#jeryd mencken x original female character

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part VII

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, affairs, sexual content, alcohol consumption, my improper use of commas, JFK references (a warning within itself)

A/N: I can’t remember who posted that photo up there^ but BLESS! Up until this point, this entire fic has been a slow burn. I hope everyone had fun while it lasted because it’s finally about to kick off. Big thanks to @vivalafae for talking me off the ledge multiple times while writing this chapter and @runningwiththefoxes for being the love of my life. Also, there’s a cutesy little playlist I made for this entire shit show, if anyone is interested in it, lemme know.

WC: 2539

I became more delusional the further we drove. Each mile marker was an omen, a declaration of how removed I was from real life. Our premeditation personified when he insisted I leave my car parked at the university after class on Friday.

“It’ll look weird if we leave together with multiple bags,” He told me. He was right, after all, but the notion still didn’t put me at ease.

The more secretive he became about our destination, the antsier I became.

“I don’t like surprises,” I told him as I gazed out the passenger’s window.

“Lighten up, Olive,” his hand on my inner thigh squeezed reassuringly, bunching my dress up even further under his fingertips, “just trust me.”

Trusting him was also easier said than done, but I did it with the type of ease that made me feel gullible, diminutive. Like I had folded myself up into delicate pieces to fit into the intricate, hollow spaces containing all the lies I had told and would tell in his name.

Nevertheless, he drove on, and so too did my desire for him, stretching endlessly like the highway laid out before us.

By the time we arrived in town, four whole hours later, I was content to continue spinning the web.

A fly does not struggle in a web in which its very wish was to get caught.

“I used to come here every summer with my parents before they divorced,” I told him, my wide eyes reflecting back to me through the window as I realized we were in Cape Cod.

“We’re going to Hyannis,” he said, squeezing my thigh as he continued to drive.

“To live out your Kennedy fantasy?”

“Which one are you referring to?” He glanced over at me with an impish grin, “The one where my brains are blown out of my skull or the one where I veer off this bridge up here and land in the pond?”

He jerked the wheel to the right, his car veering dangerously close to the edge of the road before realigning the wheel, crossing a small bridge as I grabbed onto his forearm, my mouth agape in a silent scream.

“You’re a fucking asshole!” I dug my nails into the tender flesh of his forearm to solidify my point.

“Can you swim, Olive?”

_________________________________________

“It’s beautiful.”

Settled on a bank directly overlooking the sea with unfiltered access to the beach, I stood back and took the house in with all its charm. Snowball hydrangeas teetered in the breeze, accenting the yard and picket fences, adding softness to the gray cedar siding. In typical New England fashion, the house was weather worn, but warm and inviting nonetheless. White adirondack chairs formed around a dining table on the concrete patio, only a few feet away from the entryway of the house.

“I used to think this place was a mansion when I was a kid.” He said as he came over to unlock the door.

He opened it, inviting me inside.

The house was swathed in navy blue linens, neutral shades, and pale pastels throughout, giving it a pop of warmth amongst the white planked walls. The living room and adjoining kitchen was bathed in natural light from the surrounding colonial style windows, spilling onto the natural wood floor, shining blindingly into my eyes as I made a right down a long hallway.

“Last door on the left,” He said from his place behind me, but I kept walking, stopping long enough to run my hands across the markings on the first door frame I passed.

‘JM’ and ‘JA’ had been etched in pencil along the door’s frame ranging from midway up my thigh, spanning to above my eyeline. A simple two digit year was beside every entry.

“Are you JM or JA?” I turned back to look at him as he made his way up to inspect the markings.

“JM.”

“Jeryd Motherfucker,” I joked and he looked at me with a grin.

“It’s French.”

I only nodded in response, running my fingertips along the scattered pieces of driftwood that hung along the hall’s narrow walls as I sought out the bedroom I would be sleeping in.

The bedroom was functional and simple, its shaker furniture characteristic of the quintessential New England style. A four poster bed sat against the far right wall under a bare window, a bookshelf directly across it on the opposing wall, with a dresser nestled into an alcove beside the windows leading out to a stunning view of the coastline.

“What a view,” I mused as my fingertips danced across the windowpane.

“Yeah,” He walked up to join at my side, never taking his eyes off mine, “What a view.”

_________________________________________

The rest of the day was spent in town, perusing the little shops that littered Main Street, fighting through tourist sludge, and a quick trip to a local market to pick up non-perishable necessities. It felt normal and fun doing such casual things with him. For a while I was oblivious to anything but the pleasure of being with him.

He chose Pain D'Avignon for dinner. We drank Belgian beer on the intimate patio, people watching, until my Dutch courage kicked in, willing my curious nature to take the lead.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“Here, to the restaurant,” He asked, stopping long enough to take a pull from his pint, “or to Hyannis?”

“Hyannis.”

“Don’t question my motives, Olive,” he lowered his eyes at me, “Can we have dinner without an interrogation?”

“Sure,” I sat back in my seat and nodded, “Whatever you want.”

His eyes sparkled like crystalline snow, more gray than blue at that particular moment, possibly due to the beam of sun that had broken through a small sliver between two buildings across the street. I surmised, though, they reacted to my giving him the reins to do whatever he pleased.

At some point, after a hearty serving of Wellfleet oysters, I lost all interest in questioning his motives.

We both watched curiously as a small boy, no more than three, picked up a glob of cotton candy pink ice cream from its cone, lobbing it directly at his mother as they crossed the street away from us.

“We used to be able to sit and enjoy each other , too.” His mother looked over at Jeryd and I, laughing sarcastically as she combed her fingers through the sticky concoction leaking from her blonde curls. She grabbed the ice cream cone, now covered in fingerprints, and tossed it in the garbage can a few feet from us. All the while her kid screamed bloody murder as he was dragged away by, what I assumed, were his older siblings.

“Enjoy it while it lasts.” She offered us a genuine smile and rejoined her clan.

“I don’t know if I’m fit for that type of nightmare,” he laughed, tossing his napkin on the table.

“Kids are gross,” I laughed out and he nodded in agreement.

“And codependent,” He added.

“I guess that’s why I’m an only child.”

“Surely you couldn’t have been that awful of a child, Liv.”

“There was no real reason for them to try for perfection a second time when they got so close the first time around.” I flashed him a big smile, and he reached across the table, dragging the palm of his hand down my forehead, slender fingers down the bridge of my nose, gripping my chin with a delicate squeeze.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’d be a good dad,” I offered, obviously on my way to being drunk because why else would I have said something so out of pocket?

“You don’t know that much about me.” He eyed me over the rim of his glass as he finished his beer.

“I guess I don’t.”

I realized then and there that it would never just be dinner with him. My internal monologue would always fire on all cylinders, leaving me musing to myself about a future with him, his past, and everything between where we sat now and where we would go in the future. His mother’s words fueled my delusions even further, nowhere was safe, every place leading back to what she had said days prior. It was never just dinner. Every place led back to his arms, to his grasp. Him still virtually a stranger throughout, where I stood, open and transparent, ready to be sought out and read, cover to cover. Oftentimes I found myself desiring to be the painter instead of the muse. Thus, it was easy to see a future with him. To imagine things far beyond my scope. But it’s always easier to not see the forest for the trees, isn’t it?

���Where’d you go just then?” He asked, bringing me plummeting back down to earth.

He reached across the table, seeking out my balled up fist.

I hesitated, eventually unfurling my palm to him.

“Why are you so scared to touch me, Olive?”

His fingers danced across my palm, his nails following the trails of the deeply etched lines.

“I’m not scared to touch you.” A lie if I had ever told one. All I did was lie. But it came so easily when I was looking at him. That in itself should’ve scared me away. But it didn’t. It never did. Never would.

“What do you want from me?” I asked him.

He angled his head to the side, an inquisitorial look painting his features as his lips pulled into a smile.

“What do you want to give me?”

“You say that as if I have a choice in the matter,” I laughed dryly, pulling my hand back from him like a scolded child.

_________________________________________

A subdued energy overtook me once we were back in the cottage and I walked on eggshells contemplating what would come next.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth like I normally would that time of night, alone with myself and my thoughts just long enough to realize the gravity of the situation and let it all come crashing back down on me. Nothing like looking in the mirror and seeing the problem staring back at you.

When I exited the bathroom, he trapped me between his body and the wall, looking down at me like prey caught in a trap.

“You have a choice,” He grasped at the halter strap tied intricately at my neck, unwrapping me like a gift from the neck down.

“Do I?” I wriggled to accommodate him as he slid the dress down my stomach and over my hips.

He nodded down at me, grasping my jaw to tilt my head up to him.

“Everyone has a choice.” He worked my mouth open with his, enough for his tongue to find solace as it tangled with mine.

He broke away long enough to speak with his tinged sarcasm, “What’s your excuse going to be tomorrow?” He asked, “‘I was drunk.’” Parroting back the words I had said to him the night I embarrassingly apologized for kissing him in his car.

“I’m not sorry.” I looked up at him, reaching down to grasp onto his collar. “I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”

“Maybe I’ll be sorry tomorrow,” I shook my head and looked down, feeling transparent and small under his gaze, “Maybe I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life, I don’t know.”

He grasped my chin, pulling my face back up to look at him. We were still for a brief second, staring at one another as if we could read each other’s minds.

He was quick to hoist me up by the back of my thighs, wrapping my legs around his waist, and we bounced around the hallway, my fingers combing through the hair at the nape of his neck as we did a dance of sorts through the narrow hall and into the bedroom.

When he laid me out on the bed, I leaned up towards him, practically tearing him out of his clothes. He took his time undressing me, exploring every inch of my body as he removed the remnants of my dress. Each time I’d rise off the bed to touch him, to graze my hand across his chest, he would press me back into the mattress with a smirk. He went down and pulled off my panties as he kissed around my navel and teased my inner thighs with his lean fingers. Just when I least expected it, he dipped his head low, licking a stripe through my folds, never taking his eyes off mine.

I took a deep breath and laced my fingers into his while he worked his tongue, exploring places I had never imagined him. My other hand raked through his scalp, pressing him further into my cunt.

He came up for air as I felt myself on the precipice of an orgasm, crawling his way up my body to hover over me. When he kissed me, I tasted myself mixed with a flavor that was unmistakably him.

I wrapped my legs around him, letting my body follow his lead as he pressed himself into me. Usually he was quick and relentless upon entry, but that night, he took his time filling in gaps, touching places he had never been before, places he had never seen.

A sort of unfettered pleasure transpired between us. One born from pure, unbridled lust between two people who knew right from wrong, but chose the latter because burning out simply felt better than fading away.

He moved his hands over my lower back and ass, grasping for purchase, driving himself further and further into me. I laid there, clinging to him for dear life, as I plummeted into an intense orgasm. For a while, it was hard to discern where one began and the other ended. We melted together, and each time his face would end up in the crook of my neck, moaning and groaning into the sensitive skin, I would nod along, pressing chaste kisses to the side of his head and into his hairline.

That night, I would lose all sense of fear in regards to him. I would, instead, get lost in his sea blue eyes, the light freckles that littered his cheeks and chest, the scar on his chin. I would watch closely as his shoulders flexed with each thrust, my hands roaming over his flesh with amazement as his body worked its way into mine. The tiny part of me that longed for normalcy, a foundation in which I could build from, got tucked away when he pulled back to look at me with his icy blues. The intensity was there, it would never fade, but a longing that I finally understood and felt deeply myself, shone through then.

He drug the palm of his hand down my forehead, pointer finger down the bridge of my nose, crescendoing with a tender kiss on my lips.

I fell in love at the tender age of twenty-two, in Hyannis, at a cottage by the sea, under the weight of a married man. It was simultaneously one of the best and worst things that I would ever do in my entire life.

Tag list: @aurorag98

[the-west-meadow]

masterlist

SUCCESSION reader inserts

Kendall Roy

Late at Night

Lost My Mind Today 18+

Sleepless 18+

Kissing Strangers 

You Make Me Want Things 

It Was You 

The Holy Mountain 

A Good Person 

Nowhere

I’ll be Home Soon 18+

I’m Glad You’re Here

Pain

Roman Roy

When He’s Gone

Hit Me

Did You Miss Me?

You’re an Asshole

Heartbreaker

Lukas Matsson

Normal People 18+

People Are Watching (Normal People pt. 2) 18+

Leave Your Clothes On

Awake 18+

Tom Wambsgans

My Life is Filled with Fear 18+

If I Could Start Again 18+

Whispering

You Have To Leave

All the Wine 18+

Greg Hirsch

You Don’t Have to Go

Getaway Ch 1

Getaway Ch 2

Other People

Non-Reader Inserts

Tell Me You Love Me (Ao3 link) - Jeryd Mencken/Roman Roy

THE KILLER (2023)

The Killer x Original Female Character

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (pt. 1) (pt. 2) (pt. 3) (pt. 4) (Ao3 links)

THE LAST OF US

Joel Miller x Original Female Character

If the Fates Allow (Ao3 link)

[luxlisbons]

Voulez-Vous? - part ii

Mencken's ego takes a hit when Harriet's eye wanders to the newly elected French president. In response, he engineers a grand state dinner, turning diplomatic affairs into a battlefield of jealousy.

part i

part of the "before there's hell to pay" universe: part i - part ii - part iii

pairing: jeryd mencken x original female character. 4k

warnings: affairs, unhealthy relationships, dubious morality, explicit language, age difference, smut, religious imagery & symbolism, unprotected sex, pov first person, the french

Read on AO3

ATN Breaking News: President Mencken to Host French President Reynaud in Historic State Visit

WASHINGTON — The White House announced on Monday that it would host President Marcel Reynaud of France and his mother and acting First Lady, Brigitte Sadier, in December in the first state visit of President Mencken’s administration. This marks a significant diplomatic move, bringing together leaders with differing political ideologies. The event is poised to shape the narrative around international relations, with both leaders expected to discuss a range of global matters.

Vera Schultz, the White House press secretary, highlighted the unprecedented nature of the visit. "This state visit reflects President Mencken's commitment to engaging with leaders across the political spectrum, fostering open dialogue despite ideological differences.”

While specific information about the agenda remains undisclosed, the visit is expected to cover various topics of global importance. Observers anticipate discussions on diplomatic cooperation, international crises, and potential areas of collaboration between the United States and France.

As the world eagerly awaits further details, this historic state visit has already sparked intrigue and speculation. It represents a departure from conventional diplomatic norms and underscores President Mencken's approach to engaging with leaders whose political perspectives diverge from his own.

_____________________________________________________________

When news of President Reynaud's impending visit made headlines, the gears of the Mencken administration started turning to prepare for this diplomatic spectacle. The announcement, strategically made in late August, granted us a three-month window to navigate the intricacies of hosting the French president.

Fresh off my Italian adventure, I wasted no time informing Tom that I would resume my role as the chief liaison between ATN and the White House, effectively taking on the responsibilities of a press secretary in all but name. The coordination of the media team became my domain, ensuring that the narrative surrounding Mencken was meticulously crafted. 

"Glad to have you back, Harriet," Tom greeted me.

"Cut the shit, Tom. You knew exactly what I was getting myself into."

"Yeah, well, you too. Or better said, what you let Mencken get into when you let him stick it in you. I mean, my God, it's so high school—the popular guy finally seeing the weirdo girl for who she is, and, well, you know the rest. Well, not really, because trust me this does not end with him taking you to prom.”

“But it does end with the rich girl happy with the nerd?” I replied, knowing exactly where to salt the wound.

“Ouch, harsh!” Tom chuckled, acknowledging the sting of my retort. "Alright, you've made your point. But you can't deny you're relishing every moment of this."

“You got me there, Tom Tom. And for the record, I don't need a running commentary on my personal life.”

Tom leaned back in his chair, his gaze locked onto mine. "True, true. Apologies for the friendly banter. But seriously, Harriet, you're handling this like a pro. It's almost... admirable. I’m glad you put your big girlboss shoes on. Keep it up, and keep Herr Fuhrer happy. Maybe soon enough, you’ll be making the calls in the White House."

I arched an eyebrow, intrigued by his cryptic remark. "Are you offering relationship advice now, Tom?"

His lips curled into a knowing smile. "Perhaps, in my own peculiar way."

I couldn't help but glance at the framed photograph on his desk. It showed him, Shiv, and a baby girl with a head of dark hair. I hadn't asked about Logan before, knowing it was a topic best avoided. But now, with the picture in front of me, curiosity got the better of me.

I nodded towards the photograph. "Logan, huh? That's an interesting choice. Must have some deep meaning, right? Daddy issues, perhaps?"

Tom chuckled, his voice tinged with amusement. "You could say that. It's a family name. Shiv picked it." Of course, she did.

I couldn't resist a playful jab. "Well, let's just hope little Logan doesn't need too much therapy when she's older.”

Tom laughed and added, "Ah, therapy. It's practically a family tradition at this point."

Tom leaned back in his chair, his gaze locked onto mine. "Circling back to the main point of this meeting… Do we have you back one-hundred percent? No more pussyfooting? You're brilliant at what you do, and having you closer to the action, well, it could benefit us all."

A subtle, knowing smile played at the corners of my lips as I added, "In more ways than one, perhaps." Finally, I nodded, a determined glint in my eyes. “Yes, Tom. I'm in."

_____________________________________________________________

In the following weeks, as the anticipation for the historic state visit grew, my days were a whirlwind of meetings, strategy sessions, and keeping the ATN team aligned with the White House agenda. The city buzzed with excitement, speculation, and an air of preparation for an event that promised to be a departure from the usual diplomatic routine. We needed this to be perfect, not just to avoid any potential diplomatic hiccups, but to not tick off Mencken’s fickle temper. It was during one of those hectic afternoons that a text message popped up on my phone, disrupting the chaotic rhythm.

M: “So Frenchie’s First Lady is his mom… mommy issues much?🤱🏼”

H: “Be glad for those types of issues, they are the reason why I’m fucking you in the first place 👨🏻🦳”

This tidbit of information made me curious enough to kill the little free I had and go into a Google fuelled rabbit hole. In my deep dive into Marcel Reynaud's life, I uncovered the juicy details that make him more than just a politician. A divorced bachelor who embraced fatherhood at 26 with a fellow activist, he quickly realized that the institution of marriage wasn't his cup of tea. Unlike some people I know, he managed to navigate a divorce amicably and is currently co-parenting a fifteen-year-old boy, Pascal.

But what intrigued me more was the unconventional First Lady setup. Marcel's mother, Brigitte Sadier, a feminist activist and a signer of the Manifesto of the 343, plays the role of his First Lady (Mencken would have a field day with that fact “ Hey, she’s part of your club Mrs. Abortion” ). It seems like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the Reynaud family has a penchant for shaking up norms.  

The more I read about him, I could feel a warmth spreading in my chest, a little bit of affection if you will. Everything that Marcel Reynaud represented was the complete and total opposite of Mencken. The stark contrast fascinated me, and I couldn't help but acknowledge a growing sense of affection for the French president. It was a sentiment that danced on the edges of my consciousness, like an unexpected guest at a well-planned party.

As I delved further into Marcel's life, the nuances of his character painted a different picture—one that stood in stark juxtaposition to Mencken's brashness and often self-centered demeanor. The warmth spreading in my chest wasn't just from the interesting tidbits of his personal life; it was a response to the realization that, in Marcel, there existed a leader who embodied a different kind of strength.

If there's one thing I'm consistent about, it's my ability to be inconsistent. The unpredictable currents of my emotions seemed to be steering me in uncharted waters, like an unmoored ship. I reached for my phone and found myself dialing my White House contact.

“Hey, June? How are you? That’s good. Look, can you do me a favor? Set up a dinner in the agenda for me and Marcel, I want to explain to him all the key details and prepare him for the President. I don’t want him to be caught off guard. Yeah, yeah, make it discreet. Maybe a small gathering at one of those quaint French restaurants. No, nothing official—just a casual dinner. I'm sure Mencken won't mind; he's got his own affairs to attend to. Great, thanks, June."

As I hung up, I couldn't help but wonder about the path I was treading. It wasn't just the professional interest anymore; there was a personal curiosity, a desire to understand the man behind the political persona. My thoughts swirled like leaves caught in a gentle breeze, and I found myself questioning the nature of this newfound fascination.

My mind wandered briefly to Mencken's potential reaction. I could almost hear his gruff voice in my head, questioning the motives behind this seemingly casual dinner. It wasn't that Mencken disapproved of diplomacy; it was the clandestine nature of the gathering that might not sit well with his penchant for control.

A few hours later, as I navigated the White House halls, I found myself face-to-face with Mencken, who was deep in conversation with his assistant. The stern furrow on his brow momentarily softened as he glanced in my direction before returning to his usual mean stare.

"Harriet," Mencken called out, his voice carrying a mix of curiosity and authority. "A word."

I followed Mencken in a more secluded part of the corridor. His sharp eyes fixed on mine, and I could sense the gears turning in his mind.

"I heard about your dinner plans with Marcel," Mencken stated bluntly, wasting no time with pleasantries. "Care to explain what game you're playing?"

His tone was measured, but there was an underlying intensity that hinted at a mixture of curiosity and caution. I met his gaze directly, my response poised and calculated.

"It's a simple dinner," I replied, injecting a note of nonchalance. "Just a way to ensure a smooth interaction between Marcel and the President. No hidden agendas."

Mencken's gaze lingered, a silent exchange of understanding and unspoken challenges. "Keep it professional, vögelchen. This isn't a social club; it's politics."

A sardonic smile played on my lips as I met Mencken's gaze head-on. "When have we ever played by the rules, Mencken?" I retorted, injecting a touch of mockery into my tone. "Politics is just another game, and I'm simply playing my hand."

Mencken's expression remained unreadable, a subtle acknowledgment of the unspoken truth. With a nod, he continued down the corridor, leaving me with a sense of defiance that simmered beneath the surface. 

_____________________________________________________________

The days leading up to the anticipated dinner were filled with a mix of excitement and trepidation. It was as if I was preparing for an unexpected rendezvous, unsure of what the encounter might reveal. The rational part of me scoffed at the idea of a simple dinner having any profound impact, yet the subtle flutter in my chest suggested otherwise.

When Marcel Reynaud's arrival day came I found myself at the airfield, playing the role of the welcoming committee. My task was to explain the media aspects, subtly weaving ATN's interests into the narrative of the state visit. 

Mencken stood beside the First Lady, extending a welcoming hand to Marcel and his mother, Brigitte. "Welcome to the capital, President Reynaud, Ms. Sadier. We're honored to have you."

Marcel shook Mencken's hand firmly, and Brigitte exchanged a few words with the First Lady, which was a miracle. She lately has been speaking of such irrelevant and unexpected subjects that it was impossible to get to the bottom of what was worrying her.

At moments she was cheerful, but for the most part, she was thoughtful, though she did not know herself what she was thinking about. She would suddenly begin to talk of something and then she would suddenly break off and cease speaking, responding to further questions with a vacant smile, without being conscious herself that she was being questioned or that she was smiling. It took an entire task force of uppers and therapists to get her ready for this. By the looks of Brigitte, she was not all impressed.

As the group engaged in polite conversation while nearing me and the team, Mencken's eyes occasionally flickered in my direction, a subtle acknowledgment of my presence.

"Bonjour, President Reynaud. Welcome to Washington," I greeted him with a smile, adding a subtle flirtatious tone to my words. “I’m Harriet from ATN, and I’m glad to be finally meeting you in person.”

"Ah, Harriet, the pleasure is mine. Please, call me Marcel. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he responded, reciprocating with a charming smile that didn't escape Mencken's watchful eyes.

"Now, let me walk you through our media strategy during your stay. We want to ensure this visit is not only impactful but also strategically covered."

Marcel nodded, his attention unwavering despite the diplomatic pleasantries. "I appreciate the effort, Harriet. Your insights will undoubtedly make a difference."

As we concluded our briefing, I noticed a shift in Mencken's demeanor. His eyes narrowed slightly, a silent plea for subtlety. Ignoring the unspoken request, I gestured toward the waiting motorcade.

"Shall we? The convoy is ready to take us to the heart of the capital."

Brigitte gracefully entered the car with the First Lady, leaving Marcel and me to follow suit. As we stepped into the vehicle, Mencken's voice, low and tinged with jealousy, reached my ears.

“Can you at least try to be subtle? It’s childish and pathetic.”

I smirked, catching his gaze. "Subtlety is overrated, Mencken."

Ignoring his disapproving stare, I settled into the car. The air crackled like a brewing storm with unspoken thoughts and veiled intentions.

_____________________________________________________________

In the intricate tapestry of diplomatic engagements, Marcel Reynaud's visit to the United States unfolded like a grand theater production, each scene brimming with political intrigue and subtle flirtations. As I waded through the sea of formalities, the air crackled with anticipation, ripe with the promise of Franco-American collaboration and the undercurrent of personal connections.

Amidst the polished halls of power, Marcel, a master of charm and wit, engaged in discussions with our Vice President, Samuel Bennett, at NASA's headquarters.  Accompanied by the enigmatic Brigitte, his unconventional yet captivating First Lady, Marcel ventured into the vibrant heart of Washington's cultural scene. At the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Brigitte's presence infused the air with an aura of elegance and intrigue, her effortless grace drawing admirers like moths to a flame.

Meanwhile, our conversations during a working lunch on climate and biodiversity with US Climate Envoy Richard Thompson took on a playful tone, punctuated by quips and innuendos that danced on the edge of propriety.

"So, Mr. Reynaud, while we save the planet, do you have any guilty pleasures to confess?" I teased, a mischievous glint in my eye.

Marcel chuckled, his response dripping with subtle flirtation, "Ah, Mademoiselle Harriet, the most tempting indulgence would be to explore the hidden delights of Washington with you once our work is done."

As the day unfolded, Marcel's visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery was a poignant reminder of the shared sacrifices that bound our nations together. Amidst the solemnity, a shared glance between us spoke volumes, our unspoken connection weaving through the somber silence.

At the French Embassy, Marcel's impassioned speech about the US role in World War II stirred the depths of our shared history. After he awarded the Legion d'Honneur to deserving veterans, our banter continued, a playful reprieve from the weight of the moment. 

As the veterans, now adorned with the prestigious medal, mingled with the dignitaries, Marcel and I found a quiet corner away from the ceremonial spotlight. The room seemed to fade away while our whispered French words hid beneath the symphony of polite conversation.

In a more relaxed manner, I leaned closer, the scent of his cologne mingling with the fragrant aroma of the room. "Your words tonight were truly moving, Marcel," I whispered, my voice barely audible above the soft murmur of conversation.

His eyes, alight with passion, held mine captive. "Thank you, Harriet. It means a great deal coming from you," he replied, his tone sincere yet tinged with a hint of something more.

A soft chuckle escaped him, and he cast a playful glance towards Mencken, who observed the proceedings from a distance. "Unlike some, I prefer speeches that speak to the heart, not just the ego," he said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Our laughter, a shared symphony, resonated through the embassy. Mencken, relegated to the sidelines, watched our interaction with a growing sense of frustration. His eyes, usually sharp and assertive, now betrayed a hint of jealousy as he observed us.

Meanwhile, my phone buzzed with a message. Glancing discreetly, I saw Mencken's name on the screen. The message read, "A bit too cozy with the French, aren't we?”

I couldn't help but smirk. Ignoring the message, I continued my conversation with Marcel, our laughter carrying through the embassy like a secret shared between conspirators.

As the guests began to disperse, Mencken approached, a forced smile on his face. "Quite the performance tonight," he remarked low enough for me to hear, his tone attempting nonchalance but failing to mask the underlying tension.

Marcel, ever the diplomat, extended a hand to Mencken. "President Mencken, a pleasure to be in your country."

Mencken's handshake was firm, but his eyes bore into mine. "The pleasure is ours, President Reynaud."

Marcel's departure was marked by a subtle yet lingering glance, promising more encounters. Once he and his entourage left, Mencken turned to me with a raised eyebrow. "A bit too friendly, don't you think?"

I responded with a shrug, "It's called diplomacy, Mencken. Something you might want to learn."

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part V

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: sexual content, age gap, affairs, unhealthy relationships, dubious morality, my improper use of commas, pure angst, mention of politics.

A/N: For the four people that read this, thank you so much. I almost scrapped this fic earlier this week (the full moon really had me in a full blown tizzy) but this chapter poured out of me at six AM this morning. (Y’all want me to make a tag list? Would that make life easier?)

WC: 1811

“You’re twenty-two?” He hung over my shoulder, watching with darting eyes as I filled out each line of the necessary paperwork for employment through the university.

“I feel like that should’ve been a prerequisite question, don’t you?” I looked back at him and shrugged with an alarmed look on my face.

“Is it my turn to ask if you’re legal?” I joked, watching as he crossed the kitchen and made his way over to the refrigerator.

“To be fair, I estimated you were around that age.” He grabbed the carton of orange juice and turned around towards the drying rack, plucking two wine glasses out, filling them with orange juice.

“Estimations aren’t exact.” I grabbed the glad he slid in my direction and lowered my eyes, “Not very careful of you.”

“They ID’d you at the restaurant, genius,” he shot back at me, “I’m observant.”

I slid the finished paper over to him. He picked it up, skimming the details as he sipped his orange juice.

“Luciano?” He glanced down at the paper and back at me, “That’s your last name?”

I shrugged, “What about it?”

“You’re one bad joke away from joining the mafia.”

“You’re one more insult away from waking up with a severed horse head in your bed.” I countered as I poured the remaining orange juice into the sink and rinsed out the glass.

He narrowed his eyes at me, following my eyeline as I idled about the kitchen, pretending I was focused on anything but him.

“Godfather one or two?” He asked.

“You hardly know me well enough to ask those types of questions.” It was easy to feign innocence when I wasn’t directly looking at him.

“HA!” He bellowed, “That’s rich considering the events of last night,” He laughed again, “You’re funny.”

“Now you’re turning pink.” He cocked his head to the side and lowered his eyes, “Don’t get all shy on me now, Livvy.”

“I’m not shy,” even with my proclamation, I still couldn’t look him in the eye, “I’m still processing it.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” he mocked with an eye roll,“Should we call a priest? Your therapist?”

“We could call your wife.”

That garnered the reaction I so desperately craved. A little hint of something boiling under the surface threatened to spill over and I waited with baited breath for him to tear into me. In a sick way, I anticipated it. Any crack in the surface to reveal his true nature, or anything of the sort. Something real, something I could latch onto. My own personal souvenir to remind myself that, like me, he was actually human. For a while, he had been a caricature to me. A walking trope actualized in the way he bantered with me, stared at me through his long eyelashes, existed within the confines of my home, my job, my dock. The only thing I knew about him was that he was a reckless driver, previously taught at a high school in Roslyn, liked two lemons in his ice water, and that he had an entire wife and a life so far removed from mine that he may as well have lived on Mars.

I itched for him to ask me my LSAT score, my favorite color, what fucked up series of events had led me to seek sexual gratification from my married neighbor with whom I shared a twenty year age difference.

It was at this very moment, I realized I was never built to be regarded as casual. In other words, being someone’s dirty secret only took care of the gap between my legs, my heart and ego bearing the brunt of his casual coolness.

I grabbed the form from his grip and held it closely to my chest.

“If there’s going to be an issue with us working so closely, I don’t want this job. I’m still technically employed at The Marina.”

He was quick to grab it back from me. A look of disapproval flashed across his face.

“We’re good, Olive.” He moved closer to me, patting me reassuringly on the shoulder.

I nodded, listening as his footfalls echoed from the entryway as he made his way to the front door.

I wish I had the restraint to walk away from him as easily as he walked away from me.

_________________________________________

A day later, we made the trip to the university together. A bad choice on my part, I know, but I genuinely enjoyed his company.

He didn’t seem to mind my company, nor did he seem to mind my stealing the occasional glance at him. A look of approval colored his features as he looked over at me while waiting at a stoplight.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m just looking at you, Olive.”

“Well, don’t.”

That earned me a chuckle as the light turned green.

Getting approval from the university was child’s play. My fingerprints were clean, my background untarnished, my last name garnering enough attention from the hiring office that the job was offered to me on the spot. Turns out I didn’t need his help after all. Though I’d never admit it aloud, I appreciated his offer, flattering myself despite the obvious manipulative undertones both of us were well aware of when the job was offered, considered, and taken.

“You could have told me your grandfather is the district attorney for Manhattan, for Christ’s sake.” He spoke lowly as we walked back to his car.

He opened the door for me and I slid into the passenger's seat, watching as he skulked to the driver’s side and climbed in.

“Is there anything else I should know?” He asked, eyebrows piqued.

“Part two,” I said, and he looked at me confusedly, “The Godfather.”

“Right.” he chuckled, “Are we friends now, Livvy?”

“No, actually,” I rolled the window down, tipping my hand in the wind.

“We’re colleagues.”

_________________________________________

The second mistake I made that day was going over to his house to discuss lesson plans as well as his teaching preferences.

“No fancy transitions, no bubbly text, no stupid pictures,” he told me as he clicked through an example of one of his PowerPoint presentations.

“These are college students, not kindergarteners.”

‘Poli Sci 408- The American Presidency,’ his syllabus read, with a brief introductory statement framing the coursework: This subject describes the types, functions and roles of the Chief Executive, personal administration, administrative corruption, financial administration and administrative improvement.

“No fun in Professor Mencken’s class,” I mockingly saluted him, “I got it.”

Only later would I realize how ironic it had been to stand in the future president’s kitchen discussing the details of his class, which included administrative corruption, given the nature of our relationship.

When he left me alone at his laptop to click through his lesson plans, I did anything but that. I glanced around the kitchen and adjoining living room, my curious feet carrying me to the entryway. No colors, no personal style, no signs of life in the living space. The style screamed avoidant. Like he could pick up his stuff in one go and run out the door at any given moment.

What caught my eye the most, though, was the photo on the fireplace’s mantle. A wedding photo of him and his wife framed in plated gold with the words ‘From This Moment On’ etched into the bottom of the frame in flowing cursive.

I picked it up, my fingertips gliding gently across the glass as I inspected the photo. The refined ball gown she wore with its basque bodice dripping onto the tulle skirt met with a shirred waistline, all made of matte satin throughout. The delicate V back coming to a halt with a simple bow, the chapel length train trailing behind her as they gazed adoringly at one another. He could have been standing there completely naked in the photo and I still would have only noticed how her delicate collarbones peaked through from under the high scoop neckline. Her face, her timeless American beauty. Brunette hair down to her chin, curled under at the ends, framed neatly with a headpiece at the crown of her head. Her veil flowing gently in, what I imagined to be, the summer breeze.

Suddenly I was a little girl again, gazing through the storefront window on Madison Avenue as an elated bride-to-be twirled around in front of the floor length mirror, surrounded by her friends.

Mrs. Mencken was now as real to me as that woman had been. My guilt now had a face.

I slid the frame back onto the mantle and turned around, smacking right into Jeryd’s chest.

“Do you still want to call her?”

I shook my head vehemently, swallowing audibly as I looked up at him.

His face remained calm as he blinked down at me expectantly, his eyebrow sloping at the arch.

He fucked me hard against the wall after that. My legs wrapped around his waist like a noose when he hoisted me up and took me right there in his living room. A reward, I guessed, for not spilling my guts on his carpet or to his wife. In all reality, I had wanted him to fuck me. To break the code of professionalism that we had agreed on previously. I had dressed for the occasion, silently pretending a skirt with no panties was an innocent choice when he pulled it up to rest on my hips. The entire time, my head rested in the crook of his neck, my eyes burning holes through the photo that rested innocently in its rightful place on their mantle. I held onto him for dear life as he fucked into me, slowly coming to a halt as he pulled back to look into my eyes.

“Don’t do that.” He said, lowly chastising my wandering mind. “Don’t make it personal.”

I wanted to ask him what the fuck life is if it’s not personal but I stayed silent.

He brought his left hand to rest on my cheek as he balanced our weight against the wall. The coldness of his wedding band felt like something akin to holy water on the flesh of the possessed.

“Take it off,” I pleaded with him. He was confused by my outburst, his eyes narrowing down at me.

When I slid his finger into my mouth, the cold metal gripped between my teeth, he got the message. It pooled under my tongue briefly before I spit it onto the floor. The ring landed with a soft thud right in front of the rug on the fireplace.

He didn’t look away from me when he resumed his pace. Each time I tried to avert my gaze, he quite literally jerked my chin back to look directly at him.

I wanted to ask him if that was his idea of not making it personal.

But I didn’t.

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part X

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, alcohol consumption, physical violence, mentions of affairs, morality issues, my improper use of commas. MDNI!

A/N: this is the end, my friends. As quickly as it began, so it shall end. Thanks to everyone who stuck around and read this. Y’all make my heart smile. And to @vivalafae and @runningwiththefoxes for listening to my neurotic ass.

WC: 1801

I managed to make it through dinner without a crack in the facade I had delicately manufactured for the sake of my family and friends.

They sang happy birthday with a sea of waiters piled around the table, their faces blurring along with the rest as I blew out twenty-three candles placed intricately around a pearlescent, heart-shaped cake.

I pushed the food around on my plate to make it seem like I had eaten, choosing to fill up on half a bottle of wine while everyone bantered back and forth from their respective seats, their cheerfulness making me want to scream at the top of my lungs.

One day I would realize that the world never did revolve around me. However, that day was not the day.

The entire affair had lasted five weeks and three days. My mental math gave way to a sea of memories, some pleasant, fleeting, while the others threw up a barrage of red flags, making me wonder why I had been so blind, so careless with a man I didn’t know. Even then, with the information I had, I didn’t know him. To add insult to injury, the logical part of my brain, a part long dormant where he and I were concerned, chastised any part of me that felt heartbroken and confused, citing time, or lack thereof, as a point of weakness. Five weeks is merely a blink of an eye, a flap of a butterfly’s wing. But empires have fallen in a shorter amount of time, and the thought alone made me feel somewhat better. A modicum of reprieve as my thoughts came in waves, battering down on me, sweeping me further and further from the safety of the shore.

_________________________________________

“She’s going to be looking for that note until next Fourth of July,” Heather murmured into my ear, leaning against me from her spot at the stool to my right. The Annual Star Spangled Karaoke event had kicked off and with it came the usual bards and minstrels, drunk and howling away at whatever song was chosen for them by the patrons of The Marina. To be quite frank, none of them could carry a tune in a bucket. You’d think the lightness and fun the setting provided would have made me feel better, but it didn’t. I was drunk and irritated by something as simple as the wind blowing my hair into my face.

“Why do we torture ourselves with this shit every year?”

“Oh, it’s torture, huh?” She turned completely around to look at me, her knees knocking into mine as we came face to face. “Do you have something else you should be doing besides this?”

She cocked her head at me, her eyebrow threading upward as she waited for my response.

I shook my head at her.

“It’s a tradition, Livvy Lou.” She patted my knees, turning her attention back around to the DJ.

“When do we let traditions die?” I asked her, feeling sour and dried out as I finished my second Mai Tai. “Particularly this one.”

She turned around quickly, her expression lost between anger, disappointment, and sadness.

“It’s not like you haven’t blown me off every week for the past month,” she spat, eyes narrowing at me, mouth twitching in a way that let me know she wasn’t quite done with her verbal lashing, but also wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue.

My mouth was bone dry from anxiety, the sudden rising of guilt in my chest from being a terrible friend. A terrible person.

“You know what,” I stood up, the barstool scraping unceremoniously against the tile flooring, “Fuck this.”

She turned back around, unbothered by my outburst, arms crossed snuggly across her chest as I grumbled to myself, retrieving my bag and keys before walking away from her entirely.

On my way out of The Marina, I managed to snag a fifth of Jack from the bar, my way of sticking it to Heather since her family owned the restaurant. Eventually I would replace the bottle, never telling anyone what happened to it originally, though I suspect they never even noticed it was missing.

My entire walk home I replayed the scene from Mencken’s car in my head. I rewound it, stopping and going over each word, pausing, seething, the sloshing of the whisky in its bottle in my fist becoming the background track to my dramatics.

Dodging the passerbys, the ones with enough sense to stay sober as they parted the crowds, each of them marching like worker ants towards the center of the village, ambling towards the best vantage point for the annual fireworks show.

And there I was, no regard for public drunkenness or the mess the sidewalk was making of my bare feet, stomping recklessly towards home for no reason other than not being able to stand myself, wanting nothing more than to rip my skin off piece by piece to give way to the rage boiling right under the surface.

Like he knew, like he could predict my arrival, he stood on his front porch, leaning against the railing with his hands hung over the edge, watching as I edged my way closer to the driveway.

“Happy birthday,” he said as casually as one announces the weather.

I threw my hand up, waving him off, “Fuck you.”

I kept walking, hearing his footsteps bounding down his front steps, doing my best to ignore how close on my heels he was getting.

When I fell—busting my ass with no ounce of grace—as I descended the hill that led to the dock, he grabbed hold of my shoulders.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I shook him off, clawing at the earth to get my bearings, to will myself to stand up and put some much needed distance between us.

He grabbed the bottle I had dropped, tipping it upside down, the amber liquid watering a particularly brown patch of grass that had died somewhere in the peak of June’s heat.

“Think you’ve had enough of this.” He said, chastising me with a raised eyebrow.

“Think I’ve had enough of you.”

I was able to totter successfully onto the dock, walking carefully down at the edge, linking my arms across my chest like a brooding child.

“Shouldn’t you be inside taking care of Rosemary and her fucking baby?”

That earned me a chuckle, an earnest one, as he came to stand beside me, gazing out at the water before his eyes finally landed on me.

“You can’t get mad at me over the natural order of things, Olivia.” His tone was softer than I expected, though I hadn’t expected him to follow me to the dock at all.

“The natural order of things?” A sardonic laugh slipped past my lips, “You tell me she will wise up and leave you in a few years, and then, surprise, she’s pregnant.”

He shrugged. “Is it hard to believe you can dislike someone but still fuck them?”

Once again, I chuckled, “I’ve been doing that very thing for weeks, so.”

A smirk played up behind his knowing smile. Like he was privy to information I didn’t know and most likely would never figure out. It was always like that with him; one step forward, two steps back. “You’re a hypocrite, you know.”

“Can you please just leave me alone?” I pleaded, searching his face for any cracks below the surface, any indication that he was hurting like I was, any indication of humanness underneath his steely exterior.

“What do you want from me?” I asked with a resigned sigh, “Do you want me to march into your house and tell her what’s been going on?”

He stayed silent, his smirk widening, eyes dancing cruelly across my deranged features as I continued, “or better yet, let’s just get her out here for the show. Hann-,”

Before I could finish her name, his palm slapped against my mouth, his other hand curling around my wrist to jerk me towards him.

“Shut the fuck up, Olivia.” He gritted, jerking me closer to him for further emphasis.

I was quick to wriggle out of his hold, shoving him with two hands planted on his chest.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” The impact of my shove sent me reeling, stammering backwards as I watched him fight with gravity.

He recovered, stalking over towards me, gripping my shoulders with a slight shake.

“There’s a streak of cruelty in you that I’ve chosen to ignore, but now that you want to play games, I suppose I should remind you that if you want to destroy me, I’ll destroy you too.” His tone was quiet, but laced with effortless venom as he lowered himself to be level with my face. His grip on my shoulders never loosened as he sloshed me back and forth. The idea of him laying our secret bare mingled with the way he gripped my shoulders, kneading into the bony flesh, bore an anger in me that I had never experienced.

When I hit him, with little to no hesitation, delivering a right hook to the crest of his left cheekbone, I immediately regretted my decision. A flitter of fireworks set off above us as if to mark the tumultuous scene, their ranging colors of royal blue and scarlet red maring with the inky blood oozing down his cheek and onto his chin.

“You hit me.” His face was blank, his phrase almost coming out as a question. For some reason, I expected him to hit me back. I had leveled the playing field with my punch, canceling out gender roles when it landed, shocked when he didn’t send me reeling with a blow of his own. He stammered forward, hands reaching out for me, and I swatted them away, eventually landing weightless hits and dull thuds against the hollow of his chest.

His bloody hand smeared against my face as he pulled me tightly into his chest, pushing my tangled hair away from the tacky sweat on my forehead. I contorted myself against him, pulling and pulling away to no avail. He held me tightly as the night sky exploded above us. My voice was a symphony of weak cries and crackled sentiments as I whispered, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” over and over again until my voice grew hoarse and any resolve I had to get away from him in that moment simply faded away as I wore myself down.

The perfect ending for a nightmarish fever dream—fireworks, a fistfight, a bloodied mess— but nothing could have made it better when he sighed, pressed a kiss to my temple, and in two simple words, he let me win.

“I know.” He said. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then he walked away.

Tag list: @aurorag98

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part IX

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, affairs, age gap, morality issues, mentions of vomiting, mentions of pregnancy, my improper use of commas. MDNI!

A/N: Alright, this is the big one. There’s one chapter after this and then the epilogue. Can anyone guess where this is going? To everyone who has read this and commented, my lovely betas who listen to my neurotic rants, and everyone else in between, thanks for all the love. I never would’ve guessed this little piece of shit would garner so much attention but here we are. You all get one (1) kiss on the forehead.

WC: 2725

Call it women’s intuition, clairvoyance, unchecked paranoia, I knew the moment I saw the other vehicle in his driveway that she was home. I felt it deep within my gut, unsettled like the battering sea, churning away to the point that there was no ignoring it. Willful ignorance was the only thing keeping me afloat in those days.

Something came up. Let’s rain check our run.

“Rain check your run,” I mumbled to myself as I read his text, sliding into my trainers as I made my way to the front door.

A series of events quickly set into motion as I latched the door behind me, completely out of my control, blurring the lines between he and I even more than they had been blurred previously.

Jackson came barreling towards me out of nowhere, nipping and licking at my fingertips once he finally skidded to a stop at my shins, coaxing my hand to scratch between his ears.

“Where did you come from?” I cooed to him, patting his side as he leaned into me.

“Jackson!” I expected Jill to come tottering around the corner, but the smile on my face quickly faded when I saw her poking her head over the picket fence that separated our properties.

“I am so sorry!” She whistled at Jackson, pointing her finger back at the yard he had escaped from, “He doesn’t listen to me.”

“I’ve got him,” I led Jackson carefully over to the yard as she unclasped the gate and let him back inside.

“Thank you,” she smiled at me, “He doesn’t like me, I don’t think.”

Jeryd came walking out on the porch, leaning against a column casually, drying his hands with a dish towel, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He watched the scene unfold, his eyes darting between his wife and I.

“I’m Hannah,” she said, offering her hand out to me.

“Liv,” I noticed her hands were soft and small as we exchanged a clipped handshake. Her eyes were kind, everything about her screaming out the picturesque vision of domesticity that I would never be able to achieve. Imagining her on her knees in a head shop bathroom in Provincetown was like imagining myself being the First Lady; so very wrong and out of place. She and I would fill our respective roles in a man’s life that had no regard for either of our feelings at the end of the day. A man so unsatiated that he would have his cake and demand he be able to eat it. That’s the only thing Hannah Mencken and I would ever have in common.

She bobbed her head at me, “Law school Liv. The previous owners gave us a run down.”

“Right.”

“Well, it’s nice to be able to put a name with a face.” She assessed me, walking back to the porch to take her place beside Jeryd as her eyes roamed across my face and down my figure.

I smiled up at them, nodding as I turned the other way, running as fast I could before the tears inevitably came falling down.

_________________________________________

He started out by flaking. On my first day back at the university later that week, he called in sick. I only found out when I walked in and was greeted by a substitute. My texts went unanswered, and each call was forwarded to his voicemail. Any headway we made in Hyannis was quickly replaced with regret and remorse.

I cried the entire way home that evening, breaking the vow I had made to him a few days prior in Hyannis.

When he attempted to talk to me from his vantage point on his front porch once I arrived home and mustered enough strength to get out of my car, I fully ignored him.

When I walked into his classroom the next day, he looked at me as if to say ‘I know, I know’ but I was quick to shut down his attempt to rectify the situation.

I quite simply didn’t want to hear him speak.

That didn’t last long. When he slid his hand into my slacks, opening me up with deft fingers against his desk, I felt all the tension leave my body.

“There’s my girl,” he cooed as I came around his fingers, looking over my shoulder with a sly smile as if I died and came back to life under his ministrations.

At one point, I reasoned with myself that I couldn’t possibly be in love with him, chalking up my moments of weakness to the different ways he found to get me off. And boy, did he find new ways to get me off once the stakes were higher and his wife was home. Like he knew I would eventually tire of the secrecy and lies if he didn’t make it worth my while.

“You get wetter now that she’s back,” He whispered against the nape of my neck as he angled his fingers deeper, one orgasm following the next, leaving a trail of my arousal slathered across my skin as he drug his fingers across my asscheeks and up to the small of my back.

“Don’t fucking say that to me,” I turned around and shoved myself away from his desk, repositioning my pants as I grabbed my bag.

“Where are you going?” He asked as I made my way to the door.

“To hell.”

_________________________________________

If the situation wasn’t already complicated by Hannah’s presence, my mother arriving home added a new element to the entire charade.

“You don’t look so good.” She said as she appeared in the kitchen.

“Thanks. I didn’t have the luxury of going on a two week cruise.” I had been sitting at my laptop at the kitchen table for over an hour preparing the last few batches of PowerPoints for Jeryd’s lectures. With The Marina reopening on the Fourth of July, which also doubled as my twenty-third birthday, I planned to give my notice at the university the following day.

She stopped and looked at me, shocked that I would hit back that deeply. “That wasn’t very nice.”

I had become so used to hard-hitting sarcasm as a defense mechanism, a tactic I had learned from him, or maybe to protect myself from him, that I had forgotten how to have a normal conversation without any dour undertones.

“You’re right,” I said, rubbing my temples, “I’m sorry.” I closed the laptop, offering her a kind smile.

“Tell me about your trip.”

For the next hour we worked in tandem around the kitchen. She chopped onions and I sautéed mushrooms, listening intently as she recounted each port the ship stopped in, tenderly going into detail about each little thing that reminded her of me.

“I really wish you could’ve been with me, my love.”

I wondered if she would still love me unconditionally if she knew what I had been up to. If a mother’s love truly knew no bounds and if she would forgive me for hurting another woman the way my father had hurt her.

“Me too.” I said honestly, knowing I had been out at sea in regards to my own life for the duration of her trip.

We dined together in content silence, sipping wine, enjoying one another’s presence. For the first time in a while, I didn’t think about Jeryd.

But he was there, like he always was, peeping cautiously through his kitchen window at us, like he knew I was debating on coming clean to my mother.

Luckily for him and I both, I decided to live our lie a little longer.

_________________________________________

“You could’ve told me, Olivia,” A few brisk steps and he caught up with me as I made my way down the hall, towards his classroom.

His use of my full name still had a weird effect on me.

I surmised the department head had let him know about my resignation because everything else in my life, big, small, or undefined, he knew about. The more my legs opened for him, the more secrets, or lack thereof, he seemed to pry out of me.

I waited for him to unlock his classroom door, his eyes never leaving mine as he turned the key in the lock.

“You knew I would be going back to The Marina as soon as it reopened.”

He let me enter first, tossing his keys and phone onto the desk with a loud huff of frustration.

“But you could’ve told me first. Seems calculated, no?”

I shook my head, “I knew you’d try to talk to me out of it if I told you first.”

“And you knew I’d be successful.” He seemed almost pleased with himself as he said that, a wry, sly smile pulled at the corner of his lips.

I let out a full body sigh, watching his movements in the reflection of the window I was standing beside, “This was fun once, wasn’t it?”

“In the beginning, maybe?” I continued, willing myself to turn around and look at him. It was a genuine question.

Everything blurred together when I looked at him. Days, weeks, months, years could have passed by and I wouldn’t have had a clue. I had been so wrapped up in him that nothing else had mattered.

He searched my face as I stared at him. Before he could comment, his students began to pour into the room, effectively shutting our exchange down.

I wanted to care about him, I truly did. There was a part of me that wished that he would be an unbearable asshole all the time, just so I’d be able to walk away a little easier. I was tired of the constant battles and pitfalls that existed between us, the need for me to continue waging my internal battles, as I fought for control of my own life and feelings. I was tired of navigating through broken promises and shattered expectations, letting my own guard down only to quickly rebuild it, reminding myself of why it was there in the first place.

I filed out of his classroom with the sea of students once class was over, not willing to face him to hear his answer.

_________________________________________

I kept my distance as July approached, longing for him to want to see me, to need me the way I had convinced myself that I needed him, but my pride wouldn’t allow me to beg myself for an ounce of his attention. I had gotten so used to everything being on his terms, I had forgotten that I was a willing participant in our affair. That I mattered just as much as he did. My needs remained unfulfilled and knowing that he was merely hundreds of feet next door at any given moment sent me into a maniacal spiral filled with thoughts of bursting into his house, of spilling my guts to his wife. Just to hurt him. She was an innocent bystander that my bulleted speech would maim. I lied to myself, my mind assuring me she deserved so much better. That I would be doing her a favor. At the same time, I assured myself he was exactly what I deserved.

If that doesn’t say something about the way I viewed myself then, I don’t know what else does.

_________________________________________

It was hotter than usual that Fourth of July.

“It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” My grandmother said to my mother as I walked into the kitchen, grabbing the cup of coffee she slid over to me.

Her southern accent was a means of comfort to me, until she eyed me up and down, “You don’t look so good, Livvy Lou.” Even her sweet cadence couldn’t sugarcoat the fact that I was falling apart.

She continued to eye me over the rim of her teacup, sitting it down long enough to insult me again.

“You look terrible. Like you crawled up from the grave. Was that you throwing up last night?”

“Nope,” I lied. “Must have been the neighbor's dog again.” Knowing good and well I had cried so hard that I had vomited sometime during the witching hour.

She only hummed in response, not looking away as I quickly downed the coffee that had been placed in front of me, grabbing my keys from the counter.

“These were on the porch this morning,” My mother came from the living room holding a bouquet of red roses and a book, neatly bound together with a simple piece of silky red ribbon.

“Who sent this?” I grabbed the book, pale yellow, with the words DOSTOEVSKY: LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES emblazoned on the front in sage green calligraphy.

“Don’t know. It was on the porch when I went out to grab the newspaper this morning.”

“Strange.”

All it took was flipping the book open to notice his handwriting scrawled out on the first page:

‘Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.’

_______________________________________

“Did you get my gifts?”

About an hour before my shift was scheduled to end, he showed up, requesting a table by the window in a secluded part of the restaurant, in my section.

“I did.”

I looked around at my other tables before gazing back down at him with a soft smile, “Thank you.”

“Do you have any plans tonight?”

“Dinner with my parents and grandma at that Italian restaurant next to the jazz bar on MaryAnn street. I might go out with Heather and her family on their boat to watch the fireworks after.”

He nodded at me, sipping his water to maintain the illusion of casual coolness between the two of us.

“Right, well,” I nodded as I took off, dancing around my section under his prying gaze for the rest of my shift.

I delivered his check, watching as he inked his name across the bottom, letting out a measured sigh as he began to speak, “We need to talk.”

_________________________________________

“You’re going to do this to me on my birthday?”

Per his request, I followed him to the university, its parking lot empty due to the holiday. For a split second, I thought he had wanted to see me, spend time with me, or maybe he would drag me to the backseat like he had on the way home from Hyannis. But as I followed his car closely, those four words, “we need to talk” ringing in my ears, I realized what was coming. I knew it the moment I climbed into his car, when he couldn’t look at me, barely acknowledging my presence as I waited for an answer.

“It’s not personal, Olivia.”

“Stop fucking saying that to me,” I seethed from my place in his passenger’s seat.

He didn’t let my anger phase him. He looked straight ahead, his hands pressed flat down on his thighs, his eyes scanning the empty parking lot.

“Spit it out,” I wanted to sound brave and hardened, like I could take whatever he threw at me, letting it roll off my back in stride, but my words came out as nothing more than an airy plea.

I braced for impact, waiting for the speech about my age and future. The setbacks our tryst would eventually unravel and what lost potential would come along with it. The disappointment of it all.

“Let’s be honest,” he cleared his throat, finally looking over at me, “this thing had an expiration date from the beginning.”

I met a whole different side of him that day. The Jeryd Mencken who is so full of himself, so wholly pompous and removed from any vulnerability, that you start to believe the things he says. He believed himself, at least, in saying that we had an expiration date. So much so that I sat there in silence, running through each word we had shared, every interaction, for any indication that this whole thing had been given a strict timeline.

I laughed incredulously, scoffing at him.

“God. Fuck you, Jeryd.”

I grasped the door handle, clawing at it in an attempt to get away from him.

“She’s pregnant.”

In grim slow motion, I turned around to stare at him, jaw clenched, my entire body coiled up and ready to strike.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

Taglist: @aurorag98

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part II

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, drug use, voyeurism, age gap, mentions of death, masturbation. Minors DNI

A/N: Look at me posting back to back! I have no clue how long this series will be, nor do I have any idea of how frequently I’ll be posting. Inspiration has been coming in waves, tbh, and I’m quite literally riding the wave. Also, if you’ve watched Scandal, I swear I didn’t steal OC’s name from their main character. It’s a name I’ve been in love with since I was a kid. Do not come for me. I am fragile.

WC: 2490

Of all the things that had changed in the time I had been away, the old wooden dock stayed the same, in its rightful place, bobbing directly in between the divide of property lines. I had imagined that when Ms. McGoven died, her children quickly went through her things. Auctioning off what they deemed unsuitable to their tastes, while quickly listing the house for sale. They seemed to be a covetous lot, so it came as a huge surprise to me when my mother informed me that the dock stayed in possession of my family and the new neighbors, The Menckens.

I had spent most of the day sprawled out on the dock, idling between sunbathing and getting lost amongst the tattered pages of an old novel. The sound of the waves lapping against the inlet across the way lulled me into a state of contentedness, so much so that I had failed to notice the bright sky change and shift above me, its cotton candy tone now reflecting against the shifting waves set out before me as the sun began its descent.

I was awestruck by the simplicity of the beauty around me. Flipping a tattered corner on the page, I snapped the book shut and deposited it down into my bag. I absentmindedly dug out my wallet, sliding my pointer finger along the ridges of the change section until I found the joint and lighter at the bottom of the compartment. I lit it up happily, lying flat down on my back for the optimal view of the ever changing sky. A few moments passed before I heard someone speak from the bank behind me.

“Are you smoking pot on my dock?”

I sat up in an instant, my cheeks flushing red as I thought of every possible lie I could float to him in an effort to get out of this.

“No,” I lied. A plume of smoke billowed from my mouth, effectively betraying me.

When I turned around, he didn’t look angry. He appeared amused. His hands were tucked in the pocket of his slacks as his simple white tee held snugly to his middle as the wind blew in our direction.

I bobbed along with the dock as he stepped down from the bank to stand beside where I was sitting. He looked down at me with a smirk.

“I think you are.” He crouched down beside me and plucked the joint from my mouth. When he brought it to his mouth and sharply inhaled, I stared at him with wonder.

“Tastes like pot.” His voice went up a few octaves as he inhaled as deeply as he could. He never took his eyes off me as he exhaled above my head. He observed the joint in his hands, hitting it again as he watched me.

I felt small under his gaze. Like he knew something I didn’t. And with the newfound intensity now occupying the space around us, I needed to move, to cut the tension I felt was due to my increasing paranoia. I surely hadn’t been this worked up a few days ago when I served him at The Marina. When he slid a twenty in my hand and asked for my name, ensuring he would be back to sit in my section again.

He watched me carefully as I leaned forward onto my knees, running my hands through the water. When he went to hand the joint back to me, I wiped my hands along the top of my swimsuit, finding myself gobsmacked when the material didn’t soak up the water on my hands the way I had intended for it to.

“I… can’t?” I held up my hands and shrugged. He laughed at me.

“Here,” he offered, and I watched as he puffed on the joint again. His free hand tilted my face upward towards his, gently cupping my jaw as he pursed his lips and blew the smoke gently at my mouth. It took me a second to register exactly what was happening and I was quick to settle on my knees in front of him, happily welcoming the smoke into my mouth.

When he did it again, I let my fingers dance across his cheek, making a home directly over his cheekbone as a way to ground myself as the dock moved back and forth with the waves.

The intimacy of the moment wasn’t lost on me as I opened my eyes to look into his. They were a violent shade of blue, the golden hour appearing to make them almost glow.

“It’s definitely pot.” He confirmed with a toothy grin, stubbing the joint out on the side of the dock. “I’m taking it with me.”

“What?!” I guffawed, mouth open wide at the audacity of this man. “You can’t just rob me like that!”

“I can and I did.” He turned around and began his trek back up the bank to his house.

“I’ll think of it as a housewarming gift.” He turned around and gave me a smirk.

I didn’t argue back, choosing to huff frustratedly instead, lying back down on the dock, thinking of how I could get even with him

——————————————————————

“No one told me she died.” I sipped at the steaming French roast as I eyed her.

“Who are you talking about?��� My mother mimicked me from across the bar, blowing away the steam as she relished the decadent scent.

“Mrs. McGoven.” I nodded my head towards the bay window. The same bay window that had sat in Mrs. McGoven’s house, always open with various potted plants on its sill, now sporting closed curtains. I surmised the Mencken’s were private people, the vast opposite of Mrs. McGoven who liked to open her curtains and blinds as the sun rose each day. Oftentimes I’d catch her smiling at me as I idled around the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah.” She shrugged her shoulders, “her kids had the funeral back in New Haven.”

“It was quick, honestly. They had the house cleared out and on the market by March and it sold in April.”

“Right,” I nodded, pushing around a paper clip that had fallen off the stack of mail jammed carefully between the bread box and roll of paper towels.

“He takes our trash cans to the curb every Wednesday,” she told me, as if I was supposed to know who he is.

“Him, the new neighbor,” it’s her turn to nod her head at the Mencken’s closed window.

“He, uh, he came to The Marina the other night, right before closing,” I told her, plucking off a piece of skin from a Granny Smith apple that sat lonely in the fruit basket across from me, “he tipped me more than what his entire bill was.”

“Well, maybe he felt bad about coming in right before closing.” She offered with a shrug and I snorted, wanting to comment that he doesn’t seem like the type of person to give two shits about that sort of thing, but who am I to judge? He only stole my weed with a snarky smile and a sarcastic tone. Surely Mrs. McGoven wouldn’t have stolen my weed.

Mrs. McGoven also didn’t look like that. She definitely didn’t speak to me like that.

“Right, well,” she sighed heavily, “I’m back on night shift until I leave for my trip this weekend, so I’m taking a Xanax and sleeping until dinner time.” She looked over at me and continued, “I’m so glad you decided against being a doctor.”

——————————————————————

A familiar tap on my window jolted my attention away from The Godfather before I walked each apprehensive step towards the sound. I flung the window open, grabbing Evan’s hand, hoisting him over the sill.

“What the fuck?”

He stood up and dusted his shirt off, “been a while since I’ve done that. Wanted to know if I still had it in me.”

I was unimpressed. Chronically so, but more acutely as I stared at him.

“You don’t have to come through the window anymore. We’re literally adults.” I told him, “plus it’s just me here. Mom is pulling night call again.”

“Right, well,” he rocked awkwardly back and forth on his heels, hands shoved deeply in his pockets, “nice to see you too.” He admitted with a tone of sarcasm and I smiled at him.

“Sorry, I, uh, was busy.”

He looked at the TV and then back at me, giving me a look that signaled he saw through my bullshit.

An hour or so later, I found myself on my back, him hovering above me, my nails grazing the taut skin over his ribs as he nipped and grazed at my collarbone. Evan was familiar in a way that seasonal allergies were familiar- annoying but expected. The sex was always mediocre and the one time I had pretended to cum when we were sixteen had bonded us in the weirdest way possible. Sure, it felt good, but so did scratching a mosquito bite.

He knew me well, adjusting and flipping us over so I had full access to take over. As I began to ride him reversed, I glanced out the window. Surely I had curtains before my mother decided to switch our rooms while I was away. I hadn’t noticed the lack thereof until then, when a shadow appeared in the window across the way from mine, his silhouette glowing in the break of light beaming in from behind him.

If there had been a logical part of me bigger than the lustful, ravenous part, I would have surely climbed off of Evan and covered myself. But the hunger won and in the brink of a second, I pulled my shirt over my head and flung it away from me. I was quite literally exposed to my voyeur then, the only glimpse of him that I could make out in the darkness was the occasional reveal of his profile as he moved his face around, angling his head for the most optimal view, I supposed. Maybe he was as ravenous and lustful as me. The thought spurred me on physically as I touched myself, dragging a lone finger between the valley of my breasts to the crest of my pubic bone. Evan surely noticed the change in my enthusiasm, bringing his hands to my hips, yelping shrilly when I swatted them away. I didn’t want him to touch me. Not while he was watching.

Then, out of nowhere, I felt it. The familiar gush of heat in my lower belly. I had gotten there myself plenty of times. Never with a man. And never ever like this. I rode it out, waiting patiently for it to wash over me. I watched as his hand pressed flat against the window, his other hand, well, I figured was busy given the fluid movement of his bicep and shoulder.

Just like that, it was over. I descended back down the valley, having never fully reached the peak. At least two out of three of us got to cum, I thought to myself.

The best thing about Evan was that he didn’t linger. We redressed in silence and I waited for him in the hallway outside of my bedroom door. We exchanged a quick goodbye at the front doorstep and I waited until his headlights disappeared down the road before locking the door behind me. I meandered slowly into the kitchen for no other reason than to peruse the cabinets and refrigerator out of a place of boredom. When I came up empty, I allowed myself to sink down in one of the dining room chairs, the gravity of the situation finally raining down on me. It wasn’t every day I fucked solely for the neighbor’s pleasure.

I was pulled out of my thoughts by a constant red glow appearing at the dock. I squinted, focusing on it deeply as it brightened and dimmed over the course of fifteen seconds, never completely going out. Without thinking, I marched dutifully to the back door, across the pavement in the pool area, clasping the gate closed gently behind me, and walked carefully on bare feet down the bank.

“Are you smoking pot on my dock?” I mocked him, parroting his words from the previous day.

“No,” he turned his head to face me, a smirk pulling at his lips, “I’m smoking pot on my dock.”

“You’re on my side,” I told him, “this,” I moved to stand on the side opposite of him, “is your side.”

“You should be a land surveyor,” he remarked with a dry laugh, “if you’re half as good at dividing property lines as you are at faking orgasms, the town could definitely use your help.”

I sighed heavily, thankful that we were shrouded in darkness given the deep blush I could feel creeping up my neck.

“Oh, don’t get all shy on me now,” he chided, “it was a good show.”

I sat down beside him, our thighs touching as my feet swayed above the water.

“Not my finest moment,” I remarked, taking the joint from his slender fingers.

“No complaining from me. I thought it was weird that an old lady would live in a house that big, all alone for all those years, but now it makes sense.” He snickered.

“That’s fucking sick and twisted.” I grimaced as I handed the joint back to him. A cloud of smoke gushed out of his mouth as he laughed at me.

"Yeah, that might be true,” he countered, “but so are you.”

There was no argument there. I had enjoyed him watching me as much as he had enjoyed watching. It was a weird symbiotic episode we had shared, my curiosity piquing at him as his eyes roamed my face, wondering if this was his norm, or if, god forbid, this would be my new norm. Relegated to being The Girl Next Door who gave weekly peep shows for the price of sexual satisfaction to a man old enough to be my father.

Of course, I said none of these things. But the way he looked at me clued me into the fact that he might just be a mind reader. Either that, or maybe, just maybe, I had been running circles in his mind too.

When I handed the joint back to him, he licked his pointer finger and thumb, mashing the cherry out between his grip.

“What’s Liv short for anyway?” He asked, alluding back to the day at The Marina where he had asked my name, “Olive? Livestrong? Liver?”

“Live and let die,” I joked, “Olivia, obviously.”

He nodded, a hum of approval sliding past his lips. “You look like an Olivia.”

“Just Liv.” I corrected him.

“Well, Just Liv,” he stood, holding his hand out to me, pulling me to my feet, “buy some fucking curtains.”

With the events of the night, I wondered if we were even yet.

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part I

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: mentions of religion. This chapter is pretty tame tbh. Minors DNI.

A/N: I posted a little sneak peek of this a few weeks back and now I’m finally brave enough to post the first few chapters. For reference, this takes place around 2010ish, with Mencken being in his early 40s and OC being 22. There is an age gap here so if that’s not your thing, keep moving. Also, once again, I know I have no business writing about a fictional fascist but he’s not real and can’t hurt you. Thank you to @runningwiththefoxes for being my beta and and @luxlisbons for listening to my neurotic ass whine about this for weeks.

WC: 1670

There was a constant debate on how we met. He claimed it had been on Easter of that year when I had swooped into town long enough to get a few hours of sleep before heading to the sunrise service. I hadn’t been to mass since the previous Easter, my presence that day only being an emotional support seat filler, occupying the space in which my father used to sit at the right hand of my mother. I only showed up on the major holidays at her insistence. I was a good girl at heart, or at least that’s what she had always told me.

When I dropped my rosary, it clanged loudly against the marble floor, its echo shril amongst the congregation’s stillness. That’s when I saw him. He sat a few pews ahead of me, seated to the far right, his arm draped casually around the brunette to his left. His eyes bore holes into me as I blindly felt for the rosary at my feet. I shot him an apologetic look for no reason other than being chronically sorry to everyone around me, even if the nature of the outburst was a mistake, my idle hands slick with nervous sweat allowing the sacred beads to slip through before I had even noticed. He quirked an eyebrow at me, his lips pulled tightly into a thin line. When he turned back around, I felt personally chastised by him. I did my best to swallow it down. It left me feeling weirdly small for the rest of the morning.

“Go in peace.”

_________________________________________

Our actual meeting took place at The Marina, a few months later, when summer had officially begun and I was home as a college graduate. I had only been home overnight when I had been called in emergently during the afternoon rush. I hadn’t worked at The Marina since my senior year of high school, and though I’d worked part time as a research assistant while I had been at NYU, I knew serving would be a change of pace. One I wasn’t sure I’d fully acclimate to the way I had in the past.

“It’s just like riding a bike.” Heather assured as she glided past me, balancing four plates on the inner part of her forearm as I stared at the bustling dining room.

It only took a few minutes before muscle memory took over and I was doing my own song and dance in my assigned section. It was like riding a bike. If the bike was on fire, the tires had gone flat, the brakes had given out, and I was on a steady descent into a body of water.

“Eight top coming your way,” I turned around to see the hostess seating a group of men at the long table against the window with a pristine view of the water. A bachelor party, I assumed, given their trucker hats with obscene phrases alluding to their buddy, the groom, being stuck with one person for the rest of his life.

“Great.” I muttered under my breath, snatching up a handful of straws and a stack of menus from the host’s stand. They turned into campers, not leaving until the one sober guy in their group wrangled each of them on uneasy feet back down to the pier, along the winding path towards the dock, and onto a modest yacht.

The afternoon passed quickly amongst the blurred faces of patrons, most of them a blip on the radar, while two of them set out to make my life a living hell. Frick and Frack, the other girls called them. I was informed that they came in every Saturday, two sisters, and terrorized the wait staff with absurd requests. They stayed until thirty minutes before closing time and watched me carefully as I shut down the section around them. When they finally left, I scraped the tip, all two dollars and seventy-five cents of it, off the glass top and sighed deeply.

“What the fuck was that?” I called out, dragging myself up to the bar where Heather was divvying out the remaining waitstaff’s tips for the day.

“The terror twins,” she informed with a smirk, sliding over a few twenties, a crumpled up ten, and some spare ones. I shoved the wad deeply into my apron and hopped up on the bar beside her.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t still be here if my mom hadn’t guilted me into running the place.” She zipped past me as she began to fill in the following week’s schedule on the whiteboard. I was content to listen to the Expo marker’s dry squeal until I felt the urge to drag my tired feet out to my car, making the ten minute drive back home to officially unpack and try my best to become readjusted to life at home.

When the front door opened and the familiar chime rang out amongst the empty dining room, I wanted to scream. Not only were we thirty minutes from closing completely, I had mentally and emotionally checked out, the need to go home and unwind taking precedence over any other matter.

And then I saw him.

A part of me wanted to turn around, hand Heather half of my tips for the day in exchange for her waiting on him. Anything to put me out of the embarrassment of seeing him, of having to speak to him. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.

“Sit where you want,” I told him through my silent protests.

He nodded at me, grinning slyly, as if he could hear my internal monologue. He sat by the window across the room, the table allowing him a perfect view of the moonlight as it cast its blinding light across the waves.

All I could think about was the echo of my rosary clanging against polished marble, reverberating in distorted slow motion and the look he had given me. Suddenly, I was back in my car, unreasonably angry, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel as I boiled over. Something about the way he had looked at me then set me off so badly, it came creeping back up coated in hot embarrassment as I walked over to hand him a menu. Given my hazy state of anxietal rage mixed with a bad case of sweaty palms, I dropped the menu right at his feet.

“You have a habit of dropping things?” He reached down to pick the menu up and plopped it on the table.

My face grew hot, my expression falling flat.

I shook my head and sighed, “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that.”

“Yeah, well, I do. I actually thought it was very funny.” A small smirk occupied his face as he looked up at me.

“Really?” I chuckled dryly, “the look on your face that day said otherwise.”

“Looks can be deceiving, can’t they?” He cleared his voice, shaking his head, continuing, “No, really, it was a welcome change from the doom and gloom.”

“Well then,” I tapped the menu with my pen, “what are you having?”

“They’ll kill me if I order a steak, won’t they?” He already knew the answer judging by the sly grin on his face.

“I’ll kill you,” I threatened, “with my bare hands.” I grabbed the menu he waved at me and tucked it under my arm.

“Well then, I’ll have a slice of key lime pie and water with two lemons. Preferably without the homicide.”

“Got it.” I watched his eyes glide up and down my figure in the reflection of the floor length windows across from us as I walked towards the kitchen.

Heather did my bidding and promptly brought over his order, allowing me to pick up on side work, idling between refilling salt shakers and wiping stubborn stains off the remaining menus left at the host’s stand.

He watched me intently the entire time, his gaze never leaving my busy body as I drug around the dining area. When Heather brushed by, informing lowly that she would take care of him, I sighed in relief, dragging my tired body over to the side door to pluck my keys off the key rack.

When I finally made it to my car, I saw him stalking towards me in the window’s reflection.

“If you’re going to kidnap and kill me, know that I won’t go down without a fight.” I turned on my heel, crossing my arms.

He chuckled and shook his head, “thought we agreed on no homicide?”

“The night is young.”

“What’s your name, killer?” He laughed at my attempt to be tough. It wasn’t much of an attempt, to be fair, I had already given up the fight long before it had started. I didn’t know that then.

“Liv.”

“Liv.” He repeated back to me, “same time next week?”

I watched as he flipped his wallet open, pulling a twenty out of the neatly stacked set of bills, and held it out to me.

“Take it.”

I slid it into the pile of bills tucked carefully in my apron pocket. I nodded, smiling at him, watching as he walked to his car and sped off.

When I pulled into my own driveway, not a memory of how I’d gotten there as I’d driven in a sort of zombie state, I was shocked to see his car on the other side of the short privacy fence, parked in my neighbor’s driveway. He must’ve sensed my staring because, once the familiarity dawned on him, he stared back in an equally shocked state, and when the shock wore off, I could practically hear him laughing.

He got out quickly, hanging off his driver’s side door and I did the same, propping myself up on the door paneling so I could see him.

“Did you follow me?” He asked. Not mad or worried, more so amused than anything.

“No,” I was quick to rebuttal, “I live here.”

“Well, I live here.” He used his car key to point to the house directly next to mine.

“Of course you do.”

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part VIII

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: dubious content, affairs, sexual content, age gap, my improper use of commas. MDNI

A/N: When I tell you guys this chapter was a labor of love, I fucking mean it. We’re almost at the end, my friends. If anyone can predict accurately how this is going to end, I will give you one (1) forehead kiss. As always, thanks to @runningwiththefoxes and @vivalafae for dealing with my neurotic ass.

WC: 4426

My delusions hit an all time high when I woke up plastered to his chest the next morning. My hair, like inky black tendrils, spilled across his neck and shoulders, the rest of my limbs fitted to his, melting so dangerously close together that it was hard to tell where I ended and he began.

His gruff voice pulled me to the present, vibrating my caged chest.

“Hold still.”

I only hummed in response, too sleepy and drunk off him, his scent, to come up with any verbalisation that would’ve made sense at that moment.

We zoomed at one singular pace then, his hands finding purchase clasped together at the small of back, as I dozed back off.

When I woke again, I had rolled to my side, the comforter pulled up to the pillows where he had once been.

Walking around someone else’s house scantily clad made me feel dirtier than anything else we had done up to that point. Not that I was modest, heaven knows modesty was a trait I’d try my hand at and fail over the course of my life, but my presence felt like I was tainting someone else’s memories the cottage contained.

I floated lightly in the kitchen, tiptoeing about as I put a kettle of water on to boil. Jeryd was nowhere to be found and I only assumed he was out for a run or taking in the morning air. My curiosity getting the better of me, I eased down the hallway, to the first door on the right, my fingertips grazing across the penciled in heights and their corresponding dates along the door's frame.

Cautiously, I opened the door, revealing two twin beds, their comforters checkered in identical blue and black plaid, against two opposite walls. A photo of two young boys sat atop the small nightstand separating the beds. Simultaneously the kettle’s whistle and a set of hands on my shoulders caused me to shriek.

“You’re a bad influence!” I turned around and eyed him intensely before swerving past to grab the kettle off the eye.

“Never have I ever felt so sneaky and slithery!” I called from the kitchen, hearing his footsteps draw nearer.

He appeared behind me within seconds, leaning against the counter as I filled two teacups with scalding hot water, turning around to look at him as the tea steeped.

“Tell me, will I always be the blame for all of this or will you open your eyes and see yourself as a willing participant?”

I scoffed, crossing my arms. “You’ve got me up here, half naked, making tea at daybreak, trying to figure out whose house I’m in.”

He mirrored my stance, closing his eyes with a deep sigh. “Okay, well, I didn’t ask you to make tea.”

He reached forward and grabbed the box containing the teabags, reading the back label with squinted eyes.

“This shit has probably been here since the sixties.”

“No,” I shook my head, “I snagged it from the store yesterday.”

“The sixties?” I questioned, “Whose house is this?”

He reached beside me, grabbing his respective cup of tea.

“My mother’s,” he stopped long enough to blow away steam and sipped carefully, “Do you want to see the deed for the house or do you believe me?”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“I believe you.”

“Shocking,” He commented sarcastically as he made his way over to sit at the breakfast nook.

“You fight in your sleep.” He commented, his voice still gruff and laced with sleep.

“I had to pin you close to me last night to keep from taking a right hook to the face.”

“And here I thought you just wanted to cuddle.” I laughed breathlessly as I snagged the chunky blanket from the arm of the couch and wrapped it around myself, making my way over to sit across from him.

“Hardly.” He eyed me over the rim of his teacup.

“What do we do after this?” I thrummed my fingertips across the tabletop. “When we get home... Surely a mission trip can’t last more than a few weeks.”

I slyly laid out a chance for him to come clean about his wife’s whereabouts.

“What are you going to do after Georgetown?” He asked, leaning back in his seat to eye me with the curious coolness he always undertook when regarding these subjects with me.

“I asked first.” I countered, sipping my tea confidently as I stood my ground.

“In terms of love, marriage, and a baby carriage?”

I shifted awkwardly in my seat, “Uh, not exactly what I meant for us.”

“Then what did you mean, Liv?”

“I have a soft spot for PR,” I watched as he stood up, grabbing his teacup, carrying it over to the sink, “but I think going the corporate route might be right for me, I don’t know.”

“Don’t deflect, Olive.” He chided, rinsing out his teacup, shaking his head at my poor attempt to cover my scent.

“I’m not,” I sighed, “I answered your question.”

“I answered your question last night.” He walked over, placing a firm finger over my lips before I could open my mouth to speak.

“Go get ready. Let’s have a good day, yeah?” He nodded down at me pleased with my obedience as I tucked my tail between my legs and made my way to the bathroom.

_________________________________________

I didn’t realize the extent of his hypocrisy back then, but it was, and still is, very much alive. Maybe that’s why I was so attracted to him; the hypocrite in me recognized the one in him. Or maybe it was the way we both compartmentalized any real feelings. No regard for his wife, my reputation, his reputation. I could choose when to feel my feelings, simply sliding them back on the shelf alongside my reservations, my nervousness, my general ability to know right from wrong, and everything else in between that kept me awake at night.

I sleepwalked through the museum he took me to, the only thought occupying my brain was the way he held my hand, coaxing me along through each exhibit.

When he finally spoke, I shook my head.

“What?”

“They preached traditional family values,” he motioned up to the photo of Jackie O and her young daughter swathed in JFK’s arms, “but he definitely had a wandering dick.”

“You’re not doing much to help your case.” I unlinked from his arm, reaching out to stroke a careful finger across the canvas.

“Well, I’m not, and never have been, the president of the United States.”

“And if you were?” I looked at him from over my shoulder, a playful smirk appearing on his lips.

“You ever heard of the Code of Hammurabi?”

I shoved him playfully, “Oh, shut the fuck up.”

The rest of the afternoon took on an airy feel. We lingered in downtown Hyannis before hopping back in his car, aimlessly driving until I suggested we visit Provincetown.

“We used to stay here every summer before my parents split.” I told him, eyes peeled to the window as I looked for any familiarity in the sites around us as the city unfurled itself.

“Funny,” he looked over at me, his right hand once again finding its usual spot, cradled against the meat of my thigh, “I used to spend every summer with my family in Hyannis.”

“Is the cottage a family place?”

“Well, sort of. No one has really used it since my dad kicked the bucket.”

I didn’t expect him to reveal that kind of information to me but I went with my first instinct, questioning, figuring he wouldn’t have given me that sliver of an inkling if he didn’t want to talk about it.

“When did he die?”

“I was sixteen, maybe? Heart attack on Christmas day.”

“Ouch,” I squeezed his hand, “that’s personal.”

“He was older.” He added, fingertips thrumming the dash and his thumb held closely to the wheel.

I nodded along, not really sure if treading lightly or shutting up altogether was the better option.

“He was from Brookline. My mom is from Medford. They would meet up in Hyannis to, ya know, rendezvous. Away from his wife.” He glanced over quickly, his brow sloping at the arch as he watched my face change at the realization.

I looked over at him, my eyes wide, “That’s scandalous, honestly, but I’m more worried about the bed we slept in.”

“Pretty sure the sheets have been washed in the last forty years, Olivia.” He squeezed my thigh reassuringly.

“Some stains never come clean, Jeryd.”

Ironically enough, I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the stain that blemished my soul by proving that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree in his regard.

He smirked at me as he parallel parked on a side street.

We decided to hold off on eating until it cooled off, the June heat hitting its peak around the time we set off downtown, making us both amble in and out of the gift shops littering Commercial Street for any relief from its bleating rays.

“I could’ve spent the afternoon fucking you in the air conditioning, you know?” He grumbled as we walked back out into the heat.

I stopped, looking over at him, “Didn’t know that was an option.”

“Well, it was,” he grabbed my hand, pulling me closer to him, “but now we’re here.”

He eased behind me, hands on my hips, walking single file as a sea of tourists came our way.

“I could be right here,” he purred into my ear, his left hand snaking around my waist below my navel, applying pressure right at my pubic bone, “right where you like me.”

I looked around, sighing at the prospect of fucking him in the bathroom of a building that appeared to be painted with every color of the rainbow.

“How fucking old are we?” I asked as he dragged me inside the multi flavor shop, forgoing a response to the lady behind the counter as she waved and greeted us, her glazed over eyes following us with curiosity.

“Old enough to know better,” he flung the bathroom door open, slamming and locking it behind him as I backed myself up against the sink, “too stupid to care.”

It wasn’t long until he was fucking into me from behind, his hands grasped onto the porcelain basin as his nose found a place at the shell of my ear, occasionally rutting against the hair there.

Each time one of us glanced at the other in the mirror, we would laugh, each thrust distorting the sound amongst the sea of stickers, particularly ones that said Fuck The Patriarchy and God is a Woman, plastered along the neon tinged bathroom, the nineties track blasting loudly into the confined space.

If god was a woman, I figured, she wouldn’t be too mad at me for what I did. What I would do in the grand scheme of things.

Poetically enough, he pushed me to my knees, shoving himself into my eagerly waiting mouth. As his cock thickened and his whole body tensed, he pulled my head down to his root so he could come deeply down my throat.

A shrill knock on the door startled me and quickly scrambled to my feet, dragging my underwear ungraciously up my thighs.

“Uh, just a second!”

He clasped his belt and readjusted his shirt, reaching out to push my hair away from my face.

“Go and I’ll meet you out front.”

I nodded, cracking the door open enough so I could slide through the opening.

From behind, I didn’t immediately recognize her, but when she turned around, hands full of paraphernalia and niknaks, we both stood still, looking at one another in shock.

“Good god, Olivia, what are you doing here?!” She shoved her trinkets on an empty shelf by the bathroom door and pulled me into a hug.

“Hey, Kimmy,” I patted my step mother’s back whilst simultaneously feeling the blood drain from my face.

She pulled back to look at me, “Are you okay?”

I nodded profusely, reaching out to close the bathroom door as Jeryd tried to exit. The door unceremoniously bobbed open a few times, my hand applying more and more pressure against its spine as he tried the doorknob and I watched in absolute horror as Kimmy looked from me and over my shoulder as the door pounded on its frame.

“Had some bad oysters. You definitely do not want to go in there.” I lied, rubbing my stomach for a dramatic effect.

She nodded, eyes widening as she spoke, “Looks like they’re really putting up a fight.”

Once Jeryd really put his back into it, I went flying forward, the door creaking open as he walked out.

“Those aren’t bad looking oysters.” Kimmy commented, a smirk appearing on her face as she sized Jeryd up.

_________________________________________

Once Kimmy paid for her loot while I stood awkwardly to her side like a lost child, we followed her outside and down the block where my father sat unsuspectingly under a large parasol. Jeryd had tried and failed to walk the opposite way down the street, Kimmy giving us both a look as I pulled him back to me, knowing full well what had transpired in that bathroom, loving nothing more than to watch me sweat.

“Look who I found,” Kimmy announced as my father’s head swiveled around at the sound of her voice.

“Ollie!” He was on his feet in an instant, arms wrapping around me, lifting me off the ground momentarily.

“Hi,” I squeaked out, finding my footing as Jeryd shoved his hands deeply in his pockets. An unsettling smile pulled at his lips as he watched the scene unfold.

“What are you doing up here?” He asked and I looked over at Jeryd again like he was about to be my savior through the awkwardly crushing scene.

“Field trip,” I shrugged, “We broke off from some of the students to grab a bite to eat and ran into Kimmy.”

“Liv had bad oysters,” Kimmy added with a sympathetic nod, “She was absolutely dying in the bathroom when I knocked.”

Jeryd's eyes narrowed at me and I closed mine long enough to regain blood flow to my brain as it misfired along with Kimmy’s recounting of what happened.

“He’s a professor at Stony and I’ve been working with him. A bunch of us decided to, uh, come see Plymouth monument and hit the Kennedy museums.”

My father turned slightly, the heavy chair dragging across the pavement, and looked at Jeryd.

He stood, offering his hand, doing the awkward white male handshake that men of their age tend to default to.

That’s when it hit me. Seeing them together, how close in age they were, wondering how many daddy issues I had to have for this particular moment to happen to me. Was there a set amount, like a ticket token, to hit the fucked up jackpot that I seemed to have won in that very moment. If I could have shed my skin and slithered away, I very much would have.

“Why don’t you guys sit and eat with us?”

I looked at Jeryd for any sign of confirmation but he very much let me know, silently, of course, with a look, that I was in the lead here. When I sat down, he pulled a chair from the table beside ours and pushed it next to mine.

I heard my father explain something about an annual car show and if I spoke to my dad regularly, maybe I would’ve been able to avoid running into him altogether. Other than that, their words were muffled. My inner monologue bleating, debating on fleeing the scene altogether, I wished for nothing more than to be a man in that moment. Men don’t care when things are awkward, and from an outsider’s perspective, nothing was wrong at the table. But the way Kimmy looked at me, the way her eyes dragged along my face, I knew she would eventually want to know what exactly I was doing and who I was doing it with.

Somewhere between the constant droning about the weather, the political climate, and shared similarities, Jeryd and my father finally shut up. Their constant chatter had been filler for me, and I suddenly felt small when they all looked at me, waiting as if I was supposed to chime in.

“I think that dinner reservation is ready, Professor.”

Jeryd cleared his throat, “Right, of course, it was nice to meet you both.”

We both rose, him stepping back enough to give me space for goodbye embraces, listening to me make excuse after excuse as to why I hadn’t been to visit them.

“Make sure you stay away from those bad oysters, Liv.” Kimmy called out and I waved sheepishly back at her as Jeryd and I walked in the direction where he had parked the car.

_________________________________________

The ride back to the cottage was tense and quiet. He didn’t reach over to touch me, nor did he make any effort to speak to me.

“You looked like a little kid at the adult’s table back there,” he finally said to me when we were inside the cottage, staring silently at one another across the kitchen bar.

“What?” I shook my head, scoffing at him.

“You just,” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “you locked up. I’ve never seen you look so small.”

I shrugged, looking away from him in what I would describe now as hot, bubbling shame.

“I fucked up by bringing you here.” He said, rubbing the back of his neck as he walked into the living room.

“What was I supposed to do?!” I cried out, following him closely. “She saw us basically come out of the bathroom together.”

“You could have, I don’t know, let me walk away like I was trying to do.” He turned around and looked at me and for the first time, I saw him genuinely upset.

“But, no,” he continued, “you had to drag me right down with you, didn’t you?” He spat.

I laughed incredulously at him, all the while stepping closer and closer to where he stood. “Yeah, like you haven’t been dragging me to hell everyday since I’ve known you!”

He let out a shrill laugh, his canines showing, before leaning down closely into my face, “You know what this has always been about. You made your choice. You’re happy to take the perks that come with being my mistress. Don’t act like you’re some poor, innocent woman. You always knew exactly what this was, what we are.”

“Perks?! There are perks,” I let out a shaky laugh, “Please tell me what they are and where the fuck I can find them!”

He shook his head, walking over toward the window, maintaining a safe amount of distance from me.

“I swear to god, the only thing that would make you happy is if I slapped a collar and leash on you and led you around town all night.” He said with a groan.

“The only thing that would make me happy is if you weren’t such a lying hypocrite.” I stalked back towards the bedroom in a fury, grabbing my overnight bag, stuffing my strewn out contents wherever they would fit, dragging it to the bathroom to grab my toiletries and dirty clothes.

“What are you doing?” He appeared in the doorway, a look of discomfort and disdain painting his features at my very presence.

“Going home,” I brushed past him, making my way towards the living room.

“Like hell you are,” he jerked the bag I was holding, effectively pulling me back to him like a rubberband threatening to snap.

“Is this how you act every time your wife leaves?” I jerked the bag again but I was no match against his ironclad grip. “You do her like this?”

I watched as he unzipped the bag, dumped it upside down, the contents hitting the floor like broken glass at our feet.

“A fucking mission trip?” I laughed at him, “She fucking left you and it’s no goddamn wonder!”

He pressed me against the wall, his forearms resting on either side of my head as he seethed down at me. His jaw clenched and for a moment, I closed my eyes, gearing up for whatever he was about to unleash upon me.

“You let my mother fill your head with fucking delusions and get disappointed when I don’t meet your expectations.”

I shook my head, “I had expectations for someone I knew couldn’t meet those expectations, so that’s my fault for expecting anything from you at all.”

He moved away from me, allowing me to sidestep him, easing my way into the bedroom across the hall. When I locked the door, I heard him sigh, a heavy hand smacking against the door caused me to jump.

“I’ve never cried because of someone’s lack of feelings for me, you know? I’ve never had anyone to cry over in that regard. You’re the first, and you’ll also be the last, or so help me god through this embarrassment.” I yelled at the door, hearing him sigh again, footfalls growing more distant as he walked through the house and away from the scene.

Eventually I fell asleep in one of the twin beds, its stale sheets and comforter providing me with a false sense of comfort amongst the discord.

_________________________________________

I woke up on my side facing the wall. For the most part, I slept contentedly, only waking when I heard Jeryd messing with the door, the knob jingling erratically as he tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock. I thought about asking him to stop a few times, wondering why he even gave a solitary fuck about getting inside, but realized my silence was far more personal than any words I could mutter.

“I’m tired of acting like I don’t care, because I do. I fucking do, and that’s what makes this even worse.”

I jumped as he spoke from behind me, rolling over to see that he had crammed himself in the opposite twin bed, legs bent and arms crossed against his chest, his words making him grimace as if his own honesty was poisoning him.

“Don’t,” I shook my head, “it’s too late for a death row confession.”

“I just spent three hours breaking into this room to get to you.” He sat up and looked at me, head cocking to the side when I didn’t flinch at his declaration, ��I thought about leaving you here last night, you know?

I rolled my eyes, sighing. “I wish you would have.”

“I made a shitty decision and you’re a testament to that matter, but you don’t get to decide my feelings for you.” He said, finally looking comfortable enough to continue, “I may not sail a thousand ships for you, but if I didn’t give a fuck, I wouldn’t have continued this past the first night.”

Somehow over the course of us staring at one another silently, gauging eachother’s temperaments, he made his way over to my respective bed, climbing in behind me, molding himself around my body.

I listened intently as he told me about his train wreck of a marriage, “I chose my wife because she provided stability and consistency and safety and kindness and support. We were not exactly madly in love when we married. Our marriage was based on a set of rational, mutually beneficial criteria and we’ve built it from there. I make no claim that it is a passionate, fiery love. But we do love each other,” his long term political goals, cackling shrilly when he told me he would be president one day and would take me to the White House with him.

“She will wise up and leave me in the next few years.” He said in regards to his wife.

It was stupid to indulge myself in his fantasy but it felt good.

He told me how he and his brother used to lay in the twin beds, cooking up ideas on how they could both be President at the same time. Jason, who I later learned was the other set of initials on the doorframe, gave up and decided on being a professional baseball player sometime after he turned fourteen, giving it up altogether to become a lawyer once most of his childish notions left him. But Jeryd, he clung to his dream, and I felt somewhat flattered that he decided to share it with me.

It was far-fetched, but so was the idea of us laying together, spinning our web of lies, content to fall even deeper without any regard for how hard the impact would be when we landed.

Eventually we both fell asleep with his aspirations in full force in the background.

_________________________________________

Leaving the cottage felt almost bittersweet. On one hand, I felt like I had survived a war, and on the other, I felt like we had made a breakthrough of sorts amongst the rubble we were leaving behind.

Before we left, though, he made it a point to back me up against the guestroom’s door frame, marking my height against the wood, my full adult height paling in comparison to the teenage boy’s marked far above.

“A little pointless, don’t you think?” I asked as I turned around and watched as he marked my initials above the new line.

“Nah,” he shook his head, “You’ll be back and we will see if you’ve grown any.”

I rolled my eyes, “Maybe they’ll turn this place into a museum once you’re president and I will forever be emblazoned into American history.”

He managed to crack a smile at me before carrying my bag out to the car.

The ride back to Stony Brook felt shorter than it had on the way to Hyannis. We stopped once for gas and another time so we could climb in the backseat and fuck once we both realized we had gone twenty four hours without touching one another and the prospect of reentering secretive society really took hold.

We made plans to run together the following morning as we said our goodbyes in the university’s parking lot. I took the long way home once I was back in my car, timing it perfectly as I watched his front door close as I pulled into my driveway.

Only this time, his car wasn’t the only car parked in his driveway.

Taglist: @aurorag98

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part VI

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: sexual content, dubious content, age gap, alcohol consumption, mentions of drug use, affairs, my improper use of commas.

A/N: alright alright alright, we’re getting into the thick of things. Thanks to @vivalafae and @runningwiththefoxes for their spiritual guidance. Still shocked so many of y’all have stuck around this long! Love you allllll xo

WC: 2964

For the next two days, we kept our distance. I imagined I had frightened him off with my intensity. My propensity to feel things so deeply had spilled over from my brooding teenage years, maring my early twenties like ink bleeding from one page to the next.

“Have you always been so sullen?” He asked later on that second day when I stared at him blankly from my seat across from him at his dining room table.

A simple text from him had pulled me to my feet and towards his back door. Mistresses don’t use the front door, I told myself. Pavlov would’ve loved me. Freud would’ve had a field day with me.

“Have you ever had an affair before?”

He shook his head, laughing sarcastically as he ran his fingers through his hair.

“Curiosity killed the cat, Olive.”

“But satisfaction brought it back, Jeryd.”

“No,” he sighed, “you’re my first.”

“That doesn’t make you feel any better, though, does it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” I said, wondering where this place of courage and effortless fluency was coming from.

“Be that as it may, I have no reason to lie to you.” He offered, continuing on as he searched my face, “Do you want to be my wife, Olive? Is that what this is about?”

I shook my head at him. “You mistake my guilt and curiosity as flattery.”

“I could tell you everything about me and that still wouldn’t change the fact that I’m married, Olive.”

“I know.”

_________________________________________

“I can’t believe you’re trying to pull off this whole ‘I don’t care’ thing. You care. Big time.”

I stopped in my tracks, slamming the filing cabinet closed as I glowered at him.

I had been silent since seeing him again. Existing in the space of professionalism, treading lightly for fear my emotions might disrupt the status quo two days away had provided.

He smiled at me from his spot behind his desk.

“You’re right, maybe I do care,” I stepped closer to him as his eyes glimmered with the satisfaction of knowing what I was about to unleash on him.

“Maybe I’m curious and maybe I feel guilty. Maybe I am sullen. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that you long to elicit these types of reactions from me,” I stepped closer to his desk, feeling my breath hitch as he ran a lone finger across the hem of my skirt, “That this entire thing is just a game to you. One that I will eventually get tired of playing.”

I leaned down closer to him and looked directly into his eyes.

“I can leave, Jeryd. But you can’t. You’re stuck in a marriage and a mortgage,”

He stood up to his full height, smiling down at me devilishly as I willed myself to continue, “You’re stuck here in hell right along with me and if you want to continue to play this fucking game with me, this sick cat and mouse, emotional foreplay extravaganza we’re dancing through, then you need to recognize that everything is personal with you. That you’ve made it that way.”

“You don’t look at someone the way you look at me without it being personal.” My voice was small as I backed away from him, grabbing my bag and coffee cup off the windowsill before making my way to exit his classroom.

A few quick strides and he had me trapped between him and the classroom door. He remained silent, his eyes boring holes into mine as he grabbed my face roughly and kissed me.

Despite all my efforts to remain composed, I became pliant under his hands. That’s a theme with me, after all, one my therapist would gnash into years down the road.

The sound of my heels scuffing rhythmically against the gritty linoleum as he bent me over his desk was enough cause for him to hoist me up onto the desk, climb on top of me, and fuck me like he would never see me again, like he was scared I might disappear.

His disregard for consequences, the pleasure he derived from my turmoil, and little regard for my idle threats made me cum harder than I ever had before.

_________________________________________

After his second class of the day, he found me sitting in the cafeteria, flanked by a group of students, all male, ranging from tall to short.

One in particular, a lean brunette on the shorter end of the spectrum with long brown hair, stared at me with such intensity that I had to hold back laughter each time he looked at me.

“I play guitar in a band,” he said as he sipped his Arizona tea, “You should come check us out one day.”

He crunched a chip and upped the ante.

“I can give you my number.”

I nodded along and smiled awkwardly, making eye contact with Jeryd as he sipped his coffee, one hand tucked in his pocket, relishing in my torment as I squirmed and looked for an out.

The rest of the group stared blankly at me and I wondered if I needed to get up and do some sort of trick with the expectant looks covering their faces.

I sighed in relief as I saw Jeryd making a beeline for the table.

“Hey everybody,” he clapped his hand on my shoulder and I turned around to look up at him, “Can I borrow Liv for a second?

“Of course,” the guitarist smiled up at us as I stood and collected my things, but being the pain in the ass he seemed to be, he had to ask questions.

“How do you guys know each other?”

“Us?” I glanced over at Jeryd, “Professor Mencken has been a friend of my family’s for years. Almost like an uncle to me. He agreed to let me come help out with things given my affinity for all things political.”

“Yep,” Jeryd stepped over to stand next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “She’s a good egg.”

He guided me through the labyrinth mazes of the cafeteria, out a side door, and into an outdoor corridor connecting the cafeteria with a breezy courtyard.

“‘A good egg’?” I scoffed up at him, walking quickly to keep up with his brisk pace.

“‘Almost like an uncle to me’?” He mimicked my disgust. “Now that was personal.”

_________________________________________

As if things weren’t already personal and confusing enough, I ran into him and his mother at the beach the next day.

It was low tide that day. Heather and I had made plans to scour the sand for sea glass and any sort of trinkets she could incorporate into the nautical theme at The Marina.

What I didn’t predict, however, was Heather blowing me off last minute, leaving me feeling somewhat desolate and unlikable, not taking into account how many times I’d blown her off over the course of a week so I could pine for my neighbor.

I dug my feet deeper into the sand, twiddling the strap of my bikini top between my forefinger and thumb as my other hand waded blindly across the sand. I laid there as the clouds unfurled themselves to me, their formations pillowy and soft, doing my best to decipher their shapes as they drifted by.

Suddenly, my vision was occluded by patchy shades of brown and black. I sat up quickly, coming face to face with the biggest fucking dog I had ever seen in my life. A Doberman, the size of a miniature pony, licked a clean stripe from my mouth to the bridge of my nose. It sat back on its heels and looked at me with the same confusion I was looking at it with.

“He doesn’t bite.” A familiar voice rang out behind me.

I reached my hand out cautiously and the dog, whose bone shaped tag read ‘Jackson’, licked the tips of my fingers curiously.

“My mom’s dog,” He told me, motioning back to where his mother struggled to walk in the sand due to the height of her wedged sandals.

“He doesn’t bite!” She called out to me.

“Yeah, she got the memo,” He looked down at me as if to say “shoot me, please,” and I smiled up at him.

I stood up, dusting the sand off of my shoulders and shorts as his mother finally came wobbling up to us.

She glanced up and down at my figure, seemingly appraising me, before she spoke, “Aren’t you a dish?”

“Thanks?” I laughed nervously. I could feel my cheeks turning red.

Once again, Jeryd’s eyes widened and he sighed heavily through flared nostrils.

“Jill Mencken,” she offered her hand as her caftan billowed in the breeze.

“Liv Luciano.” We shook hands. She seemed to be trying to figure me out.

“This is Jackson,” she reached down and cooed to the dog who ate it up, “Jeryd’s brother.”

Jeryd, again, looked as if he would rather be anywhere but there at that moment.

“I definitely see the resemblance.”

She swatted Jeryd’s shoulder. “And she’s funny!”

“Why don’t you walk with us?” She offered and my brain went on the defensive, listing every reason why that shouldn’t occur.

“Oh, I couldn’t intrude,” I offered, my attention falling to Jackson to be my buffer at that moment. I scratched behind his ears and he rolled into the sand, rutting back and forth, happily making a mess of his surroundings and perfectly manicured coat.

“If I had done that as a child, she would’ve given me away.” Jeryd looked over at me, giving me a knowing look, easing me out of my mind for a moment.

“I insist,” Jill grabbed my hand, using me as support as her chunky heels disappeared into the sand with each uneven step. I turned around to look at Jeryd as he waited for Jackson to comply and walk along with us.

Eventually, at Jeryd’s insistence, his mother abandoned her shoes, leaving me to walk along the shore at my own pace without her balancing act quite literally dragging me down. She trudged behind, stopping altogether to scoop up a few shells as Jeryd and I continued to walk slowly, side by side.

“She’s fun,” I looked over at him as he nodded.

“She’s, uh, something.” We both turned back to watch as she yelled something about a particular shell she had found.

“Can you swing a few days out of town this weekend?”

We began to walk forward, inching our way back towards the parking lot and adjoining playground.

He leaned forward abruptly, swiping his hand across the exposed part of my stomach, catching me off guard.

“Well, I was going to go with Heather to an art exhibit in the city.”

“Tell her you’ll be busy until Monday.”

“Sounds like a pretty personal thing for you to ask me to do, Jeryd.” I commented, watching as his signature smirk pulled at his lips.

_________________________________________

Jill insisted that I go to lunch with them and that I chose the restaurant. She also insisted that I sit up front with Jeryd, opting to occupy the backseat, holding onto Jackson lovingly as he stuck his head out the window.

“She loves the dog more than me,” He murmured, looking over at me briefly before turning back to the road.

“I do not,” she interjected, playfully smacking at Jeryd’s shoulder, “Don’t listen to him, Liv.”

Seeing him like this, in a dynamic with his mother that was familiar to me, made me feel like I knew him a little better. A glimpse into his life, the one that existed outside of the bounds of our entanglement, provided me with a sliver of hope. Hope for what, I didn’t know, but I felt hopeful nonetheless.

I chose Mirabelle’s, a restaurant adjoined to one of the original inns Stony Brook boasted, mainly so Jackson could join us on the outdoor patio.

I was never a big dog person, but watching Jeryd being walked by a literal miniature horse through the old historic district made me think I could be a dog person. Every few steps, Jackson would jerk him forward and he would scoff in the middle of whatever he was talking about, causing me to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing at how worked up he was over something so small.

“Your dog is an asshole,” He turned around and glared at his mother, causing her to pat his shoulder affectionately.

“Takes one to know one, honey.” She quipped.

Lunch with the two of them was easier than I expected. At first, at least. The conversation took on different topics such as the weather, Jackson’s obedience school progress, Jeryd’s students, and his brother’s upcoming wedding. I happily took the seat of the neutral observer as the two of them chatted idly, occasionally breaking off a piece of rye bread to share with Jackson, who rested between mine and Jeryd’s feet.

It was easy to see the resemblance between mother and son once they were so close to one another. Their flamboyant hand gestures when speaking, the shape of their eyes, the same pale blue irises. They spoke the same way, with that witty, sharp banter.

She turned the conversation to me once she was done catching up with Jeryd, inquiring about what I did for a living, where I had grown up, and what I planned to do after law school. All the while throwing in a casual, “you’re so young and full of life. I was the same way when I was your age,” or “my god, I’d kill to have your skin. I quite literally mean I would kill for that elasticity.”

Between the compliments and inquiries, I would catch her staring at me from the corner of my eye. There was no contempt or malice behind her eyes, more so a curiosity of sorts evident in the way her eyes would bounce from my face to Jeryd’s as he and I spoke casually to one another about a new book I had started reading.

“Do you drink?” Jill asked as she perused the alcoholic beverage menu.

“Usually not before seven PM,” I smiled at her, “but they do have fantastic mimosas here.”

“Mimosas, ah,” she fawned, “A girl after my own heart!”

Jeryd pinched the bridge of his nose and audibly made a noise of discontent.

“I’m not driving Miss Daisy all day for you two sots.”

“Oh, please,” she waved her hand in the air while her other hand dug deep down into the confines of her Birkin bag, “it’s going to take more than a few mimosas to keep me down.”

“Said every alcoholic ever,” He mused with an eye roll.

I watched as she pulled a silver cigarette case from her bag. Her initials emblazoned across the side in deep crimson jewels.

“You smoke?” She asked as she slid a cigarette from the case, struck a match, and lit it, dousing the remaining flame in the remnants of her drink.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you’ll start if you keep hanging out with this one.” She motioned over to Jeryd.

“She’s on a roll today,” he grabbed his drink, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. “Smoking and drinking at lunch. Maybe she will smoke some opium at dinner.”

“Always with the dramatics,” she rolled her eyes at him, “Don’t take it so personally that I want to live the remainder of my life happily.”

“Yeah, Jeryd,” I leaned back in my seat and eyed him cooly, “don’t take it so personally.”

She smiled at me, tilting her head as she followed my eyeline across the table to Jeryd’s, obviously very happy to have someone on her side.

Once the second round of drinks were served and I sipped contentedly on my mimosa, Jeryd excused himself, disappearing into The Inn’s indoor dining room.

Jill turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and asked, “How long have you two been fucking?”

I nearly choked on my mimosa. I sputtered and felt my face flush hot, covering my mouth with the cloth napkin I had placed over my lap

“I’m sorry,” I shook my head, “What?”

“I’m certainly not blind.” Her face remained blank of any emotion.

“Um, it’s not like that at all,” I wasn’t convincing her. Convincing a grand jury would have been a smaller feat.

“Have things been peaceful next door since she’s been gone?” She asked with careful disdain laced in her cadence. I was taken aback, quite literally clueless as to what she was asking, or rather, what she was implying.

“His wife,” she offered and I shook my head.

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been home since I’ve been back.”

“She runs away when they fight.” She shook her head and drained her glass in one go. “Right back to mommy and daddy when she doesn’t get her way.”

“It’s okay,” she reassured me, “Your secret is safe with me.”

“I don’t have a secret.”

“We all have a secret.” She gave me a knowing look.

I glanced longingly at the door Jeryd had walked through, silently willing him to come back to the table.

“I was Jeryd’s father’s second wife,” she told me, “They always get it right the second time around.”

She didn’t have time to expand on that before Jeryd reappeared, reclaiming his seat next to me. I ate in silence once the food was served, Jill’s words bouncing around my brain like a warped soundtrack. Whatever they spoke about after that was hazy and untuned to me as I focused on what possibilities might come my way given the newfound circumstances that had been brought to light.

Tag list: @aurorag98

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door Epilogue

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: Shockingly enough, none.

A/N: Goodbye, my dear world of a fic.

WC: 423

Seven months passed before I saw Mencken again. As fate would have it, our reunion took place in the same church in which we had first laid eyes on each other.

This time, however, the scene had changed and where he and his wife had previously sat in front of me, the two of them on a lone, empty pew, they now sat a few rows behind my family and I, occasionally their hushed tones would float up to us, lost somewhere between their newborn’s grunts and the cooing of the choir.

When the newborn’s shrill cry rang out amongst the stillness of the congregation—something akin to a rosary clanging against polished marble—my instinctive reflex had my head on a swivel, turning quickly to survey the scene behind me.

Unlike Mencken a year prior, I didn’t gawk or stare. There was no malice in my curiosity, a kind smile pulled at my lips as I looked down at the newborn in his arms and back to his face, turning back around with a lump in my throat brought on by pure nostalgia for a time that I had worked so hard to come to terms with and accept as nothing but a dwindling high followed by a dangerous low.

“Peace be with you.”

_________________________________________

Walking around my house, seeing the pool, the dock, the patch of yard between mine and Mencken’s house and the white picket fence that divided evoked feelings in me that had long since been dormant. Cognitive dissonance, my therapist called it. The need to be loved and to be healthy, but longing for a time where I was anything but.

Eventually, after indulging myself in sordid memories, I made my way to my bedroom. Nothing had changed, not that I would have expected it to in the months I’d been away at Georgetown, however, a new set of curtains billowed in the soft breeze provided by the ceiling fan in the window that faced Mencken’s bedroom.

Such a simple object, but what a difference they would have made seven months prior. I laughed at the thought, how hindsight truly is twenty-twenty, running my fingertips along the silken fabric.

It wasn’t long until my eyes met his across the way, a silent exchange occurred between the two of us as we surveyed one another for damage, for any signs of life, of yearning. If there was any, it must have been occluded behind our windowpanes.

I closed the curtains, effectively blocking Mencken out of my vision, out of my life.

Tag list: @aurorag98

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door part III

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: politics (gag), dubious content, alcohol consumption. Read the previous chapter’s warnings (we ALL know where this is headed)

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Benadryl. I went to the moon last night and somehow woke up with this chapter finished. Thanks to @runningwiththefoxes for being THAT BITCH and @luxlisbons for letting me whine, @weakling-grace for being the best hypeman and @vivalafae for also being neurotic and insane like me.

Also, we’re staying in the Succ universe for this. Jeryd just hasn’t taken off on his political journey yet. I’ve had a few messages about this and just wanted to clear it up.

WC: 1956

I made it a point to buy curtains the next day. They would lay in a pile below my bedroom window for close to a month. The rod would become bent and the screws would wind up in various cracks and divots of the hardwood floor. I made an effort, I would tell myself, only giving up because I couldn’t find a screwdriver or a drill- It was a lie if I had ever told one.

Over the course of a week his house became visible to me through his bedroom window. He never closed his curtain after that night, rewarding me a few days later when he opened the curtains covering the bay window adjacent to the one in my own kitchen.

Oftentimes I would catch him fresh out of the shower. He would trail past the window, his hand vigorously rubbing a towel through his hair, before reappearing a few seconds later, his slender fingers buttoning his button down as he gazed out the window. He would stare out at the sky, at the old oak tree looming in my front yard, over to the inlet, but his eyes would always end up on me.

No more peep shows, I told myself, but dressed and undressed purposely in front of the window each day.

Other times, I would catch him watching me doing innocent things. Folding myself uncomfortably into a dining room chair with an old book, perched on top of the kitchen counter as I chatted animatedly to my long distance friend over the course of hour long phone calls, dancing around the kitchen as I ate raw cake batter. It didn’t matter what I was doing- he looked at me with the same intensity he had the night I fucked Evan for him to see. There was something about that I just couldn’t shake.

On Wednesday, I woke up earlier than I normally would have. A waterline break had canceled my shift at The Marina, an answered prayer delivered via text message sometime after I had gone to sleep the previous night. I rooted around the sheets for the better part of an hour before I decided I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. It was barely past six in the morning.

Thinking about him made me nervous. It’s normal, I told myself, it’s human to be curious. My silent commiserations had left me feeling dirty. My internal monologue seesawing between morality and depravity.

For the first time in a week, I dressed timidly in the darkness of my bathroom, away from any prying eyes. A sort of guilt had washed over me, the type you experience when barely any remorse is involved. Which made the guilt, or lack thereof, even more personal. I laced my tennis shoes in haste and nearly toppled down the staircase in an effort to put physical distance between him and I.

I ran briskly out the front door, my feet thudding against the cool pavement as I set my pace. I took the same course I had taken when I was a teenager. Right out of my driveway to the end of the residential area where the lopsided Welcome sign stood, around the traffic circle that connected Blair Street with Ocean Avenue, and back down Paxton Place. Rinse and repeat. Easy enough.

Running had always cleared my mind. I knew the science behind it. The rush of endorphins and such, but I also resonated with the idea of simply running away from my problems.

And then my problem caught up to me. I hadn’t noticed him at first, too lost in my own little world, before his stride caught up to mine. We stayed at the same pace for a short while, only when I had a burst of energy did I manage to outrun him, but it didn’t last long.

“So,” he blew out a gust of air and looked over at me, “Georgetown in the fall?”

“Can’t. Talk. And. Run.” I managed to get out. He laughed at me, running ahead.

Once we were home free and both of our respective houses were within eyesight, I came to a violent stop, bending at the waist as I braced my thighs in an effort to catch my breath.

“How’d you know about Georgetown?” I asked, dragging myself to the curb to sit down.

“Oh,” he sat beside me, “the McGovens told us all about the neighbors when we moved in.”

“Obviously you weren’t warned properly.”

He nodded along, seemingly agreeing to what exactly I was alluding to.

“There’s a lecture at Stony Brook today,” he stretched his legs out in front of him and looked back at me, “a congressman from Pennsylvania.”

“Yeah, Gil Eavis. I heard about that.”

He nodded. “I’m expected to be there to make sure my students show up and engage. You could join me,” He looked at me almost expectantly, “Only if you want.”

_________________________________________

To say I was nervous would have been the understatement of the century. I silently chastised myself for not having a more structured summer. To not be able to use work or school as an excuse as I had done so many times in the past when I wanted to get out of a social engagement.

“He’s full of shit,” Mencken whispered to me while looking straight ahead, “everything he says is bullshit.”

I pretended to be so deeply immersed in whatever Eavis was rattling on about that I only nodded in silence.

“Pandering to the fucking left,” Mencken scoffed, “this guy doesn’t know the difference between his asshole and a hole in the ground.”

Right. Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Mencken. The only thing I had been focused on was how far apart his legs were spread, his right knee touching my left knee, had me practically breaking apart at the seams. If driving to the university together had been foreplay, this was practically second base.

When I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Eavis took a few questions from the crowd as Mencken suggested we leave.

“I’ve heard enough,” he leaned down and told me as we made our way out of the lecture hall and towards the main entrance.

“You hungry, Olive?”

_________________________________________

We ended up at a little Italian restaurant about fifteen minutes outside of town.

“A hidden gem,” he told me as he drove and I gazed out the window at the dulcet tones the sunset put off.

When we got there, we were swiftly seated towards the back of the restaurant. I promptly ordered a glass of wine but he intervened, ordering an entire bottle.

“So,” he cleared his throat, “Georgetown. That’s heavy stuff.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess so.”

“You guess so?,” he laughed and cocked his head at me, “Georgetown is impressive. “

Once the wine was served and my pulse returned to its baseline, he pried more information out of me. We discussed how I’d double majored in Political Science and Communications, with him calling me an overachiever, and then ragging on me for going to NYU.

“Law schools don’t give a shit about a double major, Olive.” Or, “You should’ve gone to college further from home and seen the world a little bit, Olive.”

“What about you?” I asked him after my second glass of wine. “Who are you?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t go to Georgetown.” He spat back at me. That same sarcastic grin I’d come to loathe and love simultaneously mirroring my own.

“Hofstra University. Full scholarship,” he informed me as he downed his second glass of wine.

“Impressive.”

The conversation idled comfortably as we both ate.

It was never awkward or forced. Neither of us gave away any personal details other than colleges and majors. Nothing of which would be deemed too deep for the light evening we had shared thus far.

“I taught high school Civics and US government in Roslyn for ten years,” he filled our glasses with the last remaining bit of wine from the bottle before continuing, “and then I took the job at Stony back in January before we settled here.”

We.

I wanted to ask about his partner. Their presence being highlighted in the subtle glitter of his wedding band. I had noticed it the first night I met him, an observation I would have made on anyone else. It didn’t mean anything to me then and it shouldn’t have meant anything to me at dinner. But it did. It meant more to me in the back of that old school Italian restaurant than I cared to realize. I wasn’t sure if I was jealous or concerned. Frankly, I was curious.

“Where’s your wife?” I asked him out of nowhere.

I had caught him off guard, his eyes narrowing at me.

“Mission trip.” Was all he offered.

“Where’s your mother?” He asked, “I noticed you’ve been alone.”

Sinister, but not at all threatening. It’s hard to be a voyeur and not recognize these things.

“A medical conference in Florida. She leaves Miami on Thursday to go on a 14 day cruise.”

He hummed in response.

I wanted to call him a dog. But if he was a dog, well, I was one as well.

_________________________________________

It rained that night. It started lightly at first, mixing uncomfortably with the humidity outside, casting the windows in thick fog. He drove slower than he had before, cursing the defroster for not doing the one job it had been designed to do.

I was blissfully drunk and the world felt a little lighter than it had when my day started. I leaned back in my seat, my head lulling to the side as I watched him thrum the tips of his fingers on the dash while his palm gripped the wheel.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, eyes never leaving the road.

I sat up a little straighter. “Like what?”

I hadn’t even realized he had made it back to our houses until he put the car in park.

“Like that,” he said, finally turning his body to the side to look at me.

There were plenty of things I wanted to say:

“Don’t look in my windows anymore.”

“Don’t come into The Marina when I’m working.”

“Don’t ply me with wine at dinner.”

“Move back to Roslyn.”

But none of them would have conveyed what I was feeling more so than when I crawled over the center console and directly onto his lap, straddling him with ease.

His hands rested on the outside of my thighs and he looked up at me, so confident and cool, as I stared down at him.

When I leaned down to kiss him, he met me halfway. What started slowly and deeply, turned into a power struggle of sorts. My hands roamed across his neck, my thumbs meeting at the crest of his Adam’s apple, as our teeth clashed. His hands, his huge hands, explored my stomach, nearly covering the surface area with his palms alone. When his hands danced onto my lower back and dipped low into my jeans, I felt the cool metal of his wedding band as he gripped onto my bare ass, kneading and pulling the soft flesh, dragging me down onto him in a grinding motion.

There was a hesitancy in my kiss then. The guilt had begun to set in.

I pulled away from him.

“I can’t do this.”

I scurried back across the center console and nearly threw myself from the passenger’s side door. I didn’t turn around once I made it to my doorstep. Instead, I let myself inside, slammed the door, and tried to catch my breath.

I slept in my mother’s room that night. The only bedroom with curtains.

[rxqueenotd]

The Girl Next Door (Sneak Peek)

Jeryd Mencken x original female character

A/N: I’ve been working on this for a while now and only recently got brave enough to post it after a slew of horny anons came along and talked me up. Once again, I am not proud to be writing about this man, but here we are. I have this really terrible habit of writing backwards and out of order, and I thought this would be a good little snippet to post and test the waters with. For reference, this fic takes place around 2010ish, which would make Mencken around 40, with OFC being around 22. I’m a sucker for the girl next door trope and couldn’t resist!

Warnings: drug use, age gap (that’s it… for now)

Of all the things that had changed in the time I had been away, the old wooden dock stayed the same, in its rightful place, bobbing directly in between the divide of property lines. I had imagined that when Ms. McGoven died, her children quickly went through her things. Auctioning off what they deemed unsuitable to their tastes, while quickly listing the house for sale. They seemed to be a covetous lot, so it came as a huge surprise to me when my mother informed me that the dock stayed in possession of my family and the new neighbors, The Menckens.

I had spent most of the day sprawled out on the dock, idling between sunbathing and getting lost amongst the tattered pages of an old novel. The sound of the waves lapping against the inlet across the way lulled me into a state of contentedness, so much so that I had failed to notice the bright sky change and shift above me, its cotton candy tone now reflecting against the shifting waves set out before me as the sun began its descent.

I was awestruck by the simplicity of the beauty around me. Flipping a tattered corner on the page, I snapped the book shut and deposited it down into my bag. I absentmindedly dug out my wallet, sliding my pointer finger along the ridges of the change section until I found the joint and lighter at the bottom of the compartment. I lit it up happily, lying flat down on my back for the optimal view of the ever changing sky. A few moments passed before I heard someone speak from the bank behind me.

“Are you smoking pot on my dock?”

I sat up in an instant, my cheeks flushing red as I thought of every possible lie I could float to him in an effort to get out of this.

“No,” I lied. A plume of smoke billowed from my mouth, effectively betraying me.

When I turned around, he didn’t look angry. He appeared amused. His hands were tucked in the pocket of his slacks as his simple white tee held snugly to his middle as the wind blew in our direction.

I bobbed along with the dock as he stepped down from the bank to stand beside where I was sitting. He looked down at me with a smirk.

“I think you are.” He crouched down beside me and plucked the joint from my fingers. When he brought it to his mouth and sharply inhaled, I stared at him with wonder.

“Tastes like pot.” His voice went up a few octaves as he inhaled as deeply as he could. He never took his eyes off me as he exhaled above my head. He observed the joint in his hands, hitting it again as he watched me.

I felt small under his gaze. Like he knew something I didn’t. And with the newfound intensity now occupying the space around us, I needed to move, to cut the tension I felt was due to my increasing paranoia. I surely hadn’t been this worked up a few days ago when I served him at The Marina. When he slid a twenty in my hand and asked for my name, ensuring he would be back to sit in my section again.

He watched me carefully as I leaned forward onto my knees, running my hands through the water. When he went to hand the joint back to me, I wiped my hands along the top of my swimsuit, finding myself gobsmacked when the material didn’t soak up the water on my hands the way I had intended for it to.

“I… can’t?” I held up my wet hands and shrugged. He laughed at me.

“Here,” he offered, and I watched as he puffed on the joint again. His free hand tilted my face upward towards his, gently cupping my jaw as he pursed his lips and blew the smoke gently at my mouth. It took me a second to register exactly what was happening and I was quick to settle on my knees in front of him, happily welcoming the smoke into my mouth.

When he did it again, I let my fingers dance across his cheek, making a home directly over his cheekbone as a way to ground myself as the dock moved back and forth with the waves.

The intimacy of the moment wasn’t lost on me as I opened my eyes to look into his. They were a violent shade of blue, the golden hour appearing to make them almost glow.

“It’s definitely pot.” He confirmed with a toothy grin, stubbing the joint out on the side of the dock. “I’m taking it with me.”

“What?!” I guffawed, mouth open wide at the audacity of this man. “You can’t just rob me like that!”

“I can and I did.” He turned around and began his trek back up the bank to his house.

“I’ll think of it as a housewarming gift.” He turned around and gave me a smirk.

I didn’t argue back, choosing to huff frustratedly instead, lying back down on the dock, thinking of how I could get even with him.

[luxlisbons]

Voulez-Vous? - part i

Mencken's ego takes a hit when Harriet's eye wanders to the newly elected French president. In response, he engineers a grand state dinner, turning diplomatic affairs into a battlefield of jealousy.

part of the "before there's hell to pay" universe: part i - part ii - part iii

pairing: jeryd mencken x original female character. 4k

warnings: affairs, unhealthy relationships, dubious morality, explicit language, age difference, smut, religious imagery & symbolism, unprotected sex, pov first person, the french

a/n: lmao so... this idea came to be thanks to @rxgirlie and i's obsession with a current french actor known for playing a lawyer in a film (iykyk), so picture him as marcel reynaud (who will make his appearance in the second part). thank you so much to Kels and my friend Lu @nyheartbreak for proofreading and encouraging me to post this.

Read on AO3.

It all started with an online poll. The Buzzfeed type of crap you read while waiting for the clock to strike 5 pm in your crummy little open space office. 

“The definitive list of the 10 hottest presidents”

Usually, despite his very alienating politics, Mencken would place number one. What can I say? Everyone loves a bad boy, especially one they can fix with sex. Attention was brought to his steely gaze, the danger and confidence he exuded in his speeches, and his past as a 90s rock band member:

“Okay but 90s Mencken??? Twink goals, honestly😍”

“Mencken got me like 😱🔥”

“I never thought I'd say this, but Jeryd Mencken, you're kinda hot 😅 “

“He is such a silver fox zaddy 🦊”

His unofficial title became “Silver Fox in Chief”, and it gave us tabloid fodder for when we wanted to deflect from his racist dog whistles and controversial actions in D.C., which was a lot of the time for very obvious reasons. We were like puppet masters pulling the strings, orchestrating this wild media circus around Mencken. It was a classic ATN move, redirecting attention from the messy stuff and instead shining the spotlight on Mencken's supposed charm.

We brainstormed catchy hashtags and encouraged people to share their favorite Mencken moments online. It was all about creating a narrative that suited our agenda – making him this irresistible figure, a distraction from the serious issues at hand. We knew how to play the game, and damn, did it work. The internet ate it up, and suddenly, Mencken was not just a president; he was a phenomenon.

The internet had found a new obsession; fancams flooded the internet– from the way he adjusted his tie to the subtle glances he threw at the camera during press conferences. TikTok became a breeding ground for creative edits, with old concert footage seamlessly synchronized to modern pop hits, each video racking up millions of views and fueling the ever-growing fandom. 

Twitter experienced a constant Mencken presence. Anytime the president made a public appearance or donned a new suit, his name would surge to the top of trending lists. The online obsession transcended political boundaries; even those who vehemently disagreed with Mencken's policies found themselves unable to resist his allure.

His press conferences were now attended not just by political journalists but also by entertainment reporters eager to capture the latest juicy details about the "hottest president" phenomenon. Mencken, bemused and enjoying the attention, tried to redirect the conversation to policy matters, while also stoking the fires with quips and acknowledgments of his sex symbol status.

His fanbase (which consisted of both ironic and genuine fans) even created a nickname for themselves: the “Mencken Fuckers”. They organized themselves into a formidable online community. They created fan art, fan fiction, and even fan-made music videos that further propelled the president into pop culture stardom. The group's ironic name didn't deter their dedication; they wore it as a badge of honor, unapologetically reveling in their unconventional admiration for the leader of the free world.

One such video caught my undivided attention while doomscrolling through TikTok late at night. It was one created with candid moments in which I appeared beside him, laughing and talking with Lana Del Rey’s song “Let The Light In” playing in the background. The chemistry between the both of us, set against the dreamy soundtrack, fueled speculation and excitement among the Mencken Fuckers. It both amused and mortified me how close to the actual truth they were.

Caption: "Is it just me, or are these two looking like the ultimate power duo? 👀💼💫 #CloseEncounters #PoliticalChemistry"

Comments:

1. @ShipperSupreme: Move over romance novels, this is the love story we didn't know we needed! 😂❤️

2. @CuriousMinds: Are we witnessing the birth of a new power couple? 👫💫

3. @LaughingWithLana: Lana Del Rey's song just makes this whole thing even more iconic! 🎶🔥

4. @Daydreamer_Deluxe: I ship it! 😍💘 Who needs reality when we can have this fantasy?

5. @RealityCheck: Wait, are we calling them #Menkenriet or #Harren now? 🤔

6. @CupidInTheComments: My arrows of love have found a new target! 💘🏹

7. @PoliticalLoveAffairs: Move aside, political drama; we're here for the romance! 🇺🇸❤️

I couldn’t help myself, I sent the link to Mencken, who after some technical wrangling on his part “I’m 54, of course I’m not gonna have Tik Tok installed for fuck’s sake” finally saw it.

The ringing of the phone cut through the silence of my empty apartment, startling General Meow from her nap and sending her scurrying toward the living room. I sighed, muttering to myself about the timing, and picked up after the first ring, feeling like a good little lap dog.

"Hey there, Mencken," I greeted, smirking to myself as I imagined his perplexed expression on the other end. "Ready for a little adventure in the world of internet?"

Mencken's voice echoed through the line, confusion lacing every word, "Harriet, what in the hell is going on? Why are people shipping us? Are we supposed to be getting something delivered?"

Suppressing a laugh, I explained, "No, Mencken, it's not about deliveries. It's a term they use on the internet when people want two characters or real people to be in a romantic relationship. They call it 'shipping.'"

There was a brief pause before Mencken asked incredulously, "Shipping? Like cargo and ships?"

I chuckled, covering my mouth to stifle the laughter. "Not quite. It's short for 'relationship.' They think we're the ultimate power couple, Mencken."

"Is this some kind of secret code or a new political term I missed in my briefings?" Mencken's confusion was palpable.

I couldn't help but tease, "No secret code, just internet slang. They're imagining us as this influential and glamorous duo."

Another pause, then Mencken's voice returned, this time more incredulous, "You're telling me there are people out there who think we're having an affair? With each other?"

"Yep, that's the gist of it. Welcome to the world of shipping, Mencken. It's a strange place," I replied, my grin growing wider. “And they've even given us a ship name – #Menckenriet. Catchy, right?" I couldn't help but enjoy the absurdity of it all.

Mencken sighed on the other end, probably shaking his head, "I can't believe this is happening."

"Embrace the fame, Mencken! Who knows, maybe we'll start a new trend in political shipping," I teased, still grinning.

There was a long-suffering sigh from Mencken. "I don't have time for this nonsense. I have a country to run."

"Your loss, Mencken. #Menckenriet could've been the political love story of the century," I quipped. 

As I prepared to hang up, he interjected with a serious tone, "Wait, do they actually know about us... you know, being intimate?"

My playful demeanor faltered for a moment. "No, Mencken. It's just speculation and fantasy. They don't know anything for sure."

Mencken sounded relieved, "Good. Let's keep it that way."

But before I could end the call, he added in a soft voice, "Clear up your schedule. I'm gonna drop by during the weekend." 

Since Rome, Mencken's hard veneer had chipped away. He made more time for me, wasn't as mean – well, still an asshole, but, as he put it, "Your asshole, sweetheart.” 

“Well, aren't you so romantic,” I mused mostly to myself, a wry smile playing on my lips.

“Yeah, well, I figured life's too short to be a constant jerk. Besides, dealing with you is marginally less irritating than dealing with most people," I couldn't suppress a laugh. High praise, indeed. Looking forward to the weekend then.

As the call concluded, I imagined Mencken shaking his head and muttering, "I'm too old for this." I let out a loud hyena cackle which leaves General Meow staring at me with her wide green eyes.

______________________________________________________________

And then the French presidential election happened. 

It was a tight race between three players, each one from a widely different part of the political spectrum. On one hand, the far-right candidate, the heiress of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, was Mencken's pick. On the other hand, the incumbent President, Emmanuel Macron, stood as a centrist, aiming to maintain stability and balance in turbulent times. The third contender, Marcel Reynaud, a charismatic socialist from the left, caught the attention of many with his passionate speeches and a boyish yet distinguished appearance, with graying hair that hinted at wisdom beyond his years, reminiscent of a Dostoevsky prince.

As the campaign unfolded, Marcel Reynaud's popularity soared. His fiery rhetoric and genuine connection with the people resonated across various demographics. The public, weary of the traditional political dichotomy, found in him a fresh and appealing alternative. The French, tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, began to rally behind Reynaud, drawn by the promise of a new era and genuine change.

Reynaud's physical presence added an extra layer to his appeal. Imagine a man with rugged charm, grey tousled hair that hinted at rebelliousness, and piercing blue eyes that conveyed both intensity and empathy. His speeches, delivered with conviction, echoed a vision of a more inclusive and socially just France.

Election day arrived, and the people of France turned out in record numbers. The results trickled in, each update intensifying the suspense. When the final count was announced, it was Marcel Reynaud who emerged as the victor. The socialist left candidate had secured a historic win, breaking the stronghold of the traditional political forces.

As the news of his victory spread, so did the memes, fan art, and adoring posts dedicated to Marcel Reynaud. Internet users affectionately dubbed him the "French boyfriend," and hashtags like #ReynaudRevolution and #MarcelMania trended worldwide. He quickly dethroned Mencken as the hottest president online, captivating not just the French public but garnering attention on the global stage.

The internet was flooded with swooning comments about Reynaud's “elf” vibes, and fan accounts dedicated to his every move and policy decision multiplied. Memes comparing him to heroes from literature circulated, portraying him as the embodiment of a modern-day romantic lead. His charisma had transcended politics; he had become a symbol of a new era, both politically and personally.

______________________________________________________________

Mencken was not impressed. Despite being in his mid 50s, he still was a petty child underneath it all, mad about the spotlight being taken off him and given to a soy boy from France of all places. 

The ping of random texts, accompanied by a distinctive ringtone reserved exclusively for him, never failed to jolt me with a thrill, whether I was immersed in work or drifting off to sleep – a Pavlovian response he found pathetically endearing.

M "Just saw another damn article about Marcel Reynaud. 🙄 Apparently, he's the new poster boy for socialism. What a load of crap."

H: "Oh, Mencken, you're just jealous that Reynaud's stealing the limelight. 😏” 

M: "Another day, another interview with Reynaud. 📰 Can't escape the guy. Do you think he practices that brooding stare in the mirror?"

H: "Maybe he's born with it, maybe it's political strategy. 🤷🏻‍♀️"

M: "Thoughts on Marcel's new hairstyle? 💇‍♂️ Trying to figure out if he's attempting a political rebrand or just desperately needs a barber."

H: "Maybe he's channeling the winds of change through his hair. 😂 At least he's keeping things interesting. You should try it sometime."

M: "Harriet, tell me you didn't fall for the hype. 🤨 The French might adore their 'heartthrob,' but I know you have better taste."

H: "Of course not, Mencken. I only have eyes for the 'old and grumpy' type. 😉 

To that last text he replied with a hilariously outdated “fuck yea” meme, highlighting how out of touch he could be sometimes.

______________________________________________________________

In one of our romantic getaways,  (if you can call secretly meeting in a pre-swept room with Secret Service agents hanging outside the door romantic) he once again brought up le problème. 

We had dinner from Dorsia’s to-go in my apartment, with General Meow eyeing our food from her own seat at the table. I tried to make conversation but Mencken's answers were clipped, a subtle giveaway that something was amiss. I took it all in stride, already accustomed to his mercurial moods. I knew that he was stressed about something and that once we fucked, he would relax and the tension would dissipate.

Wanting to make up for missing a couple of our dates, he takes me for a drive around the city in a sleek black car with tinted windows, a partition separating us from the chauffeur. The sound of muffled traffic and a bossa nova playlist was our soundtrack, as we furiously make out like teenagers on their way to prom. He’s quiet except for the sighs that escape his lips. I get needy and he likes it, petting me the same way he does my cat. The similarity does not escape me. His hands begin to go lower until they eventually find my hot center and he smiles against my mouth as he realises I’m not wearing panties. Mencken's voice, low and husky, breaks the silence as he whispers, "You always know how to keep things interesting, Harriet."

I respond with a teasing smile, my voice a breathless whisper, "Well, Mr. President, I aim to please."

His fingers continued their exploration, tracing patterns of fire on my clit. “Mr. President? You're playing a dangerous game," he murmured, his lips trailing hot kisses along my neck as he slips two fingers into me.

The combined sensation sends shivers down my spine. I cry out of pleasure and I am thankful for the soundproofed privacy the partition offers us. Eager to reciprocate, my hand instinctively moved toward his belt, but Mencken halted my advance with a gentle yet firm grip.

“Not here, better in the hotel room,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear. The promise of what awaited us hung tantalizingly in the air.

Our destination was a high-rise hotel he had booked, soaring 68 floors into the city skyline. It was quintessentially Mencken, reveling in the sensation of being the most powerful man even during sex. The car eased into a lull inside the hotel's basement parking lot, providing a moment for me to compose myself while awaiting the Secret Service's assurance that the coast was clear.

Mencken eyes me mockingly. “You do realise they all know what we’re just doing in here and what we’re about to do in that room”.

I roll my eyes and reply, “A girl has to keep some secrets. Adds to the intrigue, doesn't it?"

He smirks, a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Well, let them think what they want. It's not like we've ever been ones to play by the rules."

With a final nod from the Secret Service, Mencken opens the car door, ushering me out. The hotel's opulent lobby awaits us, and I can't help but feel a rush of excitement. The atmosphere is hushed, with the discreet professionalism one would expect in such an establishment.

He is rough, manhandling me immediately after we cross the threshold of the room. 

The door closes behind us, and the plush interior of the room envelops us in a cocoon. The dim lighting casts a sultry ambiance, amplifying the energy that crackles between us.

Mencken turns to face me, his eyes filled with a hunger that matches my own. With a swift move, he captures my lips in a kiss, his hands roaming possessively over my body. In the intimate space, he pins me against the door, a delicious urgency in his touch. His kisses travel from my lips down to the curve of my neck, igniting a cascade of shivers. The feeling lights me whole like a star. He grabs my hand and leads towards the floor to ceiling windows, the quiet city completely unaware of what is about to unfold. Mencken's eyes lock onto mine, a silent communication passing between us. With a heated intensity, he guides me onto my knees, the plush carpet beneath feeling cool against my skin. 

My hands find their way to his belt, fingers working deftly to release him. His cock is already half hard, forming a wet patch on his boxers. I pull them down to spring him free and my tongue reaches out in anticipation. In that moment, the world outside seems to fade away, leaving the two of us suspended in time. His fingers tangle in my hair, a silent encouragement to continue the exploration. As my lips inch closer to their destination, I can feel the heightened tension in the room. His arousal is palpable, the air charged intensity. I wet my mouth, preparing to take him in, and our eyes lock as my lips envelop him. A shiver runs through Mencken's body, and the room echoes with his moans of pleasure.

As the sensations escalate, Mencken's husky voice breaks the silence. "Harriet," he says, a blend of urgency and pleasure in his tone. I smile at him, as much as one can smile with a mouthful of cock. Yet, he knows—I look at him with such adoration as if I were in prayer and him my patron saint. The city outside may slumber in blissful ignorance, but within these four walls, I hold the most powerful man in the world in my grasp. 

I alternate between licking his length and kissing his tip, his skin flushing to a delicious shade of pink. “Adorable” is definitely not the best adjective to describe him, nevertheless it is the word that comes to your mind. Yes, this man who can be quite vicious and spew the most hateful vitriol can also exhibit a human side. In those rare moments when it's just the two of us, away from the public eye, I get a glimpse of a softer side that few get to witness. This only eggs me on, and I fasten my maneuvers until he can barely keep standing still. 

Just when I’m about to finish him off, he jolts me up and pushes me into the bed, covering me with his body, engulfing me. He stays still for a few seconds and places his wedding band covered hand protectively over my neck. He stares at me deeply and suddenly feeling self conscious I look away. 

"Harriet…” he murmurs, his voice a low rumble. His hand moves towards my chin and commands me to look straight at him. “Look at me, please”.

And I do.  His thumb brushes gently over my cheek, and he leans down to place a soft kiss on my lips. "You're incredible, you know that?" he whispers, his words a mixture of admiration and desire.

He seems more expressive tonight, a departure from his usual sour demeanor. “Yeah, I am very well aware of it, thank you for the reminder.” I decide to inject a bit of humor into the situation. While I appreciate this more open side of him, it's honestly weirding me out a bit.

He rolls his eyes, “Don’t get cocky.” 

“Shut up. Quick, kiss me again, old man.”

He smirks, leaning in for another kiss. Our lips meet, and the intensity between us reignites. We make quick work of our clothes, and he has me on all fours facing the window. I try to push away the thought of him imagining fucking the city in that egomaniac head of his. As he roams my body, I focus on the sensation, letting the pleasure wash over me. The position lets him get in much deeper, which combined with one hand pulling my hair and the other spanking me on the ass, makes me go crosseyed and incoherent. 

“Oh shit, fuck! Oh my god”, I gasp in between moans. This goads him into increasing his thrusts and to reply with possibly the most cliche response ever.

“Nope, just me”, he snarls.

“Ugh, just shut up and fuck me, you asshole”, I groan out both in pleasure and cringe. 

He pulls me up while still inside me so my back is against his chest. His calloused fingers come to rest on breasts and my clit, both rotating and pinching me in exquisite pleasure. Inside I get hot white and my vision goes out as the tautness that has been growing explodes. Mencken follows closely, my pussy milking him until he comes inside of me.

The soft glow of the bedside lamp bathes the room in a warm aura as Mencken and I fall in tangled limbs. With the air thick with a heady mixture of contentment and the smell of sex, Mencken, typically stoic post coitus, couldn't resist diving headfirst into banter.

His eyes wandered to the ceiling, contemplating the subject that had crept into his thoughts. "You know, I can't help but think about the French election."

I turned to him, raising an eyebrow, feigning innocence. "Oh, so now you feel like talking. Do tell. Is there a particular candidate you find captivating? Is this why you were so broody this evening?”

Mencken's lips curved into a smirk, his eyes glinting with mischief.  “Marcel Reynaud, the so-called heartthrob. I fail to see what the fuss is about."

I propped myself up on an elbow, ready for the snarky exchange that was bound to follow.

"Well, Mencken, not everyone can appreciate his charm. Or perhaps, you're just not into the whole 'French boyfriend' craze?"

Mencken scoffed, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, please! He's just another commie with a mediocre appeal. Looks like he belongs in some sad Eastern European gay porn."

I couldn't help but burst into laughter at his blunt assessment.

"Oh, Mencken, you have such a way with words. I suppose, in your eyes, only right-wing politicians can be easy on the eyes?"

Mencken grinned, his snarkiness unwavering. "Exactly."

Teasing him further, I continued, "Well, you can't deny he's got a certain je ne sais quoi. Maybe you're just jealous that the internet's boyfriend title slipped away from you."

Mencken scoffed again, feigning indifference, “Jealous? Hardly."

Chuckling, I replied, "Of course not, Mencken. Your appeal is far too sophisticated for the masses."

“Wait, you really find him hot? You have the most powerful man in the world in your bed but you still are thinking about some third-rate European lefty? He isn’t even a full president, he has a fucking prime minister!”

“Woah there, I thought you weren’t jealous.”

“I’m just disappointed in you. Really, what happened to your taste?” 

He has a plane to catch the next morning. So when he has enough rest, (“I’m an old man, remember?”) he fucks me once again after eating me out, another habit he has picked up from Rome. During the week I have to wear turtlenecks and scarves to cover up the love bites he left over my chest and neck. Immature asshole.

______________________________________________________________

His administration suddenly became very interested in US-France relations. I could practically see the cogs turning in his mind, the wheels of diplomacy greased with a hint of jealousy. The irony wasn't lost on me—the leader of the free world, concerned about a romantic rival from across the Atlantic.

One evening, as we lounged in my apartment with General Meow resting on his lap, Mencken couldn't resist poking at the issue. “Any thoughts on how we can improve diplomatic ties with France? Perhaps organize a state dinner, or maybe I should visit him on a diplomatic mission?”

I exhale a sigh, knowing exactly where he was going with this. “You're the President of the United States. I'm pretty sure there are more pressing matters than cozying up to Marcel Reynaud just because your lover thinks he’s hot.”

He grinned, a playful glint in his eyes. "Well, I just thought it would be a shame if our relations suffered due to my charming French competition." 

And so it was decided, a state dinner was on the horizon, orchestrated not just for diplomatic reasons but also as a subtle way for Mencken to flex his presidential prowess in the face of a perceived rival. It was not lost on me that, deep down, this was more about asserting dominance. Men and their petty egos.

In the weeks leading up to the state dinner, Mencken's text arrived, a blend of formality and subtle suggestion. "Pick something nice, my dear. You'll be seated with me and Marcel. Let's make it a spectacular evening."

[aurorag98]

God, god, god, that last part 🫠 was so good! everything was so great, Olive is so relatable, falling in love with this man, Olive is all of us 👀 haha I loved her, your version of Mencken is still young, I feel hope in him and dreams and glimpses of goodness, I feel there is something more than Mr President Mencken and I love him, he is so intoxicating.

The Girl Next Door part III

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: politics (gag), dubious content, alcohol consumption. Read the previous chapter’s warnings (we ALL know where this is headed)

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Benadryl. I went to the moon last night and somehow woke up with this chapter finished. Thanks to @runningwiththefoxes for being THAT BITCH and @luxlisbons for letting me whine, @weakling-grace for being the best hypeman and @vivalafae for also being neurotic and insane like me.

Also, we’re staying in the Succ universe for this. Jeryd just hasn’t taken off on his political journey yet. I’ve had a few messages about this and just wanted to clear it up.

WC: 1956

I made it a point to buy curtains the next day. They would lay in a pile below my bedroom window for close to a month. The rod would become bent and the screws would wind up in various cracks and divots of the hardwood floor. I made an effort, I would tell myself, only giving up because I couldn’t find a screwdriver or a drill- It was a lie if I had ever told one.

Over the course of a week his house became visible to me through his bedroom window. He never closed his curtain after that night, rewarding me a few days later when he opened the curtains covering the bay window adjacent to the one in my own kitchen.

Oftentimes I would catch him fresh out of the shower. He would trail past the window, his hand vigorously rubbing a towel through his hair, before reappearing a few seconds later, his slender fingers buttoning his button down as he gazed out the window. He would stare out at the sky, at the old oak tree looming in my front yard, over to the inlet, but his eyes would always end up on me.

No more peep shows, I told myself, but dressed and undressed purposely in front of the window each day.

Other times, I would catch him watching me doing innocent things. Folding myself uncomfortably into a dining room chair with an old book, perched on top of the kitchen counter as I chatted animatedly to my long distance friend over the course of hour long phone calls, dancing around the kitchen as I ate raw cake batter. It didn’t matter what I was doing- he looked at me with the same intensity he had the night I fucked Evan for him to see. There was something about that I just couldn’t shake.

On Wednesday, I woke up earlier than I normally would have. A waterline break had canceled my shift at The Marina, an answered prayer delivered via text message sometime after I had gone to sleep the previous night. I rooted around the sheets for the better part of an hour before I decided I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. It was barely past six in the morning.

Thinking about him made me nervous. It’s normal, I told myself, it’s human to be curious. My silent commiserations had left me feeling dirty. My internal monologue seesawing between morality and depravity.

For the first time in a week, I dressed timidly in the darkness of my bathroom, away from any prying eyes. A sort of guilt had washed over me, the type you experience when barely any remorse is involved. Which made the guilt, or lack thereof, even more personal. I laced my tennis shoes in haste and nearly toppled down the staircase in an effort to put physical distance between him and I.

I ran briskly out the front door, my feet thudding against the cool pavement as I set my pace. I took the same course I had taken when I was a teenager. Right out of my driveway to the end of the residential area where the lopsided Welcome sign stood, around the traffic circle that connected Blair Street with Ocean Avenue, and back down Paxton Place. Rinse and repeat. Easy enough.

Running had always cleared my mind. I knew the science behind it. The rush of endorphins and such, but I also resonated with the idea of simply running away from my problems.

And then my problem caught up to me. I hadn’t noticed him at first, too lost in my own little world, before his stride caught up to mine. We stayed at the same pace for a short while, only when I had a burst of energy did I manage to outrun him, but it didn’t last long.

“So,” he blew out a gust of air and looked over at me, “Georgetown in the fall?”

“Can’t. Talk. And. Run.” I managed to get out. He laughed at me, running ahead.

Once we were home free and both of our respective houses were within eyesight, I came to a violent stop, bending at the waist as I braced my thighs in an effort to catch my breath.

“How’d you know about Georgetown?” I asked, dragging myself to the curb to sit down.

“Oh,” he sat beside me, “the McGovens told us all about the neighbors when we moved in.”

“Obviously you weren’t warned properly.”

He nodded along, seemingly agreeing to what exactly I was alluding to.

“There’s a lecture at Stony Brook today,” he stretched his legs out in front of him and looked back at me, “a congressman from Pennsylvania.”

“Yeah, Gil Eavis. I heard about that.”

He nodded. “I’m expected to be there to make sure my students show up and engage. You could join me,” He looked at me almost expectantly, “Only if you want.”

_________________________________________

To say I was nervous would have been the understatement of the century. I silently chastised myself for not having a more structured summer. To not be able to use work or school as an excuse as I had done so many times in the past when I wanted to get out of a social engagement.

“He’s full of shit,” Mencken whispered to me while looking straight ahead, “everything he says is bullshit.”

I pretended to be so deeply immersed in whatever Eavis was rattling on about that I only nodded in silence.

“Pandering to the fucking left,” Mencken scoffed, “this guy doesn’t know the difference between his asshole and a hole in the ground.”

Right. Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Mencken. The only thing I had been focused on was how far apart his legs were spread, his right knee touching my left knee, had me practically breaking apart at the seams. If driving to the university together had been foreplay, this was practically second base.

When I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Eavis took a few questions from the crowd as Mencken suggested we leave.

“I’ve heard enough,” he leaned down and told me as we made our way out of the lecture hall and towards the main entrance.

“You hungry, Olive?”

_________________________________________

We ended up at a little Italian restaurant about fifteen minutes outside of town.

“A hidden gem,” he told me as he drove and I gazed out the window at the dulcet tones the sunset put off.

When we got there, we were swiftly seated towards the back of the restaurant. I promptly ordered a glass of wine but he intervened, ordering an entire bottle.

“So,” he cleared his throat, “Georgetown. That’s heavy stuff.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess so.”

“You guess so?,” he laughed and cocked his head at me, “Georgetown is impressive. “

Once the wine was served and my pulse returned to its baseline, he pried more information out of me. We discussed how I’d double majored in Political Science and Communications, with him calling me an overachiever, and then ragging on me for going to NYU.

“Law schools don’t give a shit about a double major, Olive.” Or, “You should’ve gone to college further from home and seen the world a little bit, Olive.”

“What about you?” I asked him after my second glass of wine. “Who are you?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t go to Georgetown.” He spat back at me. That same sarcastic grin I’d come to loathe and love simultaneously mirroring my own.

“Hofstra University. Full scholarship,” he informed me as he downed his second glass of wine.

“Impressive.”

The conversation idled comfortably as we both ate.

It was never awkward or forced. Neither of us gave away any personal details other than colleges and majors. Nothing of which would be deemed too deep for the light evening we had shared thus far.

“I taught high school Civics and US government in Roslyn for ten years,” he filled our glasses with the last remaining bit of wine from the bottle before continuing, “and then I took the job at Stony back in January before we settled here.”

We.

I wanted to ask about his partner. Their presence being highlighted in the subtle glitter of his wedding band. I had noticed it the first night I met him, an observation I would have made on anyone else. It didn’t mean anything to me then and it shouldn’t have meant anything to me at dinner. But it did. It meant more to me in the back of that old school Italian restaurant than I cared to realize. I wasn’t sure if I was jealous or concerned. Frankly, I was curious.

“Where’s your wife?” I asked him out of nowhere.

I had caught him off guard, his eyes narrowing at me.

“Mission trip.” Was all he offered.

“Where’s your mother?” He asked, “I noticed you’ve been alone.”

Sinister, but not at all threatening. It’s hard to be a voyeur and not recognize these things.

“A medical conference in Florida. She leaves Miami on Thursday to go on a 14 day cruise.”

He hummed in response.

I wanted to call him a dog. But if he was a dog, well, I was one as well.

_________________________________________

It rained that night. It started lightly at first, mixing uncomfortably with the humidity outside, casting the windows in thick fog. He drove slower than he had before, cursing the defroster for not doing the one job it had been designed to do.

I was blissfully drunk and the world felt a little lighter than it had when my day started. I leaned back in my seat, my head lulling to the side as I watched him thrum the tips of his fingers on the dash while his palm gripped the wheel.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, eyes never leaving the road.

I sat up a little straighter. “Like what?”

I hadn’t even realized he had made it back to our houses until he put the car in park.

“Like that,” he said, finally turning his body to the side to look at me.

There were plenty of things I wanted to say:

“Don’t look in my windows anymore.”

“Don’t come into The Marina when I’m working.”

“Don’t ply me with wine at dinner.”

“Move back to Roslyn.”

But none of them would have conveyed what I was feeling more so than when I crawled over the center console and directly onto his lap, straddling him with ease.

His hands rested on the outside of my thighs and he looked up at me, so confident and cool, as I stared down at him.

When I leaned down to kiss him, he met me halfway. What started slowly and deeply, turned into a power struggle of sorts. My hands roamed across his neck, my thumbs meeting at the crest of his Adam’s apple, as our teeth clashed. His hands, his huge hands, explored my stomach, nearly covering the surface area with his palms alone. When his hands danced onto my lower back and dipped low into my jeans, I felt the cool metal of his wedding band as he gripped onto my bare ass, kneading and pulling the soft flesh, dragging me down onto him in a grinding motion.

There was a hesitancy in my kiss then. The guilt had begun to set in.

I pulled away from him.

“I can’t do this.”

I scurried back across the center console and nearly threw myself from the passenger’s side door. I didn’t turn around once I made it to my doorstep. Instead, I let myself inside, slammed the door, and tried to catch my breath.

I slept in my mother’s room that night. The only bedroom with curtains.

[aurorag98]

“I was Jeryd’s father’s second wife,” she told me, “They always get it right the second time around.”

aaaaaaah my god Olive, your mother in law is on your side, what's going on?

how not to get excited, how not to take it personally? how not to have that intensity 😭 this chapter shook all the ideas I had about this story, for me the fact that you say that Olive could be Mencken's second wife (aaaaah!) and that we know that his wife and him are not in the best moment of their marriage, changes everything, it gives hope to Olive (and to all of us 😭).

i want to believe, i really do, 😭 Olive will want to believe that too, she will want to hold on to that!

it was a wonderful chapter, the way you write, it's really so poetic, I love the references, the way Olive says that "the mistresses don't use the front door" 🥺

her trying to convince herself that this isn't personal.

Jeryd's mom is a great character, I loved her along with Jeryd's brother Jackson hahaha.

And Uncle Jeryd made an appearance hahaha, I love it when he gets jealous.

Thanks for tagging me, I'm really excited about this story!💜

The Girl Next Door part VI

Pairing: Jeryd Mencken x OFC

Warnings: sexual content, dubious content, age gap, alcohol consumption, mentions of drug use, affairs, my improper use of commas.

A/N: alright alright alright, we’re getting into the thick of things. Thanks to @vivalafae and @runningwiththefoxes for their spiritual guidance. Still shocked so many of y’all have stuck around this long! Love you allllll xo

WC: 2964

For the next two days, we kept our distance. I imagined I had frightened him off with my intensity. My propensity to feel things so deeply had spilled over from my brooding teenage years, maring my early twenties like ink bleeding from one page to the next.

“Have you always been so sullen?” He asked later on that second day when I stared at him blankly from my seat across from him at his dining room table.

A simple text from him had pulled me to my feet and towards his back door. Mistresses don’t use the front door, I told myself. Pavlov would’ve loved me. Freud would’ve had a field day with me.

“Have you ever had an affair before?”

He shook his head, laughing sarcastically as he ran his fingers through his hair.

“Curiosity killed the cat, Olive.”

“But satisfaction brought it back, Jeryd.”

“No,” he sighed, “you’re my first.”

“That doesn’t make you feel any better, though, does it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s hard to believe a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” I said, wondering where this place of courage and effortless fluency was coming from.

“Be that as it may, I have no reason to lie to you.” He offered, continuing on as he searched my face, “Do you want to be my wife, Olive? Is that what this is about?”

I shook my head at him. “You mistake my guilt and curiosity as flattery.”

“I could tell you everything about me and that still wouldn’t change the fact that I’m married, Olive.”

“I know.”

_________________________________________

“I can’t believe you’re trying to pull off this whole ‘I don’t care’ thing. You care. Big time.”

I stopped in my tracks, slamming the filing cabinet closed as I glowered at him.

I had been silent since seeing him again. Existing in the space of professionalism, treading lightly for fear my emotions might disrupt the status quo two days away had provided.

He smiled at me from his spot behind his desk.

“You’re right, maybe I do care,” I stepped closer to him as his eyes glimmered with the satisfaction of knowing what I was about to unleash on him.

“Maybe I’m curious and maybe I feel guilty. Maybe I am sullen. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that you long to elicit these types of reactions from me,” I stepped closer to his desk, feeling my breath hitch as he ran a lone finger across the hem of my skirt, “That this entire thing is just a game to you. One that I will eventually get tired of playing.”

I leaned down closer to him and looked directly into his eyes.

“I can leave, Jeryd. But you can’t. You’re stuck in a marriage and a mortgage,”

He stood up to his full height, smiling down at me devilishly as I willed myself to continue, “You’re stuck here in hell right along with me and if you want to continue to play this fucking game with me, this sick cat and mouse, emotional foreplay extravaganza we’re dancing through, then you need to recognize that everything is personal with you. That you’ve made it that way.”

“You don’t look at someone the way you look at me without it being personal.” My voice was small as I backed away from him, grabbing my bag and coffee cup off the windowsill before making my way to exit his classroom.

A few quick strides and he had me trapped between him and the classroom door. He remained silent, his eyes boring holes into mine as he grabbed my face roughly and kissed me.

Despite all my efforts to remain composed, I became pliant under his hands. That’s a theme with me, after all, one my therapist would gnash into years down the road.

The sound of my heels scuffing rhythmically against the gritty linoleum as he bent me over his desk was enough cause for him to hoist me up onto the desk, climb on top of me, and fuck me like he would never see me again.

His disregard for consequences, the pleasure he derived from my turmoil, and little regard for my idle threats made me cum harder than I ever had before.

_________________________________________

After his second class of the day, he found me sitting in the cafeteria, flanked by a group of students, all male, ranging from tall to short.

One in particular, a lean brunette on the shorter end of the spectrum with long brown hair, stared at me with such intensity that I had to hold back laughter each time he looked at me.

“I play guitar in a band,” he said as he sipped his Arizona tea, “You should come check us out one day.”

He crunched a chip and upped the ante.

“I can give you my number.”

I nodded along and smiled awkwardly, making eye contact with Jeryd as he sipped his coffee, one hand tucked in his pocket, relishing in my torment as I squirmed and looked for an out.

The rest of the group stared blankly at me and I wondered if I needed to get up and do some sort of trick with the expectant looks covering their faces.

I sighed in relief as I saw Jeryd making a beeline for the table.

“Hey everybody,” he clapped his hand on my shoulder and I turned around to look up at him, “Can I borrow Liv for a second?

“Of course,” the guitarist smiled up at us as I stood and collected my things, but being the pain in the ass he seemed to be, he had to ask questions.

“How do you guys know each other?”

“Us?” I glanced over at Jeryd, “Professor Mencken has been a friend of my family’s for years. Almost like an uncle to me. He agreed to let me come help out with things given my affinity for all things political.”

“Yep,” Jeryd stepped over to stand next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “She’s a good egg.”

He guided me through the labyrinth mazes of the cafeteria, out a side door, and into an outdoor corridor connecting the cafeteria with a breezy courtyard.

“‘A good egg’?” I scoffed up at him, walking quickly to keep up with his brisk pace.

“‘Almost like an uncle to me’?” He mimicked my disgust. “Now that was personal.”

_________________________________________

As if things weren’t already personal and confusing enough, I ran into him and his mother at the beach the next day.

It was low tide that day. Heather and I had made plans to scour the sand for sea glass and any sort of trinkets she could incorporate into the nautical theme at The Marina.

What I didn’t predict, however, was Heather blowing me off last minute, leaving me feeling somewhat desolate and unlikable, not taking into account how many times I’d blown her off over the course of a week so I could pine for my neighbor.

I dug my feet deeper into the sand, twiddling the strap of my bikini top between my forefinger and thumb as my other hand waded blindly across the sand. I laid there as the clouds unfurled themselves to me, their formations pillowy and soft, doing my best to decipher their shapes as they drifted by.

Suddenly, my vision was occluded by patchy shades of brown and black. I sat up quickly, coming face to face with the biggest fucking dog I had ever seen in my life. A Doberman, the size of a miniature pony, licked a clean stripe from my mouth to the bridge of my nose. It sat back on its heels and looked at me with the same confusion I was looking at it with.

“He doesn’t bite.” A familiar voice rang out behind me.

I reached my hand out cautiously and the dog, whose bone shaped tag read ‘Jackson’, licked the tips of my fingers curiously.

“My mom’s dog,” He told me, motioning back to where his mother struggled to walk in the sand due to the height of her wedged sandals.

“He doesn’t bite!” She called out to me.

“Yeah, she got the memo,” He looked down at me as if to say “shoot me, please,” and I smiled up at him.

I stood up, dusting the sand off of my shoulders and shorts as his mother finally came wobbling up to us.

She glanced up and down at my figure, seemingly appraising me, before she spoke, “Aren’t you a dish?”

“Thanks?” I laughed nervously. I could feel my cheeks turning red.

Once again, Jeryd’s eyes widened and he sighed heavily through flared nostrils.

“Jill Mencken,” she offered her hand as her caftan billowed in the breeze.

“Liv Luciano.” We shook hands. She seemed to be trying to figure me out.

“This is Jackson,” she reached down and cooed to the dog who ate it up, “Jeryd’s brother.”

Jeryd, again, looked as if he would rather be anywhere but there at that moment.

“I definitely see the resemblance.”

She swatted Jeryd’s shoulder. “And she’s funny!”

“Why don’t you walk with us?” She offered and my brain went on the defensive, listing every reason why that shouldn’t occur.

“Oh, I couldn’t intrude,” I offered, my attention falling to Jackson to be my buffer at that moment. I scratched behind his ears and he rolled into the sand, rutting back and forth, happily making a mess of his surroundings and perfectly manicured coat.

“If I had done that as a child, she would’ve given me away.” Jeryd looked over at me, giving me a knowing look, easing me out of my mind for a moment.

“I insist,” Jill grabbed my hand, using me as support as her chunky heels disappeared into the sand with each uneven step. I turned around to look at Jeryd as he waited for Jackson to comply and walk along with us.

Eventually, at Jeryd’s insistence, his mother abandoned her shoes, leaving me to walk along the shore at my own pace without her balancing act quite literally dragging me down. She trudged behind, stopping altogether to scoop up a few shells as Jeryd and I continued to walk slowly, side by side.

“She’s fun,” I looked over at him as he nodded.

“She’s, uh, something.” We both turned back to watch as she yelled something about a particular shell she had found.

“Can you swing a few days out of town this weekend?”

We began to walk forward, inching our way back towards the parking lot and adjoining playground.

He leaned forward abruptly, swiping his hand across the exposed part of my stomach, catching me off guard.

“Well, I was going to go with Heather to an art exhibit in the city.”

“Tell her you’ll be busy until Monday.”

“Sounds like a pretty personal thing for you to ask me to do, Jeryd.” I commented, watching as his signature smirk pulled at his lips.

_________________________________________

Jill insisted that I go to lunch with them and that I chose the restaurant. She also insisted that I sit up front with Jeryd, opting to occupy the backseat, holding onto Jackson lovingly as he stuck his head out the window.

“She loves the dog more than me,” He murmured, looking over at me briefly before turning back to the road.

“I do not,” she interjected, playfully smacking at Jeryd’s shoulder, “Don’t listen to him, Liv.”

Seeing him like this, in a dynamic with his mother that was familiar to me, made me feel like I knew him a little better. A glimpse into his life, the one that existed outside of the bounds of our entanglement, provided me with a sliver of hope. Hope for what, I didn’t know, but I felt hopeful nonetheless.

I chose Mirabelle’s, a restaurant adjoined to one of the original inns Stony Brook boasted, mainly so Jackson could join us on the outdoor patio.

I was never a big dog person, but watching Jeryd being walked by a literal miniature horse through the old historic district made me think I could be a dog person. Every few steps, Jackson would jerk him forward and he would scoff in the middle of whatever he was talking about, causing me to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from laughing at how worked up he was over something so small.

“Your dog is an asshole,” He turned around and glared at his mother, causing her to pat his shoulder affectionately.

“Takes one to know one, honey.” She quipped.

Lunch with the two of them was easier than I expected. At first, at least. The conversation took on different topics such as the weather, Jackson’s obedience school progress, Jeryd’s students, and his brother’s upcoming wedding. I happily took the seat of the neutral observer as the two of them chatted idly, occasionally breaking off a piece of rye bread to share with Jackson, who rested between mine and Jeryd’s feet.

It was easy to see the resemblance between mother and son once they were so close to one another. Their flamboyant hand gestures when speaking, the shape of their eyes, the same pale blue irises. They spoke the same way, with that witty, sharp banter.

She turned the conversation to me once she was done catching up with Jeryd, inquiring about what I did for a living, where I had grown up, and what I planned to do after law school. All the while throwing in a casual, “you’re so young and full of life. I was the same way when I was your age,” or “my god, I’d kill to have your skin. I quite literally mean I would kill for that elasticity.”

Between the compliments and inquiries, I would catch her staring at me from the corner of my eye. There was no contempt or malice behind her eyes, more so a curiosity of sorts evident in the way her eyes would bounce from my face to Jeryd’s as he and I spoke casually to one another about a new book I had started reading.

“Do you drink?” Jill asked as she perused the alcoholic beverage menu.

“Usually not before seven PM,” I smiled at her, “but they do have fantastic mimosas here.”

“Mimosas, ah,” she fawned, “A girl after my own heart!”

Jeryd pinched the bridge of his nose and audibly made a noise of discontent.

“I’m not driving Miss Daisy all day for you two sots.”

“Oh, please,” she waved her hand in the air while her other hand dug deep down into the confines of her Birkin bag, “it’s going to take more than a few mimosas to keep me down.”

“Said every alcoholic ever,” He mused with an eye roll.

I watched as she pulled a silver cigarette case from her bag. Her initials emblazoned across the side in deep crimson jewels.

“You smoke?” She asked as she slid a cigarette from the case, struck a match, and lit it, dousing the remaining flame in the remnants of her drink.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you’ll start if you keep hanging out with this one.” She motioned over to Jeryd.

“She’s on a roll today,” he grabbed his drink, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. “Smoking and drinking at lunch. Maybe she will smoke some opium at dinner.”

“Always with the dramatics,” she rolled her eyes at him, “Don’t take it so personally that I want to live the remainder of my life happily.”

“Yeah, Jeryd,” I leaned back in my seat and eyed him cooly, “don’t take it so personally.”

She smiled at me, tilting her head as she followed my eyeline across the table to Jeryd’s, obviously very happy to have someone on her side.

Once the second round of drinks were served and I sipped contentedly on my mimosa, Jeryd excused himself, disappearing into The Inn’s indoor dining room.

Jill turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and asked, “How long have you two been fucking?”

I nearly choked on my mimosa. I sputtered and felt my face flush hot, covering my mouth with the cloth napkin I had placed over my lap

“I’m sorry,” I shook my head, “What?”

“I’m certainly not blind.” Her face remained blank of any emotion.

“Um, it’s not like that at all,” I wasn’t convincing her. Convincing a grand jury would have been a smaller feat.

“Have things been peaceful next door since she’s been gone?” She asked with careful disdain laced in her cadence. I was taken aback, quite literally clueless as to what she was asking, or rather, what she was implying.

“His wife,” she offered and I shook my head.

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been home since I’ve been back.”

“She runs away when they fight.” She shook her head and drained her glass in one go. “Right back to mommy and daddy when she doesn’t get her way.”

“It’s okay,” she reassured me, “Your secret is safe with me.”

“I don’t have a secret.”

“We all have a secret.” She gave me a knowing look.

I glanced longingly at the door Jeryd had walked through, silently willing him to come back to the table.

“I was Jeryd’s father’s second wife,” she told me, “They always get it right the second time around.”

She didn’t have time to expand on that before Jeryd reappeared, reclaiming his seat next to me. I ate in silence once the food was served, Jill’s words bouncing around my brain like a warped soundtrack. Whatever they spoke about after that was hazy and untuned to me as I focused on what possibilities might come my way given the newfound circumstances that had been brought to light.

Tag list: @aurorag98