#with coworkers who speak so thick I even struggle to understand them sometimes

[rookfern]

sometimes I like to dream about a world that does not immediately mark me as less intelligent for my accent

[valwrite]

O1 pride / shock; andre layton series

general masterlist

series masterlist

series taglist: @gollyderek @fanfic-addict-98 @lets-love-little-me

summary:  hell has frozen over and, in it’s place, snowpiercer has emerged. it’s many carriages carry secrets: affairs, murders, betrayals. and that’s only mentioning andre layton’s secrets. when a serial killer appears, detective layton is called on to the case. though reluctant at first, he agrees to take on the case when he discovers the first victim is rumored to be a once Tallie, an ex-coworker, an ex-lover: Y/N L/N. what starts as a hunt for her killer quickly becomes a hunt for the truth behind her suspicious death. the tail is uprising; his ex-wife is back in his line of sight; all eyes of the train are on him; and all andre layton can focus on is finding Y/N L/N’s body.

series warnings:  angst, character death, smut, infidelity.

chapter warnings: mentions of suicide, details of murder.

fic style: series.

word count: 4292.

author’s note: apologies for the delayed posting of this, i was on holiday and forgot to queue this post. the first chapter follows very closely the actual series but, the following chapters deviate and will follow their own plot, whilst still maintaining some of the show’s main plots. as always, any feedback is welcomed.

Of all the things Andre Layton had thought about when it came to life further up the train, smell was the last thing he'd ever considered.

Crouched over on the floor, he takes in a whiff of the air. There's no thickness to this air, unlike the Tail's air. There is no stench of sweat; or blood; or tears mixed in with the breath he takes. The air in the Tail tells a story of it's inhabitants struggle for survival, all the daily hardships they endure leaving behind a foul stench the Tailies had grown to find comforting. This air is clean. Perhaps a little too clean, the faintest hint of bleach is tickling at his nose. He knows from experience what the smell of bleach could be covering up but pushes those thoughts to the side, preferring to live in blissful ignorance for just this one breath.

His head is pounding, the very first headache he's had since, well, he's forgotten how long it's been, actually. There's always the thought of how maybe the headache is chronic in the Tail, never ending and, therefore, never beginning, bringing Andre to a numbness when faced with such pain. But it's been hours now since he had been forced out of his home, perhaps the quiet consumed him enough to remind him of a life without noise and headaches, only to snatch the rug out from beneath his feet and hand him the worst one he'd dealt with.

Andre's in disbelief still. He knows the Tail is in chaos. The chaos is what kept them all alive, what will continue keeping them all alive. But, uptrain? He's always assumed they were tranquil. What he's quickly discovering is that, while tranquility may have been the surface layer, if someone even begins to dig just slightly, they'd very easily stumble upon savage beasts wearing sheep's clothing. The Tail may very well be a dark and difficult place to live but all of it's travelers had learnt long ago to find empathy in each other, working together rather than just for themselves.

A murder has taken place. Well, actually, two. Possibly three, from the way Officer Till had been arguing in hushed whispers with her superior earlier on, after Andre took a few beatings from the British officer, who's name began with O and ended in asshole. The death tally isn't his main focus either way, rather the job they are attempting to enforce on him is.

It's not like he doesn't understand why or how they came to the decision of requesting - he believes they were more demanding - his services. They have a potential serial killer on the loose and they claim he's the only one on the train with experience in such a field. Of course they were going to come knocking on his door. Only, he's not technically the only one on board with familiarity of crime scenes, just the only detective. And, see, if it weren't for the fact he'd spent however many years has passed watching how the upper class men on the train came and stole food, medicine, life from the Tail, then maybe he would have been a little more giddy about stepping back into Detective Layton's shoes. Alas, they'd made their beds and it was about time they started to lay in it, because they weren't about to get any help from him.

For all he cared, the killer could have at them all till there was no one left but the Tailies. They were the only ones good for anything on Snowpiercer.

"So, you got a body?" Andre stares up at the Brakeman- Doshe? No, no, Roche! - and the voice of the train, the woman who'd introduced herself but he'd tuned out her name. He doesn't need to know the name of the woman who spoke for Mr. Wilford. It was bad enough the man had been too coward to ever properly address the Tail by making a physical appearance, never mind the fact he won't even speak to them over the announcer. He sometimes imagined Mr. Wilford, with a pot belly and a whitened beard, surrounded by nothing but lavish. "Good for you, keep it for yourself, like everything else you lot have."

"This killer is taking lives on board this train." The train's voice starts up again, staring down at him with not a wrinkle of emotion behind her callous eyes. He's met a few women like her in his life, who's eyes remained devoid and near lifeless even when faced with some of the most horrific acts a person could do. "Like it or not, you're a member of this train and-"

"That's the problem with your lot, the Tail's only part of the train when it's convenient to you."

"The tail was always part of the train, just not it's inhabitants." Roche fires out, his brows furrowed and he uncrosses his arms. "The rest of us payed to be here, as workers or as passengers."

"That means my people deserve to pay with their life?" He can feel himself becoming more riled up by the minute, the pain from his previous beating being pushed to a side as he contemplates the repercussions of brawling with the older man. 

"Roche, that's enough." Melanie interrupts them, stepping in the way of Roche and giving Andre no choice but to stare back at her empty eyes. Upon further observation, he catches the first sign of humanity in her. The bags under her eyes, subtle yet there. Dark, wrinkled, pillowy. It seems that exhaustion unites them both, even if their reasons for it are worlds away from similar. "The people on this train need security, Layton. If they found out there's a serial killer on board, the classes would break out in chaos-"

"You seem awfully sure there's only one killer and not just a copycat." A serial killer requires a minimum of three bodies. They has two. Andre wonders if this Melanie woman is unaware of such a technicality and had used the term flippantly, or if there is another body, a third body, he's being kept unaware of. If so, who? And, why?

"All of this, everything Mr. Wilford has worked so hard to keep in order and working, will have been for nothing if we can't maintain the peace. I'm not going to beg for your help, Layton, but just know you'd be saving us all. Including the Tail. You're the only one on board experienced with this."

"Guess the rich didn't consider the fact they'd start killing their own."

"So, will you help?"

This was the question Andre has been asking himself from the moment they'd stripped him away from the Tail; from his people; from his family. He knew, from the second the blonde haired woman had called out his name and butchered their plans for attack, that there was something they wanted from him. It was the same for anyone else who got called up train, there was something needed from a Tailie and it was never something good. 

He can perfectly picture the faces of the Tail all staring back at him as he demanded to be taken back, armed men using all the strength they could summon to pull him out of the way of the closing doorway. Some looked on in horror, fearing for his life under the watchful eyes of the rich. Others gave him nothing but betrayal and anger in their eyes, as if they seemed to believe he'd orchestrated everything to have himself rescued from the Tail. Maybe, Andre wonders, some of them believe Zarah had it planned out, especially after leaving the Tail herself. Perhaps there was someone else they thought had saved him, someone who'd only recently left the Tail. 

If Andre were to choose between being rescued by Zarah or her, Zarah's name wouldn't even begin to cross his mind.

The Tail is angry with him, he knows that for sure. By pure luck, they'd seemed to elect him as their leader, even if they worked as a united force and not an army. If he wants a chance to repair any damage caused to his people, his only real hope is to find his way back home and stay there, until he can charge onward with the Tailies and claim the train for themselves. Leaving the killer out in their playground of terror may just assist him in collapsing the fragile system of the train.

"No." Finally, he has his answer and it pleases him to hear the confidence in his voice, the pride he has for his status as a Tailie shinning brighter than ever before. 

"No?" The train's voice echoes as Roche simply shakes his head behind the woman, muttering some intangible curse under his breath.

"You heard me. Solve your own shit."

She pulls back from him, turning her back to now face Roche and though Andre can hear both their voices speaking in whispers, he can not make out exactly what they are saying. She'd walked out of the small room before he can even register what's happening and Roche has him standing back up onto his feet, a hand firmly grasping at his forearm whilst he carelessly shoves him back into the hall of the train. 

The quiet settles in again and Andre's fleeting attention sinks into memories from life before the cold, a fairly common habit of his which seems to be happening more than usual as of late, since she'd left the Tail much like she'd left him at the park, and the sight of the mutilated body he'd been brought out to investigate which brought back every memory of every case he'd taken on.  

In this current memory, Andre walked into an apartment. 

The room was trashed, with smashed glass and flipped furniture scattered all over the place. Upon first look, he suspected a robbery gone wrong. All around him, officers pulled him each and every way, all sharing their tid-bits of information regarding the on-going investigation, from suspects to who'd discovered the body to begin with.

The body. God, he hadn't even seen it yet but there's already that sinking feeling settling in his gut, the feeling that arrived every time he witnessed another crime scene. It was comforting to him, though disturbing, that such a thing could still rattle his bones and disturb his soul, the overexposure to it not making it any easier to deal with. Andre enjoyed the fact he had an emotional response still, the very thing that proved he was very much human beyond his detective work.

The sinking feeling grew when he saw the victim. A young woman, probably no older than his Zarah, who he liked to think was smiling; or laughing; or simply breathing and alive as he viewed the sight of that deceased woman. There were marks all down her left arm and blood on her fingertips, suggesting a chance that the victim struggled and fought for her right to live. It' was only one bullet wound, right between her eyes, yet that one simple wound ended an entire life. Killed any future, diluted any past and destroyed any present the victim had. 

But there was someone else in the room with him, another woman, though that one was breathing. Her hands were covered by medical gloves and she was crouching by the victim, a pair of tweezers in her hand as she picked at something in the victims hand. 

"Who are you?" She jumped at the sound of his voice, staring up at him with a look of discontent and frustration.

"You made me drop the DNA sample, dude. Not cool." She went back to her tweezers work. "I'm the department's new forensic scientist, Y/N L/N. I take it you are detective Layton?"

"I am." He nodded his head once, taking out his notepad and pen as their task at hand came barreling to the front of his mind, reminding him of the fact there was a very clear murder  victim between the two of them. "What do we know of the victim so far?"

They had made their way down a hatchet hole, with Roche in the lead and Andre a few steps behind, cuffed and with his head held high. His hair brushes gently against his back, a strangely comforting repeat of motion that accompanies his less than pleasant travels throughout the train's cabins. 

"You gotta take me back to the Tail, man." He pleads after Roche announces he's not heading home but, rather, to the man's holding cell. There was a time where it was Andre Layton who would be the one dumping someone in a holding cell whilst proclaiming he would be returning home to his wife, but now he had no wife; and no cell; and no badge that mirrored his past. "The Tail's all I got in the world."

The lead Brakeman does nothing but shake his head in response and Andre sighs, tired of fighting but nowhere near ready to give up. 

They're plunged into chaos suddenly, sirens echoing up the train as Andre feels himself be stripped away from Roche and slammed full force into the metal caging surrounding him. The fresh bruising on his ribs screams in pain but Andre only hisses, his teeth clenching to bite back the grunt of anger begging to escape him. A man, around the same age as Roche and the same stature as himself, stares back at him with pure hatred. He's dressed in blue armor gear and his knuckles are turning whiter as his grip on Andre's collar tightens. And when he speaks, he spits every word out: "Now we've got a hostage, too."

Even in times of utter devastation, mankind finds a way to create division between themselves. In his life before the weather changed, he was targeted for the color of his skin. Now, he's also chased after for his status on the train. A filthy Tailie. 

"Commander! Let him go." The voice of the train comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once, and Andre is actually glad to see her when he feels the grip on him dissappear. 

"The Tailies have revolted again." The small mouthed women, who Miles refers to as the Executioner but is actually named Ruth, speaks next. 

"Yes. Mr. Wilford is aware."

"Look, whoever they are, I know 'em, okay?" He steps in, hoping to bargain with them. This may be his only chance to both save the Tailies and prove his loyalty to them. "I can help."

"Things are going too far with him-" Ruth's irritating voice pipes up again. 

"Please." He continues nonetheless, focusing only on the voice of the train, who he'd heard be referred to as Melanie. "They'll listen to me."

The Commander is the one to lead him to the Tailies. His grip on Andre is tighter than before and it feels purposeful when he shoves his side into the wall. His Irish accent is distinct enough to remind Andre that he and this man have history, from the initial revolts started by the Tailies, where they fought to keep the very small space of the Tail. Many were lost in the war but it wasn't in vain, it helped the Tailies learn to rely on each other and be a family.

"You've got three minutes." The Commander gives him one last shove, right into a masked soldier's shoulder. 

He's only in the doorway and already Andre can see just how much damage his people have done. It's what they'd been training and waiting to do for so long, he never imagined they'd fail. Bodies lay all over the place, some of Tailies but most of them soldiers. Blood splatter paints the wall in red and lights are flickering at the end of the hall. His people had fought hard. They'd now need to fight harder, once he revealed his very hazy plan to them.

"Tailies! Who's left?" He listens to his own voice echo down the train. "It's Layton."

It takes no more than a second for a familiar voice to chime in, calling back to him: "Layton, you're a coward!"

It's Pike, which doesn't really surprise him at all. The man had always questioned Andre, always been ready to point out his mistakes and share his wrongdoings. 

"Pike?" He says, after a sigh and an eye roll.

Andre finally steps into the bloodied carriage, carefully placing each step on the ground as quietly as possible. So far, all he knows is that Pike is there. And there's no guarantee that man wouldn't try take Layton down given the chance, meaning he had to be subtle and careful in his approach. He steps over arms; and legs; and torsos, the stench of blood so thick in the air he can almost choke on it.

"We don't want you here!" Pike speaks again.

"I'm coming in."

"No, you're not!"

"Who's with you?" No matter what, Andre tells himself that finding out who remains is his top priority. And keeping Pike talking may just distract him long enough for Andre to disarm him in a sudden approach. 

There's three of them on the other side of the cabin. Pike's at the front, blood drying on his hands and a makeshift weapon clasped in one of them. He's stewing in his own anger, on guard each step Andre takes. The other two are pretty much in the same positions, only the biggest of them all has a familiar, though terrified, woman captured in his arms: Till, one of the brakemen who'd been with Andre earlier on that day. 

"How's it going?" He's trying his best to calm them down.

"Yo, Layton, where you coming from, man?" But the betrayal is already so evident in their eyes, their voices, their body language. To them, Andre is looking less like a Tailie than when he was dragged out of there.

"Uptrain, man." Honesty may be his best policy, if he plays his cards right. "Yo, they pulled me up to solve a murder. You believe that?" He sure as hell still didn't. "They're doing us a favor and killing each other up there."

"Bullshit." Pike is still angry but what's new? Andre knows he needs to redirect his anger off of himself and back onto those who are the real enemy. "You're a traitor! This will only end one way."

"Yeah." Andre's hand comes down on Pike's weapon, clasping it in his own strength and pulling it out of Pike's shaking arms. "They're gonna storm in here, and they're gonna butcher us. Everything we've fought for, everyone who's lost their life for this to even be achievable, it will all have been in vain."

"Two minutes!" The Commander's voice yells down the hall and suddenly they're all on edge again.

"I got a family, man. I can't die like this."

"Shut the fuck up, Z!" Pike's grip has returned to the weapon, widening Andre's eyes as he fears the man may strike him down in irrational anger.

"I got a wife and a kid on this train, Pike." Z fights back, enunciating each word with the passion of a devoted husband and a loving father. "Old Ivan offed himself, man. We're dong this for him. He hung himself with an electrical cord. That's what sparked this whole thing."

"Pike," Andre wants to grieve and break down, the loss of Ivan, a gentle soul in a world of unkindness, shaking him to his very core. But he can't. There's no time. "whatever happened between us, we're brothers." Pike's breathing slowly begins to deescalate. Andre loosens his grip on the spear between them both. "I think I got a way for us all to get outta this alive." At last, Pike lowers his weapon, his head shaking as he fights back his emotions. Andre seizes onward, making eye contact with the woman. "Hey. Till, It's okay. It's okay." It doesn't take long for him to convince the Tailie holding her captive to lower his weapon and, with an abrupt apology he wishes was sincere, Andre punches her in the face and watches how she falls down.

There's commotion straight away, with all three Tailies bringing their weapons back up and pointing them at Andre, the fire returning to their blood as  they look at the man they would call traitor. 

"What the hell, Layton!?"

"You need to surrender yourselves to the drawers!" He rushes out, before any of them can harm him. 

"No way!" Pike says.

"It's like sleep! They put you to sleep!" He'd seen them himself, zombiefied in the drawers as different wires and tubes kept their bodies alive whilst their minds slept away the revolutions the train done around the frozen landscape. 

"Okay. For how long?" Z seems more willing to cooperate.

"It's a goddamn coffin, Layton!"

"Listen to me! By my count, I went uptrain 130 cars today, okay? I seen shit none of us could've imagined, alright?"

"What? You seen your traitor wife!? Or your traitor girlfriend?"

"Pike, Old Ivan dreamed of this! I can piece together floor plans, maps, security details. Everything we could ever need to properly storm uptrain, all the way to the engine."

It's in utter tears that all three men throw down their weapons, Pike the most exhausted of all. "Look at the blood!" He cries, crouching on his knees. "I'm done, Layton! I'm done."

"One Tail, remember? It's only a matter of time until the day we take that engine, we're gonna need you waiting uptrain." Andre watches as the other man nods, standing up straight again and clearing his throat.

With the Tailies now in agreement, Andre finds himself stuck between the Commander, Ruth and Melanie, all demanding and fighting over what the fate of the Tailies should be. There's only one thing left for Andre to do, one last sacrifice of his pride to make.

"I'll do it." He speaks only to Melanie really, the others being drowned out in the sound of the train's wheels turning against the frozen track below. "I'll solve your murder. I will get your order back, and in exchange, you'll give mercy to the train."

"Mr. Wilford demands justice. But we can't afford to lose another life. Ruth will take an arm from a Tailie tomorrow." 

Hours have passed since the agreement was made and in a small holding cell lays Andre, his muscular build uncomfortably fit onto a small cot. He misses his bed in the Tail, the bed in his house, the bed in room 322 of the Marigold hotel just down the road from the station. It was the luxury of feeling refreshed every morning; of having a cup of coffee placed on his desk, her familiar handwriting across the attached sticky note that he'd taken advantage of for years. Now, he never even sees her face outside of his own memories. 

For the past half hour, he's been feigning sleep. Roche has been sat guard near his cell the whole time, though he believes the man should be on his way home soon, to his own bed and his own wife. The voice of the train interrupts this though, sneaking her way into the room so quietly Andre nearly opens his eyes and blows his cover.

"Nice work on getting him to cooperate." Roche is the first to speak. "How'd you know he would?"

"I could see it in his eyes. He'd do anything for the Tail, even if it means helping us." He hates the way Melanie speaks about him, like she understands every little thought in his head, every action he makes. Like he's a puppet and she's the puppeteer, moving him around with the strings she'd tied onto his limbs. "We'll get him started tomorrow with the proper investigation. I'll send you a list of anything and anywhere Mr. Wilford deems off limits."

"And what about the victims? Is he gonna get the full rundown or?"

"There's things he doesn't need to know about."

"Like the fact the first one was a Tailie?" Roche asks matter-of-factly and Andre swears he can see him cross his arms, that smug look across his face.

When the voice of the train speaks again, it knocks the wind out of Andre's lungs; stops the beating of his heart; freezes every thought in his head.

"The body of Y/N L/N is to be kept top secret.Detective Layton is not to even hear about her. Understood?"

He hasn't heard her name, her full name, in so long. He knows it's wrong but he loves to hear them call her by her maiden name, instead of by her married name. It's as if, on the moving life of the train, her husband doesn't exist, never existed. Perhaps reality would have been better that way, perhaps they could have survived longer to become more than dirty secrets reserved for nights of pleasure and mornings of ignorance. To even begin to fathom that she was no longer alive, on board the train, feels like more of a betrayal than when he'd last seen her walk out the doors of the Tail. He can remember it now, the anger he'd felt the next day when she'd never returned. It had stung more than when Zarah had left. To think he spent so long resenting her for abandoning them, when there's now the fact she's nothing more than a body in a serial killer case brings bile up Andre's throat.

There are secrets haunting the train. Between the murders and the politics, Andre begins to fear he's now stuck in the mess of it all, swimming blindly in a  sea of lies and being expected to be an honest man. He knows his only hope is to tear the train apart, limb from limb, and peak into the darkness it's trying to cover up. 

If that means uncovering Y/N L/N's fate along the way, so be it. 

[snarkymonkeyprime]

@magic-ramen​, I managed to dredge up the beginnings of that constantine!destiel!au.  I PRESENT IT TO YOU NOW.  :D

  Castiel wasn't quite clear on what he was doing any longer.  Since meeting Desmond, he'd been wandering in a haze, following along after the man like an obedient dog.  All that felt real was the man's voice, all silken softness.  It curled inside him, pulling him one way and then another.  Back at his home, he sighed, fingers nerveless as Desmond licked his neck.  It felt . . . odd.  Not sensual.  Not erotic.  Dark and foul.  He tried to rouse but the heaviness only doubled, his vision wavering.  Had he really drunk that much?

He tried to recall but the night’s events were a blank. He didn’t even remember how he’d met Desmond.  Or where. All he knew was Desmond.

"What's this?" Desmond asked, tapping the notepad opened on Castiel's desk.

Head moving like an automaton, it took Castiel a moment to ponder what he asked.  His dream journal.  A silly idea he'd kept with since high school.  "Dream," he murmured.  He wanted more of Desmond's touch.  Not the questions.  Right?  That didn't sound correct but he couldn't parse why.

"Dreams?"  Desmond licked his neck again, dragging sharp teeth along hot skin.  Something wet dribbled down Castiel’s neck.  "What dreams, little Castiel?"

Castiel's fingers fell from Desmond and he sagged, feeling an arm cold as iron around his back.  "A man," he rasped.  "And light.  It calls to me."  

Why couldn't he see any longer?  His den was well lit, wasn't it?  Why did nothing but shadow come back?  "I . . . it calls me.  He calls me."

Desmond's fingers pierced his arm, hot like pokers.  He might have screamed, if his mouth worked.  Maybe he did scream.  

"Who is he?" Desmond demanded.  His voice no longer warmed Castiel with passion.  It stung like ice, harsh and vile.

"Dunno," he admitted, slurring.  The only consistency had been the man’s appearance.  Tall, brown hair, green eyes.  A shroud of nightmares around him even while he shone like the sun.  And then the light of blue that reached for him.  Cut through the man and tugged at Castiel.  The dreams had begun to plague him following his thirtieth birthday two months prior.  Hadn't stopped since.  Could almost hear the voice during the day.  

A hiss of sound.  A laugh?  "Oh, pretty thing.  You tried so hard this time, didn't you?"  Desmond's tongue burned as it scraped down Castiel's cheek.  "Don't worry, little bird.  I'll make sure you can't feel it when I rip your intestines out."

Desmond’s hand drove into Castiel’s stomach, tearing skin. Castiel grunted, even as blood fell in runnels down his groin and thighs.  Desmond’s hand clenched inside him and only then did he cry out, though it erupted broken and weak.

“At least this time they sent a pretty weapon.”

Castiel sank into shadow, his body leaden, head swollen with darkness.  His head cracked against his desk.  He knew he should fight.  Wanted to fight.  But the will to do so bled out of him like oil, heavy and slick.  And like the clarion call of a hawk, green shattered the shadows.

His body shook in echo of the violent noise that erupted.  Screaming.  Someone screaming, though it gurgled and bubbled.  Something warm and wet spilled down his cheek and he groaned, struggling out from the poisonous weight that pulled at him.  Vision tilted, he saw Desmond; or, rather, what was left of him.  

The lower half of Desmond's face hung crazily, teeth shattered and bone split.  But Desmond, rather than fall, only narrowed vile red eyes.  Though his jaw was nearly gone, Desmond's voice boomed in the bright room.

"You dare?!"

"Yeah, I have that problem sometimes," came a new voice.  The sound of a gun's hammer drawn back.  "You look a little uneven.  Think I should fix that?"  Another blast, shivering through Castiel's very bones.  To his bleary horror, Desmond's ruined jaw lay on Castiel's chest and had he the ability, he would have retched violently.  Instead, he groaned and rolled, falling from the desk Desmond had pinned him to.  Sprawled on the wood floor of his den, he squinted, trying to see the newcomer.

The familiarity cut through his stupor.  Tall.  Brown hair.  Green eyes.  It couldn't be.  Could it?  "It's . . . you," he rasped, his voice little more than a whisper.  Green eyes swung to him, brighter than the lights above.

"Juliet," he called, wariness leaving it sharp, "guard."

A shadow darker than night shifted into Castiel's line of sight.  It reeked of sulfur and stone.  Heat poured off like the burn of smoldering coals.  Twin red eyes, shining like hellfire.  Castiel reached up, touching shadow, feeling a tongue that burned like acid.  He tried to see the man who'd saved him.  To thank him.  But the shadows had returned, softer this time as they crowded around him.  

Castiel swallowed, trying to call out, even as he heard Desmond scream in rage.  The sound of a violent struggle.  All too soon, though, Castiel could hear nothing but a thunderous heartbeat out of the darkness.

~~*~~

When Castiel woke, his gut burned.  He gasped, eyes snapping open only to shut immediately.  Bright, sterile lights.  Glaring walls.  Not his den.  Not his home.

"Mr. Novak?"

An unfamiliar but kind voice.  Castiel tried again, squinting at the speaker.  Tall, brown hair.  Dressed in a suit and overcoat.  The man held out a dark wallet with a badge and shield.  Not the green-eyed man.  He didn’t recognize this one.

"Mr. Novak, I'm Agent Sam Winchester."  He retrieved his badge and tucked it into his overcoat.  Pointing to another man, this one slim and blond, he continued.  "This is my partner, Agent Balthazar Elgin."

Castiel frowned and rasped, "Police?"

Agent Winchester smiled sourly.  "FBI, actually.  Your coworker, Anna, called your attack in.  She apparently stopped by your home this morning when you didn't come to work."

Licking his lips, Castiel continued to furrow his brow.  "Why . . . is the FBI interested . . . in what happened to me?"

Agent Winchester took a deep breath.  "The man who attacked you?  Desmond Reynolds?  He's a wanted serial killer.  You're the first to survive."  He pulled out a small notepad.  "Can you tell me what you remember?"

Shadows.  Fire.  Dreams.  He lifted a hand, dismayed to see an IV rammed into the too-pale skin.  He vaguely remembered being stabbed.  Shot?  He shuddered.  No, this Desmond, had thrust his hand into Castiel's stomach.  His fingers crawled across the clean white sheets.  He could feel thick padding beneath it. How had he survived?

"Mr. Novak?  Desmond was long gone by the time we got there.  He apparently believed you dead."  He cleared his throat.  "Actually, we're lucky Anna found you when she did."

No, that wasn't right.  Someone had been there.  Someone had saved him.  He mumbled as much to the agent.

The man smiled patiently.  "We only found evidence of you and Desmond; and, well, Anna.  No one else was in the home."  He glanced past his partner to the uniformed office that stood in the doorway.  "We have witnesses that saw Desmond intercept your glass at the bar.  We think he drugged you in order to make you his next victim."

It hadn't been that.  Desmond had simply touched him and he'd slipped into a sickly fog.  While in the throes of it he couldn’t recall what had happened, but now, away from the man, he recounted everything.  He’d stopped at a bar for dinner.  Had only stepped inside when Desmond came up to him and touched his hand.  After that, it was as though he watched all that happened from hundreds of miles away.  He could recall with eerie detachment how Desmond had gored him.  He'd fallen against his desk, legs gone.  Blood warm and slick around him.

Castiel opened his mouth to say as much but stopped at the sharp look of warning in the agent's eyes.  He swallowed and shook his head.  "I'm sorry," he husked.  "I can't really remember much."

"Well, I'd say it's a simple case of our lad getting sloppy," Agent Elgin commented.  He smiled at Castiel.  "Lucky for you, you took quite a wound but, not that deep.”  He folded his arms.  “All the same, we do ask you stay in touch, hm?”

Castiel nodded, confused.  “But . . . it wasn’t a knife.”

Balthazar’s eyes sharpened, as though in caution.  “Not a tiny one, no.  Rather large, by my judge.”  

What?  Castiel didn’t protest, however, given the expression on the agent’s face.  “Oh,” he replied, sagging in his bed.

“Dramatic git, I’ll give him that.”  He patted Agent Winchester on the shoulder.  "I'll speak with our darling locals, Sam."  With a flip of the fingers, he slid out the door, taking the officer with him.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Agent Winchester tucked his notepad away and shoved his too-long hair off his forehead.  He looked at Castiel gravely.  “What did he use?”

Castiel shivered, still seeing his own insides in the man’s hands.  “His . . . hand.”

Sam winced.  “Shit. I was afraid of that.”

“How?”

The agent pursed his lips before walking to the door and checking that it remained secure. He ignored Castiels question and asked one of his own.  “You saw him, didn't you?"

"Who?"  Startled by the sudden change, he clenched his fingers atop the blanket.

"Dean.  My brother."

"Your . . ?"

The agent took a seat at Castiel's bedside and rubbed his face.  "Brother," he mumbled.  "Dean.  Tall, like me.  Brown hair.  Green eyes?"  He snorted.  "Smartass loudmouth?"

That definitely rang familiar.  The eyes stuck out for him the most.  He nodded.  Lifting a hand, he waved it around his chin.  "Desmond's jaw . . . was . . . it was gone."

"But he still spoke, didn't he?"

Shivering, Castiel nodded.  "What was he?"

"I don't know what they're called; Dean calls them every name in the book but what they actually are.”  He sighed.  “Balthazar and I were sure Desmond would be one of them; I’m just sorry you had to witness it, too.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed.  “I don’t understand.”

Sam jerked a thumb to the closed door.  “It’s Dean who usually gives us a head’s up on these things; even though he stays away for the most part."  He leaned back, his fingers laced over his stomach.  "He’ll leave a clue of some kind, though, when it's not a normal crime."

That didn’t answer anything.  Why did this agent appear to know what Desmond was?  Why did both of them?  And just what was Dean and the shadow that followed him? "What did he want with me?"  

"You'd have to ask Dean that," Agent Winchester squinted at Castiel.  "Come to think of it, I'm surprised he hasn't shown his face yet.  He's kind of arrogant.  He'd want you to know he saved your ass."  The agent said it with warm amusement, however.

But, Castiel should have been dead.  What had this Dean done to save him?  He remembered, vaguely, dark smoke and brilliant red eyes.  A heavy weight that surrounded him.  The name Juliet.  He rubbed his forehead, trembling again.  "It wasn't human, was it?"

Agent Winchester's humor faded.  He shook his head.  "Maybe at one point?"  He winced.  "Like I said, Dean knows more.  Bal and I do what we can on this end but, he’s not always up front on what these things are.  The most I get is some odd message now and again so that I know he's still kicking."

"Is your brother human?"

Agent Winchester's open countenance immediately closed.  "I think that's enough for today.  I'll check in with you again tomorrow, Mr. Novak."  The man stood and waved a hand.  "We'll have a guard stationed until you're released.  In the meantime, rest."

Castiel watched him go, all the more unsettled.

​

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Like Love: Dex

CW: Incredibly mentally messed up but still perfectly consensual and sweet spice! PG-13/Mild R spice levels, non-graphic. Referenced past abuse. Pet whump and some dehumanization (not during the spice).

Tagging the #FreeDex2020 Crew: @whumpiary, @iaminamoodymoodtoday, @whump-it, @neuro-whump, @spiffythespook, @redwingedwhump, @burtlederp, @brightside-blue, @pepperonyscience, 

See end of piece for a special note.

The only person who allows Dex his voice is a man he hates so deeply, and fully, that somewhere in the past twenty years it has begun to feel like love. 

Each visit, every moment alone was another break in the iron wall Dex had built between himself and the hell on earth he was living. 

Each time the man’s fingers skimmed his skin with expert care not to hurt him - and every time they even more expertly did hurt him, in exactly all the wrong and right ways - every direct command or murmured suggestion… 

Every soft you’re fine, Dex and gentle darling or good boy has built, in him, a solid foundation of feeling that started as loathing and, at some point, became something else. The man broke down the wall but had rebuilt something else in its place. 

He goes to the man by her design - with her allowance - at her command. 

Dex cannot lie to her; his ability to deceive her disappeared long ago, under the downward swing of her discipline and the endless days of blaring, featureless white that live in his memories from training. 

Dex drifts through his life in a dream he cannot wake from, but he jolted to awareness when she told him the man was in a hotel room nearby. So close, after five years apart.

“He asked about you. Do you want to see him, Dex?” Madam had asked, looking up at him from her seat at her desk in the home office, looking over some papers with her half-lens reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. 

Madam has gray starting to grow into the roots of her hair that she dyes away. Dex has gray, too - a scattering of pale hairs beginning to speckle through the dark. His is left as it is, to filter in a little more each year.

He was nineteen when she took him for her own. He was twenty-two the first time the man was alone with him and crooked his fingers, murmured, Come here, Dex, and he went. 

By twenty-four, he was lost.

When she asked, Dex had stood there staring at her, too aware of his idle fingers, the way his shirt felt shifting over his skin. He told himself absolutely not - the man deserved prison, or worse, had done terrible things. Dex had stood by and watched him do terrible things.

On occasion, Dex was the person he had done those terrible things to.

Still there was a part of him, the small tiny warm bit that he had wrapped deep inside of himself, held for his very own and away from her cold, all-seeing eyes, that had whispered he asked about me.

He had merely signed to her, in response to her question, that he would allow her to decide as always. He did not dare let the bit of him that did not belong to her show.

She wouldn’t like it, to know that there was a part of him that might belong to anyone else - the part that still felt anger, and loathing, and defiance, and the hate like love. He hid these things under a placid surface that no stone could disturb. The perfect pet, the picture of serenity. He could be fully trusted. He was so perfect for her that he was avoided even by Madam’s other Boys, because he would tell her anything she asked… anything, of course, but this one small thing.

I want to see him.

She had simply looked at him for a moment, in the silence, with a smile he could not read but did not like. He did not like any of her smiles, not even the ones that meant relief for him, or that the worst was over. It was only a matter of time before the worst came around again, after all. 

“Obedient as always, Dex. You have always been a particular favorite of his. I’ll make the arrangements.” She had paused, tapping her pen on the papers in front of her. 

Dex had tilted his head to see, unobtrusively. It was some kind of sketched-out jewelry design, perhaps - little metal circles with stones set into them, what looked like silvered thread or wire stringing them together.

She had tapped louder until his eyes jerked back to hers.

“That is not your business,” Karen Renford said coldly to the man she had kept kneeling at her feet for twenty years. There were days she spoke to him more like a friend than what he was - but in this moment she was as cold as ever. “He is your business now. I don’t care how you feel about him. You’ll go.”

He nodded, slowly, and it was only when he was back in his bedroom that he had allowed himself a smile - because she would have cared so much if she had known what Dex’s feeling actually was.

He was not going for her. Not this time.

“Good evening!” The clerk working behind the desk greets him as he enters the hotel, automatic doors sliding open on either side of him. If he were anything else, Dex thinks with no small hint of bitterness, they might have added sir.

He looks the part of a sir, after all - tailored black pants and a custom-made deep green sweater that the man had bought for Dex himself during a visit maybe ten years ago. 

Dex had kept it immaculately cared-for, and it had been wrapped and packed away while the man was in prison.

Five years. It has been five years since he has seen him except for over Karen Renford’s shoulder, with thick panes of bulletproof glass between them, in the prison the man was meant to stay in for life. The hate twists in him, only it’s not really hate any longer. 

Or if it is, then maybe Dex has lost track of which feeling is which.

He looks the part of a sir… but the small, brightly colored blue booklet he holds in one hand - and the band of green leather around his neck, dyed to perfectly match the color of the sweater - ensures he can’t pretend to be anything other than what he is. Not that Dex would even know where to begin feigning freedom he doesn’t have.

He walks up to the desk with a small, placid smile on his face, sets the duffel bag he carries in one hand down and the blue booklet on the counter of the desk, open to the page with a photo of his face. When he turns forty, he’ll need a new one - and Box Boys his age are so rare that he watches the clerk’s face move from a blank lack of recognition to bafflement to a slowly dawning understanding.

“Oh… oh… oh! You’re one of, of, those-… um… oh, okay. So you have your passport, um, do you… what name is the room under?”

Dex holds up one finger, and presses it against his own lips, then mouths, mute.

The clerk only stares at him.

Dex sighs and holds out his hand for the pen and pad of paper he can see on the other side of the desk, pointing at it politely. The clerk stares down at his own hands, blinking, then back up at Dex.

“I swear to God,” a second, female voice says from the office door hidden just to the side behind the desk. A woman with bright red hair leans slowly out, only her head visible. “He’s telling you he needs to write it, Brent. Oh my god. If you get us another customer complaint, I will murder you. And it will be slow and it will be messy, you cretin.”

“I’m pretty sure you get fired for murdering your coworkers,” The clerk - Brent, apparently - snaps, his face flaring red with embarrassment. “I’m, I’m sorry, sir- uh, I mean I’m sorry, pet… I haven’t dealt with-… just a second-… don’t tell your owner, okay?”

Dex’s smile doesn’t change - but it stiffens somewhat. He nods.

If it weren’t for the blue book and the collar around his neck, they would call him sir. Before he was ever old enough to be a sir, that possibility had been taken from him, and he knows no other way of living.

The clerk hands him the pen and paper, and Dex neatly writes the room number he was given over the phone, in the pointy, angular handwriting that he sometimes wonders about… did he write like this before they took his identity away? 

Was he a child, once, with pointy handwriting, struggling with the swirling, rounded shapes of cursive? It’s hard to think he ever was a child. That he hasn’t always been this.

He hands the pad back over the desk, to the clerk who looks at it, then up at him, and then turns to the computer. He doesn’t thank Dex, the common overly-sincere, totally false customer-service friendliness that Madam often bemoans as so uniquely pervasive in America. No, Dex is a pet and so the moment the name is given, he is dismissed until they have to speak to him again.

His hands do not tighten into fists. They stay neatly, calmly at his side. He has lived like this, after all, for his entire adult life, the only life he knows.

He is not quite human… except with the man he hates. Unless the last five years have changed them both too much. But Dex is fairly certain he has never been allowed to change at all, except for those ways the man himself is responsible for.

“Oh! Looks like your owner’s already checked you in. Cool, cool. Okay. All right. Okay, Earnshaw, you head right up, Mr. Heathcliff is waiting for you.” Dex blinks - once, twice - at the names. 

It’s only after a full second has passed that he realizes two things simultaneously… the clerk has no idea that those names are references to one of the most recognizable love stories ever written… and that if he used such blatant names, the man must have thought the clerk was the stupidest creature he’d ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on.

A smile twitches, just slightly, on Dex’s serene, nearly-expressionless face.

That, at least, he and the man he hates agree on.

He takes the keycard he is given and his passport back, ignoring the stamp that marks him as PET and prints his Box Boy number and barcode along the bottom edge… as if they weren’t already tattooed into his left wrist, like all the others. He’ll be forty soon and it won’t matter at all, he’ll still be marked PET on his passport until the day he dies.

His stomach starts to twist in knots as he walks across the lobby to the bank of elevators. The man is on the top floor, because of course he is - nothing less for him, even on the run, even having just escaped from a prison that had given him multiple life sentences.

He deserved those life sentences.

He deserves worse.

But still Dex’s stomach is in nervous, excited knots as he presses the number 14, notes absently the missing thirteenth floor between 12 and 14. Superstitious hotel owner, maybe. His heart is beating hard inside his chest, and he tells himself it’s fear… but it isn’t.

In five years, he has not seen the man he hates, and five years is long enough to admit to himself that he misses him. The man he hates - hated - gives him his voice back, will wait to hear it, bring it out patiently, and afterwards whisper into his ear I want to hear you again, darling.

Each time the elevator moves past a floor, the light changing number by number, Dex’s eyes jerk to it, as though he can make it happen faster simply by staring. Faster or slower, he doesn’t know which he wants it to be, because he can’t stay long.

Madam will want him back.

She’ll want him to report to her if there’s anything he sees that Madam doesn’t know about. Karen and the man have been friends since just before Dex came to live with her (before she broke you, he thinks, and then he locks that thought down as tightly as he can) and still Karen has plans, and thoughts, and a purpose she doesn’t always share.

She wants Dex to share that purpose with her.

He is here for his own purpose - and the man’s - not hers.

Fourteenth floor.

The elevator beeps once and he balances through the final drop as the elevator stabilizes.

He takes a deep breath as the doors open, trying to steady himself as he steps forward and out into the hall. Hotel carpet - swirling abstract geometrics in vibrant nonsense patterns of reds and yellows and blues, textured walls in a simple cream color. Mirrors hang across from the elevators, and Dex looks right at himself when he comes to a brief stop to check the sign to know which way to turn.

He checks one more time to ensure that his hair is combed just to the side, that his sweater hangs just right on him still - the way it did when the man first gave it to him - that he… looks good.

If they were any other people, he might be a man going to meet a lover.

But they are who they are, and he is a human pet sent to give his body as a welcome home present to a convicted murderer. They are a broken man who isn’t even legally considered a full citizen… and a man who tortured people for decades until he was finally caught.

And still he wants to look good for him, to live up to what he expects.

I was broken before you, Dex thinks. But I am broken for you, now.

He turns left into the hallway following the numbers on the doorways, feeling with each step a little dizzier, breathing more shallowly. The sound of his own pulse is deafening inside his mind, in his ears, at his wrists and neck. 

Dex floats down the hallway as the human wreckage he became a long time ago, intent on his purpose - not Madam’s purpose, his. He’s a man made of drifting boards from a shipwreck, floating boxes and crates. He is the twisted coil of rope that washes up along the coast of Madagascar months after a volcano erupts in Polynesia.

But the man is the coastline that wants the wreckage, just as it is.

He stops in front of the door - room 1432, and Dex wonders absently if there was ever a Box Boy given that number, before they had to keep adding digits.

Finally, he takes a deep breath and knocks - two long knocks, three short raps. Just as Madam said to.

When he hears steps, he takes in a breath and forgets to exhale. 

The doorknob turns and Dex stands there like any other man - except for the leather around his neck, except for the very foundations of him that were shattered and remade.

Except that he is not any other man, and neither is Wright Farling.

For the time Dex’s breath is held - the door swung open - he and Wright simply stare at each other.

Wright had always looked young for his age, but time, it seems, has caught up with him. The shift from forty - the last time Dex had seen him without the orange prison jumpsuit - and forty-five has taken its toll, etching new lines into a handsome face.

They’re smile lines, mostly - the same ones that had been forming before he was locked up. Wright was always smiling, always joking except for when he wasn’t, always ready to listen to another’s joke… even ready to laugh at Dex’s humor, when he signed his own wry commentary to the movies they watched or the music they might listen to.

There are other lines now - on his brow, around his mouth - that indicate not humor but an increase in ferocity.

“Dex, darling,” Wright says, and there’s an edge to his voice, something that brings a twist of some terrible, wonderful anticipation in Dex’s core. “I’ve been waiting for you.” 

His whitish-blond hair is whiter, the change in his easy former lifestyle to prison life and his exposure to the other inmates has left a harder set to his features… but the confidence is still there, the hint of winsome pleasantness that suffused his expression.

Dex drops the duffel bag at his own feet without thinking and holds up his hands to sign, I have been waiting, too.

The smile he receives in return is brighter than any he’s ever given him before. There was something genuine, there. Wright leans down to pick up Dex’s bag and tosses it behind him carelessly, and Wright Farling is never careless.

He looks like a man who has gone five years without something precious, and has suddenly remembered how important it really is, how much he had appreciated having it.

Dex knows his own face must look exactly the same.

I hate you so much, he had mouthed once in Wright’s arms. He has said it a thousand times, a thousand different ways, and now he can’t find it in him to say it at all.

Wright tilts his head, his eyes dropping from Dex’s to his mouth, taking in the first hints of lines at the corners. Dex smiles so rarely that laugh lines struggle to etch themselves into him. 

He smiles now, for Wright. What do you want me to do? He signs, and Wright grins.

An old song and dance, and they both know all the steps.

“Come,” Wright says in a low, soft voice, and crooks two fingers to beckon him forwards.

Dex moves to him and the door has barely closed behind them before Wright grabs him and slams his back into the wall, Dex huffing silent laughter and Wright not even bothering to keep his own laughter quiet as he kisses him with all the desperate intensity that five years of loneliness has built. 

Dex’s arms are around his waist, and his hands are up on either side of Dex’s face and the kiss is nearly painful but neither pulls back or away.

Wright is a drowning man and Dex is air - or the other way around, he is drowning and Wright is the air, or he is drowning in Wright… he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care.

The press of lips, tongues sliding against each other, the pressure of Wright’s hips pushing hard against his - and Dex shifting so he can press back, making a low soft sound in his throat at the dim pleasure already beginning to coil into real heat, the way he comes to life immediately at his touch - it’s everything he’s been missing.

He missed the convicted murderer in his arms, a man who has cracked him apart a thousand different ways, but the man who wants to see the cracks.

“Dex, you wore the sweater,” Wright murmurs when they break apart, rocking his hips forwards until Dex’s own knees buckle just slightly. Wright’s fingertips slide down Dex’s face and to the sides of his neck, almost as though he would choke him. He lingers over the green leather there, the sign of Karen’s total control of him. “Did you do that for me?”

Dex nods, leaning forward just slightly to brush his nose against Wright’s. For you, he mouths, and after twenty years Wright reads his lips as well as he reads every other part of his body and mind.

“Did you miss me so much…?” Wright asks, and for a second there is something like a real vulnerability on his face. By the time Dex blinks, it’s gone, and back instead is the winsome smile. “Of course you did. Let me get this off you, darling.”

His fingers slide along to the back of the leather collar, and Dex tilts his chin up to make it easier for him, arches his back. One of Wright’s hands stays on the buckle and the other slides up into Dex’s short dark hair, twists around the strands. 

“Haven’t felt your hair in five years, either,” Wright says, more to himself than Dex.

Dex lets Wright pull his head back and back by the grip in his hair, breathing harder, jolts of pleasure straight down his body from the fingers that run along his scalp.

“Good boy,” Wright says in his ear, and Dex nearly moans. “Still such a good boy for me.”

Wright’s fingers deftly undo the buckle, making quick work of Karen’s symbol of ownership, and he drops it to the carpet with a soft thump, as if it’s nothing. As if Karen doesn’t control him at all.

Wright taking off his collar isn’t meant to mark him as free - it’s a reminder that he belongs to Wright in deeper ways, ways that cannot be marked with a strip of leather and a metal buckle.

His marrow belongs to Wright Farling - his bones, his nerves, his heartbeat, his mind.

Karen Renford only owns his skin. He gave everything else to Wright so long ago, and she has never noticed.

“That’s better.” Wright’s smile is nearly a smirk, and his hands slide down over Dex’s chest, down his sides to hook into the belt loops of his pants and pull their hips back together. “Much better. Will you speak for me, Dex?”

Once, there had been humiliation in Wright forcing him to speak, pushing him to an edge where his desperation, despair, or anger pushed him past the conditioning and pulled it out against his will.

That has changed, too.

Now, Dex only smiles at him - I am helpless for you, I will do anything you say, anything, forever - and nods. Wright tells him to speak and, despite twenty years of what they have made of him, he tries.

In a life surrounded by evil, Dex will choose the evil that wants to hear his voice.

“Wr-… Wright,” Dex says, hoarse and guttural. He has not spoken in more than five years, since the last time he saw Wright before he was caught at his evil, before they locked him away for it. It’s not a beautiful voice - it’s an ugly sound, and Dex knows it, but Wright never seems bothered at all. He still isn’t.

“There it is,” Wright breathes out, and Dex doesn’t know if he’s happy to hear the name or happy to know that none of his control is gone. Maybe both. “Come, darling. It’s been so long… I’m not letting you off the bed until you can’t leave it.“

What happens when Wright takes him by the arm is less like allowing Wright to lead him and far more like falling into his inevitable gravity, once more, down and down into the darkest parts of himself.

“God, I missed having you, Dex,” Wright says, and he pushes Dex hard in his chest until he falls onto his back on the soft, warm white comforter, hands already at the hem of the pretty green sweater to pull it up and over Dex’s head, mussing up the hair he’d combed so carefully. Dex wriggles to try and help him, Wright sitting on him straddling his hips and holding him down.

Not that he’d run. Not now, not ever again, not from Wright.

“Missed you, Wright,” Dex croaks out, forces from beyond the conditioning that has kept him mute with everyone else. “Missed me?”

Wright pauses, looking down at him with his head tilted, lips parted. There is some analysis behind the smile on his face, the way that his eyes always bare the deepest parts of Dex, pull them out to the light. “Do you need me to miss you, Dex? Do you need me, now?”

“Yes.”

Wright doesn’t answer the question Dex had asked him. Instead, he only watches him for a moment longer and then says, softly, “Beg for me.”

“Please.” In his hoarse, grinding voice, rough from disuse, he begs without hesitating. There is time to hesitate, to think too much, for Wright to tear him apart, later. For now, he runs his hands up over Wright’s thighs to his hips through the fabric of his soft pants, lets them settle there, feeling the heat coming from his skin, and bucks his own hips up to show Wright how ready he is. “Please. I need you, Wright.”

“Good, Dex. That’s very good,” Wright says, and his smile widens. He drops down to hold his weight on his hands, leaning down to kiss him again. “I love hearing you say my name. I’m gonna make you scream it.”

It is when Wright calls his name later, while buried deeply in Dex - when they are both so tangled in each other that Dex barely recognizes he is anything more than an extension of Wright at all - that Dex realizes that it isn’t that twenty years has made the hate feel like love.

It is that, after twenty years of this man’s voice whispering through his blood, his bones, his mind… what he feels for Wright is love.

ENDNOTE: Wright Farling belongs to @spiffythespook. He is used with permission, and Spiffy collaborated with me on Wright’s actions and dialogue!

[imaginesandideas]

Warren Worthington x non-mutant reader headcannons pt.2

a continuation (where the apocalypse never happened oops 🤭)

you’re staff at the mutant fightclub

it’s not like you support what’s happening there, but you feel like looking after the mutants is least you can do to help them

you get to know Warren because you care for injured fighters overtime

slowly he started to trust you and opened up about his issues

you two became close, kind of bonding over the fact that both of you were forced into such living

one night the club is more packed than usually

there’s more guards and they’re well-armed, which only confirmed your worries that something’s off

owner of the place seems more than delighted, because that means more betting, and more inflows for him

you’re only worried about the amount of wounds you’ll have to treat afterwards

or god forbid the ones who won’t make it out that night

you’re out back, arranging something when you hear that there’s a new, blue mutant in the cage

you haven’t gotten a chance to see him yet, so you didn’t really know what to expect

your biggest concern was the fact that tonight Warren was supposed to fight a lot of rivals

you push your way through the gathered crowd

people yelling, beer being spilled on the floor making it sticky and gross just like the rest of the place

looking up you notice Warren and new mutant

he seems young and not experienced in fighting

no wonder he’s utterly terrified

you try to yell at Warren to don’t go too hard on the boy, but he can’t hear you

once he enters the battle mode, there’s not much you can do

it’s about his to be or not to be after all, and you understand that probably better than anyone else in the room

but something is wrong

the mutant, Nightcrawler as they call him, doesn’t even try to fake it

he’s bouncing erratically around the cage trying to escape, and you quickly spot that his mutation has something to do with relocating

you also notice the growing impatience on Warren’s face

for a short moment your eyes meet

and you know that he’s as worried as you are, because he knows what will happen if they won’t start fighting

his anxiety filled gaze lands back on his opponent

you realize that there’s nothing more that you can do

that now you can only watch and cross your fingers

hoping today is not the night you lose him

“Fight!” Warren shouts agitated. “Or they’ll kill us both!”

the other mutant appears to finally get it as he looks around and notices the guns pointing their way from behind the grid

what you did not expect was him being as incoherent to actually hurt Warren

when his back lands on the live wire, you can almost feel the pain yourself

you try to get to the side of the cage where he landed, but people are blocking your way

the mutant flinches back terrified because it seems like he didn’t mean to harm Angel

tears fill your eyes when you see that his wing is broken and charred

but you regain fair view when you see Warren’s expression, and his eyes were already throwing deadly daggers at his rival

your yells are completely muffled by all the people screaming in morbid ecstasy

Nightcrawler backs away and keeps apologising with thick, german accent but suddenly electrified grid is being shut down

the lights turn off and people around you start to panic

your eyes immediately wander to control panel on the other side of the room and you briefly notice a female figure before she disappears

guns go off and everyone runs at the exits

everything is out of control

you’re afraid that all of these moving masses will trample you to death, but at the same time you can’t help but look up in search of Warren

when you spot him, he’s already trying to fly up

and he’s visibly in pain while doing so

you make a mental note to prepare a lot of bandages and rubbing alcohol for later

the thought itself is so natural you don’t even think if it makes sense in current circumstances

and it obviously doesn’t

because as soon as he flies up high enough, he rips the grid and gets away with guns shooting at him from the ground

it’s now that you realise you’ve been holding your breath because you want to scream after him

but your throat is worn and he’s gone

without a single word or a glance

he’s gone and you’re standing frozen in place

“_____! We need to go!”

the voice from behind you startles you, but it’s not him

your coworker doesn’t wait for your response and drags you out and into some dark alleyway few blocks away

you catch your breath and speak up

“What about the mutants?”

“We opened all the cages before everything completely blew up. It’s over.”

you nod mindlessly

it’s over

no more cage fights, no more working against the law

you exchange few more words and hug each other goodbye one last time before heading your way

you don’t know if you’ll ever meet again

or if you’ll ever see Angel again

he’s on your mind all the way home

but so are the people from fight club, and you pull the jacket tighter around yourself at the thought

you can’t help but feel like someone’s out there, watching you

once you close the door to your apartment you let out a long, deep breath out

you’re safe

at least for now

your apartment is relatively small, it’s least you could afford with the shitty money and opportunities you had

you put on a kettle to make some tea to warm yourself up, and then you hear something knocking at the window

you brush it off at first but check it nevertheless

and you stop mid step before rushing to the window, because it’s him

opening the window you step aside to let him inside

though he still has to bend down to fit his wings

the one that’s broken gets caught on the frame and he hisses

“Sheiße!” he curses before collapsing on the floor and you help him to stand up

it’s only now that you notice how bruised he is

his left wing drags along the floor, some feathers are burnt, some just charred

“Warren, what are you doing here? How did you even find me? You’re free now. You don’t have to...” you ask him, voice full of worry as he sits on your kitchen stool.

He leans back groaning.

“I just wanted t-to see you.” He hisses again as he stretches his back. “M-make sure y-you’re okay.”

you can’t help the slight blush that crept on your face at his words

because he cares about you, he came here because he was concerned about your wellbeing

after all you two have been through he didn’t just leave like everyone else, but stayed behind to check up on you

„You’re hurt. Let me help you.”

you patch him up

and while you do, he can’t seem to focus on anything else but you

you try to avoid looking at him and focus your attention on his wounds

but from the corner of your eye you see how soft the look in his eyes is

how he’s more gentle and careful not to knock over anything in your small apartment

how his cocky self is still present yet gone in a way

so different from what you’ve gotten used to

and it makes your heart flutter

he’s also helping you with everything

from applying ointment and putting dressing on the cut, to cleaning up the floor after

you tell him to stay as long as he needs to heal up, and he’s hesitant because he knows you don’t owe him anything now that the underground fights were over

but you insist that you want him gotten well, for the sake of your own sanity and he obliges

he takes the couch

you give him some old shirts that are oversized for you, but definitely fitted him and his wings

he takes everything without a single complaint

the next day you wake up late

it’s probably the first time in months that you’ve slept so peacefully

you get out of your room, completely forgetting about the events of the previous day

hair is a mess, your shirt ridden up and all wrinkled

you’re still yawning when you come into the kitchen and what you witness is beyond your wildest expectations

he’s cooking

or at least trying to cook and not knock things over

or burn his wings

he’s also topless

and if you ever thought that he doesn’t look hot topless in the cage, you definitely do now

you stand there mouth agape until he clears his throat

“Sorry if I woke you up.”

“No, no it’s fine!”

“Thought you might want to eat something. It’s least I can do y’know.” He says nervously rubbing the back of his neck. “After all you’ve done for me.”

you smile at his words and the remaining protective layers around his heart break

and they do so quickly that his neck immediately turns red

you take note that he looks even hotter like this (and you kinda wish he would never stop blushing)

but back to the morning

you end up eating slightly burnt pancakes

he tells you how this was his favourite breakfast food growing up

how his nanny would always add all his favourite toppings

and how nice it is to finally be able to eat them with someone else, and not by himself like the old days

he shares a lot of his memories with you over over the next meals you two share

in a way it becomes your own, tiny tradition

you know how painful it is for him sometimes, but slowly he overcomes his fears

he let’s you in

and you let him in too

you talk about your family, enormous struggles you’ve faced before finally finding your purpose in life, about your trust issues and how it’s totally different with him

because despite different experiences and overall differences between you, you have so much in common

because he doesn’t just nod

he understands

and when you break down crying he’s there to rub your back and wipe your tears

he’s there when the sink is leaking or when you need help with repainting that spot on the ceiling that constantly chips away

or you just need help with carrying shopping bags home

or when you get frustrated with job hunting

or when you’ve had a nightmare and you need someone to hold you

soon it’s more often than not that you wake in your bed, snuggled up to Warren’s side, his arm protectively draped over your waist

you get used to having him

in your home, in your bed, in your life

your guardian angel

it’s been months and he’s fully recovered

he even points out how bright and healthy his wings look after your generous treatment

safe to say it’s been the best months of his adult life

in fact, yours too

but everything has to come to an end eventually, and you can’t keep him caged like this

so one day after coming back home after work - he was still asleep as you were leaving in the morning - you decide to face him to talk about the inevitable

He’s sprawled on the couch but immediately jumps up upon your arrival “_____! Let me heat up the dinner for you.”

You forget what you meant to say for a second, because after all this time it always felt so unreal to watch that caring side of his unfold in your presence. I mean, who would have thought that the most dangerous mutant you’ve ever encountered will be now living with you. And cooking you dinner.

He’s visibly tense as he’s mixing ingredients in the pan. He doesn’t even look up at you when you approach him. He knows

“Angel- Warren, um, there’s something I want to talk about with you.”

He sighs and drops the wooden spoon on the counter with a thud.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just- you know, I thought that maybe-“

“I don’t want you to feel like you owe me something. You’re free, you should be flying somewhere, living your life and...”

“Wait, what?” he stops you with a raised finger, brows furrowed. You’re even more confused.

“Well, I thought that you’re here because you feel like you’re in debt to me or something, but now you’re fine, right? You don’t need me, I’m only holding you back and you’ve already helped me enough, so I thought, you know, we’re even.”

You let it all out so quickly that you had to take a deep breath right after. And you can’t even look him in the face.

If you could, you’d see how pale his face’s gotten.

“We- we’re even? I thought... I thought you wanted me to go because we’re so... different.” you stare back at him not quite understanding what was it really about. “I know that me being a mutant only complicates everything, but I thought we could make it, you know? I know the wings might be a lot to swallow, but I could try and fold them, you know. For you. I don’t even drink now. And I thought, ugh, that you just want me around and not cause I owe you or anything like that.”

“I- oh Warren.” you stand there unable to form a relevant sentence. He’s clearly stressed with all this too.

“Either way I’ll go away if that’s what you want. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“No, no! I mean, if you want to stay...” You reach out to his arm and your eyes meet. You gently squeeze his arm in an attempt to regain your composure. You bite your lip before continuing, voice above a whisper. “I’d like you to stay.”

He’s holding a breath for a moment before his entire face lights up and he chuckles.

“Well, zum Glück!” he laughs heartedly.

you’re pretty sure it’s your favourite sound in the world

he makes a move first, bringing you closer with his arms wrapped around your waist

but not before he makes sure you’re fine with it

you nod and close the distance

he inhales sharply, his neck growing red yet again

“Fuck, I’ve been wanting this for so long. Can I-?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” You whisper back, eyeing him from underneath your lashes.

he grins and leans down to capture you in a slow, passionate kiss

and in the end, after everything you’ve faced together, you were really looking forward to a new chapter in your life

together

~~~~~

Comments, ideas and words of notice are always appreciated 💜

(I decided to tag everyone who expressed their interest in part 2 🙈 so sorry for the delay)

@youthbitch @sloppybitchardtozier @not-12-swans-in-a-trenchcoat @asphyxiating-thoughts @softsmileexol @loirabrasileirabr @anita-e-taylor @anaitasunrise @totallynerdstuff

LMK if you want to be on/off the taglist!

Warren taglist: @thesecondlastjedi @fourmisfitz @shae-is-not-ok @simplyvictoria-93 @rockyroadthepastryarchy @hisatumb @samantha-is-fandom-trash @ziamhathrisen @silvver-rose @mcrmarvelloki @whatthefluffrichard

[twodrunkencelestials]

Rituals and Rope

So, this is my first piece of actual writing in a while! First fic in a while too. :D

Thanks to @archetypal-archivist for all the chats planning this, the rest of this AU, and the beta reading!

Notes: In this AU Jon is an avatar of the Web, has been since around the time he met Georgie. He and Martin have been dating since early season one basically? I think that's all one needs, besides the fact that this is set late season 3.

I don't want to spoil too much since there will be more of this 'verse coming. I have a LOT of ideas.

********

The Strangers' ritual day was creeping closer and Jon could not shake the feeling that they weren't ready. He was listening to the Archivist and her assistants' plan, feeling foolish and worried when he'd decided to weave. He pulled out one pair of his extra legs and started to weave, half listening. He wasn't sure why exactly, but he knew a tug from the Mother when it came over him, something as familar as breathing, and Jon followed the instinct. 

It took only about twenty minutes of overheard arguments before he realised what he was weaving. Rope. It was rope, to wind further around the Archivist and her people, so that their odds of finding their way out of the Unknowing were just a bit better.

His hands stopped almost on their own, when Martin came over to sit by him. Jon realised he had finished the first rope. It felt...right in his hands, just as it would wrapped around their wrists. It was not long or thick, not really, but it was strong enough, physically and metaphorically to help. 

"Jon?" Martin, his sweet Martin asked cautiously, hand hovering over the rope.

"Ah, try not to touch it, this one is not for you." The words were out before Jon really could grasp what they meant, before his hands set the rope aside to start another.

"It's for them," he clarified, blinking his extra eyes and motioning toward the group, now huddled in tense contemplative silence, "for the Unkowning. A way out, I think."

Right now, he knew he did not look terribly human, with an extra set of arms and eyes out. Jon normally tried to hide these when among the others, for them more then himself. Martin might not be afraid of them, but that didn't mean it wasn't a stark reminder of his inhumanity, of his more monsterous nature.

"You think?" Martin murmured into his shoulder, head leaned and watching the smooth motions of his boyfriend's odd limbs. 

"It just kind of came to me, I think. The Mother must think them idiots if I'm getting this prompt." 

Martin just laughed a little, and half shrugged. "That's not entirely wrong. It's a half-baked plan at best, but what else can we do?" 

Jon glanced up to see that a different argument begin, this time between Tim and Melanie. It was heated and Martin stood to try his hand at calming his bickering coworkers. 

Another rope, completed, before he knew it consciously, this one far longer, and Jon thought "Daisy", before he put it aside as well. 

He was nearly halfway through another, one mentally marked "Tim", that was thicker and softer then the others, before he was interrupted by Melanie. Her eyes were dark and stormy.

"Are you even paying attention to the planning, Mr. Spider?" 

Her question is nearly a compel, snarled as it was. Jon frowned a little at the nickname and decided to answer truthfully even without the tug. "Not since the second argument. You've been bickering too much for me to really think any of you know what you're doing."

That little twitch of teeth and brow and eye that Melanie gave was fun, her near-permanent anger a candle and flame that was too amusing to not poke at most of the time. Not right then though, not with this urge to create and entrap and assist that had him strung along helplessly.

It seemed he'd got everyone else's attention by now too, thanks to the angry Archivist. 

"And just what are you planning on doing with those Jon?" It was Tim, and he was a ball of lightning ready to shock, despite the air of unease Jon also sensed from him. "Going to make us dance like puppets?"

It was tempting, but Jon resisted tugging on the invisible threads he already had around all of them, just to prove Tim's anger correct. He tamped down on it, and remembered Annabell's warning to him to be more subtle with these people.

"Wrap them tighter, but make sure they don't know."

It was a lesson he had forgotten once with them, and would not again. 

"Not exactly, Tim. They're a backup plan to get you idiots out of the Unknowing. A lifeline out of that madness." 

The first rope, he'd decided, was for Basira. She struck him as the type to need less help, but he couldn't place why. Either way, when he finished Tim's rope, he set it down and glanced up at Melanie, actually irritated. 

"Yes Archivist? What are you still glowering at me for?" 

Here he was, helping these people, had offered them another way out, and now they were ungrateful? 

Jon thought, a bit visciously, but he held back the displeasure that had formed.

His hands still had the urge to weave and Jon would be damned if he did not follow it to it's end. 

"What you apparently missed Jon, was the question about why some certain other Powers haven't tried a Ritual yet. Or why they won't. Care to answer?" 

Melanie's gaze was too sharp on his hands, his legs, which had begun to weave again. He had decided to ride his impulse, despite the creeped out gazes of Tim and Daisy.

"Do you really want an answer? Think carefully about your question Archivist. And just how you ask."

Some of his extra eyes crept out again, blinked, then just stared, a warning and an offering both.

"Why haven't you and your ilk tried your ritual yet?"

Jon suddenly felt that, the sweetness of the compel wrapped around his throat and tongue like too many sticky webs. He glanced up into Melanie's eyes, both amused and annoyed at the newly-broken promise she had given not days earlier.

"Are you really, really sure want to Know?" He had to confirm again, before she- before they- got an answer they probably wouldn't like.

She nodded, firm, though Martin looked nervous. His boyfriend already knew the answer, as Jon had been quite plain about it before. 

Too many eyes blinked for another second, again, and Jon saw in sharp clarity the webs that had been woven around the all people here. It filled him with something dark and pleased, had pulled out the most spidery parts of himself that had just recently been fed.

Before that golden Archivist web got too strong, or the truth slipped out too wholly, he  gave a fanged little grin and answered as offhandly as possible. 

"Mother of Puppets has never been attempted, no. Why would we want a world of puppets that when we already have that? The world as it is provides plenty of prey, and it's always much more interesting when it can struggle and fight back, web-trapped as they are." Jon paused, gave a little puppeteer-like twitch of his human hands, as he enjoyed the brief silence, before he added,  "The Hunter over there no doubt understands that instinct."

Okay, so maybe Jon hadn't mentioned so much of the why to Martin, who looked a bit uneasy, but not surprised. Basira too, looked grimly pleased. Jon smiled, and waited for the silence to shatter.

"Jesus fuck. Sometimes I forget you're a monster, and then you say shit like that." 

Melanie twitched and backed away a little, all without looking at Jon. He only tilted his head, amused. 

"You did ask, don't you forget that Archivist. You even used a compel, like you promised you wouldn't." 

The others sprinkled in their own little bits of commentary, to which Jon had only paid half attention. Right now, only the Hunter and the Archivist could truly understand how much joy one could take in trapped prey and their helpless writhing. Sure, it may have manifested differently for both of them, but it did not mean that they did not understand the deep satisfaction. 

No matter how in denial the Archivist was. 

Even sweet Martin was still too human for that right now.

Tim was giving him a look that Jon chose to ignore when he asked, "Was that all you wanted from me? I am trying to finish a project that may save your very lives after all. If that isn't as important to you as useless questions..."

Melanie waved him off, but the crinkle between her brows still there. Good. 

"I'll explain what will be done with them when I finish. Now please, leave." 

Jon put a little bit of a pull meant for everyone except Martin and resumed his weaving. 

The group backed off to one of their desks halfway across the room, and left Martin hovering between Jon and the others, unsure. 

Jon, instead of speaking, pointed to the other half of the room with a free finger and mouthed the words "later" through a grin.

He lost himself to his work again, spinning and weaving the small details into the rope almost mindlessly.

 It was probably only 20 minutes later when Jon finished. He admired the rope for Melanie, feeling more then seeing the subtle eye motif and subtler web one. It was thicker then the rest, and harsher feeling, catching on his little cuts, when he ran his fingers tips over it.

Tim's, he found while admiring it, had a strong Web feel, and that left Jon concerned. He cast a quick look over Tim and remembering the jab about puppets, bit his tongue. No need to rock the boat right now.

He felt Basira's, and found it colder, lighter then the rest, though no less strong. It also seemed like it did not want to be handled, even by him, so he let it go. It landed, the whisper of its silk different then the rest.

The way Daisy's handled, it felt heavy, soft and comforting like normal silk, a bit like flower petels, but far more binding. It worried him, in a way even Tim's did not. There was no sign of Hunt, of Blood, of Search for Prey. Fear stilled Jon's tongue and thoughts, and he left it at that.

Jon picked up his gifts gingerly, tenderly, and concealed his more inhuman parts. No need to unsettle further then he already had. 

"Here," he annouced to the huddle, his most pleased and charming grin on. "I've finished. These will help. Do not get them mixed up, or else. I can be of no help if that happens."

Jon muttered the last part grimly, holding out Basira's first. The less time he had to hold it, the better. She took it more or less without suspicion, and the rest followed suite. Tim muttered an ungrateful thanks, and Daisy took hers without a word. 

"Melanie."

The Archivist was last, the rope more presented then handed, although Melanie did not even seem to notice. Jon hoped the Beholding did, and perhaps looked a little more favorably upon their plan now. The Web most certainly did.

"So, what is my part of this ridiculous plan now?" He asked, teasing and a little more energised now. 

Martin smiled at him, pulling his hand into a clammy, firm grip and began to explain the Plan.

***

(It's later, later, when they're home that Jon weaves something for Martin. Something consciously done, and filled with as much of his affection as he can put into it. It has webs and eyes and hearts weaved into every part of it, and Jon hopes Martin understands all it means to him when the man wears it the day of the Plan, and the days before and the days after.)

[fierywizardmonarchived]

The meeting pt 2

Don reaches for one of Chester’s hand, holding it “You're a fucking--” giving up mid-sentence, he turns over and starts running, dragging Chester along “where's the nearest exit?!”

Chester looks around the tavern “I'd say the nearest is to the left, sharp turn so watch out… also if you didn't like ‘em, dunno why you stopped me from beating the data outta them”

“Okay, first of all, you're out of your mind. Second of all, you're out of your fucking mind, we have to get out before they--”

“Listen I'm not outta my mind, that was the only way out the restroom, you idiot. I had to do something to give us a way out!”

Sounds of plates crashing and some commotion and the tank-looking digimon getting up and DemiDevimon screaming something about a "get him"

They reach a side door and slam it open only to be noticed by three Knightmons at the front entrance. Don mutters under his breath “... oh for fuck's sake”

Chester raises an eyebrow towards the Knightmons “Are those knightmon for me or you?” all the while his hand that's free is slowly going to his match stick on his side.

“Of course they're--” he stops, blinking, then looks at Chester “... why would they be after you?”

“No reason.” he says as he rips his hand away from Donovan's grip and then winds up his matchstick, scrapping it roughly against the floor of the tavern making it catch fire and throws the powerful flame streak hurtling at the knightmon.

Don stays motionless for a moment of silence due to sheer shock, then sighs “...great, talk about a commotion. And I was hoping to reach the East port quietly. Uuugh…” he reaches inside his coat, taking out a Tommy gun and aiming at the MechaNorimon, who was finally making their way to the duo“I'll distract the Mecha - assholemon, you make a nice sturdy firewall between us and the knights so we can escape from this mess. Got it?”

“Sure, got it.” he shoves him roughly before taking the other match with his hand scraping them on the floor and taking another strike making a blazing wall of heat “AND HOW DO YA THINK YOU'RE GONNA GO QUIETLY WHEN THERE'S THREE KNIGHTMON RIGHT THERE. YA AIN'T!”

“Ever heard of stealth, or does your head shine way too brightly for you to even grasp the concept?” the bullets from Don’s gun start firing, muffling his own voice alongside the noises and screams. The bullets ricochet against the Mechanorimon's armor, giving the tank-looking digimon enough time to swing their long arm towards Don. Chester takes cover by a nearby table, flailing all the way when the bullets come back to his direction. Don, however, is unable to avoid the Mechanorimon’s attack, and the Astamon takes a hard hit on the side, crashing against the wall behind him.

“Yep. Escape time. Ow” the world dances around him and he struggles to get up, as Mechanorimon returns his arm back and is preparing to hit him again.

Chester stops for a moment before looking at the exit and grabbed don roughly, dragging him out the tavern “Come on, I know a way off the path that we can stay away a while!”

“Watch the scarf, watch the scarf!” Don scrambles to his feet to follow Chester, another arm from the Mecha slashing a table as they run past it and off the tavern “I can't believe I'm trusting you with this, but... lead the way. I guess”

Chester starts to run straight before dashing suddenly to his right and into the woods. Don takes the opportunity to fire another bullet hell behind them, stopping the knightmons in their tracks. Meanwhile, they keep moving, Chester making zigzags in his path before going left coming to a small clearing within the forest.

Chester then takes his hands off of Donovan's wrist and walks a bit away from him.

"Should have lost ‘em cause I doubt they could keep up with all that weight."

"they-- they're not... the fast types, yeah." he says between breaths "how come you know this area so well? Do..." another breath intake "Do you live around here?"

Chester just looks at Donovan and gives him a pat on the back before he answers "Yeah I live around the area, been so for a while now." He gives a shrug  "I go to that tavern pretty often, get kicked out sometimes hence why I've seen knightmon before."

Don lets out a sharp breath before adjusting his coat and scarf "good, maybe your recklessness and overall poor behavior can be used as a red herring. Just gotta buy a few digimons in the area so NeoDevimon doesn't come straight to this town" he gives out a long breath, straightening his back “By the way, I believe a different place to spend the night is needed now… any suggestions?”

Chester narrowed his eyes at the pompous digimon “NeoDevimon?” he questioned scratching at his head “How’d you get into shit with a type like that?” Chester then paused before he waved his hand to dismiss the question “I don’t really know to be honest with you, I have a SHELTER but I don’t know about housing two. We could try though.”

Don lifts his arms “I don’t have much of a choice at the moment, the choice I used to have is now on fire. Besides, I suppose I can tell you my story while we make our way to your place…” Donovan finally eyes the other digimon with a raised eyebrow “Wizardmon, you said? The one Wizardmon I’ve met was… quite a different type, not gonna lie”

The flame on top of his head seemed to resurge with life when he heard the choice being on fire now. Though he knew Donovan was blaming him he bit his tongue for now as a means to know more why he was in such deep trouble.

“Well, not all digimon are the same you know. Different lines of evolution, types, yadda yadda.” Chester then shrugged after the comment “Just how I am, Wizardmon is all about lightning and stuff, I’m just an eternal flame. It’s how it is.”

“Cute” he patted his coat and offered a gloved hand for a handshake “although I can’t quite disagree with that. Astamon, but I prefer the name Donovan. A proper, fitting name instead of the generic label it’s added onto us the moment we hatch. Not that I expect the likes of you to understand something like that”

Chester stared at the Astamon, taking out his blue match and leaned on it keeping eye contact the whole time. “Donovan, huh?” he repeated before tapping on his match for a moment with the fire on his hat calming down. “Yeah sure, assume I wouldn’t. Names Chester, actually.” Giving a smug sewed smile at the newly named Donovan.

“Chester?” Don gave him a puzzled expression, but by the looks of the digimon’s face it was unlikely he was going to get an explanation “alright, I guess I stand corrected. Bit of an odd name, though, if I do say so myself, but to each their own - may you show me the way to your ‘shelter’, Chester? Staying still while being pursued isn’t exactly a good idea” he looked around, the black mask that covered half his face nearly invisible in the darkness.

“Yeah, it’s not too far away, well for my standards. Don’t know about you.” he said keeping the smug attitude and straightening up as he put his match away. Readjusting his hat the flame reignited with a new goal in mind.

“Hopefully you can keep up with me.” Chester then took Donovan’s hand and started to guide him through the wooded area. To Donovan, it just looked like erratic movement and change in direction, though that could take someone off their trail this wasn’t ideal for escaping if they got lost.

Mid running he looked back at Donovan “How are ya doing there?”

“I’m fine.” he says between gritted teeth “my coat is just not suitable for this environment, my scarf keeps getting stuck in the bushes. Gods, it’s gonna take me days to pluck all the leaves…” he complains, but despite the whining he does his best to follow the Wizardmon’s pace - Chester’s hand was hot surrounding his, which was expected, but Don couldn’t help but remember how cold the last hand he held felt against his own glove.

Like she wasn’t alive at all…

“Are… we there yet” he asks, clearly out of breath again, in an attempt to push his thoughts away from that train of thought.

Chester though asked didn’t exactly keep his gaze at Don for too long obviously since he needed to pay attention to the path ahead. “Yeah we got through the thick of it.”  he said as they both found themselves outside the thicket and into just a lightly wooded area with a cliff side looking over the waters. He released Donovan's wrist and started to walk “Under the cliff is where I usually stay, not too comfortable but it does well enough.” he took a big inhale “Also as far as I know not many digimon can find this place.”

“I sure hope you’re right…” Don said after regaining his composure, his eyes very obviously judging the ‘shelter’, if one could call it that as it was mostly just the natural digibiodiversity doing the job there “it’s hard enough to hide with a living torch beside me…” after a pause, he added “and not gonna lie, this is indeed a pretty sad excuse for a home”

“I didn't ask for your opinion”

“How long have you been living here…?”

Chester shrugs

“A while. Didn't keep track of time”

“Gods… oh well” he adjusts his coat yet again after the run, a habit that seemed nearly automatic “we should be out of here the moment the digiSun rises. It will be tricky to get to the port without any problems along the way but I’m hoping for a better strategy than the one at the Inn” he had a clear critical tone while glancing at Chester “the people we are dealing with can’t be stopped with a simple fire”

“Who are those people anyway?”

The Astamon scratches the muzzle that makes up for his mask, eyes drifting.

“Old coworkers, so to speak” he finally says “we didn’t end our last contract in a good note, so now they want me to, uh, pay for the contract breach, so to speak”

“That’s a lot of so-to-speaks… how much do you owe them?”

“I cannot pay them back as of yet” Don continues, ignoring Chester altogether “that is why I need to reach the File Island while avoiding them and their network, which isn’t easy since they have eyes everywhere”

[oncewhenweweregods-blog]

Importance of Representation

Every statement that I make is from my own experience, and my own opinions. I do not believe that everything I am about to say is true for everyone, or even that it should be true for everyone.

***

When it came to my own sexuality, I was always confused as a kid. I grew up Catholic, and I would listen to priests and parishioners speak about how wrong it is to be gay, that it is a sin, blah blah blah.

Obviously, I believed it. I was gullible like that. If someone told me something, it had to be true.

Every show or movie I watched was the same: white, straight main cast. It was normal. It was constant. Still, I would look around at my friends, the ones who definitely were not white, the ones who spoke with accents from different countries, and I would think, where are they in the things I watch?

I do not remember much from my childhood (shoutout to repression of traumatic events, whoo!), but I do remember watching my favorite television shows and movies and not recognizing the characters in all of the people I interacted with on a daily basis.

Is television a lot different now than it was, say, fifteen years ago? Absolutely, and not at all.

When I was younger, I did question why there were not any main black characters, or any main Indian characters, or why all of them seemed to come from America. But I never really dug into those question - I never actually understood why I was questioning it.

As I got older, I recognized more and more the lack of racial representation in the media. It was pointed out to be by a friend of mine who had immigrated to the United States from Haiti. She was complaining one day, rightfully, that all of her favorite American shows lacked one important detail: non-white main characters.

She told me about her niece, who was only one years old, and her fear that she would never be able to relate to the characters in a television show because these shows would not demonstrate the things she would go through. The shows she would watch as a child would not tell her about racism, or about what she would deal with - they would only narrate the lives of the white main characters.

I feel incredibly under-qualified to speak more on this, as I am white, but I do understand the importance of representation of POC, and I also understand the representation of immigrants in the media.

My family came from Portugal, from a less-than-decent life there, and sought out opportunity in America that they did not find in Portugal. They came here for a better life for the next generations of our family, and not only did they struggle to make it here, but they struggled once they got here.

They struggled to learn the language, to be taken seriously with thick, foreign accents - to get jobs with foreign names. It was not until they changed their names to their “English versions” that they were actually called for interviews.

My aunt married a man, a doctor, who once told her that he throws away applications if he cannot pronounce the name.

Where is all of this leading to?

The fact that I don’t see enough of this shit in the media.

The fact that I can’t find enough shows about immigrants, about foreign people, or even just with foreign people in the main cast. 

The fact that maybe - just maybe - if my mother had watched an American show when she was seventeen and afraid that featured even just one main character that went through the same struggles as her, she would feel a little less alone.

People do not understand the importance of representation. I have complained about a television show not having enough POC, and I have been told, “there’s a black guy as the main character - how is that not enough?!”

Seriously? One main character is black, and that is somehow supposed to be enough?

How many POC do you think are in just America alone, and yet every character in a lot - if not most - shows/movies is somehow magically white? Because white people never interact and form bonds with POC and therefore they could not possible be a main character?

In response to that reply, I always think, what the actual fuck?

Of course, things are getting better. There are more POC as main characters in television shows, more shows and movies featuring people who came from other countries (has anyone watched One Day At A Time?), etc.

But until people are adding POC into shows and movies for the reasons that they should be added, and not just to “temporarily please” viewers, we will get nowhere.

Now, onto gay representation...

This is where I relate to the most. As said before, I struggled with my sexual orientation, like, A LOT. 

I hated myself. I hated everyone else. I was just angry all of the time as I fought with myself over being gay, over accepting that I was gay. 

I hid it from everyone until my Sophomore year of high school. What helped me accept myself and tell my mom via a game of hangman?

One of the gayest shows (in my opinion): Glee.

Before I even came out as gay, I earned myself the nickname Santana from some of my friends who had also seen the show. Was it because they viewed me as gay? No. It was because they viewed me as a bitch.

But that is probably what made it easier for me. The show did not focus on Santana as some super-butch, super out-there lesbian. They did not classify her under any stereotypes, and they certainly did not make her identity easy for her (I mean, it took her three years just to come out to her closest friend, and we all know she suffered with figuring herself out long before that).

They made her casual, and they made her angry. That was something I was definitely able to relate to (especially now, but that it an entirely different story which I will get to shortly, since apparently I am going to share every damn detail about my gayness with you).

When she came out, her grandmother turned away from her. But still, she found strength from the acceptance of her friends, and even though she still was not completely okay with everything, she moved forward.

Watching her story made me more comfortable. I saw someone like me - an angry, lost teenager refusing to accept something that she already knew was true until she was pushed by her friends.

So, I told my mom, and the rest is kind of history, although I regret coming out to my mother by playing hangman and making “Mom, I am gay” the words for her to guess.

(Three years later, though, it turned out my mom is gay, too! Holy shit!)

Anyway, my point of bringing up Glee is that I saw myself in a character. I was able to accept myself because of a gay character that was part of the main cast of a television show.

And there was so many shows and so many characters that help other people struggling with their identity. People will tell me sometimes, “I don’t see the point in adding so many gay characters everywhere - we know they exist, we don’t need to push it.”

Well, maybe “pushing it” is what kept little Jimmy from overdosing on pain pills he found when he was fourteen because he found out, from television, that there are people like him, that there are people going through the same issues as him.

(Yes, that is a true story about a friend of mine and, no, his name was not Jimmy.)

The last little bit of representation I am going to talk about here is neurodivergence. 

I grew up with a severe anxiety disorder, but that is not something I am going to get into, because I would much rather get into a personality disorder - specifically, antisocial personality disorder.

I asked all of my coworkers once what they thought of when they heard the term “sociopath” (I would have used the term ‘antisocial personality disorder’, but as you will see from their response, the media has left everyone uneducated on the topic). Almost everyone replied with things like “murderers” or “psychos”, except for one of my managers who majored in psychology and actually understood the disorder.

Something I do not discuss often is my issue with lack of empathy and a seemingly “inability” to connect with or care about most people. I do not experience empathy. I experience sympathy only when around the few people I actually care about.

I was “unofficially” diagnosed with ASPD (professionally, but “unofficially” as in it was one session, I was classified as a non-threat, and I was told that I did not have to pursue therapy as treatment because I was fine with my diagnosis, and therefore I did not see that psychiatrist again). How this psychiatrist was able to “diagnose” me in one session, I am not sure (well, I may be, but that is not something I am going to get into).

Anyway, that short-lived therapy session was about two years ago.

What did I think after it?

Holy shit, I am going to end up killing someone. I am a fucking psychopath.

Was I actually going to kill someone? No, what the fuck? Was I a psychopath? By definition, no. 

But I was afraid of what I believed I would “turn into” because of everything I had seen in the media. I was led to believe that because I was being grouped in with people who were diagnosed with ASPD, I would grow up (even though, technically, I was already “grown up” - but let’s be real, eighteen is not grown up to most people) to be some horrible serial killer, even though I had never even thought of killing someone.

(Also, fun fact: loving animals and being empathetic towards animals apparently does not “count” according to the psychiatrist I saw.)

ANYWAY, fast forward to about six months later. My dad and I are talking and he mentions some show called Person of Interest. I look it up, read the description, and think, Sounds gay, no thanks.

Fast forward two more months. I am on Tumblr and find a list of shows with gay main protagonists. I see Person of Interest listed, with the character name Sameen Shaw. 

Being the gay asshole I am, I put the show on Netflix, but only started on the first episode that Shaw makes her appearance.

Axis II personality disorder? Am I watching what I think I am watching? A character with a personality disorder that is otherwise labelled as violent?

Okay, so maybe Root and Shaw are incredibly violent during the show, but I am ignoring that part while I write this.

They both, like me, suffer from issues with empathy. Of course, Shaw is a bit “higher” on the spectrum, a bit more “broken” if that is how you want to word it, but the fact of the matter? They both lack empathy one way or another.

And yet, they are the heroes. They are the ones that save lives. They are not the enemy, they use violence because it is necessary (for Root, let’s assume we are talking about when she starts actually working with the team, not when she was an assassin). 

The show never gives them “redemption” from their personality disorders. The writers do not have some character arc where Shaw seeks forgiveness for having ASPD, where she thinks that she is completely broken from it, and that she needs to be fixed, and Root even says it.

The show gave me something that made me feel safer about myself, that made me realize the stigma surrounding people with ASPD is mostly wrong, and there are so many other disorders (anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, just to name a few) that deserve this kind of beautiful representation, because people with these disorders DESERVE to see main characters that they can relate to, that they can find strength from.

Representation is not something that show creators/writers should consider a “gift” to their viewers.

Representation should not even be representation at all. It should just be.

Because the real people are POC, LGBT+, and neurodivergent.

Shows are not meant to be real, obviously, but the characters should be. The characters should reflect the people that watch them.

Representation is important because it gives the viewers someone to relate to, because it makes the characters real. 

I feel as though this goes without saying, but this is obviously the same for all types of media - novels, comic books, movies, etc.

And this is why I will make damn sure that whenever I write, I will include characters that people can find themselves in, because I have experienced firsthand just how important that is.

[arplis]

Arplis - News: 12 True Sex Stories You Have to Read to Believe

“WHEN HARRY MET SALLY” - COLUMBIA PICTURES   You’re out to brunch with your girlfriends, how long does it take for the conversation to turn to sex? Not long, amiright? It’s not just the ladies on “Sex and The City” who love to talk about sex—it’s most of us. We talk about it with our friends, our partners, and depending on how self-conscious you may feel, complete strangers. We talk about our true sex stories wether it be the amazing sex we’ve had, the comical, the sometimes strange and unusual, and even the not-so-great sex.  For many of us, we learned more about sex from our friends than we did from our parents or sex education class. It’s fun to share our sex stories—if it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be live storytelling shows, podcasts, books, TV shows, or movies. Fantasy has its place, but the stories that resonate the most with us are the true stories, those that actually happened. I AM & CO put the word out that we were looking for true sex stories and we received a very diverse response; stories from various sexual preferences, practices, and levels of sexual experience. All of these true sex stories are ones you have to read to believe. 12 True Sex Stories Guaranteed to Raise Eyebrows “Not Friends, No Benefit” Comedian Shalewa Sharpe, creator of  "So You Just Out Here?" I ran into my one-night-stand guy at the club. Now, some people might call that a “friend with benefits” but that term suggests that the two parties are friendly enough to schedule a benefit. This guy and I were not friends. Our benefits only happened if we ran into each other at the club. So, we made out for a minute, then he suggested we take this party to my car. This was how I ended up parked behind a grocery store, attempting to have sex with this guy in my 1988 Honda Prelude—a sports coupe, with bucket seats. Have you had sex in bucket seats? If so, a follow-up question: are you double jointed? The guy and I struggled for a bit, then his face fell. “Oh, this sucks,” he moaned. “It’s because my dick’s too small.” I had to console this guy while also keeping an eye out for the cops. If you find yourself in this predicament, don’t end up saying what I said: “Hey man, we’re in bucket seats—this ain’t gonna be easy.” A real mood-killer. We threw in the towel, I dropped him off back at the club and went home. Later that night, my roommate, who was the club’s doorperson, mentioned that she saw the guy with a weeping woman at the end of the night—they were walking in circles around the parking lot, then they hopped on his motorcycle and split. The next day, as I was furiously scrubbing and vacuuming my car, I found a driver’s license for a young woman wedged between the front passenger seat and the middle console. I guess it fell out of one-night-stand guy’s pocket during the, uh, festivities. I scratched out the ID’s info, punched a hole in it, and hung it on my rearview mirror as a cautionary tale. “It’s Part Of It” Jason, Columbus, Ohio We were both in college and had been dating for a while when she decided to take it to the next level. “Tie me up,” she demanded. “Okay, um, I’m going to tie you up now,” I said and went to get some scarves that were conveniently strewn about and set to work. “No!” “Oh, my God! I’m so sorry! I thought that…” and I began to loosen the bonds.  “No, it’s part of what makes it so hot.” “Oh, right,” I said and went back to doing Boy Scout knots such as the square knot and the sheepshank. I wondered if I should go with the trucker’s hitch? Nah. Too much.  “I’m going to f*ck you now,” I said getting into it. “Let me go!” I immediately stop what I’m doing. “Oh my God, I am an idiot. I am so sorry. I didn’t understand. You see, when you said you wanted, what I thought was, but in reality, I see… Oh no, I’m so sorry.” I quickly start to untie all the knots.  “No, it’s part of it.”  “What Goes Around, Comes Around” Ashley, Raleigh, North Carolina I paid my boyfriend for sex the first summer we were together…11 years later, he’s paying me for sex. “The Hook-Up Room”  Comedian Anita Flores, host of I'm Listening: A Frasier Podcast with Anita Flores. I’m at my first high- school party, and it’s not going well. Between my social anxiety and the fact that I only know the host, all I can think about is how I’m going to escape. I can’t actually leave, or else I’ll seem “uncool.” Fortunately, I come up with the next best solution. After making some light small talk with the host (Cassie) about her impressive selection of snacks, I ask, “Is there anywhere I can take a nap?” At the time, this seemed like a normal way to still be at the party without having to speak to anyone. I can’t say that Cassie agreed. After a long pause, she replied, “Uh, I guess in my attic.” I gleefully head to the attic. All the lights are off and it’s strangely warm, but it beats talking to people. I feel around and discover a futon I can pretend to sleep on. There I am lying down when something round and muscular attacks my face. It’s a butt, and it's smothering me! Ever want to suffocate someone, but don’t have a pillow? Just wear thick, non-breathable polyester pants. I hear a low voice. It’s a boy butt. He hears my muffled cries, gets up and exclaims, “Whoa, sorry dude!”  Now there’s giggling. He’s with a girl. Suddenly, I hear what sounds like a lot of teens slurping soup. There are more people in this room than I realized. Cassie sent me to take a nap in “the hook-up room!” Picture “Eyes Wide Shut: The Early Years.” Before the masks, there were braces. By this time, the boy butt and his lady friend have taken the futon from me. I'm standing there feeling left out because no one has asked me to join in. I can’t run away, otherwise, everyone will think I’m a prude! So, I find an empty loveseat, plop down, and close my eyes. Because there’s nothing cooler than ignoring sex. I’ll make sure to tell my future teen daughter that, too.  “There Are Rules” Michael, Portland, Oregon I was sessioning with a dominatrix named Vixen when her friend Wendy came over. Vixen blindfolded me and put me in the corner, which I was more than okay with. The minute Vixen’s back was turned, I took off the blindfold, even though I knew (and hoped,) I’d be punished. Vixen took out a strap on from her toy-cupboard and proceeded to f*ck Wendy with it. It was quite a show and later,  I was punished severely for watching—it was well worth the tribute that I paid Vixen. “Don’t Stop Under Any Circumstances!” Carrie, Chicago, Illinois My boyfriend and I were having sex one night on my old as hell bed. He was an ex-professional football player and I’m a big girl, so it shouldn’t have been surprising that right when things were getting super intense, the bed broke. He stopped what he was doing, so I yelled, “Don’t stop! I’m so close!” Without moving from the now broken bed, we get back at it and this time we don’t stop until we both cum. If there had been an earthquake or a tornado, I would have made him keep going then, too. “Side Effects Can Be Embarrassing” Krysta, Orlando, Florida  I've never been really big into taking birth control, but a coworker of mine mentioned that she was on a pill where she only had a period every three months... I wanted in on that! So, I went to my doctor and got on birth control. I started dating this new guy, who was literally the sexiest human-created. Around him, I tried to be Miss Perfection. Meanwhile, I'm on these new birth control pills and the doctor forgot to mention that they had lactose in them. I'm extremely lactose intolerant, even the smallest bit gives me major gas.  The first time the perfect guy and I had sex was a disaster. Every thrust he made inside of me made me pass gas. It was so embarrassing. We literally had to stop and go to Walgreens to get me some type of gas pills because he and I both couldn't take the noise, let alone the smell.  Let's just say, I stopped taking those pills immediately.  “Sex On The Deserted Beach” Beverly, New York City My partner and I were having a romantic vacation for my birthday in Newport, Rhode Island, and decided to spice things up by making love on a (deserted) beach in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, this beach was not quite as deserted or private as we had initially anticipated. All of a sudden we saw flashes of bright light, immediately stopped, and became alarmed.  A police officer arrived, trying to hold back a grin, and asked us if we'd seen some "kids swimming" after hours. We said no, he left, and we quickly packed up our things to make a quick exit. We drove home laughing not quite knowing what to make of the experience, but it certainly was a bonding one. It's definitely an evening and birthday I won't soon forget. “Don’t Disturb Grandpa” Spencer, Phoenix I hooked-up once with this guy who was taking care of his grandpa. It was around 10:00 p.m. by the time I got to his house. Whispering, he asked me to follow him and to not make any noise, his grandpa was watching TV in the living room. The guy sneaked me into a bedroom, but I guess that wasn’t soundproof enough, so we went into the closet and had very cramped and uncomfortable sex in there. I don’t think his grandpa had any idea about what was going on. “Male High Club” Reynaldo, San Diego, California I was taking a night flight home from Hawaii, as I was sitting down, I turned to see a guy who was so handsome I was stunned. Like a lot of us, he wore shorts and Aloha shirts, but he was well-built and looked more like he’d be a lead on one of those Hawaii detective shows. There was an empty seat near me on the aisle, and the guy asked if he could sit there to stretch out his legs. Other than nodding yes, we didn’t talk. The man grazed my knee with his leg, and all the hairs on my leg stood on end. And he didn’t pull away right away, just gradually. He got up to get a blanket from the overhead compartment which he placed over his legs. With no talking at all, he made the slightest gesture to offer me some of the blanket. Before you know it, the blanket was spread over both our legs. Then, our hands somehow started to find each other. And for a long time on the flight, that was it…just our hands grasping together, coming loose, rejoining, stroking fingers. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was rock hard. And gradually, very gradually, all without talking and with this stud of a guy who I did not know at all, our hands gradually started to stroke each other’s thighs, mirroring each other.  And eventually, very discreetly to not get attention or show movement above the blanket, we each found our erections extending out through the bottom of our shorts, and we grabbed each other. Eventually, some napkins or handkerchiefs were brought below, and without making any sound, we both came, and it was pretty simultaneous.  “Kung Fu Fighting” Carol Gee, Author, “Random Notes ( About Life. "Stuff"And Finally Learning To Exhale)” A romantic, I fantasized about what it would be like to have sex on satin sheets. My fantasy materialized when my husband and I, two young Air Force sergeants returning from living in the Far East, stopped to visit another Air Force friend and his lady in San Francisco. Invited to spend the night, the lady made the guest room bed up with a brand new pair of red satin sheets. How did she know my fantasy? I couldn’t wait to get my husband in bed to enjoy sex so good that the neighbors in the apartment next door would have needed a cigarette.  I took a shower, smoothed on scented body lotion and got into bed. My husband was already in it waiting for me. On those satin sheets, our lovemaking suddenly morphed into Kung Fu fighting. Taking me into his arms I accidentally poked him in the ribs. Oof! Climbing on top of him I kneed in the thigh. Ouch! Attempting to kiss him I missed his mouth and ended up rubbing noses with him. Then his pillow slid off the bed, mine quickly followed. Instead of holding onto him, I held tightly to the bedsheets trying not to slide off, taking him with me. Not only was the whole thing a disaster, but we also got very little sleep that night for trying to stay in the middle of the bed. Frankly, I'm glad those sheets weren’t mine as they would most likely have ended up as pretty red curtains.  “Girl/Girl Love Lesson” Sensual Massage Therapist, Jazmin Light The streets of Zurich were empty as I headed toward their place. The gentleman on the phone had asked me if I would "be" with his girlfriend—while he watched. He said she wanted a woman to show him "what women like." The World Cup soccer games were on, and that night, Switzerland was playing. The air bristled with excitement. All anyone talked about was "Fussball." Everyone's windows were wide open due to the summer heat.  A classy-looking man in his mid-fifties opened the door to a modern loft apartment. Surprised, I wondered, “Shouldn't he know what women like by now?” Behind him, pouring champagne at the high-top table, stood Nadia, perhaps thirty years his junior. In her red La Perla lingerie and matching stilettos. She handed me a glass and kissed me on the mouth. We made a toast. I took a sip, then lifted Nadia's silky blonde hair and kissed her neck. I let my lips and teeth linger, then gave her a soft bite. She gasped. Suddenly, a roar of voices sailed in through our window and engulfed us. "YAAAAAY!!!” The cheering came from next door, from above us, below us, and from outside. “GOAL!” We laughed as the ruckus died down. I stroked Nadia's hair, neck, and torso. "There are endless ways to please a woman, Manfred," I said, twirling my fingers on her lacy bra cups. Manfred plopped down on the bed and stared at us, his mouth open.  I unsnapped her bra, returning his gaze. "There's much more to women then nipples and—" I slid my hand to her panties, "pearls." Nadia inhaled sharply. "So slow down, savor, discover, and—play!" Nadia groaned, Manfred grinned. New shrieks and cheers exploded throughout the neighborhood. *** When you share a sex story, it can help you to connect with other people, learn about yourself and others, and it can inspire you to try new things. As humans, we’re always growing and that includes our sexuality.  Sex is part of the human experience and it’s always fun to hear someone else’s stories of incredible sex, confusing sex, or way-out-there sex. #Sex #Relationships

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/12-true-sex-stories-you-have-to-read-to-believe