#maybe even a couple of good ones rattling around in here somewhere

[weaselle]

and the really frustrating part is that we spent like hundreds of thousands of years science-ing the shit out of this problem until we finally solved it and now in the last like, two generations we've backed all the way off our best solution to this for no good reason.

see, you start with a group like gorillas and everybody has to get and prepare their own food and they spend a good chunk of their day each day doing that, but not so much that it's onerous and they have almost nothing else to do anyway.

but say you want to store food for when there's no food. And say you want to eat more kinds of food, and say you need your brain to start running a huge protein and sugar deficit so you can think real bigly. Now preparing your food doesn't mean bruising some leaves in your fist or chewing the husk off a fruit or breaking open a nut, now preparing your food means processing it, which is labor. And cooking it. Which is labor. And you low-key have to invent tools to prepare and eat it. Tools like sharp scraping stones and mortars and pestles and bowls and spoons and things.

This is getting to be a lot more work. You're getting a lot better access to nutrients and body fuel, but you need a lot more labor to find and prepare the food, and you need specialists to make the tools -- which means you have less people (or at least you have less total individual work hours within the group) available to do that extra labor.

That situation put a hard cap on group size (and therefore cooperative potential) for a long long time -- tribes of people who operate under the hunter-gatherer protocol (an oldie but goodie, plenty of great stuff to say about this format of peopling) often max out their group size around 50 individuals because if you all split up and go different directions, and hunt and gather at a steady walking pace for half the day, and then turn around and come back together along slightly different routes, the total area of land you covered as a group has the resources to support about fifty people usually.

Like that's how much land a group of people can cover in a day, and that amount of land is enough space to grow fifty people's worth of fruit and rabbits and stuff. Maybe only 30 ish people's worth in the badlands, or 65 people's worth of stuff if you're in a particularly lush area, or maybe you exploit something local or innovative that lets you double that number or whatever, but on average it's about 50 people.

but then, big new tech! Agriculture! Not just plants, but animals for labor and meat too. Now fewer people on a smaller area of land (about 6 acres, which is only about 1/10th of a square mile) can feed maybe a thousand people.

But if you want college professors and heart surgeons and video game designers and dentists and rock guitarists and the hundreds different specialist jobs it takes to build a single car, well, you're going to have to get a lot better than 20 people on 6 acres feeding a thousand people. You're gonna need like 5 people on 5 acres feeding 10 thousand people if you can figure out how.

and out of the total amount of human time and effort that has taken place on this planet, a huge amount of that human time and effort has been spent on trying to improve that ratio. More food provided by less people

This, incidentally, is why "industrialized food is all automatically evil" is not a realistic take, because first of all, it prevents famines and saves lives, and second of all, it's literally what allows us to have heart surgeons and video game programers.

The industrialization of our food production is something we've been working on our whole existence on this planet. The brilliant cultivation of corn by central and south american natives is all part of that process, and we still need to be working on it. We just have to make sure it's being done for the good of humanity and the planet, and not for the profit of some giant corporation or the power of some corrupt national government.

Anyway, back to the point, part of that process is the individual preparation of food as a meal. See, a gorilla eating a meal of leaves just picks and eats the leaves, but a human eating a meal that utilizes food processing to take advantage of a food source like cassava tuber, has to dig it up and grate it into a paste and squeeze aaaaaall the poisons out of it, and dry it and bake it and probably some other stuff i don't know that whole recipe, but it's a labor intensive process, and if you do it wrong you eat cyanide.

food prep is important. It takes labor, and tools that need to be cleaned and cared for, which is more labor...

This is part of why bread is a big deal. Like, the Roman army used to actually be paid in bread as a salary. And of course we've all heard about the street vender food carts in ancient Pompeii. But in-home preparation is a very real requirement on the front end of our food development as a species.

and the solution is simple. The beautiful thing is, it takes an almost identical amount of time and effort to cook a meal for two as it does to cook a meal for one. So it's easy to do the same thing to our food practices on the front end as we did on the back end. You have a small number of people making the food for a large number of people.

So if you live in a big family group, maybe 10 to 20 parents and siblings and aunts and cousins, then you can have like 3 to five of those people doing a real, but reasonable, amount of labor to feed everybody, who presumably has other specialist jobs that benefit the family group.

But somehow, modern western (can i just say white? I mostly am white, i feel like i can just say white, though of course there's an unfortunate combination of colonization and an evil empire version of keeping-up-with-the-joneses that's spreading the worst of the west around the globe) ANYway, this culture has taken that "fewer people providing for the group" thing, that super effective social unit, and twisted it into a single person doing everything for themselves (which is ridiculous and an illusion, a single person doesn't exist entirely on their own efforts in the modern world any more than a single person survives long living alone in the ancient wilds)

And then the most you are supposed to upgrade is to one pair of adults who have to do ALL the specialist jobs for their "group" between them, raising the kids and cooking the food and managing the money and securing the housing and everything that would normally be done by a larger group.

Anyway, it should be at least two people cooking for at least five adults, but more like 5 people cooking for 20 adults imo, we done fucked the whole system up

[heich0e]

bittersweet - vash the stampede/f!reader (trigun stampede): 7k, listen there's only been 2 eps and i don't know the lore so i am loudy and emphatically declaring creative license, in my mind this is set before the start of stampede but not by much, heavy on the wild wild west core here, light angst, smut, fingering, needy vanilla sex, domesticity, mentions of alcohol/alcoholism, boot-throwing related violence. 18+ NSFW MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DO NOT INTERACT

The desert smells bitter.

You wouldn’t think that sand would smell like much at all, but the fragrance that hangs perpetually in the air is heavy, singed, and acrid with the heady scent of life and its misery. Waste and runoff make their unpleasantness acutely known on the hottest days, and the fumes from old machinery that’s barely functioning thanks to age and disrepair—that no one can afford to fix, so they have to hold out hope it keeps running—clogs up the already noxious atmosphere as it rattles on throughout the day. 

Mama used to tell you that outside of Jeneora Rock, the world smelled different. There’s somewhere else past the walls that mark the edge of the only town you’ve ever known, even past the wastelands—a place where almost no one ever goes, but that your Mama saw once. Or at least she said she did.

She told you it smelled clean. Sweet. Untouched by anything but the sun’s heat and the five moons’ glow. 

Mama’s gone, has been for a long time now, and even though she never had much to give to you in the first place, that story is the most precious thing she left behind. You think about it almost as often as you think about her. 

The end of another long day is marked by a familiar heaviness to your bones. Between the suffocating heat that makes you groggy and a hard day's work, there’s a palpable weight that bears down on you as you climb the never-ending metal stairs to your front door—your feet drag a bit more with every step.

The lock to your home is getting hard to turn. You’ve noticed it a few times now: a resistance as you slip your key into the keyhole, a pressure as you urge the mechanism to turn and let you in. There may be sand built up in there to clean out, or maybe it needs some oil.

But oil costs money, of which you don’t have much, so you really hope that it’s the former rather than the latter. 

You examine the keyhole once you manage to force the lock open, dropping to your knees outside your door to peek into the narrow opening on the tarnished face of the lock. It doesn’t do you much good because the sun’s already dropped dark, and even if the light of day still hung overhead you doubt it would be enough to make the issue any clearer. You drag your thumb idly along a little scratch beside the keyhole that's probably been there for years; the metal is still warm to the touch from the heat of the day that still hasn’t quite broken, the surface a little rougher where the score is chipped in.

You sigh, picking yourself up off the ground and dusting off your skirt, and turn the knob into your home. 

It’s dark when you get inside, but something feels wrong.

You shut the door behind you as you enter, pressing your back flat against it as your eyes struggle to adjust to the dark. Your home, like every other one in town, isn’t really much to look at even in the plain light of day. You’re luckier than lots of people though, you’ve got a couple rooms all to yourself where some families have no choice but to cram many people into just one. Papa left you this house, cause now he’s gone too just like Mama, but not much has changed since the day he left it to you—except now there’s less empty bottles rolling around underfoot, and you get to call the little bedroom off the main room yours.

It takes a second for your eyes to get used to the dimness with the door shut tight behind you, so you blink hard to make it happen faster. You see the rickety little table against the wall near the door, and the chair on the other side of the room where you sometimes sit by the window to mend your skirts when they wear and tear—but only when you get home early enough to catch the last few moments of sun, cause Mama always used to warn you about sewing by lamplight. The shutters on the window are closed and locked now, but there’s no light outside them to let in anyway. 

Something shuffles in the dark.

Papa left you a gun, too. Even taught you how to shoot it. Mama hated that. She hated how good you were at it even more. She used to say that shooting was gonna be your husband’s job someday, and that even in a world this wicked Papa was teaching you things you didn’t need to know.

But now Mama’s gone. And Papa’s gone. And the world is still wicked. And you’ve got no husband, but you have a gun you know how to shoot.

You keep it and a little stash of 7 bullets underneath your bed where you can get to it quick, but it’s on the other side of the house, and even though that’s not very far away you don’t know what’s waiting for you between the door and your bed. You don’t know if it’s faster than you are, either, so running for it would be a fool’s errand. 

Inside your chest, your heart starts pumping a little harder, ‘til you can feel the wet thump, thump, thump right in the back of your mouth.

You know you need light. You need to be able to see. You can’t make any decisions until you know what’s between you and your Papa's gun tucked up safe underneath your bed.

Slowly your eyes flicker over to the lamp on your table, just within reach. 

You suck a little gasp into your lungs to steel your nerve. The air is less sour in here—more familiar, a little more comforting—but the acrid scent of the desert still lingers on the edge of each breath. Slowly you reach towards the lamp and flick it on.

“PLEASE DON’T SHOOT ME!”

The frantic plea frightens you so terribly that it sends you tumbling to the hard floor, landing flat on your ass with your back thumping painfully into the wall beside your door. In front of you is a face that has no right being as familiar as it is; eyes wide in panic beneath a round pair of glasses, blonde hair tousled in disarray, two hands (one flesh and one crafted) lifted in innocence. 

Your heart is beating even faster now under the tight pull of your laced waistcoat. 

“Are you an idiot?” you hiss, instinctively tugging your boot off your foot and lobbing it forcefully at the unexpected intruder. “You scared the daylights outta me!”

The man sidesteps the projectile easily, and it clatters to the floor. The expression on his face morphs from one of panic to something a little more chagrined.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, drawing out the word. His tone sheepish, and his lips pull into an apologetic little smile.

You place a trembling hand on your chest, pressing down on the spot where you feel your heart thumping the hardest and willing it to slow. You stare at your scuffed floorboards and take a few breaths to ease the frenetic beat of your pulse, and feel yourself begin to wilt as the adrenaline in your veins starts to fade. 

“How’d you get in here, Vash the Stampede?” you ask, looking up again at the man in front of you from your place on the ground.

“I knocked first,” he says with a grimace, “but you weren’t home and I…”

“Broke in because you’ve got someone looking for you?” you finish his explanation for him, your tone flat and entirely unsurprised.

He sighs, shoulders slumping dejectedly as his head hangs forward. 

“I didn’t know where else to go.”

He lifts his chin only enough to guiltily meet your gaze.

“It’s just for one night,” he murmurs the plea, his bottom lip weighed down by a pout.

You shut your eyes tight, hands balling into fists over your skirt to hide the way they tremble.

“Fine.”

Vash falls to his knees in front of you, hands pressed to the floor as he gets right up in your face with a wide, cheerful grin. He’s almost nose to nose with you, the light of the lamp glinting in his glasses.

“Thanks so much! I promise I’ll be outta here before you know it!”

He doesn’t need to tell you that, because the pang in your empty stomach tells you that, even unspoken, you already knew it to be true. 

Vash is travelling light again, just like the last time you saw him. He’s only got one bag that he begins to unpack onto the rickety table in your kitchen, leaving you to quietly go about your own business like you would if you hadn’t found him in your home that night. On the other side of the kitchen you unpack the meagre amount of food you’d managed to buy for yourself that day from little satchel you carried it home in. It’s barely enough food for one, and now you’ll have to stretch it between two. 

“Where’s your father?” Vash asks as he fiddles with his gun at the table behind you. “I thought it was him coming through the door, and I thought for sure he was gonna blow my—“

“He’s dead.”

The silence that follows is heavy. Uncomfortable, even. Vash’s hands still even as yours keep quietly peeling the sad, withered skin from the vegetable in your hand with the blade of a half-dulled knife. 

“I’m sorry,” his next words are quiet. “Your father was a nice man.”

“My father was a drunk who got himself shot in a bar fight with a merchant who came to town and was talking big. He just worshipped you because you saved the plant.”

That same uncomfortable silence creeps in again in the wake of your words, but after a few moments you hear Vash pick up his tools and start tinkering away at whatever he’s working on once more. 

“Is the plant still running?” Vash is the first to speak again, though a fair amount of time passes before he risks another attempt at conversation.

“More or less,” you remark, setting a little pot on the stove to boil with whatever ingredients you’d been able to scrounge together into a meal. You watch the flame of the element burst to life as you flick the switch, a little hiss as the fire licks at the edges of your only copper pot. “Some days it’s more reliable than others. But whatever you did seems to be holding up all right.”

“Good!” Vash says behind you. “That’s good.”

You turn to face him, the unevenly mended hem of your skirt swishing around your ankles. You lean against the little countertop behind you, with your arms crossed behind your back.

“I’ll pop by the plant before I leave town—” 

You watch as Vash’s fingers nimbly fiddle with his gun, broken down into its component parts to be cleaned and maintained. You’re sure it doesn’t need it—are certain he’s fired less shots from that gun in the two years since you’ve seen him than you’ve heard in town this week alone—but it’s kind of nice to watch him work, to appreciate how certain and precise his every move is, and to see how concentrated he is while he goes about it. 

“—just to make sure everything’s still in good shape.”

He looks up at you, like for the first time he feels your gaze as it traces the lines of his profile. He smiles again, that same wide, willful expression of cheer that he always endeavours to wear even though he might be the person least entitled to it.

You hum. “I’m sure everyone would appreciate that. You should stop by to see Rosa too, she’ll box my ear if she finds out you blew though town and didn’t go see her.”

The two of you eat across the table from one another in silence. Just the scrape of cutlery and the occasional loud swallow passing between the two of you. Vash seems hungry, but appears to be trying his best to be at least a little restrained as he eats with you. Even though you’d given him the larger of the two portions, he’s still finished his plate before you’ve finished yours, but he sits patiently across from you waiting for you to swallow your final bite.

“I’ll take these,” he jumps to his feet before you have the chance to even push your chair back from the table, snatching both of your dishes up into his hands. “I’ll clean up, since you’re letting me stay.”

You don’t deny him, and instead slump back into your seat, dragging your wrist along your forehead. Your skin feels grimy from the hot day and the filth outside. Normally you would have bathed before you cooked, but you hadn’t eaten a proper meal all day—and Vash looked like it may have been even longer than that. 

“I’m gonna wash,” you say, standing from your seat. You pause, your fingertips tracing against the rough, rutted surface of the tabletop. You know you don’t have enough water for two baths in your tank. You used to bathe with your mother when you were little, then once you were older and Mama was gone, you got the bathwater first and Papa would get in after you were done. It’s never been an issue until now. “Er—Vash?” 

At the sink where your uninvited house guest is scrubbing at the dishes in the washbasin that you’d filled ahead of time, Vash pauses, glancing at you over his shoulder. He’s taken off his familiar red coat, left hanging off the chair he’d been seated in at the table, and the black turtleneck he wears beneath it stretches taut over the musculature of his back as it faces you.

“The bath… there’s only enough water to fill it once. I don’t…Do you want…?” you aren’t sure what you’re even trying to ask him, but whatever is coming out of your mouth is even less clear than the thoughts running through your head.

“I’ll bathe second, don’t worry about me.” 

Vash’s smile is gentle and obliging, his eyes crinkling at the corners as they narrow into little crescents. You nod stiffly, feeling heat flush through you at the softness in his expression, and shuffle off towards the other side of your home while avoiding his gaze.

The walls of your home are paper thin, and you’re certain that Vash can hear the splash of water in the tub as clearly as you can hear the scratchy, garbled sound of his radio from the other room. Once your skin’s been scrubbed clean of the day, you sit in the water with your knees pulled to your chest and your chin tucked between them. You strain to try to make out what’s being broadcast, but it’s difficult to hear since the reception in town is always so piss poor, and whatever coherent bits of news you manage to catch are just as abysmal as always.

It’s strange, hearing someone else in the house. It’s something you didn’t realize had become so foreign to you in the time you’ve learned to live alone. The idle puttering in the other room is a sound you didn’t realize you had missed. You lean back and dunk yourself into the water, where everything goes quiet. 

The bathwater never gets very hot to begin with—tepid at the best of times, which seems unfair given the climate—but you know it’s not fair to waste time in the tub when someone else is waiting for it. You pull yourself up out of the metal basin, careful not to disturb the stopper in the bottom of the tub, and dry as much water from your skin as you can. Once you’ve deemed yourself sufficiently towelled, you pull on your nightdress and a threadbare housecoat overtop.

Vash looks up from the chair in the corner by the window when you emerge from the bathroom, and he meets your eyes so unwaveringly it feels decidedly like he’s trying hard not to let his gaze wander elsewhere. You fidget under his stare, fiddling with the fraying ends of the towel around your neck that’s catching the droplets that fall from your hair. He must realize that he’s unnerving you, because he averts his eyes to a point on the wall over your shoulder after a moment. 

“My turn?” he asks, his tone chipper but polite.

“All yours,” you nod, stepping into your bedroom and leaving him to his business.

There’s an old trunk at the bottom of your bed where you keep some of the things your father left that you haven’t yet been able to sell or make use of. You find an old shirt of his near the very bottom, soft and worn-thin from years of washing. It’s something you could have easily sold or traded by now, but that you couldn’t quite bring yourself to part with—though you’re certain the day will inevitably come when sentimentality can no longer outweigh your basic needs.

You stand outside the bathroom door for a moment, your father’s shirt clutched tightly in your hands. You can hear the splash of bathwater you’re sure has gone cold from where you stand, only a few feet and a thin door between you.

You muster your nerve and tap your knuckles lightly against the door.

“I have a shirt if you need something to—“

The door opens, and you find yourself unexpectedly facing the bare chest of your one-night housemate, still damp and glistening from the bath, lined with silvery scars that the low light catches on.

You toss the shirt at him unceremoniously and turn quickly away, and Vash himself makes a little sound of surprise.

“Sorry, I didn’t expect you to be—“

“It’s fine,” you answer before he can even finish his apology, still refusing to meet his gaze. You gesture vaguely over your shoulder without turning. “Just take that.”

The bathroom door clicks closed again, and you clutch the belt of your housecoat over your diaphragm. 

You need a drink. 

You cross your home to the cabinet in your kitchen, reaching to the back of the nearly-bare shelf and pulling out a dusty old bottle that’s been there since your father died. It wouldn’t have lasted a day if he were still living, and you’ve made it years without ever so much as cracking it open. 

Today however, you feel it’s well-deserved. 

The dust caked on the bottle smears against your palm as you open it, and you wipe the grime furiously against the material of your housecoat as you pour a long glug of the amber liquor into a waiting glass. It’s vile, lukewarm from the constant heat of your home, and burns every inch of the way down—but as you set the empty glass back onto the counter, you still find yourself grateful for it. 

You pour another drink. 

“Take it easy,” you hear a voice say behind you, accompanied by a breathy little laugh.

You turn and see Vash hovering not far from you, his black turtleneck folded over one arm and your father’s shirt over his no-longer-bare chest. His hair is wet, a towel draped around his shoulders just like yours, and he’s taken off his usual eyewear. The mole underneath his eye seems more prominent now that he’s scrubbed himself clean.

Your empty glass dangles from the tips of your fingers, the acerbic taste of the liquor lingering on your tongue. You hold it out to him in offering, and he scrunches up his nose a little bit. 

“I really shouldn’t—“

“It’s rude to turn down a drink your host is offering you, y’know.”

Things like rudeness don’t mean anything to anyone these days, least of all yourself. Decency is a luxury few people can afford. 

Vash sighs, still smiling, and takes the glass from you. Your fingers brush as it passes from your hand to his, and then you take the bottle and pour another healthy splash into the waiting cup. He brings it to his lips, wincing against the fumes alone that waft up from the glass. 

“It’s better if you don’t sip it,” you offer him, though even then you know the guidance doesn’t help much.

He tips it back and drains it.

Two drinks were enough to have you feeling woozy, but you pour yourself a third for good measure. You spare Vash the pain of another, much to his apparent relief, and let him off with just the one before tucking the half-drained bottle back into the cupboard you’d dug it out of. 

When you turn around again, Vash is crouched down, examining something on the ground. 

Your boot. The one you’d thrown at him earlier. 

He peers up at you from the floor, he lifts the shoe slightly. 

“It broke again.”

A memory floods back to you then, unbidden. 

Sitting side by side with Vash on the edge of the steps outside the same house you live in now, but when the way you lived was different. The plant had just been repaired, and there was a palpable feeling of effervescent joy sizzling through the town around you. An uncharacteristic camaraderie amongst the people of Jeneora Rock as the celebration of Vash’s handiwork spreading through the narrow, grimy streets. The two of you were away from it all, sitting quietly together in a strange sort of celebration of your own.

You were less a woman than you were a girl back then, but still somehow neither. He’d patched the sole of your boot back on when it had ripped loose. And you’d laughed when he handed it back to you with an endearingly clumsy flourish, the sound as high and bright as the sun that hung in the sky overhead. You still remember the way your laughter had made his smile grow.

The patch job had lasted a year. You’d sobbed the day it came loose again, just shortly after the death of your father. You’d been using twine tied tightly around the toe of the boot to hold it together ever since.

Vash blinks up at you from the ground as you stare down at him with what you’re sure is a vacant look in your eyes. 

“I brought you something,” he says, hopping up and skittering over to his rucksack with your boot still in his hand. He rifles around in the bag for a moment, his mechanical arm shoulder deep as he roots for what he’s looking for. His eyebrows shoot up and he grins when he locates it—a wide, brilliant smile splitting across his face as he pulls his arm out. 

He holds his find up in triumph. 

You look at it with narrowed eyes.

“What… is it?” you ask, after a moment of trying to identify the small, relatively unremarkable little container in his hand.

“Boot glue!” he says excitedly, waving it in front of your face. “I thought of you when I saw it! The merchant wanted an arm and a leg for it but I managed to—”

Tears have sprung up in your eyes against your will, and you quickly turn away from him to hide them from his sight. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Vash’s voice is softer now, less enthusiastic and more concerned. 

That softness is what upsets you more than anything. Tenderness is a foreign thing in the desolation of the wastelands.

“Thank you,” you say quietly, scrubbing your hand over your stinging eyes. 

For thinking of me.

For knowing that you’d come back.

You leave that part off, but you feel it just as much as what you say.

You drain that third glass that’s been sitting on the counter waiting for you, hoping the burn of the liquor as it sloshes down your throat to your stomach will give you something else to focus on. Or, if nothing else, that it might numb the sudden pain that’s laid roots down in your core.

Vash sits at the table as he patches up your boot under the lamplight, much like he had the first time. You watch him from the chair in the corner, under the shuttered window, with your knees drawn up into your seat with you. You’re more shameless now than you had been while he cleaned his gun, observing him keenly as he scrubs your boot with a rag and leftover water from the dish pan. He makes sure no more grime clings to it before he carefully smears a thick layer of the glue along the sole, pressing down firmly to make sure the adhesion takes. He holds the boot up in front of him when he’s done, his tongue poking out from the corner of his mouth, eyeing it from every angle to survey his own work.

You watch him just as raptly. 

He turns in his seat once he’s satisfied, holding the boot up. 

“All done!” he says, hopping up to his feet and shuffling towards you. He crouches down in front of you and holds out his hand expectantly. Slowly, you stick your foot out, and he cradles it gently in his roughened palm.

Carefully he slips the boot onto your foot, tightening the laces once it’s fully in place. 

“How’s it feel?” he asks you, peeking up at you from his place on the floor. 

“Feels good,” you reply, with an equally breathy tone. 

The lamplight doesn’t reach this corner of the room quite as brightly as it does at the table, but you can still make out a blush that sits high and pretty at the top of Vash’s cheeks. You wonder if he’s starting to feel the flush thanks to the liquor, or if maybe it’s something else entirely. 

“G-good!” he stammers a little, fiddling with the laces at your ankle. “I’m glad!”

“That glue must have been expensive,” you say. “Thank you, Vash.”

He shoots you a smile as he loops his fingers through the laces. “It's the least I could do, especially with you putting me up for the night.”

For the night. 

Just for the night. 

The reminder makes you ache a little.

Vash helps you slip your boot off again, carrying it over to the door and setting it down beside its mate.

“I’ll leave this here for you, in case you need it again,” he says, screwing the top back onto the little pot of adhesive at the table. “There’s not much left, but there’s some.”

You nod from your seat in the corner, one leg up and one leg still down—your nightdress drawn up to your knee from when he’d helped you into your boot. 

Vash ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck, dry now after his bath. Yours remains a little damp, but you’re sure it won’t last long as the residual heat from the day still hangs in the air even though the sun has long set. 

“It’s late,” he finally says after a moment. “You should sleep.”

You hum in agreement, moving to stand from your chair. The room spins slightly around you, those three glasses you’d knocked back sneaking up on you while you’d been sitting down. Your foot hooks in the hem of your nightdress because of the way you’d been sitting, but before you can stumble theres a strong arm wrapped around your waist to keep you steady. A warmth pressing into you as your face meets a heaving chest.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Vash murmurs, his grip on you tightening for the briefest moment. 

Your hands clutch at his shirt, and you don’t meet his eyes as you nod, letting him lead you towards your bedroom. 

Your hands fumble at the belt of your nightdress, pulling it off and tossing the garment across the end of your bed as Vash helps you onto the mattress. You tuck your feet under the thin sheet before leaning back against your pillows, and Vash is quick to turn and head towards the door after helping you pull it up to your waist.

“Wait,” you call to him before he can retreat. He pauses in the doorway, glancing at you over his shoulder. “Where are you going to sleep?”

You hadn’t thought much about this, and you ought to have considered it earlier. You only have the one bed, but you have two pillows you can share and a spare blanket in the trunk at the end of it that you could offer him if he wants to sleep on the floor. 

But you don’t want to tell him that.

“I’ll just take the chair,” he says with a blithe smile, jutting his thumb towards the armchair in the other room. 

It won’t be comfortable. You know that from experience, having fallen asleep there a few times yourself after a particularly gruelling day. The stuffing is lumpy and the springs are painful if you press against them the wrong way. You know he won’t complain about it. You even know that it’s probably still more comfortable than lots of other places he’s rested his head over the past two years. 

But you want to be selfish.

For once you don’t want to be alone. 

“Vash,” you say quietly, and you watch his entire body go rigid at the sudden bare vulnerability of your tone. “Please stay with me.”

You’d asked him the same thing once before, but different. The words once murmured desperately against his lips as you clung to his red jacket. Staring at him with eyes full of hope and a freshly patched boot on your foot. 

He’d looked at you the same way back then too. That smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. As gentle of a no that he could ever offer you.

“I know you have to leave,” you murmur, eyes downcast to your hands as they rest atop your lap. “I don’t expect anything like that from you. I know it’s just for tonight.”

“Please don’t cry.”

The bed dips beside you, and Vash tilts your face up towards him. He looks troubled when you meet his gaze, even in the dim light of your bedroom you can make out the conflict on his features. It’s strange to see him not smiling, wrong almost.

But your eyes are dry.

“Stay,” you repeat yourself, meeting his gaze resolutely. You swallow hard over the lump in your throat, bracing yourself for the impending sear of rejection. 

Vash cups your cheeks in his hands, and you can’t tell if it’s your cheeks or his touch that feels so warm.

“You deserve someone that can say yes to that and mean it properly,” he says ruefully, not dissimilarly to what he’d said the first time you’d asked the very same thing of him.

“I’m not asking anyone else,” you whisper, “I’m asking you."

You wonder if your mouth still tastes like liquor as Vash’s tongue dips inside of it, hovering over you as you lay sprawled across your bed. 

It didn’t start like this, of course. The first kiss had been gentle, hesitant even—like Vash wasn’t quite sure if he was going to see it through at all, poised to flee at any moment. But neither of you could deny how right it felt when his lips brushed yours, an immediate wash of relief and of unadulterated want inundating you all at once. You’d been the one to crane up and bridge the gap, but soon Vash was crawling into your bed overtop of you, easing you back to lay flat as he succumbed to the same need you felt thrumming through your veins.

Your hands are tangled in his hair now—a gesture that earned you a pitchy, needy little groan from him as your fingers twisted through the blonde strands. It only seemed to make him more eager as he parted his lips against your own in a deeper kiss.

There’s something a little clumsy about it all, an eagerness and inexperience to every touch and graze. But it’s not the same as it was at first, no longer hesitant or wary—his reservations have been peeled away as surely as the clothes the two of you are wearing, until you feel nothing but his skin against your own.

Vash’s hands are as greedy and rapacious as his mouth; touching, grabbing, grazing anything he can reach. His calloused fingers cup themselves around the swell of your chest, squeezing lightly, and when you reward him with a little moan it stokes the flames of his curiosity, and his touch moves to the pebbled bud of your nipple next. He rolls it tentatively between his fingers, pinching ever so slightly, and when you gasp against his mouth, arching further into his touch, he makes his own little pleased sound of surprise before lavishing your other breast with equal attention. 

His metal hand touches you more gingerly than the other, and he tends to favour the one made of flesh and bone. The contrast in sensations is a little disorienting—smooth, hard metal versus the life-roughened heat of skin on skin. It’s dizzying. You want more.

“Vash,” you murmur against his mouth. 

Your lips are stinging now from the constant kissing. He’s scarcely left your mouth uncovered by his own since they first connected, but at your hoarse whisper of his name he pulls back slightly, watching your face for any sign of reproach. 

“Touch me more, please,” you say to him, cupping his cheeks as he presses his forehead into yours, both of you sharing the same breath in the little space between you.

He makes a sound halfway between a grunt and a hum, nodding a little, and kisses you again as his hands slip further down your willing, waiting form.

If he’s surprised by the wet wet heat he finds between your legs, it doesn’t stop him. One finger and then two find their way inside you slowly; he moves in gentle thrusts and scissoring motions that have your jaw going slack. His palm presses against the swell of your clit, and each time your hips jump it grinds into the heel of his palm, earning a keen from the back of your throat.

“Feels good?” Vash trails kisses up the top of your cheek until his lips are by your ear. His breathing is laboured and the air of each breath is hot as it ghosts across your skin. Your tongue feels leaden, but you nod repeatedly, wrapping your arms around his neck and keeping him close.

“Yeah,” you finally manage to breathe out, “’s good.”

It’s even better when you feel the stretch of him pressing himself inside.

The sound that’s pulled from the depth of Vash’s broad chest as he carves his way into you makes your toes curl—high and sweet and desperate.

“’S hot,” he slurs, his hips giving a shallow, desperate thrust.

He’s needy, pulling you closer as he moves you how he wants you. He loops your knees up over his elbows, his mouth frantically finding it’s way back to yours as the weight of his entire body bears down on you. 

The next thrust is harder, deeper. And the pace only increases after that.

The rickety headboard of your old bed knocks against the wall each time he brings his hips down against yours. It’s loud, but so is the sound of skin on skin, and you have the distant thought as the bed frame creaks that it sounds like it might splinter underneath you—but you don’t find it in yourself to care as the pressure in you core steadily builds, threatening to burst. It blinds and deafens you to anything but the pulse that pounds in your throat. It makes your fingers curl against the skin of Vash’s shoulder blades until your nails dig into skin.

He’s still kissing you, wet and messy and noisy as his tongue presses into your mouth. He never stops kissing you.

It's nice to be with someone. To be touched. To feel wanted and needed.

Especially by him.

Your eyes flutter open, and as though he can sense your gaze on him Vash’s do the same. His expression is heavy-lidded as he pants, a little drop of sweat sitting high on the edge of his blushing cheek. He smiles a little, a soft, gentle expression you’ve never seen before.

A tenderness in his gaze unlike any you’ve ever experienced.

The pressure in your core comes undone.

He takes your face in his hands as pleasure rips through you like a sandstorm, blistering and unescapable. He’s still kissing you. Keeping you so near. In the haze it’s hard to tell where you end and he begins, everything clouded into something thats both and somehow neither. Something new.

“Close,” Vash whines, grinding his hips down against your own.

Your muscles ache, the pleasure has worn you raw, and your lungs are pricking with the need for a full deep breath you haven’t been able to draw into them now for some time. But even so, you don’t want it to be over. Can’t bear the thought of being apart.

The headboard rattles a few more times, and then the pressure between your legs is gone as Vash pulls out and spatters his spend across your stomach with a long, low groan.

It’s hot. The mess on your skin, the sweat that clings to you, the paltry breaths of air you draw into your lungs. Even the sheets of your bed have absorbed the heat from both of your bodies, sticking to your skin as you collapse into them in boneless heaps, chests heaving and hearts racing side by side.

You tilt your face towards the boy crowded into your narrow bed beside you, and find him watching you expectantly.

“You okay?” he asks, brushing a piece of hair away from your eyes.

You hum, leaning into his touch.

Vash’s gaze travels down your body, eyeing the mess he’s made of you with wide eyes. He pops up suddenly, clambering out of bed and tripping clumsily over the sheet that’s fallen half-way off the mattress as he skitters out the door. You’re not too worried that he’s going far, considering he’s still stark naked, but you watch the doorway curiously as you wait for him to return.

When he does, he has a cloth in hand—still damp from your bath earlier in the evening. As gently as he can, Vash cleans you up; the cloth cool is against your sticky skin, and feels nice. Once he’s satisfied with his handiwork, he presses a kiss to the valley between your ribs, lifting his face to smile up at you.

You shoot him a feeble smile back.

He slips into bed beside you once more, crawling up towards the pillows and pulling the rumpled sheet up to your chins as he goes. He settles in, and with one sweep of his arm he tucks you safely against his chest, with your ear resting over his heart. His hand pats gently along the back of your hair down your spine, keeping you close to him.

Vash smells good. Clean and comforting. It makes you think of the place your mother told you about once. You wonder if he smells like that place, or maybe even better.

You wonder if he’s ever been there before.

You wonder if he’d tell you if you asked.

You open your eyes, though the effort pains you in your exhaustion, and you see him peering back at you. Vash’s lips pull into a smile, but it's one of the ones that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. An expression that you know is more for you than it is for himself.

You think the two of you have a lot in common, then. That maybe the two of you understand the same loneliness. The same feeling of being haunted.

Your ghosts live on in the trunk at the end of your bed and at the back of your cupboard, covered in dust, tucked away out of sight. 

Vash’s live on inside of him, and it’s where he seems determined to keep them. 

In that moment you know that even if you were to ask, he’d tell you nothing—and he’d do it for your own sake.

Tomorrow you’ll wake and the air will smell bitter and burnt, and he’ll be gone, but your boot will be mended, and the little pot of glue will remind you he was there. But tonight you’ll dream about the place your Mama told you about, and tomorrow you’ll still have the smell that clings to your sheets. So for now, the world smells different. 

And that has to be enough.

[persephone11110]

rain is a good thing

Jake‘Hangman’Seresin x Reader

Chapter 1 : Astraphobia

warnings: astraphobia(means fear of storms), mentions of storms—raining, mentions of bleeding—blood,protective jake seresin, YOUR HONOR THEY STILL LOVE EACHOTHER

Chapter Summary: Two things Y/n hates—one how loud the thunder and rain is outside and two how much even as an ex Jake Seresin still knows her like the back of his hand.

author note: I realized that chpt1 sucked really bad and so I decided to rewrite chpt 1 AND IM SO SO SORRY TO ANYONE WHO READ IT!!!, I just re-read it and its not good at all— i wrote like it was 2+1 and not a chapter. Instead meeting Jake in chpt 2 like I originally planned hes gonna be here chpt1— erase CHPT1; A Trip Down Memory out of your mind PLZ

WC: 1K

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Series Masterlist

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Jaw clenched, you stood at your bedroom window looking out the windows staring at how angry the clouds looked— you were glued to the spot as the EAS that was broadcasted more than couple minutes ago made the agonizing thoughts you had about outside worse “Remember Y/n its normal for it to rain during the summer because its so hot”. Dr. Michaels voice was in the back of your mind reminding you to stop spiraling.

Glancing back at the clouds from the rain you finally decided to walk away. Lying flat on your back, you attempted to close your eyes, If he was here he would lightly chastise you—for laying on the floor. That one day your going to get stuck on the floor, stuck in a human shaped star position. Reading did always take your mind off the real world, you enjoyed putting yourself in character.

You groaned as you got up from the floor your back loudly cracking, unkindly reminding you aren’t in your a teen anymore. Did you fall asleep while reading because the book was perfectly laid on your stomach while, the cup of juice you brought from the kitchen was knocked over. “Thats just great Y/n now you actually have leave the comfort of your bedroom”. You murmured to yourself— aggravated with how clumsy you were.

Sighing, you rubbed at your temples as you looked at the red mess behind you— would it be bad if you left the sticky mess right where it was?

Ants, those tiny ass insects scared you. How could something so small cause so much destruction?

As both sides of your brain fought with you smartly decided to go to your kitchen to grab napkins.

The sound of a lighting strike outside your apartment caught you by surprise making you drop the cup filled with on the kitchen floor. You hate when this happens-your vision was already becoming blurry and hand started to slowly tremble, you swallowed hard listening to the sounds of rain drops smacking into the window.

“Just get up, and focus on something else”a thought enters your mind. Using the strength you have , you decide to try and pick up the glass shards around you, not l thinking of the prickly feeling in your fingers, or the smell of blood coming from your hands. Just focus on something else Y/n you repeated to yourself.

Should’ve stayed somewhere safe Y/n— your back was doing that weird tingly thing again. It felt like something crawling under your skin.

Maybe Dr.Michaels was still in her office?

Your eyelids heavy with tears, you grab your phone out of your pocket. You drag your trembling fingers over the screen typing in Dr. Michaels emergency number-listening to the phone dial out, you lift the phone to hear waiting for her calm voice to be on the other side.

“I can’t answer your call right now, however please leave your name, number and message— I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”.

“Please help me, I’m so scared.. I’m so scared”. A sob escaped from your mouth, your entire body rattling with fear.

Thunder rumbled through the sky, the rain sounded like bullets hitting the window and you were pretty sure you getting closer and closer to death.

You didn’t attempt to move again not knowing if you got up would your feet fail you. The thunder got worse and the sounds of bullets turned into a heavy pour, you leaned your body aganist your kitchen counter-using it as a bed and a chair.

The sound you heard next wasn’t thunder getting louder or a tree branch breaking because of the wind. At first you ignored it, hoping if you didn’t acknowledge it wasn’t real.

But apart of you wandered what was making the awful loud sound. What is your imagination?, were you having a nightmare?

The sound was getting louder and louder, you finally realized somebody was at your door-knocking.

What crazy ass person would risk their life?, who wants to get sick in the middle of summer?

It be rude to let the person stand outside even longer, making yourself get up you fall into the counter while getting up.

“Sweetheart”.

You fell into his soaking body not caring about the wetness. A sound of relief falls out of your mouth, you eyes squeezed shut not wanting to see the angry clouds.

“C’mon darlin don’t want you getting sick”. Jake tightly wrapped his hands around you-gently pushing you back inside. “Shh, follow my breathing Y/n”. Somehow your sitting on the couch and Jake sitting on the table infront of you.

“J-Jake”, you whimpered. “Scared”.

“I know sweetheart don’t listen to outside just listen to my voice”. Jake grabs your hand and pulls it to his heart. “Your alive darlin, just your mind playin tricks on you again”.

Finally your breathing back normal, your mind kind of still foggy.“Jake why are you here w-with me?”.

“You called me darlin”. Jake rubbed at your knuckles,“As soon as I heard your voicemail I left Javys and drove like a bat out of hell”.

You leaned your head aganist Jakes bare chest, unable to make eye contact with him—blushing with embarrassment you’ve could swore the number was Dr. Michaels.

“You called me Y/n, you called and I answered as simple as that”. Jake hums a tune from a Nina Simone song that you can’t remember right now, “I got you darlin”.

Taglist :)

@chocolatefartstrawberry , @buckysteveloki-me , @dontletthemtakeyoualive, @kellyls04

[themareverine]

Until We Fall ▹masterlist | worst!Logan x mutant!fem!OC

summary: DP&W AU. It's been God knows how many years after Logan's death in North Dakota—and this wouldn't be much of a story without a shiny new villain with a hot new plan, or someone to save the world. Well, maybe two someones. Ok, you win, three. But first, you have track down that said someone—the Wolverine. And who better to do that than the girl who found him the first time? Logan/OC

a/n: *knocks on glass, looks confused* hi, anyone still here? If so, welcome in! here's my DP& W AU. i have no idea what I'm doing. this is a sequel that i'm writing kinda-sorta at the same time as my main series, Mare & the Wolverine, and yes, please know, this is kinda self-insert-y. let me live, will you? reposting from my old account, OC is a mutant.

series masterlist | nav | | next

It's Called an Intro, Motherf******

Hi, welcome to the fuc–I mean freak, show. Don't want to blow the whole damn budget on the first 2.5 seconds of page time, right? Critics, good God–they're the worst. One sentence in and they'll judge the whole effin' book, hook line and sinker without even getting to the plot. Frickin' internet has made everyonea literary genius. Not.

ANYWAY—you're probably wondering what the eff I'm doing in the middle of this shitshow, huh? A story that isn't mine, hell—a story that isn't even technically writtenyet. That's a Fox thing. Or an MCU thing. Or a….thing, I guess? Dunno, this habit of timelines and then redoing and undoing them like a nun unbuckling a priests robes in a spittin' hurry after church is getting old—nobody really knows what the heck is going on. But, that's showbiz, right?

Rabbit trail, sorry. Frickin' brain. Anyway, yes–here. Ahem.

Well, really, we've got ourselves a Code Redpool (see what I did there?) with this one—someone trying to take over the world, rattle some cages, all that jazz. And if you didn't already know, such sticky little cumsucking messes requires a little bit more than a mercenary with a mouth. We already know I can't—don't—save the world. Despite what the box office may lend. It's above my paygrade, my hero tier. This rated R mothereffer hasn't gotten there yet, not on his own. Maybe another million or fifty.

Could be different this go around, though. Who effin' knows. All I know is that to save a world, to make a story, you need a couple of things—a smashin' budget, a whole helluva lot of copyright law, and a hero. An "anchor being," because Marvel has to be frickin' special. Sometimes two when the situation is Redpool, like it is. Maybe three, because I'll be EFFED if I'm not part of this one. Earnin' my stripes, going all Tony the Tiger and shit. You know the drill.

To help me out, I need the big guy. Yeah. Not Jesus, though it could be argued He's a factor, here. Very non denominational, very off script, very demure. Think more…yellow. Feral, as it were. Canadian. Yeah, dumbass—we need the Wolverine. The guy with the forks, the mutton chops from the 70s that were definitely a…choice. Logan. Yeah, him. Mr. Feral Forest Weasel himself.

And we'll probably need someone who can help us get to Logan, since he wouldn't know me from fresh effin' ADAM. If you saw Logan, you'll understand. Though it didn't happen exactly that way, because this is an AU—that fanfiction shit, you know. Sigh. We need someone who's tamed the beast, has clawed under all that adamantium and seen the hero where a trainwreck of a multiple-movies-gone-bad guy has stood.

A girl, genius. We need a girl. And lucky for you, delightful little fourth-wallians, I've got just the one.

Buckle up, mothereffer's—shit's about to get Wolverine-d.

Contents ➳❥ somewhere in the past, north dakota (in other words, the prologue) ➳❥ always sinners, rarely saints

[bookshelf-dust]

really know him

part i part ii part iii part iv

eddie munson x fem!reader

word count: 3,190

warnings: swearing, smoking, mentions of eddie's childhood/parents, cops, feelings and fluff

a/n: okay, hi. look who remembered how to write for eddie!! i know, right? it's totally wild. so this is gonna be another multi-part series. i think this first one is pretty sweet. it's been nice to write some eddie for a while. i hope you guys enjoy this!! the title is a play on something dustin says to wayne in season four. also tagging @rogueharrington and @zaypay because the former is a little goon and way too good to me and the latter i know wanted some eddie and is also much to sweet to me. happy reading!! <3333

————

The screen door slams so hard that the frame rattles and the metal screeches, and you’re not even sure it shut properly. But you don’t really care.

You don’t care at all. 

You practically run to the picnic table closest to your trailer, stepping onto the bench to raise yourself up and sit on the tabletop.

It rained today. It’s ended just recently enough that the trees are still dripping with it, the leaves shaking water off with each breeze that comes by, the wood table damp under where you sit.

You’re sure it’s wetting the denim of your jeans, turning the light wash of them a darker shade. But you don’t care. You don’t care about any of this. It feels so minor when you ache like this. 

The feeling stretches and splays throughout your chest, crawling up your throat and producing a sob that you release into the night air.

You lean your head back and let the tears come. They spill into your hair, across the tops of your ears; they trickle down the side of your neck. They don’t seem to want to stop. They’re the kind of tears that just keep going and going. You just have to let it out. You can’t possibly hold them in because they won’t allow it. 

You feel your eyes get puffy, feel your lashes sticking to your skin. You feel like a wreck.

It’s then that he sees you.

Eddie lights a cigarette, pulling his wrist the rest of the way through the jacket he’d grabbed on the way out. It’s the time of day where he walks around outside the trailer, smoking, breathing, looking for bugs or half listening to whatever show neighbors are watching with the volume loud enough that the whole trailer park can hear it. 

He sees your silhouette across the sandy road, your figure cast in the orange light from the old street lamp that’s just come on, the shady area tricking it into thinking it’s fully night already. 

Eddie sits down on the couch. He can’t help but look you over. No one else is usually out around now, except for that couple that sits on the old playground. They’ve lived here longer than Eddie has been alive, Wayne once told him. Everyone else is too busy having dinner or vacuuming or doing whatever the fuck it is that people do. 

You drop your face into your hands, fingers becoming wet with tears.

Eddie catches the motion, the tremble in your shoulders and the way you’re folding in on yourself. It’s like you’re trying to make yourself as small as possible. Like maybe you’re trying to disappear.

Eddie thinks you obviously want to be alone. It’s probably why you’re out here in the first place. He knows that when he’s upset and he wanders off somewhere that that’s what he wants too.

But he also knows how much he’s wished to be seen or comforted before. And the idea of leaving you there, shuddering and lost, is killing him.

So he stands.

The combination of dirt and gravel crunches under Eddie’s boots, making his approach a lot less quiet than he’d originally been shooting for. But it's not like subtlety has ever been his strong suit anyways. 

You hear it, the sound. You try and wipe your face dry, though it’s to no avail. It’s as if a buildup of every suppressed emotion is releasing itself all at once, and there’s nothing you can do about it until it’s over. Until you allow yourself to let it go. 

Still, you try and fix yourself because you can see someone walking up out of the corner of your eye. No one ever sees you cry. There’s no reason for them to.

Eddie steps up onto the bench just as you had, settling close enough to you on the tabletop that the chain on his jeans touches your thigh. It’s cold, especially with the way your jeans are wet now, but his body is warm next to yours. There’s a part of you that wants to lean into that warmth, to lean into him. 

Eddie takes the cigarette from his mouth and holds it out to you. When you turn to face him he raises his eyebrows, a sweet look on his face. Want a hit? He’s asking.

You shake your head. No thank you.

Eddie takes one more long drag and then he’s snuffing the cigarette out. If you don’t want any, he doesn’t want to bother you with it either. 

“You okay?” he asks you.

You shrug.

Eddie looks at you, curls slipping from over his shoulder to dangle on one side of his face, a stark difference in color between that of his hair and cheek. At first you don’t look back, but then you do. You have to, knowing he’s got his eyes on you. You turn your head, your bottom lip caught between your teeth, eyes swollen and tears shiny against your cheeks and down your neck, making your skin look tacky. You’re fussing with the edge of your sleeve.

Eddie thinks you look young.

“How come you came over here?” you ask, looking at his boots, which remain unlaced, like he hadn’t even thought to tie them at all. “It’s not like we’re friends or something.”

The boy snorts. “We worked together on that one project in Ms. O’Donnell’s,” he points out. “Before you up and left.”

That gets the grin out of you he was hoping it would. “You mean when I graduated?”

“Yeah.” He knocks his knee against yours, fiddling with the chain clasped around his wrist. “And,” Eddie continues, “we live across from each other.” He gestures to either of your trailers and you follow the movement of his finger. The nail is painted black, though thoroughly chipped. The kind of chipping you get when it’s been so long since you’ve done your nails that you can’t even remember painting them at all. “Doesn’t that make us like, at least, acquaintances?” 

You bring your hands up to your face, wiping at the tears there before getting at the ones spread throughout your hairline. “I suppose so,” you say.

You wipe your hands across the denim covering your legs and then shake them out. You look up.  Eddie notices you doing this and looks up with you.

The moon is round and bright. “Is it full tonight?” he asks.

“Tomorrow,” you say. Your calendar had told you so, a little circle under the date. “Though you never answered my question.”

Eddie’s head lowers towards yours, and he’s thinking. What question? Oh. That one, yeah.

“You looked upset. I thought maybe it would be nice for you to not be alone.”

You look at him again, and his big brown eyes stare back at you. They’re shiny under the light from the street lamp, his eyelashes unfairly long and kissing at the corners. There are shadows under his eyes, but they only make him look prettier. 

You think about the fact that he didn’t have to do that. Come and sit with you. It’s just the fact that he did. That he’s not prying. That he simply did not want you to be alone.

“Thank you, Eddie.”

His face splits into a sweet grin. He raises his hands, gesturing with them in a sweeping motion.

“Anytime,” he says. “I’m right there, you know. If you ever need to yell or something. As long as you’re not too busy with college for an old high school acquaintance.”

You roll your eyes at him but it’s completely void of malice. You glance back up again, and when you do, you gasp a little.

“What?” Eddie’s voice sounds slightly panicked.

You lift your hand, pointing. “Look,” you tell him. “The bats are out.”

Eddie’s shoulders slump in relief that there isn’t something wrong. But you’re right. There are at least three bats circling around the entrance to the trailer park.

One of them squeaks and you do too, though yours is out of excitement rather than whatever the reason is that bats chirp–he doesn’t know. It makes Eddie laugh.

“You like bats?”

"I do," you say, your eyes never leaving the sky. It's been a long time since you saw them, never really being out at the right time. You hope they find something good to eat.

"Me too," Eddie says.

You look away, just for a moment, remembering. "Haven't you got some on your arm?"

The boy laughs, slow and warm. "Yeah, I drew one up for my back, but I haven't saved up enough to get it done yet."

Your eyes light up, a flicker of curiosity, and Eddie thinks his heart skips a beat. "What part of your back?" you ask him.

"Lower," he says, pointing to where the bats are swooping down into the trees. You both watch them together.

"You want a tramp stamp?"

Eddie tosses his head back and cackles. It’s a beautiful, joyous sound. "I suppose I do."

“Nothing wrong with a tramp stamp, Eddie,” you say through a laugh. 

He smiles at you then, and it’s boyish. He looks young. Happy. And you can’t believe he’s looking at you that way. 

You turn your face back to the sky and close your eyes. Your nose stings and the tears start spilling out again.

Eddie looks at you and realizes you’re crying. He puts his hand on your knee on instinct. “Hey, what’s the matter?” 

You shake your head, using one hand to wipe at your face, the other settling atop his hand. His eyes dart  briefly to observe your touching hands but his focus is back on you just as quickly. 

“It’s nothing,” you say. “Just having a rough night and you’re being really kind to me and I guess I’m just overwhelmed.” 

You move your hand, but Eddie grabs hold of it gently. 

“Look at me.”

You shake your head again. 

“It’s okay. I’m not going to make fun of you,” he says, and you believe him, though really looking at him and his big brown eyes is enough to wash a surge of sadness over you. 

Eddie uses his thumb to wipe the fresh tears from under your lashes, grazing the tip of your now stuffy nose with his knuckle. You wrinkle it and he grins. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Not really, no.”

Eddie nods. “That’s cool.” He smiles again, and pushes a chunk of hair behind his ear, which only makes you curious about something else. 

You sniffle. “Why don’t you have your ears pierced?”

“You’re looking at me and that’s what you’re worried about?”

You rub your nose rather aggressively. “Yeah, actually. It seems very off-brand of you to not have at least one of them pierced. And I know you’re not afraid of needles.”

You don’t have to gesture to his tattoos. And that is true about the needles, but don’t be fooled. Eddie does not like getting shots. He loathes it, matter of fact. 

“Nope. Definitely not. I guess I just never got around to it. But it’s not like I have something against piercings.”

You rub your denim clad knees. “I’m glad to hear it.”

The both of you are quiet for a little while. It’s a comfortable silence, one that you feel safe in with him there. Because of him. You let your eyes wander around the trailer park as if you’ve never been here before. As if you hadn’t skinned your palms and banged up your knees or gotten a sunburn here as a child. As if you hadn’t grown and watched the trailers deteriorate as time went on. 

You look across the street at Eddie’s trailer, and suddenly you remember. 

You must’ve been, what, twelve? When the cops showed up, escorting a little boy the same age as you, informing a man who never really wanted children that the boy belonged to him now. There were a lot of people there that day. A social worker, maybe? A whole lot of people all trying to figure out what to do with another kid whose parents had bailed. 

Eddie’s father was arrested under charges of so many things you weren't really sure what they all were. He’d been running from the law for a very long time. And then one day he wasn’t running anymore. 

Eddie’s mother was still there after his dad wasn’t. She tried to raise Eddie, but she couldn’t do it on her own. She’d had him young, and never really gotten the hang of it, even if she tried. How hard she tried though, that can be debated on. 

After a while she turned to drugs to cope, and then when the money ran out, when the lights were off and the house cold, she ran off.

Eddie was alone, with nothing but a note and his uncle’s phone number. His mother had told herself that Eddie was a smart boy, that he’d figure it out. She got by on telling herself that her brother would take good care of her son. 

And he had. He still does. Wayne was and is a better father than Eddie’s biological dad had ever been. And even if it wasn’t what he’d planned, what he’d wanted, Eddie was Wayne’s boy. He always would be. 

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Eddie’s voice breaks you out of your stupor. 

You shake your head. 

“Thank you for sitting out here with me tonight, Eddie.”

He does his best to hide the pout he feels emerging. He doesn’t want you to go back inside, and that’s the sort of sentence that usually precedes a goodbye. He wants to talk to you. He wants to figure out who you are. 

“You don’t have to thank me. I’ll sit with you any time you want. And you can always sit with me too, if you feel like it.”

You grin. Eddie thinks it’s so pretty, your smile. Shy, sure, but so, so pretty. 

“You’re positive?”

“Absolutely.”

You go to stand, but Eddie beats you to it, his boots hitting the ground with a thud. He offers you his hand. “M’lady.”

His hand is surprisingly warm, and you’re quite sure the callouses you can feel will be imprinted in your brain for the rest of your life. 

“Can I walk you home?” Eddie asks. 

You laugh, kicking at a particularly large tree root that the rain has exposed, washing away the thin layer of dirt covering it. 

“Well I don’t know, Eddie, the twenty feet to my trailer is an awful long trek. Wouldn’t want you to have to go through all of that.” 

He shakes his head at you, bangs moving over his eyebrows. “You’re right. Could be dangerous. Which is why I need to go with you to ensure you get inside safely. Maybe you should even hold my hand.”

“Smooth.”

He holds out his hand. “Right?”

You take it, and he squeezes once, hard enough to make you giggle. 

Eddie walks you to your trailer, and rests his chin against the worn out porch railing while you walk up the stairs. 

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

“Night, M’lady.”

————

It’s been a few days. Everything the rain touched dried out again. 

Eddie’s outside. He won’t mind if you go and see him, right? 

You can always sit with me too, if you feel like it.

You do feel like it. 

Your front steps creak as you bound down them, looking both ways before you cross the road—if it can even be called that—as if the trailer park has ever been traffic heavy. Habit or whatever. 

Eddie watches you make your way towards him, tugging on the flannel you’re wearing to try and keep it close to your sides, away from the wind. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. He’s got that stupid ass grin on his face. 

“Hi.” You stop before even stepping up onto the concrete slab that is his porch. “Thought I’d come and visit you. Hope that’s okay.”

“Told you it was.” He chuckles. It makes your face warm. 

Eddie is slumped on the old couch they have set out there. His legs are spread wide, one splayed out and the other pulled closer to the cushion. He reaches his arms up over his head, stretching and yawning. His shirt rides up with the movement, exposing a sliver of the bottom of his stomach, the soft doughy skin there, the trail of dark hair leading both upwards and downwards.

“Wanna come sit?” He asks, lowering his arms. He pretends like he didn’t see you looking at him in that way, even though he most definitely did. If he thinks about it too hard he’ll blush. 

Rather than answer, you step up and settle on the other end of the couch, your back to the arm. You pull your legs up and sit with them criss-crossed.

“What are you up to?” you ask. 

He snorts. “Procrastinating. I’m supposed to be doing homework. You know, so I can do that graduating thing you did. I also have a campaign to finish, but here we are.”

You grin at him, and he reaches over, thumb tapping your knee before he rests his hand on the couch next to you. “If it helps,” you start, “I also have homework I’m supposed to be doing.”

“We’re so good at this.”

“Aren’t we?”

Eddie is quiet for a minute. He looks around outside, noting that the sun is slipping away. “You come to look for bats again?”

“No. I just wanted to see you. But I’ll gladly look for them.”

“To see me? How kind. You know just how to flatter a man.” He presses a hand to his chest dramatically and you roll your eyes. 

The door that they use as their front one opens, and Wayne walks out. He looks over at you both.

“I’m headin’ out, Ed.” He smiles at you. “What’re you both up to? No good from the looks of it.”

“Lookin’ for bats,” Eddie tells him. Wayne gives the boy a knowing look, but he won’t mention it. If something’s going on, Eddie will spill eventually. That’s how it’s always worked. Eddie the motormouth and whatnot. 

Wayne turns his face to the sky, hand raising to shield his eyes from that last little chunk of sun still hanging around, even though the moon has already started to climb up. “Watch that back tree line,” he instructs. “It’s where I always seem ‘em.”

“Will do,” you say, grinning. 

Wayne opens his car door, throwing himself inside. “Behave!” he calls.

Eddie gives him a two finger salute and watches as his uncle drives off, turning and then Eddie can’t see him anymore.

“Us?” Eddie starts. “Behave? Why on earth would we do a thing like that?”

You toss your head back and laugh. Eddie thinks you look so pretty tonight. The sun is almost gone for the evening, the clouds turning this pretty pink, this deep orange. The clouds are a thick gray. 

He wants to scoot closer to you on the couch. Maybe one day soon he will. 

————

please let me know if you liked this! feedback is always appreciated!! comments and reblogs mean more than you know. <33

[t4tvampireisms]

Now, You Feel So Alive

||Benny Lafitte/Dean Winchester|| ||Post-Break Up Blues|| ||Flirting|| ||Bars|| ||Bikers|| ||Basically: DeanBenny, But Benny Is Like David From “Lost Boys”|| ||Kissing|| ||Handjobs|| ||Blood Drinking|| ||Of Course, What Did You Expect?||

Insanity brought to me by @boykingscourt . I hope you like it bestie. 😫🫶🏾❤️✨

—

This isn’t his normal haunt. But Charlie had insisted it’d be a good time, something to get his mind off of someone she’d cleverly labeled “He Who Must Not Be Named”. Aka, Dean’s latest heartbreak and most recent failed attempt at a relationship.

Her indignation and rage on his behalf at He Who Must Not Be Named’s tryst was something he was all for, but Dean hadn’t known that “getting him back out there” came with it as some sort of package deal.

Hence, now he was parked on a barstool nursing a lukewarm beer at some neon-lit dive called “The Dirty Dog”, a place that apparently catered to large hairy dudes clad in leather and denim-wearing barfly’s pouring their welfare checks down the drain alike. Charlie was somewhere off in a dark corner making out with a blonde grunge chick with spiked studs in her eyebrows, so Dean was left to fend off roving hands all on his lonesome.

The sounds of a jukebox rattling off classic rock and the heavy stench of sweat and tobacco provided background noise to the sudden wave of emotion sweeping through Dean’s body, surrounding and enveloping him like tar.

Moving to California was supposed to be a fresh start, and at first it kinda was; Dad had a good job, Sam was making friends with the local geeks down at the comic book store by the boardwalk, and Dean had even entered into a tentative relationship with a sweet Pastor’s boy by the name of Castiel.

Well, maybe a fresh start for everyone but him then, because Cas, as it turned out, had a particular taste for thorny brunette women named Meg, women who didn’t mind blowing him at parties with red lipstick smeared all over their faces like some sort of boring cliche.

Dean’s thumb caresses the side of his beer bottle, snorting derisively to himself at the memory of Castiel’s eyes going comically wide when he was caught; maybe Dean had just been apart of some sort of side quest to piss off a preacher, but since he’d blocked and removed the boy from his life in every way that mattered he’d most likely never know.

“Y’alright there, darlin’?”

Dean turns to his right, meeting the ice blue and calculating gaze of whoever had just decided to sit by him. He was handsome, Dean noted, features sharp and rugged with a healthy amount of stubble covering his chin and cheeks, hair dyed a platinum blonde that was almost white, teased at the top and fanned down at the sides into an almost death hawk; at this close proximity Dean could make out the smell of Marlboro’s, confirmed by the one tucked snugly behind the strangers ear.

He was alluring, beautiful, and after all the shit Dean has been through the past couple of days, he thinks he’s earned the right to a bit of flirting. Not breaking eye contact, he takes a long and slow swig from his earthy beer, licking the residue from his bottom lip afterwards. “Fine, now that you’re here.”

The stranger laughs, melodic in the way a church bell rings during a quiet Sunday morning after service. “I’m Benny. Y’got a name, handsome?”

“Dean.” He takes another pull from his beer. “You usually hang around places like this?” He asks, tilting the neck of his beer towards the sight of a grizzled older man pawing at the skirt of a girl who could’ve passed as his daughter.

“Do you?” Benny asks, watching the scene briefly before flicking his gaze back towards Dean.

A snort. “I asked you first.”

A smile, white and dazzling; a flash of what Dean thinks are unusually sharp canines glinting under the low light. “Mm. Sometimes; me and my gang, we just kinda wander. Try not to get kicked out.”

“Gang?” Dean repeats, raising a brow. “What, you in a biker gang or something?”

“Or something.” Benny smirks, eyes boring into Deans, as if he could see down to his very soul; it should’ve been unsettling, unnerving, but all Dean felt was an inexplicable magnetic pull. Like a trout on bait, waiting to be reeled in to the mouth of the consumer.

Dean’s own eyes are drawn to Benny’s hands, large hands wrapped up in worn-in leather gloves that looked fit for bike riding. The thought makes him feel warm; he’s always had a thing for bikers, especially bikers with pretty blue eyes and witty smiles.

Benny’s eyes don’t leave Dean’s as he lights up the cigarette behind his ear, the lighter itself silver and emblazoned with what looked like a skull and crossbones, only the skull itself had elongated teeth resembling those of a vampires. His lips purse as he inhales from the filter, chest rising and falling in a relaxed motion as he blows out thick clouds of smoke through his nostrils. “You feel like getting outta here?”

Dean looks around, spots Charlie tugging her latest catch towards the ladies restroom and realizes she ain’t leaving anytime soon. Any other time he’d feel bad about leaving his best friend behind, but right about now all he could focus on was the way Benny’s teeth tugged at his bottom lip, tongue poking out from between the pearly whites. “Yeah alright. Lead the way, gorgeous.”

Benny grins broadly, pushing away from the bar top as he grabs Dean’s hand and fluidly drags him through the crowd, as though they were moving to accommodate him and his movements rather than the other way around. Once the boys are outside Benny leads him towards the side of the bar not illuminated by neon signs, pressing him against the bare brick wall a moment later and capturing his lips in a searing kiss.

His stubble rakes against Dean’s skin, tongue probing and swiping inside his mouth as one gloved hand places itself by Dean’s head, the other going to cup his jaw with the thumb almost hooking into his mouth.

The leather is warm, smooth and thick, something his lips immediately latch onto when Benny’s pull away, sucking at the material and leaving it glistening with saliva. The aftertaste of cinnamon and clove from Benny still lingers on his breath, an ambrosia that leaks into his skin to leave him feeling scent-drunk and almost airy.

Benny watches him hungrily, ice blue obscured by the inky blackness of his blown-out pupils, and maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the lack of light, but Dean could’ve swore he saw a flash of yellow in that predatory stare just a second ago.

“Beautiful.” He hears Benny murmur, pulling his fingers away to reclaim his mouth, feels as his lips travel from his jaw to his pulse point, sucking what would no doubt be bruises by morning into his skin. Dean groans, low and throaty, tilting his head back against the wall to further bare his throat to Benny, who hums appreciatively as he marks his neck.

So lost in a sea of bliss he almost doesn’t notice as the sucking becomes biting, the feeling of teeth puncturing Dean’s neck causing him to gasp and open his eyes; what he sees is Benny, still latched onto his neck, only his lips are now shiny with a mixture of saliva and blood, tongue gently and insistently lapping at the small wound he had created. He should be afraid, should pull back and shove the other boy away and tell him to fuck off. It wouldn’t be the first time a potential tango partner had gotten a bit too kinky for comfort.

But the thing was, Dean wasn’t afraid. He was enjoying every single zap and zing of pain mixed pleasure, endorphins and ecstasy flooding his body much like the first few seconds after ingesting the sugary sweet high of ecstasy.

Benny pulls away from Dean’s neck, his eyes hooded and almost completely clouded over; he looked just as high as Dean felt, lips swollen and tinged pink with ruby red liquid dripping down his chin. He looked almost animalistic, chest rising and falling with each heavy breath, the jut of his cheekbones more prominent, the tips of his ears pointed in a way Dean hadn’t taken stock of until now. Whoever, or whatever, this boy was didn’t matter; Dean wanted to be destroyed by him.

“You taste so sweet, darling.” Benny cooes, leaning in with a kiss that was more an exchange of tongue, of taste, and Dean realizes with a jolt that he is currently tasting his own blood. He couldn’t taste anything apart from copper, but nonetheless it was still new and exciting. Kissing with Cas had been nice, but they’d never gotten beyond the stage of heavy petting. Maybe it was wrong to compare his ex to a boy he’d only known for less than an hour, but it seems as though Dean was neglecting all other rational thought and feeling in exchange for hedonism tonight.

Had he already mentioned how intoxicating Benny tasted? It was as though the boy himself was a drug, tasting of spices, herbs, and sweetness, settling into his bones and bloodstream like a warm and tingly alcoholic beverage; a talisman in a (semi) human form.

The hand not braced on the wall behind Dean travels down his side, weightless and featherlight, grazing his hip and the sliver of skin exposed by a shirt most likely one size too small for him. Nimble fingers trail along the waistband of his pants, dipping ever so slightly past the elastic of his boxers before continuing their journey. Dean can feel himself straining against the denim of his bleach-washed jeans, achingly hard and begging for any sort of reprieve; Benny, thankfully possessing the ability to seemingly read minds, takes mercy on him and splays his palm on the prominent bulge it finds, removing his hand from the wall to deftly undo Dean’s buckle and unzip his fly.

Once his underwear is tugged down and out of the way, exposing his flushed skin to the otherwise chilly night air, Benny wraps his gloved hand around his cock, stroking and twisting, pressing his thumb against the tightly stretched frenulum under his head, chuckling deeply as Dean’s hips stutter and buck further into his touch.

Benny strokes a little faster, swallowing Dean’s moans with deeper and deeper kisses, whispering all sorts of dirty things into his ear in that carefree drawl of his. His thumb swipes over the head once again, smearing pearly drops of pre-come over his erection, the sounds slick and obscene and downright filthy. It’s not long before Dean is coming with a choked off groan, spilling hot and sticky all over Benny’s hands and fingers. He nearly collapses, Benny’s arms steadying him as his limbs decide to take a last minute vacation without informing the boss.

“Fuck.” Dean voices, almost embarrassed at how wrecked and hoarse his voice sounded.

“Mm.” Benny licks at the sticky white fluid coating his gloves, making hot and heady eye contact the entire time. Dean’s already-spent cock gives a half hearted throb at the sight, but he doesn’t think he could go a second round even if his legs weren’t currently made of jelly.

After tucking his soiled gloves into the pockets of his wool duster coat, Benny leans against the same wall Dean was currently using as a support beam to light up another cigarette, relaxed and nonchalant in a way that would’ve been infuriating if it wasn’t so damn attractive; it only made Dean wanna work twice as hard to get him worked up in the future.

“Need a ride home?” He asks, keeping his eyes trained on the inky black darkness above as he hands the cigarette over.

“Yeah. That’d be nice.” Dean nods, accepting the offered vice and taking a deep drag of it himself. Tonight had certainly been one for the books.

—

Dean’s head is buried in his pillows when a heavy weight suddenly throws itself on his bed, jostling his body weight and forcing him to open his eyes to scowl at whatever had just disrupted his sleep. A floppy haired boy of sixteen glares down at him, bangs falling into his eyes and yet somehow he’s still able to pull off the pissed-off-parent look.

“Whatddya want, Sam?” Dean groans, squinting against the bright light filtering into their shared bedroom.

“Charlie said you ditched her; she saw you walking off with some punk, and she also said she didn’t see you return. Were you doing drugs? Was he your dealer?”

Dean groans again, grabbing a pillow and draping it over his head. “Since when did you become Dad?”

“Since you started sneaking off with blonde punks to do drugs.”

“I wasn’t doing drugs, idiot.” Dean tries and fails to aim a kick at Sam’s shins, which only causes him to move his aching muscles more than they clearly wanted or were capable of. “Just go away. I’m fine.”

Sam hmphs but ultimately decides to leave it be, for once, bouncing off of Dean’s bed with the sound of his footsteps departing for the door following soon after. “Dad made breakfast. You should get up.”

Dean’s hand grazes over the mark on his neck after Sam leaves, fingers hovering over raised and jagged skin.

Killer hangover aside, being with Benny was the most fun he had in weeks; if he was planning on seeing the beautiful boy again, and soon, no one else had to know.

@lesbianboyfriend @bsideheart @tboykrillin @lesbianjudasiscariot @pikslasrce @girlv1rgin @transchesters @switchkick

[notsogothgf]

You're Gonna Kill For Me Or Die For Me

Johnny Slaughter X AFAB Reader⭐18+ MDI⭐

CW: Blood, Gore, kidnapping

CHPT: 1 Escaping Basement

Oh god things couldn’t have possibly gotten any worse. Every corner I turned the rooms looked the same, filled with blood and bones. I was never going to make it out of here. To think I actually listened to Leland. I just wanted to help Ana look for her sister, but of course this lug head wanted to check out the man with the beat up truck coated in blood. How they never got pulled over for questioning is beyond me. We went poking our noses where we shouldn’t have. Now I’m stuck in a stupid basement full of god knows what. I especially didn’t want to know who or what these bones came from. It was freaking me out the longer I was around them.I tried my best to avoid touching the bones in between the doors. Trying even harder to distance myself from the maniac with a chainsaw. While peering down the dark tunnel ahead I failed to hear the footsteps behind me.Two hands quickly grabbed at me one keeping me quiet and the other holding me still. Gasping and grabbing the hand around my mouth the assailant spoke.

“Sh sh shhh. It’s just me sweetheart.” It was Leland.

I quickly turned around punching him in the chest, “Jesus Christ you oaf you scared the shit outta me!” He smiled, wrapping his arms around me. 

Overcome with so many emotions: fear, anger, sadness, maybe even a little bit of guilt. I held him tightly, shedding a few tears not knowing if this would be our last hug alive.

“Hey now it’s gonna be okay we’re going to make it out of here. Okay?” He held my face wiping my tears with his thumbs.

I nodded, leaning into his palms.

“Now, I’ve made up a couple bone shanks to keep us safe. We just need to stick together and find a way out.” Leland gave my face one last squeeze before letting go.

I let him lead the way as I felt like I was only going round in circles. Before moving too far he handed me one of those bone shanks. I didn’t pay much attention where we were going, opting instead to watch and listen for that rattling chainsaw. The smell of decay and mildew was overwhelming. Made me miss the smell of home real bad, hell I just missed home in general. Bet Ma is worried sick. Leland stopped quickly shooting an arm out to grab me pulling me in a closet. About to open my mouth and question him, the look he shot me told me I needed to be quiet. Holding my breath and looking out of the little slit I saw the owner of the pick up truck slinking by. 

“M’ on yer tail I know y'all ‘r round here somewhere..”

Looking at Leland with wide eyes he just put a finger to his lips. The heavy thuds of his boots circled behind us heading down the rest of the hall. Leland peaked his head out first, slowly stepping out and offering me a hand. Taking it and following him back down the hall opposite of that psycho path. We ended up in what seemed to be the room.

“You see that tin thing? I need ya to open that for me. You know how butter fingered I am” He nodded towards what looked like a pigpen door.

I slowly opened the pen crawling through into the red lit room. I gasped as I saw all the different skulls littering the walls. He crawled out right beside me letting out a small ‘oh god.’ He quickly turned my head and led me to the large metal door.

“Do not turn around, understand me.” He stated as he started fiddling around with the lock on the door.

Everything in me wanted to turn around. “Why?” I whispered. 

He sighed, shaking his head, “ It’s- It’s Ana. Now please don’t look darlin’.”

I needed to know what he meant by the way he sounded. It couldn't have been good. What if I just did a quick look no longer than two seconds? I did and I wish I wouldn’t have. Grabbing Leland’s shoulder and letting out a sob. Ana was sat on some kind of meat hook. Limp. There was blood all around her. Leland sniffled, still picking the lock as he knew I looked and couldn’t spare the time to stop. This was no longer just some scary prank but a fight for our lives. Once the lock popped open he hugged me tightly. He pulled away, grabbing my face lightly.

“We’re gonna make it out of here and we’re gonna go get help. Whatever happens I love you and ‘m sorry I dragged you into this mess.” He kissed me softly.

He was always so gentle with me.” I love you too. Nothings gonna happen. Ya hear?”

Nodding he gave me one last squeeze before letting go. “Now I’m gonna open this door and we’re gonna book it. Do. Not. Stop. Running.”

I wasn’t ready but I had to be if we were going to make it out of here. Leland counted on his fingers as soon as it hit three he flung the door open and started sprinting. I fell behind not being able to keep up with his long strides. I had no idea where we were headed. I just knew I didn’t want to lose sight of him. Playing football really paid off for him though he was fast and agile. He ran through the maze of doors and bones until we stopped at what we thought was the front door. Grabbing the door knob twisting and pulling. It was locked.

“Shit, I don’t have a lock pick.” He whispered.

“I don’t either.” I looked around closely trying to find anything worth using, but not leaving the room. I fear if I did I’d get lost.

“Leland the stairs.” I point to a staircase leading to the second floor. “Maybe we kind find somethin there.”

[flowerfan2]

Casting in the Dark

Drarry, 8k, M.

Summary:

The first time Draco has an orgasm with Harry, he’s not sure Harry even notices. In retrospect, this might not have been ideal.

A story about eighth year sexy shenanigans, boys who are not particularly experienced at either sex or communication, and first times that don’t always go smoothly.

A note of interest: I was inspired to write this story when someone recently left a very lovely comment on a Klaine fic I wrote years ago (Dancing in the Dark). This Drarry fic starts out the same way, but due to the fact that these are rather different couples, it then took on a life of its own. This is evidence, however, of how leaving comments can sometimes result very directly in more fic!

Casting in the Dark (read on A03):

The first time Draco has an orgasm with Harry, he’s not sure Harry even notices.  In retrospect, this might not have been ideal.   

It’s eighth year, an extremely convenient concept that McGonagall came up with when she witnessed students losing their collective shit as the end of the summer after the war approached.  No amount of cooperatively fixing up the castle had prepared their cohort of traumatized survivors to move forward with adult lives just yet, so McGonagall and the castle, apparently, improvised.  Instead of having to fend for themselves, the group gets another year of food provided to them three times a day, schoolwork so they have something to think about other than fear, and rules that are familiar, if not always welcome.

There are some differences, of course.  The eighth years now live in a new house on the grounds that is a tad too rustic for Draco’s taste, a cross between a Swiss chalet and a hunting cabin.  Their bedrooms are haphazard with little rhyme or reason to them, and instead of being assigned they all just wandered in and set up wherever they landed.

Draco and Pansy are in a room on the second floor, overlooking a grassy hill that swoops dramatically down to the lake.  Blaise, Millie and a Ravenclaw girl are next to them, with two Hufflepuffs and Longbottom across the hall.  Thomas and Finnegan are downstairs, next to the kitchen, along with Weasley, Granger, and a few other students.  In a move that surprised no one, moments after they all filed in the house had shifted and popped a third floor, giving Harry a room all to himself.  

The common room has a high ceiling and heavy wooden beams, thick rugs in faded colors, and scattered chairs and sofas that look worn but are on the whole surprisingly comfortable.  And it’s here that it happens.  Afterwards, Draco wonders if he should mark it down somewhere, whether maybe there’s a special way to commemorate such a first.  If he should dig out his baby wizard book from a trunk at the Manor and make a new page:  Draco’s First Partnered Orgasm.  Mother would be so proud.

It's a Saturday in early December, almost the end of term.  After dinner someone puts music on, louder than normal, the kind that thrums through your body and rattles your bones.  Between that and the bottles of elf wine getting passed around, Draco’s feeling fine.

Millie and her Ravenclaw friend are dancing, hands above their heads and hair flying.  They are soon joined by Pansy and Granger, who have formed an odd friendship, and Blaise, who’ll dance with anyone.  Lovegood’s there too, turning the music up, and Longbottom arrives bringing more beverages, along with a group of seventh years that traipse in after him.  Finnegan is fucking around with the candles, charming them to shine in shades of pink neon and tangerine.  It's not the first house party of the term, but it’s shaping up to be the wildest.  Despite that, Draco’s content to hang back, watching the colors flash and reflect against the tall windows that line the sides of the room. 

Later Harry flops down on the sofa next to him, flush with alcohol.  His eyes gleam in the flickering candlelight as he turns to Draco and hands him a glass.  “Try it.  It’s pretty good,” Harry says, leaning close to yell in Draco’s ear.

Draco takes a sip and grimaces as the liquid burns going down.   It tastes like fruit flavored acid. “Is this Longbottom’s?” He leans close too.  Yelling is so gauche.

Harry’s hair brushes Draco’s cheek.  “Yup.  He claims it’s punch.”

“Sure.”  Draco braces himself and drinks the rest of the glass.  “Where’s yours?”

Harry shrugs.  “Finished it already.”  He holds Draco’s gaze, and Draco can feel his whole body tingling.  He thinks he knows where this is going.  He really, really hopes he knows where this is going.

By now most of the students have abandoned the dance floor for more dimly lit corners of the room, the charmed candles accommodating the mood by blowing themselves out.  The music is still loud, pulsing through Draco’s brain to the tune of the alcohol flowing through his veins.

Harry gives him a look that is probably meant to be sultry, but even as ridiculous as it is, it gets the point across.   “Wanna…?” Harry asks, a smile dancing around his lips.

Draco nods, and before he knows it Harry has cast a <i>notice-me-not,</i> and then they are kissing, hands in each others’ hair, messy and free.  After a while Draco shifts and stretches his legs out, optimistically pulling Harry down with him, but the soft isn’t big enough for them both to lie down and they wind up on the floor, half under the coffee table, laughing into each other’s faces.

“You’d think we’d never done this before,” Harry says, his grin stretching his cheeks, and Draco nearly chokes with glee because, to be clear, <i>they have never done this before.</i>  Not with each other.  Not even once.

“But you wanted to,” Draco says, regaining his composure, as much as it is possible to do while avoiding what he is hoping is a puddle of spilled wine and not something even more vile behind his head.

“Yeah, I did,” Harry says.  “For ages.  So did you.”

“I did.”  Draco takes in a deep breath, and then leans in, wondering if Harry will kiss him again.  He does.

Harry is an energetic kisser, and Draco tries to pay attention, tries to match what Harry is doing.  Harry is generous with his caresses, but keeps his hands firmly above Draco’s belt, and his hips canted away, so Draco does the same.  It’s more than fine with him, frankly, because he’s not all that interested in giving his fellow students a show, even if the room is dark and no one else is paying a damn bit of attention to what’s going on underneath the coffee table.

They kiss again and again.  It’s fantastic.  Harry drops kisses along Draco’s chin, and then down his throat, nosing his way into the open collar of his shirt.  It makes Draco shiver with delight.  Eager to make Harry feel just as good, Draco runs his hand over Harry’s chest, pausing to circle his nipples as he feels them harden through Harry’s thin t-shirt.  This apparently works as intended, so Draco does it again, and Harry moans wantonly in appreciation.  The sound shoots straight through Draco, and then he’s jerking his hips, pressing them to the floor and letting out his own embarrassing noises, ones he can only hope are muffled by the music.

Moments later, when feeling has returned to his legs, Draco shuffles to his feet.  He just came in his pants.  From kissing Harry Potter.  He can hardly believe it.  “Be right back,” he says, pointing towards the bathroom.  Harry, looking a little dazed, just nods.

When Draco returns from cleaning himself up, Hermione and Ron are bracketing Harry on the sofa, clinking glasses together.  Harry shoots Draco an apologetic look and turns back to his friends.  Draco goes to his room, pushes all of the night’s confusing feelings away, and, helped along by the relatively high level of alcohol in his bloodstream, falls asleep.

The next morning Draco panics.  He’s not really surprised that something happened between him and Harry – the UST, as Pansy calls it, has most definitely been building.  But he’s got no idea what’s going to happen next.  After Harry testified at Draco’s trial and McGonagall assigned them to work together mending furniture in the Great Hall, it became easier to get along.  They’ve even been on a mostly first name basis since Harry’s birthday, as a result of a gillyweed-inspired game of truth or dare.  More recently, the eighth year house has done its job, providing a cozy, safe space for the two of them to relax and breathe.  Draco knows that as strange as it seems, he and Harry are friends.

Still, it’s one thing for the wizarding world’s golden boy to demonstrate how good and forgiving he is by allowing a former Death Eater to hang with him.  It’s quite another to snog him.  

So when Harry knocks on Draco’s door that morning and asks if he wants to come play Quidditch, Draco is very pleasantly surprised.

When a week goes by and there has been zero additional kissing, however, Draco is not so happy.

He hasn’t told Pansy about what happened, or anyone else.  He doesn’t want to inadvertently screw it up before he knows what Harry wants.  He doesn’t even know if Harry has kissed a boy before, how Harry identifies, or if he’s out.  

Draco is, more or less.  After the war, and after it was clear he wasn’t going to Azkaban, he told Pansy and Blaise.  He’s not trying to keep it a secret, not any more.  He thinks his parents already knew, but kept it quiet so that it wasn’t one more thing putting them at risk, one more vulnerability for Voldemort to exploit.  

He doesn’t think Pansy saw Harry kissing him at the party, because if she had, she absolutely would have said something to him by now.  Regardless, she seems to know something is up, giving him quizzical looks and questioning him on his plans in the evenings.  He’s not quite ready to tell her, though.  Not yet.  Besides, he doesn’t need to confide in her to know what her advice would be.

Talk to him. Ha.

Read the rest on A03.

[bridgyrose]

Cinder as Astarion or Vice Versa

(I... really need to do more with BG3 and actually learn more about the breakable vampire twink)

Cinder clutched her head as she swore she could hear Salem’s voice rattling around her mind, her breathing starting to become heavy as the scars on her back started to burn. It had been years since she was allowed to be near anyone, the other spawns like her kept separated from her while she was punished for yet another failure at seducing someone to bring to Salem. 

“You know why I keep you, dont you?” Salem’s voice echoed around Cinder, almost as if she was in the same room. “You… are precious to me.” 

“I-I didnt mean to fail you,” Cinder half whimpered as the burning of her scars started to die down. “There was an attack-” 

“I dont care about why you failed me, I care that you werent able to follow simple instructions.” 

Cinder winced as she felt Salem slap her, watching as the woman appeared in front of her. Her hand went to her cheek, feeling the blood that had started to drip. “I… I’m sorry…” 

“And because you’re precious to me, I’m going to give you another chance.” 

“You… you are?” 

“I am.” Salem pulled away from Cinder with a smile. “Bring me another soul, and I’ll give you a little freedom.” 

Cinder nodded and knelt down in front of Salem, nearly shaking at the opportunity. “O-of course, goddess.” 

“Do not disappoint.” 

Cinder looked up and watched as Salem practically dissolved like smoke, her body still in pain as she began to dress herself. Years of isolation made her desperate to please her goddess as she stood up and started to make her way to the door. She paused as she placed a hand on the doorknob, keeping still as she tried to determine if the sun was out by the heat of the metal. Once she was sure the sun had set, she opened the door, relaxing and let out the breath she held as she felt the cool night air against her skin. 

She took a deep breath and made her way out into the village she had been locked away in, pulling the hood of her robe over her head to help keep herself from getting noticed. All she had to do was seduce someone she could bring to Salem, and she could be in her good graces once more. Though, the longer Cinder thought about it, the more she wasnt sure who would work anymore. Salem wasnt picky, just as long as she had bodies to feed from, that was all that mattered, but even then, there were those who didnt seem to last long, disposed of almost as quickly as they were brought. 

Still, as long as Cinder followed instructions, she’d be safe. That much she knew. A smile crossed her lips as she looked around a corner, watching a couple thugs mug one of the villagers. Her fangs slowly started to grow as she made her way over, almost as quiet as the wind itself. 

“Is that all you have?” one of the thugs asked with a scoff as he dumped out the contents of a woman’s bag, disappointed with the lack of anything worthwhile. “You’ve gotta have more.” 

The woman’s voice started to break as she tried to pull away, finding her back against a wall. “T-that’s everything I have-” The woman’s words were cut off with a scream as the second thug slashed a knife against her arm. 

“Maybe we’ll have to find another way to get what we want out of you,” the second thug said, wiping the blood off her blade. “A pretty thing like you will fetch a nice price.” 

“Leave her alone,” Cinder said as her amber eyes started to turn red, fangs peeking out of her smile. “I’m sure you two can get your money somewhere else.” 

The first thug looked over at Cinder, pulling his knife at her. “And what do we have here? Looks like we’ll have another one for him.” 

Cinder smirked and gripped the hilt of her blades as she watched the thugs walk closer to her, gently tapping the pommel as she counted quietly to ten. “Ten,” she said just loud enough to be a whisper as she pulled her blades from her sheaths and sliced into the thugs arms and kicked his leg in. 

“Gah!” the thug yelled out as he dropped his knife, falling back. “Leave that one and get her!” 

The second thug pushed the woman away and rushed at Cinder, knife at the ready. “Right!” 

Cinder grinned and sliced into the second thug, pushing him over just like the first. She licked her lips as she smelled the iron in their blood, nearly salivating as she hungered. She knelt down next to the first thug, licking her lips as she made a small cut along his neck, letting a little blood trickle down. With a quick swipe of her finger, she took a little blood and smiled as she savored the taste. “A little meal before I finish here wont hurt-” 

Her words were cut off as she heard a *crack* in the sky as a portal opened up, the hair on the back of her neck as the air felt… off. A growl-like roar echoed out in the air above her as she looked up to see a nautiloid fly overhead. Cinder got up to start to run, feeling a tentacle grab her, body practically disintegrating as she lost consciousness.

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

The Mafia Princess Part III: The Meeting

Okay, I have a lot of information to throw at you guys so here we go! First, I told you I would make a new post for this story since it was getting so long. Second, I'm compiling all of this onto AO3 for easier reading! The polls/voting, of course, will still be taking place here on tumblr at the end of each update/post.

Mafia Princess Masterpost: https://www.tumblr.com/ibelieveinahappilyeverafter/743113275016937473/the-mafia-princess-masterpost?source=share

AO3 Full Story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54008686?view_full_work=true

Winning Result: Duck and cover and hide behind a dumpster.

---

Elsa didn’t waste any time thinking or wondering if, instead of a gunshot, it had been some kind of firework on those annoying poppers they sold around the 4th of July. Instead she figured better safe than sorry and ducked into the closest alleway, trying to be quiet as she wedged herself between an overflowing dumpster and a brick wall.

Forcing herself to try and not have some kind of panic attack, Elsa was pretty sure her heart stopped when she heard rapid footsteps followed by someone slamming up against the dumpster she was hiding behind. She fought the urge to try and move further back or scrunch herself up more and instead focused on staying as still as possible as she listened to what was happening. 

She felt the dumpster rattle briefly, as if someone had pushed against it before stopping. Considering she heard harsh, breathless panting, she had to assume whoever had slammed into it had then used it to get their balance back. 

Straining to hear anything else, Elsa almost flinched when she heard a deep voice suddenly talking. “Alleyway. Somewhere between 6th and 7th over by Broad. Get here. Now.” Alright. Definitely a man who had come slamming up against the dumpster and he had probably just talked to someone on a phone. It was a fifty-fifty considering where she lived. 

Feeling the dumpster rattle again, Elsa swallowed and tried to think on what she should do or if she should just stay still and hope and wait whoever it was would leave soon. She then jumped all over again when she heard yelling and screaming coming from what was probably only a block or two away. 

It took a couple seconds for her to make anything out, but eventually she heard, “-fucking find him and take him the fuck out!” 

“Fuck,” the man swore, harsh and quiet, before a few moments of silence passed. Then the dumpster was moving away from the wall. 

This time she was absolutely certain her heart stopped — even more so when she looked over to see that the man was slipping between the dumpster and the wall to sit down and hide like she had and was now looking right at her. 

She debated screaming for help, but ruled that out when she remembered about the yelling about taking someone out (which meant killing, she was certain of that). She then thought about crying and looking pathetic and sad enough that the idea of killing her wouldn’t even occur. Then she actually looked at the man sitting beside her. He… didn’t look good.

What was once probably a nice suit was now torn up and scuffed and soaked with blood, Elsa noting that the man had been shot at least two or three times and maybe even stabbed once. One of them looked to have been way too close to something important in his chest and Elsa was pretty sure most people died when they had two or three bullet wounds along with a possible stabbing. 

Tearing her gaze away she saw that the man was looking at her just as intensely and Elsa was now absolutely certain that she had no idea on what to do. 

The yelling was only a street away, too.

[crystalninjaphoenix]

Many Roads Diverge in the Woods - Part Five

A JSE Interactive Fanfic

The Beginning | Previous

The results are in.

Your path has been altered. Strange how such a small choice can change so much.

THE KEEP READING IS BACK! XD The poll to decide what happens next is beneath it. The poll is only open for one day, expiring on October 14th at 12:00pm PST. Part Six will be up on October 16th at the same time.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

“Okay. Okay, I got it.” Marvin takes a deep breath. “It’ll be hard to take care of Jackie while in the car. H-he needs to keep laying down, and there’s not much room to do that in there.”

“Right.” Chase nods. “The car seat’s pretty narrow. So’s this sofa. A bed would be better. Can we handle getting him up the stairs to a bedroom?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.”

JJ lifts up the gauze. Then he puts it down to sign, I think the bleeding has slowed down.

“Good.” Marvin nods. “Now we just need to clean and pack the wound, then we can move him.”

That takes a couple minutes. Even as they work, the three of them can’t help but glance around. The wide-open, many-entranced living room is exposing. Being in here is nerve-wracking. Chase finds his eyes drifting towards the basement door more than once, expecting the attacker to burst through at any moment.

“I think... I think this is good.” Marvin steps back. “Or, as good as we can do. I-it’ll last until the police get here.” He takes a deep breath. “Now we move.”

Chase, help me, JJ says. Jackie is half-leaning on him, a bandage wrapped around his chest.

“No problem.” Chase spares a moment to grab the medical kit and Jackie’s hoodie—maybe he’ll want to put it back on when he’s recovered more—and then helps JJ lift Jackie to his feet. “Up the stairs we go.”

It’s slow-going, but after a couple minutes they make it. Without even talking, they head to Jackie’s room near the end of the hall. It’s the smallest one, barely big enough for a bed, a small wardrobe, and a desk with a chair, but they all find somewhere to fit. As soon as everyone’s in, Marvin locks the door. JJ and Chase gently lower Jackie onto the bed. “Put him on his side,” Chase says. “That’s supposed to be good.”

JJ nods. The two of them step back. How long until the police get here again? Ninety minutes? Do we just wait here until then?

“Yeah, that was the plan,” Marvin says.

“What if the guy tries to get in?” Chase whispers, setting Jackie's hoodie and the kit on the desk.

Block the door? JJ suggests.

Chase tries to push the desk, then the wardrobe. He shakes his head. “I think they’re bolted down. Weird.”

“What? Okay...” Marvin looks confused. “I... we could go out the window?”

“We can’t get Jackie out of a two-story window!”

As if on cue, Jackie groans and raises his head slightly. “Wha...?”

“Jackie!” Chase gasps. He kneels by the side of the bed. “How are you? How do you feel?!”

“...bad.” Jackie closes his eyes. JJ reaches forward and snaps his fingers in front of his face, making him open his eyes again. “Don’t... do that.”

Don’t close your eyes, JJ says. You’re not supposed to close your eyes like this!

“Wait.” Marvin holds up a hand. “Do you guys hear that?”

Everyone goes silent. And that’s when they hear the footsteps walking down the hall. Chase inhales sharply. JJ steps forward, as if trying to hide Jackie behind him. The footsteps get closer. They can hear the bathroom door opening, then closing again. Marvin and Chase back away towards the window.

The footsteps stop right outside the door. Silence follows, deep and deafening. Then it is broken as the doorknob jiggles, clattering as it tries to turn despite the lock. It clatters louder. Then stops abruptly. A strange scraping sound drifts down the wood of the door.

BANG BANG BANG!

JJ jumps back. Chase covers his mouth and swallows the scream in his throat. Whoever’s on the other side of the door is banging on it, trying to break it down. And it might work. With each impact the door rattles in its frame.

Marvin looks around the room, eyes wide with panic. Now what?! he asks in sign language, not wanting to say anything out loud.

We came up here to hide it out, JJ says. Surely they can’t get in. There’s not even a lock on the other side. We can wait. But as he says that, the banging on the door just gets louder, his face going paler with every echoing BANG!

What if they do get in?! Marvin asks. We can’t get Jackie out of here! This was a bad idea!

Jackie groans again. “Guys,” he whispers. “It’s... i-it’s...”

Chase shushes him. “Save your strength,” he whispers.

“No, y-you need... to know.” Jackie is breathing heavily. “Schneep... attacked me.”

The other three go silent, identical expressions of disbelief on their faces. He wouldn’t do that, JJ signs slowly.

“He did,” Jackie says quietly. “Open... the door. You’ll see... he’s...” His strength fades, and he puts his head back down.

The banging sound on the door is joined by a strange thunk!ing, like someone is throwing something against the wood. The doorknob rattles. Marvin shivers. We can’t open the door! he says. Can we?!

Chase presses his hands against his ears. It’s hard to know what to do! What do they do?!

[okinawa-division]

It’s just that Japan has turned around into the midsummer —The perfect time to enjoy a beach trip for most people.

Once a certain jet-black car has reached its destination at one of the best hot-spots being reviewed in Okinawa, the boy with reddish hair has been spotted stepping out of the car …with a number of boxes in his arms. 

The seashell chimes hanging above the bar’s doors let out their lovely rattling sound as he gets inside.

“Good afternoon, mister. Are you perhaps Mr. Young of Eagle’s Nest? I’m Yuuya Kanata from Nara division. I’m here today to relay the birthday presents from my team.”

“This box is my gift. They may look all yummy but they are in fact scented candles I found nice. If by any chance, I think they will make good decorations to your bar at nighttime. Their smells are quite something too. This one has a vanilla scent, this one is strawberry milkshake, this one is butter cream, and many more —Well, they all smell like desserts in my opinion.”

And then he brings out a cooler box. 

“Okay, these ones are actually edible haha. They’re Monaka ice cream made from my teammate despite him telling me that making ice cream isn’t really his land of expertise. Even so, he expects something cool like ice cream would sell off rather well in summer and more particularly; maybe somewhere with a tropical climate like in Okinawa. And in case you want to be more creative with them, the empty shells (crispy wafer) are also available in the additional bag.”

“From Saigo-san are the beautifully painted ceramic plates and the last one is from Mr. Chishio —Hmm, the latter is like… the assistant of Saigo-san? Honestly, just how many jobs this guy has been carrying under that title. I don’t know why, but Mr. Chishio seems to know your place rather well even before we entered the DRB. He even asked me to tell you ‘Thank you for the trading’ and give me his own gift for you.”

Inside the box from the guy called Chishio are a collection of kitchen knives for various uses ...Just don’t get the wrong idea. Japanese are known for using different knives for each different role in the kitchen. So, the ultimate motive behind this gift is only for cooking …Definitely, not for murdering someone, maybe?

“And that’s all we’ve got for you today. Lastly, Happy Birthday Mr. Young —EH? YOU ALSO GOT A KITTY?” 

Seemingly distracted for a minute, the boy soon keeps his composure back from petting the kitten a couple of times. 

“…It’s a shame that I’ve to fetch some seafoods for my teammates before dinnertime, so let me say a good-bye for today. Nevertheless, hope you and your teammates all have a nice year!”

——— BONUS: about fifteen minutes ago

Chishio: We’ve already arrived at the bar so why don’t we order some liquor on our way home?

Yuuya: How do you forget that I’m still underage and alcohol seems likely to be downright sedative to me? What wicked humor you have today, Chishio-san. At least don’t convince your minor to be your drinking friend!

Chishio: *chuckles* Aren't you 19 this year, kid?

Rashaad smiled at the handful of gifts he had received from the Nara Division. Truthfully, he wasn't all that familiar with them, though he did know of them. It was one of the many perks of being a bartender; you knew just about everyone in Japan, whether they had revealed themselves or not. He made a mental note that he'd have to interact with the Nara team later on when he had some free time. Before he departed, the bar owner disappeared quickly into his bar before returning with a bottle of sake and some cups.

"For Chishio-san and Fuyugami-san," Rashaad stated, handing him the bottle and the cups. "Tell them to make sure it's thoroughly heated first."

Bidding the young teenager a farewell, Rashaad looked at the gifts he had received. Out of all of them, the candles were perhaps his favorite. Opening a random one, he quickly lit it with his lighter. In a matter of seconds, the entire bar seemed to smell like some fruity cereal, making Rashaad nod his head, enjoying the aroma.

Sitting down on one of the stools in his bar, he chose the vanilla and chocolate parfait as he began digging into it, eating it was his hands. He heard a small 'purr' from above and looked as it was his kitten, Coco, whom Rashaad had forgotten was on top of his head. Looking up at him, he placed a small thing of ice cream on one of the plates, Fuyugami-san had given him.

The feline, not needing to be told twice, dug into the sweet milky treat, using his small tongue to eat it. The scene made Rashaad grin; this birthday was truly shaping up to be, perhaps, his best upon leaving the States.

Thanks for the gift!

[halcyen]

The fact that she's merely busying herself while the couple in the doorway exist quietly with one another seems obvious. Sophie feels as if she's been shoved up onto a stage and made to perform, though she'd be the first to admit that the absence of her ostensible audience's eyes, namely those of Skizm's Killer-Queen, is of some comfort. The short-lived glimpse she'd received of Arthur's wife's too-wide stare was sharp, and cold. She wields those eyes like she does blades in her hands. Everybody knows it.

Working to swallow the judgement that which stems more from discomfort and feeling like she doesn't currently suit her skin, is harder than Sophie would like. She locks her jaw momentarily to answer her old neighbor with a friendly hum, grinds her teeth for only a second ere catching the slip, then rolls her eyes toward the half of Arthur she can see from the kitchen sink.

" That's because you were lucky enough to be out of here, " Her 'admonishment' is well-meaning, benign, and comes with a smile meant to tease as well as self-depreciate for jest's sake. " And looking. " The squeak of the sponge against a plate laden with suds almost makes her wince. In the terse air every sound feels far louder than it should. Her breathing's rattling in her ears. She thinks she can even hear Arthur's fingers comb through Nix's hair from here.  Something about those eyes... Sophie feels gooseflesh on the inside of her skin somehow. Everything's crooked. 

She continues, " I don't even know where you'd put one in this box. "

Arthur's focus is on his wife, ostensibly working to overlook her glazed eyes for some attempt at ease for her sake. If it's working, Sophie has no way of telling. The occasional sniff from around the corner is begotten by Nix. That she knows. She thinks she hears the snapping of teeth occasionally too.

" You'd need an extension. " He agrees contemplatively, though the subject itself holds about as much weight as the air should around them. It's gotten thicker, static and prickling at the napes of their necks.

" Out on the fire escape, maybe. " She says, balancing the last of her dishes on the rack with a certain expertise that comes with years of performing the impossible feat in such a small space. Sophie leaves the detritus to drip dry, instead reaching for a towel to pat her hands clean.

She clears the modest kitchen once again, chancing another reveal of her face to the woman in the doorway. She's never seen someone cut so sharply. Nix's profile's pale against the shadow of the hallway she still lingers in. Not a toe over the threshold. " You know, " Sophie lures her attention again, stern and immovable as the walls. She isn't even sure if Nix has blinked once while looking at her. " You really can come in. I'm not gonna hold you hostage in the hall. "

Her blonde head tilts in the way a lioness' would, observing a gazelle. Nix watches her husband's would-be paramour as she pretends she isn't swallowing a lump in her throat with all the same presumed indifference. There's something more embittered behind the eyes, though. Nix feels it even herself, as something painful, acidic. A long-drawn breath does nothing to soften her edges, and she's tired of every attempt. She lifts her hands, wordlessly pulls the towel from her hair, and therefore Arthur's stroking hands too, and draws a tempered smile.

" I'm good. " Now Nix swallows, and it's something rotten that will continue to hurt and fester somewhere in her chest. Working so hard to welcome her, Sophie's natural balm only deigns to scald her. It really is no wonder Arthur's drawn to her. That truth is a blade shunted up her neck and through the roof of her mouth. She suffers the wound because there's no other choice, turns her face to her husband but not her eyes, and says, " I thought you wanted me to come get you. "

Her lower lip trembles whenever used to shape a word. She hates it. Hates herself. Hates where they are. She swears she's seen her husband's attention drift up the hall to 8J, to the other lure still pulling him to this dilapidated building instead of the home they'd supposedly built for one another. Heart trembles too. She feels it, uncomfortable and grieved and biting at her breastplate. It wants out of her chest as much as she'd find comfort in seeing it land at her own feet.

Allegorical noose around her neck, and those honeyed bullets launched her way from Sophie's warm eyes, she's about as unwelcome here as any putrid thing. In spite of assurances. How she feels the rot eating away beneath her skin promises her much the same. Arthur's naked face, rare and yet so ostensibly comfortable here, only seeks to urge the allegorical maws to chew her faster. And so she avoids looking. Can't help it. 

Sophie agrees with her, but almost chokes under that stare of broken blue glass. Her presence alone is a poison to the woman opposite her. She wants to apologise without even knowing her true fault. There's no salvaging Nix from whatever pained truth sits behind her eyes, but she can help to free her from the cage of her apartment seems to be. " It is late. "

“Yeah,” Sophie candies that retort as much as she can without patronizing the wild-eyed nymph at her husband’s side.

Nix clutches his waistcoat with such tenacity, she might shear the polyester with her nails. Terror’s shrunk her pupils to pinheads, leaving two clear blue pools no less cold than Sokol’s stare. The wolf-dog side-guards his master so Nix has more range without worrying about accidentally stepping on a paw or tail. Joker averts his eyes to note how close her feet are to his, then cradles the back of her head and guides it forward for a kiss between her eyes.

Despite the rain ostensibly drenching him, his touch exudes all the warmth of a hearth. Nix finds herself blooming toward it like a flower to sunlight. Her shoulders, however, have caved. She’s deflated. Mist clings to her eyes and stains her sclera bright red. Compared to Sophie, she’s a pasty bag of bones with stringy wet hair and clothes that wear her. Nix blinks. A mascara-stained tear slips from her waterline and trickles down her cheek. Joker pads it away with his thumb, then kisses the upturned tip of her nose and massages her scalp in lazy circles.

He turns on an angle, one shoulder toward Sophie and the other pointed at the door so he can keep Nix tucked against him. She’s too quiet. Each breath leaves hastier than the last until she hyperventilates with little dramatics. Her chest hardly moves. The warm stained glass light fixtures hanging both in the foyer and kitchen blur and swirl.

Joker, too, feels the living room twist into a funhouse tunnel. The ceiling sweeps to the wall, floor, opposite wall, and back around. He staggers where he stands. Nix lays a palm across his chest to catch him, then follows his eyes back to Sophie. She still holds his wet jacket with little direction in terms of how close she can get to the wild animal trapped against his chest. Perhaps he’d debriefed her on why she should keep her distance from Skizm’s former top player. Joker’s veneer softens into a smile that Nix can see isn’t meant for her. It’s a scalpel through the chest, but she grips his waistcoat and burrows half her face so one pale eye watches his former neighbor from the safety of his waistcoat. Joker kisses Nix’s temple again, then noses her hair as he proffers a hand to receive his only blazer. 

“Thanks,” he says before the jacket even touches his skin.

Sophie crosses the room slower than intended and hands that damp blazer off with a touch of reluctance since it’s still wet. 

“Probably should’ve taken the hair dryer,” Sophie pantomimes using it like a blowtorch.

Joker scrunches his face and pushes his tongue down so his laugh is a little cleaner than usual. Phlegm still pools in the back of her throat, but pushing his tongue lower helps the sound be less grating. He then drapes the damp garment across his forearm. All the while a crisp blue eye watches Sophie unblinkingly. The other’s burrowed in her husband’s shoulder even though Nix is marginally taller. That dying star scintillates with the lightning. A chill shoots up Joker’s spine to prepare him for thunder. When the clouds finally collide, the entire apartment shakes. Sophie doesn’t gasp, but looks up as if nervous that one of the sallow light fixtures might fall and crack someone in the head.

“It’s happened before,” she doesn’t give much context, but doesn’t need to. Werewolf has spread her legs a little further than shoulder-width apart and follows her eyes to the light fixtures. She makes her golden eyes wide and presses her mouth for as ‘silly’ a smile as she can manage given the awkward situation. “Do you remember when we had that little earthquake?”

“The one that the press played up like we live in L.A.? Yeah,” he reaches into his pocket for a new cigarette to slide in his mouth. Without unsettling Nix, he fishes his lighter out next. Three flicks of a spark wheel finally produce a flame, which Joker holds to the tail and waits for a smoky finger to let him know it’s lit. Nix will likely steal it in a minute. “I don’t even think I felt it.”

“Someone’s desk shook for maybe half a second at work,” Sophie rolls her eyes. Then her attention settles on Nix, “It’s nice to finally meet you,” though she cautions extending a hand. She busies them by snap-clapping like the harried host she’s become and gestures toward the kitchen, “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, water, maybe I’ve got a few chasers in the fridge…?”

“No, thank you,” Nix speaks in a soft monotone that she’s fully aware doesn’t become her. The bony fingers latched around her husband’s waistcoat shake. Should she turn her left hand, hot pink and rainbow spangles from her diamond and ruby-encrusted wedding rings will dance across the floor and walls.

Joker kisses her crown and strokes the back of her wet head before catching Sophie’s eye. He asks, “D-do you have a hand-towel or something? She’s soaked.”

“I don’t need it,” Nix lacks any inflection. She stares into the kitchen. That same cyan glow once flooded the kitchen of Apartment 8J. Now she’s certain the power has been cut by the landlord. No one lives there. No one should. 

He presses a kiss against her hairline. The ends of his free fingers already work on combing out the ends so her hair separates and isn’t so staticky. Nix burrows half her face deeper into his chest, smearing her eye makeup on his clothing. He pays no mind. Joker scoops what damp hair has been trapped between her shoulder and his chest like Spanish moss and slings it behind her shoulders so he can start finger-coming those locks out. She keeps that same lidless eye pinned on Sophie as she nods and disappears in the inverted version of the dark hall inside 8J. She returns with a towel large enough to wrap hair in and tosses it at Joker. He jostles his own jacket until Nix helps him by taking the garment and tucking it against her own chest. It still smells like him after rain. All that’s left it is cigarette smoke, though she watches that exhaust trickle north and bloom across Sophie’s ceiling. Had she proper lighting, the off-white paint would probably be blackened — and not just from Joker.

This building has a mold problem, though Joker says he never had any in his apartment. Wouldn’t matter if it’s in the walls. Maybe that’s to blame for his chronic respiratory infections.

Tucking the cigarette between his teeth, Joker snakes his arms up and around his wife so he can begin towel-drying her hair the way he would their daughters’. He’d felt her spine go rigid at first, then relax as his fingertips work the terrycloth through her scalp and comb out the ends so she isn’t saturated.

“It’s still raining,” Nix would stake herself were she a fly on the wall. She feels her teeth chatter.

Joker braces as brontide announces another lightning strobe. Sophie twists to check the bedroom for Gigi. When the coast is ostensibly clear, she drifts into the kitchen so as not to crowd the couple’s space. She has a few dishes that can be washed. 

“If I had a dryer, I’d have thrown it in for five minutes,” Sophie speaks of the towel being worked through Nix’s hair. The sink’s ‘hot’ water is lukewarm at best. She’s numb to the lead-contaminated sludge that in her nightmares sometimes runs brown. In reality, it probably has more than once. “Number one on my wishlist.”

“What, a washer and dryer…?” Joker echoes what went unspoken, but his eyes only stray from Nix so he can gauge where Sophie is. They then lower so he can continue working the towel through his wife’s hair. “I wouldn’t even look at a unit without them when we were moving.” 

[nadinebrooks]

Here is the link to my masterlist.

You Realize You Like Him

Harry: Gryffindor, halfblood, same year

"Hey (y/n)?" There came a timid voice from above me. I was sitting on a couch reading a couple of chapters from a book I had picked up from the library this morning. Looking up I saw Ron Weasley nervously standing in front of me as if he had something to say. He awkwardly rocked back and forth between his feet. I had never seen him like this before.

"Hey Ron. Did you need something?" I closed my book and focused all my attention to him. Even though the book had started to get good, it could wait.

"I was just wondering if you wanted to go to the Yule Ball with me? It's totally fine if you don't want to. I would understand."

"Did you wait too long to ask the girl you actually wanted to go with?" I chuckled wishing that he had asked Hermione to go with him instead. I though the two of them were destined to be together.

But Ron had waited too long and she ended up going with Viktor Krum. I don't think he knew that though. She for sure would have gone with him if he had made a move though.

"If I said yes would you still go with me?" He sheepishly chuckled scratching the back of his neck.

"Yeah." I giggled, " Of course I'll go with you Ron."

"Thank you (y/n)." He let out a sigh of relief, "I'll meet you at 7:00 in the common room." I watched as Ron walked off to tell Harry the good news and I couldn't help but smile a little at his actions. He was adorable.

Over the past couple of weeks I noticed that there had been this slight tension between Ron and Harry. I thought that it had to do with Harry being dragged into the spotlight once again, but Hermione told me it was because Harry didn't get to take the person he wanted to the ball. I was instantly curious at who this person was. Cho Chang maybe?

The night of the ball, Hermione and I helped each other get ready. She had to leave before me since she had to meet Viktor somewhere. I spent a couple more minutes fixing my makeup until I realized I was going to keep Ron waiting. I touched up my hair one last time before quickly walking out of my room. I found Ron waiting in the common room with Harry.

"Wow." Ron and Harry said in unison when I walked up to the them. I giggled and jokily rolled my eyes. It must've been a shock for them to see me all dressed up like this.

"You look really nice." Ron grinned holding out his arm so I could loop mine with his. I wasn't sure if I was just imagining this but it seemed like Harry had this annoyed look on his face.

The whole night went way better than I could have expected. Ron was the perfect gentleman and he was a much better dancer than I could have imagined.

After dancing for a while we both started to get thirsty, so he went to go get us some drinks. As a slow song started playing, I headed to go sit down until Harry asked me to dance. I nodded and followed him out to the floor. I told myself one dance and then I would go back to Ron. I was his date after all.

I couldn't help but smile as Harry wrapped his arm around my waist and grabbed my hand. He wasn't as good of a dancer as Ron was, but I figured Molly had taught him how to dance.

"I just want to say you look absolutely beautiful (y/n)." He blushed bright red and spun me around. "I didn't get to tell you that earlier."

"Thank you Harry." I whispered and before I could stop myself, I rested my head on his chest and I felt him rest his chin on the top of my head. When the song was over, I got out of his grasp and decided it was time to go find Ron.

Walking away from Harry, there was a smile on my face that wouldn't go away for the rest of the night.

Ron: Ravenclaw, muggleborn, year above

I absolutely hated being sick. I try not to use the word hate, but one thing that I do hate is being sick. Whenever I am sick, I feel like I took for granted all those times I wasn't sick. My head was throbbing, my nose was runny, and every time I took a shallow breath, I could feel my lungs rattling around in my chest.

It was my own fault though. I had brought this illness upon myself. I had no business playing out in the snow without a jacket. I thought back to yesterday's events.

The second I realized it was snowing, I ran outside with some of my closest friends. Luna Lovegood tried to tell me to bring a jacket down, but I was too excited to listen to her. I just wanted to build some snowmen.

We stayed outside for a while until I realized that I should have listened to Luna. Once I had gotten up from my snow angel, I knew that I had made a terrible mistake. I stood there shivering for a moment until Ron Weasley walked over to me.

"I have an extra sweater if you would like to wear it." He offered holding out a green sweater with a gold R stitched across the front. I took the sweater and slipped it over my head before placing a quick kiss on his cheek. I watched as he turned bright red and I ran off to participate in a Hufflepuff vs Ravenclaw snowball match.

This morning I woke up still wearing his sweater, but feeling absolutely awful. When I opened my eyes, I could feel a searing pain shoot through my head. I closed my eyes again hoping the pain would go away, but it didn't. I needed to get to the infirmary.

I was going to need to see Madam Pomfrey. There was no way I could get over this sickness by myself. I managed to climb out of the bed, slip into some comfy pants, and stagger to the infirmary. I collapsed on the floor shivering and Madam Pomfrey quickly rushed over to me and helped me get into a bed.

"You children do realize this will happen if you play in the snow without proper attire." She scolded.

"I promise I won't happen again." I managed to get out before collapsing onto the bed. I groaned thinking about all the classes I was going to miss today. They were going to be bombarding us with homework.

Madam Pomfrey came back to me holding a mug with a steaming liquid inside. I took a cautious sip not expecting it to taste like peppermint hot chocolate. I quickly downed the rest of it and passed the mug back to her.

"You should start feeling better in about a day or so. You've got a nasty flu from being out in the cold. I suggest you get comfy." I nodded and looked around the infirmary for anyone else to talk to, but it was just me. I guess everyone else was smart enough to bring a jacket outside yesterday.

I ended up taking a little nap and when I woke up, I saw Ron Weasley standing in the doorway arguing with Madam Pomfrey. I couldn't hear them, but it looked as if he was trying to get it and she wasn't having it. Eventually she gave in and told Ron he had "20 minutes to talk to his friend".

He rushed over to me shoving a sheet of parchment paper in my face. "Look (y/n). Look."

I grabbed the sheet and looked at it to see a bold O written on the top of it.

"This is the exam for Charms that you helped me study for. I've never gotten an O on anything until you started helping me. I know I can be difficult to study with but I just wanted to thank you."

"You're welcome Ron." I managed to croak out beaming at how excited he was.

"You're still wearing me sweater." He pointed out taking the exam back from me.

"Oh." I had completely forgotten about it. I got ready to pull it off and hand it back to him, but he stopped me.

"No, you can keep it. I have tons of them. I'll ask my mom to make you one too. Besides. I think you look cute in it."

"Really?"

"Really." Ron nodded earnestly back his face taking on a pinkish tint. I couldn't help but grin. I was starting to develop a little crush on Ron Weasley.

Draco: Slytherin, pureblood, year below

I have absolutely no idea what Draco's favorite color is. I did a little research and I found multiple answers that ranged from black to emerald green. The most common answer that I did find was red so I'm rolling with that. If anyone knows what it really is, please let me know.

"You look lovely (y/n)." Blaise addressed walking up to me.

"Why thank you." I flashed him a huge smiled doing a little curtsey. "You look quite dapper if I do say so myself." I was not lying at about that. Blaise looked good.

Everyone knew that he was a very attractive guy. Girls and guys alike were constantly throwing themselves at him. I knew that he was waiting on the perfect girl. Contrary to what people believe, Blaise was not someone who liked to play with girl's emotions. I couldn't wait to meet the lucky person that stole his heart.

My family put on these huge pureblood balls twice a year which I found to be rather boring. Witches and wizards from all over the world came out to attend their balls. One of them was during the summer and another was during the winter months a couple of days after Christmas.

When I was younger, I loved the balls. I loved getting dressed up and enjoying all the fancy things that my parents kept hidden every other day of the year.

But as I got older, I realized the balls were mostly for me. They were hoping that I would find someone at their balls I could end up marrying. I didn't understand why they so desperately wanted me to marry a pureblood since I wouldn't be carrying on the family name. That was the job for my older brothers.

"I noticed that you're wearing red. Which so happens to be Draco's favorite color." Blaise smirked taking a couple of sips of his champagne.

"I had no idea." I mumbled snatching a glass of champagne off the tray one of the waiters was carrying. Blaise didn't say anything, he just threw his head back and laughed. He knew that I was lying. Whenever he laughed you couldn't help but join in. I placed a hand over my mouth trying to quiet my giggles.

I knew that Blaise and I should be mingling with the other members of the party, but we didn't want to. We were happy just talking to each other. The two of us laughing caused almost everyone around us to look over and us and stare. I noticed a couple of girls who had their eye on Blaise were glaring at me. They had nothing to worry about. I had absolutely no interest in him.

"What about her?" I suggested gesturing over to a girl with long dark curly hair. "She's pretty."

"She is." Blaise shrugged and then let out an agitated groan. "My parents are calling me over to talk to this girl. I'll be back to check up on you and the Draco situation." Seemed like Blaise's parents had the same idea as mine.

There was no Draco and I situation which I had to keep reminding him about. I had always thought Draco was cute, but I'm not really sure how he felt about me. I thought he was going to end up dating Pansy, but they never did.

I wanted Draco to notice me in the way that I noticed him, but I knew that he only saw me as a younger sister. I stood off to the side sipping my champagne watching all these girls flock around Draco. but He looked bored. It looked as if he had absolutely no interest in whatever they were saying. I couldn't help but swoon at how amazing he looked in his black tux.

"He's not interested in them, you know?" Blaise was back. "He's only ever been interested in one girl."

"Are you sure he doesn't just see me as a little sister?" I nervously rocked back and forth on my heels. I was starting to get nervous watching all these gorgeous girls try to talk to him.

"I'm positive (y/n)." He promised. When I was sure that no one was looking at us, I grabbed Blaise's arm and dragged him off to one of the bathrooms.

I stood in front of the full length mirror and attempted to make myself look better. I touched up my makeup, readjusted my hair, and sprayed on some more perfume.

"How do I look?" I turned around to face Blaise giving him a little spin so he could take in my entire appearance.

"You look exquisite (y/n)." He replied. He said it with such certainty that I had to believe him.

"Thank you." I whispered nervously fiddling with my fingers. I could hear some music start playing and everyone start shuffling around looking for a partner. "Should I ask him to dance?"

"He would never turn you down." We walked back out of the bathroom and Blaise sat his empty glass on a passing tray. I scanned the crowd to see him standing by a window trying not to get himself noticed. "I'm so nervous."

"Wow." Blaise let out a low whistle. "You really do like him."

"Yeah." I nodded confirming his suspicions and taking a couple of steps in Draco's direction, "I really do."

[freewayshark]

Here, have a little ficlet I just pounded out. Set somewhere vaguely late 6a/maybe 6b. It’s basically just 600 words of vibes.

Eddie’s almost finished folding the laundry when he realizes the house has gone too quiet.

Maybe not a reason to worry, but Buck and Christopher are seldom quiet, and when he stills to listen closer he can’t hear a thing, not even the television.

He goes ahead and folds the last couple of shirts and picks up the stack and carries it through the house to where he’d last seen the two of them in the living room.

They’re on the couch together, Buck stretched out in a too big hoodie and basketball shorts, sleeping soundly. Tucked into his side is Christopher, playing on his switch, the sound turned all the way off.

The sight makes his heart hurt. Christopher’s almost twelve now, too old by his own designation for things like cuddling, but here he is. Buck’s most recent stint in the hospital had rattled him, probably because it hadn’t even been due to an accident at work, but his own faulty appendix up and bursting on him while they’d been having a movie night.

Christopher had bore firsthand witness to Buck’s pain, and had been sitting right next to Eddie when the doctor had explained how much more complicated and dangerous it is to deal with an appendix once it’s burst.

He’d calmed down a lot once the same doctor had come out and told them the surgery had gone smoothly, and calmed down even further once Buck was in recovery and could reassure Christopher himself that he was going to be ok.

And then Buck’s lack of a couch had turned out to be a blessing all around, because Eddie hadn’t even had to bully him into agreeing to come home when he was released from the hospital, because not even Buck was masochistic enough to want to have to bounce up and down his stairs post surgery.

But back to Christopher.

It breaks Eddie’s heart and mends it just as fast. He can’t not mourn all the small things Christopher does for the last time, even if usually neither of them realize it’s the last until later, but this is a reminder that sometimes you think you’ve seen the last of something when there’s another chance just around the corner.

His heart breaks and mends, and it does it right there on the couch, tucked tightly between the bodies of the two people he loves the most.

He’s known he’s in love with Buck for months, and has been for a lot longer than that. But it still hits him anew all the time. He’s running out of excuses to not tell him. All these months and Buck never replaced the couch. Eddie’s confident it’s because he’s finally figured out he doesn’t need a new one, not when Eddie has a perfectly good one here in the home they’ve been making together.

Christopher looks up from his game, finally noticing Eddie. He holds a finger to his lips to keep Eddie quiet, glancing back to make sure Eddie’s presence didn’t wake Buck. But Buck doesn’t stir, deep breaths puffing out between his lips, a precursor to house shaking snores.

He loves him, and he wants to tell him. He wants to drop this stack of laundry to the floor and wake Buck up and tell him he’s in love with him.

He won’t, because that’s insane. But he also won’t because he doesn’t need to. Later, Buck will wake up, and Eddie will feed him the soup that right now just exists as pictures of handwritten note cards in his text thread with Bobby, and after they’ve eaten it he’ll look at Buck and he’ll still feel this same rush of love, because he always feels it when he looks at Buck, and he’ll tell him then.

But for now he just takes the laundry on to be sorted away into drawers, and he lets Buck sleep.

There’s no rush. There never has been.

[searenbound]

Bully Kiri the exact same as you write him one day snaps he pins you against a locker while you two were alone in the hall as kiss up your jaw gently "Listen to me baby you gonna tell me how much you love me then I'm gonna take you home tonight then let your body do the talking while I put a pretty baby in your body make you my little house spouse"

That night despite any fight he takes you home and lays you on your bed hand right on your jaw "Tell me you love me" if you don't he'll shake your head "Is that your brain rattling around in their you must be stupid to deny it tell me you love me" when you finally stutter it out he smirks kissing you "That's a good baby" He absolutely ravishes you for hours.

A few weeks later you now attached to his arm like the good baby you are cause he said so and your not stupid enough to against him you run away to the bathroom dropping to your knees throwing up he grab your hair out of the way rubbing your back "awe baby let it all out maybe that's my baby in you telling you their here" a whimper falling from your lips as he kisses you "Don't worry tonight I'll make sure it is" he kisses your head and drags you out if the bathroom

Heavy dub-con warning

So for context look here

God I love how even when he’s attempting to get you to comply he still manages to be him about it.

Is he pressuring you? Yes but only because he knows you want this, you’re just too stubborn for you’re own good. That’s why he has to do all this, you need to understand that no matter how hard you push he won’t budge.

He had tried to be patient and what until you say all the things he did for you with so much love in his heart, but he just couldn’t take it and little stolen touches just wasn’t enough. He needed you and even if you didn’t want to admit it he could tell you’d be lost without him too. He had to speed it up, had to get you to understand your place at his side somehow.

Giving you a baby sounded like the perfect way to get the job done. He stewed on it a while before he decides that on going through with it, maybe he heard a rumor that scared him. Maybe something about someone else planning on snatching you away from him and he just can’t let that happen.

So he keeps an eye on you, gets someone to deliver a secret admirer’s love letter requesting you to meet in that hall and when you get there expecting to let someone down gently you’re pushed up against the lockers. A hand on your waist and his leg wedged between yours while he’s telling you exactly what he’s planning on happening between kisses. You hate it has a strong affect on you, that you really do want him. That somewhere along the lines everything got all twisted and you really did fall for him.

You were determined to ignore it and avoid him though but he was ahead of you. Already waiting with that big toothy smile of his and cooing at you when you look so shocked. Tells you of course he knew you go this way, knows his pretty baby better than anyone else and you should know that!

I’m in love with the idea that while he’s trying to get his confession he switches between overstimulating you and edging you so you have no idea what he’s doing. Came twice? Maybe you deserve another, on second thought no you don’t. Hmm maybe you get to cum now? Nope, oh ok you can cum and here’s another and another and that’s it. Maybe just say it and he’ll let you cum a couple of times on his cock instead? Just say you love him that’s all you gotta do.

And of course you eventually snap and say it after he questions if you got a functioning brain because you don’t use it if your being so stupidly stubborn. He doesn’t waste time either, your legs are pushed up into a mating press and as soon as he’s completely settled in your overly sensitive pussy, your already babbling and cumming from the overwhelming size of him pressing into every spot just right.

He’s so smug that all he gets out of you is his name and little I love you’s

Even more so when you finally accept you belong at his side and that you very well may be pregnant. So excited by the notion that he just has to double check and reconfirm his handy work.