#like it feels overly defensive and thin skinned like you just cant handle people not liking your creation.

[marklikely]

the framing of the critic character in the menu really pissed me off bc no offense but if i was paying 12k for a meal and you served me a broken emulsification id comment on it too

[septiembrre]

22 👀

Prompt: kissing someone’s cuts/bruises/scratches

Oh my god, Alex! I had so much fun writing this! It was a wild 5k ride these past 24 hours but here it is. I had never written hurt!comfort before, so this is my take on the classic Rio comes to Beth’s room late at night, bruised and bloody. 

I’m posting it here but it’s mad long. Feel free to check it out instead on AO3. 

I’ll Treat You Better (Than I Did Before)

It’s pitch dark in her bedroom and it takes Beth a minute to realize she’s awake. There’s a foggy, semi-intelligible lecture to Kenny swirling stubbornly in her thoughts. Was it even Kenny? Or maybe it was a pre-teen Annie of years ago...  It clings, insisting she pick up and finish the end of her rant if only to give her enough peace of mind to go back to sleep.

Earlier that day -- or Beth supposes it must be after midnight by now and the overly-rambunctious evening had all officially transpired in the past of the day before -- Kenny had come leaping down off a tree branch in the backyard. It was his latest attempt to “scare the bejeezus” out of his little sisters. He must have been up there for quite some time lying in wait for them to play below him. He had rappelled down like some sort of nightmarish, gangly monkey. Emma’s shriek had carried across the backyard to Beth as she sorted laundry in the mudroom, alerting her that there was mischief afoot. She could picture it in her mind’s eye, Emma levitating a foot off the ground. 

Meanwhile, her youngest, Jane, had sprung forward in instinctive defense of her more mild-mannered older sister, and tackled her pest of an older brother. Janey must have put all of her weight into it, too (and God, she would be great at football, if only there was a team that would take her) because she launched Kenny backward through the air to plop straight into a row of her beautiful, thorn-filled bushes.  

Beth had found herself sprinting barefoot across the yard, helicoptering in to extricate her thirteen-year-old son from his painful perch. After some careful maneuvering, her attempts had ended in a sniffling Kenny with blood dripping down his right arm from dozens of long, thin scratches. Luckily for Kenny (and Beth’s sanity), his mother kept her Neosporin stocked up in spades. Beth ended up sitting with him for the better part of the evening patching him up. 

At the cusp of his teenage years, Kenny is the spitting image of Dean, but damn, if he didn’t remind her of Annie at that age. Ballsy, sharp, plotting, and with little regard for self-preservation, teenage Kenny has really started to push her buttons. The same arguments come bubbling up from the years of yore, the same old patterns. Too quickly, she felt tears bead hotly at the corner of her eyes as she scolded Kenny to be sensical, to watch out for his siblings, to be safe. 

Then, when she was done, she had rounded on Jane. 

Beth’s thoughts continue mulling the evening over as she shifts under her covers. She comes further into consciousness, summoned by the underlying anxiety about the family history she worries could repeat, is repeating, in her children's lives. Beth considers the sheltered home-life she had carefully manufactured for her kids and wonders where she went wrong. Was this uptick in reckless behavior a product of the divorce?

She considers a quick Internet search — just to peek, get some reassurance. But, it’s just as likely she’ll come across something that will stress her out. Then she’ll really wake up and what she should do is go back to sleep, and leave the family pathologizing for the morning. 

Distantly, wrapped in the dark cocoon of her bed, Beth registers a robust rumble and the sound of rain— thunder? How long has it been raining? 

A bright flash of light peels through the curtains of the French doors and the windows of her bedroom, illuminating the ceiling above her. The answering thunder cracks loudly a few seconds later, and Beth, a grown adult, startles in her bed. 

Kenny and Jane certainly had too much of their aunt’s recklessness in them, but perhaps Beth and Emma (and sometimes Danny) were also too similar -- another thing to worry about. She wonders if her eldest daughter, her mini-me, is fated to a lifetime of boredom and self-effacement for the comfort of other people? Could this be the legacy Beth is passing on to her daughter? Oh my god. 

Beth squeezes her eyes shut, trying to shut out this unhelpful, midnight whorl of thoughts, and rolls over to check her phone. Three.

It’s too late, early, obscene for this particular spiral. But these are the kind of thoughts that take root in her mind, and come out in the middle of the night to make her second guess if she’s doing anything right in her life.

Beth takes a deep breath. She lets it out. Then, she burrows deeper in the covers, tries to settle back in her skin, and listens to the rain. 

It might have worked, too, except suddenly the French doors are jostled insistently from the outside. The handles smack sharply as they snap back into place, and Beth all but jumps a foot into the air. 

She’s suddenly awake, too awake, and pissed off. 

Beth has exactly one guess of who is out there. Who else could it be? 

Adrenaline pulses through her veins, as Beth leaps up to stalk to the double doors. She pulls back the gauze curtain and glowers at the shadowy figure outside. 

Lightning flashes again illuminating Rio’s glare that meets hers from the other side. He cants his jaw, raising a hand to rap impertinently at the glass. There’s blood on his face and his knuckles leave a red smear where he knocked on the window. 

Immediately, Beth unlocks the doors and steps back to let him in. The smell of wet earth floods her room, and abruptly, she and Rio are two shadowy figures in the darkness of her room. 

“You change the locks on me, ma?” Rio asks, playing wounded -- emotionally, that is. 

What a fucking night. 

“Yes.” Beth snips. She strides ahead of him to the ensuite and flicks on the lights to the bathroom. Her eyes squint as she adjusts to the brightness. “I didn’t want any more surprises.” Beth spins to face him. 

Rio has paused behind her, leaning against the frame of the bathroom. He brings up a palm to clutch the area of his chest over his heart. His knuckles are caked in blood, some of them still actively bleeding. Beth scans his face and registers the purple bruise blooming along one of his too-sharp, too-handsome cheekbones and there’s a dab of blood at his temple. His hoodie and pants are soaked from the rain and are dripping a puddle onto the bathroom tile floor. Her eyes drop down the length of him, and she notes that it’s the first time she’s seen his sneakers muddy. He must have tracked dirt all through her carpet. 

Worry coils knots between her shoulder blades. 

He looks like shit. 

But, still -- he finds the gall to drag his eyes suggestively down her body and she wonders what on earth he’s looking at. It’s the middle of the night, she’s not wearing any makeup, and her hair probably lies straight and limp from her pillow. Quickly her eyes flick sideways to the mirror to check that she doesn’t have drool flaking on her cheek. She doesn’t, but then her eyes catch on her frayed pajamas that in sleep have been pulled in an unflattering stretch across her body. She wonders if she could tug the fabric back into place without being too obvious, and her gaze rises to look at Rio surreptitiously in the mirror. In the seconds she’s looked away, his eyes have zeroed in on her chest and Beth is suddenly very aware that she is not wearing a bra. 

Quickly, the self-righteousness flares again. Once upon a time, she had thought it sexy-- okay, maybe a kernel of hers still thinks it’s a little sexy. But, now, after what happened between them, she never wants him to shed a drop of blood again. Beth wants to smack him, shake him… and draw him in, and warm him up, and kiss at the blood on his knuckles. The impulse beats warm, warm, warm in her chest. A clap of thunder sounds again, and like a flash she pictures his fingers illuminated in the dark of her bedroom, bloody and vibrant against the paleness of her skin. 

Somewhere low, her body throbs. 

Rio licks his lips. 

Beth swears at herself and tries to shake it off. “Get in here.” 

Blessedly, Rio doesn’t make any moves to touch her. Instead, they do a graceful pivot around each other, as he moves into her bathroom. She swears the air quivers with some spell of gravity or attraction manifesting itself between their bodies. Why-- Why is it like this? 

Beth bites her lower lip, exhausted, worried, and a little nervy. Rio tracks the movement of her teeth at her lip. 

Then, he shivers. 

It nudges her back to her senses. 

Beth lofts her nose in the air, prim. “Luckily for you, the Neosporin is already out.” She sighs, rolling her shoulders back. “It’s been a day.”

Rio nods along with her, his lips pressing together with the effort of suppressing a wry grin. “You’re tellin’ me.” 

She nods back at him. “I’m going to go get it.” 

“‘Kay.” 

Rio shivers again, and he looks disdainfully down at his wet clothes. 

“Don’t move.” Beth insists, exasperation and worry setting more firmly in. She wonders if she will find more blood under his clothes, knows she’ll see his scars again tonight, and prays he hasn’t added anything more to the collection. Beth tries to mask her concern. “I don’t want blood in my bedroom.” 

She starts to turn away, when Rio intones sardonic and somehow still with a thread of sincerity, “Thank you, darlin’.”

Beth throws him a quick glare and then tip-toes out of her bedroom to the kitchen. She takes the opportunity to adjust the set of her pajamas and combs her fingers through her hair. Then, mindful of not making more noise that would wake the kids, she quietly gathers the first aid supplies she had used earlier to tend to Kenny. There’s a quick moment of consideration, then she shoves the handle of bourbon under her arm. She makes her way back through the semi-darkness of the house, periodic flashes from the storm outside illuminating her way. 

Beth returns to her bedroom, the light from the ensuite beckoning her forward. Inside, Rio has settled on the edge of the tub. He’s pulled the hoodie off and it lies discarded in a sodden pile behind him in the tub. He’s left wearing a damp black t-shirt and soaked black denim. 

Beth sets the supplies on the vanity and then snaps her fingers, gesturing at him insistently. “Take it all off.”

“‘Scuse me?” Rio’s eyebrows raise in disbelief and amusement.

“Take off your clothes.”

Rio’s hands go to grasp the edge of his t-shirt.  “So it’s that kind of healin’, huh?”

Beth makes a dismissive sound and gestures impatiently at him to take off his shirt. Rio peels it off and drops it with the hoodie. 

His tattoos and the scars dance before her in the bright bathroom light like a mirage. Then, Rio drops his big, bloody hands to unbutton his fly. His thumb pauses, fondling the button as his grin spreads Cheshire-like across his face. Quickly, Beth grabs her towel off the rack and pushes it at his chest. Then she turns around and stares through the doorway into the darkness of her bedroom, to give him privacy. 

The night thunderstorm continues on, noisy and beautiful when she really comes to focus on it. Beth wonders if her children might have woken up with the thunder, but she hasn’t heard their footsteps. They could never successfully sneak around Beth, her ears tuned to their movements. Her eyes drift to the doorway of her bedroom and she sends a brief plea that they sleep through the storm. She doesn’t want Janey or Emma coming down to creep into her bed, while her crime boss is bleeding in her bathroom.

There’s a loud thud of soppy denim landing in the tub, and it brings her back to exactly what Rio is doing behind her.

She can hear the smirk in his voice when he calls, “You gonna kiss it and make it better now, Elizabeth?”

Beth shuts her eyes in a surge of pique. Why does she like him again?

But, hadn’t those same thoughts already flashed through her head? Of kissing his pain away?

She tries to get herself under control. “Are you decent?”

“Mmhm.”

Beth turns and finds Rio with her towel slung low around his hips, seated again on the edge of the tub. He’s dry now -- or drier. There are little beads of water that he missed lined under an ear, along a bicep. His blood stands out dabbed across his hands and at his brow. It doesn’t look like there’s any other damage to him. 

The tattoos look stark against his skin in the light, the scars starker but her eyes still have to skip past those. She wants to lick at the wings of his neck, to pin him underneath her, and suck at them in her bed. And god, he doesn’t look his best tonight. He’s not the sure-fire and graceful version of him prowling from his stupid, luxury car, or sitting incorrectly in whatever chair is around, or taunting her with his one-upmanship and wide smiles. But, want blooms wild at the sight of so much of him at once and she has a brief thought that the thunderstorm could work to their advantage. 

Rio shifts and stretches his legs out long in front of him. Then he slants his jaw at her in a manner that can only be described as cocky, daring her to ignore him, and her towel, and his probable nakedness. His eyes dance with mirth.

Quickly, regroups by Beth clamping her eyes shut again to dispel the image, the reality in front of her.

Does she still have any of Dean’s clothes? Damn, she knows she meticulously packed them all away for him to head off any possible excuse--  A loose shirt maybe? Or perhaps a spare bedsheet they could drape around him? No. That’s dangerous territory—

What was he going to wear out of here?

Well… she could always go grab more towels from the linen closet in a bit. Throw his clothes in the dryer. That was a start. 

Beth opens her eyes, and extends him her hand, “Let me see.”

“I can handle it, ma,” Rio says affectionately, seemingly sparing her in a rare show of grace. “It’s my mess.”

Ah, yes. His creed. 

“Why are you here then?” 

“‘Cause it’s pouring out and I was nearby.” 

She stares at him, trying to connect the dots. 

“...And you thought you could show up like this and I would— what? Be your hot pack?”

Rio scoffs a short laugh. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“You knocked on my bedroom door at three in the morning,” she hisses. 

Rio shrugs, not giving a quarter. 

“Is this supposed to be a—” Beth lowers her voice to an affronted whisper. “—booty call?”

He stares at her, his mouth falling open. Then he shakes his head in what Beth thinks is disbelief. “Pass me the kit.” 

Beth doesn’t move. Instead, she crosses her arms and stares down at him seated below her. “What happened?” 

Rio grits his jaw.

Their scowls meet in a stalemate. 

Thunder crashes again outside, loud as ever. Beth jumps at the sound, it loosens her stance as Rio gives another shiver from the residual chill on his skin. His gaze softens on her, and she relents -- for now.  

Beth grabs the kit, flips down the lid of the toilet and perches on the commode next to him. She holds out her palms again. “Let me see.” 

This time, Rio extends his hands. 

Beth can’t help a small grin at the victory. She cranes over his fingers, turning them around in her palms. Despite getting caught in the downpour, his hands are warm, strong as always and eclipsing hers. For the most part, the bleeding at his knuckles has stopped, and she feels her worry unknot itself. In reward for his rare compliance, she passes him the bottle of bourbon.

He wrinkles an eyebrow in surprise. “You okay with me taking a swig from the bottle?”

Beth considers it for a beat. Then she leans over and plucks the old sippy cup she keeps in the bathroom for brushing her teeth and offers it to him. He chuckles and opens the handle. He fills the sippy cup half way with bourbon and now it’s Beth’s turn to give Rio a look of surprise. He takes a drink. 

“For sharing.”  He grins at her over the rim of the cup, too charming for the middle of the night. 

Remotely, Beth can feel the tiredness pulling at her bones from the eventful evening caring to three of her four children and the subsequent interrupted sleep. But more pressingly -- the heat throbs low in her core again. 

She pulls the cup out Rio’s grasp, and takes a sip. The smell of the bourbon is sharp in her nose as it goes down her throat, settling warm in her belly. She hands back the cup and returns to her self-appointed task. 

She absolutely doesn’t think of the finally-healed bullet scars in her face. Or the expanse of brown skin exposed in front of her. Or his eyes resting warm on her face, occasionally drifting to follow the careful movement of her hands. 

Beth focuses on the cuts. 

First, she grabs the peroxide. For an eternity, or what really is just a few minutes, the only sound is the rain falling steadily outside and their soft breathing. The smell of the peroxide makes Beth's nose wrinkle and Rio gives a quiet laugh. His fingers twitch as she irrigates the wounds but otherwise he takes it well. 

For the millionth time, she wonders if Rio boxes. He must, right?

After she’s done with the hydrogen peroxide, they both take another swig of bourbon, polishing off the sippy cup. Then, Beth moves on to dabbing Rio’s knuckles with alcohol. 

Halfway through the first hand, there’s another loud clap of thunder. Beth’s hands tense and she presses too firmly into one of the cuts. Rio flinches and looks at her with a question on his face.

“You scared of thunder?”

“No.” 

He smiles at her, not seeming to believe her words. 

“I’m just tired.” --and overstimulated, and are you even wearing boxers underneath that towel?

Beth pivots. “So what happened?”

Rio’s smile wanes and he looks at her with that old guarded look-- that I’m a tough crime boss and I don’t talk easy look. She rolls her eyes and continues cleaning his knuckles. 

“I was out on business--” 

She looks up from his knuckles to search his face. 

“Not our business.” Rio clarifies, but Beth only has more questions as he continues, “And I got into a fight with some dumb motherfucker who didn’t do as he was told.”

“What was the problem?” Her mind spirals. She’s responsible for a sizable part of his wealth now but so much of his business is still elusive. But, the question comes out inelegant, too direct. 

Rio looks at her with reproach, pursing his lips. 

“Didn’t respect the pecking order.” 

Honestly, she doesn’t have enough context to be sure she knows what that means. But, she’s certainly had enough of those kinds of disputes with Rio herself. She knows it’s serious -- hence the blood -- and she decides not to press. It’s three, now three-thirty, in the morning and Beth doesn’t have the energy to work on their communication at this hour. 

She returns her focus to his hands, but the rest of him, the exposed length of him catches her eye from the periphery of her vision.

She recognizes that particular musky smell of him, of his skin, as their bodies lean close together.

She tries her previous question again. “And how did you end up here?”

Her gaze darts up to look at him through her lashes. She finds him staring solemnly back at her. 

Then, he shrugs.

“You were closer”

Beth bites her lip.

It was just two months ago that they had slept with each other at Paper Porcupine. It had been the first time since before and it just happened, late one night at a private drop between them. It had been electric, furious, and everything she had fantasized about alone in her bed. They had gone a few rounds despite the lack of comfortable surfaces. 

She tries never to think about it. But, it ends up filling all of her day-dreams. 

He had gotten on the table next to the printing press, and he had dropped to his knees and eaten her out. The look in his eyes while he had-- Afterwards, he pulled out a stack from the drop money and seemed to pretend-swat her ass with it. They had ended up spilling the bag out and they fucked on fresh stacks of cash. 

Then there was kissing, a literal bathroom break. Then, Rio, bossy, ridiculous, had led her over to a work table. He had pulled up her blouse, pulled down her bra, and bent her over the edge. His hand firm at her back, he had pushed her chest into a tin of setting pulp. God.  She had moaned around the thick fingers that he had curled into her mouth, impossibly turned on and feeling the… sluttiest she had ever felt. Rio had murmured dirty encouragement in her ear, egging her over to the edge again and again.

Not one to let him get the last word, Beth had insistently pushed off the table just before he came and pulled him out. Rio had watched in a fevered daze, groaning as she had sunk to her knees, sucking him off, tasting herself with a triumphant glint in her eye. Beth had let his come spill, joining the mess smeared across her throat and breasts.

Afterward, they laid together, sticky, sprawled out on the floor, and came back to earth. Eventually, she had tugged open the buttons of his shirt. He had let her. And Beth had cried — quietly, restrained — as she kissed the scars she had given him. Rio had eyed her steadily, carefully as Beth’s world tilted completely off its axis. 

They fucked again a week later at the hot tub store, in the water with strategic use of one of the jets. And a few days after that in his car, and then in the back of hers. Then, Paper Porcupine again and that was the last time. Beth had just managed to get him dressed and out the front door as Annie and Ruby had come through the back rallying for printing night. Beth had feigned ignorance as they had asked increasingly pointed questions about the eye-sore of a Mercedes that had just been parked outside of the store and reality came crashing down.

After that, Beth had kept her distance. And Rio… was never one to meet her more than halfway.

But, he continued to drop in on her -- more than ever. She is clearly on his schedule, penciled into the spare hours of the day. 

And still, she continues to resist it — the pull. 

She could admit they had their fun. Is that what people call the best sex they’ve ever had in their life?

But, she doesn’t know if she’s ready for something so unsteady, something that makes her feel so messy -- too alive. If she ever will be ready. But, she thinks of Rio bleeding somewhere out there and other nights where he won’t come to her, thinks of the night where she left him bleeding out, and her mouth twists in a grimace. 

Rio brings the hand she isn’t working on to squeeze reassuringly at her thigh. 

It feels really nice. 

Beth has to clear her throat and blink away a few tears. 

After she’s done with the alcohol swabs, she motions for Rio to follow her to the sink.  

As they both crowd around her vanity, Beth realizes she didn’t quite need to follow him as he rinses his knuckles out with water. But, she reminds herself, it’s the middle of the night and she’s tired. The cuts and scrapes haven’t been serious — but there’s been too much blood in the past few hours. 

She uncaps the Neosporin. It’s something for her to do with her empty, searching hands.

“Nah.” Rio shakes his head and turns off the water. “I don’t need that.”

Beth levels him with the look she gave Kenny earlier, brokering no arguments. 

“You want me to get it all over your bed?”

“Excuse me?” 

He blinks back at her. Then in affected shock, he continues, “You take my clothes, you ply me with booze and now you want me to drive across Detroit while it’s still pourin’ rain?” He tsks. “Damn, mama. That’s cold.”

Beth rolls her eyes — and she’s tired, and if he keeps his hands to himself and she keeps her hands to herself… what’s a couple of hours of shut-eye next to the lean, naked length of him? He would have to be naked. She wasn’t going to let him get into her sheets with wet boxers, even if he surprised her and they were somehow on underneath that towel.

Well, she’ll tackle it when they get there. For now, she abandons the Neosporin on the counter, passes over the bandaids and bandages she knows he won’t take, and grabs the hand towel to raise to his temple. He dodges away, playful but somewhat serious.

“I’m good. I promise.”

That’s not enough to stop Beth from zeroing in on the bruise at his cheek. She brings her fingertips up to prod at it gingerly. It’s swollen and hot. Rio winces beneath her touch, bringing his hands up to snatch hers. He lowers her hands to his lips instead, and he presses his mouth to her fingertips. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs hotly against her hand, effectively distracting her from doing anything else.

Beth gulps, as a spark kindles. Her skin burns where Rio’s mouth presses warm on her skin and shoots down her core. It coils in her belly and has her shifting in her stance. She’s still aware of where he touched her thigh just now and she craves more of his touch, the pleasure of his undivided attention.

Beth is flooded by thoughts of him, back in her bed. She thinks of him wrapped up in her sheets. She thinks of it now in the safety of darkness, with the rain still pattering down on the house. And she yearns.

She’s never felt like this before — not even when she was a teenager, young and hormonal. She had been too laden with responsibilities and a fumbling boyfriend who would become a boorish husband. Before crime, she had always accepted what had been handed to her without a complaint. But now... 

When she’s with Rio, Beth feels fire in her and it’s impossible to back away, to back down. 

She wants to chase him, be desired by him, bring him to her bed and into her life and never let him go. 

She blinks up from his mouth to look him in the eye. That look suspends between them heady, rife— 

It’s three-thirty in the morning and so what?

She licks her lips and lets herself loose. 

Beth pulls her hands away from his mouth and wraps them around his palms pulling them to her body instead. Goosebumps rise up along Rio’s arms.

She thinks, What’s one more time?

She thinks, I want to be the one who warms him up. 

She thinks, I want this. 

Beth brings his knuckles to her mouth, Rio’s hands weighty in hers. The musk of him fills her nose and it makes her light-headed, wet. She kisses them tenderly, her lips dragging against where his skin is unbroken. Her attention is trained on his hands, but she registers the wings fluttering again at his throat, as he swallows hard.

When Beth is done kissing each cut, she brings one hand to rest on her hip and the other’s fingertips to her mouth instead. She takes the tip of an index finger in her mouth and she bites firm at the pad.

When he groans, she feels deep in her cunt. 

She’s achingly empty, burning and she wants him. She can’t think of anything else.

But, Rio hovers a breath away. He’s never needed much convincing before.

And she thinks, Right. We’re here again.

Her bed.

So, she rises up onto her toes, her lips landing softly on his bruised cheek. As she lingers in what increasingly feels like their natural orbit — kissing distance — she brings Rio's hand under her shirt to squeeze at the warm, rounded weight of her breast. It’s her turn to moan as he cups her, his hand reaching up to roll her nipple between his fingers.

Rio presses his forehead to hers, panting open-mouthed against her lips. The tips of their noses brush. She feels his cock hard against her stomach, through the stupid towel.

She wants to devour him.

Beth pulls at the drawstring of her pants and pushes them down. She brings Rio’s hand that has moved to clutch her ass, to perch between her legs instead so he can feel how wet she is.

Rio groans and murmurs, “This for me, Elizabeth?”

His fingers give a perfect, exploratory swirl around her clit. Beth rocks back, scooting her butt to rest on the vanity. She spreads her legs so Rio can dip his fingertips to tease her cunt with a hint of what it’ll be like to be full.

“Always for you.”

It’s unclear who initiates the kiss. It doesn’t matter. It all devolves quickly after that.