#mary goore x female oc

[copiousloverofcopia]

Better late than never with some content for the Goore Whores!!!!!

Here is the next chapter of Under the Spell with Mary Goore and OC Piper!

Thank you to everyone who is patient with me. I recently got a promotion at work, and it comes with a lot of new training and responsibility... so I am doing my best to bring you all some content. I really appreciate all the love, support, and the patience from you all!

Also once again, please be nice I am SO not used to writing for Mary, so I hope its ok!

Also thank you to @animatedglittergraphics-n-more for the awesome dividers.

Piper and Mary have been best friends since they first met as children. When Mary and her boyfriend Sid asked her to come along on gigs, Piper thought it was a no-brainer. But as the excitement of the buzzing amps dies down, she realizes she wants more—now if only she can get him to agree.

Chapter 5: REPUGNANT

Also available HERE on AO3! Haven’t started yet? Start from the beginning HERE!

Definitely NSFW below the cut

The hum of the amp sent shivers down his spine. Mary, feeling the thrill as he heard the crowd roaring. Walking out on stage for the second half of their show. His eyes were only able to make out a vague suggestion of bodies, hidden within the sea of light that shone on the stage. He felt amazing, ready, and most importantly—alive. 

Though he lived for the stage, he found himself distracted. Absentmindedly biting his lip and occasionally forgetting the lyrics, though no one seemed to care. His mind was too obsessed with the memories of the night before. Fixated on the feel of Piper’s mouth, crashing into his. The warmth from her tears, felt as they dripped down over her cheeks. 

The two of them, coming completely undone in each other’s arms until sunrise. Enraptured by the way they felt for one another. The physical attraction and the unspoken emotions between them tighter and tighter. Binding them together as they managed to fuck the night away.  

He could still feel her hands on the top of his head. Running her fingers through his hair as he held open her thighs. Devouring her, tasting the blood so sweet on his lips. Listening to the click of her tongue ring as he glided across her teeth. 

Though Piper had tried her best to stay quiet in the bathroom, she couldn’t help but moan and mewl with his touch. Mary, finding even more arousing that others at the party might hear them. Hear how good he was making her feel as he drenched his face in her juices and blood. Mercilessly eating her out until she came for him—over and over again. 

By the time Mary had had his fill, Piper was barely able to stand. Bent her over the sink as he slid his desperate cock inside her. Thrusting away—fucking her senseless as their eyes lingered on one another’s face in the mirror. Mary felt his mouth watering even now at the memory of it—how tight her cunt was as he came. Spilling himself inside her—kissing and biting her along her neck. Leaving splotches of blood in his wake. Both of them, looking like a pair of satisfied vampiric lovers, spattered and spent, as the sun met the horizon of the sky.  

Not many people had wondered where they’d run off too. The two of them stumbling, out of Tom’s friend's bathroom in the wee hours of the morning. Long after everyone else had left, making their way back to the hotel before ultimately passing out. Both of them woke up, hours later, in their separate rooms. Neither one of them, giving away to the other’s what had really  happened the night before. 

Piper had woken up that next day, covered in her own blood. Wondering to herself how things had gone so far. Sure she was already having sex with him, but that was different. For a purpose. Wasn’t it? Thinking to herself that despite how much she may want it, there was nothing real between them. 

By the time the band’s gig was on that night, neither had spoken a word to one another. Both, however, stealing a number of glances during rehearsal. Each of them explaining it away as coincidence—something other than what it was. Mary and Piper were falling in love, like it or not things had changed forever between them and there was nothing that could be done.

For Mary it was perfect madness. While he started off a bit apprehensive, now he wanted more than ever to be with her. To give her everything she wanted—especially the baby. Finding himself more and more excited to be a part of the family they were desperately trying to create. He didn’t want to be just a friend, some sperm with a bit of time on his hands, to help her own. No he, to his surprise, was ready to be a real father.

The thought of them creating a little Pipes or a mini him filled Mary with a sense of content he’d never felt before. Imagining them, running around and causing chaos, in between him teaching them to play guitar. All of it filled his soul with renewed purpose. Finding himself warmth watching Piper smile, wondering if their child would share it. That same smile that managed to rip his heart right out of his chest. What a beautiful, bloody mess they had made between them. 

Mary knew that they’d try again as long as Piper would have him. Though he doubted she’d turn him down now. He started to wonder when they should tell the rest of the guys in the band. After all, it would only be a short time before Piper would get pregnant if he had anything to say about it. Something that couldn’t be held secret for very long. Mary deciding that now he was ready to move forward—to tell Piper how he truly felt. 

When the show was done, Piper was sitting alone as she waited for Mary. Her legs, hanging over the stage while she wrapped up some cords to keep herself looking busy. Hoping to seem unbothered, though her mind was absolutely spinning. Completely unaware that Mary had been watching her from behind the stage. 

“Hey, you all almost done?” Yulan, the old headbanger of a manager, asked as he came towards her. The bar, now completely empty and quiet—everyone else having long gone. Before Piper could respond, Mary chimed in. Surprising her as he manifested from within the shadows to meet with them out on the stage.

“Yeah, we’re good. Be out in a few. Ok?” Mary said, coming up to stand beside Piper. She looked up at him, his face and body still covered in sweat and smears of paint as he held out his hand for her to take.

“Yeah, we are...pretty much done.” Piper agreed, without glancing away from him. 

“Alright… well I’m locking up in front. So you got 20 minutes before I lock the two of you inside.” the old man chuckled. Piper finally took Mary’s hand and got pulled up onto her feet. The two of them, staring at one another for a moment before Mary spoke.  

“You know what's funny?” he asked, Piper looking confused at the question. Still a bit embarrassed as she recalled what had occurred the night before. 

“What’s that?”

“The last time you waited for me on stage, you asked me to put a baby in you.” he laughed, Piper’s face turning blood red.

“I–-who said I was waiting for you?” she asked, giving him a swat to the chest. Mary couldn’t help himself from laughing as he brought his hand up and placed it where she struck him. Finding it funny as he felt the sting, just how much she excited him. 

“Ouch.”

“You big baby.” Piper said, shrugging him off as Mary’s face changed. The goofy smile turned more serious. His eyes softening towards her again as she felt her heart beating faster in her chest as she waited for what it was he would say.

“...baby…Pipes…ah when…when is the next time we can—-” Mary asked, choosing to not finish the sentence when he caught sight of Sid and Tom heading out the front door. Hoping they wouldn’t be overheard. 

“Oh…oh. Not for a couple of weeks.” Piper blushed. Mary was unable to hold back his look of disappointment. Piper instantly on edge as she looked at him. Why that face, is he…is he really upset , Piper asked herself. “Is that ok?” she asked him.

“That's fine…heh…heh…Just trying to plan ahead.” Mary laughed, scratching the back of his head and pretending to be casual about it.

“Mare, you have never planned ahead in your life.” Piper said, laughing back at him. 

“Well. I’m planning for this.” he assured her, closing the space between them. Piper found herself blinking. Wondering if she had imagined the change in him. The change in the way he looked at her. Hints of longing—or mistaken lust for love. Wishing she could know what he was really thinking. 

Mary felt breathless. Taking in Piper’s beauty, her dark circles and smeared eyeliner from the night, only adding to her appeal. He wanted so badly to kiss her, to tell her that regardless of how things might turn out with agreement between them, she was now his. He couldn’t help but bite at his lower lip, ready now to confess how he truly felt. 

Ready to tell her how he’d give her the world or burn it down—whichever she’d desire. Bringing his hand up to caress her face. Cradling her jawline as he inched towards a kiss. Both of their eyes closed, ready to give way.

“Hey you two coming?” Tom yelled from the doorway. Thrilled he’d managed to find the two of them before they left for the hotel. Mary and Piper both, looking over at him in surprise, wondering how much he had heard—or seen. 

“Be right there!” Mary called back, smiling at Piper before grabbing what was left of the equipment. Both of them heading out the door without saying another word. 

The hotel bed sheets felt too cold, Piper thought to herself as she laid wide awake. Her eyes fixed on the empty spot beside her. Wishing that Mary had come back with her to the room. Cursing Tom for having the nerve to show himself and interrupting the moment. Hoping there was something more going on—something still left unsaid. 

She tossed and turned for what seemed like hours before deciding to give up. Throwing on an oversized Repugnant tee and some jeans before walking to a nearby coffee shop. Forgoing the free sludge they had in the hotel lobby, in favor of something that tasted rich and bold. Feeling she deserved to treat herself while trying her best to stay awake for the day. Hoping to find a moment of solace to think.  

When she walked inside, she saw the shop was rather full. Piper, smiling once the woman at the front nodded at her. Acknowledging that she’d seen her come in before pointing to the small set of stairs that led up to an additional seating area. Ascending the steps until, to her surprise, she saw Tom and Annie sitting towards the back.

Before Piper could sneak off, she saw Annie waving her at her. Calling her over to join them when all Piper wanted to do was be alone. Feigning a smile as she forced herself to approach them. Taking a seat beside Annie, rubbing her tired eyes beneath her glasses and brushing back her unwashed mess of hair. 

As usual, Annie was put together. Her hair swooped up into a ponytail, donning a mini skirt and an off the shoulder white top. Her makeup, already done even at that early hour. Tom was his usual self—long scraggly blonde locks draped down under a baseball cap and wearing his favorite jean vest. 

The two of them, looking a bit out of place together. Tom however, despite his appearance, was the more mature of the two. Annie rested her head on Piper’s shoulders, letting out a sigh as she rejoiced in seeing her. Tom on the other hand seemed to be avoiding eye contact.

“Something wrong, Bones?” Piper asked him, watching him take a sip from his cup of coffee.  

“Not really.” he said his tone quite as the waitress came to take Piper’s order. Her mouthwatering with anticipation of the French vanilla blend. Piper knew something was up, Annie was acting a bit nervous once Tom spoke and the air between them had changed from how it was just the night before. 

“Unlikely…seriously, what is it?” Piper asked. Tom set his cup down, taking in a deep breath. The act of which set Piper on edge. Something serious was about to come out of his mouth. 

“I think you’re making a huge mistake.” he blurted out. Annie’s face, looking as if it had been set on fire. It was clear that she had told Tom everything. 

“I see.” was all Piper could say. Tom, looking over to her with his eyebrows furred and a glint of anger in his eyes. 

“Is that all you can say?” 

“I don’t know what it is you think I am supposed to say Tom.” Piper barked back, Annie watching them in stark silence.

“You can’t have a kid with Mary.”

“Why not?” Piper growled. 

“What about Sid?” he asked her, hoping to avoid saying what he really wanted.

“Sid is no longer in the picture. I don’t intend on making the same mistake twice.”

“Oh but you’ll do this?” Tom snapped. 

“Tom, baby please…” Annie began before he cut her off. Annie mouthing an “I’m sorry” at Piper.

“No, she needs to know.”

“Know what?” Piper asked him. Tom’s anger turned to sadness. 

“If you and him have a kid…what do you think is going to happen to Repugnant?” he asked her. The words hit like a scorching flame—burning her ears and heart.

“Nothing is going to happen to it. I am not part of the band Tom. I’m just a glorified roadie. Mare will go on being with you all, I’m the one who will be taking off when the time comes.” Piper began when Tom began having a chuckle. Amused at her ignorance. 

“You really think that’s how it’s gonna go don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The second that baby is inside you, the man will NEVER leave your side. Don’t you get it Piper?” he asked, Piper felt as if her lungs wouldn’t fill with air.

“Tom…” Annie tried once more when he continued, Piper staring down at the table. Trying her best not to cry in front of them.

“Piper, he had feelings for you.” Tom explained, the words making Piper gasp. Looking over to him in shock.

“No… that’s not true. We are just friends, that’s it. He’s doing this to help me. I want this baby Tom. It was my idea… not Mary’s. He is just along for the ride.  

“Piper don’t be stupid. The rest of the band might not see it but I do. The way he looks at you gives it away every time. What do you think he will do when you get pregnant? Just let you run off with his child and be content to see you on the off weeks or months of time passing between visits? You gotta be outta your fucking mind if you think that’s what will happen.

“You’re wrong.” Piper cried, no longer able to hold back how she was feeling. Cursing her hormones for making her even more emotional and sensitive to Tom’s harsh—yet honest comments. 

“You get pregnant and he will have to choose between his dream. Touring with the band, making records, becoming famous—all of it and you. Choose between making something of himself and getting what he has always wanted and giving you a baby. You’re being selfish.” Tom continued, realizing that his last statement had taken things a bit too far. 

Piper swallowed back the tears. Wiping harshly at her eyes, leaving them red and sore as she stood up from her chair. She clenched her teeth, wanting to scream and holler at him. Not caring at all that they were in public. 

Stopping herself only because deep down she felt he was right. Sniffling back as she looked over to Annie and then back to Tom. Ready to leave the shop and never look back. Tears began to stream down her face as the two of them locked eyes. 

“Fuck you.” she told him, her voice trembling and low. Tom and Annie left alone at the table as Piper made her way back out onto the street. The pain inside her heart, unbearable. 

Mary had gone looking for Tom, wanting to get some advice on how to move things forward with Piper. A smile spread wide across his face as he left the hotel and headed to the little coffee shop Tom asked to meet that morning. Stopping only when he saw Piper coming from the front door. Her face, sullen and eyes shot red. 

She looked upset, more upset than he could ever recall seeing her. Running across the street with no regard for traffic. Heading the opposite direction of the hotel before Tom and Annie came running out after her. Piper, having disappeared around the corner as they caught sight of Mary across the street. 

“What is going on?” Mary asked them as they met with him on the sidewalk, “His eyes fixed on the corner from where he last saw Piper. 

“It’s what I wanted to talk to you about…I know about this thing between you.” Tom confessed, Annie almost hiding behind him. Ashamed she’d said anything now seeing what her slip of the tongue had caused. 

“Thing?” Mary asked, almost aloof to Tom at all as he pondered chasing after Piper.

“The baby thing, Mary, I told her that it was a bad idea. You don’t need all that shit looming over you. If Piper wants to be a mom, I told her she needed to find better options than trying to take you down with her. 

“You did what?” Mary hissed, turning back to face Tom with fury burning in his eyes. His heart pounding and his fist clenching up as he wanted so badly to punch him. Only seconds later, deciding to forgo the confrontation and find Piper. 

“Forget it Tom, think what you want but I’m outta here.” Mary told him, running down the street. Hoping that it wasn’t too late to undo the damage. Hoping to confess to Piper how he really felt.

[fishwithtitz]

The Five Times I Hooked Up with Mary Goore (and the One Time I Couldn’t) - Chapter 2

Summary: From beside me, I heard what sounded like a mix between a groan and a low breath. My brain told me to keep looking ahead, to ignore him, to wait until the movie was done and I was feeling better before finding Des and asking for somewhere to crash for the night. My impulsivity got the best of me and I slowly cast my eyes in Mary's direction. His eyes were slightly larger, the flickering light of the screen reflecting off the olive hue of his irises, and his bottom lip was just barely caught between his teeth. He clearly felt my stare because his head pivoted in my direction. His gaze was nearly smoldering.

Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI

Mary Goore x OFC / 8.5k words

Warnings: language, graphic description of oral sex, graphic depiction of manual stimulation, recreational drug use, alcohol, light gore

ao3 link

Chapter Two: Hook-up #2: The Den

Five hours. Five long, arduous hours of measuring, mixing, cooking, cooling, trimming, crumb-coating, frosting, and piping. I was almost certain that I had inhaled flour or powdered sugar at some point as my nose felt gritty and raw on the inside, but I tried my best to pay it no mind. I was on a mission.

It had been a few weeks since the house show at Thomas’ place (and the subsequent tonguelashing from Mary on the weather-torn roof), and I’d had done my best to try to write it off as the once-in-a-lifetime experience that I’d tried to originally pacify my nerves with. 

It turned out that Thomas and Des had hit it off at the party, in more ways than one. I couldn’t say that I was necessarily surprised; Des was charming, alluring, and very persuasive when she wanted to be. Ever since she’d locked eyes on Thomas at the smoky bar downtown a couple of months ago, she’d known she had to have him, and to her credit, she’d accomplished it in record time. And honestly, I was happy for my friend. It had been a while since I’d seen Des so happy and free spirited while in the arms of someone she was so blatantly enamored with. However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a tad bit jealous of Thomas and the hold he’d captured on Desiree. 

Routinely, weekends had been spent just the two of us together - Doll and Des - curled up on my worn couch watching trash TV or engaging in parallel play as we sent videos back and forth that had us laughing so hard that we were covered in equal parts tears, mascara, and snot. Takeout or a drunken “do” meal (as I grew up calling them) of randomly delicious ingredients thrown together and cooked often followed, and both of us banked more memories than we could count of bonding through the sillied, domestic tasks we enjoyed together. 

Not the past few weekends, though.

I got it, believe me, I did, but after the third night in a row that I’d been blown off for either a bar or a bedroom, I couldn’t help but be a little bit worn down at my best friend’s new love interest. To avoid being the ever-dreaded third-wheel, I denied Desiree’s kind offers of accompanying them out or to Thomas’ house, which unfortunately meant many nights of movies alone and crappy blue-box mac eaten straight out of the pot.

So when Des came begging for me to use my baking talents to make Thomas a custom cake for his 30th birthday (Puss in Boots eyes and all), I didn’t even hesitate to agree to the task. I missed my friend, and although I wasn’t looking forward to slaving over the black-metal themed confectionary after finishing a particularly grueling shift at work, I was happy to do this for her. “Besides,” Des had said, “it will give you a chance to do something you enjoy and live a little.”

So, here I was: my grandmother’s old apron tied haphazardly across my curved waist, melted chocolate and white icing smeared across my forearms and the backs of my hands, and the tip of my tongue perched between my lips in concentration as I finished piping the intricate Baphomet head and pentacle on top of the three-layer cake. I glanced up at the microwave clock and felt my stomach drop deep in my guts. The party was in a little over an hour, and I still had to pack up the cake, shower, and make myself look at least semi-decent before heading over. Taking a step back, I admired my work. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew that if I kept fussing with it I’d inevitably fuck it up, so I dusted my hands off with a sigh and left the kitchen to hurry through a shower and makeup routine.

After a way-too-quick rinse and a blow-dry of my hair in record time, I futzed through my closet to try to find something acceptable to wear. It was warm out, so I opted for a dark-printed swing dress and a pair of worn, black sneakers. As always, I lived by the motto of “comfort before style,” and I was fresh out of fucks to give.

I ran my curling wand through the long tresses of burgundy hair that hung down my back and framed my face before putting on a light face of makeup. It was too warm to wear anything heavy, and despite my annoyance of my freckled cheeks, I didn’t want to spend the evening wiping flesh-toned grease from my face every time I felt a sweat droplet dripping down my jawline. Simplistic it was, then.

I fastened my weathered St. Peter’s Cross necklace to rest on my decolletage and gave myself a quick once over before hustling into the kitchen to pack up the cake. After finding a cardboard box, some saran wrap, and multiple crumpled up balls of newspaper stuffed around the cake, I was off. 

 🜏🜏🜏

“Doll, you’re here!” Desiree swung open the front door with a cheshire-like grin, beckoning me in with the wave of her hand. I smiled at my friend, feeling genuine happiness for her excitement of both the party and for us finally getting to see each other. Awkwardly, I stepped into the home and followed her through the short hallway to the garage. “I want the cake to be a surprise,” she said in a low, nearly-whispered voice, ushering me out towards the outdoor fridge. 

We set the cake on a lower shelf, still hidden by the recycled box I’d used to transport it in. She took a quick glance at the hand-drawn decoration on top and her eyes went wide before she all but pounced on me in a tight hug. 

“It’s fantastic!” she squealed, holding me firmly before pulling back to look at me properly. “Doll, I can’t thank you enough. It’s so fucking rad. He’s going to love it.” 

I flashed my own warm smile in response and chuckled. “Of course, Des. If he’s important to you, he’s important to me.”

We headed back into the house and Des led me out to the back patio, motioning towards a cooler propped against the sliding glass door as she stepped onto the eroded deck. I grabbed a random beer from the red and white Igloo and sat down in a nearby plastic chair, crossing my legs as I twisted the top off the bottle. 

“Happy Birthday, Thomas,” I said as I leaned over, clinking the tip of my bottle against his own. At this point, Des had slid into the seat next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as she absorbed herself into the conversation happening around us. 

“Thanks, Dahlia. Glad you could make it,” He replied as he tipped his bottle towards me in salute and took a swig, smiling politely before turning back to the chat we’d interrupted. I looked around and noticed that this party was definitely much smaller than the last one I’d attended here. There were only about ten other people, most of them acquaintances or friends from the music scene, and I recognized a few of them as Thomas’ band mates. 

Leaning back in my chair, I took a long sip of my beer and allowed the warm air of the evening to envelop me. I had to admit, this was nice. It’d been a while since I’d been around friends with no expectations or masks to wear. I could just be me. I could enjoy the banter between the boys of which Metallica album was most iconic (and why according to Johnny, it was definitely Master of Puppets, because “zero skips,” of course), or how Mark was told by a coworker that it was “gay to wash your butthole” and how he found it completely fucked that one, he didn’t wash his ass, two, his coworker was homophobic, and three, Mark finally knew where the smell in the stock room was coming from. At some point during the story, Johnny had lit a cigarette which was now dangling dangerously from his lips, ash falling onto his jeans pocket as Mark animatedly told the tale. Suddenly, he patted the ashen pocket and his eyes went wide. 

“Oh shit! I forgot to give you your birthday present!” Johnny fished a square (and slightly smushed) package from inside his pocket. It was wrapped in what looked like an old titty magazine, but I couldn’t be completely sure from my distance away from him on the patio. He leaned forward and plopped it into Thomas’ lap with a grin. “Happy 30th, dude,” he beamed with a salacious smile. “You’re officially a senior citizen.”

“30’s still young!” he defended with a glare, thumbs inching under the duct tape holding the wrapping together. 

A snort was heard from beside him, and Greg, one of the guitarists from his band, muttered something to the effect of, “Yeah, for trees,” under his breath, which earned an even harder scowl from Thomas. 

Thomas ripped the wrapping off and turned the slightly smashed box over in his hand. “Heat?” he questioned as he squinted at the brand on the box. He shook it a little and gave the parcel a quick sniff. “...is this a box of chocolates?’ His eyes looked at Johnny questioningly, but his lips were curved into a curious smile.

“Yup!” Johnny replied as he took another drag from his cigarette. “They’re kind of a present for the both of you.” He motioned to both Thomas and Des as he spoke, smoke rising from his hand.

“Are they spicy or some shit?” Thomas asked as he tried to read over the back of the box, picking at the plastic wrap covering. 

“You could say that…” Johnny grinned, ashing the cigarette and taking another drag. “I figured that since you’re so old now, you might need some help getting your dick to work.”

I had been mid drink of my half-downed bottle of beer at his comment, and I found myself snorting as I swallowed, immediately causing the fizzy liquid to seep its way into my lungs. I coughed loudly, which luckily covered my laughter. Des and I both leaned over to get a better look, and I glanced at the small print at the bottom of the box:

“The high-quality chocolate that uses natural ingredients to increase your pleasure and boost your sex performance.”

“Are these aphrodisiacs?!” Des yelled out incredulously, eyes wide as she stared at Johnny.

All of my efforts to hold back my laughter were gone as I tilted my head back and dissolved into uncontrollable giggles. I couldn’t even formulate what Des was screaming at Johnny (although I knew it was likely something hilariously angry and defensive), and I beamed at the ridiculousness of the situation. I hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks, and it felt good to let go a little. Though, I’d never admit to Des that she was right…I’d never hear the end of it, especially now.

The conversation was cut off by a pounding on the door followed by three succinct doorbell rings. Des shot up out of her seat, yelling “pizza!” as she ran toward the door, tapping my knee on the way out as if to nonverbally ask for help. I grunted and rolled my eyes, begrudgingly getting myself out of the chair as I followed her. She must have ordered a ton of food if she needed two people to carry it out back, I thought.

Des swung open the front door and her look of excitement slightly fell, but she kept her smile in greeting. “Oh, hey Mary,” I heard from my place behind her. 

Mary? I thought to myself. I felt my stomach somersault in my gut and I unknowingly bit at my bottom lip. 

I hadn’t really seen Mary since the house show a few weeks back. Sure, he and Thomas had probably hung out, and if Thomas was socializing with anyone these past few weeks, Des had to have been there, too. However, she never mentioned anything to me. Then again, it would make sense that she hadn’t — I had never let her in on my evening hanging out with Mary (only that we had talked on the patio that night), and I definitely didn’t tell her about his shitty beer slushies and the eventual redemption arc of his head between my legs. 

“...Do you need some help with that?” Des questioned as she moved aside, watching as Mary balanced at least three giant packs of beer while stepping through the threshold. The heavy boxes made the muscles in his arms appear permanently flexed, each limb framed by the cut-off sleeves of what was once a short-sleeve Morbid Angel tee. He was deceptively strong, and images of those arms curled around my legs as he dipped his face between my thighs ramparted my mind. I couldn’t help but watch as he moved swiftly through the house and out onto the patio.

“Nah, I’m good,” Mary grunted as he hurriedly beelined for the back door, pushing the crack of the door opening to the side with his foot as he slipped through with his contribution to the party. I subconsciously licked my lips and followed Des as she made her way back out to the patio with a sigh. Apparently, she’d really been looking forward to pizza. 

The patio crowd cheered as Mary appeared and Thomas got up to help him empty a couple of the boxes of beer into the cooler. I slipped into my seat quietly, almost hoping to avoid his notice, yet watched as his hands smoothed out the cans of Keystone in the ice to ensure they fit when the lid was dropped. 

He must have felt me staring, because his eyes shifted up towards me, quickly locking on mine. I felt my heart rate begin to staccato in my caged chest and I did my best to keep my face fairly stoic, though I knew it was futile. Those eyes like spring, of sage and straw, glued me into place. 

“Hey,” he said, ever nonchalant as he finished organizing the brews and secured the lid. I looked down briefly, trying to mimic his cool behavior, and then flashed him a small, polite smile. 

“Hi,” I replied quietly. 

Mary took a seat on the other side of the patio (it was the only empty seat available) and struck up a conversation with a couple of the guys and their girlfriends that were nearby. I tried my best to engage myself in the exchange happening between Thomas and Chassie (another mutual friend of ours), but my mind was swimming with snapshots of my evening with Mary. I mentally shook it off, likening my response to my all-too-often loneliness and trying to focus on celebrating Thomas’ milestone birthday.

Not long after, pizza came, and we hovered both in the kitchen and the patio as we listened to Sabbath playing over the speakers and shot the shit with one another. The more beer I drank and pizza I ate, the more I loosened up, and I found myself reconnecting with some of the old friends I used to see at various venues around town. Mary weaved in and out of the conversations, but I did my best to pay him just as much mind as anyone else. He didn’t seem phased by me, and surely, I wasn’t phased by him, either. 

I heard the door to the garage slam, and Des’ voice echoed through the kitchen landing. “Move it, out of the way, come on,” she said as she weaved through the couple blobs of congregated bodies, the cake box obstructing her face enough that she had to peer out from the side to see. I met her at the kitchen counter and helped her to unsheath the cake from the box, gingerly peeling the plastic wrap from it. 

“Oh, god damn it,” she exclaimed as she stared at the top of the cake. I felt my stomach drop with fear that I had messed something up, but it was quickly abated when she continued her sentence. “I fucking forgot candles.”

Mark, who was unknowingly standing behind us, fished through his pocket before brandishing a cigarette. He held it between his lips and lit it before plopping it dead-center into the cake, the smoking stick appearing as if it was perched in Baphomet’s mouth. I let out another chuckle and Des shrugged. 

Mark moved to help Des carry the cake, but she slapped his hand away playfully in an act of defiance and likely in worry that his drunk ass would immediately drop it on the floor. Though somewhat heavier than she expected, she slowly glided across the open kitchen and into the dining area. Chassie noticed and yelled out “Hey, cake’s lit!” and waved a few people in (Thomas amongst them) from outside to the dated dining table. 

A raucous chorus of “Happy Birthday” rang through the room as Des set the pitifully smoking cake in front of a now front-and-center Thomas. I could tell he was trying his hardest to hide his smile, but as he looked at Des with softened eyes, it was obvious how touched he was at the personalized gesture. The moment was immediately broken when one of the guys belted into his own rendition of the song, singing, “Happy Birthday to you, you’re older than poo. If you were a horse you’d be made into glue!” which earned deep laughter from the majority of the room. 

The cake was a three-layer round cake coated in thick chocolate frosting. A bright white Baphomet stared ominously from the center of a pentacle, while swirling piping lined the borders and edges. Thomas took a moment to study the cake, shaking his head in mock-annoyance at the song. As he went to blow out the “candle,” he stopped just short of the cake, eyebrow cocked, and slowly removed the smoking (and now ashen) cigarette from the middle of Baphomet’s lips. Mark took it from his fingertips and inhaled before licking the chocolate off the filter with a shrug. 

The cake was cut quickly by Des and passed out on whatever dinnerware Thomas had laying around the house. It didn’t take long for only crumbs to remain on the cake board — a badge of honor that I took with silent pride. 

After everyone enjoyed their cake, additional pizza, and sweaty cans of beer, Mark sidled into the kitchen to stealthily pour himself a shot of vodka and a chaser of soda. The bottle of soda that he’d found hidden in the fridge had been nearly empty, and as he drained it, realization lit his face. “Shit, Tommy, there’s one more present we forgot to give you!” he yelled out as he grabbed the bottle and ran out to the patio. 

Empty two-liter bottle in one hand and a bag of bud that he had fished out of his pocket in the other, he looked at the crowd on the deck with a grin. 

“Anyone up for grav hits?”

🜏🜏🜏

A small group of people crowded around the stained tub in Thomas’ spare bathroom — one sitting on the closed toilet lid clothed in a fluffy cover, and two others leaning up against the side wall. I sat on top of the builder-grade countertop, legs crossed, a shiver dancing against my skin at the feeling of the cold formica on the backs of my thighs. 

Mark sat on one side of the tub’s edge while he fashioned some tin foil to place over the top of the mouthpiece of the cut-off soda bottle. Thomas sat across from him watching intently while his hands clasped onto the bag of pungent flower. Only a handful of us had been interested in the present Mark brought for Thomas ( Des had decided to stay out on the patio with the rest of the crew). I didn’t mind — the bathroom was small and it already felt pretty cramped with the amount of willing participants. Plus, I saw this as opportune bonding time for Thomas and I.

My eyes studied Mark’s fingers absently as he pricked holes into the tin foil and began to load the bowl with a mixture of shake and bud, packing it almost fastidiously, his movements careful as to not drop it into the water-filled bathtub. After he was satisfied with his work, he proudly  handed the makeshift contraption to Thomas and extracted a BIC lighter out of his jeans. “Want to do the honors, birthday boy?” he asked as he handed him the light.

Thomas sank down to his knees and crouched over the tub, lowering the sliced bottle into the water so that only the top third was left unsubmerged. He held onto the threads of the mouthpiece as he flicked the lighter with a quick flit. The flame etched the surface of the weed, leaves and flower petals curling into charcoaled darkness as smoke began to simmer and swirl in the bottle's thick body. Thomas focused on making sure the bottom of the bottle's cut-off edge remained submerged but that there was enough room inside to collect as much smoke as possible.

When he was satisfied, he removed the flimsy silver bowl and handed it to Mark quickly before fixing his mouth over the neck, inhaling deeply as he pushed the bottle down into the water. The thick haze slurped into his lungs almost instantaneously and he all but shot up, the plastic bottle bottom dripping as his face contorted into discomfort. He let out a series of coughs before grinning wide at Mark. 

"Forgot how hard that shit hits-" he started, head shooting to the side when the door bolted open and almost hit the man standing behind it. 

"Oh fuck, sorry," I heard, and I lifted my legs from their dangling position over the bathroom vanity to hug my chest, hoping to avoid getting smacked by limb, body, or door. 

Mary slipped into the bathroom, his golden hair stringing into his eyes as he turned to fasten the door shut again. He stood awkwardly in front of the threshold as he realized there wasn't much room in the bathroom for him to stand. Thomas reached up and opened the small window above the shower to filter out some of the smoke before inching his way past the person on the closed toilet and the few against the wall. 

"I'm gonna find Des. Thanks for this, man," he reached across and clasped his hand with Mark's in gratitude, grasping into the handshake tightly before slipping past Mary and out the door. 

I sat awkwardly on the countertop, doing my best to keep my legs folded and out of the way while still ensuring my dress covered my crotch and ass. I could feel the cold metal faucet pressing into my back and my butt felt like it was about to slip into the basin of the sink. 

Over the next ten or so minutes, I watched from my uncomfortable position as a few more people in the bathroom each took their hits, most of them leaving directly afterwards to find some air in a less-cramped space. Eventually, only myself, Mary, Mark, and the guy sitting on the john (who I’d learned was named Jesse) remained. Mark gestured to me as he dumped the ash from the foil into the clear water of the tub and began to fill the bowl again. 

I hopped from the counter, smoothing the skirt of my dress as I slipped past Mary and toilet man, eyes straight ahead to avoid any contact. As I knelt in front of the tub, I felt the cool tile lick at my knees and the heels of my feet dig into my bottom. Mark handed me the bottle and lighter. 

I could feel Mary’s stare from behind me, and while I’d like to say he was decent enough to keep his eyes above the belt, I was certain he had snuck a glance at my ass as I flicked the wheel of the lighter. Shaking the perverse thoughts that bombarded my head, I pulled the aluminum from the bong and lowered my head, lips dancing across the mouthpiece as I inhaled deeply and fully while expertly submerging the bottle. 

It was as if I licked a fiery raincloud. The smoke hung heavy in the alveoli of my lungs, pricking at the blood vessels and sacs, and I closed my eyes to keep them from watering. I rose up and exhaled, my hand softly pushing the 2-liter to Mark as I turned and gently pushed past Mary to exit. My head was swimming and I was doing everything in my power not to cough. I didn’t want to make a complete ass out of myself. Unfortunately, that also meant I was holding my breath. 

I could hear the dull thud of the music playing through the speakers outdoors and unremarkable chatter punctuated the beat. I didn’t even recognize the feeling of my feet against the Pergo as I padded down the hallway and across the landing, down the carpeted steps, and right into the den, sinking onto the worn plaid couch with another weighted exhale. My head was spinning and my stomach wasn’t far behind. Maybe smoking after a handful of beers wasn’t my smartest choice. 

Eventually, I lowered my forehead to the armrest of the couch and closed my eyes, lifting my legs up to curl under me as I soaked in the cool quietude of the empty den. I sat there for what my mind registered as an eternity. The calm doused my speeding heart and helped me to keep the heavy reams of impending panic from erupting in my chest. 

I melted into the firm side of the couch, brow bone melding with the scratchy plaid material, and reached an arm out to ground myself against the side table. I'm not sure how much time passed —it could have been a few minutes or nearly a half hour— but my body was lulled into a calmer, settled state when I heard the slap of a remote against something firm followed by some quieted curses. The click of plastic buttons on the TV console tickled my ears. 

Within seconds, sound from the TV began to ring out in the quiet den, the volume loud enough to hear over the buzz outside but quiet enough as not to startle me. I felt the couch slump next to me and the scent of cigarettes, weed, leather, and musk whooshed into my nostrils from the movement. I craned my head up to look at the man next to me. I'm not sure why. I already knew it was Mary.

"Assholes found lawn darts in the shed outside and decided to set up teams. Fuck if I’m gonna get stabbed," He started, bringing a bottle of water to his lips. My eyes trailed his form. His legs were crossed at the ankles, boots perched on top of the coffee table in front of us, and at some point during the night he had put on his leather jacket. He looked over at me and his demeanor changed from one of kind indifference to one of concern. "...you good?" he asked, turning to face me.  

"Mmph," I mumbled, trying my best to sit up straighter against the pillowy back of the couch. I licked my dry lips and realized for the first time just how cottony my mouth felt. "Too high."

Mary let out a soft chuckle and the nerves that I had spent time pushing down into my belly threatened to peek through again at the warm sound of his voice. “Not surprised," he said with a shrug, eyes flickering to the movie on the screen before falling back on me, "I’ve never seen a chick take a hit like that before. You’re a pro.”

I wanted to argue with him. In a much more sober state, I would have denied his compliment and told him that getting the spins from smoking bud was not the sign of a pro, but at the moment, all that came out of me was the sentence "I am liquid garbage." I licked my dry lips again and inwardly groaned at the Sahara that was my mouth.

“It’ll pass.” Mary reached over and handed me the water bottle he had been drinking. I smiled, recalling the last time he'd shared his beer with me weeks ago out on the patio, and I took a couple of swigs. Capping the bottle, I handed it back to him, sinking a little further back into the couch as I began to watch the scene unfolding on the screen. 

"What movie is this?" I asked after a beat, bringing my legs to cross in front of me as I snuggled into the pillows resting against the arm of the sofa. 

Mary murmured his response, clearly focused on the film, and I didn't quite hear what he said. Or, if I did, I didn't recognize it. It looked like an older film (something I confirmed when I glanced across the room and saw the VHS cover thrown on the floor next to the TV console) and the quality led me to believe it was likely an indie film or B-movie. That seemed to track from what I knew about Mary. 

We sat there for a while in a comfortable silence as the movie played in front of us. The lights of the den were off, but the incandescent kitchen lights shown in from the hallway, which paired with the glow of the TV made the details of the room fairly visible. We watched as the characters on the screen sculked down a dark alleyway, not a care in the world, and from my horror trope knowledge I knew that the action was about to start. 

From my left, I heard the crinkling of a wrapper and the distinctive clunking noise of something bitten. Another wrapper crinkled and Mary brushed my arm with his own, his hand coming out in front of me. 

"Here, eat something," he said as he handed me what looked like a square of chocolate. I felt my stomach tumble a little at the thought of something sweet, and I made a gruff noise in response, shaking my head a little. 

Mary shook the chocolate slightly as if to double down. "It'll make you feel better. Settle your stomach." 

I all but rolled my eyes as I grabbed onto the candy and muttered a noise of thanks. Typically, I'd argue with him that sugar was the antithesis of a sour stomach remedy, but his sweetness and ever-present thoughtfulness won me over. I snapped the chocolate with my teeth and as it melted on my tongue, I sank a little further into the couch cushions. It was good — a little more bitter than I expected, citrus-y, and not nearly as rich as I had worried about. Damn it, I hated when he was right. 

Before I knew it, I had downed the whole square. Unbeknownst to me, Mary had watched with side-eyes and already had another square ready for me when I'd finished, which I accepted gratefully.

We remained like that, mere inches between us as we snacked on square after square of dark chocolate until barely any remained, absorbing the scenes of the movie unfolding before us. I felt warm and heavy and full in the sanctity of the cozy sunken room and the party outside lived far from the boundaries of my mind. Glancing at the table, I looked to see if I could find a wrapper or box to mentally note the brand of chocolate to buy it later, and I noticed a familiar smashed box laying open on the surface. Within seconds, the recognizable panic rose in my chest. 

"Mary," I started cautiously, staring at the box, "where did you get those?"

I saw Mary shrug out of the corner of my eye. "They were in the kitchen."

I swallowed harshly. "So...you just…took them?" I said slowly, hoping to clarify that he hadn't taken what I thought he had. After all, Mary had shown up late. He wouldn't have known what they were.

This time, Mary turned his head to look at me straight on. The look on his face was relaxed and seemingly unbothered. "The box was all damaged so I assumed someone would throw them away. And Thomas is more of a Hershey guy," he reasoned. 

At that moment, my heart fell out of my ass — partially because we had just eaten Thomas' entire birthday gift, but more so because of what we had eaten. 

My face must have been a clear tell, because the long-haired man in front of me cocked his head in confusion. "Mary, those were, uh..." I tried to choose my words carefully despite the haze in my mind, "...those were fucking chocolates."

He laughed and looked at me with eyebrows raised and eyes wide, a look of ridiculing understanding on his face. "I know they were chocolates," he said with another mocking chuckle.

I grunted in frustration. "No, they were FUCKING chocolates!" I sighed and ran my hand through my long hair, tilting my head back as I searched for the right words. "God damn it, Mary, chocolates for fucking. Sex chocolates!" I looked over at him, my grey eyes widened a little in irritation, and studied his face for his response. 

He shrugged, fucking shrugged, and leaned back a little further into the couch. "That shit is all marketing BS," he waved his hand and settled back in to watch the movie. I was certain he didn't notice me glaring daggers at him. 

Despite my frustration, I followed suit and decided to distract myself with the film. I couldn't really decipher the plot (which I mostly attributed to my intoxication), but I began to deduce that it was some sort of slasher film riddled with horror cliches and gore.   

My suspicions were quickly confirmed when the movie cut to an intimate scene between two of the side characters. As they moved against each other in the dark, clothing half-ripped off, lips trailing skin, and almost pornographic moans permeated the screen, I felt my stomach tighten. I wasn't typically the kind of person to be affected by sex scenes in movies or TV, but for whatever reason, I felt a rush of heat flood my abdomen and pull at my navel. 

Shadows moved behind the preoccupied couple on the screen and I tried my best to focus on the horror element of the plotline. The murderer is in the room and is waiting for the opportune time to strike, I told myself in prediction, willing my eyes to study any and every small detail in the movie to keep the tugging at my core from building. 

I licked my lips and let out a quiet breath, hoping to God that Mary didn't hear me. Anger started to prick at my gut. Was this a placebo effect? A side effect of weed and alcohol? Or were those chocolates the real deal? Regardless, I pulled my knees to my chest and did my best to not allow the movie to bother me (one way or another).

From beside me, I heard what sounded like a mix between a groan and a low breath. My brain told me to keep looking ahead, to ignore him, to wait until the movie was done and I was feeling better before finding Des and asking for somewhere to crash for the night. My impulsivity got the best of me and I slowly cast my eyes in Mary's direction. His eyes were slightly larger, the flickering light of the screen reflecting off the olive hue of his irises, and his bottom lip was just barely caught between his teeth. 

He clearly felt my stare because his head pivoted in my direction. His gaze was nearly smoldering. I licked my lips, the wet sounds and moans of the TV punctuating our focus on one another, and I felt the air grow thick with tension that was practically palpable. My fixed stare drifted downward to look at his bitten lip and I shuddered as I noticed the reddened teeth mark against the soft flesh.

I don't know what overcame me. Suddenly I was lurching forward, my legs bent below me as I pushed into him, hand resting on the worn fabric of the band shirt below the jacket, knees brushing the fabric of his jeans. Our faces were inches apart and I could see the stubble outlining his chin and cheeks. His hand snaked up between us and grasped the back of my neck, and before I knew it, he pulled me into him with such force that I nearly lost my balance. 

My lips crashed against his for the first time ever, and through the fog in my brain and body, I noted their firmness, how they were slightly chapped but still velvety as they moved against mine. I shifted to lift a leg over his lap and straddled him, both hands resting against him as his own free hand came to slot against the curve of my waist. The fabric of my dress floated around our conjoined laps and I tilted my head to the side to deepen our locked lips.

Mary groaned and the hand on my neck traveled down my back and over my ass before gripping onto the other side of my waist. With both hands, he held me firmly and pulled me down into his crotch. I could feel the rough jean fabric scraping against my inner thighs and seat of my panties. I let out a whimper.  

Heat soared through my groin and had I been clear-headed, I would have laughed at the aptly-named chocolates, but I was too distracted by Mary's noises and his guitar-calloused fingertips now brushing up my thighs and oh god did he smell good (all leather, spice, cigarette, and earth). I felt my dress flutter up to the crease between my legs and pelvis and his hands came to cup around my backside. I let out a wanton moan into his mouth and he pushed his tongue against my lips, parting them as he ground himself into me. 

Had we been completely alone in the house (or at least in a more secluded space), I couldn’t promise myself that I would have had any restraint against Mary completely taking me right there on the old sofa. However, a moment of worry panged at my core and I separated from him slightly, mere centimeters between us as we both breathed heavily. 

“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?” I stumbled out, lips brushing against his own as I spoke. 

Mary grunted in reply and pulled me in against him deeper. “Everyone is distracted outside," he murmured against my jawbone as he pressed slow, tantalizing kisses that flowed down to my neck. I tilted my head further to the side and fluttered my eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of his body pressed against my own, fingertips digging into the tines of his zippered jacket. His lips ghosted a sensitive spot on the curve of my neck and I felt electricity swim across my skin. 

"I don't fuck people I don't know," I breathed out, feeling my own hips move against his now as if betraying my own words. 

He let out a noise that registered somewhere between a groan and an "mmm" before detaching from my neck. One of his hands reached up to brush some rogue strands of hair that had fallen into my eyes, tucking them behind my ear as he brought our faces close together. "I guess we'll have to get to know each other better, then," he rumbled out, voice low as his thumb pressed into my jaw and pulled our lips together again. 

The lights of the movie flickered behind us and screams from the victims of the story percussed our heavy makeout. I paid them no mind, but after the third scream and the sploshing sound of what I assumed to be blood, I could have sworn that Mary's kisses became more heated. 

His hand trailed from my jaw and down to squeeze at my breast through the thin fabric of my swing dress, which earned him a moan from me in response, before he traced his fingertips down to the skirt gathered at my waist. He dipped his fingers low between the heat of my legs, swiping them once, twice up the crotch of my panties to feel the wetness gathered there. I felt him smirk against my lips and his nimble fingers pushed the damp cotton aside to graze my pussy. I let out a whimper into his mouth and he took this as permission to go a little further, stroking along either side of my inner folds with his pointer and middle fingers. 

The muscles of my legs quivered at the sensation and I moaned a little into his mouth again, my tongue licking against his own almost lewdly as he rubbed his hand against me. He broke the kiss just barely, squeezing his fingers on either side of my clit. "Did you want me to stop?" he purred out as he languidly stroked. 

"Please," I choked out, the tenseness of weeks without physical touch bubbling up in my abdomen and throat. 

He began to remove his hand teasingly. "Please what? Stop?" he asked as he bit softly on my bottom lip. 

I tugged my lip back from his teeth and opened my eyes to look at him imploringly. "Please don't stop," I practically begged before leaning back into his touch. He slammed our mouths together again and began moving his fingers with more speed and intensity, rubbing me up and down but being careful to never directly touch my most delicate spot. His teasing had me dripping for him, and right when I felt my frustration about to run over, he dipped his hand lower and slipped inside of me smoothly. 

I let out a noise of complete pleasure against him, our lips breaking apart, and rested my forehead against his as my eyelids squeezed together. His free hand rocked me against him and he added another finger before curling them into me, pushing and stroking and prodding at my g-spot expertly. 

"Mary..." I moaned breathily, and he grunted out in response as he leaned down to lick a stripe from my collarbone to my ear. Goosebumps pebbled my skin and I ground my hips into his hand, unknowingly pushing it into his swelling cock. 

"I've been staring at you in that dress all night," he purred into my ear. The movements of his fingers began to speed up and I reached down between us to rub at my clit, but he beat me to the punch, his thumb reaching up to massage it at a teasingly slow speed. "How your tits were pushed up against your knees as you sat on the bathroom counter," he took in a sharp breath and I felt his inhale prickle the curve of my ear, "The way your ass looked bent over the bathtub, lips around that bottle. Fuck, I wanted that to be my cock."

I could feel the outline of his hardness pressing against me through his jeans, and images of his leaking cock being pressed between my lips made my gut flutter with need. I brought my fist up to my mouth and bit into it, groaning loudly and hoping that it was at least somewhat muffled. The desire pooling in the pit of my abdomen was threatening to break through, the dam nearly cracking, and I could feel each nerve of my pussy jolting with fiery synapses, just waiting to explode. 

My head tilted back and I looked down at Mary through half-lidded, lust-drunk eyes. "Mary, I'm—"

He cut off my whine, his voice gravelly as he spoke. "I want you to cum on my fingers, babydoll. Just like you came on my tongue." 

I felt the fire rage inside me and it was as if I lost complete control of my body. My hips writhed into him and my hand reached up to grab onto his shoulder for support, fingernails digging roughly into the leather of the battle jacket as I let out a noise of complete rapture. His hand on my hip darted up and quickly covered my mouth as he continued to fuck me with his fingers. 

"Shhh, you didn’t want them to hear us, remember?" His eyes pierced into mine, pupils wide and blown with desire, and he watched every minute movement of my face as I came around him. Despite his sultry reminder, I keened against his hand, his skin tasting salty against my tongue and lips with each little noise. He pulsed me through my orgasm and circled my sensitive nub with increasing gentleness as I came down in his arms.

After a moment, he slipped out of me and brought his soaked fingers to his lips before making a show of sucking my slick from them. "You taste just as good as I remember," he breathed out with a smirk. I let out a shuddering breath, closed my eyes, and rested my forehead against his once more, our hair tangling in a mess of golden brown and mahogany tresses. I felt his dick pulse beneath me. 

My mind shot back to our time together on the roof, and as I sat nearly puddled against him on his lap, I realized that I had yet to return any of his favors. With shaky knees, I pushed myself from him (earning me a brief look of concern) before I slid down his lap and onto the floor in front of him. The worry melted from his face as his eyebrows rose, and a grin stretched across his lips. 

My hands slithered down the black denim of his thighs, ghosting the skin of the ripped knees, and I grabbed his shins to push them open. Settling between them, I reached forward to push his bullet belt up and pull at the button on his pants. It popped open with minimal effort and I gripped my hands onto the meat of his thighs as I leaned my face directly over his crotch. Taking the zipper in my teeth, I wrenched it down smoothly. The heat of his groin flushed against my cheeks and even without looking, I could tell he wasn't wearing boxers.

He quickly pulled his pants down from his hips to his knees and his cock sprung out, nearly hitting me in the face. While he was no Owen Gray, it was longer and thicker than I had imagined given his height, and I knew that it would be difficult to take him completely. Grasping onto the base, I flittered my eyes up to him and peered at his face through thick lashes as I licked the tip lightly.

Mary let out his own series of aroused noises and his hands grasped at the couch cushions below him. I smirked and knelt a little closer, back curving to highlight the swell of my ass as I took the tip into my mouth and sucked sparingly before letting it go with a pop. Mary whined at the loss of my mouth and I let out a small laugh, enjoying returning some of the teasing he'd put me through, before I grabbed the base and licked from his balls to his frenulum. 

The dialogue from the TV just barely drowned out his heavy breathing and I surprised him by taking him into my mouth as deeply as I could without gagging, hand still squeezing around the base as I began to bob up and down. By now, the spinning nausea and hazy headspace was gone and I was feeling the more positive effects of the gravity hit, so I slid my other hand down to cup his balls as I took him a little more deeply into my mouth. 

One of Mary's hands came to thread through my hair, grasping the burgundy locks with a tight grip as he helped guide me up and down his shaft. I pressed the tip of my tongue against the vein on the underside of his cock and he groaned out, lips spilling out the words "Fuck, just like that” as his hips quaked beneath me. 

I continued to move my head against him, alternating licking and sucking, hollowing my cheeks and pulling lightly at his balls. I could tell he was close when his moans became louder and his arm started to tremble. Speeding up my ministrations, I looked back up into his eyes to see them closed, his head tilted against the back of the couch, and he started to jerk his hips up roughly into me. I relaxed my throat and stilted the gagging feeling the best I could, tears pricking my eyes as I let him fuck my face. 

The tip of his cock hit the back of my throat and he let out a guttural noise, his other hand coming to grab onto my head as he thrust into my mouth. "Ungh, fuck, babydoll, you're gonna make me cum," he growled, and even with my recent orgasm, I felt wetness instantly pool in my already soaked underwear. 

Seconds later, his hips spasmed into my face and he came roughly into my mouth. His salty spend pooled on my tongue and I swallowed around his cock before slowly sliding off with an audible "pop". A bead of cum dribbled down my lips and I wiped it with the pad of my thumb, popping the digit in my mouth to lap at it slowly while locking eyes with Mary.

He looked at me half-lidded, completely enthralled as I nearly devoured every drop of him, and I leaned back a little while shooting him pleased smile. 

"I couldn't let you go through life without experiencing one of my blowjobs at least once," I said, nearly echoing his words from weeks prior. He instantly recognized this and laughed, one of his hands moving from my head to trace his thumb over the swell of my bottom lip. 

"I don’t know what it is about you, dollface," he whispered. My heart leapt again at the nickname he'd assigned me and I hummed as I leaned into his touch before slinking up to sit next to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. I could hear the clink of his belt as he carefully tucked himself back into his jeans, the sound of his zipper whirring briefly through the heated air. 

His arm came to snake around my waist and we sat there in a comfortable silence, film credits dancing on the screen. I heard the sliding glass door open from the kitchen and footsteps clatter against the fake laminate flooring, but I didn't move from Mary's grasp. I was too tired (and too satiated) to care. 

After a while, I felt his lips press onto my forehead and I opened my eyes again to look at him. He motioned towards the last chocolate square on the coffee table with a subtle flick of his head, a smile carved into his face, and broke the quiet. 

“...you gonna eat that?”

[calliedion-dungeon]

My Fanfic List

Hi, I'm Callie, I realized that maybe instead of just dropping my thingys I might as well say something in the way. So, I'm just a human woman who's imagination has been assaulted by the Ghost/Repugnant train and I just will let it consume my life and soul.

I'm relatively new in Tumblr and english is not my first language, so bare with me with my mispellings, since I don't have many people to show my works and help me correct them. Thank you if you manage to read up to this point.

Main account @calitmediondell so don't be scared if I respond from there.

⛧☾༺ AO3 Links ༻☽⛧

Primo - Papa Emeritus I

❦Say it with flowers (One Shot) 2.6k words- Young Primo/GN Reader, Fluff.

Terzo and Secondo

𖤐Cardinal Brothers (Coming some time in the future) Story of an adventure of the cardinals Terzo and Secondo in late 80's/stranded in a little conservative christian town/ heavely based on "To Wong Foo" movie 1995.

Cardinal Copia

𖤐Serious Killer (20.3k words) Dracopia fic - Epic friendship- Dracopia/Cardinal Copia/GN-Reader, SFW

Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / ? (indefinite hiatus)

𖤐Dark Lipstick (2.2k words) Cardinal Copia/reader Fem/V - +18 MDNI. Sex Toys, Flirting, Edging

𖤐 Sweet Lip Balm (Second part of Dark Lipstick) (4k words) +18 MDNI. Sex Toys

𖤐 Hot Cherry Bomb (Third part of Dark Lipstick) (3.8k words) +18 MDNI Smut, Blood Kink, semi-public Sex

Mary Goore

𖤐Stiff Enough (Finished) (11k words) NSFW, Smut! MDNI, Mary Goore/fem OC

𖤐Chistmas Carol of the Goor-y Present (Finished) (13k words) (Second part of "Stiff Enough") NSFW, Smut! MDNI, Mary Goore/fem OC

🜏The Beastly Ones are in Command (4.3k words) (One Shot) Mary Goore - Poltergeist,Implied/References Child Abuse. Rated Mature Please mind the tags

��� Madness, Pain and Shadows (Finished) Mary Goore as The Crow - Blood Violence, Child Death, Mental Health Issues, Rated Mature Please mind the tags

Chapter: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

𖤓Sore Kisses - [Long Haired Blonde] Mary Goore/Fem Reader NSFW, Smut! MDNI

Chapter: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / ?

Fanart (?)

Ghost Beanie / Mary Goore's Poltergeist /

Mary Goore Sad Hours Guitar Solo / Topo Gigio as Cardinal Copia

[da-rulah]

Okay ghesties, please help me choose my next AU...

As some of you will know, I'm working on a Mary Goore AU that got away from me recently. It was meant to be two parts max, and right now, it's becoming longer than I thought...

BUT

I can't choose between two AU ideas I'm desperate to write after this one, so I need you guys to pick for me.

Below are the summaries for each of my ideas, with some warnings about the content in them. Both of them will be multiple chapters in length, longer than anything I've written to date. Read them carefully, and choose your favourite. Whichever wins, is the one I'll write first...

Folié a Deux – Cardinal Copia x OC Female Character (1st Person POVs) 

Rating: Extremely dark and explicit fiction, laced with trigger warnings incl. but not limited to: sex trafficking, sexual assault, coercion. 

The Ministry has many fingers in many pies... ‘The Ghost Project’ is simply not the only endeavour they focus on. Between fundraisers for the poor, advocating for minorities, vigilante justice and even legal representation, the Ministry is a busy and international organisation. 

One such project – The Rush Hour project – was new. A project that focussed on known sex trafficking rings, discovered on the dark web and through underground contacts. The aim was to infiltrate and free their captives, give them new lives and begin to heal the trauma forced upon them. 

On one particular night, Cardinal Copia is entrusted with infiltrating an auction, buying a woman the Italian mob is hoping to sell on. Except, he falls short... Too lost in the hauntingly empty eyes of the beauty before him, he is unable to focus, and thus, he loses his chance. 

But he had to have her. She will be his. 

By any means necessary. 

Can You Hear the Thunder? – Papa Emeritus IV (Copia) x OC Female Character (1st Person POVs) 

Rating: Explicit with horror elements incl. but not limited to: torture, violence, paranormal entities, religious trauma. (This is my own personal idea of how the lore could continue while we wait for any new updates...)

Papa Emeritus IV is plagued by dreams of a time long forgot, before his papacy; before any part of his Ministerial career. They are incoherent, patchy and make little sense to him. Still, he continues his work under the guidance of Sister Imperator, Mr. Sultarian and the Clergy.  

Now home from another highly successful world tour with The Ghost Project, Papa finds himself having his dreams more frequently. Night after night, they grow longer, fragments of memories flickering through his mind like a child’s flipbook until one night, the thunder comes... 

And then they find her, laying on the steps of the Ministry amongst the worst storm California had seen in a decade. 

A woman with nothing about her person except the ragged nightgown soaked and tattered in the storm, and a strange and deliberate carving on her back. 

[fishwithtitz]

Next day reblog 🥰

The Five Times I Hooked Up with Mary Goore (and the One Time I Couldn’t) - Chapter 4

stunning artwork of a scene from chapter 1 by @dominaarts that I've been dying to share!

Summary: A miscommunication between Thomas and Des results in a night of Dahlia and Mary dog sitting together. When a record breaking storm rolls in, Dahlia's faced with the decision on exactly how much vulnerability she wants to reveal. Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI Mary Goore x OFC / 15.4k words Warnings: language, thigh-riding, p in v sex, mentions of recreational drug use, alcohol, storms, thunder, slight angst

A/N: Thank you for your patience and support as I've taken the time to write this. This was a difficult chapter to write as it starts building the foundation for the turning point of the story and I wanted to get it just right. Leave a comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist 🥰 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

ao3 link

Hook-up #4: Thomas’ Room

Codependency was something I tried really, really hard to avoid. I’d long prided myself on my 

feral independent streak and would be damned if anyone, man or woman, made me reliant.

But I had to admit, I really missed Des. 

This was the shitty part of relationships. It seemed that when the people you love found someone that they wanted to devote themselves to, their time seemed to be sucked along with it. I understood where she was coming from. The novelty of a budding relationship is a unique and addictive feeling. I don’t blame her for chasing the high. 

While she tended the fire that she and Thomas were building, she was opting for spurts of lighter fluid rather than bits of soul-sourced kindling. And now her fire was growing and spreading, sometimes out of control, and it seemed like all of her time and resources were devoted to managing it. Which meant that some of her other relationships had to be put on the backburner until the flames could be brought to a dull roar. 

As if a sign from the universe, the stars finally aligned (or perhaps just our schedules), and Des and I were able to spend the afternoon together. It was exactly what I needed: some time with my best friend. 

After grabbing a couple of iced coffees from the boutique coffee shop downtown (at her insistence, of course, because the higher price was reflected in the quality of the roast, or something like that), we walked to one of our favorite thrift stores to pillage through the inventory. I felt a certain warmth creep through my chest as we entered the store. The smell was a bit musty, perfume-like, a permeating oxymoron of both dirt and cleanliness. It reminded me of our friendship: unlikely, brutally opposite at times, but unique and complimentary. 

The shop worker greeted us with a nod and a smile from the front counter and went back to browsing through her magazine as she sat on her high-rise stool, painted fingertips skimming over something about interior design. Des and I beelined to the back racks in the furthest room from the front of the shop. We knew that this was usually where they kept the good stuff. 

Thrifting was an exercise of equal parts skill and patience. It was best to go in with zero expectations of both finding anything or looking for a specific piece. My most successful trips had been ones where I’d happened upon things I didn’t even know I’d wanted (or like, for that matter). In fact, I’d long ago learned not to become discouraged when a trip turned out to be a bust. Busts were to be expected. The goldmines, however, outweighed the insolvencies. 

“It feels like forever since we’ve gotten to do this,” Des said as she stopped in front of a circular rack of short-sleeve knit shirts. She began sliding the hangers across the scraped metal, pausing to glance over each shirt as she did so. 

“It has been,” I replied. It wasn’t said with malice; more so, my tone conveyed a neutral honesty that I knew we’d come to appreciate about each other. Despite this, I could tell I’d struck a cord at the slight fall of her facial features. 

Des took a half-step back and turned to me with a sad smile. “I know I haven’t been around as much. I’m sorry.” 

“I understand.” And I did. She knew I did. But the morose feeling was still etched into her features in soft hatched lines and so I quickly added, “Not everyone can be a hot musician with Heraculan biceps. I’ll take my spot in line.” I gave her a wink, which seemed to soften her expression. 

I turned back to the rack and started thumbing through the medium-sized graphic tees. Quite a few were worn crewnecks of casinos or bars from around the state, though a couple school spirit shirts were peppered in. I nearly shuddered at the smiling beaver mascot that reminded me of puberty. 

Des broke my focus. “What about this one?” She held up a small white t-shirt with an image of Strawberry Shortcake on it. “Your muse!”

“One time I tell you about my obsession with Strawberry Shortcake and the Big Apple City as a child…” I mumbled, rolling my eyes as I continued culling through the rack. Des laughed and set the shirt back. 

“I don’t think your tits would fit in a small, anyway. Plus, it had a stain.” She pushed a couple more shirts to the side before turning her torso to me. “Speaking of cake, I heard you and Mary had a get together last week.”

A week had passed since I’d last seen Mary. I’d received another text a few days after our night of baking telling me that the cake was killer and his mom was impressed, but it’d been radio silence since. In any other situation with any other person, I’d probably feel irritation or some sort of anger; an inward creeping as to why this guy wasn’t at all interested in seeing me after a weirdly uncharacteristic close-knit evening. But this was Mary. He wasn’t known for punctuality or routine. On the contrary, Mary was a bit of an enigma, coming and going as he pleased, with zero rhyme or reason to his decision making. He seemed to do what felt right to him in the moment — whatever that may be. Or at least that’s how things appeared. 

The hanger I was sliding across the rack stilted, the fabric of the shirt still pinched between my fingers. My eyes widened slightly, and I failed to control the blush that crept into my cheeks. I refused to meet her stare, but knowing Des, she was giving me an all-knowing look. 

“You know, when I suggested that you make a cake for his mom’s birthday, I didn’t think that meant that you’d be doing it together,” she teased.

“Neither did I!” I said. Although I’d meant for it to come out nonchalantly, I’d sounded more defensive than intended. I tried to brush it off by swirling the iced coffee in my hand, ice cubes clinking and clashing as I brought the straw to my lips to take a sip.

“I didn’t know you and Mary were that close,” she speculated. 

I choked on the watery coffee that had been midway down my throat and brought a hand up to wipe at my mouth, coughing a little into my palm.

 Before I had a chance to respond, she cut me off, wide-eyed, a smile tugging at her mouth. “Wait, no. Doll, you didn’t!”

I looked over at her with a surprised defensiveness that completely gave away the truth. Shit. Time for damage control. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Des’ smile only widened. “Dahlia, did you sleep with him?”

I didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t as if I was ashamed to admit it. Mary was attractive. Sure, his reputation was a bit strange and extreme, but to those in the metal scene, it wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. But there was something that I liked about keeping Mary and I’s friendship hidden. Or were we friends with benefits?  Was it even a friendship? 

“You totally did!” Des said in response to my silent rabbit hole. I sighed and started to aimlessly shuffle through some sweaters on the next rack. Des began to laugh and looked at me coyly.

She walked over to the same rack that I was currently stationed at and rested her hand against the metal bar, leaning into it. “I swore I saw you two making out on the couch a while back at Thomas’, but he told me I was seeing shit,” she added, shaking her head in disbelief. 

I hummed a noise in response, barely audible. My fingertips traced along a loose thread of a knit sweater and I rolled it between them, trying to focus on the scratchy acrylic yarn instead of the beet red burning in my face. 

“That WAS you two! How long has this been going on?” I didn’t think it was possible for her eyes to get any bigger. They reminded me of saucers. Or satellite dishes. Maybe of the middle-aged woman at my work that thrived on office gossip and smelled like cat piss. 

I rolled my eyes and pulled a sweater off the rack to pretend to check the tag. “Nothing is going on,” I said. 80% Polyester, 20% Cotton.  “We’ve just hooked up a few times. That’s it.” 

Des cocked a curious brow. “A few? Wow, add that to my list of shit I didn’t expect.” She brought her half-drank iced coffee to her pink lips and took a slurp of the drink. I couldn’t tell if I was more annoyed at the sound or at her. 

 “So, what’s he like?” She grabbed a cardigan from the small section and pulled it up to inspect it, holding it to her thin frame to gauge the fit. “I bet he’s into some spooky, dark shit, like bloodletting or autoerotic asphyxiation or something. Oh! Or a piss kink!”

The garment I was holding was slammed back into the rack with more force than I’d meant. “Des! What the fuck?” I whispered loudly, trying to make a point that this was not something I wanted to talk about in public. Sure, no one else was in the back of the store, but that was besides the point. 

She held up a hand in defense. “Sorry! He looks like the kind of guy that’d be into that stuff.”

I brought the hand to my face that wasn’t holding the slippery, condensation-covered cup of coffee. With a sigh, I rubbed my left eye. “I am not having this conversation.”

Des brought her hands down and tilted her head with a look of disagreement. “Oh, come on! Why are you always so uptight about talking about this stuff?”

I took a step towards her and lowered my voice just slightly. “Unlike you, I don’t feel the need to advertise my sex life, thank you.”

“I don’t advertise it, I just…reflect on it. It’s what normal girlfriends do — talk about the guys they’re with.” She turned to the next rack that was uncomfortably close to the one we had been rifling through and pulled a pair of corduroys out to give them a look over. “Who else would I talk to about it?”

She had a point. I breathed out a sigh and set my cup on the display atop the circular rack. “I guess you’re right.”

I looked up at her to see her sporting her signature smirk. “I’m always right. Now tell me, what’s he got hiding in those tight jeans?” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis and I let out a chuckle, shaking my head.

“You are the last person I need to explain the intricacies of the male anatomy to.”

“Come on, Doll. I need details!” She whined, tossing the corduroys back onto the rack. 

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

“Good thing cats have nine lives.” She stuck out her tongue at me and I reached over to make a swipe at grabbing it, earning me a chuckle and a shove. 

I laughed too, and if I was honest, I felt a semblance of relief that the weight of my secret had been lifted from my shoulders, even if just minutely. 

She took another annoyingly loud slurp of her iced coffee, the drink now edging the bottom line of the cup. Peering at me from above the lid, she broke contact with the straw. 

“Now, spill.”

🜏🜏🜏

It was early evening on a Friday. I’d managed to get off of work a little earlier than expected — a relief given that I’d worked overtime these past few weeks to try to save up enough money for an unexpected car repair. The extra time turned out to be just what I needed to pack some last minute items in my backpack for the weekend. 

Des had asked — practically begged — for me to “do her a solid” and pet sit for her for a couple days over the weekend. My confusion rang heavy in the air when I realized that one, she didn’t have any pets, and two, neither did Thomas. 

“It’s his parents’ dog. He’s supposed to watch it this weekend, but he was able to book a couple last minute shows out of town that would be really good for the band,” she’d explained. Then, in almost overly characteristic Des-fashion, she gave me the eyes. The fucking Puss in Boots look. 

And those damn Dreamworks eyes had me hesitantly agreeing to watch the pawned pooch at Thomas’ place.  

It didn’t sit well with me. He was supposed to be watching his parents’ dog. But instead, he was having a friend of his girlfriend stay at his place to watch a dog she’d never met. I’d just hoped the dog was nice. 

After walking my bike to the back porch to lean it against the siding hidden from view from the street, I rounded back to the front door and gave it a few cursory knocks. As if on cue, loud barks began to sound — distant at first, but louder as the seconds went on — and I could just make out the scuffle of feet and claws against the hard floor. 

The door swung open and Des was restraining a black blur of tail and tongue and teeth. He wasn’t overly big, per se, but from what I could tell from his overexcited movements, he had to be at least forty or fifty pounds. 

“Hey! Come in—” she strained, holding the excited dog back as it wagged and wiggled in her arms. 

I slipped past the dog and kicked off my shoes on the hinged side of the door as she slammed it shut. “Brutus!” Des grunted as she tried to crouch over him and use her body weight as leverage. 

I straightened up and watched with choked giggles as she tried, and nearly failed, to keep him from charging me. “He’s — umph — he loves people —” said grumbled as the dog, presumably named Brutus, broke from her grasp and hounded over to me with a tail so violently wagging that I was afraid his hips would fly right off. He knocked into me with surprising force for his size and I toppled over to the ground. A slimy, velvety tongue began to attack my face and neck and I shrieked out in laughter as we rolled around on the floor. 

“Brutie! Brutus, off!” Des yelled. I could barely hear her over my screeches and giggles. 

A couple of moments passed and the dog calmed, crawling comically into my lap before curling up and looking at me with a panting smile. I ran my hand along the top of its head, scratching behind his pointed black ears. 

“Sorry, he really, really likes people. Not much of a watchdog,” Des said.

“It’s fine. He’s cute,” I replied, moving to scratch under his chin. “What breed is he?”

Des snorted. “Fuck if I know. Thomas says he’s a mutt. I think he’s a rescue.”

“Those are always the best ones,” I countered, earning a nuzzle into my hand from the furry canine nearly falling out of my lap. 

After a while of chit chat and petting the mammoth-sized wannabe cat splayed in my lap, I peeled my backpack off and set it against the wall and stood up  to follow Des into the kitchen. She explained Brutus’ feeding schedule (“He will try to convince you that he’s starving to death. Do not fall for it.”) and his typical routine, then showed me where Thomas’ parents had left the vet info in case of emergencies. It seemed pretty straightforward (easier than I’d expected, honestly), and I felt grateful that Thomas’ backyard was fenced off. A lost dog was the last thing I needed in life right now. 

Just as Des was setting the written feeding instructions back down on the counter, the door leading to the garage opened from down the hallway, and a pair of heavy footsteps came thunking toward us. 

Thomas came into view. He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at the locks a little as he glanced around the kitchen and dining area, turning a bit in his spot as if running through an imaginary list in his brain. By now, I’d seen Thomas in a variety of moods: ecstatic, embarrassed, exhausted, angry, piss drunk, and of course, the moments where he was absolutely enamored with Des, but I’d never seen him look so stressed before. His eyes looked tired yet his pupils were wide, countering the lines that were settling in around the corners of his eyelids. I’m not sure that he even noticed his shirt was inside out. 

“We found the pedalboard at the guys’ apartment. Some asshole put it on top of the fridge,” he sighed and put his hands on his hips as he looked up at the ceiling as if he were trying to visualize what he needed to do next. After a beat, he looked back down and his eyes met Des’ quizzical look. 

“Don’t ask. I don’t even fucking know.” He seemed to finally register that it wasn’t just his girlfriend in front of him and his demeanor changed a little. He straightened, almost toughened, and gave me a confused quirk of the eyebrows. “…Dahlia, what are you doing here?”

I mirrored his look. “Uh, Des said you needed me to house sit?”

Thomas looked between myself and Des, his face moving from a look of confusion to a look of what could be argued as annoyance. “Really?” he asked, taking another step closer to Des. “I thought I mentioned I’d figured all that out, babe.”

Desiree looked up at him with an innocent smile and rolled her lips between her teeth. “Whoops. Must have slipped my mind.”

He sized her reaction, clearly unconvinced. “Okay. Sure.” I was certain he was going to add something, but his potential dialogue with Des was cut off when the garage door opened again and the telltale sound of clunking boots against hard flooring cut through the air. I felt my heart simultaneously drop and expand in my chest. I had come to know that sound. 

“Everything is tied and tarped. I feel like fucking Patrick Bateman sans nailgun and Huey Lewis and the News.”

I had really come to know that voice. 

Mary rounded Thomas and Des and joined the impromptu party in the dining area. I shoved my hands into my pockets and rocked back and forth on my feet as I felt his stare bore into me from feet away. It was clear there had been a mix up, and although I couldn’t be certain that Des had something to do with it, I had a pretty good idea of what had happened. 

“What’s going on?” Mary asked as he looked around the uneven circle of his friends. Brutus trotted over and began to sniff at his pant legs and Mary reached down to scratch the hound’s forehead. Mary’s long hair hung around him in strands, the ends clumped together in damp sections as it fell from around his shoulders and back. 

“Why is your hair wet?” Des asked him. I was sure it was her way of breaking the awkwardness. 

Mary looked at her with an air of obviousness. “Shower,” he replied. 

“Oh…weird,” she said, and I had to stifle a giggle by turning it into a cough. 

Thomas rolled his eyes. “He’s full of shit. It’s raining outside and he’s been helping me load and tarp equipment in the truck.” Thomas reached out and clasped a hand to Mary’s shoulder, which to be fair, was dotted with what appeared to be wet raindrop marks. “We all know you hate bathing,” he added. 

Mary scoffed and shoved Thomas. “Fuck you guys.”

The air turned uncomfortable again, bordering sour, and it was Thomas who broke the silence. 

“Well, it looks like there’s been a miscommunication on who’s looking after this asshole,” Thomas started, looking directly at Des as he spoke although it was clear he was referring to the dog. She continued flashing her innocent smile, eyes still large as if concurrently seeking forgiveness and feigning ignorance. 

I felt compelled to speak up. I hated awkward silences, and I especially hated being the butt of one. “It’s not a big deal. I can head out if Mary’s got this,” I said with a shrug. 

“—It’s pouring out there!” Des quickly countered, looking between Thomas and I. 

Her defensive quip caused me to crinkle my eyebrows in response. “Bullshit, I was just outside and it was fine.”

I looked over at the sliding glass door to my left and sure as shit, the glass was coated in fine droplets sliding down to puddle at the deck below. The sky hadn’t been much more than overcast on my ride over, but it now swirled with tones of ash and charcoal. A storm was approaching. 

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Shit, well…I rode my bike over here.”

I could tell that the cogs were turning in Des’ mind as she tried to decide if she’d respond with comfort and support of her best friend or her boyfriend: the ever present dilemma. I felt a pang of guilt plague my stomach. 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out. You guys go,” I offered with a small smile. Forced, of course, because now I was stranded at someone else’s house with someone else’s dog and of course a particular…someone else. 

“You sure?” she asked. I could see Thomas eyeing me from behind her, his own expression mirroring her words. It was clear this was just as much of a surprise to him as it was to Mary and I. 

My gut told me to stay focused on the couple ahead of me, but my impulsiveness won over, and I glanced at Mary. He was watching with a look of amusement, arms crossed over his chest as his head batted to and fro between speakers. I swallowed lightly.

“Yeah, go. Go! It’s fine.” The voice was mine, but the words were clearly not my own.

A few uncomfortable and quick words were shared, and both Des and Thomas grabbed their overnight bags and popped them into the cab of the truck before driving off down the quiet residential street towards the gig a few towns over. And I was stuck in the ranch-style home with Mary Goore, an overexcited rescue dog, and an approaching storm. 

🜏🜏🜏

After piling into the car and sloshing down the road en route to the gig a few cities over, Des and Thomas were mid conversation about the situation that had happened just moments before. 

“Don’t tell me you’re doing what I think you’re doing.” Thomas started, fingertips tapping against the wheel as they sped down the interstate. 

Des rolled her eyes. “They’ve been fucking!” Her voice was defensive. She quickly added, “Did you know that?”

Thomas kept his eyes on the road and drummed his fingers along to the song playing in the background. “No, and I don’t—” he sighed, removing one hand from the wheel to grasp at the back of his neck, “Jesus Christ, Desiree, you can’t play matchmaker on this one.”

Des crossed her arms over her chest. “Why not? Have you seen the way they look at each other?”

Thomas briefly turned his head and gave her a serious look, sternness that nearly reminded her of her father. “Don’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” he said. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Des shot him a look that dripped in sass. Any other time it would have spurred a different set of emotions in him, but not this time. He held his ground. 

“Just — fuck, baby, I’ve known Mary for a long time and he’s not really one to settle.”

Des scoffed. “You think getting with Dahlia would be settling?”

“No, not like that.” Thomas sighed again in frustration. “He’s not big into commitment. Doesn’t like to be tied down. Mary’s…not a relationship kind of guy.”

It was quiet for a few seconds as Des pondered his response. “Well, I’m not saying they need to get married or anything,” she reasoned, “I’m just giving them a little push, is all. A weekend together, alone, no one to barge in and no expectations. It’s the perfect recipe for them to realize what they have going on.”

Another silence filled the cab of the truck. The sound of steady rain pelted against the windshield, only for the squeaky wipers to flick it off rhythmically, creating its own song and dance that counteracted the punk tune on the stereo system.  

After a moment, Thomas relented. “Don’t come crawling to me with those big, sad eyes when this ploy of yours blows up in your face.”

“What big eyes?!” Des craned her neck over and stared him down, though it was clear she couldn’t hide the smile bursting through her tough facade. 

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, babe.”

Des winked in his direction and the tension seemed to melt away. She reached over to grasp at his hand — the one that had fallen to his lap after drumming on the steering wheel —  and laced their fingers together. 

He let out a long breath and relaxed into the touch before grumbling, “They better not fuck on my bed.”

🜏🜏🜏

When Des and Thomas left, it was like they sucked what little comfort there had been straight out of the room. Sure, the house was occupied by two people and a dog (which some would even consider to be too crowded; three’s company and four’s a party and all that), but there was a timidness that I felt that seemed to have grown since my other outings with Mary. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of it all. Or perhaps it was my own lack of control in the situation. Regardless, I’d planned on staying a couple of days anyway — what was so bad about waiting out the storm to ride home?

I stood there, hands in my pockets as I continued to rock on my heels, before deciding to break the tension. “I should probably pick up my stuff,” I motioned to the general area my backpack was in and then quickly turned to retrieve my things. 

Backpack in hand, I headed to the bathroom to unpack. I’d packed light (because in all honesty, who did I have to impress), but I was searching for any and all excuses to put some distance between myself and the awkward situation I’d been thrust into. I pulled a toothbrush and toothpaste out of a plastic bag I’d jammed into the front pocket of my rucksack, mirroring the action with my face wash, moisturizer, and small bag of makeup essentials. I futzed for too long with the placement of the items, moving them from sinkside to against the wall and back again, before I gave up and sat back against the wall opposite the vanity. 

A few minutes went by and I felt a low growl erupt in my stomach. It was nearly six o’clock and I’d had yet to eat anything. I pulled out my phone, deciding to order takeout, and scrolled through the suggested nearby restaurants before settling on a well-rated Chinese place down the street. 

I was ready to press send on my order, but I remembered the elephant in the room and groaned, heaving myself up and making my way out to the main area of the home. Mary was nowhere to be seen. I turned around and upon noticing the garage door was ajar, I walked the short distance down the hallway and slipped into the adjoining garage. 

Mary was sitting in a camper chair in the empty space, lit cigarette between his fingers, with Brutus at his side. He was tossing a rope toy to the dog somewhat lazily, taking drags of the lit stick every so often. The garage was partially opened, just enough to let in the cool, damp air of the storm, and raindrops pittered in at the edge of the threshold. 

As soon as I shut the door to the house, his eyes shot up to meet my own and he nodded in greeting before tossing the toy to the opposite end of the garage for Brutus. 

“I’m ordering Chinese — you want anything?” I eventually spoke, body still against the steps connecting the sunken garage to the house. 

Mary let out an exhale of smoke and tapped the cigarette into a coffee can on the ground. “Whatever’s fine. I’m easy to please.” His telltale smirk painted his lips and I could see the mischief swirling behind his eyes. “But you already know that,” he added. 

I felt my eyes nearly roll out of my head and hopped down off the step, rounding him to sit in another nearby chair. As uncomfortable as his digs were supposed to be, they had the opposite effect. I didn’t do “awkward” with Mary that well. Sexual tension was another story. 

I added a few more items to the order and typed in my card information from memory before submitting the order, quickly clicking my phone off and stashing it in my pocket. My focus was broken when Mary interrupted the silence. 

“How’d you get roped into this?” he asked, head turning to glance at me. 

I sighed and rubbed the side of my face, showing my slight annoyance. “Desiree.”

Mary laughed, a warm chuckle that I’d grown to appreciate, and he ashed the cigarette into the can below him. “You’d think they’d learn to communicate with how they fucking act around each other.”

I stretched out my legs, sinking back into the camper chair. “Oh, I’m sure it was communicated…” I remarked.

Mary looked at me quizzically, head turned towards me again to flash those phthalocyanine eyes that somehow looked brighter in the odd lighting of the garage. I brushed off his look, not wanting to get into the specifics of the conversation I had with Desiree or the fact that she knew about our history. “The dog seems to like you.”

“Brutus and I go way back,” he said. 

“Really?” I said with raised brows.

Mary laughed out again in response, that ever-present balmy giggle that pulled at the corners of his lips sending a wave of warmth through my body. “No, I’m just fucking with you. I’m good with animals,” he paused and his lips curled into a grin, ”when I’m not microwaving them, of course.”

My mind raced back to our first encounter together. The streetlights on the walk towards the abandoned warehouse. Paper bags with shaved ice and forties. Shitty gas station snacks. And our conversation about reputation. Namely, his reputation. “Oh, of course.” My tone was one of mock seriousness, and I couldn’t help but giggle at the memory.

I watched as he took another drag from the dwindling cigarette and then turned to look out at the half-closed garage door. The raindrops pelting against the shingled roof and cracked concrete driveway were the only audio that suffused the space, with the occasional exhale of pillowy smoke from the musician next to me. 

It was Mary that broke the silence again. He always seemed to be the one to do that. “Thanks again,” he started, hand waving around aimlessly as he spoke, “y’know, for the cake and shit.”

“Yeah, of course. I’m glad your mom liked it.” I spoke earnestly and my expression was one of sincerity. It felt foreign.

“She fucking loved it. She was surprised I had anything to do with making it,” he laughed and tapped his cigarette into the can. 

“Oh come on, you can’t be that bad of a cook,” I replied.

He raised an eyebrow at me as he turned to face me. “I’ve burned water.”

My jaw dropped just enough that I was sure it looked like I’d catch flies. “I…didn’t think that was possible.”

He shrugged and turned back to face forward, the cigarette now a stubby, crinkled nub between his middle and pointer fingers. “You should know by now that I’m full of impossible surprises.”

I leaned forward, turning my torso to point towards him while I pulled my legs criss-cross into the camper chair. “How on earth do you woo a woman if you can’t even cook fucking Kraft Mac n’ Cheese?”

“Women aren’t typically after my cooking skills. Or lack thereof,” he flicked the remaining ash of the cigarette down and it missed the can. He didn’t notice. “I’ve got other talents,” he paused, “Wooing isn’t really my style.”

I let his admission ring in the dampened air. It wasn’t surprising. From what I’d heard, he’d never had trouble landing women — particularly after gigs. “The life of a musician…” I trailed off. 

Another silence built as the rain colored the absence of our conversation. I could hear Brutus’ slight snores as he lay curled at Mary’s feet, seemingly tired from their earlier game of fetch. A breeze broke through the cracked garage door and swirled around us, bringing a chill into the otherwise comfortable space. I pulled my hoodie a little closer, feeling the cool air dance across my cheeks and the skin peeking through the jacket. 

“I think I’m gonna head in. I’ll let you know when the food is here.”

Mary didn’t say anything in response — merely nodding and taking out another cigarette from the worn Marlboro carton — and I made my way back inside with a heavier mind than I’d come out with. 

🜏🜏🜏

I’d puttered around the house for what had seemed like ages, but in reality was likely only a handful of minutes. As familiar as I was with some of the rooms at Thomas’, I had to admit that there were areas I’d never been to,  namely his room or the basement. As rude as it might have been, I’d given myself a self-directed tour of the place, noting the half-completed projects he seemed to be working on to fix up the house. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign of Des domesticating him or if the house really was a secret pride-and-joy. 

Eventually, I found myself in the den, sinking into the worn plaid couch that already held too many memories. I pushed them down and reached for the remote to the TV, opting just to hold it as my thoughts zoomed. I could probably put on a movie to kill some time until dinner arrived. It wouldn’t be long and it would serve as a nice distraction. 

I got up and thumbed through the impressive number of DVDs stacked next to the TV. Most of them were action or horror (no surprise there), and I settled on a film I’d never seen before: The Amityville Horror. I told myself that the fact that a young Ryan Reynolds was on the cover had absolutely nothing to do with the choice. 

After some cajoling, I figured out how Thomas’ TV and DVD player were set up and popped in the disc, pressing play on the machine before sinking back into the couch. The blue screen transformed to darkness as the credits played and I waited to be taken to the home screen. 

Mere seconds into the film, I heard a knock at the door and I paused the movie to jog up and out of the sunken den to the front door. I was met with an absolutely drenched delivery driver holding out a large brown bag in one hand and a soaked receipt and pen in the other. I shot him a look of apology and took the receipt, signing and adding on a much more generous tip than I’d originally intended, before trading him for the food. His eyes lit up when he saw the receipt and he dashed back to his clunker parked out front. 

I ended up parking the heavy bag of Chinese on the kitchen table. My thoughts were broken when I heard Mary coming in from the garage, heavy footsteps once again thunking down the hallway.  A pitter of claws trotted behind him. 

“Food’s here,” I said, already opening the bag to take out the various containers. 

We grabbed our respective containers and utensils and made our way to the den, me sitting on the couch while Mary sat on the floor, his back against the edge of the couch with his legs spread out wide. I opened up my container of sweet and sour pork and doused it in sweet and sour sauce, mixing it up with the cheap excuse for chopsticks that they provided before settling into the back corner of the couch and pressing play. 

“You’re watching this trash?” Mary said, words muffled by a mouthful of Beijing beef. 

I rolled my eyes, though he couldn’t see it from his position on the floor. “I’ve never seen it.”

“It’s a shit remake.”

I grabbed a piece of pork between my chopsticks and lathered it in sauce before popping it into my mouth. “Well,” I said while chewing, “no one’s making you watch it.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said with a hint of facetiousness. 

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he all but grumbled, reaching in the container to grab a piece of beef with his fingers.“You knew what I meant.”

I shuddered as I watched him pop the piece of meat into his mouth with his fingers. “Are you…eating that with your bare hands?” I asked with a surprised chuckle. 

He shrugged his shoulders again. “Chopsticks are frustrating. Why use those when I have built in chopsticks right here?” He pinched his fingers in the air, just high enough that I could see them from my spot on the sofa. 

I paused, reaching into the takeout container to fish around for some sort of accompanying vegetable. “I…don’t know how I feel about that, to be honest.”

“You didn’t seem to mind my fingers the last time you were on that couch,” he retorted, tone dripping with cheekiness that I knew was accompanied by a smirk I couldn’t see from my vantage point. 

I sighed, trying to pay no mind to his constant coquettishness. “Well, they weren’t covered in Chinese food when that happened.”

“They could have been.”

I reached over and grabbed one of Thomas’ throw pillows from across the sofa and tossed it down directly at his head. Mary yowled and grabbed at the back of his head. 

“Hey, ow- fuck, you almost made me spill!”

I waved my chopstick dismissively. “Shh, I’m missing what’s happening.”

“Not missing much…” he grumbled, grabbing another piece of beef with his fingers. I looked down and dug into my food again, picking at some snow peas, and took a bite to keep me from my desire to respond with something sarcastic. 

I watched the screen as the beginning of the movie continued to unfold with the dreary undertone of music and darkened filter plastered over shots of the house and rainfall outside. 

I knew that in fiction, rain was often used to signal something darker, uncontrollable, and innately scary. While a gentle storm could symbolize rebirth or the washing away of something unclean to show a new beginning, a thunderstorm was different. Thunderstorms were brash, explosive, and undeniably cacophonous — a symbol of power, wrath, danger, and darkness. As the scene cut to a shot of the rainy setting, I couldn’t help but liken it to the rain pelting the windowpanes of the window behind the couch. They were both intense storms and I wondered what symbolism life could be trying to show me, if any at all. 

We watched mostly in silence, with the occasional jolt from me during a poorly timed jumpscare or a shake of the head and grumble from Mary (which after the third shove of my foot into his shoulder, he got the message that he was being obnoxious). 

Unbeknownst to me, the movie had a quick sex scene, which with anyone else would have been a non-issue watching. But with Mary, I felt oddly different. I found myself wondering what he was thinking as we watched the main characters move intimately against one another. Because, if my memory served me right, the last movie we watched together had something similar, and he had reacted in very specific—

 My thoughts were interrupted by yet another jumpscare and I squeaked in surprise, nearly dropping my empty takeout container. Mary chuckled and turned around with a smug smile.

 “Everything okay back there?” he asked. 

“Just fine. ‘Surprised me…” I grumbled, pretending to dig around in the empty container for more food. I was sure he could see right through me. I was easy to spook.

Eventually, I set my empty container on the side table and reclined back into the couch again. It felt weirdly quiet, and I noticed that Mary had gotten up at some point and left. 

“Seems he found something better to do with his time,” I thought. Not that it mattered, anyway. I hated the kind of people that talked constantly during movies, and I could tell Mary was doing his best not to criticize nearly every piece of dialogue and every scene. 

“Here.” The voice snapped me from my thoughts and my eyes refocused to the space in front of me, noticing an uncapped beer just in my line of sight. I took it with a thank you, noticing Mary had one of his own as he decided to sit opposite to me on the edge of the couch instead of on the floor. I tried not to think anything of the change and cast my eyes towards the movie. 

“Did….did she just put a whole ass bong into her purse?” I asked after watching the babysitter in the film try to hide her bong after smoking in the bathroom. I took a swig of the beer Mary gifted me and looked over at him. 

He laughed. “I’m telling you — this movie is idiotic at best.”

“I hate that I’m invested enough that I want to see how it ends,” I replied after a minute, adjusting my position on the couch to spread out a leg, my foot barely missing the side of Mary’s thigh. 

“I’m happy to tell you how it ends,” Mary countered, taking a pull from his own bottle.

I shook my head in reply. “Might as well finish it. In your words, we’ve ‘got nothing better to do,’” I grinned at him with a chuckle and set my eyes back on the screen. 

After the movie finished, we both stretched out our limbs, and I stood to collect the empty containers. 

“That’s 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back,” Mary grunted with a sigh. 

I rolled my eyes. With how things were going, I’d be surprised if they didn’t roll straight out of my head and onto the shitty shag carpet on the floor. “Oh come on,” I began, “It wasn’t THAT bad…”

“Well, it sure as shit wasn’t good,” he chuckled sarcastically.

I let out a defeated breath. “Okay, I’ll admit that it wasn’t the best movie I’ve seen.”

“Clear from it,” he postured, lounging back a little as he took a swig from his beer “The original does a much better job of staying true to the book and creating that building suspense th—”

His words were cut off by another loud crack of lightning. This one sounded close, and by the looks of the fulmination that painted the windows, it was. 

I let out a shriek when the lightning and its ancillary crash cracked through the den and beyond. My hand flew to my mouth in surprise and I soon rubbed it over my eyes bashfully. 

“Shit, I didn’t know you could make that noise,” Mary chuckled, eyebrows raised in an expression of slight surprise. I looked over and flashed him the middle finger, a scowl on my face, which only increased his laughter. 

“How about we put on another movie,” he suggested, then added quickly “—but I pick.” I thought about it, pondering the many choices of movies that Mary could choose on a night like tonight, and shook my head. 

“Maybe music is a better idea?” I replied. I walked to the edge of the den and started up the few stairs that connected it to the hallway. “I’ll toss these while you get it set up,” I called over my shoulder. 

When I returned, Mary was finished messing with the stereo system and Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation was playing softly through the speakers. I took a seat on the floor, copying Mary’s earlier posture with my back against the front of the plush furniture, and spread my legs out and crossed them at the ankles. 

“Didn’t take you as a Sonic Youth fan,” I said as I settled into the space. 

Mary smiled and turned his head towards me. “I told you I’m full of interesting surprises.”

I suppressed a giggle. “I was thinking of other types of surprises when you said that.”

“What kinds of things were you thinking of?” he asked, brow quirked.

I felt my cheeks flush at the coy look on his face and looked away, trying to figure out a way to change the conversation. Mary just laughed. 

“Wow, doll face, I didn’t expect to take up that much real estate in your mind. I’m flattered.” He put a hand to his chest and stared over me with a broad smile. 

“Stop it.”

He cast me a look of confusion. “Stop what?”

“That thing you do!” I began. My voice raised a little in volume and pitch. “The thing where you act all smug and ooze sex appeal!”

This seemed to intrigue him and he turned to face me from his spot in front of the entertainment system. I knew that if his shirt was off, I’d be able to see the flexion of the muscles in his abdomen. I mentally kicked myself for even thinking that. 

“Sex appeal? I didn’t know you were so pious.”

I felt myself bristle and sat up a little straighter. “What? No, it’s not about piety.” I ran my hand through my hair in frustration. “You just don’t have to make everything an innuendo!”

At this, the crusty metalhead in front of me had the audacity to laugh. “Wow,” he chuckled, “way to act like a total prude.” 

“I am not!” My eyes shot daggers at him and I’d hope they’d materialize and hit him straight in his smirking face. 

“I’m surprised you made it through that sex scene…” he looked up at me from under a raised brow.

I huffed. “You of all people should know that sex doesn’t bother m—” I cut myself off as I felt fire heat my cheeks. 

“You were saying?” he snickered. 

“Oh, fuck off Goore.”

“Sure thing. Wanna watch?”

“I’ll leave that to Brutus.”

As soon as his name was said, Brutus’ ears perked up and he let out a whine. I realized it had probably been hours since he’d been outside.

“We should probably let the dog out,” I said. As soon as he heard the word ‘out,’ Brutus sprung up and began trotting to the sliding glass door in the kitchen. I got up with a slight groan, muscles stiff from sitting on the floor, and Mary followed. 

“I can take the dog out by myself, y’know,”

“Yeah, but the view is so much better if I come with.”

I felt frustration pool in my chest at this and he seemed to sense it as well, adding, “Chill out, I was just  grabbing a couple more beers.”

After coaxing Brutus outside with some choice words said in the nicest voice I could muster (and maybe a push on the bum), I waited at the sliding glass door for him to return from doing his business. A towel was thrown by slider and I grabbed it to wipe down the dog on his re-entry. 

I watched through the window as the storm really began to rage. Fat water droplets ricocheted off the glass pane like rubber bullets and thunder rumbled a low death rattle. Mary came up behind me and put the two bottles on the kitchen table. He fished around in his pockets for his bottle opener on his key chain. 

A loud, booming sound followed by a high pitched crack and a monstrous thud rattled the foundation of the house. I let out an embarrassingly loud scream and jumped back from the sliding door. My body collided with Mary’s more solid one behind me, and immediately his hands found my upper arms to steady the both of us. I leaned back into him, not caring enough about self-restraint as my head tipped back against his shoulder. 

My chest heaved as my adrenaline dissipated, and I could feel Mary’s hands rubbing up and down the lengths of my arms. I swallowed thickly, then clenched my eyes tight. I felt his breath arm against my ear as he leaned in. 

“You good, Doll?”

His voice was smooth, oddly soothing, and the reverberations that pulsed through my ear and into my chest were much different than the shaking of the foundation from the subsonic boom moments prior. 

I nodded and looked out the window. A mature tree limb, one measuring at least 15 feet long, had fallen to the ground in the backyard from the force of the thunderstorm. My immediate thought went to Brutus and I feared for the worst, but as if on cue, his body came running towards the door like a bullet. His little black body began pawing at the door and yet, I felt frozen in my spot to Mary. His body stayed pressed against the back of mine, hands still rubbing little circles against my triceps. Neither of us moved to open the door. 

Brutus’ bark seemed to jolt us both from the haze. I slid the door open and immediately wrapped the medium-sized dog in the towel to dry him off. The little black mutt followed me as I walked back into the wood-paneled den and I sunk down on the couch next to Mary with a sigh. 

Mary handed me another beer and I graciously accepted. “You know,” he started after taking a sip of his own, “I’m not used to women screaming around me unless my name is involved somehow.”

“Is it usually preceded by ‘fuck off’ or ‘get the fuck away from me’?”

“I was thinking it comes after ‘harder’ or ‘fuck me,’ actually,” he said, pausing a beat before casting a look of cautious puzzlement. “Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

I chewed on my cheek as I picked at the label of the beer bottle. “I hate storms,” I admitted with a sigh.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

The squall of the storm caused the windows behind the weathered old sofa to vellicate. Stills from the movie of torrential downpour around the boathouse flashed into thought. I recalled the swirling blackened sky from the sliding glass door from moments before and found myself comparing the dread from the film to my stomach sinking the moment the tree limb fell heavy against the hard ground. What if it had fallen on the house, or the dog? What if it had been a consequence of a lightning strike and started a fire?

I shook myself from spiraling. “I’m not afraid of a lot of things,” I pointed out, “but storms...they freak me out. They have ever since I was little. Loud noises and all.”

Mary chuckled at this. “You listen to thrash metal,” he countered. 

“That’s different!” I ran my hand through my hair, gripping at the back of my scalp in frustration. “Storms are destructive. One minute it’s a normal day and the next - bam - people lose their homes, their jobs, their communities…decades and centuries of history even. It’s chaotic and terrible and…unpredictable. It’s fucking armageddon.”

Mary had turned to face me from his spot on the couch, one leg semi-crossed over the other. “Big bad metal chick like you afraid of some thunder and lightning? Color me surprised, dollface.”

The asshole had the audacity to smirk at me. So, I reached out and smacked him in the shoulder. 

“Ow! I was being serious!” His tone was playful as rubbed at the spot on his shoulder. “You’re not the kind of person to let a lot of emotion show.”

I felt myself bristle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “I dunno…you just don’t seem afraid of anything. Kinda just ‘go with the flow’. It’s weird to see ya all panicked and shit.”

I scoffed and clicked my tongue. “You obviously don’t know me very well.”

“Oh, I know you inside and out, dollface,” he grinned. 

My cheeks blushed garnet. “Only some of me,” I grumbled.

“Really? What else you got hiding?” he chided, sitting up a little straighter, a little closer. “Got any secret pockets in those pants?”

Now, it felt like my whole face was on fire. I remembered the cargo pants he made fun of me for on our first excursion, and the tongue-in-cheek wording was absolutely purposeful. I rolled my eyes. 

Any other time I would have had a quick quip or nonverbal response lined up to banter with him, but another crackle of thunder roared through the sky, and instead, my body physically flung itself up an inch off the cushions in a reactive jolt. My hands gripped onto whatever was near me — which in this case, was the right arm of the couch and coincidentally, the right arm of Mary. 

The sound of the thunder was replaced with the onslaught of water against the windows behind the sofa and I let out a breath I didn’t remember inhaling. I looked down at my hand gripping onto Mary’s forearm, fingers digging into the demon ink staring up at me across otherwise pale flesh, and I quickly retreated. 

I cleared my throat. “S-sorry,” I choked, “Reflex.”

Mary didn’t seem phased at all. He turned towards me, his upper torso craning to meet mine perpendicularly, and a hand came to my knee. “What helps?” he asked plainly.

“I…what?” 

“What helps?” he repeated, his tone still matter-of-fact. 

“Oh. Um…” I swallowed and looked down at his hand resting on my left knee, right over the fabric of my pants. I wracked my brain in a feeble attempt to think of something that had aided my fear in the past.

But I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even breathe properly as the heat from his hand sunk through to my covered skin. I imagined that hand six inches higher, resting on my thigh as he spread them apart on the rooftop all those weeks ago—

“Distraction!” I blurted out. I hardly even recognize my voice as I did so. I finally looked over to meet the stare I’d felt carving into my irrationally fearful form and saw those fucking eyes, green and honey and framed with brows that were pursed in a way that conveyed allure. I finished letting out my caged breath. “Something to keep my mind off things and give me another sense to focus on. My parents used to, uh, read to me. Make up stories. When I was old enough, I’d hum songs or picture scenes from movies…”

Embarrassment flooded my bones. I felt childish, weakened, exposed like a raw nerve or a root scabbing from crisp air. We didn’t talk much about our pasts and he wasn’t somewhat I typically indulged with this kind of vulnerability. But as I searched his eyes for a crinkle of amusement or a flash of judgment, I found none. Instead, I found focused pupils and a heady stare. 

He broke the pregnant pause. “Maybe I could distract you with something different.”

I rolled my lips in and stilted the air in my lungs. His hand weighed heavily on my leg. 

“We’ve tried music. And movies,” he began, briefly casting his glance towards the middle of the living room where the TV sat against the wall and we’d sat and listened to Sonic Youth. “We drank shitty beer and ate shitty Chinese—”

“—I liked the Chinese—” I interrupted in a murmur, still watching as he soaked in the visual of my legs pressed together, his hand firm and steady. 

“—so in my eyes, we’ve used sight, hearing, taste, and by association, scent. Which means, we’re missing one…”

Touch, I thought to myself. A shiver whispered down my spine. While his words trailed off, he mimicked the action with his hand. The firm hand that once sat solid on my knee began to travel up the expanse of my left leg. His fingertips ghosted my inner thigh with just enough pressure to make a point. 

I gathered up the courage to look up at him again and this time, the verdant hue of his eyes was overtaken by wide pupils that bore into me like he was clawing his way to comfort. 

I’m not exactly sure what happened next. The haze in my brain matched the low visibility from the storm outside. But before I knew it, I could feel the warmth of his proximity, the grip of his hand tightening on my leg as his other one gripped the nape of my neck, tugging and pulling me into him like a life preserver. 

His kiss was exactly as I had remembered. Soft yet slightly chapped, starting as a fervent pressing of lips on lips that moved into tilted heads and the drag of a tongue against my own parted mouth. I reveled in the feeling and gripped onto his shirt with both hands, fisting it like he’d float away if I let go.

Had I been more cognizant, I’d have laughed at the fact that his action was much more than touch. It was scent (cheap cologne and leather and musk) and it was taste (cheap beer and filmy cigarette residue that I was surprised I could crave) and sight (technicolor behind my eyelids that erupted against dark) and it was sound (of the smacking of lips on lips and the occasional clang of teeth, the rustle of fabric and the springs of the couch as we shifted to accommodate one another). 

And down we fell, my twisted torso mirroring his own as I lay plush against the flat seat of the couch. Mary moved to encapsulate my form with his own, knees brushing the worn plaid upholstery as I parted my legs to gift him space. My hands found the tops of his shoulders and as I gripped, his own hand moved from its entrapment on the nape of my neck to cup my jaw, thumb bruising against bone. I fought the urge to wrap my legs around his body and hold him in like he was to me. Touch. I didn’t care.

But before I could, he slotted one of his legs between my own, the other digging between my left thigh and the seam of the couch. I let out a groan as he pressed the meat of his thigh against my center and he smiled against my lips, nipping at the bottom one. 

Touch. I craved that movement as heat built deep within my abdomen and pooled down past my navel. Shamelessly, I rocked my hips against his leg to chase the feeling of pressure, of grazed fabric on fabric. Testing the proverbial waters. 

Again, a smirk against my lips. His free hand gripped squarely onto my hip. But instead of a teasing nip or squeeze, he pulled away just barely, breath ghosting against my face. 

“That feel good, Doll?” 

I couldn’t begin to think of how to respond. Instead, I canted my hips up again, slower this time, enjoying the friction of denim against my own clothed core. I suppose that was enough of an answer, because he held his leg firm and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. 

He hummed. “You gonna use me to get yourself off, dollface?” he breathed in question. His voice was lust-dipped and low, barely above a whisper yet it rang so heavy in my chest that I could swear it was deeper than the thunder. 

I let out a noise in response (something like a mix between a whimper and a hum) and again rocked up into the muscle of his leg as I pressed my forehead to his, eyes squeezing shut to focus on the sensation blooming between my thighs. 

“Use your words,” Mary all but tutted, voice still low in timbre. 

“Yes,” I sputtered. Fuck dignity.

He hummed in response and captured my lips with his again, pressing hard as he kissed me with purpose. His hand on my jaw moved to grab my other hip and he let his body fall into mine as he pulled my body up into his leg in time with my own movements. “Keep going,” he murmured against my mouth. Touch. Sound.

Unabashedly, I moved my hips into his thigh with the help of his strong grasp. The friction changed as I felt my own arousal begin to dampen the fabric of my panties and I groaned into the kiss at the feel of the cotton gliding over my clit with each quickening movement. 

Mary’s mouth moved across my jaw and down to the crook of my neck and shoulder, and he began to work at the skin there, biting and sucking along the sensitive areas he’d been cataloging since our last time on this couch. My eyes fluttered open half-lidded in the darkness and I raked my hand through his long hair, gripping it against the scalp as I moved senselessly against him, chasing a release I knew he could provide me. 

“Fuck, you’re so eager,” he growled out against my skin. I swear I could feel the pounding of his pulse through our mashed chests and his words only increased a need that I’d been suppressing since he’d fucked me breathless against my kitchen countertop.

Mary’s distinct scent clouded me, wet-straw colored hair hung in my peripherals, cigarettes and cheap beer and the taste of his kiss covered my lips and tongue, fabric rubbed against fabric and wet mouths primed heated skin, and every explosion of his body rocked and pulled and ground against mine into a sensory explosion. Smell. Sight. Taste. Sound. Touch.

No more storm. No more thunder. No more rain. We made our own natural disaster. 

And I was distracted. Fully distracted in that I didn’t recognize it was my voice that let out a breathy ‘so good’. So successfully distracted that the beeping of the notification on my phone was easily discounted. In fact, the subsequent beeping that followed seconds later was also minimized. And the one after that. I could feel the fuzzy feeling building deep below my navel and I chased it with every movement of my body against Mary’s, and the feeling of his own hardness growing against my thigh made me that much more desperate. He was clearly getting something out of this, too. 

“Take what you need,” Mary’s muffled voice sounded against my clavicle. “Take whatever —fuck— take whatever you want, babydoll.”

So, I did. I ground furiously against him and reached for the peak of my climb, oblivious to the buzzing and chiming of my phone on the coffee table beside us. Except, we’d forgotten we weren’t alone, and not everyone was able to ignore the phone’s noises. 

Brutus’ deep, loud barking rang through the sunken den unexpectedly, causing both Mary and I to jump in surprise, Mary’s head knocking against the side of my jaw. He rose up on his forearms instantaneously and gripped his forehead with a loud ‘fuck’ and I matched his reaction as I cupped my jaw and let out a slew of expletives. 

The light from my screen illuminated the once sleeping dog’s face and I groaned out as I haphazardly reached an arm towards the table to feel for my phone. I unlocked the device and was met with a litany of notifications from Des. I groaned and slammed my head back against the couch cushion. For working so hard to get Mary and I alone together, Desiree sure knew how to cock block. 

I brought the phone up and with squinted eyes, I read over the text messages that had gathered over the last hour. 

Des: how’s it going over there? 

Des: i heard the storm is supposed to get even worse

Des: is brutie doing okay? He gets whiny with loud noises sometimes

Des: shit someone on instagram posted that the power is out for like 5,000 people. you still okay?

Des: wow. okay. don’t answer me. you guys must be really busy 😏

Des: there are condoms in the bedside drawer 😘 cum stains wash out best with cold water ❤

Des: you still never told me about his dick btw

By now, Mary had sat back on his haunches and the pressure of his thigh was completely gone from where I most wanted it to be. “Who is it?” he asked, rubbing at his forehead. 

“Desiree,” I replied in a neutral tone.

Mary let out a sarcastic laugh. “What does she want?” He leaned down to try to get a peek at the phone screen and I snapped it to my chest tightly. 

“Just checking in to see how we’re faring the storm!” I said a little too quickly. I cleared my throat to try to force down the nervous lump that was forming. “And wanted to see how Brutus is doing with the thunder.”

I expected Mary to eye me suspiciously, but if he had caught on to anything, he surely didn’t show it. I typed out a quick response to Des, explaining that yes, we were okay, and no, Brutus wasn’t being a handful, before adding a quick ‘fuck you’ and an eyeroll emoji to her later comments. 

I set the phone down on the table and looked up at the man currently straddling my body. My heart began to speed up again as I took in my surroundings. It was dark in the room, but the light from the storm outside and the glow of the kitchen nearby illuminated him with chiaroscuro that any Renaissance painter would envy. Judging by the bulge in his jeans, the interruption wasn’t enough to sully his erection, and he looked down at me as if he was waiting for me to say the words to continue. 

I felt my chest tighten and another crackle of lightning peppered the room in flushed white. What was I doing? This was Mary: resident bad boy, metal enthusiast, best friend of my best friend’s boyfriend, and come to think of it, a guy who never seemed to show up with the same girl at his side. I didn’t sleep around purely from the fact that it was impossible for me to avoid catching feelings. Blame it on the oxytocin release.

But nothing we had done was wrong and nothing had been the result of deeper feelings, right? We were two consenting adults, two friends that enjoyed each other’s company. Couldn’t that be enough? Sex didn’t have to equal commitment or a deeper connection. It could be loose, free, fun. It was what Des always encouraged me to explore, anyway. Right? 

Despite my reasoning, I felt a weight pressing on my sternum and threatening to rise up my throat. His stare was piercing, and all I could smell was leather and cologne and cigarettes, and the taste of him on my bottom lip, and his weight on my legs, and my breath felt like it was going to rip my lungs open and—

“We should turn in for the night,” I blurted out.

I searched his face for any sort of reaction and was met with a split second of confusion before his demeanor went calm. 

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

Take what you want rang heavy in my ears from just moments before. 

“Y-yeah, it’s getting late and I worked today, so…”

He stood up from his position over me and I sat up against the arm of the sofa. I chewed my lip, battling the decision I’d just made for the both of us. 

“I’ll take the couch, you can have Tommy’s bed,” Mary said nonchalantly as he took a swig from the forgotten beer bottle on the coffee table. Oddly chivalrous. 

I shook my head almost immediately. “No, I’ll take the couch.” Mary opened his mouth to protest, but I held firm. “I am not sleeping in Thomas’ bed. That sounds like the 7th circle of hell. My best friend is frequently naked in that bed and who knows when those sheets were last washed.”

Mary laughed at this. A deep chuckle and a shake of his head as he motioned towards me with the beer bottle between pointer finger and thumb. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve never seen her naked.”

Embarrassed, flustered, and wholly unsatisfied from practically humping the metalhead in front of me, I scoffed. “Not like that and not by choice.”

Mary grinned in enjoyment of my response. “Stay up late and play with each others’ tits after a pillow fight?”

A frustrated groan breached my lips. “You’ve been watching way too much porn, Goore,” I said. I reached for one of the long discarded throw pillows and lobbed it at him, feeling a hint of disappointment when he dodged it easily.

He held up both hands, one still holding the bottle. “Suit yourself,” he began, backing up while still facing me, then adding with a smirk, “don’t get too scared with the storm.”

I watched as he turned and made his way down the hallway, beer in hand as he ventured to Thomas’ room. Leaning back into the cushions of the couch, I sighed. 

🜏🜏🜏

My fingers curled around the stiff microfiber blanket that I’d lazily thrown over myself as I’d sunk into Thomas’ well-worn plaid couch.

I tried to coat myself in the scratchy throw to avoid the feeling of the couch cushions on the exposed skin of my legs and arms. It was a touch-memory that brought me back to flying high in the same den, legs straddling the man that now slept peacefully down the hallway in the master bedroom. 

As much as I didn’t want to reconcile with the feelings of fear, I was on edge. The movie set my panic into motion, but the worsening storm was what lit the engine. It had progressed from the percussive pelting drops against the windows and siding to roars of wind and sprays of harsh rain that sounded like fire hoses. Thunder boomed every so often and I heard its fallout whip through the trees with horrid whistles — true cries of the damned. 

I let out a shaky breath and reached my hand down to pet the dog curled on the bed on the floor. Focus on the fur. Soft. Spindle it between your fingertips. Smooth. Warm. My heartbeat started to calm and my lizard brain crept back into its recesses. 

My eyes relaxed in their shut state and I nuzzled a bit harder into the pillow. I felt my exhaustion begin to take hold. And just as I began to float into the downward spiral of sleep, a boisterous crack sliced through the sky. It reminded me of the jet planes that flew at the air shows when I was little - the ones that broke the sound barrier - and my shriek that followed rivaled in volume. 

Bright white lightning strobed through the windows of the house. A quick succession of flashes flickered like a searchlight on the fritz. The house went dark again. 

The dog's ears perked as he sat up and I followed suit, blanket bunched around my knees and clutched with firm fists to my chest. Just like after a blinding camera flash, my eyes were shot. I could just barely make out the shapes of the furniture and walls. 

“You okay?” a voice asked mere feet away from me.

Startled, I let out another quick scream before slamming my palm tight against my mouth. My eyes continued to adjust and I noticed the figure turned from swirling black mass to humanoid to Mary within a split second.

“I’m fine,” I breathed out. I brought my hands down to grip onto the couch cushions. Mary stood before me in his boxers. Messy hair tousled around his shoulders and chest in waves a la 1980s glam rock (though I was certain that bedhead was a more likely culprit) and willed myself not to search through the inky black of the den to determine if he was wearing a shirt or not. 

“Do you usually scream like a banshee when you’re fine?” he quipped as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

No shirt I noted. 

I rubbed my hands against my face, pressing my fingertips into the sockets of my eyes. “Just not a fan of storms.”

“Yeah, so you said.” A moment passed. The only sound in the air was the howling wind from outside until he broke the quiet. “You sure you’re good out here?”

“I’ve got Brutie.”

“Alright,” he sighed. After a moment, I could feel he’d left again, and I willed myself back into the couch cocoon I’d built myself. 

I must have fallen asleep. Be it the adrenaline crash or the exhaustion, I wasn’t sure how I’d finally managed. It was in vain, however, when another loud burst of lightning and thunder rumbled through the house. The same strobe of light pulsated briefly, and in the distance, a booming crash. Before I knew it, I was on my feet. 

Fuck this fuck this fuck this I whispered to myself as I sped through the house. My hands reached out in front of me as bumpers to the still unfamiliar landscape, and after padding down the hallway in bare feet, I reached around for the doorknob to Thomas’ room. 

His room was better lit than the living room. The orange-y glow of the one working street lamp in the distance painted the walls with a near apocalyptic hue and illuminated Mary’s sleeping form on the bed. He was facing away from me, but I could tell he was out (shocking considering the resonance of the lightning and thunder). 

I bit my lip and crossed my arms over my shoulders as I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I didn’t even know what I was doing here. I sure as hell didn’t want to sleep in Thomas’ bed, and the thought of sleeping next to Mary made me more anxious than anything. Well, except the storm. What was I thinking? I felt like a child standing at the foot of their parents’ bed after having a nightmare, waiting with fearful eyes and too-small pajamas for them to invite me in for the night. 

Duller thunder hummed outside and I was reminded of the fear that had clenched my chest just minutes prior. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt having another person with me, could it? Clearly, the dog wasn’t enough.

I slowly sank onto the opposite edge of the bed, making myself featherlight, and lifted one leg up along the mattress as my other foot held firm against the floor. Mary didn’t move. I swung the other leg up onto the bed and pulled the covers down before sliding under, the shifting sheets whisper silent, and leaned back against the pillow. 

I lay board stiff, hand on my chest, and watched as the tree branches dappled the streetlight in whooshing patterns across the ceiling. Like dark sparkles, it lulled me into a sense of calm, and I let my eyes fall shut again. The bed shifted and I felt Mary turn over, arm flopping out towards the middle of the bed to land hand first into my arm. His eyebrows crinkled in his sleep and his eyelids fluttered wearily at the feeling of his skin against my own. 

“Doll?” he asked, eyes stained with sleep. 

I turned my head to face him, hands still clasped against my chest. “Sorry, I—” I began, taking a moment to let out a shaky breath, “ — I freaked out.”

I braced for a chuckle, eyeroll, anything that was typical of Mary, but it never came. Instead, he lifted up the blankets as if to silently beckon me over. “C’mere,” he croaked, voice clearly still lethargic. 

In any other situation, I’d take pause, but this wasn’t any situation. I scrambled over like a child. He tucked his arm around me and brought me to his bare chest. I could smell the fragrance 

of the shampoo he used as I rested my head in the crook of his neck (I guess he’d been telling the truth about that shower), and my own arms came up to curl against his skin. An arm flopped around my middle, pulling me impossibly close, and our knees brushed under the blanket. 

Surprisingly, I felt calmness wash over me. I likened it to the bear-like embrace, skin-on-skin, some sort of instinctual response to the comfort of another human. But his heartbeat pumped strongly beneath my fingertips and I could feel his steady breath floating across the top of my hair and down my neck, and in that moment, I wondered if it was a little more than just human instinct. 

A beat percussed in time. I traced my fingertips along the skin of his arm, ghost-light, dipping down the valleys and peaks of muscle that I knew flexed taut when he strummed his Epiphone SG. Goosebumps appeared under my digits and he shifted under the sheet. 

“Tickles,” he murmured atop my head.

“Sorry,” I whispered, bringing my hands back to rest against his torso. Sandwiching them between the cotton of my oversized tee and the smooth skin of his pecs would have to do. 

It was quiet — so quiet that I assumed he had fallen asleep again. But his soft breaths were broken by his even softer voice. “You’re cute when you’re scared,” he said. 

I let out a chuckle. “Gee, thanks.”

He hummed and although I couldn’t see it, I could hear his tongue wet his lips, jaw pressing against the top of my head from the movement. “It’s different from the typical Dahlia.”

My mind raced back to our earlier conversation, the one where he’d accused me of hiding my emotions. Is this what he meant? Was fear what he considered transparency? I looked up at him quizzically, breaking the connection of his chin using my crown as an actual headrest. 

His eyes were open, and despite the foreglow of the streetlights and darkness, I could better feel his stare than see it. His hair was still a step down from a rat’s nest, tangled from sleep, and strands hung down around his angular face. His cheeks were beginning to stubble with five o’clock shadow. Breaths pushed past his lips steadily, even, but beneath the pads of my fingers, I could sense his heart pumping solidly in his chest. Only a hairline fracture separated our faces. 

Outside, a whistle of strong wind thwipped against the siding of the house like a widow’s cry and my body instinctively tensed. His arm that had lethargically slung across my waist impulsively tightened and he pulled me even closer. 

“Hey…” he soothed. His brows were drawn in concern, and his hand traveled from the c-bout of my waist and up, up, up my tricep. It was less of a greeting and more of a reminder to land back in the present, to focus on my senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, sound), to remember I was right here, right in this moment, and I wasn’t alone. 

The mortar holding the bricks built around my heart began to disintegrate. Every block melded in a bond pattern to cage in my overcommitting self, to protect from obsession, from the inevitable swoon that I had felt with Brody and had ripped out from under me — they began to fall, piece by piece. 

It was the both of us that drew our mouths to meet. The kiss was lazy, sleepy, languid at first, morphing into prolonged pecks that added a harmony to the pattering rain, gusts of wind, and bouts of thunder rumbling the outside earth. His hand continued to rub against my upper arm and beat by beat, the kiss heightened, and slowly, surely, lips met tongue, and then teeth, and I was angling my neck to the right to keep him from digging into the pillow. 

Mary shifted. His fingers gripped my arm as he moved to lay halfway on top of me. Our legs tangled together, and as he slid his own against my calf, barely stilling, I was certain he’d just discovered that my nightwear consisted of only an oversized t-shirt and panties. 

I could sense his erection pressing through the thin cotton of his boxers against my thigh. My brain zapped back to hours prior when he had boxed me in on the couch and let me take pleasure from his strong quads. A fire raged within me that rivaled my hair spilling across Thomas’ pillows like a red sea.

Mary’s hand moved to skim under the hem of my shirt, tracing against my hip bone before it, too, went up, up, up, hovering just over the curve of my breast before cupping it. His finger traced the outline of my nipple. Once again, surroundings faded. Nothing else existed at this moment, here, right now. 

I exhaled shakily against him. Our lips were still passionately pendulating in a rhythm that the both of us had mastered by now. I took a leap of faith and pressed my thigh to his crotch, earning me a squeeze to my chest and his own shaky exhale. 

Releasing my breast, Mary swept his hand to the waistband of my panties. His fingers, rough and calloused from frets and strings, dipped underneath. He sat up slightly and broke the kiss. The smooth cotton was seesawed down my legs in a series of yanks from the free hand, and he quickly repeated the action on his own boxers, tossing them aside before returning his hand back to my chest. 

“Mary,” I breathed out.

“What?” he echoed. His eyes searched for something as he drank in my expression. 

I swallowed lightly. “I-” I began, not knowing exactly what I was saying.

But he did. “I’ve got you,” he said. His other hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my eyes. 

He kissed me again and fully framed my body with his own. I relaxed back into the pillow and he sat back to dip his hands underneath my shirt, pushing it up and off with a temporary break in our lips’ union. As he slotted himself between my legs, I looked up at him, body completely bare. I felt the anxiety creep into my chest and I was certain I looked visibly unsure — not at the prospect of what was to happen, no, but what would follow. How this would, or could, change things. 

“So goddamn pretty when you’re spread out like this,” he murmured as his hands roamed up and down my torso. I took the moment to soak up the image in front of me. His lean torso was flexed as he ran his hands along my breasts and stomach, and his cock stood heavy against his pelvis, bobbing with every movement of his touch.

He gripped himself with a soft moan, stroking slowly, methodically, and his eyes raked over my form. This wasn’t our first encounter, no, but I felt truly naked for the first time. 

With oddly found confidence, I reached forward to grasp at the junction of his shoulder and neck. I pulled him towards me and his other hand shot out to brace himself against the squeaking mattress. His stroking continued and I jolted when his knuckles came in contact with the ache between my legs. Without any spoken words, he lined himself up and then embraced me, hand on my shoulder as we met chest to chest, covering me like a blanket. 

His pause was obvious — an unspoken ask of consent to proceed which I answered with a soft kiss. I trusted him, and I assumed he trusted me. We both craved the connection, to complete the incomplete. 

As Mary pushed in, I melted beneath him. His tip pushed past and he groaned and buried his face in the curve of my neck. My hands darted out to grip onto his back and pull him close. I wanted to feel him take up space in my ribs. 

Inch by inch he sank before canting steadily. I could feel every bit of him as he rocked in and out, pulling and pushing as my heat gripped him, and for some reason it felt different. Not just raw, but whole. I took in every bit of him physically, but as we moved together in the nightglow, I also consumed the parts he’d been dressing up in leather and denim and metal and dissolved it into my flesh. I took him. 

And through my euphoria of connection, I barely registered my small eruptions of noises that highlighted each stroke of his cock to my core. I focused on the sensation of sprinkled electricity spreading from my cunt outwards, and his hot breath on my neck that I drank in like I was oxygen-starved. 

Mary’s hips began to stutter as he thrusted a little harder into my own and my legs moved to wrap instinctively around him. I keened out louder, and he lifted his head to look at me again. 

The eye contact was searing. Hot. It charred my retinas, but this time, I didn’t care. He must have sensed the vulnerability because his hand cupped my jaw and he ran his thumb across my cheekbone before our foreheads met together. 

“I’ve got you,” he repeated, “Fuck, I’ve got you.”

Like his own hail Mary. I believed him. He had me now — I was in his clutches, both literally and figuratively. 

His pace increased to match my ever-racing pulse. It was still steadied, sleepily focused, and I dug my fingers into the flesh of his back as I clenched down against the movement of his length, nearly trembling at the pull at my navel as each drag of him spurred fire. It was building, and I let it. My breath began to stutter and I felt tears at my waterline. The sensory overload was rhapsody and the simple, obvious connection was juxtaposed by the chaotic climax lapping at my center. I was so close it almost hurt. 

I moaned his name in a half-whimper and he must have felt my urgency and desperation and the increased slick coating our joined union because he crushed his lips to mine. His thumb dug into the side of my chin as he drove firmly into my aching need. But the jerking of his hips was almost too much and I could tell he wasn’t far behind me. 

As my thighs began to tremble at his sides, he broke the kiss. I looked at him with desperate longing. 

“Let it go, Doll,” he murmured to me. 

And unlike every other situation in life where I found myself stubbornly resisting direction, I obeyed. I followed his demand and allowed the fuzzy heat of my release to unfurl around him. I cried out in rapture and he swallowed the sound with an opened mouth kiss at the moment of impact. I tensed around him and my pussy spasmed with every lunge of his hard cock.

“Good girl,” Mary praised as gripped hard onto my shoulder and pressed his head to mine, lips separated, and I was enveloped in a curtain of golden-brown tangled strands. He began to move faster against me and I knew my orgasm had spurred something deep within him as he moaned out, “So good for me, taking me so damn well.”

His thumb brushed the breadth of my lip and dipped into my mouth, pulling down just barely against my tongue and teeth. I looked up at him with full eyes, grey hues drowned by pupils swimming from release, and I inwardly begged him to complete me as aftershocks of a violent orgasm short circuited. 

“So tight,” he grunted in response. “Fuck— feel so good around me, babydoll.” His hands moved to grip my hips and with a few more jolts of his hips, his cock twitched and he groaned, features melting as he spilled inside of me. His body jerked with each spurt and his fingers dug into the flesh covering my pelvic bone as he rode out his high.

Mary collapsed into me and I allowed my eyes to close as we savored the aftermath. I’m not sure how long it was, minutes, maybe more, but eventually he pulled his softened dick from me and I let out a long breath of satisfaction. My hand moved to rest against my chest as I digested the gnawing deep within me that questioned what this was. 

Mary fell to his side and pressed a quick peck to my lips before rolling onto his back and mimicking my sigh. A brief silence filled the sweat-scented air, and I moved my hand to grasp at his, squeezing it, only to receive a slight squeeze back.

Our ragged breaths eventually calmed and I opened my eyes to the textured plaster of the ceiling. 

“You good?” Mary asked after a minute. I rolled my lips inward as I thought about the weight of those two words. 

“Yeah, I’m…I’m good— I’m great,” I replied.  It was the truth. 

He hummed in response and pulled the flat sheet over himself. 

“Glad I could distract you,” He said as he nestled into the right side of the bed. Before turning, he added, “get some sleep.”

My eyes searched for patterns in the swirls of the painted gypsum of the ceiling as stillness settled in. Mary’s quiet breathing turned to soft snores. Despite the calm, serene relief from a shared orgasm, my chest was tight from the inward battle of how unbelievably intimate that experience was and how deeply I was freefalling into a mess of adoration for the man next to me.

I wondered how he could so easily turn to the side and fall asleep.

🜏🜏🜏

Despite the after effects of the record-breaking storm, Des and Thomas were able to make it home a couple of days after they’d left, right on schedule. 

They greeted Mary with their normal affections (a pat on the back from Thomas and a warm wave from Des), and the conversation immediately turned from a Brutus report to a play-by-play of Thomas’ shows out of town. 

Des noted there was no sign of her best friend, which wasn’t a surprise. She’d received my text the day before that I was heading home and that Mary was fine staying the additional time. And despite her prodding, I’d remained tightlipped.

Both she and Thomas were unaware of the telltale morning after where I’d woken up to sunbeams instead of lightning, choosing to pack up my belongings and head out early to check on my own pet at home. 

They were also unaware of the brief goodbye between Mary and I as I readied to leave — him, acting cool, aloof, and casual, as if nothing had changed, while I tried my best to mirror his demeanor with little success. Because as much as I tried to build the bricks back up, I’d let him in the night before, and he’d taken root inside the boundaries of my chest. 

I suppose that just like a day spent thrifting, I’d gone into every interaction with Mary with no expectations, and each time I’d come out with something I didn’t anticipate. The goldmines outweighed the insolvencies. I didn’t know if I wanted him to be aware of this.

Above all, I was happy for my momentary blissful unawareness (at least until later during a phone call with Des) of Thomas’ outburst upon entering his bedroom after Mary had left. His exclamation of “god damn it!” rang as loud as the thunder two nights previous, causing Des to dart in with a “what?” on her lips and the expectation of disaster. 

Thomas sighed, stained top sheet in hand. “They fucked on my bed.”

taglist: @soup-14 @copiasghoulfriend @thew0man @na1ven3vy @portaltothevoid @copias-juicebox @the-lisechen @anamelessfool @discountdemonwarehouse @oaksdottir

[fishwithtitz]

I’ll bring a mop 😏😜

The Five Times I Hooked Up with Mary Goore (and the One Time I Couldn’t)

Summary: Mary had a certain…reputation around town. Equal blends of obnoxious and quiet, depending on who he was around, and not afraid of stirring up a little trouble if the occasion was right. The elderly were afraid of him, children gawked at him, and the “straight-and-narrow” folks were annoyed by his antics and “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. I’d heard stories of him being kicked out of bars for all sorts of interesting behaviors and fighting mouthy assholes in alleyways. I didn’t know him well enough to know if it was purely a stage act that filtered into his interactions or if it was really who he was. Prior to tonight, I hadn’t cared enough to really think about it.

“You coming?” His voice broke me from my mental back-and-forth and I looked up at him, noticing he had walked a few steps ahead of me, his body now turned to face me with his arm motioning toward the side yard.

Fuck it, I thought, nodding my head as I jogged to catch up to him. I guess I’m spending the evening with Mary Goore.

Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI

Mary Goore x OFC / 7.2k words

Warnings: language, graphic description of oral sex, mentions of animal harm (no animal harm actually occurs), recreational drug use

ao3 link

Chapter One: Hook-up #1: The Rooftop

It wasn’t that I was against going to a house party. During the handful of years that I’d experienced adulthood (and some of my teenage years as well), I’d been to plenty, and I’d seen some shit that still brought smiles (and shudders) to my face. 

No, it wasn’t a feeling of disdain or a lack of desire to be at the loud, crowded ranch-style home on the rougher side of town full of ornery drunk young adults; it was that I didn’t have the social battery to play the “party game” tonight. 

Desiree had dragged me out all but against my will. (“It will be fun!” She’d said. “Come on…a couple bands are going to play!”) Although I knew she was hoping her words would act as a catalyst for my desire to attend, it only made me roll my eyes. I’d been engulfed in the local music scene for ages and it was always a toss up which type of bands you’d see playing at house parties. 

Eventually, I’d resigned to my fate after she’d both used her big brown puppy eyes (which I’d lovingly nicknamed her “Puss in Boots” tactic), and a confession that she was trying to sleep with the guy that lived there and needed a little support. “Friends don’t let friends get cockblocked,” she’d argued.  So, after an hour of preening on her end and me smelling which clothes seemed the least likely to need a wash, we’d hopped in a rideshare and headed to the party on the other side of town. 

I’d lost track of Des after about ten minutes when she’d homed in on Thomas, the illustrious party-thrower and member of her current favorite local band. I’d received a pleading look and an air kiss as she’d locked arms with him and disappeared into the crowd. I assumed this meant she was abandoning me and would make it up to me later somehow. 

Currently, I stood with my back hugging the wood-paneled wall of a sunken den with a mostly gone PBR in hand, people watching. I sighed and took the last sip from my can, cringing a bit at the warmth and watery taste that a last sip always provides, and chucked the can in a nearby overflowing trash bin. 

The den wasn’t as full as the rest of the larger rooms of the house, which is one of the reasons I chose it. A thrash metal band was playing in the partially finished basement downstairs and their sound was loud and gritty enough to pierce through the subfloor and into the main level. Despite this, a few groups of people congregated around the den in various stages of conversation and drunkenness. 

I pushed myself off the wall and hopped up the half steps to round into the kitchen with a hope that it had been long enough for Des to reappear somewhere. I was almost instantly met with a crowd of people circling around the kitchen table in an energetic game of beer pong. My eyes peered through the space between two guys cheering on the team closest to us, and I could quickly see why the game was so lively: each successful shot resulted in both a drink and the removal of an article of clothing of the opposing team. 

I glanced across the kitchen to the clock on the stove. 11:17 PM. I’d been here for almost an hour and a half already. My social battery was nearly dead at this point, so I decided to hop out to the back patio for a little reprieve. It was surprisingly empty (which I credited to the band playing and the strip pong) and I slid into a plastic deck chair before pulling my vape out of my pocket and folding my legs up to criss-cross in the seat of the chair. 

I wasn’t sure how much time passed as I leaned back and gazed at the stars from between the branches of the old trees craning over the house and yard, but it couldn’t have been that long before I heard the screen door slide open and the light clunking of boot-trodden footsteps approaching. I didn’t glance up, instead flipping the vape back and forth through my fingers as if lost in thought. 

The sound of a seemingly male voice, who I attributed to the boot-man, interrupted my calm. 

“That shit is terrible for your lungs.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “I don’t do it that often,” I replied coolly. I’d hoped to escape conversation for a while by coming outside and I wasn’t all that interested in small talk. 

I glanced over to see the person who’d spoken to me and was met with a smirk and shrug from a mystery man. Golden brown hair hung down past his shoulders and onto his back, framing his angular face. His cheeks looked ashen - almost as if dark makeup had been wiped off - and he held a beer bottle in hand as he leaned against the railing of the old wood porch. His eyes didn’t falter and I searched to see if I recognized them. Were they green? Hazel? I couldn’t quite tell in the darkness of the patio and I surely didn’t know who he was.

Breaking our stare, and in a slight act of defiance, I took a long pull from my vape pen. The bitter, smooth taste of THC danced down my throat and filled my lungs. I exhaled the skunky-smelling vapor, trying to politely aim towards the other side of the patio, and immediately started to cough. Hard. 

“Oh shit, I didn't know that’s what you were doing,” the guy said with a look of surprise and a small laugh. I wanted to retort with something snarky (“What else would I be doing out here?”), but when I tried to form the words, I was overcome by continuous strings of deep coughs and wheezes as I tried to intake air. 

“Here.” He took a step closer and held out his beer to me. I furrowed my brow, my arm still covering my mouth as I shook through my coughing fit, but ultimately accepted it with a slight nod. The beer was cool on my throat and helped to soothe the self-inflicted soreness. I only needed a couple of small swigs before my breathing seemed back to normal and I could hand him back the bottle. 

“Thanks, um—...” I paused, looking him over in search of his name. 

“Mary,” he finished for me, accepting the beer back, “Mary Goore.”

“Dahlia,” I offered back, earning a tip of his bottle in reply. 

Now that I’d fumbled my way through breaking the ice, I couldn’t help but sneak a better look at him. He was surely taller than me. His frame appeared lean and muscular from what I could see underneath his leather battle jacket and tight black jeans. My suspicions about the shoes were also confirmed. He was wearing a pair of black combat boots that matched the sound of his clunking footsteps. 

“I don't think I've seen you around before,” he said after a beat, breaking me from my obvious study of his appearance. I looked away and took a much smaller drag from my vape pen. 

“I'm here with a friend. Or, well, I was.” I licked my lips, eyes cast through the screen door as I gazed at the busy kitchen, “I kind of lost track of her.”

“She ditched you? That's kind of shitty,” he replied.

I turned to look at him again and was met with those piercing eyes. Green I decided. Definitely dark green. Mossy. “I'm pretty sure she's off with Thomas. Somewhere.” I motioned my hand haphazardly in the air. “I don't know. It’s been over an hour since I’ve seen her.”

He chuckled at this and took another pull from his bottle. “Yeah, if she’s with Tommy, I wouldn’t expect to see her for a while.” He paused and looked towards the direction of the screen door before looking back at me again. “You not into beer pong?”

I shrugged and looked in at the kitchen again. “Bad aim.” He nodded and at this point I noticed that the girls on the losing team were nearly nude, only wearing their bras and panties, while the guys on the opposing team had only lost their shirts. “I also don’t feel like taking my clothes off.”

A smile graced his lips at my words. “So, you won't be following in your friend's footsteps then?”

I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks at his innuendo and I looked away to hide my embarrassment. It wasn’t that I was against casual sex. I wasn’t prude, per say, but the idea of talking about it openly and alone with a stranger made me a little uncomfortable. 

“Sometimes, I just need a break from the crowd. The noise and the...feeling of so many people around me—… It's nice to be somewhere a little more open and calm,” I said softly.

I exactly don’t know why I said it — I didn’t owe Mary an explanation and I certainly didn’t need to get personal with him. I suppose I was trying to steer the conversation away from my best friend’s hookup and the raunchy game happening inside.

Mary let out a chuckle at this admission and my brows furrowed defensively. “What?” I asked. 

He shook his head a little and the light pouring through the screen door to the kitchen illuminated his face, showing that the corners of his mouth were tugged in an amused smirk. “You crave calm, yet you come to a house party?” I felt myself bristle a little at this. “You’re interesting, Dahlia.”

He cast me a smile that was equal parts cocky and warm, and god, there were those eyes again staring right at me. I shook the thought from my head. 

“Why are you out here, then?” I asked in a defensive retort.

Mary shrugged again, nonchalant as ever, and took another sip of his nearly empty beer. “Lost a bet,”  he answered. 

I felt my heart drop as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Was he out here talking to me because of some stupid punishment for losing to his friends? ‘Go talk to the weird chick sitting by herself outside’? He must have noticed my reaction, because he quickly interjected. “—Not like that! I'm avoiding the guy I owe $20.” 

“Oh, so you're nosy and you're a sore loser,” I shot back in jest, turning my body in my chair to face him a little better. 

Mary rolled his eyes. “No, he's just an asshole and I don't want to give him the satisfaction of winning.”

I laughed a little at his response. “Arrogant, too.” I quipped. This earned me another cheeky smile. I felt the corner of my lips tug down in my own slight smirk and started to flip the vape pen between my fingers again. 

“You gonna share that?” Mary motioned to the vape, his eyebrow slightly raised in question. 

“I thought this shit was bad for your lungs?” I snapped back his own words quickly, a grin plastered to my cheeks. 

This earned me a laugh from Mary, warm and genuine, and he raised his hands up to his chest in defeat. “To be fair, I didn’t know you had weed. That changes things.”

I leaned forward in my chair, almost falling out as I passed the vape pen over to him. He raised the pen to his lips and I watched as they pursed around the mouthpiece. Before I could realize it, I found myself thinking about the fullness of his lips and the slant of his jaw as he took an expert pull. I sucked my own lips into my mouth slightly in response, trying to will-down the fluttering in my gut. He exhaled slowly and passed the pen back to me.

His eyes zeroed in on my form. I realized that I had probably been caught watching, and in a last ditch effort to hide the obvious expression on my face, I rolled my eyes. “Show off,” I said. 

Mary simply grinned proudly in response. Although I didn’t really know him, I can’t say I was surprised at his cockiness. We sat in silence for a few moments (which was weirdly not uncomfortable), and I leaned back once more in my chair to study the pin-pricked stars in the inky sky. It was only getting later, and the likelihood of me meeting back up with Des was slim. After a handful of minutes, I slipped my vape pen back in my pocket and began to zip up my jacket, standing up to stretch out my tired limbs. 

“You off?” Mary asked, breaking the calm quiet. He had since moved to sit in the other vacant chair just next to his spot on the railing, and one of his legs was folded up to rest along his other as he reclined in the plastic seat. I allowed my eyes to travel the expanse of his body, noting the well-worn band tee logo hidden underneath the patch-strewn jacket, as well as the holes and rips dotting the length of his pants. 

I mentally shook myself from my glance and put my hands in my pockets. I was staring again. “Yeah, I don't see Des returning anytime soon and I really don't feel like trying to buy my way into a crowd right now,” I began to rock back and forth on my heels as I studied my shoes. 

The sound of glass hitting something hard broke my focus and I jumped. Mary had thrown his bottle into the trash can across the patio and was standing up from his seat. When I looked up at him, he had a coy smile on his face. He must have seen me react to the noise. “Let’s get out of here, then,” he reasoned, walking over towards me. 

“Let's?...as in you and me?” I asked, eyebrow slightly cocked. 

He shrugged his shoulders and his hands found his own jean pockets. “Yeah, why not?”

I paused. 

It wasn’t like I hadn’t ever heard about Mary Goore before. On the contrary, I had heard many stories about him through the grapevine. We were both active in our local music scene - him, as a musician, and me, as a spectator - and hung out in some of the same circles. I’m sure I’d seen his band play at least once or twice at some point and I’d noticed him at various gigs and bars around town. I’d never met him before, though — his vibe was a bit too forward and intimidating for me to approach him in the past. 

Mary had a certain…reputation around town. Equal blends of obnoxious and quiet, depending on who he was around, and not afraid of stirring up a little trouble if the occasion was right. The elderly were afraid of him, children gawked at him, and the “straight-and-narrow” folks were annoyed by his antics and “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. I’d heard stories of him being kicked out of bars for all sorts of interesting behaviors and fighting mouthy assholes in alleyways. I didn’t know him well enough to know if it was purely a stage act that filtered into his interactions or if it was really who he was. Prior to tonight, I hadn’t cared enough to really think about it. 

Why did he want to spend time with me, of all people? There was an entire house full of partiers he likely knew and got along with. Plus, the now nude girls at the beer pong table were definitely a more enticing choice than a quiet girl getting high on the patio while she waited for her friend, the social lubricator. 

“You coming?” His voice broke me from my mental back-and-forth and I looked up at him, noticing he had walked a few steps ahead of me, his body now turned to face me with his arm motioning toward the side yard. 

Fuck it, I thought, nodding my head as I jogged to catch up to him. I guess I’m spending the evening with Mary Goore. 

🜏🜏🜏

Mary had led me through to the front yard of the house with ease before sidling up to the sidewalk towards the more urban part of town. I followed next to him and matched his pace, hands in my pockets as I looked around at the dark street. We were mostly quiet as we walked, which I didn’t mind. Maybe he reasoned that I didn’t want to engage in small talk since I’d purposefully separated myself from the party crowd, or maybe he was content to just walk. I wasn’t sure but was grateful nonetheless. 

We ended up at a 24-hour convenience store a few blocks from Thomas’ house. Mary motioned towards the door as if asking nonverbally if I wanted to come in, but I shook my head, holding up my vape pen to tell him that I was fine outside while he did whatever he’d planned on doing. 

It wasn’t a long wait, probably five or ten minutes, and I’d had enough time to take a few more hits of my vape pen to calm my nerves. My anxiety had started to bloom in my chest. I didn’t know Mary and I was alone with him, in the dark, walking around an area of town I wasn’t familiar with. I had made sure to ping Des with my location, sending a simple text of “left for a walk, be home later” (though I doubted she was in any position to check her phone). 

Mary emerged from the gas station with an armful of snacks and a brown bag stuffed with…something. I shook my head in disbelief and pocketed the vape pen again as I followed him down another unknown street. 

“Here, put these in your pockets since you have so many of them—” Mary grabbed a couple of small bags of chips from the arm holding them and held them out to me before stopping and turning to face me, “—why the fuck are you wearing cargo pants?”

My eyes widened in defensive disbelief. “I like them!”

He laughed and cocked a brow at me. “Is that like a...scouts thing? You one of those doomsday preppers or secret militiamen?” I could feel the snark dripping from his tone. He was enjoying this. 

“They're literally just pants! They're comfy and they're cute and I—” I sighed, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose, “I do not have to explain this to you.”

Mary pushed the bags of chips into my chest playfully and I quickly struggled to grab onto them. Dropping them would be the icing on the shit cake of embarrassment. 

“...you didn't steal these, did you?” I asked as I eyed him cautiously. 

Mary, who had begun walking again, turned his head to look at me with a glance of disbelief, surprise, and possibly a tinge of irritation. I felt my heart sink a little with guilt and I let out another defeated noise. 

“Fine. I'm only doing this because I feel like I owe you,” I grumbled, stuffing the small chip bags into my cargo pockets. 

“Scouts honor?”

“Fuck off, Goore.”

We walked down a winding sidewalk, the street completely empty and illuminated eerily with various old street lamps, some flickering in exhaustion. It had grown quiet again (except for the shaking, crunching noise of the chips in my pockets) and this time I felt like I had to break the dead air. 

“Where are you taking me?” I asked quietly. 

He didn’t turn to address me. “Somewhere quiet and calm. Just like you wanted.”

I felt that familiar heat rising to my cheeks and my momentary anxiety cooled. “Thanks,” I eventually replied. 

“Don't mention it,” he said with a slight smile, before his expression changed to one of seriousness, “Really, don't mention it. I have a reputation to uphold.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I've heard. Did you really microwave a cat?”

Mary suddenly stopped in front of me and turned around, causing me to nearly run smack-dab into his chest. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed with furrowed brows. “I might be an asshole, but I don't fuck with animals. That shit is psycho.” He shook his head and pointed to one of my pockets, the one holding the vape, and I took this as his way of asking for it without really asking. I handed it to him and we started walking again. After a long drag, he looked over at me, our paces now matched, and exhaled with a lewd smile. “The only pussy I eat is in between the woman’s legs that are squeezing my head.” 

I cleared my throat to hide my noise of surprise at his boldness. It didn’t work and he laughed at the stunned expression on my face. 

“So, um, what’s in the brown bag?” I asked, changing the subject. 

“A forty. And shaved ice.” Mary handed me back the pen and motioned to the left before turning down another quiet street. I looked at him curiously. “Come on, we're almost there.”

Mary started to jog off the path through some bushes that lined the sidewalk and I scurried to keep up with him. It was almost comical watching his lean body try to move quickly without dropping his bounty and I had to hold back a snort. He led us through a bank of trees and through some overgrown grass (during which I made sure to threaten that if I got a tick I would beat his ass) before stopping in front of a small building. 

It was an old, abandoned warehouse that sat just off the main road. The structure was all cement and brick with worn shingles and overgrown vines, but in the starlight, it looked oddly beautiful. 

Mary walked up to the side of the structure and pushed some tree starts to the side, revealing an old ladder that had been purposefully tucked away. “I was hoping this would still be here,” he breathed out as he pulled it to the side and repositioned it against the cracked facade of the building, wiggling it a little to test its sturdiness. “Come on.”

Mary took the paper bag he’d been carrying and gripped it between his teeth as he climbed up the rickety ladder. I hesitantly followed, bouncing a little on the bottom step to make sure it wouldn’t break under my weight, and eventually hoisted myself onto the dirty, rough shingles of the building’s roof. Mary held his hand out to help me find my footing, and we walked over to what looked like the most stable area of the top of the graffitied building. 

We sat down beside one another and Mary started arranging his goodies. I, on the other hand, leaned back, my hands stabilizing behind me with knees bent so that I could glance up at the night sky. The moon was visible and constellations dotted the great expanse above us. Everything was much more visible from our elevated position. Sounds of crickets and a faraway frog teetered through the air. He was right —  this was much more peaceful than the party. I could feel a smile creep onto my face again at his thoughtfulness.

“So, tell me how come I haven’t seen you around before?” Mary started as he spread his legs out in a v-shape against the tiles of the roof. 

“You probably have and just haven’t noticed. I’ve seen you a couple of times at bars and stuff.” I played with the zipper on one of my pants pockets and tried to sound as neutral as possible. I didn’t want to give the impression that I cared that he didn’t know who I was…even if that wasn’t necessarily true. 

“Shit, sorry,” Mary awkwardly laughed and shot me an apologetic smile.  

I returned it warmly. “It’s fine. I don’t have much of a memorable face…or presence for that matter. I’ve come to accept that.”

“I’m guessing you’re into the music scene? Or is that just your friend?” Mary opened up the brown paper bag and took out the forty and a lidded double cup of shaved ice. I watched as he unsheathed the second cup and distributed the now sloshing ice between both cups, before cracking open the beer to pour into both of them. 

“I dabble,” I passed him a small grin and accepted the cup with a silent nod, “I’m not as active as I used to be. Life and…stupid shit got in the way.” I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and looked down at the icy mess in the cup.

“Boyfriend?” Mary questioned. 

I nodded. “Ex.”

“Ahh. Someone I know?” he asked as he took a swig of his drink.

“Brody Gillings.”

Mary immediately sputtered out the beer concoction and laughed loudly, wiping the corner of his mouth with his leather jacket sleeve. “You dated that tool? Oh fuck, that’s funny. I’m so sorry.”

I watched him as he shook his head, still laughing, and rolled my eyes in response. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get it out,” I paused and took a sip of my own drink.The taste of hoppy beer had been muddled down with water and gritty ice and I couldn’t help the disgusted look that painted my face. “Jesus, Mary, this is awful,” I choked out.

Mary returned the chuckle and to my surprise, he looked down at his own cup sheepishly. “Yeah, beer slushies sounded like a good idea in my mind, but come to think of it, I’ve never put ice in my beer. Shit’s watery as fuck.”

I shot him an apologetic glance before allowing a beat of silence to overtake the rooftop. I found myself speaking before I even realized it was my voice that cut through the air. “It…wasn’t always bad. He was charming for a while. Introduced me to a few black metal bands that I like.” I let out another small breath and licked my lips as I picked at a stray thread on the fabric of my pants. “Everyone makes mistakes,” I looked up at him, a resigned tug at my lips, “Mine just lasted a couple years too long.”

Despite how awful they tasted, Mary gulped down a chunk of his homemade icee with a nod. “Didn’t he move to Milwaukee to join some up-and-coming band or some shit?”

This time, it was me that choked out a surprised laugh. “Is that what he told people?!” I shook my head and scoffed. “Makes sense. He’s all about appearances.” 

It was true - my ex had been the kind of person who reveled in his reputation in town. The big, bad bassist that could break necks and down more shots than the whole bartop combined. I turned my head to look over at Mary. “He moved to Florida to take care of his grandma. She’s close to death and he’s itching to be written into the will.”

He raised his eyebrows in retort. “Wow, he just keeps getting shittier.”

“Seems to be the running theme with Brody.”

As time wore on, we filled the night air with pleasant and comfortable conversation, Mary sharing about the bands he’d played in and his current band, Repugnant, which were trying to set up a small coastal tour.  I shared a little about my job and my friendship with Desiree, and we sipped our beer slushies until they were mostly gone and had became more water than beer. 

Talking with Mary seemed natural. It came easily. Despite not truly knowing who he was as a person, I spoke with him like he was an old friend. I didn’t feel an air of judgment with what I chose to share with him, and he seemed appreciative that I wanted to know more about the things he enjoyed. Specifically, his music. 

After a while, my head was feeling a little fuzzy from the weed and the beer and I allowed my eyes to close as I relaxed against the scratchy shingles. As the sound of a nearby bird cooed in the distance, Mary reached over and surprised me by looping a licorice rope around my neck. Where he had kept it during our walk over, I had no idea. 

“A licorice rope? I haven't had one of these since I was like...eleven.” I reached up and pulled the rope down to remove the wrapper before biting off a small piece. 

I looked over at the gutter punk beside me to see him tying his own rope in knots, having already removed and discarded the entirety of the wrapper onto the ground below us. 

“Their R&D is genius,” he started, hands working the candy into an intricate knot, “They're like a gateway to BDSM. Perfect for preteens who like pre-bondage.”

I felt myself choke on my bite of licorice and I let out an incredulous laugh. “Mary! I'm pretty sure that's not what these were designed for.”

He paused his tying and looked over at me with another one of his trademark smirks. “Are you saying you're not into bondage? No surprises for me in those cargo pants?”

I felt my cheeks flush and I took another bite to hide my embarrassment. “I am not answering that question.”

This seemed to amuse him, but he let it go when he saw my bashful response, quickly changing the subject. “Hey - chips,” he snapped playfully, hands reaching out in a grabby motion. I unzipped the pockets of my pants and threw the chip bags at him. Annoyingly, he caught the bags without hesitation and ripped open a bag of Lays, quickly shoving a chip into his mouth. 

I tossed him a look. 

“I know it's not microwaved cat, but—”

“— it's no pussy either,” he interrupted, mouth full of chips as he chewed. 

“You're really obsessed with that, aren't you?” I leaned toward him, a hand on my hip as if to teasingly scold him.

He beamed beside me. “Who wouldn't be? There is no better feeling than having your face between some chick's thighs....”

This time, the silence between us was notable. I looked down and bit my lip, not exactly knowing what to say in response. Mary was so nonchalant, so chill yet matter-of-fact in talking about his experiences. It was something I envied. 

He must have caught on to my nervous aura because he set the bag of chips down and rotated his whole body to face me. His eyebrows raised in shock. “...wait, seriously?! You've never—”

“—I've never been with someone that liked it!” I spat out, heat flushing my face as I looked away in mortification. 

“Damn, Brody really was a dickhead. I guess that shouldn't shock me.”

I released a deep breath of resignation and reached up to rub my palms against my eyes, pushing away the burgundy locks that had fallen into my face. “He wasn't the kind of guy who cared about how I felt….in a lot of ways, actually,” I admitted. I could feel Mary’s eyes on me —  studying me — and I avoided them like the plague. 

“...And other guys? Before? They didn't go down on you?” He sounded confused.

I paused. I’m pretty sure I audibly gulped, but my heart was racing so fast that I didn’t really know what was happening. I fiddled with the thread between my fingers, twisting it as I tried to figure out how to respond. "I never reall— what are you doing?!"

My words were interrupted because Mary had shifted from beside me and was crawling over my outstretched leg, settling in between my knees to face me straight on. He was only a few feet from the edge of the roof. “Mary, what the hell? You’re going to fall!”

He ignored my protests. “I'm showing you what you're missing out on,” He said as he saddled himself in between my legs. His eyes flickered up to mine and god damn it, the green hue was almost glowing in the moonlight. He licked his lips and continued. “I'm not gonna let you go through life without experiencing this at least once.” 

He can’t be serious. I chuckled nervously and shook my head. “No, Mary, it's okay, really, you don't have to,” I said, but my words were clearly said in vain. His hands were already resting on the green fabric covering my knees. His grip was soft yet firm, and I felt a lump form in my stomach. 

“I know, I want to,” he grinned, then quickly added, “Platonic head. Just two people enjoying themselves.” Mary raised one hand to his temple and gave me a two finger salute, a mock look of seriousness on his face. “Scouts honor.”

“Fuck you,” I laughed out at his jab. Despite the situation, I felt myself relax a little under his touch. He looked at me lecherously. 

“Maybe if you play your cards right.” He winked at me and sat back on his knees, his hands beginning to brush up my thighs as if to ask silent permission to continue. I swallowed roughly and looked down at his fingertips as they moved across the inseam of my pants and up to the button at my waist. 

I lifted my hips up towards him as his hand ghosted over the button at my waist. He effortlessly popped the button through its closure and slipped both hands under the waistband before pulling the pants down my legs. I silently thanked myself for deciding to shave my legs in the shower this morning as the fabric slid down my calves before being kicked off to the side. I was left in my jacket, tank top, and luckily, a cute pair of lacy black cheeky panties that I had thrown on quickly before we left for the party.

Mary moved a little closer, leaning in as he ran his palms up and down my inner thighs. My skin was pale - maybe even more so in the moonlight - and his hands felt electric with every stroke. I leaned back on my elbows and looked at him through anxious eyes. His long hair hung in strands that perfectly framed his face and at that moment, I noticed just how attractive Mary was. His features were nearly chiseled and masculine, yet his movements were fluid, confident, and soft, almost like he was afraid to break me. 

“Damn, your skin is so soft,” he muttered out, more to himself than anyone else, and he leaned down to press his lips against my inner thigh. I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath as I felt him kissing along the sensitive skin there. He was dangerously close to my core and I suddenly was feeling self-conscious at having a person I had just barely met touch me so intimately.

Mary must have sensed my apprehension, because he looked up at me with kind eyes, lips still pressing against my leg. “Relax,” he breathed out, his thumbs rubbing circles against my skin, “You deserve to feel good.” I nodded and let out another relaxing breath, eyes closing as I tilted my head back slightly towards the sky. 

Had someone told me yesterday that Mary Goore would be eating me out on an abandoned warehouse rooftop, acting completely romantic and sweet and selfless, I would have told them they were fucking high. Yet, after talking with Mary all evening, I realized just how gentle he was. How he’d taken the time to get to know me, to ask about my past, to insinuate that I deserved better than aggressive assholes that used metal music as an excuse to antagonize women. I also realized that I was just as bad as the people that looked down at him for the clothing he wore or the music he played. I’d decided to let my assumptions cloud my interpretation of someone I didn’t even know.

His mouth moved closer and broke me from my rabbithole, his teeth grazing against the curve where my leg met my groin, and he brushed his cheek against the fabric of my panties. I felt myself biting down softly on my lip, fingertips pressed into the textured rooftop, and my hips moved just barely at the contact. He chuckled and brought his hands to rest against my hip bones, fingers sliding under the band of my underwear as he pressed a kiss to my mound. Without another word, he slid my panties off and down my thighs before pocketing them. I’m sure he’d hoped I wouldn’t notice and I made a mental note to confront him later about it.

I lay bare in front of him, half naked against the quiet slate, our only neighbors being the surrounding wildlife and the glowing stars above. Mary pressed another kiss to the bare skin of my pussy before wrapping his arms around my thighs and gently pulling me closer to his mouth. I could feel his breath fanning over me and it felt chilly against the wetness that was now gathering at my center. 

He was still for a moment, our breath the only sound punctuating the night, before I felt him lick a stripe up my slit, barely touching my clit before pulling away. I let out an embarrassingly loud moan and reached up to cover my mouth in surprise. I felt him laugh against my thigh. 

“Be as loud as you want, dollface. There’s no one around for blocks.”

I nearly felt myself puddle at the nickname and before I could respond, he was licking against my folds again, fingertips gripping tightly against my thighs. I opened my eyes and looked down, raking in a breath at the sight of the emerald-eyed man between my legs. His gaze was trained on my expression and his tongue was now moving up and down teasingly, trying to get a reaction from me as we locked onto each other. 

Mary moved his tongue up to my clit and massaged it lightly before wrapping his lips around it and sucking down harshly. I arched my back helplessly and let out a loud moan in response, my thighs beginning to squeeze against the sides of his head. My actions earned me a lustful groan in reciprocation. 

“Fuck, you taste so good,” he murmured against my skin, kissing my labia before diving in to sloppily lick around my clit, pointing his tongue as he flicked it rhythmically. The motions sent shockwaves to my center and I all but crumbled.

“Oh god, Mary,” I said breathlessly, laying down completely as if to surrender to his ministrations. Had I not been so distracted by his movements, I’d likely have felt his cheeky smile against my core. He knew he was good at what he did and he got off on these reactions. Now that I had a taste of what it felt like to have him between my legs, I was more than happy to give him exactly what he wanted.

The weed was really starting to take effect and my limbs started to feel tingly and heavy. I let myself relax into the roof and against Mary, no longer caring about the tiny noises he was working from me with each movement of his mouth. One of his hands left its place on my quad and snaked between us before barely brushing against my entrance. He gathered the slick there and without warning, he pushed inside of me gently, his tongue lapping from his finger up to my sensitive nub.

Mary started to pump inside of me before adding another, the angle shifting before he hit the spot that had me seeing explosions of light dancing in my vision. I buckled my hips up into his face and he moaned lewdly, rubbing his fingertips against my g-spot as he licked and sucked at my core. With each ministration, each caress of his tongue, I felt the tingling deep in my abdomen building and my knees shaking. 

“R-right— fuck, right there,” I whimpered out, my pelvis rocking against his movements. I felt my legs tighten against his head again and without thinking, I reached down to card my fingers through his long, caramel locks, gripping onto them as I guided his head against me. “Don’t stop,” I choked out in an almost sob. I was close and he could tell, because he sped up, increasing the pressure of his tongue as he pumped his fingers in and out of me. 

Mary let out another intoxicatingly attractive groan at my words. “You gonna cum on my tongue, kitten?” he all but growled against my folds. I was so close that I could feel myself dripping onto him and I nodded fervently. “Mmph, good girl. Come for me,” he purred, his tongue circling around my clit before clamping down and sucking hard. 

I completely lost it at that moment. My thighs trembled as I felt the tightness in my abdomen snap, flooding waves of intense pleasure and electric heat throughout my core and into each cell of my body. My grip on his hair tightened and I let out a near-scream of ecstasy as I came undone around his eager tongue. 

Mary continued to work me through my release, his forest-colored eyes watching my every expression as he kissed and sucked at my wet heat. He only stopped when I felt overstimulation take root and pushed lightly at his cheek to signal that it was too much. 

Mary ran his tongue along my slit once more, gathering up my cum with a lascivious gleam in his eyes before releasing his grip on my legs and sitting back. My head had since dropped back against the cool shingles and I was nearly panting, my whole body shaking from the intensity of my orgasm. 

“Holy shit,” I breathed out after a beat, a broad smile tugging at my face as I brushed some of my long, dark red strands from my face. I took a moment to look down at the pleased punk in front of me and watched as he dipped the fingers that had been inside of me into his own mouth, cleaning them off with an obscene slurp. Heat panged at my stomach again and I nearly came from watching him. Fuck, he was hot.

“You taste incredible,” he said before wiping my slick from his mouth and chin, a seductively satisfied grin on his face. I felt myself flush at his words and I let out a bashful giggle, licking my lips as I watched him relax back on his knees. 

“So,” he asked after a minute, reaching out to stroke the pads of his fingers up and down the delicate flesh of my thighs, “Was I right? Nothing better, huh?” He stared at me with lust-blown pupils. 

I sat up slightly to face him and sucked my lips into my mouth briefly to attempt to hide my resigned smirk. Reaching up, I threaded my hands through his messy hair, the pad of my thumb rubbing sweetly against the angle of his jawbone. I guess it wouldn’t kill me to give him a tiny victory.

“Shut up, Goore.”