#since i laid my eyes on the original i KNEW it would make a great holmes shitpost

[rknchan]

SHITPOST TIMEEEEEEE

[moonlightrafe]

The Albatross

summary: Originally an unlikely match, you give birth to Aegon’s first child and his entire world changes.

pairing: Aegon x Strong!Reader

word count: 767

warnings: Description of pain & childbirth, brief mention of blood, guilt.

note: “Albatross” is used metaphorically as a psychological burden dealing with shame or guilt! (and shout out to Taylor Swift)

Aegon wanted to hate you. He wanted to hate your hair and your eyes. Your thick eyelashes, the freckles that dusted your cheeks, the way your nose scrunched when you laughed. Despite wanting to hate you in your entirety, he found himself physically incapable of doing so. As a young boy he refused to admit it, even going so far as to tease you for your features — but he thought you were beautiful. If anything, you could’ve resembled his mother more than a Targaryen.

It wasn’t your features that were wrong, but who you inherited them from; you and your brother’s served as living, breathing reminders of Rhaenyra’s infidelity.

Alicent Hightower had been sure to remind him and his siblings that you and your brothers were a product of their older sister's infidelity. An embarrassment to the family. An insult to the crown, to the realm. Abominations. Bastards.

Screams of pain shook the walls of the Red Keep.

“I can’t do this anymore, Aegon! Please make it stop, it hurts!” you rasped, clawing at the blood-soaked bedsheets. It had been almost 24 hours since your labors had begun. To everyone's surprise, Aegon had yet to leave your side.

“We’re almost there, my love. You’re doing a great job,” your husband encouraged as he placed a chaste kiss to your sweat-drenched forehead, which you only returned with a death glare.

“I cannot take it anymore! Just get it out! Cut it out if you have to!”

One of your handmaids tried to dab at your forehead with a cloth, but you gripped her hand forcefully.

Aegon gave her a sympathetic look as he got her out of your grasp, locking his fingers with yours.

“You know we can’t do that, my love. I will not risk losing you.”

You winced as your midwife slid a finger around the base of your opening. All day long you had been violated against your will. Childbirth was not only painful, but humiliating. For Aegon’s sake, you silently prayed the babe was a boy. You weren’t sure if you would be willing to go through this again.

“I can feel the head, your grace. Just a few more big pushes for me and the babe will be here.”

You groaned loudly, your teeth grinding together as another contraction wracked your frame. Pain radiated down your spine and into your groin. You felt like you were being ripped apart at the seams. Being eaten by Sunfyre seemed to be a more pleasant fate than this.

“You hear that? You’re almost done. You’re doing so good.”

You squeezed onto Aegon’s hand as hard as you could, pushing with all the strength in your body. The harder you pushed, the sooner it would be over. You needed it to be over. With a final push, your vision began to blur and your mind went blank.

Before you knew it, loud cries pulled you back to Earth, and coo’s from your handmaidens filled the room. You laid back with a sigh of relief.

Finally.

The handmaids quickly handed the babe to Aegon so you could get cleaned up.

“A girl,” she stated proudly, “and she looks just like you, my queen.”

“Like me?” You shot up.

“Lay back your grace, you need to relax,” she scolded you.

Throughout your pregnancy there was a fear in the back of your mind, that if the babe inherited your features that Aegon would be disappointed. Turns out, you couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Yes,” he chuckled, tears swelling in his eyes, “like you. She is absolutely beautiful.”

He placed the baby in your arms, smiling down at the two of you.

A wave of guilt had crashed over Aegon at the sight of his newborn daughter. As well as your initial reaction to her looks. Thinking about the torment you endured for those same features in a world full of violet eyes and snow-white hair. How could he have been so cruel to you for something so fickle?

He couldn’t help but think about Ser Harwin Strong. And the fact that he probably shared the same thoughts as him the first time he laid eyes on you as a babe. This baby was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and the thought of anyone making her believe anything else made his blood boil. He would simply not allow it. Anyone who even dare whisper a word regarding your daughters features would lose their tongue for it.

Although the responsibility of sitting the Iron Throne loomed heavy over Aegon’s head it wasn’t until this very moment that he had true reason to be motivated to rule: his new family

[distantdarlings]

PARTING THE SILENCE // t. nott

RATING: R / 2.9K WORDS

Theodore Nott x Reader Insert (no gender-specific details)

+ SUMMARY - *Requested, based on this* Theo plans a special evening for the two of you on the night of your anniversary.

+ WARNINGS - SMUT! Virgin!Reader, Dom!Theo, Gender-Neutral Reader, losing virginity, language, piv - no protection, fingering (lmk if I missed any)

+ MUSIC (listened to while writing) -

HEAVEN - Isabel LaRosa

(Quick note: This is not entirely proof-read and was originally written with a fem reader before I realized the gender is not specified in the request. I tried to rewrite w/ a gender-neutral reader, but if I've missed something, please let me know! Thanks!)

---

Your foot tapped impatiently against the leg of your desk as you anxiously awaited the end of class. Your eyes glanced around aimlessly, attempting to catch a glimpse of the sun. Perhaps you’d be able to get an idea of what time it was. 

“Okay, that is the end of my lecture for today!” Professor Flitwick announced. With a flick of his wand, dozens of textbooks flew toward the students. They were small and very old with cracked bindings, but they held the class’ homework for the rest of the week. 

Once you selected yours and shoved it into your bag, you were practically already out the door. Your boyfriend, Theo Nott, had promised a romantic evening for your anniversary, and you weren’t planning on being late.

You shouldered your bag and exited the Charms classroom with your dormitory in mind. Every other student that was trying to get to the Great Hall or to Hogsmeade crossed the halls, making it near impossible for you to wiggle through each one. It was like an ocean constantly pushing against you. 

Past staircases and groups of students, you’d finally managed to get back to your house's common room. You ignored the growl in your stomach as the scent from the kitchens wafted through the hair. Surely, they’d had nothing but distraction in mind when they put the Hufflepuffs right next to the kitchens. You rolled your eyes. 

You didn’t need to eat anything right now. Theo had planned dinner just for you, and you wanted to be able to eat as much as you could if it. You didn’t want to show up to your date full. 

You spoke the password and whisked through the hallway into the common room. Its yellowed walls reflected the setting Sun outside, casting a peaceful, golden glow onto everything. It was nearly empty, but you knew that wouldn’t be the case forever. Since it was a Friday night, everybody had plans, and they’d be rushing back to their dorms soon enough.

You jogged the rest of the way to your dormitory and let the door fall shut behind you. Only a few of your dorm mates were scattered around the room, doing homework, tidying up, and whatever else. They all gave you a small wave or nod as you walked by, to which you politely returned.

You had no time to talk at the moment. You had to get ready. Due to the likely possibility that you’d be late, you’d already laid out an outfit. Theo always had the mind to plan ahead and have everything ready perfectly on top. Your issues with punctuality tended to put you both behind, though. So, today, you tried to think forward.

Dropping your things, you grabbed the outfit and headed to the joint bathroom. Though it was simple, it was fancy enough to be suited for a nice dinner and casual enough for a picnic. You could never prepare for the wild dates Theo planned. 

You slipped the clothing on and readied yourself in the bathroom mirror, splashing a bit of water on your face and messing up your hair. Though you didn’t look half as well as you wanted to, it would work for tonight. 

Turning on your heels, you made your way out of the bathroom and back through the common room as quickly as you could. The hallways of Hogwarts were closer to empty now that classes had been out for a while, making it much easier to find your way to your destination. 

The sky outside was blackening quite rapidly due to the wintry month the castle was currently submerged in. With a shudder of nerves at the thought of having to walk in the dark by yourself, you picked up your pace a bit. The air around you was chilled and swirling, urging you to wrap your jackets tighter around you. 

Theo had told you to meet him by the Black Lake on the side opposite the castle. You weren’t sure if he had planned to do something there and then go out to eat or… A deep sigh left you. You were definitely overthinking this. No matter how long you’d been with Theo, you always became extremely nervous before any of your dates. Due to your house of origin, you constantly felt as though you weren’t good enough to be with Theo. It wasn’t as though any of his friends made you feel that way. It was other people in Slytherin house and even some in Hufflepuff. It was an unnerving feeling that led you to believe they were right, even though Theo picked you. 

You came up to the edge of the Black Lake. The quickly approaching starlight above began to reflect in the dark waters. Halfway across the way, you could see a small lantern pressed up against one of the trees lining the banks. A wide smile spread across your face, urging you toward that dim glow. Swallowing your anxiety, you began to skirt the edge of the lake until you came upon Theo, who seemed to be admiring his work.

Before him was a dark green quilt, weighed down with two large, woven baskets, the lantern, and what looked like his school bag. You suppressed a smile and snuck up behind him, intending to surprise him. 

You eased up behind him, feet as quiet as possible, and sucked in a breath—

“Rah!” Theo turned and shouted, grabbing at your sides. You shrieked at the sudden shock, having no time to react before his fingers started attacking your ribs. Panicked giggles swirled throughout the air as he tickled you relentlessly, his eyes mean and teasing. 

“No, no, no! Please, stop!” you screamed through forced giggles. You kicked and wiggled to try and separate yourself from him, but his hold—as always—was much too strong for you to escape from. He used the size difference between the two of you much too often. “Theo!”

When he finally stopped tickling you, he pushed you back slightly to avoid your next move, which was all too predictable. As soon as he had separated himself from you, you began to swing your arms at him, trying to get a good hit to his arms. 

“You jerk! I’ve told you not to do that!” you shouted, smacking at his clothed arms. 

“You were trying to surprise me!” he defended himself, trying to push you away from him.

“I don’t care!” He grabbed a hold of you suddenly, pulling your body close to his, his strong arms wrapped snugly around you. The two of you attempted to contain giggles at the feeling of being so close to one another. The chilled air cooled your lungs and fanned across your chest. Despite the temperature around you, Theo’s body against yours was as warm as it needed to be. The weather barely had any effect on you when he held you. He was like your own personal heater. 

“Oh, I missed you, darling,” he groaned lovingly into your ear, his lips tickling the flesh of your neck. The vibration of his words and the feeling of his breath on you sent a shiver through your body. You gasped slightly at the sensation, clinging tighter to his arms. 

“You cold?” he asked. 

“No.”

“Why’d you shiver?”

“Because you make me a little nervous,” you giggled awkwardly. His arms loosened around you almost instantly. His eyes found yours, a deep concern shoved into them. Your nervous smile dropped slightly at his expression. Was he upset?

“I make you nervous?” he asked. “What did I do? I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. Was it the way I held you?”

You nearly melted at how worried he seemed to be with your comfort. Never before had you met a boy so serious about how you felt. Being with Theo felt like always being taken care of, always being thought of, and never being forgotten. It never failed that—no matter what the issue was—Theo was there and ready to fix it. Whether it was his hands, his lips, his words… Whatever it need be, he had it waiting for you. You loved him endlessly for it. 

“No, darling,” you laughed. “You make me nervous … in, uh, a good way.” His eyebrows quirked, and a small smirk began to spread across his lips. 

“Nervous in a good way, huh? Can you explain that to me a little bit?” he asked slyly as he inched back toward you. Once he was behind you, he wrapped himself around you again, allowing his face to press back into your neck. You could feel his breath against your skin; each inhale and exhale made your heart rattle in your chest. One hand that was tightened around your stomach loosened itself and slid upwards. His fingers softly slid around your neck, never tightening, just placed there. It was so domineering, yet soft, that it had you gulping.

 “L-like when you do that,” you sighed, cursing yourself for stuttering. 

“When I do what?” he asked. His free hand moved gently against your stomach, gently tracing curves and dips, claiming your body so easily. 

“When you touch me,” you whispered. At some point, your head had begun to lean back against his strong shoulder. If not for him holding you up, you were unsure if you’d still be standing. 

The two of you had only done a few things together since you started dating. Of course, you’d kissed and petted a bit, but the two of you hadn’t gotten…there yet. The thought of it started your heart beating wildly in your chest, with no regard for your pride, as Theo’s hand was still splayed against your thorax. 

“I could touch you more if you’d like,” he suggested. The fact that he’d presented the question like an option rather than a definite made the experience feel all the more pleasurable. He so obviously cared about how you felt, and that made you want him even more. 

“Outside, Teddy?” you breathed nervously, your chest rising and falling heavily beneath the fall of his hand. Every breath and every touch against you had your mind racing.

“It’s dark, and no one else is out here,” he mumbled against the skin behind your ear. His lips caressed the shell of it every few moments.

“It’s cold…I don’t know if we should.” You wanted to. You really did, but you were trying to reason with him a bit. In his defense, your plan was to come out here and have a romantic anniversary…but now all you could think about was what lay beneath his knit sweater. 

His free hand trailed around your waist and skirted your core through the fabric of your bottoms. A shuddering gasp left your lips ever so quietly, the sound slicing through the icy silence.

“Does that feel good, baby?” he whispered against your ear. The tip of his nose traced along the line of your shoulder, traveling lower and lower until he pressed a sensual open-mouthed kiss to your shoulder. Your heart was pounding, your breaths leaving you in desperate pants. 

“Yes,” you moaned breathlessly. You could practically feel him smirk against you as he gently pulled you backward to the beautiful picnic he’d set up.

With a small shove, he’d moved the prepared baskets off of the quilt and laid you softly on the ground. The earth beneath the blanket was soft and even, and the boy above you was strong and rough. The contrast had your pupils blown wide in pleasure. 

Once above you, he hovered easily, his lips running slow, personal kisses along your jawline and neck. Your head tilted back against the ground to allow him as much access to you as possible. You didn’t want anything coming between the two of you.

“Darling, please,” he breathed against your skin, “…want you now…” 

His lips hovered just over your chest where your shirt split down the middle. They were parted and swollen and wanting as he brushed them along your flesh, impatiently waiting on your consent.

“Yes, please,” you whined out, clutching his curls within your fingers. 

It took less than a second for him to begin to undo your bottoms, his hands gentle yet swift. Once the task was completed, he did the same with himself. He removed his belt and dropped it to the ground next to him, the leather slapping against itself with a loud crack. At the sound, you could feel heat broiling in your core…you figured that was an experiment for another day, though.

Theo undid his pants and pushed himself over the top of his briefs so he was still covered from the back. At the sight of his perfectly reddened dick, you could feel your body clenching around nothing, desperate to feel him inside you. 

Theo caressed gentle fingers up and down your core with one hand while the other collected a bit of spit from his mouth. He let it fall down between your legs and trace circles around your entrance, spreading the slick all around. At the feeling, your back arched toward him. Your lips parted in a silent scream. You’d never done this before, so you were bound to be as tight as possible, but you didn’t care. The nerves of your first time with Theo were very quickly overpowered by the raging lust pushing through your body.

He found your eyes and, with a soft nod, slowly slid his finger within you. It was a stretch—one that put your fingers to shame. You grasped at anything—the dirt, the grass, Theo’s back. He was sending you into space and keeping you grounded all at the same time. His finger slowly worked you open with genuine care until he was able to add more. He was preparing you for himself, but you could barely reach the third finger. 

“Ugh, slow, baby, please,” you whined. 

“I’m sorry, darling,” he whispered. “Too much?”

You nodded pitifully, your fingers grasping at the quilt and the grass beneath. His hands slowed and eased you closer and closer to your finish before carefully removing all of his fingers from you. You groaned at the sensation and the sudden emptiness. 

“Why’d you stop, Teddy?” you moaned. You stared up at him, your bottom lip jutting out slightly in a slight pout. He clicked his tongue and placed a dominating hand on your jaw. The size of his hand dwarfed your face as his thumb traced the length of your lip. 

“Because I want to give you more, baby,” he cooed. “I want to feel you wrapped around me.” 

You sucked in a shuddering breath as he balanced himself on his knees. He agonizingly slid himself over your entrance, the tip tracing you meanly. Your lips parted at the sensation, anticipating the stretch and fullness.

“I’m gonna move, sweetheart,” he moaned, his hands gripping your bare thighs tightly. You nodded in response to his guidance and braced yourself against him.

As he pushed in, the stretch was a strong yet delicious burn. The slick around your entrance was enough to allow him to slide in quickly, yet he took his time, allowing you to grow around him. Once he’d filled you up to the base, he groaned lightly, waiting patiently for the go-ahead to move.

Once you settled around him, you nodded eagerly. His hands gripped your hips, his fingers tightening into your flesh. Your lips parted at the motion. He ever so slowly began to move in and out of you, each stroke caressing some unknown spot deep within you. 

“Fuck, Teddy,” you whispered, “I don’t know how long I can last.”

“Go as long as you can for me, baby…just want to feel you around me,” he grunted out. You glanced up through hissed lids to observe his gorgeous face and the fucked out impression painted on it.

The sweat dripped down the side of his face, trailing over his jawline and tracing his strong neck. His lips were swollen and parted delicately, with whispers of moans slipping through. His eyes were shut loosely. With every particularly deep thrust, you’d clench around him, and his eyelids would part, showcasing his sea-misted eyes rolling back as far as they’d go.

The sight of his pleasure was enough to push you over the edge into an ocean of ecstasy. You came hard around him, the last remains of your virtue spilling down between your thighs. Your back arched, your legs shook around him, your fingers gripped at nothing.

The feeling of your orgasm slammed into his chest. He cried out pitifully, a melodious whine parting the silence as the evidence of his finish coated your insides.

With a deep exhale, he eased himself out of you and collapsed beside you. You laughed breathlessly, the aftershocks of your orgasm flowing through you like a wave.

With a lazy smile on his face, he leaned forward and reached over you. He lifted the lid of one of the baskets and pulled an extra folded quilt out. You laughed aloud at his preparedness.

“Knew you were gonna get fucked, is that it?” you teased.

“Actually, I figured we’d stargaze,” he admitted, sheepishly tossing the blanket over your bodies. “I brought it in case we got cold.”

“You’re adorable, Teddy,” you giggled, pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek. He rolled his eyes, but the smile on his face couldn’t hide the love he was feeling for you.

He passed around the perfectly preserved food and pumpkin juice, ensuring you got a taste of each sweet and snack he’d brought along. 

He then wrapped himself around you and reminded you ten times over why you’d fallen in love with him.

*Tag List: @mypolicemanharryyy, @angelfrombeneth, @clairesjointshurt, @bunbunbl0gs, @acornacreacure, @niktwazny303, @thestarlithideout, @sarahskakskskskajakwwnwjw, @yhiiil (if you would like to be added to the tag list for any future works, please comment on this post, dm me or send me a message in my inbox. Thanks!)

[thebestofoneshots]

Waiting For a Girl Like You | wolfstar x reader

Pairing: R.L.. x S.B. x Gn!Reader (originally written as a woman but then I discovered I hadn't used any pronouns, and the reader was not particularly feminine, so it became my first official GN) Word Count: 5 k Warnings: None Prompt: Unbeknownst to many, your birthday has always been a quiet affair, you don't often celebrate it and you certainly weren't expecting for things to change the moment you met those two, enimagtic boys on your Creative Writing course. You could have not been more mistaken.

I got two requests a couple of weeks ago and I could not fulfil them on time for the life of me. Dear @msblacklupin and @propertyofrjl sent me similar requests about a certain birthday fic and first of all, Guys your birthdays are on the same day, How cool is that!?! Second, I'm so sorry I took so long, but it's finally here!

I decided to combine the prompts since I thought it would be really cute for the story, and this is what I've come up with.

Hope you enjoy, darlings! I'm wishing you all the best! xx Lils

Written for @msblacklupin and @propertyofrjl

You hadn’t had the best experience with birthdays so far. Back in your hometown, it was the same day as a special celebration of the discovery of the mines and they held a huge, town-wide party for it. The party was great, a fair, balloons, cotton candy, everything great, everything kids loved. Unfortunately, it was so good that people tended to forget about your birthday since they were excited about Mining Day. 

Of course, people close to you remembered (your parents), but even though you had told your friends plenty of times that your birthday was on the same day, it had slipped their minds a good deal of times. You tried to make parties and people would prefer going to see the guest singer invited to the festival. You'd make them the next day and they were too tired to come. 

Eventually, you just gave up on celebrating your own birthday and decided to join the rest on Mining Day, enjoying the candies and everything in between. It might have not been your special day but it was a special day and that was as good as you’d get. Or so you thought. 

When you moved to London for university, you didn’t even think about telling your friends about your birthday, and they hadn’t asked either. That was until you took that Creative Writing side course and met them. You had been on time but the room had been filled to the brim with students, and there was nowhere to sit. You’d huffed and were about to leave to ask for a chair from a different classroom but when you turned around you bumped into the prettiest person your eyes had ever laid eyes upon, piercing grey eyes, long wavy hair, and features so elegant he looked royal.

He smiled, such a pretty smile. “Hey, you were going for one of these? I brought extra,” he said as he pulled one of the chairs up to signal what he was talking about. 

“Yeah,” you said shily. 

“Cool, come along then,” he said and you moved out of the way as he moved with the chairs. He moved his chairs all the way to a table where there was another stunning person sitting down. “What’s your name, Luv?” You replied with your name, soft and polite. “Pretty,” he said, flashing that same smile your way, meaning both you and your name, not that you knew. He accommodated the chairs, one next to each other, wiped his hands on his black jeans and then extended his hand to you. “Sirius Black.” 

You shook his hand and then the other boy’s warm smile caught your eye. “Remus Lupin,” he said with his hand extended as well. He had scars all over his body, but it didn’t make him any less handsome. Were you curious about them? Of course, you were. Were you gonna ask? No way in hell.

The boys had met each other at a boarding school in Scotland and had moved to London recently. Remus wanted to take a lit class and tried to convince his friends to join him but Sirius didn’t love the idea of a class where he’d have to read and analyse books, so he suggested taking something more on the creative side. 

Remus found the Writing Course and Sirius had been more than happy to join him. You and Remus actually had a lot in common, you discovered as the class went on. You had both read a lot, and you veered towards the same authors and storylines. You had an insane passion for Oscar Wilde and he loved Mary Shelly. You sometimes wondered if he liked her so much because of the way she described the Fiend, you truly hoped that wasn’t it, because while you could see how Rem would relate to the monster, you hated the idea of it, since you considered him absolutely stunning. 

Days had gone by, and while you always sat with the boys and hung out with them every time you saw them at school, you hadn’t really seen them outside of it, that was until you got a group assignment and Sirius was quick to place his arms around both you and Rem and claim you as his team. 

Remus scribbled your names on a piece of paper and handed them over to the teacher before she assigned each of you a different subject for your story. You got fantasy. The boys seemed to be diverted when you started talking about mythical creatures and wizards, and you assumed it had something to do with an inside joke they developed through the years of knowing each other.

They invited you over to their apartment that was just next to a corner cafe cleverly named “The Corner” and you had stopped by to get something for you and the boys, since you weren’t sure how long it would take and were now waiting just outside the door to their apartment complex. 

“We’re coming, Sweets,” Sirius’ voice said through the speakers as the door buzzed open to let you in. 

You used your shoulder to push inside and carefully moved the carton with the three coffee cups inside as you entered, your backpack strap got caught in the door and you were forced to turn around to and you opened the door again, placing the paper bag with fresh bread on your mouth to free one of your hands and pulled the strap free. 

When you turned around, you were shocked to find a smiling Sirius right in front of your face. “You shouldn’t have bothered, Luv!” he said and extended his hand towards your mouth, taking the paper bag and then the carton with the coffee from your hand.

“I wanted to,” you said simply. 

Sirius and you went up the stairs, Remus was waiting by the door and the two of them welcomed you in. For an apartment belonging to two boys, it was surprisingly neat. Remus had arranged his coffee table with a few cushions over the rug so you all could sit together, he had a couple of pens and pencils, his notebook and a stunning Remington Typewriter. 

You almost walked straight to look at it when you spotted it on the table, “This is her, isn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” Remus said as he sat beside you. “Wanna try it?” 

“Can I please?” you asked, you had a Brother one at your apartment, and you adored her, but Remingtons were classics. His was from the 50s and it looked brand new. Rather than responding, Remus placed a paper through the platen and pushed it towards you. 

Since you didn’t actually have a plan to write something, you just typed the boys’ Name and then yours, right at the top of the paper. 

“What are we going to write then? Any ideas?” 

“Didn’t you say you wanted to talk about wizards?” Sirius asked with a smile. 

“But do you want to?”

He chuckled, “Of course, Sweets, we’d love to go for that.” He reclined his head on the sofa. “We’ve actually discussed it, and we have some ideas, don’t we Moony?” 

Remus shot a look at Sirius, who winked in return. 

“Yeah?” You asked as you turned your gaze to Sirius. “For the plot?”

“Mhm… hear me out. It’s a hidden school for wizards, you get there by taking a secret train hidden at King’s Cross. The school is full of magic and mysteries and ghosts and other magical creatures.” 

You frowned, “I don’t know… it sounds a little too surrealistic, doesn’t it?”

Sirius laughed at your statement and Remus threw pillow towards his face, you squirmed in your seat a little uncomfortably and then Rem placed his hand on your shoulder, “It’s okay, Dove. We don’t have to go for Sirius’ idea.”

“But he said you wanted to write about it too…”

“I’ll be happy with whatever we make. I know with our writing skills and Sirius’ creativity we’ll make something brilliant.” 

You pulled out your notebook and checked the list of ideas for the story you had to write. It had to be at least 50k words and you had three weeks to finish it. So the three of you would have to get writing as soon as possible, which meant you had to define the story and you had to define it fast. Most of your ideas were either unfinished, not doable in such a short time or had the opportunity to be integrated into Sirius’ magic school. 

“Okay, tell me more about your Wizard’s school.” 

Sirius smiled, threw a look at Remus –a satisfied sort of look– before turning back to you, “Okay, so the name is Wartshow: School for Wizardry and Witchcraft, and–“ 

“Doesn’t Witchcraft and Wizardry sound better, though?” 

Sirius licked his lips and smiled. “All right then, Wartshow: School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” You wrote it down in your notebook. 

“It’s the story about a boy, a boy that thought they wouldn’t be able to assist even though he was a wizard.” 

“Sirius,” Remus said in a warning tone. 

“Shut up Moony, you’ll kill my inspiration.” 

“Why did he think that?” You asked. 

“Because he was bitten by a werewolf when he was 4.”

 Remus scoffed and stood up, “I’ll bring the snacks.” 

“Is he okay?” you asked. 

“He’s not a fan of my story,” Sirius said. “He says the main character is not a hero, but I differ.” 

You hummed in response. “What’s the boy’s name?” 

“Re- Andrew,” he said, “Andrew Renault.” 

“Renault? Is he french?” 

“No, I don’t– he is not.” 

“Okay, then we should go for a more English name, like… Remington?” 

“Andrew Remington? Sounds posh.” 

“As if  Sirius Black sounded less posh,” you joked and he scoffed playfully at you. He continued listing his ideas, telling you Remus’ story although he had changed the names of almost everyone. “Will there be dragons?” you asked after he had laid out the basic idea.

 “Dragons? Those are dangerous!” 

“Of course they are, but it’s more exciting than the…ugh” –you checked your notes– “boggart monster you mentioned.” 

“Dragons are definitely more exciting than Boggarts,” Remus said as he sat on the floor next to you. You couldn’t help but notice his scars, perhaps Sirius had used those as inspiration for Andrew. 

“Okay, so we’ll add dragons. What if there’s a dragon in the dungeons?” 

“No, in the dungeons there are snakes,” Sirius said as if it were a fact. He had clearly thought this out. 

“Okay… what about a secret room in the castle that has dragons? It’s magical, right? It could be bigger on the inside, like the TARDIS.” 

“The what?” Sirius asked, confused. 

“The TARDIS! From Doctor Who?” you said as if it were a fact, he still looked confused. “You do know what I’m talking about, right Rem?” 

“Is it a book?” he asked. 

“A book? How do you even call yourself Brits if you don’t know about Doctor Who? That’s it, Sunday, my house, we’re watching a marathon.” 

“Whatever you want, dove,” Remus said and handed you a piece of chocolate. 

“So, going back to the story. A room that’s bigger on the inside. Like a… Chamber of Secrets?”

“Sirius,” Remus warned again. 

“It’s what she said!” Sirius said defensively. 

After that, you finished plotting the small story in between the three, even with the slight reluctance you detected from Remus, you got around to defining all of your main characters, the challenges they’d go through and the resolution of the story. 

“By the way, tomorrow is our flatmate James’ birthday,” Sirius said as he closed the notepad he’d been writing on. “Wanna come to the party?” 

“I don’t think I’ve met James, though.” 

“It’s fine, he’ll love to meet you I’m sure,” Remus said. “When is your birthday?” 

“I–“ you hesitated, “I don’t really celebrate it.” 

“Why not? We should definitely celebrate the day you were brought into this world,” Sirius said. 

You smiled, Sirius could be the sweetest sometimes. “I don’t do parties…” 

“Because you don’t want to?” 

“No! It’s just… long story, don’t bother yourselves with it.” 

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Sirius offered. “In exchange, you give me your birthday, how about that?” 

You laughed, Sirius wasn’t the type to care too much about things, so you walked towards him and whispered the date in his ear. 

“Now yours?” you said as he leaned closer to you. 

“It’s all real, we are magicians from the school in our story,” he whispered. 

You laughed. “I thought you’d tell me a real secret, should have known,” you added as you shoved him, he just laughed and shrugged in response, as if he was saying it’s your loss, for not believing his lie. 

After that day, you hung out with them almost all the time, be it to watch movies, to continue that Doctor Who marathon, or to hang out with the boys on their birthdays. In fact, it was almost odd if you didn’t see each other in more than a couple of days, since they would find almost any reason to meet, Sirius would call and say ‘Hey, there’s a new movie I want to see, you coming with us?’

Or Remus would leave a note on your mailbox telling you to come with him to a library later that day since he had just finished the book he was reading and you were always the best at finding the right books. 

So. of course, you thought it was odd when, on the morning of your birthday, you called their apartment and got no response. Now you weren’t expecting a grandiose party, you weren’t even going to get a cake or anything, but you wanted to see them, maybe go out for dinner, or have a cinema night. You rang them again and still no answer. 

You sighed and walked towards school. You didn’t have that creative writing course today so you weren’t expecting to see them there, but perhaps on the lunch break, you’d find them in your usual spot. 

Your classes were rather tedious, an old professor that spoke very quietly and you had to sit at the very front to even hear him, and then another professor who almost always went over the same thing you’d seen in the first class. Always, round and round the same thing, with nothing new. At least you’d have a class with Professor Almain before lunch. It was your favourite class of the semester –aside from the writing course– and so far, you thought it’d be the highlight of your day. 

But when you got to his classroom, the room was empty and there was a short note on the board: Professor Almain is indisposed today. Study Chapters three and four of your book, you’ll be discussing them next class. The note was signed by Tobby Klein, his assistant. 

You sighed and sat down on one of the chairs, sulking as you took out the book mentioned and started to read. Someone else tried to enter the room a few minutes later, and when they realised there would be no class, they left the classroom instantly. Perhaps they had something better to do, you didn’t. 

You had taken that class as an extracurricular, so you barely knew the students in it, and your classmates were in a class you had taken online, so you couldn’t exactly go search for any of them. You could have gone to the library, but it also seemed unnecessary when you had a perfectly quiet classroom all to yourself. 

You were about halfway through the chapter when you heard someone knocking on the glass window. When you turned you spotted Sirius waving his hand at you with a bright, pearly smile. He looked as dashing as ever. It was ridiculous how pretty you still thought he was even when you saw him all the time. 

He entered the room shortly after. “What are you here all alone?” he asked as he pulled a chair next to yours and pressed a short kiss on your cheek as a greeting. Sirius did that all the time, you’d assumed it was because he was half French. 

“Class was cancelled,” you said as you pointed to the board. “Had nowhere to go. Aren’t you supposed to be in class too?” 

He hummed in response. “It’s that stupid advanced maths class Moony convinced me to take, I was falling asleep and asked to go to the bathroom to throw some water at my face when I spotted you.” 

“You should go back.” 

“To maths? Rather than staying with you? Yeah, right!” 

A small smile appeared on your lips as you stared at him while shaking your head in disbelief. “What if you fail, though?” 

“I’m not going to fail,” he said with a shrug. “Moony can tell me what it was about later. Wanna grab something to eat? My treat.” 

You nodded and pulled your bag from the ground. “I was actually going to invite you guys over tonight,” you said as you opened the zipper and placed the book inside the bag, “I mean I’m sure you don’t remember, and I don’t really want to make anything big but–“ 

“That today is your birthday?” Sirius asked. 

You turned to him in shock, “You– you…” 

“How on earth would I forget?” he said with a smile. “It’s the day my best girl was born. They should make a fucking parade for you.” 

You felt your cheeks warm at Sirius’ grandiose attitude. “Come on,” he said as he stood up and offered his hand. “It feels like a day for ice cream, want some?” 

You nodded and he dragged you towards the parking lot, his hand not leaving yours at all, you tried to ignore the fluttering in your chest since you suspected he had a thing with Remus, but it was almost impossible when he looked at you with his stunning grey eyes. 

He took out the helmet they’d gotten you when they started offering to take you on rides from Moony’s bike and handed it over. It was a full-face black helmet that matched the one the two of them wore almost perfectly, but while Moony’s had a half moon and Sirius’ had a star, yours had both. 

It had been Remus who added the matching moon, and Sirius –who instantly got jealous over it– painted a star right in the middle, he was exceptionally good at painting, sometimes you wondered why he didn’t study art. Then again, you weren’t sure what exactly they were studying, since they had taken classes from more than four different degrees as if they had only picked the few classes that they were interested in.

 You took the helmet in between your hands and hopped on Sirius’ bike. He drove you to the small park that was just a couple of minutes from the school and got you your favourite ice cream from the small ice cream shop James had discovered a while back. 

“So, about tonight?” 

“Moony has a thing,” Sirius said with an apologetic smile. “He has a big presentation tomorrow and he’s working on it with his team tonight, they’ll be using the rooftop of our apartment for it, I believe.” 

“Oh,” you said, trying to hide your disappointment. 

Sirius bit his lip, “Why don’t you come over?” 

“I wouldn’t want to be a distraction, I mean–“ 

“I don’t have to work on any projects,” Sirius said. “We could play chess, watch a movie while he finishes and then we order something to eat.” 

“You– do you really think that’s a good idea?” you asked, uncertain, as you brought your ice cream to your mouth.

“For sure,” he said. “We could get a cake and–“ 

“No cakes.” 

“But you like cakes!” 

“Not on my birthday.” 

“That’s ridiculous! You have something on your face.” 

“Where?” you asked. 

“There,” he said as leaned his finger close to you and smeared some of his ice cream over your cheek. You gasped in shock. 

“Sirius!” you admonished.

“Yes, Luv?” he responded, as if you had just called him.

You used the napkin wrapped around your cone to clean your cheek, “That was uncalled for.” 

“I don’t know about that, your cheeks looked like they needed some ice cream,” he said while trying, and failing to hold back a smile, he pulled a napkin from his pocket, much like a magician would do, and handed it over to you. You were about to take it from his hand, but he shook his head and wrapped his fingers around your chin and turned your head to the side softly. “Allow me.” 

He took longer than needed while whipping your cheek, but he didn’t exactly want to pull apart, and you didn’t want him to pull apart either. 

“There you go.” 

“It’s sticky now,” you teased. 

“Nothing can keep you happy, can it, Sweetheart?” he said dramatically and wrapped his arm over your shoulders and leaned his head on yours. 

You just laughed. Sirius convinced you to skip the next class and stay with him at the park and then took you home. 

“Want me to pick you up?” He asked as you got down from the bike. He had propped the small side stand down and was leaning on the handlebar. You could hardly believe he had driven you all around looking that handsome, with his leather jacket, and high boots. Sirius was pretty all the time, but sometimes he felt more like a fictional character than like an actual human. 

You saw a girl eyeing him as she passed by, and you couldn’t help but smile at him and nod. “Yeah, that would be lovely. At 7?” 

He smiled, gave you a short wink, and put his helmet back on. “See you soon, Sweetheart.” He said, voice slightly muffled by the helmet before he drove off. You entered your apartment shortly after, and it took you a whole minute to recover. It’s not that you hadn’t gone out with Sirius plenty of times, but this one seemed a lot more like a date than all of the previous ones. 

You took a snack bar from your pantry, went for a shower, and asked your classmates about the class you’d missed. A friend of yours told the teacher that you were feeling sick to cover for you and he said he wouldn’t count the absence (it was the first time you missed that class anyway), and you had always been rather participative. 

After that, you grabbed the book you’d been reading and read until it was 7. The light outside had already gone out, and you took some chocolates you’d bought for Remus last week and placed them in your backpack, it was then that you heard the familiar honk of Sirius’ Triumph.

You walked downstairs and met him outside. He switched his band tee for a snug turtleneck sweater that fit him obscenely well and was still wearing his leather jacket. You had kept your helmet and put it on as you approached his bike. 

“You smell nice,” you said as you sat behind him.

“You think?” he asked, playing dumb. “Maybe it’s the aftershave,” he added as he pulled the side stand up and drove into the street. You eyed him suspiciously, not that you could see much while he had his helmet on but you still did.

By the time you arrived at their apartment, you had forgotten all about your suspicion and were just leaning onto Sirius as much as you could, since the night had grown a lot colder than you expected it would. Sirius parked his bike just outside and the two of you walked the three floors of stairs to their apartment.

You expected to see James lounging around like he often did, but he was not there, and Sirius told you Remus was on the terrace at the top, doing his thing, so you walked towards the sofa while Sirius offered to make you a cup of tea.

“Remus bought the one you like,” he said, pulling out a box with the tea you had tried a while back. You had fallen in love with the flavour, but you never found it in the supermarket –it was from a small tea shop at Diagon Alley, so really, there would be no way for you to find it.

“Okay,” you said, “got milk?” 

Sirius nodded towards the fridge and you helped him by pulling out the milk and some biscuits. When your cup was ready, he handed it over to you and took a sip of his own. He glanced at the clock quickly, so quick you barely even noticed and then smiled. It was that mysterious smile of his that told you he was up to something. “We should go see Remus.” 

“What? I thought he was working on his project.” 

“He probably is, but you haven’t seen him all day, I’m sure he wants to at least give you a birthday hug.” 

“A birthday hug?” you asked in disbelief. 

“Yes! A birthday hug! We’ll bother him for a bit and then we come back and you tell me about that book you’ve been reading. The one with the character you said reminds you of me.” 

“You’re so full of yourself,” you said with a laugh as you nodded and followed along with him. 

As you reached the top of the stairs you heard some shuffling on the other side of the door. Sirius was the one to open it first, but none of the lights they normally had were up. 

“Maybe they went to do their homework at the Corner Cafe,” you told Sirius as you turned to him. Suddenly all the lights turn on, including candles and the hanging fairy lights at the top. 

“Surprise!” A chorus of voices sang.

You were startled, Remus and James were right in front of their small table, and there was a cake right in front of them. They had invited their friend Lily, who was dating James and with whom you were fairly close to. She was the first one to approach you.

“I can’t believe Sirius was the one to tell me when your birthday was, Luv! He used to forget mine all the time!” She turned to Sirius with an accusing gaze and then back at you. “Happy Birthday,” she added as she hugged you. 

James gave you a short squeeze after and Remus wrapped you in his arms and pressed a kiss to the crown of your head. Sirius joined the hug right after. 

“You’re squeezing me, boys!” you complained in a laugh. 

“It’s a birthday squeeze, deal with it,” Sirius responded, and pressed even closer. 

“Remus?” you tried, he was the most reasonable one between the two. 

“You heard Sirius, Dove. It’s the birthday squeeze.” 

You must have stayed like that for at least a minute before either of the two let go of you, you were certain Lily had whispered something to James, but you were too busy basking on the wrath of the squeeze to bother. After that, you would have sworn the lights of the cake turned on by themselves as Lily walked over to you with it. They sang Happy Birthday while Sirius pulled you to sit on his lap, using the terrible excuse that there was no other seat available. 

You had cake and then they handed over your gifts. A book from Lily and a chocolate frog from James, although he warned you not to open it until later. You didn’t know what that was about but decided to do what was told. Eventually, Lily said she had to go and James offered to walk her. 

Although he said ‘I’ll fly you’ getting a look from Remus that you missed entirely. The boys had extended a pair of matts over the deck and you were all laying on them while gazing at the stars. 

“It was lovely, thank you for the surprise,” you said as you looked at the waning moon. 

“It was nothing, Luv,” Rem said.

“Remus was really eager to celebrate your birthday. We actually have a little present for you,” Sirius added. 

“Really?” you asked, turning to Sirius.

“Mhm,” he nodded. 

“Open the frog,” Remus prompted. 

You leaned forwards and sat on the mat, pulling the frog from the table and doing what told. Suddenly the Frog that looked like it had been made out of chocolate jumped and fell near Remus’ leg. You gasped and stared at the moving frog. It looked like chocolate, but it moved as if it were alive. 

“What– did James give me an actual frog?” 

“No, it’s chocolate,” Remus reassured and picked it up. The frog stilled in his hand. 

You stared at it in disbelief, “Is this some sort of trick?” 

“It’s magic,” Sirius said. 

You frowned at him.

“Remember the story for our class? The one that we worked on together?” 

“Wartshow, Andrew, yeah of course.” 

“Well, It’s sort of real.” 

“What?” 

Remus pulled out his wand and handed it over to you. You stared at it, it looked like a wand, it felt like a wand, but there was no way it was magic because magic– “Is this some kind of trick?” 

Sirius laughed and pulled out a different wand from his pocket, he whispered something and red sparks blew out from the tip. You swallowed and took it from his hands. Checking on it to see if there was some kind of trick, or cannon dust or something inside of it, but it was just a stick, fancy, but a stick. 

Remus took his wand and with another set of words, levitated the small frog right in front of your face. You looked at it with eyes wide open and moved your hand all over it to make sure it really was floating, and it wasn’t some kind of invisible string trick. It was right in front of your eyes, and it was still too fascinating to believe.

“But… in our story, wizards couldn’t tell the non-wizards about their existence. It was meant to be a secret… I mean… Why are you telling me?” 

Remus smiled, his hand searched yours and he leaned his head on top of yours and sighed. “Because we trust you,” he said while looking ahead, at nothing in particular.

Sirius searched for your other hand, making sure to turn it around and interwinning his fingers with yours. He placed his head on your shoulder. “Because we like you.” 

You hadn’t had the best experience with birthdays, but this had been one of the nicest birthdays of them all, more so when your two crushes admitted what Sirius had meant by his words. That they liked you –romantically– not just as friends. 

A/N: I am so, SO sorry for taking this long to finish your gift, but I made it a bit longer than initially planned to make up for it.

Hope you both had the most amazing birthday and that you're having a wonderous day today. Sending you lots of love, hope you enjoy this little thing <3

[charlie-lec-stories]

One too many // CL16 & MV1

Pairing: Charles Leclerc / Original Female Character / Max Verstappen

Summary: When you have one too many it's great to have two boyfriends.

Warnings: Alcohol, suggestive dancing, suggestive talk, wholesome Charles and overprotective Max.

Author’s Note: I almost forgot I wrote this, the Vegas GP reminded me of it, took a while to edit but is finally done. Rate: +16 (descriptions of violence)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

"It's Friday theeeeeen... Then Saturday, Sunday, WHAT?!".

Her silver dress moved around as her hips skillfully followed the tempo of the song. She was an incredible dancer, Max and Charles loved that about her and they equally loved the little shows they got to enjoy whenever she decided that the world was worthy of seeing her dancing on a table under the ever-changing lights of some club. What they didn't love was how unable she was to say no, and when Lando gave her another drink and she accepted it gladly, they both knew that they were in for a long night. Max had to drink some himself to stop the urge of going to that table, pick her up and take her home and Charles was just following her around, letting her be while also trying to keep her safe. They both had different approaches to the relationship, they had no trouble sharing with each other, but Max had a hard time with outsiders. He hated when other people looked at Charles or Y/N, he was convinced that everyone had second hand intentions and was constantly worried that someone could just not care about boundaries. This fear was mostly with Y/N, since she wasn't only a woman but also an eye-catching one. Men were trying to win her over all the time and he was sure that she'll never cheat on him and Charles, but the chances of crossing paths with a guy who could refuse to listen to a no made him want to keep her safe at home and never let her out again. Charles, on the other hand, had no problem with other people looking at his partners, actually, it made him quite proud. He loved to show her off and how pretty she was, and to show people how much of a champion his boyfriend was. He loved it when people would look at Y/N or listen to her talk and he could tell that they were thinking "Charles, you lucky bastard". He knew that people could be mean and sometimes disrespectful, but he loved how carefree she was and didn't have the heart to rain on her parade, so instead of trying to take her home, he just followed her around and kept an eye on her.

"And here's a Monster with vodka for you, darling". Max heard Lando say as he handed Y/N yet another drink. Enough was enough.

"No need for another drink, Schat". (Babe). He quickly grabbed the glass and moved it away from her. His British friend looked back at him frowning, probably because he didn't catch what Max said over the loud music. "You've had enough, mijn liefje". (My love).

"But Maaaaax". She whined and that only made the Dutchman feel even more sure that they had to call it a night.

"C'mon, let's go". She sighed and he helped her down the table. It was messy, she had zero balance and her dress was too short, making it harder to bring her drown without exposing her too much. Charles walked up to them to help but the monegasque's presence just made Y/N a lot less focused and she ended up falling on Max. He caught her and placed her securely on the floor, where she quickly threw herself at Charles and wrapped her arms around his neck while Max looked for her purse to finally go home.

"You are the most handsome man on Earth, Charles". She slurred her words a lot over the music, but Charles understood perfectly. He smiled wide at her. Even if she had admitted before that she used to feel like he was out of her league for years, he was the one that felt lucky that she ever laid eyes on him.

"Thank you, mon amour. You are the pretties girl ever". (My love). She giggled and he couldn't help but feel his heart warm up at the action. She was really cute when she was drunk.

"Okay, I think we're ready to go, are we?". Max asked Charles once he walked back to him with Y/N's purse in hand. The girl moved her gaze from Charles to Max and smiled drunkly at him.

"You can take me wherever you want, Maxie". She bit her lip while shamelessly checking him out and Max laughed out loud, he found her extremely funny when she flirted. She suddenly changed her expression to a frown.

"Is everything alright, Schat?".

"Bathroom". Was all she let out while she ran away. Max and Charles sprinted off behind her but she was thinner and scurried away between the mass of bodies easier than them. When they finally made it to the women's bathroom, after pushing their way though with much difficulty, she was already coming out. They were a few meters away when they saw a man approach her. They started arguing immediately and Max's protective instinct just switched on. "I said no!".

"You heard the lady, she said no". Max looked the guy up and down, putting his big frame to good use, puffing his chest out a little and feeling encouraged by Charles standing straighter next to him, ready to back him up. "Fuck off".

"Get your own bitch, dude, I found this one first". The man grabbed Y/N's wrist possessively and she started pulling her hand away, trying her best to break the grasp.

"I said fuck off. Do as you're told or I'll break your fucking face". The guy must have seen the killer glint in Max's eyes because he was letting go of Y/N's hand and running off in a second. "We're going home". He stated. "Now".

Y/N fell asleep the second they got on the Uber, she rested her head on Max's shoulder and grabbed Charles hand, sighing. They were close to their house and when they made it, they didn't have the heart to wake her up. Charles picked her up while Max paid the driver. The Dutchman opened the door to the building and they walked in, inside the elevator the space was narrow so Max covered Y/N's head the best he could so she couldn't hit it with the walls and Charles moved her a little make himself and her fit inside. They were both glad to be home, Y/N was a handful when she drank but the night went pretty good compared to others. The elevator stopped at their floor and Max unlocked the door to the loft. Charles carefully walked out and into their home, then went straight to the bedroom. He placed his girl on the bed and took off her heels. She murmured something but didn't wake up. He could hear Max in the kitchen, probably getting water and then go to the bathroom to grab an aspirin from the first aid kit. Their girlfriend was up for a hell of a hungover the next morning. He moved her to make her laid on her side and unzipped her dress. Max walked in and placed the pill and the water bottle on one of the nightstands and went to the closet to grab an old shirt for Y/N. Charles took her dress off and Max handed him the shirt, the monegasque looked back at his boyfriend with a stern look when he noticed that the shirt was a Red Bull one.

"What? She used one of yours the other night". Max defended himself, walking close to his boyfriend. Charles scoffed.

"She had her PJs in the laundry basket. They are clean now". Charles argued, both of them trying to keep their voices down.

"I won the last race. I want her wearing my shirt. Stop messing around or I'll ask you to wear one too". Charles quickly pecked Max's lips then laughed at his childish behavior, putting the shirt on Y/N anyways. The whole conversation and all the movement finally woke her up.

"Where are we?". She asked softly, Charles caressed her cheek and moved the hair out of her face.

"We are home, Amour". She smiled and grabbed his hand.

"Great. I like home". Max chuckled.

"Good to know you like home, Schat". He sat on the bed next to her and started moving at the sheets so she could get under them, but her drunken mind was going somewhere else. He felt her sneak her hands under his shirt and run her nails over his abs. "Stop playing around, you're drunk, nothing's happening tonight".

"Ugh, you're boring". She turned her attention to Charles and her hand went directly to the button of his jeans, he grabbed her hand gently and pushed her down on the bed.

"You heard Max, no action tonight, Amour". She huffed, frustrated.

"But I'm horny as fuck". Max took off his jeans and shirt, putting on some shorts he found lying around. Charles laughed when he noticed that those were his, Ferrari's logo at the edge of the right leg, but he didn't tell Max.

"No sober, no consent". Said Max as he got into bed and tugged her close to him, making room for Charles who was also taking his clothes off to get more comfortable. He grabbed some Mercedes shorts that Toto gave him as a joke-gift when he stated dating Y/N and then went to bed. If Max was wearing something Ferrari and Y/N a RBR shirt, then it was fair he wore something from Mercedes, right?

"Okay, but we have to do it in the morning". She turned around so Max could hug her from behind, while Charles laid in front of her, snuggling close. She buried her face on his chest and inhaled his scent. They moved as close as possible and fell asleep in a blink.

The light coming from the window woke Charles way earlier than he wanted to wake up, the warm feeling on his face comforting, but his eyes hurting. Y/N was still in his arms, sound asleep, and Max next to her, awake and face up, his right arm covering his eyes. They forgot to draw the curtains before going to bed but they were both too lazy to get up and fix it. Charles loved days like this, where they could stay in bed all day if they wanted to, cuddling, watching movies and chatting. They spent all of their time together, working on the same field and living together, still, he never got bored or needed time alone. He just loved to be close to them both. He knew that Max liked that too, even if he didn't express it that much. Max came from a pretty cold family, while Charles came from a warm one. His parents were lovely, and he had a close relationship with his mother, even more since his father passed away. Max, on the other hand, was kind of distant with his mother, even thought he loved her a lot, and was forced to be civil with his father, who he strongly disliked. It was weird for Max to finally end up with a family that was this warm with him, who cared so much about him. So he enjoyed every second they had together. The little family they created was Max's most precious treasure and he cherished it with his whole heat. They stayed laying on bed for a while, until Max couldn't take it anymore and got up. He draw the curtains and then went to the bathroom. Y/N moved closer to Charles and he kissed her head, she still smelled like champagne and even though he loved the smell, she still needed a shower. The sound of Max flushing the toilet woke her up and she stirred a bit, moving away from Charles. She opened her eyes and smiled at him, then she moved around to look at Max, but she couldn't find him. Charles giggled at her pout.

"He's in the bathroom". She turned around again and brushed her nose with his. He went down for a kiss but she moved away. Now it was his turn to pout.

"My breath is terrible". Max laughed from the bathroom doorway.

"Doesn't surprise me, Schat. You mixed almost everything on stock and then threw up in the bathroom". She groaned and drop her head on the pillow, closing her eyes. The two men chuckled.

"Don't laugh at me. I'm suffering". She started getting up. "I'm never drinking again".

"You said that last Monday". Charles reminded her.

"And the one before". Max added, she just flipped them off.

"Fuck you both".

"Yeah, you tried that last night". Max told her when she finally walked up to him on the doorway to the bathroom.

"Really?". She walked past him and prepared everything to brush her teeth.

"Yes. Nothing happened, of course, but you're a persistent woman, Amour". Max went back to the bed and just then noticed that he was wearing the Ferrari shorts. He groaned and Charles let out a burst of laugher, Max sending him a killer gaze. Y/N walked out of the bathroom to find Charles spread out on the bed while Max took off his shorts.

"Oh, I guess we're picking up where we left off?". She walked to Max and kissed him fondly, her minty breath mixing his. But her head started hurting and she had to step away. "Ugh, my head is killing me".

"Maybe you should sleep a little more, Schat". Max suggested, ignoring completely the effect the kiss had on him.

"Here, take the aspirin". Charles passed her the pill and the water bottle. She took them and he got up, going to the bathroom too. Max went back to the bed and Y/N swallowed the pill with some difficulty. They heard Charles brushing his teeth too and she followed Max back into bed. They started kissing again, but at some point he pulled away, knowing that they all needed more sleep to recover from the night out.

"I want to be in the middle again". She told him and Max rolled his eyes.

"You're so needy". She hit his shoulder but he let her take his place anyways. Charles walked out and went straight back to bed. They resumed the position they were all in before.

"Can I have my kiss now? We both brushed our teeth, Amour". Y/N giggled and moved close to him, grabbing his face and pulling him in for a kiss. Their lips moved in sync for a while, until Charles started to feel the same effect Max felt before and broke the kiss. "Let's stop here and get some more sleep. You need it, Y/N".

"Okay, but we have fun when we wake up". Max chuckled behind her and kissed her shoulder.

"Of course, Schat".

They all fixed their positions to get more confortable and tried to go back to sleep again. Charles and Max grabbed each other's hand and rested them on Y/N's waist, Charles running his thumb in circles over Max's hand. The boys were almost asleep when Y/N spoke up.

"Thank you for taking care of me". She whispered it, vulnerability dripping from her words. "I know that I can be a handful". She sighed and they both hugged her tighter. "I love you both, so much".

"We love you too, Amour". Charles kissed her forehead. "You don't have to thank us for taking care of you. We'll always look after you".

"Always. No matter what, Schat".

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Okay! I hope you guys liked it! I'm in the process of editing three more stories, so more content will be uploaded soon. As always, thank you for reading.

[undiscovered-horizon]

[Apparently, all it takes for a doomed man to feel hope again is bad flirting and corny jokes. Or maybe it's about the comforting presence of someone he loves?]

Enjoying my work? You can leave me a tip on Ko-Fi | Have a request?

Whether Gale wants it or not, he's a quite predictable person. His reliability seems to extend far enough for you to always be able to correctly guess where he might be when the wizard is not near his tent. Although his tendency for routines might be mistaken for something dull, you've always thought of it as somewhat comforting - that among all the chaos that your life has become, there's a sense of regularity; the comfort of knowing how to navigate certain situations.

Just as you knew he would, Gale is sitting by the riverside. His back is slouched as he mindlessly reaches to grab a blade of grass, tear it off, and let his fingers play with it. Brown eyes would be intently staring at the flowing stream if their owner wasn't so lost in thought.

He hears you coming, dry leaves crumble under your feet but he makes no effort to look over his shoulder. Maybe you're actually a wild raccoon that will finally put him out of his misery... On second thought, that is a rather pathetic end for a wizard as great as him. To die by a raccoon. Ha!

"Hey handsome, come here often?" you ask as you sit down next to him.

Gale's robes once smelled of musty books and seawater but during your travels, they have lost their original fragrance in favour of a fresh aroma of pine needles, campfire smoke and herbal medicine. It gave him an "edge", if such a word could coexist with the wizard's homebody way of life.

"Only when I wish to wallow in pity," he answers. Although it's fleeting, almost secretive, you do notice the glance he gives you.

You raise an eyebrow at his response. "And that's often?"

A sad chuckle rumbles in his chest. Gale looks down at his fingers, for the very first time studying what his hands do with the long blades of grass. "A lot more than I'd like to admit." He actually bothers to make himself sound light-hearted but the dread eating him up has already soaked into his words.

You put your elbow on your knee and rest your chin on top of your hand. The new angle allows you to see more of his face, not that it changes your impression. Something's eating him up. "Is this what pretty wizards frequently engage in? I think I ought to update my schedule."

He looks almost like a painting, you think. The one a cleric would put up at the temple, a depiction of martyrhood in the name of something greater. Normally, you'd shrug at the thought of some poor sod thinking that making themself suffer will somehow please their god. It sounds like a questionable freedom of choice at best. But in Gale's case, you can't just shrug. Not anymore. Not since the two of you made it very obvious there's nothing platonic going on.

"I think you'll find that a moping wizard is hardly treasured company."

"Then maybe I should help him stop moping." Playfully, you bump your shoulder into his.

A sad smile graces his face. His brown eyes give you a quick glance again. Gale just can't help his longing. "As much as I appreciate the thought and the effort," he tries to sound unbothered, "my troubles already take up enough of your time. The others might want to have a word with you too."

Not a thing about Gale's statement surprises you. He's always wearing a facade of "Don't worry about little old me" but having gotten closer to the man, you know he's far from that - he wants someone to worry, only doesn't have the pride to ask for that. Part of him probably thinks he ought to earn the right to take up the space in someone's mind. How silly.

Gale's eyes return to you when he sees your fingers sneaking between his hands and a blade of grass he was playing with. No matter what he might say and how laid back he attempts to appear, all of his half-hearted bluffs dissipate when he forms a tight grip around your fingers.

"And I want to have a few words with you," you tell him in round terms. "Well, I want to have many things with you but I guess I can settle for a good old-fashioned conversation."

"I, erm..." he hangs his voice at your allusion. The blush on his cheeks is barely visible in the darkness of the night but you can tell it's there - his whole body is suddenly on fire. Gale clears his throat. "Enlighten me, then! What sort of lexicon do you wish to bestow upon me?"

You can't help the whole-hearted chuckle that leaves your lips. "You're really adorable when you talk all sophisticated." Gale laughs nervously at the compliment and he's just about to say something back but before he gets the chance, you reveal the truth about your arrival. "On a more serious note, I didn't have any endgame plan. I just thought that I'm going to ask you what's on your mind and no matter what you answer, I'm going to bless you with my presence until one of us falls asleep."

For the first time this evening, Gale's eyes linger on you for a long while. Although his initial embarrassment at your boldness is now gone, a sense of nervousness lingers. But do not misunderstand - it's a welcome kind of tension; the anxiety of holding something dear and fearing breaking it. "I'd very much like that," he answers. A small smile of genuine happiness curves his lips.

Gale momentarily tenses up when you lay your head on his shoulder. Then, as though paradoxically a weight has been lifted from his back, he finds himself sighing.

Strangely enough, he feels... calm. Too caught up in his thoughts of impending doom and past failures, Gale has been oblivious to the good things in his life. Especially in the present. He tries to grasp at the fleeting thoughts he had been pitifully entertaining for the past hour or so but they escape his focus. Now that each of his breathes is filled with the smell of campfire smoke and fragrant oils that stuck to your skin, the doom that had been haunting him before dissipates like storm clouds blown away by the wind. Part of him wants to laugh - the morbid scenarios that once rendered him sleepless seem so trivial now. Gale was dealt a bloody difficult hand, yes, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to play it, does it?

He's known hope for a long time but only now does he see her. And what a wonder it is that she's wearing your face.

[galway-girlatwork]

Say Something

Fandom: The Mandalorian-This is a very modern AU

Rating: Mature-There is angst. 

Central Characters: Din and Eve (Original Female Character)

Central Relationship: Din and Eve

Word Count: 1,887

AO3

Please do not copy my work. If you liked it, please re-blog and tag me. Please do not steal my mood board. Stealing is just WRONG. I do not give permission to copy, translate, or post my work to any other platform.

This is for Jo’s DEAR-UARY-A new epistolary writing challenge. 

Eve is in italic. Din is in bold.

Jo, I had a fun and interesting time writing this. Thanks for letting me take part. MUHA

Music Inspiration:

Say Something-A Great Big World

You-The Pretty Reckless

Helium-Sia

Summary:

Eve’s career has always taken a back seat to Din’s. The goal was always she would start working more on her music when he graduated law school and worked for one year at a law firm. Now both of their careers are taking off but where she’s always been there for him, Eve is finding that Din isn’t always there for her. Feeling forgotten, she now lives for her music. And Din forgets that marriage takes just as much work as a career.

It had been two weeks since they’d last exchanged words—two weeks of icy silence punctuated by the hollow sounds of routine. Her guitar sat untouched in the corner of their living room, strings gathering dust. Across the room, Din’s law books were stacked haphazardly, a stark contrast to his usual meticulous order, the house feeling like a museum of unresolved tension.

Their last fight had been explosive, her voice, usually melodic, had cracked with anger as she accused him of not supporting her. “It was the last concert of my first tour! You promised you’d be there. You didn’t even call to say you couldn’t make it.”

His excuse of a deposition running late was the last straw. She moved out of their bedroom and into the guest room. It felt like they were roommates instead of husband and wife. She was tired of the excuses, of feeling like everything they’d gone through at this point, meant nothing. They’d both worked so hard to be where they are but she felt like the only one reaping the rewards was him.

It had been little things up to this point…Forgotten diners, important dates that marked the year but this? This one hit just a little harder than all the rest. She’d finally gone on tour, her music such a driving force in her life, and he promised he would be at the very last show. But when she looked over to where he should have been, he wasn’t. The hurt coming through her voice as she squeezed eyes shut, just needing to finish and get off stage. When all was said and done, she ran to the wings, her assistant handing over her phone. Nothing. Not a text, a missed call…Absolutely nothing.

The argument they had was vicious and cruel. He of course took the lead on the cruel part. The minute she’d gotten home, she’d lashed out at him. He knew he was to blame for the anger and hurt she was feeling but she’d tossed out a comment about how he felt inferior to her now blossoming career and that was when he threw her past in her face. How when he met her, she was just a wanna be singing in dive bars, the vase she threw, missing him only by an inch. When she moved out of their bedroom, ignoring him and any attempt to have conversation, he felt like an outsider looking in. It had been his idea for counseling, wanting to fix what was broken. She had to know he still loved her, right?

The first session was a disaster, neither one of them speaking when asked what had started the discord in their marriage. After twenty minutes of silence, where breaths and pin drops could be heard, the counselor let them both know that they were being counterproductive. Well, no fucking shit, he thought. “If you can’t talk to each other, write to each other. Take turns. One day each. Be honest, but not cruel.” A single blank journal placed on the table between them.

The journal now laid on the coffee table, a blank canvas waiting for their words.

Day 1 – Eve

Din,

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking done. I don’t think that counselor knows shit about shit. I’ve only ever used journals for my music. So, I don’t even know where to start. How about I am fucking angry but I am more devastatingly hurt. That night was one of the most important of my life and you couldn’t even bother to show up.

I get it. Your work is demanding, important, something you’ve worked hard for, but I feel like I’m always competing with your job, and I always lose. That night, I needed you to see me, to hear me. Not as a musician, but as your wife. I wanted you to be proud of me for what I’ve accomplished since those days of being a “dive bar wanna be.”

Day 2 –Din

Eve,

I’m sorry. I know those words feel empty right now, but they’re true. I hate that I let you down. I was stuck in that deposition, and all I could think about was getting out in time to make it to your concert. But by the time I looked at the clock, it was too late. I didn’t call because I didn’t want to hear the disappointment in your voice. That’s no excuse, but it’s the truth.

I’m sorry for the dive bar comment. That was just cruel. I’ve never been jealous of your music. I’ve been proud. Okay maybe I’ve been a little jealous. Not of the music but of your talent. I’ve heard you singing not just in dive bars but in our kitchen, in your little make shift studio and have always been in awe of your talent.

Day 3 –Eve

Din,

Thank you for saying you’re sorry. But it’s not just about that one night. This has been building for a long time. I feel like I’m always fighting for a place in your life. You’re so good at what you do, and I’m proud of you, but sometimes I feel invisible. Do you even see me anymore?

Why didn’t you tell me? That you were jealous? I am not sure why you are. I’ve never done anything in the entire time we’ve been together that would make anyone jealous. I am just me, doing what I love, wanting to spend my life with someone I love.

Day 4 – Din

Eve,

I see you. God, do I see you. You’re brilliant, talented, everything I’m not. When you’re on stage, you light up in a way that takes my breath away. But sometimes, I feel like I’m the one who doesn’t fit into your life. Your world is so vibrant, so alive. I’m just…here, working late nights and missing all the moments that matter. I hate that I make you feel invisible when you’re the most important person in my life.

Day 5 –Eve

Din,

I never knew you felt that way. I thought you were indifferent. Thinking, “Oh there goes my wife, traveling everywhere.” Like it was no big deal that I was going to be gone for months, that you didn’t care what I did, where I was or who I was hanging out with.

Tour life is not glamorous. It’s boring as fuck. It’s tour buses, junk food, crappy hotel rooms. Until I am on stage, feeling the music pour outta me. That is when I wanted you to see me. I thought if you did, if you heard, you’d know. I miss you. I miss us.

Day 6 – Din

Eve,

I miss us too. I don’t know how we got to this point. Maybe this whole journal thing isn’t crap?

Day 7-Eve

No, it is crap. Total crap. Want to know why? Because we should be able to say these things to each other. But guess what? We’re not. Why? Because you are never fucking home. It’s fuckin two in the morning and where are you? At the office. Again. Why am I even here Din?

Day 8-Din

Eve,

I am sorry. Yea I know. I sound like a broken record. I wonder how much money you’d have if you had a dollar for every time I said that to you in the last five years. Eve I want to fix this but when I am home, you don’t talk to me. It’s like I am living with a stranger instead of the woman who used to watch horror movies with me. I can’t even remember the last time we did that.

Day 9-Eve

Din,

Maybe if you actually tried. I feel like you’ve given up. Is this where we say good-bye? Where we realize that it was a mistake and just stop? I am tired and I don’t want to live like this. It’s exhausting.

Day 10-Din

Don’t do this. Where are you? Please come home. I want to fix this but it sounds like you’ve already given up. Eve…Please

Day 11-Eve

Day 12-Din

Eve we’re supposed to be writing in this together. You’ve not been home in two days. Please baby. Where are you?

Day 13-Eve

Day 14-Din

Jesus fuck Eve. WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!?!?!?!?

Day 15-Eve

Calm the fuck down. I was at the studio. I needed a break. Do you know how hard it is to be in the same house with someone who is supposed to be in love with you, but can’t even stand to look at you? Why should I be here Din? So you can torture me with your uncaring attitude? I’d rather pluck my eyes out with a fork.

Day 16-Din

Don’t be so dramatic Eve. I was worried. Is that what you think? That I don’t care? I do. Care I mean. Yes I do know. What you think it is easy to be in the same house with you and not want to just pin you down, kiss you senseless and tell you a hundred fucking times that I love you, that I’m sorry?

Day 17-Eve

Sex is not going to fix this.

Day 18-Din

Stubborn fucking brat. Where in that sentence did I say anything about sex? I miss kissing you.

Day 19-Eve

I miss kissing you too. I miss feeling you next to me. Din…How did we get here?

Day 20-Din

I don’t know baby. We’re both stubborn?

Day 21-Eve

Yes, I am stubborn and out there and maybe the music won’t be as successful as I want it to be but Din I need you to know that it is important to me. Just as your career is important to you. I’ve been here this whole time. We agreed that I could pursue music after one year of you at the firm. I just feel like you’re not here. I wanted to share it with you. Share the music and how much it drives me. I still love you but sometimes feel like you don’t want me.

Day 22-Din

I love you too. I want you more than you know. I will always want you Eve. I don’t always know the right words to say, but I can’t imagine a life without you. You’re my partner, my equal, I want to be better—not just for you, but with you. I’ll always fight for us.

Day 365-Eve

I can’t believe we kept at this for an entire year, especially since I was the one who said it was the stupidest and crappiest thing we could do. I love you.

Coming downstairs, he saw her sitting at the dining room table, closing the leather-bound journal. Looking over her shoulder, a sly wink given before she walked into the kitchen, he picked it up and read the last entry before rereading what had been written. Each entry was raw, honest, and sometimes painful, but they told the story of two people who refused to give up on each other.

Coffee in hand, she set both mugs on the table before sitting down. “Reading again?”

“Yeah.” Fingers encircled her wrist, pulling her up from the chair, dragging her body against his. Hands tunneling into thick blonde hair, lips brushing against hers. “I love you too.”

Tagging peeps:

@jolapeno @guiltyasdave @604to647 @ease-out-the-clutch @almostfoxglove @morallyinept

And of course @saradika-graphics for the dividers.

Love and hugs.

[yellowfingcr]

I write this to you, Simone, even if you will never read it.

You cannot. You are too far. You will not. I will tear this paper into pieces, snapping the stems of sentences into words into letters, and one lone letter I will place upon my tongue to swallow, and the rest I shall bury like seeds. Then I will pray that the sectioned body of what I wanted to tell you will one day sprout upward through the earth and like dandelions find its way to you.

The first time you met me- oh! It still blushes my cheeks. Since my arrival and blood transfusion I’d watched myself furl into a hermit, allowing the strange melancholy of having cheated death to day after day chill me stationary right after the threshold of the new unexpected undeserved life I’d been given. I didn’t know what to do. I’d pleaded to every god not to die, and now that I hadn’t there was this featureless expanse of possibilities before me. What now? I couldn't answer. So I did nothing. I wintered. I don’t know for how long I lay deep somewhere inside myself, basking in my own hunger. Until one day I noticed the sunlight upon my skin. Felt its warmth. Felt! I was discovering sensation, again. I had a body, I had shape. I was alive. I existed. I wanted. I wanted.

I hadn’t prepared at all for my winter; I make for a poor animal. When I awoke from my torpor, I found myself full of great painful nothing, taut with starvation. I agonised for touch, for any contact, the hold of a hand, a knuckle against my gut, a kiss against my lips, anything, anything at all to bond me through meat to my fellow human beings.

Within the chalk circles I found violence.

In the pub that day I found you. 

Hunters among hunters knocking back warm wine in chaotic glee and here you sat, knees apart, languidly looking around the room, all interesting you but not quite enough. I could swear the raucous cheer lowered to a whisper when I laid eyes upon you. Certainly my heart stopped. Your clothing- it was civilian clothing, plain, simple. But you were a sculpture and you shone as one regardless of what covered you. I still could see the strength of your shoulders, the solidity of your thighs. Your full mouth, half-smiling. Your thick fingers, wrapped around your glass. Your jaw, curving  so sweetly for a woman so chiseled by might. I think it was one of the few times you’d let your hair down. 

I existed. I wanted. I very much wanted you.

And you- you’d noticed, hadn’t you? Not my desire but my almost adolescent hesitation. That when I approached you and told you Hi, name’s Heysel in that tone I was in truth saying please, let it be me, among the many beautiful women here choose me. For anything you crave. However you crave it. A word and I will kneel.

Hi, you’d returned, turning around, and heat conquered me up to my ears. Gods. I was elated. Bursting with pride. I’d thought, no matter what happens next, I will have this for myself. For she looked at me and I recognized in the brown of her eye appetite. 

My name is Simone.

You know, it’s funny to recall that lust was what had brought us together, considering how that spark quieted as we began talking. We found each other to be similar- in tastes, origins, humor. I adored your laugh. I adored your body, but right away I found myself so intrigued by the woman within it that I knew I never wanted to stop discovering her, and that I tried to do, question after question, none about pleasure, all about you, Simone. We became friends. We ended up never once touching each other in that manner, though you touched me plenty in all the other ways that matter just as much- your arms, holding me tight in a hug, your hand on my shoulder, to ask for my attention. Your fingers, between mine in reassurance. Your grip, strong upon me as I slipped on blood-slicked cobbles, catching me before gravity could. The mass of you, curled around me like a rib around a lung, when I knocked at your door empty of all but my exhaustion and the nightmares that would make blood slither down my nostrils, and you’d dragged me to your bed, swearing that what was chasing me as I slept or was awake had to contend with you as well. You'd say words like that often. You were so full of such love. Love for jokes, love for songs, love for the scent of grass, love for flirting and women and cooking and mischief, love for all that reminded you of home, love for all that didn’t. Love for life. And you loved Yulia; and you loved me. You loved me the way the rib curls around the lung it hides. With the same certain dedication to my protection, no matter the cost to you.

Simone. Please forgive me for what I've done. I couldn’t let any cost be paid by you. Nothing of you must be risked for me, anymore. Let me be the bones, this once, and you the precious softness they need to keep safe from harm. No matter how much it hurts.

I now shall tear this letter apart, eat it, bury it, and think of you, again, as I do every day, every single day since I've left.

Yours,

[bullet-prooflove]

Hii! Happy thursday! I hope youre having a great week! 💕💕

Silk on her body, pull it down and watch it slip off

With Bruno👀🙏🏻

Part of the Cowboy!Terry Universe

The Ranch - You fell in love with Terry underneath the stars in Montana.

Whiskey Kisses - You and Terry share your first kiss after a whiskey tasting event.

Memorable (NSFW) - You make your first time with Terry memorable.

Montana - Terry recieves a holiday card in the mail.

The last time Terry laid eyes on you was in a cabin in Vancouver. It had been the morning after your wedding and he remembers the silk slipping from your skin as he’d made love to you for the last time. He remembers the bliss in that moment, the sense of belonging to someone so completely that you’d die for them. It’s a couple of hours later that he gives you the envelope with your new identity inside.

“You stay safe alright?” he murmurs as his lips brush over your hairline because it’s the last time he’s going to see you in a while and he needs that reassurance.

It’s as he sits on the porch of his ranch listening to detectives from the local P.D tear his place apart that he thinks of the old cigar box, hidden in the alcove of the old tree at the edge of his property line. You used to leave each other love notes there once upon a time, it’s where he’s left his wedding ring and the polaroid picture a stranger took of the two of you standing on the steps of the courthouse.

This is just one of the many secrets he keeps regarding you.

Noone knows that he came to your house the night you killed Donovan. The police had never been able to prove that it was him on those videos with your niece but you knew it was him. It tore you up that he’d gotten away with it. The two of you had talked about it at length while you watched Amelie trot around the pasture on Balderdash. She’d started healing since joining Healing Hooves, the trauma program Terry ran out of his ranch, it’s how the two of you met. He knows what rage looks like, he’s seen it you everytime you thought about that man.

When Terry stepped into your kitchen that evening, he had known there wasn’t a chance in hell you could claim self-defence.

“He showed me the original video.” You’d said, your voice entirely devoid of emotion as you stare down at the knife sticking out of Donovan’s chest. “It’s worse than what he put up on that website.”

That’s why Terry decides to help you, that and the fact he is so hopelessly in love with you that the thought of you going to prison for something that was justified kills him. It’s just another sign of how much he’s changed since he left New York.

It’s a fluke that they find the body. Terry’s a city boy at heart, he hadn’t factored in that torrential rain would cause a mudslide revealing the grave he’d dug. He hasn’t been in Montana long enough to experience one before.

The two of you disappear the next day over the border. It won’t take long for the police to realise what happened, he’d cleaned up well enough but his years of law enforcement have taught him there’s always a trace.

He marries you that afternoon because despite what happened he loves you, he’ll always love you and he needs you to know that. When he returns to Montana the next day it’s to two detectives waiting on his front porch.

“Do you know where she is?” They ask him and he shakes his head, recalling the words he’s said to you that morning.

“Don’t tell me where you going.” He’d whispered against your lips as he’d cradled your face between his hands. “Just let me know when you get there.”

When they leave he spends the evening putting the pieces of his life back together, waiting for that text from you.

Love Terry Bruno? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

@kmc1989 @beardedbarba @justreblogginfics @anime-weeb-4-life @witches-unruly-heart @spaghettificationandpretzels @kishie8 @whateversomethingbruh @trublu2u @silversprings-mp3 @kabloswrld @topmagtiger

[general--winter]

I would like to request headcanons about Sasuke and reader just getting together and kinda being shy and how they are like super in love but also don’t know yet how to express it any it often gets always and stuff if you know what I mean? Sorry if that’s confusing I’d just really like to see headcanons about Sasuke in the beginning of a relationship thank u very much <3

author's note: My first ask! Thank you so much this made me VERY excited! I hope I handled Sosuke Bosuke Sasuke alright, I don't really have much experience writing for him. I also hope that this was what you were asking for, I may have went too far thinking of a little concept lmao. I hope you enjoy!

rating: teen

fandom: naruto

pairing: shy!uchiha sasuke x shy!gn!reader

warnings: canon-typical violence

word count: 1428

summary: After the war, you meet Sasuke as an innkeeper. How do you guys manage to become close?

I personally imagine Sasuke as a guy who really bottles up his feelings, so instead of acting as shy as he is I think he’d come across as careless or not interested. This is probably a defensive mechanism that he’s developed to make sure people with the potential to become close to him stay away. We all know he has a hard time dealing with his feelings towards people he loves, whether they’re platonic or romantic. He just loves too hard for his heart to handle.

So when he meets you, he knows he’s in trouble. Originally, you had run into him on one of his reconnaissance missions shortly after the end of the Fourth Shinobi World War. After the war, you retired from service as a shinobi and settled in a small village in the Land of Fire, looking to restart your life far away from the troubles of your past. The tavern and inn that you run is extremely successful, since it runs through a main road between great villages. You’re known as the keep, and in town, many are shocked that you’re able to do the work you do with such a nervous demeanor around people. It was work you enjoyed, though, damn being nervous around everyone that came in when you had to work the desk for your employees!

On an unassuming night, Sasuke ended up there, unable to travel any farther due to the darkness. He was focused on getting into a room, sealing it, and resting fitfully until sunrise until he laid his eyes on you tending his ryo and getting the key to the room upstairs. Something about the way you scuttled around like a mouse behind the desk made his heart skip a beat. Personally, your brain was already fried because a very attractive, mysterious, and polite stranger had ended up at your inn and you had to check him in. You handed him his keys and you didn’t see him again for a while, only catching his keys in the drop-off basket the next morning.

Over time, he ended up staying at your inn multiple times. (He swears it was by accident every time, but you suspect he did it on purpose. Like he would ever admit it.) Occasionally, you would gather up the courage to engage him in small talk, but his answers would be dishearteningly blunt and he would never reciprocate. Through those answers though, you were able to learn a bit. He was a shinobi from Konohagakure. His name was Sasuke, and he was around your age. You knew it was wistful thinking, as he was obviously not interested, but sometimes on shift you would fantasize about confessing your blooming crush to him. (Not like you would be able to, you would become too flustered at the thought of actually doing it before you got a word out of your mouth.)

One night, however, while you were sleeping in your small apartment within the tavern, you heard a loud crash. You immediately woke up bearing the kunai you kept underneath your pillow. Slithering out of bed in your pajamas, you slipped on a pair of sandals and stalked through the halls of the inn, trying to locate where this sound came from.

Faint sounds of fighting echoed from the end of the hall. Sasuke’s room is that way, you thought, clenching tighter onto your kunai. You wondered if perhaps this had to do with one of his missions, but you didn’t care — intruders on your beloved property, the one you tended to day in and day out, had to be taken care of. Something strange and tingly also stirred within you at the thought of coming to Sasuke’s aid.

As you approached the door, you immediately sensed an incredibly strong seal on its lock. Fuinjutsu was not your specialty, but you got to work undoing it anyways. It was not the most complicated seal you had encountered, but from its power you could tell that Sasuke was an… incredibly powerful shinobi. Butterflies erupted in your stomach at the thought. No! I can think about that later, right now an intruder is in here, you thought to yourself as you finally got the seal undone.

At that moment, though, a body came flying through the wooden door, splintering it and launching you against the wall of the hallway. They recovered quickly, their kunai piercing in towards you. You redirected it, disarming them and shoving them back into the room.

“What are you doing here?” Sasuke asked you as you stumbled into the room with the assailant. He sounded pissed off but… was that a hint of fear in his voice?

“This is my property. I have to defend it, at any cost,” you told him. Any shred of shyness was gone the second you realized someone was actually intruding on your inn. At these words, Sasuke turned to face the assailant you’d pushed into the room, who was glaring at you and preparing to strike. You had your kunai in a defensive position, but before they had the chance to leap, Sasuke’s back appeared in front of you and picked them up by the collar of their shirt. He whispered something in their ear. Before you could realize what was going on, the attacker had gasped and fled straight through the shattered window.

“Are you okay?” you asked Sasuke, walking up to him. “Did they hurt you?”

“Yes, I'm okay. Are you?” he replied, his guard lowering slightly. You felt your face heat up. That was definitely the first time he asked you a question outside of if there was a room available. The fact that I know that is pathetic. I doubt he cares, he’s so apathetic.

“Probably just uh… bruised from that bump I took. No big deal, so don’t worry about me!” You brought a hand to the back of your head to itch, desperate for anything to do with your limbs to work out all of the nervous energy of being so close to the man you fantasize about but will probably never have.

For Sasuke himself, the situation was equally nerve wracking. Before this mission, Naruto and Sakura had managed to torture the information out of him that there was a person he may have the slightest interest in romantically. At first, Sasuke had suppressed thoughts of you. He was a shinobi, running S-rank missions all around the known world. He could not afford to say anything to you, nor did he think his heart could handle it. You would just give him one more weak spot, another point for the enemy to target. His former teammates, however, absolutely pummeled him one night about how he "should shoot his shot" and "you never know what might happen". Sasuke was dead set on ignoring them until the next time he visited the inn, when you continued to ask him questions about himself. Something about the way you glanced away and tapped your feet as you spoke, the way you rambled on and on struck his heart in a way he knew he wouldn't be able to ever escape. His resolve was not there, but Sasuke knew he had to say something.

He knew if he didn’t suck it up and say something to you now, those two would figure out and pull him by the ear to this village just to tell you how he felt, which would be even more embarrassing for him. The desire to prove his idiot friends wrong pulled the question right out of him when he looked into your soft eyes, illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the window.

“I’ll be coming through this town again in two weeks. Would you like to go to dinner after I check in?”

.-.-.-.-.-.

“I thought I had made you pass out at the time.”

“I remember that night. You caught me before I fell to the ground! There were stars on the ceiling for a second or two, for sure.”

“You probably had a mild concussion.”

“Or did you ever stop to consider I was so infatuated with you that your actions caused me to short-circuit?”

“You certainly are the type to do that. It’s amusing.”

“And you say that as if you wouldn’t do the same thing if you had been in my position.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, on second thought you would have just stood there and scowled at me if I asked…”

“And then I would have accepted. It… would have been a huge mistake not to.”

[gellavonhamster]

Tagged by the lovely @mushiemellows to post four characters that make me say "my man, my man, my man." Hehe.

Quincey Morris. THE Gothic horror cowboy ever - not that there are too many Gothic horror cowboys, which must be because most filmmakers can't handle his sheer power and don't include him in the movie adaptations of Dracula (and the adaptations that do include him don't do him much justice, though they get a cookie from me for trying). Brave, compassionate, a "rough fellow" and a "gallant gentleman" at the same time. Tells a girl who rejected him he'll be okay with just remaining her friend and then actually proves himself a great friend, wow. Would totally die for his friends, would totally speak exaggerated Texan slang just to make Lucy smile. Super hot and ~manly~ according to Jack "Bisexual Disaster" Seward and pretty much everyone else. There's a post of mine gushing about him in the Dracula Daily book, which is a tiny bit embarrassing, because I've made plenty of much smarter posts about this novel, but you know what, that tracks.

2. Porthos from BBC's The Musketeers specifically. I'm kind of a fake Three Musketeers fan, because I've read the novels and enjoyed them a lot, but when it comes to the main characters, I highly prefer them in this historically inaccurate, book-inaccurate show. The original musketeers are much more complex as characters, but they're also quite shitty as people, and while I appreciate their complexity, their significantly-less-shitty working-class versions (or rather, three working-class ones and Athos the class traitor) are dearer to my heart. And Porthos, well, damn. BBC really knew what they were doing when they took Howard Charles - a very attractive man per se - and gave him leather clothes and those puffy shirts and a pirate-y bandana and an earring and a cool scar. Porthos is actually my favourite musketeer in the books as well, but the one from the show completely won my heart with his loyalty, kindness, and commitment to justice. And with being hella charming, too 👀

3. The currently inevitable One Piece part of the list! Look, I'm a simple woman, I'm not immune to gruff but secretly kind men who are built like a brick shithouse (and buy ice cream for random kids, and tell their corrupt superiors to eat shit). So I would let Smoker do unspeakable things to me. Who said that.

4. Caleb Brewster from Turn: Washington's Spies is one of those cases when I laid my eyes on a character and immediately thought "I guess this one's gonna be my favourite" and was absolutely right. To quote another character from the show, "he's unshaven, he's insane". Also loyal to a fault and extremely funny and reckless to the point of piloting an 18th century submarine. An absolute madlad. Every time there's some kind of a "who's hotter" poll in that fandom, I end up convinced that people understand nothing. But then again, most people probably were either Legolas girls or Aragorn girls, and I've been a Gimli girl since the age of nine.

Tagging @jennathearcher and @murphmurphthejerk - I know what one of the answers is going to be, but I'd like to hear the other three as well ;) As always, feel free to ignore if you don't want to answer, and so on, and so forth.

[sugutoad]

matchup trade for @nicosavior456 ! 

GAME OF THRONES

Your Significant Other 

I ship you with Sansa Stark — Queen of Winterfell. You mentioned before that you prefer women who lean on the side of being more feminine and awkward with a little mix of shyness and I think that sums up Sansa quite well. It is a pair that brings out the best in one another, clinging to one another when the world tears everything apart. Her quiet naive personality fits perfectly with your more rational and just one. I feel like she needs someone who can really treat her well because of her past experience with men. And I wholly believe that you are perfectly suited for that.

HEAD CANONS

Sansa knew you as a child and she never really liked you at first. You and your cousin randomly appeared in her life and her father treated the two of you sometimes better than her? She loathed that. But eventually romance as you grew older and more mature

Sometimes after a busy day, all she wants is to lay down in your arms — forever safe and sound. 

The two of you have the stupidest arguments, but it ends with the both of you giggling like little kids. It would be small things such as ‘What’s better: Cats or Dogs?’ Or ‘What should we eat tonight?’. Sometimes, it just feels good to let go of all your responsibilities and be yourself with someone you love and trust. 

Great Houses

We Do Not Sow

You belong in House Greyjoy. I’ll be honest, I was really reluctant on choosing this house at first since I couldn’t find one that suited you well, but after a quick game of cancellation, House Greyjoy was victorious. Since you come from a middle-class family, I tried to stay away from the high houses such as Baratheon, Targaryen, Stark, Martell, Tyrell and Stark. That left me with Greyjoy, Arynn and Tully. But Arynn and Tully never settled in my heart. You see, I imagine that you would fit so well into the Greyjoy family with Theon and his sister. 

HEAD CANONS

Theon and you were both taken hostage by the Stark family after the rebellion of your family. Originally, they were going to take you but some thought you weren’t worth much. Theon’s father was willing to offer his son too alongside his nephew. Thus, you both arrived at Winterfell at such a young age and expected horrors such as torture…. but, they treated you like sons

You were the son of Ara Greyjoy, the ‘beloved’ and youngest sister of Balon Greyjoy. Unfortunately, she passed away a few weeks after giving birth and Balon raises you as his own son. Well, at least with the same treatment he gave Theon

You and Theon are literally brothers. Always teasing one another and horse riding, talking about some pretty girl he laid his eyes on recently. Theon’s capture devastated you the most and you did everything in your power to get him back, but he never did. Yara claimed her brother was dead but you didn’t give up on him even though you were so close

Your Best Friend

Your best friend is Robb Stark — King of the North and the Young Wolf. The two of you actually make such a good pair. Both of you are just, rational and pragmatic, but also a bit reckless. While he wants to go hunting, you would want to stay home. Some wonder how the two of you became friends. The truth is that you both were willing to sacrifice your own needs multiple times.

HEAD CANONS

A part of you was alway envious of Robb. He was the perfect child for his parents and heir to one of the greatest kingdoms. He could ride horses better than you, run better than you and get more girls than you. But you could never hate him, no matter how much you tried

He would be so supportive of you and Sansa if he was alive. If he were to choose anyone for his sister, he would trust you the most above all. He knows you won’t hurt her and treat like the lady she is

Before everything went wrong, the two of you would lay wide awake and shit-talk the King, the Lannisters and literally everything. After a long day, it just feels good to let out every bad thing you thought that would get you in trouble, but you two trust one another

Rivalry

I think you would not get along with the Kingslayer — Jaime Lannister. I feel like it would first originate from what you heard of him. Perfect Jaime who is the heir of the Lannister house. And since you both grew up in houses that didn’t like one another, you both didn’t like one another either. Once you discovered he was the one who pushed Bran off the tower and hurt Ned Stark at King’s landing, this hate for him increased even more. He might have had a character arc, but to you, he is still a cocky bastard who hurt your family. Though, this hate slowly decreases and the years go on, a part of you will never settle right with him.

[knightofhylia]

Deck Review: Alleyman's Tarot

original blog post May 31 2022

Deck

This is the Alleyman’s Tarot by Publishing Goblin. First off, the person who made it is named Seven so like how can I not support this epitome of queerness? I got this deck on Kickstarter after it kept poking at me. Almost every time I opened facebook or instagram I would get an ad for it and I had another friend point it out to me. This deck took like 9 months to actually get here so this number has been on the back of my mind for a while. It is a 137+ tarot deck with cards from different decks. There’s a whole backstory and podcast about the ‘Alleyman’ which makes the deck very intricate. I got this deck (including box, bag, both chips, deck, and free booster) for like $50 so that’s a goddamn steal if I say so. I think they mentioned extras would be going for more like $80. It’s worth it, trust me. My one complaint is that the guide book has a page texture that I don’t like. It kinda squeaks but I’m going to rebind it in twine or yarn to remedy that. This deck Is BIG! The stack is about 2 inches high. Physically it is a deck that demands respect and I highly recommend taking a look at Publishing Goblin’s other stuff, they have board games and oracle decks in the works as well!

Booklet

Organization wise it has Major Arcana, Cups, Wands, Swords, and Coins. There are multiple of certain Major Arcana, such as 9 death cards, 3 towers, 2 devils etc. My fave death is Death (Dancing) because he is a funky little guy. The suits are standard, no doubles. Then there is the Strange Suit which is all the decks that had non RW suits like my fave 8 of tentacles, a card about jacking off! Ace of hounds is great as well as he looks like a lad. The Other Arcana is all the non RW Arcana like The Hole, the Joker, and my ultimate favourite card, Giusseppe. There’s also ‘Lost Cards’ which are the ones that are in booster packs. I think every deck got a free booster pack and I believe they will be selling those later as well ( ihopehopehope). There’s some reading spread suggestions and it’s a wild ride. There was a spread that involved adding coins, the deck also actively encourages trading tarot cards, which might be a fun project someday. It’s very cleverly done and laid out. Reading it is easy on mine eyeballs as well.

Spirit

I knew EXACTLY who it would be the moment I saw it. There’s only one bitch as thick and juicy as this deck. I have shied away from deity work because I was afraid of disappointment and I was a really bad believer for a while lol. This was my top dog deity Tmikh Hemy (she/they/he/it)! I was very excited to be ready to work with her. Without a doubt she is one of my most powerful decks. I put my hand in her bag and close my eyes and I can feel it up my arms and in my forehead.

Reading Style

Okay so she’s a funny one. She’s a deck that loves to be passed around. Everyone takes a chunk and passes on. She thrives on the different energies she gets. She learns from her readings like I do. She’s a cool mom and she’s hip with the kids! Since the deck is so big I read it three different ways: whole deck, chunking, or ‘which card fucks’ (official terms). Whole deck is a sad clown balloon act to shuffle so I generally chunk it. Usually I do a big shuffle and then I just grab parts of the deck and that’s what I’ll work with. If I grab a chunk and change questions I have to redo my chunks. Which card fucks is where I go through the whole deck and pick out cards that vibe to me during that time, or ‘fuck’. Her tone is very funny, she LOVES to be sassy. I kept joking about ‘what if I get all the death cards’ and sure enough every reading had at least one of the death cards. Each card means something so vastly different from each other that this really demands the time to sit and read over the guide a few times to really get it. She loves puns and language, so I look a lot into specific words or phrases she says. Even if I don’t get the metaphor I can understand what she’s getting at. Hemy is definitely a mystery, sometimes she tells me straight up shit like her house layout but I ask about something else and she’s not saying a word. I can tell because usually the card says something about secrets or giving up or makes no sense in the rest of the reading. A lot of ‘go figure it out yourself’. 

Suggested Readings

I would recommend her for any kind of reading, but her specialty is personal power. She’s the fire under your ass. She emphasizes on your personal changes first before your circumstances. If you want a soulmate, be ready to work on yourself. If you want abundance you better have room for it. I would love to do readings for people of various faiths with this deck!

[faintvibes]

Historical Hetalia Day Five: 1800 - 1945

Day 5: 1800 - 1945 // Shadows @historical-hetalia-week

When making this piece, I'd been having Thoughts about the potential relationship dynamics between Nyo!Prussia and Germany. Then I happened to stumble upon a glorious mess of a German dress, and this happened. My only regret is making Germany so damn young when (judging by canon, vaguely) he's prooooobably an adult at this point.

More of an explanation is under the cut!

Let's start with Prussia, since the idea for this piece only began to be truly conceptualised upon finding that goddamn dress. Here it is, by the way:

It's from the book "Ein Hauch von Eleganz: 200 Jahre Mode in Bremen" (A Breath of Elegance: 200 Years of Fashion in Bremen)- which appears to have been created on behalf of the Bremen Museum of Art and Cultural History (you'll have to forgive me if that's incorrect- my German is still a work in progress!)

The moment I laid eyes on this, I knew for a fact Prussia would wear this. The dress is tacky, bewildering, and absolutely delightful.

It's dated to 1885, so take that as a loose setting (beyond just '1800s') for this piece. However, the dress is likely the only sure piece of proof you'll find of this. For one, Prussia's hair (nevermind that it hasn't been styled) does not fit the fashionable cut of the time. Women tended to cut their hair short at the front, and then curl those bangs. However, I have a headcanon relating to N!Prussia's hair/general sense of identity (a very long story, that I'd rather save for its own post... maybe... someday... than shove in here!) that makes me think she'd not be so inclined as to cut it. While here, in the privacy of her residence, she doesn't bother to even style here hair- though this is likely a different case in public.

As for what she's doing? Probably preaching about her awesomeness!

At the time of making this, I'd just recently discovered a 3 part series focusing on Prussia's life (uploaded to Youtube by rano) originally from Bilibili (here's part one). I'd adored a fair few of the outfits throughout the series, but two of little Germany's stood out to me:

I'd asked my parents to vote on which one they liked better, and they picked the one you now see! Fun fact: in the video's rendition of the outfit, all those little specks on the vest are tiny patterns. Prussia's dress was enough for me y'all, no way was I gonna be able to draw those on too (｀Д´)

The background is inspired by this image of a room in Sanssouci Palace, built by Frederick the Great of Prussia:

I didn't want to overload the piece with red, so I changed up that colour- but the patterns below the bench Prussia and Germany are sat on are based on the patterns bordering the bottom of the walls.

And yeah! From here I'm pretty sure the explanations are going to be shorter than the first few days :) But thanks for reading, if you've made it this far! That's pretty cool of you

[casicroaks]

Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.

CHAPTER 7

[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]

NEW JERSEY, 1972

The egg sizzled loudly on the pan, almost as loud as the music on the radio. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, pushing the already white edges with the flipper so it didn’t spread over and stick to the frying bacon slabs, before taking a dish from the sink, giving it a quick rinse with hot water, and rubbing it dry with the dishcloth I had tied around my waist to improvise an apron.

“For five long years, I thought you were my man,” I hummed while watching the egg so it didn’t burn. “But I found out, I’m just a link in your chain…”

I turned off the stove, laid two slices of toast on the dish, and put the bacon and the fried egg on top. It would have made a great sandwich if we had some cheddar, but I had forgotten about it at the grocery store… Next time it would be. In the meantime, I added a generous dash of hot sauce on top to compensate for it, hoping the egg yolk was runny enough to give it the color it was needing.

I went into the living room with the dish on my hand, swaying my hips to the chorus. “You told me to leave you alone… My father said, ‘come on home’,” I sang along. “My doctor said ‘take it easy’, oh, but your loving is much too strong…”

Heath was still asleep on the couch, ashes on his chin, mouth wide open and drooling, in a posture that was probably not very comfortable. I gave his leg a little playful kick. He woke up suddenly, blinking and blinded by the sudden bright yellow light of the morning.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

He stretched and yawned, scratching his messy brown hair. I left the warm breakfast on the coffee table, kissed his cheek and sat on the floor next to the couch.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah…” he muttered, still kinda groggy. “How ‘bout you?”

“Like a log,” I smiled, hugging my knees. He looked so cute when he was sleepy.

Heath finally noticed the dish in front of him, and gave me a big half-grin. I giggled. He leaned down and kissed me, sweetly, lovingly, and I put my hands on his cheeks, trying to keep him close to me for as long as possible.

Several months had passed since that first kiss we had shared in his car. This was not the first time I stayed overnight at Heath’s place, nor the first time I had fixed breakfast for us. Maybe, apart from the kisses, out of everything that I had the luck to have ever since we became a couple, that was what I liked most: to feel right at home in his house, to work the kitchen as if it were mine, to wake up beside him as if we were already married. Even if some other things about being a girlfriend weren’t like I expected them to be, at least in that aspect I felt more than comfortable. In some other aspects, though…

By then, I had enough experience touching myself to know exactly what I liked, which did make things a lot easier. Besides, I knew Heath liked it when I put on a show for him. In a way, I had to admit, knowing I was the only thing in his mind, seeing myself reflected in his green-hazel eyes –it made it all worth it.

Still, actual sex with him, even as I got more used to it, had barely gotten any better. Most of the time I just felt numb and uneasy, especially when he got on top. Once, I burst out crying, and I didn’t know why (it never hurt that much for me to cry) and Heath kept asking me what was wrong, and I didn’t know, and he kept asking how could I not know, and I kept crying and crying, and he left the bedroom, and I was left alone a sobbing mess on the rumpled sheets, feeling completely unlovable. There was something wrong with me, it seemed. But I knew that, despite whatever I felt, Heath still liked it. When he touched me, even if I didn’t like it very much myself, it did feel like he loved me. So we kept doing it, and I made my best not to lose hope in that, someday, it wouldn’t feel as awkward anymore.

In the meantime, I could kiss him and talk with him and cook for us and stay over, and I never felt alone. I loved him, and he loved me. That was everything I could ask for.

Heath moved away from me, yawning again and rubbing his eyes. I smiled at him, humming the rest of the song, as he sat on the couch and picked up the fork.

“How did you pay all this?” he asked, going straight for the bacon.

“Don’t worry,” I said, resting my chin on his knee. “I used some of my poker money.”

“Oh, right.”

By then I had learned to choose my battles and lose from time to time when gambling, since otherwise I wouldn’t get anyone to play with me –especially when                                      most of Heath’s friends that I had beaten were convinced I was just really good at cheating. If I allowed others to think they stood a chance, I could bet higher sums of money, and they would be none the wiser. That was how my savings increased tenfold, all saved up in a thick roll in a sock that I kept in the spider jar in my bottom drawer for safekeeping.

“I counted it again, just to check Bri hasn’t taken anything… And you know what, Heath? I got quite a bit saved up already.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…” I said, twirling my pigtail. “So, I was thinking, maybe by mid-June we could start packing and properly plan our life in New York…”

Heath frowned. “Our what now?”

“New York!” I repeated with a big smile. “Remember when we talked about it? I’ll try out auditions to be an actress…”

“Ah, right,” he nodded. “I remember you saying you wanted to be an actress…”

“And you said you’d come with me,” I added. “You’ve always wanted to leave Hackensack, like me. Wasn’t your dream to go to New York, too?”

“Sure.”

Heath was so glum lately, he was no fun to be around anymore. I had to wonder if it was something I had done or said, especially since he seemed to be so happy around his friends during those weekly parties.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked him, and held onto his left arm. “Please don’t be mad at me…”

“Do I look mad?” he said. “At this point I thought you knew me, I don’t get mad… I just thought… See, it’s a whole thing, growing up. You know, so many of my friends were shipped off… And with dad sick, it’s like… Like everything’s falling apart somehow.”

I frowned. For me, nothing was falling apart. It seemed to me everything was coming into place.

“And I thought…” He gave a sigh. “You, of all people, might understand how that feels.”

“I do understand—”

“Do you, really?”

I looked away. I wished I could understand. I loved him, and wasn’t that enough? I spent all weekend at his place, every waking hour I wasn’t at home or at school with him. I cooked for us, I cleaned up for us… What more could he want from me?

But I didn’t want to argue. I never wanted to argue with him –I just wanted us to be happy, together, forever. We had been making plans. We had an idea of a future together. And I didn’t want to ruin it by my stupid complaining.

I stood up with a smile. “Hey, darling –you promised you’d teach me to drive shift gear before the end of the week,” I reminded him. “You think I could cash in on that promise now?”

“Sure…” he said, scratching his cheek. “Just gimme a minute, alright? I need a shave.”

I nodded, bouncing a little on the balls of my feet. Heath went into the bathroom with the beaded curtain, and I watched him as he quickly rubbed some water and white soap to get some foam, and spread it hastily over his face. He should have first warmed his face with hot water, I thought. Then again, it was his face, not mine, and I assumed he had done this before enough times to know what he was doing, even if it didn’t quite seem so. He ran the razor so carelessly against his cheek, I just knew he was gonna—

“Agh –dammit…” He had nicked himself. The tiny drop of blood bloomed and colored the white foam around the cut.

“You got to shave in the direction the hair grows,” I told him with a little snicker. “Not all the hair on your face grows the same way.”

He glanced back at me. “How do you know about shaving?”

“My dad explained it to me,” I said simply. Some years ago, he was shaving in the bathroom, and I was fascinated by how he moved the razor along his face, so close and so precisely, without getting a single wound. “His father was a barber. He was supposed to be a barber too, before he and his brothers were drafted to fight the Germans.”

Heath nodded and smiled in amusement. “Would you look at that.”

“Your hair in particular grows sideways and in swirls,” I added, going through the beaded curtain, moving closer to him and pointing to a spot just under his chin. “You need to keep the angle in mind when running the blade against your skin, otherwise you’ll just keep nicking yourself, or irritating the skin.”

“Aren’t you the specialist…” he said, lathering more soap on his cheeks to cover the bloodstain. “Say, would you do it for me? You’re clearly the professional here.”

It was no problem: I had a steady hand, and I took any chance I had to stay close to him. He sat on the toilet and handed me the razor. It was a silly thing, but I felt a little proud that he trusted me enough to let me bring a blade to his beautiful face.

“Roll me a blunt, will you?” he asked, pointing back at the living room. “Before you start.”

I nodded. I already knew where he kept the weed, somewhere where the rest of his friends wouldn’t find it. Another little perk of being his girlfriend.

“Do people drive around in New York?” I asked him, putting the joint in between my teeth, lighting it, and taking a quick hit before handing it to him. “I remember you telling me Dave told you that the traffic in the city is nightmarish…”

“Oof, yeah. I went there last month to help my father out with some dumb paperwork that needed to get done, and…” He snorted a laugh, shaking his shoulders, his eyes squinting from his wide smile. “You know, we needed to be at the office by two, but the streets were so bad we ended up arriving so late, around four—”

“Don’t laugh, sweetface,” I snickered. “Or I’ll end up giving you a matching cut on the other cheek.”

“Alright,” he said, biting his lips. Even with his face covered in soap, sitting on the toilet of his dimly lit, dirty little bathroom, Heath seemed to glow. “But yeah, it’s not easy…”

“’Cause I was wondering… I mean, I’m gonna try to get myself a job too, of course,” I continued. “But what are you gonna do?”

“In New York?”

“Of course that in New York, silly…”

“Something’ll pop up,” he shrugged. “Worst case scenario, I’ll get some gig waiting tables, I guess.”

“Hm… You think that’ll be enough to afford rent in a big city?” I asked him, hoping the worry in my voice wasn’t too obvious.

“Don’t you worry your little head about stuff like that,” he said. “And in any case, we can always come back here, where we still got the house, the auto shop—”

“When I leave with you, Heath, I’m not coming back,” I cut him off, pulling the razor away from his cheek for a moment. “I told you, I haven’t even told my parents about us, and I know they’d throw a fit if they knew we were planning to skip town together—”

“What’s the worst thing they would do if they knew?” he laughed again. “Spank you? Lock you up in your room? Forbid you from watching TV?”

I wiped the soap off the blade on my skirt. He was right, of course. It was stupid to worry about something as meaningless as my mom’s disappointment. Especially when it was something I should have already gotten used to a while ago.

“You put too much weight on what your mother says,” he commented.

“I know…”

“What does it matter what she thinks? It’s not like she owns you or anything,” he said, bringing the joint to his lips. “You’re your own person, not her shadow.”

“I know, I know, it’s just that… I just wish she could understand that I’m trying my best,” I said quietly. “Before Bri was born, I can remember a few times that my mom saw me crying, and that she made an effort to make me stop, beyond just telling me to cut it out. But after she got pregnant again, and after she had my sister… I don’t know, I guess she just became tired of hearing so much crying. Had no patience left in her,” I sighed. For a few years I’ve had this clear memory of her kneeling down and kissing my cheek, wet from tears. Then again, it could have been just a very vivid dream. I can’t even remember why I was weeping in the first place. “Now, if she sees me crying, she gets angry at me. She thinks I do it on purpose. As if I was trying to annoy her.”

Heath remained quiet. I wondered if he had been listening to me. Maybe I was being too chatty. But that was another wonderful thing about him: he never told me to shut up.

“… I don’t know. I guess she just thinks I’m already rotten to the core.”

Sometimes I wondered if my mom hated me, like I often wondered if I hated her. It could be that she just didn’t like having me around. It could be that she just grew tired of me. It might just be that I hadn’t done enough to earn her love.

Whatever the case, the only thing that was clear was that it had been like this for many years, and that I knew that neither me nor my mom would be changing any time soon. I let out another deep sigh. “You’re so lucky you don’t have a mom, Heath—”

Heath turned his head and stared at me. “Kid, you can’t just… Say stuff like that. That’s dark.”

“I –I’m sorry—”

“It’s alright, just… Don’t say that sort of stuff. Geez.”

I mumbled another apology under my breath. He took another drag, while I continued shaving him, running the razor as close to his skin as I could, softly turning my wrist to go through the curves of his face. I knew I could do it quicker, so I could have that driving lesson sooner; but I liked being there, under in the soft warm light, his soft angelic glow becoming fuzzy with the cloud of smoke.

“Um, Heath… Could you please not call me ‘kid’?” I asked him, once I was almost done. “I’d rather you just called me Tiffany… It feels like you think I’m dumb, or something.”

“It’s just a nickname.”

I kept silent, just staring at him, and turned my eyes down to look at my chipped nails, fidgeting with the razor.

“… Alright,” he said, with the smallest of smiles in his voice. “Tiffany it is.”

I smiled, too. “Thank you.” And I kissed him, getting some of the foamy soap on my chin and nose.

Six months had passed, of boring schooldays and great parties and staying over at Heath’s house. After a certain point I managed to balance being at home for dinner, at school for classes, and the rest of the time at Heath’s place. I was the happiest I had been my whole life. But still, there was this feeling that there was something missing… Like everything was picture-perfect, except for one lost piece of the puzzle. I couldn’t see what it was, or where it fit, but I just knew that somewhere there was a little hole, a flaw in what was so close to being heaven.

Just in case, I kept praying at my love altar. I wouldn’t even admit it to myself, but I was afraid, to some level, that as quickly as Heath had turned out to love me back, he might fall out of love with me too.

Sometimes, while I was lying in bed back at home, I liked to think that life could be like this forever. I was already getting used to him touching me, even though I still felt that weird disconnected sensation I couldn’t quite shake off. Heath had called me ‘frigid’ once, as a joke, and I had to pretend I knew what that meant and look it up as soon as I got home. It meant something like cold, like unresponsive. I wished I had known before, so I could deny it. I was never cold, after all. Each time he called me I came, I smiled at him and laughed at his jokes and loved him as much as I could, in the only ways I was familiar with. I was still pretty young. But in my mind time would pass and we would become wiser, and learn how to love each other properly, eventually. For the time being I froze without even understanding why, but someday, I would make Heath truly happy. I smiled and told myself it was proof of how much I loved him. I was willing to be patient and learn. If I didn’t love him, after all, I would have left already.

I tried to spend the weekends with Heath, too, especially since mom had decided that Bri was now old enough to help her around the house, allowing me to slink away and avoid doing the chores. There was this one weekend, though, not very long after Heath’s dad finally died and he was even gloomier than usual, in which mom was sick with something –so the responsibility to make lunch and dinner and do the cleaning fell on me. At least, when I took care of things at Heath’s home, he would smile at me and give me a kiss at the end of the day.

Mom had told me that Bri and I should watch less TV, and that we should play outside or find something else to do with our free time. Obviously, I was far too old to play with my little sister, so in the end I convinced her to help me bake almond cookies. I couldn’t even remember how old I was when my mother taught me the recipe, but I had done it a few times already, and since I was leaving for New York soon, I thought it would be good for Bri to learn how to make them, too. She was too distracted munching on toasted almonds while I was not looking at her, or sucking her fingers to dip them in the powdered sugar jar to lick them off. I told her off many times, but I had to keep in mind that I used to do the same, back when I was her age.

After leaving the dough to rest for a few minutes, Bri and I went out to our badly-kept backyard, hanging the wet clothes on the clothesline. I glanced, out of the corner of my eye, the pink bunny Bri was still allowed to sleep with, hanging from the cord by its ears, and took another drag of my cigarette.

“You smoke a lot,” Bri said.

I scoffed. “You don’t even see me much apart from home.”

Bri stared down at her little dangling legs. “… Can I try?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re just a kid.”

“You’re just a kid, too.”

“No, I’m a grown up,” I insisted. “At least, I’m more of a grown up than you.”

Bri pouted… And then she shrugged. “Okay, I didn’t even really want to try it anyways. It probably tastes bad. And I’ve heard that it’s bad for you.”

“Yeah, that’s probably about right.”

“If it’s bad for you, then why do you do it?”

“Because grownups can choose to do things that are bad for them.”

“Huh… When will I be a grown up?”

I gave her a long hard look. Finally, after a moment, I sighed and handed the cigarette to her. She smiled smugly, and took a drag. She immediately coughed and hacked so loudly I feared I had killed her, and that mom would then find out and kill me.

“I thought I’d taste better—”

“Well, now you know,” I said, grabbing the cigarette before she dropped it.

“Why do you smoke that, then?” she asked, still coughing.

“You grow to like it,” I said. “It’s like with everything. After a while you get used to it.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’ll get it when you’re older,” I told her.

We couldn’t watch TV, and we couldn’t turn on the radio either because mom had a headache… I really wanted to go to Heath’s place, but with our mother bedridden, I couldn’t leave Bri unattended, no matter how much I wanted to. I even considered taking her along with me, before realizing how stupid of an idea it was. She was already a whole snitch, and I didn’t want to give her more material for her to tell mom –especially when I had decided to stop spending money on candy to bribe her with, being more preoccupied with saving my bucks for when I left for New York.

Time passed by, and soon it was around four. Mom liked to have red tea, which was a whole issue since dad never had tea, only nasty burnt-smelling coffee, and that meant mom had to prepare her own kettle and also dad’s coffee pot every morning, which if she did not time properly could mess up the entire morning, leading to another argument between the two about how he would be late for work at the office and about how she was the first one to wake up in the house and that he should be able to iron his own shirts by now. My parents argued a lot less, now; I used to harbor the hope that it was because they were falling in love again, and that they would start being nicer to one another. But, after a while, I think it was just because dad arrived later than usual, and when mom began arguing with him, he just ignored her. Still, that was better than having to bear their yelling at each other late into the night.

“Too much lard,” she remarked, putting a cookie down after giving it a taste. I had brought her a tray with her tea, so my mother had at least something to eat. She hadn’t had breakfast, nor lunch. All she did that day was stay in the darkness of her bedroom, in a thick fog of herbal cigarette smoke. “At least you remembered to toast the almonds first.”

That was as close as she would get to a genuine compliment. I forced a smile, and reached for a cookie –but she moved the dish away from me.

“Don’t,” she said firmly. “You’ll ruin your appetite.”

I had made them myself from scratch; I thought I deserved to have one, at least. Never mind, I told myself. I’d pocket two while she slept. Bri herself was probably already gorging herself with the almond cookies, even if they burned her tongue, even if she knew she’d get a stomachache later.

“Did you make your bed?”

“Yes, mom.”

“And hung the clothes to dry?”

I nodded. She frowned.

“Use your words, Tiffany, you’re not mute.”

“Yes, mom.”

She pressed her temples with the tip of her fingers, letting out the quietest, most dignified groan. I thought of all the times I had told my mother I felt sick, too sick to go to school, and she had scoffed it off and told me I was exaggerating, or lying, or was just being lazy.

“Mom… How did you and dad meet?”

Mom shot me a look that was somewhere in between exhaustion and annoyance.

“Well, then… How did he propose to you?” I insisted.

“Why do you need to know?”

I shrugged. “I just… I think it’d be nice to know.”

“Make up a version of it in your head,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “It would be the same as the real thing.”

“Are you angry?”

She let out a deep sigh and had a sip of her tea. “No, Tiffany. I’m just feeling awful. Have a little sympathy.”

I almost apologized. I didn’t, though. I had nothing to apologize for.

“Why did you marry him?”

Mom huffed, putting the teacup down. “Why do you think?”

“… Because you loved him?”

“Sure,” she muttered between gritted teeth. “What’s with all these questions?”

Ever since his father had died, Heath was more detached than ever before. When he kissed me, it was almost out of obligation. It reminded me far too much of the cold cheek kisses my parents exchanged before he left for work.

“Just wondering,” I shrugged again.

“Is there a boy in school bothering you?”

I scoffed. There certainly were, even if they didn’t quite dare to annoy me right on my face. “I… I might be in love.” Me and my mother, we barely ever about this stuff. Now that she was stuck in bed, though, I thought this could be the best chance I would have to get her thoughts on a few things. She was the only person I knew who was married, after all. She surely had some wisdom to pass onto me. “How do you know when you’re in love?”

Mom took a moment to think. “… I’d say you feel it, in your gut. It’s like heaven, and also like you’re being turned inside out.”

“Does love truly last forever?” I asked, leaning forward, quite surprised that she had decided to answer me in the first place. “Like in the songs?”

“If you love someone forever, then it does,” she replied, making a dismissive gesture with her hand.

I thought of that Ronettes song I liked so much, and hummed it to myself, remembering the lyrics. ‘Wonder if he’ll love me forever, and ever…’ I could do that. I loved Heath enough for the both of us. Sometimes, when I looked at him smiling, eating, sleeping, smoking, talking, dancing, it felt as if my heart was gonna burst. I loved him so much, forever might just not be enough.

“As much as it can hurt… Love’s supposed to set you free,” she said thoughtfully, in a puff of smoke. “I know it set me free.”

“Free from what?”

She didn’t reply.

“Did you and Brittany have lunch?”

I nodded, before remembering her previous comment. “Yes. I made sandwiches, and set the chicken out to defrost on the sink, so I can prepare it with some rice for dinner.”

She nodded and sighed, holding her head. “Did Brittany brush her teeth after breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“Did she help you with the laundry?”

“Yes,” I said, and smiled to myself. “She saw me smoking, and asked if she could have a smoke, too.”

Mom turned to look at me, her thinly plucked eyebrows raised high. “Oh?”

“She hated it,” I snickered. “She almost threw up.”

Mom laughed quietly. “Your sister can be really clueless sometimes.”

“Right?”

We both laughed with our mouths closed; I saw the tiniest sliver of wet teeth from between my mother’s lips. I didn’t see her smiling very often, but when she did, it really reminded of how I looked myself, when practicing my smiles in the mirror. We were so much alike.

I grinned, thinking of Heath without me that afternoon, asking around whether they had seen me, growing more and more desperate to know where I was. Maybe it was a bit mean of me, not telling him I was not going to be there that evening; then again, maybe it was better to not become too dependent on the other. After all, Heath could manage to fix himself dinner for once.

Next Friday, like most Fridays, I took the bus to the mall; that was when it was most crowded and it was the most fun to people-watch. Usually, I went to the record store first of all and listened to what was new, so I could at least know what Heath’s more music-savvy friends were talking about. After that I had an ice cream, so I wasn’t just wandering around empty-handed while window-shopping. When I was done with it, I would go into a couple of fashion stores, pick everything I liked, and spend an hour or so in the changing room, trying it all, imagining the sort of events I would wear these outfits to. An elegant sundress, to an audition on Broadway; a flower-patterned skirt and blouse set, for a picnic date in Central Park; jeans and a printed top, for a dinner and a movie in the heart of Manhattan, by Heath’s side. These stores tended to give out cheaply-printed, complimentary catalogues that I could take home and use as references to modify the ugly dresses my mother made for me, to make them more fashionable and flattering.

Obviously, I always considered taking something from those stores, the kind of clothes or makeup I couldn’t just replicate for free. A few of Heath’s friends would show off the items they shoplifted, either by being chummy with the security, knowing where they could get away with it, or just by being really good at swiping. Once I asked them to teach me: they told me to start with little things, tubes of lipstick or mascara, which were easy to hide in my bra or my panties, before I eventually moved on to actual garments, which would need for me to bring a coat or a bag to stash them in, which would be a lot more suspicious. Following their advice, I soon got pretty good at smuggling small makeup cases out of stores and into my bedroom drawers. Ever since I began doing it, I could stop worrying about mom finding me stealing her own makeup, which was a real relief.

I did, eventually, get caught once. It was the last time I would go to that particular mall, in the end: I wised up and realized how dumb it had been of me to think they wouldn’t notice anything weird about me passing by every Friday, buying nothing, and then seeing they had a few things missing from their inventory. I did always take only makeup, and in small amount, with just one exception. Only when I got too confident –that was when I got caught.

Really, it was all because, one day, I was at Heath’s place, helping him clean up, since he was still very bummed out by his old man’s death. He was smoking in the living room, like always, watching TV, while I sorted out which clothes of his needed to be washed, and what just needed to be folded up and put in its place. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’, I told him, like my mother had told me once before. It couldn’t hurt to try. Besides, there was no more food in the house, not even eggs, and he didn’t seem to hear me when I asked him for money for groceries, so finding some loose change in some jeans’ pockets would have been nice too. Picking up old worn socks off the floor, looking for their pairs, I stretched my hand under his bed, grimacing a bit at the amount of dirt and dust that had gathered there. My fingers touched something unusual –it felt like papers, like books. For some reason I assumed it was his old textbooks, from back when he went to school, and wondered to myself if he also used to doodle on the edge of the pages like I did. I took out those papers –but it wasn’t school stuff, they were just porn magazines. I sighed, noticing how dusty my hands were now, and leafed through the pages, hoping to find some dollars hidden between the photos of tits and asses. My attention was caught by one of the girls, though: she had short black hair, eyes narrowed and half closed in pleasure, her lips barely parted in something that was almost a smile. She was stunning. There was a black background behind her that made her skin seem milky white, almost glowing. And she wore (yes, she was wearing something) a lingerie set, lacy and tight-fitting and bright red, which made the red of her mouth and flushed cheeks pop out even more. I spent a while staring at the picture, I’m not sure how long. The noise of gunshots coming from the TV snapped me back to reality, and only then I realized how worn that magazine was, even though it was the newest one in the stash. Heath must have thought that woman was perfect in some way. And then, it dawned on me. More than tidying up his room, what would make him truly happy again was to be with someone like that girl –beautiful, and perfect.

I took off my dress and, angling myself to fit into the little mirror on the wall beside his bed, I made my best to copy the girl’s position and expression. My hair was far too long, but that was just a detail, easy to ignore. What wasn’t so easy to ignore was my dull, basic white underwear, compared to that red set that made her look even more striking. I put my dress back on and thought about my options. I knew my mother didn’t have anything even remotely similar to that, and sewing something like lingerie myself was out of the question. My best choice, I decided, was to take it from the mall. After all, since it was such a small amount of fabric, it had to be easy to hide, right?

Not really. Apparently other girls had thought the same as I did, because a security guard caught me trying to stuff a bright-red bra, the closest one I could find to that of the picture, under my blouse. I had hoped I could have put it on at a changing room, but the lingerie store didn’t have one; so, I had to improvise. And I chose a really bad time to do it.

 The guard grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me out of the store, through the crowded halls of the mall, and into the small dirty office of the security team. It was like being at the principal’s all over again. I was told to sit in a chair in front of a desk, and expected to tell my version of the story, which would be promptly ignored. A man with a thick moustache asked my name and my parents’. I refused. He kept insisting, but I wouldn’t budge. After what felt like hours, he finally left the office, to be replaced with a younger, probably more patient guard who would take it from where the other left off.

“Listen, this is clearly your first incident…” he said, sighing down at the paper he was staring. “I think we can let you go this time. You just have to promise you’ll never do this again. Got it?”

I held one hand up in an oath, and the other behind my back, crossing my fingers. “I swear. Cross my heart, hope to die.”

“Good,” he said with a little smile. He shot a glance to his wristwatch. “Alright, considering it’s almost eight o’clock, you should probably be on your way.”

I nodded enthusiastically in relief, already about to stand up and leave.

“Though… Listen, you should at least allow us to escort you home. It’s late, and you’re clearly a minor.”

“I’m certainly not,” I frowned.

“Really?” he asked, leaning back on his chair. “What year were you born?”

“It’s not polite to ask a lady her age.”

“I’m not asking your age, just your year.”

I thought about it for a moment, before realizing that thinking about it for too long made me look even more guilty. “Nineteen… Forty… Five.”

He laughed out loud. “You’re twenty-seven?”

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “I know, everyone says I look young for my age.”

He laughed again.

“I’m perfectly able to take the bus!” I insisted.

“Well, a young woman shouldn’t go out so late on her own,” he pointed out. “Are you close to home?”

I wasn’t. I mean, I wasn’t that far away, but the mall was definitely not in any way close to my neighborhood. Besides, the bus stop was a good few miles away from the mall itself, so I would have to walk quite a bit regardless. And who knew how long the bus would take to arrive?

“… Alright,” I grumbled. “I guess you can take me home.”

He smiled and stood up, opening the door for me to leave the office along with him. We got into the car in silence. I told him the general area in which I lived, taking care to not be too specific, and he didn’t ask any further questions, just drove quietly.

“You can leave me just around the corner,” I said once we were close enough. “I can walk from here.”

He slowed down, but didn’t park. I pushed the door to open it –but it was still locked.

“I think you should tell me the address,” he said gently. “So I can drop you there.”

“No, I think you should drop me here.”

“How far are we from your place?” he asked, glancing around the street.

“What’s it to you!?” I said, raising my voice, losing my patience. “Let me out!”

“Just tell me where it is—”

“Fuck you!”

I tried to unlock the doors, but he grabbed my hand –and I threw a punch to his face –he managed to dodge it, just barely, and grabbed my arm even harder. I let out a little cry and pushed my head against him, as hard as I could, and I got to shove him towards the steering wheel and hit his elbow against the car horn, making quite the racket. He groaned and tried to restrain me. I bit his arm, sinking my teeth as deep as I could through his shirtsleeve. It was difficult to move in that tiny car, but I still squirmed and writhed and yelled and screamed as much as I could.

Some neighbors heard the noise, and came out into the street. None got too close, they just stayed by their porch in their pajamas, watching what little they could see through the windshield.

Finally I got to slam my fist against the lock, and stumbled out of the car. A few neighbors went back inside, a couple blinked at me but did nothing else. I rushed through the street, still feeling the strain on my jaw from trying to bite down. Behind me I heard the steps of the security officer’s heavy regulation shoes.

“Hey –stop!”

I got running. And just then, about to cover my face with my arm, embarrassed by the unblinking stare of the neighbors, I saw my mother standing on the sidewalk, curlers in her hair, wrapping herself in her faux-silk nightrobe.

“Tiffany?”

I stopped right on my tracks. The security officer got me and grabbed my arms behind my back. I screamed and went back to writhing and pushing back, but it was too late now. Mom hurried towards us while the neighbors went back inside, surely to watch everything from the anonymity of their windows.

“What on Earth—!?”

“Are you her mother, ma’am?” the officer asked her.

“… Yes, I am.”

“Your daughter was caught shoplifting at the mall, ma’am,” he said. I winced and whined, hanging my head, avoiding my mother’s glare.

“What?”

“She was trying to steal a set of underwear.”

“Mom, I didn’t—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Tiffany.”

I grit my teeth, holding back all the words I wanted to hurl at her. She turned back to the officer.

“Thank you, mister. I’ll take it from here.”

“Have a good night, ma’am.”

And with that he left, and my mother dragged me back into the house.

“… What are you even wearing, Tiffany?”

Only then I realized I was still wearing the top Janey had lent me, one of the few I got to take home and hide in my backpack to wear at school, and to put back out when I had to come back from Heath’s to be home for dinner.

“I cannot believe you really went out dressed like that,” she said in a hiss, finally letting go of my arm, looking at me up and down. “Where on Earth did you get those clothes?”

“My friends lent them to me—”

“You’re clearly hanging with the wrong crowd, then.”

“Mom, please, I got nothing to wear—!”

“Oh, that’s bullshit, Tiffany, and you know that!” she said, raising her voice. “I got you blouses and skirts that actually fit you—”

“But they’re all dull and ugly, mom!” I replied. “All the girls at school have these beautiful blouses and dresses and necklaces and jackets, and I’m the only one who wears these old things!”

“You are so thankless.”

That was it –her usual argument. I was thankless. I was clueless, I was demanding, I was thankless. Wasn’t it her fault, though, that I turned out the way I did?

“I have devoted my entire life to you. To raising you, to feeding you, to dressing you, to keeping you well and healthy,” she continued ranting. “And this is how you thank me? Stealing underwear, of all things? Dressing like a damn floozy, like a cheap slut? Do you want boys to see you as trash? Do you want to be treated like trash, Tiffany?”

“No, of course not—”

“Then why do you do this!? What possible reason could you have to do such a thing!?” she yelled. “Are you so desperate for attention, you’d stoop this low? Have you no goddamn self-respect!?”

My cheeks were burning. “Well… I feel like you don’t pay attention to me.”

“So you admit that is what you’re doing. That all this charade is your own desperate little plea for attention.”

“Well –if you actually loved me, then I might not be doing this… This ‘charade’, or whatever you call it— “

“Who says I don’t love you!?” she cried. “I love you, Tiffany Valentine! You are my own flesh and blood! You are my daughter! And I will love you, no matter how much it hurts me, until my last dying breath! But I expect an ounce of respect in turn! You owe me that same love I give to you!”

I didn’t say nothing to this. It made me angry, to realize how right she was. I was furious at her, and I wanted to call her a cunt and a bitch and a shitty, cruel mother, but I knew that, if I was in her place, I would feel the same. I looked down at the clothes I was wearing, at the little folding of my belly. My mother clothed and fed me. She worried about me. She did love me, and I was stupid for even suggesting she didn’t. And I was ungrateful… But would it kill her to be kinder? A little more patient?

“You are so lucky. You have food on your table, and a roof over your head, and your own allowance…” she said. Mom would only bring out this speech of hers about her own childhood when she was especially angry at me. She knew it made me uncomfortable to hear it. “I had to share bread crumbs with my brothers, I had to work since I was twelve, I had to bear my mother’s bad temper… You have a wonderful life. But you just have to go on, wanting more. You just have to find ways to ruin yourself and your own future.”

My mother began sobbing very quietly. Her eyes became glassy and red, to match the rest of her head.

“I… I worked so hard when I was your age. I did my best at school, I worked my fingers to the bone, and I bore the brunt of everyone around me. I learned to fend for myself. I made myself strong,” she said with a trembling voice. “But then, then I was pregnant with you. And I gave it all up on the spot. I gave up everything I had built for myself, to devote myself to your father –and to you and your sister.”

I knew all that. I knew my mom had it tough growing up. I knew she wished she had it as easy as I had it. I knew she loved me, even if I often forgot. It was hard to remember when it felt like all I did was something she could never be happy with.

“I love you, Tiffany. I really do…” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “… But you make it so hard on me sometimes.”

“It doesn’t seem like you love me, mom,” I replied. I knew she did. I really did. I just wanted her to show it…

She seemed offended. And I guess she was. And, once again, I felt a part of me wanting to apologize, and another part wanting to tell her to fuck off.

“I have loved you your entire life, because you’re my daughter,” she stated coldly. “Because it is my job to love you, as your mother. Just because it doesn’t look like it does on TV doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Those were her last words on the matter. She glared at me in silence, until I finally hung my head and left to change in my bedroom. After I got in my pajamas, though, and came back clean-faced and barefoot to the dark, empty kitchen, I realized that I was not going to have dinner that night.

Next morning, mom surprised me and Bri by waking us up even earlier than usual, hurrying us to gobble down our breakfasts, and walking us to school. Bri kept bitching about being tired and her feet hurting, begging mom to give her a piggyback ride. Mom, surprisingly, just ignored her. When Bri changed her complaints to demand to know why we weren’t taking the school bus, mom simply said:

“I want to make sure you both get to school on time.”

Which was, obviously, just an excuse. What she really wanted was to watch me and stop me from skipping class. If she didn’t have stuff to do back home, washing the breakfast dishes and fixing dinner and changing the sheets and buying groceries, I was sure she would have stayed by the school gates like a guardian dog.

Back at school, where I had to spend far too many hours of the day locked up in a crowded classroom full of noisy kids and where the teachers’ jabbering became a monotone hum, I really felt like I was bored to the point of torture. My grades had been in freefall for a while now, but that added to the fact that, it seemed, the only solution my teachers and my parents could see was to keep complaining about my lack of effort and yelling about how I was set on ruining my own future, I really had no solution to it. No class could hold my interest for long. Everything was just a constant exercise on apathy. There was a point in which, for every test, I basically flipped a coin on any possible answers. At least, though, I wasn’t called to the principal’s office again. The school was full of deadbeats like me, and I guess they preferred to focus on the whiz kids and the teachers’ pets than wasting time with those that they had given up on.

I think it’s clear now why I was waiting so anxiously for the end of the school day, so I could rush to Heath’s house.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if nothing had changed for me after deciding to keep going to class for fear of expulsion. Not long after I became Heath’s girlfriend, he passed by to pick me up after school so he could take me for a drive. He didn’t do that often, because he had work to do at the auto shop, of course, but still, the few times he did it was an absolute delight to see his beautiful face, his sweet smile, as he leaned against his blue Falcon and waited for me after grueling hours of having to sit still in a stuffy classroom. First time he did, though, it was just as Peggy Buckman and her toadies came out of the school as well, and they saw me kissing Heath and climbing into the passenger’s seat of his car. I still remember their awestruck gaping faces as they stared at us, as Heath revved the car up and drove us away from them. I might have been jealous of Peggy Buckman and her public makeout sessions at some point –she had been the first one of any of us to have a boyfriend –but now it was their turn to be jealous. What was a dumbass like Johnny Curtis worth anyway, compared to a dreamboat like my Heath?

The day after they saw me leaving with him, Peggy, Amy and Lisa officially accepted me in their friend group. I had thought that day would never come. Of course, I knew that if they hadn’t seen me kissing Heath, they would have never even given me the time of day, but I didn’t care. At least I had friends, now. Or so I told myself.

Being friends with Peggy, Amy and Lisa wasn’t the field day I had expected. None of them liked each other very much, and most of what they did was gossip and brag. Me, I didn’t care about the boring lives of our classmates, and I could only brag about Heath and his parties; I didn’t have holidays in Hawaii or a brand-new dress for Christmas. Amy in particular (no doubt because of the nose incident) was always trying to bring me down with side-eyes and snide comments. Lisa was the nicest of the three: she also had an interest in baking and an annoying little sister –two of them, actually. Despite our shared interests, though, we never got to being real friends. At least, not in a way I could recognize as friendship. Maybe they wouldn’t agree, but I did see Janey and a few other girls that went to Heath’s house parties as my friends: true, they were a couple years older than me, and sometimes they treated me in such a way that made it clear that they saw me as a kid… But more often than not, I knew that they liked having me around. I wasn’t sure of that with Lisa, and I was certain I was not liked by Peggy and Amy. At first, I assumed it was just because Peggy and Amy would talk shit about me to Lisa, but as time went on, I had to believe that it wasn’t them –it was me. Lisa was friends with other girls from the class, the sort of girls who didn’t even talk to me, who when I tried to approach them just avoided me. Peggy, Amy and Lisa, at least, were interested in knowing all I had to share about kissing boys, about dancing and dressing and styling our hair like the cool older girls, about what music was in and what was out; these other girls at school, they just thought I was some weirdo.

I thought of what Heath had told me, about me being a handful. Was I too much? I tried being quieter, a little nicer, a little kinder to my classmates. To put myself out there, so to say. It didn’t come easy, especially when I knew that I had quite a reputation already. Tiffany Valentine, the crazy bitch that punched Amy McNab at a garden party. The crazy bitch that kicked Kelly Johnson behind the school. So what if I lost my temper now and again? That didn’t mean I couldn’t be nice and kind.

After the time that Peggy had gotten me to accept her dare, suddenly I wasn’t untouchable anymore. People actually looked my way, they paid attention to me –but not in the way I wanted –not like back at Heath’s place, where I felt seen and appreciated. Here, back at school, it was as if whatever I had done or seemed to be to them before had shifted. People were no longer afraid of me. Did I seem vulnerable, out of a sudden? Was it because I had run away, back then? Did they see a sliver of fear to latch onto? Whatever the case, I missed it when I was feared. At least then they wouldn’t dare to be cruel to me.

Still, I made my best effort at being nice and kind. It hadn’t worked at helping me make any new friends, though.

“Is it true you sucked Darry Cade off?” Lisa asked me at the school’s bathroom, where we stayed every morning for a little while before we had to get to class.

“What?”

“I just found out… Is it true?” she insisted, staring at me through the mirror, leaning forward and lowering her voice, as if it was some terrible secret.

“Of course not,” I frowned. “I’m with Heath.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like he would know,” Peggy said, fixing her mascara. Unlike me, Peggy, Lisa and Amy were allowed to buy makeup and to wear it to school. I still had to do mine in the bathroom before class, and wash it off at Heath’s place before getting home –otherwise I risked getting yelled at, and spending another night with an empty stomach. “Right?”

“I don’t care about that,” I said while putting on my lipstick. “Where the hell did you hear that from?” I asked, turning back to look at Lisa.

“My brother said that Cade’s been bragging about it all week. He overheard him from behind the bleachers.”

I closed my hand into a fist, but told myself that I was trying to be nice. Nice girls don’t go around punching people, no matter how much they deserve a good punching.

“Your brother shouldn’t believe all the shit he hears.”

“It’s not particularly hard to believe, though,” Amy said, shooting me a brief glance, with a smirk on the edge of her lips. “Of all the boys in the class, Cade’s obviously your type.”

I grimaced. That wasn’t a compliment. Darry Cade was a known menace: even the teachers were afraid of him. Last year, he was almost expelled from school for good after he set a desk on fire. It had taken his parents paying for the expense and promising they would get special therapy for their son for the school to allow them to keep Darry enrolled. I had a feeling Darry had found a way to avoid going to those therapy sessions, though. If I was pretty friendless, he was probably the least liked boy in the whole school. Even some other bullies, like Peggy, had a bunch of supposed friends to follow them around. Darry was alone. All he could really do was beat up the younger kids, since he knew that he hadn’t a chance looking for trouble with boys bigger and stronger than he was.

But, despite everything, I saw Darry fidgeting in class like I did, scribbling on the pages of his paper-bag bound notebook like I did. If he didn’t feel like pretending to pay attention, he didn’t. He knew he was not going to save his grades from dipping further, so he just did what he felt like doing. I had to respect that. I had to admire his guts. It still bothered me, though, that Amy could see how clearly I related to a loser like Darry Cade.

“He’s not my type, at all,” I replied.

“You don’t fool me, Tiffany. If you weren’t dating that burnout hunk, I’d have bet good money you’d end up with Cade.”

I scoffed. “You’re just pissed because Gary didn’t want to dance with you at your birthday party.”

Peggy and Lisa smiled wide and went ‘ooh!’, and I laughed. Amy just glared at me and pretended she didn’t hear me, now angrily brushing her hair hard over and over. I kept on chuckling, fixing my lipstick, wiping the excess with the tip of my finger. Peggy in particular (since neither Lisa nor Amy had boyfriends yet, though not by a lack of trying) was extremely interested in whatever I could share with her on the topic of boys. She had been in an on-and-off relationship with Johnny Curtis for years now, and they always argued, made up, and broke up again.

“Don’t worry about it so much,” Lisa told Amy. “Boys are all jerks. You’re better off waiting for a decent guy than giving the wrong one any attention.”

“That would be assuming any decent guy’d have any interest in you,” Peggy said with a snicker. I grinned.

“Maybe Gary will get your hints,” I continued, raising my eyebrows with a shrug. “Once you manage to learn how to cover all those splotches you got on your face during your last summer in Hawaii. Don’t you think?”

Peggy stifled a laugh. “Yeah, Amy. You’d probably have better luck with Gary if you’d ask your mom to buy you something to get your skin from acting up. It’s getting really out of hand.”

“But don’t worry,” I smiled. “I can teach you how to apply some foundation. You’d have to get the big jar, though.”

Amy glared at me again, rubbing her cheek. She was the one of us who had gotten the real short stick of the teen acne experience. I was really glad mine wasn’t half as bad as hers.

Biology class was done, finally, and I got to the back of the school, to the shadowed area beside the trashcans of the kitchen, where I could have a moment to be by myself. I knew I should have been with my new friends. I could be on my own at any time. Regardless, as much as I had wanted to have a friend group of my own, I needed some time away from them every once in a while.

My little smoking break was cut short by Johnny Curtis, of all people, approaching me. How did he even know I was there? If the back of the school was the secret area where the cool kids gathered, the hidden section beside the trashcans was the part nobody would even bother to consider a hanging out spot. Amy had said that there were rats there, and she had seen a junkie there once, hiding from the cops, but that last thing sounded kind of unlikely. With all of Hackensack to explore, why would a junkie even think of nesting behind an elementary school?

“Hey, Valentine,” Johnny said, raising his chin, his hands firmly stuck in the pockets of his blue tailored pants.

I huffed. “What do you want?”

“As nice as always,” he grinned. I huffed again.

“As if you were the nicest,” I grumbled. “As if you’d say hello to me out of sheer kindness.”

“Can’t really be kind to someone known to be the bitch of the class.”

I glared at him. For a moment I considered giving him a well-deserved slap, but I thought it over. Not only was he taller and stronger than me, he was a lot higher on the social ladder than I was. “I’m the friend of your girlfriend,” I said. “Doesn’t that make me at least a little deserving of some respect?”

Johnny laughed. “Are you her friend, really? I thought you were just her little project.”

I closed my hand in a fist, but reminded myself that it could end up worse for me than for him. For a lack of swift payback, I had to content myself by thinking of his face hitting the pavement and my saddle shoe stomping on it, over and over, until I could calm down.

“Alright, I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, pulling some bucks out of his pocket and counting them. “Bobby and Gary told me you take twenty for a hand job—”

“What!?”

“And Peggy, you know, she’s super hot, but she’s kind of a prude,” he continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. “She wants to keep it all over the clothes, and it’s not fun anymore. And besides…” He grinned again, staring at me up and down. I felt sick. “She’s something, but you’re something else.”

I was absolutely amazed by even thinking that I could have found Johnny Curtis handsome at some point. Being tall and blonde didn’t begin to make up for the piece of shit he had turned out to be. “Whatever Bobby and Gary told you, that’s a goddamn lie.”

“Why’re you so shy out of a sudden? Everyone knows you’re the school slut—”

“Fuck off,” I said, shoving him to the side and stomping away.

“Alright –ten, just to see your tits, okay?” he insisted, following me and waving two bills, now almost pleading. “Come on, I know for a fact you did that, Peggy told me so.”

My cheeks were burning red. Who the hell did he think I was? Even worse, I considered bartering. After all, ten bucks was not nothing, and if it just meant I had to lift my dress for a couple seconds… But I decided against it. Who the fuck did he think I was, a damn whore?

“I said fuck off!”

Johnny grabbed me from behind and pulled me back into the shadow. “Hey—”

“Get off me, you asshole!”

“Just for a minute—!”

“Eat shit!”

Johnny’s hand suddenly clutched my left tit. I saw red. I tried to elbow him but he was stronger than me, and despite my thrashing and yelling he, pressing his chin on my neck to get a good look down at me, managed to slip his other hand under my dress—

The side of his head was just inches from my own face. I didn’t have to think about it –it came naturally –the only way I could see of breaking free. I opened my mouth and bit down on the soft tender flesh of his ear, and it was Johnny’s turn to scream, but he still didn’t let go. I didn’t give him enough time to even consider it. Biting down even harder, feeling my own lower jaw through the thin gristle, I pulled and ripped a good chunk of his ear off with one quick jerk of my neck. He screamed louder and, finally, let go.

Johnny raised his hand to the right side of his head, screeching and howling like a madman and opening his eyes wide. Soon thin lines of blood were dripping from between his fingers, as he pressed them against what was left of his ear. I stared at it, wanting to see but too startled to even ask, before I remembered I had a piece of someone else’s meat in between my teeth. I spat it out. The ear fell with a splat! on the concrete floor. I gazed at it, then back at Johnny, and licked my lips. Johnny was trembling now, too shaken to keep screaming, staring down at the ear I had torn off him. I wiped the blood off my mouth with the back of my hand, remembering too late that I had probably smeared my lipstick too.

“Don’t you fucking mess with me again,” I managed to blurt out.

I felt powerful again. Hopefully that little stunt would shut up the boys for a good while.

To hell with classes. I wasn’t gonna stay around to have Peggy cursing me out for flirting with her boyfriend, like I knew that fucker would try to spin it. I headed home instead, knowing that mom was out buying groceries that afternoon, and I went straight into the bathroom and got the water running. To get the little bit of blood that had splattered on the front of my dress, I figured the best I could do was to wash it along with myself in the tub. Mom had taught me how to rub out period stains, with soap and a handful of baking soda, for when the monthly curse was too heavy for a quick rinse. First time I had gotten my period, two years ago, while I was touching myself and thinking of Heath, I had noticed it hurt a bit –but I didn’t give it a second thought. When I saw blood on the water, though, I became terrified. Nobody had told me that this could happen. At first I thought I might have hurt myself, digging my fingers in an open wound, as I had been tearing at my own flesh. I spent a while trying to hold back sobs of panic, and wondering whether I should tell my mother or not, while the bathwater grew cold. I finally did, and she had to calm me down and tell me that it was normal, and that I just needed to clean myself up better next time. I was almost sure that Bri hadn’t been there when mom gave me the whole speech. I wondered when it would be her turn, and whether I could get away with telling her that she was rotting from the inside, like I thought I was.

I got into the bathtub and scrubbed my face first, to take all the makeup off. I hadn’t gotten a look at myself in the mirror, so I didn’t know whether or not the blood had dripped to my neck. I wondered if anyone had seen me with blood on my mouth and asked themselves what had happened, if I was alright. Dipping the little bit of fabric of the dress in the water wasn’t gonna cut it. The blood had dried already. Mom might ask, if she saw the dress all drenched at hanging from the clothesline, if I had gotten it dirty with oil or something at the school cafeteria –though I didn’t think she cared that much anymore about what I did with my clothes, at least not half as much as she cared about which clothes I chose to wear.

Thinking of my mother at the grocery store, though, I had an idea. Maybe, after my botched attempt at getting some pretty lingerie to wear for him, it was the next best thing to cheer up my grieving, recently orphaned boyfriend. Heath’s next house party was that Thursday, and I wanted to make something easy to eat, something good with few ingredients that filled the stomachs of a big bunch of hungry people, but that didn’t make too much of a mess.

“He’s the kind of guy that you give your everything, and trust your heart, share all of your love, til death do you part… …” I sang to myself, quietly, wandering through the aisles of the supermarket that Thursday afternoon after school, thinking about what I could prepare for that night’s party at his place. “I wanna be what he wants, when he wants it, and whenever he needs it…”

Lamb skewers was the way to go. By that point I had gotten really good at cooking, even in Heath’s tiny kitchen.

It was still early when I got to Heath’s; only another friend of his had arrived, and they were chatting in the auto shop, so in the meantime I got started with the meal. Firstly, I needed to clean the grill, which was really dirty and clearly hadn’t been used in a long while. Once it was good enough to cook in, I lit a little fire and fanned and blew on it until I was sore; and then I remembered that I had to soak the wooden skewers on water, or otherwise they’d catch fire too. While the fire was crackling and the skewers were soaking, I sliced the meat I had bought with the only knife in the kitchen, a dull and kinda rusty old thing that was as good as a wooden spoon; still, I managed. And, when the fire was ready, I got the skewers ready and put them on top of the grill, and mixed the cumin and chili powder with a fork in a little jar I found in a cabinet. The meat cooked slowly, but it was alright: meanwhile, Heath’s friends arrived and passed by the yard, wanting to see what I was preparing. I was very focused, though, in my task. I couldn’t let it burn, and besides, it had to be seasoned at the right time. I had to wait till it was seared, and then sprinkle the cumin and the chili on top, and then watch it for a little while more till it was ready.

By the time I piled the lamb skewers on the largest dish I could find and made my way to the living room, a crowd had already settled and a dense cloud of smoke was growing bigger and bigger. A couple of Heath’s friends hurried to me and began devouring the meat hungrily, messily, getting spice and grease all over their mouths and noses. I wanted to find a place to set the plate, but everywhere I looked there was someone sitting on, or had a half-empty can of beer. I stayed by the doorway, holding the plate, bopping my head to the music and wondering where Heath was.

“Hey, kid,” Janey greeted me with a tired smile, suddenly appearing by my side.

“Oh –hi…!” I replied, smiling back, until I saw the baby she was carrying. The baby looked at me, and I smiled wider. “… And hello to you too!”

I had heard about Janey having baby, though a lot of the girls would sometimes say stuff that they knew wasn’t true, just for the hell of it. But when a girl shows up with a baby, the safest assumption is that it’s hers. I just knew that the rest of the girls talked about it like she was already dead. And, quite honestly, it felt like it: Janey barely showed up to Heath’s parties. There was a reason, then, for marriage before sex. An actual reason, beyond your run-of-the-will sin and damnation and whatnot.

“What’s their name?”

“Bobby,” she said, bouncing the baby. Just hearing the name made me think of Bobby Farrell and Gary Lamotta and Johnny Curtis and all their damn dirty lies. “Like Jeff’s older brother.”

“Jeff’s the father?” I asked, a bit surprised, trying to focus on the conversation. I knew Janey and him used to date, but it had been a while ago –back when Jeff was still in Jersey.

“Yeah… I’m getting worried, y’know,” she admitted. “He hasn’t written back in so long… I sent him a little picture of Bobby, but I haven’t even heard of him.”

I could barely remember Jeff’s face. He wasn’t very attractive, nor particularly smart or funny. God knew what Janey saw in him. “Have you asked his parents?”

“I’ve tried… But they’re still refusing to talk to me! I don’t ask for anything, I just want to know if they have any news on him…”

I nodded, hopefully sympathetically. My dad insisted on listening to all news about the war during dinner, despite mom’s complaining. Nobody that he knew, as far as I knew, had been recruited. Still he tuned in every night, as if it was his favorite show. I wondered if he wanted to know the death count; after all, he had lost quite a few brothers back during his time as a soldier. I wondered if Jeff might be dead already, lying in some jungle in Vietnam. I wondered if Janey had considered that possibility.

“… I wish I didn’t have to bring Bobby, but… I don’t have anywhere to leave him, and my parents… It’s a whole deal,” she sighed. Indeed, Janey looked pretty damn tired. “I really need a smoke.”

“I don’t have one… Want to switch, though?” I asked her with a little shrug, offering her the plate of lamb skewers. She chuckled and, while she grabbed the dish, I held Bobby for a moment, bouncing him like Janey had done.

And Janey was hungry: she immediately got to gobbling down one of the skewers, smacking her lips and clicking her tongue. “Ah, it’s spicy… Hey, it seems like Bobby likes you!” Janey said with a smile. Bobby turned to his mother, then to me, and laughed a big toothless grin.

“He’s such a cutie,” I said, giving him a kiss on his chubby cheek.

“You know, nobody wants to talk to me anymore, now that I got Bobby to take care of,” she said with her mouth full. “And the few girls that do are always telling me how tired and sad I look… But I’m not sad! I’m just… It’s just that things are hard, you know?”

I nodded. Bobby imitated me, nodding while shoving his fat little baby hand in his drooly mouth.

“You see, kid…” Janey quickly took a cigarette out of her jean pocket and put it between her greasy lips, and, balancing the plate in one hand, lit her cigarette with a little lighter she had hidden in her other fist. “You see, you just can’t trust a guy… You can’t trust a guy unless he’s committed. Commitment, it’s not just a pretty word. ‘Cause guys see a chance to dip and they always take it, no matter how much you think they might love you.”

She kept smoking with a bitter expression on her face, biting down on the filter, looking away. I had noticed she had been eyeing Pete lately, but giving her situation, I didn’t think she would really dare to make a move.

Someone put on a new record, and a new song started. It wasn’t my favorite Aretha Franklin album, but it had a couple of really good songs. And I’m not usually the biggest fan of slow ballads, but there was something about her voice that was so tender and loving, it made me feel all warm inside. It was like the choir songs at church. It was hopeful, and majestic, all the while it was like it talked to you and you alone…

“To make you laugh, I would be a fool for you… Although the people turn and stare, I really don’t care…”

“I know I can trust Heath,” I said with a smile, turning to Bobby, moving him as if he was dancing along to the music with me. “He loves me so much, it’s almost funny… We’ve already been discussing leaving Jersey, moving to New York… We’re just waiting until he has enough money saved so we can start a new life there, together.”

Janey stared at me with wide open eyes. There was a moment of silence –and she burst out laughing, so loud that a couple people glanced at us with a puzzled look, and even Bobby was so confused he started to cry out.

“Oh –sorry, baby… Come, come here,” she said, and she handed me back the dish, and held her son again, bouncing him again, a bit faster this time. It didn’t seem to change a thing. “It’s alright, baby, it’s alright…”

“What’s so funny?” I asked her. I could feel the heat of where she had held the dish.

“It’s just that… Kid, don’t you know?” she chuckled. “Look, I love Heath, but he’s… Well, he’s a player!”

I frowned. “A player of what?”

“A serial romancer. A libertine, a bed-hopper, a rolling stone,” she insisted, trying her hardest to stop herself from grinning. “A whoremonger… Tiffany, please, he’s been with almost all the girls in the room, including me! Don’t you know?”

I blinked. “What?”

“We dated last year, before I got with Jeff… Just a month or so, but—”

“What? No…”

Janey sighed and reached out to touch my hair. “I’m sorry, kid, but I thought you knew… It’s public knowledge—”

I moved away from her hand. Baby Bobby began crying again. I didn’t want to talk to Janey anymore. There had to be somewhere I could leave the plate, I thought, looking around, when actually what I wanted was to find Heath, and smile at him and offer him what I had cooked for him, and for him to give me a kiss…

There, next to the turntable, beyond the crowd that danced and smoked, were Heath and Dee, dancing slow and close to each other. He was saying something into her ear.

“Oh me, oh my, I am a fool for ya, baby… Oh me, oh my, you know that I’m crazy, baby, yes you do—”

I walked towards them, and called his name, but I guess he couldn’t hear me, since he was standing so close to the music. I was about to call him again, louder, when I saw it happen. He put his hand on her back to pull her closer and she smiled, looking up at him like I did, closing her eyes like I did, circling his back with her arm while holding a cigarette between her fingers just like I did, and they kissed…

It was as if something broke inside me. My heart, maybe, but it felt higher –like something in my throat –like a bad taste that lingered in the bottom of my tongue. I was in shock for a couple seconds, but soon enough I found my voice, and I ran to him and yelled, I screamed and cried and cried and cried… Some girl grabbed me and tried to pull me away, but I thrashed and elbowed myself free and continued pummeling Heath as best as I could. He was taller and stronger, though, and I barely managed to hurt him, if at all, no matter how much I tried… He held my wrists and shook me to make me stop, and I was finally so heartbroken (then I really felt it, like a hole in my chest, something ripping and being pulled apart like a growing tear in my dress), and it all felt so senseless, that I just fell to my knees and cried my eyes out. I felt like such a child, in the middle of those cooler kids, whimpering and weeping like a damn baby. But how else could I react? Even when he was distant and cold, when he didn’t seem to want to talk to anybody, Heath still welcomed me with a smile and a kiss. How was I even supposed to know that he could be so unfaithful?

“I hate you!” I managed to blubber, at the top of my lungs, my eyes all blurry from the tears. “I fucking hate you!”

And with those last words I ran away from Heath’s place, stumbling and sobbing my way out of the house, out of the garage and into the street, all the way back to my home.

I’m not an idiot. I knew that sometimes people cheated on their partners. Of course I knew that, even if I still did not know whether my father was really cheating on my mother or not. I watched TV, I went to the movies from time to time, I read those little novels Janey lent me. I knew it was something that could happen; I just thought it would never happen to us. After all, Heath and I were so in love, it still seemed impossible to me that he could ever want anyone else.

I had one of those romance novels on my bedside table right then, ‘Secrets of an Accidental Duchess’, by Jennifer Haymore. I picked it up and desperately leafed through it, trying to find the scene in which the Duke admitted his wrongdoings to the wife he had married through an arrangement done by way of a bet with his crummy friends. How had the Duchess solved her own infidelity problem? I skimmed through the paragraphs till I found the conversation I was looking for.

The Duchess simply forgave him, kissed him, and declared she would always love him. I groaned and tossed the book out the window.

Ever since I began dating Heath, in my efforts to be more mature and to show myself that I wasn’t like bratty little Bri anymore, I had sworn off my toys and left my teddy bear and my few dolls on the shelf. But now, though, with how lonely I felt… What else could I do? I stood on my toes and managed to pull my teddy down. He wasn’t too dusty, all things considered. Definitely not enough to stop me from snuggling him, rubbing my tear-stained face against his soft belly, and hiding from the world with him under my bedsheets. I didn’t care about anything anymore. If the day of reckoning came right then and there, I couldn’t give less of a shit. All I wanted was to be left alone.

Obviously, I just had to think about how much I wanted to be alone for Bri to show up.

“Tiffy?”

“Go away, weirdo…” I whined, covering myself further with my sheets before she could see me hugging my teddy bear.

“It’s my room, too,” she replied.

I heard Bri walking up to me, her naked feet pitter-pattering on the wooden boards of the floor, and felt the mattress sinking when she sat on it next to me. I was too tired from crying to kick her off the bed. We remained silent for a few minutes.

“… What the hell do you want?” I finally asked her.

“You’re crying… I just thought you could use some company,” she said. I heard her, muffled but clearly, from the other side of the sheet. “When mom’s sad, she wants me to stay by her side.”

I blinked. I definitely didn’t know that. “Why’s mom sad?”

Bri hesitated before answering. “… I think she’s just a bit tired sometimes. Between managing the household money and the expenses, and doing all the chores, and with the things people say to her—”

I pulled the sheet away to look directly at my sister. “What do people say to her?”

Bri rubbed her nose and looked away. “Um… Things, I don’t know. Well… Really, she doesn’t want me to repeat them. She made me swear on it. But people sometimes call her things on the street, at the store… Have you never noticed?”

It had been a while since I had gone grocery shopping with her. Bri was the one mom was now dragging along with her, anyways.

“Is she sad because of dad?” I asked her, sitting on my bed.

“I don’t know,” Bri shrugged. “She doesn’t like talking about him. She doesn’t like answering my questions.”

I scoffed. I knew that much.

“Mom and dad aren’t gonna split, are they?” she asked, looking up at me.

“No… I don’t think so,” I replied. “After all, what would even happen to us if they split?”

“That’s what I was wondering…”

“Like mom said… ‘He’s the one who keeps the lights on.’”

Bri nodded. I kept staring at her. She was so much prettier than me, pretty enough not to need to wear any makeup. It just wasn’t fair. Then again, life was just not fair. That night had ended up confirming what I had always known.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you, Bri?”

“No, not yet.”

“Good. Don’t have one,” I sniffed, wiping my runny nose. “Being in love is so difficult… So much more difficult than I thought. And it hurts so much… I didn’t even know it could hurt.”

There was a silence. Quietly, slowly, Bri leaned her head against my shoulder. I allowed it.

“I wish it didn’t hurt,” she muttered.

The next days were spent in a miserable daze. I didn’t want to eat at all, skipping breakfast and lunch, until I felt my stomach growling and rumbling and pushing me to raid the fridge for the previous day’s leftovers. When I passed by Heath’s auto shop I walked faster, forcing me to keep my eyes on the ground, just in case he was out and about and I was forced to look at him or, God forbid, actually talk to him. I thought about him almost all day, and when I managed to turn my thoughts elsewhere, it was only to how pathetic I was and how nobody would ever love me.

I had to wonder, was it because I wasn’t fully there during sex? Did I not love him like he wanted me to? Did he end up replacing me with Dee because, in some way, she had something I did not have and that he was needing? I was told I looked mature for my age, and I believed it. Looking the part was not enough.

Apart from just wanting to be left alone in my misery, I had to finally accept that I really had no true friends. Janey and the other girls at Heath’s parties were a world away, once I avoided going to his place. And I couldn’t tell Peggy, Amy and Lisa about what happened; I knew none of them would extend a sympathetic arm to me. At best they’d tell me they were sorry and then change the subject; at worst, they’d ask why he cheated on me, and how I didn’t see the warning signs before. It was as if living underwater, with my head sinking lower and lower in the bathtub water. Words became mangled, and everything looked deformed and strange. Dad still came back from work every day to listen to the news on the radio, and mom prepared breakfast and dinner and washed the sink and chopped the vegetables and watched that the rice didn’t burn, and Bri babbled on and on about her day at school and how she did in her exams, and what her friends were up to, as if I wasn’t coming apart and having to excuse myself from the dinner table to run to the bathroom and cry my heart out. In the end, Bri, despite being bullied by Kelly Johnson, still had good friends. Still had good grades. She was probably the best version of herself. She was even gonna be the better version of me. When she became fourteen like me, she’d get some wonderful boyfriend who’d think she was sweet, and beautiful, and heaven-sent, and he’d never even think of cheating on her. She’d be mom and dad’s pride. She’d graduate top of the class, be homecoming queen, and her life would go on as it was expected of her. She’d marry, and have a lovely house, and lovely children. I could see it all so clearly, it was as if it had already happened. Now, if I thought about my own future, I could only see a blur.

“I’d also love to do nothing but stay in bed all day,” mom huffed every morning, before pulling me out of my room. “You’re not sick, you’re not dying, so you better get going or you’ll miss the bus.”

I hadn’t realized til Bri mentioned it, but it was true that mom was getting tired more frequently, now often complaining she had had ‘an awful day’, like dad would say when he came home from work, to avoid any requests or even to get us to shut up when we were, in her words, ‘making too much damn noise’. Even if Bri hadn’t mentioned it to me, I would have ended up realizing it, though. Mom never told Bri to shut up –she only ever told me.

“God, Tiffany –dour much?” Peggy asked me at the school bathroom, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Hey –Earth to Valentine! Are you even here?”

“Yeah, I’m here…”

Now that Heath had cheated on me, Peggy’s constant fawning over her boyfriend was unbearable. I knew that if she had a botched nose surgery like Amy McNab, or if she didn’t have her long soft blonde hair and pretty blue doe eyes, nobody would give a shit about her. It seemed Johnny hadn’t told her about his little stunt at the back of the school, and by what I could make out he had been telling everyone he had been mugged on his way back home and that he had been cut his ear off for refusing to hand over his allowance. I don’t know who really believed it, but everyone in class had decided to not question his story.

Weekend came around. Just one week, but it had felt like ten years had passed me by, and now I had turned sad old woman, religiously looking away when I passed by the auto shop. I realized I could not keep on like this, crying myself to sleep and thinking of everything I should have done instead. My mother was getting sick of my whiny exaggerated dramatics, my few friends were growing tired of me stumbling around like a zombie, and it really did feel like I was swinging violently between pure numbness and brutal emotion. I couldn’t go on like that.

I had to face the issue head on. I had to go to the house and talk to him. I couldn’t really expect for him to show up at my porch with a flower bouquet and asking me to forgive him. No, I had to be the bigger person.

“Heath?” I called.

The door was open, like always. I walked in. The place was a mess, even more of a mess than usual. There were empty bottles everywhere, even some broken glass. The turntable was still spinning a record that had ended a while ago. I turned it off. I thought of turning the radio on, at least to fill that unnerving silence, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.

“Heath?”

What I was even doing there? I hated myself for it. Why did I still love him, when he clearly didn’t give a damn about me? Why did I decide to hurt myself like that? I guess I just couldn’t help myself. Maybe I just felt too much, I was still too in love with him to simply be able to forget and move on.

I finally found him hidden away in the overgrown backyard, surrounded by the lush greenery, lying on a folding chair, with a joint almost completely burnt out between his fingers. I almost thought he was asleep. His gorgeous green eyes were staring at nothing.

“Hey, Heath…”

Startled, Heath turned to look up at me, and gave me a half-smile. “Hey, kid… Tiffany,” he corrected himself. “Long time no see.”

“Just a week or so,” I said with a little shrug. His comment echoed in my mind. Did he mean that this week felt longer? Did he really feel my absence? Did he miss me? I hoped so. I hoped he felt as lonely as I did without him.

“We were wondering where you’d gone.”

I kept quiet. Maybe I was just exaggerating, like mom said. Surely Heath still loved me. You can’t go so long spending so much time with someone without having some affection for them. Even if it wasn’t enough to keep him from cheating, I knew that he had to love me, at least a little bit. Besides, if my parents could still stay together even after mom had the strong suspicions dad had been unfaithful, surely, I could do the same –as shameful as it was.

“How’ve you been?” I asked him, fidgeting with my nails.

“Good, good…” he said, absentmindedly, dragging his words. “Finally finished the paperwork of… You know, the whole—”

“Your father’s death?”

Heath pursed his lips. He seemed like he was feeling sick. “Yeah.”

There was a silence. I waited for him to apologize, or to at least acknowledge that he had kissed Dee at the last party, in front of everyone, in front of me. I was not going to bring it up –Heath had to know that was why I was angry. Then again, he probably knew I didn’t care enough about it so as to not come back to him.

He stood up and went back inside. I followed. It was as if he was an astronaut who had just landed back to Earth. My very own space cadet. I giggled quietly, watching him curse and kick the bottles on his way to the bathroom. He had a piss while I waited patiently outside the beaded curtain.

“Dee told me that I look kinda scruffy with this stubble… What d’you think?” he asked out loud at his own reflection in the little cracked mirror. “I mean, I don’t really give a damn, but… I don’t know. I don’t want to end up looking like Santa Claus here, you know.”

“I think I like you better without stubble,” I said. “You look much more handsome that way.”

Heath turned around and looked at me as if he had just then fully realized I was there. “Hm. Yeah, Dee was right.”

I swallowed my annoyance at him mentioning her name twice already. Regardless, I told myself that it was because of me that he had made the choice. He took another deep drag of his joint, grabbing the straight razor and the can with shaving soap from the bassinet and coming out to the back of the house to sit on the folding chair. I followed him again, wondering why he didn’t stay in the bathroom to do it. He dipped his hand in the can and was about to slather it on his cheeks, when he stopped, blinked a few times, and snickered.

“Shit, I’m too high… Can you do it for me, Tiffany?” he said, handing me the razor and the can with a slippery hand. “Thanks.”

I picked some of the soap with my left hand and carefully slathered it on his chin, his jaw, his cheeks… He really was the most handsome man I had ever met. I gave him a quick kiss and looked at him in the eyes before bringing out the razor, wondering if he ever wanted to kiss me back. If he would ever look at me with as much love as I looked at him. But there didn’t seem to be anything behind those eyes.

He was not going to apologize. For a second I considered breaking up with him. I could do that, right? The relationship wasn’t instantly destroyed just because one cheated on the other. We could still fix it… But maybe he was just trying to prepare me for the inevitable breakup. In that case, wouldn’t it be better if I did it myself, just to save myself the heartbreak? Heath knew me so well. He knew what would hurt me the most. If he got angry at last, if he got mad at me…

“Hey, Heath… I, uh, I was thinking…” He kept quiet. Maybe he was too far off to listen to anything I was saying… But I told myself I had to talk about this with him, and it was better I did it sooner than later. “We’ve been together for, like, almost ten months now, right?”

Heath frowned at this, a confirmation he was actually listening. “Huh. That’s a good bit more than what I thought…”

“Time flies, right?” I chuckled. “So, well, I was thinking… Heath, sweetface, you must know that I love you.”

Heath looked up at me and gave me another half-smile. I smiled too. A half-smile was better than none.

“And so, I wondered… I mean, I know you might end up messing around with other girls from time to time,” I continued. “And –I promise, I don’t mind… But I think it’s very telling that I know you’d always come back to me.”

“Well, yeah. You’re a gas, Tiffany,” he said. “And you cook like the gods.”

I giggled again, flattered. “Yes, well… But do you love me?”

Heath took a deep breath. “Do we really need to talk about it now?”

I wiped the razor against my skirt. “When, if not now? I just want to know how you feel about me.”

“Listen, Tiffany, you’re alright,” he said with a chuckle, patting my leg. “You’re a great kid. But you got this crazy imagination… What does it matter, how I feel about you?”

“It matters,” I frowned. “It matters a lot to me.”

“Yeah… Well, I don’t know, Tiffany. I mean, it’s not like we’re gonna get married or anything. We’re just messing around. Just having fun.”

I took a moment to process his words. “Just having fun?”

“Yeah. So, like… Don’t expect a commitment from me, or anything,” he said, tensing his jaw, squirming in the chair. “I thought that much was obvious. I really don’t know where you got the idea that this was anything more.”

“… Oh…”

Heath smiled a bit wider. “It’s fine. Just… Keep your expectations realistic, you know?”

I forced a smile and nodded. But I could feel the anger boiling up.

“… I see what you mean,” I told him, I told myself. “I-I mean, I clearly… I clearly made this whole thing up in my head that you never even thought about—”

He brought the joint to his lips and took a drag. He didn’t seem to be listening to me anymore, if he had ever listened to me in the first place.

“… But you’re right,” I said, now fully to myself, trying to convince myself of it. “Got to keep my expectations realistic. Otherwise…”

Heath blew a cloud of smoke. It remained over our heads for a moment, in which it looked just like the clouds in the sky, before swirling and vanishing in thin air.

“… Otherwise, I guess I’m just setting myself up for disappointment.”

The blade moved smoothly from his chin to just under his ear. I thought of how many times I had kissed him there, kissed his whole face, practically begging for him to kiss me back. Always hungry for it. And he, he had become fickle with his affection. Sometimes he grabbed me and held me so tight I felt we could never be apart. Other times, it felt like he was a world away. I held the razor very still against his skin. Was that normal? That distance we felt? Was that something we could ever overcome?

Would he ever love me like I loved him?

I grit my teeth. Clearly not. We were just having fun. Just messing around. I was the crazy one, imagining things.

I turned the blade of the razor inwards, slightly askew, just enough to begin to cut. I think he was high enough that he didn’t even feel it at first. Watching closely, I moved my wrist as if it were a paintbrush, drawing a red line from under his ear down to where his Adam’s apple was. Somewhere in the middle of this Heath opened his eyes wide, now feeling it, as the first drops of blood trickled down. I was still going quite delicately, barely scratching his tanned skin. Heath gave two quick, small, nervous breaths as he realized, before opening his mouth –ruining my drawing –and let out a brief scream—

That I cut short by sinking the razor in the middle of his throat, with the kind of blunt force I had used for Peggy Buckman and Kelly Johnson and Johnny Curtis –only that this time I was armed. And it was a completely different feel, to have such an effective little tool in my hand.

After cutting deep, he couldn’t utter a sound. His gorgeous green-hazel eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. His mouth remained open but silent. When I pushed the razor just a little bit deeper the blood began gushing out, soaking the razor, soaking my hand. I hadn’t seen so much fresh oozing blood like this before. It was thicker and warmer than what I could have expected, much more different than that of a nosebleed or a fallen baby tooth. This felt like the real deal. The sort of stuff that kept bodies moving.

Heath made a funny gurgling sound while I pulled the razor carefully out of his throat and went on up to continue the line, curving now back up to finish under the other ear. The more he tried to say something, the more blood came out. I giggled, quite impressed with myself, as I took a step back to admire it all. His hands were trembling and shaking. His legs convulsed and his hips moved like he was trying to get himself off the folding chair. But he couldn’t move any further than that. Blood kept pouring down his white tank top, down, down to his belt buckle.

All the while I still held the razor up in my hand. The blood dripped down my arm as well. Fascinating as Heath’s death was, I found myself turning to the razor, to this ordinary thing I had handled so many times before and which now had helped me kill a man. I was in awe, really. And probably more than a bit shocked at myself. I turned the razor around, watching the few silver spots where it wasn’t blood-soaked, reflecting the midday sun. In the light, clinging to the metal, the deep red stains looked like gems, like stunning expensive rubies. Blood went down to my elbows now. I gave thanks for having worn a short-sleeve blouse that day.

And then Heath stopped moving. His body went limp. His arms finally hung lifeless from the sides of the folding chair, his legs stretched in front of him, his head turned slightly to the side. His eyes were wide open. I remember thinking that was weird. For some reason I always thought people closed their eyes before dying.

My heart was beating so quickly, I could feel it pounding in my throat, trying to slip out of my body. I took a deep breath and exhaled. That felt good. Like I had gotten something off my chest. Something stronger than relief –a feeling of freedom. I had loved Heath, but now that he was dead, that I had killed him –I was free from the weight of that love. I had set us both free.

But most of all, I felt like this made me realize that, after all, this might not be true love. I had felt enamored by him… And yet, as Heath’s body kept bleeding out in the folding chair, his green eyes staring blindly at me, I felt none of that love. He was still handsome as hell, that was undeniable. But I felt no grief, not anymore. No pity at all. Only the typical fascination of watching fresh roadkill. It was as if he wasn’t the man I had been madly, hopelessly in love with for the last few years.

Well… He wasn’t. Not anymore.

Alright, I’ll admit it. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t actually make my first kill till I was fourteen…

But I think I did a pretty good job, all things considered.

No cops came to my house wanting to interrogate me about what I was doing that morning. Life went on as usual. The days after Heath’s murder, I was half expecting to feel bad for not having him with me anymore. I didn’t feel bad at all, though; I felt better than ever. Happier, for once. Free, like mom had said love would make me feel. Nobody knew what had happened, but I did, and suddenly I didn’t feel like everyone else’s chew toy.

Most importantly, I knew now that, despite being the family’s disappointment, I could do anything I wanted. There was nothing standing in my way. If I wanted, I could run away to New York myself, without Heath, and start anew. I could be anyone I wanted to be.

Once the idea had settled in my mind, I gave it a lot of thought, between my daily daydreams during class. It was entirely possible: I had my poker money, and I could take the bus. There was the possibility of stealing dad’s car, but that would be too much of a hassle. Back at home, smoking a cigarette while soaking in the bathtub, I mentally went over how much food I would need for a week, more or less the time I assumed it would take me to get settled in the city, find a place to stay and a job to work. I could manage, I was used to skipping dinner every once in a while. Swirling my hand around the floating strands of black hair, smiling wide before dipping my head under the water, I thought: I could really do it.

So I began planning. I was anxious to just leave already, but I had to plan it properly. I should take a bus during the night, so the next day my parents could assume I just had left earlier to stay at a friend’s house, the excuse I had blurted before when I spent the night at Heath’s. Besides, if I arrived early at New York, that meant I had more hours in the day to find a good place to sleep, a hotel or something. Apart from all these practical thoughts, though, I returned to my old fantasies of visiting the famous tourist spots of the Big Apple: Broadway and its shining lights, the fairytale forest that was Central Park, the Empire State Building and the ferry going to the Statue of Liberty, Little Italy and Chinatown… All of those places, I would be visiting alone. But I’d find someone, I reassured myself. There were so many people in New York, I’d find someone who would truly understand me, someone who could love me like Heath could not.

And, beyond all of these happy thoughts that put a goofy little smile in my lips while I dozed off at school and at the kitchen table, I always came back to the feeling of exhilarated triumph I got from pulling the blade from under Heath’s head. I remembered the warmth of his body and of the blood, the way it gushed as if it had been wanting so hard to be released from his veins, how his body shook and jerked as he died. I had shivers just thinking about it.

A couple days after killing Heath, deep in these thoughts, on my way back home from school after having a little ice cream treat and watching the toy store’s display one last time, before I kissed Hackensack goodbye, Darry called me and took me out of my fantasies.

“Hey, Tiffany!”

I turned around, even when I knew that I should just ignore him. He walked up to me, all badly chopped hair, dirty t-shirt and hand-me-down pants. It was a sunny day, and he had to shield his eyes with his hand, blinking and squinting to get a good look at me.

“Wanna see something cool?” he asked.

I looked at him up and down. “I don’t think your dick’s part of that category.”

He laughed. “No, I mean something really cool.”

Goddammit, I thought, my curiosity was piqued. I sighed and, with my hand inside my backpack and grabbing a pencil, ready to stab Darry in the neck with it if he tried anything, I followed him. We walked through the old stores and familiar sights in silence, passing by neighbors’ homes, barking dogs and children playing on the street, until we arrived to the area of abandoned houses, a little meadow of reclaimed nature in the middle of a sleepy Jersey suburb. I was surprised to know that Darry even knew of the place. All the times I’ve been there, I had never seen another living soul: maybe a squirrel, maybe a rat; a couple times, a few younger children trying to play ball in a forgotten spot that didn’t allow anything but exploration and shelter. Never another kid my age. I picked a couple wildflowers as I walked a few feet behind him, eyeing different sized and shaped rocks in our path in case I needed to bust Darry’s head open, in case he knew something he shouldn’t. I was nervous and anxious to leave Hackensack: the last thing I needed was another Johnny Curtis-like incident, or a surprise witness that could try to blackmail me into keeping his mouth shut.

But in the end it was nothing of the sort. We stopped at what used to be the front yard of a smaller house, its windows all smashed, pieces of debris all scattered around and covered in leaves of the wild overgrown trees. He grinned a crooked-toothed smile and pointed at a furry little thing in the ground.

“A raccoon?”

“Yeah,” he said, grabbing a broken branch and poking its eye like he wanted to squeeze it out of its head. “It’s been dead for three days or so.”

I gave it a little kick to roll it over back on its belly. A bunch of ants crawled out from under its back, a few of them still clinging to its pelt. I turned my head to the side. Just out of curiosity, I raised my foot and leaned it against the raccoon’s squishy body. I pressed down, slowly, until there was a soft crack! of the bones, and it began to leak some sort of weird juice, not quite red enough to be blood. I looked up at Darry, curious about what his reaction would be. He kept staring at it, with an unreadable expression. I stepped away and wiped the sole of my saddle shoe against a tree trunk. He crouched and kept poking at the mangled body of the raccoon, now turning the guts that were peeking out of its swollen torso.

I sat on a piece of rubble, smoking my cigarette, wondering how Darry had even come across the raccoon. I wondered if he had killed it himself. Now that it laid all squelched like a bug, I had no way of properly figuring out how it had died.

“You got a light?” he asked me.

I shot him an unimpressed glance. “I’d expect you, of all people, to have a light.”

“Huh?”

“You know… The desk on fire incident?”

“Oh.”

Darry said nothing to this. I sighed, and lit his cigarette.

“Um… You were dating Heath Shepard, right?”

I froze, my pulse racing.

“Did you hear about his suicide?” he continued.

How does one pretend to be surprised? Should I cry? Should I pretend I didn’t believe him? “… How did you find out?” I asked him.

“My older brother used to be friends with him. I’ve always wanted to go to his house parties… That was before my brother was drafted, of course,” he said with a little chuckle. “… Was Heath as cool as he seemed?”

“He was sweet… But he wasn’t that great.”

Darry frowned, clearly disappointed. It wasn’t as if it mattered much. He was already dead anyway.

“I’m gonna run away from home,” I declared, rather stupidly. “Heath and I, we were gonna live together in New York.”

“Really? You’re gonna leave anyway, even without him?”

There was a chance for me to say I was just joking, and stop from going ahead and just spilling all this information to this random boy from my school. Still, I nodded.

Darry raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Huh. You’re pretty ballsy… To dare and go on your own.”

I smiled proudly and blew some smoke. “I know.”

He nodded, taking a drag of his cigarette. I looked away, avoiding his gaze. A few minutes passed. Out of nowhere, he spit at a broken glass bottle that someone had left there. I smiled and spat there too, aiming closer. Darry smiled too, and we kept spitting, aiming for the bottle’s mouth. He clearly had a lot more practice than I did, but I wasn’t doing that bad either. He won, in the end, but I didn’t care that much. It wasn’t like we were betting anything on it.

“… Would you be my girlfriend?”

I looked up at him. He was now gazing at me, jaw clenched shut, hands tense, clearly nervous about what I my response would be.

I thought about it. I would lie if I said I wasn’t flattered, even if it was just Darry fucking Cade. To have anyone want me at all, and to ask so gently, it was a real delight. But I had to be practical. And besides, I knew that, if I was as flat as I used to be, back when I was eight, he wouldn’t even look at me.

“Would you come with me to New York?” I asked him.

Darry gulped. “Uh, well… I mean, I’d like to, b-but I’m not sure I… I mean, I don’t—”

“I knew it,” I replied in a sigh, flicking the butt of my cigarette. “You pussy.”

Janey was right. Commitment was hard to come by.

“I’m going back home. You better not tell anyone at school about this,” I told him. I thought it over. “Or do. I don’t give a damn.”

I stood up and fixed my skirt. He watched me with hungry eyes. I kept avoiding looking directly at him. It disgusted me, once I decoded what that feeling was, how much I wanted to give it a try and have one last kiss in my hometown. Darry was just a boy. He was probably a shit kisser.

“And Darry…”

“Yeah?”

“If you tell anyone that I’m leaving, or where I’m going… I’ll kill you.”

I didn’t stay to see his reaction. I couldn’t afford to even care. I had stuff to do, things to prepare and a backpack to get ready for the trip.

Back at home, I felt so anxious I was barely hungry at all. I did have to eat something, at the very least not to awaken any suspicions.

Besides, I had one more matter to take care of.

While mom made dinner and Bri watched cartoons on TV, I slipped away from their sight and went into our parents’ bedroom. I looked around in my father’s drawers: I was looking for a gun. As a veteran, I had to assume he still had one; and, most importantly, it was possible that I could be mugged in the city. I had heard horror stories of the girls at Heath’s house parties, of being robbed at gun point. Having some way to defend myself was essential if I wanted to make a life for myself. Better safe than sorry, after all, like my mother said.

I found some money that I quickly pocketed, but no gun; instead, at the very bottom of the underwear drawer, I found a switchblade, pretty similar to the one Darry had.

“Cool,” I whispered to myself, with a big smile, holding it carefully. Even better than a gun –it didn’t need bullets, it was lighter, and far easier to carry.

I opened it –and nicked my finger, getting the smallest dot of blood on the blade. I sucked on the wound. And, very carefully, I wiped the blade with the tip of my thumb, before closing it and slipping it into my pocket as well.

“Tiffy?”

I jumped. Brittany was standing behind me, in the darkness, barely lit by the light that came from the open door to the hallway.

“Jesus, Bri, you scared the hell out of me—”

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it to you?” I grumbled, closing the drawer quickly and pushing her to the side so I could get out. “Get out of my way, weirdo.”

“What’s in the drawer?” she insisted, opening it herself and peering inside. “What did you take?”

“What are you, a cop?”

“You took something, I saw it—”

“You didn’t see shit.”

“Mom!” she screamed, running through the hallway past me, dodging my arm as I tried to grab her. “Tiffy’s doing something—!”

“She’s lying!” I cried and ran after her. “Whatever she tells you, it’s a dirty lie!”

“Girls, stop that!” our mother said, just as I caught a strand of my sister’s hair in a fist. “For God’s sake, it’s like you were raised in a barn… Brittany, go get washed for dinner. Tiffany, you set the table.”

I let go of Bri’s hair. “I need to go to the bathroom first—”

“Don’t try to get out of doing something as insignificant as setting the table, Tiffany…”

“I’m not trying to—”

“Don’t argue with me,” she said. “Just do it. You can go to the bathroom later.”

I huffed. Taking the cutlery out of the kitchen drawers, I caught a couple glances she threw my way. Could she suspect what I was planning? Of course not –I hadn’t done anything suspicious, anything that could call her attention. I was just being paranoid.

Regardless, I held back my need to go to the toilet for as long as I could. After all, my mother had the key to the bathroom. If she wanted to, if she assumed anything, she could lock me up there again, and keep me prisoner in that house for the rest of my life.

I had to be patient. I had to be careful. Most of all, I had to be quick.

While I changed into my pajamas, I looked around at my bedroom. There was the dollhouse I had neglected, and the old storybooks that were gathering dust on the shelf, and the few framed photographs of baby pictures and of the family at birthday parties, and a document that certified I had had a Holy Communion, and the fashion magazine cutouts glued to the wall next to my bed, and the three baby dolls that I didn’t play with anymore and that had become Bri’s, even despite my pouring fake blood inside their mouths…

I wasn’t sure yet if I was gonna miss all this or not. I guessed I wouldn’t know until I was far gone.

I climbed into bed, under the watchful eye of our mother, as I juggled with the decision of taking my teddy bear with me or not. I definitely didn’t want Bri’s grubby little hands anywhere near it; then again, it would take a good amount of space in my backpack. And, besides, teddy bears are for babies… But I felt like I needed to take something, anything from that place with me. Something that could make any homesickness I might feel easier to swallow and, eventually, forget about completely. Think about it like a set of training wheels, I told myself. You know you don’t actually need it, but it makes the whole process a lot more comfortable.

Once I could hear my mother’s snoring in the next room, I got out of bed, put my teddy bear in my backpack, and quickly changed into the outfit I had chosen for my journey. All the other clothes I had decided to take along with me were already in the bag. I had also packed a few snacks, some toiletries and a little bit of my mother’s makeup. Since I was gonna be far away by the time she realized it was missing, I finally wasn’t afraid of her finding out.

I opened the window and released my last spider. I hadn’t been properly taking care of her, honestly, so I wasn’t too offended when she scurried away as quick as her eight legs allowed. I took the money out of the jar, recounted it, put some in the backpack and some inside my bra for safekeeping. I was tying my saddle shoes when I heard a quiet little whimper, and, holding my breath, I listened to my sister tossing and turning in her bed next to me. I hadn’t made a noise –so why was she waking up now, of all times?

“Tiffy…?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and sitting on the bed. “What are you doing—?”

I shushed her. She stared at me with her big brown eyes, and for a moment, she seemed stunned enough to keep quiet. I hadn’t planned for this situation. I thought about giving her some of the candy I had in my backpack to bribe her into silence, but I couldn’t trust her to truly shut her mouth anymore. We kept staring at each other for a while. At some point though I had had enough, and I kept tying my shoes and, after that was done, I finally headed for the bathroom.

“Wait –what are you doing?” Bri asked.

“Keep it down,” I said, turning to her. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“You’re… You’re leaving?” she insisted. “Where are you going?”

“None of your business.”

She frowned. “Are you really leaving?”

I didn’t answer. See, there’s a reason I didn’t even consider saying goodbye.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Wait… Please, don’t –don’t go.”

“I said go back to sleep.”

“Please, Tiffy…” she started sobbing. “Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be here alone with mom…”

“Tough luck,” I grumbled, struggling to close my backpack. “You’ll have your chance to run away when you’re older.”

“B-but… If we go together, then I can help you! It’ll be better if we go together—”

“Really, Brittany? How, exactly?” I snapped. “You’ll slow me down. Any food I manage to get I’ll have to split with you. And besides, you’re still a kid.”

“But I’ll… I’ll miss you…”

I stared at her. “Don’t you give me that shit.”

“If you don’t take me with you, then I’ll tell mom,” Bri said with a pout. “I’ll tell her, and she won’t let you out ever again.”

I shot her a look. She opened her eyes wide. And she was about to scream –when I managed to grab onto my bedside lamp –and hit her on the head with it. Only a little bit of blood –a speck on the porcelain –and she dropped onto the mattress with a short grunt. I had to act fast. While she was out, I grabbed a bunch of socks from my side of the room, the longest bunch I found, to tie her hands and feet to the bedposts. And, when she began to blink back into consciousness, I stuffed another balled sock into her mouth.

 “You’re always trying to please her, to be her favorite!” I whispered. “You won’t miss me –you’re just trying to get me to regret this and come back.”

Bri said something in muffled cries. But I hadn’t any time to keep wasting with her.

It was an hour to midnight, and ahead of me I had the tall task to change my hair on my own for the first time. First of all, I laid a towel on my shoulders, carefully reading the warning on the bleach bottle I had pulled from under the sink while I sectioned my hair in halves. I wished I could play some music on the radio in the meantime, but I had to work quickly and quietly. Wielding my mother’s fabric shears, I chopped strands of hair to about chin-length, watching myself in the bathroom mirror and turning my head to check how it was looking. There was no plan –just an itching hurry to change how I looked, enough so I wouldn’t be recognized.

The sound of the blades closing in next to my ears made me think of when I was six and, on my first day of school, a boy stuck a piece of chewed bubblegum in my pigtail, and how I had cried and whined when my mother said she would have to chop it off. I was so worried about how it would look, back then…

Once the haircut was done, I slipped my hands into the rubber gloves and took a deep breath. I spread the bleach on top of my uneven hair strands with an old toothbrush, I covered my head with a shower cap, and kept checking on it every five minutes or so. After an hour, as far as I was going to be able to wait it out, I finally took the cap off, closed my eyes and dipped my head in the sink to wash it all off. Sinking my fingers in the now-thinned-out hair, massaging my burning scalp and drowning the chemicals out of the strands, I gasped and blinked to breathe face-down under the dripping water, feeling the warmth of the water in my hands.

The sound of slow-running water over my head made me think of when I was five and, one particularly cold winter, we didn’t have any hot water, so my mother had boiled a few liters in the kettle, and carefully washed my hair in the bathroom. She had mixed the hot water with the cold in a jar, and, lying my chin down on the frozen porcelain sink like Marie Antoinette would wait for the guillotine, she poured the water on my neck, on my nape, on the back of my head, with her long fingernails digging into my scalp and shampoo foam getting in my ears, asking me if it was too hot or too cold…

It wasn’t the blond I wanted –it was more like a weird, pale orange –but it would have to do. Regardless of how far it was from the color I wanted, it was undeniable that, with my hair now short and light, I looked like someone else altogether. If I looked different, then, maybe I could feel different –act different –be different. I’d kill who I was supposed to be to become who I wanted to be.

I smiled at my reflection.

The walk to the bus stop felt shorter than I had expected. Everything seemed to be happening so quickly. Maybe I was just impatient and restless, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep on the journey. I bought a one-way ticket, gripping my bag close to my chest, going over how much money I would have left. Not that it mattered much. I knew I had enough to last me a week or so, I had assumed.

I took a seat next to the window and watched the streets I had grown up in rushing past my eyes, dark and silent, as the road brought me closer to the noise and the lights of the mysterious and bustling city.

[brittsacademia]

• Title: You're My Bitch Tonight

• Pairing: Sub!Dabi X Dom!Reader

• Summary: You couldn't remember what prompted you to snap, but one thing you did know was that you'd make a bottom bitch out of Dabi.

• Warnings/Extra Tags: | Role Reversal | Fem!Reader | Dom!Reader | Sub!Dabi | PWP | Strap-on | Pegging | Handjobs | Nipple Play | Edging/Ruined Orgasms | Multiple Orgasms | Facesitting | Mild Suffocation | Restraints | Inappropriate Quirk Usage | Degredation | Aftercare | Dabi Being Kinda Bratty | Dabi Has Nipple and Dick Piercings | Reader Has a Navel Piercing | Pictures | One Empty Blackmail Threat | Slapping | Some Praise | Overstimulation |

• Word Count: 8,980

Notes: Here it is! The offspring of my current Dabi brain rot and life frustrations! Enjoy the filth, this came out way longer than I originally anticipated. It was supposed to be a short Drabble at first, then I got out of hand. Oops.

Minors, DNI. NSFW under the cut.

Dabi. An A-ranked villain, former leader of the League of Villain's Vanguard Action Squad, and current lieutenant of the Paranormal Liberation Front's Violet Regiment — one of Japan's most wanted. He was a dangerous guy, one that could set fire to the skies and watch with a bored, unbothered glint in his eyes as the ashes of his victims dispersed with the wind.

This was a man set on revenge, one who would stop at nothing to ensure his success. None could stand between him and his goal, less they'd want to face the consequences — an agonizing demise; burned alive with no mercy.

He was a man who held all of the world's hatred in his eyes. A single glance from Dabi would be enough to make even the bravest of heroes second-guess their courage, wondering if their life was worth the attempt at capturing the blueflame user.

Dabi. A man who has killed over thirty innocent people with a straight face, and you knew for sure that more bodies would be added to that ever-growing list.

That's what the news and public said, and you supposed that yeah, they all had a very valid point. It was the truth.

You blinked, looking down at that very man — that very danger to society. Your lips twitched, threatening to break out into a sadistic grin. Your stomach fluttered with excitement because, at the moment, Dabi was none of those things.

Straddling his thighs as he laid on your bed, you never broke his gaze, remaining nonchalant as those pretty cerulean eyes of his narrowed at you with pure anger. You were sure that, should he have the capability of speaking, he'd be spouting some colourful words to express his disdain.

The dark room was illuminated by a hue of (colour) that emitted from your body due to your quirk. The abstract markings adorning your arms glowed, signalling the activation of your quirk, as did your eyes. You knew you lacked pupils at the moment — an aesthetic side effect — and it made you feel like some sort of divinity.

Disembodied, ghost-like hands of the same, faint colour held Dabi by the wrists, pining them above his head. You wouldn't even allow him full control of his legs as another pair of hands held them down; you didn't want to give him the opportunity to squirm much, after all.

And you figured that, since you could produce and control six hands at a time, why not clamp one down on his mouth? Shut him up, for once. It had been your initial goal, but it had escalated.

What had you been arguing about prior to this? You couldn't even quite remember, but that wasn't your preoccupation at the moment. All you could focus on was just how fucking turned on you were at the thought of having full control for once.

His words came out as inaudible, muffled grunts. You tilted your head, fingers tapping at your chin in mock contemplation.

"I dunno, babe. You look right at home down there," you said, voice nothing short of condescending. "If I had known that you'd look this pretty, shit, I woulda done this much sooner."

Of course, you got no coherent response, only sounds resonating from deep within his chest.

"Great. I'm glad we finally agree on something," you said, nodding as you pretended to have a normal conversation.

Dabi's stare hardened — obvious disagreement.

You raised a brow as you watched the hands holding him down glow brighter before dimming once more, signalling his attempt at using his own quirk. The sad display beneath you made you laugh.

"Babe, c'mon. Seriously? You know your quirk won't work while mine is latched onto you," you said before shrugging and making a vague hand gesture. "But by all means, go ahead and feed me more strength. It makes things even more fun."

A sixth hand materialized, slipping beneath his shirt and slithering its way up his torso. It reached his face, tenderly cupping his cheek before offering a few patronizing smacks. They weren't rough, by any means, but they had their desired effect of making Dabi's eyes glimmer with violence.

"Okay, okay," you nodded, mostly to yourself. "I think I'll let you speak a little."

You removed the hand that had been latched to his mouth, sliding it down his neck where you could feel his racing pulse; he was into it, but over his dead body he'd admit it.

Now able to speak, Dabi didn't skip a beat. "What the fuck?" He spoke the words slowly, drawing out every syllable with a low tone in a show of frustration.

"What?" You sneered. "I thought you got off when I'm pissed, so what gives, huh? Can't handle it now that I'm the one who's decided to put you in your place?"

"My place, huh?" He chuckled in disbelief, shaking his head. "Wanna try that again, sweetheart?"

"I'm sorry, I guess I should speak more clearly," you said, placing yourself atop the growing bulge in his jeans. You leaned forward, pressing your chest against his as your lips inched closer to his ear. "Your rightful place as a little bottom bitch."

"Fuck y— hmph."

Dabi didn't get to finish his sentence as you slipped cold fingers into his mouth, nearly hitting the back of his throat. Although the hand wasn't attached to your body, you could still feel the wet, slimy texture of his tongue.

"You can bitch all you want, Dabi, but we both know you're enjoying this as much as I am," you said, sitting straight before rolling your hips against his for emphasis.

You could have sworn that you saw his eye twitch, and you weren't quite sure if it was from arousal or anger. It was then that you softened in the slightest, sliding your hands — your real ones — up and down his sides soothingly as you removed the fingers from his mouth.

"... You know you can tell me to stop, right?" You said, making it clear that, although you were mad at him, you weren't there to make him uncomfortable either.

Dabi looked you in the eye, brows still firmly furrowed, as he held your gaze before casting a glance to the side. It was as if he were ashamed of his predicament and the conflicting feelings swirling inside of him. His mind screamed at him that this new territory wasn't for him, that he'd much rather have you all bent over for him to take his frustration out on your cunt. On the other hand, however, his cock said the opposite, nearly begging him to give in and see where this would go.

Fuck, he'd be a liar if he said that you looked anything but hot at the moment.

Eventually, he settled on his classic, shit-eating smirk. "Fine. Go ahead and have your little power trip. Enjoy it while it lasts, 'cause you know damn well what I'm gonna do to you when this is over."

"I think you're a little confused there. You should be more concerned with what I'm going to do to you," you said with a tilt of your head. "If, for whatever reason, you can't talk, try using your quirk if you want to stop. I'll notice."

“You're being awfully soft for someone who claims to be pissed with me," he said, still being a nuisance. You wondered if it was just Dabi being himself, or if he was being a brat as part of his play. Both, probably.

You smiled; it lacked any warmth, only holding a warning. "Don't worry. I won't be playing soft for too long."

Not being able to move his arms, Dabi gestured with his head, sneering. "Then impress me, sweetheart."

You chuckled. Poor thing didn't know what you had in mind for him, now that you had the green light for full control. That bratty attitude of his? It'd be gone. His pride? Shattered. His mind? So fucking broken.

Ghostly hands that had made their way down to the hem of his shirt, teasingly fiddling with the fabric, now had a firm grasp as they began to lift the clothing up above his head before disappearing into thin air. You made sure to relish in every bit of skin — every purple patch and glistening staple — that was revealed to you. Your gaze was piercing, unwavering and studious, but no less appreciative; it made Dabi swallow hard.

You leaned forward again, lips hovering over his. "I don't think you'll be disappointed."

In an attempt to salvage any remnants of control he had, Dabi pressed his lips to yours in a hard, passionate kiss that took both your breaths away. You allowed his tongue to flick against yours before he licked at the roof of your mouth, offering a pleasant tickling sensation that travelled down between your legs.

As much as you enjoyed his tongue inside your mouth, you had enough of this. You wouldn't allow him to think he had an edge over you, and so, as he attempted to slip his tongue deeper into your mouth, you pulled away, closing your lips around his tongue. You sucked at the muscle as you backed away, and you heard a frustrated grunt escape Dabi as you did so.

You smirked and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips. You edged closer to his ear, making sure to barely brush your lips against the skin of his face as you made your way up there. You were sure that he could feel the way you grinned, unable to hide your excitement from the sudden rush of power traversing your body.

Your tongue dragged along his earlobe, pulling a deep sigh from Dabi. Kissing down his cheeks to his jawbone, you made your way to his neck, and you slowly licked down his pulse point, leaving a glistening trail of saliva in your wake before sinking your teeth into the junction between his neck and shoulder. You nicked his collarbone — a sensitive area of his — with your tongue closely following to soothe the little marks you left across his body. Beneath you, Dabi's hips shifted, cock jumping at the attention. You could feel the way his thighs tensed, and you just knew that every fibre of his being wanted to pin you down.

But he was powerless — powerless against you, an ordinary civilian — and fuck, seeing someone like Dabi being reduced to something so pathetic was a work of art that you were dying to immortalize.

"You're lucky I'm letting you do this," Dabi grumbled.

"Mhm," you hummed, barely acknowledging his words. All bark, no bite. Not that he could bite at the moment.

And a ghost hand was back to his mouth, silencing him. You felt his warm tongue licking into the palm of the hand — a feeble attempt at deterring you. You quickly glanced up and seeing his eyes full of annoyance, accompanied by unmistakable lust that he so desperately tried to hide, made you laugh. How he could still uphold that look, you didn't know, but you were going to make that petty little glare of his falter.

You gripped the hem of your oversized t-shirt — his shirt — and slowly, very agonizingly slowly pulled it up towards your chest, exposing your near-bare lower body as you only wore lacy underwear. Dabi's eyes immediately fell to your hips, intently glaring at the way your cunt rested so snugly atop his cock. Expectantly, Dabi's eyes wandered to your chest, waiting for your breasts to grace his view, but you wouldn't grant him that satisfaction quite yet. Your expression held cockiness as you took the shirt's hem between your teeth, not fully pulling it over your chest. Instead, from where he laid, Dabi was offered a tantalizing view of the under curvature of your breasts.

As you slid your hands down your body, teasingly pulling at the band of your panties though not removing them, you found amusement in the way Dabi's expression had been breaking as the seconds ticked by. Though anger still remained, it was faltering; it was as if there was an intense battle between anger and burning desire, and the latter was winning little by little.

Slowly, you began rutting your hips against him, moaning as your clit slid against Dabi's erection. With the right amount of pressure, jolts of pleasure shot through your veins that fuelled your arousal, even through the layers of clothing. You could feel Dabi attempt to rise his hips further against you, but your quirk held him down.

If you focused enough, you could make out the way Dabi muttered curses underneath his makeshift gag. His chest began to heave shakily, and his eyes grew heavier from lust as they zeroed in on the rocking of your hips. He watched the way the dangling, blue heart piercing on your navel gently swayed in time with your movements — a gift he had gotten for you last month.

A particularly hard thrust had Dabi grunting. His cock pulsed underneath his jeans and boxers; it was uncomfortable, and he was dying for a shred of relief, but judging by the predatory shine in your irises, Dabi knew he wouldn't be graced with his wishes.

Your shirt was still wedged between your teeth, fabric wet with your saliva. Then, you stilled, abruptly stopping your ruts as you slipped your panties to the side, giving Dabi a slight peek at your slick cunt as you made a show of stroking your lips before spreading them. He wanted to touch you, you knew he did, but you wouldn't let him.

You'd let him watch, though.

Your fingers slid through your lips, and as you brushed against your entrance, you dipped two fingers inside of you, gathering arousal across your digits which you dragged up to your clit. Your moans, although somewhat muffled by your shirt, went straight to Dabi's dick as you slowly stroked your clit up and down. His breathing grew heavier as he remained bound and unable to touch you. The wet shine coating your fingers was beyond enticing to him, and he couldn't tear his eyes away.

You pulled your fingers away from your pussy, letting your shirt fall back down. Now covered up, Dabi's trance seemingly broke, and he was narrowing his eyes at you once again.

You made the hand covering his mouth disappear, allowing him to speak, but before he could do so, you leaned down, gripping at his jaw to keep him in place as you brought your wet fingers to his mouth.

"Come on, babe," you prompted.

Dabi said nothing, only shifting his gaze between your face and fingers before reluctantly opening his mouth, allowing you to dip your fingers inside. He couldn't help the grunt as your taste hit his tongue; he savoured it. He closed his lips around your digits as you began thrusting them gently.

You licked your lips before parting them in a breathy exhalation as your cunt clenched at the sight beneath you. "Hollow your cheeks, hon."

When he didn't immediately comply, you roughly hit the back of his throat, making his body jump as he gagged rather loudly. His strong reaction made you coo condescendingly, and you were sure that, should he have been capable of producing tears, his eyes would be watering. Would it make you a shit person for saying that you wished you could see him cry in this context? Maybe, but you didn't really care.

"I won't ask again, Dabi," you said.

It was fucking humiliating, but Dabi eventually caved and did as you asked, hollowing his cheeks around your fingers, effectively creating more suction.

You groaned at the sight. "Fuck yeah. That's it."

You thrust your fingers a bit faster, occasionally hitting the back of his throat — though not as roughly as the first time — as you desperately wanted to hear him make those lovely gagging noises again.

"That's it, bitch," you said. "God, wouldn't you look pretty sucking on a cock?"

His eyes hardened at the degrading nickname, feeling beyond humiliated as a growl reverberated from deep within his chest.

Eventually, you pulled your fingers out of his mouth, which were heavily coated with his saliva. Dabi panted, attempting to catch his breath.

"Screw you. Fuck you," Dabi hissed at you.

"So vulgar..." you mused.

You gripped at his face, pressing onto his cheeks. "Open your mouth," you commanded.

He stubbornly gritted his teeth, attempting to turn his head away from you in defiance. You huffed, unappreciative of this bratty attitude of his. You tenderly cupped his cheek, tracing the seam of his marred skin with your fingertips in faux sympathy before giving him a nice smack. It wasn't hard enough to harm him, but enough to leave a red blotch on his healthy skin.

What you didn't expect was the damn-near pornographic moan that escaped him upon impact, pupils blown wide with want.

Freak.

"Open your fucking mouth," you repeated.

He did, and when you leaned over his mouth, lining up yours with his, Dabi had a feeling that he knew where you were going with this; he had done it to you before. Payback's a bitch, he supposed.

You let your saliva drop into his mouth, and you were satisfied to see you didn't even need to tell him to swallow. He did so immediately, making a show of gulping audibly.

"Good boy," you said, rubbing the mark on his cheek. "Say thank you."

"... Thank you," he muttered gruffly, cringing as he said it; the words sounded as though they had physically hurt him to say.

You nodded approvingly and appreciatively. Perhaps he was beginning to submit to you a bit more; you were making progress.

You sat back up, running your hands down his toned chest before your thumbs rolled his nipples, making sure to play with the pretty barbells pierced through the sensitive flesh. The attention made Dabi bite his lip harshly, wanting nothing more than to cut off any moan that threatened to escape him.

You took it as a challenge, leaning down again as you flattened your tongue against a bud while your thumb and index fingers continued toying with the other one. Your tongue swirled, flicking the barbell around, making Dabi's body shake, the stimulation to his chest feeling overwhelming with your precise and rapid movements.

"Ngh... fuck, babe," Dabi moaned. It was strained as he tried to contain the noise.

You hummed, pressing a multitude of sloppy kisses to his body as you trailed downwards. His abs tensed underneath your lips, watching in anticipation as you neared the one place he wanted you the most. You slid your nails down the attractive trail of white hair until you reached the bulge in his pants, flattening your palm against it. You felt him up, groping as you revelled at how hard he was. You sat straight as you undid his belt and jeans.

"Fucking, finally," Dabi sighed, already feeling less confined.

You hummed, pulling Dabi's pants and boxers down his legs and letting his heavy cock slap onto his lower abdomen, leaving behind a small puddle of pre-cum. The liquid seeped from his tip, running down his shaft and making that pretty frenum piercing of his glisten further. The sight had your mouth watering, watching how he throbbed with a desperate need to cum.

You finally pulled your shirt over your head, effectively distracting Dabi as he focused his attention on your bare skin. As you did so, you took the opportunity to command your quirk to fumble beneath the bed, subtly pulling out what would be the main event of your night. Tossing your shirt to the floor, you smirked as you watched the hands emerge, holding the items, which did not go unnoticed by Dabi.

"What the fuck are you looking a—"

Dabi's words died as his eyes grew wide upon seeing the bottle of lube and harness that bore a realistic, beige-coloured dildo — around six and a half inches, curved with some texture and a smooth tip. Dabi gulped, knowing damn well what you were implying, but still, he managed to glare up at you in an attempt to salvage his wavering dignity.

"What in the fuck is that?" Dabi hissed. It was rhetorical, but you still answered.

"That," you gave him a bored look as you pointed at the toy for emphasis, "would be a strap-on."

His glare hardened. "I fucking know what it is. When did you even get that?"

"Gag gift from a friend," you shrugged, running your hands along his thighs before snaking them towards his ass. "And I am going to use that little toy to fuck this," you said, squeezing the flesh teasingly.

"As if I'm letting you do that. You're out of your mind," Dabi said.

"What?" You sneered. "Is the big, bad villain scared of a bit of cock in his ass?"

Perhaps it was wrong of you to play with his ego as such, but again, you didn't really care. Besides, you weren't about to ignore the uncharacteristic hue of pink coating Dabi's cheeks.

"I'd rather fuck into that pretty little cunt of yours," Dabi said.

"I'm sure you would," you said rather casually as you set the strap-on next to him and grabbed the lube. "Anyway, that's for a little later. I've got other things I want to do to you first."

You gripped the base of Dabi's cock, pouring a generous stream of lube onto it. With both hands wrapped around his girth, you slowly glided up and down his shaft to thoroughly coat it and your hands in the slippery liquid.

You chuckled under your breath; if Dabi thought you would jerk his cock as you usually did, he was sorely mistaken.

Reaching for the tip of his cock, you brought a fingertip to the head, tracing your finger in slow circles around it as to tease him. The lube slicking his cock made the simple action that much more satisfying, and you could see more beads of his own pre-cum leaking down and merging with the lube. The mild stimulation was enough to make his dick jump from how aroused and needy Dabi was.

"So reactive, and I'm not even doing anything," you cooed.

You wrapped your hand at the base of his tip, making sure to pump at a tortuously slow pace, twisting your hand and letting your thumb rub against the frenulum of his cock — the area's sensitivity being amplified by the piercing — before teasing his slit.

Dabi threw his head back, teeth gritted as he finally received the attention he wanted. You could see his thighs tensing and shaking as you repeated the action, over and over, but never picking up the pace.

Your unoccupied hand reached for his balls, gently caressing them and offering the occasional squeeze, which earned you more streams of pre-cum, and a pretty moan from your villainous boyfriend.

Dabi's lips parted, sucking in a breath. It felt simultaneously amazing, but barely enough. Dabi was used to rough sex and harsh tugs at his cock to get him off, but you seemed adamant on depriving him of such, content with edging him towards his release.

And you fucking knew that, but you liked watching the conflict on his face. You loved seeing how engorged his cock and heavy his balls were from the need to cum. You adored watching his brows crease together as his eyes clenched shut.

"F-Fuck. Go faster," Dabi asked.

You stopped your movements altogether, seemingly contemplating his request, and Dabi had thought for a moment that he'd get what he wanted.

"Hm... no," you said, smirking in the slightest as a brief look of defeat crossed Dabi's features, though it was gone in an instant.

What kind of fucking monster had he allowed control of him?

Placing your palm atop the tip, you extended your fingers in a claw-like manner before gliding them up and down, from the head to the shaft, still keeping the same, lazy pace. You varied the pressure, offering a variety of sensations that had him arching his back.

Lowering both your hands to the base of his cock, you leaned down and swirled your tongue at the underside of his tip before sensually lapping at his slit, tasting the mixture of lubes as you maintained eye contact.

You took him into your mouth, fully taking him until he hit the back of your throat, but you didn't offer much more, immediately popping off of his dick and resuming your torturous handjob. The whine that escaped Dabi was so worth it.

"Maybe if you beg for it, I'll go faster," you said.

"You've gotta be kidding?" Dabi hissed.

You shook your head, keeping your concentration on his cock. You could practically feel the sheer humiliation radiating from Dabi's very soul.

".... Please," he visibly gritted his teeth as the word left his mouth. "Please go faster. I need you to go faster."

"Aw. Good boy," you said, genuinely smiling. "No."

"Excuse me? You fucking said—"

"Maybe. I said 'maybe'," you said, suddenly gripping his dick in a tight hold, immediately causing it to pulse in your hand. "You don't need me to go faster. I'll make you cum by my own means. Thank you very much."

You let go for a moment before slapping his cock hard enough for Dabi to fucking yelp. His cheeks were bright red, tongue darting to wet his lips.

Your hand gripped him once more. "You're just a masochistic little whore, aren't you?"

Touching the tip of your index finger to your thumb, you made an 'O' shape with your fingers, and starting at the tip of his cock, you stroked him downwards, and as you reached the base of his dick, your other hand repeated the process. Like an escalator type of motion; it had Dabi's cock twitching with every one of your movements.

Dabi's breaths grew heavy and rapid, and his thighs were so tense his body shook. His cock pulsed frequently as his head was thrown back.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he moaned, drawing out his words. "'M close. 'M so fuckin' close."

You hummed knowingly, yet you made no move to speed up as you normally would when he was close to orgasm. You were determined to draw this out as much as you could.

You began stroking his cock in a more standard motion, and to Dabi's horror and your sadistic amusement, you slowed your movements even more. He didn't know it was even possible.

"No! Ngh... fuck. Don't fuckin' slow down," he grunted. "The fuck's wrong with you?"

"Fuck yes! That's it," you moaned as he reached his peak.

It was unlike anything you had seen before: thick cum slowly beading at his tip before trickling down his shaft and gathering onto your hand and his pelvis. You've never seen him cum like this before, and you were mesmerized by every new drop that slowly dripped down his cock.

Dabi's reaction was beautiful. The grunts were loud, drawled out in a low tone that came from the deepest pits of his chest. His eyes had nearly rolled to the back of his skull as his tongue lolled out of his mouth for a brief second.

This was the longest orgasm he had ever gotten, and Dabi's head thrashed from side to side as he began feeling the overstimulation. Fuck — he was still leaking with cum; it wasn't over yet.

"H-Hah, fuck...!" He panted.

As his orgasm began to subside, your lips curled into a nearly-lopsided grin that Dabi missed due to his eyes being clenched shut.

"Take a deep breath, baby," you said.

"Why...?" He asked confusedly, still in a post-orgasm haze.

"Just do it."

He eyed you wearily but did as you asked. You watched as his chest rose, lungs being filled with oxygen. Before he could get a chance to exhale, you summoned your quirk, bringing a hand up to his face. You not only covered his mouth but also his nose.

Dabi's eyes widened at the sudden realization that he couldn't breathe, sending a brief shot of panic through his veins. He looked you in the eye, and as if you could sense his feelings, you softened.

"Remember what I said earlier?"

Dabi did; you were reminding him that he had the power to stop this at any given moment. He blinked, panic subsiding as he nodded. He became oddly relaxed for a man deprived of a necessary function for survival.

He trusted you.

You smiled at the green light and went straight back to work.

Unable to sharply inhale, his chest jumped as your hand resumed jerking off his cock — fast and rough. Your thumb stroked all of his most sensitive spots.

Dabi's eyes rolled to the back of his skull; grunts and moans remained caught in his throat. He was so fucking sensitive, and he wasn't sure if his head spun because of the overstimulation or from the lack of clean oxygen.

"What? Didn't you want me to go faster? I'm pretty sure that's what you were begging for earlier. Please, please go faster. I need you to go faster," you said, mocking him as you threw his previous words right back at him.

This was a foreign feeling to Dabi. Everything about this situation was foreign to him. But breath play? It was the last thing he expected out of you.

Dabi's Adam's Apple bobbed as the air trapped in his lungs tried to escape, cheeks bulging out as he grunted against the hand in an attempt to suck in fresh air. It was in vain; the hand was tightly clamped and suffocating him. His adrenaline seemed to be spiking, and it went straight to the swell of his cock.

He could hear his heartbeat thumping loudly in his own ears. His chest jumped again, convulsing hard enough that you got a brief view of his ribs.

"Hmph," he grunted again.

Dabi's lungs burned, and that warmth only fuelled his arousal. Fuck — it surprised him how into this he was. As his heart hammered against his chest in an erratic rhythm, his chest began to convulse more often, gagging noises sounding from his throat.

With the relentless way you fucked him with your hand and the lack of air, Dabi began growing dizzy, and he wondered if he was on the verge of passing out. He could tap out, but no way his pride would allow him to do such a thing.

Although his eyes threatened to fall shut, they shot wide open as he felt a second orgasm hit him like a train. It was a powerful one, painting his stomach white, with some nearly reaching his chest.

You took the hand off his face the moment his orgasm hit, enjoying the way he was torn between coughing, moaning and breathing heavily.

You gently stroked Dabi's thighs, shushing him as he came down from his high. Colour came flooding back to his face as he took in big gasps of air. He looked exhausted, and you sincerely contemplated ending the night there, thinking you may have gone too hard on him.

Dabi seemingly took notice of the soft, contemplative look in your eye. While he did appreciate your concern for his well-being, the night was still young, wasn't it?

"... 'S that all you got, princess?" He taunted with a tired smirk.

You laughed, getting back into character. "No, not at all."

You looked at your hand, still covered in Dabi's cum, before looking at him with a smirk. You lowered your hand near his mouth, looking at him expectantly.

"Clean it up, baby," you demanded.

Payback really was a bitch, huh? Dabi thought back to all the times he made you lick him clean, no matter if it was your or his mess. He opened his mouth, allowing you to shove a cum-coated finger inside. Dabi's glare was deadly as his own tangy taste hit his tongue.

"Don't look at me like that. It's not so bad, is it?" You taunted.

He much preferred your taste, but still, Dabi decided to put on a show for you as he began swirling his tongue around your finger, swallowing down his cum. As you removed your finger, his tongue darted towards your palm, sensually lapping up his substance while maintaining eye contact.

“Fuck, that's hot," you said, licking your lips as you pulled your hand away.

"You're a freak," Dabi said.

"Yet here you are, indulging me. Face it, you're loving this," you retorted.

For a brief second, you hopped off the bed in order to slide your panties down. You made sure to bend over as you did so, giving Dabi a nice view of your ass and pussy, and peeking over your shoulder, you could tell that Dabi was definitely appreciative of the sight.

"Now," you started, crawling back onto the bed. "I'm not that cruel, so I'll give you a moment to recover a bit before I make you cum again. So, in the meantime, it's my turn to get off."

You crawled over him before straddling his chest, and oh, Dabi now understood what you wanted from him. He smirked up at you, thinking that this was the perfect opportunity to regain a bit of control by making you helplessly cum all over his tongue.

"Yeah? I'll make you feel good. C'mere," he said in a low growl.

"Don't be mistaken, babe. I'm still holding the reins, here," you said.

You got into position, thighs on either side of his head as your pussy hovered above his mouth. You could see Dabi's fingers twitching, wishing that he could grip your flesh and grind you down onto his mouth on his own accord. Dabi's patience seemed to be wavering, especially when you had teased him with your arousal on your fingers earlier. He was dying to replace the taste of himself in his mouth with your essence; just your smell was enough to make his pupils dilate, hazing his brain and fuelling his sex drive.

"God, you look nothing short of pathetic, right now. You should see how desperate you look," you taunted.

Dabi huffed. "Yeah? 'Cause from where I'm lying, your cunt's looking pretty fuckin' wet."

You lowered yourself onto Dabi's waiting mouth without warning. "God. Shut the fuck up."

Dabi's grunts were muffled under your weight, but it didn't take him much coaxing before he began devouring your sweet pussy. His lips closed around your clit, sucking at the sensitive bud as his tongue flicked at it.

You threw your head back, lips parting in a moan as you looked down at your boyfriend, and the look of pure enjoyment in his eyes made your cunt clench, nearly cumming on the spot. Dabi was enthusiastic, sloppily lapping at your arousal with loud and lewd slurping noises as your lube and his saliva sloshed around. Drool dribbled down his chin, and paired with the raven strands of hair that clung to his forehead from all the sweat, his face already looked like a mess.

"Yess. F-Fuck yes, Dabi!" You said, earning you a particularly good flick of his tongue. "Good boy. Fuck, you're good at this. That's all you're good for, huh?"

He blinked, and to your surprise, his eyes didn't turn harsh, they remained curious, pleasured — vulnerable.

Your thighs tensed, squeezing Dabi's head; the man beneath you looked in fucking heaven. You added more pressure to his mouth, essentially suffocating him with your soaked cunt; Dabi never skipped a beat, only eating you out much more vigorously like a starved man.

"Shit, that's it," you moaned, running your hand through his hair before yanking it roughly, earning a muffled moan from him. "I've always wanted to do this."

You lifted yourself off his mouth, allowing him to catch his breath. Although Dabi was panting, he lifted his head off the mattress, attempting to re-attach his lips to your pussy, eager to resume.

"Stick your tongue out, baby. Lemme ride your face," you said.

"Hm.. a'right," he said, doing as you asked.

You lowered yourself back onto his mouth, and you wasted no time in thrusting your hips, gliding your clit against the wet muscle. Your pace was relentless, you were practically using him for your pleasure, but Dabi didn't seem to mind, the pleasured grunts he let out sent delightful vibrations to your cunt.

You pulled at his hair again. "Fuck, you love getting smothered by my pussy, huh?" He answered with a hum. "I think I — fuck — like you better like this. Putting your dirty, rude fucking mouth to good use for once. All bound up for me to use however I want."

Dabi was so focused on our pussy that he hadn't noticed that you had summoned another ghost hand. At least, not until he felt a cool liquid dripping into his ass. Dabi's eyes widened in surprise, looking up at you as if demanding an explanation.

You slowed your movement, looking back at your quirk as if you had been none the wiser to what was happening. "Oh, that? Don't worry, baby. I need to stretch you out a bit."

The hands that had been holding his legs down throughout the whole night spread his legs further, giving you better access to his hole. The free hand inched closer, soothing the ring of muscles with soft, teasing circles.

"You're tense. I'm gonna need you to relax, 'kay?" You said before lifting yourself off his tongue once more, giving him the opportunity to speak. "Is this something you're willing to try? Just say the word, and the idea is gone."

Dabi felt his resolve crumbling. If this were anyone else, he would've incinerated them on the spot for even proposing the idea. But with you? He could trust you with this kind of vulnerability, something that was difficult — so difficult — for him to show. So, he nodded.

"Yeah, okay. Do what you want. I put you in charge, after all," he said.

You laughed. "If I remember correctly, you didn't put me in charge, I just took it."

"Mhm. Whatever you say."

"Okay, baby. Relax, I'm going to put it in, okay?" You said.

Dabi nodded, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as if to brace himself for the foreign breach that was to come, and when it came, his eyes shot wide open, breathing coming to a sharp halt as his teeth gritted together in a hiss as a chilly finger began pushing inside his ass.

The finger had more girth than the average human size, and so you stilled, allowing him to adjust to the feeling before resuming. You reminded him to breathe, which he obeyed. When he seemed less tense, you pushed deeper until you were knuckle-deep. With the size of the finger, you wouldn't need to insert a second one. It was good training, however, as the dildo size you planned to use on him was rather large for a first-time ride.

"How does it feel," you asked, unable to hide your arousal when you heard Dabi — of all fucking people — whimper.

"Weird... but s'not bad," Dabi grunted, and you could tell that he was holding back his true feelings due to pride.

"Good. You're doing really good," you praised — a stark contrast to your previous behaviour.

But it wouldn't last very long.

Dabi's mind seemed in a haze — in a whole other dimension — so you reached down to lightly smack his cheek to gain his attention.

"You know, you still haven't made me cum," you said, gesturing to your pussy that still remained above his mouth. "You better finish what you started, and I expect you to make me cum before you do. Don't be selfish."

Dabi nodded, eyes glinting with mischief as he accepted your little challenge, and like the obedient little toy you had reduced him to, he stuck his tongue out, waiting for you to smother him.

You moaned loudly; if you thought his enthusiasm was mind-blowing before, it had reached a whole other level. The tip of his tongue dipped inside your entrance before moving to rapidly flick your clit in a consistent up and down motion. The pressure he applied was perfect, and his pace was that of a man on a fucking mission, dead set on the end goal.

Your ghost hand began to thrust, causing Dabi's breath to hitch as his tongue faltered for a moment. In response, you rutted your hips against him — it was a warning.

You slid your finger in and out, setting a slow and steady pace to warm him up. You felt around for a special little spot, one that had possibly never been stimulated up until now, and by God, you were excited to be the first one to hit that jackpot.

As you prodded around, Dabi's whole body suddenly tensed up, and he couldn't stop himself when his mouth unlatched from your pussy as he threw his head back, wheezing as if the wind had just been knocked out of him.

You laughed. "There it is."

You adjusted the hand, making sure that you slid the finger at the perfect angle, continuously sliding against Dabi's sweet spot. You moved at a slow pace, making him anticipate the moment you would hit the area again, and when you did, fuck, the slow pace you set made him feel the intense stimulation on every little nerve ending.

Dabi's tongue lolled out of his mouth, nearly going cross-eyed at the sensation. It was a nice sight, for sure, but you were a little unhappy with the lack of stimulation you were receiving. Your clit felt swollen, pulsing from need.

"Hm... I'm happy that you're enjoying yourself, but don't forget what you're supposed to be doing," you said.

"F-Fuck... ahhh. 'M sorry — shit, feels so fuckin' good — c'mere," he moaned, regaining his focus.

You were relentless as you rode his tongue, not giving him the opportunity to catch his breath. You figured you'd do all the work if your little pillow princess was unable to focus because of one measly finger up his ass.

Dabi's eyes rolled back, grunts and whimpers muffled by your cunt. His senses were overwhelmed, and he was living for it. Your smell, the feel of your skin, your touch, your sounds, the sight of you — everything felt overstimulating.

"F-Fuck! I'm close, Dabi," you moaned, riding him so roughly that your clit occasionally hit his nose. "Are you gonna make me cum, baby?"

Dabi had a hard time answering, even if it was just a hum, especially when the finger began thrusting in time with your grinding. Fuck, he was close, about to hit his third orgasm of the night. He tried his best to keep the cum in his balls, but it proved difficult when you were massaging his prostate like that.

You knew Dabi well enough to know the signs, and you huffed, not pleased that he was failing his task, and so, just as he was about to cum, the finger stilled. You summoned a sixth hand, tightly wrapping it around Dabi's cock while pressing down at the back of his tip, forcing the urge to subside. Dabi whined at the ruined orgasm, eyes twitching as he gave you the most pitiful look you had ever seen on him.

"Uh-uh," you chided. "Remember what I said? I get to cum first."

He nodded, forcing his concentration back onto your cunt, determined to make you squirt all over his goddamn face. Your moans were music to his ears, and he found himself grunting with every little noise falling from your lips. Your head was thrown back, hands reaching for the bedsheets as you gripped them in an attempt to stabilize yourself. Your thighs clenched around his head as they shook, and Dabi could feel your clit pulse on his tongue.

"Dabi! Fuck! C-Cumming. I'm gonna cum," you panted.

You went silent for a brief moment as your body went rigid, and when the tension that had been building in your abdomen snapped, you let out a loud, elongated moan. Your chest heaved with rapid breaths as sharp pleasure had your pussy pulsing from a powerful orgasm. Dabi nearly growled as he savoured your taste when your cum hit his lips. It was a mess as the clear liquid he couldn't catch in his mouth trickled down his chin.

He slowed down his movements, helping you ride out your high until he completely stilled. You lifted yourself off his mouth, backing away so that you were straddling his chest as you caught your breath and recovered from your post-orgasm haze. After all, you still had one last thing to do.

"Fuck," Dabi licked his lips, swallowing down more of your cum, groaning in satisfaction. "Did I do good?"

"Hm... yeah, you did. But now," you said, grabbing the strap-on before stepping off the bed. "We get to the real fun."

You made the hands that had been preoccupied with his cock and ass disappear, making Dabi suddenly feel so empty. He watched as you slipped the harness on, the straps weren't complicated and awkward to figure out, so you didn't fiddle with them all that much.

You crawled back onto the bed, placing yourself between Dabi's spread legs before grabbing the bottle of lube and slathering some on the silicone cock. For safety, you applied some more to Dabi's asshole. You didn't want the stretch to hurt him, after all.

"You look pretty ecstatic with this. You have some kind of weird fetish for me with things in my ass, huh?" Dabi teased.

"Maybe I do. Who knows? Maybe next time, I'll make you wear a cute, fuzzy tail butt plug," you said, lining yourself up.

"As if I'd let you do that."

"That's what you've been saying all night, yet here we are."

You held onto his thighs, locking eyes with him. No words needed to be exchanged for Dabi to know that you were asking if he was ready, to which he nodded. Dabi exhaled, forcing his body to relax as he felt the tip of the cock prodding at his hole.

The toy began breaching, making Dabi's breath hitch. Shit — he was suddenly happy that you had prepped him with your quirk, that thing was much bigger than he had anticipated. Dabi's breath caught in his throat as you slowly pushed in deeper before stilling as means to let him adjust. His cock betrayed him, throbbing and seemingly getting even harder at the sensation of being filled up.

"Fuck. Oh my Go—" Dabi's words died down as his head fell back into the sheets, mouth parting in a silent moan.

You leaned down, pressing a surprisingly loving kiss to his lips, serving as a distraction from the stretch. Dabi lazily reciprocated, being as delirious as he was. You then brought your lips to his ear.

"I'm halfway in, okay? Just relax, it's gonna feel so good soon," you shushed with a reassuring tone that had Dabi nearly melting.

The shift between your harsh treatment of his body and your soft, caring side gave him whiplash at times, but he had to say: he loved it. He loved how you knew which side to use at which moment. Dabi would have never guessed that you would make such a good top, but you just kept surprising him, didn't you?

Gently, you pushed the dildo further in, pulling a sharp gasp from Dabi as you bottomed out, your hips firmly pressed against his. Again, you let him adjust to the depth the toy was reaching, to the stretch it was providing. Your thumbs traced soothing circles into the healthy skin of his thighs.

He had better enjoy this tenderness while it lasted, because you were going to fucking destroy him.

You gave an experimental thrust, only pulling out halfway before pushing back in; it made Dabi's body jolt. Grinning at his pleasured reaction, you fully pulled out the toy before giving one hard, deep thrust.

"A-Ah!"

You grinned. "Atta boy. That's it."

You rocked your hips, rolling them in an attempt to find the perfect angle to hit his G-spot. The lube made the glide so slick and easy, and you found that Dabi's tight little hole had adjusted rather quickly, allowing you to push your hips against him rather roughly.

"Holy shit," you moaned, the sight underneath you bringing pleasure in of itself.

Dabi already looked fucked out, dignity thrown out the window as curses mingled with moans and pleas for more, more. His eyes blinked rapidly as if trying to clear his vision from whatever haze took over him, and drool pooled at the corner of his lips from the way the tip of his tongue poked out.

Fuck it, you thought as you fully deactivated your quirk, allowing Dabi not only free rein of his arms and legs but also his flames. But honestly? You had him right where you wanted, and you knew that he was too concentrated on the pleasure to even think about regaining control.

Your skin slapped against his, the rough thrusts making the bed creak. One of Dabi's arms shot to his face, covering his eyes and a portion of his sweat-covered forehead as the pleasure hit him hard, while his other hand gripped at the sheets beneath him. His legs seemed to have a mind of their own, spreading as much as they could to give you better angles to pleasure him.

His cock bobbed in time with your thrusts, and you watched as pre-cum seeped from the red, swollen tip. You knew he wouldn't last very long in this state, and you were fine with that; you just wanted to give him mind-boggling pleasure and make him forget his own fucking name.

"OH SHIT! Fuck!" Dabi screamed, back arching as you hit that spot.

"Right there, huh?" You grinned. "Get ready, baby."

You pushed one of his legs up towards his chest, making him gasp loudly as you found the perfect angle to fuck him stupid. Hearing him whine and moan, chanting your name like a prayer, gave your ego such a fucking boost, and you swore you might have cum from those sounds alone.

You licked your lips as you took notice of the previous spurts of cum painting Dabi's torso. He looked so fucking hot like that, and you couldn't help yourself when you activated your quirk one last time. A ghost hand brought your phone, opening up the camera app as you snapped a picture. The sound of the shutter caught Dabi's attention.

You groaned at the picture — a work of art, is what it was.

"Fuck, Dabi. Look at yourself," you said, bringing your phone to his face.

He could barely recognize himself: matted hair, all wet and clinging to his forehead. His body was covered in sweat and cum, while his lips shined with his drool and your own release. He had the most delirious, fucked-out look he had ever seen in his life, with eyes nearly crossing and rosy cheeks. From the angle, he could see the silicone cock inside his ass, and his rock-hard cock stood flushed and engorged as it seeped with his lube.

You put your phone away, deactivating your quirk. "God, what would they think if they saw you like this? Think anybody would take you seriously ever again? I'm sure I could make a fortune, whoring you out for the world to see. What do you think? One of the most dangerous villains getting fucked by thick cock."

He whined at your words. Even though he knew you wouldn't ever truly do that to him, hearing that little fantasy of yours had his cock pulsing. Dabi couldn't help himself when he reached for his dick, stroking it in time with your rough thrusts, only edging him closer to his release.

"That's it, babe. Stroke that fat cock," you encouraged, pace never faltering.

"G-Gonna... 'm gonna — fuck," he couldn't even form a coherent sentence, the pleasure was just getting too much.

"I know, Dabi," you said. "Do it. Cum for me."

He did, and the overstimulation hit him immediately. He could barely keep pumping his dick through his orgasm without squirming, especially when you slammed against his G-spot, thoroughly milking him dry. The amount of cum that poured out of him was impressive, possibly due to his previously interrupted orgasm. He covered his face with both his hands, grunting loudly yet lowly in a way that resembled a growl.

Your thrusts subsided, and you carefully slid the toy out. You leaned down to press soothing butterfly kisses to his thighs before moving up to his face. Pulling his arms away from his face, you peppered his face and lips with the same, loving kisses. You shushed him, muttering praises as he came down from his high.

"Are you okay?" You asked with genuine concern.

"Yeah. 'M good," he croaked in a tired voice.

"Stay here, okay?" You said, hopping off the bed and ridding yourself of the strap-on before heading out of the room.

Dabi nodded, staring up at the ceiling — not that he could move much at the moment; he felt so goddamn sore and tired. You did a number on him.

You came back after a moment, a sheepish smile on your face as you brought towels and a glass of water. You helped Dabi sit up, bringing the glass to his lips as he tilted his head back. He gulped down the water in one go, throat immediately feeling refreshed.

"What are you doing?" He asked, watching as you unfolded one of the damp cloths.

"Taking care of you."

You brought the cloth to his face, and being mindful of his staples, you cleaned his face of all the sweat, drool and dried cum. Dabi sighed at the feeling, the coolness feeling great on his overheated body. You went lower, cleaning the release off his chest and pelvis. You muttered an apology when Dabi hissed in sensitivity when you gently brought a fresh cloth to his softened dick.

You tossed the towels into a hamper before bringing your boyfriend into a hug, which he reciprocated tightly. "I hope I wasn't too rough on you.”

He chuckled, patting your back reassuringly. "I didn't know you had it in you. I can't remember what I did to piss you off to the point of ragdolling me around in bed, but shit, I must have deserved it."

You laughed, pulling away so that you could kiss his forehead. "So, can I say that I fucked you stupid?"

"Hm... I dunno, but maybe I should piss you off more often if that's the outcome."

"Don't test me," you said, shaking your head. "Alright, lemme go run a bath."

You attempted to get up, but Dabi was quick to pull you back into bed, laying you down on his chest. The warmth of his skin, paired with the calm and steady thump of his heart, nearly immediately lulled you to sleep.

"Nap first. Hygiene later."