#why did no one tell me about this when it came out

[gurugirl]

Truth or Dare | slumber party!h

Summary: Y/n's coworker, Harry, has never been to a slumber party so she decides to remedy that and give him a sleepover he'll never forget.

A/N: Based off this request. Thanks anon! I hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 6,752

Warning: smut

. . .

By her third glass of chardonnay, her stomach was feeling the acid from the wine but she was having such a good time talking to Harry from the operations department that she didn’t care. She’d have another before calling it a night. Just one more glass so she could sit with him a little longer and listen to him talk and watch as he ran his finger along the edge of his pint glass.

He was probably looking at her like he was because he was also three pints of lager in and he was kind so he was holding eye contact to be polite. Certainly, it wasn’t because he found her attractive (though she’d have welcomed that).

The company’s management meeting was long over and everyone else had gone home but Harry and Y/n stayed for another round. They rarely ever got to talk at the office. She’d always wanted to pick his brain about why he decided to move to the US and how, of all companies, he chose to work at Dunn Services.

Y/n laughed on cue as he mentioned something from his childhood with his sister having her friends over to stay the night. He grinned, a healthy row of teeth aimed at her before he looked down and laughed at himself, “In truth? I never did have a sleepover or anything like that.”

“Really? Surely you had friends…”

Harry nodded, “Oh yeah I had a lot of friends. But I never stayed over at anyone’s and they never came over to mine either. Just… I don’t know. Never happened.”

Placing her nearly empty glass down she turned and waved with a smile as the waitress walked by, “Can we get another round, please?”

“How are you getting home?” Harry asked when she faced him, crossing her leg over her knee toward him.

“Taxi. You?”

“Might walk. I’m not far from here.”

Nodding she placed her elbows on the table, “So, I think that you’ve missed out on an integral right of passage, having never had a slumber party. You should definitely remedy that at some point. I highly recommend a fun sleepover. In fact, if you need pointers on what to do during a sleepover, I’m your gal.”

“Oh yeah? What’s your go-to during a slumber party?” Harry teased before taking another sip of his beer.

“Well, I think there are like two main components. The first is entertainment and I’m always keen on a good movie, or a dumb one, either way… a movie for sure if I’m picking. Some people like to play board games or whatever, but I like to stuff myself into a pile of blankets and pillows and just lie, or drape,” she spoke using her arms to demonstrate herself draping into pillows. “Occasionally, if the mood is right, I’ll enjoy a little truth or dare.”

“Got it. A movie and maybe if the mood is right, truth or dare. And what’s the second component.”

Y/n crossed her fingers together and raised her brows as if she were about to say something very important, “Snacks. Beverages. Good ones. Usually just small bites but here’s my list…” She cleared her throat, “Buttered popcorn, and possibly potato chips. Definitely something chocolatey, and maybe something like a cookie or a snack cake. If not potato chips then tortilla chips and if it’s tortilla chips, salsa should also definitely be on the menu.”

Harry held back the laugh in his throat as he nodded, “Wow. Okay. What about like a burger or Chinese food? Would that be allowed?”

Y/n shrugged, “It’s your party. You can do what you want. I’m just telling you what I’d do and what would be a hit with your sleepover buddy.”

Harry breathed out a laugh. Y/n could tell he was getting bashful. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was. She watched him for a few seconds before the waitress returned with their drinks.

A quick gulp of wine and she nudged at his shin with her shoe, “You wanna have a slumber party with me?”

Harry blinked and tilted his head, “What? You mean… Seriously?”

She shrugged, “Why not? Then next time someone asks if you’ve ever had a proper slumber party you can say that you have.”

He laughed loudly, his husky voice was like music to her ears. Pointing at her with his finger he grinned, “Now how I can argue with that? I mean,” he shook his head, a glint in his eye, “Every time someone asks me if I’ve been to a slumber party and I tell them I haven’t, it’s such a disappointment! The look on their faces when they realize my whole childhood was a sham…”

They both laughed, leaning in toward one another, tittering toward the edges of their stools.

Harry tilted his head, “Actually I think it sounds fun. You just name the day and I’ll be there.”

Y/n smiled at him. She knew it was crazy. Having a grown man at her place for a slumber party. Typically adults didn’t have those kinds of sleepovers – it was usually with the intent of something far more salacious. But she’d show him a good time, she thought, raising her glass toward his, “Deal.”

.                 .                 .

Y/n had her sofa bed pulled out and piled high with extra blankets and pillows. She had all her favorite snacks plus she ordered cheeseburgers and fries for the guest of the night. It was silly. Truly she hadn’t had a real slumber party in ages, but she couldn’t help but feel a little bit of excitement that she’d be hanging out with Harry all night. It was possible that her small crush on him was making her feel all giddy but she’d push down that feeling until he gave her any extenuating signals.

Because the truth was that they were both single, young adults and this was such an unlikely scenario. No one would look at this and say Oh how cute of these two grown adults hanging out in bed together for a sleepover. So innocent! No, she knew better. While maybe nothing would actually happen it certainly wouldn’t look innocent.

And of course, she did pick out the perfect pijama set. Something a little more flattering on her body but not too hey I really need to get laid tonight. It was a happy compromise. Cotton shorts and a button-up, matching short-sleeved top. This was just supposed to be a slumber party after all.

Right?

Besides, the little paper invitation she gave him on Monday morning told him to arrive in his sleepwear so she had to look the part. And not to toot her own horn but she made a very cute invitation just for him tucked into a pink envelope with a separate little response card that had space at the bottom for him to mark yes or no if he could come. It was a yes. Obviously.

When Harry finally arrived he was wearing a pair of grey sweats and a white t-shirt. And for some fucking bizarre reason he looked so much hotter than he did when he wore his well-fitted suits at work.

Because goddamn did his shirt somehow just hug his torso in all the right spots and it allowed her to take a good look at all tattoos on his arms that were normally hidden under brushed wool jackets or long-sleeved button-up shirts. She knew he had tattoos. She’d seen him roll up his sleeves a couple of times but she never wanted to be rude and stare for long.

And then the sweatpants, while loose in the legs, fit his waist and hips and…

“You okay?” Harry was still standing in the doorway with his backpack draped over his arm waiting to be invited in.

“Yeah, sorry. Not used to seeing you dressed down like this. Almost unrecognizable.”

Harry let out a soft laugh, his eyes crinkling as Y/n stepped aside to let him in, “Would you like to see my ID? Swear I’m the Harry Styles, the guy you invited over for chips, popcorn, and truth or dare. I’ve even got your invite somewhere in my bag…”

She breathed a laugh through her nose and watched him enter into her space, “Movies too. Oh, and I also ordered cheeseburgers. Remembered that you mentioned that.”

He seemed quite pleased with the burgers as she handed him the bag. She got those small ones, five to an order, “Thanks. Fries too, huh?” He reached into the bag and pulled out three crinkle-cut french fries then stuffed them into his mouth.

“So should we settle in and pick out a movie?” She gestured toward her couch.

Harry had seen the pull-out couch with heaps of pillows and blankets when he walked in. He knew that that would be where they’d be spending most of the evening. It was the glaring thing about the whole slumber party slash sleepover. That they’d be probably sleeping next to one another. As two young, healthy, attractive adults.

“Sure,” he nodded and waited for her to pick which side she was going to take before climbing in next to her, the thin mattress and metal frame giving way gently under his weight before he leaned back against a mountain of pillows, bag of burgers safe in his hands.

Y/n had a few video streaming services at the ready and they settled on a cheesy comedy from the late 90s before Y/n reached over to her coffee table and then lined up all the snacks between them.

They chatted a little, having both seen the movie already. Topics were anything from what their plans were for the rest of the weekend to what they’d eaten for lunch at work. And it was only a little awkward when they both reached into the bowl of M&M’s at the same time, fingers brushing together.

Harry moved his hand away, “Sorry. You go…”

Y/n grinned at him, scooping a handful of candy into her palm, and then sat up, adjusting her seating as she crossed her legs together, “Wanna do truth or dare? Pretend like we’re 15 again having a sleepover. Really get into the whole slumber party vibe, ya know?”

Harry dug out a few M&M’s and let out a chesty laugh, “If I’m 15 again we’re in big trouble.”

Y/n snorted a laugh, “Why? What do you mean?”

He shook his head, a wide grin on his face with deep set dimples carved into each cheek as he turned his head to look at her, “If this were happening when I was 15 I’d already be in the bathroom hyperventilating and probably trying to will away a boner after our hands touched in the M&M’s bowl.”

Y/n guffawed and threw her head back, nearly choking on her bite of chocolatey candies as Harry laughed with her. Honestly, it was the best icebreaker she could have asked for. Things had been kind of clunky between them up until that moment as they were still trying to navigate how to act around one another. And she knew he was teasing but the good belly laugh that she got from Harry’s story was exactly what they needed.

“Okay fine. We’ll just keep going about it as adults then. No fifteen-year-olds here tonight,” Y/n chuckled as she shoveled a few kernels of popcorn into her mouth.

Y/n kept her eyes on him as she chewed her mouthful, “So truth or dare?”

Harry cocked his head at her, “So the mood is right then? For truth or dare?”

Y/n’s brows furrowed, “The mood?”

“Yeah. You said it over drinks. Remember when you were telling me what the most important components are to a sleepover and you said you liked truth or dare if the mood was right.”

Nodding slowly, she thought back to what she’d said, “Yeah. I guess I did say that. And I mean… I think the mood’s right for a little truth or dare. Movie’s almost over and you just pretty much kicked us off with that truth.” A breathy laugh was pushed from her mouth.

She could tell Harry was mulling on another question as he bit the inside of his cheek, head tilting in agreement, “So that means it’s your turn. Truth or dare?”

Biting her lip as she pondered, she pressed her back into the soft pillows behind her, “Truth.”

Harry shifted to his side, long legs stretching the length of the mattress as he propped his head up in his hand, a pillow under his arm, “Have you ever kissed a co-worker before?”

Scoffing Y/n moved to her side, mimicking Harry’s position on her side, “No,” she grinned. It was true. She’d never once done anything with any of her coworkers. Having Harry over at her house was the closest she’d ever gotten to doing anything like that. “Now you. Truth or dare?”

His green eyes slid over her features, “Truth.”

She laughed to herself, trying to think of something funny, “How many stuffed animals do you own?”

Licking his lips he nodded, “Think maybe two? Gifts from my niece… Truth or dare?”

“Mmm… dare,” she giggled.

Harry lifted a brow, “Ahhh… feeling bold yeah? Okay… hmm…” He pursed his lips to the side as he considered the dare. “Read to me the last text you sent to anyone. And you have to show me to prove it was the last one. And it can’t be any texts you and me, cause that’s not fair.”

Y/n blinked. She wasn’t exactly sure what her last text was besides Harry. But she was slightly worried because if it was what she was thinking… lifting up her message app she scrolled down to the text thread below Harry’s and it was a text with her sister. Which was what she had been worried about. She gulped, hoping that the things she said about her “coworker” who was coming to stay with her weren’t the last things she and her sister texted about.

Puffing out a breath she covered up all the previous texts to show Harry the last text from her sister – God knows you need it. Sending you good vibes, sis ;)

Harry squinted as he looked at the message and pointed, “That’s to you. The dare was to show me the last text you sent to someone. Let’s see it…”

Feeling her neck heat up she angled the phone away from him and read what she’d sent her sister. And there was no mention of Harry but if he were even halfway decent at picking up clues he might be able to figure out what was being discussed prior.

She shook her head and looked up at him. She couldn’t believe she was about to show him what was on her screen. But a dare was a dare. What was the worst that could happen?

lol I doubt anything will happen but I wouldn’t turn him down. Got condoms just in case 😜 send all your good vibes my way

Harry’s brows squished together as he looked at the text and back to Y/n and then down again at the words on her screen. She saw his throat bob and she knew the look on his face. He fucking knew what that was. He had to know.

She had to look away. She pulled the phone down and killed the screen. The awkwardness between them thick and uncomfortable as she peeked back at him. The edge of his mouth was pulled upward in a smirk, “That’s to your sister?”

Nodding she blew out an exasperated breath, “Your turn. Truth or dare?”

Harry grinned as he positioned his knee closer to Y/n, his eyes still on hers, “Dare.”

Swallowing her embarrassment down the best she could she decided to ask him the same, “Now show me the last text you sent anyone besides me.”

Harry’s smartass grin told her all she needed to know. That his last text probably wasn’t nearly as risqué as hers.

And it wasn’t. Not even close.

You can have two pounds for free. I’ve got so many growing I can’t keep up. As long as you come to pick them up on Monday they’re yours.

“I have a bunch of zucchini growing in my garden,” Harry pulled the phone away and laid it down next to his hip. “Got a neighbor who wants some.”

Of course, his last text to anyone was about zucchini. Jesus, she was so far out of her depth.

He was still wearing that shit-eating grin as he said, “Truth or dare, Y/n?”

And the way he said her name, all slow and sexy-like had her insides heating up. Well, maybe she made up the sexy part but he was definitely teasing her. She could just feel it.

“Truth.”

She was sure she’d regret that. Truth or dare. It didn’t matter. She was still reeling from showing him her texts.

“Was that text about me?” Shit-eating grin in place as he asked. Fucker.

Y/n’s eyes grew wide dropping her mouth open in surprise. Of course, he was going to ask that. Of course!

“Oh come on, Harry…” she pleaded.

He lifted his brows and awarded her a larger grin with those cute indents scoring into his cheeks, “Them’s the rules, baby. You chose truth and now you have to be honest.”

Clearing her throat she sat up to her bottom and leaned forward so she didn’t have to look at him as she put her head in her hands and laughed in disbelief, “Jesus. Seriously?”

“Yep. Spill. Let’s hear it.”

“Okay. Fine. Yes. It was about you.”

Keeping her eyes on her lap she waited for a smug remark. Some kind of teasing reply but it was quiet. Slowly she turned to look back at him and he was still lying on his side, head in his palm as he watched her, his eyes fixed to hers.

She shrugged, “Your turn. Truth or dare?”

Harry flattened his lips and squinted at her before cocking his head, “Hold on… Really? That was about me?”

Sighing she rolled her eyes, “Yes. Sorry. I was… it was just funny… it was me joking around with my sister is all.”

He blinked and looked down at the space between them as he nodded, “Okay. I see. So you didn’t actually mean it?”

“Well… I guess… We were joking. Obviously, nothing has to happen. I would never expect that. I…” she breathed out exasperated.

“Obviously nothing has to happen. Did you want it to happen?” His pupils were pinned to hers again.

Opening her mouth she stopped herself for a moment. She knew her answer was yes but she didn’t want to come off like a creep. She hadn’t expected it and assumed it wouldn’t. But the truth remained; she hoped it would happen.

Deflating her posture she laid back to her side to face Harry, tucking a pillow into her chest, “The truth is that I think you’re attractive and I haven’t been with anyone in kind of a long time and… she knows that, my sister. So we were just… it was lighthearted but yeah I mean… without any expectations, cause I would never… I hope you know that. But I did think it would be nice.”

“Nice. Yeah. I agree. It would be nice. And just so you know,” he swung his head to look over his shoulder before looking back at her, “I brought condoms as well. You know… just in case.”

She was a bit stunned at that. Was he…

“Dare me to kiss you,” he grinned, irises dropping to her lips for a second before looking back into her eyes.

She laughed, “That’s not how the game works. The rules are you can’t–”

“Fuck the rules. Dare me to kiss you.”

Shaking her head with a wide smile stretched across her face she felt like her skin was pricking as her heartbeat picked up. She couldn’t believe this was actually happening.

Looking back into his eyes she inhaled deeply, “Fine. I dare you to kiss me.”

Harry’s smirk was unreal. The way he dragged his gaze over her face and down to her mouth was almost lewd, “Didn’t need to play truth or dare to get me to kiss you, Y/n,” he scooted in, grabbing the pillow she had tucked into her chest and tossing it away before he drew a hand up to her face, “You just needed to ask.”

She held her breath as he closed in slowly until it was as if all the tension in the room had popped and fizzled when his lips met hers.

He was so soft and gentle. Lips winding easily, carefully at first. And then she parted her lips more, kissing him back and letting her mouth press into his bottom lip before their tongues were meshed.

She moved her knee out to stabilize herself and knocked over the bowl of popcorn between them. Laughing into his mouth she gasped as she parted from him but he only reached for her again, placing his palm at the back of her head to pull her mouth back against his with a grunt from his chest as he pushed the bowl away and drove his arm underneath her side to keep her from getting too far.

Harry was softly moaning as his tongue worked its way into her mouth gently. It was clear he’d wanted to kiss her. That he liked it. And that notion made her head spin combined with the feel of his thumb traveling over her jaw. There was not going to be any stopping the momentum that had begun.

Well, except for when the bowl of M&M’s poured out against her leg. She had to push at him. As much as she would have loved to have kept making out, she would not have been able to enjoy melted chocolate on her legs or the bedsheets tucked around the mattress (think of the scrubbing she’d need to do!).

“Sorry,” she panted and looked down at the smashed pieces of popcorn and the chocolate candies strewn between them, “I’ve gotta pick this up. Our body heat will melt all these and it’s gonna be a big mess.”

Harry grinned, “Why don’t we just move this party to your bed for a little bit? Clean up later? The M&M’s won’t melt if we’re not laying on them.”

She laughed, already feeling overwhelmed and overheated from the kiss and now he was suggesting taking it to her bed? This was really happening, wasn’t it? She nodded and they both moved off the sofa sleeper to their feet, Harry following behind Y/n as she led him to her bedroom.

She already had her bedside lamp on. Bed made perfectly, everything tucked in and neat.

She turned to look at him and he stepped against her, palm splaying at her low back, “I dare you to get onto your bed and take your clothes off.”

A small laugh burst from her chest, “Oh, so now we’re just doing dares?”

He nodded, “Making up our own rules for this game. S’more fun this way.”

Letting go of her he watched as she stepped backward toward her bed and began to unbutton her nightshirt until it was shed from her body before she pushed her shorts down her legs. She was left in a pretty white bralette (something soft for bedtime) that stretched around her breasts and a pair of thin cotton panties that matched. She kneed up onto her bed and let her feet dangle off the edge and pointed, “Now I dare you to take off your clothes.”

He peeled his white t-shirt off, his hair mussing in the process. She watched with her lips parted at the gorgeous man stripping before her. Not only was he built exactly like what she dreamed of (tattoos, beefy, muscular, a touch soft, very masculine) but the boner tenting his sweats was hard not to home in on.

Harry stuck his fingers into the waistband and looked up at her, “M’not wearing any underwear, so be warned…”

She swallowed as the material lowered, belly button, happy trail, a bit of dark hair and then he pulled the stretchy waistband away from his body so his cock could push free and she was already clenching at just the sight as he removed his sweatpants, cock full and heavy between his strong thighs.

Jesus Christ.

Harry stepped forward, nudging himself between her knees and she leaned back to look up at him, “I dare you to take off the rest of this. Since I’m completely naked feels only fair.”

She bit her lip and looked down at his girthy dick. He was clearly not shy of his body, standing there like that, cock right in front of her. But why should he be shy when he looked like that?

Scooting back further into the bed she got up to her knees and pulled the bralette off first, feeling the heat of his gaze on her tits as she then slid her panties down her thighs. She wasn’t nearly as confident as Harry was as she quickly pulled at her top blanket and covered herself with a small laugh.

Harry stepped forward, one knee on the mattress before climbing in next to her, nosing at her cheek softly before his lips were connected to hers again. And she melted into him just like before. His mouth was magic or something because before she realized it, he’d pulled the blankets off her body and he had a big palm sliding up her thigh and over her hip, “Don’t cover up. So pretty. Knew you would be.”

She pushed her fingers into his thick wavey hair and felt her side hit the mattress as Harry pulled at her again, mouth still smeared against hers. He grabbed at her thigh, hitching it over his hip as he tucked in closer and it was warm and she could feel it. Feel him against her hip.

His giant hand smoothed against her bottom and up her spine until he was wrapping his long fingers around the back of her neck. Y/n nudged in closer, driving her hips forward until she was practically straddling him. So Harry took that as his cue to move to his back, taking her hips in his hands so she’d follow with him.

It had caught her off guard, the sudden change in position but her lips never stopped moving with his. Their kisses were wet and she could smell their saliva, and a touch of onion even from the burgers he’d eaten.

He guided her hips down, his thick cock hot under her thigh until she felt her pussy drag against warm skin at the base of his dick. A small gasp escaped her mouth as he pulled her up, letting her pussy glide up his length, “So wet already, Y/n…”

She was. It was embarrassing. Every inch of his shaft her pussy dragged against, coated him, wetted his skin. He kept pushing and pulling at her hips, using her slippery pussy like a soft wet toy he could run up and down his length.

Then she felt his fingers move around to her backside, digits sliding against her pussy as he licked into her mouth.

Gently she rolled against him and when she moved herself further down he pushed a fingertip inside, “Go on. Fuck yourself on my finger a little bit,” he whispered against her mouth.

He was filthy. She had no idea. He’d always been so sweet at work. So polite and respectful. But here he was reaching around her ass to get a finger inside of her cunt as she rubbed her pussy over his cock.

She panted into his mouth as she slid down around his finger, her clit smushed into his dick, slippery as she rolled up and down. But then he began to assist as he added another finger and began to fuck into her pussy, letting his digits curve into her the best he could from his angle. Slushy wet, she stopped moving her hips and parted from the kiss as she looked down at him. She could tell she was gushing all over his palm and probably his dick as she moaned.

“S’that feel good. You’re gettin’ my fingers all wet like it feels good.”

Nodding she gasped, “Yeah. Feels so good…”

Harry rutted up against her, his cock still pressed into her clit, and she panted, eyes still searing into his. She didn’t want to look away. She almost couldn’t believe he was in her bed fingering her like that.

“Your turn to dare me to do something. What do you want, Y/n?”

She moaned and closed her eyes. She was certain of what she wanted as she listened to the way his fingers gushed with each plunge into her.

“Fuck… dare you to… put on a condom.”

She popped her eyes open to peer down at him as he slid his fingers out of her, wiping her arousal on her ass, “They right here?” He moved his hand toward her bedside table, a knuckle tapping at the wood.

Climbing off of him she opened the drawer, “Yeah, a whole box. Hold on…”

Reaching over to pull out the condoms she felt Harry’s hands on her hips as he moved to sit up, then his lips were on her back, dotting warm kisses to her shoulder blades as she finally plucked a condom from the fresh box.

She watched him put the condom on and as expected, it didn’t cover his entire length. He was kind of a big guy. Well, maybe there was no kind of about it. Before today she had no idea he was packing like that. Though he always did come off as very confident and sure of himself.

She bit her lip as she watched him toss the wrapper away and then he kneed up to her, arm sliding to her back and carefully lowering her to the bed before spreading her legs apart as he fit himself there, sturdy thighs pushing against her soft ones.

“Gonna tell your sister her good vibes worked?” He smirked down at her, hands scouring her hips and tummy and then kneading softly at her tits.

Y/n laughed and reached a hand down to his knee before he pulled at her, making her thighs drape over his as he inched in closer.

“Hmm?” He was awfully teasing, she thought, grinning at her waiting for an answer.

“Probably,” she spit out in a laugh.  

Harry gripped at her thighs, lifting her a bit more to fit her bum over his bent knees and she wanted to scream in embarrassment when she realized he was inspecting her sodden vulva. She’d gotten herself all tidied up for him, should anything like this happen, so at least she had that going for her.

He smoothed his thumb through her pussylips, spreading them apart, and softly blew out a breath, “That is very pretty. Think we get him in there?”

She rolled her eyes as she watched him wrap his palm around his base and lay his fat cock over her mons, the condomed-tip reaching to her belly button, maybe further past, “Well, it’s made for it, so I’m pretty sure–”

“What… your pussy’s made to fit around my cock?” A cocky dimpled smirk gave way to a laugh.

“You know what I meant. It’s meant to… like…” she breathed out a laugh.

“Oh, I know… just fucking with you, Y/n.”

He gazed at her as he reared back, painting his cockhead through her labia, up and down, a soft bump into her clit before he repeated, spreading her soft lips apart as he watched the way his crown smeared her arousal between her creases.

When she moaned and wiggled her hips he pointed himself right at her little muscle, nudging softly forward, opening it up for himself. And she felt that first push, the way his tip fit into her, spreading apart and then stretching to accommodate his circumference.

“Oh god…” she breathed as he slipped in halfway and then pulled back.

“Almost there,” he panted as he kept his eyes on where they were connected, pushing and pulling back until she was swallowing him whole, his cock enveloped in her soft, warm pussy.

When he’d buried in whole, he moaned and watched her face twist up in ecstasy. Her lips were dropped open and her neck stretched long as she grasped onto the forearm of the hand he had gripping her waist.

Slowly he began to thrust, viscous liquid seeping from her pussy and sticking to his shaft. It was filthy. She was so wet that every time he bottomed out there was a splat and a plap sounding between them.

She let out a deep moan and her lips curled up, humid breath escaping her mouth as she felt him driving into her guts. He was taking it easy. Languidly fucking into her with wet claps every time he plunged in.

When her cunt was taking him easier and she was dripping down to her ass he moved in a little harder, faster. Angling himself over her, a palm down on the mattress so he could work into her with more gusto.

“Ah! Harry…” she squeaked at the stronger thrusts and clung onto his lats. He was panting, lips parted and pink, a curl falling over his forehead as he plowed into her splooshing pussy.

“Fuck you’re wet. Pussy is gushing, Y/n…”

Her brows pushed together as she gasped, her body knocked upward every time his hips met hers making her tits bounce. Harry didn’t know where to keep his focus. He loved watching his cock disappear into her hole but he kind of liked being right over her so he could see her face crinkle up every time he bottomed out and then her pretty breasts sway up and down. Or maybe he’d like to fuck her from behind, watch her ass jiggle as he pounded into her.

“Mmm… fuck that’s big!”

Harry groaned, “Yeah? Sure know how to sweet talk a man don’t you, pretty? S’hurt?”

She watched his face, a lusty grin, droopy eyelids as he continued muscling his way in deep.

She hissed when he bucked in, as if he was showing off just how deep he could push in and she coughed out, “Mmm… a little!”

Harry was going to lose his mind with her if she kept squeaking out moans and splatting around his cock like she was but he would be a gentleman and pull back a touch. Slowing down a little he sat up and moved his hand between them, smushing his thumb into her clit, which was so sticky wet even that swished and slid under the pad of his digit.

“Yessss…” she breathed out before murmuring on about how good it felt. “Oh fuck, that’s it. Oh god… please don’t stop… Harry, fuck, yes…”

The clit. The magical little nob that worked wonders as long as the man knew where to find it. Clearly, Harry knew right where it was. Knew how to circle over it, pressing against it just right. Knew how to fuck into her as well. Sliding his length through her vaginal walls, spreading her open, and grazing against her gummy little spot on the inside that had her buzzing and liquifying for him.

He watched her whine and squirm under him, loving how she was so into it. God that was an ego boost, “Like that, Y/n? Gonna come for me? Yeah?”

Her ears were already ringing when she lost herself, gripping around him and crying out as her orgasm washed through her tummy. Harry’s cock made her feel so full, so incredibly stuffed to the brim that it weighed her down and she could hardly move as he bulldozed into her, the pad of his thick thumb smushing fast circles over her throbbing nub.

Fucking her through it he gasped at how she spasmed and milked around him, her pussy trying to siphon his come right through his condom. But Harry wouldn’t come just yet. He had something to prove. Wanted to make a show of his prowess and give her something to tell her sister about.

So when she was finally calmed and her pussy wasn’t clamping around him like a vice grip he slid his hand under her head and kissed her gently, speaking low and soft against her lips, “Gonna have you flip over, okay? Just need a little more yeah?”

When he parted from the kiss she blinked up at him, fluttering lashes and out of breath, “You didn’t come?”

He shook his head, pulling himself out, gently before he placed his hands on her hips, “Not yet. I will soon, though. M’right on the edge. Won’t take me long.”

She rolled to her side as he lifted her hips and helped her get to her tummy. She felt his hands on her ass, squeezing and rubbing each meaty globe in his big palms. Then he was straddling her thighs as he spread her gently and she felt him push his thick tip back into her pussy, sharp and hot. It was tighter, felt a lot fuller like that as he began driving in deep and then pulling out to his tip, before plowing back into the hilt.

His moans grew louder and, even he could admit, sounded quite whiny, pathetic. He was shaking as he watched his dick spread her in half, her soft ass jiggling as he smacked into her, skin patting, his cock leaking precum steadily into his condom.

He hissed when it felt too good. His balls squeezing and his fat dick throbbing inside of her. He thrusted forward, landing a palm down next to her shoulder, his chest pressed into her back as he rutted himself in, tucking his cock through her insides and puffed out a hot groan into her ear, “Fuck you feel good. Gonna make me come, baby…”

She moaned and nodded, “Come for me, Harry…”

He might have held out for another thirty seconds, possibly a minute longer but her breathy words, all sultry and pleading had him pumping into his condom in an instant. He gargled on a moan and squeezed his eyes closed as he buried in and stilled his hips, ass flexing so he could push in further if it were possible.

Y/n felt him crushing her back as he collapsed over her, panted breaths in her ear, cock still throbbing in the aftermath of his orgasm.

She didn’t mind it. Liked his weight on her like that. Enjoyed the way he seemed just as fucked out as she was. She could even feel his heart pounding in his chest against her back.

With a moan, she turned her head and nuzzled her face into her blanket with her eyes closed. She’d fall asleep that way if he couldn’t get up. It was quite warm and comforting. Like a weighted blanket draped over her body. And maybe she did doze off for a bit because when she opened her eyes she felt him moving off of her before he crashed down next to her, the springs in her mattress bouncing under him.

Pushing herself to lie on her side she ran a hand over his chest and he turned to look at her, a dopey smile on his flushed face, “So this is what happens at slumber parties, huh? I’ve really missed out all these years.”

She giggled and nodded into her pillow, “Yep. They’re just like big orgies really. Normally there are more than just two people. It’s how I lost my virginity.”

Harry sputtered a laugh, “Really?”

Y/n couldn’t help but to cackle loudly and roll to her back, the biggest grin on her face, “No, silly. I was teasing.”

He slid a hand over her tummy, “So this isn’t what happens at slumber parties, then?” She could hear the cheeky smile in his voice.

She turned her head to look at him, “Well, not usually. But I think we made our own rules for this one today.”

“Yeah? Well, I have to give it to you. You throw a hell of a party. I’m certain this is gonna go down as the best sleepover in history.”

. . .

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[rebelfell]

rub one out┃(for your viewing pleasure-verse)

pornstar!eddie x director!reader

a cheeky (pun intended) bit of filth based on part of my blurb series. I was trying to keep the snippets short, but this just kinda poured out of me over the past couple days.

cw: sex work, simulated adultery, oral (fem receiving)

18+, MDNI┃2.8k

Maybe this was a bad idea.

You couldn’t escape the nagging thought as you stepped outside, tightening the belt on your fluffy white bathrobe, tugging at the terrycloth tail and twisting it in your fingers. Your eyes flitted to each member of your crew, all of them in position waiting to get this show on the road.

Why were you so nervous? You’d certainly done this enough times before not to get stage fright. So why did your stomach feel more tangled than the box of electrical cords in Lenny’s truck?

Part of you almost wished it would rain, or the ground would open up and swallow you whole so you didn’t have to go through with this. But the concrete remained solid under your feet, and the sky overhead showed no signs of altering its radiant blue color. Perfect.

It’s gonna be fine, you thought in an attempt to soothe yourself. It’s all gonna be fine.

And you almost believed it would be.

Sammy, who was barely a step up from an intern, had swiftly been promoted once the plan for you to replace your no-show leading lady was set in motion. You weren’t worried about her, though—she was smart and a quick study; she knew all the shots you needed, and she had a good eye.

If you couldn’t be behind the camera yourself, she was pretty much the only one you trusted.

Well…maybe not the only one.

Eddie’s eyes met yours as soon as you stepped out of the trailer. The sunlight hit his deep brown irises, making them glow the color of rich honey. But behind the liquid gold, you could see his own nerves and it made your stomach flip, wondering what he could possibly be nervous about.

“Hey,” he said quietly as he came up next to you. “You good?”

For a moment, you considered lying. Flashing him a thumbs up or shooting him finger guns like one of those tools you used to do this with. But you knew better by now when it came to Eddie.

“Nope,” you chuckled. “I’m kinda shitting myself.”

“Well, that’s just what the guy about to fuck you wants to hear,” he chuckled back.

A real smile breaks through your tense, fake one and a genuine laugh bubbles up out of your chest. Eddie’s eyes shine when he hears it and the sight makes your chest feel all warm inside.

“No, you’re right,” you said. “I’m okay, I just…don’t know why I’m so nervous.”

His plush pink lips pressed into a straight line, his tongue poking out as he licked them. He reached out a reassuring hand and placed it on your shoulder, rubbing it through your robe.

“You’re gonna be great,” he assured, sounding a lot more certain than you felt.

Easy for him to say. He’s a fucking natural.

Even on your best day doing this, you never felt like you were great at it—competent, sure. Maybe even above average. But not great. Not at all the way you felt since getting behind the camera.

You nodded tightly, your hesitation still written all over your face. His eyes scanned over you and he swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing. He then leaned in and placed his lips beside your ear.

“You look…really beautiful,” he said.

His warm breath rushed across your neck, the heat coming off his skin making your ears buzz. An explosion of fluttering began in your stomach, like there were butterfly cocoons in your cereal that morning and now they were all hatching.

“We should get moving,” you said, pulling back. “Burning daylight.”

Eddie straightened. He nodded and you nodded back, sliding past him to do final checks before you started rolling. Telling yourself he must have pumped or popped a Viagra to explain away that bulge in his pants that definitely wasn’t there before he came over to talk to you.

The nerves didn’t disappear once you started working, but your body and brain did snap into a kind of performance mode you remembered well.

You started with some still photography for the VHS box art—shots of you in progressing states of undress, your robe dropping off your shoulder, Eddie pulling it open to reveal your body, his hand running up your thigh in a slow caress.

He let it trail all the way up your stomach and chest until he curled his finger under your chin and tipped your face toward his, letting his lips hover just inches away from yours. Your eyes fluttered closed and your heart raced, thinking he might close the gap and actually kiss you—

But after the shutter snapped, he simply let his hand drop and backed away. 

The loss of his body heat sent a chill down your spine and you shivered despite the blazing sun overhead. Eddie’s eyes caught yours, the nearly imperceptible lift of his brow asking, ‘you okay?’ You nodded and another shiver skittered across your skin as you pulled your robe back up.

For the next shot, you climbed up on the massage table and he got into position behind you. His body pressed yours down, your back arching under him as he dipped his head low to take the lobe of your ear between his teeth, palming your exposed breast with his large, strong hand. 

You let your mouth hang open, not even needing to fake the look of desperation on your face. And let yourself believe Eddie’s excitement you could feel digging into the fat of your ass was real too. The little grunts and whines he let out when you wriggled against him certainly didn’t sound fake.

After the photos, there was nothing left to do but move on to the main event. 

You and Eddie reset—him standing in frame, you just outside of it. Sammy panned the camera around, establishing the setting, zooming in on the fountain feature in the pool and then coming around to film Eddie as he snapped a fresh towel and laid it out on the massage table.

From your spot off-camera, it’s impossible not to be mesmerized by the sight. Biceps rippling, tendons in his arms flexing as he smoothed the towel flat. His tattoos stood out even more than normal with him in white slacks and a white polo meant to give the impression of him being an employee of the resort. And the little twist your hair and make-up girl Jael did is something new that only further accentuates the thick column of his neck and his angular jaw.

He’d left off his rings and bracelets, as was typical when he was filming, and you couldn’t help but think about that day in the editing suite. When he’d touched your knee, and you felt the silver ridges press into your flesh. It had jarred you somewhat, how right it felt to have his hand there and how you’d nearly leaned in to meet his lips when you saw his face getting closer.

You hadn’t kissed him that day—promptly removing yourself from temptation in an attempt to salvage some shred of your professionalism. And you (mostly) felt good about that decision. It would have been reckless and destructive and your entire working relationship might have been compromised. You’d made the right call that day, you were sure of it. Mostly…

But today was different. Today, it wasn’t going to derail your career. If anything, your career was mandating you give in to those urges that had plagued you so relentlessly. And that was when it hit you all at once—the realization about as subtle as a train crashing through a wall.

You were going to fuck Eddie.

You’re going to feel firsthand what it’s like to have his face and cock buried between your legs; what it’s like to suck on his fingers and soak them with your spit before he presses them to your clit; what he sounds like when he comes all over your stomach or tits (you can’t quite recall what the script specifies, you just know it’s meant to be outside so he can dotingly clean you up after). 

The barrage of thoughts that storm through your mind are so consuming, you nearly miss your cue to enter the scene. But once you do, you’re rather grateful for the distraction of the set-up dialogue:

“It’ll just be me, today. My husband has a meeting he couldn’t get out of.”

“No, no, it’s not his fault. I got it as a surprise for our anniversary—I should have known better than to book it without checking his schedule.”

“I’m afraid I never know how much to take off for a massage…what do you suggest?”

Eddie answered your last question with a smooth, “Whatever makes you most comfortable,” and a smile so warm it would melt the ice caps.

Giving him a smile of your own, you slowly pulled at the tie of your robe. It fell to the ground in a heap at your feet and Eddie’s dark eyes roved over you hungrily. Now revealed to be completely naked, you feigned some degree of shyness: ducking your head low, looking up at him from underneath your lashes, brushing your hand over your stomach as though to hide it while really drawing his eyes to its plush softness.

“Is this alright?” you asked him with a coy smirk. Eddie grinned, still drinking you in.

“Absolutely,” he breathed. And the raptness in his eyes almost had you believing him.

You took your time getting up on the table, propping yourself up on all fours, letting him (and the camera) take a good, long look at the fullness of your hips before you settled in place. Arms at your side, you took a deep breath as you laid flat on your stomach, relieved there wouldn’t be much dialogue needed for this next part.

Through the little donut headrest at the end of the table, you saw Sammy’s feet as she moved in close—filming tight on Eddie’s hands while he pumped massage oil onto them and warmed it by spreading it between his palms.

Your chest tightened, nerves coiling in your stomach as you anticipated his touch, forcing your body to keep still so you didn’t pull focus.

He smoothed some oil over your skin, starting at the ankles and thoroughly coating your calves. The smell of clary sage filled the air, earthy and warm. And underneath it, a clean and woodsy scent you recognized as Eddie’s soap wafted up to your nose when he leaned in closer.

His fingertips began to knead your muscles, slipping and sliding easily over your skin that was slick with the oil. He made tiny circles with his thumbs, alternating back and forth as they moved in a steady pattern up your calf.

Oh, that’s right…

In all the hubbub, you’d forgotten the whole concept for this shoot was borne on the fact that Eddie went to massage school for real. He’d told you before, after he left his hometown (shit, what was it again? Hawk-something…) that he started collecting different jobs like merit badges.

Just bounced from thing to thing, trying his hand (sometimes both) at whatever life presented. And that included porn. He’d said he only auditioned for that first film he did because someone he’d slept with a handful of times knew a casting director and suggested he’d be good at it.

“He certainly had the dick for it” were her exact words, if you recalled. Strange to think in a way, you might owe that girl your career.

Through the pleasurable haze your mind dipped into having Eddie’s capable hands erasing every ounce of stress you carried in your muscles, you realized he was moving the scene right along while you just lay there humming and moaning with relief at his practiced touch.

He’d lowered his voice to that deep, rumbly register he always used when he was building towards the next phase. His DM voice, as he so affectionately dubbed it. Rough and gravely, yet even and tempered, guiding both you and the audience along on the journey of this fuck.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying…but your husband’s a jackass for missings out on this.”

Your heartbeat picked up in your chest as he moved to your thighs. His fingertips dug into your flesh, kneading it like dough, letting his thumbs swerve dangerously close to your center.

“You deserve someone who puts you first…who knows what he has and worships you…”

One of his thumbs swiped briefly over your puffy lips, and you knew he felt how wet you were.

“You know, I’d never let you out of my sight if you were mine…”

His words dripped slowly and intentionally past his lips, his hands creeping higher and higher up your legs. At last, they slid over the globes of your ass and he groaned as he squeezed one in each hand, spreading you apart to see your center, soaked with arousal that had been pooling there, truth be told, from the moment Eddie had told you how beautiful you looked. 

You heard Eddie’s next line in your head before he said it, “If you really want to relax, I can try a very special technique. I don’t do it for just anyone. It’s a little bit…unorthodox…”

And you were more than ready to take him up on his offer once he delivered the line. 

But Eddie went off script.

Instead of hearing words, you felt the wet heat of his tongue glide through your folds as he buried his face between your spread ass cheeks. Your head popped out of the headrest, letting out a breathy moan of surprise and delight.

The shock on your face was evident as Sammy pushed in close to capture your expression, but so was your pure and utter elation. You’d never felt anything so good in your life…

And it seemed you weren’t the only one.

Eddie groaned loudly as he lapped messily at your folds, his spit mixing with your slick that covered the bottom half of his face. And it was only after a few blissful seconds of eager licking that he even realize what he’d done.

“I’m—mmph—sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” He panted out in between sinful swirls of his tongue, his he words muffled by your ass cheeks because he couldn’t stand to pull away even a little, even long enough to speak. “I had to taste you…”

”It’s okay,” you answered, voice already wrecked beyond belief. “It’s okay, just keep going—”

The command is directed at him as much as it is the crew, who only panicked slightly. Eddie never did stuff like this and they just weren’t ready.

They got back on track quickly enough, Sammy signaling the boom mic to get as close as he can without dipping into frame in order to pick up every lurid slurp and suck of Eddie’s mouth.

After no more than a few minutes, the fluffy towel under you was bunched in your fists and your hips squirmed as Eddie continued to eat you out like a mad man. His tight grip on your ass cheeks held fast, spreading you wider still so his tongue could probe deeper. The sounds he pulled out of you didn’t even sound human to your ears, let alone recognizable as your own voice. 

But you didn’t care.

However you sounded, however you looked, it was superfluous to what Eddie was doing and the precipice he brought you to. Your orgasm hit harder than any drug, than any physical blow. It had you shaking uncontrollably, reaching back to grip the hair at the crown of his head as your hips pushed back to meet every thrust of his tongue while you rode out your exceptional high.

You felt its tingling sensation spread to every inconsequential inch of your body, like an ocean of fire that crashed over you in wave after wave of scorching pleasure. Drowning you in it.

When you finally found the strength in your limp limbs to roll over onto your back, Eddie’s eyes were waiting to meet yours. You could see on his face how sorry he was, how worried he was he’d fucked up. And you tried to communicate with him in that mind-melding, wordless sort of way you and he always did that it was fine—that people were going to love it.

Cocking your brow at him, dipping into a more salacious tone to really sell the transformation from demure housewife to lusty adulterer, you threw in a little adlib of your own.

“That’s some technique you’ve got there,” you teased him, propping yourself up on your elbows. “My husband’s certainly never done that before.”

Eddie’s sly smile returned, his lips curling as he reached out to grip your waist. He hauled you closer with one jerk, bringing you to the edge of the table so your hips were flush with his. The bulge in his white pants was harder than ever when it pressed against your cunt, and he grinned wickedly when he felt just how ready you were for more. He yanked up the shirttail of his polo and whipped it off his body, tossing it behind him where it landed half in the pool.

��Oh, sweetheart,” he tutted softly, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Tysm for reading! 🛸 comments and reblogs keep your skin clear and your crops watered 🫶🏻

[archangeldyke-all]

I saw this post and said "I HAVE to see if angel sees Sevika in this."

https://www.tumblr.com/sappho-made-me-do-it/761835077309186048?source=share

So what about Reader and Sevika doing a scene and Reader always gets super flustered when Sevika asks her "tell me who you belong to" with a hand around Reader's throat? So flustered that Sevika always has to ask if she wants to continue. (The answer is still yes lol)

GOD this is so sevika coded it isn't even funny (especially now that we know she's choking cait out in season 2, my girl just loves choking)

men and minors dni

"you like that, baby?" sevika asks from behind you. she's been fucking you into the mattress for half an hour now, and she can clearly tell that you like it by the way you're whining and moaning and shaking beneath her. still. she likes hearing you say it.

"fuck, sev, fuck, fuck, fuck, i love it, i love it, i love it sevika." you babble. you're practically incoherent. sevika loves it.

"you're just so fuckin' cute, y'know?" she teases as she reaches forward and pulls you out of the mattress with a hand to your shoulder. "cryin' on my dick-- fuck i love you. i love this cunt-- love how fuckin' messy you are for me. look at you."

she smacks your ass and you squeal. "sevika-- i'm so fuckin' close." you whine. sevika chuckles and lets go of your shoulder. you collapse back onto the bed and squeak when she pulls out of you. "wha!?" you whine. "why'd you--" you cut yourself off with another squeal when sevika flips you onto your back.

"wanted to see your pretty face when you cum." she explains as she lines her strap back up with your entrance. you reach up and cover your face-- embarrassed by her words. sevika grunts and shoves back inside you, smacking your hands away from your face. "lemme see." she demands.

you give up on trying to hide, letting your hands flop down to grab sevika's hips as she fucks you. "i love you, sev." you whimper as you start to fall apart.

"fuck, i love you too." a shudder runs all the way down your spine at her words, and sevika smirks. "gonna cum?" she asks. you nod desperately underneath her. she chuckles, and reaches down with one hand to wrap it around your throat. "i'll let you cum, baby. just tell me who you belong to first."

you must black out.

one moment sevika's fucking you mindless, her hand around your throat-- and the next she's still between your legs, blinking down at you with concern, both her hands cupping your face.

you blink up at her. "wha? why'd you stop?" you ask-- your voice shaky.

sevika snorts a bit, blinking at you like you're crazy. "are you okay?" she asks. you frown.

"y-yeah? a little pissed i'm still waiting to cum but--"

"baby, you just came so hard you passed out! i was worried i actually choked you out." sevika chuckles. "i was about two seconds away from calling a fuckin' ambulance-- no idea how i'd explain that to the paramedics."

as you take in your surroundings, you realize that she's probably right-- if the way your cunt's fluttering around her strap and the puddle of cum under your ass is anything to go by.

you burst into giggles. "well that's what you get for being so fuckin' hot! shit, sevika, gimmie a warning before you try 'n kill me next time, okay?" you ask.

sevika sighs in relief and melts on top of you, giggling and kissing your skin anywhere she can reach. "you had me fuckin' worried." she mumbles.

you giggle. "did you finish?" you ask.

"no, but we're done for tonight-- i nearly shat myself when you passed out, i'm not feeling sexy anymore." she says. you snort.

"hmm. that's a shame." you say, wrapping your legs and arms around her as you speak. sevika glares up at you, knowing the mischievous tone in your voice.

"why's that?" she asks.

"well, if you were still in the mood-- i'd answer your question for you." you say, trying to make your voice as sultry as possible. sevika raises an eyebrow at you.

"what question?"

"who i belong to." you remind her. "mmm. i wouldn't just answer it either, i'd show you."

sevika groans and bites your shoulder, and you burst into laughter as her hips start to move against yours again.

taglist!

@fyeahnix @lavendersgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner

@shimtarofstupidity @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther

@ellsss @sevikaspillowprincess @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai

@glass-apothecary @macaroni676 @artinvain @k3n-dyll @sevsdollette

@ellieslob @xayn-xd @keikuahh @maneskinwh0re @raphaellearp

@iamastar @sevikitty @mascdom @nhaaauyen

@mirconreadzztuff22 @veoomvroom

[lucimaaie]

we ✧.* tlou

pairings - santa barbara!ellie x reader

summary - ellie promised herself she wouldn’t get attached to anyone after santa barbara, look how that turned out.

warning - angsty, not proofread cause i wrote this pretty quick, short (as always),

After Santa Barbara, Ellie had no plan for the future. She’d left Dina and JJ and let Abby go. She knew would still have nightmares and the pain wouldn’t leave her. What else was there to do?

Maybe that was the reason she fought you as you tried to take care of her. “Leave me alone!” She said as you’d tried to help her up from the water, raising her arm around your neck. Thinking about it now, the memory of her weak attempt to tussle you made her laugh.

You fought as hard as she did despite being starved and traumatized yourself. She didn’t know your story, just that you were the only one who didn’t want to kill her as soon as you came out of that crowded cell. You knew that she was immune and that was it. Nothing else was important in the moment. Nothing she wanted to tell you anyway.

You took care of her so much she started to feel guilty for not returning the favor. Cleaning her wounds, taking first watch, giving her whatever food you two had left. Ellie questioned whether it was pity or too good to be true, that you’d try something the moment she relaxed. But as she got stronger, nothing bad happened. You cared for her all the same.

So she cared for you. She watched your back and let you sleep a bit longer since she knew her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. She held you the way you held her when she awoke screaming. Gave you light kisses everywhere to distract you (and her) from a haunting past she knew nothing of. Conversations weren’t your speciality. You didn’t know a lot about each other, but you knew each other.

Eventually, you got lucky and found an abandoned cabin far away from Santa Barbara and quickly settled in. It wasn’t big and there was one bed, but it was shelter. Ellie didn’t want to call it home just yet.

“We should move south.” Ellie blurted, shaking the snow off her boots onto the porch. She could already hear your lecture about letting the cold in, but that wasn’t her focus. Did she just say we? “I mean, nevermind. Here’s fine.” It wasn’t. It was cold as hell and she was tired of the cold she’d been in her whole life.

“No, why south?” You said as you adjusted the small sticks that provided at least a little warmth in the small space. Ellie came to sit down next to you, leaving no space between you. She looked at you, admiring how the orange light shone on your face.

“It’s hotter.” She held your gaze as you listened intently. “Probably make hunting easier.” Ellie knocked her shoulder into yours without much force.

“You ever been south?”

She shrugged before shaking her head. “Nope.” She looked at the fire. That might be a downside of south. No more needing to snuggle up to you to not freeze to death. South you probably have to give each other some space to cool off. “Was just a thought.” She scratched her ear. “What’d you do while I was out?”

“Counted our supply. put on the fire. cleaned our clothes. a bunch of nothing.”

“What about eating?”

“uh-no. forgot that part.”

“Course you did.” She sighed, rising to her feet and look around for the bag you two stuff all cans in. All your belongings in the cabin were generally pre-packed in case you had to run, but still the fact that you’d been able to accumulate these things together made her feel something she couldn’t describe. Annoyance was part of it. that she got so attached to you after she promised herself she wouldn’t. that it just complicated things. But that already happened the moment you’d kissed and let things go further.

“here.” She used her knife to open the can of beans and sat back next to you, handing them over.

“you do know we sleep in the same bed, right?” You hesitantly took the can and swished them around with the spoon.

“trust me i know, but i don’t need you losing body fat and clinging to me like a koala.”

“you’ve never even seen a koala.” You said, taking a bite of the beans. not bad but not good and most importantly not expired. You set the can down in the middle of you, signaling that you wanted to share. She shook her head and sighed as you pushed the can closer to her, your eyes saying ‘please.’ She took a small bite just to appease you and shoved it over to you. “just shut up and eat.” she swiped her thumb over the edge of your lip. “and stop eating like that. we’ll get you more food tomorrow.”

Hours later, ellie shot up in the middle of the night, her heart feeling like it would burst out of her chest at any moment. She choked on her own breaths as she buried her head into her knees. “it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real—“ She mumbled the same words you did when you saw her like this.

“ellie?” You sat up as well, watching her with concerned eyes. She started to sob as she heard your voice, whether out of fear or relief you didn’t know but you didn’t give it much thought as you ran your fingers through her hair, letting her cry in your lap.

Eventually her tears stopped, leaving her with a pounding head and the comforting silence you provided. Her head rose from your lap and she pulled you into her, not willing to let go. Her head rested on your shoulder as her hands roamed under your shirt. There were no words for a while.

When there were words, they came quietly. “el?” you whispered. She didn’t respond for a while, still stuck in her swarming thoughts. “yeah?”

“where are you from?” It felt like a random question to ask, but there was no way you were gonna ask what she dreamed about.

She blinked for a few seconds, surprised. It was a simple question, yeah, but it could lead to other questions. she was scared to answer and ask back. “boston, i guess.”

“oh.”

“why’d you ask?” She let her head fall back on the pillow and tugged on your shoulder, silently asking you to turn around. And you did, facing her.

“i guess i just realized i never knew that stuff about you.” You said, fidgeting with her hands as you awaited her response. It felt like some dangerous territory, you weren’t supposed to cross. That was weird, you already crossed other, farther lines. “should i have not asked?” You whispered, tentatively.

“no, you..” She cleared her throat. “you can ask.” She finally looked at you, eyes soft with fear, pain. “i just..i don’t wanna talk about it all.”And go back there, she wanted to say.

“you don’t have to.” You scooted closer to her, laying your head on her shoulder.

Elie wrapped her arms around your back, her legs around yours, and looked at you. She let out a deep sigh as her heart beat for a different reason this time. “we don’t have to talk about it all. not right now.” we, there was a we. she wasn’t making it up. “okay,” She kissed your forehead.

thank you for reading!

[jinnie-ret]

cover me

poly!stray kids x fem reader

genre: angst, fluff at the end

content warnings: stress from uni/work

word count: 1.5k

summary: money, work, school. it was only a matter of time before the boys would see her crumble, and be there to pick up the pieces

requested: @straykidsnerd255

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Every time she tried to take one step forward, something would ultimately knock her back twice as far. Finally having a very generously paid job as an intern at a big company was serving her well, yet with the return of going back to university, finding a work-school balance was becoming difficult.

Truly, that was the hardest thing. She had great people around her, those being her uni friends or her loving boyfriends, the renowned Kpop band, Stray Kids. The way they cared for her and each other with such strong morals and support meant that surely it would be easy to confide in them.

Not always, especially in this case.

Other times she would be thankful for the fact that her partners all had a longer practice at the company, not to their own detriment of course, but because it gave her more time to get herself together and paint on a calm picture of 'I'm definitely not struggling right now and on the brink of my second breakdown of the day'.

However, this time she really needed them. The stress had amounted to such a level that she felt it right through to her bones, and so she found herself crying over the smallest things, which in turn let out the release of her biggest pain.

"Stupid shoes, why aren't they organised, there's too many," she sniffled, sat on her knees by the front door as she began to cry at shoes. Yes, shoes. Her boyfriends' shoes to be specific. She would have thought at least Seungmin would have berated the others for their lack of organisation at this point but even his were out of place.

"They didn't even match them back up," she cried, and more tears spilled out, "oh, why am I even crying right now?"

Sometimes being in such a state meant that it was hard to understand your own feelings, your thoughts far too occupied with the wants of other people to be able to manage the basic needs of your own.

Eventually she gave up on the shoes and wiped her tears, walking slowly over to the sofa and letting her body fall into it with a soft thump. She tugged a soft velvety blanket over herself, one that Felix probably picked out due to it's plush exterior, and instinctively cocooned herself. Her heart felt heavy, her eyes hot and burning as the tears kept falling. All it took was a reminder on her phone for a work assignment, and a uni assignment, to trigger a sob to catch her throat.

"Too much," she sobbed to herself, trying to muffle the sounds even though there was no one else to hear them, "it's too much."

She was wrong. Not about her feelings, gosh, no, but the fact that she thought she was alone.

"Hey, hey, what's going on?" Hyunjin was crouched down right in front of her trembling form, almost hidden if it wasn't for the blanketed lump that had been shaking so much it couldn't have been natural.

His hand brushed her hair back and his thumb rubbed under her eyes, catching the tears that seemed to keep appearing. Hyunjin watched on in deep concern, just like their other boyfriends did the more they realised something was wrong.

"What? When, when did you get back?" she gulped down her sobs, or attempted to, even though her words still came out messily. She sat up, the blanket falling off her shoulders and resting around her hips.

"Don't worry about that, love. Just tell us what's going on, yeah? What's wrong?" Chan held her against him immediately, taking a seat ñext to her. The only time his arm that was wrapped around her moved away, was to let Jeongin lift the blanket back up to keep her warm.

"I don't know," she sniffed indignantly, coughing lightly through her cries when she tried to clear her throat. Her arm pressed against the lower half of her face.

"You're getting yourself in a state now, come on, move your arm, you know you don't have to hold back in front of us," Seungmin sighed sadly, seeing his girlfriend so stressed. He pulled her arm towards her lap which he was sat in front of, holding her hand with one of his own and the other rubbing her knee.

"Thanks," she said sarcastically at first, until hearing the rest of what he had to say and tilting her head up to the ceiling to blink away the rest of her tears.

Chan pressed a kiss against her forehead, and everyone was around her to offer comfort, Felix and Changbin in particular wanting to jump out of their seats on the adjacent sofa to take all the pain away.

"What's got you to upset, jagi?" Jisung pouted, his own eyes glistening as he saw how upset you were.

"It's stupid, really," she began, rubbing at her eyes roughly, Hyunjin subsequently tutting at her and pulling her other hand away that Seungmin wasn't occupying.

"We're not doing that, jagi," Minho shook his head, brows furrowed, looking down at the floor with his hands folded together, "if it's upset you, it's not stupid."

"Exactly, please just tell us, you know we just want to help, that's all," Felix quickly pitched in, face crumpled sadly much like your own.

"There's just too much going on really. You know? Like, oh-" she had to cut herself off when her voice cracked with emotion again.

"You're ok, take your time," Jeongin gave a small smile and nod to reassure her.

"We're listening, baby," Changbin's raspy voice rung out.

"I've got a good job right? Like, it pays so well, but now with going back to uni it's just like I don't have time for anything. I-i'm having to squeeze in hours where I don't have them because my boss won't help me work around my timetable," she explained, the clashing of two parts of her life and time issues being what was clearly causing so much turmoil.

"I'm sorry, darling," Chan tugged her closer to him, a frown on his face.

"Don't be sorry, not your fault, is it? I'm just so tired, I'm exhausted," she admitted, pressing her lips together and taking a deep breath in order to not cry again.

"We'll help you figure this out, ok?" Hyunjin leant his head against her shoulder.

"Ok, ok," she let out a deep breath and nodded.

"I think you need to focus on uni, love. If work can't meet you in the middle then, it's hard," Seungmin trailed off, not wanting to fully leave her in the dark but not wanting to be too blunt.

"What do you think, jagi?" Jisung wondered, curled up against Minho, one leg hanging over the older's lap.

"I don't know. I don't even wanna make any decisions right now," she shook her head tiredly, blinking a couple times.

"That's understandable, baby, how about we just relax for now, ok?" Changbin suggested.

"And if anything else is upsetting you, please tell us," Chan huffed with a knowing smile.

"Ok, promise," she grinned.

₊˚⊹♡

She must have fallen asleep without realising, as she found herself waking up to Jeongin and Felix giggling over something on the latter's phone.

"What's going on?" she murmured tiredly, pressing her face deeper into... Jisung's chest, it took one whiff of his cologne to be able to tell it was him.

"Had a good sleep then, hmm?" Minho poked her forehead, slow blinking at her.

"Mm, yeah," she nodded, "Lixie, Innie, what's funny?"

The two froze, looking at her a bit guiltily.

"Well, umm, you know we have that camera in the hallway, just in case for security, like if someone broke in or-" Jeongin began to ramble awkwardly,

"I know, yeah," she nods, adjusting her head against Jisung's chest as he loosely keeps an arm around her, securing her to him.

"We're actually sorry for laughing, babe, it's just... You were crying over our shoes earlier?" Felix can't even keep eye contact as he explains.

Jisung stifles a laugh and so she slaps his chest playfully through her mild embarrassment, making him yell out dramatically.

"What's Sungie done now?" Hyunjin asks as he flops onto the sofa, entering the room again after leaving Chan, Seungmin and Changbin to managing the cooking.

"It's more about what our jagi did," Minho teases, looking at her with a smug grin.

"Guys, I was stressed, leave me aloneeee," she huffed, but it didn't stop the light laughter that filled the room knowing that she wasn't completely upset about it.

"Sorry, but..." Jeongin chuckles again, "the way you throw the shoes away from you is so funny!"

"What did our shoes do to you?!" Felix laughed again as he watched the video on replay.

"They smelt bad," she grinned happily, teasing them back as revenge, "specifically Ji's."

"Yah!"

Jisung gave her a noogie, keeping her trapped in his arms. He couldn't let her discredit him like that.

"Sorry! Sorry! Hahaha!"

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listeners: @skz-streamer @kiraisastay @kpopmenace143 @haodore @arloo00 @dunno-wut-to-do @splat00z @his-angell @2minstan @skzoologist @lovingchan @atinyniki @writingforstraykids @minholing @lilmisssona @astraysimp @lixie-phoria @theo4eve @linoalwaysknows @royal-shinigami @jolly04 @turtledove824 @yangbbokari @thisrandomgoofy15 @lieslab @hannamoon143 @arumlilyeclipse

[krirebr]

Luck Be a Lady

Pairing: soft!dark Curtis Everett x female reader

Word Count: ~10.1k

Summary: Desperate for money, you accept a job as a cocktail waitress at an underground casino. You think you know what you're doing, but when you meet Curtis, will you realize you're in over your head?

Warnings: Mob AU, violence, allusions to murder, explicit language, dubcon touching, noncon touching (not Curtis), willfully oblivious reader, SMUT - facefucking, dirty talk, light d/s dynamics, praise kink, other explicit sexual content. This is definitely on the darker end of the soft!dark spectrum, so proceed with caution! All of my work is 18+ - Minors DNI

Dividers by @thecutestgrotto

Masterlist

A/N: And here it finally is! This is my first real attempt at soft!dark. I hope I did it right! 😂

This was inspired by two things: 1) me going to a rep screening of Goodfellas and spending the entire time wondering why I hadn't done a mob au yet and 2) @bigtreefest saying "enforcer!Curtis Everett and mob boss!Andy Barber" in my general direction. Thanks for the inspo, friend!!

And big thanks as always to @paperweight91 who not only came up with Curtis's name for reader but also offered heaps of encouragement and was a great sounding board. And thanks to @stargazingfangirl18 for helping me figure out how exactly we'd get to the smut. Thanks Siri!

Any comment, reblog, or ask to let me know what you think will be greatly appreciated. Please come scream at me about this! 😄 As always, thank you so much for reading! 💜

You fruitlessly tug down your very short skirt as Holly talks at you. You’re both standing in the corner of the bar’s basement waiting for the night to start in earnest—your first night.

“Lloyd’s not so bad,” she says of your boss, the man who runs this little underground gambling ring. “You’ll have to split your tips with him at the end of the night, but he doesn’t take that much, and you’ll make enough that you won’t really notice. As long as you do that, he’ll mostly keep his hands to himself.”

You nod along, glancing at the mustachioed man conferring with the bouncer at the door. The interview process for this job had boiled down to a thorough once-over that’d made you feel naked in your jeans and t-shirt and a “You’re not too stupid to take a drink order, are you?” and then you had the job.

Holly had vouched for you. Neighbors for almost half a year, she’d come home early one morning last week and witnessed you trying to convince the landlord that you were good for your past-due rent. She’d taken you for coffee and told you she might be able to help if you were good at keeping your head down and mouth shut. And now you were here.

“The customers, on the other hand,” she continues, smacking her gum, “you’ll have to let them touch, at least a little bit. Within reason, you know? But if anything gets out of hand, you can just tell Jake at the door and he’ll take care of it.”

“Within reason?” you ask, voice shaking, just the littlest bit, as the pit that started forming in your stomach when you agreed to this grows a little more.

The look she gives you verges on exasperated. “Well, you want to make money, don’t you?”

Yes, you do. Very much so. It’s a need, not a want. So you nod and try to listen as she keeps giving you the rundown. 

Before you’re ready, the first patrons start trickling in and then you’re off to the races. It’s not too bad. No one’s orders are too complicated, mostly just bottles of beer and glasses of straight whiskey. The bartender, Colin, is friendly enough, although you learn that he’s another person you’ll need to split your tips with. 

As for the touching, there are hands on your hips, pats to your ass. But you’re rewarded with folded-up bills held up between fingers or tucked into the strap of your top. Or, twice, slid behind the waistband of your skirt. Once you realize that the majority of these bills aren’t ones or fives, but twenties, you care about the touching that comes with them much less. Plus, you’re too busy to really think about it that hard. 

You can’t believe how busy it is for a random Tuesday night, multiple games of poker, craps, and who knows what else all going at once. But when you mention that to Holly, she just laughs and shakes her head. “This is nothing,” she says. “On the weekends there’ll be three more of us and another one of Jake. Things get wild.” 

You don’t have time to decide whether that makes you nervous or excited before someone is signaling for your attention again. You manage to suppress your grimace when he slides his arm around your waist to tell you what he needs from the bar. You’re rewarded for your troubles by a wad of twenties. You aren’t sure who these men are to tip so freely, but you know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It’s an hour or two later that Lloyd calls you over to where he’s speaking to a large, impossibly broad man, dressed in a soft-looking henley under a leather jacket with dark jeans. There’s dark ink all over his hands that disappears up his sleeves and reappears on his neck in intricate lines. He’s got close-cropped hair and a full beard that’s neatly trimmed. His deep blue eyes drill into you right away and you do your best not to shiver.

“Got a new girl tonight, Everett. Still learning the ropes, but she’ll take good care of you, won’t you, Cupcake?” 

“Yes, of course,” you say, before Lloyd wanders off to check on one of the poker games.

The man, Everett, lets his eyes rove over you. “Cupcake, huh?” His voice is deep, gritty, but there's something there that's much gentler than you expected.

You give him what you hope is a coy smile. “Sure. If you want.” Lloyd was treating him like he's important. You hope important means deep pockets.

He hits you with a penetrative stare, so strong you almost have to take a step back. “No,” he finally says. “I don't think so. I'll find something more fitting.” Then he turns and starts to walk away, before calling over his shoulder. “I'm gonna get dealt in. Bring me a whiskey once I'm settled.”

You watch him go for just a moment, and then head to the bar, asking for a whiskey. 

“This for Everett?” the bartender, Colin, asks. When you nod, he grabs a fancy bottle off the top shelf. “This is all he drinks. And he doesn't pay for it, alright? Don't ever think about giving him a bill.” 

You look back at the man in question, seriously looking at the cards he’s just been dealt. Who is he???

You collect his whiskey and move back to him. As you set it down, he turns to you. “How about this?” he asks as he holds up a crisply folded hundred-dollar bill between two fingers. Your eyes widen at the money. All you’ve done is bring him one straight pour. “There’s another one of these in it for you if you make sure I never see the bottom of this glass tonight. Sound good?” And then he folds the bill one more time in his thick fingers, before sliding it under the low-cut neckline of your blouse. Your skin tingles where he brushes against it.

“Yeah, you got it,” you just breathe out, a little shocked you’re able to form words. He gives you a smug smile that you can only describe as shark-like before turning back to his cards, and you understand it as the dismissal that it is. 

You move around the room, collecting empties, getting refills, trying to goodnaturedly accept unsolicited touches. The whole time you feel eyes on you, but whenever you glance Everett’s way, he’s focused on his poker game.

Eventually, a down moment finds you catching your breath against the wall. The moment Holly sees you standing still, she’s quickly making her way to you. “You need to be more careful around Curtis,” she hisses, lowly.

You look at her, confused. “Curtis?” Jake’s at the door. Colin’s behind the bar. You don’t know a Curtis.

“Curtis Everett!” You glance at the man at the poker table. He’s running a poker chip across his knuckles mindlessly. Then he looks up and you briefly make eye contact before you quickly look away. Holly is staring at you and she looks worried. But the name still doesn’t mean anything to you, so you shake your head and shrug. She groans as quietly as she can. “He’s Barber’s top enforcer!”

This whole conversation feels so out of the blue that it takes you a minute to catch up. Barber. Andrew Barber. The most feared mob boss in the city. Probably the state. Maybe even more. Ruthless and exacting was how the papers described him. He’d been the subject of multiple stings and taskforces and whathaveyou but nothing ever stuck. “He works for Andrew Barber?” you ask, shocked and a little appalled.

Holly stares at you in a way that you can only describe as dumbfounded. It takes her a few moments to find her words, then, “Bitch, you work for Andrew Barber!”

Everything stops. “What?” you gasp.

“Oh my god,” Holly groans. “This was such a mistake. It’s an underground card game in his city! Who did you think was running things?”

“I– I don’t know,” you stutter, stupidly. The god’s honest truth is that you’d never really stopped to think about it. You’d been staring down an eviction, struggling to afford groceries. Unable to make ends meet no matter what you did. When Holly told you about this job, all you saw were dollar signs. You didn't think about anything further. Of course, you’d known these games were illegal, but it seemed so minor in the grand scheme of things. You hadn’t connected it to anything bigger because you just hadn’t wanted to.

But now– Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do? You know what you should do. You should walk out the door right now. You should find some other legitimate way to pay your bills. It’ll be safer. It’ll be better. It’ll be so much harder.

As you bite your lip, trying to process all of this information, Holly continues. “Listen,” she says, “still get him drinks, be friendly, whatever you need to do. But keep your distance however you can. Don't encourage him. He's just– He's really dangerous. They don't call him Barber’s attack dog for nothing, ok?”

“Yeah,” you say. You start to look back in Curtis’s direction but stop yourself. You think about the hundred you already have and the one promised to you at the end of the night. You think of how empty your pantry is. But then you see the genuine fear in Holly's eyes. You let out a shaky breath. “Yeah. I got it. Thanks.”

“He doesn't even come in here that often. I'm surprised to see him tonight, so I'm sure it’ll be fine,” she says, but you can tell she’s nervous.

You nod, absently, finally letting yourself glance over at him. His drink is getting close to the bottom. “Shit,” you mumble. “I gotta get him his refill.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Holly asks. 

You should let her do it. You absolutely should. But you just can’t give up on that tip. You shake your head. “No, I’ll be fine. But thanks.”

You head back to the bar and grab Curtis’s top-shelf whiskey of choice from Colin, then make your way to his table. You set it down next to him, hoping to move away without him even noticing, he’s so engrossed in the game. But as you take a step back, his hand shoots out to grab your wrist. He holds it tightly until you meet his eyes. “Good girl,” he murmurs, and you can’t help the sharp intake of breath or the way you feel his words in your knees. He strokes his thumb down the inside of your wrist, then abruptly lets go, pushing his chips to the middle of the table. You step away, gathering yourself as subtly as you can, and get back to work.

The rest of the night goes quickly. The crowd gets a little rowdier as they drink more, but you find that it’s nothing you can’t handle. The reality of who these people are, what they’re connected to, never leaves your mind. But really, they’re not so bad. None of this feels so bad at all. And soon, people start heading out. You’re beginning to clean up, when a recognizable voice rings out, “Bambi!” You turn and lock eyes with Curtis. He crooks two fingers at you and you quickly make your way over to him.

“Bambi?” you ask.

He grins at you and it feels more than a little predatory. You’ll never admit how much you like it. You try to keep Holly’s warning at the forefront of your mind. “Wide eyes and just getting your legs under you,” he says. You instinctively duck your head at that, which earns a dark chuckle. “Here,” he continues, as he pulls a genuine, fat money clip out of his back pocket. You’ve never seen something like it in real life before. He peels off two bills and holds them out to you. “This is what good girls get,” he says, a low rumble in his voice.

You swallow as you take them from him. Two hundred dollars. Twice what you were expecting. “Thank you,” you say quietly. 

He shakes his head. “You earned it.” Then, after one last long look at you, he turns around and leaves.

You stand and stare after him. You don’t doubt anything Holly said, but three hundred dollars, just for bringing him drinks. He doesn’t seem that bad, not really. A little intense maybe, but there’s some sort of interest there, and it can’t be that bad to encourage it, just a little if it earns you these sorts of tips, can it??

Any hesitance you have about this entire endeavor completely disappears as you count your money at the end of the night.

Your first week flies by. You're starting to get the hang of the job. You get along with your coworkers. You get to know the regulars. You like it. Even Lloyd isn’t so bad as long as you give him his cut at the end of every night.

And you’re making so much money.

In your downtime, you pay your landlord what you owe him. You go grocery shopping without scouring for coupons first or calculating exactly what you can afford beforehand. You make a Pinterest board of what you want your apartment to look like now that you might actually be able to buy things to fill it. For the very first time, you’re thinking about things you actually want, not just desperately trying to figure out how you’ll pay your bills. You’ve never felt this calm, this relaxed, this free before. It’s an incredible feeling.

And Curtis. Despite Holly’s reassurances that you wouldn’t see him much, he seems to be there whenever you are, trying to capitalize on his winning streak at the poker tables, you assume. His tips are still insanely generous. You don’t think he carries anything less than hundred dollar bills. 

And there’s just something about him. The way he looks at you. The way he touches you. It’s not like the other men here. His touch is like fire, warming from the inside. There’ve been times when his hand on your hip has almost made your knees buckle. That doesn’t happen with anyone else here.

But you’re being smart and you’re being safe. You are. You’re going to set a savings goal, you think. And once you hit that number, you’ll be out of here, onto something more legitimate. And until then, you’ll just keep your head down and mouth shut, like Holly said. You haven’t even really seen anything. It’s a good plan. It’ll be fine.

She’s right that the weekends are wilder. Even with three additional girls working the room, you’re kept running. You do your best to keep an eye on Curtis’s drinks, but it’s much harder than on weeknights. And you aren’t really able to pause when you drop them off. It’s one of these times, as you’re pulling away from the table as soon as you’ve set his glass down, that you’re stopped short by his hand on you. He pulls you back in by the wrist and says, “They’re just running you ragged tonight, huh, Bambi?”

You smile and shrug. “It’s busy.”

He holds out a bill and you try not to smile even wider as he slips it into the waistband of your skirt. “For all your hard work.”

You bat your lashes a little. “You spoil me.”

“I like spoiling you,” he says, lowly. 

“You’re too sweet,” you say softly. Then, pulling your arm away with a wink, you add, “Gotta run,” and you’re onto the next table.

You’re getting good at this, figuring out what level of harmless flirting is just enough to keep the money flowing. And you’re having fun. You’d never expected that.

Holly and two of the other girls, Jane and Kristi, are congregated at the end of the bar, waiting for drinks, when you join them. They’re all watching you warily. “So, uh,” Jane starts quietly, “you seem to be getting pretty cozy with Curtis.” 

Before you can respond, Holly scoffs behind her. “I’ve tried to warn her but she won’t fucking listen.”

You roll your eyes. You’re tired of hearing this. “I seriously don’t get what the big deal is. He’s nice and he tips well. It’s harmless!”

Kristi just gapes at you. “He’s nice?!”

Holly slams the drinks she was waiting for onto her tray. “Whatever,” she grumbles. “It’s her fucking funeral.”

You shake your head as you watch her go. It’s fine. You can take care of yourself.

The rest of the night goes by in a blur. You don’t get much of a chance to talk to Curtis, but you feel his eyes on you before he disappears a little before closing.

At the end of the night, once you’ve helped clean up, you cash out with Colin and Jake and then go to find Lloyd in his office. You think it’s kind of ridiculous that you’re basically paying him to work there, but it is what it is. And Holly was right, you’re making so much that you barely even notice. 

Lloyd is sitting at his desk, looking a little more disheveled than you’re used to. He startles at your approach, which is also new. 

“Oh, hey,” he says, with slightly rounded eyes. “What can I do for you?”

You look at him, a little confused. “Just here with your cut,” you say as you hold out his money.

His hands immediately fly up to his chest, palms out. “No, no,” he says. “You made that fair and square. You just– you keep what you make from now on, Cupcake. Sound good?”

You swallow and nod, preparing yourself for whatever other price you’ll have to pay for keeping your job, mentally calculating what you’re willing to do. But Lloyd doesn’t do anything, doesn’t make any move to get closer to you. Just stays there at his desk, turning back to his work. “You have a good night,” he says, clearly dismissing you. 

You leave confused, but richer, telling yourself not to question it too hard.

Things go so smoothly for a few weeks that you’re a little shocked when the bubble bursts. 

It’s a relatively quiet weeknight. There are a few games going, but nothing compared to the weekend. The pace of the night feels leisurely. It’s nice.

It’s maybe the first night you haven’t seen Curtis there. It feels weird. He’s become such a part of this place for you. A fixture, like the bar or the carpet. Just one of the elements that make it what it is. But it’s fine. Of course, he doesn’t come every night. He probably has a whole life outside of this. He must’ve gotten bored of playing cards. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

You’re passing the time talking to one of the regulars at the bar, Vinny. He’s in his fifties, you think, with gray hair and laugh lines. He’d gone bust at the poker table (or maybe it was craps tonight) earlier and then had moved to the bar to drink away his sorrows and bad luck. That was how his nights tended to go.

He’s sitting on a barstool, his arm around your waist where you stand next to him. He’s a little close for comfort, but he’s always just been a friendly guy, so you’re alright. Which is why you’re so surprised when, in the middle of a story about the good old days of the Copa Cabana, his other hand suddenly finds its way between your thighs. You freeze. For just a second. Then you force out a laugh and try to push his hand away. “Bad boy,” you try to tease, your voice shaking. His hand will not move. What is happening? “Come on, let’s keep our hands to ourselves.”

Instead of doing what you’ve asked, his thumb briefly brushes the inside of your leg and then his whole hand begins moving higher. You stop breathing. You push again but he won’t budge.

“You’re such a pretty doll, aren’tcha?” he says. 

Tears start to gather in your eyes. You look around wildly to see if anyone’s noticing what’s happening. Colin’s busy making drinks. Jake and Lloyd are talking by the door. Everyone else is engrossed in their own business. “Vinnie, stop, please,” you whisper. You don’t know why you can’t get your voice to work, can’t get your body to move.

“Come on,” he cajoles, “I’m being nice, aren’t I?” 

Then his thumb brushes against your panties and your entire body jolts into action. You wrench your leg out of his grasp and take several steps away from him. Your whole body is shaking now. “I gotta–” you start, trying to keep your tone casual and failing miserably. “I gotta get back to work, Vinny.” Then you grab your tray off the bartop and walk away as fast as you can.

You don’t really have a destination in mind. You pick up a few empties as you wander between tables. You can feel his eyes on you, following you. You try to take a deep breath, calm yourself down. It isn’t very helpful. You look up to see Jake by himself now. You make your way over to him, Holly’s words on your first night in your ears. That was out of hand, wasn’t it?

He looks up as you approach. His big golden retriever smile on his face. “Hey, what’s up?” Then he actually takes you in and his smile drops. “What happened?”

“Um, Vinny, he, uh–” You feel a few tears fall down your cheeks and you just shake your head.

Jake’s face darkens. “Did he hurt you?” 

“No, uh, he– he just–” You shake your head again. “No, he didn’t hurt me.”

Jake doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks at you. There’s something about the way he does it that makes you think he understands everything you just can’t say. He nods once. “Alright. I’ll take care of it. You go take your time in the back. Do what you need to do. He’ll be gone by the time you’re done.”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay, thank you,” you say so quietly. Then you get yourself to the back room as quickly as you can.

It’s really more of a hallway than a room, small and narrow. All of the storage space for the building is in the legitimate bar upstairs. But there’s enough room for you to crouch down, your knees pulled up tight to your chin. You bury your face in your thighs and let the tears you’ve been holding in finally fall. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re fine. 

You don’t know how long you’ve spent trying to calm yourself down when a large shadow suddenly looms over you. It takes you a moment to gather your strength to find out who it is. You hope it’s Jake telling you Vinny’s gone. You’re afraid it might be Lloyd, here to tell you to get back to work. There’s a slowly building terror that it might be Vinny himself.

After a deep breath, you look up to find Curtis staring down at you, concern on his face and fiery anger in his eyes. “What happened?” he growls.

You shake your head and turn away. He crouches down in front of you. “Are you alright?”

A humorless, uncontrolled laugh escapes you. Once you finally stop, you ignore his question and ask your own, “Why are you here?”

It takes him a very long time to answer. He just looks at you seriously for several moments. Then, finally, “Jake called me.” While you try to figure out why on earth Jake would do that, he continues, “I'm sorry I wasn’t already here.”

“Why?” you blurt out without thinking. 

He looks away without saying anything. You both just sit in the silence for a few moments. Then, you try to change tactics. “Where were you?” you ask out of morbid curiosity. You can't imagine what his life is like outside of here.

“Working,” he says curtly. He plays with a ring on his middle finger and the movement draws your eyes to his hands, specifically his knuckles. They're scraped and caked with dried blood. 

You swallow and you catch how his eyes track the movement. His eyes are always on you. He catches everything. 

“Someone touched you?”

“Lots of people touch me,” you say, flatly. “It's part of the job. You touch me.”

His eyes narrow at that. “But this was different.” It isn’t a question.

You look down at your hands in your lap and don't say anything. 

“Tell me who it was.”

“No,” you say instinctively, something about the moment feeling incredibly dangerous. 

He huffs in frustration. “Are you trying to protect him?”

“No!” you say, sharply. “I’m protecting myself.”

“You don’t have to do that. Not from me. Not ever.”

You don’t know how to tell him that every atom in you knows that that isn’t true. You can’t explain it, and it wasn’t until the moment he joined you in this little closet, but you’d swear that he’s a danger to you. You just can't articulate how, but you feel it in your bones. And still, here you stay.

At your silence, he grits out, “If you don’t tell me who it was, Jake will.”

Jake probably already has, that’s what you’ve figured. “Great,” you say. “Then you don’t need me to say it.”

“Bambi,” he lets out in an exasperated growl. “I'm trying to help you.” 

You just look at him and then figure you may as well ask the main question that's on your mind. “Why did Jake call you?” 

He ignores you and stands up. “Come on,” he says and extends his hand, “I'm taking you home.”

You just blink up at him. “My shift isn't over.” 

He shakes his hand at you impatiently. “It is now. Come on.”

You shake your head. “Curtis, this is my job. I can't just– Lloyd will–”

“I'll take care of Lloyd. Let’s go.”

You think about going home. About sitting alone in your small apartment. At least here you'll have something to do, things to focus on, to keep you busy. At home, there'll be nothing to think about other than that hand between your legs and– “No,” you say as firmly as you can manage. “I'm staying here. I'm finishing the night.”

His jaw ticks but he doesn’t say anything, just tries to stare you down. You stare right back. You will not concede this. 

Finally, he exhales through his nostrils, then growls out an unhappy “Fine. But I'll–” He's interrupted by his phone ringing in his pocket. He takes it out and glances at the caller ID and sighs. “I have to take this.” He steps away as much as he can in the tiny area and answers with a curt “Everett.” There's a slight pause. “Yeah, I took care of it.” Another pause that has him glancing at you. “No, something else came up.”

You don't wait to hear the rest of the conversation. You take the opportunity to go back to the main room and get back to work. 

You don't see Curtis again that night. You don't spare much thought to where he might've gone. You're too focused on getting through the remainder of your shift. When it's done, Jake insists on seeing you home. You don't ask why. You already know who's behind it.

The next few days are fine. You try to put what happened behind you, doing your best to ignore it. But that becomes impossible when three days after the incident you watch Vinny walk in. You can’t help the little burst of panic you feel as you warily watch him sit down at his usual table and get dealt in. 

As subtly as you can, you make your way over to Jake. You don’t even say anything before he’s looking at you, chagrined. “I know,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I had to let him in. I promise it’s all going to be taken care of. It’s just– You can ignore him tonight, ok? Just trust me. You don’t need to worry about him. I promise.”

“Ok,” you say reluctantly, trying to resist looking back at Vinny. “I just– I didn’t think I’d have to see him again.”

“I really think that after tonight you won’t,” he says sincerely.

You don’t really understand what that means, but you nod anyway. “Ok,” you say. “I, uh, I should get back to work then.” 

He just nods after you, looking a little concerned and a little sad. But the room is filling up, so you don’t have time to delve into it.

Sometime later, as you’re taking a brief moment to idle by the bar, a strange hush descends over the room. You’re facing away from the door, away from the rest of the room, but you see Colin take in whatever it is that’s caused this. His face pales and he lets out a quiet, urgent, “Shit.” 

You turn around to see what on earth could be going on and you immediately freeze. Curtis is here. But that’s not what’s garnering all of this attention. Well, not all. Because he’s not alone, there’s a man with him. A little shorter, not quite as broad. But you’d be able to feel the power radiating off of him, even if you didn’t recognize him. Soft dark hair, thick beard, an immaculately tailored suit. You’ve seen him in the papers, on the news, but in real life, he’s even more intimidating. Andrew Barber.

Barber leans in close to say something to Curtis, who nods, eyes scanning the room until they land on you. Your breath catches, but luckily Colin calls your name behind you and you have an excuse to turn around. He places two glasses of dark liquor on the bar. “Everett,” he says, gesturing to one, then “Barber,” while waving his hand over the other. “Got it?” You nod and place them on your tray. They’re identical to your eyes except for the fact that Barber's has a muddled black cherry at the bottom of the glass.

You carefully bring them over, trying to force yourself to breathe. Curtis intercepts you and grabs the drinks when you're a few steps away. “Thank you, Bambi,” he says, lowly. 

Barber perks up. “This is Bambi? Really?” He extends a hand and you have no choice but to take it. “Andy Barber,” he says with a disarming smile. “It's a pleasure to meet you finally.”

His handshake is firm, demanding. He is terrifying in his friendliness. And he knows who you are. Has known, for who knows how long. You glance at Curtis, but he's just calmly drinking his whiskey. You don't know what to say, what are you supposed to say?? So after too long a pause, you practically whisper, “Thank you, Mr. Barber.”

He chuckles lightly as he takes back his hand. To Curtis, he says, “You're right, Bambi does suit her.” Then he turns back to you and adds, “Andy, please.”

“O– Okay, Andy,” you say, with what you desperately hope is a benign smile. You look over at Curtis, you’re not entirely sure why, but out of these two dangerous options, he, at least, is familiar. “I should get back to work.”

Curtis is staring at you, but it’s Andy who answers. “Mmm, and we have a game to join, don’t we?” Curtis nods but still doesn’t break his gaze. Andy smirks, “No rest for the wicked.”

You have no idea what to do with that sentiment, so you take the opportunity and get out of there. You walk through the tables, checking to see if anyone needs anything, but the mob boss’s physical presence seems to have ground all action to a halt. The room is collectively holding its breath. 

You go back to the bar for want of anything else to do. Colin is standing ramrod straight, coiled in case he needs to spring into action. Lloyd is sitting down at the end of the bar, drumming his fingers, eyes moving all around the room. You settle next to Holly, who looks just as scared as she did that first night when she was trying to warn you off of Curtis. “Is this,” you start to ask, your voice shaking. “Is this normal? Does he come here a lot?”

“No, never” she shakes her head. “Why would he come here? He has real clubs and restaurants. He doesn’t need to hang out in a shit hole like this.” She shakes her head again. “He’d only come here for a reason.”

You turn your head back to the room and find that Andy and Curtis have settled at Vinny’s table, joining his game across from him. Your heart lands in your throat. That can’t– No. You’re just some cocktail waitress. Even with Curtis’s obvious interest in you, you aren’t important enough to bring the most powerful man in the city here. You’re nothing. He must have other reasons.

The room is quiet enough to hear a pin drop as everyone waits for something to happen, which is why when Andy does start speaking, you don’t have to strain your ears to pick up every word.

He looks at his cards carefully, then over at Vinny. “You know, Vinny, you’re a hard man to track down.” His voice is so calm, it sends a chill up your spine. “You don’t go home, we can’t find you at work. I was starting to get worried.” He runs a few chips through his fingers before tossing them into the center of the felt. “That’s why, when I heard you were showing up here, I sent my best man to investigate,” he nods towards Curtis, “just to make sure you were ok.” 

You don’t have a great view of Vinny from where you’re standing, but you can see how stiff he is, how silent. But he still calls when it’s his turn.

“You can imagine my relief when I found out you were alright. Except,” he raises again, a few more chips into the pot, “you’re losing a lot of money, aren’t you? Now, this upsets me. Not because you’re losing your own money. But because it’s mine, isn’t it?”

Vinny finally tries to pipe up. “Andy, hold on. I can ex–”

“You owe me $150,000, Vinny. With interest, that total’s climbing every day. And yet, you sit here and you just keep losing, don’t you? At my own game. What would you do if you won, huh? Would you really try paying me back with my own money? I thought maybe you’d at least have the smarts to cross the border and try this at one of Roger’s casinos. Huh? Paying me back with my enemy’s money, at least that I could respect. But no, it’s only me you think is stupid enough to fall for your bullshit. So now I’m here to give you the chance to fucking do it to my face.” With that, he violently pushes all of his chips into the center of the table. 

Everyone else has folded. It’s just Barber and Vinny now. You’re not sure Curtis even actually played. He’s just staring Vinny down, although occasionally his eyes will flick up and meet yours. You hate feeling like you’re a part of this, but you don’t know what else to do besides watch it play out.

Vinny is just spluttering, while Andy calmly looks on. It’s all the expected, cliche stuff you’ve seen in gangster movies. He’s got the money, he swears. He just needs a little more time. Andy has to know he’s good for it! You want to roll your eyes right along with Andy.

“Call, Vinny,” Andy cuts him off, sternly. “That’s $150,000 I just put in the pot. Call. And if you win, we’re even. Your debt’s erased. But if you lose, well then that’s $300,000 you’ll owe me. And you know I won’t be able to tolerate that. So call. And let’s find out where we stand.”

You can’t see what Vinny’s doing, but you can imagine the way his fingers must be hovering over his chips, his eyes moving down to his cards to check, one more time, if they’re as good or bad as he remembers. You know there’s no way out for him either way. He’ll have to call. He’s just delaying the inevitable.

You feel like you can't breathe as you wait for him to just finally do it, but Andy cuts in again. “The thing I can't understand, Vinny, is why you kept coming here after Curtis showed up. Either you're very stupid or really fucking greedy.” He looks at Vinny carefully. “Maybe a little of both. I hear you've been touching something that doesn't belong to you.”

You gasp. No one notices, but you do. He can't be talking about you. He can't. He can't. 

Vinny seems even more confused than you. “What are you talking about? I haven't touched anything!”

Andy continues to ignore him. “So you're stupid and greedy. That's why you aren't afraid of him like you should be. They call him my attack dog, did you know? Have you heard that? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you think he’s some puppy that follows me around. You’d be stupid to underestimate him, underestimate me. But maybe you only do that because you've never seen my dog off his leash.”

Curtis springs into action, lunging across the table to grab Vinny by the collar, and then slams his head into the felt. Before there’s even time to react, he’s stood and he's picking Vinny back up and hurling him onto the floor. Curtis comes around the table to stalk after him and the look on his face has you gasping for breath. You've never seen Curtis like this. There's a glint in his eye that might be the scariest thing you've ever seen. Who is this man? What is he capable of?

Vinny is dazedly trying to crawl away, but Curtis catches him easily. He grabs Vinny’s collar and hauls him back up, delivering two punches to his face in quick succession. The sound it makes. There's no other sound in the whole room. No one's saying anything, no one's doing anything. Everyone's just watching, hypnotized. You turn away, your stomach churning. Your eyes catch on Andy, sitting back in his chair, placidly drinking the whiskey you brought him, completely relaxed, like he's watching anything else. You can't look at him either. 

The room is completely silent except for the crunching of bones, Vinny’s whimpers, and Curtis’s grunts. You look up again to be startled by eye contact with Curtis. His eyes are wild, unhinged. Feral. But there's something else in it, like all of this is for you. That all of you are there, everything is happening, because Vinny dared to touch you. It takes your breath away. It’s mesmerizing.

Andy finally stands and strides over to where Curtis is holding Vinny up in the middle of the room. He looks down at Vinny, then spits in his face. “I'm tired of trying to draw blood from a stone,” he says. Then he turns to Curtis and finishes, “Get rid of him.”

Curtis gives you one last long look, his face unreadable. You feel it in your knees. Then he drags Vinny out, leaving a bloody trail behind him.

The moment they're gone, it's like the entire room can breathe again. “Lloyd,” Andy calls out. “How ‘bout a round for everyone? On me.”

Lloyd nods to Colin who hurriedly starts pouring drinks. And you, so grateful for something to do, instead of just standing there, shaking, start loading the glasses on your tray.

As you begin to pass them out, Andy of all people, pulls you aside. “Bambi,” he says quietly, “I hope you know now, we take care of our own.”

You gaze at him, shocked. It feels like a comfort and a threat. But why? It's not so much the implication that this all had something to do with you, but you can't for the life of you imagine what you've done to get yourself to a place where Andy Barber might consider you his, however distantly. It can't just be that you work here. You can't picture him doing something similar for Holly or Colin. Once again, this all feels so incredibly dangerous. 

While you're struggling to come up with anything to say to that, he grabs a drink off your tray and downs it quickly. Then, with a wink, he turns and leaves. You’re left staring after him until someone calls after you and you're scrambling to pass out drinks again. 

The night ends quickly. No one seems eager to stay and drink and play after everything that's happened. Not when there's still blood on the floor.

You do what you can to help clean up, but when you stare at the stain helplessly, Lloyd tells you not to worry about it. He's got a guy.

Colin walks out with you so you aren’t in the parking lot alone. You're grateful. You're still so shaken. As you approach your car, your beater that you still don’t quite have the money to replace, you see someone leaning against it. You stop short, looking to Colin for help, but he just keeps walking to his own car, his head down. That’s when you know it’s Curtis. 

You take a deep breath and then force yourself to keep walking towards him. You can't begin to parse how you feel to see him now. Your keys are ready in your hand like you might just get in and drive off without speaking to him. You know you won’t.

When you reach him, his voice is rough as he asks, “Are you ok?” He’s cleaned up. There’s no more blood on his hands, his clothes have been straightened.

You open your mouth to answer, even though you have no idea, so instead what comes out is “Did you kill him?”

“Did you want me to?” is his immediate reply.

It stops you in your tracks as all sorts of feelings come bubbling up, ones you can not, will not examine. This is about his propensity for violence, how terrifying he became, not– No. “Did you?” you insist. 

He looks at you carefully then shakes his head. “I don't think you actually want me to answer that.”

“But you've killed before?” You can't stop yourself from pressing, from pushing. You don’t know why. 

He just sort of smiles, gently almost, in a way that is deeply unsettling. “You need to stop asking questions you aren’t ready for me to answer, Bambi.” And it’s the way he says the nickname, like you really are that babe in the woods, just born with no knowledge of the world around you, that has your hackles rising.

“Andy called you his dog,” you say, like he should be offended.

To your surprise, he laughs, his head thrown back. Then he takes a step closer to you, and you take the opportunity to sneak in behind him, get to your car. You realize your mistake immediately when he turns back around and cages you in, your back pressed against the driver’s side door. “Everyone calls me his dog. Because he’s the civilized man in the designer suit, and I’m the animal just begging for a reason to slip my leash.”

Your heart pounds wildly in your chest. You should get into your car. You should drive away as fast as you can. You should never come back. But you don’t. “You did it for him,” you say, mustering all the strength into your voice that you can. “You didn’t do it for me.”

He leans over you, the space between you shrinking rapidly. “Yeah, he asked me to do it,” he nods. “But if he hadn’t, I still would have done it. For you.”

 You try to shake your head, to tell him that that can’t be true, even as a wild, loud part of you starts to rise up and claw out of your chest. You try to tamp it down, deny it, but before you can, Curtis is leaning in further, his whole body pressing against you, and then he covers your lips with his.  

There’s a heat that comes up out of him that fills you, the instant his skin touches yours. His hands are on you, your neck, your hip. You can’t keep track, can only say that his hands are there, everywhere, that his body touches all of yours, that his lips and his tongue are demanding, unrelenting. You are burning up from the inside.

Too soon, but ages later, he pulls away. His eyes are on fire as he looks at you. Then he tears his gaze away, and hits the roof of your decrepit car twice, looking at it disdainfully. “You get home safe,” he says, then steps back to allow you the space you need to get into your car.

You do what he wants you to do. You get in your car, sit in the driver’s seat, and then stare blankly out the windshield. You’ve never felt so out of control in your life. How did this happen? You were flirting for tips, that was all! You encouraged it for money, that was it, and now– You press your thighs together, trying not to pant. You will not be unmoored. 

A slight movement in your periphery makes you notice that Curtis is still standing just to the side of your car, watching you. You turn your keys in the ignition and shift into drive.

It doesn’t mean anything it doesn’t mean anything it doesn’t mean anything, you chant to yourself all the way home.

It’s your next shift back, and everything seems to have changed. You don’t understand it. You keep doing laps of the room, keep sidling up to regulars you were so friendly with just a few nights ago, but now, they won’t even look at you, let alone touch you. No one’s ordering anything.

Or at least, they aren’t ordering from you.

Holly has been running around nonstop all night, basically having to take care of the entire room by herself. You watch man after man after man slip her little bundles of money. 

You want to scream. What the fuck happened? What did you do? What are you going to do?

You go to stand by the bar to wait for something you can do. Colin gives you a brief nod of acknowledgment but that’s it. He’s been cold, too. No. Not cold, distant. You don’t understand what’s changed.

You take a deep breath. It’s one weird night. Things will be better tomorrow.

Things don’t get better. The next night is the same. You’re starting to panic. This job was supposed to be your lifeline. Without it, without the money you were making, you’re not sure how you’ll survive.

Curtis comes in after a couple of hours of nothing. You could cry you’re so happy to see him. But terrified too. If he gives you the cold shoulder, this job really is over. But you have no idea how he’s going to act, not after what happened last time. You’re not sure how you’re going to act either. You can still feel his lips on yours.

You bring him his whiskey immediately and he greets you with an arm around your waist, pulling you in. “Hey Bambi,” he says quietly. Then he gets a good look at you. “What’s wrong?” 

You look at him carefully, not sure what to confide. You aren’t even sure what the problem is. You shake your head. “Not my best night,” you say with a tired smile. “But I’m fine.”

He stares at you for a moment, then stands up. “Come on,” he says, grabbing your hand and leading you to the little back room. You feel eyes on the two of you the whole way there.

Once he’s closed the door behind you both, he asks again, “What’s wrong?”

You sigh. “The last two nights have been weird here. I don’t– I don’t know. I’m just worried. I don’t know what happened but I’m not making any tips. No one’s treating me like they used to.”

“Mmm,” Curtis hums thoughtfully. “I think,” he says as he takes two steps closer to you, which in this small space is significant, “everyone else here has figured it out.”

It’s suddenly a little hard to breathe with him standing over you like this. His presence, his attention is always so much. “Figured what out?” you ask, confused.

“That I have lost my patience for watching other men touch you.” 

It hits you like a freight train. “What?” It comes out in a whisper.

“I’ve let this go on for too long,” he says, his voice is calm, casual. “I don’t want you working here anymore. This is done.”

“I– What? Curtis. What?! I have to work! I have to pay my bills! I don’t understand. I don’t–”

He takes one last step forward. You feel the heat coming off of him. “Shh,” he soothes, cradling your cheek in his hand. “It’ll be alright. I’ll take care of you. I take care of what’s mine.”

You pull your face away, even as the urge to nuzzle into him is so strong. You feel like you’ve missed something, a thousand things. You feel too many steps behind. “Curtis, I’m not– I’m not yours.”

Something comes into his eyes and you’re reminded of him standing over Vinny, covered in blood. His hand travels down from your cheek. He strokes your throat once, and then his hand closes around it. “Look me in the eye,” he growls, “and say that again.”

His hand is firm, snug, but it doesn’t tighten. But you can imagine so easily how it might. You look him in the eye. You open your mouth, ready to say it again. But then– then you see it. In the way he looks at you, the way he’s always looked at you. You feel it in his grip on you, now. You can’t deny it anymore. 

Curtis shoves you into his bedroom. You’re panting already. You need his hands on you, right now. You don’t have to ask for it. He gets you to the center of the room and yanks down your skirt, tearing it in the process. You step out of it and take your blouse off, throwing it on top of your skirt. Curtis’s eyes are cataloging your body, the swell of your breasts spilling out of your bra, your soft tummy, thick thighs. His gaze, as always, takes your breath away.

You reach out for Curtis’s shirt, but he grabs your hands. “I want you on your knees,” he growls and you immediately kneel for him. He throws off his shirt, revealing the expanse of his chest, the muted blacks and grays of his tattoos. You’re desperate to run your hands over them, trace the art, but instead, they just twitch at your side. He'll tell you what you're allowed to do.

He begins unbuttoning his jeans and your mouth drops open. He chuckles darkly. “Perfect little slut.” He takes his phone out of his back pocket and aims it at you, taking a picture as you gaze up at him under your lashes, your mouth wide open. “I've been dreaming of getting you on your knees for me.” He puts his phone on his dresser, then continues taking off his pants. “You ready to choke on my cock, baby?”

“Please,” you whine. You're practically salivating now. His bare thighs are as thick as tree trunks, the muscles corded. His abs ripple as he moves. His shoulders, his back. You want.

He frees his cock and rolls his black boxer briefs down his legs, stepping out of them. It's long and thick, just like the rest of him. Your breath catches. You don't think you've ever taken something that big before.

He takes a few steps so he's completely in your space, his cock bobbing right in front of your face. He takes it in one hand, the other firmly on the back of your head and slowly feeds the tip into your mouth. You taste his musk on your tongue. As he rocks into your mouth, going a little further each time, your hands come up to grasp his thighs. On his next thrust in, you run your tongue along the underside of his dick. His movements stutter just a little and then he looks down at you, a smirk overtaking his face. It's just a touch mean, in a way that has you soaking your panties. “You ready?” he asks, his voice rough. And then without waiting for the answer, he thrusts in all the way, making you take him deep in your throat.

You flail, slapping his thigh as you try to swallow around him, breathing frantically through your nose. After holding you there for a moment, he sets a brutal but steady pace. It takes you a moment, but you find your rhythm, your panic subsiding. Once you feel steady, you lift one hand from his thighs and bring it up to cradle his balls. “Fuck, Bambi,” he grinds out. “You're gonna– I– fuck!” His hand moves from the back of your head down to the back of your neck, which he grips firmly, pulling you off his cock. As you cough and splutter on the floor, he growls, “The first time you make me come is gonna be inside that perfect cunt.”

He helps you stand on wobbly legs, then shoves his hand between your legs, cupping your pussy over your panties. “Shit, fucking soaked just from deepthroating me?”

You let out a needy little whine, trying to push further into his hand, but he withdraws it, instead settling on your hip. “Well,” he grins, “if they’re ruined anyway…” then uses that hand to rip the black lace down the side, letting them fall to the floor. He makes quick work of your bra as well, then takes a step back and sighs, “Shit, Bambi, look at you.” It’s the reverence in his voice and on his face that has you launching yourself at him, unable to keep from kissing him any longer. He lets you, quickly taking control, letting you feel all his hunger, the want he’s kept barely bottled up since he first laid eyes on you. You understand it all now. His erection brushes against you, and now it’s his turn to whine, just a little. 

He pulls away, brushing a hand down your cheek, then says “Get on the bed, on your stomach.” You quickly comply, laying in the center of the bed with your knees pulled up and spread beneath you. He brings his hand down on one asscheek harshly and you can’t help the lewd moan that escapes you. He chuckles, “Oh, I will definitely remember that for later.” He grabs your hips and cants them up, then whistles at your exposed cunt. “I knew it. Absolutely beautiful.” Then he unceremoniously shoves two fingers into your hole and you choke on nothing. “Shh,” he coos. “You can take it. My cock’s gonna be a lot thicker.” 

As he starts scissoring his fingers inside you, you can’t hold it in any longer and start babbling. Mostly a combination of “please,” and “Curtis,” and “I need,” over and over.

“I know, baby,” he says as he pulls his fingers out of you. “I’ve got what you need right here.” You have a brief moment to feel the tip of his cock on your pussy lips before he’s thrusting it into you, as far as he can go without making it hurt. 

“Oh my god,” you cry, pressing your forehead into the mattress and balling his dark blue sheets in your hands. You feel so full. It’s so good. He’s working himself into you as quickly as he can, desperate now. You both are. Once he bottoms out, fully seated in you, he pauses. Then with one hand on your stomach and the other around your neck, he pulls you up onto your knees, your back flush to his chest. You cry out at the new angle; he’s somehow even deeper now. He starts thrusting up into you at a punishing pace. You’re bouncing up and down in his firm grasp. The hand on your neck turns your head to face him, his lips brushing against yours. He holds eye contact with you as the hand on your stomach snakes down your pelvis so his thick fingers can begin circling your clit. “Fuck! Curtis, please!” you shout. 

“Yeah, come on,” he breathes, “you can let go. You can do it. Come for me like a good girl.” It’s those words that send you careening over the edge, your cunt pulsing around his cock, squeezing him until he’s coming too with a grunt, filling you up until both your cum is leaking out around him. 

He holds you there, on your knees, as you both come down, your twin pants all you can hear.

You wake up slowly, the sun shining on you through the soft drapes. You start to shift then groan at how stiff you are. The night before comes back to you. Curtis took you two more times before you both collapsed in satisfied exhaustion. He’s still out like a light beneath you. 

You take a moment to look at him. It’s odd to see him so peaceful, so still. There’s nothing of the feral predator he projects to the world. It makes you feel oddly close to him, seeing him like this.

You carefully get up without disturbing him and begin collecting your clothes. You put on your bra, but there’s no saving your panties. Same for your skirt; it’s ripped along the seam. So instead you pick up Curtis’s t-shirt from last night and put it on. It smells like him. You breathe it in shamelessly knowing there’s no one to witness it.

You savor the soreness as you move out of the bedroom. It’s like you can still feel him inside you, how much he wanted you, needed you. It makes you feel a little powerful, having that effect on a man like him.

You make your way into his living room. You didn’t really have a chance to look at his house last night, as determined as he was to get you into the bedroom. If you’d ever thought to picture it, this wouldn’t be far off. It’s all rich blues and greens and grays, leather and dark wood. Masculine. It suits him. 

As you’re admiring the room, you hear footsteps behind you and then two big arms are encircling your waist, pulling you into him. “Good morning,” he rasps. 

You turn your head to him. “Good morning,” you say with a smile.

“Fuck, Bambi, you’re even hotter in my shirt than you were last night.”

You smirk at him even as your face heats. “Mmm,” you hum. “It’s comfy. You might not get it back.” He nuzzles into your neck as you continue. “I was hoping you might have something I could wear for bottoms, too. You destroyed my skirt.”

His beard roughly drags against your skin as he asks, “Why the hell would I let you wear bottoms?”

You laugh. “Because I have to leave the house, Curtis.”

“No, you don’t,” he says as his hand begins to move between your thighs.

You playfully swat him away, even as you feel yourself getting wet again from his attention. “I have to go home.”

“Why? You’re staying here.” It’s how certain he sounds that has you turning around in his arms.

“What?”

“I don’t like your building. It isn’t safe enough. Now that I finally have you, of course, I’m going to keep you here with me.”

Once again, you feel too many steps behind. You just blink at him, confused. How does he even know where you live??

He takes your chin in his hand, his fingers gentle. “I told you, Bambi, I take care of what’s mine.”

Tag list

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[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan Tells All: Becoming Donald Trump, Gaining 15 Pounds and Starring in 2024’s Most Controversial Movie

By Daniel D'Addario

Sebastian Stan Variety Cover Story

It started with the most famous voice on the planet, the one that just won’t shut up.

Sebastian Stan, in real life, sounds very little like Donald Trump, whom he’s playing in the new film “The Apprentice.” Sure, they share a tristate accent — Stan has lived in the city for years and attended Rutgers University before launching his career — but he speaks with none of Trump’s emphasis on his own greatness. Trump dwells, Stan skitters. Trump attempts to draw topics together over lengthy stem-winders (what he recently called “the weave”), while Stan has a certain unwillingness to be pinned down, a desire to keep moving. It takes some coaxing to bring Stan, a man with the upright bearing and square jaw of a matinee idol, to speak about his own process — how hard he worked to conjure a sense Trump, and how he sought to bring out new insights about America’s most scrutinized politician.

“I think he’s a lot smarter than people want to say about him,” Stan says, “because he repeats things consistently, and he’s given you a brand.” Stan would know: He watched videos of Trump on a loop while preparing for “The Apprentice.” In the film, out on Oct. 11, Stan plays Trump as he moves from insecure, aspiring real estate developer to still insecure but established member of the New York celebrity firmament.

We’re sitting over coffee in Manhattan. Stan is dressed down in a black chore coat and black tee, yet he’s anything but a casual conversation partner. He rarely breaks eye contact, doing so only on the occasions when he has something he wants to show me on his iPhone (cracked screen, no case). In this instance, it’s folders of photos and videos labeled “DT” and “DT PHYSICALITY.”

“I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” Stan says. “And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him.” Stan, deep in character, would ad-lib entire scenes at director Ali Abbasi’s urging, drawing on the details he’d learned from watching Trump and reading interviews to understand precisely how to react in each moment.

“Ali could come in on the second take and say, ‘Why don’t you talk a little bit about the taxes and how you don’t want to pay?’ So I had to know what charities they were going to in 1983. Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take this.”

Looking at Stan’s phone, among the endless pictures of Trump, I glimpse thumbnails of Stan’s own face perched in a Trumpian pout and videos of the actor’s preparation just aching to be clicked — or to be stored in the Trump Presidential Library when this is all over in a few months, or in 2029, or beyond.

“I started to realize that I needed to start speaking with my lips in a different way,” Stan says. “A lot of that came from the consonants. If I’m talking, I’m moving forward.” On film, Stan shapes his mouth like he can’t wait to get the plosives out, puckering without quite tipping into parody. “The consonants naturally forced your lips forward.”

“If he did 10% more of what he did, it would become ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Abbasi says. “If he did 10% less, then he’s not conjuring that person. But here’s the thing about Sebastian: He’s very inspired by reality, by research. And that’s also the way I work; if you want to go to strange places, you need to get your baseline reality covered very well.”

A little later, Stan passes me the phone again to show me a selfie of him posing shirtless and revealing two sagging pecs and a bit of a gut. He’s pouting into a mirror. If his expression looks exaggerated, consider that he was in Marvel-movie shape before stepping into the role of the former president; the body transformation happened rapidly and jarringly. Trump’s size is a part of the film’s plot — as Trump’s sense of self inflates, so does he. In a rush to meet the shooting deadline for “The Apprentice,” Abbasi asked Stan, “How much weight can you gain?”

“You’d be surprised,” Stan tells me. “You can gain a lot of weight in two months.” (Fifteen pounds, to be exact.)

Now he’s back in fighting form, but the character has stayed with him. After years of playing second-fiddle agents of chaos — goofball husbands to Margot Robbie’s and Lily James’ characters in “I, Tonya” and Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy,” surly frenemy to Chris Evans’ Captain America in the Marvel franchise — Stan plunged into the id of the man whose appetites have reshaped our world. He had to have a polished enough sense of Trump that he could improvise in character, and enough respect for him to play him as a human being, not a monster.

It’s one of two transformations this year for Stan — and one that might give a talented actor that most elusive thing: a brand of his own. He’s long been adjacent enough to star power that he could feel its glow, but he hasn’t been the marquee performer. While his co-stars have found themselves defined by the projects he’s been in — from “Captain America” and “I, Tonya” back to his start on “Gossip Girl” — he’s spent more than a decade in the public eye while evading being defined at all.

This fall promises to be the season that changes all that: Stan is pulling double duty with “The Apprentice” and “A Different Man” (in theaters Sept. 20), in which he plays a man afflicted with a disfiguring tumor disorder who — even when presented with a fantastical treatment that makes him look like, well, Sebastian Stan — can’t be cured of ailments of the soul. For “A Different Man,” Stan won the top acting prize at the Berlin Film Festival; for “The Apprentice,” the sky’s the limit, if it can manage to get seen. (More on that later.)

One reason Stan has largely evaded being defined is that he’s never the same twice, often willing to get loopy or go dark in pursuit of his characters’ truths. That’s all the more true this year: In “The Apprentice,” he’s under the carapace of Trumpiness; in “A Different Man,” his face is hidden behind extensive prosthetics.

“In my book, if you’re the good-looking, sensitive guy 20 movies in a row, that’s not a star for me,” says Abbasi, who compares Stan to Marlon Brando — an actor eager to play against his looks. “You’re just one of the many in the factory of the Ken dolls.”

This fall represents Stan’s chance to break out of the toy store once and for all. His Winter Soldier brought a jolt of evil into Captain America’s world, and his Jeff Gillooly was the devil sitting on Tonya Harding’s shoulder. Now Stan is at the center of the frame, playing one of the most divisive characters imaginable. So he’s showing us where he can go. The spotlight is his, and so is the risk that comes with it.

Why take such a risk?

The script for “The Apprentice,” which Stan first received in 2019, but which took years to come together, made him consider the American dream, the one that Trump achieved and is redefining.

Stan emigrated with his mother, a pianist, from communist Romania as a child. “I was raised always aware of the American dream: America being the land of opportunity, where dreams come true, where you can make something of yourself.” He pushes the wings of his hair back to frame his face, a gold signet ring glinting in the late-summer sunlight, and, briefly, I can hear a hint of Trump’s directness of approach. “You can become whoever you want, if you just have a good idea.” Stan’s good idea has been to play the lead in movies while dodging the formulaic identity of a leading man, and this year will prove just how far he can take it.

“The Apprentice” seemed like it would never come together before suddenly it did. This time last year, Stan was sure it was dead in the water, and he was OK with that. “If this movie is not happening, it’s because it’s not meant to happen,” he recalls thinking. “It will not be because I’m too scared and walk away.”

Called in on short notice and filming from November 2023 to January of this year (ahead of a May premiere in Cannes), Stan lent heft and attitude to a character arc that takes Trump from local real estate developer in the 1970s to national celebrity in the 1980s. He learns the rough-and-tumble game of power from the ruthless and hedonistic political fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), eventually cutting the closeted Cohn loose as he dies of AIDS and alienating his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) in the process. (In a shocking scene, Donald sexually assaults Ivana in their Trump Tower apartment.) For all its edginess, the film is about Trump’s personality — and the way it calcified into a persona — rather than his present-day politics. (Despite its title, it’s set well before the 2004 launch of the reality show that finally made Trump the superstar he longed to be.)

And despite the fact that Trump has kept America rapt since he announced his run for president in 2015, Hollywood has been terrified of “The Apprentice.” The film didn’t sell for months after Cannes, an unusual result for a major English-language competition film, partly because Trump’s legal team sent a cease-and-desist letter attempting to block the film’s release in the U.S. while the fest was still ongoing. When it finally sold, it was to Briarcliff Entertainment, a distributor so small that the production has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money so that it will be able to stay in theaters.

Yes, Hollywood may vote blue, but it’s not the same town that released “Fahrenheit 9/11” or even “W.,” let alone a film that depicts the once (and possibly future) president raping his wife. (The filmmakers stand behind that story. “The script is 100% backed by my own interviews and historical research,” says Gabriel Sherman, the screenwriter and a journalist who covers Trump and the American conservative movement. “And it’s important to note that it is not a documentary. It’s a work of fiction that’s inspired by history.”) Entertainment corporations from Netflix to Disney would be severely inconvenienced if the next president came into office with a grudge against them.

“I am quite shocked, to be honest,” Abbasi says. “This is not a political piece. It’s not a hit piece; it’s not a hatchet job; it’s not propaganda. The fact that it’s been so challenging is shocking.” Abbasi, born in Iran, was condemned by his government over his last film, “Holy Spider,” and cannot safely return. He sees a parallel in the response to “The Apprentice.” “OK, that’s Iran — that is unfortunately expected. But I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Everything with this film has been one day at a time,” Stan says. The actor chalks up the film’s divisiveness to a siloed online environment. “There are a lot of people who love reading the [film’s] Wikipedia page and throwing out their opinions,” he says, an edge entering his voice. “But they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. That’s a popular sport now online, apparently.”

Unprompted, Stan brings up the idea that Trump is so widely known that some might think a biographical film about him serves no purpose. “When someone says, ‘Why do we need this movie? We know all this,’ I’ll say, ‘Maybe you do, but you haven’t experienced it. The experience of those two hours is visceral. It’s something you can hopefully feel — if you still have feelings.’”

After graduating from Rutgers in 2005, Stan found his first substantial role on “Gossip Girl,” playing troubled rich kid Carter Baizen. Like teen soaps since time immemorial, “Gossip Girl” was a star-making machine. “It was the first time I was in serious love with somebody,” he says. (He dated the series’ star, Leighton Meester, from 2008 to 2010.) He feels nostalgic for that moment: “Walking around the city, seeing these same buildings and streets — life seemed simpler.”

Stan followed his “Gossip Girl” gig with roles on the 2009 NBC drama “Kings,” playing a devious gay prince in an alternate-reality modern world governed by a monarchy, and the 2012 USA miniseries “Political Animals,” playing a black-sheep prince (and once again a gay man) of a different sort — the son of a philandering former president and an ambitious former first lady.

When I ask him what lane he envisioned himself in as a young actor, he shrugs off the question. “I grew up with a single mom, and I didn’t have a lot of male role models. I was always trying to figure out what I wanted to be. And at some point, I was like, I could just be a bunch of things.”

Which might seem challenging when one is booked to play the same character, Bucky Barnes, in Marvel movie after Marvel movie. Bucky’s adventures have been wide-ranging — he’s been brainwashed and turned evil and then brought back to the home team again, all since his debut in 2011’s “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Next year, he’ll anchor the summer movie “Thunderbolts,” as the leader of a squad of quirky heroes played by, among others, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Florence Pugh. It’s easy to wonder if this has come to feel like a cage of sorts.

Not so, says Stan. His new Marvel film “was kind of like ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ — a guy coming into this group that was chaotic and degenerate, and somehow finding a way to unite them.”

Lately, knives have been out for Marvel movies as some have disappointed at the box office, and “Thunderbolts,” which endured strike delays and last-minute cast changes, has been under scrutiny.

“It’s become really convenient to pick on [Marvel films],” Stan says. “And that’s fine. Everyone’s got an opinion. But they’re a big part of what contributes to this business and allows us to have smaller movies as well. This is an artery traveling through the system of this entire machinery that’s Hollywood. It feeds in so many more ways than people acknowledge.” He adds, “Sometimes I get protective of it because the intention is really fucking good. It’s just fucking hard to make a good movie over and over again.”

Which may account for an eagerness to try something new. “In the last couple of years,” he says, “I’ve gotten much more aggressive about pursuing things that I want, and I’m constantly looking for different ways of challenging myself.”

The challenge continued throughout the shoot of “The Apprentice,” as Stan pushed the material. “One of the most creatively rewarding parts of the process was how open Sebastian was to giving notes on the script but also wanting to go beyond the script,” says Sherman, the screenwriter. “If he was interested in a certain aspect of a scene, he was like, Can you find me a quote?” he recalls.

Building a dynamic through improvised scenes, Stan and Strong stayed in character throughout the “Apprentice” shoot. “I was doing an Ibsen play on Broadway,” says Strong, who won a Tony in June for his performance in “An Enemy of the People,” “and he came backstage afterwards. And it was like — I’d never really met Sebastian, and I don’t think he’d ever met me. So it was nice to meet him.”

Before the pair began acting together, they didn’t rehearse much — “I’m not a fan of rehearsals,” Strong says. “I think actors are best left in their cocoon, doing their work, and then trusted to walk on set and be ready.” The two didn’t touch the script together until cameras went up — though they spent a preproduction day, Strong says, playing games in character as Donald and Roy.

After filming, both have kept memories of the hold their characters had on them. They shared a flight back from Telluride — a famously bumpy trip out of the mountains. “He’s a nervous flyer, and I’m a nervous flyer,” Stan says. Both marveled at the fact that they’d contained their nerves on the first day of shooting “The Apprentice,” when their characters traveled together via helicopter. “We both go, ‘Yeah — but there was a camera.’”

Stan’s aggressive approach to research came in handy on “A Different Man,” which shot before “The Apprentice.” His character’s disorder, neurofibromatosis, is caused by a genetic mutation and presents as benign tumors growing in the nervous system. After being healed, he feels a growing envy for a fellow sufferer who seems unbothered by his disability.

Stan’s co-star, Adam Pearson, was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis in early childhood. Stan found the experience challenging to render faithfully. “I said many times, I can do all the research in the world, but am I ever going to come close to this?” Stan says. “How am I going to ever do this justice?”

Plus, he had precious little time to prepare: “He was fully on board, and the film was being made weeks later,” director Aaron Schimberg says. “Zero to 60 in a matter of weeks.”

The actor grappled for something to hold on to, and Pearson sug gested he refer to his own experience of fame. “Adam said to me, ‘You know what it’s like to be public property,’” Stan says.

Pearson recalls describing the experience to Stan this way: “While you don’t understand the invasiveness and the staring and the pointing that I’ve grown up with, you do know what it’s like to have the world think you owe them something.”

That sense of alienation becomes universal through the film’s storytelling: “A Different Man” takes its premise as the jumping-off point for a deep and often mordant investigation of who we all are underneath the skin.

The film was shot in 22 days in a New York City heat wave, and there was, Schimberg says, “no room for error. I would get four or five takes, however many I could squeeze out, but there’s no coverage.”

Through it all, Stan’s performance is utterly poised — Schimberg and Stan discussed Buster Keaton as a reference for his ability to be “completely stone-faced” amid chaos, the director says. And the days were particularly long because Oscar-nominated prosthetics artist Michael Marino was only able to apply Stan’s makeup in the early morning, before going to his job on the set of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

“Even though I wasn’t shooting until 11 a.m., I would go at like 5 in the morning to his studio, or his apartment,” Stan recalls. The hidden advantage was that Stan had hours to kill while made up like his character, the kind of person the world looks past. “I wanted to walk around the city and see what happened,” Stan says. “On Broadway, one of the busiest streets in New York, no one’s looking at me. It’s as if I’m not even there.” The other reaction was worse: “Somebody would immediately stop and very blatantly hit their friend, point, take a picture.”

It was a study in empathy that flowed into the character. Stan had spoken to Pearson’s mother, who watched her son develop neurofibromatosis before growing into a disability advocate and, eventually, an actor. “She said to me, ‘All I ever wanted was for someone to walk in his shoes for a day,’” Stan recalls. “And I guess that was the closest I had ever come.”

“The Apprentice” forced Stan, and forces the viewer, to do the same with a figure that some 50% of the electorate would sooner forget entirely. And that lends the film its controversy. Those on the right, presupposing that the movie is an anti-Trump document, have railed against it. In a statement provided to Variety, a Trump campaign spokesman said, “This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should never see the light of day and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire.” The campaign threatened a lawsuit, though none has materialized.

Asked about the assault scene, Stan notes that Ivana had made the claim in a deposition, but later walked it back. “Is it closer to the truth, what she had said directly in the deposition or something that she retracted?” he asks. “They went with the first part.”

The movie depicts, too, Ivana’s carrying on with her marriage after the violation, which may be still more devastating. “How do you overcome something like this?” asks Bakalova. “Do you have to put on a mask that everything is fine? In the next scene, she’s going to play the game and pretend that we’re the glamorous, perfect couple.” The Trumps, in “The Apprentice,” live in a world of paper-thin images, one that grows so encompassing that Donald no longer feels anything for the people to whom he was once loyal. They’re props in his stage show.

“The Apprentice” will drop in the midst of the most chaotic presidential election of our lifetime. “The way it lands in this extremely polarized situation, for me as an artist, is exciting. I won’t lie to you,” says Abbasi.

When asked if he was concerned about blowback from a Trump 47 presidency, Stan says, “You can’t do this movie and not be thinking about all those things, but I really have no idea. I’m still in shock from going from an assassination attempt to the next weekend having a president step down [from a reelection bid].”

Stan’s job, as he sees it, was to synthesize everything he’d absorbed — all those videos on his phone — into a person who made sense. This Trump had to be part of a coherent story, not just the flurry of news updates to which we’ve become accustomed.

“You can take a Bach or a Beethoven, and everyone’s going to play that differently on the piano, right?” Stan says. (His pianist mother named him for Johann Sebastian Bach.) “So this is my take on what I’ve learned. I have to strip myself of expectations of being applauded for this, if people are going to like it or people are going to hate it. People are going to say whatever they want. Hopefully they should think at least before they say it.”

It’s a reality that Stan is now used to — the work is the work, and the way people interpret him is none of his business. Perhaps that’s why he has run away from ever being the same thing twice. “I could sit with you today and tell you passionately what my truth is, but it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Because people are more interested in a version of you that they want to see, rather than who you are.”

“The Apprentice” has been the subject of extreme difference of opinion by many who have yet to see it. It’s been read — and will continue to be after its release — as anti-Trump agitprop. The truth is chewier and more complicated, and, perhaps, unsuited for these times.

“Are we going to live in a world where anyone knows what the truth is anymore? Or is it just a world that everyone wants to create for themselves?” Stan asks.

His voice — the one that shares a slight accent with Trump but that is, finally, Stan’s own — is calm and clear. “People create their own truth right now,” he says. “That’s the only thing that I’ve made peace with; I don’t need to twist your arm if that’s what you want to believe. But the way to deal with something is to actually confront it.”

[monstersflashlight]

do you have anything about some sort of reptile-based monster that involves hemipenes? i think it’s a very cool way to do double penetration with only one top

A/N: First part of this was one of the stories in the 10k followers event (find it here). Enjoy!

Lizard-brain: the research

Lizardman x fem!reader || double penetration, hemi-peens, tail play, light choking, exhibitionism, dirty talk (low key)

When he pulled out, you felt your holes twitching at the same time a mechanical voice said from the speakers: “You did well, researcher, very interesting data was recorded.” Shit, you forgot there were people watching and probably saw you get fucked within an inch of your life. All your coworkers just watched you getting double creampied by a giant lizard-man. Great.

You were allowed to go home after that, your boss telling you to go clean yourself and the next day you could go over the data with them. Your lizard mate wasn’t happy about it, but he complied knowing he could see you the next day. You felt many emotions when you left the place, not ready to name any of them, you only showered and went to sleep, your body sore in the best way possible.

You arrived to the facility next day, and the first thing your boss said was: “We need you to do it again,” you looked at them confused, what the fuck did they mean.

“What?” You asked, looking at the monitors in the wall to try catch a sight of your mate.

He explained some of the data they collected, but how it was still very early in the research to know for sure, that’s why they said: “We need more data, and you are his mate after all.” You looked at him with understanding, your scientific brain already working all the possible conclusions of all the data collected so far and how much more you could know if you kept it. But also...

“I need to talk to him about this,” you told them. You had feelings for a big monster, and he considered you his mate, there was a lot of possible ethical problems there.

“Oh yes, it talks. True.” They said, but like it didn’t matter at all.

That infuriated you, but you swallowed your complaints, trying to understand why you felt so protective over him. And then it clicked, mate bonds weren’t only one way, he felt the mate bond, but you felt it back. You cemented your bond with sex and now you felt tied to him the same way he was tied to you. That realization should have scared you, but only made your stomach flip with butterflies. You had a mate. And that came with a new goal in mind: demonstrate that lizard-people could go outside and live like equals to humans. That started with proving your mate bond was true and necessary, scientifically. And if that meant to be fucked in front of some researcher, so be it.

The talk with your mate went as well as expected. He was more than okay with the idea of fucking you again, but not so keen on the idea of other people being there. But the head researcher insisted it was important for somebody to be in the room with you to catalog fine movements and reactions that cameras couldn’t capture. You agreed with them on that, that’s the only reason you accepted (nothing to do with the fact that you might or might not have a bit of an exhibitionist kink).

And that’s why you were naked over a medical bed with your lizard-man mate over your body and a researcher standing a few meters away. Your pussy was already wet, needy and desperate to be filled to the brim again. Your lizard mate was looking at you intensely, caressing your body with one hand as he jerked his upper dick with the other. You knew this position meant big dick downstairs, and you were already anticipating the stretch.

He approached you and rubbed his small upper dick against your entrance. “Good job, keep going,” the researcher instructed. “Touch her pussy.”

Your lizard stopped and turned to look at them. “Don’t tell me what to do with my mate,” he growled, making the researcher step back and cover their mouth. “You are here because she wanted it, but I will kill you if you say more,” the danger in his tone indicated he wasn’t kidding. And it made your clit tingle.

You reached up to touch his face and redirect his attention to you, rolling your hips to feel his dick against your needy pussy. He pushed his dick slowly, breathing hard over you, his eyes never leaving yours. You could hear his tail thrashing behind him as you caressed his head with your short nails. He purred, making you giggle as he pushed his upper dick a bit further inside your pussy. The groan he got in response made him chuckle as you felt his claws probing your asshole.

“Are you going to be a good mate today, too?” His question was filled with hope, and you could only nod, trusting him and his magic precum to make it possible. Seeing as you woke up without any pain, you guessed the magic was more than great and would help you out this time around, too. “Such a good mate for me, your holes are so perfect,” he was talking to you but not really. He seemed far away, like your pussy was transporting him into another dimension.

He started rubbing his big dick against your asshole, and you instantly felt the calmness and relaxation of his precum, allowing him to push the tip inside. You cried out, way too big. There was no pain, but the stretch was noticeable as he kept going, and going, and going… By the time he was fully inside you were breathing hard and he had crazed eyes. It was intoxicating.

“How is he doing that?” The researcher asked out loud, stepping a bit closer and earning themselves a warning growl.

“Ssssshut up!” Your lizard mate hissed in their direction, his pace fluttering at the distraction.

“But I-” The researcher tried again.

You looked over at them, trying to move your hips to get your mate to move again. “I will fill a report later,” you told them between pants.

“But I-,” they insisted.

It was enough. “SHUT UP!” You yelled at them as your lizard man stopped moving completely to glare at you, surprised. “Shut the fuck up and I will answer the questions, but you won’t be able to get any responses if you don’t shut up and let my mate fuck me senseless,” you let out between your teeth.

Said mate liked your outburst very much, soon grabbing your face forcefully to look at you. He started fucking you with intent then, the combination of his dicks inside of you driving you insane in a matter of seconds. He reached you neck and squeezed, feeling the vibrations of your moans against his hand and increasing his thrusts to make you lose your mind.

You felt something different this time, the tip of his scaled tail reaching around his body to rub against your clit. The textured surface made you see stars and the universe as he played with you in every way, taking your pleasure to the next level. It was exhilarating, your mouth open and your head thrown back as he fucked you like a machine.

He lowered his body, whispering against your ear: “Come for me, my mate, let me feel your holes milking me.” And like a good girl, you exploded into a million pieces as he growled over you and painted your insides with his cum.

This time around he didn’t stop, though. He kept fucking you for what felt like hours, probably were. You forgot everything about research and people watching, you forgot everything about your boss and the world. You could only focus on his dicks inside of you and his tail rubbing your clit until you came so many times that you had to ask for mercy, which he sweetly complied. He kissed your forehead and pulled out, leaving you messy and exhausted.

Once again you found yourself creampied in front of all your colleagues. Your job was suddenly a lot more interesting than two days ago.

[babyfoxflower]

Alastor Relationship HCs

Warnings: 18+, MDNI, Some Smut, Power Imbalance (Alastor is reader’s owner), other than that it’s actually pretty fluffy

* For starters, the moment Alastor first saw you, it was like Cupid had shot him in the heart with one of his arrows

* He knew that he wanted you and he was going to get you for the Radio Demon always takes what he wants

* He propositions you a deal, you sell him your soul and in return he’ll give you anything you want whenever you wanted

* Long story short, you end up accepting his deal and signed your sell your soul away (because of course you did, he’s an excellent manipulator)

* From that day forward, Alastor never let you out of his sight

* He made you move into the hotel and stay in his room

* He even snapped in a bed for you to sleep in

* At night, he lays next to you stroking your hair and watching you sleep

* “Isn’t she just gorgeous? Such a beautiful little doll,” he said to his shadow

* His shadow grinned in agreement

* “And she’s all mine. Mine,” he hissed that last part as he pulled your body into his arms

* He was true to his word when he said he would give you anything at anytime

* You were his precious dear, if you wanted chocolate to satiate your sweet tooth than you would get the best chocolate or if you wanted shoes to match the pretty dress he got you than you would get the best shoes

* However, the one time you asked for alone time, he laughed, “And why would you want to be away from me, my dear? Do I not satisfy you?”

* You knew better than to anger one the most dangerous overlords so you would say that you were just kidding and of course he satisfies you

* He lifted up your chin with one of his claws, “Good girl,” he said as radio crackling came through his voice

* And he did truly satisfy you, it was hard to complain about being pampered by such a handsome and charming man

* Even if he is clingy and a little creepy, he’s also funny and sweet in his own way

* He’s extremely affectionate to you and even let’s you pet his ears and play with his hair

* He loves laying on your chest and giving you little kisses and love bites on your neck and breasts

* Speaking of kisses, he often steals kisses from you especially when you least expect it

* And let me tell you he’s a good kisser surprisingly

* He’s also good at other things that involve his mouth and tongue

* His tongue is long and easily reaches deep inside your pussy to that special spot that makes your toes curl and your eyes roll back

* And nimble fingers that work your bud brilliantly

* That’s not to mention his big member that stretches your walls so deliciously

* And his voice, oh he knows what to say to make you come undone completely

* Once you’re finished, he finishes deep inside you filling your belly with warmth

* “You’re such a good girl, such a good obedient little thing,” he says before kissing you tenderly

* Truly it’s not bad afterlife with Alastor the Radio Demon

[darnell-la]

can we get some nsfw of logan heavily infantilizing reader? i know he's a mean mean man and i want him to make us cry 🥺 just wanna be doted on but also fucked like a beast

note: Logan is a very nasty individual in this story. He’s degrading, calls the reader out of her name many times, fucks rough, is manipulative, possessive, and more…

having Logan Howlett claim you are one of the best-given things that could happen.

———

How do you guys feel about a x men story with reader? Logan being rude Logan at first, then slowly shows small affection towards the reader. Jealousy and things of that sort. They soon hit it off, and after Logan starts acting rude again, because he’s scared of the love he grew for her. It’ll be a long story, but something to read at night. ALL ON WATTPAD! Comment below, please!

———

“You’re so fuckin’ childish, y/n, do you know that!? So fuckin’ childish!” Logan shouted at the girl as he placed her into his passenger seat. The man slammed the door in her face before walking around to the car.

Y/m scoffed as she crossed her arms, knowing she was wrong for what she’d done tonight, but at least she had fun.

Logan treats y/n like she has no idea what the world is like. Wade speaks to him, telling him he should take it easy because is his friend. Not Logan’s.

“Well, if I’m gonna stay in an apartment with two kids, I expect them to have manners and respect. If not, then I’m out of here,” Logan threatened a few months ago when he first got here.

Y/n had come home drunk out of her mind at three in the morning after Logan and Wade had been worried all night.

Her phone had died. She explained that to them, and Wade understood, but when she came through that door smiling, laughing, and giggling with the friend who dropped her off, it triggered Logan.

“I know pay the bills, and the apartment is his, but I’ll kick you the fuck out, kid,” Logan threatened as he got into the car and started it up, ready to get home and rest without stressing about y/n.

“I’m a grown woman, Logan. If I wanna go out and get drunk with my friends, I can!” Y/n turned towards the man just to yell before turning back towards the door, looking out of the window.

“What kinda fun is that, y/n? You’re a college student, you’ve got classes in the afternoon, you need to study, but instead, you’re out almost every weekend, pissy drunk and begging for a man to touch you,”

“What!? I don’t even go out with men! I reject them all,” y/n said, confused about why he even cared about her getting with anyone.

“Sure you don’t. Every time I pick you up or you walk through that door, you’re dressed sluttier. Every fucking time!” Logan yelled, hands groping the wheel as he drove through the city to head home.

“At this point, you’re just stressing yourself out. Let me live my life like I let you, okay? Fuck!” Y/n complained.

“So slutting around is living life now? God, you kids are fucking dumb,” Logan shook his head. “I don’t slut around!” Y/n basically screamed at the man.

“Lower your fucking tone when you talk to me, young lady!” Logan looked her way. The anger in his voice made her back up, trying to keep a straight face, but it was hard.

“Always fuckin’ yellin'. Can you ever shut the fuck up for once? Just do better in life and shut the fuck up — Grow up! Because you’re a-fucking-nnoying,” the man got out.

Y/n looked out of the window in silence, holding back her tears as the man continued.

“Be a fuckin’ lady, and respect yourself for once. For once!” He hit the wheel, making the girl jump. “Respect me!” The man hit the wheel again, but harder.

Y/n wiped a tear from her cheek quickly so he wouldn’t notice, but he did. Once he did, the man laughed to himself. “Unbelievable,” the man shook his head, disappointed in her.

“You can yell at me, but when I start yellin’ and tellin’ you what you look like, you start carrying. Fucking pathetic. Seriously!”

Logan didn’t mean to hurt the girl's feelings. He was just angry. He hated seeing her out and doing things he didn’t want her to do. Why can’t she just listen to him? Why does she need other people to make her happy when she has Wade and him at home.

The rest of the car ride was silent. Y/n wouldn’t sniff here and there, but low so she wouldn’t start Logan up again. She was embarrassed and disappointed in herself.

Right as Logan parked the car, y/n pulled on the handle to get out, but he had locked the door before she could.

“Looks y/n-“ Logan went to say, but y/n cut him off. “Let me out,” y/n said with a stern voice. “Y/n, just hear me out-“ he tried to say again. “Let me out!” She yelled, not even looking at the man.

“Hey!” Logan reached for her arm and grabbed it tightly. Y/n tried yanking herself away, but he was stronger. “Let me go!” Y/n yelled, only angering the man further. He had become obvious to the strength he had.

“Ow, Logan!” Y/n shouted at the man, but all he did was grip harder. “Stay still, y/n!” Logan demanded. “You're hurting me!” She finally said as tears streamed from her eyes.

The way she looked at the man in pain, not just from his grip, but more so from his words. Looking into his eyes, he realized he had gone too far.

“Y/n,” Logan said low as she fought the man, slapping his hand, but he wouldn’t let go. He only loosened his grip. “Let me go!” She could barely yell, only cry.

Logan shifted his body and lifted his other hand to cup her cheek. When he did, she tried shaking her head to get him off, but it wouldn’t leave.

“Please!” She cried, but Logan didn’t let her leave. All he did was let her arm go, only to push her seat back and hover over her quickly, the other hand still on her cheek.

“Baby, don’t cry,” Logan said, but she couldn’t stop. She sobbed as she weakly slapped Logan’s body, telling him to leave her alone, but that was the last thing he was going to do.

“Baby, look at him — It’s okay, just look at me,” Logan said as he placed the other hand on her other cheek, forcing her to look at him.

“I’m sorry, y/n, okay? I’m sorry,” Logan spoke. That was when y/n cried harder with no words. “Aw, baby,” Logan said, trying to wipe her tears away, but they kept rolling.

“All I wanted was for you to be safe, baby. That it. It’s dangerous out here. You can’t just be goin’ out every night, looking the way you do. You just can’t,” Logan said.

“If you wanna drink, we got it at the house. You know that. No more goin’ out, and you won’t look like this anymore,” he said, hoping to manipulate her into staying in the house, and in his sight.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” Logan said and kept repeating until she ducked in her cries. It took her a while, but she managed.

“Please understand that I want you safe, y/n. Do you understand that?” Logan asked. Y/n slowly nodded her head with a sniff, making him smile slightly.

“That’s it, baby. All I want is for my baby to be safe — No more goin’ out after tonight. Maybe with me, but I have to be by your side. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

“B-But my friends,” y/n sniffed. “They’ll be fine, baby. They love you and will understand. You want me to trust you and not be stressed out, right? You want me to be? I’m gettin’ old, and ion needa be stressin’ about my girl,” Logan said.

Y/n nodded her head, halfway understanding what he wanted, but not fully. She didn’t ask though. She just knew by the way he always acted that he wanted her in sight and safe with no funny business.

“Good, baby, good,” Logan said, looking into the girl's eyes as she looked back up at him, eyes bloody and eyelashes batting.

“You’re too pretty to be seen without me, baby, and you know that, don’t you? Don’t you, baby?” Logan asked, making her nod again.

“That's right, and you're sorry for disobeying me, right?” He asked. The way he spoke to her, made her feel like she’s actually done something wrong.

“S-Sorry,” she said low. A groan slipped past the man’s lips at her words and voice. She was too sweet to believe she was real.

“Ah huh, and are you gonna show me just how sorry you are?” He asked. Y/n surprisingly nodded quickly, wanting him to know that she meant nothing personal by the way she lived.

“Good girl — Now turn around for me,” Logan said. Her mind wasn’t honking straight, but she did as told, apologizing for her body rubbing on his as she did so. “It’s okay, baby - You’re all good,”

“I’m just a little angry, and you understand that, right? It’s acceptable to why I am, right, baby?” He asked her, making her him with a nod.

“Ah huh, and you’re gonna help me relax, right, baby?” He asked and she repeated what she had done before, but more shaky. “That right,”

Logan began unbuckling his belt, watching the girl underneath him shiver from how drunk she was, the cold air coming through the cracked window, her crying session, and the confusion of this situation.

“Never listenin’ to me, baby. I don’t like that,” Logan said before giving y/n a hard slap on her ass that was covered in her tight thin dress. A whine had slipped from her mouth, only making the man groan.

“Yeah, and I’m gonna bring all this anger right out on and into you, baby,” Logan said as he pulled himself out. “And guess what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna lay here, and take it like the disrespectful little slut you are,”

Y/n whined at his words, feeling shitty for not being respectful towards the older man, but she’ll soon understand to listen.

“Every time I pick you up or watch you walk through those doors, you’re fuckin’ soaked. I just know you’re out and about, waiting for some random man to offer his cock,”

“I know you’re whore enough to take it too, now ain’t you?” Logan asked. “N-No,” y/n shook her head with a whine as he pulled her dress up, revealing her dark wet patch.

“Sure you’re not, baby. You know the drunk sluts always say that, right? Until they’re caught being stuffed and fucked in some bar bathroom,”

Y/n whined again at his comment about what he thought of her as his fingers hooked around her pants. The man pulled his fingers back, causing the panties to rip perfectly.

“You wanna be treated like some dirty slut at the bar?” Logan asked as he put his cock in his hand. “No,” y/n truly spoke, but he didn’t believe her.

The man grabbed a handful of her hair and then pushed her head into the seat. “Are you sure, baby? Because you’re gonna spreading in my passenger seat just like them club whores,”

Before y/n could say anything, the man laughed into her, forcing his huge length through her walls, knowing she would barely be able to take him.

“Logan!” Y/n cried out loud, voice crazy as she gripped and clawed at the seats. “Nah uh, you shut the fuck up!” Logan spat through his teeth as he leaned over and into the girl's ear.

“Pussy’s so fuckin’ wet, I know you want this. You always do. Comin’ back from the fuckin’ bar all soaked and full of attitude. I just know you rub that shit in my face,”

“I fuckin’ know you come through those doors wanting me to fuck your drunk ass through my mattress,” the man snapped his hips hard.

“Oh yeah? Can't take it?” Logan asked as the young girl cried in pain and pleasure. “S-Sorry, sorry,” she quickly whined as she back arched.

“No, you’re fucking not. You’re only sayin’ it now because I’m fucking this cunt dumb,” Logan growled in the girl's ear as he tugged on her hair.

“Slutty fuckin’ cunt - Grippin’ me like she ain’t been fucked in the club already,” Logan said, making the girl shake her head.

“N-No,” she managed to say. “Oh yeah? You’re tellin’ me no man has been in this cunt at the club? Fuckin’ you silly in the bathroom as you pass out from the liquor?” Logan asked.

He had already known the answer, but he was angry. He wanted to get everything out. If he could smell how wet she was every weekend, he could smell a man on her, and thankfully for her, he never has.

“N-No,” y/n whined as she came around him without warning. He hadn’t cared that she soaked his leather seats. All he cared about was how could he could fuck he’d. Maybe if he fucked he’d be good enough, she wouldn’t dare leave the apartment again.

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought. You don’t let another man touch you. Never!” He pounded, knowing the wind out of her with every thrust.

“I swear, if you do, baby, ima kill him. Ima fuckin’ kill him then lock your ass in my room,” Logan threatened, only making y/n moan.

“My fuckin’ cunt — Mine! All fuckin’ mine and you know it. You’ve been known it, Bub, and because you wanted to play games, I’m gonna teach you what the fuck happens when you do,”

Logan took the seatbelt to the car and tied it around her wrist after pulling them man. The man soon continued his anger by slamming into her until she cried, begging him to stop.

He was rough, but y/n knew deep down that she deserved it. She was disrespectful and didn’t listen to him. He should get what he wants.

“You're mine, right, baby? All mine to use like those I want at the bar and club?” Logan asked as y/n could barely keep herself conscious. “Y-Yes,” was all she could get out.

“That’s my girl,”

[bad268]

Love your writingg!!

Could you write a oneshot with ollie when reader couldn't make it to a race and she got sick while at home but didnt tell ollie cuz it couldve made him shit the race and he comes back home at takes care of herr??

+hiii!! idk if ure still taking request, but maybe an ollie x reader where she gets her wisdom tooth out and the aftermath is just her being chaotic and funny while ollie just goes with everything.

but yeah, i think it’s pretty cute. thank you!

Boyfriend Of The Year (Ollie Bearman X Reader)

Fandom: RPF/F2/F3

Requested: Clearly (I just did a sick fic, so i decided to incorporate these. Hope yall don't mind <3)

Warnings: Wisdom teeth surgery and recovery

POV: Majority Second Person (You/your), some Third Person (They/them)

W.C. 2301

Summary: A routine dentist appointment turns into a secret to keep Ollie sane.

As always, my requests are OPEN

MASTERLIST // HITLIST

~~(^Pinterest)

Your phone was blowing up with texts from Ollie. He was probably wondering where you were at this point since you promised to be at the qualifying session, but due to a dentist appointment scheduled between the sessions, you had to split up. Ollie and his dad drove together, and you took an uber to your appointment. Well, at that dentist appointment, you found out that your chronic jaw pain was actually your wisdom teeth getting dangerous. They were growing inwards and pressing your teeth, so your dentist strongly encouraged an emergency wisdom teeth removal for the same day. Ollie was going to be pissed and you knew it.

“Hey, CareBear,” You greeted in a fake tone. You were still at the dentist, but you stepped outside to get a little bit of privacy. “What’s up?”

“Don’t ‘Hey CareBear’ me! Where are you? You said you were gonna be here,” Ollie asked. He was finally able to let out a breath after running around the paddock trying to find where you were. When he couldn’t find you, he started asking around, but no one had seen you. Then, he started calling you, and coincidentally, the calls were during your x-rays or consultation, so you were not answering. It was driving him insane. “Are you almost here?” 

“The dentist was short-staffed, so they haven't gotten me in yet,” You came up with on the fly. You knew he would hate that you lied to him, but he would also throw his entire race weekend away for you. Yes, it was adorable and it’s part of what made you love him, but this was not the time to be a loving boyfriend. This was the time to show everyone why he deserved the Haas seat. He could be boyfriend of the year afterward. “I can text you when I’m done, but I need to see them today. You know how bad my jaw has been hurting lately.”

“Oh?” Ollie smirked as he lowered his voice, about to make a joke but his dad walked right past him.

“Don’t even start, Oliver,” You pressed as you saw your dentist gesturing for you to come back in, so they could prepare you for the surgery. “Listen, CareBear, I gotta go. I think they’re ready to take me back. I’ll text your dad to pick me up when we start wrapping up. You need to get back for debrief or start preparing for quali.”

“Yeah, I should probably eat something,” Ollie said to himself as he scratched the back of his neck. He had never had to go into qualifying without you, so he was a bit nervous. However, he totally understood that this was something you needed to do. “I’ll get on pole for you.”

“I expect you in the top 22, nothing less,” You joked as you both said goodbye and hung up the call. You headed back inside as they started giving you the rundown on how the surgery would occur. For once, you were thankful for scheduling your appointment in the morning and not eating beforehand. Just before they would put you under, you decided to call Ollie’s dad. It didn’t take long for him to answer.

“Hey, Y/n,” David greeted immediately as he walked toward the back of the garage, “Need me to pick you up? That was awfully quick.”

“Actually no,” You chuckled nervously. “Don’t tell Ollie until after quali, but I’m getting my wisdom teeth out right now. If we tell him, he’s going to freak out.”

“Was this the plan the whole time?” He asked, quieting down as Ollie walked by nonethewiser. He was finishing up before he would be getting in the car, so he had enough on his plate, in your opinion.

“No, I just found out that the jaw pain I thought was the start of TMJ was actually my wisdom teeth growing inwards,” You explained with a smile as you watched your dentist finish setting everything out. “Listen, David, I’ll need you to pick me up in like an hour. Maybe after qualifying break it to him? Or just let him figure it out when I’m loopy. I really don’t care.”

“I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” David reassured as he saw Ollie gesturing for him to come over before he would get in the car. “Have them call me when you’re done, and we’ll pick you up.”

You thanked him before ending the call and heading into the back where the operation would take place. 

The qualifying session went by quickly for Ollie because it was basically a one-lap shot. Right after the first laps, it started pouring rain, so when Ollie was at the top of the timing page, no one was able to beat him. He tried to call you as soon as he got out of the car, but every call went straight to voicemail. It freaked him out a little, but he brushed it off, thinking you were still getting your cleaning. It wasn’t until his dad was ushering him to change and get to the car park almost as soon as he wrapped up media that he started thinking something was wrong. Ollie sat nervously in the passenger seat as his dad drove in silence, which was completely unusual for him, so he decided to try and break the tension.

“So, dad,” He dragged out as he looked over at his dad. They pulled up to a red light, and David looked at Ollie. “Where are we going?”

“The dentist,” David said simply as he moved the car into first gear when the light changed. “We need to pick Y/n up.”

“Shouldn’t they have finished up during quali?” Ollie asked before muttering to himself, “I thought they would have been in the garage by the end of media.”

“They had to get some work done,” David responded. It was light-hearted, so Ollie wasn’t too worried. When they pulled up, he parked the car but made no move to get out for a second, causing Ollie to look over confused. “They had to get their wisdom teeth out.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” Ollie freaked out, immediately getting out of the car and trying to reach the front door before his dad. Unfortunately for him, his dad anticipated this and beat him to the punch by blocking the door. “Dad, let me in.”

“No, you need to understand why we didn’t tell you,” David pressed as he put a hand on Ollie's shoulder and sheered him back toward the car. “They didn’t want you to be nervous in qualifying. It’s getting to the end of your season, and next year, you’ll be in F1. Everyone’s eyes are on you, and the last thing they wanted was for you to get nervous and risk your position in the championship.”

“That makes no sense! I wouldn’t have thrown the session!” Ollie disputed as he threw his hands up.

“Oh, please,” David tsked, “You almost crashed the car when you found out they had a headache a few months ago. Of course, you wouldn’t completely compromise your qualifying session knowing they were getting surgery. That sounds totally believable to me.” 

“Maybe you have a point,” Ollie mumbled as he dripped his hands to his sides in defeat. He looked back over to his dad as he sighed, “Can we go in now?”

“Are you going to cause a scene?”

“No.”

~

POV Switch-Third POV

All the while, Y/n was just waking up. The team had wrapped up the surgery at the end of qualifying and called David, saying he didn’t need to rush since they still needed to ween Y/n off of the meds and they still needed to pass the memory tests.

Y/n didn’t remember even waking up, but they did semi-register people walking in, around, and out of their room. Most of them were dentists or nurses checking their vitals, but then two people walked in that didn’t look like a dentist or nurse. It was Ollie and David, but Y/n was still too out of it to recognize them (or what they were saying to be honest).

“So they’ll be a little loopy for a while,” one of the dentists said to David, causing him to nod. Ollie had already taken a seat beside you and was holding your hand. The dentist then took David out of the room to talk about how to help clean the wounds and give him a list of foods that Y/n could eat while recovering. Ollie wanted to say something, anything to Y/n but they ended up talking before him.

“Whoever is your significant other is lucky because damn you’re hot,” Y/n chuckled slightly as they fell back against the pillows and smiled sleepily as they looked at him. “They’re like really lucky.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that you’re my significant other,” Ollie chuckled with them as he brought their hands up to kiss their knuckles.

“No way!” Y/n said as loud as the gauze in their mouth could allow as their eyes almost fell out of their head. “You’re telling me I bagged you?!”

“You bagged me,” Ollie chuckled in disbelief. He was upset at first that Y/n didn’t tell him sooner, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad at them, especially when they said something like that. “If I tell you a word, can you remember it for me?”

“Anything for you, handsome,” Y/n shamelessly flirted as they leaned in a little closer to prop their head against Ollie’s free hand that was resting by their head. 

“The word is ‘pole’,” Ollie said, and Y/n repeated it a couple of times before nodding that they understood it. “Okay, how are you feeling now?”

“I’m feeling tired. I wanna sleep. I wanna eat. I’m hungry. I want someone to tell me what place Ollie is in for the race tomorrow,” Y/n ranted before gasping toward the end, remembering the qualifying session they missed. In the haze, Y/n’s brain never connected that Ollie was sitting in front of them as they went on a rant. “Ollie Bearman is my favorite driver, and I wanna know where he placed. Do you know Ollie?”

“I know of him, yeah,” Ollie said as he bit back a laugh. There was no way he was witnessing this. “I think I know where he placed.”

“Where?” Y/n gasped as they tried to sit up in the bed, but the vitals machine started going off, causing a few personnel to walk in, but Ollie was already pushing them back.

“What was the word from earlier?”

“Pole?” Y/n said confused before it finally connected, “Wait, pole position?”

“Yup, he’s on pole for the feature race,” Ollie smiled at their enthusiasm. “Now, what’s my name?”

“What’s your name? CareBear?”

“Well, yes, but what’s my real name?” 

“Oliver,” Y/n dragged out before the fog cleared enough for them to make the connection. “Wait! Ollie, my CareBear! You’re Ollie!”

“I am,” Ollie chuckled as he leaned over to place a kiss on Y/n’s forehead while the dentists started removing wires and needles from Y/n, so they could leave. Ollie wrapped an arm around their shoulder, knowing Y/n didn’t like needles. He took to whispering reassurance in their ear until they were cleared to leave. Ollie then asked, “You still sleepy?”

Y/n didn’t respond as they were already asleep, so when all of the paperwork was signed, Ollie picked Y/n up to carry them to the car.  The entire ride to the hotel, Y/n was asleep against Ollie’s shoulder until David pulled into the parking spot. That’s when Y/n woke up, stretching their arms above their head.

“I still wanna sleep,” Y/n whined as they leaned back against Ollie. “My legs feel like jelly.”

“I can always carry you again,” Ollie commented already getting out of the car and moving around to help Y/n out. As soon as Y/n stepped out, Ollie’s arm was lifting up their legs to carry them up to their room. Thankfully, David was already leading the way and opening doors for them.

“You’re really working for that Boyfriend Of The Year award, aren't you?” Y/n teased as they plopped their head against Ollie’s shoulder.

“I didn’t know I was in the running,” Ollie joked back as he left a kiss on their nose.

“You’re always in the running,” Y/n pouted before going on another tangent, “Y’know, I’d love to kiss you, but I can’t really feel my lips so I don’t know how that would go.”

“I’ll give you a kiss when you don’t have bloody gauze in your mouth,” Ollie said as he walked up to the door. “Does that sound like a deal?”

“Add some ice cream or smoothies and you’ve got a deal.”

“You can’t drink from a straw, so no smoothies.”

“Buzzkill.”

“Not a buzzkill,” Ollie said simply as he set Y/n down on the bathroom counter, so he could change their gauze. “We’re not risking you getting dry socket.”

“Kissass.”

“How does that make me a kissass?” Ollie chuckled as he helped Y/n down from the counter and to the bed. Ollie fixed the pillows around them to make them comfortable before grabbing an icepack from the freezer. 

“You know the judge of the Boyfriend Of The Year award, and you’re kissing their ass,” Y/n chuckled as they leaned back into the pillows and took the icepacks from Ollie, immediately pressing them against their face. “Let me say, you’re winning.”

“I would hope so,” Ollie retorted, “I should be the only one in the running!”

~~~~~

© BAD268 2024. DO NOT REPOST WITHOUT PERMISSION.

[swagpeytato]

Yandere!Neglectful Batfam x Batmom!Reader PART 3

With the Batfamily

Everyone had gathered in the Bat cave, surrounding Tim as he looked over the divorce papers. He was struggling. Tim didn’t believe this was real. In fact he thought Y/n was full of shit, and just pulled this little stunt for attention, but he just wanted to be sure. Because if she left the media would get suspicious, and she would disrupt the natural order of the family. 

He didn’t believe it was real…….but it was very very convincing. Almost as if it was real. But it couldn’t be real…right?

Bruce was angry, and worried. He was so enraged that his wife would ever do this to his children-to him. Putting all this unnecessary stress on them, just because she wanted attention. And he didn’t even know how long she’d been gone…..come to think about it, he didn’t know the last time he even spoke to her. That’s what he needed to do!

How could he be so stupid? He just needed to call her phone, and that would be that. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he scrolled through looking for her contact, only to see the last time it was dialed was 3 years ago. That was a little after Jason came back. How has it been that long? Brushing this aside, he called her, expecting it to be answered immediately, but was surprised when the caller ID said disconnected. This was getting worrisome. The others looked toward him with furrowed eyebrows. When had she disconnected her phone? And what was her new number? Why hadn’t she told him?

As he mulled over these questions, an unknown number called him. Thinking it was his wife, he answered it right away, with his hopes of finding out what was going on skyrocketing. What he didn’t expect was to hear a deep, familiar chuckle. The Joker. It was at this moment that Bruce’s world came crashing down.

With Y/n and the Joker

Y/n woke up with a grunt, the cold steel room being an anchor, bringing her back to reality. She didn't know where she was, and she hoped and prayed that what she did remember was a very unsettling nightmare. She knew, however, that this was false hope as she looked around the room, and saw the Joker leaning against the wall, his goons straying not too far from him. 

“I didn’t think it’d take ya that long to wake up. Although I should expect the Bat never trained ya, huh?” he chuckled darkly, his wide grin sending shivers down y/n’s spine. She knew she was in danger, but she couldn’t help herself from trying to save her case. 

“He won’t come!” she blurted out in desperation. He perked up at that. Seeing that she piqued his interest, she continued. “He doesn’t care about me. He hates me even, they all did, that’s why I was in Jump City……” she hesitated before continuing, “I needed to get away, and I doubt they even knew I was gone. Even if you do tell him you have me, he probably won’t come.”

The Joker was pleasantly surprised. He had already told Bruce, and he seemed to care about Y/n more than anything. He reacted even worse than he did with Jason. So either she was lying, which he doubted she was based on the look in her eyes, or, Bruce realized his mistakes, and was going to stop at nothing to correct it. 

The Joker knew Bruce, better than the back of his hand even, and how Bruce reacted under stressful situations. This however was not just a stressful situation, this was the “love of his life”, and this worried him. Batman had never sounded so angry. While he was lost in thought, Y/n spoke again, voice filled with sadness.

“You already told him, didn’t you?” all she felt was sorrow. She had been kidnapped, and even then, that wasn’t enough to garner attention from her family. She had already lost her parents not too long after she married Bruce, and now she was sure she had no one. “He’s not coming. You might as well just kill me, and get it over with…..” Tears leaked down her face as her voice trailed off.

“I don’t think I will. He seemed to care a lot when I told him I had ya. He was angry.” His smile had widened a significant amount, thinking of all the possibilities to beat Batman. This was going to be fun.

Hope you all enjoy! 😁 😁

@redkarmakai @moonieper @thatpersonnamedrook @madine11-blog @bat1212 @feral-childs-word @resident-cryptid @ch1cky-093 @sweetconnoiseurgardener @sillysealsies @dhanyasri @bloodyboi

[holylulusworld]

Sewer rat (2)

Summary: He broke your heart. Now he must pay for it.

Pairing: Mobster!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, former Mobster!Tony Stark x fem!Reader

Warnings: angst, scared reader, Bucky is scary as shit, mentions of a breakup

Sewer Rat (1)

Sewer rat masterlist

Prey. That’s what you are to James Buchanan Barnes. Well, at least you’re not a sewer rat to him. As long as your information is useful to him, you’re safe.

For how long, you don’t know. He’s, just like Tony, a cold-hearted man unable to feel compassion or love. Sadly, you realized too late that Tony Stark could never love you.

“Let me get this straight. Tony threw you out with nothing but a towel. Still, you got this.” Bucky holds up the little black book. “How did you manage to steal his black book in only a towel?”

“My bathrobe,” your voice cracks, and you drop your gaze. “Did you not wonder why I fought tooth and nail to get my bathrobe, not a pretty dress or at least shoes?” You lift your head to look Bucky straight in the eyes. “The moment Tony Stark stepped into my life, I knew it was too good to be true. Whirlwind romances and men fulfilling your every wish always come with a catch.”

“You hid the black book in the bathrobe, didn’t you?” Steve smirks. He’s impressed you thought about hiding something so valuable for hard times.

“In the first months, I was on cloud number nine, but the façade crumbled. I slowly realized that Tony is not the man he loves to pretend he is. I didn’t think he’d treat me like he did last night.”

“How did you get your hands on his black book?” Bucky is still not convinced you are telling the truth.

“He’s sleepy after—” You bite your tongue and look away. “You know, sex. I couldn’t sleep and got up to get some water. I saw his little black book and phone lying abandoned on the kitchen counter. He was so eager to fuck me in the kitchen, he forgot about it.”

Bucky clears his throat. He shudders; imagining Tony and you going at it is the last thing he wants to think about. “Go ahead, tell us everything.”

“I knew Tony had lots of these black books. He uses them for notes. I sneaked into his office and stole a new one,” you lick your lips as Bucky opens the black book to check on the first names. “That night, I copied the book, writing every contact and code word down. When I came back to the bedroom, Tony was awake. I didn’t get the chance to hide the book somewhere else but in the pocket of my bathrobe.”

“Smart girl,” Steve praises. “This probably saved your life. We are not the kind of people protecting others for free.”

“I know,” you wrinkle your nose. “If you’re not useful, you can rot in hell.” You chuckle humorlessly. “I’m not delusional nor blinded by my undying love for Tony. He showed his true colors, and all I got left is the little book in your hands and all the things I memorized to help you bring his business down.”

“I will check on the information. If you tried to trick me, the things Tony said and did to you will be a pleasant memory.” Bucky’s features darken for a moment. “Steve, ensure she gets food and show her the way to the guestroom.”

“Please come with me.” Steve holds his hand for you. You look at his large hand but refuse to take it. So far, they haven’t proven to be better than Tony. “Alright.” Steve shows his palms. “You don’t trust me. That’s fair. We don’t trust you either.”

Slowly getting up, take a deep breath. Bucky is still reading the names in the little black book. You only hope he won’t betray you too after you hand the only leverage you hold over Tony.

“The information is gold,” Jake grins while explaining every little detail he found out about the people on Tony Stark’s payroll. “He pays cops, politicians, civil servants, and prostitutes,” he laughs. “Man, even taxi driver. That man seems to be obsessed with staying informed.”

“We will start with the less powerful people. The taxi driver he pays,” Bucky points at a name in the black book. “We will talk to him first. Make sure he knows if he fucks with me, he’ll die.”

“Got it, boss,” Rumlow hums. “Do you want him in one piece, or can I rough him up a little?” He smirks at Bucky.

“We don’t want him to shit his pants yet. Bucky wants to talk to him, not scare the shit out of him. Maybe it’s enough to offer more money than Stark to him,” Steve huffs when Rumlow gets a knife out, grinning. “No violence before we tell you so.”

You’re starving. Until now, you didn’t know you were hungry. It’s been hours since Tony kicked you out of his house and life. It feels odd to give in to a primal need while your heart still lies in shambles, shattered on the ground.

“Good, isn’t it?” Bucky sits down on a chair at the kitchen counter next to you. He looks at the sandwich his cook made for you. “I hope they made something you’ll like for you.”

“I’m not picky,” you murmur before taking another bite. Bucky’s presence in the kitchen can mean two things. Your information is valuable to him, or he wants to kick you out too.

“You know,” he leans closer to steal a pickle from your plate. “I saw you at one of his parties a few months back. You helped a waitress pick up glasses after another guest bumped into her. I knew that you were different at that moment.”

“People are rude; the world too. This doesn’t mean I have to be rude too,” you sniff. “Maybe when it comes to Stark. He deserves to catch hell.”

“That guy,” Bucky steals another pickle from your plate. “Your friend. Do you think he was involved in this shitshow? I mean, he comes back to town to marry and wants to meet up with you out of a sudden.”

“If you already know all the answers, why ask questions?” You muse. “I guess he was paid to get me in trouble. I just don’t know who is behind this conspiracy and why anyone wanted Tony and me apart.”

“We will find out,” he says, eyeing the second half of your sandwich. “Your information was correct. So far. We will see if you are as valuable as you believe you are.”

“I’m not, but this,” you tip your forehead. “I memorized every shady deal and name. Whatever you want to know about his organization.”

“Jake, my smart little tech nerd, is working on finding out more about your friend and his involvement in all of this. If you are helping me, I’m helping you.”

“Quit pro quo, Mr. Barnes,” you reply, and hold out your hand.

“Quit pro quo, doll,” he says, and grabs your hand, making you squeak. "But,” he leans closer to whisper in your ear, “if you try to trick me or fuck me over, you’ll end up six feet under.”

Tags in reblog.

[thatonebirdwrites]

Cheating Death Part 2

Part 1 here.

Only seconds after Lena vanished in the portal, the Kryptonite cage melted into the floor. A yellow light pulsed so brightly, Kara had to close her eyes. Light infused her cells and pushed the pain of the Kryptonite away.

Lena's words echoed in Kara's head. How she'd stomped and shouted, the tears on her face, the desperation in her voice. How heartbroken she'd been when she'd said, "No, no you don't get to tell me who I am anymore."

She didn't know what to do. Lena had been hurting and grieving this entire time, and what had she and her friends done? Celebrated her brother's death, ignored Lena's increasingly isolating behaviors, and pretended everything was fine.

It wasn't fine.

Yet, the yellow light. Why had that activated? Was it Lena or the Fortress?

Kara ran through the Fortress to the control panel. She dug into the log and swiftly found Lena's code. It had been programmed to create the cage if Kara asked about Myriad, but then the yellow light was also programmed to heal Kara after Lena escaped. A note was annotated on that section of the code, and Kara's breath caught in her throat.

"I wish I could stop loving you. This hurts worse than death."

Tears dampened her cheeks and she wiped them away. What would she tell Alex? How can she explain any of this?

She didn't want her friends to turn on Lena, and Alex definitely would go after Lena if she knew about the cage. It'd been temporary, and Lena had programed a healing sun-bed equivalent burst for after. That alone gave her hope that she could still reach Lena.

Because even in her heartbreak, Lena did not want Kara dead.

She grabbed the weapon she needed, the same one Lena had used to stop Leviathan from killing Kara, and re-calibrated security. Her tears froze on her cheeks by the time she finished.

Kara flew out of the Fortress and high into the stratosphere. She listened for Lena's heartbeat, but heard nothing at first. Fear clenched her heart. Either Lena hid behind lead, or something terrible had gone wrong since she'd left. She hoped it was the former.

With a heavy heart, she flew to the DEO. Alex waited on a balcony.

"Kara?" Alex said, alarmed. "What the hell happened? Where's Lena?"

Kara held out the weapon. "It works as hoped. Sustained blast will keep Rama Khan down, and then attach the power dampeners."

Alex took the weapon with a frown. "Kara, what happened to Lena? Where is she?"

Kara shook her head. She couldn't voice it. She refused to believe Lena was lost to them. There had to be a way to save her, to bring her back, to repair what Kara had fucked up.

She pressed her hands against her face and flinched when Alex tried to touch her shoulder. "I got to find her," she whispered. "I got to make things right. I got to."

"Kara, I can't help if you don't tell me." Alex's voice held kindness, but Kara knew how quickly Alex could turn to anger. When it came to Kara's safety, Alex might cross a line she'd regret. Kara had done it for Alex a few times.

But with Lena? Kara had no boundaries. Lena held her heart in a way no one else did. She'd talked herself into settling for Mon-el, but it'd never been who she needed.

She needed Lena.

"Kara?" Alex tried again. "Kara, talk to me."

"She's the one who shot Lex." The words felt unreal.

Alex's brow wrinkled. "I thought he died when he fell."

Kara shook her head. "We never found a body or even parts from his suit, remember? If he had a portal watch, he could have gone anywhere."

Alex sucked in a breath. "And Lena was waiting for him?"

Kara nodded. "She shot him to protect us. She's been grieving and hurting all this time, and what have we done? Ignored her grief! Where were we for her pain?" She paced the balcony as fury at herself and everyone around her built up in her sternum. "I hurt her! I hurt her with my lies, and I have to fix this."

"Kara," Alex hefted the weapon. "Maybe let Lena have her space. We still have to deal with--"

"Alex, you didn't hear her!" Her pacing quickened and a groove appeared in the concrete from her superspeed.

Kara should tell Alex, and yet she couldn't. She needed to save Lena from Myriad herself, but to do that, she needed to find Lena. And she still couldn't hear her heartbeat.

She let out a shout of rage, her fist colliding with the wall and shattering the concrete. "I hurt the person I love! I have to fix this. I have to bring her back."

Her rage petered into sobs, and she fell to her knees.

Her, the strongest and fastest on the planet, brought to her knees by a Luthor.

She thinks of all the times she could have told Lena, and how she'd chickened out, afraid of losing her. Afraid of living a life without Lena's presence. Now a Lena-shaped hole had been carved in her chest, and she hurt.

It felt like Kryptonite all over again.

Was this how Lena had felt the past few months? This agony?

And yet, Lena had still helped. She'd still saved Kara's life. Still built devices that helped others. Why Myriad? Why use that monstrous device? Kara couldn't make sense of it. The months of pretending to be Kara's friend.

She should be angry at Lena. Furious at the betrayal, but she felt only grief. She'd started this with her lies, with leaving Lena in the dark. Lena could have helped so much more if she'd been in on it from the start. Then this never would have happened.

Kara sat there, silent, head-bowed long enough for Alex to leave and return with a cup of herbal tea. Rooibos since most other teas were too intense thanks to Kara's supertaste. Her fingers curled around the warm cup.

"I tasked Brainy and J'onn with the weapons. We'll deal with Leviathan." Alex smiled and squeezed Kara's shoulder. "You do what you need to do, Kara. I'm with you, okay?"

Kara nodded numbly. She sipped the tea and slowly became aware of a high-pitched beeping. "Wait, that's the signal watch," she murmured. She put down the cup and listened. It came from downtown. "Lena," she whispered.

Before Alex could respond, Kara blasted into the sky and broke the sound barrier. The crack whipped across the city and shook windows. She landed on Lena's balcony at L-Corp, ripped open the door, and dashed into a dark room. The beeping came from the stairwell.

Horror twisted her gut. She supersped down the stairs, all forty-three flights, until she reached the stairs just below ground level near the door to security.

She threw open the door and the thick scent of iron assaulted her nose.

Eve lay in a pool of blood, no heartbeat. Someone dressed in black lay crumbled near Eve, again no heartbeat. Blood coated the stairs from where Lena must have crawled.

Lena, her Lena, lay motionless, one hand on the top step. For a horrifyingly long second, Kara couldn't hear a heartbeat. She dropped next to Lena and pressed her fingers against Lena's pulse point.

No, there it was.

A faint badum-badum, the most precious sound in the universe.

She could do nothing for the others, but she still had a chance to save Lena. A scan of her body revealed the bullet in her side, how it pierced a lung.

Kara gathered Lena into her arms, and ran through the security sector, hitting each door with her shoulder to wrench it open, until she finally made her way outside.

Lena's blood soaked into her suit, her head rolling in Kara's arms. She held her close and flew as fast as she dared toward the DEO. "Lena, please," she whispered, "please hold on. Don't you dare die on me. Not now. Not like this."

When her feet touched down, she heard Alex's voice shouting about a Rama Khan sighting. Agents poured into vehicles, and the team prepared to leave.

Kara ignored them. She walked through the bustle, and people parted for her.

Alex turned from where she studied Brainy's screens. Her eyes widened. "What the hell...?"

"Please. Help her." Tears clouded her vision.

"Medical now. Brainy J'onn's in charge." Alex grasped Kara's arm and maneuvered her through the mess of the control center. Technicians worked on last minute fine-tuning of weapons, and others manned screens plotting possible vectors. Activity that meant nothing to Kara, not if Lena died.

Not if she couldn't speak her last truth to Lena.

She laid Lena on the medical bed, and Alex ordered her nurses to get an IV in immediately. Kara began to pace, the blood drying on her suit. Alex cut away Lena's shirt and examined the wound.

"She needs surgery now."

"What do I do?" she asked Alex, anguished. "What do I do?"

Alex shook her head. "You can't help with this. Go help J'onn, and wear Lena's anti-kryptonite suit. I'm not sure how long I'll be in surgery."

"Can you save her?"

"I will try my best," Alex said. She refused to look at Kara, and that told her far too much.

Alex didn't think Lena would make it.

"Promise?" the words came out small, plaintive.

"Promise. Now get out of my way." Alex hooked the IV bag to the pole on one end of the bed, and rolled it toward an interior suite. Two nurses followed along with a second doctor.

Kara closed her eyes and listened to the most beautiful heartbeat in the universe -- it faintly hung on, slower and slower with each passing minute.

She couldn't stay and watch the medical team open up Lena. She couldn't.

Instead, she grabbed the anti-kryptonite suit. As it flowed over her, she almost wept again. It felt like Lena hugged her, the suit entirely her design and her nanites.

She flew outside and listened for J'onn. The fight was to the southeast by the docks.

Hadn't Leviathan been targeting Lena? She'd saved her once from them already. Maybe twice if she counted the break-in that had knocked Lena unconscious.

Now Lena was dying, and Kara didn't just want justice for Lena.

She wanted to tear apart whoever ordered that assassin.

The windows shook at the sonic boom, and the ground cratered when she landed.

Rama Khan and another Leviathan member battled J'onn and Dreamer, who had the weapon from the Fortress. Agents, with adjusted weaponry to match the power-disrupting frequency, scattered around the docks.

Kara didn't care about the risk. She didn't care about the Kryptonite weapons the assholes carried.

She crashed into Rama Khan and threw him into a dock building. The wall crumpled. "Did you hire Lena Luthor's killer?" she growled.

Rama Khan laughed and stood with hardly a mark on him and his ridiculous earth-toned suit. "Those who cross Leviathan do not live to tell the tale. Let you now join her, Supergirl." He extended his hand and the ground shook violently.

A blast from Dreamer's gun sent Rama Khan sprawling. Kara sped over and grabbed him by the throat. Her feet she stomped on his arms. "No one hurts Lena and survives," she growled. Her eyes glowed, and she let out a scream of grief and fury.

She blasted him and punched him again and again. Blood gushed from his face, but then he melted into the earth and stumbled into being a few feet away.

Only for Dreamer to blast him again. Kara pummeled him with the rage of a thousand suns. Her vision red, and the land ripped and shredded in their fight. Part of the pier demolished when Kara threw Rama Khan's accomplice into it. Another building fell when Rama blasted Kara into its walls.

Rama Khan slowed, each blast from the gun scrambled his powers long enough for Kara to rip into him until he bled from multiple places. She lost track of the others, so intent on eliminating the one who ordered Lena's hit.

"Kara!" J'onn clamped the power dampeners on the alien. "Kara, we got him."

Kara clenched Rama's neck and looked down to see the cuffs clasped to his wrists.

How much loss could a heart handle? Why did the universe seek to torture her so? Her entire planet, nearly all her friends, and now the woman she loves most -- loss melted through her crevices, filled her with a blinding fury.

She'd fought to keep everyone alive. It's why she needed to be in control, but that obsession of controlling everything, to make sure she never lost, had poisoned her. She couldn't control everything.

She couldn't even save Lena. The thought of Lena dying in surgery, of never hearing her voice again -- even Lena shouting in anger?

Her fingers crunched bone. Rama Khan tumbled from her grasp and hit the ground with a thump, motionless.

Dreamer and J'onn looked at her, but she didn't respond to their words or looks. Agents swarmed around them to secure the site, while Brainy set up the containment unit for Rama Khan and his accomplices. The ruckus roared like the sea in her ears.

She turned without a word and shot into the sky. She flew as high as she could, to where little to no oxygen existed. The fury burned in her, and she wanted to rip herself apart. She deactivated her helmet, turned off its life support systems, and let the lack of air suffocate her and her emotions.

She'd live. She'd always live, wouldn't she? While all she loved died.

She closed her eyes and let herself fall. Air whooshed around her body, screamed in her ears as she hit terminal velocity. For those brief moments, she heard nothing but the shrill wind, the rest of the Earth drowned out in her fall. A moment of release from the endless soundscape.

Halfway to the ground, she righted herself and flew to the edge of Earth's atmosphere. Again she let herself fall. For a third time, she soared high and fell.

Each time she let herself get closer and closer to hitting the ocean. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't outpace her fury at her own actions. At her failure.

This time she hit the water. She sunk into its depths.

Sea life swam around her, the distant calls of whales rippled through the water. What should delight her brought her sorrow.

No, she couldn't die. Her wretched powers, her curse, kept her alive. Kept her isolated from those she loved. Her careful, practiced control meant even in moments of extreme emotion, she still had to make sure not to hug too tightly. And kissing? How many noses had she broken?

All she wanted was Lena. Even if she could never be with Lena, she needed Lena to be alive. To be healthy and happy. Kara could live with just being on the sidelines, right? As long as Lena was alive.

She burst out of the ocean in a shower of sea water. She hung in the air and watched the waves below her. Her ears tuned to her favorite heartbeat, and there it was, faint, far too faint, but still pulsing.

A slither of hope wove into Kara's wretched spirit. She flew back to the DEO, the wind drying the moisture from the sea.

When she landed, Nia met her at the balcony's doors. "Kara," she breathed out as if she'd been running. "Been looking everywhere."

Kara crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want?"

"It's Lena. Alex said to let you know the surgery is ongoing and Lena's handling it like a pro." Nia met her gaze, but worry painted across her face. "Don't lose hope yet. She may still live."

Kara said nothing. She heard the rebuke in Nia's words, but she didn't regret her actions. For Lena, there was no boundaries. She'd destroy a thousand Rama Khans if it meant saving Lena.

She followed Nia down the hall, through two intersections, and into the medical bay. Most of the beds were occupied by injured agents from the Leviathan battle. It was the surgery room that occupied all of Kara's attention.

Lena's heart beat still in those glass walls.

Kara walked up to them and pressed a hand against the cool glass. Lena looked so pale. So fragile.

The tears returned. Her chest constricted with a Lena-shaped hole that ached with each beat of her heart.

She didn't move from that spot for the rest of the surgery. Kara held vigil in silence, unmoving. She'd given Lena revenge on those who tried to kill her, and now Kara waited.

Waited for hope to dawn once more.

/end part 2

[wolverigrl]

Scorched Earth

Logan Howlett x mutant reader

!Disclaimer! Y/n is a mutant with the same skills as the human torch! Let me know if you'd like to read another part!

Warnings: mentioning of alcohol and death, angst

Enjoy!

---------------------------------------------------

“Bobby, for real, you can’t possibly think that’s better than mine!” I laughed, leaning back on the chair in the kitchen, feet propped up on the table. Across from me, my brother grinned, folding his arms over his chest with that cocky smirk of his.

“You’re just jealous I got the better nickname.” Bobby replied, his voice light, teasing. “Iceman? It’s sleek, it’s cool - literally - and it fits me.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes. “Oh, please. ‘Iceman’ sounds like the title of some second-rate action movie. Meanwhile, I’m lighting up the sky over here.”

Bobby raised a brow, feigning offense. “That’s a lot of talk from someone who’s still stuck with ‘Firecracker.’ ”

I punched him lightly on the arm. “I’ll take ‘Firecracker’ any day over your ‘cool’ puns.”

Our banter was easy, the kind that came naturally after years of being siblings. Bobby had always been the steady one, the one who could calm everyone down with a joke, while I was the hothead - pun intended - never one to back down from a challenge. It’s what made us a good team, even if we drove each other crazy half the time.

The way he carried himself, his calm demeanor, and his unwavering sense of control over his powers - everything I wasn't.

I was the fire to his ice, the chaos to his calm. We clashed often, but it wasn’t because we didn’t care. It was because we cared too much. And despite all the bickering, all the teasing, there was a bond between us that no one could break. I’d die for him. He was my anchor when my temper flared, my tether to reality when my powers spiraled out of control.

Just as I was about to throw another sarcastic remark his way, Logan walked into the room, his usual gruff self. He barely acknowledged us, heading straight for the fridge. Typical.

“Hey, Logan!” I called, a mischievous grin spreading across my face. “Did you finally get that stick outta your ass, or is it still lodged in there pretty good?”

Logan froze mid reach for a beer, then slowly turned his head, giving me the look - the one that said 'I am not in the mood for your crap right now, bub.' But that just made it more fun.

“Don’t you have somethin’ better to do, hotshot?” he growled, slamming the fridge shut and twisting the cap off his beer with more force than necessary. “Or do you just live to run your mouth?”

I smirked, unfazed. “You know, it’s funny you say that, because I’ve noticed you love listening to me. Maybe it’s because no one else has the guts to call you out on your eternal grumpiness?”

Bobby snickered from beside me, enjoying the show. “She’s got a point, man. You’re not exactly known for your sunny disposition.”

Logan shot Bobby a glare before turning his attention back to me. “Maybe I’m grumpy ‘cause some people around here don’t know when to shut up.”

“Oh, come on, Logan. You’d miss me if I didn’t poke at you every now and then.” I said, leaning forward with a grin. “Admit it - you secretly love the banter.”

Logan let out a low, frustrated growl, shaking his head as he took a long swig from his beer. “The day I admit that, is the day hell freezes over. And even then, I’ll blame Bobby.”

Bobby grinned, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t drag me into your weird dynamic. I’m just the innocent bystander.”

I shot Bobby a mock glare. “Innocent? You? Yeah, sure. Tell that to the last five people you pranked.”

Logan huffed, clearly done with the conversation, but I wasn’t quite finished yet. “You know, Logan.” I continued, leaning back again and stretching my arms behind my head, “You really oughta work on that sunny disposition. You’re gonna give yourself wrinkles with all that frowning.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, jaw clenching. “Why don’t you mind your own damn business and keep that fire of yours under control?”

“Oh, I keep it very controlled, thank you very much.” I said, flashing a smile. “Besides, you seem to enjoy living dangerously. Why else would you keep hanging around us?”

Logan shook his head, muttering something under his breath before retreating to his usual corner of the room, beer in hand, grumbling the entire way. Bobby leaned in toward me, his voice low enough so only I could hear.

“I still think you’re his favorite.”

I laughed quietly, watching Logan brood from across the room. “Nah, he just hasn’t figured out how to handle all of this yet.” I gestured to myself with a playful smirk.

“Sure, that’s what it is.” Bobby chuckled, leaning back with a relaxed sigh.

Despite Logan’s gruff attitude and my constant teasing, there was a kind of unspoken respect between us. He was the first to step in when things got dangerous, always willing to put himself on the line for the team. And even though he’d never admit it, I knew he appreciated having someone who wasn’t afraid to challenge him, to call him out when he was being extra cranky. In a way, it kept things balanced.

Bobby and I exchanged another look, both of us knowing exactly how this dynamic worked. I teased Logan, Logan growled, and the world kept spinning. It was our version of normal - a delicate balance of sarcasm, snark, and the occasional grumpy Wolverine glare.

It was one of those rare moments when everything felt light, even if just for a little while. Days like these, with Bobby teasing me, and Logan grumbling from across the room, were the best. I’d give anything to hold onto them.

But life as an X-Men had a way of reminding you that those moments could be fleeting.

And I didn’t know then just how fleeting they would be.

Todays mission was supposed to be a standard takedown. Another mutant extremist group, radicalized and bent on 'mutant supremacy'. Charles had briefed us thoroughly, and we had faced worse before. Or at least we thought we had.

It went south almost immediately. We were outnumbered, and it was clear that our enemies had intel we weren’t prepared for. They knew where we would be, how we would strike, and worse - they knew how to separate us. That was when things really started to fall apart.

The battlefield was a mess of chaos and screaming. Blasts of energy, ice, and fire lit up the sky, while the air howled with the sound of Storm’s winds tearing through enemy lines. I was a blur of fire and fury, every step a combustion of flame as I ripped through the chaos, throwing up walls of fire to keep enemies at bay. But no matter how hard we fought, there were too many. We were getting spread thin. Too thin.

I caught sight of Bobby ahead of me, just in time to see him raise an enormous ice wall to shield a group of our teammates. His back was to me, and before I could shout a warning, a blast from one of the enemy’s weapons slammed into him, sending him sprawling across the ground.

“Bobby!” I screamed, my heart lurching.

He struggled to get up, one knee bent, but the blast had been too much. His walls of ice began to crack and crumble around him. Panic rose in my throat like bile. He was surrounded, the enemies closing in.

I pushed forward, flames erupting from my palms as I blasted through the mob, trying to reach him. “Hang on, I’m coming!” I shouted, but my voice barely cut through the cacophony of combat.

But I wasn’t fast enough.

Before I could get to him, a second blast hit him. The impact was devastating. I saw his body jerk violently before he collapsed, crumpling like a rag doll on the cold, scorched ground. Time seemed to slow, my breath caught in my throat, and everything else faded away.

“No!” My scream tore from my chest, broken and raw, but there was nothing I could do.

He was still, too still.

I scrambled toward him, my flames fizzling out as I dropped to my knees beside his body. I reached out, hands trembling as I gently touched his face. His skin was cold, colder than it should have been. His chest didn’t rise. His eyes were closed. My pulse pounded in my ears, but I couldn't hear anything except the roaring silence in my own head.

He was gone.

“Bobby, please…” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Please don’t leave me.”

I don’t know how long I sat there, holding him, begging for him to come back. I couldn’t save him. I. Couldn’t. Save. Him.

Then, something broke inside me.

The grief, the rage, the helplessness - everything surged at once, overwhelming every rational thought. The fire inside me, the power I always tried to control, flared up in an instant. It wasn’t just fire anymore - it was fury, pure and uncontrollable.

Flames erupted from my body, hotter and fiercer than they ever had before. I screamed, the sound ripping through the air as fire exploded in all directions, a supernova of heat and light. The ground beneath me cracked, molten lava seeping from the earth as the intensity of my power burned through everything in its path.

I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to.

The flames raged out, consuming everything they touched. The enemy soldiers who had killed Bobby screamed as they were incinerated, their bodies turning to ash in mere seconds. The ground smoked, trees around us igniting in a blaze, and the air became thick with heat.

Jean’s voice echoed in my mind, faint, as if she was shouting at me from the end of a long tunnel. “Y/n, stop! You have to stop!” Her voice was desperate, but I couldn’t listen. Couldn’t hear her over the roaring firestorm inside me.

Storm tried to summon her winds, pulling clouds thick with rain to douse the flames, but it wasn’t enough. Even the sky couldn’t hold back the inferno that had taken over me. I felt her power strain against mine, but my emotions fueled the fire, making it burn hotter, stronger. I was losing control completely, my body heating up like the core of a star.

“Y/n! You’re going to kill everyone!” Scott shouted through the comm, his voice barely audible over the roaring flames. I could see them, all of them, struggling to get away from the heat, the fire spreading in every direction.

Charles reached out, trying to touch my mind, but I was beyond reach. His calming presence couldn’t get through the thick walls of grief and rage that had consumed me.

I was going to burn everything. Everyone.

Then, through the haze of heat and fire, I saw him.

Logan.

He was moving toward me, slow and steady, ignoring the screams of the others as they begged him to stop.

“Logan, no! You’ll die!” Jean’s voice, frantic, but he didn’t listen.

“Logan, don’t!” Storm shouted, the wind whipping around her, but he kept walking, one foot in front of the other, his eyes locked on mine.

I couldn’t stop the fire. I was too far gone, too lost in my own power. The heat radiated off me in waves, scorching everything in its path, and yet he kept coming.

His skin started to blister almost immediately. The heat was unbearable, even from where I stood. I could see his face contorting in pain, could smell the sickening scent of burning flesh as he got closer. His clothes were already charred, the leather of his jacket melting and fusing to his skin. But he didn’t stop.

I wanted to scream at him to get back, to stop, but the words wouldn’t come. All I could do was watch in horror as he walked into the flames, his healing factor struggling to keep up as his body was scorched by the heat I was putting off.

And then he was there, standing right in front of me, his skin bright red, his hands trembling as the fire licked at his skin. His face was a mask of pain, sweat and blood mixing with the charred burns that covered his arms and neck. But his eyes, his eyes were steady.

“Y/n.” he said, his voice low and raspy, strained from the pain. “You need to stop.”

“I can’t!” I gasped, my breath catching as the flames flared up again, fueled by the storm of emotions inside me. “I can’t control it. I-I’m going to kill you, Logan!”

“I don’t care!" he growled, taking another step closer, his boots melting into the molten ground. His body trembled, his skin bubbling and cracking under the heat, but he didn’t back down. “I’m not leaving you.”

Tears streamed down my face, evaporating the moment they hit the air.

His eyes locked onto mine, unwavering, even as the flames licked at his skin. His face contorted in pain, but he didn’t stop.

“Bub.” he rasped, his voice hoarse from the heat. “You need to let go. I know it hurts, but you gotta stop.”

I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the fire. I was too far gone. The heat, the flames, my emotions - it was all consuming me. I was a supernova, and there was no pulling back.

Logan took another step. His healing factor was working overtime, but even he couldn’t withstand this for long. Yet, he didn’t hesitate.

“Y/n!” Logan yelled, louder this time, and I felt his words cut through the haze. “I know what it’s like! To lose someone - hell, to lose everyone! You feel like you’re gonna burn up inside. You feel like it’ll never stop, like you’ll never breathe again. But this ain’t the way!”

I felt the fire flare around me, almost as if it were trying to drown out his words. I wanted to listen, but the grief, the rage - it was still so raw. Bobby was gone. How could I stop the fire when everything inside me was screaming to let it burn?

But Logan didn’t back off. He stepped into the heart of the inferno, his arms opening, and wrapped me in a hug. The flames surged as they met his body, and I could feel his skin burning under my touch. I could smell it. His face twisted in agony, but he didn’t pull away.

“Let it out, hotshot. Let it all out,” Logan whispered, his voice softer now, almost tender. “But don’t burn yourself with it. You ain’t alone. I’m here.”

I could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly, his breaths ragged from the heat, but his arms around me were steady, grounding. In that moment, the fire faltered, flickering as my mind struggled to grasp what was happening.

Logan - the one person who could barely stand to be in the same room as me without a sarcastic remark - was holding me, burning alive in my fire, all because he wouldn’t leave me alone in my pain.

And then, I felt it.

The fire started to die down, the flames retreating into my skin as I began to sob against his chest. The heat that had consumed me so completely, so violently, began to ebb, leaving behind only the suffocating weight of grief. Logan’s chest was soaked with my tears as I clung to him, my body shaking with the force of my cries.

“I couldn’t save him, Logan." I choked out between sobs. “I couldn’t- ”

“I know." Logan murmured, his voice rough but soothing. “I know, bub. It’s not your fault.”

The last of the flames flickered out, and the air around us was suddenly cooler, still. Logan’s body, still blistered and burnt in places, didn’t move. He just held me tighter, letting me cry into his chest, never once letting go. I buried my face into the fabric of his ruined shirt, his heartbeat the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.

After what felt like forever, I became aware of the world around me again. The sounds of the battlefield had quieted. Jean, Storm, and the others were slowly approaching, their faces a mix of worry and relief.

“We need to get back to the mansion,” Scott said, his voice soft but firm. “Y/n, Logan… let’s go.”

Logan didn’t move to let me go, and I didn’t want him to. The thought of being alone right now, without the steady warmth of his presence, was unbearable.

“Can you walk?” Hank asked me.

Logan shook his head, giving a low grunt of pain as he stood up, still cradling me in his arms. “I got her.”

I felt Logan’s arms adjust under me as he began to walk, carrying me like I weighed nothing. I should’ve been worried about him, should’ve told him to let me go, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I pressed my face into his chest, feeling the burn marks on his skin, the roughness of his wounds. He was hurting because of me, but he didn’t care.

The journey back to the mansion felt like a blur, the sounds of the battlefield fading into silence as Logan carried me, step after step, his breathing labored but determined. I clung to him, my body exhausted, but my mind still racing with grief and guilt.

When we finally reached the mansion, Logan carried me straight to my room. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and laid me gently on my bed. His face was tense with pain, but his movements were careful and protective.

I reached out, grabbing his wrist as he turned to leave. “Don’t go... please.” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “I-I don’t wanna be alone.”

Logan’s eyes softened, just for a moment. He gave a small nod and sat down on the edge of the bed, his weight making the mattress dip slightly. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to offer any more words of comfort, and for that, I was thankful. I didn’t need words. I just needed him to stay.

I curled into his side, my head resting against his chest once again. His heartbeat was slower now, more even, though his body was still warm from the burns. He didn’t flinch when I pressed closer, seeking the comfort of his presence. His arm wrapped around me, holding me close, and for the first time since Bobby died, I felt a small flicker of something like peace.

As I sobbed into Logan’s chest, my body exhausted from the emotional and physical strain, I felt his hand gently stroke my hair. He didn’t say anything, just let me cry. His presence as steady as the heartbeat beneath my cheek.

The tears slowly began to subside, my body relaxing into his as the exhaustion took over. I was grateful for the silence, grateful for the way Logan just was - strong, unyielding, and never pushing me for more than I could give.

Eventually, my eyes grew heavy, the grief and pain pulling me into a restless sleep. The last thing I remembered was the feel of Logan’s hand still in my hair, his quiet strength wrapping around me like a protective shield.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I let myself drift into sleep, safe in his arms.

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[muwapsturniolo]

Hockey!matt

First post in the AU!

MATT STURNIOLO: PASSIONATE OR A HOT HEAD?

"Matthew Bernard Sturniolo, a 24-year-old triplet native to Boston Massachusetts. According to his parents, from a young age he and his youngest brother Christopher Owen Sturniolo, were always interested in sports. Seeing this, the parents decided to throw the boys in any sport they could. They started off playing for their town's soccer team, a typical thing for most kids to do. However, it seemed as if the sport wasn't enough for a young Matthew. It was too easy, he cleared all the other kids without even trying. Seeing this, his parents threw him into another sport, lacrosse. Now this held Matthew over for a long time until it became boring, he needed something more.

That's when hockey came into play, a sport most boys in Boston find solace in during the cold months. The sport seemed to be Matt's calling, the ice feeling like a second home. His talent was natural, something most people couldn't obtain no matter how much they trained. He ended up loving the sport so much, he made it his full-time career.

At age 17, he graduated high school alongside his two brothers and their childhood best friend. All four boys managed to get full-ride scholarships to Boston University, a school that had many NCAA wins, and has sent many players to the NHL. Matt took control of the Terriers by force, quickly becoming the captain when only being a freshman. Many of his former teammates and coaches had good things to say about him, but something stood out to me. That something was his anger.

"He was a hothead, always shouting and yelling at us during practice"

"There were a couple of times where he broke his stick and punched a locker after losing a game"

"I remember he argued with our coach one day. The argument was so bad, both of them just ripping into each other. It escalated so quick, one second they were shouting and the next Matt was throwing punches."

All of these are quotes by old teammates who would like to stay anonymous.

It was an evident pattern that managed to follow him to where he is now, the lucky star of the Boston Bruins. I had the specialty of sitting in on some of the practices, seeing how the men work with each other. Just like I expected, Matt was a force to be reckoned with. He yelled and berated some of his teammates, even going as far as getting into an argument with his own brother. It's hard to tell if it's just him being driven by passion, or if he simply has anger issues. I chose to go with the latter considering what I saw during the first game of the preseason.

The Bruins were losing against the New York Rangers, not that the score mattered. The preseason is mainly for the coaches to evaluate their team and see who fits where. So why was Matt Sturniolo causing fights, yelling at refs, and being an overall hothead? He resembled the Hulk, the brute green giant who was also a hothead when angry. It seems as if no matter the situation, training, preseason, or the actual NHL season, he was locked in and out for blood.

He's passionate about the sport, perhaps too passionate. Would it be his downfall? Would the Bruins let him go and leave him to reminisce about his glory days while he rots? We will have to tune in to this year's NHL season to find out."

Y/n Y/L * october 3rd, 2024

AHHHHHH A NEW TROPE/AU!!!!! I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY THIS! IF THIS IS CONFSUING IM SORRY! I TRIED TO MAKE THIS INTRO THE ARTICLE READER (AKA YOU) WROTE ABOUT MATT WHICH JUST SO HAPPENS TO BE HOW YALL MEET! I HOPE THIS GIVES A GOOD BACKGROUND! I PLAN ON DOING FICS FOR THIS AU BUT IM ALSO WILLING TO DO BLURBS JUST HOW I DID FOR BUNNY!READER!!!

LET ME KNOW WHAT YALL THINK!!