brows raise, a look of realization creeping onto his face. he nods his head, "I see what this is," he lets out a bitter, mocking laugh. "you want me to tell you how much I love your food? y'trying to prove to me that you're not a bad influence on her, after all?" 

you stare at him, anger clouding your sight; are there tears of frustration rimming your eyes? you hope he doesn't notice. 

"-newsflash, darlin', I don't fucking care about you." he finishes, scowl dark. "you're a nuisance. don' know why Tommy took you in, anyways. you're a foul-mouthed, untrustworthy, pathetic little slut- and jus' because you can't stop thinking about my cock doesn't mean I owe anything to you. no dinner, no fuckin- cordial neighborly attitude, nothing." 

thinking about- what?

oh, fuck him. your face burns; your jaw unhinges. of course he thinks this is about you and him. your eyes spare a quick, fleeting glance to the notch in the table before you glare, "well I don't fucking care about you either, Miller. don't be so fucking conceited." 

he laughs, shaking his head as he downs the remainder of his wine before slamming the glass down, but you're not finished. you can't let him think he's won. 

"you’re delusional. I haven't thought of it once." you spit, aflame at his accusation. you feel flustered, still caught off-guard. if anything, it was him who was obsessed with it - you see the way his eyes can't leave you; the way he adjusted his jeans earlier when you leaned over to pull a bowl from your cabinet. 

"really?" he spits, brows raised. his chest moves with the exertion of your yelling and you resist the urge to hit him or stomp your foot or anything. "yes, really." you defend, face heating up under the scrutiny of his knowing gaze. 

"anyone ever tell you you're an awful liar, sweetheart?" he drawls, raising his brows at you. 

you fume, standing up, pointing to the door, "get the fuck out, Joel." 

his eyes light ablaze with the same anger that rages in your heart as he stands, throwing his napkin on his plate, "gladly. food was great." he spits, storming out of the house with no other words. 

-- 

your scowl doesn't leave your face for the entire rest of the night. what- what the fuck was that? how dare Joel assume so much about you- he doesn't know you, at all. 

your eyes fall to the bottle in your hands.

ellie left her water canteen at your place. you were so angry, so mad earlier, that you hadn’t realized she’d left it until a few minutes ago. 

she doesn't need it, right? she could get it next time she comes round. yeah. she'll get it next time, you don't have to go over. right?

no. 

you have to go over. 

the anger within you festers just as much as the slick that plagues the apex of your thighs in the aftermath of your spat with Joel; it's a vicious cycle where you think about his tone, how condescending it was and then you get mad - but some sick part of you wants it to consume you; wants him to consume you. 

you’re fucking obsessed with him. you hate him. 

you need to hear him yell at you again- if-if anything, to get your ten cents in on the argument, and also maybe to get some good content for your wet dreams tonight. jesus christ. 

god, you're so fucked up. 

christ. 

so once you finish cleaning from the remnants of the meal, your legs are carrying you over to his house with Ellie's canteen in your hand before you can second-guess it. 

what the fuck are you doing? 

you're standing on their porch in mere seconds, your breath heavy with wrath. what if Ellie opens the door? well- you suppose, if she does, you'll give her the canteen and talk to her. probably apologize for acting the way you did. no business with Joel, then. yeah.  that’s... that’s fine. 

fuck. why do you want Joel to answer so terribly? 

you know where the answer lies - a coiling beast of arousal, consuming and muddling your mind, just at the apex of your thighs. 

Joel is a fucking asshole. you need him. now. 

your knuckles slam so hard and unforgiving against their door that there is no possibility of them assuming it's anybody else but you at their porch. their light is flickering and dim above you as you stand, canteen in hand, eyes trained forward in determination.  

the door swings open in an air of irritation. 

your face jerks back as Joel Miller stands, staring at you with the disdain of a thousand lifetimes swirling around his eyes. 

"y'here for more?" he snarks. 

your momentary hesitation melts away when his words drip from his lips. a glare pierces him through the eyes when you shove the canteen into his hands, "I'm here for Ellie. she left this." you spit. 

he lets out a chuckle, humor absent from the ring as he scratches his nose, "right." he mutters. "well she ain't home. went to the movie in town." he clips, setting the canteen on the table just inside the house. "y'need me to pass any more of your words of wisdom on to her?" he asks, voice clipped and prickled with sarcasm. 

you glare. "yeah. just do me a favor, tell her I'm sorry her dad is being a hypocritical, neglecting asshole." you snark, sending a false smile up at him as he leans with his arms crossed at the doorway.

you don't miss how he leans into it, how he's not slamming the door on your face. he wants to argue, too. "-and you can suck a dick, Mr. Miller." you add, intending to whirl away on your heel. 

he scoffs, a deep and condescending noise. "thanks for comin' all the way over to return a little canteen. g'night, darlin', hope you don't make too much'a mess when you cum all over that table again tonight thinkin' of how much I hate you. glad y'got your ten cents in." 

your face burns hot in embarrassment, and at the irony of him using the same phrase you’d thought. 

the door moves quick to shut, but your arm moves quicker. 

your hand wedges is just before it shuts, leaving you far too close to Joel than you'd like - gunpowder, pine, and dark amber whiskey surround your senses. again. 

so you shoot another fist forward, aiming for his left jaw; aiming for it to hurt.

he’s going to fucking hurt.  

it doesn't make contact with the warm skin, though: no, his hand has caught your wrist in an iron-tight grip, wrenching your arm down hard. 

you let out a gasp of surprise as he shoves you off of the door and away from him before you can blink. 

but instead of the door slamming in your face, his rough hands are pushing you hard up against the side of his garage. the door behind him remains ajar as he pushes himself into your space, growling at you as your mouth falls open in shock. 

"did you just try to hit me, girl?" he whispers, voice deadly serious. you swallow, arousal rushing down to your heat; you swear you can feel your heartbeat in your pussy as he stares hard at you, but your eyes trail down to his jeans.

you hide your smirk as you take in the stretch of the rough denim, the outline of his own arousal evident even in the dim light. he’s hard because you were going to hit him. 

your body aches as you remember the stretch of him inside you, splitting you open. your eyes flicker back up to his where he breathes heavily, expecting a response. 

you give him one. 

"yes, but you already knew that." you smirk, cocking your head as you boldly gyrate your hips forward slightly, your clothed cunt clenching in desire as you graze his hard-on. "or are you not hard right now, Mr. Miller?" you purr, your voice laced with seduction. 

his rough hand shoves your hips hard back against the wall, a growl slipping his throat. "y'got a dirty fuckin' mouth on you." his breath hits your cheeks in a warm reminder of the wine you'd both had for dinner. 

"so it wasn't because of that?" you ask, blinking in a false sense of innocence, watching as his eyes swim with an animalistic hunger. you've got him right where you want him. "was it from thinking about me touching myself? or, from remembering the last time we were together in my house?" 

his momentary lapse in recovery allows for you to go in for the final kill, "Mr. Miller,” you coo, “do you think of my pussy when you fuck Dahlia? d'you wish it was me?" you spit, smirking up at him as red splatters his furious features, "you can talk all you want, Mr. Miller, but I know you're just a greedy, desperate man who loves to pretend you have any power over me." you whisper into the shell of his ear, palm roughly grabbing the outline of his cock boldly. 

his next movements take your breath away: the shock of his fists slamming hard against the wall on either side of your head makes you jump, and his hawkish, angry eyes bore into yours. 

"get your fuckin' hands off of me. now." 

his voice is... scary. 

the blood leaves your head as your damp spot of your pants floods with desire, the fear spiking a real excitement in you. you are smart enough to follow his orders; the look in his eyes suggests you do so. 

your hands shakily fly back from his crotch to hang by your sides as you stare up at him - nervous. excited, ready. 

his eyes are narrowed, stern as his brows are furrowed low. the permanent scowl on his lips is intimidating as he holds your gaze with fierce intent. "you're gonna be real fuckin' honest with me, now. okay?" 

you swallow dryly, staring up at his face, how he's boxed you in with arms on either side of your head. you feel cornered, small; prey, hunted by predator. 

you nod smally, startled into silence, unable to speak as the ache between your legs becomes unbearable. your legs clench, searching for relief only to be disappointed at the dull sensation. 

he stares at you for a few moments, unmoving except for the flaring of his nostrils and the rising of his chest as he breathes just as heavy as you. 

"are you wet?" 

your face flushes with heat. christ, Joel is going to kill you. (if you don't kill him first). your legs feel weak, desire driving your heart rate up as you nod meekly, voice cracking out. "y-yes." 

he nods, seemingly pleased with your honesty. 

"how long have you been walkin' round with ruined panties?" his head tilts down slightly, angled down at you as if chastising you. you flush in shame, genuinely taking a moment to remember the exact moment you first noticed your underwear dampen. 

you can't admit to him that you woke up this morning with his name on your lips and a wet patch on the seat of your sleep shorts, can you? (and certainly not that it happens every day.) 

"s-since-" you take a sharp inhale, glaring at him for humiliating you like this - outside, no less. anybody could walk past or look out their window and see Joel and you like this. "dinner." 

his brows raise, the look darkening on his face. you can tell, he loves the beginning - the teasing, the arguing, the embarrassment - just as much as the end. "dinner? s'like, two hours." his frown immodest, tempting. judging. 

you nod, biting back a snide comment about Joel being an excellent time-teller, your face burning in embarrassment as you break eye contact, staring at your feet. 

"d’you like being a slut?" he asks, then. you nearly whimper at his words, the aching in your cunt burning, pulsing and clenching around nothing as you stare at him in desire. fuck Joel Miller. 

"'m not a slut." you say, but the defiant words come out more as a whine than a sharp argument. one hand falls from the wall on your left to grip onto your jaw, holding your cheeks hard as he forces your eyes back up to him. 

his nails dig into the soft flesh of your cheeks as you gasp, your own hands in fists as you resist pulling him into you. 

"that's not what I fuckin' asked, now, is it?" he sneers. you blink up at him, shaking your head after a moment of contemplation. "no, sir." you whisper meekly. you don't miss the tightening of his grip at the honorific as it falls sultry from your lips. he hums. 

"do you want me to touch you?" he asks next. you can't even have the decency to stop your whine as you nod, "yes, please." 

his other hand falls from the wall, eyes just as angry and unforgiving as he undoes the button on your shorts single-handedly. "good. don't you fuckin' look away from my eyes, y'hear me? hands down, eyes up." 

this is twice now that he hasn't let you touch him - your brows furrow, but just as he snaps in front of your face, you let the thought melt away. 

"y-yes, sir." you nod, your palms sweaty, heart thundering as he shoves his hand down the front of your shorts, breaching your underwear easily as fingers slide through the deft curls that lie just above your heat. 

"gotta warm y'up for me this time," he mutters, eyes sharp as he watches yours, ensuring they don't do as much as blink. 

it's delicious, almost too much as two of his thick fingers part the seam of your lips, your wetness spilling and coating his fingers immediately. you burn in shame, thighs starting to close over his hand. 

one ruddy, thick thigh slides to kick your leg to the side, widening your stance as he shoves you harder up against the side of the house. the tip of his finger prods at your aching hole, leaking with desperation for him. 

there are crickets outside, a steady but low staccato of music filling the summer Jackson air as one finger slowly slides into you, curling unforgivingly as you gasp, rising on your toes as he stretches you. "fuck," you whimper, throwing your head back against the wall behind you. 

the thud is dull, but it echoes around the street and it calls your attention to the very public space you're in. 

"hey." Joel snaps, one hand swatting your cheek lightly as your eyes close, "don't look away." 

you blink back at him as he pumps lazily for a few moments, watching your every micro-expression, the way your chest stutters with his motions. the noise of your arousal is humiliating against the pleasant summer breeze. 

you can't help the low moan of his name when he adds a second finger. the stretch is nothing like when it's his cock inside of you, but the strokes, the curl of his fingers start to coax a simmering coil in you that you know will explode soon. 

your eyes are still on his obediently when you nearly whisper it. 

he hears it, though, and smirks, "what was that, darlin’?" 

you groan in irritation but it splinters into a sharp moan when his fingers pick up their pace, fucking into you as you lie slack against the wall, legs trembling. 

"just- fuck me. fuck me now." you wheeze, the desire a burning snake that coils around your chest and squeezes at your heart. 

"no." he decides, eyes glaring, "can't have y'whining like a bitch again, darlin'. gotta open you up on my fingers first." the sting of his words are cushioned by the lust that swirls around his voice, the languid was his thick fingers pump up into you, holding you up against the frame of the house with a dark smirk. 

you nod, hissing in stimulation when one finger slides to start rubbing your neglected clit with just enough pressure to curl your toes; your chest is slick with sweat, fingernails digging painfully into the meat of your palm as you hum, lips sealed tight to avoid yelping out. 

your eyes flicker from his once more, scanning the street just feet away from you, paranoid of the possibility of a neighbor seeing you. 

Joel notices, of course. "what, baby, don' want the neighbors to see?" he hums, eyes cutting into you as your face flushes with heat, "y'seemed to want everybody to hear me fucking you stupid last time, didn't 'ya?" 

you groan, "fuck you, Joel." 

his hand stops its ministrations just as cold ice pours down your spine. oh, shit. 

his hand slides out of your pants, face furious. 

you shake your head, eyes welling with tears; you hadn't meant for it to slip out like that. "n-no, wait, 'm sorry, didn't mean it." you whimper, voice choked with the loss of his hand. 

he just huffs a cold chuckle, wiping his hand over his face, the other one glistening with your juices under the light of the porch. 

your panicked, desperate babble of apologies is stopped with one look from him. 

"get on your goddamn knees now." 

you shiver with excitement, tears drying slightly as you swallow, complying quickly. the cement is rough and cold under your bare knees, your hands held still together on your thighs as you stare up at him in wait. he stands tall before you; the shroud of the flickering porch light emboldening him, making him look like a god - an unforgiving one, at that - as he pulls his thick, pulsing cock from his jeans. 

your mouth waters as he starts to pump it languidly, the tip a red color from arousal, leaking precum. 

he doesn’t have to ask you to open your mouth for him, your own desire to taste him spurring you to stick your tongue out flat in wait for his dick. 

"I'm going to ask you again." he says, tapping your tongue with the weight of his length, the slapping noise flooding your underwear as you ache to feel him again. "do you like being a slut?" 

you swallow, tongue sliding along the bottom of his head as you do, muttering a slight, "yes, sir." 

"'s right. you love being my slut." he nods, your mouth open and ready for him as he thrusts his whole length into your wet, warm mouth; you gag almost immediately, his hips unforgiving as he immediately starts to fuck into your throat. you try your best to breathe through your nose, gagging as his tip pokes the back of your throat - you know there'll be a bruise that will make it painful to eat, drink, speak - you fucking love it. 

he lets out a grunt of arousal, nodding as his hands gather your hair from your face, gripping your cheeks and pushing your head back against the side of the house. 

two thrusts, a few tears from your eyes as you choke, your lungs burning for air. 

he pulls away, you suck in air with a strangled gasp. your saliva links you to his heavy cock, a chain that holds you in his grasp. "tell me you love being my slut." 

you burn at his words and in your brief hesitation, his cock is slapping at your mouth, his impatience bleeding through his actions. 

"I-" your voice is wrecked after only a few seconds of him in your mouth, but you swallow as you gasp for air, "I l-love being your slut." 

he slides himself through your slick lips again, hips a punishing pace as he fills up your mouth, your throat tight and wet. his groan echoes through the street; in the corner of your eye, you swear you see a light turn on in a bedroom window. shivers of desire run through you as you resist the urge to touch yourself. 

you can't breathe; your nose brushes against the course hair at the base of his shaft, the scent of him surrounding you as his hips try to smash you against the side of the house. 

he holds you there, hands rough on your cheeks, slapping your right cheek as it bulges with his length. you choke, gagging as you try your hardest to keep eye contact. his face is harsh, his sneer cold as he stares at you, "'s right, choke on your fuckin' words, darlin'." his hips press forward slightly and you cough around him, it's too much - tears slide down your cheeks as you try not to gag more. 

"you gonna disrespect me again?" he asks, tilting his head as spit trails down your chin, tears meeting the trail of saliva as it drips down onto your chest. 

you can only hum a nuh-uh around his cock, hoping it's enough to satisfy him. you feel yourself throb and fucking burn with need, your knees sore from the cement under you. 

you cough and sputter when he pulls himself away from you, mouth sore, jaw aching and throat wrecked. his eyes flicker over to the house across the street before he grips your shoulder, tugging you in your aroused, dazed state up to your legs. 

"oh, darlin', you're bleedin'." he coos at you, thumb swiping your cheek as you stand up. he's right: your knees are just scratched enough to speckle the skin with dark splotches of blood. you feel a tingling sensation of arousal as he hums, "let's get you inside, hm?" 

you stumble to keep up as he storms through the threshold of the house, the door swinging shut after your shaking frame falls inside. it's dark; there is only one lamp turned on in the other room. 

Joel is almost a shadow as he surrounds you, your hands falling onto his large, stiff shoulders as he pushes you against the door frame. 

your legs give out from desire soon and the two of you tumble to the ground, a mess of grunts and shoves, tearing at clothes as you whimper in desire, his own lustful groans echoing the empty house. as his pants are shucked off and your shorts are thrown across the room, your hips are shoved and flipped over until you're ass-up for him, one of his large hands moving roughly to grab a handful of your plush behind. 

your hands and knees ache, but you wiggle your ass slightly in need, not daring to speak to him. the anger that radiates from the two of you is a grenade; you can feel the tension bubbling behind your desire and so you just move back until you brush against his hard length, the fabric of your panties completely soaked as you grind against him. 

his moan echoes as a hand falls hard to slap against the skin of your ass. you let out a strangled yell, the pain stinging through you as you keen forward. you know there will be a handprint branded into you, you know it'll be sore to sit and you'll have to think of him each time. he'll consume you for days. 

you love it. 

his fingers tease the wet material that's glued to your pussy with desire, tracing over your lips lightly over the fabric. "pretty cunt, just for me." he mutters; you shake with desire when you realize it was more a mutter for him than an intentional phrase for you to hear.

"think you're ready for me, baby?" he grunts, his fingers pulling your underwear to the side, exposing your puffy, glistening cunt to him. 

"I'm so re-ready sir, please, fuck me." you beg, reduced yet again to nothing but a writhing mess for the worst man you know. 

he gives no warning, no teasing - he breaches you swiftly and rough. you scream. 

it cracks, it echoes, it's painful as you yell out, his cock heavy and huge and aching as he slides into you, sheathing you fully within a few seconds. Joel's moan reverberates on your skin as his hands grip so hard at your ass you think his fingers will remain there for days. 

he immediately sets a pace that has you squirming under him, breath choking up in your chest as you slide against the hardwood. the smell of the house is Joel - sandalwood, whiskey, pine. sex. 

your arms are tugged roughly. 

panic rises in you when you think you're about to slam your face against the floor, but as Joel pounds hard into you, he pulls your hands tight to your back, holding you up to you're suspended with just his cock working you open can keep you from falling. 

it's bliss. it's sharp, this angle; he hits into that spongy spot inside you as his cock drags against your pulsing walls, your hands clenching as your breath leaves you. 

one hand sneaks over your front, grasping at your tits as he reaches up into you deeply. then it snakes lower, rocking you forward as he swats at your clit, the sharp smack of his palm causing you to squeeeeeze around him, trapping him in your aching desire. he lets out a grunt, "fuckin'- jesus christ, girl, you're s-so tight."

the noises of your arousal swallowing his dick echo around the room in a sickening chorus. 

"dumb girl, lovin' it when I yell at her," he mutters to himself, chasing your high as he feels it spasming close around him. "gonna be o-obedient and thank me for each orgasm, 'kay?" his accent is thick in the throes of passion, you notice. 

you nod, unable to speak, unable to think as you feel the crest of something incredibly blissful; you let out a wheeze of ecstasy. "y-yes, s-sir," you choke, your voice croaking from the remnants of his dick wrecking you. 

you barely realize you're cumming until you’re screaming, a white-hot, searing arousal streaking your vision. tears are resurfacing on your eyes as he hums, "say it." 

you swallow, shakily squirming as he pounds into you, unforgiving in tone and pace. "than-thank you." 

it only takes a few more minutes and his thick hand squeezing your throat before you cum for a second time, your hands pulling at his hips, trying to escape the overstimulation of his long, dragging thrusts. the floor is slick with your juices, and so is his pubic bone. 

"thank you, s-sir." you slur out, his hand holding you by the throat against his chest, his heartbeat slamming just as fast as yours. 

soon he drops your arms, their shaky muscles barely stopping you as you fall to the floor. his chest follows you until he's smothering you, thrusts becoming weak with his own nearing orgasm. you cry, the overstimulation causing you to shake. "'s too much, too much." 

he hums, "you want me to stop?" 

"no!" you scream it, wail it; no, christ, don't stop. never stop. 

he chuckles; a dark, brooding noise. "an' you wonder why I think you're such a bad influence." he mutters into the shell of your ear as he pushes further, deeper into you; "lettin' an old man fuck you into the floor. lovin' it." 

he chuckles as you let out a whine, eyes screwing shut at the bursts of pleasure coursing through you. your knees ache.

"'s dirty, isn't it? and you love it, pretty girl." 

you let your cheek drop onto the hardwood at his ministrations, spent from your previous orgasms; the pet name makes you flush, arching your hips back. he's so deep, you feel him in your throat. each thrust pushes his tip into your cervix, a dull ache with a swirl of pleasure and ecstasy. you let out a groan, "love it, love it s'much. love it, sir, thank you." you whimper, your brain empty except for Joel Joel JoelJoel-

"good m-manners, sweet girl." he hums, pressing a hot kiss to your spine. goosebumps form in his wake, his words echoing in your brain. sweet girl. 

"you're gonna cum one more time." he orders, the thrusts of his hips grinding you down, melting you, tearing you. you nod, "yes, yes-yes, fuck, gonna-gonna cum again." you whimper, the painful overstimulation of his cock drilling through your spent, swollen folds. 

your third orgasm has you wailing, shaking your head as you convulse in pleasure, his strong grip holding your hips down as he hits your spot repeatedly, the noise of him fucking into you echoing through the foyer. 

there's tears on the floor as you shake, colors exploding behind your eyes as he whispers things you cannot hear into your ear. 

when you come to, he's still ravaging your body. 

you're limp, ecstasy flowing through your very being as his cock spears through you, hands smacking you, gripping you, grunts leaving his mouth as he nears his own orgasm, having pulled three from you. 

"where are your manners?" he whispers into your ear. you let out a broken half-laugh, half-gasp. "fuck- thank you, Joel, thank you." 

he hums in satisfaction and you swear you feel his cock twitch inside you as you utter his first name. 

he's back in your ear in seconds, surrounding you, swallowing you whole. you love it. 

"this is my pussy. mine." he grunts, "never think 'bout any other pussy. jus' this one. always." his voice is laced with desperation as he swats your ass, thrusting into you a few more times as you squirm, sobbing, throat raw. 

yours, you whimper in a chorus, body limp as he uses you; his thrusts are sloppy. he's so close- 

and he cums just as he's pulling out of you; you gasp at the loss but also as his cum shoots hot spurts across the plush curve of your ass, a bit onto your spine - most of it over your ruined pussy, streaking you in white. 

you pulse around nothing, shaking as your legs give out. he groans a deep thing, fingers falling to spread you open, the lewd noise soft and slick.

you jolt and he shushes you with a soft caress of your back. "jus' wanna see it, baby. wanna see how I ruined you." 

you swallow dryly at that, nodding as you tilt your hips, eager to feel his eyes over you, over all of you; eager for him. 

a finger smears his spend over your juices, pressing lightly at your puckered hole, pushing some of his cum back into you. "fuckin' christ, girl." 

you set out a laugh that turns into a cough of pain at the ragged state of your throat. 

he stands and leaves you on the cold floor, covered in sweat. you try not to let your heart deflate when he’s gone. 

but he returns with a rag and hands it to you before shucking his jeans on; you pull your underwear back on with shaky hands once you’ve wiped yourself clean, your body exhausted. 

you sigh. even the thought of making the trek just a few houses down to your own place is daunting as your eyes flutter. something in his eyes glint in understanding when your gazes meet each other, and he seems to get it. 

so if Joel gathers you in his arms with a grunt and a short complaint, you don't think too much about it. 

(you hate him. he hates you.)

and if he holds your head to his chest as he starts the walk back to your house, it’s not a big deal to you. 

when brings you up into your bedroom instead of leaving you at your front door as he finally carries you to your house, you chalk it up to you being nearly asleep. you must be delirious when he tucks you into your mattress and pulls your blankets up. you swear he mutters something about dinner and nice and good job. 

(what a cocky asshole.) 

it's probably a dream, when a hand caresses the sweaty skin of your forehead, brushing hair away gently before footsteps disappear through the doorway. 

. part three .

requests open

. 

[sp00kymulderr]

feeling that way

Joel Miller x transmasc!reader

Lover boy series masterlist

Warnings/Tags/Notes: 18+. for sexual implications. reader is afab/has female genitals, no pronouns used (written with the idea of a non-binary or transmasc reader), reader wears a packer, references made to both readers cock (packer) and pussy, pet names for reader (baby, honey), Joel is really horny for reader and their cock :), Joel sucks the strap (mention), bulge worship big time, love love love, beautiful queer love actually, writer got emotional and made this too personal and not at all about Joel oops. Unedited and unbeta'd. (divider credit to cafekitsune)

Words: 1.3k~

Summary: Joel enjoys a new part of you. He loves it, in fact.

Something is different about you.

Joel feels it the moment he opens the door. He's good at that, at noticing.

You're sitting on the couch watching something on the tv, nothing unusual there. But the way you hold yourself today, even the way you sit. There's an air of confidence to you that's different than usual. A hint of something new.

It excites him. You always find new ways to excite him.

“Hey” He mutters, coming round behind the couch and leaning down to kiss the top of your head. The usual greeting, intimate and caring.

“Hey” you say back with a smile, your head falling back so you can look up at him. There’s a glint in your eyes that belies your cool air. 

You’re excited too.

“What’re you up to?” Joel mutters, a gruff chuckle leaving his mouth as he rounds the furniture and comes to sit beside you. It doesn’t take much from there to see what exactly has you acting the way you are. His eyebrow quirks, eyes looking up to meet yours then back down.

“Nothing at all” You grin back, and he understands the joy in your features now.

“Fuck, baby. It came?” He says, watching the subtle lift of your hips.

You’d been waiting for the packer for a while, Joel had insisted you go for something quality, something that would feel real for you and even though it meant a longer wait now you were glad he had done that. He’d insisted on paying for it too, ‘let me spoil you, honey’ he’d whispered in your ear when you’d confessed your desperate yearning to wear one.

It felt good to put on. So fucking good to wear. You had floated around the house in elation, a weight almost lifted off your chest at the new addition to you. Your eyes caught in every mirror, traveling down to your crotch at any opportunity. You didn’t feel like a different person, but you certainly felt like a different you.

Joel has a warm hand on you now, his eyes darkening in lust as he takes in the sight of it. Your cock is sitting just so, making a bulge in your tight jeans that he can’t possibly ignore. It makes his own twitch in need.

“Jesus Christ, baby” Joel groans, his hand rubbing lower towards the front of your jeans. Down, down, down… “How does it feel? How do you feel?”

You’re watching as his big hand skims the button of your jeans, stopping just shy of the swell of you. You barely register his words, mouth hanging slightly open, breath coming a little heavier. This is the feeling you’ve been chasing for longer than you realise, longer than you can even say.

“Feels..right” You finally whisper, something about the admittance making you shy away from his gaze momentarily. It feels like a big deal. It is a big deal to you.

Joel pinches your chin between fingers, tilting your head to look at him. Jesus, he looks desperate for it. For you. He leans in and kisses you, more tender than the kiss you expected. A kiss that says ‘I know’, ‘I’m happy for you’, ‘I’m here for you’. You have to fight back the sudden urge to cry. He’s always been supportive, always. You never expected less.

When he lets you go your head falls back against the couch as finally he makes eager contact with the bulge in your jeans. This new part of you. 

And it is a part of you. You feel it when that big hand squeezes gently. You moan for him, breath shaking.

“Looks so fucking good. Feels good too, doesn’t it?” He whispers reverently, and all you can do is nod dumbly and fucking whimper at the sight of him getting down on to his knees, his eyes bright with the wish to worship you for everything you are.

He loves everything you are.

Joel gets between your legs, already spread wider than usual and it’s making his heart hammer in his chest. He looks up at you as he pops the button of your jeans, gives you a look that's so full of desire and absolute need. He looks wrecked and he hasn’t even gotten past the layers of your clothes

“Y-yeah. So good” you murmur as he slowly pulls down the zipper, his eyes flicker from yours and back down to the peek of underwear beneath your jeans. The sound he makes then makes your cunt ache in devastating desperation. 

“You’re gonna be the death of me, honey” Joel grunts out, noticing at once that you’re wearing a pair of his boxers - your favourite ones, black with a simple red design, snug against his dick and now against yours too. Your eyes meet again, yours surely glistening with a lust matching his, and the look he gives you makes you clench around nothing. Without a thought your hips cant up to connect the bulge of your cock with his palm again.

“I know, I know” Joel mutters sympathetically, keeping eye contact with you as he very intentionally lowers his head, only breaking away from your eyes when he presses his lips against the firm yet soft barely exposed front of your- his - underwear.

And fuck if your legs don’t start to shake, if your core doesn’t tighten breathtakingly as he plants open mouthed, sloppy kisses there.

“Can feel your cock. That’s your fuckin’ cock, ain’t it?” He murmurs, not moving away but turning his head, his cheek pressed against there and you want to cry again at his words, at the affirmation, at the acceptance of your needs and the love he shows for you even in this filthy moment.

“Yeah, Joel. Yeah…” You stumble out, practically dumbfounded as you watch your handsome, gruff, hardened man worship the bulge of your fake dick like it’s his favourite thing in the whole damn world.

“Say it baby” He orders, voice all grunts and groans as he deftly rubs his nose against you now.

“My cock…it’s my…fuck…”

“Yeah it is” Joel smiles up at you, such a beautiful sight, all pride and joy just for you. God, you love him you think as he moves away for a moment tapping your hip lightly to lift your ass so he can pull your jeans all the way down. He’s all but salivating at the proper sight of you filling out his underwear, both your hearts beating a matching rhythm in your chests

“Gonna let me suck it too, huh? Fill my mouth up all good?” He says, voice gravelly with wild desire that makes every part of you feel on fire - a fire you never want to put out. Let it burn forever, let it burn everything but the two of you. 

You watch rapt as he kisses up your thigh whilst his big hand experiments with squeezing your impressive package, facial hair tickling your inner thigh before he moves up again. As Joel practically worships at the altar of you his own member strains against his pants, you can tell from the way he thrusts against nothing - still on his knees, which he’ll regret a little later, hips subtly shifting every time he enthusiastically rubs his face on your crotch.

“I love it, Joel. I feel- feel like me” You finally admit out loud. 

“I know” He says back.

‘Thank you’ you whisper, though perhaps the words never make it out of your mouth before he’s drawing away, standing with a groan and knees clicking. Taking your hand in his with a squeeze and all but dragging you to the bedroom.

He takes one moment, just one, to stop in your tracks and look in your eyes. A gentle, loving, caring look that makes you feel so special. Just like he does every day.

“You’re here, baby. You’re here”

And he’s right, finally you are.

[ratedfleur]

i'm currently watching immaculate rn and i just thought of this thing i wrote in ao3 a few years ago... (also if you are a horror movie enthusiast, that film is honestly a rollercoaster, even i was gagged) (also i know nothing about churches and priests whatsoever so do not expect this to make any sense)

my fic was originally priest!sunghoon and church boy!jake but make it priest!sunghoon and church girl!y/n.

father sunghoon was the youngest priest in the parish, quite the good looking one out of the bunch. the young and old ladies liked to be around father sunghoon for he was the most approachable and the smoothest talker of all.

and there was you. you were the most beautiful among all of the ladies in the church, well respected because of how well dedicated you were when it comes to your bible reading, confessional booths, and you were the one that the children loved to be with when it came to bible reading, and so you could not afford to commit not even a tiny mistake.

sitting in the confessional booth, you quickly did the sign of the cross. your hand were clammy as you bowed your head in shame, "forgive me father for i have sinned, i have not made a confession in 2 weeks. and forgive me father for the lustful thoughts that my mind has created over the course of two weeks."

hearing no response from the priest on the other side of the booth, you resumed with your confession. "i may have not meant to have those kind of thoughts but my mind chooses to take over me when i have such lustful thoughts— just like how jesus does in my daily life. but father i..." you say, suddenly backtracking in your words out of shame.

"speak." the voice says from the other side.

taking a shaky breath, you shamefully shut your eyes as you clasped your hands together. "father, i have had lustful thoughts about a priest in the church and i am ashamed of myself. i know i shouldn't have and yet—"

"who is thy priest?" the voice cuts you off.

shaking your head despite knowing he can't see you, "i— i have dreamt of father touching me as i layed in bed, merely in my sleeping garments—"

"i said, who is this priest." he spoke once more.

"father sunghoon, father.. i have dreamt and yearned for him to touch me, shamelessly touch and tell me to let me cum as i read my bible before i sleep. i dreamt that he would put a baby in me for us to be wed in this church.." you say with a quiet voice, eyes brimming with tears out of shame.

"come to the other side of the booth for i shall bless you." the voice says.

looking up to look at the latticed opening, you barely see the silhouette of the person on the other side. "b-but i thought i needed to do it here—" you say before he cut you off once more as he spoke.

"come here."

following his orders, you quickly stepped out of the booth and went to the other side, merely a few steps away from the door before father stepped out, only for you to see that it was father sunghoon all this time.

"kneel for me and i'll make those wet dreams of yours come to life."

[rotdistressxox]

Scenario: Date Night with the Papas ♡

!Nsfw! No smut, just some very intimate details.

Primo / Papa Emeritus I

• A letter appears under your office door. Curiously, you pick it up and look at the wax seal. It was a very ornate 'P' on it, so the sender basically revealed himself.

• You slice it open with a letter opener and read:

"My Dearest (Reader)

I know I've been gone for quite some time due to my presence being requested at another ministry. Every second I'm away from you only makes me yearn for you more. When I get back, I would like to treat you to the finest delicacies I've come accross while staying overseas. Be ready as soon as I get back. By the time you read this, I will be arriving in a few days. I look forward to seeing you soon,

Your Beloved Papa Emeritus I"

• You dance around with the letter, giving it a big smooch and putting in your priority drawer. Time to shop for a date night outfit!

• The day comes and you're all fancied up for him. Perfume put skillfully where it should be. You were R-E-A-D-Y.

• A knock raps at the door. Primo. You adjust yourself properly before he opens the door, singing your name.

• "My love" He grabs your waist tenderly and plants a kiss on your cheek. "I wish to savor you longer, but we do have plans. Let us leave". You nod, respecting his urgency. You hang onto his arm as you head to the ministry's more private dining area.

• The evening was spent with him telling you about his travels, sharing playful glances, and eating good food. Primo was one to pay attention to details. Especially food. There had to be some form of aphrodisiacs to give the mood some romance. Even though your love for him and his for you, was unmatched.

• There was nothing that could truly rival the part of the day when your longings reached its peak.

• "Have you missed me that much?" He says as the two of you walk the quiet, candlelit corridors to his room. You hum as his hand rubs your hips. "Tonight, I shall make up for that"

• As soon as his door closes, you two were on eachother like magnets. Barely making it to the bed. Kisses turned into passionate gazes while he gracefully stripped your clothes off, savoring you like he wanted to before. His long hair tickling your bare skin.

• "Ti penso ogni notte e giorno" he said into your lips. Moments like this was when he felt in his prime again. As a man of his age, he saved all of his strength to pleasure you. Taking you to the hilt as he worships every detail.

• His lovemaking always exceeded expectations. It was worth it to long for him every night.

Secondo / Papa Emeritus II

• It was your 2 year anniversary with Secondo.

• Initially, you told him you could plan something. But he was adamant about doing it himself and would suprise you.

• You didn't know what to expect, but Secondo was never one to disappoint.

• He takes you in a limousine to an undisclosed location. He's not in his usual robes, instead dawning a blazer, button up, and dress pants. Something was definitely different about what was going to happen.

• As he opens the door for you, you stand infront of downward staircase which lead to an underground nightclubs. Commonly used by the Papas to have more of their personal rituals in. This should be fun.

• After a few drinks, Secondo and you were certainly the life of the party. Dancing with no room left for Jesus. Bodies flush together as his thigh was pressed between your legs. The music was slow yet full of emotion.

• Tonight, there was nobody else but you on his mind.

• "Sei sexy" he whispered in your ear. "Mi ecciti...mi fai impazzire" his gloved hands guided your hips to move in sync with his. "I would take you right here and now in a heart beat if I could" his voice so sultry it made your knees weak.

• You've learned some Italian, so now was as good of a time as ever to use it to your advantage. "Cattivo papa~" you looked into his eyes while sliding your hands up his chest.

• He tilted his head back slightly and groaned. Hearing that come out of your mouth sent all the right reactions through his body.

• "I don't know if I can hold myself back any longer" he groped your rear roughly. His multi-colored eyes filled with carnal desire as the world around him disappeared.

• "Let's not waste any time then" You took him by the arm and left the club. He found it hard to keep his hands off of you whilst heading back in the limousine. Desperately kissing you, leaving you gasping for air as his mustache tickled your lip.

• The night was filled with never ending pleasure which lasted until morning. Making sure your body remembered every inch of his love. Bodies covered in sweat, and heartbeats slowing down. You and him fell asleep for the day.

Terzo / Papa Emeritus III

• Terzo had this day trip planned out for a while now. He made sure it fell on the right day on the right time. Tracked the weather just to make sure.

• He wanted to take you to a beach he frequented as a child. It would be perfect for a candle light picnic.

• Bought you two matching swimsuits just for the occasion. You quickly changed into it as Terzo was already wearing his half. As you step out of the changing tent, his eyes light up.

• "My lucifer. Antichrist. You look ravaging" he takes your hand and kisses up your arm. "Let's have fun today, sì?" You nodded.

• Most of the day you were walking hand in hand with him. Strolling as the waves hit your feet and the wind blew your hair. Until he dragged you into the water.

• He was an excellent swimmer despite his size. Showing off his skills as he swam around you and splashed water in your face.

• His arms wrapped around you as his chest pressed into yours. "Ready?" "Mhm". You take a deep breath as you and him submerge yourself under the water. You look at his hair weightless and floating in the water. The crystal blue waters surrounding you two as you sink and let your knees hit the sand.

• He had borrowed a breathing incantation spell from the library, with the help of the ghouls of course. You would be able to hold your breath longer whilst you were under the water.

• He lifts you up so that you stand on your feet. 'Trust me' he mouths. He couldn't speak underwater afterall.

• He shows you around all of the rock formations, fish swim past you nonchalantly as you are in complete awe of what your seeing. By this time, the both of you would have to come up for air soon.

• 'I love you' He mouths, pulling you into him. 'I love you, too' you push a few floating hairs out of his face. He smiles and presses his lips onto yours, closing his eyes. The both of you begin to float upwards as the kiss continues until you surface.

• Terzo dries you off with a towel as you lay back in a lounging chair. Drying your legs slowly as he has to leave a few kisses everytime he's done drying that spot in particular.

• "Did I ever tell you how beautiful you look in that bathing suit?" "Yes, I counted atleast 13" "Well did I ever tell you how amazing you'd look if you took it off slowly, and infront of me?"

Copia / Papa Emeritus IV

• Movie niiightt!!

• Gets the old popcorn machine from the basement to work so there's copious amounts of it for the both of you.

•Candy, sweets, drinks, anything you can name is laid out on the table.

• He has a specific system to how picking out movies would work. Your pick, his pick, your pick, then if there's time, the both of you decide on one.

• Since his room is very small and he doesn't really have a couch. He let's you sit on the bed while he sits on the floor. You rest your chin on his head while the movie begins to play.

• You almost ate all of the candy, just like he expected. The first movie was just ending and there was at least a few more to get through. Exhaling, you burrow you nose into his shoulder.

• He smells more fragrant than usual. He definitely has some cologne on. You sigh as you lightly massage his scalp. It didn't seem to bother him as his eyes were still glued to the screen.

• Your fingers trace down his neck to his shoulders. Kneading his shoulders gently. He let's out some small groans as he tilts his head to the side.

• "You're a little tense, hm?" He hums. Your fingers squeeze a little tighter, making him bite his lip. "You need to have better posture when working, Copia" your voice sends a shiver down his spine.

• "I know" he closes his eyes. Your lips trace down his neck, and his gloved hands visibly grip his sweatpants. "Easy easy. Just focus on the movie" "But-" "Focus"

• He tries his best to keep his eyes opened as your hands knead into his shoulder muscles. He thought it the worst had passed, but when you finally found a sweet spot, he tossed his head back and covered his mouth.

• "Oh my, looks like the second movie is just gonna have to wait" You sat yourself on his lap, back facing him as your hips pressed against him. "Me next"

• He eagerly felt up your back, rubbing circles tenderly until he found the most sensitive place and began to move his fingers more skillfully in that area.

• "Copiaaa" you whine as he gets rougher. "What's wrong, I thought you asked for this?" He stopped and pulled you in so that your back was pressed against his torso. "Too much?" He grabbed your hips and planted them firmly on his crotch. "Or not enough?"

[hippiepowrs]

he's a goner

eddie munson x gn!best friend!reader

a/n: this is the first fic i'm ever posting on here i'm so nervous plz don't eat me guys

warnings: pining. yearning. longing, if you will. just eddie being totally whipped. swearing. weed use/vague descriptions of being high. d&d terminology. one line from gareth. no use of y/n or reader's pronouns. eddie's pov.

wc: 571

Eddie’s in way too fucking deep.

Maybe this is salvageable?

No, he’s a goner.

It’s not like this is a scene he hasn’t watched before–his best friend laughing, giggling, and smoking with the rest of the older Hellfire boys–hell, it happens every week. But there’s a certain point where the high starts to hit him just right, and he can’t help himself from staring at you. Despite his typical loudness, the usual brash and joking demeanor that overtakes him, he just sits in his chair, quieter than ever. It’s not unheard of for him to get quiet, so nobody thinks anything of it.

You’re the prettiest person to ever exist, he thinks. He finds himself thinking that a lot. The way one corner of your mouth lifts a little more than the other when you smile, the way your eyes crinkle, the way you sparkle as you giggle; he loves it all. He loves the way you look when you blow smoke through your lips. He’s never been more honored to roll in his life. He’d buy all the weed in Indiana if it meant he got to watch you smoke it. 

Eddie often finds himself wanting to write about you or draw you, but he’s nervous he won’t capture you correctly. You’re the kind of beauty that only the Greeks could capture. He wishes he could sculpt like them, just to be able to sculpt you.

A nudge to his arm breaks him out of his trance. He sees you smiling up at him from the floor. It’s a sight he hopes he’ll get to see for the rest of time.

“Ed,” You say, voice soft and a little tired, “Can you back me up here? Can you please tell these nerds that fighter isn’t the best class?” 

“What?” He mumbles, still out of it. “Guys, literally any class is as good as you make it. Except monks.”

“Fuck off.” Gareth responds, throwing a handful of chips in his mouth.

Eddie zones back out after that. Whatever B-horror movie Jeff brought continues to drone on in the background as you and the guys continue to argue, but he can’t be bothered to listen to any of the words he hears. By the time he zones back in, the guys are standing up and brushing themselves off, clearly ready to leave. They say their goodbyes and Eddie waves them off, leaving him alone with you. 

“Is it cool if I sleep over tonight?” Your voice is his favorite thing to hear. Even better than Hetfield or Dio.

“‘Course.” He says, voice more grumbly than he expected. “You know you’re always welcome to.” 

He watches you stand up, watches the way your shirt rides up as you stretch, admires the sleepiness in your eyes. He wants you in his bed, next to him, he wants to wake up to your face in the morning. He wants the smell of your shampoo to overwhelm him. He wants to kiss you, soft and sweet.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” He mumbles under his breath, running a hand over his face before standing back up. Your footsteps are already trailing down the hall to his room, and he quickly follows. You’re halfway through throwing one of his shirts on, which you do every time you sleep over. He’ll never get tired of the way his worn-out shirts hang off your body. He’ll never get tired of you. 

[powderblueblood]

HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER THREE — EDDIE MUNSON COMMITS TREASON (BREAKS UP a CAT FIGHT)

PREVIOUS | MASTERLIST | NEXT

summary: you deal with the fallout of your fight at steve harrington's party... in the passenger seat of eddie munson's van. so much for pretending you didn't exist to one another, huh? content warnings: as always, MINORS FUCK OFF, because we have *deep breath* implied fantasy smut, lots of swearing, confused yearning, themes of threat, heavy snark, another mention of the drink tab which i feel like is/was gross word count: 7.2k

Dear Dio, Tommy Iommi, Gary Gygax, Pee-wee Herman, Ronnie Ecker — forgive me for what I’m about to do. 

I know I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life. Like the time I lit all my hair on fire and spent middle school with a buzz cut. Or the time I almost trapped myself in a spread eagle with my own handcuffs. Or the time I got my arm stuck in a wall for an entire afternoon when I was trying to rescue a feral cat. 

I’ve done a lot of stupid shit. But the stupidest among it all has got to be saving this girl from the bare knuckle wrath of Carol Whatsername. You know the one. 

Tonight, for whatever reason, this insane ex-rich chick has decided to teeter on the edge of a pool of boiling hot lava and for whatever reason, I feel like it’s my responsibility to yank her back.

Which sucks, because she’s a total bitch to me. 

Even if she just told everybody Tommy Hagan had crabs and has been cheating on his girlfriend in such a deranged way that it almost made me pop a semi. 

Anyway. Tell my guitar I love her. 

The world around Eddie slows to the tick of a football game replay as you let the last incendiary word you speak to Carol bounce around the goddamn Roman amphitheater Harrington’s back yard has become. 

This is insane. What he’s watching is insane. Like, he knew you and your dumb little court of Hawkinsites bickered back and forth, but you’re the last person he’d ever expect to air their dirty laundry like this. 

It’s incredible to watch the fascist leadership that he and the rest of the social nobodies have suffered under for so long rupture in real time. 

What’s even more incredible is how little hesitation there is on his part, shoving through the crowd when he sees Carol leaping for you. Eddie’s nearly jostled backwards by some slobbering roid heads— they’ve already called CAT FIGHT! and a crowd is clamoring. But Eddie’s got years of thankless equipment lugging behind him, giving him deceptively strong arms.

And thank god, because you are not an easy girl to hold onto. 

Carol lands a decent punch to your face, slamming with a dull knuckle-on-cheekbone crunch that makes all the onlookers, including him, go ooof! You stagger back in a state of shock (though, c’mon, you heard what you said just now, right?) and Eddie takes his shot just as you dive forward to retaliate.

He grabs you under the arms so you can’t like, elbow him in the fucking nose, a pale imitation of an illegal wresting move that Al Munson had forced him to learn at the tender age of seven. His dad had fancied himself a wrestling manager at the time— you can imagine how that worked out. 

But Jesus, can you ever squirm! Your body writhes against him—stop—hips bucking—don’t go there—as you try to get free. He doesn’t even think you realize who’s dragging you away from the screaming harpy, otherwise you’d probably turn your fury on him. 

He takes full advantage of the rage blackout and manhandles you through the party, earning a baffled look from Steve Harrington, who’s finally graced his own party with his presence. A pinch-faced Nancy Wheeler lingers behind him, but then again, Wheeler’s always all pinch-faced.

“What the fuck?!” Harrington breathes, exasperated. 

Eddie struggles against you struggling, just about dragging you over the front doorstep. Trust this guy to be upstairs in a domestic dispute, missing all the action while getting no action. 

Even in the chaos, Eddie will never pass up an opportunity to fuck with Harrington.

“You gotta start hidin’ your bath salts, man! Chicks are going crazy in there–Evil Dead type shit!” 

—

“You’re dead, Lacy! Monday morning, you are fucking dead!” Carol screams down the hallway. 

“It’s a date, bitch!” you screech, Munson’s nelson hold on you stronger than your thrashing. With a lot of work, he manages to haul you as far as Harrington’s front yard before you wriggle out of his grasp. You shove him, hard, all white hot and punch drunk and regular drunk on top of that. 

He yelps, high and frightened. You weren’t expecting a noise like that to come out of a surly-looking dude like him. 

So you do it again. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” you spit, and Munson flinches.

“Cutting you off!” he exclaims, this half-yell, half-laugh. It stings, the way he’s looking at you– like your anger isn’t anger, like it’s just amusing to him. 

“Well, who gave you the right? Who died and made you my parole officer, Munson?!” 

“Oh, I’m not– but I also didn’t feel like being woken up at home when the cops come looking for you after you go all Raging Bull on Carol. You haven’t been around the park long enough to hear ‘em, but those sirens really perforate the eardrums!”

Your jaw sets itself stiffly and you bind your arms over your chest. Unfuckingbelievable. “I would’ve, you know,” you breathe, seething, “Beat her up.” 

Munson’s dark eyes glide over you, like he’s checking you for concealed weapons or signs of a zombie bite— you avoid his gaze entirely, staring square into the middle distance. 

You promised that he didn’t exist to you, yet here he is. Driving you off the road. Breaking up your fights. Existing.

“Yeah, I know you woulda. You’re scary,” he says. You shrug, and he reaches to massage his shoulder. “And strong. Shit.” 

Your eyes flick over to him, but you don’t feel bad. You don’t feel bad because he’s grinning at you now and despite yourself, despite everything that’s transpired and the everything about him, you’re trying your hardest not to grin back. Adrenaline and vodka are still burning a hole in your chest. 

“Stay out of my way, then.”  

“Noted, but,” a couple of steps from Munson’s end closes some space between you. He’s peering at your face, right where Carol clocked you. A hand reaches out, angling your chin closer to the Harrington’s glaring porch light with his fingertips. You stiffen and squint, performatively wary, but you don’t stop him. You just let his eyes pan over you, looking anywhere but into them. “You might need a little first aid first. And a ride home.” 

“I was actually planning on carjacking Hagan,” you say coolly, the smile you were trying to beat away edging its way across your face. Munson releases your chin and the spot where his fingers were buzzes. It’s just the cold. It’s just your slutty librarian outfit, you tell yourself. You have to swallow in order to speak again. “Seems like fitting payback.”

“Jesus, sweetheart, what did I just say about cops?”

—

Eddie tolerates your eyes rolling back in your head when he props the passenger door open for you, helping you into the cluttered van with an outstretched had. 

See, I’m not the kind of asshole who doesn’t open doors for girls wearing stilts for shoes.

Those things were not made for clambering into a vehicle like this, sure, but they’re– nice. For what he knows about shoes, which is nothing. They make your legs look more… leggy, and for whatever reason this is making his brain soft. 

In your other hand is a cold can of High Life, which is the closest thing to an ice pack he could nab. That bruise blooming under your eye is going to be nasty, and he’s a little curious how you’re gonna look with it. You, with nary a hair out of place on a bad day, with a big ol’ purple shiner in a place that’s hard to hide.  

Gunning out of Harrington’s hood, a silence settles between Eddie and you. The radio hums in the background– a mainstream station for once. He thoughtfully figured that an aural assault by Sabbath would kinda rub salt in your wound. 

He’s thoughtful, but he’s not not nosy. So, of course he’s gonna ask– 

“That whole… verbal smackdown back there,” Munson starts after clearing his throat. “With Tommy H and everybody.”

On your end, the adrenaline has worn off and the numbing effects of the booze have amped up. You feel loose and warm, apart from the beer can cooling your bruise. There are twice as many streetlights streaming past you as usual. This is going to blow later– if you don’t blow chunks first. 

“All that about your dad pimping me out?” God, I mean, Hagan couldn’t compose a written sentence to save his life but maybe he had a future in speculative fiction. Did he just come up with that on the fly? “Take a wild guess, Munson.” 

Eddie recoils in his seat– gross. Gross. “Not the– the shit with Tina and Carol and–”

“Oh, the crabs? Yeaaaah, that’s true,” you slur, “But I rejected Tommy waaay before I knew that. Call it my brilliant instinct. And then he has the nerve to call me frigid, which– trust me, I’m anything… anything but.”

Munson seems a little surprised at this. You can see it in the way his eyebrows dart under his curly bangs. 

But you’ve had your share of disappointing experiences with the blandly acceptable boys in your circle– it’s par for the course, it’s part of advancing in the field. You can’t throw your cat into the street completely, but god forbid you be choosy about the boys you want to copulate with. The ones you’ve hooked up with, all unremarkable and perfunctory, always seemed so smug afterwards. Like they’d conquered something. 

But from Eddie’s purview, you always held yourself like you were above everyone else; not just the underclassmen and the social rejects, but even your own friends. He’d watch you sometimes, because it’s hard not to watch you. He’d wait for the few flickering moments you let your guard down, when you thought no one was paying attention as you sat at the lunch table or walked the hallways. So achingly unamused by the guffawing, the backslapping, the forced camaraderie of your forced high school persona and your forced high school friends. Then, one of them would say something like, Right, Lacy? and your brow would unarch and you’d be right back in the groove with the rest of them, giggling dumbly and glossing your lips. 

He always wondered how you did it, tolerated it. And why.

“Now, far be it from me to agree with a shithead like Hagan–and I don’t, before you get scary–but I kinda get where he’s picking that up,” Eddie winces, throwing a glance to you, glassy-eyed with your head against the window. You’re looking at him with narrowed eyes, eyeliner smudged. Even that look could cut down a man with twice his ego. “You’re a little bit frosty. Cold shock in the middle of a summer’s day– which, y’know, could be–”

You absolutely do not let him finish the thought.   

“It’s caaaalled being aloof, Munson,” you drawl, shuffling your shoulders against the passenger door and pulling a stray thread from your skirt with a sharp snap. “Playing hard to get, duh? Leave them wanting more? You wouldn’t get it because you’re so goddamn big and obvious all the time…”

“Obvious!” he brays, letting his jaw hang open with theatrical flair, “Obvious! Lacy, you wound me, I–”

“Obvious,” you bark back, “Obvious like a neon sign, obvious like a circus tent, obvious like– like– look at me, look at me, I’m a weirdo!” Your Munson impression, complete with devil horns, is a little dorkified but it shuts him right up. That loose little tongue of yours has trasmuted your mood from wrath to barbed silliness. “So obvious you wouldn’t know that kind of subtlety. Not if it hit you in the face.” 

A familiar tune whistles from the radio, distracting you. “… or cause you’re a virgin.”

“Okay—!“ Eddie starts, immediately assuming the position of point guard. His hackles are raised, but to be honest, he’s so willing to let you ramble on. It’s the first time he’s heard you talk this much, ever, save your little tête-à-tête by the lockers the other day. 

Eddie doesn’t want to stem the flow just yet. He’s not thinking about it too hard.

“Oh shit, do you hear that?” Like a Virgin pumps from the tinny speakers and you reach to turn it up, your head drunkenly bobbling on your neck. Eddie winces; it’s so weird, watching you like this. It’s like dream logic. It’s like opposite day. “Munson’s a virgin! I’m gonna touch him for the very first tiii-iime! Munson’s a vii-iir-gin—“

“First off, no I am not and no,” he audibly swallows, positive you didn’t realize what you just sang, “no, you are not, ‘cause— well.” He clears his throat. A flare of heat burns around his collar. “I’m not the type to bone and tell.”

“Bone and tell.” You guffaw, a sound so unbecoming yet so endearing coming from you, and slump back in your seat. That tight little skirt you’re wearing rides up about an inch and a half. “Sounds like something a virgin would say.”

Eddie huffs; no way around this. You’re fucking with him, and it’s the indefatiguable male ego that’s not going to let him let you win. 

He fucks, okay? Or has fucked, prior to this. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with not fucking. 

But he’s done it.  

Eddie’s eyes dart between you and the road, and you’ve got him like a stuck pig with that expectant glare. His eyes linger on your exposed upper legs for a half a second. 

Christ, you’re annoying. It occurs to him that wants to bite the soft flesh of your thigh and hear you squeal about it, but you are annoying as hell. 

“Fine. Fine. You wanna know?”

Your head lolls against the rough upholstery of the seat and you bat your lashes at him. “I really wanna know.” 

And Munson will tell you, you know, because you’re the kind of person people tell things to. 

“Nicole Summers.”

“Bullshit. Nicole Nicole? My Nicole?”

“Nicole Nicole. Nicole, formerly yours. The only-girl-meaner-than-you Nicole. It was tenth grade,” he snorts bitterly. “Most unforgettable thirty seconds of my life.”

“Nicole told us she got her v-card stamped by a board waxer in Maui.”

“I’ve got a lot of side gigs. You don’t know about me.”

You snort too, despite yourself. That’s a lot of despite-ing tonight, Lacy. You sit up in the seat a little, interest catching. Flame to a candle wick. 

“How was it?” you press. 

Munson furrows his brow, like duh. “Most unforgettable thirty seconds of my life, I just told you.” A beat. “Until— …Cass Finnigan.”

Now, an encounter like that is less surprising, but still you holler, “Bullshit!”

“I’d say the same shit if it hadn’t, y’know, happened to me,” he stage whispers, “In this van.”  

Your eyes widen, a flicker of a grimace sailing across your face. You wonder how he pulled that off, but all that comes to mind is the start of a bad porno– Cass meets him at that dingy little bench out back of the school to pick up and he’s, I don’t know, test driving some of his new supply and offers her a toke. She’s all, why the free samples, Munson? and he’s all, I only let the prettiest girls test the product. And because Cass is notoriously insecure–who among us, girl–she’s all, who, me? and he’s all, come back to my van, and she’s all, but I’m going steady with Mikey B, and he’s all, I won’t tell if you won’t and then he fucks her in the ass. 

Because Cass is saving the first hole for marriage and you know that. You’re the kind of person people tell things to. 

What you don’t expect is a weird pull of… envy. Why, in this imaginary scenario, had he never invited you back to his van? Well. You know why. But you’re drunk, so logic begone. “When did all this go down?”

“Uh, right before school got back,” Munson answers, kind of apprehensively. He could be lying, you figure.

“Well, Cass has been having a weird year,” you mumble, meaning to think that rather than say it. You know, because you’re the kind of person people tell things to.

“What’s that supposed to imply exactly?” Eddie says, an edge in his voice. He can’t help the way something in his chest flares; like he forgot to wait for the other shoe to drop with you, and now it’s dropping. 

“It stands to reason that she’d wanna, like, do something stupid,” you explain, and you know how it sounds. It’s mean. But honestly, you’re so drunk, and so past the point of attempting to spare people’s feelings.

“Like hook up with the local freak,” Eddie finishes for you, tone flat. You couldn’t not put him in his place, could you? Not that he thought Cass liked him or anything, he could feel her (literally feel her) going through the motions like a social experiment but– God, a little delusion doesn’t hurt now and again. 

“Exactly!” and even in your inebriated state, you can feel the tension in the air, hanging between you like a balloon full of noxious gas. Rather than cut it, you want to poke at it, unfeeling as to whether that’ll make it worse or better between you and the boy in the driver’s seat. You hike yourself up further, leaning toward him, pulling the can of High Life from your face. 

Munson’s profile is this beguiling mix of hurt and irritation, lit by the scuzzy orange hue of the passing streetlights. 

“What, did you want me to act impressed? Did you want me to lie to you?” 

“What? No– look, I know what girls like that– think of me, but,” Eddie’s voice shrinks in his throat, making him sound completely pre-pubescent. He notices you lean forward in his peripheral vision, like you have to strain to hear it, “that doesn’t make it any less shitty.” 

Oof. He did not need to unleash that little piss-shake of earnestness right now. He mentally steels himself for a ribbing from you, a cackling, piercing laugh like you let out before Carol punched you. 

“Of course it doesn’t!” you froth, “Just like it doesn’t make it any less shitty when guys act like they’re settling a bet with their buddies when they hook up with me.” You cross your arms to your chest with a quickness, slamming back into the seat. “Bet you couldn’t make it with Lacy, she’s got a combination lock on her pussy. Fuck you, dude.”

That coaxes a bark of a laugh from Munson, which makes you giggle a little in turn. It’s a weird feeling. It’s not quite relief; more like satisfaction. One point to Lacy, you made him laugh. 

“Combination lock, huh?”

“Allegedly.”

“Bet none of those losers even know how to crack a lock.” 

Your head tilts in his direction, forward this time. “And you do?”

Munson’s eyes flash at you, a dangerous orange glint sparkling in the darkness of his irises. “My criminal skillset is pretty diverse.”

He pins you down with this look from the driver’s seat and for a heartbeat or two, and you let him. Just long enough that a stab of sobriety sneaks in– and you can’t deny it, but you wish it didn’t. 

You’re drunk. 

If you can stay drunk, all bets are off. 

If you can stay drunk, whatever you do doesn’t matter, because you were drunk. 

You could reach over and press your fingers into the soft denim between his legs, make something hard there. You could squeeze the thickness of him over his zipper and kiss the shock of alabaster skin on his neck, where his pulse goes all jackrabbity under your touch. You could make him forget he ever heard the name Cass Finnigan. 

And it would mean nothing. 

And you wouldn’t have to justify it, because you were drunk. That’s what you’ve always been taught.

But you uncross your arms and you pull at the hem of your skirt and look to the road, just as the van swerves into the trailer park. Munson doesn’t take such a hard turn at the corner this time, probably wary of your risk of ralphing all over the van if he does. He pulls into that negative space between your trailer and his and instructs you to wait in your seat. 

“Trust me, the descent out of this baby is much trickier than it looks,” he assures you, jogging to the passenger door, a jingle of keys and pocket chains and belts on leather, “and you’re way too gone to make it in one piece, princess.”

So he holds his hand out again (“M’shitfacedlady,”) and gingerly you take it, and it becomes very apparent very quickly that your legs have turned to rubber on the drive home. 

“Oh, shit!” 

Your attempt at gracefully exiting the van is ruined by an unsteady ankle, sending your weight right into Eddie Munson’s chest. Luckily, he was braced for it– just about. “Told you you couldn’t make it without me,” he breathes as you clutch a handful of his Metallica shirt, vision quadrupling. He’s warm, and you suddenly realize that you’re freezing.

Trembling.

“Stop flirting with me,” you hiss to one out of the four Munsons in front of you. “I need to go to bed.”

Eddie forces himself to bite back another double entendre, which is a shame, because they’re doing an awesome job of covering up how goddamn nervous he suddenly is. He moves his arm to your waist, helping you haul ass to your front door. He’s got to keep one arm outstretched behind you in case you lose your balance again– which you almost do, a couple of times, wavering around like a dashboard Jesus. 

He watches you like he’s trying to commit this to memory, the rare case of you being so beyond your usual composure. He’s even got to intervene after the first five minutes, making unlocking your front door a two idiot job.

Eddie’s about to wave you off and disappear to scream and something else into his pillow when he sees you take a dangerous lunge into the darkness of the trailer. “Woah, girl–” 

But you recover, in a kind of brainless way, taking a measured Bambi-like step forward. One after the other. 

Fuck. He can’t leave you like this. 

You’re gonna trip and brain yourself on a Fabergé egg or whatever the fuck it is you and your mom have in there. 

“Uh– Lacy?” 

The trailer is eerily quiet. You feel like you’re trespassing in your own place. Boxes of out-of-place, too-expensive ephemera are still strewn everywhere, but you navigate the maze of them like it’s nothing. Sense memory. You don’t even entirely register that Munson is following you inside, that he’s frantically whispering after you, until you reach your bedroom door. 

A coldness shoots up your spine as you turn on him. You didn’t invite him in here, did you? 

“What do you think you’re doing?” you ask for the second time tonight. This time, it comes out a little fearful. 

Eddie picks this up, right where you’ve erroneously dropped it. His chest gets a little tight. You didn’t think he was trying to–? 

“Making sure you lie down in the recovery position, that’s all,” he throws his hands up in total surrender, Scout’s honor, all that shit. “I’m not tryin’ to pick any locks tonight. I swear.” 

“I don’t need your help, Munson,” but just as you twist the doorknob, you keel over through the door, hitting the floor like a lead balloon. 

“Yeah, you keep telling me that,” he blearily smirks down at you, “And yet.”

But Munson’s not such an asshole about it that he just leaves you there. He hauls you up, again, and you stagger towards your bed, flopping face down on top of the comforter. He says some variation of okay, well, that’s how you choke to death on your own vomit, Jimi Hendrix and bullies you into the recovery position. 

“Don’t freak out, I’m just–” and Munson sits gingerly on the edge of your bed, taking one of your high heeled feet in his hands. 

What the fuck, you mumble, either aloud or in your head. But he’s fiddling with the tiny buckle at your ankle, gently undoing it. Another chill runs through your body but you don’t move, not an iota. You just… let him do it. His hands on your aching feet aren’t a totally unwelcome touch. He’s being featherlight about it, almost afraid to touch you even though he had no problem sheepdogging you into bed. 

“You could do anything to me right now,” you hear yourself saying. “No one would even know. No one would even care, I bet.” 

It’s meant to sound like you’re goading him, or even flirting with him, but it comes out sounding pitiful. You cringe, your hands creeping up to cover your face. 

“I’d care.” Munson’s voice is a tiny mumble– you know he’s just defending himself, but it kind of sounds like something else. He slips your right shoe off and sets it on the floor next to your left one. He hesitates for a moment before getting off your bed. 

“Alright, well– we can forget this ever happened. Resume being assholes to each other on Monday. Don’t, like, die in the meantime.”

“You say resume like we ever stopped being assholes to each other.”

“Have a fun hangover, Lacy.” 

–

You do not have a fun hangover. You wake up late Saturday afternoon after Friday’s bacchanal and don’t emerge from your room save from the occasional bathroom trip to puke up what little dignity you’ve got left. Sunday morning is when your mom hammers on the door and drags you to the kitchenette after confirming that you’re still, y’know, alive. 

“This is your game face, hm?” she says, pulling at your chin to examine your violet bruise that seems to have developed its own heartbeat. She doesn’t hold your face the way Munson did, gentle and searching, just tugs into the sparse light streaming into the dingy kitchenette.

You attempt to steel your jaw, but your bottom lip is starting to waver. 

“What happened?” your mother asks, and beneath all the jagged broken glass, there’s a tiny sliver of tenderness. 

Call it your pride, but you don’t reach for it. 

“I went out,” you say tightly, “and I made a fool of us.”

She hacks up a scoff through her smoker’s cough and disappears into her bedroom, leaving you alone to pick at a cold waffle. The few moments of consciousness you’ve had since Friday night have been spent trying to piece the party together– you remember clearing the better part of a bottle of cheap, cheap, shitty vodka with Robin Buckley’s help (weird), you remember getting into it with Hagan and Carol and getting wailed on. You remember getting a ride home with Munson, but the finer details of that are fuzzy. 

You think, and this is a thought that turns your already 180’d stomach, you let him into your bedroom, but you can’t be one hundred percent sure. All you know for an absolute is that your shoes came off that night, and you would never bother to take your shoes off after a night like that. 

So somebody must have. 

Meanwhile, Eddie’s been having a hell of a meanwhile. 

Fact of the matter is that you managed to detonate a nuclear bomb at Harrington’s party just under an hour after your arrival, which has got to be some kind of world record. It was also a world record for how little product he’d managed to sell during one of those parties, because he was preventing the manslaughter of a teenage girl– could’ve been you, could’ve been Carol. He nearly wishes he let that fight play out, as he stares into his empty wallet. 

Eddie’s gotta busy himself somehow, gotta do something– weirdly, he’s not in the mood to make a whole lot of noise. It’s not such a terrible day for working on his van, so he slams his toolbox on the ground and gives a couple dozen casual glances toward your bedroom window.

Your blinds still aren’t fixed. That’s got to have been shitty when you woke up with a splitting vodka headache and a shiner the size of Canada. 

Eddie keeps finding excuses to pace back and forth in perfect view of your window. Not in a peeping Tom sort of way, but in a way where he’d kind of like to see any sign of life from you. Even if you just rose from your bed like Nosferatu and gave him the finger. Then, he could relax. 

“Ed,” a gruff voice comes from the makeshift trailer porch, “fuck’re you doin’.” 

Those dulcet tones would belong to his beloved Uncle Wayne, who, ever since his hours got cut at the plant, has become unbearably observant of Eddie’s every movement. Wayne’s not a neglectful kind of father figure, not like his blinders-wearing real dad is, so he actually gets concerned when Eddie’s acting out of sorts. 

“Engine,” Eddie mumbles, pivoting fast like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t, “Engine’s making hinky noises.”

“Sounded alright last night,” Wayne levels him instantly, “when you came home.” 

“Didn’t mean to wake ya,” he twists an oily rag in his hands, avoiding Wayne’s stony stare. 

“I was up.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the doorframe. God, whenever Wayne susses him out, it’s like drip torture. He’s slow as molasses with the confrontation on purpose, making Eddie sweat and out himself on every little fuck up he’s ever made. “You go in there?”

Chin jerks towards your trailer. Eddie’s shoulders shrug towards his ears, head tilting back. “Wayne, it’s not– she was real drunk, like blotto, I just–”

“You steer clear of that one.” It’s the definite nature with which Wayne says it that makes Eddie’s stomach drop. No prelude to it, no I know, kid, you were just tryin’ to do right by her. Nothing. 

“Wayne–”

“She ain’t what you think she is. Not if she’s anything like her bloodline.” 

He says this like the realization hasn’t hit Eddie like Carol hit you on Friday fight night. 

He says this like people haven’t been saying the same thing about Eddie for years.

–

Monday morning comes and you’re still somewhat suffering. A headache nags at your temple, but you pin that down to anxiety rather than an extended play of your hangover. 

It occurs to you that you should dress as down as possible today– realistically, of course, as you’d never be caught dead in sweatpants. You need comfort, you need something that feels like a well-worn blanket so you opt for a deep burgundy sweater dress that actually belonged to your mom in the 60s. 

You’d found it in the back of her closet when searching for a belt you knew she’d stolen from you and pulled it out. Mom! you chirped, How cute! How come you never wear this?

Oh, God, she’d cringed, batting the garment out of her way as she passed you in a cloud of Shalimar, Just throw that ratty thing out for me, would you?

But you didn’t. You kept it tucked away in the back of your closet and took it out when you needed it. When you needed to bury your face in it. Substitute it for a comfort she refused to give you. Which you realize is terrifically sad, but so’s life. 

The warm red is a distant cousin in the color family to the bruise under your eye. That bruise, it’s a glaring reminder of what a fucking loser you’ve become. The old you, the real you would never have stooped to that level– never had let them drag her down like that. But now you’re the kind of girl that screams and starts fights at parties, you guess. 

Your rage feels ugly in the cold light of day. 

You’re locking the door of the trailer behind you just as Munson emerges from his humble abode and it’s nothing short of awkward. Like you’d both seen each other naked or something.

You both stand there, in your relative doorways. His mouth gapes like he’s about to say hi, say something, and a memory comes back to you. Cold shock in the middle of a summer’s day. No one likes that. No one wants that. 

Regret stabs at you.

“Can you see it from there?” It’s the only thing you can think of to say, because you’re sure as fuck not saying hi. 

“What?”

“The bruise. Can– can you see it from over there?” 

Munson sort of half-snorts. “Not from here–”

“Ugh, thank god.”

“--but this is like, over fifteen feet away.” 

You roll your eyes, which hurts a lot, thanks guy, and walk toward his van. 

“Now?” you say, waving a hand under your eye, right where you’ve applied and blended and applied and blended a criminal amount of concealer. Munson leaves about a foot of space between you, on purpose, and you crane your neck back, on purpose. Reinstating the forcefield between you. 

“Oh yeah, you can barely even see that you got your ass kicked.”

“It’s not even eight in the morning, Munson. Do you really want to start your day with a knee to the balls?”

“You’re right. That’s usually an after-dinner activity,” he grins and jerks his head toward the van. “Need a ride?”

Need a ride? Like it’s the most ordinary, everyday thing in the world, Eddie Munson offering you a ride to school in his deathtrap of a van. Your stomach pulls at the sense memory of being in there on Friday night, and what you’ll look like getting out of it in the parking lot of Hawkins High. 

“No,” you say, shaking your head, definite and resolute. “I’m walking.” 

He scoffs. “C’mon. It’s too late to start walking now. You’ll be late for first period.” 

You scoff back, imitating him. “So what?”

“You’re never late for first period.” 

“I can be late– how the hell do you know I’m never late for first period?” 

“Because, dummy, I’m always late for first period,” he tells you, yanking open the passenger door, “And I sit behind you in History, and you’re always there when I come in, leaning back with your nose in some dumb book and your stupid hair all over my desk.” 

It’s true– you are always reading in history, because Kaminsky can’t teach for shit and you’ve already read ahead on the coursework anyway. You liked to rub that in his face by pulling out some unprescribed literature during class. Plus, no one you really care about is in your class, so you don’t have to worry about getting made fun of for having your nose in some dumb book. Illiterate jocks would never try that shit with you– nobody there would. 

Until now. 

And it’s true that Eddie Munson sits behind you, and barrels in like an idiotic excuse for a hurricane with some idiotic excuse for being late that you always scoff at, because does he ever get tired of his own bullshit. But after that brief cameo appearance in your day, you really do forget about him. 

Until now. 

“So?” he says, all expectant. 

And you consider it for a second, you really do– but you don’t think you can handle the blowback of leaving a party with Eddie Munson on Friday then turning up with him on Monday. Going to the same class. Where he sits behind you. It’s just… overexposure. 

The same realization must hit him, because all of a sudden he’s slamming the door shut with a roll of his eyes. “Whatever. Your tardy slip, babe.” You can’t help but think he sounds a little wounded. 

But fuck it. Fuck it! Since when do you stand around feeling sorry for Eddie Munson? 

Before you know it, the van roars out and leaves you in the dust. 

You don’t make it to school until after second period, because that so-called bus route a fifteen minute walk from the trailer park must not even exist, so you forge a note from your mom in the parking lot. 

As your fountain pen hovers over the paper, brainstorming an excuse, you consider pulling out the big guns– say you had to attend visitation day at the penitentiary. Use this disaster to your advantage for once; but you pull back. Scribble something about a doctor’s appointment and dot your mother’s ‘i’s with eerie precision.  

You make quick work of dropping the note off in reception– the uptick of being the kid of the town’s gossip beacon is some people still feel sorry for you. Some people weirdly include Janice, Principal Higgins’ secretary, who snatches the note from you before you can even reach the actual receptionist’s desk. 

“I’ll file that for you, dear,” she says, all coo-cooey with an unwelcome hand on your shoulder, “How are you and your poor mother doing these days? And your,” her croaky voice drops to a whisper, “dad? How is… he being treated?”

You blink at her, gripping the fountain pen in your hand. “Do you know what a shiv is, Janice?”

Just then, the bell trills and you take your leave, stepping out into the linoleum. 

Someone calls your name from down the hall. You crane your neck to see Ronnie Ecker jogging toward you, paper in hand. 

Now look, you’ve never had a problem with Ronnie Ecker. You can’t say you’re particularly fond of her but she’s smart; she keeps to herself and she was a decent lab partner during your junior year of dissecting frogs together. Squeamish, but that’s why you were there, to handle the scalpel. As much of a social outcast as she is, she’s not nearly as odious as the rest of them. That’s pretty goddamn remarkable amongst the Hawkins student body. 

She is also, you’ve come to notice, a resident of Forest Hills trailer park. 

“Hey!” she says, “Um, I noticed you missed first period and Kaminsky was handing our papers back so I figured you’d want yours…” 

“Why is everyone so obsessed with me missing first period?”

“Huh?”

“No– nothing,” you huff, taking the paper from her. A solid B on A+ material– told you Kaminsky couldn’t teach for shit. He’d be hearing from you about this. “Thanks for this, Ronnie.”

You start down the hall but notice Ronnie’s keeping in step with you. “I also just wanted to say– I heard about what happened Friday. And I think it’s sick, you standing up to Hagan like that. Asshole needed to be put in his place.” 

Well, there’s only one person she could have heard the nitty gritty of that news from. You know she’s trying to flatter you, but all you feel is a flame of embarrassment, plus a touch of anger– even though the news has easily circulated the school hallways by now. 

Along with the rumors of you taking Hargrove, Buckley and Munson, and not in a fight. 

“Well. Y’know. I was pretty wasted,” you attempt to brush it off and you see Ronnie deflate a little. 

Like you’re not the blazing hero someone made you out to be. 

“Okay, but is it true you had a threesome with Billy Hargrove and Robin Buckley and Robin was wearing the Tigers mascot suit?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

–

Classes pass in a monotonous blur, like most Mondays, but worse. That would be thanks to the extra shot of dread that’s served with your cafeteria meal of a wilted salad and soda. Last week at lunchtime, you at least had a tenuous standing with your former circle– you could still sit between Tina and Nancy Wheeler and suffer Tina’s thinly veiled jabs at you with a semi-placid look on your face. Nancy would look at you with eyes full of pity, and you’d want to punch her face in, but you’d be fine. 

But now, as you stand in the cafeteria swirling with people and catch the death glares from your old table (save for Nancy and Steve Harrington, who just straight up refuse to make eye contact with you), you’re just about ready to snap. 

Your flight instinct tells you to toss the tray out of your clammy hands and run, and keep running, until you disappear into the woods behind the school, never to be found. Your body becomes mulch before anyone remembers to look for you. Maybe you make really good fertilizer and a couple of pretty weeds sprout up from where you die. 

Your bruise, under its flaking layers of concealer, throbs twice– as if to say, don’t you fucking dare.

You make a confident beeline for the table, chin tilted and eyes set in a stare that could be categorized as withering, if only it was trained on anybody in particular. You grab a chair that some dumb underclassman is about to sit in and drag it with you, legs screeeeeching across the waxed floor. 

Who gives a shit who you were on Friday night. 

“I can sit here, right?” you say, and place your tray on the table next to Ronnie Ecker. 

She just stares at you for a hot second. That’s too long to stay standing in uncertainty, so you settle your stolen chair at the table and sit next to her. 

Ronnie isn’t the only one staring, however– the rest of these dorks, all in their matching t-shirts with Satan’s fiery head emblazoned across them, are watching you with their mouths agape. 

“Is this a prank or something?” one of them, a curly-haired freshman, says. 

This question is directed toward their fearless leader, decked out in denim and leather at the head of the table. That is to say, the direct opposite end of the table that you’re sitting at. 

“That’s no way to greet a lady, Gareth,” Munson says, feigning coolness but you can tell he’s a little flustered. The dead giveaway is in the way he misses his mac and cheese with his fork, the way his solid gaze double-blinks. You’ve thrown him off game– and because he’s impossible not to overhear sometimes, you know that game is all he’s got going on at this table. 

There’s that feeling again– point to Lacy. 

“To what do we owe the pleasure?”

This is Munson’s version of what the hell do you think you’re doing, but you choose to ignore him. It’ll drive him insane, and you know that, glaring red warning sign that he is. Instead, you flash a smile at the freshman that almost makes him pass out, Cupid’s arrow struck straight through the heart. 

You cross your legs and angle your body toward Ronnie– and by extension, in the direction of your old table. You can see Carol burying her face in Tommy’s shoulder, the both of them on the verge of losing bowel control with laughter. Laughter at you. 

Who gives a shit who you were before Friday night.

“So, Ronnie,” you say, taking a sip of your Tab, “You get up to anything fun this weekend?”

author's notes: let me get ahead of everything and say yes, i am absolutely fucking with the timeline. suspend your disbelief, my beautiful babies, and enjoy steve, carol, tommy and ronnie ecker still being in high school because I SURE WILL. but on an absolutely serious note, thank you so much for all the support and each and every note you’ve put on the chapters so far. i seriously, seriously appreciate it. now, the notes: - you think eddie munson doesn’t fuck with pee-wee herman heavy? you think he didn’t watch this movie in reefer rick’s, high out of his gourd, and think oh yeah i love this freak? get REAL! RIP paul reubens, this one’s for you. specially every time i mention a handjob - eddie munson also has charlie kelly disease - speaking of iterations of always sunny characters, much like frank reynolds, there’s not a get rich quick scheme al munson hasn’t tried. we’ll get into that a little more… later - admittedly, the whole ‘face eating on bath salts’ thing didn’t gain traction until the 00s, but if hawkins is going to be ahead of its time in anything, it’s fucked up shit happening to people! - did you notice how i blended eddie and lacy’s povs in the van? i’m going to continue doing that in moments where they’re on a similar ~wavelength~ - jimi hendrix did unfortunately die of asphixiation, but instead of thinking about that, watch this sick video of him playing guitar that eddie definitely has committed to memory - RONNIE ECKER KLAXON. i know that in flight of icarus she’s described as tall, but that hasn’t stopped me fancasting her as ayo edebiri in an eddie munson wig - at this point, you might be thinking damn, everyone sure seems to hate each other in this story. like, why is nancy wheeler catching strays? i’m here to remind you it’s the 1980s and teenagers kind of suck. play the track - thanks again for all the love! you can keep this crazy train going by liking, commenting, reblogging and generally showing me the same kindness you’ve shown me so far. love u my little hellcats

[rel124c41]

NARC. floyd leech

It’s a chance to prove yourself again … and to ignore this godforsaken craving for a burger.

tags: mafia au, blood and injury, mild sexual content, organized crime, emotionally repressed, food issues, nonconsensual kissing, & post-betrayal

word count: 9436

You pluck a glass of red wine from a tray. Shoulders gliding past a humanoid Cthulhu, you pour the blood-hued liquid down your snorkel and sample the taste of dry wine. It is a Pinot. Gratefully for this, you take care to pour a bit more in your snorkel. Though, just as you duck under the wayward stretch of a shark’s gesturing, cigar-holding hand, – smoke from a White Russian cigar furling out of his rubber lips like crisp, morning fog that a ship must part through  – Jesus asks, scandalized, in your ears, “Are you drinking on the job?”

The wine halts its descent down your throat. Holding (almost choking on) the liquid in your mouth, your eyes momentarily widen in surprise. You throw your head back and down what is left in your snorkel, because it is necessary to communicate with an empty mouth. “I thought you said you didn’t have any eyes in here.”

No one can really blame you for how your own eyes start to flutter around the room, like tracking an energetic butterfly.

“I took the precaution of sending Rook to plant S.T.Y.X. cameras in the ballroom. I, however, did not know I would have to take any precaution against one of my spudlings being inebriated,” Jesus chastises. 

Caught red-handed, you feel heat crawl up your face. “ …It’s just one drink, boss.” Even though it is soft, you can still clearly hear that admonishing huff of breath come through your ear-piece while your personal Jesus – your boss, Schoenheit – breathes with affront. You decide that you will hold the cordial glass for the rest of the night as decoration rather than drinking it.

“One too many.” The words are so cold that you feel a shell of frostbite coat your earlobe. “I expect your greatest performance, Potato. The audience is very bilious tonight.”

Bilious, as in bad-tempered. For a moment, it feels the weight of the world socks you in the ear. That you know too well. Whether they are actually watching through the S.T.Y.X. footage back home or are simply holding up an ear to tomorrow’s whispering grapevine, the audience is upset with you. 

If tonight’s performance does not go well, there will be no more stage for you. The next time you appear to the audience, it will be on your curtain call. You imagine Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) taking a knife to your throat with all the poise of a violinist playing its instrument, the red notes splattered across the leather seats. 

The thought makes you yearn to down the rest of the Pinot. 

Instead, you find an appetizer table to stand by inconspicuously. And though you have already been stricken by the sight (which caused you to even grab a drink!) you glare upwards with a furrowed brow, through the polycarbonate sheets of your swim-goggles, towards the second floor. 

Above the ballroom is a circular platform walkway, connected to the ground by two spiral staircases. Leaning on the golden railing that twists like interlocking peppermint canes, the left hand man of Ashengrotto fiddles with a single drumstick. It propels through his hand like a miniature helicopter blade, spinning effortlessly. Sullen and bored, his eyes flicker all across the ballroom to find a crumb of entertainment. In Floyd’s right ear, Ashengrotto is talking – yet most likely being ignored too. 

His outfit is … juvenile. (the sneer blooming on your face is natural) Unlike the other attendants, the eel-mer is simply dressed in a graphic tee – your HUF graphic tee with Spider-man and Venom on it – and sweats. There is a ketchup or tomato soup or blood stain on your shirt’s collar. A pair of Monty Python bunny slippers peek out from the pooling, gray fabric around his ankles. The ears flop as he squirms back and forth on his feet.

Ashengrotto is dressed much better – an expensive, freshly pressed notch lapel suit of cobalt and swirling violet – but it is still very different from the fool’s play that is happening below them. You survey the crowd wearing rubber fish masks, diving equipment that conceals their faces, and any other variation of deep sea disguises. The ocean tonight is full of sycophants..

Most people think an Ashengrotto masquerade is the zenith of high society. Tabloids have waxed poetry about the ‘nocturnal beauty of a deep sea labyrinth where desires are found in nebulous waves’ and how the masks give ‘a thrilling sense that we are all drowned, wayward souls brought together in harmony under his glorious might’. You know better. That flowery poesy is a mere facade in a game of facades. Ashengrotto likes to throw these masquerades so often because he likes to laugh at others who unquestionably follow his every whim or will.

Schoenheit has informed you that Ashengrotto is a schadenfreude. Not too fluent in German, you asked for the translation. The two jigsaw puzzle words of schaden, which is damage, and fruede, which is joy, connect to make schadenfreude. It means Ashengrotto experiences emotional pleasure at the sight of others misfortune. 

‘There is no better sight to Ashengrotto than the sight of some poor, unfortunate soul begging on their knees at his doorstep. You would do well to remember that, Potato.’

Remember it you shall and you have. One drink is not enough to send you to your knees or make you beg. However, to Schoenheit, sipping a drop of wine tilts the scale in favor of the one-out-of-ten chance of you walking up there, blowing your cover, and smashing the empty glass in Floyd’s face.

Instead of doing that, you ask conversationally, “When was a covenant struck with the Shrouds?” You wish Schoenheit would have more trust in you, but you are well aware you lost that trust. Waiting for an answer, your eyes search the environment for those mentioned cameras.

“When you were out of commission.” 

All of your limbs flinch at that, as if you have just taken a bite of the world’s sourest lemon. “Ah.”

How altruistic of Schoenheit to remind you.

Being out of commission was very unlike you. For five years, you have known Schoenheit; for four, you have worked for him. In that time, sick days were once-in-a-lifetime events. You pride yourself on how effectively you worked because, for three years, you have known Schoenheit’s face and for two years, you had been in the upgraded position from canon-fodder to information recon. 

Then, for one whole year, you had … well, you rather not say. Speaking it would be like swallowing a bouquet of roses but without the petals and solely the thorns. At the very least, you inform Schoenheit on new information, just in case he has not seen it on the cameras, “He’s here, boss.”

“Ah.” At least both of you are dealing with this in stride. After that faint whisper, the earpiece fixated tightly on your snorkel is quiet for a few moments. In that time, you stumble into a memory. 

As the kunai slams into the wall by the door’s opening entrance, emitting a sharp warning bang, you announce to your uninvited guests, “If it’s the mailman, you can leave the package by the grocery bags like normal. If you’re here to stop my heart, someone’s already beat ya to the kill.” With that said, you let your deceased arm drop and fall limp on your mattress. 

“And if it’s your boss?”

Wincing, you respond, “ … ah, I supposed you’re welcome.”

“Thank you,” Schoenheit says primly as you hear your apartment door close. 

Though he says nothing, you can hear Schoenheit’s eyes flickering across each item of a break-up vomited across your single room apartment. Ah, where to even start? The snow white vivisection of the beheaded bear that he made for you at Build-A-Bear? How about the dart board where a handful of porcupine quill darts stick out of a five-tiered photo of you and him squeezed tight in an arcade’s photobooth? Yet, who could neglect to look at the real ruins of the relationship which is you, spread out like a starfish on your bed, eyes raccoon-ed with running mascara and insomnia?

After scrutinizing over the heartbreak hurricane that has torn through the room, Schoenheit starts to make his way over to you. It only takes a second to recognize that he did not come alone. You hear a second pair of shoes. “Oh, mon cher,” Rook says sullenly.

At least you don’t have to turn your head to see who it is. Body comatose in dolor, you cannot be bothered to move an atom of yourself besides the hand that feeds yourself and your bunny a bowl of carrots.

You hear one of your two superiors seat themselves at your bar as Oswald nibbles an orange stalk from your fingers. “How long do you think you have been here?”

“Must be more than a couple days, three?” You put a carrot in your mouth as you wait for the reveal.

“A week and a day,” Schoenheit supplies the answer. Then, he repeats chastising, “A full eight days.” 

“Hm,” you hum, just as acknowledgement to let him know that you heard him. Eight days seems so insignificant. You press another carrot to Oswald’s lips as he takes it in his chattering teeth. As the ebon Havana whittles the vegetable down to nothing, you depress your fingers down onto his fur, feeling the vibrations of his nibbling on your chest. 

Eight days? If you had the energy to scoff, you would be up in Schoenheit’s face with the loudest, most scornful scoff he has ever heard in his life, a scoff that would have the academy sending you home with a performing arts award. 

Eight days is nothing!

Your apartment goes quiet for a beat. Unsure which one has previously sat down at the bar countertop, you listen to the single pair of footsteps that walks around the wreckage. Crunching glass murmurs in the air. Again, you are unsure on whether one of your two superiors has picked up a photograph frame you bludgeon to bits or has accidentally stepped on the skeleton remains of a ceramic plate you two painted downtown at some rickety pottery studio. 

You bloodlet a year worth of your time for him. He left. So, you broke everything that could be a reminder of stolen seconds, minutes, and hours – even though it does not reverse the clock at all – to cement the finiteness. 

No going back: that is what you wanted your destruction to symbolize. You know that is not where your feelings lie. Reversing time is all you want to do. All your love and longing is strapped to you like a huge hiking bag, and you cannot find it in yourself to shoulder off that paralysis-esque weight. Thus, it crushes you, much like how Oswald crushes down on your sternum when he starts to make biscuits. 

“Do you plan to make it nine?”

That rouses you enough where you stop looking at the ceiling and drop your cheek on the right side of the bed. Schoenheit is the one sitting at your bar. Plucked straight from a vogue magazine, your boss looks like Jesus himself with his shoulder-length hair. His halo is the light shining in your set of a dozen, upside down cordial glasses. Like sleeping bats, they hang from your iron mounted, wine glass rack and cover him in evangelical sunshine. Your personal Jesus who came to console you after a break-up. 

“I don’t know,” you verbalize. Moodiness makes you brave. “Why don’t you stay for the next twenty-four hours and find out?” You put another carrot in your mouth, intending to turn back to staring at the ceiling when, “Ew, bunny hair.” You flick your tongue up and down, trying to dislodge the stray black hair. 

Chuckling with a dangerous undertow, Schoenheit says, “I wish I could but I have much better things to do with my time than watch you eat your pet’s hair. Time should not be wasted. I know, Potato, that you can use your time more wisely than this.”

Oswald’s hair finally out of your mouth, you bite back, “No, I’m quite content doing this forever.” This time you take care to brush your fingers on the edge of your shirt to rub off pet fur before you reach back into the bowl. 

“Well, I tried to be gentle about it.”

Oswald is plucked off your lap. You give a noise of protest when the rabbit is handed to Rook. That noise is effectively silenced when a disposable syringe tip is placed on the skin folding over your carotid artery. Not yet pressing it, just a small apply of pressure to remind you of its existence. 

Your slow blink is confronted by the blink of awe that rinses over Schoenheit’s face, thoroughly shocked at your lack of reaction. In the grand scheme of things, eight days truly is nothing. And, in the grand scheme of things, death really is nothing. “I loved him, Schoenheit.” You have no idea what could possibly be in the syringe. Poison made by your boss has made men weighing two hundred plus pounds drop in seconds and has made others dissolve into a bubbling puddle of red. 

Thus, you continue on, bitter and thoroughly hurt, “I loved him like a garden loves the sun and rain. I loved him like a guitar loves making music. I loved him like … oh, I don’t know. More than anything really.”

“The sustenance from a kiss is a fertilizer like no other! From each replenishing embrace, a flower grows in the garth of our hearts! What a beautiful seraphim love is! A free spirited angel of our making! Some might even say finding love is like finding Heaven on Earth! Que c'est beau!”

“You’re not helping.”

“Ah, je suis désolé,” Rook apologizes, switching his energy outlet from an impromptu poetry slam to brushing Oswald’s fur in neat sections.

Schoenheit’s eyes are testy as they regard you. Two rich pools of orchid violet dissect you from the top layer of epidermis down to your bone. You are very curious to what those keen eyes could be seeing in the decrepit, disgraceful state you are in. Is there anything left to salvage from you or are you a lost cause (a potted plant, too withered to revive)?

You flinch when the syringe goes in. It feels like pinching skin between metal. As mysterious fluid flows through your carotid artery, you listen to Schoenheit’s lecture, “He has stolen from me something that was in your possession. Something that I trusted you to keep safe. That I cannot forgive.”

When the syringe is pulled out, you offer nothing more than a wince. You want to be a smartass and ask, no bandage?, but you continue to listen on. “Diligence. Excellence. Relentlessness. Those three values are what Pomefiore is founded upon.” The cap clips over the empty needle of the syringe. “I have full confidence in you that those are memorized in your mind. Yes?” Those orchid lakes seem to grow bottomless and nebulous. Which of the Greek Gods must you never look in the eyes?

Jesus pulls back from your coffin-bed. Oswald is put back on your chest like a bundle of flowers. 

“The heart is flexible. There is always a place to make new love.” 

You have no idea what is in the syringe but you sit up in bed, feeling refreshed like one does after a long shower or long nap. 

After they leave, on your countertop and under the hanging wine glasses is a ticket to Ashengrotto’s upcoming masquerade along with three vials of swirling colors that move like tiny lava lamps of blue, red, and yellow.

“Remind him, Potato.”

So caught up in memory-lane, you startle because who are you supposed to remind? And remind them of what? Jesus (the actual Jesus, not your boss), did a week out of commission really have you in such disarray? 

Yet, you know each intricate circumstance that leaves your nerves so shot. Just like you know exactly where freckle is on his back, the exact hues that blend together to make up the color of his contrasting, gazing eyes, and just like you know the print his teeth leave behind when he bites down. All that information is left in high, extensive detail in the files of your mind. 

Luckily, Schoenheit was only beginning his sentence with Remind him, Potato. You listen to the rest of his words and commit them to memory. “That he is not the only one on the stage. You are there too. On the same stage.”

You inhale a tiny planet of air. Steeling yourself, you take one last glance up to the second floor. The only person who could recognize your face from the casting call of tonight’s performance stands up there, picking his nose with his pinkie like a child. Tonight is just: him, you, and this wire.

The objective of tonight – in order to proceed to the main objective – is to find someone to inject with a syringe. 

You have exactly three. Blue, red, and yellow. Three plastic vials that are hidden in a pocket professionally stitched inside the inner wrist of your suit. Nestled together like newborn bunnies nursing, they lie in that pocket and await the moment you take out the needle from your boutonnière. 

It is an impossible task to bypass security into an Ashengrotto masquerade. Without fail, guests are scanned down for metal lingering on their bodies. Thus, creative liberties need to be taken to complete Schoenheit’s wish. Underneath the rose pinned on your suit are three needles. They blend together with the metal found in a boutonnière, and that disguise allows you to perform on stage. 

A brief [Aside], they also do not check shoes here with their metal scanners.

Each vial has a different job for tonight. Blue, red, and yellow. All your primaries gathered together underneath the veins on your non-dominant wrist. 

If injected, blue will cause a seizure unlike the likes anyone has seen before, causing bones to climb into directions thought impossible of anatomy as the victim crawls upward for heavenly salvation. If injected, red will cause the punctured spot to dissolve, flesh dripping away to reveal bone that falls away like a melted jar of sugar. If injected, yellow will cause any wounds to heal, reversing all damage no matter how grotesque or twisted out of proportion. 

The best thing about them is there is no need for a syringe. As soon as the needle pierces something, the liquid is pulled out of the plastic by its own fate. Right now, you look around for a masked individual (anyone besides Ashengrotto and Floyd)  to empty the blue one into.

It has to be a distraction of magnetic caliber. Everyone’s focus needs to be pulled, even those of the most insignificant waiter to Ashengrotto himself. No matter what, it has to be compelling and spellbinding.

Which is why you chose a man wearing a diver’s helmet. So when his Herculean head inevitably falls, it will cause a loud clank! that is heard all the way from the second floor. 

It is why your conspiracy starts off delicate; the femme/homme fatale simply spreading out their influence in subtle ways. You only know you had him ensnared in your web when the arm you are running a hand upon relaxes, his previous flinch and tension melting like a peppermint in the mouth. You flutter your eyelashes at him from behind your goggles.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you; I was simply hoping to get the hors d'oeuvre in front of you.” You retract your hand but not without giving his elbow a teasing squeeze.

It is difficult to deduct any sort of thought from the impenetrability of his costume. Sealed away by blue-rusted brown copper, his ‘face’ is a tenebrous ebony with the words Anchor Engineering, 1913 as his temple and then as his chin. Unperturbed, you stare lovingly into the cold, lifeless circle. 

He side-steps but does not leave. That’s good. As you masterfully pluck a shrimp square off the lazy susan, you make sure to turn your victim. Act uninterested in the food. Look at him as if he is your next meal. 

“They always serve such extravagant, authentic seafood here. It feels as if I am truly dipping my hand into the Coral Sea and reeling in my meal from those very waters. Don’t you agree?”

The helmet sways up and down in a slow nod. His body underneath is like a statue.

You take half a bite of the shrimp square. It is an explosion of flavor; the bread, sauce, and meat combines into one sophisticated umami that excites your tastebuds. When you finish chewing, actually genuinely pleased with your bite, you hum out, “köstlich!”

And whatever fleeting interest this stranger has with you is amplified, if only by a slim margin. That flat black circle that reminds you of a bottomless fishing hole in northern ice tilts, curious at your words. A smile graces your face. 

“Do you speak any German?” The helmet goes back and forth in a negative response. “I’ve picked up a bit of German in my teens. A beautiful language. Köslitch, a pretty word, no?”

His body language is poised with interest. Thank Jesus, he must think you are something exotic and seductive. That intrigue will solidify his fate. “In German, it has a double meaning.”

You finish your shrimp then continue, “It means both funny and delicious. You would call a certain snack köslitch in the same way you would call someone that makes you laugh köslitch. I think,” — Here, you grab his hand. It is ungloved and a bit coarse. Meaty in your slim hand. Gingerly, you pull his hand up towards your mouth, making sure your breath hits across each of his knuckles — “, that you could fit both meanings.”

Then, mimicking a centipede with sharp pincers, you bite hard upon his index finger. And, with both hands cradling his single hand, you slip the needle piercing the blue vial into his exposed wrist. A crescent mark of teeth lingers on the top notch of his finger.

“I’ve always had this secret yen for funny guys.” The black hole leans forward, intense. “Meet me in the bathroom on the second floor in ten minutes.”

Yet, walking away, you know the diver only has five minutes of oxygen left in his tank. 

“Ya never had a burger?”

Even though, yes, you did just previously confirm that, Floyd’s awestruck words leave you wide-eyed. You are in disbelief over how … in disbelief he sounds! Lips on his cheek, lipstick-staining activity halting momentarily, you ask, “Is it really that hard to believe?”

“It’s almost impossible to believe!”

You chuckle with a dumb grin. Used to his dime-flipping moods, you lean in to continue peppering his face with kisses. Arms already around his neck, you pull him just a few more centimeters down so you speak into his ear. “Well, we just gonna have to order one after we fuuuck.”

Despite the chuffing link you have with your arms around his neck and with your legs around his waist – your crotch rubbing eagerly and teasingly up against his! – Floyd pulls back from you. It is almost comedical the look of sheer devastation of his lipstick polka-dotted face; would be too if you were not so astronomically horny. “Never? Like never never?”

Oh God, this is going to be a whole thing. “I don’t know. Maybe as a kid? Come here.” You tighten your legs around his waist when he tries to pull himself up from your apartment’s bed. Doubling down, you fasten your pace a bit when grinding down upon his crotch, feeling the familiar shape of his penis in his sweats moving against you so nicely. “Forget burgers. I want a different kind of meat.”

“I can’t just forget something like that! Who the hell grows up without eatin’ a burger!” 

How you desperately wish to reverse time when his steadyfast words reach your ears. There is a determined fixation in his voice. You let your arms fall by your head as Floyd’s hands squeeze your ass; he’s now no longer reciprocating in your grinding. Putting on your best pouting face like a young actor desperate for the role, you whine, “If I knew you were going to be like this, I would have said yes.”

“But seriously, how have ya not?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t something my parents made and now I’m on this caloric diet that has me eating whole foods.”

“A hamburger is a whole food. It’s a whole cow.”

“Ugh, I don’t know! Can we please have sex!” 

You throw your head back in exasperation. Legs fall down by your side. Floyd had the munchies after coming back from your bowling date, so you thought it would be nice to brainstorm aftercare options for dinner together  — ping-ponging between the idea of ordering takeout or going somewhere. Curse you and your big, dumb mouth. 

“Nope! We’re goin’ out again!” 

Just like that, he is skirting around your apartment to pick up the graphic tee he shucked off. His Neckface dunks are already hooked on the edge of his fingers when you sit up, readjusting your wrinkled shirt. You need to fix your cosmetics. However, when your hand falls around the oyster-shell of your compact mirror, your other hand is grabbed.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Floyd cheers, half-dragging you to the door. He is ignorant to your distress as the compact-mirror slips from your grip, soap-esque. “Me and my brother used to go to this place all the time. They do this whole burger of the week thing; it’s like pun-based burgers. My brother kept going back for the jokes, but I just think the grub’s good. You’ll love them! The owner’s super nice and I met his wife and kids –!”

“Floyd.” Your feet digging into the carpet finally grabs his attention. His face is equivalent to a giant question mark. “I need to check my face.”

The blank look on his face is wiped by him moving his dual-colored eyes up and down, surveying the area. His reply is genuine. “Looks fine to me, babe.” A mischievous gleam comes to his irises as he chuckles, “It’s a real sexy face. Even sexier when it’s moanin’ my name.”

Hope flares up in you. Maybe, just maybe, you can drag him back to the bed. 

“Yeah, baby?” You slur huskily before pulling him into a deep kiss. 

Floyd always kisses well. Somewhere in the middle of it, he spins you. Towards the bed? Hope is dashed when you hear the click of your apartment door, realizing you two are on the opposite side of it. Your boyfriend giggles the entire way down to the lobby, having successfully duped you.

The burger joint is built like a tiny house or a big shed, depending on how you view its humble spot in the universe. With the sun starting to set, the owners have powered on the string of lights crawling like a march of ants across the tiny house’s soffit. The unique footprint of Floyd’s car engine is already recognized before you enter. And, when you are seated, the waitress already knows not to ask for Floyd’s order (“He won’t order anythin’. Just trusts the slobs in the back to bring him something good.”) and the waiter claps him so hard on the shoulder you are afraid Floyd’s thin frame would break (“Haven’t seen you in a whole month! Where you been?” – here, the waiter stops and looks at you – “… and you are trying to hide things from us now?”). The energy is so light that you cannot stop yourself from leaning over your shared appetizer, waffle fries. 

“You failed to mention you're a local celebrity here, you know? Warn a girl/boy before you bring them to somewhere where they’re rolling out the proverbial red carpet for them” you say, fishing a fry out of the greasy basket. You really should have done your face.

“What,” unlike you, Floyd talks with his mouth half full of words and the other half full of food, “everyone here is super lowkey.” 

“I think the entire world is lowkey from your perspective.” You dot your sentence by dipping the waffle fry in the shared ketchup. “I feel like everyone is dissecting me.”

Floyd looks back again at the bar where everyone seems to be oblivious to your conversation, so deep and entangled in their own. “Nah, I don’t feel it.” And before you can refute, Floyd reaches over and bumps your chin with his finger, causing you to miss your bite. Your worry is forgotten as you dabbing your face with a napkin, laughing threats about taking the entire basket if he plays dirty with his food anymore.

At an appropriate time, your food arrives from the kitchen. It is set down on the table and this time, instead of Floyd’s shoulder being clapped, his hair is ruffled. Juice spills over the edge of the lower bun, soaking into the yeast. The bun seems to radiate its own heat as you pick up your burger – Knife to Meet You Burger (comes with thinly sliced beets) – and bring it towards your mouth.

“You eat with your pinkies up?”

Lower jaw still hanging open, you glance at Floyd. He has already taken two large bites of his burger, a ketchup mustache decorating his face. My, he really does not care about his appearance. “Hmmm?” You look down to see that your pinkies are in fact raised like two little horns.

A laugh comes out of your mouth. It has been ages since you’ve eaten finger food other than fries or maybe some whole wheat crackers. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Floyd smiles, fond. “Cute.”

The clang as metal helmet meets ground sends a shockwave through the masquerade. A woman shrieks; when a man starts to yell out if anyone shrouded in mysterious masks might just be a doctor by chance, you make your way up the stairs.

It won’t take you long to decipher the code. The potion Schoenheit gave you yesterday heightened your senses. Hearing each click of a correct turn on the safe’s dial will be easy. Like how elevated your sight and smell are, there is a certain air about you. 

Despite the entire prologue, you feel good. Heartbreak might be the costume cemented upon you in this masquerading parade but you are still capable. Pomefiore’s disciples always seek to be their best.

As you slip into Ashengrotto’s bedroom like a breeze, removing your snorkel, you forget in your joy of elevated sensations how your own heavy scent carries on the wind. 

Just as the safe opens, the door to Ashengrotto’s bedroom opens. 

It is a bit hard to shoulder your apartment door open with arms full of groceries, five ringlets of plastic hanging on for dear life on each of your forearms, but you still manage to do it. 

Today, the click of the door seems a smidgen louder than normal. It is probably because of how you need to use your spine and hip to push open the wooden slab. Blissfully unaware your key did not manage to unlock the door on the first try like you thought, you rotate yourself so you walk into your small apartment chest first. 

You would have flicked on the lights if you did not spot movement in a place that is definitely not where your bunny cage is. Five grocery bags sliding off your right arm, you hold out your second kunai, pinched in your hand. 

The first kunai you throw lands a few centimeters from the man who is crouching down by your slide-open closet door, piercing the birch wood. 

You take care to put down the groceries bags on your left arm. You have lettuce, eggs, and bananas in those. Hand still aimed, the point of the kunai trained straight at the spot where the intruder is, you take your non-dominant hand and turn on the lights. 

“Floyd?”

Standing up – the files detailing Schoenheit’s jury tampering where two of Kingscholar’s men were killed by Schoenheit’s men and then the failed narcotics conspiracy sentence to imprison one of Ashengrotto’s men (files that could get Schoenheit arrested in the wrong hands (his) and files that could get Ashengrotto arrested in the right hands (your boss’s)) in his dominant left hand – Floyd gives you a fleeting once over. He looks as if all of your time spent together was erased from his memory. As if he has successfully forgotten it.

“It’s nothing personal, Shrimpy. Just business.”

The door of Ashengrotto’s bedroom fully opens and knocks you back into the present.

He looks handsome. 

To be fair, his face has always looked handsome. He has looked handsome curling into your blankets, hair unbrushed and laughing. He has looked handsome picking you up in his car, cheek soft and squished on his steering wheel. He has looked handsome eating a burger with you, face dotted with a melange of sauce and crumbs. He looks handsome, staring down at you now. 

Shock – in the terms of upsetting events that surprise you like a deer in highlights – is something Schoenheit has trained out of your system. The only man who does not act is a dead man. So, when you launch yourself to your feet, you fully anticipate getting the first punch in.

Only to be caught so off guard when your ex-boyfriend cuffs both your wrists in one large hand and sends your face reeling back in whiplash due to the connecting embrace his other hand delivers. 

It feels like a spider blooming. That animal is all you can use to describe the sensation of being punched. The egg-shaped body of the arthropod is the spot where the nose lands – directly on your nose – and the spreading flame of pain is like a thousand legs stretching over your face.

A teardrop trails down the heated surface of your face as you gather your bearings. Or is it blood from a nostril? You cannot check the color of the watery drop because Floyd still has your two wrists prisoner in his single hand. With a grimace and hateful eyes, you turn so you may face him. Gaze upon his handsome face and deem it ugly. 

“Shit. I didn’t mean ta hit ya that hard.” The whiplash you are receiving tonight is like a rollercoaster! Full of so many ups and downs, just like you would expect of Floyd. Still, you cannot help the look of pure dumb shock that paints itself over your face as you are suddenly fussed over. 

When the hand that punched you tenderly touches your broken nose, you reel back with a growl.

“Get your hands off me!”

The files are still in your hand when you pull back. Like a magnetized magnet, Floyd follows in your desperate attempt to escape the bind he has upon you. You waste no time in clicking your heels, gaining an extra inch under your left sole. If that idiot won’t let go, you’ll force it. Left soles now sprouting a field of spikes, you bring your foot up and kick him hard in the abdomen.

Floyd falls back. The papers rustle. The click of your heels is like the tongue of a dragon sparking up a breath of fire. As his footing stumbles, you kick up and cut a long slash across his cheek and down to his lips with the knife sticking out the top of your right sole. 

“Shit,” Floyd shouts as his body collides and closes the door. 

When you pull your fingertips back from your face, you see that the drop from earlier was certainly blood.

Then, for a moment, you and Floyd observe each other. Intensely, both of your eyes take to tracking over the features previously known so intimately. Your eyes squint with so much vitriol that Floyd almost blurs in your vision. But, you are eating up the gourmet image of him, blood curling down the left side of his face much like the black strand curls down his right.

He smiles that familiar smile. “Hi, Shrimpy-baby.”

“...”

“Ya know, I never told ya this, but I always had this secret yen for the feisty ones.”

“Don’t spew that shit at me, you asshole.”

What a wicked game he played with you. To burrow into your life like a plump, devouring mite that took to digging deeper into the soil of your garden. A year of love is too convoluted of a scheme for a man of his ever-changing disposition to do, yet he did it. In doing so, he has destroyed your belief in the very concept of love. 

This time around, you are much more unsure if the drop falling down your face is a tear or blood. 

“Ya … You smell the same.” Confusion flickers over your face, so Floyd continues, “Didn’t think you’d be wearin’ the same perfume. Was almost positive I wouldn’t smell it again. Shit stinks.”

My, what a compliment. Like a practiced magician, you go to pull a syringe out from underneath your cufflink when surprise paralyzes you. Cheekbones burns as Floyd perfectly recites the French name – you distantly him saying how much he hated that language – of your perfume. 

“Comme Des Garçons Avignon.” Then he names the top notes. “Smells like Roman chamomile, elemi, and incense.” Then he finishes off with, “Ya spray like twelve puffs on yourself. And ya always make sure to get in on your inner wrist before rubbin’ it into your neck.”

“There’s something evil in you.” Disgust coats your tongue as you shake your head back and forth. Why can’t he just vanish off the face of the earth? Or at least walk back into the masquerade so you can finish your job. 

You cannot face the ugly truth that you still love him.

Floyd’s eyes flicker down to the ground … or perhaps only to analyze the files in your hand. All the same, a shadow falls over his features. It reminds you of each time his body shut down when emotions got too big, resemblant of powering off electronics. His next words are less confident than how he described your habits and perfume in detail. Whispering, he insists, “You should be in my life.”

What is he talking about? Your head continues shaking, almost stuck in that action. You were in his life. Both of you were so intimately entangled with one another’s life. That sentiment is now completely unrealistic; this cavern between you will never heal. 

“I hate you,” you whisper, just before closing the distance. 

There is a foreign sentiment you know pretty well despite the language gap. Bilingual because of Schoenheit and his right hand man, you pick up French and German much like how a child picks up alluring shells on the shoreline. You carry them in the pail of your brain. Naturally, you cannot stop one from floating to the surface as pallid plaster coats your knuckles.

Qui aime bien, châtie bien. Who loves well, punishes well. 

In its original meaning, it relates to the idea that as your love grows older, you become well versed in teasing. More comfortable in your aging relationship, certain barriers fall away from the heart. The nautilus shell falls away to reveal the soft, vulnerable body of slime. Teasing happens. Tough love is natural. Right now though, as your hand clenched around a syringe falls in a diagonal arch, you use the proverb in a much more literal way.

The popcorn wall dissolves under administration of the liquid. Red churns in the tube before magical magnetism pulls into the area of injection. Floyd ducks out of way just in time and makes a grab for the hand holding the files.

TITLE: THE TEXT MESSAGE ‘IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU’

INT. ASHENGROTTO’S BEDROOM

OPEN on two people fighting. One holds a stack of papers large enough to be a dictionary. The other is trying half-heartedly to steal those files back, but is mostly fixated on avoiding the onslaught of punches falling in his direction. The shuffle is a violent dance. Punches are thrown and dodged. Some connect and others miss. The only sound is the huff of measured breaths, exhaling when either FLOYD or YOU attack on offense. 

The room is full of three main objects; a safe, a bed, and a dresser underneath a large mirror. 

FLOYD. 

(exuberantly) 

You’ve been holdin’ back on me. I didn’t know you could fight like this.

YOU. 

…

FLOYD.

C’mon, Shrimpy, don’t be like that. Woah!

YOU

Do you ever shut up?

FLOYD. 

I’d like it if you made me. Aren’t little spiders supposed to neutralize their prey with venom?

YOU.

Aren’t little eels supposed to bite their prey with teeth? … Did it feel good? Building me up to tear me down?

FLOYD.

It was just business. It had nothing ta do with us.

A punch connects with the side of FLOYD’s face. As he stumbles, a swinging leg sends his torso falling onto the dresser. It rattles like a hundred bones in a coffin shakened like a child’s birthday present. 

YOU. 

(voice raising)

Don’t lie again. I’m sick of being lied to by you!

FLOYD.

I never lied to you. I haven’t been lyin’ about a thing. It’s not fair that Vil gets to have ya.

YOU keep throwing punches, ignoring his words. 

FLOYD, growing increasingly aggravated, abandons his position of defense. He pulls YOU in by the lapels of your suit, hoisting them up by sheer strength and slams them into the mirror above the dresser. Papers fall like autumn leaves and glass falls like snowflakes. Seen subtly behind them, a trail of blood coming from their pierced shoulders, rolling down the dresser’s side like one stretching snake of sanguine. 

YOU twist yet are unable to escape the grasp.

FLOYD narrows his gold and olive brown eyes.

FLOYD. (CONT.)

I know everything about ya. I know ya can’t blow a bubble with gum. I know each mole and freckle on ya. And I know no matter how hard you try, your pinkies always go up when you eat a burger! So, you shouldn’t be with a lover who doesn’t know ya. Give him up. I can put in a good word with Azul; we could be back to how we used to be. It’s not fair that Vil gets to have you! I should have ya!

YOU

(shaking their head and laughing, haggard)

You don’t get to have me. – No-Not after what you did. 

FLOYD

(angry)

You should be in my space! You should be in my life!

THE fight continues. A sharp sound much like a tongue clicking inside a mouth startles the audience. YOU press the left sole of their shoe into FLOYD’s abdomen and push back as hard as they can. A pained shout bleeds out his mouth. YOU, stumbling from the glass that managed to sink through their suit and into skin, goes to punch yet is blocked. 

WITH a rough tug on YOU’s biceps, FLOYD pushes them both down to the ground. Pain flares across their back like one crashing wave. EXIT SCENE.

“Kiss me. Kiss me,” he pleads, his fingers digging so harshly into your skin that bruises will be there tomorrow. His voice is turbulent with so many emotions. “Just one. Just kiss me again.”

Fist enclosed on his shirt’s sternum, you push against him and try to rebuild the distance between you two. “Get off! Get off me, you psycho!” Each time he attempts to close the gap, you violently twist your lips away. Your body squirms like a desperate fly caught in a web. His lips collide with the corner of your lip and chin. You push back as hard as you can. “Get off me right – fucking! Floyd!”

The hands that left tomorrow’s bruises on your upper arms move to grip your writhing, wrinkled in anger face. He holds you still with tremendous strength, eye to eye. Each atom of your skull shakes with frustration. Gritted teeth almost seem to vibrate in your mouth. Despite your desperation to tear away and flee, Floyd keeps you pinned.

“I love you so much,” he confesses, dual-colored eyes brimming over. Emotion crinkles his voice. You want to scoff at his well-improvised act.

The scoff lands in Floyd’s mouth as he pulls you into a perilous kiss. Teeth act like iron gates. Closing him off from your love, you try to use each component of yourself to escape. Knees and fists curl up and push him away with fruitless strength. Nose wrinkles as if you smelt something horrid. When he tries to French-kiss you, you take the hand shoving at his chest to wrap your hand around his throat. A thumb presses hard in his trachea.

Floyd pulls back immediately, hacking and his spit flying through the air. There, you think, is your opening for freedom. 

Your body rolls onto its side. You only get a shuffling inch or so away from him before he is laughing jubilantly, teeth gleaming in his mouth – Like he used to laugh at comedy shows, playing on your shitbox CRT, or like he used to laugh when breaking out into an impromptu dance, playing music and heartstrings in your kitchen. – “That’s my Shrimpy. Oh, I love you!” 

Your fruitless escape is squashed as Floyd pulls you back into another kiss. This time he manages to slip his mouth past those iron gates.

According to songs, sparks fly when a kiss happens. In this moment, you feel like those sparks are not from joyous, amorous fireworks but a hundred plane engines blowing their transmission. Screaming into his mouth, you pull back so hard that your head splinters a crack into the wooden dresser behind you.

Floyd’s hands protectively cradle the back of your head after that. He rotates his body so his weight smothers. Your rotated body is once more flatten like a pancake. Lying by the dresser, you kiss – well, he kisses you. You are actively still fighting against it.

Curses and potions, you know them well. They are frequently used in your work. It is not unheard of to utilize ancient, outdated methods of magic to gain an upper hand in this dangerous tango of organized crime. Just like the Shrouds excel in technology, the Schoenheits excel in potions and curses. No matter how many charms cloaked over objects or potions brewed inside bubbling cauldrons, you have never been under a curse or tasted a potion more dangerous than love. It is the most potent, poisonous curse.

A wet drop falling from Floyd’s face falls on your cheek; tear or blood, who can tell? The next motion you make, you blame it upon the brain damage you sustained when knocking your head into the dresser’s bottom leg. 

As you grab his hair and open those iron gates, you think, ‘Sorry Schoenheit.’

Slobbering into his mouth, like you are trying to fuse together, you explore the cave. Finding the familiar stalagmites of teeth and the moss spot where his canker sore from too many bedtime sodas or snacks laced with salt and vinegar. Teal hair is pulled at the root and your embrace feels more like a hook than a hand, yet Floyd still launches into the kiss with relief and excitement. 

He is an everlasting object of motion. Unstoppable and breaking laws of psychics. He pushes his tongue further in, entwines it with yours. Each pressure point of contact is seductively bewitching. Floyd lets out a long, stretching groan like a widow mourning. The sound reverbs in the grottos of your interlocked mouths.

Hands flurry about in wild motion. You open up your legs and hold him pelvis to pelvis. His hands do not stop running up and down frantically from shoulders to waist. It is only because of this endless stream of movement that Floyd does not notice when you draw a Z across the back of his skull. 

Pulling back from the kiss, you say a single word with closed eyes, “Somnum.”

Floyd’s own eyes fall shut and his body goes limp. 

Like pushing away fallen rumble, you discard Floyd’s body to the side and bring yourself up to sitting on your knees. A shaky groan exits you. Fingers trembling from adrenaline, you smooth the pads of them over your nose – it is definitely broken – over your back – the material is wet with blood – and over your bottom lip – it radiates a soft heat. Ducking your head, you sigh.

Bewitched Sleep is one of the least complex curses. Just a simple swish of a finger writing a Z and a single Latin word, the chosen victim will fall under a temporary spell of sleep. Those guarded enough will be able to resist it though; casting a glance over at Floyd’s slumbering body, you reflect upon the notion that his iron gates must have been open the entire fight.  

A glare passes over your face. It melts. Then, it comes back again stronger than before. “Such an asshole.” You bite at the air and push yourself up to your feet. One last time, you knock your heels together and the spikes underneath your left sole disappear. “You’re the most convincing actor of all, Floyd.”

It takes a while to gather up the mess of papers, shaking the glass off certain pages. Still, you pile them all back into the folder and check that none had swooped underneath the bed or dresser. As you go about collecting all the pages, you also pick up the snorkel you left by the safe. Holding it up to your ear, you say, “Have Epel send the car around to the back.”

It takes a while to receive an answer and, even when you do, the snorkel is held in your hand rather than by your ear so it is a very muffled answer. “Good work, Potato.” The praise feels empty as you stare down at Floyd’s body sleeping in a bed of glass.

He is not your problem anymore. He is not yours. Yet, it was only nine days ago that he meant everything to you and he had been yours. Just because it is over, that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything.

Like a sinking stone, your acid-coated heart makes itself a little elevator ride down to your stomach. 

“Fuck,” you whisper before fastening your snorkel back on your face. “I’m ridiculous.”

So, ridiculously, you find yourself hooking your hands under Floyd’s armpits. Dead-esque, his head slumps forward on a limp neck. It reminds you of those nights, coming home to the apartment from the bar, each of you shouldering the other’s weight. Experienced with it, it is a fluid effort and getting Floyd on Ashengrotto’s bed is no trouble. 

You shake the files in your hand. You stomp your feet to make sure each blade is inside the sole. Then, you go to leave?

Ridiculously, you find that your feet are hesitating. Shuffling indecisively on the carpet. Heavy as if cement has been poured in them. The window is only a matter of a dozen steps away yet you might as well be trying to trudge through glutinous quicksand towards a whole other planet.

Once more, your intelligent mentor’s voice rains down from the Heavens with his oh so introspective words of wisdom (this time imaginary). “Honey, ditch that loser,” Jesus-Schoenheit says.

‘Oh I wish I could. I really wish I could,’ you bemoan to the fake voice of your boss, face pinched in a grimace. As you turn around, you start to dig around in your slacks pockets. 

‘I should have that pen somewhere.’ Shoving the files under your armpit, fingers flutter through the snow fields of lint at the bottom of each pocket. Where is that stupid pen? You know you were carrying a permanent tattoo marker. If you had to make a run for it after getting the codes but before opening the safe, you brought along the writing utensil so you could mark down the numbers on the length of your arm … that is, if you can find it.

A breath of relief escapes you. Uncapping the pen, you take a short moment to observe comatose Floyd. Even with his clothes elongated and stretched from your hateful hands and his skin drenched in sweat and sanguine, he rivals the very concept of beauty. Individuals favored by Aphrodite, actors or actresses with faces that belong immortalized in marble, and a blond Queen who seduces men and women with a poisonous potency: these are the type of people you surround yourself with daily. Yet, all of them look hideous in comparison to Floyd who sleeps with a slightly parted mouth and tacky blood streaming down his face. How has he warped your vision so grandly?

Upset, you force your eyes to fall away from his mesmeric features and move down to his waistline. Most of your graphic tee is untucked like normal so you have little problem with wrestling his shirt above his belly button. On his navel, above the dusting of black hair, you place the tip of the marker. 

In quick yet eligible swirls, you write down your new phone number across Floyd’s V-line. A twisty six forms, an eight loops side to side, a soldier-straight one is born. You punctuate it all with a sharp dot, imagining that your very innocent pen is a dangerous knife. The stab of ink hits him so hard that he coughs in his sleep, pained. 

God, you want to make him feel so much more pain than that. 

Capping your marker, you pull down his shirt and pull the files from the crook of your armpit. Rereading the document’s identification, you feel just a tiny spritz of your frustration dissolve inside of you. The job is complete. Despite everyone back home thinking you would be a loose canon and fail tremendously, you manage to succeed. 

Yes, your nose will have to be snapped back into place. And, you doubt Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) will be gentle with the whole procedure. But, at least you did not run into Ashengrotto which you consider a huge, jackpot-esque win of a night full of many ups and downs, and much lack of faith from homebase.

The door clicks open just as you reach up to your ear. Startled, your fingers depress down on the still intact communication device, sending your desolate “fucking shit” out on radio waves back to that beloved homebase.

“(Name)? (Name), what’s wrong?” Schoenheit’s voice worries in your ear as you and Ashengrotto lock eyes across his wrecked, demolished bedroom. The absolute puzzlement in those blue eyes would be amusing if only you did not know the octopus’s exact next move.

“How close is Epel?”

“He’s only one block away from your location.”

“Yeah, I got enough time.”

“Potato?”

“I’m jumping out the window,” you inform your boss just as Ashengrotto unclips the gun from his belt. Confusion has long since drained from those blueberry hues; just as hesitation has vanished magically from your feet. “Tell Epel, proceed as planned, meet me at the spot.”

“Potato! Don’t you dare jump through a window! (Name)? (Name)!”

You have a nagging suspicion that Rook (under Schoenheit’s instructions) will not be gentle when taking the glass out of your skin. It matters very little to you as the wall by your head coughs out a dusting of white plaster. A decorative new eye in Ashengrotto’s bedroom wall is just another damage left behind in the mess you have made. Something else matters much more.

There has been a dormant craving in you for disgustingly greasy food for days.

That said, you need to keep your calories in check so you could definitely use some company to reach over the sticky table and paw at your share of food. The burger of the week at yours and Floyd’s self-established ‘joint’ is Poutine on the Ritz Burger. Comes with poutine fries. Probably will put a yellow, waxy clot of cholesterol in your veins. As you leap from the window, you can already picture it perfectly. 

Floyd, sitting across the table from you, licking gravy from his fingers, his shark maw gnashing back and forth noisily as he grinds down cheese curds and potatoes from your fries, looking as irresistible as a hung Da Vinci portrait. 

[novy2sirius]

Hii, novy! Hope you're having a lovely day 💖. Just saw in one of your observations the fact that some master numbers are actually soulless, so now as a life path 22 I am slightly concerned lol. If not a problem, could you please expand on it?

Thank you so much in advance ☺️

indications someone is soulless

☾⊹₊ ⋆ having an almost perfect life no matter what shitty things they do to people. no negative karma can come back to someone who has no soul

☾⊹₊ ⋆ having no loyalty or honor toward anyone

☾⊹₊ ⋆ no yearning to learn more about what’s beyond earth and their life here

☾⊹₊ ⋆ constantly drains the energy of others

☾⊹₊ ⋆ close minded and makes fun of people interested in the occult and astrology, tarot, numerology, etc

☾⊹₊ ⋆ easily persuaded by the media and believes every single thing they say

☾⊹₊ ⋆ basing life on their appearance alone and not caring about anything else

☾⊹₊ ⋆ wearing red more than other colors and all the time (not always but can be a sign they’re stuck in that root chakra energy)

☾⊹₊ ⋆ having empty eyes

☾⊹₊ ⋆ bullies or used to bully people really bad

☾⊹₊ ⋆ angry about everything and has a lack of care for others feelings

☾⊹₊ ⋆ very hypocritical or narcissistic

☾⊹₊ ⋆ cares too much about materialistic things (unless they’re a life path 4, 8, 24, or 28 because that’s their mission in this life)

some context: i believe the world is a matrix (if u have ever seen the matrix movie it will make more sense), so this is all my personal opinion. yes i do believe there is ppl walking around soulless almost like “bots” (like a non player character in a game). there’s just some ppl who u meet that u rly feel like just suck the life out of u and seem like they’re missing an aura. i think those ppl have no soul. u can quite literally see it in their eyes. i do not think all master numbers have no soul (as someone who has master number energy), but there definitely is quite a few who don’t. no one has to agree with this theory of course. most ppl that r soulless actually will be completely close minded to things like this or involving the matrix, so i expect ppl that r to make fun of this post which is fine just don’t spam my comments with “jesus gave everyone a soul”. u have the right to believe that of course but i don’t. i believe the universe is more complex than just heaven and hell and earth. i do believe there’s a higher power but that whoever it is isn’t in complete control of our world. i think a darker energy is bc our world is too low vibrational for the higher power, but i do believe that we have access to this higher power within ourselves and can become more high vibrational if we so choose to

read this note: having only one of these doesn’t guarantee someone’s soulless. they’d have to have multiple. also know that ANYONE in ur life can be soulless. even ur family or friends

to starinbloom: if ur open to the idea that ppl r soulless ur most likely not soulless

[juuuulez]

more lip x carmy x reader smut……. consider it not a direct prequel to this piece, but definitely in the same universe.. the start of their shenanigans perhaps.

so lip is your roommate: maybe you’ve managed to wrangle him into moving to a nicer area, someone safer than the south of chicago. it’s got tons of nice restaurants, you tell him! the nightlife is buzzing, public transport is (a little) cleaner, and it’s not even that far from home.

and he comes out of convenience, not because you two are anything special. he’s made that very clear. sure, you fuck around sometimes, and lip goes out of his way to make sure you’re always happy and satisfied and safe, but he’s very apparent about one fact:

lip gallagher does not do relationships.

not with you, not with anyone.

and yet, as he brings home a new girl every second night, you find yourself becoming increasingly annoyed. it was obnoxious, at this point.

the banging of his bed frame against the very thin walls, the clothes you’ll find scattered in the living room. when his fuck of the week comes out for coffee, half naked and clad in one of his shirts.

it pisses you off.

so, you decide it’s time for a little revenge.

it’s fair game, because in your mind, he started it. the plan is to find a guy, someone good looking, ideally, and have the loudest fuck of your life.

you find this man in a bar, somewhere dark with the music not too loud, just enough alcohol in your bloodstream to convince yourself this is a good idea.

tall, chiselled face, strong jaw… spiky hair…. and oh.

someone else catches your eye.

you think it’s lip, for a moment. that he’s predicted your plan and has come to squash it.

except it’s not lip.

his hair is long and curly, reminding you of lip’s from when he was younger, just a little more wild. it makes you yearn for the feeling of it between your fingers, a sorely missed sensation given that now lip insists on the buzz cut.

doesn’t matter, focus!

long story short, you manage to lure this mystery man off, with not more than some batted lashes and a sweet smile. you’d really been expecting more of a fight. regardless, it’s a win.

his name is carmy. so cute. you find it ironic that this guy has a clear aversion towards just using his actual name. and who does that remind you of?

the door closes with a slam, rattling the keys attached to the wall. “shh—” carmy whispers inbetween sloppy kisses, his hands settled on your waist as you tug him further down the hall. “don’t y’have roomates?” he asks.

“roommate, singular.” you mumble against his lips, fingers already working at the thin black tie he’s wearing.

it gets thrown to the floor, along with carmy’s jacket, and your heels. his hands find your thighs, pushing up the material of your dress, fingers hooking into the band of sheer stockings. his mouth finds your neck, mouthing hot and wet against the skin, your hand tugging at his curls.

it ends with your back pressed into the counter, the corner digging in uncomfortably, but that doesn’t matter. as far as a revenge fuck goes, you’re getting lost in the feeling, carmy’s eager hand coming up to cup your clothed cunt.

“fuck.” he grunts into your neck, grinding down against your hip. you wind a hand around to his belt loops, giving a firm tug that only presses his bulge flush with your form.

“jesus fucking christ, are you serious?”

lip squeezes his eyes shut the second he walks through the door, not wanting to see some fucking random rutting against you. there’s a grocery bag in his hand, the plastic crinkling as he tosses it towards the counter blindly, eyes still shut.

the intrusion causes carmy to recoil, his hands moving away from your body like he’d been burnt. a deep red flush comes to his face, made worse as your prying fingers persist, worming their way underneath his dress pants.

“i am serious,” you coo, looking over at lip. “this is my new friend carmy. say hello, carmy.”

“wha— what are you doing?” carmy can only squeak out, this strange mix of embarrassment and arousal thudding through his veins.

your free hand, the one not in his pants, finds the sides of his face, pinching his cheeks between your fingers. you use the grip to tilt his head, making carmy look across at lip.

and.. oh yeah, it’s starting to click now.

because, holy shit, carmy has one thought in his mind: is that me?

well, that thought, and also holy shit, her hand is still on my dick.

and lip’s going through a similar thought process, albeit with more anger, the familiar emotion stirring in his gut and overriding any of that initial confusion, because he knows you, and he knows this is some sick shit you’ve masterminded.

“bedroom, now.” he gets out, voice low and serious and commanding. it sends a tingle up your spine, one of excitement.

and you obey: grabbing carmy’s hand and tugging him along with you, despite the poor man’s confusion. because if you’re gonna be punished, he should too, right?

[doormatty3]

Sinner's Salvation: Chapter 1 (Ed Warren x Reader)

Masterlist Ao3

Next chapter

Summary:

[Ed Warren x Female Reader] [Ed Warren x You]

You don't believe in the supernatural and superstition. Witchcraft and demonic occurrences are nothing but quackery to you. But when the room starts spinning, days start blurring into each other and shadows start dancing in every corner you wonder what is wrong with you. No doctor can tell you more about your condition - each and every one is insisting that you are fine and perfectly healthy.  Seeking alternative help, you stumble across Ed and Lorraine Warren.  They promise to help you, rid you of the demon that has taken hold of you - to drive it out. But you didn’t know what you signed up for and what an exorcism by Ed Warren entails.  OR: Ed shows you how well he can possess your body - and your cunt

Wordcount: 8019

Chapter: 1/2

Warnings: 18+, description of violence, dirty thoughts, flirting, religious imagery

A/N: Peer pressure is strong - so here is another Patrick Wilson fanfic. This first chapter is pretty much swf, the smut is in the next one. And belief me…it is filthy. Anyway I need Jesus or Ed to exorcise me.

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CHAPTER 1

Your head pounds as you try to busy yourself with the magazines on the glass table at your doctors’s waiting room. Headaches and migraines have been intermittent companions throughout your life - coming and going over the years with an emphasis on going.

However, for the past few weeks, they were persistent and overstayed their welcome.

What began as a dull ache that had settled in the front of your skull had slowly morphed and spread through your whole head until it felt like constant and pervasive pressure was applied to your temples, squeezing your mind between its fingers restlessly. The dull throb had escalated into a sharp, blinding stab, like invisible hands transforming into relentless claws.

It was at this point that you resolved to consult your doctor. Those headaches were out of the ordinary, deviating from their usual form and you were yearning for some relief and an explanation as to what was causing them. Because you were sure that it wasn’t just migraines or stress.

You sink back into the uncomfortable chair of the waiting room as you find yourself desperately seeking some solace from the sharp pain throbbing at your temple. The mix of the flickering fluorescence overhead and the bright daylight seeping in through the window seems to intensify your discomfort so you close your eyes to drown out one sensation. But the lack of one sense amplifies the other, so you hear the murmur of hushed conversations and discussions as well as the rhythmic ticking of the clock that has never seemed so loud as it does at this moment.

You bring your right hand to your head and rub your thumb in circular motions over your temple while your fingers rest on your forehead. Despite your best efforts, it does not really help against the throbbing ache and only provides some short-lived relief.

Each passing minute elongates your stay in the room, marked only by the clock’s relentless ticking.

On any other day, you would have read something or watched the other people sitting in the room but the headache makes everything tiring and painful.

Suddenly, your name echoes through the waiting room, your head jolts up and your eyes fly open. The doctor’s assistant meets your gaze with an expectant look and gestures with her hand, saying: “Please follow me”.

As you rise from the unyielding chair quickly, the ticking clock and flickering lights momentarily fade into the background when spots dance in the edges of your vision - a new side effect of your headaches. You blink a few times to regain your composure and balance.

The corridor leading to the treatment room is long and sterile - occasionally a colorful picture on the white wall breaks up the monotonous path. The echo of your footsteps sounds loud in your head and you feel the sharp stab in your temple with every noise.

With a smile and a nod, the woman opens the door to the doctor’s room: “He’ll be with you in a couple minutes. Feel free to take a seat”.

“Thank you”, you mumble quietly and pull out a chair to sit down.

The room is adorned with medical charts, anatomical diagrams, and informational posters that detail various parts of the human body. Anatomical models of organs and skeletal structures stand on shelves, their detailed features catching the sterile light.

You lower your eyes to your hands and away from the bright lights in the room when the door to the room creaks open.

“I’m sorry for the wait, dear”, the doctor enters the room, shutting the door gently and taking a seat opposite you, “What brings you here today?”

“I wake up with headaches almost every morning”, you admit, your voice carrying the weight of fatigue and frustration, “It started a few months ago and hasn’t gotten better - only worse.”

The doctor, a mix of empathy and expertise, leans in, pen poised over a notepad, ready to capture the nuances of your struggle.

“Tell me more about the nature of the pain. Is it sharp, dull, pulsating?”, he inquires, his eyes focused on yours, seeking a clearer picture.

You take a moment, searching for words to convey the indescribable sensations.

“It’s like… a relentless pressure, sometimes sharp and stabbing, and it just lingers throughout the day. It’s not just the pain; it’s the way it clouds everything else, like a persistent shadow”, you explain, your frustration evident in the furrow of your brow.

And then you add, almost as an afterthought: “I usually have migraines, but this headache feels different. It’s like a stranger invading my headspace, and nothing seems to help.”

The doctor nods thoughtfully, his brow furrowing in a half-hearted attempt at concern.

“I see. How would you rate the intensity on a scale from one to ten? And have you noticed any specific triggers or patterns that coincide with these headaches?”

You take a deep breath, appreciating the opportunity to provide more insight into the daily struggle you endure.

“The intensity varies, but at its peak, I would rate it around an eight or nine. It’s not just the pain…”, you trail off for a second, blinking your eyes rapidly against the throbbing of your head, “It’s the relentlessness of it, like a drumbeat in my head that refuses to fade away.”

The doctor scribbles a few notes, but his furrowed brow remains a mere semblance of genuine concern and you cannot help but wonder if he takes your concern seriously.

He continues, without looking up: “Triggers or patterns - have you noticed anything specific that seems to bring these headaches on? Certain foods, stress, lack of sleep, perhaps?”

Your mind races to pinpoint potential triggers, hoping to offer any helpful information.

“No, I don’t think I can pinpoint any specific trigger. I’ve tried tracking my diet, but nothing conclusive… I know stress can make it worse, but that just doesn’t seem right. It almost feels like they have a mind of their own.”

The doctor’s nod is accompanied by a distant sound of acknowledgment: “Understood. We’ll note the variability. Have you observed any changes in their frequency or duration recently?”

You pause, considering his question. “Yes, they’ve become more frequent, and the duration seems to be stretching out. Sometimes lasting for days.”

As you share your experiences, the doctor’s responses remain mechanical, lacking the depth and engagement you hoped for.

He takes down a note on his pad, his expression somewhat detached.

“Thank you for sharing that. We’ll explore this further. In the meantime, have you experienced any other symptoms alongside these headaches? Changes in vision, sensitivity to light, or nausea, perhaps?”

You take a deep breath before responding: “Yes, there have been moments where I see shadows dancing at the edge of my vision, and light, especially bright light, seems almost intolerable.”

“Well, headaches can be tricky. I’ll prescribe you some pain medication for now. It should help take the edge off. Let’s see how that goes before jumping into more tests.”

The doctor’s demeanour remains distant, his response lacking the reassurance you were seeking.

A pervasive disappointment sets in as you absorb his words, rendering you speechless. The doctor’s lack of genuine concern leaves you disheartened.

With a brisk movement, he rises from his chair, with a faint smile gracing his lips as he extends his hand toward you.

As the doctor withdraws his hand, he nods almost imperceptibly, a silent acknowledgment that punctuates the end of the consultation. With a parting glance, he pivots and makes his way towards the door, the echo of his footsteps emphasising the hollowness of the room. The door creaks open and then closes, leaving you sitting alone as you try to comprehend what just happened.

The initial hope for understanding and empathy begins to waver, replaced by a nagging question: are your headaches truly as severe as they feel, or are they being downplayed by the doctor’s lack of concern?

The doubt grows as you leave the examination room, and a wave of self-questioning accompanies you. Perhaps you’re exaggerating the pain, or maybe others endure worse without seeking medical attention. The once vivid description of your headaches starts to blur, muddled by the doctor's detached response.

This self-doubt, however, doesn’t entirely quash the very real and tangible pain you feel daily. The clawing at your temples persists a constant reminder that, regardless of the doctor's reaction, your struggle is genuine.

_____6 months later_____

The moment you pry your eyes open, you instantly regret it when a familiar surge of pain flares up and radiates through your head. The once-tolerable discomfort, only triggered by encounters with brighter lights, now manifests even at the gentlest touch of illumination.

The blinds in your apartment are drawn almost entirely shut in a deliberate attempt to shield you from the outside world. Only a handful of thin, feeble stripes of light manages to illuminate the room, casting delicate patterns on the floor. The room around you remains shrouded in a semi-darkened veil.

As you lay there, contemplating the day ahead, you can't help but wish for a respite from the relentless screaming in your head. With a groan, you push yourself up, your movements measured to avoid exacerbating the persistent ache.

The dull glow of a digital clock on the bedside table reveals the early hour, a reminder that the day has just begun, yet the promise it holds seems elusive under the weight of your current state. You’d much rather not have to open your eyes at all and retreat into the comforting embrace of darkness and the inevitability of facing the day ahead.

The current intensity of the throbbing headaches promises a rather bad day ahead - maybe the worst you’ve had in a while.

The cool surface of the floor meets the soles of your feet offering a momentary distraction from the pulsating discomfort in your head as you navigate the dimly lit space. The few rays of light filtering through the partially closed blinds create a chiaroscuro effect, casting shadows that dance along the walls like fleeting memories.

The weight of uncertainty presses down on you, adding an undercurrent of fear to the pulsating discomfort in your head. The unknown, wrapped in shadows, looms over your thoughts, intensifying the ache that reverberates through your skull and manipulating the threads of your mind like a malevolent puppeteer, weaving a twisted dance of uncertainty.

With each step, you can’t shake the feeling of being adrift in a sea of questions, with no clear answers in sight.

You lower yourself into the desk chair in your office, facing the computer. With a heavy sigh, you rest your head in your hands, succumbing to the pounding in your head that seems to be intensified by the soft glow of the computer screen.

A sense of worry washes over you as you contemplate the missing fragments of time. There are moments when waking up brings with it the haunting realisation that whole days have slipped through the sieve of your memory. You recall mornings when you’ve donned shoes and proper clothes, yet the specifics remain elusive, lost in the fog of an obscured consciousness.

Unexplained bruises are scattered across your body like cryptic symbols etched into the canvas of your skin. The morning light sometimes reveals these marks - random, and varied in size. Some bruises are inconspicuous, while others are more pronounced, a stark contrast against the pallor of your skin. You know that it may very well be a nutritional deficiency or just your clumsiness in general.

It's plausible that during the night, you inadvertently collide with objects or navigate your dimly lit apartment and stumble into furniture, while the pain is obscured by the prominence of your persistent headaches. Which rhythmic persistence feels as if someone else is dwelling within, an unwelcome tenant navigating the labyrinth of your thoughts.

Once again you google your symptoms just as you did before in hopes of finding something that provides you with the answers you so desperately seek. The tapping of keys echoes in the quiet room as you type in the details of your affliction.

The search results hold a plethora of possibilities, ranging from the mundane to the foreboding. Your eyes sweep across the information, revealing a spectrum of potential explanations.

Predictably, illnesses such as cancer or a brain tumor show up in the results. But you recall a recent and disappointing visit to the doctor during which you talked about the results of brain scans that were completely normal and unremarkable. The lingering sense of unease that clings to your every thought has not been dispelled by that and still remains.

As you delve deeper into your online search, the glow of the computer screen casts an ethereal light on your face, accentuating the furrowed brow that accompanies your contemplation when the search results take an unexpected turn.

Among the medical explanations and everyday ailments, there is a collection of pages adorned with ominous symbols, discussing the supernatural, and invoking the paranormal.

A skeptical scoff escapes your lips at the absurdity of such notions. The idea of demonic involvement feels like a fantastical escape from the reality of medical concerns. You dismiss these supernatural threads as mere distractions, remnants of an online world where fiction and reality often blur. But you cannot deny that you are intrigued and fascinated by those weird demonic and paranormal things.

So you decide to dive deeper and steer your thoughts in a different direction than your medical condition.

You stumble upon Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their names are etched in the annals of supernatural and demonologist lore, their photographs capturing a certain gravitas that transcends the ordinary.

As you delve into their stories, a mix of fascination and skepticism grips you. The tales of haunted houses, malevolent entities, and their seemingly fearless pursuit of the unknown unfold like chapters in a dark, mysterious novel.

The images of the Warrens show a tall, imposing couple that exudes an aura of authority. Their gaze seems to pierce through the screen as if they have encountered unknown forces that your brain cannot comprehend. Both exude attractiveness and Ed, in particular, captivates your attention with his clear blue eyes and a soft, reassuring smile.

As you sink deeper into your exploration, you come across intriguing details about the Warrens, including snippets about their artifact room.

Further research reveals that Ed is a non-ordained demonologist officially recognized by the Catholic Church and Lorraine, on the other hand, is described as a gifted clairvoyant.

Notably, you discover that the Warrens are scheduled to speak at a university near you in a few days, where they will delve into topics surrounding demons and the supernatural. This upcoming lecture piques your interest, as it offers the possibility of gaining insights on the topic you’re interested in and steering your thoughts in a different direction.

The next day unfolds with a disconcerting air that hangs over every moment. As you move through the routine motions of your day, a persistent sensation gnaws at the edges of your consciousness - a feeling that someone might be in your apartment, an invisible presence tracking your every move. The shadows seem to linger, conspiring to elongate and distort as if concealing the secrets of an unseen observer.

Unease settles in, and the weight of the unknown intensifies. Your senses are on high alert, hyperaware of subtle sounds and fleeting shadows. Paranoia casts a veil over your perception, transforming the familiar surroundings into a labyrinth of uncertainty. The notion that you are being followed, and watched, becomes an inescapable undercurrent.

As you sit down at your computer to continue your Google search about Ed and Lorraine Warren, the mysterious feeling of being watched persists and the noises in your apartment become more pronounced.

Suddenly, you hear a distinct tapping sound, like fingernails lightly brushing against a surface. Your head jerks up, and you glance around the room, searching for the source.

You decide to investigate the source of the sounds. Slowly, you get up from your chair and start to explore your apartment. The creaking floorboards and faint whispers add to the tension in the air. As you move from room to room, you can’t shake the feeling that someone - or something - is with you.

Jesus, you think.

Delving into the Warrens’ cases has genuinely left an impression on you. Despite your rational certainty that you'll discover nothing unusual, a small part of you wants to make sure that you are truly alone, so you look into your bedroom.

The room is dimly lit, and shadows dance on the walls, creating an unsettling atmosphere and you half expect to come face-to-face with an intruder.

Of course, the room is empty. You shake your head at your antics and the weird games your mind sometimes plays at you. So you return to your computer, determined to focus on your research.

As you delve deeper into their history, you come across tales of unexplained occurrences and inexplicable events. The line between the paranormal and the ordinary becomes blurred, and you can’t help but wonder if there's a connection between your eerie experience and the stories you’re reading.

The distinct creak of the front door opening sends a shiver down your spine, intensifying the unease that had settled in the pit of your stomach. Your head jerks up instinctively, eyes widening as you try to discern any movement or sound that may follow.

Slowly and cautiously, you ease yourself out of the office, your senses on high alert - your mind cannot have made that up again, it feels too real.

Each step is deliberate, the floorboards beneath your feet protesting with muted groans. The dim lighting in the hallway casts long, wavering shadows, creating a macabre dance of darkness that seems to come alive with each flicker.

As you make your way to the kitchen, you can't help but notice the play of light and shadow, accentuating the contours of the furniture and giving the surroundings an otherworldly quality. The eerie atmosphere lingers, and every sound, whether a distant whisper or the faint rustle of curtains, contributes to the unsettling symphony. Your heart pounds in your ears, the rhythmic thud echoing relentlessly as adrenaline courses through your veins.

The air feels charged with tension as you navigate through the space, acutely aware of your surroundings. The kitchen, once a place of familiarity, now holds an unfamiliar weight, and you find yourself glancing over your shoulder, half-expecting to find a presence lingering in the shadows.

You look around for a potential weapon in your kitchen. Your eyes land on a set of sharp kitchen knives neatly arranged on the counter. You grab one, the cold steel offering a reassuring weight in your hand. Gripping it tightly, you take a deep breath, trying to steady your nerves as the blade reflects the gentle glow that is emanating from the windows.

Your mind races with possibilities, ranging from a potential intruder to something more otherworldly. Your eyes blink rapidly, a reflex under the stress, and you can feel sweat building as your apprehension grows.

With the knife in hand, you decide to cautiously approach the area near the hallway that leads to the front door. Every step is deliberate, and the creaking floorboards beneath your feet seem to echo in the silence. The shadows play tricks on your imagination, making you question whether the movement you see is real or just a product of your heightened senses.

As you reach the entrance, you notice that the door is slightly ajar. The chill in the air sends a shiver down your spine. Holding the knife in a defensive stance, you push the door open, ready to confront whatever or whoever might be on the other side.

To your surprise, the hallway appears empty. The dimly lit corridor stretches out before you, devoid of any immediate threat. However, the feeling of being watched persists, leaving you on edge.

A shiver runs down your spine as you turn towards the living room, and your eyes widen with a mixture of fear and surprise.

In the dim light, you make out the silhouette of a figure standing in the shadows. The room seems to hold its breath as you lock eyes with the unexpected visitor.

Your grip tightens on the knife, your instincts urging you to be prepared for whatever may come. The figure remains still, a mysterious presence cloaked in darkness. Panic and curiosity wrestle within you, but you muster the courage to speak.

“Who’s there?”, you demand, your voice wavering slightly, betraying your inner turmoil.

The figure doesn’t respond immediately, maintaining an unsettling silence. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you start to discern features - the outline of a person clad in big, dark clothing wearing a hood. The air in the room feels charged with tension, and the quiet seems to amplify the beating of your heart.

A surge of fear courses through you as the stranger inches closer in the dimly lit living room. Your panic intensifies, and without thinking, you unleash a scream, a mixture of fear and warning, hoping to startle the intruder or whatever presence stands before you as you feel your whole body shaking.

“Who are you? What do you want?”, you shout, your voice echoing through the tense silence. The sudden burst of sound reverberates in the room, and you can feel your heart pounding in your chest.

The stranger freezes momentarily, their movement halted by your unexpected reaction. The dim light casts uncertain shadows on their stance, making it challenging to discern their intentions. You maintain a defensive stance, clutching the knife tightly in your hand.

In the wake of your scream, a heavy silence lingers, broken only by the sound of your own rapid breaths. The stranger remains silent, their next move unclear.

“I don’t want to hurt you! Please just…go”, your voice is shaking and the fear that settled itself in your core is palpable.

Suddenly, the stranger surges forward and in a split-second response to their move towards you, fear and adrenaline drive you to react instinctively. Without hesitation, you thrust the knife forward, aiming for the center of the oncoming threat. The blade makes contact, sinking into the stranger’s stomach with a sickening resistance.

The stranger gasps, a guttural sound escaping their lips, and their momentum falters. The reality of the situation hits you, and your eyes widen in shock as you release the blade and stumble back. You watch their hands instinctively clutch their injured stomach before inevitably collapsing onto the ground.

Time seems to stretch as you assess the situation, your mind racing to comprehend the events that have just happened.

You stand there, breaths coming in ragged gasps, staring at the figure now on the floor. The dim light accentuates the stark reality of the situation - their blood on the knife, their blood splattered on the floor, and their blood staining your hands.

A wave of panic grips you, and you feel the onset of a panic attack tightening your chest. The reality of the violence you've just inflicted crashes over you, and a whirlwind of emotions - fear, guilt, and shock - threatens to overwhelm your senses. Bile rises at the back of your throat, adding to the overwhelming intensity of the moment.

The heavy silence in the room is broken by the sound of your laboured breathing when you realise the gravity of the situation. You just stabbed someone.

You step closer to the figure on the floor, your hands are trembling and your mind is in turmoil. Your gaze falls onto the knife. It is still stained with their blood and lodged in the stranger’s stomach like a macabre focal point that rhythmically rises with their rattling, shallow breaths.

You hover over the figure and you reach out to grab the protruding knife with your bloody hands in a motion that you cannot stop. Your hand closes around the handle and you pull.

The knife emerges from the stranger’s stomach without much resistance but with a wet squelch and a deep, pained groan. Blood follows the blade out of the wound, drenching the stranger’s clothes as you watch mesmerised.

A few seconds tick by before you sink to your knees and lift the blade again as if pulled up by invisible strings.

The knife plunges into the stranger's chest, and a sickening resistance, a visceral clash of flesh, bone, and muscle, courses through your hands. The figure beneath you convulses, and the room is filled with the gut-wrenching sounds of their laboured breaths and pained noises, and the air is heavy with the metallic scent of blood, a salty tang settling on your tongue.

As you continue to stab in a mindless range, the blood pools over your hands, coating them like a warm embrace. The stranger beneath you convulses in response to each stab, their breaths growing more ragged with each passing moment.

Your frazzled breathing is loud in the room when you snap out of your frenzy. A sudden realisation grips you as the weight of what you've done settles in and the knife hits the wooden floor with a loud clink.

The dim light flickers, casting an eerie glow on the tableau of violence before you.

The dark clad, hooded figure that lays motionless on your floor in a pool of deep red blood surrounding them, drawing a macabre outline.

You reach out to the stilled stranger's form and tug the hood down from the stranger's head.

A jolt of terror courses through you as you reveal your own face staring back at you, eyes wide in terror. The shock is overwhelming, and you stagger back, falling onto your hands. The surreal horror of the revelation sends a scream tearing from your throat.

But then, as abruptly as the situation unfolded, you wake up screaming. Your heart pounds in your chest, and you're drenched in a cold sweat. The remnants of the dream cling to your consciousness, leaving you disoriented and unsettled.

As the realisation sets in that it was all a nightmare, a wave of relief washes over you. The room is bathed in the soft glow of moonlight, and the familiar surroundings of your bedroom reassure you that the disturbing events were only figments of your imagination. The oppressive shadows, the metallic tang of the knife, the haunting echoes of the chilling act - all dissolved into the hazy realm of dreams.

You extend your arm to hit the light switch for your bedside lamp, flooding the room with a brighter light. However, the sudden change triggers a throbbing headache, and spots dance before your eyes. The harsh illumination contrasts sharply with the peaceful moonlight, leaving you momentarily disoriented as you navigate the transition from the dreamworld to the stark reality of your lit room.

Abruptly, you raise your hands, a quick and anxious gesture, checking for any signs of harm or scattering of remaining blood. When you see nothing but spotless skin you take a moment to collect yourself, breathing deeply. Yet you still rub your hands together, attempting to rid yourself of the lingering sensation of phantom blood that appears to have permeated your skin.

The digital numbers on your clock glow faintly, spelling out the hour: 3 am. The unsettling residue of your nightmare clings to your thoughts, a haunting aftertaste that refuses to dissipate.

As you consider the option of getting up, you notice the gentle hum of the air conditioner and the distant sounds of the night outside. The weight of the bedsheets feels heavier than usual, as if reluctant to release you from the lingering grip of the dream's distressing scenes. The room, while familiar, carries an air of unfamiliarity, as if the vivid dream has cast a subtle shadow over your reality.

The intensity of your frustration grows as you realize that even your dreams have become a source of distress. The pervasive discomfort of constant head pain during waking hours now seems to extend its unwelcome influence into the realm of your sleep, turning what should be a respite into yet another source of anguish. The feeling of being trapped in a dual nightmare, both waking and sleeping, causes tears to well up in your eyes.

In all the months of your illness, you have never felt so completely and utterly lost and afraid.

A sob escapes your throat, and tears stream down your face as you succumb to the overwhelming weight of despair. You just want to get better - because this state is not living anymore, it is merely existing.

You recall the Google search from the day before - about Ed and Lorraine Warren being at a university for a lecture.

Maybe they can help you tackle whatever this is. Conventional medicine has failed you, leaving you desperate and adrift, and at this point, with nothing left to lose you are okay with anything. After all - it cannot get worse.

_____

The lecture hall at the university is packed, filled with an eager and diverse crowd, spanning different ages, all buzzing with anticipation as they gather to witness the renowned Warrens deliver their lecture.

Ed and Lorraine take their place on the stage, positioned behind a podium. You find yourself nervously seated in the middle of the audience, the bright lights exacerbating your headaches, the dull throb syncing with the beat of your heart as you feel anxious. Your attention shifts to the front, where Ed and Lorraine stand and you let your eyes rank over them.

Ed, with his impeccably styled short auburn hair, is dressed in a light grey three-piece suit paired with a black shirt and a tartan tie. Lorraine’s attire is a black vest over a light blue ruffle blouse and a long skirt carrying a matching tartan pattern, echoing Ed’s tie.

It’s a subtle reflection of their devotion to each other, you figure. Both of them emanate an undeniable attractiveness that seems to reel you in and you understand why they are so successful in what they do.

As they stand behind the podium, Ed exudes a grounded demeanour, his voice breaking the silence and resonating through the hall: “Fear is defined as a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger. I don’t care if it’s a demon, a ghost, a spirit, or an entity - they all feed on it.”

Despite Ed’s composed presence, Lorraine appears unfocused, her eyes scanning the crowd as she nervously plays with her rosary.

The room is illuminated by a large screen, displaying rough film footage featuring a gaunt, despondent man in his late twenties - rail thin, eyes black like his hair, and skin pasty white. A Catholic priest stands beside him, murmuring Latin in a barely audible tone.

“Maurice here was a French Canadian farmer with nothing more than a third-grade education - yet after being possessed by a demon, spoke some of the best Latin I had ever heard - sometimes backward. He had been molested by his father, who also exposed him to bestiality. Evil found its home in this man because he was conflicted, and forced into this - he never had a choice. He thought he was saving his wife by shooting her - like his father did to his mother”, Ed informs the audience as the film unfolds before them.

You experience a mix of unease and captivation in Ed’s presence, marvelling at how he commands the room. His bright blue eyes gaze into the audience as he speaks, intensifying the dull throb in your temples as you concentrate on the lecture rather than the charismatic man on the stage.

Shifting your focus from Ed’s figure, you fix your gaze on the screen displaying the possessed man, Maurice, writhing in agonising agony.

Lorraine interjects as the film plays: “If you look at his eyes, you can see them tearing blood onto his shirt.”

You witness Maurice’s white T-shirt morphing into a canvas of dark crimson, accompanied by anguished screams.

“And upside-down crosses started appearing on his body”, Lorraine’s soft voice narrates as Ed lifts Maurice's shirt in the film, revealing two inverted crosses pushing out from the inside.

A sense of disbelief floods your thoughts - how is that possible?

Your headache pulses, prompting you to massage your temples as you watch Maurice’s struggle. The shocking scenes inadvertently bring back memories of the unsettling nightmare from the previous night. You blink rapidly, attempting to dispel the lingering thoughts and bring your focus back to the stage.

Ed takes charge, saying: “That’s good, Drew, why don’t you hit the lights.”

As Drew obediently follows Ed's instruction to turn off the projector, the room is bathed in light once more.

The harsh contrast between the vivid reality around you and the haunting scenes you’ve just witnessed on screen intensifies the unease. You notice others in the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats, exchanging glances that reflect a shared sense of disquiet.

Ed’s silhouette becomes more pronounced against the darkened backdrop, and his next words pierce through the silence, undeterred by the discomfort permeating the room, as he begins to explain the significance of the possessed man’s ordeal.

His voice, a steady and authoritative cadence, cuts through the residual tension: “What you’ve seen tonight is not an isolated incident. Demonic possession is a very real and insidious force that can take hold of a person's soul.”

The rational part of your mind grapples with scepticism, but the visceral memories of Maurice’s screams and the grotesque symbols etched on his body make it challenging to dismiss the possibility outright.

Ed’s blue eyes, still holding the attention of the room, seem to penetrate the shadows of doubt. As he delves deeper into the supernatural narrative, your unease mingles with a growing curiosity.

Your attention is drawn to Lorraine, who still appears notably on edge. Her eyes nervously traverse the audience, revealing a subtle unease as her husband, Ed, steers the course of the lecture. It’s as though there's an undercurrent of tension beneath the surface, and Lorraine’s apprehensive demeanour suggests an awareness of something lingering in the air.

You wonder what she may be searching for or if that is normal for her - Ed doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

“So, what happened to Maurice?”, a young man seated in the front row blurts out loud.

Ed responds with gravity in his tone: “Well, he tried to kill his wife but instead he shot her in the arm and then turned the gun on himself. Maurice had a very troubled life with little to live for...and not even an exorcist you bring him back.”

His words send a shiver down your spine, evoking a sense of sympathy for Maurice. The nonchalant demeanor with which Ed addresses the grim outcome leaves you intrigued and a bit unsettled. You can’t help but wonder about the myriad experiences the Warrens have encountered, considering their seemingly unshaken composure in the face of such dark tales.

As Ed turns to roll up the projector sheet, your attention briefly wanders. At that moment, you find yourself discreetly appreciating his form – his broad frame, strong shoulders concealed by the suit, and his ass that is pronounced by his tight pants.

“Which brings us to the three stages of demonic activity”, Ed declares, pointing emphatically to each word written on the blackboard. He begins to pace around the room, his gaze sweeping over the faces of the assembled audience.

“Infestation, oppression, and possession. Now, infestation: That’s the whispering, the footsteps, the feeling of another presence… which ultimately grows into oppression - the second stage. Now, this is where the victim, and it’s usually the one who's the most psychologically vulnerable, is targeted specifically by an external force. Breaks the victim down. Crushes their will. And once in a weakened state, leads them to the third and final stage: possession.”

The weight of his words hangs in the air, emphasising the ominous progression of these stages.

Ed’s eyes, still holding the attention of the room, sweep across the assembled audience, and he opens the floor for questions: “Are there questions?”

A smattering of eager arms shoot up, and you find yourself sinking deeper into your chair. While you too have a question, the nature of it – perhaps delving into the experience of possession – could raise suspicions, causing you to hesitate.

Ed acknowledges a male student in the front row with a subtle nod, indicating his readiness to entertain the question.

“I’d love to know what scares you the most?”, the student inquiries, his curiosity evident.

Ed’s demeanour shifts slightly, breaking into a small but genuine smile at the inquiry. His gaze is momentarily diverted from the audience to meet Lorraine’s. In that brief connection, it’s apparent that Ed’s gaze is filled with love, a sentiment that practically emanates from him, adding a layer of warmth to the otherwise intense atmosphere. Lorraine, still appearing unfocused and nervous, scans the room with vigilant eyes, seemingly attuned to energies beyond the visible.

“Being married to a clairvoyant - there’s not a whole lot I can get away with”, Ed responds, his smile widening as he adds a touch of humour to the gravity of the topic, “But there is just a base level of respect for everything we deal with.”

You can’t help but find Ed’s smile endearing and attractive. The way the skin around his eyes crinkles as he smiles toothily adds a touch of charm to his already charismatic presence.

As Ed shares this insight into his personal life, the room absorbs the shift in tone, the lecture momentarily transitioning into a more intimate and conversational atmosphere. The male student nods in response, seemingly satisfied with the candid revelation, as the audience gains a glimpse into the intricate dynamics of the Warrens’ unique partnership, accentuated by the palpable love that underlies their connection.

You raise your hand into the air since you thought of a question that won’t arouse suspicion among the gathered crowd. The odds of being chosen appear slim, given the multitude of raised hands, but you decide it’s worth a shot.

Yet, the moment your hand ascends, Lorraine abruptly grinds to a halt.

She suddenly stops cold - her smile vanishes, and her fidgeting with the rosary stops as her eyes lock onto yours with unexpected intensity. Under the weight of her unyielding, scrutinizing gaze goosebumps rise on your arm, and an unexpected chill ripples through you.

Simultaneously, as if in synchrony with the abrupt cessation of Lorraine’s movements, a searing flare of pain erupts in your head. It feels as though an unseen force is ruthlessly clawing its way into the recesses of your skull, compelling your hand to instinctively seek solace on your throbbing temple.

Breaking free from Lorraine’s gaze, you shift your attention towards Ed, attempting to regain a sense of normalcy.

However, Ed, too, has pivoted his attention from the audience to his wife. His gaze remains riveted on her, a pronounced crease forming between his brows as he meticulously follows the direction of her unbroken stare.

Your breath catches in your throat as you meet his eyes - bewildered and tinged with concern. As you lock eyes with Ed, a sensation akin to lightning strikes courses through you. The connection feels electrifying, and for a moment, the world seems to narrow down to the intensity of that shared gaze.

He takes in your form, trying to make sense of why his wife froze on the spot.

As he registers your hand that’s still suspended in the air, Ed’s tongue darts out to wet his lips before finally breaking the silence: “The girl in the fifth row. What’s your question?”

The exchange with Lorraine felt like an eternity when in reality it must have only been a few seconds. Strangely, it appears that no one else in the audience has noticed it.

Before you speak, you discreetly clear your throat. The disconcerting encounter with Lorraine has thrown you off balance.

“How do you protect yourself against the evil forces? Are there specific precautions you take?”

Ed Warren takes a moment to compose himself before addressing your question. The room falls into a hush, and all eyes are now fixed on you and Ed, with your heart still racing. The intensity of Ed’s gaze momentarily threw you off balance.

He responds with a serious expression: “Well, that's a good question. When dealing with the paranormal, it’s crucial to approach it with caution. Lorraine and I always ensure to say a prayer for protection before any investigation. We also use blessed religious artifacts, such as holy water and crosses.”

Lorraine, still visibly affected, nods in agreement, her gaze somewhat distant. You wonder if the people in the audience noticed her strange behavior or if your mind is just playing tricks on you.

“In addition to that, we have a network of clergy and experts whom we consult for guidance. Spiritual strength and faith are crucial when confronting dark forces. It’s about maintaining a balance between understanding the supernatural and respecting the spiritual realm”, Ed continues.

His intense gaze remains on you as he concludes the ghost of a smirk on his lips: “Well, rooms and artefacts can be blessed - but people cannot.”

“Thank you”, you nod and try to fake a smile.

Some part of you had hoped for a more detailed approach on how to deal with the unsettling experiences you’ve been facing. You doubt that you can just pray the persistent headaches and unexplained occurrences that have been plaguing you away.

The audience appears satisfied with the response and begins to murmur amongst themselves. Ed picking up on the collective mood, smoothly gestures for the next question, effectively shifting the focus away from the brief moment of tension.

Despite the outward calm, your mind is racing. You remain deep in thought, contemplating the practicality of the advice given.

You feel Lorraine’s gaze lingering on you, still scrutinising you but no longer frozen.

Ed occasionally diverts his attention from the audience, his concern evident in the subtle furrow of his brow and the way his eyes linger on Lorraine. His glances toward his wife carry an undertone of protectiveness, a silent reassurance seeking confirmation of her well-being as you wonder if it was a good idea to speak to them.

When your eyes meet Ed’s, there is an inexplicable intensity that steals your breath for a moment. The connection feels charged with unspoken questions and a shared curiosity about the peculiar reaction Lorraine had toward you. The exchange is profound, but it’s repeatedly interrupted, the moment broken again and again as Ed diverts his gaze back to the audience or checks on Lorraine.

You sense that Ed is wrestling with his own thoughts, wondering why Lorraine reacted in such a way, and, truth be told, you share the same curiosity.

As your headaches intensify with each passing moment, you find yourself yearning to escape the persistent gaze. The desire to leave this space becomes increasingly urgent as the weight of the unknown, coupled with the growing discomfort in your head, becomes almost unbearable.

“Well, that concludes this seminar; our time is up”, Ed declares, prompting the attendees to rise, and you join the collective movement toward the exit.

Just as you’re about to step through the doorway, a gentle, small hand is placed on your shoulder. The unexpected touch startles you, and you instinctively turn around. There stands Lorraine, her eyes carrying a mix of concern and kindness, and her voice holds a soothing quality as she speaks.

“Can we talk to you? Please, just stay behind”, Lorraine requests, her tone gentle but with an underlying seriousness.

The weight of her words feels like a sudden rush of cold water, and you can’t help but wonder if she has picked up on something you may not even fully understand yourself. A conflicting mix of desire for help and an underlying fear grips you in that moment. Despite the uncertainty, you decide to comply, nodding in acknowledgment and watching as the room empties.

As the door closes behind the last departing seminar attendee, you find yourself alone with the Warrens in the now-empty room. The weight of both Ed and Lorraine’s gazes fixated on you becomes palpable, creating an atmosphere charged with unspoken questions. It’s an unnerving feeling, like being under a microscope, and you can’t help but shift uncomfortably under their scrutiny as the pounding in your head reaches its peak.

Ed, ever perceptive, notices your discomfort and steps forward, breaking the silence.

“You don't have to be scared”, he reassures you with a calming tone, “My wife, Lorraine, she... well, she sees things that I cannot. And right now, she sees that something is bothering you.”

Lorraine, standing beside Ed, remains silent but her eyes, keen and perceptive, seem to penetrate to the core of your being. It’s both fascinating and unsettling, knowing that she possesses abilities beyond the ordinary.

Ed continues: “We’ve encountered many individuals who’ve faced unexplained phenomena, and sometimes, it helps to talk about it. Lorraine has a unique gift, and she might be able to offer some insights.”

As the conversation unfolds, the weight of your distress becomes increasingly apparent to Ed and Lorraine. Their expressions soften, recognizing the urgency of your situation.

“We understand that you’re going through something, and we’d like to help. Our home is a sanctuary, and Lorraine’s unique insights might bring some clarity to what you're experiencing”, Ed’s voice is marked by genuine concern as he reassures you.

Lorraine, who seemed to exude a calm and reassuring presence during the conversation, her demeanour a blend of empathy and understanding, gently adds: “Sometimes, being in a different environment can make it easier to open up and address these issues. We’ve assisted many people facing similar challenges, and we are here for you.”

The persistent throbbing in your head intensifies, and shadows seem to dance in the periphery of your vision as you stand before the Warrens. The pain becomes a tangible force, urging you to seek relief and answers. The sincerity in their words, coupled with the promise of potential resolution, convinces you to accept their invitation. Despite the lingering uncertainties, the hope of finding solace from the unexplained phenomena that have haunted you is a powerful motivator.

As you agree to visit their home, you take a moment to scrutinise Ed and Lorraine up close. The subtleties in Ed’s mannerisms captivate you - the way his hands flex when he explains something. The fluid movements of them, enticing your gaze to trace the contours of his rather large palms.

His lips curl in a subtle but genuine smile, revealing a warmth that contrasts with the gravity of the situation.

You notice that Ed is not clean shaven but instead, a carefully groomed short stubble graces his jawline, framing his face in a way that accentuates his features. The stubble adds a rugged charm, underscoring a sense of authenticity and strength.

You find yourself feeling a different kind of pull - a quiet and unexpected attraction to Ed.

As you stand near him, you catch a whiff of his intoxicating scent, a distinctly manly fragrance that envelops you like a comforting spell. It’s a blend of woodsy notes and subtle hints of spice, leaving an indelible impression that adds an intriguing layer to the enigmatic connection blossoming between you.

A momentary hesitation causes you to instinctively bite your lip, a nervous habit that betrays the complexity of your emotions. In that fleeting instant, you catch Ed’s gaze flickering down to your lips, lingering longer than appropriate.

The attraction to Ed catches you off-guard and the unspoken connection, heightened by your response and Ed's subtle acknowledgment, adds a subtle tension to the air.

Not only is the situation at hand graver and darker but he is also married - and his wife is standing right beside you.

A twinge of guilt creeps in as you become keenly aware of the poor job you are doing to hide the magnetic pull you sense toward Ed.

Next chapter

[johnslittlespoon]

accidentally just created my own buckbucky college au oops (i love college aus tho, this was far overdue tbh) so here's like ~2k words of (semi–nsfw) drabble that i wanna turn into a oneshot/series :-)

thinking about modern au pre–established relationship buckbucky who meet in their first year of college because they apply to an ad to rent a two bedroom apartment near campus, complete strangers save for a few texts back and forth until move in day.

they become fast friends despite how opposite they are, john being a cliche frat boy type (but subverting expectations by majoring in something english–related? waxing secret poetry about his 'obvious as the sun to everyone but gale' crush on his roommate lol) and gale being a studious math/science major, no interest in parties or campus culture. pining aside, everything's just fine until:

john does something stupid a few months into the school year and ends up spraining/breaking his dominant arm– probably wipes out trying to ride his bike home to his and gale's apartment while drunk after a party. gale gets a call at midnight from a sheepish john asking if he can come drive him to the hospital, and of course he does, though after his initial concern when he picks john up at the side of some random street, he's fuming at john's idiocy.

"you could've rode into traffic, john. jesus, you're gonna give me a stroke one of these days, you gotta start using your brain more." and john's drenched in cold–sweat from pain as he cradles his arm to his chest, head tilted back against the headrest and trying not to curse out every red light as his head spins, but he still cracks a weak smile and says "c'mon buck, you'd be bored if i started using my brain." gale glances over and the stern look is enough to shut john up.

this injury leads to gale having to help him with certain tasks for a bit, like shaving his face, brushing his teeth, doing his hair, tying shoes, etc. john's stubborn the day after, independent to a fault, refusing to ask for help, and gale watches with mild amusement/hidden winces, not wanting to push because he knows by now it'll only make john dig his heels in. gale only decides that enough is enough when he's walking past the half–open bathroom door the next afternoon and suddenly hears a sharp inhale and a stream of profanities and pokes his head in to find john's cut his jaw trying to shave with his left hand.

the intimacy and domesticity of it all– john pretends he's inconvenienced, but once he realizes this means he gets to stare at gale's focussed face up close as he sits on the bathroom counter and gale stands between his legs carefully shaving away his stubble, he's a lot less reluctant to accept help. but being that close to gale's face and being able to unabashedly study his long lashes and the curve of his lips is dangerous for john's lack of impulse control, barely keeping his pining under wraps from the moment they'd met, let alone with this newfound proximity they have to fall into the routine of.

so john has fun being a shithead on purpose during these moments, both to distract his yearning brain and for his own entertainment, just yapping away while gale's frustratedly trying to grab him by his jaw and hold him still for five seconds. biting down on the toothbrush when gale's trying to do a proper job of brushing his teeth so gale has to wrestle it away like he's playing tug of war with a dog, being an asshole and jerking his shoe to the side while gale's doing up his laces for him, heart leaping at the thrill he gets from gale's touches getting firmer when he's fed up, or from being pinned by irritated blue eyes.

he has no idea gale's pining just as hard, because gale's a master of concealing emotions in thanks to a very different upbringing than john's, and because while gale doesn't hide his queerness, he's not as open with it as john is. but gale's losing his mind just as much each time john needs his help, and the way he feels his self control slipping scares him.

this little dance around each other probably comes to a peak when john's being extra difficult one day while gale's trying to tame his wild curls for him. gale's got john pressed back against the bathroom counter with a scowl, working his gelled fingers through thick dark hair, and john can barely think straight because oh, has he ever spent an ungodly amount of time thinking about gale's hands in his hair under very different circumstances.

john's got a grin so big it near splits his face in half as he purposefully leans out of gale's reach, pulling every annoying thing he can think of because if he focuses too hard on gale's motions, he's gonna pop a very inconvenient boner with no hope of concealing it from gale with the way he's pressed up against him.

but gale's got twenty minutes until his next class and it's a ten minute walk from their apartment, and he's at the end of his rope, so he finally snaps and without giving it a second thought he closes the last bit of distance between them to grab at the back of john's hair, and he pulls, hard.

the smile slides off john's face as his mouth falls open and his hips reflexively jerk forward and whatever scolding gale was about to give him dies in his throat because holy shit. there's a few seconds where both of them just stare at each other wide eyed with their hearts pounding, john internally spiralling because he thinks he's just fucked everything up, gale internally spiralling because oh my god, he hasn't been misreading john's behaviour around him.

gale whispers a "fuck" and, more impulsive than he's ever allowed himself to be, goes in for the kiss, hand still tight in john's hair, and john whines into his mouth and his hands fly to gale's waist and everything gets heated really quick– until gale pulls away with a gasp for breath, both of them panting, cheeks flushed and eyes heavy. and then gale's ducking out of the bathroom and grabbing his backpack from the entry way and all but sprinting out of the apartment.

john's left standing there harder than he's ever been in his life but also panicking because he's not sure whether he's fucked up or whether gale's just overwhelmed, because he knows gale well enough to know he likes his space when big things happen.

but gale also knows john well enough to know how big of an overthinker he is; they've probably had to work through some incidents where their communication styles have clashed over the few months they've been roomies. so after his hands stop shaking enough while he's walking to campus, he types out a message to john letting him know 'I'm all good. Sorry for running, was gonna be late for class and panicked. Talk later, yeah?'

and john sighs in relief, texts back a 'np. sounds good :)' and then promptly shoves a hand down his pants and comes embarrassingly quick with the sting of gale's hands in his hair still fresh in his mind.

they talk things out somewhat, blahblahblah plotting problem for future me, but they're both shy and awkward around each other for a bit, which is so out of character for john and how obnoxiously flirty and loud mouthed he normally is.

so maybe what finally breaks them out of this tiptoeing around each other after a few days is something stupid– specifically, john ends up pent up and frustrated because trying to get off with his left hand just isn't doing it for him. and he's one of those 'once a day minimum' guys, so this isn't something he can just ignore; finds his temper is shorter, and he can't focus as well, etc. drama queen.

either gale comments on it lightheartedly and john blurts out his problem unthinkingly, or john makes an offhand joke about it, and gale thinks john's lack of impulse control is starting to rub off on him, because after a beat of silence, he gets out an "i can help."

john's head snaps over to look at him so fast he feels like he gives himself whiplash, eyes comically rounded, wondering if he's heard gale wrong or if gale's making a rare flirtatious joke. gale blinks back at him, looking just as surprised, tips of his ears going a little pink, but he doesn't laugh or throw in a 'only kidding!'

mumbles a "y'know, if you want," second guessing himself as if what happened in the bathroom a few days before isn't in john's top three best things that have ever happened to him list. john gets out a "yeah– yeah, i want," uncharacteristically nervous, and gale nods, turning his attention back to his laptop. and john just stands there in the kitchen, flabbergasted, shifting uncertainly.

works up the courage to shyly ask, "like. now? or." and he feels like he's never fumbled the bag so hard in his life, unable to remember the last time he's felt shy when talking about sex–related stuff, realizes just how bad his crush on gale's gotten. beyond a crush, at this point. and it makes it worse that gale's so nonchalant now, humming to himself as if in deep thought before saying "later. i've gotta get this assignment done."

john loses his mind over those next few hours, trying to be patient and give gale space to focus, but he's half hard the whole time and can't think about anything other than what gale means by 'helping'. gale can sense his impatience from the other side of their apartment, and he can't help the way it makes him smile to himself, having fun teasing john without even needing to do anything, and without john knowing it's fully intentional.

unfortunately this arrangement, however it plays out, probably leads to a lotta miscommunication and repression of feelings, because they're both dumb boys who suck at communicating, neither one of them wanting to ruin a good thing (aka an inevitable friends with benefits situation) by bringing up their feelings for the other. but there's plenty of hot sex and light kink exploration in the meantime, and eventually they sort their shit out, likely by accident like every other situation they've stumbled into together.

and not to cliffhang pre–smut, but i'll leave it there because this is way too long and if i do turn it into a oneshot i don't wanna write it all out of my system into this drabble before it makes it into a fic loll <3

[omgrachwrites]

One of The Lads - Sirius Black

Pairing: Sirius Black x Reader

Warnings: swearing and fluff!!

Request: Could I get au number 8, for secret relationship with Sirius black and female reader? Where maybe they’re only secret because she’s like the pet of the friend group to everyone with how like silly she is and no one really expected the 2 of them, lots of fluff please 🙏 and only if you want to ofc, take it easy and don’t rush! Thank you for consideringggg🧡🧡 - @siriuslycaptainofthedawntreader

A/N: Thanks so much for requesting love! I hope everyone enjoys, I love you all very much! xxx

It was a wet and dreary day in October, the enchanted ceiling overhead was exceptionally dull with dark grey clouds floating in the centre, that looked to burst at any moment. The bad weather seemed to have an impact on some of the Hogwarts students, not you though, you loved weather like this.

Although long, summer days were glorious, sometimes you yearned for the cold weather when you could wrap up in your fluffy coat and scarf. Weather where you could all rush to Hogsmeade, finding shelter and warmth in a corner The Three Broomsticks, laughing and joking over a pint of Butterbeer before wandering back to the castle in the dark, you way lit only by a couple of streetlamps.

Remus tried to give you an unimpressed look but you could see the corners of his mouth twitching as he tried not to laugh when another marshmallow hit him between the eyes, “Jesus, Y/N! You’re the best seeker that we’ve had in years, how can you not land a marshmallow in a giant mug,” he laughed as he gestured to his enormous mug of hot chocolate.

You pulled a face at him, “I can catch things well enough, I just can’t throw them,” you proved your statement as you lobbed another marshmallow and it completely missed its mark as it flew past Remus’ shoulder and hit someone on the back of their head.

“What’s going on here?” Sirius laughed as he finally joined the breakfast table, “it looks like a marshmallow factory has exploded,” his voice was rough from sleep and his hair was a little messy as he ran a hand through it.

You were momentarily speechless as you gazed up at him, your mouth slightly open, in your opinion he looked the most handsome after just waking up. You and Sirius had been dating for a couple of months. In complete secret. You had even hidden it from your best friends, not for any malicious reasons of course, you didn’t know how they would take it. Dating within the friendship was some sort of forbidden unspoken rule.

“Y/N, is being a pain in the arse,” Remus grinned at you.

You gasped, pretending to be offended, “I’m a delight.”

Remus rolled his eyes as he looked at his best friend, “she can’t get a marshmallow into my mug, embarrassing really,” he joked, immediately contradicting his words as a marshmallow soared into the mug, making a tiny splash.

James, who had been watching let out a weak cheer, “finally. That was fucking painful to watch,” he smirked as you gave him the finger.

Sirius grinned at you as he sat next to you, his little finger linking with yours, his way of saying I love you when he couldn’t say it out loud. You smiled back as you linked your fingers together.

As you, Remus and Sirius walked down to Potions, you could see James once again, trying his hardest to chat up Lily Evans. To be fair, this year she seemed to hate him less, James’ head had really deflated in size and he was much more likeable. Lily caught your eye over James shoulder and she rolled her eyes with a grin before trying to look like she was interested in whatever James was saying.

You smirked at the couple, wanting to get James back for what he said at breakfast, and you did just that. Taking your wand from the inside of your robes you subtly pointed it at James’ bag, muttering a spell. A quiet ripping noise and a louder crash echoed through the corridors of the dungeons as the seams on James’ bag was pulled apart and his belongings went crashing to the floor. James let out a very high pitched yelp as he scrambled to pick his stuff up, his glasses falling down his nose and his cheeks flushing.

Your face must have given you away because he shook his head and slung an arm over your shoulders as you all walked into the classroom. He glared at you but when he spoke you could hear the laughter in his voice.

“That was so mean.”

You laughed as you looked up at him, “you still love me though, right?”

He groaned “yes, I do,” he replied reluctantly.

More of your silliness ensued while you were making your potion, you were all brewing an Elixir to Induce Euphoria. Unfortunately, it seemed as though you had put in too much of one ingredient and not enough of another, which resulted in the effects being too strong, reducing you and your friend Alice into fits of silent giggles. Slughorn looked up at you both, shaking his head.

Finally, it came to yours and Sirius’ free period so you were sitting down at the deserted boat house, Sirius was sitting behind you with his arms wrapped around you as he placed sweet kisses on your cheek. You hummed as you leaned back into him and you felt him smile against your skin. There was nothing but the sound of the howling wind and the rippling of the water before Sirius spoke up.

“I want to tell people we’re dating.”

You tensed up in his arms and glanced at him over your shoulder to find him grinning at you but his grey eyes held a look of vulnerability, “you do?”

“Yeah, I know you’re not big on the idea.”

You sighed, “I want to tell people Sirius, I do,” you hesitated, “but I mean, I’m not exactly your type am I?”

Sirius frowned, a crease forming between his eyebrows, “you’re beautiful, smart and funny. Exactly my type,” he kissed you gently.

You flushed at his words as you fiddled with the ring that he wore on his thumb, “everyone sees me as just ‘one of the lads’ though, they’d be weirded out if they found out we were together.”

“Our friends would want us to be happy, Y/N.”

You knew he was right, of course he was right. You guys had the best friends in the whole world who would be happy for you. Finally, you nodded, “okay. Let’s tell them.”

After classes were over, you both walked into the dormitory, hand in hand and found your friends sitting by the fire, “we have to tell you guys something,” Sirius spoke up.

Remus smirked as he pointed at your joined hands, “is it something to do with that?” his words caused you and Sirius to exchange a look.

James’ eyes widened slightly, “wow, I never would have thought of you guys as a couple,” your face dropped at James’ words and you exchanged another nervous look with Sirius.

“What do you mean by that?” you whispered, bracing yourself.

“Well, he’s infuriating enough as a best friend, never mind a boyfriend. You’re a saint, Y/N,” James joked and you let out a relived sigh, “I’m really happy for you guys.”

“Me too,” Remus grinned as Sirius turned to give you a little kiss.

“C’mon, I snuck into the kitchens and stole some Firewhiskey, let’s celebrate,” James picked up a bottle of amber liquid, shaking it with a suggestive look on his face.