#such is the way of video games but this really shows they were really doing so much more

[eddiazx]

buck's baby fever - evan buckley x reader 

(bc this man would definitely have a breeding kink.)

You almost regret it the second it comes out of your mouth. 

Six words. A singular question. 

Every part of your body aches. You’ve forgotten what the outside of your apartment looks like, and you’re sure you’re dehydrated from the amount of sweat transpired in the past three hours. 

Should we try for a baby? 

You had asked the question after your brain had supplied a sweet montage of Buck with the children of your entourage. Baking with Jee, zoo trips with Chris, tossing a baseball around with Denny, playing video games with Harry, and knowing fun facts of the tv show that Mara was obsessed with were just a few examples. Buck was so good with kids, and you had no doubt that he would be an exceptional father. 

So it shouldn’t have surprised you that Buck had reacted to your question by practically pouncing on you. The two of you have had sex on practically every surface of the loft, in every position you can possibly think of, since the question had been asked. You were both currently on the bed, breathing heavily after what was either your 9th or 19th round. 

Buck leans in to place a kiss on the corner of your mouth, and before he can do anything further, you push his chest playfully. “Get away from me. I’ve created a monster.” You joke.

Buck laughs loudly, eyes and nose scrunched up beautifully. “The answer is yes, by the way.”

“Really.” You deadpan. “I couldn’t tell.” 

“You know,” you continue, “I’m still on birth control. We’re not making a baby today.”

You’re responded with Buck’s fingers trailing down your bare body, dipping between your legs to collect his and your mixed releases. You shiver pleasantly and happily open your mouth to welcome those fingers in when he taps them on your lips. “Maybe. It doesn’t mean we can’t have fun practicing though.” 

[chiasaaa]

— anything for you

itoshi sae x f! reader

summary: sae finds himself doing things he wouldn’t normally do. all for you.

warning: english is not my first language. apologies for any grammatical or spelling errors.

— itoshi sae knew he was beyond saving the moment he set his phone against his pillow and clicked the record button, holding up three boxes of what seemed to be pr boxes for the brands he’s sponsoring.

no, said brands did not require him to film the pr boxes. they only wished for him to use and test it out in an attempt to gain his brutally honest feedback. so why is it that he has his camera open to do a little review?

it’s because he’s deeply and undeniably in love with a so-called idiot named you. you have him wrapped around your finger, and sae was the one to curl your fingers around him for you. a little while ago��right after emerging from the shower of his hotel room—he sent a photo of the three pr boxes that laid on his bed. his manager did tell him he’ll drop it off around the night.

itoshi sae: they’re here.

itoshi sae: [sent an attachment]

you: ohhh! unboxing vid, pls!

itoshi sae: not my thing

you: aww :PP

you: anyhoo, don’t forget to eat dinner!

you: i’m just pinning my sketches in the new mood board, then i’ll head back home.

he knew there was nothing else to your response. sure, you were a bit dampened by how he flat out rejected your request, but you’re not one to dwell in such silly things either. sae knew that you would be the last person on earth forcing him to do something he doesn’t want to do, and video reviews might as well be nonexistent in his vocabulary.

even so, he decided to give it to you. reviews of the products he’s sponsoring.

oh, may god save his soul.

“we’ll start with this one.” he holds up a pastel yellow box displaying the name of his favorite skincare brand. “i heard they’re releasing a new formula for my moisturizer that’s less sticky. if it works well, then i’ll be using that for my games.”

he takes out a tube from the box and showed it to the camera, plucking the lid open. “the bottle’s bigger than the previous one too, and the design’s more minimal. i like it.”

for the next hour, itoshi sae filmed each and every reaction he had for every product he tested, telling you his brutally honest reviews and picking out which ones he considered purchasing upon launch.

sae didn’t even bother screening the videos before sending them to you, well-aware that you prefer his rawest form than anything else. it is a factor as to why he feels so lucky being with you. though, he’d never admit it right at your face, he simply hopes he shows it enough.

imagine the look on your face when you just finished locking up your office, fishing your phone out to let him know you’re about to head home. instead, you were met with three 15-minute long videos of each promotional box sent to him.

itoshi sae: [sent 3 attachments]

itoshi sae: i have to admit, i like the new sunscreen the most. i’ll contact the company and have another delivered to you.

itoshi sae: you should also try the lip glaze. i remember you’ve been complaining about how your lips dry up in the winter. i’ll give it to you next week when you fly over.

your heart swelled at the sight of him actually filming his reactions, nearly slamming into a lamp post if it wasn’t for your driver tugging you back lightly to prevent you from doing so.

you: you really filmed!

you: i’ll watch it on the way home!

you: i love you, querido <3

and your appreciative messages were enough for sae to know that leaving his heart to rest upon your care is the best thing he’s ever done. you have always been the most positive influence in his life, and you never shame him for anything he does out of his character.

itoshi sae: i love you. head home safe.

[project-sekai-facts]

Hiii I'm a newer fan and I have a few questions about how the SEKAIs work

1. When you leave the SEKAI, does it spit you back out the same place that you entered it? Or can you use it to teleport?

2. On that note, in the Wonderlands x Showtime main story, Emu and Nene hold on to Rui while Tsukasa transports them all. This means you do not need one phone per person to travel. Can he do this because they also have the Untitled songs on their phones? Or can this be done to ANYONE? Could it work on those from a different unit?

3. Do we know if there's a limit to the number of outside things someone can bring into the SEKAI? For example, if the Empty SEKAI is essentially limitless, could it be used essentially like a bag of holding from DnD? Could it store the Mediterranean Sea? Could you steal something and put it in the SEKAI to erase the evidence?

4. Do things brought into the SEKAI ever disappear? If they do, do they return to where the objects were in the real world, or do they simply vanish?

5. If you give something to someone inside the SEKAI, can they take that thing with them outside of the SEKAI? Can it be used to teleport objects? Or will the object return to the person who originally brought it? Or will it stay in the SEKAI until the original person takes it out?

6. Why do they have to hide the Vocaloids on their phones? What do they think will happen if people see a hologram of Kagamine Len? Wouldn't it just be assumed that they're looking at a vocaloid video or some kind of sophisticated VTube program? Why would someone automatically assume magic?

Thank you for your time! I have no idea if these questions have even been thought of; it seems more like the SEKAI are supposed to be metaphorical than treated as proper aspects of science fiction. So if you have/find any answers, I would greatly appreciate it!

1. It sends you back to where you were when you went in. This is shown most notably in the wxs main story where kigurumi-san says he saw Tsukasa and Emu disappear and reappear.

2. Sekai only allow certain people into them (the people with the specific untitled file on their device). This might change later this year.

3. This is something that they've never really gone into detail about, but you can probably put as much in as you want. They're pretty much endless or at least very very large.

4. No, they just stay there until you take them back out

5. The way the game seems to work is that whatever you are holding goes in/out the sekai with you (things like chairs you are sitting on seem exempt from this). So yes this technically means you can teleport objects, but only ones that came from the real world. Stuff that was created by the Sekai can't be taken out.

6. Probably just basic sci-fi rules of not trying to freak out the general public. Emu mentions that normal phones are able to display holograms in-universe, so in theory it shouldn't weird people out. But then again if anyone found out any level of detail about you having an mp3 file that warps you to an alternate dimensional plane where Hatsune Miku is legit real and based on your emotions would probably make you subject of government research. Like WxS use the vsinger holograms in the Wonder Magical Showtime event because they can use the excuse of "it's a show we just have the technology" and they never get sued by crypton and you could probably just say "cool app" if anyone saw it briefly but if people find out any actual info it's a problem.

Hope this is helpful!

[leliwardens]

ah...thank you kindly for sharing all of this.

@exhausted-archivist hi this is its own post now

what do you mean cut rescue mission.

[yall-batman-fanfic]

Indiana Quinn! Harley Goes to the Temple of Doom | Bruce Wayne/Batman x OC!Magician

Synopsis: Inspired by the Harley Quinn show, here is a quick adventure where Harley kidnaps Vivian to help her get into a cave that’s believed to have some plant treasure based on a documentary she saw (which Vivian was a guest on). 

Vivian had many encounters with Harley Quinn and the Joker. Mostly as a hostage and being a victim of the man’s Joker Gas, and Batman would always come to save the day. Her relationship with the two clowns were not the best, especially when the latter was responsible for the death of Jason. She still hates him for it, and the fact he’s an evil-worshipping garbage. For Harley, it was complicated.

She remembered being a captive of Harley on one of her first runs as her own woman after breaking up with the Joker. Her whole gig then was to steal some jester jewel in the museum and it so happens, Vivian was the curator that day and she was the biggest hostage that Harley could get for a huge ransom. 

Batman swooped in and saved the day, but Harley got away.

After that, Harley established herself to be some sort of antihero, who the Batfamily would run into or ask for help in certain cases. 

This time… this time, Harley was… her game wasn’t exactly villainous but her way of doing it was concerning.

Vivian woke with a terrible headache. The last she remembers was heading to the cafe to get her afternoon coffee when suddenly the barista revealed to be Harley and WHACK! She was hit at the head with the woman’s mallet. 

“Mornin’, Professor!” Harley greeted her. “Had a nice nap?”

“I had better ones.”

“Sorry if this ain’t some fancy-shamncy bed with silk beddin’s and feather pillows like the one you have at home.”

“We don’t use silk beddings because it’s slippery when — Harley, what is this? Why am I tied up to the bedframe with fluffy cuffs,” she did not want to think how those were used before this “and why is the room moving around — I think I’m going to be sick.”

“First off, we’re on a yacht,” Harley answered. “Second, the cuffs are so you don’t run away. Can’t let you do that.”

Vivian sighed. She could easily get out of this but with her secret on being a witch, she can’t just do that. The best she can do is send a message to Bruce about this as discreetly as she could.

“Listen, this ain’t some villainous trap that I’m doin’, okay? Would you believe me that it’s for love?” 

Silence. One that was so awkward for Vivian that she couldn’t help but fill it in with a question of: “Really?”

“Yes! You see,” Harley held out her phone to show to Vivian. It was the photo of her and Ivy kissing. “It’s my and Ivy’s anniversary and I wanted to get her something really special!” 

“Well, that’s nice to know, and congratulations on your anniversary… but considering this is Poison Ivy we’re talking about… isn’t a botanist a far better person to abduct for whatever you have planned – not that you should be abducting anyone – but I don’t see any connection here at all. I’m a symbologist and a historian! I teach art history to college students!”

“You see,” Harley swiped her phone and showed the video she saved. It was a documentary that Vivian was a part of that discusses the runes of Gaia’s Temple in the Mediterranean Sea. “You said here that there’s this plant life that lives in those temples that dates back to prehistoric times.”

“I didn’t, I said, it was believed that that’s where the first seed of plant life had started, that’s why people built a temple for Gaia in. And that those plants are just about a millennia old” Vivian corrected. “Can you get me out of this so we can talk comfortably?”

“Right, but that’s the thing. There are also other researchers that said that the plants there are so old that it goes back to prehistoric times,” Harley continued. “Now, here’s where you come in. Getting the plant is going to be so easy, the hard part are the things you said at timestamp 21:43.”

She played the video.

Vivian cringed at the sight of herself talking there. She hates watching herself on TV.

It was believed that the temple holds the most sacred relic to life there is. So, a tribe from the Bronze Age created this temple that would keep thieves from taking it. They would set traps and mazes before anyone could get it. And as of today, that island is believed to be the Labyrinth of Daedalus.

“Please don’t tell me this yacht is heading to Greece,” Vivian said.

“WE’RE GOING TO GREECE!” 

~*~

Free from her bounds, Vivian was given some new and “sailing appropriate” clothes by Ivy. As promised, she didn’t put up a fight nor did she try to escape – not that she had a way of escape at all – and just sat there on the poolside with a margarita that was served by one of the henchmen she brought along.

It’s not like this plan was some diabolical one that would destroy the world, and besides, it won’t be long until Bruce finds out where she was and come in to save her. Better to let the Batman do it than her having to make a whole thing with her magic and try to confuse Harley that she doesn’t have magic at all. The woman is a renowned psychiatrist! She’ll figure it out!

“So, how’s marriage?” Harley asked, out of the blue and joined Vivian at the pool benches after her swim. This was a huge yacht. 

“What do you want to know?” Vivian asked, pulling down the dark glasses she wore.

“How does the hubby treat you, does he give you gifts? Do you do all the laundry? How about the kids?”

Removing her glasses, Vivian faced Harley and said, “Bruce is a good man and a good husband too. He gives me gifts but not too often, only when there’s an occasion or when he finds something he knows I’ll like. It’s more than just marriage, it’s really us being good friends too. We’re partners.”

“Just like me and Ivy!” Harley sighed whimsically and laid on the bench. “You know, I thought I had that with Mr. J, but he’s really just a fucking asshole.”

“I know the feeling. I mean, I didn’t have a boyfriend as psychotic as him, but I had bad ones before Bruce. So, it’s nice to find someone who loves you and cherishes you… and while you did kidnap me and gave me a bruise on the head, I can respect what you’re doing for Poison Ivy. But where is Doctor Pamela?”

“Oh, I got her on an errand run. And I told her that I just need to finish something overseas. You know, the usual.”

“So, anniversary, you got something planned other than kidnapping me so we can Indiana Jones this temple for a goddess’ plant of life?” Vivian handed her a mimosa that one of the henchmen gave her. 

“I am so glad you asked! I’ve been wanting to run this through you, considering you’re now married for a long, long time and I need your advice on how to do this right.” Harley jumped from her seat to Vivian’s and they were squished together. “I got this huge thing planned, where we have dinner in the swamp.”

“You don’t mean Swamp Thing’s swamp, right?”

“The very one! You know him?”

“Yeah, I do.” He almost killed her when she and John dropped in his swamp. 

“Right, so, after a very romantic dinner, we’re gonna have a nice dance in the moonlight.”

If there is a moonlight in that swamp at all.

Harley continues, “And then I’m gonna give her my gift and she can finally create her Eden and turn Gotham back to its plant utopia!”

So, it was in the name of love and for Ivy’s plant utopia which meant killing humans and destroying Gotham City. Love and evil. Batman needs to get her out of here. Now. Where is he?

Just as she was thinking of him, the Batjet appeared right on top of the yacht, and from the pod, the big Bat himself descended and took out the henchmen that attacked him and before Harley could do anything, like bring out her red and black bat, or Bruce taking her down, Vivian whispered a spell, not too obvious, that had Harley trip and falling to the pool. 

“Hello, my love,” Vivian greeted Batman with a kiss on the lips.

“You had everything under control?” Batman asked her.

“No, and yes if I wanted Harley to know about my magic, but no. Not really. Listen, just hear her out. Let’s all just sit down and talk about this for now and after that, we can go inside to talk about this.”

Batman wasn’t amused nor does he want to agree but he does and says, “Fine. We’ll hear what she has to say… you look nice.”

“Thanks, Harley picked it out for me.”

Harley resurfaced from the water, coughing, and gasping for air. “What the hell?! What just happened because I was sure I had it.”

“The wind?” Vivian shrugged. “Come on, I convinced Batman that we all sit down and talk about this.”

“But he–”

One look from Vivian and Harley was climbing out of the pool and sitting on the bench, still dripping wet from the pool water. And pouting. Sitting on the bench across her, Vivian gestured for Batman to join them but he only stood between them, ready to listen.

Vivian explained to Batman all that Harley told her, from the abduction and the plan to get the Gaia plant for  Ivy, but for the part where Ivy wants to build Eden in Gotham, and after finishing off, she waited for his response. 

“Do you really expect me to believe that this is all for your anniversary?” Batman questioned Harley.

“Yes! I mean, come on! Admit it, Bats, even you’ve done something like that — I mean everyone in Gotham knows you got the hots for this one,” Harley pointed at Vivian. “Why else would you come all the way here just to save her?”

“Because you abducted the Professor,” Batman pointed out.

“Whatever! The professor already said that she’s in. If you’re not, you better scram or I’ll make you!” Harley took her bat in warning.

Batman looked at Vivian and sighed. “Fine, I’ll join you in your trip. I’ll inform Robin on the change of plans.”

“And get the jet back to them?” Vivian shrugged.

Batman hummed in displeasure and turned his back to them and went to do his call. 

“So, is it true?” Harley said, getting too close to Vivian. “Are you and the Bat close?”

“He’s a friend, considering he saved me before and I’ve been consulting in other cases.”

“Don’t worry, Professor, your secret is safe with me – boop!” She poked Vivian’s nose. 

~ * ~

Later that night, while Harley made herself comfortable in the captain’s quarters, Vivian settled in one of the rooms in the yacht and changed to the pajamas that Harley provided for her tonight. It seems she was prepared for everything and gave her lingerie so, in her words, she could “have the night with the bat. What happens in the yacht stays in the yacht.” 

“Nightwing and Robin will be on standby with the jet,” Batman said as soon as he entered the room. 

“That’s a good idea. You can take off the uniform, you know, and relax a bit. I placed a spell to keep anyone from snooping or eavesdropping,” Vivian said as she brushed her hair.

“Viv, we’re still on a job.”

“I know, but it’s not like Harley has some world dominating plan.”

“Hard to believe.”

Sighing, Vivian dropped the brush and turned to face Batman to come out clean, but Bruce did notice the black, laced lingerie that she wore. “Yeah, there is some sort of world dominating part in it and it’s mostly tied up to their anniversary dinner. Harley wants to get Ivy the plant so Ivy can create Eden at Gotham. I couldn’t tell you earlier because Harley was there.”

Bruce sighed and sat on the bed in front of her. He pulled down his cowl and ran his hand down his face. “I’ll inform Tim and the others about this. I guess you don’t want to ruin their dinner.”

“Maybe there’s just something that they can do with Ivy’s lab to not trigger the plant-dominating in Gotham? Harley means well, and I don’t want her to think that we’re going against what she’s doing because of her history. If this is going to help with whatever it is she’s doing, I’ll forgive her for hitting me with the mallet,” she gestured to the bruised forehead. “And we can just get this plant and then go back to normal. Besides, I’ll admit, a yacht sailing across the ocean with mimosas is fun. I’ve been enjoying it.”

“You do know that we can do this on our own yacht, right?”

“I know… I guess I just enjoy bonding with Harley. It’s fun. Aside from the whole head bashing and kidnapping, Harley’s fun to have around, and she’s pretty sweet too. And it’s been a while since we actually did something like this, the only downside in this little “vacation” is you’re not here with me.”

Bruce reached for his earpiece and said, “I’ll be cutting off for a while. Can you handle things until tomorrow morning?”

He heard snickering at the other line. It was Dick, “I’m sure we can handle things here. I’ll have Red Robin look into Ivy tonight too. Have fun you two!”

“See you guys tomorrow, cutting you off now, Batman,” Oracle said and the comms went silent. 

Getting up from the bed, Bruce removed his cape and cowl, and the belt — placing them on the vanity — then picked up Vivian from the seat. 

“Since we’re practically stuck here until Quinn gets us to that temple, might as well make the best of this time.”

Vivian smiled and kissed her husband. “So, what are we going to tell Harley when she finds us leaving the room together?”

“An open relationship with the Batman?” 

“How exciting,” Vivian laughed as Bruce got her on the bed and started kissing her neck. “Remember the last time we had sex on a yacht?”

“It’s been a while,” Bruce admits. “Do you miss it?”

“Very,” Vivian pulled him up to kiss his lips. 

His kisses went lower and lower, from her neck to her breasts. He pulled down the lingerie just so he could kiss her every inch of the and take in one of her nipples into his mouth. Before he could go any lower, Bruce got up to remove his gauntlets and the top of his uniform. Half-naked, he went down and started kissing her inner thigh until she felt him kiss her sex, and ran a long and lingering caress with his tongue directly. When did he get her underwear off? She couldn’t remember. Each lick and kiss showed how much he’s memorized her, what gives her pleasure, what makes her moan and what would make her cum. 

But he doesn’t want her to orgasm just yet, he wants this to last longer and to make her pay for making him worry when she was obviously alright, despite the bruised head. 

“Fuck, Bruce,” Vivian breathed out, her hand holding his hair as he prodded his tongue inside her, then he did something unexpected. “What are you –”

He had flipped them over so she was practically sitting on his face. Embarrassed, Vivian tried to get out of that position but Bruce held her there and continued kissing her clit. She held onto the bed frame for support as she felt the knot in her stomach with how much stimulation he was giving her there.

“Bruce, come on,” Vivian panted. “You know that I feel bad when you ask me to do this.”

“You made me worry,” was all he answered and continued with his work, suckign her clit into his mouth, working it with his tongue. The feeling of it, the light touches and the teasing licks, had her arch her back and unintentionally move her hips to get more stimulation so she could reach her climax. 

He knew exactly what would get her to squirm in his hold. He wedged two fingers inside her, twisting it around as he looked for the spot that had her moaning his name loudly, all the while he traced her clit with the tip of his tongue. 

“Bruce, I…” Vivian whispered and held his hand. A signal that she was going to come. He growled against her sex and stops. “Why?”

Bruce flipped them over again and settled between her legs. “I might as well enjoy this, right?” He wrapped her legs around his waist and pushed into her. With one hand holding her waist and the other her wrist, Bruce thrust in fast, too fast, all the while he kissed her lips deeply.

Just like earlier, before Vivian could reach her climax, he flipped them once again, this time she was on top of him and Bruce held her by her waist, sinking her deeper, so he could have more of her.

“Ride me,” he said.

She obeys, sitting up and fixing her position, she started with slow and decadent stokes. Opening her eyes, Vivian watched as her husband watched as she fucked him there and felt him grow harder inside her. Her movements started to hasten and her descent harder, to help her, Bruce would meet her descent but that wasn’t enough. Vivian wanted to cum after he’s denied her that twice, taking his hand, she placed it between her thighs and said, “Please, my love.” He pressed down on her clit, making her moan. “Don’t stop.”

Fuck, he thought. He can’t stop now.

Sitting up, he met his wife’s lips again and bit her lip as she gasped when her climax finally came. Her eyes slid shut with pleasure, her sex clenching around him. It’s too much and this time he gave in to the overwhelming pleasure. 

Bruce catching Vivian with a kiss that slowed everything and had them settle back to that bed. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, if there was any way to be closer than that.

“That was…” Vivian panted. 

“A lot,” Bruce admits, still feeling himself releasing spasm after spasm inside her. “I’ve been pent up for a while now.”

“Me too… maybe we should thank Harley for giving us this break.”

“Maybe.”

Laughing, Vivian kissed her husband again and said, “You wanna go again?”

Bruce turned to her, smiling, and said, “Give me five minutes.”

~ * ~

Arriving at one of the islands of Knossos, the yacht docked at the old looking port that had the view of a temple above the mountain, Gaia’s Temple, and before that was a forest, lush, majestic, and mysterious.

“Do you smell that?” Harley took a deep breath. 

“The ocean,” said Batman.

“I smell true love and it’s just up that mountain,” Harley pointed her bat at the temple atop the mountain. 

“Actually, it’s something else,” Vivian stepped up, wearing the clothes that Harley provided for her, which reminded her of Evelyn O'Connell from the 1999 film, The Mummy. 

“What is it?” Batman asked her. 

“There’s the ocean and the forest, but there’s also a tinge of… sulfur?” She turned to Bruce, knowing what they were facing.

“You need to get your nose checked, Professor, because I ain’t smelling sulfur anywhere. Let’s go!” Harley jumped off the yacht and was marching towards the forest. 

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Vivian sighed.

“Then we’ll make sure she doesn’t die,” Batman jumped down and caught her when Vivian followed him. “Here, for protection.”

“Is this your collapsible sword?”

“Yes,” Bruce answered and demonstrated it. 

“Of all the things you have there, this is the coolest one there is.”

“AUGH! STOP EYE-FUCKING EACH OTHER AND LET’S GO!” Harley called out from the entrance of the forest.

“Harley! Wait, don’t go in there!” Vivian ran after her.

~ * ~

The path across the forest was supposed to be easy, Vivian has gone through the place before and got out unscathed, but this time they have been walking for hours now with Harley taking the lead and holding the map she nicked from the museum. Vivian wasn’t happy when Harley pulled out the map from her bag and recognized it.

“You took an ancient old map and glued it to an A3 paper so you can do a treasure hunt?!” Vivian exclaimed.

“I know, smart, right?” Harley smirked.

Before she could burn the forest, Batman placed a hand on Vivian’s shoulder and reminded her of their mission. Get the plant, get back to Gotham, let Harley do her anniversary surprise, and they stop Ivy. 

But now, even with the map they were running in circles.

“I think this is fake,” Harley said.

“It’s not, it’s the real deal,” Vivian told her.

“How would you know?”

“Because I do… This is also the same map we copied and printed so we can go around the place when we went in for the documentary.” She took the map from Harley.

“Then how come it ain’t working?”

“Vivian,” Batman approached her. “The sulfur, was it there when you came the last time?”

“No, that’s why I was…”

“Maybe it’s doing it on purpose, to throw us off guard. Gaia is the earth, and what happens if we continue aimlessly in this forest without food or water?”

“We die, then we turn to compost and return to the earth… shit,” Vivian sighed. Holding his hand, Vivian said to him, “What’s one more person to know, right?”

Batman nodded in agreement.

“Harley, do you promise that whatever happens in this little adventure stays here?” Vivian turned to the woman watching them with a smirk on her face.

“Yeah, I promise! I won’t tell your billionaire husband that you and the Bat were going all out last night too.”

“Harley.”

“I swear!” She crossed her heart.

“Alright,” handing the map to Bruce, Vivian focused and cast the spell to open the gate. “Into the light, I command thee.” Vivian transformed out of her Evelyn O'Connell outfit to the robes of the Phoenix, her red hair glowing flames, and her eyes bright gold. 

“Holy shit!” Harley exclaimed. “You-you-you got magic! You’re that Phoenix woman that I saw on TV last year, battling demons! Oh!” Her eyes turned to Batman. “So, does the Justice League have anything on work-relations? Do they allow this arrangement?”

Batman only glared at her. 

“This will scare away those assholes trying to trap us here. Follow me, I know the way,” Vivian said and took the lead.

“How?” Harley asked.

“Because I can sense them up the mountain. They want us to go there.”

Following the path and the scent of monsters and hell, Vivian got them through the forest and at the foot of the mountain that had a long and steep path leading to the top.

“So, can you fly us up there?” Harley asked.

“Something I didn’t discuss in my documentary,” Vivian faced them. “This island is a sacred place. This forest is actually the Forest of Dodona, and it’s where homo magi would come for their test of power. A millennia ago, practitioners of magic would come here as a trial by fire. They would cross the forest, which we did, then climb the mountain to the top where the temple is and take a bite of whatever fruit is up there where they will have a taste of the purest and most ancient magic. The island is magical itself, and it will keep you from teleporting to cheat. It tests magic users of their skills. You still want to go through with this?”

“Hell, yeah,” Harley said.

“Thought so,” Vivian sighed. “So, stay close.”

Their ascend to the top was long and full of trials. The mountain was actually a volcano that would let out steams that were both volcanic and hallucinogenic that reminded Vivian of the Oracle of Delphi. She won’t admit it but as they ascended she would see visions around her. Her mother would appear, telling her to come down and come home with her; John would appear to, telling her to just give up on this trials; Or Lucifer, she’s encountered the Devil a couple of times, and his cocky smile would always get her.

“Come on, Viv,” Lucifer’s illusion whispered in her ear. “Come on, forget about them, this can all end now. You know what’s waiting for you up there.”

“Shut up!” Vivian threw a ball of flames at his direction, but he wasn’t there. There was just the view of the setting sun and the top of the forest. 

“Whoah, there, Professor!” Harley said.

Batman climbed up to check on her. “Viv, is everything…”

“Yeah, just… you’re not seeing any visions are you?” Vivian asked.

Bruce shook his head. “No, and you? What did you see?”

“A lot… but I can push through. We’re almost to the top anyway. And trust me, this is just the beginning.”

They pushed through, climbing the mountain until they came to camp base at the first peak, just as Harley was to cheer, she fell silent when she saw what awaits them. A cave. No way up but through that cave.

“That’s the entrance to the labyrinth, and to the heart of the temple, the real work starts then,” Vivian told her as she drank from the flowing stream. “We rest for the night, then we go in tomorrow morning.”

Harley didn’t argue and said something about hunting a pigeon for dinner.

Their camping sight wasn’t the most ideal but they made due, Batman had taken off his cape and wrapped it around Vivian for her to use as a blanket tonight, and Harley was busy cooking the fish and rabbit she caught while they prepared camp.

“Here, Professor, have a bite!” Harley handed her the skewered fish.

Accepting the food, Vivian thanked her for it and dug in, and for a moment, she forgot about Harley and fed Bruce a piece. They both seem to forget because Batman scooted close to her and wrapped an arm around to give her more warmth. They only realized what they were doing and that they were not alone when Harley coughed.

“So, how long has this been going on?” Harley asked.

Vivian quickly moved away from Batman and went to eat on her own. 

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me. So, does the hubby know about the whole magic thing?”

“Yes,” Vivian answered.

“And he’s okay with it?”

“Yeah, he is,” Vivian kept her gaze on the ground to keep her from turning to Batman. “How about you, Dr. Quinzel?”

“What about me?”

“Tell us how you’ve been? I’ve been hearing stories that you’ve been helping out the Bats and some that are just out there.”

Harley groaned. “You helped them save the world once and people start thinking you’re a hero and have expectations! Geez! For the record, the reason why I helped them with saving the world is because I live in it and so does Ivy, and nothing more! What, you think I’m a hero too?”

Vivian shrugged. “I think you’re Harley Quinn. And you do whatever the wind tells you to do.”

“Nobody tells me what I do, Professor!”

Vivian laughed. “Why do you keep calling me Professor?”

“Because you are. Come on, just because I’m this doesn’t mean I respect you as a professor. I’ve read your works, you know, and I respect you just as I respect my Dr. Ivy.”

Vivian smiled. “I’ve also read your works too, Dr. Quinzel. You’re a good psychiatrist.”

“Thanks, but you can just call me Harley. I’m still a psychiatrist but that’s kind of like a part time thing.”

“Oh, you have a clinic?”

“Nah, just something I do with the people I work with. Bats here is even my patient!” She pointed at Batman.

“You are?” Vivian turned to him.

“I’m not,” Batman replied.

“He’s just shy.”

Later that night, as Vivian lay in Batman’s cape, she felt his strong arms wrap around her as he took his place beside her. Feeling her husband’s embrace, Vivian smiled and went back to sleep. 

~ * ~

They started early the next morning, packing water and food before they went inside the labyrinth. The walls were filled with depictions of the creation of the universe as told by Greek mythology, and as they pushed through there were trials they had to face, one of which involved the brains of the Bat to help her cheat their way through a solstice calendar. 

Using the light of her magic and one of Batman’s batarangs, they reflected the light to shine to the gem that serves as the key to opening the large stone gates. The doors opened and they passed through, which led them deep into the caves and up the mountain that led to more trails which each of them passed with their skills. Harley using her acrobatics, Batman with his wit and gadgets, and Vivian with her magic and knowledge in reading ancient Greek.

When they finally came to the top and at the end of the maze, they came to the final test. One that was related to Green Magic. To nature and life and death. 

“Gaia is earth,” Vivian said as she read the stones and the images on it. “For this trial, we must create life.”

“You sure you’re not pregnant after the other night?” Harley asked her.

“Not like that,” Vivian groaned. “I mean… look around, there’s no soil nor water, just stone. Just like Gaia, we need to create a life form from nothing.”

“So, how do we do that? You’re the magician here,” said Harley.

Looking around, Vivian studied the environment they had. “There’s a piece of sunlight there,” she pointed to where a small ray shone. 

“The sun is almost setting, we need to hurry,” said Batman.

“The Pomegranate seeds!” Vivian called for Harley. “Hurry!”

Harley spat out one of the seeds she’s been sucking on and handed it to Vivian. Now, they needed soil. Placing her hand on the ground, she started gathering the small amount of dirt she could get to create a soil pocket. Seeing what she was up to, Batman shoved himself to the wall to generate more dirt from the stone ceilings, more than enough dropped and Vivian placed the seeds inside, then with the small drop of their water, she started casting a spell to speed up the process of life.

She was the Phoenix, she should be able to bring life to that lifeless cave.

And she did. From that small dirt, a seedling sprout appeared and the doors that were closed opened to reveal an old tree atop the temple that bore a pomegranate at one of its branches.

“There it is!” Harley ran inside.

“Harley, wait!” Vivian called out to stop her but she was too late. From the ceiling a creature dropped down, a giant that towered them all. Antaeus. The giant. The son of Poseidon and Gaia. 

“You dare take from Mother’s garden?” Anteus growled.

“Harley!” Vivian pulled her back with her magical force before the giant could crush her with his fists. 

“I shall make you my offerings to Mother and place your skulls on the walls of her temple!” Anteus declared.

They kept evading Anteus’ attacks. Running across the place to get away. Batman tried using his gadgets to get to him, but no matter what explosive or weapon he had on hand, nothing worked. Every damage made by the giant would be healed instantly.

“Any tips, Professor?” Harley asked. “Nothing seems to work with him!”

“Anteus is son of Poseidon and Gaia… it’s Gaia that heals him! We need to get him off the ground!”

“And how do we do that?!” Harley exclaimed.

“Batman, Harley, can you immobilize him? I know how to do it,” Vivian asked the two.

“Yeah, we can!” Harley declared and jumped out, brandishing her knives and used her acrobatics to get close to the giant while dodging his attacks. Batman followed her, doing the same. The two slashed the giant at his Achilles tendon, immobilizing the giant and falling to the ground, before he could be healed, Vivian summoned the Phoenix and lifted him off the ground with her magical chains. He was heavy, put Vivian carried him with her magic to be elevated from the ground, not giving him a chance to touch one spec of soil so his mother could heal him. 

“Peels, suetnA!” 

The giant tried to fight it but he eventually succumbed to a deep slumber while suspended in midair. 

“Whohoo! Team Harley, let’s go!” Harley cheered and went to the tree to pick a pomegranate from the tree. “Want one, Professor?”

“I’m good,” Vivian said. “Let’s just go home.”

“Do we go the same way?” Harley asked.

“No, we use the other way. We leave the same way Daedalus and Icarus did.”

“By dying?”

“By flying, Quinn,” said Batman.

“Right… so, how do we do that?”

To answer her question, Vivian pushed her off the window and jumped after her, in mid fall, she used her magic to catch them and flew them back to the beach, with Batman gliding with his cape.

~ * ~

Back in Gotham, Vivian slumped in the bathroom tub and relaxed. It has been a long weekend with the trip with Harley, then dealing with the police report at the GCPD, then insisting that she wasn’t pressing charges, then Batman and the Robins stopping Ivy from using the Pomegranate seed to create her world-dominating-Eden formula. She deserves this break.

“I got you some snacks,” Bruce entered their bathroom and showed the bowl of snacks that he prepared in the kitchen. “And your drink.”

Vivian happily accepted the glass of scotch and thanked him. “So, how are things?”

“We won’t be hearing a lot from Harley or Ivy for a while after we stop the formula from getting finished. Gordon is still confused as to why you’re not pressing charges. And we’re handling the PR about you going missing, nothing too serious. And you?”

“The Dean told me to take a little break and rest, because what I went through is a lot,” she added air quotations. “And I also met with the psychologist for the trauma-something, which I do not need but thank you… and I miss my husband.”

Bruce smiled, placing the bowl of snacks on the table beside them, he sat on the edge of the tub and said, “We had the entire weekend together.”

Vivian got out her hand from the water and reached for his thigh. “What can I say? I can’t get enough of you.”

Getting up, Bruce took off his shoes, his trousers and shirt, then joined Vivian in the tub, overflowing the water. She squealed in laughter as he had her sitting on his lap, both of them naked and close to each other.

“I can’t get enough of you too,” Bruce said and kissed her deeply. “Shall we continue what we started that night in the yacht?”

“I wasn’t aware we weren’t finished then.”

“Oh, my love, that wasn’t even half of what I wanted to do with you.”

Just as Alfred as to bring Vivian a bowl of pretzels, which he knew she liked to munch on while having a long bath in the tub, he stopped on his tracks when he saw Bruce and her in the tub, laughing and kissing.

“Oh, my,” Alfred said and quietly closed the door to give them privacy.

[eternalwritess]

jjk matchup for @tamaaamaa

i match you with... 𝓢𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝓾 𝓖𝓸𝓳𝓸 ██ 20% _ ████ 60% _ █████ 80% _ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ 100% ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ!

✎ I feel like the two were you were in separate classes when younger until you eventually weren't and were paired up together to go on a mission. It was likely a class mission though and one that Satoru couldn't just finesse his way out of because it was important in some way or another

✎ You were both basically forced to work together by Yaga as he wanted Satoru to work with someone who wasn't Suguru or Shoko and get along with someone else for a change. He knew Kento wouldn't take it and neither would Utahime, and he didn't think Haibara would do too well so he chose you

✎ Not gonna lie he probably thought that you were slightly annoying at first, but that's his first reaction with 90% of people that he meets so don't take it too personally and just give him some time to warm up to you

✎ Soon enough though he started to have fun with you and your energies really matched each other well and you both started to actually get along with each other. He liked how positive and laid back you were with everything

✎ In terms of confession no one had to force him to do anything, he did it all himself. Going up to you at first was hard and when he actually started forming words he stumbled a little but he got the thing out eventually :)

✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧

✎ You probably introduced him to video games in terms of actually playing them and stuff like that. Although he can't do it for too long because I'd imagine that looking at a bright screen for too long would hurt his six eyes, but he likes listening to you play at the very least and he'll look up every now and then and comment on what you're doing

✎ He understands all of your brainrot, he might not get it the first time you say it but he's a quick learner and can pick up on certain terms... also he's probably come across it himself and has a little too. So having you there to understand it would always help him feel like he's not totally crazy lol

✎ When he learned you could dance he wanted you to show him as he was genuinely curious about all of it. Mostly because he knew that Utahime also danced and he wondered if it had anything to do with your cursed technique (whether it does or not is up to you). He really likes it though, mostly because he likes watching your hair and how it moves when you dance or just your arms or legs

✎ He's asked you to draw him before... I'm sorry but this was 100% inevitable and he's going to bother you into doing it and... well you really should've expected this

✎ Night owl you say? Well that's perfect! Because I'm 90% sure that canonically Sarotu does NOT sleep at all so this is perfect for him! He stays up with you all of the time and even with you being a night owl you're probably the first to fall asleep

[icewindandboringhorror]

I've referenced before how I have a big google document to keep track of every media I've ever seen in my entire life (just for reference because I like to track everything possible lol… I am the Data Collector), but recently as I was updating it, I thought of actually evaluating them to find out random percentages (like for example, out of Total Shows Watched, what percentage did I finish vs. stop watching, what percentage did I like or dislike, etc.)...

Evaluating these things is made easier by the fact that I already place everything on each subsection of the list into 6 broad ranking categories, so I don't have to go back and guess to figure out how I feel about them or anything. The categories are: Ranking 5 - overall best* (despite some criticisms of course because I'm too much of an Analyzer to ever find anything Perfect lol) Ranking 4 - more positive than neutral, but not good enough to be 5 Ranking 3 - either the good + bad negate each other, OR it's just not memorable/interesting in any way enough to be ranked higher or lower (this is the Default category ALL things are placed in if no other rank applies) Ranking 2 - maybe a few redeemable elements but largely more negatives than positives Ranking 1 - So bad that it circles around to being fascinating to observe in some way (not necessarily Funny, or Good, but just interesting somehow) Ranking 0 - Bad in a genuinely frustrating or obnoxious manner

*("best" primarily defined here as most interesting, rather than most good in a technical sense, or some other measure. I tend to value more highly whether there's something novel or thoughtful about the worldbuilding, tone, writing, base premise, etc - than about whether it's actually executed perfectly.)

And here's the amount of shows that have so far been placed into each category -

TV shows ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 20 shows ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 28 shows ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 114 shows ~ Rank 2 (mid low) -33 shows ~ Rank 1 (low low but intriguingly so) - 14 shows ~ Rank 0 (iredeemably low) - 2 shows

This would make for a total of 211 TV shows overall. However, there are 57 shows within these list marked as "didn't finish" (typically meaning I quit on the very first or second episode - but log them still to keep a record that I at least had a brief view of them).

So my total of genuinely fully watched shows would be more 154. 211 Total, but a More Accurate Total of 154.

Counting them all and using the Total Number Of The List (211) -- that means roughly 9.5% of all total shows I have ever watched (or at least attempted to watch) have been Mostly Good, 13% have been Moderately Okay, 54% have been either entirely Forgettable or some mix of good + bad that lands them right in the Neutral Middle, 15.6% have been Mostly Bad, 6.6% have been Bad (but in an interesting way), and 0.9% have been Terribly Bad.

Additionally, I didn't even get past the first two episodes of about 27% of the total.

Sooo, discounting ones I didn't finish, my total TV shows ever watched in my life would be about 154 (maybe give or take a few, assuming I might have forgotten some from very long ago).

But instead of entire life, let's just say this is the total for 'About 20 Years' (so, not counting very early childhood when I likely wouldn't remember things I saw/have no detailed recollection of them (like for example, I'm sure at some point when I was like 4yrs old I must have seen an episode of Spongebob or something, but I have zero distinct memories of it, can't quote anything of it, and barely recall the premise - so I don't count it on the list, etc.)).

In that case, 154 divided by 20 would be roughly 7.7 shows a year.

Which is actually surprisingly low considering that I often have stuff on in the background for hours whilst I make sculptures and do costumes and stuff (maybe I should have also marked some distinction between 'things I fully paid attention to' and 'things I kind of half listened to whilst sculpting', but that would further split the categories too much probably lol), but I guess a lot of that is youtube videos or random documentaries, so .. eh.. maybe I get it being lower.

Now, doing the same thing for movies-

Movies ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 4 movies (3.4% of total) ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 12 movies (10.3% of total) ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 91 movies (78.4% of total) ~ Rank 2 (mid low) - 8 movies (6.8% of total) ~ Rank 1 (low but interesting) - 1 movie (0.8% of total) ~ Rank 0 (irredeemably low) - none in this category (0%)

That makes 116 for a Total (Actually Remembered) Movies Watched In Lifetime (Or At Least In 20 Years).

116 divided by 20 is roughly 5 or 6 movies a year (I feel this has probably been skewed though by adding everything since like elementary school onwards, as I remember a lot more movies from child/teen years.. Whereas, the past 3 years I feel like I've barely seen maybe even 5 movies?? lol). I also have "Didn't Finish" marked on 18 of them. Which means I quit halfway through about 15% of the total movies.

So, a for broader summary stuff..

I seem to be less forgiving to movies than tv shows, by far. Which makes sense to me, I guess, because I love elaboration and details, so "short form" things that only last an hour or two are often lost on me a bit. My biggest complaint with movies is indeed usually walking away just wishing there had been more exposition, more scenes where characters are doing nothing, more "mindless bantering" conversations, more Quiet Downtime and Lore Elaboration and so on lol, so... of course most 1-2hr films end up feeling a bit Not Enough To Draw My Interest/Nothingy to me.

If you count 5 and 4 as "like" and rankings 2 to 0 as "dislike", then for TV shows I at least somewhat liked 48 of them, and at least somewhat disliked 47 of them.. So it's almost exactly the same lol. I'm just about equally as likely to find something bad as I am to find something redeeming about it. But overall, the largest chance is that I just won't really care much for it at all and it will be tossed into the 'neutral' pile, forgotten forever. Movies have a bit better of a balance, "liking" 16 of them, and "disliking" only 9 of them. So I'm slightly more likely to enjoy a movie than to find it annoying - though still VASTLY more likely to just not find it anything in particular, possibly not even finishing it.

ANYWAY.. this is vague and literally pointless, but like I said, I just really find information fun. Like my document where I've rated every apple flavor I've ever tried (like 40 of them now?), or reviewed every oreo flavor (32?), or ranking data from my entire 10 years of Trying To Make Friends process (out of 100 people, roughly 8% chance of a moderate compatibility, 3% chance of high), or etc. etc.. I love to have random pointless things to analyze I suppose lol.

I doubt anyone tracks things in their life in this same exact way, but I'd be interested in hearing any at least somewhat similar data !!! (like, how many TV shows you watch a year on average, and what percentage of those you like vs. dislike (if you keep track of that sort of thing), etc.)). I guess it might be easier with movies, since I think some people use those websites where you curate a list of movies you've seen and you can rate them or something, so maybe the numbers are already available on those places. :0

[hannahchronism]

"i loved asoiaf/hotd but had to abandon the fandom because they write incest >:O" hey quick question. what show were you watching.

[yousaytomato]

Tumblr really is one of the last defenders of the: "ooopsy wooooopsy~ looks wike we had a wittle accident 👉👈🥺" style of error message

[koling2345]

Simon with a young and soft girlfriend. NSFW

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・

Boyfriend! Simon who: Was completely whipped for you, would do anything you asked without question, he'd kiss even the ground you walked on, just say the word and he'll do it.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Bought a new cell phone just to talk to you, his old cubicle could barely hold a video call with you, and now he could finally listen to you chatting away with him every time he had free time. And.. You also sent him some really nice pictures, and he kept them all on his new cell phone for his own personal use.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Sometimes it took him a while to catch up with you in all your youth, not physically, but in your interests, hobbies, the games you liked, series you watched. He wasn't that old, but keeping up with everything you did wasn't that easy, but he tried to get into your vibe. Give him a few days, he'll soon have everything in a notebook, the game you're so excited about, he'll soon be talking with you about it. He makes a point of knowing something or other, just to get into your world, to make you happy.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Melted in place when you showed off your new hoodie, which had his name, 'Riley, written right across the chest. You looked so beautiful wearing an outfit with his name written on it, as if it were a ownership, and he was grateful that you wore the hoodie without any shame, proudly showing who you belonged to.

Boyfriend! Simon who: After listening to you nagging him all week to get a hoodie just like yours, with your name on it, he finally gave in and made one. Just like yours, it had your name on the chest, showing everyone what a couple you two were. As much as he thought it was corny to wear matching clothes, he didn't mind if it was with you. He even put a Kuromi print on his hoodie, since you almost cried for him to put something from Hello Kitty on it. Sometimes he hated this cat and her derivatives, but he did it for you. All for his princess.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Always bought things for you, every time he came to see you, he never came empty-handed. Were you on your period? He would bring you chocolates and flowers, along with your favorite snacks. Did you pass through a store and want to buy something? Well, it'll be at your house as soon as possible. If he couldn't bring it himself, you could be sure that the package would arrive at your house the next day. He wasn't petty, he had plenty of money to spend and he liked spending it on you.

Boyfriend! Simon who: When he went out with you, he wouldn't let you spend a penny, no matter if you wanted a simple ice-cream, he would pay for you. And if he saw your eyes glazing over at something you saw in the shop window, he'd go and pick it up with you. Every time you went out together, you always came back with several bags of shopping, along with the plushies you loved so much. Simon didn't even know how you were going to fit more stuffed animals into your room, with all the stuff you already had.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Is a complete gentleman to you, carries your bag, always takes his helmet off you, as well as before you get on his bike, he attaches the helmet in place himself. He's the type to take you on his arms, just to stop you stepping in a puddle of water and getting your feet wet. And if you're tired, he'll carry you like a princess all the way home without complaint.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Is quite jealous of you, you're young, beautiful, and you're with an old geezer like him. Although he recognized his own value, he couldn't help but feel a sense of possession over you every time someone looked at you with ulterior motives. As a result, he would always mark you on the neck, or put a hand around your waist, always putting a part of himself in you so that everyone would know who you belonged to.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Was a completely kind prince to you on the streets, but he would wreck you inside the bedroom. He loved that you were all submissive to him, always taking him so well, accommodating him as if you were made for it. Even if he opened you all up with his fat cock, your tight cunt would stretch to accommodate him, it was like heaven on earth.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Made you bend over all night, fucking you on all fours, your ass up while he admired the new panties you made such a point of showing off to him. 'Simon's' was the writing on the lace, just seeing you wearing it made his cock throb, he took several photos of you wearing the panties, as well as giving you a good spanking session while you were over his knees, just because you loved being his good little girl.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Recorded a video as soon as he had worn you out on the bed, pulling his cock out of you, to see the mess coming out of your pussy that was full, opening your folds just to see his cum running down your thighs. Your cunt full of him, leaking because he came so hard in you. It's not his fault, seeing you on your stomach, your panties written 'Simon's', you were begging to be fucked. And he'd love to watch the video he recorded himself, his time alone at the base would be lovely.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Had a photo of you on his cell phone, bent over his knee while wearing a short skirt and thigh-high stockings, ass up, pink lace panties. On top of that, a bright red mark on your ass, the mark of the slap he had given you minutes before taking the photo, he is very proud to use this picture, and he's not shy if someone caught it. In addition, the lock screen photo was of you smiling while wearing his famous balaclava, one of the few times he let you touch the mask. Not that he regrets it.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Knew he was going on a dangerous mission, he didn't know when he was coming back, or if he was coming back. So a week before going on said mission, he took a whole week to spend with you. No work, no nothing, just him and you.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Fucked you all week, on your stomach, bending over, missionary, cowgirl, on the wall, living room, bedroom, bathroom, table, floor. Any surface he could slide his thick cock into your folds was fine with him. He couldn't stand the sight of you bending down to pick something up, or when you wore his clothes inside the house. The sight automatically made his cock throb, hard as a rock to fuck you again, always making sure to fill you with his seed, to the point where it was leaking out of you. Only then is he sure that he's filled you to the brim, like a good boyfriend does.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Wasn't very good with goodbyes, so he fucked you all night, all night he had you in a missionary, that's when he wasn't burying himself between your legs. He filled you up so well that night, the bed was full of wet spots, your pussy as full as ever, he'd leave you leaking with his cum, mixing your mess with his, just to bury himself in you and start all over again. He was relentless. His job was done, since you slept like an angel that night.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Went out on his mission early in the morning, grateful that you were out like a light, covered in sucks and marks from last night, making him tempted to go back to bed and hold on to you. But he couldn't, so he settled for a kiss on your lips and forehead. His farewell was a handwritten letter, explaining the details and saying that he loved you very much and would come back to you. Even so, it wasn't enough to prevent the tears that fell down your cheeks when you found out everything.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Even though he was on the battlefield, he couldn't stop thinking about you, always trying to maintain some kind of contact, sending messages every time he had a second of time, and if it was possible, when he was resting, he would call you. Every time the mission dragged on, he felt a sense of dread in his chest. Simon couldn't have realized how important you were, and that scared him, because for the first time in a long time, he was afraid that he wouldn't be alive to finish the mission. He promised himself that if he made it out alive, he would ask for your hand in marriage.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Stayed in a very remote area, his cell phone didn't work there, and he had no way of communicating with you, and that killed him inside, not being able to know how you were. And you were worried to death, thinking the worst.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Came home after four and a half months, of those four months he spent three without being able to talk to you. So as soon as he got off the plane that brought him back, he went to your apartment, stopping first at a jewelry store to buy you a ring, and he spared no expense. You were going to be his wife.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Was all giddy about arriving at your house, preparing to give you a surprise. As well as coming back alive, he was going to ask you to marry him, get on his knees for you. Then he rang the doorbell, still dressed in his work uniform, the box with the ring in one hand, and your favorite flowers in the other.

Boyfriend! Simon who: Stopped dead in his tracks when he saw you after all this time. It wasn't just emotion, his eyes caught your form, wearing one of his shirts, which barely did the job of covering your swollen belly. Well, it seems, he wasn't the only one with a surprise.

[sleepyangelkami]

more vi plss!! (and reader is a pillow princess)

SAY IT .vi

𝜗𝜚 WORD COUNT - 1.5K

VI (ARCANE) X FEM!READER

𝜗𝜚 SUMMARY - vi calls you exactly what you are, a pillow princess and in efforts to prove her wrong, you only end up proving her right. but that's fine, because that was all she wanted.

𝜗𝜚 WARNINGS - smut, dom!vi, sub!reader, pillow princess!reader, fingering (r.receiving), praise kink, dumbification, dirty talk, alternate universe, petnames, intended lower case, nothing i write is ever proofread 🩷

it started off as a joke.

a simple joke that left your girlfriends lips. you'd been laying on your stomach across the sitting room sofa, words mindlessly falling from both your lips as you flipped through a magazine. she sat man-spreading across the arm chair, controller in hand. you always said she loved her video games more than you, but she'd always deny.

then you heard it, the joke spewing from her lips with a smirk on her face. "yeah, okay, pillow princess."

instantly, your head snapped up from your magazine. your glittery pen that you'd been circling clothing with dropped from your pretty fingers. "i'm not a pillow princess."

vi seemed to sense your distress. she set the controller down as the game conveniently ended. "well, i'm not saying there's anything wrong with it." she leaned back against the armchair, resting her hands behind her head. "i love that you're a pillow princess, believe me."

you wouldn't believe how many times she'd gotten off just by thinking about it. you were so good for her, so responsive. she hardly had to touch you and you were falling apart. sure, she loved watching your head between her thighs as you whimpered into her but there was nothing more she loved than watching you, hearing you. all of it.

you seemed butt hurt by the joke.

but vi swiftly changed the conversation, noticing the furrow of your brow.

vi knew how sensitive you were, how easily you took everything to heart and she didn't want you over thinking this. and her tactics proved right, by five minutes later you were showing her a pretty top you'd spotted on the coloured pages.

you didn't think much of it at first. in fact, for the next while, you didn't think of it at all.

perhaps you had too much in your head to contain so much information, you told vi that was why you talked so much.

it wasn't until vi had you pinned down against the bed, making out with you, that the moment popped into your head again.

you almost shut it out on accident, then it clicked. vi was kissing you deeply, her hands dragged at your hips, pulling and kneading the skin while you passed heavy breaths through your lips, kissing her back just as hard.

and suddenly, you had this urge to prove her wrong.

vi felt you shift, letting you take the lead.

she felt you turn you both over, you landed in her lap and suddenly, she was the one against the bed. her brows shifted in amusement. "what's this, baby?"

you shifted your hair to one side of your head so it didn't get in the way, you weren't really used to things like this. "jus' trying to prove something." you mumbled before reaching down and kissing her lips.

don't get me wrong, vi loved the feeling of you kissing her, whatever way you sat, laid or stood, on top or not. but she couldn't seem to shake the amusement as your mouth left hers, leaving a trail of kisses against her neck. "this have something to do with that joke i made before?"

your lips stopped momentarily at her neck, eyes gazing up. "'m not a pillow princess."

vi didn't understand why you were so adamant about it.

there was no shame in it. on the contrary, she adored it.

"yeah?" her brow cocked and she was looking at you this way that had you nodding, suddenly unable to speak. "y'sure, sweetheart? cause if i remember correctly..." suddenly, you were being flipped over again, beneath her all over again. "you quite like sitting there all pretty 'n taking it."

you could feel her hands trail down past your waist, kneading your thighs in her hands. "v-vi, 'm trying to―" you were cut off by the breath being caught in your throat.

vi's hand had trailed up your skirt, her fingers dancing over your panties. "you're trying to what, sweet girl?" you felt her fingers rub against your clothed clit. "c'mon, use your words f'me."

"vi!" you whined, feeling her fingers against you. she wasn't being fair, you were supposed to take charge but how could you think about anything when she was touching you like that?

a soft laugh left the girls lips as she pushed your panties aside, fingers gentle against your swollen bud. "love it when you whine like that."

you could only look up at her with your tinted hot cheeks.

she began to press gentle kisses against the nape of your neck, fingers trailing down to your hole, she rounded her fingers against you, collecting the trail of your slick across her digits. she made a fake gasp noise. "'n look how wet you are already." she couldn't help but smirk. "good girl."

two single words that set you off every time.

a gasp left your lips as she slipped her two fingers inside you at once. you suddenly moaned with pleasure.

vi was like a drug. every time she touched you, you found yourself addicted, begging and chasing for her to praise you. you'd do anything to please her but luckily for you, that meant just sitting there and taking it. you truly did wish you could be less 'responsive' but vi wouldn't take it any other way. her favourite thing to do was turn you dumb with her mere fingers, maybe even her strap.

your eyes fluttered shut in pleasure, feeling her fingers pound against your sopping cunt. "please, vi." you moaned out. "please don't stop."

"yeah? wanna be my good girl again, huh?" nudging your face with her nose, littering kisses on your cheek.

you could only whimper out with a nod. vi had this way of making you feel like you were high on magic. you couldn't help but want her in every way.

"then say it, angel." fingers pumping in and out, embarrassing squelching sounds bounced off each wall of the bedroom. "say you're my pillow princess."

she was met with a mere whine of dissatisfaction from you.

she feigned sympathy with a coo. "awh, i know, baby. my poor girl, jus' so mean, aren't I?" but the girl didn't care much for your whining and whimpering, she'd get you to say it before you came. "but you gotta say it, yeah? don't want me to stop do you?"

you pursed your lips closed. "mm-mm. please don't stop." you practically panted out, you could almost feel frustration build in your water line. "nnghh― please, vi!"

"four words." is all she whispered back, her palm grazed against your clit every time her fingers pounded into your entrance. "know you can say it, pretty girl. jus' need me to make you all dumb, don't you, baby?"

a whimper of her name was the only thing that left your lips, eyes screwing shut.

"close, sweetheart? 's now or never, baby. say it or i'll stop."

the feeling was knotting in your stomach, ready to unravel. you didn't want to but you knew better than to cum without following orders.

so you forced the damned sentence to pass your lips. "'m your pillow princess."

and a coo only fell from the magenta haired girl. "awh, know you are, sweet girl. see? my good girl always listens, doesn't she? huh?" vi tended to ask you questions while knuckles deep in your pussy, she knew you couldn't utter a single word. "you jus' need me to make your poor pussy feel all good, don't you?"

a breathless, "uh-huh." was her answer. "'m close!"

"yeah? gonna be good f'me 'n say please?" of course, vi had to make you beg for it.

"please!" you practically squeaked out as your back arched against the bed.

a chuckle left her lips. "you can do better than that."

and you really, definitely could. but vi had made you all dumb, exactly her plan. "please let me cum, vi. please, need it so bad. please." you repeated the word please in little whispers, unable to hold back the knot in your stomach.

"you're such a good girl, 'course you can cum, baby." she felt your spongy walls suddenly tighten around her fingers. "that's it, sweetheart, cum all over vi's fingers, 's a good girl."

vi pumped her fingers in and out of you, letting you ride out your high like she always did until you were squirming away from her.

she leaned against the bed with a self-loving smirk on her face, hardly glancing your way. you laid next to her, chest falling and rising as you panted out breaths. a beat of silence passed until you spoke up. "vi?" turning your head to her.

"yes, my pillow princess?" she teased.

instantly, a frown fell on your face as you crossed your arms over your chest. she wasn't being fair. "i was gonna say something, now i'm not speaking to you."

"oh, come on." she lifted your face by her thumb to make you look at her again. "no pouting or else i'll have to shut you up all over again."

an idea suddenly fell flat on your head.

your pout deepened.

vi only climbed over you with the smuggest of smirks on her face. "you dirty little slut."

main masterlist/vi's masterlist

[airybcby]

જ⁀♡⊹｡° sniper, sniper, sniper ♡ wifey, wifey, wifey

( bllk boys showing you off )

♡ a/n — i just love the tiktok trend so :) ( was going to attach a link to a tiktok showing what i was talking abt but it wouldn't work. just look up sniper sniper sniper wifey wifey marines and you'll see what i meant :) )

♡ content — all characters are 18+ !!, mentions of tiktok & instagram, slight cursing, tbh bad writing, nicknames like 'love' , 'wifey' , and 'my girl' used, probably ooc characters

♡ synopsis — blue lock boys showing off their girlfriend :)

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' oh that's your wifey ? ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the...tiktok maker

if there was anyone you would really and truly call chronically online, it would be him. every day he'd come to you with some new word he learned from tiktok, or a meme that would plague your house for weeks until it went away.

so when he pulled out his phone to show you a video, you weren't expecting it to be a couples trend.

" please, please, pleaseee, love? you'd look so cute in my arms like that ! " and he had just won a big game...how could you say no to him?

so here you were, being carried like a bride in your lovely boyfriend's arms. if it were anyone else, you'd be too worried about how long they could hold you, but since it was him you didn't worry.

it took a few tries, each of you messing up a part at least once and you accidentally dropping the phone a few times, but after you figured it out, the video was practically perfect.

they posted it to their public tiktok account with the caption

' not my wifey yet, but soon ;) '

and to say all the notifications were making his phone glitch would be an understatement.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ BACHIRA MEGURU, hiori yo, SHIDOU RYUSEI, chigiri hyoma, OTOYA EITA, isagi yoichi

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the...instagram poster

maybe, just maybe it was wrong of him.

wrong of him to want to post these pictures the two of you had taken on your date to the aquarium?

if he were any other, normal, person this wouldn't have seemed like a big deal, but since he had at least a million followers and some were a bit more obsessed than others, it was.

you'd told him multiple times that you were okay with him posting you, really if he was happy, you were happy. maybe it was the egoist in him, but he wanted to keep you to himself.

fuck it.

if you wanted to be posted, he was going to post you. who cared what anyone else thought? their opinions didn't mean anything to him.

he selected a few of the pictures the two of you had taken at the aquarium, sneaking one of a lipstick stain on his neck in the middle of the slides.

if he was going to announce his relationship to the public, why not let the world know how utterly whipped he was for you?

the caption was a simple

' gotta love my girl ♡ '

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ YUKIMIYA KENYU, karasu tobito, REO MIKAGE, alexis ness, RANZE KURONA, gin gagamaru

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ the...national television?!

the ever illusive pro soccer player. that's what every press agency called your boyfriend.

his ability to somehow dodge any paparazzi and answer very short questions during press conferences made every view into his personal life shine like gold.

based on an instagram story ( that was taken down in less than 10 minutes ) where a picture of him with his arms around a woman in a bathroom mirror, the media could assume he was in a relationship. in that photo, however, the woman's face was not visible, so the questioned still remained...

what woman could capture this mans heart?

he hadn't cared, not really. a photo was nothing to him, but you were everything. he tried really hard to keep your identity private, he didn't want you to be absorbed into a world of cameras always in your face.

but after he made the game winning goal of a very important game...all he wanted to do was see you.

maybe it was the way he could see you in the section you'd always sat, or maybe it was his ego wanting to tell everyone "yeah i'm the best soccer player, and yeah i have the best girl, what about it?"

as all of the adoring fans rushed the field, including you, he just wanted to see you. he knew, realistically, he should just go back to the locker room and come meet you afterwards like he usually did, but not today.

he shrugged off ever reporter and fan that wanted to talk to him, which was nothing new, but instead of leaving to the locker room, they watched as he walked over to you

he knew all eyes were on him, the world still watching...but he couldn't find it in himself to care. he wrapped his arms around your waist

" made that goal for you, ya know? "

you were a little surprised at his appearance, but if he didn't care neither than you.

" i know. "

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ NAGI SEISHIRO, rensuke kunigami, RIN ITOSHI, shidou ryusei, ZANTETSU TSURUGI, sae itoshi

⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆ ' i think i like her . ' ⋆.˚✮🎧✮˚.⋆

this was a midnight brain dump so it's pretty bad, but i hope yall liked it :)

likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated!!

[harrysfolklore]

lando norris being down bad for his girlfriend: a compilation

summary: lando norris can’t help but talk about his girlfriend whenever he cans, fans make compilation videos about it

MASTERLIST | MY PATREON

Lando Norris could be described as someone who's not scared of saying whatever crossed his mind.

And that's why he never, ever, missed the opportunity to talk about his girlfriend whenever he had the chance.

He mentioned her during interviews, press conferences, social media post and even fan interactions. To the point where fans started making compilation videos with all the moments he publicly obsessed over his girlfriend.

The most popular one gathered millions of views on YouTube, showing multiple occasions Lando couldn't help but be down bad for her.

The video started with a clip from Q&A with fans, someone asked him about his favorite way to relax after a race. Without missing a beat, Lando replied, "Cuddling up with my girlfriend, of course. Nothing beats that."

"You're really whipped man, It's embarrassing," Oscar, his teammate, teased beside him, making the audience laugh.

"It's not, really." Lando shrugged proudly.

The next clip was taken from McLaren's Tiktok account, their content creator tried to do the "Can you watch my ___ for a second" prank on Lando.

"Oh my girlfriend already did this prank to me," Lando said, laughing at the camera, "Baby, If you're watching this, I miss you. Your pranks are way better than McLaren's"

The video moved to show Lando during a post-qualifying interview, his suit hanging by his waist and his fireproofs showing, when asked about his strategy for the race, he cheekily replied, "Well, first I'm going to call my girlfriend for some good luck wishes. Then, I'll focus on getting to the front."

"Zak Brown should hire your girlfriend as your strategist then," the interviewer joked.

"That would be great but I don't think we would be getting any job done. You know what they say about mixing business with pleasure."

The next clip showed Lando with his friend and fellow driver Max Fewtrell, playing a trivia game about how well did they knew each other. Max had to answer what was Lando's worst habit.

"I'm going to say leaving dirty plates around the house," he said, showing his board, "You do mate, admit it."

"My girlfriend would agree on that," he admitted, "She's always complaining about it."

"I don't know how she's still living with you."

"Because she loves me, and I would die if she leaves me."

On the same note, a video of Oscar teasing Lando followed right after.

"Who's most likely to snore?" Lando read the question, and Oscar quickly put ut the cutout with Lando's face, "How are you so sure? You didn't even hesitate."

"Mate, I've heard you, plus your girlfriend literally complained about not being able to sleep properly last night because you kept snoring."

"I did keep her up last night, but it wasn't just because of the snoring," Lando said, a cheeky grin on his face.

"Put the not safe for work disclaimer at the beginning of this video please."

The next segment was from Lando's own Youtube channel, he was doing a little vlog in Miami before the race weekend.

"Hi everyone," he said, filming himself in the mirror with his camera, "Today I'm back with another LandoLog, I'm going to be filming some behind the scenes of this Miami weekend, so without further ado, let's go," he moved the camera around, focusing on his girlfriend who was putting some mascara on her eyelashes, "Here's my beautiful girl, who takes ages to get ready. Say hi baby."

"Hi everyone," his girlfriend waved, laughing, "I'm not taking ages, I'm just making sure I look good."

"You always look good for me," Lando said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before turning the camera back to himself, "See, I told you she's the best."

The next clip showed Lando and Oscar together once again, this time they were giving a tour around the McLaren hub.

"This is my driver's room," Lando said as he opened the door, "It's cleaner than Oscar's, clearly, and looks like I have a bed."

Lando moved to put together the small bed that was behind the door, "This is an upgrade from last year, we didn't have this. I'll be definitely giving it some good use, to nap or with my girlfriend."

"Can we have a video where you're not a horndog please?" Oscar said, putting his hands on his hips.

"You're the horndog, I never said what we were going to use it for, we're just going to cuddle."

The video moved to show one of Lando's post race interviews after winning the Miami GP, he had been asked ho would be the most excited person about this win besides him.

"My girlfriend, definitely. I couldn't have done it without her," Lando said, his voice filled with emotion, "She's been my biggest supporter, my inspiration, and my motivation. This win is as much hers as it is mine."

The video then cut to a scene from Lando's gaming stream with Max Verstappen. The two drivers were deep into a game of Call of Duty, their banter and laughter filling the screen. Lando was focused, his eyes glued to the monitor as he coordinated with Max.

Just then, Lando's phone buzzed on the table beside him. He glanced at the screen and his expression softened, the comment section noticing, "Hey, mate, I need to go. My girl needs me for something," he said, setting down his controller.

"Lando! Are you serious right now?" Max said, his eyes still glued to the screen.

"I am, see ya," he turned to the camera, smiling not so apologetically "Sorry, guys, duty calls. See you next time."

The last scene was a snippet from an interview, Lando had been asked what he saw in his future.

He paused, a soft smile playing on his lips. "Honestly? I see a lot of racing, hopefully some championships," he laughed, "but most importantly, I see her. I can't imagine my life without her."

The screen faded to black, showing a text that read: Get you a man who is as down for you as Lando Norris is for his girlfriend.

[gutsby]

Father Figure

Pairing: dbf!Joel x Reader

Summary: Parents’ Weekend looks a little different this year with Joel showing up in the place of your father.

Warnings: 18+. Unprotected piv. Dad[dy] kink. Age gap. Oral (m!receiving). Premature ejaculation (Joel cums in his pants while he’s kissing you AS REAL LOVERS DO). Drinking and drug use. Gratuitous dad rock references.

Note: We all saw that video. This was begging to be written.

Another note: For a more immersive read of the pregame, listen to my freshman year Kegs & Eggs playlist (yes, it sucks).

Word count: 19.0k

Freud would’ve had a field day with this shit.

Really, there was no sane explanation for the obsession that seized you and your friends come Parents’ Weekend every year. But there it went. Again. Like clockwork, all the forty- to fifty-something fathers arrived for their first meal on campus. Like the cock-starved coed she was, your roommate bumped your shoulder as you walked and nodded to the first set of families approaching the dining hall. Out of the pack, you spotted four grey heads.

“Would, would, would, and would,” Aly observed, almost clinically. Her strides were long and resolved in their path

“That one could get it.” Her brother shrugged on your other side. He tipped his chin up, then added: “Look.”

And look you did. The batch of men, women, and all their college-aged children struck you as little more fun to ogle than your average wall of paint waiting to dry. Though the moms and dads were, admittedly, the kind of attractive you rarely saw outside an L.L. Bean magazine—as were all the rest of the kempt and polished crowd that populated your school—you were hungry as fuck. You’d agreed to join your roommate’s family for the kickoff banquet of the weekend, and you needed food. On top of that, you’d sworn off middle-aged men forever.

Aly and her brother didn’t know that, though, so you played the game and trudged ahead. When a handsome blue-eyed man born in 1970-something stood back and held the door open for your trio going in, you had to fight back a smirk at the look Aly gave him after thanking him.

“Oh, he wanted me bad,” she hissed once safely inside.

“Looks a bit like Rob Lowe,” you offered noncommittally.

“What about your dad? Is he gonna be here tonight?”

That last fragment of conversation had come from Aly’s brother, and the curiosity in it was sincere. Then he’d wiggled two dark brows your way and said he bet your dad was a silver fox like no other, and you’d had to roll your eyes before strolling into the wide open dining area. You were late; the food, evidently, was all already served.

“My dad’s at home with a broken femur, so…no,” you answered slowly. Starting to weave your way through a sea of round tables and following Aly’s lead as you did, “Probably not your type. Just old. Very embarrassing.”

You stuck your index in your mouth and pantomimed gagging, and the sophomore beside you just laughed.

“Yeah? Desperate, too?” he challenged.

“Pathetic, really,” you replied.

For a second, you felt a pang of guilt at the way you were describing your father. Surely he couldn’t deserve being characterized like that. Then you recalled how he’d boned your mom’s best friend while he was married, had never really made amends after the fact, and was still fucking said mistress’s brains out on the reg to this day.

You’d done plenty of wrong behind his back, to be sure, but that kind of took the cake for fucked up betrayals. He could stand for a little bit of ribbing every now and then.

Presently, Aly was paving the way straight toward a pair of bright and beaming faces at a table near the back.

“Our parents named us after a goddamn Grateful Dead song and the city they first saw the band in concert. Nobody does pathetic better than Scott and Michelle.” She waved her arm in a wide arc and grinned over there.

And you would’ve gladly countered that no, that actually makes them very fucking funny and cool, but the chance to do that was gone in a moment—the next had you approaching their table and meeting with big hugs.

Even for you, who had never seen these people before in your life, there was a warm welcome. You got long, suffocating embraces and cheery greetings of, ‘Oh, you must be Aly’s roommate!’ and ‘We’re sorry you got stuck with our shithead kid’ before you had a grin plastered on again and were being ushered to sit down.

You took note of the little placards opposite each chair, counted four, five, six of them altogether, with an empty spot beside your own, per usual, and you took your seat.

“Dallas, honey, I love you,” the woman across the table, Michelle, said with all the restraint she could conjure up, “I love you to pieces, but what the hell are you wearing?”

That steered the conversation in a decidedly light, playful direction from the start, with Aly’s brother defending his decision to be decked out in full school-sponsored athleisure tooth and nail. He’d been recruited to play lacrosse, so naturally, wearing the far-too-tight crimson lycra was all part of the deal. Aly insisted that he just wanted to show off the biceps he didn’t have, Scott hypothesized it was the crisp, wintry Boston air that had made his son dress like a total douche, and Dallas tried bringing the inquisition to a speedy end by lifting one middle finger up and flipping his napkin into his lap.

“Fuck you guys, I’m hungry,” he declared, emphatic. Fighting the urge to laugh along then grabbing a fork.

Just as fast as he’d picked it up to dig in, though, his mom was slapping the silver utensil out of his hand.

“Not yet,” she chided.

“Why? We’re all here,” Dallas groaned.

“Because,” his father returned, scrubbing at the stubble on his chin before casting a quick look around him, “We’re still waiting on one more to join us. See?”

With that, Scott nodded toward the card next to you, and immediately, your cheeks warmed. You shook your head, mouth working a little less fluidly than you would’ve liked as you piped up and told them—assured them all, rather:

“My dad’s not coming. He got a little, uh…hurt at work.”

And you were certain that would be the end of it. You’d just moved to grab a fork yourself, eyeing the plate full of food in front of you then, when another hand stopped you on the spot. It was Aly beside you, grip insistent as she gave your wrist a little shake, and in your periphery, you could see her tilt her head the opposite direction.

She was staring, silent—totally unlike herself.

Normally when something crossed her path nearby to make her twist her whole fucking neck to get a glimpse, it was followed by a dry remark. A comment, a compliment, or a lewd invitation to fuck me, please.

While the last of the three clearly wasn’t an option to use around her parents, you at least would’ve expected to hear something. When nothing came, you turned your head too, having just snagged a bite of roast beef on your fork and shoveled it in before looking that way.

You followed her gaze and nearly inhaled the food.

With a startled gasp and a ‘Christ!’, your eyes widened to find a man who wasn’t your father at all—just his best friend and your ex-fuckbuddy, Joel Miller, walking over.

It was a sight you weren’t prepared to see in a million years. What the everliving fuck this man was doing two thousand miles from Austin, Texas, on your college campus, striding into the very first meal of Parents’ Weekend, looking like that, was so far beyond your comprehension you couldn’t speak. You just stared and sucked in the sharpest, strangled breath, fought back a cough, and tried not to die swallowing a cube of meat.

From the way that man was approaching you now, asphyxiation might not be the worst, you thought idly.

Joel’s here.

Joel’s here, and he’s wearing slacks and a button-up.

Joel’s wearing business casual, and he’s walking over.

Who the fuck does this man even think he’s trying to—

“Sorry I’m late,” Joel cut in, smile bright and easy on his face. Then, stepping behind your chair, leaning down:

“Hey, sweetie. How are ya?”

He kissed the top of your head.

The tone sealed his fate completely.

Joel was pretending to be your father.

This wasn’t his brightest idea.

Call him sick, insane, selfish, besotted, or rotten straight down to his core, Joel Miller was no longer one to care. He had a goal in his head. Less than a week ago, you’d left him high and dry in Austin after having told him you loved him—in the middle of climax, but aloud, no less—and the month before that, you’d left him again. Back to college, where you could happily pretend he didn’t exist.

Tonight, he wasn’t letting that happen. This weekend, Parents’ Weekend, was of course reserved for families, but Joel knew your father wasn’t coming. He knew you wouldn’t be expecting your dad or anyone else to be there, and since you’d taken to the usual course of ignoring all his calls and texts, he felt he’d had no choice.

You couldn’t stay closed off like this forever.

Eventually, you’d both have to reckon with what this was and how to move forward, or the mess of the last month would never change. You would never believe he saw you any differently from a one-off hookup or a taboo outlet of pleasure. And if that was all you saw him as, so be it. But he had to get the truth of it out now, one way or another.

Even if he had to roleplay the father figure and play the most fucked up game of paternal charades known to man, he’d get the answers he needed this weekend.

You were good at games. Unfortunately, Joel was better.

He’d take this fake-out to the max and be the best faux father you’d never asked for. Maybe you’d hate him for it.

As he’d squeezed your shoulder and sat down beside you at the table, felt your gaze heavy and stunned on his, he also couldn’t help but hope you might still love him after.

“Scott Ingram. Pleasure to meet you.” The broad hand had been extended his way before he was even fully seated. The face across from him was kind. Intrigued. Tinged with a faint trace of curiosity, “So you’re dad?”

“Stepdad, yeah.” Joel had had to leave a bit more room for plausibility before he’d made his formal introduction.

Then he’d met Michelle. Aly. Dallas. The latter two more piqued with interest than the first, as though unsure of what they’d just been told, but willing to go on anyway.

“Old and pathetic my ass,” Dallas had murmured your way, low enough for Joel to know those words were meant for only you to hear. You stiffened in response.

“So glad you could make it up! Is your leg doing better?”

Aly had smiled warmly over at him, and Joel had only hesitated a second. Then he remembered his friend.

“Oh, my— yeah. Just…peachy. Yeah. All healed up.”

He didn’t flit a look to you; he could feel the searing imprint of your gaze and the way you hadn’t bothered to hide your frown when he’d referenced the leg he’d never broken. The way you could’ve pulverized the napkin in your lap to dust from how hard you were squeezing it in your fist—you didn’t like to admit it, but that was your nervous tic, and Joel knew it well. He propped his elbows on the table and didn’t miss the way a head turned his way from a neighboring group. Then another. He hated every starch white button-up he owned with a burning passion, but he couldn’t deny this one was eye-catching.

Not that it mattered, really, because the only glossy gaze he cared to snag was presently nailing him with daggers in its path. Still, it was a comfort to know he’d make a good-looking corpse if that look of yours ever did kill him

“Oh, my, my, oh hell YES—”

The sing-song trill of a baritone beside him roused him from his trance. He looked over and saw Scott grinning.

“—honey put on that pa-a-a-a-a-arty dress!”

It was Michelle that finished the line for him, while they both bobbed their heads along to the Tom Petty song blasting overhead. Evidently, dad rock would be alive and well all weekend. Joel wasn’t mad to see that happen.

“You a Tom Petty fan?” Scott jerked his chin up to him.

Before he could answer, though, Michelle interjected:

“I’d say he’s more of a Simon & Garfunkel guy.”

Whatever the hell that meant. Joel smiled.

“Mom, Dad. Please stop,” Aly moaned.

“Seriously.” Dallas’s mouth was full.

And, just as he fought to swallow the heaping glob of food he’d just crammed in, his dad snapped his fingers.

“No, I know it! You’re a Billy Joel man, Joel. No doubt.”

Joel blanched as white as the shirt on his back. You coughed. He hadn’t even noticed you’d chanced a bite of food beside him, but now you were sputtering—choking on a morsel of beef or mashed potatoes or something—and he didn’t think twice. He pivoted right to you and dropped a hand on your back in the space between your shoulder blades. He patted you twice, eyes a little wider.

“Hey, you OK?”

Fleeting memories of a night not too long ago flashed through his mind: driving town by town, state after state, blaring Billy Joel extra loud in his Bronco with you riding shotgun. It had been something special between you then. Now, your gaze was on him like you despised him.

“I’m fine,” you answered, tone clipped.

You shrugged his touch away. Joel blinked back to Scott.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he said, thoughts occupied by you all the while, but he reckoned it was something his neighbor had wanted to hear, because he saw a satisfied little smile cross his lips, ‘I told you, Michelle.’

“Everybody likes Billy Joel, dad.” Aly rolled her eyes.

And Joel would’ve liked to look your way again. Maybe dropped the fatherly moue for half a second and flashed an apologetic look shared just between you and him. But then the conversation shifted; the whole table began to eat, more pleasantries and questions about home life and backgrounds followed, and all the talk from there converged on where they were planning to go out after dinner—how they’d make the very most of Parents’ Weekend. You sat back and ate in silence, mostly. You wouldn’t meet his gaze for even a moment, and when you rose from your seat to get another drink, Joel felt himself stand too, as if out of habit. He hadn’t meant to.

It hadn’t been his intention to follow you out of the dining area, strides swift to try and keep up, but he did.

It hadn’t been his goal to corner you by the soda dispenser, either. Away from the eyes of everyone else, or at least in a private enough space not to be seen by too many people, Joel felt a little more at liberty to talk. He lowered his voice and drew even closer then to speak.

“Sweetheart—”

You’d filled a cup halfway with water. As soon as he’d said that word, ‘sweetheart,’ you turned and chucked its contents directly in his face. Liquid splashed up at him, and for a second, Joel had only to stand there with his eyes closed and his body completely frozen in place.

Water dripped in silence before he wiped at his chin.

At the same time, you were tossing your cup aside.

“Don’t you dare fuckin’ call me that,” you growled.

Then, shortly: “What the fuck is your problem?!”

Honestly, he didn’t know. He opened his eyes.

And, just as he raised both hands in a semi-conciliatory kind of gesture, you scowled and backed away from him.

“You’re sick, Joel. Pretending to be my goddamn da—”

“I know. I know,” Joel winced as he spoke, wrinkles no doubt creasing even deeper along his face as he saw yours fall. You weren’t happy to see him in the slightest. “I know it’s fucked up. I just…needed to talk to you, hon.”

“About what?!”

He could feel the heat rising to your cheeks. He wanted to cup them in his hands, or else kiss the frown off your lips in a way that would be totally inappropriate for a stepdad to do, but already, he sensed his resolve was eroding. It didn’t matter, anyway, because you weren’t letting him get within an inch of you, based off your look.

“Darlin’,” Joel sighed, “There’s just so much—”

Of course, the next moment was punctured by a voice. His words were cut short; you were both forced to turn.

“It’s all settled now,” Aly declared with cheery conviction. She snagged a cup and started filling it up with Sprite, “Pregame at Dallas’. Seven Oaks after. Lucky’s after that. Maybe a brief intermission at The Alley, if you’re up for it. Afters at A.J.’s, probably. Depends what the vibe is like.”

Joel had barely processed half of what was said, and it still sounded like a lot from where he stood. He blinked.

Then Aly’s eyes fell to his collar, and she lifted a brow.

“You got a little…drinking problem there, Joel?”

He glanced down at the mess on his shirt and tried to smile with her. It was hard to fight the color jumping to his cheeks simultaneously. He scrambled for the words.

“Oh, uh—”

“Dad’s real smooth with it,” you cut in, suddenly, like the paternal moniker was nothing at all. You didn’t look back, “I’m fine drinking wherever. Your parents coming, too?”

Aly’s grin stretched even wider. It looked devious.

“They wouldn’t miss this bingefest for the world.”

At just the intonation of those words, Joel’s pulse sped up. He saw a knowing look pass between you and your roommate, and in a second, he sensed he was fucked.

He really shouldn’t be drinking tonight.

A hundred shots probably wouldn’t have been enough to kill it—this ringing in your head hurt like a motherfucker.

Joel wanted to talk.

Of course he wanted to talk.

Just on his terms, on his time, with your closest friends and their family members all assuming he was your dad.

Because that made a lot of fucking sense.

You’d meant to split from Joel the second you showed up. Dallas’ off-campus house was many things, but small and quiet were not among those descriptors, and you planned to use all of its space to your advantage tonight.

Simply put, the place was a glorified playground for college degenerates. Afforded the distinct honor of housing eight members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity in 2,700 square feet for over fifty years, the Craftsman home was no small wonder to anyone who saw it standing today: the house was shit. Dallas loved it.

You’d enjoyed it, too, for at least the first year or two of college. Then you’d wisened up to the antics of a few too many numb-skulled Pikes, got tired of listening to the same ten tracks being blasted in your ears every other weekend, and decided you’d just stick to the bar scene, where at least patrons were prohibited from standing on elevated surfaces and breaking bottles over their heads.

When Dallas rushed, and eventually joined the fold last year, you’d been hesitant to go back. Then, when he’d promptly decked the first guy who tried dragging you up onto a table with him, you figured you could safely visit again and not have to worry while your friend was there. The kid did a pretty good job of weeding out assholes.

“My lady.” He stood and bowed before presenting you with a fifth of Pink Whitney like it was the finest wine.

The bottle was half empty. You’d been passing it back and forth for the last hour in between rounds of pong.

“Been sayin’ shit like that ever since he saw Gladiator II.” His housemate Cory called from closeby. He flicked his wrist once and sank his shot in the second to last cup.

“You are not General Acacius, brother,” Cory’s teammate Pete chimed in. With a lucky throw of his own, he hit the final Red Solo cup and shook his head like it was nothing.

You were all on the third floor, away from the noise downstairs. While the so-called ‘pregame’ surged ahead on first, in the basement, and outdoors, you’d managed to find relative quiet among eight or nine friends and acquaintances, plus a guy railing lines off a frisbee in the corner. Nobody knew where the fuck he’d gotten it from.

“I like to pretend,” Dallas said with a shrug. Then, once you’d taken a swig of the pink drink and handed it back: “My parents play next. Gavin, put the coke away, please.”

Gavin sniffed the air at least four times like he had a cold. Then he tucked his credit card back in his wallet, put the wallet in his pocket, and knocked the frisbee on the floor.

‘Yessir’ was all you heard before he was leaning back contentedly. The girls Cory and Pete had just played seemed equally indifferent as they sauntered off—likely looking to get their hands on whatever the hell else the redhead had in his jeans and quick to forget about the game. Blow was way too easy to spread at these parties, and clearly, no one gave a shit about redemption round.

“Gavin.” Dallas’ tone was a warning.

At the same time, his housemate had just snagged an ID where it was left on the table and held it up to the light.

“Hang on, it looks like this guy, uh…” Cory squinted to read the text on an apparently too-old driver’s license. “Looks like he called dibs on next round…Joel Miller.”

Your grip tightened on the spot. You said nothing. Cory was just then starting to remark that this dude’s the spittin’ fuckin’ image of that one guy from Game of Thrones, Dallas, come look, when the door to the room swung open, and in walked the man of the hour himself.

Joel was joined by Scott, Michelle, and a horde of others.

Well, maybe five in total. They were all freshmen girls.

Giggling, grinning freshmen girls who were quite literally hanging off his body on either side, or else trailing behind him, admiring him like he was the single greatest thing.

Where were all their fathers? That was your fake dad.

Christ, that sounded bad, and you hadn’t even said it.

When Dallas offered you the bottle again, you declined. You were more than just buzzed. And Joel was drunk.

Apparently.

And was he—well shit, were they trying to strip him?

One of the bubbliest girls from the group was tugging on Joel’s shirt. Three buttons were already undone, and a smooth, tanned patch of flesh glistened through the ‘V’ in the fabric. He’d been working up a sweat downstairs.

A sea of black-and-grey hairs peeking out through the trough of cotton was the last thing you saw before you had to look away. It was too familiar. And there you saw some girl fresh out of high school, feeling him, teasing at the material while she bounced on the balls of her feet.

“You are so lying!” she slurred, voice pitchy and shrill.

What was worse, you couldn’t even fault the girl for it. That had been you just a few short years ago, hadn’t it?

Beside her, her friend snagged his sleeve: “Show ussss!”

Scott and Michelle had approached the table where Dallas was setting up the cups for the next round and you were trying not to stare. You reckoned you were failing pretty miserably at the task when the next thing Mrs. Ingram did was lean in closer to you and whisper.

“Real hot commodity with the girls, isn’t he?” It was soft.

She was right.

You forced your gaze to your feet, pretending to assess the wet and sticky mess underneath them. You hummed.

“Yup. Real ladies’ man,” you answered quietly. Strained.

“They’re convinced he’s got some ink hidden under his shirt. That’s a creative way to get a man topless if I’ve ever seen one.” Scott chuckled next to you, tone teasing.

Something twisted in your chest, though you couldn’t quite place what it was. It hardly felt like jealousy at all—but that was worse, somehow. Joel was your stepfather in every other mind but yours and his, and here he was, soaking in all this attention that you couldn’t give to him.

Maybe that was for the best.

Joel deserved a woman he didn’t have to love in secret.

“OK, who’s up—Joel or mom and dad?” Dallas asked.

“I’m out. Joel can take my place. And don’t we—”

Pete snapped his fingers, then pointed at Cory.

“We forgot to grab the other keg, didn’t we?”

“Fuck me.”

“Let’s go.”

They were gone in a second. That left Joel, Scott, Michelle, plus one open spot. Dallas set the last cup.

“Who’s gonna be Joel’s partn—”

“ME!”

That had to have come from three girls, at least. One on the couch and two more on either side of Joel, along with a slew of hopeful looks from others in his orbit.

They’d dispersed some, thankfully. Though not physically clinging to your pseudo-stepfather and begging him to peel off his shirt, they stayed close.

One of them giggled and nudged her friend: “Maya can!”

The girl who’d just been playing tug-of-war with the front of Joel’s button up waved her hand in mock indignation.

“I suck at pong. You go, Claire,” she crooned.

It was clear from the sideways glance the first girl had flashed that she wanted Joel to protest. Maybe insist that she play anyway, if you had to guess. It was all so confusing—what with how this group was flirting, and fighting, and insisting simultaneously that they couldn’t possibly play, even though they’d like to, but maybe…

Your skull started ringing again.

You were just about to turn to leave, when Dallas cut in:

“Sorry, ladies. Gonna be a Daddy-Daughter duo tonight.”

Then he gestured to you, beckoned to Joel, and grinned. Your stomach could’ve plunged to that floor you’d just been pretending to study. You quickly jerked your head.

Even Joel, for all his calm and unaffected dealings, the pretty damp mop of hair hanging in ringlets against the sides of his face, and the way he kept pretending not to be concerned by the flock of girls, had to pause a beat. You saw his throat work. Before you could try and decipher the look that was crawling up his face, you made the split-second decision to interject yourself.

“No, Dallas. I’m not playing again.”

You tried to avoid grinding your molars.

This time, the tone he heard wasn’t one of a thinly veiled acceptance—something begging to be disputed when it tried to decline the offer—but instead an emphatic ‘no.’

No way were you playing another game with this man.

Joel already had your head fucked ten ways to Sunday by being here at all, and now you had to pretend to be platonic, his goddamn beer pong partner, while a gaggle of freshmen girls sat frothing at the mouth for his dick?

Yeah, but no.

Hard fucking pass.

You didn’t care what it looked like. You shot Dallas a look, grabbed a stray Solo off the table, and made your way to the door, calling something over your shoulder about being too tired to play, and offering your spot to Maya.

That should make your old man happy enough.

It wasn’t like he could do anything here with you.

And then you left. Before you did, though, you passed Gavin and the mysterious white bag he was starting to fish out of his pants, and without thinking, you grabbed his hand. You didn’t like doing coke, had never seen the point in taking your level of intoxication that far out on an ordinary night, but, all things considered, this evening was anything but normal. You deserved some relief. If that couldn’t come in the form of Joel packing all his shit and leaving, then so be it. But you weren’t about to hang around and play the nice and polite stepdaughter when all you wanted to do was scratch your fucking eyes out.

A few lines wouldn’t be the worst way to start the night.

Joel wasn’t drunk.

He wasn’t tipsy, either.

And even if he had been, he wouldn’t have appreciated the way this hazel-eyed firecracker had nearly crushed his toes from how hard she’d jumped up and down at hearing you abdicate your position. Maya had shrieked, and Scott and Michelle hadn’t been able to fight back smiles, and trying not to wince too hard, Joel had politely excused himself. He’d claimed that he needed some air.

The oxygen he found down the hallway a few minutes later was stale as shit, but he couldn’t exactly complain.

He’d asked for this, after all: the thumping bass, shaking floors, passageways that reeked of weed and cheap perfume, and girls that refused to let go of his neck.

Well. He hadn’t asked for that last thing.

Thirty years ago, he might’ve found it cute—what Maya and Claire and every other glossy-gazed Phi Mu seemed to be offering with every bat of their lashes. Now, if the arms latched around his throat weren’t yours, the idea just made him sick. He cleared his throat and walked.

And before long, his feet had carried him to the end of the hallway. Where in the hell had you gotten off to?

Would you be back soon?

And why had you taken that kid with you?

Joel’s palms were sweaty by his sides. He didn’t like being kept in the dark—didn’t think traveling some 2,000 miles to be closer to you would still leave him wondering like a fucking idiot if he would see you again.

Then he reached for the nearest door. A bathroom.

The door was just cracked, allowing a sliver of light to shine through and a peek at a sea of tile flooring to greet him. Joel pushed on the knob without thinking to knock.

When he stepped inside, he had to stop.

It was too much to process and walk at once.

For the first time in his life, he felt shell-shocked.

You were on your knees in front of that red-haired fucker. Stabilizing one hand on a denim-clad leg in front of you, patting his thigh, having him murmur something back—probably words of encouragement for how nice your mouth felt around him—and then tilting your head up.

Joel could only see you from behind. His vision was red.

“What the fuck are you DOING?!” he bellowed out.

The two of you leapt apart, your head jerking back.

He wasn’t thinking. Joel blew straight past you and went for him, the little pencil-dicked Pike who’d just had his dick down his stepdaughter’s throat, presumably, and he grabbed him by the shirt. He shoved him hard against the bathtub on the wall, watched him flail a few steps, and then, before the kid could recover his balance, Joel shoved him again. He might’ve tripped further back and fallen into the tub, had the older man not reached for him again—and reared back to punch him square in the face.

That blow never landed.

In the next instant, a smaller body was forcing itself in between him and the kid, and the only other thing Joel could see through his own blinding rage were your two eyes—wide and panicked and horror-stricken, clearly.

“JOEL.”

Still not prepared to retreat, Joel reached out again.

Your hand knocked his down in a blink. Hard.

“J— Dad. Dad. Stop. Please don’t hit him.”

Suddenly, that tone was approaching a plea. You must’ve caught a glimpse of the rage pulsing through his veins and sensed it might’ve been too much for him to control—but of course, Joel knew better. He could always stop.

He stepped off and turned to you at once, teeth bared.

“How the fuck could you even—” he started again.

“I’m sorry, dad,” you broke in, words sounding like a sob, “It’s not his fault. Really. I— I didn’t mean for you to see.”

Sucking some other guy’s cock. Yeah, of course not.

Joel’s face flared with an anger unlike anything he’d felt in years, and if it weren’t for the skittish sack of shit stumbling away, and the warning that was starting to radiate off your skin, he would’ve liked to knock him out.

He might’ve, if the kid hadn’t run out of the room.

If you hadn’t turned slightly, he might’ve yelled again.

And then he saw it, from where you’d pivoted—the toilet.

Sitting on the smooth white porcelain lid in three thick stripes, the sight greeted him like a punch in the gut.

He wasn’t sure what it meant for an excruciating second. He stared. Then he processed what that substance was.

You’d been crouched over the toilet doing a line of coke.

He wanted to feel relief. For a moment, maybe, he did.

When your eyes narrowed on his and you shook your head in a scowl, it didn’t feel like he should be happy. Or ready to celebrate this latest discovery. Instead, realizing that you hadn’t been blowing a guy in this bathroom but were simply doing drugs in front of him, Joel felt bile jump up his throat. It was like a knot the size of his fist, and he wasn’t sure how to react, but he couldn’t stand that look on your face. You were just as angry as him.

“What the hell was that all about, Joel?!” you snapped.

He opened his mouth to speak, but you cut back in:

“Sorry, sorry—I mean ‘dad.’ You fucking asshole.”

“And this is why you up and left?” Joel hissed.

“I just—”

“Do you realize how dangerous that is?”

“I didn’t—”

“What that could’ve been laced with?”

He pointed to the cocaine on the lid of the toilet—apparently there hadn’t been enough space on the skinny porcelain sink to set up your lines—and at the same time, to Joel’s amazement, you sank to your knees.

“Well, I don’t know, dad, why don’t we test some out?”

And then you swiped a casual touch through a line and lifted your index to your mouth. With your other hand, you pulled at your bottom lip a little, and were evidently about to test your drugs the old fashioned way: by rubbing the powder against your gums to see if it made them numb. Joel swatted at your wrist before you did.

“Don’t,” he growled. Without even realizing it, he reached and grabbed your chin. His fingers engulfed half your face in an authoritative, upward-tilting grip. “Put that stuff anywhere near your mouth, and you will regret it.”

That didn’t seem to stir you, but your hand stayed put.

Joel stepped away just as quickly. He went to the door.

He shut it.

And when he returned, you hadn’t moved from where you’d been knelt. He was glad. Something quiet and dull throbbed between his ears, though he wasn’t recovered enough from the shock of the last few minutes to really investigate that. He just stood back over you, frowning.

His voice was lower when he spoke again:

“What am I gonna do with you, honey?”

It was a question as much for himself as it was for you, and your lips twitched at the end of it. You shrugged, and you sank back onto your heels, peering up as you did.

“You thought—” you started, soft.

“I thought you were in here blowin’ that little shit.”

Your smile split into a grin. Your eyes glistened.

“Is that so?”

Joel didn’t have the strength or the presence of mind to answer, so instead, he just nodded. His scowl deepened.

“You and me,” he resumed, having just exhaled a breath, “We’re gonna have ourselves a little chat later. Got that?”

And he meant it. Not just about drugs and other men and the dangers of accepting cocaine from strangers. He had more to tell you tonight than his overwrought mind was likely capable of sharing right now, but he’d say it.

Soon.

Eventually.

Once he got this bulge in his slacks sorted out.

With you, it was never a conscious decision, and it rarely ever occurred at times it was appropriate to happen. Like when your friends and their family and half of the Pike fraternity weren’t all milling about around this house. When he hadn’t almost decked a kid for giving you coke.

When you weren’t shuffling on your knees to greet the growing erection in his pants with a grin on your face.

“Will this ‘chat’ come before or after you fuck Maya?”

That was it.

Joel seized hold of your head again—this time, from the back. One palm rounded the base of your skull and yanked your face forward, mushing your nose and your lips against the fabric of his pants in an obscene sort of kiss. He made you rub your face against the hardened tent there, and he groaned when you whimpered. The reverberations of it traveled from his groin to his brain in two milliseconds flat and made him think insane things.

Like having your mouth right now.

Taking from you here what he thought he’d almost lost.

The sight of your head hovering anywhere near another man’s crotch made it crystal-clear to him, though he’d known it well before: he wanted you. He needed to have you. How you could even crack the joke about a shred of his attention being elsewhere had him tightening his hand in a fist in your hair. He didn’t care if it felt wrong.

“You know what girls like Maya can do for me?” he said.

He tilted your head back so your gaze could find his. He didn’t let you answer, but he let you stare for a second, and then he worked your pretty parted lips over the front of his slacks again. He let the taut grey fabric tease the cusp of that opening, tasting a bit, before drawing back.

“That’s right,” Joel went on as if you’d just responded, “Nothing. Absolutely fuckin’ nothing. Open your mouth.”

And you did. Wider. From the look of it, there was spit pooling inside, and your tongue hovered just within it when your lips met the front of his pants. You cupped your mouth around his clothed erection and kissed it.

Your eyes were locked on his as you did. The sight felt extra obscene—Joel couldn’t ignore the fact that he was dressed in near-formal attire, and you had on jeans and a tight cropped tank. He looked polished and professional; you were a beaming pretty thing making space between his legs to kneel. You felt like a dream with your lips over his swollen, aching cock; Joel felt old. Paternal, almost.

Was it wrong to think you needed to be taught a lesson?

Of course it was. He wasn’t your dad. He didn’t do that.

But when you smiled up at him with your lips still brushing his straining bulge, Joel couldn’t resist the smallest impulse to wonder—what if he showed you?

What if he let you know exactly what he wanted, how he needed it done, and that he only ever craved it from you? If he couldn’t say it outright in words, he could guide you.

Teach you.

Your tongue traced the seam of his zip, and he groaned.

“Damn near gave your old man a stroke, y’know that?”

“I know,” you said softly. Kindly, “I’m sorry, daddy.”

His cock throbbed at that last affectionate word.

His hands couldn’t help themselves: one stayed planted on the back of your head, and the other made its way to his belt. He undid his buckle, button, and zip in a blink.

“And what was that prick’s name?” Joel grumbled.

“Gavin.”

Your mind seemed two million miles away from any shit-brained fratboy at the moment as your gaze fixed itself on the length he was working out of his pants just then.

When it bobbed out and got within an inch of your rapt expression, your lips parted on instinct; you leaned in.

Swiftly, Joel’s hand on your head halted the movement.

“Gavin, huh,” he returned, tone treading on patronizing. He knew you were salivating for that little pearl on his tip. He gripped your hair hard. “This what you’d do for him?”

You whimpered.

“No, daddy. No, just— just you.”

Joel hummed his approval but didn’t let you move. He watched you eye the head of his cock like there was no single sight more appetizing in the world, and then he saw you lick your lips. You’d get positive reinforcement.

He would take things slow, and by the end of it all, he hoped to have made it clear that this was what he wanted: you, and only you. That he didn’t want you doing this with anyone else other than him. Here, now, or ever.

The last was a lot to say, so he fed you an inch instead.

He let his cock slide between your lips and stretch them.

You breathed something soft and sweet at the first intrusion of his tip; your mouth cushioned that inch, and his head was immediately enveloped in warmth. Your tongue darted out to greet him in a gentle lick. Joel groaned again, and his fingers constricted in your hair.

“That’s it, honey,” he told you, “Suck on daddy.”

His hips hadn’t meant to jump, but the pleasure from just the cusp of your mouth was too much for him not to flinch a little. He stabbed another couple inches in that pliant ‘o’ and felt you work your jaw open to take him whole. You looked so obedient. You were doing so good.

You bobbed your head gently, and his hand didn’t need to coax you at all. You were hungry, mouth sliding up and down his thick, throbbing dick and leaving trails of spit in its wake. You wanted to please him now; he could feel it.

You had no idea what you did to him. All he wanted now. It was like trying to explain a color in words, and all the man could do was just hold your head in place and watch you take him. When your back straightened and one palm braced itself up against his thigh, the other about to curl around the base of his length, he shook his head.

He brushed that hand away and made it rest on his other leg, so you were left with just your mouth around him.

You peered up, confused. Joel was, too.

He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew he had to lead the way. Make you see what he wanted you to by guiding your motions and filling your mouth the way he needed. He tried as much by shifting his left hand to meet the right at the back of your head. Gently, he pushed your face forward to suck more in.

“Breathe through your nose, baby. Wanna feel you.”

Feel you deeper, he should’ve said. Either way, it made for a slow and painstaking slide down your tongue—sensing you flatten it and inhale a shallow breath as he worked his way in—and at the stretch, you gagged a bit.

Joel eased up, just enough to let you flit your gaze to his.

“You wanna feel me, too, sweetheart?” he asked gently.

You nodded, mouth still full of cock. Your eyes glistened in a way that said you might’ve guessed there was more to it, but you weren’t exactly in a position to ask just what. You let the fingers of both his big hands splay against the back of your head, and your jaw slackened more. Your gaze stayed on his as his cock slid deeper.

In that, there was wordless, tranquil reprieve. The sight of his spit-soaked length stuffing your mouth, skin all shiny and wet, and the way he kept going further and further and further, until your soft pert nose grazed the hairs of his belly, made Joel’s member swell harder still. There was scarcely an inch in between your lips and his heft of stomach. Your eyes were still fixed on him, and as the seconds ticked by, there was moisture welling at the corners. Joel moved his hands to thumb at those tears.

“Good girl. You’re doin’ so good for daddy,” he praised.

And something stirred in the depths of his body when he felt you try to nod again, like you were thrilled to be giving him pleasure and wanted to show it in some way.

Joel could’ve stayed like that for hours if his dick would only have let him. As it was, though, he felt the stir in his stomach accompanied by something else—a familiar pinch, and a warning jolt of pleasure. He cursed quietly.

You’d just started. He’d barely got an inch down your—

“Fuck,” he cursed again, when he sensed you swallow around his dick. The head of himself was breaching somewhere deep within your throat, and he felt it.

This wasn’t what he’d planned. You’d taken him deep before—at your father’s birthday bash last month, actually—but then you’d been blowing him under a table. He couldn’t hold your gaze or watch your throat open around him, couldn’t see the minuscule wince in your eyes or try to brush that discomfited look aside with his thumbs in the way he could now. He felt it in the pit of his gut, though: he would burst if he didn’t slow down.

With that one grounding thought, Joel tried pulling out.

Your body below him responded in sharp protest.

‘Daddy, no’ seemed almost to jump off your tongue, though it was presently weighted down by his cock. Your nails worked deeper into the fabric of his pants, like the tight, possessive grip was all you could manage to let your intentions be known to him. Then the look flared in your irises, too. They were begging him to stay in place.

Joel obeyed. Though it was you on your knees for him, lips, tongue, and throat pulsing and sucking to give him the utmost pleasure, he felt pangs of powerlessness, too.

He couldn’t help it when your lips stretched more, when your mouth opened wider, and your throat took him in all the way. He was fucked. He let out a sharp, hoarse grunt to let you know as much, and he cursed out loud again.

And then, completely axing his every well-laid plan, Joel felt the first rope of cum unload from his throbbing tip. Then another. And another. And another hot flurry of pleasure cropped up from that place your mouth was presently attached to him, and this time, the wave was too much to be overcome. The whole thing flooded him.

Without a hope of beating out that primal instinct, Joel just cupped your face in his palms and let his climax fill your throat. He couldn’t think, and while you seemed a tad surprised at how early it came, you didn’t fight it, either. You simply sat back, peered up, and let him fuck your mouth in the gentlest, most desperate thrusts, mind likely eager to feel his spend paint your open throat.

You hardly had to swallow at all—hardly could swallow, with how deep he’d gone. His cum jetted in milky strings through your plush, wet channel, and Joel could feel it gliding down with just a moment’s hitch of resistance.

Impaled as you were, you gagged once, and he withdrew in the next instant. He didn’t wait for you to catch your breath or for his cum to get down inside you. He felt too much to be troubled now; he yanked you to your feet and drew you into him. He pushed you back against the sink.

Your legs latched around the backs of his, and your body was thrust against the mirror. It was tender, somehow. Joel didn’t fight to claim your lips or invade your mouth with stifling kisses; he just pressed you to the reflective glass and hedged you in under him. He kissed you gently.

In between movements against your body, he mumbled:

“I’m sick of missin’ you all the damn time, sweet pea.”

He wasn’t sure where it came from. It just came.

Much like he had, except the stringy ropes of cum that had spurted from his dick seemed far less of a mess than whatever the fuck was coming out of his mouth right now. He felt exposed as soon as he’d spoken it you.

Then he saw your lips twitch. You kissed him back.

Someplace within where your mouth slotted over his, you were able to get out a couple murmured words yourself.

“I wish you didn’t have to,” you returned in a whisper.

You snaked your arms around the back of his neck and kept kissing him, over and over again, like your body was just starting to melt, and the heat was making you dizzy.

Joel could relate. Every time you touched him, he felt it.

He gripped your legs where they were still curled around his sides, and he held you tighter to him. He pressed his torso to yours until he was half-sure he was hampering your breaths, and then he pulled back. Briefly. Panting.

When he opened his mouth to speak, you cut in for him:

“I wish you could…be here. I wish we didn’t have to…”

Hide.

Your mouth seemed to have your mind and your usual reservations beat by a mile. It was moving fast, like his. Before you could stop yourself, your thighs constricted around his hips, you pulled him in closer, and just as you were about to finish that last quick, splintered thought—

“We’re leeeeeeeeav—OH! Shit!”

Aly Ingram’s sing-song tone was shortly supplanted by a shriek. She’d thrown open the door, unannounced, and when she saw the two of you collapsed against the sink, Joel’s undone pants hanging precariously over his hips and your mouths scarcely two inches apart, she jolted.

Or jumped, really.

She almost leapt through her skin, it seemed, and before she could even begin to recover, she just slapped her hands over her eyes and stumbled back. She was drunk.

“I didn’t see that! I did not seeee—”

“Aly!” you half-hissed, half-groaned.

“I literally didn’t see shit. You’re all g—”

Before either you or Joel could utter another sound, or attempt to split apart, Aly let out a second shrill yelp. This time, it was because she’d just tripped over a trash can backing out. She’d only very narrowly regained her bearings, had grabbed hold of the doorknob and was dragging the door shut, when the girl all but sang again:

“Have fun, be safe! Don’t make babies!!”

Joel scarcely knew how to react to that.

As it turned out, your roommate was open-minded.

Ply her with four or five shots of tequila and a couple High Noons, and she’d probably believe the moon was made of cheese if you told her in a serious enough tone.

But your goal tonight hadn’t been to convince her of a lie—it was to get a big, ugly truth off your chest that you’d been hoping to keep under wraps this entire weekend.

Now, after getting caught with your fake stepfather’s jizz drying in your throat, you had had to come clean about this thing. It wasn’t a story you’d wanted to tell, but it was one that needed sharing given the circumstances.

Aly had laughed her ass off when you told her everything.

Blame it on the strobe lights, the thumping music, or the thick, fetid air of the bar you’d just arrived at, but Aly had laughed a lot. She’d squeezed her eyes shut and slapped the tabletop beside her, like that was the single most insane thing she’d ever heard, and why don’t you write her a How-To? She’d love some tips on boning old men.

“He’s not that old!” you’d protested over your beverage.

She’d bought the drink. She said news like this was cause for celebration, and you couldn’t deny that. Smiling as you spoke, you figured this was good.

In fact, you thought getting caught by your closest friend was one of the best things that could’ve happened, all things considered, because now you knew at least one person was supportive and in your corner regarding Joel. On top of that, you had someone to help cover your ass—if a touch or a look between you two was too suspect, she’d tell you. From the second your group had Ubered to the bar, she’d been keen to see you close…though not too close. Presently, she grinned and squeezed your leg.

“I think you two would make a damn cute couple.”

“Huh?” You had to shout over the music to be heard.

“A cute couple!”

“Come again?”

You were really trying your best, but the blare of Bon Jovi overhead was a bit too much. You leaned in closer to her.

“YOU AND JOEL WOULD MAKE A CUTE COUPLE!”

And, as if on cue, Joel and Aly’s father reappeared at the table, holding the drinks they’d left to buy. Thankfully, the volume in the room was near-deafening, and neither seemed to have heard a word of hers. Scott was nursing some bottom shelf whiskey concoction while Joel double-fisted two shitty beers beside him. You had to admit, the latter looked good from where you sat: one more button was popped on his icy white shirt and a smile was plastered on his face, eyes straying to you more often than they should. The moment after that, you were doubly grateful for the blast of ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ in this bar—the next thing you knew, Joel was dropping his head casually and murmuring in your ear,

“Aly sure likes to stare, doesn’t she?”

Followed shortly by:

“Wanna give her somethin’ to watch?”

He was clearly joking. Your cheeks warmed anyway. Then, when he started to lift his head, he left a quick, parting kiss to your temple that could’ve been construed as a paternal gesture. To anyone else but you, him, and Aly, it likely was. Your gaze slid from Joel’s face to his forearms, where the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. He smelled like pine, sweat, and Natty Light, and you were just about to tell him that somehow that combo worked for him, when Scott interposed, loud as hell.

“You ask her yet?!” he bellowed.

He knocked shoulders with Joel in a playful way, and the pair nearly stumbled sideways. Scott elbowed his ribs.

“He’s drunk as shit,” Dallas observed idly.

“Well, what’s he—” you began to say.

Before you’d even finished the question, your answer came in the form of Joel nodding, visibly pretty buzzed himself, as he waved his friend off with a shove and a laugh. Scott just grinned bigger as Bon Jovi gave way to Steely Dan over the speakers. Joel leaned back to you.

“Scott invited us to go skiing out in Jackson, Wyoming.”

“He loves planning trips drunk,” Michelle added.

“Like they’re best friends,” Dallas chuckled.

You ignored Aly’s half-concealed smirk on hearing that; you were too stuck on the look Joel was giving you. Like he was drunk, but dead serious—like he’d agreed to this.

Something set for a future date, however nebulous and far-fetched and stupid the idea may have been, made your insides stir a little all the same. You tried tamping it down with another sip of your drink, but you still shared a glance with Joel. He was watching you more intently.

“Is that something you’d wanna do, hon?” he asked.

You might’ve liked to warn him that he was drawing too close—that his breaths were too warm on your cheek and Aly was straightening in her chair, blinking harder—but anything even approaching a remonstrance was evidently never meant to leave your mouth, as the next second had you nudged off your barstool, taken by the hand, and dragged toward the bustling crowd at the center of the room. Scott had suggested dancing; his son had readily agreed and was now leading you out to the crowd himself. You snagged one fleeting look at Joel.

Mr. Ingram had been dying to get out there, apparently. Behind you, the man spun his wife the best he could through the jam-packed dance floor of students and parents bumping their way through the very best of the ‘70s and ‘80s. He took a few graceless turns himself; while Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, and AC/DC reigned supreme over the wide open space, he pulled some mildly impressive moves. More importantly, though, he didn’t give a shit how he looked. This encouraged your group to let loose a little, too, and you somehow found yourself burrowing even further into the sea of people.

Your arms were compressed on either side of you. Your shoulders were bumped, and nudged, and given little more than a quarter of an inch for your chest to expand in the shallowest of breaths. Every pull of your lungs was an effort, and still, you couldn’t help but smile as you ran a quick look over the heads of everyone around. This was fun. Private, even. With dozens of nameless, faceless bodies gyrating in time with the music, you could blend right in. You could pretend that everything was normal.

Even with the press of a familiar form at your back, you could pretend it was just the crowd forcing him there—that Joel had just sauntered in behind you by accident.

It was risky, to be sure. The lights above flashed in bright white bursts, undulating with every pulse of the song being played, and it wasn’t too far from you that Aly and all the rest of them were strewn throughout the crowd.

But Joel hadn’t seemed to have noticed. Beneath the myriad limbs of the bargoers around you and him, he moved a hand to your waist. It hovered precariously for half a second, then tightened. It drew you closer to him.

You tried to push it away on instinct, heart jumping in your throat: what if Scott or Michelle or anyone else turned their heads at that moment and found him touching you there? What if the grasp their eyes caught wasn’t the wholesome, blameless kind that was meant to be shared between stepfather and stepdaughter? Who the hell was supposed to do the explaining to them then?

Clearly Joel wasn’t all that concerned about it; he slid his palm back up your side and gripped your hip hard after you’d nudged him off. He took a daring step forward, and you could feel him shake his head behind you. Smiling.

“And if I made a joke about father-daughter dances—”

“I would kill you with my two bare hands, Miller.”

Your backside glanced off his front. It wasn’t so much a deliberate move on your part but a byproduct of the rhythm. Some soft rock song was coming to an end, and your body rolled gently with his. The friction was minimal. This kind of proximity was easy to be explained away, if Dallas ever happened to look in your direction—

“Joel!”

Something hard pushed into your ass. You had to steel yourself quick, eyes darting furtively about to make sure no one had seen what you’d just felt between your legs. Then you tried wriggling away, off of him, and were rewarded with another hand on your side. It gripped the flesh just above your hipbone with a tender conviction.

Joel’s lips grazed your cheek briefly. His grip loosened.

“See what you do to me?” he murmured, and the fingers that he’d eased around your waist were turning you back.

Facing him now, away from your group. More bodies filled in between you and them, and the force of that influx pushed you closer to Joel. It shoved you together. It almost couldn’t be helped—that was what you kept telling yourself, anyway—when your frame melded to his, and his hands lowered to your hips, and one finger worked its way through your taut, denim belt loop in a manner completely unbecoming of a normal stepfather.

That callused finger held you firm to him with your jeans. It didn’t give an inch, and his eyes on yours did the same.

You were drifting further out. This didn’t matter as much. Anyone who saw you now would just have to guess that you were Joel’s, and Joel’s was yours—if only for now.

Your lips and his were gravitating closer then, too. You were just about to part yours to speak, when one soft, opening sequence broke out in the air, and you groaned.

No fucking way.

An all-too-familiar mid-tempo tune flooded the room and coursed in and out of your skull with a low, rhythmic tick.

It was eerie. Dreamy. Nearly haunting in the way it rang out right here, right now, with Joel’s hold on your sides tightening more and more with every passing second.

You hoped like hell he didn’t know this song, though you were half-certain this was a big hit from back in his day.

When Joel tipped his head back and fell right in step with the swaying cadence, you weren’t left guessing for long. Of course this slick bastard liked George Michael.

Of course he did.

What more of an appropriate song to be dancing to now, other than fucking ‘Father Figure’ of all the throwbacks?

Joel lifted both arms in a half-shimmy, half-slide and flashed a shit-eating grin down at you. It was smug.

‘For one moment, to be warm and naked at my side.’

Joel raised his brows with it, as if hearing the lyrics for the first time and being shocked. He wasn’t, clearly, as he rolled his shoulders in a stupid and seductive way, and dragged you closer to meet his body’s movements.

‘Sometimes I think that you’ll never understand me.’

Right. You would likely never understand Joel Miller.

‘But something tells me together we’d be happy.’

Well…as long as your father didn’t kill him first.

Emboldened by the pre-chorus beat and the ever-increasing swell of people around him, Joel snaked an arm around your waist. He let your body fall in line with his, rolling in gentle sorts of motions until he could find what kind suited you two the best, and he led the way.

When his head dipped to yours, you could feel it coming.

‘I will be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mine.’

This time Joel was singing along, grin wide on his face. As if to mirror the lyrics, he took your hand and squeezed it. You might’ve rolled your eyes or pulled away when the man leaned down and slid his touch to your wrist. He kissed your palm. Then he kissed it again, sponging his lips to the skin in time with the rhythm of the song. It was both innocent and lewd. Wholesome and sensual.

Something trapped between perverted and polite, like Joel was testing the waters while trying not to make it seem that way at all. You kept moving in time together.

Joel’s other hand held you to him. His fingers flexed.

“You can’t…”

When his grip slid to your ass, you shook your head.

As much as you would’ve liked to indulge the urge that was currently flooding your system, the timing was off. The choice to give in now was wrong, and risky to make.

Your roommate and her family were no more than fifteen feet away. No matter how many strangers stood between you and them, Joel was toeing a dangerous line with his hand lowered to where it was. With his face only inches away and a sly grin spreading on his lips, it was clear he knew better than this. But he was eager to talk.

“You feel that, sweetheart?” he asked softly.

Where that single term of endearment had once made you bristle, you now sensed it warming your insides.

You nodded but were quick to add: “Joel, we can’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because…”

You found yourself trailing off again, just as you felt Joel’s erection grind into your front, somewhere close to the space between your legs. It rubbed right where you needed him. While another stream of airy, dreamlike notes floated out and a tenor’s voice crooned if you ever hunger, hunger for me, you peered up to find Joel deep in contemplation. He didn’t blink when you met his gaze.

Instead, he nudged you sideways. You inhaled a breath, and not long after that, you felt your back pressed to one of the lone barstools sitting at the outskirts of the room. You’d strayed far. And now, away from all the people that you’d come here with, you had two big hands sliding up the sides of your body. Cupping your face. Guiding your mouth to meet a warmer, more desperate set of lips than you’d ever been expecting to find. Joel’s kiss was rough.

It was open and aching—a wound not willing to be soothed by anything other than your tongue on his. Swiftly, he coaxed your jaw open and slid in. He licked in. He practically panted into your mouth, fingertips carving crescents in your cheeks from just how hard he was holding your face. He didn’t let up, and that hunger bled from his lips to yours. You felt a heady wave wash over your brain, and at the same time, your thighs tensed.

You pulled away.

Your lips were bitten numb. Your cunt was throbbing.

While your pulse thundered through your ears like a fucking kickdrum, your grip loosened on the front of Joel’s shirt, and you started to turn yourself from him.

What you needed to do was leave. What you couldn’t stand was getting caught again, and risk it being someone who wouldn’t take to it as kindly as Aly had.

But even as you walked, you felt a pulsing in your skull.

Between your legs, the feeling was worse, like there was something thrumming a frantic beat in that precious and defenseless place that you knew was needing him most. You were weak. You swiped a hand over your mouth like that would do anything, and you kept walking, knowing how closely Joel would be following you all the way out.

On such a clear, frigid night, the air outside should’ve been a relief. Instead, your pulse hammered and swelled. Your cheeks burned. You could’ve ground your teeth so hard that you cracked enamel, and it still wouldn’t have been enough to bite back the words inside your throat.

You turned to Joel wanting to tell him no. The expression that met yours said he was expecting as much—and was preparing to object—when you swiftly cut him off again.

It should end there. Nothing good ever came of you shedding your inhibitions or clothes with Joel Miller.

He reached out; you winced. You shouldn’t say it.

“Let’s go home, Joel.”

You were running again.

You’d nearly knocked him to the floor the second he’d turned the key in the door of his dingy little motel room, lips frantic over his and hands making fists in his shirt. It was exactly what he’d been hoping to see—part of why he’d booked this place and made the drive that weekend, to have you cradled in his arms again—but as he crossed the threshold with you all over him, Joel grew unsettled.

He couldn’t quite place the feeling, but something told him that you were only here to escape an unsavory urge. Like he was a bad habit to be flooded from your system.

You seemed to say it with every motion of your hands: skating down his front, clawing at the buttons, busying themselves with quickly trying to rid him of the fabric while your eyes stayed trained anywhere but on his face. It stung. Normally Joel wasn’t the type to ruminate on the reasons why a girl might be tearing his clothes off, but tonight, with you, this wasn’t what he usually did.

The ache unfurling in his chest wasn’t the kind to be imparted by just anyone, he kept reminding himself.

Which was why he took hold of both your wrists. Tightly. Just as you were about to try and peel his shirt from his shoulders and expose the whole naked expanse of his chest, he stopped you. He swallowed as you groaned.

“Joel.”

“You didn’t want me kissin’ you at all back there.”

In the bar, outside the building, in the car ride over here. You’d scarcely let him hold you for half a minute before begging to be taken home, and now that you were inside this room, alone, now you wanted to be touched by him.

Joel tried not to feel stupid saying it aloud, but hell, he felt pretty fucking pathetic peering down at you then.

You shook your head. Took a small step back from him.

“Yeah. Trying not to get us caught again, remember?”

And when you backed off, you stayed off, if only to start unfastening the little straps of your top and kick your shoes off your feet. You made your way over to the king-sized bed at the center of the room and sat down. Joel took off his own shoes but didn’t follow, opting instead to rest his weight on the old TV stand across from you.

He planted his hands on the hardwood surface on either side of him, watched you shuffle to the edge of the bed, and had to steel himself when the next pieces of clothing came sliding off your body. You were lifting your shirt over your head, then dragging your jeans down your legs.

Before you were stripped bare, Joel cleared his throat.

“I said we were gonna have a little chat later, too.”

He sounded like a dad. This really had to stop.

Instead of following his lead, you only kicked your pants off at your feet and leaned back. Joel approached the bed, and you greeted him with a coquettish look, like you already knew where this was going. But you couldn’t.

Joel made sure that you wouldn’t when he cupped your chin in his hand and made you tilt your face up to him.

“Honey,” he started, stern, while you reached for his belt.

You’d almost succeeded in threading your fingers through the leather and tugging it loose when Joel’s grip drew tighter. He jerked your chin up in a pinch, ignoring the roll of your eyes, and for yet another beat, he felt that obscure urge to discipline you again. Like you needed it.

If he could just control himself and play things right…

“Listen, I’m not trying to be your father.”

Wait. No. That came out wrong.

Your eyes widened some.

“Oh, really, daddy?”

Well, shit.

Joel straightened where he stood and tried not to puff out his chest like an old father-type might do, but the effort was useless—everything the man said and did was like the fucking calling card of a patriarch. He scrubbed a hand over his face and pretended not to see you grin up at him, your gaze bright and fiery as the Fourth of July.

He could hold important conversations and still not try to jump your bones immediately. He could control himself. He could slap on a semi-austere look and just tell you.

“I love you, you know that, right?” he blurted out.

Your eyes widened again, this time in alarm.

“Christ, Joel.”

You were sliding back on the bed. Shaking your head and pursing your lips in a grimace like this wasn’t happening.

“We’re not doing this again,” you added in a grave voice.

Joel was already making his way up after you—again, like a fucking moron, he felt—crawling on hands and knees across the moth-eaten, coral-colored bedspread and trying not to panic and failing miserably, per usual.

“‘S’alright if you don’t wanna say it back, I just—”

“I didn’t mean to say it in the first place, Joel!”

But there was a strain in your words. Denial.

You were working in earnest not to expose that sliver of self that wanted him, too. Joel could feel it. He planted his knees on the mattress and met you closer to the headboard, where your breaths were coming in faster. You shook your head, but you also didn’t stop him when he drew in even closer and lowered his body to yours.

He was hovering, almost.

Just as he’d been poised above your soft, beaming face all those weeks back in some little podunk town—at Balmaceda’s Mountain Lodge, where you’d been stuck together, only to fuck each other for the first time that night—he pressed a touch to your side. He rubbed his thumb just over your hipbone, where the panties you had on still clung to your skin, and he watched you tense up.

It was like before, only worse: now you knew his touch, and he knew yours, but there was a dread in your eyes.

As if you couldn’t stand to be under him, you slid back.

“Joel, please…don’t,” you murmured hoarsely.

“Don’t what?” His stomach dropped.

“Don’t ever say that again.”

That he loved you?

Joel never thought one string of words could hurt him so much, but there it was. While his heart unwound and his ego met with a swift and unceremonious death, he felt something like agitation twist inside him, too. Cruelly.

This was what he’d come this whole way to tell you.

The man could handle rejection; that wasn’t the problem. What bothered him now was how unflinchingly committed you seemed to misunderstand his intentions. Something surged in his chest again, and this time, it wasn’t all hurt—it was anger, too. Why you refused to accept that someone might love you was beyond him.

He didn’t reach for you again or crowd you further, but he raked a hand through his hair and heaved a hard sigh.

“Why won’t you believe me?” This time pleading.

“It’s not that I won’t—I just can’t, Joel. I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

You started to speak, but then that balloon of rage swelled bigger in his chest, and it wasn’t meant to be directed at you—it was only meant for himself, why wasn’t he enough—and he spit the words like venom.

“Haven’t I shown you that I mean it? That I— I— I care? I’m here. I came to see you. I’m telling you that I love you. How else am I supposed to show the woman I love that I care when you won’t let me in an inch, except when—”

“Except when you’re seven deep in me?” you scoffed.

It was bitter and derisive, and you slid farther back.

“For Christ’s sake,” Joel gritted through his teeth.

He didn’t even wait for you to interject, as he came back: “Is that all you think of me? Is that what I am to you?”

His voice was loud, and he hadn’t meant for it to be.

He was pushing off the bed, watching you sit back.

“I just think it’s real convenient,” you snapped again, “Betraying my trust by not telling me about dad’s affair, finding me in a weak moment, letting me believe you feel the same so you don’t have to deal with this…this…guilt.”

Joel couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“You think I did all of this out of pity?”

“I think you’re trying to be a—”

“That I would lie about it?”

His heart rate was spiking. He felt his pulse thudding in his ears as he stalked around the footboard and scowled.

“Joel, I—”

“No.” He shook his head hard. He was sincerely trying not to fit the bill for ‘hot-headed, explosively angry father,’ but the efforts he made seemed all in vain. Joel could hardly talk now without raising his voice to a shout.

“I have—” he started, only to stop himself, swallowing.

His throat ached, and he almost choked on his words.

“I have been in love with you this whole fuckin’ time!”

His eyes burned. The sound came out angry, hoarse. Maybe he was; he just couldn’t contain it anymore. Silence filled the open space, and time distended.

He couldn’t stand the way you wouldn’t believe him, even now, as you straightened and shook your head.

“No, you haven’t.”

“I have.”

“You don’t mean—”

“You don’t get to tell me what I mean!”

He stared back and watched your gaze erupt in ire. Indignation. Lips drawing tight and teeth baring and hands gripping the bedspread beside you, as if enraged.

“I do. I can. You’re— you’re full of shit.”

Your words made him want to hurl something at a wall.

“Am I?!” he bellowed.

“Yes!” you spat.

“How can you say that?!”

And, without meaning to, Joel’s knee hit the side of the nightstand while he turned abruptly from you. The whole thing shook; the lamp nearly toppled, and the man immediately reached for it, then out to you. The gesture was a reflexive apology, but you responded by shoving his hands off. An angry sound racked through your body as you moved from him—“You—you don’t mean it, Joel.”

“I do. I mean it. Believe me, I do.”

That sound from his chest could’ve been half a sob.

He reached for you again, knees sinking with the springs of the mattress beneath him, and you shuffled further back. Your movements slowed. Suddenly, Joel’s stopped.

He couldn’t see it without a wince—your hands shaking. Your fingers tried making fists but failed, and in an effort to conceal the fear they held, you seized the comforter.

His throat ached, and that pain only soared in a second.

“You can’t…you can’t mean it if I’m just a secret to you.” Your tone was a rasp. The lips that spoke it were curled, revealing teeth still gritted. Eyes filling with more tears, “You can’t say you love me if…if you’re just gonna leave.”

By the end of it, your words were ground to a murmur. Your voice was hushed and slow and begging to be spared notice, as though every syllable hurt to say.

Your bottom lip was quivering too. He knew you were kicking yourself for it—could see the embarrassment etched into your gaze as you blinked back nothing, then one, then two, then a barrage of slow, hot tears—but no matter what you did to fight it off, your body trembled.

The whole thing was practically vibrating with hurt. Humiliation and anger had evidently joined the mix, and before he could even think to speak, you mumbled again:

“You’re gonna leave me, Joel.”

The hurt wouldn’t stop.

“You don’t love me.”

Your voice cracked to continue, pain clinched with a sob.

“You can’t.”

In the look that met his, he saw a wall of warring fears. It wasn’t all for him, either. There were wounds that were the work of years beneath the surface of your skin, ones entrenched in flesh since long before he’d ever known you or laid a finger on that part himself. It started young.

Your lashes battled to keep the tears at bay, but the floodgates had opened. Your secret was gone. There was no sense in feigning indifference when the truth was laid bare—that you didn’t deem yourself worthy of love, and likely never had. Regardless, you worked hard not to cry. You scrunched your nose, mashed your lips together, and stared anywhere but him, and the tears kept flowing. Gently, but without slowing, they streaked down in turn.

“No, sweet pea, I love you. I love you. I ain’t leavin’.”

It was all Joel could do to keep his own vision clear.

He already knew you wouldn’t believe him, but that didn’t stop him from saying the words all the same.

“I— I said it first,” he went on, words tumbling out.

You turned wet, sad eyes to him in utter silence, and that made him want to ramble on forever. As long as it took.

“At the fair, a month before you ever said it, I was trying to tell you I loved you then. You ran off before I could.”

That was the truth.

If Joel had any hope of regaining your trust, it would need to start there. And out of one truth came another.

“I already knew I loved you before that. I would’ve said it, except it just felt wrong, with all that…that stuff I knew.”

He meant knowing about his best friend, your father, and his little rekindled romance with his former mistress. It wasn’t right, keeping you in the dark about something like that, but he also hadn’t wanted to hurt you. There was more to the story that complicated things further, and frankly, Joel had been too swept up in the novelty of this thing you two had had to choose the smarter path.

That didn’t excuse what he did. Hell, it only hurt him worse seeing your eyes gloss over and stay fixed on his.

Knowing you’d trusted him not to hurt you—and he had.

If you didn’t accept what he told you now, he wouldn’t fault you for it. All he could do was slide off the bed and pull you to a perch on the edge, while he planted himself on the carpeted floor and kneeled in between your legs.

Cupping your tear-stained face in his hands, pleading:

“Baby.”

You blinked back at him but ventured nothing.

“Sweet pea, I am not keeping you a secret.”

A beat.

“I’m not leavin’. I want more—need more.”

And for some reason, that felt like a weightier admission than he’d even thought possible. He wasn’t good at this.

He wasn’t quite cut of a cloth to know just how to soothe you and make things right, but he did know that holding you felt right to him. So he did. He rubbed his thumbs in little circles over your warm, wet, puffy cheeks, and he pulled your face closer to his. He held your gaze and watched an internal war wage somewhere far behind your eyes as you tried to contend with this new feeling—that of being wanted and needed and loved as you were.

You sniffled between his two broad palms.

“I want you to stay,” you said softly.

Joel’s heart hammered at that.

He couldn’t hope to leave out the rest. He let go of your face then and felt an irresistible urge to go on, even if it was much too soon and he had meant to show you later. As stupid as the idea had been, he’d already made it, and there was no going back anyhow. He would tell you here.

He reached in his pocket for his wallet. He broke your gaze momentarily to take it out, flip it open, and then card his fingers through the bills a few aching moments before pulling it out—the thing he’d wanted to show you.

When he held it up, a set, he flitted a quick look to what he’d lifted between you and him, as if the sight might give him answers on what to say. Sadly, nothing came.

Joel was totally on his own in explaining what this was. Lucky for him, though, you didn’t seem keen to judge.

“They’re…they’re tickets,” he started. Stupid.

You raised a brow, trying to read, and he forged ahead. Just as the words first appeared to register in your mind, and the faintest look of shock took shape, he hurried out:

“Billy Joel’s got a show comin’ up in Austin this June. I…I thought— well, I hoped, I guess, that maybe we could…”

Spit it out, Miller.

Spit. It. Out.

He frowned.

“I’m no good at this. Sorry. I wanted us to go…together.”

And then…

“And I want your dad to know about us before then.”

There it is.

The last lynchpin in the man’s resolve was gone. He’d said it. There was no turning back from what he’d offered, or what it required, and now you knew he wanted things to be real and committed. Serious.

Terrifying.

Your eyes remained fixed on his. For a second, that look, and your whole upper half, appeared so still Joel thought you might’ve stopped breathing altogether. You blinked. Glancing down at the tickets in his hand and batting your lashes again, as if you weren’t quite sure how to answer.

Then, at last, he heard a sharp inhale—Or was it an exhale? He couldn’t tell—and before he could blink back or wonder so much as a thought, the breath was battered out of his own chest. You rushed him.

You’d moved so fast, hugged him so quick, Joel scarcely knew what was what until he felt your arms snake around his neck. You joined him on the filthy, soiled floor and dropped your knees on either side of his body in a kind of straddling hug. It was as swift as it was unexpected, and it took him a second to adjust. But no longer than that.

Joel was relieved to feel your warmth. Squeezing him. Choking him, almost. He didn’t think you’d ever held him that hard in his life, so he did all he could to soak it in.

It was only when he heard another sob that he paused.

“You…you want to?” Your voice was tiny against him.

“‘Course I do, darlin’,” Joel answered in a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He cupped the back of your head to him and held you tighter, “Of course I do.”

Then, because the impulse struck again: “I love you.”

He didn’t need you to say it back; a look was enough. When you drew back and met his gaze, eyes still doused with tears but smiling faintly at him, Joel was content to see your acceptance. Allowing love in in some small way.

And when your lips succeeded that look, meeting his in a soft kiss, and your body shifted up toward the bed, he didn’t protest. He kissed you back. Joel didn’t have to have love spelled out in words for him to feel what you meant. You said it gently, but somehow with even more force than when you’d stumbled into this room together, touch beckoning him in as you laid back on the mattress.

Admittedly, every inch of this place was seedy. On such short notice Joel hadn’t had much of a pick among his choice of accommodations, and the shortage showed. Still, when you slid up that old, worn bed and stretched yourself in wordless welcome, he couldn’t have asked for more. He only wished that he could give you more, but for right now, at least, that was out of the question. He leaned in and found your lips like second nature, slotting between your thighs and kissing you harder. The concert tickets had shortly been cast aside on the night stand.

“I love you.”

It slipped out again, and Joel didn’t care. His tongue chanced past the seam of your lips and, once inside, explored every contour, ridge, and crevice it could find.

While he did, a touch palmed your breasts over your bra. Your skin was warm; gaze soft, the last he’d seen of it. The scent of you rose to greet him like a mist of some wild intoxicant: citrus, mint, a tinge of sweat, and a liter of your favorite fruity drink, if he’d had to guess. You flooded his senses. It wasn’t enough for him simply to hold flesh in his hands and explore your body with his lips and tongue; Joel wanted to consume something more, though he hardly had the words to articulate it.

You unclasped your bra just as his mouth slid down to your neck. There was a beat—your sharp intake of breath when his teeth met skin and marked it with the tenderest bite—and then your arms reached out. You discarded your bra and bared yourself to him, and when Joel tilted his head to take in the view, he had to groan your name.

There was no other logical route for him to go.

You’d just begun to wind your fingers through his hair when he slid down to greet that newly-exposed place.

“I love you,” he repeated against your skin before drawing one nipple between his lips. He kissed it.

Your grip grew tighter.

“Joel, please.”

His teeth had only reappeared a second to tug the pebbled flesh between them, tongue hungry and wet and laving gently across that hardened peak, when your legs wound around him too. You pulled his body into you.

Joel was helpless to the inducement. His torso fell more heavily to yours and his lips suckled with a vigor that betrayed sheer desperation. He felt it strain in his pants. When he moved from one breast to the other, he heard a wet pop, and the whimper when he re-attached himself was enough to make the bulge he felt swell even bigger. His tongue caressed in laving, measured motions along the curve, and he tried not to grow overly eager from it.

Don’t get too excited. You need time. Lots and lots of—

“Joel,” you exhaled on a particularly harsh press of his mouth. Your ribs heaved with it. “Come— come here.”

He was clambering back up in an instant. The ministrations of his lips that had practically engulfed your skin and smeared it with his saliva were swapped in a blink with them returning to your chin, jaw, and cheeks, planting kisses in between the words he murmured next.

“Yeah? Every—” To the side of your mouth. “Everything OK, sweet pea?” Feeling guilty but also simply needing to calm himself down. “Too fast?” Another to your cheek.

It wasn’t like the two of you hadn’t gone too far, too soon before. In fact, it was a pretty regular occurrence with the sex you had. Joel just needed a reset—had to make sure this was alright, and that he could cool down if needed.

He felt a pinch in his groin but ignored it.

Suddenly, your gaze was on his again.

Fingers carded through the sweat-damp, striated tufts of black and silver hair at the sides of his head, and you leaned in closer until your nose and his were touching.

“Here,” you pressed him, low. Need crept into those words, and your grasp constricted. “Stay here, please.”

It was clear you were inviting him back to your lips, to kiss them, so Joel did just that. He bracketed his arms on either side of your head and let his mouth explore as it had before. Where he resumed at equal force, you met him with still more warmth and wanting and open fervor, tongue curling around his in some soft and wordless plea

Below the belt, Joel was throbbing. He didn’t need to reflect long at all to know what that meant. Then your lips parted wider, your ankles dug deeper in the backs of his calves, and your hips started grinding against him.

Dry humping.

Whining at the friction.

“Feels…feels so good, Joel,” you told him breathlessly.

“You like that?” His lower half mimicked the motions.

Need blossomed across your face as the ridge of his cock rubbed in just the right way through his slacks. Something harder than he meant—a thrust, like he was fucking you into the bed—shook your frame, as well as the mattress underneath it. Springs creaked. Metal groaned. Warmth spread, from the pit of his stomach to where your body met his. The movements kept going.

You were slick beneath him. You must have been. Your whines had heightened to punctured gasps and your hips were so desperate, rubbing your barely-clothed core to the front of his pants and brows pinching as if—

You were already expecting this to end.

You didn’t think that he would stay.

“Baby,” Joel panted again.

By now, desire consumed him, but the urge to smooth that tiny crease of worry was coursing just as powerfully. He swallowed, gripped the linens beside your head in one hand a little harder, and opened his mouth to speak.

Another flick of your hips. Another sigh. Another whine.

Another pinch somewhere deep within him, and a groan.

Suddenly, your hands were on his shoulders, sliding up and toward his neck. Your fingers clawed for his hair.

“Joel,” you panted back.

Joel had tried to slow the motions of his lower half to talk, but yours had only sped up to grind yourself against him. He could feel the heat bleeding from you now. Wetness formed and expanded in a patch through your pink cotton panties and likely stained his front, or would.

His cock was swollen stiff and throbbing. Precum pearled at the tip of him, no doubt, and with every jerk of your body, he could feel it smearing and aching to slip in.

He wanted to be inside you. His balls twitched, his stomach ached, and his senses were suffused with you, a white-hot desire to paint your mouth, your skin, or your insides with his cum nearly as strong. But he had to stop.

Then you kissed him.

Joel’s lips were still parted when your mouth found his, kissing him sweetly and without reserve. Your fingers that had threaded through his hair pulled taut. Hard.

Your center slid up the length of his fully clothed cock, and with one more press of your legs, Joel felt you.

He’d never wanted anything more in his life, and still, he fought to speak—to reassure you that he wasn’t leaving.

“Joel—”

“I know, I know. Baby, I—fuck.” His breath hitched in his throat when his bulge pulsated again. His head swam.

With what meager resolve the man still possessed, he ventured another kiss, then drew back. His eyes dropped and searched your expression, half-crazed, and just when the words were taking shape again, you parted your lips and brought them to his. You rolled your hips, balled your fingers into fists through his hair, and with your mouth and his a quarter-inch apart in puckered, pretty ‘O’s, panting with every thrust that shook the bed:

“I love you, Joel.”

It was a breath, and the taste had never felt sweeter.

One more jerk of his hips and you were drawing in once again, panting in his mouth as if to make sure he heard.

“I— I love you. I love you so much,” you murmured, low.

His cum unloaded in thick, hot ropes. He couldn’t stop it.

Joel Miller, at the age, maturity, and level of experience he could boast, had never cum virtually untouched and in his own fucking pants since…he couldn’t remember when. But he was. His spend pulsed out from the head of his cock in dizzying bursts, and his stomach clenched. He gripped the bedspread and let out a guttural groan while he soaked the front of his boxers from inside them.

His dick throbbed and leaked, and his breathing slowed. He mumbled something back, quietly—‘I love you, too.’

Then he pushed up and off of you, out of the bed.

Seconds stretched; he didn’t feel it. Stars burst behind his eyes with every step, and he staggered that path to the bathroom like his life or his pride might depend on it.

As a matter of fact, the damage was already done. He’d jizzed in his pants like an overeager teen getting his dick touched or sucked for the very first time. What was worse, you hadn’t been doing either when he came; you’d told him you loved him, and that was enough.

Enough to make him look like a goddamn idiot, Joel thought without blinking. He kicked the door shut behind him and reached for the zip of his pants.

Sticky. Wet. A whole fucking shitshow below the belt.

He ran the tap. He had his undone slacks and boxers pulled down past his hips, and he was facing the sink in seconds, assessing the extent of the damage. Then his face flushed red at the sight of the sticky, milky mess swarming his groin and he could’ve kicked himself. He settled for yanking a towel out from one of the cubbies beneath the counter and running it under the water. He daubed quick and without much precision, gaze darting to find dozens more clumps of his spend strewn about than he thought possible. He’d cum an absurd amount.

Before he chastised himself, though, he had to pause.

“Joel?”

Your voice was soft. Sometime since he’d unzipped and started scrubbing his crotch in vicious circles, you’d appeared at the door, head peeking around curiously.

You must not have been standing there for long, because you actually drew closer to join him. Feeling comfortable enough in roughly thirty square feet of space, you shut the door again and leaned your hip against the counter.

If Joel didn’t know you better, and he wasn’t already occupied with wiping cum off of his cock and balls, he might’ve searched your face for a smile. A smirk, maybe.

It wasn’t like teasing each other was suddenly off-limits now that Joel was brimming with embarrassment. Half your communication was giving the other shit for little mishaps and quirks, and he expected that his last accident in the bedroom would be no different.

He flinched when you reached out instead.

Hooking your fingers under the waistband of his pants and his plaid boxers, you shuffled in closer to him and let out a breath. You tugged once, twice—gently, so as not to further disrupt the mess or make him wince—and then coaxed the fabric down his legs, lower and lower.

When you peered up at him, Joel couldn’t find so much as a trace of amusement in your eyes or on your lips. You just nudged his slacks to the tiled floor and hummed.

“It’ll be easier if we wash it off in there.”

You nodded to the shower behind him.

Joel turned slightly, as if considering or trying to get a glimpse of the freestanding shower with its wide-open, mildewed curtain seeming to beckon him in, then stopped. He turned back and chucked his towel.

“Alright,” he said while kicking his pants off at the ankles. Talking softly and not meeting your gaze, “That’s fine.”

He pivoted once more to peel his shirt off and make toward the shower by himself, and you surprised him, again, when you bypassed his much larger frame and hopped in first. You slid your panties off and tossed them into the pile of clothes by the sink, and you twisted the knob on the wall. You sidestepped the first stuttered sprays and drew the curtain back in wordless invitation.

Joel hovered, eyes scanning the cramped space.

“I don’t think we’re both gonna fit in here.”

Then, as though to emphasize his point:

“I can wash off by myself. It’s…fine.”

He hadn’t meant it to sound so stilted, but that was just how he felt: stiff and awkward and raw with feelings of recent embarrassment. He tilted his head to the side.

Your head tipped right back, and you raised a brow.

“Just get in, Miller. Freezin’ my fuckin’ ass off.”

And there was a smile: the first one. Faint.

Not mocking, snide, or condescending. Just the kind to usher him in and drag the curtain behind his hulking body, wipe a slick, wet hand over your mouth and grin—‘You do know I’ve seen you naked before, right?’—and that set his mind at ease. He almost smiled himself.

“So you remember that I’m a grower, not a shower.”

Joel cupped his hands over his softening length in faux protective fashion, as if you hadn’t seen the thing dozens of times by now. When he sidled up and cornered you between the soap tray and the shower stream, he found the edges of his lips kicking up a little, unable to help it.

You’d seen him hard, soft, and everything in between—mostly hard when near you. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that you were getting to experience him like this.

That made him lean in closer. Chance another joke.

“Looks like your old man’s stamina has taken a hit, too.”

Joel had meant it to sound playful. Suggestive, even. Instead, it came out dismal and gruff, like he was trying to overcompensate for something he was sorely lacking.

He might’ve wanted to kick himself again, were it not for the next move you pulled on him, which was enough to pluck his thoughts—and his breath—out of his body.

Without wasting a second to pretense or teasing, you simply brushed your hand down his front and touched him, gently. He was softer, smaller, and almost wholly spent from his last exertion; still, you reached and wrapped your fingers around his length with care.

Sparks ignited from the place where you trailed. Joel had to swallow a groan, oversensitive and fairly stunned, and his palm came to rest on the wall behind your head. His chin dipped toward his chest while his gaze dropped too.

He watched you stroke him once, rub your thumb along the tender skin, then bring your left hand to join the mix, carrying a bar of soap with it. You started from the base.

“Baby,” Joel rasped. The muscles of his stomach clenched while you drew circles to spread the soap.

“My old man,” you repeated affectionately.

It was artless and kind. Friendly and gentle. Most every other time he’d been touched where you had him, the hands had meant to arouse, and seek something else. Here, you were trying to help. Clean him sweetly and without concern for yourself while also drawing him in, like you always did. It made his chest hurt—and not in a way totally unconcerning for a man his age. Nonetheless, he leaned into that feeling and shifted his body to yours.

His head and your head were now doused with water, his hovering above so close that little droplets streaked from his chin down your slightly upturned face. Joel could feel you watching him. He flicked his own gaze back to meet yours, and as he did, your palm stroked him from root to tip. His hips jerked involuntarily; he swelled in your grip.

His cock stiffened but still remained far from fully erect. Joel swallowed, anchored his hand harder on the wall, and wished himself a decade or three younger, at least.

“You alright with this?” he muttered.

“With what?” you mumbled back.

Joel sucked in a breath just as your hand, and the soap, slid back down his length, and rubbed casually around it. You assumed a leisurely pace and scrubbed his tummy.

“My body ain’t what it was—”

“And it’s more than enough.”

Suddenly, your eyes weren’t just resting on his but pressing. Piercing. The circles working to clean his skin increased in pace and force, and you set the soap aside. You nudged him closer to the water, but all Joel felt was the urge to draw you with him. The shower stream pelted his chest, his belly, his freshly soaped lower half, and past the suds, a gradually hardening cock. Gradually.

You had him in your hand; you were rinsing him clean. Joel should’ve extended some murmured thanks, a calm and uncalculating touch coming to rest on one of your shoulders while you did him this innocent favor. Your lips twitched. His cock hardened. Then your back was flat on the shower wall, and Joel was hovering over your drenched and naked frame again, only his touch was descending to your hip instead. He held it firmly.

“You could have your pick of any guy—”

“Good thing I only want you.”

Your grip tightened too. Now that you’d scrubbed him clean, you seemed ready to let go in the next second, but old habits died hard. Joel leaned in to nose your cheek.

“That so?” His hand moved from your hip to what he knew would be a scorching heat between your thighs.

Two thick fingers glided through your folds and forced a whimper out of your throat. You were soaking wet, and not just from the shower’s spray. Joel rubbed that slick, delicate seam with all the self-control he could muster in the moment, and he kissed your cheek. Every inch he could feel of you was brimming with warmth and need.

You tilted your chin and caught his lips. You parted your legs and held his almost-fully erect length in your grasp.

“I— I mean it, Joel,” you answered him, surprisingly soft then. You kissed the sides of his mouth while you continued to stroke up and down. “I want you.”

Joel’s hips shifted involuntarily. As if moving of its own volition, his lower half stirred beneath your touch, and shortly, he had your legs spread wider and his body slotting in the gap between. His fingers pushed deeper.

And, just as his hand was all but cupping your mound and the wet heat of your cunt was pulsing against him, Joel slowed. He sucked in a breath and met your gaze.

“How do you want me, sweetheart?” he murmured.

In reply, you gripped his base and guided him closer. Flicked your thumb over the fat, leaking tip and sighed.

“Right…here.”

“Right here?”

Joel hadn’t meant to move you so quickly, but one blink and your hand was off him completely; your back was turned to him, and your ass was pressed flush with his groin. He had to hunch in the tight, wet, fog-infested enclosure with his chin jutting in over your shoulder and his palm splayed over your tummy. He spoke softly again:

“You want daddy in here, pretty girl?”

Your whine was all he needed to hear.

And perhaps it would’ve been wise to wait a beat or two. Work two fingers in and out of your aching cunt, drag his tongue through your folds, or else use his throbbing tip to ease you open for him. Before he could even think to make use of his hands, mouth, or head, though, you were reaching behind and taking him yourself. You pressed a palm to the wall and pushed up on the tips of your toes, and with impatience bleeding through your every movement, you slid back onto him. You did it quickly.

In the absence of adequate foreplay, entry wasn’t swift. Joel almost choked at the feeling of how tight you were around him—how rigid and warm and narrow you felt on that first slide. He planted a grounding hand next to your own out of sheer necessity. He held your hip in his other and swallowed a groan that seemed fit to nearly kill him.

“Sweetheart,” he panted against your neck, “Easy. Easy.”

You tried to nod your understanding but slid up just as fast. From a glimpse of your profile, Joel could make out some consternation fanning out. Your brows pinched.

The pretty, slick ‘o’ encircling his cock clenched again, and it was evident you were trying to force the motion back down against your body’s wishes. You whimpered a little and dropped your free hand between your legs.

Joel kissed your jaw. Your cheek. Your ear. Partly to remind you that he was fine to take things slow and partly to quiet his own hammering heart inside him.

It wasn’t working.

You were just so. fucking. tight.

“I— you gotta slow down, sweet pea,” he hissed through gritted teeth. Your walls pulsed again, and it nearly sent him spiraling. The second your ass met his hips and he was buried to the hilt, he stifled a groan into your neck.

“But I need you, daddy,” you whined, “Need you inside.”

Another grunt. Another moan. Another suffocating pulse.

“I’m gonna blow if we don’t slow down some, honey.”

It was mortifying, but it was the truth. Tonight, Joel just couldn’t seem to keep his cum confined to his balls like he normally could. Presently, they rested firm and heavy against the globes of your ass and were just then preparing to hit a rhythm as you rocked back and forth.

Your gaze flashed to his over your shoulder.

“That’s OK. You…you can— oh.”

Before you could finish that thought, your words were torn from your tongue and lost to a shuddering moan. His cock plunged deep within your soft and airtight channel, and your head lolled back a little more.

Out of habit, Joel pulled out and then plunged back in, feeling the wet clutch of you stretch around his cock.

“I can what, honey? What can daddy do?”

Lax as his voice made him sound, the man was coming apart at the seams; he had only to search your face for a fleeting, desperate moment, find you hungry as he was, and he thrusted even harder, absorbed the shockwaves of your pleasure while he fucked you up against the wall.

Gradually, the spatter of water on white glossy tile gave way to the sounds of your skin and his hitting again and again. Your face softened, and the once-taut walls eased to accommodate his girth. You squeezed Joel from base to tip, making the most obscene noises when he slid in and out, and from the look you gave him then, he could sense the need before it ever left your lips. He saw desire fill your pretty, glossy stare and felt compelled to sate it.

Again, it seemed you were begging him to stay.

Expression so pleading and sweet and soft.

“Daddy, I— I want you to cum inside me.”

Joel almost blew his load on the spot. His hips had to stutter in place—so taken aback by what you’d just said—but then you were bouncing back and forth again, neck craning to flash him the most winsome smile.

“Oh, honey…”

“Please.”

He’d finished in you before. It had been an accident. The night had ended with you and him hauling ass to the nearest CVS and hitting the Plan B like it owed you money. And now you were asking him to do it?

“I’m about to start my period. It’ll be fine.”

The half-starved look in your eyes said you’d been thinking about this for awhile. Maybe not with your rational brain, but certainly in earnest. Your smile said it.

Joel’s good sense was shot. He knew it was wrong. He was assured beyond a shadow of a doubt that if your dad ever learned he’d deliberately painted your insides white—or worse yet, knocked you up—his best friend would personally sever his dick and sauté it for lunch. Still, the urge to be joined with you in this brand new way was damn near debilitating. He couldn’t tell you no. So instead of doing what he should’ve done, he simply said:

“OK.”

For some reason, it felt wrong to finish in the shower. So he cut the water, toweled you both, and took you to bed. He slid under thin, sodden, wildly outdated motel sheets without letting his lips disconnect from yours once. He propped your legs around his hips and kissed you harder. He found a home within the furthest recesses of your body he could find, and his heart still throbbed for more. It was the best and worst agony, to be so delirious in the need for someone else, but each time you met him and accepted him in, his pleasure soared to new heights.

His cock dragged in and out of your heat in sloppy, shallow thrusts. He felt your wetness ease his passage and welcome him deeper, until the mouth of your cunt was stretched as taut against his base as it would go and your walls were pulsing with need. You squirmed underneath him. Your whines turned into whimpers, and the whimpers became ragged, hiccuping gasps as you clawed at his back and begged for more, more, more.

“‘M’so full. Feels so, so good, daddy,” you breathed.

“Yeah?” Joel said, and he glanced between your bodies to see you stretched and stuffed to the brim with cock. He groaned involuntarily. “I fit so nice, don’t I, baby?”

“You— you do, daddy. You do.”

“Can I fit a little more in?”

Your eyes widened.

As soon as realization dawned, you nodded your head and gripped him tighter. You hardly needed another stab of his hips, his thumb on your clit, or so much as a word spoken besides—at just the thought of being filled with his seed, your body seized in anticipation. It was you trembling, shuddering, clenching hard and reaching bliss before you even meant to get there, really. You were wholly overstimulated and clamoring for more, the pulses of your cunt milking his cock with all you had.

Joel scarcely had the presence of mind to get a syllable out, but he knew what he needed to say before his pleasure took hold. He smoothed a hand over your cheek, cupped it, and lowered his lips to yours, so only the cusp of his mouth and his stubble were grazing your open pout and the words he spoke were all yours to hear.

Sliding deeper. Meeting and holding your gaze with bare, uncontrived sincerity: “I’m yours, baby. I’m all yours.”

His balls tightened. He wanted to say more to set your mind at ease and assure you what you meant to him, but evidently, your bodies had other plans. In the next moment, he felt a familiar warmth spurt from his tip, and his hips jerked. His cock burrowed as deep within your wet, pliant walls as it could go, and he unloaded rope after rope of his cum. Joel let out a full-throated groan.

The wild hum of his pulse through his skull all but rendered him deaf to the sounds around him, but he knew he told you that he loved you; he knew you said it back. He felt you anchor your heels into the backs of his legs and accept him completely. You spent what felt like hours kissing, writhing, panting, and murmuring words of the warmest affection. In reality, this lasted seconds.

With you underneath him, in his arms, it didn’t matter.

“I love you, Joel,” you whispered again, smiling.

He grinned and kissed you, “I love you more.”

And he’d meant what he said: every inch of him was yours. Every moment you would let him have from that point forward, he’d spend showing you that he was there to stay. He didn’t care how long it would take to prove it.

For once, he didn’t care what your dad would have to say

[yan-lorkai]

Kicks the door open I have come! to request a Self-aware AU with the Twst bois. When they and the Darling/MC/Player/S/O switch bodies. However, the Darling isn't inside the game. So it's like the Darling waking up in the boys' bodies inside the game, and the boys waking up in the Darling's body in the real world. Thankyou very much 🙏👍🫂✨

.⁠｡⁠*⁠♡ a/n: self-aware au, my beloved. It was so fun to write this and I wrote a lot too 🥺💓. It took me a while to finish, so I hope you like it, darling!

Azul could always feel your presence through the puppet you control. He felt calm when you looked at him. He felt delighted at every laugh you laughed, and he wanted nothing more than to be beside you. The real you. He wished really hard for it to be possible someday, not knowing that this was exactly what was going to happen. Although his request was successful, there was just one error in the equation: he was in your body, your holy, beautiful body. Which means... You were in his horrible body.

While others would feel happy (and he really is happy to an extent), Azul feels a sense of trepidation knowing that you were awaking in his body and there was no way for him to check on you. Or could he? He tried calling his own phone but it wasn't possible. Resigned, he then took to explore your room and home and if you have any roommates / lived with your parents, Azul would try get along with them and collect information on you. While this isn't the ideal, Azul still has to think ten times ahead so when he take you to Twisted Wonderland (not a matter of if but more of when), he could make you sign a deal.

By the way, he definitely try to unlock your phone. And since he is in your body, Azul may try to unlock your phone with your fingerprint or your face if your phone has that function. If he is successful Azul will read your messages as if it were a magazine, he would see what type of songs you listen and videos you like to watch, what's in your history. Basically he is your fbi agent seeing everything on your phone, there's not a thing he'll not see. Good luck for you, reader. That's why I always I always delete my history lol.

Meanwhile you. You wake up on Azul Ashengrotto's body, the octavinelle dorm leader. Geez, are you dreaming? But everything is so real and feels so real. Jade and Floyd seems so real. And their voices, mocking and teasing, almost condescending as you tried your best to act like Azul. They seemed to know that something was wrong but neither choose to ask, brushing off as you being busy with a new scam plan. You were overjoyed but also anxious, without knowing what to do. Could you even return to your body at all? Only time will tell.

⠀⠀

Jade always knew that something was strange with this world, it was almost too... Surreal? He can't quite put into words the things he feel but everything was so much clearer whenever he could feel your presence when he was studying or riding his broom. He could feel your presence when he was cooking, when he was talking about this terrariums, when he was beating people who broke their part of the deal. You seemed to favor him, to love him. He could feel your affection seeping through your cellphone. And he wished to see you, to know you as intimately as you knew him.

And that wish became real. One day he woke up in a different bedroom, in a different body, then, while he is a little surprised, Jade just brush this off as something you did. Perhaps you wanted to show him your world? You wanted to show him your life? Or were you trying to show him something else? Either way, Jade is having the time of his life in your body. Though, as if he was mesmerized by it, he caught himself looking himself at the mirror to see your face staring right back at him. He looks like an excited kid making silly faces in front of the mirror. Honestly he is so unserious. Making faces and silly dances, and laughing because of it.

⠀

Floyd is instantly thrilled, if somewhat bewildered. At first, he messes around with everything he can find, marveling at your surroundings and taking a deep dive into your belongings — he finds it all so fascinating. He’s absolutely entertained by exploring your room, your things, and all the little details that give him insight into your life. But once the novelty wears off, his mischievous nature kicks in. He wants to know everything about you — what you like, your habits, your friends — and he’s not afraid to dig deep. Floyd starts exploring your social media, searching for anything that brings him closer to you and your world. If he finds anyone he thinks might be close to you, he’s ready to make them uncomfortable with cryptic messages or odd behavior, wanting to make it clear that no one knows you better than him.

Meanwhile, you, trapped in Floyd’s body, have to navigate his spontaneous, unpredictable moods and intense physicality — whether in class, on the basketball court, or during his shenanigans. He's having the time of his life while you are fighting for yours, even more when Azul send you to squeeze some people. Like??? How are you supposed to do this????

⠀

Silver always dreamt of you. He knew you, the feeling of your love and affection, the tone of your voice, even if when he woke up he forget everything. A blurry line separating you two. For a while, he thought that you were some higher being that he created on his mind, a simple part of his imagination. That is until this magicless student come around and your presence was all over them, controlling them, talking through them. He wanted to get closer, he wished he could talk to you, to bask on your presence. But he couldn't. He couldn't break his code. Not yet.

But when he slept that night something was different. He couldn't jump into another dream, his voice was different, his height was different, then when he inched closer to the mirror, he saw. A different face. And he knew instantly that it was your face. It was a very beautiful face, exactly how he had imagined. Though it was not what he wanted. He wanted to talk to you, to tell what he felt whenever your gaze was upon him. He didn't want to be you. Or for you to be him.

⠀

Riddle wakes up in your body, feeling completely disoriented and frustrated with the lack of control he has over the new, unfamiliar world around him. But soon, the shock turns into curiosity and then into obsession as he realizes he now has full access to everything about you, your routines, belongings, even your weaknesses, and insecurities.

Riddle’s meticulous nature drives him to organize your life, make everything as “perfect” as he can, so when you’re back, it’ll be clear that he knows what’s best for you. He spends hours exploring your things, setting up strict plans, and making lists, even going so far as to cut out people he feels are a bad influence. All of this, in his mind, is for your “own good.”

In Twisted Wonderland, you’re now bound to the rules of Heartslabyul, balancing Riddle’s strict schedule, navigating his many routines, and dealing with his high standards as you struggle to maintain his reputation without causing a commotion.

⠀

Jamil is quick to adjust, immediately masking his initial confusion in favor of stealthily gathering information about your world. He keeps a low profile, but behind that calm facade, he’s strategically piecing together every part of your life, figuring out who’s important to you and how he can stay in your life even if he returns to his world. Jamil moves through your world with subtlety, observing your friends and family with a quiet intensity, noting who to trust — and who to remove from your life. He’s ready to make subtle changes to your social circle or behavior, aligning your life with what he thinks is “best.”

Meanwhile, back in Twisted Wonderland, you’re handling Jamil’s carefully hidden responsibilities, feeling the pressure of his dual life between serving Kalim and managing his own ambitions, all while trying not to slip up and reveal your true identity. It's difficult.

⠀

Kalim wakes up in your body with sheer joy and fascination, his excitement overriding any initial confusion. He’s absolutely delighted to be in your world, taking in every little detail with childlike wonder. Kalim sees this as an opportunity to become even closer to you, and he goes about learning everything there is to know about your life, friends, and family, brimming with excitement to be part of it all. He’s incredibly affectionate with anyone he meets, happy to share his thoughts, and may unintentionally end up sharing details about “you” that leave people puzzled. He can’t resist splurging a bit on your behalf, thinking he’s treating you.

As for you, adapting to Kalim’s responsibilities in Twisted Wonderland is overwhelming, as you’re thrown into his high-energy life and surrounded by his devoted friends and followers. His cheerful, social world is a whirlwind of activity and expectation, especially with Jamil by your side, assessing every move you make with a scrutinizing eye.

⠀

When Ruggie wakes up in your body, he’s initially thrown off but quickly realizes the opportunity in front of him. Instead of panicking, he takes a strategic approach, savoring every moment as he explores your life and digs into your personal world. His tendencies kick in subtly but intensely; he’s not one for grand, showy gestures, but every action is deliberate, aimed at securing his presence in your life as deeply as possible, as he changes your wallpaper for fanart of him and enters the game to level up all his cards for you.

He begins by poking through your belongings, finding small things that give him insight into your personality, routines, and friends. Ruggie is careful to go unnoticed, learning as much as he can about your relationships and keeping mental notes about anyone he thinks poses a “threat” to his place in your life. He’s not above making subtle changes, distancing you from people he dislikes and reshaping your social circle to align with his preferences, but he does so with skillful subtlety — most people won’t even realize he’s manipulating things from behind the scenes.

If you have a job, he’ll blend right in, charming your colleagues and subtly gaining their favor, leaving an impression that makes it hard for anyone to forget you. He’s naturally resourceful, too, so he takes a look at your finances, maybe even setting aside a bit of extra money “for emergencies” (which, of course, he intends to use for things he thinks you’ll need down the line).

Meanwhile, back in Twisted Wonderland, you’re adjusting to the gritty pace of Ruggie’s life in Savanaclaw. His resourcefulness is evident in every little aspect of his world — from balancing odd jobs to navigating the intense social structure under Leona’s rule. You feel the constant need to stay alert, manage his reputation, and keep up with his never-ending hustle. It’s a life of quick thinking, constant negotiation, and clever shortcuts that keep you on your toes, giving you a firsthand taste of Ruggie’s way of surviving in a world that doesn’t make things easy. You made a note to dote on him when you get back to your body, he deserves.

[willowpains]

paparazzi

drew starkey x latina actress reader!

slightly inspired by that zendaya and tom video iykyk

It was the season 4 premiere of Outer Banks.

Drew and you were arriving together to the event, the car having picked you both from the place you two shared in Charleston for filming seasons.

“It never gets old” you say, resting your head in Drew’s shoulder while fidgeting with his hand.

He chuckles lightly as he looks down at you.

“What do you mean doll?” He asks smiling at you with longing.

You look up to meet his eyes.

“The premieres” you pause. “I love them. And I’m secretly scared that we don’t know if this might be the last” you say, feeling your eyes glaze at the thought.

It was not about the premieres and you knew it.

Drew knew it.

You loved spending time with your best friends, and you were scared that the project that brought you all together one day, could ever end.

He gave you a soft smile while he cradled your face between his hands.

“It’s okay to feel scared” he murmured sweetly. “That’s one of my fears too”.

You furrowed your brows at his words, trying to hold your tears, you didn’t wanna ruin your makeup.

“Really?” You ask smirking up at him.

He nods chuckling at you, while softly grazing your cheeks with his thumb.

“But I am not worried about it” he says looking deep into your eyes. “We’ll keep seeing each other and hanging out no matter what love”.

You nod slowly at his words, smiling softly at him and his sweet words.

“No need to worry about the future” he continues. “Let’s enjoy today and take it one day at a time”.

He smiles and leans into you, pressing his lips softly against yours in a loving and soothing way trying to calm you.

And it worked.

“How many people do you think there’ll be?” You ask him excitedly, changing the subject.

This was a game you two liked to play. Guessing how much fans or people would be there showing for these events. It kept you feeling competitive and gave you reason to tease each other.

“Not many” he said playfully, sticking his tongue out at you.

You smile up at him.

“Hopefully” you say letting out a soft laugh.

You loved meeting fans and attending these events, it made you incredibly happy and motivated to see how many people loved your work.

But they also made you nervous. Big crowds of people screaming, flashing their cameras towards you and wanting to get a glimpse of you made you a bit anxious.

It was getting easier with each event you attended, but the little monster in your brain never truly shut up until you were safely inside, around the people that made you feel at ease.

Drew gave your hand a little squeeze while lifting it up and leaving a soft kiss on the back of it.

“It’s fine doll” he says softly. “I’m here with you” his thumb brushes your cheek soothingly.

You lean into his touch leaving a soft kiss on his palm.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way” you smile up at him.

Your boyfriend smirks down at you.

“I’m very tempted to tell the driver to turn around and drive back to our place” he says teasingly as he leans down to place a soft and slow kiss to your lips.

You feel yourself smile against his lips.

“You’re gonna have to wait, because my glam team wouldn’t be happy if this look didn’t get its moment” you say, as you take his face between your hands, tracing your thumb over his lips.

He smirks at you.

“Oh, I can make sure it gets the attention it deserves” he teases, moving his hands dangerously slow down your waist.

You laugh softly at his words.

“Too late mi amor” you say pecking his lips softly and moving your hands to fix his tie.

Because at that moment, the car comes to a stop, and your door is being opened, revealing screaming fans and paparazzi.

Your boyfriend sights and looks at you while you smile back innocently.

Drew gets out of the car first, waving and smiling at fans, and then turns around offering you his hand, helping you as you step out of the car, motioning and saying hi to everyone around you two.

Someone from your team guides you to the entrance, but you two decide to take a little detour and walk to the side of the street where fans were waiting patiently for the cast to arrive.

He never leaves your side, both of you stuck together taking pics, signing stuff and talking with fans.

“Omg y/n I love you so much!” A girl says excitedly as you near her and her friends. “can we take a selfie?

You smile happily at her.

“Of course!” You say, making a kissy face, watching her screen and seeing how Drew photo bombs from behind.

The girls around you begin to scream and giggle at him as he chuckles looking at the girl holding the phone.

“Nice shirt” he says pointing to the girls shirt, that has a photo of you two together back at poguelandia last year.

She blushes and laughs looking up at Drew after he complimented her shirt.

“I love you two so much!” She says moving her hands to touch her heart.

The both of you eventually switch sides, trying to get to as much fans as you can.

On this side, a girl catches your attention.

“Y/n, thank you for representing latinas in the show!” She screams as you near her, feeling your heart warm at her words.

You pout looking at her with teary eyes.

“You’re gonna make me cry!” You say as you go in for a hug.

The girl embraces you back excitedly.

“Estamos súper orgullosas de todo lo que estás logrando” says another girl next to her, now in Spanish.

You smile at them lovingly.

“Muchas gracias por el apoyo” you tell them clutching your heart.

You continue chatting and taking pics, feeling Drew’s presence looming behind you or a couple of people away from you.

When you reach the end of where fans are standing, there is a group of messily organized press and paparazzi waiting at the entrance of the event for anyone that arrives.

A member of your team tells you it’s time to get going, so you mutter some apologies and wave goodbye to the fans that you were not able to meet properly.

Drew takes your hand in his, as you two follow the crew member from your team to finally get into the event.

As you walk away from fans, suddenly the paparazzi and press that had been somewhat calm, immediately swarm the both of you, to the point that security guards that were waiting at the entrance, near the both of you to help clear the way.

Your boyfriend doesn’t let go of your hand, instead, holds you tighter and keeps looking back to make sure you’re okay.

While you’re making your way to the entrance, you spot a girl in between the mass of paparazzi, trying to get you to sign her poster.

You let go of Drew’s hands slowly, moving to face the girl in front of you.

The paparazzi suddenly swarming and moving around you and the fan.

All the screams and clicking sounds from them didn’t allow you to talk to the girl, so you tried your best to smile sweetly at her while signing her poster, hoping to make it quick, as you felt yourself getting a bit claustrophobic.

Drew was watching all of this go down from where the paparazzi had pushed him.

When he felt your hand leave his, he turned around to see all of the paparazzi and press already crowding around you and the little girl, shouting questions and flashing their cameras at you.

“Y/n you look lovely tonight!” “Y/n you and Drew going strong?” “Who are you wearing tonight y/n?” “Y/n can you tell us anything about the Narnia rumors?”

Drew tried to get closer to you, as he saw you were finishing signing the poster, when he saw one of the reporters shoving his camera a little to close to your face, almost hitting you with it.

His heart raced and his patience ran out.

He immediately got closer, shoving the paparazzi’s that were in his way to get to you, not even sparing to talk to them nicely, as they were already too comfortable violating your personal space.

“Get out the fucking way” he said loudly and a bit too agressive as he pushed the last of them to get to you.

The security guards that were supposed to be escorting you two, tried to gently pull him back to do the job themselves.

“No, no, no” Drew said as he shrugged them off and continued walking until he reached the guy who almost had his camera on your face.

He pushed him away from you in an instant, shoving him aside by pushing his chest away.

“Dude back off” he spitted at the guy while he took your hand between his and started to walk back with you close to him.

“Give her some room!” Security behind him shouted, trying to get the paparazzis off of you two.

You took his hand and gave it a soft squeeze, trying to let your boyfriend know you were okay.

Everything happened too fast you barely had time to react.

Your boyfriend continued walking to the entrance, looking back at you to make sure you were still behind him and not being bothered by the people around you.

As you two stood in front of the entrance, he came to a stop, looking at you and the paparazzi behind you, assessing them.

He moved back to let you in before pausing.

A guy with a camera stood infront of the door blocking it, trying to get a shot of you getting in the event.

Drew looked at him seriously, before, pushing him aside, to finally make space for you to get in.

He gently placed his hand on your waist, guiding you inside before him, while he gave the mass of paparazzi outside one last serious look before getting in behind you.

Finally, inside the event, you let out a breath of relief while you turned around and looked at your boyfriend, who was looking at you with a concerned look on his face.

“Are you okay?” He asked as his eyes wandered all over you, as if assessing you were perfectly fine.

You nodded slowly as you closed the space between you and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“Thanks to you” you smiled up at him as you pressed a soft kiss to his lips.

He smiled softly in between the kiss, his hands wrapping around your waist immediately.

You felt himself relax against you.

“That was pretty hot you know?” You say cheekily at him, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

Drew smirks down at you as his thumb draws soft circles on your waist.

“Really?” He chuckles, one hand moving to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear.

You nod, smiling brightly at him.

“You’re very attractive when you get protective” you say reaching up to peck his lips one more time.

He blushes slightly at your words, looking down to meet your eyes.

You feel his heart beating against your chest.

“Let’s get this over with” he says, taking your hand in his as he starts walking to the carpet. “I wanna take you home already” he says smirking playfully down at you.

*

that video did something to me, and I just couldn’t resist.

a bit of a time jump from the last few parts, but maybe a little hint of all that’s to come between drew and latina actress reader!

if you have any requests, ideas or things you’d like to know feel free to ask<3

taglist

@aariahnaa