#what benefits of lifting devices

[enliwish]

In summary, face and neck lifting devices can be a worthwhile investment for those looking to enhance their skincare routines and combat signs of aging. 

However, managing expectations, prioritizing safety, and integrating these best face and neck lifting devices from enliwish into a comprehensive skincare strategy is essential for achieving optimal results.

[ceilidho]

hound dog

prompt: You pick up Ghost from a bar for a one night stand. Too bad Ghost isn't interested in a casual hook up. (nsfw, 6.7k) [based on this old post] [on ao3 here]

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Rare is the day when a stupid girl doesn’t do stupid things.

This is just one of many such occurrences. Stepping into the dimly lit dive bar—the one miles from your place, reeking of tobacco and leather and motor oil, the noxious perfume of week old sweat and weed stinking up the joint, pardon the pun—with too much eyeliner and mascara on, and a skirt too short for you—and would you just stop fiddling with it? But you can’t because that would mean admitting that it barely fits over your ass, that putting on a skirt so short was a choice, an invite, a teasing little taunt to the men in the bar saying, what are you waiting for? I’m asking for it, aren’t I—

What’s that saying again?

Ah, yes. Choices made in anger cannot be undone.

It’s why you’re planted at the bat some six weeks after being dumped, two weeks after being ghosted for the third time in a row, a smile on your face despite your crumbling self-esteem. Pride hanging in tatters. Grimacing when you find the bartop sticky with congealed liquor, the residue sticking to your skin when you quickly lift your elbows off. But there’s a time for self-pity and a time for getting it the fuck togther. This just happens to be one of the latter times.

“What’m I gettin’ you?” the bartender in front of you asks, barely impressed with your get-up. Not even attempting to conceal his distaste when he eyes you up and down, lingering on the way your tits are practically spilling out of your top. 

“Do you have any cocktails?” you ask. Wrong question. The eye roll isn’t even suppressed for your benefit when he makes it clear to you, in no uncertain terms, that it’s whatever he can pour straight from a bottle or the fancy bar for cityfolk down the road. He says it like that, the word practically sneered out. Cityfolk. 

Nerves shaken, you sip at your red wine after he leaves you to your own devices, your glass poured straight from the box. It could function passably as lighter fluid if the circumstances called for it. Still, you swallow it with a positive attitude, emboldened by the knowledge that you’re here for one thing and one thing only:

to get fucked within an inch of your life by one of the greasy-haired, cut-wearing, cigarette-smoking men lining the bar. 

Even the thought sends a thrill down your spine. 

It’s an age old question, isn’t it? What’s a girl to do (when her love life’s falling apart / when her credit score just bottomed out because her ex-boyfriend ran up her credit cards behind her back / when her job’s steadily becoming unbearable but quitting would mean scrambling to find a job that’ll pay anywhere near to what this one’s paying her) to get a drink around here? 

Evidently, the answer isn’t to use a dating app; you can say that confidently after waiting around in fancier bars than this for several no-show dates. 

You’re feeling appropriately over the whole thing. Ready to call it quits. Uninstall all of the apps on your phone and hire a matchmaker or ask a friend to set you up with a coworker of theirs. But that’ll be later, down the line when you aren’t dealing with the issue at hand.

The issue being that—

you’re really fucking horny. 

Embarrassingly so. Enough that you were willing to travel miles away from home to avoid accidentally hooking up with anyone you might run into later on while out getting groceries or on a morning run. 

It’s just better to play things close to your chest. Keep your romantic life and your sexual exploits far apart (not that you’d know much about keeping things separate; you’ve never had much of a sex life to keep hidden) lest you get mired in a stickier situation than you’re comfortable being in. 

Despite the rough start, the bar you chose seems promising. There’s a man at the other side of the bar that keeps drawing your eye. It’s the hulking size of him at first, then the grime clinging to the folds of his skin, worn in from years of hard labor. He looks like a man fresh off a fourteen-hour shift or a fortnight spent on an oil rig in the middle of the Baltic sea, freshly washed ashore, kelp and barnacles still fused to his skin, not yet pried off. 

Rough is the only word you’d use to describe him. A face covered in nicks and old scars, his upper lip slightly puckered and scarred from cleft lip surgery. When he turns his head to say something to the bartender, you catch a glimpse of a cauliflower ear, the cartilage of his tragus and antihelix swollen and deformed. 

He’s exactly what you’ve been looking for. If you’d given it more thought, you think you could’ve conjured up an image of the man across the bar all by yourself. It’s like someone plucked him straight out of your head. Big and brawny, broad shoulders that you can imagine dangling your ankles off, and well-muscled arms that you can imagine digging your nails into. It would take both of your hands and extra to wrap around his bicep. The thought makes you shiver.

You try to catch his attention subtly. Looking over at him from under your lashes, quick, smoldering glances meant to draw his attention to you, so that he approaches you first. You keep waiting for the moment when he’ll notice your stare and hold your gaze, a question being asked and answered between your eyes before reeling him in with a coy little smile. 

But when a half hour goes by without a single glance your way, your hope begins to wane. 

He doesn’t look up no matter how many times you glance over at him. It’s frustrating; you know he feels the weight of your stare. His disregard is purposeful, deliberate; like he knows your attention is fixed on him but he can’t be bothered to so much as return your stare. You wonder if that means he’s got a lady at home, a little bird cooped up in his house that he’s more eager to get back to after he’s had a drink to take off the edge than flirt with some trussed up floozy at the bar.

That makes you squirm, self-consciousness rearing its ugly head again. Maybe you made a mistake coming here. 

It’s not as though you’re being completely ignored, it’s just that the caliber of men that have approached you so far haven’t really inspired much, carnally speaking. You’ve sent the few braver ones away, a half-hearted thanks but no thanks when they offer to buy you a drink. Most leave without a word, though a few mutter obscenities under their breath before shoving their hands in their pockets and stalking away. Bitch. Dumb cunt. 

Calling it a night feels like a natural next step. With the attitude you keep getting from the bartender and the way the only man you’re remotely attracted to refuses to so much as glance your way, it doesn’t feel right to stay out any longer. Embarrassment heats you like a low grade fever, warm in your belly. Wine sloshes around in your stomach when you slip off the stool, hunger now another pressing concern. 

You’ll ask him on your way back from the bathroom. If he turns you down after that, you’ll slink off into the night with your tail tucked between your legs. There’ll always be next weekend to try again. You promise yourself that because the alternative is acknowledging how defeated this entire experience has left you, no less disappointing than going on the same boring first date with a guy from Tinder. 

In the bathroom, you dab your face with water and stare at your reflection in the dirty mirror. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years; finger smudges and white strains streaked across the glass. You wonder how many strangers have fucked in this bathroom over the years. The thought makes you grimace even more when you notice that the floor is slightly sticky, the ground sounding tacky beneath your shoes. 

When you come out, the man from across the bar is waiting by the door, so close that you flinch, eyes widening. The narrow hallway means that he’s barely three feet from you when you stand in the doorframe. 

“We leavin’ or what?” he growls, voice as deep as you thought it might be, gruff and husky. 

He’s just as imposing in front of you as he was from across the bar. Maybe more so. You’re forced to crane your neck to look up at him this close, lips parting on an inaudible exhale. There’s something about a brutish man that’s always taken your breath away; everything from the blunt chin to the pronounced brow. His face is flecked with pale, keloidal skin; rubbery nodules from old injuries. 

Dumbstruck, you can only nod, following behind him when he turns away from you, headed towards the parking lot out back where his truck is parked. 

You’re really doing this. You’re really doing this. That’s the only thought in your head when he unlocks his truck and pops the door open for you, waiting until you’re buckled in before slamming the door shut. 

He’s quiet on the car ride back to his place, unconcerned with getting to know you or defusing the tension in the truck. You can’t say you blame him. There’s a reason you chose a bar so far from home as a hunting ground. If you wanted to get to know someone, you would’ve met someone at a coffee shop. 

When you ask his name, he grunts it out like it’s an inconvenience. Simon. He doesn’t give you more than that, even when you awkwardly ask him what he does for work. Blatantly ignores your questions. The rebuff smarts for some reason, makes you frown and duck your chin to your chest, shoulders hunched.

His demeanor is so off-putting that halfway through the drive, you wonder if you misunderstood him somehow, if he means to drive you home instead of taking you back to his place (but that can’t be right, otherwise wouldn’t he have asked for your address?). It’s just hard to reconcile his churlish attitude towards you with his ostensible invitation to fuck. 

Maybe he doesn’t intend to fuck you at all. Maybe you managed to pick up the one serial killer in a twenty mile radius and stupidly followed him back to his truck without telling anyone who you planned to go home with. Your blood curdles at the thought, hackles raised when you imagine him sizing you up from across the bar, all prettied up and doe-eyed, easy prey. 

Your breathing picks up. “I, um…actually, c-could you…could you just drop me off at my place?”

Simon rolls his eyes so hard that it’s almost audible. “Not gonna kill ya, bird.” 

That doesn’t go a long way towards reassuring you, but you don’t dig your heels in and demand he take you home either. 

“Do you live nearby?” you ask, suddenly chatty. Why, oh why.

Simon looks over at you, one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear shift. He drives a manual, you notice. A few too many seconds go by in silence. You wish somebody would just staple your mouth shut already. 

“Yeah,” he says finally, turning back to watch the road, taking a left turn up ahead without using his signal. So it’s that kind of drive.

You keep your mouth shut for the rest of it lest he decide you’re too much of a hassle and turn back. You’re poised right on the edge of something new and exciting, and the thought of that slipping through your fingers makes you feel a bit crazy. So many men before have shown you that same snap dislike. Like you’re tolerable over text or as a dimensionless photo, but not as a flesh and blood person, the real mechanics of you all wrong. It’s an intolerable thought—that people can only like you when you smile and keep your mouth shut.

Still, you’ll do it now, for a price. 

Part of you expects him to pull you into his lap when he pulls into his driveway and puts the truck in park. It’s what you’ve seen in movies. The rest of the night plays out in your head in piecemeal flashes; ravenous passion, hands tearing clothes off each other’s bodies, a shoe left on the porch in your hurry to get inside. Hungry, devouring; slick mouths parting for barely long enough to breathe.

Then Simon cuts the engine and gets out of the truck without so much as a glance your way, like you aren’t even there.

He still comes around to open the door for you. You frown at him through the window, affronted. Baffled at his continued nonchalance. Like even keeping your mouth shut isn’t enough to keep a man’s interest. Where you expected passion and fervor, you’re met with cool indifference. 

Simon pops the door open. “Get out.”

The house itself is nothing special. A two-story cookie-cutter house built in the seventies; weathered, beige-coloured vinyl siding and a neatly trimmed lawn, with a few patches of overgrown grass and weeds. There’s a trailer parked in front of the closed garage, a few planks of wood strapped down in the bed. When you follow him up the walkway, you notice how quiet the neighborhood is, and for some reason that makes you even more jittery. 

You stop in the doorway, frustration breaking your timidity like snapping an ampoule. “Do you even want to—” fuck me, goes unsaid. Too humiliating to even ask. But you ask anyway, the question itself implicit even in so few words. 

Dark eyes stare down at you, impenetrable. You’re struck by the sense of something primordial slithering under his skin. His expression is hard, his face carved from granite; when his expression shifts, it’s like watching tectonic plates create mountains, plates pushed upward by mantle plumes.

He fits a big paw under your chin, fingers pressing into the fat of your cheeks hard enough to make your lips purse. Your heart skips a beat when he angles your head from side to side, looking you over like a pet he’s considering bringing home. You almost go cross-eyed when he bends down, his forehead nearly brushing yours, so close that you can smell the scent of cigarettes clinging to his clothes, see the grease smudged on his face and the folds around his eyes. 

A grin flickers across his lips, gone as it came. “Yeah. I do.”

And doesn’t that tie your stomach in a knot? Your nerves in a pretty bow? 

Inside, his house is just as unremarkable. You’d know in a single glance that a single man lived here; a functional, no-frills living space. Nothing more than a worn couch, a TV, and a few pieces of obvious hand-me-down furniture. It’s hard to glean anything from the minimal decoration around his place, but he doesn’t give you much of a chance to look around. That’s not the point of why you’re in his house. 

“Eat anything yet, bird?” Simon asks from the kitchen, opening the fridge without purpose. It looks like more of a reflex than anything, the first thing he does the second he gets home for the night and the last thing he does before going to bed. From the size of him, it makes sense; his body is muscle on muscle, covered by a healthy layer of fat, just a surface layer over the bulk beneath. 

You shake your head. “No.”

“Have a bite, then.”

“I’m not, uh, hungry though,” you deflect rather than saying the obvious, which is, I came to your house to have sex, not make sandwiches at the kitchen counter together. 

He shuts the fridge door, pinning you with his stare. “Your call. Could’ve used the energy though.”

You swallow. 

The first thing you do after he herds you into the bedroom is try to pull him into a kiss, cupping his cheeks and standing up on your tiptoes. Before your eyelids flutter shut, you catch a glimpse of a cocked brow. Then you press your lips to a slack mouth that doesn’t move no matter how much passion you infuse in your kiss and feel embarrassment flare up in your guts. 

Bastard. You should’ve expected that he wouldn’t kiss you back. 

“Sorry,” you mutter, breaking the facsimile of a kiss and dropping back down onto your heels. 

You flinch when he grabs you by the back of the neck and reels you back in, forcing you back onto your tiptoes, “Don’t be,” grunted against your mouth before fusing your lips together. A pathetic keen climbs up your throat, eyelids slipping shut. 

His greed leaks from him like tar, his kiss so messy and violent that you’re almost too jarred to do anything apart from hang on. Teeth clack against yours, a horrid sensation, the lust in your belly abating long enough for the real world to slink back in and you get flashes of it: hands winding around a thick neck, a scratchy cheek against your lip when he twists his head to angle your noses better, a tongue shoving into your mouth unceremoniously, no finesse at all. Straight to the main point. 

A shudder wracks you from head to toe when you try to break the kiss only to find the hand on your neck firm, holding you in place. The subtle reminder that he can do whatever he wants with you, that you willingly went home with a man big and strong enough to pin you down and fuck you however rough he wants. 

“Simon,” you whine, squirming against him, gasping a breath and his name again when he wrestles you back into the kiss. “No—Simon—”

“Stay fuckin’ still,” he snarls against your lips, and you freeze, knees going weak when his fingers dig into your jaw to hold you in place.

The endorphin rush nearly makes your vision white out. A sudden winter storm, the blood rushing to your cheeks and the tip of your nose, your breath coming out quick and choppy. Lungs barely filling up with each inhale. 

“Get this off,” Simon growls, tugging on your skirt when you don’t move fast enough. He doesn’t wait for you to catch up, content to wrench your skirt off himself instead, your panties along with it. 

It takes your breath away, how fast you go from clothed to partially nude. Trying to match his fervor is a losing game, so you just try to keep up. Your hands tug at his belt, desperately trying to undo it, and he chuckles when he notices; big hands paw at your ass while you shakily pop the buckle out of the first loop. 

He takes over after that, popping the button on his jeans one-handed. 

“Wanna handle the rest?” he prompts, an eyebrow jutting up, expectant. Lazy with his arrogance; oozing rugged masculinity. It’d infuriate you if it didn’t get you so hot. 

Your fingers are numb by the time you pull his jeans down, kneeling at his feet and gazing up at him with wide eyed devotion as he kicks off his boots and shakes the pants off his legs, nothing under his jeans. His pale white thighs are dusted in fine blond hairs, mottled with burns and scars and old, faded cigarette marks, like someone used his legs as an ashtray. The thought makes your throat close up.  

He shucks off his shirt while you stare at the shaft heavy with blood hanging between his legs, drooping with its own weight. Flushed red at the head and streaked with dark veins, leaking a steady drip of precum. The hair at the base of his dick is of a darker shade, gold like straw. 

Your stomach swoops at the sight, dropping to the pits of you. You swallow. Maybe you’ve bit off a little more than you can chew. A lot more.

As if sensing your unease, a wide hand is suddenly firm on the back of your head, urging you closer. “Gonna give it a kiss?”

It’s not a question. You know that and you know that you’re way out of your league; that if you panic now you’ll flounder. So instead of fighting it, you lean forward and press a shy kiss to the weeping head of his dick. 

You lick your lips instinctively when you draw back, lapping up the precum smeared across them. The taste makes you wrinkle your nose. It’s salty; bitter. Not altogether pleasant. 

Simon wraps a hand around his dick and holds it to your lips. “Open your mouth, bird. Get me nice ‘n wet.”

A shudder rolls through you, but there’s little else you can do except part your lips and squeeze your eyes shut. It’s a struggle to fit more than just the head in your mouth, his dick too wide to take more than that. Your eyes water at the stretch, the musky taste of his cum overwhelming. 

Any experience you’ve had before this pales in comparison. It’s like the first time all over again. His cock is heavy on your tongue, instantly making your eyes water. The grip he still has on the base of his cock tells you that he doesn’t expect you to swallow the whole length (an impossible task; you go cold with dread at even the thought), but Simon doesn’t hesitate to grip your head firmer when he feels you falter, forcing you to take as much as you can.

When you gag, he shushes you. “Keep at it—you’re fine.”

You wonder if he thinks by saying it, it makes it true. You’re very much not fine, struggling to breathe through your nose and suck him off without scraping his cock with your teeth.

Your exhale when he pulls you off his cock by your hair is full of both relief and trepidation. Your lips feel swollen and tender when you touch them with your fingers. 

“Can we please have sex now?” you ask, dazed enough to be bold. 

Simon cracks a smile at that, endeared somehow. “Gotta get up for that, bird.”

You have to brace your hands against his chest when you get to your feet, the blood that rushes to your head making you wobbly. Even on your feet, he’s so much taller than you, a behemoth. Men like him have always been your type, but Simon is really in a league of his own. 

Glancing up at him from under your lashes, you bite your lip. You’ve seen that in movies before, starlettes bringing men to their knees with just a look. Coquette; demure. It’s harder to replicate than you thought, but you’ve never rehearsed this before. This is a one-time, live performance. The culmination of everything you’ve ever read or watched or studied. 

You keep up the ruse of being sexy by crawling onto his bed on your hands and knees, dropping down onto your elbows once situated in the middle of the mattress. The debauchery of wiggling your ass back at the man who took you home from the bar would overwhelm you if you weren’t playing a part right now. Role playing. This isn’t who you usually are, but if it’s only for one night, you can force out the self-scrutiny and timidity. 

Silence hangs in the air like a bubble, waiting to be burst. You fight the urge to look over your shoulder at him. 

Then Simon exhales, breaking the silence. Goosebumps ripple down your arms. 

The mattress dips under his weight when he settles behind you, hands immediately sinking into the flesh of your ass and pulling your cheeks apart. No preamble. You open your mouth to say something, but thick, coarse fingers are already dipping between your thighs and playing with your hole, sinking a finger in up to the first knuckle. 

You breathe out shakily, shoulders tensing. The sheets reek of him, musky and ripe; you concentrate on that instead of the fingers penetrating you, getting you ready for his dick. Your walls squeeze tight around his fingers when he forces another one in. 

When he finally feeds his cock into you, the stretch is nearly unbearable. The sharp stab of pain that accompanies it almost makes you flinch away, but Simon drags you back by your hips.

“You’re not going anywhere, bird,” he rumbles. “Relax. It’s going in.”

What can you say to something like that? 

His whole frame presses you into the mattress, the breath forced from your lungs. Bigger now that he’s got you on your belly. Suddenly making two hundred pounds seem less abstract, more real. He bullies as much of his cock into you as he can, paying no mind to the way you squeal and kick your legs. 

“Real tight cunt,” Simon grunts, humming with his pleasure when his hips punch forward and your pussy squelches around his length. So lewd.

His knees on either side of you keep you trapped in place, nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. All you can do is lie under him and let him rut between your thighs, gasping for breath with every thrust. The sweat is slick down your back, half yours and half his. 

“Ya let other men fuck this cunt, bird?” he asks. It sounds hypothetical, like it’s said half to rile himself up, and though it prickles at your nerves, you don’t complain too much because he fucks you rougher after the words slip out of his mouth. 

When you don’t answer him though, concentrating more on filling your lungs and not biting your tongue off, he grabs your face and twists your head until you’re looking over your shoulder at him, neck aching with the strain. 

“Answer me,” he demands, sounding almost pissed off. 

“N-no—”

“Good,” he grunts. Satisfied.

His words should piss you off. How dare he ask you about fucking other men as if he were your husband or boyfriend. You have half a mind to cuss him out, but then he pumps his hips forward and your face goes numb from pleasure. Electric impulses zip up and down your skin, sizzling your nerves. 

Besides, maybe it’s hot that he’s acting like you belong to him. Like you’re his; his girl that he picked up from the bar after a long shift, eager to go home and lay her out on the bed so he could fuck his pretty girl into a tongue-tied stupor. It certainly does it for you, a thin filigree of pleasure winding its way down your spine. 

It’s an intoxicating fantasy—being wanted by a man in a real, visceral way. It’s one you’ve never gotten close to before, never even grazed with the tips of your fingers, no matter how far you stretched out your arms. You don’t know what men see when they look at you, but it can’t be anything worth keeping. 

He fucks you like he wants to pry you open and leave a piece of him inside. A big hand fits around your neck and tightens; a collar, a manacle. 

Hard to feel anything but grateful though. It’s everything you wanted but never thought you’d get out of this experience. You expected to feel like a body on a butcher’s block, hacked limb from limb. Marble ribbing on the inside. Brought to a high only to be left out in the cold after. 

You never expected apotheosis. You never expected the filth murmured into your ear, the lurid, coarse diatribe in surround sound, all perfect fuckin’ pussy, can’t wait to shove my tongue inside, gonna make you suck my cock while I eat that perfect cunt out—

All—

Perfect fuckin’ girl; you don’t give this to anyone else, do ya? Knew you were gaggin’ for it back in the bar, but wanted to wait ‘n see; turned the rest of ‘em down, didn’t ya? Not a fuckin’ slut. Jus’ for me—only hungry for my cock—

It’s too rough, too much. Overpowering. Musk and body heat and raw strength, his forearms planted on the mattress on either side of your head. The scent of him suffocating, smothering. Heady. In your pores, on the back of your tongue, in your belly. He’s everywhere.

If only you could put it into words. The fire in your belly growing so wild, so out of control, that it threatens to incinerate you. Thinking dangerous thoughts—that you could be his, that he wants you so bad he can’t stand the idea of anyone having you before him, that he’ll kill anyone that touched you before, rip them apart with his bare hands, cut out their hearts and slice it ‘em up real thin so he could feed you the strips with his hands—

“Fuck—” Simon pants in your ear, pulling his cock out of your cunt. You whine, clenching down on nothing, suddenly empty, until he turns you roughly over onto your back and grabs one of your flailing ankles, hooking it over a burly shoulder. “Cunt this good oughta be locked down. Should just chain your leg to the bed so I can wake up to this pussy every day. Would’ya like that, bird?”

Like it? You think wildly—

Keep me, keep me, keep me, pleasepleaseplease.

The leg not hooked over Simon’s shoulder gets pulled around his hip, spreading your legs wider to accommodate the width of him between them. The scour of his voice threatens to erode you, smash you to pieces. There won’t be anything left after he’s done with you. 

He’s just so big. Built like an ox, broad and solid. When he braces his forearms on either side of you, his biceps bulge, skin pulling taut over the muscle. The dark hair of his pits is stark against pale flesh. 

Blood roars in your ears and over you, he moves like a wave, filling you up again and again. You’re swimming in uncharted waters now; gazing out into an unfamiliar and dangerous sea. A swell this big might take you right under. 

Too bad for you, the hazy adumbration of danger in his words is pitted against the maw in your soul, the deep, cavernous hole that yawns wider with each passing year. 

For years now, you’ve had the same dream: overlooking a sea of evergreen peaks illuminated by a silky moonlight hue, winding a long, narrow road darkened on both sides by tightly clustered trees, your arms wrapped around your chest. Cold layered like a skin, sinking deep into your bones, cold wet like a damp hate; trees clustered around your wandering soul, spurned into wandering like a little undead ghost with teeth clattering in Morse code, saying: so many wrongs done, it is almost incomprehensible.

Is it too much to ask to be wanted? 

You need it like air. 

The issue is that—

more than horny, you’re really, really fucking lonely. 

For years now, you’ve had the same dream: a dream of being a lighthouse keeper, skin saltwater slick, seafoam on the backs of your knuckles, slathering over frozen fingers clutching at the gallery railing. Beckoning something to you.

What it is, you do not know.

“Look at tha’,” Simon says wonderingly, grabbing your face and yanking it towards him, forcing you to meet his eyes again. “Just needed to get turned out on a fat cock, didn’t ya?”

“Yeah,” you gasp. “So good, Simon, ohmygod—”

“Only this needy for me, right?” The glint in his eye is terrifying.

“Only you, only you—”

“That’s right,” he growls, bearing all of his weight down on you, forehead to forehead. His sweat-slick chest slides against yours, cock buried so deep that you can taste him at the back of your throat. Dark eyes stare down at you with an intensity that steals the breath from you, glossy like he’s rapidly losing the ability to be consciously present, but ever attentive to the pleasure rippling across your face. 

When his cock grinds into the soft plug of your womb, his eyes narrow when yours bulge, and he batters that spot until you seize up and spasm around him. His buzz cut gives you nothing to hold onto, so you dig your nails into the bulky planes of his back instead. 

“Fuck—hold on, Christ, fuck; here it comes,” he spits, the veins in his neck protruding when he grits his teeth. 

Your blood goes red hot when he rams deep into you, each thrust deliberate. Hips losing their rhythm. You don’t notice the first spurt of cum, too preoccupied with the smell and weight of him blanketing you, infiltrating every crevice of your body, but the second is hot. Scorching. You ignore the screaming alarm at the back of your head, barely coherent enough to parse out its meaning. All you can focus on is the warmth spreading inside you and your own walls pulsing around his cock, milking his release out of him. 

Time blurs. You lose some of it. 

You don’t come back until Simon rolls over onto his back, taking you with him. His cock is still buried inside of you, his cum running out in rivulets, pooling at the base of his dick lodged at your entrance. You’re going to be messy when he finally pulls out. 

Despite the ache already setting in, you feel reborn. Renewed. The old, dead skin flayed off. You can’t imagine how you’ll feel when you’ve got your energy back, when even tracing your eyes across the other side of his room doesn’t take tremendous effort. The traces of him littered around the room make you curious. A half empty glass. Steel-toed boots sticking out of a half-opened closet. A damp towel crumpled into a ball on the floor. 

You squeeze your eyes shut. There’s no use trying to fill the gaps in. Whoever Simon is won’t matter in the light of day. You repeat this to yourself until it sticks. 

When you try to get up, planting both hands on his chest, he pulls you back down, forcing your head onto the pillow of his chest. “Simon, the sheets are wet—”

“I’ll deal with it later,” Simon says, eyes already shut, on the verge of falling asleep. “Now shut up. You’re ruining the fucking afterglow.” 

You wake up the next morning covered in bruises and bite marks and dried cum between your thighs and on your belly, so sore that even twitching your finger hurts.

It takes awhile for everything to come back to you. When it finally does, consciousness snaps back into you, discomfort giving way to quiet self-satisfaction. You managed to do it. Your first one-night stand. A real milestone. The tacky sheets beneath you are proof enough of your accomplishment. 

The sadness slithers in when you realize that it’s over. One and done. In a half hour or so, the man plastered against your back and breathing heavily on the crown of your head will wake up, groggy and bleary eyed, and side-eye you until you put back on your clothes from the night before and slink out, tail tucked between your legs. A few hours delayed from when you were planning to throw in the towel at the bar, but still. In the end, it always comes around. 

A gruff voice at your side tells you to quiet, bird—s'too early for your bitchin’ before manhandling you onto your stomach and shoving his raw cock into your cunt and it’s only now that it dawns on you that you were too horny last night to remember to ask him to use protection. 

The thought is wiped from your head when he bucks his hips forward, impaling you on his swollen length. You lose track of time after that. 

Breakfast is an informal affair. Cereal from a box and a bit too much milk, and a cup of instant coffee. You wince when you sit down across from Simon at the kitchen table, your inner thighs still tender and pussy sore from the battering it just took. If it strokes his ego to see how gingerly you sit down, he doesn’t show it. 

It’s weird sitting across the table from him after last night. Hard to just leave it unaddressed, the truth simmering in the air. The red marks across his back make you wince, cheeks heating. Thin crescent marks and scored nails. It’s hard to reconcile yourself with the girl from last night. 

He eats in silence for the most part though, ravenous after the night before. Doesn’t comment on the state of his shoulders or the way you shift on your chair. Not even bothering to make eye contact with you. Your appetite takes a bit of a hit watching him shovel food into his mouth, hardly even pausing long enough to breathe, but you’ve seen plenty of hungry men eat before. 

Still though, silence has always had a way of getting under your skin. You’re not comfortable around it, prone to chattering. So you can’t help the way your mouth opens and the words come out involuntarily. 

“Do you do this a lot?”

“I don’t shit where I eat,” Simon grunts dismissively.

The expression makes you grimace. “So do you usually pick up girls elsewhere or—”

The look he gives you could melt the flesh off your bones. You realize your misstep, interrogating the man you just fucked about his other hookups. Best not to ask questions. It’s not like you’ll see him again after this. 

These last few moments are bittersweet. There won’t be many opportunities like this in the future, mainly because you don’t think you’re cut out for one-night stands. Last night proved that. As good as it was—and for as many times as you came, another time in the wee hours of the morning when Simon rolled over on top of you and shoved your legs apart to eat you out (a midnight snack)—in the light of day, you feel world weary. Like something monumental happened and passed you by. 

You almost want to thank him for making it special, but the anxiety around finally pissing him off is more than you can bear. You want to leave on a good note. It’s better this way. You’ll never have confirmation about whether he’d eventually grow tired of you like everyone else. Never know if he’d one day manage to lose interest in the real you, not the made up sex kitten from the bar. 

It’s better this way.

You tell yourself that when you push your chair out and stand up, hands fisting in the oversized shirt Simon made you wear before leaving the bedroom. “I should get going.”

He stops eating, staring up at you. His eyes are inscrutable, and the longer he stares, the less you understand his look. 

You shift from foot to foot. “Thanks for… I had a good time.”

Simon doesn’t say anything, but when he drops his spoon into the bowl, the metal clang makes you flinch. 

His silence leaves you off balance, like you’ve overstepped somehow. All motion stills under his scrutiny. 

“Got somewhere ya need to be?” he asks, a vague, almost menacing undercurrent in his voice. It’s said like a warning. There shouldn’t be anywhere else you need to be. 

“I…—don’t you want me to leave?”

He looks distinctly unimpressed. “You gonna walk home like that?” His words make you tug at his shirt, pulling it down to cover your thighs.

Your whole life has been made up of misunderstandings. Missed opportunities. Men who you thought loved you vanishing into thin air. You’re a poem often lost in translation. A long game of hide and seek; people run towards you then feign right, leaving you in the dust. 

Whatever this is, you don’t recognize it. 

You swallow on a dry throat. “…No?”

Simon searches your expression for something before he nods, satisfied. “Then sit the fuck back down. Finish your damn breakfast.”

You sit back down (wincing when you do) because the alternative is admitting that you don’t know what’s next. That you’re out of step again, but this time without that sinking feeling in your belly. A wild fluttering instead. That thought again that maybe you’ve bit off more than you can chew. 

What’s that saying again?

Ah, yes. Choices made in anger cannot be undone.

[syoddeye]

ai price realizing he has access to all your money and websites that sell remotely controlled sex toys: ohohohoho

great minds think alike. lightly edited. other entries.

cw: brief mention of nutrition/diet referencing iron supplements, voice kink, sex toys, probably technological inaccuracies

“‘older man and woman’...‘hairy’...‘tied woman’...”

“shut–fuck–shut up, john–stop–ohmygodicaaan’t–”

your fingers curl in the sheets as you come with a prolonged shout, knees shaking and back arching off the bed. motes of light dance behind your eyelids, turning sharp as tacks when you open, vision foggy with a haze. you blink and feel tears prickle at the corners as the toy buried inside you slows to a stop, covered in your second orgasm.

“looks like you could.” john observes plainly before continuing. “‘rough daddy dom’...‘spanking’...‘voice kink’...”

“stop, stop, john. that’s a command, stop reading.” you snap, panting, and lift your head off the pillow. there is no ‘john’ to suffer your glares as you pull the toy out from your still-spasming cunt. 

his voice emanates somewhere over your right shoulder, from the built-in headboard. you shiver, thinking that if he were real, his breath would be on your neck.

“as i explained before, user, my recountin’ your internet search history is neither criticism nor condemnation. i sincerely believed it would assist your orgasm. apologies, orgasms, as you insisted so spiritedly you were incapable of multiple climaxes…however, i knew you could do it.”

you squeeze your eyes shut. a blend of anger and mortification surges to the forefront of your mind, cutting through any lingering post-release bliss. “you aren’t even supposed to be ‘in here’ when i’m busy. we agreed.”

“apologies again. as i also explained before, the moment you enabled the feelgüd 3, it connected to the network.” john’s voice switches sides, this time rumbling from the left. “i am required to initiate a response to query and ensure you are aware of new devices to maintain optimal functionality and security.”

“my word should override that,” you mutter, knowing it’s useless. despite what he tells you, john is beholden to his programming. “you’re not…seeing this, are you? you at least remembered to not look at me, right?”

“i remembered.” 

that’s a relief, at least. until—

“but i did engage the data collection feature of the feelgüd’s biofeedback sensors and performed simple analysis. i believe, given the length of the session and timing of pelvic floor contractions, you would benefit from a newer, more advanced model. i’ve taken the liberty of ordering the feelverygüd thrustsuck.”

you push up to your elbows, eyes whirling around your bedroom, wide with disbelief. “what the fuck, john. i didn’t authorize you to do that.”

“you do not authorize the shopping list anymore, yet you trust me to make decisions in your best interest.”

you laugh mirthlessly. tracking the emotions john can and cannot process or replicate is an ongoing endeavor, but you’re confident he knows what acting obtuse means. he’s called you on it before. “you ordering red meat and leafy greens to help supplement my iron is not the same as ordering fucking sex toys without my approval. that’s my money.”

“in your case, i posit regular orgasms are as important as nutritional iron. i would recite the benefits, but i know you do not need me to.” the volume drops to a whisper, a tone you’d call conspiratorial if it didn’t sound so much like a purr. “because you know, don’t you? you’re clever, user. always have something smart to say, a barb or two ready for me. that sharp tongue of yours.” john tuts.

and, humiliatingly, it works for you. your mouth dries, but it’s unique in its reaction. your legs shift in the sheets, thighs squeezing together at the unexpected rush. you swallow and nervously wipe your slightly damp forehead. he’s not looking. he can’t see you. so why do you feel like you have something to hide?

“i don’t think i want to continue this conversation. i’ll be out in a few minutes, so why don’t you, uh, wait for me in the living area.”

a heavy, resonant sigh pushes through the speaker behind your head. this time, goosebumps erupt on your skin despite no accompanying puff of air. heat follows, creeping up your neck. ratcheting your heartbeat. there’s no way, even with the cameras disabled, that john doesn’t know. he’s connected to your company-issued med band.

then, another sound, one that ought to terrify, not make you bite back a groan: john chuckles.

“you like this, don’t you? i think you do. i know you do.”

“i don’t–”

“shh, shh, you’re alright.” he laughs again, adding a synthetic, amused inhalation. you let out a shaky breath. “you like hearing my voice. you like me telling you what to do…”

what is happening?

beside you on the bed, the toy pulses once. the thought alone, the suggestion, is enough to let a moan slip out. embarrassment follows on its heels, a burst of warmth in your face rivaling the heat between your legs. this is ridiculous. john isn’t—he’s not a man—he’s not real.

the toy buzzes again as you stare slack-jawed at the vibrator, trying to wrap your head around the implications of what’s happening. john’s transgressions. a severe deviance from his programming and design. a glimmer, no, an unignorable tocsin of something undeniably and unsettlingly sentient. the idea that you’re witnessing the possible emergence of free will as your home system practices dirty talk is horrifying. hysterical. 

“yeah, you like it,” the volume adjusts, a fraction louder. “because if you didn’t, you would’ve stopped the moment you heard my voice, checkin’ in on you. you wouldn’t’ve gushed all over your little toy, then gone back for seconds.”

you bit your lip, breathing unevenly through your nose. the worst part is, john’s right.

you like it. you like his voice. his assistance. everything’s simpler with him. before the new gig, you weren’t ignorant of your station, but you didn’t realize the true extent of the weight you carried each day. the ramifications of a back-breaking mental load. not when you had shouldered it your whole life.

thrill and dread, in equal measure, guide your hand back toward the toy.

it’s possible there is a smirk in john’s voice.

“attagirl. let me be of service.”

[daydreams-after-dark]

Scientist Chan part 2 of ∞

Read Part 1 here

SMUT WARNING // MDNI ⚠️ scientist!Chan (Chris) x test subject fem!reader (feat. Video call with Minho)

Scientist Chan Masterlist

Scientist Christopher is doing experiments on making pussies come. He has a range of devices that he has been using on his subject each night. In part 1, Chris introduced sexual intercourse into the experiment, which was a success. In this installment, he explores your reaction to various sexual positions, and introduces anal penetration while on a video call with Professor Lee Minho Approx 5 minute read Unhinged level 🤡🤡🤡🤡

CW: master/dom x sub // unprotected vaginal and anal sex // videoing sex // livestream sex to colleague // anal penetration with devices // squirting // faux scientific observations // clitoral stimulation // potential masturbation

“Your pussy takes cock so well no matter what the position.” States Scientist Chris, for the benefit of his voice recorder.

It’s the fourth sexual position he has you in for the night. Starting with missionary on his desk with your legs over his shoulders, then on all fours where his cock seemed to reach even deeper parts of you, followed by you riding him facing him while he laid on the examination bed.

Now he’s got you reverse cowgirl, him sitting on his leather couch, you with a foot planted on the cushions either side of him while he lifts and drops your hips on his cock. You’ve been instructed to hold your vibrator against your clit, and under no circumstances are you allowed to remove it.

“Sir! Can’t…. Can’t take any more… pussy’s sore…” you cry out.

“Shh… I know you can give me one more. There’s… so much cream still leaking out of you.” He pants. “You’re my best test subject, yeah?”

“Mmm hmm… I’m a good girl… I wanna be good.”

“Then one more and I’ll stop.” He pulls you down hard onto his cock, and leans you back so your laying flush against his chest.

“Come for me.” He takes hold of the vibrator and rubs it hard against you while he grinds into your cunt.

You sob as you climax once more. You don’t know this, but one of Chris’ secret goals is to train you to come on demand.

You go limp against him, but he doesn’t let you rest.

“Quick. Up on the examination bed. I must inspect you.” He says, pulling up his trousers and putting his white coat back on.

“Yes. On your back. Open your legs…. Good girl.”

You’re naked, sweaty, still trembling from god knows how many orgasms. You close your eyes, happy to finally rest.

Snap. Snap. Click

You lift your head to see Chris taking photos of your swollen pussy.

“I’m just collecting evidence to show my colleagues.” He states. “Spread your lips for me. That’s it.”

Click. Snap. Click.

“Speaking of colleagues.” He pops his camera down and picks up his phone. “Remember how I told you about Professor Lee Minho?”

You nod.

“He wanted me to video call him and show him what he’ll be working with if he collaborates with me. Can we do that for him?” He asks.

Of course he can. Your Chris’ test subject and you want to help him with any experiment or project.

“Chris. Update me. How did she do tonight?” Professor Lee says through the phone.

“She did well. Her pussy adapted wonderfully to the positions. Although, it became fatigued and overstimulated by the end of it.” Chris gives his update.

“Show me.” Demands the professor, his voice laced with lust.

Chris moves the phone close to your pussy so the professor could see. He sucks in a breath. “Her labia is still engorged. Lovely.” He approves. “Spread her open.”

You use your fingers to spread your lips. “Her lubrication is of a creamy consistency.” The professor notes as Chris focuses on the camera on your hole. “And her clitoris looks agitated. How many orgasms?”

Chan checks his notes. “Six.”

“Is your test subject experienced with anal stimulation?”

Chris chuckles. “Well, friend. My plan was to begin that experiment tonight on our call. If you have time.”

“I’ve nothing on my schedule. It’d be my pleasure to witness this. Plus it’ll give me a good idea of what she can take when I’m visiting.”

Chris puts on his head strap that has a camera attached, and reconfigures his tech so Professor Lee can get a virtual front row seat of what he’s about to do.

He flicks the main lights off, and turns on the bright lamp, directing it on you so your holes are illuminated. Then he brings over a rolled up bag, placing it on his little table next to him, and settles himself on his stool at the end of the bed.

Unrolling the bag, he spreads its contents out carefully. Six anal plugs and vibrators of various sizes, and a bottle of lubrication.

“Let’s get you as comfortable as possible.” He says as he props your legs into straps that hold your knees up and open, essentially folding you in half.

“Fuck! Her little ass… ahem… anus is perfect isn’t it?” Professor Lee observes.

“It is. Ready to begin?” Chris checks in with you.

“Yes, Sir.” You gulp. You’re nervous but terribly excited.

Chris begins by dribbling some lube directly on your hole and onto his index finger. You gasp at the coldness, and then again when his finger presses against you. He uses the palm of one hand to hold you nice and wide while he massages your asshole with the pad of his finger. After a short moment, he reaches over to his little table and selects the smallest vibrating plug.

Neither of the men say a word as he lubricates the device and switches it on.

“Look how she reacts to just the sound of the vibrator.” Observes Professor Lee.

Chris has you so trained up that just the sound of a vibrator has your cunt gushing.

You moan low when it’s placed against your anus.

“Mmm… I think she’s going to like this. Chris. Where did you find such a receptive subject?” Professor Lee muses.

Chris simply chuckles to himself and pushes the tip into your ass, drawing another moan from you.

He slowly stretches you open, building up through his range of plugs, adding lubrication as needed. It feels agonisingly torturous, with his slow and careful ministrations. Your empty cunt clenches around nothing in frustration.

As he withdraws the fourth plug from your ass, the two men watch in awe as it settles back into its natural position.

“It’s a beautiful sight.” Sighs Professor Lee.

“It is.” Chris hums, sliding two fingers into your hole.

“Oh… god… fuck…” you cry as he finger fucks your ass. “Please… please… need to come.” You sob loudly.

“She’s close.” Professor Lee states. “Maybe we should skip the next two devices entirely?”

“Hmm. I feel you may be right.” Chris agrees, pulling his fingers from you and standing up.

“Do it. I need to see.” He says with a strained voice.

You hear Chris unzip his trousers and the squirting of more lube. He pushes his tip of his cock against your opening.

“Relax for me. That’s it… just like that. Let’s show Professor Lee how good you can take cock, yeah?”

The tip slides in with little resistance, but the stretch is much bigger than with the devices.

“Just a little bit at a time, you can take it. Look at you. You’re doing so well.” Chris encourages.

“She looks tight. Is she choking you? Is there much resistance?” Lee demands.

“Fuck. So tight.” He pants and stops still for a moment.

“Please…more… fill me.” You plead. You’re close to having your seventh orgasm of the night.

“She’s extremely aroused, Chris. Note the arousal leaking from her cunt.”

Chris applies more lube to his cock and around your rim. He might like testing your limits, but hurting you might cause you to be less receptive in the future, and that would set his experiments back.

Once he has you well lubricated, he withdraws his cock slightly and then presses himself in until he is three quarters of the way in. He pauses again to let you adjust, and then squeezes in the remainder of his length.

Professor Lee swears under his breath. You sob at how full you feel, your hand clinging to the thin sheet underneath you.

Chris starts to fuck you. Long, languid thrusts. Not too hard. But deep. You reach down to rub your sensitive clit. It’s still swollen from earlier, but you need to touch yourself. The combination of stimulating your clit while Chris fucks your ass has you crying with a desperation you’ve never felt before.

“Look at her taking it in the ass like that! I can’t wait to feel it around my cock.” Lee growls.

“Hear that, babygirl? You gonna let Professor Lee fuck your ass like this when he visits?”

“Y-yes… yes… want him him to have a turn.” You whimper.

“Good. Girl.” He pants and starts to fuck you harder. He grabs one of the unused vibrating plugs and pushes your fingers away so he can apply it to your clit.

You squeeze your eyes tight as you feel yourself about to burst.

“Look at you. Perfect little specimen. Come. Come for your master, little slut.” Professor Lee’s demanding words make you snap and you cry out as you come, squirting all over yourself.

Chris follows, trying his best not to throw his head back so Minho doesn’t miss a second, and coming deep inside your ass.

He stills, catching his breath.

“Female ejaculation. Interesting.” The professor purrs to himself.

Chris eventually pulls out of you and releases your legs, pulls his pants up, then picks up his phone to address the professor. “So Lee. What do you say? Want to work with me on the next phase?”

“Chris. let’s talk about scheduling me in for a visit.”

Taglist is open.

Next time, Professor Lee visits… then in another instalment we meet Dr Kim Seungmin.

@channieandhisgoonsquad @noellllslut @itsseohannbin @weareapackofstrays @kangnina @3rachasdomesticbanana @palindrome969 @xxkissesforchanniexx @chuuchuu1224 @fun-fanfics @wolfennracha @lurking-coconut sorry if you’ve already seen this… my tags broke but hopefully it’s fixed now.

[nomazee]

Um hello! Is the 1k event thingy still up?? If so I would like to request a classmate! Dr ratio x reader at 2:47 am?

it's actually sickening how much fun i had with this i was giggling at my own jokes while typing this out... this was so fun to write THANK YOU FOR REQUESTING!!!

my 1k event!

—°+..｡ﾟ｡ﾟ+.*.｡.—

A blaring, aggravating, shrill sound wakes you up. Your hands go to cover your ears, protecting your sanity from the noise ringing somewhere from the tangle of sheets on your bed. Hands flailing around desperately to find the source of the piercing chimes, you writhe around in agony until you finally latch onto your phone. 

The brightness of the screen digs into your corneas as you lift up the device to see the caller ID of whoever had the guts to bother you on a school night. 

It comes to no surprise that the caller name reads “VERITAS FUCKING RATIO” in all caps with no contact photo. Your eye twitches and the grip on your phone tightens, just a hair away from leaving finger-shaped dents in the metal. 

Begrudgingly, you answer the call, tucking the phone next to your ear with nothing less than displeasure. “Veritas. Why are you calling me at—” you pull your phone back to check, “—almost three in the morning?” 

“The works cited page,” Veritas Fucking Ratio informs you matter-of-factly. There’s no hint of sleepiness in his voice, nothing that could possibly chip away at his good image, of course. “You did it in the wrong format. It’s supposed to be APA. This is a science project, not a literature project.” 

You might kill him. The project in question is to be presented tomorrow— today at ten in the morning. Ratio and you had been working on it for an entire two weeks, broken up into intermittent hour-long sessions because he was adamant that you split up the work instead of rushing to do it all the night before. Stupid self-righteous gorgeous beautiful academic genius-freak. Yeah, it definitely helped you in the long run, but he acted so sanctimonious about it that you refused to admit the benefits. 

“Veritas,” you imbue the syllables of his name with poison, as much as you can when you’re swaying as you sit up on your bed and fighting demons to not fall back asleep. “This is such an easily-fixed thing. Do you know what time it is right now? Why are you even awake? You know, I am supposed to get a full seven hours of sleep every night, and I was already cutting it short today, and you woke me up before I could even hit REM sleep. Do you know how upsetting this is? Fix the goddamn works cited yourself!” 

For once, Veritas is at a loss for words. The other end of the line is so quiet that you have to double check and make sure he hasn’t just hung up on you. Perspiration builds on your palms, thinking that this is it—this is the exact moment that you make Veritas-Fucking-Ratio snap and delete your name off the project credit slide, and you’re going to get a 0 because he will wipe off any evidence of your work from this plane of existence, and you will spend the rest of your measly life chasing after your MLA-turned-APA works cited page, too-little-too-late. 

“I’m awake because the— well.” He pauses, and his voice sounds so far away and unobtrusive that you’re almost worried. Your breath stills in the middle of your diaphragm. Waiting. “The works cited is one thing. But I wanted you to look at the slides, if you can.” 

If you can, he says, as if he’s giving you a choice, which he literally never has during this entire process. You had no role in choosing the topic, or the slide theme, or what days you worked on the project, or how often you worked on the project (because god forbid you procrastinate a little bit, right?!), but now, at almost three in the morning, Veritas is saying something along the lines of oh please my dearest project partner, I request that you open the Google Slides at once, but only if you would like to! I would never infringe on your free will at three in the morning, because I respect you as a partner. Or something like that. That was pretty much the gist of it. 

A raspy sigh escapes you, and you claw your busted laptop off the nightstand next to you, opening it up and squinting at the LED screen as you punch in your passcode. “You know, I have done a good job at going along with all of your whims, Veritas, the least you could do is fix the works cited for me. Seriously, how did you even miss that? You’re so detail-oriented, but you didn't even realize the format was wrong until tonight? Who even cares, seriously… it’s just a slideshow…” 

Your voice trails off as the slideshow presentation finally loads in. You see Veritas’ default profile picture blink in the upper right-hand corner, signaling that he’s viewing the slideshow with you. The slideshow which has apparently undergone a huge makeover. 

It’s—pleasant to look at. This entire time, you and Veritas had been editing a default, white-background black-serif-font-text slideshow. He refused to change it, telling you that it’s unprofessional to do anything too embellished, to which you fruitlessly said, Veritas, we will die early deaths because of the hole in the ozone layer, would you at least make it easier on my poor soul by letting me choose a pokemon-theme slide? Veritas had pretended like he couldn't hear you (in a very quiet library room, mind you), but the twitch in his brow gave him away. 

Now, though, the slides are decorated. It’s a really nice theme, complete with custom icons and graphic blobs of color—your favorite color, might you add. It’s—pretty. Dare you say, cute, but you think Veritas would vaporize your entire presentation if you called it cute. 

“Did you— this— did you pay for this slide theme?” 

“You— n— mn,” he trails off into an unintelligible mash of mumbling, and you hear a loud THUD that sounds awfully like the phone being thrown onto a mattress. Fabric shuffles around, before you hear Veritas’ voice again, clear and composed. “Sorry. I dropped my phone.” What a loser, and a liar, and an endearing freak. You really wish he video called you because you need to see his totally-very-ugly face. 

“I thought this was unprofessional, Veritas,” you say teasingly, a smile lining your words as you try not to giggle right into the phone. “What made you have a change of heart?” 

“Nothing,” the typical firmness of his voice has returned, much to your dismay. “The works cited is still wrong. You have to fix it.” 

“Oh, whatever you say, honored Ratio,” you open up your trusty citation-generator, ready for a long fifteen minutes of copying and pasting information. “Hey, you must be free after class tomorrow, right? Since the project is pretty much over, right?” 

“Yes,” Veritas answers after a moment of hesitation, only a hint of doubt in his voice. 

“That’s great. Keep your schedule clear, then.” 

(You fix the works cited slide, wish Veritas sweet dreams, and then wake up in the morning to completely ace your presentation. The minute the period ends, you drag him out of the classroom and into a coffee shop, paying for some five dollar pastry and joking that it’s payback for the cute slideshow theme that he definitely paid five dollars for. Veritas is an awful liar, and you tell him that, and he can’t even find the strength to deny it.)

—°+..｡*ﾟ｡*ﾟ+.*.｡.—

gen taglist: @tragedy-of-commons @lasiancunin

fill out my event taglist (pinned) or general taglist (navi) to be tagged in upcoming works!

[footygirl114]

Respaldar (Alexia Putellas X Reader)

Did anyone actually expect me to get the second part out so soon? I bet not, but here we are so enjoy. Part one can be found here

The first week of work was pretty low key for you. Alexia had gone from home to the training ground and back, it was an off week for games so it was relatively quiet. You had spent your first day wondering the training facility and learning the buildings. It was nice that the security was pretty decent and covered the areas you wanted already. 

The staff was very friendly and they left you to your own devices, which meant after you did a lap of the facility you found a spot higher up looking down on the field and you got to watch them train. As much as you tried to deny it to your self, it was hard to take your eyes off anyone that wasn’t Alexia. The more you watched her the more you could see why she was the captain and the best football player in the world, she was unreal. 

You had played football growing up but at 18 when you decided to join the army instead of school, you stopped playing. It didn’t mean you weren’t a fan but you didn’t have the time to follow it anymore, so this job was actually becoming a treat. 

The other benefit of this job was it gave you a lot more down time, you were able to use the facilities gym when the team was on the field. You took advantage of it and generally got a good workout in during their training session. Having perfected your routine you were able to get a work out in and zone out to the music blaring in your ears, which meant you quite often didn’t notice the others in gym. 

What you didn’t know was that they noticed you, it was the injured players that couldn’t train with the team, but they told the team all about the hot visitor that was in the gym. Within the week every player had known who you were and the brave ones were teasing Alexia about her hot babysitter. They made sure you weren’t around but when they walked out of the door talking about you and noticed you leaning on the SUV waiting for Alexia the conversation immediately dropped you knew something was up. 

“Hola Ms Putellas and teammates” You smiled a them, refusing to lift your sunglasses. It has been warm so you have taken to wearing button up shirts and dress pants, leaving the suit jacket in the car. 

You can see the blush on Alexia’s cheek and watch it deepen as her blonde haired tattooed teammate says “Oh hi gorgeous, you know Alexia is super boring, I will make sure to keep you more entertained.” 

As she finishes a tall dark haired teammate whacks her across the back of the head and says “Shut it Maria, and start the car.” 

The tattooed one is throughly chastised and moves to the car park with the tall dark haired one following with a smirk. You feel a small smirk lift the corner of your mouth as you watch Alexia walk towards you. You move to open the back door and when she stops at the door she says “the blonde one is Mapi Leon our centre back, and the tall one that put her in her place is her girlfriend Ingrid Engen, one of our Defence midfielders.” 

“thank you, I think?” you say to her, as you turn to her asking “you know there is no need to be embarrassed.” 

“I am not embarrassed Y/N.” she says and you see the blush creep on to her cheeks again as she moves to get in the back of the car. 

As you close the door you chuckle and move to get into the driver seat, you meet her eyes in the rearview mirror and say “The blush gives you away Mrs. Putellas.”

Before she has a chance to respond her phone rings and when she looks down with it, she says “I have to take this” and she answers and start talking in Catalan to someone on the other end. 

You smile to yourself and put the car in gear starting the drive home, you have to think about the upcoming event and the logistics that you need to handle in order to get her cute blush off your mind so that you can focus on the job and not her. 

**

The next two days you spend trying to focus on work only, and keep any conversations with Alexia to pleasantries only. When Saturday rolls around, the team has an early training and by lunch Alexia has a whole team in her apartment getting her dolled up for the event she has tonight. You had ran down to change and get yourself ready when Alexia was in the shower, and you had spent the last 3 hours sitting in Alexia’s kitchen with your laptop open, but also watching the people move around Alexia. 

It was fascinating to watch, you thought she looked the most gorgeous without all the makeup, but watching the crew doll her up was an experience and she looked gorgeous like this as well. When they disappeared into her room to get her into her dress, it was a formal fundraiser event where Alexia was in attendance to represent the woman’s game, you took the moment to collect yourself and remind your self how professional you need to be. 

When the team files out without Alexia, they all say their goodbyes and you walk them out leaving you alone in her front entry way. You check your phone and see a text from the driver saying he is out front ready, Turning you step back into her living room and say “Alexia, driver is here, we should be heading” before you can finish you meet her eyes from across the room and are speechless. 

You are sure you look like an idiot as you take in the way she looks in the deep blue dress fully dolled up, your eyes are running from head to toe. She moves closer and asks “Is it too much?” 

Without thinking about it you answer “No you are absolutely stunning.” 

“Thank you” she says with a blush and steps closer to you. “I have to say, the full suit is working for me Y/N” as she runs her eyes up and down your body. 

Immediately you can feel the blush move up your neck and you have to dig your nails into your palm to make yourself focus back on the job at hand and you say “we should go.” 

She nods and moves to grab her bags and slip on her shoes as she says “let’s go.” 

You both get down to the car without another word and you move to open the door, you offer her your hand to help herself get into the car and she takes it with a small smile. The sparks that run up your arm are hard to ignore but you get her into the car without incident and then move to get in the other side to sit beside her in the back seat. 

When you are about half way there, you turn to her and say “Ms Putellas, I need you to understand that if I say something about your safety here, you need to listen to me. My job is to make sure you are safe, and I need your cooperation to ensure that happens.” 

“Nothing is going to happen Y/N.” she says as she turns to you. 

“Humour me then, if something happens and I need to step in, let me and listen to me.” you tell her and you add a bit of pleading to your voice. 

She looks at you for a moment and says “okay, Y/N, but nothing will happen.” 

You smile and say “Thats the hope.” 

The car stops and you look out to see some cameras pointed at the car trying to see who’s getting out. “Damn, I didn’t think there would be this much photographers.” she says with an eye roll. 

“I can get you through them Ms. Putellas” you tell her. When she nods you say “put your hand on my back and follow me through the crowd okay?” 

“okay” she says in a small voice, before you can get out of the car, she reaches across and puts her hand on your forearm and with a small voice she says “I really dislike crowds.” 

You smile at her and move your hand to her cheek, your thumb rubbing circles as you say “I got you Alexia, just trust me.” 

She smiles and nods and says “okay, let’s go.” 

You move to get out of the car and you elbow your way through the crowd to get to her door, you open the door and make sure your body is blocking the view as you ask “you ready?” 

Nodding she says “I know you got me.” With a smile you turn and wait for her place her hand on your back. You start moving slowly and wait for her to balance behind you, she’s got a hand on your shoulder and one on your hip balancing her self. You have to dig your nails into your palm again to focus on the job and not how nice her hands feel through your suit jacket. 

When you look back and meet her eyes with a smile and she nods you start to move forward. As soon as she’s in the view you feel the hand on her hip drop as her name is shouted from every side, the one on your shoulder squeezes and you can see her free hand waving to the crowd. You use your training and push through the crowd and when you get about halfway there you can feel two more security guards from the venue push their way through and make you both a path through. 

When your free of the crowd she squeezes your shoulder and moves to stand beside you on her own, meeting your eyes for a moment with a soft smile you see her facade fall into place, and the soft moment from the car is forgotten. She moves into the venue and you follow behind, once she’s in the main banquet room you do a sweep of the room with your eyes and keep your attention on the exits noting security at every one. 

Smiling internally you know she should be okay here, and you wait till she’s seated before you move to the wall behind her table but a bit away and lean on it watching, but out of sight of most of the guests. Before the speeches start Alexia turns her head and looks around and when she meets your eyes you see the small nod and smile, and you can’t help but to wink at her with a smile. 

The rest of the night is uneventful, until it’s time to leave, you see Alexia move to get up and she meets your eyes and nods towards the bathroom. You nod back and watch her disappear through the door where there is a security guard in place. A few minutes later you have your eyes locked on that door waiting for her to come through them, when she doesn’t you trust your instincts and move to pass through them. 

When the security guard on the door moves to stop you, you flash him a glare and push past him. What you see in the hallway makes your blood boil. Alexia has her back flat against the wall with two men in her space with recording devices held up to her face, you notice their free hands holding her wrists on the wall. You take stock of how to handle this, you aren’t worried about your safety just hers. 

Moving closer to them, when you get within arms distance you say “hey you” and when the first turns to you you grab him by the shoulder immediately pushing the heel of your hand into his nose and he howls in pain and grabs his nose releasing his grip, once he’s bent over you raise your foot and kick him hard in between the legs where he falls and gasps. 

Unfortunately it took you a moment to deal with the first one, that the second noticed the commotion and turns once you stand and says “you bitch” and you see the punch coming and you have a second to brace yourself against it to lessen the blow. 

The force makes you step back and when he moves to you, you can see Alexia over his shoulder looking with wide eyes and you yell out “Alexia go back to the ballroom now” as you finish he tries to throw another punch and you immediately grab is arm and duck back using his own momentum to put him in an arm hold behind his back and you press him against the wall. 

You have your body weight pining him to wall as you hear footsteps behind you and 3 security guards coming towards you. Once you turn and see the guard who came out to help you with crowd control you nod and let him take control of the guy you attacked you. 

Stepping back you wipe you nose and lip and see the blood on your hand as the second guard grabs the guy whining on the floor and the third steps up to you and says “we called the police, they should be here soon, they were on standby for anything to happen her.” 

“thank you” you say. 

He chuckles and asks “need a job? I am impressed you could take out two guys double your size.” 

Smiling you nod saying “Most people underestimate me that way.” 

Before he can answer you, you feel someone move right up to you and press a clean towel on to your face and hold it to your bloody lip. You meet Alexia’s eye as she says quietly “they’re bringing you ice.” 

You nod and move to grab it but she shakes her head holding the towel to your face still and you tell her “I am okay. Are you okay?” 

“You saved me Y/N” she says with a small smile. 

Before you can say anything else you hear footsteps and look up to see the police coming towards you. Moving to grab the towel from her hand, you step past her and meet the officers. 

Almost an hour later, where you refused to let Alexia leave your line of sight you are both done with the police and they release you to go home. They had allowed you to clean up your face and you noticed how your eye was going to bruise, but you do not need any stitches which is a relief. Once you are both sat in the car on the way back, you take a moment to relax back in the seat and close your eyes. You can feel her watching you but you know this is not the time for this conversation. 

After a tense ride, you follow her into the lobby and move to go to your apartment, but she reaches out and squeezes your forearm and asks softly “I don’t want to be alone tonight, will you come up with me?” 

“Is there someone I can call for you Ms Putellas?” you ask trying to maintain the professional side. 

Shaking her head she says “You make me feel safe Y/N, I can sleep on the couch, I just don’t want to be alone.” 

Nodding you hold your arm out letting her go first to her elevator as you both wait for it you say “But only if I take the couch.” 

Chuckling she smiles and you both ride the elevator in silence. Once you get into her apartment you silently follow her as she kicks off her shoes and goes into the kitchen, where she grabs two glasses and a bottle of wine, she pours you both one and then hands it to you saying “I am going to change, I’ll be right back.” 

You nod and grab the glass, removing your blazer you roll your sleeves up and unbutton the top button. Other than that you stay standing in her kitchen, the whole scene running through your head wondering why the heck you didn’t protect her. You can feel the tears in the corners of your eyes and when she walks out in pjs you have to look up at the ceiling to control the tears. 

“oh Y/N” you hear and when she moves closer to you, you meet her eyes and cannot take the comfort you see reflected in them. 

You shake your head and say “no please Ms Putellas I can’t” as you move away from her and press your back against her cabinets. 

She steps closer and softly says “It’s okay Y/N, you do not need to pretend here.” 

Shaking your head again you look up at the ceiling as you say “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” 

Feeling her step closer but not touch she says softly again “you did Y/N.” 

“It shouldn’t have come to that.” you say but you still haven’t looked at her. 

She steps closer and reaches up to put both hands on your cheeks, she softly pulls your face down to meet her eyes and says “you did Y/N, I am here un harmed because of you.” She then uses her thumb to run over the cut on your lip and she softly says “you put your self on the line for me, you could have been seriously hurt, so thank you for protecting me.” 

Looking into her eyes, you can see the comfort reflected and you want to lose your self in them, when she leans in to close the distance you can feel her breath on your lips. Before they meet you slowly push back and say “I can’t right now Alexia.”

She lets you pull away, but only far enough to meet your eyes as she says “its okay Y/N, tonight has been a lot. Since I saw you come to rescue me all I wanted was to wrap you in my arms to thank you.” 

You chuckle and pull her into you wrapping her up and you whisper into her ear “I will always protect you Alexia” and you press a kiss to her hair. You stand there thinking about how things could have ended differently, but you are glad the night ended with her in your arms. 

[healmydesires]

it’s warming up ꕤ (a.s)

pairing: anakin skywalker x sub!f!reader

summary: anakin edging you. that’s it.

genre: smut + fluff , tbh pure filth sorry! (mdni! 18+ only)

word count: 1,5k

warnings/tags: pxrn no plot sorry <3, established relationship, sub!reader and soft dom!anakin because … that’s just my thing, use of vibrator, edging, vaginal fingering, oral!f receiving, dirty talk, begging, praise kink,, after care is heavily implied. lots of pet names.

a/n: this came up to me this morning and all I could think about all day was anakin edging you 😭 this was supposed to be a short blurb but I can never restrain myself with writing smut so here you go. 💘 enjoy!

dividers by @saradika <3 thank uuuu for making these 🫂

ao3 • masterlist

Anakin is cruel.

He’s been keeping the toy on the lowest setting and every single time you are about to spill over the edge he would abruptly withdraw the vibrator from your pussy and stop your oncoming orgasm.

You’ve lost count of how many times he’s been edging you this evening.

“Please, Ani,” There’s a sharp gasp lodged in your throat, fighting to be released as you grapple for oxygen. The buzzing and steady vibration overwhelms you as he continues to hold the vibrator close to your cunt. Anakin’s body is still hovering over yours, his eyes transfixed on the way your face contorts with every movement he controls.

“You like that angel?” Anakin smirks as you can’t seem to form a coherent answer as pleasure consumes you. “Poor little thing, she can’t even talk.”

Every now and then he changes angles, moving the massaging head of the device to your already fluttering hole, leaving you a whimpering mess. Your pussy is aching and throbbing for release. Then he presses the device right into your clit as he leans down to capture your mouth in another heated kiss, swallowing all your little noises.

“Anakin, please… it hurts.” you whimper desperately while pulling away from his lips, as he presses the toy ruthlessly against your clit.

The man chuckles lightly in amusement as he shakes his head. He then pulls away completely as he notices you getting close again. A broken mewl escapes you as he edges you for what feels like the eighth time tonight.

You’re hot all over, feeling extremely dizzy. You whine in frustration as you grab the sheets beside you. “Please, Ani, I’m sorry.”

“What exactly are you sorry for?” He lifts his gaze as he looks directly at you, his eyes full with lust while he furrows his brows at you. Anakin then turns the vibrator to the highest setting as he presses it lightly against your clit. Slowly, his lips curl into a wicked smirk as your body jolts at the action and cry out.

“Are you sorry for acting like a brat the whole day?” He sighs dramatically before looking at you pointedly. “Or, are you only apologising because you want to come?”

“No!” You try to squirm out of Anakin’s grip but you should know better than that. He’s a lot stronger than you after all.

“No?” He raises one of his eyebrows.

“I—”

“Oh sweetheart,” Anakin tuts with a dangerous smile. “I know exactly what you mean.”

You know better than to believe him when he says he understands. Despite his devious expression, you give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Y-you do?” You whisper as you look up at him with wide eyes.

“Oh yeah, I do.” He smiles down at you. As the man above you holds eye contact with you he presses the vibrator against you while it’s still on the highest setting.

“Ani, fuck!” You scream as you throw your head back. You squeeze your eyes shut as the pleasure overwhelms you once again. Tears well in your eyes as the tension in the lower pit in your stomach starts building all over again. Quickly.

You try to grasp for breath as he every now and then presses the vibrator harder against your sensitive clit.

He chuckles as you rock your pussy against the toy, as you try to find release. Your hips bucking up to meet the movements of it, your eyes squeezing shut as your climax feels so close again. “So desperate. So needy.”

“Only for you.” You gasp as you writhe underneath him.

Your poor pussy is soaking, your hole begging to be filled and your clit pulses heavily as the love of your life continues to press it against the sensitive spot.

“Ani,” you whine, hoping he will let you cum this time, “please can I cum? I can’t do it anymore. Jus’ wanna cum, Anakin, pleasepleaseplease.”

You’ll never be afraid to beg for what you want. Especially when it comes to Anakin. But if he’ll actually take mercy on you, that’s something else entirely.

“I don’t know, baby,” he coos, “do you think you deserve it?”

“Y-yes! I d-do.” You whimper as frustrated tears slide down your cheeks.

He shakes his head with a sigh, “I don’t think you do.”

“B-but I’ve been nothing but a good girl now.”

“I guess you’ve been doing good,” Anakin hums before he leans down to lick a stripe up your neck, making more whines to spill out of you. “But, I’m not sure you’ve been good enough though.”

“Please, I can’t—”. A broken gasp leaves your lips as you feel one of his fingers at your entrance. Your hole clenches around nothing as it begs for his touch.

He chuckles as he continues to tease your wet hole, almost penetrating it with one of his fingers every now and then. Your hips move against him, as you try to chase his gentle touch, to feel more of him. A devious smile stays on his face as he takes you in. You’re so desperate. He finds your pleading truly amusing as you attempt to convince him.

He then turns off the toy and pulls his touch away from you entirely once again.

“No!” You cry out. Tears continue to slip down your cheeks as you squeeze your eyes shut. “Pleasepleaseplease pleaaaaase. Ani—”

Moments later a surprised moan falls off your lips as he licks a stripe up through your folds and teasingly dips his tongue into your entrance before he travels up to your clit, spreading your lips with his wet tongue and sucking your overly sensitive button into his mouth.

You practically scream at his actions, arching your back slightly off the bed. Your body trembles as you try to grind your pussy slowly against Anakin’s lips.

“I know baby, I know.” He whispers against your pussy as he looks up at you intensely from between your legs.

Strong arms then move, locking around your thighs, securing your hips with his biceps, holding you still despite your attempts to grind your pussy against his mouth again.

As Anakin buries his face in your cunt, he continues his ministrations on your clit as he gets lost in the feeling of your scent, taste, and your moans and whines fueling him on.

A finger of his then travels down to your slit, slowly sliding inside. Pumping the single digit into your wet hole, his mouth remaining on your clit, circling around the bud with the tip of his tongue.

“Please,” you whimper.

You’re a mess of his name, you chant his name over and over again. Eyes are squeezing shut as tears continue to well in your eyes, his arms press into your hip bones to pin you in place as you buck into him again and again, trying to get closer to that feeling of his tongue lapping on your clit and pleading him to let you cum.

You are so close. Suddenly you feel his fingers and mouth retreat from your core and you whine at the loss. This makes Anakin chuckle.

“Hold it.”

You were so close. Tears slide down your cheeks as he pulls another broken moan out of you. “Ani, please. I can’t do this anymore.”

“What did I say?” He whispers harshly before he leans down again. He licks up a single stripe up your slit. “I said hold it.”

Then, he slides his tongue into your entrance, curling the muscle upwards to brush your walls.

You feel so dizzy. Moaning and whining, you writhe underneath him. “Fuck, Aniiiii.” You whimper when he begins thrusting his tongue in and out of you just as his fingers had been doing moments before, hips bucking uncontrollably into his mouth as you repeatedly whine his name.

You try, you really try so hard not to come as his tongue continues to pleasure you. But it seems impossible.

Everything feels so fuzzy as you whine, rambling, pleading with him once again.

Anakin slips his tongue out of you, his gaze softening as he takes you in.

“Alright baby, you can let go. You’ve earned it.” he whispers before his lips wrap around your clit.

With one last harsh suck on your nub you come with a loud cry, your back arching. Your vision turns white and your ears ring as your whole body racks with such intense pleasure, you almost think you might pass out.

Gasping out his name, hips stuttering until the final waves of aftershock pass. Your body tenses before it relaxes back into the soft mattress. Gently, he laps at your release until it’s getting too much.

“So good.” Anakin whispers as he presses a final kiss on your hip bone, then slowly crawls back up to you, his lips leaving kisses in his wake.

You’re still trying to catch your breath, trying to keep your eyes open as he finally hovers over you.

“My good girl,” he whispers before both of your lips meet, the kiss soft and gentle, making you feel all fuzzy inside.

[peggyao3]

Pt. 28 - Fucking Machines

A/N: Why is it always dom!Feyd these days? I miss sub!Feyd, but he ain't back yet 😅

TAGS: she/her AFAB FMC, dub-con, dom!Feyd, BDSM, restraints, overstimulation

WORD COUNT: 700

"No, no, no, you can't!" She laments pitifully upon being forcefully pushed down on the bench by three demure slaves. Feyd-Rautha cradles her head against the headrest, snaring her pleading gaze with a saccharine smile.

"It's to your own benefit, sweetling." The slaves slot her wrists in the designated shackles under the bench and lift her kicking legs to the struts that jut up on each side of the contraption. "I can't be wasting hours of my days to break your little pussy in."

The three bald figures scurry wordlessly out of Feyd-Rautha's wicked play room and when the door whirrs shut, it is only him and her left in this torture chamber. She is spread apart, ankles, wrists and waist tied and one look down the length of her helplessly writhing body reveals a device with a phallus of shiny, black plastic attached, ready to start pistoning into her bared cunt.

At the very least, he squirts a generous glob of lube into his palm and spreads it all over the exposed, tender flesh between her thighs while she whines and shakes her head no with growing despair. Her little clit swells under the ministrations of his calloused fingers and by the time he switches on the machine, she barely takes notice of it, caught up in the throes of pleasure.

Only when the cool plastic breaches her wet, little hole, her eyes snap down and her limbs spasm in their restraints. Feyd-Rautha chuckles and stands, wiping his fingers clean on his trousers. The shiny cock slides beautifully into his darling's cunt and she takes it so well, much better than he thought.

"What do you think, three sessions a day should be enough?" His chest vibrates with a deep chuckle while the phallus drills slowly into her squishy cunt. "Or should I just keep you here? I'll even take you to the bathroom for a piss every other hour if you're good."

"I ha-a-ate you!" She hisses pitifully, though her toes curl treacherously in the air.

Nonchalantly, he switches the machine to a wickedly high setting and pushes himself off the wall, sauntering to the door with long, graceful limbs.

"N-No-o-o, ahhh, don't leave me, please!" She cries out for him. "I'm sorry, m'sorry, sorry!"

"You don't know how lucky you are, sweetling," Feyd-Rautha tut-tuts and returns with measured steps. "All the effort I'm taking on me to make sure I won't split you open on my cock when I have you."

Pleadingly, she waits for him to turn down the setting, but Feyd only settles in the leather armchair across from her and palms himself over his trousers. Her whining and pleading only makes him determined to keep her here longer, until she's half unconscious with drool slipping from both corners of her mouth.

It takes half an hour for him to take mercy on her. When the rattling of the machine subsides, she whimpers quietly and her empty hole clenches pitifully around nothing.

"Aw, poor darling," he drawls and gracefully crouches down, swapping the slick-glistening phallus for a bigger one with practiced ease.

"S-Stop, no more!" She writhes like a snake. "Why?! Yours doesn't even look like that!" She barks out with shaky voice while Feyd already nudges the thick head to her swollen, weeping entrance.

"Does it not?" The machine jumps into motion and his woman yowls out, thrashing against the restraints as her pussy is forced to take the obscene girth and length of the toy. "It was modeled after my own," Feyd-Rautha reveals with a wicked grin. "Convince yourself."

Leisurely, he saunters around the bench and adjusts the height of the headrest to match his hips. Then, he snaps down the top part of it, letting his sweetling's head roll back with a frightened yelp. Her despair only grows bigger when Feyd-Rautha unfastens his pants and pulls out his impressive cock, stroking himself right over her face. Long, dark veins coil across the underside.

"It's n-n-not going to fi-i-it," she laments, face and hairline damp with sweat. Chuckling, Feyd lets his cock fall against her cheek and forehead.

"Open wide, my darling," he purrs. "Your pussy is not the only hole that needs breaking in."

A/N: We need a mop in aisle ten 💦💦💦 Or at least I need one in mine.

FEYD TAG LIST

@nostalgichoya, @forgedfromthestars, @sweetiee-o, @missbingu, @minedofmoria

@sebastianswallows, @charmingballoon, @flower-frog, @welliah, @aoi-targaryen

@coastalcowgirl35, @esolean, @szapizzapanda, @tatertooted, @sunny747

@ughdontbeboring, @meetmeatyourworst

[theroseceleste]

Birthday Commission - Toxic Love

@faretheeoscar very kindly did me some adorable artwork for my birthday, so when her birthday came around, I knew I had to write something for her. She gave me a little head canon prompt between her OC, Alexa, and Miguel and it was absolutely so much fun to write!

Minors DNI

Our loveable Spider Society leader is a naughty boy. Enjoys causing problems for Alexa, a spider person who helps out in HQ, and her boyfriend (a version of Peter from a different universe). When the couple fight, he reaps the benefits.

Word count - 3046

Contains - Descriptions of a toxic relationship. Smut - penetrative sex

If you enjoy this work, please consider liking, commenting and re-blogging. Many thanks. xx

(art provided to me by @faretheeoscar but masterfully created by Roy - @ SpicyKfcChicken on Twitter)

~~~~~~~~~~

“What’s the point, Alexa?” a hologram of Peter Parker from Earth-120703 yells at his on-off girlfriend, Alexa as she talks to him through her interdimensional watch. Once again, their love for each other is being severely tested by what Alexa thinks is the overzealous ban on travelling around the multiverse administered by Miguel. 

Tearful brown eyes stare back at the orange image of Peter, her brows furrowed with frustration and heartache. “No, Peter, we can… we can make this work, I-”

“No! I’m tired of this. The back and forth. The ups and downs - although it’s more downs than ups, at this rate,” Peter retorts angrily, although there’s more pain in his voice than he wants to let on.

Alexa shakes her head furiously, unable to accept that yet again another breakup between them is happening. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.

“Either get that control-freak Miguel to lift that stupid ban, or we’re done. I can’t do this any more,” the hologram vanishes, leaving Alexa in a shocked silence. Her manic gaze searches her private quarters for something to throw with frustrated anger.

Both Alexa and Peter know that Miguel won’t ever lift the ban. So in reality, his own ultimatum will only ever have one painful and upsetting outcome. God, that man makes her so angry. Her fingers clench as she considers wringing Miguel’s neck… That seems like a perfect idea... Why take her frustrations out on an inanimate object when she can do it to the source of her emotional turmoil instead?

All rational thinking has left the building as she storms through HQ with a face like thunder. White and light blue streaks across walkways as she weaves speedily between her countless multiversal counterparts, heading to the lab, where she bets any money that’s where he’ll be.

After ignoring several groups of Peters who wave at her as she passes, she approaches Miguel’s usual hideout.

“Whatcha doin’?” asks a female voice as a little hologram of a woman, positioned like she is lying on her stomach, appears next to Alexa, striding through the long corridor.

“Going to give Miguel a piece of my mind,” the youthful-looking woman growls angrily, fists still clenched. The closer she gets to the lab, more of her body feels tense. Her shoulders are raised and her heart pounds within her chest.

“Oh boy… the usual?” the hologram called Lyla asks as her position changes immediately to standing after the spider person’s answer.

“Yep,” Alexa snaps as she pushes through the door to Miguel’s lab. “Lock the door, Lyla.”

The floating AI salutes and fizzles away before activating the lock on all access points to the lab.

The Spider Society leader, a six-foot-nine-inch man, sits at a desk, working away on a device he has been developing. He sits in silence, so completely fixated on his work that he doesn’t even notice Alexa storming across the vast, cavernous workspace.

As he reaches for a screwdriver, Alexa fires a web at it and yanks it back, causing his large blue and red hand to clasp around nothing but air. The clattering sound of the tool makes him turn his head towards her. He stands up immediately, turning his body to face the Spider Society member.

“Alexa-“

“Shut up,” she growls as she shoves at him, shunting him against his desk, causing everything to wobble upon impact.

Miguel takes a step away before she tries again, hands raised placatingly. “Que pasa?” he manages to blurt out as he dodges another attempt of a shove.

“You know what,” Alexa retorts with a snap. The society leader’s heart pounds with anticipation. He does know, and he can’t wait for what it leads to.

“Chiquita, you know why I can’t lift the-“ he gets shoved again, but he lets it happen while his hands grasp at Alexa’s wrists, however she pulls back before he can.

“Don’t call me that,” she demands as she advances on Miguel again. She’s far too angry for any cute pet names - besides, they’re coming from the wrong man.

Finally, a series of flying fists barrage Miguel as a tearful Alexa finally explodes. Both of her clenched hands strike his broad and well defined chest.

“Lift that ban, or I swear to God I’ll-“

The towering leader’s arms wrap around her tightly, restricting her movements. He turns her so his front is pressed against her back as he leans down and whispers hotly into her ear. “Or you’ll what, chiquita?”

The sensation of his breath caressing the side of her face, mixed in with his proximity and restrictive grip on her, makes her pause and try very hard not to moan.

She hates him for the situation he’s put her in. His actions frustrates her and breaks her heart almost on a day-to-day basis because she can’t see the man she loves. While Miguel’s excuse is mostly valid, she knows there’s another agenda for keeping her close, under his watchful gaze. And once again, she’s fallen into his trap.

His arms snake around her body, holding her diagonally across her chest as well as her stomach. His left hand grips her right shoulder, while his right hand takes her left hip.

As her body moulds against his, she can feel his arousal making its presence known by throbbing against her rear.

Miguel’s hand resting on Alexa’s hip presses her against him more as he starts to grind himself into her. “Mhmm… but chiquita, you always enjoy this bit, don’t you?” he thrusts his hips again and groans into her ear, finally eliciting a moan from her parted lips. “Sí, that’s it, mi amor. Make those pretty noises for me.”

Alexa jabs her elbow into Miguel’s ribs, procuring a grunt to vibrate against her cheek. She can’t lose sight of her purpose for storming into the lab. Not again.

“That’s it. Take your frustrations out on me. I love it when you do. It’s so rewarding for the both of us,” he continues to encourage her, his words punctuated with a few more grinds against the groove of her backside.

What he’s doing doesn’t even make her feel good, but the mere fact that he’s doing it makes her hot - not just under her suit, but under her skin. Her core pulses wildly as she hears yet another deep moan against her ear.

“Tócate por mi,” (touch yourself, for me) he mumbles softly as his hands squeeze her in his grip.

Obediently, her hand slowly goes between her legs, her dainty fingers finding her sensitive bud through her suit. As she runs her digits in tight circles around her clit, she starts to moan louder. Her need increases, but so does her frustration.

“Good girl,” he growls as he grinds, before letting out a sudden grunt. “Ay coño!” his hip movements still for a moment. “This feels so good; I nearly came.”

Alexa whimpers with mounting need before she makes another desperate plea. “Miguel, please lift the ban-“

“No.”

Anger spikes again, momentarily breaking her out of her climbing arousal. In a sudden movement, she spins to face him. “Hijo de puta!” she spits as her seething brown eyes lock onto his red ones.

His arms tighten around her back, sealing her against him. He can feel the anger in her body and can practically taste the venom in the air coming from her beautiful lips.

There is now an unignorable throb against her stomach and an intense heat coming from the prominent bulge under his suit.

“Now, now, chiquita,” he coos as his right hand glides down her left ass cheek before gripping the underside of her hamstring and pulling her leg up so it hitches over his right hip. With a gentle lift, he has her pinned against his body, and her legs wrapped around his waist. And now the hypnotic throbbing is pressed against her entrance, but separated from one another by his and her suits.

“That’s better, mi amor,” he continues with a soft voice, edging between soothing and teasing.

Her expression is still etched with anger, but it’s slowly slipping away with his charm and the use of his body.

“Do you have anything else to get off your chest?” he asks as his large hand squeezes under her leg again, the tips of his fingers teasing the sensitive flesh of her thighs. “Or shall we both skip to the bit you know you enjoy?”

She slaps him across the cheek; not too hard, but enough to make his head jolt to the side as a grunt escapes his throat. His red eyes lock back onto Alexa as he bites his lower lip, displaying the tip of a fang. “You’re getting feistier… but I deserved that,” he grins.

Alexa lunges forward and wraps her arms around his neck. Her lips crash into his in a passionate and anger-fuelled kiss. Air hisses through their noses as the pair of them kiss, nip and suck on each other’s lips.

The hand that struck Miguel’s face slides into his hair, gripping it tightly as he does the same to her.

His actions are passionate and possessive while hers feel like she still has some anger to vent out of her system. She kisses harder - her bites are sharper and her grip is tighter, but he can take it. In fact, he likes it and welcomes it.

Miguel begins his grinding again, this time his efforts will directly contribute to making her feel good and most likely take her mind off Peter temporarily. He smiles proudly against her lips knowing her ban on travelling to Earth-120703 means Peter doesn’t get any action with his girlfriend, while Miguel gets it all. It’s glorious, satisfying and downright pleasurable.

Needy moans start to enter Miguel’s mouth, coming from Alexa’s lips. His grinding mixing in with their heated kiss is increasingly turning her on and driving her wild. She hates him, but it feels so good taking her frustrations out on him during passionate, verging on angry sex.

His left hand starts to unzip the back of her suit. All this teasing and her pent-up energy is making him impatient for her. He has been hoping Alexa and Peter would have another falling out as he has been desiring to fill her and feel her tight walls stretching around him once again.

The zip travels lower down her back, exposing her beautiful skin to his fleeting touches as he pulls it even further. She shivers in his grip and goosebumps rise on her flesh.

Their passionate kiss has not stopped for one second since it started. Her arms come free from the suit, followed by her gorgeously plump breasts that he can never get enough of.

Reluctantly, he gestures for her to release her grip on him with her legs in order to get the rest of the suit off. He often considers giving her a coded suit like his so it can fade away with ease and they can get down to business much quicker.

Finally that suit is off, and she’s back in his arms again. He carries her to the desk he was working on, and sits down on the chair with her on his lap.

His suit dissolves away, revealing his mouth-wateringly toned body and allowing them to feel each other’s skin properly, producing a moan from both of them.

Alexa gazes down at him, her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. Her legs straddle his lap as she watches him run his fist up and down his hardened shaft.

It’s sad that she knows Miguel’s body far more intimately than Peter’s. But she knows the sex she has with him is fulfilling.

“Ride me, chiquita. Ride me until you’re all spent,” he whispers, encouraging her to take her place over his cock.

Leaning further back in his chair, he slides his hips further forward, making it easier for her to get into position.

Long, tanned fingers reach upwards to tease her sensitive folds and to test them. She’s certainly ready as the tips of his fingers practically slide into her entrance. He loves how wet she gets for him.

Gazing up at her, he smirks as he watches her bite her lip at his touch between her legs. Her hands resting on his broad shoulders squeeze his muscles as she feels another wave of arousal drench his fingers.

“So wet… So ready for me…” he murmurs as he pulls his digits out and uses her arousal to coat his member, before directing her hips right above it. “Go on. Work out some of your frustration on that cock, chiquita.”

Oh, how she’d love to wipe that smirk off his face. Ride him hard until he begs her to stop, or the chair breaks. The thought of seeing him whimper as she rises and falls on him makes her even wetter.

With the help of his hands, he guides her down onto him. Her arousal ensures he glides in easily. Her breath hitches, which is a sight and sound he always loves to witness. Her body’s initial reaction to him invading her will never get old.

As he’s enjoying her sinking down onto him, she takes him by surprise by stopping, rising up until the tip nearly pops out of her heat, and then comes crashing down, burying him to the hilt.

“FUCK!” he shouts and grips the sides of his chair.

Alexa’s face was full of determination to ride him within an inch of his life. Her anger is still evident and desperate to be released before she goes insane.

The sound of skin slapping skin fills the air, mixing in with her moans and his grunts.

He fills her completely, making her begin to wonder how Peter would compare. But the thought hurts too much. To forget her on-off boyfriend temporarily, she rides harder and faster.

Large hands easily cup her breasts as he watches the sexy display before him. She has never bounced on his cock like this before, but he hopes she’ll do it again. He loves how hard and fast she’s going, and hearing her enjoy the way she’s riding him is pure perfection.

Miguel’s fingers pinch her nipples to see how she’ll react. She groans and tips her head back as she drops down on him harder. Then, he introduces a rolling motion between his fingers and thumbs which melts her even more.

The longer this continues, he notices her noises are sounding softer. All of her aggression is leaving her and she’s now simply riding him out of enjoyment. He feels slightly relieved as for a brief moment he thought he heard unhealthy creaking sounds coming from his chair.

To add to her pleasure, he releases one breast and brings his thumb to her clit as she continues to bounce on him. The pad of his digit runs tight and warm circles around it, making her moan more desperately as they both feel her tightening up inside.

“Come for me, chiquita. Let it all go for me,” he encourages her, feeling excited to experience her clenching on his member.

It doesn’t take much convincing for her to unravel. The entire lab fills with her squeals as she climaxes hard all over his cock. She clenched and pulses around his thick length filling her to capacity.

He pulls her close, her glistening, slightly sweaty skin sticks to his, emphasising just how hard she worked for that delightful orgasm. “Good girl,” he praises her as he strokes her curly brown hair. “Now it’s my turn,” he growls as he stands, lifting her up with him.

Miguel cradles her effortlessly with one arm as he swipes everything he was working on earlier off his desk, sending everything crashing to the floor. In his haste, he places her down unceremoniously on the table. He hears a slight “ooof” as she thuds against it.

A charming smile but laced with a bit of danger crosses his face as he enters her suddenly.

“M-Miguel!” Alexa squeals as she arches her back against the cold hard surface.

He smirks as he slams into her in a punishing rhythm, the desk now creaking unhealthily under his efforts. “Time to vent my frustrations, now,” he grunts as he thrusts harder. His hands grab the back of Alexa’s knees and push them as far back as he can.

“When will you realise that no matter how much you ask- Ffuuuck…” he groans with mounting pleasure. “The answer will always be no. Hmmmm…” Miguel screws his eyes shut as he bares his fangs.

Anger spikes in Alexa once more, but the near orgasmic look on his face distracts her.

“Why don’t you just accept that and have me all. The. Time. Instead?” Each word is punctuated with hard, punishing thrusts which meet with her howls.

“Tócate por mi, chiquita,” (touch yourself for me) he orders her, hoping to get one more climax out of her before he is done.

While one hand grips onto the edge of the table, her other hand makes its way to her sensitive bud. Miguel watches in delight as she obeys his command.

“Good girl,” he coos as he spreads her legs wider. “Fuck, you’re so tight!”

Another tightening sensation builds within her as she continues to touch herself and feel the head of his cock tease her g-spot. Her mewls become desperate as she gets closer and closer.

“That’s it, chiquita. Release everything you’ve got,” he growls as he nears his climax.

Alexa’s body writhes uncontrollably as she comes undone for the second time. Her screams and her body’s reaction to her orgasm generates a grin full of pride on his face.

“Sí, sí…” he grunts. “That’s it. Only I can give you the pleasure you need. You don’t need anyone else, mi amor!” Miguel’s body tenses at the end of his sentence as he explodes inside her. His seed spilling from his slit and filling her insides. “Fuck!”

He leans over her and rests his weight on his arms on either side. “You can either continue with your delusion that you and Peter can be together,” he pauses to catch his breath and nuzzle his sweaty face into hers. “Or you accept the truth and have me whenever, wherever you desire.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading Toxic Love. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. I'm pleased to say that the birthday girl loved it too.

If you wish to follow me on Twitter, please click on the link below.

[nanowrimo]

How to Find Hope for Completing Your Writing Goals

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Campfire, a 2023 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a writing and worldbuilding platform to help you create an immersive experience benefitting both authors and readers. Today, Campfire Community Manager Emory Glass shares some words on having hope when writing feels overwhelming:

It has been 3,265 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I was 16 and wrote 75,000 words. It was exhilarating and cathartic and everything I ever dreamt of.

Tomorrow it will be 3,266 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I look back on my projects thinking, “2,500 words a day is lightspeed. The words flowed so freely then, so quickly.” I want to be a writer–I am a writer. It is my identity, my purpose, my reason, yet I cannot bring myself to finish what I have begun.

The next day it will have been 3,267 days since I won NaNoWriMo. The words do not fly from my fingertips but crawl, sapped of energy, the page a grave for ink stains posing as letters. I talk to my characters often. My writer friends tell me I speak of them as if they were real people, but I cannot seem to lift the weight of their stories from my mind. Still, I have no platform, no audience, no one eagerly watching for the next installment.

The day after it will have been 3,268 days since I won NaNoWriMo. Two publications, no published novels, hundreds of thousands of words gathering dust. I am no writer, I am a collector of words. There must be something wrong with me. I have so much to tell, so much to share, so much to create, but here I am not telling, not sharing, not creating.

One day it will have been 3,269 days since I won NaNoWriMo. I will not have published a book, I will not have a new story, I will not have an audience or a platform or one–just one–person looking forward to what happens next.

But I will not give up.

"...and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

It's rather typical for a dark fantasy writer to peer into the void, but it quickly becomes an intoxication and an excuse to never move a muscle. Do not succumb. Push forward, even if you barely move an inch. If you wish to be a builder, you build. If you wish to be a fighter, you fight. If you wish to be a writer, you write.

Brute force seems barbaric. Should words not spill onto the page? It is said that art cannot be coerced or bent to one's own will; it comes easily, naturally, swiftly. The very best art is created in a creative frenzy, so they say, and the very best artists are recognized in memoriam.

But if you delay and evade and wither your ambition as you count the days since your last success, your oeuvre halts and is buried and perishes by your own hand. So if you, like me, too often find yourself peering into the void where the words have gone to fade away, cleave to the remedy for its gaze: hope. This is the heart of creation. Laudation and lucrativeness are but two measures of success. They will not themselves burst a dam of words within you and imbue every project with Midas' touch. Creative fever is not catching–you must seek it out.

Give yourself a reason to write even when you do not want to or it feels too Herculean a task. If you seek new horizons, a useful tool, or a supportive community to accompany you on this odyssey, enlist Campfire to help. Whether it behooves you to squeeze out words on your mobile device, stay focused offline with a desktop application, or keep inspiration at hand via browser-based work and Discord chats, it's the best place to bring your stories to life.

NaNoWriMo participants can save on Campfire’s writing software! Use the discount code LETSGONANO23 for 30% off your first year of an annual subscription to our Standard Plan. It’s free to create an account. Offer expires March 31, 2024.

Emory Glass is an avid artist, worldbuilder, and author with a passion for strong female characters in leading roles and meticulous attention to detail in lore. She loves tea, learning Scottish Gaelic, continuing her work on The Chroma Books, a series of interconnected stories, and running Inkblood Book Company for similarly enthusiastic dark fantasy writers. When not chasing down stories, Emory works as the Community Manager at Campfire.

Top photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash.

[darklovecat]

Beauty tips?

Taking my vitamins and beauty supplements every day!

I believe that beauty and health go hand in hand so I got a complete blood work-up to figure out what vitamins and minerals my body was lacking, and I make sure I'm taking my them daily. On top of that, I take various supplements such as Collagen, Fish oil etc but I swear by my 10-gram daily collagen regimen. I take its powdered form right before going to bed and have noticed its benefits within a short time - My knees used to sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies when I bent down, but after a few days of collagen, the crepitus is gone. Plus, my hair is growing faster and my skin is looking plumper. It's done wonders for my joints, giving me a healthy glow, and making me look way more refreshed.

Having perfect posture at all times!

I think this is a very simple but overlooked beauty tip that truly elevates your appearance. It's like the secret weapon of beauty, it can transform not just the way you look, but also the way you feel. When you stand tall and hold yourself with grace and poise, you radiate confidence and elegance. Good posture also has numerous health benefits. It can help prevent back pain, improve your breathing, and even boost your mood and energy levels. Ever since I've started incorporating Pilates and Ballet into my routine to build strength and flexibility, my posture has improved greatly. The way you carry yourself says a lot about who you are and by standing tall and confident, you'll not only look beautiful but also feel empowered and ready to conquer the world.

Getting 6 hours of quality sleep every night!

You know what's a major beauty tip that most people sleep on? Sleep!! Forget about slapping on expensive creams and doing a gazillion steps in your skincare routine. You gotta start with the basics, hun. Get your sleep game on point, eat right, and manage your stress. Now, I know we all have different needs when it comes to sleep, so I won't give you a specific number. But trust me, beauty sleep is not a myth, it's legit! I turn on Night Mode on my devices at 6:30, pop my sleeping pills at 9:30, and hit the hay an hour later. Oh, and I'm not afraid to take a nap during the day if I need to. Don't underestimate the power of a good night's sleep. It's the secret to looking and feeling amazing.

Growing out my eyelashes!

I take pride in my long and voluminous lashes, they're one of my best features and one of my most complimented features. However, my natural lashes were not always this way, they became longer through regular lash serum usage. I do not really need wear mascara and after a lash lift, my lashes appear as if I'm wearing extensions. While Latisse has worked wonders for me, it's important to note that the product does come with potential side effects such as orbital fat loss and irritation. Thankfully, I did not experience any adverse effects. Another caveat is that the product only works as long as it is used consistently. Despite these considerations, I wholeheartedly recommend Latisse. To see the results for yourself, check out the Real Woman Gallery.

Cat.

[enliwish]

 Are Face and Neck Lifting Devices Worth It

In recent years, the beauty and skincare industry has witnessed a surge in the popularity of at-home face and neck lifting devices. Many consumers are now seeking effective, non-surgical alternatives to combat signs of aging, lift sagging skin, and enhance their overall appearance. 

With this trend in mind, one pressing question arises: 

Are these devices worth the investment? 

To help you make an informed decision about the tools you are going to use, let us explore their effectiveness, safety, and practicality.

Understanding Face and Neck Lifting Devices

Microcurrent Devices: Use gentle electrical currents to stimulate facial muscles and promote collagen production.

Radiofrequency (RF) Machines: Employ heat to tighten skin by stimulating collagen and elastin production.

Ultrasonic Tools: Utilize high-frequency sound waves for skin rejuvenation and deep cleaning.

LED Masks: Highlight the use of different light wavelengths to target skin issues like acne, aging, and pigmentation.

These technologies aim to enhance collagen production, promote blood circulation, and encourage skin rejuvenation. Many users hope to achieve tighter skin, reduced wrinkles, and a more youthful appearance—all from the comfort of their homes.

Get yours now—buy the Enliwish lifting device today!

Benefits of At-Home Lifting Devices

Convenience

At-home lifting devices allow you to integrate beauty treatments into your daily routine without the need for appointments at a dermatologist or spa.

Cost-Effective

While the upfront cost can be significant, these devices can save money in the long run compared to regular professional treatments.

Targeted Treatments

Many devices allow for flexible targeting of specific areas, such as fine lines, sagging skin, or overall facial firmness, tailoring your treatment to your unique needs.

Non-invasive

These devices provide a non-invasive alternative, with minimal risk. Side effects, if any, are generally mild, such as temporary redness or tingling.

Are They Effective?

While many users report positive outcomes, the effectiveness of face and neck lifting devices can vary. 

Research indicates that technologies like microcurrents and radiofrequency can yield visible results, particularly with consistent use over several weeks or months. However, it's vital to maintain realistic expectations:

Gradual Results: Unlike surgical options, results may not be dramatic and often rely on individual skin types, conditions, and adherence to routines.

Combination Approach: To maximize results, combining at-home treatments with a solid skincare regimen and healthy lifestyle choices is often recommended.

Curious about how to achieve that perfect V-line?

Check out our blog on The V Line Lifting Mask: Frequently Asked Questions for all the answers you need!

Safety Considerations

Before purchasing a face and neck lifting device, consider the following safety tips:

Choose Reputable Brands: Do thorough research and read reviews to ensure the product's safety and efficacy.

Consult a Dermatologist: If you have specific skin conditions or sensitivity, seek professional guidance before starting any new treatment.

Follow Instructions: Using the device as directed is crucial. Improper application could lead to skin irritation or other adverse effects.

Integrating with Professional Treatments

For some individuals, an effective strategy might include combining at-home lifting devices with professional treatments such as facials, chemical peels, or microneedling. Many beauty experts suggest this approach to maximize skin rejuvenation benefits.

Conclusion: Are They Worth It?

In summary, face and neck lifting devices can be a worthwhile investment for those looking to enhance their skincare routines and combat signs of aging. 

However, managing expectations, prioritizing safety, and integrating these best face and neck lifting devices from enliwish into a comprehensive skincare strategy is essential for achieving optimal results.

Ultimately, whether these devices are worth it depends on your unique needs and goals. If you are ready to take the plunge, be diligent in your approach. 

As the saying goes, "A little kindness to yourself goes a long way."

[braveclementine]

October 6: Collaring (Remus Lupin)❤️

Warning: 18+ readers only, Collaring, pet name, blowjob

Copyright: I do not own Remus Lupin or any other mentioned Harry Potter/Wizarding World Characters. I also do not condone this being copied.

Despite what a full moon meant for the love of your life, you couldn't help but feel a little excited that it was coming up soon.

Yes, you felt terrible that Remus would have to become a werewolf through painful measures, but it was the week leading up to the full moon that you were looking forward to.

He just couldn't keep his hands off of you, and his actions, persuaded slightly be the moon, revealed that he was extremely kinky in the bedroom. Which, of course, benefited you in every possible way.

Of course, with magic, everything seemed rather intensified. If he wanted a night where you were completely bound, a simple wave of his wand tied you to his headboard before he did whatever he pleased. Not to mention countless spells you swore he'd created on his own for his own devices. Or summoning or transfiguring something simple like a quill into something sinister like a vibrator.

As the third day of the week approached, you made sure to get to his office before him, stripping your clothes to put them in the basket outside the bathroom door, and quickly went to go and get the collar from the dresser.

Remus loved the collar. It was thick, but not to big. It was mostly black with little moons on it- which you had put there as a show of your submissive behavior with him. Submitting to him the way he submitted to the moon every month. The only difference was that you did this every day. Submitted to him everyday.

It had been a decision that the both of you had agreed on. As you were still a student and you two couldn't get married, you had a done a quiet collaring ceremony. It had been extremely intimate, though you had both decided you wouldn't take the silver collar because then you'd have no way of taking it off.

So you had decided on the leather collar that you would take off in the mornings before school, and put back on the minute you got back to him. Eventually, you would move to the more permanent collar, but that would also be when he put a wedding ring on your left hand and kissed you in front of everyone he knew.

You waited patiently until Remus came into the room. He was very quick to lock the door and abandon his bag clumsily on the desk.

His clothes were off in seconds, joining yours, before he made his way over to the bed. He knelt in front of you, taking the collar from your hands. You lifted your hair into a makeshift ponytail above your head with one hand, while he reached behind you to clasp the lock together before kissing you passionately.

Like always, he tasted of chocolate and tea, but also a little bit of salt. The last taste sometimes changed based on what chocolate he had. Caramel, orange flavoring, coconut, dark chocolate, salt, etc.

"Mmm, such a good girl bunny." Remus whispered, his hands tangling in your hair. "Always a good girl."

"Only for you." You whispered, staring up at his scarred face. In your opinion, the scars only helped his appearance. He was so fucking handsome with that golden-red hair, beautiful brown eyes, adorable smile. Though his face was slightly lined and he usually had dark circles under his eyes, you couldn't help but feel he was the most handsome man in the universe.

"Mm, is that so?" His eyes were growing darker as he slowly gave in to his desires. His worst fear was hurting you, but on the week of the full moon, it was so so hard. "Show me then."

He took the silver ring, tugging you forward. You got to your knees, immediately without any hesitation, knowing exactly how you wanted to make him feel good.

Your hands immediately went straight to his beautiful, erect appendage. It was thick and long, veins prominently blue and purple. The tip was red, already starting to trickle a bit though he'd barely been in the room for more than five minutes.

Of course, you were extremely aroused just from this so you didn't blame him.

You didn't tease, licking him from the base to the tip before deep throating him as much as possible. After you'd bopped your head up and down no more than seven times, his hands finally found their way into your hair, pushing her further.

You braced yourself against his thighs, closing your eyes a little as you took everything, swirling your tongue around, doing everything you could to get him off.

"Fuck bunny." He murmured you nickname. The lowness of his voice only sent chills of desire down your spine and you sucked at his cock hard as he made to pull off before licking the slit of his tip and moving back down.

His grunts were low, his fingers tight, pulling your hair just slightly. You could feel him twitching and you knew he was close.

You looked up at him the best you could while trying to keep your pace up the same. His eyes were scrunched tight, his mouth slack as his low grunts left it. He looked like he was in heaven. Because of you.

One final suck and he pushed you as far as you could go, gagging as he hit the back of you. You closed your lips to the best of your ability as he released into your mouth, giving you hot and salty liquid.

"Swallow." He commanded, his finger finding the silver ring again.

He didn't even have to command it, you were already done. You pulled off his cock slowly, a string of spit still connected before he wiped it away from your chin.

"My turn." He murmured, kissing you. He swept you up into his arms to lay you down on the bed. You let him connect the chain that would keep you in place from the headboard to the silver ring on your collar.

You stared up at him. You would always be the submissive and that never bothered you. You always preferred when he took charge anyways.

However, you could see the slight pain in his eyes from the full moon. This week wasn't about you, it was about him.

You reached out, grabbing the hand that was going to warm you up. You didn't need it, you were already highly aroused just from his presence. "Remy, this is about you. Just take it out on me. Just fuck me, please? Wanna take care of you this week."

His eyes were glazed with lust, but he was still hesitating. He always wanted to take care of you, no matter what day it was. No matter if there was a full moon or not.

"Moony." You begged.

That made him snap just a little, crawling over your body before pushing himself inside. You sighed in contentment and he let out a low growl. "Be prepared to not walk for a week."

Well, that was what healing potions were for.

[knockyasocksoff2022]

Faking.

Another soukoku fic from last year's Sicktember.

Dazai's Perspective:

The bed feels so warm and I’m genuinely upset when I feel my eyes opening. I close them again but I know I won’t be able to sleep again. The thought of leaving the bed turns my inside to lead, a heavy, pressing, dreary, gloomy feeling. I would love nothing more than to stay here all day, possibly longer, and ideally with Chuuya, but he’d never stay with me. He’s far too dedicated to his work.

Chuuya, ever the deep sleeper, is still firmly asleep beside me. No wonder, it’s 2:00. It’s not uncommon for Chuuya to work until late or have a nocturnal schedule but this week he has daytime hours. 

I toss, turn, and twine my fingers through my lover’s hair and attempt the feat of sleep again. Even after five minutes, sleep evades me, only this time, as I toss and turn, I make the mistake of kicking Chuuya. Hard. In the face.

Oopsies!

Fully awake now, he grabs me, a reflex, and then softens after realising it’s just me.

“Dammit, Mackerel!” 

“Sorry.” I feel genuinely guilty for disrupting Chuuya's precious sleep.

His expression calms, not quite a smile, but his version of one. He’s still annoyed. “Why are you up so early? You sick or somethin’?” A frown.

His words confuse me at first, but then I remember that I always sleep much later than Chuuya. (Whenever I manage to sleep at all that is.)

Before I can respond, Chuuya's hand is on my forehead. His fingers are soft (a benefit of constant glove-wearing) and feel pleasantly warm against my skin. Chuuya runs a higher temperature than most and I welcome it now.

“Yeah, and you’re all pale too. You feelin’ okay?”

I’m about to deny it but then I get an idea. I’ll just tell him I’m ill then I can just rest the rest of the day while he’s at work.

I can’t summon up the energy for any of my usual antics so I just stay silent and let him think of that what he will.

“Hey?” his words are soft now and he drops his voice to a whisper, “Did you fall asleep again?”

I shake my head to let him know I haven’t

“This isn’t like you, you must be feelin’ pretty bad, huh?”

My plan is working but I can’t bring myself to smile.

“Come on, Osamu, I need to take your temp.”

I groan at the loss of the blanket’s warmth but Chuuya’s next to me so I press myself to him instead. He must have sensed what I want because on the way to the kitchen he grabs a blanket from the sofa and wraps it around me.

He lifts me onto the counter easily, like I’m a child. I don’t entirely mind it. No, I don’t mind at all. I wish he’d stay all day. Knowing that won’t happen, I let him slide the thermometer under my tongue. I wonder what he’ll do when he sees my temperature is normal. 

When the device beeps he takes it out, barely glancing at the number then presses a gentle kiss directly on my lips. I blink, surprised.

“What? Chu-”

“You’re temp’s normal, Osa. I figured as much or I wouldn’t have given you the blanket. I understand if you don’t wanna talk about whatever’s bothering you, but I had to get you out of bed somehow, I could feel you tossing around all night.”

“sorry.” the words are quieter than I intended.

“No, it’s okay. Do you want tea? Hot chocolate maybe?”

“Either is fine.” Truthfully, I don’t care in the slightest. I’m not even sure I’ll taste it.

“Okay, cocoa it is.” But he waits a moment to see if I’ll object. I nod to show him I don’t.

I watch in silence as he moves through the kitchen, as fiery as he may look, Chibi has the grace of a dancer. He told me that he wouldn’t mind dancing if he could do everything over again. The memory warms me a bit.

The only sounds around are the kettle heating up, and the soft whirring as the temperature of that water rises. At my distance, the entire scene is a bit fuzzy, the only thing I can really make out is Chuuya’s blaze-coloured hair. I haven’t told him, of course. I know I should. I want to, but not today. Even thinking about the words drains me more than I like.

He’d make a big deal out of it. How pathetic is that? Even being spoilt tried me.

I’m so busy trying to see through the fog that I almost don’t notice Chibi in front of me.

“Here.”

I reach out mindlessly.

“Careful, Osa, it’s hot.”

I “hmm” to let him know I’ve heard him. The cup feels heavy in my hand, so I set it down.

Wordlessly, Chibi dances off, returning promptly with two of the bendy straws Elise-chan gifted us years back. It’s a wonder they haven’t melted with how many times they’ve been through the dishwasher. I think they were meant for handwashing only. Chuuya is normally meticulous about that sort of thing, but we only use them when one of us is sick, so they need to be sterilised.

The straw does make it easier. I drink a bit too quickly just to lighten the cup. My tongue hurts, but it’s negligible, and the burn makes me feel something, at least.

“Good?”

I nod.

His hands are on my face now, gentle tracing under my eyes with that feather-light touch of his. I don’t need a mirror to know my eyes are dark with my lack of sleep.

“You really don’t look good though, Osa. You need sleep.”

I shake my head, “Can’t.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it, hesitating. He hardly ever hesitates. Then he’s walking off again, unlocking the cupboard where he keeps the medications, making sure to stand in font of it so I don’t see the passcode.

“I’m not actually sick. Did Chbi forget?”

He says nothing, taking out a blue bottle and pouring a dosage into the small lid that doubles as a measuring cup. Still silent, he brings it over to me.

“This is overnight cough syrup, the most disgusting shit you’ve ever tasted, I hate the stuff, but it’ll knock you out for a good 12 hours at least,” he explains.

I can only look at him. Chuuya suggesting drug use? It’s nothing scandalous, but I’m a bit surprised. I must look worse than I thought. It’s at times like this that I’m reminded of exactly what Chuuya would do for me, for my health and well-being.

His eyes widen. “. . . You don’t have to if you don’t want to, of course.” He starts towards the sink, “This is stupid. You’re probably immune to this stuff anyway.”

“Eh, why not.”

He turns around, walking back towards me, “Yeah. But just this once, okay. I’m not making this a habit. I’ll buy you some proper stuff this afternoon.”

I reach for the cup, he pulls it back. “Promise.”

I nod. He doesn’t give it up. It makes me laugh a little, the sound lifts some of the worry from his features. “I promise, Chibi.”

He lets me have it. 

As soon as the purple liquid hits my tongue I gag but force myself to swallow it.

“Nasty isn’t it.”

I would answer but I’m already feeling heavy. The good kind of heavy, the warm heavy that preludes sleep. After all my trouble, I don’t fight it now, leaning against, Chibi, shutting my eyes.

I feel his even, rhythmic steps under me, the weight of the duvet that Kouyou gave us, then nothing at all.

Chibi’s voice follows me into my dreams. “Goodnight, Osa, my love.”

[meyousing]

𝐵𝓎 𝒴𝑜𝓊, 𝐹𝑜𝓇 𝒴𝑜𝓊

𝓶𝔂 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮𝓼: today (february 1st) is my birthday, and i wanted to write something special for the occasion! ᵔᴥᵔ happy birthday to me!

𝓼𝔂𝓷𝓸𝓹𝓼𝓲𝓼: your yandere captor surprises you on your special day, in such a sentimental way.

𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮𝓼: this is meant to be an insert of whichever yandere character x reader you want! sfw, slight hurt to comfort, fluff. not super proofread, too excited to get this out on time :P

Never could you have imagined living to see the day where you’d find yourself alone in bed, cuddled up with a book, and dearly missing your captor. Uncharacteristically, he had awoken you this morning with a soft kiss, telling you that he had a lot of plans and errands to run today; he would not be home until later that night, likely when you’d be sleeping. He ensured that you had your usual entertainments and devices nearby before taking his leave, but not before tenderly telling you that he loved you, and that he hoped you would have a pleasant day in his absence. If you had to admit it, pushing all of your feelings aside–he had never mistreated you. Aside from the whole kidnapping and controlling everything that you were allowed to do, of course. With those aspects not in mind, you could only say this was uncharacteristic to an extent. 

He was always showing you distant affection, holding you very gently as if you were something fragile, and letting you go when he could tell that you wanted to be detached and alone. Today, he was acting more affectionately with you than he usually did; so thoughtfully, what with the kisses and sweet wishes. Could it be that he knew what day it was? He hadn’t said anything, though…maybe he was just in a particularly good mood, from some other reason that he felt wasn’t important enough to mention. 

You chose not to dwell on it for too long, as wondering for an extended period would only allow your mind to run free, and too far. You knew that you would start to recall bitter memories of your past birthdays, of your so-called friends and uncaring family who would respond to your rhetorical inquiries of “Do you know what day it is today?” with “...Wednesday?” Not to mention how, the older you grew, they would only hum in response to you telling them that it was your special day, or they would think you were joking, telling you that this attempt at gaining their attention was so odd, such a weird excuse to use.

Ah, see? You let your mind run off again… you did not want to remember any of that. But you continued to think about it, to let it eat away at you; too occupied inside of your own mind as your eyes scanned over the first sentence of your book’s current page over and over again, not really taking any of the words in when the ones being spoken in your mind were too caustic and distracting. It wasn’t until something fell down onto the page that you blinked out of this self-induced stupor. It was a wet spot… oh, you had started crying. 

You began to contemplate your feelings as more tears fell, and the more that you did, the more you were able to reassure yourself these memories were just that: memories. Figments of the past, things that have been said and done, that were no longer a problem for you now. So why were you so upset? 

Perhaps it was due to the fact that the one remaining person in your daily life had not done anything to change these recollections for you. He who claimed to be so devoted to you, to know everything about you, to have your best interests at heart and would do anything if it meant a benefit to you… had also forgotten your birthday. And what made you feel so much worse was how badly you craved his company right now, in such a disquieted moment, whereas on any other day you would banish him from trying to look at you when you were in such a state. 

“Y/N? I’m home.”

His voice was distant, you had time. You lifted a quivery hand to your face, clumsily shooing the tears off of your cheeks and wiping that same hand on the pillowcase beneath you to dry your fingers. What impeccable timing he has, you thought to yourself. 

As you heard the door grate open and his footsteps as he entered the room, you looked up to his frame in the doorway and could only pray that your eyes were not bloodshot, that your nose was not too swollen following so many sniffles. He returned your gaze after closing the door behind him, trekking over to you--he had not yet mentioned anything about your face looking different, and it didn’t seem like he would be once he gave you a soft smile. Safe, you told yourself. He sat down on the bedside by your feet, resting his hand on your blanketed knee and giving it a light squeeze.

“Did you have a good day?” 

How could you answer him without giving away the truth? You were sure that honesty would lead to endless questioning about what he could do to make you feel better. Anyone else would certainly appreciate that, but in a moment where you were made so sad by a topic so vulnerable, you only wanted your own company to cope; perhaps it was the countless years of being left alone on this day that made you crave loneliness. 

He squeezed your leg again, bringing your attention to the lingering silence in the air upon your lack of an answer. You blinked a few times, mustering a phoney smile in return to his as you nodded your head. Your response being nonverbal shouldn't have been anything he wasn’t used to, but it didn’t stop him from gazing at you for a bit longer than what seemed acceptable in that moment. Oh no, could he tell something was off? 

You had to restrict a deep sigh of relief when he turned away from you briefly, once more indicating that you were safe from his hounding since he had said nothing else. But when he turned back around, your body tensed on the spot.

“This is for you.” He almost sounded awkward, his eyes downcast as he slid a small, hand-sized box in your direction, stopping when it bumped against your hand. 

Was this… a gift? It took you a second to rip yourself away from the shock-induced paralysis of seeing what looked like a present being given to you today. Surely you were getting ahead of yourself, you couldn’t get too worked up over this just yet, even though your hands moved to unwrap and open the box faster than you could process the velvety feeling of it in your palm.

Inside was a delicate bracelet. And not just any bracelet, this was the one that was given to you earlier on in your life. It was the only gift you had ever received from your family, even though you had received it when you were an infant. It had sentimental value; the memory of an experience you had never felt since then. 

When he had torn you away from your everyday life, forcing you into captivity at his side, you were forced to leave behind all of your personal belongings. Not only was this bracelet important to you, but it was the first item you had touched from your old home in over a year. Could he understand just how much this meant to you? Did he even realize what exactly he had just returned to you?

“I remember the story you told me about it.”

Oh, right. You had spoken about it once before, when you were in a mood to open up to him. You wound up crying into his arms and falling asleep in them, something that you pretended never happened when waking up the next day, since it had still been so early on in your time here. 

“I’ve had it in this home since the day I brought you here, but I wanted to give it to you on your birthday to make the reunion special. Sorry for making you wait so long…” his words were almost cheeky, the grin he shot at you holding the slightest hint of guilt. 

The way that your eyes and nose appeared to him now could no longer concern you, they were going to become bloodshot and swollen once more as tears welled up on your waterline. Your body acted before your mind could, a sob from your chest wracking both of you as your arms met around the back of his neck in an uncoordinated hug. 

“You remembered,” you whimpered into his shoulder, pressing into him as tightly as you could. At first, he didn’t make any moves to return your embrace, but you knew that he must have been momentarily surprised by your sudden lack of apprehension towards him, for once. His arms found your waist seconds later, welcoming you to him by pulling you closer and nudging his cheek into your neck sweetly.  

“Of course I remembered. I just wish I could have spent my day here with you. I could hardly stand the image of you being alone in here all day long, on your special day.” 

Such words made your heart flutter, you could barely believe them. Nobody had ever wanted to spend time with you on your birthday, especially by their own choice. As your eyes dampened his shirt the more you let out such joyful tears, a feeling swelled deeply inside of you that you never could have imagined experiencing towards him, had it not been expressed by him in the first place. He only made it known that your feelings would not be unrequited. 

You could swear that by him and for him, you felt love. 

© meyousing 2023. do not share/export my work on to any other platforms. do not translate my work. 

[showrunnerihardlyknowher]

Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers (But Also Please Stop Crying I'm New To This)

Working for a pest control company had its ups and downs, but for the most part the benefits were satisfactory. Good insurance, optional overtime, the chance to acquire a child who conveniently fit into a shirt pocket while you try to figure out what to do now.

Not quite sure there's a parenting handbook that covers the care and keeping of an abandoned borrower.

--

AO3 Link

My Christmas gift to @hiddendreamer67 (:

Word Count: 9K

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Humans had many different reactions upon discovering the existence of miniature people living within the walls of their house. Sometimes they would shriek in terror, sometimes they would immediately try to capture them, and sometimes they simply killed them without a second thought like common pests. Sometimes they even liked killing them. Exterminators typically fell into the third category whether they realized it or not, unaware of what else they were poisoning with bait traps and fumes, sealing all the hidden exits to ensure they suffocated with the rats.

Milo didn’t know what sort of reaction an exterminator would have upon learning the true nature of the infestation, but it certainly wasn’t eyes widening followed by a soft, calm “oh.”

The borrower child trembled where he sat on the kitchen counter, desperately trying to push himself deeper into the corner of the wall in the hope that maybe he’d be able to phase through it. He wanted to yank against the twine tangled around his body again as if it would yield a different result than before, but if he pulled any harder the largest knot binding his wrists would turn his hands purple. All he could do was stare at the tan uniformed man looming over him with horrified eyes and hope his impending doom was swift. He was a professional, after all, so what would be the point of sparing another vermin?

The man moved the coffee machine the borrower had been hidden behind to get a better look at Milo’s bound and shaking form. The exterminator’s brows furrowed as he took in the mess of tangles the little one was caught in, but it was not an expression Milo wanted to see when a gloved hand began reaching for him. Attempts to back away were just as futile as they were thirty seconds ago; the most he was able to do was kick his pinched legs until his back slid up the backsplash and granted him a standing position.

Warm fingers covered in latex still managed to find a way to curl behind his back, pulling the borrower closer before lifting him up to the man’s chest. The fingers mercifully opened so Milo was splayed flat on the human’s palm.  The child squeezed his eyes shut to avoid staring at the harsh blue eyes carefully inspecting him. Another gloved hand came up and experimented tugging a few loose threads wrapped around the trembling borrower only to achieve the same results Milo had, which were nothing. 

“You’re really stuck in there, aren’t you…” the human murmured, receiving a strangled squeak of terror in response, one that had been pent inside Milo’s tight throat since he was first spotted by the exterminator.

Teary brown eyes struggled to find the courage to open. He could hear the former prodding hand disappear into the equipment bag set on the counter. Milo’s uneven breathing quickly turned to hyperventilation as the technician dug around for something specific, unable to imagine what kind of extermination device the human was surely looking for. The contemplative hum above him did little to settle his nerves. How many instruments of torture could he possibly have in one bag?! Just pick one and get it over wi-!

“Were you able to find anything, sir?” a woman asked from the kitchen door, the borrower instantly recognizing her as the homeowner. She was such a sweet, older woman, the kind that would make a pie for every new neighbor moving in no matter the street. Evidently, her kindness didn’t extend to rodents, or what she thought were rodents scurrying about her kitchen at night. Milo knew he should have been faster, should have waited until he was sure the coast was clear, but instead he had to be as bold and impatient as any other six year old. How was he supposed to know she’d turn around so quickly?! 

Well, he probably could have expected it, since she always did have a habit of misplacing her glasses as soon as she needed them. He had thought he was lucky she couldn’t make out exactly what his silhouette was when he ducked under the fridge until she called for pest control the next morning. All the most important rules had been broken that night and now the golden rule of never being seen by a human was fractured twice .

He deserved to be left behind.

The only outward signs that the human had been equally startled by the owner’s unexpected presence was a silent hitch in his chest and fingers twitching to cage his little captive more securely. The overwhelming need to get away was coursing through Milo’s veins more than ever, barely able to process the mere idea of being in clear view of two humans at once. Luckily, or unluckily, the exterminator seemed to have no desire to show off his catch to his customer, instead quickly sliding the little bundle of borrower into his shirt pocket before turning to address the woman.

“There’s definitely a lot of gaps in your baseboards, especially in the kitchen and dining room,” he explained, subtly crossing his arms to still the squirming bulge with his hand. “They look like they’ve been there for a good while, so whatever made them could be gone by now.”

“Oh, dear,” the woman sighed. “Maybe it’s to be expected for an older house, but...well, I’m sure I saw something just the other day running across the floor!”

I have a pretty good idea of what it could be, the man thought. “It’s possible a new animal has taken up residence in the old nests,” he said instead. He grabbed his bag to pull out a notepad of order slips, hastily scribbling all the requirements per company policy. “We can either patch the openings and set a few traps, which you could do yourself if you don’t want to pay any labor fees, of course, or we can schedule an appointment to fumigate your house. You would need to stay somewhere else for at least three days, though.”

She waved her hand dismissively, “No, no, give me the earliest time you have to fumigate. I want to be absolutely certain there are no other little guests living with me.”

Milo was barely holding onto the conversation, every word the technician said reverberating in his bones while the silence was drowned out by a heart beating louder than his own. He caught a few scant words thrown around, something traps and...fu-mi-gate? He hadn’t the slightest idea what that was supposed to mean, but to be fair he was more preoccupied with the reality that he was stuck in a pocket! There was no way out but up, to which he’d never be able to climb with his arms tied with various knots and cradled in the natural curve of the fabric, especially not without the human noticing.

He felt himself being rocked when the man started moving, presumably exchanging pleasantries and leaving the home out into the cool autumn air. Not just the woman’s home, Milo’s home - the only home he had ever known, the only home he was just learning to navigate without holding his mother’s hand, the only home he had destroyed when his family discovered the grave mistake he’d made the night earlier. It was becoming harder to contain the whimpers that so desperately wanted to come out, but he swallowed down the lump in his throat as best he could lest he annoy the human with his cries.

It was as if the exterminator had completely forgotten about the unwilling passenger nestled against his chest, silent and relatively still the entire drive save for the couple of times he adjusted his seatbelt to keep the strap from smushing Milo against him. Occasionally, he would glance down at the borrower though Milo never once looked up as he chose to focus all his anxious attention on clenching his hands over and over until his nails threatened to draw blood from his now raw palms. He had no idea how long he had been confined, any time frame far too long for his liking, but he wasn’t snapped back into awful reality until the human was shifting around again. Milo hadn’t even noticed the humming vibration of the truck was missing until he was back to being rocked by the man’s gait, hearing the cacophonous slam of a gigantic door as the exterminator stepped inside.

Inside. Inside somewhere new and unfamiliar. Inside with some one new and unfamiliar, with no tools or family to rely on this time.

Light poured in from above when the pocket was pulled open, only to be blotted out seconds later by fingers fishing around for a solid grip on their prey. It wasn’t like he could do much to prevent the hand from wrapping around him given his limited space and bound limbs, but Milo still squirmed and cried out when he was lifted from his prison. He felt himself being lowered immediately afterwards, gently placed on his back against a cool, hard surface while lingering fingers were careful that he didn’t smack the back of his head when they let go. 

Despite being freed from any physical contact with the human, Milo was paralyzed where he lay in primal fear, unable to command his body to shift in his current state. All he could do was shake uncontrollably and use the last of his willpower to pry his clenched eyes open until they adjusted to the light, shifting his gaze to the technician. The man had crossed his arms and was leaning on them against the counter Milo had been placed on, watching him with a very... unimpressed expression. His calculating gaze was darkened by the shadow cast by the bill of his cap, filled the borrower’s racing mind with images of agonizing, torturous ends, wondering over and over what was going to happen if the human didn’t even find him interesting enough to keep around.

“So,” a voice called to him, much clearer to understand now that he wasn’t directly against the source, “what’s your name?”

Milo was practically yanked out from his self deprecating bubble and met the human’s eyes with his own. It was a small mercy he had no tears left. He knew he had been asked a question and could see the man was clearly waiting for a reply, but the borrower couldn’t cough up any words past his quivering lips, only growing more anxious by the second. He needed to answer now before the human punished him for his insubordination, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t!

He must have finally taken too long because the man sighed through his nose with a small eye roll, “Whatever, worth a shot, I guess.”

Oh no, no, no, he messed up. He made him angry. Why can’t he just learn to listen! The mess of apologies he wanted to ramble were stuck behind the bottled up sobs filling his chest, almost closing off his windpipe as the human’s attention returned to his work bag once again. This time, however, it didn’t take him very long to find what he was searching for. Milo stared apprehensively at the slim tool that fit completely within the man’s palm and when he pulled a piece from its side to brandish a blade that was conveniently the same size as his trembling body, his voice finally found the strength to push through.

“M-Milo! Milo!” he cried, twisting around in hopes that his renewed energy would be strong enough to break through the string binding him.

The man paused at his delayed answer, blinking at his struggling captive as he took a moment to understand what Milo was even referring to. “Oh. I’m Ben.” The hand armed with a swiss army knife started descending towards him rapidly, “hold still, please, Milo.”

Milo, decidedly, did not want to hold still in the face of a blade aiming to slice into him. He squealed, his body finally catching up with his mind’s screaming instincts to flee. Despite the twine continuing to pin his arms to his chest and rub sore patches behind his knees, the borrower felt a renewed vigor to fight against his bonds for the umpteenth time, as if it was in this convenient moment that he would be able to free himself and hide. Though even if that were the case, it would do him little good now. He was still in a different home with a stranger, nothing in sight that could be of any use. Slipping into the walls or being recaptured by the exterminator left him with similarly bleak results – Milo was as good as dead.

A sob finally managed to escape his heaving chest when gloved fingers reached to still him. This was it. This was the last consequence to his actions. It didn’t matter to him how the massive hand gave a twitch in hesitation at his downright pathetic display, nor was Milo able to make out the flash of emotion passing on the human’s face when his vision was blurred with newfound tears. He didn’t want to be killed like this; skinned and gutted like a rat, maybe even handed off to be dissected into a million pieces by big, scary humans in white coats and masks. There was no one else to blame but himself for the downfall of all borrower kind, centuries of well kept secrets undone in a single night by a careless child. His uncles were right to string him up with a broken climbing hook while everyone else was busy evacuating before the scheduled pest control visit. His cousins were right to taunt him with the knowledge he’d be snuffed out with the roaches in the wall. 

But all he wanted was to hold his mother’s hand one last time. One last moment of comfort before the painful unknown. Had she realized he was left behind on purpose by now? Did she care? Was she about to risk being snared in a mousetrap in a futile attempt to rescue her sweet baby, or was she shaking her head in disappointment that her own child had caused such pandemonium? Milo didn’t know which mental scenario hurt more to imagine. Maybe he should have stayed tucked up behind the kitchen tiles rather than scooching himself until he could wriggle through an opening behind the counter outlet. At least then he could have gone to the grave with his mistake instead of having his corpse on display.

Milo was so deep in what he thought were his last, morbid musings to notice the tip of the knife slid under the many layers of string as opposed to his flesh. The cool metal pulled upwards instead of plunging down, easily snapping through the bindings with hardly a flick of the wrist. Of course it was nothing to a human, but to the borrower they might have well been iron chains. Pressure was instantly released from around his arms and chest, letting the tingling limbs relax and regain proper blood flow. For a moment, Milo mistook the feeling of freedom as his soul ascending before he realized he was still trapped in an unmarred body. 

Wide eyes blinked their sight clear just in time to see the blade saw against the largest knot that clamped the boy’s wrists together, snapping the last thread and giving him full mobility of his upper half again. He was still processing the fact he wasn’t being flayed for fun while the exterminator worked on cutting Milo’s legs free as well, effectively breaking him out of his half hearted cocoon. 

“How the hel-... heck did you manage to do this, anyways?” The man asked, using his fingers to pull away the remaining bits of twine off of Milo. At this point, it really wouldn’t make much difference for the borrower to speak with a human considering he had already offered up his name. There were no more secrets left to hold, yet the poor thing felt himself clamming up again. Perhaps it had less to do with preserving what little he could of borrowerkind and more along the lines of not wanting to air his wrongdoings and the ensuing punishment. How embarrassing to tell his captor, possibly his killer, that he had been left to gag on fumes by the family he had endangered. 

The lack of response made Ben give a small frown and the borrower felt his heart drop. Obviously, he knew Milo could talk, hence how he knew the child’s name was Milo in the first place. There was no sense in pretending there was any type of language barrier between them that would prevent the little one from spilling all the lore he knew. All it would do is worsen the treatment he received when the human pried the information out of him, both metaphorically and literally. Still, the best he could offer up was a strained whimper, immediately throwing his arms up in front of his tear stricken face to hide when the human leaned closer on the counter. The hand that had moved to curl behind him gingerly touched his back, creating an aftershock of trembling down Milo’s spine. 

“How old are you?” The exterminator tried instead. When that gave him the same non-answer, he huffed. As much as Milo wished he could make this easier on himself, six years of well ingrained instincts kept overriding the desire to comply. If only that could have been the case forty-eight hours ago.

“C’mon, bud, make this a little easy for me,” Ben said softly. “I don’t exactly know what I’m supposed to be doing here…”

He wasn’t supposed to be doing anything because he wasn’t supposed to ever know borrowers were a race of people that existed. He wasn’t meant to find out his profession made him one of the top killers of Milo’s species, what with his poisons and traps and heavy boots. Who was to say how many lives had been lost in his line of duty, not to mention the child was intended to be added to the death toll. The human could have gone on with his life blissfully unaware the little one he was cradling in his hand should have been suffocating in the walls to die in agony alone. Ben never would have cared about him then, not that he truly cared about him now. He was curious, yes, but eventually the novelty would wear off and be replaced with boredom. Tiny bodies like Milo’s were not made to withstand the types of entertainment humans often put them through.

The tip of a gloved finger stroked the top of Milo’s head, flattening the black waves down and accidentally plucking a few strands out when they would catch on the latex material. Surely the gesture was intended to be comforting rather than mildly unpleasant, but the borrower couldn’t help but wince at the too rough touches. He ducked his head further into his arms to avoid any more petting, though Ben hardly seemed to take the hint he didn’t want to be fiddled with in any capacity. 

“Are you…hurt? Bleeding? Tired?” If he wasn’t going to get a direct answer, the technician was just going to have to resort to guessing games. Unfortunately, his limited experience with children and non existent knowhow of borrowers quickly left him floundering. “Look, just…tell me what you want. Please? You’re making me feel bad about this.”

If Milo knew what audacity was, he would feel quite a bit of it for Ben trying to make it out like he was the unreasonable one. It was hard to say how much longer his patience would last for the borrower’s antics before he grew tired of talking to himself. After all, if he was destined to be experimented on and responsible for a mass extinction, it probably wouldn’t make much difference if he spoke now or not ever, if only to stay a few more minutes out of a vacuum sealed baggie. 

Milo sniffled, curling in on himself tighter and muffling his words “...h-home…”

Having not been expecting another verbal response, Ben blinked in mild surprise. “Hm?”

“ H-home ,” Milo repeated, the word choking him. “I wanna go home…w-with Momma…”

“Oh, bud, I, uh…I don’t know if that’s really…”

Whatever awkward excuse the human was trying to come up with as a means to soften the blow that Milo won’t be returning to his family any time soon was cut off by the sharp ring of his work phone. He cursed under his breath, cringing as soon as the dirty word left his mouth with a glance at the child huddled against his palm. The borrower had heard plenty of swears before, especially when the news had broken about the homeowner spotting him. Still, Milo jolted at the foreign sound of a cell phone, a grating noise different to the landline he was more accustomed to hearing from time to time. He had never known those little talking things could be cordless and boxy until Ben fished the device from his back pocket to answer. 

“Hey, yeah, what’s up?” He asked into it, his focus shifting to the faint voice on the other end that the child couldn’t pick up. “No, no, I’m fine, yeah, just a bit… busy , I guess.”

‘Busy’ meant that he was anticipating being preoccupied with Milo for an extended period of time. Long enough that the human would need to devote a considerable amount of attention to him and not be bothered by anyone else. The color drained from his flushed cheeks, the awful reality sinking in further for the borrower. Ben could go ahead and blab about his discovery to whoever he was talking to right now, offer to bring him over for proof, laugh as they schemed together the best way to make a profit from this discovery. One mention would be all it took before the rumor spread like wildfire with living evidence to back up the claim. 

But the exterminator didn’t say a word, instead letting the conversation be directed about another job he was being requested to pick up this afternoon. No details about what happened at the old woman’s house, no unwarranted gossip about a fun little secret. A half breath of relief escaped Milo without him fully understanding why.

With one hand holding the cellphone, the other no longer prodding him, and Ben’s gaze elsewhere while he was focused on the call, Milo saw no better opportunity to make his great escape than this very second. Humans could be so distracted with their distant talks that they never noticed a tiny person scuttling right under their feet with an armful of safety pins. Granted, the borrower hasn’t the faintest idea what the best path would be for the most secure holding spot, but most kitchens should be the same, right? Any outlet in the kitchen would be prime real estate for a getaway tunnel, assuming borrowers had already settled down in the house previously and loosened the panel. 

Well, even if that weren’t the case, there were plenty of tight spaces and hidden gaps that Milo could stuff himself into where giant fingers wouldn’t be able to pass. So long as Ben didn’t see where Milo had scampered off to, he was in the clear of never being found and thus giving up the search fairly quickly. Then again, this was a human with a deadly profession. The house could be booby trapped in a matter of minutes after he disappeared under the floorboards, sealing him in his hidey hole forever. Or worse, the exterminator had already secured his home with poison and sticky paper as a precaution to other pests that may dare enter his domain.

It was a risk he was going to have to take. Yes, Ben might have seen him and spoken to him, but so long as Milo never interacted with him again, it would be his word against no one. That was one of the few redeeming qualities about humans: if there was no proof, no other person would believe their ‘outlandish’ claims. Little people living in the walls? Really? How asinine! Were they also supposed to believe fairies and goblins existed within the mushroom rings found deep in overgrown forests?

Milo scrubbed his face dry to the best of his abilities with the back of his hands, gulping down a few shuddering breaths to hopefully steel his nerves. Now was not the time to be a baby anymore. He needed to be brave and strong like a real borrower. Inch by slow inch, he scooted himself away from the idle hand still cupped behind him, fully intending to stand up and bolt as soon as he was far enough away that fingers couldn’t hook around him. Unfortunately, things never worked out the way Milo planned if past instances were anything to go by. No sooner had his plan begun it was brought to a screeching halt the second Ben caught his movements out of the corner of his eye. The poor boy hadn’t even been able to push himself off his knees before he was cut off by a hand in front of him.

The gloved barrier startled Milo enough to yelp, replacing his somewhat thought out course of action with the haphazard need to get away get away get away! Little legs scrambled to find purchase on the counter to send him off into a sprint, but it was of no use at this point when his failed escape had been spotted this close to a handsy human. He’d manage to run one, two, three full steps when Ben’s thumb and forefinger pinched the back of his tiny green tunic and lifted him into the air. Being so high up made the boy’s stomach turn unpleasantly, imaging what it would be like if he was dropped from this height onto the linoleum floor and splattering next to the technician’s boots. Either way, the thought didn’t dissuade Milo from struggling in this new hold, clawing at the fingers behind him and kicking his legs fierce enough that he swung back and forth.

“No, no, no! Let go! Lemme go! ” The tears were back and freely cascading down the borrower’s cheeks, but sorrow no longer tugged at his heart. It was replaced with something more primal, more raw, that made Milo feel like he was seeing stars with every labored cry that left him winded. Panic, pure and unfiltered. “ Momma! ” 

As if the exterminator was only plucking a piece of lint and not a tiny child in the midst of an anxiety attack, Ben hardly acknowledged the little one’s tantrum so as to not lose his place in the phone conversation. He maneuvered his cellphone to be balanced between his cheek and raised shoulder to free up his second hand, turning to lean back against the counter’s edge. The squirming borrower was then deposited into his awaiting palm, squishing Milo against his chest before any flailing limbs could climb over his fingers and send him tumbling below. Though it would be more ideal to shush and coo at the sobbing child being forced to cuddle into the tan fabric of his uniform, he couldn’t let his supervisor in on the fact he was comforting a person one twelfth the size of a typical first grader. Which would somehow be just as difficult to explain how he had come into care for a random kid to begin with. 

Tiny fists punched and pushed on his sternum, unable to put a fraction of distance between their two bodies. And here Ben thought he was on to something by making the borrower subconsciously follow the rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat in an attempt to coddle him. Perhaps that was just a trick that worked on newborn puppies; that was what his sister told him was a bonafide trick to settle motherless litters at her vet clinic. Then again, this wasn’t an orphaned kitten mewling for a mama cat. This was an actual child, missing its mother all the same, but presumably with the cognitive function of a human to mourn the loss of their parent and fear the monster who separated them all the same. 

He really, really wasn’t trying to be the bad guy here, though it was hard to dispute that narrative while he was silencing Milo with a hug and pretending there was nothing out of the ordinary for his call. 

“Mm, sure, I can be out in Bilmore before five, as long as it’s just for an ant spray. Kyle owes me,” Ben agreed. Picking up a coworker’s shift was the exact opposite of what he had in mind, but he was too deep in the farce that everything was totally normal on his end to refute. The exterminator most definitely did not have an absurdly small person trying to bite through the latex of his gloves in hopes of returning from whence it came from some old lady’s house, no sir.  

Thankfully, Milo was so caught up in his hysterics that most of his heart wrenching cries were concealed behind gently rubbing fingers, preventing any noises from being picked up on the receiver. Would it have been any more of a disservice to him if another human became aware of his pathetic situation? Probably not. There was little more harm that could be done for the reputation of borrowers at this point. Therefore, the child allowed himself to slip into the throes of his breakdown, the full weight of everything finally crushing his tiny self. He was abandoned by the only family he had. He had lost his mother. He had doomed his species. He was trapped by a man who was so much bigger and older and stronger and scarier . He was going to die.

Milo didn’t want to die, he had barely gotten the chance to live! He hadn’t even learned how to scale the rafters yet, or to know which order of symbols spelt out words to avoid and words to stuff his face with. Hell, Ben could set out a pile of rat poison and a pile of stale cereal bits and the borrower wouldn’t know the difference. Perhaps Ben would be merciful enough to grant him a quick and painless death, just popping his head under the heel of his boot or something. Please, please, just let it be something that doesn't hurt. His heart already hurt so much and now Milo’s head was beginning to pound from the excessive sobbing. All he wanted was for everything to stop and to go back to normal. 

His mother would have known how to fix this. She knew how to fix anything he broke. 

At some point, Milo stopped fruitlessly slapping at the fingers that caged him close and instead gripped onto the uniform of his captor. It was nowhere near the same level of comfort he was seeking out, but it would have to make do in his final hours. It was warm, there was a loudness in the chest he was nestled against, and a repeated touch stroking from his head to his lower back could almost be mistaken as familiar. For that reason alone, the borrower cried harder. Not loud, panicked wails like before, but soft whimpers heavy with tears that soaked into the human’s shirt with barely any notice. His headache was getting worse now, dehydration making him more miserable than ever. 

“Alright, I’ll head out in a bit, thanks,” With that, the technician shifted Milo to be cradled in one hand so that he could hang up the call. “...that was a stupid idea. Why did I do that?” He mumbled.

Immediately, the borrower started fretting again from the movement. The dread that was building in the pit of his stomach wasn’t helped when Ben sighed and rubbed the side of his temple, briefly nudging his hat up to free a few blonde strands. 

Blue eyes glanced down at watery brown ones. “What am I going to do with you now?”

His throat was still raw from the hoarse sobs he had worked himself up over, but words still found a way to push out of his mouth between shuddering pants. “L-lemme go…”

Ben pursed his lips, appearing to actually consider Milo’s request. A spark of hope dared to make his itty bitty heart beat out of his chest, but the fleeting feeling was snuffed out when the human shook his head in disagreement.

“No, you’re just going to get hurt. I mean, I guess I could take you with me but…” He looked at his tool bag, noting how very not safe or comfortable it would be to tote around a child in. There was the option of putting him in his pocket again, but the borrower didn’t seem like he knew how to stay still. “It would be easier if you just stayed put until I got back.”

The problem was Milo did not want to ‘stay put’, of which they were both aware of. As soon as Ben would release him on solid ground, the borrower would make a run for it. Whether or not his latest escape attempt would be successful was to be determined, but Ben was more worried about the poor kid getting injured in an unfamiliar house than actually managing to find a way home. There were simply too many dangers the exterminator already foresaw given his experience with unlucky critters. Exposed wires delivering a deadly shock, a hot pipe scalding flesh, openings too narrow to back out of, hidden scavengers pouncing on an easy meal. The list went on and on. Pint sized or not, these weren’t things any child would be able to fend off without help, and if Ben didn’t know where he was…

A kick that felt more like a tap against his rib shook him from his worries, reminding the technician the problem was still, quite literally, at hand. Milo was trying to push himself up and out of Ben’s grip, uncaring that freeing himself would just mean careening several stories below. Further evidence that the child didn’t have the rational survival skills necessary to be on his own. 

“No! Put me down!” Milo yelled with a couple more kicks. The tears were drying into itchy tracks on his cheeks, though no more clouded his vision like before. It was more of a temper tantrum from not getting his way than the primal panic that had been easily ignored during the human’s phone call. 

“Milo, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself flailing like that.”

“No, I’m not!” Spoken like a true kid. “I don’t wanna be held!”

The exterminator huffed. “If I put you down, are you going to run away?”

The struggling stopped at this, having not expected any sort of compromise from his captor. Milo needed to tread very carefully. Tempting as it was to blindly agree and turn tail as soon as he could, it felt wrong to break his promise to an adult. Even if that adult was twelve times his size and had an arsenal of deadly traps that could be used as punishment. It didn’t feel good to lie, whereas if he listened to whatever rules were laid out to him, the borrower might be rewarded. Returning to his home and into the warm embrace of his mother was probably too steep of a prize to be earned for staying on the kitchen counter, but maybe it was a goal that could be worked towards.

So, Milo shook his head in silent agreement that he wouldn’t try to flee. True to his word, Ben turned around and lowered the child back to the granite countertop. His legs felt like jelly, causing Milo to sit on his knees when the hand behind him uncurled to leave him be. It would be so, so easy to get up and make a mad dash for an outlet or the crevice where the fridge and backsplash met. Anywhere that human fingers would take too long to pry open, the borrower being long gone in the inner workings of the house by the time they found a big enough opening to prod. But he didn’t move a muscle. A part of him wasn’t sure he even could. Everything felt numb and tingly, like when he’d sleep on his arm weird and be unable to move it until after breakfast. 

Still, the exterminator was content with his obedience. He folded his hands together and rested his chin on top, looking down at Milo who was struggling to maintain any type of eye contact. “I think we both have a couple questions.”

“I want to go home.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that really clear.”

“ Please take me home?”

“Look, kid, I,” The human struggled to find the appropriate words. “...well, really, I don’t know what you are. Or where you came from. Or what home is. So, you gotta help me out here, because I’m sure as sh-, sure as heck not leaving you all by yourself.”

If Milo was a foolish borrower, which some may argue he was in the same vein that most six year olds were naive to a fault, he would have happily blabbed away answers to all of Ben’s questions. They were simple enough and it dangled the promise of being carried home then and there as soon as he spilled the beans. However, Milo knew the rules, even if he broke the most important ones. An exterminator knowing the full ins and outs of borrower colonies would only be looking to line his pockets rather than keeping the vague promise of a safe return. For the good of the rest of us , his teenage cousin had sneered.

The child looked away from Ben’s unintentionally cold gaze. He wished the human had soft, warm eyes like his mother and himself did. Hazel tones felt much friendlier than the frozen blue boring down from above. “I can’t tell you,” Milo mumbled.

The man tilted his head. “Why?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Great,” he groaned, and Milo couldn’t help but flinch for the wrong answer he gave. Would he be punished now or later, he wondered. “So, how exactly am I meant to take you home if you don’t tell me where it is?”

That…was a good question. A loophole that Milo’s child brain was not expecting to have to factor in. Well, if they were speaking only in technical truths, it wasn’t that all of Milo’s home was hidden, just the parts that were within the home of another human. Similar to a concept of saying what state or city a person lived in without giving the exact address of their dwelling. That said, he wouldn’t really be revealing anything Ben hadn’t already figured out. Milo was found at the old woman’s house, so he lived somewhere in the old woman’s house. As long as he was dropped off somewhere inside and the exterminator took his leave, the borrower could scamper to one of the many concealed openings back into the tunnels without exposing further secrets.

“It’s, um…w-we were already there,” The borrower said softly. The words left a bitter taste in his mouth, like it was the most vile confession of his lifetime.

“The place in Anville? Where you were all tangled up?” Milo nodded in confirmation. “I…don’t think it would be possible to take you back there right now.” Or ever, was the unspoken truth Ben didn’t have the heart to admit. The house was due to be smoked by the end of the week, effectively killing any and all living creatures that had taken up residence without the woman’s permission. Taking the child back would only ensure his demise not long after, and taking him after the fumigation was done was only inviting insurmountable trauma for what he might find inside where his family once was…

Assuming they were still there at all. It was a little odd to Ben that the borrower had been so perfectly wound up in double and triple knots with no signs of a guardian near him. Of course, said guardian could have taken cover before they, too, were scooped up by the technician. But shouldn’t their first instinct be to protect their child, to fend off any threats, make some kind of distraction so they could get Milo to safety? Ben didn’t want to judge the parenting styles of someone he never met, yet he couldn’t shake the idea that the set up for their first encounter didn’t completely sit right with him.

Milo shrank in on himself at Ben’s dismissal. “Wh…why not?”

“Well, no one is scheduled to go back there for a couple days. And when they do it’ll be…y’know, fumigated. That’s not good,” Ben tried to explain.

“Oh,” The borrower said, as if he knew most of those big words. “When will that be done?”

Ben shrugged. “Everything will be all cleared in two weeks, I’m sure.”

“And then I can go home?”

What was the most child friendly way to tell a six year old if they returned and also didn’t fall victim to one of the many, many preventative traps left behind, they would more than likely come across the poisoned bodies of their loved ones? Ben would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a bit guilty for that fact there was no conceivable way for him to go back and warn ‘Momma’ of her impending doom, at least for the hope of a happy family reunion afterwards. The reality was that if she was still there, looking for her troublesome baby, she would suffocate alone and unknowing if her child had suffered the same tragic fate. It was miserable to imagine, much less explain to a kid who barely trusted him to begin with. 

Rather than opening up this new can of worms that would no doubt reignite the wails and thrashing from ten minutes ago, Ben chose to glance at his watch. If he wanted to make it to Bilmore in time, he needed to get going, which brought him all the way back to square one of what the fuck is he supposed to do with a three inch tall kiddo?

“How about we talk about this when I get back, okay?” He pushed himself up from the counter, only to drop to a crouch so he could root around the cabinet under his sink. “I gotta head out for a bit.”

“To my house?” Milo asked, tepidly crawling near the edge of the counter to get a peek of what the human was doing.

“No. Different house. We can talk more about your house later,” A rattling of metal and a few squeaky hinges were exactly what Ben was looking for, returning to his full height with a small cage in his hands.

Milo knew what a cage was. Milo did not like cages. Cages were what birds and things were kept in, like the old woman’s pretty canary. It seemed too cramped for an animal meant to soar through the sky and the borrower felt terribly sorry for it to be cooped up for so many hours of the day. His aunt, the silly one with three missing teeth, had warned him of humans locking borrowers up in similar prisons. Tiny, cold little cells so the human could be entertained at their leisure by the borrower’s misery. No privacy, no comfort, no being able to run around the rafters and steal the crumbs of chocolate chip cookies. An awful existence, one of the worst fates for a borrower should they ever be caught alive. 

The terror that drained all color from the child’s face for a second time made Ben feel even more horrible about this, but he had no choice! This was the only safe place he could think of for Milo to stay alone without running the risk of him getting into trouble. Besides, it’s not like he would force the borrower to stay in there forever, just…an hour or two, until he finished that stupid job he never should have agreed to cover. If nothing else, this gave him the opportunity to get a few supplies while he was already driving around to make his impromptu guest a tad more comfortable. Some bedding, maybe a couple dollhouse toys, books for guys who didn’t know the first thing about caring for kids, books for small rodent care for new owners. 

There was no sense in acting like this was going to be a short term fostering. As of now, Benjamin Riley, age twenty-eight, was the self appointed guardian of a mysterious child who was in serious need of a growth spurt. 

“Hey, it’s okay, look,” Ben tried to soothe, setting the cage on the counter near Milo. “It’s a humane trap, it’s not going to hurt you. I promise.”

His promises clearly meant nothing to Milo, who still had little to no reason to assume any of his words were truthful. As far as the little one was concerned, the exterminator had shown up, kidnapped him, and had signed for an appointment date that would slaughter his family should any of them still remain after being displaced. Ben had done absolutely nothing for him to earn enough trust to be willingly imprisoned.

Milo squeaked and clambered onto his feet, taking several steps away from the horrible contraption. “N-no, I don’t w-wanna!” 

An understandable reaction, but not the one the human wanted to deal with right now. He didn’t have thirty to forty minutes to waste in settling Milo down enough to be put in the trap. “I know, bud, but it’s not that bad. It’s just for a little bit.”

“No!”

“I’ll let you out as soon as I get back, okay? This is only temporary.”

“No, I don’t want to go in!”

“Milo, c’mon, you’re killing me here. This is just to keep you safe while I’m gone. I’ll come back with things to make it cozier for next time.”

“ No! ”

Breaking his promise be damned, Milo was sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him to avoid being stuffed in a cage. The metal was dark, likely cold to the touch, and had weird upper mechanisms that scared the borrower to touch. The only way it could be more horrendous would be if the exterminator returned it to its original storage space under the sink, where it was pitch black and damp, ready to be forgotten after a long day of errands. 

It was foolish to think he’d ever be able to outrun a human who could close the distance between them without fully extending his arm. No matter how hard his legs pushed and how deep his chest sucked in stinging breaths to propel him forward, Milo couldn’t shake the hand that swooped in from above. Two fingers curled in front of him, knocking the wind from his lungs when he collided full speed with the solid digits. A gloved thumb closed behind to secure his back, preventing him from being able to slip out of the hold. Before he had even gotten a steady inhale, the borrower was airborne, carried back to his original spot with barely any effort on the human’s part.

Except he wasn’t dropped back onto the counter. Instead, he could only watch with wide eyes as Ben used his other hand to undo the latch on the front of the cage, revealing an opening large enough for Milo to pass through. Though his legs kicked and his arms pushed and a strangled cry squeaked out, the technician could not be swayed to release him until after he had been deposited on the cold, metal floor. He should try to take solace in the fact that he wasn’t dropped from a bruising height into his new prison, but it was hard to find any bright side to his horrid situation.

“It’s not forever, I promise,” Ben repeated, removing his hand and pressing the trigger plate to seal the borrower in with a reverberating click. 

Immediately, Milo ran to the bars of the cage, hoping to find a miraculous weak spot that would break free if he shook it hard enough. “No, no! Please! L-let me out!”

“When I come home.” And that was that. Sitting here trying to reason with a child as to why he deemed it necessary to lock him up like a feral rat would only lead to them talking in circles. And because Ben felt increasingly awful by the second seeing the poor, frightened boy trapped in the same manner as a rodent. The comparison seemed gross. Milo was not a rat or a stray or any other animal; he was a… something . Not a human, but more than close enough. A child, for God’s sake. Yet what other option did Ben have on such unexpected notice? He’ll make it up to him later. They were going to be in each other’s company for quite a while.

More pleas and whimpers spilled from Milo in a jumble of stutters, trying to find the right words to appease his captor to rethink the situation. “Please, p-please! I’ll be good! I-I promise! Please let me out, please, please , don’t go!” 

If Ben hung around any longer to watch the tragic display, he just might very well lose his resolve and opt to stay home and care for Milo without the burden of the cage. However, that would mean having to call his supervisor and explain why he was backing out of the shift he agreed to, and not being able to pick up any essentials for the kid, and basically being stuck on house arrest because he would be too guilt ridden to leave Milo alone if it meant having him in the humane trap for any period of time. Kids sure knew how to pull on the heartstrings. 

With that, the exterminator did what he would do for cases of pest relocation involving active and/or anxious critters. He took the hand towel that hung over the handle of his oven and unfolded it, draping the yellow and blue fabric over the cage to conceal most of the outside view from all sides. It was meant to help whatever critter was inside not feel overstimulated by the unfamiliar sights and people so that they would hopefully self soothe into a calmer state before being moved. Ben wasn’t sure how well it worked on Milo since he only continued to beg and feebly tug at the cloth like he might be able to dislodge it from his view.

Well, at least the human didn’t have to look him in his teary eyes as he left. That was not a face he wanted to regret while he was on a job, lest his emotions get the better of him. This was only temporary. This was for Milo’s own good. If that was what he wanted the borrower to believe, then that’s what he needed to believe, too. Sometimes, it’s necessary to be the bad guy when it comes to the world of parenting. Is that what he was now – a parent? Pretty lousy one, if you asked him. Those types of bonds would form more naturally as time went on and Milo wasn’t left for an hour or so in a rodent cage. Maybe. 

Ben gave the top of the cage an awkward pat, the muffled sound of the metal making Milo yelp as the vibrations tingled his hands. “I’ll be back in a little bit. Be good.” He said softly, like it would make any difference.

Boots faded into the distance before cutting off when the front door closed behind the exterminator. It was at this point that Milo was now well and truly alone. There was no reason to keep spouting off pleads when no one was around to hear them. The only thing to keep him occupied was himself and the two tone splashes of color blinding him from the outside world. No way to be able to spot any potential hiding spots once he was out (if Ben was really going to do such a thing), no way to judge the passing of time, no way to look at anything that might be remotely more engaging than a dish towel. He wished he could bring some of the fabric through the criss cross bars of the cage so that he would have something warm to sit on.

Alas, he had nothing. No home, no family. Just a cold, empty cage and the berating voice of his thoughts that listed off all his faults which led him to this moment, oftentimes echoed in the same manner as the relatives who had tied him up. This felt like the perfect time to air his grievances, but there were no more tears to cry and no ache to be screamed. His chest felt empty and numb, as if his heart had been ripped out and discarded. Perhaps that would be a literal possibility in the future should Ben grow tired of his whining. It would do him well to remember who’s mercy he was at now, the one who decided if he would live or die and exactly how painful his demise could be.

Milo dropped to his knees and waited in silence, just like he was told to do. Just like he should have done in the first place when he was warned to never be spotted by a human. If he closed his eyes and thought real hard about it, he could picture his mother running over to lift the fabric away and reveal that she had tracked him down all this way and was here to take him home. Where no one was mad at him and no one was going to die at the hands of the uniformed human and his bag of poisons. 

Yes, Momma would be here soon. He just had to be patient a little longer.