#youth & young manhood

[rastronomicals]

4:15 PM EDT September 17, 2023:

Kings of Leon - "Molly's Chambers" From the album Youth and Young Manhood (July 7, 2003)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[ijustwantedtobeoneofthestrokesuk]

Indie Discos to Stadiums

Nashville and Las Vegas

The Americans brought mystery and myth, The Stripes weren’t the only ones with an intriguing back story. Was the Kings Of Leon a manufactured indie band? Was Brandon Flowers the first Mormon rock star? Nashvillle and Vegas weren’t the obvious spots for indie superstars…

There was so many bands who couldn’t get past a few good songs, never mind the opportunity to tackle that difficult second album. 2 bands who successfully navigated their way to stardom, even if one of them reluctantly had to trade in their cool card and be looked at like sell-outs (Caleb, the internet will never forget those strops) was Kings Of Leon and The Killers. They didn’t come from New York or London but they managed to reinvent themselves for the masses

This is the New Rock Revolution success stories from Nashville and Vegas.

Conor McNicholas “Shortly after I joined the NME a guy from Coalation PR came into the office saying “Have I got a band for you!”.  He had a press kit on VHS, it was Kings Of Leon, pictures of them driving in big cars. We’ve just had The Strokes, American bands are cool, bands in general are cool but they from the wrong bit of the country, nothing cool comes out of Nashville, it was either Detroit or New York (at the time). They’ve all got long hair which is weird, they look like Crosby, Stills & Nash and he was like, “they are like The Strokes, but the Southern Strokes”, we now had an angle. 

The deal was pretty much done on the spot, a radar piece exclusive before anybody else, 2 single reviews, an album review and a world-exclusive cover story. This was before anybody in the world knew who they were. The deal is done on a handshake, exclusives in exchange for hype. All of these things are planned and manufactured. The music press has as much interest in hyping stuff up as anybody.”

Family bands are a rarity and nobody saw Kings of Leon coming, or where they would go… 3 brothers, Caleb, Nathan, Jared and cousin Matthew started the band in 1999, named it after their grandfather, Leon but rock ‘n’ roll was a sin for the religious family who would only listen to gospel music growing up on the road with the 3 brothers’ dad, who was a touring preacher.

Caleb wasn’t happy with the direction his life was heading and he was close to joining the army. He claims, when he was 15 he had a vision from God to move back to Nashville and start writing songs. He moved in with his grandparents and discovered country music. Nathan joined him a couple of months later, they started writing music together, despite Nathan not being able to play any instrument.  

Nashville is more than just the home of country music, it is a self-contained hub for musicians with labels, recording studios, producers and managers. This is where they met Angelo Petraglia, the man behind the bands’ debut album and co-songwriter on the two that followed. Angelo, originally from New York is a songwriter and producer, he helped the brothers work on their songwriting and introduced them to rock music, the first time they’d come across The Rolling Stones and The Clash.  

Caleb and Nathan started performing as a duo in bars in Nashville which led to them signing a record deal. The label offered suggestions for potential bandmates but the brothers said their 14-year-old brother Jared and 16-year-old cousin Matthew would be joining them, again, like Nathan, they couldn’t play an instrument. The young pair moved into their grandparents and the 4 of them, along with Angelo spent a month playing together, writing songs including Molly's Chambers, California Waiting, Wicker Chair, and Holy Roller Novocaine (that went on the EP that broke them, then the debut album) and smoking weed. Jared had previously spent a bit of time in public school where he discovered the Pixies and The Velvet Underground and this would also influence their sound. 

Youth & Young Manhood didn’t sound raw or edgy, it had cracking melodies that glazed over the sleazy lyrics and they were welcomed to the UK but the states were unsure about them. Those early years were full-on, Kings Of Leon were renowned for their partying, Jared can’t really remember 2002 - 2006 because of the drink and drugs. Caleb and Nathan would drink 3 bottles of wine each and take some pills before a gig and another bottle of wine during the gig. There’d be times where they would come off stage and have no recollection of the gig. 

Despite those hedonistic days and hype, the quartet followed up the Americana debut with Aha Shake Heartbreak which was slicker, sexier, confident and dynamic. Not only did they sound different, but they also looked unrecognisable. Their long unkempt hair, beards, tight tee’s and flares was replaced with stylish haircuts, shirts and tight jeans. These boys were growing up while they were in the spotlight. Third album, Because of the Times took the band another step forward sonically and Glastonbury headliners, they were becoming stadium rock, but cool.

That cool was lost with one song, a joke song that Caleb would loathe for years. In August 2008 the band knew they’d lose their day-oners so they put the edgier Crawl up on their website first but that was one totally eclipsed once Sex On Fire, the first official single from their fourth album was released. They were mocked by the indie kids, old fans turned their back on them but they strolled into the mainstream and became a band for the masses. 

Caleb had injured his arm and it had been in a sling, he could hardly move it (doctors advised him not to play guitar, obviously he ignored the advice) and the first song he wrote was Sex On Fire as it barely requires the arm to move up the guitar neck, they knew the lyrics were cringy but people loved it, it got to a stage where you couldn’t turn the radio on and not hear it. Not only do the older fans hate Sex On Fire but the band did too, particularly Caleb who reluctantly played it live, however he grew to love it after understanding its importance. The second song Caleb wrote after his arm injury was Use Somebody, the song that confirmed the band's place in the stadium rock league. The band have gone through their battles, with each other and alcohol, Sex On Fire will be the song they will be known for but for many, they will be remembered for everything that came before it.

Conor “There was another American band we heard before anybody else…We were sent pre-released demos for a band called The Killers. We put it on in the office, we knew this was interesting. They’d played in and around Vegas, one warm up gig in Vancouver as they’d had been hidden away by their label, nobody knew that that gig had happened. Their first gig outside of North America was at the Dublin Castle in Camden, they were then put on first, on a four-band bill. There was a huge amount of label money and a management team behind them at this point but we were the only ones in the know.  

After that gig I knew we were on to something but we didn’t know how long they would belong in ‘our world’ for, they clearly had mainstream potential.” 

The Killers came straight out of Nevada with their iconic hit that has filled dancefloors at weddings for over 20 years. There was a brief moment when Mr Brightside belonged to the indie kids, before becoming a record-breaking single, a song that should define the era but it spiraled out of control.  

Brandon Flowers was inspired to become a rock star after an Oasis gig in his hometown of Las Vegas and met guitarist Dave Keuning via an ad in the local newspaper in 2001. They started writing songs together, the first was Mr Brightside and The Killers haven’t played a gig without it. It’s safe to say the pair were on to a winner from day one!  

After recording a few more demos the duo played an open mic night in Cafe Espresso Roma in Vegas in January 2002 before recruiting members and playing more regularly. After a few changes on bass and drums throughout the year, they settled down in November and the 4-piece turned the band into something special.  

They practiced and wrote the majority of debut album, Hot Fuss at the University of Nevada, where Ronnie was studying while they learned how to perform at venues such as The Boston and The Junkyard in Vegas. They played at showcase gigs for labels but the only person to show interest was Alex Gilbert, an A&R from the UK. He passed the demo on to Lizard King Records which had recently launched.  

In July 2003 the new label from Britain signed The Killers based on the 5-track demo and released Mr Brightside on vinyl with just 500 copies, before re-releasing the single the following year as the band grew (and it is still charting over 20 years later). Zane Lowe was the first DJ to play Mr Brightside on the radio in August 2003, a month before the band's first ‘proper’ visit to the UK. The UK press took to the band and the labels in the US noticed the hype, Island/Def Jam signed them up.  

In June 2004, Hot Fuss, sn album full of electro-pop hits was released, but it was a slow burner. It took 7 months for the album to top the UK album chart and almost a year until its peak position of 7 in the US album charts. Similarly, Mr Brightside wasn’t an instant hit either but since then it has broken a record after spending 260 weeks in the top 100 singles charts in the UK.  

The Killers weren’t phased by the difficult second album, or to repeat what had already brought them success. Where Hot Fuss was influenced by UK synth-pop, Sam’s Town was an all-American affair referencing their hometown of Las Vegas and seeking inspiration from Bruce Springsteen. It might not have filled the indie disco dancefloors like Somebody Told Me did but it would go on to pack out arenas with big choruses’ and bold anthems however, they did bring back the danceable hits on album 3, Day & Age in which delivered a couple of big singles, Human and Spaceman. 

The band might have peaked in the 2000’s but that gave them the foundations to consistently release albums that will satisfy BBC Radio 2 listeners and sell out arenas and stadiums around the world. They don’t need to milk anniversary tours to pay their mortgage when Mr Brightside is being streamed by boomers to Gen Z and beyond.

NEXT CHAPTER

[kwaggysshardmindemporium]

Alright, album. Today was Youth and Young Maanhood by Kings of Leon. This, for better or worse, sounds EXACTLY like what you'd imagine if someone said "Kings of Leon's earlier work before 'Use Somebody' got super big.'"

So here's a thing I've danced around a bit without mentioning explicitly. The albums from the 1001 albums generator are taken directly from a book called "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die," which is curated by a small group of music critics, with new editions every few years. So when I say "I'm not gonna lie, I don't think I needed to hear this, even if my life didn't get WORSE from hearing it or anything," be aware that this is a direct dig at the people curating that list more so than the artists.

So anyway, I'm not gonna lie here I don't think I NEEDED to hear this, even if it didn't make my life WORSE or anything. This album is the sonic equivalent of the sensation of shoving your hand in a box of styrofoam packing peanuts. It's not UNpleasant unless you've got some kind of severe aversion to that sensation, but it's also not like a noteworthy experience either. Much better to get in, grab whatever thing inside you actually wanted, and move on with your life. I give reaching my hand into styrofoam packing peanuts a 3/5.

[hyperlexichypatia]

This post reminded me of it, but my partner has observed that in contemporary gender discourse, maleness is so linked to adulthood and femaleness is so linked to childhood, that there are no "boys" or "women," only "men" and "girls."

This isn't exactly new -- for as long as patriarchy has existed, women have been infantilized, and "adult woman" has been treated as something of an oxymoron. Hegemonic beauty standards for women emphasize youthfulness, if not actual neoteny, and older women are considered "too old" to be attractive without ever quite being old enough to make their own decisions. There may be cultural allowances for the occasional older "wise woman," but a "wise woman" is always dangerously close to being a madwoman, or a witch. No matter how wise a woman is, she is never quite a rational agent. As Hanna K put it, "as a woman you're always either too young or too old for things, because the perfect age is when you're a man."

But the framing of underage boys as "men" has shifted, depending on popular conceptualizations of childhood and gender roles. Sometimes children of any gender are essentially feminized and grouped with women (the entire framing of "women and children" as a category). In the U.S. in the 21st century, the rise of men's rights and aggressively sexist ideology has correlated with an increased emphasis on little boys as "men" -- thus slogans like "Teach your son to be a man before his teacher teaches him to be a woman."

Of course, thanks to ageism and patriarchy (which literally means, not "rule by men," but "rule by fathers"), boys don't get any of the social benefits of being considered "men." They don't get to vote, make their own medical decisions, or have any of their own adult rights. They might have a little more childhood freedom than girls, if they're presumed to be sturdier and less vulnerable to "predators," but, for the most part, being considered "men" as young boys doesn't really get boys any more access to adult rights. What it does get them is aggressively gender-policed, often with violence. A little boy being "a man" means that he's not allowed to wear colors, have feelings, or experience the developmental stages of childhood.

This shifts in young adulthood, as boys forced into the role of "manhood" become actual men. As I've written about, I believe the trend of considering young adults "children" is harmful to everyone, but primarily to young women, young queer and trans people, and young disabled people. Abled, cisgender, heterosexual young men are rarely denied the rights and autonomy of adulthood due to "brain maturity."

What's particularly interesting is that, because transphobes misgender trans people as their birth-assigned genders, they constantly frame trans girls as "men" and trans men as "girls." A 10 year old trans girl on her elementary school soccer team is a "MAN using MAN STRENGTH on helpless GIRLS," while a 40 year old trans man is a "Poor confused little girl." Anyone assigned male at birth is born a scary, intimidating adult, while anyone female assigned at birth never becomes old enough to make xyr own decisions.

Feminist responses have also really fluctuated. Occasionally, feminists have played into the idea of little boys as "men," especially in trans-exclusionary rhetoric, or in one notorious case where members of a women's separatist compound were warned about "a man" who turned out to be a 6-month-old infant. There's periodic discourse around "Empowering our girls" or "Raising our boys with gentle masculinity," but for the most part, my problem with mainstream feminist rhetoric in general is that it tends to frame children solely as a labor imposed on women by men, not as subjects (and specifically, as an oppressed class) at all.

Second-wave feminists pushed back hard on calling adult women "girls" -- but they didn't necessarily view "women" as capable of autonomous decision-making, either. Adult women were women, but they might still need to be protected from their own false consciousness. As laws in the U.S., around medical privacy and autonomy, like HIPAA, started more firmly linking the concepts of autonomy with legal adulthood, and fixing the age of majority at 18, third-wave feminists embraced referring to women as "girls." Sometimes this was in an intentionally empowering way ("girl power," "girl boss"), which also served to shield women (mostly white, mostly bourgeois/wealthy) from criticism of their participation in racism and capitalism. But it also served to reinforce the narrative of women as "girls" needing to be protected from "men" (and their own choices).

I'm still hoping for a feminist politic that is pro-child, pro-youth, pro-disability, pro-autonomy, pro-equality, that rejects the infantilization of women, the adultification of boys, the objectification of children, the misgendering of trans people, and the imposition of gender roles.

[netherfeildren]

FABLE OF THE DOG : 2. Sugar, Not so Sweet

Series Masterlist; Chapter: 1,

Pairing: Joel Miller x FMC

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: Cowboy/Heiress AU; Slowburn(ish); Original Characters; Alcohol Use; Allusions to Attempted Suicide; Discussions of Grief; Daddy Issues; Parental Neglect; Angst and Fluff; Older Man/Younger Woman; Jealousy; Possessive Behavior; Brat Taming; Extremely Bossy Old Man; Past Teenage Crush; Yearning and Longing Galore; A Home is a Place but ALSO a Person!; Found Family

A/N: This is a deeply, deeply unserious chapter, and I make no apologies—I was taken away by whimsy!!!!

Apologies however, for the French people slander, I went on a truly heinous date with a oui oui baguette loser last month. I’m still working through my anger.

Word Count: 13.4K

Read on AO3

2. Sugar, Not so Sweet

They appear at the break of dawn, the young man and the boy. 

“How many heads’ve you got total?” 

Joel appraises him, the fresh-faced look, a boy just crossed over into the cusp of manhood—though he’s large and strong and earnest in the eyes. He’d be a good hire, if not for—

He glances over at the young boy sitting on the bunk’s couch, snickering quietly with Ellie as his brother tries to barter a place for the two of them. 

“Near to thirty large about now. We’re fixin’ to breed, but we’re pushin’ our limitations.”

“So you need hands,” he says eagerly. 

“We do,” Joel returns slowly, chewing on the mint he’d plucked from out front. His stomach is in knots, has been since—days and days and days ago, last night, and so much worse now. There’s a sick heat settled deep that he doesn’t know how he’ll scourge out and quick. 

“Listen, I know it’s unconventional, but—”

“Where’s his parents?” He tips his chin at the boy, and Ellie peers slyly over her shoulder at him. He’ll get hell for this later, he knows, she knows. 

“Our momma’s down south—by way of Odessa. She cowboys during the summer too, and—”

Joel sits up in his seat. “Texas?”

“Come on, Texas,” Tommy slinks behind him, sneaking an arm over his shoulder to thump Joel roughly on the chest. “Just say yes.” He lets out a gruff sound masking a cough, fucking Tommy, and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ellie rise from the sofa and leave the bunk quietly with a parting pat on the boy's head. 

“You’re from Texas, too?” The young man asks brightly, that look of hope in his eyes that Joel’s about to quash. 

“We’re from Austin,” Tommy says from the coffee pot, his mustache spreading wide over a shit-eating grin. “Southerners way up here, we gotta stay united amongst all these Yanks’,” his brother puts on the drawl heavy, and Joel rolls his eyes. Clown. 

“Listen, Henry,” he says, trying to turn the conversation back to business. He looks at the boy again, the back of the small head bent and silent and something that could, perhaps, be thought of as guilt pulses through him, but to be honest, there’s so much of that moving about Joel’s system right about now, that it’s just one more drop of poison filling his cup. It doesn’t matter. He needs to do what’s right.

For who? He can’t very well tell yet.  

“I’m sure you’re a hard worker, son, and I’d not hesitate to give you a place were we in different circumstances, but I just don’t see how this would work—”

Henry leans forward in his chair too, ready to plead his case, fight for his brother and the generously paying jobs the Kelly’s are famous for. There’s something about the boy newly turned man that reminds Joel of himself. Perhaps during that young and fragile youth of his twenties, when he’d been alone with a newborn baby, trying to figure out the whole world and himself. 

“I know it’s unconventional, but he’s a good kid. He’s quiet and keeps to himself, and it’d only be for the summer, sir. We head back down for the start of the school year. It’s difficult, but it’s harder for my momma to get work with a kid than it is for me.” He trips over his words with the speed at which he’s spitting them at Joel, trying to convince him, and he knows that the fair thing would be to take them in. To give this man a chance the way Joel had been given one so many years ago, the mercy of safe harbor. But he’s got a finite amount of goodness in him now, he’s got to save it all for only one person. There’s none left for anyone else. And Joel doesn't want trouble, he’s got enough of that around here right about now. “He’s got his books and his summer worksheets, and he knows how to manage on his own while I work. I swear, he won’t be in any sort of way. You can—”

And then, amidst the young strangers' rambling plea, Joel's heart falls through his stomach. Here comes that trouble anyways. 

“What’s going on here?” In that soft, lovely voice that haunted his dreams last night. 

All the cowboys rise from their seats at the sound of your presence. 

From over your shoulder, Joel sees Ellie’s face twisted in a grimace at him, the flash of her middle finger and then her tongue. 

“Goddamnit, Ellie,” he growls low. 

You look exhausted, eyes red rimmed and swollen—as if you’d been crying all night, and Joel’s tongue is a swollen, poisoned thing in his mouth—a husk of guilt is all he is. He swallows convulsively, trying to find his words, trying to not scream at the thought of being what’s made you cry, trying not to look down the length of you and failing. Silky sleep shorts end way too high up on the long length of those too pretty thighs, an oversized pullover with Yale emblazoned across the front, a little hole at the neck and a large dark stain marr the front of it. You’ve got on a too big robe, dark and plaid, draped over your shoulders with your hair all a mess. He can see Ellie’s trying to pull it into some semblance of a braid behind your back discreetly while you stare at him with those eyes that, and he’s being damn honest now, fucking terrify him. Those puffy, ridiculous tan boots women wear, the impractical ones that become a sogging mess in the snow or wet despite the fact he understands they’re supposed to be worn in winter, are on your feet, two mismatched socks peek out above the tops. 

He’s pretty sure one of them has bombs with a capital ‘F’ in the tiny centers printed over it. The other, some sort of Easter bunny carrot print. Absolutely ridiculous, and he can’t help it, he notices it all. 

And worst of all, in your grip is that World’s Best Dad mug you’d sent the old fucker for Christmas several years ago, a little holiday fuck you from his best daughter. It’d been one of the years he hadn’t let you come home for the winter break, forced you to spend the holiday alone at that boarding school of yours. The whole ranch had known and whispered about it, and he’d felt embarrassed and offended on your behalf, that they’d all gossiped about the girl you were behind your back when they should’ve respected you for the woman you’d become one day, the one that’d eventually pay all of their earnings. 

And the jackass had the audacity to use the mug all the time afterwards. Joel was pretty sure it’d been his favorite. 

“We were just wrapping up,” Joel says, clearing his throat, finally finding his voice. It’s almost physically painful to look at you directly in the eyes, and the heat of shame and regret claws its way up his throat at the hollow look he sees there. You’re so angry at him, and he deserves it. 

“This is the new Kelly,” Ellie tells Henry, cutting him off, pressing you forward with her hands wrapped around your shoulders. Your shorts are way too short to be in here right now, and Joel feels something else, even hotter than shame, stirring inside him. “If you want work here, this is who you need to talk to. The big boss.”

“Miss Kelly,” Henry says reverently, pulling his cap off to press against his chest. “It’s a mighty fine honor gettin’ to meet you. I was just telling your foreman here,” he motions the cap towards Joel, and he feels like a bear who’s about to rip it out of his grip and stuff it down his throat. Fucking Ellie going and snitching on him. “How me and my brother Henry travel for the summer. I’ve got letters here, I’ve worked at the King before, and have a number your man can call if he needs more references. I’ve got lots of experience and—”

“What will you do with him?” Your gaze is on the little boy, has been the entire time. Joel steps forward and over the back of the couch he sees the kid, Sam, has a comic book in his lap he’s been reading this whole time, while adults who should have no bearing on his life decide what will and will not be for him. “While you work—”

Joel looks back at you, and he knows already what it’ll be. 

Henry’s smile is wide and gleaming, putting on the charm. What he doesn’t see, what Joel does, is that bleak sadness in your gaze that he’d put there himself last night. He needs to speak with you, to explain, to make it right between the two of you. 

“He’s good at entertaining himself. I promise he won’t be in the way or nothin’. He’s got books and summer work, and he’s learning to play the guitar. He won’t be in the way,” Henry says again. 

“What about school?”

“We only travel during the summer. We’re back in Texas for the school year.” And at that, you finally look back at Joel, and his heart shoots from his belly to his throat, ready to be spit up at your feet. 

You watch him for a long searing moment, and there's such sadness there. He doesn’t know what would have been better, what would have been the correct recourse, how to make that look go away. To give you what you want? To do what he thinks is right or what should be right? He’d never thought, never considered anything like this. It’s all too much too fast, and he feels suddenly lost and childlike in the face of you and all you stand for. 

“They stay,” you say only for Joel. 

Henry lets out a whoop of victory, rushing forward to thank you profusely, but Jesse, who’s standing by the door, blocks his rush forward with a hand to his chest before he can get too close to the new boss. You’re for protecting now, above all else, it’s the unspoken word they all suddenly understand keenly. 

You stare solemnly at Joel for only a second longer, those sleep sloped doe eyes, before you’re turning without another word. 

-

“He never did a very good job of hiding the way he treated you, sweetheart. I couldn’t ever respect a man like that.” 

The cricket song is a symphony of sound around the two of you, and you’re suspended for a second, he sees it come on—a rose hued haze, and then blink-of-an-eye donning a look that spells nothing but disaster. He’s thrown off course by it for a single second, that girl fantasy glow, before you’re launching yourself at him, and then it’s nothing but a soft wet mouth, smoked fruit and fired oak, the slick of your tongue against his bottom lip as you kiss him.

You’re kissing him. 

He’s a frozen solid husk, eyes wide open as he stares down at the look on your face—something like agony. The tiny frown between your eyebrows, concentration, and a single diamond tear caught in the web of your lashes, and he can’t help but notice the soft press of your breasts against his chest, you’re not wearing a bra, before he’s shoving you back by the shoulders, scrambling to get as far away from you as quickly as he can.

His back hits the railing before he can get far enough. “What the fuck are you doing?” He spits, but can’t help but lick his tongue along his bottom lip, tasting where you’ve just been. 

His stomach is suddenly hot.

You swallow convulsively, bleary eyed look turning to hurt, pressing your palm to your belly, twisting your fingers in the fabric of your sweater there. “I don’t— I didn’t—” Your eyelashes flutter shut, closing the hurt, confused look away from him for one blessed second. You press your other palm to your forehead, gripping yourself as if you’re trying to hold your very skin together. 

What do you think you’re doing? He enunciates each word like the lash of a whip, and then licks his lips again to soften those same blows for himself. 

Something is about to go inexplicably wrong here. Something already has. A tragedy worse than the death of a father

“I just thought that—” You blink your eyes open and they’re wet, and he’s about to bark at you to not fucking cry or he’ll lose it completely, but he swallows it or loses the thought to madness. He feels incomprehensibly insane, inconceivably triggered. 

This is like nothing he’d ever imagined, and it tilts him on his axis, skews his vision, headlights blinding you in a dead-on collision. 

What are you doing—thinking?

“I— I watched you grow up. I watched you—” You take an anxious step towards him, some word on your lips he can’t even make out because his hearing has gone out, and now he’s all of a sudden deaf in both ears instead of just one. He hardens his voice further. He makes sure you understand. “This is fucking wrong, and you need to get away from me right now,” reversing his movements, taking a threatening step forward, stomping his heavy boot against the floorboards beneath so that you’re jumping, skittering backwards like a frightened little rabbit. 

And Joel, the beast, crushing her beneath his foot. 

You wrap both of your hands around the delicate column of your throat; he imagines you’re holding in your hurt sounds, and it makes him even angrier. 

“Listen to me—” he starts again. 

But you cut him off, shaking your head, the confused sleep-look being blinked away so that now it’s spitting fire that is awake and angry in your gaze. “But you didn’t,” you say. “You barely know me. We’re almost strangers.” A scoff, and then switching again to soft, to girl-like, to hurt: “And I’m all grown up now, Joel.”

“I don’t know what you reckon is happenin’ here between us. Or what you think— what you—” He looks away, can’t bear the sight of it, you, fuck, he spits, again, fuck. “If I gave you the wrong impression, I’m sorry, but—”

Then in a broken little voice grasping for straws, “But we were born on the same day,” and you say it like a question. Like it should mean more. Like, and he realizes it now, like it means the world. 

He turns back to look at you, and he feels full of everything but mercy—too much regret. “And what? What do you think that means? That we’re connected—meant to be?” His voice sounds full of cruelty. “Don’t be delusional. It’s also the day my daughter died. D’you know that?”

A blink. “What?”

“She died on my thirty-fourth birthday.” 

Again. “But… Wh—at?” Broken up word, and your chin does a little wobbling dance, jutting this way and that, and you have a dimple in your cheek that comes out when you’re happy, but also when you’re sad. When you’re about to cry. He sees it now, and starkly. 

He’s ruining something sacred. 

Joel steels himself. “Whatever it is you’ve made up in your mind about us, it’s a fantasy. Something not real that you need to let go of. Are you hearin’ me?”

“I— I think…” You won’t stop blinking, your hands look like they’re about to strangle you, and he steps forward as if to stop you or save you from yourself. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

But instead of saving, “Why would I? Why would I ever tell you that?” He does not want to hurt you, and yet he cannot help it, and Joel wonders if this is how your father felt every time he failed you—like a lesser man. “Wasn’t for you to know—it doesn’t mean the same thing to us.” That day. He makes himself clear: “Whatever child’s fantasy you’re still holding onto, you need to let it go.” 

-

He rushes out of the bunk after you, a growled, you little shit, at Ellie as he passes her. 

“Man, what’d you fuckin’ do?” She calls after him in that tone that tells him that of course she knows what’s happened. You two’ve never been able to keep a single thing from each other. Asshole! She shouts at his back as he catches up to your slowly retreating form. Your movements are sluggish, exhausted. 

He calls your name and tries to moderate his tone from being as aggressive as he feels right now. “We gotta talk.” He follows after you, hot on your heels and then jumping back like a scared mut when you spin around on your ridiculous boot to face him. 

“Speak.” It’s a high-handed tone, that one. One that says he’s the grunt here, and you the queen, that you’d both forgotten it last night, but the battlelines are clearly drawn now. There’ll be no more forgetting. 

And it’s all his fault. 

“You can’t—” His heart thumps and thumps and thumps like a pitiful thing. “You can’t undermine me in front of the boys like that. There’s a reason I was saying no.”

“Which is?”

“That the kid’ll be in the way.”

And you flinch and Joel prays for a gun to the back of the skull. Fucking Christ, but this is difficult.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he gruffs. “You know what I mean. This is hard work we do here. I don’t want the kid gettin’ hurt, I don’t want to be responsible for that. What goes on here is on me. The people who get hurt, it’s all on me, and I take that responsibility damn serious.”

You tilt your head at him in that queer, inspecting way of yours. The one he’d watched you pull like a weapon against your father so many times. He finds he hates it now, detests it, being wielded against himself. You ignore his words, “What was your arrangement here—with him? How did this work with the ranch?”

There has been that thought always, and obviously, of you as something higher, that symbol of the family or the safe haven this place has been for Joel. The not-respect he had for your father, but surely the understanding—you've always been all wrapped up in that. He's at times felt grateful for your existence, perhaps, in ways. That something as good, as better, as you could exist in the same world Joel exists in. Perhaps he’d admired you in ways, even as a young girl, for your goodness, your sincerity. But he finds now, at this look of disdain you’re wearing against him, that he hates the feeling of being less than you, of not being good enough to even stand in your presence. 

He’s done wrong, marred it all in ugliness. He’s put himself in this position somehow, by hurting you, by confusing you, by wanting—

“I do what I need to, what the ranch needs. Whatever decision I need to make, I call it and it’s on me. Monthly reports to him and that was it. He understood that what happens out here is different to what can be told and sometimes you can’t plan for certain shit. He focused on the business, I focus on the ranch.”

By wanting what?

Bringing the mug to your lips, you take a long sip, humming. It’s all a taunt. Joel realizes, suddenly, and with painful clarity, that this has all been a grave miscalculation on his part.

As uncomfortable as it is for even him to admit, you are, and undeservedly, a person used to not being wanted, used to rejection. Joel understands this with the quick fire blink of an eye. And he has, in his shock, or— or… he doesn't know—instantaneous awakening—unintentionally alienated you, made an enemy. 

I see, you murmur quietly coupled with a bitter cough of laughter that doesn’t sound anything like the sweet sound he’s used to hearing from you. Yes, a very bad mistake has been made indeed. “Well, you’re practically king here, aren’t you then? Quite the partnership the two of you had.” You smile wide, all bright teeth. 

The coffee sloshes in the mug held in your unsteady hand, and he worries there’s something stronger in there too. 

“Not at all. I’m just good at what I do.” He shoves fisted hands into his pockets, trying to keep patient. Trying not to throttle you, check your drink for himself. 

“And is this how you’d like to continue going forward? I mind my own business, and you do as you please?”

He shakes his head slow, grinds the pulverized mint between his molars, “I want whatever you think’s best. You’re the Kelly now, after all.” You get a look on your face like you don’t like the sound of that at all, and he turns to spit the greens between his teeth, coughing roughly. 

“Yeah, I’m sure of that,” you say with teeth bared, and then whipping your head away from him as if you can’t bear the sight of him a second longer. The coffee sloshes the other way, splashing against your wrist. He hopes it’s not burning you. “You know, you’ve got some fucking nerve, Joel. You—” 

The robe—all of a sudden, saturated by the dark liquid, it grabs his attention. It’s in a plaid print, expensive looking, like something you’d see an older man wearing. A man’s robe? He cocks his head, “Whose robe is that?” Cutting your tirade short. 

What? You spit, all sass, his stomach burns, turning to look back at him as if he’s gone idiotic, grown a second head.  He feels a little bit like he’s in the process of doing so—wracked with growing pains. “It’s my ex-boyfriend’s. Can you focus, please? I’m trying to have a fight with you right now.” And you scrunch your nose too adorably for him to find anything besides endearing. Certainly not intimidating. 

He grunts, displeased. 

“I know you don’t want to hear it—”

“Then keep it to yourself.” You turn, continuing on your way up to the house, coffee flies with your spin, boyfriend’s robe whipping out in your wake as he follows like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. 

A little desperately, like a dog, too. A begging for scraps imitation game he hadn’t intended to play but feels obligated to now, and by his own doing. 

“But I want to say—about last night…”

You turn on your heel out of nowhere again, and he stumbles to not rush head first into you, to not touch you. 

The look on your face is all heartbreak. “Do you remember—when I was away at school—and I fell off the horse? When I came home with that broken arm and couldn’t get back on and you helped me? Do you remember that, Joel? How you reminded me how I was supposed to do it—”

He coughs, uncomfortable, shifting like that same scared dog. “You remember these things different than I do.” The words feel cowardly spilling from his tongue, but he should be honest. Shouldn’t he?

This is what he should be doing, isn’t it?

“I remember that you were kind. That you cared. That’s what I remember.” Your eyes are glossed again, and now it’s Joel that has to look away. 

-

“I didn’t care. It was my job to serve your father. To do as he’d want me to. It was a responsibility.”

It’s happening again. A tale like any other you’ve too often heard. You know he’s not lying, and yet everything he says feels precariously close to it. 

“Why are you being like this?” And you ask it very practically, like you really want to know, like you’ve asked the same sort of question to the same sort of figure before, and so now you’re extremely well practiced, an expert even. 

“You remember these things differently. Wrong—That’s not how I meant any of it—whatever you’re thinkin’. It was just a kindness.”

“No, but I— but you…” That’s the point, you want to say, a kindness, but the words stick. You look away again, colored in shame, can’t bear the sight of him. “Maybe you’re right,” you whisper with that very remembered kindness of your lonely childhood thrown back in your face now. “Maybe I do.”

“Listen to me—I’d like for things between us to be— I’m not… I don’t now what to fuckin’ say to you.”

“Honey—” Dina calls from the porch, your father’s assistant, now yours by inheritance, you suppose. “We gotta go soon—gotta get you ready.”

“I have things to do with Dina. I don’t have time for you—for this. Do what you want, run it how you like,” the ranch, “But the kid stays. That’s final.”

You won’t look at him again, you decide. You’ll learn to want a new thing. You’ll learn to love a new thing. 

If you had it in you, you’d laugh in his face. 

Have you been in love with him? Probably not in any way that could’ve been called mature, it was the girl-fantasy of a neglected child latching on to a man who’d always seemed nothing but steady and kind.

So you’ll learn to grow up now, no choice left in the matter, let the fantasy go.  

-

Despite your desire for debauchery and the three days of bad behavior you’d promised yourself, you’ve got shit to do. 

An hour after your ridiculous non-conversation with the ridiculous man, you and Dina are stepping back  out into the summer sunshine when your phone rings with a call from another ridiculous man for what promises to surely be another even more ridiculous conversation. 

Jacopo.

You’d met through the friend of a friend at the party of someone or another in Monaco. Come from an Italian mother and a French father, you should’ve known he was going to be an arrogant asshole from the get go, but he’d been beautiful and momentarily distracting—things you knew you didn’t really want but told yourself would suffice. Really, all he was, was boring, the same as everyone else, wanting something from you without having to truly return anything in full. 

Jacopo the jockey—sounds like a goddamn cartoon. 

You liked to call him Jack, like he were the same sort of plebeian he saw all Americans as, and which he absolutely loathed with the sort of passion only an uppity French man could possess. 

In the distance, you can see Joel, Frank and Bill propped up against the corral watching as Jesse runs Ellie atop a gorgeous chestnut Quarter. Sometimes she likes to compete, when she can get Joel to stop complaining about it for a second. 

Dina makes her way towards them, “Tell them we’ll take the Ghibli,” you call after her to which she throws a thumbs up. At the sound of your voice he peers over his shoulder, finding your eyes immediately, catching there—fish on a burning hook. And then turns full around, leaning back to rest his elbows on the iron grate as you take French boys call, settling in to watch you. 

“Hi, Jack, sweetie. How’s it hangin’?”

“I do not know what this means.”

Bore. “What do you want, Jacopo? I’m busy.”

“My love, we must speak. I have heard of your father. You should have call me, I will come to be with you now. Tell me where you are.”

“Why the hell would I want you to come be with me? We broke up. Remember?”

Joel watches you as the French idiot prattles on about how he loves you and how you need him and how the two of you belong together, blah blah. Odious man, you don’t know how you ever let him inside of you. 

Across the lawn, he isn’t looking away, and his gaze burns where it touches. You feel—humiliated, hurt, rejected, so angry it’s a physical ache. 

Not surprised. 

Perhaps in some way, his rejection was what you’d wanted, had been looking for. Perhaps, it was your subconscious search for the easy way out. Because, and really, what else had you thought would happen when you’d thrown yourself at him half drunk? That he’d suddenly stop seeing you as the child he’d known you for always, take you as a woman, want you, fuck you right there on your newly dead father’s front deck?

Ridiculous.

You can’t even think about the birthday—about her. It’s a snipped lifeline, a crushed tether. 

“Cherie, I must tell you I am feeling very neglected now by you. You don’t call. You do not love me no longer, or what is the problem?” More nonsense and really, this fuckin’ guy needs a boot in his ass pronto. 

And the one still watching you—something even worse. He’s got his mangy brown cowboy hat pulled low over his brow, the one for the ranch, not the lovely dark one for escorting orphans to the funerals of dead fathers, and his jaw works the mint leaves you know he’s got between his teeth, slow and steady. You should hiss at him. Instead, your tummy smolders with heat and butterflies.

 Stop looking at me, you horrible man, you want to shout. 

Humming and hawing at the annoying voice coming through the phone, you smooth your palm over the silk of your dress. You’d wanted to look nice today, your first Kelly meeting. You wanted to look better than you feel, which is like shit, quite frankly. 

There are tiny green paisleys patterned over the deep blue of the dress, a shock of dark red maroon for the cashmere knit of the cardigan tied over your shoulders, and a little silken kerchief wrapped around your throat, something from your mother’s things you’d gone through last night after Joel had ordered you to bed with your tail tucked between your legs and tears in your throat. 

Twenty four years later, and your father still had all her things preserved in their bedroom as if she’d only stepped out for the afternoon. A veritable mausoleum right there in your house-not-home. 

You’d never even stood a chance. 

-

He watches you begin to pace across the deck, but the look on your face tells him you aren’t quite listening to whatever it is the person on the phone’s saying to you. 

The gold and silver bangles that slide around your fine boned wrists jingle a song of temptation. Siren song, bird song, death march, something he’d follow with blind eyes, recognize deaf. And heavy gold and jeweled rings along your fingers that shine almost as bright as the spilled silk of your hair. Swathed in shades of jewel, you’re all woman, done up and ready to go out and devastate. 

He doesn’t know how any man could ever look at you and not want you. 

He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be the same from here on out. 

“Who’s she talkin’ to?” He asks Dina, tipping his chin over at you. He can hear you raising your voice, something about you fucking French moron, and he doesn’t like the hunch he’s got about who it is.

“Boyfriend,” Dina says while she watches Ellie work the horse with hearts in her eyes. 

“Thought he was an ex.”

She peers up at him suspiciously at that, a queer little smile tipping the corners of her mouth upwards. “Well maybe now that he knows how much she’s worth he’ll be coming back, huh?”

Joel swears all these fuckin’ women are conspiring against him, trying to send him to an early grave. “He steps foot on this ranch, and I’ll shoot him in the goddamn ass.”

She laughs, throwing her head back which inevitably draws Ellie’s attention. “You are literally so dramatic.”

“What’s he bein’ dramatic about now?” Ellie calls from behind, trotting up to the corral edge. 

“Ohhh, nothin’. Just Joel being Joel. Right, old man?” Dina bumps her hip against his and he grunts, refusing to be goaded. He’s not being dramatic, it’s his responsibility to take care of you now, to watch over you. 

That’s all.

“I’m never dramatic,” he tells them very seriously. 

On the porch, the spat reaches a crescendo and they all turn to watch the show. 

Why don’t you shove the whole Eiffel Tower up your ass, you fucking dipshit. And don’t you ever call me again!

“Little girl’s got a mouth on her,” Bill murmurs. 

Ellie lets out a long whistle. Deserved, Dina adds. On the porch, you let out a strangled little screech, stomping the high heel of your boot as if you’ve got half a mind to throw a fit. 

Joel feels hypnotized, speared through the gut.

He wants to know what the ex-boyfriend said. What his name is. Where he’s from and who he is and what he does and how he is and every single thing about him and how it was between the two of you. 

He is suddenly desperate to know everything there is to know about you in a way that makes his throat feel swollen with guilt. In a way he didn’t ever think he’d want from you. 

All the things you keep close, all the small intimacies that make you this person you are now, that’s what he wants. 

You stomp down the steps, making your way towards them, eyes directly on his, and you’re too fucking beautiful for his own good, watching you feels like a sin. 

Makes him feel in danger, like prey. 

“All men should die,” you yell over. 

See. 

“I agree,” Dina says cheerfully.

“You know you can have a baby with the junk in your bones from another woman now,” Ellie adds helpfully.

“The junk in your bones?” Joel says. 

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Yeah, like really we don’t even need you for shit anymore.”

“They should all be put in a hole in the ground in the middle of Nebraska and only be let out when a girl wants to bone.”

“To bone—Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Ellie.”

“I love that idea,” you say, finally coming to stand right before Joel. He swallows hard, stays silent—feels like the cat’s finally caught his tongue. 

“Why Nebraska?” Franks asks, puzzled.

He’s got to stop looking at you, he’s got to get away from the sight of your eyes, feels like the colors of you seem to pulse brighter, and he feels it all like a touch against his skin. He turns to look at Ellie over his shoulder and with a huge, shit-eating grin she says, “Cause who the fuck knows where fuckin’ Nebraska is, huh?” Her eyes flash to you and then quickly back to Joel, winking, cheeky, knowing. He feels the noose tighten.

They’re definitely conspiring against him. 

The three of you cackle—at his expense. 

“Where’re you two headed?” Bill asks with a frown when the three little hyenas settle. 

“She’s got a meeting in Jackson,” Dina tells him. “First part’ll be quick—she’s just gotta kick some pushy jackass to the curb and tell him we’re not leasing mineral rights to him no matter how hard he begs or how much money he throws at us. Then…” she trails off, throwing you a worried glance, but your eyes are on the far off mountains now, and Joel watches a shaky swallow pass through your throat.

“Then we’ve got the will reading,” you say. 

A sharp ache starts up behind Joel’s left eye, all the easygoing laughter of a few moments ago sucked away with a few words and a single reminder. That you’re not the girl you used to be, laughing and playing with Ellie, that your father is dead, that you have a world of responsibility to face now. 

“You shouldn’t have to go all the way into town. They should be comin’ to you here.”

“I want to get out—see his office.”

“S’only been a few days, honey,” Frank says gently. “You should take it easy.”

“Thanks, Frank,” you reach out to squeeze his arm, flush of emotion across the bridge of your nose. “I’m okay, promise.”

Joel takes you in, in full. You’ve got something shimmery swept across the highs of your cheekbones and glossy lips, the fine grain of your skin—pristine like you're made of sugar and everything good in the world. The silky wisps of baby hair at your temples that look softer than anything he’s probably ever touched in his whole life. And you’re so beautiful it almost hurts the eye to look at you, beautiful in a way that makes men cower at the sight, like you’d be the strongest thing in the whole world. But he sees all the rest too. The delicate curves of your shoulders, the fine swoop of your collarbone and the quick-fire beat of your pulse beneath the fragile skin of your throat. There’s fear all around you in a way, a desperate sort of sadness. 

He wishes there was more he could do for you, that he could bear the burden of all this entirely in your stead, that he could be all you need and want him to be without having to sacrifice his soul to give it to you. 

Your eyes flash back to his, and he worries for a second that you can read his mind. 

Behind you, Jesse pulls up with the sleek black of your father’s favorite car. Of course you’d choose this for today, bets you’ll find a way to turn it into a pretzel before the days end. 

“Take Jesse with you,” he says low at your back as you turn for the car. 

You look over your shoulder at him and his spine throbs. “No.”

Following you around the front of the car, he pulls the door open for you. “You’re not moving around alone anymore. He’s going. Jesse—” he whistles, “You’re going into town with Miss Kelly.”

“Yezzir,” he smiles with the sunny easiness only he possesses.  

“Excuse me,” you turn to frown up at him, stomping your foot again, and you’re a little bit of a brat, he’s realizing. “There’s no room in the car for him. He can’t come.”

“He’ll take a truck,” he says, leaving no room for discussion, but then gentles his voice again, “Things are gonna be different now. You’re the Kelly, you can’t go on all gung ho about your new reality. You need taking care of. Can you not fight me on this, please?”

“What I need—”

“Is to be protected.”

You give a delicate little huff through your nose that he finds to be just about the cutest damn thing he’s ever seen in his whole life. “Then it’ll be my choice how and who.”

“It’s easier if you just do as I say.” Grasping, grasping, praying for patience. 

“You overbearing d—”

“You’ll be okay meeting this jackoff? Don’t need me to come with you?”

You glower at him.

“I’m bein’ serious with you. I know you’re capable,” he puts his hands out, palms up in a conceding gesture, “But this is new, and there’s no shame in asking for support.”

At that, you get a confused little pinch between your brows, softest rose shaped mouth he’s ever seen—felt—all pursed up, and he thinks it’s wrong now, trying to be sweet to you after last night, looking at you this way and seeing the things he’s seeing. He should stay away, go away forever, find a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere to bury himself in like you’d said, but he worries now, and quite desperately really, that he won’t ever be able to leave your side again after all this. 

“I have Dina.”

“I know, but—”

“Can you please just… not. I think— I think it’s better if we just steer clear of each other. If I need something,” you look away now, hazy look from last night back in your gaze again, like you’re remembering, like you’re wanting something else he’s not willing, not capable of giving, “I’ll ask for it. Otherwise you can focus on what’s important to you.” 

Gut punch. 

He soldiers on, can’t help it.

“You feelin’ alright?” 

Your eyes flit back to him for a fleeting second and there’s honesty in your gaze now, maybe something extremely vulnerable too, and then shuttering again, looking away again. He’d demand your gaze if he had the right, insist you tell him everything there is to know with just your eyes if you were his. 

But really, he’s got no right to ask anything. 

So instead, “Tell me what’s wrong,” he begs, praying you don’t say him. 

What’s wrong? A laugh and—nothing. Like your father isn’t dead, like he hadn’t hurt you as he had last night, like you’re looking for answers etched into the mountains or the sky. You bring your thumb to your right temple and his own aches in response, digging there for some unseen pain to be gouged out. “Tired—was having bad dreams.” Your voice sounds full of air, and you’ve got a huge emerald on your ring finger, an even larger turquoise stone beside it, other hand is covered in a row of opals—you’re a treasure of a girl, all the way inside and out, and it’s like he’s staring at a work of art, knowing that if he were to touch, it’d all be ruined. Your voice full of air floats in his bad ear and booms out the good one full of forlorn want. 

It feels like you’re the only two people left in the whole of Wyoming, standing here together under the sweet sun, maybe the whole world, and he’s ridden in guilt, wants to tell you he’s sorry again, beg or something, and thinks that God should give you the chance to rewind time when you’ve made someone feel this bad without meaning to. 

You whisper at the Tetons, and he’s all but forgotten, “I feel a little bit like I’m the real nightmare.”

“You couldn’t ever be, sweetheart,” he tells you and means it with his whole heart. 

It’s all agony swimming in your eyes, and if you don’t stop him, he’s going to take you into his arms right here in front of everyone. You need more than protecting, it’s clear, you need caring for, you need loving—the sort of something he can tell you’ve never had in your whole life. 

“Ready to go, honey?” Dina calls from the other side of the car, her canoodling with Ellie finally come to a pause. 

You’re snapped out of your reverie, looking down at your feet, impractical boots again, these ones sexy and tall and not for his admiring, blinking away the wash of heat that’s bloomed across the bridge of your freckled little nose. 

“Did she eat?” He asks Dina over your head.

“Ehhhhh, but I brought a smoothie,” she pulls out a thermos from her large bag and smiles all beaming and large. 

“A smoothie ain’t food. Get something else in town.”

“You're so prepared,” Ellie sighs dreamily beside her. 

“You’re annoying me,” you grouch at him, tossing your bag into the backseat, sliding into the luxuriously leathered interior as he shuts the door gently behind you, bending down to brace his palms against the open window. 

“Drive careful. Call me if you need anything.”

“You’re kinda a helicopter mom. You know that, Joel?” Dina tells him with that sweet smile of hers. 

“Do not entertain his nonsense,” you snap. 

“She’s just grumpy because Vogue France posted a piece on her and the funeral—the heiress to watch, they’ve called her.”

“I don’t know who they think I am—Kendall fucking Roy? This isn’t HBO, it’s my goddamn life.”

“It’s fine, drink your smoothie, here,” Dina soothes. 

“I don’t got a clue what any of that means,” Joel says. “And do up your belt,” frowning at you and pulling away just in time when you speed off with half the admonishment still on his tongue 

-

The bar is loud and sweaty and crowded enough there’s room for your spite, which he knows, is all this night out is. 

The day had gone from terrible to horrible to heinous, and he’s officially reached his limit now. You’d returned from your late morning in Jackson toting a gray cloud that’d settled over the entire ranch and everyone in it. All work had come to a slow and grinding halt, the mood morose, knowing that the lady of the manor was grieving and angry. 

And then a few hours into the evening, you, Ellie, and Dina had spun into the bunk, already giggling on drinks he was certain were too sugary and way too strong to end in anything good. Looking to rile up the boys into heading back to Jackson and finding a bar to terrorize. 

And so here he now finds himself, stepping through the door of The Mushroom, ridiculous name for a bar if anyone asked him, eyes searching for the gleam of your hair, that tiny fucking outfit you’d draped yourself in. You were hunting for trouble, to aggravate him, trying to hurt him with your, you’re not invited, Joel—no one wants you to come.

Angry, angry as a spitting fire. 

He’d felt like shit about himself and your upset for a second, and then had thought: Well, are you going to cowboy up, Joel? Or just lay here and bleed?

Now, there’s something sick in him that wants more of it, to take everything you’ve got to give, to see how far you can go, to push you just a little bit further too.

A masochist, is what he reckons he might actually be.

He finds Ellie’s bent head whispering into Dina’s ear, giggling and dragging her fingertips up the other girls bare arm, and he feels a thump of fondness for the two—happier than he can say that they’ve finally worked it all out after months of their will-they-won’t-they struggle.

Making his way over to them, he catches Frank in the distance, dancing to the countryfied Abba cover of Chiquitita the local band’s currently playing while Bill stands nearby, serious and menacing, keeping anyone from getting too close to his partner. 

No sign of you, and the backs of his knees itch and burn. 

“Where is she?” He demands when he reaches Ellie at their place against the bar. 

“Oh, dude. She’s gonna be soooo pissed.”

“Where, Ellie?”

Get you anything to drink, sugar? The bartender calls and Joel shakes her away, panic thumping in his gut the longer he doesn’t have eyes on you.

Dina knocks her head towards the end of the L-shaped bar, closest to the throng of dancing patrons, and there in the last seat and partially obscured by someone’s shoulder and ridiculously feathered hat, you sit. 

“Who the fuck is that?” 

“Can you please just leave her alone. She needs to blow some steam off.”

“Yeah, Joel, we’re watching her,” Dina adds, always the peacekeeper.

Or blow someone, Ellie adds in a snicker, and he gives her a death glare. “You need to quit the asshole act,” she tells him, purposefully thunking her beer hard enough on the bartop that some of it sloshes over the lip of the bottle onto his hand braced against the edge. 

Real mature. 

“Changed my mind,” he tells the bartender when she heads back their way, “Shot of Jameson.” 

Beside him, Jesse appears, beer in hand as he leans against the bar to watch you also. “That might just be the most beautiful girl I’ve seen in my whole life, honest to God,” he sighs wistfully. 

Joel sees red—this is just too much. “Quit fuckin’ lookin’ at her,” he snaps. 

Ellie snickers knowingly, and Frank and Bill join the group, picking up on the topic of conversation. 

“That little girl can drink a grown man under the goddamn table,” Bill says. 

“And looks good as hell doing it too—”

“Eyes off, you little shit,” Joel sends a threatening glance at Jesse again. 

Ellie ignores them both. “He’s a finance bro or some shit—from New York—here to play cowboy dress up with the group he’s with. Nothing I can’t handle, and you need to cool it and leave or have a drink and let her have fun.”

“She’s vulnerable right now, Ellie—”

“Yeah, you would know.”

Joel’s turn to do the ignoring, “And she needs someone to watch her back.”

“I’m fuckin’ watching it, man. You’re so annoying, and I’ll have you know that—” The fucker’s got a thick lock of your long hair trapped between his probably manicured fucking fingers, smoothing it between his thumb and index and then looping it around and around, drawing you in closer.

Joel’s about to start howling.

You’ve done something to him, knocked something askew inside him, and he needs you to set it back to rights. Let him out of this saw trap he’s been caught in. 

The man says something that has you throwing your head back in an overly eager laugh, loud and melodic in the most hypnotizing sort of way, meant to draw the eye or seduce or send his gut to twisting and aching. 

Ellie’s saying something about how you need to have fun, how you need to find yourself, and all Joel can think is that he can be the one to give you that, to help you do all that while still making sure you’re alright, taken care of. 

Over the wannabe cowboy’s shoulder, he sees your eyes land on him, and you give him one of those serenely beautiful smiles he knows means he’s about to lose his fucking mind and cause a scene. 

A provocation of a smile is what it is. 

You cross one long leg over the other, a flash of hot pink his eyes can’t help but flash to beneath the obscene hem of your skirt and lean in to whisper something, glossy lips right at his ear, and a tick starts up below Joel’s left eye. The fuckwit pulls you in closer, and you tip into him, hand on his shoulder—your eyes never leave Joel’s, and then you’re pulling him off the barstool and leading him into the throng of dancing people. He’s desperate to know what the back of your hot pink underwear looks like—string of lace wedged between the cleft of your ass, or silk wrapping around the full cheek like a perfect present? The man pulls you into himself, spinning you around, and you’re made up of blues and purples and pinks, shimmering like something that shouldn’t exist here amongst all the rest of them. Slinky little top made of silk like water and sparkles, your cheeks, flushed with drink or heat, but he’ll tell himself it’s because of him, because you’re still angry at him, thinking of him, and it soothes the tempest that’s brewing in his gut. 

He spins you towards himself, the man Joel’s about to beat senseless, shooting the Jameson without really tasting anything but the insane jealousy souring to irrational fury on his tongue, it pulses in his throat once, twice, and the fucker tugs you into himself again by a handful of your ass in that too short skirt and sticks his tongue in your mouth. Joel slams the glass on the bartop, not seeing red anymore, something like dark spots now, he’s so fucking pissed off. 

Ellie yelps his name, her and Jesse scrambling after him, but they’re too late and he’s there already, pulling you away, and gently because he might be feeling a little bit like a demon right now, but he knows what you are and how to handle you no matter what—and slams his fist into the fuckers nose, the satisfying crunch of broken bone and a pathetic cry sounds as he hits the sticky bar floor. The people around peer over in nothing more than mild curiosity, this is a cowboy bar after all. 

He watches the man for a second, making sure he stays down, and then turns to look at you and isn’t at all surprised when he finds that look of victory on your face. 

“Ready to go?” Voice all sweet innocence. 

You’re going to kill him. 

Spinning around on the toe of your boot, the hem of your little skirt flutters with your movements and he catches a flash of cheek, mystery of your panties still unsolved. 

“You’re a real dumbass, you know that?” Ellie snarks as they pass the group of them. 

He chooses to ignore that observation. “Don’t stay out too late. And let Bill drive back.”

Following you out into the night, he tries to take control of himself, to lie away the heat he feels sitting heavy in his stomach. 

He wishes he had a mint leaf to pulverize between his molars, he wishes he could pull you over his knee and spank your ass for being such a bad girl. And looming behind you, he knows you’re not even a little bit intimidated by his size as you dance and prance across the parking lot towards his truck.

“I know you’re ticked off because of last night and today, but you can’t lash out just because you’re angry with me.” 

All he gets in response is that head-thrown-back wind chime laughter—the real one, which is something. 

“You need to stop misbehaving,” he breathes down your neck.

“Hmm, I don’t think I will,” you singsong. 

“Are you drunk?” Refusing to be distracted, he’s going to stand strictly on business, he promises himself. 

You spin around again—always catching him off guard and pissing him off—hooking yourself on his shirtfront, pulling yourself into him like you’re trying to dance some fucked up dance he doesn’t know the steps to. 

“Not at all.”

“You need to not be touching me right now,” he warns, the threads of his control dangerously close to snapping, walking you backwards without putting his hands on you. Chest to chest, he feels like he could breathe fire if he really set his mind to it. 

“Yes, sir,” you say sweetly, dragging your palms down his chest and belly before letting him go, skipping ahead of him, humming an off-key rendition of whatever kitschy, poor excuse for a country song they’d been playing at the end in there. 

The even poorer excuse for a skirt bounces along the curve of your ass, driving him fucking mad—he’s goig to have a heart attack, he’s middle aged, he can’t handle this shit anymore—you. 

Stop that, he growls.

“God, you don’t like anything—you’re no fun,” you pout. 

Coming to the truck, he yanks the door open for you. “Get in the damn truck.” And he makes sure to turn away and not ogle your ass as you hop in, his palm hovering in the vicinity of your elbow if you need him. 

The prospect of an hour and a half of the dark drive and the scent of your musky sweet perfume and sweat soaked skin has his heart pounding. When he pulls his door open, you’re turned in your seat expectantly waiting for him, folded knees up on the seat and pink triangle right there to taunt him. 

“Sit right—put on your seatbelt.”

“You’re so bossy.” An exaggerated sigh and your voice is so fucking sassy, a tiny bit of a needy whine threaded through it, he feels his patience snap. 

Grabbing hold of your damp cheeks he squeezes hard enough to force your full mouth into a pout and giving your head a little shake he says, “And you need managing, little girl. Put your fucking belt on, or I’ll put it on for you.”

Eyes all pupil and gone blurry, you lick your lips and he can smell the sweet fruit scent of your breath. He groans, pushing you back—mistake, mistake, putting his hands on you at all—and peels out of the parking lot, and he is not hard in his jeans for you. 

“Are you mad at me?” You ask after several moments of forced silence. 

“No.”

“Not even for last night?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Why not?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it either.”

“Well, now I’ve changed my mind.”

Jesus, he mutters. “There’s nothing to discuss—already told you what I think and how it’s going to be and that’s final. You need to let it go, you hear me?”

You give a little groaning screech through your clenched teeth, turning away from him, still not wearing your goddamn seatbelt, never doing as he says. 

Toeing your boots off roughly, the little skirt hitches high enough on your thighs he catches a glimpse of the smooth glowing skin of your hip, eyes trying to watch the road and your thighs at the same time. 

“You’re horrible,” you say through a grimace, but your voice cracks a little bit at the end, and you’ve still got your face turned away so that he can’t tell if he’s made you cry or not now. 

“Are you cryin’?” He demands.

“No,” you sniffle, wiping your cheek on a lifted shoulder 

“Yes you are, liar.” Fuck—fuck, fuck.

“Well you’re bein’ mean,” you whine, finally turning to look at him again, and you’re all rose glow, cheeks flushed and eyes glossy, lips red as a cherry. 

No man should be tested like this. It’s wrong—unnatural.

He tries to gentle his voice and steady the pounding of his heart, pressing down on the gas, wishing the road would disappear from beneath the tires of the truck and that he could have you home and away from him already. “Not bein’ mean, sweetheart. Just—just…” He sighs, “Goddamnit, just don’t how how to handle you,” he curses, losing the grasp on his gentleness. 

“See—you are angry with me!” A tear slips down your cheek, and Joel’s mouth waters. 

His heart kicks up another notch, hypnotized, “You make me fuckin’ crazy—is that what you wanna hear?”

“Yes.” You turn full in the seat to face him, bent knees against the center console block his view of the apex of your thighs. Fucking Christ. 

“Sit right. You’re flashing your bits,” he tries and fails to focus on the road. 

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause I want you to see them, stupid.”

Jesus. “How much did you have to drink?” 

“Only one High Noon.”

“The hell is that? And quit lookin’ at me like that.”

“Like what?” Your knees shift against each other, and he’s gripping the steering wheel so tight he feels like he could rip it out of the dash. 

“You fuckin’ know like what.”

“Well if you hadn’t been such a cock block earlier, I’d be looking at someone else like this right now.”

And the teasing is too much. The bare legs and the tiny skirt and the hair and the lips and the sound of your voice, the kiss last night replaying in his mind over and over and over again like some lovesick taunt, the look of hurt he’d put on your face and the idea of you bare and slick, taking some other man that isn’t him. It’s too much. 

He jerks the truck roughly onto the road shoulder and into the grass, wheels spinning and gravel flying. Joel—you squeal, being jostled in your seat so that all he can see are soft thighs and pretty tits bouncing in his peripheral. He puts the truck in park, ripping his seat belt off, reaching over to tug you roughly forward by the nape, his fingers twisting in your hair in a hold he knows is too hard for something so delicate, his other hand grips below the bend of one knee squeezing hard. 

“If you think I’m gonna let you spread your legs for anyone fucking else—” he growls.

“Anyone else?” You laugh in his face, eyes spinning with something a little maniacal.

He thought he’d been worried for his soul, that taking you would be the undoing of everything he’d tried so hard to mend back together after Sarah. And really, he had tried so hard—to be good, to be better, to atone for all he’d not done before her, all he’d done after her. He’d tried to make himself into something that was respectful of her memory and the second chance Kelly had given him. 

But right here, and again because anytime he looks at you, is within a mile of your vicinity, it feels like you’re the only two people on the whole goddamn planet, he doesn’t think he really gives a fuck for being good or atoning or souls at all. Not even a little bit. 

He follows your lead from last night and kisses you, is sure to take your tongue this time. Forcing his thumb and forefinger between the line of your molars, he presses down hard enough to hurt the baby soft skin, spreading your jaw open wide so that he can lick into your mouth deep and wet. He wants to scare you, cow you, intimidate you into behaving with this hunger that seems to swallow him whole—remind you that he’s let you have your fun thus far, but the both of you know who’s playing games and who’s not. 

You let out a shocked little gasp onto his tongue, fingers twisting in the fabric over his shoulder, and he tightens his grip under your knee, tugging you just that little bit further forward, and when he pulls back to look at you, spit slick, swollen mouth and wide eyes, tits about to spill out of your top, you push his face away roughly, dragging your nails down the skin of his cheek with a tiny snarling growl. 

Spoiled little brat.

“Don’t be fuckin’ childish,” he snarls back, and pulls you roughly over the console and into his lap. 

“I can’t stand you,” you pant, settling above him, coming in to kiss him again, and he can’t deny it anymore. He’s hard as fuck for you. 

You moan into his mouth, high and throaty at the same time, girlish little sigh at the end that has him gripping your hip tightly, trying to stop himself from thrusting up against you.

“Can you taste him?” You lick his tongue. “He kinda looked like you, didn’t he? That’s why I chose him.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

He’s going to stop this now, at any moment. He’s going to push you away and tell you this is wrong and that the two of you can’t do this. 

Instead, you wrap your arms around his neck, pressing your tits high against his chest and grinding your lace covered little cunt against his cock. 

He groans into your mouth, pushed straight over the edge and free falling, cupping your ass to lift you off of himself a little bit, he just needs a second, before he takes a breath and presses you back down harder, rolling your hips against his lap. Little animal sounds, an ah, ah, ah and an oh, coupled with his mewled name. Cupping the soft of your ass in the palms of his hands, his calluses scrape against silken skin, and you fit him as if he’d dreamt you up just for himself; perfectly lush curves he can squeeze as hard as he wants because you’re not getting away from him now that he’s caught you in his snare. He drags his fingertips up the roundness of your asscheeks, and the mystery’s solved, it’s a thong. Catching the lace between his fingers he pulls the flimsy string upwards and tight against your pussy, a pained moan when he pulls even harder, making sure the fabric digs against your skin.

He knows if he cups you there you’ll be wet for him, for him, no one else but him. Knows he could bend you face first over the console, pull the soaked lace aside and suck on your wet little clit, make you come in his mouth. 

“Fuck, baby,” he groans. 

Joel, Joel, Joel, you hum in a dream voice. 

He can feel two little dimples at the low of your back, imagines what they’d look like with his thumbs gripped there as your ass takes his cock. 

He can’t say it enough—he feels fucking insane. 

“Touch me,” you beg, sliding and pressing against him, long hair like water slipping all over and against him too. 

Oh my God, he whisper moans when you spread your knees as wide as the seat allows, rocking your hips in short little hitches against the ridge of his cockhead. He knows your little clit is right there, cunt a knot of indescribable heat against him, and you pull your mouth away from his, letting your head fall back, hair a tangled curtain. He drags his nails back down your ass hard enough he hopes he’s leaving marks, leaning forward to lick along the salt tracks of your tears, watching you use him. 

“Do not fucking come,” he orders. He can’t—he can’t watch you do it and not be inside you when it happens, and the two of you absolutely cannot take this that far. 

He pulls your hips up again, forcing your movements still and you huff at him, whining. 

“We gotta stop.”

Noooo. “No, Joel. Please,” you cry, trying to pull yourself towards him—your mouth is so swollen—trying to escape his hold and get what you want for yourself. 

Grasping at the last vestiges of his sanity, “Fuck— No. No more.” He lifts you off his lap and back into your seat, sitting back to press himself against the door and adjusting the throbbing erection in his jeans, so hard it’s making him a little nauseous. If he doesn’t stop, he’s going to stuff his cock inside of you right here and now. He tucks the thick head up under his waistband, trying to find any sort of momentary relief. 

There isn’t enough oxygen in this truck. He needs air, space, to taste you. 

“Fine,” prim little nose in the air. You stretch one leg out across the console to dangle over his groin and let the other drop to the cab floor. “That’s fine—I’ll just take care of it myself then,” you tease provocatively, fingertips dragging up the inside of your thigh.

He shoots forward to stop your movement, gripping your wrist in a vice—baby bird bones beneath his fist, and you moan at his touch like the little wanton he’s coming to realize you are, writhing in your seat. “Don’t you fucking dare. I swear to God I’ll put you over my knee.”

“Jokes on you, I’d like that shit,” you sass back, ripping your wrist out of his hold, little socked foot kicking towards his face. He catches it, holding it in his grip and squeezing. “And I don’t really care if you’re not mad at me because I’m mad at you.”

“I know you are, sweetheart,” and the mood changes, smolders into something more serious, more honest.

-

“Why didn’t you go today? The lawyer asked you to—” You’d wanted to find him as soon as you’d gotten home earlier, demand he give you an explanation. Cowardice had won over that desire, and going out to find a drink and a replacement man had seemed the easier alternative. 

“Wasn’t my place.” Spreading his thighs wider in his seat to accommodate himself, he presses his hips forward, and you can make out the heft of his cock beneath his jeans—your belly twists all full of heat and bubbles. 

“Did you know he was leaving you something?”

He laughs a bitter bark of a laugh. “No—never thought—” the words die in his throat and he stares out the window, lost to the memory of your father. “No, I didn’t think he was leaving me anything before I got the call.”

“It’ll make a good nest egg.” 

“Don’t want it.”

He won’t turn to look at you now, and you know that this conversation in the aftermath of touching you shames him. 

“You’re taking it. You don’t have a choice.” His eyes flash fire at you and then flit away. “He had all your banking information, it’s probably already there.”

Fucking Christ, he spits the murmured curse, bracing his elbow against the curve of the steering wheel, cupping his palm over his mouth as if to keep his anger and frustration in. The bulge of his bicep beneath his dark hoodie distracts you for a moment. 

You’d spent enough time watching him over the years that you’d learned all the things you knew he tried to hide in plain sight. That gentleness, that patience, that heart—that he is an inconceivably good and honest man. Things that are ultimately impossible to hide. 

Your eyes flash to the temple where a gristle of scar tissues is slashed across his skin. The meaning behind a scar like that, coupled with his bad ear and his green eyed photograph—it’s hard to hide. People can always tell when you’ve tried to kill yourself, you know. 

Which all goes to say—and you’re quite certain of this—that yes, the two of you are strangers, in ways, but in others, or in your own way, you know this man. You understand his nature. You know he wouldn’t have ever wanted it—that he does not want it and never will. He isn’t the sort of man who’d ever look a million dollars in the eye and feel moved by them. 

His humanity means more to him than his life, you’d heard Tommy say about him once to your father when you’d been an eavesdropping little girl. You hadn’t understood at the time, but now you do. 

The dark pullover and jeans, incongruously boyish, the scuffed boots—he’s so himself and so fucking hot and you want him so, so badly, and looking at him sitting here now, gorgeous, hair mused by your fingers, and your slick smeared across his jeans—you look down at your own twisted fingers in your lap, a little ashamed now too—and you can’t fathom why or how he’d ever look at you and feel moved by the likes of you either. 

You’re ashamed that you’re even angry at him for it at all, resentful of this gift your father has given him when really it is not only resentment, maybe not even truly that at all. More so, it’s a complicated mixing pot of feelings that these two men seem to have always been twisted up into knots together inside of you. Resentful, not because you don’t want him to have it. You want him to have everything he deserves or could ever think to want and more, but perhaps, because this was the final nail in the coffin scrap of proof that your father had cared about him in a very real way that you’d never experienced—in a way that was entirely Oswald Kelly’s own choice and not because of dead mothers or obligation or legacy. 

“It’s good he left it for you,” you say gently and mean it. 

He looks at you out of the corner of his eyes, looks away, from under the cover of his palm says, “S’not fair to you.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me. This is about you and you deserving this, and I’m glad he gave you your due. He should’ve left more.”

His eyes flutter shut, sighing deeply and shakes his head. “You’ve made me into something I’m not. You need to see that.”

“You’re not some sort of cautionary tale, Joel.”

“You don’t know a thing about it,” voice like he could he angry but is being very careful to remain not. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, the reasons why I came here. You should look at me and see nothin’ worthwhile.”

“My father saw something,” you argue. “You let my father see that something. And I do too, no matter what you say, no matter what you do or how hard you push me away; I’m used to it, and you won’t change my mind.”

He gives you a look like you’re hurting him, like your truths hurt him. “We’re goin’ home. This is enough,” he gruffs, pulling the truck into drive again and peeling out of the grassy knoll. 

Fight dying in your throat, you feel suddenly exhausted, shivering coldly, belly an ember of unsated lust, your orgasm is tight and wet between your legs and you don’t want to argue or impose yourself on him anymore. You don’t want to feel like you’re imposing yourself now when he’d never made you feel like that before. 

The night is a pitch dark blur falling away behind your glazed over eyes, and huddling into yourself against the door, you hide your face away in your shoulder, belly swooping with nausea. 

“You drive too fast, I’m dizzy,” you mumble, and he  immediately slows, foot easing off the gas.

“You gonna puke?”

“Yes, all over your face.”

“I’m serious, darlin’. Need me to stop?”

“No. I just want to be home,” said in as small a voice as you can manage, hoping he won’t catch your words, and soon he’s turning off into the long drive to the house. 

When he pulls to a stop, you scramble to grab your boots before he can say anything else, but he’s unnaturally quick for such a large man, out the door and around the nose of the truck, pulling your own door open before you can even get a single boot on. He pulls them from your grasp, and then tugs you bodily out of your seat, slinging you over his shoulder as if you were some sack of nuisance prone potatoes. You screech, flailing, trying to knee him in the gut, but he bands a strong arm across the backs of your thighs, pinning you in obedient place. “Quit.”

“What the fuck are you doing?” You howl, hitting him repeatedly on the ass, trying to wriggle and make his life as difficult as you possibly can. 

This man has absolutely no consideration or respect or sense of personal space!

Technically, neither do you—but that’s neither here nor there. 

You scream like a hyena, shrill and long and he pinches your ass hard, right at the inner crease of your thigh and ass cheek, too close to your still wet pussy for comfort. “I said quit.”

“Everything alright out here?” You hear Jesse’s voice call from the direction of the bunk, they must’ve beat you two here while you’d been trying to seduce Joel into making you come. 

The snap of Joel’s fingers and then, “Mind your own fucking business.”

“You are so rude.”

He bumps you on his shoulder, jostling you on the soft of your belly and making your cunt go even tighter. You hate him. “Quiet, you.” 

Letting himself in the dark of your house, he makes his way up the stairs while you hang quietly upside down now, a little astounded, a lot turned on by how strong he is, lugging you all the way upstairs without even a change in his breathing. 

But as soon as he steps foot into your bedroom, now set to rights from yesterday’s disaster, you feel the change come on him. The shift and deepening of his breaths, the expanse of his ribs going wide and winglike as he sucks in a big gulp of air. You press your palm flat to the center of his back, feeling the whistle of his breath go in and out of him until he’s slipping you off his shoulder to bounce gently backwards onto your soft bed. 

He stands above you for a quiet moment, and you take in the broad shape of him backlit by the moonlight of your open drapes. He’s huge and imposing cast in this darkness, something out of a dream.

Literally—out of your own teenage fantasy dreams. 

Has anyone in all the world ever wanted someone as badly as you want him?

You can feel the press of his left knee against the inside of your right one, and you wish he’d put it between your thighs, join you on the bed.

“Can I ask you something?” You reach your fingers out and he tangles his hand with yours and it’s a small victory. 

“Yeah.”

“Would you come to my funeral?”

His fingers jolt— “What?”

“If I died.”

“Don’t say shit like that.”

“Tell me that you would—” You tug him forward and he lets himself come, bending over your prone form, braced on one arm and still holding onto your fingers with the other. “—That I wouldn't be alone even there.”

“You’re not alone.”

“Would you?”

“Makes me angry when you say shit like this—as if you don’t believe I’m going to take care of you.” 

“Please tell me, Joel. Promise me—” and you reach up to gently touch the scar across his temple. 

He goes frozen and understanding. “I’d come,” and you know it costs him something to give in to such an imagining and it makes you all the more grateful for it. 

Fingers sliding back into the curls at his temple, silver speckled, you know, you pull him further towards you until he’s close enough to press a softly hot kiss to his mouth. The two of you hold there for a moment, another, another, you can feel the wash of his heavy breathing through his nose, the flutter of his long lashes tangling with yours—you hope he’s searching for you in the dark—and you lift your knee up onto the bed, bending to open yourself to him. 

He pulls back, hand shooting to your jaw to grip you tightly in place, breath ragged, animal being hunted. 

You smile.

“Not gonna fuck you,” he says low.

“Why not?” It’s what you want, you deserve to have what you want. He squeezes your face once, presses another hard, too quick kiss to your mouth and then flips you over onto your belly, turning your skirt up over your ass to expose you. He tugs once on the string of your thong, drawing his finger along the lace wedged between your ass cheeks and then pulls his hand away for a moment before he’s spanking you hard and quick. 

Owwww, you whine, hitching your rump towards him, wanting more despite the sting. He bends his head and bites you even harder at the inner corner of your asscheek, teeth digging hard and long enough to leave a mark. You whine again, high and mewling, trying to escape his meanness and he smacks you again on the other cheek. 

“Go to bed, little girl. I’ll see you in the mornin’.”

And he’s leaving you, broad shouldered form slipping out your bedroom door and leaving you aching and angry to scream into your pillow.

You’re pretty sure you hear his deep laugh before the slam of the door sounds below, and you’re slipping your greedy fingers into the ruined wet of your panties, petting away the ache he’s left. 

-

The late May night is cool, despite the daytime heat, and Ellie shivers in her Carhartt, watching as Joel slips out the back kitchen door of the big house. 

“The hell is going on with those two?” Jesse says beside her, pulling long on his beer. The litter of yellow cans around them speaks to his mullish whining that he’d not been able to pull tonight. Sometimes he annoys her, but in that sort of endearing little brother way that makes her want to kick his ass and protect him at the same time. 

“Nothin’, they’re fine—just gotta fuck it out.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Naw—just smarter than you, man.”

“They like each other?”

“God, Jesse, you wouldn’t see an obvious thing if it were a tipsy bison barrelin’ towards you full speed in the middle of the day.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he says a little pathetically. Moping men—Ellie really can’t be assed to deal with them all. 

“It’s fine. You don’t need to understand. I do—I see all, I know all. You mere mortals wouldn’t understand.”

“S’kinda weird, no? Them two—him bein’ so much older, her bein’…well, you know— her.”

“Nope. Makes perfect sense—they need each other, you see.”

He shrugs, I guess—“You’re fuckin’ weird, too. You know that?”

She takes a swig of her beer now also, hoping the two idiots she loves most in the world, after Dina of course, figure each other out before the whole ranch has to suffer for it too. 

“Wrong again, Jesse. Wrong again.”

Chapter 3; Little Freak

Netherfeildren’s Masterlist

Updates Blog

[greenlyren12]

Waytelem

Neteyam x Reader

word count: 1k

Summary: Tradition with Neteyam

A/N:

"Individuals create a songcord that is used as a tactile representation of their own personal or family. Na'vi create their own song cords and expand on them continuously, adding a new item to the cord for any significant life event that occurs."

"Traditionally, once a Na'vi male has passed the tests on the path to manhood and has been accepted into the clan as an adult, he is not only allowed to make his bow from the wood of the Hometree, but he is also expected to choose his woman."

Two blue feet glued to the wooden branch below you, focused on keeping balance, you strolled ahead under the shadow of greenery. Rays of sunshine pooled beneath you, serenity chirping around, causing your ears to flutter. 

Stopping at almost every step, you lovingly caressed the manifestations of the Great Mother. From sensitive to the touch, peach colored mushrooms to hanging azure vines. Every breath you took was synchronized with the forest. 

Happiness was simple. 

As all things seemed in tune, a particularly annoying tail kept disturbing your peace. Finding the joy in tickling your nose and poking whichever eye it chose. Having enough of it, you swiftly seized it between your grasp and tugged on it.

“Neteyam, you säsrätx!”

The boy fastened his pace and collected his tail back with a toothy smile.

“Ikniyama is close, this should not even phase you.” The young na’vi snickered.

“That was your last breath, skxawng.” You evilly laughed and began to chase him, pinching the back of his legs whenever you could. 

Both of you quickly climbed up the trunk of a particularly large tree. Ascending to a naturally formed platform, secluded from the eye. Neteyam was first to sit down, carefully putting his bow and arrows beside him. 

You followed, going by his side, slapping his cheek with your tail. Proudly sitting down with your legs crossed, you expected a reaction - and none was received. Instead, he remained seated in front of you, a smug smile painting the lower half of his face. Not even looking at you, he busied himself with detaching his songcord from his waist cloths. 

You mirrored his actions, getting yours out.

“You know, this is unacceptable behavior from the future Olo’уektan.” An emotionless statement from you, which purpose was to get under his skin. 

Finally meeting your gaze, Neteyam laid his songcord on the ground.

“And this is the behavior expected from a child.” He said with a smile. 

The boy did not mean for it to hurt, but it did. By the clan’s way he was an adult, having completed the rite of passage. And you - half a year younger and still a kid. Being born again, it scared you. The uncertainty never left your weary shoulders. But it was close, you could do it. Conclude it and become a functioning member of the clan.

Neteyam’s soft nature immediately noted your silence. 

“You know I did not mean it.” The boy worryingly said while reaching out to caress your hand. 

Meeting his copper eyes, you let your face fall down.

“I will wait for you.”  He matter of factly reassured your downcast frame.

I will wait for you, he said, of its true meaning you pondered.

Would he wait for you? 

Both of your lives were intertwined from small children, you had always known him. Seeing him grow from Neteyam the Mighty Fisherman to Neteyam the Fierce Warrior. The youthful adoration was now a clumsy teenage love, but none of you dared to say a word. Ever since you could remember you had always done everything together. it was natural, you just always lingered by his side and he by yours. it was funny actually, right now was one of those moments. 

it was a tradition to weave your songcords together, if you had a closer look at them you would see they were almost identical. 

His last words had your cheeks become a deep shade of purple now, ears back, you squeezed his hand.

“Do not speak of such things, Nete.” Your tone low from embarrassment. 

His hand from yours went up to your nose to flick it so you could look him in the eye, missing your usual demeanor. 

“Whatever you wish, yawne.” The young na’vi went back to fiddling with his songcord. 

“Neteyam!”

You spent the next hour twining a fragment of an ikran’s tooth between the string. From when Neteyam claimed his own ikran and as it was your first time climbing the Hallelujah mountains. 

With Neteyam’s help you crushed it to smaller bits, so it could be easily woven into the cord. 

The time shared together was mostly spent in singing personal songs, only for your closest to hear. It served as an escape from the daily chores of life, hidden from parents and siblings. 

“I think i’m done.” Neteyam broke the silence first. 

You grabbed his hand and pulled for closer inspection, catching the boy by surprise. It was now your turn to make him nervous. 

A shy expression and a tight line forming on his mouth, he intently looked and waited for an answer.  

“It’s beautiful, Nete.” You flashed a toothy grin, fangs poking out. 

“Thank you.” His expression made your stomach turn, this boy would be the death of you. 

Neteyam retracted his palm and pulled out petals from a sun lily. His hand unsurely remained in front of him, scared to proceed. You curiously gazed at the boy, irises enlarging and tail nervously swatting. 

“Come closer.” He sweetly commanded, closing the space between you. 

For the first time ever, you silently obliged, standing on your four limbs, you waited. Something was different this time, the air was heavy, you dared not ruin it.

Neteyam carefully put the flower petals behind your ear, making your breath hitch. He pulled back, remaining a few inches from your face, noses almost touching. None of you moved, intently looking into the other’s eyes. You could see the light reflecting in his tawny orbs. 

He was beautiful.

The young na’vi slowly closed the space between your lips. The sweetness of the first kiss, gentle and loving. Scared of everything, both of you barely moved. You delicately pulled back, meeting his eyes and diving back in with a smile. This time more confident, Neteyam cupped your cheek, keeping you in place, growing eager by the second. You have no idea how long you had stayed like this.

And then you felt it. 

A tickling sensation on top of your heads, both of you pulled back, carefully looking up to inspect. 

A woodsprite gently hovered above you. 

He will wait for you.

Na'vi translation:

waytelem - songcord säsrätx - annoyance iknimaya - the rite of passage for young Na'vi skxawng - idiot olo’eyktan - clan leader yawne - beloved

[serpentface]

Ohh, is there any more about the sacrificial bullfights? Are there costumes?

It has no costume whatsoever and in fact stands out as one of the Least costumed rites there are. The fighter is completely nude save for carrying a pure white cloak (which is used to provoke the bull in the process of tiring it, and is only actually Worn at the end of the rite should the fighter survive). They're also painted blue. Looks like this.

The skimmer-woman necklace is for good luck, he's going to need it.

It's one of the much older, more localized traditions that has been integrated into the Faith of the Seven Faced God. It originated in the Ephenni tribe and variants on the base theme (a ritual fight to the death between a young man and a bull) have been practiced for at least 900 years.

The purposes of the original rite were very different from its modern incarnation, and were linked to Ephenni kingship. The fighter was always an unwed Ephenni prince, the bull would be an established domestic bull that has sired many offspring. The fight between the prince and the bull was a symbolic 'killing' of his father, initiating the boy into manhood and signalling that he is ready to take his father's place. It was not a yearly occurrence and was instead an aspect of coronation, with each transition of power beginning in the new year (marked by the planting of maize, the staple crop). Ephenni kings were also high priests and (among many other functions) spiritually protected the crops, the prince's first action after his initiation would be to bless the freshly planted maize.

Over centuries, this practice became Directly associated with the wellbeing of the maize via animal sacrifice, and then was forcibly removed from its kingmaking functions altogether when the Ephenni were occupied by Imperial Bur and their kings killed. The practice of bull-fighting for exclusively corn-blessing purposes continued during and after Burri occupation, and would ultimately be brought into the broader Wardi milieu when Ephennos, Odkotonnos, and Wardin allied and conquered most of their neighbors, forming the beginnings of Imperial Wardin.

Its present incarnation is a yearly rite, observed at the festival that celebrates the planting of the maize (still a staple crop in most of the region). It is functionally a Fertility Rite, intended to bless the crop and observed for signs of how this year's growth will turn out, but it's also highly celebratory and spectacular in nature, not just a solemn religious occasion. It could be argued as a form of human sacrifice in that it is Very dangerous and not infrequently fatal for the fighter, and the death of the human is an acceptable outcome that can impart the same blessings.

---

The fighter is always a 'beardless youth' (usually 16-20), chosen from the unwed sons of noblemen. The fighter will have been trained as a warrior (default for most boys, especially nobility) and is chosen for bravery, health, and strength. But he is Highly unlikely to have experience as a bullfighter (at best, may have rehearsed with domestic cattle) and will rely on instruction and good luck. He is also given a drink of consecrated strong liquor immediately beforehand, which does have ritual elements but serves the practical purpose of lowering the probable teenager's inhibitions and making him less fearful.

The fight takes place in farmland surrounding the city, in a fenced off ring. The fighter and bull are placed together in the arena. He is armed with only the cloak and the dagger. He will have to evade the bull's attacks (using the cloak to goad and direct its charges) and gradually wound it until the animal is weakened from blood loss and exhaustion, and a killing blow can be made. The movements and the behavior of the bull are used to discern signs for the future of the crop- a more aggressive bull is a good sign (indicating a strong, healthy crop and good harvest), a bull that spends most of its time attempting to flee or behaves indifferently is a bad sign.

If all goes right, the fighter will manage to injure and tire the bull until it can be dealt a fatal wound. The rite is now successful. Its throat is slit, and the fighter soaks his cloak in its blood. The rest spills into the earth and nourishes the farmland. The fighter is garbed with the cloak and garlanded, and led on khaitback out through the fields to bless the crop while the festivities kick off. He will preside over the rest of the festival in a place of honor, and is celebrated by the attendants. The bull is cleaned and cooked whole for the feast, and the fighter distributes its meat to high ranking attendants (often giving out the best parts to specific people- family, public figures, women he is courting and/or flirting with, etc).

If the fighter is killed, he has ritually taken the bull's place. The rite is now successful. His blood is spilled by attendant priests and his cloak is soaked, the rest nourishes the earth. The bull is restrained, garbed with the cloak and garlanded, and led in procession back out through the fields, blessing the crops in its passing. It is then released among free ranging cattle (often in estrus at this time of year) in hopes it will mate with some, which is highly auspicious and additionally blesses the herds (and eventually makes up for the loss of the bull's meat at the feast). The fighter has died a good death and his blood has blessed the crop, he is given a lavish public funeral and cremation, and the women in attendance honor him with wailing.

The rite fails if it ends in a 'draw', where one is unable to kill the other. Most frequently this occurs when the fighter is non-mortally wounded and the bull ceases its attack. This failure is not regarded as catastrophic or dooming the crop, rather a warning that proper actions have not been taken and amends must be made. The bull is released without ceremony, a yearling domestic bull is sacrificed in its stead (without the additional crop blessing procession, and its body is cremated rather than butchered and served), libations of its blood and wine are poured onto the crops, and the fighter takes no further place in the festivities.

---

This ritual has been heavily reinterpreted to fit with the Faith of the Seven Faced God. It is framed as a rite to Mitlamache and officiated by Galenii high priests. It exclusively uses wild aurochs rather than domestic bulls (as a representation of Mitlamache and of wild fertile earth on which the crop grows). It still occurs in the farmland of the city of Ephennos as part of a seasonal maize festival, but is considered to bless all of God's lands (not just the Ephenni crop). This festival occurs regionwide, but the bullfighting at Ephennos is the only Official enactment of this rite (other towns, cities, and villages often include nonfatal sport bullfighting with domestic cattle in their festivities instead).

The original meaning of the blue body paint has been lost to the ages, but are reinterpreted through the lens of the contemporary faith by being made with blue amenchalme (amenchalme is a consecrated paste of ground maize, salt, wine, and oil, in this case mixed with water and blue pigment). This blue amenchalme is the same material Galenii priests wear on their foreheads during rites (you've seen a couple drawings of Tigran wearing these).

The older practice of butchering and eating the sacrificed bull is retained in its modern incarnation, which is a major outlier among most other official sacrifices in the Faith (in which certain parts of the body may be saved as holy relics, but the flesh and blood is NOT eaten and IS the offering). The spilled blood specifically is framed as the sole offering, and the death of the bull and survival of the boy is an indicator that it has been accepted and that its body may be given back to nourish the people directly.

Full nudity (which is taboo in most contexts) is also retained from the older practice, in keeping with other attemptively transformative rites involving the human body being made intentionally vulnerable via nudity. The fighter being seen fully naked cements the notion that he has been temporarily Transformed in triumph over the bull, granted the ability to impart blessings and lead the ceremony when his body's integrity is restored and clothed in the bloody cloak.

Notably, in spite of being ostensibly a human sacrifice, fighters who die in this rite are not considered sacrificed saints (a status generally relegated to those killed in the dry season offering), though are still believed to have died a good death and granted a place of honor in the afterlife among other esteemed dead.

[lancerslover]

Just Relax

pairing: young john f. kennedy/reader

summary: the summer before his graduate program at stanford, jack kennedy brings his new fiancée, president roosevelt's niece, out on a sailboat for some much-needed alone time.

word count: 2.2k

warnings: 18+, smut, some swearing, mildly dubious consent

taglist: @raspberryknees @saturns-flowers @vlyofthedolls @fortheloveofjos @h-l-vlovesvintage @astro-vibes-bro @neverellaxx7 @maudesgf @southernpopprincess @melancholicstation @secretwonderlandcheesecake @kennediva

a/n: first of all, thank you as always to @vintagedebutante for the beautiful moodboard photos!

this fic’s based on a request i got a while ago for jack to be in an arranged kind of marriage with another socialite! i know it's short 😫 but i'm planning on posting another fic in the next few weeks. i hope you all enjoy this one!!

You’re watching Jack Kennedy sail his boat—how his flexing muscles shimmer like knots of cinnamon in the white sun, the way his golden-red hair ruffles around his ears in the fresh late-morning wind, the way his face glows pink from exertion and every few minutes he’ll mutter something like, “Easy now, just like that, there we are” while easing the long wooden tiller back and forth—when, suddenly, the boat rolls over a particularly big wave and you start slipping from your perch at the edge of the deck.

But before you even know what’s happening, Jack’s long, heroic arm comes swooping across your waist to yank you back to safety just as you’re about to tip overboard.

“I‘ve got you, I’ve got you.” You feel his voice, urgent but still self-assuredly calm, on your neck. Then you feel his hot, furry thighs as you stumble back—or what’s more likely is that he’s purposely pulling you—into his lap.

A quiet groan escapes you. This is the last thing you need. The whole reason you left the cockpit to go sit at the far edge of the boat in the first place was to try and put some distance between yourself and him.

“Are you alright?” he asks then, scorching you with one of those slow, coaxing smiles as he looms over you.

“I’m fine,” you say, and you realize from the sound of your voice that you’re a little breathless—but whether that’s from the aftershock of almost falling or the jittery thrill of being pressed against him, you aren’t entirely sure.

This little voyage at sea is the longest you two have ever been completely alone together. Sure, you’ve been technically alone for hours in places like the cinema hall or a restaurant on all of those ridiculous “dates” your families would send the two of you on so you could be photographed together before they announced your engagement, but this is different. You’re truly alone, without another soul in sight. 

Normally when you two find yourselves truly alone like this, it’s only for a few minutes while Jack drives you home from one of those “dates,” and it doesn’t take long before neither of you can handle the tension any longer and he’s pulling over and unbuttoning your blouse. And you’re pretty sure he was envisioning something along those lines when he invited you and you alone out onto his boat the second his family’s breakfast picnic ended. 

Of course, you’re envisioning that, too. How could you not? For almost a half-hour now, you’ve been forced to watch him in all his masculine glory, commanding the sea against the backdrop of the shiny Kennedy mansion on the horizon and the flapping American flag on their beachside lawn. It’s stunning, the way Jack looks like the total embodiment of the youthful, all-American manhood that he and his brothers symbolize to so many. And the fact that he just rescued you certainly isn’t making matters any easier—because what you also can’t help but envision is the scandalous story that would smear across the society column of every major newspaper if an innocent, neighborly passerby boat happened to catch you and Jack with your hands all over each other in public, before you were married, no less. Your reputation would be in ruins. Your mother genuinely might never speak to you again.

The entire world, it sometimes seems, has been involved in every last little day-to-day moment of your courtship with Jack ever since your families first formally introduced you at a dinner party over a year ago now. But that’s the whole point, you suppose, behind two of the most famous families in America betrothing their two eldest children to each other. And now that, as of last month, you and Jack are officially engaged, the country waits with bated breath for the union between the handsome Kennedy celebrity—who, come autumn, will be galavanting off for his glamorous first semester as a graduate student at Stanford, where he’ll likely mingle among a swath of California’s finest singers and matinee idols—and you. If anyone asked, you would say that the most notable thing about you is that you’ve just finished your freshman year at Radcliffe College. A few years ago, you were dubbed “President Roosevelt’s favorite niece” by the New York Times, but in all honesty, you don’t actually have any reason to believe that your uncle prefers you over any of your cousins.

But still, under no circumstances, you tell yourself, will you let Jack make any sort of move on you out here on this boat. At least one of you needs to have your priorities straight.

“I told you not to sit up there, didn’t I?” Jack is saying when you snap out of your thoughts, tilting his chin toward the edge of the deck where, moments ago, you were peacefully sitting. “Remember this next time you decide not to listen to me.”

You can’t help but crane your neck back to try and study his face for some hint as to what he’s really feeling behind all the sarcasm. Does he pity you for almost tumbling overboard? Or does he think this whole situation is just plain funny? Though either one would be sufficiently humiliating, you’re sort of hoping that, whatever he’s thinking, it’s now distracting him from any dirty thoughts.

But, alas, he’s wearing his big, circular sunglasses, so it’s really no use trying to read him. Unlike the rest of his features, his eyes are always so full of soul and emotion, and whenever you can’t see them, he suddenly becomes so distant, like a calculating secret agent who’s completely anonymous to everyone he keeps tabs on yet somehow knows all of their darkest secrets.

Your spine tightens then when you hear the faint chug of another boat cruising by, but thankfully, when you turn to look, you realize it’s not coming close enough for anyone on board to see you in Jack’s lap. Nevertheless, you twist out of Jack’s arms, landing with a soft thud beside him on the wooden bench.

Jack chuckles then, a deep, slightly dark sound. You blow your bangs out of your eyes, trying your best to seem nonchalant while sparks go off inside of you at the sound of his laugh.

“Why’d you wanna sit so far from me, anyway, huh?” he asks, sidling closer simply because he knows perfectly well that you don’t want him to.

The sharp contrast between his dark glasses and the bright, sun-reflecting tape across the freckled bridge of his nose is suddenly making your eyes burn, and you stare down at your sandals. You start to open your mouth to remind him that now isn’t the time or place to do whatever he’s thinking of doing—but your voice dries out in your throat as he places his hand on your thigh and gives it a soft, playful squeeze. Oh, boy, you think. Here we go.

“What’s wrong?” Jack murmurs with exaggerated concern, an electric sound that’s followed immediately by the dangerous, hair-raising sizzle of his lips on your exposed neck. You suck in a sharp breath of air. “Afraid somebody’s gonna see us?”

He moves your hair to the side and kisses your neck again. And again. You know you should move away but the heat from his chest has welded your body to the bench beneath you.

When he speaks again, his voice is suddenly lower and quieter than before, like there’s something inside of him that he, too, is now trying to suppress, to wrangle into control.

“There’s no need to worry,” he says. “If there’s a photo of me bending you over the deck in The Post tomorrow, I’ll make sure none of the blame falls on you. I’ll say I grabbed you and you tried your best to get away but I just wouldn’t let you go.”

He chuckles again, and then, when you sense him suddenly pulling away, you can’t help but feel a clench of disappointment.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him reach up into the sails and bring the boat to a complete standstill in a whirlwind of brisk, whooshing movements. Then you’re being heaved onto his lap again, facing him this time, your knees thumping against the bench on either side of his legs.

You let out a small, shuddering laugh, pressing your hands to his chest. “Oh, come now, Kennedy,” you say. “As romantic as it sounds, we can’t actually—”

He cuts you off by popping open the button on your shorts.

You’re suppressing a grin as you try your best to push away from him, to squeeze your thighs closed. But his big hands close tightly around your hips, and in a sudden flash of riled-up aggression, he jolts you still with one sharp, warning movement. Almost immediately, you can feel bruises start to form under his fingertips, which makes your stomach somersault.

“Keep still, Y/N,” Jack groans between clenched teeth, the corners of his mouth fighting off a smirk. “Christ. You’re killing me.”

Left with no other choice, you settle back down into his lap, and you quickly realize exactly what he meant by “You’re killing me.” The inside of your thigh brushes against a bulge in his pants that, you can only assume, was created by the friction from all your inadvertent grinding against him.

A shaky gasp leaves your lips then as his long, knuckly finger slips inside your zipper. When that same finger starts to move in slow circles over your clit, your head falls back and you breathe “God dammit, Jack” to the sky.

“Listen,” Jack says into your skin while he kisses across the length of your collarbone, “I promise nobody’s gonna see us. We’re far enough out.”

He brings his free hand to cup your breast over your shirt, and your head tilts forward. Your forehead smushes against his, which, strangely, is kind of soothing. You take the opportunity to let out a deep breath.

“That’s it, kid,” Jack says, his teeth brushing against your lips. “Just relax.”

Into his mouth, you whisper the words, “I hate you.”

One of his eyebrows twitches up over his sunglasses. “Yeah?” he says, and he suddenly sounds even more feverishly out-of-breath than you are. “You hate me, huh?”

He laughs as his finger increases its pressure, and a wave of pleasure so intense you feel like you could vomit cracks through your body. So much for trying to relax. Your mouth falls open, and as you gasp his name, you notice his mouth going slack, too, as he watches yours. An odd, gratifying tingle shoots down your back.

He increases the pressure again. “How does that feel?” he asks, blinding you with the cocky glint of his teeth. When you don’t respond—because your deep-seated competitive side won’t give him the satisfaction—he closes your clit between his thumb and pointer finger in a gentle pinch.

You can’t do anything but groan as that watery pressure starts to reach a breaking point between your legs. 

In a last-ditch attempt to gain some semblance of control over the situation, you shove those god-forsaken sunglasses up off his face and back into his thick tangle of hair. But his eyes are so bright and so full of what looks to be some sort of boyish, appreciative awe as he looks up at you that, once again, you’re rendered stunned and powerless. You’re briefly reminded of that old John Buchan quote you always felt described Jack perfectly: “He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.”

“Soon,” Jack says then, as if he’s been waiting to say this until his sunglasses were off and he could truly look you in the eye, “we’ll have our own house and the rest of our lives to be alone every single day.”

The sun starts to melt out from behind a cloud, and Jack’s eyes crease adorably around the edges as he squints up at you. You aren’t quite sure how to respond to his uncharacteristically sentimental remark, but in the end, you don’t have to. You hit your climax right at that moment—you aren’t sure exactly why. But suddenly your whole body is trembling, and you’re gasping his name into his neck, sinking your teeth into his stubbly skin, digging your nails into his shoulders. You feel his throat vibrating as he groans along with you.

Just then, you hear another sailboat come putzing by—and this one sounds only a hundred or so feet away. Immediately, you’re ripped from the throes of ecstasy. You sit back up, heart jumping into your throat so fast you almost choke. You feel Jack tense up, too.

But then the man at the helm of the boat waves and shouts hello, and you feel Jack relax.

“Ah,” Jack says. “It’s just old Mr. Newman. He can’t see well. Completely harmless.”

“Are you kids behaving yourselves?” Mr. Newman shouts jovially across the glittering water.

“Always, Mr. Newman,” Jack says, pulling his hand out of your shorts to wave back.

thank you for reading!!

[rastronomicals]

7:07 AM EST March 3, 2023:

Kings of Leon - "Molly's Chambers" From the album Youth and Young Manhood (July 7, 2003)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[mm-lurking]

The Crown and The Blood That Taints it - Blade

When you, the princess of Xianzhou and Blade, the Lord of the Cursed Blood meet there is only one thing that can happen: a fire that burns everyone and everything that gets in their way.

A/N: Watched a few clips of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones and started brainrotting Blade in it. Do I understand much? No. Am I still going to write something on it? Yes. Posting this early cause my bday is today

Warnings: none?? Not proofread, mostly fluff and slightly OOC sorry about that. – The idea of Blade being a dragon rider does things to me in ways I cannot explain. The idea of him being a prince, an heir even, of the kingdom of Xianzhou Luofu. Or perhaps he is one of the lords that serves the king of Xianzhou -and the king happens to be your father.

Thinking of how you, the princess of Xianzhou, the beloved daughter of the King, is a stubborn woman who does not bend the knee to anyone and does whatever she pleases. Thinking of how your father probably cleans up silently after you as you walk around in the realm and do whatever you please. Not that you are mischievous but rather you are not “ladylike” enough. 

Thinking of how you are a princess with power and grace, yet it is not flowers that bloom by your side but rather fires that rage. Your presence scares most lords away for one, you are the king’s most prized treasure and two, they are aware you cannot be controlled. They are aware that their stereotype of women being weak, or the lesser sex than men does not work on you. And with one of the most dangerous dragons, Obsidian, by your side, no one dares to oppose you. Not even the king. After all, the dead bodies your darling creature had piled up in his pit were enough reason to leave you alone.

They know you have a good head on your shoulders and as such, nothing can sway your ideals and visions for you cannot be manipulated. You’ve been assisting court matters by your father’s side since you came of age and are arguably one of the best in the kingdom. Endless marriage proposals come for you, yet you decline everyone and turn away. This frustrates your father, angers him even but you are his only daughter. As such, he finds himself excusing you each time you tell him you don’t want this; you don’t want love nor do you want marriage.

Thinking of how, in the countless seats where the lords sit and serve your father, there is a man you haven’t paid much attention to -Blade. A young lord who not only serves your father faithfully, but is also part of his small council. In a sea of old wrinkly faces, he is the only bright youthful one with an indecipherable look in his you have never understood.

Thinking of how your first few encounters with him occur when you’re in a meeting with the small council, standing by your father’s side. You propose an idea regarding the unrest that has freshly occured in the countryside only for the master of war to shut it down quickly, politely reminding you of your lack of skills and manhood. You are about to strike when Blade speaks up for you making you stare at him in shock.

Thinking of how silence falls momentarily as the lords are taken back by his support for the idea. Blade was an exemplified swordsman who possessed incredible knowledge of the battlefield and had a powerful position in the kingdom. His opinions and ideas were precise and well refined, making him a favourite of your father quickly when he first became a lord. The more time Blade spent in court, the more he proved himself to be capable and stronger than the other men of the small council. While this would often lead to drama between him, the lords and their sons (who weren’t even half as capable as Blade despite being his age), no one dared to cross the Lord of Cursed Blood for they knew the consequences would be deadly. They were aware of the mara that would possess him during wars making him a killing machine.

They were aware of how his crimson eyes were the colour of the liquid he so easily spilled when crossed.

Thinking of how your father, the king approves of your idea despite the protests from the lords. In the back of his mind he knew you were far more capable than most men in this kingdom. He was aware that the only thing that prohibited you from overtaking everyone was your womanhood. Yet that didn’t stop him from discreetly favouring you over his lords and using Blade’s opinion as a backup.

Thinking of how that was the first time you made eye contact with Blade, holding it momentarily as you tried to understand his thoughts before glancing away. You could feel his gaze linger on you for a second longer before he resumed looking at the map on the table.

Thinking of how this new military plan you proposed is what starts this unsaid longing between you two. Your father orders you and Blade to work together alongside some others to see through this plan effectively. At first you are still slightly uncomfortable by how he looks at you; his gaze so strong that you feel exposed in his eyes. You are aware he does not do this on purpose as it is just the way he looks at others yet you cannot help but find yourself a tad bit nervous around him.

Thinking of how the strictly political meetings slowly turn into longer sessions of somewhat political meetings as you two stay behind and discuss your lives even when the meetings are over. You learn that behind his chilly exterior is a different man with regrets and a lifelong curse he can never undo. And while he refuses to speak more about his past and lineage, you already know from the small nuggets he drops about it that he is an incredibly dangerous man, one capable of burning down the entire city if he ever pleased. Hell, he could even take the throne away from your father if he ever wanted and the very thought of that sends chills down your spine.

But one day when you look at him, you realise you do not feel any fear or nervousness around him and rather its replaced by a new emotion -a desire to get to know him better. This new outlook confuses you but you suppress it and continue to be hospitable to Blade, conversing with him regarding several topics and chatting away for hours end. Discussions in the meeting room turn into long walks around the palace and ultimately morphs into somewhat of a date.

As more eyes fall upon you both, the princess of Xianzhou and the lord of the Cursed Blood, chatter spreads through the walls and gossip eventually reaches the king’s ears. You two as a pair seeing each other so frequently and casually only fuels the rumours of something going on between you both. This angers your father in a manner he has never felt before and he immediately calls for you, unable to believe his precious daughter would ever be involved in such unbecoming behaviour.

Thinking of how for the first time, no matter how hard you try to dissipate your father’s anger he does not listen. Even with your mother’s assistance your father refuses to hear you out and commands you to stay away from Blade, warning you about the dire consequences if you do not heed him. Upset, you rush out of the room bursting into a fit of tears from your father’s fury. As much as the king hates to see his daughter like this, he cannot have his only heir slip up. You were the successor of this kingdom and it was inappropriate for you to meet a man without any former agreement or public proposal. Especially one that has served your father well and was a favourite.

Thinking of how you do not, in fact, listen to your father and continue to meet Blade in secrecy after the formal military meetings are over. Despite all the measures your father implements to keep a watchful eye on you, you manage to slip past them all to meet with the man who was slowly conquering your heart. You are fierce and stubborn and he was no different. You were the only woman he knew who didn’t want him for his status, prestige or fortune. With you, discussing combat and other natures of the world felt natural and he didn’t find the need to put up a front. What primarily was companionship evolved into something more, something he could not explain.

To Blade, these new emotions that were starting to stir in his heart after getting to know you were enough reason to defy the rules of this kingdom.

Thinking of how one day you both sneak out of the kingdom when your father is occupied with official matters in the Red Keep. You wanted to run away from the prying eyes of people and spend some time alone with Blade, riding your dragon in the drifting clouds of the sky where no one could snitch on you. You both ascend to the sky as he wraps his arms around your waist and by god if you weren’t steering the dragon you would have melted into his embrace. You both knew that at this point that there was no going back, that your relationship had crossed all the lines and that this desire to be with each other was burning stronger and stronger each day.

Thinking of how it’s late when you part ways with Blade that day. One of the lords who disliked you had caught you and Blade kissing when you dismounted the dragon. By the time you get back to the castle, all hell had broken loose. There was screaming, crying, arguing all at once the moment you step foot in the room; some lords and your father glaring at you in disgust from your actions. You try to play it off cool but unfortunately the cat is out of the bag and nothing can be done.

Thinking of how, in the heat of the moment, the king immediately arranges a marriage for you, sending you as far as he can from Blade and demoting him from the small council. You beg your father to give his blessings and to allow you to stay with Blade because there was no man you would want to be with except him. Marriage scared you and the idea of being someone’s wife felt suffocating but with him, with Blade all those worries flew out the window. With Blade, it felt natural and safe. The stars and the heavens are not on your side as not a single word gets through him and all you can do is let tears roll down your face as you listen to his raging anger. 

Thinking of how when Blade finds out nothing else registers in his mind for a moment. He receives the message late at night in his chambers from his righthand man. The hesitation on his face is enough to let Blade know something’s wrong but when he reads the letter from the King the world around him grows numb. There is pin drop silence in his head before it's replaced with the rampant rage of desire and betrayal. His eyes darken and he stares out the nearby window with an evil smirk on his face; a look so sinister that his guard also starts to feel fearful from the distance.

Your lover picks up the letter and puts it through a nearby flame. The letter ignites and sizzles as the fire eats away at the malicious words of your father, leaving only ashes behind. He watches the flame intently as it continues to burn brightly. Not a single word is spoken in the chambers but one thing is clear: there was something more to this than anyone around him knew. After all, the title Lord of the Cursed Blood was not awarded to him as a passing thought -there was a history behind it that only his lineage and the King knew. 

A song of blood and fire, a tale of eradication and fear.

The Achilles heel of his father and forefathers and the sins of the king and his predecessor.

Blade commands his men to pack up everything and move back home and despite their protests and concerns, he turns a blind eye to their words. He would no longer stay on the lands of the very man whose hands were covered in his family’s blood. However, there was one last thing he had to do before he left this city for good.

Thinking of how you wake up to your bed dipping aggressively in the middle of the night. You hadn’t bothered to change into comfortable clothes or freshen up as you went to sleep directly after you argued with your father, exhausted from how cruel life was to you. It takes you a moment to fully register the presence of a human being on your bed. Before you can scream, the hooded feature clasps your mouth shut and shakes off his hood revealing the man you had fallen for. You fight the drowsiness in your eyes as you attempt to question him but he doesn’t allow you to speak and instead firmly kisses your lips as a sign of devotion and a silent promise -a promise he will come back for you. 

All you remember is him softly telling you to wait for him and that he would never allow another man to have you before handing you his ring and disappearing into the night. A promise you held onto even after months of him being gone….even on the day of your wedding with your father’s handpicked suitor.

The festivities of your marriage are in full swing. The streets have been decorated lavishly and countless carts and carriages of goods have been sent to the castle as a gift. Your suitor, not to your surprise, is the son of one of the lords who serve your father in the small council. It just so happens that the lord is the same one who caught you with Blade all those months ago. The small council had struck gold with your downfall and decided to manipulate your father into making it worse. Lucky for you your suitor is not venomous like his father but neither is he courageous enough to stand against his pathetic plottings.

Despite the joy amongst your people and the cheers that erupt every few minutes, your heart is numb. Ever since Blade left you received no word from him and with each passing day, your longing for him only got worse. Not a single day went by where you didn’t think of him. Even though his face had now become blurry in your vision and his voice had started to fade from your memories, you could not get over him. The only reminder of his existence and everything you both shared was his ring that presently hung around your neck. Wearing it on your hand would cause trouble and you couldn’t bear to leave it in your room so instead, you strung it on a chain and wore it around your neck to conceal him right where your heart beat the loudest.

Before you know it, it's time to stand at the altar. Ever since that day, your relationship with your father has soured a little but despite that, you pretend to be happy just for his and the kingdom’s sake. All these months you had tried to get answers from the King, just something, anything that could tell you why he was so against you and Blade being together. You pried, you searched the libraries, you sent out people in secret to find information but you still had no answers. Anger and frustration eventually turned into silence and compliance and at the end of the day, you just did what you could to keep your aging father at ease.

Thinking of how none of the vows and prayers registers in your head. You stand in front of your suitor, holding his hands loosely while you’re mentally playing all your memories of Blade over and over. Wishing it was him standing in front of you. Wishing your union was with the only man you ever grew to love. You peek at your father, who looks so delighted as he beams at his only girl, from the corner of your eye. Seeing him so merry almost brings tears to your eyes. You had done everything right as a child to be the apple of his eye…only to love the wrong man. Your only sin was falling for the mara-struck prince. 

Thinking of how you force yourself to bring the chalice up to your lips right after your suitor drinks out of it. You fight with your mind as one half of you does its best to get this wedding done and over with while the other half of you tries to push the chalice away. Right when you finally manage to bring it up to your lips-

-a terrorising screech resounds from the distance followed by aggressive stomping and glass shattering. You see a scarlet red dragon perching itself on one of the nearby towers before hissing and extending its neck tauntingly through the broken walls. The crowd screams as they all try to find refuge from the beast while the King tries calming them down, horrified at who would interrupt such a joyous occasion for the kingdom. All the knights attempt to protect the citizens and the royals in the area but the dragon shows no mercy as it slaughters everything in the way. The wreckage does not reach where you are nor does it harm you, as if this were a well-planned attack.

Before you can process anything and take note of the figure riding the dragon, raging fire towers over any mortal present on the ground as it burns and reduces everything in its vicinity into ashes. There are wounded men littered all over the barren soil, groaning and crying in pain from the injuries they have sustained. Ashes and soot circulate in the air causing the soldiers and knights present to wheeze while breathing. But none of that matters to the prince of the cursed blood, Blade, who slides down his dragon and makes his way through the damaged buildings with his eyes fixated on a particular figure in the distance -you.

Thinking of how the soul leaves your body when you watch him fend off all the soldiers mercilessly, leaving no man alive that stops him from getting to you. You stand there at the altar frozen and breathless as you stare at him with wide eyes, unable to believe he’s here. He looked just as you saw him all those months ago, dashing and dangerous. You practically gawk at the man who's getting closer and closer to you and your heart beats louder and louder.

“Princess we must go now!”

Your suitor and father voice out, concerned for your well-being. The rough grabbing of your shoulder snaps you out of your trance and you stare at the knight holding you before shoving him off and running towards Blade.

“Princess!!”

Their yells fall deaf on your ears as you run down the altar and away from your unwanted suitor. Some guards try to stop you but the dragon screeching in their direction scares them away.

Ba-dump

Ba-dump

Ba-dump

The only sound you can hear now is the rapid quickening of your heartbeat as your heart threatens to jump out of your ribcage and flee. Blade stares at you with eyes that swirl with desire and desperation as he finally stands in front of you, panting. 

Thinking of how Blade does not give you a single second to speak; he urgently cups your face with his hand and brushes the pad of his thumb deeply against your cheek. You can tell his hunger for your touch runs deep; he’s been starved of your presence for so long that he’s ravenous. Your eyes momentarily shut close as his face only draws closer to yours. Amidst the ruins of the city centre and cries for help, you both gaze into each other’s eyes as if searching for answers while simultaneously apologising silently for being away unendingly.

“Blade..”

Thinking of how you manage to take his name; you speak his name so softly as if he would vanish in thin air if you raised your voice a little louder. He hums in response as he trails his eyes over your figure trying to absorb you and etch you harder into his memory.

Thinking of how while you were running your necklace had flung out causing his ring to peek through your clothes. You hadn’t realised but Blade’s lingering gaze on your décolletage makes you look and you gasp. He says nothing but instead tugs on the metal string, revealing his ring that had been tucked away on your chest for months.

Thinking of how he runs his fingers around the ring before harshly pulling it, causing your necklace to break and the string to slip away. The ring remains in his fingers as he stares at it for a while before looking back at you.

“I had to keep it safe.”

You whisper as you look away in embarrassment. He chuckles and stares around at everyone, or well the ones who are still alive, before he locks eyes with your father. The King is standing at the altar shielded by his Kingsguard as he watches you both to his dismay. Then without a word, he gets on one knee and takes your left hand.

Thinking of how all oxygen leaves your body as he slips his large ring into any of your dainty fingers that could hold it. Your hands slightly tremble from the gesture but he gently squeezes them, reassuring you of his decision. He is sure of wanting you. He is sure of making you the mother of his children. Destruction and terror are the witnesses to his proposal but none of that matters to you for he was born and bred of such emotions and you had become acquainted with it.

Thinking of how you stare at him and the ring back and forth, unable to believe this was happening. The sunlight continues to shine brightly upon you both as it bounces off his ring and dazzles his appearance further. The flames he had started sizzle and roar behind him as they further exuded his authority. You find yourself falling for him all over again as tears well in your eyes. This was not how you expected to find him again but you weren’t complaining either.

Thinking of how he gets up and pushes you into his chest upon seeing your tears. He smells like blood, dust and rust but you inhale his scent like he was the finest perfume available to you. He kisses the top of your head and, unknown to you, directly stares at your father once again smiling sinisterly. You both remain like that for a while even with all the murmurings and whispers (and deaths and screams) that surround you.

Thinking of how you place your hands on his chest and, to the horror of your father, tilt your head up to lock lips with him. Blade reciprocates as he pushes you deeper into his chest as if he had been waiting for this his entire life. You both stand at the centre of the building ruins, confirming your union amidst the chaos and the damage done to your people. How ironic that the people’s princess had become the lover of the destructive lord.

Thinking of how his dragon roars while it watches you both as if acknowledging and congratulating you both before flying away. The people in the area scream in fear afraid they will be toasted again. You can’t help but smile through the kiss which he reciprocates.

Thinking of how you turn around and look at your father as your heart harbours mixed signals. On one hand, you were delighted to have Blade with you but on the other, the pain of disappointing your father and the city hurt you. You give him a bittersweet smile as Blade stands right behind you, still staring at him with a gaze that screams revenge.

In the days to come, you would learn that the man you had given yourself to had a darker history with your father than you could have imagined. And in the days to come, you would learn that the lineage of the cursed blood was more powerful and dangerous than you ever knew.

Perhaps your father was right to keep you both apart. Or perhaps, he would learn that only you could bring the mara-struck prince to his knees, something he and your forefathers could only dream of doing.

A song of blood and fire, a curse that would now be yours to bear. ⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ ©mm-lurking 2024 do not copy, steal or reuse my work.

[whencyclopedia]

Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotanka, l. c. 1837-1890) was a Hunkpapa Sioux holy man, warrior, leader, and symbol of traditional Sioux values and resistance to the United States' expansionist policies. He is among the best-known Native American chiefs of the 19th century and remains as famous today as he was when he led his people.

He is widely known for his part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876 and his later celebrity as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, but, for the Sioux, Sitting Bull is celebrated as the embodiment of the four cardinal virtues of his people: courage, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. He is also recognized for his refusal to abandon the traditions of his people and his efforts to preserve their culture. Although famous as a holy man, prophet, war chief, and hunter, Sitting Bull was also a poet and composer, as well-known among his people for his rapport with wild animals and herbal knowledge as for his leadership.

He was killed while resisting arrest at the Standing Rock Agency Reservation in South Dakota on 15 December 1890 and was buried at Fort Yates in North Dakota. His remains were exhumed by family members in the 1950s and interred at Mobridge, South Dakota, near where he was thought to have been born. Debate continues over whether these remains are those of Sitting Bull, and historians also offer differing views on his legacy. His reputation as a great leader of his people, however, is unchallenged as he continues to be recognized as a symbol of Native American pride, honor, and traditional values, as well as for his stand against injustice.

Youth & Name

Little is known of Sitting Bull's life before the age of 14. His date of birth, given as 1831, 1832, 1834, or 1837, is debated, as was his birthplace until fairly recently. He is now understood to have been born on the Yellowstone River (known to the Sioux as Elk River) in modern-day Montana and was named Jumping Badger (Hoka Psice). He quickly earned the nickname Slow (Hunkesni), owing, according to scholar Robert. M. Utley, to "his willful and deliberate ways" (6). His father was Chief Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa Sioux, and his mother was Her-Holy-Door from a respectable Hunkpapa family. He had two sisters and a half-brother but would later adopt others as his brothers, and these are sometimes mistakenly referenced as biological siblings.

Chief Sitting Bull taught his son to ride, hunt, and shoot expertly before the boy was ten years old. Young Slow was an excellent shot with bow and arrow and became so closely associated with horses that his peers joked how he even walked as though he were on horseback. When he was 14, he joined a war party against the Crow and "counted coup" against a Crow warrior, knocking him from his horse where he was then killed by another of the party. For this act of courage – defeating an enemy without killing him – Chief Sitting Bull gave his name to his son and assumed the name Jumping Bull. "Sitting Bull" – Tatanka Iyotanka (literally "Buffalo Who Sits Down") – fit the youth's personality as, "according to fellow tribesmen, suggested an animal possessed of great endurance, his build much admired by the people, and when brought to bay, planted immovably on his haunches to fight on to the death" (Utley, 15).

Later acquaintances and writers would claim the name was given him due to his stubbornness or, according to Sioux writer and physician Charles A. Eastman, that he was given the name after forcing a buffalo calf to sit down. The name was actually given in accordance with the tradition whereby a father passed his own name to his son when the boy was recognized as attaining manhood.

Between the ages of 14 and 20, Sitting Bull led his own war parties, and his name became famous among his enemies as a formidable warrior. Utley describes him at around the age of 20:

A heavy, muscular frame, a big chest, and a large head, he impressed people as short and stocky, although he stood only two inches under six feet. His dark hair, often braided on one side with otter fur and allowed to hang loose on the other, reached his shoulders. A severe part over the center of the scalp glistened with a heavy streak of crimson paint. A low forehead surmounted piercing eyes, a flat nose, and thin lips. Although dexterous afoot and superbly agile mounted, he appeared to some as awkward and even clumsy. (19-20)

Around 1857, in a clash with an Assiniboine band, Sitting Bull spared a 13-year-old boy whom he later adopted as a younger brother. When Sitting Bull's father was killed in battle with the Crow in 1859, the boy took the name Jumping Bull and would remain by Sitting Bull's side for the rest of his life.

Continue reading...

[fredwkong]

Alphaworld File 1: Oral History

The universe is multifarious, constantly diverging as new choices are made. Spinning away through time, these alternate realities become locked away from our own, so we can never know exactly what would have happened if a single choice was made differently.

Except, sometimes, two of those worlds, careening through the upper dimensions, happen to converge. As they slide past each other, they may line up just so, each leaving behind fragments as they continue their journey into their divergent futures. You’ve never heard of this, because the remnants, mostly data, are swiftly collected by various government agencies and collected into reports on the intercepted reality.

This report collects various scientific articles, personal journals, news reels, and even a documentary series from one such reality, codenamed Alphaworld. In this world, gay men have not only become the norm, but have seemingly replaced all other people. In this world, society is stratified into an apparently biological hierarchy of homosexual castes, based on men’s physical characteristics and psychologies. Upon finishing the following fragment from a peer-reviewed article that was a trace recovered from Alphaworld, please select the next fragment you would like to consume.

X

An Oral History of the Creation and Initial Spread of the Alpha Phenomenon, by Alpha Dr. Jose Martinez

Until recently, it was not known what sparked the spread of the Alpha Phenomenon which has wholly remade the world in recent years. This was until Alpha Joshua Dearfoot, who resides with his Betas in rural ex-Ontario, stated during a livestream on OnlyFans that he is the original Alpha.

Alpha Dearfoot does not interact with Betas from outside his harem unless they renounce their current Alpha. As this research team contains no unbonded Betas—Alpha Dr. Martinez says we can’t spend too much time with non-harem Betas—we investigated among those close to Alpha Dearfoot, conducting interviews and surveying in the local area to discover as much as we could.

Joshua, as he was known before the emergence of the Alpha Phenomenon, was a PhD candidate in nanotechnology, with a secondary focus in physiology. Photographs kept by his father (Beta to Alpha Sean Barehill) reveal that through his youth and young adulthood Joshua was physically unimpressive, with a physique not even reaching the base level expected of a Beta.

According to a classmate of Joshua’s from university (Beta to Alpha Liam Oliver), Joshua was studious but insecure: “I mean, I used to push him around all the time for being a fa— gay kid. Gay and a nerd? In the Old World, that was, like, the worst thing.” When asked about whether he has properly apologised, the Beta said, in a rapturous voice, “Oh, yeah, Alpha Dearfoot was my first. He disciplined me so well I could barely walk, I came like four times. Then he told me to come join Alpha Liam’s harem. I mean, he wasn’t Alpha Liam then, I was one of the first guys to go full Beta on campus.”

It appears that Alpha Dearfoot had a difficult youth, growing up unable to meet certain Old World expectations of manhood. The masculine stereotypes of Native Americans also seem to have weighed on him, as he was entirely unable to meet them. As his father told us, “Joshua was a sweet kid, but he got bullied for being too short and scrawny, not matching the image of an “Indian” in all these bigoted kids’ heads. He was obsessed with growing bigger, which is why he went into physio.” Remember, in some communities it is normal for a Beta father to continue to refer to his Alpha son by his first name.

According to Sigma Harrison White, a former lab partner of Dearfoot’s who fucked us on his lawn in exchange for this interview, Joshua was obsessed with creating some way to become more manly. “He spent some really long evenings in the lab,” said Harrison while one of us squealed in the grass beneath him. “One morning he came out with this manic grin on his face, said that he’d finally done it, and ran off. Two weeks later, he came back a full Alpha.” At this point, Harrison’s pace slowed down as he became contemplative. “It was only after he started hooking up with all the queer guys on campus that we started becoming Alphas and Sigmas and stuff, too.”

Did Alpha Dearfoot intend for the Alpha Phenomenon to be infectious? A Beta from his harem claims not. “He got home from school one morning all excited about some project he’d finished,” the Beta told us—it seems that he and Alpha Dearfoot were childhood friends. “The next day, he seemed a little different, a little more muscular, more assertive. He seemed really satisfied for about a week, then he got scared. He just kept getting bigger. The day he got taller than me and nearly broke a bar at the gym doing deadlifts, I started feeling the Beta change.

“I went to him and started telling him about my muscle gains and all the weird thoughts and sensations I was experiencing, and he got really scared,” the Beta continued, his eyes distant. “I started to comfort him, and that was when we felt the bond form. It felt so right for him to be my first, to finger me open and fill me with his still-growing dick.”

While we pressed for more details about what may have been the first Alpha/Beta bond in history, the Beta refused to disclose more information, claiming that it was private to him and his Alpha. For the reader’s imagination, see Figure A to find a picture of Alpha Dearfoot from his Instagram profile.

Alpha Dearfoot appears to have intended to create a nanomachine-based masculinity booster, and the transmissibility of the Alpha Phenomenon, as well as the behavioural and sexual changes it induces, were unintended side effects, perhaps introduced in the particles’ replication process. The effects of the Alpha Phenomenon on aging and physical fitness may also be unexpected consequences of Alpha Dearfoot's programming efforts.

According to Alpha Young Baek Hyeon, who lives in the former New York area with a mixed harem, he and Alpha Dearfoot attempted to “date,” an outmoded practice common in the Old World, during the early weeks of the Alpha Phenomenon’s spread. “Alpha DeWayne and I work well together,” Alpha Young told us by video call, “but we’re both pretty chill even since we changed. Alpha Dearfoot and I couldn’t even stand to be in the same room once I had transformed. He’s one of the most territorial Alphas I’ve ever met, he can barely stand to have another Alpha within a mile of him.” As Alpha Young spoke, we watched a well-trained Beta enter the room with a plate of apple slices and present them to his Alpha.

“He was really torn up about it, too. Even though we couldn’t stop yelling at each other in person or over the phone, he left me a ton of really sweet voice messages about how much he’d liked me before we became Alphas.” Alpha Young took a bite of apple and ruffled his Beta’s hair, causing all of us to shudder with phantom pleasure at the affection. With a contemplative expression, Alpha Young said, “No, I don’t think he meant for any of this to happen.”

While this study has yielded plenty of useful biographical information about the man apparently responsible for the Alpha Phenomenon that changed the world, we appear no closer to understanding the precise mechanism of that change. With better access to the programming of the nanomachines, perhaps it would be possible to reduce the natural aggressiveness of the Alphas, allowing Alphas like Dearfoot to return to their studies or jobs if they so wish. In the following section, we will propose potential opportunities for further research in the effort to isolate the Alpha Phenomenon.

Or vote on Strawpoll here: https://strawpoll.com/wby5A0vw8yA

This series is my way of celebrating reaching 2000 followers! I hope you enjoy this glimpse into Alphaworld and vote on what file you would like to see next. There is no strict update schedule, so you good boys better be on the lookout for a new chapter you can vote on ;)

[octuscle]

Today was my 18 birthday, and when i blew the candles i only wished one thing, being a muscular hairy cowboy old man in a big farm, with many land for myself to work, can you make it true?

Youth is being wasted on the young. What do you want? Become an old cowboy sitting on his ranch, mending fences and milking cows? Seriously? On your 18th birthday? Dude, I could think of 3,000 better things to do. At least!

How about a crisp young farmhand, for example. You're out in the fresh air too, you look more like a man than anyone in the big city. But you can enjoy life, have no responsibilities and are always horny all the time. Much better, isn't it?

No? Really not? Okay… Suit yourself. What exactly do you mean by old? Like 25? No? 35? No? 40? I mean, that's really old… But you're at the peak of your manhood. You've given up the fight against chest hair. A man is only a man when beads of sweat from hard work glisten in your body hair at the end of the day, right?

Not enough yet? Phew, I hope you know what you're doing. All right then… It's your birthday. You get what you want: "A muscular hairy cowboy old man in a big farm". 65 years old. Your body looks younger. The result of years of hard physical labor. Your face looks older. The merit of years of hard physical labor in the sun without SPF100. You look a bit like the classic Roman statues of Caesar and Cicero. The head of a caring, responsible head of state on the bodies of Olympic athletes.

Hmm… Caesar and Cicero mean nothing to you? No, they don't work in Zac's hardware store. And I'm not talking about the Rome in Floyd County, Georgia. Anyway, just forget the C&C story. Take care of the cows. And have a good life. Happy birthday!

[apollophanes]

Callimachus – Hymn 2: To Apollo (trans. Barry B. Powell)

Sing Iê, Iê! It is bad to quarrel with the Blessed Ones. He who wars with the Blessed Ones, may he war with my king! And he who wars with my king, let him war with Apollon! O Apollon, he will honour the band of dancers, who sing what is pleasing to his heart. He can do this because he sits at the right hand of Zeus. Nor will the band sing of Phoibos for one day only, for he is a fine subject for song. Who would not easily sing of Apollon?   Golden are his garments and his clothes-clasp and his lyre  and his Luktian bow and his quiver and his sandals. For Apollon is rich in gold and very wealthy, as testified by Pytho. And he is always handsome and forever young. Never has the down of manhood appeared on his blooming cheeks. His hair drips down fragrant oils on the ground. Not the oil of fat do the locks of Apollon let fall drip by drip, but the essence of healing. And in whatever city those drops fall to the ground, in that city all things are free from harm. No one has so many skills as Apollon. The archer is his lot, and the singer too—for to Phoibos belong archery and song—   and to him belong those who divine with pebbles, and who prophesize the future in words. Doctors have learned from him how to put off death. Phoibos, too, we call the god of Flocks from the time when, burning with passion for the youth Admetos, he raised yoked mares by the banks of the Amprussos. Without effort the herd would increase, nor would the goats lack young when mixed with the sheep, when Apollon cast his eyes upon them as they grazed, nor were the ewes without milk or barren, but all would have lambs suckling from them, and whoever had borne one offspring would soon bear two.

[rwac96]

Prompt

OG Stud. Gigolo

Ruby goes to the gigolo building to pick up her sister, only for one of those gigolo, Jaune, to think that she is here to fuck and leads the blushing girl to a room. The night will end with Ruby losing her v card in the best way.

It was supposed to be a trip to pick up Yang from the apartment complex, where most renters were gigolos. Ruby entered the building, and before she headed to the elevator, she was spotted by a muscular, blonde youth around Yang's age. Jaune introduced himself, assuming that the girl was here for a gigolo, though Ruby insisted that she arrived to pick up her sister. She was dragged to a room, unable to speak much more when she had a closer look at the young man's build, making her blushing and sputtering mess. Arriving at the room, Jaune began kissing her neck, which melted the unprepared Ruby's mind.

Pwalp!...Pwalp!...Pwalp!...Pwalp...Pwalp!...Pwalp!

"Ooh, Gods!!"

Now, Ruby was bent over the black couch, naked, and being rocked back and forth onto the cushion by the gigolo. Feeling Jaune's hands on her hips, his hips hammering away at her shapely, doughy buttocks. The silver-eyed girl wails as she felt his manhood pumping in and out of her formerly virgin pussy. Jaune's movements were slow, but he pushed his cock deep into her wet depths. Ruby shuddered as she felt his invading organ touch every part of her vaginal tunnel.

Schlap!...Schlap!...Schlap!...Schlap...Schlap!...Schlap!

"Aaaah," Ruby moans out, slightly turning her head to the thrusting Jaune. "Ooh, don't stooop!!"

"Lovin' your first time, huh?" Jaune huskily said as he rammed his hips against Ruby's Rubooty.

"I looove it~!!!" The silver-eyed girl wails happily, turning her head to face the couch. "Ooh, Gods! It's incredible~!!"

Platt!...Platt!...Platt!...Platt!...Platt!...Platt!

[kingsandbastardz]

more of the wips list

@cheetahing

shark-dick - a tale of narratives and severe misunderstandings

Ok this one will likely eventually be some flavor of dihua.

But it's basically continuing on the theme of narratives != reality, where I ask, "What if Jinyuan Alliance, and Di Feisheng in particular?"

Which, we know DFS isn't nearly as evil as the name Demon would suggest. But what else?

It starts with the idea of Jinyuan Alliance being the hive of scum and villiany and sexual deviance. Where it's the place where perverts go to roam free and wave their freak flag in a way polite society doesn't allow. Like, their poor prisoners! You'd be better off dead! Etc.

"So... you haven't? At all? Even when you're this old?" Fang Duobing asks with far more confusion than was warranted. Di Feisheng's eyes are closed as he cycles his energy through his meridians, his eyelashes arcing softly across his cheeks and his hair lifting and fluttering about as if buffeted from an invisible, spiraling wind. He doesn't respond beyond a faint but clearly disdainful snort. Offended, Fang Duobing points at him and demands, "So if shaoye grabs your- your jade rod, you're telling me you can just make the feeling go away?" A sharp brow twitching faintly, Di Feisheng immediately replies, "Yes." "I refuse to believe you." Really, Xiaobao? In Li Lianhua's opinion, if there was anyone who would take a largely ignored path to harness his youth's yang energy and efficiently turn himself into a high density cauldron of power, it would be Di Feisheng. The concept of taking sexual energy and transmuting it into something else was not a new one (there were entire schools of thought and exotic styles based around it), but this was an area largely ignored by earthly men and women for a reason -- only Di Feisheng could accidentally master systemic chastity out of annoyance that his adolescence was disrupting his focus. Li Lianhua carefully pours himself a cup a tea with perfectly steady hands and a blank mind. He can feel as Di Feisheng winds down his daily meditation - his energy slows and pulls inward and back, like the ocean's waves tugging lightly at bare toes as it withdraws at low tide. Li Lianhua should be impressed. He really should be. It was a great skill mastered at a very, very young age - a skill mastered without a teacher and without any understanding of what it could mean for Di Feisheng's future self. But instead, unexpectedly perverse words like "virgin" and "untouched" echo resonantly in the cavernous space between Li Lianhua's ears. Meanwhile, Di Feisheng has unexpectedly embarked on a wordy tale of something he personally witnessed. "I know a man who was prideful in his high energy and the size of his manhood. One day, we traveled together for a short time and was on a ship heading to [____] when he started arguing with a deckhand. The sailor insisted his reputation was too overblown. In a rage, my aquantance ripped open his pants and whipped out his cock --", Di Feisheng pauses and looks down at his arm, thoughtfully tracing a finger in the vicinity of his elbow, or maybe his armpit. Di Feisheng blandly continues, "--his cock comes out and he slaps it over the side of the ship's railing." (And the word cock coming out of his mouth makes both Fang Duobing and Li Lianhua twitch for different reasons.) Di Feisheng pauses again and looks sideways at nothing as he reaches his limit for words and struggles for more, "--Heaven was watching and was unhappy with him? There was a shark." "A-a shark?" "Big fish. Lots of teeth. It jumped out the water in a big arc the moment the meat came out and--- when it went back into the water, it took this aquaintence's cock with it." Fan Duobing's mouth had fallen open and remained open for the entirety of this telling. He shuts it with a snap. "It was a freak accident. But truly," Di Feisheng's brows arch questioningly. When there is no response, he says slyly, with great logic, "Why would I want anything to do with that?" Why indeed? Fang Duobing sits down. Li Lianhua has no response either, but not because he is struggling to decide whether this tale has any truth. It's because he realizes, with a sudden flood of fondness that he hides behind his tea, Lao Di may be inexperienced but he isn't innocent.

basically dfs is gonna fuck with fdb's brain about his 'innocence' for the foreseeable future. fdb is a 3-star intelligence against dfs' 5 stars. someone help him.

anyway.