#never noticed that last bit because i was so focused on the forehead kiss from two different angles.......

[youreadarkwizard]

The X-Files | Cut footage from “Rm9sbG93ZXJz” (11x07)

[lixies-favorite-cookie]

you'd never let me fall ・b.c

—Bangchan who carries you home while your a little drunk and your feet a lot a bit hurt

paring・bangchan x gn!reader // geners・fluff, established relationships // words・900 // warnings・drunkenness, if you don't like rambles or tooth-rotting fluff than you won't like this

a/n・i needed something soft and fluffy after a pretty big fight with my dad and i found this also @sunnysdiary istg i dont know what i would do without you ilysm. p.s. lowkey proud of myself for finally just writing (i only edited once for like an hour :))

You were exactly two blocks away from your apartment when the handful of shots you had thrown back earlier really started to hit you. The sun had died hours ago, the sky now sparkling with stars that seemed to dance and tangle with the streetlights in your vision.

Wow.

You were really fucked up.

You sigh, leaning deeper into the crook of Chan's neck, his hand pressed protectively against your back as he holds you up. His breathing is soft and calming when the world begins to shift again, sharp pain shooting up your legs thanks to the stupidest decision you made all night—wearing high-heels.

The only thing that could be heard over the harsh click of your foot-shaped-death-traps is your pained groan as you loll your head against Chan's shoulder and stumble over the sidewalk mindlessly.

"I'm tired, carry me home," you slur, a slight whine in your voice. He simply smiles, looking down at your dizzy gaze with tender eyes before effortlessly scooping you up bridal style.

The moon grins with you.

Your heartbeats intertwine as you squeal, lovesick giggles pouring from your lips as you hide your face in his sweat-coated neck.

There was no way he was real.

You pull away, blinking up at his sharp jaw and shiny lips, and you swore if you looked just long enough you could find the stars hung on his lashes. There was something about him, something that spread warmth underneath your ribs. You could never quite place it—the feeling bursting within you before settling down like sweet rose perfume fading off your shirt as your nose acclimates to the scent.

Perhaps it was the alcohol that made you so sentimental, or how in a rush of emotion you remember days when you used to assess others by their expressions, the tone of their voice, and the heaviness of their footsteps. You had gotten so used to living on the edge of disaster the thought of certainty deemed to be an impossible feat—that was until you met Chan. He was something special, he loved you softly, with gentle fingers and adoring gazes. He wasn't loud, not with his words or his actions, and sometimes from the outside, society might have deemed he didn't love you at all, but you knew better than that.

Just because it was subtle didn't mean it wasn't there—it just meant it was safe.

The notion alone is enough to bring tears to your eyes, drunkenly choking out: "Thank you for always carrying me."

His gaze softens before he faintly tilts his lips, muttering, "Thank you for letting me carry you."

You were almost to the house when, mindlessly, half-asleep, you mumble, "You'd never let me fall," before going limp in the comfort of Chan's strong arms.

If you weren't so drunk, you might have noticed the shift in his stride, how a shy blush falls over his cheeks and he fights the urge to spread a smile so bright across his face it would put the sun to shame.

But you were far too gone to notice. And he was so focused on keeping you safe that he didn't sense how deeply in love with him you were right then.

You were correct; down to his very last days, he would never let you fall.

You hadn't realized how close you were to the apartment before he steps through the unlocked door, your vision blurring into the darkness of your shared home. It was the silky sheets you felt first, the warmth of his hand leaving you only before he gently pulled the covers over your body and right underneath your chin.

He kisses your forehead, lips lingering there before, hesitantly, he whispers, "I don't know what I'd do if I didn't get to carry you."

He brushes a stray lock of hair from your eyes as you crack them open only to smile, lopsided and silly. "I guess we'll never know."

Bangchan stares at you for hours after that, admiring you in all your tranquility. He knows he should stop, but he also knows he can’t. It had bottled inside him for so long, and it felt as though the rug had been ripped out from under him, and suddenly his feelings flooded out of him all at once. This wasn't what average love felt like—it was pure, gentle, and, best of all, entirely absolute.

In the novels, love is described as something maddening, profound, and disorienting. And while there are moments where it felt as though the galaxy had been sewn into your fingertips, it was more than that. Chan quickly came to find that love lived in silence—the intimate moments where words didn't matter. There was no pressure or unrealistic expectations when he was with you, no anxiety about being perfect all the time. Being with you made his world feel... lighter.

He breathes, brushing a lock of hair out of your face. You shift, instinctively leaning into his touch. A small smile tugs at his lips when the moonlight catches your face just right; you were peaceful, angelic like spring flowers fluttering in the breeze.

There are very few things in this world that are truly poetic. Some may say the stars, the sea, humanity, and the very depth of our emotions. And while Chan could agree with all of those, his love for you outweighed them all.

please don't forget to reblog with tags or comment what you think your feedback makes my day 😁

[rosesnurhair]

soccer player ellie headcanons cus she's so cute and I feel like she'd play either soccer, rugby, or softball!

{cw: idk much abt soccer, mention of bruises, a bit of sub!top!ellie, switch!reader, not lots of dialogue, ellie begs to eat reader out, nsfw and sfw separated, cum eating, use of “mommy” ellies just a big loser fr..}

sfw:

loser!goalie!ellie who when she looks at the scoreboard and notices that the opposing team is winning, stomps her foot on the ground and crosses her arms angrily and childishly; a moment which you constantly laugh at.

loser!goalie!ellie who's the most determined goalie you've ever seen, no seriously, she'll literally throw herself in the air to make sure the ball never even remotely touches the net, which stresses you out completely.

loser!goalie!ellie who melts into your touch whenever you bandage her bruises and press soft kisses to her forehead. “els anyone with two eyes could've seen that the ball was no where near the net, there was no need to almost do a cartwheel and nearly break your leg” proper place name backstory special stuff... cus she's not listening, obv too focused on how pretty the worried expression on your face looks right now.. tilting her head in her hands and smiling away. ^_^

loser!goalie!ellie who’s the happiest person alive when you praise her because she yearns for your validation at all times so when you're watching her practice out on the field, running back towards you during breaks to ask “did y’see that, aren't I doing so much better than last practice, didn't even have to get in any insane positions this time to block the ball!” in which you reply “ I did, you're doin’ so well els!” after that with a wide smile she'll skip back to the field twirling her auburn locks through her pointer finger!

loser!goalie!ellie who's the giddiest person ever when her team wins, she'll jump around and scream on the field then basically pounce on you to give you the biggest hug ever with a “WE WONNNN” like you can't see the scoreboard for yourself.

➽──────────────❥➽──────────────❥

nsfw:

loser!goalie!ellie who's immediately on you when you both arrive home, her hands are on your hips grinding her knee into your clothed cunt, her tongue swallowing yours, exchanging spit in the sloppiest manner possible, she's moaning into your mouth like a slut, already completely wet just from kissing you.

loser!goalie!ellie who acts like you're the one to score the points for her, breathlessly you sigh out “els— baby—wait let me cook for you or somethin, after all it's your win” and of course she uses an excuse along the lines of “couldnt have done it without you now please let me show just how appreciative I am pleaseplease—” begging to you eat out like the whore she is.. but you let her of course !

loser!goalie!ellie who's eating it like her life depended on it, her short hair disheveled and messy as your fingers are tangled in it, pushing her face closer to your heat, head lolling back with your freehand grasping onto the soft pillows, a string of uhh's and ohh— fuck's leave your slightly parted lips.

loser!goalie!ellie who's obsessed with your scent and taste, she'll get off on eating you out, taking her middle finger and making small circles on her clit as she's fucking her tongue in and out of your seeping hole, licking long stripes from your hole to your clit, your legs trembling as they close around her head to grind against her tongue, shaky breaths leave your lips as you cum right in her mouth and of course ellie doesn't miss a drop.

loser!goalie!ellie who goes “mmm— taste so good fuckfuckfuck thank you mommy thank you—” as she cums on her own fingers whilst licking yours up. you prop yourself up to look at the mess she's making, grinding against her own fingers, and glossy lips, taking kitten licks at your puffy cunt.

“mm— made mommy feel so good, my turn to take care of my girl now, hmm?” you say happily wanting to return the favor, and of course... she lets you ! <3

idk that much ab soccer sorry^_^

[gay-dorito-dust]

Dorito my beloved, would u ever consider writing a Jason x reader blurb where reader has a bad day and in an attempt to cheer them up he either brings home their fav ice cream or frozen treat or takes them out to somewhere like cold stone creamery for ice cream, and then after a successful cheering up reader kisses him on the cheek and then he tells because COLD… it feels weird to send an ask I’ve never done it before so sorry if it comes off weird? Anyways I love your writing and I’m always pleased to see u pop up on my feed :)!

Oh what I wouldn’t give to have this man comfort me on the shitty days.

Jason knew that as of recent there was storm cloud hanging over you. You looked as horrible and you felt horrible and given how little you talked about it, the distant look in your eyes or how all you wanted to do was retreat to your room and go to sleep said it all for him. He understood that not everyday was going to be a good one but recently it seemed as though you had more of a shitty week then anything else, and you just didn’t want him to know about it, but unfortunately for you Jason was far more observant when it comes to you than most give him credit for.

And he knew just what might help ease that feeling of nothingness, of the numbness and perpetual exhaustion that riddled you right now.

‘Sweetheart?’ Jason popped his head through the doorway, spotting your unmoving form on your shared bed, taking this as his cue as he entered the bedroom to sit on the bed as close to you to you as he could. ‘I got you a little something that I know might cheer you up, even it’s a little bit.’

‘What?’ Your say shortly, already feeling as though saying any more would only drain you even further then you already were to begin with.

‘Ice cream.’ Jason replied as he sets aside quite a decent sized tub of honeycomb ice cream on the bedside table before moving to make himself comfortable in bed next to you, making sure to keep some distance between the two of you unless you asked for him to close the distance. You managed to muster out a weak ‘thank you’ to Jason as you sat yourself up against the headboard of the bed, reaching out to grab the tub of ice cream to your lap, not noticing that Jason had a tub of ice cream himself until you looked over at him shovelling spoonfuls into his mouth; which made his cheeks puff out much like that of a chipmunk.

Jason tended to be somewhat of a messy eater and it lead to quite humorous situations where you were left wiping sauce from his lips, crumbs from his cheeks and left over ice cream that had somehow missed his mouth. You might not have been feeling all that great of a week but you knew you could always count on Jason to remember things you’ve said in passing, and use it to his advantage to make you feel better despite whether or not he himself wasn’t feeling too up to it; it was something about him that you loved deeply and couldn’t help but admire.

Your sour moods, depressive states and moments of sadness never lasted long when you were with Jason as he always brought a sense of comfort, a sense of understanding when he coddled you against his chest while whispering sweet nothings against your forehead. He was your comfort, your strength and your guiding light all in one and you would forever be grateful for everything he’s ever done for you, even if you didn’t have the strength to do so but you’d always make up for it by letting him know that his hard work payed off by one simple act; smiling.

So as you continued to watch Jason inhale half of his ice cream, not waiting long enough to finish swallowing before shovelling in more of the cold sweet treat, and in a way that you worried that he would give himself major brain freeze. However you were more focused on just hoe full his cheeks were getting and the mess he was leaving all across his face, some part off you felt as though this was all an intentional shoe just to make you feel better, but another part of you appreciated that Jason was more then willing to look a little goofy and be a little silly if it meant making you forget everything that has left you wanting to wallow in eternal isolation.

You could feel the weight lift from your chest and the fog clear form your head slowly as you started to smile, only to let out a soft chuckle which caught on Jason’s ear as he stopped his shovelling to look at you with soft, attentive eyes. ‘What is it? Is there something on my face?’ He asked through a mouthful of ice cream as he began to touch his face with his hand, something that only proved in smearing ice cream further across his cheeks, which only added to the humour of it all as your cheeks were more or less hurting from how large your smile had become.

‘Yes, a lot of it if you don’t stop doing that!’ You replied as you reached over to swat away his hand in order to wipe the ice cream that had started to dry on his cheeks even, only pulling away when you were satisfied with your work. ‘There, that’s better you don’t look like a messy chipmunk now, just a full one.’ You teased as you kissed that very same cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath your chilled lips from the ice cream as you smiled before pulling away, not forgetting the beautiful way his breath hitched the moment your lips met his warm skin. ‘Thank you.’

‘Whatever for gorgeous?’ Jason asks as he looked at you adoringly, happy to see you be at least somewhat better now. In truth his cheeks were starting to hurt from how much melting ice cream he was stuffing in them full, not that he’d ever tell you that as all he wanted was to offer you some light in your darkest times, much like how you did for him when he was in the same predicament you’re in now.

‘For being you, for making me feel better, for being here with me and most importantly being my anything and everything.’ You say to him as you set aside your now empty tub of ice cream to cuddle into his side, resting your head against his chest with his arms moving to keep you tethered to him, though not that you were complaining as you felt his lips cascade gently semi-chilled kisses across your face, forehead and nose.

‘You don’t ever have to thank me for anything darling.’ Jason whispered to you as he noses the side of your head, kissing it. ‘I’m just come here with one thing in mind and one thing only, to make my sweetheart smile again like they should be always.’ He adds as he hold you tighter against him, smiling to himself in victory that he had helped ease the conflict within your mind, even for a little while but Jason was more then willing to keep up the fight until you get better again to stand up on your own.

[intheorangebedroom]

Tonight you belong to me, chapter 6

Summary: He comes to you every Friday, in a shady motel on the outskirts of town. Time's up.

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader (OFC)

Rating: Explicit 🔞 Additional 🚨: self-harm, suicidal thoughts

A/N: Happy Frankie Friday, Orange bedroom besties 🧡 Thank you for your patience, I appreciate you all SO DAMN MUCH. See you in the end note 🧡 @frannyzooey you're a warrior and I'll go all gothic on you: I will keep loving you long after I'm dead, long after I'm gone, long after love ceases to exist. Thank you for your invaluable help 🧡

Word count: 14.5k

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Chapter 6: Never Let Me Go

Benny bends forward with a huff, and drops the bulky card box he’s carrying next to a pyramid of similar boxes, all labelled “LIVING-ROOM” in black Sharpie. It hits the hardwood floor with a loud thud that resonates in the empty room. 

“Fuck me, that’s heavy. Okay. I think that was the last one,” he pants, lifting his baseball cap and wiping his sweat-damp forehead on his shoulder.

“That went fast,” William observes. His brother whips around to face him with a scowl. 

“That’s because you took the bags labelled ‘clothes’ and you let me haul up all those fucking books! Fish, what the fuck do you have so many books for, man?” he adds, as Frankie steps into the room, two solid oak planks propped over his shoulder.

“To read,” Frankie answers absent-mindedly, setting down the wood against a wall.

Silence falls over the small square room as the two brothers exchange another wary glance. Frankie doesn’t notice. He hasn’t noticed much since morning, too focused on the task at hand, too caught up in his head. 

“What’s this for?” Will asks patiently, pointing at the wood. 

“Shelves. For the books. I left the old ones to Lupe.”

“You mean there’s more books over there?” Benny snarls. Will glowers at him, and the younger man pouts, adding in a softer tone, “You know you could save yourself some money and trouble and get shelves from Ikea or somethin’.” 

“Nah, I don’t like these things, they’re full of solvents. You’re just breathing toxic shit. Don’t want that for my kid.”

Don’t want that for Lee. 

Frankie straightens up and takes a quick look around him. The room is small, yes, but luminous. Clean, and well ventilated, which had been selling arguments. The house itself is no frill, a bit soulless even, but functional. There’s a separate dining-room he plans on converting into a playroom for Lua. Maybe a TV room or an office, when she’s older. The kitchen came equipped and is large enough for a table and four chairs. There are two bedrooms upstairs and, most importantly, a spacious basement where he can work wood. 

The front lawn is fine, but the backyard will require a lot of work, the previous owners seemingly having had no interest in tending to it. 

It’s good enough for his kid and him, but will it be good enough for you? 

He assumes you could afford two houses like this one with what you make in a year. He assumes you live downtown, in one of those lanky glass towers that cast their haughty shadow over the harbor. 

He assumes you hate it. 

And maybe you hate it enough to break your cage open and leave. Maybe someday soon, your Russian literature will sit next to his engineering books on those shelves he’s going to build for you. 

“You got more wood like this at the other house?” 

Will’s voice brings him back to the square room. To all the things that remain to be done. To the urgent necessity of furnishing the house so it’s habitable for a two-year-old. A tiny bed with tiny linens, rainbows, stars and suns. Rails to secure the stairs, a shower curtain, drapes and rugs. Safety outlet plug covers. 

And the question he has yet to ask you. 

“Yea, in the garage. But I can take care of it later.”

“No, let’s get to it, buddy. We can wrap up everything today so you don’t have to go back.”

Benny swipes the hem of his Kiss t-shirt over his face and nods, walking toward the front door. Will’s gaze follows his brother’s tall silhouette before it returns to Frankie, steely eyes of blue openly trained on his face. 

The allusion is not lost on Frankie. This house is a mere couple of blocks away from the one he shared with Lupe. He’s not keen on the idea. If it was up to him, if he moved through life alone, he would have already crossed three or four state lines, at the very least. Head north, and maybe west. Closer to his sister. 

But he’s not alone. He’s a father. Living nearby makes the everyday logistics of co-parenting that much easier. Daycare, then school. Family doctor, friends and sleepovers. Lua will be able to walk between her two parents’ homes. That’s not exactly a functioning family, but for now, it’s the best he can provide.  

“I’m doing what I can, here, you know?” Frankie murmurs, dipping his head under the brim of his hat.

“I know. I know you’re doing what’s best for them.”

Will runs a palm over his nape and winces, hand flying to his left flank. 

Frankie has noticed him clutching his side every so often. He can’t tell if it’s pain or remembrance. He’s never encountered anyone with the Millers' capacity to endure physical injuries. Only he knows first hand that guilt-tainted wounds are another deal entirely. 

“You okay there, man?” Frankie frowns.

“Oh yeah. Golden.”

“We can take a break. Finish after lunch. There’s beer in the fridge and–”

“Let’s get to it, Fish,” Will insists, patting Frankie’s arm as he walks past him.

Frankie firmly believes that no one over thirty should ever, under any circumstance, ask their friends to help them move. Which resulted in him calling the Millers on very short notice. He had decided early on to leave all shared belongings to Lupe, thus hadn’t anticipated there would be so many things left to move. It seems to him that, until three years ago, his entire life could fit in a single rucksack.  

When he saw the two brothers stepping out of Will’s truck this morning, it felt as if a formidable weight had been lifted off his chest. He’d woken at the crack of dawn, setting all the bags and boxes on the front lawn, to spare Lupe the ordeal of having his friends trampling all over her carpet. Not that she’d said anything. She’d gotten up shortly after him, preparing a large pot of coffee, placing a fresh box of donuts on the kitchen table.

“You’re a good man, Francisco,” she’d told him back in early April, when he’d asked her if he should move out, if she wanted him to. “And you’re always going to be the father of my child. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. We’re just not a good match, I guess. You know that, right?”

“I know,” he’d said, holding her gaze. “I just– I want you to know I’m sorry. And grateful. I’m grateful for you, Lupe.”

She hadn’t answered. Lupe was made of heavy silences and sharp thoughts. A perceptive gaze in a movie star's face. She’d pushed away from the kitchen counter, and reached out for his shoulder, giving him a strong squeeze. A gesture that meant, you’ll be alright.

He’ll be alright. That much he knows. When he wakes up every morning between sheets that bear your luminous scent, when your mug is drying on the dish rack next to his and when your clothes are hanging in the closet next to his clothes. Then he’ll be alright.

He cannot wait for you to meet his kid. It’s a childlike anticipation, a fantasy, really. The only thought that keeps him going. That enables him to ward off the crippling dread spreading black and murky inside of him. 

When you came back to him with that fresh wound on your forehead, a clock got set off in the back of his head. A distant ticking, at first, stifled by what you hadn’t yet extinguished of his rage and regrets. But every week since, the timer has been growing louder, pulsating faster in his temple like a swollen vein, ominous, threatening, he needs to get you out of there. Out of there, out of your cage, away from this man. 

This pain rooted in his chest whenever he thinks of you, that piercing ache has become a hindrance, he can’t keep a clear mind, that one obsessive thought obstructing everything else, he needs to get you out of there. Keep you by his side, where he can make sure you’re safe. 

Every Saturday morning, when he parts from you, reluctant and exhausted, the fear that you’ll get caught cheating clenches his hands into vengeful fists. 

Cheating is a filthy fucking word that feels all kinds of wrong to describe what you share and everything you mean to him. Bitterly, he remembers how he tried to scare you off, that first night at the motel. Everything he’s done to keep you at arm’s length, letting you believe he belonged to another woman. How he failed and fell hard, beyond the point of no return, how he was doomed to fail from the very first look you exchanged. 

How does he fix it, now? Does he step into the motel next Friday and flat-out ask you to move in with him? No preamble, no casual dating, none of that bullshit? Would you get scared? Would you trust him? Would you laugh in his face, reject what he’s offering? Does he get you into the truck and drive away with you into the sunset, like he’s dreamed of doing since the first time he took you for a ride, five months ago? 

Will you forgive him? You’ve trusted him so far. Can he push it a little further?  

How much more time can he afford to waste, before your safety is seriously at stake? 

He needs to get you out of there.

—

There’s a latch on the left side of the window frame, concealed in the sleek aluminum panel. It’s difficult to find, to say the least. Purposely, you suppose. 

The pads of your fingers run over the cool metal until you feel a tiny groove in the flat surface. With a satisfied hum, you slide a fingernail into the ridge and lever it up. It’s thin and sharp and it bites into the soft flesh of your thumb. 

“How many times do I have to tell you not to open the windows?” Adrian’s voice comes in from behind you, and you whip around like a cartoon thief caught red-handed, catching your balance with the flat of your palm on the glass panel. “There’s no need for it. And It messes up the thermostat.”

His tone is reprimanding. It makes your toes curl.

He’s been gone the entire weekend. Since Friday morning, as far as you can tell. His bespoke, royal-blue suit looks slept in. It probably is. Somehow, even when you’d been buzzing with gin and numbed out on pills, you’ve always maintained enough clarity to notice these kinds of details. To pay attention to him. 

Tonight, you’re entirely sober. Like you’ve been for weeks. And you have no trouble seeing the white collar of his shirt smeared with lipstick, the faintest trace of a flaming red pigment. You nearly scoff at the cliché. The flap house motel, the lipstick stain. So much for 2010 Bay Citizen’s power couple.

There’s an unkept air to his general demeanor. The dip of his collarbone peeks out from his unbuttoned shirt, his pale skin is flushed. His hair tousled, fairer without the matting pomade he normally applies to sleek it back, loose strands falling on his forehead, casting a shadow over his brow. 

He looks different. A younger, rougher version of himself. He looks handsome. It strikes you, with a sense of guilt to the realisation, like something you’re supposed to know but forgot everything about. 

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“So you thought you’d open the window?” he asks flatly, breaking eye contact to take off his jacket and drape it over the Stark chair.

“I need fresh air. Real air. It’s too stuffy in here,” you mumble. You sound like a scolded teenager. You hate it. 

“Is that literal?” he snarls, throwing you a glance over his shoulder, sliding his undone tie off his neck. 

You sink your teeth into your cheek, strong enough to taste blood. You pivot toward the window. The soft pad of your thumb finds the latch and you swiftly lift it, ignoring the bite of the metal. The window frame cracks open. The dried out joints part with a crunching sound. 

It’s a mundane sequence of actions. Insignificant, inconsequential. Nothing like following a stranger to a dark, deserted parking lot behind a bar. But inside you, the wild creature stirs, awakened by what you’ve set in motion. You don’t know it yet. But it’s too late to back down. 

A briny evening draft rushes in, carrying the bustling city’s noises on its tail, distant traffic, siren’s wails, fracturing the seal of your glass cage. 

When you turn back to face him, a smirk is forming on Adrian’s thin lips, one that can only be interpreted as an expression of condescension for your poor attempt at rebellion. 

The notion riles you up. 

“Actually, it’s not stuffy, it’s suffocating. But you wouldn’t know, you haven’t been here in three days.”

The air stills between you. It’s tangible, ironically, despite the open window. His expression freezes mid-smirk, and your eyes quickly scan his face. That long ingrained apprehension in the back of your brain, desperately, frantically trying to set off all the alarms, but something within you won’t let it. Something new. Something brazen.

Adrian straightens up. For a fleeting second, his expression shifts, unclear, undecided, as though he’s still making up his mind on how to deal with you.

And then, his face settles. 

“Well, that’s rich, coming from the woman who’s been deserting her home every Friday night for over half a year.” His lips purse in disdain around the word woman. 

It’s rage. That something new and brazen inside you is rage. It’s white-hot, and it’s growing fast, too fast for you to even try to contain it. It fills up your brain, smothering your inner voice and muffling the blaring alarms, overpowering everything else. You can feel it swell inside your chest, powered by the wild creature between your lungs. It takes up so much space between your rib cage, you can barely breathe, and yet you embrace the sensation. It’s not discomfort. It’s strength.  

“Another thing you wouldn’t know, since you’re out all night playing poker.” In turn, you scoff at the word, at the lie, at the hypocrisy of this long-overdue squaring up.

His eyes narrow on your face before he delivers the next blow.

“Maybe I had you followed. Maybe I know exactly where, and with whom, you spend your Friday nights. Have you thought of that, babe?“

Blood rushes down to your feet as you break in an instant sweat. Prickling scalp, nape and armpits. The sheer idea is unbearable. This life, or whatever’s left of it, colliding, trespassing on your time with Frankie. At your back, the weak breeze wafts in, and your eyes clench off the vision of the fourteen-story void. 

The sound of Adrian’s delighted snigger jerks you out of the intrusive thought. Your eyes are wide open again. 

“I don’t think you care enough about the details of my whereabouts to spend money on a PI,” you start, lifting your chin as if your heart isn’t thumping in your throat. “In fact, I think it suits you just fine that I haven’t been on your ass about your whereabouts.”

There’s the faintest hint of a wince altering his smug expression at your profanity, but the words keep pouring out of you. 

“Most of all, I think that if you really had me followed, you wouldn’t have missed the chance to ruin whatever you think this is for me. Like you do with everything I–” 

“Ruin whatever…? Oh, I’m the one ruining things?” he cuts in, lunging toward you in a movement so sudden you recoil against the open window frame. “When you’re the one who’s single-handedly destroyed our relationship with your fucking pills and your fucking depression? And now you’re having an affair with God knows who! I hope you haven’t been dumb enough to pick him among our circle of friends. And I fucking hope to God it is a man. Maybe you’re a degenerate, just like your sister.” 

You hit the mark. He doesn’t really care, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but his blatant lack of interest still hurts. After all those years, it still makes you bleed. The pain is washed over by anger, and the cruelty of his grossly redacted and biased narrative of your history. Doubt and guilt tighten your throat. 

He’s taken a step back. Hands on his hips, he’s seemingly waiting for you to counter. After a few dragging seconds, when he’s satisfied that he has silenced you for good, he faces away, and begins to unbutton his shirt. 

“I— You’re— you’re so fucking unfair,” you stutter, deflating, miserable.

“I’m going to shower. Make sure that window’s closed by the time I get out of the bathroom.”

“I’m leaving.”

The words rise from between the folds of your existence, overdue, evident, irreversible. They slip through your lips, and panic pervades your body at a molecular level. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” Adrian retorts with an audible smirk, sliding his shirt off his lean frame, “the Grants are coming over for dinner. That’s the only reason I came home.”

Tim Grant is Adrian’s most valuable client after your father. He’s in politics, in some office or other, you know you should know. His wife Cheryl is a flawless, sculptural blond. A Stanford graduate who has mothered five children. She’s three years younger than you. 

You need to get out of here. 

You are rooted to the tiled floor, vaguely aware of the lingering taste of blood on your tongue, and your right hand pinching your thigh. 

“I’m leaving you,” you clarify. 

Adrian turns around and pauses. He looks at you. Looks at you for what feels like the first time in months. At last, you caught his attention.

The alarms are bellowing inside your skull. You have nowhere to go. Ava is over a thousand miles away, everyone you know is primarily Adrian’s friend, and there’s no way you’re going back to your parents. 

Beyond the window, the indigo dusk is shifting to blue. The breeze is soothing. It’s Sunday, April 26th, 6.52 pm. You’re standing on the threshold.

“You’re what?” he asks in a thin voice. 

“I’m leaving you.”

Something flashes across his face, something you’ve never seen before. This is uncharted territory, for the both of you. He scrunches his brow, narrowed eyes flickering between yours. Lifting both hands, palms outstretched toward you, he speaks in a slow voice, detaching each word. 

“Alright, okay, I get it. You’re angry. You can leave the window—”

“I don’t care about the window, Adrian, I am leaving you.”

“Lee, this is not the fucking time for this, the Grants will be here in half an hour and the catering–”

“I don’t give a shit about the Grants!” you burst out.

Adrian’s hands fall limply to his side, his eyebrows jumping to his hairline. He licks his lips, an attempt to regain some countenance. 

“Okay,” he concedes in a strained tone, “I guess we’re doing this. Where do you go every Friday? Who are you fucking?”

“Now, you care? Now, you want to know? When I’m halfway through the goddamn door? I gave you ten years of my life, Adrian! Ten years! I loved you! I gave you everything!”

“You loved me?” he yells back, pocking a finger to his chest. “You gave me everything? Are you fucking serious? You are never here, Lee. You’re checked out, 24/7. Is that what you call love? Let me laugh! You never ask me any question about work, you never once came golfing with me. You can’t even pretend to care!”

“You are so fucking unfair! Tell me, how does it feel, to treat me like you do?”

“I am not unfair, Lee, I am realistic! Yes, maybe you loved me, but as soon as shit got real between us, you fucking checked out! An eight-year-long engagement? Really? Is that your idea of giving me everything? I am the laughingstock of everyone at the firm! You want to know how it feels? How it feels when I see your face closing off every time I try talking to you? You don’t know how to love, Lee. You know nothing about love. Unrealistic expectations, that’s all you got. Dreams. Childish fantasies. You’re heartless. Remote. Fucking hollow. Completely unfit for reality.”

The walls ring out with his acid rant. He stands before you panting, unmasked, with his shaking frame and his unfiltered anger, with his truth and his raw pain openly displayed. With his hurt and his loss and regrets. It’s vertiginous, unbearable. Your body recoils into the glass panels, tears spilling down your face. 

He straightens up, and takes in a quivering breath, a pointed but vain effort to recompose his face.

“Now would you please be so kind as to clean up, and instruct the maid to set the dinner table before catering gets here?”

But his vulnerability lingers in his voice and your crying intensifies, your chest convulsing under the weight of your sobs, of his words, of all your mistakes, and you slump down onto the cold hard floor, weeping uncontrollably. 

“I’m– I’m sorry,” you blubber, “I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

He sniffles, taken aback. Standing awkwardly, he wipes his nose with the back of his hand and takes a tentative step closer.  

“Babe, come on. Don’t cry. I’m sorry. Go get cleaned up, we’ll talk about this later.” 

But you can’t stop crying, your life is folding in on you, all of your certitudes, your broken heart and your grievances exposed, ugly and distorted, through a drastically different lens.

“I’m so sorry, Adrian. I– I loved you wrong. I wasted– wasted your time,” you sob.

“Shh no, come on,” he coos, crouching down beside you, brushing the hair from your face in a gesture so gentle it only makes you cry harder, hot tears scalding your eyelids, “I’m sorry I lost it. I’m tired. Let’s not talk about this now.”

All you want is to reach out and wrap your arms around him. Hold him tight, stop shaking. Go back to the start, take away the pain you’ve caused. But there’s no going back, and your hands are clenched around your shins, pressing your knees into your chest.

“I’m not the one you need. I failed you. I’m not the woman you need and I tried to be and I led you on– and I wasted your years and— and mine, I’m so sorry, Adrian.”

“Babe, stop crying,” he pleads again, panic skirting his tone, “I’m sorry I lashed out. Fuck, I know I can be an asshole sometimes. We can work this out, we always work things out.”

His clear-blue eyes shine with unshed tears. Everything inside you hurts. Everything inside you bleeds.

“I should have done this sooner. I was so scared. I’m such a fucking coward, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t leave, Lee,” he rasps. “We can– Please. Stay.”

—

You stay, inexplicably. You stay to host the Grants. 

Adrian lets you use the shower first, guiding you to the en-suite bathroom, his arm wound around your waist. You keep crying under the hot stream of water, unable to control your sobbing, choking on the hot steam with every shaking gulp of air you take in. 

And perhaps it’s the only way you’ll ever get out of here. Dead, chocked up on grief. 

You let the water run while you step out of the cubicle. Adrian stores the double-edge blades for his razor above the sink, inside the cabinet behind the backlit mirror. The sharp metal slices a shallow cut in the pad of your ring finger when you grab one. You adjust your grip, splay your hand at the top of your thigh, and slash the blade through your tender flesh, underneath the old scar Frankie likes to tease with his thumb. 

Trembling hand, straight line. The pain is searing, your relief immediate. Back in the shower, the blood runs down your leg in crimson rivulets, and your crying finally ebbs. 

In the bedroom, you swallow an anxiolytic, then another. The tablets catch at your throat going down, burning your esophagus like shame and failure.

You’re no longer a person, not really, not anymore. You’re the sum of your pains and discomforts. You’re that cut on your thigh and those pills in your throat. You're the black mascara that coats your eyelashes and burns your eyelids, you’re the red lipstick that dries out your lips. Fragments of you, held together by the snug material of a dress that you hate, a gift from Adrian, the figment of someone else’s desire. 

When the doorbell rings, your hair is still wet.

The dinner is an awkward mess. Adrian looks shell shocked, powerless to summon his usual charming persona. His answers are monosyllabic, incoherent. To you, it’s a complete blur. You drink fast, and too much, hanging your dazed gaze on Cheryl’s double row of natural pearls. Every time you shift in your seat, a sharp pain stings your thigh. You smile through it. 

The poorly executed charade goes on for about an hour before the Grants make a hasty exit. 

Tethered by a thinning thread of lucidity, you go straight to your bedroom, Adrian on your heels. He watches you from the threshold as you heave your shabby college suitcase onto the bed, his pale face twisted, clouded eyes, pinched lips. You try to avert your gaze, you need to hurry, to gather your brains, gather your things. 

But your eyes flicker back up to him. One last look. One last tear. You stare at each other in silence for a brief moment, until a draft closes the bedroom window with a muted bang. Adrian slides his hands in his pockets, turns around, and walks away. A few seconds later, the front door opens and slams shuts behind him.

Your heart trips and plummets. Somewhere far away, long ago, a small voice implores you to run after him. To beg for his forgiveness. To mend your faded dreams. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

Nausea lurches in your stomach, and you lower your head to the empty suitcase stretched open across the bed. You need to get out of here. 

But what are you supposed to pack? The apartment is filled with reminders of what you’ve destroyed. Photo albums, art, trinkets and souvenirs, Christmas presents, birthday gifts. It’s like slicing through ten years of your life, ten years of yourself, of the person you’ve been and never again will be. Letting that woman die and disappear. What do you need to take and what do you choose to leave? 

Completely unfit for reality.

Fighting a sense of urgency, your vision getting more unfocused by the minute, you go through the nightstand and dresser. Prescription pills in rattling tubes, a little box of old Polaroids and Ava’s maternity hospital bracelet, your e-reader and random books, two chargers coiled on the floor like resting snakes… You throw everything indistinctly into the suitcase. It swallows your belongings like a chasm, like a crevice, like a monster with unhinged jaws. 

Staggering to the walk-in closet, you slide some clothes off their hangers and shelves, throwing them blinding behind you. With precarious balance, you rise on your tiptoe to retrieve a leather-bound edition of Anna Karenina hidden on the upper shelf. A gift from your Russian lit professor for your graduation, with an inscription etched in his distinguished cursive on the cover page. Something about you being a promising young woman. You haven’t looked at it in years.  

Completely unfit for reality. 

You pull out a travelling bag, and stuff the book inside it, along with some shoes, and in the bathroom, cosmetics and lotions. 

When you try to change out of the dress, blood has glued the fabric to your skin. You have to rip it off like a band-aid, like a life-threatening habit. The slit starts bleeding again. 

The suitcase’s tired wheels swivel with a loud squeak over the tiled floor of the corridor. The bag keeps sliding off your shoulder. It’s all too cumbersome for you to drag, heavy like your spinning head, swaying like your vision. 

In the living-room, the city’s night lights twinkle and dance behind the floor-to-ceiling windows. You search the room in the semi darkness for something else, something more. Your laptop perhaps, before you realize it’s in your office. Do you need a laptop? You probably do. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

You grab your I ❤️ NY bag and drop the apartment’s keys on the console by the door. Propelled by the creature in your chest, by decades of silence, by an obscure promise for peace, you leave. 

You are in no condition to drive, but you don’t need to be. Your drowsy body’s on autopilot, and the traffic on the 589 northbound is fluid. 

You pull up in front of the motel a mere 54 minutes later, and stagger over to the office, where the young clerk with his blond hair in a bun is hunched over his phone. 

The suitcase refuses to roll over the gravel. One of the wheels folds and breaks off. You have to walk back to the reception and ask the young man to help you carry everything to the room. Your voice is slurring. You rummage in your bag for some cash to give him, only to find him already gone when you triumphantly pull out a tenner from your wallet. 

You don’t fold the dirty bedspread. You don’t clean up your face or brush your teeth, you don’t undress. You kick off your sneakers, and slip under the sheets, Adrian’s words ringing out in your ears. The truth they carry deafening, inescapable. 

You’re unfit for life. For reality. You went out of your way to create a relationship with a stranger, exempt of responsibility, of commitment, of any kind of difficulty. So you could revel in the illusion of a bond, of something greater than you. So you could romanticize a hope, without having to materialize its promises.  

You cry yourself to sleep. 

—

Buried at the bottom of your bag, your iPhone chimes for a solid 14 minutes before you can crack open an eyelid. Your hangover is vicious. It’s a wildfire raging inside your brain. It’s your body thrown off a cliff. 

Cautiously, you sit up on the edge of the bed, brain sloshing inside your skull, nausea lapping up at your esophagus. The harsh denim of your jeans rubs over the slit on your thigh, abrading the cut. A brownish stain of dried blood smears the fabric, and you scoff, thinking you didn’t pack any band-aid. 

The prospect of dragging your body under the shower and putting on clean clothes feels like medieval torture, but presenting yourself at the office reeking of alcohol and in yesterday’s blood-stained jeans is not an option. Not a satisfaction you’ll grant your father, anyway, and the thought gives you strength. 

In the bathroom’s black-edged mirror, your reflection is haggard. Downright cadaverous.

You’re sick a first time, emptying the content of your stomach crouched over the chirped porcelain bowl of the toilet, and then a second time, in the parking lot, after gulping down a tepid coffee from the vending machine in the reception. With the tip of your shoe, you scuff the gravel over the small mess and get in your car, not in the least ready to face the morning traffic, your father, or the rest of your life. But proceeding anyway.  

When you step out of the elevator, your father’s senior secretary is waiting for you in the lobby. Adrian has made some phone calls. Kaytee ogles the scene from her desk, a petty glee lighting up her dull features. 

You follow the older woman to your father’s office, unfazed, obedient. Absent-mindedly watching her restricted gait, encased between her pencil skirt and 5 inches heels.

Richard is calm. An impassive look on his handsome face concealing all thoughts and emotions, the sleeves of his Armani shirt rolled-up to his elbow. He lets you speak first, he listens in silence. 

I’m resigning with immediate effect, the words come out of your mouth easy, and you, too, listen to them. 

You expect to be chastised. Scolded like a rebellious teenager. Sent back to your desk with a mention etched in red on your permanent record and a slap on your hands. You brace yourself for the usual words, his favorite weapons, designed and crafted to humiliate and defeat. 

Instead, he reasons. He bargains. Calling you a valuable partner. A genuine asset for the company, he says, with irreplaceable experience and unique expertise. 

Shadows shift across the glass surface of his desk. His cellphone buzzes, and remains unanswered as he keeps talking, his attention focused on you for longer than it’s ever been. What would your trajectory have been, if he’d paid attention to you from the beginning? If you’d heard his praises as a child? 

What did Adrian say? How did he sound?

After a while, it’s your turn to speak. At the first mention of your shares, Richard’s posture and demeanor switches instantly. Before long, you know you’re never getting this money Ava has instructed you to fight for. 

You don’t argue, you know better. You’ve witnessed firsthand his power of nuisance. His sense of entitlement and his twisted passion for meticulous revenge. But your father’s ire escalates, until he’s standing next to you, pulling you up your seat by your arm and manhandling you toward the double glass doors. 

You wonder how far he’ll go, if he’ll make this public, if he’ll risk the scandal. You soon find out. You’re a rag doll in his hold, as he drags you toward the elevator, seething and sputtering threats.

“You have dishonored me, the name I gave you, your family. You’ve been nothing but pointless ever since you were born. Don’t ever try to come back here. I don’t care if you’re starving.”

As you stumble inside the cabin of the mirror-lined elevator, you realize you never got to retrieve your laptop. You turn to face your father and, looking straight at him, you cover your ears. 

Before the doors close with a cheerful ding, you see his face distorted by wrath, turning a violent shade of purple. 

—

“What do you mean, the room is taken? Taken by whom?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I cannot disclose that kind of information.”

Raul’s affected attempt at hotelier’s etiquette has Frankie scoffing into the receiver. Or is it Joachim? No, you’d said his name was Raul.

“Wait, it’s taken now, but is it booked on Friday? I just need it on Friday. Why did you give them that room, anyway? I’m pretty sure you got plenty of vacancies.”

The real question is, why is he behaving like an ass to this poor man who’s only trying to do his job properly? Why is he getting so nervous over this? How does it matter if you’re not in room number 2, this week?

“I don’t know if the room will be available on Friday, sir. I am afraid the lady hasn’t specified a date for the end of her stay.” 

Frankie’s spine grows rigid. Like a bucket of ice is being poured over his head in slow motion. That ominous ticking fires in the back of his head, so rapid and loud it might fracture his skull open.

“What lady?” he rasps, his throat suddenly parched. “Who’s in there? Is it the– Is it the woman who comes in every week? With me?”

Raul doesn’t answer, and his silence tells Frankie everything he needs to know.

“Alright, thanks,” he snaps, hanging up and throwing the phone on the desk. 

An hour and a half later, he’s pulling up into the motel’s parking lot. Lupe has been gracious enough to agree to pick up Lua from day-care, even though Monday is his day, so he’s got the rest of the afternoon to sort this out. 

This is foolish, though. He, is foolish. Your car is not even here. He’s probably overreacting. 

The thing is, his gut instinct tells him he’s not. It’s a potent, familiar dread, one that sets all his senses on alert. One he’s sworn himself never to ignore again, after Tom’s death. It’s that vision he had on Christmas evening. Your lonely silhouette sitting by the window on the edge of the bed. It’s that pull in his chest. That ache in his flesh.

He gets out of the truck swiftly, with a quick glance at the reception office, and walks straight to room number 2. The place looks even shittier in the bright midday sun. The contours of the low building are pressed flat by the blinding light and the heat. The lime wall between room 2 and 3 is streaked with deep, long winding cracks. The paint on the porch’s poles is chipped, coming off the sun-baked wood in large, crispy flakes. The hanging lights are covered in rust, the base of the railing in mold. 

Once more, guilt squeezes his chest tight at the thought that he’s made you come here, week after week. That you docilely agreed to it, and never said a word. That you kept coming back. Back to this place. Back to him, too.

The door is locked. He rattles the doorknob harder, more to shake off his own frustration than to achieve anything else. The yellow curtains are drawn, and no matter how hard he squints, he can’t see jack shit beyond them. 

He’s probably overreacting. 

What if he picked the lock? Just to make sure you’re not in here?

“Jesus,” he sighs, running a palm over his face, “the fuck is wrong with me?”

He stands in front of the door a while longer, head hung, hands propped on his hips, so still he can feel the sweat beading on his nape. Eventually, he lifts his cap and combs his fingers through his hair, then turns around and steps down the porch. 

He’s halfway to his truck when your sedan appears at the end of the road.

—

On the drive back to the motel, you roll both front windows down, and let the warm breeze blow your hair in every direction.

Yesterday, the pain was all encompassing. So sharp and piercing, you wanted to cease existing. Now, thoughts and images come and go, carried by the draft from the opened window. Kaytee moving into your office, and your employment prospects, nonexistent in the Bay Area. Your forgotten laptop. The talk you need to have with Ava. Your financial situation. 

Everything seems distant, another woman’s problems. You are numb. Remote. Hollow. 

The tears will come back, though. When you ask yourself if this tragicomic public humiliation was your final interaction with your father. If the formal lunch you shared with your mother last Thursday was the last time you’ll ever see her, the last time you’ll hug her frail figure. When you realize you won’t see Agatha grow up. 

You will reject the pain. The sense of loss. Of isolation. But it’ll sweep you away anyway. 

The fact that you have voluntarily orphaned yourself. 

You will choke on your grief. 

“I need to start making plans,” you inform the empty cab with an even tone. 

Or you could simply hide away in the motel for the rest of your life. Waiting for Frankie, Friday after Friday. 

Frankie. 

A strangled gasp ricochets inside your throat. You push the thought of him away, bury it deep between the folds. 

Completely unfit for reality.

But when you turn into the parking lot, the red truck immediately pops into view, stationed in front of your room. Frankie’s standing a few yards away from it, eyes trained on you through the windshield. 

Your body tenses up, a lump grows inside your throat, your grip on the steering-wheel white-knuckled as you maneuver to park. 

When you kill the engine, Frankie walks up to your door. There’s a suspended beat, as he motions to grab the handle. But he seems to reconsider, taking a step back and waiting for you to get out. 

Raw nerves and flayed skin, you exit the car. 

“Are you okay?” he asks when you’re standing in front of him. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Lee, are you okay?” he repeats, detaching each word, his large hands coming to frame your face. 

Shaded by the brim of his hat, his dark eyes skip nervously over your features. You know what you look like, puffy eyes, ashen face, and you squirm nervously in his hold.

“I’m okay. I’m fine. I didn’t fall again,” you add with an empty chuckle, trying to pull away from his grip, evade his scrutiny. 

“Jesus fuck, Lee,” he sighs, shaking his head. 

Your spine grows stiff, but his hand is already cradling the back of your head, drawing you in. Hunched around you, he presses your rigid, reluctant form into his chest, into his heat, breathing you in. Face tucked into the curve of his neck, you stand awkwardly still between his arms, terrified of your body’s reaction should you let go and relent, should you lose yourself in the reassurance of his solid figure, of his soothing embrace, of his comforting scent. 

Eventually, you wrap your arms around his torso, skimming your hands over the soft, cottony fabric of his shirt. 

“Why are you here?” you ask again, your voice muffled against his collarbone. 

“I called to book the room,” he starts, talking into your hair, “and this Raul guy said it was taken. By a woman.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I don’t know. I just knew.”

Clenching your eyes shut, you ball his t-shirt in your fists. 

“Listen, Lee, I can help you. With whatever it is that’s going on. I can help you. Let me help you.”

“I know. I know you can. But I… I think I need to help me.”

Prove yourself, and that collective we, that you can make decisions, be resourceful, be resilient. Other than through silence and disappearance and pills. Stand on your own. Face reality. Deal with it.

You feel the working of this throat against your temple. His hands span your back, spreading warmth in their trail, finding purchase on your waist with a vice grip, as if to make sure you’re really here. 

“I understand.” The deep, velvety roundness of his voice envelops you. “Would you tell me if you needed my help?”

You nod, your cheek brushing the pebbled skin of his neck. 

“I promise.”

His heart beats strong and steady against your breasts. You lean into the slow, pulsating rhythm, into his life force. 

“I need to talk to you,” you start, and his hold on you tightens. “Can we go inside your truck?”

“Sure,” he answers, but he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t move, and you grow anxious, afraid you’ll lose courage, and the momentum will fall to a halt. 

Completely unfit for reality. 

“Okay, let’s go,” he finally says, and you lead the way, walking in short strides toward the passenger side of the vehicle. 

Once you’re both seated, Frankie turns on the ignition. The AC immediately kicks in. In the harsh, unforgiving daylight, the dashboard is not black, but a faded shade of anthracite gray. 

When you turn to face him, he’s already looking at you, the dark pools of his eyes boring into you, searching. 

“I left,” you say in a flat tone, your voice as hollow as your chest feels. “I left Adrian. My fiancé. And I felt my father. The company, I mean. I quit.”

He registers the news, the crease in his brow deepening, lips slightly parting. 

“Okay,’ he nods. “How did it go?”

“It… I don’t know. It went? I’m not sure if they realize I’m never coming back. Adrian especially. Well, my father too, actually. Although he made it clear that he never wants to see me again. I don’t know. Maybe I’m mistaken. I really torched those bridges,” you shrug.

A myriad of fleeting expressions animate Frankie’s features, too fast for your overwrought brain to read into any of them, before they settle into the familiar frown.

He swallows hard, before he asks, “How are you feeling?”

In turn, you furrow your brow, searching the abyss inside your chest. 

“You know the movie, The Dragon Tattoo Girl? Or whatever it’s called? The one with the James Bond actor?”

He lifts a puzzled eyebrow, but nods for you to keep going.

“You know toward the end, when they’re in London and they go tell this woman that her brother is dead, the killer guy. Her abuser, basically. They go back to the car to monitor her computer activity, and she’s just… shopping online?”

“Yea?”

“That’s how I feel.”

He huffs, and you don't know how to interpret his reaction. 

“It doesn’t change anything. For you, I mean. My sister’s in New York, she got away some time ago and I–”

“Lee,” he cuts in, his hand flying to grab yours, but you recoil from his touch, “I told you, you can ask me for anything. Anything you want. Anything you need.”

His gaze pierces through you, soft sad eyes, cold hard stare, and you can’t withhold it any longer. You face away, turning to the brass number 2 hanging upside down on the wooden door. Behind it, there's a travel bag and a beat-up suitcase with a broken wheel that contain all of your belongings. 

You’re thirty-five years old. You only just broke free, and everything you want is in this cab. 

This man, his past, the burden of his sins. The strength and resilience weaved within the fabric of him, his tender touch, too, and the promise of his future. The sense of safety he provides you, unlike anything you’ve ever known in all your years. 

His solid body’s thrumming next to yours, steady vibrations caressing your skin. The air between you ripples as if it were liquid. It’s the only thing you can feel. The first thing you’ve felt since you woke up this morning. 

His words come back to you, from so many Fridays ago, pained and yearning, Are you real? You never questioned the realness of him. You gave yourself blindly to the reality of this. This inescapable and electrifying living thing between you. It’s not the reason behind your emancipation. But it has propelled you toward it.  

Was it all just a dream? 

“Do you sometimes think…” you trail off, hesitant. You’re still not looking at him. The heel of your palm comes to rest over your denim, over the thin wound that brings you relief. You press down on it. You wince. “I don’t know how to ask you this.”

His voice rumbles with tension. “Just shoot it straight.”  

“Do you sometimes think you’ve replaced cocaine with— with me? With this? Whatever this is?”

You risk a glance in his direction and watch him take the blow, eyes lowering to his hands. He releases a deep sigh, cocking his chin. 

“Aren’t you scared you’ve replaced an addiction with another?” you continue. “What if… what if I’ve traded my pills for you?”

His eyes flick up to yours. He stares at you in silence for a while. When he moves, it’s to take off his hat. He props it on the dashboard, assuring its balance, before his gaze returns to you, and you brace yourself, chewing on your cheek.

“Yea, it’s… It’s a valid question. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it. At the beginning, at least. But the answer’s no. I don’t think I’ve traded cocaine for you. I like the man I am when I’m with you. You make me want to be happy. You make me feel good. Coke never made me feel good. It was a means to escape… pretty much everything. I don’t want to escape anymore. I don’t need it. I don’t think I can ever unlearn what you taught me.”

Frankie pauses, letting his words settle over your tense, motionless body. You grit your teeth, your jaw aching. 

He breathes in deep. His voice drops to a murmur, low, but firm.

“I love you, Lee. I was never in love with drugs. I don’t think I was ever in love, not really. Not the way I’m in love with you.”

Your body shudders, tears rising like high water inside your throat, face flushing. All of your suppressed emotions come back rushing. Guilt and fear, remorse, rage and resentment. Hope and elation, too. They tumble inside you like boulders falling off a mountain, in a formidable landslide.

“You can’t love me,” you say in a choked up voice.

“Why is that?”

“Because I don’t know if I can be loved. I don't know if I know how to love back.”

“That’s bullshit,” Frankie grunts. 

“It’s not,” you retort, aggressively brushing a rogue tear from your cheek with the flat of your palm, angered by the confidence of his statement. “You don’t know– I’m faulty, Frankie. I’m fucked up. Defective. I can’t handle reality.”

“How about you stop talking about yourself like you’re a machine? Nobody can handle a shitty reality they feel trapped in, Lee. Nobody. Just look at me,” he adds with a shrug.

His words open a floodgate, more tears spilling out of you, streaming down your face in scalding rivulets. 

“But what will happen when you don’t love me anymore?”

“That’s never gonna happen. I can promise you that much.”

“No, that’s bullshit!” you spit out. “Everything passes! Everything ends! Everything, and you know it!”

“Not this. This never ends.”

His assertive tone, his steady demeanor, your stupid, uncontrollable tears, everything sets off your temper. Yet, something throbs inside you, longing and want, stronger than your rage, pulling you toward his still, solid body. His gaze pins you down, not like a dead butterfly in a glass frame, but like a benevolent shadow stretching over you, seeping through your flesh to wrap around your heart and protect it, keep it safe. 

You push back against it, back into the door, the handle biting into your spine, covering your mess of a face with trembling hands. 

“I know what my track record looks like,” he says. “But I’m asking you to trust me. My love for you has no end.”

The seat bench creaks under his weight as he moves closer to you. 

“C’mere, baby.”

His hand circles your arm, pulling with gentle little tugs until you give in and let him tuck you into his side, his arms keeping you firmly pressed against him. His scent engulfs you, his quiet strength, the rumble of his voice felt through your chest as he hums quietly into the crown of your head, Don’t be scared, you got this, I got you. 

Surrendering, you allow yourself to cry, weeping loudly into his shirt, full-body sobs quaking your frame. You might break apart in a million scattered pieces, should he let go of you, but you’re not scared, you got this, he got you, resolute, unyielding, and you weep until the tears run dry, until your rib cage is too sore to heave, until the convulsing of your throat is reduced to a silent tremor.

Releasing his hold, he guides you over his lap to sit you between his legs, and you burrow into him like a small child, eyes drifting close, finally resting. 

—

Around the truck, the sky has gradually changed. The crushing, white-hot afternoon light slowly gave way to a fuzzy, faded coral atmosphere. 

Frankie’s lost track of the time. His arm is numb, his shoulder sore, but he’s not moving. He won’t risk disturbing you. Your breathing comes in deep and regular, you might be sleeping. 

From orange to pink to indigo, the day dies out into the night. 

It’s almost dark when you quietly call his name, and he can hear the toll grief has taken on you in the rasping of your voice. 

“Is it okay for you to be here?” you ask. “Are you going to leave?”

The questions send chills down his spine. Now is the time to tell you. Now or never. It’s been years since he’s known such a fear. 

“No, it’s fine.” He marks a pause, then takes a leap. “What did you mean, earlier, when you said it doesn’t change anything for me?”

Releasing his shirt, your fingers splay over his chest, and with an apparent effort, you push away so you can look at him. In the dim dusk light, he can hardly distinguish your expression. 

“I meant just that. I didn’t leave Adrian on your account. I’m not expecting you to do the same for me. I’m not going to ask you to divorce your wife and abandon your child.”

He runs a palm over his face, sighing heavily.

“I’m not married, Lee. I never married Lua’s mother, and we split up a little over a year ago. Right after that… after that bullshit mission I told you about.” 

Your silence is unbearable. His heart thumps painfully in his throat.

“We kept living together. Until a week ago. Lua’s still young, it was more convenient. I owed them that much.”

You’re still silent, your mind probably working over the implications, measuring the extent of his betrayal, when he’s asked you mere moments ago to put all your faith in him. 

“Why did you never tell me?”

Sweat prickles over this nape. 

“It was easier at first. I could keep you– keep you at a distance. I was scared.” 

“Scared of me?” 

Your eyes glimmer in the darkness of the cab, boring intently into his. He’s reminded of that very first night at the bar, when they bore into his back. When he swiveled on his stool and your gazes met for the first time. When your lives collided. He thinks about how much your eyes have come into focus, since. 

“Scared of what you made me feel,” he breathes.

“What did I make you feel?” 

“Like I’m worthy of you. What I saw on your face when you looked at me… I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to risk changing anything. I’m sorry, Lee. I’m so fucking sorry.” 

He straightens up imperceptibly, moving to touch you, but you lean back into the steering wheel.

“What did you see on my face?”

The words come out of him in a husky murmur.

“You were burning inside. Burning with life. And you wanted me.” 

Everything stands still.

Slowly, your hand goes up to his cheek. It rests there, light and soft. A cool and soothing touch. Like it’s always been. Your thumb strokes his scruff, and he leans into your palm, exhaling painfully.

“I still want you, Frankie,” you whisper, leaning forward, your lips meeting his lips. 

—

You step out of the truck feeling drained, acutely aware of every aching bone and tissue in your body. Frankie by your side, watching over your balance, you walk back to your car to get the room’s key. The brown diamond-shaped keychain fits in your palm with a homely feeling. 

The room has been made. The artificial perfume of the industrial detergent blends with the musty scent woven into the curtains and rug.

Frankie swallows you in his embrace as soon as the door closes behind you. His mouth slanted over yours, his face pressed into your face, his kisses are deep, needy, desperate, and so are yours. His arms wound up tight around your waist, you cling onto his broad frame. 

With infinite care, with measured movements, he starts undressing you. You’re docile, pliant like a sleepy child, giving in to the solace of his touch, relenting to the safety of his devotion. 

Kneeling at your feet, he slowly slides down your jeans, revealing the mess on your thigh. Clumps of rusty-colored blood are caked around the flushed, raised skin. The sight stops him. Your heart cowers, your breathing suspended as he stares at your self-inflicted wound. 

His left palm skims your leg upward, until the small cut is framed between his thumb and index. When he looks up, you can’t tell if the tears gleaming in his eyes are anger or sadness. You cup his face, so many words stuck inside your chest. So many fears, so many regrets. 

Soon, you’re crushed under his weight, spread around his breadth, ankles locked over the small of his back as he fucks his love into you, his hands hooked over your shoulders. His skin rubbing against yours, long, languid, thorough strokes splitting you open. The painful ecstasy only he can give you, when he buries himself deep inside you, his forehead pressed to yours. Healing all of your wounds. 

He’s breathing you, his heart thumping inside your rib cage, I love you, Lee, I love you, but your words still won’t come out, so you nod, and he knows. Your nails sink into his back, and you pray that he knows. 

For the first time ever, you sleep in his arms throughout the night. His chest to your back, a thin shin of sweat between your two bodies. His steady breathing fanning the hair on your nape. You wake up together, on a Tuesday morning. 

Stirring out of sleep, he pulls you flush against him. His plush lips trace a wet path of open-mouth kisses along your neck, exploring the expanse of your skin, drawing ephemeral patterns, warm and unhurried. Softly humming, he tastes you, licking your sweat, inhaling your scent, nuzzling the edge of your jaw and nibbling your earlobe, his cock hardening against your cheeks, his calloused hands kneading the soft swell of your belly. 

His mouth rounds over the slope of your shoulder, and he sucks in sharply. You jerk between his restraining hold, his tongue peaking out to ease the blooming bruise. 

You lift a sleep-heavy eyelids and the morning light hits your iris. Dust particles suspended in the golden sunbeams, the musty smell from the sun-warm curtains carried in the air. His teeth sink in sharp at the base of your neck, a low growl rumbling from his chest, primal and possessive, and it dawns on you. What he’s doing. 

The realization thrums along your nerve-endings, courses through your veins, it blooms wild and spreading inside your chest. He is yours. He was always yours. He was never running away from something, not really. He was running to you. 

He chose you, remote and aloof. A bottomless well of craved affection, lonely scars, lost ideals, and he filled you. Imprinted on you his want and his need, his trust and reverence, in all the ways you let him. 

You summoned him. He found you. He appeared. 

You push back into him, granting him access to the line of your throat, and his bite sinks in deeper. Your fingers card through his hair, heart bursting, body like a fever, arousal pooling slick and sticky between your hips. 

He fucks you slow. Shallow thrusts, the fat head of his cock teasing your entrance, inching further inside your heat with each dragging stroke. His arm banded across your chest and his hand between your folds, he commands your pleasure, flooding all your senses, until you cry out his name, until he comes with you, until your bodies are spent. 

You shower together, and drive to a nearby diner for breakfast. Sitting in a red pleather booth, you drink strong filter coffee and devour thick, buttery pancakes, Frankie’s spend trickling down your panties as you watch him shovel scrambled eggs inside his mouth with a ravenous appetite, his face beaming with a dimpled grin. 

Your smile is so wide, your cheeks hurt.

On the way back, he stops by a CVS to get plasters, gauze and an antiseptic ointment. In the room, kneeled between your thighs, he lets you twirl his curls around your fingers while he dresses your small wound in silence, cautious and meticulous, deft and experienced. 

You know you should talk, know you should start making plans, but he carries his heart in his hand, and his touch is soothing, and your want is restless. High after high, your body tenses and breaks, as he fucks your cunt, your ass, your face, fills you up with his come, greedy teeth sunk into your flesh. 

After making a few calls, he stays another night, and when he leaves for work on Wednesday morning, you spend several minutes observing your reflection in the bathroom’s black-edged mirror. You look good, if not rested, your skin gleaming with a flattering post-orgasm glow. 

You detail the bite marks adorning your skin. They’re everywhere. He hasn’t been gentle. He hasn’t been careful. Some of them still a little sore when you poke a finger into the bruised, tender flesh. The mild pain draws a buzzing, electrical line from your heart to your core. You smile at your reflection. Stop me, you challenge the woman in the mirror. She smirks back at you. She’s so beautiful, so confident, your breath hitches. 

Eventually, your current situation resurfaces. Calling Ava sits at the top of your mental checklist. You wait for a couple of hours, until her lunch break, to dial her number. The first ringtones send you into a brief panic. Above the desk, the woman in the mirror is looking at you. You anchor yourself to her image. 

When Ava picks up, you tell her what happened in terse words: you broke up with Adrian, then quit. You’re currently staying in an out-of-town motel. 

She hollers into the receiver, and you wince with an uncertain smile, holding the phone away from your ear. There are a few cheerful curses as she expresses her pride and surprise, but she quickly gets back on track. 

“So when are you coming here? You’re coming here, right? Richard is gonna make sure you never work again over there. You know that, right?”

“Yes, I know,” you concede ruefully. 

That’s the part of the conversation you should have planned ahead. But you’re still riding high on the fuck-drunk euphoria of the last two days. She questions you for more details, demanding an elaborate report of the events that you’re not too keen on remembering, nor submitting to her judgment. She left without a word, without a goodbye, unnoticed, unacknowledged. You had to confront not one, but two of them.

It occurs to you that you don’t have to tell. Nothing forces you to. Maybe, for the first time ever, you can curate your own experience. Refuse to give in to peer pressure, however benevolent. Define your own story. Be its main character, and its sole narrator. 

“What would I do in New York, anyway? Crash your couch? And then?”

“I told you, Polly has a job for you.”

“No, you said Polly could help me find something. Now she has a job for me? What kind of job?” you frown. “At her practice?”

“No, no. Something in a publishing company one of her clients owns. I don’t know, nothing fancy apparently, but enough to get you started.”

“And what, they’re holding a position for a woman without any qualification and zero experience in their field?”

“If Polly says it’s a sure thing, then it’s a sure thing. Call her. She only mentioned it in passing, we never actually thought you’d fucking leave, Lee! And our couch is very comfortable, I’ll have you know.”

This goddamn collective we. 

When you hang up, nothing is decided. Frankie won’t be back until Friday evening. You're going to be on your own to stew over the crossroads for the next two days. 

Lost in the liminal sequence. 

Ava is right. You could never find a decent job in Tampa. You can’t stay here. You don’t even want to stay. You hate this city, you hate this fucking state. It has been your life-long dream to break-free and get away. The idea of staying inside your father’s radius of influence, within reach of Adrian, gives you the wrong kind of chills. 

But New York? Do you really want to live there? The city has always mildly scared you, with its buoyant history and its mythical aura. Too big, too noisy, too stressful. Completely anonymous. It would be so easy for you to drown in there. Forever disappear.  

The truth is, there isn’t any place you can see yourself living in, because you don’t want to live anywhere without Frankie. 

Only right now, the sheer thought of being despondent on another man rises bile in your stomach. You will never be that woman, ever again. 

“Here is fine,” you sigh with a pout, looking at the one-dollar store painting of the Appalachian. “Why can’t I just stay here forever?”

Completely unfit for reality. 

Adrian’s words seem to find you everywhere. They followed you all the way here, in your hiding place, plucking at the safety blanket Frankie’s care has swaddled you in. You shudder in the warm, quiet room. 

Well, fuck Adrian. Fuck your past. Fuck his words and their condemning truth. 

Step by step. That’s how you’ll proceed. You need to secure your financial situation. You need a new laptop. You need to buy underwear to replace the ones you forgot to pack. And you need food.  

You get dressed and drive to an Apple Store in town, where the price tags on the MacBooks make your eyes bulge. You’ve truly been living inside a despicably privileged bubble. Guilt makes your skin grow tight. 

After running a quick search on your phone, you find a second-hand electronic store, where you purchase a refurbished laptop for a quarter of its original price. You feel stupid for feeling so smart. After all, you’re only experiencing most people’s life. The thought helps you follow through with the rest of your errands, starting with the bank.  

When you come back to the motel with your shopping bags and some takeaway Thai, however, the problem of your immediate future remains unsolved. 

Deliberately stalling, you start fiddling with the computer. The motel doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but you manage to tether the laptop to your phone. The small victory alleviates your anxious sadness. You settle over the bed, back propped against the pillows, and watch brainless social media content as you eat. A warm breeze wafts in through the cracked-open window. This is good, you think. The life-altering decisions can wait. 

Over the next couple of days, you gravitate within a few miles radius of the motel, only going out to buy food and take short walks in the surrounding area. Exploring its vicinity in broad daylight anchors the motel in a reality you are not ready to confront. The fact that it’s always felt like an isolated island is what brought you a sense of safety in the first place. 

But being on your own is exhilarating. You can sleep in late without having to put up with the nagging beeping of an alarm-clock that’s not even yours. Choose to shower, or not, skip a meal or eat pancakes for dinner. You can watch Parks and Recreation bloopers all night long and never tune in to a financial show ever again. You can sleep with the window opened and listen to Disintegration fifty times in a row. Your newfound freedom is in every little detail. 

When Frankie comes back on Friday evening, carrying a six-pack and a takeaway bag, he finds you bare-faced in your sleeping t-shirt, sitting cross-legged on the dirty carpet, watching SNL Digital Shorts on your good-as-new computer. 

He sets the beer and the bag on the desk. An appetizing aroma fills the room. Freshly made burritos from his favorite place. 

Silently patting the space next to you, you invite him to join, but he faces away, hiding his soft smile from you. He takes off his hat, then toes off his boots, and your heart somersaults at how far you’ve come since your early rituals. 

Walking over to you, he crouches at your side to inspect the bandage on your leg, that you changed every day, per his instructions. Seemingly satisfied with your handiwork, he pivots to sit down, his knees protesting with a resounding POP that makes him grunt, and you're overcome by a powerful wave of fondness. Oblivious to the food and the videos on the screen, you unfold your legs and climb over his lap in a straddle. 

“Evening, baby,” he greets you with a round chuckle, soft as velvet, as you lean in for a greedy kiss, prompting him to open with a swipe of your tongue over his plush lips. 

He responds in kind, voracious mouth slanting over yours, tongue licking inside you. Your arms wrap around him, fingers burrowing into the plane of his strong back, the heady scent of him, leather and musk, filling your brain with static and your belly with want. His warm hands slide under your shirt, calloused palms roaming the expanse of your naked chest. He swallows your wanton moans, thumbs playing over your peaked nipples and you take, back arching into his chest, nails digging, hips rolling. 

His touch gets rougher, his hands a kneading grasp over your soft breasts, over the dip of your waist, the swell of your ass, desire pooling hot at your center as his tongue licks and twirls inside your mouth. Chasing the contact of his growing bulge, you bear down over his harsh denim, and his breathing comes in shorter, fingertips teasing the elastic band of your cotton panties. You exhale heavily through your nose, slick soaking his jeans through the soft fabric. 

His lips curve into a grin, thick fingers sliding under your panty-line. He presses into the dip underneath your hips to part your leaking folds with an explicit sound. You push harder into him, into the wall of his chest, forcing him to lean back, your need coiled like a wound spring, angling his face with a harsh tug on his curls to catch his lower lip between your teeth.

“Fuck, okay,” he growls, straightening up with a cinch. 

His fingers clutch the swell of your ass and in one swift motion, the room around you swivels, you’re on your back, legs bracketing his waist. 

As he unbuckles his belt, your gaze follows the rippling of his lean muscles along his forearms to the shifting bulk of his biceps, lingering on the round of his shoulders and his corded neck, up to his gorgeous face. Tousled hair, kiss-swollen lips, cherry-red, curved in a boyish grin. Black, lust-blown pupils that watch you watch him. 

A clear laughter rises from your chest and bubbles in your throat, its music beautiful to your ears, almost alien, long forgotten. 

His grin widens, dimpling his face, and he tugs off his shirt, throwing it at random in the room behind him. Your laughter dies in your throat; it steals your breath away, it always does, the sight of his naked chest, towering over you, gleaming golden in the soft hues from the bedside lamps. The dips and planes, the pattern of his freckles, the scars you could trace with eyes closed. The stories they tell, your precious secrets, your treasured knowledge.

A flat press of his palms over your knees, and he spreads your legs open, exposing the wet patch on your underwear to his gaze, and his smile falls, his expression turning wilder, dark and hungry. 

“Fucking soaking wet,” he husks, chucking down his jeans, pulling out his stiff length from his boxer briefs, and you squirm over the rough rug with a pleading whimper. Spiting in his hand, he starts stroking himself, eyes trained on your core, deft fingers loosely circling his cock in a slow up-and-down motion. Saliva pools in your mouth, you clench around nothing. 

“What’s that t-shirt?” he asks, bending closer to you, slotting his cock between your folds over the slick-drenched fabric of your panties.

“Oh god,” you gasp. “That– what?” 

“That t-shirt you’re wearing.”

You can feel the throbbing weight of his sex, feel its heat as it rubs back and forth over your swollen clit, and your mind scrambles.

“From– from college.”

“You’re gonna keep it on,” he tells you, his left hand finding your breast and giving it a tight squeeze through the worn-out material. “You look so young, it’s like I’m fucking you in your dorm.”

The fat head of his cock nudges at your entrance, pushing the soaked fabric in, and your mouth falls open, hips arching into him.

“Like I knew you back then. Like I’ve always known you,” he rasps after a thick swallow. “Like a second chance. You know?”

“I know,” you mouthe with a short nod. 

Hooking the tip of his finger, he slides your panties aside, just enough to line himself up, slowly inching inside your heat with a strained groan. 

“Shit, baby, you’re tight.”

The stretch is impossible, the size of him blinding, and you hiss and squirm, but his hold on your waist is bruising, keeping you in place as he thrusts inside you inch by inch, thick cock catching at your entrance. 

There’s the working of his throat as he gathers saliva in his mouth, and he locks eyes with you, making sure you’re watching, before he lets it slide along his tongue straight onto your cunt. The rough carpet scraps your ass as you writhe against his restraint, against the terrifying notion that he always knows just what it is that you want, that he always makes sure you get it. 

“You wanted it, now you gotta take it. You’re gonna take it like a good girl.”

“Yes, Frankie,” you breathe out, nodding again, surrendering, bucking your hips into him.

“Oh yea, good girl, that’s it,” he coos. “Gonna stretch that pretty little cunt on my cock, until you come all over it,” he says, moving inside you, “until you beg me to stop–”

“I’ll never beg you to stop,” you breathe out, brows furrowed, sweat beading at your temples as you take his first shallow, labored strokes.

“Wanna bet?” he asks, drawing your legs over his lap with a sudden tug, deepening his thrusts at a blinding angle. 

You thrash your head, back arching off the carpet, a guttural sound vibrating in your throat as he starts fucking into you at a steady pace, his cock dragging along your walls, leaving you no choice but to accommodate his girth. 

With a small grunt, he thrusts in deeper, the round head of his cock grinding against your center and your fingers scrabble frantically, flying to his chest and clawing at the meat of his muscles.

“That perfect fucking cunt,” he says, eyes trained on where he disappears into you, “you feel so fucking good, Lee. You’re so beautiful. Say it.”

“I’m beautiful,” you say in a warped voice.

“You’re fucking perfect. Say it, Lee,” he husks, drilling inside you faster, with undiluted strength, clutching your waist and sliding you over his cock so you meet him thrust for thrust. 

“Oh god, Frankie,” you beg, after all, taking hold of his wrists, a desperate attempt to slow down his merciless pace. 

Leaning forward, he covers you with his broad frame, crushing you into the rug, spine undulating as he thoroughly wrecks you, unrelenting, his speed escalating.

The heady musk of his scent fills your nostrils, so thick you can taste it. His hot breath scalds the shell of your ear, brutal shockwaves radiating from your center with each of his strokes, each of his words.

“Be a good girl, and say it,” he pants, “say you’re perfect.”

—

You’re mine, Lee Abbott. 

Celadon green, and a pale shade of yellow. He knows your scent will haunt him long after you’ve left him. You’re a part of him now. He made you so. You’ll forever be woven into his flesh, into his very soul. 

You’re mine. Lee Abbott.

He never speaks those words out loud. He’ll sooner die than compromise or be a hindrance to your newfound independence. 

But god, you’re his. Your entire body bears the mark of his desperate plea. Bite marks on the swell of your hips, the round of your ass, the curve of your neck. Heart shaped flecks of crimson, blossoming underneath the surface of your thin skin along the line of your throat, your collarbone, and the weight of your tits.

Every night, he covers you in his sweat and his spit, before he fills you up with his come. 

I love you, he said instead, that first night, and you never replied. In a few days, you’ll be gone, and it might very well kill him, but he will let you go. 

And maybe, from the start, he was more yours than you ever were his. A part of him knew it. The part that tried resisting your pull. The part that compelled him to run away from you that very first night.

Two weeks. Two weeks, and you’ll go north. Live with your sister in New York. Start over. 

There was this talk, over cold burritos and warm beer. He ate with reluctance, desirous to keep your taste on his tongue. Forever preserve the flavor of your orgasm that he lapped from your folds.

That talk that tore his bleeding heart right out of his chest, when you hinted you might have to leave town. You couldn’t explain, you said. Couldn’t make sense of it. You said, I just want to stay here in this room, with you. I don’t want anything to change. 

But it made sense to him. You had to leave, put physical distance between yourself and those who’d wounded you continuously throughout the years, so you could rebuild your life, rebuild yourself. And you needed to be on your own to do this the right way. Once more, he reveled in your courage. He admired your strength. 

He hadn’t measured the extent of his hatred for this man until you pronounced his name. Adrian. Your fiancé. This shit stain. Ever since you broke free, he’s had violent dreams about him. A faceless, lanky silhouette, he beats him to a pulp until his knuckles burst over the man’s skull. He wakes up feeling blood spilling warm and gooey between his fingers.

The local newspapers continue to allude to your departure from your father’s company. Short, carefully redacted articles downplaying the event with meticulously curated talking points. Typical PR damage control bullshit. 

He looks them up, and never mentions them, of course, but every so often, when he arrives from work, he finds you hunched over your laptop, brow furrowed, bloodshot eyes. Quickly shutting the computer close as soon as he approaches. You’re preparing the after, you say. Scouting for jobs, apartments, and once more, he chooses to believe you. 

But then, you cry at night. Silently heaving next to him, your face buried into the pillow to muffle the sound of your heavy sobbing. He pulls you into him, into his chest, wrapping his body around your shaking frame. Chin tucked over the crown of your head. Humming into your hair. You seem so frail, so vulnerable in his hold, and he wishes to absorb your loss, annihilate the pain, rip it from you and make it disappear. 

I got you, Lee. Don’t be afraid, you’ll get through this. 

Can you hear him, then? Do you believe his words of reassurance? You fall asleep with your hands clutching his shoulders, exhausted, the wrong kind of spent. 

You need to go. And he’ll let you leave. Your needs are his needs. They dictate his life. He’ll be right here, waiting for you on the other side.

He said, This never ends, and he meant every word.

But the fucking pain. 

Constantly ripping through his chest, it’s in everything he does, tainting your last days together. In every look at your gorgeous face, in every kiss, every stroke, every embrace. It’s there when he marvels at the graceful ways in which you move, at your recovering appetite, at your patience with him when you let him dress your wound that’s long healed. 

It’s in the blissful domestic routine you two have so naturally fallen into. It’s in his every thought, at work, with his kid, with you. When he comes to you at night, in this shithole that feels more like home than his new house does.  

And whenever he opens his mouth, he fears he’ll betray himself. The words are always there, in the back of his throat, ready to pour out of him. I want you to meet my daughter. I want you to move in with me. I’ll provide for you. You can be whoever you want. Stay. Stay with me. 

You’re mine, Lee.  

Two weeks isn’t enough. Two lifetimes wouldn’t be. 

—

The small cantina is crammed, swarming with boisterous kids and their harassed parents. A continuous clamor hangs over you like a lead lid, you don’t think you’d be able to hear your own voice if you were able to speak. 

Frankie’s head is dipped, his face half concealed behind the brim of his trucker hat, his broad frame hunched over his tray. He hasn’t touched much of his food, and you have yet to start on yours. When you left the motel, a quick lunch had sounded like a good idea. A welcome distraction from the impending separation. 

Now, it feels like moving through a bad dream, like running away in slow motion from an ineluctable disaster.

Inside your palm lingers the ghost sensation of the room’s keychain. You balled your fist around it before checking out at the reception. You raked your brain for an excuse to keep it, and found none. 

Two weeks ago, you’d thought leaving was the right thing to do. He said he understood your decision. He said, I’ll wait for you. 

And when you booked the flight, the date, however close, seemed surreal. Somewhere in the distant future, intangible. As the day drew near, you did what you do best. You refused to acknowledge the reality of it, eluding the prospect, reasoning with yourself that you were merely preserving your last moments with Frankie. 

Now, the take-off only a couple of hours away, your luggage stored in the truck’s tailgate, you can’t shake the feeling that this is a terrible mistake. You don’t care about rebuilding your life. You don’t give a damn about having a job, about emancipating, about being an independent woman. You want to build a home with him. You want to become his wife, to raise his daughter. You want to be his forever. 

You’re going to be sick, is what’s going to happen. 

“Should we go?”

You meet his shadowed eyes, fighting the tears that fill up yours, and nod in agreement. 

Outside the cantina, the heat hits you like a brick wall. Thoughts rush to your head, about the New York winters, the harsh, icy winds, the snow. The clothes you’ll have to buy. Wool sweaters, boots, a coat. Familiarize yourself with the subway. Those dark, underground tunnels. The ramifications of what this new life entails are overwhelming. 

You look up at Frankie and there is no cold hard stare. Only his soft sad eyes, and the gentle caress of their mahogany light, and the pleading arch of his brow. You’re hanging off a cliff, suspended over the abyss, grasping at the dirt, like the wild creature in your rib cage, trying to claw its way out and back to him, where it belongs. Where you belong. 

Nothing makes sense anymore.

“Okay, I’ll call a cab,” you say into your bag, looking for your phone, heart thumping in your throat, tears prickling your nose.

Frankie sighs, a constrained, pained rasp of a breath. He props his hands on his hips, cocking his leg to the side, and the heel of his boot scuffs over the asphalt. 

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”

The swelling lump in the back of your throat won’t let you talk, so you shake your head no. 

“I can drive you all the way there, if you want. New York, I mean. We could… we could make a detour. Through the Appalachian. See that ugly painting in the real.”

His attempt at a cocky smile fails to reach his eyes. 

A first tear spills out from the corner of your eyes. A fat, angry droplet that rolls down your cheek to hang on the edge of your jaw. 

“Hey now, don’t cry. C’mere.”  

Your bag falls to the floor when you crash into the solid warmth of his chest. Winding his strong arms around you, he cups the back of your head in a gentle, careful cradle, lifting you up in his hold.

His cap falls to the ground when you thread your fingers through his hair. You burrow into his neck, into him. You want to live inside his body, meld with his bloodstream, wrap around his heart, become his heartbeat. 

He breathes you in, the plush press of his lips a warm caress on your temple, and more tears flow out of you.

“I wish you could come with me.”

“I know, baby. I wish I could come with you.”

“I would—” you start with a sob, “I would love her like a mother. I could. I know I could.”

“I know you would. Of course, you would. Hey, look at me,” he says, putting you down and pulling away just a notch, cupping your wet face with both hands. “This is not over. It can never be over. It’s just the beginning. The beginning of something different.”

Eyes fluttering shut, you tilt your head to the side, his calloused palm grazing your cheek, to place a kiss on the inside of his wrist. Over the small tattoo you never got a chance to ask him about. You inhale him there, musk, leather, safety. You let your head rest between his hands, the same way you placed your life between his lips, many months ago.

“Frankie, I need to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“Why… That very first night, in the bar. Why did you turn around? What made you look at me?”

His face falls. The crease in his brow deepens as he visibly ponders over his answer. The sun backlights his curls with a golden halo. When he speaks, his voice is a low rasp, a round aching husk. 

“I’d been searching for you for a long time.”

He thumbs away a stray tear from the apple of your cheek; he scratches his throat. 

“Call me when you get to the airport, okay? And when you board. And when you land. Okay?”

A wistful smile lifts the corner of your lips. Looking at him through hanging tears, you say, “I just realized we’ve never ever talked on the phone.”

Frankie breathes in deep, his smile mirroring yours. So beautiful, so strong. So soft. Yours.  

“See, baby? We got so many things to look forward to. It’s just the beginning.” 

*****

Thank you so much for reading and for your patience 🧡 I hope you liked it. Remember, there's still an epilogue. It will be shorter, so it shouldn't take me too long to birth it, if my brain cooperates 🤞🏻

[fruitjoos]

emergency contact

day 1 — angstober !

patrick zweig x reader

note — this is based on that one scene from mr. & mrs. smith (the series) because the show is absolutely fucking amazing and i’m obsessed with it. i def recommend everyone watch if you read this and haven’t already.

angstober masterlist

The first time you said "I do," you were standing under a barely decorated arch in a courthouse you barely remember now, wearing a dress you bought on sale. Patrick was late. Of course, he was. But you waited, heart pounding, every second feeling like an hour. You’d already slipped the ring on your finger in the bathroom, just to see how it would feel. You knew he’d come. He always did. He never had much money in his pocket, and time slipped away from him like water through a sieve, but that was okay. You loved him. You loved the way he’d kiss your forehead in the mornings, his crooked grin when he’d finally show up after keeping you waiting, and how he’d hold you tight like he was afraid you might disappear.

Tashi had pulled you aside a few days before the wedding. You remember the way her voice had softened, the edge of concern in her eyes. “Love isn’t enough to marry someone, you know that, right?" she’d said. But you didn’t listen. You couldn’t. Your heart was already tangled up in Patrick, knotted so tight it was impossible to separate where you ended and he began. So, you said “I do,” and it didn’t matter that the judge looked bored or that Patrick had scrambled in at the last second, breathless and apologetic. It didn’t matter that Tashi was right. Love felt like enough.

The break room was bustling with the usual clatter of cups and chatter, the scent of fresh coffee lingering in the air. You were focused on preparing a few snacks for the afternoon meeting, absentmindedly wiping down the counter. In the chaos, you didn’t notice the spilled water pooling on the floor. One moment you were upright, and the next, your feet slipped out from under you. Your head struck the tile with a sickening thud, and everything went hazy. The edges of your vision blurred, the world around you dissolving like a faded memory. Distant voices echoed in your ears, warped and muffled, until a sharp cry of alarm pierced through.

When you woke up, the harsh fluorescent lights of the infirmary stung your eyes. The first thing you saw was Patrick, rushing over to your side, his face scrunched up in worry, like a kid trying to solve a puzzle too big for him.

“Your mom called me,” he said, his voice soft, hands cradling yours as if you might break. He cooed over you, kissed your forehead like always, and you let yourself sink into his touch, groggy and too tired to question anything. The scans came back clean; the impact had just knocked you out for a bit, but you'd be fine.

He drove you home in silence, the kind that wrapped around you like a blanket, comforting and warm. But it was also the kind of silence Patrick hated. You could feel it simmering beneath the surface, waiting to bubble up. His mind always spun too fast when things got quiet, overthinking everything until it unraveled.

The silence lingered, grew heavier, until it pressed down on the both of you. He was gripping the steering wheel a little too tight. It wasn’t until you were slurping up the soup he’d made. Watery, lacking flavor, but still better because he’d made it, that the clock struck nine like an invisible alarm. He couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Did you call and tell your mom you were in the hospital?” he blurted out, the words crashing into the silence like a wave, startling you.

You looked up, spoon halfway to your lips, confused. “No, what do you mean?”

He set his bowl down, leaned forward slightly, and his eyes searched yours like he was looking for something you were hiding from him. “Who’s your emergency contact?”

And there it was.

You could feel where this was heading, a slow, inevitable slide. You licked your lips, buying yourself a second, before carefully placing your spoon down. “My mom,” you said, voice steady, though your stomach twisted.

His eyebrow shot up, and he scoffed, a sharp, bitter sound that filled the room. The hurt on his face was undeniable. It was painted on every line, etched deep in his features. His jaw clenched, and he shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“So… I’m not?” His voice was low, almost daring, like he was trying to hold it together but cracks were already showing.

You exhaled, rubbing your temples, already exhausted. “Patrick, come on—”

“No, don’t ‘come on’ me,” he snapped, pushing his chair back so hard it scraped against the floor. “I’m your husband, right? We said ‘I do,’ we made promises. But I’m not the one you put down if something happens to you? Why? Because I’m not reliable enough? Not good enough?”

“That’s not it,” you said, trying to keep your voice calm, trying to soothe the storm before it got worse. But he wasn’t having it.

“Then what is it?” he shot back, eyes blazing. “What, am I just here for show? I’m the guy who’s late sometimes, who doesn’t always have money, but I’m still here, aren’t I? I show up for you. I’m the one who takes care of you when things go wrong. But your mom gets the call?”

His words struck you with an intensity that left you reeling, each one echoing painfully in your mind. You wanted to fight back, to defend yourself, but guilt had already wrapped its hands around your throat, squeezing tight. He was right, and you both knew it.

“I just—” you began, but he cut you off.

“No, what am I supposed to think, huh? That you don’t trust me? That I’m not enough?”

You looked at him, the frustration and pain in his eyes, and something broke inside you. “Patrick, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t even think about it like that. It’s just... my mom’s always been there. It’s habit. It’s—”

“Habit,” he repeated bitterly, his face contorting. “Great. I’m not even a choice. I’m just not even in the equation.”

“I’m sorry,” you said softly, and for a second, he seemed to deflate, the fight going out of him.

He ran a hand over his face, letting out a long breath, the room falling into a tense quiet.

“It’s just…” His voice cracked a little. His eyes locked onto yours. “I’m hurt because you’re my emergency contact. I didn’t even think twice about it. I just assumed you’d do the same for me.”

His words lingered in the silence, filled with a sadness that created a distance between you neither of you could bridge. The quiet was stiff and uncomfortable, as if a single wrong word could tear everything apart. You tried to swallow the lump in your throat, but it stayed lodged there, trapping any apology you might have offered. His face, lined with quiet devastation, was harder to look at than any anger he could have shown.

You loved him, always had. But in that moment, staring at the hurt written so clearly on his face, it hit you—love wasn’t enough. You’d clung to the idea that it could carry you both, but now you knew it never would.

“I love you,” you said, hoping to break through the tension.

“It doesn’t feel like it right now,” he responded, his voice laced with sorrow.

[avvail]

supervillain x their super oblivious civilian lover

original ask submitted by @save-the-villainous-cat for the ask game!

“Morning, baby,” the civilian yawns wearily as they plod into the kitchen, rubbing their eyes softly. The supervillain turns in a beat, smiles, and then focuses their attention back onto the pans over the stove.

“Good morning, my love,” they answer smoothly, not stopping from flipping over a pancake when they feel arms wrap around their waist and a forehead nuzzle into their back. “Have a good sleep?”

The civilian nods, sighing. “Yeah. I didn’t even feel you come back last night.”

That’s because the supervillain didn’t, but they wouldn’t tell them that, of course. Once the pancake is flipped, they turn and cup their cheeks, kissing their lips softly.

The civilian looks at them and smiles happily, and the supervillain almost wants to drop the breakfast and whisk them right back to bed.

“Another late night at the office?”

The supervillain chuckles, like that’s funny. It is, a little bit. Their lover was too naive for their own good, and the idea that they would be content with an office job was quite amusing.

“Unfortuantly,” they simply respond, and the civilian huffs, like they’re offended themselves.

“They can’t keep doing that, you know,” they pout, eyes fluttering slightly when the supervillain brushes some hair from their face. “Can’t you complain so I get to spend more time with you? You’re always so busy.”

They peel away, reluctantly, and the supervillain sees the playful pout on their lips, smiling to themselves.

“The overtime is criminal,” the supervillain smirks, and the civilian laughs, shuffling away.

“You’re funny.”

The supervillain turns back to the stove, checking on the pancakes. They have some bacon and egg on the go, simply because they feel the need to spoil their lover like there was no tomorrow. They were theirs, after all, all their obliviousness aside. They just didn’t know it.

The civilian hums softly to themselves as they set the table and pour some drinks, and the supervillain relaxes into the tune. It makes them work more efficiently, until they’re dishing up, and letting their eyes linger on their pretty lover easily.

“Wanna eat and watch TV?” The civilian asks, an eager glimmer in their eye. “Unless you have to rush...”

The supervillain was their own boss – it didn’t really matter to them, not when the civilian didn’t even notice their lackluster “office hours”. They kiss their head, herding them into the lounge.

“Go on, then,” they smile, handing them their plate and watching them get comfortable on the couch with a little smile. The supervillain joins them, and they attatch themselves to their side like glue, but the supervillain doesn’t mind. They eat their fill of bacon and an omelette, while their civilian shovels added pancakes into their mouth as well.

Sometime during a programme, the supervillain’s phone rings. The civilian’s head lifts in curiosity, and they answer it. It’s work related, but they don’t leave the room, letting their hand gently card through their lovers hair as a distraction. Not that they needed it.

“Uh huh, and that’ll be ready to use by tomorrow, will it?” They absentmindedly question, their annoyance piqued by the delay of their supplies. “Just don’t fuck up the encryption. It’s sensitive, one wrong move and it’ll be your head, do you understand?”

They end the call, and the civilian shifts, glancing at them with an amused smirk. “Encryptions? Sounds fancy.”

The supervillain laughs. Not because it was funny, but just because the civilian was absolutely clueless. They lean forward, kissing their head, a roaming hand landing on their thigh.

“You know what?” The supervillain drawls. “I think I’ll have today off.”

The civilian frowns softly. “That’s the fifth time in the past two weeks. This is why they’re keeping you late, you know.”

They shut them up with a kiss, and the civilian doesn’t complain. They never do – the supervillain could destroy the city, and their clueless little lover would be by their side every step of the way.

[cowboywritersworld]

May I request a Will Ospreay x Reader, where Reader fem!/Will wife is angry at Don Callis, after she finds out that Callis eventually acknowledged that he sent Takeshita to attack Will and Ricochet last week and then all of a sudden Don callis goes after Will wife reader about how it’s her fault for getting involved in Will business and even says how their kids could possibly not be will? Fluff please

This is too much

General Masterlist | AEW Masterlist | Will Ospreay Masterlist

Characters: Will Ospreay, Reader, Don Callis

Prompt: May I request a Will Ospreay x Reader, where Reader fem!/Will wife is angry at Don Callis, after she finds out that Callis eventually acknowledged that he sent Takeshita to attack Will and Ricochet last week and then all of a sudden Don callis goes after Will wife reader about how it’s her fault for getting involved in Will business and even says how their kids could possibly not be will? Fluff please

You have just finished breastfeeding your little girl, setting her to burp, when you finally hear Don Callis acknowledge that he had sent Takeshita to attack your husband and Ricochet, the week before. You are relieved when Annie finally burps, setting her down in her bassinet, looking over at your four years old boy.

"Andrew, can you please take care of Annie for a bit? She is sleeping now and I'll send someone to take care of both of you, okay? Mommy and Daddy will be back soon though." You kiss him on the forehead, smiling when he nods eagerly.

"Of course, Mommy!" He kisses you on the cheek.

"Thank you."

You are not back on the roster, with Annie being born just a bit over three months ago, but you still follow Will around as much as you can. The little girl isn't accustomed to flying, you are introducing it slowly, when the places you need to be don't take too much hours by plane.

Now sure that both kids will be good, you leave the room, asking one coworker to please take care of them in the meantime. They are both very loved, so it is easy to find someone who will watch them.

As you reach Gorilla, you notice Don Callis getting back and shove him in the chest, really angry and pissed off at him. It seems to take him by surprise, the cameras are already rolling, but he smirks. You hate that smirk and if you could, you would slap it out of his face.

"So you were the one behind that all? You are an idiot! Do not ever touch him again!" You are fuming and Don just laughs at you.

"Why are you even blaming me, Y/N? After all, all this happened because of you. Ever since Will Ospreay met you, he changed, even more now that you gave him two kids." He smirks even more, knowing fully well how much you don't want him to mention them.

"Take our kids off your bloody mouth." You growl, trying to hold yourself back. "This has nothing to do with them!" You scream, shoving him once again.

"Getting involved in Will's business was the wrong move from you, Y/N. Getting involved in the Family's business was wrong too." He takes some steps towards you and you take two or three back. "Those kids sure are cute, but are we even sure they are Will's? He is always so focused on wrestling, when does he ever have time to make love to you?" His tone is so irritating...

You bite your lower lip, closing a hand to a fist and it takes all your willpower to not punch him in the face. "Annie and Andrew are his kids and you have no right to question such an important thing!" You are about to swing on him, but a hand poses on your shoulder and you smile, when you notice Will.

"Go back to our kids, I'll be there very soon, sweetie."

He whispers in your ear, giving you goosebumps, which thankfully are covered by the sweater you are wearing. You slowly calm down while you walk back to his locker room, taking a deep breath once you are in front of the door. You and Will both know that the kids are not someone else's, you have always loved him and never had sex with someone else, but it is difficult to stay calm. You purr when you feel Will's arms around your waist, sighing as you melt under his kisses on your neck.

"I talked to him, he'll never bring Annie and Andrew in this feud or any other, up ever again." Will whispers as he still kisses you, nuzzling into your neck.

"It was okay until he mentioned them. I don't care what he says about me, but there boundaries he shouldn't overstep." You say, turning in his hug, kissing him sweetly on the lips.

"It was hot seeing you step up to him, though." He chuckles, nodding serious then. "That's what I told him after the cameras went off. He apologizes for that." He smooches you on the nose. "Are you feeling better? I know it was hard for you to not punch him." He rubs his hands on your back, in a soothing way.

"I am feeling better. We should go now, I put Annie to sleep after feeding her and Andrew is surely tired." He would love to get intimate with him, but she is tired too. "Maybe we can order take-out and when we are at the hotel put Andrew to sleep. We can then have time for ourselves."

"That's a good plan. Let me order and then I can take Annie and drive us to the hotel. Love you, sweetie. You are a very special Mama and I am so glad you are our kid's mama. Thank you for choosing me to be at your side." He kisses you longer, both of you are panting when you finally part ways.

"Thank you too, Will. For being at my side, for our two beautiful children."

[onlyhaos]

I need the longer version of it please I think you know what I'm talking about I'm begging you 🙏🏻😭

this is pt. 2 from this fic!!

pairing: seungcheol x afab!reader

genre: angst, fluff

warnings: small mention about alcohol, the day after the fight

[a/n] It’s crappy and def not proofread (😭😭) I’m so sorry, but here you go!! (And thank you, you’re my first ask🥹🥹💞)

You wake up, not feeling relaxed at all.

Your head was still buzzing, just worse than last night. You let your head fall down again, but your head fell into a.. pillow?

Looking around the room, you noticed that you weren’t on the couch or in the living room anymore. You were in your bedroom, under your familiar sheets.

With a swift movement of your head, you immediately looked to your left, in hope for Seungcheol to be in bed.

But he wasn’t.

Memories of yesterday evening and night crossed your mind again.

Closing your eyes and turning your face into a soft frown, you began to bury your head into your hands.

Confusion about how you got into your bed quickly disappeared, because you were telling yourself that you probably went to bed, and you’re just not able to recall it.

Wanting to pick up your phone, you realized that it wasn’t on the nightstand.

So you got out of bed, putting on your slippers and going to the living room to get it. Until there laid a well-known someone.

“Cheol..?”

No response. Was he still sleeping? You tip toed closer to the couch, seeing your boyfriend’s eyes closed. His beautiful lips slightly parted as his breathing was a steady rhythm.

Quickly grabbing your phone, you went back to your shared bedroom. Leaving Seungcheol, still sleeping, on the couch.

You cuddled back into the sheets, fishing for the charger, that was always under your pillow whenever you didn’t load it. And when you began loading your phone, your lock screen lit up.

There was the message that you didn’t get, anymore, after you fell asleep.

Cheollie 🎀🍒

[…]

I love you, Y/n.

That last sentence was all you focused on, and also the sentence that quickly brought tears to your eyes again.

Opening your message app, you read the rest.

Cheollie 🎀🍒

I'll be back tomorrow, when we're both a bit more composed. We'll talk about every single thing, that made us come to thinking that breaking up would be a good idea.

Because I won't and I don't want to let you go that easily.

Tomorrow we'll decide how things will be in the future. If we'll still have one.

I love you, Y/n.

More tears stumbled out of your eyes. And before you could even notice, you began to sob.

Which, eventually, woke up Seungcheol. You didn’t know he woke up, though.

But when you heard the bedroom door opening you found out.

“Cheol.” You sobbed out, not able to keep it in anymore.

And your boyfriend couldn’t see that sad face of yours, so he went over to the bed and pulled you into a much needed hug.

Not able to stop the crying, you buried your face into his chest.

“I missed you — I shouldn’t have said that. I just felt so lost at that moment and didn’t think properly.”

That’s what you originally said, but it only came out in slurs and gasps for air, from crying that much.

Seungcheol quickly shushed you.

“Be quiet, baby, just cry it all out. We’ll properly talk after that.” He comforted, kissing your forehead.

Soft strokes through your hair, and on your cheek, calmed you down. Only the smallest tears escaping you, as your eyes met his.

“Y/n, love, I never want to see you like this. Especially not when I see that our fights end with you blacked out on the couch from my whiskey.”

He spoke, the smallest smile on his lips, as he wiped away any remaining tears.

With a small sniffle, you smiled, too.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Seungcheol asked you.

Looking into his eyes, you mumbled, “My head’s buzzing. I think I’ve got a hangover.”

Seungcheol recommended making you a soup, to feel better and more comfortable. To which you agreed, almost immediately.

So when your boyfriend made you sit on one of the stools in your kitchen, he prepared your favorite soup as hangover soup.

Talking about all the things from yesterday and clearing any misunderstandings, finding solutions for possible next times, both of you still shed a tear.

But that was nothing that a hug couldn’t fix now.

With a full stomach from eating your favorite soup, Seungcheol and you now had the time to comfortably cuddle on the couch.

With a random movie playing in the background. (Which obviously was ignored) You both made up for the time, that was not able to be shared yesterday.

“I love you, Cheol.”

“I love you, too, baby.” Was his response, smothering you with loving kisses.

[jd-loves-fiction]

𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐓𝐢𝐞

Person B has to get dressed up for a nice event. B is struggling with their tie/dress/suit and can’t get it right. Person A is surprisingly good at fixing it and Person B asks them how they did it.

✦ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Joshua Madika x GN!Reader

✦ 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: fluff + suggestive

✦ 𝐰𝐜: 819

✦ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: none

✦ 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: Just a short something cuz he just looks too good :)

“God! Come on…” Joshua mutters to himself, fiddling with his troublesome tie as you walk in to put away some laundry. You set it aside and lean against the doorway for a moment, just to watch his handsome face scrunch up in mild frustration as the silky fabric slips from his grasp once more, “Are you going to help me? Or is this sight too amusing?”

“Hmm… nearly.” You tease, approaching him slowly to stand between him and the mirror and taking the tie from his slippery hands. Your own hands work quickly, almost automatically – all while Joshua ogles your ass in the mirror.

Lost in the wonderful sight, he’s caught off guard by you stepping back, “You’re done?” you nod, fiddling with his lapel and shirt collar. God, he looks damn good.

“How– That was so fast.” His long lashes blink in shock, he should’ve asked you to help him before now. “When did you learn to do it so fast? You don't even wear ties?”

“Oh, well…” You trail off, suddenly put on the spot and going back to fix minute details in his appearance to distract yourself – the curl fallen to his forehead, a speck of dust on his jacket, a small wrinkle on his shirt.

“This story’s a bit… unusual, so bear with me.” Josh nods in understanding, now entirely focused on watching your features that begin feeling warmer at the attention.

“So, remember I said I took psychology in high school?” A nod, “On one, seemingly random, class the teacher told us – without context – to learn how to tie a tie. And that he’d be grading us based on how well we did in the next class. Me, boasting the absolutely stellar combo of ‘perfectionist’ and ‘people pleaser', went to ask my father to teach me. Turns out, he's never worn a tie in his life and my mother was even less helpful.”

Skepticism would be a gentle way of describing the expression on your boyfriend’s face, so you raise your hand as if to wordlessly tell him to wait until you’re done before judging, “Why… would he ask you to do that?”

“I haven't the faintest, Josh. It was the guy’s last year as a teacher – I feel like he didn't care about making sense anymore. Anyway–” He pulls you with him while sitting down on the edge of the bed, giving your tired neck a rest from having to look up at him as you speak.

“Long story short, Youtube tutorials were surprisingly effective – I got full marks on the next class, even though I feel like that didn't end up mattering at all. I guess the knowledge just stuck from then.” You add sheepishly, adjusting (playing with) Joshua’s gorgeous curls as he takes you in silently. So focused on getting the details right, you barely noticed the unwavering attention he leveled you with during your little speech, cowering now that you do, “What’s that look for?”

His hand reaches for your cheek, brushing it with a tenderness that warms the skin beneath, “You’re just… everything.”

“Are you just saying that because you don't know what to say to that story or what?” You giggle, playfully gripping a handful of curls to direct his gorgeous nose to brush yours, both going cross eyed in the process.

“No, I mean it.” He whispers softly, long lashes fluttering against his cheeks as his lips graze yours, “You’re everything…” to me, he wants to say but the urge to lay his lips against yours is far too strong. The kiss is slow and sensual, almost enough to distract you from the fact that his hands begin wandering down your body, “Don't you have somewhere to be?”

“It can wait.”

“Hmm, not what you said this morning…” You whisper, matching his suggestive tone and doing nothing to discourage his actions – you don't want him to go, of course you don't, but you clearly recall him stressing over how important this dinner is just a few hours prior.

“Well, that was this morning. Before I discovered there were productive things for me to be doing.” His lips descend on your neck, sucking on it gently as your breaths hasten together.

“Me, you mean?” You tease and he hums approvingly, nimble fingers pulling back the band of your leggings to let it slap against your skin. Focusing becomes harder every second he keeps touching you, but a glimpse at the clock on the wall tells you it’s time to end the fun.

“I think I can wait… The dinner, however, can't.” With great effort, you tear yourself from his warm embrace, delighting in his childish whine while stepping back out of the reach of his long limbs. “Get to it.”

He groans deeply as you step out to give him space to prepare, secretly hoping he doesn't come back too tired to pick up where you left off…

[ladylilith]

(Play the song when the orange letter appears or just have it in the loop while you read)

Paper Moon

9:07 p.m.

Fifth day without hearing from him.

Since your last argument, silence had settled between you two, impenetrable. Neither of you dared to break it.

You couldn’t even remember how you got to that point. You never argued... at least, not until now.

It all started when you went to his room, needing to rid yourself of the lump in your throat. Another disappointment in love. Another failed attempt at connecting with someone.

You were exhausted from stumbling around, searching for someone who made you feel understood and loved. Was it really that complicated? Everyone else seemed to have found it, except you.

Although, deep down, you knew that wasn’t true. You had found it... it just wasn’t mutual.

“Don’t you think you should take a break? Stop meeting new people?” he said as he hugged you.

But this time, he seemed tired of the cycle you were trapped in.

“If I stop, I’ll never move forward,” you replied, feeling yourself spiral deeper into negativity.

You had never told Chan how you felt about him. Your friendship meant too much to risk it over feelings you knew weren’t mutual.

“Move forward from what? What’s holding you back?” he asked, his tone harder than usual.

“You wouldn’t understand,” you answered, tired of feeling this way.

Chan must have taken that last comment badly. After that, he dropped you off at home, and you hadn’t heard from him since that day.

Until now.

You entered the JYP building with a bag of food and drinks, showed your ID, and headed up in the elevator. Your hands trembled with uncertainty as you pressed the button for the studio, hoping, as always, that you’d find him there.

Stepping out of the elevator, you saw a sliver of light escaping from under the door. You took a deep breath, relieved that you hadn’t been mistaken.

Carefully, you opened the door without making a sound, hearing the melody of a guitar you didn’t recognize, accompanied by Chan’s voice.

We were talking in the dark skies

About how people change

You told me that you’ve never found a love

That stayed the same

Quietly, you placed the bag of food on the table next to the sofa and turned your attention to the figure inside the booth, focusing on the lyrics of the song.

You asked me what I was thinking

What I was holding in

I told you that I never wanted to end up like they did

A shiver ran down your spine, and you realized just how much you had missed his voice.

They say looking in the stars when they last saw the moon

Well that’s just a little too far or a little untrue

I hope it’s enough, it’s the best I can do

I can’t reach the real one so I’ll make you

A paper moon

A paper moon? Was he singing about your last conversation?

“Am I asking for too much? I don’t need someone to give me the moon, just someone I can trust,” you had said through tears.

"You deserve the whole universe,” Chan replied, kissing your forehead.

Tears welled up in your eyes as you approached the door to the booth, feeling your heart race with every step.

Chan noticed your presence and looked in your direction, surprised, as he took off his headphones, the melody still playing in the background.

“Uh-hey, what are you doing here? Did something happen?” he asked, concern lacing his voice.

“I came because we haven’t talked in days,” you replied, your hands tingling with the urge to reach out to him.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve been a bit busy lately,” he said, glancing at the sheet full of scribbles in front of him.

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” you asked, taking a step closer.

Chan gripped the stand beside him, and you noticed how his hands trembled slightly.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked, avoiding your gaze.

“I miss you, Chan,” you said, taking another step forward.

“I’m right here,” he replied, this time meeting your eyes.

“I know, you always are, always,” you said, looking down and smiling. “Is the song new?” you asked, trying to read the scribbles on the paper.

Chan looked at the sheet in front of him, and you noticed doubt flicker in his eyes.

“Yes… well, it’s something I’m working on.”

“Can I listen to it?” you asked nervously, afraid he might say no.

“Sure, go outside and play the track again.”

You walked out to the room with his computer, sat down in front of it, and pressed the button to play the track again.

You listened intently to the part of the song he was singing when you arrived, absorbing every detail of the lyrics.

You can hang it on your ceiling

Or keep it by the door

I know it doesn’t shine as bright at night

But it’s all yours

Your heart ached as you thought about how the lyrics mirrored your feelings for him, how he had always had your heart, to do with it as he pleased.

I promise that I’ll love you

And it’s a promise I can keep

I hope you always feel the most at home

When you’re with me

Tears streamed down your cheeks as you thought about how he had always been your refuge, the place you went to when the world felt like too much.

The song continued until the last notes played out.

Chan left the recording booth and approached your table. You watched him as he slowly walked toward you, trying to wipe away the tears that wouldn’t stop falling.

"Are you okay?” he asked, crouching down to be at your level. “I guess you liked it,” he added, trying to dry your cheeks with his hands.

“What were you thinking about when you wrote it?”you whispered, your voice breaking.

“Our last conversation,” he said, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. “It kills me to think you feel like you don’t deserve someone to give you the moon just because you ask for it,” he sighed. “You deserve that and so much more.”

You looked into Chan’s eyes, finding a gaze filled with everything you had been feeling for years.

Without fear of what might happen after saying the words, you decided to be honest, ready to risk everything.

“I think I already have someone who would do that for me,” you said, looking directly into his eyes. “And for whom I’d do the same.”

Chan stared at you, absorbing the weight of your words.

You felt his hand gently caress your cheek, slowly tracing the line of your jaw.

You leaned closer to him, feeling his breath against yours.

“Chan…” you whispered, resting your forehead against his. “It’s always been you,” you said, raising your trembling hand to his neck, feeling his pulse quicken with every touch.

“I thought you didn’t feel the same, that I could never have you, and that I’d have to settle for watching you from afar,” he said, his voice filled with sadness. “Our last conversation made me decide to distance myself, afraid I couldn’t hold it back any longer.”

You placed your hand on his cheek, feeling the dampness left by his tears.

“I was just trying to find someone to help me get over the fact that you would never feel the same,” you said, sighing. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Chan…”

“Don’t be,” he said, and you watched a smile form on his face. “I’m just glad you didn’t find them.”

“I did, you were always by my side.”

[stressymessywriting]

a taste of what's to come

A dark sky above covered in clouds made for a boring walk home, but Shoko walked on with a weary smile on her face. Streetlights dimly lit the sidewalk enough for her to make out street names and the like, not that she needed any help finding her way to her destination. Going back to her own apartment was out of the question in the last few months, the place growing dusty from lack of use, not that she ever had many opportunities to go back to it in the first place. The time she spent away from her apartment now was not due to being stuck in her hospital-like space at the school, instead it was spent in the arms and in the bed of her beautiful partner. 

Shoko was usually to be found either focusing on a nearly dead patient or sleeping in her office. Nowadays her office was cleared of the usual clutter and her presence, office hours strictly adhered to now that she had someone waiting for her. Although she was tired from her day's work she always looked forward to her journey home. When it became her home she didn't know but she enjoyed it regardless. 

Approaching the solid black door that stood as her only barrier between her and the sweet smell of vanilla that made itself a home in her heart; she took her keys out of her pocket and inserted it in the lock. The door opened with a creak and she let the scent fill her lungs. Better stress relief than any cigarette she’d ever had, Shoko breathed a sigh of relief as she walked in, locking the door behind her. 

“Y/n! I’m home!” she called out, setting her bag on the bookcase and hanging her coat on the rack. 

She peeked her head around the corner into the living room and found no one there.  Strange. She made her way to the kitchen to pour two glasses of wine before heading to their shared bedroom. It almost made her giddy. The feeling of domesticity was something she never had envisioned for herself initially but reveled in all the same. As she made her way down the hall she held the two wine glasses in one hand and took off her cream heels with the other. 

“Babe?” she called out, softer this time hearing the music that had been playing a bit better now. 

She stepped into the shared bedroom and dropped her heels by the door before kicking it closed with a small thud. She turned and when her eyes landed on y/n the tension in her shoulders left. Standing in front of a floor length mirror, y/n observed themselves with an obvious gloominess. Hands running up and down their abdomen and checking every angle they could. So caught up in their staring they didn’t notice Shoko come up behind them. 

“Wine, my love?” she whispered in their ear, mouth ghosting down their neck to plant a kiss on their shoulder, offering the glass in her hand. 

A quiet nod and small smile was all she received before y/n turned to the mirror again and frowned, taking a sip of the wine to calm the building nerves. Dissatisfied with the lack of response, Shoko wrapped her free arm around the waist of her lover and laid her forehead between their shoulder blades. 

“Whatever you think is wrong, isnt,” she said, her thumb making small circles on the skin her hand rested on.

“You’re extremely biased.” Y/n said in an exasperated tone, bringing the wine to their lips to take another drink. 

Lifting her head from its resting spot and without moving her hand from its place Shoko set her glass aside on the table beside the mirror and turned her partner’s face to meet hers in a soft kiss. She easily moved to have both of her hands on their waist, pulling them closer. 

“I’ve missed you all day.” Shoko said when the kiss finally broke. 

“I’ve missed you too,” the soft words sounded almost sad, “You’re too good to me, Sho.”

A smile and a nod from the overworked doctor, she loved the nickname coming from their lips, “Only because you’re so good to me, birdie.”

“No, I really don't deserve you.” Y/n said as they pulled away from the embrace, wrapping their arms around themselves. 

Shoko watched in disbelief as Y/n sat at the edge of the bed. Grabbing her wine and finishing it in one swig she left the empty glass on the table before walking over and standing between her partners legs. A place she took great comfort and joy in most nights. 

“Did something happen?” 

No response. 

“Did I do something?” Shoko asked, concern leaking through into her voice. 

“No! I just…” a pause and a shuddered breath was all that came out. 

Shoko took her lover's face in her hands and turned it up to look at hers. She inspected it carefully. Looking for any signs of untruthfulness. If she had done nothing wrong, and her love could do no wrong…then she was truly at a loss for what could have upset them so much. 

“You know you are perfect to me, yes?” Shoko asked, her voice clear. 

“I know, but-”

“You do everything you can for me.” Shoko continued, “You helped me quit my habits and became the only thing I ever want to be addicted to.”

Running one hand through their hair and holding their face still with the other when Y/n tried to turn away, Shoko kept her eyes locked on theirs. 

“You can’t leave me. I won't let you. No matter what you think of yourself.” 

She pressed a kiss to their forehead, on each of their cheeks, finally resting on their lips in a kiss that Shoko tried to pour every bit of the love she had for y/n into. In return, hands pulled her face closer as y/n deepened the kiss. Shoko gently pushed her love down to the soft blanket underneath, continuing to crawl over them and cover their body with her own. She felt the need to make sure they knew how much she loved them. Love didn't even come close to what she felt. She wanted to drown in them, to make every bit of them hers forever. She wanted to blur the line between what defines them. So, she proceeded to kiss down their chin, their jaw, ghosting her lips over their neck, memorizing every inch of her favorite spots. 

“You need comfort?” her voice comes out in breaths, “I’ll ease any worry in that pretty head of yours.”

She continues to kiss along y/n’s collarbone, enjoying the shiver in her partner's body as their hands caress her sides, then travel up to rest on her shoulders. Nipping and biting hard enough to leave little marks wherever she last was, Shoko made sure to pay special attention to spots she knew were the most sensitive. Something or someone had gotten into her beautiful partner's head, and it was her job to make sure all they could think about was how devoted she was to them and their happiness. She was determined to make her devotion known. Her hands planted themselves on her lover's hips. Making escape from her barrage of kisses and bites more difficult. Not that escape was on either of their minds now. 

The music in the background, the wine in their bodies, and the intimacy of the moment made a calming effect that pulled the tension from Y/n’s body. It was as if each kiss sealed a break they didn’t know was there. Shoko was healing their insecurities with each touch of her lips. Enough that they were able to enjoy the love they were receiving with less reservations than before. Every kiss healed and every bite sealed the feeling of being so thoroughly possessed by the woman on top of them. 

Pulling away from the kiss and caressing Shoko’s face with one hand, they smiled up at her, “You really are too good-”

A manicured finger quieted whatever stream of nonsense was about to spill from their lips, “All I want to hear from you is how much you love me.”

Shoko kissed her way down further, over their chest that rose and fell with bated breaths, and over their abdomen until she laid her head down right above their pelvis, “That, and whatever beautiful sounds you make as I worship you tonight.”

~~~~

Thank you for reading! Lots more to come *wink, wink*

[jedipoodoo]

she's not afraid (of falling in love) (Sergeant Hunter x OC Saachi Gunder)

Saachi’s independence conflicts with Hunter's protectiveness. Will they be able to catch their bounty and make it out in one piece?

For @clonexocweek 2025!

Yes this piece is based solely off of That Outfit

Notes: Hunter is hot. That's it. That's the fic.

Warnings: Alcohol consumption, gambling, allusion to sex and attempted sexual abuse.

"Stay close, Saachi," Hunter muttered through gritted teeth, "I don't like the look of these skugs."

"I thought the point was to split up?" Saachi hissed, tugging at the leather skirt that resembled more of a belt.

"I know, but-"

"Hunter," Saachi placed a finger against his lips, "I'm not going to run off with some gambler just because you take your eyes off me for two seconds."

"I'm not worried about you," Hunter took her wrist, gently removing her hand from his mouth. He ran his fingers back and forth over his bandana, tied around her wrist like a bracelet. Hunter had all but begged Saachi to wear it, as some token reminder, like she was going off to war instead of to the club.

"I do trust you. It's everyone else in that mud hole I don't trust."

"Well, that's why I've got you watching my back, right?" Saachi took a step closer, balancing on her tiptoes inside the thigh-high boots that made up half of her disguise for the night.

Hunter's hand landed on her bare hip, and Saachi couldn't suppress a shudder. A crop top and miniskirt wasn't her usual outfit, but the indebted gambler with a 40,000 credit bounty on his head was notorious womanizer, so it couldn't hurt to tempt him.

"Easy, mesh’la," Hunter growled in her ear.

"Good thing Tech and the others aren't listening in, huh?" Saachi teased.

Hunter chuckled, his breath warm against her neck. His free hand cradled her chin, lifting her head so he could place a kiss on her forehead.

"Forty thousand credits are the only thing standing between you and me right now," Hunter sighed, resting his forehead against hers

Saachi smiled up at him, "The sooner you let go of me, the sooner we're back together again."

Hunter gave her hip one last squeeze before his hands disappeared. Before Saachi turned back to the bar, she noticed the odd way Hunter's scarf was wrapped around his neck. If it jostled too much, it would come untucked. Saachi adjusted the scarf with a few deft tugs, securing it into place. She kissed a stunned Hunter on the cheek and sashayed her way over to the tavern with purpose.

Girls got into The Lucky Rodian for free, lucky her. Hunter would have to pay a fee. Their paycheck would cover that and the fruity cocktail she ordered. If she was going to seduce the sticky fingered gambler, she was going to need a good bit of liquid courage.

It had been her idea, or at least, she'd been the first to voice it. Hunter, Tech, and Echo, all had the same uneasy look in their eyes when she suggested it. It was the most obvious plan to lure in their bounty, but none of them wanted to put her in that position, certainly not Hunter.

Still, credits were credits.

What bothered Saachi the most was the feeling of being alone, even in a crowded tavern. She hadn't gotten much privacy in the last few months. The Marauder was too small to afford much of anything in the way of personal space. There was always someone around-- Echo fixing the ship, or Wrecker working on a project, or Omega and her intense fear of being left alone.

And Hunter. Hunter, who was always nearby, whistling as he whittled something with his knife, squeezing her shoulder as she walked by, his hand cradling hers as she talked about the most recent surgical procedure she'd read about.

He was still there. She knew that wherever he was in the bar, his eyes were on her. She trusted him implicitly, he would never abandon her.

But she couldn't be thinking about Hunter right now. She needed to be focused on their bounty, and the best way to catch him off guard

Stanger Reed was at a table not too far from the bar, cards in hand. He looked a bit too relaxed for a man in debt who had a losing hand. Saachi stood and sashayed her way over as Stanger finally folded and the croupier droid shuffled the cards for a new round.

"Any luck tonight?" She asked him, dragging a hand across his shoulders.

Stanger looked up with a hungry grin, "I think it's just changed for the better, sweetheart."

He took her empty hand to place a kiss on the back, but it quickly locked around her wrist in an iron grip and gave a playful tug that bordered on greedy.

Without an empty chair nearby, Saachi was made to sit in his lap. She took a sip of her drink to hide her grimace, praying that Hunter wouldn't let his jealousy cloud his judgment. She couldn't risk looking around for him at the moment, and forced herself to settle into Stanger's lap as if she were actually comfortable. She draped her arm around his shoulder and started to play with his hair, but it was far too greasy to pretend it was anything but. She opted to massage his shoulder instead. Saachi begged her mind to focus, she needed to keep Stanger distracted from any impending danger until she could get him alone.

That thought almost made her vomit. What was she thinking, volunteering for this job? She was a nerd, she didn't know how to flirt!

She wanted to pretend he was Hunter, but that was almost more sickening than just pretending to flirt, and Saachi wasn't that good an actress.

A flash of bright crimson fabric caught her eye from the shadows on the edge of the room. Hunter stood at a table with a single glass of cheap beer, having scared off any attempts at conversation from the other patrons by looking directly at Stanger as if he were plotting every gory detail of the gambler's excruciatingly painful death.

Saachi glared at Hunter, hoping he remembered that their client specifically wanted Stanger alive. He couldn't pay off his debts buried in the Coruscaunt gutter, but he couldn't touch her anymore either. The longer Stanger's sticky fingerprints groped the strip of bare skin at her waist, the more appealing the visual became.

Then Stanger's touch squeezed a little too hard, and Saachi gasped, looking back at her target. Stanger paid no attention to her, his poker face a perfect mask of stone, but Saachi could see the excellent hand of cards he'd just been dealt.

Good, the more Stanger won, the more pleased their client would be.

Saachi feigned innocence, leaning her head against Stanger's and lowering her hand to massage his muscles. She glanced back to where Hunter had been, purely out of habit, but the table was abandoned except for the remnants of a shattered glass.

Stanger won the first round, leaving a Devaronian male and a Talz female without any credits to continue. A Wookie proudly took the second round in victory, but Saachi knew Stanger was only letting everyone else lower their guard. From what the client had told them, Stanger had a flair for the dramatics. So it wasn't a surprise when he revealed his two sylops at the end of the third round. The others at the table shouted in outrage and cried as Stanger laughed. He planted a sloppy, wet kiss on Saachi's cheek.

"Maybe you are good luck after all, sweetheart!" He said, squeezing her a bit too tight. As he reached for his winnings, he shoved Saachi to the side, splashing the rest of her drink over her arm and getting on the bandana.

"Don't worry honey, the way things are going I'll buy you a dozen more," Stanger laughed. He unwrapped the bandana from her wrist and tossed it into the shadows before Saachi could protest, already shoving his credits into his pockets.

When Stanger was finally satisfied with his collection of winnings, he grabbed Saachi’s hand again and pulled her in close.

"Wanna get out of here?" He asked. His breath was hot, and stank of liquor.

Despite her anger, Saachi schooled her face back into a simpering groupie, “Why? What’s wrong with here?” She asked, a little too high-pitched.

Stanger’s visage of confidence flickered as he looked her up and down, confused, and Saachi realized her mistake. Stanger had won, and now he wanted his prize. If he didn’t get it, things were gonna go wrong.

She cleared her throat, trying to act like Stanger had misheard her, "Lead the way, big guy.”

Stanger’s grin returned, but Saachi could see in the strain of his cheeks that it was forced. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and dragged her behind him.

Saachi took short, shaky breaths as Stanger dragged her towards the stairs to the second floor. She knew what waited upstairs, and the last thing she wanted to do was spend the night with Stanger Reed. She needed backup, but she hadn’t seen Hunter for the last ten minutes. She couldn’t say anything without alerting Stanger, but she reached for her comm and opened a channel. Whatever he heard, Hunter would know to come. She knew he would. Saachi just had to tease Stanger long enough for him to catch up.

Stanger took the steps two at a time, and Saachi tried her best to keep up without tripping over the uneven wood planks. At the top was a hall, with four doors on either side. Stanger used a keycard on the first door to the right and practically kicked the door in before tossing Saachi on the bed.

He locked the door behind them and then he was on top of Saachi, a hand around her throat and a blaster in the other.

"Alright, sweetheart," He growled, "Who sent you?"

Saachi grit her teeth and latched onto his hands, trying to pry his fingers away from her skin. Well, she’d never been especially proud of her flirting skills to begin with.

“Who sent me? What am I, a good morning text?”

"Don't play games with me!" Stanger's grip tightened, and Saachi gasped for air.

"Was it Xizor? That rat bastard cheated at that game and he knows it! He won't get a credit out of me!"

"I don't know what you're talking about! Let go of me!" Saachi spat.

Her mind raced as bruises bloomed on her throat. Hunter was coming, she knew he was. He would always come for her, blasting through the door like some classic hero in a holonovela. She had to get away from Stanger, get some space between the two of them so that he couldn't use her as some kind of leverage. Was it going to be any use pretending that she didn't know what Stanger was talking about?

Stanger leaned in closer, and Saachi turned away so that his lips almost brushed against her cheek

"I may like the girls, sweetheart, but I'm no idiot," He grabbed her hands, forcing them up above her head. Saachi took a deep breath, coughing and heaving on the fresh air, but Stanger barely gave her room to breathe, taking her wrists in one hand and her face in the other.

“Still, seems a shame to waste such a pretty face…”

As Stanger leaned in closer, Saachi seized the moment and drew her leg back, launching the heel of her boot right into Stanger's crotch. Stanger groaned, curling around his man-parts as if that would protect him, and Saachi kicked him again, each kick pushing him farther and farther away as she desperately tried to defend herself.

There was a blaster shot just out in the hall, and the door flew open in a shower of sparks. There stood Hunter, his blaster and knife posed for a fight. Unfortunately, Stanger was already curled up in a ball on the floor, whimpering pathetically.

Hunter cuffed Stanger’s hands behind his back, making sure that he was no longer a threat, and then he sat on the bed next to Saachi.

“You alright?” He asked.

Saachi nodded, still trying to catch her breath. Her wrists were sore, but not bruised, unlike her neck. Her hair had come loose, and she tried to use it to hide her neck, but Hunter picked it up too quickly.

”Osik,” He growled, and looked back at the man on the floor. Before Saachi could stop him, Hunter was on his feet again. He brought the heel of his combat boot down on Stanger’s fingers, ripping a bloodcurdling scream from the gambler’s throat. Hunter did it again, and again, making sure each of Stanger’s fingers were nice and broken. Saachi knew that she should stop Hunter from going too far, but she really didn’t want to. She wanted Stanger to suffer for what he tried to do to her.

Stanger gasped through the pain. Hunter looked him over, clearly thinking about where else to hurt this man, but he seemed to decide against it.

“You good to stay here?” He asked, not looking at Saachi.

Saachi nodded, her hand massaging her throat. Hunter took the key card from Stanger’s pocket and tossed it to her along with his knife.

“I’ll be back,” He said, slinging Stanger across his shoulder, “Don’t let anyone else in.”

Miraculously, the door shut behind him, leaving Saachi alone.

It wasn’t completely quiet, the music from the bar below her feet thumped out of tune with the shouts of the patrons. No wonder no one noticed a couple blaster shots.

There were no lights in the room, but the window was open to let in the hazy moonlight. Saachi sat there on the bed, trying to keep her breathing steady as she ran her fingers around her wrists, trying to scratch away the itch that Stanger’s touch had left behind. She should leave, she should go help Hunter collect the bounty from Prince Xizor, she should go see if she could find Hunter’s bandana. It was just a scrap of cloth, some part of her argued, but that wasn't all it was. It was Hunter. It was a part of him, and he'd trusted her with it. And Stanger had thrown it out like it was garbage.

But Hunter told her he would be back, and she couldn’t disappoint him for a second time that night.

So Saachi sat on the bed, breathing, and watching the door.

When she heard footsteps in the hall, she leaped to her feet, knife in hand. She waited just to the side of the door, and when the door opened, she launched herself at the intruder.

When she had them up against the doorframe with the knife to her throat, she froze.

It was Hunter.

She couldn’t move. She was safe. It was Hunter. She should move. But she didn’t.

“Nice reaction time, mesh’la,” Hunter smiled lazily, unperturbed by his current predicament.

“May I come in?”

Saachi didn’t say a word. She backed away from Hunter and made a beeline to the bed.

“That was quick,” She muttered, sitting on the bed. She still held Hunter’s knife in her hand.

Hunter nodded, “Xizor’s men met me at the spaceport, but I grabbed a couple things.” He set a case– heavy with credits– on the nightstand for safekeeping. He took his backpack and set it on top of the briefcase, rummaging through the essentials he’d brought before settling on a tube of bacta gel and a shirt.

Saachi looked at the shirt in puzzlement, and Hunter shrugged. “It was the first one I saw. Thought you’d want to cover up.” Saachi took the shirt from Hunter. She didn’t need to put it on to know it was his, it was far too big to be her own, covering her hands and sitting on her more like a coat than a shirt would. She wore it anyway, rubbing the sleeve against her cheek.

Hunter poured a generous amount of bacta into his palm before turning to Saachi. He gently cradled the back of her head, tilting it to get a better view of her injuries.

She started at the first touch against sore skin, but Hunter held her steady, “Easy, pretty girl,” He murmured, gently applying the gel with his fingertips.

Saachi’s eyes slipped close as the bacta worked its magic under Hunter’s careful guidance. When her bruises were all treated and Hunter was assured there were no broken bones, his hands slipped lower, massaging the knots that had formed in her shoulders.

Saachi gripped the fabric of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Hunter’s hands paused for a brief moment

“What for?” he asked.

Saachi’s eyes squeezed shut as she sighed, “I should have listened to you when you said this whole thing was a bad idea.”

"No, Saachi," Hunter took her hands in his, crouching down between her knees, "It wasn't a bad idea- okay, the going to a second location with an unpredictable bounty was a terrible idea, yes, but-"

Hunter froze, noticing the tears beading in her eyes.

"Saachi," Hunter cradled her face in his hands, wiping at her tears with his thumbs.

Saachi sniffed, rubbing her nose with her arm, "I know, I know, it's stupid, but...I just feel so useless all the time. You and your brothers are these amazing, black ops squad with a perfect record and then there's just me."

"And Omega," Hunter reminded her.

"And Omega," Saachi laughed, bordering on manic, “I just wanted to prove that I was good at this, that I can do this on my own without waiting for you to help me.”

Hunter pressed his lips to her forehead. “By all accounts, you had him taken down by the time I got up here,” He reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess I did. I just wish I wasn’t so freaked out about all this like some baby,” Saachi’s breathing shuddered again, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Hunter sat like that for a moment, and Saachi thought the conversation was done.

"When Omega gets in trouble, do you think she's useless?" He asked softly.

"What? Of course not, she's a kid."

"And I'm a child soldier bred for nothing but defending," Hunter said.

"And I'm an adult. I can take care of myself, I shouldn't need you to get me out of everything."

Hunter grit his teeth in frustration, but he sat on the bed next to Saachi, gently taking her chin in hand.

"Am I useless?" He asked.

Saachi stared at him incredulously, so Hunter repeated the question.

"Am I useless?"

"I literally just said you weren't?" Saachi said, confused.

"But I have no idea how to properly set a bone or where to begin with surgery, and you do. So, obviously, by your own logic, I'm useless because I can't perform a surgery like you can."

"It's not the same-"

"Exactly," Hunter said abruptly. He pushed Saachi's hair back behind her shoulder, "We're both good at different things. If you were as good at fighting as I was, then who'd set my ribs properly every time I get shot in the chest?"

Saachi laughed with a delighted snort, and quickly slapped her hand over her mouth.

"There's my girl," Hunter grinned. He placed one hand on the Saachi’s upper back, tracing her spine as he kissed her on the lips.

Saachi hummed pleasantly, one hand resting on his chest for balance. Her nose brushed against Hunter's when he paused to take a deep breath.

“Do you know how I felt, when I heard your comm?” Hunter’s voice was much more solemn this time, “When I heard him threatening you?”

Saachi’s throat hitched.

“I looked around and I couldn’t see you, and in this crowd I thought I’d never find you. I felt utterly and completely helpless, knowing that you were in trouble and I hadn’t done a damn thing to stop it.”

“Hunter,” Saachi whispered. Her fingers traced his tattoo, and his forehead rested against hers as he breathed heavily.

Hunter kissed her forehead again, gently caressing the hair that fell down her back. “But I knew that you were counting on me, and that was more important than any fear I felt. When I caught your scent, I ran, and found you up here. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as relieved to see anyone the way I did when I saw that you were alright.

"You're not useless because you asked me to get you out of there. That's literally why I'm here. I'd be the useless one if you tried to stick it out and I didn't do anything about it."

Hunter took a deep breath, grounding himself in Saachi’s presence.

"And…regardless of how well you can defend yourself, watching you take that guy out with one hit was hot."

"Hunter!" Saachi shoved his shoulder.

"What? I'm in love with you, I can't say you're hot?" Hunter chuckled. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her onto his lap. He kissed her cheek, lips trailing down to her jaw.

"Mmm, Hunter," Saachi gasped. His fingers trailed under the shirt, tracing patterns into her skin.

"And you definitely look hotter wearing my clothes than that ridiculous getup you had going earlier," Hunter said, his voice low against her skin.

"You're one to talk," Saachi laughed, fumbling at the straps of cloth that made a pitiful excuse for sleeves.

"Shows off the arms better," Hunter said, barely able to keep his lips from her skin.

"It certainly does," Saachi had to agree. Despite how impractical it was, no outfit was a downside when it showed off just how gorgeous Hunter looked.

She cradled his face in her hands, tracing the tattooed cheekbone with her thumb. He was here. He was alive. She was safe.

“What do you want from me, Saachi?” Hunter asked leaning into her touch, “What do you need?"

Saachi closed her eyes, listening to Hunter breathe as she began to card her fingers through his hair.

“I need you to hold me,” She said, “I just need to know that you’re here.”

Hunter wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up ever so slightly so that he could lay her down on the bed, lying next to her. He pulled her into his chest, crowning her hair with kisses as she cuddled closer.

“I’m here, Saachi,” He promised, “I’ll always be here for you.”

[skyyguy]

“i think it’s about time you called it a night, baby.”

For the pretty little ponies au pleaseeee !!!

Prompt

He wasn't used to waking up alone, not anymore. Sure, they had the odd night here and there where Gale couldn't handle the feel of the mattress shifting or getting up the stairs, but John was always on the cot in the same room. So, while he technically was waking up alone, because he was alone in bed, he could look over and see Gale, which meant he absolutely wasn't alone. Tonight, though, tonight he was actually alone. John pushed himself onto all fours and shook his head, clearing the last bit of sleep from his brain before sliding his way off the bed and pulling on his pj pants, yawning and rubbing his chin before setting off for the living room.

"Gale, honey, what are you doing?" John asked when he noticed Gale still hunched over the laptop, books open on the kitchen table. Gale blinked up at him, a distant look in his eyes fading away. He'd been extremely focused, John realized as he watched Gale glance around him, as if confused. While seeing Gale able to focus that intensly on something was uplifting, John was still worried about the fact it was nearly 4 am and Gale hadn't slept at all, if the fact he was still in his jeans and western shirt said anything.

"Research," Gale replied, voice rougher than usual, speaking to his lack of any sort of self-care, including something as simple as drinking something.

"Love, you've been at it for 6 hours, I thought you were going to come to bed ages ago," John said softly, sliding into the chair beside Gale's wheelchair and taking his hand in his own.

"I… Wasn't paying attention…" Gale admitted, blinking at the clock, looking dazed still. John frowned, wondering if Gale had actually been focusing on his research, or if something else was going on.

"Okay," John muttered softly, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek, "but I think it’s about time you called it a night, baby," he said gently, rubbing Gale's knuckles with his thumb. Gale looked at their hands for a long few seconds before nodding stiffly.

"Ya, I guess," he agreed, almost reluctantly. John frowned deeper, bringing Gale's hand to his lips and kissing the back of it.

"Do you want to sleep down here tonight, sweetheart?" John asked, wondering if it wouldn't be better in case anything happened.

"Just wanna sleep with you."

"Of course, my heart, of course, never gonna leave you unless you want me to, 'kay?" John promised, relieved when Gale nodded, seeming to follow him better.

"'Kay," Gale agreed leaning his forehead against John's, smiling when John rubbed their noses together.

"A'ight, sweets, let's get you to bed before you spend another 6 hours on research," John mused, slowly getting up, pulling his hand from Gale's, and switching the brakes on the chair to wheel Gale to the lift to take him to bed upstairs. Gale let his head lean back in the chair, closing his eyes and humming, not fighting John for once. John squeezed himself onto the wheelchair lift with his husband and ran his hand through Gale's hair, gently working out the tangles and knots, smiling as Gale groaned at the feeling, nails scratching at his scalp.

Gale was half asleep by the time they reached the bedroom and John wished he could just bundle him up and tuck him into bed, but he needed to go through the usual nighttime routine before he could get him completely settled. So, he nudged him awake with a soft apology, kissing his cheeks while he did so. Gale whined the entire time, but he let John do as he pleased nonetheless, and John was grateful for his cooperation, thrilled when he finally got Gale settled into the bed and the other snuggled into the blankets, practically purring happily. Rolling his eyes at his adorable husband, John slid into the bed as well, letting Gale snuggle into him and wrapping his arms around the smaller man, kissing his forehead.

"Sweet dreams, my heart."

[ewaneneollav]

obsession, by clarice lispector (excerpt 4 of 4)

- -

[...]

when Dora left, i stood in front of the mirror & fixed myself up as i hadn’t done in months. but anxiety robbed my patience, left my eyes bright, my movements darting. it would be a test, the final test

when he arrived, my agitation stopped immediately. yes, i thought deeply relieved, i was calm, almost happy: Daniel hadn’t shown up. he noticed i’d changed my hair, my nails. he kissed me, unworried. i took his hands, ran them over my cheeks, my forehead

“What’s the matter, Cristina? What happened?”

i didn’t answer, but thousands of bells clanged inside me. my thoughts vibrated like a shriek: “Just this, just this: I’m going to free myself! I’m free!”

we sat on the sofa. & in the silence of the living room, i felt at peace. i thought of nothing & leaned against Jaime serenely

“Can’t we stay like this the rest of our lives?”

he laughed. stroked my hands

“You know? I like you better without nail polish …”

“Request granted, sir.”

“That wasn’t a request: it was an order …”

then back to silence, whipping in my ears, my eyes, sapping me of strength. it was nice, tenderly nice. he ran his hands through my hair

then, as if a spear had pierced my back, i grew suddenly irritated on the sofa, opened my eyes, focused them, dilated, on the air …

“What happened?” asked Jaime, worried.

his hair … yes, yes, i thought with a slight, triumphant smile, his hair was black … his eyes … just a moment … his eyes … black too?

​

that same night, i decided to leave

& suddenly, i no longer considered the matter, stopped worrying, gave Jaime a pleasant evening. i went to bed serene & slept through the night, i hadn’t in a long time

i waited for Jaime to go to work. i sent the maid home, gave her the day off. i packed a small suitcase with the essentials

before leaving, though, my calm suddenly evaporated. useless, repeated movements, darting & stumbling thoughts. it seemed as if Daniel were next to me, his presence almost palpable: “These eyes of yours rendered right on the surface of your face, with a delicate brush, a touch of paint. Meticulous, light, incapable of doing good or evil …”

in a sudden burst of inspiration, i decided to leave a note for Jaime, a note that would hurt him the way Daniel would hurt him! that would trouble him, crush him. &, just for the pride of showing Daniel that i was “strong,” remorseless, i wrote deliberately, trying to make myself distant & unattainable: “I’m leaving. I’m tired of living with you. If you can’t understand me at least trust me: I’m telling you that I deserve to be forgiven. If you were more intelligent, I’d tell you: don’t judge me, don’t forgive, nobody can do that. But, for the sake of your own peace, forgive me.”

​

silently i took my place beside Daniel

gradually i took over his daily life, replaced him, like a nurse, in his movements. i looked after his books, his clothes, brightened his surroundings

he never thanked me. he simply accepted it, as he’d accepted my companionship

as for me, from the moment in which getting off the train i approached Daniel without being repelled, i had taken a single-minded attitude. neither from contentment because of him, nor regret because of Jaime. nor quite relief. it was as if i had returned to my source. as if previously they had chiseled me out of rock, cast me into life as a woman & i later returned to my true roots, like a final sigh, my eyes closed, serene, standing still for eternity

i didn’t dwell on the situation, but whenever i scrutinized it i always did so in the same way: i live with him & that’s it. i stayed close to the powerful one, to the one who knew, that was enough for me

why didn’t that ideal death last forever? a bit of clairvoyance, at certain moments, warned me that peace could only be fleeting. i sensed that living with Daniel wouldn’t always be enough for me. & i plunged even deeper into nonexistence, granting myself respites, putting off the moment when i myself would seek life, to discover by myself, through my own suffering

for the time being i would just watch him & rest

​

the days passed, the months fell away one by one

habit settled into my existence & its guidance soon kept me busy by the minute with Daniel. soon i no longer became enthralled, exalted, as before, when i listened to him. i had entered him. nothing surprised me anymore

i never smiled, i had unlearned joy. yet i wouldn’t have removed myself from his life even to be happy. i was not, nor was i unhappy. i had so incorporated myself into the situation that i no longer received stimuli & sensations that would allow me to modify it

only one fear disturbed my strange peace: that Daniel would send me away. sometimes, silently mending his clothes at his side, i sensed that he was about to speak. i’d drop the sewing onto my lap, go pale & await his order:

“You can go.”

& when, finally, i’d hear him tell me something or laugh at me for some reason, i’d pick the fabric back up & continue my work, fingers trembling for a few seconds

the end, however, was near

one day when i’d gone out early, i took longer than usual to come home, due to an accident on one of the roads. when i got to the bedroom, i found him irritated, his eyes gazing off into the distance, not replying to my “good evening.” he hadn’t eaten dinner yet & when i, feeling guilty, begged him to eat something, he kept up a long, willful silence & finally informed me, scrutinizing my worry with a certain pleasure: he hadn’t had lunch either. i rushed to put on the coffee, while he kept up the same sullen attitude, a little childish, watching my hurried movements from the corner of his eye as i set the table

suddenly i opened my eyes, in shock. for the first time i was realizing that Daniel needed me! i had become necessary to the tyrant … he, i now knew, wouldn’t send me away …

i recall that i stopped with the coffee pot in my hand, disoriented. Daniel was still gloomy, in silent protest against my accidental negligence. i smiled, a little bashfully. so … he did need me? i didn’t feel joy, but something like disappointment: well, i thought, my job is done. it frightened me, that unexpected & involuntary reflection

i had already served out my term of slavery. perhaps i’d go on being a slave, without rebelling, for the rest of my life. but i was serving a god … & Daniel had gone soft, his spell was broken. he needed me! i repeated a thousand times afterward, feeling that i had received a beautiful, enormous gift, too large for my arms & for my desire. & the strangest thing is that with this impression came another, absurdly novel & powerful. i was free, i realized at last …

how can i understand myself? why that blind conformity at first? & afterward, the near joy of liberation? what matter am i made of in which elements & foundations for a thousand other lives mingle but never merge? i go down every path & still none is mine. i have been sculpted into so many statues & haven’t frozen into place …

from then on, without actively deciding to, i imperceptibly neglected Daniel. & no longer accepted his dominance. i was just resigned to it

what good is it to narrate trivial events that demonstrate my gradual progression toward intolerance & hatred? it’s well-known how little it takes to transform the mood in which two people live. a slight gesture, a smile, snag like a fishhook onto a feeling coiled in the depths of calm waters & bring it to the surface, making it clamor over the others

we went on living. & now i savored, day by day, mingled at first with the taste of triumph, the power of gazing directly upon the idol

he noticed my transformation &, if at first he retreated in surprise at my courage, he took up the old yoke with still greater violence, prepared not to let me escape. yet i would find my own violence. we took up our arms & were two forces

it was hard to breathe in the bedroom. we moved as if in the thick of danger, waiting for it to materialize & crash down on us, behind our backs. we grew cunning, seeking a thousand hidden intentions behind every word offered. we hurt each other at every turn & established victory & defeat. i grew cruel. he grew weak, showed what he was really like. there were times when he was a hair’s breadth away from begging me for help, confessing to the isolation in which my freedom had left him & which, in my wake, he could no longer bear. i myself, my strength quickly flagging, sometimes wanted to reach out to him. yet we’d gone too far &, proud, couldn’t turn back. it was the struggle, now, that kept us going. like a sick child, he grew increasingly capricious. any word of mine was the start of a harsh quarrel. later we discovered yet another recourse: silence. we hardly spoke

so why didn’t we separate, given that no serious ties bound us? he didn’t suggest it because he’d grown used to my help & could therefore no longer live without someone to wield power over, to be a king over, since he had no other subject. & perhaps he really did love my companionship, he who’d always been so solitary. as for me—i took pleasure in hating him

even our new relations were invaded by habit. (i lived with Daniel for almost two years.) now it wasn’t even hatred. we were tired

eventually, after a week of rain that had trapped us together for days on end in the room, fraying our nerves to the limit—eventually the conclusion came

it was a late afternoon, prematurely dark. rain dripped monotonously outside. we’d hardly spoken that day. Daniel, his face white over the dark “scarf” of his neck, was looking out the window. water had fogged the windowpanes; he pulled out his handkerchief &, attentively, as if this had suddenly become important, started wiping them, his movements painstaking & careful, betraying the effort it took to contain his irritation. i watched him while standing next to the sofa. the clock went on ticking in the room, heaving

then, as if i were continuing an argument, i said to my own surprise:

“But this can’t go on …”

he turned & i met his cold eyes, perhaps curious, definitely ironic. all my rage solidified in that moment & weighed on my chest like a stone

“What are you laughing at?” i asked

he kept staring at me & went back to wiping the windowpanes. suddenly, he recovered & answered:

“At you.”

i was astonished. how brave he was. i was afraid of how boldly he challenged me. i answered haltingly:

“Why?”

he leaned slightly closer & his teeth gleamed in the half-darkness. i found him terribly handsome, though the realization didn’t move me

“Why? Ah, because … It’s just that you & I … indifferent or hateful … An argument that has nothing really to do with us, that doesn’t exhilarate us … A disappointment.”

“So why laugh at me, then?” i continued obstinately. “Aren’t there two of us here?”

he wiped a droplet that had trickled onto the windowsill.

“No. You’re alone. You were always alone.”

was this just a way to hurt me? i was surprised all the same, i was stunned as if i’d been robbed. my God, so … neither of us believed anymore in whatever held us together?

“Are you afraid of the truth? We don’t even feel hatred toward each other. If we did we’d almost be happy. Beings made of strong stuff. You want proof? You wouldn’t kill me, because afterward you’d feel neither pleasure nor pain. You’d just think: ‘what’s the point?’ ”

i couldn’t help but notice the intelligence with which he penetrated the truth. but how things were going so fast, how fast they were going! i thought

silence fell. the clock struck six. back to silence

i breathed hard, deeply. my voice came out low & heavy:

“I’m leaving.”

we each made a slight, quick movement, as if a struggle were about to begin. then we looked at each other in surprise. it had been said! it had been said!

i repeated triumphantly, trembling:

“I’m leaving, Daniel.” i came closer * against the pallor of his slender face, his hair looked excessively black. “Daniel”—i shook him by the arm—“I’m leaving!”

he didn’t move. i then realized that my hand was clutching his arm. my declaration had opened such a gulf between us that i couldn’t even bear touching him. i pulled it away with such an abrupt & sudden movement that the ashtray went flying, shattered on the floor

i stood staring at the shards for a while. then i lifted my head, suddenly calmed. he too had frozen, as if fascinated by the swiftness of the scene, having forgotten any mask. we looked at each other for a moment, without anger, our eyes disarmed, searching, now filled with an almost friendly curiosity, the depths of our souls, our mystery that must be the same. we averted our gaze at the same time, disturbed

“The prisoners,” Daniel said trying to lend a lighthearted, disdainful tone to the words

that was the last moment of understanding we had together

there was an extremely long pause, the kind that plunges us into eternity. everything around us had stopped

with another sigh, i came back to life

“I’m leaving.”

he didn’t make a move

i walked to the door & at the threshold stopped again. i saw his back, his dark head lifted, as if he were looking straight ahead. i repeated, my voice singularly hollow:

“I’m leaving, Daniel.”

​

my mother had died from a heart attack, brought on by my departure. Papa had found refuge with my uncle, in the country

Jaime took me back

he never asked many questions. more than anything he wanted peace. we went back to our old life, though he never came completely close to me again. he sensed that i was different from him & my “lapse” frightened him, made him respect me

as for me, i go on

alone now. forever alone

[dadddybangtan]

Suck Torture | 18+

Back Table of Contents Next

cw: smut(!), cvm play, overstim, unprotected s3x, mentions of s3x toys, mentions of self h^rm

word count: 3k

I felt his cold lips peck my forehead through my hair and I shivered even more than I did before. I felt so weak, but I wanted nothing more than to disappear underneath his protection.

"I promise." He said with brooding strength in his voice.

He cradled my head in his chest as my tears failed to stop. My life had been threatened more times than I was comfortable admitting at the time. Falling from that window made me believe that it was truly the end. And the only one who could save me actually did. He was right there, holding my almost-naked body.

"Hyunjin," Taehyun whispered, "I think you should take Beomgyu home tonight while Yeonjun and I fix the room."

"Are you sure?" Hyunjin asked.

I was asking the same thing as I didn't understand why I couldn't be there.

"Yeah, I think it's better for him to be with you right now... Sure you sent Felix away, but there's no guarantee that he's actually gone."

That line put an anxious thought in my head. Felix will always be lurking. Perhaps one is likely to try harder when there's nothing to lose (not even a life) and everything to gain.

"You're right," Hyunjin squeezed my arm, "Are you sure you're okay?"

I lifted my head up to look at Taehyun. He silently nodded.

"I'll take care of him."

Taehyun was entirely right about sending me to Hyunjin's house. I felt so safe in Hyunjin's dark, candlelit room and big soft bed. I lied down immediately and Hyunjin joined. We were facing each other and he looked at me with only kindness in his eyes. For once, he didn't seem so distracted or preoccupied. He was completely focused on me.

"You're so intense." I said quietly.

"I don't mean to be. Intensity is in my DNA."

I chuckled at his charming joke. Despite that, I knew he was serious. He only ever cracked a few jokes around me and they were sandwiched between some of the most traumatic moments we've shared together. He was twisted. That's why I liked him so much.

"I wish I could know what's going on inside that head of yours. I can only get words and scattered phrases, never a full thought."

"Well, I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age. I've been off my meds since I ran away," I admitted, "So honestly, I wish I could read my mind too... And I wish..."

I trailed off as my eyes fell from his eyes to his lips. They were full, pink and alluring.

"You wish?"

"I wish I knew why you liked me."

And his lips spread into the most comforting and endearing smile, hiding his deep red eyes from view a tad.

"I like you because you're good. You're good and pure. You're beautiful," He grabbed my hand and interlocked his cold fingers with mine, "And you give me something I could never give myself in a million years."

"What's that?"

"Your warmth." He said as he kissed the back of my hand.

That was the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. And to make it more romantic, I actually believed him. Even if he was lying, I would've been able to take that and pat myself on the back with it. He's right whether it's true or not.

"Last night, Beomgyu, something happened in the kitchen. It's a bit of a long story, but," He said as he slowly separated his hand from mine and held his palm up to show a rough, reddish mark, "I did this because I was craving your warmth. Craving you."

Sirens and alarms went off in my head. To say he was craving me wasn't the best choice of words considering the events of the last few days. My gaze trailed down his arm to notice that he failed to mention the clear bite mark on his wrist.

"Excuse me?"

"Not like that. I meant I wanted to hold you. Like how I'm doing now."

I stared at his mildly burned palm until he lowered it to a comfortable spot on my chest.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it didn't hurt that badly."

"No, Hyunjin, are you okay," I pressed, "You shouldn't hurt yourself..."

His face fell. He avoided eye contact for a moment while he circled his middle finger around a spot on my chest. He was thinking, calculating. Until he looked back up at me.

"I guess you're right."

"You've saved my life three times, Hyunjin. Don't forget to save yourself sometimes too."

His eyes bounced between mine and my lips. That was until he nuzzled the icy tip of his nose to my nose and flirted his lips onto me. They were soft and pillowy, perfectly pressing into my lips. I closed my eyes and focused only on the sensation of his kiss. I centered my senses on the delicate touch.

Suddenly my body completely surrendered to him. The hand that rested on my chest snuck it's way to my neck and tugged lightly on my hair. Our kisses became deeper as I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him closer to me. He softly sucked on my bottom lip, but I winced at the feeling of his fangs.

"I-I'm sorry, did that hurt?" He asked.

"Only a little bit... I've never made out with someone like you."

"I've never made out with someone like you either," He swiped a strand of hair from my forehead, "Someone whose mind I couldn't read."

"Does it matter that much?"

"I don't know what you want from me, Beomgyu."

Oh. I was beginning to understand his logic. For centuries, he'd been the perfect partner because of his powers. He was romantically, platonically and even sexually flawless. All of a sudden, he was powerless against me. He was just as clueless as me when it came to the other's pleasure and desires. And honestly, his vulnerability got to me, making my heart beat faster and harder.

"Then just kiss me and let me take the lead."

His face, that was once so shy and unsure, glowed after I said that. He kissed me deeply, fangs muffled by his soft lips. I hummed in satisfaction before turning Hyunjin to his backside and toppling him.

I snuck my hands behind his neck and played with his long, black hair. He hummed into my lips and the soft, seductive sound had butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I sank my body into his even more. That's when I felt the throbbing bulge between his legs.

He put his arms on my back, fingertips pressing threw the fabric of my shirt.

"Do you want me as much as I want you," He asked, sliding his hands down my back and resting at my hips, "Because I really want you, Beomgyu."

"I do." I said as I dragged my hands to the neckline of his sweater.

Before I knew it, his hands were unbuttoning my pants and I was lifting up his sweater. I sat up and looked down at his pale, sculpted abdomen. Tracing my fingers along the grooves of his stomach, I felt my dick harden in my pants. I was silently begging him to remove them faster. So I tore his sweater over his head to reveal his bare chest.

I let my fingers explore his body, the chill heightening my senses. Hyunjin grabbed my hand and brought it up to his lips.

"How do you want me, Beomgyu," He asked as he kissed my fingertips, "Something tells me I'm not as flexible as you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I think you're a switch," He grabbed my wrist and pulled me down so my face was hovering over his, "And I'm not."

"Maybe you can read my mind."

He smirked as he gently cradled me under him in a seamless move. He kissed me from my lips to my cheek, jaw and neck until he got to the collar of my shirt. All the while he was using one hand to tug my pants off.

"But," I said breathlessly, "It's been a while... So, I just-."

"I'll be gentle."

He successfully pulled my pants off and revealed my hard-on in my underwear. it was a vulnerable place to be in, half naked under him. And there wasn't a hint of regret. When his cold fingers traced up my thighs, I felt my body tense.

"But you have to relax," He whispered, kissing my thighs and inching closer and closer to my cock, "And trust me."

Hyunjin's lips met the hem of my underwear. His skin ship was teasing me so intensely, I thought I was going to explode. Then again, it'd been so long since I'd been touched like that.

"I trust you." My voice shook with anticipation.

He kissed my clothed shaft until he reached the tip before sliding down my underwear. He stared longingly at my dick. I saw his mouth twitch in want. I just said that I trusted him, but I didn't trust him not to hurt me during a blow job.

He slipped my length in his mouth, swallowing me without me feeling any sharpness. All I felt was his lips and tongue. And eventually the back of his throat. I gasped at the feeling.

"Fuck," I moaned, combing my hand through Hyunjin's hair to keep his head steady, "Stay right there."

And he did, letting my tip slide in and out of his throat. My hips bucked up and my grip on him lightened so he could breathe. I was gasping for air myself. His mouth was the most pleasurable organ my sex had felt in so long. I was left whimpering when he finally let up.

"Was that okay?" He asked with a perfect combination of sensual innocence.

"Mhm." I moaned.

"Can you reach under your pillow?" He asked.

I reached my hand up until it ran into a small bottle. It seemed I pulled out a very fancy bottle of lube. It was shaped like a human heart with a dark red tint on the glass. He took it from my hand and popped it open.

"Hyunjin, can I tell you something?" I asked as I watched him lube up his index and middle fingers.

"Of course."

"When I first came over, I opened one of your drawers."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah... And I saw those glass anal beads."

He chuckled lowly, using his dry hand to brush his hair back from his pretty face. God, he's gorgeous.

"So what? Do you wanna use them?" His question was serious and flirtatious.

"Not yet... Right now, I just want you."

He snuck his lubed fingers to my hole and traced the sensitive circle. I was quickly realizing how good it felt for him to touch me and how my body reacted so naturally to that supernatural human. His eyes trailed up my body, taking in my wet, throbbing cock.

"You're practically drooling."

"My apologies, is it not attractive," He asked cutely, slowly sliding his finger tip inside me, "Your body is perfect, I can't help but salivate."

His spit slicked my ass even more, but the praise is what melted me around his finger. I whimpered and whined as he steadily pumped his finger inside me.

"S-say it again. Please." I begged helplessly.

"Say what," He smirked, bringing his free hand to my dick and stroking it confidently, "That your body is so perfect, I think it was made for me? You were made for me to make love to."

"Fuck." My voice shook on the stimulation.

His finger penetrated deep enough to massage the most erogenous spot inside. Paired with his stroking, I was reaching my climax quicker than I had anticipated.

"H-hyunjin," I squirmed a bit, gripping the sheets at my sides, "I'm s-so close."

With that he quickened the pace of his stroking and eased another finger inside me. He fingered me so perfectly, fast enough to get me off yet slow enough not to tear the sensitive skin. Just when my pleasure was at its peak and my moans became more desperate, he wrapped his mouth around the tip of my cock. His tongue licked and sucked on the tip while he hand rubbed the shaft.

Overwhelmed with pleasurable stimulation, my body jerked and twitched uncontrollably. My moans filled the room, my legs were shaking and my vision was blurred from the sensation.

"I'm gonna cum." I muttered between moans.

And I shamelessly let my orgasm fill his mouth. It was the release I needed from all the madness around me. It kind of baffled me that Hyunjin, of all people, was the one to relieve the stress. At that moment, I questioned how we ended up there. How I went from an insufferable human, to the warmth he didn't know he was looking for. Though it happened to me in real time, I couldn't fathom the possibility of us being intimate like that.

He took his hand off of my dick and took down his pants while his other hand occupied my ass. He gently spread his fingers and loosened me up even more. His pants and underwear were finally off and his long, veiny cock got comfortable between my legs. Hyunjin spit the cum from his mouth onto his hand and stroked his dick.

"You don't mind me fucking your cum back into you, do you?" He asked so casually.

"I don't mind," My hoarse voice whispered as I reached my hand to his chest, "I just want you.”

I was ready for him and whatever he had to give me. He used his fingers to guide his dick inside me. I felt my hole stretch to his size and I grabbed onto his arms for leverage.

"Relax, Beomgyu," He said, crimson eyes piercing through his long, black hair, "Let your body get used to me."

With that I did what he said. I let out a deep breath I didn't know I was holding. It quickly became easier to penetrate deeper. And it felt so fucking good. The slow insertion allowed me to feel every pulsing vein and twitch. He took his time thrusting into me. Every push and every pull fulfilled desires I didn't know I had. It felt right to be full of only him.

After getting to a comfortable heartbeat pace, he lowered his chest to mine and hovered his face over me. He slipped his arm under my neck and held me close. I held him too with my hands on his back. I faintly felt a rough texture line the space of his back. I didn't question it, I just held him as he made love to me.

"You feel so good." He panted, resting his forehead on mine.

"So do you." I moaned.

His pace quickened. My moans got louder and more desperate, but I could tell that he liked it. He growled into my lips. That was the first time I didn't mistake his lust for me with hunger. Even when he let up from my lips, winced at the pleasure and exposed his fangs, I trusted him.

I brushed his hair from his face as he pounded into me. He looked so beautiful. His eyebrows were pulled together in want and he wanted me. He didn't break eye contact with me. He was throbbing inside me, I could tell he was close to climax.

"Beomgyu," He gasped, "Can I finish inside you?"

I nodded. Hyunjin thrusted in me even harder. My hoarse voice only got worse with how vocal he made me. The closer he got, the more desperate he looked. He rested his head in the nape of my neck, clearly letting his dick control his body. He was fucking me relentlessly and it felt so damn good.

"I fucking love you, Beomgyu." He groaned as cum filled my asshole.

My heart was pounding but I couldn't tell of it was a result of having sex or hearing him confess that to me. It was probably both, but the latter worried me. And I was only worried because that was such a loaded thing to say in the heat of the moment.

He pulled out of me and rested on my heaving chest for a moment before laying down beside me. He kissed my shoulder and wrapped his arm over me, still panting.

"Are you alright?" He breathed out.

"You love me?"

"Oh, you heard that?"

"That sounds like a 'no.'"

He grabbed my chin and made me face him. I couldn't resist his gorgeous face that had his hair plastered to his forehead by sweat.

"I do love you, Beomgyu," He said seriously, "I always have. That's not just something I say when I have sex. I mean it... But I am sorry that that was the first time you heard it."

"It's okay. Because I love you too," A sweet, close-lipped smile graced his face, "But I love Taehyun too."

"I know you do. And that's okay. I'm not in love with Taehyun, but I do like him a lot. Especially with you."

"How are you and him so cool about these things? Why am I the only one whose nervous about this kind of relationship?"

"It's okay to be nervous. But, frankly, I don't think you have to be. We love you. Let us love you."

I curled into Hyunjin's body and he held me in his arms. I silently wished that Taehyun was with us, but I knew he was a lot more prudish than Hyunjin and I. But if he had been there to hold me as well, it would've felt even better. Naturally, I just assumed that we would have our time together soon.

"All of this love talk makes me think though."

"Think of what, my love?" He asked.

"Don't you think one day you'll get tired of saving me?"

"Oh, Beomgyu, I could never get tired of saving you. As long as I can, I will," He kissed my forehead, "I love you."