#stupid(withlove)

[kindagar]

he's stupiddd

on the topic of different unrelated aquatic mammals wasn't there also one marsupial that became aquatic and is notable as the ONLY semiaquatic marsupial?

somehow it gets past the whole "babies might drown in the pouch" issue

yeah, the yapok! it's native to mexico and central america, and it's the result of the north american branch of opossums trying to make an otter and mostly succeeding :)

there are many many MANY partially-aquatic mammals out there, but only a few totally-aquatic marine mammals.

[tropes-and-tales]

A Match to Dynamite

Day 31:  Roleplay (Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader)

(For the 2021 Kinktober event offered by @beeschaos and @withlove-sid.  The original post and calendar/list can be found here.)  

CW:  Fix-it fiction; smut (roleplay that is rough; PiV; unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count:  4569

It is a dangerous game you are playing, and you know it.  

You are currently sitting alone at a table, the wood deeply burnished from decades of use.  Your arms are handcuffed tightly in front of you, almost to the point of pain in your wrists.  The Colombian heat and humidity don’t seem to touch the room you are in, but you can still feel a trickle of sweat cut a tickling, torturous path between your shoulder blades.

You are in so much trouble.

You don’t know how much time passes.  There’s no clock in the room.  No ticking second hand to give you a clue.  No windows either – no slide of sunlight across the floor, no lengthening shadows to mark the shift from noon to evening to night.

You can hear footsteps approaching, and then the door swings open to admit Colonel Carrillo.  Tall, broad, impressively ruthless.  The rumors that swirled around him, the things he was accused of having done in the fight against Escobar….

If the good, law-abiding citizens of Colombia spoke of Escobar as a boogeyman, then Horacio Carrillo was the thing that haunted the narcos’ dreams.  He strides into the room, shuts the door behind him.  Sets the thick manila folder down on the table and sits across from you.

Then he fixes you with those dark, impassive eyes of his, and you shouldn’t be turned on…you shouldn’t!

But you are.  And that’s what makes this so dangerous.

He only sits and stares at you, a painfully long moment until you squirm under the force of his gaze.  When you do, he glances down at his folder, flips it open with one of his big hands, the fingers blunt and calloused.  Colonel Carrillo wasn’t like other military brass, lazy and easy to bribe.  Colonel Carrillo got his hands dirty in the fight against the narcos.

He rifles through the pages.  You can’t read what they say; you refuse to lean forward to see.  You can guess.

He says your full name.  Flips a page.  “Alias Fosfora.”  He snorts at that, but there’s no humor.  “Do you all have to have such stupid fucking nicknames before you start pushing drugs for Escobar?”

You redden under this taunt.  Fosfora, for your hard-to-control temper.  A little matchstick that bloomed into flame at the slightest friction.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that great, but it was better than Cucaracha or El Leone or Limón.  At least you weren’t nicknamed the cockroach.

You don’t respond to his taunt, so you just watch him turn the pages of your file.  You wonder what intel he has on you.  Where he got it.  It likely doesn’t matter – he is sweating you, waiting for you to crack first.  It is a tactic your father used to use.  Silence as a cudgel.  Which is why you could outlast Colonel Carrillo.  If you could outlast your bastard of a father, you could outlast the head of the Search Bloc.

You thought he might list out all of your supposed crimes.  Might slide a picture of your mother across the table to tug at your tender heartstrings.  Instead, Carrillo fixes you with a glare.

“Where’s Escobar?”  His voice is soft, deadly low, and it sets a throb of desire through you that you try to ignore.

“Never met him.”

“Where’s Escobar?”  He repeats it, even softer this time.

“Maybe he’s dead already.”

At that, the man laughs.  It’s bitter and humorless and tinged with menace.  “You think Pablo gives a shit about a puta like you?  You think he wouldn’t sell you out in a second to save himself?”

Puta.  Well, that stings.  You curl your lip in distaste, but you remain silent.  You try to remain still, but your hands are drifting into numbness, and you flex your wrists a little against the handcuffs.  Carrillo catches your movement.

“I can take those off,” he offers, and now his tone turns conversational.  It’s so adjacent to friendliness that a less wary person might put their guard down.  “I’m not unreasonable, little fosfora.”

You don’t trust him, but your hands are aching.  You nod at him and stretch out your bound wrists.  Carrillo reaches into his pocket and pulls out the tiny silver key, and you ignore the warm brush of his fingers as he unlocks the cuffs.  He takes them, tucks them away into another pocket, and watches as you rub the life back into your numb hands.

“Muchos gracias,” you say.

He snorts, but replies, “you’re welcome.”

“Where’s Escobar?” he asks a third time, but his tone remains borderline friendly.  His eyes – dark, probing – are anything but.

“Why would they ever trust me with that knowledge?” you counter.  “Especially a – “ you grimace at the word – “a puta like me?”

“Why wouldn’t they?  The cartel seems to embrace all sorts of human garbage to their cause.”

There’s something in his expression that surfaces and then disappears, lightning-quick.  You catch it, though.  It makes you lean forward a little in your seat.

“Does that human garbage include your men?” you ask, and now your voice is soft, low.  “The members of your own military?”

Now he refuses to answer.  He only stares back at you, unblinking.  But you catch the little tick of angry energy as he clenches his jaw, and you push your luck.

“How does it feel, Colonel?”  Your voice is so quiet now that it’s practically a whisper, a husky, smoky voice that seems to affect him.  His dark eyes get just a shade darker, his pupils dilating the barest bit.  

“How does what feel?”

“How does it feel to be the only honest man in Colombia?”

He narrows his eyes at you, but you can feel the tension.  It is almost like a third person with you in the room, filling up space, taking up air.  Making it a little harder to breathe.  It’s balanced perfectly between the two of you now; Carrillo had the upper hand when he first entered, but now you can feel it shifting in your favor.

“I imagine it’s lonely, being the only honest man in the entire country,” you guess.  You fan yourself with a hand, then reach down to pluck one of the buttons on your shirt free, letting a blessed bit of air down your collar and against your sweaty skin.  “Do you get lonely, Colonel?”

He doesn’t answer that question either, but his eyes drift down at your exposed décolletage before they jerk back up to stare at your face.  That angry tick in his jaw is steady now, a steady beat you could tap your feet to –

“Are you lonely now?”  Your voice is a whisper.  “I’m not unreasonable either, Colonel.”  At his own words volleyed back to him, Carrillo twists his mouth into a sneer – but he stays silent.  Stays mostly still.  Just his mouth frowning at you, his jaw clenching as he holds back whatever he wants to say.

“Maybe we could help each other.  You could let me go, just…show me a side door I can slip out of.  And in return….” You trail off, arch a suggestive brow at him.  Reach up and undo another button on your shirt, and it’s enough to show the swell of your breasts, edged in lace and damp from the heat.

“If you knew me, you’d know that I’ve never taken a bribe in my life,” he growls back at you.  

You smile inwardly – you know that about him.  Everyone knows that while Horacio Carrillo may be ruthless and violent, he never takes bribes.  He never gives in where so many of his colleagues do, trading in his unwavering moral compass for money.

“Maybe you never were offered the right bribe.”

“You think you’re the right bribe?”  His sneer doesn’t sting as much now.  Now it seems…like coverage.  Camouflage. Like you’re breaking down his façade….

“Probably not,” you reply with a pout.  You look down at yourself and undo another button – enough to expose your breasts if you push the sides of your shirt open.  Which you do, a bit:  you push the fabric aside just a little, and you run a thumb over the pushed-up curves of your breasts, slicking against the sweat gathered there.  You don’t need to look up to know that Carrillo is staring at you.  You can feel the weight of that gaze.

Something in him snaps.  You feel the tension shift first, and then his hand is on you, shot across the table and quick as a rattlesnake.  He gathers the fabric of your shirt into his fist and hauls you halfway across the table towards him.  He’s leaning forward too, and you’re almost close enough to kiss him.  You can feel his breath, coming out in short, angry bursts.  You can see his eyes – dark, but the deep brown is shot through with lighter flecks that look golden that close.

“What – “ you start, but he silences you by jostling you hard, yanking you a fraction closer to him.

“I cannot be bribed, puta,” he snarls, and there it is – that pulse of arousal.  You can feel yourself growing wet from this, and it feels wrong, but you cannot stop it.  “Better people have tried.”

“So you aren’t just lonely then.  You’re tired too.  Tired of being the only one standing up to Escobar, tired of fighting – “

He cuts you off with a brutal kiss that steals your breath away.  It’s so hard, so sudden that you bite the inside of your lip and taste the iron tang of blood as Colonel Carrillo slots his mouth over yours, never allowing you a chance to finish your sentence.

You gasp against him, and he takes the opportunity to invade your mouth with his tongue.  He kisses like he fights:  deliberately, with confidence.  He maps out the contours of your mouth, the ridges of your palate, your teeth, your tongue.  You can taste the whiskey on his breath, hidden beneath mints.  You can taste him, and even though he is invading your mouth with his tongue, even though his hand is gripping your shirt tightly, you feel another sharp throb of lust course through you.

He breaks away just as your legs begin to shake.  You are stretched onto your tiptoes, and your muscles are burning, but you can’t think of anything other than those dark eyes glaring at you.  And then he releases his hold on you.

But you aren’t free of him.  Not by a long shot.  He stalks around the table, silent and predatory, until there’s no furniture between the two of you.  He’s not especially tall, only half a head more than you, but he’s broad through the chest and shoulders, and his uniform strains against the sheer bulk of him.  You want to cringe away from him, but he’s shifted the tension back in his favor and you are loathe to cede more ground.

“Little fosfora,” he says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through your body.  “You know what I think when I hear your stupid fucking nickname?”  He doesn’t let you answer.

“I think, it’s fitting.  A little matchstick.  Good for one use, then tossed away like garbage.”  He leans down, pushes his mouth right against your ear to whisper, “what if I used you once and then tossed you away?”  His breath is hot against your skin, and it makes you break out in goosebumps.

“I think you’d get burned, Colonel.”

He chuckles against you, turns to brush his lips against your pulse point, thundering away under your skin as your heart hammers in your chest.

“Just a little burn,” he says.  He doesn’t kiss you.  You feel him peel his lips back in what must look like a grimace, and then he’s biting you, his teeth pressing into your skin, right to the point of pain…and then he retreats, darts his tongue out, soothes the pain with the wet tip that makes you actually shudder this time.

“Colonel – “

“Shut up.”  He shifts his head, bites you again.  Pushes you right to the line of it hurting, then pulls back.  He draws a line down the column of your neck, a line of indented teeth marks dimpling your skin but not breaking it.  Leaving marks that will fade pretty quickly.  You bet they won��t even bruise.

Distracted by his mouth, distracted by his hand on your lower back, you don’t notice his other hand creeping to his own side, to the little leather holder on his belt where he tucked the steel handcuffs.  You don’t notice until the first cuff clicks around your wrist, and when you try to squirm away from him, he grabs your other arm and cuffs it too.  Both of your arms are behind your back, and your shirt falls open as you struggle against it.  You catch Carrillo’s eyes drifting to your chest, and now that you are subdued, he doesn’t try to hide it.

He reaches out, undoes the remaining buttons.  He can’t remove your shirt, cuffed as you are, but he pushes it open so that he can see you better.  Your breasts pushed up by the satiny black bra, the trickles of sweat coursing between the valley of your cleavage.  

The way your chest heaves, breathing in short and fast at the tension.  It’s shifted from the dangerous tension of being interrogated by the head of the Search Bloc to sexual tension, charged and sparking like lightning in a cloud bank. Carrillo sees you practically panting, and he glowers at you, his lips twisted in a cruel smile.

“You’re enjoying this,” he claims, and he’s not wrong.  Some dark part of you is enjoying it, the surrender to this hard man.  Giving over to him, letting him take what he wants.  

But part of it is the power you hold.  Carrillo is the paramount example of his version of ethical behavior – violent, sure, but laser-focused on his goal of beating back the narcos.  He’s never been successfully bribed.  He’s never crumbled where other men have.  He’s been a solid seawall against the tide of drugs flooding from Colombia, but now…

Now he’s crumbling too.

He seems to realize it.  He seems to understand the line he is crossing, and it seems to make him angrier.  He pulls you to him to lay another punishing kiss on your mouth, and there’s nothing giving in it.  He only takes – takes your breath from you, takes the moan that slips out of you involuntarily.

Then he shoves himself away from you, but he’s not finished with you.  He’s only starting.  

He turns you around roughly until you are facing the table, and then he pushes you down, bends you at the waist until your upper half is lying against the table top.  Your head turns, your cheek pressed against the cool wood, and you can see out of your peripherals – Carrillo staring down at you.  The sight of you bent over in front of him.

You see out of the corner of his eye when he reaches down and unbuckles his belt.  It falls heavy on the floor.

You see him step closer to you.  You feel his hands reach around you, feel them fumble at the button and zipper of your jeans.  You bite your lip but you can’t stop the whimper that tears out of your throat.  Your mouth feels dry, but you also feel how wet you are.  Soaked, in fact, and he’s about to realize –

He sees it when he yanks your jeans and panties down together.  Pushes them to your ankles, nudges one of your feet until you lift it and free it.  Your pants and panties are tangled on the floor on one foot, but your bottom half is naked otherwise, and Carrillo kicks your feet apart.  You are obscenely exposed to him, and it shouldn’t turn you on even more…but it does.

You shut your eyes and hope he interprets it as embarrassment.  You hope he can’t see how much you want this, though it’s painfully apparent.  You feel him step away a little; you hear the rustle of fabric, the quiet snick of his zipper –

And then he steps back to you.  He has to be a fraction away from you – you swear you can feel the heat from his skin, the electrical charge he carries with him.  The menacing aura that is so easily read as dark desire.

“Beg me for it, little fosfora.”  

His voice is low, and you can’t help pressing backwards a little to try and touch him.  He steps away with a chuckle, and he lays one of his big palms on your lower back to pin you against the table.

“Ask me to use you,” he says.  You can sense a smile in his voice, and you can picture the curve of his lips.

Well, why shouldn’t you?  You’ve been caught.  You’re handcuffed in some room.  You are at the mercy of a man who would do anything to eradicate Escobar and his organization.  Why not grab a little pleasure before whatever is going to happen finally happens?

“Please,” you whisper.  His hand on your back flexes at your word, so you say it again.  “Please use me, Colonel.”

Colonel Horacio Carrillo kisses like he fights, and he fucks like he kisses.  It’s a smooth movement, how he swipes the tip of his cock through your folds, coating himself in your arousal before pushing into you in one firm motion.  He doesn’t rush it, but he doesn’t go slow, and it’s like the bites along your neck – right at the edge of pain, flirting with it, but never quite crossing the line.  

He’s so fucking thick, your mouth falls open in a silent scream.  You can feel him splitting you open, the sweet burn of you giving way to him.  It is the feeling of being possessed, impaled on his throbbing length, and you wish you could capture the sensation somehow so that you can replay it over and over again.

You wish you could see his face.  He doesn’t say anything – doesn’t swear or curse or invoke the name of god.  He huffs out a heavy breath when he first enters you, and he pauses for a single moment.  If it’s to collect himself or to allow you to adjust to his intrusion, you don’t know and he doesn’t say.

He starts moving, and there’s no words in any of the languages you know that capture the sensation of him inside you.  His thrusts are smooth, deep.  The rhythm at first is steady as the waves of the ocean, rolling in and out.  He’s slow enough that you can feel every ridge, every vein in his cock as it pushes against the tender walls of your cunt.  You try to twist a little so that you can look at him, but he pushes you down with one hand between your shoulder blades.

Then.

Then he starts moving faster.  Harder.  The rhythm changes from smooth and rolling to jolting.  Each time he buries himself in you, he pushes just a fraction in more, pushes against your ass, and you can feel him battering you from the inside.  Then he pulls out, slams back into you, over and over and over.  Each thrust, he grunts a little, and it makes him sound feral.

It's too good.  You were already turned on, but this was more than you had expected.  You had thought maybe he’d force you to your knees, make you suck his dick – though your mind boggles that the man has cracked and given in to his baser wants….

You can feel your orgasm building low in your belly.  It’s a hot coal buried under a bank of cold ashes, and each punishing thrust coaxes the heat higher and higher, and you know you are close to combusting.

You finally burst into flames when he shifts his hand from your back to your hip, puts the other hand on your other hip. There’s something about Carrillo’s hands on you, his calloused palms against your soft skin.  His fingertips digging into your flesh, and you know you’ll have bruises there at how hard he grips you, how hard he steadies you as he hammers away.

Your orgasm explodes into the heat and destruction of fire, a heat that devours you and makes every cognizant thought crumble to ash.  You can hear yourself, but it sounds faraway to your own ears, a high-pitched cry.  Your entire world collapses down into the sensation of Carrillo’s cock pushing into you, pulling your pleasure from you with an intensity that feels a little like dying.  Your legs tremble uselessly, and tears sneak out of the corners of your eyes.

You can hear him too, but he’s faraway-sounding.  You think you hear him say something, but you can’t make it out over the roaring of your own pulse in your ears.  You feel the way his steady, punishing thrusts stutter, and then you feel it – the pulse of his cum in you, filling you.

*****

Carrillo’s first instinct is to feel guilty.  He shouldn’t have done this; you haven’t said a single word for long minutes.  You only lie against the table, even when he removes the cuffs.  He winces at the red marks on your wrists – he did them too tight.

He winces too at the purpling fingerprints he sees on your hips before he pulls your panties and jeans back up, as gentle as he can muster.

“Sweetheart,” he says, and his voice is laced with regret.  Apprehension.  “Are you….are you okay?”

You say something in reply, but it sounds slurred.  Sounds a little like “yeah,” so Carrillo relaxes a fraction.

He gathers you into his arms and carries you out of the room.  Takes you out of the narrow guest room that he’s never used before for anything other than storage.  Carries you to the bathroom.  He strips you out of your clothes and takes his own off, and you’re cognizant enough to step in the shower with him.  

The water seems to revive you.  The glazed-over, fuck-drunk look in your eyes clears, and you finally focus on him.  You gift him with one of your smiles, and he finally relaxes the rest of the way.

“Hey,” you say.

“Are you okay?”  He repeats the question from before, now that you’ve returned to your senses.

“Oh, yes.”  You stretch up under the spray of water and kiss him gently on his mouth.  “That was fun.  Are you okay?”

He is now.  Absolutely.  He got lost in the fantasy at the moment, and he felt sick to his stomach when he recovered enough to find you insensate, stretched across the old kitchen table he had moved into the guest room for the occasion.  But during the little game?  He loved it.  Loved sliding back into the old role of Colonel Carrillo, head of the Search Bloc.

Even his old uniform still fit, though it was a little tight around his belly.  He had put on weight.  Fat and happy, as Trujillo told him last week with a grin.

After you both shower, you dry off and climb into bed naked.  No point in putting on pajamas.  The game is still singing in both of your veins, and Horacio wants to make love to you to remind you of the truth between the two of you.  Not antagonistic at all.  Caring.  Supportive.  Full of love.

So he does just that.  He pulls you on top of him, guides you to ride him gently, his big hands splayed against the soft skin of your waist as you take your pleasure from each other.

Afterwards, he tugs you to his chest, and you drag your fingers through his chest hair.  He can still never quite reconcile how his life turned out.  It was nothing but Escobar for so long.  The hunt for Escobar destroyed his first marriage, made him a hard, unforgiving man with only one objective.  He felt more like a machine than a man, most days.

Then you came into his life.  Not even DEA, technically – a contractor hired from the private sector, a gorgeous woman with a ridiculous number of endangered and indigenous languages crammed into her head.  Escobar had leaned on those small villages, those small tribes in the highlands that could be bought for a song.  You were impressively equipped to deal with it, a literal doctor of rare languages trained at MIT.

But you had been a doctor of words, of plosives and frictives and trills.  Carrillo had been irritated by you, a soft thing with no business being in the dirt of the war with the narcos…and yet you were the one that saved him, in the end – a bit of intel you decoded from the Achawa language about an ambush.  You had called Trujillo and Murphy and Peña when Carrillo was bleeding out in an alleyway, his life hanging in the balance.  Escobar had raised the gun, aimed it at his head, was about to pull the trigger when a scout saw the coming cavalry and called him off…

When Escobar met his own end, Carrillo suddenly found himself with the prospect of a future.  A future without Pablo, a future with you…

When he asked you out, still limping from the bullet he took to the leg, you had smiled at him and asked why it took him so long.

And if all of the pain and frustration and loneliness of the Escobar years were one epoch of his life, you marked a better era.  One of rest and relaxation and love.  The military lavished him with medals, gave him a new title, gave him the cushy job at the military academy in Bogotá.  

You found a job pretty easily too, a charming anomaly at first – the American who could map out the family trees of Arawakan or Quechuan or Chibchan languages.  But you were sharp, and funny, and passionate about languages, and you found a position at the university with ease.

Though…

“Muchas gracias,” he murmurs against your head.

“De nada,” you mumble back automatically.  Horacio laughs.

“You said muchos earlier.  It’s muchas.  Muchas gracias.  Gracias is feminine.”

It is cute how you fumble your Spanish.  You also fumble your English, your mother-tongue, confusing “affect” and “effect” and putting far too many commas in your writing.  Your head is so full of difficult languages, you make mistakes on the easy things.  You are like a brilliant mathematician who can calculate the speed of the universe’s expansion in their head…and who makes arithmetic mistakes in the register of their checkbook.

“Thank god I married a local yokel then,” you say, and Carrillo isn’t sure what yokel means, but you press a kiss to his chest, so it must be fine.

“Thank god I married a little fosfora.”

You kiss him again.  “Anytime you feel like taking a bribe, Colonel, you let me know.  I’ll get in touch with her.”

“Muchos gracias, mi amor.”

You laugh at him, give him a little swat.  You settle back against him, and it isn’t long until he feels your head get heavy as you fall asleep.  

Horacio fights sleep for a little longer.  He still can’t fathom how his life turned out so well; it was more than he ever could want for himself.  Why on earth would he want to sleep?  No dream was better than this:  you in his arms, his savior, his guardian angel.  His little fosfora.

~~~Tag List~~~ @bananas-pajamas  @rachelxwayne   @stardust-fray   @massivecolorspygiant​   @imspillingcoffee​   @amneris21​  @paintballkid711​   @mad-girl-without-a-box​   @bestattempt​   @rosiefridayrogersunday​   @strawberrydragon​   @hoeforthefictional​   @greeneyedblondie44​   @melaniecraig80​

[hurting-fictional-people]

Betrayal Story - Part 6

Hii look at what I finally finished! sorry for taking so long to post this guys, I don't even have an explanation lol... I have something else already half written for the boys so hopefully I won't take so long to update the story again 🙃 anyways, I hope y'all like it <3

tagging @thelazywitchphotographer @swift-perseides @whump-it-like-its-hot @sunflower1000 @msrandonstuff @fromtheo-withlove @boxofsilence @lionhxartx @sometouchofmadness @paleassprince @livingforthewhump @1becky1 @shameful-indulgence @whatwhumpcomments @tropes-for-my-md-daydreams @starnight-whump @writingbackwards @noodlesandkareokee @mylifeisonthebookshelf @nightwhumpee

CW: forced sedation, manhandling, drugged whumpee, needle mention, aftermath of branding/burning

Part 1 here, continued from here

-

Liam can’t move. Every time he does, his arms do too and the mere brush of burned skin against pristine bandages is enough to get him on the verge of tears.

The room he’s kept in is too barren, too small to provide any kind of distraction from the constant pulse of pain – too much and never abating. No one listens or cares when he begs for medication, for anything to ease the agony. The doctor comes in to see him, give him antibiotics and check if there’s no infection, but barely looks at Liam when he whimpers under gloved hands.

The first time he takes a glance at the twisted skin underneath the wound dressing, a breathy, hysterical laugh slips out, quickly followed by a silent gasp as Chase’s initials weigh on his arms. He was always his, in the end, wasn’t he? Even after being betrayed and stabbed and kidnapped, he could never get the agent off his mind. Now he’ll be on Liam’s body as well.

It takes all of his willpower not to rip the dressings off once the doctor and nurses leave, just to stare at the hideous thing his arms are now.

But in the silent room, with nothing to do but think and despair, Liam can’t stop looking at the bandages.

He doesn’t know how long he spends staring at it – at the white itchy gauze, and the burns that hurt underneath it. At the C and the R he knows are forever burned on his skin. Like fucking cattle, marked with his owner’s name. Like the stupid boy who thought he could give his heart away to the beautiful, mysterious man that smiled at him. If nothing else, it is a good reminder of how big of a fool Liam is. If he lives long enough for it to be useful, that is. If Jonah doesn’t decide he’s had enough of Liam soon.

Horror floods him at the thought, and when his heart speeds up, Liam can’t hold it any longer. He pulls off the bandages in one swift movement, holding his breath when a wave of fire licks his arms. It doesn’t stop him from ripping out the second bandage though.

His hands tremble on his lap as Liam stares at the skin above his wrists, red with blood and raw skin disfigured into letters. It looks just as ugly as it feels.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until a tear drips on his thigh. And then another and one more, until he’s openly sobbing, chest heaving and stomach twisting.

Lost in tears and the sight of burned skin that sinks into his heart and burns everything there too, Liam only realizes there are people in the room when a hand grabs his forearm.

“What did you do? I just bandaged that,” the nurse complains.

This time, this one time, he moves. Liam yanks his arm away from their grasp and stumbles out of the bed, away from the nurse that stares at him with wide eyes and a startled frown.

“D-d-don’t touch me,” he hisses, holding his hands as close to his chest as he can, and hissing again when sore skin rubs against his shirt. “Stay the fuck away!”

But instead of moving back or so much as talking to him, the nurse calls for the guards and starts walking in his direction.

Liam takes a step backward and presses his back against the wall, wild eyes searching for an escape, a weapon, anything, but salvation is nowhere near. “Please, don’t. Leave me alone.”

When the guards open the door and enter the room, Liam slides to the ground, as small as he can make himself, elbows on his knees, arms protecting his head.

“Get off!” he screams when hands grab at him, and thrashes in the hold. His foot connects with soft flesh, his knee with someone’s chin, but there are too many men. Too many hands for too little strength, no matter how desperately Liam fights.

They drag him through the floor as Liam writhes with every last bit of stamina he has, panic driving him to fight like he wishes he could every time he’s hurt.

A different kind of pain blooms as he squirms uselessly in unforgiving grips – one deeper, familiar, warmer. Liam still doesn’t stop.

“Fuck, he reopened the stab wound,” someone shouts over the cacophony of pain and panicked struggling. “Hold him down, now!”

Liam is pushed to the floor, and when someone squeezes both his arms to keep him there, right over the exposed burns, the world turns red, and a scream tears its way out of his throat.

“No, no, no, get off!” he sobs, kicking out even when a needle sinks into his arm. “n-n-nggh off, get, get o-off,” he tries again, but the world is already slipping through his fingers. He kicks out and thrashes as best as he can, but it isn’t enough. There are stronger bodies over him and the movement is barely there at all.

As much as Liam tries to keep his eyes open, they weigh too heavy, the drugs stronger than he is.

What isn’t?

Liam’s body relaxes against his will, slumps under harsh hands and angry stares, and all he can do is whimper when they drag his limp body to the bed.

-

Chase moves through life like a ghost, only a shell of helplessness and worry, and for the first time, his team notices. He hasn’t slept in days, not with Liam’s face twisted in agony ready to wake him up each time he closes his eyes. Has barely eaten, no appetite left when all he can think about is the boy he loves being hurt on his account.

How can he be free when Liam is locked up? How can he be the one who isn’t hurting when he is the only one who ever deserved it?

“Come on, I know that there’s something wrong,” Zoey says, crossing her arms.

If he could simply flee, he would, but with the hacker standing right in front of him, Chase knows it isn’t worth it. Even if he did leave, she wouldn’t stop trying to get the truth out of him. So Chase sighs and looks down at the blond woman who looks ready to commit murder.

“We all know it. You look like shit. What’s going on?”

It takes all of his strength to plaster a smirk on his lips and lean against the wall with a casual tilt of his head. “You guys worry too much. I’m fine, Zo. Probably could do with a little more sleep, but who couldn’t?”

As convincing as he hopes he sounds, Zoey doesn’t seem at all impressed by his acting. If anything, her frown deepens. “I know you, Chase. And you know me, so you know you can trust me. You look even worse than you did after that mission with the newspaper boy.”

Newspaper boy. If that was all Liam meant for him, maybe Chase’s heart wouldn’t be this tattered.

“Zoey. I am okay, I p– I promise.”

I never lied to you, he had said to Liam as he bled out in Chase’s arms. I betrayed you, yes, but not once did I lie. Stay alive and I’ll prove it to you.

But that was just another lie, wasn’t it? Liam is as alive as ever, and all Chase’s done is cause him more pain than any of them ever imagined possible. All he’s proven is his failure to keep Liam safe.

What is another lie when he’s already filled with them? Maybe that’s all he was always meant to be, all he will ever be – a betrayer. A traitor. A liar.

With a casual shrug that makes his stomach twist, Chase sidesteps his teammate. Before he can move farther away though, she grabs his arm and pulls him back.

“You are good at lying, but I can see the way your eyes have gone dull. I’m not going to force you to say it, but when you get tired of pretending to be fine, I’ll be here. Okay?” When Chase doesn’t answer, she takes a deep breath and nods. Zoey leaves him standing there, feeling dirty and raw, something stirring inside his chest and begging him to tell her everything.

Chase opens his mouth, the truth one breath away, and takes a step towards Zoey’s back. And then his phone buzzes, and reality comes crashing back as he looks at the screen and she disappears down the corridor.

Wanna see him?

It’s the first message he’s gotten from Jonah in days, and Chase holds his breath and freezes for a second at the words.

He’s rushing to his car even before his mind has caught up with his legs.

He’s standing in front of Jonah’s building in a matter of minutes, heart racing but mind weirdly quiet. Static silence, fear building up.

Jonah waits for him in the lobby this time, leaning against the open door of the elevator with a smile on his lips.

“Chase! Long time no see.”

“Where is he?”

“Straight to the point, huh. Boring as ever,” Jonah rolls his eyes. “I was feeling generous today, thought you might want to say hello. I’m not sure our dear boy will answer you, but you can try for yourself I guess.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Chase hisses as Jonah nods for him to get inside and presses the button.

“Nothing bad. He was just fussing about the pain, so my nurses gave him have a little something to relax.”

Chase steps into the elevator, two guards close behind, and fears he’ll shatter his jaw from how hard he’s clenching it.

“He also doesn’t really like his new… adornments, I don’t think. Ripped the bandages earlier today, wet the whole bed with tears.”

Jonah’s voice is light as he says it, the tone one would use to talk about something meaningless, something that doesn’t make Chase sink his nails into his palms and hold his breath. The man’s eyes are the telltale, shining with dark glee, and Chase can see the way Jonah follows his every movement like a predator, reveling at the little cracks in his unruffled façade.

“So when I offered him something to calm down, he didn’t even think before accepting,” he continues.

The doors slide open before any of them can say anything else. A small mercy.

The walk to Liam’s room is as quick as it is infinite. They stop in front of the door so incredibly soon, yet so painfully late.

“Be nice to him, I think he’s going through a phase,” Jonah chuckles as he nods for one of his men to unlock the door. “And don’t forget that this is your fault, dear.”

He barely realizes he’s entered the room until the lock clicks behind him. And then Chase’s eyes find Liam, and the world stops on its tracks, just like it always does when they are in the same room together.

He’s lying on his back, arms open and hands hanging off the bed, bandages covering the skin from Liam’s elbows to his wrists. His eyes are open, but unfocused, slow blinks that lead to nowhere even when Chase takes the first step towards him. His chest rises and falls slowly, rhythmically, a shallow blow of air through parted lips, and despite everything, Chase is happy that Liam isn’t in pain.

It is only when he stops beside the bed that Liam’s head lolls on the pillow, a sunflower looking for the sun even though no real light can reach him here. Still, he looks, and half-lidded eyes roam around the room before finally stopping on Chase’s face.

“Hey,” Chase says, curling one hand into a fist while the other clutches the edge of the bed.

“Mmgh,” Liam slurs with a shuddering breath and a crease on his forehead before trying again. “I, mm, I’m not, n-uh not feeling… well.”

“How can I help?” Chase’s voice is hoarse and low, pained, but Liam hears it. He hears it and he whimpers, shaking his head no.

Make it stop, his mouth forms, but doesn’t voice.

I can’t, Chase wants to scream, I’d give anything to make it all stop but I can’t. Instead, he softens his voice and tries to smile. “What if I do something to distract you? I… I was told you are under some strong drugs.”

Green eyes blink at him, and Chase is happy there are only the two of them in the room. He might actually lose it and punch Jonah square in the face if the man was here.

“How about I tell you a story? You’ve always liked them.”

Liam swallows, eyes darting around the room again, and even though Chase knows he isn’t listening, not really, he sits on the edge of the bed and starts talking.

“It’s about a boy who thought he could change the world, but instead changed the person who was sent to stop him.”

“Sou-sounds like a shit story,” Liam mumbles.

“Depends on how you look at it. Or who’s the one telling it, I guess.”

There’s a pause, and Liam sighs softly before talking again.

“Are you… are, are you really… here?”

The words slam into his chest, shattering anything left in there, and though Chase holds himself firmly still and keeps his face carefully free from anything but tenderness, something collapses inside of him. Maybe it’s his heart. It feels like it, and he wants to cry, to grab Liam and leave, but he can’t, and Liam strains to focus on his eyes, so Chase smiles like there isn’t burning agony rippling through him.

“Do you want me to be?”

“I, I don’t, I don’t know.” It is only a murmur, but Chase knows he’ll hear its echo in his nightmares for a long time – the uncertainty, the fear, the sadness. The helplessness.

I’m here. I would be here forever if I could.

But the words are only that – words. He can’t be here forever, nor erase all the pain he’s caused and continues to cause. So Chase picks up the pieces of his heart and pretends it doesn’t hurt to smirk and brush Liam’s hair away from his forehead like he used to do so long ago.

If he can’t take Liam away from this nightmare, the least he can do is pretend it is a dream.

“Then you should stop dreaming about me.”

“Ca-can’t,” Liam frowns, staring at the hand Chase just touched him with. “Will, will you leave? Again?”

“Only if you want me to.”

Liam looks up again, and something is missing in those eyes. A spark of life that was still there the last time they saw each other, but isn’t now. As Chase searches for the hope he always loved in the depths of Liam’s gaze, what he finds instead is sadness.

“Don’t go,” Liam breathes. “I, I, my h-head, it it it feels weird, Chase.”

“I know, love,” Chase says calmly, nothing of the wild desperation that rages inside of him seeping through the words. Not when Liam is this lost, this vulnerable. Not when it is the first time he has called Chase by his name after the betrayal. “It’ll pass.”

“I’m scared,” he murmurs, shifting on the bed. “But, I, I don’t remember… why.”

“You are okay, Liam. I promise. You’ll be okay.”

Liam closes his eyes and shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is only a whisper, gone even before he finishes. “I don’t believe you.”

Chase bites on his lip and creases his forehead, but none of it shows when he takes Liam’s hand in his own and gives it a little squeeze.

“I know. That’s okay too.”

But Liam isn’t there anymore to hear it. His body sags on the bed, taken away by the drugs, and Chase is left alone in Liam’s cell, watching the boy he’d kill and die for fall asleep. As he does, all Chase can think about is that he needs to get Liam out of here. Somehow, he needs to get him away, no matter the cost of it.

An hour goes by, and though it is one of the worst hours of Chase’s life, is it the first time he doesn’t feel like a part of his heart is bleeding in days. Not when he can see the bleeding part right in front of him.

He wants to wake Liam up, to hear his voice while he can, before he’s forced to leave again. But there’s peace on his face as he sleeps, and Chase can’t take him back to reality when he looks like he used to, like he could wake up at any moment and kiss Chase with a smile.

And then the door opens, and the memories vanish as Chase reluctantly gets up. As soon as he does though, Liam stirs on the bed, frail hand reaching out and grabbing Chase’s wrist before he can move away.

“You promised me… a… um, a story.”

Liam’s eyes open for a moment before closing again, but he doesn’t let go. Chase shoots one look at the guards waiting by the door and knows that nothing good will happen if he waits. He has to play nice if he wants to get Liam out.

Chase looks down at Liam again, and when he finds half-lidded eyes struggling to stay open, he can’t stop his voice from breaking mid-sentence.

“It’ll have to stay for another time, okay? I’ll see you soon, love.”

Liam’s eyes flutter back closed with a soft sigh. His voice is soft as the tears that sting Chase’s eyes when he speaks. “You al–, you always leave in real life too.”

Chase can’t find an answer before he is dragged out of the room by a firm grip he knows better than to fight. He yanks his arm away as soon as the door locks him and Liam on different sides, and hears the words rattling around his head while he is lead to sit in Jonah’s office to hear what the man wants next. All the way back to his house.

He doesn’t think when he calls Zoey. All he hears is Liam.

All he can see is Liam’s lost gaze, the life fading out of his eyes. All he knows is that if he lets him in Jonah’s claws one more second without doing anything, he might actually, truly, crumble down until he can’t pull himself back up.

He is sitting on his couch, hands over his face and elbows on his knees just like they have been since he got home, when his friend opens the door.

“Oh, Chase,” she breathes as soon as she sees his face and sits beside him. “What happened?”

He doesn’t get to crumble down. Not when it’s Liam the one being hurt. The one branded and tortured and kidnapped and betrayed. Still, when Zoey’s gentle arms wrap around him, he hugs her back.

“It’s Liam,” he says, fighting to get the words out through his heaving breaths, trying to force his mind to put them together long enough for someone else to know it too because he can’t do this on his own. He thought he could, he thought he was enough, but he isn’t and he needs to get Liam out, no matter what, no matter how, he has to, he has to before the light goes out in that beautiful green gaze. “He, I, he’s caught and it’s my fault and I thought I could keep him safe but I can’t and now–“

“Chase, breathe,” she commands, and he answers. It’s all he knows how to do, isn’t it? Answer orders. Look at what happens when he’s left on his own. “Let’s start from the begging.”

So Chase does.

(next)

[creweemmaeec11]

Avoiding Love: Epilogue

Guys this is so soft. I may have beaten kind touch in softness without crossing into that cliche over the top cringey cute. How do I do this

Part one Part two

The villain was having a hard time believing just what was happening right now.

He was laid back on the couch of a motel room, lights off late at night, some crappy movie playing on the small low res tv in front of him that he was barely paying attention to.

It would have been a fairly normal thing if not for the hero contently snuggled into his chest, sound asleep on top of him.

If this was a dream, he did *not* want to wake up any time soon.

But it wasn't a dream, this was real life. Feelings bubbled up in his chest as he looked down, movie long forgotten about. The hero was sound asleep, relaxed and snuggled in just about as close as he could get to the villain, having made some comment about it being punishment for avoiding him for 4 days.

If that was the case the villain might just have to do it more often.

It had been hours, and he could still feel the slight tingle of where the hero's lips had kissed his cheek.

He caught himself smiling again.

Gods. This creature in his lap had him so wrapped around his finger it was stupid.

The villain couldn't bring himself to mind.

"You're staring again,"

The sudden voice snapped the villain back to reality only to see two eyes sleepily peering up at him.

How long had the hero been awake?

The villain's face immediately took on a red hue.

How long had he been staring?

"I wasn't! I- wait- again?" The villain sputtered.

The hero on top of him giggled, and the sound immediately made the villain feel warm and floaty inside. The hero's face when they laughed while half asleep had to be one of the cutest sights the villain had ever seen. He felt his heart rate pick up again when he remembered what said hero had said earlier.

This hero could play him like a violin without even trying. He had it so bad it was ridiculous. He would have even called it pathetic if not for the fact he wouldn't change it for the world. Not if it meant losing this.

"Yes, again," the hero replied, before yawning mid-sentence and snuggling in even closer, "you were doing it for most of the movie too,"

The villain blushed even more. He was fairly certain the hero would be able to feel how flustered he was even from where he was snuggled against his chest.

"Sorry..." the villain muttered, shifting slightly.

"I don't mind" the hero replied, "I'm just wondering what you're looking at,"

"Nothing. I'm just... staring off into space,"

"For a villain, you're a terrible liar," the hero replied, idly drawing circles on the villain's chest with his finger, which caused goosebumps to rise. The villain could hear the amusement in his voice.

The villain wasn't sure what to say.

"I think it's pretty cute," the hero continued, yawning yet again, "That your staring and don't even realize it,"

The villain shrugged, pathetically tongue-tied and unable to come up with an excuse.

The hero shifted, getting more comfortable before snuggling even closer, "you're so warm,"

The hero glanced up when he still didn't get a response, only to see the villain pointedly looking away from him. The hero giggled again, poking the villain's stomach gently, "Sunshine, you don't need to stop looking at me,"

The nickname alone made the villain's gaze snap back to the hero laying on top of him.

"I was just wondering why, I didn't mean for you to stop," he explained with a small smile.

"You'd laugh," the villain muttered, trying not to shift nervously and disturb the hero who was still practically half asleep.

"I would never," the hero replied more seriously, "If I ever did, it would be fondly, certainly not mockingly. I promise,"

The villain huffed. This was unfair. He couldn't say no to the two puppy dog eyes looking up at him now. He never could.

"I'm just trying to convince myself this is real," the villain admitted under his breath, "because it feels like a dream,"

He couldn't meet the hero's eyes while he spoke, but when he didn't immediately get a response, the villain dared a glance.

The hero was looking up at him with a big yet soft, genuine smile. He reached down, grabbing the villains hand with his own, pulling it in closer and subsequently pulling the villain's arm around him.

"This is real," The hero reassured, intertwining their fingers, "don't worry"

"I just... never thought I'd ever get to hear you say it,"

"Say what?" The hero asked in confusion.

The villain opened his mouth to reply, but stopped, blushing, like the words were caught in his throat. He bit his lip.

But the hero caught on quickly, a small smirk growing on his face.

"Ohhh,"

The villain glanced at him, before looking away again, cheeks darkening.

"I could always say it again you know, if you'd like," the hero offered, failing to hide the amusement in his voice.

The hero smiled as he felt the villain go statue still underneath him. He turned his face downwards, resting the side of his head against the villain's chest. Gently, he examined the villain's hand in his, tracing over the different scars lightly.

"I love you," the hero whispered quietly. Even he was too shy to say it while looking at the other.

In his ear, he could immediately hear the sound of the villain's heart rate pick up, suddenly thumping like a jackrabbit through the snow.

The hero immediately giggled in delight, which didn't help the pounding in his ear slow down any.

He went to say something, most likely a tease of some kind but was cut off by a large yawn, causing the villain above him to chuckle.

"You should go back to sleep darling, you can barely keep your eyes open,"

The villain felt slightly guilty, avoiding the hero for 4 days was probably part of the reason he was so tired.

"It's okay, I'm not- *yawn* - that sleepy..." the hero replied, despite clearly losing the battle to stay awake.

The villain just shook his head and scooped the hero up in his arms as he stood up.

"Wha-"

"Just moving you to bed,"

After laying the barely conscious hero down, he threw the blankets over him. Right as he went to pull away and head to his own bed, he felt something grab onto his hand.

The hero was looking up at him with a mixed expression of pleading, sad, and almost slightly betrayed.

The villain gave a defeated laugh.

Puppy eyes were so cheating.

"Move over,"

The hero's eyes lit up.

He barely got a chance to settle down under the covers before the hero was reattached to his chest snugly. The villain just idly began combing through the hero's hair.

They lay in content silence for a minute, before a barely audible mutter caught the villain's attention.

"I really don't mind you know,"

"Mind what?" The villain asked in confusion, staring at the ceiling above.

"The staring," the hero replied, voice barely discernible from where he was mumbling, barely conscious on the villain's chest, yet still somehow managing to snuggle even closer, "makes me feel safe,"

The villain looked down in shock, only to find the hero had finally waved the white flag and lost the battle of staying awake, now sound asleep.

The villain doubted the hero would even remember any of this conversation in the morning.

He was kind of banking on it because he would never live it down otherwise.

One way or another though, he was sure of two things.

One, he was in love.

And two, he was *definitely* sending supervillain a fruit basket after this.

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[froggywhumpy]

Punishment

- - -

>:)!!! finally some whump!!!! I thought this chapter was a bit longer than my others, but I checked the word count and- no. It’s not. I hope people enjoy the shorter style because all of my stories are kinda like that. I think this chapter is pretty good, too!! Enjoy our poor baby Ezra learning the consequences for his actions >:)

- - -

Tagging: @milk-carton-whump @whatwasmyprevioususername @myst-in-the-mirror @happy-whumper @abitefullofwhump @starnight-whump @cowboy-anon @whumpasaurus101 @fromtheo-withlove

- - -

CW: Whipping, knife mention, yelling, swearing, fear of heights, Drew is really mean and Damion is sadistic

- - -

Ezra had never been more terrified in his life than he had when Drew told Damion what he had done.

Drew’s brother was older, and stronger too. Drew- well, he was horrifying, but at least Ezra knew him. With Damion, Ezra never knew whether he would act calmly, or if he would snap his arm off.

However, when Drew told his brother that Ezra had made a call, Ezra knew he was in trouble.

“You’d think he’d have a bit of common fucking sense.” The older man snapped, closing the distance between himself and Ezra in but a second.

Ezra pressed himself further into the corner, trembling like a child. “Please- I’m sor-sorry, I swear, I swear, I’ll never do it again, please, don’t- please-“ Ezra dissolved into frantic pleading, begging as if his life depended on it.

“You didn’t think you’d get off the hook without any punishment, did you? In fact, I think you need to be taught a lesson.” Damion sneered.

Ezra shook his head. “No, no no no, no- please, please don’t-“ he looked up at Drew, desperation clear in his eyes.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Ezra’s stomach dropped. “What?”

“Oh, wow. You’re so fucking stupid.” Damion grabbed Ezra’s wrist, yanking him harshly to his feet, eliciting surprised cry from the boy. “It’s really adorable how you still think he’s on your side, though.”

“Please, please please please-!!!“ Ezra continued to beg, his voice raising as Damion pulled him out of the living room, and down the hallway.

His pleas were completely ignored. Ezra was dragged down the hall, shaking as Damion opened the door at the end of the hallway.

The room Damion had brought him to wasn’t particularly terrifying by itself. It was somewhat small, and while the walls were covered in windows, the mountains weren’t visible, to Ezra’s relief. In the center of the room was a metal pole going all the way from the wooden floor to the ceiling. Against one of the walls was a long metal cabinet, running over a significant portion of the wall. Other than that, the room was empty.

Damion shoved him over to Drew, who had entered the room behind them. Petrified, Ezra whimpered as Drew brought him over to the pole in the center of the room. A moment later, Damion handed his brother a roll of rope, which Drew used to tie Ezra’s hands together, tying them to the pole over his head.

“I’ll never- never do it again, please, just don’t hurt me.” Ezra sniffed, his tears barely kept at bay.

“It’s far too late for that, love.” Drew’s frown deepened as he tied Ezra to the pole by his waist as well.

“Please, please please please- I’ll never ever do that again, I’ll- I’ll never ever..” Ezra rambled on, only somewhat coherent by this point. His pleas were ignored yet again, as Drew and Damion went over to the cabinet and began looking through it.

“Look over here.” Drew ordered. In Damion’s hands were two weapons; a knife, and a coiled whip. Ezra’s eyes widened. “Which one do you choose?”

Ezra shook his head. He didn’t want to choose- which one would hurt less? Ezra had never been whipped before. Just the thought of that being used on him sent chills down his spine. Defeatedly, he hung his head in resignation.

“The knife.”

“Great!” Drew grinned, taking the knife from Damion and approaching Ezra. Ezra squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for pain as Drew raised the knife towards him, but it never came. Instead, he felt cool air crawl across his exposed skin as Drew cut the shirt he was wearing off of his body. Ezra watched, not daring to move an inch.

Once Drew was finished, Ezra again prepared himself for the pain he was sure was coming- but after a moment of silence, he realized Drew had put the knife away, and had backed away from him.

Ezra stared at him for a moment, confused, before he saw Damion uncoil the whip.

“Wait- wait, I didn’t- I didn’t choose that one!!” The desperation was plain in his quivering voice.

“Life’s full of disappointments, isn’t it?” Damion laughed.

“That’s not f-fair!! Please, you can’t, you can-“

The next thing Ezra knew, the whip was brought down upon his bare chest, his skin instantly splitting the skin open. Ezra screamed in agony- The pain far exceeded Ezra’s expectations. He never even imagined it would hurt like this.

“Oh, stop screaming. And you might want to hold your head up, unless you want me to hit your face.” Damion began to smile, barely even audible over Ezra’s torment.

“Stop, stop, I can’t!!” Ezra sobbed. “I can’t, I can’t do anymore!!”

“Yes, you can.” Drew glared at Ezra, speaking with disdain. “And you will. I think ten lashes will be enough for you to have learned your lesson.”

“Ten?” His eyes widened further. “I can’t do ten, Drew!!”

“I guess you should’ve thought about the consequences before you disobeyed my direct orders, then.” He snapped.

Defeated, Ezra listened to Damion’s advice, holding his head up as he braced again for the incoming pain. He felt nauseous at the very thought of having to endure ten lashes.

The second hit was just as painful, if not worse, than the first strike. An anguished cry escaped his lips, blood now dribbling from his open wounds.

When Ezra heard the third crack of the whip, he was already anticipating the pain that would come soon after- that didn’t mean he didn’t still scream out in excruciating pain as the whip struck him. The phone call wasn’t even worth this. Jason would never find him. Trying to contact him was pointless. Ezra wondered if trying to escape was pointless, too.

Ezra didn’t have much time to contemplate that, as before he knew it, the whip was brought down on him again. Every time, he thought he knew what it would feel like to be struck by the whip, and every single time, he underestimated the pain.

By the time the whip cracked for the tenth time, Ezra’s world seemed to spin, distorted by pain and blurred by his tears. His body was completely limp against the ropes, and if it weren’t for them, he would’ve collapsed a while ago. Much to his relief, none of the lashes had landed on his face. Ezra was grateful for that much.

“No more,” The boy whimpered as Drew approached him yet again. “Please, Drew, I can’t do anymore.”

“There won’t be any more.” Drew sighed, still frustrated. “No more whipping. But your punishment isn’t over yet, so don’t get too comfortable.” Drew removed the ropes from his around his waist, and then his wrists.

Ezra collapsed, and he would’ve fallen to the ground if Drew hadn’t caught him. He let out a cry of pain; every tiny movement hurt.

“I’m tired, no more punish- punishment, please.” He whined.

“You deserve it.” Ezra never would’ve believed these words could’ve been spoken by his previous lover. Each word felt like a knife cutting through him. He had never felt betrayed like this ever before. Nobody could deserve this- Drew didn’t really think that, did he?

Ezra was dragged from the torture room, writhing in pain as he was lead upstairs. Ezra’s head was spinning. He was brought into a clean room. Ezra was able to make out a desk, bookshelves, a door to a balcony- oh gods, Drew was taking him onto the balcony.

“No- no, no, no, no, Drew, don’t!!” Ezra screamed, his desperation neglected as he was pulled out onto the rickety wooden balcony.

If Ezra thought the floor was moving when he was inside, it was nothing compared to how he felt on the balcony. Lightheaded didn’t even begin to describe how he felt as he stood on the poorly made platform, overlooking a 1,000 foot? 2,000 foot? drop.

Ezra was forced to his knees- he shrieked, terrified of getting closer to the cliff face, even if the difference was only a few feet. Drew pulled out a pair of handcuffs, cuffing Ezra’s hands around the wooden railing of the balcony.

Ezra gaped at Drew, petrified that movement of any sort would cause the balcony to just break. Drew didn’t seem worried in the slightest. “Now, you’re gonna stay out here until you can tell me why what you did was wrong. Understood?”

“I know why, I know why, you can- take me in now, I know-!!”

Ezra’s begging was abruptly cut off, Drew’s hand cracking against his face as he slapped him. “None of that. Shut up and take your punishment like a good boy.”

Without another word, Drew walked off of the balcony, taking time to lock the balcony doors and draw the curtains, leaving him absolutely and completely alone.

Ezra cried. He couldn’t take it any longer. This time he would die, he was absolutely and positively sure of it.

[strigwrites]

🐱 - A time they found a stray animal

(Art source)(As told by @fromtheburn-withlove)

The caravan moved at an easy pace through the white crunch of the desert, and after even twenty malms on the march, that sort of lackadaisical stroll might have been a blessing, but we were hundreds away from any kind of reprieve in a jagged scar filled with sand and savage wildlife. At that point, just call it what it is: a death march.

We lost a few guys back at the dig site—no, let me rephrase that. We lost most of our guys at the dig site, and we had orders to return our finds to base camp on a strict deadline that was, as most tend to be, completely impervious to the reality of human limitations. So with three-quarters of the crew missing, we couldn’t afford to burn daylight and took off before any of us could truly process the sight and sound of our comrades being rended to shreds in the million-fanged mouths of sandworms who refused to die out of sheer spite. Needless to say it was a quiet trip.

It was a flinching movement out of the corner of my eye that caused me to stop and scramble for my weapon. Those who marched outside the wagons to conserve space saw my movement and mirrored it on impulse; we were prey and we knew it, a vulnerable line of famished and fatigued men and women who couldn’t afford to think beyond the next step, just one foot in front of the other in that bone-dry purgatory. You could feel the hackles rise as we waited for the sudden explosion of sand that heralded the arrival of another burrowing foe and prayed it would happen under some other poor bastard first.

I held my breath and waited, and then I saw it again—a flutter that I pointed my gun at and almost nearly pulled the trigger for when I caught a glimpse at something unusual. Fur. I was the brave and stupid bastard that stepped out of line to approach the movement, curiosity overtaking my better senses (or perhaps I was delirious from the sun) until I could prod the barrel of my rifle into the sand, nearly leaping out of my skin when it met with the fleshy yield of a very-much-alive body. I stepped forward as the others surely cowered and waited for me to be eaten alive in sacrifice for my indulgence, and I fell to one knee. With gloved hands, I gingerly probed and dug until the near-lifeless body of a desert hare greeted my sight.

“Well, hello there,” I rasped from beneath my scarf, staring down at the marble eye that rolled back at me, its body twitching with the occasional electric jolt of fright. “You’re a rare bird out here, little man. Surprised you haven’t been eaten.”

“What is it, Kat?” a voice called behind me.

“We’ve got ourselves a bunny rabbit.”

“That’s funny.”

“I’m not joking. Come have a look for yourself.”

Much to my surprise, the caravan came to a shuddering halt and the others gathered around. Under normal circumstances, they’d be barking at me to keep moving, but my proclamation changed the mood as suspicion melted into piqued interest. In truth, this was the kind of novelty we never got. We were all starved for something good and uncomplicated. We were so hungry for something that was not imminently threatening, something we could trust not to hurt us or deceive us.

“Well, ain’t he a handsome boy?” a man called out with his hands on his hips. I dare say he even smiled a little.

One woman stooped and offered out her waterskin; I removed my gloves and dipped my fingers in the opening, drip-feeding this parched, sun-baked rabbit back to life for damn near a half an hour while others sat around and watched and waited, touching its fur like a relic. Before you knew it, they were telling stories of pets they left back home, furred or not, and how much they’d adored them.

In the end, our little friend was tucked into my jacket and came along for the ride. I could feel his little nose moving against my ear, sniffing into my hair as he returned to life with each nibble of dried rations we sacrificed in service of this unexpected token of hope. That night when we made camp, it felt like the winds were finally at our back. In the morning, he was gone.

[pinartindia-blog]

If a friendship last more than seven years, it lasts a life time. . Tag your bff's . Gift your bff a token of crazy, stupid times spent together through the growing years.(we customize a special card for your bff) #bff #badge . Shop on www.pinart.co.in . #handmade #withlove #badges #pins #pin #lapelpin #badge #bff #bestfriends ##metallic #magnet #pinart #badge #pinartindia https://www.instagram.com/p/BvondpEnUK2/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=h088j038rygb

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[tropes-and-tales]

The Ways of Love, Part One

Day 7:  Aphrodisiac (Colonel Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader)

(For the 2021 Kinktober event offered by @beeschaos and @withlove-sid.  The original post and calendar/list can be found here.)  

CW:  Idiots in love; heavy yearning; talk of aphrodisiacs; discussion of virginity; ‘80′s slang; discussion of sex but nothing explicit; 18+ only, just to be safe.

AN:  Part One of Two.

Word Count:  3926

Steve Murphy often felt guilty, you being in Colombia.  It was his fault.  He had raised the issue, pointed out your vast experience in Panama.  The DEA was losing the battle against Escobar, and Murphy had mentioned your name…when the approval came through for another agent to come to Colombia, it was you.

He felt guilty because you would be home otherwise.  If he had kept his mouth shut, you’d be back in the States finally starting your life.  He had met you in South Florida a few years back, had been impressed by how singularly driven you were in your work.  No husband, no boyfriend, no girlfriend.  No kids.  Your parents had you late in life and they were dead now.  

Steve often felt guilty.  He was in Colombia too, but he had Connie.  His life could continue apace.  Javier had his bevy of women, so he wasn’t exactly lonely.  But you…

You had nothing but your work.  And Steve didn’t realize how bad it was until some of the crude assholes at the embassy slipped up and revealed a secret about you.

By then, you’d been in Colombia for months, and Steve – guilty as he felt – didn’t just see your lonely life.  He saw a lot.  He observed you as closely as a cartel member, and he saw what others didn’t.

Because he felt guilty, Steve did something he never had before.  Connie would tease him later for it, call him Cupid, but it wasn’t that.  All he did was give a little nudge.  He pulled Javi into his scheme, so it was a joint-nudging, really.  

What else did Steve notice?  Well, he saw two people – two driven, lonely people – quietly in love with each other without the other person knowing.  

So Steve gave a nudge, with Javi’s help.

*****

Colonel Carrillo was generally irritated by the Americans even on the best of days.  

First of all, he was an American too.  Everyone in this goddamned hemisphere was – north, south, and central, yet the Americans from the United States took the title for themselves.  Which he didn’t quibble over much – he was a Colombian through and through, and he never thought of himself as anything but a Colombian.

Secondly, the Americans were a nation that was uniquely talented at breaking shit and then rushing in to fix it at great expense.  Like a mob boss in those old movies he used to watch growing up, black and white movies where some wise-talking mobster strolled into a store, smashed it to hell, then offered to fix it for a price.  That was the Americans’ entire international approach:  break shit, then haphazardly fix it.

But mostly, Colonel Carrillo just didn’t like them.  The ones from the embassy were brash, crude.  Stupid.  They sneered at the Colombians, sneered at the quarters provided to them, sneered at the local cuisines.  As if Colombia wasn’t a paradise of food – all those delicious fruits, delicious coffee, delicious fish from the ocean.  As if a sad hamburger from McDonald’s was the height of haute cuisine.

He didn’t hate all of them, though.  Murphy, Peña…they were good men.  Capable men.  He trusted them more than he trusted many of his own men, and both Murphy and Peña lacked that special American arrogance that many of the embassy employees had.

But you?  He didn’t hate you at all.  Not even a little, not even for a moment.  When he met you, it was like being shot – the sudden searing pain, so unexpected that he thought for a second that he was having a heart attack.

He’d never felt it before, love at first sight.  His marriage to his wife – his ex-wife, now – had been half-arranged by their parents, their families old friends, when they were young, and any love between him and Juliana had been slow to grow.

The love at first sight only deepened as he got to know you, got to work with you.  Your sweet face belied serious credentials – you had worked in Panama to dislodge Noriega in the late eighties as a field agent, had stayed behind afterwards to work cleanup.  It hadn’t been glamorous, but you had invaluable experience and were just jaded enough to realize that fighting Escobar was a long war, not a short battle.

But work aside, you weren’t like your fellow countrymen.  You seemed to genuinely love Colombia, and seeing you see it for the first time made Carrillo fall a little more in love with you each day.  

Each new food you tried, each new sight you took in…he thought you a secret aesthete, someone who took a sensual pleasure in beautiful things, whether they be a colorful silleta at the Festival of the Flowers, or the wash of the sky at sunrise in the highlands, or a perfectly ripe guava cupped in the palm of your hand.

He could never act on his feelings.  He knew it.  His life was a lonely one now, monkish, his sole objective to take down Escobar.  Even if he could, he wouldn’t act on his feelings – you were just as driven as him, just as focused.  You were friendly with him, and he’d never risk that friendly closeness on such a wild gamble.  

He contented himself to just being near you.  To taking in the scent of you when you stood close to him in a military checkpoint, to feeling the brush of your bare arm against his when you reached past him.  The sound of your voice, both when it was bright with excitement over a promising lead or husky from tiredness.

He was an aesthete too, after all.  He took a sensual pleasure in beautiful things, and there was no one more beautiful to him than you.

-----

There was an event at the American embassy, needless socializing that Carrillo had to do.  He put on his dress uniform, made sure his shoes were polished to a high shine.

You would be there, and he knew it.  If he took a little extra time making sure his tie was perfectly straight, no one knew but him.

The cocktail party was in full swing before he finally spied you in the crowd.  Usually you blended in just fine, or as much as a gorgeous woman in a sea of mostly men could.  Usually you could do the socializing part – laughing at jokes, asking after wives and children back in the States.

Tonight, you were scowling so deeply that your face was downright thunderous.

You still looked beautiful to him.  You were in a black dress, the skirt flared out a little just below the knee, the sweetheart bodice accentuating the curves of your breasts without exposing much of them.  You were wearing simple pearl jewelry – a necklace, earrings – and Carrillo thought you looked like an old Hollywood movie starlet.  Simple elegance, understated and lovely.

Except for the fierce glower on your face.

He never got to speak to you that night, and he felt a low moment of disappointment when he scanned the crowd and found you gone.  There was a moment of jealousy too, a mad bit of possessiveness when he thought maybe you went home with one of those embassy assholes, but no.  That wasn’t the case at all.

He was scanning the room for you, coming up empty when he noticed Murphy watching him.  The man had a curious expression on his face that Carrillo couldn’t place, and a moment later, the blond man walked over and joined him.

“Colonel,” he said in greeting.  “Looking for someone?”

Was it that obvious?  He decided to lie.  “Peña here?”

Murphy narrowed his eyes at him for a second, then shook his head.  “No.  You know Javier hates these things.”  A beat, then he added, “the Girl Wonder just left too.”

It was what they called you – the Girl Wonder.  Carrillo thought it was a little dismissive – you were a woman, not a girl, but he would readily concede that you were a wonder.

“Hmm,” he replied, non-committal.

Another beat, then Murphy continued.  The tone of his voice was so casual, so unlike him – Carrillo wouldn’t realize until much later that the man guessed at his unrequited love for you and was egging him on in that moment.  

“Girl Wonder left in a temper,” Murphy told him.  “Some of the embassy assholes slipped up.  I guess they have a pool about her.  They’ve been taking bets….”  He let the sentence trail off, let Carrillo make his own assumptions.

“Have they been betting on who will sleep with her?” he asked, and his voice was low and tight with anger.  What else did those crude idiots ever think of than where their next easy lay would come from?  They made bets all the time about the women in their orbit; of course they’d make a bet about you.

He knew how hard it was for you, being a woman in the DEA.  How hard you worked, the fine line you had to walk.  Be too cold and you were a bitch.  Be too friendly and you were a slut.  You had told him about it once during a late night stake-out, and Carrillo had raged quietly then too at the unwritten rules you made for yourself just to be taken seriously.

“Yes,” Murphy replied.  He studied Carrillo for a moment, then clarified.  “They have a pool for whoever sleeps with her first.  You know…whoever takes her virginity.”

*****

All you wanted to do was put it behind you.

You had been having such a nice moment at the embassy, a funny conversation with one of the employees there.  Some guy from New Jersey, joking around about baseball teams, when another man butted into the conversation.

“Trying to make yourself a cool few hundred?” he asked your New Jersey compatriot, and you had looked on in confusion until the interloper made a crude joke about cherry picking.

Then you realized.

You could guess how they found out.  There was a woman in the embassy, a secretary and sometimes-translator who had been in Panama with you back in ’88.  She and you had been fast friends, but she had a way of gossiping with other people and had likely spilled your secret.

All you wanted to do was put it behind you.  Work the case against Escobar.  

But Murphy acted weird the next day, blushing like a damned idiot as if he were the virgin and not a married man.  You caught Peña staring at you more than once, and the weight of his gaze grated on you.  You stared back at him, the entire moment reduced to a childish game of who would blink first.

Peña did.  Peña blinked first, and you felt a silly triumph when he finally turned back to his own paperwork.

It was early evening when a messenger brought fresh intel straight from the CIA spy planes.  The three of you rifled through the sheaf of photos, and then Murphy reassembled the stack and handed it to you.

“Take these to Carrillo, will you?  Connie said if I’m late again, she’ll divorce me and take up with this asshole as a rebound.”  He jerked his thumb at Peña, who flipped him off.

“It’s late – “ you started, but Murphy cut you off.

“He’ll be there.  Take them to him.  He’ll want to see them sooner rather than later.”

You always enjoyed spending time with Carrillo.  There was something about him that drew the eye, and it wasn’t just his darkly handsome looks, the menacing set to his strong features.  Many of the men you met in your line of work were just champion bullshitters, little boys who hid behind guns and badges and who played at being men.  But Carrillo…

Carrillo, you thought, was a rare specimen.  A real man.  One completely assured in himself, in his actions.  

Beneath the stern façade, the heavy menace, there was also something else.  A sensual sort of elegance to him.  He had a way of smoking his cigarettes, of running his fingers along the cut-glass of his whiskey tumbler…in another life, you could picture him as, say, an art dealer.  Or a purveyor of rare vintage wines.  Or an archeologist who could spend a lifetime in the dirt to find a single piece of gold from the Quimbaya era, a man who saw beauty and appreciated it for its own sake.

You didn’t think of that now.  You only wanted to flee from your awkward partners, the knowledge of your virginity heavy between the three of you.

But if you were expecting Carrillo to not know….of course he knew.  He had been at the cocktail party, and gossip seemed to spread faster in Colombia than in the States.  Maybe it was the humidity.

He was sitting at his desk, and some flicker of emotion passed across his features when he saw you.  You stilled your steps, halfway in his office, and you felt your stomach sink.

“Shit,” you said.  “You heard too?”

He nodded, but he stood and gestured for you to sit on his couch.  He walked past you, shut his door.  Went back to his desk and pulled two crystal tumblers out of his desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of whiskey.  He looked at you, the question in his eyes, and you nodded.  He poured you each a drink, then he came over and sat beside you, handed you your glass.

“Thank you,” you said.

“Is that new intel?” he asked, pointing with his chin at the photos in your hand.

You handed them to him, but he only glanced at them before setting them down.  You sipped at the whiskey, felt the pleasant burn down your throat, felt the warmth spread through you.  He sipped his too, and the silence wasn’t oppressive like it had been with Murphy and Peña.

“You Americans are strange,” he finally offered, and he smiled when you snorted at his words.  “The strange things you get obsessed with.”

“That’s an understatement, Colonel.”  

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know.”

You sighed.  “I know.“

“It’s no one’s business but your own.”  His tone had an angry edge to it, and you could see the way his jaw ticked angrily as he clenched it.

You sighed again.  “People having a pool makes it everyone’s business, though.  Murphy and Peña were weird today.”

He made a dismissive wave with his hand.  “They’ll get over it.  It’s not their business either.  Only your own.”

You took another sip of whiskey, relished the burn of it.  “Why is it that the head of the Search Bloc is the only reasonable person I know here?”  You smiled around the rim of your glass, and he caught it – returned it with one of his own, a rare thing.

“Because they only hire the best, wisest men in the military here,” he replied, deadpan.

“Our government could take a lesson then,” you joked back.  “We mostly just hire choads.”

Carrillo’s English was impeccable, but you were steadily corrupting his crisp, perfect words with your slang and idioms.  You had caught him once, quietly raging in his office, calling the latest stake-out bogus.  

“What’s a choad?” he asked, and you had to tell him.

He chuckled at you, then took a sip of his own whiskey.  His face turned serious again.

“Don’t let them make you feel like you’re less than them,” he ordered, and it set a thrill in you, a fluttery feeling in your stomach.  “That isn’t something you should keep score on.”  The that was emphasized, the meaning clear:  sex isn’t something to keep score on.

“Because if anyone is keeping score, Javi would win.”

“True.”  He paused, took another sip, seemed to hesitate before speaking again.  

“I was inexperienced when I got married.”  He glanced at you, and then added, “Católico.  You understand.”

You nodded at him and tried to ignore the fluttery feeling.  “I’m not sure why it’s a big deal.  There’s a lot of things I haven’t done.  No one has a pool about being the first person to take me…I dunno.  Horseback riding.”

It was funny, how your virginity seemed such a non-issue for him, but the fact that you’d never ridden on a horse surprised him.  His eyebrows shot up, and he turned to look at you.  His face was openly shocked.

“Never?”

You laughed.  “I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore.  Not a ton of horses.”

“My uncle has a ranch in Argentina,” he told you.  “We went all the time when we were young.”

“Maybe I’ll take it up once we catch Escobar.  Horseback riding, country life.  All that.”

Carrillo smiled.  “I could see you as a gaucho.”  He polished off his whiskey, rubbed his hands together.  “Now, let’s look at these photos your CIA provided.”

*****

The knowledge of your virginity didn’t change how Carrillo felt about you.  If anything, it made him more protective of you, the thought of those embassy fuckers speculating about you, gossiping about you.  As if they had the right to.

After that evening in his office, you didn’t speak about it again, but Carrillo had gleaned enough intel about your life that he could guess.  You weren’t like him – raised Catholic, raised to save one’s virginity for their spouse.  You were raised by older parents who had given your care over to a girls-only boarding school, so you probably never dated as a teenager.  

Carrillo could guess the rest too – a driven young woman, solely focused on her education and then her career.  Parents that eventually passed, and with no family to anchor you, your work with the DEA took over.

It didn’t change how he felt about you, but still…he hoped fervently that whenever you did find someone worthy of your love, they would be gentle with you.  

Late at night when he couldn’t sleep, he allowed himself to imagine how he’d handle it.  How he’d gently, carefully claim you.  How he wouldn’t rush it, how he’d set aside an entire weekend somewhere quiet and beautiful to teach you the ways of love.  Somewhere that he could stretch out over you in a soft bed, then outside in the night air underneath the stars…

But then it would be morning, and Carrillo’s indulgent fantasies were just that – fantasies.

-----

Maybe he couldn’t teach you about love, but Carrillo took your education of his country seriously.  He always enjoyed how you threw yourself whole-heartedly into the culture, and he loved stealing little moments here and there.  A food stall with obleas, empanadas.  The little groans you made when you found a new food to love, like when you took your first bite of something new.

The Search Bloc was running a checkpoint up in the highlands, and you, Murphy, and Peña were there too.  A long day but at least it was cooler than in the city.  So far, the checkpoint had turned up exactly nothing.

There was a fruit vendor nearby in the little crossroads market, and you wandered off to peruse the wares.  Carrillo watched you, took a moment to enjoy the sight of you trying to chat with the old man at the stall.  

From behind, he could relish in the sight of you – the khaki tactical pants you favored for field work, looser than your usual jeans but still snug against the curves of your ass, your hips.  The button down camp shirt underneath your tac vest, the way your ponytail curled a little against your neck.  

He got lost in the moment, and it was Murphy who brought him back to earth.

“Okay, Colonel?” he asked, and Carrillo gave a brusque nod.  He put his sunglasses on, snapped at one of his men for lounging in the dirt.  Then he stalked off, irritated that he’d been caught, and when he glanced back at Murphy after a moment, the man was still watching him.  Studying him.

He would have stayed away from you, but when Peña sauntered over to join you at the fruit stall, his careful façade gave way to a searing envy he’d never felt before.  He strode over to join the two of you, his feet having a mind of their own.

“Agents,” he said, and it came out clipped, curt.  Peña tilted his head at him, then nodded…then turned and walked away, towards Murphy.  Carrillo watched as the two men exchanged low words, glanced over in your direction, said more things.  But he couldn’t make any of it out, and then your hand was on his arm, tapping him to get his attention –

“Can you help, Colonel?” you asked, and you gestured helplessly between yourself and the old man who worked the stall.  “I can’t understand him.”

Your Spanish was good – excellent, in fact – but the old man’s Spanish had a thick accent that sounded like some form of Runasimi to Carrillo’s ears.  

You pointed to one fruit, and the man gave a string of words, grinning at you the whole time.  Carrillo translated.

“It’s níspero.  He says that it makes bones strong.  He says he keeps his teeth strong from the níspero where other men his age must gum their food like babies.”

You laughed, selected a few, and the man put them into a paper bag for you.  Then on and on, down the entire line of the stall.  You recognized the dragonfruit and passionfruit.

“What about this one?” you asked, pointing.  Again, the man smiled, laughed…gave you an entire litany that even Carrillo struggled to understand completely.  He made the old man repeat a little, and Carrillo nodded, made a quiet ah.

“That’s a borojó.”  He knew what the fruit was, but he didn’t want to repeat the man’s words…

“And?” you asked.  You looked at him, your face expectant.

He hesitated, and he glanced back at Murphy and Peña.  They weren’t watching the two of you anymore, so Carrillo relaxed a little.  

“Afrodisiaco,” he said.  “Good for…love.”

Your brows knit together as you glanced at the simple-looking green fruit.  “That’s an aphrodisiac?”

The old man seemed to read your disbelief, because he said more, ending his words with a laugh of merriment and a knowing smirk.  You turned back to Carrillo, waiting for the translation.

“He says…he says it would make your husband as hard as a teak tree.”  He watched as you registered his words, and how you laughed at that – your head thrown back, your eyes squeezed shut in delight, and he saw how it pulled the attention of your fellow agents back to you.

You turned to the old man.  “No tengo un esposo,” you said, and you shook your head in mock-regret as you pointed to yourself.  

The vendor laughed too, rattled off another string of words.  Carrillo didn’t even wait for you to ask.

“He says you should have one.  He says if you can’t find one in the city, you should come to his village.  Lots of borojó.  Lots of men with…no, lots of men like teak.”

“Tell him I’ll keep that in mind,” you laughed, and you pointed at two of the green fruits, had him add them to your purchase.  As always, you gave him too many pesos, waved off your change.  Always generous with the people who fed you, especially those that taught you new things.

You ate one of the borojó that afternoon as the checkpoint dragged on.  If it sparked any amorous feelings in you, Carrillo couldn’t tell.  You only paced alongside your fellow agents, stretching sometimes in the golden sunlight, turning your face to catch the warmth and light like a flower.

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[tropes-and-tales]

Something Different

Day 10:  Face sitting (Benny “Borracho” Magalon x F!Reader)

(For the 2021 Kinktober event offered by @beeschaos and @withlove-sid.  The original post and calendar/list can be found here.)  

CW:  An idiot in love; the affectionate usage of “mamí”; smut (PiV; protected; oral sex, F receiving); 18+ only.

Word Count:  3298

Some days just don’t go right.  Sometimes you spill coffee on your clean white shirt.  Sometimes you get a flat tire, or your ex turns up, or you accidentally eat cilantro (which you are allergic to) and spend the rest of the day in urgent care with an itchy case of the hives.

Today?  

You were driving all over Los Angeles County, looking for an informant of yours who was in the wind.  You would be worried that he was hurt, possibly dead, but he pulled this shit all the time.  Went on a bender, usually woke up in San Berdoo with one of his numerous ex-wives.

But today, you couldn’t find him.  You crossed over the border into San Bernardino County, and the weather was just hot enough, the traffic just slow enough, to push your irritability into a full-fledged temper tantrum.

Thank god Big Nick sent Borracho along with you.  After the last place you looked (a rundown house with your informant’s second ex-wife, who told you she hadn’t seen him, and if she did, she’d blow his fucking brains out for you), you tossed the keys of the SUV to your fellow detective and made him drive.

He did so with his trademark stoicism:  turned the ignition, punched in the next address, and drove.

Your temper cooled, but only a little.  You fiddled with the AC, but it smelled weird, so you rolled down the window.  The dry, hot wind whipped your hair, so you sighed and put it back up.

“We’ll find him,” Borracho said.  You glanced over at him, took in the sight of him.  He was a calm, solid rock that seemed to weather your temper, which was how you started hooking up in the first place.  You angry at a case, him cool and collected.  Complete opposites who fell into bed together:  you, spending your anger.  Him, shaking off his reserve.

But you were just fuck buddies.  You liked Borracho a lot, thought about him a lot.  Sometimes you thought about what it would be like to be with him, but you both had baggage.  Too much of it, maybe.  He had an ex-wife, you had an ex-husband.  Casualties of your line of work, maybe, but in your case, it was also just pure stupidity – two young kids who married too young and grew out of the marriage quicker than you thought possible.

Best to just stay friends – co-workers – with benefits.  No sense in opening yourself up to more pain.

“This guy can stay lost for a while,” you grumbled.

“We’ll find him,” he repeated.  He glanced over at you before turning back to the road.  “Promise.”

“And if we don’t?”  You already knew the answer.  If you didn’t find the informant in time, the D.A.’s case against a local drug dealer would fall apart pretty easily.

“We will.  In the meantime…”  Another glance over at you.  “You need anything?  You seem tense.”  He tilted his head, and amended, “tenser than usual.”

“I’m fine.”

“Need me to come over later?”

You bit your lip and thought about it.  Borracho was a generous lover, and you always had a good time, but it was always just sex, him taking you from behind or you riding him reverse cowgirl, and you never really faced each other – and never talked afterwards or even spent the night.  You were starting to feel cheap, though all those rules were your own.  Not his.  

“Nah,” you replied.

“You sure?”

You waited a moment, considered it.  You were starting to feel badly afterwards, felt an aching loneliness when he pulled away from your curb and you were left alone in a bed that suddenly seemed too big.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

He merged onto the freeway, heading back to Los Angeles County.  It was a long stretch of silence before he said, “we could try something different, if that’s the issue.”

“Who said there was an issue?”  Your voice was sharper than you meant it to be, and you sighed at yourself.

“Just saying.”

There was another stretch of silence, but this time it felt like Borracho was waiting for you to say something.  Of course he was – every word the man said had intention, probably because he spoke so little.  

“What do you mean by something different?” you finally asked.  You turned your head in time to catch the slight smirk that tugged against his mouth.

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

You rolled your eyes.  “Give me an example, Benny.”

His smirk turned into a smile, a soft one that made your heart thump painfully in your chest.  “I like it when you call me Benny,” he said.

“Don’t change the subject, Magalon.”

“Ah, there it is.  Back to Magalon.”  He braked gently, rolled to a standstill in the traffic snarl ahead.  “I dunno, whatever you want.  We could try a different position.  I could go down on you.  Whatever.”

Another rule of yours:  no oral sex.  For many people, it was foreplay, but it always felt unbearably intimate to you – more so than regular ol’ sex.  A dick inside you?  No big deal.  A person’s mouth on you?  That felt like something you reserved for people you were in love with and who loved you in turn.  

And wasn’t that the problem all along with Borracho?  That as much as you tried to pretend, you were kinda, sorta, possibly in love with him, and every time he came over, you slipped a little deeper.

“You don’t need to go down on me.”

He chuckled, shook his head at that.  “Such a weird rule, mamí.  A lot of guys like it – “

You sighed, waved to cut him off.  “That’s not it.”

“You don’t like it?”

You did.  Of course you did.  But you were terrified that if Benny Magalon went down on you, you’d no longer be able to half-convince yourself that this was just a hook-up for you.  Stoic as he was, you couldn’t guess at his feelings, and it would break your heart if he didn’t feel the same.

But you hated to lie to him.  “No, I do like it.”

“Then what’s the problem?  I like doing it, you like having it done to you.  Seems like an easy thing.”

“I just – “

“Would you rather sit on my face?  Take control?”

You sputtered at that, and it made him smile again.  “Benny!”

“What?”  He shrugged.  “I’d let you.”

That was the problem with Borracho:  his words had intention.  They burrowed into your brain.  He was the one who had casually mentioned hooking up in the first place, at one of the department’s off-the-books, boozy parties.  You hadn’t taken him up on it at first, but once his words were in your head….

-----

��Fine,” you told him.  It was three days later, you were at the office, and you were both standing by the vending machine.  You only had a ratty dollar bill that the machine kept rejecting, so Borracho pulled out his wallet and handed you a crisp one.  When you tried to press your dollar onto him in exchange, he waved you off.

“Fine what?”

You punched in the number for the Snickers bar.  You bent to retrieve it and straightened up.  “Fine to…what you offered before.”

He glanced around, dropped his voice to a low rumble.  “You gonna sit on my face then?”

You could feel the heat rising to your face, so you mumbled an affirmative and then fled, his low chuckle following you all the way to your desk.

-----

“So, how does this work?” you asked.

You felt nervous.  Jittery.  Benny had come over earlier, brought a six-pack and a pizza so the two of you could watch the Dodgers game, and it was the first time he came over and did something other than just fucking you.  But here he was, eating and drinking on your couch, one arm slung over the back, his fingertips brushing against your shoulder.

“However you want it to work.”

You sighed, and you turned a little to look at him.  It didn’t help that he was so damned handsome, strong features and dark brown eyes and just enough visible ink to give him that dangerous edge you were a sucker for.  He took a sip of beer and gazed back at you, utterly unperturbed.

“Explain it to me, Benny.”

He grinned at you and took another sip of beer.  “You’re always so big on rules and play-by-plays.  What if we just let it happen?”

“But I could hurt you.  I read about a woman who got too into it, snapped her guy’s neck, right between the C1 and – “

“You researched it?”  The arm along the back of the couch shifted, wrapped around your shoulders to pull you against him.  “This is why I love you, mamí.”

He probably didn’t mean it.  He said it so casually, the words just tumbling out of his mouth like smooth stones…but Benny Magalon only spoke with intention…he didn’t say anything else, so you decided to ignore it.  

-----

You decided to take Benny’s advice and just let it happen.  Which meant both of you gradually growing bored of the baseball game, and then a lot of making out on your couch.  Which was new – you’d kissed before, but only as foreplay.  This was slow and leisurely, Benny’s mouth working against yours, and you had the notion that maybe he was giving you a preview for later.  

The thought made your clench your thighs together as you bit back a whimper.

He led you to your bedroom, no stranger to the layout of your place.  He stripped you out of your clothes, removed his own, laid down on your bed.  He patted the space beside him, and as you settled near him, he reached into your nightstand and pulled out a condom.

“I thought maybe you could sit on my face, and then…” He gestured down the length of his body, his open hand pointing at his erection that was already curved against the smattering of dark hair on his belly.  “If that works for you.”

You nodded.  You swallowed, but your throat suddenly felt too small, too dry.  This all felt too intimate, just as you had feared…

But you decided to just let it happen.  You knew your own feelings, and maybe Benny, after what he had said earlier…

You watched as he rolled the condom onto his length, and then he fixed you with that look – his dark eyes darker, his lips parted as he growled out, “c’mere then, baby.”  

With his guidance, you straddled him, high up on his chest.  It was awkward, nowhere to put your folded-under legs until he spread you wider, allowing you space for his broad shoulders to slot between your thighs.  You felt your face heat up, so exposed to him in a way you’d never been before….but he only licked his lips and muttered, “fucking gorgeous, baby.”

His eyes tore away from where they were fixed and settled on your face.  “Brace yourself on the headboard,” he said.  “And don’t hold back on me.”

“Do we need a safe word?”  Your research had yielded face-sitting horror stories – broken necks and crushed larynx…

“Won’t be able to talk,” he smirked.  “My mouth will be full of this pussy.”

You groaned in embarrassment.  “Benny – “

“I’ll tap your thigh twice, like this,” he replied, demonstrating.  “That’s the sign to ease up, okay?”

You started to protest again, thought about negotiating something else, but when you opened your mouth, Benny saw it – and he cut you off preemptively by swiping this tongue along the length of your pussy, choking off your words and transforming them into a startled oh!

His kissing on the couch had been a preview.  He took his goddamned time, unhurried.  Your ex had always been in a rush, fingering you aggressively as he half-heartedly licked at you, but Benny was a fucking connoisseur of eating pussy.  

He had no rhythm or pattern you could discern.  He laid featherlight kisses along the insides of your thighs, then he licked at your seam, prodded you open with the tip of his tongue as his big hands held your hips, kneading your curves.  

His facial hair scraped against you, raised a sweet burn, and you knew you were soaking him.  The sounds were obscene – wet smacking, and Benny’s own uninhibited groans and grunts.  Not unlike the sounds he made the time you and the guys went out to celebrate at a steakhouse, you realized with a blush.

It felt good – better than good – but when he wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked, hard, you felt like you’d been punched low in the belly.  The ache of desire was almost painful, and you whined out his name.

“I got you,” he murmured against your core, and the vibrations from his words dialed that ache up another notch.

You couldn’t help yourself from moving, and Benny’s hands on your hips guided you, urged you to take what you needed from him.  All of your worries from earlier – the feelings you were catching, the logical concerns of your weight on his face – fell away.  As that ache built and built in you, you ground yourself against his face.  A small part of you was waiting for that double-tap to your thigh, but it never came – he only groaned against you, speared you with his tongue as his nose caught your clit and bumped against it.

Your orgasm washed over you – the ache in your belly exploding outward, into your arms and legs, making you tremble.  White sparks exploded behind your eyelids, and you turned your head to muffle your cry against the crook of your elbow.  Benny’s mouth never stopped though – he coaxed you through it, lapped up the arousal that soaked his face.

You weren’t sure how long it took, how long you sat on him.  At some point, his hand tapped your thigh twice, and you were brought back to yourself.  You climbed off quickly.  You apologized, but Benny shook his head.  He looked dazed, his mouth and chin shiny with your cum.  

“I need to be inside you,” he said.  He sounded faraway, and you weren’t sure if your orgasm had shorted out your hearing, or if he just sounded that faint.  “But I’m not gonna last long.”

“Fuck, Benny, I don’t care.”  You straddled him again, lower this time, lined up his throbbing cock with your slick entrance.  You lowered yourself, felt the heat of him even through the latex…

“C’mere,” he growled, and his hand hooked the back of your neck to pull you down to him.  To kiss you.  The man’s tongue must be tired, but he kissed you fiercely, like he wanted to possess you.  You could taste yourself on him, smell yourself on him, and it was the hottest thing you’d ever done.

You didn’t even need to ride him properly, and Benny hadn’t lied:  he came after only a handful of thrusts upward, his hips juddering up into you before he groaned into your mouth.  You could feel him, the way he ground into you, some instinct to bury himself deep in you when he came, despite the condom.

You dismounted him a long moment later, and you were both winded.  Your emotions were churning through you.  The high of coming was fading, and the more troublesome feelings were surfacing again –

“Benny – “

“Hmm?”

“Do you want to spend the night?”

He shifted his head on the pillow to look at you.  “I don’t have my toothbrush,” he said, but there was a smile on his face.

“I think I have a spare.”  You hesitated.  “But only if you want to.  You don’t have to.”

He took a deep breath, and he shifted his head back to stare at the ceiling.  “Meant what I said earlier.  Felt that way for a while.”  He glanced over at you again, looked away.  “I know you don’t feel the same.  You don’t have to say it.  I just wanted you to know.”

“Why do you think I don’t feel the same?”  You felt sick, like you might throw up the pizza and beer from earlier, but you also felt a filament of hope, a buoyancy that made you feel lightheaded.

“All your rules,” he replied simply.

“Do you think,” you said slowly, taking each word carefully, “that maybe the rules were a way of protecting myself from…feelings that I thought might not be returned?”

“Because of your ex?”

You nodded.  You and Benny had talked about it, before you started hooking up.  Both of your marriages crumbled around the same time:  his because of infidelity on his wife’s part, yours because your husband simply didn’t love you anymore.

“I’m not him.”

No, he wasn’t.  Not by a long shot.  Which may be why you had caught feelings so easily for your fellow detective.

“I know.”  You paused, then added with a smile, “he never let me sit on his face, for example.”

Benny chuckled.  “He should have.  It’s fucking hot.”

You laughed with him, but you didn’t respond for a while.  The silences with Benny were always comfortable, and he shifted at one point, raised his arm for you to lie against his chest, his arm around you.

“Maybe…” You started, and you swallowed hard.  That tight-throat feeling was back, but you pushed through it.  “Maybe I could get rid of some of the rules?”

“Like spending the night?”

“Yeah, and others.  Maybe…maybe we could try something different after all.”

“You asking me to be your boyfriend?” He joked, but you could hear the blatant hopefulness in his voice.  “Did you do your research first?”

“Asshole.”  You poked him in the side, making him grunt good-naturedly.  Your voice turned serious.  “Is that something you think you’d want?”

Benny kissed the top of your head, pulled you closer to him.  “I said I loved you, didn’t I, mamí?  I’ve wanted this for a while.”

“Since when?”

He snorted, kissed you again.  “Since I proposed we start hooking up.  Thought it was the best I could do.  Thought being fuck buddies was better than nothing.”

“You should have said something!”

He cleared his throat, let the pause grow between you.  “Maybe I was protecting myself too.  But it seemed stupid, after a while.  You aren’t my ex.”

You weren’t, and Benny wasn’t your ex.  Maybe it was possible to move on to something better the second time around.  Maybe you could be that for each other….

“We’re probably gonna have to tell the guys, at some point,” you said.

He snorted again.  “Baby, they already know.  Zapata drove past your place once and saw my truck out front.  They’ve only kept it quiet because I threatened them all with violence.”

You could feel embarrassed, but you pushed that familiar feeling aside and embraced a more rare one:  the feeling of comfort.  The feeling of awe.  There had been all sorts of stuff happening beyond your own limited view – Benny in love with you, the guys knowing – that you had missed.  Too wrapped up in your own sad feelings to realize what you already had waiting for you.

You didn’t tell Benny that you loved him that night.  It didn’t feel right.  You were all stirred up, and you had too many thoughts whizzing around your head.  But you knew you felt it, were utterly certain of it – both when you fell asleep against him and when you woke up beside him the next morning.

You told him a few dates after that.  It was something different, you embracing words with the intentionality of Benny.  No more holding back on him or yourself.  

~~~Tag List~~~ @bananas-pajamas  @rachelxwayne   @stardust-fray   @massivecolorspygiant   @imspillingcoffee   @amneris21  @paintballkid711   @mad-girl-without-a-box   @bestattempt   @rosiefridayrogersunday   @strawberrydragon   @hoeforthefictional   @greeneyedblondie44   @melaniecraig80​

[hurting-fictional-people]

Betrayal Story - part 5

This is it guys, this is why the characters got names! I hope y’all like it <3  

CW: branding, burning, forced to watch, emeto (pretty brief and only at the end), whumpee restrained to a table, nonsexual noncon touch, hurt no confort again but that will change eventually I promise lol

tagging  @thelazywitchphotographer @swift-perseides @whump-it-like-its-hot  @sunflower1000  @msrandonstuff @fromtheo-withlove  @boxofsilence  @lionhxartx @sometouchofmadness @paleassprince @livingforthewhump (let me know if you ever want me to stop or start tagging you ♡)

Part one is here, continued from here

-

Fire is strangely beautiful, Liam thinks, watching it flicker and dance in the hearth. A kind of painful beauty that hurts to see, the idea of touching it enough for gooseflesh to rise, but pretty nonetheless. 

He wishes he could be like fire. Not because of its beauty, but because it produces no shadow. No darkness comes from the flames, only light. And pain, when touched without notice. If he could be like that, only light and self-defense, maybe all of this wouldn’t hurt so much. Chase’s leaving, the dread of what each of his breaths might bring as time passes, the plummeting of his stomach every time he hears footsteps outside his room’s door. 

The flames crackle, and Liam wonders why it is he can’t shake the fear off, as he remembers the guards bursting into his room and pulling him out of bed, leading him outside as Liam pretended each step didn’t make him want to scream. That was minutes ago, and yet the fear still drums in tandem with his heart, pulsating turmoil into his bloodstream. Why feel fear when all it does is make things worse? Wouldn’t it be easier if he could just be at peace in those moments between pain, before it comes? But instead, his mind or his body or his soul decides to fill him with dread – only another layer of horror he cannot avoid.

Jonah was waiting for him when they brought Liam inside a weirdly cozy living room, leaning against the fireplace and watching Liam’s uncertain footsteps as he was pushed down to lie on a steel table placed in the middle of the room. Eyes glued to him as Liam was restrained until he could no longer move. His gaze went straight to the fireplace and stayed there since, watching the flames as memories of electricity, lighting up his every nerve until he nearly lost his voice to screaming, flashed before his eyes. The memory is still fresh enough to freeze him into not resisting. What a pitiful sight he must be.

“Hello there,” Jonah smiles, taking casual steps towards him and stopping by his side to watch from above, hands in his pockets as if having someone tied to a table in his living room is nothing out of the ordinary. “How are you today, Liam? Has your voice returned after our last encounter?”

He lifts his gaze to find the man’s eyes blinking innocently at him.

“You are sick,” Liam rasps out, shaky and small, but the words are there. He might be restrained and scared, but he is not broken. He isn’t. Right?

“That’s a yes, then. Very good, I like to hear you,” scream – he doesn’t even have to finish the sentence for the word to be heard. Liam feels sick. “Now let’s call our mutual friend, shall we?”

Liam narrows his eyes as Jonah types something on his phone. He can’t be talking about– 

“Chase!” Jonah says to the camera Liam only now notices a few paces away, held by another one of Jonah’s men. He tries to hear more, but Jonah comes so close to the camera and talks in such a low voice that all he grasps and holds on to is the name. 

Jaw clenched and stomach churning, Liam stares at the ceiling, letting the wave of bitter rage break against him without resistance. It wins the battle against fear for one moment, and that’s enough for him to seize it with every last bit of willpower. It is better to be angry than frightened, and he’s had enough of the latter for a lifetime.

The frantic beat of his heart turns into aching memories of Chase’s lies, promises of love he never intended to keep, each word meant to trick Liam into being a fool. Twice. Once months ago, then again when he genuinely, stupidly, hoped Chase would pick him instead of a job. Fucking ludicrous. 

But bitterness can only do so much to keep fear at bay, and when Jonah’s voice reaches his ears again, not even a minute later, it comes crashing back and flooding his veins with pointless adrenaline.

“He was a very good boy if you want to know. Just stood there, still and obedient as we buckled in the restraints,” he says to the camera, stopping beside Liam once more, placing a hand on his head. “Say hi to Chase, Liam boy.”

“Fuck you,” he spits. Fuck both of you, he means to complete, but Jonah’s hand is already closing on his hair, drawing out a pathetic little whimper from his lips.

“Language, Liam.”

He closes his eyes and waits for the hand to let go. It’s all he can do. Still, his hands twitch uselessly by his side, palms turned to the ceiling closing in fists, knuckles scraping against cold steel.

“I guess this is a lesson for both of you, then. For Chase to not be a prick and for you to behave better, my pretty plaything.”

Eyes snapping open, he glares up at Jonah, feeling indignation bubble up inside of him.

Jonah doesn’t even see it. He is too busy looking at his phone with an unamused expression before handing it to one of the guards. 

Is he talking to Chase? Is Chase delighting in seeing Liam like this, helpless and scared?

The part of him that refuses to give up entirely shakes its head, remembers gentle touches and tender gazes that couldn’t possibly have been faked. The other part, the one that grows each day he spends in this hell, purses its lips and scoffs at his naiveness. If Chase cared, he wouldn’t have left him here. 

“You know, if it wasn’t for Chase, this wouldn’t be happening,” Jonah says, painful grip turning into deceivingly soft fingers that run through Liam’s hair in mock sympathy. “He knew what I’d do if he pissed me off. So here we are again. It is always him, isn’t it Liam? It doesn’t matter how far Chase goes, he’s always the one causing you hurt.”

He tries to fight it. Of all the things he’s been put through, he fights the tears that prick his eyes. And just like everything else, he loses. They fall in warm drops down his temples as he turns his head, looks away into the fire again. No shadows there, nothing like the darkness seeping through the cracks of his heart, tainting his soul.

“Now for the fun part,” Jonah declares, sauntering to the fireplace, crouching down in front of it. Something entirely too close to panic pools in Liam’s stomach as he gets back up, holding two iron rods he’d dismissed as fire pokers. As Jonah approaches him, he can see with disturbing clarity how wrong he’d been – the rods’ bright-orange tips shine in intricate shapes. Letter shapes.

“J-Jonah,” he breathes, more sob than word, “please, please don’t.”

Jonah smiles at him, and without saying a word hands one of the brands to a guard before placing himself beside Liam’s exposed arm.

He tries to breathe, beg, say something, but every rational thought disappears as Liam follows the blazing hot shapes with wide eyes, gasping for air that refuses to fill his lungs.

He is almost there, the please I’ll do anything hanging from the tip of his tongue when the branding iron is lowered onto the delicate skin above his wrist. 

Burn could never describe the pain that steals every last bit of himself Liam tries to hold on to. Fire sinks into his skin, into muscle and bones until it reaches whatever lies within, and destroys everything in its path. He screams, cries and wails senseless pleads, but nothing passes through the ocean of agony he’s drowned in. 

He barely notices when the brand is pulled away.

He does when the second one is pressed onto his other arm though. 

Liam writhes and sobs, but there’s no escape, no mercy to be begged for. Only pain to feel, nothing, no one else but pain and pain and pain that swallows and dissolves the world into searing flames that hold nothing of whatever beauty he thought he saw.

-

You know, what really makes me mad isn’t even your fucking stupid idea of keeping things from me. It’s the shit job you did deleting those files. Who do you think I am, Chase?

That was all that waited for Chase when his phone buzzed, along with a link to a live stream instead of a video. No recording this time, no certainty that at least while Chase watches, Liam isn’t in pain anymore. 

“Chase. I see you’re faster now. Pity you’re no smarter,” Jonah sighed as soon as he clicked on the link. “But I won’t go into how fucking idiotic it was of you to delete half the information I asked you to get me,” he hissed, low and angry enough for Chase to feel the words as bugs crawling along his skin, up and down, circling his throat, ready to squeeze. “What’s happening here today is entirely on you. I hope you see and hear and remember every bit of it, sweetheart.”

He felt like screaming when Jonah closed his hand in Liam’s hair and made him yelp. The impulse to clench his fist until it shattered the phone was strong enough for Chase to connect the live stream to the television in his living room and bite on his lip when the image expanded and Liam’s terror became so painfully obvious.

One minute later, Chase nearly threw the phone at the wall when he called the man and Jonah simply looked down at his muted cell phone on the other side of the screen and handed it to someone else.

“You know, if it wasn’t for Chase, this wouldn’t be happening,” Jonah said, and Chase seethed, half anger and half guilt boiling inside of him. “He knew what I’d do if he pissed me off. So here we are again. It is always him, isn’t it Liam? It doesn’t matter how far Chase goes, he’s always the one causing you hurt.”

Chase dropped the phone in time to avoid crushing it, but the desk chair didn’t escape his rage. Its broken pieces fell on the other side of the room, doing nothing to soothe the horror building up in his stomach.

And then Jonah grabbed the branding iron, and Chase’s heart missed a beat at the sight, eyes widening in tandem with Liam’s.

“J-Jonah,” Liam choked out, “please, please don’t.”

“Jonah,” Chase said too, unable to hold it in just like anything else in his life, even if he knew he was the only one listening. There was never such a thing as restraint when it came to Liam. If only Chase had seen it sooner. “No–“

When the iron descended on that soft, silky, perfect skin above the restraint circling Liam’s wrist, Chase fell on his couch, legs too weak to hold his weight. 

Liam screamed, loud and raw and utterly hopeless, back trying to arch and being pulled back down by too tight restraints before it even left the table. His body spasmed, trying to escape the blaze, but there was nowhere to go, and it took only a moment for the despair to turn into sobs and tears.

It didn’t last more than a few seconds, but those would star Chase’s nightmares forever. Jonah pulled the iron off Liam’s now bright red skin, and Chase couldn’t bear to look at the letter-shaped burn. He also couldn’t help it. 

When Jonah exchanged the used iron with the second one, Chase felt bile rise in the back of his throat. “Please, p-please, please,” Liam begged, so little Chase barely heard it, so dazed he didn’t think Liam did either. 

He echoed it though.

“No, please don’t.”

But no one heard him, and the second branding iron was pressed to the inside of Liam’s other arm, and his mouth opened in a silent scream Chase heard nonetheless.

By the time the second one is pulled away, Chase is kneeling on the floor, hands covering his mouth and tears threatening to overflow.

It is nothing compared to Liam, though. His mouth hangs open even as the iron stops touching skin, and soft sobs wrack his slim body as his glassy eyes leak a constant stream of tears into his hair.

Chase doesn’t even move when Jonah’s voice leaves the speakers again.

“So? Do you like it?” he asks, a manic grin stretched across his lips as he points to Liam and the camera walks toward him. 

It focuses on his face first. Sweat, tears, pure agony written all over it. His eyes lay open and unfocused, lost to the pain. The image slides down to his heaving chest, restrained arms, until it stops above both his wrists.

Chase turns to the side and vomits at the sight. 

Two bright red burns mar the perfect skin he had once worshipped with lips and tongue and feather-light touches that never felt like enough. 

Jonah chuckles, and the live stream ends in that ghastly image of two letters forever engraved on Liam’s skin. Flourished and elegant, a C stands out on his right arm and an R on the left one. His initials. Chase Raymond. 

Chase pukes again, and then curls up on the floor and weeps.

(next)

[hurting-fictional-people]

Betrayal Story - Stargazing

Tonight I bring y’all pure unabashed future fluff. I don’t think I’ve ever written something this soft before. I’d say it’s disgustingly soft, but the boys really needed some comf :’) we’ll be back to our programmed whump content in the next part lol

tagging  @thelazywitchphotographer @swift-perseides @whump-it-like-its-hot  @sunflower1000  @msrandonstuff @fromtheo-withlove  @boxofsilence  @lionhxartx  @sometouchofmadness  @paleassprince  @livingforthewhump @1becky1  @shameful-indulgence  @whatwhumpcomments @tropes-for-my-md-daydreams

(story starts here)

This is set many months after Liam is rescued, and after he forgives Chase for the betrayal. So, like, MANY months from where the story is now.

-

“I’m lost,” Liam whispers to the stars. The grass field in front of the cottage he and Chase rented or, more truthfully, stole for a few weeks, would be in complete darkness if it wasn’t for the tiny spots shining above him. There’s only the moon out here to listen and keep him company as Liam lets his eyes wander from star to star. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

He doesn’t fight the tears that slip down from the corners of his eyes and disappear into his hair. Just lets them go, along with everything he used to be and doesn’t know where to find anymore.

“I do,” comes the voice from behind. 

Liam flinches even before he has the chance to recognize Chase’s quiet tone. His cheeks tinge red, embarrassment gnawing at his insides.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” he says softly, watching from the ground as Chase lies down next to him.

“Sorry. I thought you might want the company.”

His heart is still pounding from the scare, but Liam has learned that he can never tell Chase no when he is being this open, so weirdly vulnerable, so different from the mysterious man he once was. Liam nods and looks back up.

“Did you know that the constellation right there is called Tiny Fairy?”

Liam turns his head to the side and frowns at Chase. “No, it isn’t. There’s no constellation called that.”

“Of course there is,” he says calmly, pointing a finger to the sky. “There are the wings, and right there the arms. See?”

Liam squints, but the stars, as usual, just look like stars. “I can’t see it, but okay, if you’re saying it then I believe you.”

Chase’s head snaps to the side, something akin to surprise in his gaze, the tug of a sad smile on his lips. “I’m not being serious. There’s no Tiny Fairy constellation. There could be, though, it really looks like it.”

Liam snorts and rolls his eyes. Fitting. 

“Liam.” He shoots Chase a side glance. “Whoever you are now, whoever you’ve become after the hell you went through, is still someone worthy of love. Someone I’ll always admire and care about, no matter how much you change. You know that, right?”

His voice is light, as silky as his fingers once were against Liam’s skin. Still, somehow, it makes his heart weigh heavy inside of him.

“What if I don’t love me anymore?”

“I can love you for us both until you find yourself again,” Chase whispers.

Liam doesn’t smile, but something in his chest becomes a little lighter. There’s still hurt there, pushing and pulling and aching, but Chase’s words are a fresh breeze on a hot day. Blows away the heat, brings in a new breath of air even though they both know it won’t last. It’s only a breeze after all.

Still, Liam enjoys it while he can, and under the night sky with no one there but the two of them, he silently reaches out a hand to touch Chase’s fingers, fingertips only grazing his skin, but enough for his heart to race for the right reasons this time. He doesn’t have to look to the side to know Chase is holding his breath. He is too.

They move at the same time to entwine their fingers, and in tandem with them, a shooting star crosses the sky.

Liam makes his wish and tries not to look at Chase as he does.

The grass under his body flutters in the night wind, crickets chirp, and Liam pretends that this is all there is. That this is the whole world. That there’s no one out there hunting him, just waiting for him to slip up. This is his whole world, and all it is made of is Chase and the night.

“What did you wish for?” Chase asks after a while.

“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

Chase laughs, and the sound fills one of the many little holes in Liam’s heart. 

“What did you wish for?” Liam asks.

“What about the ‘if I tell you it won’t come true’?”

He smiles, and for once in a long time, the stretching of his lips feels true. Right. He smiles wider.

“You are beautiful,” Chase says, just like one would whisper a prayer. Despite every scar telling a different story, Liam believes him. There’s no way to doubt when Chase looks at him like that, like he is his whole world too.

“Can I–“, Liam stops, takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“Can you what?” Chase squeezes his hand, a slight crease in his forehead at the uncertainty in Liam’s face. “Tell me.”

“Can I kiss you?” he whispers. It is nervous and small and hesitant and feels so infinitely stupid once it leaves his mouth.

They haven’t touched each other like that since the time when Liam thought Chase was a journalist. Even though sparks still dance over Liam’s skin every time their bodies come close, it never lasts. They always pull away. Liam, because sometimes the thought of being touched without notice feels too much like being back with Jonah. Chase, probably because Liam is so broken he’s become all but a burden now. 

Why would he think that Chase’d want to kiss him now? Holding hands doesn’t mean that they are back to what they once were, not after all that happened. Not after he’s been ruined, scarred, broken. 

What a stupid fucking idea, why did he–

“Are you sure?”

Liam stares at Chase, blinking surprised eyes at the hope on his face.

“I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to, or aren’t ready for,” Chase says, sounding as worried as Liam was a moment ago. “Are you–“

He raises himself up on one elbow and leans over Chase. Before he can finish the sentence, Liam smiles and presses his lips against Chase’s.

The kiss is something made out of tenderness and longing, sprinkled with stardust. It is soft, as soft as the hands they bury in each other’s hair, the one Chase wraps around his waist to keep Liam there. 

When it ends, it is only so Chase can whisper “This was my wish. This, right here,” before kissing him again.

Liam smiles against his lips, and as the kiss deepens, he doesn’t tell Chase that this is what he wished for too.

[pinartindia-blog]

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