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hischierhoney · 2 months ago

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I Know Places

Jack Hughes x actress!reader // masterlist

title & inspo from I Know Places by Taylor Swift. written for the Eras Tour fic challenge! thank you to @comphy-and-cozy and @wyattjohnston for putting this on!

Summary: When the press catches Jack leaving your place, things seem set to crumble. But Jack has different ideas. 4.2k words

Warnings: mentions of press/pressure from the media, some mild angst but it’s fixed by the end!!

It’s past 2am when you stumble your way into your New York City townhouse, eyes bleary and tired, limbs even more so. The lights are off, besides the one in the hallway, and you don’t bother to turn any of them on. You just shuck off your jacket and shoes, shuffle your way down the hallway, up the stairs and straight into your bedroom. There’s one thought in your brain, and it’s bed. Warm, cozy, soft, full of blankets and pillows and a man-

You nearly scream at the sight, the gentle slope of shoulders under your fluffy comforter. You press your hand to your racing heart as it all comes flooding back. You, on a layover between Los Angeles and New York, stuck in an airport for longer than planned, on the phone with your boyfriend Jack Hughes.

Jack, who’d promised to pick you up from the airport until your flight got delayed. Jack, who has morning skate at 7am and needs his sleep. Jack, who, in a moment of sleep deprived, airport lounge tequila induced delirium, you had told about the key you keep in a potted plant, and suggested that he let himself in. Suggested he crawl into your bed and fall asleep. Just in the interest of sleeping next to him, of maybe having a couple moments with him in the morning.

You don’t get much time with him. Not nearly as much as you’d both like, at least. The two of you are too busy, too full of your own obligations, with his job and your job. Star hockey player and America’s sweetheart actress- it’s like a pairing from one of those Hallmark movies, the ones with perfect houses draped in fake snow that look like they’d smell like warm cookies. Except this is real. And he’s here.

He looks peaceful, you think, as you pad across the room to be closer. His cheek is smooshed against the pillow, on his stomach on the bed, laying in a spread eagle position that’s going to leave it difficult for you to find any space. His lips are parted slightly, soft breaths puffing out between them. Jack sleeps like the dead, you’ve found, from the now many times you’ve slept in the same bed. He says he’s trained himself into it, with hockey and all. You’ve witnessed his pregame naps, watched him fall asleep in seconds flat. It’s impressive.

You make your way to the bathroom, doing what little you can muster of your nightly routine. When your eyes start to close on their own accord, you shuffle your way back to the bed, in your pajamas now, and study the scene. How best to handle the boy in your bed, how to fit yourself against his body so that you can finally fall asleep like you’ve been aching to do.

Before you get the chance, there’s the shrill sound of a phone alarm, and Jack sits bolt straight up in bed. You stumble over your own feet, hand over your heart again, breath stolen from your lungs. Jack scrambles for his phone. It’s 2:30 am.

He’s rubbing at his eyes when he scans the room and finds you. Then he mirrors your position, eyes wide, hand over his heart.

“Why th’ fuck are you already here?” He mumbles out.

You choke on a laugh. It’s a hell of a greeting. “What?”

He groans. “Set an alarm. T‘go pick you up.”

You blink at him, half his face illuminated in the pale moonlight that spills in through your window. There’s a soft breeze that ruffles his hair and makes him shiver- he’s left the window open slightly, the way you like to sleep. Goosebumps raise on his bare skin. You tear your eyes away.

“What are you talking about?” You ask, bewildered. “I told you to just go to sleep.”

“Yeah, but. I set an alarm,” he repeats. He digs the heel of his palm into his cheek, his lips pulled into a pout. “For 12:30. So I could pick you up.”

You cock your head. “Well, it’s 2:30, so I think you set the wrong alarm.”

He groans loudly, brows furrowed, and then lets out some string of gibberish. He checks his phone again, then sets it down on the nightstand. You watch with curiosity as he flops back down onto the bed, on his back this time, blankets pooling around his waist. He’s bare from the waist up. Not for the first time, you have the urge to press yourself against every inch of his skin.

He seems so untouchable, here. Like in this room, he’s only yours. It’s a heady feeling, to watch him sigh and pout about missing his chance to pick you up from the airport. It’s private, normal, domestic. So few things in your life fit any of those descriptors. It tugs at your heartstrings.

“C’mere,” he calls out, spreading his arms across the mattress again. “Come cuddle.”

You don’t argue. Sleep tugs at your bones the second your head hits the pillow. He tugs at you until you’re plastered against him, the heat of his sleep warm body spreading over you. When he ducks his head to kiss the crown of yours, you sigh happily.

“How was th’ flight?” He asks, his voice still laden with sleep.

“Fine,” you mumble. You’re not really in the mood to talk about it. “Missed you.”

He laughs lightly, his chest rumbling with it under your head. “Missed you more.”

You feel his fingers under your chin, tilting your face up towards his. You blink through your exhaustion to meet his gaze, and you sigh happily when he kisses you, for real this time. His lips are warm and soft, his little bit of stubble scraping against your skin in an almost hypnotic fashion. This is why you told him about the key. You wanted to come home to him.

The rest of the world melts away, and you’re left with just Jack.

….

You wake up at 11:30 the next morning to an empty, cold bed, a hoodie folded neatly on the end of the bed with the number 86 on the shoulder, and a barrage of notifications on your phone. They’re still rolling in, chiming every so often. Your heart lurches.

There are a billion from your manager- something about being careful and bad look and you didn’t even get in until 2:30 so why was he there- and your stomach sinks even further. When you open twitter, there it is. A grainy, blurry set of photos, of Jack’s shoulder and back as he leaves the townhouse, his overnight bag slung over his shoulder, his white sneakers bright in the blue early morning light. You can’t see his face in any of them, the hood of his jacket pulled up around his head, which is topped with a beanie and sunglasses. He’s almost unidentifiable, but you know the internet. They’ll figure it out.

It’d be easier if you’d never been seen with him in public before, but you have. Months ago, now, at a charity event hosted by a mutual friend. There’s been a photo of you and Jack from that night, chatting away near the bar in the venue, smiles on both your faces. There’d been a barrage of posts and notifications, then, too- eager Devils fans who were excited to see you talking to him, eager fans of your own who had similar feelings, the other way around. And a text from your manager, reminding you of your upcoming movie, of your male costar who you were supposed to maybe-potentially-possibly be in love with. For the press. For the ratings. But Jack had captured your heart that night, with a teasing joke about Hollywood and a soft little grin on his face, and you’d been unable to forget him.

Now you’re here, in your empty bed while Jack is at practice or meetings, or something in between. It’s not the first time. But it feels like it could be the last.

Jack’s a private person. You are, too, when you can be. When you’d first gone out with him after that first night, he’d seemed wary of all the precautions you took to hide from the press. You’d smiled ruefully and told him that if this was going to happen, he’d have to get used to sunglasses indoors and private rooms and stay at home dates. You’d expected it to scare him off. It usually did- you can’t blame any of them, really.

But it’s been months now, and Jack woke up in your bed this morning. So the scaring didn’t really work as planned.

Text me when you wake up.

That’s the text from Jack. No emojis, a period at the end, no life to it. You fight the urge to roll over, press your face into the pillow, and go back to sleep. Try again later. Hope this is a nightmare.

You text him back, something equally as lifeless. He’s probably busy, he probably won’t have time anytime soon, so you’ll have to wait until then to figure this out-

The phone rings. It’s an echo of Jack’s shrill alarm hours ago, except he’s not here to rub at his eyes sleepily and smile at you and make you feel better. Now it’s his contact, the simple “Jack” flashing across your screen. You sigh and swipe to answer.

“Hi,” you say. Your voice cracks on the single syllable, gravelly from stale plane air and travel and disuse.

“Hi,” Jack echoes. His tone is warm. Soft.

You swallow. “I’m-“

“-sorry,” Jack says, talking at the same time as you, saying the exact same words. You blink up at the ceiling above your head.

“What?” You ask, a bit bewildered.

“What?” He repeats. “Why are you sorry?”

You blink again. “Why are you sorry?”

He lets out a huff, one you can almost picture. “I fucked up.”

And this is how it goes. You’d thought of all people, Jack would have the decency to do this in person. To wait until you’re not seconds past waking up. That maybe he’d give you a bit to process before he called it quits, before he says what everyone else has said before him.

It’s too much.

You’d warned him, back when you’d seen him for the 7th time. You’d been laying in his bed, half on top of him, drawing patterns on his bare chest with your pointer finger. He’s asked about labels and how serious this was and if you were seeing anyone else, and told you he wasn’t. All very brave of him, really. You’d been afraid to say anything for weeks.

“Not seeing anyone else,” you’d admitted. “Where would I find the time?”

He’d huffed out a laugh and tucked you close. “Can we maybe keep it that way?”

It should’ve been a red flag. Not on his part, but on yours. You know how this ends, you’ve been down this road before, and you’d known, even then, that this wouldn’t end any differently. Things go smooth until the media catches wind, and then they figure out who he is, and then everyone picks apart every little bit of him until there’s nothing left for you to hold onto. You can’t blame them, all the people you’ve lost to this curse.

You hate the media enough yourself. You can’t imagine subjecting anyone you care about to it.

You’d tried to warn him. About the secrecy that would be required, about how if anyone ever caught wind of it, he’d be subject to the worst scrutiny of his life. He’d tried to insist he understood, that nothing could be worse than his rookie year, that this mattered enough to him to put up with the pressure. But now the pressure is drilling down on the two of you, and he’s crumbling, just like they always do-

“I knew better than to leave out that door,” he says. “There’s always a pap there, you’ve told me about it before,” he says. “I was just. I was in a rush, because I was so comfy this morning, and I forgot, so. I’m sorry.”

You frown. “It’s okay, Jack.”

You’re the one who told him about the key. Who let him stay over, fueled by sleep deprivation and the urge to see him, even just for a little bit. You’ve gone and contributed to your own demise. God, you were going to let him pick you up from the airport. What kind of idiot are you?

“Are you okay?” You ask him.

He scoffs. “They don’t even know it’s me.”

Your gut twists, again. “They will.”

“Mm, maybe my powers of camouflage have worked,” he says. “Maybe I’ve stumped them.”

You don’t bother pointing out that if the press haven’t already figured it out, his fans will. Someone’s bound to point out the grainy Devils logo on his hoodie, the characteristic swoop of his hair. Someone’s bound to have followed him to his car, and they’ve probably already looked up his license plate. They’re probably running it through whatever system they use, and even if Jack is leasing the car he’ll still show as connected to it, and then they’ll dig their claws into him.

“They’re never stumped,” you tell him. You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Fuck.”

“I know,” he says, voice softer this time. “So. What do we do?”

You pry your eyes open. What do we do? We.

“We?” You choke out.

Jack scoffs. “Yeah, we. I mean. Do we come out and tell everyone, just to take it away from them? Do we lie?”

We. It’s never been a we, before. Not like this. It’s always been flight, never fight. Like everyone before Jack hadn’t thought it was worth it to even try. Had thought you weren’t worth it.

“Jack, you don’t understand,” you tell him. “They’re gonna tear you apart. They’re gonna tear us apart.” Until there’s no us left, you think. “We- we don’t do anything. There’s nothing to do.”

“Not to stop them, no,” he agrees. “But you’ve had this before. How did you and those people handle it? I mean- I can avoid interviews for a while. Nico will take them, he’ll understand. And the All Star break starts soon, so then-“

“They didn’t,” you cut in.

He pauses. “Who didn’t what?”

You sigh, again. “They didn’t handle it, Jack. They broke up with me and left me to handle it and kept going on with their lives. So. Nobody will blame you if you do the same, let alone me. I get it.”

Jack stays quiet for a few moments. The silence hangs between the two of you, heavy and thick. You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to say it. Because you always let them do it. No matter how much you’re to blame here, you can’t be the one to end it over this. Not when things were going so well with him.

“I’m coming over,” he says.

You blink. “What?”

“Just- stay put. Stay there. I’m on my way,” he says. You hear the jingle of his keys.

“I’m not going anywhere,” You tell him.

“Me neither,” he says.

You don’t bother to warn him that there’ll be added media attention, that the place is probably swarming with people with cameras. You don’t think it’ll change his mind- Jack is stubborn when he’s set on something. And it’s a little late, anyways.

He shows up an hour later, probably having had to fight through insane traffic to get there. You’re back in bed, having only gotten up to brush your teeth before retreating to the safety of it. He lets himself in with the key, and you hear him come up the stairs and shuffle over to your bedroom door.

He stands there, haloed by the hallway light. You roll over to look at him, barely able to keep the tears from forming in your eyes. Maybe he’s just waited to do it in person. Maybe he’s trying to let you down easy. It’s never easy. To lose a relationship like this, before you’re ready.

Things were going so well. You think of nights spent in your kitchen, making dinner together, sharing a bottle of wine. You think of all the hockey games you watched from hotel rooms while you’ve been doing press, and the way Jack answered all your questions on the phone afterwards, never letting on how exhausted he really was. You think of breakfast delivered to your door while he was at away games, and the way he spoke so fondly about his family and friends, how they’d all love you and you’d love them. And now, you’ll never get the chance.

Jack, standing in the doorway, sighs.

He makes his way over to sit on the edge of the bed, and he reaches a hand out to rest against your cheek. You sigh in response. Wait for him to open his mouth, for it to hit. You wait, and wait, and-

“The way I see it, we’ve got a few options,” he says. You blink up at him. “We can just go public, take away the hype about it. We could pretend we have no idea what they’re talking about, just ignore it. We could wait for them figure it out and handle it then. Or-“

You sit up slightly, and he pauses. You know the confusion is written on your face. His gaze softens, blue eyes warmer than they’ve ever been.

“I’m not breaking up with you,” he says. “I don’t run when things get tough. Come on, you know me better than that.”

You want to tell him you’d thought that about everyone, only for them to run from it all, run from you, at the drop of a hat. But you don’t, because you can tell from the hard set line of his jaw, from the determined bend in his brow, that he means it. That he’s not going anywhere. At least, not without you.

“I wanna run away from it all,” you tell him. “I want to take you somewhere they can’t find us. I want-“ you cut yourself off with a wry laugh. “I just want you, that’s all.”

A smile creeps across his lips, and he leans forward to press them to your forehead. Warmth spreads over your body, all the way down to your fingertips and toes.

“We can make that happen,” he says. You can feel the smile against your skin. “If that’s what you want. I know a place.”

You let out a laugh, one that’s mixed with tears. But when he lays down in the bed and pulls you close, you’re inclined to believe him.

…..

The “place” Jack knows takes hours of travel to get to. It takes packed bags and ditching responsibilities on both of your parts, and dodging questions from your friends. But as he pulls the car into the driveway, you think it’s worth all the hassle. The house is blanketed in soft, fluffy snow, hanging off the branches of the trees and over the edges of the roof. He opens the garage and pulls in, and when the door closes behind you, you breathe out a sigh of relief.

When he’d suggested his Michigan house as the getaway location, you’d been skeptical. Anywhere that was linked to him would be a risk once they figured out who he was. But he’d told you about the security of the neighborhood, the gate at the entrance, and that they’d never been bothered there before. He’d suggested that the two of you could just stay in the house the whole time, and it wouldn’t matter. The press finding out about Jack is inevitable, at this point. But as you walk into his house, you remind yourself that they can’t touch you here. You’ve left them all chasing their tails in New York City and disappeared.

Besides, the snow is coming down harder now. Even the paparazzi wouldn’t brave the weather.

Jack insists on carrying your bags in, and then he shows you around. The living room is first, decorated with photos of him and his brothers. The house is full of hockey memorabilia, you realize, as he shows you around. But it’s also warm. Personal. Home. There’s a photo of him and his brothers as little kids hanging over a fireplace. It makes you smile, the way you recognize the light in Jack’s eyes, the determination on his face. He hasn’t changed a bit. You’ve been in his apartment in New Jersey, but you know now that this is what he considers his real home.

He takes you up to the bedroom before the rest of the house, so you can get settled. You change into even comfier clothes than your travel ones while Jack heads back downstairs and tells you to meet him when you’re ready.

You call out to him a few minutes later when you pad your way down the stairs, and he calls back from a room you haven’t been in yet. When you walk in, he’s standing at the kitchen counter, setting out a bottle of wine. There are fresh flowers in a vase- Jack had said he’d ordered groceries to be delivered, and he must’ve gotten those, too. It’s a sweet touch.

You walk into the middle of the room and look around, a bit in awe. It faces towards the lake, with a large sitting area connected to the open concept kitchen. The lights are low and warm. Along the back wall, there are floor to ceiling picture windows, giving you the perfect view of the icy lake, the snow covered sloping bank, and the houses that dot the shore all around you. Like a postcard, or a hallmark movie. Jack pads his way across the room to you.

“Oh, wow,” you say, quietly.

He nods, his hands falling to your hips from behind as he rests his chin on your shoulder. “Pretty, right?”

You nod. It’s beautiful. Peaceful. Still. Quiet. A billion other words pass through your mind. But most of all, it feels safe. Like the whole world could be chasing after you, but here, it’s just you and Jack and the snow. You could run out into it, fall flat on your face, and there’d be nobody there to see it. Or to care.

“Can we go out in it?” You ask him, carefully. Not wanting to break the calm. “It looks so-“

“Yeah,” he agrees, eagerly. “I think we’ve got a pair of boots that’ll fit you.”

Ten minutes later, you waddle through snowdrifts that cover your calves in boots one size too big. You can’t bring yourself to care about the snow in your socks, or the notifications on your phone, or the fact that by now, they’ve probably figured out who Jack is. Because Jack is standing in front of you, and you know who he is far more than they ever will.

He’s the kind of person who stays.

He lobs a snowball at you. It hits your shoulder and crumbles, and he laughs. Pure, loud, happy. You reach down with your mismatched mittens, stolen from their bin of miscellaneous outdoor gear, and form one of your own. You look at him, lining up your aim. Look at his flushed cheeks, his wide grin, the way the snow sticks to his hair and melts on his nose.

“Come on baby,” he says, taunting, arms spread wide. “Hit me with your best shot.”

You drop the poorly formed snowball at your feet and launch yourself at him instead. He’s laughing again by the time you both hit the ground, the snow cushioning his fall. He laughs more when he rolls you over and pins you under him. There’s snow seeping down the back of your shirt, and it makes you shiver. And then he kisses you, and the cold doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing does, except this.

He’s never kissed you anywhere close to the public, both of you too cautious. So much of your relationship has been hidden away. You’d never had a chance like this in New York- no kissing in the rain, under streetlights, no cheek kisses between glasses of wine at fancy restaurants, no holding hands while you walk down the street. But now you’re out under the cloudy sky, surrounded by peace and quiet, and he’s kissing you. You never want to leave this place.

You shiver, again, and he laughs into the kiss. When he pulls away, his eyes are sparkling. You think yours are too.

“Come on,” he says. “We should get you warm before you catch hypothermia.”

He suggests a shower. You agree eagerly and pull him under the spray with you. The cold melts away, along with the rest of your worries.

Later, you’ll drink wine and make dinner and watch some old movie he’s been insisting you need to see. Later, you'll curl up basically on top of him in bed, surrounded by him, feeling more at peace than you have in months. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up before you do, and come back with coffee from his favorite place in town, and wake you up in bed with it, made just the way you like. And you’ll look at him and thank him. Not just for the coffee, but for bringing you to a place that means so much to him. For letting you in on his little bit of comfort.

You won’t have to say it out loud. He’ll already know.

#jh86 #jack hughes x you #jack hughes fanfic #jack hughes fanfiction #jack hughes fic #jack hughes x reader #jack hughes fluff #jack hughes imagine #nhl fic #nhl fluff #nhl x reader #nhl oneshot #this is shorter than I’d like #jack Hughes oneshot #and I don’t love the ending tbh #but it’s so fine #honey writes

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honnelander · 1 year ago

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go fish! part 2

guyssss i did NOT expect this little series to blow up. y'all are amazing! i'm turning into a Sanji writing blog and am i mad about it? no lmao i received a couple of requests and i'll work on them as soon as i can. i'm really in the zone rn so i'll ride this wave as long as i can. if you want to be a part of the taglist for whenever i post new Sanji content, lmk. i hope you enjoy!

WARNINGS: none

word count: 2.8k

pairing: opla!sanji x fem!reader

summary: after being humiliated by Usopp earlier, reader stays in her room to decompress. however, she gets a visitor.

prequel part 1 part 3 part 4 masterlist

taglist: @smolracoon25 @mischiefmanaged71 @jovialcat123

Mortified. That’s how you felt. Still.

Ever since you ‘forfeited’ from finishing your Go Fish card game with Usopp a couple of hours ago, you had taken your glass of water that Sanji had poured for you and boarded up in your shared room with Nami, refusing to come out due to “heat exhaustion”.

Poor Luffy, ever the golden hearted captain, was immediately worried for your wellbeing as soon as he heard that but after multiple reassurances from you and getting up off of your hammock multiple times to prove you were in fact, just fine, he relented from wanting to stop by the nearest island so he could find a doctor for you. Usopp had managed to convince him as well that all you needed was some water, alone time, and that you would be fine by dinnertime.

You rubbed your eyes as you let out a sigh, vowing to yourself that the next time you wanted some time by yourself, you should just take a bath or something, since any other excuse would cause someone on the crew (Luffy) to lose their mind at the thought of someone not feeling well.

You readjusted yourself, sitting more upright, as you downed the last of your water, it being warm by this point since it had been poured by Sanji hours ago.

Sanji. Ugh.

Your heart fluttered once again at the mere thought of him, but that flutter was immediately replaced by a wave of crashing embarrassment at the thought of the afternoon’s sequence of events. What had happened earlier wasn’t even anything that groundbreaking or special, but to you? It was everything. It wasn’t common practice in your life for the object of your affections to be so kind towards you, so thoughtful, to read and anticipate your needs before you even knew they were even there. But Sanji? He was all of that and more. And you didn’t even know him for that long! You’ve all been a part of the straw-hat crew for 5 months at this point and it felt silly to admit to yourself that you had developed a crush on one of your crewmates in that short amount of time.

And having feelings for your crewmate? Someone who you literally couldn’t get away from since you all were trapped on a ship together (not that you would ever want to be away from him or anyone else for that matter, besides Usopp, but still), it felt morally wrong. You guys were all a team. Sure, you all were off to sail around the world and chase dreams, but achieving all of that required teamwork and trust, and that was hard to do if two of those people were caught up with matters of the heart every hour of every day.

Like, what if things didn’t work out in the end? Would you really want to put the crew’s dynamic at stake just because you thought the blonde guy was cute? No, you wouldn’t. It would be selfish so you would never dare to put yourself or Sanji in that position. No matter how much you liked him.

So as much as it pained you, you could never tell Sanji how you feel. You would never cross that line of being a ‘professional pirate’ into something more, like a pirate wife. Or a pirate chef’s wife.

It definitely didn’t help that freaking Usopp of all people on the crew knew about your affections for Sanji. Ugh, you groaned. He was the absolute worst person to know about it too. Why did he have to figure it out? Why did he have to be the one that had put two and two together to equal four? That your random bouts of awkwardness and shyness plus ‘heart eyes’ and blushes whenever Sanji was around equaled to you having a forbidden crush on the crew’s chef? It was embarrassing. And complicated.

He loved to stir the pot too, so whenever he could tease you for it when you both were alone or in front of a clueless Sanji, he would. You remembered the kiss he had shared with Kayla back when the straw-hats had acquired the Going Merry, so you definitely jabbed him right back when you had had enough, since part of you felt guilty for it since Kayla was thousands of miles away and Sanji lived on this ship with you. Your situations were slightly similar but completely different.

Also, completely different in the way that him and Kayla were basically dating at this point, albeit long distance, and had shared a kiss while you could barely sustain eye contact that lasted more than 5 seconds with Sanji.

You were hopeless.

“Knock, knock,” a familiar accented voice came through the closed door. “Y/n? Are you awake?”

"Sanji?” you blurted out in complete surprise.

Shit. You weren’t mentally prepared to see him just yet. At all. You were still replaying the interaction you both had earlier in your head, your overthinking mind going over every minute detail to figure out if Usopp’s careless teasing had given away your affections.

Usopp, you mentally ground out. You were going to kill him. Sanji had never stopped by your room before so what on earth was he doing here now?

Suddenly, a thought struck you like a bolt of lightning and made your stomach drop fifty miles below sea level: if Sanji had specifically stopped by your room just to gently let you down, that no, in fact he did not feel the same way about you, that he only thought of you as a member of the crew and nothing more....then yeah, you were definitely going to kill Usopp and throw him overboard.

Before you could mentally plot out more details on Usopp's murder, the door opened and the straw-hat chef’s blonde head appeared. His eyes quickly scanned Nami’s empty hammock on the room’s left side before turning his head to the right, his blue eyes immediately finding your surprised ones, a (relieved?) smile lighting up his face at the sight of you.

“So, I take it you’re awake?” Sanji asked in a light, teasing tone but not making an effort to move himself away from the doorway.

“Uh, y-eah,” you stuttered out in surprise as you just stared at him dumbfounded. You still couldn’t figure out why he was here.

Sanji continued to lock eyes with you, making your cheeks flush the longer you both stared at each other, and your palms sweat as the silence stretched on, making the tension in the air become thicker by the second. He blinked, his eyes darting to the side in confusion, raising an eyebrow as he asked, “May I come in?”

“OH! Yes, of course- sorry,” you stuttered as you waved him inside, sitting up in your hammock and mentally face palmed yourself. Of course, Sanji was waiting on you to invite him inside. Like always, he was acting like a true gentleman. “Please, come in. Have a seat. Sorry, that was rude of me. Make yourself at home.”

Sanji stood up to his full height and walked into your room with an easy smile and a small laugh, closing the door behind him. “Ah, don’t ever apologize y/n. You could never be rude to me,” Sanji rebuttalled and waved off your apology as he looked around and took in your very plain and basic shared room with Nami.

Your room, or side of the room more specifically, wasn’t much to brag about considering you really didn’t have much to your name but for now, it was home to you. Your side consisted of your hammock, a wooden barrel next to it to act as a makeshift nightstand that housed your only book, a journal, and a lamp, along with an empty wooden crate to act as a makeshift seat and another to hold some of your other clothes and small travel bag. Nami’s side was similar to yours but had a touch more personality as she hung up some maps she found at various markets and drew up herself on her wall.

You swallowed, suddenly feeling a tad self-conscious about the lack of things in your room considering your current guest was dressed, as usual, to the nines in his signature black suit and blue and white striped shirt complete with a skinny black tie. “Sorry for the sad state of my room-”

“Sad?” Sanji stopped admiring your room and snapped his gaze to look at you. His eyebrows pulled together as another confused smile adorned his features. “Why would you say that? Your room isn’t sad, I like it. It’s a reflection of you,” his next words came out softer, “and I think that’s beautiful.”

You could feel heat crawling up your neck at his words as you busied yourself with placing the empty glass in your hand on your barrel nightstand. There was no way Sanji was calling you beautiful, he was just commenting on your room. With Nami. On your shared room that owed any ounce of ‘personality’ to the ship’s navigator because it was obvious you literally brought nothing special to this room whatsoever.

You stopped yourself from spiraling into ‘I don’t bring anything special to the straw-hats, I don’t know why they keep me around’ thoughts because now wasn’t the time to think about any of that. Those dark thoughts were reserved when you couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night.

As you placed the glass on the nightstand, you asked, “So, what brings you all the way to my room? Aren’t you usually prepping for dinner around this time?”

Sanji’s eyes followed your hand and lit up when he saw the sole book on your nightstand. “Oh, a book? I didn’t know you liked to read.” His megawatt smile lit up a couple of notches as his eyes sparkled, he looked like he had just learned one of the universe’s greatest mysteries as he took a seat near you on an empty crate. “What book is that?”

“Oh, that?” You mentally deflated at the fact you now had to tell Sanji about your favorite book, “It’s Pride and Prejudice.”

You weren’t ashamed of having that book specifically, you loved it and it was your favorite book of all time, you had lost count at how many times you had read it at this point, but it was the fact that you now had to share this part of yourself with the guy you fancied. Guys normally scoffed and turned their nose up at romance book and romantic things, so you were bracing for Sanji to scoff and laugh at you like all the other guys did (like even Zoro and Usopp did when they first saw you reading it) but it never came.

Instead, Sanji’s smile remained bright. “Ah, so you’re a lover of classic romances? Pride and Prejudice? Romeo and Juliet?”

Immediately, you smiled, finding yourself instantly comfortable suddenly whenever you got to talk about one of your favorite things. “Absolutely. I don’t think there’s a problem big enough out there that love can’t solve. Family backgrounds? Wealth and status? At the end of the day, none of that stuff matters. What matters is if two people love each other.”

Sanji stayed quiet for a moment, looking into your eyes with a twinkle of an emotion that you couldn’t decipher. It made your heart skip a beat. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly, never breaking eye contact. “I agree.”

You swallowed. “You like this stuff too? Have you read Pride and Prejudice?”

Sanji blinked and that indescribable emotion he had in his eyes was gone. His smile remained, however, and became sheepish as he held up his hands, “Ah ok, you caught me. I’ve never read the full thing, but I know the main parts of the story. My favorite part that I did read though, was the first dinner with Mr. Collins and he complimented the Bennets on their ‘excellent boiled potatoes’.”

You couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking your head slightly as you teased, “I should’ve known that the chef of the Going Merry’s favorite part of the book is when food is discussed!”

The blonde cook held his hands up again with a good-natured laugh, “Ah, you got me!” His face softened as he asked, “What about you?" He nodded towards the book. "What’s your favorite part?”

You paused for a second as you mulled the question over. “Well, I'm not sure if you know about this part since you never read the book...”

“Try me,” he encouraged softly.

Your face turned to the side, your eyes looking at the wooden wall to your right, unable to bring yourself to look at Sanji as you told him your favorite part of your favorite book. You took a deep breath to steady yourself and calm your nerves, your voice becoming quiet as you told him, “My favorite part is...when Mr. Darcy barges in on Elizabeth for the first time, while she’s at her friend Charlotte’s house writing a letter. He had come to practice ‘conversating’ with her since he admitted that it wasn’t something he was good at and she had told him to practice it. So, Mr. Darcy just barged in and they had one of the most painfully awkward conversations ever...and he did all that just because he loves her. He did something he hated and was bad at, and opened himself up to embarrassment just because he wanted to improve and be better for her. It’s so romantic and beautiful.”

The air was quiet after your mini monologue and for a moment, nothing could be heard except for their quiet breathing and the occasional crash of the ocean from outside your small window.

Part of you worried that your little rambling had bored Sanji, so when you finally looked at him, imagine your surprise when you found him leaning in towards you, hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees and his eyes watching you, completely engaged. It was like he was hanging onto your every word.

Sanji scanned your face for a moment, the corner of his lips curling upwards as he said, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m not familiar with that part in the book,” and before you could open your mouth to bring yourself down, he continued, “but, that doesn’t mean your answer is wrong.” He leaned back and slapped his hands against his thighs, “Hell, it’s a much more insightful answer than mine!” He laughed. “I just liked how they were poking some fun at boiled potatoes.”

You laughed with him because yes, that part in the book also made you laugh as well. But at the mention of food, you realized that you still didn’t know why Sanji was here in the first place. Wasn’t he normally prepping for dinner at this time? He had to be running behind schedule at this point.

“Why are you here, Sanji? Isn’t it almost time for dinner?”

“Yeah, it is actually but I heard you weren’t feeling well so I wanted to check in on you, make sure you’re feeling alright and see if you have any special requests for dinner?”

You couldn’t help the slight smile that overtook your face, trying to hide the blush at the fact that he was kind enough to check in on you and offer to practically be your own personal chef for the evening.

You hummed for a moment, acting like you were deep in thought before asking with a raised eyebrow, "And what would you say if I requested some boiled potatoes?”

The smile that lit up the chef’s face was priceless. He had never looked more beautiful. “To that, I would say ‘Absolutely. If that’s what the missus wants, then that is what the missus will get.’”

Missus. There it was again. You felt all warm inside whenever he called you that, it made you feel like he was your husband and that you were his wife. But that wasn’t the case. Sanji definitely must have called other women that before. You weren’t special to him, he was just being polite.

You swallowed down your emotions, putting your sudden wave of sadness away for later, putting on a small smile. “Then that sounds perfect. I would like to formally request some ‘excellent boiled potatoes’ as a side for dinner, please.”

If Sanji noticed your sudden change in mood, he didn’t show it. Instead, he grinned as he said, “Excellent choice, Madam. Boiled potatoes, coming right up.” As he stood up and made his way towards your door, Sanji did one of the most unexpected things that nearly knocked the wind out of you. With his left hand on the doorknob he said, “And don’t worry, Madam. I’ll sprinkle in a little bit of extra love in there,” he turned and winked at you, “just for you.”

With that, Sanji left your room, gently closing the door behind him, leaving you completely dumbstruck in your room, your mouth agape and body frozen.

Did Sanji just say he loved you?

You shook your head, because there was no way he did, right? He said he’d ‘sprinkle in some extra love’ into your potatoes, not 'I love you". You weren’t a chef, maybe that was a euphemism for something.

You sighed.

Those better be some good boiled potatoes.

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charliemwrites · 1 year ago

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Woof woof… whimper

(Part 10… but technically a continuation of part 9)

Content: Dub-Con/Non-Con, Knotting

It takes your cock-addled brain a second too long to process what Soap’s just said. What he’s implied. And by then he’s all ready for you to buck against him, confused and angry.

“That’s so — that’s not funny!” You shout.

But he’s got you pinned thoroughly, your chest flat against the mattress and your ass flush against his hips. His cock buried so deep you can feel the hot head of it bullying the deepest parts of you. All your struggling does is make you clench up tight around him, makes him feel that much bigger and meaner inside you. Makes him grunt low and ragged in your ear, all animal appreciation.

“I’m not laughin’,” he replies, nipping at your shoulder.

“G-get off of me, get out, get—”

His hand slides into your hair again, gets a firm hold at the roots and presses your face into the blankets, muffling your protests. Shushes you like soothing a panicked animal.

“Now, now,” he chides, “I still gotta prove I’m not compensating, don’t I?”

You suck in a breath, squeezing your eyes shut. There have to be a million explanations other than the absolutely ludicrous one he’s just presented to you. Cameras, microphones….

How did he know where you live?

How did he know where the spare key was?

How did he know where your bedroom was?

How did he find you at the bar?

Stalker, you tell yourself. He’s a creep, you’ve always known that.

Then where’s your dog?

“N-no,” you warble, bucking again. Nearly scream as his cock twitches inside you; only reason you don’t is because you can barely breathe as it is. He’s so deep inside that he’s practically in your lungs. “No way you’re my — there’s no way. You’re crazy. I’m gonna— ah!”

He draws out as you speak, gradual, and then plunges in again all at once, cutting you off. Grinds his hips in a dirty circle too, burying himself as deep as he can.

“Aww, poor thing,” he coos. “S’alright, baby, I knew this would happen. We jus’ gotta get all those big, scary feelings out first. Then I can explain it all nice and slow.”

You try to scream at him. Try to curse him out, tell him there’s no way in hell you’re listening to a word he says now; never mind letting him spend another second with his dick in you.

All that comes out is a high-pitched keen as he starts fucking you without further preamble. It aches, but you can’t tell in what way. If it hurts, if it’s the best you’ve ever had. Both? Your nerves feel haywire, brain dragged to lust-stupid depths.

“See, there we go,” he rasps, punctuating with a sharp snap of his hips on that last word. “My perfect little mate. Your cunt was made for my cock, made to be bred by me. Isn’t that right?”

You try to shake your head, but his grip keeps you from doing more than sending electricity down your spine, hair pulled taut.

“Yeah it fucking is,” he growls to his own question, canting your hips back further. His fingers grip cruelly into the flesh, sure to leave bruises. You wish you didn’t enjoy the sensation, wish it didn’t make you spasm around him helplessly.

“‘Bout time I owned you right back, don’t you think?” He continues, never stopping or even slowing. You yelp as he tugs your necklace again, arching your back at a steep angle. “Even collared yourself up for me. All it needs is my name.”

Something about that drives some awful, slutty part of your brain fucking wild. The idea of you with a tight leather choker — a collar — with his name (you don’t think about what name) hanging from your throat…

“Like that, don’t you?” He chuckles meanly. “Who’s my good little slut? Who’s my perfect, soaked little breeding whore?”

Tears spring to your eyes as you realize the “I am” is right there on the tip of your over-saturated tongue. If you had air, brain cells, any ability at all, you’d be crying it to the ceiling like the toy he’s treating you as.

He’s going to ruin you, you think. He’s going to fuck you broken. You’re crying and wailing on his cock, think you’d actually throw a tantrum if he pulled out and left you on the edge right now. Would, you realize in horror, beg for him to keep going.

And then he snakes his hand around your hip and starts rubbing your clit — fast, hard little circles. Just the way you like; the way you’d do it yourself. Relentlessly and cruel, even when you try to writhe away from how fast you can feel yourself getting to the edge. Almost frightened by it, how quickly he’s mastered your body’s pleasure.

Frightened by the extra stimulation at your entrance, too. A little extra friction at first — shocking because you’re leaving a puddle on the sheets. But then the friction becomes pressure, becomes… more.

“W-wha….?” You slur, hips wriggling.

Soap (Johnny?) snarls in your ear and that feeling at your entrance grows. Feels, you realize with alarm, like stretching.

“Gonnae take my knot so well,” he rambles, accent thick like syrup, trickling into your empty brain, filling you up with meaningless sounds. “Plug you up full of my cum, breed you right just like you need.”

Any questions or confusion are whisked away by the extra stimulation at your entrance. The sensitive nerves getting just as much brutal attention as your inner walls, your cervix, that sweet spot inside you that makes your eyes roll back.

It all becomes too much all at once and crashes through you, devastating. You clamp down around him tight and needy, lean all your weight back into his thighs. And he practically howls as he sinks into you and stays, grinding and humping without ever actually pulling out again. You feel a flood of heat that seems to go on for an absurdly long time, cock pulsing against your overstimulated walls, milked for every last drop.

You shudder as your brain tries and fails to process it all. Like trying to decipher a foreign language from white noise. It’s nothing but static to you.

You can feel a tongue against your shoulder, scraped of blunt teeth. Soap/Johnny licking the sweat from your skin and nipping bruises into the flesh. You make an annoyed noise that comes out whinier than intended, shoving at his face.

“Get off, you bastard.” Your voice is pathetic, thick with tears and fractured in a hundred places.

“Can’t, bonnie, even if I wanted to.”

You scowl, try to look at him over your shoulder. He takes that opportunity to nuzzle against your temple.

“What?” You ask. “What are you talking about?”

“Did ye hear me?” He chuckles. “Well, maybe not with the way you were screamin’. You’re all knotted up, baby. Can’t pull out — ‘less you want this pretty pussy to tear.”

You jolt, nearly yank yourself off out of pure fear, but Johnny keeps you still again, humming.

“Easy now,” he croons. “Still fussy? Need another to settle down?”

Useless as your brain may be, it recognizes what he means by “another one.” You think you might pass out.

“No,” you snap, petulant even to your own ears. “I want you to explain… explain everything.”

“Alright, hen. C’mere.”

He gently lays you out prone on the bed, then rolls you both on your sides. Hitches your leg up over his hip. You want to protest, but it helps the ache in your poor cunt.

“H-how are you still hard?” You pant, traitorous pussy twitching around him.

He growls in your ear, can feel him grinning against the lobe. “Will stay that way for a bit, lass. Don’ worry, you jus’ have to lay here all nice and still. Keep me warm while I explain things to you.”

And he does. How there are shapeshifters out there in the world, rare as they are. That he comes from a line of them. Recruited to military, as most of them are.

How he was on standard patrol when he smelled you for the first time.

“Like a wet dream, bonnie. Fertile. Spring. Smelled like mine.”

How he instantly knew you were his mate. That he just needed to make you see it. Never a good time to explain it all to you — and then there were interlopers and your silly little books and your pesky toys. How he tried to drop hints around the house, let you come to the correct conclusion on your own. But you never did.

“Honestly it’s a good thing I’m here, hen. You’re so oblivious. Lived with a man and never even knew it.”

That he tried to go about it the other way ‘round, as a man, but you’re just so stubborn. And then how it all led up to tonight. To you finally, finally realizing what you really needed: your mate.

You should be angry, furious. There’s a lot to say about… well, all of it. It’s horrifying and violating and… and…

And he hasn’t stopped bullying your clit since he started talking. Cruel, tight circles. Drawing the hood back with two fingers and stroke with a third, slow and languid and just soft enough to make your head spin. Rhythmless taps. Even pinches when you try to chew him out at one point, half turning to scowl. Instead have his tongue lapping sloppily at yours as your mouth gapes open soundlessly.

Makes you cum twice just like that without ever interrupting his own story, cock still hilted — knotted deep inside you. Honestly, you probably miss a good portion of it, some of the finger details for sure. But you get the broad strokes (among other strokes).

He licks at your overstimulated tears when he’s finished, nuzzling and kissing your cheek.

“I-I miss my dog,” you mumble finally, hands balled against your chest.

“Aww, darlin’,” he sighs, sounding genuinely apologetic. “We’re one and the same. I’m always your boy no matter what form I take.”

It would be more comforting if his dick didn’t throb calling himself your boy.

“‘Sides, I’m better than a normal mutt,” he continues, tugging you against his chest. You want to hate that is instantly makes you feel a little better. “Wolves mate for life, after all.”

First | Previous | 1fur1

Masterlist

#sorry this is a little shorter but uhhhhh i never know where to go after smut #anyway hope yall like it #cod #my writing #fanfiction #reader fic #thoughts™️#dark fic #woof woof johnny #woof woof au #wolf john soap mactavish #johnny soap mactavish

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stellewriites · 8 months ago

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trans!soap who buys one of those dick molding kits and drops it in ghost’s lap, asks him to do it so he can have a braw cock to fuck his new girlfriend with.

“need something that’ll leave her weak-kneed, ya ken? an’ i know from personal experience that yers’ll do the job, lt.”

#is this??? anything??#it’s been floating in my head non stop for a week but i know ill never do anything more with it #simon scoffs and rolls his eyes ‘maybe she’d prefer the original’ he’d goad but he’d get up and do it immediately for johnny #drop it off the same day with a suggestion to try it out and make sure it’s just as good so his birds not missing out #obvs this would eventually lead to ghoap x reader but idk how exactly it’d get there #also braw is scottish slang for good lmao #uhhhh how to tag this i dont usually do shorter stuff :p #johnny soap mactavish #soap x reader #soap x ghost #ghoap #johnny soap mctavish x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #trans johnny soap mactavish #trans soap #trans johnny mactavish #stelles fics

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zoldsick · 5 months ago

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Kings and Jesters

♕ summary: zoro x f!reader - a silly game on the Thousand Sunny causes Zoro to confront his feelings about their newest member. Based on my original bullet point HC here.

♕ tags: fluff, first kiss, sfw

♕ wordcount: ~2.2k

♕ read on AO3

♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕

Zoro was drunk. He needed to think and therefore was on his second bottle of hard liquor. He always did his best thinking when he was drunk, right?

Zoro thought long and hard about you. What was it about you? Why did he keep feeling himself drawn to you? Whatever it was, he was done letting you in so carelessly. He would not let you invade his mind. He had decided whatever he was feeling was most definitely not romantic feelings. He was sure of it. He would make sure of it.

After coming to this decision he continued to sit back on the bird's nest and enjoy his drink, all the while he desperately tried to tune out the charades taking place on the main deck. One voice in particular, he begged to stop hearing.

…

It was a silly drinking game.

You were the one who introduced this game to the Strawhat crew, and everyone was having a blast. The game involved drinking, stupid challenges, and inconsequential punishments. Everything a silly party game needs.

After you introduced the game to the Strawhat crew, they picked it up in stride. The game was called “King” and it involved competing in a handful of goofy challenges in which the winner of each round was crowned the King and the rest of the losers had to drink. The King was then allowed to penalize one of the losers by implementing a punishment- which was usually making them complete some sort of dare. Additionally, to add incentive, Nami decided she would be collecting a “Cowards Fee” on anyone who didn’t want to complete their dare. Suffice to say, everyone was going through with them.

In other words, it was a fast, fun way to get wasted.

The Sunny was sailing into an autumn climate and the air was chilly. You were grateful for the fireplace Franky had built as you felt the gentle breeze glide along your back. You smiled as you watched Sanji bring out a tray of marshmallows towards Chopper, who perked up at the idea of sweets. The moon was nearly full and everyone had finally settled around the fireplace living off of the alcoholic buzz and comradery that the game created. Well, almost everyone.

Sanji cried out in anguish as the whole crew choked on their laughter. Franky was the previous winner and had declared that Sanji would be punished by eating a bite of a dangerously spicy pepper he had picked up on a previous island. It was not a pretty sight.

They had all come up with pretty good punishments this round. Usopp was forced to hold a spider that Robin found under the deck, Luffy was punished by Usopp, who dared him to jump into the ocean—given that Usopp would rescue him shortly after— and sweet Chopper made Robin give him a head massage behind his ears. Of course, Robin didn’t think this was much of a punishment, and happily scratched Chopper's head.

“I WIN!” Nami shouted, jumping up and looking devilishly at the crew. Who knew Nami would be so good at card games?

Nami peered around at the crew grinning as she thought about what punishment would bring the most entertainment.

“Pick me Nami ~” Sanji said, earning an eye roll from the orange haired girl. “Punish me please ~” She ignored his begging, but this did give her an idea. She suddenly turned towards you. You flinched under her mischievous gaze. You had been spared all night and now had a bad feeling it was about to become your turn. Just as predicted, her finger shot out and pointed straight at you.

“Y/N. Don’t get cocky because you’re new on this ship. Stand up!”

You got up from your seated position chuckling nervously at Nami’s antics. You doubted she would give you something too terrible, she’s been very protective of you since you boarded the Sunny. The Strawhats all cheered as you walked over to Nami, hooting and hollering for a good punishment.

Nami slapped her hand across your shoulders, “Alright, Y/N. As a guest on this ship you must show your gratitude to the crew! I demand you give one of our crewmates a kiss! I’ll even be nice and let you choose who, though I think the answer is easy enough.” Nami said, batting her eyelashes at you.

Your eyes widened, mouth agape, you couldn’t find the words to respond. You could feel your ears turn red as the whole crew exploded in excitement. Sanji went comatose.

“Nami… I don’t know about this.” You complained, “I don't know if I’m comfortable with a …kiss.”

“What’s wrong? Too many good options?” Shouted out Franky, “Choose me! I’ll definitely make it SUPER!”

“It’s just a small kiss. No need to read into it,” said Robin.

Sanji, staggered to his feet, “Y/N, I would be honored if you chose me as a representative of this ship, to bestow a k-k-kis-” he stopped to cover his nose as a jet of blood shot from it and he collapsed back again.

Luffy protested, “But I’m the Captain! I’m the representative of the ship!”

“Luffy, do you really want Y/N to kiss you?” questioned Usopp.

“What? No. I’m just sayin’ I’m the Captain!”

“SO! Y/N, who is it going to be?” Nami interrupted, stopping the crew from getting too off-topic.

“Guys, I really don’t know about this. It’s not really something I’m, particularly… experienced in.” You beg your face to stop changing colors but feel your cheeks betraying you.

“What do you mean?” Robin pressed, “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

You desperately try to avoid eye contact. “Uh…”

The deck of the Sunny suddenly went silent and you felt your embarrassment deepen even more. Suddenly everyone exploded in astonishment and reinvigorated competition.

“Oh. My. God.” Nami couldn’t believe it, “This changes everything. ALRIGHT EVERYONE! This is now a competition to see who deserves to receive Y/N’s first kiss!”

…

Zoro’s drunken brooding was interrupted by shouts and arguing. He shifted from where he sat, the shouts weren’t in fear or danger, but emotions were definitely high. Luffy’s laugh pierced through the yells. What the hell are those idiots doing?

Zoro stood up and stumbled a little, suddenly feeling the liquor working through his veins. Zoro descended the birdnest’s ladder and staggered towards the main deck. As he turned the corner an odd scene appeared before him. Zoro couldn’t quite make out what the argument was about, but he heard everyone shouting over each other.

“I’m the one who initiated the dare in the first place! So I’m the obvious choice here! It’s only fair!” screamed Nami, pulling hard on Usopp’s ear who yelped out in pain.

“Oh yeah?” Usopp winced, “Well I was the best kisser in all of Syrup Village! It should be me!”

“That’s nice, but if we are basing this on experience, the older members should be at the top of the list. Right, Franky?” Robin asserted.

“RRRRRRRRRIGHT AS ALWAYS, ROBIN!” Franky posed showing off his muscles, “Y/N! Robin and I are obviously the best choices!”

Sanji was incoherent, struggling to stop his still bleeding nose. All that could be heard was a pathetic beg, “Please… Please… Y/N’s first… Please…”

Luffy and Chopper sat back laughing at the whole crew, uninterested in the prize and stuffing their cheeks with marshmallows.

“What the hell is goin’ on here?” Zoro said gruffly.

You jumped slightly. You were so focused on the chaos that was taking place in front of you that you didn’t notice Zoro walking up.

“Oh, Zoro. Uh… We were playing a game and…” You struggled to get the words out.

Zoro waited, watching you squirm with cheeks flushed. This is unfair.

You launched into a story, something about a game and a punishment, but Zoro wasn’t following. He was just staring, watching the way your lips formed each word. One might say he was distracted. Thankfully, he tuned back in to hear the conclusion.

“- and so now everyone is arguing about who’s going to get my… first kiss. I guess. It’s all so dumb, I just want this to be over with.” you said burying your face in your hands as you heard Nami smack Sanji’s head back down after he had finally gotten back up.

“They’re what?” Zoro finally comprehended the implications of this punishment. Y/N’s first kiss…

“I know, I don’t know how to get out of this. Nami will probably bleed my pockets dry if I bail out. Probably best to just choose someone and get it over with.” You peeked out of your hands up at him. You were getting redder by the second.

Zoro looked at the brawling party and then back to you. His chest hurt.

“First kiss, how stupid.” he mumbled.

“I know! That’s what I’m trying to tell everyo--”

There was a crash and suddenly Zoro’s hands were gripping your face, and before you could process it, his lips were crashing into yours.

It was nothing like you imagined your first kiss would go. It was clumsy and he tasted like liquor. One of his hands gripped your jaw and the other tangled in your hair. You could barely keep up with his pace. One of your hands gripped his shirt and the other gripped his arm to ground yourself. His tongue was gliding over yours forcefully, you squeeked at the unfamiliar sensation, which only seemed to encourage Zoro.

It only lasted around 10 seconds, but when Zoro finally broke the kiss you couldn’t move. Your whole body felt like jelly. His face hovered close to yours, eyes barely open, as if he couldn’t decide whether or not to continue. He suddenly took a long step back, clearing his throat and touching his mouth with his fingers.

All members of the Strawhat crew were staring, mouths wide open. Zoro’s bottle of liquor was still spilling out from where he dropped it.

There was a beat, then the crew fell into disarray.

Zoro ignored the ruckus happening next to him and struggled to look down at you. He shouldn’t have done that. He finally mustered up the courage to look at you and noticed you were an alarming shade of red. If steam started coming out of your ears he wouldn’t be surprised. Your mouth hung slightly open, lips slightly swollen from his rough kiss, he could tell you were struggling to register what had just happened. He froze as you looked up at him.

It was like he got punched in the gut. You were incredibly flustered, your eyes slightly watery, and your hair disheveled. His breath hitched. God, what did I just do?

He quickly looked away, struggling to maintain his composure. Trying to look anywhere besides you. Seeing you this flustered after a simple kiss was not going to help his current crisis. Suddenly a sob broke through the noise and Zoro turned to see who it was coming from.

Sanji was on the floor crying, looking straight at Zoro, “How… HOW COULD YOU! YOU BEAST!”

He jumped up, joined by all the other competitors for your first kiss. Chopper knocked down Zoro’s legs and he fell onto his stomach, Usopp jumped on his back and grabbed his hair, yanking it back and yelling back, “How was that fair, you jerk!”

Sanji took advantage of the fallen Zoro and got a few weak kicks in, still wiping the tears from his eyes. He can’t even speak, he’s too furious, seeing Zoro kiss a woman was the nail on his mental coffin. Luffy can’t stop laughing.

“They’re RIGHT Zo-Bro,” Franky says, twisting his arm to engage his weapons-left, “I never heard the lady give her permission.”

“Hey! Argh! Stop it! What’s the big deal? It’s just a first kiss! I’ve never done that before either, it’s nothing!”

There was a second pause while everyone took in this new information. Robin, unaware she was about to rub salt in wounds, spoke up, "So, you’re each other's first kiss?"

Zoro struggled against his crew and managed to look at you. The second you make eye contact neither of you could hold back the blush that made its way across your cheeks and up to your ears.

The crew bursts into hysterics once again.

Unable to withstand the attention and incapable of processing everything that just happened, you turned around and ran off into the women’s bunks. Gotta cool my head, gotta cool my head, gotta cool my head— What was that?!

The crew watched as you retreated, then got in a few more blows to berate and beat Zoro. After a while everyone felt satisfied that Zoro had been appropriately punished, and left him alone. But Zoro didn’t move, he stayed facedown on the lawn of the Sunny, defeated. He was in time out, trying to think about his actions.

He heard Usopp goofing around with Luffy and Chopper, bragging about how he alone managed to defeat the feared pirate hunter Zoro. Sanji had also dragged himself away sniffling, leaving to make the crew some hot cocoa before bed per Chopper’s request. Finally the deck was silent once again.

Zoro finally sat up, looking down at his own hands, “She didn’t need to run off like that, it’s not a big deal.” He spoke out loud, still trying to convince his crew, but mostly himself.

Just then, Robin sprouted a hand from his back and slapped him on top of the head.

He looked up at Robin in disbelief, “Not your best move, Swordsman,” she said from a distance and walked away.

It’s possible that Zoro does not do his best thinking when he is drunk.

♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕♕

author's notes: hope that was a little more fun than the original bullet points. this was originally in a much longer slow-burn story that I decided to ditch, so it's been written for awhile. I might just post the fun parts of that story and edit them to make sense as a one-shot. As always thanks to @nanpecan for editing, go read her nanami fic, it rulez

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leavingsunsets · 9 months ago

Note

Helllloo!!

I would like to request a senkuu x reader if possible! (Preferably some angst + romance but anything works!) Been looking for some inspiration and I love your work!

Also hopefully you're okay if I draw some of your work too

Thank youuuu!! (>u<)/

im okay with you drawing my work! saw some of ur art, and wow! glad ur a fan tehee :33 i see you've given me an angst plot, with romance? yes i will definitely fulfill this. i waaaassss ssupposed to make this action filled with scene wit reader dying in battle of treasure island arc and senku going "WHAT" and head in hands and sobbing and the gang has to go back to the mainland hat on stomach like ":(" but exams and research defense finished and i also jus watched cute little vid of an old couple so this is jussttt hmmm a softer angst set between events ig

"ʟᴏᴏᴋ ᴍʏ ᴡᴀʏ."

[ꜱᴇɴᴋᴜ x ɢɴ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ]

It wasn't really a secret. You didn't even try, honestly.

Since the first of times of where you'd glimpsed his face at school, to the latest catch of him swirling fluid in a beaker, you've always been confident in your feelings.

Albeit a bit clumsy in your attempts, you were honest, never mincing them, never embarrassed.

"Senku, I really really like you!"

"Yeah, okay, could you pass me that screwdriver?" he says, both of you 6 years old in his room, as he gestures to the tool beside you.

"Senku, I want to date you. I heard Aimi had a boyfriend recently and I was thinking-" your voice goes interrupted as the loud sound of Senku's machinery overpower yours. 13 years old, another one of his favorite past times.

"Senku, if we were both nobles in medieval fantasy and I had to marry someone in order to get a persistent suitor off my back, I'd go to you. Offer a contract with an eventual divorce, but then we fall in love in a slow burn romance and start rethinking about our agreement."

"Can you- just- HELP ME, DAMN IT." Senku heaves, 16 years old, face turning red as he struggles to hold the boxes of equipment you came to help him with.

All these confessions, all these words, even before everything changed. The clatter of a can hitting the ground.

...

In this new life, surely, you know, Senku's had an absolute goal for this world. To rebuilt it as it was, from his own two hands. In your own way, you've had to learn how to pace your feelings.

Instead of words, as you always did, you decided to translate your affections into a language that matters most in a time like this.

Actions.

For every problem, every step he takes, you take with him. Express your thoughts, concerns, ideas. Any progress, you're there to celebrate with, any process, you're there to assist.

Declarations of love aren't so frequent, though you do like to sneak it in rarely. Announcing it in bursts of passion at the top of your lungs. Quite an antic you do, much to his embarrassment. It's become a well known fact, and often a joke between company.

Though, sometimes you wonder if it's what makes him doubt it. Your overt confessions, cheesy poems and bustling energy that could rival Taiju's. Was it too clumsy? Too obvious that he feels it's an exaggerated farce for show?

To this, you whisper gingerly in the dead of night, in the earliest of mornings,

"Senku. I really really like you."

In the times of uneventful hours, peacefulness in comfortable silence,

"Senku,"

You know, of course you do, of all people.

No one knows him more than you and that fact would've made you happy of such a thing if it couldn't break your heart more. The love of your life, saying everything said in a language that matters most in this time.

An unreadable glance. When the sun beams down brightly and you stare at him lovingly like he's hung the stars in the sky.

Winter strikes mercilessly, days are rough, tensions are high. When everything's all good and done, a bold pinkie inches towards his own. He doesn't pull away, but his hand moves back just as further.

Late at night, behind the tree he leans upon, watching, just watching. His ruby eyes enraptured by the night's celestial pearl.

Gaze too high, to see you.

You close your eyes.

You don't think you can ever stop loving him, despite that. That man doesn't like dragging things out, so you're sure a rejection is soon to come. Whether you approach first or not.

Why he doesn't do it sooner? You know why. As much as he doesn't reciprocate, you know how hesitant he is when it comes to close relationships such as you. Is he scared of breaking your friendship?

It's not the warmth you're looking for, but it's the warmth you can get. Even so, you would never expect him to return just as much as you've given. You love him for him, and not for anything else.

Tragic, how terribly you do.

Maybe one day, you'll learn to forget, to move your heart from where it isn't supposed to be. Maybe one day, you would stop gazing at him with something much more than fondness, waiting for his eyes to find its way back to you.

But until then,

"-I love you."

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lesbianherald · 8 days ago

Text

got an idea for another fic oh my GOD I have BRAINWORMS HELP MEEE

#i am already balancing FIVE projects right now two of them fics #i refuse #my own work has to have the majority im sorry #but mayhaps.... once the one small thing im working on is done...#this one is epistolary. like one or two chapters.#heres my guess for my future here #ill finish the knight au by early summer #ill do my lil stardew au thatll probably only be like 40-50k #ill write a few more one shots/shorter things as i continue those #and then i vanish like the avatar except the world wont need me the most #because jayvik will be made canon on valentines day and/or pride #seeing into the future like raven i think #besides im going to be really busy with a project this fall. august feels right for me to dip you know #its gotta be right

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sil-te-plait-tue-moi · 3 months ago

Text

My heart is a bloodhound!

PART 1 ★ PART 2

Quick summary: It happens again, when the year festers into August again and leaves the two of you raw and vulnerable like open wounds.

Word count: 15K… 🤓

Warnings: canon-typical mentions of death, violence and injury (there is mention of like eating people but idk); grief; misogyny; Rust's personality; semi-public SMUTT T-T (MINORS DNI); same level of pretentiousness, maybe a little more, as the first part.

A/N: Holy fuck this sucked the soul out of me (wish Rust Cohle would suck the soul out of I MEAN WHAT), i am super proud of this though!! Went through many iterations and this was the least shit! 🎀🎀🎀 This is technically part two to The idler wheel but can be read by itself too. May or may not write other things for this guy but for the time being, I need a cleanse 😭 BUT please please enjoy and please please interact, i love reading comments and so many lovely people commented on the first part, im gonna do my best to respond to any/all this time 🤘MWAH MWAH

***

It’s difficult to differentiate between the thrill of being left alone here with him and the slow-sinking dread of the implications of that.

With the return of the musk of the summer, those three ruthless, windless, unrelenting months that would seem to drag on for several lifetimes when I was a kid, the memory of where I was last year—and the year before that, and the one before that—hangs brightly in my mind. Stale, not quite dead – so bright. Crawling with mildew.

Stepping into the bar had felt like entering another dimension. Maybe it was the suits that gave it away – every single God-haunted patron—the truckers, the farmers, even the old dog lying at a man’s feet—had turned, sensing foreigners as acutely as the immune system registers a bodily threat. I knew Johansson felt it: that dark pull over the back of the neck. But under Marty’s overconfident, swaggering lead, that winning smile, we soon assimilated. Skin swallowing a bullet.

God forbid you ever leave the town you grew up in. Shame on you if you don’t, though. How sanctimonious of me to change my mind and return after earning a spot amongst the lucky few escapees.

Something in this place still irks me.

At least, in Brooklyn, there was always noise: cries of a baby in the apartment over, the discord of traffic bursting through the streets below, the rush of a crowd, the overlap and slur of private conversations. At least the badness would stare you right in the face; at least people were evil to be evil. At least there were corners where things could hide, where it made sense for shadows to exist: all to explain the paranoia that stalked me.

But here?—it seems so open. Like, if a rare, hot wind would blow through a Louisiana town, it could do so in one straight path, through walls, through people, without ever getting disrupted. Everything is so light in the blazing sun, you can practically hear it: the hum of rays passing over every surface. Nothing should be able to hide. And, at night, with no sun, no rays, there is no noise. Maybe a dog. And ghosts. But perhaps it’s just the area in which I live.

When Marty started drinking, flirting with the twenty-one-year-old barkeep, Johansson’s face had stiffened. He himself had never even touched a bottle of beer – devil stuff. We shared a look once the blond detective started gabbin’ like an idiot.

“Know what Maggie thinks?” he had laughed, slumping over the sticky table of the booth, big, sweaty palm choking out his drink. “She thinks you might be pissed at me.”

Johansson blinked hard to keep his nose from wrinkling, but, even then, he couldn’t keep from physically cringing away. “Who?” he asked, confused by those hazy, unfocused eyes.

Marty cracked a toothy grin – there was that slight gap between those front two, which had been charming at first and only managed to thoroughly disgust me now in moments like these – and pointed his finger right at me, accusing. “You.”

My stomach churned dangerously at the sight of him.

“Marty,” his partner had drawled, a low warning.

Waved away like a fly.

“Naw, it’s like—you’re on your high fuckin’ horse or somethin’.”

The words were spoken through a laugh, but I knew there was meat behind that so-called good mood. He was one of those people that tended to overcompensate. A mistake, an ill feeling. He liked to point out how I was alone, and often, too, poorly disguised as a passing joke, complete with one of those shit-eating grins that seemed to come so easy to him.

Shouldn’t he have been happy? Not only had he gotten our case, by then, but we’d handed it over with smiles on our damn faces. Nice enough to walk them through the original crime scene, introduce them to the key witnesses. Complicated. We didn’t have to do shit for ‘em, but we did. Hell, even that beer he was clutching to his chest was paid for out of the goodness of my own fuckin’ heart. Who was he to moan about the situation? He was the one who insisted on staying in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, brushing off any and all pointed questions on whether his family would be missing him at dinner.

“You know, I’d rather you were pissed,” he continued, where, really, I should have just smothered him into silence.

Rust was staring into the side of his flushed face, iron-grey eyes like a drill, like he was thinking the same thing.

“Look, you’re smilin’ at me now, but I sure as hell don’t trust it, buck. You wanna bite my head off, don’t ye?”

Like I ever could have done that.

Though the familiar weight of rage curdled in my chest, I would never admit it to the likes of Martin Hart. When he got like this—jealous, insecure, whiny—I wondered whether it was just a temporary lapse, or if this him, this true him, just lay under the surface all the time.

It wasn’t that fucking hard to plaster on a smile and take what you fucking got – I did it all the time. He could dream of a different life, but this was the one we were dealt. Fact that his grown ass hadn’t accepted that by now twisted violently in my gut. Between the two of us, I was the one that knew this – so why did he get myfucking case?

In my head, I’d let Salter have it, too. How could I ever admit I had an ego? How could I ever admit I had a mind to wrench the teeth out of the sheriff’s fucking gums?

But I have plenty of practice acting like things don’t bother me, which is why it was so easy to plaster on my amiable smile and laugh, “C’mon, man, you know it’s only ‘cause o’ the workload.” Not that you could comprehend that, lazy fuck. To Marty, my kind’s natural state was amiable—anything otherwise would be a defect—so I’d expected to convince him. “You’ll do right by it, ‘m sure.”

If he were sober, I know he would’ve bought it – he could convince himself that the way of the world was right and I was only being sweet to be sweet, because he deserved it.

But Marty was drunk. Piss-drunk, loud drunk. His mind was clumsier than usual, unable to muster the energy to jump points, ignore the evidence, like he did daily. I hoped I had the power—if I had to let the case go, I wanted to at least retain an into its goings-on—but there was only one way to really have power over men like Marty when they were drunk, and I had had no interest in being one of his girls.

My partner twitched beside me, picking at some spongy, yellow fluff protruding from a thin split in the chocolate-brown fake leather of the booth. He was just as furious as I was beneath his fort of calm.

Marty took a swig of his beer. “She wants you over soon. Maggie. Barbecue or some shit.”

“Maybe you should go home,” Johansson interjected, sharper than intended. If I were him, with his body, with his life, I’d have hit the fucker—long time ago, too. I couldn’t, but Johansson wouldn’t. He didn’t lack the temperament for brutality—I’m not sure anybody does—but, rather, couldn’t justify it to a necessary degree in his head. “I’m going home,” he’d reasoned kindly – he made it sound so easy. “Just let me take you. It’s on my way.”

Itching to leave, to return to the comfort of his wife and his little daughter. Marty had always found Johansson’s fondness of them disingenuous, had disliked my partner as long as they’d worked in the same office. He complained to me once that none of his stories seemed complete. When I asked him what he meant by that, he couldn’t answer—but I knew.

Breath short in my chest, I had half-expected Marty to lunge over the table, scratch Johansson’s eyes out. Only, Rust leaned over, dipping his head down to mutter something quietly into his partner’s ear, which was all flushed red.

And then he went willingly into Johansson’s car, stumbling through the still, open night into the backseat.

My partner had squeezed my shoulder goodbye – I’m not sure why I didn’t leave with him. Now, I was doomed to leave with Rust.

There, he sits across from me, smearing the ashy tar of his half-smoked, flaking cigarette over the mottled glass ashtray dragged over to his side of the table, little circles, waves, absent-minded art. Has me transfixed, some hypnotist.

If I look down like this, if I sacrifice the opportunity to look at him, I earn his careful attention: this sits in the back of my idle mind. I’ve been taking advantage of it more and more since summer broke through the sweetness of spring, which has since curdled like milk, sour. His stare drags over my face like fingers – I can almost feel his touch pressing into the softness of my cheek, dragging over the ridge of the orbital bone.

“You’re okay?” he asks after a couple slowed heartbeats, pulling me out of the honey-pit of my thoughts.

I dart my eyes up, breaking the spell – his observation retreats, clouds, and drifts away to fix on the broken clock on the wall, the one that reads one forty-five at eleven o’ clock.

Primarily, his question irritates me. Nobody asks “are you alright?” imploringly, not unless it concerns themselves and their own wants. Salter had asked me that, right after telling me he was pulling me from my case, and, then, I had thought about crying, just to unsettle him. But what good would that have done? He’d only asked “are you alright?” to test the waters, to see if there was a future possibility of letting him pull the rug out from under me with zero consequences. Again. I couldn’t win.

But Rust doesn’t want much from me. He doesn’t even want the case, really, which just twists the knife even further.

“You—you know I’m good in there, right? In the box.” I carve a jagged thumbnail into this message in the table, twisting the characters wider, or taller, risking splinters.

Why should I have to give it up? And to a fucking idiot? Marty wasn’t the one who stayed all those late nights alone at the office, wasn’t the one scoured over heaps of files under low light, wasn’t the one who took the fucking beating when the suspect fought against arrest. Marty was not the one who conducted an interview like that.

My mouth thins into a hard line, but I know the words will come out whether I let them voluntarily or not. Around Rust, it’s that way. I should’ve left when I could.

“It’s just that—it was so weird,” I continue, my head pulsing with the unwanted memory of that cabin. Marty didn’t have to experience it, Rust didn’t have to experience it—but I did. “Not jus’ wrong, or sad. Makes me feel strange, thinking about it.”

Often, the suspects underestimate me. Johansson’s broad shoulders and tough-set jaw come off as offensive—nothing like my voice, low and gentle, and my eyes, sympathetic and warm. I’m the mother who will never judge, who is spilling over with unconditional love.

Beneath this, though, I am good at the maths of the job, the connections. Though all detectives technically develop the same constituent skills—close attention to body language tells and other biological betrayals—I ain’t sure most understand the sensitivity and strength required to confront shit like this head-on. To not avert your eyes at the mutilated woman on the bed. To inspect her eunuched boyfriend’s severed appendage, to have steady hands when photographing the scene—with flash, of course, to highlight every detail with sufficient clarity—for evidence, which must be returned to and examined again and again, each time with greater fervour still.

I could name a few who’d joke about a thing like that, to ease the burn of that image in their heads, to sleep better at night, to leave behind the uninvited, vicarious sensation of a knife teasing over the meat of their dick.

But the boyfriend’s corpse, we eventually located separately in a cabin in the woods, laid into the basement freezer, so peaceful, such a brutal image. Pretty parts of him preserved for mauling.

And Salter has the fucking audacity to take it away. He wasn’t the one to see something like that, to feel sick to his very stomach, to gag and have to turn away, to cringe and writhe like his skin suddenly wasn’t his, like he ought to pick himself out. I’ve been reeling with that image for weeks, living with motion sickness, and have been denied the relief of vomiting.

“So, you need me to get that confession.”

Rust comes back into focus, perfectly still.

I nod, the back of my neck prickling with mean goosebumps. “Campbell, his DNA was all over the bodies. He was proud of it, even.” My ribs still glow with the phantom-sensation of his brutal kick there when we located him. Stomach clenching, I struggle to remain level. “But there ain’t no way in hell she wasn’t involved. He denies it, but the house is registered under her name. Maiden name, Phelps.”

“I read,” he confirms.

I tremble in frustration – I almost wish he hadn’t.

“It’s just—this lady’s tough.”

Eyes darting over to the dim-lit bar, scouring the scuffed hardwood floor, I can feel my face growing hot with indignation. Christ, it sounds pathetic, like a whiny kid insisting on continuing a task all wrong in order to protect their damaged pride.

“You know Johansson: once she starts with the tears, he can’t see past ‘em. Southern manners ‘n’ all: a crying woman is a delicate thing not for a man to understand but to comfort. But, with me, it ain’t the same. She doesn’t respect me.”

“What d’you mean ‘respect ’? Don’t need respect in this game.”

I scoff, which would’ve been a dire mistake with anyone else. “Y’wouldn’t know what I’m on about,” I tease through an easy smile, though I’m not feeling so funny at the moment.

He inclines his head down to me, an invitation to elaborate.

My boot feverishly taps against the floor, thrumming light like a jackrabbit on the run.

I sigh, mouth twisting. “She keeps asking me if I’ve slept,” I confess. “Says I look like her daughter.”

For all my mothering, here comes a perp who’s desperate to play me at my own game.

I can see how intelligent she is: some hollow glint in her eyes with nothing behind; past that gleaming screen of kindness, something black, like a cherry pit.

Sitting across from her, it felt like looking into a mirror. Not just physically—though her skin is a similar shade to mine, her nails bitten and splitting like mine, and she looks close to what I imagine my own mother could’ve grown into. It was in the way that, when I smiled, she smiled. When I took a sip of my coffee, she would drink some tea. At times, it would even seem like she would speak in my voice: the pitch, the intonations, the phrasing all far too similar. I was reluctant to tell her my name. It reminded me of this folk tale, of these tall, dark creatures who only required your name to speak like you, to look like you, to replace you in your own life. Its victim would die—in some way or another. Wander the woods, eaten alive.

A harrowing feeling had crept over me, winter pressing against the two-way mirror – I was sure Johansson, on the other side, would pick up on it. Only, when I confessed my worries to him, he’d given me this doubtful look, and I really wasalone then.

“She’s playin’ you,” Rust states simply, tracing his fingers over his mouth like some pseudo-cigarette.

“Yeah.” I grind my teeth together. Under the table, where he cannot see, my fingers curl into a tight fist, trembling with my secret violence. “And now Salter wants Marty to have it? Bull.”

I should’ve socked him right in his dumb, slack fuckin’ jaw. One day, I will.

“He don’t want Marty to have it,” Rust retorts smartly, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are warm in the dark – I should’ve taken my chances, raced to meet ‘em, but I’m too late. “He wants me to have it.”

Yeah, well, I wish what was mine would stay mine.

Even if I’m inclined to be pissed off at Rust by proxy, I just can’t be. The difference between him and Marty is that he actually pays attention, real attention, not the selfish kind. Just by watching, I can tell he knows exactly what he could say, how he could act, in order to appeal to somebody—which is why I find it so odd that he chooses not to. I sacrifice my damn dignity to keep myself palatable. He does not. As a result, he is not well-liked at the office – people tend to feel caught out by him; they don’t like to feel observed, known.

When did being seen become a threat? I thought it was intimate. Though, I suppose, a piece of shit never wants to believe they’re a piece of shit.

Everyone’s the hero of their own story.

Rust slides Marty’s half-empty beer across the table to me, which I receive with a crooked smile and a quick hand.

“Sure I won’t catch whatever he had?”

He shrugs. “Y’ain’t as deadbeat as the rest of ’em. Oughta drag you down to their level.”

I snort. “What, you don’t think you’re deadbeat?”

He huffs. “I’m worse.”

Bitter, the beer washes over my tongue, leaves that funny aftertaste I never really liked, not the first time, not the last. I don’t suppose I’ll ever turn one down though, not if it was offered to me: I’d accept it if only to win points with whoever it was, points I could spend at a later date.

“Maybe,” I start, “if you were a little more deadbeat, you’d be popular. Go out with the boys.”

When he meets my eyes momentarily, smirking, I have to grip my hand over my knee, fingertips digging into bone, and consciously remind myself via mantra not to let my face freeze. He hums, voice smooth and low like liquor, “What, like youdo?”

I should be pissed off, really. Maybe I will be. Instead, though, I choke on the smart retort I had meticulously configured in my head, some quip that would’ve maybe interested him based on what caught him before.

I don’t know whether it would have been worse pretending like it never happened. That’s my strong point: pretending. It’s his, too, when he wants it to be. Maybe we could’ve outlasted it – all we needed was stamina.

But, instead, it’s this. Looking across at each other and knowing exactly what’s going on in the other’s head. I can see exactly how he thinks of me, what he wants to do. When he tilts his head ever so slightly, my neck glows with a promise, like the movement was mine in the first place. When I would bite at the pendant of my necklace, he used to narrow his eyes, like he ought to yank the chain off my neck. But now, he looks on softly, so unlike him, his own fingers at his own lips. I know what it feels like – I’ve kissed him there, too.

“Don’t give me that. At least Geraci would stop shit-talkin’ ye,” I manage, tearing myself away. “Swear he’s stuck at sixteen or somethin’. But—you don’t mind it, do you?”

He shakes his head. “‘f he was smarter, maybe I would. Jus’ likes the sound of his own voice.”

The clock has replaced me as his focal point – I can’t help but feel jealous.

“S’why I like you,” I mumble from behind my beer. “First time I met you, I thought you’d make me feel stupid.

That seems to get him.

He blinks, a barely noticeable twitch. “Do I? I don’t mean to.”

Can I spin this? I’m sure, if I were a little more awake, I’d be able to spin this.

Some evil part of me hopes to make him feel guilty, to trick him into feeling tenderness for me, though I know the pursuit of that would be in vain. The type of men I know how to work—creatures of habit that take the exact path you want them to, to believe that they’re the real seducers—Rust seems entirely separate from that. He can sniff out rehearsal and practice, that robotism, like a dog – he sees it enough in criminals, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s called in for favours across state police departments.

When I met him the first time, I shook his hand, smiled, friendly-like, only to be met with rigidity and stoicism. No trouble, of course: some people just are that way. Wild horses on the highway. But his quietness?—now, that had set alarm bells off in my head. Boys at the precinct were loud – you couldn’t pay ‘em to shut up about their weekends, their football, their college years, their fuckin’ yards. When I was first exposed to it, I thought I’d gain a lot of friends. But then I realised they weren’t so much talking with me as they were talking at me. It’s why they’re so easy to read: they just tell you everything you want to know right off the bat. Even their secrets are bursting at the seams of their fat mouths, begging to be released.

But Rust?—doesn’t talk until he finds it necessary. It’s impressive. Before that, though, the trait was enviable. I had—have—no comparable method. Even though, at first, it can seem blunt, even cold, his eloquence is refreshing. Never running in circles – only determinedly forward. So intimidating, almost like a freight train – I have to consciously keep myself from jerking back and out of the way.

How low he must really think of me then, to see me like this. And I know he does: he sees. Everything I might have done to prevent it perhaps even had the opposite effect. I hate, I burn, I curse: it’s ugly. I cry over cases I would’ve left behind in two months tops, anyways, onto the next. I obsess over just another woman in the box. I think about him almost constantly.

“You don’t,” I mumble, wondering if I ought to be wishing myself far away. “Make me feel dumb, that is. Not me. Others, I can’t speak for.”

We’ll have to leave soon – no doubt, this local bar is used to slow days and early nights, a blissful routine rudely disrupted by two outsiders who haven’t even really shown them good business. I glance over at the barkeep, slumped over the scuffed wooden counter and flatly watching the football up on the boxy TV set, and I recall my first job. Then, too, I’d let men twice my age buy me drinks, flirted with them. Was worth the tip money.

Rust hums, though I really wish he wouldn’t speak at all. “Don’t pay mind to what Marty said.”

My neck prickles.

He’s not trying to console me, is he? No, that’s not like him. Besides, it’s not like any amount of coddling could reverse the merciless truths I’m constantly reminded of in this line of work – if I’ve learned anything about sympathy, it’s that it doesn’t fix shit. If anything, it’s just another complication. It can seem beautiful, but, really, it isn’t. I can miss it, miss its warmth, miss the kind, sweet nothings my husband would whisper into my hair on the hardest nights, but it never changed the fact that I would have to get up in the morning and do it again. Rust knows this, has maybe lived this, so he’s not trying to console me.

Maybe he’s trying to defend Marty.

Sharp and sure, that anger comes lurching up in my throat, slashing and snarling.

The sensible part of me—what I hope is the larger part of me—knows this is not possible. Rust understands Marty’s faults better than anyone, even himself, even his wife.

“Thing is,” I mumble bitterly, “he really means it, don’t he? He just don’t show it.” I trace the warm, smooth rim of the bottle with a light finger, though my mind is currently toying with the idea of jamming it violently down the opening. “Maybe it means more that he does keep it hidden – at least some part of him knows it’s wrong.”

Placid in the periphery of my vision, Rust shrugs. “‘s what separates us from our killers. Feelin’ it ain’t the problem. Resistance is where strength is tested.”

“Ego,” I chuckle darkly.

He hums. “Fragile ego.”

Underneath my smile lies an uneasiness stirred by his criticism.

Rust is not gentle with his opinions – I don’t suppose that’ll ever change. Resistance is a losing game – not even he is immune to the impermanence of these things. I’m sure he said that to me once, on a night like this.

I’ve never been very good at refraining from things. Even from an early age, I just couldn’t say no. Teenage years: alcohol, drugs, sex. If it was tossed my way, I’d take it, anything I could get, hungry to experience something.

Ha!—maybe I actually am more like Marty Hart than I’d like to admit. He’s trying to be an adult, albeit really, really poorly. As long as he believes he’s a good, family man, then his reality is protected. But I know I’m rotten, really. One of the boys at the precinct will call me pretty—in that sick way somewhere between the unchecked lust of a man and his paternal right to claim—but, below, I know I’ve got sickness swimming through my veins. Not blood. Something accumulated over the years, maybe from pretending all the time.

I feel like I want to cut things, break them. Told myself to hang on until I retire, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ll break. What will Rust think of me then?

Maybe I was his low point: that fault in resistance.

Some awful, gnawing feeling collects at the pit of my stomach, like black tar. Must be all those cigarettes.

“Wha’s in that head?” he probes suddenly, stealing razor-sharp, fleeting glances.

I shrug, swallowing down a bout of nausea. “I dunno.” And I really don’t. Behind the surface tension, I don’t know what I feel, only that I do, and it’s so, so much. “It kinda—makes me happy to see him like that: jealous. ‘Cause he knows I’m good, and he’s wondering why he’s finishing what I started. He knows he don’t deserve it. Not like I do.”

My confession lingers in the air like smoke – I have mind to reach a hand up and wave it all away, or suck it down, deep, erasing reality. Fuck. I’ve always been a little off when reading into Rust’s quiet – with that tightrope he seems to have mastered, I know I should avoid any step at all—it could just as easily miss its mark—but I can never seem to help myself.

I stare at him—and I think it makes him uncomfortable, though there’s nothing there, not any normal human reaction, in his face for me to draw from. That’s fine. In my gut, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it down.

“You want to be seen as competent,” he finally says, a simple-enough statement.

I scrunch my nose up distastefully. “No, I want to be competent.”

“Well, what good is bein’ somethin’ if there’s no-one there to witness it?”

Unable to press down an exasperated sigh, I close my eyes, roll them with all the subtlety I can manage.

Foul words push under my tongue, like vomit.

I don’t know if I’m in the mood for this tonight: smart conversation. What feels like debate. Maybe if he hadn’t been given my case, I’d take him up on the challenge, but I’ve already lost.

I eye him, try to figure out his game.

“I dunno, Rust,” I tell him flatly. “I think that’s called having an identity issue.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Most people do.”

My chest burns. “This isn’t a go at me, is it?”

Slow, he draws the ashtray towards him from across the table, as if the grind of the glass against the wood is a noise that ought to be savoured.

I could be deaf, but reading his lips would be easy: “And how’d this be about you exactly?”

I’m able to fight off the initial instinct to wince, the way in which he delivers the words, calm and deliberate, stinging like a slap to the face. What’s worse is the growing impression that he’s as bored of me as I am.

With a furrowed brow, I watch him, heartbeat thrumming in my ears.

“I ain’t out to get you, s’you can quit lookin’ at me like I kicked you or somethin’.”

Frowning shallowly and trying to pretend like I’m not, I glance away and commit to rearranging my face—but at the glimpse of that twitch at the corner of his mouth in my periphery, I know I’m only digging a deeper grave for myself. The noticeable heat of my embarrassment must please him.

Playing with the food.

And I’ve got nothing to say to him—not a single word or phrase up to par, nothing to measure up to Rust’s clinical detachment, let alone destabilise him. He might’ve been reciting the coroner’s report. There’s nothing I can say to scathe him—and fuck, I want to leave a mark, prove to him that I can. I scan him for weakness, but either I’m still too stunned to see it or there is none. I have no plan of attack and no line of defence.

Rust seems to soften in the knowledge of this.

“I mean,” he begins, knowing now that I’m really listening, “identity ain’t fixed – it’s not permanent. I don’t scrutinise my appearance. I don’t mind my body, and my body don’t mind me. My personality hardly feels under my control – ‘s just somethin’ that is and will be—‘n’, I guess, will change, but only against my will, never because of it. Feels pointless to feel insecure about that.”

Is this supposed to be some fucked-up attempt at advice?

My priorities changed, but this place never has, never does, never will. So, it’s all dumb and the people are dumb and this bar is dumb and the boys at the precinct are dumb and, fuck, I wish Rust were dumb, too. I feel pathetic, and he does not alleviate that feeling at all. If he were dumb, I could laugh at him and make myself feel better. I could laugh at myself for sleeping with a dumb man. Instead, I think of him religiously and crave his approval. Afflicted with the knowledge that he needs to be corrupted to want me, that I’m awful enough to want it enough to corrupt him again. Tainted waters. It would be so much more comfortable if I could look down on him.

My skin writhes and ripples, and I know the only thing that would soothe it is if he touched me. Jesus and the sick man—or some polluted version of that.

My world swings under a bout of nausea as it begins to spiral – the beer does not help.

Maybe he’s waiting it out, like I’m trying to. Forgetting is the wisest decision anyone could make, the most fortunate outcome. Though, my efforts are paradoxical: I think so, so much about not thinking about it all.

“Sure seems like y’think about yourself a good deal, too, s’don’t you criticise me,” I mumble, clumsy. It’s a mistake to even open my mouth again – he’ll use it all against me eventually.

Rust hums again, low, some muscle twitching in his jaw, like his body has no clue what to do when not blindly occupied with a cigarette. “Never said I don’t think about myself,” he rectifies, staring at the sweaty palms I’m wringing together tightly against the lip of the table.

I allow my mouth to pool with saliva, trying to combat the increasing dryness of my mouth.

“Guess the thinkin’ part is where insecurity comes from in the first place,” I add after swallowing.

When my eyes dart up to look at him, his are on my throat.

Immediately, I look away.

Maybe this is the bad kind of intimacy.

The intensity of his attention is looming, sifting through my thoughts like sand.

Sometimes, I think he has me figured out but just couldn’t care less about what he’s found. He’s feeling the power of my burning desire for him – maybe it amuses him. Maybe he’s waiting to mechanise it, letting me sit idle while a use for me finds him (if ever). Maybe I know things. Maybe I can break things open. Maybe he can take my cases from me. Maybe I can tire him out, put him to sleep.

It’s almost worse that he hasn’t put me to work yet.

Maybe it really was just something in the water. Maybe all I need is to visit somebody close to me.

“Ever heard o’ that theory? ‘bout internal monologue?” Rust asks softly, leaning in and tipping his head down like only I’m worthy of hearing this here.

My leg jerks and I can’t place why. I nod, face hot.

“I think ‘s bullshit—‘bout some not having one. Think everybody’s got that voice in their heads.” He pauses, squints. “Mm, maybe that’s a little generous.”

I laugh – I hope it makes him feel good. In truth, I know he couldn’t care less.

“What d’you think it’d be like? No voice.”

The world seems so close right now, wrapping its fuzzy arms tight around us, buzzing in my ears, shadows fur-soft over my face. What does he want me to say? I wish he’d tell me, offer me respite.

I shrug, and it’s honest, my resignation. “No voice don’t mean no thought.”

“Alrigh’. Then, what about no thought?”

I shrug again. “I like thinking.”

He huffs, angling himself back away from me. Have I disappointed him? Somewhere deep in the pit of my tummy, there’s that fleck of worry, something that tastes an awful lot like vomit.

I expect him to finally stop talking.

But “I get tired of it,” is what he says instead. “In between cases, or these—moments where I feel like I could burn a hole through myself ‘f I spent ’nough thought on it. ‘s heavy, like they weigh me down.” He pushes the ashtray away, his fingers the only part of him moving.

Swept up in the rising tide of your own life, hurting around you in some never-ending circle or spiral of which you happen to be the centre. Swimming with black-eyed angels. I know how he feels – I used to feel that way. Maybe I still do, sometimes. Clinging on to the tenderness my husband used to have for me like it could save me from the guilt I would feel when I moved on. No-one would pull me out: that much was true enough. That memory of stability, of the good times, only depressed me, moving from Brooklyn back to Louisiana. Feeling small in my own life, like a piece on a chessboard, with no semblance of control, only duty, chasing this idea of who I used to be. Hunting down the bad men, wondering what upper hand is driving them across the squares, contemplating the carpenter that fashioned the pieces. Too big of a big picture can be detrimental. The fact that I know this to be true doesn’t make me an exception.

“I think you’re tired of the things you think about,” I muse, a headache beginning to expand between my temples – perhaps the heat has finally gotten to my head. “Space better occupied by other shit.”

I’m careful not to pay attention to Rust’s reaction, if there even is one, since the weight of his interest is pressing over my face where I really wish his lips would.

“Like what?” he challenges.

His eyes glint with curiosity, a blade’s sharp edge.

I bite my tongue.

“You think you know me?” It’s more a statement than a question.

I shrug. “You think you know me, don’t ye?”

Though, he kinda does. I think he’s proud that he can read me, but maybe that’s me overcomplicating things. Maybe I’m just another person to him. I wonder if he thinks I’m predictable. Boring, negligible, painfully average. Good for one thing, and that one thing was a mistake, anyway.

Look at him, now: his eyes have dropped to elsewhere, but there’s a soft smirk that curls up on his face, the hint of a pink tongue that traces lightly over his teeth.

Geraci always talks shit about that look whenever Rust closes yet another case, securing a tough confession. “So fuckin’ up ‘imself, ain’t he? Jesus.” Sure, he pisses me off—for different reasons. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that he’s worthy of admiration.

He smiles to himself – I don’t trust it. “You’re calling me arrogant.”

“Are you?” I press, gnawing at the inside of my cheek. I’m surprised at the tepidity of my voice, considering how I’m covered in boils and burns in my head.

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, only hums in response, seemingly amused.

“Doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I murmur. “People are scared of bein’ known, so nobody really tries no more.”

“I don’t observe people for intimacy purposes.”

Then why does he fucking look at me like that?

A year ago, I’d have put it down to my own desires warping my perception of reality. Really, he wasn’t interested; he was only paying me my due amount of scrutiny in order to keep his mental file of me up to date. Really, he didn’t want to touch me; really, he was just someone who fiddled with his own hands, maybe to remind himself that he could be his own from time to time. Lust is such a dangerous thing – any deeper than surface level, and it has the very strong potential to kill you. If you want something against your better judgement, do you really even want it? The haze of having Rust come so close to me is dampened by such doubts.

But at this point, he either wants me, or I’m crazy. Shit, maybe I’d rather be just that. I’ve seen his eyes like this—dark and bottomless—when hands were unzipping my skirt, or dragging over my skin. To deny intimacy? Now that’s arrogance. Anddelusion. Shit, and I thought he was so above all that stuff. Does he think I can’t figure him out?

Surely his opinion of me can’t be that poor.

My hand cramps up as I punch down the instinct to pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Sure you do,” I press. And I’m right. I hope I’m right.

His stare thickens into something different, what I think might be a black, molten form of gratification. Then, it hardens, cools in a split second into these tough, jaw-breaker pellets. I’d say it was confrontational, but then his eyes flutter just as he happens to swallow thickly. Is that his pulse in his throat?

I rub at my puffy eyes with a stiff set of fingers.

Rust drops his eyes, brushes his hand over the side of his blazer where his cigarettes are sitting warm and ready beneath.

“What, you—lonely again or some shit?” he asks.

I almost recoil at the sudden bitterness of his tone.

I snort good-heartedly, but, really, the comment stings just right—he knows where to press—all the breath knocked out of my chest. “O-kay, Rust. That an accusation?”

“No. ’S an observation. Thought you jus’ loved those,” he combats flatly.

Chest burning, I have to save myself, jump ship, and look away. My mouth tastes like grainy bile.

“You were lonely last summer. That’s why you came to me.”

The dim light above us flickers, his face phasing in and out of shadow before me like a candle in the wind.

I roll my jaw.

Does he look back on it with disdain?

“No,” I snap instinctively, instantly burned by the satisfaction that crosses his eyes.

My breath hitches plaintively. Every fibre of my body trembles and burns to defend myself. There’s not a single word that could repair his opinion of me.

“Or—yeah.” Shut up.

I rub at my temple, desperate for relief – do they have pills for this shit? – which does not come. If he feels any pity for me, it certainly doesn’t show.

The harsh line of my mouth trembles. “I just thought you understood me. Or made an attempt to, at least, but maybe that part was self-projection. ‘Cause nobody ‘round here’s like you. I know you think that’s stupid and I was being naïve or—” I swallow though my throat is dry as ever, “—or dumb, or somethin’, but that’s what I felt. At the time.”

His gaze is fixed on my neck.

“At the time,” he echoes. It’s a question, I realise after a couple moments.

“Yeah. Fuck y'want me to say, asshole? 'm not—I’m not gonna embarrass myself with you, Rust. That what you want me to do? Show you just how dumb I can get—?”

“Sure like to speak for me, hm?” he bites back quietly, making it so damn easy to run right over him, to feverishly stamp out that insufferable fucking softness to his voice. Shit, I wish he’d just raise it and yell at me already.

“—Yeah, whatever. You like this shit, don’t you? Y’think you deserve a fight?—well, I’ll give you one. That what you want? ‘Cause what?—what, you get to ignore me, pretend I don’t exist, act like you’re above fuckin’ me—” his eyes flit away, bringing my roiling frustration to a crest, “—No, don’t you fuckin’ look away,” I scold, a bite, jutting a crooked finger into his space.

He obeys, but that look in his pale eyes is so hollow, it almost makes me feel bad for saying anything at all. Almost.

I try to press down my anger, but it’s spilling over, now, far beyond things so trivial as control. I clasp my hands together in a prayer that they will finally listen to me and not move again.

“Fact that you feel anything at all makes you feel like shit, huh?”

His expression has glazed over, cool and smooth.

Half-expecting him to walk out and rightfully abandon me here, I stare hard at him, like I might chip into that exterior. If I managed it, I’d slip it in my pockets as proof. Silently, I beg him to prove me right.

“Sorry,” I snap. No, I’m not. I hope it cuts at him. “You do what you want, I don’t fuckin’ care. But, please, do not patronise me like that again, Rust.”

God offers no help with the silent plea I send Him. He does not care, so I shouldn’t care, and that’s the end of things. I’ve survived worse natural disasters than him. He’s just a man, and this is just what happens with them. Still, the disappointment floods like poison under my skin. I’m a stupid girl, really.

“I understand if you regret things, but you don’t have to say it out loud. It’s mean. But, fuck, I dunno, maybe you mean to be.”

I take a moment to untangle the knot in my throat. He watches it all, quiet again, his eyeline sitting heavy over where the skin shifts and stretches over my neck.

I adjust the collar of my shirt, fiddle with the gold necklace that sits hot over the contour of bone. Rust stares as I wedge the small pendant tightly in the vice of my thumb and forefinger.

“Feels like you don’t even fuckin’ like me half the time. All the time.”

Christ, I should’ve left with Johansson.

My heart is racing like a wild mustang – it’s a surprise, really, that that old hunting dog lying over by the bar hasn’t noticed, singled me out as something to chase, to kill. My belly’s exposed, soft and ripe and asking for it. I forget, sometimes, that there are things out there that kill things that kill, too.

He doesn’t plan on giving me a break; I wouldn’t deserve it, anyway. “Wha's it matter to you if I like you or not?”

My cheeks burn furiously.

I stare at that bone-bird tattoo that fledges from the nest of his sleeve. With the way my head’s spinning, it almost looks like its skeleton wings are actually moving, unfurling and ready for pilgrimage.

“It don’t.” It’s a disgrace to myself to answer that god-awful question, but what’s more pathetic is the way I shrink into myself when Rust’s attention crowds in over my face. “I jus’ thought you knew me almost as well as I did.”

“And currently?” he asks.

The moment hangs.

“Just answer. I already know – just wanna see if you’ll lie again.”

I close my eyes a second—mistake—and breathe, breathe in and then breathe out, shaky but slow. It’s no use.

“Same.”

He nods. “Not better?”

I shake my head. “No, never better.”

Furrowing his brow, Rust tilts his head down slightly, a soft curl falling gentle over his tense forehead. “But you wanted intimacy.”

So it is intimacy to him?

Maybe this should count as a win for me, but it certainly don’t feel like it. This isn’t the slow slip and slide of last summer’s end – though the heat had swallowed whole everything from here to the other side of the Mississippi, there was something so clipped about the words that left me, left him. I’m sure I was more drunk then than now, but, even so, my mind had been so level, like I’d done it all in my sleep. Now, here, I have done it in my sleep. I’ve revisited him a hundred times in my daydreams, but all that practice has left me for dead. I would’ve killed for an opportunity like this a month ago – it’s like he’s taunting me. It should be easy.

Rust is smart enough to make me wonder if he wants me to feel this way.

Intimacy is planned and eventual, whether that’s due to his power or some cosmic fate. Everyone knows the decision they’re going to make, somewhere in their brains, deep inside. People only ask for advice to condone their decisions, to spread out the responsibility, which, at the end of the day, still remains solely with them. Shit, he’s rubbing off on me: I sound like a fuckin’ asshole.

No, all this thinking won’t save him from the sensation of human feeling, emotions. No amount of planning prepares you for skin-to-skin touch. No time spent evaluating can undo it either, and I’ve tried so hard. His way doesn’t work.

“Everyone wants intimacy,” I end up rambling, voice thin and dry and brittle. “Even folks that don’t want intimacy want intimacy. ’s not love or sex, really, I don’t think, though those are good, too. It’s not a way to find yourself. It’s jus’ trust. Or companionship—”

“And that’s what you want?”

Carefully, I rake my eyes over his face. Does he ever flush from the heat?

Hopeless and too muddled to bother with concealing it, I try to assess whether he’s displeased with me. I try to memorise this moment, so I’ll be able to turn it over in my head later, just another one of my crime scene photographs.

“Dunno yet,” I confess quietly. “I’ve had partners. And partners. When I was younger, I thought I’d have this life packed chock full of amazing relationships, and these—connections.”

The soft, disappointed eyes of my husband come to mind, which haunt all my relationships. I’m so hungry for another body, for connection. Why does it seem so easy for other people?

“Truth is, it don’t happen all that much. To me, at least. You?”

Surly and bone-tired, Rust shakes his head. “Didn’t have much hope for it growin’ up,” he admits.

“But you wanted it,” I press, clumsy and clinging to the sag of his voice. Of course, he’ll pick up on the trace of hopeful, aimless, false victory that undercuts my words; he’s the only one who ever could.

For a moment, though, I second-guess myself.

It’s pathetic, really: I’d give almost anything to walk as him for a day, though, even then, I’m not sure I’d understand him any better.

Sometimes, my imagination runs away from me: in my dreams, I do. I wake under the impression that we’re one and the same, that, just maybe, he, similarly, is dreaming as me. It’s a pulsing obsession, difficult to conceal. Whenever a moment becomes still, I think about it: at night, he is transported; in his dreams, he touches with my hands, sighs with my voice, tastes with my mouth. Then, at least, that would explain these funny sensations I get in the morning: so weathered and worn, a strange ache in my muscles, like I’ve been sleepwalking.

How else could he know me so well?

Or maybe I’ve really fucking lost it. Somewhere along the way – maybe after seeing that half-eaten body swaddled in thin cotton in its freezer cradle – I think something else took the wheel. Why that thing is racing towards him, I have no idea. It’s laughable, really.

Rust blinks calmly down at his hands. “Reckon the deniers are dumb?” he murmurs.

Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I do my best to press back against the foul memory of dismembered limbs. Whoever had eaten the man—who was now beyond recognition—did they feel satisfied? Comforted with how forever close he was to them now? When I was small, I used to think sex was crawling into another person's body, like a cave, and letting all of their insides warm you, love you, wrap you tight.

I swallow thickly.

“Your words, not mine,” I reply through a tight smile. “Reckon it’s easy to find a distraction.”

"Have you given up?" he asks. “Finding a distraction?”

I don’t entertain him with a proper answer to that – I merely shrug and scratch at my scalp, tucking loose strands of sweaty hair back into the loops of my braid. Rust must be frustrated with me. To want a companion, to want the good life. Rivalling Marty in my delusion.

He slides his hands into his lap, continuing: “Distraction is the way to peace?”

I shrug again – I think it’s starting to piss him off. “For a time, I guess.”

“So, ‘s that how you’re takin’ quittin’? Think about other stuff whenever you want a smoke? Occupy yourself?”

Once I realise my leg is going dead, fuzzy from sitting still so long in this dark booth, I flex my thigh, flex my hands under the table, wide-open and then tight-shut, processing the blank slate of his gaunt face. I press my fingers into the sticky vinyl, delight in the interrupted drag of them up, up, up as they curl to fists, my shoulders up to my ears.

When he says things like that, it makes it so hard to dislike him. I almost wish he’d ignore me, like he did the first couple weeks before it became clear to the both of us that it couldn’t be undone: his back constantly to me, sending messages only through Marty, refusing to look in my direction, like I might tempt him again into being a version of him he hated. At least, before, his coldness hadn’t been directed at me specifically. Then, it was a retaliation, a wall meant to keep me out. Where were his books on philosophy then?—to tell him that attachment leads to desire leads to suffering? That kind of suffering would be better than this kind.

This is worse. This is so much worse. I’d rather not have something at all than have it toy with me like this.

It takes a considerable amount of co-ordination to fabricate the apathy in my posture, my eyes, my expression, to compensate for the unease that pulses like a new artery in my throat – though, at the silvery glint that flickers in his eyes, I know it’s all for nothing. He’s already seen the hurt that, really, I can’t pin on anyone but myself. He’s raking his eyes slowly over my face. It’s fucking mean. Do me the favour of a mercy-killing, God.

I never even told him I was trying to quit.

“What,” I begin, concentrating very hard on keeping myself from stammering and from slurring, from crying and from grasping at his hand, “like that association thing?”

I’ve heard of it, obviously. I know every trick at this point: old wives’ tales to the latest research papers at the state university library. It’s psychological: whenever you want something, instead, think of awful, gross, repulsive things, and make yourself hate it. I’ve tried it before, but it doesn’t always work. How can you convince yourself that one thing is disgusting when it’s undeniable how good it really was?

Rust nods.

“I mean, I tried it,” I tell him lowly.

Overstatement: I tried it for approximately three days and two nights before I caved, unlocking the drawer in my study with shaky, desperate hands, hungry.

“But I’m always thinkin’ about it.”

Shit. He seems to have regained a nerve: Rust stares calmly ahead at me—not through me or just past me; at me. This is what I wanted, isn’t it?

He leans his weight over his forearms upon the table, on offence. Is this how he works his suspects? Well, shit, I’ve studied his methods from the privacy of the other side of the false mirror enough times to be able to answer that, actually: this is how he works his suspects. Initially, at least, to gauge their personality, their wants, their fears, what they need him to be.

Thing is, I can’t pin down his intention with me. Is it just the satisfaction of the kill? Or maybe revenge for what I did to him last August. I broke down his walls: an unforgivable sin. I condemned him to the effort of building them back up, of shoving me out—if I ever managed to intrude in the first place. Maybe I deserve this.

With his sleeves folded back, the dark lines of Rust’s tattoo jut out, growing along his tawny, leather-tan skin like lichen. I try not to stare.

His eyes complete a pre-emptive scan of my face, and, really, I know I should not let him see any change there in my expression, though my mouth twitches to frown. I try to gather my forces. I try to prepare myself for it, for that inevitable intrusion.

“‘f you’re so desperate for it, why’re you fightin’ back?” he asks, unblinking and cruel.

My mouth twists, and I let it fall into the frown it wants. “‘Cause I wanted to feel better.”

It sounds dumb because it is dumb, even though it’s true.

Low, he hums. He straightens, softens, and finally leans away. It’s like the vacuum around me leaves with him, and, there, now, it’s easier to breathe.

He must note the way my chest rises and falls so stiffly, like there’s a weight resting over my heart.

“Withdrawal’s a breeze, ain’t it?”

“You’re not fuckin’ funny,” I scoff, digging my nails punishingly into my palm. He smokes and drinks like he welcomes cancer, or hopes for it, so I don’t think we’re on a level playing field.

He quirks his head. “Well, do you?”

“Do I what, Rusty?”

Amused, he rolls his jaw. Good – I hope I’ve provoked him.

“Do you feel better?”

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Sometimes,” I reply truthfully. “Not right now.”

He searches my face.

“I can give you a ride home,” he offers.

Fuck, and what will that be like? Ten times worse than this. I’ll come away the husk of a woman, worn down by his disapproval. My own fault for wanting anything from him in the first place, really.

Teeth gritted together, I shake my head, ready to pull a muscle in my damn neck. “Didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Sorry.”

No, I’m not. I ought to slap him, and then run away, back home, or back to my house, or to a brand new city. Or he could finally cuss me out, save me the wondering. Then, I could lick my wounds and they would finally stop reopening.

I scratch at my scalp.

Rust eyes my hand like he’d like to rip the bad habit away from my body. For a moment, I think he will—the tendons in his hand flex and writhe under the skin—but, no, he only brushes a thumb against the valley between his nose and cheek, and he holds his tongue for once.

“Wasn’t offended,” he corrects firmly. “I’ll take you home.”

Flashing with annoyance, my eyes dart up viciously to penalise him. “And what?” I hiss.

He sits back, doesn’t answer the question.

Jaw clenched, I wait to see if he’ll look away, but he doesn’t.

My irritation soon fizzles through, condenses to a low, simmering understanding, steadily tended to by the intensity of his steadfast gaze.

Oh.

My eyes soften.

Oh – I have him, don’t I?

He shows no signs of the tentativeness he had displayed last time—if Rust could ever be tentative. His eyes do not shift and scuttle around me; they meet mine, challenging my comfort. He does not tuck himself into a corner; he remains leaned over the table, just like that. How could I have known?

I stare back, brow pinched in confusion.

In the heat of last August, I’d peeled away from him knowing exactly how I’d convinced him he wanted me. Maybe I was evil for it – a good person wouldn’t use somebody’s faults against them, would they? And maybe that’s what it was: selfish. If he hates me, he’d be right to.

Which is why I’m so puzzled that he doesn’t. Or rather, indifference was the baseline. Hell. And this? I don’t know.

Swelling dangerously with the well-loved memory of his delirious mouthings over my skin, I grow rigid.

My temples throb and ache, the threat of tears still very real.

“Mind?” he asks – I watch, wide-eyed, as he pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket.

Trembling slightly, I shake my head, though saliva is already pooling over the pit of my tongue, warm and soft, just like my desire. Luckily, he’s too preoccupied with his lighter to see it: how my body ripples at the scrape of his voice.

The promise of nicotine dances like a phantom in the mouth, just from watching him place a cigarette between his lips. When he flicks open his Zippo, the sharp, shuddering candle of it taunts me, and I finally understand what they say about moths and flames.

I watch him take a long drag.

That all-consuming hunger lurches up in me again, and I swallow the warm spit that’s steadily been filling my mouth.

Oh, Christ. This can’t be real. Desire shouldn’t be this bloody. Desire shouldn’t be the thing with teeth and claws, the ugly thing that tips into violence. Or obsession. With how often my thoughts return to us in the summer, I’ve wondered obsession as a possibility. The difference between myself and those who commit crimes of passion is control. Rust is dangerous for me. What is he thinking? What’s in his head? I ache to pry it open and explore, to swim close to him, for my skin to melt into his, to consume and be consumed. Not a moment’s peace, and that’s what I’m chasing, isn’t it? Peace and quiet?

I don’t have to say anything – he can read it all, mulling over the fine changes in my expression, the softening of my body, some pre-emptive instinct. Will he touch me tonight?

With a cautious hand, ready to jolt back if met with teeth, I reach out to him and remove the cigarette from his pinched fingers—which he allows—then bringing it to my mouth, taking a drag myself, nice and slow, good and deep, a sigh, like home.

He watches me.

“Don’t say anything.”

And he doesn’t. He just watches, watches, watches as I take another drag. He shivers, and I feel it reverberate through my bones.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” I ask him softly, pressing down a quivering breath, smoking his cigarette. I’ve never mustered the courage to ask before.

For once, though, I really don’t have to: I know exactly where his head is. Where else? He’s back in that room, infected by the drowse and drunken fever of August, with me, living it again. Where I’d coaxed him into the temptation, wicked as the snake in the garden. He should’ve pushed me to leave with Johansson and Marty – of course, I would’ve stayed. I’m a rotten thing, and my heart is a bloodhound. He’s the better of the two of us. I’ll take whatever of him I can get – anything.

He meets my eyes directly, so hopeless, so raw. Is he asking? He shouldn’t be.

But what will he have me do? I’m at his disposal, really.

“And?” I ask, throat dry.

When he moves to speak, the words that leave him are low and slow: “You did something to me,” he manages.

I scoff.

“S’that a good or bad thing?” I ask.

Rust huffs like what I said was funny. More likely, though, it’s the way my eyes are so wide, the way my hand is pressed between my thighs, that amuses him. “Can’t decide.”

My mouth trembles as my eyes scrape over his neck, which I know, I remember, to be hot and alive, thick with it over the pulse. I was so high off of it: his warmth, his weight, his press.

I indulge in one last drag, using the last scraps of my energy to conjure the pungent stench of rotting flesh in the cruel sunshine, the pick of eager flies and their cacophonous buzzing, the churn of vomit in the stomach. I look at Rust and try to do the same: the months of silence, his back decidedly turned to me, him accepting my case, and his arrogance and his apathy and his severity. He is a harrowing connection that I should rather not have made.

The technique doesn’t work. I don’t know why I thought, even for a minute, that this time would be different from the last.

With him staring calmly at me, like I deserve it—the trap, the squirming sensation over my spine, the hopeless, unavoidable heat that claims my face—it’s just another arrow pointing to the same conclusion. Maybe we should just let August have its way with us again. Twin plagues.

Trembling ever so slightly, blood so warm, so thick, I flick ashes out into the tray between us.

“I should put this out,” I mumble, though my hand yearns to return it to my mouth.

“’s my cigarette,” Rust mutters.

“Sorry.” I offer my hand to him. “Want it back?”

I know what I must look like to him, pupils dark, the size of the moon, like a plate. Here, in the darkest part of the dark bar, I open myself to him, warm, molten, inviting. And God, this must be a dream—because I know what he wants, and I know that he’ll accept me. How we got here doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe he’s thought about it for some time, and only now, in a moment of stillness with him, have I even noticed. Too caught up in the fine details of a painting to think of the artist’s intention, which is always more important.

Silent, stare inexorable, he accepts the cigarette, only touching my fingers quick, like I’d burn him. Maybe I will. Serves him right: he was always going to haunt me either way. I ought to get mine while I still can.

The hunger laps at me.

I want to coax him open-wide. I want to peel away his demeanour and wrap myself close to him. Body heat is the best way to keep warm, isn’t it? I’m sure I read about that somewhere. It’s still fresh in my mind, like a cut. I can’t manage a day without playing it over at least once. I want it again: I want to breathe him in and let him sit in my chest and seep into every cell and let him be part of me that way, at least until the next breath.

He can see it in my eyes: the freneticism of my thoughts, racing like a storm, desires like bullets like rain.

“You ever think about what you want?” I try asking him, voice strained tight over my heart in my throat.

“People only ever think about what they want,” he parries, batting away any trace of diffidence. He secures his cigarette between his lips, shifting. “Let’s leave.”

At his first movement, I slide out of the booth.

Sometime during our conversation, the place emptied out. It must have been around when I finished Marty’s leftover beer that the weight of the locals’ beady stares—which had already faded to the back of my mind, in the same way that a dark alleyway can still make you uneasy though you know nothing would ever happen to you there—finally left me. There are no witnesses left to see me following after Rust like a dog, my body thrumming like the lone bug zapper out on the porch, which cracks! just as we exit.

The broken clock reads three o’clock when we leave, but I know that, really, it’s only midnight.

Fortunately, the heat has cracked for once, like old, beat-up, splitting leather. Stepping out onto that night path, the breeze is warm and fragrant, dancing over my cheeks, playing gently with the loose threads of my hair. It’s a clear, blue, never-ending night – the dirt road which accompanies us is a long, winding, indigo river that spills unseen over the far, far horizon. The neighbouring fields—one a rolling stretch of grass; the other of wheat—are alive in the wind, flung one way on exhale, drawn the other upon inhale.

Thank God for the noise of it: their rustling whispers, in a language we can’t understand; the soft whistle of a passing gust of air; the firm, crisp crunch of dry mud and dust under my boots. Thank God for the sway of things: the cradle of humidity; the press of my arm to Rust’s, which he permits only for a second, with his face angled away. Then, he slows, coming to walk just behind me, still parallel.

Flickering strands of long-grass brush my knuckles – I grab onto one, pull the seeds off it in an easy swipe, and scatter them as we go, one by one.

Briefly, I glance over my shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes are fixed on me, on my every movement, like he’s making sure I’m actually real. The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile.

Rust’s cigarette flares between his lips.

I scratch gently at my wrist, reminded of the flowing of my blood just beneath the skin, hot and thick.

You get nowhere in life just hoping things will fall into your lap like this—and, anyway, what good is getting something that you didn’t work for? Where’s the gratification? It’s artificial, feeble as plastic. Christ, it was even a struggle to get my head around Johansson and his propensity to dole out favours. I understood a write-up – won’t pretend I’m above ass-kissing – but tidying up the office kitchen and keeping quiet about it? I thought it was stupid: letting people reap the rewards of your own effort, and for what?

So, the buzz of earning Rust’s touch that first time?—shit, nothing compared. No drug, no high; nothing. I really thought I did something. Satisfied some secret ambition I didn’t know I held. To have him like that. To be able to replay that night, swallow it like a pill. To look at him and know what was underneath his clothes and his skin, and perhaps further inside, too. Shit, I took so much from him, but the mental gymnastics of the effort justified it, right? And, now, he’s going to give it all up again. Wants it, even.

Haven’t I played this out a thousand times in my head? I’ve seen the future—a number of futures—where I’m able to argue for his affection. Fight for your love – that’s what my daddy used to tell me whenever he was feeling sentimental after yelling.

I’ve had endless conversations with him in my head, edited accordingly as time passed, as he changed, as I changed, as the air between us changed. Possible flirtation seemed silly, futile, after a week. Sex appeal would go unnoticed by him – wasn’t like he looked, anyway. Not the type to chase tail. I found myself longing for him to please linger uncomfortably in doorways to rooms I was in, to leave things near me and come and collect them just after I was gone so that, maybe, he’d still feel the warmth of my presence and understand it was only ever warm that way for him. The idea of genuine confession always sprung up during the quiet nights alone together in the bullpen, but I was always able to talk myself out of it when he wouldn’t so much as glance at me after two, three hours.

It must be a million threads of conversation up in my head, which is why I guess it’s so hard to untangle the great knot and retrieve just one, because, now, there are no words that come to mind when it matters. Or maybe it doesn’t matter: I don’t think he needs convincing at all.

“What you so quiet for?” he asks faintly.

When I look back, he’s stark against the brooding sky like some shadow-man. His outline hums like he’s pulling away into his own silhouette.

I can’t seem to smile. “Nothin’.”

He won’t push—at least, not on this—and I’m glad for it.

Rust’s beat-up semi is all lonely sat in a dip up in the road, waiting for us. Same semi he’d driven me home in from work this one week I was getting my car fixed up, in which a series of slow, mutual interrogations would take place along the light-streaked highway. In the office, you were lucky to drag a full sentence out of Rust, but, alone, it wasn’t so hard to get him to talk at all.

Maybe I had just wanted to be better than him, to learn how he worked, how he was such a good interrogator, and bleed him dry. That was why I couldn’t look away: every choice in his demeanour could help me surpass him.

Even then, I learned to be careful with my looks. I had the feeling he’d morph into something else if I stared long enough, the way the shadow in the corner of your bedroom changes shape when you’re bone-tired. Sometimes, he would. And on the Thursday night of that week, when he had pulled over and thrown up, shaking, into the dark thrush, I hadn’t uttered a word as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. But, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, I’d stared at him with the filmy eyes of a hungry nocturnal animal.

Then, at least, the curiosity wasn’t a burden. Not like it became when I drove myself home come that morning after.

I could tell it was different the moment I shifted awake, feigning a sleep for just a couple more minutes.

Dressed again and putting on a pot of coffee, his back was to me. I had shuffled up, pulled on my clothes, and I knew the stupor of the night had faded. So, really, when I stepped past him and he closed the door behind me without a word, I shouldn’t have been upset.

When I reach the pick-up first, I twist to look at him.

Rust has slowed to finish his cigarette at a safe distance, eyeing me warily.

He crushes the stub into the dirt, then glancing out into the long night.

“Straight home?” he asks.

I shake my head, and the rigid line of him gives just a little. It’s so dangerous to be seduced by your own influence, but the realisation that I’ve had any at all is fuel enough to the plea in my wide eyes.

Rust advances haltingly. If I move, I’m sure he’ll flinch and bolt. So, I test the theory: better to weed out what’s already decayed.

I angle myself towards him, open like a door. He tosses his jacket into the bed of his pickup, stepping through.

The heat seeps back between us, slow and thick like a flood of molasses, and it becomes very clear, suddenly, that we never should’ve tried to barricade ourselves. Pretty sure Rust’s known this a while, anyways: he’s the one who leans in for me, kisses me slow.

This time, his hands are quick to curl around my body, where the tension in that tight cord all down his spine has snapped. Or just eased up on him—but that’s unlikely. And unimportant. With his firm touch petting up my spine, climbing each rung, it’s all unimportant.

A pulse of arousal strikes me like an electric current as Rust pulls the blouse out of my skirt, his face close to me.

His tongue pushes into my mouth again, and I hum over the husk of nicotine. It’s a haze in the brain, one I’ve missed. My skin tingles and my thoughts warp in this leer, like a nic rush, only I haven’t had one of those in years and years.

I can’t exactly call what I’m feeling satisfaction. There’s no win to this. My teeth sunk into him so sweet last time, and the thrill of getting him, of tripping him up with his own desire, was almost as good as the actual feeling of him inside me. But it’s different now: so obvious, it’s funny. Though my first instinct is to doubt and pry apart, maybe want is the most trustworthy thing a person can feel. It’s animal and instinctive, and it’s inevitable, so it’s always true. Ugly, sometimes, but always there. There’s no room to question his want, because I can taste it on his tongue, I can feel it pressing over my stomach, I can hear it in the way he hums at the sear of my skin.

It must be a favour to me: the blatancy of it all. For however direct he may be, I’ve always felt that Rust has these plans within plans. Nothing is as it is on the surface: you have to dig to get to the good stuff. It’s disorienting, having it all laid out for me. And I’ll take anything he gives me.

I don’t want to leave any room for doubt in his mind either.

So, I clutch at him hungrily, so drunk on his warmth, and thump my back against the door he opens for me to close it again.

I don’t ask, and I’m glad that he doesn’t make me, only presses my body flush against the cool surface of his side-door, until the only part of me free to move are the fingers that curl over his arms, as if they could sink through the fabric and then the flesh underneath. There’s only dogs and ghosts out at this hour, anyway; eyes in the long-grass. No-one but them and him to see my hips jerk against the precise hand under my skirt.

He hadn’t looked at me this much before. Even when my eyes go glassy and I have to blink hard to try and regain my smarts, to not finish too quickly, I know he’s staring at me like a scientist.

When the next needy noise is drawn from me, I bury my face into his neck to save myself the embarrassment of being seen like this, even though it’s pointless. His fingers are dragging aside the damp fabric of my underwear anyway, sliding through my silky desire. When his knee shoves between my legs to keep apart, he changes the pressure of his hand, circles tightly over where shame does not apply. Restraint is a man-made practice that never prevails over biology. I should know this. Still, though, my face is hot as I whine into his shoulder.

Rust doesn’t ask me to look at him, not yet, and I’m so grateful for it. I bite into the meat of him at the push of one finger, then keen all the way to my toes at the hook of two, rocking against his palm thoughtlessly as he fucks the both of them in deep.

The clink of his belt buckle barely processes through the smoke of sticky eyes and open mouths and the press of his body. But the absence of his hand from my hip, of it working between us?—that’s what ushers normal sensation back into me. I recover from the limp slump against him, but not quickly enough to understand or resist him guiding my hand to wrap around his swollen cock, coated with spit.

He grunts as he tightens my grip around him, coaxes my hand how he wants it. In the back of my mind, though, of course I remember. Only, his fingers are so far inside that my head is spinning, teetering on the precipice of another thought I know I’ll lose, one that dissolves at the slight scrape of nail, one that would never matter as much as the soft then firm press of him against my cervix. My eyes water, and there licking at me is only a faint, abstract impression of embarrassment when Rust grips over my jaw, calloused heel of his palm heavy on my neck, and hauls me away from the hiding spaces of his body’s crevices.

“What, you fuckin’ shy now? You wanted it, so look,” he mumbles, digging his fingers into the soft parts of my face a little more, like there’s some hidden button beneath the surface that can make my droopy eyes fly back open. There must be because, somehow, it works. He angles my face by the scruff of my neck.

I can only stand to look between us for a few jumpy heartbeats before my eyes settle on the comfort of his even face, which he seems to accept readily, breath hitching. He does not blink. The intensity of his observations hounds me, lights me up like points on a star, even when my vision smears and melts at the dizzying curl of his fingers. Lucky for my weak knees he’s got his hand over the nape of my neck, his thighs pinning my own. I shake against him, some pathetic thing, and tremble when he keeps massaging there deep inside.

“Don’t go dumb on me, girl,” Rust scolds quietly when my hand loosens around him, his own having to leave the heat of my neck and come down to correct the pressure, the pull. My head lolls without the support of his hand. “Ain’t gon’ say nothin’?”

Words spill uselessly into a pool before me, slipping through my fingers. My pulse slams in my throat, lower, too, against his touch, each beat meeting him as he works me over again.

What I manage is a choked noise, all clogged up inside. I have little to do with it: just a body, a heartbeat and a compulsion to be near, nearer, nearest to him. Half a mind that’s lagging worse than the computers at work, that realises far too late that the body is curling into itself again, so tight, so wet, and fuck, fuck.

He removes his fingers, that slow drag, and tells me to turn. When I don’t—completely without, dull and aching—Rust twists and shoves me against the window, which goes cloudy at the breathy moan pushed up from my slack stomach.

Slow-like, a cold hand snakes under my shirt, smooths up my burning spine, all the way up, all the way down, hooking in the waistband of my skirt, knuckles burrowing into the soft dimples in my back. My whole body shivers as he slides his palm over the back of my neck—a comfort for which I’m desperate to become familiar—and squeezes gently. If I keep my eyes open, all I can see of him is that black silhouette in the window, a reflection. A homogenous mass, humming at the edges, devoid of the detail of things: can’t see the way he drags his thumb up along the line of my spine, traces where it meets the skull; nor the way he steps forward, teases the air out of my lungs, enjoys it, tugs my hips closer to him by the gusset of the underwear webbed between my thighs; nor the way the cool metal buckle presses red lines into flesh.

The sight of Rust doesn’t matter so much as the understanding that it’s him behind me, that it’s his truck my cheek is being pressed into, that it’s his—fuck—that it’s him sliding through the heat of me, so close. The tip notches and makes it all the easier for my eyes to flutter shut. It helps with the vertigo that follows the rough push of him inside.

My fingers grasp for the little ridges in the door. Best place for them ends up to be under my mouth, though, to keep my head on my shoulders, to muffle the noises I was sure only animals made. My knee jerks sharply against the truck at the first white-hot pulse of pleasure – I hiss, smearing the drool at the edge of my mouth with the back of my hand, so glad he isn’t in clear enough line of sight to chastise me with his tendency to notice and never forget.

But he knows—he must fucking know by now—because the heavy hand clasped over my scruff curls around my face, and Rust forces two fingers into my parted mouth, presses over my soft tongue.

He pulls himself out just to feel the total length of me taking him again, so painfully slow. Feel the initial resistance, the spongy give, the sweet slip, the drag, all of it. So full, I feel sick with it. Overindulgence. Knocks me weak, doesn’t mind it when I bite down on his fingers to take most of the weight out of my sob. What I take from him, he takes from me—we’re even that way—so Rust, already with his nose flirting with the crook of my sweaty neck, nips over my erratic pulse, pushes his tongue over where I’m sure he can see the skin throbbing with the violence of it. Vampire. He could draw blood and I wouldn’t mind: he knows I need bloodletting.

So fucking dumb to think for a second it could be sated by just one time. I needed it again before it even ended – I knew it in the split second he touched me. The grief of closure was as adamant as a shadow. Stupid. He must think it, too, because, shit, the snap of his hips is mean. Punishment: you should’ve known.

“We ought’a be in your bed. I should be fuckin’ you through your bed,” he complains gruffly, his mouth dragging over hinge of my jaw.

I moan around the fingers in my mouth, which hook together with his thumb to pinch the fleshy inside of my cheek, challenging my lost focus. No matter. There’s nothing we can do now.

The seize of my body doesn’t take him by surprise at all, not that I expected it to, and the words that follow are easy, like he’s been thinkin’ of them as loud and clear as day as it would be to speak ‘em: “Shit, that feels good, sweet girl, huh? Tha’s it, just take it. That’s good.” And he lets the warmth gush out before stuffing it back in. “You’ll take one more.”

I stare at the endless field to the side of us, melted over the curve of his door, shivering despite the humidity that always finds you around here. I choke more on my own tongue than his fingers as Rust fucks me slow, like I deserve it.

“Need it s’bad, huh?” he drawls into the shell of my ear. “Why you gone all quiet on me, baby?—thought y’wanted it.”

He drags his fingers out of my mouth, daring me to speak. He slides his hand between my stomach and the side-door, gliding down between the thighs, smearing my dripping arousal over the skin.

My toes curl tight again as he pushes deeper than before, sits there like he knows my mind will do the rest of the work. The grate of his zipper as he shifts draws a mangled sound from the pit of me, not hidden by the brace of my trembling arm.

He zeros in on my clit, all sticky, and circles tight. I shudder.

“Give in,” he says to me in a voice so low and soft that it barely reaches me above the high frequency splitting through my skull. He rolls that bright pearl between his finger and thumb. “You feel it?”

Mindless and eyes all milky, I still manage a nod, grateful for the mean pin of his knees against my shaking thighs.

He hums. “So give in.”

Fuck, this is absurd. The mind can just about string two and two together when Rust lends a forearm beside my head for me to rest on, to grip over: so he’s pictured this, wanted this, for how long? I knew the stagnancy was a front, swallowed something else, but—my mouth goes wet and slack over his forearm at the languid roll of his hips—but it wasn’t realistic to imagine it was this. Rust struck me as someone incapable of reconciling himself with his wants. Shame over acceptance because he thinks it’s atonement. Should’ve known better than to think Rust believed in redemption.

The silhouette in the window is looking over the empty road, scanning for cars that won’t ever come—but his hand is warm under the tent of my shirt, easing over my waist, slow, as everything clamps up, trembling, again. Body and a heartbeat, he tugs my hips back to him, again and again, until he’s a hot, shuddering line all through me, face in my neck, crushing the fight out of my lungs.

His nose presses over my cheek, and his breath is coarse there, too, panting, when he lifts his heavy head. My throat goes so loose and open, greedily drinking in the sweet-sticky scent of him.

“C’mon, now,” he says to me once he’s pulled my underwear back up, dragging the cool, damp gusset against the mess of me for good measure. He pinches my hip, then over my thigh, like that might get me to quit shuddering. “Time to go.”

When I don’t move, he smooths a hand gently over my hair. Tucks a loose chunk of it back into the mess of my braid before deciding it’s best if he lets it loose completely.

Rust winds down the window as he holds open the door for me to clamber onto the bench.

“Y’can sleep ‘f you want,” he mumbles once he’s got me curled up on the seat, leaning through the frame. He tilts his head – the shadows have always hidden his eyes, but I like how the pinch in his brow has melted away at least.

If I had half a mind, I’d use it to shove his face out my goddamn way. Instead, I settle for the narrowing of my eyes and a decided huff. “Won’t.”

Lie. I fall asleep like anything, mellowed by the sweet rush of wind over marshland, the spirit of it weaving inside, and the weight of Rust’s hand tucked in the tight bend of my knee.

#rust cohle #rust cohle x reader #true detective season 1 #rust cohle x reader smut #the idler wheel td #marty hart #true detective #i want to [redacted] his [redacted] until he [redacted] all over-#who said that #female manipulator doesn’t need to manipulate in this one??? crayzay #fic is basically them talking but im hoping ive been accidentally super introspective and deep #her vibe is like mannnn i have to make this guy love me #and his is like girl you don’t have to try I literally already do #i know it’s 15K but i swear it feels shorter if you get into it #got #whatever #only took me a year 😃#fucking finally

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ckret2 · 2 months ago

Note

Bill having freaky sex with his girlfriend the howling void A.K.A Yvonne

Joke's on you I've already written Bill having freaky sex with the howling void!! Through sheer improbable luck I wrote Bill having freaky sex with the howling void before TBOB even came out!!!

In fact, the freaky sex is so freaky that it's not even nsfw. It has zero overlap with human carnal acts. ... except that it involves screaming.

So, here: Bill Cipher having "sex(?)" with Yvonne Torizon. Warning that this is atypically tender & earnest because it is 💕 Bill's First Girlfriend 💕 and he's still young, naive, not completely jaded, and thinks this sudden rush of giddy infatuation will last forever and possibly fix him. He's wrong.

"Okay," Yvonne whispered. She tugged him closer and he wrapped an arm around her wispy, ghostly back; and she pulled his embrace infinitely inward.

He had a voice that could be heard from every part of Dimension Zero; but he confessed what had truly happened to his home in a whisper pressed up to her event horizon. Where the words would fall into her dimensionless heart and never escape.

####

To anyone close enough to them to see what was happening, what they did looked like an infinitely-regenerating fractal solar panel sliding an eyeball across its surfaces as it infinitely folded up into an infinitely small origami singularity around an infinitely black core.

Nobody could possibly be close enough to see what was happening. The view was sucked into Yvonne's horizon, never to be witnessed by anyone but her.

When a black hole consumes a star, it pulls it in a little bit at a time, in a string of light, like a hand unravelling a ball of yarn by winding the yarn around its fingers. Because of the way light bends in the vicinity of a black hole, no matter what angle you're looking from, the light seems to surround the black hole in a ring, like a halo.

From every point in Dimension Zero, it was possible to see a halo of golden-white light at the center of reality.

For six hours, the howl of the void echoed through the Nightmare Realm.

####

She was shivering; the optical illusion of distorted light surrounding her rippled like a heat mirage.

"Everything okay?"

"M'fine." Her voice was thick. "It's just— It's been a long time since anyone's been able to physically touch me."

"It's been a long time since anyone's been able to physically hurt me." He hadn't realized how badly he'd needed to hurt.

She terrified him. Nothing had ever shaken him to his core the way her voice did. When he gazed too long into her abyss, he could feel it gazing into him. It pulled him in. He wanted to fall into her and never come out. He wanted to be crushed into her core and...

He tried not to think about what he wanted to happen to him.

He loved her. He was going to spend the rest of eternity with her.

And cue the laughter from anybody who knows anything at all about Bill.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call the honeymoon period.

#(I hope I'm the first person to post Bill banging the void. That's the kind of cloutless achievement a fic writer can be proud of.)#(this excerpt is shorter than i wanted because—believe it or not—any more would give away MAJOR spoilers for tomorrow's chapter)#bill cipher #howling void #the book of bill #my writing

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zevrra · 3 months ago

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—sweet & pathetic

syn: tonight, gojo wants you on top.

includes: fem!reader, bottom!gojo, pegging, overstim, crying, begging, praising, multiple orgasms.

“you’re doing so good baby.” you coo ever so sweetly in the shell of satoru’s ear. moving your lips along his shoulder, placing well deserved kisses in the middle of his shoulder blades, right on his spine. your fingers grip his small, slutty, waist as you slowly sink into him.

he had begged you to take control tonight. wanted so badly to try out the new toy you had just gotten. was all too eager to let you kiss him onto his back, rub his thighs, stroke his cock until he leaked at the tip. he even let you tie his wrists together with a pretty blue ribbon so he couldn’t touch without permission.

now he lays face first into the bed. arms tied behind his back, waist held high with an arch to his back as he moaned pathetically into the white sheets. his cock drools between his thighs as your new strap inches further inside of him. a fruit flavored lube coats the pretty blue silicone of the toy as you sit on your knees behind him. admiring satoru’s pale skin turning a pretty shade of pink with arousal.

you lick your lips at the sight. his head turned to the side to allow you to see the tears clinging to his pretty white eyelashes. he cries at every inch he takes but he takes it like the good boy that he is. you pour more lube onto the shaft of the toy as you’re coming up onto the thicker part of the flared base. wanting to make sure he could take it nice and easy.

his blue eyes open ever so slightly to look back at you, bottom lip trembling as he whines for you. “more, i-i need more my love.” he cries with a jolt of his hips, trying to get you to move faster. always so eager and you loved it.

“satoru…what do you say?” you hum sweetly as your hands move along his hot, sensitive skin. trailing from his waist to his arms, where you grip his strong biceps. he could so easily break free from your half ass attempt at bondage but he doesn’t. he could turn his infinity on and send you flying backwards but he wants this. wants to give you every bit of control he can. he’s no longer the strongest, he’s just your lover who wants to be fucked senseless.

“please! fuck please, baby, please. i-i need you to fuck me.” satoru whimpers, his fingers flex and un-flex against his restraints, hoping his slightly muffled words are enough for you. and you smile in return, not that he could see it, but do so anyway as the man you love begs for you to make him feel good. your hands move to grab hold of his wrists, widening your position on the bed as you prepare to fuck him just like he asks of you.

you lean back, pulling the new toy out from within his trembling body, before snapping your hips forward and forcing satoru to take every inch of your pretty new strap to the very base. a broken sob rips from your lover boy as he trembles under the weight of your toy fully sitting inside of him now.

and little to no surprise, gojo cums the moment he takes every inch of you. body spasming as a dry orgasm rips through him and leaves him gasping for air. his pleading sobs turn into needy groans once he finishes riding out his premature orgasm, his dazed blue eyes looking back at you. “tha—thank you,” he cries between hiccups of the lingering pleasure coursing his veins.

“mhm, what a good boy.” you hum before your hips begin to move as fast and as harsh as you can. fucking into him once more at his wish. using your grip on his wrists to help fuck into his overly sensitive prostate with plenty of well angled thrust.

he damn near screams at the overstimulation setting in his lower half. makes you lick your lips as you watch his head lift and snap back while tears finally break free of his lashes. he weeps at the pleasure you give him. broken sobs of your name fall from his lips as you fuck him into your mattress. “yes! god, yes, please…please let me cum again…please baby i can’t!” gojo cries pathetically, causing you to smile once more.

you lean forward, planting hot kisses against his shoulders and neck, picking up the roughness of your thrusts as you slide a hand around to grab ahold of his aching cock. you time your strokes with your thrusts while giving him the pleasure he oh so deserves. “come for me.”

satoru weeps as he comes with the help of your hand. he erratically thrusts his own hips into your hand with each new onslaught of his orgasm. your hand nor your hips never stop moving as you fuck him through his second climax. can already tell with each stroke of his dripping cock that the sheets beneath the two of you were definitely going to be stained at this rate. didn’t matter one bit as he stutters and sobs until he can’t take it anymore, finishing his orgasm with a weak cry.

you hum sweetly as you remove your hand from his cock. using your other hand to turn your lover onto his back to view your handiwork. some of his cum splatters across his stomach while the rest makes a mess against your bed. his cock limps against his thigh, bright red from cumming back to back, while his face is stained with pretty little tears and you smile faintly at the sight. moving your clean hand to brush across his face, catching his attention. and he looks at you with those gorgeous blue eyes of his; hazy and fucked as senseless as you want him to be. you lick your lips as the meal before you, pressing your thumb gently against his lips in return.

“can i keep going, satoru?” you ask in a sultry tone. it was never enough when you got to hold him like this. you always ended up being the greedy one. wanting more and more like a sex-craved lunatic.

satoru blinks at your request, probably trying to blink away the fog in his eyes, before his lips breaks out in a wild, lust filled smirk. “yeah. fuck me some more baby.”

#zevrra zevrra!#spicy zev!!#jjk #bottom!gojo #gojo satoru #gojo smut #jjk gojo #gojo x reader #gojo x female reader #gojo x f!reader #jjk drabbles #jjk x reader smut #jjk fic #jjk smut #jjk x reader #this was supposed to be shorter oops #i like my men pathetic!!!!#RAAA i need a gojo irl #should i make a series of pathetic men hmm

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pastafossa · 4 months ago

Text

"Poor thing." (Matt Murdock x F!Reader, Fic) 🔥

So as promised, I'm taking part in the October Tuna-Tober prompt challenge! For Day One I had three prompts to choose from, and I wound up going for the kink prompt of somnophilia cause, well, I'd hinted at it in TRT as being something Matt liked, but never actually sat down and wrote anything out for it. You can see the rest of the prompts I've chosen here if you'd like to know what's coming this month from me, but for now, please enjoy Day One! This is not specifically written as any fem!Reader in particular, although any readers of TRT can choose to see this as TRT's reader!

As a reminder, if you'd like notifications when I post something, you can follow my sideblog @pastaxandria and set it for notifications!

Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Chapter Summary:

You’d had a long week. He remembered you telling him that the night before. You wouldn’t mind if he woke you up—you never did—but odds were good you needed your rest far more than you needed him dragging you up out of the haze of sleep for a sloppy, indulgent midnight fuck. But then… he didn’t have to wake you up, did he?

Wordcount: 3.3k words

Warnings for this chapter, let's do this: consensual somnophilia (they talked about this being fine, don't worry), oral f-receiving, grinding, PiV sex, some dirty talk. 18 and up only please!

Oh and we're black suiting this cause fuck yeah.

Your arousal hit him the second he opened the rooftop door.

The scent of it stopped him dead in his tracks, threads of heat winding through him as he drew in a long, slow inhale, savoring it. Another inhale, and he let out a low rumble of pleasure, his mouth already watering, cock stirring.

Well, that was one way to be welcomed home.

Not that he was complaining. His night had gone well enough—the fights visceral and satisfying, with multiple people he’d ensured would make it home safely. But your skin against his, fucking his way lazily inside you while you moaned loudly into his ear, dragging your nails down his back, would only make a good night better. However, as he eagerly stepped through the door and closed it behind him, it quickly became clear that your body’s call to him wasn’t exactly intentional.

He directed his senses down the stairs and into the bedroom, hunting through sensory information, through the fire of the world until he found you in bed. You were laying on your side and tucked under the blankets, one of your arms thrown over his pillow to hold it up against your chest. And despite the tempting scent of you in the air, you weren’t moving. Not really, anyway. At most, every now and then your fingers would twitch or curl, your heartbeat uneven and a little restless.

Asleep.

You were dreaming, then.

Maybe even dreaming of him.

He slowly dragged his tongue over his lips, considering his options.

But then… he didn’t have to wake you up, did he?

Just like that, he settled on a course of action.

He crept silently down the stairs, stripping out of his gloves and black mask as he went, tossing them aside without care for where they fell. The bottom step was carefully avoided, thanks to its tendency to creak and alert you to his presence. He stopped only long enough to kneel and quietly unlace his boots, tugging them and his socks off so that he could slip barefoot into the bedroom, weaving through the shadows, navigating around any floorboards that might give him away. He did it all without a sound, his senses so focused now he could hear the faint whisper of the dust motes in the air stirred by his passage, hear the tiniest shift of your skin against the sheets as you breathed, hear the blood flowing hot beneath your skin where you’d grown flushed and aroused.

The scent of your arousal was even stronger here in the bedroom, more than enough to thicken the heat inside him, an instinctive little purr halted in his throat before it could stir the air with sound. His body knew just as well as he did what that scent meant, what always followed, and his nostrils flared as he got closer to you, taking in how your pheromones had mixed with his in bed. It stirred some possessive, lazy satisfaction in him to take in the way you’d curled up with his pillow, chasing his scent, and you were even wearing—

Oh.

You were wearing his shirt.

It was like you were begging for this, for him, for what he had planned.

He crept up onto the bed on his hands and knees, each shift of the mattress followed by a pause, a confirmation from your heartbeat and breathing that you were still asleep. He had to be careful if he didn’t want to wake you. It wasn’t that you’d be angry, of course—you’d both agreed that this sort of thing was alright, though he’d had a far easier time making use of that agreement than you had thanks to his senses. No, this was about ensuring you still had a chance to rest.

Though, if he were honest, the challenge of this was a thrill all its own. It was a delicate balancing act to give you the sensations you needed, allow himself access to your body, all without waking you. It was as if he were hunting you, gradually gaining ground from the shadows until at last he could take hold of his prize. Fortunately, this prize was one that would leave you both satisfied.

The moment he found himself over your hips, he shifted to catch the blankets and slowly, ever so slowly began to edge them down.

Gentle.

Inch by inch, he bared your body to the air. You didn’t so much as stir, well and truly asleep, and presumably still caught up in your dream. Even so, he held his breath, listening closely to the beating of your heart and your shallow breathing. But he’d been careful enough, and besides, you were used to him climbing into bed in the middle of the night, shifting the blankets around as he crawled under them to join you.

The scent of you that rose up as the blanket slid down was so much richer now that it wasn’t stifled and trapped by thick fabric. It made him shiver, his cock already so hard he could feel a damp spot growing on the silk of his boxers. He needed more of that scent, and to taste it, too, but the angle was all wrong with you on your side. So he gently traced one fingertip up the side of your thigh, applying the barest hint of pressure. You were normally fairly responsive to him even in sleep.

“Roll over for me, sweetheart,” he whispered, leaning down to brush his lips, light as a feather, against your hip. “You smell so good. I need a taste.”

He wasn’t sure if it was his touch or his voice that made it past whatever dream you were lost in, but either way, some part of you heard him. You breathed out a soft sigh, twitching a little until he helped you roll slowly onto your back beneath him. You made a soft sound that might have been his name, and he couldn’t resist letting out a reassuring little croon as he pressed your slack thighs outwards, gradually parting your legs. There wasn’t so much as a hint of resistance as your legs fell open, baring the wet heat of your pussy to him.

God, your scent.

He quickly backed up a few inches before dropping to his hands and his knees, lowering his head just over your hips to quietly inhale the scent of your cunt. The rich, musky tang of your arousal—all pheromones and slick warmth—left him half mad, his eyes rolling back. His hips instinctively snapped forward against nothing but air, his body curving as if he were already fucking his way into you.

It only got worse, got better when he let his head fall further, hungry for just a taste. He slipped his tongue out until he could use the tip for the barest little lick at the line of your slit where your arousal had gathered, your body twitching as he did. Even that small taste hit him like a drug, and he swallowed down a ragged moan, his chest hitching as he kept the sound from reaching the air. He’d told himself he’d just have a taste, just one, but one quickly became two became three, hungry, quickening laps at your slit until he finally whined softly in want and dropped the rest of his body down, burying his face desperately against your cunt.

Your hips twitched, rocking against him just slightly, and you let out the softest little whimper as he grunted and slurped quietly at your slit, wetness smearing across his chin and mouth. Only once he’d thoroughly tasted what you’d made for him did he slide up to your clit, tongue extended to lap at it with little kitten licks, ones designed to encourage your body to give him more of your slick wetness, your body jerking with every pass. He tried to remind himself to be gentle, to take things soft and slow so you didn’t wake, but that was so hard when you whimpered again, whimpered as he pursed his lips to suck lightly at your clit, drawing it into his mouth to work with his tongue. Your fingers curled and released against the sheets, and you tasted so good that he found himself fucking against the mattress, humping mindlessly at the folds in the blankets like an animal.

“M… Matt.”

His eyes fluttered lazily open, his gaze drifting up around the sensory shape of you. You were all flowing air currents and sounds and scents, twisting tongues of flame fed by the growing heat of both your bodies. Your heartbeat was still too slow to signal you’d woken up, but your breathing had picked up, your eyes fluttering more rapidly behind your eyelids.

If you hadn’t been dreaming of him before, you were now. And if you were still dreaming, he was safe.

He rumbled a low noise of satisfaction, using his fingers to part your folds before dipping down to your entrance. Once there, he began to lick firmly at you, pressing deeper and deeper until at last your body opened to him and he slipped inside. You let out a sleep little mewl, one of your legs shifting restlessly in your sleep, your head rolling on your pillow as he moaned quietly, curling his tongue inside you to drag against the silken heat of your clenching walls, his nose grinding gently against your clit.

Did you know, somewhere deep down, what he was doing? That he’d spread you open like this and worked his tongue inside you? Or did all your dream self know was that you suddenly felt so, so good?

The very idea that you might not know, that you’d left yourself so vulnerable to him, had him dangerously close to coming, his motions growing just a hint more frantic. Wetness smeared across his face as he kissed sloppily at your slit, kissed at it like he might your mouth, snaking his tongue out to slide inside you with every pass of his lips.

He listened carefully to the quickening pace of your heart, your breathing, taking in the faint sheen of sweat forming on your skin. Every time your heartrate rose too high, he’d slow just a little, or shift his mouth over to your folds or the inside of your thighs. It was there he left you a mark or two, sucking gently at thin, delicate skin. Even if he managed to do this without waking you, you’d know tomorrow what he’d done when you saw the little love bites and bruises between your thighs. The very idea made him purr warmly against you, and he quickly worked his hand down beneath himself until he could undo his pants, pushing the fabric down until he could pull his hard cock free. He took a moment to grind slowly, deliciously against the sheets, presing his mouth to the skin of your thigh to muffle his hitched moan. And that reminded him of what he’d planned on from the start, before he’d become distracted by the taste of you.

He was close, and he needed you. Fortunately, based on the way your body had begun to tighten in increasing waves, you were close, too.

He let his head roll to the side to rest against your thigh as he panted, still grinding himself against the sheets. “Do you want my cock, sweetheart?” he whispered, his lips curling up into a delicious little smirk when your body clenched at the sound of his voice. “I think you do. Even when you’re asleep, you need me inside you, don’t you?”

There was no verbal response, but the growing heat of your skin was enough for him. He rocked himself up as gently as he could, stopping just long enough to strip the rest of his clothes off before climbing slowly up your body. As he went, he caught the hem of your shirt, slowly dragging it up your body with him. He couldn’t take it off you—even he wouldn’t be able to mange something like that—but he had no desire to. The idea of fucking you while you were sleep, while you were wearing his shirt, was a fantasy he’d used more than once while taking himself in hand. He did, however, tug your shirt up just enough to bare your breasts to him.

Obscene, something inside him whispered in delight, a wave of throbbing heat flooding through him. Here you were asleep, shirt pushed up over your breasts, your naked cunt practically dripping onto the sheets. He balanced his weight on one arm as he hovered over you, indulging himself as he palmed gently at one of your breasts, dragging his thumb slowly against your nipple. That won him another soft moan in your sleep, your cunt clenching, body tightening around nothing. Your next moan was even louder when he dropped his head to drag his tongue hotly against your other nipple, drawing it into his mouth to catch it gently between his teeth, sucking lazily until you let out an even louder moan, one of your hands curling as if to claw at the sheets before relaxing. “Poor thing,” he crooned quietly, reluctantly leaving your breasts to climb the rest of the way up your body. “Listen to you, so needy.”

And it would only be right to help with that, wouldn’t it?

Once his hips were level with yours, he settled in, rocking and grinding his cock gently against your slit, slicking himself up with your warmth and the saliva he’d left behind. The sudden sensation of your burning heat against the underside of his cock made his mouth fall slack, and he started to pant at the little shocks of pleasure that washed over him every time he caught the head of his cock against your clit. You weren’t much better even asleep, whining as your hips jerked, eyes rolling frantically beneath your lids. It took everything in him to keep his motions gentle and slow, no matter how much his body demanded he grind and rut, fuck his way desperately inside you even if it woke you. No. No, not when he was so close, his cock now slick and ready for you. He let out a shaky breath, burying his face against your warm throat, huffing in the scent of you as he shifted the angle and began to slide inside you, centimeter by warm, delicious centimeter.

“Fuck,” he whispered shakily, one of his hands fisting desperately in the sheets beside your head. “Fuck, sweetheart. You feel so good.”

God, you were tight, so close to coming that you were already clenching tight around him. That tightness forced him to move gradually, his progress slowed to a sinfully dangerous crawl, one that allowed him to feel every last twitch and shift of your body around his cock. It seemed designed to make him lose his mind when he was already this worked up. In a blink, he’d caught the fabric of your shirt in his teeth, stifling his hoarse, shaky moan, your shallow, hitched breathing a tantalizing whisper of sensation in his ear. It felt like it took hours, ages before he’d finally hilted himself inside you, buried in your slick heat.

He forced himself to still there for a long moment, his chest heaving as he scanned over you with his senses again.

Stuttered breathing, each breath hiding a faint moan.

The fluttering clip of your heart, just slow enough to indicate you hadn’t woken.

Your fingers clenching and releasing, spread thighs shifting in minute, restless movements against the sheets.

It wouldn’t take much more for him to come, he knew that much—the taste of you still lingered on his tongue, filled his nose, and the drag of your skin against his with every breath only left him burning. But he wasn’t a selfish lover, even when you weren’t awake to beg and plead with him for release. No, he’d make sure you got what you needed, too: his sweetheart, so tender and soft and welcoming to the Devil even in sleep.

He slowly, gradually settled his weight onto one arm, sliding his free hand down between your bodies. Even that much shifting around had him swallowing down a groan, and he couldn’t resist grinding just a little inside you. It made you twitch and whimper, hushed and breathless in his ear as he pressed his cock against that spot inside you. Once he was sure that hadn’t been enough to wake you, he quickly dragged two fingers through your folds, raking gently to gather up your wetness before he brought them back up to your clit. The rhythm he started was slow and easy, a gentle grind and loop over your clit that matched the rolling waves of his hips as he began to gently fuck you, barely retreating at all before sliding smoothly back to fill you once more.

It took him no time at all to work your body up that final hill, your breathing growing shorter, your heart rate climbing as you began to tighten around him. It helped that he knew what you needed—each retreat was slow and gentle, and he never left you more than halfway before rolling lazily back forward, ensuring your warm cunt stayed achingly full as he brought you just up to the edge. This time it was your mouth that moved, not a word but a soft whisper of skin as you parted your lips, your head tipping back. And he knew that motion, even as slack and lazy as it was in your sleep.

He purred quietly at the unconscious request that he fill you there, too, lifting his head to seek out your mouth. One soft lick against your lips and you parted them for him on pure instinct, allowing him to slide his tongue filthily into your slack mouth, dragging his tongue against yours, granting you what you’d asked for. You let out a soft sigh, your throat working beneath him as you sucked at the taste of him, of yourself, of you both.

All it took from there was one more finger grinding against your clit, a gentle buck of his hips as he moaned into your mouth, and you crested, your body tightening and releasing around him in rippling waves. Your head rolled back in your sleep, a soft gasp shuddering up your throat as you twitched and shook, eyes rolling back beneath your lids. You let out what might have been a moan of his name, hot and sweet, a sound that seared its way across his mind like a brand. That was more than enough for him, and he let himself go. He groaned softly against your lips, snapping his hips gently against you as he spilled himself near-silently inside you, filling your cunt with a spreading heat that you wouldn’t notice until morning. He kissed you through it as gently as he could, rubbing lightly, quickly at your clit to drag your orgasm out along with his, pleasure rolling through him in gentle waves. Even once you both began to come down, he wasn’t quite done, rumbling a low, possessive growl as he ground himself inside you further, ensuring he’d coated every last inch of your warm cunt, his, you were his, even in sleep. He toyed with that overstimulation just long enough for his toes to curl, for his spent, softening cock to twitch inside you, spilling a few more drops, giving you everything he had as you drifted back down into a deep sleep.

Satisfied with what he’d given you.

He got one arm down and around your hip, gently, carefully rolling the both of you until you were both on your sides, his cock still buried deep inside you. He rumbled a low noise to reassure your sleeping mind, burying his nose in your hair as you sleepily curled into him, one arm draping itself over his waist.

“Love you,” he murmured. “My good girl.” “Mm.”

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