#yeah the body's gonna be mostly made of door

[the-takosader]

So, about that "Marauder" build I was doing...

Breaking news: it is no longer a Marauder build!

For context of the people who randomly stumble across this post without all the lore and shit from my megapost back in August, first of all, hi, welcome to the blog, second of all, this was originally intended as a "recreation" or full copy of a pretty obscure mid-'60s Fender guitar that never saw full, mainstream production - the Fender Marauder.

For further context, the Fender Marauder was a guitar that got a mashup of all of Fender's offsets, plus the Stratocaster, getting the Strat's pickup layout, a pickup selection method similar to the Jag, the Jazzmaster's lead/rhythm circuit, plus a vibrato like the Mustang, and the headstock of the Starcaster, which didn't exist at that point, so it's technically that the Starcaster had the Marauder's headstock, rather than the other way around...

Where was I? Ah, yes, not doing the Fender Marauder. Yeah, no, it's not happening anymore. Instead, the build has, for lack of a better term, "pivoted", thanks to an idea my aunt gave me: doing something original.

Now, in Current Year (2024 is soon to end, and oh dear god it's almost a year since I had the idea for the Tele-Shaped Rickenbacker), originality in the guitar-building world is... not exactly a thing? There's that many Telecaster and Stratocaster copies, combined with the fact that there's only so many ways you can shape a slab of wood into a pleasant experience to play.

My solution? The academic method! And by that, I mean "instead of ripping off one guitar and calling it a day, I'm ripping off multiple guitars," or at least taking from multiple sources, as an academic should.

If you want to see more of this madness, keep reading under the cut.

You still here? Awesome. So, now that you've chosen to read on, let's go through the spec sheet that I made for this exact purpose! Surely, it can't be that incomprehensible, ri-

...oh.

Yeah, I went really in-depth. I even mentioned the fucking fretboard radius, that is how in-depth I went. Now, does this in-depth nature help? Oh yeah, certainly. Is it comprehensible? Nope. Not in the slightest. Not unless you browse Wikipedia for fun or watch way too much of Trogly's stuff.

So, a small glossary of terms, before we get into this shit properly:

Comfort carves: bits of wood removed from the body of the guitar to allow for better playing experience, originating with the Stratocaster.

Trem system: also known as a whammy bar or vibrato, this is how you get those reductions in pitch.

Coil split and coil tap: either factoring out one coil's output (split) or removing the effect of some of the windings of the coil (tap).

That's nowhere near all I've got to explain, but if any of you wanted, I'll put out a "translated" spec sheet that attempts to properly explain the shit. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes!

The build no longer being a Marauder has freed me up to do whatever I want now, which leads me to the body design (further screenshots will come from the translated spec sheet mentioned above):

So, let's discuss why those three specifically. But first, were they the original ideas? Not in the slightest! Originally, this was going to be FAR more Gibson-inspired than this, taking from the Scarred Reaper (a Jagstang style merging of the Les Paul and SG created by the aforementioned Trogly, I would recommend you watch his stuff if it wasn't so Guitar Nerd) and the SGV/ZV (that Zakk Wylde signature thing the Gibson custom shop cooked up), with maybe a single-sided headstock.

That idea's gone, DOA when further thought was brought in. The new idea, as specified in the image, is a hodge-podge of 2 guitars and a bass, all 3 of which I've played previously in some manner or form. The upper horn of a Burns Double Six, which (for those less educated in guitars, or can't just visualise a guitar from memory as soon as it's brought up in a conversation) looks like this:

Yes, the guitar body looks like that. Plays beautifully, or at least the one I played does.

So that's the source of the upper horn, even if it'd be less exaggerated than that. What about the other two? Let's start with the lower cutaway, inspired by the Rickenbacker 4001 (or 4003) bass.

Note how the fret access is incredibly good? Yeah, that's not just a thing on the bass. Rickenbacker also make/made a guitar version of this, the 480 (plus a short-lived version known as the 481 with slanted frets - not fanned, slanted), with at least 21 frets of perfectly fine access to frets, and 24 frets total on the neck.

Finally, the PRS CE24, which is being used for the lower body of the guitar:

I could go on for several paragraphs about how and why I'm going with the lower bout of a CE24 for this, or even that I'm basiclally making this a more PRS-style Strat than the John Mayer Silver Sky. But, I won't. Quite simply, I have neither the time nor the energy. Instead, what I'll do is summarise, because I can't put a second read-more link in here.

So, why is it a PRS-style Strat? Well, many reasons. I'm thinking of putting in a PRS floating trem system, doing a 10-degree headstock angle (enough to have the tension, but not enough to risk headstock breaks - looking at you, Gibson, with your 17-degree headstocks!), and, most importantly, I'm going for a 25" scale length, which effectively gives me the very basics of a PRS guitar, minus the construction and the pickups.

But continuing from there, the only thing preventing this from being a "normal" PRS build or similarly designed guitar is the pickups I'm using. They're not any of the usual fare that PRS use, not by any stretch of the imagination. What I'm planning on using is, as laid out in the spec sheet, a Fender-style Wide Range Humbucker, a reverse-wound, reverse-polarity Tri-Sonic imitator (because I don't want to try and source Burns or Adeson pickups for this, so Kent Armstrong it is), and a Tonerider Hot Classics Broadcaster bridge pickup (it's the bridge pickup specifically because a Telecaster's bridge pickup is tilted with a black bobbin). Now, dear reader, can you guess what positions I'm going to put them in?

If you guessed that I'm going to be sane and normal by putting the humbucker in the bridge, you're entirely incorrect, unfortunately! Instead, I'm going for an at least sane positioning for the Broadcaster pickup, putting that next to the trem system, or at least as close as can be within reason, that RWRP Kent Armstrong Tri-Sonic in the middle position, and the humbucker in the neck position.

The result of that, in concept, should be a fuller sound in the neck, and depending on how I wire the pickups (which will most likely be in series) a really bitey sound in the bridge, the kind that gives some levels of distortion a run for its money. A comparatively "thin" sound is to be expected, as this project is to have 24 frets, and thus a tighter pickup spacing.

The idea is similar to this guitar made for Alex Lifeson by Paul Reed Smith (yes, that's what PRS stands for), which uses an EMG in the neck, and a Signature Guitars single coil in the bridge, with Signature Guitars being a short-lived brand that Lifeson worked with in the mid-to-late '80s until the company's dissolution in 1990.

That's partially what's inspiring me on this specific pickup configuration, as I've heard the tones that this specific guitar's made, going back to at least 1991, for the solo on Dreamline. Considering the guitar's serial dates it to 1990, so it's likely he got it from PRS for the explicit purpose of recording the Roll The Bones album.

But that's not important, nor is it even the point, because damnit, I love rambling about tangential shit! Anyway, to get back to the point of this rambling, this is a PRS-style Strat in the least Strat-like manner. None of the parts I took from are a Strat, or really have any relation to it outside of the Double Six. The CE24 is inspired the double-cuts that Gibson made, and the 4001 was made back when originality was actually a thing in guitar design.

But the result of all that designing, combined with a little bit of image compositing, was this:

Now, I'm aware that this design, for lack of a better term, looks like shit. It's way too stretched out, and nowhere near like realistic. In my full defense, this was made in Paint at close to midnight, so I doubt I was thinking at full brain power. I'll probably de-stretch it at some point, if I can be arsed to do so.

The neck, by comparison, doesn't look nearly as bad, but considering how hard it is to fuck up the look of a neck, it's not that big a deal. The idea of a neck is to give an anchor point for the non-ball end of the string that allows for a tension adjustment point, with the fretboard acting as the point where frets change the note/pitch the guitar plays.

As God Pythagoras Intended.

Side note, fuck that guy! He broke music 2000 years ago, and we still haven't recovered!

Back to the matter at hand, though, my compositing process for the neck was based on inlay style, number of frets, and headstock shape. Now, I mentioned above that I was doing a 2-octave neck, 24 frets total. The "neck" (by which I mean the fretboard) was taken from a Rickenbacker 360, and the headstock shape was taken from a Gibson Firebird, the last remaining relic of this thing's Gbison influences, resulting in this composite:

Please note that the transparency for all this was done in Word, which is the best I can use to get specific bits and pieces of guitars to mash up and weld together like fucking Victor Frankenstein.

The full thing, combining both neck and body composites, came out of this process looking like this...

...as you can see, very squashed, very stretched, which was not the intention, I assure you! So, as a help to my brain, and possibly to the very few people who stumble across this who know good proportioning, I squashed the width down a bit further, albeit at the cost of making the neck feel too short for the body:

I could throw a squashed down version of the body back into Paint, add the standard-sized neck, and operate from there on the image front, but there's a small issue of CBA to contend with. In short, I can't be bothered to do it.

Now, you might note that the headstock lacks tuner tips. Why? Because the Firebird had planetary tuners, what some would term "banjo tuners". The basic idea is that, to facilitate string pull, they made a new headstock design (because before this there were 3 Gibson headstock styles - open book, which was the standard one, triangle, for the Flying V and related models, and hockey stick, which only got used on the Explorer until Aldo Nova came along in 1982). This new design utilises the planetary tuners for... some reason, Idk, I can't find it. Point is, at first, this is what I was going to go with, Firebird headstock shape and all.

However, upon further rational thought, I'm just going to go with a Hamer-style headstock, specifically one like the Hamer USA Centaura, which looks like this:

I was kinda debating on putting a Floyd Rose or similar on this, being influenced by this thing, but they're not exactly cheap to install, replace or repair, so that's why the PRS trem. The one thing I'm still debating on from this is the "sweet switch", which was designed for Carlos Santana by PRS, purely because he was known for using a long cable prior to going wireless. But that's not the point.

What is the point? Fuck if I know. I've been writing this on and off over the past 2 or 3 days, I just set out to make an in-depth Tumblr post about my guitar build, and here I am talking about a Hamer and Carlos Santana. To try and steer myself back to the point, let's talk the unique bits, stuff I've only seen done... 2 or 3 times, total. In this case, I'm talking about unique pickup selection methods.

There's a couple I have in mind for this build: a rotary switch, and individual slider switches. Now, why are these unique? Because both are rare to see on production-level guitars. The former comes from PRS guitars from the '90s, which worked really well, except people couldn't figure out what pickup they were on, while the latter I've only seen in 2 different styles on a total of 3 guitar models.

Style 1 is what I'm thinking of doing: Jag style, where there's a control plate to select what pickup you're using, and you can select and swap on the fly, which is similar to the Red Special, which has 3 pickup switches and 3 phase switches - the top row is pickups, and the bottom row is the phasing. Brilliant bit of kit for a guitar built 60 years ago.

Now, the other style of switching is a bit more convoluted than that, because it's Mustang switching, which is 3-position sliders mounted horizontally above each pickup. Position closest to the bridge is off, central is on, and position closest to the neck is out of phase. Sounds like the Red Special's method but condensed into 3 switches, right?

Well, the fact of the matter is that Brian's design and build was done between 1963 and 1964, and the Mustang didn't enter production until the latter year, so it's likely but not certain to be a case of convergent design/evolution.

Each idea has its merits. While, yes, a rotary switch would be less clunky, not to mention easier to install, you then have to manually wire each and every pickup combination you want. Now, that's fine and dandy with 2 humbuckers, you can do full neck, outer coils, both pickups, inner coils, full bridge, and in fact, that's how PRS did it. The issue is doing 3 pickups, one being a humbucker, and the other two being single coils, because then you need at least 7 positions, by my measure:

Neck

Neck + Middle

Neck + Bridge

Middle

Middle + Bridge

Bridge

All 3 together.

Now, I could be missing the forest for the trees, or at least the wood for the figuring, but I'd rather avoid having to wire up 7 different positions, especially because I'm not doing any fancy pots here. By comparison, individual switching seems more appealing, as there I can just have 3 switches for neck, middle and bridge, and be done with the whole matter.

Moving on from that, we have the aesthetics of it. I don't know what finish I'm gonna go for, considering I've debated at least 6 different finishes in my head for this build since I started it. I've debated on 2-Tone Sunburst, 3-Tone Sunburst, Tobacco Burst, Sandbar Burst, deep ocean blue, whale blue, grey black, all sorts. In theory, any of these 6 I listed could be the one I go with, which is pretty obvious.

Then again, I could go with some mad bastard finish like Faded Whale Blue Smokeburst (diluted Whale Blue stain, add on top a black ring on the front, dark sides, kinda tear drop figure on the back like an old '70s silverburst, the works) and deal with the convolution of doing that on a flame top.

Maybe I'll end up doing that. Who knows.

Oh, I almost forgot! I even gave it a name: the Crusader, acknowledging that a) it's my design, and b) it was based on the Marauder. It's going to be a long road to its completion, possibly a full year (remember, this is with hand tools, no large scale machinery) instead of the 6 months it took to build the Cherry XII. Most of it's going to be either mahogany or sapele, with the odd bit of maple or ash in there, but by the end of it, I'll have something unique to call my own. You couldn't get me to give it up if you tried.

Things I didn't go into detail about:

Binding stuff

Neck heel carve

Locking tuners

Inlay style

Possibly other shit I'm forgetting

Hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings this time!

[invincibledc]

Tiny request for twin reader with damian mabye they were seperated at birth aka talia gave bruce twin reader and kept damian but win reader has some kind of disability like walking with crutches and as soon as damian moves in he goes into protective brother mode and always tries to help twin reader

“I’m your protector.”

Damian Al ghul-Wayne x Disabled! Twinreader

Summary: separated from birth, Damian finds out you are disabled from walking. Knowing that you are his blood sibling, he can’t help but be protective over you

After Talia revealed to Damian he had a twin (brother/sister) that she gave away to his father all because you were disabled. He felt anger towards his mother and a little bit of betrayal.

How could she keep such a secret from him and the fact she just gave you away made him feel…protective.

He wants to know you are okay. He wants to make sure you are okay. So when he moved into his new room, he got a knock on his door. He opens it to see, you. You had crutches, smiling as your hand grip the crutches handle. “Brother! Oh my, we do look the same!” You were excited, happy. Damian immediately observed you, he sees you are pure of light. He was right to feel protective when you don’t know much of the words he is saying with his high vocabulary.

He draws and colors on your crutches, he likes to see the light in your eyes when he draws what you like on your crutches.

You both may be different, but his brotherly love is not. He’s always sitting by you, dinner, breakfast, lunch out of the manor, events, galas. He’s always there. Sure Bruce would try and tell Damian that you can protect yourself, maybe even that you can do things without his help. But you’re ten, just like him. So what did he do? Not listen to his father like he always do.

He’s happy to know you never wanted or tried to be Robin. His heart would break knowing that his precious half would try and fight. But that also meant you never learned how to protect yourself and fight mostly, making it worse for Damian to grasp.

Damian tried not to baby you much, but he couldn’t help but feel anxious at those random thoughts in the back of his head. “They’re gonna fall one day, what if no one is there to pick him up.” He would sometimes just sleep on a chair in your room incase you fall off your bed.

Damian would train Titus for whenever you fall and you can’t reach your crutches. He would have Titus use his body and guide you somewhere so you can get up.

“I’m your protector.” He would say when he sees you trying to get up and grab your crutches. But titus and him are already up and helping you. You laugh thinking he’s joking, but he’s not.

If you’re sick? Protectiveness levels are off the charts when he sees you cough and shake. Yeah he’s not going to school until you’re better. No way he’s leaving his sibling at home!

Would call pennyworth off his phone if you are homeschooled. Always checking up on you no matter what, it doesn’t matter if Alfred says you are okay. He wants to hear you say it.

If someone dared to make fun of you, he’s after them like the devil himself. If they dared to try and take your crutches, it’s gonna get wicked. Even god himself won’t be able to take Damian off the assailant.

Say you were also on the artistic route, he would absolutely treasure your art work. “It’s bad..” you said once, and Damian straight up lectured you about how art takes time and how beautiful your art work is to him no matter what.

I can see Jason saying it’s true the artwork looked terrible, and Damian just straight up chased him around angrily while you try to tell Damian it’s okay.

Titus adores you, and you adore Titus which makes Damian feel even better that Titus likes you. I mean who wouldn’t when literally you are the sunshine of the family.

Damian definitely have written letters to you when he was on “punishment” is what he called it when he had to go work with the titans. So when you visit him at the titans tower, he made sure most things were safe proof for you. Kory already knew you because of Dick. Kory tries to reason to Damian as he literally rips something apart because he deemed it as “unsafe.” But did he listen? No.

When beast boy playfully was play fighting with you, Damian was ready to cut Garfield’s head off. Only for you to wipe the floor of the green shapeshifter by using your crutch as a bat. Damian hid his sword with a smirk, maybe he doesn’t need to protect you much.

[nereidprinc3ss]

promiscuous

in which spencer reid doesn't like that flirty!reader is going on a date. he makes that known. (bandages universe)

flangst, 18+ for discussions of sex warnings/tags: gn!reader I think, mentions of going to a bar/going for drinks, very suppressed mutual pining, jealousy from Spencer, reader implied to engage in casual sex, reader calls themself a slut somewhat disparagingly but like as a joke, it all gets resolved, he is very sweet, he rambles when he's nervous a/n: oh God I love them so much they are like so in love and they literally have no idea at all because they're so dumb... but WE can tell.. turning point for them

“Penelope wanted me to confirm that you guys are coming to drinks with us tonight?”

It’s something of a standing tradition for the BAU on the last Friday of every month, and usually you’d agree, but tonight, you have other plans. 

“Raincheck for me,” you say, sliding some files into your bag which you do not plan on reviewing. “I have a thing.”

“What thing do you have on a Friday night?” Morgan asks skeptically. You don’t bother looking at him as you hide a smile. 

“A date, Morgan. You jealous?”

“You’re going on a date?”

You’d nearly forgotten Spencer was in the room until he spoke—he’s been in one of those quiet moods of his where he sort of floats around everyone else and makes himself insubstantial. As you cast him a sidelong glance, trying to figure out his tone of voice, you see he’s frowning. Nearly grimacing. His brows are drawn so tight you’re worried he’ll give himself a headache. 

“Uh, yeah. I am.” Suddenly, your parade feels a little rained on. 

“With who?”

You pause, looking back down at your desk with a new frown of your own and shaking your head as if you could clear it that way. “Just… some guy from OT.”

“Dalton?”

Ding ding ding. Somehow he got it right on the first guess, and for some reason, you wish he hadn’t. You don’t want Spencer knowing who you’re going on a date with. It feels wrong. 

“Does it matter?” You evade, shoving your things with a little more force into your bag. 

“Well Dalton is an idiot, so I guess I’m just trying to figure out why you’d go out with him.”

“And if it’s not Dalton?”

“Then I’d tell you all the guys in OT are idiots and you shouldn’t waste your time on any of them.”

“Alright—” Morgan passes between your desks, placing a friendly hand on your back as he does. “I’m gonna let you two hash this out by yourselves.” He gives you a look, eyebrows raised, unsmiling, that means, go easy on the kid. It makes you feel terribly guilty. And more than a little defensive. 

“Night,” you call halfheartedly. He only waves as the glass doors swing shut behind him, leaving you and boy genius alone in the bull pen.

Silence falls, cloistering you as you finish packing up together. It seems to magnify the buzz of the overheads. You notice him intentionally lingering, and you sling your bag over your shoulder with a sigh. 

“Okay,” you say, turning to face him with your whole body. He seems uncomfortable with that, but you’re not letting this go. “What is this? Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” he mumbles, refusing to meet your eyes. “I just think—”

“Yeah. You’ve made your thoughts abundantly clear. I don’t know why you’re judging me for going on a date.”

“I’m not judging you! I just think you deserve better than a guy who looks like he… snorts protein powder for every meal and has less capacity for intelligent conversation than a mealworm.”

“Okay. Do you have someone in mind?”

The words come out a little sharper than you’d meant for them to. A little louder. Spencer looks like a scolded puppy as he swallows. 

“Not specifically. Just—someone more like you.”

He just doesn’t get it. You fold your jacket over your arm. 

“Yeah, well, until someone more like me comes along and asks me out, Dalton is the best I’ve got. I know he’s not my soulmate, Reid. But he asked me to drinks, and I said yes.”

The room is mostly dark. Only a few fluorescents remain on to cast Spencer in an almost clinical glow against a dark grey background. You’ve been here before. It feels like an interrogation. An environment where you’re practically begging for the truth without saying please, but there’s only room for measured dishonesty. 

Spencer speaks under his breath, fiddling with the strap of his own bag. “He’s not good enough for you.”

“What do you want me to do?” It’s an exasperated, confrontational sigh. Your arms raise and fall heavily back to your sides. Another long grey hallway of silence that leads nowhere. When it becomes clear he doesn’t have the answer, or he’s not comfortable sharing, you straighten. “I’ll see you Monday, Reid.”

Your spirits are completely dampened as you trudge to the elevators. What once seemed like an exciting opportunity now only serves as a depressing reminder that you’re wasting your time with a man who isn’t what you want. Maybe you should just call the whole thing off. 

“Wait,” Spencer calls, half-jogging to catch the open elevator. His bag bobs with every step, pens and things jingling around inside. It’s endearing, even though you’re upset with him. Your arms remain stubbornly crossed, but he makes it anyway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your mood.”

You laugh dryly. “Yeah, well…”

“It’s just that…” he sniffs and looks down, hair falling in front of his face. He really is sweet, even when he’s kind of a dick. He’s full of so much sincerity he doesn’t know what to do with it all. “I know how you are—you’re special, and funny, and intelligent, and, and Dalton—all those qualities are wasted on him. He looks at you and he just sees a pretty face. It may sound trite, but… he doesn’t deserve you.”

You sigh again, heart squeezing. The glowing light on the panel of floor numbers flickers. “I know your heart is in the right place, alright? But it’s not about who deserves me or who doesn’t. I’m not a prize. I’m a person, and people like to feel wanted. Sometimes, it’s just—it’s about who’s there, and who likes me enough to say it to my face. Sometimes that’s all I need, and I know you didn’t mean it like this, but when you say he doesn’t deserve me, it really seems like you’re not considering what I might want at all. Maybe Dalton is what I want.”

God—this elevator ride is like, comedically long. 

“Is he what you want?”

At least he has the bravery to ask. 

You glance over at Spencer, washed out bloodless and looking like he’s prepared to flinch, like he doesn’t know if he’s ready for the answer. The doors ding and slide open, and stale air whooshes from the chrome compartment into the lobby like a held breath finally exhaled. You swallow. 

“I don’t know why it matters to you.”

“Because you’re my friend and I want to see you happy,” he insists, trailing after you as you speed walk through the lobby. Every click of your heeled boots echos. 

“Then shouldn’t you be supporting me?”

“I’m not going to support you in making the wrong choice.”

The conversation spills out into the bitter-cold parking lot. You turn around to face him. 

“Respectfully, you have no idea what’s right or wrong for me. I don’t like whatever this is,” you say, gesturing with a finger between the two of you, as if the conflict were a tangible thing—a phone line hanging between your hearts. “I don’t know if it’s, like, jealousy, or some misplaced feeling of possessiveness, or protectiveness, or—”

“It’s not like that!” He splutters. 

“Okay—so what is it like? If you want to see me happy, why don’t you support me in pursuing the things that make me happy? And if that’s meaningless sex with some guy from operational tech, so be it! You are not in a position to give your two cents on who I sleep with!”

“I wasn’t trying to—I wasn’t even thinking about—about sex! I don’t care who you sleep with!”

He’s turning increasingly pink. 

“Fine. But if you weren’t thinking about sex, if you thought I was under any illusion that Dalton was going to be my fucking Prince Charming then clearly you’re not equipped to have this conversation. I know he’s an idiot. I’m not looking for my soulmate—thank you, though, for reminding me that it’s completely fucking pointless to even pretend. I love you, Spencer, but grow up. And stay out of my business.”

And with that, you’re turning on your heel and marching toward your car. Spencer calls your name—once. Twice. The wind lashes against your bare arms and stings your eyes as you fumble with your keys. 

It’s just the wind. 

Nothing else. 

-

Maybe you’re simply not meant for love. 

It’s a narcissistic thought in the sense that everyone has it at some point in their lives—everyone falls victim to the delusion that they are so uniquely wretched, so singularly incapable of being understood by another person. It’s the universal illusion of solitude. And you’d thought yourself above it for a long time. In college, there was fling after fling. Your bed was never empty if you didn’t want it to be. In your young adult life, you have other priorities—but you rarely have to be alone. 

Now, though, as you sit on a rickety metal stool deep in the bowels of the Bureau’s records room, banished to sort through files in search of one that had been mishandled during a cold case and is now supposedly relevant again, (although you’re not sure it actually exists) you’re pondering the nature of those connections you’d been so sure your life was full of. Were they all artificial? Designed by you subconsciously to manufacture a sense of complacent satisfaction? To stave off the aching, gnawing loneliness in your gut that you’re only now becoming aware of and has been eating you away in bigger and bigger bites since Friday night?

Morgan was supposed to be just as arm-deep into a box of dusty manila folders as you are now, but he talked his way out of it, and you’re sitting in an awkward twenty-minute-long-so-far silence with Spencer. Which isn’t helping anything. 

The tension comes and goes like the moon pulling the tides. It’s like you can sense it wafting off of each other—you feel it in the prickle on the back of your neck and the buzz in your stomach when he’s about to say something, and you glance over, and he’s already looking at you with his lips parted, and then he doesn’t say anything after all, and the silence reinforces itself. 

It gets frustrating. 

Not to mention this task is equal parts mind numbing and infuriating. Maybe Hotch just hates you. 

Eventually Spencer clears his throat, and you welcome the distraction. 

“What year are you on?”

You give him a long look which he doesn’t reciprocate, because you want to say, really? But eventually you pick up the edge of the box you’re sifting through and double check. 

“Uh… June 1979 through August 1979.”

He nods matter-of-facts. “They should be making us wear gloves.”

Your incoming tangent spidey senses are tingling. It’s not exactly an opportune time, but it’s better than silence. 

Plus—you’re pretty sure this is his idea of a peace offering. 

“Why’s that?” You mutter, flicking through yellowed papers. 

“Wood pulp paper contains an alum-rosin mixture to minimize ink bleeding, but in the presence of moisture such as that introduced in trace amounts by our fingertips it generates a diluted sulfuric acid solution. They didn’t start adding alkaline buffers into paper until 1986, and the cellulose chains that comprise the structure of the paper inevitably shorten and break down over time, so we’re actively degrading these documents by touching them without gloves.”

“Did you say sulfuric acid?”

“I said a diluted sulfuric acid solution,” he clarifies, utterly missing the point of your question as he so often does in that disarmingly endearing way of his. “Sorry, by the way.”

You look up from a photo of bloodied bell-bottom jeans. He’s caught you by surprise. 

“For what?”

“For—”

He struggles with the words—you watch his lips form a few silent ones before he gives up on the nonchalant act and sets his file on his lap. He can’t seem to tear his eyes from it, but you don’t mind. 

“For everything on Friday. I… I know it was none of my business. I sometimes struggle with… keeping my thoughts to myself. Especially when it concerns someone I care about. But I wasn’t judging you, I swear. What you said about—about sex, I—” he sighs, obviously frustrated with himself, and pushes a bit of hair out of his eyes. “That’s not where my mind was at, at all. Whatever you… do, or don’t do, is none of my business. Obviously. You don’t need me to tell you that. You don’t need me to tell you anything. I just really wanted to clarify that I wasn’t shaming you or judging you for—”

“Spencer,” you say gently, cutting him off and reeling him in before he can dig any deeper. 

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He glows under the canned lighting, a soft aura of white blurring the edges of him. The stale room buzzes. It’s otherwise quiet down here. Peaceful, almost. 

From anyone else, you might consider it overstepping. 

You wouldn’t have been willing to forgive them in the first place. 

But it’s not anyone else. 

“Thank you, for apologizing. I really appreciate it.”

He glances up at you, sort of hunched—always trying to make himself smaller than whatever force created him had intended. The deep brown of his eyes is melted and swirling and sweet and nervous. He’s not naturally good at these interpersonal things, but he’s always trying. He’s always pushing himself for you.

Do you ask too much? 

Do you offer enough in return?

Struck by sudden insecurity, you look away. Go back to your files. 

Perhaps you made a mountain out of a molehill and told him to climb it. 

“I mean, I am kind of a slut. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so,” you laugh airily. “Maybe it was a good reality check.”

A trailing silence. An air conditioner kicks on. 

“What? That’s not—that’s not at all what I was trying to say.”

“Spencer, it’s fine.”

His stool squeaks as he sits up straighter. 

“No, I really want you to understand. Even if I cared or thought about how many people you might sleep with—which I don’t—and even if I determined that you were… sexually promiscuous, I wouldn’t assign a moral value to that judgement. Sexual promiscuity is observed all the time in the animal kingdom, it’s biologically sound and justified and in less misogynistic cultures where bonds forged between humans weren’t socioeconomic arrangements dependent on women being viewed as commodities first and foremost, it’s completely unremarkable. But I haven’t made that determination. All I know is that… you’re you. And that’s all that’s ever going to matter to me.”

Silence falls. Your voice gets stuck in your throat. 

How does he so casually show you more kindness than anyone else has ever managed to show you in your life?

Spencer takes pity on you. 

“And… we’ve talked entirely too much about something that’s none of my business today.”

It’s wry and earns a chuckle from you. Even Spencer manages a chagrined smile. That same strand of hair falls loose as he looks down. Light bounces from his self-effacing smirk. 

You fiddle absentmindedly with the fraying corner of a folder, and you’re about to open your mouth, about to speak into the sparkling cloud that the easy laughter and the melted tension has left in its wake, and tell him how much you appreciate him and how kind he truly is and undoubtedly whatever you say will be made more beautiful because of it—because of the affection you have for each other—and then you stop, eyes catching on the case file between your fingers. You frown. 

“Wait—what’s the case number we’re looking for?”

“91 18 00063 7.”

You hold the file up, eyes alight. 

“I found it.”

Spencer frowns and takes it without asking. You watch as he reviews the number in tiny black typeface along the top of the document. His brow scrunches in disbelief. 

“I genuinely didn’t think we were ever going to find it,” he murmurs after leading through the photos and glances back up at you. “We had thirty years of boxes to look through and you found it in under an hour. You’re like magic.”

It’s impossible not to smile. You feel all warm and sparkly as you snatch it back from him and stand, straightening your jacket. 

“Will you tell that to Hotch?”

“I… will tell anyone who will listen,” he assures you, and you’re confident he’s following as you make your way through the maze of stacks. “Are we not gonna clean up our mess?”

“There are people who will take care of that later.”

“Yeah. Like me. During my lunch break.”

“Don’t worry. You’re going to be well rewarded for your efforts today.”

“What does that mean?” He mumbles, and you can practically hear his blush. 

You smile to yourself. 

Still got it. 

for more of these two, check out the bandages universe masterlist!

[gutsby]

Stupid Prizes

Pairing: dbf!Joel x Reader

Summary: Before you head back to college, your dad wants to go on one last family outing: the county fair. The only problem? Your secret fuckbuddy, Joel, is there.

Warnings: 18+. Sneaky, unprotected p-in-v. Joel pining for you while your dad is beside him, oblivious for now. Semi-public sex (on a ferris wheel—don’t ever do that). Gross misuse of a candy apple. Age gap. Jealous Joel. Teasing. Angst(!) Mentions of infidelity/abandonment.

Word count: 10.0k

Read on AO3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

The gingham dress was your best idea yet.

For Joel, nothing could’ve been worse.

He’d cum down your throat no more than ten minutes ago, and with just a glimpse of your new getup bounding down the stairs—you’d had to change after he painted your last one white—Joel almost inhaled his Heineken.

He coughed and sputtered and hacked the beer back up while you strolled past the sofa and grinned at your dad.

“Ready to go, old man?”

It was just a short red frock with a sweetheart neckline.

The fabric cinched at the waist and flowed with every step you would take. Turning slightly to toy with the hem, and teasing the only eyes on you, you corrected yourself:

“Sorry…old men, I mean.”

Something like amusement flashed in Joel’s eyes.

Didn’t seem to mind this old man’s cock down your—

“I was born ready, kid,” your dad answered, still messing with something on his key ring, “How ‘bout you, Miller?”

“Yessir.” Joel stood.

He recalled you saying something similar before opening your mouth in the guest bathroom just fifteen minutes earlier. Joel’s cock twitched in his jeans at the memory, and his cheeks might’ve tinged a little, remembering how fast he’d cum. You’d only smiled and sucked your thumb, getting a taste of the residue that had missed your chest.

“Quite a mess you made there, Joel.”

And you repeated those words, at length, with only you and him to know what it had meant to you both before.

You gestured to the smattering of crushed potato chips on his shirt, and your grin got bigger. Joel grew redder.

“Yeah…” he mumbled, brushing the crumbs off his front. He wasn’t nearly as fast with the comebacks as he was with other kinds of comings and goings, and he knew it. He set the bag of Lays aside and seemed ready to leave.

But when he’d licked the salt off his lips and caught you staring—when he saw his friend go back to the kitchen:

“I had to be quick,” he said. Then, lowering his voice, “You know better’n anyone what a messy eater I am.”

Of course you knew that. Joel winked at you, and you winked back, mostly making fun of the boomer move. He reached for you—the edge of your skirt scarcely hanging a fraction of the way down your thighs—and he opened his mouth to speak again, when there was the sound of heavy boots at the threshold of the room. Joel leaned past your body and snagged the bag of chips instead.

“Food for the road?” He turned to his friend.

“All you,” your dad replied, smiling and waving the chips off as he went for the front door, “I swear your stomach’s a bottomless pit, man. Eatin’ me outta house and home.”

Joel looked at you when your dad was past you both.

House and home ain’t the only thing I’m gonna—

“Let’s go,” you chirped, fast, “I call shotgun!”

This would be a long, long day, no doubt.

The county fair had been his friend’s idea. One last day of ‘family fun’ before his little girl went back to school out East, and Joel hadn’t seen Bellville in years, so he’d asked him if he wanted to join. After a shared, brief stint in abstinence camp, the answer should’ve been clear:

‘NO.’

But Joel hadn’t learned very much from the Fireflies in the less than 72 hours he’d spent living—and also fucking you—there, so he’d nodded and said ‘Okay.’

Now you were twenty minutes out from the fairgrounds with a near-depleted tank of gas in the truck, obliged to make a quick pit stop at a Texaco. It was the first time he’d been alone with you since you’d set off from Austin. The second his friend was gone and headed inside to buy a pack of smokes, he heard a seatbelt come undone.

Earlier, he had raced you and beat you to the car to lay claim on the passenger seat, so you’d been in the back this whole time. He barely saw you before he felt you, climbing over the center console and then into his lap.

Straddling him while the Eagles played faintly overhead.

“Feel fucking insane not being able to touch you right now,” you huffed against his lips, kissing him hungrily.

Joel groaned. Felt your lower half grind into his. Almost rutted his hips up and yearned to have you seated on something other than just his denim-clad crotch when he sucked in a breath and remembered where he was. He nudged your hips and fisted the fabric in his hand.

“You in this dress ain’t helpin’ me either,” he growled.

You grinned against him, then hiked the red-and-white material up your legs a little more. Joel felt something like a shockwave when he saw what was underneath it.

Or, rather, what wasn’t there at all: your panties.

“Bathroom quickie?” you said, already breathless, “I’ll tell my dad I got cramps. I’ve been so wet this whole ti—”

“Darlin’.”

Joel’s eyes had drifted down to the place where your body and his were touching—rubbing—now. Even from this limited vantage point, he could see a glistening patch sticking from your bare seam to his jeans, and it was pooling on the fabric. Practically oozing out of your cunt while you rocked your hips and begged him please.

“Please, just one. I’ll be good the rest of the day, daddy.”

“Fuck,” Joel hissed.

His pupils were wide, and his mind was seriously considering it. Stupidly so, he reckoned; your dad was bound to be back any second, and surely you couldn’t both be gone for more than five minutes without raising suspicions. It was a reckless endeavor, he already knew.

And when he saw his old friend strolling out the front doors of the Texaco, his decision was made for him.

He watched you scramble off his lap and back to your seat, body quick and lithe and giggling the whole way.

“Gonna get me murdered, girl,” Joel panted, gruff.

Your own smile didn’t waver; you just settled back into the middle seat and let your gaze trail out the window, trying to fix your eyes on something to calm you down.

You already had the sense that nothing would. Your teeth bit your bottom lip between them to forestall the threat of another laugh while your dad approached the vehicle.

From the radio, ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ kept playing.

As old as they were, Joel Miller and your dad had a funny way of acting more like kids than you ever had, at any age. As your trio approached the wide, gleaming gates of the Austin County Fair, you saw your dad nudge Joel, and Joel shoved him back, and somewhere in the midst of all the ribbing, you heard your dad say, clear as day:

“If I’m takin’ a whole day off work, I’m gettin’ hammered.”

You knew by that tone this would an interesting afternoon, to say the least. You held your ticket tighter.

And for a moment, you wished you’d worn underwear. It’d been a split-second decision to peel them off before skipping downstairs, and it had worked well enough—Joel walking with a limp all throughout the parking lot and trying to shield the tent in his jeans—but now you were the one in greater danger still. Seeing your secret family-friend-with-benefits in his tight, light, heather grey shirt and jeans, hips adorned with a hefty belt and moving deliciously with each new step he took, you were transfixed. Left to watch him and gawk and grow wetter between the legs with every passing second, there was nothing you could do about it now. Likely sensing this, Joel raked a hand through his grey-flecked hair and hummed to himself. His bicep bulged through the sleeve.

“Nice little view, ain’t it?” he asked, nodding to the outline of a dozen shining rides and attractions ahead.

Go fuck yourself, Joel.

“Can’t wait to ride that.” You pointed to the ferris wheel, though the finger in your mind was aimed closer to him.

“Funnel cake,” your dad beamed, eyeing a nearby stand.

The three of you weren’t walking for much longer before he insisted on buying one. Joel had had a hankering for lemonade himself, so he’d fallen in line behind you and your dad. When it was your turn to order, you paused.

Then, pointing again:

“Can you get me one of those?”

You’d had to stand on tiptoes to see it inside the display, but from Joel’s own height, he was certain to have seen what you meant. While your dad shilled out the cash, not batting an eye, the man behind him clenched his jaw.

Candy apple, hon? Real fuckin’ mature.

Your eyes met his as soon as you’d turned, treat in hand.

I thought you liked seeing big things in my mouth, Joel.

He would’ve scowled if he wasn’t next in line—and your dad wasn’t walking so close behind, sniffing his food.

Joel ordered his drink, drank it fast, and found his thirst no better quenched than when he’d started. You’d sat across from him at the table and made sure of that.

You dragged your tongue up the sugar-coated apple just like you’d done to his shaft that morning and blinked, savoring the taste. Feigning innocence as he looked on.

And what else could he do? If not watch you, then peer at your father, furtively, and make sure he wasn’t able to see so much as a second of this little show you were putting on now. Joel glanced around you, too. No one else seemed to notice what was going on, even when your lips left a soft, sweet suction near the top of the apple, and he could’ve sworn he’d heard you moan.

It was just in his head. He was remembering how you’d done it that morning, mouth sinking down his length and whimpering when you’d reached the base. The way your eyes had watered, your free hand had reached between your legs, and your lips had welcomed him in; it was all burned in his memory, and not retreating any time soon.

Neither was the blood rushing to his dick, he reckoned.

You didn’t seem to care. Even when a bright pink river of spit and sugar trickled out of your mouth, you didn’t flinch. You let it slide down to your chin. Right before it reached the end of your face, and you were certain Joel’s gaze was glued to the spot, you licked a little bit of it off. You didn’t get it all in one go, so you shifted your snack to the other hand and then swiped your thumb under your lips. You brought it up to your mouth and sucked it, just like you’d done with Joel’s cum on it earlier that day.

Joel chucked his cup in the trash. Your dad took another bite of his deep-fried pastry and, talking between chews:

“That was fast.”

“Need’a stretch my legs,” Joel announced, abrupt.

He turned to you, and your thumb came out of your mouth. The frown on his face was unmistakable, though your father probably thought it was just from having to squint against the sun. Not because he was incensed.

Out for revenge.

“Ready to get wrecked, kiddo?” he asked you.

Your eyes widened, and your tongue quit licking.

What?

Then you saw him nod to some spot over your shoulder. You didn’t have the nerve to follow his gaze as he did.

Faintly, you could make out a smirk crossing his lips.

“Arcade’s over there. Unless you’re too scared.”

Your dad raised a dumbass, not a quitter.

You’d accepted Joel’s proposal without a second thought, and your father seemed pleased to have the chance to peruse the food stands and beer carts to his heart’s content. You’d set off quickly. Your candy apple was still in your hand when you saw your friend lean over.

Joel opened his mouth, and he took a big, angry bite.

“You’re insane,” he said after, words muffled by fruit.

You took your first steps inside the dark, cool building littered with machines and fun activities of every kind, and deep down, you were happy you’d had that treat. You took a bite yourself, then discreetly patted his ass through his jeans and told him, ‘Only for you, Miller.’

You weren’t sure why you’d said it. As soon as the words came out of your mouth, you regretted it, no matter how stupid and playful the message was meant to be read. But then Joel nudged you back—actually wrapped his arm around your shoulder and pulled you into his side.

His mouth was close to you, and you could feel the smile:

“Just how I like it.”

Your cheeks heated a little. You weren’t so fond of the intimate move—in public like this, even as dark as the arcade happened to be—but you couldn’t deny the flutter in your stomach. You swallowed the rest of your apple, and with it, any shred of emotion, or so you were hoping. You nudged Joel off of you under the guise of trying to point to something new, and his eyes followed.

“C’mon. At least pick something you’ve got half a shot of winning,” he said, swiftly. Sounding smug as he spoke.

You plodded on anyway, not hesitating at all.

“I’ve got more than half a shot,” you assured him, tone arguably twice as conceited, “Now if you’re scared—”

“You can’t use my own lingo against me, little girl.”

“Then nut up or shut up, old man.”

Joel scoffed. You chewed. The two of you approached the Skee-Ball machines with near identical looks of ambition and zeal, and sensing this tension wouldn’t dissipate with any more shit-talking, you got to work.

The first game was close. You beat him by less than ten points, and you guessed that that had been due in part to Joel’s own will. You saw him make more than two pitches so outrageously bad that you’d had to have guessed he was going easy on you. As soon as you felt that, you’d scowled. Pointed angrily at the scoreboard.

“You can’t just let me win, Miller!” you said, shrill.

Joel’s hands went up, and you knew he’d deny it all.

“No need to gloat, now, honey—”

“Fuck off,” you snapped, all while fighting back a smile, “Gimme your A game or don’t bother playing, honey.”

And he did.

The next game left you destroyed, roughly 900 to 320. You stepped back from the machine, feeling a frown start to form on your lips but knowing you’d asked for this, and just as Joel was about to lean in to offer a conciliatory hug, he had to stop. Both of you turned.

Somewhere behind you, you’d heard a voice.

It was young, male, and audibly amused.

“He really whooped your ass, huh?”

Your eyebrows raised as soon as you saw the source. Your scowl morphed into a smile, and your eyes were bright—too bright, almost. You ran over to hug the boy.

He was a boy, after all. Likely no more than half Joel’s weight soaking wet and wearing the biggest, dumbest grin that could only belong to a guy your age. He hugged you back, and his arms tightened around you. Comfily.

“Wade!” you gushed, squeezing him hard. You stepped back and looked him over, as if in shock, “It’s been…”

“Forever,” Too-comfy-cozy Wade finished for you.

Joel frowned.

“And here I thought you were gone away for good!” you laughed, “Went off to get that fancy Stanford degree—”

“—and you, in Boston—” the boy chimed in.

Before the reminiscing could go on much further, you remembered yourself and turned back to Joel. Still beaming as bright as you’d been when you first saw the kid, you gestured indistinctly, tongue-tied for a second.

“This— Joel, this is Wade Pritchett, one of my friends from high school,” you introduced him. Letting the two men—or, rather, mustached boy and muscled man—shake hands. Evidently, you were too stoked to notice.

“He moved out to Sacramento our senior year, and none of us thought— well, we— we figured we’d probably never see him again. Fuckin’ west coast hot shot he is.”

You smirked as you nudged his ribs, and something in Joel turned to month-old milk: sour, rancid, and heavy. His stomach turned inside him, and he hardly knew why. All he noticed was that he didn’t like the eyes you were making at him, and he hated the face Wade had for you.

Joel was just looking out for you, really.

You could do so much better than this douche.

“This is my friend,” you said to Wade, motioning back. Then, reconsidering just a second, “My dad’s friend.”

Joel didn’t like that.

Wade gave him a brief once-over and hardly seemed to see him at all. In that millisecond of a look, Joel saw it:

‘Old family friend. No worries there.’

Foolishly, Joel wished the chump could’ve seen what you’d been doing the night before—impaled on his cock and riding him as hard as your knees would allow you:

‘Daddy, please, daddy, daddy, daddy.’

“Joel?” Your voice cut in his mind like a knife.

Joel blinked.

“Yeah?”

“Okay if Wade joins?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah.”

Not that it mattered now. Royal pain-in-the-ass Pritchett was already getting the machine next to yours set up.

Joel eyed him once more and tried to swallow his pride.

Somewhere along the way, it got stuck in his throat.

Three rounds was all he could take.

You on Wade, Wade on you—goading each other on in the most sly, flirtatious ways. Or maybe it was just Joel imagining that. Regardless, the man didn’t feel guilty at all when, at the conclusion of the third game, he’d tried to feign a casual tone and told you your dad would be expecting you back any minute, better wrap things up.

“He texted me like twenty minutes ago saying he’d be neck-deep in craft beer for an hour. I think we’re good,” you replied, and the indifference in yours didn’t have to be faked. You grinned at Wade, and Wade grinned back.

“Well, he texted me a second ago that he was holding a spot for us in line at the ferris wheel, so let’s roll, kid.”

That was a lie.

Joel didn’t like himself for doing it. But, again, he didn’t like Wade Pritchett even more, and he reasoned that he was doing you a favor, anyway. He searched for the exit.

“It’s alright, my mom’s probably looking for me, too.”

We get it, Pritchett. You’re a mama’s boy.

“Ah, okay.” You almost sounded sad.

Don’t be, baby. You’re daddy’s girl, remember?

Wade pulled you in for a hug; Joel wanted to deck him.

“I’ll be in town all week if you wanna—”

“I wish. My flight leaves tomorrow,” you cut in. Now your tone was really despondent. Your mouth was pouting.

It was just Joel’s eyes. He was seeing things. He was thinking you cared for this guy more than you probably ever did, and he was getting himself worked up over nothing. He clenched one hand into a fist by his side and waited for the anger to subside. Sadly, it was slow to go.

“Maybe we could…go out for drinks later or something?”

That suggestion didn’t make things any easier on Joel.

“I’d love to.”

Your reply didn’t exactly set his mind at ease, either.

At last, he decided he’d had enough. Turning on his heels, he bid a terse goodbye to shithead Pritchett and walked out of the arcade. He didn’t stop until he’d hit one of the bar carts your dad had been raving about outside.

He contemplated buying a drink. Maybe two. In fact, he’d just been eyeing three cans of Coors Light and was fishing for his wallet when he heard your voice again.

“Joel?”

“Yeah?” His tone was clipped.

If you felt it, you didn’t show it.

“Are we riding the ferris wheel or not?”

He probably should’ve given a verbal answer in the affirmative. Instead, he’d just nodded his head and started off the other way, expecting you to follow.

The walk was short. You’d had to weave through a sea of fairgoers, including schoolkids, college-aged drunks, and more than a fair share of loved-up couples, but that wasn’t too bad. Joel just ignored each one and didn’t stop until you’d reached the line for the ferris wheel.

Or what was left of the line, anyway.

Unlike what Joel had told you, there was no wraparound queue for you to join. Your father wasn’t there. Once you’d passed a look over the dozen-odd people waiting patiently for it to be their turn on the ride, you felt your stomach turn. Joel had never texted your dad at all.

“He’s not coming, is he?” Dispensing with the obvious.

Joel still wouldn’t look your way. He’d just sidled up behind the last people in line—a group of older folks who all seemed eager to get on the ferris wheel. You scoffed when you saw Joel’s expression harden, and you planned to turn away. Then the people up front started to move. For a moment, you were torn between telling him off and leaving him there. At length, you settled on saying, low:

“You lied.”

Joel followed the moving line, and a few more people started to trickle in behind you. Before you could even think to speak again, you were nudged ahead by the force of that crowd, and had only to keep glaring.

“Hey—” you hissed, only five steps away from the platform now. The ride attendant was scanning the line, appearing to count the people approaching the gate, and when his eyes landed on you, you made out a little grin.

“Aww, your daughter scared’a heights or somethin’?”

He’d said it to Joel, sounding cheeky. His teeth gleamed in the light of a hundred different neon bulbs, and you had to avert your face to keep from revealing its disgust.

So everyone else still thinks he’s my dad. That’s nice.

You couldn’t see Joel’s expression, but you imagined it looked the same. You shuffled ahead, reluctantly, and heard a lady behind you laugh; the sound had a tipsy lilt.

“My kid’s the same way—you’ll be fine, hon,” she slurred.

Heights aren’t the issue here, you’d wanted to snap back, for no other reason than your own disdain for Joel and the present situation. He walked in front of you, still refusing to meet your gaze, and soon you were perched on the platform, sandwiched between two semi-rowdy throngs of fairgoers with no clear means of escape. You crossed your arms and stared up at the back of his head. The look you gave him probably could’ve burned holes in his skull if irritation had been the means of achieving it.

You were seated on the ride in minutes. The compartment was surprisingly large, and its walls high, with glass on every side. Under a waning afternoon sun, the views you expected to see were bound to be pretty. All that was left to detract from its splendor was Joel— hunkered down opposite you and manspreading. Wide.

Sitting in total silence with his denim-covered legs split in a ‘V’. Watching you and rubbing one thigh, absently.

“You’ve got some nerv—” you started in.

“Yeah, no. No. That kid was gettin’ on my nerves—”

It amazed you how fast Joel was to return your words with a hostile quip of his own, anger flashing in his eyes.

“What’d he even do?! He’s my friend— my best friend—”

Fury flitted to something like discomfort, momentarily.

“Oh yeah? Just friends?”

“What the fuck does it matter to you?”

In your own expression, rage flared unchecked. You didn’t particularly care what Joel thought now if he was immature enough to act like this, and the walls of the compartment were thick enough to prevent anyone else’s hearing a word of it. The ride continued to rumble along, letting on new passengers with each new stop.

Joel might’ve paused. Could’ve stared out the window for all you knew—everything but the wheel itself seemed to be moving at lightning speed, and time was sliding.

“Because I— I— I give a shit, kid. I care.”

“And that makes lying to me alright?”

“I was just worried for your—”

“Bullshit. What would you need to be so worried about? Me playing Skee-Ball with an old friend and maybe getting drinks? You can fuck right off with that.”

Joel opened his mouth to speak, but he shut it when the ride suddenly jolted to a stop. It sputtered. Then, after a long, tense moment, it slowly ascended again. You took this lull in speech as your own chance to re-intervene:

“That’s not ‘care.’ Or ‘worry,’” you continued, words dripping with condescension, “That’s controlling.”

“Controlling?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

Joel Miller always did.

“It’s not—”

“It is—”

“Protecting you from assholes like him—”

“—he’s not—and I never asked you to do that!”

“So I just sit by and watch him touch what’s mine—”

“I’m not yours, Joel!”

Your last words echoed through the car like a shotgun’s report. You’d said it with such force—so emphatic for him not to be mistaken in what this was, or whose you were—when you hardly even knew how you felt yourself. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and one that Joel knew only too well. The last time you two fucked, he’d begged the same: ‘Say you’re mine,’ and no matter how close you’d been to release at the time, you simply couldn’t say it. Now, clear-headed and mostly clothed, you still despised those words. Emotions. Uniquely juxtaposed with Joel’s jealousy over Wade, you’d never wanted to say it louder:

“I’m not yours, and I never will be. So just stop.”

More cruel.

“Are we clear?”

The car came to a halt near the top. When Joel still hadn’t deigned to answer, you leaned in closer.

“I said, are we fucking clear, Miller?”

Then you didn’t have to wait.

“I hear you.”

Of course he heard. His face was hard. His eyes were like two brown stones in the sockets, and the line of his mouth was tight. Whatever use you might’ve had in trying to decipher that look was ignored for the time being; you were still too angry. And, perhaps owing to this state—with a white-hot look fixed on him and your head full of blinding, bitter thoughts—you were more than susceptible to surprise. You jumped when you felt it.

Felt him with a hand moving from his leg to yours.

It went quick but was almost too ridiculous to fathom—how swift Joel was in reaching for you, hoisting you into his lap, letting your limbs straddle his hips with all the ease of old, welcome habits. It might’ve worked just as well, were it not for the tension in your legs. The short, sharp, ‘Joel’ and a look flitting out to either side of you.

“What?” he grunted.

You heard a fly unzip.

“We’re on a—”

Before you could finish, and as if to furnish the answer for you, the ride shuddered back to life. Its descent was slow, but any movement now made your stomach churn. It didn’t matter that most of the cabin was encased in metal, the rest semi-tinted plexiglass, or that your space was almost entirely shielded from the view of other cars—it was too much of a risk, as was everything with him.

Joel remained blind to it all. Your cabin came to a stop, still high in the sky, and then you felt him grip something between you. In one swift motion, he had the head of his cock rubbing your seam. You sighed; his eyes were cold.

“C’mon then…show me what ain’t mine,” he murmured.

His voice was low. You hated those words. This was more than just that. Your cunt slid and accepted him anyway.

For a second, your gaze was level with his. Your hips hadn’t stirred, and he was crawling inch-by-inch inside you, pulling you down. The act could’ve been intimate, had the words that passed before not been so harsh—and the place not been a fucking amusement park.

When the ride resumed its slow, rumbling circuit, he didn’t make your bodies part, but instead flipped you around. Your back was flush with his front, and by all appearances, you were innocently perched on his lap.

What the tens, or dozens, or hundreds of strangers ambling around down below couldn’t see was that a cock was nestled inside you, too. That with every gentle bump of the wheel, a man several decades your senior was filling you to the hilt, sending waves of pleasure through your body and his while he stuffed you tight. What your dad didn’t know was that this was his friend. That the nose nudging the skin between your sleeve and your neck belonged to Joel, and his breaths were short.

Trying to calm the flutter of his pulse and the pull of his lungs, he flattened his hands on either one of your thighs. He rubbed his palms back and forth, and you glanced down to find the insides of your legs extra shiny.

Slick, pretty, and full of him. He tilted your chin back up.

“Nice and quiet for daddy—nice and still. No squirmin’.”

He nudged your hips forward, and his cock brushed a wet, spongy ridge inside you. You had to purse your lips to swallow a noise. You felt your cunt drool even more.

The car swung low, in the line of sight of far too many eyes, and then it stopped again. You weren’t at liberty to move at all, and still, the feel of Joel inside you was raw.

Grating, almost.

It made the prospect of conversation seem the tiniest bit easier, though—forced to face away from each other and act civil now. Right before the ride started up again, you gripped the armrest and anchored your feet to his boots.

“Feels…good,” you whimpered.

“That so?” Joel murmured back.

“So—oh.”

Your words fell apart at the next brush of his hand, sliding down to your heat and taking his index and middle fingers to the precious, pulsing bud in between.

Soon the car was up at a comfortable height. You sighed.

Your legs pressed together over Joel’s, and you felt him rub the tips of his fingers even harder, circles tighter.

“I know,” he said, sensing your words before they came, “I know it feels nice, baby. Keep that chin up for daddy.”

Don’t let them know I’m inside you. Stay quiet.

But his girth was so much. The tug of his smooth, throbbing manhood between your walls was almost more than you could take. You laced the fingers of your free hand with his over your thigh, and you held them tight as your hips wriggled back. You couldn’t help it, feeling a welt of pleasure start to blossom in your belly.

“Joel—” you started.

“Don’t talk,” Joel grumbled, stern, “It’ll draw attention.”

You sensed there was more to it than that. Your fingers threaded even deeper through his, and he squeezed them back. Between your bodies, there rose a soft, gentle tap, tap, tap with the thrusts Joel was able to deliver now that you were back up high and out of sight. If there was any time to speak, this was your window.

Joel probably wished you hadn’t, but you tried, anyway.

“You know it’s been years since—”

“Since?”

Now you didn’t want to say it. But you knew you had to.

“Wade’s been my friend since—”

Another influx of something soft and tender inside you. Joel holding your hand, pushing himself deeper, and trying not to groan when you clenched around him. Hating that he had to hear that name, most likely.

You despised the words even more before you said them:

“—since my mom left.”

It was an awful time to be bringing this up, admittedly. Both of you on the brink of release with Joel’s cock buried as far inside you as it would go, his fingers entwined with yours, and the ride drifting lower.

And lower, lower, lower still. Joel’s breaths picked up.

The car shuddered to a halt almost halfway down. You didn’t have to see his face to picture it a little more rigid than it’d been before. He’d known your dad long enough to remember the time his wife had walked out on him.

“Ever since we were kids—” You continued, as if you needed to remind him of any of the particulars. Joel hardly knew you back then, though, “—he was my friend. Wade’s been one of my— my closest— he was there—”

You couldn’t be sure if it was the subject of discussion or simply how close you were to cumming that kept your tongue from forming a coherent string of words, but here you were. Joel’s grip on your hand had loosened, and the movements of his hips had slowed considerably. You hoped he’d be too lost in his own pleasure to care.

“I remember,” he returned quietly.

That was all he said for a moment. Out of habit, your legs parted more for his touch, and you whimpered, feebly, as the fingers kept circling your clit. The ride started again.

“You don’t have to—” And again, his voice was low.

“I’m not saying that as an— as an excuse or anything.”

You didn’t know why you were saying it at all. You just wanted Joel to know he didn’t need to be jealous. That Wade had been a friend through a dark and bleak season of your life, and that was all it had ever, or would ever, be.

While the car was still suspended in air, and the sights below all relatively small, you got the sense you’d have to deal with this budding bliss inside you a bit quicker than anticipated. Joel was all wordless encouragement. You almost wished you could’ve seen his face as he urged you to come undone, keep making yourself feel good, that’s it, cum for me, but frankly, it was probably for the best you couldn’t look him in the eye right now. Beyond just needing release, you wanted him to see you in a more vulnerable light than you’d ever been—facing away seemed the least painful position to have that happen.

With your fingers and his still interlaced and your hips moving a little more quickly, Joel could feel your pleasure soaking his jeans, and he pulled you down closer to him.

He nudged the back of your neck with his nose. He panted against it gently, tenderly. Then he kissed it.

“Don’t need’a say anything else, darlin’. I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry.

Under any other circumstances, an apology from a man would have been the last thing to send you over the edge, but today, you couldn’t help it. Just as the car started up again, you hit your peak with Joel still stuffed inside you, and you gripped his hand as hard as you could. You fought to keep the moans contained behind your lips, but it was hard—and Joel’s constant, tender caresses with his lips and fingers made it that much worse. He trailed kisses down your neck and shoulder and told you gently, ‘That’s it, good girl, that’s my girl.’

My girl.

Again.

You almost didn’t mind it being said this time around.

Almost.

In truth, you didn’t have half a mind to think much of anything in that moment. You just curled your toes and pressed your back into Joel while the warm, euphoric waves coursed through you, and you let yourself be content with what he’d said. Whatever he meant by it.

In the minute that followed, you sensed he was perilously close to finishing, too. So, as soon as you’d made it down from your high—and the ride, too, was circling back and making its way through the final cycles—you crawled off of Joel. You got on your knees. For the first time in what seemed like hours, you locked eyes with him; your mouth moved lower still. You’d barely latched your lips onto the head of his cock before he was shooting off rope after rope after rope of his cum. Warmth splattered down your tongue and throat, and you swallowed it all obediently.

You didn’t need to be told when the ride was over. You heard a buzz, felt it jolt, and, unfortunately for you and Joel, your car was one of the first to be let off. You had to hurry off your knees and back into your seat, across from your panting, silver-haired friend, just seconds before the door to your left swung open. You began to stand.

Joel followed you out. His spend was still stuck to your throat in some places, the scent of his skin and his stubble and his extra heavy load all fresh to your senses. You wiped one corner of your mouth and kept walking.

And it was in this state you remained another second or two. You were just about to take your first steps off the platform, mind floating over somewhere tranquil and warm, when your thoughts were presently interrupted.

Your steps, too, were cut short. Joel had stopped you.

Then he grabbed your face, and he kissed you.

Your world froze a moment. You didn’t have time to think, or react, or even kiss him back, so you just stood there and let him hold you to him. It was over in a blink.

And one glance over Joel’s shoulder after he did it, to the ride attendant and nearly every last person in line, said they were just as stunned. Some sick, by the looks of it.

‘He’s NOT my dad!’ you wanted to yell, out of habit.

Seeing the eyes Joel had fixed on you—the smile that followed—their suspicions didn’t matter to him at all.

You walked off together, still considering those words:

My girl.

A month wouldn’t be so bad. Two was tolerable, even.

The next few hours spent with Joel made it seem like you could go a year or longer without seeing his face, and nothing between you would change too much.

He was a friend. A good friend. Not just your dad’s old companion, but your own. Whatever else was left beyond that could be explored down the road, but for now, you were content to just let him hold your hand in places you weren’t likely to be seen, and kiss you in those he hoped your dad wouldn’t be. Maybe fuck you on a ferris wheel.

At the thought of going back to college tomorrow, not seeing him again until Thanksgiving or Christmas at the earliest, you didn’t feel too sad. You did get an extra burst of yearning when Joel’s hands would find your hips and push you off to some shaded, semi-discreet area and he’d tell you, softly, ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do without ya, kid’ before kissing you with a hunger all over again. That made you think you might miss him a little.

You’d warned him not to lie to you again. He promised he wouldn’t. You believed him, at least as far as your general mistrust of men would allow, and you had left it at that.

Now the tips of his fingers were brushing your own, and his mouth was grinning—coated in all sorts of sauces from the barbecue you two had been devouring. It was approaching six o’clock. He held the last Carolina-style pulled pork slider up to you, and you shook your head.

“I’m stuffed,” you said, pained.

Really, you were. You and Joel had decided to join in on the fair’s 25th annual BBQ and Chili Cook-off an hour ago, and now your stomachs were suffering immensely.

You made a face in disgust when he tried to push it closer, ‘Joel, I’ll projectile vomit if you don’t— don’t—’

You squealed when he leaned in, thinking he was planning to smush the patty in your face—you’d done that to him with some coleslaw not too long ago—but instead, he dropped the burger. He pressed what non-sticky parts of his hands he could get on your face and, cupping your cheeks between his palms, he kissed you.

Then he kissed you again, and again, and again.

This time, it felt more like an attack. Not an attempt at being affectionate, which he’d shown himself amply capable of all day, but really just a way to smear your lips and chin with sauce and get you extra pissed off at him.

It worked. You bit his lower lip at the last kiss.

And, instead of wincing in pain or biting you back, Joel surprised you by groaning a little bit against your mouth. His grip loosened from your face, and he leaned back.

‘Behave’ was all he said. Smirking.

If any one of Joel Miller’s quasi-fatherly lectures had ever met with success before, this would not be one of them. You only rolled your eyes and were about to reply with some variant of ‘Make me’ when your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pulled it out to see the new notification.

Nothing more than a reminder to check in for your flight. But that sight also roused some awareness in you that it was just then starting to get late, and you hadn’t heard a word from your father in hours. You and Joel had been extraordinarily fortunate that day in hearing that your dad happened to run into some friends at the livestock show, and had been occupied—plastered, most likely—ever since. You hadn’t thought to question it before, just happy to have your dad out of your hair for the afternoon, but now that it was late and all the shows were long since over, you had to wonder if it wasn’t time to shoot him that text. Bring your last happy, fun-filled night with Joel for the next two months to an end, and head home.

You started to send him a message. Joel peered over your shoulder, absently wiping his hands on a napkin.

“He said he was headed over to a concert last time we talked. Some band he likes,” he hummed, “Wanna go?”

You weren’t too keen on seeing the likes of any Creed-adjacent artist your dad so loved to listen to himself, but if it gave you an excuse to stretch your time with him and Joel, you didn’t mind. You nodded, then deposited your phone back into your pocket. You were just about to stand when Joel held you back. He’d snagged your hand.

“Hang on, ya got a little—” he said, soft. Then he lifted his napkin and started wiping at the sides of your mouth. His motions had all the crude, brute force of a man who’d never wiped a person’s face before—he seemed more concerned getting the vinegar-based glaze off your cheeks than impressing you with how tender he could be—but the gesture was received well enough. For once, you resisted the urge to roll your eyes and just smiled.

“You’re taking me to the airport tomorrow, right?”

“Long as it’s alright with your dad.”

“You could spend the night, too.”

Joel paused. He flitted a look from your lips to your eyes, then, finding a sly playfulness in both, only hummed. Stopped wiping long enough to kiss you on the cheek.

“We’ll see—”

“I’ll be real good—”

“Oh, I bet you won’t.”

But by the end of it, Joel was grinning too. He didn’t protest when your lips returned the favor from his, and they left an equally sweet and clean kiss on his cheek.

He didn’t bat an eye when your hand slid up his leg either. He just squeezed yours back and helped you up.

“Gonna get me murdered, I’m tellin’ you,” he murmured in your ear as you stood, just like he’d said to you earlier.

You figured if he’d had his pick of ways to risk his life, sneaking into your room tonight wouldn’t be the worst possible option. You threw your trash away and started off for the entertainment pavilion, following the music.

It was almost like you could feel Joel contemplating whether to sling his arm over your shoulder while you walked. Not once, but twice did his fingers twitch beside him, and he looked around you both from side to side. He decided against it, at length, and contented himself instead to just nudge your elbow and tell you that he liked that dress a lot—he hoped you would wear it again.

Come up for a football game, and you might see it then, you’d urged him back. The red of your dress wasn’t quite the perfect match for your school’s hundred-year-old crimson and black color scheme, but that was alright. You’d bend the rules for him. The two of you were just approaching the outskirts of a big, noisy crowd when Joel was about to respond. Your eyes glazed over a sea of people, surprised by its size, when you cut back in:

“We’re never gonna find him in here.”

Joel assessed the crowd. Checked his phone. Heard the wail of a guitar from somewhere up at the front and instantly surmised this was a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band—and that your dad wouldn’t leave until he’d heard every song. Silently, he kicked himself for suggesting coming to look at all. He could’ve taken you on a few more rides, filled your overstuffed belly with a little more cotton candy, popcorn, or ice cream, if you’d been up for it, but instead, you were obliged to find your old man. It wouldn’t have been awful if it wasn’t so hot and—

“Hey,” Joel broke in, before he could think.

His eyes had landed on a person—a pair—in the crowd that you hadn’t seen, and his heart clenched in his chest.

You’d barely tilted your head to him, “Yeah?”

“We should go,” he told you. He hadn’t meant for his voice to come out so rushed, or strained, but it was.

He couldn’t help it, especially when your gaze had shifted fully to him. Your eyes searched his, curious.

“Why?”

“‘Cause I…” Joel trailed off, looking around. Scrambling to procure an excuse of some kind, “I gotta…go piss.”

“Then piss. I’ll wait here,” you replied.

You didn’t get it. Really, there was no way you could. You hadn’t yet seen the short-sleeve, turquoise-colored PFG shirt at the back of the crowd, the beaming face Joel spotted above it. You hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of the man’s profile, much less the full, wide smile on his face, the beer in his hand, or the woman by his side. She was either laughing, or singing, or nudging his hip. They looked happy. And yet, you shouldn’t see it.

Joel would kiss you—that was it. It would be the riskiest thing he’d done, but at least it’d save you from seeing.

So he tried. Joel leaned in and ventured to press his lips to yours, gripping your face, but the second he did, you pushed him away. Your eyes were wide. Cheeks heating.

“What the hell, Joel?” you hissed, “Dad could be—”

Your gaze darted to the side, and then you stopped.

The eyes grew wider. Your lips stayed the course, as if to keep going, but no sound came out, and all that was left of your mouth was a round, stunned ‘o.’ You blinked, like you couldn’t believe it: the two people were kissing now.

Joel reached for your arm, but you were far too fast. You shot off to get away, toward them, and didn’t stop until you’d made it to the edge of the crowd where they stood. The music was loud, the audience was rowdy, but still, even at a distance, Joel could hear you as clear as day:

“Dad?!”

The man and the woman split as quickly as they could.

You were standing there, watching them watch you in utter shock for a second or two. Joel wasn’t counting, but he did find himself next to you before he could blink. He was reaching for your arm again, then stopping. Looking to his friend, whose gaze was plastered on his daughter with all the markings of awe. Embarrassment.

“Honey—” he started.

“What the fuck is this?”

Bad question. Terrible timing. Joel knew what it was—clearly his friend knew it too, but you weren’t supposed to find this out yourself for at least another month or two. That was what he’d told Joel back then, anyway.

“Sweetheart, this is my—this is Helen.”

You looked like you wanted to be sick.

“I know who she is!” you spat. You waved an angry, inarticulate hand in Helen’s direction. Helen looked away.

“Why don’t we go someplace quieter?” That was Joel, cutting in over the thumping bass and the strain in the air like he might’ve been a father to you himself. Wanting to shield you from what was coming next if he could help it.

Once more he reached for you, and still inflamed, you shoved him off. Your eyes were too hurt to turn away.

“What? This is y—your—” you started back, stammering.

“We were going to tell you, honey, I swear.”

In all the years he’d known him, Joel had never seen his friend look so contrite—or fucking moronic. The man had ditched his beer, was wringing his hands trying to pace a little more carefully your way while he spoke, but you weren’t having it. Or anything, really. When Joel brushed his touch against your elbow the slightest bit, about to murmur words low in your ear, like, ‘We’ll talk. C’mon,’ you’d jerked your arm away from him entirely.

He didn’t need to see your face to hear the pain in:

“Fucking stop, Joel!”

That caught your father off-guard. He didn’t hesitate before he cut back in, looking more pointedly at you.

“Hey. You don’t talk to your Uncle Joel that way,” he said, sharp. Joel winced. He went on, “I’m the one who told him not to say anything, okay? Now just calm down—”

And whatever effect his friend had intended to produce created just the opposite in you. Instead of focusing on your dad, your eyes shot to Joel, and in an instant, your body was turning. Your face was half-hatred as you did.

“You knew?!”

“Honey, I told him—” your dad tried saying.

But your look was too enraged. Your jaw was too tight. Your mouth could barely form the words you wanted to say, and your eyes were like two bloodied daggers. Joel was amazed you could speak a syllable at all, but when he heard it, he got a sense for why that was. He had to.

“You knew?”

You were hurt.

When you left, he followed. He wasn’t sure what he’d bothered saying to your father as he did, but it sounded like an excuse—‘It’s fine. I’ve got her.’ He didn’t, though. You were gone quicker than he could turn around, and by the time he’d made it far enough away from the crowd to yell your name, you were too removed to hear it. He saw the top of your head through a whole new cluster of strangers, and he yelled it again. You kept walking.

Joel was fast, but you were adept, all things considered. You slipped through the crowd with ease and gained more and more distance than he could attain in twice the time. Joel bit the inside of his cheek and kept going. He didn’t reach you until you were approaching the front gates, when he called out for you again, out of breath.

You probably wouldn’t have turned if you’d had a choice. But as it was, you were up against a bottleneck effect of more people trying to leave than the exit could fairly handle at once, and everyone at the back was at a standstill. Your jaw tightened when he said your name.

“Darlin’— hey— baby, just let me—” Joel had weaved his way around your neighbors, but the area was cramped.

You didn’t move. Your gaze was trained elsewhere.

“—explain. Let me explain, and I promise, I didn’t—”

The line shifted forward, and you moved with it. Your body was turned; while you kept walking, shuffling, Joel earned a few uneasy looks from the people around him.

“I didn’t mean—” he forged on.

But as soon as he reached for you, he knew he’d overstepped. Confirming every onlooker’s suspicion that you didn’t want to be disturbed, you snatched your arm away, and your eyes flared with anger. You faced him.

“Fuck you.”

Before he could reply:

“Leave me the hell alone, Joel.”

And, while the words were still fresh on your tongue and no one else tried stepping in themselves, you walked off.

You left him again—for what other place, Joel wasn’t sure. You just made off the other way, breezing past carts and stands and now-shuttered booths and more faces than either one of you could count. You kept walking until you found an open space a tolerable distance away from all the noise, then went further.

Your face was fixed in a hard, immutable stare when Joel approached you again. The look behind your eyes was worse; he could tell in a second you were about to cry.

“Darlin’—”

“You knew this whole time,” you said. Seething.

“I didn’t—”

“My dad’s been dating the woman he cheated on my mom with and you didn’t think to fucking tell me?!”

“I thought—”

“Not ONCE?! Huh?” you screamed it this time, “Known you my whole goddamn life and you hide that from me?”

Joel winced. He knew the tears were coming before they even filled your eyes, but the sight still made him hurt. You wouldn’t let him near you, either. You just shook your head and swallowed a lump and blinked hard, and he felt stupid. Whatever favor he’d thought he was doing your father—and you—seemed infinitely small to him now.

That knot you’d tried pushing down in your throat kept you silent for a minute. Joel opened his mouth to insert a word or two himself, but then you looked keen to keep hold of the conversation, no matter how much it hurt, and you were starting again. Blinking harder. Hating it.

“She’s the reason mama left,” you said, hoarse, “Helen was her best friend, and then she went and— and— and— fucked my dad, and because of that, I didn’t have a family for half my fucking adolescence. You knew that.”

Another beat. Joel’s own throat constricted considerably as he considered his next words, but there was no need.

“You saw how much I hated my father, and her, and myself for years, thinking there was something just…wrong with me not being enough to make her stay. And you knew all that, and you still kept it a secret from m—”

“I know, baby. I shouldn’t have kept it from you, I know.”

He’d also known your dad was in the wrong. That hadn’t stopped Joel from trying to rationalize his friend’s actions while they happened: it was a one-time hookup with Helen, then a casual, no-strings deal that the man only indulged when he was feeling extra lonely, then a thing, a relationship of two, three, six months now. Joel had known all along what kind of profound ramifications these decisions would have if you were to ever find out. But his friend wasn’t so easily swayed from old habits, and Joel couldn’t stomach having to break it to you.

Then the roadtrip from Boston happened.

You seemed to be remembering the same.

“Was fucking me a way to make yourself feel better?”

Your words had never struck Joel with more deliberateness or force. He croaked ‘No’ in a moment. You took a step back, and there came the look again—more spiteful than before and repulsed to its core.

“Is that why you offered me a ride back in the first place? Just felt guilty for all the stuff you knew my dad was—”

“No. No, no, honey, I would never, ever—”

“Then why hide it?! Why all this? Why bother?”

You gestured between his body and yours; you didn’t seem to know what you meant. Your cheeks were wet with tears. You had to scrape your palms down your face, sniffling and struggling to clear your own vision, but the efforts appeared to be in vain. You couldn’t stop crying.

“For you,” Joel said, and he hated the way his own voice was splintered. He didn’t know how to make it better, “You were off at school when it started, then— then Boston. Just thought it’d be safer…for you…for us—”

Somewhere in his brain, he’d meant to say that he didn’t want the news of your father to hurt you, or else jeopardize a shred of something Joel had had with you.

It was stupid. Your instantaneous reaction said as much.

“Us?!”

Joel blinked. The eyes across from his were alight.

“Us, Joel?! Are you fucking kidding me? There is no us.”

Their brilliance wasn’t appreciative by any means. If anything, the words made the flow of your tears even worse. You pressed your hands to your face, rubbing your cheeks and trying to shield your eyes, and saying again, ‘There is no ‘us,’ Joel, that’s not an excuse—you knew!’

With his insides in knots, Joel wanted to hold you again. You were still in pain, and your scowl wouldn’t move, and when he tried to touch you, you stepped back in disgust.

He knew better than to think he could reach you now.

“Whole thing was a mistake,” you spat, unfeeling.

“Baby—”

“You and me. Dad and Helen.”

“You don’t mean—”

“Anything you need to keep a secret probably isn’t worth keeping at all, right?” And when you said it, he could tell you’d meant it to hurt him. As if the tears and the time and the sheer resignation in your eyes didn’t say enough.

Now Joel felt an ache in his bones, worse than it’d ever been, and he still couldn’t touch you. Where the heart demanded comfort of a kind you couldn’t give, the head knew better than to ask, and his hands fell limply at his sides. He saw you cry and had only himself to blame.

You turned back to the fairgrounds’ exit. The crowd was as big as it had ever been, but anywhere away from him seemed to be as welcome as anything else, Joel guessed

He’d try something stupid. Again. Even more desperate.

Never in his life had he said the words to someone else, and he sensed it wouldn’t do a thing to change your mind right now, but he’d say it anyway. If not to extricate himself, to let you know what he felt beyond every thing that had taken place tonight. He reached for you again.

“Darlin’, I lov—”

But before the words could register with you, the simple act of pressing his fingers to yours made you blanch. You hadn’t heard him at all, and seemed only concerned with jerking yours away as fast as you could, then shrieking:

“I HATE YOU, JOEL!”

Then you choked back a sob, trained your glossy gaze on him in one last pitiless look, and left him. He didn’t move. He didn’t try to. Sights and sounds and the ground underneath him seemed apt to swallow him whole, and still, he couldn’t move an inch. Somewhere ahead of him—too serendipitous, really—he heard you call a name.

Of course, it wasn’t his. You weren’t running to him.

It wasn’t Joel in the crowd making its way out the gates. It wasn’t him standing a little ways off to the side, eyes wide and confused as he watched you rush over. Almost stumble over yourself falling into his arms and hugging him, burying your face in his chest. Joel watched it all with a raw and hollow heart and wished it were him.

But it was Wade.

Wade hugged you back and held you close, and the look on his face was too bewildered and distraught for Joel to blame him. He hadn’t been the one to hurt you. Joel had.

He watched you leave.

There was nothing more to say.

[deadsetobsessions]

Can try a fic on: Dick adopting danny? Danny runs away from amity park his parents found out he is phantom and jazz told him to run.

Ooh! I can't do a full blown fic (I barely have the motivation to finish the ones I’ve started) but I can give you a one-shot?

---

Jasmine Fenton has always been a responsible young woman. That's what happens when your mildly neglectful and emotionally oblivious parents parentified you at a young age. Them’s the breaks. Anyways, Jasmine "Jazz" Fenton had raised her baby brother from, well, a baby to the scrawny teenager he is now and is therefore in the right to call herself his parent, even if it was a weight she wished her parents were adult enough to carry. Thus, it was a protective fury like no other that threaded through her vision when Jazz saw a terrified Danny hunched over himself in a way she'd not seen for a long time.

"Danny? Is everything okay?" Jazz quickly stepped inside of her room, taking in the amount of Boo-merangs laying broken and discarded on her floor. She locked the door. This was a locked door conversation, clearly.

"They found out." Danny curled up even more. His words were muffled into the tattered denim of his jeans. Jazz's body went cold as the stark red and green splotches made themselves apparent to her eyes. "They're hunting me."

Breathe. Danny needs you. Break down later. When he’s not around to watch you shatter at how his voice broke.

"Are you injured?" Danny nods meekly. It broke her heart to see him so removed from his usual and mildly ironic lively self.

She patched him up, keeping the red at the edge of her sight at bay when she catches sight of the blaster burns and the cuts.

"Good?" Danny nodded silently back. "Okay. Here's what you're gonna do."

Jazz strode over to her closet and dug out the gotta-dip bag. "Emergency escape bag. Sam saved up enough money to put a down payment and then some on an apartment in Bludhaven through cash, so you're gonna go there."

“What? Jazz, I’m not leaving you here-!”

“Danny, if you die- shut up, you know what I mean- permanently, you’ll be leaving me forever. And that’s not happening.”

Danny winced. Jazz used Pissed Off Mom Voice and it was super effective! Danny loses 50 points of bullheadedness.

“Yeah, okay.” He said weakly, in part because of the lost argument and because he also had ten different blaster scorches.

A loud thump. The siblings jolted, eyes widening in fear. Jazz’s face quickly morphed into the singular determination of getting her parents the fuck away from her baby brother.

“Go. I got this.”

Danny swallowed before grabbing Jazz in one final, desperate hug.

“PHANTOM! I KNOW YOU’RE THERE. GIVE ME MY BABY BOY BACK!”

“Mom!” Jazz shouted back, letting go of Danny and ushering him out of the window. “MOM! PHANTOM JUST FLEW TOWARDS THE TOWN CENTER!!”

“THANKS, JAZZY-PANTS!”

Once the explosive sounds of the GAV rocketed away, and Danny had disappeared into the waiting arms of Amity Park’s mystical forests, did Jasmine Fenton allow herself to sink to the ground and scream.

——

Blüdhaven wasn’t so bad. Sure, Danny’s injured to the hells and back but with the ambient ectoplasm Blud's got powering him, he's not even winded while walking home. His apartment was a bit ratty, but so was the rest of the city. At least his food’s not attacking him, and Danny learned that he’s not a bad cook. The city rats don’t even try to rob him anymore!

Really, it’s not too bad.

[Danny tried optimism. It failed critically.]

“Isn’t it too late for you to be out alone, kiddo?”

Danny whirled around, heart going straight up into the stratosphere. Which, for the halfa, was about 75 beats per minute.

“Who are you?!” Danny slid backwards, hunching in on himself to protect the injured parts of himself. He had gotten injured as Phantom, so his living form was mostly fine. It’s just being living as a scrawny 15 year old in Blüdhaven meant he had to dodge pickpockets, looters, and murderers more often than the locals did. And now, he faced his greatest evasion challenge yet, some weirdo in a sparkly blue Elvis costume. “Elvis-con was three months ago!”

The vigilante’s face, for lack of a better descriptor, smushed into a look of either great consternation or intense focus. Danny swore to himself that he wasn’t about to get offed by Bling Bling the third today. He wasn’t going down like that! Not to a the second coming of a disco ball! Sam would never let it die. Unlike how he will, if he doesn’t focus.

“I’m not impersonating Elvis!” Blue weirdo muttered.

“Of course not, you don’t have the hair.” Danny agreed, shifting back. Keep the costumed weirdo happy and Danny might get out of here safe and sound.

“Excuse you, my hair is the best-! You know what, I’m not doing this right now. I’m a whole adult.” Blue weirdo took an exaggerated breath before introducing himself, like he should have done before approaching Danny like a vaguely threatening circus performer. Danny hates the circus. “I’m the vigilante, Nightwing? You must be new to Blüdhaven.”

“How would I know if you’re a vigilante and not a villain?” Because the child dressed in brightly colored clothes and covered in blood following behind him does not inspire confidence or safety in Danny.

“Would a villain do this?!” ‘Nightwing’ flipped midair and did jazz hands. Danny crossed his arms, the movement adding much needed pressure against the ache in his chest. He levels Nightwing with an unimpressed stare.

“Yes.” Vlad did plenty of those things while trying to either adopt or murder Danny. The vigilante wilts, the ghost tearing up. and Danny tries hard not to feel guilty. He fails. Danny’s failing at things a lot lately. “I guess you get points for not trying to kidnap me, yet.”

“Really?” Nightwing grins, blinding and reflecting off of his pretty sparkly blue suit. That’s one hell of an outfit. Danny had to respect the dedication. “That’s great! So, what are you doing out here alone? Blüdhaven’s got a curfew— more like a suggestion, really, but most people follow it— and if you’re out too late, people will try to rob you!”

Personally, Danny felt like that shouldn’t have been said with a kind smile. There was something off about this guy and Danny was proven right in a few scant moments later, when a robber tries to hold Danny at gun point.

Nightwing all but flies into action, beating the absolute dogshit out of the guy. His ecrisma sticks fire up with a voltage level that raised the hairs on Danny’s neck. Was that safe for the living? Danny inched further away. “Right. You clearly have some issues to clear out on your own. I’ll… leave you to that.”

“Well, I’ll get you home safe, first.” Again, someone who sounded that nice should not be as intimidating as he is. Danny threw up his hands, hiding the wince that drew from him, and allowed the vigilante to escort him home. Even if Nightwing knows where he lives, Danny doubted he’d be able to do anything, even if the electric sticks make Danny wary.

“You live here?”

The ghost child face palms, muttering stuff about “Wing, holy shit where the fuck are your manners?!”

Honestly, Danny was feeling kind of upset too.

“Well, damn, you don’t have to be so judgmental about it. I’m trying my best, holy shit.”

——

Dick is trying his best to not lose his shit. The sparkles in his costume help him with that, reminding him there’s brightness in a world he wants to break with his bare hands. Brightness, like the kid in front of him. Danny.

The wounds were so fresh, Jason’s haunting hallucination following him so closely, that Dick had thought he was seeing another hallucination when he spied Danny from the rooftops. He was half sure he was imagining the conversation, staring at a stranger that reminded him so strongly of Jason. Clear blue eyes, black hair, and a weariness that a child shouldn’t ever have. The mugger made it clear it wasn’t fake, though, and Dick lost it.

Jason’s image overlayed with Danny’s and Dick’s big brother instinct kicked in. They kicked in, right in the mugger’s face, that is.

Great. Danny thinks he has issues. He does, of course, but… to see him wary made Dick’s heart break a little. Still…

“You live here?!” Dick shoved his foot into his mouth, shocked that Danny lived so close by, and immediately cringed at his own tone. His Jason hallucination facepalmed, telling him Alfred would kick his ass for being so thoughtless. The dirty look Danny shot him kicked his ass plenty, Dick thought, grimacing.

“Well, damn, you don’t have to be so judgmental about it. I’m trying my best, holy shit.”

“Sorry, that came out wrong.” He apologized. New plan. He was going to pull a— he grimaced again— Bruce. He was going to adopt Danny. He’ll work through the guilt later, Dick lived here and he knew how much of a shithole it was. To leave Danny alone, defenseless? Blasphemy.

Danny inched away again and Dick wilted. Why can’t he do anything right?

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: Drawings from darklordofawesomeness' cat Stan au, this time featuring wolf Ford.

In the first, cat Stan is standing on wolf Ford's back. Some helpful text points to them, reading "Same coat color, same eye color, same expression, NOT related".

In the second, cat Stan is sitting on wolf Ford's shoulders, and saying "Wolfy, I'm gonna teach ya how to commit FRAUD." Ford looks nervous.

In the third, there are assorted wolf Fords and cat Stans: Stan curled up on Ford's shoulders; Ford and Stan posing cutely and reluctantly; Stan and Ford sitting in front of an open book. Stan says "If I didn't need this to turn human, I would just laugh at your suffering." Ford says "noted."

The fourth is a two panel comic where Stan teaches Ford to look less like a wolf and more like a dog. Ford is standing like a wolf; head in line with shoulders and tail down. Stan says "Yeah if you wanna fool anyone you need to change your body language", then "Lift your head and tail. Smile. Put your ears forward." Ford, following his instructions, looks significantly more like a dog at a glance. He is smiling, but his eyes are narrowed, and he says "I hate you." Stan says "Better! Now just stop scowling at me."

In the fifth, human Stan drives an extremely sketchy and loosely colored Stanleymobile. Wolf Ford is standing on the door and sticking his head out the window. Stan looks annoyed.

The sixth is nearly identical to the fifth, with the addition of Carla, Fiddleford, and Emma-May in the backseat. They, along with Stan, are dressed like Scooby Doo characters. End ID.]

More cat stans from @dark-lord-of-awesomeness's cat stan series! These are mostly from Double Cursed, except for the last two, which are ostensibly from chapter 52 (How to dognap a man?) of Cat Stan Extras. Except the last one is because i made up scooby doo vibes in my head and i wanted to do something with that. Basically, this is The Post Where Ford is a Wolf.

the comic is because way back when, i saw that one post about how to draw wolves to look more like wolves, and i thought it would be fun to use wolf ford as my guinea pig to test out some of the differences. Since ford is a human person capable of changing his body language! idk if it would fool someone in real life but in image form i do think it works, the second one reads way more doglike.

[twistedsistas-stuff]

R&B Breakups

Sammie Moore x Reader Modern Au

Warnings :Makeup smex- uh angst cause it’s me. Reconciliation? (I’m bad at warnings yall please bear with me) messy stack

You’d heard Sammie’s name before — mostly ‘cause of his cousins, them wild-ass Moore twins and that baby record label they got. Folks said he was church-bred, sang in the choir ‘fore he dipped out with his cousins to chase the dream. That’s where that name came from. Preacher Boy. Fit a little too well, considering the way he sang like salvation and rapped like sin.

He had a voice, though. No doubt. Those old clips on his socials? Whew. He ain't sing like his cousins, and they damn sure ain’t rap like him. You remember thinkin’ it was wild — a PK talkin’ nasty on a track like that. But then again, he a Moore. So.

You was up first — body gliding across that stage like smoke on glass. That other dude was rappin’ next to you, but Sammie ain’t hear a word. He was watchin’ you. The way you moved. The way you smiled mid-note and locked eyes with him like, Yeah, I see you too. Left the stage with a little wave like it was just another Tuesday.

Headed to the back where the Moores were posted up like royalty in a hallway too tight for all that ego. And then one of the twins stepped dead in your path.

“Whoa there, pretty thing. Where you rushin’ off to?”

You blinked hard. Couldn’t tell which one it was — Stack or Smoke. Identical and your high ass wasn’t helpin’ either.

“Uhhh... Smo–Stack... which one are you?”

He laughed loud, hand hittin’ his chest like you told the funniest joke of the year. “This Stack, baby. The cute one.”

You smirked, eyes rollin’ like dice. “Well, Stack... I don’t think we got any business, do we?”

You tried to slide past but he eased in your way again.

“Nah, but I ain’t here for me.”

That made you pause. You tilted your head, brows up. “Tell Smoke the same thing.”

Stack gave you that look. That girl, come on now look.

“What do you want, Stack?” you asked, dead in his face.

His grin widened like he had a secret. “Sammie wanna talk to you.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Well, just like you found me, Sammie can too. Hmmm?”

You patted his cheek and kept walkin’, hips talkin’ louder than your mouth. But truth be told? You damn near sprinted to the dressing room. Checked your face, fixed your hair, heart doin’ a whole beat set in your chest.

Knock knock.

You froze, whispered “shit” to yourself, then pulled the door open.

There he was. Preacher Boy Moore.

Tall, golden-brown with them locs pulled back just enough to see that smooth-ass hairline. He had a guitar slung on his back, biceps flexin’ like he meant to remind you he could hold more than notes.

You blinked. “Huh?”

He chuckled low. “I said... you told me to come find you. So I did.”

Took a second to process that. Took longer to accept this man was real and talkin’ to you and not one of them thirsty lil girls he sang about.

“That’s ‘cause you sent a walkin’ STD to find me,” you said, turning back toward the couch.

Door shut behind him. He leaned on it like it was part of his act.

“My cousin clean,” he said, laughin’ through it. “Y’all just don’t like his lyrics.”

You smirked. “I don’t like that he got lyrics about every woman in three zip codes.”

He stepped closer. “I ain’t like them dudes, you know.”

You tilted your chin. “Coulda fooled me.”

Didn’t say nothin’ else — just stared like he was seein’ through your whole outfit. That made you shift in your seat.

“What, Preacher Boy?”

He grinned. “Come watch me perform, baby.”

“Boy, I ain’t your baby.”

“You could be.” He stepped in, hand hittin’ your waist real gentle. “I’d treat you reaaaall good... if you let me.”

His fingers rose to your chin, all slow and tender like he was tryna ease you into a spell.

You was already caught. He knew it. He planned it.

“Come on,” he said, slidin’ his fingers through yours.

You wasn’t gonna go, at first.

Was gon’ head home, roll up, forget the way he smelled. That clean-sweat cologne and old incense aura. The way his voice dipped when he called you baby like he meant it. But by the time you hit the sidewalk, you was already textin’ your homegirl like:

"bitch... I think I just met my husband lol"

She texted back:

"U BETTA GET HIS FINE CHOIR-BOY LOOKIN ASS PREGNANT THEN 💅🏾"

Fifteen minutes later, you was back inside, leanin’ in a booth near the stage, and Sammie was up there talkin’ ‘bout, “This next one’s for somebody real special.”

You rolled your eyes so hard they nearly popped out.

Stack caught you doin’ it and laughed from across the room.

But when Sammie sang?

Shit.

You ain’t roll nothin’ after that. Just sat there quiet, chin in your hand like a teenager with a crush, watchin’ his mouth shape every damn word like it was yours to memorize.

He didn’t look at nobody else. Not once. Not the girls screamin’ his name. Not the aunties blowin’ kisses from the back. Just you. Like the whole room fell away.

That night, he ain’t ask for your number.

He gave you his. Told you to hit him when you was ready for the real thing.

You waited three days. On purpose. Then you hit him up with just a 👀 emoji.

His response?

“Bout damn time.”

When y’all linked up it wasn’t even supposed to happen.

You was on FaceTime. Choppin’ it up ‘bout old music, ghosts, exes, the church. He was on the road — some baby tour in Little Rock or Baton Rouge. You was laid across your bed in a tank top, bonnet half-on, half-slid to the side.

He was shirtless. Gold chain catchin’ the motel lamplight, locs loose around his shoulders. He started talkin’ low, voice scratchy, like he been smokin’ or singin’ all day.

“Whatchu wearin’?” he asked, already smirkin’.

You looked dead at the screen. “Boy, you see what I got on.”

“Yeah, but what’s under it?”

You tilted your phone just enough to give him somethin’.

Not everything. Just enough.

His eyes dropped. Lips parted like he was gon’ pray. Or sin. Maybe both.

“Come here,” he said.

You laughed. “I’m three states away.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

That man sent a Lyft, a Cash App, and his hotel room number within five minutes.

And you? Packed a weekend bag like your name wasn’t nowhere on that lease.

Yall got close REALLL close so after that night you thought maybe — just maybe — this could be it.

Sammie walked different after y’all hooked up. Spoke softer, texted quicker. You weren’t somebody he was entertaining. You were it. Least, that’s how it felt when he pulled you into his arms at baggage claim, when he posted you with no caption like he ain’t have to explain shit to nobody.

And you ain’t press him about the DMs. About the whispers, the girls with they side eyes and slick tweets. You let it go. 'Cause he looked at you like you mattered. 'Cause you wanted to believe he was different from his cousins.

Different from the Moore boys who treated love like a punchline in a verse.

Stack noticed it first.

“Damn,” he said, grinning, twisted blunt between his fingers. “You really cuffed, huh?”

Sammie just smirked, focused on tunin’ his guitar.

Stack laughed again. “You ain’t been out with us since Houston. You in love or somethin’?”

“I’m chillin’, bro.”

“You actin’ like you scared to slip up.”

“I don’t wanna slip up.”

Stack rolled his eyes. “You actin’ like we back in church.”

That got Sammie’s attention. He looked up. Eyes darker.

“I ain’t no saint,” he said, “but I ain’t stupid either. I know what I got.”

Stack shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Cool. Just don’t let her turn you soft. Bitches love soft n***as... until they don’t.”

Sammie ain’t respond. Just shook his head, focused back on his strings.

But the words stuck. That’s how Stack worked. He ain’t push hard — just enough to leave a crack.

You flew home two days later. Left him with that kiss that lingered, that “I love you” whispered half-sleep into his chest.

You went back to your place. Lit your sage. Put on some Erykah. Started back recording, hummin’ little verses into your phone like maybe this time, love was gon’ be the one to hold you.

He texted. He FaceTimed. Called you “mama” in that lazy, slow drawl that made your knees twitch. Sent you pics from soundcheck. Some nights he was too tired to talk, but he’d still text, "I miss you next to me.”

And for a moment, you felt safe.

Until Saturday.

You were laid up on your couch, bonnet on, roller on the floor, your comfort playlist goin’ when your phone buzzed so hard it slid off the armrest.

Dozens of notifications. Your homegirl texted:

“bitch get off the internet now 💔”

Then:

“I’m so sorry I ain’t wanna be the one”

Your stomach dropped. Cold spread slow.

You opened Instagram.

Right there. Big, bold letters:

@theshaderoom
“Preacher Boy or Player? 👀 Sammie Moore seen in ATL last night gettin’ real cozy with someone who def ain’t his ‘main thang’ 👇🏾”

You clicked.

There he was.

In the club.

Sweat glistening on his neck. Lips at some girl’s ear. Hands on her hips. Rockin’ with her from behind like he was keepin’ rhythm with her heartbeat.

Her dress was red. Her smile smug.

You paused the video. Just stared.

Your whole body went still.

You ain’t call him. Not at first.

You waited. An hour. Then two. Then six.

He finally texted at 3:12 AM:

“I’m sorry.”

That’s it.

No explanation. No lie. No voice memo. Just those two damn words. Like sorry could wipe the image of his hands off another woman’s waist.

Like sorry could shut your DMs up, stop your mama from texting asking if “everything okay between y’all.”

You typed a long message. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that one too.

Finally you wrote:

“Don’t worry about it.”

And turned your phone over.

Two weeks passed. Fourteen whole days of silence — but not peace. Not when every app still knew his name. Not when every scroll felt like salt.

Sammie had been calling. Texting. Emailing even. Sent voice notes through people you ain’t even follow no more. You blocked him on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. You turned off read receipts. You turned off your feelings.

You ain’t owe him a response, and he knew that. But he kept trying anyway. Then it happened again.

Not from TheShadeRoom this time. Nah — one of them side accounts. ShaderoomTeens. Petty, messy, loud as hell.

Your homegirl tagged you before you even saw the post.

@shaderoomteens
Artist Sammie Moore spotted with mystery woman in new video 👀

Being a PK, gotta know that he sinning right now, right? Right? He’s known to be in a relationship, even have a few cute collabs. #DoBetter #CheatingRoomies #WhatSheGonDo

You just stared.

No way this was happening to you. Not again.

Hand trembling, you tapped the comments. Shouldn’t have. But you did.

They tore you up.

“What she expect messin’ with a Moore lol
“His whole bloodline allergic to loyalty”
“Girl just sing and move on 🙄”
“He was too fine to keep anyway, sorry not sorry”

Some took pity. Said they felt for you. That made you angrier.

You weren’t a damn victim. You knew who you were dealing with. But you let your guard down. Let him kiss away the doubt. Let him hold your face and promise he wasn’t like them. Swipe.

Next slide?

A still from your first video together. You and Sammie, forehead to forehead, laughing between takes. He had you by the waist. You looked so happy.

Your chest cracked open.

Not a little.

Not manageable.

That deep, whole-body kind. The kind that live in your bones. The kind your mama warned you about when she said “don’t love no man more than you love your damn self.”

Your phone rang. Him.

That same picture flashing up as his contact photo — it made you sick now. You declined.

Then it was Stack. Then Smoke.

Like clockwork. Every hour. Every day.

You ignored them all.

You weren’t bitter. You were hurt. That was the thing. You weren’t even mad at first. You were just gutted. And when that hurt started to rot in your chest, it grew teeth. Turned to something mean.

You wanted him to hurt, too. Just like you did.

That’s when your group chat rang. FaceTime. The real ones.

You stared at the green button. Then pressed it.

Your face hit the screen.

Blank. Skin dull. Eye bags deep and designer.

“Hey girl... we just checkin’ on you, how are you?”

“Yeah, that nigga ain’t shit.”

“What you wanna do?”

They all talked at once, like they’d been waiting to catch you before you fell too far.

You swallowed. Voice small.

“I’m still hurt, y’all... I really wanna beat his ass but I can’t bring myself to fight over a man.”

“You better than me,” one said.

“HELLO?!” another yelled. “Ass woulda been BEAT.”

You cracked a smile. Then a laugh. Shook your head slow.

“I know, y’all. I know.” You looked down, then up.

“Right now... I just wanna be distracted. Not by a nigga. Just wanna have fun.”

They waited. Let you say it.

You leaned closer.

“Shots and studio time?” Head tilting.

“OH BITCH YESS.”

“We makin’ a diss. Yep. Let’s gooo!”

You laughed loud — loud enough to rattle the stillness in your chest.

This was why you answered. They knew how to scoop you off the floor without making it feel like rescue.

“Aight. I’m finna get cute and get ready. Y’all do the same. I’ll send the address.”

You hung up. Headed for the shower.

Steam filled the room slow, thick as your thoughts. You stood under the water long. Let it drip from your lashes. Let it drown the ache.

Music. That was your safe place. Your weapon. Your church.

You thought about him — not just the man but the moment. What he could’ve been thinking. What made him fold.

Was it the club? The women? The spotlight? Or was it just him?

You weren’t stupid. You weren’t naïve. You knew what came with fame. With fine niggas raised in families that never taught 'em how to love without hurting somebody first.

You dried off. Got dressed.

Sat at your vanity. Lip gloss, lashes, liner. Your armor.

Just as you were about to press play on your playlist—

Your phone lit up again.

No Caller ID.

It swirled around your screen like a warning.

Your breath caught. What if someone leaked your number? People were crazy these days. You froze for a beat. Then exhaled.

You answered.

You put the phone to your ear. Didn’t say nothin’ at first.

But then—his voice.

“…Hey.”

Quiet. Raspy. Like it hadn’t been used right in days. Like he ain’t slept either.

You closed your eyes. That tone—it didn’t make you feel bad for him. But it did make your chest tighten. ‘Cause no matter how mad you was, it still hurt to hear him sound like that.

You didn’t say nothin’, just waited.

“I ain’t even gon’ lie to you… I fucked up,” he breathed. “I know what it look like, I do. I just…”

His voice cracked just a little.

“I was drunk. Stack was hypin’ me up, talkin’ ‘bout ‘one dance ain’t gon’ kill nothin.’ Then Smoke started pushin it too, sayin’ I needed to ‘remind the crowd who I was’ or some dumb shit…”

You opened your mouth and closed it again. Your stomach churned. “So you did all that... for them?”

He went quiet.

You leaned forward in your chair, voice cold and clipped. “You mean to tell me you disrespected me—embarrassed me—for some damn cousin validation?”

He exhaled, frustrated. “It ain’t like that—”

“Oh, it ain’t?” you snapped. “You the same man who had me scared to even post you ‘cause I didn’t want the internet in our business. Now you all up in the club tryna be seen, tongue damn near down some girl throat—for what? To look like Smoke?”

“She ain’t even kiss me—”

“Boy, don’t play with me,” you said, voice cracking. “You already played in my face enough.”

Sammie sighed heavy, like he didn’t even have the strength to fight. “I ain’t tryna argue. I just… I miss you, baby. I ain’t slept right since you stopped answerin’.”

You looked at yourself in the mirror, makeup half-done, your gloss untouched. You shook your head.

“You wanna act like them niggas, go be with them niggas,” you muttered, trying to stay calm. “I loved you for you, Sammie. Not for who you was tryna impress.”

“I ain’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered.

“But you did.”

Silence. The kind that says everything.

You checked the clock. “I gotta go.”

“Wait—”

Click.

You let the phone fall on the vanity and stared at your reflection.

This niggas really had you thinking he was different.

But a Moore gon’ Moore.

The studio was already buzzing by the time y’all got there—neon lights low, incense burning in the corner, and bass leaking out the booth like it had a mind of its own.

Your girls followed behind you, all heels and hair and ready-for-war energy.

Soon as y’all walked in, Dre, your producer, spun around in his chair, noddin’ like he already knew the vibe. “Got somethin’ dark cued up. I heard the rumors. Figured you’d want blood on the track tonight.”

You smirked. No lies detected.

Y’all got settled—liquor got poured, joints got lit—and the girls crowded around the couch while you kicked off your shoes and leaned back.

“So,” one of them asked, her eyes sharp, lashes thick. “Did he call?”

You nodded slow, licking your lips before answering. “Yeah.” They all leaned in.

“What he say?”
“Chile what?” “I know he ain’t try play victim—”

You sighed nodding , pushing your hair back. “Said it was Stack and Smoke. That they got in his head. Said he was drunk and just tryna prove somethin’.”

They all looked at each other, then back at you, faces twisted like somebody farted.

“Nahhh, see, now I’m mad all over again,” your best friend snapped. “He risked all this—” she gestured at you like you were plated gold, “—for some cousin clout?”

Another girl scoffed, twisting the top off the Casamigos. “And that lil girl in the video? I know she know who you are. Y’all been hella public.”

“For real,” someone else chimed in.

“Y’all did that couple interview for Level Up, had folks screamin’ ‘#RelationshipGoals’ and all that. How she actin’ brand new?”

You shook your head, lips pressed tight.

Then the beat dropped.

It was dark. Angry. Heavy bass, low piano, something sinister underneath like a heartbeat turnin’ sour. You stopped talking.

“Dre…” you said, standing up slow. “Run that back.” He looped it, and the speakers trembled like they were mad too.

You walked toward the mic, paused with your hand on the booth door. “Y’all remember when I first said I loved him?”

They nodded, quiet now.

“Right here,” you said. “In this studio. he pulled me close, said, ‘Damn, I love you girl. I hope you know that.’ And I said it back. Just like that. Whole room smelled like weed him looking at me with them damn eyes.” “That was the first time.” Your voice cracked a little.

“I really thought…” You trailed off. Then shook your head. “Nah. Fuck that.”

You turned back around, picked up a shot glass from the console.

“To dumb bitches,” you said. “May we never be her again.” They all cheered. Glasses clinked. You threw it back. It burned, but not worse than this heartbreak.

Then you stepped into the booth, pulled the headphones on, and closed your eyes.

The beat kicked in again, your voice slid out raw.

All that hurt, rage, betrayal—it spilled into the mic like venom dressed in velvet.

And by the time the track ended… history was made.A hit. A warning. A reminder.

He played in the wrong girl’s face.

Sammie’s sprawled across the couch, scrolling through his phone with dead eyes and clenched teeth. That green bubble on your story stays glowing. Every loop of the video hits him harder.

Stack lounges nearby, dipping room service wings in ranch, TV humming low with a muted basketball game. Smoke’s in the corner on FaceTime with Annie, cracking up about something unrelated, but every so often his eyes slide back to Sammie, watching him stew.

Sammie spoke first voice laced with disbelief. “She made the whole damn thing about me.”

Stack laughed throwing his head back with a lil snort“She made a Billboard hit about your ass. Congrats, heartbreak muse of the year.”

Smoke leaned forward, FaceTime forgotten
“What she say again? ‘You gone be with tupac when I come blow up that studio…’ somethin’ like that?”

Sammie shook his head muttering
‘Yeah. That’s about me fasho”

Smoke spoke through a laugh 
“She in the booth talkin’ like she the Don, bro. That energy hit different when it’s personal.”

Stack spoke mouthfull with his greedy ass
“She out-rappin’ you and outsellin’ you. How’s it feel to get dissed on beat and make her rich?”

Sammie looks at him fast as fuck 
“You think this funny?”


Stack shrugged “A lil’ bit. - “But nah. I get it. She got her lick back. You was in love and fumbled. Ain’t nothin’ new.”

Smoke nodded towards Stack
“Like he can talk. Every time he catch feelings, he ghost like he doin’ a magic trick. That girl from Baton Rouge still lightin’ candles for him.

Stack pointed at his twin smirk on his face “Difference is, I ain’t lie to nobody face about bein’ solid. I told her I was no good.”


“I didn’t lie. I just... I listened to y’all. Let myself get stupid. Tried to play it like I didn’t care when I did.” Sammie spoke looking between the two.

Stack just shrugged his shoulders
“You grown, bro. Don’t blame us.”

Sammie swipes again. Next slide.

It’s a video. Your laugh, low and breathy. A flash of your legs, draped over someone else’s lap. A hand—light-skinned, casual, resting on your thigh like it belonged there.

Sammie sat up so fast he almost got vertigo.

“ Them ain’t my hands”

Stack grabbed the phone squinting
“That’s not any of our hands.”

Smoke laughed
“She out here living soft life. Passenger princess with a new driver.”

One thing sammie hated about these niggas they always had jokes for the wrong occasions.
“Nah. That’s my -

Smoke spoke fast cutting him off
“Was. She was your girl. Now you just the beat behind a Billboard single.”

Sammie stands, grabbing his keys off the side table. No hesitation.

He speaks low “Fuck this.”

This catches Stacks eye

“Where you goin’?”

Sammie snapped voice angry and sharp

“To my girl nigga”

He slams the door behind him. Silence.

Smoke pops a fry in his mouth, eyes still on the door. “Look what you did.”

Stack just shrugs, licking sauce off his fingers. “If every clover had four leaves they wouldn’t be lucky now would it”

You and your girls are splayed across couches, floor pillows, and a fuzzy throw rug—glasses half-full of rosé from brunch still sweating in your hands. Laughter fills the space, soft R&B spinning low from the speaker.

Someone’s talking about their sneaky link, someone else is scrolling through TikTok showing funny edits of your song. You’re halfway paying attention… until your phone buzzes again.

Your friends speak up hearing it too
“Girl, who is blowin’ you up like that?”

You flip the screen toward them. “Sammie. Again. I been ignoring him all week and now he wanna be consistent?”

They lean in. Another buzz. A message pops up

Peekay : Answer or I’m comin’ right in that mf house.

You hold the phone up, jaw dropped. They scream.


“Oh he real bold—he must really miss you.”


“Or he real crazy. Ain’t nobody told him we deep in here?”

Just then, another call. FaceTime. His name lit up bold. Your thumb hesitates.


“Y’all shut up.”

You answer. His face fills the screen—eyes red, jaw tight, lips pressed in that pout you used to kiss when he got like this.

He spoke serious, voice low
“Sit the phone up.”


“…Why?

He sat up readjusting in his seat.
“Just sit it up. Let me see.”

You sigh, propping it on a candle jar. Your girls dip out of frame fast like trained soldiers.

He waited his eyes flicking around the background looking for something , you don’t know what
“So… ain't no light-skin dude in there imma have to beat the fuck out of right?

You blinked hard

“What?”

He looked at you plainly
“You heard me.”

You glance behind the phone—your girls looking shook, mouths open, frozen in place.

You spoke slow, annoyed
“There’s nobody here. And even if there was, you don’t get to ask that. I don’t question the girls you been with, apparently.”

Sammie spoke instantly, eyes hard
“I ain’t been with nobody but you. Don’t play with me.”

You tilted your head, voice sharp
“Play with you? Oh you mean like how you played with me when you let Smoke and Stack gas your ego till you blew up everything we had?”

Silence. His throat works like he wants to say something but can’t.

You spoke final, icy
“Don’t FaceTime me with that jealous boyfriend energy when you wasn’t You hang up.

The room’s quiet for a second, the air thick with disbelief soft 
“…Did he say light-skin with tats?”
“He remembered the hand! This man really clockin’ your stories like it’s his job.”

Sammie’s parked a few houses down, low in the seat, window cracked. His phone’s still glowing in his lap from where you hung up. His jaw ticks. His chest rises, falls. He don’t move at first. Just stares at your contact. Then his fingers move.

Leave it open.

He tosses the phone onto the passenger seat, flips the radio up loud—some old Boosie track—and sparks the blunt he’d rolled on the drive over. Leaning back in the seat, smoke curling from his lips, he watches the house like it’s breathing.

You and your girls are still downstairs, hollering.
“Nah, that nigga is unhinged. You really broke him!”

You laughed , mocking him
“‘Ain’t no light-skin dude in there with no tats?’ Boy, worry about your own tattoos.”

Y’all fall out laughing again. Then ping. You glance down. It’s him

Leave it open.

Your friends all look at you eyes wide
“Oh my God.”
“He outside. I know that energy.”


“Bitch, what do I say?!” You say looking back and forth between them

They all start talking at once, pure chaos:
“Say your man just pulled up.”
“Tell him the door already open—let him come see!”
“Ooooh text something spicy! You know he hate that.”

You nod, fingers flying across the screen.

It’s unlocked anyway. My man will be here soon. Send.

You toss the phone on the couch and throw your head back. “Amen.”
“Amen!!”

They scream and cheer, clutching their chests like it’s church.


“You gon’ die. But you gon’ die legendary.”
“Upstairs, now! We gotta get you ready. Just in case he come in here on demon time.”

They usher you up the stairs like you headed to war, grabbing gloss, edge control, and a fresh hoodie from your closet. Your heart beats wild behind your ribs—not

scared, just… alive.

Your bestie speaks smiling while doing your edges.
“Smile if you bout to ruin a man’s whole ego tonight.”

You smirk in the mirror. Below the window, a familiar engine cuts.

He’s coming in. You can feel it in your bones.

You’re fresh, feeling like a whole mood with your girls beside you—hair laid, gloss popping, outfit on point. You unlock the door and swing it open.

Sammie is already there, standing firm, hands down by his sides. No anger in the way he raises them, just presence. His eyes lock on you first—hard, serious, and something else you can’t name right away. Then he shifts his gaze to your girls.


“Wassup y’all.”

Your girls nod respectfully, eyes flicking back to you, silently saying, What now?

You just stand there, taking him in. Mad as hell, yeah. But damn… the way he looks—head to toe in black, gold chains catching the streetlight, that little flash of grill shining when he parts his lips—it’s hard not to soften.

You know he fucked up. But maybe… just maybe, there’s a fix here.

Suddenly, one of your friends clears her throat sharply. You blink, shaking off the moment, and glance at them.
“Bye, y’all. Be safe.”

They nod and slip quietly down the steps, leaving you and Sammie alone.

He looks past you, eyes scanning the house like sizing it up “Come on.”

He nods toward the door.

You hesitate—then step inside before your brain can catch up.

He closes the door behind you with a soft click and locks it.

Your heart skips.


Yo, man would be here soon ? Nah. His ass here now.

Sammie gestures toward the couch.

“Come sit with me.”

You walk over first, careful. He watches every step like he’s memorizing you. You settle on the edge of the couch, keeping space between you—safe distance.

He scoots closer, voice low but commanding. “Quit actin’ scary. Come here.”

You shift, inching your leg closer—now touching his. Your heart skips. It’s been a minute, and that tiny buzz starts crawling up your spine. He pulls his hood off, revealing that sharp, tired look in his eyes. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, eyes heavy-lidded but steady on you.


“I know I messed up, baby. I did everything you told me not to.”

His hand moves slowly, settling on your leg. You tense for a second, then relax as he straightens his back a little.
“I did that shit... bein’ childish. Tryna get approval from two lonely mfs.”

You let out a quiet laugh—half disbelief, half relief.


“I won’t ever do no shit like that again, baby. I can promise you. I’m sorry.”

He opens his arms slightly, inviting but vulnerable

You meet his eyes, voice steady but serious.
“I believe you... but don’t make me have to get outta character, Samuel.”

Your fingers twitch, lightly grabbing his gold chain hanging around his neck. The weight of it feels real—like a reminder. Sammie catches the movement, a flicker of both surprise and respect crossing his face.

He tightens his grip on your leg just a bit, his jaw clenched but his eyes soft.
“I ain’t gonna make you do nothin’ you don’t want, baby. I’m here... real this time.”

You don’t pull your hand away from his chain. Instead, you let your fingers linger, a silent test — how much does he really mean it? The room feels smaller somehow, just the two of you and the hum of the city outside.

Sammie leans in a little, voice dropping even lower. “ I done been stupid, but I’m tryin’ to be better — for us, for me. Ain’t just words this time. I’m done lettin’ other people mess with what we had.”

You study him, the weight in his eyes pulling at something inside you. A soft part you’d been trying to guard.
“That part of me? When I say ‘get outta character,’ I mean it. don’t want that.”

He smiles then — not the cocky grin, but the kind that reaches his eyes.
“Good. ‘Cause I ain’t tryin’ to fight you. Just wanna be right where I belong.”

You shuffle closer, legs brushing, breaths mingling.

You narrow your eyes, the tension thick now.
“If you ever — and I mean ever — pull some dumb shit like that again? I’ma beat your ass, then Smoke’s, then Stack’s for hyping you up.”

He throws his head back, laughing.
“Damn, all three of us? You on a mission.”

But that smile fades fast.

His eyes lock onto yours, voice low and solid now.”So who’s the nigga?”

Your breath catches.
“What?”

He leans in slightly
“Don’t play with me. Who. Is. The. Nigga?”

You hesitate. Your girls’ plan echoing in your mind. A distraction. A game. But the heat in his gaze ain’t playful — it’s boiling.


“Just… some dude.”

He tilts his head slow, like he can see straight through you.”Some dude?”

You nod, swallowing.

He leans back now, arms stretched wide across the couch, legs open, looking fine as hell and dangerous with it. You wish he didn’t look that good — this would be easier.

“So how long you known this dude?”

You look away, nerves buzzing. You answer low, a whisper really.
“A year.”

Before you can breathe again, his hand’s on your chin — not rough, but firm. He tilts your face to his, eyes burning through yours.
“Say it like you mean it. All that muttering and guessing shit? Pissing me off.”

Your cheeks heat beneath his touch. Your heart races.


“That girl in the club? A mistake. Drunk. Ain’t even mean nothin’. But you? You doing stupid shit with a clear head. And that’s different.”

You pull back a little, voice rising with your anger. “A mistake? Boy, fuck you. I was hurt! I ain’t no damn robot, Sammie.”

He lets go of your face, rubbing both hands down his own, exhaling like he’s trying not to snap.

“I know that, baby… but come on now. That dude been all up under your posts, sending you eyes, hearts… You ain’t say nothin’?”

You rolled your eyes
“I don’t have to, Sammie. You not my daddy. Go worry about your mystery bitch. Don’t come in here tryna check me like you been loyal. I should beat your ass my damn self.”

You shoot to your feet, voice raised, hand on your hip, heat rolling off you in waves.

He stands up slow, towering, unbothered, staring at you like you’re the only thing in the room.


“Come on then. You bad? Beat my ass.”

You was yellin' now, voice climbin’ with every breath.

“You think just ‘cause you showed up, I’m s’posed to forget all that shit? You think I don’t feel none of this? That I don’t dream 'bout you, cry 'bout you, bleed for you, Sammie?”

He took it. Standin’ there in all black like the funeral you never got to have for what y’all used to be. You stepped forward and pushed at his chest with an open palm. He ain’t move. You did it again—harder this time. Then again. His gold chain swayed with each shove.

“Fuck you, Sammie,” you spit, eyes full and wild.

He caught your wrist the moment your hand flew up toward his face. You watched his jaw lock, tongue pokin’ into his cheek, breath pullin’ heavy through his nose like he was tryna stop from blackin’ out. That look alone could’ve burned your clothes off, but you was too mad to care.

“Fuck me?” he said low, still holdin’ your wrist. His voice ain’t rise—but the heat in it made you pause.

“Yeah,” you said louder, chest heavin’. “Fuck you.”

He nodded slow, grip loosening as he let your arm fall.

“You better watch how you fuckin talkin’ to me,” he said, voice steel-hard. “And if you bold enough to say it, you better be bold enough to make good on it.”

You turned, walkin’ fast toward the bedroom. You ain’t know if you wanted to scream into a pillow or tear the sheets up. You ain’t even hear his footsteps, but you felt him right behind you—tall shadow heat pressin’ close.

“Sammie, fuck you. I hate you nigga deadass. You ain’t shit. Just like the rest of ‘em. Dirty. A liar. I don’t know why I thought you was different. Why I thought you’d love me for real.”

That stopped him cold in the hallway.

You could feel it—the shift.

Then you felt him.

A hand closin’ ‘round your wrist, pullin’ you back, pressin’ you up against the wall in one smooth motion. His palm came up, firm ‘round your throat—not squeezin’ too tight, just holdin’ you in place.

You looked up into eyes that was all storm and no light.

“I know I fucked up,” he said, voice rough. “I been sayin’ that like a broke damn record. But don’t you ever stand here and act like I ain’t never loved you.”

His grip tightened just a little. A soft gasp left your lips. Your smaller hand came up, fingers restin’ over his.

“I love you more than anybody ever could. But you think that give you the right to hit me, disrespect me, throw my name in the dirt like I ain’t bled for you too?”

You swallowed hard, breath catchin’.

“I’m gon’ show you,” he murmured, voice low but heavy. “By the time I’m done, you gon’ feel all the shit I been carryin’. All of it.”

Then he stepped back, hand slidin’ away slow, lettin’ you breathe again. You stayed there, chest risin’ and fallin’, vision blurry—but not from tears this time. From how hot the air between y’all had gotten.

He tilted his head toward the bedroom door.

You was still breathin’ hard when he locked that bedroom door, slow and sure. Always did that. Said it made his nerves settle knowin’ he was closed in with just you.

“Sit down,” he said again, voice low but thick now, dark like syrup.

You ain’t move right away. You just stood there, lips still tinglin’, chest tight, still hearin’ him say he loved you like it was a vow and a warning all at once.

“I said,” he took two steps forward, slow and solid, “sit down, baby.”

You ain’t know if it was the way his gold caught the low light, or the way his drawl wrapped around that word “baby” like he’d never stopped sayin’ it, but your knees moved on their own. You sank onto the edge of the bed, hands in your lap, eyes trackin’ him like prey.

He came closer, pulled his hoodie off, chain swingin’, his whole chest breathin’ deep like he was tryin’ to hold back somethin’ fierce. He stood in front of you, thumb and two fingers slid under your chin, tilted your face up.

“ you hate me,” he murmured, brows pullin’ together just a little. “Say it again.”

You opened your mouth, but nothin’ came. Your lips quivered, jaw tight. He looked down at you, real slow, takin’ you in. His hand moved—thumb draggin’ across your bottom lip, just enough pressure to make you tremble.

“That what we on now?” he asked, voice even. “Hatin’ each other?”

You shook your head slow, breath catchin’.

“Nah,” he said, lettin’ go and standin’ tall again, lookin’ down at you like he already knew. “You mad, yeah. Hurt. But hate? That ain’t in you, not for me.”

You couldn’t deny that. Didn’t want to. He leaned down, mouth close to your ear now, lips just brushin’.

“Gone lay back, baby. Let me make it right.”

You hesitated. He waited. Then you did it, breath shaky as your spine hit the sheets.

He peeled his shirt off slow, belt next, every movement deliberate. He wasn’t in no rush. You watched him like a storm was comin’. And it was.

He climbed over you, arms on either side of your head, breath fannin’ across your neck. His voice was lower now, Southern syrup and smoke.

“You gon’ feel me,” he whispered. “Feel every word I couldn’t say right. Feel every time I shoulda chose you louder.”

His hand slid under your shirt, and you gasped—‘cause this wasn’t soft. This wasn’t sorry. This was claimin’. This was a man tryna repent with his whole body.

And baby, you let him.

He slid down slow, mouth still on yours ‘til the last second. His hand pushed your thigh open again, wider this time, and he looked at you—dead in your eyes, like this wasn’t just lust. It was penance. Worship. He kissed the inside of your knee first, then lower, taking his time.

“You been actin’ like I forgot how to treat you,” he muttered, voice thick as molasses. “Let me remind you what it feel like to be taken care of.”

You barely had time to gasp when he pressed his mouth to you. That first pass of his tongue had you archin’ off the couch. He gripped your hips tight, keepin’ you down.

“Nah, don’t run now,” he said low, lips glistening. “You was talkin’ all that shit a minute ago. You gone take this.”

And you did.

He licked slow at first—broad, hungry strokes that made your breath catch. Then faster, tongue focused right where it needed to be, two fingers slid in easy, curling just right. You cried out, and he smiled against you, tongue never leavin’ you.

“That’s it, baby,” he growled, voice damn near feral now. “Let me hear that shit. Don’t hold back, not with me.”

Your hands were in his hair, pullin’—not tryna stop him, just needin’ something to hold on to.

He brought you to the edge and over with no hesitation. He wanted you there. Needed to feel it. You shook under him, legs tremblin’, but he didn’t let up, even when you tried to push his head away.

“Sammie—baby I can’t—”

“Yes you can,” he said, voice thick with hunger. “You gon’ come again. Open back up for me.”

He spread you with both hands, dove in again like he couldn’t breathe without you on his tongue. This time, he kept his eyes on yours the whole time.

“Don’t look away,” he said, breathin’ against you. “Wanna see your face when you fall apart.”

And you did—again, harder this time, back archin’, his name fallin’ from your lips in broken, breathless moans.

When he came back up, his mouth was wet, and so were his eyes—just a lil’ bit.

“Tell me right now,” he said, leanin’ in close, lips ghostin’ yours, “that you ain’t mine. Say it with a straight face.”

You didn’t say a word. You just pulled him in, kissin’ him deep like you ain’t need no damn words at all.

He lined himself up, slow and steady, slid in deep on the first stroke, and stayed there.

You gasped, grippin’ his shoulders.

He didn’t move at first. Just let you feel it. All of it.

“You feel that?” he whispered against your mouth. “That’s me. I been here. Ain’t never left you, baby. Not really.”

You nodded, eyes damn near rollin’ back.

He started movin’ deep, slow strokes that filled you up and made your toes curl. One hand on your thigh, the other flat on the bed keepin’ him grounded. But his eyes never left your face.

“You still mad?” he asked, voice shaky with restraint.

You shook your head.

“You still hate me?”

“No,” you whispered.

He kissed you again, harder now, hips pickin’ up pace. The couch creaked under y’all but neither of you cared.

“Say you mine.”

“I’m yours, Sammie. Always was.”

“That’s right,” he said, buryin’ his face in your neck. “That’s right, baby.”

And when y’all finally came, it wasn’t just heat—it was every ounce of anger, pain, love, and regret burnin’ out at once. Both of y’all shakin’, holdin’ on like the world might end if you let go.

He didn’t move for a while. Just stayed there, buried deep, head on your chest, heart beatin’ fast against yours.

“I love you,” he said again, voice hoarse.

You kissed his temple, stroked his hair.

“I know, Sammie. You looked at him laughing a little. This made him look at you now “what”. He spoke laughing a little too. “Nothing you just barely made it out PK”. He ain’t say a word just say up looked at you real slow.

Your body was folded under him now—face in the pillow, back arched just right, his weight pressed firm and familiar behind you. Sammie’s hand gripped your hip like he owned it, other one flat on your lower back, steadyin’ you as he moved inside you slow… deep… like he meant every stroke.

“That shit you said…” he muttered, breath hot against your shoulder, “'bout me barely makin’ it out…”

You gasped when he pushed in harder, hittin’ that spot like he been rememberin’ where it was.

“Say some slick shit like that again,” he growled low, “and I’ma show you just how bad I can not make it out.”

He gave a rougher thrust that had you grabbing at the sheets, teeth bitin’ the pillow to keep from cryin’ out too loud. His hand slid up your back, fingers spread, keepin’ you grounded.

“This what you wanted, huh?” he grunted. “Actin’ like you ain’t need me, like you could just walk off and forget—nah. You mine, baby.”

You tried to speak but the rhythm—slow but mean—had you breathless, body trembling under him.

“I’m not gon’ leave you,” he said softer this time, voice thrummin’ deep in your ear. “Don’t care how mad you get, how loud you yell, how many times you hang up on me. I’m not leavin’. I’m here.”

His lips brushed the side of your neck, teeth grazin’, breath hot.

“It’s just us. Always been just us. Can’t no clout, no bitch, no dumb shit change that.”

His strokes slowed down but sank in deeper, hips grindin’ like he was tryna leave pieces of himself inside you.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, kissin’ your spine. “Sorry if I made you feel like it wasn’t you. Like you wasn’t enough. You everything to me.”

You couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. The way he was movin’, talkin’, lovin’—it was too much and not enough all at once.

“You feel that?” he asked, voice husky.

You nodded into the pillow.

“That’s all me. And I’m yours too.”

He stayed buried deep, arms wrapping ‘round your waist, chest to your back now, lettin’ y’all melt into each other.

“I ain’t lettin’ go,” he whispered again. “So don’t run no more. Ain’t nowhere to go that I won’t follow.”

A month later, everything had shifted. You were back together—solid this time. Sammie had taken you on the most beautiful date, the Delta sky lit up behind him as he dropped to one knee with a band you damn near cried over.

Of course, the messy-ass Shaderoom posted it too, caught the whole moment in 4K, and while everybody had something to say… you could care less.

It was just you, your man, and music now.

You sat across from each other in the studio, separate mics, hearts synced.

Stack and Smoke were on the other side of the glass, watching like it was a damn movie. Smoke nudged Stack, a smirk on his face.

“See that? That’s how you get your woman back,” Smoke said.

Stack shook his head slow, arms crossed. “Nah, bruh. That’s how you stay soft.”

Smoke laughed, “Yeah, but they soft in love.”

Stack rolled his eyes, leaned forward, and pressed the intercom.

“Aight,” he said, voice dry but eyes warm, “seein’ as this whole thing was kinda my fault… I figured y’all could take it out on the track, leave it in this booth.”

He let go of the button, nodding at Smoke to hit play.

The bass hit like it knew your name, low and dirty and full of space. You closed your eyes and let it pour through you, your voice slipping in smooth—raw, emotional, laced with love and pain. Smoke looked at Stack with a raised brow, Stack just nodded, lips curled up. Sammie watched you, head bobbing slow, admiring the way you moved with the beat, your sound—his favorite place.

Your eyes found his as you sang directly to him now. That verse hit different, full of everything you couldn’t say in the mess. He slid one headphone down, nodding with the beat, then walked up to his mic with that same locked-in look.

The beat dipped darker, slower. He didn’t even glance at the paper—just went in, voice low, controlled. That whole verse sounded like an apology without ever sayin’ the words. Just you and him, pain and promise, trading bars like vows. Music wrapped around y’all like smoke.

You joined in, harmonizing with him—two voices, one body of hurt, healing, and heat. It wasn’t just a song. It was y’all. A reckoning. A release. A hit.

Later that night, Shaderoom posted a snippet of the session:

🎤🔥 Y’ALL HEAR THIS??? That tension in the booth got me sweating. Sammie & his girl locked in again, for real this time. Engagement, a studio session, and now a collab? Whew 😮‍💨

Comments flooded in:

• “They arguing on the beat and I love it 😭”

• “You can HEAR the makeup sex in her vocals.”

• “He really said I’m sorry through a 16-bar verse 🥲”

• “Soft men winning 2025 fr.”

And somewhere under it all, a pinned comment from Sammie’s burner account:

“Only one mic I’m sharing like that. Forever.”

Hit. Made. Hearts mended.

—————————-

Hey yall omg this took a minute- so enjoy this from me on my way home from therapy😏 hopefully it’s all cohesive ngl Im a little high.

Thank yall for reading sexies😏🤞🏾🎀

[deadhands69]

Online Girlfriend

MDNI loser!Shigaraki x Reader

Request from anon Contains: gn/afab reader, mostly smut: face sitting, sex (m behind), lots of cum. [wc: 2k]

“Why’d you put the work in, no one’s gonna show up.” Dabi laughed across the room at Shigaraki who put in some low-level effort to be presentable (showered.)  “You’re being catfished.”

“Hey, don’t listen to him. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” assured Spinner, who remains skeptical but supportive. He’d like to think there’s at least some hope for one of them to actually get a date.

Tomura’s phone dings.

running late, sorry! still otw!

Rushing, you try to make up the time you lost when a traffic jam caused all transportation to be rerouted. It’s not a great start, for the first time you’re meeting your online boyfriend but it is what it is. 

The two of you hit it off in a discord chat for your favorite game and haven’t stopped talking since. The past few months of chatting have been great so you finally asked to meet in person. It felt like the next step. Admittedly, you’ve also been really horny lately and are hoping to do something about that.

Typically, you’d be worried about meeting someone from the internet but he seems real enough. The photos he sent you were cute. Not perfect in a conventional way, like something you’d expect from someone pretending to be someone else. These were real. They were dark and grainy, taken by someone who isn’t used to taking selfies. Even with the low-quality images and hair covering most of his face, you could tell he’s attractive. He has nice collarbones and a cute smile. On top of that, he’s smart. Having a weird amount of information about nearly everything. He’s funny too, in a dark way. You feel like you could talk to him about anything.

Finally, you made it!

Shoving through the door into the bar he’d sent you the address of earlier, you see that it’s pretty empty. You’d recognize his silvery-blue hair anywhere though. 

“Hi, Tomura!” you take a seat next to him, “I’m [y/n], it’s so good to finally meet you!”

Spinner and Dabi stare in amazement, you’re a lot prettier than they expected. Tomura notices this too. For all the flirting and suggestive messages he’d sent you online, he completely freezes the moment he lays eyes on you. Staring like a deer in the headlights.

Okay, so he’s a little awkward. That’s fine.

The two of you make some conversation. Bumbling through small talk until you start talking about games and he loosens up a bit. After an hour, he still can’t look directly at you without stuttering, but he’s rambling excitedly about the newest patch.

“I just downloaded it, if you want to play. Come on,” he gestures, “I live upstairs.”

As if he only just realized he asked you to be alone in his bedroom with him, his jaw drops and he begins to stammer again. 

“I… I didn’t mean to, like...uh. If you’re uncomfortable -” 

You grab his arm, pulling him from the stool. “Lead the way,” you smile.

The two in the corner, who you’ve since learned are his friends, look shocked as you walk past them to the exit.

Tomura Shigaraki’s room isn’t clean per say, but at least he remembered to take the bags of trash out this morning. He’s glad for that since he definitely didn’t think he’d be bringing you back to his place. You watch as he wiggles the mouse to wake his computer up, middle finger hovering. He has nice hands, you decide.

“Uhm,” he starts uncomfortably, “it’s a pretty big patch. So it’s not done downloading yet.”

The estimated time remaining jumps between two hours and three days as the internet speed flickers.

“That’s okay, we can find other ways to kill the time,” you run your fingers softly over his shoulder. It’s nice to touch him for the first time, feel that he’s real. 

tomura.exe is no longer responding

His body stiffens at the closeness. This is what he wanted, right? Why else would he bring you up to his room?

“If that’s okay with you?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he manages to choke out, letting you pull him to his bed. He lays flat out while you climb over him, straddling his hips. He whimpers slightly and you can feel that he’s already hard. Awkwardly, his hands hover at your thighs. You didn’t expect your discord boyfriend to have a ton of experience, but seeing just how nervous you make him is… hot.

“Okay, is there anything I should know? Places you like to be touched?” your fingers graze his collarbone before running down his chest. Feeling the warmth of his body through the thin shirt. “Or anywhere you don’t like being touched?”

“No,” he breathes huskily, before sighing “...y-yes.”

“Don’t… y-you can’t touch all five of my fingers at the same time,” he gulps, “it’s my quirk.” Without being able to find the right words to explain, he grabs an empty energy drink can that’s in reach. It crumbles to dust instantly. 

You’re fucking kidding, you think. This bumbling mess underneath you has that strong of a quirk? How has that never come up? It only turns you on more, knowing he has the strength to take out half the world but melts into a puddle when you so much as breathe in his direction. 

He makes eye contact with you for the first time before biting his lip and looking away. It’s as if he’s waiting for you to say nevermind. To get up and leave. There’s something so sweetly pathetic in all of it.

“Cute,” you say, pressing his hands back into the bed by his wrists. Fingers snaking up his palms. He looks confused. No one has ever called him ‘cute’ before. It’s also the closest he’s ever been to holding hands with someone and he nearly cums from that alone.

He groans as your lips lightly move over his. Careful not to kiss him too hard, he’s already excited and you still want to fuck him later. With the way his breath hitches at a small kiss on the neck, you decide to move faster.

Standing up, you begin taking off your clothes and tell him to do the same. 

You planned for this. While you didn’t absolutely expect him to fuck on the first date, you certainly dressed for it. It’s not full-on lingerie or anything but you put on the nicer underwear for the occasion. Judging by the look on his face he notices and appreciates this. Too flustered to manage the button on his black skinny jeans.

“Here,” you climb back over him, “let me.”

They’re tight so it takes a bit of effort to pull them over his ever-growing bulge. When you finally manage to pull his pants over his feet, you pause to admire the sight. 

He’s beautiful.

More toned than you would have expected under all of his clothes. Pale skin contrasting with the black of his underwear, his lightly pink tip poking out from under the elastic.

“Have you ever touched anyone before?” you ask, already knowing the answer. He shakes his head. 

“Okay,” you move closer, “let's start there.”

You pull his trembling hands to your sides. Two fingers hover above your hips.

“Oh fuck,” he mumbles staring up at you.

“Take my underwear off,” you instruct.

Of course, he does exactly what you asked him to. He’s slightly clumsy at it, but you expect that. He’s never done this before and he’s being overly cautious. His jaw drops at the sight of you.

“Bra,” once more, he does as you say. Already panting underneath you.

You crawl over his body, careful to brush the hard length of him as you go. He whines at the contact.

“I take it you’ve never eaten anyone out before either, huh?” you ask rhetorically. 

“Nuh-uh,” he shakes his head, strands of baby blue falling in his face.

“You’ll learn fast,” you whisper while brushing his hair back to the bed. 

Placing your hands on his headboard, you move your knees to each side of his head. His eyes widen as you sink onto him. You rock your hips forward, bringing his nose to brush your clit. He moans before licking where he can. 

“Just like that,” you exclaim when he hits a sensitive spot. 

He takes instruction well, slowly improving as you go. His movements are still a bit sloppy, but the friction of his skin against you is enough. You’re at the edge -

“Oh fuck,” he groans under you. His body tenses and he shoves his face further into you. Turns out it’s all you needed too. Reaching down, you grip his hair while you ride out your orgasm.

You pull away, leaving his face slick. He catches his breath as you assess the situation. As you assumed, you weren’t the only one who just came. His stomach and chest are covered in ropes of his own doing. Of course you didn’t mean to make him cum so fast, you didn’t even touch him. You were looking forward to fucking him too.

He grabs a shirt from the floor, wiping himself off.

“Do you always cum that fast?” you tease. 

“Uh, sorry. C-can we keep going?” he chews the skin of his bottom lip nervously.

“You want to keep going?”

“Yeah,” he says more confidently than you’ve heard him speak all afternoon, “I can last longer if you give me a chance. I promise.”

You look him over. He looks pretty fucked out but he’s already hard again.

“Just tell me what to do,” he stares up at you with his beautiful red eyes and you can’t help but give in.

A minute later, he’s behind you. Lining himself up at your instruction.

“Like this?”

“Yeah. Okay, now slide up and in. Slowly,” he does as you say, poking around slightly before you feel his tip press in. You look over your shoulder at him, his jaw slack as he stares down at himself disappearing into you. His eyes closing as he wills himself not to cum again so quickly, he did promise.

“You’re doing great!” his breath catches at the compliment, “now, you’ll press in and out. In. Out.” You set the pace you want him at, he listens. 

“This okay?” he asks breathily. You’re amazed at how good he feels already. The way he fits perfectly inside you. He has no idea that he makes every nerve in your body feel like it's on fire.

“Yeah, exactly. That’s perfect,” you gasp.

Without needing to be asked, his hands carefully grip your hips. This time with more confidence. Pulling you back into him with force. 

“Fuck, just like that,” you moan. Feeling yourself tense around him, you grip the sheets calling out his name. Arching your back to press harder into him, he gets the hint and picks up the pace.

With the quivers of you around him, he can’t hold back any longer. 

“Fuck, sorry, fuck,” he groans, pulling out just as the trembling in your gut subsided. You feel him plaster your back in warm cum before he falls back on the bed to recover.

“Uhm,” you hum moments later, eyes flicking over your shoulder.

“Shit,” he mutters breathlessly, jumping up to grab another semi-clean shirt to wipe your back off with.

He lays down again, this time you move to the bed with him. You wrap your arms around him, head resting against his neck.

“Sorry it wasn’t very long,” he mumbles.

“You did great,” you say, wondering how long he actually expected himself to last, “and I’m sure next time you’ll make it even longer.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, “next time.”

Extra headcanons for fun:

Kurogiri googled you before you arrived.

Tomura googled "how to talk to attractive person."

Dabi and Spinner placed bets on if you'd actually show up. Spinner didn't know if you would but wanted to be supportive of his friend.

The traffic jam was caused by Twice and Magne. No reason, they just thought it would be fun.

After this, you and Tomura agree to meet up once a week. Once turns to Twice and before you know it, you're moving closer to see each other every day. Eventually, he learns what you like and you don't have to give him instructions.

masterlist

[bucketsorbueckers]

No Hard Feelings - Chapter 1

Paige x Azzi

Warnings: language, alcohol

Dual POV - 3.3K words

A/N: literally no idea what I’m doing. Back on this godforsaken site because women’s basketball has completely taken over my brain. This is my first pazzi fanfic ever and mostly just me trying to keep my mind busy before it short-circuits. Probably some grammar mistakes bc i cant read my own writing half the time. It’s all angst and yearning and that cursed feeling when your first love is also your best friend. Would love to know what you think <3

Summary: Azzi Fudd loved Paige Bueckers in the quiet moments—off the court, in the dark, when no one else was looking.

But loving someone the world adores is its own kind of loneliness.

Now, with a new season looming and history heavy between them, Azzi is learning: some people aren’t hard to love...just impossible to hold onto.

Paige’s POV

There was a particular kind of loneliness that came from standing in a room full of people who thought they knew you. Paige had grown used to being watched. The stares. The whispers. The phones held just low enough to seem subtle. But there was one gaze she couldn’t feel anymore. And somehow, that was the one that hurt.

Because in the blur of lights and music and bodies pressed too close, not feeling her eyes felt like its own kind of punishment. Like absence had weight. Like silence could bruise.

She shoved the screen door open with the heel of her hand. The night air hit her sharp and cold, far too bitter for October. It cut against her damp skin, made her flinch. She inhaled through her nose, slow and tight, trying to dislodge the pressure blooming beneath her ribs. That familiar, nameless weight she only ever felt around her.

There wasn’t a word for it. Just a hollow ache that stretched too wide. She hated it. Hated how it filled her chest, her lungs, her tired limbs—how it bled into every part of her until she wasn’t sure where she ended and the feeling began.

She pressed a palm flat against her chest and rubbed, hard, like she could scrape it loose. Force it out. But it stayed rooted. And when she closed her eyes, she wasn’t sure if she was holding herself together or holding something back.

“Paige?”

She flinched, eyes snapping open as she glanced over her shoulder. Nika stood on the porch, concern written all over her.

“It’s cold, Nika. Go back inside. I’m alright.”

She knew Nika wouldn’t listen, but still figured the lie was worth the breath it bought. Footsteps whispered over the brittle grass behind her. Nika joined her in the dark, arms folded tight against the cold.

Paige sighed and slipped off her jacket, draping it over Nika’s shoulders without a word.

“Told you to bring a jacket.”

“Always so chivalrous,” Nika murmured, a ghost of a smile in her voice.

Paige just shrugged and tilted her head back, eyes tracing constellations she didn’t know the names of.

The sky in Storrs always seemed a little louder. Stars so bright they looked like they might shake loose and fall. She tried to anchor herself in that—tried to let the sharp pinpricks of light distract her from the heat crawling up her throat, the ache coiled tight and unwelcome.

“We gonna talk about it,” Nika asked gently, “or just stand out here and stargaze?”

“Not shit to say,” Paige muttered, eyes never leaving the sky.

“You always have something to say.”

“Yeah, well,” Her voice was slightly thick and she sucked in a breath to control it. “Not about this.”

Nika just nodded, leaning into her, warm where their arms touched, and blessedly quiet. She didn’t push, didn’t pry and Paige loved her for that.

She didn’t know how long they stood there, silent and shivering, but eventually Paige let out a slow, shaky breath and turned to her.

“Back inside?”

“God, thank you,” Nika squeaked, already grabbing her hand and tugging her toward the door. “You need a drink.”

Maybe she did. But Paige had kept her distance from the bottles tonight. She wasn’t the kind of drunk who cried or screamed—she was the kind who laughed too loudly, leaned in too close, and let her secrets slip through a smile. Affectionate. Messy. A little too honest for her own good.

A terrible thing to be when you’re in love with your best friend. Or ex-best friend. Paige wasn’t sure what category Azzi Fudd fell into anymore. There wasn’t a word for it. Just a lingering ache and the way her name still tasted like something sacred and sharp on Paige’s tongue.

As she stepped through the door, the noise of the party crashed back over her. Bright lights, pounding bass, bursts of laughter that felt a little too sharp. Paige blinked, trying to adjust, to armor up again.

Nika didn’t give her time. She kept hold of Paige’s wrist and pulled her through the tide of bodies. People called out to her—hellos, shot offers, phones flashing up for pictures—but the words barely landed. Paige kept her gaze locked on the swing of Nika’s dark, glossy hair as she moved forward.

The kitchen gave them a sliver of breathing room. The music thudded through the walls, but it was quieter here, relatively speaking. Nika didn’t miss a beat, pressing a plastic cup into her hand like it was gospel.

“Drink.”

Paige looked down. The liquid inside was an aggressively unnatural color, and it smelled like bad decisions and lighter fluid.

“Drink, Bueckers. Or I’ll finish it off for you.”

That did it. Nika knew her too well. Paige might not have wanted it, but the idea of someone else drinking it—of Nika drinking it—was somehow worse. She tipped the cup back and winced as it hit her throat, bitter and burning. She coughed once, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

“Tastes like regret,” she rasped.

Nika just grinned. “That’s how you know it’s working.”

Paige leaned against the counter, eyes scanning the chaos. The room was packed—too many bodies crammed into too small a space. Lights flickered, smoke curled in the corners, and every voice bled into the thud of the bass. It was all blur and static.

But still, somehow, she found her.

Dark curls were piled on top of her head like some chaotic masterpiece, two strands left loose in that way that felt accidental but probably wasn’t. Her lips were full, pink, stretched into a smile too wide for her delicate features but it worked. God, it worked. 

Her brown eyes lit up as she looked at the guy beside her, one hand resting casually on his arm like it meant nothing. Like she hadn’t once touched Paige that way. Like Paige didn’t still remember the exact weight of that hand, and what it felt like to be the center of her gaze.

Azzi Fudd was the kind of beautiful that left wreckage in its wake. The kind that rewrote gravity…pulled you in, tore you apart, and expected you to thank her for the privilege.

She was Paige’s ruin. And this—this cruel ritual of watching from the sidelines, of biting her tongue and feigning disinterest—was purgatory. A slow bleed. A soft unraveling.

Because how do you survive the thing that made you feel infinite, when it no longer looks your way? Azzi had once set her world on fire. Now Paige stood in the ash, smiling like it didn’t still burn.

Only lately, the smile was slipping. She wasn’t pulling off detached, or effortless, or even remotely okay. She wasn’t the cool, unbothered ex–best–something she wanted to be. She was a trainwreck. Messy. Obvious. Loud in all the ways she didn’t want to be. Undone. And trying like hell not to fall apart where Azzi might see.

To her left, Nika pressed another cup into her hand. Paige didn’t bother checking what was in it this time. Not when Azzi had just laughed, really laughed, at something he said. The guy who, by all appearances, had taken her place. 

So Paige tipped the cup back without thinking. Let the liquor scorch its way down her throat, sharp and mean. She welcomed the burn. It was something besides the hollow ache that had settled in her chest and decided to stay.

Azzi’s POV

Cam, by all reasonable measures, was handsome. Easy smile. Kind eyes. The kind of guy who asked if she needed anything before wandering off for drinks, who touched her lower back like it was second nature—not a performance.

It was fine. Safe. Which was exactly why Azzi let him stand there.

She laughed at something he said. Not because it was all that funny, but because it filled the space. Because silence, lately, made too much room for thoughts she didn’t need to entertain. Like the fact that Paige was here. And probably hadn’t even noticed her.

Not that it mattered. Paige hadn’t looked at her in weeks. Not during practice. Not in the hallways. Not once—not really.

Azzi had already tried. She’d waited in doorways, lingered after lifts, sent the texts that went unanswered. She’d left the door cracked open, just wide enough for Paige to step through. And maybe, stupidly, she’d hoped she would. But Paige didn’t chase her. Didn’t stop her. Didn’t fight.

So Azzi took the silence for what it was: an answer. Whatever they were…whatever that had been, it was over.

She leaned a little closer to Cam, let her smile stretch wider than it felt, and pretended her heart hadn’t made its choice a long time ago. 

Somewhere across the room, someone screamed. Sharp, high-pitched, probably from a game or a spilled drink, but it still made Azzi jump. Her eyes cut instinctively toward the noise, scanning the chaos.

She didn’t find the source. But she did find Paige.

Leaning against the counter like she wasn’t the most magnetic thing in the room. Solo cup in hand. Hair pulled back. Black pants slung low on her hips, just enough to reveal the soft slice of skin above her waistband. Azzi’s breath hitched before she could stop it.

People surrounded her, drawn in like always—smiling, laughing, hanging onto every word as she told some story Azzi couldn’t hear from across the room. Paige talked with her hands, animated and alive, fingers slicing the air like punctuation.

She could never sit still. Never stay still. Even now, holding court in the middle of a crowd, she shifted her weight from foot to foot, rolled her shoulders, tucked a strand of hair that wasn’t even loose. Restless in a way that made her electric.

Azzi watched, arms folded tight across her chest, trying not to stare.

Cam said something, and Azzi flinched, like she'd been caught peeking through a door she had no business opening. Which, in a way, she had.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck like she could scrub away the guilt. “What'd you say? It’s too loud in here.”

“I asked if you wanna get out of here.”

She blinked. Yes. Of course she did. That was the whole point of being here with someone like Cam. Someone steady, easy, uncomplicated.

And Paige was here, which made her want to leave. To breathe. To stop feeling everything all at once.

But Paige was also here. Which made it impossible to walk away.

Her eyes darted back across the room and she watched Paige throw back a shot. Paige didn’t really struggle to handle her alcohol but seeing her drinking so much still made Azzi nervous. She bounced lightly on her toes, restless, trying to figure out what to do with the feeling clawing up her spine.

“Can we stay a little longer?” she asked, turning to Cam. “Season’s coming up, and I have no idea how many more nights I’ll actually get to feel normal before it takes over my life.”

Cam smiled and Azzi relaxed slightly. He was everything she should want. Easy, dependable, kind. Paige had never been any of those things. Paige had been wildfire. Chaos wrapped in charm. And Azzi had been the fool who'd run straight into the flames, not thinking twice about how badly fire burned. 

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “But I think we’ll both need another drink to survive it.”

She grinned because he wasn’t wrong. He was steady, warm, uncomplicated. Exactly what she’d told herself she needed.

She watched him disappear toward the kitchen.

But Paige Bueckers’ fucking gravitational pull should be studied, because no matter how hard she tried to look anywhere else, her gaze was always dragged right back to her.

The blonde ringmaster in the center of it all.

Azzi watched her scan the room, watched her eyes land on Cam. Watched them drag down his body in that slow, assessing way. Watched the way her mouth curled into something smug and sharp. A smirk Azzi knew too well.

Then—God—those blue eyes shifted.

And locked onto hers.

The world shrank. Just a pindrop of existence now. Her. And Paige.

The room didn’t fall silent so much as it paused, like even the universe was holding its breath, waiting to see what she’d do. What they would do.

It was maddening, the way one look from Paige could still upend everything. Like Azzi had spent all this time laying brick after careful brick, building walls tall enough to forget her only for a single glance to blow the whole thing wide open.

She didn’t move. Neither did Paige. And for a moment that felt too long and not long enough, they stayed like that—frozen, suspended in whatever fragile thread still tethered them together. Like the world had cracked open just wide enough for this one impossible beat of stillness.

Then, someone tugged at Paige’s arm, and just like that, the thread snapped. Frayed by the outside world, like it always was. At that exact moment, Cam reappeared at Azzi’s side.

“For you,” he said with a mock bow, holding out her drink like it was an offering. 

It was adorable. The way his voice caught just slightly, the way he’d taken the time to find a cherry to drop in, just because he knew she liked them. He looked at her like she was gravity. Like she hung the moon. The way she used to look at Paige.

She shook her head, like she could rattle the thought loose—like she could shake Paige out of her bloodstream just by trying hard enough. Then she took the cup, smiled like it didn’t ache, and tipped it back with a long, burning sip.

When she leaned into Cam, it wasn’t for warmth. It was for distance. Across the room, Paige was already looking somewhere else.

And Azzi told herself that was a good thing. That it meant she was finally free. That it didn’t still feel like losing something sacred. She told herself all of that. And she almost believed it.

The party carried on around her—music pulsing, laughter echoing, the scent of something burnt wafting from the kitchen—but Azzi just sipped her drink and let Cam’s voice fill the space between thoughts she didn’t want to entertain.

He was mid-story about one of his teammates’ latest escapades, face animated as he tried to reenact the moment Tim had somehow ended up locked overnight in the stadium bathroom. Azzi giggled, genuinely, when he mimed the panic.

“Az!” She blinked, pulled from the easy rhythm of Cam’s story, and turned to see Jana waving her over, grinning like she knew exactly what she was interrupting. “Team picture, lovebird.”

Azzi rolled her eyes but couldn’t help the smirk tugging at her lips.

She turned back to Cam. 

“Let me hold your drink, superstar,” he said with a wink, already reaching for her cup.

She handed it over with a quiet, grateful smile and slipped her fingers into Jana’s outstretched hand.

Azzi let Jana tug her through the crowd, weaving past solo cups and sticky floors until they reached the cluster of girls already forming near the banner wall. Someone had strung up a makeshift sign that read UCONN, BABY in crooked silver letters.

“Alright, squeeze in,” someone called—probably A, based on the height and authority in her voice.

Azzi slid into place between Jana and Aubrey, laughing as someone elbowed her from behind. Everyone was loud and a little too tipsy and giggly to really get organized, but they gave it their best effort—arms draped, cheeks flushed, someone trying to shush the group and failing miserably.

“Wait, we’re missing—”

Before she could register the rest of the sentence, Paige appeared at the edge of the group.

“Well, glad to see no one waited for me.”

The voice was unmistakable. Light, cocky, soaked in that trademark Paige bravado that made people laugh before they even registered the joke.

“Your ego could use the hit, Bueckers,” Nika called out, and the group broke into laughter.

Azzi didn’t.

Instead, she turned, eyes locking on the source like they always did. Paige stood just a few feet away, solo cup in hand, hair a little messy in the best kind of way. 

And she was smiling. Not the polite kind. Not the camera-ready kind. The real one. The lopsided one that always looked a little too wide for her face, like she wasn’t used to joy taking up that much room.

Paige’s eyes swept over them, pausing just a second too long on the space beside Azzi before skimming past her like she wasn’t even there.

“Okay, you’re taking too long,” Jana huffed, rolling her eyes before grabbing Paige’s arm and dragging her into the narrow gap.

She shoved her into place—right beside Azzi. “There.” 

Their shoulders collided. Not a brush. Not a graze. Collided. Paige’s skin was warm and Azzi felt the contact like static under her ribs. Elbow to elbow. Hip to hip. She stiffened. Paige didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t seem to notice.

The camera was already counting down—someone shouting “three!” like this was all just a fun, forgettable night—but Azzi couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Paige stayed still beside her, perfectly composed, like they weren’t even touching. Like they hadn’t once fallen asleep shoulder to shoulder, hadn’t whispered secrets into the hollow dark between practices and regret.

Azzi forced her face into something passable. A smile that didn’t quite reach. But she couldn’t focus.  She could feel Paige breathing beside her—slow, steady, maddeningly unbothered. And she hated herself for wanting to look. Just a glance. Just enough to see if Paige was faking it too.

So she tilted her head. Just slightly. Just enough to catch a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. To see if Paige’s jaw was tight. If her hands were clenched like she knew they did when she was stressed. White knuckled and skin pulled tight. 

And that was when the flash went off.

Moments later, Ice was already scrolling through the burst shots, holding the phone too close to her face.

“Okay, this one’s actually good,” she said. “No one’s blinking...oh wait. Azzi.”

Azzi blinked. “What?”

Ice flipped the phone around. Everyone else was looking at the camera, grinning or laughing or holding up peace signs. And there she was, not looking at the camera. Not even close.

“Where were you even looking, Fudd?” someone laughed.

The group cracked up, tossing around a few harmless jabs.  Azzi forced a smile. Tried to play along. 

But she couldn’t stop looking at Paige who hadn’t taken her eyes off the photo. Not once. Paige’s gaze was narrowed slightly—studying, focused. Like she was seeing more than just a team picture.

Then, without warning, her eyes flicked to Azzi. Just for a second. But it was enough. 

Azzi’s heart shot into her throat, breath caught somewhere behind it. She almost stepped back, like the look had physically hit her.

And then Paige turned. Not back to the phone. To Nika. Who didn’t say anything. Just looked at Paige with an expression Azzi couldn’t quite read. Something careful. Knowing. Maybe even tired.

They stayed like that for a heartbeat too long. And then Nika nodded, subtle and sure, like they’d reached some silent agreement. She touched Paige’s arm and turned, ushering her away.

The sea of people seemed to part without effort. Without question. Parting for Paige. Like they always did.

She didn’t push, didn’t ask—just moved, and the world rearranged itself to make space.

And Azzi—who once knew the sound of her laugh in the dark, who once held pieces of Paige no one else even knew existed—stood frozen, watching her disappear into the crowd.

Just another wave drawn to Paige Bueckers without question, only to break against a shore she never meant to offer

[haruchi-slit]

"B-B-BIG JUICY!"

kinktober '24 | what happens if the meanest fucking men came to your workplace just to leave you fucked up? literally. | sukuna x reader x toji | warnings: pussy slapping + double penetration + threesome + cock-bulge + creampie + fingering + spit + mean tojikuna

"take a step into the world of my sultry seduction, I'ma lure you in, just like a midnight siren" -

the speakers blasts so loud that you can hear your heart thumping so loudly as you dance around the pole your eyes lidded and heavy with lust.

- "take a look into my eyes, can you feel the tension? between us, boy, I know you want this potion"

the music continues, the air was fucking hot even though the air conditioning was on max, you walk thru the dance floor, lip syncing the lyrics, as the beat drops your upper body does too, gliding your fingertips up, up, up on your body, you whip your hair seductively, as more people stare, money dropping on the dance floor too.

-"My love can't take it no more

Gotta cast it on you (on you)

On you (on you)"

you sat down the dance floor, slowly spreading your legs then closing them fast in a teasing manner before cat walking to the pole once more, you swung your hips, your body glistening with sweat your eyes locked on the audience but mostly to the two gorgeous and most gawking men across the room. as the song came to an end you ended your performance too and made your way back stage to catch a break.

"good job hot stuff" your co-worker jestered playfully slapping your ass, "ohh come on babe i always serveee!" you cackled, "good luck out there" you added as she steps on the stage.

you stride to your room to re-touch your make-up but not long after you got a knock on your door,

"someone requested you baee! room 4 hurry!"

"be right there!" you shout, closing your make-up pallet.

-

you stride confidently thru the said room with a new lingerie, fresh make-up and doused with perfume.

*knock* *knock* *knock* - "hello? you requested the private dance?"

"come in.." you heard, and obliged.

and fucking hell it's your lucky day miss, turns out you charmed the two handsome men across the room.

"have a drink baby doll" the black haired man offers, as you kindly decline "ah- no thank you.." you can hear your heart thumping...so loud, you were almost shaking with anticipation...

"goodness they're so hot-" you'd thought to your self staring intently to them back and forth...

"hey are 'ya gon' dance or just stare at us like that?" - the pink-haired man spoke, his voice was raspy, almost breath taking... "oh r-right! I'm gonna turn down the lights if that's okay?" you blabbered,

"don't scare her sukuna...heh"

"so his name is sukuna huh?" you thought to yourself

" I am not scaring her, toji. " toji chuckled as a response, "do y'er thing"

-

you switched down the lights, to a lower level, setting the mood and on top of that you put the speakers on blast with your song of choice before you stood up on the mini stage with a strip pole,

"I'ma care for you

I'ma care for you, you, you, you" the song starts...

you gripped the pole hard as your nerves were pulsing with nervousness,

"You make it look like it's magic (oh, yeah)

'Cause I see nobody, nobody but you, you, you

I'm never confused..."

you swung your hips seductively, mouth lightly hanging open as you danced, you twirled your hair flipping it slowly, dropping your upper body down to your legs then tracing your finger tips up, it was alluring. so alluring.

the two men lounged in the couch swirling their beverage on their glasses, feeling their cock getting hard.

you walked down from the stage and walked slowly to them, eyes hooded with hunger, you blew a kiss to them as you walked behind their couch, touching sukuna's neck, slowly.

you walked infront them once more before grinding your body to toji's. feeling toji wrap his hands around your flesh,

"awh- sukuna might get jealous, doll.."

"fuck you" sukuna groans, as your body subconsciously grinded it's way to his, he smirked, his sharp crimson eyes never leaving your form, "awh, don't worry toji- 'm sure she'll prioritize you later" he gave toji a smug teasing look while his hands snaked around your waist... "tell me, doll...have you ever fucked your customers?"

-

you never expected this, being fucked out literally. both legs spread out at its limit, saliva slightly drooling from the side of your mouth and lingerie rip into two,

-

"fuckk-" you groaned feeling the cold table on your back, sukuna running his hand through your hair, tugging gently but possessively. "you look so beautiful like this" he cackles,

"all ready for us," he purred, a smirk playing on his lips, sliding his tip up and down on your soppy folds, toji stood behind, his hands snaking around your exposed breast, pinching and tugging it harshly, you hissed in pain and pleasure while his lips brushed against your ear, sending shivers down your spine.

"such a fucking slut.." he whispered, his voice low and husky, swiping his tongue on your ear,

"mhmn!"

you winced in pleasure as sukuna slammed his member with no remorse in your cervix, you arched your back feeling his hard cock bulge in you, his fingers ghosting over your skin.

you felt your body shook, almost feeling electrocuted, he started up slow, before building his fast pace, thrusting in and out with no remorse,

"hmn- ah! sl-o" *thrust* "what's that slut?" "ahgh slow- angh!" *thrust* "can't understand ya" he leers deviously, "speak properly hun" toji chuckled, sucking on your reddened nipples, your pussy gushing harshly on sukuna's length, while your hand griped on the edge of the table, the other stimulating your clit shamelessly, "look at you go, such a dirty-" he thrusts hard "bitch" he continues, making your toes curl, and stomach churn in pleasure, eyes twitching as sukuna continues to pound your pussy with no mercy.

as you cried in pleasure he pressed the bulge on your stomach hardly, making you convulse in pleasure and your face contort, he thrusts harshly, "fucking- goodness oh my gosh!", you gasped for air as he pounds his cock back and forth chasing your climax, but as soon as you thought you'd cum, he quickly pulled out and pulled you up forcing you to stand up.

toji stepped up behind you, quickly nursing his hands on your ass, "I can't wait to ruin you tonight" sukuna remarked provocatively, lowly chuckling as they slid their hard cocks in, You could feel both of their hard lengths pressed against your sweet spots, making you even more desperate for their touch. your core ached painfully good as they both moved in sync, thrusting in and out, hard. your pussy pulsed in a dangerous level ready to be filled and stretched in all the right ways.

sukuna's hands trailed down your body you shivered on his rough touch, but also couldn't help the pooling sensation between your legs. toji nuzzled his face on your neck, his hands gripping your hips tightly as he pushes his length deep, sukuna leaned in to capture your lips in a bruising kiss, his tongue invading your mouth in a passionate dance. you moaned against his mouth, your hands gripping his strong arms for support. meanwhile, toji reached for your clit, rubbing it in a circular motion you gasped, as you feel your brain melt and get fuzzy, your eyes lidded with hunger for their cocks both pushed you onto each other as if they're going to crush you with their muscles, while peppering you with hot kisses.

you were sandwiched between the two men, completely overwhelmed by the sensations coursing through your body. their pace quickened, their movements becoming rougher and more urgent. You couldn't hold back any longer, your body trembled, "f-fuckkk I can't ugh! shit-" you moaned loudly, as you feel them so so soo deep in you, "gonna cum, doll?" toji grumbles, "mhm! yes please let me!" you begged, making the two men chuckle, "but we're s-still getting started" toji pants, pulling out, sukuna pulling out soon after, before he throws you on the couch.

"hold her still heh.." toji said to sukuna while you sat on his lap, with his hard cock inserted in your ass, toji spat on your cunt before inserting his fingers in, "let me cum please..." you'd stutter, "be patient." sukuna grins, toji slowly thrusts his fingers in feeling your wam velvet walls wrap his fingers, he curls his fingers in your cunt as his thumb stimulate your clit, while sukuna plays with your sensitive nipples, bitting and nibbling your neck, "please, please, please let me cum" *hic* you cried as your puffy cunt begged too, toji slapped your pussy, "can't hear you doll." he grins, with darkened eyes, "please...let me cummm!" *slap* "can't hear you still.." "PLEASE LET ME CUM!" you begged, they chuckled, as toji stood up aligning his cock in your entrance, before slamming his cock roughly, your bodies moved in a sync motion, sukuna bouncing you on his cock as toji bucking his cock in you, you body contorts as you feel your stomach tighten and your breath hitching, your hands found it's way to sukuna's hair and toji's locks, gripping a handful of each, "'m gonna cum, ah! I'm gonna cum -fuck!" you moaned as you came, but that didn't stop there as both didn't stopped and chased their own high, "your pussy's so good- fuck!" sukuna groans, thrusting his cock deep before cumming, as toji came soon after...

the three of you catched your breaths before they both pulled out off your abused pussy and ass, you catched your breath as you feel the aftershocks course thru, watching their cum ooze out of you...

-

"so can you dance for us again?"

[andersonsgf]

I literally cannot get enough of your modern roommate Abby posts, I keep rereading them

but imagine Abby having a roommate that's just SO shy and nervous around her and is just always holed up in her room and gets so scared to talk to her because honestly, Abby's got an rbf and she's scarily hot

modern roommate!abby

glad you like the series! thank you very much for the request :) series link

sorry for not updating this series in a while peoples, been big sleeping after work most of the time and monster hunter has been taking up my remaining attention, it is far too addictive, BUT shes baaaack

before you and modern roommate!abby started dating, you were super intimidated by her. you were sweet, shy, a bit of a people pleaser if you were honest to yourself, and abby simply never looked pleased. unless something truly made her happy, or made her laugh, her face was in a constant grump.

you would hop in the car at the start of the car share arrangement, greet her with a happy smile, and she would just nod and look at you, mouth set in that downturn, and eyes just observant, mostly expressionless. you spent the majority of the first few months of the rides to and from work awkwardly fiddling with your backpack zipper, praying for the journey to end quickly so that you could go and wallow in your room about how you think your roommate hates you.

modern roommate!abby could always see how you scurried into your room when she opened the apartment door, the way your body seemed to get less and less tense as you moved further through the apartment. it was always met with a small frown and a head tilt.

sure, at this point abby hadn't been the most welcoming to you yet, but she didn't quite understand why you seemed actually scared of her. still, she always just got on with her evening, sitting in the living room, listening to music, reading. and little old you would be holed up in your room doing whatever it is that you did every night, abby wasn't sure.

most of the time you ended up cooking your dinner at the same time as modern roommate!abby though, moving around the kitchen gathering the stuff to put in the oven, giving her a wide berth as she worked on making her high protein meal. she was always curious about you, asking you a few questions about what you were making, listening to your timid replies as you promised to get out of her hair soon.

"don't worry about it, your kitchen too", she'd shrug, nonchalantly, trying to be nice, to emphasise that you paid rent too so you had just as much of a right to be cooking your dinner. you'd just give a small nod, watching as abby looked at you without much of an expression, yet again. abby honestly thought that she was being more welcoming than she had been at the start, but clearly she just wasn't aware of how much of an "rbf" she had, because to you, her words seemed genuine but her face screamed 'i'm just being nice, get the fuck out of my kitchen'.

in abby standards she was being perfectly pleasant, though. if she didn't like someone she would make it quite clear, giving them gruff answers, being snarky all the time. with you she thought she was being perfectly normal. initiating some conversations, humouring you when you stammered out a comment in the middle of a movie because in your view there were several awkward silences throughout. even though it was a goddamn movie.

but still, you would hide yourself away most of the time, and abby seriously didn't know what was up. so, one day, she intercepted you before you could open your bedroom door. "you know you don't have to stay in there all the time if you don't want to, right?", she meant it in a friendly way, she really did, but her face and the way she crossed her arms over her chest just really didn't make it seem that way to you as the anxious little dog in you reared its head.

"yeah just don't wanna bother you", your smile was slightly lopsided, hand itching to reach for the doorhandle.

"you're really not gonna bother me just by like... sitting on the couch", her eyebrow raised, and boy this was just getting worse for you.

you gave a slight shrug and cleared your throat, "you just never seem really all that pleased to have your evening time taken up".

abby frowned, which made your stomach drop out of your ass even further, "i really don't have an opinion which way or the other about if you sit across the room from me or not, it's not like you're loud or anything".

"yeah well...", you were a little lost for words, not wanting to actually piss her off, "you just always look-".

you were met with an immediate scoff, "is this about my face?", she groaned, "everyone is always on at me about my face! 'abby are you okay you look angry?', 'woah do you hate them? you looked like you hated them'."

you simply blinked a little at her outburst. she sighed, "sorry, just everyone always walks on eggshells around me and they really don't need to".

"okay sorry... just you really really do look like you wanna grab me by my hoodie and swing me round like that little girl from matilda when i'm anywhere near you".

she did quirk a tiny smile at that, "well i don't. you're perfectly average to hang around".

you turned to open your bedroom door, tossing your backpack into your room before facing her, "well that didn't fill me with too much confidence but yeah i can hang out here tonight i guess".

you still sounded unsure, so abby patted you on the back with one of her big hands, more like a thump that knocked the air out of your lungs but you'd take whatever crumb of affection you could get from her. "c'mon, squirt. wanna watch a movie?".

your eyes rolled at the nickname, but you smiled nonetheless, glancing at abbys grump expression as she scrolled through netflix, trying to find a movie you liked.

you'd get used to it. hopefully.

[absdollievu]

Just one more rep

gymrat!abby x reader

Part 2

Warnings: public sex-ish, gym locker room (r!receiving) fingering (r!receiving

Part 1

It’s the second week of working out with Abby, and everything feels… loaded. You’re used to the soreness in your muscles now, the burn in your legs, the sweat soaking your shirt by the end of every session—but not this. Not the way the silence between sets buzzes with something unsaid. Not the way her eyes linger a little too long, or how her hands hover just close enough to your skin when she’s adjusting your form. She’s still your gym partner, still focused and sharp, but there’s an edge to everything—tight, electric, waiting to snap.

You didn’t whine. You just worked. And she pushed you.

Week after week, she spotted your lifts, corrected your form with big, calloused hands on your hips or your back. She’d lean in close when you were mid-squat, voice low in your ear: “Tighten your core. Yeah, just like that. Perfect.”

You started noticing the way her eyes lingered, the way she watched you when she thought you weren’t looking. And you couldn’t lie—your eyes were doing the same thing. How could they not? Abby was strong, cut, intimidating in the hottest way. And god, when she smiled after a good set, flushed and panting, it did something to you.

She teased, too. “You getting stronger, or you just want me touching you more?”

You chuckled nervously, dodging the teasing question. The answer was both.

Today had been brutal—PR day. Deadlifts, squats, a core finisher that nearly made your legs give out. Abby stayed close the whole time, coaching you, grinning when you surprised her with how far you’d come.

“You’ve been putting in the work,” she said, handing you a towel as you both walked off the floor. “Proud of you.”

It was the way she said it—low, like it meant something more.

The locker room’s mostly empty by the time you both get there. Your body aches in that satisfying way, but your brain’s buzzing for a different reason. You’re halfway through pulling off your shirt when you hear the door shut. Clicks locked.

You glance over your shoulder.

Abby’s there. Leaning against the lockers, watching you.

“That look in your eyes,” she says, stepping forward, “you’ve been giving it to me for weeks. Thought maybe I was imagining it.”

You swallow hard. “You weren’t.”

That’s all it takes.

She’s on you in two strides, mouth on yours—hungry, claiming, real. Her hands grip your waist, sliding up your back, warm and strong and so sure. You moan into the kiss, and she growls like she’s been holding this in too long.

“I’ve been thinking about this since day one,” she breathes against your lips. “Every time you bent over a barbell, every time you made those fucking noises when you pushed through—drove me insane.”

Your back hits the lockers with a soft thud. Her thigh slides between your legs, pressing up against the little bundle of heat, and pinning you there.

“I saw the way you looked at me,” she continues, mouth on your neck, biting just enough to make you gasp. “You wanted this.”

You nod, breath hitching, already soaked for her. “I still do.”

That’s her green light.

Her hands are everywhere—tugging down your shorts, slipping inside your underwear. She groans when she feels how wet you are. “Fuck, baby…”

You grind against her palm, desperate, and she obliges—slipping two fingers inside, curling just right, pressing into that spongy spot that makes you tremble. Her mouth trails fire along your skin, lips and teeth and tongue until you’re nearly falling apart.

You grab her shoulders to stay upright, but she’s solid beneath your grip—steady, controlled, powerful.

“You’re gonna come for me,” she says, voice rough, “right here. Just like this.”

You grind up against her digits to reach your high. You come—hard and fast, moaning into her mouth as your legs quake and your head spins. She doesn’t let go. Not until you’re clinging to her like she’s the only thing keeping you standing.

And maybe she is.

She strokes your back gently, kissing you softer now. “Think you earned a little cool-down in the showers.”

She flashes that grin again, slow and wicked.

“You coming?”

⸻

[getaapologist]

Secret Garden, Disregard my Heart.

Yeah. I know. Random. Bound to happen. No, I still haven't seen the movie. Yes, I will very soon. This is a short little thing for (and because of) @glassbxttless (also, I get to see Spiritbox today, so this title is a little nod. And I kind of love a lot of Spiritbox songs for Michael? Maybe if I write more I'll use some others.)

Pairing: Michael x female!reader

Warnings: the gif? no, but seriously; 18+ only, your roommate is willing to help however he can; cuddly sex, breeding kink if you squint

Again, I haven't seen the movie yet, just a series of clips. This is probably so grossly out of character and makes no sense, but it's here. I'm sorry.

Miserable.

That was the best way to sum up your day. Your head felt like a dumbbell, with all the pressure of a balloon on the verge of popping. But there was nothing for it. You just had to wait it out.

There were things you could have tried to alleviate the symptoms, but who on earth had the energy for all that?

No. Vegetating on the couch was the preferred option.

Finding some boring animal documentary, you tucked in, pulling the knit blanket around yourself as you curled up on the couch.

Michael got home from work with a loud clatter as he abandoned his boots by the door, the sound not disturbing you in the slightest. 

He didn’t have a stealthy bone in his body. It was how he lived his life, too, always hopping from one boiling pot into another, using his innate charm to distract and slip out of being caught.

“Hey,” he greeted, stepping through the living room. When he didn’t get a response from you, he turned back around, eyes raking over your form. 

The pair of you hadn’t been roommates for all that long, a couple months at this point, but he paid enough attention to know this was unusual.

Tissues on the coffee table, tea gone cold. The way you were curled in on yourself. All clues that he made note of.

He knelt down in front of your sleeping form, his arms on his knees as he watched you, realizing quite quickly that you must not be feeling well.

“Hey, did you take anything yet?”

You didn’t stir.

“Oi,” he spoke gently, breaking through your fever dream, his fingers nudging at your cheek. “You take anything?” he repeated.

“Not yet,” you croaked out, sitting up to look for your glass of water.

He was already thrusting it into your hand, a concerned look in his eyes.

Without a word, he left you there on the couch. Soon, rummaging could be heard in the tiny kitchen.

He returned with some pills he muttered were for the pressure, dropping them into your palm before disappearing back into the kitchen.

In the time it took you to finally sit up on the couch and swallow back the pills, he was able to prepare you a big mug of hot tea, absolutely loaded with honey, and a nice steaming bowl of some canned chicken noodle soup. 

The large tray was set before you on the coffee table. His eyes moved over you, catching on your messy, slept on hair, the way your shirt hung precariously off your shoulder. The way you visibly brightened at the offerings placed before you. 

He scolded himself internally, averting his gaze. “Gonna go shower,” he announced quietly.

Michael was a bit odd. Mostly quiet until you got him talking, he seemed used to keeping to himself. But he had a habit of caring for others. It wasn’t a chore, or even a question. He just did it. 

There were certainly worse men in the world. And he was a fine enough roommate. It just sort of happened. He was a friend of a friend of a friend who just needed a small favor. A month, maybe two. He paid everything on time. His job was stable. 

He liked this new stability, he admitted one night. He didn’t feel quite so anxious. So you told him there was no rush to go anywhere. 

Now there was no deadline. And you allowed yourself to look. 

He was undeniably handsome, filling out his skimpy tank tops in a way that left you a bit warm in the face. If he noticed, he hadn’t said anything yet. And that thin little chain he wore, it was far too delicate for the musculature of his neck and shoulders. Eye-catching, too. Like it was on purpose.

It’s not like you were going to do anything with this blooming attraction.

That would be crazy.

Soup and tea finished off to the best of your ability, you couldn’t deny you felt much better as you laid back down. 

Back and freshly showered, Michael stared down at your pathetic shape on the couch.

“You ought to try to sleep.” His smile was audible in his voice.

“I am,” you argued, curling in tighter.

He laughed, shaking his head, towel still in hand as he rubbed his curls mostly dry. “This couch is not fit for sleeping, believe me.”  

Before you could protest, the towel was tossed aside and he was sliding warm, damp arms beneath your frame. 

“Michael–!”

He picked you up off of the too-small couch effortlessly, as if you were just another of the bins, and carried you upstairs.

“I could have walked,” you grumbled, though you didn’t really mind too much.

Or at all.

He climbed each step so easily. “Didn’t feel like waiting.” A smirk.

His skin was still slightly wet from the shower, the thin tank forcing you to come into contact with it far more than you ever expected as your arms wound  around his neck.

Once he entered the hallway, he branched off left to nudge open your door with his foot. He set you gently down onto your bed, reaching up and wrapping his hand around one of yours, lowering your arm away from his neck and onto your chest. 

His gaze felt heavy, full of care. Care that maybe shouldn’t have been there.

“You gonna want dinner?”

He watched you curl up in the middle of the bed, your knees drawn in, a frown on your face. 

When you didn’t answer, he started to turn to leave. 

As if you’d been preserving all your energy for this one moment, your hand shot out of your blanket cocoon.

Your fingers found his wrist. 

He looked down at you, slight confusion in his expression before his gaze traveled down his arm and along yours, finding your eyes already on his.

Nothing was said. You didn’t know how to articulate what you were really asking for.

He stood stock still as he began making a series of decisions and negotiations in his head. His stare was loaded, full of his racing thoughts.

Are you sure? Do you understand what you’re asking for? Will you regret this? Is it me, or are you just lonely? Is this okay? How far will this go?

Clearly the negotiations went your way, because suddenly he was sliding into bed behind you. The thick knit blanket was tugged away and tossed to the foot of the bed, and he drew the scrunched up comforter over top of the both of you.

He radiated warmth, his big arm falling over your waist, his large hand at your belly drawing you back against his chest. He was still damp from the shower, the thin cotton tank harboring moisture that bled through the back of your shirt.

It felt right. Crazy, but right.

You weren’t blind, even in this haze of sinus pressure, you could appreciate the way his hair curled down over his forehead as he’d carried you up the stairs, the way his big, sad eyes observed you. Always on the verge of being too intense.

And here he was, so tempting, so close. 

It would be nothing to start edging past the point of no return. There was no time to properly weigh the pros and cons. You took a page out of his book and moved on impulse.

Just as he seemed to get comfortable, you nestled into the shape of him, something he picked up on immediately, his hands seizing your hips.

As if he didn’t want this to happen. The image of propriety, of decency.

Because that’s all it was, the image.

“You’re not feeling well,” he explained, as if that was honestly a deterrent. There was a tiny amount of stress woven into his voice.

“I don’t care,” you admitted. “Maybe it’ll help.”

A quiet laugh left his throat. You wanted to turn around to see the smile he must have worn. But the hands on your hips pulled, his own hips pushing up, the friction welcome for both of you.

Quiet gasps. Hands that squeezed, even as yours covered his own.

His lips pressed to your hair. “You really think this’ll help?”

The noise you made wasn’t an answer, and he wasn’t really asking. 

Large hands slid under the hem of the oversized shirt, not an ounce of hesitation lurking in his muscles. They roamed like they’d been shackled all this time and were finally cut loose. The shirt was lifted, pulled almost harshly over your head, staying on the arm pressed into the mattress. 

But it was good enough, as his hands found new skin. 

His own shirt came off easily, thrown aside. 

His breathing quickened into pants, his hips rubbing up on your ass as you pushed back against him. His heart raced as his fingers dived low, beneath the thin shorts, the underwear. He listened to you, his fingers swirling as you tensed beside him.

Could you feel it? he wondered. This superbloom of trust?

His chest pressed so tightly against your back, it felt like he was your second skin, peeling back anytime you separated even an inch.

Beneath the covers, it was stifling, sweat dripping down the back of his knees, the middle of his back, even his arms. He reveled in it. Maybe that’s what you needed. To sweat it out. It couldn’t hurt to try.

Frantic hands pushed your thin shorts and underwear down, past the swell of your ass, down your thighs until you reached down to tug them lower, eventually kicking them off. His own only made it to his knees. But it was enough for this.

Hooking your leg back over his hip, he finally found home, the grunt that tore from his throat sending a shiver down your spine. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, his forehead pressing against your shoulder. His hot breath fanned out over your sweat-slick back. “You are…”

He didn’t finish his thought, instead opting to begin an agonizingly slow rhythm. 

Too slow. Too shallow. 

He could feel your dissatisfaction and smiled against your skin before pushing you over, flat onto your stomach. He stretched over you, reaching past your head for a pillow. 

Finally taking the time to fully remove the underwear tangled around his knees, he allowed himself a moment to look at you, presented for him, pillow raising your hips up just enough. 

Just an hour ago, he was talking himself down, begging himself not to screw this up.

But he didn’t account for you.

He pushed back in, much deeper, the press of his body weight over yours a sufficient distraction from the pounding in your head. 

This. This was what you needed.

His muttered groans in your ear, one of his hands in yours, fingers laced together, crushed against your chest. His lips sometimes pausing their string of curses to press to the skin of your shoulder, the chain he wore tickling your skin, wet with his saliva as it hung in the way.

The forbidden nature of this sent a ripple of pleasure through him. He found himself thinking that this shouldn’t happen again, not until you reached this same level of desperation.

But he knew he was lying to himself. He wouldn’t be able to wait that long. Not with the way your every move filled him with adoration, a desire to protect, preserve.

Maybe this could be his life. Would you accept him? 

As he pushed in as deeply as he could manage, your shrill, breathless sounds heralding the way you clenched around him, he decided he didn’t care. 

He loved too much, too fast. He knew this. But this time, he would make sure you remained with him. He would convince you to love him. He just needed time. 

So he pressed his face into the back of your neck, the sweat there melding with your own, as he succumbed, spilling inside you.

His body was a dead weight over you as you two fought to recover.

“Feeling any better?”

He sounded quite pleased with himself.

You smiled, squeezing the hand clutched to your chest like a precious possession. “Maybe.”

His lips pressed soft kisses across the span of your back. “Could… try again?”

A shiver. 

“...Yeah. Again.”

[xcaptainhannax]

Where It Hurts The Most (joel miller x reader)

Plot: Abby swears she only wants Joel dead—until she sees how much she means to him. Blinded by grief and rage, she changes her plan, targeting her instead. Joel powerless to stop the fallout is forced to watch as Abby wants him to feel the same crushing loss she once did.

Warnings: violence, blood, torture

A/N: I know Abby mentions multiple times that she only wants Joel BUT this idea came to mind and yet again i can do whatever the fuck i want SO yeah !! i hope you like this new twisted idea, joel is alive tho so that counts for something, right? RIGHT??

The ski lodge reeked of blood and gunpowder.

Joel's breathing was ragged as he struggled against the ropes biting into his wrists. Blood slicked his side — Abby hadn’t wasted time. When they'd first dragged him in, she'd made sure to beat him half to death, cracking ribs, splitting his brow, breaking him down piece by piece.

He didn’t know if the pool beneath him was mostly his or someone else's.

Ellie’s muffled screams and Dina’s frantic shouts echoed around the wooden beams of the cabin, but Joel’s focus was locked on one thing: you, forced to your knees before Abby, bruised and bloodied.

"I was just going to kill him," Abby said, voice trembling with rage as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Quick. Clean."

From across the room, Owen stepped forward, hesitation thick in his voice. "Abby — this isn’t what we talked about. We came for Joel. Just Joel."

"Yeah," Manny added warily, shifting his weight, his rifle lowering slightly. "Don't make this messier."

Abby barely heard them. She glanced down at you — saw the way your eyes, swollen and bloodshot, still searched for Joel — and her expression twisted into something dark, something cruel.

"But that’s not enough anymore," she muttered.

Joel jerked against his bonds so violently the chair scraped loudly against the floor. "You fuckin’ touch her, I swear to God—" His voice broke into a growl, hoarse and burning from the earlier beating.

Abby laughed, cold and hollow. "You’re gonna watch, Joel. You’re gonna feel everything I felt when you killed my father."

"No!" Ellie screamed, fighting against the arms pinning her down. "Please — please, don't!"

Abby barely glanced at her before turning back to you. She grabbed you roughly by the collar, yanking you closer. You didn’t cry, didn’t beg — you just kept your eyes on Joel.

Trying to be strong for him.

The first punch landed hard, sending your head snapping back. Joel bellowed your name, straining so hard that blood seeped from his wrists where the rope cut into his skin.

Another blow. And another.

Joel was roaring, begging, his voice hoarse and broken. Ellie was sobbing, Dina trying to twist free from the guards holding her.

"I’m gonna kill you!" Joel swore, voice cracking. "I’m gonna rip you apart!"

But Abby didn’t stop — not until your body slumped, weak and trembling, against the floorboards.

Joel’s vision blurred — from blood, from rage, from helplessness — until he heard it: Gunshots.

The door to the lodge slammed open, splintering against the wall.

Tommy burst inside, rifle raised, already firing. Behind him, Jackson patrols flooded the lodge like a tide — someone must have sent a signal.

The room exploded into chaos — gunfire, screaming, bodies scrambling for cover.

Joel didn’t think. He tore at the ropes until the chair tipped over, smashing against the floor. He rolled, gasping, side burning, and his hands — bloody and half-numb — finally found freedom.

He crawled to you, heart thundering so loud he couldn't hear anything else.

"Baby—" His hands cradled your face, sticky with blood and too cold. "No, no, stay with me. Look at me."

You blinked sluggishly, pupils slow to respond — but you were alive.

"Joel," you whispered, voice cracked and broken, but so alive it made him choke on a sob.

"I got you," he rasped, pressing his forehead against yours. "You're okay, baby. You’re okay."

Ellie and Dina were suddenly there too, shielding you as Tommy’s voice barked orders across the lodge.

And then Joel heard it — a sharp yell, a struggle — and through the broken beams of the lodge, he saw Abby trying to escape, blood trailing from a wound at her side. She shoved past a patrolman, frantic.

Tommy didn't hesitate.

One clean shot rang out.

Abby stumbled, then crumpled to the floor without a sound.

Joel stared — not with triumph, not even with hatred — just with a hollow, aching finality. She would never hurt anyone again.

The fight moved outside. The lodge grew quieter, except for your shallow breathing and Joel’s broken prayers.

Ellie clung to your side, Dina pressing cloth to your wounds, and Joel held you like he could will you whole again — ignoring the searing pain in his ribs, the way blood trickled down his temple.

Maybe he couldn't undo the pain Abby had caused. Maybe nothing would ever be the same.

But you were alive. And for Joel Miller, that was enough to keep fighting.

[brainddeadd]

Chapter 3

I was gonna make y'all wait but I'm too enamoured with him to wait

masterlist

It was just past midnight when the lights flickered.

The Pitt ran 24/7—no sleep, no mercy, just a rotating door of trauma. Jack was halfway through stapling a gash in someone’s thigh when the pager on his hip buzzed violently. He didn’t flinch. He never did.

“Code Gray – Pediatric Trauma Inbound. ETA 3 minutes.”

His blood ran cold. Pediatric trauma. She’d be there.

He finished the last staple, ripped his gloves off, and jogged toward the bay. Yn was already inside Trauma 3, tying her hair back with a bright green scrunchie that clashed hideously with her pink scrub top. She looked like a rainbow after a storm.

“Five-year-old. Blunt force trauma. Possible internal bleeding,” she rattled off, eyes scanning the monitor, hands already moving to prep equipment.

Jack moved beside her without a word. They worked in tandem—her touch gentle, his precise. The EMTs burst in seconds later with the patient: a tiny body on a backboard, barely conscious, face pale.

Yn's smile dropped. Gone was the sunshine.

Jack watched her change gears—fast, sharp, focused. Her hand hovered briefly over the boy’s forehead, a featherlight comfort that made Jack’s chest ache in a way he didn’t understand.

“She’s good with them,” a nurse murmured at his side. “Like magic.”

Jack didn’t reply. He knew. He saw it.

They lost track of time. IVs, vitals, scans, blood work. The kid was stable—for now—but needed surgery. Yn leaned against the wall when it was all over, hands trembling, eyes wet.

“He reminded me of my nephew,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

Jack stared at her. Normally, he would’ve walked away. Left her to process it on her own, because that’s what he did. People were messy. Feelings were worse.

But Yn Ln had walked into his life with cinnamon coffee and glitter shoes and carved out a space he didn’t realise was empty.

So he walked over. And for once, said nothing.

Just stood beside her, close enough for her arm to brush his. Close enough to hear her breathe.

“I keep a notebook,” she said suddenly. “For all the names. Of the ones who make it. And the ones who don’t.”

Jack exhaled slowly. “That’s heavy.”

Yn looked up at him. “Yeah. But I think someone should remember them.”

He watched her, really watched her. There were smudges under her eyes. Her bun was slipping. Her heart was too big for this place.

“You’ll burn out,” he said quietly.

She smiled, tired and soft. “Not if someone keeps handing me coffee.”

Jack reached into his jacket, pulled out a cup he’d picked up hours ago and forgot to drink. Still warm.

She blinked. “For me?”

He shrugged. “You said I looked like I forgot how to laugh. You look like you forgot how to sit down.”

She laughed—just a little. Quiet, exhausted, real.

And Jack Abbott, trauma god, felt something crack open.

Maybe sunshine didn’t belong in The Pitt.

But maybe he didn’t want to chase it out anymore.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Can't Have One Without the Other 4

Warnings: non/dubcon, marital troubles, body insecurity, and other dark elements. My username actually says you never asked for any of this.

My warnings are not exhaustive but be aware this is a dark fic and may include potentially triggering topics. Please use your common sense when consuming content. I am not responsible for your decisions.

Characters: Bucky Barnes

Summary: your marriage is on the rocks.

Note: I asked about husbands and all your hoes said Bucky (with a few Sy’s in the middle). I wasn’t intending on a whole series but I thnk it would be fun to have husband!Bucky turn a bit desperate.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

You bring Bucky his dinner. He's in the front room watching a show on military tanks. As you set his plate on the low coffee table, he clears his throat.

"Those old Shermans used to blow their tops like a cork. Useless," he snickers and reaches for the accompanying beer. "Thanks."

"No problem. Hope it's good," you back up.

You go back to the kitchen and tidy up what's left. You pack away the extra potatoes and beans. You only made one steak. He calls your name.

"Yeah," you look down the hall into the front room.

"You gonna join me? Wife?" He adds the last word like a reprimand.

"Uh, yeah, one sec," you retreat and grab a glass from the cupboard. You fill it with water and mix in some electrolytes.

You go out and sit next to him on the couch. He leans over the coffee table as he cuts into the steak. Medium rare to his liking. You sip your water as he shoves a hunk in his mouth and looks at you. He gulps and frowns.

"You're not having any?" He snarls.

"I'm not very hungry. That cappuccino was sugary," you assure him and turn the glass in your hands.

"You should have more than that," he says.

"Sorry, I--"

"Christ, you don't gotta be sorry. Making me feel like the bad guy again. Making me dinner, sitting there with water, apologising. I'm just fucking concerned since you're my wife," he huffs and scoops up potatoes onto his fork. A speck falls to the floor. "Shit," he looks down.

"Let me get you a napkin."

You place the glass on a coaster and get up. You scurry out to grab a paper towel and return. You lay it next to his plate as he chews. He wipes up the potato and crumples the strip of towel.

"I mean, I don't think I was wrong," he says through a mouthful, stopping to swallow. "Won't let me touch you. Makes a guy feel a kind of way."

"Bucky," you look down. "It's not you. I don't want to argue about this anymore."

"I don't either. I'm just trying to figure you out."

"Figure me out?" You utter.

"Yeah, I'm trying to recognise you. My own wife," he shakes his head. "You're not the same girl I married."

You wince and shrink down, "no, I don't think I am," you agree. "I'm fat and I'm lazy." You stand up and take your water, "and I'm ruining your supper."

You march out, tense and tortured. You don't look back as you head upstairs. You believe every word you said. He doesn't deny them either.

You sit on the edge of the bed and drink the water. You're hungry. Mostly because you're emotional. When you feel lonely, sad, angry, you just want to eat. You drain the glass and leave it on the nightstand. 

You stop yourself from taking off your rings. You get up and change into striped pajama pants that used to fit too loose and a tee shirt that hugs your middle. You hide under the blankets and watch the window as the night sets in.

You can hear him downstairs. He rinses off his plate. You should've gone back down to do that. He'll probably be sure to tell you so.

You roll over so you can't see the door. You're too upset to sleep. You're stuck in a vortex of dread and self-hatred.

You open your eyes as you hear him climbing the stairs. The light flicks on as he enters. He moves softly through the space. You hear a drawer and him sifitng around. When he doesn't tuck in next to you, you're sure he's about to go sleep on the couch.

"Hey, doll," he tugs the blanket by your foot, "wanna do something for me?"

Doll? When's the last time he called you that? You brace yourself and sit up. You look at him. He holds up black lace.

"Will you put this on for me?"

You stare at him dumbly. Huh?

"Bucky," you groan.

"Come on," he coaxes, "these are my favourite. You know that."

You feel like you could crumble into dust just looking at the lingerie. Still, it's not worth the fight. You're going to feel bad either way.

"Sure," you get up and walk along the bed. You look him in the face. You take in his square jaw, his cheekbones, the shadow of stubble, his bold blue eyes. He is still unbelievably handsome. "Bucky," your cheeks pinch. "I miss you."

"I'm back, baby," he smirks.

You almost drop your shoulders. That's not what you mean. You exhale and smile. "I know."

You go into the bathroom and shut the door. You switch out your pajamas for the lace. You're mortified at how your belly pudges up over the underwear. Your tits are spilling out of the bra too.

You refuse to acknowledge the mirror. You stand facing the door. A gentle breeze could knock you over.

"Doll?" Bucky calls to you.

You flinch and make yourself move. You turn the handle and your vision hazes. You open the door and step through. You don't see him as you come out.

He whistles, "see, that's what I missed."

You shake the fog and look at him. He's naked. He might have a bit extra too but he's still in good shape.

"Come here, baby," he waves you closer with both hands. "You didn't think earlier was everything."

You stare at him. It's a whirlwind. One minute he's mad, the next he's cooing and coaxing. You don't know that he really wants you, only what's accessible.

You go to him and he grabs your hips. You instinctively grab his hands. You waver as he pushes his thumbs into your soft flesh.

"Hey, why so shy?" He looks up at you. "You're acting like it's our first time." He brings you into his lap. You can't resist. You're much too weak, more than physically. "Wasn't that spectacular, huh?"

"Bucky," you look away bashfully. You remember. You were shy because it wasn't where you imagined it. Hiding in a closet at one of Stark's stupid parties.

"You didn't used to be so afraid of being bad," he falls back and takes your hands, putting them on his chest. "Why don't you be bad for me, baby?"

You stare down at him and bite your lip. He's still your husband. He's still somewhere deep in your heart. You bat your lashes.

"Can I turn off the light?" You ask.