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devilmademewriteit · 2 years ago

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Dark but Just a Game

pairing: (pre-ellie) joel miller x afab!fem!reader

summary: your dad’s associate and friend, joel miller, finally tires of your constant teasing

warnings: rough sex/smut (fingering, fem penetration, unprotected sex) so 18+ only content; fem afab reader; mention of reader having long-ish hair; alcohol consumption & drunkenness; pet names (sweetheart, angel, baby); dubcon (intoxication, power imbalance); age gap.

beta reader: @millllenniawrites aka that’s bestfren

word count: 3.7k

no use of y/n in this fic.

Click to read part 2: Pretty When You Cry

Click to read part 3: Let Me Love You Like a Woman

ahhhh this is my first time writing for joel so any and all feedback is super appreciated. i was slightly inspired by the amazing dbf!joel drabbles that @anchoeritic writes (seriously, if you enjoy this fic, go read them). as always, my requests are open !!

—

THEN,

It started out so innocently.

Your dad often helped Tess and Joel smuggle contraband in and out of the QZ, sometimes by keeping the right people quiet, other times by offering the pair a place to lay low at. You got accustomed to the sight of them passed out on the floor, the glow of the sunrise illuminating only their sleeping faces, or else a murmuring trio of hushed voices in the middle of the night.

Soon, however, you began to notice the way Joel’s eyes seemed to trail on you, often catching his hardened gaze in yours. Still, he rarely spoke to you and when he did, he mostly just grunted a “hullo” or asked if your father was around.

But you suspected that he noticed you.

Especially when your old clothes got too tight, hugging your skin and leaving little to the imagination. You observed his breath hitching the very first time he saw you in a skirt.

So, naturally, you played into it. You started sneaking downstairs in the morning wearing only a t-shirt and your underwear, feigning innocence at the way (you imagined) he tried, hard, not to look at your ass as you sauntered back up to your room.

Sometimes, you bumped into him on the streets of the QZ. You’d loop your arm around his broad bicep, wide-eyed, gazing up at him through your eyelashes and asking why he hadn’t dropped by to say hello recently. Causing him to tense beneath your hands always felt electrifying; the restraint in his grumbled “soon” always felt like a victory.

When it was dark out and he, Tess, and your dad shared a drink together on the dusty-old-living-room-couch, you made sure to lock eyes with him, taking in the danger lurking in them. He’d look away, leaning back casually and adjusting his jeans.

But—it was always innocent.

It was a game you played with yourself; one you weren’t even sure he was in on. Life in the QZ got dull, and there were only so many good-looking men your age that your dad’s work allowed you to see.

Sometimes, when business was good, your old man got his hands on an extra shipment of liquor, inviting all of his favourite bandits in the Zone and throwing a “party” in one of the run-down, less monitored buildings. You did yourself up as best as you knew how to, shared a flask with your friends and flirted with young smugglers.

It was seedy, but it was fun.

Joel was always there, usually asking around for parts or looking to cut deals. Usually, he drank and stayed out of your way.

Once, however, after being extremely irresponsible with your consumption, you found yourself alone with Andy, a young FEDRA guard (working for your side, of course), slurring your words and stumbling on your feet. He was good-looking in a boyish way and handsy to high heavens. You vaguely remembered his insistence on taking you back to his place and the feel of his wet lips against yours. You clearly remembered hearing a gruff, “Get off,”—Joel’s baritone echo taking you both by surprise. Andy’s head swung to find Miller’s looming form in the doorway; he immediately tore his hands from your body and scampered off. You were alone with Joel, his expression a mask of rage and contempt tinged with—could it have been—jealousy?

After that, it was all bits and pieces of blurred images and sounds. Big hands pulled you into strong arms; your feet were lifted from the ground. You retained flashes of drunken faces smiling and jeering at you as you were carried away from the festivities—then it was dilapidated hallways, the jangling of keys fumbling with a lock, and finally, the ceiling above your bed as Joel gently set you down. Even now, you could clearly picture the way his eyes traveled along your exposed skin as he stood, arms crossed, at the edge of the bed.

Sitting up, fixing your drunken, playful eyes to look deeply into his, you slurred, “Got a bit jealous?”

He said nothing. He only held your gaze and crossed his arms, the muscles beneath flexing and relaxing in rhythm with the motion.

“C’mon Joel,” you teased him, “so serious, all the time. I was fine.”

Now that had an effect.

He growled, “one more minute with that asshole…” and shook his head, his words trailing off as he fought the urge to take your bait. “Just go to sleep. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

He turned, heading towards the door. Perhaps the excess liquor made you reckless or Andy’s kisses left you wanting—either way, you needed to push the limits with Joel. You needed him to stay, to turn around and play your game.

“I could thank you now, if you want.”

He stopped in his tracks, his head slowly turning to the side. Your blood burned in your veins, both from the alcohol and from the tension pulsing between you and him in that darkened room. He paused for a moment and it felt like a lifetime—laid on the bed, watching his shoulders move with every breath he took. He flexed a hand, something he often did when he was around you.

Finally, he spoke.

“Go to sleep.”

And with that, he shut off the light and left the room, closing the door behind him.

So, you decided it was probably all in your head. Maybe the looks and the tension and the teasing were just part of a one-sided game you played with yourself. Still, you couldn’t help thinking about the strain in his voice when he ordered you to bed or the anger that went beyond disdain and contempt at the sight of Andy’s hands exploring your body. You regularly reminisced about the events of that night, most often without meaning to. Most often alone, between the hours of one and three AM, sneaking a guilty hand down between your thighs.

That was the last time Joel had interacted with you.

At least before tonight.

—

NOW,

Joel stands between Tess and a seedy looking short guy you’ve never seen before, clearly not paying attention to whatever the two of them are hashing out. Tensions are low, which makes Joel look comically out of place. He lifts a silver flask to his lips.

The chatter of people talking and laughing fills the narrow, dusty space—from somewhere down the hall, you hear your father’s booming laugh. You’re finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on whatever your peers are gushing on about. The warmth in your stomach and the buzz under your skin from whatever liquor finds its way into your cup brings you back to the last time you’d seen Joel at one of these get-togethers.

“Can’t believe Miller comes to these things,” one such peer—a bandit in training, your good friend Emma—remarks. “Weird seeing him… well, not relaxed but… not stressed.”

You laugh. “I know, right. When he’s passed out, I don’t even recognize him. Looks completely different without his signature scowl.”

She turns away from him, focusing her attention instead on you. “Right,” she says, “I forgot him and your dad…” She trails off, her expression changing as her interests do, as well.

Emma suddenly smirks at you. “Does he sleep naked?” she asks, mischievous. This piques the interest of the others paying attention to your conversation, who subsequently tune in to hear your answer.

You smile, shaking your head. “No,” you respond, keeping your voice low. “Fully clothed—with his gun in hand.”

Emma’s eyes settle back on Joel as her smile fades. The other delinquents go back to their respective conversations. “Such a shame,” she says, wistfully. “I’d bet a month’s rations that his dick is huge.”

You giggle at that and she passes you the flask. You take a big swig, heat blooming across your tongue as the whiskey burns down your throat.

He catches you staring—his eyes darken when he notices the drink in your hand. Smiling innocuously at him, you wave your fingers in an extremely girlish greeting gesture. He raises his thick eyebrows, unimpressed.

A familiar figure interrupts your silent conversation.

“Hey,” Andy says, his voice unsure and subdued.

“Hey.”

He looks rumpled and flushed, as though recent weeks had not been kind to him. Andy’s not-brown-not-blonde hair hangs limp around his crown, mirroring the defeated air his stature gives off. Despite the near foot he has on you, he seems ironically small.

He runs a nervous hand through his hair. “Look,” he tries, awkwardly stuffing his fingers in his pockets, “I’m sorry about last time. I was really drunk and I don’t really remember what I said, but I know it wasn’t cool.”

You scoff. “I don’t really think it was so much what you said, Andy,” you respond playfully. After all, you know he meant no harm. Drunk people get horny, and you had both been very drunk. “Don’t worry about it. No hard feelings,” you add.

That’s when, from over Andy’s shoulder, you catch a glimpse of Joel’s expression. Pure disapproval. Cold, ruthless contempt burns in his eyes.

“At least not from me.”

Andy turns around slowly, following your eye-line. By the time he clues in to who you’re referring to, Joel’s already looked away, turning his attention to the still-ongoing conversation between Tess and the stranger.

“Right,” Andy says, wincing. “He’s been giving me a hard time on the streets.”

“Don’t sweat over Miller,” Emma interjects casually. “He gives everyone a hard time.”

Once again, you find yourself distracted from the conversation, focussing on a different man in the room. Why should he get to decide when you get to be wild? What business does he have protecting you from other guys? After all, Joel Miller is not your father.

It frustrates you that he keeps pretending not to notice your stare. It frustrates you that he keeps his head ducked, feigning interest in the deal being made beside him. Taking in his size, the salt-and-pepper of his hair, and the fierce angle of his jaw, you steal another swig from the flask, wiping the excess off your lips.

It emboldens you.

Leaning up on your tippy-toes, you muster up your most sensual tone, whispering softly in Andy’s ear: “Let me make it up to you.”

You pull back to catch his look of disbelief, his pouty pink lips parting slightly as he struggles to locate his words. Grabbing his hand in yours, you nod your head to the right, wordlessly encouraging him to take you down the hall. He obeys without a sound.

You quickly shove the flask back into Emma’s hand.

“Save some for after,” you plead, and she shakes her head, tossing you an exaggerated eye-roll.

You lock eyes with Joel momentarily before you’re pulled down the hall, satisfaction leaking from your gaze—you’re not quite sure why. You break away, ignoring the non-verbal warning in his stare.

Who cares what he thinks, anyways?

You wind up in a run-down, dim-lit room, empty save for an old desk. Andy pins you against the wall as soon as the door creaks to a close behind you, pressing his lips to yours in a sloppy, tipsy kiss. His hands travel south to grab your ass and you respond by wrapping your arms around his neck. Things heat up—his clumsy fingers brush the fabric over your breasts and you dig your hip into the bulge beneath his denim.

It’s not that you want Andy. Frankly? It could be anyone. None of the boys you hang out with really interest you beyond being potential partners for youthful experimentation—which is exactly what Andy is to you. In all likelihood, that’s not what you are to him.

Oh well. Those are morning thoughts.

Andy’s hands snake under your shirt, the pads of his fingertips creeping up to your breasts.

The door slams open.

Andy basically leaps off of you, a horrified expression settling on his features as he registers the identity of the intruder—as history repeats itself.

“Out,” Joel orders through gritted teeth, holding the door open for the boy to walk through. Andy practically sprints free—without risking a goodbye, without uttering a “sir, yes sir.”

You sigh once you and Joel are alone, adjusting your clothing and casually leaning back against the wall.

“Okay, Joel,” you say, exasperation coating your words. “What’s this all about.”

Wordlessly, he closes the door and locks the handle. His movements are slow, precise, and calculated—butterflies erupt in your stomach.

He approaches you, leaning one hand against the wall behind your head and using a pair of thick, callused fingers to tilt your head up. He smells like sandalwood and hard liquor; he smells like a man. Electricity crackles throughout your entire being.

The touch of his hand on your face drains every last drop of your boldness.

“I think,” he grumbles out, his voice low, gravelly, dangerous, “You know exactly what this is about.”

You swallow, focussing all your energy on holding his severe gaze. Between your thighs, your nerves begin to pulse, responding to his proximity with enthusiasm.

“No, I really don’t,” you respond, mustering up some confidence from god-knows-where to render your tone convincing.

He scowls. “S’lil’ game you’re playin’,” he mutters softly, coolly. “Comin’ downstairs half-naked, clingin’ onto me in public when you know I can’t do anything…”

He shakes his head, his grip on your jaw tensing slightly.

This time, when he speaks, his tone is hoarse. “What are you tryin’ to get out of it?”

A smile creeps onto your face at the anguish in his voice.

So you hadn’t imagined it. Joel had been in on it from the start.

You look up at him with big, sultry eyes, taunting him. There’s no point in avoiding the truth anymore—you want joel. And you’ve never really been the type to not go for what you want.

In this moment, you’re willing to risk anything to have Joel do something, anything to you.

Wicked innocence drips off your every word as you purr, “Whatever you’ve been dying to give me, Joel.”

You watch your answer take effect. A vein in his jaw twitches—lust floods his eyes.

In a flash, you’re facing the wall with both hands pinned above your head by one much larger, much stronger hand. Joel’s weight presses against you, pinning you in place.

“That right, angel?” Joel challenges under his breath as his other hand explores your chest, grabbing roughly at your breasts. “Want me to show you what I’ve had in mind?”

His hand travels towards your underwear, sliding down your front in a tantalizing motion; you moan before his fingers even brush your most sensitive spot.

“I do, Joel,” you moan, desperate for his touch. The feel of his chest against your spine is intoxicating, your mind goes blank at the sensation of his cock pressed against your ass.

Joel’s index and middle fingers find your clit, rubbing torturous circles around the throbbing bud. His thumb presses into your skin, anchoring his hand in place.

“So fuckin’ wet,” he groans. “Wonder what your dad’d say if he knew his lil’ girl was soakin’ wet for this cock.”

He slips a finger inside you, curling it up, making your mouth gape open in a silent ah and your eyebrows crease together. “You think of me when you’re touchin’ this pretty pussy?” Gasping and struggling against his hold, you nod enthusiastically, overwhelmed by the feel of him inside you.

“Please,” you whisper, wanting more, more, more.

“Manners,” he growls, tightening his grasp on your wrists. “Please, Joel,” he corrects, pumping his fingers in and out of your cunt, his palm flattened and working against your swollen clit.

“Please-please, Joel,” you gasp out, throwing your head back against the crook of his shoulder. He leans forward, laying a soft kiss in the delicate nook of your neck. Then, he’s releasing you, pulling his fingers out and taking a step back.

He gestures to the desk.

“Facedown, sweetheart.”

You obey, stumbling over to it and laying your chest against the cold wood. It stings and you shiver.

Joel fumbles with his belt and then he’s behind you, unzipping his fly and pulling his length out. With your cheek laid against the desk, you get a perfect view of him towering over you, a dark God, holding his cock in his hand.

Emma had been right.

“You gotta be quiet,” he warns, before flipping up your skirt. He groans at the sight of your ass, roughly grabbing one cheek and squeezing it—hard.

“I will be,” you whine, desperate to take him in.

He chuckles, pulling down your dripping panties, letting them fall to your ankles. His tip runs between your folds, teasing your clit in tormenting strokes. You whine and moan, “Joel-s’good,” responding to every brush of his tip.

“You’re needy,” he says, gruffly.

He pushes his cock deep into your cunt, settling every inch of himself inside you.

“I like needy.”

You gasp at the sting and the pleasure and the fullness, unable to control yourself. Joel is huge—your walls wrap tightly around him as he pulls out near-completely before snapping his hips against your ass, filling you up to the brim again. You cry out as he holds your arms in place, setting a rhythm, grabbing you just as roughly as he fucks you.

“Joel,” you moan loudly before a large hand slaps over your lips.

��Shut up,” he growls.

Your eyes roll to the back of your head as you give yourself to him entirely, cravenly grinding against his hips.

“Look at you, fuckin’ yourself on my cock,” he taunts. “Takin’ it so good, pretty girl.”

The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoes through the room, dirty and filthy and hot.

Joel’s fingers muffle your moans of abandonment, every “fuck,” “yes,” and “thank you,” coming out simply as “mmm.”

“This what you fuckin’ wanted?” he asks gruffly, leaning a hand next to your head and bending forward to loom over you. “Gettin’ fucked by a man twice your age?”

The angle allows him to push even more of his length inside you, causing you to squirm pathetically against his hips. His fingers dig into your cheeks as he adds, “That right, pretty girl?”

You nod eagerly, your eyes growing heavy, filling with abandon.

He looses a hollow laugh. “Needy lil’ thing,” he breathes, tangling his fingers in your hair. “With a needy lil’ pussy.”

Freeing your mouth, he throws his head back, straightening out and bringing both hands to your circle your waist. Now, he fucks you fast and brutally, his breath coming heavy and hard. With every stroke, Joel’s tip grazes your inner most sensitive spot, causing sheer ecstasy to radiate throughout your core.

“Come inside me, Joel,” you beg. “Come in me—please.”

Joel groans sinfully. “Can’t do that, sweetheart.”

Fluttering waves ripple from your cunt down your legs, threatening to take you over the edge.

“Joel,” you half-sob, “I’m gonna-”

He slows down, thrusting into you in great, harsh strokes, well-versed in the art of bringing a woman to climax. You cry out as your orgasm tears through you, unable to form words or thoughts or anything beyond “Joel,” “Ohmygod,” and “yes-yes-yes.”

“S’it baby,” he coaxes. “Come aaalll over my cock.”

Your walls clench around him, your pussy just as desperate as you are to keep him tucked inside you.

He exhales shakily, grabbing fistfuls of your ass in his hands.

“Fuck it,” he groans, thrusting faster inside you. “M’gonna fill you up.” Your eyes are still rolled to the back of your head, your hands desperately searching for something to grasp onto. His cock swells inside you, tensing up between your walls as his seed spills out between them—he comes with an “oh fuck” and a final, brutal stroke.

You lie still for a moment, listening to the sound of your ragged breathing harmonizing with Joel’s. He runs a massive hand along your arm, his touch suddenly delicate, revering.

“You’d better fuckin’ pray I can find the pill for you tomorrow,” he says finally, his husky voice both amazed and amused.

Lifting your chest off the table, you slowly flip around, perching on the edge to face him as he reorganizes his clothes, pulling his boxers up and tugging at his fly. He looks so handsome between your knees, with his hair slightly disheveled and his shirt all rumpled.

“Get extra,” you coo, your breath still uneven, your thoughts still bungled. You run a slight hand devotedly down his plaid shirt, marvelling at the pleasure the proximity brings you.

He laughs low, shaking his head. “S’was a one-time deal, angel,” he says with a smile. He finishes doing up his belt and leans both his hands on the table, his nose just centimeters away from your own. “Can’t be caught fuckin’ my associates’ daughters—bad for business,” he adds, pulling your underwear back up your thighs. You adjust yourself and pout at him, playfully.

“You didn’t like it?” you ask, pretend-innocence soaking your tone.

He smiles softly. “I liked it too much,” he responds. “S’why it can’t happen again.”

You raise your eyebrows defiantly. “Well, I’m not gonna make it easy on you, Miller.”

He slowly straightens up, offering you a hand as you scoot off the desk. Your legs feel shaky, but his hold anchors you in place.

“M’countin’ on that.”

With that said, he gestures for you to leave the room, following closely behind you. He opens the door and you peer into the hallway, making note of its emptiness before stepping out. Joel exits soon after, taking off in the opposite direction. You catch him looking back at you, a dazed, hungry look still lingering on his expression.

It makes you smile.

Later that night, you find Emma and Joel finds Tess. You’re back to your side of the divide and he’s back to his.

It’s as though nothing ever happened.

“Hey, check it out,” Emma remarks. “Miller actually looks, like, chilled-out,” she slurs loudly.

You smile knowingly, nodding in agreement.

“‘Guess he found a way to blow off steam.”

She gives you a quick, faded nod before becoming absorbed in something else. It doesn’t bother you. You’re also absorbed in something else: lost in thought, consumed by the lingering echoes and traces of Joel’s skin on yours.

When you catch his eye from across the room, you can tell that his thoughts are haunted by the very same thing.

This was no longer an innocent game.

It was a dirty secret.

—

Read part 2: Pretty When You Cry

Read part 3: Let Me Love You Like a Woman (Let Me Hold You Like a Baby)

12K notes · View notes

sematarygirls · 1 month ago

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FUGITIVE!RAFE x MOTELWORKER!READER

WARNINGS .ᐟ fem!reader, unprotected p in v, choking, exhibitionism if you squint, murder, reader hates the cops, fucking a wanted criminal on a desk pretty much, seedy motel, passing mention of prostitution, drugs, and other illegal activities

NOTES .ᐟ when you're in an idgaf war and your opponent is motelworker!reader... my girl has seen shit, okay.

Sweat glistened on your exposed skin, a fitted top and pair of shorts barely covering your figure as you sat in the front office of your dad's motel. The heat was unbearable, and the humidity practically suffocating, causing your hair to stick to your forehead and your clothes to uncomfortably cling to you.

Leaning back in the office chair with your bare feet propped up on the desk—a fresh layer of nail polish drying on your toes—and a magazine in your hands, you sighed loudly, flipping to the next page. A bored expression was seemingly permanently etched into your features, purely disinterested in anything. Someone could come in and rob you with a gun to your head, and you'd barely blink.

The small square television in the corner was playing some sitcom at a low volume, the sounds of a couple fucking in a room a few doors down drowning out whatever stupid, corny jokes were being told under an ear piercing laugh track

The little motel, named Paradise Inn like this was some sort of really bad porno, was out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. The nearest building was a gas station a mile or so up the road, and the sheriff's department which was about five miles in the opposite direction.

The secluded nature meant that you were always encountering the oddest people. You were sure half of them were serial killers and the other half prostitutes, if you had to guess, but you didn't actually care. Whatever the reason they came in to pay for a dirt cheap hotel room with no questions asked was their own business, and you genuinely couldn't care less.

The little bell above the door chimed, indicating that someone had entered, but you didn't even look up from your magazine, your eyes scanning some Hollywood drama about people you'd never even heard of. Footsteps thudded on the dirty linoleum floor, stopping right in front of you. When you still didn't look up, the man cleared his throat impatiently, clearly irritated and not in the mood for games.

"I'll be right with you," you hummed with disinterest, despite the fact that you were clearly not doing anything even remotely important. You just liked fucking with people, and you didn't like these kinds of people thinking they could walk over you, especially the occasional creepy old fucks that you encountered.

Rafe's jaw clenched at your blatant dismissal of him, the room falling silent—save for the TV and lewd acts echoing off the walls—for a moment as he fidgeted impatiently. "Customer service here is real nice," he said sarcastically, planting his palms on the desk and leaning forward.

You rolled your eyes in annoyance, closing the magazine and tossing it onto the desk before settling back in the chair and looking him over. He was hotter than the usual patrons that frequented this establishment, his biceps glittering as the thin sheen of sweat on his skin caught the light.

"You want a room or not?" You asked, eyes boring into his sharp blue ones. He clearly thought his intimidating presence alone was enough to get you to bend to his every whim, but you'd dealt with guys like him, and worse, since you were like five years old. The whole macho routine was not new to you, and frankly, you were tired of it.

"Obviously," he said, his tone clipped with annoyance. "What the fuck else would I be here for? Your lovely personality?" His gaze raked over you, taking in the sight of your glistening skin, the thin fabric of your shirt that left little to the imagination—he was pretty sure you werent even wearing a bra underneath, and your bare legs on the desk, crossed at the ankle.

"How charming," you deadpanned, his attitude not phasing you in the slightest as you leaned back and retrieved a key dangling from one of the hooks behind you. "You paying by the hour or..." Your gaze flickered back to him, the question lingering in the air. He didn't look like the type that needed to pay for sex, but maybe his delightful personality drove most women away.

"By the night," he replied curtly, looking like he wanted to say something else but decided against it. He dug into the pocket of his jeans, pulling out a wad of cash. He peeled off some bills and tossed them onto the desk haphazardly. "Keep the change."

"Whatever, dude," you shrugged, pulling your legs off the desk to sit up properly and grab his money. In the process, something on the TV caught your eye, a breaking news report about a cop killer that was spotted a few towns over.

Rafe followed your gaze, his jaw clenching as he saw his picture flashed onto the screen. His mind started to run through every possible option. He couldn't let you call the cops and report him, but did he really want another body under his belt.

"Huh," you said, your brows furrowing as you looked between him and the man in front of you. "That guy kinda looks like you," you hummed before shrugging, brushing it off without a care in the world. You didn't care whether he killed a cop or the president. As long as he ran off to his room and left you alone, you wouldn't have a problem. "Anyway, here's your key," you tossed it onto the desk, getting up to put the money in the safe.

His brows furrowed, expression guarded as he glared at your figure. Were you playing dumb until he left, so you could call the cops, or were you genuinely an idiot? He watched you bend down, his gaze immediately falling to the way your shorts pulled up and revealed the underside of your ass to him—a fact you were either unaware of or indifferent to.

You punched in the code and put the money inside before closing it. You were surprised, and a little annoyed, to see him still standing there when you stood back up and turned around. "Did you need something else?" You asked, your tone indicating that you were clearly uninterested in helping him with anything else he may need.

He hesitated, staring intently at you for a long pause, as if he was trying to read you. Ultimately, he decided you were more trouble than you were worth, so he just turned on his heels and walked away without giving you an answer.

"I hate this fucking job," you muttered under your breath, plopping back down in the office chair and grabbing your magazine while you attempted to get comfortable for another five long hours until your dad came back and took over.

It wasn't but an hour later that the bell above the door chimed again, making you audibly groan. Could you not have a moment of peace? You look up from your spot, rolling your eyes when the sheriff walked in with his hoity toity, high and mighty attitude.

"Sheriff," you greeted flatly, watching him approach the desk with his thumbs hooked in his belt. He looked like an idiot.

He said your name in a low drawl, the two of you having become quite familiar. It was quite often that you ran into the sheriff and his deputies, considering the kind of no questions asked establishment your father was running here. "You seen the news lately?"

"Does it look like I watch the news?" You asked, your gaze unwavering and your voice dripping with apathy. Obviously, you had seen the news, but you weren't about to give a cop what he wanted, especially not when that cop was Sheriff Swanson—the biggest pain in your ass since your father.

Sheriff Swanson's eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching. He didn't like your attitude, he never had, but he knew better than to push his luck with you because you sat around all day, bored out of your mind. He knew you'd jump at the chance to pick a fight with anyone, especially him. Instead, he pulled out a photo from his pocket and slapped it down on the desk. "Recognize this guy?"

You hummed, glancing down at the photo briefly. It was the same guy from the news that was now residing in room 212. "Nah, never seen that man before in my life," you shrugged, completely disinterested. You weren't a snitch, and besides, your dad would have a conniption if he found out you went talking to the cops about one of the customers because it would 'ruin your reputation' as if the reputation of this place wasn't in the shitter already.

He searched your face, trying to detect any hint of a lie, but your expression was utterly blank, bored even. With a frustrated sigh, he snatched the photo back. "You sure about that? 'Cause I got a tip that he checked in not too long ago."

You laughed mockingly. "And you believe anything anyone here says? They'd frame their mamas for a packet of smokes and crumpled dollar bill," you scoffed, wondering who would have possibly called the cops. Half the people here were engaging in illegal activities, risking a police raid was a stupid fucking move.

"Well, if he does show up, you call me. Understand?" Sheriff Swanson ordered, stabbing a finger at you. He was clearly annoyed. Most of the people in this town bent to his will like he walked on water or something but not you or your dad. You two were considered outsiders because of your nonchalant attitude and seedy business dealings.

"Oh, so I'm doing your job for you now, Swanson?" You rolled your eyes, crossing your arms over your chest. "You want me to put on a little shiny gold star and citizen's arrest him?" That stupid fucking gold badge really pissed you off for some reason. What did he think this was? An old western film? It was time to retire the glorified cowboy hat and supervillain mustache. It wasn't cool ten years ago when he became sheriff, and it's not cool now.

"I'm not asking, I'm telling," he growled, his voice low and threatening. "This ain't no joke. That man's dangerous."

"Oh my gosh, a bad guy... whatever will I do?" You deadpanned, kicking your feet back up and grabbing your magazine, already bored with the conversation. You were hoping he would tire of your oh-so-witty and charming banter and just leave, so you could go back to dying of heat stroke and boredom without his grating voice in your ear.

"I swear to god, girl," he growled, slamming his hands down on the desk to scare you, but you didn't even flinch. You just turned the page of your magazine calmly. "You're as infuriating as your old man." He glared at you, clearly wanting to reach across the desk and throttle you.

"Unless you got a warrant, you can go," you said impassively, your eyes scanning the fashion page and debating whether you could pull that skirt off or not, clearly expecting the sheriff to see himself out.

Sheriff Swanson clenched his fists, glaring at you for a long moment. It infuriated him how dismissive you always were, but there was nothing he could do about it since freedom of speech meant you weren't technically breaking the law. "This ain't over," he spat before turning on his heel and stalking out, the bell chiming angrily as he shoved the door open.

"Uh huh," you hummed as he slammed the door behind him aggressively. "Men," you scoffed, rolling your eyes. You hoped that no one else would bother you, but you could only be so lucky. Unfortunately, you seemed to be very popular today, and the heat was making you bitchier than usual—not that you were that much less bitchy on a normal day.

Not fifteen minutes later, the man from the news walked back into the office, and you were sure that you were going to be on the news next if people didn't stop waltzing in here and demanding your attention. It wasn't like you were doing anything that particularly interested you. You just hated drama, and that was all the people of this town ever seemed to bring here.

"Whatever you want, I don't have it," you said the moment the door flung open. Your father told you to work the desk, so that's what you intended to do. Catering to the sleazy whims of all the customers that came in was not your job description.

"Why didn't you rat me out to the cops?" He asked, cutting right to this chase, his eyes boring into yours with an intensity that made you shift a little in your seat. He ignored your attitude, and seemingly, the remarks you made earlier, now just curious.

You shrugged nonchalantly, placing the magazine down for what seemed to be the millionth time in the span of an hour. "Because I couldn't care less about you or whatever you did."

"You should," he said menacingly, crossing his arms over his chest and stepping forward, clearly trying to scare you. Your eyes caught the movement of his biceps flexing before flicking back up to his face.

"Oh, please, spare me," you rolled your eyes, not the least bit intimidated by him.

"I killed someone," he tried to get you to see the gravity of the situation. He didn't like that you weren't afraid, that you didn't seem to care at all. "And you're sitting here acting like this is a fucking game?"

"I killed a man once," you said sincerely, watching his brows shoot up in surprise. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you," you snorted, cracking a smile for the first time since he'd met you, not that he'd known you all that long.

"Funny," he replied dryly, taking another step closer. His tall frame loomed over you, and you had to crane your neck to look up at him.

"Whatever," you breathed out, clearly finding yourself hilarious, even if he didn't. "Listen, I'm not gonna tell Sheriff Shithead or anyone else that you're here," you reassured him, still having hope that maybe he would fuck off and leave you alone. "Now, go find someone else to bother," you waved him off, standing from your seat and walking over to the vending machine in the corner.

You were unbelievably hot, the sweat coating your skin making you uncomfortable and sticky, which wasn't helping. You also couldn't deny that your temperature had gone up significantly when the man—whose name was Rafe, if you recalled correctly from the news report—walked in. Just because you didn't want anything to do with the trouble Rafe clearly left in his wake, didn't mean you were blind.

"You're not gonna ask why I killed her?" He asked curiously, following you over to the vending machine. If a murderer had shown up on his doorstep, he'd be a little more inclined to ask what happened. He watched you intently as you pressed the button for a cold soda, wiping your forehead with the back of your hand. He had to admit, you were hot as hell, even if you were insufferably annoying.

"How many times do I have to say 'I don't care' before people really start to get the message?" You huffed, stepping back and waiting for the soda to fall, but it never did. "Goddamn machine," you cursed, balling your hand into a fist and hitting the front of the machine hard. Almost instantly, the clanging of aluminum on metal rung out. "Aha," you rejoiced triumphantly, bending down to grab the can from the tray.

He watched as you grabbed the soda, then watched as you brought it to your lips and tilted your head back. His eyes dropped to your exposed neck, admiring the long column of your throat as you swallowed. This whole murderer thing had really taken its toll, and he hadn't got any in what felt like weeks, which felt like an eternity for someone like Rafe who loved sex.

You pulled the can away, looking over at him with furrowed brows as your tongue darted out to lick your lips. "You're really just gonna loom over me like a fucking weirdo while I work?" You asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I'd hardly call sitting around and reading magazines all day 'working'," he scoffed, crossing his arms again. It's like he wanted to draw attention to his biceps, and damn, it was working.

"Fine, you really gonna loom over me like a fucking weirdo while I don't work?" You corrected, mirroring his actions and crossing your arms, the can dangling from your fingertips as you shot him a look.

"I'm not looming," he said defensively, taking a step back as if to prove that he wasn't. "I'm just standing here, talking to you. Why, is it bothering you?" He smirked mischievously, enjoying the way you rolled your eyes. You seemed to do that a lot, ever exasperated by every word that left everyone else's mouths.

"Yes, actually, it is," you said flatly, sitting on the edge of the desk and setting the half-consumed soda beside you. You stared at him, your annoyance evident in your gaze as you once again, crossed your arms. If he was gonna taunt you with his biceps and smart ass comments, you were gonna taunt him with your tits. Two could definitely play it that game.

His eyes immediately dropped to your chest, his gaze lingering on the way your arms pressed your boobs together, accentuating them. Your lack of a bra definitely wasn't helping, your nipples straining against the thin fabric. Damn, he loved a good pair of tits, and even through your shirt, he could tell you definitely had some of the best he'd ever seen.

"My eyes are up here, Rafe," you snapped, drawing his attention back to your face. He was a bit taken aback by you saying his name, seeing as he hadn't provided it to you, but he'd be lying if he said it didn't sound fucking hot coming from those pretty lips of yours.

"I know where your eyes are," he smirked, not looking the least bit ashamed as his gaze slowly dragged back up to your face, pausing at your lips before meeting your eyes.

"Perving on the girl who can send you to a federal penitentiary with one phone call isn't a wise move," you tsked, planting your palms on the desk behind you and leaning back casually, eyeing him. You didn't mind his eyes on you. In fact, you kind of liked it, but you liked being a pain in the ass more.

"And what're you gonna do, hmm?" He asked, taking a step forward, closing the distance between the two of you. He could practically feel the heat radiating from your body as he loomed over you. "Turn me in?" He scoffed, his smirk never wavering.

"You seemed pretty worried about it earlier," you pointed out, tilting your head to look up at him with a confident grin. You had a no getting involved rule, but you were quite literally hot and bothered right now, so maybe you could make an exception just this once.

"Well, that was before you made it clear that you 'don't care' as you so enthusiastically put it" he said, his voice dropping to a lower octave as he reached out, his fingertips trailing along your collarbone. "You're not gonna tell on me, are you, sweetheart?" He asked mockingly, knowing full well that you wouldn't, especially not after what he was about to do to you.

"Maybe I will," you said lowly, looking up at him with a challenging glint in your eye. "What are you gonna do about it, huh?"

He leaned down, his breath ghosting over your lips as he spoke. "I'm gonna shut you up," he said, his hand reaching up to wrap around your throat, applying just enough pressure to make your eyes widen. You looked up at him, still no trace of fear in your eyes as your lips parted at the feeling.

He leaned in, his mouth crashing against yours in a rough, needy kiss, his hand tightening slightly around your throat. He kissed you like he was starving, like he'd been deprived of oxygen, and he needed you more than he needed his next breath.

His other hand gripped your thigh tightly, pulling you to the edge of the desk, so he could press himself against you. You moaned into the kiss, the feeling of his tongue in your mouth and him manhandling you enough to make your head spin.

He swallowed your moan, his tongue delving deeper, exploring every inch of your mouth. The hand on your thigh slid upwards, his rough fingertips digging into your soft flesh. He was so hard it almost hurt, his cock straining against the denim as he ground against you.

"You should lock the door," you mumbled into his mouth, a little annoyed that his hair was buzzed, so you could run your fingers through it.

"Who cares?" He growled back, his teeth sinking into your neck as his hand slid up higher, brushing the hem of your little shorts. "You're letting a wanted fugitive fuck you. I'd be willing to bet you like the risk."

You let out a breathy moan, your head tilting to the side to allow him better access as your nails raked gently along his scalp. "Asshole," you muttered, not appreciating his rude, but accurate, assessment of you.

"Mhm," he hummed against your neck, his hand sliding higher to hook into the waistband of your shorts. "You like that, though, don't you?" You didn't reply, instead, shifting to help him slide off your shorts and underwear. You weren't really interested in small talk right now.

He groaned at your eagerness, his hand leaving you momentarily to quickly undo his belt and free himself from the confines of his jeans. If you didn't want to waste time with foreplay, he sure as hell wasn't going to fight you on that. After all, he was kind of on borrowed time. He didn't know how long it would be before the cops came back here looking for him.

He grabbed your thighs again, roughly spreading your legs apart and positioning himself between them. With one swift motion, he buried his hard length inside you, a loud groan escaping you as he felt your walls stretch to accommodate the intrusion. You let out a sound between a gasp and a moan, your hand gripping his big bicep for purchase as he thrust into you at a dizzying pace.

He set a brutal rhythm, pounding into you with no care for gentleness. He was too far gone, too desperate for the feeling of being inside you. His hand came up to wrap around your throat again, using it as leverage as he drove his hips forward, causing a needy whine to force it's way past your lips. The burn from him stretching your tight walls coupled with the pleasure of him fucking and choking you had you practically on cloud nine.

"Shit, look at you. This sweet little pussy was made for my dick," he groaned, seeing the look of pure ecstacy on your face as your walls seemed to pull him in with each thrust.

His own face was scrunched up in concentration, his jaw clenched as he fought to hold back. He wanted this to last. He wanted to brand himself into your memory so you'd think of him every time you sat in this office, every time you laid down to sleep, every time you touched yourself in the shower. He wanted you to remember how you let a murderer defile you.

You were a mess of moans and whines as his tip repeatedly hit your g-spot, knocking the breath from your lungs with each thrust. Sure, you'd been fucked before, but never like this, never with a guy that could probably put you in a headlock and choke you out—and you'd probably like it. He was good, and he knew it.

He smirked arrogantly, his hand around your throat tightening slightly. "I'm gonna fill this needy little pussy so full, gonna make you remember that you're a dirty fucking girl for letting me do this to you," he said lowly, his words holding a vaguely threatening edge, but you didn't care. They only served to turn you on more, pushing you closer to your peak as his thumb slid down to play with your sensitive clit.

He could tell you were close, your breath hitching every time he bottomed out inside of you. He groaned as his movements grew jerky, his own finish nearing. "Come for me, baby. Let me feel this greedy cunt squeeze my cock."

"Shit, Rafe," you moaned, your nails digging painfully into his bicep as your walls clamped down around him, your release washing over you. The feeling of your walls bearing down around him triggered his own orgasm, hitting him like a freight train. His vision practically blurred as he emptied himself deep inside of you, his cock pulsing with each spurt. He held you in place, his hand around your throat, as he rode out his climax, painting your insides with his cum.

"Fuck," you panted, your head tilting back and eyes fluttering closed as you caught your breath. Maybe this job had a certain... charm. Though, it was only just now occurring to you that you let this man cum inside you, and he didn't even know your name.

He stayed buried inside you for a long moment, his softening cock twitching with the aftershocks. Then, with a grunt, he pulled out and tucked himself away without another word, not that you expected much from a guy who was so eager to give you a quick fuck on a desk where anyone could have found you.

You hopped off the desk, retrieving your underwear and shorts to slip them back on, trying to ignore the feeling of his cum seeping out of you. You definitely needed a long shower and maybe a moment of silent reflection after what you just did.

He watched you dress with a critical eye, his gaze lingering on your body, as if committing it to memory. "Guess I should be going before the cops decide to come knocking again," he said casually, as if he hadn't just fucked you senseless.

"Guess so," you said, your seemingly apathetic attitude returning as you crossed your arms and regarded him with that same uninterested look that you'd given him when he first walked in here. You knew what you were getting into. You weren't an idiot. He was still on the run from the cops, and you were still just a motel worker in bumfuck nowhere.

He gave you a nod, his expression unreadable as he turned and strode to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob, glancing back at you over his shoulder. "You didn't tell me your name," he commented, his voice low. He wasn't sure why he cared. The chances of seeing you again were abysmal, but he was curious.

"No, I didn't," you said flatly, a small smile tugging at the corners of your lips, threatening to betray your nonchalant demeanor.

He studied your face for a moment, trying to decide if he should press the issue or just leave. Something about you, about this moment felt... important. He couldn't quite place the odd but distinctive feeling, but still, he found himself saying, "Next time you see me, I expect you to tell me your name."

You raised an eyebrow at his presumptuous words. You hardly expected to see him again, given the whole fugitive thing, but you decided to humor him. "If I see you again, I will."

He nodded, seeming to accept your response, before turning and leaving without another word, the door shutting a little harsher than he intended behind him. As he walked to the car he'd stolen to keep the cops off his ass, he couldn't shake the feeling that this encounter, this girl, meant something more than just a quick fuck in the office of a seedy motel.

tags .ᐟ @starkeysprincess / @cometmultiverse / @iheartjjmaybnk / @all4l0vee / @kissesfrmriri / @xoxohoneymoongirl / @bradshawed / @fallbhind

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elliespectacular · 4 months ago

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FARCETTE IS NOW AVAILABLE

The wait is over! You can now play Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore but with all the cutscenes turned into YouTube Poops. Get it here: https://elliespectacular.com/farcette

#ytp #youtube poop #dathings #arzette the jewel of faramore #arzette #game mod #cutscene mod #seedy eye software #farcette #cd i

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gutsby · 1 year ago

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Playing Dangerous

Pairing: Detective Dixon x Reader

Summary: Working undercover in a seedy part of town, homicide detective Daryl sees you in your skimpy club attire and mistakes you for a hooker. A wrongful arrest makes for a funny way to foreplay, but you’re still game.

Warnings: NSFW. Thigh riding. Brat taming. Daddy kink. Dubcon elements vis-à-vis power imbalance and forceful facefucking, plus some dark-ish dirty talk, face slapping, overstimulation where Daryl keeps making you cum after you say that you’re finished (all meant to be consensual).

Notes: Big big thank you to @dilfsandmartinis for this filthy lil idea!! 🫣🩷 Requests are always welcome :-)

Shitty was an understatement.

This was a full-blown, top-notch terror of an evening, rivaled only in its sheer lethality by the time you once broke your nose and got arrested twice in the same day.

Tonight was likely to be a close second, though.

You’d spent all of ten minutes in the center of that hot and sweaty club, fighting madly not to drop your drinks or lose your purse, when suddenly, simultaneously, it seemed every guy around you had lost the power of self-control. You were prodded and groped like a shiny slab of meat ripe for any man’s hands—and no matter how hard you elbowed each offender, you couldn’t find reprieve. You were constantly being grabbed.

You’d grumbled as much to your friends, and they’d told you to ‘lighten up’ and ‘not be so surprised when you were wearing something like that.’

Something like what? A super mini skirt and a bustier?

You promptly informed each member of your party they could kiss your ass, and left.

That had been almost half an hour ago, and you were still currently stuck outside the club waiting for a lift. In the snow. With no jacket, or adequate covering.

Every time a taxi passed, you’d wobble over to the street corner and wave your hand, but on each endeavor, without fail, its driver would shoot you a dirty look and speed right off. Like you had, ‘I’M GONNA ROB YOU’ written on your forehead or else smelled of rotting flesh.

You were mystified, distraught, and supremely pissed off. You didn’t know what you were doing wrong.

The second you saw a semi-reputable looking Dodge Charger pull up to the curb, you decided you’d had enough. Uber or not, you needed a fucking ride.

You stalked over to the vehicle, already seeing its passenger side window creeping down on your approach. Your arms were quick to fold over your chest as you bent down and scowled,

“Could you please take me home?”

The man you saw inside looked polished. Well-groomed.

You hardly had more than a second or two to inspect his appearance, though, because in an instant, he was leaning over the center console to shoot you a smile.

“How much, hon?”

You heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, someone was taking you seriously.

You reached for the door handle and tumbled right in.

“Any price, just name it,” you groaned. You rubbed your face with both hands and leaned back in the seat. Almost unable to believe your stroke of good fortune after so many failed attempts, you let out a shaky, but grateful, breath and spread your legs just a little to get comfy.

“Good,” the man to your left said, calmly, evenly...then, “Now put your hands where I can see them.”

You lowered your hands from your face and gave the stranger a puzzled look.

“What?”

“Hands, show me hands,” he said, voice raising ever slightly in volume.

What the fuck was he on? Staring you down with that stupid, self-righteous face, lip curled in a melodramatic snarl like he could’ve been one of those lousy fuckin’—

“Police,” he barked. Louder, this time. Flashing a badge before your panic-stricken eyes and clenching his jaw.

Your hands flew up instinctively.

Was it illegal to hail a cab now?!

You didn’t have time to think, or blink, or do much else besides breathe when the well-dressed man got out of the car and instructed you to do the same. Your hands and feet seemed to move of their own accord as you gingerly slipped out from the front seat of the car to the cold wintry night outside. You were pushed to your knees on the concrete sidewalk and made to kneel.

To your right, you saw a gaggle of college kids strolling by—some pointing, others laughing, but all watching in muted awe as the undercover cop circled to your back.

“You have the right to remain silent—” he started, reaching for the handcuffs on his belt.

“Excuse me?!” you hissed.

“—anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—” he continued. A couple gentle clinks and suddenly your wrists were in chains.

“What’d I do? What the fuck did I do?”

“You have a right to an attorney,” he droned on, heedless of your cries as he read your Miranda rights, “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

You felt tears spring to your eyes as both cuffs locked into place and you were being hauled back onto your feet, sniveling and sobbing before throngs of amused onlookers. Your face burned with embarrassment.

“I didn’t know it was a crime, officer— I didn’t know, I swear— I-I-I’m so fucking drunk!” you blubbered as he guided you swiftly to the rear of his car. You practically bawled when he opened the back door.

“I just really needed a taxi!” you wailed, legs shaking as he started to lower you into the vehicle.

At that, he stopped.

He tugged you back on your feet and spun you around.

“A what?” he asked.

“A taxi,” you cried, “All the other drivers kept— kept driving away, I thought, I-I don’t know, I thought you might be another Uber driver or something.”

The man’s expression betrayed a change, though you couldn’t decipher just what that was through your tears. You sniffled and tried to wipe your cheek with your shoulder but ended up smearing more makeup in your line of sight. You whimpered at a pathetic pitch.

“Taxi,” the police officer repeated, seeming to mull over the word in his mind like it was the latest addition to the English language. He frowned.

Through your tear-streaked vision, you could just then detect the faintest trace of affliction…even remorse? His eyes wavered between your face, your ensemble, and the ground below, making a couple quick circuits before finally settling on your wet, bleary gaze.

His voice sounded strained to you now.

“You weren’t…trying to have sex with me?”

Your breath caught in your throat. You coughed, blinked, looked the man up and down and hardly knew to even shake your head with how blind-sided you felt.

“W-What? What?”

“You’re not…a prostitute?” the man said, almost pained.

That query threw you for a loop just the same. You pressed your weight on the car and sensed a strange unsteadinesses seize your limbs. This undercover cop thought you were a hooker—and a cheap one at that, game for any price the man was offering—and presently, you felt queasy. You looked down at your outfit.

It surely wasn’t that revealing, was it? He couldn’t have been so easily convinced of your profession by a...pair of glossy go-go boots, latex skirt, and lacy top, right?

Okay, you looked a little bit like a hooker.

Worse yet, you noticed a wad of cash stuffed between your left tit and armpit, from the time you tried to bribe the bouncer for a ride while leaving the bar. A loose cigarette stuck behind your ear, two hickeys suckled into the skin of your neck, and a teensy bag of blow to boot, tucked haphazardly between an assortment of Trojans and Magnums strewn lazily throughout your purse.

Alright, you could’ve been cast in the next Pretty Woman remake, but who cares? Half the girls in the club were dressed just as scantily, if not more so.

You somehow mustered the strength to squeeze your hands into frozen little fists behind your back and gave the officer a brazen look.

“Think I don’t have anyone better to fuck?” you scoffed.

The detective’s expression went from inscrutable to uncomfortable in fewer than two seconds. He seemed hardly able to look you in the eye any longer, casting sidelong stares at the crowd growing larger on the sidewalk. Collective curiosity piqued at the sight of a cop and a would-be streetwalker making small talk outside of the club, he knew he had to get out of this. Quick.

“I’ll, uh, take ya home, ma’am,” he said under his breath.

Before you could either accept or reject his offer, he had your cuffs undone—discreetly—and your body shuffled hastily inside his car. You heard the door slam shut and saw the officer make quick strides toward the driver’s side. You raised both brows as soon as he re-entered.

“That’s it?” you quipped.

“What?” he returned as he started the engine.

“You make that hot-shot unlawful arrest in front of all those people, and you’re not even gonna say sorry?”

The man made every effort not to shoot you a look in the rearview mirror. Slowly, he pulled into the street.

“Well...y’know, you do look the part. But I’m sorry.” Proffering one of the most pitiful apologies you’d heard in your life, the detective fixed his gaze on the road.

You knew he was bluffing. The man was humiliated as shit, too coy to come clean with the fact that he’d just made an egregious error, and now offering you a ride all to make himself out to be the good guy—and quite possibly avoid a wrongful arrest lawsuit.

Maybe it was the residual amounts of alcohol still coursing through your veins or else the cocaine, but you couldn’t let the dipshit get off that easy. You scrambled your way up to the front of the car.

It was at that moment Detective Dixon sincerely wished he’d driven the squad car—complete with a cage, of sorts, to keep inmates locked away in the back seat—rather than his unmarked vehicle, to be making arrests that night. He stifled a groan when you plopped down in the passenger seat next to him.

“What do you mean, ‘looked the part,’ hm?” you quizzed, burning a hole through the side of his head with how intently you were watching him.

“Put yer seatbelt on,” the man rolled his eyes, attention never straying from the long line of cars ahead of him, “And where do you live?”

“Over on ‘Fuck 12’ Avenue, Officer...Dixon?” you answered sarcastically, scanning his chest for a nametag.

“Detective,” he corrected, “Friends call me Daryl.”

“Detective Dixon, I am not your friend.” You smirked, and for the first time, you thought your discomfited front-seat companion might be tempted to crack one too. You watched him fight his base instincts, however, and force a frown instead. Still not tearing his gaze from the road, he reached over, blindly, for your seatbelt.

“C’mon now, buckle up,” he urged, echoing the words of a concerned father but somehow making it sound far more sexy when he said it. You swallowed a giggle and swatted his hand away.

“Detective!” you feigned an offended gasp.

“Ah, hush up, will ya?” Daryl muttered as his broad, veiny hand continued fumbling for the seatbelt, “You know it’s against the law to— shit!”

The two of you simultaneously leapt in your seats with near-identical sounds of...shock. You, feeling his fingers accidentally graze that tender spot between your legs and him, in turn, finding it unclothed. And soaked.

Detective Dixon retracted his hand just as fast as he’d sunk it in place, only holding it up in the air for an instant—but that was all either of you needed to see that his digits were glistening. You clamped your legs tight together and sucked in a breath.

Under any normal set of circumstances, you would’ve been much more in tune with the way your body was reacting to external stimuli. With all the commotion of your almost-arrest and the subsequent desire to exact revenge on the undercover detective, you hadn’t even realized how physically aroused you were.

Still reeling from his touch, you sank back in your seat. Suddenly more conscious of your bodily fluids than ever before, and embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry,” Daryl blurted out in a hurry. Gripping the steering wheel and pretending not to notice the slight wet slip of his right hand.

You couldn’t speak. He wouldn’t dare to venture a look to see if you might.

Now this would make for one hell of a career-ending lawsuit, Detective Dixon thought with a grimace. Wrongful arrest, soliciting sex on the clock, making unwanted advances on a woman who was technically, in a sense, being detained in his car while he—

Jumped, again, the second he felt your hand on his own.

You were pulling his arm over to your side of the car.

When Daryl turned his head, he paled the instant he saw you bring his hand to your mouth. Watched you pucker your lips and move them over his still-damp fingertips. Then suck them inside your mouth, three at a time.

He nearly swerved off the road and took out six civilians.

“Eyes...on the road, detective,” you murmured quietly, words garbled by the obstruction of his fingers.

Daryl swallowed thickly, and then, reluctantly, turned his attention to the street. He didn’t see much of what was in front of him.

“13 Peachtree Place.” You plucked his fingers out of your mouth just long enough to tell him your address. Then you went right back to suckling down the skin, letting your tongue glide gently over the tender, slick digits.

Daryl stifled a groan. There was no fucking way this was happening.

Guided by the faintest idea of where your neighborhood was located, he pulled off onto a side road and tried hard not to let out a sound when you sucked his three fingers to the back of your mouth—and felt your throat seize just a little at the sudden intrusion.

You pulled him out of your mouth with a wet pop and started over his lap.

You, yourself, were hardly more aware of what you were doing than why you were doing it, a slave to your sensory impulses and a sucker for a man in brown slacks. You crawled across the lap of the plainclothes officer who’d accused you of ‘selling yourself’ just minutes ago, only to show him what you were happy to do, free of charge.

It wasn’t your most gloriously feminist moment, to be sure, but then again, when were you going to get another chance to fuck the police and get off scot-free like this?

You palmed Detective Dixon through his pants and smiled when he whined just a little.

“Bet you wish I was selling, huh? Wish I was some pretty little thing for you to use at your convenience?” you purred, stroking over him gently.

Daryl gritted his teeth but said nothing in return. He brought the car to a stop under a red light.

You didn’t like the quiet types. You squeezed him harder in your hand, felt his erection grow even larger between your fingers, and moved up to press a kiss on his neck, tasting tiny beads of sweat there.

“How badly did you wish I was a whore, detective?”

When you leaned in for another couple light kisses, you were startled to feel a hand at your own throat, jerking your face up to his.

“Already knew you were the second I saw you.” he returned, deadpan, before your wide and unsuspecting eyes.

When the light turned green, he released your neck and reached for the back of your head. You let out a muffled whimper as he shoved you down against his crotch, stiff as a rock underneath your cheek.

“Why? Does a whore wanna suck it?” he asked, pressing his foot on the gas.

At a moment’s notice, you were robbed of your slight dominant edge and made to grovel under his touch like a bitch in heat. Daryl rubbed your plush lips over the mound in his pants like he was proud to make you feel it. And you, yielding as ever, made no attempt to keep from being manhandled because, if you were honest with yourself, you knew that you wanted it that way. You smiled against the cotton blend of his trousers and made a soft moan along the fabric, letting him drag you by the hair any way that he pleased.

When he yanked your head up and the car came to another stop, you weren’t surprised in the least by the trail of saliva that followed your lips. You locked eyes with his steel blue set and grinned again, quite stupidly.

“Well?” Daryl pressed, giving your hair a sharp tug.

You thought the sight of your watering mouth and blissed-out expression would have sufficed for an answer, but clearly, he wanted more. You worked gracelessly over the belt buckle and zip beneath your chin, and had his cock freed in seconds.

The car sped up again. Detective Dixon’s grip tightened on your scalp.

The second your lips latched onto the head of his dick, you knew you’d be in for a bumpy ride. He hissed as soon as the warmth of your mouth enveloped him, gripped the wheel like a vice, and made sure to spare your throat no expense the second he came to a sloppy halt.

Either your car was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or the man couldn’t drive for shit while getting road head. You’d put a large sum of cash on the latter if you had it.

Regardless, you bobbed your head up and down and tried your best to suppress the urge to gag when you could. It was tough work, flattening your tongue down his length, gripping his cock at the base, sucking hard until your cheeks hollowed out, and then bump went the whole fucking car, and suddenly your throat was forced to take four more inches in the span of a second.

You lifted your head to protest but were swiftly met with a firm hand holding it down. Keeping it down.

“You’re done sucking this cock when I say you’re done,” Daryl informed you sternly, sucking a breath through his teeth when you gagged around him once more.

He pulled you off just long enough to breathe—and answer a question.

“You live over by McGinty’s? Or MacManus’?”

“McVeigh’s,” you supplied in a shaky voice. No one ever got the Irish pubs around you right.

Daryl hummed and shoved you right back onto his dick, pretending to take no notice of the way you gripped his thigh or tried to groan, ‘Fucker’ against his shaft. Your oral cavity was presently flooded with cock, pre-cum, and saliva, and the longer you sucked, the harsher he got to pushing your head up and down. Your eyes stung with tears.

“In through yer nose, darlin’, almost there,” he hummed, smug as ever. Whether he meant you were close to your house or he was about to cum down your throat, you couldn’t be sure. Your mouth slipped and squelched gently over the man’s throbbing member and made tiny whimpers when you felt you might climax any minute.

In a clandestine act, you moved one hand down your body while you continued blowing Daryl’s brains out. You were half-cockdrunk and hardly more sentient than a sex doll, it seemed, but you could’ve sworn you were quite discreet about the endeavor between your legs. You had just grazed the slick wet seam of your slit, about to press two fingers to your clit, when a hand jerked at a clump of your hair. Hard.

As soon as your mouth was disconnected from his shaft, Daryl landed a tart slap on your cheek.

“My baby need something?” he said, almost tauntingly.

You blinked up at him, failing to understand, until he reached down and pried your hand away from your heat.

“If tha’ wet, greedy cunt needs sum’n, ya better tell me.”

You were amazed how deftly he appeared to maneuver the car now, just pinching your face between forefinger and thumb as he veered down winding streets. When you paused a second or two to answer, you were punished with another slap.

“Just wanted a touch,” you whined, trying to rub the cheek that was stinging and finding yourself outmatched by Daryl’s grip. He squeezed you even tighter.

“Then you say that next time. With your big girl words,” Detective Dixon grunted, bringing the car to a sudden halt and hauling you into his arms.

You looked small splayed across his lap. Perhaps even tinier just straddling one leg, as you were, body writhing beneath his touch and moans and whimpers bubbling up your throat one at a time.

When you looked around, you realized you were home.

Part of you wanted to bolt, for a second. Go sprinting up the lawn toward the safety of your home and jump straight under the covers, a place where you would be free to touch yourself as you pleased—no smug homicide detective breathing down your throat.

But, as you straddled his wide, beefy thigh and felt one gentle pulse of the muscle underneath, you knew you were done for. He saw just as clearly as you that your body was in need of release. Not from your fingers, not from his tongue, perhaps not even from the fat, throbbing cock that had been fucking your mouth the whole way home.

In this moment, all you needed was for him to bounce you on his thigh, let you ride, and make you cum.

Your expression must have looked exceptionally pathetic when you tried stirring your hips and felt two hands stop you cold in your tracks.

“What did daddy just say about big girl words, hm?” Daryl’s voice took on a tender lilt so unlike anything he’d said or done before that you almost didn’t hear the word ‘daddy,’ or think it strange at all. It seemed so natural playing off of his tongue.

“I need you, daddy,” you whimpered.

To say you were putty in his hands was still something short of the truth. You were damn near liquified underneath his touch, half-limp and wholly yearning as the man steadied you in place and began his delicate ministrations like you’d never experienced before.

The once callous, largely cruel law enforcement figure took on something of a gentle affect as he ran his hands up and down your body and let you ease yourself into his touch. There were kisses, caresses, and all sorts of soft little touches on your skin that made you feel pampered and prized, even precious in his eyes. Was this really the same man whose cock had been choking you to the point of tears just minutes ago?

Daryl hiked your skirt up your hips until the sight of your bare, needy cunt was all he could see. Still, he stayed cool and trained his eyes up to yours.

“How’s that feel, honey?”

Even as still as a stone, you felt sparks of hot energy fly up from your center. Remembering your big girl words, you replied, ‘So good, daddy, I just need some more.’

Daryl seemed happy to oblige his good little girl and made sure to shift his knee a little to the right. At the slightest bit of friction, you moaned.

“Oh, daddy,” you whined, leaning in to that praise-heavy dynamic Daryl seemed keen to play out. When he bounced his foot once or twice, shaking your whole body as he did, you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth and grabbed hold of his thigh. Even rolled your hips right back to his movements.

As light, tender sounds tumbled past your lips with increasing frequency, so too did Daryl’s mouth impart more gentle kisses and dirtier words for your ears to hear:

“Such a pretty little thing, ridin’ daddy’s thigh like tha’.”

“Grindin’ tha’ needy wet pussy all over my leg.”

“Gonna make a mess fer daddy? Show me how much my sweet girl’s been needin’ a good fuck?”

You loved every last filthy syllable. You braced hard against his leg and rutted up and down, in circles all around until you thought you could’ve soaked his whole pant leg. Meanwhile, he was bouncing his thigh, stroking your sides, and making sure you were never wanting for affection or praise as a soft swell of pleasure came dimly into view.

When he flattened one palm across your tummy and told you to lean back, you knew the end wasn’t far from sight.

Daryl took hold of your hips and made an even quicker cadence with his leg, bouncing you fast and hard and hopelessly tight against his thigh as he drank in every one of your moans coming out.

You pressed one hand to the window—long since fogged up and opaque with the hot breaths you were panting—and placed the other on Daryl’s shoulder.

You could tell by the glint in his eye and the grin on his face that he loved you like this. Spread out and desperate for release as you rocked your hips a vicious course over him, using his body for leverage as you fucked his leg for all it was worth.

“Tha’s my girl,” Daryl beamed, practically scintillating with joy.

He watched you rut your hips again and again in the most obscene sort of fashion, riding his thigh with a moan never far from your lips. You squeezed his shoulder.

“Daddy, I—” you started, only to swallow your words with a whimper the second Daryl started bouncing his foot even faster.

“Daddy what?” he teased, pretending not to notice the elevated pitch to your whines.

“Fuck— you know what!” you cried.

“Nah, pretty baby, I ain’t got the slightest clue,” Detective Dixon was exuberant now, grinning from ear to ear as the pleasure visibly mounted inside of you, “Fuck my leg a little harder and tell me how it feels.”

You did. He helped. Even gripped your hips and moved them for you, keeping that breakneck pace as you moaned and writhed and sank your nails into his shoulder as the feelings just got to be too much.

With one last strangled cry, you came all over his thigh.

And, whether that climax lasted two seconds or two hours, the man beneath you didn’t really care—he kept bouncing his leg as you finished, and long after you had, as well.

You seized both of his shoulders this time as you tried to slow his movements. He made no such effort to oblige, only flashing a smile and nodding his big, dumb head as he said:

“I want one more.”

What? No fucking way, you thought, communicating as much through your frantic eyes and the shake of your head. Daryl kept right on moving his leg and holding you firm to that mile-wide wet spot on his thigh, which only grew larger and larger the longer you rode him.

As a bizarre, unfamiliar feeling sank to the pit of your stomach and twisted, you weren’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or cum all over again—luckily, your body decided for you and graced you with yet another orgasm. You gritted your teeth and tried not to scream as a wild wave of a new sensation washed over your senses…

And Daryl kept bouncing that fucking knee.

Mind-numbing waves of ecstasy came crashing closer and closer than ever before, and frankly, you couldn’t quite tell how, or when, you’d ever cum again until you did it, you felt it: walls clenching back and forth while your vision blurred with pleasure. A sound wavering somewhere between a scream and a plea—Daryl, keep that goddamn knee to yourself, for fuck’s sake!—tore out of your chest and prompted you to sink all ten nails into flesh that told your sly detective it was time to stop.

Your whole frame was shaking by the time his foot came to rest. If you hadn’t been so fucked-out and sensitive, you just might’ve jumped out of the car the second it did.

But you didn’t. You stayed frozen in place, let your vision return apace, and didn’t let your eyes stray an inch from Daryl’s smug face while your third orgasm subsided.

Fighting every urge to giggle when he squeezed your ass and begged for another.

“Fourth one’s gonna cost ya, asshole.”

“Oh yeah?” Daryl said, grinning, “What’s your price?”

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon smut #daryl dixon one shot #daryl dixon imagine #daryl x reader #the walking dead #twd daryl #twd fanfiction #twd imagine #smut

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pin-k-ink · 7 months ago

Text

bereft // nakahara chuuya

tw ⇢ enemies to lovers, alcohol consumption, sexual tension, accidental love confession, mutual pining, making out, cunnilingus, marking, squirting, pet names, dirty talk, unprotected sex, implied masturbation, creampie, so much feelings, angst, character death, implied suicide, canon divergent

wc ⇢ 11.9k

a/n: uuuuuuh

The dingy Port Mafia bar thrums with raucous energy, neon lights casting lurid shadows across the smoky haze. Drunken laughter and slurred jeers ricochet off the stained walls, punctuated by the clink of glass and rattling ice.

And you've never been so goddamn tense in your life.

It's not like this vile atmosphere is anything new to you. As an agent of the Armed Detective Agency, seedy dens like this are just another Tuesday night's stakeout locale. You've posed as provocative arm candy more times than you can count, all in the name of gathering intel or inching closer to a high-priority target.

But there's something about the charged undercurrent crackling through this specific Port Mafia haunt that sets every nerve on high alert. Perhaps it's the debauched gazes burning into you from the leering criminals crowding the bar. Or the unmistakable sense of danger that lurks behind even the most minor-seeming mafioso's sneering smiles as they appraise your figure lounging in the corner.

You're supposed to be just another jaded call girl looking to cultivate some wealthy "clients" tonight. But you're hyper-aware of the slight bulge beneath your tight minidress - a meticulously concealed holdout pistol that's already becoming sticky against the inside of your thigh from clammy perspiration.

Exhaling a breath, you try to assume an air of boredom as your hooded eyes lazily roam the rowdy crowd. In through the nostrils, out through the pursed lips, nice and slow. You are the picture of vacant disinterest.

Until your roving gaze inadvertently lands on a shockingly familiar figure near the bar, and you instantly choke on the lungful of smoke-hazed air.

There, hunched over a glass of whiskey with furrowed brow and glowering into the amber liquid...is Nakahara fucking Chuuya. That gorgeous mess of orange hair is just as unruly as always, his slim form clothed simply in one of his signature crisp white shirts and dark slacks. You'd recognize the dangerous aura surrounding that unassuming body anywhere, no matter how casual he appears.

A phantom ache blossoms in your abdomen at the sight of him, flashing back to your first run-in with those bullets that marked the start of your endless, bloody game of cat-and-mouse. Unbidden, your fingers twitch toward the reassuring hardness tucked against your outer thigh, mentally counting the number of shots to subdue him.

Just as quickly, you berate yourself for the impulse. Need you forget already? This depraved confrontation was the entire purpose of your undercover operation tonight. Getting close to Chuuya and exploiting any potential vulnerability that could be used to dismantle his new plans...that was the mission you willingly walked into.

Dragging your eyes away from his brooding figure feels like monumental effort. But you manage to resettle your features into that of aloof disdain just as one of the rowdier patrons lets out a wolf whistle in your direction.

"Hey there, pretty thing! You lookin' for some company tonight?"

Here we go - time to work the role you've inhabited so many times before. Tilting your head, you shoot the drunken man your most sultry look, allowing your gaze to brazenly roam over his stocky frame before giving a coy flutter of your lashes.

"Depends...you got the cash to keep me interested, bigboy?"

The loutish grin stretching over his pock-marked face is all the response you need. With a slight sway of your hips, you slink across the bar toward his beckoning hand, mind already whirring on how to maintain this high-risk gambit of seduction and deception.

Just another job in the field, right? You can do this. Stay focused, do not give in to distraction or doubt.

Even if the persistent nagging at the back of your mind unceasingly whispers that those rules unequivocally do not apply whenever Chuuya is involved.

You paste on your most coquettish smile as the greasy patron waves you over with a meaty paw, making sure to add an extra sway to your hip movements. This guy clearly can't resist playing the big man around a pretty face.

"Well now, ain't you just the whole package?" he leers, giving you an exaggerated once-over as you slide into the empty seat beside him. The stench of stale beer and cheap cigars washes over you, making you fight back a wince.

"I do try my best," you murmur demurely, pitching your voice into that husky, sultry register that drives most men wild. Slowly, you lean in closer until your curves are almost brushing against his burly arm, holding his unfocused gaze through the veil of your lashes. "Though I'm sure a strapping guy like you already knew that."

The drunk's chest puffs out slightly at the transparent ego stroke, just like you knew it would. "Heh, damn straight, baby. Feel like letting ol' Daisuke here show you a good time?" One ham-sized hand starts inching up your exposed thigh with inevitable confidence.

Showtime. You allow your lips to quirk into the barest hint of a smirk, keeping your tone low and seductive. "Is that so? Well...I do have pretty discriminating tastes." Gently but firmly, you catch his wandering paw and guide it back to rest innocuously on the bartop. "Why don't you start by getting me a top-shelf drink, stud? Let me know if you've really got the means to keep me..."

You pause to lean in until your mouth is brushing his ear, voice dropping to a whisper. "...satisfied."

The shudder that ripples through Daisuke's broad frame is unmistakable, his pupils dilating to saucer-like dimensions. Without needing to be told twice, he frantically barks for the disgruntled bartender.

As the sleazy patron busies himself ordering the most expensive whiskey in an obvious bid to impress, you allow your gaze to drift away with studied nonchalance. But like a magnet, your eyes are subconsciously seeking out that head of mussed orange hair seemingly out of compulsion. And there he is, still brooding silently over his drink just a few spaces down the bar from where you sit...

Chuuya doesn't appear to have noticed your arrival yet, thank whatever deities exist. His shoulders are hunched and tense beneath that fitted white dress shirt, every once in a while raising his glass to take a measured sip.

You can't quite make out his expression from here, but there's something almost melancholy in the set of his jaw and the slight furrow of his brow that draws your eyes like a magnet. You find your curiosity piqued against your better judgment - just what circumstances could leave even the infamous Chuuya looking so uncharacteristically pensive and...dare you think it...vulnerable?

The ember of an idea begins sputtering in the back of your mind, firing up the nerve endings across your scalp with a sort of electric tingle. If you play your cards right, exploit the right angles just enough to pique his interest without arousing too much suspicion...this could be your ins-

"Hey sweet cheeks! Whiskey on the rocks, just how you like it." Daisuke's raucous voice practically bellowing in your ear shatters your concentration.

You can't quite suppress the slight wince, but quickly school your features back into a mask of allure as you turn your attention to the waiting glass being shoved under your nose. "Why thank you, handsome. That's exactly the kind of drink a powerful man orders for a thirsty girl."

Daisuke's chest puffs out even more, clearly gratified at the praise. "Heh, only the best for a sexy thing like you, darlin'. Love to make a woman purr like a kitten, if you catch my drift."

The wink and lascivious grin he shoots your way makes you mentally retch, but you force your own lips to curl into a coy simper. "Well then, why don't we see if you've really got the means to back that up," you husk out, gesturing discreetly at his bulging wallet with your chin.

The drunken lech practically starts salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs, fumbling the billfold open and stuffing a wad of crumpled tens into your waiting palm. You carefully keep your features impassive as you glance down appraisingly at the measly stack - barely enough for even fifteen minutes of your lowest rate. But you can hardly contain your smirk of satisfaction as you smooth the bills out to make them appear even flimsier.

"Mmm...I suppose this'll do for now, big spender. Long as you don't mind me keeping my options open." You shoot him a pointed look over the rim of your whiskey glass before downing the whole thing in one burning swallow.

The message is clear - your time and company won't come without him investing much, much more if he wants to keep you around for anything more...personal. Sure enough, Daisuke's brows knit together in obvious dismay at your dismissive assessment of his offering.

"Hey now, don't be like that, baby! I'm just getting started over here..."

As his babbling reassurances fade into the background cacophony of the bar, you allow your gaze to drift one final time toward that solitary beacon of orange in your periphery vision. Your ploy seems to have worked - Chuuya's laser focus is piercing directly toward you, brow furrowed even deeper as he openly stares. You don't break eye contact, keeping your expression carefully neutral.

One thin russet brow arches ever so slightly, almost in a silent challenge. Like he suspects the ruse you're running but can't pinpoint exactly why it seems...off. You tilt your chin in response, letting your lips quirk in the barest hints of a smirk before turning your attention fully back to Daisuke's increasingly pathetic groveling.

Hook, line, and sinker. You've got Chuuya's undivided attention now, whether he'll admit it or not.

It's time to really reel him in.

You lean back with deliberate slowness, allowing your low neckline to gape open even more as you eye Daisuke with lidded appraisal. "Well now, aren't you just a sweet talker," you murmur, making sure to drag your pink tongue across your lower lip in an exaggerated swipe.

Daisuke audibly gulps, his gaze dropping in a way that makes you want to deck him even as you fight to keep your features smoothly impassive. "I'll take that as a compliment from a gorgeous gal like yourself," he manages, recovering with a lecherous grin and letting his beefy arm drape across the back of your chair.

You allow the faintest shiver to roll through you, more out of revulsion than any attempt at playing coy. "Why don't we move somewhere a little...quieter, so I can show you just how much I appreciate a real man's flattery?"

The growl that rumbles from the portly man's chest makes the hair on the back of your neck prickle with unease. Subtly, you resettle yourself on the barstool, allowing your knees to fall slightly open and give him a tempting glimpse of creamy inner thigh.

Sure enough, Daisuke's eyes immediately snap downward like a dog ogling a juicy bone, his tongue slipping out to wet his cracked lips. "Whatever you say, babydoll," he husks, greedily dragging his gaze back up your figure. "Why don't you lead the way?"

The barely concealed lust dripping from his tone has you suppressing a grimace, but you channel it into yet another lithe stretch that pulls your tight dress taut across your curves. Sliding off the stool with exaggerated grace, you toss one last smoldering look over your shoulder as you saunter toward the dimly lit hall concealing a warren of private rooms.

"Keep up if you can, tiger. Can't guarantee I'll wait for dawdlers."

The throaty chuckle your words elicit might as well be a wolf's growl for all the stomach-churning effect it has on you. You don't have to look back to know Daisuke is practically tripping over his own feet to follow in your wake, arousal swiftly obliterating any lingering traces of rational thought.

Keeping your swaying steps measured, you silently appraise each secluded nook you pass, searching for one tucked away yet not overly obscured. The arousal thrumming through you is strictly the intoxicating thrill of a successful con rapidly coming to fruition. Just need to seal the deal for Chuuya to find you, but not so easily that it ruins the illusion...

Bingo. You spot a half-hidden alcove at the end of the hallway, shielded just enough by a gauzy curtain to avoid immediate detection. Tossing your head to allow your wild curls to bounce, you make a big show of "stumbling" inside, mussing the drape slightly before glancing back to where Daisuke leers from the hall entrance.

"Almost left you behind, handsome. Care to join me...if you think you can handle it?"

The prospect of convincing prey practically salivating after him is far too tempting for such a simpleton to resist. As expected, Daisuke lurches forward with surprising quickness to slip behind the curtain, meaty hands already outstretched to undoubtedly grope and paw-

Only for his impatient lunge to run smack into an unexpected steel vise grip on his wrist, yanking his motion up short with enough force to make his eyes bulge in shock. A harsh chuckle rumbles from the shadows by his ear.

"Should've known you louts would be sniffing around, as always. Do yourself a favor and stick to pissing up the bar, yeah? Wouldn't want any...unpleasant accidents to happen to your plaything."

With that final snarled comment, Daisuke's wrist gets brutally wrenched in a way that makes him cry out sharply, stumbling back and cradling his now-reddened appendage against his chest. Stunned, he gapes at the vaguely humanoid silhouette now resolving from the back gloom like an apparition.

"Ch-Chuuya-san! I didn't realize...I mean, I was just-"

"Save the pathetic blubbering, worm," the distinctive, gruff baritone growls back, the shadows shifting to reveal a steely glare and familiar mussed hair gleaming like burnished copper in the low light. "Get lost before I decide to make things messier."

That brusque warning appears to be more than enough for the simpering fool. With a strangled whimper, Daisuke gives a clumsy bow and scurries away, abandoning his intended conquest with all the hurry of a dog tucking tail. An almost pitying scoff echoes after him down the hall.

It takes every ounce of your restraint to remain seated and perfectly still, giving no outward sign of the thunderous riot your pulse has become. This is it - the opening you'd been angling for has finally presented itself. Any other sane person would be frozen with terror in the face of this unparalleled threat.

But terror has always been a distant acquaintance to you when it comes to Chuuya. It's been supplanted by a far more intoxicating feeling - the lure of getting hopelessly, perilously close to the untamed flame without letting your wings get burned in the process.

So you simply regard him with studied nonchalance as his tall form stalks from the shadows into the gauzy half-light, sharp features settling into a glowering leer.

"Fancy meeting you here...Chuuya."*

A tense silence stretches as Chuuya slants you an inscrutable look, one russet brow arching ever so slightly.

"You know who I am," he states flatly after a moment, clearly not bothering with any pretense. His gaze sharpens further, flicking over your form in an assessing once-over. "Yet you don't seem the type to go running for the hills like that sniveling worm."

You allow your lips to curve into the faintest of smirks, shrugging one shoulder in a studied show of nonchalance even as your heart hammers against your ribcage. "Well now, you'd be correct about that observation," you murmur, carelessly crossing one leg over the other to allow your skirt to ride even higher up your thighs. "I don't scare quite so...easily, let's say."

The way Chuuya's narrowed eyes instantly zero in on the expanse of bare leg you've revealed makes your gut clench with something that definitely isn't fear. More like the thrill of a predator getting a glimpse of a new, elusive kind of prey to evaluate. You keep your gaze locked boldly with his, not about to be cowed.

"That so?" Chuuya rumbles after a weighted pause, straightening from his slouch as he takes an prowling step closer. There's a distinctly dangerous edge to the banked smolder now flickering behind those scarlet irises. "Seems like an awfully stupid broad has wandered a little too far from whatever dank hole she crawled out of."

The sheer arrogance bleeding from his words, delivered in that low, grating growl, should rightfully have your hackles raising. A massive voice in the back of your mind screams at you to defuse this situation, disengage before it spirals into territory you may not be able to endure.

Instead, you find yourself leaning forward with avid interest, allowing the whisper of your neckline to gape open even further as you flash Chuuya a coy look from beneath your lashes. "What can I say? Maybe I've just acquired a...taste, for tempting a little risk every now and then."

The way his pupils flare infinitesimally at your blatant implication is almost worth the sizzling lick of tension now heating the cramped space between you. Feeling unnervingly brazen, you let your tongue swipe across your lower lip before continuing in your most sultry drawl.

"Doesn't hurt that danger often comes with certain...thrills attached, wouldn't you agree?"

There's something almost predatory about the rake of Chuuya's hooded eyes up the length of you now, his full lips quirking faintly at the corners. "Well now, that's certainly an...interesting revelation comin' from a scrap like you."

One booted foot edges incrementally closer into your space until the tips of his polished toes breach the whisper-close perimeter you're holding. Something about the nonchalant invasion of your boundaries makes the fine hairs on your arms prickle with an odd, static sort of electricity.

"So tell me, sweetheart..." Chuuya leans in even further now, his features almost blurring with proximity until that smoldering stare bores into yours with blistering intensity. You can smell the smoke and whiskey's potent musk radiating from his pores, taste the faint metallic tang of violence that seems to linger like an aura around him.

You don't - can't - look away, finding yourself utterly suspended in his molten regard.

"Just what kind of...thrills were you hoping a monster like me could provide?"

The low, guttural purr of his final words sinks directly into the pit of your stomach like a dousing of chill water. Except rather than dousing anything, they seem to ignite every tingling nerve ending across your skin into roaring life. Every well-honed instinct is silently screaming at you to take your gun out and shoot.

But your heart thunders in your ears for an entirely different reason, one you can no longer deafen yourself to even as sirens blare in the back of your mind. Because right here, right now, the monster in question has coaxed an infinitely more primal beast from its usually well-restrained cage inside you.

And now, face to face with the only man who's ever brought those feral urges to the surface, you can no longer remember how to resist its howling call.

So instead of heeding your flashing warnings, you allow every last gossamer thread of control to unravel from your grasp. you let the curtain drop completely - metaphorically and literally, as you purposefully lean back to reveal the shadowed haven of your chest undulating with quickening breaths.

Exposed and hungry, you hold Chuuya's smoldering crimson stare as the first provocative rumble parts your lips:

"I was rather hoping you'd show me..."

Chuuya holds your brazen gaze for a beat, russet eyes glittering with an unreadable intensity. You can practically see the gears turning behind that furrowed brow as he processes your bold proposition, evaluating how serious you are about tempting such dangerous territories.

At last, his lips peel back in a slow, wolfish smirk - the kind that makes your pulse spike despite yourself. "You've got a set of nerves on you, I'll give you that much," he rumbles, leaning back just enough to allow his eyes to roam overtly over your displayed figure with relish. "Most dolls wrap themselves up tighter than a hair-trigger gunslinger around me. But you..."

His gaze flicks back up to lock with yours, blazing with undisguised intrigue. "You're just beggin' to get burned, aren't you, gorgeous?"

There's an undeniable thrill licking up your spine at the blatant challenge arcing between you, the kind of illicit adrenaline rush you've been chasing perhaps a bit too recklessly lately. Mustering your courage, you hold Chuuya's smoldering stare and part your lips in a slow, deliberate sweep of your tongue.

"Well now, they do say there's a certain...excitement, in playing with fire, don't they?" You make sure to pitch your tone into a sultry purr, allowing your lashes to dip in a slow blink. "And who are we to question that particular wisdom?"

The low, gravelly chuckle that rumbles from Chuuya's broad chest causes a frisson of sensation to trickle down your body. Slowly, he pushes off from the wall, allowing his fitted white shirt to strain against his defined torso as he prowls the sparse distance separating you. Your breath hitches despite yourself when he looms into your personal space, near enough that you can detect the smoky, smoky whiskey scent of him.

"Is that what you're angling for, then?" he murmurs, head dipping until you can feel the whisper of his warm exhalation skating across your cheekbone. "A chance to dance among the flames and see if you get yourself burned?"

You resist the urge to shiver, forcing yourself to meet his heated stare steadily even as your pulse throbs with mounting anticipation. "Well now, I do love indulging in life's...rarer sensations whenever I can."

One daring hand lifts until your fingers are just grazing the open vee of his dress shirt, allowing your splayed digits to tantalize the hard planes of his chest through the crisp fabric. Boldly, your hooded gaze flicks up through your lashes, a shiver of adrenaline sparking beneath your skin as Chuuya's own eyes darken infinitesimally.

"Tell me..." you breathe out, letting your words skate like a caress against his stubbled jaw. "Just how much thrill...does a rare indulgence like you have to offer?"

For a long, heated moment, Chuuya simply holds your daring stare, the muscles in his forearms tensing as his fingers flex almost unconsciously. You can sense the thunderous caution warring with that undeniable spark of interest in his hooded gaze as he sizes you up fully, evaluating whether you're truly the kind of hazard worth risking his...attention.

At last, a slow, wicked smirk curls over his lips, and a shudder of electric premonition dances down your spine.

"Well now...what do you say we go somewhere a little more...private, and find out?"

Your pulse thrums with a heady mix of trepidation and illicit excitement as Chuuya holds your daring stare, clearly weighing his options. Despite every rational instinct screaming at you to defuse this situation, you find yourself utterly transfixed - a moth helplessly drawn to the hypnotic flames.

At last, Chuuya leans back with a slow smirk, giving you an assessing look-over that makes your skin prickle. "Tell you what, gorgeous - how about we take this little game somewhere a bit cozier?" His gaze briefly flicks toward the hallway beyond your alcove's tattered curtain. "Got a private office upstairs that'll give us all the...privacy, we might require."

The unmistakable emphasis he puts on that last part sends a shiver of smoky anticipation licking down your spine. You know you're treading into incredibly dangerous territory here - this is the Port Mafia's most volatile element you're brazenly tempting, after all. One misstep, one misread signal, and there's no telling how quickly this situation could careen into utter chaos.

And yet...you can't resist the thrill of poking at that particular rattlesnake, drunk on the dizzying high of skirting peril. Holding Chuuya's piercing stare steadily, you allow one side of your mouth to curve into a slow, provocative smile.

"Lead the way, then...I'm partial to a little...risk, with my indulgences."

Chuuya's eyes flare infinitesimally at your words, that smoldering gaze roving over you with rekindled interest. For a beat, the two of you are suspended in a sort of heated detente, the air between you thrumming with roiling tension and unspoken challenges. Despite yourself, you feel a whisper of excitement curl low in your belly as those molten azure irises slowly blaze a path down your form.

Then, abruptly, Chuuya spins on his heel and strides toward the exit without another word. You blink, momentarily wrong-footed by his abrupt dismissal, until he tosses a final look over his shoulder - the expression on his face makes your breath hitch.

"Well? You comin' to collect your indulgences or not, gorgeous?"

There's an unmistakable glint in Chuuya's stare then - a sort of heated promise that has your adrenaline spiking despite yourself. Like he's testing you, issuing a blatant dare to see if you'll recklessly rise to meet the perilous temptation head-on.

A greater part of you knows you should immediately abort this reckless gambit, disengage before you cross a line there's no coming back from. But that primal part that's already been stirred into electric wakefulness refuses to back down from such a flagrant challenge.

So with one last inward steadying breath, you smooth your features into an insouciant smirk and saunter after Chuuya's retreating form. Every step behind him down the dimly lit hallways feels like you're striding deeper into a dragon's den, utterly insignificant compared to the scorching, chaotic power you're brazenly trailing.

But rather than cowing you, the prospect of getting inexorably closer to such a dangerous presence sets your blood simmering with heady, illicit adrenaline. You can't tear your eyes away from the confident set of Chuuya's shoulders, the controlled, subtly powerful roll of his hips with each long stride. It's like watching a panther stalk through the underbrush - power and grace roiling in sync, utterly spellbinding.

By the time the two of you reach the non-descript doorway tucked away on one of the upper floors, your pulse is thundering with a strange sort of breathless anticipation. As Chuuya swings the door open and gestures you forward with one beckoning hand, something sparks hot and illicit in your veins.

You don't hesitate before crossing the threshold into the dimly lit office space, chin raised in smoldering challenge. The distinct sound of the door clicking shut behind you seems to ring with finality, sealing you in this intimate battleground with your most dangerous opponent yet.

One deep, steadying breath later, and you slowly turn to face the sole occupant now in the room with you. Chuuya prowls closer, looking utterly at ease amidst the overlapping shadows cast by the single flickering lamp. He cocks one russet brow slightly, the ghost of his ever-present smirk still playing about the corners of his lips.

"Well then...care to indulge me on just what kind of rare...thrills, you think you can handle?" The low, gravelly purr of his drawl seems to reverberate against the very walls with its heady promise.

In this moment, all bravado flees as you find yourself pinned by the weight of Chuuya's piercing stare. There's something incandescently feral roiling just beneath that cool surface, power and intensity thrumming from every taut line of his lithe form. You feel suddenly, viscerally aware of the yawning chasm of danger you've actually stumbled into by provoking such an untamed juggernaut.

Yet despite the rapidly shrinking space between you, despite the alarms clanging in the back of your mind...you can't seem to make yourself turn and flee while you're still able. No, some deeper, more primal instinct is beading bright pinpricks of perspiration across your nape, thrumming with a low, electric sort of excitement as Chuuya stalks ever nearer.

So rather than retreat, you feel the first reckless threads of control beginning to fray as your body's most basic urges override any sense of self-preservation. Your lips part in a tiny shuddering inhale as those feral crimson eyes finally bore into yours at point-blank range, the heat of Chuuya's compact frame now radiating palpably against yours.

In that delirious instant, everything narrows until there's only the two of you, coiled taut as a wire split-second before detonation. You can't tear your gaze from Chuuya's even if you wanted to - find yourself suspended, mesmerised as he subtly scents the air around you both with a slow inhale of his own.

Then, at last, he leans in until his lips are a scant breath from yours. You freeze, dizzy at the sudden proximity, skin tingling...and wait with inexplicable tension for the final ax to fall.

The words that finally part his lips are little more than a smoky rasp, thrumming with a vibration that sinks sparks into your very marrow:

"Then let's find out, shall we?"

You feel like every nerve ending in your body has been set alight as Chuuya's words seem to reverberate against your very bones. The low, smoky rasp of his voice carries a thrumming vibration that sinks sparking tendrils of electricity into your very marrow.

In that suspended instant, everything narrows into hyper-focused clarity - the smoldering weight of his piercing crimson stare boring into yours, the slight hitch of his chest with each measured inhale, the faint whiskey-and-smoke scent of him swirling in the charged space between your bodies. You're acutely, dizzyingly aware of Chuuya's compact frame radiating an intense, banked heat so palpably against you that your own breathing grows shallow.

Despite the alarms still blaring at the back of your mind, something infinitely more primal has awoken and taken the reins - that reckless, thrill-seeking part of you that cannot seem to resist chasing the untamed wildfire no matter how badly it threatens to burn. You can't tear your widened eyes away from Chuuya's own hooded gaze, utterly transfixed by the promise of power and intensity thrumming in every taut line of his form.

And when he finally moves, prowling that last infinitesimal distance to bring your bodies into searing alignment, you can't even find it in you to flinch.

There's the faintest tangling of your mingled breaths as Chuuya noses infinitesimally closer, and your chest stutters on a shuddering inhale in response. Yet you remain frozen in place, utterly suspended in the gravitational pull of his aura as his lips ghost across the heated whisper of skin just beneath your jaw.

"So tell me then..." The gravelly rumble of his low purr ghosts across your pulse point, igniting a shivering trail of sensation down your neck and across your collarbones. "Just how much hazard were you angling to chase tonight, gorgeous?"

The blatant challenge dripping from Chuuya's words finally spurs you back into motion after your momentary paralysis. Steeling your nerves against the molten intent searing from his heavy-lidded stare, you force your lips to curve into a slow, smoldering smirk of your own.

"Why don't you go ahead and show me...unless you're not confident you can rise to the occasion?" you breathe out, allowing your voice to dip into a low, throaty purr of provocation.

The infinite pause that stretches between you next is charged like a livewire, tension and unspoken baits crackling in the superheated air. For an endless moment, the two of you remain suspended in a crystalized tableaux - Chuuya pinning you in place with smoldering promise, you staring him down with charged challenge.

Then, like the abrupt snap of a rubber band, the fragile tension finally breaks.

A harsh exhale gusts from Chuuya's parted lips as a muscle ticks in his tensed jaw, the banked intensity in his stare flaring into a bonfire of blatant hunger. You can't quite muffle the tremor that wracks through you in response, heat licking beneath your skin like the first sparks of a brushfire about to ignite.

"Well then..." he rumbles in that distinctive rasp that seems to lick across your nerve endings in a searing caress. "I do so hate to disappoint a lady with...particular tastes, now don't I?"

The final taunting lilt of his words hangs for a torturous beat in the electrified space between your bodies. Then, before you can so much as draw another shuddering inhale, his hands are on you - rough, calloused fingers skating up the bare expanse of your waist to sear possessive brands into your overheated skin.

The molten contact finally shatters the spell of restraint you've been struggling to maintain against the steadily encroaching tide of Chuuya's presence. A sharp, wordless exhalation punches from your lungs as you instinctively arch into his scorching palms like a tree being bent to gale-force winds. Every nerve is alight, thrumming feverishly with heady, illicit anticipation that seems to vibrate in your very bones.

Chuuya's low, guttural rumble of approval vibrates against your heated pulse point in a distinctly possessive sort of resonance. "That's what I thought..."

Those large, blisteringly warm hands flex against your sides, fingers tightening in an inescapable grip that has you trembling minutely. There's a distinct sense of him looming, encompassing your entire field of awareness. The terribly intimate cocoon of his powerful aura and crisp, smoky scent has raptured senses occluding everything else in a dizzying spiral of sensation.

You're only dimly cognizant of the slide of hot breath skating up the column of your vulnerable throat before Chuuya's graveled rasp ghosts across your lips with finality:

"Now let's see how much of my...particular skills, you can take."

A tremulous shiver wracks through you at the blatant intent scorching from Chuuya's words. For all your attempts at bravado, at provoking this untamed hurricane, there's no denying the molten thrill now simmering low in your belly.

You're well and truly in the eye of the storm's chaos now. There's no retreating, no shred of distance to put between you and this barely-leashed juggernaut towering over you. The heat radiating from Chuuya's compact frame, the banked intensity blazing behind those smoldering russet irises, the thrumming aura of controlled violence roiling just beneath his deceptively calm surface...it all combines into a heady, electrifying force that's utterly overwhelming your senses.

You can't tear your widened gaze away from the searing intensity of his stare, can't halt the trembling that wracks through your very bones as Chuuya regards you with that slow, lupine smirk curling the corners of his lips. It's as if he can sense the first tendrils of apprehension starting to unfurl in your gut, can scent the first hints of your rapidly dwindling bravado like a predator sensing weakness in its prey.

That molten gaze narrows infinitesimally, holding you utterly transfixed as those wicked lips part to exhale a low rumble that seems to reverberate against the very walls around you:

"Well, well...aren't you just a messy tangle of nerves now, gorgeous? Should've known better than to go poking a sleepin' beast."

Your throat works in a convulsive swallow, suddenly achingly aware of the rapid flutter of your pulse thrumming visibly beneath the hollow of your exposed throat. Whether from exhilaration or mounting trepidation you can no longer tell - everything's starting to spiral and blur together into an indistinguishable haze in the wake of that banked wildfire radiating from Chuuya in rolling waves.

You manage the barest shake of your head, gaze skittering away in a rare moment of cowed discomposure as the instinct to physically retreat briefly rears its head. But Chuuya's callused grasp on your waist tightens infinitesimally, effectively pinning you in place like a cobra subduing its prey.

"Now where d'you think you're going, babydoll?" The low, honeyed rasp of his drawl slithers down your neck like velvet laced with venom. "Don't go getting cold feet after working so hard to earn yourself a dance with the big bad wolf..."

Swallowing hard against his iron grip, you force yourself to match his smoldering stare with a defiant tilt of your chin. "I’m not," you rasp, hating how breathless you sound pinned beneath this man's thrall. "Unless you're the one getting cold feet...?"

Chuuya's eyes suddenly turn flinty, his smirk twisting into something sharper and colder. "Funny you should mention that," he says, his tone deceptively light despite the new tension thrumming through his frame. "Tell me...what's a pretty little Agency thing like you doing here trying so hard to play the vamp? Shouldn't you be out there fightin' the good fight, making the city a safer place and all that righteous bullshit?"

You freeze, eyes widening as the blood drains from your face. He knows. Somehow, Chuuya has seen through your undercover operation. Your hand twitches instinctively towards the concealed pistol against your thigh.

Chuuya's grip on your waist tightens infinitesimally as he leans in closer, his eyes blazing with a combination of hunger and...sadness? "Yeah, that's right. I know who you are and why you're really here. To take me out, just another job for the Agency's dog."

His words slice through you like a knife as your heart pounds in your ears. This was never supposed to happen. He was never meant to discover your true motives.

Chuuya's gaze bores into you, stripping away every layer until you feel utterly exposed before him. "Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you? Even playing the seductress...I'd know you anywhere."

There's a rawness to his voice now, a vulnerability that takes you aback. His fingers loosen slightly against your throat, almost a caress. "I've watched you for years, you know. From a distance, always keeping my distance because I knew we could never be anything more than enemies."

Your breath catches in your throat as realization dawns. The longing you'd glimpsed in his eyes...it wasn't just your imagination. "Chuuya..." you whisper, torn between the instinct to attack and something far more dangerous blooming in your chest.

He laughs bitterly, the sound grating. "I'm just a fool, aren't I? Falling for the one person I can never have." He reaches up to slowly pull the wig you wore for your disguise, revealing your natural tresses. His thumb strokes your wildly fluttering pulse almost tenderly. "So go ahead, do what you came here to do. At least I got to be this close to you one last time."

The pistol feels like a lead weight against your thigh as you gaze up at this deadly man, your sworn enemy, and see the depths of his longing and resignation laid bare.

Your breath catches in your throat as you gaze up at Chuuya, the man you've sworn to take down as an enemy of the Agency, and see the naked longing and resignation in his eyes. In that moment, you realize with dawning clarity that you can no more kill him than cut out your own heart.

The pistol concealed against your thigh suddenly feels like an utterly foreign, leaden weight. How could you ever bring yourself to pull that trigger against this deadly yet achingly vulnerable man before you? The one who has haunted your footsteps and thoughts for years, it seems, with the same tortured yearning you've struggled to ignore?

Chuuya's thumb strokes your thundering pulse once more, his touch tentative yet scorchingly intimate. "Well?" he prompts roughly, jaw tensing. "Aren't you going to finish what you came here for, gorgeous?"

You open your mouth, but find no words will come. What could you possibly say in this suspended moment where everything you thought you knew has been shattered? Your entire world has abruptly tilted on its axis, sending your convictions and allegiances spinning into freefall.

Seeming to take your silence as answer enough, Chuuya's expression shutters closed once more. He lets out a harsh exhalation, fingers tightening almost bruisingly against your hip. "Fine then. Have it your way."

With that gruff declaration, he suddenly seizes you by the shoulders and spins you both around, slamming your back against the wall with enough force to expel your breath in a pained rush. You instinctively try to pull free, to summon your training and detach from this volatile situation before it spirals further.

But Chuuya is relentless, pinning your wrists above your head in one unyielding grip while crowding you with the searing heat of his compact frame. The hard planes of his body cage you in utterly, his thigh jamming between your legs in a blatant parody of intimacy before he snaps your holster off along with your gun.

"If you're not going to finish the job, then at least grant me this one indulgence before you walk away," he snarls against the hammering pulse at your throat. His free hand slides possessively up your ribs until it's fisted in the hair at your nape, wrenching your head back to fully expose your vulnerability to his piercing stare. "One taste of you before I burn it all to the ground."

The world seems to splinter and fracture around you as Chuuya's heated words penetrate the haze of shock and confusion swirling through your mind. This is madness, utter insanity descending between your tangled forms. He's the enemy - untamed, volatile, a force of destruction that could annihilate you without a second thought.

Yet despite every rational warning blaring at full volume, you can't seem to make yourself struggle against the scorching brand of his body anymore. Can't deny the reckless part of you that has been awakened and roused into insatiable hunger by Chuuya's smoldering stare and this searing, unexpected revelation.

So instead of heeding your ingrained instincts, you simply hold his burning gaze steadily and allow the first lethal admission to tumble recklessly from your lips:

"Then take what you need from me..."

Chuuya freezes at your breathless entreaty, the blazing intensity in his gaze seeming to flicker and gutter for just an instant. As if some part of him hadn't truly expected you to capitulate to this reckless descent into madness between you both.

For a suspended heartbeat, the office seems to hold its collective breath, awaiting the final plunge over the edge of this precipice you now teeter upon. You can feel Chuuya's ragged exhalations ghosting across your parted lips, can all but taste the roiling torment and need crashing together in the infinitesimal space separating your bodies.

Then, like a rubber band reaching terminal tension before snapping, every last strand of restraint finally frays into oblivion.

A harsh growl rumbles from the depths of Chuuya's chest as he surges forward, claiming your lips in a searing, bruising clash. The tight grip in your hair wrenches your head back at a nearly painful angle as he plunders the intimate depths of your mouth with almost feral intensity. You can only cling to the hard planes of his shoulders and surrender to the riptide of sensations crashing over you.

There's no gentleness, no teasing exploration in Chuuya's onslaught - only the desperate, blazing need to consume, to leave his brand seared into every inch of your being. Each nip of his teeth against your lips, each rasp of his calloused palms mapping the curves of your body, it all conveys the same frenzied message:

Take what you can from me before this all gets torn asunder.

You're only dimly aware of the harsh grind of the wall at your back, of Chuuya pinning you there with the inexorable force of his lean musculature as you both drink desperately from this catastrophic spiral. All that exists is the scalding trail of his lips, the shuddering gasps being torn from your lungs, and the roaring heartbeat thrumming between your tangled bodies.

At some point, Chuuya wrenches his mouth free to blaze a path of smoldering, opened-mouth kisses down the vulnerable column of your throat. The rasp of his stubble scraping your over-sensitized skin drags a trembling moan from you that seems to reverberate in the very air. He lets out his own guttural groan against the wild flutter of your pulse in response, clutching you impossibly closer and grinding his hips against yours in a blatant rhythm.

"Been drivin' me crazy for years, you know that?" he rasps into the sweat-dampened hollow of your neck, each word seeming to sear itself into your very bones. "Watchin' you from the sidelines, playing the good guy while I kept my distance like a good little monster..."

His teeth graze the juncture of your shoulder hard enough to sting, but the burn only streaks molten licks of sensation straight to your pussy. "Never thought I'd get the chance to finally have you...even if it's just this once."

The desolate undercurrent woven through Chuuya's heated words penetrates the lust-hazed spiral of your mind, sending a jagged fissure straight through the reckless abandon coursing through you. This frantic, devastatingly intimate blaze between you isn't just about giving in to primal desires and sating forbidden cravings.

For Chuuya, it's a last-ditch grasping at ephemeral smoke before the world as he's known it inevitably turns to ash and ruin. A final indulgence to sate his starving beast before resigning himself to the solitary, untamable path he was seemingly born to walk.

Something hot and agonizing clenches in your chest at the bitter realization, an unfamiliar and terribly disarming ache blooming beneath your ribcage. You want - need - to soothe that weary resignation bleeding from Chuuya in scorching waves, even if it's only for one delirious, catastrophic moment outside the roles and enmity, before the entire world crashes down around you.

So you force your hands to release their white-knuckled grip on the rigid plates of his shoulders, sliding them up to frame his harsh, stubbled jawline instead. Chuuya makes a muffled sound of surprise against your pulse point, but doesn't pull away as you gently guide him to meet your softening gaze.

For a long, suspended heartbeat, you simply drink in the sight of him. Take in the smoky azure blazing with naked hunger and that terribly tender longing. The sharp angles of his brow and razor-edged cheekbones, the sinfully decadent curve of his kiss-swollen lips. The disheveled crimson spill of his hair across his forehead, the sheen of perspiration on his pale skin.

Then, with an aching, shuddering exhalation, you lean in and claim his mouth in the first gentle, devastating kiss of the night.

It's a slow, lingering thing - a delicate, searching brush of lips, a delicate exploration of the warm, wet heat of his mouth. A sensual dance that quickly builds into a scorching, searing thing. This time, you're the one to nip at his lush lower lip, to trace the sensitive seam with the tip of your tongue and draw a shivering moan from the depths of his throat. The hand fisted in your hair slackens, his grip becoming a caress instead. His other hand skates reverently over the curve of your waist, the slope of your hip, as if he's trying to commit every inch of your body to memory.

As you sink deeper into the addictive heat of Chuuya's mouth, as he swallows the needy sound that spills from you and tangles his tongue with yours in a slow, sensuous slide, the entire universe seems to contract down to the point where your bodies are pressed together.

Where the air is thick and heavy, the scent of leather and his cologne a potent mix that sends your head spinning and leaves you gasping.

When you finally part for air, when your trembling fingertips find the buttons of his vest and start working them free, his gaze sears into you like a brand. "Let me have you," he rasps raggedly, the sheer desperation in his voice making you shudder. "Please, let me..."

"Yes," you manage to whisper, the single word nearly lost in the maelstrom of sensation and need spiraling between you.

He curses roughly against the curve of your shoulder, his fingers flexing against the small of your back. "I don't want to hurt you. I never... not you."

"You won't." You're surprised at the steadiness of your own voice as you lean into the heated cradle of his body. "I trust you, Chuuya."

Chuuya goes utterly still against you, his word nearly lost in the maelstrom of sensation and need spiraling between you. There's a raw vulnerability in his gaze when he lifts his head to search your face, as if he's afraid he imagined the words falling from your lips. As if he can't quite believe this is happening.

"I trust you," you whisper again, pressing a kiss to his jaw, his throat, his temple. You don't care if the gesture is too soft, too intimate. Not when the ache in your chest only seems to deepen with each ragged inhalation you take.

"Please, Chuuya...I want this. I want you."

It's the truth, and you realize in that moment that you'd do anything, give him anything, if it meant chasing that bittersweet resignation from his expression. If it meant holding him close and keeping him safe, even for a single instant.

Chuuya shudders against you at your fervent confession, a low growl rising from his chest.

His fingers tangle in your hair, his eyes blazing with something that sends a jolt of heat straight to your core. "Then I'm yours."

He claims your lips once more, the kiss searing and all-consuming, even as he reaches down to hook his hands beneath your thighs and hoist you effortlessly into his arms. With the ease of a man who spends every waking hour honing his physical prowess, he carries you across the room and settles you atop the wide expanse of his desk.

You gasp at the feeling of the polished wood beneath your bare skin, at the cool caress of the air as he steps back to swiftly shrug off his vest and unbutton his dress shirt. Even in the dim lighting, you can't help but drink in the sight of his pale skin, the sculpted ridges of his torso and abs, the tantalizing hint of the V-lines disappearing beneath the waistband of his slacks.

When you finally tear your gaze away from his exposed body to meet his eyes, Chuuya's lips curve into a smirk. "Enjoying the view, babydoll?"

Heat creeps up your neck, but you don't look away as you reach up to begin working the zipper on the back of your dress. "Maybe. It'd be easier to enjoy it more if you took the rest off too, though."

Chuuya's smirk widens into a grin, the wicked curl of his lips sending a new spike of heat lancing through you. "Whatever the lady wants," he purrs, popping the button on his slacks and letting the fabric slide down his hips.

Your breath catches in your throat at the sight of him clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs, the outline of his erection evident through the stretchy fabric. His heated stare is pinned on you like a physical weight, tracing the curves of your bared flesh as you tug the dress down and over your head.

A low, ragged sound spills from Chuuya's chest as he drinks in the sight of you perched before him in nothing but your lace bra and panties. You don't have a chance to feel the slightest bit of self-consciousness, however, because he's crowding against you almost instantly, his hands spanning the dip of your waist and his lips trailing a line of burning kisses along the curve of your neck, moving downward.

You feel Chuuya's soft lips press gently against your stomach, his kisses fluttering over the scars that mark your skin. The scars he put there himself, when he shot you what feels like a lifetime ago. His touch is tender now as his mouth grazes the raised lines, his breath warm on your bare flesh.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, voice thick with emotion. "I never wanted to hurt you." He looks up at you with repentant eyes, fingers tracing the edges of the scars with the lightest touch, as if afraid to cause you more pain. You know he regrets what he did, that guilt weighs heavily on him. Cupping his face, you guide his mouth back to yours, wanting to absolve him, needing him to know that you forgive him.

The kiss is slow and deep, and vou can feel every ounce of his regret, his pain. His hands move to your bra, unclasping it and pulling the straps down, baring your breasts.

You watch as his gaze darkens, the hunger returning, and you know his thoughts have drifted back to the present. To the need burning in both of you.

His lips travel downward, capturing one hardened nipple in his mouth and sucking hard. Your fingers tangle in his hair, a moan falling from your lips. The scrape of his stubble against the sensitive skin only intensifies the sensation.

Chuuya's hand kneads and teases the other breast, his thumb flicking and teasing the taut peak. The wet heat of his mouth on your sensitive flesh, the friction of his stubble on your skin, it all sends waves of pleasure rolling through you, coiling in the pit of your stomach.

When his mouth moves to the other breast, his hand continues the sensual torment.

"Chuuya," you whimper, needing more, but knowing there's no rushing him. He's going to take his time, drive you to the brink. "Mmm," he hums, his lips moving over the curve of your breast and down the planes of your stomach. "Patience, babydoll. I've been fantasizing about what l'd do to you if I ever got you in my bed. And since that's not happening, this will have to do."

His mouth is warm on your inner thigh, his tongue and teeth nibbling the tender flesh there.

"So soft, so sweet," he murmurs, and then his mouth is on your core, the damp heat of his tongue dragging along your slit. "Oh god," you groan, hips lifting involuntarily off the desk. Chuuya's hands grasp your thighs, his strength keeping you from wriggling away from his wicked, talented mouth.

He chuckles darkly, and the vibration sends another pulse of pleasure through you. "No escaping, gorgeous. Not until l'm finished."

Finished? How will you survive that?

Your breath comes out in short pants as he continues his sensual assault, the strokes of his tongue and his fingers relentless. Just when you think you can't take anymore, the pressure and pleasure building to the point of overwhelming, his mouth finds the swollen bud of your clit.

You cry out, his name a breathless, reverent prayer falling from your lips.

"That's it," he croons, his words vibrating through you, making you arch into him. "Give it to me."

His tongue laves over you, his fingers stroking and teasing, until the wave crests, pleasure flooding through you, sending you careening over the edge. You could hear the loud, pornographic moan Chuuya let out as your juices spray against his mouth, the vibrations from his growls sending shivers down your spine.

"God, yes, baby. That's it," he praises, licking his lips and staring at you like a starved man presented with a feast. His lips curl into a wicked grin, and you feel your blood heat at the sight.

"But I'm not finished with you yet. I want to feel you come on my cock, feel that tight, hot pussy squeeze me."

The filthy words coming from Chuuya's beautiful mouth should disgust you, but they don't. They turn you on, make your body heat and clench, ready for more. Your breath hitches in anticipation, but Chuuya's not done teasing.

"Tell me," he purrs, "have you thought about me? Have you touched yourself, imagining my hands on you, my mouth on you?"

You don't answer, but your blush gives you away, and he lets out a low, husky chuckle.

"Oh, yes, I can see it in your eyes. I've thought about you, too. Touched myself, imagining your sweet, soft lips wrapped around my cock. I'd love to feel those pouty lips stretched around me. Would you like that, gorgeous? To swallow me whole, drink down every last drop?"

Your mouth waters, and the image fills your mind, making your sex clench and your mouth go dry. He chuckles again, a dark, seductive sound.

"Well, since we have no time for that now, l'll settle for being buried inside your sweet pussy. How's that?" Your eyes go wide as you look at him. He's massive, and the idea of him filling you, stretching you, makes you tremble with need.

"'m gonna take that as a yes," he drawls, the rough, gravelly tone of his voice making you shudder. He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his boxer briefs, and pushes them down his lean hips, freeing his thick, heavy cock. You can't help but stare. He's long and thick, his cock pulsing and twitching, pre-cum beading on the tip. He grips his shaft, stroking lazily, his eyes locked on yours. "Like what you see, babydoll?"

You lick your lips, and he groans, a tortured sound. "God, I want to feel that sinful mouth wrapped around my cock, but right now, I want to feel that sweet cunt."

He prowls towards you, and your legs spread instinctively, making room for him. You can feel your sex pulsing, the need for him to fill you, claim you, almost overwhelming.

He steps between your spread thighs, and leans in, claiming your mouth in a bruising kiss, the taste of yourself on his lips driving you wild.

He breaks the kiss, and his mouth trails down your neck, over your shoulder, the rough scrape of his stubble and his soft, full lips making you writhe. His hand slides between your legs, and you feel his finger tease your entrance, testing how ready you are.

"Shit," he curses. "You're soaked. Dripping for me."

You're about to protest his teasing, but the words die on your lips as you feel his blunt head probing at your opening. Your eyes go wide, and he grins, a wolfish, predatory look.

"Ready for me, gorgeous?"

He doesn't wait for a response, thrusting his hips, sheathing himself in your slick heat in one long, smooth motion. He's so big, and the stretch burns, but the sensation of him filling you is delicious, the pleasure just on the edge of pain.

"Fuck," he groans, and he leans forward, burying his face in the crook of your neck. He stays there, buried deep, breathing harshly, for a moment, and then he pulls back, and thrusts into you again, setting a steady pace.

His hands grip your hips, his fingers digging into your soft flesh, and you know he'll leave marks, but you don't care. You want them.

"Look at me," he growls, and you comply, gazing up at him.

The fierce intensity of his gaze as he thrusts into you sends a shiver of pleasure up your spine.

"Touch yourself," he commands. "I want to feel you coming around my cock."

You slide a hand between your bodies, finding the slick nub of your clit, and begin stroking in time with his thrusts.

The sensation is overwhelming, and you can feel yourself spiraling towards climax.

"Chuuya," you moan, and he groans, the sound rumbling through you.

"Yeah, that's it, baby. Let go. Come for me." His words push you over the edge, and you scream his name, pleasure washing over vou in a crashing wave.

He continues to thrust, drawing out your orgasm, and then he stiffens, his hips slamming against yours, burying himself to the hilt, and you can feel his cock throb and pulse, his hot release filling you.

"God, I love you."

His words shock you, and your eyes go wide.

He blinks, and you can see the regret flash in his gaze, and he starts to pull back, to withdraw. You wrap your legs around him, pulling him close, refusing to let him go.

He's frozen, his expression unreadable, and then, he slumps, pressing his forehead to yours.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly.

"Don't be," you murmur.

"You've held a place in my heart for longer than I probably realized.I wish I could say exactly when my feelings for you started, but the truth is they've been slowly blooming for ages without me fully recognizing it until now."

You don't say anything, because you can't.

There's a lump in your throat, and you can't speak past it. Instead, you hold him close, and you let him know, without words, that you care for him, too.

You don't know how long you stay like that, holding each other, but eventually, he pulls back, and you let him go. He pulls out of you, and the sensation of his seed dripping down your thighs is oddly erotic.

You watch as he pulls his boxer briefs up, and the sight of his lean, muscled form makes your pussy clench.

"Come here," he says, reaching for you, and you let him lift you into his arms. He carries you to the sofa and sits you down, the cushions soft beneath you. He takes a seat beside you, and pulls you against his chest, and you lay your head on his shoulder, his lips lingering against the crown of your head.

Burying your face in the crook of his neck, you breathe him in - smoke and spice and something uniquely Chuuya. Let it ground you in this moment, in the undeniable connection sparking between your bodies like a livewire.

There’s so much you want to say to him, but it's everything you can never say out loud. But here in the hushed stillness of Chuuya's secret haven, wrapped up in his solid warmth...you can almost pretend that it's enough. That this is enough.

Just for now. Just for tonight.

Chuuya's arms come up to enfold you, drawing you impossibly closer. One big hand splays across the small of your back while the other cradles the nape of your neck, gentle and protective, pulling you onto his lap. Like you are something unspeakably precious he wants to keep safe.

"Stay with me," he murmurs into your hair, low and entreating. "Just...stay."

You squeeze your eyes shut against the hot sting of tears, pain and guilt and wistful longing swelling up to choke you. But you ruthlessly tamp it down, lodging the messy tangle of emotions behind your ribs to examine later. When you're alone and it's safe to fall apart.

For now, you simply burrow deeper into Chuuya's embrace and nod once, decisive.

"Okay," you breath. A benediction and a promise. "Okay."

And as the two of you lay there, together in the cocoon of shadows and fairylights to a melody only you can hear...you let yourself surrender to the illusion. Let yourself imagine, just for a stolen heartbeat...

That this is real. That he is yours and you are his and nothing else matters.

That maybe, despite all the odds stacked against you...love can still bloom in even the most barren soil.

The spell endures long into the night, your quiet murmurs and shared laughter filling the air as you explore every intimate nook and cranny of Chuuya's office. Curled together on the battered leather sofa with fingers interlaced and pulses syncing, you talk until your throats are raw and your eyes gritty.

He regales you with stories of his misspent youth - of scuffles with local gangs and leaps across rooftops...all while you listen with rapt attention, drinking in every new glimpse behind the unflappable persona. In turn, you share carefully edited tales of your own childhood - the better, brighter parts that don't give too much away.

With every grin and eyeroll and gentle ribbing, the last of your walls come down brick by brick. Until all that remains is the undeniable truth of this soul-deep resonance binding you together across enemy lines. This inexplicable sense of coming home in the last place you ever expected to find it.

But of course...all illusions must eventually shatter. And this one meets a brutal end with the first gray fingers of dawn creeping across the horizon.

A shaft of watery light spears through the high windows, falling across your huddled forms in mocking admonition. Illuminating just how entangled you've become, limbs hopelessly enmeshed and faces mere inches apart on the shared pillow.

Chuuya is the first to stir, a furrow appearing between ginger brows as he blinks muzzily. Those piercing blue eyes slowly sharpen and widen as he registers your presence - and proximity. But rather than pull away, he simply drinks in the sight of you like a man stumbling across an oasis in the desert.

"Mornin'," he rasps, voice low and sleep-rough. A tiny smile tugs at one corner of his mouth, private and unbearably soft. "This is...not how I expected to wake up today."

A corresponding bloom of warmth unfurls behind your sternum, light and giddy. "That makes two of us," you whisper back conspiratorially. Worrying your lower lip between your teeth, you reach out to trace the curve of his cheekbone with a tentative fingertip, marveling at the freedom to do so. "But I'm glad we did. Wake up together, that is."

Chuuya's eyes flutter shut at the innocent caress, a shaky exhale gusting past his lips. Catching your hand in his much larger one, he presses your palm flat over his thundering heart, holding it there like he never wants to let go.

"Me too," he confesses quietly, gaze dark and depthless as it roves over your face. There's something almost pained in his expression, a wistful sort of yearning that echoes through your own hollow bones. "I wish..."

But he cuts himself off with a brisk headshake, jaw firming. That's when your gaze catches on something glinting on the floor amidst your discarded clothing - the sleek, deadly outline of your gun. Reality slams back into focus as you remember your true mission, sent to assassinate this man, this infamous mafioso you've somehow ended up sleeping with.

Chuuya follows your line of sight, shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly as he makes the connection. You see realization filter across his expression - he knows you were sent to kill him. For a drawn-out moment, an electric tension crackles between you, brimming with unvoiced truths.

Rather than react with anger or fear, Chuuya simply holds your gaze steadily. There's an unfamiliar softness graven into the lines around his mouth and eyes as he gives a minute, solemn nod.

"I don’t care, gorgeous. I..." He breaks off, clearing his throat roughly. "Well, it doesn't matter now, does it?"

Your chest constricts painfully at the resignation in his tone, the blatant acceptance that he's sealed his own fate by allowing himself to become entangled with you. You open your mouth, an useless apology on your lips, but Chuuya cuts you off with a gentle shake of his head.

"Don't. Please, just...don't ruin this for me." His smile is wry but doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Let me pretend a little longer that you wanted me as much as I wanted you. That this didn't start as a lie."

The rawness in his voice is like a physical blow, leaving you floundering for breath. You can't tell him that he's right, that you did want him - want him still with a ferocity that terrifies you. Instead, you simply sit up and wordlessly hold your hand out in entreaty, throat too clogged with emotion to speak.

Chuuya's brows knit minutely, but then understanding blooms across his features. With the same care one would use to handle something infinitely precious yet fragile, he takes your proffered hand and guides you to straddle his lap. His large, calloused palms immediately find purchase on your waist, thumbs stroking over your hipbones with infinite tenderness.

For a long stretch, you simply hold one another's weighted gazes, peeling away every remaining barrier with each shuddering inhale. Chuuya's eyes are a kaleidoscope of emotion - yearning, resignation, and something softer that steals the breath from your lungs.

Then, almost as one, you're both leaning in until your foreheads rest flush together. His breath puffs warm and intimate against your parted lips as you simply breathe each other in, savoring this fleeting infinitesimal of connection before the outside world comes crashing back in.

When you finally do move, it's in perfect synchronicity - mouths slanting together in a kiss loaded with every unspent syllable, every aborted caress and aborted heartbeat. It's a messy, ardent thing, all tangled limbs and broken keening noises muffled between your joined mouths.

There's an undercurrent of finality and futility to it all, like two planets locked in their final orbits before terminal destruction. You pour every ounce of feeling you can't name into that scorching mess of tongue and teeth and desperation, trying to convey it all before the chance is torn from your grasp forever.

You aren't sure how long you stay like that, consuming each other in deep, convulsive swallows. By the time you finally break apart, you're both panting harshly, cheeks ruddy and lips swollen. Chuuya's hair is thoroughly mussed, eyes dark and hooded in a way that sends fresh ribbons of heat pooling low in your belly.

His pupils are blown wide, but his gaze is clear and searingly focused as he drags his thumb reverently along the plane of your cheekbone.

"Do it," he rasps, the words barely audible over the thundering of your pulse. "If you have to end this, then make it mean something. Put us both out of our misery, once and for all."

You suck in a sharp breath at the stark simplicity of his declaration. Can feel the truth of those words in your very marrow, stark and inescapable as a terminal diagnosis. There's no future for you beyond this moment, the two of you spinning endlessly around one another in a void while the inexorable machinations of the outside world slowly rend you asunder.

So you do the only thing you can - the only merciful thing left. Reaching behind you in one sinuous movement, your fingers close around the cold, unyielding steel of your gun where it lies discarded on the threadbare sheets.

Chuuya makes no move to stop you or defend himself, entire body lax and at peace as you bring the muzzle up to press firmly against his sternum. He merely watches you through those piercing blue eyes, lips quirking in a tiny, rueful smile.

"That's my girl," he murmurs, voice a ruined rasp of bittersweet devotion. He mutters to no one, voice cracking on the single syllable. "See you around...detective."

And with his end blessing still ringing in your ears, you pull the trigger.

The gunshot is deafening in the small room, the kickback bucking against your shoulder with vicious force. You watch with a sort of detached horror as Chuuya's head rocks back, eyes blowing wide for one final endless moment before his head crumples back onto the couch.

A thin line of crimson immediately begins trickling from the corner of his slack mouth, hot arterial blood already seeping out to stain the leather beneath him in an ever-widening blossom of scarlet. But his expression is one of perfect tranquility, the furrow between his brows smoothed away and those blue, blue eyes frozen in an expression of stunned acceptance.

It's over for him. You remain frozen for what feels like an eternity, simply staring at the body of the man you killed - the man you loved, no matter how briefly or disastrously. Then, with a strange sense of calm settling over you, you turn the gun on yourself.

"See you around...Chuuya,"

those who made it all the way down here, how’re you feeling?

( ✧≖ ͜ʖ≖)

#bsd smut #bsd x reader #bsd x reader smut #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs smut #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs chuuya #chuuya smut #chuuya x reader #chuuya nakahara #chuuya x reader smut

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timmydraker · 2 months ago

Text

Bruce had never been to The Eclipse before.

The club was similar to that of a gentleman’s club from the starting years of America, filled with dozens of tables all curved and ready for a game or feast. The three floors of the place each had a game room, a bar and a section for private rooms for the more seedy type of talks to be had.

It was one of the few non-criminal funded place in Gotham that was still rich. Deals definitely went down, but it was more fitting for gossip that anything else.

Often people went there for catch ups in a refined setting.

Bruce was there for a catch up, or more accurately, a reuniting with his son.

Tim had sent Bruce a time, date and location and said he was only going to meet with him and no one else. Considering Bruce hadn’t seen his beloved son in nearly four years, including his time in the time stream, he accepted without argument.

Tim said he would look different but that if Bruce was as good of a detective as he says, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Bruce had no idea what his son meant until a woman let him inside and told him that ‘Drake had asked you to find him yourself’ with a confused bend in her eyebrows.

It took him a little longer than he’d be happy to admit, although still less than forty seconds, to find his son.

Or maybe that was the wrong word now, if the regal young woman staring at her drink was anything to go by.

Like something out of a vintage movie, the woman had curled black hair and dark red lipsticks. Her dark eyeshadow matched her sweetheart collar dress, black with thick straps and tight enough that each breath was visible.

The gloves on her hand were long and black, one putting a stark contrast to the pink coloured cigarette lit in her hand.

Everything about her screamed old money.

Bruce only knew it was Tim because of the sweet blue eyes and shape of his jaw, though there was also some kind of… paternal instinct in play.

Tim only looked up when he put a hand on the rounded couch, Jim’s tearing nervously down at his distinguished looking child.

It was when she smiled, a real thing that was just highlighted by her dark red lips, that Bruce knew he wasn’t mistaken.

“Hi Bruce.”

A lighter voice, not soft so much as smooth, and nothing like the more monotone sound he was used to.

“Ti-… hi.”

She smiles and gestures for him to sit before taking a final drag of her smoke and putting it out.

Bruce stares at for just a second before looking at his child. Despite the shock of the obvious changes, he notices something far more important, “You look healthy.”

Well fed, clean, nourished.

Like she’s gotten sleep.

“I am. I’ve done a lot of work on myself and it’s paid off.”

Bruce smiles, genuine and almost a little painful, “I can see that. What… what do I call you?”

“Charlotte. Charlotte Jackson Drake.”

“A beautiful name.”

Charlotte smiles before a serious look comes over her face, “Bruce. I haven’t just changed my lifestyle and body, I’ve changed how I look at the world and I’ve come to understand a lot more in my life now.”

Never has Bruce been so attentive, ears feeling on fire as he does his best to focus on every word spoken to him.

“The main thing I’ve come to understand is you.”

Bruce doesn’t move, scared to make his daughter stop talking to him and so he just does his best to show he’s listening.

Charlotte continues, “I get why you brought all of us in. It wasn’t just to protect us from the world, but from ourselves. I can see now that you are only crazy because you’ve been given the impossible challenge of being a necessity in Gotham and the worlds survival and sanity. It doesn’t change that you’ve made mistakes and fucked up, but I get why now. You didn’t want us to apart of Batman, but we forced you, me most of all.”

Bruce is more than stunned by the honesty and understanding in Charlotte’s words, but the fact that he himself only figured that out after loosing Jason.

She smiles at him like she could read his mind, “It took me a long time and I still have anger towards you, yet I want you in my life all the same.”

A gloved hand comes to hold onto his own, delicate and gentle in a way that reminds him of his mother all those years ago.

Charlottes smiles is far too sad to be hers though, “I’m not the boy you once knew, not just because of the woman I want to be now. I don’t want to help you, to save you and parent you, I want to know you. As my father. If-if you’ll allow it?”

Bruce has cried in public before, several times in fact, but normally it’s to play up his over emotional persona.

This time it’s pure relief.

“Of course. Anything you want, at any pace you want, I- what ever you need.”

Charlotte smiles and squeezes his hand, “Thank you.”

Bruce eventually huffs a laugh and wipes his eyes, “god, you really are good at catching me off guard.”

She laughs, a honey like noise that makes him realises he’s never heard Tim smile and that maybe his daughter could only do that once she be same ‘her’.

The two order drinks and Bruce is given the tale of how Charlotte came to be, of how sometimes she misses being Tim but never wants to go back. He learns that she chose her name based on what she would ah e been if she was born a girl so she wouldn’t feel like she was betraying her parents.

Bruce learns that she is still a hero, operating as Red Robin, but that she focuses on prolonged crimes like trafficking rings and makes sure to take them down in on go instead of busting a few and giving the rest a chance to escape.

He’s not so happy to hear that she isn’t ready to talk to the others and that she only really talks to Cass and Duke as both of them have always been on her side and are truely her siblings.

Yet he respects it, if only to keep her close and show her the love he failed to give.

Respecting his daughter’s privacy, he doesn’t tell his other kids anything about what happened and acts ignorant when there’s a few articles about the mysterious Charlotte Drake and her distant relation to the private Tim Drake.

He meets with his little girl, his Lottie, once a week at The Eclipse and talks with her about their businesses both in the literal sense and more broadly.

He meets Bernard and can’t quite see what it is about the strange boy that makes his daughter so happy, but all he needs is to see her big smile and know it doesn’t matter.

That and the several background checks he did.

#batfam #tim drake #bat family #dc comics #batfamily #dc universe #dc #tim drake is red robin #tim drake is a menace #Bruce Wayne #bruce is a good dad #he just needs a chance #tim and bruce #papa Wayne #trans tim drake #male to female #mtf tim drake #female tim drake

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pparacxosm · 2 months ago

Text

blue-eyed son

(homeless era!patrick zweig x jaded businesswoman!reader; tw themes of poverty; tw strangely intimate vaguely unnerving eating scene; maybe i got carried away with characterising the motel receptionist; but it was necessary; tw corporate ennui; tw scathing outlook on new rochelle; i’ve never even been to new rochelle; there is a real prompt from the NYT mini crossword in here, and the answer was ‘aches’ but ‘zweig’ is also five letters; also maybe i got carried away with reworking the dialogue from the motel scene; but i maintained the essence of tragedy; in fact i enhanced it; tw enhanced essence of tragedy)

‘Not too shabby…’

The blue light miasma permeating from the screen of your brickheavy, moltenhot company laptop casts taunting shadows across your visage as you stare at the subject line of the email from your boss. You drag your finger across the mousepad and click.

Just got off the phone with Mr Smith from Kanonda Corp., and they had some great things to say about our chat today. Kudos to you for handling that. Just a quick reminder, though, that your numbers aren't quite up to par this month, so let's work on ramping those up. Keep it up!

Cheers!

You find three things hilarious about this email: 1) the use of the words our chat when you’re pretty sure you endured those three hours of Mr Smith’s overt attempts to incite a clunky game of footsie under the wobbly table in the shitty steakhouse in bumfuck New Rochelle completely solo, 2) the notion that adding an exclamation mark to the phrase ‘keep it up’ makes it read more like an encouraging pat on the back than a barked order, and 3) the use of the words your numbers when there’s about five other assholes on your team who aren’t in bumfuck New Rochelle, whose combined time spent sitting on their asses in the office, if harvested as energy, would be large enough to power up a small town for all four days of this wretched business trip.

Actually, the “kudos to you” is also pretty funny. Your boss, the comedian.

You shut the lid of the computer, drawing your knees to your chest and ignoring how the sharp lump of an errant spring in the old mattress is digging straight up your ass. You’re nursing a lukewarm can of Coors you’d snagged from this motel's halfway functional vending machine. You’re trying to ignore the noise from the room next door, where some douchebag is doing his best impression of a broken washing machine in bed.

New Rochelle sucks. New Rochelle sucks dick. The weather sucks dick. The food sucks dick. Your job sucks dick. Sunny Skies Motel sucks dick. And you’re considering redownloading Hinge, and setting your radius to ten miles and your standards to hellishly low, just so that maybe you can suck a dick, too, because you’d hate to feel left out.

The company you work for so graciously comps the room in the seedy motel. Real nice. The room reeks of piss and potpourri, old cigarettes and beer, and looks like a relic from the 70s. As in, peeling, avocado-green wall, visibly stained motheaten carpets that are an alarming shade of brown, and an ancient CRT TV whose only available channels are reruns of sitcoms from the 90s. Everything about this place wails ‘temporary,’ but, to you, there’s the stark, resigned misery of a lifetime sentence. The room is like your life, in a way: suffocating and stagnant, with no change in sight.

It's the kind of motel that no one would ever choose to stay at if they had a choice, or, perhaps, a modicum of selfrespect. But you, poor you, eyes going misty as you look out the window facing an alleyway, are beginning to contend with the fact that you have neither of those things.

You’re lying supine on the bed, arms spread out like a crucifix effigy, and your back is learning every lump and valley of the shitty mattress. You’ve downed your beer, and it’s sloshing about in your belly, and there’s a dampness gathering beneath the underwire of your bra.

You cast a glower to the thermostat, an old model with yellowed plastic and faded lettering. You note the temperature display.

“65, my ass.”

And who are you talking to? The roaches? They’re probably waiting for you to die of heatstroke so they can dine on your miserable, sweatstrewn flesh. The vent shudders droningly, spewing tepid air like bad breath, and you do consider just lying there. Sweating out your bitterness. But no. You need your bitterness. Your bitterness has always served you.

Like this, bitterly, you peel yourself off the bed, swinging your legs over the side.

You slip your tights-swathed toes into the firm leather of your kitten heels, tugging the hem of your skirt down your thighs, but choosing not to bother with the rolled cuffs or the top four unbound buttons of your button down, the dampness where the fabric clings to your back and armpits growing cool as you step out into the nighttime.

You’re twentyeight, which is seventyfive in corporate years.

You’re a wonder with a spreadsheet, and you work hard, and you’re reliable, but these are the sorts of things that only get you so far.

So they send you to New Rochelle. Fine. Here’s their thinly veiled, lastditch attempt to motivate you, or something.

And everyone’s probably sipping on fancy espresso in their cushy corner offices or having lunch in some upscale bistro back home. And you’re in sucksdick New Rochelle, wondering how many different ways a woman can feel disconnected and uninspired.

The Sunny Skies motel lobby is a hollow shell. It is lively as a morgue. The vending machine flickers with the weary lament of someone who is sick of dying. Not pained, or begging mercy. Just over it. Someone who wants to get the dying part of being dead over with.

There’s another roomtemp Coors can in there singing you siren songs, but you’re trying not to be tempted.

You’re stood in front of one of the twin front desks, tapping your manicured nail against the countertop.

You’re staring at a small sign behind the front desk, and trying to ignore the strange sort of aura of decay that seems to hang in the air. Sunny Skies knows her days are numbered, and it shows. Your eyes flick up to look at the clock as you hear footsteps approaching.

Enter Sally. Dear Sally. Sally and her jet black pixie cut and cold shoulder blouses and perennial disinterest. You identify with Sally on a deep, primordial level, because Sally has that soul-sucking look that only comes with years of forcing enthusiasm when you don’t feel any, and you can only hope to one day wield with as much grace that distinct emanating air of exhaustion. Sally is your hero.

“Can I help you?” she asks flatly, casting you a bored, fleeting glance over her narrow pink rectangle rimmed spectacles.

God, it’s artistry.

“I think the air conditioning in my room is broken?” you say. You pull out your phone and flip open the cover, retrieving your key card, because you have one of those flip phone cases. “I need someone to come take a look at it. The last repair guy said he’d pass the message along and no one’s come by yet.”

Sally takes the card and looks up at you sceptically.

“Are you sure it’s broken? Sometimes the thermostat just needs to be reset.”

You bristle a bit at the implication that you don’t know how to work a thermostat. You respect Sally like a soldier respects a war general. Which is to say, do you particularly like the woman? Fuck no.

“Yes, I’m sure,” you say firmly. “I tried resetting it myself like the last guy told me to, but it’s still not working.”

Sally sighs and jots something down on a piece of paper.

“Alright, I’ll send someone up to take a look at it,” she says. “Is that all you need?”

You want to say no, that that’s definitely not all you need, that you need to go home to your quiet, cozy, doesn’t-smell-like-musty-carpets apartment, to lay on your comfortable bed and eat a warm meal.

You just nod curtly.

“Yes, that’s everything. Thank you.”

Sally turns away to pick up a phone receiver, but freezes for a moment, her head tilted in an odd direction. You follow her gaze, your eyes landing on a figure at the far end of the lobby.

The first thing you notice is that he is a total mess. His hair is sticking up in different directions, like a child’s hair after a windy day, and his clothes are rumpled and chaotic, as if he’s just woken up.

You’re trying to determine if he’s extremely tall, or if it just looks that way because you can see his entire two legs with how short those shorts are.

You’re trying, too, to determine why he strikes you as being somewhat out of place here.

You suppose harsh fluorescent lights can sort of warp a person. But there is something almost striking about him. His face is sharp and angular, all hollowedout cheekbones and fierce, saxe blue eyes that house the sort of selfloathing hunger you only see in Eastern European gay porn. And they are staring directly at you.

He approaches the counter, and comes to stop at an odd place, almost slightly behind you. And you can feel a splendid heat radiating from his body, and you shift uncomfortably to put some distance between you.

Sally, from behind the desk, has been watching the man with a wary sort of glare, but she looks at him now with the same flat, exhausted expression she had used with you. No bullshit Sally. Unaligned and unimpressed.

“How can I help you?” she asks, monotone all the same.

This guy looks at her for a moment, still staring directly at you out of the corner of his eye, but then shifts his gaze to Sally completely.

“I need a room for the night,” he says. His voice is slightly hoarse, as if unused for a while.

Sally is already unconvinced.

“Do you have a credit card?” she asks, her fingers hovering over the chunky computer keys.

The man digs around in the pocket of his athletic shorts and pulls out a wallet whose leather has long ago seen the best of its days. He rummages around in it for a moment before pulling out a credit card and handing it over.

Sally holds the card between two fingers and begins to type something, eyes narrowed at the monitor. She looks at a screen for a moment, then looks back at the man.

“This card is declined,” she says matter-of-factly.

The man’s forehead creases up, a look of the defeated suffusing across his face.

“What? No, that can’t be right,” he says, but he sounds like he thinks it probably can be right. “Can you try again?”

Sally sighs, but, for her part, types the number in again.

Then she waits.

And a moment later, she turns the computer monitor to show him the word DECLINED on the screen in angry crimson.

His expression swims somewhere toward frustration and he leans forward, his voice taking on a hint of desperation.

“There has to be a mistake, that’s my only card.”

Sally looks at him with an air of very mild irritation colouring her general apathy.

“Sir,” says Sally, “I can see the balance on the card. It’s declined. You don’t have any other cards?”

The man’s face shifts again—his face is really very expressive—now bordering on despair.

“No, no other cards,” he says. “Is there anything I can do? I really need a bed for tonight, I’ve been driving all day, I’m exhausted…”

And—what, is he gonna seduce Sally? The thought alone is so funny (not him seducing Sally, really, but rather Sally being seduced by him, or maybe just him trying and failing) and you pull out your phone to keep from laughing, or, at least, then you can blame Twitter, or something.

Sally holds up a hand to stop him, her bangles jingling.

“Listen, sir. We don’t give rooms out for free,” she says, tone all no-nonsense. “If you want a bed for the night, you need to have a valid form of payment. Do you have cash?”

Now this man’s head is bowed, and he is visibly deflated. He looks up to meet Sally’s gaze, sadness and helplessness doing a miserable pas de deux behind his eyes.

“No, no cash either,” he says quietly. “I don’t have anything. I just need somewhere to sleep tonight. Just one night. Please.”

And, at that—at that, if my fleeting glance serves me correct, Sally’s expression softens a little. I think Sally probably watches a lot of AGT. She clearly has a soft spot for a pathetic story, but her job is, of course, to keep the motel from going under. And Sally has no golden buzzer here.

“Sir,” she says firmly, “I have bills to pay too. If I just gave away rooms without payment, we’d be a homeless shelter, not a business.”

Fuck, that’s funny, too. In a way. You’re actually not so tempted to laugh anymore, because this is all becoming a bit painful to witness.

The man lets out an exasperated sigh.

“Can I pay in the morning, then?” he asks, and you can’t see from here, but his hands may be clasped together, because he certainly sounds like he’s pleading. “I’ll have cash by then, I swear. I’ll sign something, give you my driver’s license, anything. I just need a place to stay. Please.”

Sally leans forward on the counter, her tone growing a little terse. Whatever softness she’d started feeling now seems so far gone it may as well have never existed at all.

“Sir, I can’t do that either. If we let someone stay in a room without upfront payment, and you just disappear, then we’re out of a room and out of money. I’m really sorry, but we don’t make exceptions.”

And, to her credit, she does sound sorry, but she’s certainly not budging.

The man is definitely practically begging now.

“I won’t disappear!” he stresses, “I swear, I— Listen, I’m a tennis player. The tournament down the road. I just need a place to stay so I can rest before my match tomorrow. If I win, I get seven thousand dollars. I just need a bed for the night, that’s all. Please, you have to help me.”

Yeah, no, this is really painful. Like, uncomfortably so. You have the cruel thought of just turning around and leaving, and going back to your hot room, to go about your own—now considerably lesser seeming—wallowing, but an even crueler part of you regards this whole thing as a slow motion train wreck.

And, in your defense, you’re only halfway eavesdropping, because you’ve now struck up a passive aggressive argument with a coworker over a Microsoft Teams chat.

Sally raises a brow.

“A tennis player?” she asks dubiously, eyeing his disheveled appearance.

The man nods urgently.

“Yes, yes, I am! My name is Zweig, Patrick Zweig. You can look it up. I just need a bed, please, just one night. I’ll sign whatever you want, give you anything, just please.”

Sally now looks really unimpressed by his plea, her face betraying a hint of disdain.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, her voice laden with sarcasm. “You’re a tennis player. And I’m Beyoncé.”

And it’s funny again. Fucking Sally. You should try and ask her for a drink before you leave. She’ll say no, but you should ask.

The man’s face contorts in abject sorrow and impatience.

“Please, ma’am, if you just look me up—” he begins, but Sally cuts him off before he can continue.

“Sir, do you think I just have time to look up every person who comes in here claiming to be somebody?” she asks, her face growing increasingly pinched with annoyance.

It is then that Sally turns to face you, whose fingers are now really tapping away at your screen, because your coworker’s a bitch, but then,

“Ma’am, do you know who this man is?” Sally asks, gesturing a rednailed hand toward him as though presenting a case on Deal or No Deal.

And fuck if you hadn’t halfway tuned out of the conversation, because you’re suddenly being put on the spot.

You look over at the man, who is fidgeting and biting his chapped upper lip, and his wide blue gaze is a mural of anxious anticipation and pleading hope, and—okay.

So you hadn’t really been paying attention. But you now feel a palpable twinge of something resembling sympathy.

This guy’s face is so earnest and desperate, like an abandoned, infant monkey, or something equally as devastating, and there is something about… whatever he’s got going on that really compels you to give him the help he is so desperately seeking.

But that’s the thing. You were so busy insisting to Deirdre over Teams that saying you’re so articulate is, in fact, a microaggression, that fuck. You really don’t know who this man is.

But he’s looking at you, so desperate and pathetic, and his bottom lip may as well be jutted out and quivering, yet there is something—something—about him that intrigues you. In a stupid way. The way a kid may be intrigued by the mushrooms that have appeared between the wet grass after it’s rained.

So—okay—you give it a think. Because you do think he said it, his name, at some point. Your eyes flick over him. Your phone is still raised up to your face.

“… Peter Zeppelin?” you shrug, raising a brow.

And the guy’s eyes widen comically, and his face falls like the London Bridge, and Sally gives an amused sort of scoff. That seems to be the final nail in the coffin for her, and she holds up her hands in a resigned sort of there you go motion, going to turn back to the computer. And Peter Zeppelin—who is not Peter Zeppelin apparently—all but throws himself over the counter, and now you do see his hands clasp together, with all the desperation of Jesus in Gethsemane.

“No, no, no, come on, come on, that was close!” he says desperately, “Patrick Zweig, that was close, come on!”

But Sally seems done entertaining him, and the poor guy’s face twists with a dozen different alloys of disappointment and frustration and acceptance as he sees the conversation is over, and the gavel has been banged.

But despite his disappointment—and there are veritable oceans of disappointment he’s working with here—there is a hint of something else in his expression, something almost like amusement.

He shoots you a sidelong glance, as if trying to understand you. And you cannot help but notice the way his eyes linger, but you quickly look away, feeling a scattering prickle of guilt cascade over you, and you almost shiver. And why should you feel guilty, if you were only honest? You can’t be sure. Because you feel it all the same.

He lets out a sigh and gathers his things, wounded by the harsh blow of reality straight to his heart, it would seem. This was surely among the saddest interactions of his life.

But, as he turns to leave, he shoots another glance over his shoulder, his gaze once again finding you with magnetic haste.

It is a strange look he wears. A mixture of disappointment, curiosity, and something almost like… interest. You drop your arms, your phone hanging at your side, because that’s enough for you to feel a jolt of something. Something. Something you quite literally try to shake off as soon as he has departed, like a crestfallen cartoon character with all his belongings in a bandana on a stick over his shoulder. But his image seems to linger in your mind. His plaintive eyes and disheveled mien causing an odd sort of sensation to rise up in your stomach. You think it may be nausea.

Or the guilt is really having its way with you.

And the door swings shut behind him with a loud thunk, and you’re feeling a pang of regret, even. And fucking Sally, of all people, is giving you an odd look, as if to say you couldn’t have helped that poor man out a little more?

And you want to say hey, you mythic shrew, I don’t even know him, which is true, because you don’t.

And even if you had, would that have made Sally drop to her knees and throw him a room key? Who are you, arbiter of fame? You want to ask her. If you were less of a masochist, you probably would ask her. But the guilt makes a funny little home in your tummy, and you start to think it’s what you deserve.

You think, at some point, you were generous. In some tender, faraway time in your life, you housed a massive soft spot for anyone who needed help, you couldn’t help it. You’d grown up in a household with a Methodist and a Social Worker, and compassion and kindness were espoused with breakfast in the mornings. And now that you’re working in a cutthroat office full of bloodthirsty Type-A’s, you’ve been made hard as granite. Great.

You’re walking through the parking lot towards your room, and you spot a beat up Honda, its park job beyond redemption.

And who should you see slumped in the backseat, looking utterly dejected, but Peter fucking Zeppelin. He is staring at something on his phone, the glow illuminating his face in the darkness. And you’re holding another Coors from the vending machine like a world class capitalist shit stain.

Seeing him like that, so defeated and alone, makes the spot of guilt you’re nursing in your belly stand up and do a little jig.

And is it your fault? No. Kind of? Either way, you feel the tug of responsibility, and an unfamiliar need to make amends.

You reach your room. You unlock the door with your keycard. You do not walk in. You linger, of course, staring across the parking lot at the man sitting in his car. He hasn’t moved, still slumped down, head bowed over his phone. Your guilt seems to metamorphose into something more discomfiting, and its jig becomes a stomp.

Why refuse to help him?

It is so unlike you, that coldness.

You stand there for what tires you like an eternity, more than a little torn. But, ultimately, the image of his big blue pleading eyes, and the way they had laved you in abject despair, wins out. You’ll see them in your nightmares if you don’t do something. You can’t leave him like this, alone and dejected in his car. You certainly want to. You’d love to go back into your too warm room and drink your too warm beer and hope for Sally to have a come to Jesus moment. But you really can’t.

With a weary, longsuffering sigh, you gather your courage and make your way across the parking lot towards the car, your heels clicking against the tar.

You knock the knuckle of your index against the window, “Oi! Zeppelin!”

And the man’s head jerks up.

He looks… surprised to see you standing there. But there’s a gleam of expectation in his eyes.

The door is locked when he first goes to open it, which—good. At least he has a sense of selfpreservation. And then he unlocks it and takes off his grey track jacket and scrambles out of the car with a disoriented sort of grace, stepping out and straightening up to his full height.

So, yes, he actually is very tall. Much taller than you’d realised, actually, and you have to crane your neck to look at him. The light from the motel sign illuminates his face, accentuating his pallor and the tired lines around his eyes.

He is standing very close, this homeless stranger, and it suddenly occurs to you not to let your softness get the better of you. You look him up and down.

You wait for him to speak.

You want to see how he’ll react. And a furtive little part of you hopes that he’ll be a little angry, a little annoyed, at your still getting his name wrong. Because then you get to keep your guard up and maintain your distance, because even Mother Theresa knew the implications of standing alone with a large man in the middle of a motel parking lot in bumfuck New Rochelle.

His eyes, weary, harden just a fraction, the dim apparition of a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s Zweig,” he corrects, his voice frayed at its edges but firm. “Patrick.”

He isn’t quite angry, but there’s a glimmer of irritation there, just enough to give you the satisfaction you hadn’t realised you’d been craving, and a strange sense of triumph tingles through you.

Oh, how much easier to be cold and standoffish when you have something to work with.

“Right, right, sorry about that,” you say, your voice dancing almost imperceptibly with sarcasm.

You cross your arms, raising an eyebrow at him, as though… assessing.

And then Peter—not Peter, Patrick—looks at you for a moment, his weary eyes registering your defensive stance and your rigid gaze.

He seems to recognise something. Something. A need to maintain something. To push him away and make a run for it before it’s too late. And yet, he doesn’t quite seem offended. Or even irritated, anymore. More amused, really, as he gives you a slow, crooked smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling in an odd, charming, almost absolute sort of way. Like he’s smiling, and that’s all he could be doing. Even as the smile itself has all sorts of nuanced implications. “I’ve heard worse,” he says.

The way he is looking at you, that easy grin, makes the guilt in your tummy flutter and still and wait. It does feel like he is seeing something, and, of course, that isn’t nice.

You feel a growing unease at his active refusal to react the way you expect him to, and maybe want him to. You work in white collar. There’s nothing easier to delineate than an angry guy. A guy frustrated by your callousness. But this guy seems almost entertained by your standoffishness. It is unsettling. Maybe strangely captivating. But mostly unsettling.

“You look exhausted,” you say, and you make sure any detectable concern is ostensibly feigned.

“Yeah, thanks for noticing.”

Simple. Dry. A note of humour.

He reaches up and runs a hand through his messy hair, the movement drawing your eye to his long, lean arm, the way it strains against the fabric of his helplessly rumpled T-shirt.

So you start feeling irritated again. Uneasy, unsettled, annoyed, these are easy things to start feeling, and you start feeling them. But not for this guy himself. Not necessarily. No, more by the way he is making you feel. And you think, fuck, has it been so long since I’ve had a beer that I can’t hold it down? And maybe that’s it. Or, maybe, you can’t help but find him marginally attractive. The fabric of his shirt, worn to gossamer, brushing over and revealing a glimpse of a toned, hirsute chest. His athletic shorts, which seem laughably short now, or maybe his legs seem laughably long. And strong. Maybe he should run for money, that’s a thing, right?

So anyway, you’re unsettled. And you find yourself growing even colder in response.

“No, you look really exhausted. Like medically. You look like you’re about to pass out. You look like you just crawled out from under a freeway overpass,” you say, and the words come out a tad sharper than intended, which was already quite sharp anyway. “Are you sure you’re not just some bum pretending to be a worldclass tennis player?”

This time, his smile turns into a fullblown toothy smirk.

“Oh, I’m a bum alright,” he says, leaning against the side of his car as he regards you with that flaying sort of intensity. “A real loser, actually. The kind of guy who ends up sleeping in his car in a motel parking lot because he’s too broke to even get a room for the night.”

The guilt in your tummy—remember that guilt?—yeah, well, it feels uncertain if it should even be there any more. If it shouldn’t be replaced with something more commensurate with the dense thump of your heart. But you don’t want to let him see how much his self-deprecating attitude has affected you. And you don’t want to let yourself see his reaction, if you were to give into a very strange sudden compulsion to tell him he isn’t a loser.

Instead, you roll your eyes.

“You’re really laying it on thick, aren’t you?” you say, a wry hoist of your brows. You press your face against his car window, cupping your hands around your eyes so you can see in through the tint. “Where’s your guitar? Are you gonna start singing an acoustic version of ‘Hallelujah’ and begging for change?”

He chuckles at this, eyes lingering on the little patch of fog left by your mouth on the glass. “Ah, did you miss it?” he says, feigning sympathy, but his smile is still so wide, “I was strumming like a beast over on that street corner earlier. Gave my strings to this other homeless guy, though, in the end, figured he needed it more than me. Not ‘Hallelujah’, though. Dylan’s what really gets peoples’ hands in their pockets.”

“Righ… t.” You hesitate. You hesitate, because—well—he’s singing.

Yeah, no, he’s definitely singing. He’s closing his eyes and leaning against his car and singing Bob Dylan.

“Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? I’ve stumbled on the side of ten thousand graveyards.”

And—okay—those are the wrong lyrics, but the song choice certainly feels relevant to his current situation.

“It’s a hard—” He’s still singing. “—it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna—”

“O-kay,” you say, and he opens his eyes and for all their fatigue they are glimmering with mirth.

You try to remain expressionless, but his undeniable charm and abiding levity considering his obvious predicament make it difficult for you to justify being mean.

“You seem awfully comfortable with your circumstances,” you observe, a vein of scepticism threaded through your voice. “Most people would be freaking out right now, you know.”

He shrugs, hands in his pockets now, and makes an ambivalent sort of noise. “Well, what good would that do?” he says. “Won’t magically make the cash appear in my account.”

He pulls a hand from his pocket, the nylon rustling, and runs it through his hair again. You find yourself watching the movement, watching his hands now, which you think look oddly large. You’re unsettled again. Or maybe you’ve been unsettled the whole time, and you’re just still unsettled.

“So, you’re just gonna sit there in your car all night and hope a miracle happens?” you ask, a strange tremor in your voice that even you cannot presently put a name to. “You don’t have any… I don't know, friends you can call? Or parents you can beg money off of?”

And his expression seems to go dour at that, a noticeable trickle of humour draining from his eyes. “Parents are out,” he says bluntly. Pauses. Gives a humourless laugh.

Doesn’t mention friends, you note. But then you’ve never had many either.

Your guilt seems to settle again, deciding it is needed, and it is accompanied by whatever had had your voice tremoring seconds ago. You cannot help it. This is fucking sad. The way his selfdeprecating remarks have suddenly turned into selfdeprecating revelations. It’s fucking sad. And you don’t realise you’re staring into the middle distance all sadly until he’s ducking down into your field of vision, eyes searching your face, vaguely bemused, but sort of disgruntled.

“You feel sorry for me,” he says—says, not asks.

And then he straightens, and you think he’s gotten taller.

“Well, you’ve got no friends, no family, no money, and nowhere to go,” you say, trying to keep your voice neutral, despite the fact that, yes, you find you are feeling quite sorry for him. “It sounds like you’re in a pretty shitty situation, Patrick.”

And where he could probably break down into tears—and maybe he should; you’re willing to give him your lukewarm beer and rub his shoulder a bit—a glimmer finds his eye. A fissure in his nonchalance. A look of surprise, and what almost seems like hope. He doesn’t even try to disguise it, and his smile is coming back, with the ease of something never departed.

“Hey! Look who remembered my name,” he says, and his voice has suddenly gone weird and tender, and the change sort of makes you shudder.

“Ah, shit, did I?” you say, looking down, rolling the beer can in your palm and letting it flick off your fingers and land in the other hand. You toss it back and forth like that a few times, and you’re trying to be… not too much of anything. You try to be Sally, unaligned and unimpressed.

It's hard, though, with the way he smiles like he knows something you don't. Like he's in on some kind of secret. You’ve always had a weird suspicion that everyone is keeping something from you. No one could surprise you, as a child.

Patrick—fuck, there you go—has the impish simper on his lips of a cat who’s just seized and maimed the canary.

“You did,” he confirms, voice still strange and heavy, like it’s laden with something.

You try to keep your gaze focused on the can—left, right, left, right—and the metal makes a little tck noise each time it hits your palm, the liquid inside sort of singing as it moves. But your eyes meander up to his legs, where a small patch of bright red road rash is visible on his knee. The guilt in your belly is up and dancing again, but it seems to have invited a whole bevy of other emotions alongside it. Stupid stuff, like sympathy, and shyness, and lots of other somethings of various discomfort.

And then you say, “Well, don’t get used to it,” and the can slips from your palm and onto the ground.

“Okay,” he says, stopping the can from rolling away with his foot.

And then he’s bending down to pick it up, and then he’s freezing, crouched down, like his whole body is wincing, and he makes a noise, like a guilty sort of noise, and he looks up at you, and says,

“Fuck,”

And stands up and sighs, shakes his head like he’s made a mistake, and shrugs his shoulders and says, “I’m used to it,” with a rueful sort of smile.

“Oh, are you?” You hold your hand out for the can, but he doesn’t give it to you.

He makes a tsking sort of noise, his elbow raising to rest on the top of the car, “I think I am,” he says, like it pains him, “I think you’re just gonna have to keep remembering my name.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“But you did.” He parrots your intonation.

Everything suddenly seems very loud. The sound of crickets chirping, the buzzing of the neon signs, the nylon swipe of his tiny shorts as he moves. He keeps moving.

“Because I feel sorry for you,” you say, and things seem quiet at that, as if for that, “You’re right, I feel sorry for you.”

He sort of kisses his teeth, nodding slowly and glancing off to the side in thought. And when he looks at you again, it’s with a gleam of vulnerability, like he’s conveying a silent message that you cannot quite decipher.

It is disconcerting.

His vulnerability is like a gaping black hole, something that will suck you into oblivion. You don’t really know what to do with your hands now. You wipe your palm off down the side of your pencil skirt.

“You’re not gonna spend the night in your car, are you?” you ask, like, maybe, if you ask, he’ll come up with a new plan of action.

But no. No plans. Only questions. He suspects you have a plan.

“Why?” he asks, “Are you offering me a place to crash?”

His smirk is returning, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. He is clearly a seasoned scholar in deflection, but he bears the cross quite poorly, and his words send a shiver down your stilldamp spine.

Sunny Skies is the kind of place you'd expect a scene out of a thriller to take place.

You can picture the headline now: Woman found murdered in cheap motel room, career dead in the water long before.

You hesitate for a moment, torn between your better instincts and your uncanny appetite to help this man.

You know what you should do; you should tell him no, leave him with the beer, and walk away. Keep yourself safe from getting involved in his mess of a life, and potentially being found days from now with a racket jutting out your abdomen, long since festered in a pool of your own blood because the damn air conditioning still won’t be fixed. Fuck, Deirdre would love that.

But the way he’s looking at you, that deep dark supernova vulnerability you’d spied in his eyes just moments ago, it makes you hesitate.

“I…” you start to speak, then stop, sighing as you fiddle with your nails. “I'm gonna ask you something.”

Patrick's smirk falters slightly. He seems to sense that something significant is about to happen, and he tenses, as though bracing himself for an impact.

“Shoot,” he says, a thinly veiled wariness in his tone.

“Why the tennis?” you ask, your eyes on his, flickering, searching, like a bloodhound. “Why are you still doing something that’s clearly not working out for you? Why not give up and do something different? Something that pays, for one.”

And, now, you really do steel yourself for anger, but, to your surprise, anger doesn’t come. Nor do defensiveness or hostility.

Instead, he’s letting out a cynical, protracted sort of pfft noise. “You think I haven’t asked myself that a million times?” he says, his voice cloistered in irony. “There’s only tennis. Since forever. Maybe I fucked up with that, but that’s what I did, and now it’s all there is. I’m not exactly standing before you with too many marketable skills. I can run, I can hit a ball, not much else.”

And you’re frowning at that, at the resignation in his voice. You want to say something, some platitude about not giving up, about trying harder, but you know he won’t appreciate it. Instead, you ask another question.

You ask, “If you had a choice, what would you do instead?”

Again, Patrick surprises you. He doesn’t scoff or obfuscate. He actually just thinks about it for a moment, his whole face turning introspective.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually, his voice low. “I guess I never really thought about what else I might be good at.” He runs a hand through his hair again, letting out a soft sigh. “It’s hard to imagine another life when this is the only one you’ve ever known.”

And that just makes you frown harder. You really want to say something now. But you don’t. Because you can’t. Because what would it be?

He’s an almost-has-been who’s fallen from the top of the ladder and is now scraping the bottom.

He'd once had it all, and now he has nothing.

How do you comfort someone like that?

You look at him for a moment, his lingering charm swirling like a wandering bee around you, pulling on your senses. You think about Ted Bundy, and how he lured women to demise by strumming their heartstrings like Bob Dylan. But then you suppose that any man trying to victimise a woman is not first going to try their luck on Sally, so. Well. You make a decision.

You make a decision, and take a deep breath, looking him straight in the eye. “I have a deal for you.”

He chuckles at that, his eyes dragging downward, a slow descent. He looks at your dishevelled working girl get up, and you realise, with a passing breeze that wafts the acrid, musky, but vaguely not unpleasant scent of him toward you, that your shirt is still half open, and your cleavage has been on exhibition this whole time, but you’re only realising now, because he’s only looking now, and he wasn’t looking before, and he says,

“I’m sure you do,” and he says, “You got a contract for me to sign?”

“My room has a queen and a sofa pull out couch,” you say, not-so-furtively, furtively creeping your fingers up to pull your shirt closed, “You can stay tonight—“

“I can’t let you sleep on a sofa pullout couch in your own room,” he says, and he’s able to feign absolute concern for but a moment before his smile is back again.

“—you can stay tonight,” you repeat, “on the couch, on one condition.”

He crosses his arms, the beer can slipping beneath his armpit, and you don’t even want it anymore, not the least because it’s now probably undrinkably warm.

“Let’s hear it,” he says.

You pause before responding, to make sure you haven’t been briefly possessed and given the suggestion by passing poltergeist, that it’s actually what you want. Maybe you’re tired, or charitable, or maybe it’s just whatever strange, striking quality he seems to have, but you say, “I’ll let you stay in my room if you let me come to your match tomorrow.”

And now you have managed to shock him. He’d been expecting some sort of request for a favour, or payment, but certainly not that.

“You…” his eyes are searching yours for sincerity, “… want to watch me play?” he asks.

“I’ve never seen a tennis match before,” you admit, and, for a fleeting, ludicrous moment, you feel a flush of embarrassment at your confession. “It might be interesting. And…” you steel herself, not sure you’re going to go through with sharing the next bit, “I’ve had a really shitty time here. My meetings here were… horrific. I could use some entertainment.”

He lets out a soft laugh at that, though maybe it’s a scoff. “You want me to entertain you?” he says, and his cadence is jesting, but there is something else there too, something in his eyes that makes your heart start thumping densely again. “You realise tennis can be pretty boring unless you know the sport, right?”

You shrug, affecting an air of nonchalance. “Hey, I’m willing to give it a shot. I have one day left in New Rochelle, and a day at the courts is a lot better than another day stuck in a meeting from hell. At least with you I’ll be watching someone actually do something, instead of pretending to care about some idiot’s idea for a corporate wellness retreat.”

Patrick’s eyes house a genuine amusement, his smile wide. “Corporate wellness retreat,” he says slowly, raising an eyebrow. “You in finance?”

“Worse. Way worse. Marketing,” you admit, like this is the most harrowing thing you can say. “But it’s all the same, really. It’s mostly idiots with big egos in boardrooms trying to outbullshit each other.”

“So you’d rather watch idiots with big egos trying to outbullshit each other on a court,” he nods solemnly, but, in a way, he’s issuing a warning. A beat, then he asks, “You always this sour?”

And you bristle for a moment, your pride affronted at his words. But you quickly relax as the irony of your current situation occurs to you—you’re letting a practically homeless tennis player stay in your hotel room, and you’re letting him joke at your expense.

And you suppose, not for the first time, that you deserve it, to some extent.

“Oh, no, usually I’m a blast,” you say wryly, and then, smiling vaguely with an odd sense of honesty, “But it’s been a long three days, and I’m not exactly in the best mood.”

He spends a moment studying you, taking a thoughtful breath. “You work too hard,” he says, as though coming to a profound conclusion.

“And you don’t work at all,” you reply, “Maybe we should swap problems for a day.”

“You got a house? I’m in.”

“An apartment, yeah,” you say, your voice lilting as though genuinely considering the prospect, “But I don’t have a car. Maybe we should just merge and form a symbiotic, corporate drone/middling athlete hybrid life.”

And there’s a pause there, and everything sounds loud again. The vague nyoom of each passing car rattling your teeth, because, in a way, what you’re suggesting is intimacy. And it’s beginning to occur to you that, though perhaps in different ways, you and Peter Zeppelin are two unspeakably lonely people. And to suggest such a thing as beastly as to share what’s tender, well… it feels a little unkind. A gentle brush against an open wound hurts the same way a slap does.

Patrick takes a moment.

Then, sucking in a contrite bit of air through his teeth, he shakes his head, “I couldn’t wear a suit.”

“You could wear a suit,” you respond, shaking your head, rolling your eyes like he’s being silly, like that’s a silly thing to say. But now you’re picturing him in a suit which certainly feels like an untimely gust of air against that very same wound.

“I couldn’t,” he insists, shaking his head like he’s resigned, “I couldn’t, I’d look ridiculous in a suit.”

“You’d look great in a suit.”

“So, it’s a deal then? I get a bed to fall into tonight, and you get a ticket to the Patrick Zweig extravaganza tomorrow?”

You laugh at that, a sharp, amused ha, because that’s certainly some audacity he’s got on him.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” you say, and you’re smiling. “You get a sofa pull out couch to fall into.”

Patrick’s face swims with feigned despair at your words, a mock-offended noise leaving his mouth. “I thought this was a mutually beneficial arrangement,” he says, a picture of exaggerated disappointment. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

You sputter a laugh. “I’m letting you stay in my room,” you remind him. “Free of charge, might I add. I think I’m scratching your back plenty.”

His eyes widen. He gives a dramatic sigh. He says wow like he just can’t believe it. He pretends to sulk. But the twinkle in his eyes ruthlessly betrays his amusement. “Okay,” he nods, like he’s doing something very big of himself, “Okay. I’ll take the couch. I’ll be good. It’s just a shame such a beautiful woman will be sleeping all alone in a massive bed.”

Something hot definitely flares deep in your gut, burning away all the guilt and concern and embarrassment and whatever else. There is something to being called beautiful by a man who looks like… well, like him. You’re not above admitting that he is becoming increasingly more handsome with passing time, like his face is blooming and ebbing and flowing before you. And that weird, vaguely unshowered musk is making your nostrils flare with something primordial.

“You’ll survive,” you say dryly, though your heart is back to thumping like a heavy fist.

The sound of the shower running is a vague cloud of pitterpattering, an ambient thrum, and you can hear the water rushing through the pipes behind the wall like a faraway steam engine.

You’re sat against the headboard, your nuclear reactor of a work laptop balanced on your knees, the fan whirring, the bottom permeating your skin with a volcanic heat and probably giving you radiation poisoning. You’re typing like a court stenographer, a sharp, erratic clacking of your nails against the keys, accompanied by the muted rush of waterflow from the next room over. You’re traversing the minefield of your emails. The light of the computer screen casts a pale, eldritch glow on your features, your brows creasing in irritation as you quickly scan and delete all your accumulated unreads.

You’re still in your tights, skirt, and button down, but now you’ve untucked the button down as well. You’re still sweating. The room is still a tepid rat hole. And it’s washed in the warm dingy glow of the beside lamp.

The only other light in the room comes from the ensuite bathroom, the door slightly ajar, leaking out a bright white beam that illuminates the swooping, swirling streams of mist that flow out.

You think the water pressure here’s a bit aggressive, but Patrick nearly sheds a tear when the sharp stream of hot water thrashes against the aches and knots in his muscles.

His whole body is sore. He sometimes feels like an earthbound corpse. It isn’t just the hours spent in his car, but it’s also the ardour of the matches, the unheard of notion of a good meal. The stress and toil of his lifestyle has taken its due toll on his flesh and bones, and here, in the shower, haloed by the thick fog of water vapour, he allows himself a moment of vulnerability.

The water sluices through his hair, emulsifying with the soap and sweat, creating a slick, frothy, chalky-floral scented trail down his face, chest, and arms. He lathers himself everywhere with the little motel bar soap until it is the size of a coin.

He braces himself against the shower wall for a moment, jaw slack and breathing laboured, letting the water batter his shoulders, feeling the muscles there tighten and loosen simultaneously under the hot, cascading stream. The steam and the heat seem to soothe something inside of him, and, for the briefest moment, he feels something approaching peace.

So Patrick is having his spiritual awakening in the shower, and you’re at the mercy of your emails. Deleting messages from your boss about the meeting notes and potential follow ups.

And Patrick spends the first ten minutes in there making unholy sorts of noises, like his skin is being torn off, which is a little disconcerting, but you figure he’s not had a nice long shower in a while, so you leave him be. And the next five minutes are just heavy breathing. And then he starts singing.

“It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall!”

Which would be fine, but your irritation’s mounting; each new communication in your inbox serves as a needling reminder of the tragic, tedious day you’ve just had. The tragic, tedious life you've been living.

You rub your temples, and Patrick’s singing the guitar refrain of the song, and you’re trying to ease your burgeoning headache, but it’s proving stubborn. The more you read, the more you just want to thwack something. Or scream. Or both.

And so it is bad timing when Patrick emerges from the bathroom.

You’d been expecting an awkward moment. He seems the type to wear his towels irredeemably low on his waist and you weren’t particularly keen on knowing the intimate distribution of all his body hair.

But Patrick walks out in something else.

Patrick walks out in a baby blue Hello Kitty robe.

Patrick walks out in your baby blue Hello Kitty robe.

And you’re pretty sure your blood turns molten.

Your eyes widen like saucers, and your lips part softly. It is certainly both the most absurd and, perhaps, endearing thing you’ve ever seen, and you feel almost strange and lightheaded at the sight. You’d been imagining all sorts of stilted scenarios in your head, but this… this is beyond any of those.

“What… the hell are you wearing?” you manage to sputter, your chest kindling with both embarrassment and amusement.

Patrick glances down at the robe.

You’ve had it since you were nineteen, is the thing, and it only just fits you now, so, naturally, it looks absolutely comical on him. The sleeves come up to his midforearm. The hem is immodest, to say the least, rivalling his shorts in that regard. And the plush belt only just about encircles his waist, but he had the decency to tie a tiny knot at the front.

He looks back up at you. He seems remarkably nonchalant.

“Ah, this?” he says. “I thought it was, like, a complimentary thing. Y’know, like the little shampoo bottles?”

And he has the nerve to add a little shrug for effect, though, when you look closer, you can see the corners of his mouth are twitching slightly with suppressed laughter.

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A possessive part of you—well, the possessive part of you—wants to incinerate the robe with him in it, because he’s definitely naked under there. You can see the damp hair on his chest peeking out from the neckline, and water runs in rivulets down his legs, dripping on the carpet, and he’s getting your robe wet.

But the image of him raiding the bathroom, thinking he’d found some sort of freebie, is so strange and amusing.

You raise an eyebrow, trying to keep a straight face.

“You thought the motel—this motel, Sunny Skies motel—gives out Hello Kitty robes as complimentary items?”

Patrick grins in response. He is utterly thrilled with the effect he is having on you.

“Hey, Hello Kitty is a timeless icon,” he says.

And your eye twitches. You feel a little deranged.

“Yeah,” you say, enunciating sharply, eyes still a little wide, and you slowly move the laptop from off your knees, “That’s why I bought the robe.”

“You know, you’re not a very generous hostess,” he says, like he’s been sitting on the grievance for a while.

You release a laugh that is halfway a winded breath, “Oh, really?” because he’s not exactly getting a five star guest review on AirBnB either.

Patrick he tsks and nods slowly like he’s sad to break the news. And he saunters around the poky room, hands hiked high in the pockets of the robe.

He gives an exaggerated onceover, inspecting the room, before his gaze settles on you. You are now cross legged, leaning forward, your laptop immolating in front of you as your fingers fly across the keyboard.

"Can't believe this place actually has a TV," he muses, walking over to the small, ancient box. He glances at the remote, lifts it, and turns the TV on. A bright red screen flashes No Signal.

"Nevermind." He flops down on the edge of the bed next to you. "What’re you doing?”

You suppress an eyeroll, or violent screech, or spontaneous second degree murder at his question.

He knows what you're doing, but he's clearly itching for some sort of attention, a stray pawing at the restaurant door in search of warmth. And you wonder how long it’s been since he’s spent so much time with someone. You're a little hesitant to indulge him, partly because you're still processing your callously stolen garment and all the flesh with which it’s become familiar.

"Email," you say tersely. "Work stuff."

"Oh, right, right," Patrick nods and nods, as though only now realising that you're in the middle of a task.

He peers over your laptop screen, looking at the rows of email threads.

"Looks stressful," he comments.

You spare him a glance. His proximity is a tangible, intrusive thing, and robe gapes open, exposing a damp triangle of his chest and collarbone, his bare feet crossed at the ankles.

“Yeah,” you say, not even bothering to sheathe the irritation in your voice. “It is.”

For his part, he seems unfazed by your tone, or at least not willing to acknowledge it. He continues to peer at the screen, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes.

And you don’t know why, but you feel a strange, singeing humiliation at his scrutiny. You and your stupid mire of spiritdecimating emails. You feel pathetic enough to belong in a museum. An abstract sculpture portraying modern melancholy.

“Can you not... stare, please?” you croak, then clear your throat, your fingers against the keys growing jerky and feverish, like the sputtering adrenaline of something soon to perish. “I need to finish this.”

“Sure, sure.”

Patrick holds up his hands in surrender.

He looks around the room for a moment, as though contemplating his next move, and when he seizes beside you, like he’s just spotted a motion-activated grenade, it is so noticeable that it actually makes you stop typing and look up. He is facing away from you, is the thing.

There's a moment of silence. You watch his back. It looks like he’s not even breathing. The hum of the laptop fan and the low drone of the TV and the thick, tepid waft of the ventilation system compete with each other.

Slowly, slowly, as though you, too, have spotted the bomb, and you’re bracing yourself for flakspray, you look over his shoulder. And oh. Oh.

You see what has arrested his attention.

On the bedside table is a little black cardboard to-go box, Meyer’s Butcher & Grill printed atop in block lettering.

You blink. You had forgotten about the box completely. A relic of a day you hope will be extracted irrevocably from the flesh of your cerebral matter via some sort of alien abduction or government experiment.

But Patrick—well—he hadn’t been tightly shutting his legs as the polished toe of a hoary businessman conspicuously crept up his shin. He didn’t have to feign interest in golf for three hours while a cracked leather seat scraped the back of his knee.

No, Patrick is looking at that box like it houses nirvana. When he leans forward a bit, you can see how his throat moves involuntarily. He swallows. You see the muscles in his jaw flex with primal intensity.

For a moment, neither of you speak. The moment is heavy with tension, like the air before a storm.

And this seems to be an apt metaphor, because there is suddenly a deep noise, like the sky churning after thunder. And it is coming from his body. And it is such a loud, visceral noise of human urgency that you almost recoil.

A strange mix of shame and pity swell in your throat. The box, as it were, had filled you with such a strange sort of repulsed nostalgia that you really had let it slip your memory. You have no interest in its contents. But this man’s raw response rekindles the abject guilt in your tummy.

Patrick turns to you. He turns to you very slowly. And you can see how his eyes are almost glazed over. He wears the look of a man staring at the Holy Grail. A tentative shock, like he’s been marooned on a deserted island for a dozen years, and has just stumbled upon civilisation.

He opens his mouth. His jaw is slack and leaden. His tongue pools with saliva. And if a string of drool slips past his lip, it’s the least you can do not to mention it.

After a while, he manages thickly, “What… uh. What is that?”

“It’s, uh… steak. From the restaurant.”

He nods. He nods very slowly. As though he’s been rendered physically incapable of saying any more, though his words come suddenly, “Steak?”

“Uh, yeah. Filet mignon, I think. The… fucking… guy ordered it, but…” you feel, in a fleeting moment, a feral sort of fear, like a fawn caught alone by a wolf in the forest. And it’s silly, obviously, but that’s how intense his gaze is right now. You clear your throat, “I mean, I’m not hungry.”

Patrick’s breathing is growing increasingly laboured. His tongue flicks out of his mouth, the wet muscle glistening in the dim light.

A moment passes.

“You can, uh…” you hesitate, a bit transfixed by his carnal hunger, your voice sounding oddly fragile, “You can have it… if you want…”

Patrick's eyes flicker almost imperceptibly at this. And you’re sitting there, and you expect him to just go ahead, and, maybe, in the background of your mind, you feel bad that the meal’s gone cold.

But he’s not eating. No, he’s suddenly become very still, as though waiting. As though trying to discern your sincerity.

"Are you sure… you don’t want it?" he asks.

And there is something about his voice, small and corporeal. It sends a strange, hurtful waft of pity through your chest. It sounds like it’s been scraped over barbed wire. It is raw and vulnerable and painful.

And you have the sense that, even if you did say no—which you wouldn’t—he has the look in his eye of someone who will definitely end up eating that steak, one way or another.

You shake your head, clearing your throat, “No, no, of course not. Take it. Please. It’ll just go to waste.” And your voice is sort of coloured by the notion that you’re on the verge of tears.

For a moment, Patrick's reaction is oddly unreadable. It's as though he can't quite believe his luck. And then, he turns, scrambling for the box as though it may spontaneously disappear now that it’s his.

He tears the lid off and, from here, his face looks cast in strange shadows, a shimmer flickering past his face as the low lamplight catches the foil in the carton.

There is something about the instant greasy, bloody aroma that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. You’ve never liked steak. But he's already reaching inside.

Patrick can’t seem to chew quickly enough. He almost whines softly with each swallow.

It’s an animalic scene of consumption.

You think of hyenas mauling their prey, but he also looks very small, and vulnerable, and certainly odd, because he’s still wearing your robe.

He devours the meat voraciously, and he doesn’t even bother to wipe away the stream of red dribbling down his chin, but he has the decency to hold the box right under his chin so he doesn’t make a mess.

His fingers are covered in blood and mashed potatoes. There’s a little plastic container of chimichurri in the corner of the box, but he seems content ignoring it.

You have a strange sense that this whole ordeal is something you shouldn’t even be watching. And that, when a loud knock sounds at the door, you should be sort of embarrassed, but you don’t know why.

“Maintenance.” The man at the door seems so bored as to be disgusted. He towers over you, and is peering down, arm resting against the doorframe. He is gnashing open mouthed upon a wad of gum.

You are suddenly conscious of your dishevelled appearance, and find yourself scrambling to button your shirt up.

“Um?” you say, skewing your face a bit confusedly as you slip the buttons closed.

You let your sleeves roll down, the rumpled flare of the open cuffs falling over your wrists.

“Air conditioning maintenance,” the man repeats, as though you are a bit dense. You notice, now, he has a friend behind him.

And, “Oh!” you say, “Right, yeah, the air conditioning, the thermostats showing 60, but the air’s still hot.”

He blinks down at you, his head lolling to the side, and he tongues the inside of his cheek. His arms are big as boulders and tattoo strewn.

“You try resetting it?” he says.

Your jaw clenches.

“Yes,” you smile tightly. “It’s still not working.”

He harrumphs and then sort of coughs loudly and then sniffs, “Yeah,” he drawls, “we been getting a lot of complaints.”

“Lotta complaints,” he friend chimes boredly, tugging up the sagging waistband of his comically oversized grease stained jeans. He is idly twirling a screwdriver.

And then the one in front, the larger one, flicks his gaze over you. And then over your shoulder. He seems vaguely disinterested, for his part, in the story behind your blowsy, tousled appearance, and the half naked man tearing into a steak takeout in a Hello Kitty robe behind you. You figure working in a motel begets much stranger sightings, but you cringe to think of the conclusions he may be drawing. A disillusioned businesswoman and her famished prostitute? Does he think the robe gets you going? You shake your head of the embarrassment.

"Ah... ma'am," he utters, shoving his hands into the pockets of his faded overalls. "You and... your friend need to vacate the room for about twenty minutes while we work on the unit."

Outside, Patrick strikes his chest two times and manages a distasteful burp.

A draught sweeps past and the hem of the robe he’s still wearing sways dangerously. You aren’t even wearing your shoes. The soft soles of your feet lay flat against the warm tar through the thin gauze of your tights.

You’re holding the Coors can, still unopened, warm to the touch between your fingers, and Patrick’s got a cigarette he bummed off one of the workers between his lips.

“Nice outfit,” the guy had said—the shorter one, with the baggy jeans and crew cut and scar on his temple.

“Thanks,” Patrick had grinned, unashamed.

“Are you supposed to be smoking?” you ask.

The night is sticky in the mouth, sultry and thin, like a yawn.

The candescent red pearl of the cigarette’s end bobs with Patrick’s each inhale. The smoke curls past his lips like wisps of grey fog, the humid wind carrying them off like fragments of a weary conscience.

Patrick shrugs. Inhales deeply, his eyes trained lazily on the sky above.

You’re far enough from him, now, that when you look at him, he’s a strange tableau all on his own. This boy not yet a man, scantily wrapped in vivid blue, his too long legs and too large feet and too farfetchedness. He stands against the hellscape of Sunny Skies. Sickly yelloworange streetlights casting looming shadows that writhe like living things on the ground.

His lips and fingers still glean with the greased detritus of his cold steak dinner.

“Night before a match?” you ask then, and you find yourself following his gaze heavenward. The sky is effectively starless, but you appreciate the deep shade of indigo. “Doesn’t seem smart.”

“Smart,” he echoes.

He reaches up to pinch the cigarette, takes another drag before tugging it off his lips and flicking some ash off. You watch how the smouldering grey specks float down to the ground before dissolving into nothing.

When you look up at him he is looking at you.

“It’s not Wimbledon,” he says, like he’s breaking the news to you, a meandering coil of smoke swirling from his now halfway smirking mouth, the plume veiling the dim streetlight glow in an almost tender way. His voice is kind of loud, when he’s speaking to you now, because there’s a few feet of parking lot between you, but it’s quiet enough that he could just talk normally, if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He says, loudly, pointing at you with the brilliant orange end of the cigarette, “Helps me relax.”

He shrugs again, brings it to his lips again, and slowly turns around. And you think he’s hiding, but he’s made a full rotation by the time he exhales, the smoke streaming out his lazy smile and billowing all around his face, so you suppose not.

“It’s mostly a mental game,” he says, gesturing with the cig again, bringing it close to his temple in a way that makes your brows knot in slight concern, “Tennis. I could be the most disciplined guy ever—“

The concern in your furrowed brows turns to dubiousness. “Could you?”

“—could cut out drinking, cut out smoking, eat all the green shit, sleep at nine. But if I’m fuckin’ pulling my hair out about stepping onto a court, I’m fucked.”

You think he has a point. You think you remember a therapist, at some point, saying something about compartmentalising. But you don’t really know what that means. You stopped seeing her after three sessions, anyway, so who are you to cast judgement on discipline.

Still, “Where did you say you’re ranked again?”

Patrick chuckles at that, a slight nod as if to say touché. He takes another deep drag, the ember smoldering bright for a moment before the smoke spills past his lips again.

“Two hundred and one,” he says, and he’s ostensibly unwounded by this sentiment.

“Not exactly Federer or Djokovic,” you say, and it seems like he’s strolling towards you now.

“You want a good show tomorrow?” he says, hiking a hand into the waisthigh pocket of the robe.

“Oh, I expect one.”

He pauses, closer now. Cocks his head at the can in your hands.

“You want that?”

You snort, hide it behind your back as though he’s got object impermanence.

“You can have it if I see you win tomorrow.”

Patrick scrunches his nose up at this, like a kid who’s smelled something nasty and doesn’t know how to keep it off his face, but he’s really just considering, and maybe disgruntled at the dissipation of your giving mood. But he tilts his head to the side, raising his brows like he’s conceding.

Then, looking down at the robe.

“You want this?”

You laugh, “Yes?” you say, like it’s obvious.

But he seems surprised, “Still?”

“Yes!”

“I’m naked!”

“I’ll run it through wash twelve times. It’s mine.”

He throws his head back, making a real show at being putout by this. A protracted groan of longsuffering leaves his lips.

And now you’re really laughing. “You can buy your own with your prize money. Warm beer and a new robe, that’s the height of luxury.”

He takes his hand out of the pocket, claps it hard against his chest as if wounded, and his lips shape around the cigarette in a way that’s almost artful. He takes a long, terminal inbreathe. Drops the cig. Crushes it beneath the sole of his foot. Faces away, and all you see is a large, cascading cloud, swishing away from him and out into the night.

“First my beer,” he turns around, “Then my robe. What next? My car keys? You’re gonna take my car keys and hold them hostage until I win.”

You make a face of sort of abject disbelief, though you’re still smiling.

“My beer,” you say, slowly, like you’re speaking a different language, eyes still sort of manic with the shock of his gall, “And my robe.”

The robe in question is now halfway open, but then he seems unconcerned with modesty. The dark hair on his chest looks almost silver beneath the street lights, the faint glimmers of water still clinging to his skin catching aglow.

“That’s a real shame,” he says, and he’s walking towards you, the hand he had slapped in his chest to show you how you’d spurned him now stroking the soft material of the robe with a carelessness that borders on intimacy, “I feel like it brings out my eyes. Don’t you think it brings out my eyes?”

Your gaze flicks from the robe, to his eyes, and back again. He’s standing in front of you now, and he’s sort of towering over you. He has an ease when he moves, like a stray cat or a rogue cowboy. Or something else. You suppose you can’t think of it.

“You can get another blue robe, Patrick.”

He shuts his eyes. He’s savouring your saying his name, or mourning the robe, or both. But probably the latter with how his fingers caress the lapel.

“One that fits, maybe. Definitely one with a higher thread cou… nt.” You hesitate. Because he’s singing again.

“Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?” he’s doing something with his face; something like he’s trying to feign a compelling hurt, but he’s smiling too hard. “What’ll you do now, my darling young one?”

You laugh, and he’s close enough to you that when your head falls forward it hits his shoulder, and your nose brushes against a plush outline of Hello Kitty, and he smells like cigarettes and motel soap and—well—you because of the robe.

“I’m going back out before the rain starts a falling! And it’s a hard—”

“Okay,” you say, because he’s getting louder, but you’re still laughing and grinning wildly.

“It’s a hard—sing it with me—it’s a…”

He holds the note. His eyes are still closed. You roll your eyes and you don’t step away from him, and you’re still holding the beer behind your back.

Your voice is low, but, “A hard rain’s gonna fall,” you supply grudgingly—well, you’re still smiling—and he throws his arm around your shoulder and pulls you against him and sings, loudly,

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall!”

“Okay,” you say again, pushing away from him, and having to sort of extricate yourself from his hold by slipping beneath his arm. “Very nice, you want some cash?”

“Whatever you can spare,” he says.

And you’re so intrigued by the way he looks at you. He has the sort of face that demands to be catalogued in intimate detail. His eyes crinkle at the corners now, in a way that makes them look almost wolfish.

“I love tennis,” he says, and he says it loudly, because you’re seven feet apart in an empty parking lot, and it makes it seem like he’s declaring something.

An empty Funyuns packet drifts by like a tumbleweed.

“What?”

“I love tennis. That’s why I do it.” He seems resentful, but resigned.

You hesitate, but when you open your mouth to speak again, he beats you to it,

“Doesn’t love me back though,” he’s shaking his head, sporting a huge rueful smile that seems to coruscate in the night, “Doesn’t love me back.” He huffs a sigh. “Story of my life.”

Across the lot, the two maintenance men emerge from your room.

Inside, the air conditioner blows frigid.

You're starting to think everything isn't half bad. You're a good person, letting a homeless man crash on the pull out couch in your dingy motel room, and you leave New Rochelle tomorrow. At this rate, you should extend an olive branch to Deirdre.

You brush your teeth. You change into your pyjamas, the satin of which Patrick is a little disappointed to see a lack of Hello Kitty printed on, but he doesn’t mention it.

He himself is now wearing a T-shirt, and a pair of boxers, and if he quite literally kissed the robe goodbye when he gave it back to you, then you don’t mention it.

And now he’s sprawled on the pull out couch, a thin sheet draped across his lower half. And you’re cross legged on the bed, the duvet gathered around you, and you’re doing your NYT word games because that’s part of your nighttime routine, even though you tell people it’s tea or reading or yoga. This is kind of like reading. You have to think about stuff.

What’s a five letter word that means ‘has a lingering soreness’?

Anyway, so, Patrick is sitting—kind of halfway laying—on the pull out couch. One arm behind his head and the other across his chest. And he’s wearing an expression that’s both intense and a little vacant, like he’s trying to read your mind.

Or like he’s having a silent argument with himself.

Or he’s just tired.

Yes, definitely tired, you think. His eyelids flutter, like they’re desperately trying to stay half open, and he’s sort of drifting in and out of awareness.

He’s quiet for a while, staring wearily into the ceiling like it houses the solutions to all the world’s problems.

And then he closes his eyes fully, and rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Your own gaze follows that hand, his right hand—the hand not behind his head—the one that falls from his face back onto his chest, the one that’s rubbing his sternum like he hasn’t had a good sleep in years.

And he can tell that you’re staring. So he clears his throat and opens his eyes, catching yours. And you look away instantly. Maybe a little too quickly. Certainly a little too guiltily.

He smirks. He knows he’s caught you. And you keep your eyes averted, because you know that he knows. But you can feel his stare still on you. And you can sense a kind of curiosity in it.

Earlier when he’d said it—just a shame such a beautiful woman will be sleeping all alone in a massive bed—you’d laughed. You’d laughed it off. And you’d taken a bit of pride in being the sort of strong, independent woman who cannot be charmed into sharing a bed with a stranger.

But that had been then, and now it is—well—now, and the pull out couch, in retrospect, looks firm as stone. And here you are, sitting in this (comparatively, which must be emphasised) comfy bed, and, not for the first time, you feel like a heartless cow.

There are rings around his eyes, dark shadows like bruised flesh. And there’s just this look to him—something weary, but not just in that way that says he hasn’t been taking care of himself. It’s more an aching kind of weariness that’s sunk into the very marrow of his bones.

Patrick is watching you as your eyes flit from the bed, to him, and back to the bed. His eyes follow yours. The way he looks at you is vivid and penetrating. It makes you feel like he’s seeing all of you. But he still looks like he’s struggling to figure something out.

He lets his gaze linger for a moment longer, and then he sits up and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and hands hanging limply between his legs.

Looking at the way his shoulders are hunched over and the way his neck kind of juts out when he cranes his head forward is kind of reminding you of a pigeon. Or maybe a falcon. No, probably a pigeon. But a handsome, scruffy, feral little pigeon, maybe. And you’re staring at him, trying not to focus too closely on any one part of him.

He rubs the back of his neck, lets his shoulders sag, and looks back at you, and now he has this kind of pleading look on his face.

And you can’t tell if it’s genuine or if he’s faking it to get what he wants, but there’s that veritable exhaustion in his eyes that’s making him look so vulnerable.

And so you say, “Get in the bed, Patrick,” and you say it like he’s been sitting there begging you relentlessly, even though this is the quietest he’s been all night.

He’s surprised. Surprised that you’ve suggested it, but that it was more a statement than a question. And he’s studying you intently again, and he’s trying to figure you out, and you’re trying to figure him out, and there’s a tension in the air that was there before but feels heavier now.

And he looks like he’s about to protest, like he’s going to put up some sort of token fight, but then he nods and says, “Uh, yeah, that’d be great, yeah,” and the relief in his voice is clear.

He scoots off the couch and walks towards you in these slow, silent strides, and when he’s standing in front of you, you look up at him—you forget, whenever he recedes, that he’s quite so tall—and he looks down at you, and there’s something expectant in his gaze, like he’s waiting for you to tell him that you were kidding, and he’s bracing himself for it.

His eyes flickering all over your face, you can see his individual lashes, and the freckle on his lip, the faint lines around his eyes, the way his nose is a little crooked, and you have to really look up at him, and that makes you feel a little small, a little vulnerable, and then he says,

“You’re serious,” like he just doesn’t believe you, like what he really wants to say is you’re shitting me, but he’s too tired not to be polite.

And you shrug. And you nod. Just once. A little nod, but it’s sincere. He can tell it’s sincere.

You do the stupid, twenty-year-old, wall-of-pillows thing. Because you refuse to go top-to-toe when he’s just been outside barefoot.

You peek your head over the pillows, like a child looking over the wall between two neighbouring gardens, and you look down at him. And he looks up at you.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly through his nose, but he doesn’t break eye contact.

You’re a little unnerved by how unblinking he is, but you don’t look away either, and you both just sort of linger there silently for a few moments more.

“What time do you need to be there tomorrow?”

And he looks away a second and furrows his brow in thought.

“Eight,” he says, and he looks back up at you, and you can tell that he’s trying to stay awake.

“I’ll wake you up at six,” you tell him, playing with a loose thread on the pillow, and you’re whispering very quietly like you and he are the last two kids up at a sleepover, “Maybe six thirty. I wanna shower first. Then we can go get breakfast, we can get, like—McMuffins or something. Then we’ll go to the country club.”

And he does something like a nod, though it’s a hardly discernible motion, and his blinks are getting longer with every beat. You don’t know if you should say more, so you just wait a moment, and he’s still staring at you. He’s still looking at you like that. His jaw a little bit slack. He looks a little less present each time he blinks, his eyes closing a little longer each time, and his eyelids are drooping.

But he’s got that look like he’s trying to read your mind. And then his brows sort of twitch.

And you give him a suspicious look and whisper, “What?”

But he just lets out a heavy breath of a laugh and gives a little shake of his head. And he’s got a small, amused smile on his face as his eyes fall shut, like he’s thinking, if you only knew.

#challengers #challengers fic #challengers 2024 #patrick zweig #patrick zweig x reader #patrick zweig x you #patrick zweig apologist #‘zweig’ is also five letters #patrick zweig and his dickensian grade poverty #he genuinely had it so grim #in fact i shed a tear #peter zeppelin #sally the motel receptionist #microsoft teams #hello kitty #bumfuck new rochelle #bitchy coworker deirdre #twitter is still canonically twitter because this is 2019

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