#magic man chapter two

[southernswampmamma]

Magic Man: Chapter 3

Original! Male Character x Original! Black Female Character

Chapter Warnings: Slow Burn, Age Gap

Summary: Yolana Humphry spent her entire life stuck in Tapioca, Alabama, under the thumb of her controlling Aunt Freda. That is, until a stranger comes along and swoops her off her feet. A charming man, that everyone but herself seems to know; who easily bypasses her fragile walls and embeds himself in her heart. Escape, however, doesn’t seem to be the end of Yolana’s journey. With her newfound freedom, she now has the opportunity to pursue something she never thought she could obtain.

Chapter Summary: Nathan, being a man of his word, picks up Yolana for work. Though, it is awkward at first, the two manage to get to know each other.

I try to be very inclusive with my stories, even if I write in an original female character. So, though she has a name, the only characteristic known is that she is black.

I also plan to write stories for everyone, not just a specific race!

Chapter Three

Bright N' Early

[Good morning, Yolana]

[I never asked what your address was]

The message took Yolana off guard. She was barely out of bed when her pillow started to vibrate. She reached under the satin pillow to retrieve the secret phone to see Nathan’s text message. Yolana knew she never gave him her home address. She convinced herself the rest of the weekend that Nathan never had any intention of taking her to work because of that. She didn’t get her hopes up and decided to get up at her regular time.

She sat up in the bed, eyes barely open, for the bright blue light of the phone screen was nearly blinding her. She sent her home address to him, then stared at the phone, waiting for his response. Yolana still couldn’t believe he actually planned on taking her to work every day. On his vacation none the less. What kind of person does something like that? A murderer, Yolana thought. He did promise not to murder her, however, and Yolana determined that was enough for her to trust him. It’s not enough though, but she doesn’t care to be more careful than that. A sadistic part of her believed she had experienced enough of what life had to offer her.

[Thanks! Be there soon]

She read the message. A mix of emotions spread from her head and flared to her stomach. Nervousness being one. She had never done anything so risky before. Freda would kill her. Excitement being another. Excitement always came with doing something her aunt forbid her from doing. Sadness also was present. For Yolana, things easily became a disappointment. No matter how much she believed she could have something, anything, it all resorted to nothing. She ignored it, though, not just the sadness, but the other emotions as well. If she didn’t make a big deal, then it wasn’t.

Not too long after, Yolana was stepping out of the house. She was met with the sharpest set of LED headlights she had ever seen. They lit the entirety of the house, and she was sure he woke up a few people on his way there. When he had shut them off, Yolana could feel her face cool and was grateful for the break on her eyes.

When she could focus her vision again, she saw a tall figure exit the vehicle, then stride to the other side and open the door.

“Good morning!” Nathan yelled from the end of the driveway.

“Morning!” Yolana yelled back. She stood there at her front door, not moving, not at all sure what she was doing. The only thought, after seeing Nathan hop out of the truck, was that maybe she should have ignored his text and taken the bus this morning.

“You coming?”

Like a sudden snap to the wrist, Yolana quickly came back to reality, and she turned to finish locking the door. She slowly approached Nathan at the passenger door, giving her hand to his when he asked for it. He helped her into the truck, then made his way back to the driver’s side.

“I didn’t really expect you to come pick me up.” Yolana spoke her thoughts.

Nathan started the vehicle, putting it in reverse.

“Why not? I said I would.” He said, while turning to drive down the street.

Yolana shrugged her shoulders, not really sure. She could feel the awkwardness settle in her bones. She shouldn’t have said anything and stayed quiet, or at least just said thank you.

Nathan smiled. “I’m a man of my word. If I say I’ll pick you up, I’ll pick you up.”

He shuffled in his seat, finally making it onto the main road. He got more comfortable and leaned back. One hand moved to hang off his center console, while the other planted itself on the bottom of the steering wheel. His long legs widened, and the back of his head rested on his headrest. Yolana watched him. He looked like a large tiger relaxing in a savanna.

Nathan wore a pair of black cotton shorts and a simple white t-shirt with a Nike checkmark on the breast. On his wrist was an Apple Watch with a moss-colored band. Yolana’s eyes traveled all the way up his body and noticed that he didn’t wear a seatbelt. He was a big man; he would probably stay put if he were in a wreck, but Yolana herself would definitely fly through the windshield. So, she made sure she always had it on while she rode. She remembers the gruesome video of the head on collision her teacher played in Driver’s Ed. The blood and brain matter on the sidewalk spooked Yolana as it intended, still some people refused to put it on. Yolana didn’t judge; it wasn’t her vehicle, nor was she driving.

The drive was short and mostly quiet, save for the small talk both attempted at randomly. When Nathan pulled into the parking lot, he exited the vehicle again, helping Yolana out. She waved him goodbye and entered the building, thanking God no one saw her exit his truck. Yolana almost tripped, realizing she had no clue what to do if someone saw her leave his vehicle. That added to the nervousness which sat alongside the excitement.

Nathan entered his grandfather's home through the garage. He hung his keys up before making his way to his grandfather’s office. Not expecting to see anyone in there, Nathan nearly hollered when he saw his grandad’s face, lit up only by the desk lamp. With how dark it was in the room, Elijah looked like a floating head amongst the shadows.

“Pops! What are you doing in the dark? I nearly shat myself!” Nathan had a hand to his heart and the other to his hip.

Elijah said nothing at first, just pointed to the obvious lamp beside his head. “Well, Son, don’t you see this lamp right here?”

Nathan ignored Elijah and simply raised his hand to turn on the light switch. Elijah rolled his eyes while flicking off the lamp.

“You shouldn’t be sitting in the dark like that either way. It’s bad for your eyes.”

“You sound like Thomas; and your mother.” The old man paused, straightening his bifocals. “What are you doing out so early, anyway?”

“I can ask you the same thing.” Nathan said.

Elijah, who wasn’t as young as he used to be, was up early, though he was still wearing his pajamas. He had gotten up, made him a pot of coffee, read 20 pages of Dracula (his book of the month), and started working, all while Nathan was out that morning. Elijah might be old, but he still has it in him to have an active day.

“I’m just doing some work. I guess you’re in here to do the same?” Nathan nodded on his way to the armchair that sat across from Elijah’s desk.

“Yep. I wanted to look through some emails, see if I had anything to sign. I’m glad you’re up, though. My park is doing some conservation efforts for the wild Heart’s Tongue, but Augustine Fisheries-“

“They’re still there?” Elijah interrupted.

“Yes, they won’t leave. Once they figured out their sales increased when they pretended to be eco-friendly, they decided to stay longer. Now they want in on the new conservation efforts. They want to know if it can somehow include the rivers and ponds they sponsor.”

“I guess if their pretending actually does some good, we can’t complain too much.” Nathan shrugged in agreement. “You never answered my question, though. What were you doing out so early on vacation?”

“Well, I went for a run, then I took Yolana to work.” Elijah noticed that there was a calm that resided in the boy; until he heard Elijah laugh. “What?”

“Yolana Humphry?”

Nathan nodded, confused.

“And how did this come about?” Elijah waved his raisin’d hand in the air as if the situation had physically materialized in front of him.

“I met her at the barbecue Saturday, and she mentioned she didn’t have a ride to work, so I volunteered to take her.” Nathan answered honestly.

Elijah looked at his grandson in amused disbelief. “You always liked playing with fire.”

“What do you mean? She’s Belvin’s niece. I never met her before, and I felt like it could be nice to get to know her.”

Elijah calmly put his hands together and leaned forward in his chair.

“It’s not Miss. Yolana, I’m referring to Son. It’s her aunt.”

“Belvin’s ex-wife?” Elijah confirmed. “I barely know her, either. I meant to say hello to her as well, but she was always surrounded by people, and I didn’t want to interrupt her.”

“Yea, Freda is always conversing, whether it be with the townspeople or those ladies of hers. She’s always been like that. It got worse when she became president of the ladies’ association. She convinced the pastor to change the group’s name from Mother’s of Ministry to The Ladies of Mt. Zion. It’s a minor change, and to me unimportant, but the latter name feels more flamboyant than the former.”

“So, what’s so bad about her, other than her talkativeness?”

“Freda is a decent woman, don’t get me wrong, but her relationship with Yolana has always been tense. When it comes to Yolana, Freda is very guarded. She’s attentive with everything she does, but that girl is always under Freda’s watchful eyes.”

Nathan asked his grandfather to continue. “Freda adopted Yolana a long time ago, when the girl was around 6, or maybe 7. I can’t remember. It was after she kicked the girl’s mother out of her house. I don’t know the full details, but something happened between her, Belvin, and the mother; coupled with a slew of other things. Now the mother, her name started with an M, but it escapes me at the moment. Well, the mother had some problems with drugs. After Freda kicked her out, she went around town asking for money and things, but one day she just up and disappeared. The last trace of her was a security capture from that Pick Me Up gas station down on county rd. 32. Since then, Freda has been an impenetrable wall around Yolana.” He paused with a sigh. “Don’t worry though, just be careful with the young lady.”

Nathan looked down to his lap, lips pursed and head nodding alongside his thinking. It’s no big deal to him and he couldn’t see why it should be a big deal to anyone else. How overprotective can a person be to another adult, especially when they were married to the fire chief? Belvin would never tolerate any mistreatment of the people surrounding him. He knew firsthand how well Belvin stood up for others. He’s sure he would do the same for his own niece. Anyway, all Nathan was doing was taking her to and from work; something harmless. Nathan will be careful, as his grandfather asked, however.

“Are you interested in Miss. Yolana Nathan?” Elijah asked, still leaning forward in his chair. Nathan snapped out of his thoughts and shook his head.

“No, just wanted to get to know my fire chief’s family, and to fill in some time.” The woman is pretty, Nathan won’t ignore that, but his intentions are pure.

Elijah sat back to give his back a break from the position. “You’ve always been social, making friends out of everyone when you were here. When you were young, I thought you had some bizarre goal to know everyone in town and talk to every single one of them. Your mom was like that, too.”

“And who did she get that from?”

“I think she got it from a bit of both of us, but mostly from your grandmother.” After a few seconds of silence, Elijah perked up and drummed a beat on his desk. “So, how about that conservation project?”

Yolana’s day was like any other, however she found herself exhausted by the end of it. She completed her rounds, completed her paperwork, completed her test packs, and assisted all her patients/donors easily throughout the day. However, she was greatly exhausted. She stood at the entrance, telling her coworker exactly that.

“I don’t know what it is girl, but I’m tired too.”

They both stood there, feet hurting, back aching, ready for a shower, and waiting for their rides. Candace, who usually waited by herself after work, was delighted she would have someone wait with her today. After Yolana told her, she sat at her station until Yolana finished so they could walk out together. Candace was the old friend that got Yolana the second phone, but they weren’t close by any means. So, Yolana was surprised that she was so happy to have her wait with her outside. Maybe Candace felt lonely standing there by herself while her coworkers walked by and got into their cars. Yolana looked around while she listened to Candace talk about her day. In the distance, to her right, she saw a man sweeping the entrance of a vitamin shop. He snuck a few obvious glances in their direction while he swept. Yolana glanced over to Candace, who refused to look that direction. Or, she wanted someone around so she wouldn’t feel so creeped out.

Candace was a beautiful woman around the same age and height as Yolana. She had light brown skin and a loose curl pattern that was slicked back into a ponytail today. She had a beauty mark right above her left sculpted eyebrow. Her coworker wore heavy makeup, but nothing unflattering, and Yolana knew she didn’t need it. If Yolana looked like her, she wouldn’t put an ounce of makeup on and cover such natural beauty.

Today she wore a dark look. A deep brown lipstick under a shiny gloss. Amber eyeshadow that was blended with a dark brown color. She put a touch of gold on the inner corners of her eyes for highlight. Her eyeliner was long and sharp to complement her long eyelashes. She was thinner than Yolana, but not by much, but Yolana still noticed and was a tad bit jealous. Who wouldn’t be when they were next to a woman like Candace? Yolana moved on from her coworker’s looks and refocused on the creep still sweeping. She turned to the man and stared him down, putting one hand on her hip and cocking her head to the side. She wanted him to know that she saw him, and she didn’t like what he was doing. The man saw the nasty look that was thrown to him and feigned innocence by waving a polite hello, but when Yolana returned his politeness with a middle finger, he bounced back into his shop. Yolana turned back to Candace, who was still talking, picking at her manicured nails. Another thing that Yolana wished she could have.

“Do you want to ride the bus with me sometimes after work, so you won’t have to stand out here every day?” Yolana asked.

Candace looked at Yolana, unimpressed. “I heard it smelt weird on that bus.” Candace replied.

“It does, but you don’t have to wait here by yourself. You can wait with me at the bus stop.”

Candace still looked skeptical, but she shrugged. “I’ll think about it.” She said while bending over to retrieve her purse sitting on the ground beside her. Yolana looked to see two vehicles approaching the two women, one being Nathan’s truck. She guessed the other belonged to whoever was picking Candace up.

Yolana picked up her own things off the ground and started walking towards the open door that awaited her. Before she made a single step, she was stopped by a pull on her jacket. Yolana turned to see Candace looking in the direction of Nathan’s truck. Her eyes were squinched and focused, and her lips were puckered. Yolana let her pull her back, leaning in while the woman whispered to her.

“Girl, who is that tall man picking you up?”

Yolana looked at Nathan. “Who? Nathan?” Who else? Yolana asked anyway. To be honest, she was more confused why Candace didn’t know who he was already. She figured everyone knew him.

“Yea, girl.”

“That’s Nathan Bard, Elijah’s grandson. He used to stay here a long time ago.”

“Really. He do look like Elijah a little bit.” She paused and straightened up. She waved at him in a flirtatious manner, only fluttering her fingers. “Are y’all a thing or something?” Yolana told her no. “So, it wouldn’t be a problem if I go talk to him?”

Yolana was hesitant to say anything, but she reminded herself she has no claim over Nathan, and it was weird for her to have pause like that. She permitted Candace to talk to Nathan, and the woman made quick work walking over to the truck. Yolana walked behind her. While Candace introduced herself to Nathan, Yolana hopped inside the truck by herself, since Nathan was distracted at that moment. She shut the door and watched the two talk outside. She still felt weird, though she knew she shouldn’t have, and even though she was in the truck and they were outside, she still felt awkward.

Those feelings deepened as she watched them both round the front of the vehicle. Nathan got in the front seat while Candace stood and leaned against the open door. Yolana peered over at her. She had a confidant smile on her face and her eyes were low and easy, cast down from the weight of her attraction. She fiddled with the gold chain around her neck that said Baby Girl in shiny swirls. Yolana noticed Nathan’s eyes move back and forth from her face to the necklace. When his eyes made it back to hers, she licked her lips and Nathan’s eyes again moved down to the distraction. His body responded, and he licked his own lips as well. Yolana was witnessing the big man get hypnotized, and suddenly she didn’t want to be in the truck anymore. She instead turned towards the window, drowning out the conversation beside her. She was successful until she heard them exchange numbers and Nathan’s door slam shut. She didn’t move to turn, however she did, after convincing herself she was acting stupid.

They pulled off onto the road and merged with the afternoon traffic. The silence was thick, thicker than this morning and Yolana hated it, but there was nothing she could think of saying. So, she just continued to look ahead at the traffic. Traffic wasn’t too bad around this time, but there was enough to slow them down about 3 minutes. With more time sitting than driving, Nathan turned to Yolana and watched her quietly observing the outside life. Even though this morning was quiet and awkward, they still managed to have small conversations. However, Nathan noticed that Yolana’s presence leaned more dull than earlier, and he deduced that she might have had a long day. She sat slumped a little with her bag clutched to her front. Her eyes were hooded, and she had part of her bottom lip bit between her teeth. Her legs, crossed by the ankles, were covered by her dark green scrub bottoms and except for a matching green top, she instead had a basic white long sleeve shirt on. Yolana’s hair was covered with a dark green bandana though, bringing the simple outfit together.

He asked about her day, and she responded, “It was ok, just another Monday,” but that was all he got out of her. There was another minute of silence before she turned to him and asked the same. She thought it rude not to ask in turn. Nathan could tell that she didn’t really feel up to talking about his day, but she was trying to be polite. He answered, telling her his day wasn’t too bad.

“I worked for a few hours after dropping you off, then I went around exploring my grandpa’s farm. I forgot how nice it is down here.”

“Do you live in a city?” Yolana asked.

“Not really. Where I live isn’t far from town, but not close enough to get my groceries delivered.” Nathan said, grunting. “My mom has a small farm just like my grandfather, but she owns a business and there are constantly people around making noise. Down here is very quiet and still.”

Yolana wanted to know more about his life, but didn’t want to pry too much. Since Nathan saw that she perked up a little at the small conversation, he wondered if she would be down for a brief detour.

“Are you hungry?”

She was, but she instead said she was ok.

“Are you sure? I’m starving and I’m feening for a sandwich. How about we head over to Mary’s?”

“I should probably get on home.” Yolana worried.

Nathan looked at his watch. “If you’re worried about it getting dark, we have plenty of time.” Nathan chuckled. He pointed out the early hour on his watch.

Yolana wasn’t worried about getting home before the sunset, she was worried about getting home before her aunt. However, she was hungry and so was he, and it was early. They could stop by Mary’s and have a quick meal before heading home. Hopefully, there weren’t many people there at this hour. Most people should still be at work and not to mention it’s Monday.

Nathan watched Yolana’s contemplative face. She was unsure, but her face slowly softened, and he knew she was leaning in his favor. He flashed a victorious smile when she finally caved in and happily turned on his signal to turn off the cramped street.

Mary’s wasn’t far, about 10 minutes away from Yolana’s house. It sat on a small sized farm surrounded by open fields of wheat and corn. There was a long dirt road leading up to the spot that ran through all the fields. Patrons got a good view of the tractors and field workers on their way to the restaurant. Nathan pulled into the gravel parking lot, cutting his engine in front of the small blue building.

Long ago, the restaurant used to be a shotgun home where Mary’s ancestors used to live. After the home was tossed around from descendent to descendent, Mary acquired it and turned it into a restaurant. There were some obvious renovations made, but at the time of purchase, Mary couldn’t afford to expand the house to hold seats. So, Mary put up a large tent outside, bought a bunch of tables and chairs from Walmart, and fed people outside. The house became a full kitchen. After a few years of steady business and tips, Mary made more renovations. She replaced the tent with a beautiful wooden pavilion that her husband, Ted, had built. The dirt driveway became gravel, the kitchen was completely redone with a large wash pit and grill stations she got from an old waffle house that was also renovating. The plastic tables and chairs were replaced with wooden picnic tables and two-seater tables. The house itself was painted blue with colorful murals of Mary and her little lambs, which was fitting, since the restaurant specialized in lamb cuisine.

Nathan helped Yolana out of the truck and the two strolled over to the porch to make their order. The front door was where they stopped, that was fashioned as an ordering window. There was a young boy there, no older than 13, to greet them. He was a short kid, blonde, and red in the face. He leaned on one hand through the window, looking uninterested and bored, not even attempting to make eye contact with the two.

“Hello, welcome ta Mary’s.” the boy said slowly lifting his eyes. “Oh, hey Yolana.” He said, his spirits barely rising.

“Hey Conner.” Yolana gave a short wave. She felt bad for the kid. Missing out on school this week for a sprung ankle and having to work at his mom’s restaurant except for staying home. “How’s school?”

“Sucks.”

“What about baseball?”

“Sucks even harder.”

“I thought you liked baseball.”

The kid rolled his eyes. “I liked it until we had ta practice wit’ the softball team, and I sprung ma ankle.”

“What’s wrong with the softball team?” Yolana asked.

“Well, first they’re girls,” Conner flicks a finger up, followed by another. “And second, they don’ act like it. What happened ta girls bein’ soft and nice and frag-ile? Mamma says all the time that one day I’m goin’ ta meet a ‘Nice young lady’. I haven’t seen one yet.” Conner complains. “I just had ta play wit’ the most rugged set of girls I have ever met. I swear on Grandad’s Chevy I saw one spittin’ dip!” Conner raised his right hand, the other to his heart.

A jerk of laughter came from Yolana, followed by Nathan.

“And don’ get me started on the trash talkin’. That Carey Anne has a mouth on’er. You would think it would still be sore wit’ the new set of wires she got on her teeth a week ago.”

“Well, you still have to be a gentleman around them, though.” Yolana spoke around her laughter.

“I try, I promise I do. It’s hard, Yolana, when they open the door for me.” That was followed by another set of laughter from the adults. Conner was serious, however, his demeanor staying steadfast.

“Well, don’t let them intimidate you. They might be a little rough, but you can still make friends out of them.” Nathan spoke up.

“Thanks sir, but I’ll pass. I refuse ta be friends wit’ a girl that can outrun me.” That was it of that. Conner wasn’t going to change his mind when he was still upset, missing out on baseball practice and hanging with his friends. It was best the two let him be.

“What’s today’s lunch special?” Yolana looked up above the door at the menu, ignoring the shadow Nathan was casting over her with his height.

“Barbecue sandwich wit’ greens.” Conner said while ruffling his hair and sweeping it back from his face. He pulled his baseball cap back on and placed his head back on his palm. The boy truly was having a lackluster day.

Nathan and Yolana ordered the lunch special, and Conner gave them their ticket. Nathan reached to pay, but Yolana offered to pay for the ride to work. He refused and brought his money out to pay for the food.

“You’re doing too much.” Yolana said, as she settled down on the wooden bench.

Nathan sat across from her. “If I offer a meal, I pay. Plus, you worked hard today.” Nathan saw Yolana try to start up again. “I’m just doing what you told Conner to do earlier. Be a gentleman.” He smiled and so did she. He looked down at it and again, but like before, she hid her smile.

The restaurant wasn’t too busy as Yolana had thought, but she hoped for her and Nathan to be the only ones at this hour. There were three other tables occupied at that moment, two being groups. They were all recognizable faces as well and Yolana wondered if they would notice her and Nathan. So far, so good, everyone else seemed to be preoccupied with their meals. She brought her attention back to Nathan, who was staring at her. Yolana flinched, not expecting him to be watching her.

“You nervous?” He asked.

Yolana cocked her head, assuming ignorance. “Nervous? Why would I be nervous?”

Nathan swirled one of his fingers in a circle. “You’re looking around like a wanted woman.”

Nathan had watched as Yolana looked around the perimeter, eyeing everyone that sat around them. Her arms were securely crossed as to protect herself and her body vibrated from the bounce of her leg. A nervous habit that Nathan noticed the first time they spoke.

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve been here and was recalling the area.”

She lied easily, and Nathan noticed, but he ignored it. He remembered the conversation he had with his grandfather earlier. If Freda was as overprotective as Elijah had told him, then of course Yolana would be a little nervous being out. But she needn’t worry, she’s in trusting hands.

“I know what you mean. It’s been so long, but it’s just as I remembered. The open field, the smell of the crops mixed with the smoke from the grills, and the morbid ass petting zoo behind us.”

Nathan was referring to the small collection of farm animals at the back of the establishment. Patrons were encouraged to venture along the fence lines and pet the animals with a caretaker present. There were mostly lambs amongst the animals, as that was the theme of the restaurant, but since the menu had a splattering of other meats, there were also other animals to see. Because of the theme of the restaurant and the petting zoo attached to it, a rumor was spread years ago that the animals there, were the animals you ate. The rumor spread quick and became very popular. It took a while for Mary to quell people’s suspicions, but it wouldn’t have made a difference in her sales. They really didn’t care that much.

That’s the way of the south. What they couldn’t see couldn’t hurt them. However, the rumors were indeed rumors. Mary gets her meat from an outside source and the animals in the petting zoo are there only for aesthetic and monetary purposes.

“Should I go over there and pick our sandwich? I think that brown, spotted one looks pretty good.” Nathan was half turned towards the field, eyeing the creatures. He rubbed his hands together and turned back around, licking his lips. The laugh he produced from Yolana elated him and simultaneously made her loosen up. She unraveled her arms and her legs sat still.

“I don’t know. You ordered two sandwiches. I don’t think he can feed you and me. Maybe the bigger white one on the other side.” Yolana pointed to a white lamb that was prancing across the field. The animal suddenly stopped and looked stupidly over in their direction. “Oop! I think he heard me. Turn around!” Nathan quickly turned back to Yolana, laughing. “Well, I guess we’re having the brown one.”

Since business was slow, Yolana and Nathan got their food quickly and began to eat. Yolana slowly went at her sandwich, taking sips from her styrofoam cup, while Nathan zealously ate at the first of his two sandwiches. Yolana paused mid bite to watch Nathan as he ate. Men usually ate faster, but she never saw a man eat as wholeheartedly as her uncle Belvin… until now. Nathan sat with both hands on his plate, one holding his sandwich and the other fishing for chips from the bag he ordered. He took deep gulps from his cup, pulling nearly half the liquid for one swallow. Where it took a few bites for Yolana to make it halfway through her sandwich, it only took Nathan two. He was a vigorous eater, though he wasn’t messy. Everything he did was precise and orderly, and though he was eating fast, he ate calmly. It was an astonishing yet comical display. She had to hide a few of her laughs. Nathan didn’t notice, however. He was focused on swallowing the last of his chips.

“Damn, I ran out of chips.” He mumbled it. It was meant for his ears only, but Yolana heard it clearly. She had to disguise her snort for a cough.

“So, what you plan on doing once you get home?” Nathan asked. He picked up his other sandwich. He ate it slower, likely the first sandwich, his starter sandwich, cooled his hunger.

Yolana thought while she chewed. “Laundry that I should have done yesterday and maybe clean my bathroom.”

“That’s it? You're going to get off of work and work some more?”

Yolana was slightly stunned and suddenly wanted to empress Nathan and not seem so boring. But all else she had in mind for the evening was sticking her head in her journal.

“I do plan on drawing a little bit of roughs, but that’s it.” She stated. There was no point in lying or pretending. For a person who had no life, she couldn’t help but be boring.

“Drawing roughs of what? You’re an artist?”

“It’s just a hobby, but I do draw during my pastime.” Yolana explained. “I like to make puzzles, like mazes.”

“You create mazes?”

“Yep, but I also incorporate other things like riddles and cryptograms inside.”

“Inside the mazes?” Nathan asked. He began to put down his sandwich to pay attention. Yolana nodded. “How?”

“Well, every maze I make has a theme. Like, the puzzle I’m making now has an Indiana Jones slash jungle theme.” Nathan nodded his head in understanding. “The character I created is looking for treasure. He has to navigate through the jungle to find it. The jungle has various twists and turns which forms the maze. However, the jungle has many obstacles and dangerous animals and sometimes he can’t pass them without a hint. That’s where the riddles come in. If you solve the riddle, it will give you a hint or tell you the rules to get through the maze.” Yolana paused to see if Nathan was still with her. When she saw that he was paying attention, and not bored, she continued.

“Other puzzles like cryptograms and word games are used when he has made it to the area where the treasure is held. He’ll need to crack these puzzles to both get hold of the treasure and escape with it. Sometimes I don’t include a riddle or brain teaser in the maze. I just put in a set of rules like: no right turns on the green paths, but you can make any turns on the red.” Yolana finished.

Nathan sat across from her, completely interested.

“How long does it take you to make one?”

“It usually takes me months.” Yolana stressed. “One maze can take weeks to complete by itself. The quickest process of the whole thing is the water coloring.”

Nathan’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. She painted them all by hand as well? The way she described her process it didn’t seem like a simple task. It sounded detailed and time consuming and, though it might be the quickest step, he was sure that hand painting was still a lengthy process. Nathan’s not artistically inclined, but he had seen what his grandfather went through with his own work. To say Nathan was impressed was an understatement.

“What do you do with them once you are finished?”

“I just give them to Uncle Belvin to solve and see how hard they are.” Yolana shrugged.

“You think I can try to solve one? I would love to see your work as well.”

Butterflies fluttered along the walls of Yolana’s stomach. She’d never shown anyone other than Belvin and Freda her mazes and was quite unsure about showing it to others. However, when she looked at Nathan and his honest interest in her little hobby, she couldn’t help but nod her head at his request.

“Sure.” She spoke.

The thought of finally showing someone outside of her home something close to her was nerve wrecking and suddenly Yolana was skimming through her works in her mind. Which ones were suitable for Nathan? Maybe something easier, but Nathan’s a smart man. It would be insulting to give him something too easy. Then maybe something with more difficulty? Yolana decided on that, a medium difficulty. She’s no genius, so Nathan could probably solve the problem easily. He’s a biologist. However, she has to choose one that completely encapsulates her work and talent. She knows Elijah dabbles in art, and she’s seen some of his work, so Nathan already has an understanding of great artistry. She doesn’t want to disappoint.

Yolana found herself overthinking, and before she started an earthquake with her bouncing leg, she decided to stop.

The drive back to Yolana’s neighborhood was less awkward than the first two travels. This time, the two spent most of the ride talking and getting to know one another. Yolana learned that Nathan was 37, which was a surprise to her, because he didn’t seem that much older than her. He definitely didn’t look it. She also learned that the truck she was riding in did not belong to him, but that it was Elijah’s. Nathan came all the way from Tennessee on a motorcycle. Nathan learned that he and Yolana have similar tastes in television and music, but she draws the line at horror and country music. She does like her share of Carey Underwood. That resulted in a lengthy conversation about how Carey Underwood in not a country singer and how country music has totally changed in the past few years.

By the time he pulled the truck into Yolana’s driveway, Nathan was out of breath and Yolana was grateful for it. She hopped out of the truck when he opened the door.

“I don’t care how you feel. Artists like Carey Underwood and Little Big Town are the reason why country music is still around.” Yolana said, stepping past him and sauntering towards her front door. She continued, raising her voice so he can hear her from the gained distance. “And Pontoon is a fantastic song!”

Yolana giggled while fishing her keys out of her bag.

“I’m going to ignore what you just said.”

The air in Yolana’s lungs escaped her, and she spun around quickly, not knowing that Nathan had followed her all the way to her front door.

“Since you said them walking away like a coward.” He stood tall and cocky over her with a smirk slapped on his face. He knew he had scared her, causing her to drop her keys. She watched as he slowly bent down to pick them up, slowly coming back to his full height as well. She accepted the keys from his hand. “And I’m just going to wish you a goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

He turned to walk back to the truck. “I’ll see you bright n’ early in the morning.”

[fallen-gabrielle]

I can forgive Hakuba for wearing a godamn Sherlock Holmes cosplay on a crime scene. I get it, he's half british and a high school detective. FIne, be proud of your origin my dude, go forth, it's great.

But dude now comes to a crime scene while drinking fucking tea like it's a room for it. Man, come on. That is next level of ridiculousness

[iamvegorott]

Meeting A Magical Man Pt. 69

Part 1: Link Prev: Link Next: Link

Marvin turned his head at the sound of the wall being destroyed. He watched as Actor flew through the air and landed on the ground. 

Actor was still moving, still breathing. He was still alive. 

But with that look of pure rage in Mad’s eyes as he came down to the first floor. He might not be for long. 

He let his aura drop, more than confident that Mad could handle himself or, at least,  the others still standing would help since his mind returned and his focus returned to Chase. 

“If I wasn’t the one dealing with this poison bullshit, I’d be impressed.” Dark huffed as Marvin knelt down with him. 

“How’s he doing?” Marvin asked, placing a hand on Chase’s cheek and looking at him. 

He was pale. Very pale. 

“Alive. I’m certain adrenaline’s running out. Chase is going to feel the last bit of the healing. If you want to do that one trick you and JJ have, I suggest doing it now.” Dark was used to the smell of blood, but even he appeared to be done with it. 

“Hey, babe.” Chase held out the words and weakly laughed. 

“It’s okay, darling. You’re almost better.” Marvin knew he had handled the man who had done this to Chase. The cracking of his bones as he was slammed into the wall still echoed in his brain. He’ll get over it eventually. He always did.

“I’m, like, so warm, and-” Chase’s comment turned into a pain-filled scream. 

“Thought it’d hit sooner,” Dark said almost too casually. “Hold him still, or he’ll ruin everything I’ve done before I finish.” 

“Chase, Chase, sweetie, you need to stay still for a little longer.” Marvin pressed his hands to Chase’s shoulders. 

“It burns! Stop! Stop!” Chase screamed, legs kicking as if he was trying to run. 

“I need a minute!” Dark raised his voice so he could be heard over Chase. 

“I hate doing this,” Marvin said to himself. He shook his hands in the hair, getting them to glow before pressing both of them to the center of Chase’s chest. The glowing seeped into Chase and slowly started showing in his skin, going in lines that appeared to follow his veins. 

“I…I can’t feel anything.” Chase blinked away the tears that had formed in his moments of pain. His entire body was numb. He couldn’t move, paralyzed by magic. 

“It’s okay. Everything will be okay.” Marvin spoke through gritted teeth, tense with concentration. 

“Done.” Dark pulled his hands away. “Keep that up for a little longer to be sure he won’t start screaming again.” He looked at himself and his hands, caked in blood, and knowing that it was a miracle Chase was alive. 

“Shit.” Marvin only lasted a few more seconds before he stopped the spell, panting heavily and feeling pure exhaustion hit him hard. “I hate doing that so much.” 

“Longest you’ve been able to hold that spell,” Dark commented. “More practice and-”

“Shut up.” Marvin cut him off. “Not now.” 

“Understood.” Dark nodded

The three were too busy to notice Mike sneaking past them, walking with soft, deliberate steps before running over to where Mad and Actor were still fighting. 

Mad’s magic was more powerful, but Actor had much more training in fighting, knew how to move, to be one step ahead, and to conserve his energy. Actor was still going strong, but Mad was getting tired and stumbling, and Actor took one of his stumbles to his advantage. There were large chunks of debris from the hole in the upstairs wall, and, using some magic, Actor sent one of the pieces flying and slammed it into Mad’s side, knocking him over and pining him down with it. Actor knew Mad wouldn’t stay down long, so he lifted another piece and was ready to slam it down on Mad’s head. 

Everything happened in seconds, including the firing of a gun that sent a bullet through Actor’s leg and made him fall. 

Mad got the debris off of himself, beginning to feel the warmth of his own fire, a sign that he would lose control if he didn’t finish this soon. He stood up, legs trembling, desperation coursing through him, and felt a sickening coldness take over as he held a hand out toward Actor. A rope of flames came from what surrounded Mad and wrapped around Actor’s neck, hoisting him in the air. Actor screamed and clawed helplessly at his own neck, trying to get the fire off of him, but each movement caused the hole in his leg to bleed more, blood dripping to the floor, and his fighting got weaker and weaker. 

“He’s going to kill him,” Anti commented from where he and Mare watched. 

“Send me down there,” Mare said, dropping the broken, empty gun, hand pressed over his aching ribs, body begging for rest, but he refused to stop. 

“What? Dude, you’re a walking-”

“Send me down, or I’m jumping down there myself!” Mare snapped. 

“Fine, fine. Geeze.” Anti snapped his fingers and saw Mare appear on the first floor on Mad’s side of the room. 

“No!” Mike screamed, running to Mad and grabbing his arm, ignoring the pain as he got burned as well. “Let him go! Let him go! Please! Please let him go!” His voice cracked as he begged for Actor’s life.

Mad’s eyes looked empty as if he wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t react at all to Mike, to anything around him. He was tired. He was so tired and just wanted all of this to end. 

“Mad.” Mare spoke softly and walked up behind him. Even in his altered state of mind, Mad’s flames didn’t hurt Mare. “Starlight.” Mare placed a gentle hand on Mad’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Let him go.” There was a pause. It only lasted a second, but it clung to the air for what felt like forever. 

Eventually, Mad let his arm drop, nearly knocking Mike over, and his fire vanished. Mike scrambled over to Actor while Mad stared off at them. Mad sniffed and looked at Mare. 

“I want to go home.” 

“We will.”

“Wilford, mind healing up, Mare? He’s holding himself like someone with broken ribs.” Anti said after appearing next to Mare and Mad. 

“Ask JJ to numb him. It’ll make the healing go smoother.” Dark stated. Marvin and Chase walked over with him, Chase leaning against Marvin.

“We can do that back at the house.” Mare suggested. “I don’t think any of us want to stay here longer than necessary.” 

“Jackie?” Phantom moved his hands from Jackie’s eyes to his cheeks. 

“Are you done?” Jackie asked, voice soft.

“I’m done. I think I got your eyes are back to how they were before.” 

“Everyone else okay?” 

“They’re okay.” 

“Cool. Plug your ears.” 

“Why?”

“Trust me.” Jackie waited until Phantom covered his ears before letting out a shout. “Mother fucker! That hurt like a bitch! God damn! Holy shit balls!” 

“Jackie’s fine,” Marvin said with a weak giggle. 

“Dark.” Anti’s voice was quiet, but Marvin could pick up the firmness in it. “Don’t.” Marvin looked over his shoulder and saw that Dark had a glowing hand toward where Actor lay, Mike trying to cover him as much as he could with his own body.

“Hold him, please.” Marvin handed Chase over to Wilford. “I’ll be a moment.” He said before Chase could protest. 

“A dead man is a man we no longer have to worry about,” Dark said and breathed heavily through his nose when he had both Anti and Marvin lowering his hand. 

“We got this. Trust me.” Anti said, and when Dark said nothing, he moved to stand between Dark and Actor. “Do you trust me?” 

“I do,” Dark said with a sigh. 

“Then go wait with the others. Me and Marvin will only be a minute.” Anti waited as Dark hesitated before sighing again. 

“Fine. But I’m coming back if you take a second longer than a minute.” Dark warned before walking off to where everyone else was gathered. 

“Mare shot him somewhere he can recover from and still walk. He might have a limp, depending on how good the doctors you go to are,” Anti said to Mike, arms crossed and speaking casually. Marvin reached into his pocket and tossed a tube of burn cream. 

“I made the burn cream with magical elements. I’ve worked enough with Mad’s fire to know how to heal its effects. Rub that on his neck, and he’ll survive.” Marvin placed his hands on his hips. 

“What?” Mike picked up the tube. “Why?” 

“Because it’ll hurt him more to know he’s only alive because we let him live,” Marvin said. 

“Make sure he knows that if he ever tries to fuck with us again, there won’t be mercy.” Anti added. 

“Good luck.” Marvin clicked his tongue as he and Anti walked off. 

“We’re just leaving them?” Chase asked.

“Yep. Let’s go home.” Marvin took Chase from Wilford. “Can you send us back, Wilford? I think I’m out of juice.”

“Can do!” Wilford’s cheery tone felt strange with the rest of the energy in the room and, with a snap of his fingers, sent them all away from the mess of bodies, blood, and pain. 

----------

Tags: @brokentimewatch @bookwormscififan @d-structive @rainymae523 @ashtonisvibing

[reireimur]

ac crossover but it’s Desmond rebuilding the Assassin Brotherhood in Skyrim

[deus-ex-mona]

help nooooo i just realised that they butchered akechi’s character too

[painlandpalace]

dead boy detectives reading list

with the show finally out i figured it was a great time to share my reading list again! check it out below the cut 👻☠️🔎

-

⏳ the sandman #25 (1991)

this is their first appearance!

🐇 the children's crusade (1993)/free country: a tale of the children's crusade (2015)

1. the children's crusade #1

(2. black orchid annual #1

3. animal man annual #1

4. swamp thing annual #7

5. doom patrol annual #2

6. arcana annual #1)

7. the children's crusade #2

alternatively you can just read free country. whether or not you read the annuals i recommend reading free country's middle chapter

!!! in place of the annuals there is an additional middle chapter that was created for the book "free country: a tale of the children's crusade" where it is placed between the two children's crusade issues. the boys don't actually appear in most of the annuals (they are in two panels of swamp thing and appear in doom patrol) and reading them isn't necessary but i figured i would include them as they are part of the story.

❄️ winter's edge #3 (2000)

this is an anthology. their part is the 'books of magic: waiting for good dough' story starting on page 19

🐦‍⬛ the sandman presents: the dead boy detectives (2001, 4 issues)

i believe the tv show's esther finch was partially based on this run's villain.

*

(they do have a part in 'death: at death's door' from 2003. it's short and really just a retelling of events from sandman #25 with some minor changes. the entirety of their appearance in death: at death's door is included at the end of the next comic im listing so i am not really adding the death: at death's door book to the list)

☠️ the dead boy detectives (2005, one-shot)

this book was made by jill thompson in a very cute manga-esque style

👻 ghosts (2012), time warp (2013), the witching hour (2013)

these three are anthologies. the story 'the dead boy detectives in: run ragged' runs through all of them. 'run ragged' kicks off the next run.

🔮 from the pages of the sandman: dead boy detectives (2013, 12 issues)

this is the comic where crystal is introduced! a book collecting all 12 issues titled 'dead boy detectives by toby litt & mark buckingham' was released in 2023

🔎the sandman universe: dead boy detectives (2022, 6 issues)

the most recent run, centered around some really interesting thai mythology and featuring multiple edwin moments that i am sure you will love

-

and that's everything! i also recommend buying the omnibus if you can. it includes everything minus the 2022 run plus some additional bonus content!

i hope this is helpful! feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the comics. dead boy detectives is my number one interest so i should be able to answer

have fun reading! 👻

[textmel8r]

[ DRABBLE + SMAU ] 𝐒𝐔𝐆𝐀𝐑 𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘 ! ( seventh installment ) in which you find toji fushiguro’s number off a sugar baby site .

୨୧˚ part; one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine.

୨୧˚ incl; toji fushiguro

୨୧˚ cw; sugar mommy! reader , sugar baby! toji , masturbation , angst , profanity , descriptions of violence , toji being a pathetic little sicko :D

୨୧˚ an; sorry this part is on the shorter side😅😅 it’s more of a filler chapter but i still like it!

It’s well past midnight when Toji slips his way back into his motel room. It’s dingy and drab, the once-white walls twinged a sickly yellowish tint from chain smoking guests. Ugly bedspread details different flowers that Toji couldn’t name, the same aged pattern clinging to the drapes that were pulled shut over the front window, never to be opened. It smells of heady sweat and open wounds, though maybe that’s just him. No, it definitely is him. He’s hyper aware of the grimy layer of filth that acts as a second layer of skin. It’s gritty and uncomfortable.

The bathroom cubicle is claustrophobic; if Toji were to stand in the center of the room, he could easily touch all four walls that boxed him in. He sits on the closed toilet seat lid, staring at his hands. They’re huge, intimidating. Trembling, spattered in blood that’s long since crusted into a dark concretion, cracking at the hinges of his fingers. His hands that took the lives of two innocent men just hours prior. Toji didn’t want to kill them, but they wouldn’t cooperate. Oh, how they shrieked and hollered for their lives as he dragged them into that alley. They just kept fucking screaming. 

“Fuck…” The man sighs grimly, letting his head dip forward to rest in the cups of his filthy palms. His bangs feel matted and crunchy with remnants of sweat. Disgusting self-pity blooms at the base of his hollow chest, and suddenly Toji has the urge to ram his skull into the drywall. Or dislocate his finger. Or do anything to punish himself for that feeling of defeatism. The nerve to possess such a shameful victim mentality, as if he deserved sympathy. He’s a killer; the best he deserves is a fucking electric chair.

Toji showers. A long, scalding shower that singes him to the bone. Water stained red cascades down the rippling wall of muscles that was his body and swirls down the rusty drain. These post-slaughter showers used to be blank canvases of his life. Ones where Toji’s brain would shut off and try to forget the atrocities committed by his hand. He would scrub his flesh raw, scrub scrub scrub mindlessly until he ached all over. But now, he only thinks of one thing.

You.

Maybe it’s some sick coping mechanism, turning to thoughts of you in times like these. In a pathetic form of self comfort, he reminisces. Your hands holding his face, your know-it-all smile, your way with words. God, your fucking way with words. 

“My sweet boy,” Toji whispers under his breath, touching himself. As if he could replicate the delicate way in which you spoke to him. His eyes shut, desperately clinging onto the mental image of you beneath him in his bed. Your arms outstretched, reaching for him like you want him. Like you love him. “My sweet…” Toji tries to fade into the warmth of the spray, imagining it to be your body heat encapsulating him instead. But the water is far too hot, it hurts; you wouldn’t hurt him like this. He tries so damn hard to disassociate into the pleasure, as if his hand would magically dissolve into yours. Yeah, right. His hand is too big to ever compete with yours. Too fucking rough and gritty and mean.

The flat of his palm finds the greasy tiles of the shower wall. Toji fucks himself with all the roughness he deserves, lower lip staked between two rows of teeth to cease its quivering. He’s going to cum. Your face appears in his psyche once more, but this time, it’s from the first time you visited him in the hospital all those months ago. He can see the picture so vividly, it scares him: you seated at his bedside, poking and prodding over his obliques, muttering a stream of concerned questions. But you were never upset or angry. No, despite the worries, you were still smiling. At him. 

Fuck, he’s really going to cum.

Toji grits his teeth, climaxing with a harsh shudder and a broken gasp of your name on his lips. Small jolts force him into a twitchy state, and he leans forward to rest his forehead against the tiles beside his hand. Semen paints the wall below, too far to the left for the shower spray to rinse it off. He doesn’t bother to clean it off. He’s too repulsed by himself to do much of anything. 

The plasticky sheets stick to his skin. Sleeping in just a pair of boxers was probably a stupid idea, bed mites were a real cause for concern, or so Shiu had told him. But it’s hot. He’s hot. And restless. And uncomfortable. He always had trouble falling asleep in foreign beds. Lidded eyes peek over to the alarm clock perched on the side table, its cherry digits splaying 2:47am. You were asleep. 

He reaches for his phone anyway, wracked with guilt all the while. The tension in his thighs still persisted, still succumbed to the aftershocks of his orgasm he fucked himself to with your face in his mind. He’s fucking gross. This is gross.

She’s sleeping, jackass. Don’t wake her up because you’re lonely.

Be a fucking man and lick your own wounds. That’s what his father would say.

He texts you anyway.

He presses the call button. It only gets through half a ring before the line cuts on and he hears a groggy “hey” filter through the receiver. How long has it been since he’s heard your voice? Not that long, only three days and yet it feels like it's been three lifetimes. And that’s truly the moment when Toji knows you’ve fucked him for life, because when did he start thinking such sappy shit like that?

“Hi,” he answers, melting back into the stiff mattress. His gaze wanders along the waterlogged ceiling, tracing the abstract damp stains that have settled in its popcorn surface. He thinks offhandedly that one of them vaguely resembles a rabbit. “Sorry for waking you.”

“You already apologized, silly. I told you it’s okay.” There’s a pause. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

It’s nice to hear yours, too. “Go to sleep.” 

“Yeah, okay.” The sound of sheets stirring crackles, Toji assumes you’re tossing in bed. “You’re sleeping now, too, right?”

He paws at his stomach, the pads of his rough fingertips tracing the gutters of his abdominal plates before he sinks his blunt nails into his own flesh. “In a bit.”

“Soon. It’s late, Toji.” You order him to bed like a mother would her child.

He nods as if you could see the gesture. “Soon, then.”

You bid him a good night, turning once more into bed before settling back into the depths of the slumber Toji had interrupted. He clasps his cell between his ear and shoulder, basking in your gentle breaths. It’s the same sounds you made the night you fucked him. He slept upon your chest, head over your heart, listening to its beats. You drooled on his pillow, he gave a quiet scoff at the memory. Are you drooling now?

Toji never sleeps.

likes and reblogs are appreciated !

tags . • @4imhry @sugurubabe @mastermasterlist1p1 @mikisspeak @fluttershyfangs @iluv-ace @xstom @bratbby333 @mizzfizz @sserafin @wo-ming-bai @maexc @r0semultiverse @r0ckst4rjk @aesukuni @taelattecookie @purple-obsidian @hqtoge @khaothick @saintkaylaa @ya9amicide @crayzyaarna @saiki-enthusiast @haesify @nyamocka @sixxze @lifesucksweswallow @darkstarlight82 @megumisdivinedogs @celestialol @yunho-leeknow @ghostfacefricker6969 @aizawa19 @lupicalbestwolf @nymphsdomain @makuzume

[visacardteamloverrr]

ex's or not? cs55

summary: y/n and carlos once were the it couple, how are their lives after the breakup? did everyone move on?

warnings: writing this i was sick, i was done and i was ready to delete so enjoyy

i also was supposed to write part 2 to i'll be waiting but oh well...

y/njazzy

liked by lilymunihe, carmenmundt, and 65 000 more

y/njazzy Prague you've been great, next up my beloved Vienna 🍒

comments

y/nstan mother is GLOWING

lilymunihe music to my ears (literally) 🫶🫶

y/njazzy i'm blushing 😊 💋

alexandrasaintmleux i haven't heard you play for agesss, see you in Vienna ig

y/njazzy and whose fault it is?? clearly not mine missy

alexandrasaintmleux oh look at the time, i have to go !!!

chillis the post breakup glow up is reaaal

loverofy/n can we expect some album soon queen?

charlesleclerc exactly @/y/njazzy, care to share with the class???

y/njazzy i will not confirm nor deny

y/njazzy and lord perceval do not push my limits. besides, if you would honour me with your presence, you would know. the choice is yours

charlesleclerc no comment.

user1 she calls him the way that carlos does...

jazzychill she looks so hot in red 🔥

chillistan don't you find it weird that after all charles is in her comments?

y/nfan through all the years y/n was with carlos, she formed a friendship with charles (especially with carlos in ferrari) and other people from the paddock, so it's nothing weird

jazzlover besides, alex and y/n are besties, no?

y/nlos do you remember how carlos would always melt when y/n wear red??? because i do.

carlossainz55

liked by landonorris, charlesleclerc, y/njazzy, and 2,093,728 more

carlossainz55 🌶🍔☀️

comments

soylago ON MY KNEEEES

charlosfan what do they feed our drivers, he and charles are soooo hot

chillis the second photo, two plates, carlos sainz is that a date?

landonorris and where are pics from our little golf tournament 🤔🤔🤔 oh, maybe they aren't here because YOU LOST AHAHAHAHHA

carlossainz55 cabron we all know you cheated.

landonorris what a sore loser we have here

charlesleclerc do you remember when we played uno once?

maxverstappen i wonder why you played uno only once

charlesleclerc lando almost lost an eye

landonorris I ALMOST DIED, HE TRIED TO KILL ME

carlossainz55 do NOT listen to them, those situations did not happen

carlossteponme Y/N LIKED???!!

y/nfan they actually still like eachothers posts, i believe they said something about mutual breakup and that there's no hard feelings between them

y/njazzy

liked by yourbestie, lilymunihe, and 64,728 more

y/njazzy new project coming up 🔜

comments

landonorris tell me who he is.

y/njazzy no❤️

landonorris and why exactly ???

y/njazzy i'll tell you, you'll tell oscar, oscar will tell logan, logan alex, and then magically the whole grid will know

landonorris you won't even tell your best friend?

y/njazzy you're talking about yourself or ?

landonorris PARDON #exbesties #friendshipover #offended

y/njazzy WAR IS OVEEEER

landonorris bye.

lilymunihe A MAN? A MAN? A MA-A-A-AN

lilymunihe girlies to the gc riGHT IN THIS MOMENT

lilymunihe avengers ASSEMBLE @/alexandrasaintmleux @/carmenmundt

carmenmundt i think we've missed a chapter here...

y/njazzy alex didn't.

carmenmundt excuse me !

lilymunihe SHE DID WHAT

alexandrasaintmleux tf y/n? i thought i meant something to you?

y/njazzy if i'm going down i'm taking everybody with me 😘😘😘

alexandrasaintmleux DO NOT QUOTE CHANDLER RN

user1 carlosy/nnation how are we feeling

user2 we don't.

user5 i have an idea...

user3 don't. don't give me hope

user7 fuck the guy NEW PROJECT IN THE MAKING ??? NEW MUSIC ???

user9 do i sense some movie soundtrack

liked by autor

user2 can you imagine

user5 Y/N LIKED !!!!!

carlossainz55

liked by maxverstappen, y/njazzy and 2,836,267

carlossainz55 getaway with mi amor

comments

charlesleclerc i pay my respects to her

carlossainz55 ¿disculpe?

charlesleclerc for putting up with you 😘

user carlos sainz jr i was NOT familiar

user1 which one of you bastards stole my man

reyesvdec ❤️

user2 APPROVED BY MAMA SAINZ

user6 i miss her and y/n together in the paddock

user5 that's y/n. mark my words

user1 i truly aspire to be as delusional as you

y/njazzy she's a lucky girl

carlossainz55 im a lucky boy*

user8 y/n's comment? im dead

user3 carlos' response?????? i am crying, the boy really is in love

y/njazzy

liked by carlossainz55, reyesvdec and 482,471 more

y/njazzy love. love love love.

comments

user8 our girl is in loooove 🥹

alexandrasaintmleux match made in heaven

carmenmundt you compliment eachother so well 🫶

landonorris you two are disgusting

y/njazzy jealousy, jealousy

user5 the luckiest girl???? i wonder why... maybe because she has carlos sainz

user ring ring, that's the mental ward calling for you

lilymunihe i'm heartbroken, how could you leave me

alex_albon execuse me? i'm right here??

y/njazzy lily it's just an act, let's run away together

lilymunihe i am ready to go

alex_albon HEY ITS NOT FAIR

alex_albon he can't even stand up for himself

carlosssainz55 he can

carlossainz55

liked by y/njazzy, landonorris and 5,839,821

carlossainz55 mi amor, you're the closest to heaven that I have ever been. I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I promise to cherish you forever. I am so incredibly grateful for you and everything you do. I want to thank you for being there for me, even after we broke up. there is no one else on this earth taht i would spend my life with. you are my person, and I am yours.

comments

georgerussell mate leave something for us

alex_albon what I am supposed to do rn, lily won't let me in to our apartment

charlesleclerc gentelmen we are so finished

landonorris die lol 👎

oscarpiastri yk that they can see you crying, right?

y/njazzy my one and only ❤️

user can somebody check on user5

user5 I KNEW I WAS NOT CRAZY

user5 PARENTS ARE REALLY BACK TOGETHER

y/njazzy

liked by carlossainz55, reyesvdec and 171,729,819 more

y/njazzy the only ex i would ever come back to 💋💋💋

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alexandrasaintmleux finally the ferrari girls are reunited

y/njazzy not for too long

alexandrasaintmleux foul

charlesleclerc too soon y/n, too soon

maxverstappen i won't even ask about the last pic

carlossainz55 the less you know the better you sleep

landonorris i cannot belive this is happening

y/njazzy sucks to suck ig

carlossainz55 only ex i couldn't move on from 🫶🫶🫶

y/njazzy you flatter me

user1 the difference in the capitions pls ✋️

[sabertoothwalrus]

I think I’ve deduced exactly what year this chapter cover takes place.

First off I love this page 🥺 initially I had assumed that it was all different points of time. or if it was the same time, perhaps a couple years prior to the start of the series.

At first glance I thought this one of Laios and Falin was in their room on the island, but looking closer, they’re definitely kids. That fur-lined coat Laios is wearing and Falin’s round cheeks makes it clear. So, according to the adventurer’s bible, it has to be year 500 or earlier, since that’s when Laios was still living at home.

This is the magic school, which Marcille did not start attending until 499, so it has to be after that.

now INITIALLY when I saw this,I assumed the previous two were more recent, so this one took place at a much earlier point in time, if it’s supposed to be Chilchuck’s family. But then I remembered the adventurer’s bible mentioning him renting his house out to family after his wife left, and this is that extended family (he has two older and two younger siblings). BUT THEN after realizing the other two were much earlier, this could be year 500, especially since that’s the year Puckpatti was born. That would mean the baby is her, the child on the left is Meijack, the one on the right is Flertom (and Chilchuck still keeps that toy Flertom has in his office), and his wife is the one wiping Meijack’s face.

Senshi in the dungeon obviously. A wide range of time this scene could cover, but he was living like this during year 500, so it tracks.

NOW THIS. I thought was Izutsumi pawning her onions off to Tade, like had been shown in the manga already. But if this was the year 500…. Izutsumi was born in 497. She wasn’t taken from her family (and turned into a beast-man) until she was 6, and didn’t start living with the Nakamoto family until she was 10. So either this is her as a three-year-old with her parents, or this is the one section that isn’t during the year 500.

It does look like she has kitty traits, but it’s possible Kui hadn’t solidified her backstory & timeline yet. The more recent comic that implies “Izutsumi was originally a cat beast that got some human soul stapled on” makes her human past a little less clear. The comically tall bowl of rice does look like something Tade would have, so it’s hard to say.

tldr: year 500 (except maybe Izutsumi’s?)

[sylhea-raemi]

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

[thebigbiwolf]

Spittle - Part 1/2

Summary: The chocolate seems innocent enough - if you look past the Infernal writing on the wrapper, and with so few pleasures in the wilderness, you all but jump at the chance to sneak yourself a small treat.

Unbeknownst to you, the bar is infused with succubus spittle. Just one square is rumored to contain enough potency to send a mortal into the throes of ecstasy.

This is what happens when you eat half the bar.

Fic Tags: Sex Pollen (kinda), aphrodisiacs, succubus magic, a bit of dom!Astarion, unprotected piv, overstimulation, he talks you through it (iykyk), more tags will be added later.

Fic Warnings: Explicit Smut (18+ MDNI), Dubcon (if you squint), Language, No use of Y/N, magical influence

Read on AO3: Here

A/N: Remember the dead spider? I remember the dead spider. Anyways, the reception I've been getting on Starvin', Darlin' has me wanting to thank everyone with a one-shot. This got away from me so I went ahead and split it into two parts.

I've never written anything like this and it was significantly more difficult than a multi-chapter fic. I hope everything comes across the way its supposed to! And a huge thank you to my beta @imaginarydromedary for...you know... encouraging me to post this, despite everything.

From what you could tell, there wasn’t much to the apothecary. 

As you push open the dilapidated doors, your first thought is to search for supplies - anything that could help if things went south on your way to the goblin camp. 

Dried herbs hang from the rafters beneath a thin veil of cobwebs, filling your lungs with a pungent clash of scents. Empty bottles lined the shelves along the wall, caked in several months worth of dust. Large chunks of the building were missing where stone met splintered wood, some areas almost entirely overtaken by greenery.

You step over broken shards of pottery, scanning over the floor and countertops for something - anything that may be of use, but to your disappointment, it seems like the shop was entirely ransacked long before your arrival.

You sigh deeply, knowing you’ll likely never hear the end of this from your companions. It was your idea to search the village. You were the one who suggested taking out the goblin scouts, exerting everyones’ energy, and now you’re afraid you’ll have very little to show for it.

You catch a glint of gold, an object reflecting the sun's rays beneath a pile of rubble. You kneel down to brush away the surrounding debris, thankful for even the smallest promise of coin before your hands catch on… some sort of serrated edge?

You pull at it, and it easily comes loose. It's a thin, rectangular block, just barely larger than the length of your hand. You wipe away some of the dirt with your sleeve, revealing an intricately designed foil wrapping underneath.

As you speculate what this might be, you hear footsteps approaching from behind, light and familiar. You turn to face the elf with a smirk.

“You’re supposed to be the stealthy one.” You chide at him, playfully, “Or has my blood put a little skip in your step?”

Astarion scoffs. “I’ve been here the entire time, watching you fumble around in the dirt.” 

Crimson eyes study you, then the object you’re holding. He places his hands on his hips, head cocked to the side with a raised brow. “Is that what you’ve dragged us all the way here for?”

“First of all,” you waggle a finger at him, “You’re especially grumpy when you’re tired. I’ll have to make a note to prioritize your beauty rest. Second, I haven’t finished looking around, but check this out.”

You hand the bar to him as you stand. The cool skin of his fingers brush against your own, and you’re irritated with the way your heart skips at the brief contact. Why did the one man you found attractive in your camp have to be such a primadonna? And such a huge pain in the ass? 

Astarion’s eyes scan over the textured paper with suspicion, angling it towards the light to get a better look. The golden wrapping is stamped with an image of red lips On the back, letters twist and curve in a language you don't recognize, following a single circular pattern where they meet in the center. You’ve never seen anything like this, neither in your travels, nor within the city walls of Baldur’s Gate.

“Where did you find this?” 

You shrug, then point to the pile next to you. “It was buried right there.” 

He silently stares at the foil, mouth pursed, until your patience begins to wear thin.

“Well, can you read it or not?”

His nose scrunches. “Of course I can’t read it. It’s written in Infernal.”

That’s… odd. Why would an ordinary apothecary sell goods made by devils? Or, worse, for devils. Unless, of course, it was some sort of marketing trick, perhaps a play on the phrase ‘sinfully sweet’, or some other cringeworthy branding.

You take it back, turning it over in your hands before tearing at the corner of the wrapping. It's sectioned into dark, rich squares, and smells indisputably like chocolate.

“It looks like candy.”

“An excellent observation.” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Now, can we go? We’ve spent more than enough time here already.”

You roll your eyes and stuff it into your bag, setting off for camp, vampire in tow.

–

During dinner, you decide not to tell the others about what you found, knowing Astarion’s likely already forgotten the event. You set down your empty plate, thanking Gale for tonight’s meal. He smiles at you and bids you goodnight as you excuse yourself to your tent. 

You pick up your rucksack, thinking fondly of the dessert that awaits you inside. Having lived at the beck and call of your companions for weeks on end, you can’t help but smile at the idea of selfishly indulging in a small treat like this.

You tear open the rest of the wrapping and snap off one of the squares, immediately popping one into your mouth. It melts - buttery in texture, with a smokey, slightly bitter flavor. You can’t remember the last time you’ve eaten something so rich. Maybe weeks of the same rations have made you easier to impress, but this felt especially notable.

As you break off a second piece, a strange tingling sensation begins to spread across your lips - a pleasant buzzing that starts at your neck and spreads down through your chest. 

Strange, but not entirely unwelcome. You’ve heard of such inebriating chocolates, ones laced with alcohol or species of flowers that numb one’s senses for a short while. All harmless, of course, and you don’t have watch tonight. You may as well enjoy yourself. If worst comes to worst, Shadowheart is just outside with an assortment of spells and potions. Always better to ask for forgiveness.

It only takes you minutes to finish half the bar. You set the rest next to your bedroll for later and turn to blow out your candles, enjoying the lingering physical effects of the chocolate. Your skin feels flushed and delightfully warm as you settle down for the night.

When sleep finally takes you, it's dreamless, at first. Your consciousness sways, floating in an empty abyss, until colors begin to bleed onto the blank canvas of your mind.

A trickle of red morphs into the shape of familiar eyes, piercing you with their intensity..

Droplets of white spatter over a dark background, diffusing, blending into whisps. They curl and twist before settling into soft, coiffed fibers. 

Hair , you recognize immediately, his hair . His eyes.

Astarion. 

His image fully takes form, as if it had been waiting for you to make the connection before entirely revealing itself. 

He reaches out and seizes you, grabbing painfully at your hips as you crash into his body, hands exploring you - tight, possessive, squeezing at every inch of exposed skin before settling on the curve of your ass. He digs into your flesh with the blunt edge of his nails.

His lips press hot, wet kisses to your throat, mouthing just below the ear, before dragging his tongue along your nape and sucking, hard . You whine at the pressure, eliciting a grin from the elf, so characteristically pleased with the pathetic little noise he’s managed to pull from you.

“You thought sleeping would allow you to escape this - to escape me , unscathed?” He growls against your skin, his voice almost unrecognizable - as if it’s layered beneath a lighter, somehow more arrogant, feminine one.

“No, no, no. Wake up, darling. You’re in for a very long night.”

–

You startle awake, gasping - loud, labored breaths struggling to make use of the unbearably thin air. The edges of your tent bleed in and out of focus, spinning at a nauseating pace as you attempt to recollect yourself.

You wipe at the sweat collecting on your brow, the muscles of your arm heavy and aching, and find that your skin is absolutely drenched. 

Hot. Why is everything so hot? 

It's as if you're being cooked alive beneath your blankets, strangled beneath the furs. You throw them off; normally soft to the touch, the fibers now only worsen the prickling beneath your skin.

Could this be some sort of illness? A fever? 

No, this doesn’t make sense. Everything feels off. 

Fleeting thoughts of Astarion cross your mind - quick flashes of a sinful smile that was not his own.

It didn’t quite match the one you’d silently come to admire, and now that you think of it, the hunger in his gaze was much too intense for the reserved elf. 

His hands, his mouth, the way he touched you -

Your abdomen cramps, bringing your thoughts to a screeching halt.

A stabbing, visceral pain; a knife plunging into your organs. It overwhelms you, forces your body to curl into itself. You hold your pelvis, grunting, and grasp at your sheets. Tears sting the corner of your eyes.

This is - well, you have no idea what this is. 

You can’t think past the pounding in your head, the throbbing in your midsection. You're compulsively twisting, writhing, begging the gods for some sort of reprieve, but it's then when you make the most mortifying discovery of the night.

You’re soaked .

N ot just your smallclothes, which may have been understandable given your strange dreams, but through your damned pants. Not even the sheets were spared. 

“What  in the hells…?” 

You run your fingers over yourself, only intending to confirm the horrifying reality of your situation - that this is not, in fact, some sick, perverted nightmare, but the lightest touch sets off every nerve. 

You wail at the sensation: one massive wave of bliss giving way to several small jolts of pain. 

Pleasure to the point of agony.

The shock of the sudden orgasm courses from your sex through every limb, clenching and releasing pitiful, warm slick. It leaks freely out of you into your already thoroughly ruined underwear. 

Your heart pounds. You stay like that for what feels like a lifetime, toes curled, limbs twitching, waiting for your body to settle. 

After a minute or so, your breathing evens, and the thick haze surrounding your thoughts begins to lift just slightly, along with the suffocating heat. 

But something within you knows this isn’t the end - knows this isn’t enough . A desperation lurks beneath the surface that you can’t quite name. It screams at you. You need more.

‘Aw…’ A familiar, feminine voice prods at your mind. You quickly recognize her, the woman from your dreams who wore Astarion’s image.  

‘All alone, are we? Empty and needing to be filled? Doesn’t that hurt?’

It does. It aches unlike anything you’ve ever known. The lingering buzz of your orgasm just barely quells the worsening cramps, and they’re beginning to rear their ugly head again not minutes later.

You choke out a sob. “Wh- why are you doing this? What do you want?”

Sharp, wicked laughter fills your head, echoing off the walls of your skull. ‘I’m not doing anything, dear. Just enjoying the show.’ She hisses, ‘I told you, it’s going to be a very long night.’

You must be hallucinating. This fever - whatever this is, is simply cauterizing your senses, or possibly interacting with the tadpole? But the tadpole doesn’t speak, not like this. Never so clearly. Not with words.

Think, please. There has to be a reason this -

“Is everything alright?” Shadowheart raps on the canvas of your tent. “I heard a yelp. Are you hurt?”

Shit.

‘Ooh, this one might do!’  You feel an unwelcome… eagerness flood you.

No. No. Absolutely not.

You try not to panic. 

Under no circumstances should she or anyone else come in here.

The best strategy may be to ignore her - pretend you’re still sleeping. It seems like a good plan, but before you have a chance to follow through with it, another sharp contraction hits. This one is somehow even worse than the ones before. 

You pull your sheets up to your mouth to stifle your whine, but the half elf’s ears are sharper than most. “I’m coming in.”

She opens the flap to your tent and gasps when she sees you there - skin flushed pink, doubled over and covered in sweat. 

“Gods, what’s wrong? What’s happened?” Her hand reaches out towards you. 

Without thinking, you swat it away with your own. Your skin tingles at the contact, and the essence of a smile crosses over the threshold into your mind. The intruder giggles with satisfaction.

“Don’t,” you plead, “Don’t touch me.”

She scans over you, taking in your humiliating state. Her face twists with concern. “I need to know if you’re feverish. Please. You look awful.” 

‘Well, I think you look delectable.’

You groan.

At this point, you know it’s no use fighting this thing on your own. You go back and forth on whether you want to tell her the whole truth, about the voice in your head and its influence on your body, but the idea mortifies you into silence. 

Regardless, a cleric is likely your best chance of fixing this literal mess, so you nod, close your eyes, and brace yourself.

Shadowheart’s palm meets your forehead. It’s somehow worse than you anticipated. Even the simple, chaste touch sends you reeling, as if her soft hands are caressing your entire body. Flashes of heat wash over you, burning your skin, threatening to pull you back under another wave of ecstasy. 

It’s too much. You try your hardest to suppress a moan, but the muffled sound manages to escape from between your tightened lips, pitiful and broken.

The disembodied voice squeals with delight.

She quickly retracts her hand, clearing her throat. “Apologies. I can confirm your temperature is… elevated, but the rest…” She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

You want to scream, cry - anything to release your frustration, but you keep your mouth shut, not wanting to risk making any more unsavory noises.

“I believe I can give you some relief by treating the fever, but I’ll have to consult the others on the rest. This doesn’t look like any ordinary sickness.”

Consult the others? No. Gods, no. Nobody can know about this. Is she mad?

You intend to protest, beg her not to share this with anyone, tell her whatever death awaits you on the other side of this would be preferable, but she’s speaking an incantation before you have the chance.

A bright, green aura envelopes you, cooling your skin and ever so slightly easing the cramps. With the pain dulled, it's as though you can finally think again. 

You want to laugh. This situation is so utterly ridiculous that you’d find it hilarious, were it anyone else, but with the modicum of relief comes exhaustion - eyelids heavy, vision blurring with weariness.

“Get some rest. We’ll figure this out.” 

Her reassuring words are the last thing you hear before you’re overcome by darkness.

[southernswampmamma]

Magic Man: Chapter Two

Original! Male Character x Original! Black Female Character

Chapter Warnings: None, atm. Slow Burn

Summary: Yolana Humphry spent her entire life stuck in Tapioca, Alabama, under the thumb of her controlling Aunt Freda. That is, until a stranger comes along and swoops her off her feet. A charming man, that everyone but herself seems to know; who easily bypasses her fragile walls and embeds himself in her heart. Escape, however, doesn’t seem to be the end of Yolana’s journey. With her newfound freedom, she now has the opportunity to pursue something she never thought she could obtain.

Chapter Summary: The Local fire Department is having a celebration for the Fire chief and Nathan intends to attend. Yolana notices a welcomed stranger.

I try to be very inclusive with my stories, even if I write in an original female character. So, though she has a name, the only characteristic known is that she is black.

I also plan to write stories for everyone, not just a specific race!

(I am not in the medical field or national park services, so I might be wrong about some information in this chapter)

Chapter Two

Belvin’s Barbecue

Nathan pulled up to the fire-station around 3:30 that afternoon. The party started at 3:00, but he thought things wouldn’t have gotten too far started by the time they arrived. He hopped off his bike, hanging his open-faced helmet on his bike's handles.

“Boy, how do you get this thing off my head?”

Nathan brought his attention to his riding partner for the evening. Elijah sat on the bike fiddling with his helmet, struggling to get his fingers around the clasp to set himself free of the hot thing.

“Well, first Pops, you’re going to need some patience.” Nathan said, while assisting his grandfather.

Once the man was free, he huffed, sitting back a little, while his feet planted on the gravel under him. He looked around at his environment.

“Haven’t been here since before your last visit.”

“That’s a long time, Grandad.” Nathan imputed, taking off his riding gloves and massaging his fingers.

“Well, you were the only reason I came down here in the first place. I’m surprised I even got an invitation.”

Nathan offloaded his grandfather’s cane while simultaneously helping the man off the bike.

“You’re invited to every function, Pops.”

“Huh! You’re right.” Elijah said, as though it had just occurred to him. Once Elijah was situated on his feet, he took the cane and wiped his brow.

“Oh, my stars! If that aint a sight for sore eyes!”

Nathan and Elijah both turned at the sudden holler.

“Oh, hell.” Elijah muttered under his breath.

“Ms. Patty!” Nathan yelled, raising his arms for the eventual hug he was going to give his old babysitter.

Ms. Patty was an elder at the church, but when Nathan was a kid, she was just the church youth director. Whenever his grandfather was out, Ms. Patty would watch him. Nathan engulfed the short woman in a tight hug. She barely reached his chest, and he was sure she couldn’t breathe, but she made no complaint.

“What are you doing here in Tapioca? I thought you were up there making the big bucks in Tennessee?”

“I came down to see my gran for business, but decided to stay and catch up with everyone.”

“Oh, that’s good. We sure missed you! Your old pictures are still sitting on my mantel, and I still have all your artwork you used to draw me. You have grown so tall too! Also, so handsome!” She gasped. “Oh my god! Have you found yourself a little lady yet? If not, my grandniece is single, and she is getting so lonely ever since the rodeo left town.” Ms. Patty leans in. “Them’s clowns sure are dirty dogs.” Nathan listened to his former babysitter, just like the old days when she would watch him. He and Ms. Patty would talk all day about anything his younger self could conjure up. Whether it be dinosaurs or evil aliens from a distant planet, Ms. Patty would talk with him all day. Nathan used to think he talked too much to Ms. Patty, but as she went on and on about her grandniece and the clowns at the rodeo, then the circus and eventually the amusement park, Nathan didn’t feel like his talking was so bothersome back then.

“Alright Patty, we need to get going. My knees are starting to hurt and my patience is starting to wear thin.”

Ms. Patty rolled her eyes at Elijah and turned her attention back to Nathan.

“Let me show you inside. Everyone will be so delighted to see you!”

Nathan could barely get the beer he brought on the table with the rest of the drinks before bodies surrounded him. Everyone, people he went to summer camp with, people from the church, and even some people he met in holding cells, were there and ready to talk to him. All familiar faces he hadn’t seen in years. Nathan only expected to see his old buddies from the fire department, not people like George Allen, an older aged man he used to cut grass for, or Kip Ramos, the baseball coach from summer camp. It was nice to see everyone. He wished he hadn’t just up and disappeared without keeping in touch with everybody. George, though he was old when Nathan was a kid, was even older, obviously. Nathan wanted to ask how he was feeling. He had to be around his grandfather’s age, if not older. Kip had a limp that wasn’t there last time he saw him and Nathan wondered what caused that. Everyone he talked to looked the same, but was different in some way or the other. Nathan really needed to catch up with everyone.

After all the hellos from the townspeople, Nathan finally settled his eyes on his former fire brothers. His already wide grin got impossibly bigger once he saw the men.

“Little Nate Bard!” One said, approaching Nathan with his hands in the air. “Though you aint so little, no more!”

“Booboo!” Nathan said, clasping his hand with the other man’s. “Never was little, man!”

Buley “Booboo” Harrison was a tan man about an inch or two shorter than Nathan. He’d built muscle from his years as a firefighter and covered himself in random tattoos. His long brown hair framed a face that he had also scattered with random tattoos. Booboo, to anyone who didn’t know him, looked terrifying, but he was nothing but a big goof and Nathan’s best friend down in Tapioca. The two spent many a night getting into trouble, which resulted in many a night in a holding cell until Nathan’s grandfather could come down and pick them up; or in the morning, sometimes they would have to stay until the morning. It never was for anything too serious, but Booboo almost got shot once, trespassing. That resulted in an endless talk with the sheriff and everyone’s guardian. Soon, they started volunteering with the fire department. They were too young to actually do anything, but they cleaned and washed the fire truck until they both were old enough to fight fires. Where Nathan could only volunteer for the summers he was away from home, Booboo went ahead and joined.

Surrounding them were five other members of the crew that Nathan could recognize, and he took his time greeting them all. He decided if there was anywhere to start catching up, it would be with his fire fighting family. He talked long with his former friends and took the same amount of time getting to know the new members.

“Man, it’s nice to see you all again. This brings back so many memories.”

Booboo went around and grabbed two drinks from the coolers, handing one to Nathan.

“Yea, a lot has changed, too.” Booboo lifted his hand, displaying a wedding band on his left ring finger.

“Someone married you dude?” Nathan said, peering at his friend’s hands. The gold wedding band stood out brightly against the man’s dark tattoos.

“Yep, she’s over there setting up the balloons.” Booboo pointed to his left where a tall redheaded woman waddled around a picnic table with a hand full of balloons. “She’s carrying our third.”

Nathan turned to his friend in bewilderment. He took Booboo’s hand in his again, only this time he brought him in for a solid hug.

“Congratulations man!” Nathan couldn’t believe his tattooed friend had gotten married and was already on his third kid. But of course he is! Buley is a strong, loyal, dependable man. Of course someone saw that and wanted to spend their life with him.

“I’ll introduce you to her later, she’s busy. You want to help us with the seats? We ran out so were going to take some old tires from the back and put some pillows and blankets in them. We’ll have the kids sit in them.”

It would have been an honor to work with his old buddies again.

Once they had made all the makeshift tire seats and put up all the balloons, the guest of honor arrived with his eyes covered from the surprise. Everyone was told to quiet down. Knowing the children in attendance wouldn’t be able to do that, someone escorted them all further inside the fire-house. Once the fire chief’s eyes were uncovered, everyone yelled in unison, “Happy 30th Anniversary Chief Friday!” Confetti popped in random places and there were enthusiastic whoops and hollers everywhere. The fire chief’s expression showed immense happiness. With his hand to his heart and eyebrows to the heavens, he laughed joyously.

“Oh, my God.” He said to the crowd, stuttering afterwards, not knowing what to say. His mouth opened and closed, but words were never spoken. When he was finally able to say something, he was interrupted by his companion.

“We ladies at the church thought it would be a fantastic idea to celebrate your 30th anniversary as fire chief with all your friends, family, and the good people you serve in Tapioca.” The lady spoke loudly so everyone in attendance could hear her. Her chest puffed out from the strong yet feminine posture she presented.

“Th-thank you, Freda, thank you Ladies of Mt. Zion, and thank you everyone for this wonderful surprise! I, I can’t express how-” he paused to collect his thoughts. His eyes scanned the area for his words. “Just thank you so much!” He was obviously flustered, so Freda spoke up and commenced the party.

Nathan watched the fire chief as people gathered around him. Booboo’s wife came around and draped the chief in a bright red and orange sash, stating: 30 Years in Tapioca. In smaller letters on the bottom, read: Tapioca’s first African American fire chief! The woman that was with him quickly left his side, a younger woman slowly tailing behind her after giving the chief a kiss on the cheek. They sat at a picnic table littered with older women. Nathan assumed they were the Ladies of Mt. Zion that the chief was referring to earlier. Nathan will let Chief Friday settle into his party before seeing him, not wanting the old man to be too overwhelmed with all this attention.

“The audacity of her.”

Nathan turned to his left to see a stout woman, red in the face, shoving plastic plates and cups around the table for the food. She was standing with another old black lady. He turned back around, pretending he didn’t hear them.

“We ladies of the church!” she mocked the speaker from before. “No! You ladies from the church, AND the fire department, AND volunteers from town. Not just you and your ladies from the church!” the woman hissed.

“Freda is so full of it Judy, it’s ridiculous. She tries to seem so important, like she comes up with everything and she’s always in control.”

“Did you see her? Belvin was about to say something and she just spoke right over him.”

“Mmhm, like she used to when they were married, at least now he has some freedom, unlike that poor girl. Did I tell you what happened yesterday?” The woman paused, getting an answer from the other. “Yolana came over and Freda nearly snatched her back across the street! Like she owned her or something. That girl is well into her twenties, there aint no reason she should be talking to, or treating her that way.”

Nathan looked over at the girl that was standing behind Chief Friday and Freda. She sat with the other church ladies, not really conversing with them, just staring off like she was bored. He brought his attention back to the gossiping old ladies.

“No! You see right there? That’s just too far.”

The women moved on from the table, still talking under their breath, discreetly pointing at various people at the party. The thing about small towns that Nathan missed was the gossip. Since it was so small, everyone knew everyone, and even though Nathan hadn’t been around in a while, he knew it wouldn’t take him long to find out everyone’s business.

He looked back at the table. Nathan knew of Chief Friday’s wife. He saw her a few times at the church, but that’s pretty much it. She never visited the firehouse, to his knowledge. All the years he visited Tapioca, he never said a word to the woman. However, he didn’t know that Chief Friday had a daughter. Nathan sat on top of the picnic table with his feet planted on the bench and his beer resting on one knee. He looked at Booboo embracing his wife as two kids ran around them clinging to the mother's dress, eventually trying to hide under it. Nathan smiled. Booboo is all grown up. The couple soon turned towards him, leaving the two playing children to their own devices. Once reaching him, Booboo extended his hand from his wife towards Nathan.

“Nate, I want you to meet my wife, Audrey. Audrey, this is my old friend Nathan Bard.” Booboo said formally. His demeanor was proud, like showing off one of his most prized possessions.

The strawberry haired woman brought up her hand, smiling brightly while she greeted him. Nathan did the same in turn. After he greeted her, Booboo lead a long conversation into all the antics he and Nathan got into, as well as how one of his antics, in Nathan’s absence, caused him to happen upon Audrey.

One thing about the church ladies, they can drain someone’s energy fast. It didn’t matter what mental state that person was currently in; the Ladies of Mt. Zion can make the most patient of people want to pull their hair out from the root. It didn’t take long or much before Yolana was ready to walk away. She already had three “bathroom breaks” despite not even finishing half of her sweet tea. With only five different subjects, the ladies can drive people mad. The same five subjects that repeat over and over, like a broken record.

Subject 1: Babies, who’s pregnant? Who’s pregnant again and who’s the father this time? Today’s victim is Shawny Price, the youngest of the Price family, who is popping out baby 5.

Subject 2: Falling Angel, who had been caught doing ungodly things, though saying they are a godly person? That would be Pastor Brian Wiggom Jr. of New South Baptist Corinthian Mass Church. His crime was being caught swiping right on a dating social media behind the church. This resulted in a very public fight between him and his wife of 5 years.

Subject 3: Who died, which 70+ year old relative, friend, or former high school sweetheart has The Lord taken too soon? John Joyner, an 82-year-old retired janitor who met his untimely end with a heart attack while mowing his grass one sunny afternoon.

“Right after he died, the heavens opened up and a heavy downpour of rain came down.” One church lady said, fanning herself with a paper plate.

“Yep! That was the heavens crying in joy as another angel got its wings.” Another church lady responded.

Subject 4: Who found the Lord? Fred Hilton, a 34-year-old football coach who found his way back in the church for the 3rd time. This time was supposedly different. Yolana would see how long it would take before he disappeared again.

Subject 5: Anyone in the near vicinity. This subject lasts the longest and can consist of strangers or fellow church members. Their targets are usually the underdressed, the overdressed, the too big, or the too small, someone’s hair, someone’s spouse, or someone’s children. The Ladies of Mt. Zion brought all their attention onto Booboo and their animosity towards his body tattoos and whether he’s a good father to his children.

Sometimes listening to the ladies is very entertaining, but sometimes it could be draining, especially when it can become unnecessary judgments. There was no reason to speak of Booboo the way the church ladies spoke about him. It wasn’t fair to speak of him like he was some freak show. To them, it’s a shame. It’s a shame poor innocent Audrey got wrapped up with that “Coloring Book Criminal”. It’s a shame their children might also cover themselves in tattoos; defiling their bodies.

When the ladies get like this, Yolana wanted to leave, but since she’d already had enough bathroom breaks, she had no choice but to sit there and listen to their judgmental opinions. She zoned out after long; her brain giving up along with her. Yolana instead focused on her uncle Belvin; it was his party after all. She watched him chat along with random people from the neighborhood, then she watched him go in for a second hotdog. He gulped it down with three deep bites, then he reached for another after chugging half his diet soda. Uncle Belvin was a hearty eater. He ate well, and he ate fast.

A man approached Belvin while he was distracted with dressing up his third hot dog. He was a tall man with medium length brown hair and a full beard. He seemed to be the tallest man at the party, only Booboo and two other firemen even coming close to his height. His eyes were squinted and wrinkled from the happiness in them, and a wide white smile reached across his face. He wore a simple outfit, a dark green corduroy shirt/jacket, unbuttoned to show the white t-shirt underneath, and a simple pair of blue jeans. On his feet were what looked like hiking boots, or work boots, Yolana couldn’t tell. A few people stood behind him, obviously in on the surprise, and she could tell that he was going to be someone her uncle hadn’t seen for a long time. Not only Yolana, but multiple people in the party had stopped what they were doing to watch the gathering. With smiles on their faces as well, it seemed they all knew him, too. Yolana focused on the man’s face, trying to place him somewhere she might have seen him before, but nothing came up. Tapioca’s too small, though, so she must have seen him somewhere.

Yolana’s uncle finally turned with the new hotdog halfway in his mouth before his eyes focused on the bright blue ones of the stranger. Belvin snatched the sausage out of his mouth before throwing it back on the plate and to the table. He engulfed the tall man in a firm hug. Belvin was too far away from Yolana for her to hear the stranger’s name, but the people around that were watching, started clapping. Who could Belvin know this well that she didn’t know? She knew everyone that her uncle knew, especially since she lived with him most of her life. She was only separate from him for the last 5 years he and her Aunt Freda were divorced.

She leaned over to one of the ladies at the table. She interrupted the woman from the word game on her phone.

“Mother Belle, who is that man talking to Uncle Belvin?” Yolana asked quietly, not wanting to disturb her aunt’s conversation with the other ladies.

The older woman looked up from the top of her glasses, one finger still hovered over her phone.

“Which one? The tall one?” she asked. Yolana confirmed.

“That’s ugh… that’s Elijah’s grandson Nathan.” She said, “He must be back in town from Tennessee.”

“How come I’ve never seen him before?” Yolana asked.

“Oh, he stopped coming down here years ago, and plus, you’re always cooped up, so you never saw him before he left for good.” She paused, flicking her finger across the screen a few times. “He would show up at the church sometimes when he did come for the summer, but that was a few and far in between.”

Yolana looked deep inside her memory, trying to remember anytime she saw Nathan’s face, but gave up when she realized he wouldn’t look the same as he did in front of her. She brought her attention back to the man; he and Uncle Belvin were brought over to a picnic table with the rest of the firemen. Yolana’s eyes coasted over all the men’s faces. They all varied in height, but were all very handsome. Some wore their uniforms, and some others didn’t. They were all tight fitted, however. All of them were fit, omitting the fire chief, with his portly belly sitting in front of him. Because of the uniform policy, they weren’t allowed to have unkempt hair, so every man had cropped hairstyles, with the exception of Booboo. All had skin clear of tattoos, with the exception of Booboo, and no facial hair, with the exception of Booboo, who wore a five o’clock shadow. Thank God Booboo was such a good fireman, because he would have been dismissed from the department for not being in code. He definitely would have gotten fired for wearing sandals while on duty.

Yolana sat there with one hand supporting her head, looking at the men. She was 25 years old, a lot of them were around her age, she would like to talk to some of them. She’d known most of them her entire life, went to school with them, one of them asked her out in the 7th grade, but nothing came of it. Yolana had seen how some of them look at her, she knew that they wanted to talk to her too, but there’s always something stopping them. A looming shadow that consistently sat right behind her.

Yolana’s eyes coasted over to the woman not too far from her. She chatted up with a few different people, reaching out for a napkin to scribble something on it and hand it to them. Probably her email and phone number. Fundraising again, Yolana guessed. She never stops. Her eyes moved over to Yolana; most likely feeling someone’s attention on her. Yolana looked away, focusing back on the men. If only one would come and talk to her, but she knew that wouldn’t happen, not with her aunt around. A saddened smile covered Yolana’s face. She’s 25; why was she daydreaming like a child? It would only upset her in the end.

If there was anything Yolana could rely on to never make her upset, it was her notebook. Her notebook, filled with notes and designs for her hobbies, could never dampen her mood. She could escape from the mundane, depressing life that she lived. Yolana reached down to her purse that sat between her and the old lady on her phone. She flipped through the pages until she got to her current design that she started that morning. After leaving Mrs. Henderson’s house, Yolana continued to where she left off, finishing the last few lines of the maze onto the watercolor paper. She spent the rest of the night painting her maze in the deep browns and greens of the forest. She was amazed the alcohol didn’t influence her work.

This maze's theme was the jungle. She watched The Jungle Book a while back and was inspired to add the theme to her new mazes. It didn’t help that she also watched Indiana Jones around that time. So the last three mazes she created were an incorporation of them both. The jungle being the setting and an Indiana Jones type character exploring the area and having to solve puzzles. Yolana was designing the fourth in a series of five. She planned on the adventurer finding his prize in the new one and the last being his great escape from the “Mountain of Tigers”. She’ll let Belvin try to solve it to see what type of difficulty she’s dealing with.

Yolana got lost in her notebook, drowning out Freda and her third round of Subject 2. The party disappeared around her and she was no longer thinking of her squandered youth and nonexistent love life. After a while, she didn’t notice the happy couples and the babies running around and she didn’t even notice that her aunt and the rest of the ladies had left her alone sitting at the table. Yolana was so distracted that she didn’t even notice the person on her left approach her.

The person sat next to her, huffing when their butt connected with the bench, Yolana lifted her head and her eyes met with a set of blue ones. It was the man from earlier, Nathan, who was talking to Belvin. Up close, Yolana got a good look at the man. He looked young, but there were scattered greys in his beard and the hair above his ear. His lips weren’t big, but they were far from thin from what she could tell. The hairs of his mustache covered his upper lip, and while she stared at it, she wondered if it got in his mouth while he ate. His cheeks were rosy, but that may be due to the beer he had in his hand. As he was closer, Yolana definitely didn’t place him anywhere in her memories. He was handsome, however; she would have definitely remembered that face.

Yolana lifted her eyes back to his, knowing that she was staring, and she was sure that she saw his mouth move. His eyes crinkled in amusement, obviously noticing her gaze. His eyebrows raised and his mouth molded into a grin. He had an impressive set of teeth. He reached out his hand to her, and she timidly accepted it.

“It’s nice to meet you. My names Nathan.” He spoke confidently, the grin still wrapped around his lips. His hand was cold from the beer that was now rested in his left hand between his legs. Yolana shook it, almost gasping when his big hand completely enveloped hers. It was lightly calloused, and though it was very large, he held her hand delicately. She looked down at it, deciding he had very manly hands.

“Hello, I’m Yolana.” She said quietly, unsure. She cleared her throat, not wanting to sound so soft.

Their hands disconnected, his returning to his lap and hers doing the same. She twiddled her pen between her fingers, fidgeting. Looking down, she noticed her notebook sitting open on her lap. She closed it before he noticed.

“You’re Belvin’s niece. I saw you earlier when you first came in. I thought you were his daughter, but he corrected me. Now that I look at you, you look nothing like him.” Yolana nodded her head. “I didn’t know he had a niece down here; I’ve never seen you before.”

Yolana started swinging her feet under her, a nervous habit. If she was to still her legs, they would bounce instead. “Yea, I’ve never seen you either. I was told you are Elijah’s grandson.” He nodded. “It’s nice to meet you; everyone loves Elijah. He comes by the blood center all the time.”

Finding an entrance to a conversation, Nathan leaned in.

“You work at the blood bank?”

“Yes, I’m a phlebotomist. Elijah comes in twice a month to give blood or get bloodwork done.”

“That’s cool. How long did it take you in school to learn that?”

Yolana inwardly cringed. Nathan noticed, but before he could say something, she answered him.

“I didn’t go to school for it. I was trained on the job.” She looked away for a second. It was always embarrassing for her every time she told people that. Being a phlebotomist sounded cool; it sounded like a specialized position, but that all goes away when she tells them schooling wasn’t required and anyone could learn it. There were graduates fresh from high school that worked with her. It made her feel dumb.

“Oh yeah? That’s cool. Jobs like that usually teach first aid and resuscitation techniques. Not to mention you got OJT, so you skipped out on the pricey classes. How long have you been working there?” he asked.

“5 years.”

“That’s enough experience to become a nursing assistant at one of my national parks, well after you get a CNA certificate, but that shouldn’t be hard if you already have a BLS certification. Do you have one of those?” Yolana nodded.

Yolana was surprised. “Really?”

“Yea.”

“You own a national park?” Who was she talking to? She already knew Elijah had money, but who was this man?

Nathan smiled, his big chest moving with every silent chuckle. Yolana got distracted momentarily, noticing how big he was compared to her.

“No, I don’t own any national parks; just run a few of their labs. I’m an NPS Biologist. I make sure our national parks are healthy, specifically their vegetation ecosystem, but I do dabble in wildlife.”

“Oh! Well, how long did that take in school?” Yolana asked his earlier question back. He scratched the back of his neck.

“Too many!” he took a swig of his beer. He was quite distracted while in college, so distracted that he took a little longer to graduate than his classmates.

“You must be really smart then to be a biologist.”

“Oh no! I just really like nature and how it works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no tree hugger or crazy environmentalist, but nature and its cycle of life is really neat.” Nathan said. Yolana could see a sparkle in his eye, and it was not from the alcohol.

“So, you’re no vegetarian hippie?” She joked.

Nathan leaned in, a playful glint in his eyes. “Nope.” He popped the P. “I’ve had like three burgers and waiting for Channing to get done with those ribs he’s taking forever on.”

Yolana liked his smile. The wider it got, the more boyish he looked.

“However,” he paused to collect himself and sit back a little. “I do believe in animal rights. Farm animals and animals for slaughter should be raised ethically. I’m a meat eater, and I know we have to be fed, but we don’t have to be so barbaric about it.”

“I get it.” Yolana thought for a minute. “Do you go fishing?”

“Yep.”

“Hunting?”

“Love it!”

“Do you think that’s ethical?” She didn’t know where she was going with these lines of questions. She knew it didn’t have anything to do with his line of work, per se. However, learning more about him interested her.

“They both are federally regulated to make sure the species are thriving. It’s illegal to hunt or catch certain animal and fish species.” Nathan paused to look at her. Maybe it was the look in her eyes or the face she made while paying attention, but it caused him to backtrack. “I’m sorry to upset, if you’re not a fan of hunting.” He apologized respectfully, his southern upbringing shining through.

Yolana grinned, not expecting him to apologize. She thought that was very thoughtful of him. “Oh no! I was just asking your opinion. I love fishing, never been hunting, but wanted to try someday. Uncle Belvin won’t take me.”

“Why not?”

“He says ladies shouldn’t use guns, or some stupid shit- stupid stuff like that.” Yolana corrected herself. She looked around, making sure the church ladies weren’t near to hear her. When she saw the coast was clear, she continued. “I’m not big on guns, but I would like to try hunting.”

“Well, I can’t take you hunting, since we’re out of season, but I can take you fishing if you would like?”

She shook her head, declining his offer before she even noticed she was doing it. It’s an automatic response whenever people invite her to do things. It was almost a reflex like motion.

“It’s alright, you’re on vacation, you should enjoy that, plus I’m sure my uncle has a fishing trip scheduled soon. He sometimes invites me.”

It wasn’t a complete lie; Chief Belvin frequented the local ponds and lakes. Sometimes he invited Yolana, and she would fish with him or sit there and draw her surroundings. However, she did not know if he was going on a fishing trip soon.

Nathan nodded his head, draining the last of his beer. He sat the empty bottle behind him before bringing his attention back to Yolana.

“I bet you’re going to enjoy not having to get up in the morning like the rest of us.” Yolana spoke.

Nathan nodded. “Yea, I used to not be a morning person, but after all these years of getting to work at 5 AM, I’ve programmed myself to always be up. Even on the days I work from home, I’m up.”

Yolana wouldn’t consider herself a night owl, nor would she be up before sunrise. She was a perfect mix of both, rising from bed around 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning, on her off days, of course. Trying to imagine herself up and ready to work at 5 AM every day seems impossible. Life is already hard, why make it harder with crazy work hours like that? However, the man before her seems put together, with a title like his and with a grandfather like Elijah; of course, he would be an early riser. He’s a businessman.

“So, you’re going to be up at 5 all week for no reason?” She joked. He looked down at her smile, making her want to hide it.

“No, not 5, maybe 7. Go take a run in the early sunrise.”

He ran too, every morning? Yolana was truly talking to a sophisticated man. It made her feel even more insecure. As a woman her age with nothing of her own, looking at this man, that’s not too much older than her, she wondered if she was too late or… behind.

“Well, I can’t say I’m not jealous of your motivation, but I am glad that I don’t have to be up and at it that early.”

“What time do you have to be at work?”

“I have to be there at 8, but the bus comes and picks me up at 7:30. Still early, but better than 5 AM.”

Nathan looked at her, confused. His thick eyebrows pushed the skin between them together.

“Bus?” Since when did Tapioca get a bus?

“Oh!” Yolana just realizing he’s been gone too long to know about the new transportation system. “Mrs. Bethel Claire retired from the school two years ago. They also retired her bus, so she bought it, painted it an emerald, green color, and started picking up the elderly and handicapped.”

“Like a Brat bus?”

“Kinda’, but she extended her services to everyone else, like people without vehicles.” Yolana pointed to herself. “It’s cool! The town even made dedicated bus stops, and I heard she was looking to buy a second bus.”

“Do you like riding the bus?”

Yolana thought for a moment. “No, but it’s either that or walking. My aunt has to be at work before I do, so she can’t take me.” She smiled. “I should be used to it by now with all the old people I’m constantly around, but sometimes it smells weird in there.”

“Like old age?”

“Like… fermented life.”

Nathan cringed before laughing. He didn’t expect her to say something like that, nor did he ever hear anyone refer to old people that way. None the less, it was funny what she said. He extended an offer of a ride to and from work, but she declined, saying he didn’t have to. This time, Nathan didn’t accept no for an answer, his chivalrous nature getting the best of him.

“I really don’t mind.” He said, “It would be another reason for me to get up in the morning. The routine will keep my inner clock going.”

Yolana wasn’t sure about him taking her to work, plus he was a stranger. However, she recalled how everyone greeted him when he was around and how her own uncle reacted to his presence. He genuinely seemed like a good man and when everyone else ignored her and didn’t talk to her from fear of Freda, he came over anyway, not knowing the implications. Maybe it was the boredom of her day-to-day life, or the attention of a handsome man, but she found herself thinking irrationally. What if she let this man take her to and from work? A person that was a stranger to her, to her and her alone.

His eyes were easy, disarming and kind. He patiently waited for her answer, leaning one arm on the table facing her. His long legs wide and relaxed.

“Wouldn’t it be out of the way?”

“Not if it’s my destination.” He answered cooly.

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re Chief Friday’s niece, Yolana.” He gave a sly smile. Yolana looked at it, then his blue eyes.

What could be the harm? Her aunt leaves the house at 5:30 AM and doesn’t come home until 4:30 or 5 PM. Yolana didn’t have to be at work until 8 and she only works 6 hours a day, which should give her plenty of time to get home without her aunt knowing about Nathan. Yolana almost giggled to herself. The idea of Freda catching Yolana and Nathan was terrifying, more terrifying than her catching Yolana with Mrs. Henderson yesterday. But it would feel good. It would feel so good to not ride that bus in the morning and afternoon. It would feel amazing to not walk home if she missed it. To comfortably sit in a vehicle that wasn’t burning hot, from all the cold natured elderly riding beside her, that sounded fantastic. She could get to know Nathan, someone who was brand new to her. Also, even though it sounded bad, she could talk to a man without her aunt’s eyes burning a hole in the back of her head.

Yolana wasn’t sure if this was Nathan’s way of getting to know her in a friendly way or romantic way, but she didn’t feel like he was flirting with her. Maybe he’s just being nice. Friendly, like he seemed to be with everyone else there. It’s not like she had an abundance of friends. She could use one, even if it was temporary. Yolana bit her lip, looking down, then suddenly back up to him again.

“You promise not to murder me?” his abrupt laugh sent electricity through her bones.

“Chief Friday would kill me. I promise.” He lent an affirming hand to seal his promise, and she took it.

When they disconnected, he retreated to his back pocket to retrieve his phone. He asked for Yolana’s phone number. She set up to give it to him, but paused, remembering that was the wrong number. A year ago, she got a second phone without her aunt knowing. An old high school friend bought it for her with cash she put back from her paycheck. It was just a simple flip phone from Walmart that Yolana could gradually put minutes on. She bought it to talk to Mrs. Henderson when their shows came on and a few other things that she didn’t think were her aunt’s business. She decided that Nathan was also one of those things.

“I work Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 2 PM. It usually takes around 30 minutes to get to the blood center, sometime 35.”

He slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Alrighty, I will pick you up around 7:25 then.” He smiled at her, leaning back onto the table. He obviously had intentions of talking to Yolana more, but when he looked past her and she followed his eyes, she saw her aunt and her band of ladies behind her. Yolana abruptly got up, pointing towards the food table.

“Let’s go see if your ribs are up.”

He followed her to the food where he finally got his ribs, and she got her first plate of the party. To avoid an awkward exchange with Freda, she bid Nathan adieu, going back to her table, and he returning to his grandfather.

For the remainder of the party, the two remained separate. Yolana stole glances towards his direction, replaying their conversation in her head, trying to find any instance of him flirting. After some consideration, Yolana decided that he was, indeed, just being friendly. That was perfectly fine with her; it would make for a less tense exchange the next time she saw him.

When the event ended, Yolana thought she was in the clear before her aunt mentioned Nathan.

“What did that Bard boy want with you?” She had asked, glancing over to her niece while she was driving.

So, her aunt knew of Nathan too? Well, Yolana assumed Freda knew everyone, and she did leave the house more than Yolana did.

“Nothing, just saying hello.” Yolana lied easily. “Do you know him?”

“Barely. We crossed paths once or twice when he was young. How long did you talk to him?”

Yolana shrugged her shoulders. “Barely five minutes.” Freda looked at her, not really trusting her. There was a pause before Freda spoke again.

“I want your phone when we get to the house.” She said, dragging her eyes back to the road. Yolana didn’t dispute.

The roll of Yolana’s eyes couldn’t have been stopped to save her life. She sucked in her cheeks to keep the smart remark within her lungs. She wondered who she was, really. Was she really an adult, or was she an overgrown child?

[sp0o0kylights]

Wayne takes in a Beat to Shit Steve Harrington after Starcourt as n Owed Favor to Hopper Part 4

Part Three: link

First Chapter (parts 1-3 on tumblr) on A03: Link

The kid was madder than a wet hen.

Just as slippery as one too, when he got like this--music pulsing like a living thing to signal all his rage and upset. 

Not like Wayne hadn’t expected it. 

He just wished it wasn’t quite so damn loud. 

The music had started up almost immediately after Eddie had stormed to his room, startling Steve awake and nearly making Wayne curse for it.

Normally it was a good thing--music meant Eds was willing to listen instead of heading for the hills.  

Normally, they didn't have a house guest who looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a bear.

They had a routine for this, was the thing and the music was a key part of it. It worked all the edges off for Wayne, and he'd long figured out that about thirty minutes was a the perfect length of time for Eddie to stew before he could actually talk things through.

Given the hand Harrington put to his forehead, Wayne wasn't eager to give him that thirty minutes.

Not when Steve deserved little peace he could have.

Unfortunately, so did Eds. 

Still.

 Strutting through the door and demanding to talk right now was a bad move and so, with a sympathetic look given to Steve, Wayne did what he did best

Gave space.

Let Eddie rage, as Wayne got up and shuffled about the kitchen.

Pulled out the soft earplugs he pretended weren’t there for Eds to steal (playing that damn loud guitar all the time could not be good for his ears) and offered them to Steve, before making two cups of what Wayne privately thought was the Munson “chitchat” drink. 

One cup of hot water, one packet swiss miss, a small amount of maple syrup drizzled in, topped with little marshmallows they reserved for these types of situations. 

Wayne took his time with it, thinking through what he wanted to say. 

‘I understand that this is a screen door on a submarine kind of situation...’ 

Nope. 

‘Son I know you hate listening to anyone for anything but this is serious...’ 

Absolutely not--that would end up with the boy bolting for sure. 

‘Ed’s, I love you but could we please turn Ozzy off while we talk? That man wails louder than any damn cat I have ever met.’

That one was purely self indulgent, mostly because the wall was starting to shake. 

Wayne put the finishing touches on the cocoa before staring at both of them. 

Perhaps if he stared the Garfield mug in its eyes hard enough, the right words would come through. 

They did not.

He kept trying, standing there long enough for the cocoa to reasonably have cooled and for Eddie’s song to flip over to something with more screaming in it than singing. 

Wayne supposed that this was the hardest part of being a parent. You just didn’t get to have the magical one liner. The right thing to say at just the right time.  

The joke that would ease all the tension and let things progress forward nice and easy.

Instead, you got to fumble your way through the dark with a flashlight up your ass and hope you were going in the right-ish direction. Ideally without making things worse. 

Wayne was here though, and that had to count for something. 

(Knew it counted for something--because Eddie was still here. 

They had cleared hurdles far higher than this when it came to trust. They’d get through this too, come what may. 

Steve too.)

“Can I just ask,” Eddie started, aggressive as always when Wayne finally gave in and entered his room, feeling all sorts of awful for the migraine Steve had to have, “what the absolute fuck is happening?” 

Sure as fire he was sitting on his bed, leg bouncing a mile a minute.

An unlit cigarette hung between two fingers, looking a little chewed on, but otherwise undisturbed--as it should be, because one of Wayne’s few rules was that smoke stayed outside the house. 

“You could.” Wayne said loudly but agreeably, as he turned himself around and dropped down next to his kid.  

Held out the Garfield mug, and was happy when it was taken from him. 

“Figured you might have other things to say, though.” 

Likely a lot of things. 

It was as good an opening as any, and his kid didn’t disappoint, launching right to it. 

“Why is he here and not at a hospital?”

 ‘Here’ was punctuated by Ed’s hand winging towards the door, and while it wasn’t the righteous fury Wayne expected, it was at least, an easy answer to give. 

“Steve has some people looking for him. Bad people. Hospital makes him an easy target.” 

Wayne was still talking loud. Could only hear Eddie himself because he was looking at the kid’s lips more than he was actually hearing his voice. 

Eddie took that in, swallowing it about as well as he’d swallowed anything he hadn’t liked. 

And thank the stars above, he finally reached a hand out and turned the music down. Not a lot--Steve wouldn’t be able to hear them over all this--but enough that Wayne didn’t have to struggle. 

“We’re hiding him from the cops now?!” Ed’s spat. 

“Cops know he’s here. Hopper’s the one who asked me to take him.” Wayne reminded him, because it was the truth. 

Not the full truth, but given how Ed’s pissed off half the local PD on a good day, Wayne absolutely did not want to see his nephew take on Federal Agents.

(Particularly not the kind who were going ‘round killing kids.) 

“So--what?” Eddie yanked hard on his hair, a gesture that looked less intentional and more like he was trying to fight his own anger down. “Hopper just called you up and said ‘Hey, we had a whoopsie with the rich kid, the hospital’s not safe anymore. Can we stash him with you for a few days?” 

Wayne nodded once, slow-like. 

Always remembered how too fast movements had made Eddie flinch and jerk back when was littler, and given the way Steve was looking, figured it was a good time to be cautious again. 

“He did.”

“And you just--agreed? Just like that!?” 

“I did.” 

He pretended not to see Eddie boggle at him at the simple admission, so furious that he seemed to struggle for words when he normally had too many to say. 

Wayne took advantage. 

“We did talk a bit more than that, I’ll admit.”

Ed’s scoffed. “About the weather I’m sure.” 

“‘Bout trust.” 

Eddie blinked at that. 

“Trust.” He echoed flatly. 

“What have I always told you? People like to ask you to trust them, but you they don’t get to have it until--” 

“They provide proof or a reason.” Eddie finished with an eyeroll. “So which did Hopper provide then?”

Wayne took a noisy sip of his coca. Smacked his lips a little before saying: “Both.” 

Didn’t bother to say anything else, because he knew Eddie would finish the thought for him. 

“One of them was me, wasn’t it.” 

Eds didn’t say it like a question, but Wayne hummed in agreement anyway. 

He wasn’t gonna shame his boy, but he wasn’t gonna sugar coat Eddie’s involvement in this either. Not when he’d already admitted that was half the reason Hopper had gone to Wayne to begin with. 

“No one is expecting Steve to be here.” He said, seeing the chance to hammer home the most important part of this entire shitshow. “So long as no one finds out he’s here, he’ll be safe. Everyone will be safe.” 

Steve from the Feds who were hunting him for while he was busy being involved in shit he couldn’t control and Eddie because he had a mouth that most people didn’t like. 

Not small town people anyway, and absolutely not authority figures with guns. 

“Who’s even after him?” Eddie was theatrical as always, hands waving away as he talked. “Did he make a deal with the mob? Piss off some other rich guy? I know it’s not anything drug related, I’d have heard about it by now.” 

After years of experience, Wayne knew exactly how far to lean away to stay out of range, too used to his nephew talking with his entire body.

“That’s his story to tell ya, Ed’s. It ain’t mine. Same way it ain’t my place to tell him your story.” 

That at least got the boy to think for a minute. Put down that frustration he carried with him all the time, and use the brain they both knew he had. 

“How long is he staying here?”

Wayne shrugged. “Don’t know.” 

Eddie sighed and mockingly mimicked Wayne, taking an obnoxious slurp of his cocoa. “The neighbors are going to notice if he’s here more than a few days. The trailer park isn’t exactly big.” 

“They didn’t notice that time you decided to make fireballs with the cooking spray and about blew up half the driveway. Don’t think they’re gonna notice someone being quiet in the house.” 

Eddie snorted, and probably rolled his eyes again, not that Wayne could see it given the kid was looking into his own mug as he thought it all through. 

Wayne sat with him as he processed. 

Eds worked at his own pace with things, and while life at large might be against that, Wayne was happy to let him do it. Found it easier that way, then trying to poke and prod and force him like so many father figures did. 

Wayne’s patience was rewarded not even a full minute later, when Eddie turned to him and asked; 

“What if he finds out?”  

This in a quieter voice. An unsure one--words and body hunching in a way unlike the Eddie the world outside knew, but very much like the little boy Wayne had brought inside his home. 

It took Wayne  a moment to connect the dots--he’d been speaking out of the place parents and authority figures often do, and in doing so hadn’t thought much of the fact his nephew had a real secret. 

The kind small town minds didn’t like--and would kill him over. 

This all wasn’t about Wayne taking in Steve, he realized abruptly.  It was that Steve being here meant Eddie couldn’t be himself. 

Could not relax in a place he was accepted for who he was, because Wayne knew and made sure Eddie understood he was wanted here, had a place here, regardless of who he loved. 

Now, Wayne had gone and removed it.

‘Shit.’ 

“He won’t.” Wayne said. 

Knew that wasn’t enough, and so, promised: “But if he does, I’ll make sure he understands his safety here relies on your own.” 

Ed’s chin jerked in a nod, the two of them sitting in silence for a moment before the boy did as he often did when he wanted a hug but felt too awkward to ask for one, and tipped himself into Wayne’s side. 

“Thanks old man.” Eddie whispered into his shoulder and not for the first time, Wayne wished things were easier for the poor kid as he put his mug in one hand and hugged his kid with the other. 

Hoped that in the future, it would be.

Even if he had to force everyone and everything coming after him--and now Steve--to do it.

(Wondered vaguely, how bad it was that he was already getting as protective as Steve as he was of his own kid.

Probably very, given his kid clearly hated Harrington.)

xXx

Wayne took the first night of Steve’s stay off.

He wasn’t the type to use his PTO lightly. Was used to rationing it for any possible thing Eddie might need him for.

A night up sick when he was younger, to a night spent chasing him down during some of their bad spots--but the last year or so Wayne had slowly realized he hadn’t had to use it much.

He was still careful with it though, precious as it was, and was thankful for it now as it ensured his nephew didn’t murder their house guest. 

Or at the very least, didn't sit there pecking at him.

The kid might've failed English a few times, but he had a real gift with words and an even better one with insults.

(Wayne wasn't quite clear on what all the "King" jabs were about, and absolutely did not get why Steve looked far more hurt at the comment about his "sad ass floppy hair" but given the increasingly flat look Steve was throwing Eddie's way, Wayne figured it couldn't be anything good.)

Thankfully a pointed reminder about Steve's injuries had finally gotten them all some peace, enough for Harrington to drop back to sleep--and for Wayne to realize he looked a little too dead while he did it to be comfortable getting any sleep himself.

The kids chest barely moved, and that it ate at Wayne’s until he got up and shoved a hand under his nose. 

Felt his breath, and told himself the poor sod was fine. 

Hurt, absolutely, but alive. 

Over and over again, until the sun had made its rotation in the sky, bringing the morning with it.

‘Better than nightmares, I suppose.’ Wayne figured, as exhaustion scraped at his eyelids.

Those Wayne knew, would come later. When Steve’s brain caught up to the rest of him, and stopping dumping survival chemicals through his battered body. 

He'd given up on sleep entirely sometime around 1 am, and now he sat at his small kitchen table, writing out a medication schedule for Harrington so he and the kid both knew when he could have his next Tylenol. 

Wasn’t even halfway through it before Eddie made his typically late appearance and blew through his door. 

Had his back up from the moment he’d stepped a foot in the kitchen and it didn’t take a genius to see he’d worked himself into a snit again.

Unfortunately for him, whatever scenario that imaginative brain of his had cooked up fell flat to the reality that was the poor kid on the couch. 

Steve Harrington was one a hell of a sight.

Didn’t help that he was doing his level best to make himself as small as possible, curled deep into Wayne's ancient couch.

The blankets covered the ribs and hid away most of the damage, but there wasn’t much Steve could do to hide the shiners on his face--or the marks around his neck.  

Not when they’d grown worse overnight, practically inviting questions.

It was almost laughable how quickly Eddie ate whatever words he’d prepared, mouth awkwardly chewing around them as if they were tangible. 

The less-than-sneaky looks he threw at the younger teen were equally amusing, and if Wayne wasn’t trying to peace keep, he’d have given in and chuckled when Eds split attention caused him to pour half his coffee into the sink rather than a cup. 

Looked utterly lost when, after finishing putting his coffee together and grabbing some junk food thing that absolutely was not a breakfast item, he came to stand awkwardly at Wayne's shoulder, openly staring as Steve blatantly ignored him.

Eds didn’t know what to do, and Wayne couldn't blame him. 

Seemed to keep thinking he was going to encounter a boy that likely no longer existed, and whose blood tinged specter just made things sad.

Shit like this, Wayne knew, took a man’s ego and warped it, shaping it to something else entirely. 

At least for Steve, it seemed that getting wrapped up in whatever mess he had had shaped him for the better, instead of pretzeling him into something worse. That, Wayne thought, spoke to the boy's character more than anything he’d done prior. 

(It helped to know what Hopper tolerated and what he didn’t. That he’d vouched for Steve in the same way Wayne knew he’d vouched for Eddie, even if Eddie didn’t yet realize the cop he antagonized so much would do that for him.) 

That didn't erase the history his kid had with Harrington, though.

Wouldn't stop him from seeing the old Steve, first.

‘Don’t you got school?” Wayne asked when he decided Ed had stared enough. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie waved him off, trotting out the door. “Bye old man, house parasite!” 

It was clearly a jab, meant to nettle, but Steve barely acted like he heard it. 

Wayne rolled his eyes. 

“Goodbye, Eds.” He said firmly, much of a warning as he ever gave, and fondly watched his nephew scuttle out the door. 

Turned to see how Steve was taking things, and was once again given a reminder that Steve wasn’t doing a hell of a lot other than feeling his injuries. 

“I think I promised you a game, son.”  Wayne said gently, startling Steve out of the distant, dim look he had trained on the wall. 

It wasn’t a lot to offer in terms of a distraction, but it would have to do.

[phantomrose96]

Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 2

(Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 1)

Chapter 2, because @ciestess voiced an idea that absolutely consumed my entire mind and I could not rest until I made this

...

Danny’s eyes tracked the swing of gunfire raining bullets across the horizon. Tucker reloaded, crouched, dodged left and pivoted, another blast of bullet confetti launched through a gaggle of zombie heads. He tossed the magazine and reloaded. Click. Ching. Danny flinched when a zombie smashed a hammer clean through Tucker’s head.

 “God. Fucking…” Tucker pulled out of his hunch. He unclamped his fingers from his controller like bug legs unfurling. He extended the controller to Danny, bouncing it in his grip. “Your turn.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, as if he hadn’t been watching Tucker’s game the whole time.

“You. You’re up. I died.”

Danny accepted the controller, reloaded the screen, and jogged about a hundred feet forward before the first horde of zombies took him out football-style from the left. The death screen rolled.

“Oops,” Danny said.

“Not your best work.” And Tucker took the controller back. Tucker shot a few spare glances to Danny while the level restart loaded in. “Is it Vlad?”

“No. Well, yes,” Danny answered, flopping back into his normal position on the Foley attic armchair. Tucker’s mom had planned to toss it ages ago, before it became Danny’s chair. “But at least he left when my parents went all zombie mode into the basement.” Danny picked absently at the scabs of leather flaking from the armrest. “It was just weird.”

“I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s definitely not the first time your dad’s gotten some math wrong,” Tucker said. “He blows up like three things a week doesn’t he?”

“He does. But he doesn’t care when he gets that math wrong. This one was like I broke something important.” Danny’s expression soured, and he picked a leather flake clean off the chair. “Vlad did, I mean.”

“Does any of the math actually work?” Sam offered from Tucker’s desk. She leaned an elbow around the back of his chair, head tilted to Danny. A pencil dangled from her loose fingers, nib-half worn to the History of an Invention report she was actually working on. Tucker had half-assed his earlier in the day about the palm pilot. Danny had not done his. “Like, it’s all crackpot theory, right? Do ghosts even follow math?”

“I think they follow some math. It’s not magic that makes the ecto-bazookas work, or the Fenton-phones work, or—well the thermos DIDN’T work—until I made it work.”

The unspoken thing Danny had been not-quite-saying hung in the air. He said it this time.

“So I’m wondering if I did it. Like the Fenton thermos. And now maybe they’re gonna do the math all over and realize the missing piece of the equation is one half-ghost son.”

“Well the order is backwards, for starters,” Sam said. “Thermos worked because you pumped ghost-energy into it. How would you have done that to the portal? You were human when you walked in.”

“Sam’s right. What do you think you brought to the table exactly? Button-slapping abilities?” Tucker loaded up the next level. “It was their portal, and their math, and it worked. There’s a million-billion kinds of math and they probably just forgot one thing.”

Tucker took a headshot and died. Mechanically, he handed the controller back to Danny.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Ask Vlad. He’s got a portal.”

“Like Vlad’s gonna tell me.”

“Just promise to be his diligent little son minion or whatever. He’s easy. Wait, let me do the next level. You know I like the cyberpunk levels.”

“It’s not your turn,” Danny said, reeling the controller just out of Tucker’s wiggling grasp.

“I’ll let you do two in a row for your next turn.”

Danny knocked Tucker away, distracted just long enough for a zombie cyberbeam to launch from the horizon and take him out through the head.

The screen washed sepia. Danny stared at it. You died.

…

Danny hadn’t really meant to stay the night at Tucker’s place. They’d just gotten really far in Man vs. Zombie, and Sam had gone home, and Danny was just resting his eyes between his turns with the controller.

So when he woke to the bright strip of sunlight beaming into his eyes through the attic skylight, his first thought was Fuck.

He was awake, here, morning, school. Fuck he had not actually done his History of Invention report, despite the stupid amount of grief it had already caused him this weekend. He pulled his face out of the armrest, now pineapple-patterned from the decaying leather, and pawed for his phone fallen on the floor. If it was still early enough, he could maybe still afford to desperately half-ass something before sixth period science.

He flipped his phone open. A text from Jazz. “Don’t come home. Make up an excuse.”

“…Fuck,” Danny whispered, through the sensation of his heart launching itself into his throat.

He scrambled upright, whole body shaking at the mercy of adrenaline shock so soon after being pulled from dead sleep. His mouth was dry, teeth unbrushed, wearing his old clothes from yesterday, report not done, Don’t come home, Don’t come home, Don’t come home.

They knew. He’d fucked it up. Somehow they knew. The math. Something. And it had to be with guns blazing, because Jazz would not send that text if they’d taken the “We accept you” angle.

Were they coming for him? On their way here? Tracking by his phone? Did they like Mrs. Foley enough to not SWAT-slam her against the wall when she opened the door for them so they could come capture the ghost pretending to be their son?

Fuck.

Danny was upright. Danny was standing. Danny was shaking. Danny wasn’t actually sure what the next thing was he was supposed to do.

Tucker’s ball of blankets rustled from the couch. “Mmph?” he asked, articulately.

“I have to. Go deal with my parents, I think,” Danny said, because any plan felt a little better than no plan. “I think they know.”  

Danny was a ghost. Danny was gone. Tucker sat upright, alone, blinking himself awake. He was staring at the You Died sepia screen still displayed on monitor, now burnt into the plasma of the tv.

…

Danny paused with his human hand slick on the Fenton front door. The gears in his mind turned as his plan quickly unraveled into no-plan. He had no plan, right? What was his plan? Handle this Man vs Zombie style—open the front door ready to dodge wide, because both zombies and parents liked to camp behind closed doors with bazookas at the ready?

“—absolutely absurd, and entirely unscientific, with no probability of being true. It goes against everything we know about neurology.”

Oh, Jazz. Was Jazz enough of a bazooka-deterrent? Probably not. Knowing his parents.

Danny turned the knob. His heart hammered. If bazookas, dodge left.

The first thing he noticed was in fact the no-bazookas. It was what he was most looking for. And so it was Jazz’s expression he did not notice until second—whites of her eyes wide, snapped to Danny, with a look that would be accusatory if worry hadn’t won that battle. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair was unbrushed.

He noticed his parents third. Compulsively, he rocked back onto his right foot, still outside the doorway, still outside the threshold of the Fenton family household.

Seeing his parents tired was of absolutely no shock-value to Danny. It was at least a twice-per-month tradition to see them haul themselves up from the basement sweaty and glaze-eyed at 7am, babbling excitement about some new ecto-spectral-hoozy-whatsits whose concept had shimmed into their minds at 8pm and now existed, fully operational, 11 nonstop hours later.

So it wasn’t the exhaustion on their face. It wasn’t the stagnant smell of sweat or the paleness of their faces or the stains on their clothes.

It was the way they looked at him. Like their whole world had fallen apart with his foot passing over the doorstep.

“Danny,” Jazz said, choked, a break in the silence. “Things are…! A little weird here. So maybe, if you wanna just get to school, I’ll finish clearing up—there’s a misunderstanding Mom and Dad have with their math. I am state finalist in Math League and have been studying college-level calculus in preparation for school applications so I’ve offered to help them fix their math, or prove to them—”

“Danny,” Maddie said, an echo of Jazz, but it felt worse. Danny scanned her hands for anything pointed enough to be a weapon. They were empty. “Danny can I just ask you something honestly, just quickly? Jazz is right. I’m just trying to clear up an issue with our math. And I won’t be mad. Whatever the answer is, I won’t be mad. I just want an honest answer.”

She stepped closer. Danny fought the urge to match her with a step backwards. Her eyes roved over him in a starved way, looking for something.

“Were you there when the portal turned on?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” Danny answered. He wasn’t sure what to do with his face to make it look convincing. “It just. It needed some time to boot up, or something, right? That’s what you two said.”

“That was our guess ,but we don’t really know. The security tapes are wiped. We tried to make them EMF-resilient but a very, very strong blast of EMF could still corrupt them.”

“Yeah. I mean the portal’s gonna do that, right? When it turned on? Ripping open the Ghost Zone that’s—gotta be huge EMF.” Danny’s focus bounced between his mother’s eyes. “Just a guess. I really don’t know. I was in bed, already, whenever the portal started working.”

Left eye. Right eye. Why was she looking at him like that? Like she was sad. Was this part a trick? Make Danny let his guard down, go hey Mom need a hug? and that’s when the bazooka-whipping starts? It made his ribs feel scratchy. Stop looking at me like that.

“Have you felt anything weird at all, since the portal started working? Any gaps in your memory? Any parts of you that don’t feel right? Is there any part of you that feels like it’s changed in a way you can’t explain?”

She reached a hand out. Danny instinctively recoiled.

“Uh, yeah. They taught us about this in health class. They call it ‘puberty’ there.”

“Danny,” Jack said, and his voice was scratchy from disuse, from a long and uncharacteristic amount of time spent not speaking. “Did you die in the machine?”

A beat. A moment. Like when the zombie sends a hammer through your head.

“I’M alive!” Danny declared with a crack in his voice, with hands slammed to his chest. “Look at me. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the only math that works,” Jack continued, his words like chalk, his voice too dead. He looked too much at Danny. “If one of you two walked into the portal, and died in it. And I don’t think it was Jazz.”

This was bad. This was weird. Danny had ghost powers, sure. ‘They can’t kill me I’m already dead,’ was a funny joke sometimes. But it was funny as a joke. He was a ghost sham, really. A faker, a LARPer, whatever Tucker had called it. He was a human who was just kind of a freak now. More of a freak than he already was. He looked dead, for someone who was super-duper still alive.

He’d buried that worry, already. They weren’t allowed to bring it back.

“Look… at me!” Danny continued, mouth dry. He threw his arms wide. “Look how super alive I am! I’m awake! Using energy! Eating food and sleeping with my human body. I’ve got flesh and blood and bones and stuff! I’m not a ghost-expert but ghosts don’t have that.”

This was weird. This made Danny feel like something was scratching to get free from inside his rib cage. It twisted his entrails. Sure Tucker and Sam had thought he was dead, for those first horrible few minutes, but then he changed back to a human and the nightmare ended there. Jazz never called him dead. The ghosts called him freak and halfa and whelp, but never ‘one of them.’ That was his whole thing: being different from the ghosts who became ghosts by something so normal as dying.

He was not dead.

“If you died in the portal, your ghost wouldn’t have been ripped out of your body. It would have been allowed to stay, and then you’d be…” Jack hesitated. “I don’t know what you’d be, but you wouldn’t be alive.”

“Dad,” Jazz said, and she stood herself bodily between Danny and Jack. “What an absolutely messed up out-of-line thing to say to your son! You don’t know that! Dad you’re tired, and just because you weren’t able to solve your math problem in one night doesn’t mean you get to treat Danny like this! I said I’d help you with your math! Now apologize to Danny.”

Jazz looked over her shoulder to Danny, her expression falling at the sight of Danny’s face.

Danny backed up over the door threshold. He shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with this. This is weird. I’m gonna go to school now.”

“Danny, I promise they’re just—”

Danny turned on heel. No backpack, no change of clothes. He took to the street without a single school supply and moved, and moved.

It was supposed to be guns-blazing. Molecule by molecule. Headshot you died. He’d prepared for that this whole time, in the shower, in his dreams, in his daydreams in class. He’d duck and dodge and explain himself over and over until they understood him.

Danny wasn’t sure he was capable of explaining himself anymore.

…

Danny knocked the heavy iron knocker. He was in ghost form, as a threat. He wondered if he still smelled like yesterday’s sweat now that he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. Now he was wearing the clothes he died in.

No one answered the door. Danny phased himself in.

“Vlad!” he called, and his words echoed along the slope of the two elaborate winding staircases that twirled and met at the top like caduceus. Gold-plated banisters. A security camera buried somewhere in the ceiling, no doubt.

Danny phased into the library. His eyes roved the three stories of bookshelves wrapping the perimeter like a sheath. Gaudy. Audacious. Like Vlad would ever read that much. Danny racked his brain because some something in here was the secret to opening Vlad’s laboratory. Jazz had told him. Some gold something to be touched, and pressed down, or pushed up? Or it opened to a button. Or a keypad, maybe.

Danny spat a curse. He was being stupid. He was frazzled. He wasn’t thinking straight.

He dove into the floor below. Intangibility was the only key he needed.

The sheetrock was cold, even when he wasn’t touching it. The darkness was so piercing it made static jump in his vision, some weird trick of the brain Jazz had explained where, in the absence of all light, the brain hallucinates its own. It came with a sensation of pressure against his eyeballs, and a complete disorientation of direction, and he simply just kept going down.

Danny emerged into a wash of cold air. Cold like metal was cold. The low lights of dials and clicking machines were bright to his eyes previously dunked into the pitchest nothing. He drank it in, eyes grateful for light no matter how little, inner ear grateful for orientation that had left his head swimming and his stomach tight.

His feet tapped down to the stone ground, and the air that breezed past him was chilled.

“Vlad!” Danny called again.

Nothing.

He moved by the floor lighting, which ran in trim along the perimeter of the laboratory rooms. It lit things from beneath, made machines gaunt and specimens into sharp geometries of darkness and flesh. It made the Fenton lab feel warm in a way Danny had never considered it warm.

His feet clacked. His breath puffed.

“Vlad!”

He followed light, followed a wash of green miasma percolating from some far room and catching on the particulate of water and dust that disturbed with the air currents. Danny disturbed it too, walking through, wearing its shade of green which his shadow robbed from the wall behind him.

“Vlad. I swear to god Vlad.”

He crossed the threshold of the portal room, where the dusting of green ambience became a medallion wash of golden-green coating, painting every surface of the room. The Fenton lab was one single expansive room, portal anchored into the far wall and facing all the dead and empty air in front of it. This was different. A much smaller room, walled on all sides save for the simple doorway, and each surface reflected the color back deeper and heavier. It was like a fishtank in the wall of an aquarium lit radiant aqua-blue by all the lights within, but green instead, pure ecto-green.

Danny approached the open portal. He stared into its placid swirls, mesmerized, and scared of it, in a way he hadn’t previously felt about the portal in the Fenton basement.

“Ah, seems the cat is a good mouser after all, it dragged you in my boy.” The words came sing-song. They came spine-shivering for Danny, who felt them like hot breath on his shoulder and reeled back, pivoted, fire crackling to life in his palms.

Vlad stood at the doorway, a solid 20 steps from Danny.

“Vlad.”

“So I’ve been hearing.”

“I need you to explain the portal.”

“Ah, I see you’ve spoken to your parents.” Vlad stepped in, washed in the ecto-green which muddied his ruby red eyes. He held his hands behind his back, cape trailing, a smirk on his fanged face. “Last I heard they weren’t taking the news very well.”

“What news. What did you tell them?”

“Me? Nothing. In fact, very kindly for your sake I even tried to drive them away from the answer but… We know how stubborn your parents can be.”

“What answer?”

“That you’re dead, Daniel.”

Shock washed like ice down Danny’s spine. It sent prickles like spider legs across his skin.

“Well, I suppose there’s still chance for some doubt. It could be Jazz. She could take the fall for you, if there’s any benefit to that at all.”

“I’m a halfa. We are halfas,” Danny said.

“A silly made up word by a silly child,” Vlad mused, and the light smile left his lips. “We are dead.”

“I’m not dead,” and Danny’s words were small, and they were childish.

“You are. I am. Embrace it. It’s nicer this way.” Vlad took a few steps closer, lionously tall in his saunter, feet clacking the ground. “It’s very freeing. After you’ve died already what is there left to fear?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re a dead body with its soul still stuffed inside it like a Christmas goose. A lot of things in your body don’t work anymore, but ghosts don’t work right anyway and it is, for all its defiance of nature, a perfectly symbiotic relationship.” Vlad’s smile brushed his lips again, warm. “It’s nice to share this with you. Isn’t it nice to share things with people?”

Danny’s heart was beating too fast in his chest, and it was a human heart, a human beat. “I’m not dead,” he declared.

“Your wounds heal quickly because the ghost piloting you only needs to remember form. It stacks cells back into place and calls it good. You’ll endure fatal injuries as you no doubt have many times in your fights, but they’re trivial because physical trauma is not what kills a ghost. It’s what creates one. You’ll necrotize in places but it’s okay, because you’ll carry on, and it will bother you only if you let it bother you, if you’re too sentimental about the puppet you’re still inside.” Vlad closed in closer, neck craning to appraise Danny. “Ghosts love a facsimile of life so you will keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing. You’ll eat and you’ll sleep but you’ll find you won’t perish if you don’t. It just won’t be a good time if you want to keep occupying your flesh form. Take better care of it. You won’t get another.”

“You’re psychotic. And you’re wrong.”

“I have all the math to prove it.” Vlad leered from over Danny’s shoulder. He circled the boy, knocking Danny’s balance, who still on a hair trigger stood ready to fight. The light from the ghost portal painted Vlad’s face like the phases of the moon as he moved. “Did your parents explain that part to you properly?”

“No, because they didn’t get the math right.”

“Oh they’ve gotten it right. This time. It only took them two decades longer than it took me.” The portal rolled like static, and its fizzling pattern crashed like an ocean wave across Vlad’s cape. “No amount of man-made power is sufficient to drag the entire fabric of the Ghost Zone up against our own, tear a hole through it, and anchor it to a stable frame. It requires something with a pull on the Ghost Zone, a strong pull, and that thing is a human life at the moment of an extraordinarily violent death.”

Danny backed a step away from the portal, from Vlad, but the walls boxed him in. He swam in its green light.

“You stepped in and you turned the portal on, that’s what you thought, right, Daniel? Pressed a careless button on the inside and now here we are. Silly parents for not finding that button first.” Vlad’s face hardened. “No. Jack and Maddie knew about the button. Maddie explained it to me over the phone. What engineer designing and building their own portal would forget the location of the on button? They’d pressed it from the outside. It didn’t work. And so you pressing the button was not the important part. It was you dying to the electrocution that clicked everything right into place. And while your ghost should have been torn from your lifeless corpse and pulled to the Ghost Zone you instead pulled the Ghost Zone here. Your ghost got to stay put. You opened the portal. You became the undead freak you are. And now we’re here.”

Danny’s eyes bounced between Vlad’s. His cheeks felt hot, like he was enduring an accusation of wrongdoing. And he had none of the knowledge to refute what was being said.

“You’re messing with me. You’re wrong,” Danny shot back. He thrust an arm out, drenched in the fog of the portal. “If the portal needs a person to die in it then explain your portal! Are you so casual about it? You killed someone? You’re admitting to murder and you think I won’t do anything about it?”

Anger flashed like a storm across Vlad’s face. His aura swelled, pressing down with a pressure on Danny as Vlad halted and cast his shadow clear across Danny, coating the back wall. “The killing of other people with the wanton carelessness of half-baked machines is the domain of Jack and Jack alone. I’ve brought no such harm onto anyone else.”

“Then how do you have this portal?”

“This portal? This portal that I’ve had for 20 years? Which I opened when I solved the piece of Jack’s broken math that he was never able to solve until this morning?” Vlad stalked closer, hunched, imposing. Danny stepped back. “My boy Daniel you’ve had it so easy. You had it so simple. A truly clean break. So clean so lucky. A single lethal dose of electricity and it was already over. I’m jealous. You never even suffered.”

Vlad stepped closer, striking distance, arm extended. Danny flinched, but Vlad only swept his cape around, clenched in his fist, and pivoted to approach the portal.

“Put out of your misery before it even started.” Vlad slammed his fist against the portal rim, and the explosive metallic clang bounced through the rooms. His laugh belted out. “I should have been so lucky.”

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A sophomore in college. A man actively in the midst of sabotaging his social life to chase a woman who was already deeply in love with Vlad’s best friend who he hated more every day. He wasn’t sure what he ever enjoyed about Jack’s bumbling ineptitude, or his loudness, his brashness, his poor social skills, his bad breath, his mullet. Maybe Vlad had gravitated to Jack because deep down he loved how superior it made him feel to surround himself with the likes of Jack Fenton… And now, he hated how enraged it made him to watch Maddie’s eyes skip past his to focus on Jack Fucking Fenton again and again and again and again.

But surely there was hope still. Surely it was a matter of time before the rose-tinted glasses fell away and Maddie saw bumbling and inept and every such word in the basket when she looked at Jack. There’d come the day she tested the waters with Vlad to complain about one of Jack’s little quirks, and they’d find solace together in all the things Vlad was that Jack wasn’t, and all the things Vlad had that Jack didn’t. And he’d be gone, back to bumble elsewhere, and it would be just them.

The day didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. And maybe Vlad needed to change himself for Maddie. If he listened to her and Jack’s ghost ramblings, if he could put Jack in his place and solve the things Maddie couldn’t, it would show her. She’d understand.

Because that was the thing about Jack. His math was never right. Enduring Calculus 1 with Jack was all it took to prove this to Vlad. How many times he’d caught a single error on a single line for Jack, like a dropped stitch that would unravel the whole sweater. Every problem, without exception. Jack only passed on his homework grade with Vlad’s help. On his tests, he failed.

So Vlad was staring at Jack’s equation, full of bogus math, which Vlad knew was wrong because Jack had penned it, and Vlad had not yet fixed it himself.

“I’m telling you Jack, it won’t work.”

“Bogus V-man it totally will!”

It wouldn’t. But Vlad wouldn’t fix it for him. Not yet. Vlad would let Jack embarrass himself first, fully in front of Maddie, watching on, judging. Vlad would solve it for her. After. Once Jack had made a fool of himself for the hundredth time since college began.

He leaned in to study the portal frame. The gears were turning in his head already. He didn’t hear the whir of the power source catch.

…

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A tube ran down his nose and into his lungs, supplying oxygen for lungs which were failed by a diaphragm sloughing itself away. He was poisoned from the outside-in. Irradiated by ecto-energy none of the nurses or doctors could fully understand. It damaged his DNA. First obvious in the skin of his face where the blisters of his ecto-acne drained and sloughed. “Acne” was the wrong word. An unkind word. They were boils where the blast had cooked his skin, microwaved his cells. The skin on his body blackened over time. Organs decayed. Vlad Master read a lot about radiation sickness. He knew everything he had to expect.

Jack and Maddie had stopped visiting. They were dating now. It was on their last visit they’d told him, and Vlad hadn’t taken it well, and he’d perhaps burned a few bridges with the words he chose. It was deserved. Considering what Jack did to him.

He’d found the error in Jack’s math, by the way. Errors, but all the rest paled in impact compared to the lambda. The ecto-energy. The necessary ecto-potential to pull the Ghost Zone here. How stupid. How idiotic. For Vlad to die to a machine so botched in its construction.

When Vlad was released from the hospital, it was not because they’d cured him. It had been because there is a certain cruelty in making a 19-year-old live the last of his days bedded down in a white-walled room with just his books, his equations, and no one coming to visit anymore.

He was released with bedrest instructions. Vlad did not heed them. In his beater car, every cell of his body aching, he drove. At the materials lab, he disconnected his oxygen tank and moved through the lab space with the tube dangling loose from his nostril. No one was Vlad Masters’ friend. No one cared to stare long at his ugly boil-ridden face. No one stopped him as he hauled sheet metal, and supports, and bolts and wiring and resistors and power tools, checked out with a valid student ID, from the lab. The lab inventory room would not be seeing these back.

It was a prep bunker, buried beneath a vast lot of empty Wisconsin land, that Vlad hauled his materials. He and Jack had discovered it as freshmen. Poked through its bowels with flashlights and quipped and laughed over how eerie it was. Deep beneath the sheetrock, boxy rooms carved out of walls of stone. Shelf upon shelf of dusty canned foods, and shotguns sealed in cases fastened to the walls. The locks had rusted with water damage.

His arms ached until they throbbed, dragging beams of metal across the stone floor, scratching chalk-mark stains into the ground. His skin sloughed, inflamed, burning to the touch. Vlad didn’t bother to rest, because these injuries would never heal anyway. He hauled, and welded, and wired up his circuitry and resistors with a care and caution Jack would never have bothered to practice. He checked it against his math by flashlight. He took naps on the cold stone floor and woke with deep purple bruises on every part of his body that had pressed against the ground.

His appetite left him. His lungs filled with mucus. The boils on his face had spread down to his chest, his shoulders. The touch of his shirt chafed them, so he worked without one, a figure of skeletal rib ridges jutting from tight skin that bloomed with the projection of his shadow against stone walls.

He knew why Jack’s math was wrong.

A silly mistake. A stupid mistake. Anyone with half a mind for the paranormal should have realized the Ghost Zone was not so easily at your beck and call. Not without chumming the water with something it would rise to feast on.

And in that violent death, what would happen to the ghost? It would stay, wouldn’t it? If it successfully anchored the Ghost Zone to the portal it stood inside, then by definition the ghost would stay?

And was that death? Yes, in a way. But it was a death one would get to keep living. As opposed to the death Vlad was headed for, whose coldness and finality scared Vlad more than anything he could put to words.

He’d fixed the oxygen tank back to himself. He couldn’t work without it, hauling it about on a little dolly with him, back and forth, while he fetched and affixed the last of the plating he needed to craft the frame of his silent soulless portal.

He’d stolen a generator from the sports storage shed. It was meant to be enough to power the portable stadium lights they hauled onto the fields for late games, an absolute obelisk meant to cast light across an entire football field.

Surely, it contained enough power to kill one simple human.

Vlad fixed the last bolt in place. Jumper cables clamped generator to portal wiring. It was a pure skeleton. A paltry thing, like the bones of something already picked clean. Built in haste, sloppy, by a 19-year-old whose fingers were too inflamed to clutch a wrench any longer.

He could have asked Jack for help. Maddie. But he wouldn’t let them have this. They had to solve the portal on their own. They didn’t get to know his hard work. They did not get to save him.

Vlad would save himself.

A ghost anchored to a body. What was that? What monster was that?

Vlad moved. He coughed mucus from his lungs. It made it hard to breathe. So he moved slowly, and crouched, bony jutting angles, painted blotchy purple, all bruises and skin, sloughing away.

He crouched, because the portal he’d constructed was not large enough to hold him standing up. He bowed inside it, a small thing, a pathetic man of little life. He wheezed. He hurt. His eyes burned.

And he held in his hands the remote to flip the generator switch, and connect the circuit, and bring to life the math Vlad had so kindly corrected out from under Jack’s grip.

Vlad did not. Because throwing the switch would kill him.

Deep in his animal brain, his dying brain, he knew this intimately. It filled him with a drowning fear like paralysis. He did not want to die.

He would die if he did nothing.

It would be this one throwing of the switch which could save him. Which would burst the portal to life right through his heart. Electrocute it out of its rhythm, slaughter him like a pig on spot and… maybe… hopefully… drag the Ghost Zone here. And whatever he was, dead, would stay.

And whatever he was, dead, would be better than this.

Vlad held the remote in his clammy hands.

And from within the humming skeleton of his portal, his fingers caressed the on button.

…

The portal sung its happy contentment, mused in its healthy green aura, staining all the slabs of rock wall. Danny swiveled his head, recognizing now the bunker this had been before it had been a laboratory.

“I’ve harmed no one, Daniel,” Vlad concluded, his voice too measured for the horrors it had spilled forth. Too calm against the blossoming terror its words had wrought across Danny’s face. “I opened the portal to save myself. You’re lucky, Daniel. It was because of my fast thinking that your father is not a murderer. I took that honor from him.” Vlad’s head tilted to the side, suddenly sympathetic. “Although, you’ve maybe made the title whole for him.”

Vlad reached out, Danny shot away.

“Dad didn’t kill me,” he choked. “I did this to myself.”

“How lucky Jack is, to always dodge responsibility for his actions.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. If you believed me, you’d have to accept you’re not wriggling out of this. There’s no denial you can bring home to your parents. If you believe me, then this is reality.” Vlad smiled, a playful glint to his fangs. “I suppose I should have more sympathy. I quite like being this way. It is so much nicer than wasting away to death, like I was. But you. You were healthy before this. This killed you, and it didn’t save you from anything.” Vlad cocked his head. “Such tragic fates, both of us, due to the carelessness of Jack Fenton.”

Danny shook his head. His heart beat—his human heart beat—all too fast in his throat. It made him sick. It made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. This was Vlad’s doing. Vlad’s trap. Vlad’s prison he’d been forced to join.

"That's not true. I'm not like you."

“Of course not,” Vlad said, sweetly. “How sweet denial is. Deny it if you like. Call me a liar. But if you ever want to come to terms with what your father did to you, consider coming to me. I understand you in a way no one else will.”

Danny gave no response. He gave no acknowledgement of Vlad’s words. He took to the air, phased himself up through the sheetrock that had been packed atop the doomsday prepper bunker. Up through the mansion, which had been built atop the portal beneath it, and not the other way around. Into the open sky, he breathed fresh air not stagnant and damp beneath the ground, bathed in light pure white from the sun and not tainted green like the bowels underneath him.

And he flew back toward the portal that made him, leaving Vlad with the portal from which he’d made himself.

...

(inspiration post from @ciestess)

[katiexpunk]

Scarlet Haze - Part 2

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!Reader | W/C: ~6.2K | Rating: 18+ Minors DNI

Series Summary: Life in the QZ was fairly predictable. That was, until Joel Miller showed up on your doorstep covered in blood. Since then, you've helped him more times than you can count. Now it's his turn to return the favor.

Series Warnings: SEX POLLEN. SEX POLLEN. SEX POLLEN. Set in the TLOU universe in the Boston QZ. Buckle the fuck up for a lot of filthy, feral smut. Check chapter warnings for specifics. This series will follow them through current day.

Chapter Warnings: Canon-typical violence. Blood. Sexual tension. Bloody knuckles/wounded Joel. Flirting. Alcohol. Male masturbation. Voyeurism. Pearl Jam. Drug-seeking behavior. Medical references. Crying. Hallucinations similar to a drug high. Euphoria. Damsel in distress trope. Pet names. Praise kink. Begging. Unprotected P in V. Oral (female receiving). Fingering. Use of daddy. Age gap (make it your own!). No use of Y/N. Reader has no physical descriptions. Let me know if I missed anything!

A/N: Surprise! It's here early (probably the only time you'll be glad something came early). Part 2 as part of my contribution to @morallyinept's Flora and Fauna Challenge. Part 3 coming 5/19.

Part 1 | Masterlist | Read on AO3 | Notifications

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.” ― Stephen Chbosky

Joel Miller is a bad man. 

It wasn’t always this way – there was a time when he thought he was good, kind even, a gentleman through and through, just like his momma raised him to be. 

But those days are long gone. Nowadays, the things he does are far from decent.

What he’s doing right now tops the list.

He should avoid it. He knows he should. 

Whatever this feeling is, it’s entirely alien to him—like a cocktail of a thousand potent drugs coursing through his veins, igniting an instinctive physical response. His heart pounds furiously, and a searing heat prickles his skin. He feels lightheaded, probably from the blood rushing anywhere and everywhere except for his brain. 

He tries to reason with himself that he can wait— he should wait. Wait for you to wake up, do your typical doctor business, pull out a magic pill or some bullshit, and you’ll both be well on your way. 

He should wait. A good man would wait. 

But then you started whimpering. 

Fucking whimpering. 

It was soft, just a whisper; he almost second-guessed it, but then you said his name clear as day, drawing him closer to the edge of control.

“Joel, please,” you moan, spread out on the dusty sheets, lost in a daydream he wishes he was part of, totally unaware of your actions.

He palms himself through his denim, hips titled forward as he sits on a wood chair that he’s not all too convinced can bear his weight after years of abandonment, but he could give two shits about that right now. 

“Yes, oh god, yes, just like that,” you moan again, your hand inching closer to your center, chasing friction of any kind. He wonders if you’re wet right now, how sweet you must taste. 

Fuck it. 

If he's destined for hell, he might as well make it worth the trip.

He unhooks his belt and yanks down his zipper, forcefully pulling his pants down to bunch around the muscular expanse of his thighs

Heavy cock in hand, he takes a second to admire it. It’s a fat, healthy one with a little curve to the left and a prominent vein running up the side. He’s a blessed man – in this regard, anyway. 

He rises to full attention, and his hand rises with it, thick, strong fingers just about meeting his thumb as they curl around him. He savors the first proper stroke, the shift from teasing to relief. 

He’s so fucking hard. He’s not sure he’s ever been this hard. 

His skin feels like velvet wrapped around steel. Even at the end of the world, hell, even before it, he’s not sure touching himself has ever felt like this. 

As the edges of his vision begin to soften and blur, he focuses on you. He empties his mind into thoughts of you and only you – how good you’d feel, your tight cunt wrapped around him, creaming on him as you chant his name like a prayer. 

Fuck.

His head falls back to lean against the wall, eyes tightly shut, his hand still working as he conjures up images of you bent over for him as he watches his cock slide in and out of your wet heat. 

It feels like his whole system has been turned on, his body flooded with adrenaline, the frantic thud of his pulse in his ears now palpable against his palm, too.

Just then, you blink open your eyes, and the remnants of your daydream evaporate like a mist in the morning sun. For a moment, you’re unsure where you are, the room spinning gently in your haze. 

The last thing you remember is being in the flower field with him, and now you’re on a bed that hasn’t seen a warm body in over a decade. How did he? 

You drop the thought when you feel the air, thick with a heavy, sweet scent that tugs at the edges of your consciousness. You feel hot, every nerve ending tingling uncomfortably. Breathing feels difficult, each breath deep and labored. It’s as if your lungs are struggling under a heavy weight, a need you can’t quite pinpoint. 

Your gaze slowly shifts from the ceiling to the corner of the room, and that's when you spot him. 

Sunlight streams through the grime-streaked windows, casting beams that light up the swirling dust in the air. As your eyes adjust, the details come into sharp focus, cutting through the haze in your mind like a knife. 

Oh. He’s — 

 You must still be dreaming; you must. There’s no way this is happening. 

Your stomach flutters and flips, enough physical proof that you see what you think you do.

You take a moment to admire him, his cock, the glistening precum that’s gathered at the tip of it, the soft groans coming from his chest. The way his thick neck is angeled back perfectly presents his Adam's apple and the nape of his throat. 

You adjust to prop yourself up slightly. 

"Joel," you coo, his name dripping from your lips like nectar from a flower. 

He pauses at the sound of your voice, and time suspends for a moment. If he weren’t so fucked out, he might think to stop what he’s doing, might even feel embarrassed that he was caught. 

But right now, part of him wants you to watch. When he tilts his head up, you’re staring at him with a look he can’t quite place, but holy fuck, you’re beautiful. 

Seeing your own lust-filled eyes, knowing you're watching what he’s doing to himself, consumes him. 

“See what you do to me,” he groans, holding your stare as he fucks his fist, jaw slack and balls tight. 

It’s so intense. He’s intense. 

“Wanna see you,” he rasps, and you’re more than happy to oblige.

You work to undo the buttons of your jeans, desperate to touch yourself – dazed and dizzy. 

You haven’t even touched him and you’re already cock drunk, tipsy with the need to touch him. You can’t stop it, not even if you tried. It feels like this moment was always meant to happen, and everything in life—the good and the bad — has led up to it. 

Feeling a sudden surge of boldness, you stand to walk over to him, but the floor rushes up unexpectedly. As gravity claims you, a different kind of pull—a magnetic force you've felt since the night you met him—lingers in your mind. 

You think you hear him call your name as the ceiling swirls into shades of red, patterns like a kaleidoscope painted behind your lids, and you’re living that night again before you can be sure. 

++++

Boston QZ, Fall 2022

The bar's dim lights hardly penetrate the thick air and despair that seems to stick to everything inside the QZ. You shove open the heavy metal door and step inside. The noise—a mix of wood chairs scraping against the ground and low conversations—briefly spikes before settling as the door thuds shut behind you. 

It's been a long, tough shift at the clinic, leaving you feeling bone tired.

The bar—if you can even call it that—has a worn appeal. As your eyes get used to the dimness, you head straight for the counter. 

The bartender, a middle-aged guy with a scar trailing down his cheek like a tear track, gives you a quick nod in greeting. “Hey, Tom,” you greet him with a tired smile. “I’ll have a chardonnay.”

Tom chuckles, wiping down a glass with a rag that has seen better days. 

“Doc,” he nods. “Best I can do is beer. Got a fresh batch that’s more hops than rust this time.”

“Sold,” you laugh, settling onto a stool and pushing him one of your ration cards. “Make it a cold one, if you can remember what cold feels like.”

Your eyes drift across the bar as Tom turns to fetch your drink. That’s when you notice him—a rugged man nursing a beer, his presence almost as worn as the leather jacket hugging his broad shoulders. 

His knuckles are raw, the skin split, and a dark bruise blooms around his left eye. It’s an impressive shiner that catches your attention more than it probably should.

You lean slightly on the bar, the wood cool under your arms, and a half-smile forms on your lips when you catch his eye. “You really should have someone check that out,” you say, nodding toward his hand, the flirtation in your voice unmistakable.

His eyes assess you momentarily, weighing your words, maybe even your presence here talking to him.

He curls his right hand into a fist, the skin tight and pale over the knuckles. “This?” His voice, rough as gravel, carries a hint of nonchalance. “It’ll heal eventually.” As he speaks, his words stretch out with a slow Southern drawl, wrapped in a weariness you can almost touch.

“Must have been quite the fight,” you remark, accepting the beer Tom slides in front of you. “Or a really stubborn door.” 

A trace of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. 

“Something like that.”

“You know,” you continue, sipping the beer and finding it surprisingly not terrible, “I’m pretty good with stitches and less good with doors. If you ever need a hand…”

His dark eyes flick back to you, pausing on your lips, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

You sip your drink, the corners of your lips twitching upward slightly. Turning to face him fully, you let your eyes roam over his features, openly appreciating the chisel of his jaw and the facial hair that covers it. He’s handsome. 

He doesn’t ask for your name, but the silence feels like an invitation. Leaning a bit closer, you raise an eyebrow playfully. "And you are?" your voice lilts at the end, lingering on the anticipation.

"Joel Miller," he says, his voice a deep rumble that cuts through the bar noise. His handshake is firm but careful as if he's mindful not to hurt despite the roughness of his hands.

"Joel Miller—I like that," you reply, holding his gaze a little longer than necessary, your hand still clasped in his. You gently turn his hand to inspect the battered knuckles, not having to work hard to imagine the sting you know he feels.

A shout from across the bar catches your attention; your friends are waving you over. You turn towards them, but he continues to look at you. When you turn back to him, he drops your hand quickly, almost like you burned him.

"Well, Joel Miller, I guess I'll see you around," you say with a hint of promise.

He nods, “Maybe so.” 

As you walk away, you feel his thoughtful, dark, and hungry eyes still fixed on you. 

The intensity of his stare sends a shiver down your spine as you move toward the laughter and warmth of your friends waiting at a table near the back.

You feel the pull of curiosity that makes you want to look back, but you don’t. 

++++

Later that week, you’re pulling a late night at the clinic. 

"Fuck," you moan, bringing your hands to your temples and rubbing them slightly. You're exhausted. When are you not?

You don't have a clock in the clinic, but you know it's probably close to curfew. Every cell in your body tells you to go home, but you ignore it. At least you have the peeling paint and the constant drip from a leaky faucet to keep you company.

You’re restocking a shelf in the lobby when the front door slams open violently. A man staggers in, his eyes bloodshot, clothes tattered, and reeking of what you don’t even want to know. You straighten up and quickly reach into your coat pocket, your grip finding a scalpel from earlier. Using your thumb, you work to remove the cap and position it between your fingers should you need to use it.

"I need some meds," he growls, slamming his fists down on the reception desk. "The strong stuff, now!"

"Sir, I need you to calm down," you say, trying to keep your voice even despite the adrenaline surge. "I can help, but first, you need to tell me what's wrong."

"Listen here you little bitch, I don’t need advice; I need fucking pills!" he bellows, his voice echoing off the walls. Suddenly, he lunges over the counter, grabbing your arm with a firm grip. 

You struggle to pull away, but he’s too strong. You try your scalpel, but he slaps it away. Panic spikes as he twists your arm behind your back and slams you against the counter. Pain shoots through your shoulder, sharp and blinding.

Just then, the door to the clinic bursts open with a force that makes the entire room shake. You barely have time to register the figure rushing in, his movements fast and determined.

And then you see him. 

Joel Miller. 

His expression is set in a hard line, eyes pinpointing the man pinning you down. Without a word, he grabs the man by the collar and yanks him away from you. The man flails, trying to swing at Joel, but he’s too quick, too angry. He lands a solid punch to the man's jaw, sending him reeling backward into one of the shelves. 

"You okay?" he asks, turning to you with concern etched on his face. His hands are still clenched into fists.

Breathing heavily, you nod, rubbing your bruised arm. The pain is sharp, and you know you'll be feeling it tomorrow, but you’re relieved to be free from the man's grasp. 

"I think so?" you manage to say, trying to steady your voice as you back away from the counter to put some distance between yourself and the now-groaning figure on the floor.

Joel’s eyes find the man as he slowly picks himself up, giving him a warning glare that promises more if he tries anything again. "Come in here again, and I’ll make sure a broken jaw is the least of your worries," he threatens. Is he always this intense? The man, clutching his jaw and mumbling curses, stumbles out of the clinic.

Once gone, Joel turns back to you, his expression softening. "Let me look at your arm," he says, gently taking it in his hands, his touch careful as he examines the bruising.

“Playing doctor today, are we?" you tease with a smirk.

Joel's chuckle rumbles low and warm, melting some of the tension from your shoulders.

"I'm not, but you could've fooled me," he replies, his touch light as he examines your arm. His eyes hold a soft concern that seems at odds with his typically rugged exterior. 

“Didn’t know you were a doctor.” 

"Do a lot of women at the bar tell you they’re good at giving stitches?" you quip, watching his reaction.

“Alright, smartass, point taken," he teases, releasing your arm. You gently massage the sore skin.

"How did you know I was in trouble?" 

Joel leans against the counter, his brow set as he watches you rub your arm. 

"Let's just say I've got good instincts.”

"Instincts, huh?" You say, stepping closer. "I suppose next you’ll say that it was just my luck that you happened to wander by when you did?” 

His eyes lock with yours.

"I think you're lucky I came when I did," he agrees, his tone serious now.

"Yeah," you agree, a wave of gratitude washing over you. The clinic is suddenly quiet, and you both look at each other momentarily. Everything suddenly feels heavy.

“Too bad there’s no lottery anymore—I could've used some of that luck earlier,” you joke. Stupid.

Joel shakes his head, eyes still scanning your face, perhaps looking for injuries you hadn't mentioned. 

"Really, you should be more careful," he chides. "It’s not safe to be out here alone this close to curfew."

"I usually manage fine," you assert, trying not to let his concern make you feel like you can't handle your job. "Tonight was just... unexpected."

"Doesn't mean it won't happen again. You should think about having someone here with you during late shifts," Joel suggests, his voice low and insistent.

You consider his words, knowing he's right, but it’s also not like people in the QZ are lining up to care for people who aren’t themselves.

Joel seems to read your mind. "Just promise me you'll be careful," he says, stepping back, giving you space. His eyes still hold that fierce protective glint.

"I promise.”

Joel nods once, satisfied. "Good.”

You give him another small smile and think he sees the thank you behind it. 

He nods again, eyes lingering on you for a moment longer before he turns to leave. As he walks towards the door, you watch him go, feeling a mix of emotions—appreciation, relief, and that same magnetic pull from last night. 

“Joel?” you call out, halting his steps. “You like whiskey?” 

Joel turns, a curious arch lifting his brow as he shifts from his reserved demeanor. 

"Yeah, I like whiskey," he replies. "Why, you offering?"

A playful smile dances on your lips.

"Maybe I am," you say, considering for a moment. "How about a thank-you drink? My place isn't far."

For a moment, Joel just looks at you, assessing. 

"Lead the way, Doc,” he says, his voice carrying a warmth you haven’t heard before.

++++ 

You unlock the door to your unit, stepping aside to let him in. "Make yourself comfortable," you say, gesturing vaguely towards the living room. Joel nods and walks through the threshold. As he passes, you notice that he smells slightly sweet and smoky, with a rich, woody undertone. 

He takes a seat on the worn couch that’s a carry over from the 80’s, it creaks under his weight. He settles back, his knees spreading wide, and makes himself at home.

Heading into the kitchen, you rummage through the cabinets before finding an old bottle of whiskey. You don’t own any glasses. 

You call out to Joel, "I hope you don’t mind sharing with me." You unscrew the cap, take a swig directly from the bottle, and feel the warm burn of the alcohol as it slides down your throat.

You cough. “It's not great, but it’s the best I’ve got.”  

Carrying the bottle back to the living room, you pass it to Joel with a playful wink. "Your turn," you say, watching him take his swig with an approving nod. He takes a moment to assess the bottle; not bad for decade-old Tennessee whiskey. 

As he drinks, you walk over to a shelf cluttered with various knickknacks and pull out an old battery-powered CD player. Rifling through the modest stack of CDs you’ve traded more ration cards for than you care to admit, you pull out the one you're after and slide it into the player. 

As the first chords of Pearl Jam's "Alive" reverberate through the room, Joel's head swivels, his eyes lighting up with recognition. "Holy shit. Pearl Jam?" he says, his voice tinged with surprise.

"You know ‘em?" you respond, settling beside him on the couch.

He looks at you with a you’ve got to be serious look.

“Yeah, darlin’, I know ‘em. Pretty sure I was listening to them before you were even born.” 

“Oh please,” you laugh, gently elbowing him in the ribs as you snatch the whiskey bottle back. “I’m not that young.” “Pretty sure I’m old enough to be your daddy,” he looks at you. You’re not sure who moved closer, you or him. You feel the solid warmth of his thigh pressed firmly against yours, sending a spark through you.

You turn and look up at him through your lashes.

“Is that what you want to be?” You feel a little thrill as you watch his pupils dilate, and his jaw tightens. 

You take another swig from the bottle, and his eyes linger on your lips and the shine from the amber liquid on them. “My daddy,” you emphasize the word daddy with a suggestive tone. His hands flex on his thighs. You can tell he’s holding back, trying to maintain composure. He blushes a little; you notice. 

Your words hang in the air. You decide to go easy on him. For now. 

“I’m just fucking with you; that’s not really my thing,” you lie. You take another sip from the bottle, and you feel the alcohol coursing through your veins, your cheeks warming from the combination of the whiskey and his burning gaze. Your muscles feel a little gooey, and your bones feel lighter. 

“All yours, cowboy,” you say, passing him the bottle. His left-hand kitten kisses yours as he grabs it, and even though it was just a brief touch, you still feel it afterward. You bring your free hand to his resting on his thigh. His knuckles have started to heal, but scabs still linger. 

“You gonna tell me how you got this for real this time?” Your fingers gently explore the rough texture of his skin, tracing the prominent veins that stand out beneath. He clenches his hand into a fist, looking at you with an intensity that suggests you don’t want to know. 

"Alright Miller, keep your secrets then," you murmur playfully, leaning in so your side body is pressed against his arm. You gently pluck the bottle from his grasp and set it aside on the table. Sliding onto his lap, you straddle him, your thighs framing his sides.

“Wh – what are you doin’?”

"If you won't tell me, the least you can do is kiss me," you suggest, your fingers weaving through his hair, using it to tilt him up to look at you. His eyes flicker to your lips, and his hand cradles your face as you inch nearer. His thumb brushes softly across your bottom lip, sending a shiver down your spine. His touch wanders, trailing from your neck to your waist, each movement charged with tension.

Suddenly, he shifts, flipping you onto your back with a smooth motion. Your back hits the cushions and a small oof escapes your lungs. Your thighs are still bracketing him. The pressure of his hips against your center makes your insides flutter.

“You’re a needy little thing, arentcha?” 

Mhmm, you moan, cupping his face, trying to pull him closer to you. The hardness you feel pressed up on your hips makes you a little desperate. 

God, you’re perfect, he thinks. So warm and willing, making it so easy for him. 

You’ve been fairly obvious in your flirting with him. He hasn’t been with a woman in a while, but he sure as shit wasn’t born yesterday. A voice in his mind tells him this might be the liquor talking, not you. Or worse, he thinks you might feel like you owe him something for helping you out earlier. 

He wants you, but not like this. 

"I think you're a little drunk, darlin'," he whispers, his voice low and teasing. He leans in, his breath warm against your skin, noses so close they touch. 

“So what if I am?” you giggle. 

“Kiss me, Miller.” His eyes fall to your lips.

You close your eyes, expecting a kiss, but instead, he plants a tender kiss on your forehead.

"I should go," he murmurs, pulling away and standing up. "Get some sleep," he adds, his voice mingling with the music. Before you can reach for him, he's out the door, leaving you wet, tipsy, and confused. 

By the time Joel returned to his unit, the ache in his jeans was almost too much to bear. 

He fucked his hand twice that night, once to the thought of how you felt on top of him, your hips rocking into his, and the other to the thought of what your lips might feel like pressed against his. 

He wanted to kiss you. He wants to kiss you. 

And while his cock might have other thoughts on the matter, he’s never been one to take advantage. Joel knows he’s a bad man, but he’s not bad enough to do that to you. 

He’s done many hard things, but walking away from you at that moment might be near the top of the list. 

++++ 

You feel his fingers on your forearm, gently tracing up and down on the skin there when you open your eyes. He’s sitting on the bed next to you. His voice, a heavy mix of concern and warmth now, steadies your spinning world. You try and sit up. What the actual fuck is happening? Wasn’t he…just?

"Hey, take it easy," Joel murmurs, guiding you gently back against the pillows.

As you settle, the dizzying spin of the room slows, and you're met with Joel's intense stare. He's studying you, his eyes flickering with a mixture of unease and something deeper, something unspoken. 

"You okay?" His voice is a soft murmur, barely rising above the whistle from the broken window across the room.

You nod, but your heart feels like it’s going to pound out of your chest —not just from the disorienting fall, but from the closeness of him. The magnetic pull you've felt since the beginning is more palpable now, impossible to ignore. You blink away the last clouds of your dizziness and focus on him. His shirt clings to him, damp with sweat; his usually neat hair begins to curl at the edges, and there's a tightness in his expression that mirrors the pain you feel.

You’re aching, not in your muscles or bones; no, it’s deeper than that. It's like the pull of a wave threatening to take you under tow. 

"Yeah, just,” you sigh. “Joel, I feel so weird," you manage to say, your voice barely a whisper. “I’m so hot,” you say, and admitting it out loud overwhelms you.

“I know, baby, me too,” Joel responds softly, his hand brushing lightly over your shoulder,

He’s so sweet and tender. The nickname lingers in your mind and plays on a loop. 

Baby. Baby. 

Warmth spreads up from your chest, a burning sensation that lodges behind your ribcage, familiar yet overwhelming. Tears start to prick your eyes, and before you can hold them back, they stream down your face.

You're crying now, not just from the discomfort but from everything—the closeness, the concern in his voice, the way he keeps calling you baby, and the deep ache it all stirs within you.

“Stupid fucking flower,” you say through your tears. 

“What’s that now?” 

“In the field—the flower, the colorful one I showed you. I didn’t know what it was at first, but then I remembered reading about it in a book about herbal remedies.”

“And you think this flower has something to do with what’s wrong with us right now?” he questions. 

“I don’t remember what it’s called, but I remember reading a warning about it –” 

He doesn’t say anything; he just looks at you, patiently waiting for you to finish your thought. 

“The flower,” you sniffle. “Well, the sap and pollen of the flower, I should say, have some strange side effects if ingested or put into the bloodstream…” 

“Go on, baby.” 

There it is again. Baby. 

“It causes extreme arousal, light-headedness, and a shit ton of other things I don’t remember.” 

“Oh. Well, that explains –” 

“Yeah,” you cut him off, already knowing what he wanted to say. You use the back of your hand to wipe away some moisture from your face, but there’s no point; you still feel the tears falling. You close your eyes and try to will the discomfort from your mind. 

“It's okay, darlin'," he murmurs, "I’m here. We'll just let it run its course, alright?" His arms envelop you, drawing you tightly against the solid warmth of his chest. Gently, he cradles the curve of your head in his hand, the rhythm of his heartbeat steady against your ear. You open your eyes, and through your wet vision, you look down and see that he’s still hard. 

“Joel, I –”  his hand floats to the column of your neck, holding you to look at him.

“What do you need, baby?” 

“I need you to fuck me.” 

Shit. No going back now.

“I can’t do that. We’re not in the right state of mind. I don’t want to take advan–” 

“Joel, please,” you say through your tears. 

He looks at you like he’s at war with his mind and body; your desperate doe eyes stare back at him. 

His cock twitches.

He’s been in pain ever since you hit the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to finish after you passed out again. How could he? He was too worried about you. Every fiber of his being was screaming to cum, but the concern he held for you overrode it all. 

“Joel, I’m begging you,” you plead.

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes, yeah—yes. Joel, I need you,” you respond quickly, already moving to drag the unbuttoned jeans off your body. He’s still unmoving, and his body feels like molasses—viscous and sluggish. You’ve rid yourself of your shirt when you command his attention again, “Joel!” 

“Fuck, yeah – okay,” he takes off his shirt, and you help him with his buckle. He undoes his jeans once more while you make quick work of removing your bra and underwear, leaving yourself bare in front of him.

“Lay back, baby, need to taste you.” You do as he says, letting your knees fall to the sides until you’re spread open for him. He comes to his knees on the bed, the mattress groaning under his weight. 

“God damn, darlin’ — could cum just from lookin’ at you like this,” he says, stroking his cock. You thought he was big when you saw him in the corner, but seeing him this close, really seeing him, is another story. 

He collapses onto his stomach between your legs, his breath warm against your skin. Gently, he presses his lips to the tender flesh of your inner thigh, delivering a playful nip that sends a shiver through you.

“Wanna taste you – you have no idea how bad I want to taste you,” he groans as he breathes in your scent, the tip of his aquiline nose bumps against your clit. You’re so keyed up already, a dripping mess for him, your aching clit just begging for a bit of attention. 

He runs a finger through your drenched seam, your juices dripping onto his thick digit. He licks his finger, then shoves it into his mouth so he can taste every drop. He clamps his eyes shut and groans. “So fuckin’ sweet, baby.”

Joel spreads your legs wider, giving him full access to your pussy. He plants a soft kiss on the top of your mound and then gently parts his lips, allowing his tongue to lick through your dripping folds. 

“Please,” You cry, with one hand gripping the worn fabric of the bedspread and one tugging on his messy curls. His beard scratches the sensitive skin of your pussy as you grind your hips into his mouth. 

“I’ll take care of you, baby, don’t worry, ‘m here,” he whispers before returning his attention to you.

Your vision fills with glittering spots while he expertly alternates between flicking his tongue and sucking on your clit. He’s keeping a steady rhythm, on the slower side, you think, but you can’t be sure; your sense of time is fully warped. 

He picks up the pace, your fingers cramping from their death grip on the fabric. You feel your peak approaching. It feels different, like euphoria injected straight into your veins. 

Joel senses your approaching release and pushes one of his thick fingers into your wet heat.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” he mumbles against your skin. He picks up his pace and then adds another finger, one your greedy cunt happily accepts. He hooks them slightly so they’re pressing against the spongey spot inside you that you can never seem to reach yourself. 

“Come on, baby. Wanna feel you.”

His eyes flicker up to meet yours, and then tension inside you releases all at once, snaps, and hurtles you into another dimension.

As if the cosmos has poured all its beauty into a single moment, the wave of your orgasm breaks—an explosion of white light, pure and cleansing, sweeping away all that came before, cooling the fire raging inside of you.

Joel works you through it, his fingers keeping a steady rhythm as you come down, coated in a gentle rain of shimmering particles, bathed in a serene and growing peace, and you catch your breath. 

“I’ve–I’ve never felt anything like that,” you pant, “That was amazing.”

“It was pretty pretty to watch, too,” he tells you, rising between your legs. His hand comes to his cock again, holding it by the base. He’s furiously hard, the tip of him drooling, the color of it a deep, rich shade of violet.

“I need you, baby, so fuckin’ bad,” he tells you, voice wrecked. 

You spread your legs open a little wider for him, bringing your hands to your knees, spreading your glistening cunt open for him. 

“She’s all yours,” you coo, and he’s on you. He arranges himself above you, his forearms taking the brunt of his weight, yet the impressive heft of him presses down, enveloping you in his presence. His broadness looms, an expansive canopy; he eclipses your view, and all that exists in this moment is him. You wrap your fingers around his midsection, and he lines the tip of himself up with your wet and waiting hole. 

“You’re mine,” he tells you like it’s a fact, not a statement, as he pushes his hips forward and buries his cock deep inside of you. He pauses, giving you a moment to adjust. There’s a dull sting, but it quickly dissipates as he pulls out of you slowly and then thrusts forward again. The slow drag of his cock against your walls, the tip of it kissing your cervix, sends you into a frenzy. 

“Faster – ah shit, harder –” you moan and he begins to ravage you without mercy, kissing and nipping at the razor edge of your jaw, the tip of your chin. Your moans are muffled against his skin, cries of pleasure that rise in pitch with each thrust forward. 

“Mmm, you’re so warm,” he huffs and moans above you as he fucks away at your tight core. “Feels so good, not gonna last long like this. Tight little pussy’s choking me too good.” 

The familiar, odd sensation washes over you again, that strange mix of feeling both insubstantial and overwhelmingly heavy. It's as if you're simultaneously a feather, drifting weightlessly, and a boulder, rooted deeply and immovably. This feeling lifts and anchors you, leaving you floating between reality and a dreamlike state.

You focus on the feeling of his thrusts.

Back and forth. 

In and out. 

Back and forth. 

In and out. 

You’re drunk off it, off him.  

He snakes his hand behind your body to grab your ass for extra leverage, allowing him to slam into you harder, his hips thrusting against yours. The thatch of dark hair at the base of him rubs up against your swollen clit.  You feel like you’re getting fucked into near unconsciousness, your eyes heavy and half-lidded. 

“Joel,” you moan, your voice barely above a whisper, “I’m so close, oh my god, please.”

Joel’s eyes roll shut as you wrap your arms and legs around him tightly, holding on for dear life as he fucks you like a man possessed.

“That’s it baby, beg for it,” he tells you, and you do.

“Pleasepleaseplease,” you cry out, “Daddy, please.”

“Jesus, fuck,” Joel groans as he feels your walls clamp down on him, your orgasm gripping you like a fever.

“Good fucking girl,” he praises. 

Tears once again stream from your face, this time from pleasure, as he splits you open even more. 

He repositions, bringing your knees to your chest, holding them together with his strong arms as he continues to push in and out of you. 

The tension builds, a gathering storm within him. Every nerve seems to tighten, coil, ready to spring. His world narrows and blurs until there’s only you and the tight feel of your pussy around him. 

“Gonna come,” he tells you, and his thrusts slow.

His breath catches, and he quickly pulls out of you. Then, the release comes— your legs fall to the sides again, and a spray of his cum lands on you, hot thick ropes of it drooling from his cock. 

He’s floored by relief, pleasure radiating through his body. It's like watching the sky split open with light after a storm—vivid, raw, and beautifully clear. 

The aftermath is quiet, a soft descent back into himself, marked by a satisfying stillness. 

He drops to the bed beside you, and you both stare at the ceiling, breathless, nothing but prey ensnared in a web of desire.  He looks at you, his deep brown eyes now soft and satisfied.

“So…Daddy, huh?”

Part 3 - Coming 5/19

A/N Continued: Okay ngl, I am down so bad for these two. If you are, too, I would really appreciate a comment or a reblog. Your feedback and interaction really are so special to me. Tags: @syd-djarin @endlessthxxghts @thereaperisabitch @caramilena @promptly-mercy @alex-does-art-things @swankyorange @ayishahislost @bensonispunk @doblasftcisco @lizlil @pigeonmama @sullyselena @deansimpalagirl @theelectricmind @pedropascalsbbg @laramc-02 @elegantduckturtle @rainbow12346 @senoratess @eff4freddie @auteurdelabre @yxtkiwiyxt @javipispunk @reedrchards @miller-n-morgan @sawymredfox @casa-boiardi @punkshort @pastawench @survivingandenduring @aspecialgreenie @puduvallee @moel-jiller @sheepdogchick3

[jenchan-writingmultis]

What do the dorm leaders + a few more students do when you leave them without saying goodbye / you go missing? (Series: Part 2)

──────⊱⁜⊰──────

Genre: Fluff/ Angst

Pairing: Leona x Gn Reader

A/n: Ooh It took me a while to create an update of this, I’m still in my second semester hell but I got a bit of time! So, I decided to write something for our dearest Lion, also I wanted to note that I’ll be doing this based on the book chapters, for example, Riddle First, Leona Second, Azul Third, and so on… I hope you like this part! I loved writing every part of it.

Credits: The design was made by me in Canva and the art that was used is all from the Official Twisted Wonderland Cards.

Warning: Cussing, OOC Crowley (lmao), smitten Leona, slight blood mention Masterlist Part one (Riddle x Gn Reader)

──────⊱⁜⊰────── Sypnosis: You went off already, actually, they didn’t even know where you were right now, Grimm was worried about you, where have you gone? You just vanished into the mirror that you were talking to every midnight, he knew that he should have listened to his gut feeling when he realized that you were warning him about your sudden disappearance. The moment he went dashing out of Ramshackle, paws cold from the snow that he stepped on and it was really bad that when he needed Hornton he wasn’t there.  Savanaclaw:

Leona: He was annoyed when Grim started screaming outside of his dorm in the middle of the night causing all beastmen to wake up due to his ruckus, but his annoyance vanished when he realized what the furball was saying. You were gone, while he looked indifferent outside, telling Grim to calm the fuck down because he can easily hear him without him screaming in his ears, he was a bit worried. (Just a bit)

“Oi, can you tone down your screaming?” he grabbed Grim by the collar as the kitty sobbed, “Calm down, we’ll help” He sighed, causing Ruggie to stare at him surprised, “What do you mean we?” Leona scoffed before he threw Grim at him. 

“This furball will just keep on screaming if we leave him” He sighed, scratching the back of his neck. Ruggie huffed “Well, it’s surprising for you to immediately agree to help though” he whispered to himself, Leona could clearly hear him, but he ignored what the other said. It was rare for you to leave Grim all alone, you two were practically attached to the hip, so you vanishing out of nowhere was odd, did you finally get back to your homeland? You didn’t talk about it, but he can see how you look at others when they’re with their families and he knows that look. It was a look he had when he was younger, when Farena was the golden child, and he was the black sheep. 

He wanted that kind of familial love from his parents before, but they never gave it to him. You probably missed your family in your original world, he understands the feeling, but he can’t help but feel a bitter ache in his heart. Did he and the others not make you feel at home here? Sure, they overblotted and probably could have killed an herbivore like you, but he’s a changed man, surely you didn’t leave because you got sick of him or the others, right?

Of course, he went to interrogate Grim, asking him various questions, and after a few hours of barking orders to his fellow beastmen, he went to Crowley personally to ask, he was running out of options, and he was starting to feel that his theory that you went home was right. The last time Grim saw you was you got sucked in the mirror that was inside your bedroom. He tried to check on that mirror too, he didn’t feel any type of magic in it, it was just an ordinary mirror. You’d know he’s already at the edge of his seat trying to find you when he asked Crowley out of all people for help, denying the feeling in his gut that you were truly wiped out of this world.

“You’re saying that the prefect vanished?” Crowley put his hand on his chin, he was a bit annoyed about how calm Crowley was, and he crossed his arms glaring at the guy. “Did you send them home?” He questioned, getting straight to the point, which made Crowley shake his head “No, I didn’t, I have yet to find the portal back to their homeland, but this is certainly worrisome, I’ll try to help you find them, and can you summon the other head wardens for a meeting?” Crowley walked past him, Leona’s eyes following him. “I’ll be getting the teachers involved, this is a missing student case after all” He murmured, now that’s the sight he likes to see, somehow his opinion of Crowley increased. He guessed Mc became important to him as well. 

However, despite the ton of effort to find you, none of them got any leads, the ache he was feeling from before got worse, he found himself awake than asleep most of the time, his head was aching, it was affecting his health too. When the housewarden meeting along with the teachers happened, of course, the majority of them volunteered to have their housemates search for you outside and inside, Crowley couldn’t get any officers involved since you weren’t officially in Twisted Wonderland, you were a walking unregistered herbivore; it was dangerous, it could get the school closed so he had to ask his staffs and students to help around, which no one complained. Everyone cared for you, you helped them one way or another; helped them grow as a person and as a mage, it made him fascinated that you get to change almost everyone in this school in just a few months of your presence, and you’re magicless even. 

The improvement of the school happened because of you, and you just vanished out of thin air just like that, like some God who graced everyone with their presence only to leave once everything was sorted out. What about him? 

Leona couldn’t help but feel numb, eyebags evident on his face, it was so unlike him to be overworking trying to find you, you were just a herbivore to him, someone who had the audacity to annoy him before just to gain his help. Ruggie was worried about him too, the guy tried to ease him into that he would try to use his “connections” to gain more manpower to search the whole twisted wonderland, it made him laugh, he was a second prince, he had more connections that can help with the search than Ruggie, plus he knew that you weren’t here anymore. He couldn’t accept it at first, it was just slapped on his face multiple times.

Your scent continued to fade as the days continued, he didn’t have any motivation to do anything else but try to find you, find you, and find you for the first few weeks health be damned, but when you manifested in his mind, festering him to do something else, to try to finish third year, then maybe during internship he can find leads to you. He decided that if he plans to continue to persevere, then he will. After all, he was known for his tenacity before. 

Ruggie was surprised when one day, Leona started to become focus on his studies, Leona was sometimes going to class, just enough to the point he could be promoted to 4th year, where he could do internships.  He thought that Leona might have forgotten about you, which kind of annoyed him, was Leona only good at doing stuff in the first place and abandoning it once he realized it was futile? Of course not! Ruggie slapped his cheeks and shook his head, Leona could never, he’s mischaracterizing his Housewarden. 

While the search died down, plenty of students gave up because they kept reaching dead end after dead end in their search. Grim was often with Ace and Deuce, he noticed that the furball lost a lot of weight and he often seemed out of it. Most of the students who knew Grim understood the devastation of losing someone whom he treated as family. They try to get Grim to eat more, but he always ends up either overeating or not eating at all, the only housewardens who get him to eat normally are Vil and Riddle who have strict diets for him. Riddle is more lenient due to knowing Grim longer than Vil. 

The housewardens get split custody of the Cat, and the main custody being with Riddle, Ace, and Deuce. Leona barely gets any time with Grim, and when he does, he usually just gives him to Ruggie. One time, Grim got really upset at him though.

Leona flinched in pain, blood seeping out of his arm, a scratch mark forming on it. Jack jolted and grabbed Grim’s arms, subduing him immediately. “Grim! What are you doing!?” Jack yelled out, gripping on the squirming cat. 

 “You! Out of everyone here, you’re the one who’s always so calm and relaxed!” Grim cried out, glaring at the Lion. Leona glared at him as he used his magic to heal his arm. “Do you even care! You just gave up after a few months!” He continued, biting Jack making Jack let go out of pain, and when Grim jumped on Leona. He got grabbed by the scuffle. 

 “What makes you think I stopped trying to find them?!” Leona snapped, gripping on the cat, as if he’s a cub misbehaving, this was annoying, people thinking that he doesn’t do a lot when in fact he’s been giving more than just effort  “You think I’m not trying my best here!?” He lets Grim go who is surprised at his outburst. “Shit” He pinched the bridge of his nose, Jack carrying Grim again. “I’m really sorry Leona” He apologized on Grim’s behalf, but Leona just waved him off. “It’s fine,” he said, looking down at the cat. “But I want you to understand that some people just prefer doing work behind the scenes, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean they’re not trying.” 

He really was trying. The you that was cuddling him in his dreams, playing with his hair and kissing him, telling him to do his best. That had kept him sane while trying to find you. It was stupid and pathetic, but at least he knew that somehow, he never forgot your face, your scent, and your voice even if it took years. Even once he graduated, even if Falena tried to set him up with other Beastwomen or some high-ranking princess. He rejected them all, in favor of waiting for you, despite not knowing if you’ll ever come back. 

He never even got to tell you his feelings before you vanished, if he did would that make you not go back to your own world? Even after a few years, your friends had already graduated, he was working in Sunset Savanna, temporarily because his brother asked him for help, he was busy jumping from place to place to maintain connections and build new ones so while his brother is gone, he was the one in charge, Cheka was already in Junior High school dreaming of getting inside Royal Sword Academy where his friends would be around as well as his father encouraging him to enroll there due to being an alumni, and his sister in law kept festering Leona about mates and stuff. 

Right, did he tell you that he kept the mirror that you vanished from to his room? When he finally graduated, he felt that he needed the mirror, so he decided to buy it from Crowley, who graciously gave him the mirror without any complaints. Sometimes, he looks at himself in the mirror, hoping to see you behind it. He really wishes you would come back. 

He went to sit down on the edge of his bed, sliding himself into the covers, his bed feeling cold and needing another, he stared at the ceiling, wishing in his mind that when he woke up, you’d be there, touching his cheek. 

Drifting into sleep, he dreamt of you again, a dream that he saw multiple times after you vanished, his head laying on the soft plush of your thighs, he stared up at you, who was looking down at him with a soft smile, he nuzzled the hand that you placed on his cheek, placing his hand on it as he guides your hand to his lips, kissing it. 

 “I miss you” he murmured in his dream, your hand felt incredibly warm and soft right now, it felt… real. Maybe whatever Deity from above decided to pity him today and give him your touch that he was constantly seeking.

He didn’t want to wake up, the warmth of the sun hitting his body except for his face which you were shielding it from. The moment he lifted himself up, to go nearer your face, he wanted to kiss you now or else he might never feel this surreal experience ever again, a blinding light suddenly flashed in his vision, causing him to flinch. 

 “Oh, sorry Leona” a familiar voice apologized, making him groan and blink a few times, was he still dreaming? He felt his head resting on something else and not his pillow, it felt softer. When he finally was fully awake, he realized that he was in fact, not dreaming anymore. He looked up only to see you, in the same position as you did in his dream. 

“Herbivore…” he froze as you rubbed his cheek gently. “Yes, I’m here” You hummed as you pushed away a bit of his hair just to see his face better. “Oh wow, Leona you became prettier!” you giggled, causing him to sit up, grabbing your cheeks, he examined you. He can’t believe it, it really is you, he’s not dreaming anymore. 

“How? What?” he questioned, glaring at you maybe this was a trap, if this was some doppelganger or some shapeshifter, he’d turn you to dust, but the way you weren’t scared of his glare made his will falter, you were warm, you were there, your scent was there too, nobody can replicate that.  “Herbivore you’re back” he finally caved in, pulling you into a crushing hug, which you gave back happily. “I’m back Leona, I’m sorry I vanished,” you said, burying your face into his shoulder. “You idiot, I definitely deserve an explanation for this” He growled out, not letting you go at all. 

Word Count: 2,359