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moonieandi · 4 months ago

Text

snapshots pt. 8 | stanley pines x f!reader

summary: you and stanley go fishing

warnings (TW): swearing, panic attack/panic-inducing scenarios, slight gore/violence

tags: mutual-pining, fluff, angst, action, affection

notes: idk anything about ice fishing so pls don’t get my ass for this okay, this was v different to write than my usual long drawn out heart gutting character analyses that I love (not that that is NOT here) but all the movement was deffff hard so it took me a minute but hey this is what I wanted imma do it ya know

Also i configured this chapter in like three separate ways in my head and it was so hard to chose? But i think the one i did end up writing is most true to their dynamic so far. To be of note for the v stubble reference im giving here but yall know The Kiss by painter Gustav Klimt? Ya… that…. Thats here (spot it if you can) as always thank you for the kind messages and notes and comments, love yall <3 also comment below if you'd like to be on a tag list I should maybe organize that hehe

word count: 6.5k

| masterlist | ix |

January, 1987

She had found them both nice fold-out chairs at the flea market just that last season, along with fishing poles the nice old man insisted went with the seats also. Talked her ear off about how he used to go ice fishing with his son, before said son went off to college.

Now he wouldn’t be home during the ice fishing season, so he saw no use for his chairs or his poles. But she did.

Stan would tell her flippantly about his youth from time to time, usually if not always said stories incorporated Stanford in one way or another. It seemed that the two barely, if ever, separated during their youth. Something that upset her more, that her friend had never spoken of his brother to her in the six years they had known each other. She didn’t think he would speak of it all as fondly, these memories, considering he never confided in her about Stanley, to begin with.

Stan would speak of the shoreline in New Jersey, of the sharp sand beneath his feet and hidden caves along the coast they both would trek through. Talk of the setting sun, of racing his brother home in the dark down paved streets back to their shared room.

He spoke most fondly of a boat though, one that had taken both twins years to configure.

She figured the fishing poles could be some sort of link, at least in her mind.

That and they spent some of their summers down by the dock at the local lake anyway. Splashing in windy tides off the dock and watching boats go by until sunset was a great way to cool off. That or revisiting the pool, where Stan would insist upon ice cream for the short drive home.

She figured he would wait for the season opener to go fishing. Considering she gave him the poles and chairs in December, a quick wave to Christmas, a holiday he laughed off on the regular. He would routinely celebrate it with her, just for the holiday cookies and cheesy movies he wouldn’t admit he loved. But he was Jewish, after all. At least raised in a Jewish household, he told her flippantly, after opening his gift this last December. Laughing at her blushing face, and flabbergasted stuttering, asking him why he would bother with all this. She sat straight when he said it was for her. Because she wanted to, so he would. Not that he was a religious man, anyway.

He found it amusing this holiday season then, to find her struggling to make some traditional dishes his mother would make each year come December for the holidays. Nothing he necessarily missed, but something he found endearing nonetheless. Her usual attention to detail, and odd need to ensure his comfort.

The fishing poles were a welcomed gift though, and he lit up at them and the differing tackles the nice man at the flea market had also gifted her. Hugged her into his side, while he ranted and raved about being able to fish off the docks come summer.

But he didn’t want to wait.

Something she thought rather glumly in the very early morning that January weekday. The sun not even having made its appearance, she had stumbled out of her bed around 4 a.m., having promised to reluctantly go ice fishing with said enthusiastic man. They stood before the porch door now, while he knelt in front of her, lacing up tall winter boots and pulling over her snow pants. Tucking her in, layer upon layer. Putting to use some winter clothes they both had rangled out of donation bins that very first cold season. The snow pants and boots had only ever really been used when they would trek through the outskirts of the woods, searching for clues to Stanford’s other journals.

She was still half asleep on her feet, falling forward into Stan’s bent shoulder in front of her to groan. For some reason, he was wide awake, and grinning like a fool despite it being 4 a.m. That dumb look on his face reminded her why she even crawled out of her cacoon of blankets. He was beyond happy to be able to go fishing. Something he couldn’t even wait for a warmer season to do.

He seemed a smidge like his younger self when he was closest to water. Some of his favorite memories are those ones with Stanford by his side and sand intertwined in his hair. His skin dark in the sun and his toes were deep in the tide of the sand.

It seemed more distant now, as distant as Ford was to him now. He wanted to ground himself here too, and some of his new favorite memories are of them hanging at the end of the dock. His feet in the cold water of the lake, and her nudging his shoulder. Teasing him, edging him off the docks’ wood and into the cold water with her. He preferred the summer to the snowy winters, but he figured they could make some new memories by the water now also. Even if they were colder ones.

So he more or less begged her to join him. Promising that he would handle the fish after she made a disgusted face at the thought of stripping the fish of their skin and bones for the meal they would make of the catch. She agreed though, happy to tag along if it pleased him.

He stood from his knelt position in front of her, standing to reach behind him to grab his red coat from the coat rack. Turning back to her to fold her arms into the coat also, her eyes still blurry as she smiled at him slightly giddy.

He had a gift for her that last December also. A coat folded into shitty wrapping newspaper he had thought to repurpose. She smiled at the blue coat but quickly became confused when she pulled it out of the wrapping to find it was far too big for her own physique to be for her. He had quickly pulled out another present for her, presenting her with another newspaper-wrapped gift. Which she tore open with haste, and rocked up quickly to her feet to dance around their small living room, his old red coat in her arms.

It was hers now, and she reveled in the shitty coat. His smell still lingered in the seam line, and when she leaned her head far back into the hood she could pick up on his shampoo. It kept her warm, despite also not fitting her physique.

He had woken up earlier than her that morning, putting the appropriate supplies for ice picking into the trunk next to their foldable chairs, the tackles, and the fishing hooks. So they made their way out into the dark, ducking into the car next to each other to make for the lake in the early morning.

She hummed along to the radio as per usual, random songs interspersed in between the local morning forecast. She stopped though now, picking her head up from the back of the seat to look over at Stan.

“We missed the entrance to the dock.”

“Nah there's another one we can go to. Farther down, less people.”

She hummed, smiling over at him. What he actually meant was there would be no lake office to report to. So no need to register them for the lake that day, and no stupid state fee to pay for fishing on the lake. Amused at his shortcuts, she turns back to watch the pine trees pass out the car window.

It was a sharp, nose-burning 10 degrees Fahrenheit that day, according to the radio forecast. Only made worse somehow with the creeping darkness from the horizon line. The sun slinked slowly in the coldness of January.

He made his way out first, the car’s cabin light flashing on as he grinned over at her. Securing his blue coat closed quickly before getting out to stomp a path in the fresh snow around the car. Pulling around the sides to pull open her door, before chugging around to the trunk to unload the supplies he claimed they needed.

She knew how to fish, but had never ventured into ice fishing. Mainly because the cold was beyond unappealing to her. But the thermos Stan had presented to her before making out the door that morning heated her hands enough to dismiss the onslaught of negativity thrumming through her. And partially woke her up on the drive over. Stepping out into the crunchy cold snow to help Stan gather supplies.

He shuffled her chair into her hands, slugging everything else into his own broad arms. He could reasonably carry everything, stomping forward in the snow to make a path for her to follow in.

They had made a spot on the ice, the snowy shoreline a good bit away. Stan claiming the best spots must be farther out. Because the farther out, the bigger the fish. She sat, glancing around the empty ice. When Stan meant fewer people he meant no people. A frozen dock far off near the shoreline also, its wooden structure covered in ice. She watched him now, the fishing poles cradled in her lap, and the thermos warm in her hands. He’s bent in front of her, his mittened hands working an ice auger to break a solid hole through the thick layer of ice.

Grunting, he stands back up, hands on his hips admiring his work.

“Is the ice too thin here?” She observes.

He tilts his head left, turning to her now. “No, doll. Perfectly fine right here. We’ll only be here until a little after sunrise anyway.”

He sits in his own foldable chair that she had set up for him while he was finagling with the ice. Their chairs positioned side by side, a little distance between them and the whole he had just made. He reaches between them, opening up the tackle box to shuffle around drawers, looking for something in its depth.

“Close your eyes, hun.”

She rolls her eyes, closing them, while shuffling the thermos between her thighs to hold out her hands in wait. He places something in her mittened hands, it’s slightly heavy in them now.

“Open ‘em.”

She opens them to see an odd black contraption in her hands. Two knobs, a dark screen, and a long antenna on what she presumes is a battery-powered electronic. Almost too dark to make out what it was, but it hit her and she gasped.

“Ta-Da!”

“A radio!” She sings, clutching it closer to her chest and swinging in her seat to knock her knees with his. Clawing at his shoulder to fold herself into his neck and coat’s furry trim. She wouldn’t question where he got it, just revel that he had thought to, for her.

“I know you weren’t too eager to go fishing with me, doll. But I figured this could make up for some of it.” He chuckled, readjusting his hat on his head after they pulled away. Knee’s still knocking between them.

“I’d do anything with you Stan.” She hums, unthinking, as she looks down at the device in her hands. Tweaking around the knobs and the antenna to turn it on. She misses his flush next to her.

She gets it working quickly, the music faintly staticy in the background of Stan attempting to put lures at the end of their poles.

He gets her’s ready first, leaning forward in his seat to situate the pole in her hands. Pointing out the slack line and the type of lure he put on the end of her pole. She’s too distracted, like she always is when he’s probably explaining something vaguely important.

The music hums between them, perched on the tackle box he had closed. His cheeks flushed from the cold, his hat slumping down the back of his head, hair peeking out around the rim and sticking to his forehead. He leans in closer, his knee and thigh along her own. His own covered hand reaching for hers, folding it around the pole for her to hold.

They enjoy each other's company until the sun peaks up along the horizon, a good hour in. As they pass the coffee-filled thermos back and forth, she hums to the radio. Enjoying stories Stan told about tourists from the end of the last season. Telling her about their ridiculous questions he had to work around last minute.

“Then he asked me if they were extinct!”

“What you tell him?”

“Well he couldn’t have been more than eight years old, and he got all teary-eyed when he asked me.” Stan waves his hand around, drumming up the memory of when a child had asked him if the fake displayed plady-beaver was the last of its kind.

“Annnnddd?” She hums, sipping on the last of their shared beverage.

“And I may or may not have said they were not.” He shrugs. “Was easy to convince the kid’s dad to buy him a plushy.”

She laughs, thinking about the stupid merchandise she’s still not used to, that she sometimes restocked in the front of the house. But of course, Stan didn’t have the heart to really crush the kid’s spirit. Sad kids equaled less money probably, in his mind. That and he had a weird affinity of being about to communicate with them like no other.

There’s a tug on her line suddenly, not the first in the hour they’d been at their spot, but the first real strong one she’s ever felt. Jerking her pole, bending it forward. Both her hands met the pole, yanked straight in her seat suddenly.

“Woah!” He says, sitting forward and reaching for her pole also. His hands encased hers around the pole. “Hold it tight, hun.” Grunting in her ear.

But the pulling got worse, had them both standing from their chairs. His arms around hers, helping her reel back the pole, pulling it back towards his left shoulder. His arms encasing her, pulling her flush with his front.

“I gotcha.” He grunts again, close to her ear.

“Do you?” Gasping at the strength of the pull along the pole.

It seems to drag them closer and closer to the ice hole he had put in the ground not even an hour ago. His feet planted firm, yet scrapping against the ice. Hers fumbling, dipping under the strength of being pulled forward. Her hands tight, beginning to sweat and ache in the casing of her mittens. A heat around the ring of her hat. He’s hot behind her, warmth seeping out from his coat and onto her back. He feels firm, and yet they both continue a slow crawl forward.

Until it tugs. It tugs so hard that she instinctually releases her grip. Her hands were still steady against the pole though, still beneath Stan’s own hands.

The jerk has them both flung forward, his feet no longer steady, flipping against the ice. She’s still between his arms when they fall forward, inching towards the hole. He turns them somehow, taking the brunt of it on his right shoulder.

Her head swims, having met the ground rather suddenly. But she’s between his arms, her hands having let go of the fishing pole. He’d let them slip from the pole, his arms tight around her, trying to take the force of the impact.

“Stan.” She mutters, mushy between them. Her head pounded for a minute, as they continued to slide against the ice. His chin propped on her head, warm around her still.

He doesn’t respond, because he’s given no time to. Another harsh tug on the pole sent him forward quickly towards the hole. He thinks fast though, bending his arms, hooking his feet along her legs, and pulling her out of his grasp.

She slides along the ice and snow, his push along her legs and waist burned. She turned, pushing herself up on her hands. Grasping at the snow to get some balance. She had run into the chairs and tackle box. All their supplies scattered along the ice. The radio was static behind her.

It had all happened so fast, her voice cracking in the cold air. Calling his name but not finding him. One moment he was there, the next gone. The water still.

They had been pulled forward so suddenly, a quick five-second span between the tug and her head meeting the ice. And he was gone as soon as she had lifted herself again, the ice cracking along the sides of the former small hole.

“Stanley!” Scrapping, crawling towards the hole. The surface wet and slick from the cold lake water that had seeped through the cracks along the hole now. Stan’s visage far from view, the top of the water dark.

She stares in what feels like forever but is only quantifiable in the movements of the sun. It’s rising now, around her. Sparkling on the ice and water around her. Something she’d marvel at, have her grasping at Stan’s shoulder. Nudging him to see as she does.

She thinks only briefly before shucking off her hat and gloves, beginning to unlace her boots. She’d follow him, into the dark depths.

A deep continuous thump. Running along the ice. First near her feet, then farther and farther from her. It has her racing towards it, the vibrations along the ice guiding her along. It must be him, must be that something that pulled him into the dark murky water. The rhythmic thudding has her racing back to the supplies. Fumbling for the axe Stan had packed to help pick out the ice in the hole.

Running full force back, the ice cracking beneath her legs. Shoelaces dancing around her feet, her fingers nippy and uncovered around the wooden handle of the axe.

It cracks, sickenly loud and sudden. Water bursts beneath her shoes, seeping up and around her. The ground opens up in front of her, splitting along the horizon line. A flash of blue precariously balanced in the large maw of a blurred creature.

It shakes the ice, splintering and fracturing it below her feet. The weight of the creature resting the front of its body along the ice. Shaking the striking blue figure in its jaw, trying to subdue it.

She stands still in the ankle-deep water, trying to make out the blurry figure in the maw of the anomaly. It strikes her then that it could be nothing else but Stanley, confirmed by the sputtering grunts the figure heaves, coughing up cold water from his lungs.

She stands frozen only until then, stepping forward into the slowly sinking ice bath. Ax swung behind her shoulder, ready to slice along the neck of the beast in hopes it would release her husband.

He clamors in the cage of teeth above. Raised his large hand into a well-practiced fist, blindly throwing said fist to meet the eye of the beast.

The hit startles the beast, cracking open its jaw to release Stan, a sudden sharp screech creeping up its large neck through its throat. Rattling her bones as she leaps forward in the ice and water, bringing the ax into the meat of the beast's neck.

It crawls back further, slinking back into the dark cold waters. She stumbles back through the ice and the water until she feels snow beneath her unlaced boots again, the ax gone from her grasp and embedded in the skin of the anomaly. The beast is there and gone in a flash, scrambling back beneath the water.

Stan has the air knocked out of him, having landed on his back. His head cracked against the ice and water below, the cold creeping in through his clothes. He opens his mouth to groan but finds only his shallow breath and the puff of heated air leaves his mouth. The sun creeping above the horizon now, something he can only gauge by the heat on his face. The rest of him rock solid and shivering under the weight of his wet clothes.

A sudden eclipse above his head, the sun, and shadows shaded by a beautiful face. Her face shadowed by the sun, her hat gone and her hair spilling all around her head like a halo. Her cheeks flush from the cold, from the adrenaline. It could be the cold or the way the light looks around her head, but he swore she must have been an angel.

He’s muttering when she finally reaches him, stumbling through the cracked ice and wet water. Her only thought was getting to him. He was beyond sense when she did make it to him, clutching at his tattered and soaked blue coat. He was soaked, drenched to the bone. His hat gone and his hair icy along his head, his gloves gone also, a boot missing from his left foot. And he’s drenched. It all stuck to his body, freezing quickly in the icy temperature. She had to get him home, get him out of these clothes, and heat him up.

She runs her hands along his coat first, checking for punctures, for blood. He had been dragged several yards under the water in the toothy jaw of said beast. But no punctures and no blood made themselves apparent through his coat. Something she’ll have to access later.

A thump along the ice has her whipping her head around. The vibration rippling along the ice and the shards of the broken lake surface. The beast lingered in the area, waiting for them to be off guard again.

She wastes no time, lifting Stan’s large arm up and above her shoulder. Leveraging his body up to be leaned against her side and her back. All those stories about mothers and daughters and adrenaline ring in her head, a truth to the stories of women and abnormal strength in times of strife. She would ache tomorrow, and be glad of it anyways.

He unconsciously shuffles his feet, and she makes note that he’s somewhat conscious. The ice helps her slip them both along the good hundred yards she has until they reach the shoreline. Their supplies the least of her worries, and the anxious thought of the beast meeting her back out there in the wreckage of it all. She does not turn back to look when abandoning it all.

It’s harder folding his stiff body into the passenger seat. His legs flopped into the car last. She curses, reaching over him to buckle him in and then making for the driver's side. She rarely drove them, it was more of a special occasion between the two of them. She had only ever driven once in the winter and had been deeply scared of the slipping ice and heavy snowfall. But the sky was clear and she’d put the thought of ice away for a long while.

She curses again, reaching over to Stan to feel up the inside of his coat pockets for the keys. He stirs at the movement, shrugging off her touch, shivering in his seat.

“Not Doc’.” He mutters, his head spinning.

“What?”

“You’re not Doc’.” He grunts again, his lips loose. His head hurts like a motherfucker.

“I am!” She hisses, hands pushing his away, reaching for his pockets again, looking for the keys.

“Oh.” He looks back, eyes blurry under the odd pressure along the back of his head. This person sounded like his wife, he’d admit. Shifting his head to lean against the back of the long bench, making out the flush on her face and the halo of hair around her head. He thought this was his angel? He guessed it was the same thing in his mind, anyway.

She’s still ruffling through his soaked half-frozen jacket. “Hi, angel.” He says, smiling down at her frusstrated face. Why was she so frazzled?

He’s grinning like an idiot, and he just acted like he didn’t know who she was. Like she wasn’t her. Calling her angel? He’d only ever done that in her dream. That achingly sick dream she had of them, of them in this very car. Of his weight above her, of his breath along the crook of her neck. Of his kiss.

She shakes it off. Finally finding the keys folded into a very frozen and flat pocket along his chest. Turning back to the wheel, starting the car up, and peeling out of the parkway backward. Leaving the same way they had come in.

She races home, glancing over at Stan stiff in the passenger seat. His eyes hadn’t left her figure but seemed distant. His thoughts far beyond him, and his coat and pants were frozen against him. His hair melts off his head in the car, still wet but no longer frozen to his scalp. Messy wet hair tucked around his big ears.

She parks and throws open doors as quickly as she physically can. Slipping in the snow, tripping over her loose boots. Fingers frigid when she reaches for him to move him out of the passenger side.

She knows the signs of hypothermia. Knows the dangers of prolonged exposure to cold, and dropping body temperature. Doing math in her head, hoping he had been exposed short enough for her to physically raise his temperature before his heart began to slow. Before blood began to sludge its way through his veins.

He looks as blue as his coat, his arm slugged back over her shoulder as she attempts to get him up the stairs. The slurred speech, the confusion, the dulled skin. It made her heart race, taking steps two at a time to drag him to the upstairs restroom. To the bath.

She sets him against the open door, running and slipping along the tile, turning on the bath to its warmest temperature. The water would be scalding against his cold skin, would sting and tingle in contrast to his wet clothes, but it was the only way she thought to raise his temperature.

She rushes back to him, kneeling in front of him, grabbing at his coat and pants to pull the wet clothes from him. He’s smiling again, giggling at her attempt to uncloth him.

“Could have asked hun.” He jokes, but she cries. He’s so out of it, so gone from this reality and it shakes her bones. He’s here and not all at once.

He thinks he sees her clearer here in the yellow bathroom light, hot fog swelling around them from the facet. She has her hands all over him, eager to get him out of wet clothes that stick hard against his body. Didn’t she know? That all she had to do was ask and he would shed any layer to get closer to her? He giggles again, leaning into her hot hands against his cold blue body.

She manages to get everything but his boxers and socks off him, a flush to her face. Not for lacking of trying though, but Stan would laugh and shake her hand away. Muttering under his breath between them when she would reach for the waistband of his usual blue loose boxers. So she luggs his wingspan along her back again, leveraging him up to move him to the scalding water. Heat bubbling up in clouds around the water. Bruises along his chest have begun to form from the pressure and weight of the beast's teeth and jaw. They’d turn purple and swell soon, a good sign she sighed. A swell meant blood was flowing fast still.

He hisses, his head rocking back along the edge of the clawed tub when he finally is able to sit in the water. It’s hot, too hot. It hurts to breathe in the heat, and he attempts to lift his lungs above the water to gain air again. The muggy water hurts his skin and burns him. But her hand meets his chest, pushing him back into the scalding water.

“Stay.” She commands, eyes wavering when she looks at him now. Melted into the porcelain of the tub. He’s still shivering. He doesn’t even register it but his body has been shaking, vibrating, this entire time. Moving his muscles in an attempt to warm him up.

She reaches to turn the hot water back on, cursing, beating her hand along the rim of the tub when the water comes out cold. It’s all gone. She looks down at him again, her hand moving along his chest, trying to generate heat where her hand was. “Stay, Stan. Stay in the fucking water.”

“Yes ma’am.” He mutters, still smiling at her like an idiot. God, she was pretty, god her hand felt nice along his cold bitter skin. She was out the door so quickly. Was it possible to miss someone who was just in the other room?

She’s barreling down the stairs, flipping on every gas burner in her wake on the kitchen stove. Stumbling to the cupboard, pulling out saucepans and the like to put water in. She’d boil it, damnit. Like her grandmother used to do for her when she was preparing her bath.

She doesn’t breathe until every corner of the stove is full. Leaned over the countertop next to the burners. Her hand rubbed along her chest, along her heart. Self-soothing, the purpose of the continuous motion above the erratic beating. She had tunnel vision up until now, suddenly noticing that she hadn’t even flicked on the kitchen light. Hadn’t even closed the front door.

She had been scared. Still was. Shaken beyond something she knew. It pained her to be in the next room, afraid of looking over her shoulder and not finding him there. She’d never lead them through crowds again, never let him stray far from her peripheral. Because then he would be gone, could be gone.

Ice seeps in through her snow pants, and she tugs off her boots too. Socks wet against the kitchen tile. Her hands shake as she pulls her boots loose.

She had almost lost him. Lost him for good. It was a shell shock beyond her, beyond her imagination. For the last five years, it was hard to conjure up adventures and trips without him. The thought of flippantly leaving him behind never crossed her mind. Hadn’t ever left her mind. Not after storming in through the shack's door, not after his confession to her across the dim kitchen table, across their kitchen table.

She sits there now, feeling like it was a lifetime ago, but knowing she could blink and mistake the past for the present. He had reached across to her that night, across the table. Held his palms face up when he asked for help. When he confided in a four-second mistake he had made. She had hesitated then, to reach for him. To reach across and find assurance between them, to fold her hands into his own. She had judged initially. But they had both made mistakes. Both made mirror image mistakes, it felt. She didn't want to hesitate to reach for him ever again. She just feared he would be gone before she could. Feared he would disappear along her shoulder line.

She had thought it was obvious, the unspoken agreement between them. That they both meant something to the other. That her dreams threaded into a deeper reality, and that the jokes they shared weren’t some passing balm to deal with it all. That the late nights in front of the T.V. analyzing movies were for the thrill of each other's company, and that their yearly poker game was a silent promise of convergence. That the shitty driving lessons weren’t so she could drive away from him someday, that chalkboard lessons were so he wouldn’t scoff when she said he was smart with her whole chest. That the yearly diner dates were just that, just dates. Not something flippant, not something as unkind as the upkeep of an image. That he opened doors for her for a reason and tucked her below his chin because he cared enough to. That he reached across tables, palms up, because he never feared her hesitation.

Something unwritten between them she believed, everything shared in everything but words and letters. She was a calculating woman throughout her years and didn’t know how to trace the beginning of the feelings she had amassed all the way to the end of it. She didn’t know how to explain that her heart clenched when he leaned over the seat to buckle her in or explain how her hands shake when he reaches for the chalk from her now in the middle of a lesson. It was inconsequential, improbable, and entirely unexplainable to well… explain the sum of him to her. It felt little in comparison to his constant devotion.

The two front pots begin to boil over, she lifts her head, turning off burners and carrying a stem to a pot in both hands. Taking the stairs two at a time again, uncaring about the burning water running down her arms in her haste to make it back to him.

He’s still the same shade, but he lifts his head to look at her when she enters now. His smile less doppy, more genuine. His hair beginning to dry along his head, no ice to be found in its dark strands. He’s still leaning heavily along the back of the tub, not yet able to hold himself up. Color coming back to his cheeks, to his face. She kneels beside the tub, the floor wet as it seeps in through her pants. She pours in one pot at a time, swiping the water around to acclimate it to the bathwater. His hands move unconsciously, grabbing a strand of her hair to fold behind her ear. To be able to look at her more clearly through the fog of hot water.

She begins to pour the next pot into the tub, but he tugs her forward, folds her body against the rim of the tub. Something in her makes her stand, lifting her feet into the tub. The way he looks at her, so disorientated and shivering still. It moves her forward, has her crawling into the tub completely clothed just to lay her cheek against his chest. To make sure it continues to rise under her. Like when she sleeps, and he lulls her back to sleep by simply being there. She wants that, for him to lull her racing heart now. Make her forget about his disappearing visage and still water. He does that, hums like he always does, folding her head under his scruffy chin. Comforting her despite his weakened figure. Hoping she wouldn’t notice how cold he still was against her.

Something unwritten she believed, something she had never had to say out loud because she had never felt this weird depth before. But he was slipping from her grasp now, heavy against the rim of the tub. And so very quiet it made her sick, made her heart chase up her throat. Made her anxious beyond words, because the thing she meant to say to him would stay unwritten. If he was gone she’d only voice such fantasies in her dreams. The dreams she had of him as hers, those other realities her mind conjured where he wore a golden band and called her his. Where she was his.

“You're mine.” Her voice was unwavering, something unwritten between the syllables of her words. It blooms and bursts from her throat, a growth that had sprouted long ago, stumbles out of her mouth searching for light. Still folded under his chin, along his chest. Her shirt wet from the water, bunched up along her waist where he had put his hands.

He gets that look in his eyes despite her intensity, a joke on the tip of his tongue. Something to soothe her racing heart, to stamp down the distant look in her eyes. How she had looked in the car scared him, the rush of her chest but the focus of her eyes. Like they had been driving in the dark, through a neverending tunnel. But she chases it away before he can open his mouth, her hand meeting and cupping his scruffy jaw, pulling back from her comfort to look at him. Turning his eyes to her intense ones, ones that held something unspoken.

“No.” A shake to her voice, eyes blurry. “You’re mine.”

He nods, his voice stuck in his throat. Running his hands up her back, his warmer hands.

“Y-you aren’t allowed to leave me like that, Stanley. You can’t l-leave me all alone like that.” Flashes of a towering beast are nothing compared to turning over her shoulder. Of searching the horizonline. Like she does for Stanford, eyes drifting to tree lines. She wouldn’t, couldn’t compartmentalize doing such a thing for Stanley. She’d take back hesitancies and reach across tables palm up if it meant he wouldn’t leave her again.

“I promise, angel.” He takes her again, tucking her back to his chest. Her racing heart fluttered against his warming chest. “I won’t leave.”

Her hand fall into that crook in his chest, the other clutching along his back, trying to bring him closer, trying to make the space between them disappear. She sniffling, from the cold and stress, against his chest and he doesn’t think twice about his words. Thinking of reaching for her, of meeting her across bridges and tables and in tunnels to meet her open palms, her warm hands. Unfurling her from his chest to lean down and place his lips near her ear, something unspoken between syllables.

“You’re mine, too.”

His lips traveling to her cheek, hovering against the flush skin before tracing her warmth. Kissing the apple of her cheek as she leans into the front of him. His lips warm against her cheek, like she had dreamed of. He had never been this close in the waking world, something she craved more with each passing day. She never pulled away, sniffling as he brings her forward again. No hesitation to be found in the nod of her head along his scruff, a nudge, and nestle of agreement. Something unspoken, unwritten.

She forgot about the pots and burners.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #gravity falls imagine #grunkle stan #stanley pines #stan pines #stanley pines x reader #stan pines x reader

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pparacxosm · 2 months ago

Text

sigh like a chime

(postcanon!patrick zweig x infant halfsister’s au pair!reader; idk either man; came to me in a dream; title from the sound of music let’s all act shocked; major tw for suicide talk; tw depressive behaviour; tw disordered thoughts about eating; tw vague implication of alcoholic dependency; patrick zweig is generally not doing so hot; like at all; tw strained father son dynamics; tw grown adults projecting childhood trauma onto a baby; warning you now: this is a long one !! ; make a day of it; atp coexisting; lily donaldson being a weird little girl ™; tw airports during holiday season; whoever came up with the headcanon that patrick was late for his circumcision and it got cancelled i owe you a kidney; so cw smut obviously; cw religious ((Christianity, specifically Catholicism + Judaism briefly)) motifs; tw splicing of said motifs with the aforementioned smut; tw vomit)

“It’s not that I’m not happy for him,” Patrick tells Tashi, “I really am, you know I mean that.”

He paces her kitchen impatiently, running fingers through dark, dishevelled hair.

At such times, he still looks like the boy wonder sprinting carelessly across electric blue asphalt, eyes shimmering, as if he were part of that riot of colour. Some of his athletic maturity is replaced with the facetious, callow mannerisms of a hungry novice who wants to skip the necessary steps. Who wants to swallow experience and spit out the bones.

Tashi straddles a stool at the vast marbletop island. She’s pattering away like bulletquick rainfall on her MacBook. She doesn’t even spare him a glance.

Patrick makes an effort to rein in his temper. He drops into one of the stools. He swivels left and right and cranes his neck, staring up at the coffered ceiling moulding.

“It’s almost Christmas, Patrick. Go home.”

I am home, he wants to say, but that would be revolting and stupid and he doesn’t even really mean it. Art and Tashi aren’t home for him. Nothing is. And he likes that, he likes being a nomad.

Lily clicks in like a pony. Lily—well, Lili, Lieselotte—is also the name of his little sister. He likes the coincidence. The trick of the mind he can perform, imagining an alternative family.

Family is just being nomads together.

“Hey, I told you no tap shoes inside,” Tashi says, eyes still swimming through the pixelmire of her computer screen.

Perhaps Patrick ought to feel flattered by her attention at all. His familial woes are just as perturbing to Tashi as Lily fucking up the flooring with her ball changes.

Patrick’s still quashing his irritation. She doesn’t even fuck him, anymore. He actually doesn’t fuck much of anything at all, of late. What with how tired he is all the time, how his flesh and bones deplete with each exertion. In a way, that’s her fucking him. But it’s also just the scorn of getting older.

It gets harder to shoulder things. His patience corrodes quicker. He should lean forward, take that laptop, and lob it across the room. She’s not even wearing those stupid bluelight glasses she’s supposed to be wearing.

“Do you just not care about anything?” It’s a petulant attempt at stoking her, but it’s too meandering and abstract to really matter, let alone take effect.

She doesn’t respond for a whole five seconds, still typing, and when she does, it’s a distracted whisper of, “What?”

Her power over him is such that she can afford to be so blindly condescending. But it still stings.

He groans into the air, and it’s such a thundering sort of noise that Lily spares him a weirded out scowl on her way to the pantry. “Do you really want me in Germany? I’ll sit on my ass and start drinking beer again all day, Coach.”

Three years into their partnership, he often uses her title to signal his annoyance.

Tashi sighs like she’s disappointed. Not disappointed that he’s trying, but the fact that he’s making such meaningless, childish stabs at it. Instead of just going for it. As in, yes, smashing her MacBook over his knee and yelling pay attention to me! She’d respect that more and he knows it.

But, anyway, she lowers the screen halfmast and looks at him. “Are you jeal—”

“I’m not jealous of the baby.”

“Okay…”

“But he’s sixtyfive, Tashi! It’s ridiculous.”

Tashi does something between a scoff and a laugh, shaking her head. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweater and narrows her eyes at him. “And how old did you say the new wife was?”

“Thirtytwo, Tashi.”

Tashi laughs properly now, dropping her head and dragging her thumb and forefinger over her lashes. Patrick smiles at her amusement, albeit at his expense.

“That is pretty ridiculous.” She looks up at him again, clearing her throat, “Don’t try to bullshit me and pretend you don’t still drink beer.”

He wants to contradict her, but he decides he wants to make her laugh more. “He met her because she was his masseuse for a hot stone treatment.”

Tashi sputters, her giggles spilling everywhere, and she’s waving her hands like she’s calling timeout.

“And then he calls me,” Patrick continues, before miming a phone to his ear and straightening and dragging his voice down like an anchor with an affected distinguished rumble, “And goes, Son, I am moving back to Germany. I have love again.”

“I have love again!” Tashi wheezes, her elbows thunking on the marble and her face falling into her hands. Her shoulders are shaking with laughter.

“Like it’s a fucking disease.”

“It is.” Art’s voice still manages to quaver delivering a glib oneliner. Maybe because he doesn’t mean it. Patrick’s willing to chalk it up to his brisk stride as he enters the kitchen. Always a fucking pep in his step these days, the fucking asshole.

Patrick doesn’t turn his head. He feels a sharp instance of vertigo when Art’s hand lands on his shoulder. But both the touch and nausea are gone as soon as they arrive, and he passes off the motion of his own hand going to grab Art’s fingers as a scratch to his nose. Tashi’s too busy wiping her tears away to have noticed that, thank God.

“Oh my God, please tell him,” Tashi cackles, still gathering lost breath as Art slides her bluelight eyeglasses onto her face and enswathes her body with his, caressing her arms with his knuckles.

“He knows,” Patrick says dismissively, even though that’s a lie. He hasn’t told him.

“What do I know?”

Tashi recounts the story with the engaging enthusiasm of what Patrick is beginning to recognise as schadenfreude. But even that is still a salve, and he feels a little foolish for forgetting its effect. Not just the laughter, but all of this. He wishes they would just throw him a bone and let him stay for Christmas. He feels like a dying dog made to live too long. He offered to dress up as Santa, but Lily herself informed him that she’s far outgrown such folly and resents his assumption otherwise. She’d kicked him in the shin with the metal plate of her tap shoe. He’d let her.

Art’s smile quirks up at the image. Mean old Mr Zweig laid nude across a spa bed, cock jumping for the meek masseuse.

“Bet he slipped her eight grand to fold the towel a little lower,” Art mumbles into Tashi’s hair, the strands buttery against his lips.

She makes a face at this. She raises her hand to swat his arm reproachfully.

But Patrick only chuckles. Spares a glance over his shoulder to where Lily is sprawled on the couch, gripping the handles of her shockproof iPad case with the focus of a pilot at the yoke of a plane, her little head swallowed by a pair of AirPod maxes. Turns back and looks up at Art with a conspiratorial smirk.

“Probably had her stroke his dick with two hot stones,” he murmurs.

Tashi thinks that’s even less funny. But Art thinks it’s even more funny.

He laughs very loudly and does a less than polite impression of an old German bastard wincing and coming.

“Ah—” he hisses, “The next one up my bumhole, yes?”

It sounds like a botched Hitler lampoon, and it’s ostensibly a caricature he’s done many times before. Sometimes, they spend whole days just wading through their ancient morass of shared memories and inside references and running gags. Sometimes, even now, it's just easier that way.

Patrick laughs so hard he falls out of his chair.

They do let him stay for dinner.

It feels like they’re mocking him, but he’s hungry. So he stares into the middle distance and listens to Lily spiritedly declaim facts about deep sea turtles. She keeps surreptitiously slipping Brussels sprouts from her plate onto his. It wouldn’t be his place to mention it. And, for her part, she quaffs down her mashed potatoes like an endurance test. He tells her they’re not going anywhere. She kicks his shin again and he’s pretty sure she should have taken those shoes off by now.

He watches every gentle graze of Art and Tashi’s limbs and shoulders.

He sighs and chews his sprouts until his jaw aches.

There are worse things in his head to beat himself up with than wishful thinking.

“What’d Sassy say?” Art asks as he uncorks a Montrachet.

The corner of Patrick’s mouth quirks up almost imperceptibly. Like the reflexive twitch of a bad muscle. But he can tell Art discerns it by the way he starts to chuckle preemptively. That grin that spreads across his face like fire on dry grass.

Patrick huffs. “She said she hopes the baby chokes and dies.”

“You’re killing me, Sas.”

It’s December eighteenth at JFK. Patrick feels like a fucking sardine. Everyone is everywhere. The emetic odour of tarmac and jet fuel embues him. His fingers are red and stiff and so tightly coiled around the stainless steel handrail of the escalator that he thinks they may just pop off like caps. There’s an acetous chill to the nighttime air, and he probably should’ve worn more layers, but the sweat on his back is already soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt. He doesn’t mind. It’s better than being late.

Patrick’s dad used to enforce punctuality like a jailhouse warden. Saskia knows that.

He has his phone tucked to his ear against one shoulder.

His sister’s voice across the receiver sounds warped and liminal. His stomach is grumbling.

“You’re fucking me, Sas, you’re fucking me right over,” Patrick says. “What’s in Brazil?”

“Well, warmth, for one.”

“What about me?”

Saskia laughs. That loud, tocsin laugh she used to do when he’d wet the bed. “You boycotted the christening, Brutus.”

“Why would I fly to Germany to watch a baby take a bath?”

“Why are you flying to Germany now?”

Patrick’s teeth are on edge as he schleps his weighty duffel toward the terminal. He fishes a cigarette out of his windbreaker pocket and shoves it through his lips. He wants to spark it, even though Tashi’s psychologically tortured him into quitting, and he’d get thrown out for sure. There’s a line of security guards at every corner, and he’s seen the German Shepherd sniffer dogs.

He chews on the cigarette instead. Grinds the tip between his molars to get that stark jounce of nicotine even if it’s mostly tobacco and paper.

Saskia is saying something in his ear, and he’s only halfpretending to listen. His eyes are fastened straight ahead, singeing holes into the back of a woman’s head. Her hair is pulled into an absurdly tight ponytail. And he is so taken by the movement of the strands as it bobs with each step that he is only dragged back to reality when Saskia says his name loud enough to stab his eardrums.

He blinks. “What, bitch?”

“Paddy, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I don’t wanna throttle the little shit. I’m pushing forty and I cried because he bought it a fucking babysize tiara.”

Patrick closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. He swallows a bit of that tobacco wad on his tongue. He nearly gags. He belatedly catches that a couple of security guards are looking at him with some suspicion. He holds up a finger as if to say, sorry, and turns around to walk away.

Saskia’s still on the line, and she starts singing something, though he doesn’t understand why. He has to hold the phone a good foot away until she shuts up.

“Wh—” he scoffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey, maybe you’ll get along with it.”

“Unlikely.”

“Maybe you’ll get along with dad.”

“Un—fucking—likely,” he retorts.

He ducks into a corner of the empty terminal and drops inelegantly onto a hard plastic seat. He is hyperaware of the sweat fumes under his arms, the way his track pants cling too snugly to his thighs.

“Actually, hey,” Saskia says, and he can hear her perking up. He imagines her in a hammock in Rio. She’ll burn so bad. No earthly SPF could ever keep her from shedding like a crimson serpent. “She has this au pair.”

Patrick glances up at the TV monitor over his head.

Departures to Berlin 23 30, it reads, flashing jarringly in red LED lettering, accompanied by a blinking graphic of an airplane taking off.

He makes a noncommittal grunt. “That tracks,” he mumbles.

“I’m saying you don’t have to be lonely,” says Sassy, “Make friends! She’s nice. Bit young.”

“Reckon dad’ll try to knock her up next?”

Saskia laughs herself to piggish snorting. The bigeared little boy within him, tugging at the pantleg of his sister’s pyjamas for attention, is vaguely mollified by that laughter. Albeit at his expense.

He should spend the flight feeling guilty for not getting a gift for the baby, but he listens to a true crime podcast instead.

They’re talking about a young girl who was found unconscious by the side of a road. The truck driver who spotted her was a little drunk at the time, and he was afraid that if he called the cops he’d lose his job, so he just moved her body further up the road where someone else could find her.

Apparently, she was still alive, but the truck driver thought she was already dead.

It’s not certain if she would have made it, had he done The Right Thing, but maybe it would've made a difference.

“He should've just called the cops and driven away,” one of the hosts says.

“If you’re reporting an accident, you can’t just remove yourself from the premises,” the other one replies.

“Well no, but if you report a homicide—“

“Same thing. Also, how can you just leave a person bleeding by the side of the road?”

“Was she visibly bleeding?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Patrick closes his eyes and leans his head back. The clouds roll by like lambhide.

He can picture it clearly, driving away from this fucking mess, leaving a body by the side of the road. He’d do it if he could. But he thinks he’s the body.

He shudders with a pang of cold. He doesn’t know why this image sticks. It’s like ghosts, floating in between the clouds.

Saskia texts him. Suffocate the baby with a pillow. Also delete that text. And that one.

And he, the body by the side of the road, doesn't say anything.

The plane jostles a little in a patch of turbulence. They descend into Berlin at eight in the morning.

His knees hurt from keeping them bent at an angle for so long, his ass is going numb. He should feel sorry for himself, being alone like this.

As he deplanes, a few fellow passengers glance in his direction, their noses wrinkling. He can’t tell if it’s the bitter rot of cigarette between his teeth or his sudor stench or his mouldering heart.

People converge in the baggageclaim like a throng of cattle. Patrick shoulders through. Swallowed up and spat out and alone again.

No one pays anyone any attention. Everyone is hurrying to make this flight or get to the next. When Patrick finds a men’s room, he realises he should be glad for that. In the reflection of the large mirror above a long stretch of white porcelain sinks, he can see shadows like cosmic abysses under his eyes. Some of the veins in his arms—which are sticking out from under his sleeves like pythons—are slightly swollen and purple.

His duffle bag bangs against his hip as he shuffles onto the tarmac and joins the taxi queue.

Berlin greets him with an onslaught of sleet.

His bones rattle like clicking spoons in the cold. He’s cursing under his breath and trying to remember the last time he was sincerely back in Germany.

Not just a brief cut across for a match, a layover, a hamfisted excuse to see his sister.

He was probably nine.

Patrick lumbers up the walkway to his father’s home. It looks like it’s been shoveled already today but has endured several hours of snowfall since. That and—well—he guesses his dad’s playing humble now.

Sas had dubbed it a latelife crisis. But it’s not shabby. In fact, it’s nice. It’s no limestone portico. Far cry from the august Georgian Revival mausoleum he and Sas gleaned their nascent wounds in.

Lili gets a Hallmark ass two story colonial, strung with Christmas lights. Deep green door, ornate bronze knocker, festooned with a wreath. The doorbell echoes through his empty bones like a deathknell.

His teeth chinkle like coins as he waits.

When the door opens, he releases a protracted, puerile whine. “Fuck.”

You’ve never been cause of such overt disappointment.

It’s almost flattering.

But your smile quickly metamorphoses into a grimace.

His shoulders are drooping and he looks liable to topple facefirst to the snowswathed gravel at any moment. His eyelids keep fluttering, like he’s fighting a losing battle against the urge to just shut down.

“Is this the right house?” he groans, pained and shivering.

You’re marginally certain this is your boss’ son and not a homeless vagrant.

Either way, you’re nodding emphatically. “Of course it is.”

In the kitchen, he stands in the corner like a newly housed stray. Hands tucked into his armpits and chin touching his chest as he watches you spark up the cooktop through snowdappled lashes.

The powdered creamer, as you pour it into the teacup, reminds him, too, of snowfall. You keep flicking him conspicuously concerned glances.

“So you’re Patrick…” you say, spooning sugar.

He clears his throat and hums in a way that says, yeah, I’m not too thrilled about it either. His head is bowed, his eyes fallen shut, and he’s swaying vaguely on his feet. He looks like he’s making devotions. The kettle sings.

His fingers are bonetight around the cup and saucer. He lifts the cup and presses it to his cheek, like leaching the warmth from the ceramic. When he sips, you’re reminded of cats lapping milk.

There’s a moment of silence, and it’s awkward. And then he sneezes—once, twice. His throat clicks.

“Uh… tennis,” you try, folding closed the box of Five Roses.

The steam plumes up and curls around Patrick’s face, flushed and sallow. He clears his throat again, his eyes unfocused. He glances toward you and knows he should reply, but the only thing that comes out is a damp, congested sniff.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Tennis,” he repeats, the word muffled by the cup still pressed to his lips.

You nod slowly, rapping your knuckles rhythmically against the counter. “Wimbledon,” you say then.

Patrick scrunches up his face as if he’s in pain. He’s trying to force some simulacrum of synapse action in the conversational skills faculty of his brain.

“Yeah,” he manages. He takes another gulp of tea and tries to clear his throat again. It hurts. Everything hurts. He hurts.

You nod some more. You can’t help but think that this feels a bit like a tennis game. You and he, volleying oneword utterances back and forth. “Impressive,” you offer, cocking your brows at him.

“Thanks,” Patrick mutters.

He does actually want to be witty. And he does actually want to be charming. And he wants to make a good first impression. But right now he wants to sleep, preferably through a few decades. Certainly, the last few of his father’s life. Which, speaking of,

“Hey, where is the bastard?”

He glances around, as if to see his father lurking in a crevice somewhere. You raise a brow. Could it be an affectionate nickname? Perhaps. But you’re starting to connect some dots.

You smile like you’re trying not to provoke a sabertoothed creature. But Patrick can see in your eyes that he’s amusing you, which he doesn’t mind. Of course he doesn’t mind.

There’s a vast window above the counter, pictureframing an expansive, snowshrouded back garden that, knowing his dad, is probably a rigorously manicured viridescent green in the warmer months. How warm do things get in Germany these days?

He squints against the luminous white splay as you point beyond the glass. There’s a distant brown pinprick that lets him know this property is larger than it seems. Larger than it needs to be. But the kid needs frolicking room, he guesses.

“He’s in the den,” you say.

Patrick throws the rest of his tea back like a shot, placing his cup and saucer onto the counter with a twinkling thunk.

“Alright, then let’s go.”

“My balls are gonna freeze off before we even get there,” Patrick hisses.

Every step forward sends his feet an inch deeper into the snow, and you watch him shake out his running shoes with displeasedness. You laugh at him, and he turns back to face you, and he makes this face that could either be a smirk or an indication of great turmoil. You are struck by his ability to wear that lopsided grin in his current circumstances, to look at you like that. Well, like what? You don’t know.

It’s just that the scarf and wool peacoat you’re wearing make you look like a well-loved heirloom doll. He can see the faintest wisps of your breath in the bitter air. Your smile is so kind and so warm, he thinks, smiling wider.

He appreciates you joining him on his doormat pilgrimage. A better guy would tell you that, but he just turns around and keeps footslogging.

Together, you trudge forward across the sprawling, sleety landscape.

The door to the den is unlocked.

Patrick casts a glance back at you before he pushes it all the way open, hitting the opposite wall with a hollow bang.

It creaks a little on its hinges as it opens into a long corridor. He takes a step in first.

“Hello?” Patrick yells, his voice lilting. “Armed robbery. I have guns and knives and… bombs. Got your pretty nanny.”

You feel the little smile on your face quavering with amusement as you close the door shut behind you.

The floors are clad in dark oak panels. The walls are lined with copper sconces. There’s an ostensibly hideous and probably hilariously expensive rug in the middle of the floor and Patrick makes a show of wiping his shoes clean on it.

“Sure as fuck not taking this thing,” he mumbles, digging his hands into his pant pockets.

He glances toward a long sideboard on the side of the corridor. It’s laden with antique trinkets and mahoganyframed pictures, and he reaches out to prod at an ivory figurine sitting at the edge.

You stay in silence for a few moments, looking at him.

Then, the faint creak of footsteps comes from upstairs, and you both look up at the ceiling. Seconds later, it fades to your right, and, soon enough, there appears Rupert Zweig. Cashmere jumper, tapered joggers.

There is no denying the family resemblance. And if the way Patrick’s eyes narrow as his father descends the staircase is anything to go by, he is not gonna wanna meet—

“There you are,” says Rupert, corners of his eyes crinkling. He stops at the end of the hall, hands in his pockets. The two regard each other like snipers. You have the sharp sensation you shouldn’t be here, but where would you go?

Patrick clicks his teeth wryly. “Here I am.” His hands are also in his pockets. Their deportments are uncannily kindred.

You think Patrick shouldn’t be so putout by that. Rupert Zweig is a handsome sixtyfive. Tall and broad and still in trim, despite most his days being ornamented by cognac and cigars. His silvery hair sheens like tinsel, and has not thinned much to speak of, if at all.

You figure maybe they’ll hug, as Rupert approaches. You know Rupert to be a hugger. But he only claps Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s bones look like they’ve been swapped for concrete, and he watches his father give him a once over, like surveying an old car.

“I hope things are well with you,” Rupert says. Which isn’t strange paternal commentary. But his voice is tinctured with a concerned edge at the overall impression that his only son has been dragged along the pavement by the tail of a motorbike and then beaten with sticks to boot. I thought things were better, now, he’s really saying.

You think it’s concern, anyway. You, too, know Rupert to be quite concerned, and caring. But Patrick takes it as scorn.

He wears a bitter smile. “Things are peachy, Pa.”

His nostrils flare, he shifts his shoulders. Like he wants to shrug his father's hand off, but is keeping still for the sake of seeming mature.

And then it happens. A pule from the ether like the resounding stroke of a viola.

You perk up. “Oh! I’ll go—“

“Yes, dear, she’s with Giselle in the drawing room.” Rupert’s eyes crinkle, a kind brush of his fingers to your elbow.

Patrick—you glimpse, as you shuffle past him and out the passage—looks furious. And a bit queasy.

In the drawing room, Patrick stares at Giselle’s hands. She’s twisting her emerald engagement ring around her finger. The stone is big as a pebble, its facets winking.

He doesn’t let himself look to where you are. On an ivorycoloured foam playmat on the ground, doing something that is causing the baby to squeal and giggle like a strident string of bells and clap her pudgy hands together. He can hear the yarn of drool gurgling from her gummy mouth.

An angeltopped pine tree scintillates with fairy lights in the corner.

Giselle is slender porcelain. White sweater, skinny jeans, milkblonde hair. She crosses her legs at the ankles, knees to the side, like she’s the fucking queen of England. She is polite to varying degrees of genuineness.

“Lili’s so happy to see her big brother.”

Patrick’s knee shudders violently. Cut the shit, Giselle, he wants to spit.

But he knows he won’t. He doesn’t feel he can. Maybe it’d be easier, if she really was just some nympho naif. Then he could call his dad a perv and move on.

But no. Giselle is three years his junior but tenfold his put-togetherness. There are two infants in the room, and neither are her.

The room is so warm and well lit. There are bookshelves teeming with hardcover tomes whose rapiersharp corners look ostensibly untouched. A globe of the world, a framed Picasso original. Baroque vases and potted ivies and the permeating waft of jasmine and rose and leather.

It’s an intimate microcosm of his father and Giselle’s interwoven lives. Their very fumes amalgamate. And then there’s that puny thing, gossamer flesh, babbling like a brook. He doesn’t look. He can’t.

When his dad walks back in, Patrick is on his feet like a springing coil.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” says his dad, handing Patrick a set of keys.

Patrick shakes his head and feigns remorse. “Nah, Sas asked me to water her plants, so.”

Rupert looks like he’s going to say something, but decides against it.

“Right,” he nods and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a slim silver case. He flips open the lid, revealing a neat row of hand rolls. He plucks one between his long fingers. Patrick would say no, if he offered, but resents his father’s lack thereof enough to head for the door.

You think he’ll say bye to you, or maybe offer just a parting wave, but he doesn’t.

You hear him and his dad at odds like a cobra and a mongoose in the hall. You daub tender kisses onto the fleshy pink soles of Lili’s feet. You discern misty fragments of Patrick’s scathing whispers.

“... newage, hippie bullshit... nice guy act... fucking sweatpants... —christen the baby! What the fuck are you doing christening the baby? You never even took us to temple!”

However Rupert responds, on the other hand, is vaguely inaudible. It’s just a deep, cautiously placating rumble of syllables.

You hear a bit more mumbled venom before the door creaks open and slams shut.

“He thinks he’s got everyone fooled, but I’m fucking onto hi— where is your alcohol?”

Patrick’s disembowelling every cabinet in his sister’s kitchen. On all fours like a hound rooting in the snow. He can hear the hot waft of tropical winds from Saskia’s end of the receiver. Crash of surf. Squawking birds. The staticky tempo of Brazilian phonk in the background.

“Ugh, Paddy,” Saskia mumbles like she’s disappointed.

He tears the fridge door open so fervently, the cord comes loose from the socket. There’s nothing there but bottled water, yoghurt, and salad dressing. He makes a strangled noise of agony into the ear piece.

“Saskia May,” Patrick groans with a sonnet’s desperation, resting his head against the icy fridgeshelf, between the organic grassfed butter and the handcrafted balsamic glaze, “I know you may be in a fucking beachside cabana right now, dipping Portuguese cock into your piña colada with the little umbrella in it and then sucking it off, but it is late here, and it is winter, and I am dying.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see the baby?” she asks.

“No, well, I saw her, just…” Patrick’s withdrawing all her earthenware now, “I just didn’t look.”

“What, like the fucking Basilisk?”

“Sassy, for the love of God, tell me you’ve left even a drop of liquor in your home.”

Saskia laughs, and he can hear the chime of ice. “Did you meet the au pair?”

Patrick stumbles back to the stillopen, halfway gutted fridge. He identifies with it. He sticks his head back in. “She thinks I’m a mess.”

“Wow, what a stupid whore,” his sister laughs. As everything, it is at his expense. He’s in emotional arrears, but it’s okay. It’s all okay.

He hears Saskia’s inbreathe. Marijuana? Probably. He doesn’t mind her lungs. He doesn’t mind that she’s always been more beautiful than him. He doesn’t mind that she’s warm in Rio. He knows it’s harder for her. She never got to be Rupert’s little princess. He wants to protect her in that asinine way baby brothers think they can protect their sisters. In that asinine way Patrick Zweig thinks he can protect everyone.

“Have pity on me, Sas.”

She directs him blindly like a game of Marco Polo. He wades through the ransacked bombsite he’s made of her kitchen. Avocados rolling across the slate floor. Spilled milk, which feels symbolic.

He unearths the bottle of Gordon’s dry gin from under the sink. Holds it aloft like a holy grail.

Patrick can’t remember the last time he set foot in a church, if such a time has ever occurred. Part of him expects the parishioners to take one look at him and know he doesn’t belong, for them to demand he leave.

For the things he has done, the things he has felt, the things he has wanted. Certainly for the things he cannot bring himself to believe.

He is struck by the towering stonework of the cathedral. The wooden cross in the apse is immense. Behind it, stained glass windows paint the icedover morning in vivisected coloursplays. Soft motes of sunlight waft in shafts from the ceiling.

He never thought he’d see the day—the Zweigs done up in their Sunday best. His mother would laugh herself to tears.

Rupert’s broad shoulders are ramrod straight, his argent hair slicked back handsomely. Giselle is wearing a ribbed knit dress in eggshell. Princess Lieselotte—finally, a worthy heir—is wearing a knit tunic dress embroidered with blooms, a scallopcollared ivory shirt underneath, and a crocheted woollen baby bonnet.

They look like an affiche for Norman Rockwell.

At first, he’s still trying not to meet the Basilisk’s gaze, but then he gets this disarming glimpse. The peonypink hue of her. Her comically outjutting little ears. Gibbous blue eyes, lapping up the world through cornyellow lashes. Those are Giselle’s. But the rest…

Unlucky little shit, Patrick tells her telepathically. And now he is looking straight at her, like the spell has been broken. He needs to let her know he’s onto her, and her bullshit doting father. You look like dad.

But what that means is she looks like Patrick, too.

He watches you hold her in your arms, rubbing your nose against hers.

Giselle had had you press Patrick’s shirt—his father’s shirt; of course he didn’t pack a buttonup—for him this morning. He was only kind of embarrassed. But he sat carefully in the car, leery of creasing your hard work.

The linen of your skirt reaches your ankles. You’re wearing this creamcoloured slouchy knit turtleneck, and you’ve got a little lacy chiffon infinity veil halfway canopying your hair. Patrick is pleasantly amused by all this fabric. All the things he cannot see. Because of God, or the cold, or God and the cold.

The Zweigs find their pews, stopping frequently to greet their fellow churchgoers, and whisper inquiries after names Patrick doesn’t know. He shakes half a dozen hands if he shakes one, introduces himself as ‘Rupert’s son’ more times than he can count.

You, too, are pleasantly amused. Because Patrick is notably discomfited. You fish your little pewter cross necklace from beneath your collar. You hold it between your fingers and out toward him like an exorcist.

“He can smell your fear,” you whispergrowl, fauxominous. Lili giggles all saliva in your arms. That’s the voice you use when you pretend to be the babyeating ogre. She takes the cross between her tiny teeth. Patrick watches. You smile. “And so can she.”

Patrick looks at you for a moment, feigning indifference. “They’re both smelling how little they matter to me.”

Your smile widens.

Patrick—who has never endured a mass—takes his cues from the brush of your shoulder on when to stand, when to sit, and when to supplicate himself. The priest oscillates from English to Latin and back again. Seemingly on a whim. When Patrick fumbles trying to find the right page for the hymn, you tilt your book slightly so he can read along.

He thinks the rosary looks good where it dangles from your lithe, supple fingers. Looping and weaving through your pretty knuckles like drops of blood.

You are flawless in your devotion.

You slip to your knees with a fluidity that makes his tummy fasten.

You sing quietly and sweetly and when you turn to Patrick to wish peace upon him, your grin is so sweet and earnest it takes a moment for him to contend with that blessing.

Everyone falls down to the hassock again and Patrick is beginning to find the rhythm of the whole affair. At least enough to let his thoughts maunder and his body be at mercy to the motions.

It’s soothing, in its way. He can almost understand it. What blessed relief in lifting your human pains to be scoured clean.

The priest closes out the sermon with a few nice words about Jesus. Guy’s birthday’s coming up, after all.

Patrick leans forward a bit to glance at his father’s fingers, tapping on the dry leather of the psalmbook.

In the photo, little Lili is wearing a white linen nightgown that mantles her whole, like a tiny tarp. His dad cradles her, and everyone’s standing around a marble pool. He can see Saskia off to the side, hosting a very conspicuous hangover behind her mask. You’re in the picture, too. Apparently, you had been Giselle’s doula, in the beginning, and you just ended up sticking around. Which he finds more than a little strange. Patrick often sees life as a series of measures to get further away from his family.

On the edge of the photo, he can see the broad back of a becloaked man, plashing his fingers the water.

Patrick feels an inkling of discomfort at the sight of that man.

“She still sleeps in that dress, actually,” you say, rocking the babe.

The wallpaper of Lili’s room is printed with pale pink linework of woodland creatures. He’s straddling the vintage nursery rocker—a plush weathered lamb; it used to be his and Saskia’s—and his knees are hiked comically high on either side of him, his slacks riding up his ankles.

Patrick stares at the baby girl in this framed photograph. She looks too small—almost tenuous—underneath the white shift. Her eyes are flushed and still wombswollen.

“What’s the point?” he asks, trying to imagine that man softly slooshing water over her boneless head.

You smile. “It’s to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?”

You lower Lili into her French Provençal style woodcarved bassinet.

You look up at him, eyes flitting over his face. “Shame, I guess.”

It doesn’t quite make sense. A fullimmersion baptism means commitment. You have pledged yourself to God. You are bound to follow His laws. Shame is essential to these laws. Isn’t it?

You don’t know why he’s still here. Giselle is taking her Sunday nap, and Rupert’s playing solitaire or reading Guy Sajer or something in the den. Lili, too, is dead to the world. You need to do the laundry. The laundry room is too strait for him to be lingering, leaning against the doorframe, interrogating you. He likes watching the linen of your skirt gather at your feet as you crouch to the floor, depositing the armfuls of bedding into the mouth of the washing machine. All that fabric.

“It’s a different kind of shame,” you try to explain. “I can be ashamed of myself, of my body.”

“Why are you ashamed?”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t know. I’m alive.”

“Alright. And this helps?”

“A little, yeah. It takes you out of your body. Then returns you to it. And you feel brand new. Like you belong to Jesus.”

You laugh a little at the concept, but he can tell you treasure this belonging, deep down.

He walks toward you, taking the empty wicker hamper from your hands and setting it aside. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed in the first place.”

You shrug, noting his proximity. “It’s probably good to feel shame from time to time.”

He doesn’t say anything to that.

He doesn’t ask you if you feel ashamed right now. Face smushed against the top of the palpitating washing machine. If you said yes, he’d be unhappy. If you said no, he’d be unhappy.

He’s happy, now, hiking your skirt up around your waist, shucking your gauzy tights halfway down your thighs. Best not to ruin it.

So he doesn’t ask if you’re ashamed. He doesn’t ask if you’re a virgin. He does ask if you’re on birth control, and furrows his brows as his strong hands caress the flesh of your ass.

“Why not?” he laughs, dragging the beige skin down his rigid cock, rubbing the deep blush head against your hirsute pussy and bending over you. “Isn’t that shit free here?”

He burrows his head beneath your sweater, kissing your back through the cotton of your longsleeve. He doesn’t search for more bare skin, just keeps a good grip on that which he has, fingertips digging into the flesh of your hips.

He fucks into you and feels your body shudder around him with the jostle of the machine.

He doesn’t ask of shame or chastity or how long Giselle and Lili usually nap for, how far his dad is into The Forgotten Soldier. He does, however, feel it necessary to ask,

“Feels good, right?” Even though you’re drooling against the zinc and your hoarse groans are rivalling the churning noises. You roll your eyes but they stay there, your lashes fluttering.

“Yes,” you pant, clutching the edge of the machine. “It feels good.”

He bends over you, pinning you, elbow to elbow, his chin resting on your clothed shoulder. Your veil slips off your head and drapes around your neck. He quickens his pace. “It’s fucking big, isn’t it?”

You turn your head to look at him. His eyes look like they want to fuck your eyes. His mouth hovers over your drooling mouth as if to kiss you. The shaggy hair of his crotch abrades your tailbone.

“Verdict’s still out,” you say, voice quavering, and you let him lave your tongue sloppily with his.

His sister has a guestroom, but he sleeps in her bed. Reads her Audre Lorde and Laurie Colwin. Uses her toothbrush. God, she’d kill him. But he likes the transgression of violating her space. He doesn’t use her vibrator, or anything. He finds it, but he doesn’t use it.

He has his few ways of having people. So he’s always taking what he can get.

That’s why he fucks the nanny in the laundry room, and lets Art’s kid bruise him with her tap shoe, and sits on the kitchen tile drinking Saskia’s gin.

He has to hold on to the granite countertop, as he straightens from his haunches. His back is a wreck, but the ache is nothing compared to the relief and vindication and victory he feels. He can’t say for sure what the prize is. Maybe it really was just your pussy, and that’s where this all starts and ends, which is fine. The feeling of winning is so rare and precious and precious and rare and, as he unscrews the cap and raises the bottle to his lips, it’s as if he’s just slain a mighty monster.

He places the little tiara he’d filched from Lili’s room on Saskia’s mantel.

He’s less than compos mentis come Christmas Eve.

He lays in Saskia's bed for a bit, inhaling lime and ambergris, trying to figure out what to do with himself. He checks his phone: No Service.

He sighs and tumbles out the sheets like a rockslide. He figures he might as well go for a run before the blizzard clocks in since there’s nothing else to do. His feet already feel numb and damp. Everything has felt numb and damp the whole time he’s been here.

Running buzzed probably isn’t his smartest idea, but it doesn’t feel like his worst one either.

Patrick frenetically tugs two pairs of thermal leggings on. The radiotor whirrs but the house is still arrestingly gelid. He pulls on his sister’s comically inflated neon orange down jacket.

He looks at himself in the mirror.

“Oh, fuck yeah,” he whispers.

He loots and pilfers some mittens, goggles, and a neck gaiter from Saskia’s closet. She could never take to professional athleticism, but she’s a reasonably devout runner, and is partial to a halfmarathon or two most years. Which means free activegear for Paddy. He walks to the front door and slips on his dank shoes.

He steps outside once he feels decently covered head to toe, a skill he’s found refining itself as the week has shouldered past him.

Patrick strides the roadside briskly for almost a mile. His legs feel halfway atrophied, so he gives them time to warm up. The neighborhood seeps into copses of snowdusted forestry. He feels the beauty of the landscape flicker through him like a spark.

He starts jogging.

He has no mapped course, no mile time to hit. He just wants to move forward. For once. His goggles fog up with entrapped bodyheat crowning the cold air but he doesn’t fix them. The compressed insulation of his clothes, the whirring thump of his shoes to the tar—it engenders a strangely hypnotic effect. He realises, only after miles have elapsed, that he's forgotten to turn any music on. He doesn’t need it now.

He comes upon a clearing in the trees that discloses a river he hadn’t recalled.

He abates to a walk before stopping completely and removing his goggles.

He knows a breathtaking scene when he sees one. That was never his problem, the discernment of the good thing. It was never even the obtaining of it. It’s that—well—if Sas actually had left plants for him to nurture, they’d be dead by now.

But anyway. The river.

Snowfall has burgeoned somewhat, but light is still breaking through. The sun reflects tenderly off the surface of the frozen water as if it’s all being illuminated from beneath the ice.

Patrick swears he can see evidence of a current still rushing below, but he can’t be sure that’s all too possible at these temperatures.

He tries to take a picture for posterity (or Lily; she’s ‘into vistas’ lately), but all the light is so strange and coruscating. Hardly anything can be captured in earnest.

Patrick takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

He pulls his gaiter down and doffs his hat. Allows his florid skin a few moments to feel the glacial squall, the moist sting of melting snow. He thinks he’s missed this weather, harsh as it may be.

He takes the opportunity to check his watch, vaguely hoping the GPS tracker’s been running. And hope seems to count for something here.

4.7 MILES

A surge of accomplishment and anticipation shimmers through him. He grins, breathless, at the thought of being able to tell Tashi that he’d done a cool ten miles. And the prospect of being able to eat a guiltless meal is emerging as an actual possibility.

Patrick gears back up and begins to walk again in the direction he came. He takes advantage—always taking advantage, always taking what he can get—of the trodden path he’d made in the road. The surer grip of his shoes.

His head starts feeling strange as he’s walking. As though it’s sloshy inside, like the dirty snow he sees on the curb. But he pushes forward and chalks it up to temperature. Picks up the pace again.

He finds himself less mesmerised by his own footfalls now and slips his AirPods in. Slips inside the eye of his mind. His sister used to have a ‘(What's The Story) Morning Glory?’ CD. Patrick’d scratched it, probably. He hopes Oasis can get back together some day. It's not so hard to reconcile. Mostly, anyway.

About a mile into the returning trek, Patrick feels his legs suddenly get heavier. He’s felt as much before. He assumes he’s just hitting the wall. It’s a little early for him, at such moderate mileage, but he knows inclemency and altitude can do things to a body.

He’s deliberate with his strides as he proceeds. He wants to be sure that his torpid legs are parting with the ground.

It’s around the two mile mark that his spine rattles with an odd enough sensation—sharp, like an incision down the length of it—to bring him to a stumbling halt.

Patrick’s clumsily reaching around and groping at his neck and back the best he can through his layers. It feels almost like someone has poured water on his skin. Soused him like a baptism.

He tells himself he needs a second to breathe. Starts walking again. Eventually feels very marginally centred enough to pick up the pace. His knees feel like cinderbricks. Dense and angular. But he should be capable of making it home. Or at least determined enough to do so. He’s seeing houses again. He can’t be more than a mile out.

He’s thinking of raiding Saskia’s toiletries and snorting her cornucopia of bathsalts when a billow of abject nausea rolls through him. He’s stumbling again.

He moans vaguely with turnsickness. The trees are blurring together.

He sways.

Sidesteps jerkily over the curb into a stark white alloy of fresh and shoveled snow.

Doubles over.

Dissolves to his knees, bracing himself on his palms. All fours again.

He maintains this position for several minutes. He’s heaving in and out forcefully with his eyes screwed shut. It feels a bit prayerful. He’s praying to be made to vomit. Just wants to feel better and move on and he’ll never touch his dick again, he prays. Which isn’t true, but need it be?

Things go sloshy again, and warm, this time. Overwhelmingly warm, actually. He flounders in the wet, rips off his gear, and uses his bare hands to grab handfuls of snow off the ground and push it onto his face. The heat feels like bloodshed.

Patrick tears off his jacket. Patrick lays his entire body facedown in the snow. Everything is numb and damp.

“Oh my goodness, Patrick?”

One imagines the voice of God to be a little less frantic.

He’s confused by how weak his muscles feel when he tries to push himself up. How he only sees lucent whiteness when his eyes flicker open. Shit, is this it? He thought for sure he’d end up at the other place.

“Jesus Christ, I thought you were dead!”

Oh, alright. So not yet. Not yet, and certainly not Heaven. Close, though, with how relieved you sound. He is the body on the side of the road, and you’ve stopped to triage him instead of driving off. He squints up at you. Floral puffer. Scarf and muffs. You look like a fairytale illustration.

His blood’s gone cold in his extremities, and he’s mumbling, “Sorry.”

“You’re a mess.”

There it is.

For your part, you don’t sound malicious, or anything. You say it like a forgone conclusion, a fact of the matter. The way a person in an Ionesco absurdist play would say, oh, it looks like I’m wearing pants right now.

He tries to make a stab at indignity. Like maybe if he denies that he’s a mess, that should suddenly make him clean. What blessed relief. But all he manages is a whimpered grunt of protest.

“What happened? Were you attacked?”

Patrick shakes his head, suddenly aware of just how wet he is.

“Patrick, tell me.” You sound concerned, but not in pieces. He knows this is all coincidence. That you simply happened to be driving by. But the fact that you’ve found him prone in the snow, the fact that you knew to call his name, knew it was him who’d ambled to the woods and buried himself in the ground like a coldblooded mountain climber, like a defiant zealot, staring into Earth, his back to God, taunting you with his dickish solipsism—he thinks all this should terrify you. He isn’t dead. Not yet. But maybe he’d already made up his mind. Perhaps you’re just picturing him as another baby. Something small and soothable. “What happened? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Patrick shakes his head again and takes your assistance in getting up. All his things are gathered in your arms.

“You’re soaked, Patrick. What were you doing in the snow?”

He looks around and feebly brushes some of the debris off of his leggings and thermal pullover.

“I... I don’t know? I’m pretty sure I started feeling sick, and then I got hot, so I took all my shit off,” he explains. He’s all nonchalant about it, too.

At first, he won’t tell you where his sister’s house is. You’re going all Nuremberg on him, like he really is a baby who will drop the knife if you tell him no sternly enough. But he soaks through the polyester of your passenger seat and grins and defies you. It’s like he’s challenging you to take him back to his dad’s. Like he’s a kid acting up in school for attention.

It takes a while. You circle the block twice. Then he sees the way his fingernails tinge cobalt, and thinks of how disappointed his father’d be. Concerned, you allege, but he doesn’t buy that.

Still, he confesses like a sinner.

He asks you—as you stand on the concrete steps to the quaint, Tudorstyle home, and he holds his cap in his teeth and fishes the keys from his pocket—not to hold the state of the place against Saskia. He says there’s a lot of damage he can do in a week. He’s always making a mess. Messing things up. Has he messed you up? He doesn’t ask, but has he?

He’s even sorry for fucking you. He doesn’t tell you that, either. And he’s about to do it again. But he is sorry. That has to count for something.

You stink. Not in a really bad way, not in a noticeable way, but the stale perfume and deodorant have turned into a cool film against your skin, trapping your sweat and guilt and other gross things which you’re too tired to name. You’ve been out buying gifts all day. You’re always so last minute. You feel like you might fall asleep on Saskia’s couch.

News says blizzard’s on its way. News is all choppy static pixel kaleidoscope, too. Even if you left right now, you wouldn’t make it home before the roads got dangerous.

You’ve heard enough hypothermia horror stories to know he should be taking a shower right now, warming himself up in increments. And you’ve heard enough suicide horror stories to know you’d be wrong to leave him anyway, after how you’ve just discovered him.

Was she visibly bleeding?

He doesn’t look like he’s about to call it quits.

On the contrary, he looks relaxed, calm, selfpossessed, sitting on the arm of the couch, one knee drawn up, cigarette dangling between fingers. Also his cock is out. He’s naked.

Has he already made up his mind?

How many times has he lain like that, in the snow, lucid about his slide into the abyss?

He finishes his cig and takes a knee by your feet. Your bare feet. You shouldn’t have taken off your shoes. They stink.

You try to tuck your feet under you, but he reaches out and grabs your ankle and tugs like you’re the baby.

“What happened to your leg?” you croak, your voice a little fraught.

His thumb keeps brushing up and down the arch of your foot, like trying to ease your tension. He leans back and looks down, past the leavening weight of his dick, to the navy bruise bloomed through the hairs just below his knee.

You watch that Cheshire cat smirk spread his mouth apart. “Violent tap dancer.”

You do kind of wish he wouldn’t do the whole slapping your pussy and calling you a good girl thing. It feels weird and Freudian and it even makes you feel kind of guilty.

Not because of his stupid uncut Jewish cock all swollen against his thigh, nor the virgin’s innards mangled in a manger at this very moment two thousand years ago. You know that’s not how you measure innocence. There’s something idiotic about that, something primeval and pathetic, something no one should be proud or ashamed of.

It’s just that he doesn’t seem fully committed to the pastiche.

He spits a thin globe of saliva right onto your clit. His fingers sweep through your coarsehaired folds. Slow, methodical, like a cartographer mapping the world with his compass and pen.

Then, he raises his fingers and strikes them down against you. You flinch, you whimper. He groans straight into you.

“Good girl. Good girl.”

And it's hot, sure, but he could stand to be crueler.

You’re this nice twentysomething with no real bearing on his life. You pray. You care. You wipe his sister's shit. He suspects he didn’t take your virginity, but he could easily imagine he did, if he wanted to. That he’s teaching you something. This could all be a lot more plastic and pornographic.

But it isn’t. Not really.

He climbs over you, all over you. He’s all over you like the flu. He wants to crawl inside of you, burrow and fester. His knee is pressed between your thighs and he’s breathing into your neck, his head tucked under your chin. His nose is the colour of raspberry syrup and he drags the cold tip of it up the column of your neck.

He smells like smoke and snow. Like sweat and musk and something stale and dry.

You crane your neck with a piercing cry when he bottoms out. He cracks your hips open like a lobster claw. You feel his fevered heartbeat thumping through your body. He seems to think the heat of your flesh is enough to warm and cure him.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” you slaver into his hair.

“I don’t get sick,” he assures you, puffing throatily. “I never get sick.”

He licks Saskia’s bathsalts from the swollen underside of your tits. You gather palmfuls of warm water and pour them over his freckled skin, watching it bloom florid. Are you clean now? Are you shameless? Has the stink gone? Sort of.

Maybe, for a second there.

But Christmas day seeps in like another reek. You feel bad when you catch whiff. You feel the stroke of midnight in your bones, and you think you can hear Carol of the Bells. You feel especially bad, because you’re holding onto his shoulders and fucking yourself on his unhewn cock, the bathwater swashing tepid around you. And he licks the silver crucifix in the dewy valley of your breasts into his mouth, and sucks on it, and looks at you like he’s trying to make a point. He sees you frown.

The pendant glints between his teeth as he says, “Don’t worry, He’s not paying attention. It’s His birthday.”

And you duck your head to laugh.

The water ripples. He wraps his arms around you in a halfway embrace, halfway detainment. You can tell he is worried you will find your morals and leave him cold.

But you won’t.

He’s big enough that he won’t just slip out of you, even in the water. You’re all steamdizzy, eyes halfmast. You watch rivulets of condensation dance down the tiling.

Are you really about to fall asleep on this man’s cock in his sister’s bathtub? Perhaps. There is something grounding about his heavy presence in all four corners of you. You feel that mollifying pressure in your head. Your hands scrabble and slip all over the skin of his shoulders. You kiss all these droplets off his skin.

“I think I’m about to throw up,” he whispers in your ear.

You pull back and sigh. He does look quite waxen and wheyfaced. You feel bad. You were starting to think that you alone could break the fever.

Your knee knocks against the tub. He has to tug himself out of you. He clambers out of the water, puddles splashing everywhere. He slumps to the ground like marmalade, his arms drape the toiletseat, his head in the bowl. Runnels drip off him and sop the bathmat. He spits and heaves. Then he retches. There is nothing solid to the bile. When was the last time he ate something? His viscera slops out of him and into the water. The gin scalds twice as sore on the way up. He sounds horrifying. His lips drip with mucus.

He feels your soft, moist flesh against his back. Your arms around his toned middle. You feel his ribcage tremble against you.

He feels the bone of your chin against the crown of his head.

Patrick knows this is all very repulsive. He's not sure why you're holding him. Maybe you're picturing a baby again.

“What would you get me for Christmas?” he murmurs, his heavy breath echoing around the toilet bowl.

You can smell his puke.

“Um— well... you know, Giselle actually—”

“No,” he grunts stubbornly. “I mean, if you could get me anything, what would you get me?”

“I don’t know,” you say, pressing your wet breasts against his wet back. The humidity is starting to disperse, the trickles cooling off. You do get sick. You get sick quite frequently, actually. This will definitely make you sick. He’ll be gone soon enough, and that’s probably for the best, but who will hold you in your ailing?

“Come on, babe.”

You drag your fingertips down the hair on his abs until you reach the thatch between his legs. “I don’t know… A hot stone massage?”

And it’s cruel and stupid and funny—it’s something only a few people would ever understand. He and Art and Sas and Tash and you. Maybe Lili, one day.

You and Patrick burst into laughter at the same time. He chuckles until he’s wheezing. The sound of it catches in his throat like a fishbone. This is what constitutes a happy moment for him.

“That’s perfect,” he mumbles into the shitter.

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dhoranbolt · 11 months ago

Text

Devilish

a/n: Happy (late) Valentine's! I suck at time management this was supposed to be out like a week ago lmao. Brought to you by that one Sukuna art, Fleabag, the songs Church/Devilish by Chase Atlantic, and really just my priest kink in general, yeah.

Disclaimer - I am not super religious forgive me if none of this makes sense lmao idk

Friendly reminder- if your age isn't easily accessible on your profile I will not be tagging you! That said if you'd like a tag in future works let me know and I'll add you to the list!

Bestie beta reader: @yukios-medic ily ma'am as always you keep me sane 🥹💙

Pairing: priest!Sukuna x fem!reader

cw/tw: minors/ageless blogs DNI, priest kink, degradation, reader is called good girl, oral (female receiving) unprotected sex, cream pie, dirty talk

Word count: 5.7k

She’s seen him around the coffee shop she frequents every once in a while. ‘Gorgeous’ might be an understatement – maybe ‘sculpted by the gods’ would be a more accurate description.

He’s tall, muscular, from what she can tell under his loose-fitting tee and jeans. She swears she’s not gawking, but with the tattoos that line his face and arms, so intricate yet simple, his fluffy pink hair, could anyone really blame her for staring a second too long?

He’s so breathtaking, she might just be showing up to the coffee shop more often than she used to just in the hopes of glimpsing him a little longer. Maybe in a different t-shirt, maybe in a suit– okay stop.

She’s decided to take a seat while she waits for her order to be called out, not having paid particular attention to who from the list of regulars she sees strewn about the shop.

“Order for Father Kuna!” She huffs a small laugh out as the barista calls the name with such a straight face, and then pink hair is blocking the view. Her breath catches in her throat the moment he turns around to walk back to his table with a grin, and their eyes meet. Her heart jumps into her throat, but the moment is only that- a moment, and then he’s moving out of her view, back to the table of other men laughing as he rejoins their group.

She chances a look that way to see a man with long black hair, and another with short white hair. She looks away before any of them can feel her eyes on them. It was enough that he was so attractive, but all three of them?

It’s not the first time she’s seen him smile, but it is the first time he’s looked at her, smile widening as they lock eyes.

–

Granted, it’s only Tuesday, this whole week has been one inconvenience after another, and her visit to the coffee shop is not an exception. In her rush to find caffeine, she’d neglected to bring her wallet with her. So, imagine her surprise when she moves to pull it from her purse and pay, only to notice it missing.

She’s huffing as she frantically looks through the bag again. The cashier in front of her looks bored, like this is probably not the first time this exact situation has taken place today, and if the world could just open up and swallow her whole right now, that would be great–

“I can pay, if you can’t find your wallet.” A voice calls from behind her, and if her cheeks weren’t already red from embarrassment at her current situation, they would be now.

Turning to look at the owner of the voice, she’s met with an abdomen, and as she follows it up, black tattoos come into view, and so does pink hair, and are his eyes red–

“Oh, please no, it’s fine I’ll just–” He laughs, and she feels like every inconvenience in her life could just melt away at the sound.

“I insist. Besides, what kind of good Samaritan would I be if I left a damsel without the caffeine she looks like she might break down without?” Her face scrunches up at his comment, but before she can question it, he’s stepping past her to order his own drink and pay.

“I was joking, by the way. About the caffeine comment. I’m sorry if it came across rude, you just looked a little you could have used a laugh. Long week?” She laughs and nods as they wait off to the side for their drinks.

“The longest. And thank you for paying, really you didn’t have to, but I appreciate it, nonetheless.” He grins again and her heart might actually jump out of her chest at just how painfully gorgeous this man is.

“It’s no issue, I like helping people where I can.”

“Well, I’m going to pay you back after this, just so you know.” He chuckles and shakes his head.

“There’s no need, we’ll say I just did it out of the kindness of my heart and leave it at that.”

“I don’t like feeling like I owe people.”

“Then don’t feel that way.” She lets out an exasperated huff as she looks up at him, but he’s grinning down at her again.

“Okay fine, fine. How about this? How about you can pay me back, by meeting me… Here.” He says as he scribbles an address out for her on a napkin. He hands it over, and she takes it with a raised brow, looking at the unfamiliar street name and number.

“You want me to bring your money to an address I’ve never been to before?” And there’s a sparkle in his eyes as he looks down at her.

“I don’t even know you.”

“Sure you do,” he says with a nod, continuing on, “I’m Sukuna, the devilishly handsome coffee shop patron who doubles as your knight in shining armor for today.” She laughs as he grins.

“Okay, well, what makes you think you know me?” And he pretends to think for a minute.

“Well lets see, I’ve seen you around this little shop long enough to know that you’re a woman of your word.”

“How, this is the first time we’ve ever exchanged words.” She scoffs another laugh.

“Oh so you have noticed me around then?” And anything she says next would give away the fact she did notice him around, so her jaw opens and closes silently as she debates on what to say next.

“I-” And she’s saved by the barista interrupting her derailed train of thought.

“Order for Ryomen!” He moves to the pickup bar, taking the two drinks in hand and walking back to her.

“Meet me there tonight, seven fifteen.” And she’s still trying to register what’s even really happening as he hands her the cup.

“What is this like a date?” The words leave her mouth before she can stop them, and she bites her tongue as he chuckles.

“Yeah, something like that. Just come, then consider your drink paid for.” And how could she say no to him?

“Okay sure,” she laughs nervously, “I’ll be there, Sukuna.” And she savors the way his name sounds, rolling off her tongue.

“I’m looking forward to it, enjoy your drink.” He says with a smirk, before leaving her in the coffee shop. Sitting down at a nearby table, she pulls out her phone to look up the address she’d just agreed to meet a semi-total stranger at, and when it loads on her map she’s left even more confused than before – it’s the address to a church.

–

She’s sitting in the parking lot of the church, staring at the doors in contemplation. She’s not very religious, but the curiosity of finding out just what he could possibly be asking her here for, is why she’s making her way to said doors once the first few groups of people pass. She laughs to herself at the mental image of the church setting her ablaze the second she steps in.

Looking around at everyone sitting down, she’s searching for pink hair, but doesn’t see it. For church on a Tuesday night, the place is almost packed. She barely finds a seat with breathing room from the sea of faces around her.

‘It is only eight past seven though, maybe I’m just early.’ She thinks, trying to calm her rising nerves. What is she even doing here? It was so easy for a handsome stranger to coax her into following him to some random church, surely this was not the stellar survival instinct of someone who doesn’t get serial murdered.

The minutes tick by, and she’s about to just get up and leave, mortification starting to settle at the fact she believed he would even show up, when a familiar voice gathers all attention to the front of the room, and she freezes.

What exactly is she supposed to make of the sight before her? Black tattoos, pink hair, muscular body, covered up in black clothing, complete with the white tab collar. If the building wasn’t going to set her on fire before, it surely would now.

“Good evening, everyone. For those of you that are joining us for the first time tonight, I’m Father Ryomen.”

He’s looking out into the crowd as he speaks, eyes scanning the rows of people for her. When his eyes land on her, her breath catches in her throat, shivers running through her entire body.

‘There is no way in hell that I am horny in church right now.’ But there is a way, and his lip is currently curling up at the corner as he looks at her.

So, she sits for the next hour and a half, listening to the sound of his voice as he goes on through his sermon, not retaining anything except for how smooth his voice sounds, booming off the walls. He gives his closing words, and everyone around her begins to get up. Some filter out, most stay back to chat with him, and she decides to wait until there is no longer a line leading up to him.

The last big group of people finish up, and she’s finally had ample time to process the image before her as she makes her way toward him against the leaving crowd.

“You made it.” He says with a warm smile, and her stomach twists.

“I won’t lie, I thought you were joking still when I realized it was a church. So, a priest, huh?” He laughs with a nod.

“Forgive me, father, if I didn’t take you for the type.” Sukuna smirks down at her, and for a second, she swears there’s a mischievous glint in his eyes. It’s gone just as soon though, and she chalks it up to the lighting.

“Most people don’t, with the tattoos and all. I don’t mind, though. I use it as a way to show it is not our place to cast judgment upon others. But services are over, please, just call me Sukuna.”

“How very religious of you, Sukuna.” She hums.

“And what about you, then?”

“Honestly? I’ve never been very religious.” She shrugs, ‘but I can see why the people at this church would be’.

“And yet I talked you into coming? Surely that’s got to mean something.” He jokes as he rests a hand on her arm for a second.

“It does, if I’m not mistaken, my drink is now paid for in full.”

“Hah.” He fake laughs, and the sound makes her stomach flutter as she looks around.

“I should probably get going though, I think we’re the last two here.” She notes, seeing the fact everyone else has filtered out of the church, before looking back up at him.

“Why don’t you stay with me and lock up, I want to show you something.” Conscious of the fact she still doesn’t really know him, she raises an eyebrow at him, searching his face for any ill-intent.

“It’s nothing bad, I promise. I don’t bite, if that’s what you’re worried about.” And she doesn’t sense anything bad about him, his words seem genuine. There’s something about him though, she can’t quite place. It doesn’t set off alarm bells, but it piqued her interest, making her stomach knot in anticipation.

So, she follows him. Chatting about nothing in particular as he tidies around, and they lock up the church for the night.

“You know, I would have never in my wildest dreams, guessed priest.” He threw her a smile.

“So what did you dream about me then?” Her cheeks burn, and she busies herself with the now very interesting chip in her nail polish as she flounders for a response. But he hooks his finger under her chin, grabbing her attention.

“Hey, I’m kidding.” He says, leaning down to catch her eye, and her heart stops. She’s not sure what she’s doing as she stares back into scarlet eyes, but the air around them changes. Suddenly, it’s thick with desire, so thick she could almost choke on it. And she can feel the gap between them slowly closing- he licks his lips, eyes glancing down at her own for just a second.

“C’mon, we’re not done yet.” He says softly, before pulling away. Her head is swimming, was she just about to kiss the hot coffee shop priest inside the church, no less? But she doesn’t dwell, he’s already moving to the other end of the hall, and she’s quick to catch up.

“It’s usually one of the other two fathers and myself,” he explains as he moves through the church, checking doors and tidying up as he goes. “unfortunately they’re both out this week.”

“And that leaves poor Father Ryomen to take care of the church all by himself?” She teases, and he scoffs.

“They’re unreliable as it is. Though the current company isn’t an undesirable exchange.” He winks at her, and not for the first time tonight, she wonders why he’s called her here.

“Why did you bring me here?”

“To repay your drink from earlier.” She rolls her eyes with a smile.

“That is so not why you dragged a stranger to your church.”

“Why do you think I dragged you here then, hmm?” He whispers, eyes slipping down to her lips again before searching her face.

“And I already told you, we aren’t strangers.” As he says it, it really does feel true. She doesn’t feel out of place next to him, doesn’t feel like she shouldn’t be here, even if this is the first time she’s stepped into a church in years. She takes his shift in conversation and runs with it, not answering his previous question. The thought he’d brought her here for anything other than to listen to him preach was starting to take hold, and she’d rather not read the room wrong and tell him what she was really thinking.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been to church, I thought maybe I’d be struck down the moment I made it inside.” She laughs, stepping past the door he holds open for her into a new room.

“Have you ever done confession before?” He asks, moving to refill the holy water.

“Can’t say that I have, but I get the gist of it.”

“Enlighten me.” He’s glancing at her with a stern look on his face as he caps the bottle.

“You sit on one side, us sinners sit on the other.” and at that he cracks a smile, chuckling.

“Keep going, you’re on the right track.”

“And, they tell them to you and you forgive them on god's behalf.” He shakes his head, still smiling.

“Want to give it a go?” She looks at him with an arched brow, and this time she laughs.

“You did this on purpose didn’t you, paid for my drink to get me into a booth. I’m almost positive that falls under coercion, y’know.”

“Oh c’mon, just try it. Don’t you trust me?” And there it is again, that mischievous glint in his eyes that makes heat pool in her lower stomach. She bites her lip.

“No I trust you just fine Sukuna, I just-” But he’s placing a hand at the small of her back, leading her to the booth at the front of the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Going to wash you from years of sin.” He whispers as he leans down to her ear, and a shiver runs through her.

“You’re joking-”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” And he’s reaching over her to slide the curtain aside, motioning for her to sit.

“I don’t think-”

“Then don’t. Be a good girl, have a seat.” Her stomach flips at his words, and there’s that smirk again. Like he knows exactly what he’s doing to her. What could humoring him hurt? She’s moving, brushing past his reach to sit on the hard wood. He gives her a nod, closing the curtain.

“I’ll be right on the other side, then I’ll talk you through it.” 'I bet you would' and the words are flashing in her mind before she can stop them. Maybe five hours ago, before she knew he’d sworn himself to a life of celibacy and Jesus, his hands all over her had been attainable. But now? This just felt like torture- and yet here she was. Being a good girl for him, and sitting in his booth.

She chews her lip, shifting her thighs together.

“Nervous?” He asks, hearing the noise. She stops moving, shame washing over herself. Not only was she trying to relieve some of the tension between her legs in a church- Sukuna could hear it.

“Y-yeah, something like that.” She laughs, putting her hands to her face.

“You have nothing to worry about. Sinning is innately human, that’s why you come to me.” And did she really come to him? Certainly not for this, but again, here she was. When he realized she wasn’t going to speak up again, he continued.

“Let’s start off with this, just say what you can read off the little plaque there.”

“Sukuna-”

“Aht aht,’ he cuts her off “I’m Father, in the booth, little one.” Heat pools between her legs at his tone. It’s playful but firm, and she can’t help the way she’s biting her lip to not make a sound. She follows his instructions, and- this feels ridiculous, what are they doing exactly? Why is she still doing it?

“What are they?”

“I don’t,” she wracks her brain for an answer. Being here in the first place, premarital sex, lusting for a priest, lusting for said priest while in the church.. The list was long, and she wasn’t sure saying it aloud would make the dull ache she was currently feeling any better.

“Don’t be shy now.” And he says now like he knew something she didn’t, about what was really going on here.

“I’ve watched Twilight.” It’s the first thing to come to her mind that doesn’t elude to the fact she’s going home to stuff a dildo into her aching walls while she thinks about him tonight. The answer catches him off guard, and he chuckles. Turning to the wicker wall dividing them. She can’t physically see him looking at her, but she can feel his eyes on her through the divider.

“Twilight, really?” Her cheeks turn pink, and she looks right back at him.

“Look I read it was like, devil worship according to the church in some article, okay?” He shakes his head with a smile.

“The woman who I met in the coffee shop just doesn’t strike me as the type to watch vampire movies, is all.” He teases.

“Oh like you’ve never watched a single fantasy movie.” He’s quiet now, and she blinks.

“… Not a single one, ever? Isn’t lying a sin, Father?” She challenges.

“We should stick to the topic at hand, sinner.” Her jaw drops and she scoffs in disbelief.

“Okay, well, the next one is that I have tattoos.” She can just imagine the look on his face right now.

“That’s a common one.”

“I’m still surprised they let you, with the tattoos.” She notes, smoothing out her dress over her thighs.

“I can be very convincing, when I need to be.”

“What is that like code for something?”

“My charm helps, even the little old ladies got over them when I flashed a nice smile.”

“I’m sure you’re very popular with all the grandmas.” She laughed.

“Not as popular as Father Gojo, but he’s always been the type to flirt with most things that have legs, regardless of age.” And he has to keep from rolling his eyes or talking any further down on the white haired man.

“I thought flirting was like, forbidden in your religion.”

“Not necessarily forbidden. frown upon, sure, side-eyed possibly.” She could live with side-eyed, hell she could live with frowned upon too. She wasn’t the one that took an oath of never sticking her dick in someone else. But she was the one that decided she wanted a priest of all people, to stick their dick in her. That wasn’t much better for her in the long run though.

“I think that about covers all my transgressions up to this point. Hey, does it still work if I confess to something I eventually will do? I think that’s a much better way to run this whole thing.” Sukuna chuckles, she’s definitely warmed up to being here with him, he can tell in the way she speaks so freely.

“That covers everything huh? Sure you’re not missing anything?”

“Like what?”

“How about, ’I’ve been eyeing up a priest for the past month now’.”

“I- what?” Her voice catches in her throat, jaw dropping and face burning. This visit had just taken a left turn, there was no way he’d just said that.

“Go on, say it. Unless of course, I’m wrong? Just remember, lying is a sin.” She can hear the smirk in his voice, but he doesn’t stop.

“Maybe, ‘I’m so turned on I can’t even sit still’.” Her breath catches in her throat- how could he have known that.

“Or how about, ‘I’ve even made a priest question where his loyalties lie’.” Her body was hot, a fire growing in the pit of her stomach. She takes a shallow breath, mouth feeling dry. She was going to have to answer him at some point, situational whiplash or not. She might as well try to level the playing field while she was at it,

“I’ll own up to mine, but not yours.” He chuckles, and it’s deep, ringing in her ears.

“Perhaps we should switch sides of the booth then.” Listening to a hot priest tell her just how into him she was, wasn’t exactly how she’d imagined tonight going. But when she really thought about it, what other way could tonight have gone?

She heard him shifting on his side, before the curtain was being drawn back. And her handsome, well put together priest, was no longer looking quite so put together anymore.

His hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it, shoulders moving in sync with his breathing as he gripped the side of the booth.

“Lust is a sin too- but sometimes I just can’t help myself.” She swallowed hard at his words, frozen in place as she stared up at him, red eyes burning into her.

“I can always get on my knees, ask god's forgiveness afterwards.”

“Sukuna…” And she’s watching him slowly sink to the floor before her. Even as she looks down at him, she doesn’t get the feeling that she’s the one in charge of this situation. He moves forward, caging her against the back of the booth, his face inches away.

He looks so different from what she normally sees at the coffee shop; lips twitching up in a smirk as he reaches over to caress her cheek. He certainly doesn’t look anything like a priest, let alone a respectable one. He looks devilish, like he’s been waiting for an opportunity to get her here. And she can’t say it’s not exactly where she wants to be.

He leans closer to pull her into a kiss. The first one is slow, tentative, even though they’re both so clearly worked up. Pulling back to look her in the eyes he searches them, before they both crash their lips together.

“Mmm- wait- wait!” She can barely get the words out against his mouth, pressing her hands against his chest. He pulls back, looking at her in concern that he’d over stepped.

“What about- what if someone sees us?” The concern on her face that someone would catch them doing this, and not the fact that they’re still going to, is so cute of her.

“We locked the doors, didn’t we?” He grins and lets out a breathless laugh as the realization crosses her face. The son of a bitch planned this whole thing. He dips back in to claim her lips again, hands traveling down her sides to her ass, sliding her to the edge of the seat.

“From the moment I first laid eyes on you, I knew you’d be the reason.” He’s pressing kisses along her jaw, down her neck, anywhere he can reach.

“What?” She breaths, not really hearing him as her eyelids flutter. She’s too wrapped up in the whole situation, in how soft but firm his palm feels against her face as she leans into his touch. How wrong but right it feels for him to touch her, even just like this.

“Knew I’d stumble,” His thumb traces her bottom lip, tugging it down, and she opens her mouth instinctively. He’s using the grip on her jaw to turn her face to the side, planting kisses below her ear as she shutters, whining at the feeling.

“It’s like you knew, walking into a church wearing a dress. Walking into my church, wearing that dress. Did you wear it because you caught me staring a little longer when you would?” He’s rough, pressing his lips along her neck, across her chest, sucking, biting his way further down her body.

Her head is spinning. This was wrong, wasn’t it? But the fact it was wrong only turned her on more. She’d never wanted, needed, someone to fuck her so badly before. His hands are everywhere, kneading her chest, pinching at her hardening nipples.

“I asked you a question.” Sukuna’s still pinching at her bud, and she can barely concentrate enough to whimper a ‘yes’.

“Yes what?”

“Yes… Yes… I wore it just for you.” He sucks his teeth with a grin.

"Be a good girl and keep your eyes on me, I want to see them.” He pulls away from her and slips further down, running his hands from her knees up her thighs, pushing her dress up as he does. She’s instinctively parting her legs, letting him ghost his lips up the inside of her thigh. Sukuna presses his thumb against the wet spot on her panties, looking up to see her squirming closer as he does.

“Patients is a virtue, sweetheart.” He warns as he drags the lacy fabric down, discarding it off to the side. She huffs with a pout,

He presses his thumb to her clit, rubbing slow circles as she twitches below him.

He rubs a finger through her slick folds, slowly pushing into her. It's easy, she's so wet, whining for him so needily, and he's already working a second one in.

"Eyes on me, you're going to look at me while I make you cry." She could finish right here, he was so calm yet demanding. Scissoring his fingers inside of her he moved his thumb, dropping his mouth over her clit as he sucked.

Her thighs are fighting to close against him as he slides his fingers into her, tongue moving in slow circles. It's cramped in the booth, but Sukuna still finds the space to use his arms to hold her legs open. She's biting her lip so hard as she watches him, body tense. Her grip on his hair is tight, and she doesn't know if she's trying to pull him closer or push him away as the pleasure builds in her abdomen.

Sukuna doesn't stop as he feels every part of her clench, her body rigid and she takes everything he's giving her. He's sucking as he moves his tongue just a little faster, fingers sliding in and out of her slick cunt as he curls them inside of her. Her back arches, legs shaking as her walls clamp down on his fingers, pulsing as her orgasm washes over her. She's gripping his pink hair, trying as hard as she can to keep her eyes on him as he works her through it.

He's watching her with determination, listening to her cry his name, as his cock strained in his pants. With a few more shallow pumps of his fingers he pulls out and she whines.

"Greed is a sin too, sweetheart." He says as he lifts his fingers to his mouth, licking them clean. She breathes in softly as she watches, the low grown leaving his mouth making her stomach flip.

"Taste divine, I'd keep you here for hours if I could." He moans, pressing his mouth to her glistening cunt as he lapped her clean. She cried out at the over stimulation, hands flying to his head, trying to push him away. He simply takes both her wrists in his hand, holding them at bay.

"Try to stop me again, and it'll be a long night for you in this booth." He warns, pulling back to look at her. A rush floods her body at the thought, and he's leaning up to kiss her again. She's eager to return it, lacing her fingers through the hair at his nape.

Sukuna pulls her up on shaky legs, turning them so he can sit down instead, pulling her to straddle him. He presses her down over his clothed bulge, grinding up into her as he pulls away.

"You gonna be a good girl and have a seat?" She whines, grinding right back down onto him with a nod as she runs her hands down his chest, fumbling with his belt. He rubs his hands up and down her sides as she works, whimpers of frustration falling from her lips as she works on his pants.

"Patients is still a virtue." He hums, kissing the side of her neck. She can feel how thick he is even over his pants, but she's not ready for just how thick he actually is when she works him out of his clothes. Her jaw drops with a gasp as she runs her thumb over his slit, already dripping with precum. Sukuna hisses, hand flying down to grip her own.

"I said sit." He says, gripping her hips to lift her over him.

"You're so-"

"I'll fit, don't worry." He soothes as he moves her, rubbing his head between her folds a few times before slowly pulling her down. Her hands fly to his shoulders, gripping tight as he slowly stretches her out, making room for himself as he breaks her open over him.

"Sukuna, Sukuna!" She whimpers.

"You're doing so well, look at you." He praises, brushing his thumb over her cheek. She doesn't think she can take anymore, and yet her walls are practically sucking him further in, begging for more. God no one's ever felt like this before, he filled every space inside of her.

And then the back of her thighs are flush against his own, as he slowly rocks into her.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" He coos, and she shakes her head, mind already hazy from the pleasure.

"No." She whimpers, and rolls her hips with a cry.

"Fuck you're so much." She sobs, body shaking.

"Yeah? But you're going to take it." And he's pulling out, only to slam back up into her. She screams, nails digging into his arms as he holds her. He sets a steady pace, and after the first few thrusts she starts to move too, bouncing herself over him, pushing him further into her tight heat everytime their hips meet.

Sukuna pulls the top of her dress down, sucking a nipple into his mouth. All she can do is moan and grind harder down into him. Looking down between them she watches as he disappears into her, and it should be terrifying, just how much of him there is- yet she's accommodating every thick inch. And then she sees it when he pulls away from her chest- the bulge in her lower abdomen. She takes a shaken breath, and presses down on it.

“Oh my god fuck!” she whines, throwing her head back as her legs shake.

“When I’m this deep in you, the only God you should be crying for is me.” Sukuna growls, fingers digging into her sides to hold her in place as he fucked up into her. She clenched around him at his words and he grinned.

“Oh she liked that, did she?”

“Sukuna-! Fuck I’m gonna cum!” She cried, nails digging into his arms. He drank in the way she looked, jaw dropped in a silent moan, lip quivering. He wasn’t going to last much longer either, with the way her walls fluttered around him, sucking him deeper with every thrust.

“Where should I-”

“Fuck- inside, I don’t care just please-” She was shaking her head, rolling her hips into him as she babbled. Sukuna gripped her chin, forcing her attention on him.

“Say it again, like you mean it. Like you want it.”

“Please Sukuna, finish inside me. Wanna feel you inside me!” Her walls clamped down hard around him as she cried. He lifted a hand to wrap it behind her head, pulling her forehead against his own.

“There it is, take it. Be a good girl and cum for me.” He growled, watching as she came undone before him; jaw dropped in a silent moan as she pulsed around him. Sukuna fucked her through her orgasm, sending him right over the edge into his own. She whined at the feeling of him painting her insides in hot spurts, grinding further into him as they both pant.

It was quiet, aside from their breathing as they came down from the high, lustful haze being left behind. She cleared her throat, realizing they’d have to clean up the mess that was going to drip out of her.

“Well…” She started, beginning to pull back when Sukuna stopped her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The question takes her aback as she stutters for an answer.

“I just- I thought- the mess…?” He grins lazily up at her, swiping a thumb over her bottom lip.

“Did you really think I brought you here just for one fuck?”

“Technically you brought me here over coffee.” She giggled, leaning into his palm.

“Leave your wallet at home more often then.” He demands, and she swallows hard, gasping as he bucks up into her again.

Tags: @saiki-enthusiast @alice-smutthoughts @idktbhloley @rezitio @matchat3a @mo0nforme @bleach-your-panties @fateisnotafactor @lov3ly-bunny @antishadow2021 @xo-evangeline @ackachii @tiredravenette @carpioassists @yoongislatinagff @unoriginalidea @i-likebread @squishybabei @emyyy007 @bitchykittenconnoisseur @kokushibosgirl @wishandluck @kimchi-zaks @kyriekurokami @not-brionnne @andic137 @tang3r1n @mammon-s @yuujispinkhair

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