#the cricket in times square

[magpie-to-the-morning]

When you were a kid were you also obsessed with the idea of being tiny and using dollhouse furniture and other repurposed found objects both natural and man-made?

[whats-in-a-sentence]

So the three friends hopped, scuttled and padded across to Tucker's home, where a fine farewell feast was held.

"The Cricket in Times Square" - George Selden

[exhaled-spirals]

Just this once, in the very heart of the busiest of cities, everyone was perfectly content not to move and hardly to breathe. And for those few minutes, while the song lasted, Times Square was still as a meadow at evening, with the sun streaming in on the people there and the wind moving among them as if they were only tall blades of grass.

George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square

[tenth-sentence]

Harry shouted that Chester should take care of himself – Tucker told him not to worry about the Bellinis, he would look after them – and Chester just kept chirping good-bye as long as he could.

"The Cricket in Times Square" - George Selden

[animatejournal]

Yankee Doodle Cricket Director: Chuck Jones | USA, 1975

[brimstone-cowboy]

Was looking through my old art, I still really like this Cricket in Times Square piece

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

ADHD Brain Moods™ (Derogatory Edition)

well, i got uuuuh four (4) sentences written of my ~Revisions~ today (i’m straight up not having a good time over here), but i DID jot down some classifications of the ADHD Brain Moods™ (Derogatory Edition), so have those instead internet:

>> “My brain is full of static” -- There’s nothing going on in there but ineffective Noise and it’s hell; I’m halfway to dissociated and everything is stupid and I Don’t Want To Be Here.

>> “My brain is full of spiders” -- Altogether too many legs; jerky, predatory, and agitated; itchy but can’t find the right spot to scratch for relief, Generally Irritated and Irritable

>> “My brain is full of crickets” -- Superficially seems quieter and level in there, but out of the blue we’ll SPRING to something totally unrelated and unexpected and we won’t get our scheduled shit done (or: Impulsive As Fuck)

[cats2000s]

Cricket in Times Square 🐱

[quickdudes]

I love Chester C. Cricket

[delxenofic]

the cricket in times square films aren't available to watch online like anywhere.... i found this collection of chuck jones' filmography on the internet archive but oh my gosh the quality of them is just horrendous and a very merry cricket is not on there anyhow. sad :(

[sunnyskies281]

IF YOU GET RID OF CONNECTICUT WHERE IS CHESTER THE CRICKET GONNA LIVE

[headspace-hotel]

Nature is healing.

I burned the Meadow a couple weeks ago. At first it looked like nothing but charred ashes and dirt, with a few scorched green patches, and I was afraid I'd done something terrible. But then the sprouts emerged. Tender new leaves swarming the soil.

My brother and I were outside after dark the other day, to see if any lightning bugs would emerge yet. We had been working on digging the pond. That old soggy spot in the middle of the yard that we called "poor drainage," that always splattered mud over our legs when we ran across it as children—it isn't a failed lawn, and it never was.

Oh, we tried to fill in the mud puddles, even rented heavy machinery and graded the whole thing out, but the little wetland still remembered. God bless those indomitable puddles and wetlands and weeds, that in spite of our efforts to flatten out the differences that make each square meter of land unique from another, still declare themselves over and over to be what they are.

So we've been digging a hole. A wide, shallow hole, with an island in the middle.

And steadily, I've been transplanting in vegetation. At school there is a soggy field that sadly is mowed like any old field. The only pools where a frog could lay eggs are tire ruts. From this field I dig up big clumps of rushes and sedges, and nobody pays me any mind when I smuggle them home.

I pulled a little stick of shrubby willow from some cracked pavement near a creek, and planted it nearby. From a ditch on the side of the road beside a corn field, I dug up cattail rhizomes. Everywhere, tiny bits of wilderness, holding on.

I gathered up rotting logs small enough to carry and made a log pile beside the pond. At another corner is a rock pile. I planted some old branches upright in the ground to make a good place for birds and dragonflies to perch.

And there are so many birds! Mourning doves, robins, cardinals and grackles come here in much bigger numbers, and many, many finches and sparrows. I always hear woodpeckers, even a Pileated Woodpecker here and there. A pair of bluebirds lives here. There are three tree swallows, a barn swallow also, tons of chickadees, and there's always six or seven blue jays screaming and making a commotion. And the goldfinches! Yesterday I watched three brilliant yellow males frolic among the tall dandelions. They would hover above the grass and then drop down. One landed on a dandelion stem and it flopped over. There are several bright orange birds too. I think a couple of them are orioles, but there's definitely also a Summer Tanager. There's a pair of Canada Geese that always fly by overhead around the same time in the evening. It's like their daily commute.

The other day, as I watched, I saw a Cooper's Hawk swoop down and carry off a robin. This was horrifying news for the robin individually, but great news for the ecosystem. The food chain can support more links now.

There are two garter snakes instead of one, both of them fat from being good at snaking. I wonder if there will be babies?

But the biggest change this year is the bugs. It's too early for the lightning bugs, but all the same the yard is full of life.

It's like remembering something I didn't know I forgot. Oh. This is how it's supposed to be. I can't glance in any direction without seeing the movement of bugs. Fat crickets and earwigs scuttle underneath my rock piles, wasps flit about and visit the pond's shore, an unbelievable variety of flies and bees visit the flowers, millipedes and centipedes hide under the logs. Butterflies, moths, and beetles big and small are everywhere.

I can't even describe it in terms of individual encounters; they're just everywhere, hopping and fluttering away with every step. There are so many kinds of ants. I sometimes stare really closely at the ground to watch the activities of the ants. Sometimes they are in long lines, with two lanes of ants going back and forth, touching antennae whenever two ants traveling in opposite directions meet. Sometimes I see ants fighting each other, as though ant war is happening. Sometimes the ants are carrying the curled-up bodies of dead ants—their fallen comrades?

My neighbor gave me all of their fallen leaves (twelve bags!) and it turns out that piling leaves on top of a rock and log pile in a wet area summons an unbelievable amount of snails.

I always heard of snails as pests, but I have learned better. Snails move calcium through the food chain. Birds eat snails and use the calcium in their shells to make egg shells. In this way, snails lead to baby birds. I never would have known this if I hadn't set out to learn about snails.

In the golden hour of evening, bugs drift across the sky like golden motes of dust, whirling and dancing together in the grand dramas of their tiny lives. I think about how complicated their worlds are. After interacting with bees and wasps so much for so long, I'm amazed by how intelligent and polite they are. Bumble bees will hover in front of me, swaying side to side, or circle slowly around me several times, clearly perceiving some kind of information...but what? It seems like bees and wasps can figure out if you are a threat, or if you are peaceful, and act accordingly.

I came to a realization about wasps: when they dart at your head so you hear them buzzing close by your ears, they're announcing their presence. The proper response is to freeze and duck down a bit. It seems like wasps can recognize if you're being polite; for what it's worth, I've never been stung by a wasp.

As night falls, bats emerge and start looping and darting around in the sky above. If the yard seems full of bugs in the day, it is nothing compared to the night.

I'm aware that what I'm about to describe, to an entomophobe, sounds like a horror movie: when i walk to the back yard, the trees are audibly crackling and whirring with the activity of insects. Beetles hover among the branches of the trees. When we look up at the sky, moths of all sizes are flying hither and thither across it. A large, very striking white moth flies past low to the ground.

Last year, seeing a moth against the darkening sky was only occasional. Now there's so many of them.

I consider it in my mind:

When roads and houses are built and land is turned over to various human uses, potentially hundreds of native plant species are extirpated from that small area. But all of the Eastern USA has been heavily altered and destroyed.

Some plants come back easily, like wild blackberry, daisy fleabane, and common violets. But many of them do not. Some plants need fire to sprout, some need Bison or large birds to spread them, some need humans to harvest and care for them, some live in habitats that are frequently treated with contempt, some cannot bear to be grazed by cattle, some are suffocated beneath invasive Tall Fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, honeysuckle or Bradford pears, and some don't like being mowed or bushhogged.

Look at the landscape...hundreds and hundreds of acres of suburbs, pastures, corn fields, pavement, mowed verges and edges of roads.

Yes, you see milkweed now and then, a few plants on the edge of the road, but when you consider the total area of space covered by milkweed, it is so little it is nearly negligible. Imagine how many milkweed plants could grow in a single acre that was caretaken for their prosperity—enough to equal fifty roadsides put together!

Then I consider how many bugs are specialists, that can only feed upon a particular plant. Every kind of plant has its own bugs. When plant diversity is replaced by Plant Sameness, the bug population decreases dramatically.

Plant sameness has taken over the world, and the insect apocalypse is a result.

But in this one small spot, nature is healing...

[whats-in-a-sentence]

"Maybe next summer we could go to the country."

"The Cricket in Times Square" - George Selden

[tenth-sentence]

They were standing at one corner of the Times building, which is at the south end of Times Square.

"The Cricket in Times Square" - George Selden

[o-avosetta]

This made me think of The Happy Prince.

Chester Cricket ’s Pigeon Flight illustrated by Garth Williams, 1981

[textmel8r]

[ DRABBLE ] 𝐒𝐔𝐆𝐀𝐑 𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘 ! ( eleventh installment ) in which you find toji fushiguro’s number off a sugar baby site .

୨୧˚ part; one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight. nine. ten. eleven.

୨୧˚ incl; toji fushiguro

୨୧˚ cw; sugar mommy! reader , sugar baby! toji , profanity , prostitution , bisexual! toji , smut , spit , gunplay

୨୧˚ an; if there are plot holes, no there aren’t. i just wanted an excuse to write toji suckin on some gun🧌

୨୧˚ join my discord server ! we share headcanons, fanfic recs, color roles, and more drooling emoji

His hair is wet, sopping and adhering to the canvas of his forehead. Back at the hotel, Toji set the record for the world’s shortest shower, forsaking even a once-over with a towel in favor of slipping his clothes right back on. He doesn’t even recall the shitty excuse he tossed at his one night stand, not bothering to stay long enough to hear her response. Quickness was of the utmost importance, the man told himself to justify blowing through four separate red lights. 

Oh, the irony. Because now, Toji stands before the grand entrance of your extravagant abode with a palm flat against the column of wall beside the door as he staves off constant hitch wracking his lungs. Unhurried, stagnant, moving as though he was thawing out frozen limbs. The last half hour having been spent on nothing but hastiness, it is at this time when all of these troubles and concerns fight their way to the front end of Toji’s mind. 

The most prominent question: why?

Why did you ask him here? What use could you possibly get out of his shriveled husk?

Toji knows where your spare key is. Beneath the clay pot, the one flourishing with a bouquet of pastel Hydrangea flowers. Glaringly obvious to any happening stranger—Toji had barked at you endlessly to swap its hiding spot for one a little less in plain-fucking-sight, and everytime you told him you’d get to it. And you never did. Idiot woman. He steals a glance to the pot once more and notices the flowers’ stems have a lot more limpness in them than he remembers. Wilted. Poor little things.

Toji knows where your spare key is. He knocks anyway. The side of his fist pounding poplar wood once, twice, three times, and then he takes a step back. Blunted thumbnails pick at the callouses welded into the inside of his knuckles. 

He can’t even blink before the door peels ajar. Fast, like you’d been waiting nearby for him. 

The permanent slouch in his spine corrects itself when Toji stiffens. Shoulders squared, thick fingers curled into iron fists against his thighs. And like the colossal moron he is, Toji doesn’t speak. He just looks at you, standing there in the openness between door and frame. A downy robe obscures you in its rouge silk, cascading down just barely passing the center of your thigh. Your thigh… Toji observes more carefully, noting the bulky extremity protruding out from the side of your shapely leg. A boxy bulge sheathed under a reddish robe; the man scoffs. 

 “Thank you for coming,” you break the silence first, offering all-too polite benediction. Almost robotic, like you’d recited it from a script you memorized. 

“Yeah,” Toji replies, curt.

Mores standing, more silence. Melodic chirps from the crickets fill the chasms of dead air. 

Then finally, finally, you make a move. Toeing the door wider with a bare foot, stepping back to accommodate his bulky constitution. “Come inside.” It is a quiet command, the last words you speak before pivoting on a heel and heading deeper into your home. Toji acts on the instruction, plodding in your trail. He kicks the door shut with the outsole of his muddy boot. 

“Sorry,” there goes your second apology of the night, “I know it’s late.”

He doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn't care much for these pointless I’m sorry’s right now. You’ve guided Toji into the living room—back toward him, shifting weight between legs, plucking at the stitches along the seam of your garb. Toji stands merely ten paces behind, awkward in the way he is uncertain of what to do. What to say. Existing here, in your presence, in your house… it all felt so disgustingly unnatural now. He should've never come back to this place. God, he should’ve never done a lot of things.

“Why am I here?” Toji asks bluntly. Cutting to the chase, because the suspense of anticipating the worst has his stomach coiling in sharp knots. He’s waiting for a fleet of officers to come barrelling down your staircase, ready to gun him down where he stands. Or, alternatively and arguably more dread-inducing, you’ve corralled him here so you can collect proper reparations for all the anguish he’s put you through. Both would be thoroughly deserved.

A glance is thrown from over your shoulder. “I have something for you. Please, sit.” 

“Okay.”

Toji settles on the sofa while you pad upstairs. He never cared much for your couch, its expensive leather was stiff and unforgivingly uncomfortable. Like it was brand new. Like you never had time to sit in it with the schedule you worked. That was the setting for the rest of the room, as well—unlived in in appearance, cold and empty. 

Footsteps thud. He turns his head and watches you curiously as you reemerge from the second level of the house. A ball of worn fabric swaddles your fist.

Toji sits up a little, looking up to where you stand before him with the puzzling bundle of textile. “Is that my..?”

“Your shirt,” you finish for him, tossing the thing into Toji’s chest, to which it hits before tumbling limply into his lap. Not for a second does he bother sparing a glimpse to the useless shirt; still, he commits to your eyes, hoping that you can decipher the inquisitiveness in his. 

Gravelly and mystified, “what?”

“You left your shirt here the last time—”

“What?” A decrepit, holey tee shirt cannot be the reason why he’s sitting on your couch right now. In a bone-crushing clutch, the shirt sits braving force from Toji’s iron fist. He holds it with such conviction that his fingers activate a tremble.

You’re not stupid. You’re the most intelligent, most sagacious woman—person—he knows. So it really fucking irks him when you continue to play oblivious. 

“What do you mean, what?”

“I’m not here right now because of a dumb shirt.”

Your lips smack together pensively, looking fixedly at the drab, eggshell walls. To the porcelain tiles now scuffed from being grazed on by two bespattered tactical boots. To your own feet, to the perturbed curl of your toes. To anywhere besides him. Never had you avoided looking at Toji so unmitigatedly, as if locking eyes for even a split second would cause worldwide devastation.

He reflects upon the night you’d thrown him out, discarding him back to the streets where he belonged. “‘Get the fuck out of my home’, she says,” Toji mumbles a recitement of your own words, struggling to keep the muzzle on his distaste. Elbows on his knees, head in his hand, he taps his index to his lip in thought. “You hate me, and then suddenly you like me enough to return my damn shirt… What kind of game are you playing? Just fucking cut it out and be blunt about what you want from me because I’ve had a really shit day and I’m not in the mood to be cute for you, Y/n.”

You bear his outburst in stride, pulling a face of forlorn at his apparent exhaustion. You don’t shout back at him, nor do you comment on his attitude that you’d surely never let slide in the past. 

“Okay.” 

On tiptoes, you shuffle closer to fit between Toji’s spread thighs. There is a streak of hesitation that perpetually hugs around your body, he realizes, because every which way you turn oozes trepidation in its slow tempo. Jitters teeter down your person, oscillations so tangible that it sways your hair. “You’re shakin’,” Toji annotates, tilting his chin back to gaze up at you. Shaking like a leaf, in fact, and he wonders where all your composure has fled to. “Why’re—”

“I need to…” You take a pause to swallow down the thick ball of uneasiness clogging your esophagus. A sheen glints along your forehead, cheeks, neckline; fucking sweat. “I have to confirm something.”

You are off. This whole situation is off, and Toji can’t pin a point on any of it until…

Slowly, clumsily, your hand glides down the elegant curve of your oblique, toward the ponderous bulk against your thigh. With the brain of a seasoned assassin, Toji pieces the puzzle together with time to spare. Time he could’ve spent lunging at you, pinning you to the floor beneath his body weight, subduing your wrists in the cuffs of his own fingers. But he doesn’t. Be it a product of his own stupidity, his lackluster will to live, or maybe even his inextinguishable urge to devote his trust to you, Toji lets you draw open the curtain of your robe and pull your concealed gun on him. 

With heavy puffs of breathing, you direct the barrel of your handgun toward the centerpoint of his chest. It wobbles in a hybrid of uncertainty and inexperience, and there’s a cold, metallic rattle discernible the whole time. Toji admires the gun—it’s a small thing, some flavor of a colt pistol with a cask forged from iron. It looks weighty and misplaced in the palms of your delicate hands. 

“Nice piece,” he allots useless, apathetic praise. 

Evidently, you aren’t in the mood to reciprocate his quips. “Be serious.”

“I am.”

There is something picturesque about you in this context, it overpowers the innate fear he should be feeling right now. You tower before him like a deus ex machina, his own personal angel of death, granting him divine reprieve from this remarkably bleak concept of life. Toji wants to kneel, call you beautiful, and kiss your feet in appreciation.

“I wasn’t lying when I told you I liked you.” Those words contradict the finger you hold against the trigger. You shake your head, contracting the muscles in your jaw. “Was it just a version of you that I fell for?”

Toji concedes. “Yeah.”

“Do I even know you?”

His thick eyebrows furrow at the question. Do I even know you? “There’s so much I haven’t told you yet.”

You sneer, “you mean, so much you’ve lied abou—”

“No.” Toji holds up his hand, a pardon to interrupt. Because he has never spewed untruths in lieu of keeping his double life a secret. He never lied about his job, his addictions, his mental instability—there were no flimsy excuses, Toji had simply pretended his weaknesses did not exist. You made him forget they were even there in the first place. “No, I didn’t lie. Not once.”

“Then what purpose did you have for me at all?” Wetness glistened over rounded eyes, and wistful tears began to collect along your lash line. Toji watches a bead of sadness break loose, hanging from a cluster of eyelashes. Looking up to the ceiling, you attempt to blink it away. “I just… Fuck. I promised myself I wouldn’t sleep with you—wouldn’t get attached—but you… Why did you lay with me?”

The gun still aims to his heart. “I wanted to.”

“I feel like my head is spinning,” you weep, sniffling in the air. So utterly hopeless. “I feel like I don’t know you at all. Or your intentions.” You were a woman of prowess and authority, a real powerhouse in the sense that you always seemed to just know. Knowing what, knowing why, knowing how; he was so strangely drawn to that superlative superpower, finding your wisdom one of the most alluring things in the world. So perhaps that’s why Toji feels worse than cow shit right now, subjected to the awful sight of your realization that you truly don’t know who he is. The reigns were relinquished from your hands. “I’m scared, Toji.”

“Of me?” A stupid question he already knows good and well the answer to, but he asks anyway.

You whimper out your answer with a dejected nod. “Yes.”

The sorrow that oozes from your stare physically hurts, something akin to watching an eclipse with naked eyes, so Toji fixates on the handgun instead. The metallic shine indicates that it was recently purchased and most likely never used. You must’ve bought the thing specifically for this purpose.

“Are you going to kill me, Y/n?”

There’s no response. It aggravates him. 

“Are you?” Toji asks once more, projecting a rougher tone. Digging for an answer. 

Through tears, you whimper out a little reply, a question to his question. “Will you stop me?”

No. No, he fucking won’t. He sees through your plan; you’re waiting for him to lash out, to fight for his life. You want him to give you a reason to pull the trigger and prove your theories right—theories that he’s nothing more than a dangerous, vindictive animal hell bent on satiating his bloodlust. But Toji isn’t much of anything other than a torpid waste of oxygen. He won’t combat fate, he won’t put his hands on you even in the face of death. Toji takes your shaking wrist into his hand, keeping every last movement slow and sticky. You flinch away upon contact, but the look in his eyes was nothing if not assuaging, so you let yourself be handled. He draws you near, close enough to press the end of the barrel directly against his head. “Aim here,” he instructs with a lulling timbre, and fixes the thing to rest harshly on his temple. “It’ll be quicker. Less blood.”

Horrified, “what are you doing?”

“I ain’t gonna get violent with you.” Toji feels ready. This is okay, to die in a room as pretty as this one, facing a sorry sight as pretty as you. It’ll be a hassle to clean up for you, but you’re sharp as a knife. You’ll figure it out. His other hand, the one not attached to your forearm, rises to touch at your hip. Massaging over the thick robe, holding the dip of your waist with a vice grip. “If this is what I gotta do to prove myself, then fine. I’m ready, so take the safety off and put a bullet in my brain already.”

“N-no…”

“Yes.” He jimmies your arm, coaxing you to shoot. “Fucking do it, I know you can.”

“No!” You roar in his face, lips reeled back in a desperate snarl. “No, you made your point!” A knee sinks into the space of cushion between Toji’s legs, a hand clawing at his forearm. “Stop it, enough already!”

Toji is bemused by your fanfare of emotion. He barely winces as you work hard to pry your wrist from his handhold, scratching overgrown and timeworn acrylics into the tough flesh of his arm. “I can’t keep up with you, woman.” He tuts, observing the struggle. “Y’kick me out, then you call me back. Don’t talk to me for months, but you’re paying my rent. Pull a gun on me, then start crying when I give you a push.” Reaching up, Toji finds the warmth of your neck, cupping his palm to it. Sliding up and up, pushing your jaw with thick fingers because he needs you to stop focusing on the gun and start focusing on him. Your head is steered by his ginger hand, forcing your guys’ eyes to bridge. “You had me fooled. Here I thought you were more mature than whatever-the-fuck this is.”

“You want to talk about maturity?” Like a coin, the doleful effusion you bled was flipped into bewildered agitation. Fire ignites underneath your tongue and Toji braces for its heat.

“Yeah, sure,” ever the impudent asshole, “let’s talk.”

You give him a funny look. A you have a lot of fucking nerve look. “It’s because of your immaturity that we’re here right now!” Getting closer, your other leg fits across the opposite side of his, effectively perching yourself over his thick thigh. Toji grunts under the force in which you sit down. “You and your stupid flirtations. You made me believe that we could have…” Breaking off into a frustrated groan, you shook your head. “How selfish can you be, Toji? To pursue me when you know damn well what you’ve done is unforgivable.”

The tip of his tongue finds his molars, and he looks away for a moment to analyze your question. A moment that is cut entirely too short when you return the favor of maneuvering his head. “No, you need to look at me, too.”

There isn’t any elaborate reasoning he can present to you on a silver dish. When it comes down to the brass tacks of it all, that was just it: Toji is selfish. The only taste of love Toji had ever gotten was when he was young and dumb in his early twenties, spontaneously marrying the first woman who convinced him that he was worthy of tenderness. God, she was gentle with him, seizing his heart in her hands with so much caution and kindness that it made him physically ill. When she passed, he was positive that his heart had been buried alongside her deep in the Earth. That warmth never returned, not once in the years following when he’d find himself falling into strangers’ beds for a quick living. And he’d curse himself, reliving memories of her every night before sleep. So young and dumb, far too much so to appreciate what he had; what he’d never get again. 

But then you came along. 

Man, what a plot twist you were.

“You make me feel things.” What the fuck is he even saying? ‘You make me feel things’? That explanation was about as insightful as a child would be. Toji has never so directly spoken about his feelings before, this is challenging. 

Non-judgemental, you heed his message and urge him to continue. “Good things or bad things?”

“Uh,” Toji thinks for a second, “nostalgic things? I… Haven’t felt like this in a long time.”

“Felt like what?”

There comes a pregnant pause, and Toji takes this time to peer up at you. You sit tall on his leg, head at a tilt while you wait patiently for him to select a word. An attribute that you shock into his system every time you enter the vicinity. It’s a shitty, embarrassing answer, but he spits it out anyway. “Loved.” Using your quiet to his advantage, Toji prattles on. “Or somethin’ like that. I’m a fucking moron though, for thinking I could keep secrets. Selfish is a good way to put it.”

“You’ve killed people for money. You are the epitome of the word selfish.”

“That shit’s behind me.”

You reel, leaning back in his lap to gauge Toji’s expression. “Really?” It’s asked with skepticism, and Toji’s eye twitches.

“What, you think I’m bullshitting?” His hand involuntarily squeezes your wrist, a futile attempt to communicate his sincerity through touch. “No, I haven’t taken a job since last I left your place. I quit.”

This discovery retires some of that scorn. With a weaker voice than before, “officially?”

Toji gives you a subtle nod. “As much as you want to believe I liked dropping bodies, I really, really didn’t.”

There is a hint of a smile, just barely curling at the corner of your lip, before it droops back down into the biggest frown he’s seen you wear all night. “But then wait a second… Where have you been getting your income from? I stopped issuing checks when we—” You stop yourself from saying it. 

“Ah, I’ve just been,” shit, what a dilemma. “Getting some sugar.” It comes out with an awkward chuckle. It’s not a complete lie, sugar baby-ing and prostituting—it was all sex work nevertheless. He isn’t fond of the whorish implication, but you know him. You’ve seen him at his sluttiest, and you weren't disgusted.

“You’ve been having sex?” You veer in toward him. There is no shock or discomfort lacing your words—you know him—only bona fide earnestness. 

“Yeah.” Toji feels compelled to say sorry, but he doesn’t. “I needed the cash.” He doesn’t care to rally the question back at you, doesn’t care to know if you’ve fucked anyone else.

It’s subtle, but he can feel the pity radiating off you, seeping into his pores and burrowing under flesh. You look at him the same way you’d look at a scraped-up mutt abandoned on the side of the highway. He fucking despises that look from anyone else, but from you? It’s not so bad. If anything, it’s maybe even a bit soothing, the way you can console him with just your eyes. 

“Toji, let go of my arm.”

He does as told, dripping your wrist. The handgun falls to the couch, neglected, but Toji doesn’t get the chance to watch it because you’re shrouding the view. A buxom body nestles against the convex of Toji’s ample chest, two arms coil around his thick neck, fingers scritching over his scalp. You’re hugging him.

“Is this okay?” You must’ve felt him stiffen under the weight of your affections, perhaps you took it as a sign of discomfort. But that’s not it at all; the hesitation was a byproduct of Toji’s emotional stoicism. A defense mechanism he’s built for himself, successful in warding off contingence. Sex was okay. Sex was gritty and rugged and crude, enough to make him forget he was being touched at all. But this? Fucking hugging? 

How childish was he for submitting to something so teenage? This was the equivalent of popping a boner from hand holding.

And still… “I like it.” Once again, he lets you tear down his walls. Succumbing to you felt organic, almost as if Toji could just close his eyes and let muscle memory guide his limbs to their place. A heavy head knocks forward, plummeting in the valley between your breasts that have been exposed by the plunging neckline of your robe. Unbeknownst to you, the knot holding it closed had untied itself somewhere in the haste, and it has become more of a loose garnish to your body clad in nothing more than a matching set of dark, rebellious little underwear. Strong arms return the gesture, squeezing you to him so tightly that you must let out an audible oomph as your lungs constrict.

“I like it…” Toji repeats under his breath, nosing a path up to your clavicle. On you, notes of that saccharine, peachy body wash he’d once massaged into your skin. He takes self-indulgent whiffs, closing his eyes to hyperfixate on his sense of smell. “I like you.”

Totally abrupt, no sensibility in the manner, Toji blurts it out. Those three bedeviled words he swore to condemn to the pit of his guts, never to be released aloud. His conscience dictates his actions now, apparently, because the man has no longer any will to swallow his sentiments. After all the terrible, traumatizing shit he’s dragged you through, it’s the least he can offer. You’ve been deserving of those three words for a while now, Toji just never knew how to give them to you. As it turns out, it’s a lot simpler than his imaginations led him to believe. 

“You’ve never told me that before.”

He holds you impossibly tighter, hands flat and feeling the landscape of your back. “You knew, though.”

The hand in Toji’s dampened hair clenches when he ghosts his lips over that throbbing neck vein. “Still, you could have said it sooner.”

“I’m sorry.” He kisses you there, then kisses you again. Slow and tantalizing, just the way you liked. “Sorry for being awful.”

Teeth peek out and catch your skin. 

“I don’t—” you stop to gasp, cradling Toji’s head and holding him deep into the crib of your neck. “Think you’re awful.”

“Mm.” Blindly, he gropes the cushion beside his thigh, feeling for the discarded gun. Toji taps the cool metal against the chub of your cheek, attentive to the trigger—he never goes near it. Catching you in a lidded staring contest, “you use this on good guys, then?”

You pull a grimace. “I don’t use it at all.”

Toji is thoroughly amused. “You were gonna use it on me,” he chuckles quietly, so close to your pretty face that the point of his nose brushes yours. “Or were you just tryin’ to give me a scare?”

“I…” You trail off into brief thought. “I was afraid. I’m only a normal woman, Toji, it’s not everyday I find myself in the presence of a criminal.”

Again, he laughs, thumb sweeping back drapery that shades your thigh. You make no efforts to halt him, instead just following his line of sight all the way down to the black, leathery holster strapped high upon your thigh. Something about it is so enticing, the way fat pudges out along the sides of the tight strip. Like a garter belt, but a thousand times sexier. “‘Normal’ my ass.” Toji plucks the thing, gauging its limitation to stretch, before releasing it to snap back into place and choke your squishy thigh once more. You yelp, smacking his bicep.

“That hurt, asshole.”

“Sorry,” Toji apologizes loosely. He shakes the gun, hearing its rattle. “So this was a test, then.” There is no quizzical lilt, because there is no question about it. It was a test of trust. The weapon was a mere instigator, a tool to coax Toji into showing his ‘truest colors’; unmasking his supposed violent tendencies. All that trust you placed in Toji’s basket must’ve vanished on that rainy night, in the wake of his confession to murder. All that trust… It soured into bitter doubt. 

“A very idiotic, very flawed test,” you sigh, on the cusp of a humorless smirk. “You passed, by the way.”

“I don’t feel like I did. You thought that I would’ve hurt you.”

“I was just preparing for the worst case scenario.” 

The way in which he surveyed you was kindred to the nature of religion. Gritty fingertips explored your Holy face, and Toji worshiped every feature. Could you truly not see how sacred you are to him? Toji doesn’t caress the faces of his quick fucks, and he certainly wouldn’t surrender his life to them. 

“Put that thought out of your brain. Right now. I will never put my hands on you.”

You look flushed. Your cheek kindles warmth beneath his hand. “I want to kiss you.”

Toji’s instantaneous submission was laughable. Jaw unhinging, scarred lips parting wide, tongue twitching with anticipation. He opens his mouth for you and waits.

His face gets clamped in between two tenacious hands. Nails dig into Toji’s face as he’s yanked in to meet you in a teeth-clanking lip lock. It feels like a breath of fresh air, to kiss you like this again. Suddenly, he forgets what those strangers’ genitals tasted like. He forgets the taste of coke dripping down the back of his throat after snorting his fifth line in one night. Forgets the taste of soupy, liquor-flavored bile. All Toji knows is you and your nectarous little mouth. Your honeyed tongue is a tyrant in his mouth, dominating every wet corner, branding your essence into his taste buds. 

“I missed you,” Toji laments into your lips. He grapples with your hips, manhandling them into a constant gyration deep onto the crux of his lap. “I missed us.”

“I can tell,” you mumble and give a sharp grind against him. Against the prominent tent beaming up from the crotch of his pants, and he shudders. Then, you look at him stone cold sober from lust and ask him foolishly, “do you want to have sex right now?”

A nasally exhale huffs out, because you have to be joking with him. “My cock’s hard, ain’t it?” 

You’re a beacon of po-faced prudishness, all the while he pants for more. “Your erection is a given, considering the position we’re in,” close-grained and consolidated in intimacy. You tap Toji’s forehead, “how do you feel up here? I’d like to know.”

Such shitty pillow talk, but even still, Toji felt rosy. It made him feel acknowledged; recognized as more than just a dick to bounce on. Fuck, you’re really turning him on with that corny, mushy bullshit. “I’m good,” he tells you honestly. “I want you.”

I want to be inside of you.

“And you’ll let me know if that feeling changes?”

He groans against your cheek, “Jesus, yes, just fuckin’ touch me.”

“Ask me appropriately.”

Here he goes, sounding like a little bitch again. “Please, m-ma���am… Take it out.” Another memory to add to his internal cringe compilation.

Satisfied, you sit up on your haunches. “Lift your ass.” He does so, and accepts your help to shimmy the waistband of those constricting pants down to quarter thigh. Just low enough to make a spectacle of the hard rod straining against the thin material of his snug boxer briefs; gray and breathable and damp with his pre-ejaculant.

“Shit.” Toji huffs, giving a weak jerk when your hands begin the delicate procedure of feeding his slippery appendage through the piss hole at the front of his ruined underwear. He watches you pull him out with grace—he’s privy to the consideration you show to his most sensitive spots when you handle him like this. He thinks it’s endearing.

There his dick stands, tall and proud in the valley where both pairs of hips meet flush with one another. Toji looks down at the pinkish thing, watches the way it drifts back to hit his navel, falling under its own mass. “Rub me,” Toji whispers with his forehead pressed against the shelf of your shoulder, gazing down under heavy lids to watch his own dick drool spittle into his tee shirt. A hand precipitously hangs below his chin, fingers and palm working with each other to create a makeshift bowl. Assuming to catch something. 

“Spit, Toji.”

A second hand strokes the back of his skull, and the gesture emmenates patience. There’s only a split second of hesitation before he grants your vulgar request. Toji swishes his tongue around, collecting every ounce of saliva that coats the inner seams of his sticky mouth before opening up. The wet muscle unfurls, and a waterslide of spit cascades down into the palm of your awaiting hand. He’s rewarded for his efforts—good job, Toji—before you get down to business. 

His spit is cold when it smears along his tip. Toji bites his lip, sinks his digits deep into the meat of your ass, and fixates on keeping a composed breathing pattern because fuck, your hand was magical. You jerk him off leisurely, maintaining languid strokes that squeeze tighter near the peak of his length. “This alright?” You coo next to Toji’s ear, keeping your free hand busy playing with his raven locks. 

Toji makes a pitiful, throaty noise in response. “Do it faster.”

“No.”

He grits his teeth. “Unfair…” Toji’s hands tremble. To combat this, he begins grabbing at the robe still hugging over you, shielding that sexy body from his perverted glare. You make no indications that he should stop, so he doesn’t. Shucking off that expensive, red cape down your perfect shoulders, splitting the front open right down the middle. It’s a black, lacy little number, and the cups of your darling bralette plead transparency.

Toji pulls the thing up without dawdling, sighing blithely at the heavenly prospect of your perfect breasts bared and ready to be taken by his mouth. “God.” He captures your tit in one hand, squeezing it, playing with its weight. Your latter breast gets swiftly tucked between his lips, subjected to enthusiastic teasing from Toji’s tongue. He’s teething, rolling your budding nipple between rows of ivory fangs like he’s trying for milk. 

“You’re so hungry for it.”

“You've been depriving me of this,” Toji emphasizes his point with a long, keen lick to your cleavage. “An’ you expect me not to be starving.”

You pull him off your chest by the scruff of his neck, hoisting Toji’s heavy head up at your face level. Saliva moistens his lips, and you take your time swiping up his spit with your deft thumb pad. “Shall we get on with it, then?” Condescension and sympathy duel each other when you speak to him, like he is the unreasonable one for becoming a frenzied mess of sensuality. 

Toji is about to answer when it catches his eye. The glinting iron barrel, taunting him. It sits once more at the side of his thigh, untouched and forgotten. Begging to be used.

“I want you to fuck me.” There’s a brief intermission of silence while he collects the weapon, grabbing it by the cask and offering you its handle. You’re inquisitive, staring at the thing with uncertainty, so Toji lays his motives out across the table. “Hold this on me while you do it.”

You chortle, expecting his laugh to come next. But it never does, so you stop and raise a brow. “Come again?”

“You went through the trouble of buying this just for me, yeah?” It was obvious to anyone with two working eyes that you had no experience maintaining firearms. The gun was spotless, brand-spanking-new, and never had you mentioned to Toji that you keep something so dangerous in your home. So yeah, you can try to deny it all you want, but he knows that the only reason you now own a pistol is in case you needed to pop a cap in his brain. “Now I’m asking you to use it.”

“Toji,” you sweatdrop, “I don’t think…”

He takes your hand in his and presses the grip of the gun into your palm before securing your fingers around its silicon. Wide eyes look at him with pure solicitousness. “It’s okay.” Just like before, he steers you into position. “Jus’ keep your arm up like this. Hold it to my head. Yeah, perfect.”

“This is sick, even for you.” Despite your words, you don’t sound too dismayed. 

“Been rocking a half chub the second you pointed it at me.” 

“Filthy.”

Toji hums offhandedly, peeking down at your panty-clad pussy. Your undies were cute, he thinks, teasing the tiny ribbon bow perched on the waistband with a feather-light fingertip. Twin ebony fibers crafted the panties, just as chiffon as the bra. “Gets me off,” he shrugs, hooking his index beneath the gusset and dragging it to the side where it’ll stay in the crease of your thigh. Toji can feel the blaze of your core grate against his hand. You’re turned on. He looks back at you. “Putting my life in your hands.”

You’re shifting, stretching up a little higher to accommodate his cock. One of your knees props up at a right angle, the other remains firmly planted into the couch. “You’re so insane.” Ruddiness blooms along Toji’s neck when you hawk a wad of spit into your hand and bring it down to rub yourself. Lubricating yourself for him, moaning for him, fuck. He’s holding himself too. 

“Aintcha feelin’ powerful, though?” Toji challenges haughtily, slapping his swollen tip against your pubic bone. In response, he feels the barrel of the handgun sink a little rougher into the thin skin on his temple, and it makes him chuckle out loud. “Makes you wanna give it to me harder, don’t it?”

Tacky, spit-soaked fingers catch the angle of his running jaw with a grip so taut, it squishes his cheeks and forces his lips into a reluctant pout. “What am I going to do with that mouth?” You glower, and his mind races with a catalog of hundreds of different risque solutions to propose. However, he doesn’t get one out before your next order: “Put it in.”

And he does right away. A concoction of spit, semen, and cunt juice made the insertion process quick and painless. Without delay, your hips crash down into his lap, and it draws a paltry cheep past his clenched teeth. Fronts stick together thanks to the bone-crushing bear hug he ensnares you in. You give in, throwing your arms over his broad shoulders to attune to the sudden adjacency. He can feel a hard, steely nozzle trace around the circumference of his skull, ending at the base behind his head. 

And that’s how you two sit for a while; inside one another, breathing humid puffs of carbon dioxide into each other’s necks. 

“I’m… Gonna move now.”

“Please,” Toji murmurs.

 Hands walk down your spine, finding purchase on the malleable globes of your ass. Toji kneads like it’s dough; grabbing, pulling, grinding you back and forth. This is how sex should feel, you’ve made him come to realize. Equal parts raw and nasty in perfect tandem with intimacy and comfort. Hell, you have a fucking gun trained at his cerebellum, and even with that unusual addition, this is the safest sex he’s had in months. 

You are an expert in the ways of motion, methodically pirouetting those godsent curves in the most salacious degrees. “Oh God, don’t fucking stop,” Toji pleads, lapping against the slope of your neck. It’s killing him, the way you’re fucking his body deep into the couch like you owned it. It’s physically strenuous to keep his teeth at bay. “Don’t you fucking stop.”

The gun clinks against his head, the thud echoing in his mushy brain. “Hey,” you manage to pant out between short grunts. “No marks, y-you know that.”

Oh. Right. Stupid fucking professional job bullshit…

In the throes of Toji’s desire to swallow you whole, your warning goes in one ear and flies right out the other. “It’ll be fine,” he hushes you, skimming his sharp canines up your throat. 

“Toji.”

“How about here, then?” Before you could say ‘knife’, the tip of a tongue prodded into your ear. Swiveling around, collecting your flavor. Even here, you tasted clean. Like soapy chemicals, but not unpleasant. 

“Toji!”

You’ve stopped fucking him. Toji blinks, and suddenly, he’s being pushed into the back of the sofa by a hand in the center of his pectorals. It takes a second to catch his breath, but when he does, “what?”

Gawking, you palm your ear and cast a horrified look. “You can’t lick there! That’s dirty!”

“But I felt your pussy squeeze when I slid my tongue in—” He hacks around the foreign object. Did you just…?

“Your fucking mouth.” The barrel now lodges in his mouth, pressing back against Toji’s tongue hard enough to trigger salivary glands. It’s obvious that his nonchalance had rendered you harebrained, but thrusting the gun between his jaws like that was the last thing Toji expected you to do. It appeared that the surprise of it all was mutual—you, too, ogle your hand that holds the firearm. “Oh my—Toji, I’m sorry I didn’t—”

With haste, you move to reel back. But Toji’s reflexes are military grade, so he’s able to snag your wrist and hold you there. The shock subsided, and in its wake was the most intense form of pleasure he’d ever felt. Has there ever been a more pure forgery of submission than this? Choking on the loaded gun of your lover, hinging on each breath, wondering if your next will be your last. The whole concept is giving him a headrush far greater than any drug could. So Toji holds you in place, muffling out his pleas through the metal. Staring at you down his nose, eyes teeming with his adoration. 

I want it. And he means it. 

Thank God you’re not one of those dumb bimbo bitches he normally fucks with. You understand the message conveyed in his eyes. You see it. You’re not dense, you know what he wants, and you’ll give it to him. “Tap my leg if you need a break.” He won’t. 

The humping of his sore cock resumes, and any crumb of fortitude left within him curled up and wilted like the Hydrangeas on your front doorstep. He wilts too, collapsing back into the couch while you use his erection. 

You mewl contentedly, bracing yourself with a gentle touch to his pec. A stark contrast to the way your latter hand thrusted the piece in and out of Toji’s willing mouth. He’s not averse to something long and stiff down his throat—desperate times called for desperate measures, and if he had to suck a few cocks to cover the bills, then that’s exactly what he was gonna do. Though this was more enjoyable by miles, he thinks offhandedly while he stifles his gags. There’s no musty stench burning up his nasal cavity, no foul taste of unwashed skin. And a potential bullet was much more appetizing than the inevitable gluey spunk guaranteed at the end of every hummer. Spit bubbles up into a foamy mess at the corners of his lips as he sucks the gun. Sucks it like it’s attached to you, like you’ll be able to feel the way he coils his experienced tongue around the metallic muzzle.

“You’re really i-into that..” Awe infuses each shaky syllable, and Toji hopes maybe in some twisted rhyme or reason, he’s impressed you. Once more, he tries to talk back, but the barrier between his teeth results in utter incoherence. 

Orgasm was near shortly after, and the only warning Toji can supply is a broken half-cry, half-cough. His body began to jerk and twitch in strange ways. Like his right thigh, now sporting an uncontrollable tremble. Or his eyes rolling skyward. “You want to cum?” You asked softly despite your own impending climax, and you stroke the clenching muscles in his abdomen. 

“Nngh.” Fucking pathetic, but it’s the best he can do.

The muzzle clips the back of his throat, and tears spring into Toji’s trundling eyes. Everything gets brighter, and atmospheric sounds jumbled together into deadened white noise. Very distantly, weight lifts from his legs, and that’s when he can’t stop from diving over the edge of his orgasm.

Toji shakes, then shakes some more. Oh, his mouth is empty. When did that happen? Everything is wet and thick and syrupy. The brightness starts to fade, but even still, he has to cover his sensitive eyes with a forearm while he gasps his way back to reality. “Fu… F-fu… Ck…” You have diluted him down to nothing but a babbling idiot. Jesus Christ.

“—ji… Toji!”

Hazily, he peeks down from underneath his arm. You’re massaging soothing circles into his restless thighs that have still yet to calm down. But you’re doing it all with a quiet grin. “There he is.” 

I’m happy.

I’m happy.

Because you remind me that I can have good things.

There is your beautiful face, shining at the end of his orgasmic rainbow. Ready to clean up his mess, ready to talk him into slumber, ready to hold and caress under a shared blanket. Maybe he can deserve this—you—if he works hard enough.

Summoning whatever remained of his stamina, Toji lurches off the couch’s back to meet you into a sweet kiss. A simple kiss, devoid of any spit swapping; just his lips to yours.

“Here I am.”

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