#like what are you doing to set the mood. apparently me being nude is enough for him but like that also bothers me?

[sarcasticorgasms]

.

[yoramkelmer]

Hogwarts Overexposed Chapter 13: Day of Reckoning

Hello everybody, it´s been a little while since the last sporking, but here we are. And I hope to get through this chapter in one setting.

As a preparation, since the last chapters sporking, I read ahead the chapters after chapter 12, and believe, reading these unsporked was really a test of patience.

I might as well add that there will be large sections of this chapter I will leave unsporked, as it really is so stupid one has to read it to believe.

"Harry, I feel as if we've failed the girls," Hermione said, her melancholy mood apparent in her voice.

"I know, but we've done everything within our power," he said, caressing her absentmindedly.

"But it wasn't enough. The girls still have to spend the next eight months parading about appearing to be dressed in those appalling costumes. How could Severus agree to Hogwarts participating in this debacle? What was he thinking?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be too hard on Severus," Harry replied. "His intentions were honorable. All the reports he received concerning previous games were positive. When Minister Wrong approached him last year concerning Hogwarts competing against the Americans, he only visualized positive results from the meeting. Like us, he was not aware that greed had tarnished the games and turned them into an adolescent peek show."

And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the last ever time Emma Wrong is mentioned, and it is mentioned in a way that is so nonchalant and without any mentions of her running an empire of terror attacks, abductions and nipple eating.

"When did we catch up with and pass the Muggles?" Hermione asked. "I always thought the magical world was rather prudish and behind the times and now this happens. Even in the most liberal of Muggle schools, students would never be allowed to parade around in such outfits, let alone be forced to do so."

Hermione, you´re in Hogwarts Exposed.

"It isn't our world or the schools that are to blame, it is government corruption and the greed of individuals like Simone," Harry insisted. "I'm not at all happy with the situation, but for now I'm afraid the best we can do is prevent it from escalating. The concealment charm is going to frustrate Rishard to no end. He's looking forward to the girls, especially Jamie, putting on a revealingly good show."

The social commentary is truly subtle.

And the way Harry talks of Jamie giving a "revealingly good show" is rather creepy as well.

Hermione nodded her head in agreement to Harry's comments, but they had done little to abate her frustration. "Even without any accidents, I feel like he's still winning. The vision of the girls in those costumes alone is enough to cause most men to puff up; their various parts popping out was just an added bonus."

"At least the girls should be able to cope with the situation," said Harry, sighing deeply. "They might not be happy with the sexually explicit nature of the costumes, but being nudists, they aren't ashamed for their various body parts to be seen. I can't imagine how Nora and the boys will react. Nora, especially; she is so shy and modest."

Don´t worry, Harry, Nora is gonna be brainwashed into accepting the dogma of naturism soon enough.

"I suggested to Jamie that she should try to convince the others to also use the charm, but I doubt that she'll have much success. The boys will likely be thrilled about the girls being nude, but I doubt they'll be willing to follow suit. Then, like you said, there is poor Nora. I doubt she'll have the courage to even leave her dormitory tomorrow."

"Hermione, what would you do?" Harry asked. "I mean under the same circumstances, would you wear the costume or go naked with only the charm?"

Hermione thought for a while. "That depends on what period in my life we're talking about. Now, I wouldn't hesitate in the slightest to use the charm; I'd have absolutely no problem with my teammates seeing me nude. However, back when I was a young girl in school, it would be a completely different question because I was an entirely different person. As a first and second year, I would definitely have opted for the costume. I can't picture me letting anyone see me nude, even though there wasn't anything much really to see. Even as a third, fourth and fifth year my body still wasn't exactly bursting forth. I would have probably still taken my chances with the costume rather than have anyone see me totally naked."

Does this sound like something the actual canon Hermione would ever say?

Hermione blushed. "In my sixth and seventh year, my breasts would have never been content to stay confined in that costume. I would have had to use the charm out of necessity although I would have died of embarrassment being naked unless you and Ron were my teammates. We were such good friends that I don't think I would have been nearly as embarrassed to be seen by either of you."

Such natural sounding dialogue. I´m so stunned.

Hermione laughed. "Maybe I should have let you guys see me naked in second or third year," she said. "Then at least it would have been evident to you that your one mate was a girl."

"That was Ron," Harry said defensively. "I always knew you were a girl. I just never realized that you were the girl I was destined to love. Speaking of which. You're upset tonight. Would you rather we forgo our normal pleasure?"

B O N K

"Harry, I don't think I could sleep a wink if we didn't make love. Being joined with you, as one, completes my day." Hermione paused. "There is something else we must discuss first, however. What are we going to do about Emily?"

"I don't feel anything needs to be done," Harry said, acting in Emily's defense. "Sure, she's more irrational than the other girls, but her heart is in the right place. Emily's a good girl."

Show, don´t tell.

Emily is by far the worst behaving of all the Sues, and yet Neil wants us to believe that she´s a good girl.

I hate her.

"I wasn't talking about punishing her," Hermione clarified. "I'd prefer she let it out rather than hiding her true emotions and feelings. I was more concerned with the concealment charm. Emily, as you well know, is the radical nudist in this family. Since she was taught the charm, not a week has gone by that she hasn't asked about the possibility of her using it instead of wearing clothes to attend classes. Now Caitlin, Jamie and Kim are about to do it, not for a day, but for eight months. Emily didn't make the team with them and now they are about to do something she's been begging to do for what seems like forever."

"Are you suggesting that we also let her use the charm?"

Well, of course!

Is anyone really surprised at this point?

Hermione nodded her head, a guilty expression on her face. "Harry, I must be the worst mother in the world. Yes, you are! Tomorrow morning I intend to send my two young daughters, their best friend and Jamie off to classes, all totally starkers." "Then I'm the world's worst father because I back your decision one hundred percent," Harry said. "But they won't actually be naked. They'll have on their socks and trainers."

OMG DATS LIKE SO FUNNY OMG OMG Hermione stared at Harry momentarily, and then broke into laughter. "Men," she said, before nestling back in his arms.

* * * * * *

Tuesday, November 1, 2005 "Girls, hurry!" Hermione yelled. "You're not going to have time for breakfast if you don't get a move on." "I think I've lost my appetite," Kim said, as she led the other girls into the room. "This is going to be harder than going nude on the cruise was."

Oh, the conflict! Can´t you feel the suspense in this scene? "You'll be fine," Hermione lied as she inspected the girls. The short walk from the bedroom to the sitting room had been enough to cause Jamie's breasts to burst out of her top. Kim's slit looked like it was trying to devour her tiny triangular bottom. Only Caitlin remained at least minimally covered.

This whole "Caitlin has flat breasts" gag is both really annoying, cringe and reeks of unfortunate implications. Harry and Hermione exchanged perplexed looks. "Is this going to work?" Harry asked, as he held a sleeping Ben. "Doesn't the charm simply replace the clothing? What is going to prevent their goodies from still popping out?"

Harry, you calling them "goodies" makes you seem like a pervert. "The difference is that unlike an article of clothing, the charm isn't actually worn. It is more like a three dimensional projection that appears solid. Clothing can shift position, the projection can't. It will always cover what it initially covered." Hermione paused. "You can even feel as if you are grabbing onto it, but when you pull, nothing happens because there is actually nothing there. You can't touch, rip or tear something that doesn't exist."

How convenient that such spells exist. Occasionally one truly forgets that this is supposed to be a Harry Potter fanfic. "Mum, does that mean that it can't get wet or dirty?" Caitlin asked. "Exactly! If you fell in mud, your body would be covered from head to foot. The charmed article would appear completely clean, while in reality you would be covered in mud underneath it. Now, what we want to do is have each of you adjust your costume before I perform the charm on you. You want to cover your breasts on the side as best as you can and also make sure that the triangular patch at your crotch is smooth and covering as much as possible.

The latter part is where I´m asking - why all these details?

Though it´s rather obvious why. "So then once they are covered with the charm, they can't get a camel toe or expose a nipple?" Harry asked.

Well, considering how Madam Hooch is out of the way now, I doubt they need to be afraid of her showing up and attempting to eat their nipples. "No, no accidents," Hermione said, "but unfortunately that still leaves an awful lot exposed."

One might even say Overexposed, am I right? "An awful lot!" Harry repeated, wondering what his reaction would have been at 15 seeing Hermione, Cho or Parvati in a costume such as this. B O N K Suddenly he was having second thoughts about the girls leaving the sanctuary of their quarters. "They're required to go about their normal activities," Hermione said, as if reading Harry's mind. "We have no choice." Harry and Emily stood watching as Hermione did the charm on each girl individually and then as they in turn slipped out of their costume.

I still find it baffling how the main conflict and actual plot of this fic is angsting about these stripperific outfits and that the main villain is a flamboyant camp gay stereotype. They all appeared to be still dressed, but Emily knew from personal experience that they were actually nude. As the girls slipped on their socks and trainers, Hermione gave some additional advice. "I didn't charm the capes because I didn't know whether you wanted to wear them or not. They don't really cover anything; they just draw attention and make you look more ludicrous. Also, be careful how you bend, do a lady-like squat. The front and back of that outfit is only connected by a quarter inch string; it won't hide anything if you bend improperly."

This is the last time the capes are mentioned as part of the outfit, afterwards, they´re never mentioned again.

Like so many other things in this series. Emily had watched, a gloomy expression on her face, as Hermione performed the charm on Jamie, Caitlin and Kim in succession. "I'm afraid that's about all I can do to help you," Hermione said dolefully. "I hope the other students understand. After all, anyone of them could be in your shoes. Speaking of shoes; Emily, quickly slip out of your shoes and socks." "Why?" Emily said staring at her mum questioningly. Then she suddenly realized why. "Are you going to put me under the charm, too?" she asked elatedly. Hermione nodded her head and gave her youngest daughter a weak smile. Emily was euphoric.

I hate Emily.

* * * * * *

"So far, so good," Caitlin said, as they neared the Great Hall. "Caitlin, we used the private stairs from the staff quarters to the Great Hall; no one has even seen you yet," Emily reminded her.

In this fic, you never know though. "I know. I wish we could keep it that way," she said. "I realize this sounds crazy, but I'd prefer if everyone were about to see me nude rather than in this sluttish outfit."

This is going to be a running gag in this fic from now on. "It's not crazy," Jamie assured her. "Kim and I feel the same way." Kim nodded her head. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but let's get this over with." The others agreed as they hurried from the refuge of the tapestry-covered passageway to the Great Hall, bursting with students. As they entered, every eye turned in their direction, but they weren't greeted with the expected wolf whistles or obscene remarks. In fact the relative quiet was unsettling, considering the display they were affording the other students. Quickly, they split. That sounds rather impractical in this fic though. Caitlin and Jamie heading to the Gryffindor table, Emily and Kim to Slytherin. "That went better than I expected," Jamie said as she took a seat next to Amanda. "I thought we'd be greeted with all sorts of obnoxious comments." "That's because Snape chewed out the entire hall just before you got here," Amanda responded.

Yes, the one time Snape shows some spine, it´s off screen! "What happened?" Jamie asked inquiringly. "When the Americans walked in they were given the type of reception I imagine you were expecting. The pretty blonde -- didn't you say her name was Debby? Yes, this one of the few times we get a description -- became quite flustered and actually tripped over her own feet. Brian prevented her from actually falling to the floor, but in the process, both her boobs popped out. The Hall went wild and she's been crying ever since." Jamie glanced toward the Hufflepuff table and saw Debby crying her heart out, her head buried in Brian's chest. "Snape saw the whole thing and literally blew his top," Amanda explained. "He went into a tirade for about ten minutes about how wrong it was that the contenders were forced to wear such provocative costumes and that he was ashamed to be associated with the event. Bottom line is that if anyone treats any contestant with anything but the utmost respect, that person will be packing their bags and leaving Hogwarts."

Oh well. "That should put an end to obscene remarks," Caitlin said, "but I doubt it will have much effect on the lustful stares." "Especially in your case, Jamie. How in the world are you managing to make your breasts behave?" Amanda inquired.

Would you ever have expected to read a sentence like this in what is supposed to be a Harry Potter fanfic? "The concealment charm," Jamie whispered in Amanda's ear. "Caitlin and I are actually sitting here nude."

How lucky that no one outside the table hears it, considerng that everyone around them stares at them. Amanda stared at Jamie in total disbelief, before saying, "May I?" Once she touched Jamie, she just sat there speechless, a confounded expression on her face.

Seriously? "Good morning, everybody," Alex said, giving Jamie a light kiss on the cheek and sliding in next to her. "I wanted to be here before you guys," Alex said apologetically, "but I overslept. I hope you and the others weren't given any grief." Without thinking he laid his hand comfortingly on Jamie's. He had momentarily forgotten about the concealment charm, but in a few seconds he was reminded and quickly removed his hand. "Alex, you're the only one that can see me," Jamie said, reaching for his hand. "I don't want this charm changing anything between us." "It won't," he said, resisting a compelling urge to reach out and touch Jamie's tempting breasts.

So much for nudity being completely nonsexual.

* * * * * *

I have no idea why Neil added a break when it´s not even a scene transition.

"How does it feel to actually finally walk the corridors of Hogwarts nude?" Alex asked. "I know its something you've always wanted to do." "Yes, but not like this," Jamie answered disconsolately. "Although I'm nude, it looks to everyone as if I'm wearing a scandalous outfit. I'd much prefer they see me as I actually am. "Truthfully, I imagine what I really want is a Utopian dream," Jamie continued. "I'd like to live in a world where people just saw me simply as Jamie Zacherley, a world in which I wasn't judged by my clothes or lack of same or by my physical appearance, but rather only by the type of human being I am."

This mega melodramatic monologue just reeks of Ebonys "Why couldnt Satan have made me less beautiful?" speech from My Immortal. "Do you really think the world could ever evolve to the point that people would ignore nude individuals around them?" Alex asked. "No," Jamie answered honestly. "Not unless everyone suddenly started running about starkers and I doubt that is about to happen. For now I'd be happy if people would just stop equating nudity with sex."

Oh well. Alex nodded in agreement. "Oh! Alex!" Jamie cried out. "We have to help her." At first Alex had no idea what Jamie was going on about, and then he saw Nora. She was sitting on the floor in the doorway of an unused classroom. She had her knees pulled up to her chest, her cape pulled tightly around her. The girl was shaking uncontrollably as tears streamed down her face.

Yes, this is the actual first time we actually meet Nora.

While she as an alternate was present in the previous chapter, we still had virtually no introduction to her and she said nothing.

So she was essentially a non-entity.

Without thought, Alex removed his robes and draped them over the emotionally distraught girl. "I'm not allowed to cover myself," she cried, but made no movement to remove the comforting robes. "This is a lot of bull," Alex shouted, "and it's not going on for a minute longer. Jamie, I'm taking Nora to the headmaster's office. I'm going to need the rest of the team. It would help if we had the Americans' support, too. Do you think Professor Granger or Potter could get them?" "Alex, what are you going to do?" Jamie asked.

Jamie, he pretty much already stated it. "That depends on your fellow competitors," Alex answered, as without explanation he picked up Nora in his arms.

How realistic.

* * * * * *

"Professor Snape, what is so urgent that it necessitated my being dragged from my warm bed?" Rishard asked, as he entered the headmaster's office.

"I'm not quite sure myself," Snape responded, frostily. "I did not initiate this get-together; therefore I'm also extremely anxious to learn its purpose. Now that Mr. Simone has arrived, could you kindly explain why we are here Mr. Ward?"

This sounds as if canon!Snape is trying to get out of Exposed!Woobie!Snape. "Yes sir," Alex responded, "but first may I please beg your indulgence as I ask a few questions of those gathered here." "A few questions," Snape agreed, "but be quick about it. This is disrupting the school day."

Wait, they actually go to classes at Exposed!Hogwarts? "These are general questions I'd like to ask of all members of both the American and Hogwarts teams," Alex said. "Please respond by raising your hand when appropriate." "How many of you like the costumes you have been issued to wear for the competition?" Those assembled all watched apprehensively as not one hand was raised. "It doesn't matter whether or not they like the uniforms," Simone shouted huffily. "They have a magical contract."

Which works how?

Do their heads explode when they decide not to wear these costumes? "Yes, we're all well aware of that," Snape replied. "Please allow Mr. Ward to continue his questioning. I would like to see where this is all heading." "How many of you would have not even considered being a part of the competition if you had known before hand that you'd be required to wear such a revealing costume as practically your only clothing for the next eight months?" Alex asked. This time all hands went up.

THE MAIN CONFLICT OF THE FIC EVERYBODY "I'm sorry Severus, but this is a waste of my time," Rishard said haughtily. "Mr. Simone, would you rather waste a few minutes now or a few days later in court?" Alex asked. "What are you going on about boy? Rishard asked angrily. "No barrister would consider taking such a case. Magical contracts can not be broken." "You're wrong," Alex declared. "Legal magical contracts can not be broken. Each of these students is obliged to compete in your tasks, but they are not required to wear your costumes, most certainly not everyday for the next eight months." Rishard shook his head in frustration. "Okay, junior barrister, suppose you tell me just why they don't have to wear the costumes." Alex smiled. "I wanted to be sure, so I stopped and got this book from the library on my way here." He turned to page 169 Get it? and read out loud. "Magical contracts are no different than paper contracts with the exception that there is no printed copy. All the same rules apply. Both parties must be made aware of all the particulars prior to completion of the contract. Noncompliance with items not disclosed will not negate the remainder of the contract." "Very interesting, Mr. Ward," Snape said, "twenty-five points to Gryffindor. This is so in character for Snape. Oy vey. "You might want to consider a job in the legal profession. Mr. Simone, do you still feel that no barrister would consider taking this case?" "This is preposterous, he's just a boy," Simone argued. "Certainly you people can't place any merit in the dribble he's spewing. It has been the authority of the games committee to select participation uniforms for over a thousand years."

"And how long has it been policy to insist that they be worn on a daily basis for eight straight months?" Severus questioned. Rishard hemmed and hawed before saying, "That would be new policy, but it is still part of the magical contract." "Only if disclosed to the participants before they became bond," Severus declared. "I know my students were not aware of your new policy, were you?" Severus directed his eyes to the group of Americans who quickly shook their heads no. "Before returning to your classes, you might want to all slip into something more appropriate for a wizarding school," Snape announced. "You're overstepping your authority, Snape," Rishard warned in his anxious high-pitched voice.

This is the Main Villain, everyone. "I might well be," Severus said. "Sue me if you can find a barrister willing to take the case." Rishard literally shook with anger. "This doesn't change the training or actual competition," Rishard warned. "They must dress as directed for those events."

I have the feeling that if this was set in a more logical setting rather than Bizarro!Dark!Edgy!Potterverse, then I think that if the parents saw their mostly underage children wear these outfits for the events that they immediately would protest and that the events would be cancelled as a consequence to that. "If that indeed proves to be correct, they will," Severus agreed. "Humiliation is always difficult to bear, but rather five days than over two hundred." Severus turned to the assembled students. "Is there anything anyone wants to add?" "Sir, would it be all right if Jamie and I talked with all the contestants for a moment before they went about their business?" Alex asked. "Certainly," Snape said motioning to a corner of the room. Rishard watched suspiciously as everyone gathered around Jamie and Alex. Before Alex could speak, Debby threw her arms around him and kissed him soundly. "I'm sorry," she said looking first at Alex and then toward Jamie. "Brian told me that you were engaged, but I had to kiss him. You cannot imagine how good it will feel to get some clothes on and not be the center of attention for a change."

Oh well, Debby, regarding clothes, I´m afraid to tell you.... "Just don't make a habit of it," Jamie warned before giving Debby a friendly hug. I can´t help but imagine Jamie having a huge slasher smile in this scene and context. "Look, we can't talk here, too much chance of being overheard. Can everyone meet me Friday night at eight o'clock outside the entrance to the Great Hall? It's about these costumes and it's important."

* * * * * *

Cut for a boring scene about Emily and Caitlins relationship dramas, and another boring scene about prom dates.

"You can't imagine how good it feels to wear clothes again," Debby said as she and the other members of the American team approached Jamie and Alex. "I hate that ludicrous outfit. Words can never express my gratitude."

Yes, Debby, and by the end of the fic you will hate clothes alltogether. "Words will have to do," Jamie said with a warning laugh. "You've already exceeded your yearly limit of kissing Alex." Jamie looked around and counted heads. "I think that's everybody then, please follow me," she said. "Where are we going?" Dick bellowed. "And where are Thatcher and Potter?" "I don't want to talk here," Jamie answered. "Kim and Caitlin are preparing a place where we won't be disturbed." "I don't have all night to be traipsing around the castle," Dick complained. "Furthermore, what is Ward doing here? He isn't a member of either team."

Dick is only saying this because the scene needs a contrarian. "He's my boyfriend and he's How hard was it just to write "he is here"? here at my request," Jamie replied. "I might need his help to stick your head in a chamber pot if you don't shut up and stop bellyaching." Debby smiled. She definitely liked Jamie and Alex. Something about them just sparked trust. On the other hand, Bancroft had easily won her disdain.

Like other sporkers have noted in this scene, it would have been way more interesting if Debby found herself more drawn to Bancroft than the way too perfect Jamie Sue. Jamie looked about nervously as the group followed her and Alex as they made their way toward the seventh floor. "Harry offered me his map," Jamie whispered to Alex, "but I was fearful someone else might see it."

And then this is promptly forgotten about. "I don't imagine it's necessary to name names," Alex said squeezing her hand. "I'm disappointed," he moaned. "Your robes are real."

Alex, you pervert!

"Yes, but what's under them isn't. That's another reason I wanted you with me." "Why are you bringing us up to the seventh floor?" Bancroft complained. "There's nothing up here." "Do you call that nothing?" Jamie asked, as they approached a highly polished door with a brass handle. Alex seized the handle, pulled open the door, and led the way in. The room was spacious, and illuminated with flickering torches. The walls were lined with wooden bookcases containing every manner of law book imaginable. How convenient. There were also seventeen extremely comfortable chairs. "I've been on this floor numerous times before and I've never seen this room," Dick complained. "Maybe you weren't looking for it," Caitlin said with a chuckle.

OMG THIS IS SO FUNNY LOOK HOW SMART CAITLIN IS LETS ALL CLAP FOR HER "If everyone will please take a seat, I'd like to get started," Jamie said. Caitlin and Kim remained standing uneasily on either side of Jamie as the others all were seated. "Prior to you getting started, may I ask why the three of you are wearing robes inside on a Friday evening?" Jeff questioned. "What we want to talk about tonight involves a little show and tell," But mostly tell! Jamie explained. "Bear with me and you'll understand in a few minutes. "First I'd like to properly introduce Alex Ward, my wonderful boyfriend, who found the flaw in the contract that allowed us to get out of wearing those hideous costumes nearly every waking moment for the next eight months." Everyone applauded and either kissed Alex or patted him on the back. Surprisingly even Dick Bancroft shook Alex's hand and murmured what sounded like, thanks mate. "Unfortunately, thus far, Alex hasn't found any loophole that will get us out of wearing those atrocities for training or the actual contests," Jamie remarked. "I don't understand," said Nora nervously. "What is the difference?" "Tradition and over a thousand years of precedence," Jamie answered. "Having us wear his awful costumes on a daily basis was Simone's original idea. The concept was totally new to wizard competition and therefore needed to be explained in full before it could become part of the magical contract. It not only wasn't explained, but it wasn't even revealed, therefore it can't be part of the contract."

As was clearly stated earlier that day.

Why is this repeated again if we all already know? "I'm confused," Jeff admitted. "If the costumes are considered to be indecent for us to wear daily, why is it okay for us to wear them for training and in the actual events?" "You've jumped to an erroneous conclusion," Alex interjected. It´s not an interjection when he´s answering the question, Suethor! "The fact that you don't have to wear the outfits on a daily basis has nothing to do with whether they are indecent or not. You don't have to wear them because being required to do so on a daily basis was a change from tradition that was not properly explained before the magical contract was initiated." "You mean that we still have to wear them for training and the actual competition?" Nora asked, devastated. "They're still ghastly and indecent." "That, they are," Jamie agreed, "but unfortunately it has been traditional for event holders to issue uniforms for the games. It was not necessary for this to be explained to us because it has been the accepted policy since the origin of the games." "But certainly not such revealing outfits," Nora pleaded. Alex nodded his head. "I was hoping that we could use that against Rishard, but it seems history is on his side. For a period of over two hundred years, wizards and witches actually competed in the same attire as the original Muggle Olympians." "Didn't those dudes contend starkers?" Brian questioned. "Exactly," Alex answered. "I'm sure Rishard has pointed this out on numerous occasions to those opposing him." "Let me get this straight," Bancroft fumed. "We don't have to wear mini Speedos on a daily basis, but we do have to wear them for the two training sessions and the three actual events when the entire wizarding world will be watching. I was expecting good news. Why are you wasting our time if you don't have any worthwhile to tell us?" "We do have something meaningful to say," Jamie responded. "I'm sorry, I wish we had a way of getting us all out of wearing Rishard's debauched creations, but we don't. We do, however, have a way of preventing body parts from popping out while participating." Jamie removed her robes; Caitlin and Kim followed suit. Kim's face glowed a bright pink as all the competitors from both teams stared at the trio.

This is so dumb.

"The way you're staring at us now, is exactly the way the spectators will be looking at all of us during the competition," Jamie said, disgust evident in her voice. "But as provocative and revealing as these costumes might be on their own, Rishard is expecting us to deliver much more to his audience. He is counting on us to have numerous 'accidents' throughout the course of the contests."

Jamie looked pointedly at Bancroft. "And it's not just boobs that he's hoping will pop out. He wants both male and female privates on display, too." For the next few minutes, members of the American team related stories of the numerous embarrassing moments they had endured during the US competition wearing a less revealing costume than now required. After Debby finished telling the story of how she had spent ten agonizing minutes as part of a human ladder with her vagina completely exposed, everyone sat in silence for a few moments.

That does sound rather unpleasant.

But still strange how no one dared to bring this up while still in the US. Debby looked intently at Jamie, tears filling her eyes. "These contests are going to be seen world wide on wizard cam. I don't want my pussy bared to the entire wizarding world." "We have a way out," Jamie said hesitantly. "It has its draw backs, but it's better than the alternative." Jamie gave Caitlin and Kim a smile. "Are you ready?" Both girls gave Jamie a nervous smile as she began counting. First the three girls did ten toe touches. They followed this with ten sit ups, ten pushups and ten jumping jacks. To finish everything off, Caitlin did a handstand with a full split.

This whole plot is so ridicculous. Everyone watched with amazement, particularly the Americans. "How did you do that?" Brian asked, looking totally flabbergasted. "Wearing those outfits, your breasts should be exposed." He stared at the spot where Caitlin's legs met. "You don't even have a hint of a camel toe. I hate this fic. By rights you should be totally showing off." Debby and the remainder Not balance? of the American team nodded their heads in agreement. "It's impossible. How did you manage to stay in your uniforms?" Debby asked. Jamie took a deep breath. "It was easy," she said. "You see, we aren't really wearing Rishard's costumes. We are covered with a concealment charm. In reality, except for our trainers and socks, we're nude." "What do you take us for?" Bancroft yelled. "Do you actually expect us to believe that blarney?"

Why would a pureblood wizard like him be surprised over that a spell like that exists?

Oh, I forgot - this scene needs a contrarian! "In your case, I'm surprised that you've accepted the principle that the world is round," Jamie said, frustration evident in her voice. She reached out her arm. "Touch my hand." Alex cringed as Dick Bancroft reached out and touched Jamie's hand. Bancroft barely made contact when his mouth open and his chin dropped. He didn't speak, but he did seem on the verge of drooling. Jamie withdrew her hand, but Dick's eyes remained fixed on her body.

This isnt the first time where we have seen Dick gushing over Jamies oh so hot body.

Despite all these scenes, nothing ever comes of it.

Strangely enough, Jamie and Dick actually have more of a dynamic and even somewhat of a chemistry than Jamie has with Alex, who we still essentially know nothing about. "I don't understand how you can consider being nude better than wearing that depraved costume. Either way your private parts are seen," Nora pleaded. "It's extremely different," Debby said. "One way, you're exposed to the entire world. I expect that my pictures will float about on the Muggle Internet How strange how she suddenly mentions the Muggle Internet, considering that they before and after this scene keep mentioning the Wizard Net. for the rest of my life. The other way, you might be seen totally nude, but only by a few people that you intimately trust." Her eyes rested on Brian. "Jamie, would you please teach me that charm?" "I'm in too," said Brian. A couple of the other Americans also agreed, but one girl and the other three boys declined. None of the Hogwarts competitors seemed willing to take the plunge. "Why can't we wear both the costume and the charm?" Nora asked. "We thought about that but it causes numerous problems. The charm is meant to hide flesh, so parts of the real costume sometimes stick out from under the charm. Plus if the actual costume becomes out of place, which it will, there is no way to adjust it. We need to be careful that Rishard doesn't catch on to what we're doing.

I said it before, but my G-d is this plot ridicculous!

So an ancient dark lord returns from the death, and yet this is supposed to be the main conflict of the fic?! "If there are no other questions, I'm willing to show anyone that's interested how to apply the charm." After Jamie had showed the interested Americans how to use the charm, the students separated into teams so that members could become accustomed to seeing their teammates nude.

This is part of the cultish brainwashing for the wonders of naturism.

* * * * * *

Saturday, November 5, 2005 "What do you think practice will be like?" Caitlin asked Jamie as they both nervously nibbled I almost read that as Nipples! at their breakfast. "I've no idea," she said. "I'm just glad that Harry is going to coach and be present at the training sessions. That Rishard is creepy; he makes me uneasy." "I don't like him either. He's most definitely a pervert," Caitlin declared. "Although he seems more interested in watching the boys than he does the girls."

Which in Neils eyes makes him even more evil. "Yeah! His only interest in us is that we expose ourselves enough to satisfy his paying clientele," Jamie replied. "I heard that these training sessions are even open to the public. I wish Nora and the guys had decided to use the charm." "Especially Nora," Caitlin said. "She's so shy. I'm afraid she'll be a basket case before the day is over. She must be assimilated!" Jamie nodded her head in agreement. "You don't mind if I come watch the practice, do you?" Alex said placing a hand on both Jamie and Caitlin's shoulders. "I kind of want to keep an eye on Bancroft." "We'd be disappointed if you didn't come," Jamie answered candidly. "Okay, see you in a bit then," Alex said, leaning down and kissing both girls on the cheek before starting away. "Wait up," Jamie shouted. "We're done eating. You can escort us both down to the Quidditch Pitch." "Now that's an offer I can't refuse," Alex said gleefully. "It's not often I get to escort the two prettiest girls in Hogwarts." He put an arm around each girl's waist. "Do you realize how envious all the other guys are right now and they can't even see what I can?"

This is clearly Neil speaking through Alex. "Just make sure that hand stays on my waist," Jamie warned. "No grabbing a feel of my butt."

I´m surprised Jamie has any boundaries at all. Caitlin giggled. "You can squeeze mine if you want, Alex. I think it would feel neat."

-_- Jamie, Caitlin and Alex all exchanged impish looks and then burst into laughter.

* * * * * *

Cut for a boring scene with Emily and Tyler.

"Good morning," Rishard said, surveying both groups of players. "You certainly all look divine today."

He glanced at Harry and gave him a wink. "This is our first of two 'Get to Know You' sessions. To be successful in these games you must know your teammates and trust them intimately."

"What we're going to do first is a humorous little ice breaking drill using a simple little beanbag. Would both teams please form circles?"

Harry and Buddy had their teams comply, spacing the members about three meters apart in two separate circles. After the teams were positioned, Rishard handed Harry and Bud each two beanbags and instructed them to hold on to them until later. He then walked over to the team from Salem. He handed Debby a beanbag and then whispered something in her ear.

"I wonder what he told her?" Emily asked.

"I'm not sure," Tyler replied, "but I wouldn't want her looking at me like that."

Debby's face was flushed, but she was staring livid daggers at Mr. Simone.

Rishard next walked over to the Hogwarts contingent and handed a beanbag to Jamie. "My, but doesn't that costume display your attributes nicely," he whispered. "Your tits look like they're just begging to be unleashed."

This sounds like completely natural dialogue.

Jamie just glared at Rishard. She couldn't believe that he was talking to her in such an improper way.

I´m surprised that she is surprised at this point.

"I should warn you," Rishard continued, "that costume might not be able to restrain those beauties of yours, but don't worry. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and I'm sure the sight will be greatly appreciated by all those watching."

I don´t know why, but it seems that Neil wants to show that he´s a pervert.

"Now then, each team has a beanbag," Rishard announced loudly. "Introduce yourself to your teammates. Tell something unique about yourself and then toss the bag to the player on your right. Take your time; it is more important you get to know your teammates than it is to rush."

Debby and Jamie both began to speak, but since Tyler and Emily were sitting nearer to the Hogwarts team and could hear them better; they concentrated more on their introductions.

"I'm Jamie Sue Zacherley, a seventh year Gryffindor," Jamie announced. "Most of you are probably by now aware of my uniqueness; I'm a Mary Sue naturist."

Jamie then passed the bag to Caitlin. Each player introduced him or herself and then passed the bag on until it reached Nora who was standing on Jamie's left. Nora had a difficult time reaching for the bag. Her left hand was busy covering her crotch, while she tried to cover her chest with her right arm.

"I'm Nora Jordan, vice president of the Gobstones Club," she said timidly.

No idea what that is.

Mr. Simone had been watching both groups waiting for them to complete their introductions. "Now what I want you to do is call out any teammates name and toss the beanbag to that person. Try to do it as quickly as possible, but make sure your throws are accurate. Begin!"

Nora called Jeff's name and then without moving her arm, made a pathetic one hand toss to the boy on her immediate left.

"She's going to need to loosen up," Alex said to Amanda, who was now sitting with him. "She must be assimilated!"

"That's easier said then done," Amanda answered back. "The poor girl is embarrassed to be seen in public in that outrageous getup and I don't blame her. Worse yet, she's scared stiff to move for fear of becoming even more exposed."

Alex was sympathetic to how Nora felt, but at the same time realized that her inhibition might well eventually be the downfall of the Hogwarts team.

Both teams seemed to be having fun tossing the beanbag about; only a few players had dropped it. After getting their attention, Simone gave Harry and Bud the signal and they both called a name tossing a second beanbag into the circle. After a few more minutes the third bag was added. Nora stood apprehensively; she knew sooner or later one of the bags would come in her direction. She was amazed that no one had thus far thrown to her. Obviously all her teammates, Bancroft included, had decided it was best to avoid throwing to the timorous girl.

Oh well. Seems that someone is trying to take Caitlins title of being the Queen of Angst.

Anyway, we now come to another one of the most infamous scenes of the series:

Then without warning, it happened. Three people called his name at the same time and Bancroft found three beanbags zinging his direction. He leaned to his left, stretched to the right and then jumped skyward. Unbelievably he had caught all three bags. He started to send them off in different directions when Jamie flung her arms around him and held him in a tight embrace.

"What the ...?" Dick started to say.

"Your penis decided it wanted some fresh air," Jamie quickly explained. "I'll keep you shielded while you adjust yourself."

I laughed so hard when I read that the first time.

Jamie held on just long enough for Bancroft to put things back where they belonged, and then she hurried back to her position in the circle. Dick just stared as she walked away. That had almost been worth being exposed.

Or even Overexposed.

"I hope she doesn't have to do anything like that too often during the competition," Amanda said.

"You hope!?" Alex said, his face turning a sickly green. "If she ever has to hug him again, I'm going to end up tossing my breakfast."

"That's enough," Simone said. He was still trying to act jaunty, but disappointment seemed to etch each word.

"I wonder what's wrong with him?" Tyler asked. "He seems disappointed about something."

"He is," Emily responded. "Rishard was expecting a tit show and he's not getting it. So far, at least on the Hogwarts team, Bancroft was the only one to have an accident. I know for a fact that he was hoping for Jamie to be out of her costume more than in it."

"I get it," Tyler said. "Jamie, Caitlin and Kim are wearing the charm too. That's how they are able to jump around without Overexposing themselves."

"Our next getting to know you exercise is called 'Reach Out and Hug Someone'," Simone announced.

Alex just looked at Amanda and shook his head. This wasn't his day.

One of the few times something that is meant to be funny where it actually works.

"For this exercise the groups will once again stand in circles. When your coach yells, 'go' you run across and hug someone. On each 'go' you switch partners and hug someone different until each person has hugged everybody in the group. Yes, I mean everybody," Mr. Simone emphasized as a number of hands had ventured into the air.

When Harry hollered 'go' for the first time, neither Dick Bancroft nor Nora initially moved. Nora was simply afraid to move whereas Bancroft found the whole idea of hugging extremely uncomfortable. Once everyone else had paired, with Harry's encouragement, Dick finally moved toward Nora and only just placed his arms around her.

On the first switch, Bancroft ended up with Caitlin. Caitlin hadn't seemed to mind hugging Jeff, but seemed exceedingly hesitant to put her arms around the Dick.

"I wouldn't want to hug that slime ball either," Emily said, commenting on Caitlin's lack of enthusiasm. Then she remembered that Dick was Tyler's brother. "Sorry! I'm sure he's okay once you get to know him."

Cut for more boring Emily/Tyler stuff.

As the pairings continued to change on the field, so did the arousal level of the Hogwarts male participants. Most of the boys had never experienced seeing a naked girl before the previous night, now they were in turn hugging three of them. Their swelling quickly subsided, however, when the boys began hugging each other.

So it seems none of them are gay.

Finally after the members of both teams had exchanged hugs with all their counterparts, Rishard called an end to the exercise. Although his voice still maintained a buoyant air, his face gave away his disappointment. He glanced one by one at the Hogwarts players, maintaining eye contact with the girls longer than the boys. Finally his eyes came to rest on Jamie Zacherley. The girls all looked extremely provocative, especially Jamie. The costumes left little to the imagination, but he had promised his colleagues that no imagination would be necessary. He had guaranteed accidental nudity. With the exception of Nora, the Hogwarts girls seemed to be running and jumping about without a care, yet there had been absolutely no Overexposure. Why weren't Zacherley's tits popping out?

"It looks like it is about to rain," Rishard said, glancing at the darkening skies. "This will be our last exercise of the day. Next Saturday we will concentrate on developing team trust."

Oh well.

Cut for more boring Emily/Tyler stuff.

"Harry! I'm so glad you're back!" Hermione cried, as he entered their quarters. "I was just about to send Hedwig to search you out."

Ah yeah, I totally forgot that Hedwig still is a thing here, given that this was written before the final book came and used another fanfics continuity while then using the canon that was revealed afterwards at the same time.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked, seeing grave concern etched on Hermione's face.

"I'm not sure," Hermione answered tensely. "Severus just stuck his head in the fire and asked that you and I come to his office immediately. Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt are on their way." Hermione bit her lips. "I don't think it's a social visit. Severus looked distraught."

Oh well.

It´s rather easy to guess what´s coming next, considering what the last chapter ended with.

End of Chapter 13

Finally.

[wienerbarnes]

A Certain Romance (1/6)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 2,513

Warnings: fake dating au, mention to past abusive relationship

A/N: im so EXCITED to start posting this series lmk what yall think!!!

MAIN MASTERLIST | A CERTAIN ROMANCE MASTERLIST

He couldn’t quite think of a word to describe the restaurant.

The deep tones of maroon on the walls contrasting against the clean, stark-white tablecloths, tablecloths that have been so deeply washed, soaked in bleach and radiating chemical residue beneath plates of fancy and over-priced dishes for people who have too much money than they know what do with.

Ratatouille is the special for tonight, priced at $32. Side dishes extra, of course.

The overly simple decor on the walls with lighting so dim you’d think they forgot to pay the electric bill, all in the name of minimalism and an art form you just wouldn’t understand.

Bucky has news for them, though. Minimalism won’t get rid of their depression and anxiety, and a $30 plate of vegetables won’t bring you happiness.

His collar feels tight around his neck, even though the first two buttons on his shirt are undone. The longer he stands around waiting for Sam, the more ridiculous he feels. He’s sweating suddenly, and all he wants to do is leave, go back to his apartment, to Alpine, and take off this stupid monkey suit of an outfit.

Where r u?

Should be sitting pretty at a table already. Wearing a cute lil red dress. maybe blue, not sure.

“Son of a bitch,” Bucky mumbles under his breath after reading Sam’s text.

It’s Bucky’s fault at this point. Not only is this not the first time Sam has done this to him, set him up on a blind date and tell him it's him he’s meeting and not a girl, but it’s not the second either. Sam has done this three times, and this is going to be the fourth. How do you let this happen to you four times?

It’s not a surprise either when the date goes horribly all three times, either. The girls are always nice and always beautiful, but Bucky’s in such a sour mood by the time he reaches the table that it’s a failure from the start.

That’s a good word to describe the restaurant. Sour.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a table under Sam. Or maybe Bucky.” He approaches the hostess, praying that whoever Sam has set him up with isn’t here and that they stood him up.

“Ah, yes, your date has been waiting.” She tells him, and he tries not to roll his eyes.

The walk through the restaurant to the table makes him feel more ridiculous than when he was waiting. He feels all eyes on him and it makes his skin crawl, even though when he glances around, everyone has their eyes on their own date; their date that probably wasn’t sprung up on them by a man who dresses up like a bird for a living.

Careful not to trip over his own feet in the dark room, the only lights being small bulbs on a thin string from the high ceiling, he sees a table that’s probably for him.

The only table with one person sitting alone, he spots you looking down at your phone with a slight frown on your face. Sam was right on his first guess, you’re wearing a deep red dress, thin straps over your shoulders and he can see through underneath the table that it flows down to your calf. Nude heels adorn your feet as they are crossed at the ankle, and he can’t help but feel a little bad.

Just because he thinks minimalism and expensive meals are stupid doesn’t mean that other people don’t enjoy them.

“Hi, uh, sorry I’m a little late.” He greets as he takes his seat.

You look up from your phone and give him a closed-lip smile, an unspoken way of saying it’s alright, but he’s seen that tight smile on too many girls before to know that, no, it’s not really alright.

“I’m Bucky, what’s your name?” He asks, hoping that the sooner he starts the conversation, the sooner he can get the fuck out of here. Respectfully.

As far as introductions go, this has definitely been the most awkward. Neither of you know what to say. Not that he’s about to go around giving Sam advice about setting him up with people, because he certainly wouldn’t want Sam to take that as him asking him to try again, but he couldn’t have set him up with someone worse.

It’s painfully awkward, and he feels himself sweating again, blushing from slight embarrassment at this disaster of a date.

The waiter hasn’t even brought out the bread yet.

He can’t do this.

“Listen,” He begins after a few minutes of silence and the two of them awkwardly glancing around the room, as though the avant-garde art pieces are the most interesting thing either of them have ever seen.

“I’m sorry if I don’t seem like I want to be here, it’s because I don’t. And it’s got nothing to do with you, it’s just that Sam told me I was meeting him here because he thinks he knows best when it comes to setting me up on dates even though I’ve told him countless times that -”

He stops when he realizes you’re laughing. Giggles escaping from behind your manicured hand that’s attempting to cover your mouth, he can’t believe you’re laughing at him. As if the date couldn’t get worse.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt you.” You tell him, the most you’ve spoken the entire night, only really telling him your name and a few one-word answers a while ago.

“It’s just that I don’t want to be here, either. And Sam also told me I was meeting him here, not a date. And I thought that was funny.”

That bastard, Bucky thinks. But he appreciates that it’s the situation you find funny, and not him. He’s never had a date laugh at him before, and as tough as he is, he can’t lie and say it wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

He opens his mouth to say something but another man in an equally ridiculous monkey suit such as his own approaches the table, a basket of bread in hand.

He can’t help but notice how small the breads are and the fact that the butter is individually wrapped in those small tinfoils - not even The Cheesecake Factory does that, they bring butter in a tiny dish - but he doesn’t say anything.

At least now he has something to do with his hands.

The two of you both pick at the bread in your hands, and while the tension is somewhat eased at the table with the confession that neither of you want to be there, it’s still silent and awkward, as neither of you have spoken again.

Bucky doesn’t know what causes him to say it, maybe it's the obligation he feels to keep the conversation going and fill the silence, maybe his mind just insists on making the evening worse, because apparently that’s possible.

“My best friend died. Recently. And Sam’s been setting me up on these dumb dates to take my mind off it.” He says, and he sees out of the corner of his eye your hands pause around the bread and your head lifts slightly to look at him, though he doesn’t do the same.

“Sam was a little better about it at first, using distracting me as a way to distract himself while we both grieve. But he’s got the whole Captain America thing, helping his sister, working with Torres; he got over it a little quicker than I did and… expected me to get over it, too.”

He’s afraid to meet your eyes. He’s not sure why he just told you that, or why he felt like he owed you an explanation in the first place. He doesn’t even know you! What does he care if the date is awkward? He could leave now and never see you again and not feel bad about, and yet he sits here, sacrificing his own comfort in order to attempt to salvage the evening by being honest? Is honesty even what you want?

“My boyfriend beat the shit out of me. If we’re sharing tragic backstories, I mean.” You reply, looking down at your own bread now that Bucky’s head has snapped up to look at you, a humorless smile on your face.

“Had to move states, change my name, the whole nine yards. And while I wasn’t grieving a best friend, I was grieving… myself. My old life. And Sam doesn’t just distract himself by setting you up on dates, he’s been doing that with me, too. And, so, I kind of get what you mean, when you say that other people get over it and expect you to be okay, too.”

Another pause of silence, but the awkwardness is gone now.

“How many times have you heard the phrase, The grieving process is not -”

“Linear? Too many times. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard that, I’d probably have enough money to afford a plate at this place.” You finish for him, a disgusted look on your face. Almost the same look he had on his face when he entered the restaurant.

He laughs, though. The first time he’s laughed tonight.

“Are you two ready to order?” The waiter interrupts again, small booklet in hand, and thick French accent in the air. Of course, the waiters here are French, how is he even surprised?

“Do you mind if we have a few more minutes with the menu?” Bucky replies, not receiving much of an answer as the waiter looks him up and down, gives him a curt nod, and leaves the table once more.

“Listen, I don’t know about you, but this place looks like… I don’t even know, but it just looks sad, and I know a pretty good pizza place a few blocks away. If you don’t mind walking. Or continuing this date as friends?” He squints as he finishes his question, hoping you won’t take it as him playing hard to get, and actually want to be friends and absolutely nothing more.

“You had me at pizza.”

With the bread from the restaurant in hand and his jacket around your shivering shoulders, the two of you make your way down the sidewalk, stomachs rumbling at the thought of cheap, greasy, slices of pizza.

Sitting among people in their pajamas and otherwise casual clothing, it’s safe to say the two of you are the best-dressed people in the joint. Bucky tells you this and you laugh again, agreeing. Slice after slice goes down easily, much easier than any plate at that stupid clownhouse of a restaurant.

The conversation is easier, too. It’s almost like it was so bad before because of the suffocating atmosphere of the restaurant, The Fork, a stupid name for a stupid place.

What was that word he said before? Oh, yeah. The restaurant was sour. The pizza place, though, run by two older, heavier men with ungroomed mustaches and dark pit stains, is much less sour.

“I surprisingly had a good time tonight. I’m really glad we both came to an understanding of not wanting to date due to our individual unresolved trauma and issues, that we should probably be in therapy for.” You tell him, after thanking him for paying the six dollars both your copious amounts of pizza slices cost.

“I did, too. I’m just glad we didn’t have to stay at that dumb restaurant, I mean what was Sam even thinking with that place?” He rubs his fingers over his eyes in lasting disbelief. He’ll never let Sam live that place down.

“Speaking of Sam,” You start, stepping out of the pizza place as Bucky holds the door open for you, “Would you mind telling him that the date went well?”

“I mean, technically it did, didn’t it?”

“It did. But if we tell him that we left with a newfound friendship rather than sore legs and sex hair, he’s just going to keep setting us up on more shitty dates. I mean he’s great, but he does a better job at being Captain America than he does at being Cupid.”

“Agreed. He’ll just keep setting us up with people until we end up dating one of his picks, regardless of friendships made along the way. He’s too competitive, he doesn’t see friendship as a success, only a boyfriend or girlfriend.” Bucky admits.

“So… if he asks, we’ll just say we’re going to go on another date? And then whenever we hang out, we’ll just -”

“Be extremely and explicitly clear about it to him.” Bucky finishes.

They smile at each other satisfied, satisfied knowing they’re finally going to outsmart the bird man, they’re finally going to be done with shitty, last-minute blind dates that they never wanted to go on in the first place.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“Oh, no, my friend’s on her way to get me now.”

“I’ll wait with you then.”

Cheesy flirting ensues as the two of you joke about fake dating, competing to see who can think of the worst pick up line. Bucky feels a bit embarrassed that he probably would’ve used a few of these a few decades ago when he was a fresh, young man, but he doesn’t dare mention that to you. No need to give you more ammunition to use against him, and especially no need to risk you mentioning it to Sam.

Your least favorite, and evidently his favorite, is If happiness starts with “H,” why does mine start with “U”?

He laughs as you dramatically gag on the sidewalk, almost not noticing the car pulling up to the two of you.

“This is me. Oh, here’s your jacket by the way.” You move to take it off from atop your shoulders but he stops you.

“Hold onto it for me. And also, mention to Sam that you’re holding onto it for me.” He winks.

“Will do. Boyfriend.”

“Drive safe. Girlfriend.” He opens the passenger door for you, greeting your friend briefly, and offering a hand out to help you sit inside, closing the door after you’ve clicked your seatbelt.

He watches the rear lights grow smaller and smaller as you disappear down the street, and he begins walking back to where you two came from. His bike is still parked at the restaurant, after all.

That was probably the best date - not a date, friend date - he’s ever been on, and by far Sam’s greatest success yet, even if it’s not the romantic relationship he probably intended.

It was nice to talk to someone without the pressures of impressing them, the intrusive thoughts questioning their deeper motives or what it is exactly they want out of a date with him. He tried engaging in the whole hookup-one-night-stand culture once, and didn’t like it at all.

Not to mention, he’ll never have to go on one of Sam’s set-up dates again! And he didn’t even need to get a girlfriend to do so!

The night couldn’t have ended better, and he can’t wait to tell Sam all about it.

[lowkeyorloki]

Stolen

yes i already posted a fic today... but i didn’t want to wait for this one ;)

smut, only 18+ please

~

Loki Laufeyson has never done anything in his life but take.

He doesn’t say that to make himself out to be a villain. He’s not fighting for some noble cause, he’s not under some impression he’s an entirely moral man. No one is.

But Loki is somewhat justified. He was stolen himself. By taking, he was simply getting back what the universe had pulled away from his grasp.

Loki was done giving, is really what it was. He pledged, all the way back when he found out he was a Jotunn, that he would never give again.

You were no exception.

Loki took everything from you- your love, your lust, your whole being really. Well, you gave it to him. Loki was a prideful man though, and he liked to pretend in the back of his mind he was the one in control, even if that wasn’t always the case.

He’s pretending that now. 

You’re nude, just like Loki, and your back is pressed against his bedsheets. You’re all around the room, your pants your moan, your sweet smell. Loki dips down, taking your nipple in his mouth, and moans. You taste sweet too, like honey. Like the most expensive wine on Asgard, catered specifically to Loki. That was what you were like. You were a drug to him. 

You want him, right now, all of Loki. You don’t seem to be in a teasing mood tonight, and in all honesty, Loki isn’t either. He feels a carnal desire in the pit of his stomach when he looks at you. You, with your messy hair and blown-out pupils. Arching your back off Loki’s bed just feel your skin against his for a second.

You were a needy girl. Naughty, at times. Just the way Loki liked you to be. 

Loki’s prepped you for his cock already, letting you fuck yourself against his fingers for a bit. He licked your juices right off his hand, letting you watch as he did so. You had trembled underneath him, surely holding back a whimper. You always did that. Loki hated it, when you hid your pleasure from him. But it was no matter, it was always apparent at one point or another. 

Loki lowers himself to catch your lips against his before he enters you, feeling sparks behind his closed eyes when you bite down on his bottom lip. It’s one of those nights sex is more of a physical act than a loving one, when you and Loki both needed to relieve the tension. 

And Loki wants you right now, he even needs you. You’re so eager, so ready to want him back.

Loki kisses his way down your body, between your breasts and stopping at your lower belly, just above where you need him the most. Your muscles shake with anticipation, and Loki grants you a searing kiss on the inside of your leg. It’s going to leave a mark, one Loki will surely revisit later. 

Loki draws in a breath as he enters you, watching his own cock disappear into your willing body. Your nails rake down his back, and Loki prays there will be scratches tomorrow. Anything to remind him of you.

He thrusts, so deep inside you he almost fears you’ll break. But that’s something about you Loki loves so much; is that you never do. You cry and you scream and sometimes you become a different person entirely- but you’re always there the next day, picking up the pieces of yourself. It’s admirable, it’s enviable. Loki doesn’t dwell on it, it makes his heart too full.

Almost as full as you. Loki is so far inside you, your warm walls clenching around him. Your hips cant every time Loki’s do, as if he is the governing force of your body. 

“You’re alright.” Loki says, voice as steady as it can be when you’re making him feel so good. You squirm underneath him, struggling between needing to adjust to Loki’s girth and needing more. Loki shushes you, threading his fingers with yours as he allows you the time you need. When you’re ready, Loki exits and enters you again, setting a swift pace you can both handle.

Watching you experience euphoria is a priviledge, one Loki doesn’t ever want revoked. He reaches between your bodies, his fingers quickly finding your clit. He catches sight of your cunt when he does this, and feels his cock throb inside you. You’re so wet, the curls at the base of Loki’s girth glistening where they’ve touched you. Loki revels in the moment, knowing this part of you was Loki’s. The rest of you he had to share with the world, but this part- the awe-inducing, intoxicating, earth-shattering orgasm part- was Loki’s alone.

The rest of the world. What would they do, if they say you like this? At the mercy of someone else, red-faced and breathless and absolutely wrecked. The idea of Midgardians looking at Loki, knowing he was the one to provide you such excitement, makes him stroke your clit faster. You let out a cry from underneath Loki, begging for more and less all at once. Between your body, your smell, your noise, Loki almost comes right then and there. But years of self control spare him the humiliation, lets him focus on you.

“So wet.” he coos, driving you as close as possible to your limits. “Is it all for me, love?” your answer if muffled, toyed with by the sheets. Loki bucks his hips, causing you to let out a moan. “I can’t hear you.” he growls. You open your eyes.

“All for you.” you say breathily. You’re about to say more, but Loki silences you with a kiss. That was enough surrender for tonight. 

“I’m going to cum. Fill you up with my seed, ruin any other lover you may take if I haven’t done so already.” he had. The first time Loki fucked you he took away every other man’s ability to provide for you. It was selfish to do, but Loki couldn’t help it. Everything about you was delicious, and Loki wanted everything about you to be his. 

He makes good on his promise, coming inside you with a shout. You knit your eyebrows when he does, sweat forming an even sheen on your forehead. Drops of Loki’s seed trickle down your legs as he eases himself out of you. Loki gathers them on his fingers, then inserts his digits back inside you so you can have your release.

It’s not often that Loki lets himself come first. You’re the only one he’s been comfortable doing it around. But, when Loki’s head is light and hazy with afterglow, he can coax you to the edge, watching you respond and react to his touch with more efficiency than if he were still chasing his high. That’s what Loki does now as follow suit, your moans echoing off the small room. 

Your body goes limp, so Loki gathers it in his arms, placing chaste kisses to your head and murmuring what’s practically a love letter in your ear. 

Loki was always taking from you.

But for the first time in years, he was also giving. 

[ninnodesu]

“Can I See You?” || Modern!Thomas

Modern-day AU:

It's still Thomas B. Hewitt we know, the only thing that's different is the fact that it's set in modern days! Making it easy for our Big Man to actually communicate with the help of text messages. He gots one of those nasty vocabularies.

I'm still learning how to write smut, okay :( Also, try changing my mind that Modern!Thomas wouldn't have both tattoos and a frenum piercing.

Oh, and sorry that this is AFAB, but it's easier for me to practice writing smut since I'm cis myself, but one day I might evolve!

You sigh as you lean your head on your steering wheel and bonk it a few times. “Please. Move. Please. Move. Please. Move.”, you chant in rhythm to your head hitting it, and glare out at the cars in front of you.

Of course, you got stuck in traffic. And of course, you still had about maybe two hours left to drive to get home, meaning, you would get home much later than you had hoped. Turning your head, you decide to unbuckle your seatbelt and just lean in more comfortably on your wheel instead and look out at the horizon to your left.

“I jus’anna’go’ome.”, you mumble into your arms and groan slightly before fishing your phone out of your pocket to lazily browse your social media in a rotation, hoping something will happen, knowing nothing will. The line of cars is ever un-moving in front of you, and you can even see some people going out to check on the miles of cars. Checking the news section, you see the cause of the traffic jam. A big accident, apparently. With several cars.

“Well, I’m not gonna get home any time soon…”. A thought crosses your mind as you scroll through your contacts, looking for a specific little icon you know so well at this point.

A chainsaw one.

You press it and bring up the message window to your earlier conversations and start typing.

“I’m stuck.”

It takes maybe five minutes before you hear the familiar chime.

“In a baby swing?”

“Ha-ha. No.” “In traffic.” “And I’m bored.”

You knew he had a particular small pet-peeve to other people multi texting but had a habit of doing it himself.

“And you think I care?”

“I know you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You seem in a happy mood…” “What made you so grumpy?”

“Can’t get the shower to work.” “And I really want to take one” “but my uncle is an ass and refuse to fix the plumbing” “so I have to.”

All you do is sit there and watch as the pet-peeve he so vehemently screams about when you do come through.

“Uh-huh. All I could focus on were you, naked, alone.”

“No.”

“What do you mean by “no”?

“I won’t do it.”

He saw right through you. You’d been talking with this somewhat mysterious man for a few months now, you’d never seen him, all he’d done was to describe himself to you, but you had never seen his face directly before. He refused to send any kind of clear picture of himself, but you loved teasing him about it in a friendly way, making sure to never sound like you were making fun of him. And even if he seems like he didn’t want to, he also seemed to loosen around this subject, one time going as far as to send half of a mirror selfie to you. Showing a strong arm with a tattoo covering most of it that pictured a chainsaw - the sole reason why you’d saved his phone number as a chainsaw icon, not thinking about asking him for his name - shoulder long brown hair flowing in locks and the half of what seemed to be a broad chest. He had his face turned away, sadly, but what you saw made you more curious. It seemed like he was wearing a mask in the photo that covered the parts of his face that were visible in the mirror.

“Aaw, come on. I know you’re hiding something really handsome. I won’t tell anyone~” “What if I send you something naughty? ;)”

This time he seemed to disappear on you for a longer time and during the thirty minutes he was gone you thought you had almost offended him or finally made him tired of your ramblings. But then the chime came back.

“Finally!”

“Finally I’m getting a nude?”

“...”

“I’m just messing with you, big man.”

“Look, you won’t like what you see, okay?” “I’m nothing more than a freak” “I’m ugly and disfigured” “that’s all there is to this.” “People don’t like looking at me” “so I don’t bother showing my face to anyone”

A part of you broke when you saw his confession. He had never told you why he didn’t send you pictures, and you didn’t want to pressure him by asking. All you did was type one reply.

“Try me.”

Silence. Pding! This time, however, you froze when the notification said that “ Has sent an attachment ”. Your thumb hovered over the small icon with its glowing and angry red one. You opened the chat, and the attached photo showed you a man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, he had one arm laid over his broad chest, the one heavily tattooed arm taking the mirror selfie resting on the one crossed over the chest. He did have a mask on, it looked homemade, but what you could see showed a strong jawline and a masculine face. The most striking part of him was his eyes, they were amazingly blue, and he looked directly into the camera. And you melted. Your eyes traveled over his tank topped clad shoulders, down his biceps, and up to his arms. He looked like he was made by an artist. His dark locks sweaty after seemingly working the plumbing, a sheen of sweat lingering on his collarbone.

“Jesus fucking… christ…”, was all you could mumble behind your mouth. Seemingly in a trance, as you just ogled the stranger you’ve barely gotten to know, the two of you mostly using the other for some sexual relief during the nights. You glanced up to the traffic in front of you, making sure it was still stuck and yes, just as stuck as when you first messaged him. Your phone chimed into a melody as a series of short sentences came through, and you woke up from your trance.

“I’m sorry…” “I’m not what you expected, am I?” “I figured.” “This is why I never sent you anything back.”

“No, I… You’re just really… really handsome. I couldn’t stop looking at the picture.” “I really can’t. I had no idea this is who I was having such naughty thoughts about at night.”

“Heh… No need to be polite.”

“I’m not being polite! I’m being honest!”

“You really like it?”

“Yeah… I do.” “Can I ask why you wear the mask, though?”  

Silence. You tapped the side of your phone as you saw the three dots.

“My face isn’t like everyone else's” “I don’t want to scare you off” “like I do with everyone else”

You bite the side of your thumb. His responses made your heart sting. How would anyone be scared of him? You want to see more of him, want to see him without the mask. And suddenly, you felt nervous. You’ve never been nervous about having sessions of dirty talk with him before, but now? When you’ve seen him? You were. And you decided to take the plunge and ask for more.

“Can I see more of you…?”

For some reason, you were shaking as you pressed send.

Why do I suddenly feel like a fucking schoolgirl?!, you thought as you waited for a reply, feeling a small tingle starting to emerge in your body.

A new picture came your way, this one accompanied by a text on top of it.

“Time to give the new plumbing a test drive…”

He had no shirt on this time, your breath hitched slightly as you saw his bare torso. His mask was off, but he had one hand hovering over his face, parts of it seen through sprawled fingers. Like he did want to show you, but not all at once. What you saw was shocking, yes, and you couldn’t deny that fact. His nose was missing, large parts of his face were scarred and dried, but you didn’t care. All you could really focus on was his blue eyes. Your own traveled over what you could see. He was gifted with the absolute perfect ratio of muscles and fat all over his body. A towel wrapped around his waist, the angle of the camera showing a beautifully delicious happy trail leading down from his navel down below the towel.

“Are you sure you’ve never taken photos like this…?”

You couldn’t help but tease a little bit.

“Positive…” “Am I doing good?”

You breathe a laugh out.

“You’re doing great.” “I hope you think of me when you shower~”

The cars finally started moving again after that message and you happily went on your way home. Having a hard time ignoring the chiming that went on in the passenger seat next to you, having to chew the inside of your cheek as to focus on the road the best you could. Absolutely not thinking about this mysterious man you’ve never met before having a shower… naked.

When you finally arrived home you basically threw everything on the couch and almost ran to your bedroom. Sinking down on your bed, covered by big pillows, you take a shaky breath while opening your phone to check your messages. There weren't many, but the few you had from the giant man was enough to send chills running down your spine to end up exploding in tingling fireworks between your legs. You chewed your lip slightly as you opened his chat.

“Would be nicer if you could join me, though.”

Another picture had joined the chat while you were driving.

The bathroom is foggy, the mirror covered by condensation, but he’d wiped straight across it so he could take another picture in it.

This was the one where he had - apparently - gathered enough strength to show his entire face. His hair was dripping, laying over the upper half of his face, eyes peeking through it, and he had a towel laid over his shoulders, the one hand not holding the phone in the midst of wiping excess water from his thick and wide neck. Although now, a smirk was splayed across his lips, lips that seemed to be missing a few pieces, but god did they look kissable. His smirk letting you know he knew something you didn’t. This angle also showed a bit of skin like the earlier one had done, but this time you couldn’t see a towel in the fogged-up mirror. This bastard had consciously wiped the mirror off just enough for you to see his face and down just above his navel where the fog took over, covering the rest of him up. This one also had a message over it, strategically placed on the lower end of the picture.

“I hope you make it home fast, I want to practice this thing. ;)”

You trace the shape of his body, thoughts running wild at how his hands would feel, what sounds he would make if you bit down on his throat, his strong hands gripping and groping every part of your own body. You two had exchanged dirty texts for a long time now. It had mostly only been dirty words, with you sending him the occasional picture, but he’d never sent anything back. Until now. You couldn’t help but smile at that fact.

“This is a new side of you.” “I’m home now, by the way” “I like these welcome home messages ;)”

All you do as you wait for a reply is look at the pictures again. You had no idea this was the man you’d been talking to. He did describe himself, but it was obvious he was oblivious to just how attractive he actually was. You did guess it was because of his facial deformities, and while you could agree that it was bad, all the words you’d exchanged between each other made so it didn’t matter. This man was hot.  

“Heh… Welcome home.” “Mmh. I’m not sure what happened” “but I wanted to make you happy” “and if showing my ugly mug makes you happy” “so be it.”

You frowned when you read how he called himself ugly.

“You’re not ugly. I can’t stop looking at you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you on my drive home, either. My thoughts have been nothing but impure because of your pictures~”

“What did you think about?”

“You really want to know such dirty things?”

“Mmh. Tell me.” “‘specially if it’s dirty. ;)”

You sank down lower on the bed, biting your lower lip as you pondered how to word your response. Deciding it’s time to bring the teasing out and see if you can lure more pictures from him.

“Mmh~ I don’t know… What do I get if I do?”

“Are you starting to bargain?”

“Maybe~ ;)” “Maybe I just need some convincing before I actually tell you such naughty things”

“You’ve never had any problems in telling me naughty things before, little lady.” “Why now, all of a sudden?”

“Tell you what, big guy. If you do me two favors, I’ll tell you what I was thinking about…” “Deal?”

Your phone got quiet for a minute, you figured he was thinking about your proposal.

“Deal.”

“First, tell me your name. I want a name to moan while cumming to that handsome face of yours” “Secondly, I want another picture~” “It doesn’t have to be spicy, I just want to see more of you.”

It was weird, but you’d never thought about asking his name before. You guessed it was because you didn’t have a face to him until now. Apparently, he had decided to play along, seeing as he’d sent you a new photo.

It showed you a lap, thighs that looked just as muscular as his upper body, he was sitting down, relaxing it seems. This man was either a huge tease by nature, or he knew how attractive a guy in gray sweatpants was because he had chosen to put a pair on. His left hand lazily resting on his left thigh, big fingers adorned by clunky rings and a worn-out watch on his wrist. Nothing sexual, if it wasn’t for the generous outline of what seemed like a properly proportional dick resting in between his meaty thighs. And a name sprawled in simple text.

“Thomas.”

You hummed to yourself.

“Well, Thomas, I guess it’s up to me to uphold my part of the deal then...“

“I’m waiting, darlin"

A tingle runs down your back again, he’s never called you that before.

“I was thinking about you in the shower. How the water ran down you back, how much I would love to be in it with you, pressing my tits against your back as my hands run down your strong arms” “then back up to massage your shoulders. You don’t know how much I wanted to do that, to join you in your shower. I want to run my tongue on your throat, I want to know what you taste like”

“You can’t.”

“I know, and it’s killing me. And now when I’ve seen you, I want you more. Want to hear you breathe in my ear as you fuck me” “to hear you moan” “you have no idea how hard you make me cum when we talk”

“This is definitely a new side to you” “I didn’t know you could talk like this” “what’s made you this bold? ;)”

“You, Thomas. You awoke something in me when you showed me your face.”

You can’t help but be honest with him at this point. You agree that you’ve never talked to him like this before, even if you’ve been texting dirty, it’s never been to this point. Arousal starts to build up between your legs and you press your thighs together, not wanting to give in just yet.

“That makes me happy, baby.” “Nice knowing I have this effect on you” “so, you’re telling me I make you horny?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know you do.”

“I do, but I want to you say it” “I want to see you admit I make you horny” “tell me I’m the one who makes your pussy wet”

A shaky breath escapes you seeing him talk like this, but you give in and give him what he wants.

“Thomas, you make me so horny. You’ve always had.”

“That’s my girl” “You like how I talk about how I would fuck you?” " Is that what you like hearing?”

“Yes…”

“Mhm.” " I bet you would look lovely stretched around my cock”

That was the point where you couldn’t ignore the growing arousal spiking through your body, and you could feel yourself starting to get wet by the thought of him ravishing you. Him moaning as he pushed inside your wet cunt. Your thighs rubbed harder, your hand shaking as you could only watch the three dots come up as he was typing.

“Show me.” “Show me how your body reacts to me” “I want to see how wet I make you”

“Persuade me…”

You grinned, thinking you had the upper hand this time.

“Nuh-uh” “you don’t get to set the rules this time” “this time; I’m in charge” “and if I want you to show me your pussy before I give you more” “that’s what you’ll do”

You shivered hard at this series of texts from him. You loved that he showed his dominant side. Pulling off your jeans along with your moist panties, you sit back on the bed, half laying, snapping a cheeky photo of your lower half, fingers only crazing your mound, being more in a teasing mood than in a give-him-what-he-wants-straight-away kind of mood.

A satisfied smirk dances on your lips as you send it away. Not long after a reply comes.

“Don’t play games with me, now.”

“Or what? You’ll spank me?” “You know you can’t do that~” “So what’s gonna stop me?”

A few minutes of silence followed before you got another picture, one that made you moan slightly at the sight of it.

His left hand was grabbing over his crotch, fondling what looked like a half-hard cock through his pants, nothing fancier. But it did look like he was definitely… proportional to the rest of him that you’ve seen.

“if you don’t stop playing games, the pictures stop here” “and I think you want to see more than this.”

You cursed him silently because he was right. God did you want to see more than that. You huffed at his reply and decided to be good and give him what he wanted.

Spreading your legs as wide as you could, you snapped the photo he wanted. Showing him how wet you already were.

Over it, you slapped a text.

“See how wet you’ve made me by only showing me what you look like. This is what only your words did earlier, now this is because you showed me ~”

You scrolled up to watch the latest picture he showed you and massaged slow circles around your clit while waiting for a reply. You wanted to see what he was hiding inside his pants. Finally, his reply came.

“That’s what I wanted to see” “to think I did that to you” “you make me hard, baby”

His multi texting habits were really going strong today, and you giggled a bit at it before replying.

“Oh yeah?” “I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours ;)”

“Mmmmhhh…. No”

“Why not? You can’t tease me with a picture like that and then not follow up with more”

"Because you haven’t earned it yet” “and I just don’t feel like showing you my fat cock just yet is all”

“What do I have to do to deserve it, mister?”

He’d admit it early on that calling him mister or sir sent chills down his spine, something you’ve used sparingly, as to not overuse it on him. The thought of him caving in and finally showing his cock made you rub your clit a little harder, earning a low moan as you tried picturing it behind closed eyes.

Pding!

“Hmm…” “surprise me with a movie” “but don’t tell me what it is.”

Oh, you liked that idea. You thought for a bit before you figured something out.

Pulling your top off, laying naked on your bed, you started the recording.

Angling the camera to focus on you sucking on two fingers, making them nice and wet, and making sure a string of saliva was attached between your lips and your fingers as you removed them from your mouth. You slowly moved your hand down together with your phone, until you reached one of your breasts where you circled a hardening nipple with your saliva drenched fingers, making sure to amplify your breathing.

As your hand traveled downwards, the one holding your phone stopped right at your navel and returned up to your face to focus on your expression as your fingers reached your wet cunt and pressed down on your clit, something that was accompanied by a breathy moan of his name. “Thomass…”, right before you turned the recording off you made sure to look straight into the camera with lustful eyes.

On the receiving end of that video, Thomas quickly opened the message. Eyes wide as he followed the way your fingers moved down your body, around your breast, gingerly moving around a nipple. He cursed silently to himself as you stopped filming downward right above your navel, but when the camera returned up to show your face and the way he heard his name escape your lips as you reached that sweet, sweet spot between your legs, some part of him snapped.

He shot up from the chair he was slumped in and silently sneaked over to his door to listen if anyone needed him in the house, it was silent, which was a good sign. He closed the door and locked it. Making sure no one would disturb him.

Sitting back down he smirked as he grabbed the base of his now rock hard cock, still tucked away in his sweatpants to snap a new picture, a small dark stain resting where the head was located.

“That was dirty, see what you’ve done to me?”

Right after sending the picture, he sighed as he slid his hand down into his sweats to lazily stroke himself, closing his eyes, he fantasized about how your lips would feel gliding over his cock and stroked it a way he thought your tongue would move, a trembling low groan left him at the thought. All regrets he had earlier have about starting to send pictures blown out the window as your voice replayed from his phone.

It dinged with a reply and he quickly looked at it.

“I can get even dirtier~” “You remember how I told you I went shopping a few days back?”

He gulped, his hand was shaking slightly as he tapped away with this thumb. He did remember you had briefly told him you went “shopping” a few days ago.

“Mhm. I remember that.” “What did you get, baby?”

His breathing went up a notch as he sent the question. His hand stopped moving, having to already calm himself down a notch. Your video and photo had worked him up something awful.

“Do you want to see~?”

“Oh hell yeah"

It took a while to receive a response from you, but when he finally did, it was a photo. One that made his dick jolt in excitement.

It showed you, holding a dildo against your tongue. He shivered hard at the sight, a tingle reaching his cock.

“You got that just for me? ;)”

He smirked slightly.

“I did… I thought of you when I bought it.” " Wanna see me use it~?”

“Fuck yourself for me” “I promise to give you material” “you won’t regret it, believe me”

He finally let his erection spring free, the hefty weight of it making it bounce back on his stomach and he sighed again in relief. He pondered if he should send another photo already, but decided to tease a little longer before giving in. It took a while to get a new reply, during this time he entertained himself with lazily stroking his leaking dick. Smearing precum over his sensitive head, a finger caressing over the silvery barbell placed right under it, his breath hitching as his sensitivity had gone up tenfold since got the small jewelry. The other arm is flung over his eyes as he tilted his head back and smiled as he always did when he was stroking himself, and deleted every single regret about getting the erotic piercing.

The ping of his phone jolted him back to reality. A video. He hesitated at first but decided to press play.

It was you, at first sucking the dildo, swirling your tongue around the head of it, a string of saliva snapping as you smiled into the camera before moving both the phone and dildo slowly downward. A small gasp escaped you off-camera as you slowly pushed the fake dick into your already soaking cunt. You started slow, just teasing yourself with how it filled you, but after slowly pulling it out you suddenly shoved it in, and he vaguely heard his name escape you again.

One part of him couldn’t believe you were actually sending him videos, while the other part of him kicked itself for not asking for it earlier. This was pure bliss for him.

This video was what made lust take over, though, and he decided it was time for him to give you what you’ve asked for for a long time

Checking the lightning around him, he grabbed his cock at the base, angling it just right, he snapped a picture, doing his best to really show the sheer size of him. He was fully aware of the fact that he was way above average. His butchering job making sure he’d seen a good amount of men, making him realize how big he actually was. His small light made the silvery part of him glint.

“I hope this is what you’re thinking of when you fuck yourself like that” “because I sure as hell am thinking about fucking your tight pussy right now”

Sent.

The smile on your lips transformed into a needy grin as you bit down on your lower lip when you opened his convo, a quiet moan leaving you as you saw it. All you could do was stare. You dropped the toy to hide your blushing cheeks and needy grin behind your hand, for whom you hid, you had no idea. What you saw must’ve been the biggest dick you’ve ever seen outside of porn.

He must’ve been around 7 - 7,8 inches long, the girth almost scary, your toy suddenly felt way too small for you and you spasmed around nothing. You couldn’t help but drool slightly as you followed every inch of him, brows furrowing in want when you saw the barbell snugly fastened under his swollen and leaking head.

After ogling the huge cock, you gave him what he wanted; you to admit that he was right.

“You’re right, big boy.” “I did want to see this” “I wanna taste you”

"Yeah?” "You wanna suck my dick?”

A shiver runs down your back as your fingers play through your folds at the way he’s talking to you.

“Yeah, I do” “I want to hear you moan as I swallow your big fat cock down my throat”

The phone went quiet for a minute or two before you got an attachment sent your way, this time, he had sent a video, and you thought you were going to lose your mind at what you saw.

Pressing play, you saw his cock twitching in his hand before he slowly started stroking himself. He was slow at first, teasing himself - or you, you weren’t sure and didn’t care at this point - before he decided to up his tempo. Off-camera, you could hear his heavy raspy breathing, a deep moan, and something that sounded like a breathy “ fuck ”, it was low like he didn’t mean for it to escape his throat.

"Where have you been all my life?" "Your cock is amazing"

This time, you grab your dildo and sit down in front of the full-body mirror you've placed in your bedroom. Spreading your legs, you tease your slit with the toy smiling straight into the camera and furrowing your brows with want and need before pushing the toy in your wet cunt. You fuck yourself slowly as you decide to start talking instead, asking one simple question. “Want to watch me cum?”

When Thomas' phone dinged he almost dropped it out of excitement.

His head rolled back against his chair as he watched you fuck yourself, a growl low in his throat as he started dreaming of how it would feel when your muscles clench around him, making sure to squeeze his own hand in a desperate way to mimic that feeling. He started thinking how in the hell he’d been happy just reading your words earlier and seeing the occasional nude photo coming from you.

The videos were so. much. better. He almost couldn’t type anymore. He’d lost his words in fogginess that was lust, if he talked he’d be speechless at the amazing view coming from his phone. He was close, but he refused to cum without seeing you do the same, letting his aching cock go, he pulled up the keyboard.

"Please… " "I do want to see you cum" "need to" "need to see that beautiful pussy cum because of me"

You huff slightly as you see his desperate plea for you to show him. But at this point, you can't keep edging yourself. Your pussy clenched hard as you watched yourself in the mirror.

Alright, you thought. I'll give you what you want

"Do you think of me when you cum, Thomas? Ever think of how I would look covered in your cum?"

Hurrying, you prop your phone up in a standing position, making sure you are well visible in the camera you hit record; Your toy pumps in and out in a hectic tempo, hitting a really sweet spot inside your cunt, the other hand rubbing your clit.

Your orgasm was approaching fast and just moments before it hit, you look straight into the camera and with a breathy voice you say; "Because I think of you when I do." And just as your orgasm hits, you throw your head back, your voice loud as you scream his name in ecstasy.

Before stopping the recording, you lean in close to your phone and whisper; "I hope you do."

He was in the middle of replying to your questions when he saw you’d sent him a video, completely ignoring to reply to you, he pressed play. Thomas’ mouth just hung open as he watched the - for him - most beautiful and erotic scene he’s ever seen play out on his phone. His hand pumped in time with the way you fucked yourself and he almost had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from moaning out loud in fear of his family heard him.

The sounds your toy made as it went in and out of your wet cunt sent shivers down his spine and exploded in a myriad of tingles in his dick, making it twitch, his own orgasm building at a rapid speed.

But when he heard and saw you cum, and the way you screamed his name as you did, he couldn’t hold it at bay any longer. His orgasm washed over him, a low choked groan left his lips as his thick and almost cream-like seed shot over and covered his hand, landing a good way up to his chest. He forced himself to let his phone go because if he didn’t, he would surely have crushed it the way his fist clenched until his knuckles turned white. He grit his teeth, heavy, huffing and wheezing breaths coming from his lungs.

You’d made an absolute mess out of him, and you hadn’t even touched him. Sweat was running down his temple, his hair stuck on his neck, he was absolutely spent .

If only you knew, he tilted his head back, trying to catch his breath, how much I think of you when I do.

It's been two weeks since you've heard from this man who now has a name resting before his little chainsaw icon. It wasn't that weird not hearing from him for a few days, but never two weeks. You'd gotten a special assignment from work, meaning you'd had to travel to Texas. Before you left you sent him a short message.

"I just wanted to tell you I'm going to drive for a while, so can't text much."

No response. You guessed he'd had his fun with you, gotten what he wanted, and now he was tired of you.

You were stranded at a small dip in the road, your car had broken down in the middle of it, but you had managed to push it into a safer spot away from the traffic - if there actually were any. It was hot and humid. And you hated yourself for actively choosing to drive instead of taking a flight as you kicked your car out of anger.

"I. Fucking. HATE YOU! You absolute…" Kick "piece" Kick "of" Kick "trash!"

You were hot and you suspected your skin was starting to turn red due to the angry sun screaming down at you.

Footsteps coming your way distracted you momentarily from abusing your poor car and you got happy for only a moment as you went to turn to the person. Before you had the chance to fully turn towards them the butt of a gun slammed against your temple and everything went black.

You wake up with your head throbbing, you move to sit up from an apparently horizontal position but notice you can't.

You're bolted down.

"What…", you try looking around, but your position makes sure you can only flip your head from side to side, the room is cool and dim. From a distance, you hear voices shouting in what sounds like a heated argument. "Hello…?", you try to yell out. Your heart begins to beat in a rapid rhythm as the voices quiet down. They heard you. Not long after they go quiet, you notice the floor above you start cracking and creaking with footsteps, and soon after a door slides open. "Hello?", you try again.

An angry voice rings out again; "You heard me, boy! I don't give a rats fuckin' ass about what you say. You take care of 'er now, or I will!", the door slides shut again.

Heavy footsteps are coming your way, and your breathing starts picking up. "Who's there?", you hear heavy breathing in the room, the person is moving closer. "Please… I beg of you.", you try pleading to the stranger. You're so, so scared, you don't know if you're about to get killed, or used for other things, to be locked up on the surface you’re pinned down to only be viewed as an object. You don't know anything.

The person stops close to you, you see them in the corner of your eyes. But they're not saying anything, only watch you in silence.

You turn your head towards them, and they back off into a shadowy corner. They seem… afraid. "What do you want from me? Who are you?", they seem to flinch slightly at your words. You can see their whole body moving with each breath. "I don't know what you want!", tears start prickling in the corner of your eyes as panic sets in. "Please, let me go! I… I don't… I was just passing through!", you thrash against your restraints as your tears start streaming freely. Pain shooting through your restraints digs into your skin. "I don't want to die…", you sob.

Thomas can't move. He's frozen. He wants to move, he really does, but his body refuses to cooperate.

You're here. In the basement. Where everything grim happens. Where no one gets out alive. Where he is supposed to kill and butcher you. The person who’s been so nice to him over text messages, keeping him company during lonely nights. The one who willingly showed herself reaching her climax thanks to him, even after he had shown you his face.

Charlie has already told him he can't keep you. He didn't care that Thomas knows you, he didn't give a fuck about how nice you've been, how you didn't stop talking to him after you've seen his face. Thomas had a job to do, but he couldn't. He's breathing heavily as your voice pierces the otherwise quiet basement, his mind flashes back to the video saved on his phone. All those late nights where he’d read your words with his hand down his own pants.

You're here. What are you doing here?

Three words from you wake him up from his trance-like state.

You sigh. "Just do it..", you've given up. You realize you won't get out of here alive, a part of you already accepting that fate. You won't see your family anymore.

You'll never hear from Thomas again. The last thought makes another stream of tears run down the side of your face and you turn to your captor. "Please, do it fast… I… I don't want to feel pain.", a weak defeated smile reaches your lips, "Just kill me." Your last words seem to trigger movement in the figure as it moves towards a wall close to it, a small click and a light flicker on. You're bathed in a harsh white light, your newly cried eyes burn slightly as you adapt to it.

And you guess this is it.

The figure moves close to you again, and suddenly; he's right next to you. Your eyes widen in nothing but pure shock as you see dark, shoulder lengths locks. "What…", your heart beating a panicked drumming melody against your ribs. "You can't be…". The man reaches up to his head, and that's when you realize he's wearing a mask that looks way too familiar to you. He unbuckles it, and that’s when it clicks in your head. You see a face you recognize. A face you've dreamed off. A face you've masturbated to almost every night for two weeks.

But seeing this face makes tears well in your eyes for the third time and a cry that almost makes you scream bubbles up from your stomach. He just looks at you with sad eyes, eyes you wish you hadn’t seen, eyes you wish you didn’t recognize.

Thomas’ eyes.

[let-it-raines]

Prompt - David and Mary Margaret discover this great groupon deal for an autumn leaf changing tour and cabin rental in Vermont, but the catch, it's for 4 people. Enter in the reluctant best friends that can't stand each other. (And you know, the cabin only has 2 rooms)

🍁 found on ao3 | here | 🍁 

-/-

Here’s the thing about Killian Jones: Emma doesn’t hate him.

She really, really doesn’t. Hate is a strong word that she saves for people like Neal and the asshole who took her parking spot and made her lose her skip and her bigger paycheck last week. It’s not a word she uses to describe her opinion of Killian Jones. That would be better described as mistrust or slight animosity or dislike. In the nicest of terms, it could be described as nonchalance and uncaring, maybe a little bit of annoyance, but those are only true when she hasn’t seen him for awhile and has forgotten how annoying he can be.

Right now, annoyance is the exact word she would use to describe her relationship with him, mostly because his appearance was unexpected and unwelcome.

A month ago, Mary Margaret called Emma and told her that she and David won a trip to Vermont for a weekend of walking trails to see the leaves changing. It included free lodging, free dinners, tickets to a farm where you could pick your own apples and pumpkins and sit at their restaurant on the lake and drink the cider brewed at that very farm. It sounded nice, like the plot and setting of a Hallmark movie Emma only watches when she’s at Mary Margaret’s loft, and Emma told Mary Margaret that she hoped they had a good time.

Then Mary Margaret told her the trip was actually for four people, invited Emma and their mutual friend Ruby, and Emma figured why not? Her job has been stressing her out lately, and it’s a free vacation. Who passes up a free vacation?

Ruby Lucas apparently does in order to go to help her grandmother with the catering of a last-minute wedding, and Emma didn’t know about that until she got in the back of David’s truck and saw Killian Jones sitting in the spot that was supposed to be Ruby’s.

She feels cheated.

This was supposed to be relaxing even if it was going to be spent watching David and Mary Margaret be overly affectionate with each other, and now she has to deal with Killian for an entire weekend.

That’s two days and twelve hours too long if she includes today…which she definitely is.  

They’ve been in the truck for a little over three hours, which means they should be at the lodge soon, and Emma’s trying to focus on the scenery outside. It’s gorgeous, much more rural than what she’s used to living in the central part of Boston, and from what she’s heard of the lodge and the trails surrounding it, it’s only supposed to get better.

This is good. This can be a good weekend. Maybe she can go off on her own for most of it, and she won’t have to be with Killian or the lovebirds. They’ll be too busy getting lost in each other’s eyes, and he’ll be too busy flirting with every woman around. There’s definitely got to be opportunity for her to go off on her own.

If not, she might fling herself into a pile of leaves and never emerge for air.

And she’ll definitely blame it on Ruby for not telling Emma about her last-minute cancellation.

When they do eventually arrive at the lodge – after thirty minutes of Killian complaining about one of his coworkers – it turns out to look more like a small castle than anything else. It’s made of gray stone and covered in ivy and weeds while still being maintained. There’s a round fountain in front of the entryway, and behind the building, Emma can see the path that leads down to the lake and the hills that are full of trees behind it. Every tree is a different shade of red, orange, green, and yellow, and Emma has never wanted to take a picture of nature so much in her life. She’s about to live out the life of one of those girls on Instagram who only do things for the aesthetics, and for a weekend, she can’t say she minds.

What she does mind, however, is that when David hands her the key to her room, he hands Killian a key to the same room.

The same room as in her room.

Her. Room.

Hers.  

“No.”

“Why are you saying no?” David asks, tilting his head in question.

“No, as in no I will not share a room. I thought I was getting my own room.”

“It’s a couple’s weekend, Emma, and I bet you would have been fine sharing a room with Ruby.”

“Yeah, because Ruby’s…”

“Ruby’s not me,” Killian interjects, wrapping his arm around Emma’s shoulder. She tries to shrug it off, but it doesn’t move anywhere. It’s deadweight up there, and Killian has unfortunately turned so he can’t see her death stare. Not that it would have any effect on him. “You see, Dave, it’s just that Emma is wildly attracted to me, and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to contain herself knowing I’m only a few feet away from her, especially when she discovers I sleep in the nude.”

“Oh my God.” Emma moves from underneath Killian’s arm, her strength coming back to her, and moves toward her – their, ugh – door. She turns the key, which is for some reason the old fashioned kind and not a card. “Please stop talking, Jones. I am not wildly attracted to you, and I can handle sharing a room. I’m not a child.”

“See, I knew the lass could do it.”

He winks at her and does this ridiculous eyebrow thing at David, and Emma is seriously considering paying thousands of dollars (she googled this place when they walked inside, and it is not cheap) for her own room.

“We’ll meet you guys in the lobby in thirty minutes, okay? We’re going on a tour of the grounds with our guide and then dinner, so dress for both.”

“When is the hike?” Emma asks, lingering in the doorway.

“Not until tomorrow. I’ll get Mary Margaret to send you the itinerary.”

“She already has. I just haven’t looked at it.”

“I’m not telling her that,” David laughs. “See you soon.”

Emma waves, smiling at David, and turns into the room, dragging her luggage behind her. It doesn’t take long before she’s stopped in her tracks, her sneakers snagging in the carpet, as Killian runs into her back.

“Bloody hell, why’d you stop like that?”

She opens her arm to the bed – singular – in front of them, which would look cozy and soft and all of the good things if she had it all to herself. “If you didn’t bring clothes to sleep in, you’re sleeping in your fucking jeans,” she mumbles before turning toward the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

This is fine.

This is all fine. Emma has been through a hell of a lot worse, and maybe Killian won’t be an ass. Maybe he’ll be the gentleman he always claims to be.

She’s never believed him for a second when he’s said shit like that.

Emma changes out of her leggings and sweatshirt into a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, grabbing her red plaid jacket and a beanie and placing them to the side for when she leaves. She puts on some mascara, a swipe of lipstick, and brushes out her hair. This is as good as it’s going to get, and she doesn’t mind that. Mary Margaret will tell her that tomorrow or whenever they go to the nice dinner that she’ll have to dress up, and Emma is giving herself a break on the makeup until then.

She had to pile it on every night this week for work, and her skin is screaming for a break.

Killian knocks on the door, telling her to hurry up because he has to get ready too, so she takes five extra minutes…out of spite…because she knows it’s just petty enough for it to rub him the wrong way. She doesn’t feel bad about it either. Killian would do the same damn thing.

“You look nice,” Killian tells her when she opens the bathroom door and he’s standing on the wall opposite the bathroom, leg propped up and arms crossed over his chest. His eyes trail up and down her body, and Emma moves out of the doorway. A shiver runs down her spine, but she ignores it.

Definitely, definitely ignores it.

It’s cold up in Vermont, even colder than in Boston, and these old walls aren’t helping.

Killian takes approximately two minutes to get ready, all of which is probably spent getting into ridiculously tight jeans, and then they’re begrudgingly walking to the lobby where David and Mary Margaret are waiting for them already talking to the guide, a peppy woman named Anna who is like the redheaded version of Mary Margaret when Mary Margaret is in one of her “everything is a fairytale” moods.  

Anna takes them throughout the property, giving them the history of the place while offering up different amenities that are not included with the package they won but still accessible if they’re willing to pay. There’s a spa, a gym, three different hiking trails, an option to take row boats out on the lake if the weather is nice, and there are two different restaurants on the property. They also offer drivers to several places around town, including the grocery store and the farm they’ll be visiting tomorrow after their hike, and Emma is sure several other things are said. She zones out about halfway through, distracted by the view of the trees and how they’re reflected on the lake. Everything is in an orange glow right now, one that brings comfort to Emma.

She’s always liked sunsets. It’s cheesy and she’d never admit it out loud, but she likes the predictability of them. They don’t always look the same, but they happen every day, even if she can’t see it. She likes that, having that constant. It’s not something she has a lot of, constants that is, and she takes every one she can get.

Maybe this weekend won’t be so bad.

If she says that enough, she just might believe it.

-/-

Dinner is nice.

The food is good, the wine surprisingly good since she was pretty sure it was going to be some funky homemade stuff, and even more surprisingly, the company is great.

When she thinks that, she wonders if the alcohol content in the wine was higher than the server said it was.

All the good thoughts about Killian go away, however, when they’re back in their (still so awful to have to think) hotel room, and Emma is awkwardly sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing lotion on her arms. Killian, thank goodness, is in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt, so he’s not even going to attempt to sleep naked.

She was 100% sure that he would try, and she’s honestly kind of sad she won’t get a chance to slap him.

On the cheek.

On his face.

She doesn’t want to slap him anywhere else.

Okay, that wine’s alcohol content was definitely higher than it should have been.

Killian plops down on the bed, the mattress shaking beneath him, and tugs the covers over him. His movements jostle her, and she grits her teeth as she finishes moisturizing. He turns on the TV, puts it on some show she has never heard of, and Emma tries to keep calm. She’s tired. She’s going to fall asleep quickly, and the TV won’t bother her. She falls asleep every night with the TV on, so this is nothing new.

Emma turns down the corner of the bed on her side and slides underneath before flipping the switch for the light. The room darkens except for the TV and the glow of the alarm clock, and Emma closes her eyes. They’ve got a lot to do tomorrow, and she doesn’t want to be walking around wishing she had an IV of coffee to keep her awake.

Slowly, sleep comes for her, tugging at the corners of her eyes, and just as she’s about to succumb to it, the comforter is tugged off of her, leaving her foot exposed to the cold air of the room.

What the hell?

Emma tugs it back, shifting her leg to have it covered, and for a moment, she’s warm. Warm and cozy and not even the too loud laugh track on the TV is disturbing her.

The fact that Killian pulls away the comforter again is, however, disturbing her.

Actually, it really freaking annoys her, so she pulls it back. Hard this time, and Killian grunts in response and rolls over. she feels his foot brush against her calf, and she kicks out, moving him back to his side. It’s only a queen-sized bed, so there’s not a lot of room for them to stay separate. She’s about three seconds away from finding pillows or their suitcases and putting them in between the two of them so he stops encroaching on her space.

And taking her comforter.

Because it’s definitely hers. Just like this room was supposed to be.

Killian wasn’t even supposed to be on this trip. It was supposed to be Ruby, who definitely would have stayed on her side of the bed. Better yet, she probably would have met someone and would be staying with them, and Emma would have this entire bed to herself.

It’s so comfortable that it’s a shame she has to share it. She’s not used to that anymore, and she likes to stretch out.

The comforter moves again, and Emma grips onto it, holding it where she is and tucking it underneath her ass to keep it as steady as possible. At this point, he has to be doing it to annoy her, and Emma is not going to lose this battle.

She’ll stay up all night if she has to.

“You know, Swan,” Killian mumbles, “normally I prefer to do more enjoyable activities with a woman on her back than fight over the covers.”

Emma groans and rolls over on her stomach, pointedly kicking out at him. “Shut up, Jones.”

“If that’s what the lady wishes.”

Emma mutters into her pillow, and for a few minutes, as the blanket stealing calms down and the TV quiets, Emma wonders if she could feasibly fake some sleeping disorder that has her punching Killian in the face all night.

She can be a pretty good actress sometimes. She could probably pull it off.

She doesn’t do that, though, because she eventually falls asleep, one foot sticking out into the cold air.

Damn you, Jones.

-/-

There’s a warm body nears hers.

That’s the first thought Emma has when she wakes up – after thinking of how annoying her alarm sound is. The body warm and solid and a little hairy, and it takes her two seconds to remember where she is and who she’s sharing a bed with. She knew she should have slept on the floor last night because in no world does she want to have her leg pressing up against Killian’s leg and her ass…

“Oh my God,” she murmurs, eyes blowing wide as she turns and moves her body as much as she can. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my Goooooooood.”

“What are you yelling about?” Killian groans, shifting behind her, which only makes it worse.

“I’m not yelling,” Emma hisses. She pushes away and sits up, and there’s no need to even adjust the comforter because none of it is on her. “What are you doing near me?”

He raises his brow, wrinkles on his forehead popping up. Getting a look at him now, she knows the ruffled look he sometimes does with his hair is natural, and for some reason, that really freaking annoys her.

“I was sleeping until you decided to have a conniption.”

“Yeah, well that’s because your dick…oh shit.”

Emma wasn’t going to say that. She really wasn’t, and from the way Killian’s brow is arching higher, she knows that she’s messed up. She’s given him the perfect set up for all of his innuendos, and knowing him, she’s never going to be allowed to live this down.

What a great start to her morning.

“Usually that’s not the reaction, but I understand your shock, love. You weren’t prepared, and it’s, well, a lot to take in.”

“Oh my God, shut up.” She takes the pillow from behind her and smacks him with it as he laughs. He’s getting far too much enjoyment out of this, and she’s wondering how long she would be in jail if she smothered him. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Make it cold and bracing. I think you might need it.”

“Yeah, I’m not the one with morning wood, but you keep thinking that.” She gets off the mattress and reaches down for her bag. Killian may have unpacked his stuff, but she didn’t bother to do that, even if it means everything is wrinkled. “Please don’t take care of it while I’m showering. That’s just…we have to share the bed, Jones, and I’ve worked in hotels before. I know they don’t always change the sheets.”

He mock salutes, the cheekiest grin on his face, and this is really going to be a long day.

-/-

It’s a long day.

Before she can even get coffee in her, she’s dragged out to the hiking trail. The sun hasn’t fully risen, and they’re supposed to be watching the sunrise and how it matches up with all the changing trees. It’s beautiful. She knows it is, and she does manage to take some pictures that she’s sure capture about half of the beauty. The thing is that despite her best efforts, she didn’t sleep well, and she’s only running on adrenaline and annoyance.

Mostly at Killian.

He’s been staring at her all morning, a joke on the tip of his tongue about their morning, and he’s started to make them several times before Emma shoots him a look or elbows him in the stomach. Mary Margaret has given Emma several funny looks, and if she wasn’t so wrapped up in David and the romance of the changing leaves and the sunrise, she’d probably ask about it.

Mary Margaret is not one for subtlety or staying out of someone else’s business.

David guides them over the trail, which is somehow all uphill despite no discernible incline, and eventually the come to a perch with a few of the lake and the lodge, miles of trees surrounding it. Emma doesn’t think she’s ever seen anything quite like it, and now she can truly see why so many people travel here just to stare at some trees.

“It’s something isn’t it, Swan?” Killian asks as he walks up behind her, the heat of his body making the chill of the air fade for a moment.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

“I didn’t think looking at trees would be your thing. I don’t take you as much of a nature person.”

Emma turns to face him and crosses her arms over her chest. “You don’t know me well enough to know if I’m a nature person or not.”

He steps closer, invading her space like he always does, and maybe she’s a bit of a liar when she says he doesn’t know her. “Just who are you then, Swan?”

Emma cocks her head and straightens her back, not letting him overwhelm her. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He smiles and nods, lashes fluttering until his eyes are hooded. “Perhaps I would.”

“We better get moving if we want to make it to the apple orchard on time,” David tells them, making Emma jump away from Killian and smooth down her flannel over her stomach. “You okay? You look flushed.”

“Just the walk,” Emma lies. “I’m sure that’s all.”

-/-

“I will throw this apple at your head.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Emma groans, audibly, and plucks another apple from the tree and puts it in her basket. It’s getting a little heavy, and not in a million years could she eat all these apples before they spoil. They’re not for her, though. They’re for the farm and its cider and pies and tarts and all the other apple goods they make. She must admit that it’s a brilliant business plan, having people pick the apples for you and then make them pay for it and the food and drinks.

She can’t believe people actually pay to do this. The hike, she gets, foraging for your own food, not so much.

Emma picks an apple out of her basket, one that kind of looks gross and a little squished, and she tosses it at the back of Killian’s head. It hits, just barely, and she stops as he reaches up to touch his hair.

“What is wrong with you?” he hisses, turning around to glare at her.

“You’re the one who has spent the last ten minutes being invasive to my personal life, so what’s wrong with you?”

“Asking if you were still seeing Graham Humbert is not invasive.”

“It is definitely invasive.”

Killian’s shoulders shrug, and he steps closer to her. Really close, actually. He does this obnoxious thing where he’s always encroaching on her space when he speaks, swaying closer and dipping his head down until their eyes are level. He’s doing that now, obnoxious, downright cocky grin gracing his lips, and Emma backs away, dodging some low-hanging apples, until her back is against the tree and she’s putting her basket on the ground. She really hopes there aren’t ants crawling all over her, but at this point, she’s too distracted to care.

For every inch that she moved, Killian matched her. And now, he’s more in her space than ever, the heat of his body warming her more than her jacket. How is he that damn hot?

Only in the temperature sense…not in the other way. She is obviously still a little tipsy from the wine last night that she still maintains had a higher alcohol content than usual.

He chuckles, and his eyes look at her before glancing down at her lips. It’s not even a quick glance. It’s pointed, and Emma knows she was meant to notice it.

“Please,” Emma huffs, “you couldn’t handle it.”

He doesn’t even flinch. “Perhaps you’re the one who couldn’t handle it.”

She wants to say something back, some smart, snide remark that will make him frustrated, but she also wants to prove him wrong. Emma doesn’t care what anyone else has to say, and she’s heard all the rumors. Kissing Killian Jones is not going to have an effect on her.

So she grabs the lapels of his coat and pulls him forward until his mouth is on hers and Emma’s head is pressing into the back of the tree. The bark scratching the back of her neck would be uncomfortable if she wasn’t so focused on Killian. He’s not kissing her back, his lips rigid against her, and she’s just about to pull back and give him shit over being a horrible kisser when he moves. His hand comes to her hair, yanking on the strands as he tilts her head the way he wants it, and his prosthetic rests at her waist. Every thought she had about him being stiff was wrong.

She’s never felt anyone move like this.

She’s also had some pretty damn good kisses in her life, but she can’t remember the last time one took her breath away and made heat curl over her skin as soft lips moved over her and slightly rough stubble scratched against her skin, likely leaving her red.

Emma can’t remember the last time she was kissed well, and damn, what a shame that is.

She could get used to that.

But she knows that’s a dangerous thought, and this is a dangerous game she’s playing. If she’s bringing cards to the table to play, she has to be open to the possibility that she can lose her hand.

Emma isn’t open to that right now.

So, she pulls back, just barely though, and tries to catch her breath as Killian does the same. He’s panting, and in any other circumstance, the sound would be like heaven to her, a strong indication of what’s to come next. Not in this one, though, and when Killian moves in, she pulls away.

“That was,” he begins, seemingly trailing off in a search for the words to describe what just happened.

She doesn’t know either, but it doesn’t take her long to figure out what she wants to say.

“A one-time thing,” she finishes, knowing she has to say it as she looks at him and the flush of his cheeks. “I’m going to find David and Mary Margaret. Don’t follow me. Wait five minutes and...” she glances down toward his jeans “…calm down.”

He mockingly bows, same smug smile she’s used to back on his lips. She knows how they feel now, and that feels wrong.

“As you wish, milady.”

-/-

The late afternoon lunch (or is it early dinner considering the time?) is awkward as hell. They’re sitting at a small, supposedly cozy table in the midst of the most romantic patio ever created (think of all the string lights in the world and then double it) with wine and cider in their glasses and good food on the table in front of them.

Emma wants to run away.

She can’t.

It really freaking sucks.

And it doesn’t help that Killian keeps looking at her with these big blue eyes that she doesn’t normally see. He looks earnest almost, and she doesn’t think Killian Jones has been earnest a day in his life.

Then again, how much does she know?

“Oh, this is so romantic,” Mary Margaret sighs. “I’m so glad we won this trip.”

“Does romance include two of your mates sitting at the table with you?” Killian asks. “Dave was playing footsy with me earlier we’re so cramped in here.”

“Was that you?” David hisses, cheeks going red, and Emma starts to laugh. That’s the best thing she’s heard all day.

“Yes, it is romantic even with you and Emma here. And with David somehow mistaking your leg with mine.”

“In my defense, Killian’s calves are only a little bigger than yours, sweetheart.”

“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.”

“Flattered, of course,” Killian says. “I have bloody fantastic legs. Ask Swan here. She felt them up last night.”

Emma kicks out her foot at Killian under the table, not one hundred percent sure she’s actually hitting his leg, but then she sees the slight wince. Gotcha.

“So, what are we doing after this?” Emma asks to change the subject. “Another hike? More apple picking? Second dinner?”

Mary Margaret sighs, “a carriage ride back to the hotel, but they’re going to take us the scenic route.”

“Of course they are,” Emma mutters, stabbing her food and stuffing it into her mouth. She’s going to need more wine.

-/-

The carriage ride is worse than the dinner. For one, the horses smell horrible, much worse than the food, and the carriage is somehow smaller than their table. She’s pressed completely up against Killian, their sides aligned, and he has his arm over her shoulder while they share a blanket. She tried to refuse, but it’s gotten really cold. Her nose and her fingers are going to fall off soon, and she’s as zipped up as she can be.

David and Mary Margaret practically make out across from them, and even though Emma knows more about their sex life than she would ever want to know, sitting his close to it as a horse drags them along the road is not something she’s comfortable with.

“Make it stop,” she murmurs into Killian’s shoulder, half to keep her from having to look at David and Mary Margaret but mostly to keep her nose warm.

“I’m afraid we have to ride this one out, love. If you want, we could share our own kiss…again.”

She hits his thigh underneath the blanket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever helps you sleep through the night.”

-/-

She doesn’t sleep through the night.

She’s too aware of her surroundings, of the warm body a few inches from her own.

It’s all too much, even if he didn’t try to steal the covers tonight, and if she wasn’t so damn stubborn, she’d sleep on the floor. She told herself she would do that tonight, but now it feels like admitting defeat.

Emma doesn’t like to admit defeat.

-/-

They go for another hike the next morning, their last morning in Vermont.

Emma sticks next to David the entire time, asking him mundane questions she doesn’t care about just to keep the conversation flowing and to keep Killian from making any jokes she doesn’t want him to make. It works, mostly, and Emma is even able to enjoy herself and the view for a lot of it. Boston can be gorgeous, but she’s going to miss a lot of this.

It’s the picture perfect dream, but Emma knows perfection doesn’t exist. And in pictures, it’s almost always photoshopped.

Doesn’t make it any less stunning as she stares out at it all, and it doesn’t make her want the picture perfect dream any less. The one where she isn’t so scared of getting hurt again and where she lets herself have fun, lets herself feel safe.

Lets her heart in on the decision making with her head.

-/-

Emma sleeps on most of the car ride back to Boston, and when she wakes up, it’s with a sore neck and tired eyes. It’s also in front of her apartment. She thanks the Nolans for the weekend, and very slowly, it dawns on her that Killian is no longer in the car. They must have dropped him off first, and she doesn’t know why, but it stings a bit that she doesn’t get to say goodbye to him as well.

That’s the lack of sleep talking, obviously.

Emma would never miss saying goodbye to Killian because that would mean she was going to miss his presence. She wouldn’t do that, though. Of course not. Because she didn’t have a good time when he was around. He didn’t make her smile at all this weekend.

He never makes her smile at all.

If Emma was using her own superpower to detect lies, there would be a blaring red light over her head with a little bell blaring in her ears.

She is ignoring it in favor of stuffing everything about this weekend in her bag and not looking into it. It was pretty. Nice pictures were taken, good food was had, and nothing else happened.

(Ding, ding, ding.)

-/-

Life returns to normal. She goes to work, goes to the gym, is occasionally dragged out to bars and clubs with her friends on the nights she isn’t working.

(She does finally get that guy from two weeks ago, and the paycheck is worth the struggle.)

Killian is around a lot more than he usually is. He’s in school getting his degree in software engineering on some scholarship he got from his service in the Navy, and he usually bartends at night. That job fizzled out, though, so when they all have pizza night or go out or meet up for lunch, he’s usually there.

Emma finds it odd, but she doesn’t mind.

She doesn’t pay much attention to him because she’s making a conscious effort specifically not to pay attention to him, not until he misses a fantastic opportunity to make an innuendo, and she realizes he hasn’t been making a lot of those lately. They’re there, sure, but not in as high of a quantity as they usually are.

It’s weird, but the weirdest thing about it all is how much she misses them.

Huh.

When did that happen?

When did the flirting stop annoying her and start making her laugh? When did she start liking it?

Liking him?

The thought comes to her without true warning and without permission. It’s wiggled its way out of the deep caverns of her mind and made it to the surface, gasping for air so it can live out in the open. She has a physical reaction to it, her hands coming to cover her mouth as she inhales a deep breath that has everyone looking away from the TV to look at her.

“You alright?” Ruby asks from her spot on David and Mary Margaret’s couch.

“I’m fine,” Emma lies, knowing her friends won’t push her further. They’ve known her long enough to know not to do that too often. “Just need some water.”

She gets up from her chair and walks toward the kitchen, her mind running faster than Usain Bolt, and she tries to focus on pouring herself a glass of water and on the football game that’s on. She doesn’t even really like football, but it’s kind of a fall tradition around here. She just has to go with it.

Everything is fine. This is fine.

This is…this is crazy. It’s even crazier that she can’t tell if her body is experience fear, joy, or some insane mixture of both bottled up with all of the adrenaline it can muster.

“You sure you’re alright, love?” Killian asks as he walks into the kitchen puts his plate in the sink. Of course he followed her in here. He, unlike Ruby, Mary Margaret, and David, has no qualms about bothering her. “You look a bit flushed. You’ve gone red around your cheeks.”

“Fine,” she lies again. “I’m fine.”

If she says that word enough, it’ll be true.

“Are you certain because I – ”

“Why don’t you flirt with me anymore?” she blurts before she can stop herself. She must be going crazy because this is insane. Who has taken over her body, and can she get it back please? Preferably before she does something stupid like kissing him again.

Then again, that wasn’t all stupid. It felt pretty damn good.

Killian arches his brow, his forehead wrinkling, and she knows she’s about to get some dumbass answer. He scratches behind his ear with his prosthetic. “Because if I’m to win your heart Emma, as I’d like to, I’d like to do it in a way that doesn’t piss you off, as much as I do love that. It’s quite entertaining for me, especially when you go red as you are now. It’s a becoming color on you, but I realize my methods of getting your attention were a bit childish.”

Well, okay then. Maybe not a dumbass answer.

This is a weird, weird few minutes.

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve been doing the adult equivalent of pulling pigtails on a playground?’

He shrugs. “Aye, I guess.”

Emma, once more, doesn’t know what to do or say, so she lets instinct drive her. She steps forward and places her hand on his shoulder, looking him dead in the eye. They’re ridiculously blue, and it’s just not fair. “Asking me to dinner would have worked much better than that. Food has always been the way to my heart, especially if it’s cheap, greasy, and will make my stomach hurt afterward.”

She leaves the ball in his court (or in his possession on the field since they’re watching football and her sports metaphors should make sense, and she’s 82% sure that’s a correct metaphor), and walks away before being pulled back by her wrist until she’s looking at him again.

Once more, he’s earnest, and she’s still getting used to that.

And those blue eyes. Those too. They don’t have to be all devilish all the time.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me, love?” Killian asks, hopeful, kind smile on his face.

Genuine. He’s genuine, and she feels that little flutter that she hasn’t felt in awhile, not since she kissed him against the apple tree to prove a point to herself that she wouldn’t be affected by kissing him.

Emma really is a bad liar, especially when she’s lying to herself.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

[samwrights]

Also (I did another ask so you can take your time) something nsfw with Iwa? Like you’re really close to Oikawa and he basically try to get you a boyfriend but every date is terrible to the point that one night you said to Iwa that you’re not “good looking” enough for someone to stay and then BAM he’s in the mood “Iwa praising you” 👀👀👀

Let’s just change No Filter Friday to Fuck Iwaizumi Friday

Warning: consumption of alcohol, language, praising, groping, slight dub-con (?)

“Dude, I am so fucking sick of this shit.” You snarl, barging into the shared apartment of Oikawa Tōru and Iwaizumi Hajime. Not necessarily an estranged occurrence, considering you and Oikawa were best friends. Even more so than the aforementioned roommates. The latter is sitting on their couch, perking up a little when you slam the weighted front door to the apartment. “Where the fuck is shittykawa?”

“Uh, he went out?” Iwaizumi flicks the television to pause the show he’s watching before peeling himself off the couch. For a moment, the ace stands still, watching you pace around his apartment tugging at your own hair while each step is accompanied the clomping of your heels against the hardwood. “What did he do now?”

“He keeps setting me up on these bunk ass blind dates and they all turn out to be fucking dicks!” Without permission or prompting, you all but stomp over towards their stainless steel fridge, grabbing the first beer bottle you set your sights on. Looking at the label, you scoffed. What college kid, athletes no less, stocked their fridge with heavy beers such as stouts?

Whatever, alcohol is alcohol.

Unceremoniously, you crack off the cap before pulling the the bulbous opening to your lips and taking rapid, unyielding glugs of the syrupy ale. Slamming the now half empty bottle on the granite counter, you wipe the residue, along with your nude inner lipstick off the back of your hand. “Who’d he set you up with this time? It was supposed to be Miya Atsumu tonight, right?”

“Yes,” you seethe, “he basically said that Tōru was wasting his time trying to find someone stupid enough to date me.” The words leave a bitter taste in your mouth. While it wasn’t what Atsumu said verbatim, he may as well have. To be more accurate, he more so said that Tōru was never going to find anyone that met your standards and the whole blind date thing was just wasted efforts.

“You know that’s not true, [name].” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, arms still folded over his broad chest as he slinks into the kitchen beside you as down the rest of the stout and fiend for another bottle. He made a mental note to bill you later.

“At this rate, maybe he’s got a point. Maybe I expect way too much for an ugly bitch.” You let out a laugh before allowing the tiny bubbles of the alcohol to fill your throat instead.

“Oh come on,” he groans, rolling his olive eyes in addition to his whole head, “you know you’re hot—don’t start that whole act.” The words leave his lips so nonchalantly, so uncaring even, making you choke on the liquid until the brown ale is sputtering out of your mouth.

“E-excuse me?” In response, Iwaizumi just quirks a brow once again in confusion. Did he not realize what he just said or...?

“What?”

“Iwaizumi Hajime, did you just call me hot?” Oh. Did you not know that? What an insane concept.

“Yeah? That’s a known fact?” Huh. That was news to you. Why was he acting so casual about of it? Judging the look on your face, Iwaizumi realizes you’re entirely unaware of this little campus-wide fact. “[name], why do you think Oikawa carries a list of people that are dying to date you?”

Huh? “What? N-no, t-that’s not—“

“Oikawa hasn’t been setting you up, he’s been setting them up with you because they all beg him for a chance with you.”

Then there’s silence. A long, awkward silence that can’t even be tampered off with you languidly sipping at the stolen stout. “I’m still waiting for you to say psyche,” you admit. The ace groans, rolling his eyes again before snatching one of your wrists and dragging you back to the foyer. The two of you are standing in front of the large, entryway mirror with Iwaizumi standing behind you and the two of you locking eyes in the mirror.

“You’re the one girl on campus that nobody can touch,” he starts off slowly, pulling your hair away from where it had fallen over your shoulders so that your locks didn’t obstruct his view. “Of course, the first thing everyone notices is your face. Specifically, your lips.” As he speaks, he plants one hand at your waist, the other coming to have his digits ghost over your full, plump lips, still covered in lipstick despite you trying to remove the dry residue earlier.

“W-what are you—“

“Personally, I really like your collarbones.” Iwaizumi interrupts, tracing his fingers along the taut flesh before cupping one of your breasts over the velvet black crop top you were wearing. “Surprised you went with a push up bra, today. You don’t need it.” Your face burns beet red as he gives said tit a reassuring squeeze before stepping closer and pulling your back flush against his broad chest.

Iwaizumi leans closer, eye contact remaining through the mirror as his heady breaths fan out over your neck. His hand drags down roughly from your breast, down your stomach before grabbing your ass over your dark washed denim. “You really don’t feel everyone staring at your ass everyday? Or wonder why I walk behind you and Oikawa on the way to class?”

“I thought you didn’t like being around the both of us.”

“Nah, I just wanted to look at your butt.” Iwaizumi’s hand gives your behind one more squeeze in addition to his lips anchoring themselves at the base of your neck. But something isn’t making sense to you, even through the cloudy haze of lust washing over you as he gropes.

“Y-you said everyone’s been asking Oikawa to set them up with me, so what about you?” A snort leaves his nostrils, accompanied with laughter rumbling in his throat and it doesn’t go over your head that you can feel him. You can feel the vibration of his skin against yours as he suckles on your neck, marking his newfound territory, no doubt. You feel the shaking of his chest as he’s pressed against your clothed back. You can feel his hardening erection through his jeans, threatening to break through the zipper as it presses into your lower back—you can feel all of him with only thin clothing acting as a barrier.

“Oikawa said I wasn’t allowed to even try. Something about being the third wheel,” he mumbles, traveling to the other side of your neck. This time his attention is significantly less as he takes the hand anchored at your waist to pull your chin towards him, eye contact solidifying in real time rather than being held together through a mirror. “I really wanna kiss you.”

“So do it.” And that’s all he needs. All the permission he needed before allowing his mouth to all but swallow your own, his tongue ravaging the inside of your cavern and unleashing years of pent up desire and depravity. You turn on your heel, pushing yourself to be chest to chest with Iwaizumi, draping your arms over him to clutch at the fabric of his shirt covering his torso.

Iwaizumi presses harder into you, forcing you to stumble into the mirror as his tongue massages the roof of his mouth. His large hands, no longer satisfied with feeling fabric in them, start stripping you of your shirt and bra hastily before throwing them onto the floor. “So fucking pretty, baby.” The ace mumbles, olive green eyes locked with yours as he takes one nipple into his mouth. “I’ve fantasized about this every day for years.” A moan escapes your lungs, though you’re unsure if the admission is the cause or the ministrations themselves.

“I-Iwa...”

“Don’t wanna fantasize anymore,” he drawls, tongue swirling around the pebble of your hardened nipple, “lemme fuck your pretty pussy, baby. Wanna feel you nice and tight around my dick.” Your hands frantically clutch at the back of his shirt, shedding the fabric hastily before unbuttoning his jeans and pulling them down along with his boxers.

Iwaizumi Hajime has a pretty cock. Who knew? It’s a beautiful amalgam of olive toned skin blushed bright red, weeping precum and screaming for relief.

Despite the minimal preparatory work, Iwaizumi learns that you’re absolutely soaked as he peels your underwear off and plunges his cock in with no preamble because Jesus Christ, he needs to stuff his length as far in as he can possibly go. “Holy shit,” he drawls.

For just a moment, the two of you are still, save for the way your chests are rising and falling rapidly as you both try to catch your breath. Iwaizumi is grinning, canines poking out as he grins, and despite the events that lead to his dick being buried inside you, there’s a glimmer in his eye that makes the dusty olive hue seem to shine like peridots. As he finally feels oxygen returning to his brain and settling the dizziness that overwhelms him, he lets out a soft laugh. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing,” but you know by his tone there’s more to it than just nothing, “never thought I’d get to say I’m the one fucking the sexiest girl on campus.” By the way the walls of your warmth momentarily clench around his length before relaxing again, Iwa knew he’d done something right. Apparently the praise was going straight from your ears to your pussy. “So fucking tight, too.” He adds, moving his hips slightly to allow the weight of his dick to pressure your nerves. The slow movements in addition to his lips that were now latched onto your collarbones made you dizzy, made you want to scream. “Lemme hear your voice, baby,”

If that was supposed to be a warning, the warning did little to prepare you for the intensity of his hips bucking into yours rapidly and ferociously. Thank god or whoever was up there that Iwaizumi was holding you in place because surely you would have slid to the ground with the way your feet were nearly dangling above the floor. On every withdrawal of his cock, a breathy whine leaves your lips, wordlessly begging and crying for more. “Be a good girl and wrap your legs around me, ‘kay?” The ace manages out between his own pants. You could only oblige.

The slightest shift allows the curve of his dick to nuzzle and nestle along your g-spot ever so slightly, teasingly coaxing your walls to tighten to prolong the feeling of Iwaizumi filling you whole. The entire time, the only sounds leaving your lips are broken sobs of the name of the man fucking you while he is spewing every filthy thought that came to mind. “You feel so fucking good around me, baby.”

“Want you to cum in me,” you mumble, nestling your face into Iwaizumi’s shoulder while laying limp in his control.

“Yeah, gonna take my cum like a good girl?” In response, you could only nod because words were just not a thing right now. “I asked you a question, baby girl.”

“Yes!” You cry out, unaware of the sound of the locks turning not even three feet from the two of your entangled bodies as Oikawa opens the door to the apartment.

“Iwa, I’m—oh what the fuck guys.”

[omniswords]

Chronicles of a Parisian Dumbass 1

because we all really wanted smitten!Luka so I’m making it happen, PERIOD. slight AU? canon divergence? where Luka begins to frequent Tom & Sabine’s bakery when his sister needs a pick-me-up through her first year in university, and may or may not have a thing for the new girl at the register once summer vacation hits. and tweets about it.

(yes, i’m still working on La Joconde! only two parts left :( but i hadn’t posted any lukanette content in a Hot Minute and wanted to share a bit of what i’ve been working on. enjoy, loves!)

at T&S for mom and sister and oh god there’s a cute girl i’ve never seen at the register

Post.

i think she’s got flour on her nose, and she probably doesn’t even know it’s there, and she’s adorable

Post.

send help

Post.

That’s the magical thing about social media, isn’t it. The cool, casual, even bored expression you sport in a waiting room or on the subway is a master at hiding away every all-caps rant you swipe out with your thumb. At keeping every moment you want to scream, excited or outraged, under lock and key in your chest while your fingers do all the talking. At cementing the lines in your brow and your lips while you broadcast how much you’re Gay And Dyingggg—and yes, you really need the capitalization and those extra letters for the emphasis—over the image of a kitten falling asleep mid-meal. The viral-video echo of a child’s singing in a big-box store. The pretty girl in the coffee shop with the floral cloth headband, the nude lip, the grey eyes that stop you in your tracks and somehow always seem to meet yours whenever you Just So Happen to look up.

It’s those capital letters, you know. They really do wonders for emphasis. Emphasis.

In a city like Paris, the hundreds of thousands of people you could pass in a single day would never know the intimacies they could stumble upon by happenstance. The ones you choose to share with a few hundred strangers, friends across oceans or friends of friends who happened upon you or lovers of art the way you love art, because the distance and the screens make it safer.

In Paris, almost no one knows who Luka really is, aside from a blue-haired busker downtown who sometimes frequents coffee shop stages. Or some guy who delivers their evening meals when they don’t feel like cooking. No one has to know. And he’s been fine with that for as long as he’s had these accounts.

He wouldn’t call himself a stranger to the internet. He hardly could; he’s a product of it, raised by it, like most anyone else his age. Frankly, he could go so far as to call it his third best friend—third, because his sister and his mother might fight him for not putting them first, and because he values them enough to put them there. But on the metro, he’s near invisible, and online, he’s Sort Of Someone. A set of hands and a guitar and strings of notes to pull in a few hundred admirers, and even fewer friends he’s never met in person. He doesn’t have to, he’s decided, for them to mean something.

And he’s getting the keen sense that they’re all already hanging onto his last three tweets. Or will be, if they’re not already awake yet. (He’ll never understand that—his body almost never lets him sleep in past eight, no matter how late he goes to bed.)

He has to gather himself before he goes in—which is hilarious, because he must have been to Tom and Sabine’s bakery at least a hundred times by now. Or at least, enough times that they know him by name and to save him a napoleon or two whenever he’s in the area. Is it really that difficult this time because of a girl?

And then she… whoever she is, she smiles at a customer, and it looks like utter sunshine, and almost instantly he wishes she were smiling at him. Just for a few seconds.

Yep. It really is that difficult.

With a flip of his stomach and one last post—all right, prayer circle before i place this order—Luka pushes into the tiny bakery just as the customer is coming out. He shuffles among the racks and display cases as though he’s in a museum, and given the care that goes into these decorations, he might as well be. Usually it’s Mrs. Cheng who’s at the register, humming along to some classical piece they’re playing overhead—it fits her, being so traditional—and there’s a stack of finished cake or pastry orders beside her on the counter. The orders are still there this time, but the music sounds younger; it must be one of those study playlists he sometimes finds online or touches upon when he needs some extra inspiration for his own music.

And there is the girl, with her chin in her hand and the flour still on her nose, absently twirling her pencil as she stares down at a sketchbook like she’s about to get into a fight with it. She doesn’t look bored there. Actually, Luka isn’t sure he’s ever seen anyone so focused before, because even the bell over the door signaling his entrance apparently hasn’t gotten through to her. If anything, she looks like she’s toeing that impossibly thin line between mellow and frustrated, if the quirk in her lips or the pinch in her brow is anything to go by. Even from a distance, he can tell that her face is soft, that her lashes are beautifully long, and that she probably barely has to do anything with them. If it weren’t so weird, or showy, or even creepy, he’d probably stop in his tracks at the door and watch. Try to make up a song about her, for her, on the spot.

Luka takes a deep breath, readjusts his gig bag on his shoulder, and takes a few quiet steps up to the register, still keeping his distance. It isn’t until he clears his throat that she looks up, and he’d swear that he’s never seen eyes so… so blue, before.

He’s never played a song this color before, and he wants to. Instantly.

Before he can get a closer look at the sketches, one that would have been entirely inadvertent, the girl squeaks and snaps her book shut, immediately apologizing for not noticing him right away. Her fingers twitch a bit, but she smiles cordially in spite of them. There it is. That sunshine, just for him. “Welcome to Tom and Sabine’s. How can I help you?”

Luka wonders if that’s just her Customer Service Voice, or if she always sounds that sweet. Either way, somewhere inside him a cork pops, and warmth floods his insides, just for having heard it. Now that he’s this close, now that he’s really heard her, he’d think she’s only a couple of years younger than him. Nineteen or twenty, maybe. “Hi,” he says, as smooth as he can manage. Maybe it’s her first day; he knows some of the woes of customer service, even if most of his work experience has been in food delivery and not actually processing the orders. Maybe he can ease some of her nerves. “I was wondering if I could get something to go.”

“Oh! Sure thing.” The girl brushes some flyaway dark hair out of her eyes, twirls her pencil again, and taps a few colored squares on the tablet in front of her. “What can I get for you?”

“Let’s see…” He already knows the orders by heart, because in spite of their penchant for chaos and unpredictability, the Couffaines don’t mind anchoring themselves to some things. So much so, in fact, that if it were Mrs. Cheng at the register, she wouldn’t even have to ask. She’d already have the box ready. It’s just that he doesn’t want to overwhelm this girl right off the bat, even if he does have the feeling that she’d look even cuter with a blush. “An opera cake, a pear tart, a fraisier”—that’s for Rose, because he wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still over when he gets back. He goes slowly, gives the girl the chance to look for each item in the menu on her screen before punching it in, just in case she’s ever had customers who were less kind.

Yes, that’s definitely the only reason why, and it definitely isn’t because he wants to spend more time at the register, and has that liberty to do so since there aren’t any other customers in the shop and since he’s done with work for the day.

“Anything else?” the girl asks, her voice slightly more clipped now that she’s in the rhythm of it. She cocks her head, more at the register, and quirks the edge of her eyebrow. Maybe she’s more seasoned at this than he thought. Or maybe she just sinks into this mood when she sets to work.

He kind of likes it. Like, a lot.

But that would be incredibly weird to say, to her face or about her online, so he holds his tongue. “Yeah, um…” He looks around, narrowing his eyes at some of the display cases. “Has Mr. Dupain made any napoleons today?”

The girl’s eyes light up a bit, which makes him smile. “I’ll check,” she says—chirps, more like—and flits toward the room in the back like a hummingbird.

Oh, no.

She’s so cute. Too cute.

She’s back in seconds, before he has the time to agonize about it any further. “Yup, we have them. How many would you like?”

“Just the one.” Luka’s already fishing out his wallet from his back pocket. He holds his breath, card in hand, pushes it into the chip reader. “Say, is Mrs. Cheng… doing all right?”

The girl blinks a couple of times. Is it really that weird to ask? “Yes…? She’s fine. She’s just traveling—she went home for a bit to see her family. She’ll be back in… three weeks?” She trips on her words a bit, not in the way that she can’t recall, but in the way that she doesn’t want to be too forward in her speech.

Huh. Mrs. Cheng didn’t mention anything about a trip the last time he’d been here… “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen you around here before.”

The girl smiles faintly, tearing away his receipt once it’s printed. “Well. I guess that makes two of us.”

Oh, she’s good. He doesn’t even know what to say to that.

She flits around the tiny bakery, different pairs of tongs in hand as she assembles his order, and Luka finds himself tapping out the melody of the current song against his thigh. “Nice music,” he says to make conversation. “You pick it out?”

“Uh huh.” There’s that clipped tone again. “Sorry, I know it’s kinda basic—”

“It’s cool.” He pauses. “Uh. I mean, the music is cool.”

The girl looks up from one of the display cases. It might be the lighting, or the distortion of the glass, but he thinks she might be blushing. “You… said that already?”

“Right—right.” Luka clears his throat, leans back against the wall with his arms folded, and resolves to keep his mouth shut and his eyes down. He knows he’s blushing; his face is too hot for him not to be. She’s working, he tells himself. He can’t bother her while she’s working. Still, he can’t help idly tapping the toe of his shoe, or pressing his fingertips into his arms, to that same rhythm, the same melody. At least that keeps him grounded. He only wishes there were lyrics he could mouth along to to make it easier.

He’s about to dip into his own mind, try to find a song that would do the trick, when he hears his name. “Luka?”

Instantly, his head snaps up. The girl is back at the register, a beige box with a gold sticker in her hands, and she holds it out to him. “Yeah,” he says, doing his best to stroll casually to the front and take it from her. “How’d you know my name?”

The girl looks at him, half-confused, before mutely holding up the receipt. On the bottom, along with the last four digits of his debit card number, is his name in tiny capital letters.

Oh. Duh. He heaves a nervous laugh, and on the inside, he’s looking away with wide, mortified eyes. He takes the box from her; the sooner he gets out of here, the sooner he can kick himself. “Thanks. Could you tell Mr. Dupain I said hi?” And also, could you tell him how dare you for hiring a girl who has no right making my heart stop on her first day working?

She nods, twirling her pencil one last time, and Luka’s off with a wave and a mutual exchange of, Thank you, have a nice day! And the instant the door closes behind him and he turns the corner, he sets the box aside, slides down to a squat, and rests his face in his hands, eyes wide and trained on the ground.

In Paris, no one knows that Luka Couffaine is even capable of being an anxious, smitten fool.

Once he’s churned out as many anxious, shaky feelings as he can—once he’s replayed her smile and the sound of his name in his head enough times—he pulls out his phone.

god, i hope she has a nice day. i hope she finds twenty euros on the ground.

Post.

[riverboundao3ff]

Riverbound, Chapter 17

All in all, Lanque’s a whole lot calmer about the whole thing than you thought he’d be, which makes you feel better about going to him right away instead of Daraya. Of course you love Daraya, but knowing the kid she’d probably run off to start a fight with Bronya, Lynera, and any other poor bastard who gets in her way.

“I want to believe Bronya’s doing this because she thinks she’s in the right, but I just can’t… augh! I just… can’t believe she’d ask me to do something like that.” You conclude your messy rant by flopping down on the carpet. There’s a dull ache in your skull from either exhaustion or anxiety, possibly both.

Lanque’s looking down at you from the loveseat in the corner like the universe’s most judgemental therapist, sprawled across the whole thing with his gangly self. “You haven’t known her nearly as long as I have. You heard me say once that she’s the craziest bitch in the whole cloister. I meant it.”

You want to argue with him; Bronya isn’t crazy, just a control freak, but that’s gonna have to be a discussion for another time. “You’re not surprised at all by this? Not even a little?”

“Not surprised. Just… disappointed.”

“What, does she make you to sleep at certain times and check your palmhusk, too?” you joke.

“Not anymore, she doesn’t. She learned her lesson after I filled my whole camera roll with the spiciest nudes you can imagine.”

You try not to imagine anything of the sort and fail miserably. Your last brain cell hangs on for dear life. “So, uh… w-what should I tell her the next time we go out?”

“Tell her that I’ve been taking Daraya to a slam poetry club. We’ve actually done poetry in the past, so it’s not like you’ll be lying,” he says with a smirk. “You should come sometime. Talk to people about all sorts of controversial alien opinions. Maybe throw in some rhymes while you’re at it.”

“Alright,” you agree.

“... Darling?”

“Yes, babe?”

“Don’t breathe a word of this to Daraya. She’s stressed out enough as it is.”

“Of course not.”

“Good.”

:::

The next night you spend with Polypa, vandalizing stuff with the Heiress’s face on it and even setting a billboard on fire. It’s a lot of fun, but between vandalizations you can’t stop yourself from thinking about the girl herself. From what you can tell she’d be around seventeen in human years, which meant she’d soon have to challenge the Empress, as all the Heiresses before her did.

Some teenagers like to play video games, some like to sing or dance or do sports; you even know a few who live all by themselves on an island in the middle of the ocean who can shoot guns better than most military personnel. But not Trizza Tethis. No, she’ll be off to duel for the throne… and her life.

In your hearts of hearts you know that Tethis is a monster. There’s no doubt about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still just a kid, a kid who is going to be murdered soon for the crime of reaching adulthood.

It makes your heart hurt just thinking about that, and all of the other girls that came before her, and if this rebellion goes to shit all the girls who will come after her.

“Hey, Polypa?” you ask.

“Yeah?” She’s hanging upside-down on some broken piping while spraying THE REVOLUTION IS HERE on the side of a post office. You’re being a good moirail and keeping watch for anybody who might see her, even though it’s dark out and you can’t see much past the street lights lining the sidewalk. For some reason she refuses to tell you, she’s been in a mood ever since she came back from Tegiri’s, but you’re patient. You can wait for her.

“Do you ever wonder if Trizza might have been a good person if Alternia wasn’t the way it is?”

Polypa stops what she’s doing and stares down at you. “Honestly? I don’t really care how she might have turned out if things were different. All the things I’ve seen her do, the shit I’ve heard her say on social media… I just can’t bring myself to believe anything other than she’s one of the most horrible Heiresses Alternia’s ever had and that she deserves to die. Slowly and painfully, that is. And then she deserves to be forgotten.”

“That’s fair,” you tell her. “I dunno, I just kept thinking about how she’s supposed to go off and duel the Empress soon, and that she’s definitely not gonna win, because none of the fuschias who went up against her ever did.”

“... Does that make you sad?”

“It makes me sad that a kid is going to die, yes.”

She huffs. “Save your sympathy. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Can trolls control who they sympathize with?”

“Of course we can. Can’t humans?”

You laugh. “No. Or at least I can’t. Empathy’s a blessing and a curse.”

Polypa chucks her spray-paint can into the nearby dumpster. “Empathy? Isn’t that like, feeling what other people are feeling? I thought that was just a myth.”

“Some humans can feel the emotions of others. I’ve always been able to.”

“That sucks.”

“Again, it’s a blessing and a curse.”

Polypa shudders, flips upright, and then drops down to the concrete. “If you say so. C’mon, let’s scram.”

You scram, or at least you try to before somebody bumps into you hard enough to nearly knock you over.

“Watch it!” Polypa hisses from somewhere behind you.

You look up at a boft looking (buff plus soft) rustblood guy, who flinches back when he accidentally looks you in the eye. “Sorry! Sorry. Bye.”

He shuffles off down the street, shoulders hunched in like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible even though he’s easily the biggest rust you’ve ever seen. Huh.

“Well, that was weird,” you say, and then you feel something crinkle in the hood of your jacket. Cautiously, you reach up and grab it, hoping that he didn’t just put a bomb on you or something. You aren’t that worried about dying, because you know your immortal ass is coming right on back, but if Polypa’s in the blast zone--

“It’s a piece of paper,” she says.

“Oh, yay. I thought it might be a bomb.”

“Definitely not a bomb.”

The paper’s been folded several times, so you smooth it out and read the letters that have been cut out and glued out in a note, like some kind of Nancy Drew shit.

“What the…” You read the message, and then you read it again, once, twice, thrice, four times before Polypa starts swatting at you and grabbing for the paper. You hand it over and stare out across the street.

You are not alone. Tomorrow at midnight.

“I’m texting the others,” Polypa mutters, shoving the paper into her pocket and whipping out her palmhusk.

“There’s more of us,” you whisper. “That’s what it means, right? We’re not the only faction out there fighting for-!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, let’s not believe anything that some stranger wrote down on a piece of paper and shoved into your hoodie--”

“But he came to me, Polypa--”

“Hey!”

Both of you turn around to see some cerulean girl you don’t know storming across the street to you. “The fuck you think you gutterbloods are doing, huh?”

“The revolution is here, bitch,” you tell her, and you grab Polypa’s sleeve and zap away.

Polypa does not hesitate to smack you upside the head the second you two appear on the roof of some building downtown. “The hell was that? She just saw an alien and an oliveblood teleport out of an alley with fresh graffiti on the post office!”

“Who’s gonna believe her?” you snort.

“She’s a cerulean, she’ll make somebody believe her.”

“Dude. Chill. We still have time before things get crazy.”

“Apparently not! Tomorrow at midnight--”

“I know! Isn’t it great? What if it’s like, a big post on Chittr, or a public service announcement from God knows where saying that it’s time for bigots to start shitting their pants, because the revolution is here and it is sexy!”

“Augh!” Polypa throws up her hands. You start to get a little concerned. “Aren’t you scared? Like, at all? We could all die tomorrow and you’re just… totally fine! You disappear for half a sweep and come back ready to lead a revolution!”

Alright, it’s time to bring out the big guns. Slowly, so she has time to pull away if she wants, you step forward and reach up to caress her cheek.

The effect is instantaneous. She visibly loosens up from horns to toes, leaning forward into the contact with a low chirrup rising up from deep in her throat. If you were a troll, that sound would have probably made you pale-horny to the max, but you’re human so all you do is just stand up on your tippy-toes to press your foreheads together. You imagine pulling away all of her fear and stress and releasing it into the open sky, never to be seen again.

“We’re not going to die,” you tell her. “We’re just not. And if we were, I’d tell you, because dying isn’t that bad. Doesn’t even hurt, really.”

“... You’ve been dead before?”

“Yeah. Feels like the best fucking nap you’ve ever taken.”

She snorts hard enough for you to feel her breath across your face. “Only you would say something like that and be completely unbothered.”

“That’s just how it be sometimes,” you say, because joking about your trauma and having anxiety are basically your only two personality traits nowadays.

“I’ll write that down for the pile,” she says, because she’s always been able to see right through you, even when you can’t see yourself. “Which we’re going back to an abandoned apartment building to do once I yeet this glass bottle into that window over there.”

She picks up the broken glass bottle at your feet and proceeds to do just that. It sails through the air with all the majesty of an eagle and crashes through somebody’s office window. You know enough about troll romance by now to be a little scandalized by how forward she’s being, but you both know it’s out of necessity. Troll language is far from just verbal-- it’s flattened ears or bared fangs or dilated pupils. It’s hissing and chirping and growling and all sorts of sounds you don’t even know the names for, and you can’t even hear most of them because they’re either too low or too high a pitch for your human ears to catch.

“Hot damn, wildcat. You gonna take me out to dinner before you throw me down on somebody’s abandoned loungeplank?” you tease. Her face lights up in green, and you grin in satisfaction as she splutters something about saving it for the respiteblock.

You’re about to cook up something truly slutty to say when her palmhusk vibrates. Polypa reads it and snorts. “Aaaannnddd Daraya is losing her mind, Tagora says it’s a trap, Tyzias wants to know what the rustblood looked like, Stelsa is in agreement with Tagora, Lanque is asking how the hell it could be a trap when the rustblood didn’t even ask you to meet him anywhere, and Mallek is telling everybody to shut up so he can take a nap. Konyyl and Azdaja haven’t responded yet. I bet they’re making out in a back alley somewhere. Oh, Tagora is telling Lanque to shut his Troll Twilight-looking ass up before he fines him for wasting the rebellion’s time… and Tyzias just sent a bunch of hysterical laughing emojis.”

“I love my friends,” you say.

“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

“I’m gonna get Mallek to hack the server so whenever people start arguing over stupid stuff a bot starts spamming the chat with gifs of fighting purrbeasts.”

“Do group chats have servers?”

“I have no idea. Come on, I’m fucking freezing up here.”

:::

Your memories of growing up on Earth are fuzzy at best. You have no idea if it’s from Scratch, or Ultimate Dirk, or hell, maybe it’s just regular old brain damage, but one of the few things you can vividly remember is when your grandma died.

You can’t remember her name, but you can easily recall her eternally-smiling face, that smile that always reached her eyes-- hazel, like yours. She’s the one who taught you how to braid your hair, wing your eyeliner, ask out a crush. She also taught you how to take down a grown man with nothing but your fists and a pocketknife. Old age hadn’t ever been a problem for your grandma. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

The morning your uncle found in her lifeless in bed hadn’t felt any different than all of the mornings before. You just woke up and started to get ready for school, and then your mom… yeah, it was your mom who picked up the phone. She didn’t cry, but your uncle did.

It was a heart attack.

Your mom told you that you didn’t have to go to school, but you were still pretty young, and it still felt like every other morning before so you went to school.

You’re not sure why you’re remembering this when you first smell the smoke, or see the burning buildings from the roof of the abandoned apartment building you and Polypa crashed in. Maybe it’s because it still feels like every other night before this one.

Something deep in you that’s been irreversibly interwoven with time and space begins to tingle. This is a turning point in history, you just know it.

Polypa’s shaking her head like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “It’s a riot. A riot. In Thrashthrust. We really aren’t…”

“Alone,” you finish with a smile so big it hurts your face.

“... Do you think this is really the right thing to do?”

“A wise man from my planet once said that riots are the language of the unheard.” You turn to her and take her hands in your own. “So let’s make them hear us.”

You’re not sure what you were expecting when you drop yourself and Polypa into downtown Thrashthrust, but you definitely weren’t expecting to almost get run over by Konyyl and Azdaja, both panting, sweaty, and smelling faintly of smoke.

Konyyl yelps and jumps about a foot in the air. “WHAT the-- oh, hi, guys. You didn’t scare me, I just… yeah.”

“Dude, what is all this? This is incredible!” you crow.

An explosion rocks the ground, followed by a giant plume of fire that shoots up into the sky just one street over. Azdaja whoops in delight, and Konyyl cheers even louder as a piece of flaming metal you think used to be a scuttlebuggy sails through the air and takes out a convenience store. Normally, something like that would have worried you, but seeing as the store’s already nearly burnt to the ground you think everybody’s already gotten out.

Not to be outdone, Azdaja telekinetically grabs on to a fallen lamppost and hurls that bad boy through the grocery store across the street.

“Show-off,” Konyyl scoffs.

“Where’s the main protest?” you ask.

“Like, a couple of blocks back that way. Some bronzeblood is leading the charge. Absolute mad lad,” she says, grinning. “I think a few more people you know might be there.”

That’s all the convincing you need to grab Polypa’s hand and take off running. You can hear the roar of a crowd chanting something.

“What are they saying?” you ask Polypa.

“Be silent no longer, when we’re together, we’re stronger,” she replied, glancing back at you with a twinkle in her eye. “I kinda like it.”

“Me too!”

The both of you turn the corner at the end of Hookedclaw street and find yourself face-to-face with a sizable crowd of about one hundred trolls. They’re all looking up to a pair of trolls standing on an upturned scuttlebuggy-- a bronzeblood, like Konyyl said, and the same big rustblood guy who you ran into last night.

You gape in shock. “Holy shit!”

The bronzeblood boy is yelling something, so you press closer into the crowd to hear what he’s saying. Most of the trolls here seem to be lowbloods, so when they see you and Polypa, an oliveblood, they gladly make room for you to join.

“... for what? A social construction that keeps us divided, because those who sit on thrones marked with the blood of our people know how strong we are together! They know that we’d be able to take control of our own destinies, and that terrifies them!” He pauses to take a short breath. “For fuck’s sake, I just want a world where I can walk down the street without worrying about getting killed! Is the bar really that damn low? Think about that, all of you!”

Another wave of cheering echoes through the streets, and you join in without hesitation.

“This guy’s spitting straight facts,” Polypa admits, looking impressed.

“He’s got balls, all right,” you agree. “That rustblood guy look familiar to you?”

She ribs you. “Yeah, yeah, you were right. I admit it.”

You turn your attention back to the boys, but they’re looking over the heads of the protestors at something behind you. A soft wave of hisses rise into the air as you turn to see a trio of purples stalking towards everybody, clubs dragging behind them with the awful scrape of steel against concrete. They’re twice the size of Polypa, except the giant fucker in the middle, who you think might be just a little bit shorter than Chahut.

“That’s a pretty sermon there, bronze brother,” he calls with a voice that crackles like burning wood. “Pretty for a load of treasonous fuckin’ shit.”

“Can’t be shittier than whatever they’re cooking up in that drug-hole church of yours,” the bronzeblood fires back with a smirk.

Even the rustblood standing next to him sucks in a sharp breath as the clown regards him with no trace of emotion. Polypa grabs your hand, and you squeeze it tight.

“You’ve got a big-ass mouth for a critter the size of my motherfuckin’ left toe,” the clown on the big guy’s right says.

“And you’ve got a big-ass forehead for a bastard with such a tiny skull.”

Somebody lets out a loud snort. It might have been you.

The feeble tendrils of bravery holding everybody together begin to unravel as the purplebloods begin to approach once more. You instinctively back up and pull your jacket hood over your head.

“Get ready,” Polypa growls.

But before the clowns have the chance to attack or use their chucklevoodoos, or before the lowbloods gather their courage enough to storm the intruders, a deafening CRACK splits the air like a thunderclap.

The clown to the far left drops like a rock, and standing over him, bat raised, is Elwurd.

She’s wearing a mask to conceal her face, of course, but you’d recognize that crest of blue hair anywhere. Beside her is Remele with her oversized mallet-club thing, and bringing up the rear with shining dual blades is none other than Ardata Carmia.

“Am I fucking dreaming,” you ask nobody in particular, and then all hell breaks loose.

The cerulean girls lunge for the two purplebloods that are still on their feet. The bronzeblood screams for everybody to scatter just as drones begin to swoop down from the sky, opening fire on the trolls below. Half a dozen kids drop dead on the spot.

You and Polypa duck into the nearest alleyway just in time before bullet holes pepper the pavement. Behind you, Elwurd roars something that sounds like “Duck!” before another explosion blows out all the windows. You yelp and cover your head as glass showers down on you like rainfall.

“Zap us out of here!” Polypa yells.

“No, wait! We have to go help the girls!”

“I’m not going back out there and neither are you!”

You glance back just in time to see Ardata drop to her knees, holding her bloody arm. She’s shrieking in terror as a drone advances on her, culling fork glinting bone-white in the darkness. Remele and Elwurd are too busy getting their asses kicked by the last living clown to help.

In that moment you can’t remember her as the bloodthirsty murderer who tortured you in her basement. All you can think of is the time she broke down in your arms, overcome with guilt at the monster she’d become in the name of being accepted by highblood society. A monster who’d traumatized you, and then became your friend.

You’re moving through space and time before your brain can catch up to what you’re doing. Ardata is cold and hard when you tackle her out of the way of the drone. The two of you tumble across the street together as the culling fork hits the spot where Ardata just was with a SHUNK. Even with adrenaline racing through your system the sound chills you to the core.

Remembering what Dirk taught you about hand-to-hand combat with a larger opponent, you grab one of her knives and zap right over to the clown, getting right up in his business before burying the blade into an eye socket.

Unsurprisingly, he drops a squirming Remele and covers his face with a scream so horrible you almost pee your pants. Ardata’s wailing your name from the sidewalk like a terrified child. You want to yell at her to shut up and run before the drones spotted her again, but you never get the chance. One moment you’re twisting a knife into a purpleblood’s skull, the next you’re flying through the air like a ragdoll before a pair of strong arms wrap around you. You and your rescuer land hard on the street with matching grunts of pain.

You look up into Elwurd’s bewildered face and burst out laughing. “Hi!”

“What the--”

“Time to go!” Remele yanks the both of you up by your scruffs like a pair of naughty cats. “Ardata, stop screaming like a wiggler and get your arse over here now!”

“My arm!” Ardata screeches. “I’ll be scarred for life!”

“No, you won’t, idiot, not when you hit your adult molt-!”

You zap the three of them out of there and into the alley, grab Polypa on your way, and then get the hell out of dodge.

The five of you end up in the back of a Troll Dennys, because of course you do. Polypa falls on you, knocking you to the ground, and then she yowls in anger when Elwurd lands on her legs, only for Ardata and Remele to hit the concrete ass-first. Remele accidentally kicks you in the stomach. Ardata falls back against a dumpster and hits her head on the metal with a BANG.

Everybody stares at each other for a long moment with varying degrees and expressions of utter shock. Polypa glares at you, and you just know you’re in for a long discussion about putting your own safety first in dangerous situations, or something like that.

You decide to break the ice first. “Anybody want pancakes?”

[enamoured-x]

Lover

Sonny Carisi x Reader

Summary: You and Sonny became quick friends when he joined SVU but when your feelings become more than friendly, you struggle to decide if you want to finally tell him or to keep them bottled up in fear of losing him.

Warnings: None? 

(I’ve decided I might just add to this every once in a while and use prompts for it and just keep it here as it’s own universe.)

Part 7 (Masterlist for other parts)

Word Count: 1,640

Part 7

The next day you couldn't help but think about your date with Sonny. Even at work you were a little distracted but you couldn’t help it, you were more than excited and your stomach did a pleasant flip every time you thought about Sonny. Amanda had asked if you were seeing someone with the way you had been in a good mood throughout the day, you were cryptic, just saying a simple, something like that, and then moving on. She didn’t comment on it further, probably just happy you weren’t mopey as you had been about Sonny. You wanted to tell her but seeing as you and Sonny were just about to go on your first date, you figured you’d hold off until you and Sonny talked about what you were doing. Also, Amanda liked to tease and you knew if she found out she wouldn’t be able to hold back and you were worried that might ultimately lead to Liv finding out, which is something you didn’t need right now. 

Sonny had told you to dress formal and you figured he was pulling out all the stops for the date. So when you got home you quickly hopped in the shower and then started getting ready as soon as you got out. You were worried about the time especially since it was so late and you didn’t know where Sonny was taking you that would be open at this time but he had explained that the place didn’t close till one in the morning so you were okay. You opted for a wavy look for your hair and pinned one side to stay behind your back and for hair to fall onto your other shoulder. Seeing as Sonny asked for fancy, you picked a dark forest green dress that was form fitting and had a bit of a dip at the bust to show off just enough of your cleavage to be sexy but still formal, the dress stopped above your knee and had a slit running down one side from mid thigh. It showed off your assets perfectly and the green complimented your skin tone. You kept your makeup a little light for the most part, just using nude tones for your eyes and a nice nude lip. It was a simple makeup look but it definitely brought out your eyes. You were just slipping on your heels when there was a knock on your door. Even though he had a key he was still being a gentleman and you couldn’t help but smile at that. You checked yourself one last time in the mirror before grabbing your clutch and slipping your phone inside. The butterflies in your stomach went crazy as you went to the door and opened it. Sonny was in a white button up with a black suit jacket and black slacks. This suit was a bit more subtle than his work suits and you loved how it looked on him. What surprised you most though were the flowers in his hands, classic red roses. 

“Wow, Doll, you look…” He shakes his head like he can’t find his words as he looked you up and down. You felt your cheeks heat up at his wandering eyes.

“You look absolutely stunning.” He then says. 

“Thank you, you look very handsome, Dominick.” You say and you can see his ears turn pink at the compliment. 

“These are for you.” He hands you the roses and you can’t help but bring them to your nose to smell. 

“Thank you. Come on, let me get a vase to put these in.” He steps inside while you walk to your kitchen, you find a vase and fill it with water and then place the flowers inside. You loved them.

“Alright, I’m ready.” You say and he grabs your hand and you walk out of your apartment. 

“Where are we headed?” You ask him once you were both seated in his truck after he kindly opened the door for you. 

“Can’t tell you, it’ll ruin the surprise.” He smirks at you and then starts to drive. 

“Fine. How was your day?” You ask. 

“Little hectic, Hadid is on my ass about every little thing but I understand why.” He shrugs. 

“I’m sure it will calm down soon, you know what you’re doing and she’ll see that.” You tell him and he smiles at you. 

“How was your day? Squad miss me?” He teases and you laugh.

“Oh, yeah, definitely. You know who misses you the most? Fin. He will not shut up about you, it’s kind of annoying. Like, we get it, Fin, he was the best detective on the squad but you still have me and Amanda.” You exaggerate and he laughs loud. 

“I always knew Fin had a soft spot for me. And best detective, huh?” 

“Shut up, you know you’re good.” You roll your eyes.

“I do?” You knew he was playing around but you also sensed he didn’t think he was that great of a detective to be deemed one of the best on the team. But with Sonny, he never put himself in high regard or gave himself even half the credit he deserved, it wasn’t in his nature and it was one of the things you loved about him.

“Dominick, I really hope you know how great of a detective you are.” You say, your tone turning serious. 

“Doll…” He trails off as his cheeks flush. 

“I’m serious. You’re the greatest detective I know.” Apparently you guys arrive because Sonny is putting the truck in park once you pull into the parking lot. 

“But if you tell the squad I said that, I will deny it.” You tease to lighten the mood. If Sonny still didn’t believe how amazing he was, you’d just have to work on it and tell him everyday until he believed it. 

He laughs.

“Don’t touch that door handle.” He says as he starts to get out of the truck. You roll your eyes but you smile as he goes to your side to open your door. He takes your hand and helps you out of the truck and then shuts the door.

“Thank you.”

“Of course.” He places a kiss on your temple and then you wrap your hand around his and leaned into him. Sonny opened the door to the building for you and when you walked in you were surprised. The place was lavish and sleek, there was literal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and beautiful paintings on the varnished wooden walls. The lighting was a bit dim and it created a quiet and calm environment, it was very personal. You and Sonny walked up to the podium with a waitress behind it.

“Reservations for Carisi.” Sonny says and she looks at her tablet. 

“Carisi for two, if you’d follow me.” She says as she grabs menus and starts to walk. She directs you to a small table against the wall and places your menus down. Sonny pulls out your chair for you and then he takes a seat. 

She tells you their wine of the day and before you could protest Sonny agrees and orders you both a glass. You were going to deny it with good reason, you recognized the name and knew how expensive it was.

“Sonny, that’s too much-” You couldn’t even finish before Sonny was stopping you.

“Doll, it’s okay. Don’t worry about the price, okay?” You knew he wasn’t going to let up so you just nod your head. You both look over the menu and you decide on some type of plate with chicken and Sonny went for a steak. You tried not to get distracted at the prices, you didn’t want to upset Sonny and you were flattered he wanted to treat you. Sure, some of your boyfriends in the past had taken you out for nice meals but nothing like this. And although you didn’t need fancy dinners, you loved how Sonny wanted to spoil you. 

When the waitress comes back with your wine, you and Sonny ordered and then she leaves you alone again. When you take a sip of the wine your eyes widen and Sonny smiles.

“Good?”

“Great, that’s amazing.” You tell him, happy that he agreed to the wine. 

You and Sonny talk about work a bit more seeing as you have different jobs now. Eventually the food arrives and Sonny had requested for more wine for the both of you seeing as you drank yours fast. You were impressed with this place, especially when you took a bite of your meal. Everything was delicious and you were happy you and Sonny were doing this. Once you finished eating you stayed talking and finishing your wine, recalling stories from when you were newly partnered. You were both red in the face from laughing and from the second glass of wine you both had just consumed. Eventually you decided it was time to leave and Sonny paid. You were both giddy and when Sonny pulled up to your apartment, the last thing you wanted was the night to end.

“Do you want to come up?” You asked him biting your lip. It was bold but you didn’t want Sonny to go and something told you he didn’t want to go either.

“Yeah, I’d like that.” He smiles and then gets out of the car, once again going to your side to open the door for you. Once you get into your apartment you set your clutch down and Sonny takes off his jacket. When he starts rolling up his sleeves you can’t help but feel a pressure between your thighs, he was entirely too hot and he had no idea what he was doing. You take off your heels and try to calm yourself down.

[chiseler]

Sinner’s Holiday: An Ode to Pre-Code

Once upon a time, Hollywood movies showed us Spencer Tracy skinny-dipping with Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck ducking into the ladies’ room with her boss in exchange for a promotion, and chorus girls warbling hosannas to marijuana.1 This, of course, was pre-Code: shorthand for the era of Hollywood movie-making between the advent of sound in 1929 and the ascendance of Hays Office censorship in 1934. The term is in fact a misnomer. The Production Code was written and officially adopted in 1930, but for the next four years, like Prohibition, it was flouted with near impunity. A look at a representative film of the time provides ample evidence of the Code’s impotence. Take Night Nurse (Wellman, 1931), starring Barbara Stanwyck: a fast, tough, sleazy and thoroughly enjoyable tale of a nurse who uncovers a plot to murder the children in her care for their trust funds.

The Code proclaimed that Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot. Stanwyck and her roommate, played by Joan Blondell, often speak their lines while casually changing their clothes in front of the camera. An intern who walks in on Stanwyck in her scanties assures her, “You can’t show me a thing. I just came from the delivery room.” The Code said, The use of liquor in American life…shall not be shown. The mother of Stanwyck’s charges, who is never seen in any other state than blotto, boasts, “I’m a dipshomaniac—and I like it!” Stanwyck befriends an amiable bootlegger when she treats his bullet-wound and agrees not to report it, contrary to law. In gratitude, he sends her a bottle of rye. “But you’re not allowed to drink,” a square nurse objects. “No,” Blondell cracks, “But it’s swell for cleaning teeth.”  Adultery and profanity are both proscribed by the Code. The dipsomaniac is plainly carrying on a tawdry affair with her chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable), and at one point Stanwyck, disgusted to find her passed out while her children are on the brink of death, rebukes her with, “You mother.” The Code said, Methods of crimes should not be explicitly presented. When sent out to get milk for the sick children, the amiable bootlegger breaks into a grocery store. As for Revenge in modern times shall not be shown, the movie ends with the bootlegger arranging for Nick to be “taken for a ride.” Did I forget to mention that Apparent cruelty to children or animals, the central trope of the plot, is also forbidden by the Code? Or that Gable socks Stanwyck on the jaw, or that Stanwyck gets her job by flashing her ankles at a doctor?

Code? What Code?

The appeal of pre-Code movies lies not in sex, violence or vulgarity (there’s more than enough of those in the infinitely more explicit cinema of the last forty years) but in their attitude, which conveyed the pessimism and irreverence of their time. Radical cultural changes in the wake of World War I, the farce of Prohibition, the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression combined to create a pervasive disillusionment and loss of respect for authority and traditional values. With rapid changes in fashion and technology, violent upheavals in economic and political conditions, society was wide open, hectically elated in the twenties, confused and frightened in the thirties. For a few years the lack of rigorous censorship allowed movies to channel the mood of the country and to capture society warts and all. They depicted adultery, divorce, rape, prostitution and homosexuality; bluntly portrayed alcoholism and drug addiction, glorified gangsters, con artists and fallen women. With a distinctive blend of cynicism and exuberance, they offered escapist entertainment but also bitter and sometimes radical visions of a society on the verge of breakdown. Oscar Levant famously quipped that he he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin; Hollywood too was grown up before it was innocent.

The Con Man as Comic Hero: Blonde Crazy

During the silent era, censorship of films was piecemeal. Not only states but individual towns had boards of censors who screened movies and ordered cuts of shots or scenes they considered too racy. Projectionists simply snipped out the offending material, a practice that accounts in part for the incompleteness many surviving films from the twenties.2 In the early twenties, Hollywood was hit with a string of off-screen scandals, culminating in the trial of comedian Roscoe Arbuckle on charges of rape and manslaughter. The movie moguls, terrified that bad press would scare away audiences, invited Will Hays to become the guardian and public face of Hollywood’s morals. Hays, a Presbyterian elder and former postmaster general, became director of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association. He was an ideal choice to project a more wholesome image of Hollywood, but as a censor he proved ineffectual, and movies continued to be attacked for their evil influence on the country’s moral fiber.

Silent movies contained many elements that would not be seen during the Code era, including nudity, drug use and comic vulgarity. But the absence of sound gave film a degree of unreality that lent itself to fantasies like Valentino as an Arab sheik and Douglas Fairbanks riding a flying carpet, as well as to timeless moral fables like Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans, whose characters are called simply The Man and His Wife. From Mary Pickford as a spunky urchin to Harold Lloyd as a college freshman, actors frequently played much younger and more naive than they were in real life. Even the flapper films of Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, which purported to expose the shocking mores of modern youth, presented their heroines as pure though misunderstood. With the change to talkies, the silent era’s swashbuckling heroes, Great Lovers, ringleted sweethearts and carefree flappers suddenly seemed antiquated. Sound punctured fantasy and brought movies down to earth and up to date: never again would they soar to the heights of romance they had reached in silence.

The coming of sound involved a complete reinvention of movies, amounting to the development of a new medium. The fluid spectacles of the silent screen gave way to small-scale films confined by the technical limitations of early sound recording technology to interiors and studio sets. The bulk of films from 1929 and ’30 are clunky and static, with stilted dialogue and acting. When talkies hit their stride in the early thirties it was with urban settings that could be recreated on studio backlots and zingy vernacular dialogue delivered at machine-gun pace by Brooklyn-bred voices. As the old screen gods faded, snappy young urbanites like James Cagney and Joan Blondell entranced audiences with their unaffected style and wised-up attitude.3 This new earthiness brought the censorship issue to a crisis; everyone agreed that movies were going “from bad to voice.” In 1930, still hoping to render external censorship unnecessary through self-regulation, the studio moguls officially adopted the Production Code, written largely by a Jesuit priest named Daniel Lord (hence it should, aptly, be known as the Lord’s Code rather than the Hays Code.) But this effort coincided with the onset of the Depression, when the movie studios were struggling like other businesses. Desperate to lure audiences back to theaters they defied the Code to create daringly risqué entertainment, treating the list of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls” as a list of “Do’s.”

The kick in pre-Code movies comes from the awareness shared by the actors and filmmakers that they are pushing the limits, getting away with something.  Since today’s films must work so hard to raise an eyebrow, they can never recapture the harmless fizz of Maurice Chevalier taking Jeannette MacDonald’s measurements in Love Me Tonight, or Jean Harlow slipping a portrait of her boss into her garter in Red-Headed Woman, or Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise picking each other’s pockets over the course of a romantic meal. (“I trust I may keep your garter?”)

There was a Code, after all, and movies were never completely uncensored. Because they couldn’t get away with explicitness or profanity, pre-Code movies specialized in innuendo. A line that would register with sophisticated adults but fly over the heads of children or more naïve viewers was considered ideal; it would protect the innocent while enticing the experienced. In The Half-naked Truth, a scheming promoter played by Lee Tracy checks into a fancy hotel with a Mexican carnival dancer he is passing off as a Turkish princess. Also with them is rotund Eugene Pallette, wearing a turban. The hotel clerk looks at the register Tracy has filled out and does a double take at Pallette. “Oh, they have them in all Turkish harems,” Tracy says, adding confidentially, “He’s very sensitive about it.” The joke is carried through the movie without a word being spoken that could bring a blush to the most prudish cheek. Pre-Code wasn’t always this artful—there’s nothing subtle about Dick Powell singing “I’m Young and Healthy” in a tunnel of chorus girls’ legs, or Tarzan and Jane romping around the jungle in loin cloths—but in general the naughtiness was low-key, not flaunted but there to be discovered by the alert viewer.

Movies offered vacations from reality in sleek art deco style: gleaming penthouses with twinkling views of Manhattan, shimmering bias-cut evening gowns and shiny top hats, buoyant jazz scores and intoxicated gaiety. Beyond mere escapism, there’s a loopy, zany, surreal streak in pre-Code that flourishes in the early Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields films, in Busby Berkeley musicals with their kaleidoscopes of semi-nude chorines and in the cartoons of the Fleischer Brothers, where Cab Calloway lends his voice to a ghostly dancing walrus singing “The St. James Infirmary Blues.” There’s a dizzy feeling, as if the whole of society, like Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, had an empty stomach and it went to their heads.

Maybe it was the effect of hearing so often that prosperity was just around the corner while the country sank deeper and deeper into despair. Demented optimism was parodied—or endorsed; it’s hard to tell—in a bizarre cartoon short from Columbia Studios called Prosperity Blues. A world of wretched, baggy-eyed, trembling sufferers, of cobweb-infested banks and pitiful apple-peddlers, is transformed into a fascistic spectacle of crazed cheerfulness as the hero, to the tune of “Happy Days Are Here Again” slaps disembodied grins on people’s faces with the command “Smile, darn ya, smile!”

“The age of chivalry is over,” James Cagney declares in Blonde Crazy (Del Ruth, 1931). “This, honey, is the age of chiselry.” Tough yet ebullient, Cagney personifies the essential pre-Code flavor of hard-boiled high spirits, sarcastically knowing and gleefully amoral, but not sour or misanthropic. Like nightclub owner Texas Guinan who greeted her customers with a hearty, “Hello, suckers!” the con artist hero of Blonde Crazy seems high on his own cynicism. Or maybe punch-drunk: you need a score card to keep track of how many times Joan Blondell slaps him, and he keeps coming back for more.

The films of Hollywood’s classical period are tight, smooth, polished. The scripts, dialogue, acting, lighting and art direction all gleam with controlled craftsmanship. Blonde Crazy, by contrast, skates on the verge of chaos: the actors seem to be winging it, cutting loose, seeing how far they can go. Cagney revels in this freedom, indulging in outrageous vocal mannerisms, flaunting his virtuosic control of his body as he darts and weaves through the role like a boxer in the ring, going from crafty schemer to world-class chump, wise-cracking operator to heart-broken lover. The anarchic, free-wheeling atmosphere of pre-Code, mined with slapstick and doubles entendres, often leaves modern audiences incredulous. Did I really hear that? Did they really mean...?

Like Night Nurse, Blonde Crazy methodically defies the Code. Undressing scenes? Cagney walks in on Blondell in the tub and appreciatively examines her underwear, doing a little shimmy with her panties, playfully holding her bra over his eyes like a pair of goggles. Liquor in American life? In an early scene Cagney, a bell-hop in an anything-goes hotel, peddles bootleg booze to a traveling salesman (Guy Kibbee). Adultery? Cagney and Blondell’s first con involves setting up the same salesman: caught “parking” with Blondell and a bottle of hooch, he offers a hefty bribe to the “cop” who’s actually their accomplice. Methods of crimes? The depiction of the movie’s confidence tricks, including a daringly simple ploy by which Cagney lifts a diamond bracelet from a jewelry store, is so detailed the viewer could easily copy them. Revenge in modern times? The movie lovingly details the means by which Blondell succeeds in fleecing a fellow con man who previously fleeced Cagney.

One scene is set in an elegant hotel lobby where men discuss the races while women share their plans to blackmail men with love letters. Every single person here is on the make. “Everyone has larceny in his heart,” Bert (Cagney) explains to Ann (Blondell) when he asks her to join him in the rackets. She’s reluctant, but only because she’s afraid of getting caught and sent to jail. Still, as the movie’s only hint of a conscience, she objects to out-and-out thievery and feistily protects her virtue. Bert keeps making passes at her and she keeps slapping his face, without harming their affectionate partnership. But the pair’s toughness keeps them from admitting the depths of their feelings. “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you,” he tells her earnestly, then shrugs dismissively, “But if I can’t have you I’ll have someone else.” Still, by the time Ann tells him she’s marrying another man, your heart bleeds for Bert, the chiseler with the wandering eye. The other man is Joe Reynolds (Ray Milland) who chivalrously takes a cinder out of her eye and sends her a book of Browning (the poet, not the automatic, as Philip Marlowe would say.) She tells Bert that she’s going to marry Reynolds because he and his family know “a better way to live.” They care for “music and art and that kind of thing.” Of course he turns out to be the biggest louse of all, stealing from his firm and exploiting Bert’s devotion to Ann to make him the patsy. Bert winds up in jail and shot full of holes, but at least Ann finally admits her love and promises to wait for him.

Joan Blondell was the best love interest Cagney ever had. More than able to stand up to him, she brings out an unexpectedly tender and sexy side of his cocky, wound-up persona. With her wide-eyed, appetizing looks, Blondell has a warm, open front but an inner reserve and caution. Like her fellow Brooklynite Barbara Stanwyck, she was born wised-up. Cagney too, for all his extroverted energy, has a core that is aloof, introverted, nervously intense. It is touching to see these two wary, skeptical souls embrace each other so openly. They have good reason to be wary; only suckers trust anyone in the world of Blonde Crazy. Con artists con fellow con artists, and “respectable” citizens lack basic decency. Near the end of the movie, another con man tries to interest Bert in a ploy that involves tricking the relatives of the recently deceased into paying for good luck charms that the dead supposedly ordered just before “kicking off.” Anyone stupid or trusting enough to be conned deserves to lose his money. Life is a continuous game of one-upmanship, a contest to see who can laugh last.

In Guys and Dolls, Sky Masterson explains that among his people, “to be marked as a chump is like losing your citizenship.” During the early thirties, audiences who felt like victims of an economic swindle reveled in the exploits of sharpies, shysters, smart guys who know all the angles and who outwit hypocritical representatives of wealth, authority, respectability. Cagney played more con men than gangsters: in Jimmy the Gent, as “the greatest chiseler since Michelangelo,” he asserts, “There’s only two kinds of guys in business, the ones that get caught and the ones that don’t get caught.” But for all his street smarts, Cagney has moments of child-like naivité. “The consummate urban provincial,” as Andrew Sarris called him, Cagney is irrepressible rather than unflappable. His driving energy, self-mocking humor, hot temper and sentimental streak expressed the pre-Code mood—fast-paced, excitable, hustling for a buck—as Bogart’s world-weary postwar cool expressed the mood of noir.

Later in the thirties, Frank Capra would glorify his own version of the sucker: in his films Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart embody the soul of America as innocent, optimistic, easily fooled. Smart cookies like Stanwyck and Jean Arthur would crumble in the face of such purity, renouncing their hardened attitude and determination to get ahead by any means necessary. Even pre-Code movies often bow, sometimes wistfully and sometimes perfunctorily, towards the old-fashioned virtues. Chivalry makes a come-back in the final scene of Blonde Crazy, one of the few genuinely romantic moments in Cagney’s career as he gazes up at Blondell with shining, worshipful eyes. Bert has demonstrated that love can turn a crooked guy into a knight in shining armor. But he’s got a prison stretch ahead of him, and then—what? Will he go straight, get a job? It’s hard to feel any great confidence in his future, since the lasting impression left by the film is that the cornerstone of American society is the confidence trick.

“The End of America”: Heroes for Sale

The pre-Code years corresponded to the nadir of the Great Depression, when disgust with Herbert Hoover’s government deepened the country’s black mood, when the homeless called their shanty-towns “Hoovervilles” and the newspapers they wrapped themselves in “Hoover blankets.” Law-abiding citizens made folk heroes out of bank robbers like Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, while hoboes sang of a utopia where “all the cops have wooden legs” and “the railroad bulls are blind.” The “bulls” were notorious for beating the hoboes they caught, shooting at them or forcing them to jump from speeding trains; even young teenagers weren’t spared. Being broke, jobless and homeless was treated not as a misfortune but as a crime. In the South, many towns used transients as slave labor: arrested on freight trains or in rail yards, they were put to work on chain gangs, and when their sentences were up, put back on the trains they’d been arrested for riding and told to get out of town. Communities posted signs, “Jobless men keep going—we can’t take care of our own.” Some towns denied medical care to travelers who fell ill or were injured, simply dumping them outside the city limits. Before the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, many people felt the country was drifting towards anarchy or revolution.

Not all movies of the time were escapist fantasies; many pre-Code films were “ripped from the headlines.” Warner Brothers even confronted the Depression in a musical, Golddiggers of 1933. The opening number, “We’re In the Money,” is pure wish-fulfillment, as chorus girls wearing only strategically placed gold coins crow that “Old Man Depression” is through and that, “We never see a headline about a breadline today.” This giddy fantasy shatters when it is revealed to be a rehearsal for a show that has to close down because the producers can’t pay rent for the theater. Soon the chorus girls are staying in bed all day (three to a bed) because they have nothing to eat. The plot invites us to enjoy watching Joan Blondell earn money the easy way again, squeezing it out of a man who is rich, self-righteous and not very bright. Golddiggers is fluff, but it concludes with a musical number that makes a powerful if disconcerting stab at social realism.

This is social realism à la Busby Berkeley, so Blondell dons a black satin dress and stands under a lamppost, suggesting that unless the government helps jobless men their wives will be reduced to peddling themselves in the street. “Remember my forgotten man,” she sings, “You put a rifle in his hand / You sent him far away / You shouted hip hooray / But look at him today…”4 The song is taken up by a black woman sitting in an open window, surrounded by other women posed to look like F.S.A. portraits: a gaunt and worried farm wife, a starved and empty-eyed grandmother. Meanwhile endless lines of men are seen marching off to war, stumbling through the muddy trenches, then shuffling along in breadlines. This was torn from some very fresh headlines: in the summer of 1932 thousands of World War I veterans, known as the Bonus Army, had camped out on the Mall in Washington, D.C., asking the government to pay them the financial bonuses they were promised for their war service in advance, since many of them were unemployed and destitute. The army under Gen. Douglas MacArthur violently dispersed the men and their families, inspiring outrage. In this frivolous Hollywood musical, Blondell confronts a policeman who is rousting a bum out of a doorway, pointing to the military medal pinned to the inside of the man’s shabby lapel. Her eyes burn with pure hatred for the cop.

In these desperate times, both socialism and fascism were touted as viable alternatives to America’s problems. Several Hollywood movies offered glowing visions of benevolent totalitarianism: in Gabriel Over the White House, produced by William Randolph Hearst in 1932, Walter Huston plays a president who seizes dictatorial powers for the good of the country and proceeds to get rid of gangsters by trying them in military courts without constitutional protections. (Sound familiar?) In The Mayor of Hell, the boys in an ethnically diverse and racially integrated reform school are offered the chance to run the place as a children’s democracy, and when a tyrannical director tries to destroy this system, they try him in a kangaroo court complete with flaming torches.

The government’s helplessness or callousness in the face of economic crisis was not the only source of disenchantment with authority. The prohibition of alcohol, enacted in 1920, turned the vast majority of Americans into criminals, law enforcement into hypocrites, and bootlegging gangsters into society’s pets. Meanwhile, in the late 1920s the lingering wounds of the Great War, initially suppressed by a generation desperate to forget, resurfaced as people began to take stock of what they now viewed as a ghastly waste of life. Pacifism was widely embraced; in 1933 the hallowed Oxford University Student Union debated and passed the statement, “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its king and country.” Movies like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Last Flight expressed horror at the costs and pointlessness of the war, while others called attention to the plight of veterans struggling to survive in the country for which they had fought.

Heroes for Sale (Wellman, 1933) is one of the bleakest films to come out of Hollywood during the studio era. What the confidence trick is in Blonde Crazy, gross injustice is in Heroes for Sale: the basic building block of American society. Richard Barthelmess plays the American everyman as Job, afflicted not by mere bad luck but by unfairness, misunderstanding and the heartlessness of the powerful. In the teens and twenties, Barthelmess had played pure-hearted farm boys in silent melodramas like Way Down East and Tol’able David; he stood for integrity, trustworthiness and boyish optimism. By 1933, his fresh handsome face looked tired and worn, prematurely defeated even at the start of the movie, when he supposed to be just 25. The story begins in the trenches during the War, and the first thing we see is an officer issuing a command for a raid intended to gain prestige by capturing a German officer. When a subordinate objects that the plan will amount to suicide, he snaps, “Suicide or not, it’s orders,” and tells the other officer to take nine or ten men, because “that’s all I can afford to lose.” This kind of callous abuse of power will recur throughout the film, until the penultimate scene in which armed policemen drive homeless men from their shelter into the rain, ignoring the plea that they are not bums but veterans.

Tom Holmes (Barthelmess) is one of the nine or ten expendables chosen for the mission, and when his superior officer turns yellow and refuses to leave the shell-hole where they are hiding, he single-handedly knocks out a machine-gun nest and captures a German officer, only to be wounded and left for dead on his way back. His own officer, Roger, takes credit for the escapade and wins the Distinguished Service Cross, while Tom is taken to a German hospital where he is treated humanely but given morphine to ease the pain of shell-fragments in his spinal column, starting him on the road to addiction. Back home, he winds up working in the bank owned by Roger’s father, who self-righteously fires him when he learns of his drug problem. Roger is a weak, nervous, sweaty-palmed villain; he feels bad about stealing Tom’s glory and allowing him to suffer unfairly, just not bad enough to do anything about it.

For a while things look up for Tom. In Chicago he falls in with a friendly father and daughter who run a café, gets a good job at a laundry, and marries a beautiful young woman (Loretta Young). But as soon as he reaches higher he is shot down. He agrees to help promote a friend’s invention to mechanize the laundry, but when his benevolent boss dies, the new owners use the machine as an excuse to fire all their workers. The workers blame Tom and start a riot, in which his wife is accidentally killed. As if that weren’t enough, he is blamed for leading the riot he was trying to stop and sentenced to five years hard labor. When he gets out, he’s still marked as a “Red” and driven out of town by government agents. By now the country is in the grip of the Depression, and he joins the army of hoboes riding the rails. Achieving secular sainthood, Tom gives away the fortune he earned from the laundry machine to fund a soup kitchen. And when he finally encounters Roger again, also on the bum after serving jail time for embezzling, Tom counters Roger’s pessimism (“The country can’t go on this way. This is the end of America”) with a pat speech about how the country isn’t licked and will rise again, just like Roosevelt said in his inaugural speech. Angry and anguished throughout much of the film, by the end he has slipped into a kind of haloed masochism. Despite his clichéd words, what he embodies is not can-do optimism but the kind of enlightened detachment that comes from having nothing more to lose.

“The only thing that matters is money. Without it you are garbage. With it you are a king.” These words are spoken by Max, the German inventor who makes Tom rich and indirectly ruins his life. Max is a ludicrous stereotype, starting out as a ranting communist and abruptly turning into a greedy plutocrat (when someone points out that he used to hate capitalists he responds, “Of course—because I had no money then!”) In its one idyllic interlude, the film shows a workplace where capital and labor cooperate in smiling harmony and the boss is even willing to use mechanization to give employees more leisure and easier jobs without cutting the workforce or lowering salaries. This utopian fantasy, along with the café whose owners give to the poor even as they struggle to survive, suggest that the only solution to the country’s problems is selfless generosity. Unfortunately, the movie also implies that heartlessness and blinkered malice are far more common.

Heroes for Sale is not a lucid analysis of economic problems, and despite a gritty atmosphere it lacks the objectivity of neo-realism. At once bitter and sentimental, it portrays the whole of American society as a “you-must-pay-the-rent-I-can’t-pay-the-rent” melodrama, with villains as vile and heroes as pure as those in a D.W. Griffith tale of wronged innocence. Many pre-Code movies invite the viewer to identify with and root for people who cheat to get ahead: gangsters, con artists, gold-diggers. Heroes for Sale instead asks us to identify with an innocent and virtuous but hapless and often helpless hero. If people fantasized about being one of Cagney’s confident, cynical operators—predators rather than prey—they saw themselves as Tom Holmes: down on their luck, taking one hit after another, but struggling on and clinging to hope.

Wellman’s next film was Wild Boys of the Road, his famous portrait of teenage hoboes, which grinds through hardship and injustice only to veer into shining idealism in the last five minutes. Two middle-class high-school boys turn into ragged panhandlers, one a cripple, the other stooping occasionally to petty theft. A crowd of vagrants bands together to attack and kill a brakeman who has raped a teenage girl, and to fight off the “bulls” who try to put them off a freight train. It’s easy to imagine audiences cheering as the young bums pelt the cops with eggs and fruit, and booing when the cops use fire hoses to drive them from the shanty-town they have built in disused sewer pipes. The hobo community is painted as loyal, diverse and supportive (blacks and girls are treated as equals), but no one is having any fun. They’re not wild, just bone-weary. The protagonists wind up in New York, living in a garbage dump, and one is tricked into taking part in an attempted robbery. But when they are hauled before a judge, instead of coldly meting out injustice like the judge in Heroes for Sale, the kindly man lectures the youths on how things are going to be better now, they will get a fresh chance, as the camera pans up to the National Reconstruction Administration poster above his head (“We Do Our Part”). The ending looks like a cop-out now, but audiences of the time probably cheered it too.

The pre-Code era was vanquished not only by stricter censorship but by the mood swing following Roosevelt’s inauguration, when the desperate country embraced the promise of a “new deal for the American people.” Pictures of FDR went up next to icons of Jesus; at the end of Footlight Parade, another Warner Brothers musical, solders marching in formation create an American flag, the president’s face, and the NRA eagle. Roosevelt campaigned to the tune of “Happy Days are Here Again,” and one of his first actions in office was to repeal Prohibition. The New Deal failed to end the Depression but it did stop the free-fall of the country’s spirits, ending the sense that the people had been abandoned by their leaders. Hollywood diligently promoted the new tone of wholesome optimism, strictly punishing vice and rewarding virtue. But can you regain innocence once you’ve lost it?

The Age of Experience: Baby Face

Pre-Code movies finally went too far. The last straw may have been the lesbian “dance of the naked moon” in The Sign of the Cross, Miriam Hopkins getting raped in a barn in The Story of Temple Drake, or Mae West just being Mae West. America was divided then as now, and the backlash that ushered in the Code crackdown was driven in part by heartland resentment of movies pitched at sophisticated urban audiences. 5 Outraged by the increasingly salacious tone of Hollywood, in 1934 the Catholic Church formed the Legion of Decency and ordered its congregations to boycott the movies it condemned. In fact, box office receipts rose for movies that were banned by the Legion, but Hollywood’s producers panicked at the prospect of shrinking audiences; of being attacked as foreign corrupters of America’s youth, since most were Jewish immigrants; and of federal government intervention. They capitulated. After 1934, the studios could no longer flout the Production Code Administration and its viciously anti-Semitic head, Joe Breen; unless movies earned its seal of approval they would be blackballed. For a few years filmmakers fought hard against the Code6, but as ticket sales rose with the easing of the Depression, they settled into acceptance of its strictures. For the next twenty years married couples would sleep in twin beds and no couple would kiss for longer than three seconds. The most damaging aspect of the Code was not that it limited what could be shown, but that it forced movies to uphold conservative values, to show respect for authority and religion, and to present a simple dichotomy of good and evil, virtue and sin. The censors did not want controversial subjects like abortion, prostitution or racial tensions discussed from any angle, no matter how morally serious. Hollywood managed to produce great movies under the Code’s restrictions, but sometimes its stifling effect gave them a sterile, airless, homogenized quality.

Some of the pre-Code spirit survived in screwball comedy, a genre created by the Code—the sexes must battle lest they wind up in bed. Even at the height of the Code, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder consistently subverted its precepts, probably because their dialogue was too clever or just too audaciously dirty for the censors to decipher. After World War II the hard-boiled, wised-up attitude went underground, flourishing in film noir, but what became of the pre-Code sensibility after the end of the noir cycle? Our own time may be rife with irony and black comedy, but sneaky innuendo can’t thrive without restrictions, and all-pervasive, indiscriminate irony becomes shallow and facile. The gritty, sassy tone of pre-Code flourished precisely because it still had the power to shock.

The proponents of censorship cited the overwhelming power and mass appeal of movies, which made them particularly dangerous to the young. And after all movies were not art, so they couldn’t claim first-amendment protection as books or plays might: one journalist wrote in 1934 that no “classic” movie had been created yet. Hollywood’s producers were all too ready to agree, viewing their creations only as commercial products. Even pre-Code films weren’t safe from retroactive censorship. Those that were re-released during the Code years or the early years of television had bits cut out: Myrna Loy trilling “Mimi” in a sheer nightgown in Love Me Tonight, Edward Woods tussling in bed with Joan Blondell in Public Enemy. Ironically, films that were considered too thoroughly offensive to be salvaged remained intact. In 2004 a complete, uncensored print of Baby Face, perhaps the crown jewel of pre-Code, was discovered at the Library of Congress. Baby Face (Green, 1933) was so sordid that it was rejected outright by state censorship boards and heavily altered before being released, but a copy of the original camera negative showed the film as only censors had ever seen it.

Sold-out crowds packed New York’s Film Forum on a snowy Monday in January 2005 to be the first audience ever to watch Barbara Stanwyck smash a beer bottle over the head of a man molesting her, then lie down in the straw with a brakeman in return for a free ride on a freight train; to hear a sinister German cobbler quote Nietszche to Stanwyck and advise her to stamp out all emotion and use her power over men to get the things she wants. A New York Times piece on the rediscovered print stated that “you couldn’t make this film today.” Baby Face’s heroine, Lily Powers, is sexy and heartless, with a hidden, wounded fury built up during a lifetime of mistreatment. Accompanied by a growling rendition of “The St. Louis Blues,” she climbs a ladder of weak and venal men from a dreary steel-town speakeasy to the inevitable Manhattan penthouse. With her all the way is the only person she really cares for, her black maid and best friend, played by the beautiful Teresa Harris. Baby Face has all the kick, the style, the shocking laughs and underlying bleakness that exemplify pre-Code.

During the Depression, with so many men unable to support families, women became responsible for their own and their children’s survival as they had rarely been before. Many pre-Code movies focus on the predicament of women looking for ways to support themselves outside of marriage. While the flappers of the 1920s were young girls sowing their wild oats, the women of pre-Code are looking for security, and they aren’t too scrupulous about how they get it. They are neither virtuous helpmeets nor destructive vamps; they are adults who have faced some cold, hard facts. Actresses like Constance Bennett and Miriam Hopkins played a new kind of woman who was hardened, experienced, far from spotless, but who instead of paying for her sins usually triumphed in the end.

World War I shattered the traditional manly and womanly ideals of the nineteenth century; World War II brought back the celebration of the he-man and the homemaker. Between the wars there was a blurring and mingling of the sexes. Women bobbed their hair, smoked and drove cars; men got manicures, sang falsetto and danced the Charleston. A novelty song of the time complained: “Masculine women, feminine men / Which is the rooster, which is the hen? / It’s hard to tell ‘em apart these days.” Homosexuality was an object of sniggering fascination, and caricatures of effeminate men and butch women show up regularly in pre-Code movies. In Ladies They Talk About, a new inmate in a women’s prison is warned about a hefty cigar-smoking lady in a monocle: “Watch out for her, she likes to wrestle.” In Wonder Bar, a fey young man cuts in on a dancing couple and dances off—with the man. “Boys will be boys!” Al Jolson comments with a swishy gesture.

In the Victorian era, Europe and America embraced the ideal of woman as untouched by experience, the “angel of the house.” One of the arguments against granting women the vote or allowing them to enter universities and the work-place was that if they left the domestic sphere they would lose their purity and moral authority. The working women of thirties Hollywood triumphantly backed this argument: they are hard-nosed, pragmatic, independent. The “double standard” for pre- and extra-marital sex was a common theme in films of the early thirties: why shouldn’t women act like men? The feisty yet vulnerable pre-Code woman was more compromised than the fast-talking dame of later screwball comedies, who usually worked as a reporter or secretary and relished her self-sufficiency. One aspect of pre-Code movies that might actually shock contemporary audiences is the ubiquitous equation of sex and money. It’s taken for granted that women will sell themselves for furs, jewels and apartments, as “kept women” or free-lance party girls. This reflects the Depression too, a time when—so the movies warned—the scarcity of honest jobs might tempt girls to take “the easiest way.” Men, meanwhile, might turn to crime, bootlegging, gangs: selling their souls for flashy suits, cars and women. Unlike their female counterparts, the fallen men always pay, dying in the gutter or going to the chair. Women who break commandments—even a hard-bitten ex-felon like Constance Bennett in Bed of Roses—can be redeemed through the love of an honest man, in this case the poor but hunky Joel McCrea.

The thirties were a golden age for women in Hollywood movies, the only decade when they were regularly allowed to be smart, competent, funny and sexy all at once, and seldom required to be tamed or put in their place by men (Female is a dispiriting exception.) Throughout the decade, women continued to embody the toughness and cynicism of the Depression years in romantic comedies, where they were habitually both more dazzling and more down-to-earth than their male counterparts. The experienced woman paired with a naïve, virginal man is partly a comic reversal of a more traditional trope, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. But while these women take economic advantage of their male prey, they are also seduced by male innocence. They yearn for what they themselves have lost.

The uncensored version of Baby Face makes it clear that Lily was forced into prostitution by her own father when she was fourteen. Hence the cruel irony of the title: while she poses as girlishly helpless (“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” she pleads when she’s caught in the restroom with her boss) she has been, as the cliché goes, robbed of innocence. This is the festering wound behind her hard, defiant poise. No one could play the part better than Stanwyck, with her devastating ability to face the facts; her sudden lashing rages; and the enticing warmth that she could—chillingly—turn on or off at will. Douglas Sirk spoke later of how Stanwyck seemed to have been “deeply touched by life.” Her most arresting trait is her level, unwavering gaze, both bold and sad—what Sirk called her “amazing tragic stillness.” The simplicity of her style comes from a steely inner resolve, a hard-won self-mastery that allows her to look at the world without fear—but not without anger or sorrow. “My life has been hard, bitter,” Lily tells her husband. “I’m not like other women. All the gentleness and kindness in me has been killed.”

Movies of the early thirties revel in the victory of experience over innocence, but they mourn it too. James Cagney stumbles into the gutter in the rain muttering, “I ain’t so tough.” Ann Dvorak, as a drug addict whose sleazy lover has kidnapped her son, crashes through a window and plummets to the street below to save the boy’s life. Paul Muni, fugitive from a chain gang, fades into the darkness, answering his girlfriend’s question, “How do you survive?” with the despairing words, “I steal!”7 It is this sense of bitter knowledge, of deeply-felt experience, that makes the best pre-Code movies truly “adult.” W.H. Auden said that the purpose of art is to make self-deception more difficult: “by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.” Enchantment and intoxication have always been Hollywood’s stock in trade, but occasionally—in Out of the Past, in The Lady Eve, in Blonde Crazy—the studios blended cocktails of fantasy and disillusionment, of disappointment and romance. Hollywood in the 1930s cast its lingering spell not with cynical magic, but with magical cynicism.

by Imogen Sara Smith

NOTES

1. In, respectively, Man’s Castle, Baby Face, Murder at the Vanities.

2. What happened to the cut footage? Most of it probably wound up in the wastebasket, though some found a home elsewhere. In his book The Silent Clowns Walter Kerr recounts how a boyhood friendship with his local projectionist enabled him to amass “what must unquestionably have been the most extensive collection of shots of Vilma Banky’s décolletage existing anywhere in America.”

3. Native New Yorkers Cagney and Blondell were appearing together in a play called “Penny Arcade” when they were both offered contracts by Warner Brothers, the studio that, with its Vitaphone process, had pushed the changeover to sound. “Penny Arcade” became the film Sinners’ Holiday; Cagney and Blondell made six more films together and formed a life-long friendship.

4. Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote “Remember My Forgotten Man,” which echoes the great Depression anthem, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in its complaint that the men who built the country and fought to defend it were now reduced to begging for bread. These two songs were exceptional; Tin Pan Alley churned out hundreds of “keep smiling” ditties during the Depression, leaving it to Woody Guthrie to express the nation’s bitter mood in songs like “I Ain’t Got No Home in this World Anymore.”

5. The pre-Code Two Kinds of Women opens with the governor of a western state rehearsing a passionate speech decrying the evil influence of New York City on the rest of the nation, leading America’s youth astray with the lure of glamour and fast living. The scene cuts to the next room where the governor’s daughter (Miriam Hopkins) lounges on a sofa in sexy pajamas, reading The New Yorker and listening to a radio program broadcasting jazz from a Manhattan nightclub. The movie makes no secret of which side it’s on. At the end the daughter says that she and her New York playboy husband will announce that they are moving to South Dakota for the fresh air and clean living—until her father is re-elected, after which, “We’ll come back and live on East 58th Street!”

6. Producers and filmmakers at Warner Brothers were particularly hostile to the new regime. Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade features a puritanical censor who keeps popping up to warn Cagney, a director of musical prologues, “You’ll have to put some bathing suits on those mermaids—you know Pennsylvania.” Ultimately, he’s revealed as worse than just a buffoon when he’s caught in flagrante delicto with the film’s floozy.

7. In, respectively, Public Enemy, Three on a Match, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

[courtorderedcake]

Roses : A CS retelling of ‘Tam Lin’

Hi, everyone! Thanks to @kmomof4​ and the extremely talented @eastwesthomeisbest​ for their patience on this. As usual, thanks to @ultraluckycatnd​ who I would be lost without, the woman is a monster editing machine, and super beta. I live for my updates from her.  Without further ado, here is my laaaaaaaaaaaate contribution to @cssns​. You get TWO chapters for the price of one! WHOA!

Read on Ao3 right here, darlings! Chapter 1/4 Chapter 2/4

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If there was one trope in fairytales that Emma hated, it was the lonely orphan who found parents and lived happily ever after in a beautiful castle. Her first problem with it was that while she hadn’t met any royalty, she doubted that most of them lost track of their children that often. Or, if they were separated, that a prince or princess would be placed in a crowded Boston orphanage. Her second problem was that there were only so many countries in the world, and even less with a missing monarch. Even diplomats and billionaires were few and far between in that category. 

So, on a rainy April afternoon when she returned to her apartment, she did not expect to see a fresh faced courier waiting for her. Although she wasn’t old by any means at 28, the boy looked about 12 with his baby face as he asked her to sign for the letter. She gave a scribble, handed him a wadded bunch of bills from her bag, and stumbled inside to peel off her rain slicker. Throwing aside the envelope of what was probably more of her husband's accounts that she was now responsible for, Emma opted for a nap before work instead. It was until she landed a successful skip that night that she felt ready to tackle another batch of what remained from Neal's legacy. 

Kicking off her heels, which were most likely ruined from the rain, she collapsed on her couch. With a wiggle, the skin tight red number was off and she basked in the freedom of being nude as she searched her floor for a clean t-shirt and a pair of lounge pants. Looking at the letter, she picked it up and placed it between her teeth, paused to put her hair in what she hoped would resemble a ponytail, and pulled to rip it open. Letting the envelope fall to the floor, she grabbed her thick rimmed glasses to read the small script. 

Her roommate, Mary Margaret, came out of her room. “Emma? It’s 4 am, did you just get back?”

“Mmmmyar.” Emma replied, scanning the text. Her late husband's family crest and name, long discarded after his death, was printed on top of the document. She shuddered at the golden medallions adorning a darkened shield, and the scaled, lizard like, dragon that curling around it. 

“Well… OK, but do you want some coffee? David's here and we're getting up early to -”

“Holy. Fucking. Grilled cheese and onion rings.” Emma breathed heavily, staring wide eyed in shock at the papers in front of her. 

“What are you swearing on such sacred foods for?” Mary Margaret quirked an eyebrow in amused concern.

“I've just inherited an estate valued at £800,000.” Emma flicked her eyes up, mouth a thin line. “Neal's family's fortune, home and grounds apparently. Things I never even knew about.”

“Well.” Mary Margaret sipped her coffee, looking completely nonplussed even if Emma knew on the insides she was bursting - it was how she had earned her nickname Snow Queen after all. “That would do it.”

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 The estate reading took place in Ireland through a crackling speaker box, Emma's eyes racing around the office the entire time. It was stunning, as were what seemed like all the buildings during her trip to gain the deed to her home. This office in particular was what Emma imagined when reading Peter Pan; a gentleman's study and den, complete with whiskey decanter and cigar box to her left as if she had gone back in time. The tall shelves were lined in books with gold leaf letters and rich leather bindings, the panels of dark wood mixed with verdant jade paint and damask almost making up for the unsettling stuffed deer heads.

Cringing, Emma turned back to the box. The voice on the other line was thickly accented with a rolling brogue which Graham assured her in his own was common, and had obviously been in a bad mood long enough for it to be a defining quality.

“Ye don't be wanting Carterhaugh, lass. T’place is cursed, hallow in the way tat echoes, not t’way of blessings.”

Her lawyer smirked, teeth white and extremely straight. Emma had liked Graham Grimm since she had met him, and this was insight into his character. Taste in wall decorations aside, he respected her agency enough to not let this man continue to try to stop the change in ownership. In her experience, lawyers were far too careless and rude. This man was funny, even when she teased him about his name and he had sighed, an eye roll so loud she could hear it through their original phone call. 

(Yes, my name is Graham Grimm. Yes, they do sound alike. No, I am not involved with fairytales, unless you consider me a fairy Godmother of estate and divorce settlements. No, I am usually very happy. No, I cannot change into a black shaggy dog, can you please just tell me what the approximate appraisal value is?) 

“My client will determine its worth.” His tone was calm and well practiced, even through his own clear lilt, but Emma could hear the edge there just under the surface. He had the heart of a forest hunter; not a threat until prey was too well ensnared in a carefully laid trap. This man on the phone, a Mr. Seáìnns’, had been fighting tooth and nail to keep her from her inheritance, throwing obstacle after obstacle in her way for months now. 

At first it was as simple as he refused to understand that Emma wanted to know the family that had abandoned her husband, wanted to feel the last connections she had with him or any family she could, but it quickly devolved into more. Emma was subject to constant harassment by calls and letters, envelopes filled with shredded paper or scribbled notes she could not read, all from this crazy older man in the village that Carterhaugh laid in. This didn't do much more than annoy her, as well as the post office, customs, and the garbage disposal crew. It escalated to him crossing a line when he tried to prove she was not the proper heir, insinuating Neal was a bastard, and further when he tried to declare the estate a historical landmark. 

Emma hadn't even seen the damn mansion or castle or whatever an estate was considered. It seemed to vary between every property she had compared what little information she had, the repeated ridiculous notion of having her own ballroom driving her and David giddy with excitement. Mary Margaret rolled her eyes, but David pulling her away to dance made a smile crack across her face. They'd discovered over beers that a ballroom didn't make a home a palace, a question neither David, her, or Mary Margaret had ever thought they'd be asking. 

The sound of sputtering rage brought her back to the present. 

“You bloody ridiculous ‘n hateful creatures! I know what you are doing, what you're playing at. You can try to find me, but I know your games, and I know this woman is either demon or worse! She'd kill ye before even looking, smile on ‘er face. Calling her client… Yer client doesn't know her ken folk have cursed me, an m’wife, and took -” The line crackled, an electronic whining mixed with metallic pops. A dial tone replaced the man's voice and Graham’s smile faded. 

“Well. It seems like your new residence has eccentric neighbors, doesn't it?” Graham laughed, and Emma felt his hand slip into her own. She flinched, pulling away from him and he gave her a sad smile. “Sorry, I -”

“It's alright. I… I'm just not looking for anyone.” Rubbing her palms together to do something with her hands, she pushed away the feeling of wrong that came over her at someone's touch. “I don't think I'll be ready for some time.”

Graham nodded, gathering papers together from his desk. He waited a few long, drawn out, silent minutes before asking, “How long has it been since Mr. Gold's -”

Emma's tone was short, frustration defined in every syllable. “It could have happened yesterday, but it was 2 years ago. We got married fast, it was a blur. It's a difficult topic for me.”

“I'm so sorry I -”

“Can we please see the estate?” Pinching her brow as a migraine set in, Emma heard Graham clear his throat and stand. 

“Absolutely. It's a few hours from here, if you'd like to get lunch and car pool -”

“I'll take my car. Lead the way.”

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 Driving through the small town of Carterhold, Emma could see why locals may be wary of change. The town was a sleepy and picturesque village, stone homes with thatched or moss covered rooftops that stood sparsely around a small town center. From there, through the foggy clouds that swirled through a dense forest, trees climbed up the slope of a massive hill, emerald fingers that reached for the plains leading up to Carterhaugh’s imposing presence, and its perch on the cliffs over the sea. The wind shifted, and it was gone, swallowed again by mist, but Graham was already making the slow ascent up a winding road. 

Emma heard a thud, jerking the steering wheel as someone barreled into her bug, broad shoulders and crazed eyes under matted hair barely visible through her wet windows. 

“What the -”

The words had barely left her mouth when an unmistakable voice was yelling at her, rambling incoherently as he pounded on her door. 

“Ye kinnit go to Carterhaugh! Ye kinnit have it ye bloody witch or fairy demoness! ‘Tis on Hallowed and protected ground, guarded, an ye haven't a clue what I will do to protect it from you, ye - ” The face of Mr. Seáìnns was lit by lightning, eyes blazing bright blue, thunder from his fists against the passenger door and the sky. Emma felt panic in her chest, heavy and leaden.

Slamming her foot on the accelerator, Emma let the bug lurch into its unused highest speeds as she flew up the road to Carterhaugh. 

The driveway was curved elegantly behind an imposing metal and stone gate, mossy spheres capping the tall towering structure. The manor itself, even in its disuse, was stunning. A fountain stood before large wooden doors, framed by windows that traveled in neat rows up walls choked in ivy. Two wings on either side curved off from there, both facing the sea and woods, a domed roof on one side for a solarium, another for a ballroom. It was both imposing and impossibly inviting, a mystery that was decayed beyond unraveling. 

And it was hers. 

Graham helped her inside, the lights crackling in refusal to turn on in the storm as they stood in the atrium, dripping on the stone parquet. 

“It's fine, I have a lighter,” Emma shrugged, pulling it out of her jacket pocket. “I always carry one. As a kid I was afraid of being alone in the dark. I somehow always seemed to end up there, either hiding or being forced somewhere, so it helped to make my own magic light to fight away shadows. Probably silly…”

“Not silly at all. It's a common fear based on instinct. Predators lurk in the dark, so your brain says that light is safe,” Graham said simply. “Smart to have it on you to start a fire too, or warm up in the wilderness.”

Emma's lips tightened as he continued on about the practicality of the lighter. She turned, expecting him to get the hint, but he followed her while continuing on about the merits of different wood to burn or oils to keep to sustain a good burn. Emma found herself wishing for a nice birch branch just to whack him with. As her annoyance peaked, the lights flickered on. 

“Well. No candles I guess, but let's get you a fire started in the hearth, and then I'll be on my way.” Graham paused, and looked down, shuffling his shiny leather shoes. “Unless… I can stay if you like, until you get used to the place or have someone to stay with you, you know, because it's a big older house and -”

“I think I'll manage.” The words crept out more icily than she wanted, but he nodded with a sheepish wave of his hand. 

“That's fine. Just call if you do find you need something. I'll get someone out here, and then be out myself in an hour or so. I don't want to see you get swallowed up by a house this big.” He smiled and Emma returned it genuinely, touched by his offer. If she didn't know how men dangled kindness in the face of women like her to get something in return, she would have taken him seriously. But Neal… Neal had ruined her. 

The fire in the hearth was easy enough to start, even without special wood. Taking off her boots and coat, she gazed into the flame and planned out her course of action. Her sparse belongings were in the bug, and furniture would be delivered as soon as she took stock of what remained and measured for new pieces. Sighing and rubbing her temples, Emma rolled out her sleeping bag. She was asleep as soon as her eyes closed. 

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 In the morning, light flitting through the windows and the chill of the fire's death woke her up far earlier than her usual time. Wandering out to the bug, she dragged her luggage inside, pulling on extra socks and layering her sweaters. The effect was comical, but warm. Her stomach growled, but the kitchen was a quick - and musty - find. Sticking to pop tarts instead of whatever the swamp like gloop in the sink was, Emma set to work making a written game plan. 

Calling contractors would wait until reasonable hours, but she mapped out who she would need while taking stock of furniture, books, tapestries, busts, and paintings. To her surprise, much of the home was in decent condition, and she easily found a bedroom suite that overlooked the sea cliffs from a secure balcony, a fireplace with stone carved boats in its inlay, an almost modern bathroom, and to her absolute delight, had a storybook fairytale four poster bed. The linens were almost new, the pillows fluffy , and it smelled of sea salt, leather, spice, and rum. If she didn't know how alone she was, the room would seem almost home to someone. 

As normal waking hours approached, Emma went outside to survey the gardens and landscape. Most of the plants were dead around the house itself, but the gardens and connected solarium were wild and overrun with blooms. Down the hill, wildflowers in rainbow spectrum danced in the wind, their colors like an eruption of the Crayola crayons Emma had to share in school. 

Something moved out of the corner of her eye, and a dark shape made its way around to the front of the manor. Emma grabbed a rusted shovel from a garden bed, and crept towards where the intruder had gone. She found the man looking curiously at her bug. He was tall, dark hair blowing in the wind, scratching his neck in confusion. In his hand was a hook. 

“Don't touch my car and I won't have to hurt you, buddy!” Emma yelled, wielding the shovel in her hands like a baseball bat. The man turned, surprised. 

Blue. The first thing that Emma noticed was how blue his eyes were; how clear and beautiful the blue she saw in those eyes reflected the color of the sky above. The eyes that currently were gazing at her in confusion. 

“Who are you?” he asked, raising his hands above his shoulders, as if she were police. In his left hand was not a hook, but a three pronged garden trowel. Some impression she made, thinking about urban legends this late in life. 

“Better question, Alex Trebek, is who the hell are you?” Emma snarled. 

<

“I’m the, er, gardener, madam.” He waved the garden trowel in the direction of a nearby wheelbarrow. There was something off in the way he spoke, the accent strange to her. “Killian. Killian Jones.”

“Gardener?” Emma would had refused staff had she known they existed, and had made sure that she was for the most part alone. He shouldn't be here, especially not with her. Anger boiled over to cover her fear. “You’ve done a great job of things.” Gesturing at the dead plant life around the dilapidated manor, she watched his eyes narrow. “You’re truly magic with landscaping.” This comment brought a dark smile to his face that left her feeling like he was in on the punch line of a joke she hadn’t heard. 

“Well, if you’d contact the ruddy owner and let him know to add to the budget for gardening...” The English accent was evident in his voice now, the clear definition between Irish and it what had been off to her ears as she watched his cheeks reddening. Emma gave him a wolfish grin.

“I think that can be arranged.” She gave him a curt nod, before pointing to herself, which he appraised with lips curled back. “Emma Swan. Official new ‘ruddy owner’ of Carterhaugh.” 

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 The Gold family estate had beautiful gardens. At one time they even had cultivated a rare buttercup and rose hybrid, so they had been very particular on who tended their gardens. A quick call to Graham that took several minutes of cell phone aligning to make confirmed that Killian Jones actually was listed on a small ledger, his family name written on yellowing paper, noted as “horticultural help”.

“I don't know how I missed this, it's like it just appeared here Miss Swan,” Graham had groaned, yawning into his end of the line. Static cracked through her cell phone speakers as fog rolled over the driveway. “But yes, he is explicitly listed as coming with the property.”

“Great. And you're sure I can't fire him without penalty?” 

“No, I'm sorry. This is written in a ridiculously old way, as if they're counting him as property. He can resign, but even then -” There were several moments of garbled reply that was incomprehensible. Emma huffed, kicking rocks and pacing until she caught a better signal, and Graham's voice snapped back on the line. “-Look into it more as I do some digging. You're out of luck. Do you want me to come stay? I'm happy to while you wait for another friend -”

“No, no, it’s fine. He’s not creepy, he just seems…” Chewing her lip thoughtfully, she struggled for words. “He seems, lonely. Just sort of desperate and excited for company, which I thought I could avoid by being out here. I just wanted to be alone, or at the very least I guess with someone I didn't worry about… Well. I just don't do yokels or men, and he seems a pinch of both.”

Dead air hung on the other line, followed by a faint, eerie whispering. 

“Graham?”

The sound of a low laugh, as quiet as blown leaves over cold pavement sounded over the line, and Emma dropped her phone with a start. 

“Are you alright?” came the sudden voice from behind her, and she whirled on her heel. 

"I'd be fine if you made noise when you walked, buddy, and if I could get some damn reception out here." Emma huffed, and the grounds keeper seemed to decide against saying anything, quickly snapping his mouth shut. "Do you know a better place to get service?" 

In the fog and chill breeze of the gravel drive, Emma suddenly felt a deep sense of foreboding and unease. The shadow of Carterhaugh loomed, as if reaching for her, Killian already swallowed by the scrawled shape in the morning sun. He seemed uneasy as well, even unnerved. Emma watched as his jaw muscles worked as if he quite literally chewed on her words before speaking. 

"I could set up a tea service, if you'd like, but I'm afraid you'll find neither a service or reception out here. Nothing but chill." He made a gesture for her to follow him, which she did with a wry smile. He thought he had a sense of humor. Wonderful. 

As he prepared tea from a silver set in one of the many kitchen cabinets, they made attempts at conversation. Killian was also a caretaker for the property, and he asked her how she came about ownership as they sat at the large oak dining table together. The furniture was remarkably well preserved in the majority of the main rooms, much to her delight.

The sunshine through moth eaten curtains had dust motes swirling in the air as her face fell, and she swallowed the bile that rose before she uttered her tight words. 

“My husband passed away.” Killian had winced at that. 

“I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sure he was -”

“I don't… I don't discuss Neal.” She closed her eyes tightly, taking deep breaths, feeling her skin flame. Even after what felt like an eternity, Neal's shadow still darkened her day. She sipped her tea, trying to cool herself, even with the scalding liquid. 

He hadn't asked any more on the subject, only asking about changes to what affected his work. Emma found it comforting; if he was to stay, at least he would leave well enough alone. 

“I'd like to stay here, if you don't mind. I have a master suite facing the sea on the third level of the east wing, and I know there'll be nothing in town for rent,” he stated. Emma chewed her lip in thought, mapping out his room in relation to her own. The answer struck her, and she groaned with a scrunched face of annoyance. 

“Do you get up early? Probably don't keep a fire lit?” she grumbled, and he looked at her with eyes narrowed. 

“Yes, I'm up as early as possible, and I find I enjoy the chilled sea air. Why?”

“And I bet you have a dove gray comforter.” Emma sighed, head falling into her palm with a wry laugh. “Because of course, just of course -”

“I do, aye -” He blinked and his brows shot up. “Were you..? Did you sleep in my room?” 

“Well, no, but I didn't know it was -”

“I mean, it's fine. I'll choose another, I guess -”

“No. No need to be ridiculous. I… You probably know where the next best preserved bed is?” she asked, and his eyes lit up. 

“Well yes, but you'd be in the same wing, is that alright?”

Emma hesitated, and then nodded. “With you up so early I doubt we'd see much of each other. And I'll be busy inside as you work outside.”

He made a non-committal noise, and stood with a stretch. Emma inhaled sharply; he was well toned and very good looking, but the thought of anyone’s hands on her after Neal had… 

Her stomach churned. 

“Follow me, then,” he said, offering his hand. Emma could feel her lungs tightening. Her expression must have frozen on her face too, because his eyes widened and he lowered his hand. “Or we could do this later, if you -”

Emma stood, and shook her head. “Just got a bit dizzy. Lead the way.”

They made no conversation as he led her up the staircase to the third level, the other suite he mentioned on the far end of the hall whereas his was at the beginning. The large door was imposing but carved with floral inlay, the stain perfectly applied to add to its richness. Both sides were flanked by stained glass in the same twisted vine and flower designs. 

“I almost chose this room. It was for the lady of this house at one time, and should serve you better than me.” Killian produced a key with the same designs swirled around the brass, unlocking it to reveal a sun warmed sitting area the color of blushing peonies. An ornate vanity sat in one corner, while a matching bureau and canopy bed sat before a balcony, from which the sea and his own room visible. Stained glass curved around the doors to what she assumed were the closet and bathroom, and more carved wood and glass made up a truly spectacular fireplace. If Killian’s room was big, this room was truly gigantic. 

Emma was at a loss, the furniture was all beautifully intact except for the bed’s canopy curtains and linens. Beyond that, the fabrics and rugs showed no large evidence of wear, the patterns still bright and soft underfoot. She poked her head in the closet and found it relatively large, possibly a maid's room or changing salon at one time, then turned the handle of the bathroom while Killian watched from the entrance. 

The huge claw foot soaking tub and gold veined marble under her feet could not prepare her for the large stained glass framed window that captured the sea, as if she was sailing away in the tub itself. A double sink, open shower, and large mirror completed the space in luxury. It was exquisite, and left Emma aching for a bubble bath. 

“I'll move your things, if you -”

“No,” she whispered, still in awe, before clearing her throat. “No, that's alright. I'll move everything. I… I don't like people touching my things.”

“At least allow me to give you my spare set of bedding, love, and -”

“I am not your love, alright?” she snapped, and his eyes widened. She took in a steadying breath, chewing her lip to rid herself of the sourness she wanted to throw at him. He seemed mollified, scratching behind his ear. 

“I'm sorry, I -”

“No. I'm sorry. It's been… I have… I don't do people very well.”

“Well, I'll get you the linens and be out of your way, then.” There was resignation in his tone, but Emma could only hug herself as she let her armor build back up around her. 

“Perfect. Thank you.” Her tone was clipped, but she didn't expect the annoyed response, huffed under his breath as he pulled blankets and pillows from a hall closet. 

“As you wish, Princess.”

Emma's tone was colder than ice, her words spoken in frigid staccato. “Excuse me? I must have misheard you.”

“I wasn't expecting the new owner to be all business, is what I said. These corridors are old. If you aren’t careful, these halls will try to trick you. You’ll get used to them, though.” Killian deposited the mountain of linen on her bed, and spread out the fitted sheet. 

“I don't think halls,” she snatched the pillows from the bed, pulling the sheet roughly on the other side, “are capable of trickery. Only people. People are difficult, they need to be watched. You have to keep your eyes on them or they'll do who knows what.” Pulling roughly on the sheet again, she glared with narrowing eyes at Killian, his own eyes glowering under dark lashes. “Especially people who say things under their breath like a petulant, scorned, self absorbed, preening -”

“Well, I would despair if ‘People’ took their eyes off of me. Some might say this attention is in the beholder’s benefit, and I'd say so as well. I'm quite dashing, or so I've heard.” Gripping the comforter tightly, he laid it out and smoothed it down while returning her glare. “So, I suppose we are well matched, since you are an icy, insufferable, stubborn, spoiled -” Reaching for a pillow, his hand grazed her own, and Emma yelped in surprise. 

Her breathing quickened as she stared at her skin, Killian’s insults and attempted arguments drowned out by an increasing electrical whine mixed with her heartbeat thumping. Stumbling away into the bathroom, she turned on the tap, desperately washing her skin where they had touched in the rust colored water, scouring the place their skin had met with her nails instead of the absent soap. 

Killian’s hand found her shoulder and Emma flew at him, pushing him away as she screamed profanities. He stumbled backwards into the tub, watching in fear at her transformation, her rubbed raw hand bleeding as she renewed her focus on the new area he'd touched. Without soap it was pointless, hot water her only real advantage, pouring the scalding water onto her skin. She mumbled to herself, trying to focus against the onset panic.

Emma's thoughts were burning away elsewhere, the fires she could not escape when Neal had locked her away; smoke, embers and ash acrid in both the air and her lungs. 

It took what felt like hours for her to come back to herself, her fingernails bloody and skin blistered from the heat. The gentle chime of the clock in the room indicated it had only been ten minutes to her relief. It was the worst attack she had in ages, the first time in so long she hadn't been able to control herself. The first time in so, so, long that she had fallen back into the flame of those memories, of that pain. 

A soft voice whispered gently to her, taking her off guard, and she looked up to see Killian slowly extricating himself from the bathtub. He raised his hands in supplication, kneeling several feet away from her. She choked out a strangled noise and he shook his head. 

“It's alright, it's OK, lo - er…” He gave a sheepish look, thinking for a moment. He smiled in a sad sort of way after a moment, before continuing, “It's alright. Just tell me how I can help. Maybe a glass of water?” Emma nodded slowly. “Alright, I'll fetch you a bottle.”

At his retreat, Emma let her herself take stock of what had happened, falling back into her times under clinical observation. Mary Margaret had been a stone faced angel, taking in her pain and working a life around it, going as far as releasing care notes when she felt Emma was ready. She had met David, Emma's adoptive brother that way, resulting in a very happy marriage.

“Patient refuses to accept human contact, even using high concentration chemical cleaning agents on skin.”

“Patient has no history of obsessive or compulsory behavior, but violence and destruction of property are noted in their state welfare file.”

“Attempts at getting patient to explain what happened on the night of the incident to victims causes patient to become increasingly distressed when her husband is mentioned. Questions regarding other victims or the causes of death are met with silence. Patient claims no memory of her actions.”

“Patient indicates possibility of further witnesses or victims at scene - hallucinations caused by trauma or psychosis?”

“Repeated attempts at questioning or explaining patient's obsessive actions or fear of touch are met with hostility, while questioning in regards to matrimonial life is indicative of abuse. Patient advocate (M. M.) recommends home based care, with patient's brother.”

“Patient continues to allow touch in sparing amounts among family, friends, and in situations where they are prepared. Therapy with preferred Doctor is continuing as part of a deferred sentence. Patient advocate (M. M.) states that large improvement has been made outside of care facilities. Recommending end of observational treatment.”

Killian placed the water next to her, as the feeling of oxygen in her lungs weighed her down. 

“Thanks.” Emma croaked, voice raspy. Killian sat down in front of her, legs crossed as he watched her drink with shaking hands. 

Scratching behind his ear, he looked sideways across the floor, picking at a chipped piece of tile. “It was nothing. I'm sorry that -”

“Don't be. I just have a thing about touch.” Emma stood briskly, ice back in her unsteady tone at glacial levels. “You couldn't have known, and since you are going to be scarcely around it won't be an issue, as we discussed earlier.”

Killian snorted, and stood as well, rocking on his heels. “I was going to say that I'm sorry it took so long, and I brought you some… other items.” His face changed, haughty to solemn, watching her hands tremble as she shoved them in her pockets. “You're right, we won't be seeing each other often. If you need help with something, or finding your way around the estate, leave me a note under my door. If I need garden supplies, I'll leave a note in the kitchen.” 

He turned, walking towards the bedroom door. After a moment Emma followed tentatively, walking towards the door behind him in silence. She shot a glance at the bed, noticing the bandages, a tube of some ointment, a key ring, and a few pink roses. She stopped in the small salon, watching Killian open her door and give her a strained smile. 

“I'm sorry for touching you, as well.” Emma made a sound of protest, ready to tell him again that he was blameless, but he persisted. “While I couldn't have known, my presence here has never been… convenient. I had hoped that had changed with the new owner. Good day, Miss Swan.”

“Wait -” He looked as surprised as she felt, the words racing past her lips, blurted at the last second. “What is your cell phone number? It'd be easier to get a hold of you that way, if I should need you. Not to say that I will…” Killian stared at her in abrupt confusion, his brows knitting. 

“I don't have a phone. The manor has one, should you need to use it.” There was something off in his tone, but her own cell phone had fought every attempt at service on the property, so this shouldn't have been too much of a surprise. The manor phone, she could work with that. 

“What's the number?” Emma pulled her phone from her pocket, the screen lighting up. Killian looked amazed in her peripheral, which didn't surprise her. The town was practically medieval, and this phone was the newest of its brand. Emma scarcely knew how to use it. 

“You have to set it up later, if you want communication by wire. Your device there -”

“It's an Android, I let the kid at the store set it up for me. If you want me to get you one, I can the next time I go to the city. They have a walkie talkie app that I think might work with a wifi connection once I have that set up.” Killian nodded, looking at her blankly. “Have you ever had Wi-Fi in the house before?”

Killian hesitated, his jaw ticking as he bit into his lip in thought. “I wouldn't know, love. I'm afraid that we’re a bit behind the rest of the world here, I don't believe we know what year it is most of the time.”

Emma laughed lightly, and relaxed a little bit more. “Most of us are trying to forget that it's 2019, so I suppose that's fair. I just enjoy Netflix and the occasional game of Words with Friends too much to go without internet.” Killian looked down at his feet, his face unreadable for a moment, fists balled. When he looked back at her and relaxed, Emma caught a glimpse of pure sadness, a mirror of her own pain, before it was carefully pushed behind walls of his own. 

Smiling softly, Killian laughed. “I have no idea what a Netflix is, but you are the Mistress of the estate. I encourage you to do as you wish. If you would like me to have a…” He hesitated again, as if searching for something. “A, er, shell phone, I will gladly oblige if you provide it and give me instruction.”

Emma snorted, and found herself genuinely laughing as Killian’s cheeks turned red. “You're actually funny. Alright. I'll try to get you a ‘shell phone’, old man.” Killian’s eyes darkened, his smile turning almost sour. “Between the two of us, we'll bring some life back into this place.”

He nodded, that same pensive look on his face, almost hidden by his smile. “Yes. Well, taming the estate is not going to be an easy task. I'll help you where I can, should you need me. Good day.” He closed the door slowly, and Emma listened as his footfalls fell away. 

Climbing into her bed, the mattress surprisingly plush under her, she bandaged her hand slowly. The roses he'd laid next to the first aid were beautiful, their strong aromatic scent filling the air already. Picking up one of the roses delicately, she sniffed, the full scent absolutely breathtaking. The throbbing of her skin faded, and all at once Emma felt herself relax. She felt invigorated, but her muscles were loose, and she happily moved her things into her room, making sure to place the roses in a porcelain vase. 

The rest of the day was spent taking pictures and taking full stock of every room in the large estate. It was exhausting and by the time darkness settled Emma had barely scratched the surface of the repairs needed. Neal had left a large sum of money for her, but this was a giant and expensive endeavor. Back in her room, she started a fire in the hearth and tugged on a robe over her pajamas. Opening the door to the balcony and stepping out onto the cold stone, she stared at the waves. 

Never, never in her wildest dreams did she believe that this could be her life. In the moment it was overwhelming, the only silver lining in the thunder cloud that was her marriage to Neal. A true story of a love turned into something poisoned, a once healthy plant that grew into twisted vines, strangling everything in its path. 

His hands tight around her neck, the air in her lungs not enough, she wasn't enough. The other women being led somewhere by the red haired woman with green nails, Ari's and Tam's bracelets heavy on her wrist even as she starts to feel herself go slack. The pressure is too much, black spots dotting the air, and somewhere close, another man hooting like some primate - Brown eyes meet hers, and for a moment he falters, fingers loosening. 

Emma kicks, kicks with all her strength, and when he crashes backwards she screams, screams like her chest is ripping apart just to resonate this noise, this wail of everything he lied about. It is a trick of light, a symptom of lack of oxygen, a freak occurrence spurred by the old home and poor insulation, bad wiring and mice chewed exposed cables. 

Neal looks at her and sighs as Emma can hear the red haired woman and her underling shriek. 

“Thank you,” Neal whispers, reaching for her, but Emma's banshee wail is not over and her mouth is a perfect ‘O’ as the rafters shake, tears stinging her eyes. A Swan song, she thinks, the end of her sanity and her life, the feeling of this cry flowing through her like breathing with every inch of her body. Her skin burns too, but not like theirs. 

He makes it to her on stumbling steps, a vision from a nightmare, her scream unending even as she stares at him in horror. His touch is like a branding iron, his embrace like raw flesh dipped in salt. Neal touches her face as he burns away, ashes to ashes, his hand becoming embers and dust. This is hell fire, and Emma can't stop her scream long enough to beg for this to end. His lips are against her ear and his last words echo as he falls away, falls to her feet, the building crumbling around them. Her scream ends when the ceiling piece hits her skull, and the world too, finally falls into blissful, silent, cool darkness. 

Far off there are sirens, and she can feel the burning when her body is lifted, but for now, Emma prefers the darkness even as Neal's last words occasionally echo through the stillness. 

“I'm so sorry, Ems." 

Emma came back to herself soaking wet, the rain that threatened from the horizon now in full force. It pelted her, cold, salt rain, pulled from the waves and forced from the sky. She was crying, sobbing in silence, but no one is here to see the rain wash away her tears. 

[borathae]

↳ Index [#04 Santa Claus is Coming to Town]

Pairing: Jungkook x f.Reader, Jimin x f.Reader, Seokjin x f.Reader

Genre: Smut

Warnings: foursome, mxm, fxm, dom!Seokjin, dom!Jimin, sub!Jungkook, sub!Reader, thigh riding, spanking, marking, ass play, use of toys, nipple play, cum eating, anal sex, spit roasting, oral (m. & f. recieving), multiple orgasms, use of nicknames, degratation, orgasm denial, overstimulation, hairpulling, praising, aftercare

Wordcount: 7.6k

Back at the chalet you are met with silence. The others must still be out, you think to yourself. The four of you bit each other goodbye for now, each rushing off to your rooms to get ready for the night out.

You decide to text your best friend to tell her about your day and ask for her advice on which you dress you should wear for tonight as soon as you enter your empty bedroom. After all you had promised to update her on every little thing.

-You: Giiiiiiirl I have so much tea for you, get the biscuits ready lmaooo. Okay first of all I made up with Taehyung and Jimin already yaay. And second of all I need your help. Seokjin, Jungkook, Jimin and I want to go to an après ski party in town and I don’t know what to wear ugh. Should I wear the silver dress or the black one? ♥

Three dots appear as soon as you had pressed send on the first message and soon enough your phone vibrates.

-Hayley: biiiiiiiitch I knew they wouldn’t break up with you like that. see I told you!!! ♥ first of all did you get the vitamine d already? 👀 and second of all take the silver dress it makes your ass look amazing ♥

You smile at the enthusiasm of your friend typing your answer.

-You: nooo as far as now is concerned I didn’t 😔✊ but it can change lmao at least I try to tonight… thanks for your help btw I’ll wear the silver dress ♥

-Hayley: that’s my girl 😏 give me updates 😏

You lock your phone afterwards to finally get ready for the night. You quickly step into the shower letting the hot water run over your cold body. Being outside for the whole day had taken its toll on you and you were glad for the hot temperature of the water. You wash your hair as well, cleaning it from the sweat. Apparently you had sweated more than what your cold body tells you. You blow dry your hair, styling it whilst doing so. You decide to go for a smokey eye look and keep your lips in a neutral nude look. After that it is time for your underwear for tonight. The silver dress was tight fitting to your body, so simple lace which would hug your body in a flattering manner would be to one to go for. You decide to go for the black lace, which Yoongi had once given you on Valentine’s Day blushing at the thought of what had soon followed after that present. God you really missed their touch. You sigh, shaking your head to get rid of the depressing thoughts and peel yourself into the dress. You put on your black high heels turning around in front of the mirror one last time before nodding satisfied with the result.

Once you come to the railing you can already see the three of them sit on the couch underneath you. Your breath catches in your throat, they hadn’t promised you too much when they had told you that they would dress up. Jungkook was wearing ripped jeans into which he had stuck a yellow dress shirt. He had finished off his look with a black belt, which accentuated his small waist and his silver Rolex on his left wrist. You weren’t used to him dressing like this and you feel your breath quicken.

Jimin had decided to go for a black turtleneck, same as Seokjin. Expect that Jimin had paired it with black jeans and a black leather jacket. Seokjin had decided to pair it with a burgundy suit which made his shoulders look even wider than usual and rectangular glasses.

“You look amazing wow”, you tell them once you reach the living room. Their eyes go big as soon as they see you, looking you up from head to toe, “you like my dress?” you ask turning around so they could get a good look of your ass.

“You look hot babe”, Jimin says standing up to place a kiss on your cheek.

“I can’t wait to dance with you tonight”, Jungkook tells you before offering you his arm, which you accept with a smile.

“Let’s go before I decide that staying home is far more fun than going out”, Seokjin says slapping your ass to which you gasp surprised.

“Control your hands mister”, you warn him. Your heart was racing at an ineffable speed, you weren’t used to Seokjin acting like this anymore and you felt nervous all of a sudden.

Why are you nervous? They are still your boyfriends and they would never do something what you wouldn’t want them to. Or are you nervous because you already know what was to come later that night from just looking at their hungry eyes.

“I’m sorry I had to”, Seokjin apologizes smiling at you cheekily.

“Don’t be angry at him, if it hadn’t been him I would have slapped your ass in his name”, Jimin tries to defend him offering you your jacket. You scoff throwing your hair over your shoulder dramatically to get it out from under the thick fabric of the coat.

Just like always a taxi was already waiting outside for the four of you and to Jungkooks and yours luck Seokjin is as nice as to get into the passenger seat this time. The drive to the club was silent safe for the French music playing through the taxi radio. Seokjin is the one who pays the taxi driver this time giving him a large tip before thanking him and helping the rest of you out of the car.

The club looks unremarkable from outside, a simple wooden house. The bright pink neon letters are the only indicator that you were entering a club. The bouncers let you through easily once Jimin smiles brightly at them, both of them a flustered mess afterwards.

“How are you always doing this?” you ask him.

“Do what?” he asks smiling knowingly but acting stupid.

“Put every man into gay panic”, you tell him making him laugh out loud.

“I’m cute no one can resist me”, he says cupping his face in his hands.

But his cute behavior was gone the moment the four of you enter the dark room of the club, his eyes turning dark once he had been set into the mood. This man will be the death of you one day you are sure of it. Heads turn your way while the four of you walk through the crowds of people to get to an empty table, mostly women starring at your boyfriends, forgetting completely about the men at their sides. The men are far too intimidated by the stares of Jimin walking in front of you and Seokjin and Jungkook walking on each side of you to actually take a good look at you. You grin to yourself; you had always found it quite attractive when your boyfriends acted protective over you.

“I’ll go get us some drinks”, Seokjin yells over the loud music pointing at the bottle bar once you had sat down at one of the tables. He rushes off, wallet already in his hand.

“The music is good in here”, Jimin says moving his head to the loud bass.

“Not really my cup of tea but once Seokjin brings the vodka and I am drunk enough I’m sure I’ll love it”, Jungkook says and despite his words he is nodding his head to the music.

Right at this moment Seokjin comes back with a big silver bucket filled with a bottle of vodka and different sodas to mix it with.

“The barman told me this is the best vodka here. I paid 260 swiss francs for it let’s hope he didn’t screw me over”, he tells you pouring each of you a glass.

There was one thing you had always hated about Seokjin and that is the way he mixes drinks. The moment you take the first sip of your vodka cola your whole body shutters at the taste.

“Fucking hell Seokjin that’s pure vodka”, you hiss scrunching up your nose.

“Listen babe I paid a lot of money for it so you are going to enjoy it”, he warns pouring down his drink in one go. He grimaces noticing that he indeed had mixed it far too strong but he is too proud to admit that.

Jungkook is the one who mixes the next round and as you so painfully realise he isn’t any better than Seokjin. So after two glasses you feel already drunk enough that for the time being you want nothing more than to dance it off again.

“I’ll go dance for a bit, you guys are shitty at mixing and if I don’t move I’ll throw up. Anyone wants to join me?” you announce struggling to stand up with your high heels on.

“I’ll join you”, Jungkook says catching you with his strong arms, so you wouldn’t tumble backwards onto the couch again.

You laugh pulling him out of the booth and dragging him onto the dance floor. It was stuffed, hot bodies pressing against each other. Once you and Jungkook had finally found a spot where the two of you could dance quite undisturbed, there is nothing stopping you anymore. You jump up and down to the music with raised arms. You close your eyes smiling brightly, singing the lyrics to the song which had just came on.

Suddenly two arms wrap around your body and you open your eyes meeting Jungkook smirking down at you. He presses you against his body grinding his crotch into your stomach. He leans down to whisper something into your ear.

“You look so hot whilst dancing”, he whispers before pressing one of his thighs between your legs. You gasp at the rough material of his jeans rubbing at your core, the thin lace doing little to lessen the friction.

“Ah Jungkook”, you moan when he forces your hips to move on his leg to the music.

“Quiet babe we don’t want the others to notice or do we?” he warns biting your earlobe. Your eyes fly shut, moans leaving your lips at the feeling of his lips tracing kisses all over your neck and his thigh muscles flexing underneath you.

“Shit Jungkook baby ah, stop people will notice”, you gasp when he presses you even tighter to his body, his erection now pressing into your stomach.

“Just keep moving babe, you feel so good, no one will notice”, he pants, too far gone into the feeling already.

“You two up for a person joining this little thing here?” a man in sweats and a Christmas sweater suddenly interrupts your dancing.

Jungkook looks up from your neck, pressing you even closer in reflex.

“Can’t you see tha-“, he starts but is interrupted by you kissing his ear to get his attention.

“Let him join baby, let’s make the others jealous”, you whisper to which you feel his dick twitch against your stomach. He nods giving his permission.

“Go ahead”, he invites the stranger who doesn’t need to be told twice.

He wraps his hands around you, resting them on Jungkooks waist and as soon as he wants to start grinding into your ass he is ripped away from your body.

“What the fuck?” he screams looking around for the idiot who just interrupted his actions.

“If I were you I would fuck off before it turns ugly for you”, Jimin growls starring at the taller man with such intensity he seems to shrink in height. Strong hands wrap around your wrist and soon you are dragged into the direction of the exit with Jungkook and Jimin closely following by.

“What the hell did you think you were doing in there?” Seokjin spits once he had dragged you out of the club and to the closest taxi.

“I wasn’t doing anything”, you insist but you can’t help the smirk creeping up your face. The alcohol surely does his job well, adding to your confidence.

“Into the taxi now”, he orders shoving you into the backseat next to Jimin.

It surprises you that none of them say something to the little escapade of you and Jungkook and soon you feel yourself grow worried. Did you go too far? You relationship was already on the brink of breaking, what if your little stunt actually had done the exact opposite than you had hoped for. What if they actually consider breaking up with you now?

Your worries soon come to a halt once you feel Jimins hand travel up and down your thigh. You look over to Jungkook, noticing that Jimin was doing the exact same to him as he was to you. His hand travels up further and further until it comes to a rest, mere millimeters away from your core. Your breath quickens starring between yours and Jungkooks crotch.

“Now be quiet we don’t want to bother the taxi driver”, Jimin whispers into your ear lightly biting your ear lope before his hand finally comes to rest on your core. You have to bite down on your tongue to stop the sigh from escaping your lips.

“You are both so ready for me already”, he says smirking at the way yours and Jungkooks hips snatch up simultaneously. He increases the pressure of his fingers against your core and you have to burry your face in his neck.

“Jimin pl-please stop”, you stutter scared that the driver would notice your indecency.

“Hyung plea- ah fuck”, Jungkook suddenly blurts out. Jimins hands had pressed down especially hard and whilst you were able to muffle your moan in Jimins neck Jungkook wasn’t as lucky.

The eyes of the taxi driver snap into your direction. He is starring at you through the rear view mirror disgust written all over his features.

“Oooh, wow I really love this song! What’s it called?” Seokjin saves the three of you turning the music louder and bombarding the taxi driver with questions.

To your dismay Jimin retreats his hands from your core after that, acting like he doesn’t notice both yours and Jungkooks whines. Seokjin pays the driver double once you arrive at the chalet, apologizing with a sorry smile on his face before slamming the door shut.

“No missy you are not dismissed for tonight, into my room now”, Jimin tells you pulling you back by your wrist. You had wanted to walk up to your room, frustrated that they had stopped their teasing.

You let him drag you with him, leaving your high heels somewhere scattered along the way to the room. Seokjin, who had been the last one to enter the bedroom, locks the door before pushing Jungkook onto the bed next to where Jimin had pushed you.

He crawls onto the younger man’s body sitting down on his crotch earning a groan from Jungkook.

“You were a very bad boy today Jungkook-ah”, he says grabbing him by his hair and pulling hard. Jungkook winces from the pain, his eyes fluttering shut. “You know how much I dislike my pets misbehaving like that”, he pulls even harder on Jungkooks hair and the younger one groans out a pained “sorry”.

“Look me in the eyes when apologizing pet”, Seokjin warns and despite the heaviness of his eyelids Jungkook manages to peel them open.

“I’m sorry master”, he chokes out, breathing out in relieve once Seokjin releases his hair from his grasp.

“Good boy”, Seokjin praises gently massaging Jungkooks aching roots. He leans down to capture Jungkooks lips into a rough kiss grinding down on Jungkooks crotch. The younger man whines with every move of Seokjins hips, his hand grasping at the black fabric of Seokjins turtleneck.

You had watched the whole scene unfold in front of grinding your hips involuntarily against nothing but air. You need to feel something press against your core soon or else you will go crazy.

“You like what you are seeing kitten?” Jimin whispers into your ear. His hot breath tickles your neck making a shiver run down your spine.  You nod, suppressing a moan once his lips meet your neck. “You were such a bad little girl tonight dancing with this stranger right in front of us. I know you wanted us to see didn’t you?” he asks and once you don’t answer his bites the skin of your neck making you gasp, “answer me kitten.”

“Yes I want- wanted you to”, you stutter grasping at the bed sheets underneath you. Jimins fingers had travelled down to your core, now lightly teasing your folds. He chuckles once he feels the soaked material of your panties.

“Why did you want us to see? Mhm kitten, are three cocks not enough for you?” Jimin teases adding pressure to his touch. Your hips buck up at the sudden feeling and you gasp out loud.

“Because I wanted you to punish me”, you scream out looking into Jimins eyes. They flutter shut for a moment, before he finds his composure again now starring down at you with dark eyes.

“On my lap now kitten, head to Jungkook”, he orders pulling you up from where you were lying before and sitting down on the spot. He pats his lap and you soon follow his orders. You lie down on his thighs now facing Jungkook who was panting hard from whatever Seokjin was doing to him.

“Go on Jungkook look at Y/N see what happens when you make us jealous”, Seokjin orders the younger one forcing his head to look into your direction. “I want you to watch her face when Jimin spanks her beautiful little ass”, he whispers leaning down close to Jungkooks ear looking at you the whole time with hungry eyes.

The first blow comes as a surprise to you and you yell out from the sudden pain against your ass cheek. Jimin had pulled up your dress, when you were too occupied to stare between Jungkook and Seokjin, admiring the black lace for a few seconds before spanking you hard.

“Tell me kitten on a scale of one to ten how much did you enjoy your little escapade with Jungkook hm?” Jimin asks massaging the hot flesh with gentle fingers.

“Eight”, you try to get out before the second blow hits you.

“So you still have six to go kitten. Start counting now”, Jimins tells you before spanking you once again. Your eyes fall shut and you try to get the numbers out as loud as your heavy breathing allowed you to. You feel yourself grow wetter with every slap of Jimins hand against your ass cheeks, the rings on his fingers only adding to the pleasurable pain.

“Could you hear her right now Jungkook? Because I couldn’t”, Seokjins asks when you had choked out the last number sobbing too much to actually be able to speak. Jungkook shakes his head, his eyes are fixated on your teary eyes and his breathing is heavy.

“Eight! Eight! Fuck eight!” you blurt out once Jimin hands meet your ass once again, harder than before. Seokjin nods satisfied and soon you feel Jimin gently massage your burning skin.

“This will leave a pretty mark”, he chuckles starring down at the red hand print on your left ass cheek. “You did good kitten”, he praises making you smile. He helps you up on your knees so you are kneeling next to his sitting form. He rests his hand on the small of your back, smiling at you before pulling you down for a kiss. You melt into his kiss. It is the complete opposite of the rough treatment from his hands a few seconds ago, gentle and sweet and soon your ragged breathing relaxes. He pulls you back by your hair, once he had decided that it was enough, and you wince from the pain. “Don’t get too relaxed kitten, we are just getting started with the two of you”, he says and your breathing gets faster as soon as his words had left his lips.

“Now Jungkookie what are we going to do with you mhm?” Seokjin asks, gently combing through Jungkooks dark locks.

“I don’t know, anything please I need you to punish me”, he answers shaking his head. His eyes flutter shut, enjoying the soft touches of Seokjins fingers.

“I’ve got an idea”, Jimin says getting up and walking to his suitcase. The three of you watch him crouch down and digging through it for a few moments before finally pulling something out with a triumphant “aha.” He walks to the bed again putting a black satin box onto the bed sheets. He opens it and as soon as Jungkook spots the black butt plug his body starts to shake. He had always loved the feeling of it vibrating in his tight hole whilst Jimin sucks off his dick, but he knows what it meant tonight and he doesn’t like it one bit.

“Go on kitten get Jungkooks ass ready for my toy”, Jimins tells you smirking at the way Jungkooks adam’s apple pops up and down from swallowing so hard.

Jimins request takes you off-guard for a moment and your eyes jump from Jimins and Seokjins features. They are both smirking at you, waiting for you to spring into action.

“If that’s okay with you of course”, Seokjin adds and you have to smile at his words. You nod, of course it is okay with you, it is just that you felt nervous. It had been rare that any of the guys asked you to eat out their ass, so you were relatively new to this area.

“No it’s fine with me”, you tell them before crawling over to Jungkook. He watches your every move with big eyes, chest heaving up and down. “Is it okay with you too Jungkook-ah?” you ask him and he nods violently.

“Please babe I need your tongue”, he whines to which Seokjin pulls his hair back.

“You don’t beg her for anything, she is nothing more than another toy following our commands, is that clear pet?” he warns to which Jungkook nods as good as his aching roots allow him too. “Good boy, now what did you want from her?”

“Her tongue master, please I need her tongue”, he begs, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

“Good boy”, Seokjin praises releasing Jungkooks hair before signaling you to move, “go on doll make his ass nice and ready for us”, he orders you and with that he is gone from Jungkooks body. Jungkook whines at the sudden loss of contact snapping his hips up searching for any sort of friction.

You crawl over to him, sitting down on his thighs resting your hands on his chest. 

“Can I please strip him? I really want to see his body please masters” you ask Jimin and Seokjin to which they both nod.

Your fingers are shaking and unbuttoning his shirts takes you longer than you wanted it to. Once you have finally managed to open every single button Jungkook jumps into action, sitting up and ripping his shirt from his body before wrapping his arms around. He kisses you hard grinding you down against his crotch, hissing every time you core grinds over the most sensitive part of his constrained cock. You are rendered speechless for a moment, resting your forehead against his and just letting him grind you down against him.

“Don’t forget your role here pet”, Seokjin warns stopping Jungkook in his movements with his words.

“I’m sorry master”, he apologizes with his eyes pressed shut from trying so hard to control the urges to snap his hips up into you again.

“Go on kitten, you are not finished here”, Jimin encourages you and with shaking fingers you manage to open Jungkooks belt and zipper.

Jungkook raises his hips, so you are able to finally free him of his jeans and boxers, sighing loudly once his cock spring free from his pants. “Fuck yes finally”, he sighs closing his eyes for a moment before ripping them open again.

You had wrapped your mouth around his tip gently sucking on it, surprising him. He lets out a loud moan throwing his head back at the sudden pleasure. His right hand comes to rest on your head guiding you down further on his dick. You swallow hard once you can feel the tip of his cock hit the back of your throat, making him grunt in pleasure.

“Wait, please go slow babe I’m sensiti-”, he groans choking on the last word when you grace his cock with your teeth, “fuck do that again holy shit”, he stutters. You repeat your action, Jungkooks hips thrusting into your mouth at the feeling. You move upwards again, not wanting to choke on his length now concentrating on his tip. You flick your tongue around his tip, sucking hard before working your way down his length tracing every single vein with the tip of your tongue. “It feels so good babe don’t stop doing that”, he moans tightening his grip around your hair. You suck his tip again, licking over his slit one last time and then you are gone from his dick.

“No please don’t babe I was so close”, he whines looking at you so miserably you nearly sink down on his dick once again. But you stay strong wiping your mouth clean from your spit.

“Turn around baby, get on all fours”, you tell him and he follows immediately. He rests on his elbows, ass up in the air and head pressed to the mattress just waiting for you to touch him again.

You look at him for a moment admiring the curve of his ass cheeks and his very impressive thigh muscles. You begin trailing kisses all over the small of his back slowly working your way down to his ass. You suck on his flesh first, a small gasp leaving Jungkooks lips once it starts to hurt. You release him admiring the purple spot on his perfect skin. “Are you ready Jungkook?” you ask him.

“Fuck yes please”, he groans already shaking from just your hands massaging his ass cheeks. You spread them open so it would be easier for you to dig in and then you are finally where Jungkook wanted you the most. “Shiiiiit”, he moans once he feels your wet muscles trace his entrance. You are gentle at first, kitten licking so he would get used to the feeling. It doesn’t take Jungkook long to beg for more grinding his ass back against your tongue. You hold him still, not wanting to be suffocated by him, before starting to fuck his hole with your tongue as good as possible.

“Ah fuck baby fuck yes”, he moans nearly ripping the bed sheets apart from grabbing them so tightly, “Please fuck me with your fingers baby”, he begs catching you off-guard. You look to Seokjin and Jimin for permission.

“Go on doll do what Jungkook asked you for”, Seokjin encourages you and quiet “thank you” leaves Jungkooks lips upon hearing Seokjins words.

You wet one of your fingers with your spit, so it would slip in easier, and start slightly pushing against the ring of muscles. Jungkook breaths in hard, trying to relax his racing heartbeat, “go on baby”, he encourages and upon hearing his words you push hard against his hole, your finger slipping right into it. Jungkook winces in pain, the new sensation burning. You attached your mouth to his entrance once again, licking and sucking until Jungkook has relaxed enough that you were able to thrust your finger in and out of him. You add another one soon after, curling them so you would hit his prostate with every thrust of your fingers. He was a moaning mess underneath you at this point, his thighs shaking and precum dripping down on the sheets ruining them.

“I-I’m so cl-close”, he stutters bucking his hips back to meet your every thrust.

“Stop your movements kitten”, Jimin suddenly tells you. You don’t listen at first, too caught up with making Jungkook cum, until a tight grip around your wrist makes you stop in your movements. “I said stop your movements”, Jimin warns pulling your hand away from Jungkooks ass.

“No please don’t, please let me cum”, Jungkook sobs shaking violently from having been stolen from his high. He was aching, he wanted nothing more than to feel full again, to feel anything at all.

“Patience babyboy you’ll get your reward soon”, Jimin calms the younger man gently stroking the skin of his back.

Seokjin is suddenly standing in front of you with the butt plug in his hands and lopsided smile on his face. “Open up doll”, he orders and you follow opening your mouth wide. He presses the toy to your tongue, “go on get it all nice and wet for Jungkooks ass”, he tells you and you suck on it hard holding eye contact with him the whole time. He watches you suck the toy for a few moments, imagining how your lips would feel around his dick before finally removing it from your lips. “Good girl”, he praises and you smile.

“Now Jungkook-ah are you ready for your toy?” he asks attention turned to Jungkook.

“Yes”, he answers holding his breath for what was to come. He wanted it so bad. 

Seokjin is gentle, tracing the cold toy over the ring of muscles before gently pressing it down. Jimin traces circles across Jungkooks back calming him down.

“It’s okay babyboy breathe”, he reassures him and on Jimins words Seokjin presses the toy against Jungkooks hole until it slips right in. Jungkook whines, the toy is much thicker than your fingers and it burns at first.

“You took it so well Jungkookie”, Seokjin praises him before pressing a button and the toy springs into action.

“Yes oh my god yes, higher please master turn it on higher”, he groans grabbing onto Jimins arm which had rested next to his face.

“We rewarded you far too much already Jungkookie, it stays on this setting until we say so otherwise. Now kneel up and put your hands on your thighs”, Seokjin tells him. Jungkook sits up as good as his weak limbs allow him to. He looks fucked, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead and his eyes glazed over by un-fallen tears.

“And don’t you dare touch yourself. We will tell you when you are allowed touch yourself babyboy. Now for the time being you have to watch Y/N get fucked by the two of us”, Jimin explains earning a whimper from both you and Jungkook.

“Would you like that doll?” Seokjin asks hovering over you all of a sudden. You swallow hard nodding. “Good girl, now undress for me”, he tells you opening the zipper of your dress for you.  With his help you are able to easily slip out of your dress. “Sit”, he says pointing to his lap and you follow. The moment you are sat on his lap he kisses you hard, his tongue dancing with yours and his teeth grazing over your lips ever so often. He unzips your bra, throwing it onto the ground once you had removed it from your chest. His hands cup both of your breasts immediately, his mouth working its way down from your neck to your chest.

“You are beautiful little one”, he says looking at your exposed chest before wrapping his lips around one of your nipples. You gasp out at the feeling grabbing at his shoulders. He groans in agreement, biting down hard and you cry out.

“Shit Seokjin don’t stop!” you moan grinding down your aching core against his clothed erection. He soon traces kisses over your chest. A stinging pain runs through your chest and you hiss closing your eyes. “It feel so good master”, you moan concentrating on the feeling of his lips leaving bruises all over your chest. His fingers start traveling from your chest down to your core, teasing it over the lace material.

“Wow Jimin-ah she is already so wet for us”, he chuckles, ripping the panties from your body to finally press his finger against your clit. Your skin burns where the lace had dug into, but soon the hot touch of his fingers takes over your senses. You buck against his touch burying your face in his neck biting down on your lip to stop the scream threatening to escape your throat. “I don’t think she needs any more foreplay. Hm doll? Do you think you are ready to get fucked by Jimins cock?” he asks adding pressure to his touch. You nod, your breath catching in your throat.

“Good girl, get on your knees”, Jimin tells you watching you crawl from Seokjins lap. He had stripped himself of his clothes while you were preoccupied with Seokjins touch, now lazily stroking his hardened cock. As soon as you are gone from Seokjins lap he starts undressing as well, throwing his ruined suit pants onto the floor next to your dress, his other clothes soon following after.

“Are you ready kitten?” Jimin whispers, leaning his body over you, so his chest was pressing against your back. You nod bucking your hips back against his crotch, his dick grazing over your entrance. He stops your movements with one press against the small of your back with the flat of his hand. He teases your entrance for a few seconds, stroking the head of his head through your folds until you can’t take it any longer.

“Please fuck me master please”, you beg pressing your eyes shut. Jimin slams into you after that, the sudden stretch burning. Despite his first rough thrust, his movements are slow after that. He lets you get accustomed to his length and soon the burn turns into pleasure. “Faster please”, you beg trying to get more friction by grinding down your hips against Jimins crotch.

“You are such a greedy little slut kitten, grinding down on my cock like your life depends on it”, Jimin chuckles. He grabs your hips, his fingers digging painfully into your skin before increasing the speed of his thrust. You throw your head back, moaning loudly and your eyes falling.

“Look at me doll”, Seokjin suddenly says averting your attention to him. He is kneeling in front of you, stroking his big length. He grabs your chin with his free hand and guides your head to his cock tracing his head over your closed lips. “Open up”, he tells you and you open your mouth waiting for his cock to finally touch your tongue. He is slow at first, letting you get used to the sensation at your own pace. You circle your tongue on the underside of his cock tracing the big vein running from the base to his tip. “Don’t be shy take it in”, he tells you pulling your mouth onto his cock. You gag at first once his tip hits the back of your neck, but Seokjin doesn’t let go of you enjoying the way you struggle for air. 

He starts thrusting into your mouth holding you by the back of your head, so you wouldn’t be able to back off. “You look so pretty right now”, he tells you watching a tear fall down your cheek. He has to look away or else he would lose his composure. Instead he concentrates on your lips wrapping around his length, a deep grunt rattling through his chest.

The sudden increase of Jimins hips calls your attention back to him. He had moved the angle of his thrusts, so they would hit your g-spot with every snap of his hips. The scream of pleasure gets muffled by Seokjins cock stuffed down your throat.

“You are clenching so much kitten fuck you are so tight”, Jimin groans throwing his head back digging his nails into your hips. “Cum for me kitten let me feel you”, he tells you moving one of his hands to your core to rub circles on your aching clit. You are crying at this point, breathing heavily through your nose and moaning around Seokjins cock.

“That’s it doll just like that”, Seokjin groans increasing the speed of his thrusts. You are so close, your head is spinning and your abdominal muscles are clenching so hard it hurts. Jimin thrust up into you one last time and then the hot pleasure shoots through you. Your eyes roll back into your head, the image bringing Seokjin over the edge as well, his hot cum coating the back of your throat. Jimin soon follows after you with a loud groan, your clenching walls driving him over the edge.

“You did so good”, Seokjin praises removing his softening cock from your mouth. You swallow his cum before breathing in hard, your lungs finally filling with enough oxygen. He wipes away the fallen tears from your cheeks gently stroking your burning skin. You smile weakly falling forward once Jimins grab around your hips loosens, your arms giving in underneath you.

 “Is it my turn now?” Jungkook asks, his voice weak from the exhaustion of not being able to touch himself the whole time.

“Lick her clean first”, Jimin tells him, tracing his hand over your shaking legs. You whine, despite your high just a few seconds ago you wanted more again.

Jungkook follows crawling from where he had been kneeling before to between your legs. Seokjin and Jimin both lay down at Jungkooks previous spot, stroking their softened dicks, already growing hard again. Jungkook goes straight in without a warning, his patience long gone. He wanted to cum and if it meant making you cum with his tongue he would do it as fast as possible. You throw your head back into the pillows groaning from the overstimulation. You are still sensitive and the rough treatment of his tongue against your clit hurts. You pull him back his hair.

“Please go slow Jungkook I’m still sensitive”, you whine.

“I’m sorry pumpkin”, he apologizes. He starts to lick you, soft strokes of his tongue teasing your entrance and soon you feel yourself relax into his touch. He moans once he gets the first taste of Jimins cum, licking it from your entrance, loud slurping noises ringing through the room. Normally you would have felt embarrassed about the sounds, but his touch was too good to feel ashamed. His right hand comes resting next to your clit, his index and middle fingers starting to trace gentle circles on the bundle of nerves.

“Ah Kookie, it feels so good”, you groan, already feeling your high built up in your stomach once again. He starts fucking you with tongue, groans of approval leaving his chest and vibrating through your core “Yes don’t stop baby I’m so close”, you moan already readying yourself for your high.

“Stop your movements pet”, Seokjin stops Jungkook and suddenly he is gone from your core and you are left whining and writhing underneath him.  You look over to Seokjin and Jimin, they are stroking their cocks both of them already hard again. You try to get them to let you cum looking at them with trembling lips, but their faces stay frozen.

“Please master I was such a good boy, can I please cum now”, Jungkook begs folding his hands in front of his chest. He is a mess, the toy in his ass did nothing more than make him want to feel full.

“Fine, but only because you asked so nicely babyboy”, Jimin allows him taking pity at Jungkooks miserable state, “go on fuck Y/Ns tight little pussy”, he urges him on with a flick of his wrist and as soon as the words leave Jimins lips Jungkook is between your legs. He spreads them open starring at your core his cock twitching at the sight in front of him.

“Can I?” he asks taking his dick into his hands and guiding it to your entrance. He waits for your consent looking deeply into your eyes. You nod urging him on by pressing your feet against his ass. You are so wet he slips right into you making him groan loud at the sudden feeling.

“You are so we-wet”, he stutters staying still for a few moments, taking deep breaths or else he would have cum immediately. Once he feels in control enough he starts to move, thrusting in and out of slowly. You watch him, your eyes fixated on his heaving chest. You reach out to take one of his nipples between your fingers. He groans at the feeling of you rolling his sensitive bud between your thumb and index finger. “Don’t stop please”, he moans increasing the speed of his hips.

“Don’t cum already Jungkook-ah I have a treat for you”, Jimin suddenly says wrapping his arms around the younger mans waist. He stops, breathing hard, his eyebrows furrowed from concentrating on not cumming. Jimin removes the toy from Jungkooks ass, making him whine at the sudden loss of feeling. “Are you ready?” Jimin asks teasing his entrance with the dip of his lubed-up dick. Jungkook nods holding his breath. You watch him, still playing with his nipples and when Jimin finally slips into Jungkooks the pleasure on Jungkook face is like nothing you have ever seen before. His eyes roll back into his skull and his mouth snaps open high pitches moans leaving his lips. The snap of Jimins hips is rough, forcing Jungkook to thrust into your with every snap of his hips. You moan, the angle perfect to graze over your clit every time Jungkook shakes above you.

“You are such a good little boy, so tight for daddies cock”, Jimin groans increasing the intensity of his thrusts. Everything gets too much for Jungkook, your warm walls clenching around his aching cock, your fingers playing with his sensitive nipples and Jimins cock hitting his prostate over and over again. He cums with a loud scream falling onto his elbows from the intensity of it. He is shaking violently, his hot seed coating your walls. But Jimin doesn’t let go of him, his hips never stopping their relentless pace.

“Ah fuck”, Jungkook whines hiding his head in your neck. He grabs your hand clutching it tightly like his life depended on it. You try to sooth him, gently stroking through his hair. “It’s too much”, he sobs hot tears falling onto your neck, “please Jimin please.” The overstimulation was too much for him but still he didn’t want it to end. He clenches around Jimins cock, the older one groaning at the sensation until his thrusts become irregular and he finally cums with a loud groan of Jungkooks name.

Jimin falls back pulling Jungkook with him and embracing him in his arms and as soon as the feeling of Jungkook buried inside of you is gone you realise how much you are actually aching for release.

“Please I need to cum”, you whine, your fingers trailing down to your clit involuntarily. As soon as they start rubbing circles they are slapped away. You open your eyes, Seokjin was starring down at you with lustful eyes.

“Turn around”, he tells you and you follow. He pulls your hips into the air, pressing your face against the mattress with his other hand. He is quick to act, thrusting into you without giving you any time to adjust. He knows you are ready for it. You scream grabbing the bed sheets for support. He was so much thicker than both Jungkook and Jimin and despite Jungkooks cum lubricating you his first few thrusts hurt so good. “That’s it scream for me slut”, he says earning another scream of pleasure once he tangles his hand in your hair and pulls hard.  

“Shit master ah fuck me harder please”, you yell. Your neck was hurting from having been pushed into the mattress and your scalp was burning from Seokjins rough treatment.

“Such a greedy little slut, taking my cock so well”, he grunts struggling to get the words out of his mouth. You were clenching hard around him and every snap of his hips was bringing him closer to his release. He increases the speed, easing you into your well-deserved high. It feels so good, the angle of his thrust and the length of his cock are perfect for hitting your a-spot over and over again and soon enough you are shaking underneath him, his name rolling off your tongue over and over again.

“That’s it doll fuck”, he moans cumming hard once he hears his name fall from your lips. It takes you a good twenty second to come down from the intensity of your high, your body falling limb in Seokjins arms. He holds you tight to his chest falling onto his back and pulling you with him so you were now lying on top of him.

“That was amazing”, you groan laughing tiredly.

“Yeah”, Seokjin whispers kissing the crown of your head, “I’m sorry for being so rough with you”, he apologizes, his dominate nature gone once his mind clears. He cuddles you tightly to his chest stroking your back soothingly.

“Don’t apologize it was amazing”, you reassure him kissing his naked chest.

“It really was”, Jungkook answers tiredly. Jimin had been stroking through his hair the whole time, peppering his face with kisses.

“You were such good little sluts I am so proud of you”, he praises both you and Jungkook to which you both smile. “You deserve to sleep now”, he whispers kissing Jungkooks nose. Jungkook snuggles closer to Jimin humming contently.

“Good night little one”, Seokjin whispers kissing your head once again and soon you were drifting off to sleep.

[dukeofishgard]

FFXIV Write 2019. Prompt #1 - Voracious

feat. Duke and Dracyn’s youngest son, Lucien Jr, set in the future. I’ve really been in the mood to write him for a while and explore his character more and ironically this prompt fit him perfectly. No real warnings, other than Lucien Jr is an idiot. 

@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that right Lucien?! I mean, it’s not as though I’ve been sitting here, worried about you or anything! Why the hells should I be when you’re clearly fine and dandy wandering about without a care in the world!”

Lucien winced, opening his mouth to respond but then quickly snapped it shut at the look on the other man’s face, offering instead only an apologetic, weak smile.

“You get back to Limsa and your first instinct isn’t to come let me know you’re back, no of course not, because that’d be too bloody hard for you, aye? No, instead you beeline to the Drowning Wench and find the first bastard willing to listen to your outrageous fething stories!” The man huffed, glaring over at the dark-haired man.

“Um, one moment-” Lucien held up a finger, wagging it slightly, “Do you mean to say you do not believe my stories? I say this because you just called them ‘outrageous’, soo…”

“Yes, Lucien. I utterly believe your batshit story about how you single-handedly rescued an entire ships worth of slaves-”

“It was not single-handedly! Freya was there! I give credit where credits due…” he scratched the back of his head sheepishly, glancing away, “Mainly cos Freya’d kick my ass if I didn’t if I’m being honest…”

“Oh, fine then.” Kiaran retorted, “You and Freya single-handedly destroyed that ship AND a notorious pirate captain AND freed the slaves. That’s why the Maelstrom’s saying they did it-”

“Oh bullshite, are they really!” Lucien stood up, uncaring as the blanket fell off his body and exposing himself as he furiously began to pace around the room, “That’s just my parents work! You know my father worked for them, and my mother obviously is, well, I mean- hugely influential. Twelve, I can’t BELIEVE they’ve actually covered up my work! I mean… I shouldn’t care that much, a real hero does deeds for the good, not for the recognition so- ”

“Shockingly enough, Lucien- I can’t confirm a single detail of that because I barely know a single damned thing about the particulars of your family because YOU, refuse to introduce me to your entire fething family!” Kiaran cut him off, stalking over to point a finger at his face, shaking in annoyance, “You refuse to so much as even consider the idea of me even saying hello to anyone who may be even the most CASUAL of acquaintances.” 

Lucien sputtered for a moment, blue eyes blinking rapidly at the suddenness of his lover’s outburst, waving his hands frantically to attempt to calm him down, “W-...Well, that’s for your own good, I’ve told you!”

“Oh, yes of course,” Kiaran rolled his eyes, turning his back on Lucien and waving a hand in the air, “Your mother, the bloody Duke of Ishgard is overbearing and liable to have a stroke if he finds out you’re serious with anyone… because he’s apparently an ‘immortal’ and fears for your eventual death. Your father is both a former pirate and somehow former Maelstrom . Kidnappings seem to follow your family everywhere and you’ve all got so many enemies out for your blood-” he paused, turning back to stare at Lucien, “That a good enough summary? Really, I’d be less pissed if you just were honest and say you’re not ready to be serious.”

Lucien gaped at him, hands shaking as he balled them into fists, “I am being honest! Why would I lie about all of that?! It’s for your own safety that I keep you at a distance!”

“Oh, sorry I wasn’t aware ‘keeping someone at a distance’ also meant fucking anyone who fawns over you-”

“I don’t fuck just anyone!” Lucien huffed, crossing his arms and looking away, “Only the ones I want too.”

Kiaran snorted, shaking his head, “So. All of them then?” he retorted, rolling his eyes.

“No! Not all of the-”

“He does have a point. You’ve a rather voracious appetite I’ve yet to see satiated, Lucien,” A third voice rose from the door, and the two men blinked- glancing over at the unannounced visitor who stood in the doorway, arms crossed as she surveyed the room, “My apologies, Kiaran. The door was opened, and I was looking for Lucien. Please allow me to take him off your hands.”

Kiaran sighed, rubbing his forehead and waving a hand, “No. It’s fine. I’m used to Lucien barging in here unannounced, why not you as well!” 

“Freyaaa…” Lucien’s voice came out as a whine as he stared at the viera with the saddest puppy eyes he could muster, blue eyes shimmering in the sunlight, “Don’t take his side! Tell him that everything I’ve told him about my family is true! That it’s dangerous for him to be involved with me!” 

The viera named Freya glanced between the two men, light brown ears twitching slightly and black eyes gazing at them balefully as she spoke, “Kiaran, you are a good man. Please understand that Lucien is correct and has spoken the truth… it is absolutely dangerous to be involved with him,” she paused, glancing at the naked dark-haired man who was now smugly looking at Kiaran at her words, “But not because of the reasons he stated. No, he is just an idiot. A foolish idiot. Trust me when I say it is better you stay far away from his foolish endeavors. Now, will you put some clothes on Lucien so we can go and collect our payment from the other day?”

“I- wha- FREYA… that is NOT what I meant for you to say! That’s not- I’m NOT an idiot! I simply have a voracious appetite and lust for adventure and helping others-”

Freya stared at him blankly for a moment before leaning down to pick up his discarded pants and chucking them at his face, “Can you please stop monologuing, shut up, and put clothes on? Yes, all the things you stated about your family are true,” she glanced at Kiaran again with a shrug, “To be honest, he is not wrong about that. The Bellefleur-Navarre’s are not exactly a family that most normal people can handle. I grew up with Lucien and I can still barely deal with the events that seem to consistently befall them,” she glanced back at Lucien who had finally untangled himself from the pants she had thrown, “But my point stands. Lucien is an idiot. Please, let him grow up a bit more before you force him to introduce you to his family.”

Lucien glared at her, throwing his pants onto the ground with a huff and crossing his arms, “I am NOT an idiot-”

“You absolutely are. Do you really think you have the upperhand in this conversation whilst ranting nude, little idiot?” Freya turned to stare at him unblinking, “You may be a morally upstanding man, but you are absolutely an idiot. Now please put on some clothing lest I start judging Kiaran more than I already do for bedding you.”

Kiaran groaned, bringing a hand up to rub at his brow, “For the love of Twelve, would you both just get out of my house? Some of us actually have work we need to do and I can see clearly there’s absolutely no getting through to you yet again, Lucien.”

Lucien glanced at him, now very clearly pouting, “Really? You’re just going to kick me out? Just like that?”

“I’ve done it before, and I am doing it again. Get out. I can’t believe I actually held some manner of affection for you last night that let you come back here in the first place. Grow up Lucien, and then come back to talk. Until then, I’ve got no time for your hyperbolic stories.” 

“I…” Lucien frowned, staring at him for a moment before leaning down and gathering his clothes in a huff, “Fine. Fine! See if I care. You think I care? I don’t. You’ll see one day that I’m not lying and then you’ll feel bad. And I still won’t care!” He turned away, clutching the bundle of his clothes against his chest before stalking out- uncaring that he was still not dressed.

Freya watched as he left before turning to Kiaran with a bow of her head, “Please forgive him. He’s got the best and worst traits of his parents unfortunately, he means well… he is just an utter fool,” she shrugged, “Take care Kiaran. I shall see you in a few days.”

“In a few days?! Do you REALLY think I am going to let that brat back into my house? I’m done with him, and you heard him, he ‘doesn’t care’” Kiaran asked, glaring at her- eyes flaring with annoyance. 

She returned the stare with zero emotion, simply shrugging her shoulders with a nod, “You have every other time,” she said plainly before turning on her heel and left without another word.

----

Outside Lucien had, much to her thanks, put on his pants and was in the process of pulling his shirt over his head- uncaring of the stares of the people on the street.

“Bloody bastard, I swear, I’ve no idea why I put up with him. Blah blah blah, you’re full of shite Lucien, blah blah blah whine whine whine. Seven hells, could you lay off me for one twelves damned tick,” he turned, blue eyes turning to stare icily at Freya as she leaned against the wall to watch him, “You didn’t help a single bit in there, you know. I hope you’re happy.”

Freya shrugged, idly checking her nails, “You are the one who didn’t help yourself. I do not know why you insist on sabotaging your relationship with Kiaran every chance you get. If you were just honest-”

“Freya, you heard him. He doesn’t even believe the basic facts about my family. You expect him to believe the rest? Please. My family is even weirder than what I’ve told him. Whatever, it does not matter anyway. Plenty of other fish in the sea, eh?” he winked at her, a cheeky grin appearing on his face, “Or so they say. Heh, there sure were plenty last night until he showed up and occupied my time-”

“Please-” Freya held up a hand, pushing herself off the wall and shaking her head, “Do not continue. We’ve a payment to collect and another job to start o great hero of Eorzea. Mayhap that will cheer up your clearly broken heart.”

“I do NOT have a broken heart, Freya…!”

“Of course not. You’re just sniffling like a babe because… allergies? Yes?”

“Shut up! Nobody asked you.”

“And you wonder why he treats you like a child, idiot.”

[porkchop-ao3]

Charlie Foxtrot: Part 4/7

More sexual content, things start to get rocky. 

Shout out to @hoodoo12, points to anyone who can spot the nod to her Bar at The End of the Universe series! :D

-

It was Tailor that initiated their next meeting. Third mistake?

After a meeting with the Council that'd taken up way too much of his time and patience, he was annoyed and tense and was looking for something, anything to relieve that. That's how he found himself face down, ass up on Rick's bed. He'd been lucky enough to catch him when he was home alone, his roommate (another SEAL team Rick) had gone out to a bar, and apparently a certain barlady would likely keep him occupied for the night.

Rick had still locked the bedroom door, of course. The bedsheets certainly smelled lived in, and tailor turned his head to the side for a more pleasant breathing experience while Rick kneeled behind him, rubbing his hard-on against his ass. They were both still fully clothed, but had organically made their way into this position.

“You've caught me in the right mood. Do you have that lube laying around?” Tailor asked.

Rick moaned at the words then moved away for a few moments. Tailor didn't see where from but the lube was retrieved and tossed onto the bed.

“I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing back here,” Rick said hesitantly, but it didn't stop his hands from stroking over his ass like it was the most natural thing in the world. It also didn't stop him pulling Tailor's pants down, exposing his ass.

“Well you have the right idea so far,” Tailor snorted. “You’ve done this with a woman before, yes?”

“Anal? Sure.”

“Well just do what you did then. Just- just let me get undressed. I don't want to leave here with spunk up the front of my shirt like last time.”

He pushed himself upright, his back met Rick's chest and he felt his jacket being removed from him. He sighed softly as Rick undressed him, his hands roaming his body as new inches of it were exposed. It was the first time he'd been naked in front of him and he made sure to get a good look when Rick pulled off his own shirt. Christ, he looked good; so much muscle tone you could play his abs like a xylophone. He was a little hairier than Tailor would usually go for, but he wasn't complaining at all.

Once they were both nude, Rick guided Tailor back down, his chest to the mattress with his ass in the air. It took his breath away when Tailor felt a tongue at his asshole, stroking and massaging the puckered opening, sending shots of pleasure right to his cock. He was not expecting that; though he supposed that was what he did to the women he slept with. Or at least the lucky ones. His cock throbbed and hardened fully, and he took it in his hand to stroke himself while Rick continued to use his tongue on him. It was over all to soon and Rick pulled away, reaching for the bottle of lube.

“I-I-I'm gonna finger you,” he told Tailor, pouring some lube out onto his fingers before stroking them over Tailor's entrance. He fucked him open with his fingers slowly, making Tailor pant and fidget on the bed, stroking himself quicker, though he soon had to stop in fear of cumming.

“Fuck me,” Tailor breathed, his hand tightening in the bed sheets. Rick didn't need asking twice, immediately withdrawing his fingers to lube up his cock. Tailor could feel himself getting impatient, needy, dangerously close to begging, he bit down on his tongue and hummed quietly into the bedsheets.

“You ready, baby?” The pet name infuriated him but he didn't say a word.

“Yes! Just do it,” he hissed. He choked out a gasp as Rick pushed in quickly, stretching him open and filling him up in a jerky thrust.

“Shit, s-sorry,” he whispered, gripping onto Tailor's waist while he gathered himself.

“Please!” Tailor whined, mentally kicking himself in the balls for doing so. His next words were a little more dignified. “Don't piss about going slow, just give it to me.”

“Fuck. O-okay.”

Rick's breaths were shaky, and so were his hands where they held the other man tightly. He started moving, it was like he'd forgotten how to have sex and his hips weren't doing exactly what he told them to, but he bit down on his bottom lip and got a grip. After a while he found his rhythm, pounding into Tailor at a quick pace; he got a thrill out of hearing him moan and gasp. He wasn't as vocal as most of the women he'd been with so it made it all the more rewarding when he got the angle just right and he cried out, cursing through gritted teeth.

The ass in front of him was round and soft, he couldn't help grabbing onto it and squeezing, parting the cheeks so he could watch his cock slipping in and out. A string of profanities left him and he sped up, his thrusts becoming rougher until he could hear a clapping sound. But it felt too distant, too impersonal. He couldn't see Tailor's face at all and he didn't like that. He paused for just a moment and pushed Tailor's hips down so he was laying flat on his front; then he lowered himself down over him, holding most of his weight with his arms but putting their bodies flush together. Tailor was panting, he lifted his head from the mattress and craned his neck to try and look behind him. Resting his chin on Tailor's shoulder, Rick began rolling his hips again, fucking him right into the mattress now that he could see his face better. Tailor's cock rubbed up against the bed now, dampening the sheets with precum and pulling louder sounds from him. He was getting close.

Tailor bent his legs, hooking them around the back of Rick's calf's so they were even more intimately entwined. Mistake number four. Rick groaned into his ear and began planting sloppy kisses on his shoulder, whispering unintelligible things but Tailor could make out the odd word. Pet names, mostly. Sweet things. It stopped him from cumming, and when Rick reached his peak and finished deep inside him, Tailor was quick to get dressed and make an excuse to leave with his unspent cock. It raised a few questions, but Rick was nothing if not a smooth talker and got out of there feeling more frustrated than he'd gone in. He had an unsatisfactory wank when he got home, then threw himself into his work.

-

He should not have had that last drink. He was full of mistakes these days, Tailor. But Rick had turned up at his studio when he was already feeling buzzed; he'd stopped working a while ago and was now just sticking around so he wouldn't have to go home and see his family. Not that he hated the family, he just had to be in the right mood to see them; and that night it wasn't one of those moods. He knew who it'd be when there was a knock on the door but let him in anyway, they ended up having a few drinks together. Tailor instructed him on how to suck cock that evening, sitting down on the same chair he'd been sitting on when he'd sucked Rick off the other week. But Rick was on his knees, he looked good like that, and even better with cum on his face.

When Tailor eventually went home that night he was two loads lighter and his ass was a little sore. He also had a horrible, sickly knot in his stomach that didn't go away until he was asleep.

-

When had they exchanged phone numbers again? Probably when Tailor was drunk. But his chest felt tight every time his phone went off now and not in a good way. It was constant. At first it had been about sex, Rick would send him pictures of himself and sure, Tailor liked it for a while. But then he'd text about random things, asking him how his day was, what suit he was working on, when they were going to see eachother next and if he wanted to come over right now. Not to have a quickie, but to have dinner because Rick was making pot roast.

Shit.

Dinner? If Tailor had learned anything it was that when fucking turns to having dinner, there was an issue. And so he said he couldn't, he was busy, perhaps another time? Perhaps not. He stopped answering his texts after that.

-

He slipped up again. Mistake six? Seven? He'd lost count. The radio silence had worried Rick and he turned up in person again. He looked so hurt that Tailor found himself feeling sorry for him when he could've used the opportunity to tell him to leave him the hell alone. Instead, he kissed him, sucked him off, and got his first I love you in decades. He nearly vomited, literally, and spent the next fifteen minutes salivating profusely into the toilet with Rick on the other side of the door, asking if there was anything he could do.

Fuck off! Tailor wanted to say, but didn't.

When his stomach finally settled and he went back out, Rick was still there. Tailor stood across the room from him, not really knowing what to say or do, but Rick closed the gap. He pulled him into a hug, pressing his face into the side of his neck and mumbling an apology. He was sorry for what he said. He didn't know why he said it. He knows it was too soon. Can we just carry on as normal?

Tailor knew he should've kicked him out then and there, but God did those thick arms of his feel good around him, his chest so firm and muscular. He took him back to his house and rode him in his bedroom, in his bed, Jesus Christ what was he thinking? He couldn't blame himself, though. Being on top felt incredible, he could set the pace and take exactly what he wanted, he could hold onto Rick's chest and put all his weight on him and he didn't hear a single complaint. Rick just watched him intensely the entire time, his teeth clamped down on his bottom lip and his eyes darkened just enough to make him look a little dangerous. Tailor shot his load over those glorious abs, revelling in the way Rick growled out in satisfaction as he did.

When Tailor decided to push his luck and wipe up some of his cum to offer to Rick, he wasn't even sure if he was surprised when his fingers were licked clean without a hint of hesitation. But he was sure he could cum again right there when Rick thanked him for it. Thanked him. What had he gotten himself into? They shared the bed for the night but Tailor didn't sleep a wink, he was too hot with the body pressed up behind him, it was like suffocating but how could he ask him to leave after everything they'd done?

TBC...

[ikke-secret]

Cold Shower

First off, I’m sorry I haven’t posted some real smut in a while, I’ve just been very busy, and I’m doing my best. Anyways, enjoy.

Pairing: Calum & Y/N

Warnings: Swearing and smut

Word count: 1500+

Send requests here

I slip out of the living room, leaving the boys with my friend, Anya. None of them get to say another word before I’ve slammed the door to my room. I lean my back against the door and rub my temples in circular motions. When was it ever a good idea to invite him over. A string of curse words leave my lips, of course, Luke would invite the other boys over too, and Cal isn’t one to say no to a couple of beers.

After a minute or two, I push away from the door and quickly maneuver my way into my bathroom. I lock the door behind me even though I know the lock really doesn’t work, but it still makes me feel a little safer, in case a murderer wants to kill me while I’m showering.

My clothes are quickly stripped from my body and on the white-tile floor, I step under the running water, letting the water stay cold. It makes my body shiver, but I love it. The water runs down my body and soothes my nerves.

That is, of course, until a knock sounds on the door. I groan to myself, ignoring it, and try to find my way back to the calming place where I was less than a second ago. “Y/N? You in here?” Cal’s voice goes straight to my core, making me tense in the best way – which I hate. I ignore him once more, going against everything my body is telling me. “Y/N, I can hear the water running.” He argues.

My eyebrows draw together, “Why are you asking then?” I answer sarcastically.

Before I can even bat an eye, the door has opened with a sound of something crunching – that was that lock. I spin around, completely forgetting about my current nude state, “What the fuck are you doing!” I exclaim, but I don’t meet his eyes. Instead, his eyes are traveling up my body, torturously slow. I reach out for a towel, but he is faster not letting me. I grab my underwear and the t-shirt from earlier of the floor and quickly pull them on.

I curse myself for wearing a white shirt, knowing that he’ll now be able to see everything.

Square the fuck up Y/N, I tell myself.

I straighten my back, realizing that I can use the way I look at a weapon – it’s not as if I haven’t done it before.

“Get out,” I say, getting annoyed at my shaky voice.

His eyes meet mine for the first time since he entered, and I try to ignore the apparent lust in them. It would be a lie if I say I don’t want him to touch me, but I need him to get out. I can’t do this with Calum, and by this, I mean the whole relationship thing.  

“If you look me in the eyes and tell me you want me gone, I’ll leave, but if you don’t, I’d very much like to fuck you senseless right about now.” He murmurs, his voice barely above a whisper.

I chew on my bottom lip, knowing I won’t be able to resist him much longer.

I maneuver around him and grab the door, ready to tell him to get the fuck out, but he apparently has other plans. His hands grab my hips tightly and his lips crash down on mine. My body reacts instantly, and I lean into him while kissing him with everything that has built up inside me for the past month.

He presses my back against the door, wrapping his rough hands around my thighs and lifting me up. I do as he silently asks.

I can instantly feel his hardness pressing against me.

He moves again, and I begin tearing his shirt off him – if he hadn’t begun helping me, I would’ve probably ripped it apart. The next thing I feel is the cold water against my skin as he steps under the water. “Fucking hell.” He shivers as he too feels the water.

I chuckle, “Why the fuck is the water so cold?” he questions, in between rough kisses down my throat, sucking at my collarbone.

“I guess you made me want a cold shower.” I joke, which is partly true.

“You could’ve had no cold showers in the last month if you’d stayed.” He said, hurt creeping into his voice. “No, I couldn’t,” I argue and begin working on the button on his soaked jeans. “You wouldn’t have wanted me for this long.” I continue, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“You broke up with me, remember?” he questions, “I was ready to have you for a long fucking time.” I smile, not only at his words but at my management to push his jeans down.

My gaze returns to his, “We weren’t a couple, I didn’t break up with anyone.” I remind him and pull my shirt over my head, causing him to suck in a sharp breath. His mouth closes around my nipple, making my back arch at the sensation. “I’m going to make you wish you’d never broken up with me in the first place.” He says, ignoring my statement.

His hands cup my ass and press me closer to him. “Fuck I’ve needed this.” He breathes, and I smile widely, bringing his lips back to mine.

I kiss him roughly, not wanting to waste one more moment.

I tense in anticipation as I feel his hand move down my stomach and then cup my core. “Touch me,” I say against his lips.

He grins at me, “I am touching you.” He reasons. I’m not in the mood to play games right now, and I make sure to let him know. I place my hand over his and press his hand harder against me, making us both make some incoherent sound. “Got it.” He says and nods.

He steps away from me, letting me stand on my wobbly legs. He’s quick to step out of his boxers and pull mine down. I eye his erection, my mouth watering just at the sight. Before he even takes another step towards me, I’ve wrapped my hand around him, already beginning to slowly stroke him up and down – just because he can’t tease me doesn’t mean I can’t tease him.

“I want to come inside you.” He tells me and removes my hand. I don’t protest though because I want that too.

He kisses me softly and presses his now naked body flushed against mine, and I feel him hard against my stomach.

“Wrap your legs around me, baby.” He orders, and I quickly follow suit.

He uses his hands to lift me even higher, as he teases my opening with the tip of his dick. “Just fuck me already,” I order, and he doesn’t waste another second.

He slides me down on him slowly – so fucking slowly – and we moan in unison. He presses my back against the wall, as he begins pulling out and pushing all the way back in.

“Faster.” I breathe against his ear, and with my hands, on his shoulders, I try to quicken the pace myself. Which doesn’t really work before he begins doing it.

A couple of moments later we’re both moaning messes.

He captures my lips and his tongue moves in the same rhythm as his hips. I drift my hands into his hair and tug at it, making him groan into my mouth in approval.

His thumb begins rubbing circles on my clit, and I can barely contain the pleasure streaming through my body.

“Come for me, baby.” Cal breathes into my ear, and I do. My orgasm rips through me and I come muttering his name into his mouth.

I tighten around him as he thrusts into me a few more times, before stilling, buried deep inside me. I feel his release pour into me, and I slowly remove my nails from his tan skin.

“I’ve missed that.” He admits as he sets me down. I smile widely at him, feeling my body being completely relaxed now. He wraps his arms around me and presses our bodies together. I lock my arms around his neck.

He runs his hand up and down my back, causing goosebumps to break out across my skin. His lips catch mine in a lingering kiss, and when he pulls away I say the question running through my mind, “Stay here tonight.” It sounds almost like a plead.

He grins widely at me, which I take as a yes.

I grab his soaked jeans from the floor, “What are you going to do with these?” I ask and laugh when he takes them. “I can just go out there naked.” He jokes, but it sounds more like a promise. I shake my head, not even trying to hide the grin on my face. Instead, I grab my hair dryer and hand it to him.

I walk over to the door and grab the handle to open it when my mouth falls open. “Cal, you broke my door,” I say.

I twist around to look at him, “Then the others must’ve gotten a show.”

Masterlist

- Calla