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storyarcscribe · 4 days
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going to make you sweat
javier peña x f!reader | main masterlist
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summary: it's the hottest day of the year; you and javi want to make it hotter.
rating: 18+/explicit warnings: explicit smut. somewhat established relationship. jo's spelling, jo putting to practice her spanish. wordcount: 1.9k
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It begins with the sound of the fan.
Whirring. Whirring. Blowing nothing but warm, sticky heat around the over-boiled place.
For four days, the sun has been beating down relentlessly, acting as another unforgiving tyrant ruling over Colombia, forcing waves of heat to seep into homes, regardless of whether doors and windows are closed.
All but forcing everyone to seek refuge from the scorching onslaught.
It's why he's home.
It's why you didn't protest when his hand found your lower back, guiding you out to the passenger seat of his vehicle.
The unspoken understanding between you both fizzes in the air. All silence, discreet.
Just like the rest of the clandestine nature of your relationship.
Now, you’re lying as still as possible. Not even considering sliding your leg over to touch his—even if usually, you’d have done it a handful of times.
Cool showers offered no relief—your skin was already slick with dampness before you finished drying off. Every movement made the heat feel unbearable, trickling down your neck. Your limited attire, stuffed in a spare drawer at his, offers no relief; the white tee and panties cling to your skin, feeling like additional layers you long to peel away from your bones, not just your skin.
Your eyes flick towards him at the sound of his lighter—at the paper burning at the end, before the scent greets your nostrils.
Normally, it would barely irritate you, but now it twists your annoyance into a knot and uses it to fuel its fury. A glare not forcing him to stub it out, your mood souring, further making beads of perspiration collect along your collarbone and drip down the valley of your breasts, all but pooling where your body bends and creases as you remain on the sofa.
You can feel him watching.
Eyes likely following the path of sweat descending under your top—because even in unbelievable temperatures, you’re sure he’s mentally undressing you.
Because he looks wrecked, even with the cigarette burning between his fingers/.
Javier Peña's usually put-together look of swept-to-the-side hair is currently stuck damp to his forehead as sweat drips off the end of his sloped nose. The look is so reminiscent of what you’d imagine he'd look like if he had a full free day to fuck you; if it wasn’t rushed quickies or long, drawn-out nights before the two of you collapsed into sheets before doing it all over again on three hours of sleep.
At some point between coming home early and sitting beside you, his barely buttoned shirt has been discarded, leaving him in a pair of shorts he’d pulled on when he’d been grumbling about the fucking heat, paperwork and bureaucracy all in the space of a minute.
The fact he'd shed most of his layers allows you to trace your eyes down his body. Glance at the soft curve of his stomach, the firmness of his chest and those biceps you see flex when he’s leaning when he’s doing all he can not to flick his eyes from your face to your tits.
He's already caught you.
Taking a drag on his cigarette for a suspiciously long time before blowing the smoke out in one smooth movement. Eyes on you. Fixed. Never unfocused.
And fuck, if it doesn’t make you want him that much more.
“It’s too hot.”
“I said nothing.”
You snort. Loud. Full of intent.
Mind a scrambled mess of want, as your hips shift when your eyes flick south of his neck and land on his thighs.
“C’mon, Cariño,” he drawls, stubbing out his cigarette—punching the lit end out until it’s snuffed, “Come sit on my lap.”
A battle ensures in your skull. It’s weak, both the for and against, which is how you find yourself straddling him, palm flat to your thighs—finding the heat from his body no more intense than the sweltering environment around you.
“This what you want, me all sweaty on you?”
He chews his cheek, a glint in the dark of his eyes, a blip in the pool of desire—and your heart pounds in your chest. Breaths coming in short gasps, matching the rhythm of the fan in the corner.
"I'd have you on top of me however I can."
"Course you would," you retort.
His fingers flex, itch. Sneak in inches up your skin as he continues to breathe slowly, in and out, out and in.
You’re not sure who moves first, but your lips find his—passionate, fiery. Teeth almost grazing but your tongue slides in and licks past his teeth, swallowing his moan, his hiss, as you roll your clothed pussy over his hardening cock, tasting nothing but smoke, coffee and mint, a combination you know to be him.
“Mm—fuck,” he groans.
He sounds pained when he drags his mouth from yours, his fist full of the back of your sweat-soaked tee as he drags it off over your head—throwing it, it landing on the tiles with a wet slap, forcing your head to snap to the sound.
But he’s on you.
Mouth latching to your nipple, tongue swirling, before tracing a line up your breast and across your collarbone.
“Taste so fucking good, cariño.”
It’s stifled, the moan—forcing your best smirk to show, “Put your head between my thighs and say that, Peña.”
And he considers it.
Your words.
Head tilting marginally, the slightest of movements that he’ll pretend never occurred. But he moves, shifts. Practically bucks his hips into you as he repositions, and you land on your bare back on the sofa with an oomph.
A comment arrives on your tongue, almost fizzling before it’s swallowed at the way forces your knees together and yanks your panties down your thighs. Soaked, ruined—both from the mere existence of him and the heat. Discarding them, throws them into some dark space as he glances down at the place between your thighs.
“Even in this heat, she’s pretty.”
You try not to turn away, bury your face in the smoked-scented cushions of his sofa as his words meet you. A sudden desire to hide, to cover—
“You not like that, cariño, when I call her pretty?” His knuckles part your folds, teasing, dragging them up and down as you squirm, whine his name. “Tell me.”
Somehow, all fucking unknown to you, more heat floods your cheeks. It's embroiled in embarrassment, shyness—two things you’re sure he spends most of his time trying to fuck out of you, but has failed to do so thus far—
He says your name.
Not your nickname. Not agent.
Eyes snapping to him, throat dry as he continues to tease, as his thumb presses on your clit and makes you hiss.
“No—ffff-feel embarrassed, alright? Fuck.”
You hear his tongue click—it’s the last thing you hear before ringing. Before two fingers slide into you, slide with ease as they delve deep, his frame coming over your body as he moves them, as he curls them. Doing his best to undo as his eyes come into focus, the top of his tongue dragging over his parted lips.
And the ringing dies down.
Forced to as a pebble of sweat falls from his nose and drips to your breastbone.
“No need to be embarrassed with me.”
Your hips try to buck and seek.
“Impaciencia,” he groans—moisture glistening at the base of his throat, palm keeping you down, still, fingers curled inside of you as you gasp. “You’re… fuck. I need to taste you.”
The breath of his words sweeps over your inner thigh.
“Javi, don't tease—“
“I’ve got you, cariño—don’t worry. I’ll make you come again, and again, and…”
You’re not sure if he speaks the last again—or if it’s buried into your pussy. A high chance you blank it out with other noises as his tongue fucks into your hole. Finger on your clit, swirling, drawing shapes your brain can’t manifest or conjure as you become aware of your moans.
Out of instinct, your fingers find his hair—slick with sweat, trying to curl between your fingers as his tongue flattens. All precise, taunting. Forcing you to the edge and dangling you before pulling you back.
It almost makes you thrash, forcibly lift your hips against him when his face lifts—face slick with your want as he smirks.
“Lo sé, cariño.”
“Please.”
It leaves your lips undignified, dignity gone, transformed into more raw, desperate—a plea that cuts through heat. One answered as he lifts your knee over his hip, feeling bare skin, red hot body heat and the nudging of his cock at your entrance.
He steals your breath, it stammering as he sinks into you in one fluid movement. Your fingers grasp, finding the hair at the nape of his neck again as his mouth comes to your ear, hearing it, the hiss between clenched teeth.
When he moves, your lips find his. It’s different, softer and almost gentle. All measured movements gone, lost, thrown out when you breathe him in, when your mouths are open, moaning into each other's throats as your heels dig into his lower back.
And you want to hold on.
But he’s driven you mad. Teeth grating over his shoulder as you tug on his hair. Tasting it, sweat, sex and salt. Your neck further coated in the slick of the heat, the moment; perspiration trickling, sliding over your skin as his hand grasps your hip firmly. Tightly. Practically noticing the hints of intimacy the two of you pretend aren’t there, but rumble and thrum whenever the two of you are alone.
And the thought adds to the feeling of that impending wave rising inside of you again, more angry, needy than it had been before—
“So good for me, cariño. My good girl.”
“Yours.”
It snakes out, too late to retract. Not even caring that it’s there, staining the space between you both, polluting it. Because it’s the truth.
Some days the only thing you can full on believe—
“Yeah, that’s it. Mine, right? All fucking mine?“
His hips thrust into you harder, matching the tone that makes you even wetter than you were seconds before.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
“Yes. Yes. Ye—”
“Fuck, cariño.”
You‘re close. So close. It almost blinding in the way it tries to force your eyes to clench shut, but you can't look away. Not from him. Each flex of his muscles, the way his teeth grit as he fucks into you, makes your body both taut and boneless.
“Wanna feel you, cariño,” he groans, breath ragged, tortured out. “Let me feel you come, baby. Please.”
Tightening around him, fingers jerking on his hair, he meets your eyes.
Not able to fight it, not able to stop it from unravelling as it begins to crest—
"Let me feel you come, baby. Please." His tone all full of gravel, insistent, demanding. Practically unwilling to bend as it brushes itself into your ear. 
His name cracks out of your throat like thunder, slamming against the walls as it rips through you. Making your back arch into him, hearing him groan; hearing him hiss and fucking moan as you shake, thighs quaking around his sweat-tinged skin before he grunts as he spills into you.
It’s silence, except for heaving breaths.
The dull noise of the fan comes back to you, replacing the ringing from before as you slowly peel your legs from his body.
You’re not sure what you expect when he lifts his head, but it isn’t the look there. The one matched with a smile, sly but still a smile—chest rising and falling as he kneels, staring down at you.
Taking you in, flicking his eyes to the place the two of you had just been conjoined.
“Fucking hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
And even if you roll your eyes, you hide a smile behind the back of your hand, whispering a "Cállate, Peña."
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storyarcscribe · 10 days
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me n my bestie also made a playlist and update it after every chapter 😭
ok stop this is literally so exciting, i love you guys
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storyarcscribe · 12 days
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So like what if you’re Javi P’s co-worker and you get drawn into going undercover with him at some seedy bar, posing as his… let’s say lady friend for the night.
And you always dress practically, you know? In case you need to give chase, but tonight you’re in a skimpy little dress that makes Javi’s eyes pop.
And at some stage in the night, to lend credence to the facade -or maybe just because he wants to, he isn’t sure - Javi pulls you onto his lap. Your ass perched across his sturdy thighs. The hem of your silly little dress riding almost all the way up, barely covering you. His splayed hand bracing at the small of your back, smoothing up and down, itching to slide down to feel the globes of your ass.
Your hot lips sliding down the column of his throat now to lend credence to the facade - or maybe because you want to, he’s not sure - and he thinks about you tasting the sweat on him but you’re not stopping. Not stopping and he never loses his cool but… damn.
You nip at his earlobe with your teeth before you whisper your astute observations of the scene to him. Never wavering even as you do this, your breath fanning warm against the shell of his ear and he’s convinced he can’t help it as his free hand slides on to your bare thigh, fingers sinking into your flesh and driving up, slow, towards the hem of your dress. His skin is buzzing, all warm from your touch as your hands wander over him too, palm smoothing at the bare expanse of his chest beneath the deep “v” of his shirt. Your scent all over him, his jeans tightening as you wriggle on his lap, curling further into him with his thighs bracing you… and he almost forgets that you’re pretending. That he’s pretending. This is the most secure, straightforward cover he’s ever had and he realises it’s so easy to want you.
He almost forgets why you’re here at all, honestly. That is, until your languid, honeyed movements turn suddenly cool and decisive. Until you whip your head around to signal to another operative in the room that the target is moving out. Until you stand too, grabbing your jacket and concealed weapon and moving out, high heels be damned.
But Javi… Fuck. Javi looks down to his lap, still warm from the press and weight of you on him, and he notices… the wet patch on his jeans. Holy shit. Your wetness on his jeans, where your heat had rested over his sturdy thigh. His arousal swells painfully against the seam of his blue jeans at the thought of it. The thought that being close to him like this had turned you on. Enough to soak through your panties. Enough to darken the denim and leave him a reminder that maybe you weren’t pretending at all. All that for him? So wet that you’ve soaked him, even as he’s sure you would have tried with every scrap you had to resist it?
“You coming?” you hiss from the doorway, and the sudden swell of his arousal makes it hard to stand - but he does. He stands because he’s motivated to wrap this op up quickly. He’s suddenly very motivated, in fact. You step out into the alley together, and you’re stumbling and giggling a little, hooking your arm into his - to add further credence to the facade. Making eyes and him and God.
Javi pins you against the wall. Positions close enough to the mark outside that you can still observe the interaction. Do your due recon. You won’t miss anything, he knows it, and so he focusses on making things look… as convincing as possible.
It’s easy. He pins you to the wall with his body, hips slanting towards you. He tilts your head and his lips hungrily meet your pulse point. He tongues languidly at the taste of your perfume. Across the ridges and cords of your neck as the act punches a breath from your lungs. He works you until no-one could possibly doubt the scene before them. It works him up too, so much so that if you asked him why he was here at all tonight, his first thought would be that he came here for you.
“You want me to take you home tonight?” he purrs, and you offer him a perfectly pitched coy smile as you sling the loop of your arms around his neck. Always on your game. Still watching. Still working. Fuck, you’re a dream, he thinks, and the wet patch is burning a hole in his thigh. He wants to feel it for himself with his fingers, right here. Has never needed anything more.
“Peña, they’re gone,” you impress, your voice trembling with a brazen want which sounds every bit authentic - despite it all. “You can drop the act now, huh?”
“I know,” Javi breathes. “I know they’re gone.” He didn’t miss it. Didn’t fail to hear the thrum of the motorcycle and the sudden hush which has fallen over the alley. He’s definitely not pretending any longer. “So. How about it, darling? Do you want me to take you home tonight?”
You blink at him from beneath your lashes - pupils lust-blown- as Javi kicks your legs open. Shoves his thigh up against your heat as your bare, warm legs bracket him. “Or if you really can’t wait…?”
“What gives you that idea?” you protest, stubborn and proud as ever, even as you grind yourself down on his leg, angling your hips further towards him. “This is just work, Javi… I mean...” Your eyes turn big and searching then, in a rare moment of vulnerability. Despite himself, it makes Javi wonder if that’s how you’ll look the first time his cock spears you, as you wonder for a second if he really is too much. “…Isn’t it?”
He offers you a smug, lopsided smile. “You soaked through my jeans, darling.”
You shake your head softly, more of your weight sinking into his hold as you go even more limp against the wall. “Fuck, I’m-“
“-Don’t be embarrassed, sweetheart. It’s okay.” He dips his lips towards the shell of your ear. “You know? I wouldn’t even mind if you soaked my sheets instead.”
He grabs the meat of your hips in his broad hands. Angles you down to slide your heat against his thigh. The way your eyes flutter closed, followed by a honeyed moan, sends a zip of pleasure straight to his cock. He could drink down those noises all night - and for breakfast. He could have you for breakfast.
“Can I feel you?” he begs, his fingertips lingering at the hem of your dress.
You bite down on your lower lip, eyes darting around the alleyway. “Not here, Javi.”
“No?”
“No. Take me home.”
Reluctantly, he moves away from you, and he groans as he once more looks down at his jeans to see the wet patch has grown.
He is arrested there for a moment, and yet when he looks back up you are already waiting at the door of his vehicle.
“You coming?” You ask him for the second time tonight.
Finally, he finds some game, from somewhere. “Not as many times as you will be.”
Just like earlier, he’s more than confident he can get the job done… it’s just that this time, there won’t be any need at all for pretending.
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storyarcscribe · 20 days
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hanging on the telephone a sex on fire one shot
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pairing: ceo!joel x fem!reader
summary: your boss picks a convenient time to ask for a favor.
warnings: age gap eat my fuckin shorts (reader is late 20s, joel late 40s), workplace relationship, imbalance of power dynamic, joel likes (semi) public sex again!, softdom!joel, fingering, unprotected piv, daddy kink, praise kink, cursing.
word count: 2.9k
series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 💚
“Sh– Fuck – Shit –”
“So goddamn tight, baby, she’s so –” he pinches your hip with his left hand, presses harder on your clit with his right thumb, “– she’s so fuckin’ tight for me.”
“Daddy, I’m…I’m gonna c…Oh, shit, I'm...”
Joel tips his head back, two beats of cocky laughter pushing from his chest. Even with your vision quickly blurring, your eyes rolling shut, you can still see the way his jaw flexes with it, the way his Adam’s apple bobs. Can hear the curve of the words, shaped by the smirk on his lips.
“You gonna come, baby? That what you’re tryna tell me?”
Your hips circle, body clenching around three thick fingers. “M-hm,” you force through gritted teeth.
“Fuck, pretty girl,” he growls, feeling your little cunt squeezing down to his knuckles. “That two now, or three?”
“Th-three.”
“Three,” he whispers, though you know he already fucking knew. He just wanted you to admit it. Wanted to watch as your lips twisted around an answer, struggled through your orgasm quickly approaching. “’n how long have we been alone?”
Your head tilts onto your shoulder, hands reaching down to clutch around his big wrist. You grip onto the strap of his watch, the cold glass face shocking your burning skin.
Joel laughs again, a hot breath of air across your lips, but he doesn’t slow the snap of his fingers, the circles of his thumb. He takes your jaw in his free hand and turns your ear to his lips, whispering, “Asked you a question, baby girl.”
“F-uh-ck,” you whine, hips beginning to give. “I don’t know, Daddy, I don’t –”
His teeth nip at your lobe, lips press into the skin under your ear. A low rumble, wet on your skin when he murmurs, “Ain’t even been ten minutes.”
There had been no recovery time between your first two orgasms. The first bled straight into the next – Joel and his fingers had drawn them from your body before the elevator had even delivered Martha to the lobby, you’re willing to bet.
She’d buttoned her coat, announced that she needed some fresh air – offered for you to join her, and then shook her head when you called back from Joel’s office that you were fine, thanks, Martha.
Maybe she’s onto the two of you. Maybe she knows all the signs of a secret work romance. Hell, maybe Joel’s done this before. You don’t fucking know.
Reason (and perhaps a smidge of desperate hope) convinces you otherwise. Still – you can’t remember the last time the woman left for lunch alone. Can’t remember the last time she gave you two peace in Joel’s office for more than ten minutes, without popping her head in to gossip or roll her eyes at the pair of you.
You hadn’t been up to anything when she was here, anyways – but it didn’t take long after hearing that sharp ding and the signature rattle of the doors announcing her departure, for Joel’s hands to find your waist.
He made some quip, like, Maybe she’s got her own secret man she’s off to see, and you hadn’t the time to come up with anything worth half a laugh before he pulled you into his lap and slipped his fingers up the inside of your thigh.
When did this become what you do, anyway, you wonder? Sneaking around behind your colleagues’ backs; feeling brave enough to slip a palm down your boss’s front and cup his fucking dick through his pants anytime he looks at you a heartbeat too long. Letting the guy spread your legs on the desk you’ve worked at for three years now; letting him kiss and lick and feast between your thighs.
When did this become normal?
He’s intoxicating. He’s all you fucking think about these days. I’m bored, tell me something funny. Can I sit here while you’re on that meeting? When can we fuck next? No one ever fucked me like you do.
“Fuck,” Joel grunts, wrist slowing as the edges of your vision blur. “Like that, baby girl?”
“Just – just like that,” you beg, hands gripping around his shoulders.
“She likes that, doesn’t she?” Joel utters, pulling you closer. “Come on, baby, give me one more.”
The world halts for a second, splits in two, and crashes back together, throwing you over the edge. You come with a pathetic whimper, folding over Joel’s body and rocking uncontrollably, gripping onto his hair to steady yourself.
His arm wraps around the small of your back, holding you down on his hand until you loosen again – his fingers soaked, glistening. He slips them out, rubbing your clit slowly with his middle finger.
“Fuck,” you breathe, reaching for his hand.
His fingers knot around yours, your release slippery and warm on his knuckles. He takes your jaw in his other hand, pulls you in, and slips his tongue across yours. Something wet and needy, something as meaningless as it is meaningful.
Something which beckons your hands to his belt, your fingers slipping behind the thick leather.
The moment is interrupted by an annoying ping from Joel’s phone discarded to the opposite side of the desk.
Blindly, still with his lips attached to yours, he reaches over and swipes it with one hand. He breaks apart the kiss to look down, blinking at the screen. “Oh, shit,” he says, flatly.
You lean over, one hand still lazily playing with his, squinting at the upside-down text thread. “What?” you ask, fiddling with the undone buttons of his shirt.
“Shit,” again, hissed and now…irritated. “Did you–? I didn’t ask you to book a table at Ricci’s, did I?”
“The Italian place?”
Joel nods, hurriedly.
You shake your head, slowly. A little confused. “Why? What’s…?”
“I’m meeting a client there this afternoon,” he mutters, shifting in his chair. The movement rocks you back and forth, but Joel keeps a hand on your hip to hold you.
A weight you know all too well brushes the inside of your thigh. You both clock it. And then you both ignore it.
“Goddamn it,” Joel groans. “There ain’t no chance that Martha…?”
Your head tilts. “You know damn well you don’t trust anyone with that shit but me. No, it’s not booked. You never asked. But it’s fine, just call ‘em. These places can always make room, Mr. Miller.”
Joel squints, jaw lifting when you drag your nose along it to kiss his neck. His rough beard scratches your nose and chin.
But he’s squinting, when you pull back. Half-turning away from you, one eye closed; mouth twisted in a dumb smirk.
“What?” you ask, frowning.
“You can’t do it for me?”
Your eyes roll. “You fucked up,” you fix the tousled strands of his hair back into place, “fix it. You’re a big boy.”
“Willing to pay you a little extra,” he offers, pulling your hips down against his crotch. “Generous amount.”
“Generous,” you echo, letting him drag your slick mess all over his black pants. Your fingers slip beneath his belt, loosening the fly of his pants.
He’s hard already – solid and heavy when your hand dips below his boxer shorts and wraps around his warm cock. Turned on just by the feeling of you around his fingers, the sight and sound of you unraveling in his lap.
He hisses quietly when you pull him free; smearing wet onto your fingers as you drag your fist up and down. And when you look back up, he’s not watching his cock in your hands. Not looking at the skin exposed by your tangled underwear, your skirt sitting almost as high as your waist.
He’s looking straight at you. Your fluttering eyelashes, your tongue dabbing at the wet forming along your bottom lip. His eyes shoot quick as lightning from one to the other. “Like playing with it, huh?” he asks quietly. “’s your favorite thing in the world.”
You grin. “Like it better when it’s…” you push yourself up, running his wide tip along the seam of your cunt, separating your folds and pausing right below your vagina, “…here.”
Joel’s hands push heavier on your hips – lowering you slowly and gently enough that you could stop him, but sure and steady enough that he knows you won’t dare to. He breaches your opening, intrusion enough to stop your breathing, and slips in.
It glides in so smoothly, so easily that you barely feel the stretch at first. Still soft and soaked from your third release, your body pulls him in – until it starts to hurt.
A tiny gasp from your lips and Joel holds his arms out, letting you clutch onto the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. “Easy, easy,” he says, holding your elbows.
It’s only been a couple times. And as good as they were, you’re still not used to him. He’s still bigger than anyone you’ve ever had before; it still hurts just a little, anytime he pushes in.
But still, you smile bracing yourself now with two palms on his chest – his hair damp with sweat in little swirls on the skin below his clavicle. “Still not – callin’ them,” you pant, taking him halfway.
Joel clicks his teeth, studying your cheeky expression. “Be a big girl ‘n do it,” he whispers, eyes following the round trail of your fingers on his sticky chest. “Do it for your daddy.”
You look up at him, smirk tugging on the corners of your lips. “’n what if Daddy doesn’t deserve it? You – shit – you fucked up,” you repeat.
Joel’s hips lift from the chair, cock slipping deeper, painfully slow as it fills you all the way. When the coarse hair at his base meets your clit, your nails digging little curved marks into his skin, he smirks. “He feel like he don’t deserve it to you?”
“No,” you gasp suddenly, eyes screwing shut, “feels – feels so good, Daddy.”
“Uhuh. You gonna call the restaurant for him?”
Another splintered breath. He’s so fucking big, so uncomfortable when you’re sat on him like this. “Yeah,” you whine, “I’ll call ‘em, Daddy, please just…please…”
His chin lifts, lids flickering over inky eyes. “Ah,” he clips, still holding you up on his cock, “no begging. Not ‘til you call.”
And he drops his hips, holding you off his length as you shakily stand. He helps tug your skirt back into place, watches as you lean over him to reach for the phone.
You do your best to sound annoyed, covering the scratch marks of desperation in your voice when you ask, “What’s the number?”
Joel reads it out, standing up, too, and you rest your elbows on the desk, cracking your neck.
Some chipper voice answers the phone, belting down the line to thank you for your call and ask what he can do for you today. He’s too fucking enthusiastic, too distracting, and only when he pauses to check the system for any free tables do you notice the weight at your ass.
The cold of his belt buckle kissing the underside of your thigh, the peeling of your skirt up, up, up. Hands massaging your ass cheeks; then one cupping between your legs to nudge your clit gently.
You jolt forward, a warped sound crying from your lips. The guy says, Pardon me, ma’am? and you stutter your way through a sentence in reply as Joel hooks your panties to the side.
“We’ve got…let’s see…” The host hums some stupid fucking tune, clicks his tongue against his teeth while you tug on the phone cord – unable to stop from stealing a glance over your shoulder and yet unwilling to give your boss the satisfaction of knowing you’re watching.
Joel pulls the belt free from its loops, drops it to the seat of his chair with a thud, and lines up right behind you.
You cover the microphone. “This what you wanted?” you hiss.
He hums. “You’re the one who bent over, darlin’.”
“Asshole.”
“Way to speak to your boss,” he grumbles, and shoves in.
“Christ,” you yelp, and the host pauses again.
“Um…We have one o’clock?” he asks, keyboard clicking in the background.
Your voice catches, body bouncing against the desk rhythmically. The wooden edge shunts roughly against your pelvis, bruises likely blooming already with the rate Joel’s going.
He bends forward, his right ear lining with the phone. “Say again?” he whispers.
“One,” you repeat.
Joel shakes his head. “Too soon. Ain’t hungry yet.”
“It’s twelve,” you mutter, teeth gritted, “you might be hungry in an hour.”
“Hm,” he considers, leaning back upright. “Maybe, long as I keep myself busy.”
He thrusts forward again, pulling you by the waist until you’re flush against his chest. His hands slip around to cup your breasts, squeezing and pinching and holding you still.
“Anything – later?” you ask down the line, switching the phone to the opposite ear to let Joel in at your neck. His teeth graze the skin, sharp pain when the blood vessels splatter streaks of crimson.
The host offers up a table at two-fifteen, which Joel seems to like the sound of, given the moan he lets free when you ask.
“Two-fifteen’s good,” you say, dropping the phone to the desk when your boss’s hand sneaks around your hip. “Joel,” you gasp, holding your voice at as low a volume as you can, “Joel, I swear to – Jesus Christ, you’re gonna –”
He’s laughing, playing with your clit as he fucks you, lips buried into the crook of your shoulder. “You my good girl?” he asks, bending your bodies forward. “Then book the goddamn table.”
“Ma’am?” the host’s asking, when you lift the phone to your ear again. “You still there?”
“Still – still here,” you breathe, flattening the whine in your voice. Joel’s starting to falter, starting to lose his rhythm. You can feel yourself beginning to tighten around him, give in to the pressure between your hips.
“What’s the name, ma’am?”
“Huh?”
Joel laughs, lips against your ear again. “Tell ‘im, pretty girl. Tell him who your daddy is.”
“My – fuck – M-Miller,” you reply, knees buckling. “Miller.”
“Alright, a table for two for…Miller…And that’s M-I-L-L–”
“–E-R, yep. Miller.”
“Good girl,” Joel pants against your temple, bristles of his beard grazing your cheek. He wraps one arm tight around your waist, clamping you against his body, the other still toying with your clit. Hips snapping roughly into yours, he whispers sharp in your ear, “I’m gonna come, darlin’, gonna fill you up real good, alright?”
“Can you wai–?”
“Alright, that’s you booked in, ma’am! We can’t wait to –”
“Great,” you choke back, falling forward with Joel at your back, “thanks. Thank you, we’ll see you – see you –”
Joel reaches over your shoulder and jams a thumb into the hook of the phone. “Fuck,” he groans, holding you steady as his cock throbs and a wet heat floods somewhere deep inside you.
The handset slips from your grasp, clattering against the desk as your body falls limp, your pussy jolting around him. His hands are the only thing keeping you steady, keeping you from melting into a puddle at his feet. A love-drunk sigh, the word Daddy spilling out into the room – the last thing before your breath cuts and he’s dragging you back down into the chair with him again.
Joel sinks back into the leather, sighing as he settles you again in his broad lap. He kisses you until you stir – lips soft against your temple, your cheek, your neck, to bring you back to him. His cock’s still stiff, half-limp and shining at the bottom of his stomach.
“’s a good girl,” he coos, letting you collapse against his chest.
Your cunt pulses, clenching around nothing; Joel’s come and yours trickling into your underwear.
“I hate you,” you whisper, playing with his hands.
“I know,” he mumbles into your skull, “bad boss.”
You breathe a laugh. “Who’s the client?”
“Mm,” Joel muses, adjusting in the chair, “nobody. Canceled on me last minute.”
He grins when you snap upright, head cocking. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just put me through all that for no goddamn reason?”
“Naw,” he protests, frowning, “I thought the two of us could go.”
There’s a softness to his face which dampens the fire in your belly as quickly as it ignited. Something genuine, something honest. You know him well enough by now to tell when he’s asking something of you, and not expecting it.
You feel your cheeks heat. “To lunch? Together?”
He shrugs. “Why the hell not? We’re going to Paris together.”
You blink at him, considering it. He’s not fucking wrong, is he? That same fire strikes again – only, a little further north, a little harder to control. It tickles your lungs, shaking the breath as you suck it in. You cover yourself with a blunt, “Martha’s gonna be pissed,” laced through as easy-going a sigh as you can manage.
Joel laughs, nodding. “I am sure she’ll get over it. Quiet office for the afternoon. Paradise.”
You smile, looking down at your hands clasped around one of his. You give his knuckles a small squeeze, and mutter, “You’re paying, Miller. And I’m ordering big.”
If not for the dark beard on his cheeks, and the sudden protective movement of his hand over them – if not for the fact that you’ve never in all your time here seen it happen…you’d swear the man was blushing.
“Okay,” Joel says, cheeks lifting. “Anything you want.”
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Nick Offerman wins Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted Series at the Spirit Awards for "The Last of Us."
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Yup.
@elliespuns @typewriter83 this is what I chose this morning and decided to share... I just... yeah... being horny has a lot to do with it, but I can't be blamed.
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"Eos" by Emile Corsi, 1860
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PEDRO PASCAL Interviewed by Access Hollywood | SAG Awards 2024
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helen ; chapter one
dear joel
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Si vis pacem, para bellum. Or, the inciting incident.
series masterlist | my masterlist pairing: joel miller x f!reader tags/warnings: 18+ (MDNI), john wick AU, (retired) hitman!joel, husband!joel, graphic violence, established relationship, artist!reader, love as worship (and blasphemy), blood + injuries, murder, cars, joel lifts reader once, reader has hair, oral sex (f receiving - aka munch!joel returns), married fluff, angst, threats of rape/SA, home invasion, disgusting awful men, childhood/religious trauma, the typical alcohol + smoking + profanity, erotic paintings, dividers by @/saradika word count: ~ 8.2k a/n: so i'm posting this and sprinting away because i'm terrified. that being said, this story means more to me than words can say and i sincerely hope you enjoy what i have to offer. thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you think!! gigantic thanks to @cavillscurls for beta reading this chapter and being generally incredible throughout this whole process. i couldn't have done it without ya baby ❤️ next
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PREFACE
“Love is my mover, source of all I say.”
— The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto II.
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The blood is tangy, near-sweet, as he swipes his forearm over his mouth and smears crimson on his shirtsleeve. It tingles faintly on his lips and crackles, warm as the melt from a late-winter snow. He feels it settle in the grooves of his palms, the hairs of his beard. He’s drowning in it. 
Joel Miller grins as the punch rocks his jaw. 
His opponent hits hard, but he’s slow. He’ll take five punches in the time it takes to wind up for one. Joel brings his arm up to block the next and delivers a blow to the sternum with his knee as his opponent’s guard drops. Wide open, the man stumbles a few steps back, choking down the telltale wheeze of being winded. Joel marches forward, relentless in his crusade, grasping him by the scruff of his neck, teeth bared like a mad wild dog, and bears his skull down on the side of the railing. Around them, the wind howls and lashes at his clothes, but he still hears the pained scream as if it were poured into his ears. 
The man drops to his knees, and Joel grabs him again, bashing his head repeatedly against the steel bar, the lapel of an Italian leather coat bunching between his fingers, tainted by rainwater and the fist of the man who's about to take his life. 
And fuck, Joel wants to make it last. 
But there's a knife in his opponent’s hand, conjured from the darkness of his coat pocket, and Joel must release him to avoid the lethal slash of the blade. Blinking blood and lashing rain from his eyes, the man lunges with a snarl, and Joel recovers from his lost victory, stopping him with his fingers curled around his opponent’s wrist. He brings his hand to the crook of the man’s elbow and uses his leverage to snap the bone.
Yowling, the man drops to his haunches, the knife clattering to the ground. Joel, chest heaving, stands over him, flexing his fingers as he readies his fist for the killing blow.
His name leaves the man’s bloodied mouth, accompanied by a mouthful of crimson-tainted saliva spat on the ground at Joel’s feet. 
“Joel…” He lifts his head, cradling his own broken arm, and sneers. There’s a chilling glow of satisfaction in it. “Did you get your perfect life, Joel? Do you really think you’ve won? It won’t ever stop. Not after you’ve killed me, not after you’ve killed all of them. Is that what you’re going to do? Kill them all?”
Joel staggers backward to pick up the knife, clamping his hand over the curve of his opponent’s shoulder, and drives the blade down into his neck.
“Yeah.”
He leaves him slumped against the railing, choking on his own blood, and limps his way to one of the beaten-up Range Rovers whose front right bumper was totaled in the crash. Joel groans as he settles into the front seat, gnashing his teeth together as he lifts the hem of his dress shirt to inspect the damage. 
The bullet has pierced the soft flesh of his stomach. Blood blossoms bright through the white fabric and spirals outward. Joel blinks away rainwater and pulls his phone from his pocket, the screen smeared with blood. He doesn’t know if it belongs to him.
He grits his teeth and makes a call. 
In the back of his head, Joel vaguely recalls an old song of prayer. He used to watch others sing it while he lingered in the shadows at the back of the cathedral. He would memorise the shape of the words leaving their mouths and wonder how a benevolent God, who had shaped man—perfection—from red clay, could have made him. 
He would lower his head as if swept up in a tide of repentance, examining the bones beneath his hands. The flickering of tendons. The bulge of veins as he delicately folded his fingers into a fist.
Red clay. Blood. The old dance of serpent and man.
He was fourteen when he escaped.
Joel looks down at his bloodied hands. They’ve grown since then. They’re stronger, thicker, scarred. There are no pictures of him as a young boy, but if he saw one, he knows he would not recognise himself. Not his eyes nor his hands nor the set of his jaw. God makes man makes boy. He is destined for Hell.
The call goes to voicemail. 
Joel curls his hand into a fist and whispers a prayer.
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Something cool and wet collides with Joel’s forehead as he stalks into the airport. It’s begun to rain. 
His target gate is close, and he's early. The press of bodies begins to crowd him. Prickling body spray and sickly-sweet perfume and sunburned skin from Spring Break return flights. Joel shoves through them, unseen, unnoticed amid the rowdy din of reunions. The collar of his shirt sticks to the nape of his neck. It’s the sensation of being strangled, clammy palms slick against his own skin. He adjusts his jacket and tightens his grip on the black fabric dangling from his hand. 
Joel waits by the gate, his eyes flitting between its apex and the people milling about him, reuniting with partners and parents and children. Nobody seems suspicious, but his fingers still dance upon the blade hidden in the inner lining of his leather jacket. Those performing wide berths around the scowling man try not to make eye contact. Most don't notice his presence at all. 
He waits, flicking his sleeve up every couple minutes to check the time on the inside of his wrist. Every tick of the thin hand registers in the pulse of his heart against his ribs. 
He hears the suitcase before he sees it—and it’s hard to miss. One wheel is wonky, and the case stutters in its path along the polished floor. It’s huge, pink, hideous. 
His hand dropping from the blade in his pocket, Joel makes his move. 
You see him approaching and drop the lopsided suitcase, shrieking as he takes you up in his arms. 
He swings you around twice, holding you firm against him, your fingers grabbing desperately at the locks of his curly, brown-grey hair. Joel nestles his face in your throat and breathes in: vanilla and shampoo and the unmistakable scent of a you he can never shake. Home.
You shudder into him, your feet barely scraping the floor as he holds you around the waist, one hand cradling the back of your head. Joel lets his eyes close. 
Daisies made of diamonds dangle from your wrist, connected by a fine golden chain. He can feel the faux petals dig into the back of his neck, etching their shape into the phantom pain of the ink peeking out from his collar. Sometimes, his skin would pull back with the needle, briefly protruding from his body like a tent made of flesh, as if grasping feebly onto some innocent time before the black hands of Dürer were permanently his. His to remember. His to loathe. 
There is a slight in the way his gift to you, wrapped snugly around your wrist since the first anniversary, kisses the old wound, the tip of the cross, and all he feels is the echo of agony. He holds you tighter.
“Can’t breathe, honey,” you croak, shoulders shaking with laughter. 
Joel mutters an apology, loosening his grip on you just enough to pull away and cup your face in his hands. His thumb traces the curve of your jaw, and you beam up at him, smoothing back the hair you’d tousled with your fingers. A curl swoops back down over his forehead.
“Hi,” you say softly. 
“Hi,” says Joel, already on his way to kissing you, his mouth slanting over yours. 
He tastes of mint and smells of his dark cologne, pine, Joel. Your Joel. And you kiss him like it—your hand cupping the nape of his neck, the other sliding up his strong, broad back, your lips meeting in a consuming kiss that knocks you off-kilter. He bends slightly over you, keeping you upright with a large hand on your lower back. 
“Never leave again,” mumbles Joel, grinning against your mouth, his hand sliding down your arm to your left hand, where two glimmering bands rest on your third finger. Your hands intertwine, and he bumps his nose into yours. 
You give him another short kiss. “Get me out of here.”
Joel slides your raincoat over your shoulders and you slip your arms through. He presses his lips to your forehead and closes his eyes, letting himself linger briefly in your space before he scoops up the handle to your affront of a suitcase and escorts you out back to the car. 
He opens the passenger-side door to let you slide into your seat, securing your case in the back, and makes his way around the vehicle. You reach for the collar of his jacket and pull him toward you for a kiss, grasping his jaw between your thumb and forefinger. He grins crookedly when you pull away, bushing the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone. 
“Missed you,” he says.
You sink your teeth into your bottom lip. “Yeah? How much?”
He reaches across the console and kisses you deeply, making you gasp into him as his hand slips underneath your silky little blouse and fits his fingers in the grooves between your ribs. Your skin prickles with goosebumps under his touch as his exploration migrates to your belly, sliding south, ever lower, his hand playing at the waistband of your panties—
“Okay,” you laugh, smacking his hand away. “Okay. You’re paying for parking, Miller.”
“I’ve got money,” he says plainly, dipping his head to kiss you again, his pupils fattening as he tries to gorge on all of you at once. You place a hand on his chest, enjoying the strong pulse of his heartbeat where you typically rest your head, and gently push him back. 
“Take me home,” you coo, your gaze sweeping fondly over the face that hasn’t changed, that you cannot forget, “and show me how much you missed me.”
His wedding band coolly kisses your cheek as he retracts his hand, reluctantly turning his key in the ignition. “Yes, ma’am.”
He’s always been a meticulous driver, expert in the way he flattens his palm on the wheel, his other on the back of your headrest, turns the car out of the spot, and merges onto the freeway. When he no longer needs his other hand, he gives it to you, and you bring his long-scarred knuckles to your lips. 
His hands are marked by years of use, of abuse, speckled with little white scars, freckles, divots, curves. You already know the lines in his palms, have traced them and painted them and put them under sensitive study with your body. But you turn his hand over nonetheless, your own fingertips careful in their examination, following their contours as if searching for a change. But they’re the same—he’s the same—and so you tuck your fingers between his and bring your palms together in a warm, awaited kiss.
It’s only been a month, but you study his profile as if years have passed. He’s still Joel, still surly, plush lips curved into a permanent pout, the space between his brows marked by a ponderous gash, the vein in his throat fluttering in silence when a driver cuts him off or he spots a car following too closely. He’s a good study, practised in his stoicism. 
His nose is artful. Its convex slope, pronounced, strong, curves deliciously into his upper lip, the soft greying hairs in between a space of waiting. His mouth, soft, learned, often languageless, is what you know best of him. You know it like your own—can trace its shape in the dark, hands behind your back. The strong jawline, the slight wrinkles beside his eyes, ones he never had before you met him, the patches of skin disrupting the fullness of his beard: they’re the picture of the man you married, and there’s always something you’re disappointed in discovering you’ve missed. A something you’ve never noticed, a something you wish you could go back and add to all your canvases. 
When you left him at the airport, it was a freckle just beneath the hollow of his throat. Now, it’s the frayed hairs just behind his ears, crimping in frizzy patterns that don’t match the languorous curls on the rest of his head. They look singed, as if he’d put a match to himself. 
Maybe it’s making up for lost time, for all the days you’d missed being away from your Joel. But there’s a second, smaller something: the little round scar beneath those wild hairs. You lift your hand to it, and before your thumb can make a pass over the white, puckered skin, he speaks. 
“It’s a burn.” Merging off the freeway, he pulls into a gas station. His fuel ticker is tapping gently at the E. “From a cigarette.”
Your heart tips off the edge of a yawning chasm, and your hand pulls back in a wary twitch of your fingers. Throat tightening, you feel a distinct pressure behind the T of your nose and forehead. “From the people who raised you?”
A muscle in his jaw spasms, and he lifts your joined hands to his mouth. “None of that,” he says softly, meeting your eyes that well with unshed tears. 
No tears for me, he once said to you. Not until I’ve earned ‘em.
You sniffle, watching him nuzzle his cheek against the soft flesh of your wrist, his lips finding your vein and following it halfway up your forearm. 
“Tell me about your show.” 
You let him tuck your tears away in the grooves between his joints and smile. “Successful, but lonely. So many people knew my name, and I’m pretty sure I knew about a quarter of theirs. Made me feel like some snobbish pig.”
“Nah, that’s my job,” says Joel. “Everybody loves you, baby.”
You roll your eyes. “Either way, the gallery was a hit. The triptych sold for the highest at the auction.”
Joel smirks. “The nude ones?”
“Yeah, dirtbag. The nude ones.” Your smile is dry, still somehow saccharine. 
“I liked those,” says Joel, fingers playing upon your upper thigh. 
“Perv.”
He playfully smacks your thigh. “Goddamn right.”
“It was good. It was. But I missed you.” Your voice breaks, and Joel squeezes your fingers in response. “Could hardly sleep without you there.”
He nods like he knows. And you know he does; he barely sleeps, even if you’re on top of him. “I know everybody loves you,” he says, “but next time you go away, remember I love you most.”
You blink away the shimmer of tears so you can see him clearly. “Casanova.”
“That's right,” he says, nosing his way into another kiss. “Don't ever leave me again, baby. My heart can't take it.”
You shake your head, laughing into his mouth as your tears slip onto your tongue. “Never again,” you whisper, “unless the hotel food is good.”
He nods. “I’ll make an exception, long as I can go.”
You grin. “You know… if I’m at home all the time…”
“We’re not getting a puppy.”
“Joel—”
“No.”
“Don't you want to make your wife happy?”
He faux-snaps at you like a dog, catching his teeth around your earlobe. “As a goddamn clam.”
You gasp as you feel his mouth suckle gently at the sensitive spot beneath your ear. “I… I want… We should at least talk about…”
“Hmm?” 
He’s playing with the hem of your blouse, deft fingers leaving warm imprints on the soft skin of your belly, fingers enveloping your precious heart when he places his hand on your upper back. The organ pounds under his touch, pouring its blood into his palms. 
You haven’t felt his touch in so long.
“I want…”
Joel hums again, prompting, his pinky finger dipping under the strap of your bra and pulling back, snapping it against your skin. 
“What was I talking about?”
He chuckles, bringing his lips back to yours. You grasp for him greedily, trying to fix him to you this time, your fingers bunching the fabric of his T-shirt. But he’s pulling back, his forehead falling against yours. 
“I’ll consider it,” he says, “if you can convince me.”
Giddily, perhaps stupidly, you smile. “I’m very prepared to convince you.”
“Uh-huh. I don't doubt you, baby. How ‘bout you let me fill up the car first?”
The throbbing bass of house music Dopplers as another car approaches the gas station. Three men exit the vehicle, one of them already lighting a cigarette while the other two make for the convenience store. One is wearing a backwards cap and the other a pressed suit. 
Nice move, you think, sinking back in your seat a little as Joel slides out of the car, smoking by a gas pump.
“Nice ride,” says the man at the opposite pump, puffing at his cigarette. 
“Thanks,” says Joel with a polite smile, locking the nozzle in the fuel tank and folding his arms over his chest. He’s hovering by the passenger door, halfway to blocking you from view.
The man surveys the hood, his fingers gently tracing the cool silver. “Boss Mustang 429. She a ‘70?”
“‘69,” says Joel.
“Very nice,” muses the man, drumming his hands on the hood. You feel the crude vibrations in your spine and straighten in your seat. This man—this kid, all his puffing and grinning and loud music—is bad news. Your stomach coils taut when his gaze shifts from Joel to you, staring hard through the windshield. 
“How much?” he asks Joel. 
You notice the minute stiffening of the muscles in Joel’s shoulders. “What?”
“How much for the car?” 
Joel pushes off the car and dislodges the pump, brushing the kid aside on his way back to the driver’s side. “It’s not for sale.”
The kid wanders to the passenger-side door before Joel can turn on the car and roll up the window. He leans his elbows just inside, his face mere inches from yours, and you can smell the sickly, cloying smoke of his cigarette as he blows it in your direction. 
He says something to Joel in Spanish that makes your husband’s hand still on the wheel.
And your Joel, your courteous Joel, your never-the-shit-stirrer Joel, narrows his eyes at the kid and says something in kind, his voice a low scrape that shudders through you.
It’s too fast for you to hear, and you never learned Spanish, and you were under the assumption (until right fucking now) that Joel never did, either. But he starts the car and rolls up the window, and you’re peeling away from the gas station before the kid can reply. 
“That was…” You cast around for the words and instead rest your eyes on Joel, whose jaw looks ready to snap. “Joel, honey, when did you learn Spanish?”
He’s silent for a long while, and you would assume that he didn’t hear you—if you didn't know that he has stellar hearing. When he pulls onto the long stretch of road, signalling your first firm tug away from the stifling noise of civilization, he finally speaks. 
“Picked it up in the Marines.” 
“What did he say to you?”
Joel’s skin is stretched taut over his knuckles. “Somethin’ stupid.”
You hum, letting him linger in silence for the remainder of the trip. Scenery, green and grey sky and the drizzle of rain, swoops by the window, and you're going home. It isn't much different from what you found in Vancouver, but it's familiar. It’s the smell of the air after the rain and the way your shared home comes into view the same way it always has. 
It isn’t a modest home. You and Joel had it built before the wedding, both eager to get away from the city and exist in relative peace when your job allowed it. It sits low and broad, geometric pillars framing the front porch, sleek modern lines in black and white. Your compromise: he assumed responsibility for the exterior, and you took everything within. Joel pulls into the garage, next to your beige SUV, and helps you and your hot-pink luggage out of the car. 
The walls are littered with canvases. Mostly, there are paintings of Joel. The first time you brought him to your studio, a few weeks into the relationship, he’d sat stone-still for hours. You don't recall even a twitch of a finger. He’s in shades of blue, red, green, grey. He’s sitting, standing, lounging, sleeping. His lashes lie in repose over his cheeks, eyes closed, sometimes open, often averted. You’ve captured him in bed, by the pool, in the kitchen, in your studio. Like a spider, you’ve ensnared his shyness, his care, his devotion, weaving it into a tapestry of oil, watercolour, pastel. 
You’ve never sold a single one. This Joel—whose eyes are sometimes closed, sometimes open, often averted—is for your eyes only. 
The curls at the nape of his neck are creeping under the collar of his jacket. Winding your finger around a rich brown lock, you give him a tug. “You haven't been taking good care of yourself.”
Joel brings your hand to his mouth, kissing the rings on your finger that bind you to him. “You told me you liked it long.”
“You told me it itches.” You shrug his jacket off his shoulders and trail your hands up his muscled arms. “It's not about me, honey.”
Joel hums, cradling the crown of your head in his palm and pressing a lingering kiss to your forehead. “When will you learn”—another hand around your hip, tugging you forward by the small of your back—“that everything is about you?”
You narrow your eyes at him. “That's a good answer, Mr. Miller.”
He grins crookedly, backing you against the kitchen counter. “Yeah?”
You scratch his scalp and feel his mouth descend on your jaw. “Mhm. You’ve been practising.”
“Didn't have much else to do,” he grumbles, fisting the fabric of your blouse and untucking it from the waistband of the old jeans sitting low on your hips. “My wife was gone.”
“You're getting whiny,” you chide, smacking his hand away from your fly. 
“Is it working?”
“You really wanna make your wife happy?”
“Yeah, baby. Yeah.” He looks down at you like he's close to pleading. 
“Then you'll let me cut your hair,” you purr. 
His pout lasts as long as it takes for you to get his hair soapy and your fingers in his curls, massaging slow and sweet. You take your time ridding him of the excess length, chopping carefully, your hands assured of their strength. You tell him to tilt up and look down and to the side, honey, and he obeys because it's your hands, and your voice, and he's pliable as molten glass. 
You get lost in the musical shhhick of the scissors cutting through hair, humming a tune that does not match, and he's reminded of ballet. Watching you in the mirror is like seeing the dance through a glass he cannot permeate. You may be touching him, but most times he's struggling to grasp you in your entirety. 
He sees an angel in his sleep, reaching out with a hand made of gold to guide him up from hell. 
You tell him more about the gallery. You tell him about whale-watching and being too seasick to take photos for him like he'd requested. Joel wants to shake his head but he stays still and tells you it’s okay, baby, all I wanted was to know you were happy. 
And you tell him I was happy. But it would've been better with you.
And he's joking, telling you I’d be throwin' up on the other side of the boat, but his body feels cold when you set down the scissors and leave his side. 
“How’s Tommy?” you ask, rubbing gel between your palms. This, he knows, is your favourite part: styling him up all pretty like your personal doll. 
It’s his favourite part, too. He holds you around the waist while you work. “He’s panicking.”
“Oh, come on,” you laugh. “He's read every book on the shelves. And your brother doesn't read.”
“Books can't prepare you for the real thing,” says Joel. “‘Least, that's what Maria told him.”
“Maria’s probably right.” You thread your fingers through his locks and watch with a smile as he closes his eyes, his forehead dropping to your belly. “But that doesn't take away from the fact that Tommy will make a great dad.”
Joel hums, pressing a kiss to your belly. “He’s been askin’ after you to paint their nursery. Want me to tell him to fuck off?”
You're beaming, curling one lock of hair around your finger and dangling it teasingly over his forehead. “Tell Tommy I'd be delighted. Maria shouldn't be doing any of that, pregnant as she is. You should smack some sense into your brother.”
“I tried every day when we were little. Didn't take.”
You give his styled hair a finalistic tug and brush it back from his ears. “Such a good model for me,” you coo, dropping into his lap, “just like always.”
“And what do I get?” he says, watching his own hand cup your breast, thumb ghosting over the soft swell, obscured by layers of fabric. 
Your wicked eyes feel heavy on his skin. “What you always get.” 
You take his hand in yours and lead him to the bedroom. You’ve done this a thousand times, it seems, this methodical undressing, made new with every hour spent apart. The dance replenishes in the sunlight, coming alive as spring blossoms, never stale, never withered. There is something new to discover each time. 
Joel kisses you, staggering backward until he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. You climb onto his lap without breaking the kiss, your arms winding around his neck as he tucks you into him. His cock is a hard, heavy weight between your thighs, accustomed to the touch of his hand alone in the month you've been apart. 
The revitalising warmth of skin-on-skin strikes him true, blooming like blood from his heart. He clutches you so close that your heartbeat skitters from your chest to his, your mouths exchanging breaths, your bodies sharing heat. He knows nothing but the shape, smell, sound of you. 
He trails his knuckles up and down your spine and wonders if he can make certain that he will die like this. He doesn't want to know an afterlife. It will spoil the memory of his very last moment, when he brings you in close and kisses your soft cheek and lets the darkness gently pull him down. 
The sisters at the orphanage would tell him things. You will never know peace until you know Him. You cannot know a person’s love until you know His. You will never understand, child, what it is to breathe, until every breath you take is in His name. Joel drags his open mouth up the column of your sternum, its golden pillar, his tongue dipping to taste the nectar that pools in the hollow of your throat. He tastes you instead, and he feels he has not cheated God. 
You gasp his name as he licks molten salt from your skin, and he feels the golden hand curl around his heart. His lids grow heavy with every taste. Intoxicated, he seeks more, putting his mouth to the crook of your neck. Your back arches, your chest flush with his own, melting and moulding together. Every second of time spent apart withers and dies. 
You have taken Joel to bed and felt him angry, happy, morose, insatiable—but the Joel you’re feeling now is tired. A drowning man finally cresting the surface, he touches you like he never will again. Your skin bunches and folds under his too-eager hands, rubbing you raw. Your muscles pull taut as you try to accommodate his frantic mouth. He bites you and your lips part in a silent scream. He pulls your hair and you gush, your chest hot, prickling with friction and sweat and heat. 
There is anguish in the way he holds you. It feels deep as a wound, old enough to still ache when it rains, old enough that you were never around to know him when it was cut into his body. You want to rescue him from the wordless pain, the agony that has no name. 
You want to know what has made him this way. Because there are times when you see your husband and it strikes you suddenly that a different person exists in the black of his eyes. Because there are parts he keeps hidden, for your sake or his. Because there is a little boy in his chest who's been hurt and you do not know how to save that sliver of him. 
Leftover hairs from his trim sting as your bodies slide together. Your scalp prickles at the desperate way he holds you at the crown of your head. You whisper his name and he looks up at you in the darkness, and there is water brimming beneath his irises. 
“Tell me what you need,” you say. 
He brings his hand between your thighs and touches the wet, warm place he seeks. You nod, letting him roll you onto your back, his mouth trailing kisses down your navel. When you squirm, he pins you by your belly, his palm flat to your skin. When you mewl his name, your chest heaving, he nods his head in reply, dipping his head and sliding his hot tongue through your slit. 
Joel is the prayer you chant. He kneels at the edge of the bed, bringing your thighs around his ears, closing his lips around your clit. You cry out, your hand flying to his hair, tugging him closer, eliciting a groan from his chest. It rumbles through you, his face buried in your pussy, his hands fastened around your thighs. He places searing kisses between your legs, lighting you ablaze, leaving scorch marks wherever his lips touch you. 
“Tell me you're mine,” he says, and the fractured sound of his voice cuts into your skin. He's watching you, his pupils puffy and seeking, hands squeezing, desperate. “Please.”
You whimper at the sight of the kiss he places on your clit. “I’m yours,” you tell him, reaching for his hand and threading your fingers through his. “I’m your wife, Joel. I’m not going anywhere. I’m yours and I love you.” 
He lowers his head, an apostate seeking redemption, and his tongue slides heavily over your clit. At the suction of his mouth around the slick pearl, you gasp, “Oh, God,” your head thrown back, your spine arching into his palm. The cut of the diamond on your finger is sharp against his skin. 
Joel relishes the cool bite of the gem as he licks through your folds and his saliva mingles with your wetness. He kneels with fervour, presses his mouth to you as if whispering his confessions through the lattice, and makes you his. 
The flat of his tongue is scalding, his palm a brand. He licks and sucks until you’re quivering, suffocating his hand in yours, and he wants to bare the imprint of your sigh forever. He should be the one submitting to you, and here you are, lending him your body to please, if only for another moment. Joel flicks his tongue over your clit, takes it into his mouth, and makes you sob his name. 
I’m yours. 
Yours. 
And it sounds so permanent that, for a second, he believes it himself.
You come with your back curving and your hips grinding and your nails in his skin. Joel doesn’t stop until you’re begging him to, until you push yourself onto your elbows and tell him to come here.
You swing your leg over him and bring your mouth down to his. Joel squeezes his eyes shut and kisses you so deeply that it bruises him somewhere he cannot reach. His hands cupping your face. His cock heavy between your bodies. The sun lowering, casting you in bronze. He loses his grip on the world.
“Now,” you whisper in the growing dark, “it’s your turn to tell me.”
You lift yourself onto his cock and bring yourself down, and Joel’s fist opens against your back. “I’ve been yours since the restaurant,” he rasps. 
You beam at him, and dusk ends.
There is a thumping beyond your bedroom door.
Joel hears it before you. In a flash, he hooks his leg under your knee and rolls you over, pinning you under his body. He reaches for the nightstand on his side, throws open the drawer, and pulls a gun. 
You grasp his shoulders, nails digging into flesh. Eyes meet in the slippery darkness. Wide, careful. Words wordlessly exchanged. 
Your fluttering heartbeat begins to pound in your ears. The noise migrates down the hall. 
Footsteps. 
In the kitchen, glass shatters, and your stomach swoops, down and back up, lodging in your throat. 
“Joel,” you whisper, your own voice trembling out of you. He shakes his head, his finger coming to his lips. Your body begins to tremble. The chill digs a pick into each knob of your spine as it climbs up to your brain stem. 
Your home begins to pound with its very own heartbeat. You can hear its tightly-wound tension in the walls. Nobody breathes except for your husband, slow and steady, hovering over you with a gun in his hand. 
You hadn’t known he owned a gun.
His hips ground you against the bed and his fingers intertwine with yours, bringing your hand to his chest. His heart pounds strongly into your palm, his eyes narrowed, fixed to you. But you know his focus is split down the middle, divided between keeping you safe and listening. 
Your breathing peters out until it’s silent as the breeze outside the window. A man’s voice carries from the kitchen, and another answers. Joel shifts slowly off the bed and brings you with him, handing you his T-shirt and boxers. He tucks himself into his jeans and pulls another shirt over his head while you silently dress. The fabric slips from your hand as your trembling fingers struggle for a purchase. Once you’re dressed, Joel pulls you into him, pressing his lips to your forehead. 
“Under the bed,” he whispers. 
Oh, fuck that.
“You want to go out there and confront them by yourself? Are you fucking crazy?”
He shuts you up by lowering his mouth to yours in a scorching kiss. “Do not fuckin’ argue with me,” he rasps, his teeth scraping against yours. You open your mouth to do exactly that, but another glass shatters, and you flinch away. 
“Under. The. Bed.”
And he’s gone, leaving you alone, helpless, the predatory prowl of his gait something unfamiliar to you. It’s learned, utterly silent, the curve of his elbow guiding your gaze to the gun held behind his back. His head juts out before him, peeking around corners.
There are dust bunnies underneath the bed. You’re a better cleaner than Joel, but he makes an effort. He gets lost in it sometimes, sweeping his way through the house as if there’s a grid on the floor, precise in his methods. He doesn’t attend to the details, like the corners of the trim or the grooves in the floorboards. And yet, your floors are polished. Your plants are watered. He cares for you in quiet ways, when words fail. 
Your heart thuds against the hardwood through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. It smells of rain and him. There are no more noises coming from the kitchen.
You drop your head into your folded arms and will yourself to breathe. The claustrophobic space between the bed frame and the floor edges in on you. The only light disrupting the vignette is the small lamp. You’re alone. 
When you lift your head again, a pair of heavy black boots stares you right in the face. 
You bite down on your scream as your heart swoops down into your stomach, pressed hard against the cold floor. Though you do not breathe, the thrum of your heart echoes in your throat as the sputtering of an engine in the dead of winter. The boots leave scuff marks on your floors, the boards groaning under the weight. The owner is heavyset, likely male from the size of his feet. And he's calling for you. 
“Here, pretty kitty.” He pitches his octave high as he taunts you. “Come on out, sweet girl. Don't make me mad.”
You watch the path of his boots across the floor as he approaches the nightstand, throwing open the drawer and rummaging through your belongings. 
Objects roll under the bed with you as he periodically drops them, careless in his vandalism. Your journal lands next to your head with a thunk, and you hear the low buzz of your vibrator in his hand. “Hmm, kitty likes to play.” And it lands on the floor, rolling to a cool stop in the groove between two boards. 
Petrified, you can only watch him stalk across the room, his heavy footfalls thundering in your ears. He whistles a tune you don't recognise, and you wonder what's taking your husband so fucking long. 
Joel, cries your heart as the man halts in his tracks, lowering himself to the ground, taking a knee. JoelJoelJoelplease—
And there's a spark of recognition when your eyes meet in the dark, like you've been acquainted with their black depths, before you're scrambling out from under the bed and kicking him square in the face with the heel of your foot. 
He grunts, holding his nose, free hand grasping for you like wisps of smoke. You crawl to your feet and begin to run, only for him to wrap one cold hand around your ankle and pull. 
You crumple back down to the floor with him, barely saving your own skull from cracking on the hardwood as you throw your hands in front of your eyes. The impact to your elbows radiates up to your neck, and you scream your throat raw, kicking out at your assailant, your blood roaring, weeping. 
With a firm kick to his throat, you force him to let go, his hand flying instinctively to his windpipe. He wheezes something crude, probably, but you’re running—limping, mostly, slamming the bedroom door behind you with a shattering thud that quakes the frame.
“Joel!” you cry, turning the corner in the hall, feeling the walls as you go as if your own home has become foreign to you. What if he’s dead? What if you’re about to stumble over his body in the dark—the only body you’ve ever been able to know as something more than a vessel for art, for a painstaking study? That body, the body you could trace in the black with fingertips, not brushes, does not make itself known. 
“JOEL—!”
A hand comes to rest on your cheek. It is not Joel’s hand. It is no hand at all, but the edge of a blade, a cool stinging thing that nicks the tender skin beneath your eye. 
Blood from his nose drips down his mouth, staining his teeth red. You feel a small thrill of victory. 
Joel is on the kitchen floor in a heap, vaguely stirring from the impact of a baseball bat to his ribs. The bat which a second intruder now uses to smash the framed pictures on your wall. Glass rains down on him. Shards have cut Joel’s soft belly, shredded the fabric of his shirt. Your captor holds you by the hair.
A third man smokes a cigarette, sitting on your countertop, swinging his feet back and forth, and it strikes you that he’s really only a kid. Twenty-five at most. You know young hands, young eyes. Your pencils and paper know them better. 
“Nice of you to join us,” says the man from the gas station, making shapes of the cigarette smoke. You watch the way it curls around the low-hanging light. 
“Joel,” you whisper, the salt of your tears stinging in the wound on your face. “Baby, please… get up…”
“He’s fine, chiquita,” says the kid. “Don’t waste your energy.”
Joel’s eyes peel open, his hands blindly grasping for something he does not have. He’s curled in on himself to protect himself from the inevitable next swing of the bat. You wonder if he’s been struck in the head, and you can feel pieces of your heart slowly wilting as petals untended.
His gun, you realise, your eyes dropping to the belt of the man who holds you hostage. It’s tucked into his waistband, but you cannot reach it with your arms trapped in front of you. His arm is a heavy band around your chest, glueing you to him, helpless. You’re fucking helpless and you cannot get to him and he will die.
Your Joel will die and he will know pain in the way you want him to know love. 
“Let him go, please. You hurt him.”
The kid sniffs, tossing his cigarette to the floor beside Joel and jumping down from the counter to stomp it out with an expensive sneaker. “He disrespected me,” says the kid, leering down at your half-conscious husband like a speck of dirt on a polished glass. “But he doesn’t matter.”
You choke on your sobs, writhing in your captor’s grasp in a futile effort to feel not-so-suffocated, not-so-stuck. “You can have anything you want. Please, take anything. We have money, we have cars, we have paintings. They’re worth something, I promise you. Just—just look up my name. They’re worth a lot, please, just take them and leave us alone, please—”
The anger explodes through the gash in his face where he’d put the cigarette, that yawning maw eager to swallow blood and pain. “I don’t want your fucking paintings!” he screams, stalking toward you and yanking you free of the other man’s grasp. 
Your stomach swoops as he shoves you, hard, to the floor. This time, your arms do not take the blow. It is your temple that absorbs the impact, striking hard on a floor already flecked with blood. Black seeps through paper. Your eyes darken. A man—you do not know which—is speaking.
“Go on, Emil, have some fun with the bitch,” he says. “We can put her up in the kennel when we’re done with them both.”
You hear the rustling of a belt as the man above you flicks open his fly, laughing all the while. 
You're still blinking hard to clear the fog when you hear a growl rumble in your husband’s chest, the faraway noise of a fist meeting flesh, the scuffle of feet across your freshly-washed floors, the first gunshot. 
Your cheek meets cool hardwood as you succumb, the shape of your Joel’s rage etched into your eyelids. 
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There’s a painting on the wall depicting two bodies in orgasm. Curved spines, feverish hands, dimples where fingers meet flesh. There is a hole in the canvas where the woman’s heart should be. A splatter of blood taints the image where the man drags his open palm down her back. 
His face is obscured, but his mouth is on her throat, exposing the cut of his jaw. The scruff of his beard. Careful strokes of oil paint join their bodies in harmony. It’s knocked askew on the wall. 
He’s rusty. 
He can feel it in the taut pull of his shoulder as he brings his arm back for the death blow. The blade comes up against the rough skin beneath the man’s chin, slicing him open just beneath the scruff of his beard. Blood bruises the hardwood floors, and although the man is already dead, Joel grasps him by the hair at the crown of his head and brings him down against the wall. 
His shoulder aches. His finger joints crackle. His knuckles are already bruised, his abdomen sore. He spits out pinkish saliva and turns his attention to his next job. 
His gun now back in his hand and its thief dead, Joel puts a bullet between the eyes of the third man, and another in his chest. The baseball bat clatters to the floor.
He thinks of the first time he wanted to kill for you and couldn’t. 
A man at the bar had groped you while you were out with friends. A little tipsy, you told Joel as he tucked you gently into the passenger’s seat, wrapped in a pretty black dress, and fell promptly asleep. He remembers the cool flutter of your hair from the air vent. He remembers the way your lashes spread like spider legs on your cheeks at every red light, the way the street lamps turned you golden. 
He remembers the man’s name. His face. His address. Some of the little wrinkles in his brain still hold echoes of information he'll never need again. But he keeps it tucked up there anyway. Maybe it reminds him of what he could never do, now that he had you. 
It seems the rules have been bent. 
Glass crunches underfoot behind him. Joel turns just in time to see the retreating figure, the fucking coward, sprinting for the door. He fires a shot that chips a piece of drywall and goes nowhere significant. Cursing himself, Joel hears the roar of his Mustang come to life as the kid leaves with his fucking car. 
Everything has a price, he'd said, blowing smoke in your face. Including your bitch. 
Joel curls his hand around the hilt of the knife. Blood begins to crust along the edge. Some of the blood, he realises, has been stolen from your sacred body. There is a cut on your cheek. 
And does your bitch have a price? Joel had replied, glancing behind the kid at the lackey he'd brought along. He seems to like you. 
You teeter on your way to standing, and Joel rushes to catch you before you can hit the floor. He flicks on the safety and sets his gun aside, cupping your face in his bloodied hands. 
Your eyes, blurred with tears, struggle to meet his. They're fixed to the man in a heap over Joel’s shoulder—the man who'd cut you. 
“Baby,” he says. 
Trancelike, you shake your head. 
“Baby, I gotta see you're still with me. Don't look at him; he ain't important right now. You’re important. Hear me?”
His voice is gentle, guiding, his thumbs hooked just behind your ears, hard eyes flickering between each of yours. 
“You killed them.”
“Yeah,” says Joel as the pad of his thumb traces the soft skin beneath the cut on your cheek. Your fingers curl around his wrists as if you’re trying to strangle him, temper him. 
“You’re hurt.” Your soft cry inverts his ribs, sits heavy and wrong in his chest. When your glassy eyes slide to meet his at last, Joel remembers the second time he wanted to kill someone and couldn’t. 
A man from your past had visited your apartment and told you he wanted to try again. You'd politely escorted him out and laughed it off. Terrible in bed, you’d joked. 
Joel remembers kneeling in the cathedral, surrounded by the lick of a thousand votives coaxing sweat from his glands, as he tried and tried to find faith and only felt the agonising scrape of the floor against his kneecaps. 
He remembers the first time devotion meant something to him. In the name of your second gallery showing. Paintings lined the walls depicting couples in embrace. “Which one is us?” he asked. 
“I don't sell those,” you’d replied. 
“Why not?”
“Because you're only for me,” you told him. “But I’ll tell you a secret.”
He’d ached to hear it. Even leaned in, a co-conspirator. 
“There isn't any devotion in these paintings. They're all hired models.”
“Then why bother at all?” he'd asked. “Why call it that?”
“Because I like showing people that there’s love in the world. And because devotion means something to me now.” You’d looked up at him and tucked your hand in his and he knew what all those nights spent kneeling meant. 
Faith, he thinks now, glaring at the shallow cut on your cheek, is knowing your purpose. 
The wound is his purpose. 
“I’m not hurt, baby girl. We need to pack a bag, okay? I have somewhere for us to stay.”
“Are they—are they coming back?” you ask, your bottom lip wobbling. 
Joel swallows bile and a bit of blood. “No. No, they won't be comin’ back. But we need a safe place while I take care of things.”
“Take care of things.” 
Your echo is ominous in his ears, and when your eyes leave him again to watch the way the blood trickles into the grooves between the floorboards, Joel knows what you will say next. 
“Who are you?”
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storyarcscribe · 2 months
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i know it when i see it - part 7
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series masterlist | ao3
pairing: pornstar!joel miller x fem!reader
rating: explicit 18+ minors dni
word count: 8.4k
warnings: attempted rape/non-con, non-consensual drug use, main character is roofied, hurt/comfort, descriptions of vomiting, finally some feelings talk, victim-blaming by the victim
summary:
a/n: this chapter contains the graphic description of an attempted assault against the main character. if you believe this content may be triggering for you, there is an abridged version of the chapter posted here. please be responsible and protect your peace. resources are included at the end of the chapter.
The sunlight is brutal the next morning.
Slipping through the half-drawn blinds, burning red behind your eyelids. The sheets are warm and smell heavily of your roommate’s perfume, the lavender oil she puts on her wrists to fall asleep. Your head is heavy with hangover, mouth cottoned and dry. You’re achy and sore and so fucking embarrassed you want to die.
God, Joel must think you’re pathetic. Trailing after him like that, picking a fight when it was clear he wanted to leave. Grabbing his dick through his jeans — fucking hell, basically begging him to fuck you.
You bury your face in the pillow to muffle a groan, trying to cringe away from the memory.
What the hell is wrong with you? What is it about him that makes it impossible for you to keep your shit together? You told Tess that you were a big girl, that you could handle this. A fucking lie, clearly, since you can’t keep your cool for a single evening in his presence. 
You are so soft for him, so easy. Just some cock-addled idiot willing to take whatever crumb he’ll give you, and then somehow hurt when that’s all you get. Of course he left. He always leaves. It’s like getting surprised when the sun starts to set.
Even if, for a second, you felt like things were different this time. That quiet moment when you were caught together, the way you felt him laugh, the scrape of his smile against your cheek. When your heart stilled and you were sure, so fucking sure that he felt it too. 
Fuck.
You groan again, cringing away from the memory, the oil-slick shame of it that clings to your skin.
A gentle hand rests on the crown of your head, stroking your hair. Your roommate shifts in the sheets beside you.
“Baby, you’re spiraling,” she says, “Go take a shower.”
You do, because you are a little bit disgusting. The stale sweat from the club, from the sex. Glitter and mascara smudged around your eyes. Joel’s dry semen flaking between your thighs. You let the hot water scald your skin and think, unwillingly, of baptism. At this point, you doubt even the holiest of water could wash away your sins.
You stare at the grout, the little specks of mold that live there.
It’s just sex.
That’s what you had said to him, the lie that spilled out of you when you realized he was leaving. 
Because that’s how it is with everyone else, the revolving door of co-stars that spend a few hours with your cunt. You fuck strangers the same way that you file taxes or wait in line at the bank. Efficiently, without anything resembling real want, no jagged edge of feeling. Sweaty and soulless, all gaping mouths and shuddering gasps. Checking your nail beds and chatting about the weather between takes, coming so hard you can’t see straight and never speaking to them again.
It’s just always just sex. 
It shouldn't be different just because it’s Joel. 
You’re tired of smoking until your fingers burn, tired of staring at the scrawl of his phone number, tired of waiting for the other shoe to fucking drop.
You’ve survived bigger disappointments. You won’t let yourself be wasted by it, won’t shrink into some softer shape, cannibalized by your own bastard affection. You tell the gnawing ache in your belly to fuck off, let it go, maybe chew on your ribs for a while. 
The phone rings just as you’re stepping out of the shower, the sound muffled through the walls. You wrap a towel around your waist and crack open the small window to let out a spill of steam. The mirror is too fogged to see your own reflection, and it feels like a small mercy. You’re not sure you can look yourself in the eye right now.
Silly, shameless girl. 
The voice in your head sounds like your mother’s.
You’re slightly more human when you shuffle out into the kitchen. Your roommate is at the stove, nudging a pat of butter around a sizzling pan. 
“Someone called for you,” she says, nodding at the phone.
Only one of the other girls has resurrected, sitting cross-legged on one of the mismatched dining chairs, staring bleary-eyed into a soggy bowl of cereal. You ruffle her hair as you make a bee-line for the coffee pot, and she preens like a cat.
You see Tess’s number scrawled on the pad of paper by the phone, and wince at the idea of talking to her right now. You’ll need to ask her not to book another scene with Joel, explain some version of what happened last night. That was a conversation for later, once you had some food lining your stomach, a steady drip of caffeine in your veins. 
The Hustlers cover is taped to the fridge, and your own face stares at you as you take out the cream. 
Well, not your face, really. 
It’s all Lucky, her heavy-lidded eyes, her please come fuck me smile. The girl in the magazines, the thing you came here to become. A better version of yourself in so many ways. Radiant and unrepentant. 
She watches you take a sip of your coffee. Hair still dripping around your shoulders, so hungover you can barely stand upright. The lovesick, wet rat version of the nation’s newest sex symbol.
It’s just sex.
That’s all it was. A cruel biological trick, the inconvenient compatibility of your bodies. Some fucked up animal magnetism making you think any of it meant more than it did.
You’re not heartbroken. 
Obviously.
Porn stars don’t put their heads in the oven. 
x x x x x
When you tell Tess that you don’t want to work with Joel again, she doesn’t argue. 
She gives you a long look, her gray eyes searching. And for a second it looks like she’s going to say something else, raise some other, elusive point. But then she just shrugs.
“Whatever you want, kid.”
And you’re grateful that she doesn’t ask you to explain, that you don’t have to fess up to your stupid feelings. You’re desperate to feel less in general, to tamp down on that part of you that wants so many things you can’t have.
So instead, you focus on the shit you can control. 
The work, the sex — the tangle of the two together. Business meetings and gang bangs, contract negotiations and nipple clamps. The most lurid moments of your life parsed out in frank, unfeeling conversations. Signing on the dotted line to spread your legs and smile pretty for the camera. 
You sink into it, let yourself be submerged in the endless stream of smut. Every day a new set, a new scene. You’re a waitress, a dancer, a nanny, a prison warden. The ever-changing, eternally fuckable girl. So many skins you can slip into and shed the messy, inconvenient parts of yourself, just for a little while. 
You avoid anything with even a whiff of cowboy in it. No more beard scruff or calloused hands, no low rolling voice, no Texas twang. Instead, only smooth-bodied bull types, oiled and hairless, who greet you with broad, dopey grins. Beautiful, lithe-limbed women, all coy smiles and conspiratory laughter, a breathless whisper in your ear before each take.
You’re not as picky when it comes to the projects. You do the rougher stuff, the longer days. Resetting over and over so the camera can get a better angle, catch the edge of a cock in your throat. Take after take after take. You leave sets sore, but usually satisfied, and so exhausted that you can't do much more than climb into bed.
Less time for thinking. For pining, God forbid.
You’re a pledge, the oh-so-reluctant prey of an older girl in some sorority flick. Knees chafing against plush carpet, your skirt hiked high on your hips as you recite the Greek alphabet. You get a playful spank for every mistaken letter, tripping over the tau and upsilon, forgetting chi altogether. 
You bring your co-star off once with your hand, once with your mouth, and then again with the handle of a hairbrush. It’s a little crass, a porn cliche infecting the girlish room, but the cameras love it. After, she presses you back against the flowery bedsheets to return the favor. It’s not scripted but she coos in your ear that you’ve earned it. 
When the director calls cut, you lay there for a long moment, staring up at the high rafters of the soundstage. Settling back into yourself, feeling out your body. The burn of your knees, the slight ache in your neck. But there’s a warmth low in your belly, the slow-burning embers of your arousal, a sleepy sort of satisfaction in your limbs.
Your co-star’s face appears over yours. Cheeks still flushed, eyes shining. Her hair a golden halo, blocking the too-bright light of the overheads.
“You good?” she asks.
The sheets stick to the sweat of your back, the drip of release still cooling on your thighs. You huff out a sigh. 
“You fucked my brains out.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Please, that was nothing,” she says, “Imagine what I could do with a few hours.”
She winks and you laugh, finally forcing yourself up off the damp bed. 
Around you, the crew has already started striking the set: taking down the frames with their posed pictures, the stray textbooks and candy bars, the pennant for a college that doesn’t exist. Echoes of a life so obviously un-lived, the man-spun fantasy of a dorm room.
The dressing room is cramped, tucked in the back corner of the sound stage and wallpapered pink to disguise its past life as a storage closet.
The mirror is fogged over with hairspray, your reflection cloudy at the edges. You look well-fucked. The blur of mascara beneath your eyes, hair frizzed from her fingers. The tacky shine of her arousal is still damp on your hairline, and you wipe it away with the edge of your robe. 
Your co-star is still mostly naked, the robe draped open around her shoulders. Her breasts sway as she leans closer to the mirror, dabbing at a smudge of lipstick with her pinky finger. 
“Scoot over,” she teases, bumping your elbow as she reaches for the crumpled heap of her carpet bag.
There’s an easy familiarity in your movements, your comfortable closeness. The kind of de-facto friendship you earn after an hour between her legs.
She cuts a neat line of coke on the vanity, nudging aside the bottles of cheap perfume and for her pleasure lube left out by production. She sweeps her hair to the back of her neck, gathering it at the base of her skull as she lowers her head. It’s gone on a long inhale, the excess caught on a fingertip and tucked into her gums.
She straightens and meets your gaze in the mirror.
“Come out with us tonight.”
You raise an eyebrow at her reflection, “Out?”
“There’s a party in the hills,” she says with a shrug, “A bunch of us are going.”
It takes only another half a second of hesitation to decide fuck it. The quiet ache in your hips, the tired pinch behind your eyes, the dizzying cost of the taxi you’ll have to take home at the end of the night. 
It’ll be good to get out. Healthy, probably. 
Lately your brain has started to eat itself if you spend too much time in the empty apartment. Something to do with the weather, probably. Or your diet, the long days of black coffees and crafty croissants. Or maybe it’s guilt, so many Catholic ghosts catching up with you.
You smile at her in the mirror and catch a glimpse of your shiny, shimmering self.  
x x x x x
The taxi crawls through the winding roads towards Mulholland, the windows rolled down so your breath, that blur of backseat conversation, doesn’t fog the windshield. 
There are four of you crammed together, a flask passed between you, an elbow digging into your ribs at every sharp turn. You don’t know the others well — another actress and one of the girls from wardrobe — but your co-star’s arms are wrapped around your waist in lieu of a seatbelt, and you can feel her laughter in your ribs. It’s easy to melt, lean into the warmth, listen eagerly to a story about people you’ve never met. 
One of the other girls pulls out a little baggie, digs into it with the edge of her house key. She notices your gaze and offers it out to you.
“Want some?”
It’s only a little bump, but it burns at the back of your throat, that awful chemical drip.
The taxi turns into the driveway of some sprawling behemoth of a house, perched high at the top of the valley. The windows glow, all glass, and you watch the shift of silhouettes against the dark sky. 
You feel light, giddy, as you make your way up the drive. Gravel crunching underneath your heels, the other girls bumping into you, their laughter carried away on the cool night air.
Someone presses a glass of champagne into your hand the second you step over the threshold, and the bubbles fizz down your throat as you take it all in. The crowd, the dizzying masses, all sequin and leather and lace. A chandelier glitters above it all, concentric circles that seem to spin if you stare at it for too long.
Your co-star keeps her elbow locked with yours, tugging you through the house, pausing occasionally to accept an air kiss or make a vague promise to catch up soon. As soon as you move on, she leans in to whisper some scrap of gossip in your ear. 
Terrible flirt, never keeps his hands to himself. 
Worst actress I’ve ever seen, chews the scenery like you wouldn’t believe.
Shame about the divorce, but he should have seen it coming.
You melt from one circle to the next, an endless tide of introductions. You call yourself Lucky before you have a chance to correct it, to rethink the nickname, the endless blur of brand and body. But it doesn’t matter, not really. 
You can be Lucky tonight. 
These days, you’re her more often than you are you.
You wander through the house, taking it all in. The ugly, expensive art. Little statues tucked away on high shelves. No family photos, no shoes by the door. Only the icy veneer of impressive, impersonal wealth. There’s music playing, but it’s shapeless, meant to be heard rather than listened to. Just sounds, really. A bloated bassline, some sluggish synth. 
You think that you prefer the kinds of parties that your friends throw. Casual, comfortable. People sprawled out on the carpet, passing around a joint, or crowded together in the kitchen, trying to dance without bumping elbows. You’d kill for a night that was just dancing.
Here, it was hard not to feel watched. Observed.
Industry types lean in doorways and against railings, cool and impassive, polished in a sheen of self-importance. Around them: the aspirational drift moonish and eager, desperate to be swept into someone’s orbit. An artful hand on the hip, a precisely positioned chin. Hoping desperately to be seen, scouted.
You turn a corner and collide with someone. Champagne jumps from your glass, spilling over your fingers. A soft hand closes over your elbow, catching you before you can stumble.
“Shit, sorry about that.”
You blink up at the man attached to the hand, the apology written across his expression.
And you recognize him. At least, you think you do. 
He has a face like so many men in this city. Handsome enough, half-sculpted. The better-looking boys in their high schools, bolstered by some small-town ego, buoyed by visions of distant stardom. Inevitably disappointed when their egg whites and lean cuts of protein did not grant them entry into some secret world. Chiseled but unfinished. Forgotten marble. They pour coffee, they wait tables. Their good looks became window-dressing for someone else’s story.
He offers his hand with a warm, friendly smile and says, “It’s good to see you again.”
And you think maybe you do remember him. Standing at the edge of a set, a forgettable face from some past project. A producer, you think, like most of the men here. 
You smile up at him the way that you’re good at and say you too.
It’s mostly a lie. You’re trying very hard to remember his name, conjure it up from the blank spaces of your memory. Patrick, maybe. No, Patrick was the AD on the last film you shot. He must be Richard. Robert? You can’t figure out how to ask without insulting him.
“Do you know many people here?” he asks, maybe mistaking your expression for interest, romantic or otherwise. 
“Only a few,” you shrug, “It’s not really my scene.”
His smile widens as he shakes his head. 
“I don’t believe that,” he says, “I bet you fit in anywhere.”
He’s flirting. Leaning in the way that men tend to, like he might catch a bit of your shine if he stands close enough. 
Your co-star reappears, breathless and grinning.
“Everyone is jumping in the pool!” she says, taking your hand in hers and pulling you towards the back of the house.
The man watches you go with a wistful sort of look on his face.
“Maybe I’ll see you later,” he calls after you.
It’s hopeful, almost charming. 
You let your gaze linger for a moment. Let him indulge in the fantasy, however briefly. And maybe you will find him later, circle back as the night ebbs and make good on the promise of your smile. 
But probably not. 
It’s been less than an hour, and you already want to leave. You miss Joan Baez. You miss your bottle of wine. You miss the sound of your own name, the way it’s said without any innuendo or smirk. 
But the night has barely been worth the price of a taxi, so you swallow down the rest of your champagne and try to find the fun in it. The excitement. People would kill for an invitation to a party like this, to be in a beautiful house surrounded by such beautiful things. You search for any of that in yourself, some wide-eyed awe that could gloss over the evening. 
Instead, you only find the beginnings of a headache, a low throb in the base of your skull.
There’s a crowd gathering at the edge of the enormous pool, watching amused as a group of drunken guests splash around in the shallow end. Clothes on, still holding cocktails that must be half-chlorine. Lost in their own revelry, trying to playfully drown each other as the rest of the party watches.
You sip your champagne, waiting for the buzz to take hold, to soften the cold and the ache of your heels. 
Guest after guest kicks off their shoes and jumps in the pool to a giddy wave of oohs and aahs. The occasional cannonball or backflip earns a scattering of applause. Suit jackets are stripped away, abandoned on deck chairs. Women’s dresses billow underwater, strange jellyfish that float up above their waists.
There’s a shout as a young actress is scooped into someone’s arms and thrown into the pool. The splash arcs high, water raining down on the skirts and shoes of those standing closest. The actress emerges after a beat, drenched and beaming, swiping her hair back from her pretty face.
That starts something. Men grabbing their dates, their girlfriends, and tossing them into the water. There are indignant cries, playful laughter. A few of them get pulled in, toppled over by their own gravity.
A hand reaches from out of nowhere, grazes along your lower back, and you shrink away instinctively. 
You’re not going in the fucking pool.
Actually, you think that maybe you need to go home. The headache is getting worse, and you’re starting to feel a little dizzy. Something in the music is setting your teeth on edge, the occasional shrieks striking an uneasy nerve.
A girl standing too close to the edge loses her balance and falls in. She comes up spluttering and scared, floundering for the edge. There’s a cheer when she finds it, a few glasses raised. Her white dress has gone sheer, exposing the pink pebble of her breast to the onlookers. When she smiles, her teeth are chattering.
Your stomach twinges uncomfortably.
Shit.
You might actually be sick.
Not here. Not in front of all these people. 
“I’ll be right back.”
Your co-star catches your eye, raises an eyebrow. Need company? But you shake your head and lift your glass. Just getting another drink.
You slip back into the main house, away from the noise and bodies, down a quiet hallway that stretches into the rest of the house. More terrible art lines the walls. Brutalist and obscure, void of any warmth. You pause between paintings, waiting for your stomach to settle, for the headache to recede.
But it doesn’t.
You’re not drunk — you can’t be drunk. 
You’re only a few sips into your second drink. And sure, maybe you’re a bit of a lightweight, but never like this. Maybe the hit in the car was laced with something, or it’s reacting badly with the wine, or there was something —
Your gaze slides to the champagne flute in your hand, the soft ripples on the surface. 
Did you set it down? Just for a second? To shake a hand, maybe, or refasten the strap on your heel. You didn’t notice, you weren’t paying attention. 
But you can feel it now.
The slow creeping fog in your head, a haze of dilution. The lights a little too bright, the music a little too loud. Your skin feels heated and buzzing, something boiling beneath.
There was something in your drink. 
The realization sinks through you like a stone, a buzz of panic rising in your veins. You press your fingertips to your throat and feel your fluttering, unsteady pulse. Slower than it should be. 
Not good. Probably very bad, but you try not to panic. 
You double back to the pool area, the mess of bodies, so many strangers. The music is so fucking loud, God, how does anyone think? You search for your co-star, or any of the girls from the car, but they could be any one of the many wet heads in the pool. It’s impossible to tell, impossible to get anyone’s attention amidst the chaos. 
Someone bumps into you and your heel slips against the wet cement. You manage to catch yourself, but only just. Your balance is all wrong, off-center, some new gravity taking hold.
Whatever this is, it’s working fast.
And you can’t keep looking for the others, can’t wait for this to get any worse. 
You turn back to the house, but find a man in front of you, his broad face twisted in a leer. The front of his shirt is soaked through, clinging to the stretch of his stomach.
“Want to go for a swim?” 
You force a smile, even as your insides revolt, as your skin stretches too tight. 
“Not right now, thanks.”
You try to step around him, but he moves with you, blocking your way. His pupils are blown wide, expression hungry as he takes in your dress, the bare skin of your legs. 
“C’mon,” he coaxes, “The water’s warm.”
You don’t have time for this, for him. You let the mask drop, Lucky sliding away to leave only you. Angry, frightened, slightly feral you. No more smiling, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Fuck off,” you snap.
His expression sours, curdling like milk.
“Bitch,” he mutters, but doesn’t try to stop you again as you shoulder past.
You try to keep your breathing steady, weaving through the crowd gathered at the window, watching the spectacle outside. The house has half-emptied, everyone else spilling out into the night air. There’s a couple tangled together on one of the sofas, all legs and arms, apparently oblivious to their surroundings.
It takes a few wrong turns, a few locked doors, before you find a phone down one of the empty hallways.
Your hand is shaking as you dial Tess’s number, the receiver held so tightly you can hear the plastic creaking against your ear. 
It rings. 
And rings.
And goes straight to Tess's voicemail.
Fuck.
You try the apartment next, but it rings right through. And of course it does. It’s a Saturday night, the girls are almost never home on the weekend. And they’re too far anyways, all the way on the west side. You’re not sure you could even stay conscious for the hour it would take them to get here. 
You’re halfway gone already. The slow creep of fever along your spine, the fuzzing edges of your vision. It’s an effort to stay upright, to stay focused. You can’t stay here, in this house full of strangers. 
There’s only one other number that you know.
One you memorized, girlish and hopeful, but never called. The numbers scrawled on a receipt, tucked into a book by your bed, read over and over until they burned on the back of your eyelids. 
Your hands are shaking as you dial, slipping twice so you have to start over. And you realize it’s late, too late to call, and he doesn’t even like you very much. But there’s no one else.
Joel answers on the second ring. 
“Hello?”
His voice is low, scratched up with sleep. 
“Joel?”
He says your name, and you think, inanely, how much you like the way he says it. The deep gravel of his voice, all the things you’ve been trying to forget. 
“Everything okay?” he asks. He sounds — surprised, maybe. Confused. But not annoyed, not angry that you called. At least he hasn’t hung up on you yet.
“I’m sorry, it’s so late. I tried to call Tess. First, I called her first. And my friends. But no one’s answering and — and —”
You shake your head as a wave of dizziness threatens to overtake you. 
“Hey, slow down,” Joel says, “What’s going on?”
“I think —” you swallow, “I think there was something in my drink.”
You hear his sharp intake of breath. 
“Where are you?”
There’s a hard edge to his voice. An urgency.
You try to scrape through the fog of your memory. You can’t keep your thoughts straight, they keep spilling and tripping together. Someone had said, had told the driver the name as you slid into the back of the car. 
“In the hills. At a house. Some producer guy’s — Rich something?”
“Matthews?”
Fuck. Maybe. Names really are not your strong suit tonight.
“I think so?”
“I’m coming to get you.”
Relief surges through you, though with it comes another wave of dizziness, the black-blue blur at the edge of your vision. It takes a second to realize that you haven’t answered, that Joel is still talking to you.
“Just stay put, alright? I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
“Okay,” you tell him.
“Twenty minutes,” he says, and the line goes dead.
You let the phone slip from your hand, skittering back against the wall as the coil contracts. 
He’s coming. Joel is coming. Twenty minutes. 
You’re not sure how much time you have, how much further you have to fall. You dig your nails into the skin of your arm, focusing on the bite of pain, the sharp sting. Something to keep you awake. Present.
There’s a burst of laughter, the dance of footsteps, and a couple stumbles into the hall. Faces flushed, hands entwined. They stop short when they see you, their shameless apology tripping out through laughter.
You force something like a smile onto your face, straightening as they make their way past you, disappearing through a doorway down the hall. 
Shit. Your head aches. You need quiet, need to be alone. You really need to not fall apart in the middle of this party, where anyone could see you and shape your current state into some seedy tabloid story.
You press your hands over your eyes, digging the heel into your socket, trying to relieve some of the pressure there.
“Lucky?”
You look up. 
It's him again. The producer, the one whose name you can’t fucking remember. Patrick-Richard-whatever.
You try to straighten, but your knees buckle and you fall back against the wall. Stars burst in front of your vision, obscuring his face, distorting his mostly handsome features. 
“Woah, hey,” he frowns, “You okay?”
“Not feeling great,” you mutter, swallowing down the bile at the back of your throat. 
He chuckles, “The bartender’s a pretty stiff pour.”
You smile weakly. You really don’t want to throw up on him. But his shoes don’t look that expensive. You could probably replace them. 
You must be a little green, because he asks, “Want to get some air?” 
Yeah. Yeah, air might be good. Might clear some of the fever in your head, defibrillate you back into sobriety. At the very least, there will probably be fewer witnesses if you puke. 
You nod, and he offers his arm out for you to take. Which is good, because it’s starting to feel like the ground is slipping out from beneath you. 
“There’s a great balcony,” he’s saying, “You can see the whole valley.”
You’re staring at the floor, focusing on every step as you take it. The rich brocade of the hall carpet, the threshold of the room, the dark hardwood of wherever the fuck you are now. You blink up at the dark room, the French doors and the balcony beyond. 
Then you hear the soft click of the lock behind you.
And your stomach drops.
Hands reach out from behind you, sliding around your waist, pulling you close. A sweaty grip at the back of your dress, a gin-soaked breath at your ear. 
“Thought we could use a little more privacy.”
You freeze. Breath catching in your throat, every joint and muscle locking in place. A fear like poison, like disease, slithers through your veins. 
He put something in your drink.
Somewhere between shaking your hand and making you smile, he slipped something in your fucking champagne. You hadn’t noticed, hadn’t registered him as a threat. His banal, lukewarm smile. His easy flirtation. Not asking too much, barely even pushing.
Because he didn’t need to push.
He planned this.
Nausea twists in your stomach and now you wish you would puke. Ruin the moment, spoil whatever fucked up fantasy he wants to play out. But you can’t even think against the ache in your head, the thrum of your own pulse.
He presses his face into your neck, tongue darting out to taste your skin. His hand slides over your hip, down to the hem of your dress. He gathers it in a fist, the fabric bunching beneath his grip.
“Such a tease,” he murmurs, “This dress was driving me crazy.”
His grip is tight, holding you firmly to his chest. Every touch is hungry, consuming. You can feel him hard against you, pressing against your ass, threatening every awful thing that he wants to do to you. 
You feel surrounded, smothered. The heavy spice of his cologne, the bitter taint of sour sweat beneath. He’s everywhere, hands moving over your body, scraping across your skin.
“Stop,” you try to say, but your voice is a weak, shattered thing. 
It’s taking everything in you to cling to that last scrap of consciousness. Even if you weren’t drugged, you doubt you could fight him off. He’s twice your size, all lean muscle. The hand that flexes at your waist is a threat, a warning.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he murmurs, “Don’t be like that.”
And maybe you should just give in. 
Let go, slip into the waiting black. Submit to sharper teeth, let yourself become easy prey. It might be less painful that way. You probably wouldn’t even feel anything. You would wake up tomorrow, sore and aching, with the shadow of this awful thing, but no real memory of it. 
Lips brush your cheek, searching for your mouth. Tasting of smoke and gin and the worst night of your life. 
He’s too close, his grip too tight. The hand at your waist slides down, finding your bare thighs beneath the hem of your dress. Your breath hitches, catching on a sob, as his fingers brush against your center.
“Let me in.”
Something base and animal comes to life inside you. A clawing, gnashing fear that rips through you.
You twist in his grasp. Twist and writhe and wrench away from his hands, the suffocating press of his body against yours. His hands scrape against you, nails breaking skin, but you break free. 
Just for a second. Just for a breath.
Long enough to turn to face him on your shaky legs, to stare into the eyes of this man whose name you don’t even fucking know. The warmth is gone from his gaze. His friendly, forgettable face is now twisted, turned ugly with frustration. His hands twitch at his side — the hands he put on you, the fingers he tried to press inside.
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” he sneers.
And then lunges for you.
You see him coming, the hands reaching out for you, and try to move out of the way. 
But your legs don’t work. Your reactions are slow, stuck in the mind-numbing molasses of whatever was in your drink. You take a single, stumbling step and your heel snags on the carpet.
Your head hits something on the way down. The sharp edge of a table. You didn’t see it, didn’t realize it was there. 
You land hard, wrong. All the air punches out of your lungs from the force of the fall, the pain splitting through your skull. You can taste blood in your mouth, the bite of metal behind your teeth. It’s thick and bitter when you try to swallow.
It’s too much. The ache in your head, the heavy weight in your limbs. You want to sleep, to stop fighting, to sink into the soft darkness waiting just at the edge of your vision.
There are hands on you again. Dragging you back, turning you over. A weight settles over your legs, pinning you down.
“You like it rough, huh?” he hisses. 
You can barely see, vision spotting and smeared with color. His face is a blur above you. Your dress is shoved up over your stomach. You hear the clink of his belt coming undone.
Things are slipping, gone hazy and hard to understand. You can’t think over the pounding in your head. 
Or maybe it’s not in your head.
There’s a heavy thud, a muffled shout, and then the crack of splintering wood as the door is forced open.
You can’t see, can’t breathe. It’s all colors and sounds, shuffling and swearing, until suddenly the weight is off you. 
You twitch away, curling in on yourself, knees tucking up to your chest. A black film swims over your vision, threatening to overwhelm you. Your nails bite into your legs, and the sharp sting brings you back, keeps you teetering on the edge of consciousness. 
Blinking hard, the blackness ebbs away. The room settles into soft-focus.
The man is crumpled on the floor a few feet away from you, clutching at his nose. Blood seeps between his fingers, dribbles down his chin. You didn’t hear bone but you hope to fuck it’s broken. His expression is stained with fear, eyes wide as he watches —
Joel.
It’s Joel.
He’s here. He came for you. He’s here.
His steps are heavy as he crosses the room and drags the other man up by the collar of his shirt, lifting him so they’re eye level. His expression is stony, severe. Ice-cold fury.
“What the fuck did you give her?” Joel demands.
The other man struggles against him, but it doesn’t matter. Joel is bigger, stronger. When the answer doesn’t come immediately, he tightens his grip.
“Ow, shit, man,” the guy winces, “Fucking rohypnol. It’s just supposed to loosen them up.”
Joel’s jaw tenses, and you think maybe he’s going to hit him again. Break some more bones. Damage some vital organs, if you’re lucky.
Instead, he lets go. Shoves him back towards the door, sniffling and still bleeding.
“Get out,” Joel snarls.
The guy doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t spare you so much as a glance before he stumbles out of the door.
When Joel turns to you, all the anger is gone from his expression. His brow drawn, concern etched in every line on his face. He approaches you slowly, warily. Easing down to crouch beside you.
You swallow hard, trying to find words in the slur of your head, the blood in your mouth.
“He — he —”
You realize you’re shaking, the cold of shock settling in. 
“Hey,” Joel says gently, “You’re okay.”
He smooths his hand over your skirt, pulling your dress back down to cover your legs. You ease a little under his familiar touch, the careful way he pieces you back together. Sliding the strap back onto your shoulder. Thumbing the blood on your chin.
“Can you walk?” he asks.
“I think so.”
You just want to go, to get out of this house. You’ll crawl if you have to.
He lifts you up carefully, helps you settle on shaky legs. You try to straighten, to stand on your own stupid heels, but the world tips sideways, a sudden lurch that has stars dancing across your vision again.
But Joel is there. His hand at your hip, his arm wrapping around your waist. Steadying you. 
“Easy,” he murmurs, tucking you into his side, “I’ve got you.”
It’s a blur, mostly. The hardwood, then back onto the carpet of the hall. Joel supporting most of your weight, his voice low in your ear. Doing good. Just a little further. Through the crowd downstairs, the eyes that slide over you, drunk and disinterested.
When you finally reach the front door and step out into the night, you stop short. You close your eyes, inhaling deeply, hoping the fresh air might settle something in you. 
It doesn’t. 
“Almost there, baby,” Joel says.
You force yourself to nod, to keep moving.
His truck is a reddish blur at the end of the driveway. He keeps you balanced as he unlocks the door and helps you inside, closing it carefully behind you. Your body sags into the worn leather seat, aching and exhausted, eyes already fluttering shut.
You’re distantly aware of the engine roaring to life beneath you, the crunch of gravel as Joel pulls out of the drive. The dark, twisting hills that sink into city streets. Asphalt and lilacs, the air cool on your feverish skin.
You come-to a few seconds before you realize that you’re going to be sick.
“Shit,” you mutter, “Joel, pull over.”
He does, easing the truck over to the side of the road.
The second it rolls to a stop, you’re fumbling for the door handle and throwing it open. You barely manage to lean over the side before you’re vomiting, spilling sour champagne into the street below. 
You feel hands scraping up your hair. Soothing strokes down the length of your spine.
“You’re okay,” Joel says, “Get it all out.”
It takes a second. Shuddering and retching, your body finally revolting against the poison inside it. When you’re finally empty, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and lean back into the seat. Sweating. Shaking. The acid taste of bile sharp on your tongue.
Joel watches you. Wary. Worried. Waiting for your go-ahead. 
“You good?”
No. Definitely not. But you think you’re done puking, so you nod.
“Alright,” he says, “Not much longer now.”
X x x x x
You come back to your body in a quiet, unfamiliar place – bathed in a deep blue darkness, the muddy warmth of a streetlight. Soft carpet beneath your bare feet, a blanket around your shoulders. Someone moving nearby, a low voice. Gentle, coaxing.
“Can you look at me?”
It takes a second to focus on Joel’s face in front of you.  Everything is a little melty, the colors soft and smudged, blurring at the edges. Your head feels so impossibly heavy, an anvil on your shoulders.
“Where are we?” you ask, and the words come out slurred, the consonants gone soft and lazy.
Joel raises his hand to stroke your hair back from your face. His fingers feel warm and dry against your cheek.
“My place,” he tells you.
His place. The idea of it sits strange, doesn’t settle. You figured he would take you home, or to Tess. Leave you for someone else to deal with. You’re not his mess, not his problem.
You frown.
“Why?”
“You’re sick,” he says simply, “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”
You blink again, trying to bring the blurred outline of him into focus. He’s crouched in front of the sofa, face level with yours. The tense set of his jaw, his brows drawn together in concern. He’s holding a glass of water, and he presses it carefully into your palm, curling your fingers for you.
“Can you drink this for me?” he asks, voice as gentle as his hands. 
Your arm shakes as you bring the glass up to your lips, and it’s an effort to make your throat work the way it’s supposed to. It feels raw, wrong. But you manage, swallowing down a few mouthfuls, the water soothing some of the burn inside of you, washing away the metallic taint of vomit and blood.
“Good girl,” Joel murmurs, “Let’s get you cleaned up, alright?”
You hum your assent, though your head is still too hazy to follow from one thought to the next. It snags on the good girl, the warmth in his voice that makes you want to cry. 
But then Joel's arms are around you, lifting you easily and tucking you against his chest. You sink into the warmth of him, the sway of his step as he carries you upstairs. Eyes closed, listening to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. You wish your own would settle, even out. It’s still too slow, your blood too thick in your veins.
He eases you down onto the bathroom counter, cool granite under the bare skin of your thighs. His hand holds steady at your hip as he leans over to flip a switch. Soft light spills into the small room, and you wince against the brightness. Your head is still sore. Every inch of you aches.
Joel's gaze flickers over you. Steady, assessing. You think, absently, that you must be a mess. Mascara smudged from crying and puking, sick still clinging to your skin. Dress stained from the same, ripped in places you don’t want to think about, not when your stomach still feels so tender.
“Can we take this off, darlin’?” Joel asks.
You nod, lifting your arms. You want it off, gone. Burned, maybe. You doubt you ever could without feeling the grip of those hands, the snag and tear when he tried to take it off you. 
Joel's hands are careful as he eases the dress over your head.
You shiver, goosebumps on your bare skin. But you don’t bother covering your breasts. It’s not like there’s anything to hide. Joel's seen it all before, knows every inch of your body better than anyone else.
There’s no heat in his gaze when he looks at you now, no hunger as he wipes a damp rag over your skin. Skin that he’s kissed and bit and come over. That he now strokes gently, carefully. Cleaning away the remnants of the night.
You should really shower, but you’d probably drown.
He tugs a worn t-shirt over your head. Pulls your hair free from the collar, smooths it over your skin. You blink up at him, and his brow furrows in concern. Dark eyes lingering on your split lip, all the places you’ll probably bruise. 
“That hurt?” he asks.
You shake your head.
“S’not bad.”
He hums, but still looks. Tilting your head towards the light, touching the swollen skin.
He’s being so — soft. The tenderness in his touch, in the way he’s looking at you. It makes you ache in a way that has nothing to do with the drugs.
You lean forward, tucking your face against his neck, breathing in the whiskey and oak smell of him. His hand rubs along your back, over the knobs of your spine. You feel the pinch of tears behind your eyes.
“I was really scared,” you whisper.
Joel tenses, his hold on you tightening a fraction. 
And it strikes you how easy this is, how well you know each other's bodies. There’s familiarity in every touch, every inch of skin. You’re half-drugged, half-naked. And still you feel safe, despite his bigness, his rough edges.
His hand comes up to cup the back of your head, cradling the bowl of your skull in his heavy palm. His nose brushes against your temple, breath warm against your cheek. You’re alright, he murmurs. 
You twist your fingers into the fabric of his shirt, nuzzling your face into his neck. Hoping he can feel the thank you, the gratitude fluttering at the base of your throat. He strokes your hair, and you think he understands.
“Come on,” he says, “Let’s get you to bed.”
He steps back, and you try to slide off the counter. 
Your knees give out the second your feet touch the floor, and stumble. Catching yourself on the edge of the counter, wincing as the room spins.
“Fuck,” you mutter. The pounding behind your eyes resumes, a steady throb.
“Careful,” Joel says, “That shit’s still in your system. Can't do any cartwheels.”
You mumble something about just trying to fucking walk, but then Joel’s arms are around you again, scooping you off the floor. And that’s fine too. Better, probably.
He deposits you gently onto a bed. His bed, you realize, dimly. The smell of him on soft gray sheets. Your bare legs slide beneath the blankets, the same space he sleeps every night. It twists inside you, a funny feeling blooming in your stomach.
The mattress shifts as he sits beside you, holding out the refilled glass.
“Drink some more for me.”
You do, and you don’t shake as much this time. You feel only slightly more human when you finish. Still drugged, but the room stops spinning. You can blink without seeing stars.
You grimace, setting the glass aside. 
“I think men are bad.”
Joel chuckles softly, his hand smoothing over your hair.
“Real bad.”
You meet his gaze, the warmth in the deep brown of his eyes.
“Not you,” you murmur, “You’re okay.”
Even as you say it, you feel the weight of what’s happened hanging between you. The ugly way you’d left things. The anger, the uncertainty. There’s still so much shit you don’t understand, can’t make sense of. The way he is with you now — where was that when he left you standing in that fucking closet, hurt and confused.
Joel’s brow furrows, and he drops his gaze.
“‘M sorry about the other night,” he says, “I shouldn’t’ve left like that.”
Something nervous and vulnerable flutters in your stomach, but you figure you’ve done plenty to embarrass yourself tonight. It can’t get any worse, really.
“Did I —” you swallow, “Did I do something wrong?”
Joel looks up sharply, shaking his head.
“No. No, ‘course not,” he frowns, “It ain’t that. It’s, well — it’s complicated.”
You tilt your head, studying him in the half-light. There’s that nerve that ticks in his jaw. You used to think it meant he was angry, annoyed. Now you think it’s something else. All the things he won’t let himself say, swallowed down like glass.
“I’ve got time,” you say softly.
Joel looks up, lips twitching.
“What you’ve got is a bunch of fucking benzos messin’ with your head.” 
You bite back a smile.
“Might as well tell me then,” you shrug, “I probably won’t remember in the morning.”
Joel huffs out a sigh, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, staring down at a blank stretch of carpet. His profile silhouetted by the bedroom window, bathed in soft blue light.
“I, uh, kept tellin’ myself I’d keep my distance,” he says.
You blink.
“From me?”
He nods, still not meeting your eye.
“Why?”
He scrubs a hand over his face, frustration evident in every hard line of his body.
“Told you, lines get blurred,” he says, “Figured it’d be easier if I stayed away.”
You think of that first scene, the way he walked away without looking back, how it settled like lead in your stomach. The anger in his face when you’d shown up at the bar, the livewire of tension between you. How much it hurt every time he pulled away, shut you out. 
You frown.
“I don’t want you to stay away.”
“I know, darlin’,” he sighs, gaze flicking up to meet yours, “And that makes it a helluva lot harder.”
Something warm pools in the pit of your stomach. 
Stupid, infuriating man. You want to hit him. You want to kiss him, actually, but you’re pretty sure you still taste like puke. Still, you should try to argue. Plead your case. Explain all the reasons why staying away from you is a terrible idea.
You try to push yourself up, and spots immediately cloud your vision. A fresh wave of nausea threatens to overtake you and you wince, squeezing your eyes shut. 
“Woah, easy,” Joel catches your arm before you can topple off the edge of the bed and eases you back down. 
You can’t even argue as he tucks the blankets in around you, pulling the comforter up to your chin.
“Just gotta sleep it off, baby,” he says.
“What if — what if I — asphyxiate, or whatever,” you mumble. 
You hear Joel’s low chuckle somewhere nearby, the shift of the mattress beneath him as he settles in.
“Not gonna let you,” he says, “I'll be right here.”
The darkness seeps in at the edges of your vision, and finally, you give in.
x x x x x x x x 
author’s note: There is no situation, context, or flirtation that ever excuses sexual assault. It is never the victim’s fault.
If you need support, the resources below may be helpful: 
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline 800-656-4673 | Online Chat
Find a sexual assault service provider near you here. For international readers, you can find local providers here.
Additional resources:
The Sexual Trauma and Abuse Care Center
LGBTQ National Hotline
Mental Health Support for BIPOC Survivors
National Organization of Asian and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence
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Take me. | joel miller x f!reader drabble
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Summary: Joel always knows what you need and he gives it to you.
Warnings: 18+ MDNI, porn without plot, dom!joel, sub!reader, unprotected p in v, spitting, suffocating, praise kink, degradation kink, all is consensual, established relationship, let me know if I missed anything!
wc: 1010 Divider by @saradika-graphics
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He’s sitting on his calves fucking you slow and deep, rolling his hips to brush your clit with his pelvis every time he bottoms out, right before pulling almost all the way out, hard thrusts melting your heated core.
Your ass rests on his lap as you lay beneath him, his hands resting with a bruising grip on your hips, your knees pulled back and up almost touching your sides. He has you all spread out and he feasts on you.
You look at him in awe, always so beautiful, so strong, so in control, it makes your skin crawl. His head is bent forward, his own jaw slacked, almost touching his upper chest, his brows knitted together in concentration and pleasure. His curls damp around his face, on the nape of his neck, behind his ears, oh you gonna tug them so hard. His eyes are transfixed down where the two of you connect, his gaze hungry and dark, his pupils blown wide, no sign of his chocolate brown in sight.
His cock is covered on your slick, thick and creamy by now, he’s edging you for -you don’t know how long, you feel you might start loose conscience. Your hands clasped together above your head on his command. No restrains, he wouldn’t make it that easy on you. He knows what you can take. And if not, he’s always pushing. And you’re always taking. So eager.
No ability to tug and pull and push against anything. You have to restrain yourself for him. Because he asked. No, he stated. Like he was informing you of the time. And you want, no need to do this for him. Need to be his good girl, make him proud. Any brattiness you have in everyday life you gladly forsake in his bed. And if you choose not to, he makes sure he fucks it out of you. Consistently and relentlessly.
Joel is what escapes your mouth in a wimper; it’s the only word you know when he has you like this. At his mercy. Always at his mercy. For he is mercyful as he is kind. Eventually. That is how much you trust him, that is how you show him. Surrender. He’s your mantra, your cult, your religion, he’s everything you need. Him, him, him.
His eyes snap to yours by the sound of his name on your lips. He sees how spaced out you are, how fucked out, your head pushed back to the pillow, your eyes rolling back, your mouth agape. No, he won’t have that. You need to be there, take it how he gives it. He needs you to choose to take it. Take him.
His hands leave your bruised hips and he leans above you, putting his weight on one arm beside your head and he squeezes your cheeks together with the other to make you open your mouth.
He doesn’t have to say a word. Oh, how you‘d like to listen to his voice. But you know what he silently asks of you so you open your mouth and stick your tongue out. He stops his thrusts, burried to the hilt inside your warmth, he sucks his cheeks and spits forcefully in your mouth. You close your throat to hold it in and then swallow. But before you have a chance, his grip tightens on your jaw, his big hand covering almost all of your lower face. Hold it he speaks now and if you didn’t know any better you’d thought his voice lacked any emotion. Far from it. Slowly this time, he lets another glob of saliva to drop from his pursed lips. He’s so dominant, so large and broad and massive above you, you clench so hard around his cock, it stings.
“You like that, huh?” his eyes piercing into yours almost in a challenge. He doesn’t wait for an answer, “That’s right, hold it in your mouth until I say otherwise.” he commands as he grinds his hips, rubbing on your neglected, swollen clit.
You’re out of breath and his teasing on your sensitive nub doesn’t help you keep your pulse even, but you obey, another act of dominance, you suffocate yourself without him having to touch you. The thought makes you clench again, massaging his throbbing cock.
“You fuckin’ love it, don’t you? Suffocating on my spit like the needy little slut you are?”. You nod, eyes wide, tongue still out, face red from the lack of air, corners of your sight turning haze. He lowers himself on his elbow, cradling your neck with his palm, tugging the hair there and loosening his grip on your jaw with the other, not giving you command to swallow. Another. He wants you to hold it yourself, hoping, believing, despite every instinct of self preservation that he won’t let you faint. Trust.
He brushes his lips against your nose and your upper lip. Instead of trying to breathe all you wish for is that you could smell his scent right now. Smell him. And then he licks your cold now tongue with his warm one. The sensation makes you shiver. You almost come then and there. But you don’t. Not without his permission. Swallow he coos against your lips looking deeply in your eyes, his thumb now caressing your cheek. And you do.
“There’s my girl. There’s my good fuckin’ girl.” he praises you with a proud smile, the one revealing his dimple and your whole world lightens. You smile lazily at him, so full of love and need to be close to him, you almost forget and move your hands to hug him. You restrain yourself and try to raise your chest instead against his. He supports his weight on his calves again and brings one hand back on your hip and the other between the valley of your breasts pushing you back down, because he knows best. You obey. “That’s it babygirl. Take it.” he growls as he starts fucking you again in a punishing pace. “Fuckin’ take me.” And you do.
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Joel Miller's butt, appreciation post
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Young Joel Miller, appreciation post
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Holdout || Fraternize
Congressman!Javier Peña AU
Fandom: Narcos
Pairing: Javier Peña x Reader
Rating: 18+
Warnings: smut, fingering, arguments, period typical misogyny, American politics, inappropriate workplace behavior, office sex, kinda fem!dom, discussions of healthcare policy, inaccuracies regarding American politics
Word count: 4.5k
Summary: Sometimes it was better to talk face to face than to send his lackeys to speak for him. And who knows? Maybe he’ll get a sweet deal out of it. If nothing else, she was at least a good time.
A/N: I know Javi has nothing but disdain for politics and politicians. He would’ve pushed those DC guys out of the helicopter in season 3 if they’d asked more stupid questions. But it’s the same season 3 Javi who put in all those suits and ties and combed his hair neatly and walked around looking like a WHORE. So it’s actually his fault that I’m writing him as a politician. As usual, give your girl some comments and reblogs 🥹🥹🥹
Tagging: @art-estrange
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“How many holdouts, Donna?”
“Thirteen.”
“Fuck,” he whispered, knowing instantly from the number which faction of congresspeople had refused to agree to vote for the bill. He also knew who the ringleader of this group of thirteen was. Without her approval, the other twelve wouldn’t even breathe let alone vote yes. An abstinence, maybe. But a yes? Impossible. She was also one of the few who could reach across the aisle to get them the votes he and Murphy needed to pass the bill in Congress.
“What exactly does she want?”
“Bunch of stuff,” said Donna, flipping open the binder that contained the draft of the Child Health Assistance Program bill. From his seat, Javier could see the color coded remarks that decorated the pages. Only when it went to her office did it come back with the fucking rainbow splattered in the pages. When he was a freshman to congress, the outgoing congressman from his district had warned him about her.
Difficult. Nerdy. Pretentious. A fucking bitch. An absolute cunt.
He would never say the last two things about her, of course. If he so much as thought them, his mama would fly to DC and slap him.
“The premium increase on Medicaid for one. She thinks it’s too much. Did some math on the side, too,” she said, unfolding a sticky note that contained some scribbled out numbers. “She accounted for the average household income nationally and in her district and adjusted for projected inflation and arrived at an increase by 3% on the financial burden on families. She made a calculation for our district, too. And by Stoddard’s calculations, her estimate is accurate.”
“Right, right,” he said, taking a puff of his cigarette and blowing the smoke out towards the open window. “Has anyone told her that healthcare expenses have increased and we cannot afford to keep the Part B premiums at forty four fucking dollars?”
His staffer simply shrugged before beginning to explain all the other demands the congresswoman from West Virginia had. By the time they were through with the major issues, it was time for lunch.
“Try to get Barrett and Kilpatrick on board,” he said, getting up from his seat at the head of the table. He heard her grumble, but didn’t take it too personally. It would be easier to move a boulder up a hill than to convince anyone in the congresswoman’s faction to vote for something she didn’t vote for. He pressed the stub harder into his glass ashtray, his anger towards her manifesting in the present she got him.
“Yes, sir,” she said, marking the page they’d last discussed. His staffers shuffled out of their seats and out of the office, leaving him with just Donna.
“I hear she’s back in the building. Returned from her district last night. Maybe you can convince her?” She said expectantly. Out of all the people in his office, she was the only one who knew that he had a shot. No matter how narrow the possibilities. Fair’s fair, he thought. Since he tasked her with talking to Kilpatrick and Barrett.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “No harm in trying.” He would’ve laughed had someone else said that. There definitely was harm in trying. His sanity was at stake. He had a hard enough time just seeing her at the committee meetings. But if he couldn’t get members of his own party on board, he could bid goodbye to the dream of passing the bill.
He picked up the binder and sped through the hallways to her office, anxious she might leave for lunch. She usually didn’t, but made exceptions for when she met with her campaign team. Something about it being unethical to do campaign business in facilities paid for by the taxpayer. And illegal. Like him, she was a workaholic. If she wasn’t in her office, she was in her congressional district.
He stopped outside the double doors to her office, American flags on either side and a nameplate with her name and state written in gold. Right as he rose his fist to knock for courtesy’s sake, the door opened and a lanky young boy stepped out of her office, sandwich in hand. Intern.
“Is the congresswoman in?” He asked, making the boy jump back in surprise.
“Uhh…” the boy trailed, looking back at the door with wide eyes. So she was in. And the kid didn’t know whether he was one of the people to whom he should lie about his boss’ availability.
“She’s…busy?”
Javi snorted before putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder and gently nudging him away from the door. “Enjoy lunch, kid,” he said before slipping into her office. The boy said something in an effort to stop him, but the door thankfully muffled the sounds. He kicked the door with the deadbolt, eager to not get caught. Nothing interesting ever happened in congress. So the first wisp of smoke would be enough for gossips to start a fire. He walked past the front office with the plush couches for guests and right into the inside where the magic happened.
Sure enough, he found her hunched over her desk, punching numbers into a calculator with her left hand as her right scribbled them out on her notebook. The black high heeled shoes she wore pushed her ass out invitingly. His eyes trailed up the shoes, following the black lines of her stockings. He took a deep breath and turned away, his eyes landing on one of her staffers’ desks.
A carton box with sandwiches from the nearby cafeteria sat open, mostly empty but for three sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil. He wasn’t planning on lunch, but he wouldn’t decline after seeing some perfectly good sandwiches laid out in front of him.
“Get your own, Peña,” came a cold, stern voice right as he touched one.
“I would, but you owe me sustenance for making me read through all your notes. I need more nutrients to keep up with your shit,” he said, unwrapping the foil. He took a bite, nodding appreciatively as the well seasoned meat and garlic mayonnaise touched his tongue.
She put her pen down and turned around to finally face him. She looked well put together as she always did. A navy blue pinstriped skirt that clung to her beautifully, matching the jacket draped over her chair. Her white blouse was tucked in, her hair up in a neat bun to show off her pearl earrings. She placed a hand on her hip, crossed one leg in front of the other and narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s not my fault that your diet of whiskey and cigarettes doesn’t nourish you enough to read some notes on your poorly drafted bill.”
“It’s called a draft for a reason, Glitter,” he scoffed, his lips curving up in a smirk as he used her nickname against her. He knew she hated it. He wasn’t even in congress for the origin of the nickname, but it took only days for him to learn that the Congresswoman from West Virginia had “accidentally” used a glitter pen to write notes on the final draft of a bill. Sure she changed the pen after she realized. Only one word was in the imbecilic ink, but the name stuck.
“I forgot that your standards are low.” She rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “What do you want now, Peña? Is it just the sandwich? I knew you had a tight budget over in the 23rd district of Texas, but I didn’t know the situation was so dire even the congressman had to mooch off someone else.”
“I already paid for it. With my soul.” He took another bite of the sandwich, unaffected by her jabs. As he chewed on his free lunch, he slapped a hand on the binder he abandoned on a staffer’s desk.
“We need to discuss your ridiculous demands.”
“I don’t see how asking to restore coverage for disabled children counts as ridiculous.” She leaned back against her desk and placed her palms flat against the surface. “Unless you hate children. Disabled children.”
“You’ve been in D.C. too long,” he said, annoyed by her spin. “And it’s not like I slashed the funding for disabled kids. They did. Don’t fight me for shit I didn’t do. And it’s not like they would’ve changed their minds by now. None of them have grown a conscience all of a sudden. They’ll just laugh us out of their office.”
“Peña, are you proposing the child health program for the children or the fucking pricks in the House who think it’s a waste of money to invest in healthcare?”
“To invest in healthcare, we need to get the bill passed. Would you rather get some coverage for kids or none?”
“Obviously, I would like some. But some or none aren’t the only options. If you’re going to cut out necessary things preemptively, we’ll get even less than what we need by the time we’re done negotiating with them.”
He darted his tongue out, licking his lips as he considered her words. They did not differ much ideologically. He too was an idealist like her. The people of his district voted him in for his ideals, for his promises. But D.C. had a way of making cynics out of optimists. It was easier for her to remain an idealist. There was no real threat to her seat.
“We don’t have an unlimited budget. It’s going to be a pain in the fucking ass trying to get this through. I put the shit you’re asking for and we can forget getting any coverage. Just like your demand to expand benefits for low income folks. If we do what you’re suggesting, it’ll be an expenditure of 3 Billion dollars over five years instead of the 1.5 billion we have available.”
She sighed and leapt up, sitting herself down on her desk. “Listen, Peña. I know you’re holding on to your seat by a thread because your margin of victory was thinner than said thread. You need to schmooze the conservatives back in Webb County. But I refuse to pay with the health of my people so you can keep your job.”
He fist clenched at the accusation and he let out a grunt. “Easy for you to say. Your district would vote for a fucking donkey if it had our party’s name slapped on it.”
It wasn’t so easy for him. Every move he made was like walking a tightrope between doing the right thing and what his constituents thought politically correct. One wrong move and they’d be out there on CNN calling him a fucking commie. Not that it bothered him. It just wasn’t good optics.
She held her pen up like it was a sword, like a threat. “They’ve tried to primary me multiple times, asshole. Never worked. I do the work and people vote me in for it.
“Listen. You wanna talk shit or actually work on this thing so we can get it passed?”
“I did my part, Peña. Thought you read through it since you’re claiming to be so exhausted.”
“It’s not gonna work sending it back and forth. Never does. We need to sit together and sort it out.”
“Right…” she drawled, her pink painted lips curling up in a smirk and her eyes sparkling with a mischievous glint. He huffed, knowing immediately what she was smirking about. He licked his lips and let himself think of what they did the last time they decided they would sit together and ‘sort it out’.
“You know I didn’t mean that,” he said, the words tasting bitter on his lips. He didn’t mean that. But he would never refuse an opportunity to do it again.
“Oh?” She teased, an eyebrow raised.
A carefully manicured fingernail dazzled under the light as she used her pointer finger to beckon him forward. He stepped towards her, his feet moving automatically like his cock remembered how he would be rewarded if he complied with her. Eyes connected to hers, he imagined what she looked like under her suit. If he would be able to catch even a glimpse of her body this time. If he would have to reach under her skirt, rip her stockings and push her panties aside to fuck her.
He loved knocking the smirk off her lips the last time, just the sight of her pliant against his chest giving him all the satisfaction he needed even before he came. She wasn’t arguing then. Just sweet little whimpers as she clutched onto his shirt and begged for release.
Just as he could deal with the smirk by reaching her and capturing her lips in a kiss, she lifted her high heel clad foot and placed it on his pants. Over his fucking cock to be exact. He raised his eyebrows at her, confused by her move. She put a gentle pressure on his cock with her foot, making him swallow.
“The fuck are you playing at, Glitter?”
“Nothing,” she drawled in a low, seductive voice. “Just testing if you have a foot thing.”
He huffed and rolled his eyes. “I don’t fucking have a foot thing.”
“Yeah? Must be an ass thing then,” she said, lifting her leg higher and caressing his face with the top of her shoes. “Maybe it’s a shoe thing…” His breaths got quicker and his heart beat faster, his body enticed by her daring when she was usually quite conservative and no-nonsense. “You didn’t want me to take my shoes off last time. It was fucking uncomfortable. I know you like how my ass looks when I wear these.”
She trailed the pointy end of the heel down his neck, just barely touching his skin, driving him mad with want for more. The hairs on his body stood to attention and his cock twitched in his pants. She hooked the heel under his tie and pulled. When it budged only a little, he tugged on it himself, taking the thing off completely and stuffing it into his pocket.
Before she could retreat, he caught her leg. Hand wrapped around her ankle he placed a kiss above the strap of her shoes. He looked up at her, relishing in watching her confidence chip away bit by bit as he left a trail of kisses up her leg. A silent gasp left her lips as he stopped at the edge of her desk and put her leg over his shoulder.
“You up for a meeting? To discuss,” he said, tilting her head up with a finger to her chin.
A soft smile played on her lips as she said, “We’ll see…”
“Yeah? What exactly do I have to do to get you in my office, Congresswoman?”
“Convince me. Give me something I’d want.”
“Everything’s a quid pro quo to you, isn’t it?”
“Such is politics, Peña.”
“If you say so,” he said, leaning close and kissing her neck right above the collar of her blouse. He felt her swallow, making him smile against her neck. The perfume he knew she spritzed on her neck seduced his senses and he licked her skin in a quest for his other senses to experience her delicious scent.
“Javier… Someone could come in at any time.”
Javier… It was always Peña for her. Except when they fucked. Then it was Javier, Javier, oh fuck please, harder! Once she fixed herself post fuck, it was back to Peña with a tinge of disdain. Like some crude separation of church and state.
“Everyone else knocks. I’m the only one who drops by without announcing myself,” he spoke into her skin, his voice a low drawl. “And I locked the door. Because I know you can’t resist me.” She snorted, but relaxed beneath his touch. Her hand came up to his hair, touching him oh so lightly in a way that she wouldn’t mess it up too much.
“Fucking caveman,” she chided, her voice too warm for him to believe she opposed his behavior. He trailed a hand up her skirt, stopping where her thighs met. He cupped her pussy, his eyes fixed on her face to read signs of displeasure.
“Congresswoman, I just kissed up your leg like you’re a delicate fucking princess. A caveman would rip your clothes up, hold you down and fuck you hard,” he said, feeling proud of himself when he felt her pussy react to it under his hand.
“Guess you have a caveman thing,” he mocked, leaving her no time to respond before grabbing her stockings and ripping it in his hand. She shrieked and grabbed on to his shoulders to steady herself.
“That’s the second pair you’ve ruined, asshole.”
“I wouldn’t have to ruin your stockings if you just took your clothes off and bent over the desk.”
“Oh fuck you,” she laughed, letting out a little whimper when he pushed her panties aside and found her clit.
“I will, Congresswoman,” he said in a soft voice as he rolled her nub under his thumb. Her hand traversed his back, feeling the fabric of his suit and making him wish they had the time and privacy for him to take his clothes off. Feel her bare hand on his back and let her leave scratches as he took his time to get her across the finish line.
“You address everyone by their designation when you fuck them, Javier?” She rocked up against him, her chest flush against his as she searched for her pleasure under his thumb.
It felt so fucking good though she wasn’t doing anything to him, to have his mouthy, disagreeable colleague in the palm of his hand. To play her like an instrument. Have her spinning in her head for a second longer before her snarky retorts left her lips.
“No, just the infuriating, fuckable Congresswomen,” he joked, getting a shove to his chest. He didn’t budge, having prepared himself for the attack since he anticipated it.
“You tease all the men you fuck in your office with your shoe?”
“No, only the ugly ones,” she said, laughing. He smiled, happy with her giving it to him as good as she got. They were close, so close he could feel her warm breath against his skin.
“Asshole,” he whispered against her lips before closing the gap between them. She looped one arm around his neck and allowed her other hand to play with his suit lapel. Her lips were soft, contrasting the sharp words they often spoke to him. A sense of calm settled in his chest as she slipped her hand under his jacket. He felt her hand now, caressing him up and down, making him long to know what she would feel like against his skin.
Spurred by the thought, his hand rubbed her more enthusiastically. She whimpered into the kiss and he took the chance to slip his tongue between her lips. Her hand traveled up his shirt and clutched his collar, her thumb slipping under his shirt and touching his neck. He moaned and quickly felt her smirk against his lips.
Unwilling to give her the upper hand, he grabbed her panties and tugged, making the frail fabric rip in his hand.
“What the fuck, Javier!?”
“Shh…”
Unobstructed by her panties, he was free to let his hand do two things at once. He parted her pussy lips and pushed a finger inside her, her warm wetness inviting him in easily. He added another finger and coated himself in her slick.
She gasped as he returned his thumb to her clit, making him smile smugly. He pulled away so she could see him. So she could see the power he wielded over her.
“You’re much nicer like this, Congresswoman.”
“And you are more of a dickhead somehow,” she said, grabbing his cock through his pants. When she began stroking his length, he drew a sharp breath.
“Why wouldn’t I? You get wetter when I’m a dick to you. You get like this when we’re talking business too?”
“Of course not, assface.” She gritted her teeth and grabbed him harder, making him grunt.
“Maybe I should check the next time we’re yelling at each other in the middle of the hallway. Reach under your skirt and find your wet panties.”
Her grip on him got harder and her eyes narrowed at him, but her pussy clenched around his fingers. “See, you like it.”
“You’ll see what I like and don’t like when I break your little prick, Peña.”
“Thought I was Javier when I’m fucking you.”
“You thought wrong,” she said, squeezing his cock again.
He yelped, the pressure getting too much even through his pants.
“Fuck!”
“Yeah. Fuck,” she snarked, releasing him only to snake around to his behind and grab a cheek.
“Get it done quick. Unlike you, I have things to do after this.”
“Oh yeah? Maybe I should go now. Can’t keep the Congresswoman from doing the best for her constituents,” he mocked, pulling away from her.
She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him back, trapping him in place with them. “Finish the fucking job,” she spoke, a serious expression overtaking her features.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, keeping up the pace of his thrust. He found her neck with his lips, placing sweet kisses on her skin. So close to her, he could feel the effect of every touch, every kiss. He locked the responses in his mind, ready to use the information for the next time he found himself with his hand up her skirt.
“The other side, Javier…” she breathed her command and he followed, eliciting a moan from her.
“Just like that… Keep going.” She thrusted back into his fingers, taking her pleasure from him eagerly. Every now and then, she issued a new command. When he obeyed, she rewarded him with sweet sounds of her pleasure.
As he brought her closer, she gripped his fingers tighter. Her eyes glazed over and she stopped giving instructions, only enjoying the fruits of his compliance with her earlier ones. She leaned against his shoulder, placing some of her weight on him. Being the sucker he was for beautiful women in the throes of pleasure, he placed a kiss on her head and cradled the back of her neck with his free hand.
“Come on, come for me…” he said softly when he felt her at the edge of the precipice.
“F-fucking make me, fucker,” she cursed, mewling when he changed the angle of his fingers to add a twist to his touches.
“Will you give me a meeting in exchange then? We could work it over together…” he negotiated with no shame whatsoever. It was a shameless business, politics.
She opened and closed her mouth several times, unable to let out anything other than a breath as he assaulted her senses mercilessly. She shook her head in denial, making him smile at her defiance.
She panted as he wore her out, her chest heaving and her eyes rolled back. The hand gripping his lapel grew weak and she went limp against him. With a low moan, she came around his fingers and collapsed against him. He kept his fingers inside her, not having the heart to kiss out on how her pussy spasmed around them as she recovered from the high he brought her.
She lifted her head off his chest and dropped her legs, freeing him from her prison.
“You’re not getting a meeting in exchange for fingering me, Peña.”
“What does a man have to do then? Fuck you in the ass? Cause I’ll do it,” he said, laughing when she shoved at his chest weakly. He pulled out finally and took a step back before grabbing his handkerchief and wiping his fingers clean of her release. She hopped off her desk and pulled out her handkerchief from her purse. She unfolded the white cloth embroidered with flowers and leaves and dipped a corner in her glass of water.
He raised an eyebrow at her when she turned back around to offer it to him.
“You have lipstick on your face.”
“Ah.”
“Where?” He asked, accepting the cloth from her.
“Right there. On your neck,” she said, pointing vaguely at his neck. He swiped where he guessed the lipstick mark was and looked up at her, asking silently if he got it.
She shook her head and reached back into her purse. She offered him a black circular box- a makeup thing he knew had a mirror in it.
“Thanks,” he said and pried it open.
“Who are you expecting to vote for this from the other side?” She asked as she adjusted her clothes and reapplied her lipstick. He wiped off the traces of her from his neck and lips. He closed the box, careful not to spill the powder inside.
“Hayworth, Calvert, Cunningham, Doolittle. Rohrabacher would do it, but it’ll require a lot of negotiation. Chenoweth would find the bill agreeable, but it’s unlikely that she’ll vote for it,” he said, a little disappointed that she was talking business even though that was why he came over.
“Yeah. She has a poor record on bipartisanship. Is Evans on board? Cause he’s pretty close to Porter and he can convince him to come aboard.”
“I think he will. Stoddard is talking to Evans’ people and it seems he’s content.”
“Alright,” she said, nodding. “I don’t have time for this shit, but it needs to be done. Surely your buddy on the other side can convince a lot more people to sign on. If he isn’t confident, there’s no point in us discussing this further.”
“Murphy’s got a list. He’s still in talks with them.”
“He’s still in talks? Motherfucker, why did you waste my time then? Could’ve waited for his chipped down draft before you sent a copy to my office.”
Because as much as I fucking hate you, I respect your intelligence. I respect that DC’s cynicism hasn’t turned you away from your ideologies.
But that wasn’t what he said. That wasn’t how this partnership worked. Political alliance didn’t equal friendship. Hell, Murphy wasn’t his political ally. He was on the other side. Yet they were friends.
“Mhmm. I had it sent to you so early on ‘cause I know you’re the hardest to please.”
“Well,” she said, mischief playing at the corners of her lips. She walked behind her desk and sat back down. “You pleased me okay today. I could do without all the yapping building up to the act, though. Really sucks the fun out of it, hearing your stupid voice.”
“Asshole,” he mumbled, as he pocketed her handkerchief and retrieved his tie. She laughed, the sound eliciting a smile from him. He pressed his lips into a thin line as he busied himself tying his tie, loath to have her see him enjoy something so trivial.
“I’ll see you at the committee meeting then,” he said when he got his tie back on.
“Yeah, see you there to watch them slash programs so they can give tax cuts to their buddies.”
He snorted, agreeing with her. It drained him to sit in on the budget committee meetings. It was a high honor when he got assigned to such an important committee. Felt like a pat on the back for his hard work. Until he had to do the hard work of arguing against the fucking worst suggestions futilely. Nothing fucking mattered when they didn’t have majority. Yet, he argued. So did she.
“Pass me a sandwich on your way out, Peña.”
He picked one of the two remaining sandwiches. “Here you go,” he said, making a throwing motion without tossing it. She reacted, throwing her hands up in the air to catch a sandwich that never came.
“Asshole,” she cursed, picking up her paperweight. Before she could throw it at him, he skipped away, another free sandwich in hand. As he closed the door to her office, he could’ve sworn he heard her giggle.
.
.
.
Main Masterlist
Guys, I’m so excited about how fun this could be. Javi in his suits. Angry Javi. Javi taking his tie off like in that one Narcos episode from season 3. Javi and reader having clandestine meetings under the guise of work. Maybe a sex scandal? Who know… Let me know what you think of Congressman!Javi and Congresswoman!Reader.
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Honey, Stomach, Mine ; 2. More Intelligent Than a Face
Series Masterlist ; Part 1.
Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader
Rating: Explicit 18+
Content Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics; Dystopian Society; Outbreak not Cordyceps AU; Angst & Yearning™️; Slow Burn; Sexual Inexperience; Cock Riding; Size Difference; Size Kink; Sex Ed for Omega’s 101; Power Dynamics; Creampie; Discussions of Heats and Knots and Slick, Oh My!; Virginity; Emotional Hurt/Comfort; Young and Needy Omega; Possessive Behavior; Age Gap
A/N: FYI I do mention that she has small breasts in this one only because I usually write big boobs and thought it was time for some itty bitty titty committee representation. 
Word Count: 13.9K
Read on AO3
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2. More Intelligent Than a Face
Existence is a strange thing, a needful thing. Something to be sated, filled, satisfied, this ordeal of being a living, breathing person. And to be an unusual sort of person, someone with needs extra to what the regular sort would require, doubly strange. 
You had always thought, in different ways, that the mating program, although a choice thief, a freedom thief, was also benevolent in its control in some ways. After all, it gave those of you who were of the not usual sort, alphas and omegas, that such thing that you needed so badly. 
Each other. 
A bad, terrible, devastating thing that in turn gives you something necessary, life changing, life fulfilling, even, perhaps. 
When your aunt had died and you’d been taken away and then put away and then shut away for what seemed would be forever, it had not, at first, in your child’s mind, seemed so terrible. But with the years, that existence you bore that needed, it began to hurt. It eventually became a very terrible thing that in turn, had taken away your ability to recognize yourself, as well. The reality that you’d been caged because of what you were, perhaps not particularly who, but certainly, what, was, at first, difficult to see. And then, when you did see it, even more difficult to look at. 
A thing caged because of what it is. And again, existence is a strange and needful thing. Caged because of what you exist as; caged because of what you need because of what you are. Caged because they can give you what will sate you. 
You open your eyes slowly, the bright, waning golden light of dusk shooting over the edge of the end of the world; bleeding pinks and violets feeding the fire. And he’s there, in a deeply set arm chair pulled up by the hearth, staring into the flames, and you realize, like you’d never truly considered before, that the cage was in part also his fault. That in ways, you’d been put away also because of what he is. You wonder if this should make you angry, resentful. If it should mean you should not want to be here, langoring so comfortably in his home that he’d brought you to. This man who you do not know, who does not so much even look like he wants to know you. In ways, your caging is his fault. And certainly, concretely, the prolonging of that caging was entirely of his doing. So why is there no resentment?
Once, one of the other omegas had said that they were brainwashing all of you. Preparing you, ripening you for slaughter. He’d come in later than the rest of you, when he was more grown, more mature, when he’d seen more things in his before life. He had lots of opinions, lots of thoughts, said that your before life, those ten years of living with your aunt, of only being a child like all the rest of them and not an omega, did not count. He said you’d been too young to understand all you’d lost. A boy named Leo. He was kind, but he was angry. And his anger frightened you. It was something you did know, in the sense that you could recognize it, for you’d seen anger before, but you could not understand it. For some reason, maybe you were built wrongly, and Leo was right, and you should have been angry like him, but you could never find it within yourself to muster it. Maybe there was nothing wrong about it. Maybe everyone was simply built and made and felt differently and that was fine too. But you knew that he was wrong on some accounts, particularly, that your before life had counted, that your aunt, who you remembered with so much love, had counted. And most of all, what he was most painfully wrong about, was that you did, and deeply, understand all you had lost. 
After all, you could only see the sky for one hour a day, every other day, now, and that one hour made your understanding of everything around you, everything happening to you, keen and painful and humiliating in a very clear way. 
The last rays of the sun wash Joel in vibrant orange reds now. A slash of glowing vermillion across his face, something almost violent about the streak of light, something possessive, and you focus your eyes intently on the sight of his face. This man, this alpha, who for all intents and purposes would or could own you as declared by the government or nature or even Leo and all he’d said would happen once you’d been claimed. 
But there was one last thing he’d been wrong about, that young, angry boy, and what you felt was the greatest chasm between the way the two of you had existed within your new designations, which was that, at one very recent point in Leo’s memory, he had belonged to someone, to somewhere. He’d had a place and a home and a family, and he had belonged, and you had never had that. Your aunt, despite her love for you, had been too old and tired to want you, truly want you. You had never been wanted in any soft, true way by anyone before. And looking at him now, you don’t think Joel could ever be capable of wanting anything in a soft way, but you do think he could want something in a true way, and you’re certain that could be more than enough for you. 
“Why didn’t you come for me?” Your voice, scratchy and small from sleep, floating away from you towards him. He jerks, the twitching returned, head snapping towards you, eyes wide, moving forward in his seat as if he’d spring out of it and towards you without thought. His scent seems to be heightened somehow now. As if your sleep had awakened your senses in new, keener ways. You can feel him tickling the back of your throat, threading his way through your hair, beneath your clothes, between your legs. 
“Are you hungry?” He asks, ignoring your question. “When was the last time you ate? You need to eat.” And again that frown, too many fast words. 
“Why didn't you come for me?” You press. “They told me you didn’t know if you wanted to come, that you wouldn't answer. I want to know why.”
He sighs a heavy, heaving thing, falling back in the chair, and turns back to the fire, and you want to whine and cry until he puts his attention back on you. You feel so… so– you don’t know. Little, unmade, with a need to be big, to grow and grow and grow so that all the things you feel and want might fit inside of you, so that he might fit inside of you. You feel hungry as if your gums ache and sting with a desire you’ve never tasted before. But also, and despite all of these conflicting, churning things, you also feel so inexplicably at ease. He’s just there, and you are just here, and you’ll make him answer, you know you have it in you to make him do the things you want, and you can’t say how, you don’t know how, but you understand that you do. 
There’s power in that – even as you are, all you are not, you can see it – the ability something small possesses to make something big move, do, be. There’s power in that. 
You whine low in your throat, and he turns back to you, something dark and tumultuous in his eyes, brow crooked sternly, but he opens his mouth. “I was going to leave you there,” he says, and you immediately wish he’d shut it. Never mind, you want to tell him, you say all the wrong things.  
“But why? I was waiting for you.” Whine, whine, whine.
“I didn’t want this. I never have.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want me?” You ask again, just to be absolutely certain you’re understanding that you’ve once again found yourself in a place where you are not wanted for, or despite of, the thing that you are. The logistics, the intricacies of it don’t seem to matter as much anymore, after everything, the before life, the not life, all that matters now is the yes or no. 
But he goes silent again, attention back toward the fire, the sun set, no more glowing vermillion slash, very little hope now too. 
He ignores your question again. “Tell me about the place they kept you,” he says instead. 
“There’s nothing to tell.” You want to cry now, for the first time, besides the tears of initial happiness when he’d finally walked into your white box, you want to cry. You dig stubby nails into the round of your knee, hard as you can, trying to make it hurt and distract. “It was very calm and very quiet.”
“Did you have friends?” He won’t turn back to look at you, and it makes you feel very lacking. Very much like the nothing they tried to make you feel you were before. 
“No. They wouldn’t let us.”
“They wouldn’t let you have friends?”
“No. They said it would agitate us – too much socialization. Really, they just didn’t want us realizing, becoming angry and aware”
This makes him turn, makes you feel, within yourself, the anger you’re telling him of, like oh, now, when I’ve been shocking and honest, you look at me – after I waited all that time for you. There is no resentment about the cage, only for the waiting. You should stick your tongue out at him, make him an ugly face, turn over and go back to sleep and ignore him the way he’d ignore you. But no, you think, let him see that you do understand, and you do know some things, that you are angry, and Leo was right.
“What did you do then?” He asks. 
“I read. I learned about myself, about you. About what we are.”
His gaze is so intense now, a ricochet, a scream, something very persistently sad. “And what are we?”
“People just like all the rest of them. But with more necessity.”
“How do you mean?”
You tip your head side to side, bright fire eyed gaze to bright fire eyed gaze. Your cheeks feel molten, sweltering, sweat at your nape, the fire in the hearth so bright, but not as bright as you; your belly glows. This is what you are, this is what you’d been made into. “There is so much necessity in existing, don’t you think?”
He tips his chin, he doesn’t understand. 
“We need so many things. We require so much to be alive, to be what we are, to be satisfied and content.”
“Do we?”
“The things we are, yes. I think so.”
“You don’t seem like you spent years in that place,” he says, voice slow, molasses in the notes. There’s something hypnotized slumbering in him that forces something satisfied to swell within you. Your belly glows. 
“I had a before life. People forget that.”
“I read in your file — you lived with an aunt.”
You wait for the: only for ten years, but the diminishing does not come. “Yes. She was kind, and I remember all of it, even if the rest of the world forgets it happened.”
“Did they ever mistreat you? At the facility–”
“No. Never. There was nothing.” You’re the one to turn away now. The sun has entirely gone away, a single glowing sliver just at the drop off of the end of the world. You stick your hand out straight ahead of you, fingertip following that line of fading light through air and space and sea. 
He watches you unblinkingly, and asks, “What do you mean?” The far off light glows through your skin, through your fingernail; he follows the path of your hand.
You can pretend in your mind that you feel the warmth of it against your fingertip, that it scorches the way it glows, heats the length of your limb, feeds the same glow in your belly, but there’s no more possessive streak of light to wrap around you; now, the heat only lives within you. This is what you are, this is what they said would happen, and now it’s finally happening. You let your arm fall back to your lap, limp, and turn to look at him again. He looks so angry, and you feel so incredibly sad for him. This cold perch, this cage that is not white like your box, but dark and struck right on the edge of peril, this place he chose to exile himself to. They were honest, in the things they'd told you all, the truth of the way alphas exist out in the world. Lonely and ostracized and feared, brainwashed to your reality maybe, sure, the way Leo claimed. But in certain things, they’d been honest, and you’re glad for it, that you have the ability to understand him now from this vantage point. The reality of how he exists, the reason for that look in his eyes, it all makes sense to you. 
“I suppose that can be a kind of bad thing… a mistreatment. Making nothing of us, of our lives, taking the whole world away until someone chooses to come and give it back to us.”
He flinches, the look shutters, clicks and flashes, a camera capturing the truth of what the two of you have already done to each other without even really knowing one another at all. “I’m sorry I waited. I’m sorry I took so long.” The words cost him something the way all truths cost something. “That I wasn’t there for you as soon as I should have been.”
“Why weren’t you?” You ask, although you know. 
“I couldn’t. I can’t. I’m not– I’m not right. I’m not well.” And this costs him more than the rest, you can see. The thump, thump, beat of his heart in his throat. You should tell him to stop, mercy is power, but you think, feel, that this pound of flesh you’re demanding via his truths is what you’re owed for your life and a year of waiting. And anyways, you’ll pay your own pound of flesh in kind eventually, and it’ll cost, even if it’s freely given, it’ll still cost. Everything is equal here, it’s only that it takes a certain kind of eye to realize the truth of that. 
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Everything, what I am, the whole thing of it and this. It’s all wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know.” And he looks suddenly angry, aged, wearing all his years and all his very obvious loneliness, teeth bared but on the verge of falling out.
“No…” you say slowly, thinking, rationalizing, a rolodex of truths in your mind. What you are, what I am, what we all are and all the honesties that compromise us. “I don’t, but I understand anyway. They make you all nothing, as well, don’t they? They take it all away, all nothing until you have one of us. It’s a terrible way to live.” And you don’t ask him, it’s not a question, only a very obvious thing. 
Your words upset him, put him right at the mouth of madness, all those shakes and jitters returned, but you only lay your head back down on the soft pillow he’d tucked beneath you, hands folded undercheek to wait for the explosion that does not come. There’s something in you that wants to see him angry, angry like Leo, like the boy who’d said you didn't have to be what they told you to be, that reminded you that you could choose for yourself. One of the few things you’d agreed on, despite and inspite of the friendship that they would not let you have but that would have blossomed anyways if they’d given you the time. They wanted to make you nothing, but you didn’t want to be nothing. You wanted very much to be alive and to belong. 
You realize, watching Joel muzzle his nature before your very eyes, wondering if the truth of him would have him springing up out of the chair to smother you with his weight and temper you with his knot, subdued with his teeth sunken into the gland at the back of your neck, that you want to see him angry. You realize that you want to see him break, that you want to hear that truth no matter what it costs the either of you. You want to see him honest. 
He struggles, a dog fight right before your eyes, but when he wins, it changes the game, turns the truth chimeral. Makes you see him in a different way, and all at the same time, makes you aware and even more comfortable than you’d already been. You’re safe here. He is safe. Most importantly, you want to be here. 
“Let me show you your room,” he says after a deep breath. 
“My room?” A little seedling of dread and sadness and disappointment. 
He shows you to a bedroom hued in soft blues. The sea when it is gentle, the sky when it’s joyous. Everything comfortable, nothing white, like he’d known already. 
He stands awkwardly at the mouth of the entry, as if scared to step foot into this serene pool of azure and marr it’s peace. You watch him out of the corner of your eye as you move around, no shoes, no socks, slowly running your fingers over all the soft surfaces, sweaty little toes sunken into the deep pile of the rug underfoot. 
“I wanted you to have somewhere to adjust– where you’d have privacy. I’m sure this– that I– that it’s all a shock…” he stutters.
One of his boots inches forward, snaps back, like he wants to follow, like he needs to follow, like nature is right here in the room with the two of you, but he wins that dog fight again, holds back. Frustrating. 
“I’m not shocked. But I– I won’t stay with you?”
“No,” he says with a finality that makes that seedling bloom in full. “I also got you clothes. And– and soft things. I know your sort–”
You give a soft huff of air through your nose, my sort… our sort.
“Like things like that. And I also… I also put some of my own things in the drawers,” he nods towards a dark mahogany dresser shoved up against the wall; shy and boyish and hesitant all wrapped into a package that would seem to be none of those things. “They say that helps.”
“Okay… thank you.” 
“Went into town to get it,” he says of the robin's eggshell blue duvet, a more dove gray blue wash for the silk soft sheets beneath. It’s all beautiful and delicate and lace trimmed and looking at him, huge and rough and something like a lonely mountain, you can’t believe he’d chosen this for you. “Lady at the store said you’d like it when I picked it out.” And that makes satisfaction smother the seedling, yes, he’d chosen it for you. A good sign. 
“You went into town to get me things?”
“I told you I want you to be comfortable while you’re here.” Something about the sentence tickles your mind, but then you’re lowering yourself onto the cloud soft bed, cool silk and cotton beneath your skin, sliding against his clothes, your belly glows bright. You’re full of distractions and truth. “There’re a couple of young women that live down aways.” Young women? You perk up at the thought. Friends? “Ellie and Dina. Two young alphas, and they’re good people. I’ll take you down to meet them soon, when you’re ready.”
“Two alphas?”
“They’re a couple.”
“Like– like in love?”
He hovers at the edge of the rug with that strange look in his eyes again, the one from before – I’m only an omega, you don’t have to be afraid of me – and a palpable desperation to cross the border you don’t think he’s even aware he’s letting you in on, but that you can see nonetheless. Two fingers tucked into the line of his belt, twisted there as if grasping for restraint. 
“Yeah, they’re together.”
“I didn’t know alphas could do that… that they’d let you.”
“Reckon it’s why they came all the way out here, to be honest, for freedom. But ‘course they can – be together, that is. We can do what we please, despite what they’d have us believe.” And Leo’s words ring in your mind again. Perhaps everyone sees the truth of what you are except for you. The seedling grows vines, suffocates. All the hope you’d thought would live here seems to have never even existed at all. You feel, for the first time, heavy with all the things you do not know, all the things you lack, all the inexperience and naivety like ignorance thick and cloying in your blood. “From what I understand, Dina presented late, after they’d already gotten together. And by that time it was a done deal, they were in love, no going back. And anyway, they make it work, make it look easy as nothin’, to be frank.” He runs a big hand over the back of his skull, and the way he lifts his arm has the thick of his bicep bunching, fat ball of muscle just there for your teeth to sink into. You shift restlessly on the bed. 
“Easy as nothin’,” you say slowly, trying to imitate the dip and pitch of his drawl. Your fingertip follows the line of stitching in the duvet, petting at the seams holding it together. “Is that how we’ll be too?” And although you mean the words, intend the question, you’re suddenly awash with shy regret for asking, even though you can’t say exactly why. Probably for the look on his face, which goes immediately dark and serious, and even yet, you persist. “Will it be easy for us too?” And you’re sure your voice must sound like you’re begging. 
“No. It won’t. It won’t be like that between us. You’ll stay here as long as it takes for you to acclimatize to being out of that place,” that place, he says like a curse, and it makes you angry, “To bein’ out in the world, and then we’ll find somewhere for you. Somewhere that’s safe and comfortable where you’ll be able to make your own life.”
“I don’t– I don’t understand,” you tell him, but it’s a lie. You do understand, you see, and very clearly, that all you’d waited for during your life, the before, the not life, the extra year, it had all been in vain, for nothing. It would not be given to you here. 
“What don’t you understand?” And his tone is cruel and spitting, making you flinch. “I’m sending you away soon. This is what I’m saying.”
“But I don’t– No–” You’d waited so long. He’s being so mean, and you tell him so. 
“Yes. You need to be with people your own age. You need to see the world and grow up,” and what a horrible thing to say, you think – to grow up. As if it were not a thing you’d been forced to do already all on your own, without anyone to help you.
“Well then what do you care about what I need? You make no sense!” And you bare your teeth at him. “If you don’t want me–” 
But he cuts you off, broad palm held up in a staying gesture, and it’s so incongruous with all the rest of it, that you want to laugh in his face. “Didn’t say I don’t want’cha.” And that frown again, he makes no sense, the tip of his boot makes landfall in the high piled rug, halfway in, hypnotized and compelled in full. You settle on the bed and feel very calm despite the too fast beat of the thing that moves and lives within you, despite your anger and confusion. 
And through the beat and the heat and the sweat on your neck, despite the shyness you’ve forgotten is shyness right at this moment, but that you’re sure will return later because this is what you are and this is what you were made for: him. You ask, “Then are you going to knot me now?” Because if he’s going to send you away, then surely he’ll give you that before you go, surely he’ll still want that from you. 
He splutters, going all red in the face as if the notion of a young omega asking the experienced alpha she’s been presented with to do that most basic thing his nature demands, is something out of the ordinary. “What? No– no.” But despite his supposed refusal, he takes two steps forward towards you. Venturing further onto the soft piled rug, leaving large crushing footprints in his wake. 
“Later then?” You ask very pragmatically.
“No. Absolutely not. There will be no knotting.”
You shake your head at him, small frown between your brows, but still feeling calm despite the tragedy. Forcing that horrible seedling down into submission, the vines smothering all your hope. “But what do you mean?” And you feel like a child. 
“I’m not going to fuck you. We aren’t doin’ any of that. You’re too– you’re too young, practically a girl.” A child. He has an accent that thickens with agitation, the ends of his words sluicing off between his tongue and teeth and anger while he hurts you.
“You don’t want me,” you say, and it isn’t a question anymore, only an obvious thing.
His eyes go very dark, and you want to turn away, look back at the edge of the world and the bright glow of the sun being swallowed by it. “I don’t want that.” And the way he spits the words hurts, making you a thing impossible to desire.  
“You don’t want me,” again, repeated, so the both of you can bask in the truth of it. 
But it snaps something in the room, or in him, or amidst the honesty being brought out here and now. He takes two ground-eating steps forward to loom over you aggressively, forcing you to fall back on your elbows, looking up at him wide eyed but still inexplicably not afraid, only a greater thing than what can be called merely disappointed. And yet, not disappointed enough to not notice the way one of his knees presses against the inside of one of yours. “I should get to have a fucking choice too, shouldn’t I? Like you, locked away in that horrible place–”
“It wasn’t horrible,” you try and say, but you don’t think he hears.
“The way you had all your choices and freedoms stripped. Shouldn’t I also be allowed to have one single goddamn thing?” Where else would I have gone if not there? “A choice – to say, no, stop, I don’t want this.” He’s so angry, and it is all suddenly so clear, and he finally grabs you, pulling you up by the bend of your elbow, the small joint almost crushed in his massive fist to pull you halfway up off the bed and towards him, getting in your face with all his anger. 
Leo’s voice again, you don’t have to be what they tell you to be, you can choose for yourself. This is what Joel wants too. 
“You can’t end up stuck out here at the end of the world with some washed up old alpha who can’t give you a quarter of what you need and deserve. I won’t let you. I won’t,” he snarls.
But despite your greenness, your naivety or your ignorance or your youth, you think: how dare he? “And what about what I want? What about my choices? Or are you going to be just like all the rest of them? Like the whole world telling me I’m too insignificant and too stupid to decide for myself? Just locked away in another cage–” You spit at him, trying to claw and shove at him, stubby nails digging at the sun pebbled skin of his throat, yanking at his too long hair and patchy beard, inadvertently pulling yourself closer to him. He grunts, struggling to take you in hand, slippery thing you can make yourself into when you really want, and you, trying your mightiest to hurt him any way you can as he’s already decided he’s going to hurt you with his rejection. “Is that what you are? Just like all the rest of them?” You cry amidst your struggle, choked with tears and being too little to be effective but too big for your own skin. 
You shove at his jaw, trying to scratch at his cheek, but he grips you full around either arm, locking you in place and gives you a swift but measured jerk, jostling you into submission, trapping your hands bent as they are up by his neck so that one small palm is sliding to the back of his nape, over the gland behind his ear, at that soft vulnerable hollow, and coming to rest at the one in back, at the base of his neck beneath his collar. Both of you go still as stone, frozen by the truth of what you both are and how inescapable it all is, reality held in the palm of your hand.
Obvious: a designation is not a thing you can ever hide. Alphas and omegas wear it on their bodies like markers. Glands scattered at different places: behind the ears, at the base of the neck, inside the wrists and ankles; vulnerabilities that when acknowledged, bitten, seal a mating bond. Places that if handled properly, turn you into nothing but what you are at your basest nature. And you can’t help yourself – at the feel the spongy patch of skin, slightly raised and slightly rougher than the rest of him, a place that when in rut or in heat, would become, will become, extra sensitive, extra swollen, extra ripe – when you slowly slide your fingers against it, feeling the texture of it, the way it’s even hotter than the already sweltering rest of him. 
He growls low and rumbling in his chest, that sound again, and he’s so angry, it’s painted all over his face in shades of defiance; coming off of him like radiation, angry at you, angry at the truth of what you both are, angry at himself and the world and all of it, but he pulls you closer anyways, tugging your forward by his grip on your arms which is starting to mimic the ache you’re suffering at that place between your legs you long to show him, pulling you in so that the tips of your breasts, covered beneath his thick sweater and the too thin, soft bra they gave all the omegas who needed them, brush against the thick of his chest, pulling a soft breath of a moan from your tongue.
“You’re being so mean to me,” you whisper. “And I don’t deserve it. And I waited so long for you and you never came for me, and now this is how you’re treating me,” you say with a hiccup and a tear, and you feel little and big and that place that calls for him pulses and hurts and leaks. He’s so mean and you’re so sad and you want him and you can’t understand why he’s being this way when you were made for him and he for you, and if nothing else was right in this world, then this was the thing that was supposed to be. 
His eyes shift quickly back and forth between both of yours, that frown, mouth turned down, his mustache that connects to the patchiness of his beard showing how contrary he finds you. You frown back at him, trying to pull away, whining when he tightens, pulls you closer, right up to his face as if he needs to inspect you even more closely. Your toes aren’t touching the rug anymore, scraping against the thick round of his boots, and you won’t have it. You’ll give him a piece of your mind, you’ll show him. “You think that because I’m little and young and easily bruised that I’m not in control.” It’s not a question. If you could grow fangs, you would. If you could rip him to shreds, you would. “That I can’t control you. But I made you come for me, didn’t I?” Now you laugh at him, now you show him. “I knew if I wrote to you, you’d come, and you did. I made you come. I made you.” And saying it feels like victory, so you don’t care that it makes his face crack, you don’t care that he pushes away from you, letting you fall back onto the bed with a limp bounce, storming out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him. You don’t give a thistle for choices. You want to be selfish, you want to be alive, you want to see the sky. You have the sea now, and you want to be this thing you are because this is already you, this is what you were made into, and you have no choice but to bask in it, and you won’t bend to him or give it up for him only because he can’t accept the same of himself, only because he’s still trapped in his own white box. 
-
He knows, as soon as you make whatever stupid decision it is that you’re making, that something’s off. A shift in the air in the house, his heart beating funny, his scent changing because his body knows you’re not in its immediate vicinity anymore, something that tells him off, off, off, be vigilant, she needs you so much, you can’t fail again. He reminds himself of all the decisions he’s already made, of what he knows he wants and does not want, of what he is and what he is not. 
After he’d stormed out of your room – I made you – he’d retreated to hide in his own bedroom, to the other big chair by the fireplace in here, cowering like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, forcing himself to listen to you cry for hours, the whine and whimper of an omega in need of something he was made to give, and yet will not. As if a little thing like you could make him do anything. Him. He grits his teeth, chews on his own tongue, digs his fingers into the arms of the chair to force himself to remain seated in place, to not return to you, to not give you all the things he knows you need and want to be soothed by. 
He can smell your scent changing already, reacting to him, reducing him to nothing, entirely effective in your conquering. And he’d stupidly thought that perhaps the heat, and the rut that it would yield, would wait, give him a moment of reprieve or compassion before it came for him. A moment to think. He thought he’d have more time, a chance to escape the thing he so desperately wants but cannot and will not let himself have, refuses to give in to. His body stirs and smolders, and like he’d done for eleven years and then one, he ignores it. He ignores the truth of who and what he really is. 
He sits in his chair, head propped up against the back, and listens to your cries and mewls ebb and quiet until finally, he thinks you might have sobbed yourself to sleep. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he doesn’t mean to hurt you. It’s the absolute last thing he could ever, ever want. Everything, not only in his nature, but in his character, in the things that make him up as a man who’d want a woman like you, is clamoring within him to go to you, to give you what you want, to sooth you with his voice and his scent and his cock. To fuck you into your heat until you’re soft and slick and fevered enough to take his knot, to let him breed you, to let him mate you. His cock stirs and thickens beneath the rough confines of his jeans, that thicket of skin at the base where his knot waits in ready for you, simmering with heat and tightness. He digs his knuckles into his temple until it hurts. 
You don’t want me… Of course he fucking wants you. He’d have taken your cunt for himself right there in that white box room, on your rickety little iron cot for all the surrounding omegas and witless betas to hear without giving a single shit what anyone said or thought if he had any sort of right or will or choice. If he had anything more to give you. And then watching you go right to sleep when he’d brought you into his home, the sight of you feeling so immediately safe and content, ready to nest amongst his things and his scent – that feeling of having within himself the things that he needs to be what he is – indescribable. 
Pretty little omega – and truly, you’re so pretty. All he’d never let himself imagine or desire or hope for. He’s too old, past his prime and forgotten by the world, but he’s still a man with a working cock, still an alpha, even if only in the simplest of ways. Of course he wants you. 
He lets himself languish miserably before the fire, eyes going hazy with exhaustion, the comedown of adrenaline, the presence of warm omega all around him, the taste of your pre-heat scent coating his tongue and throat. He pulls his socks off and lets the heat of the fire warm his feet and thinks he should’ve given you his room instead, let you sleep in his bed, near the fireplace, between his sheets and amongst his scent. He can sleep out in the dirt for all he matters as long as you’re comfortable. And the rational part of his brain wants to laugh at the thought, sitting here alone, realizing that despite his battling, his nature will always win out in the end, that all this fight really means shit. His cock gives a faint throb, his deflated knot rhythmically pulsing in time with his heart, ready to swell and claim what everyone including nature, but excluding Joel, has said belongs to him. Of course he wants you. And if he’s honest, or a fucking liar, he can’t really say which, all his truths and deceptions have become so muddled within his own mind, his past and his present and this future he’s never thought he wanted or had a right to, the year of waiting was more a form of self punishment, restraint as proof of fear, than anything to do with you. 
Anger, yes, that everything had been decided for him for so long. That he isn’t even allowed to decide what he is, what he wants. But fear, more than anything, that interminable curse of failure he’s so haunted by and so afraid of. How could nature ever look at him and think him strong enough to take on the role of caretaker, protector, alpha – whatever it is that you need him to be, the whole world in the eye of a young and untried omega – when he can hardly stand the sight of his own face in the mirror? There’s nothing but tragedy setting the stage the two of you stand posed on. 
Finally, your cries fade to soft hiccups, and then a peculiar silence he doesn't trust. He waits, ears peeled, his head turned slightly towards the cracked open door of his bedroom, sensing the shift in scent and after a few beats of too loud silence, a thud and a huff, the music of a little mind thinking too loudly and mischievously for its own good. Even the wind seems to blow differently as if it knows you’re scampering about amidst it now, vulnerable to its lashings, and he’s shooting up out of his chair and charging through the house. By the door, he realizes his boots are gone, stolen from where he’d dropped them discarded after he’d left you in your room to cry your salt tears. He forgoes a coat and his flannel, braving the icy wind in nothing but his white undershirt, stepping silent but no less frantic out onto the deck. The truck is dark and quiet, still in its usual spot, and this quells his fear minutely. It occurs to him that you likely don’t even know how to drive. 
But when he comes around the western facing corner of the house, it’s worse than he could’ve imagined, and the scar slashed across his right temple suddenly zings like copper, burns like fire at the sight of you. You are, for some inexplicable reason, crawling on all fours, towards the edge of the cliffside. And he’s frozen solid for a second, shocked and terrified, and then moving forward like lightning, tripping over his own two feet and breath before he realizes you’re right at the very edge now, and he needs to move very fucking carefully to ensure he doesnt send you spilling in fright over the edge. 
He alters his movements, continues forward slowly, his bare feet over the freezing ground and sharp bric-a-brac of the forest floor, the slabs of stone turning to ice as he nears the edge, and he watches the uncoordinated wallop of your movements, banging your knee with a small yelp, as you crawl like a slow and drunken spider in his too big clothes, dragging his too big boots around your ankles, to the very edge of the cliff side, slowly lowering yourself to plop down with your head and arms hanging over the edge. 
He pauses about ten feet away from you and waits for your next move, but you lie still, quarter part of you draped over the edge of the cliff, and he realizes that you’re watching the water far below crash against the rocks. 
“Sweetheart,” he calls slow and gentle, crouching down low so that his voice travels along the ground where you lay. “Sweetheart, what’re you doin’?” You start, turning back towards him, one palm coming to the edge of the rock to shove yourself up to peer back at him, rock pebble spraying out over the void with your movement, and his heart and stomach lurch to his throat, almost gagging at the terror. Your eyes are hazy and bright, and he recognizes the beginnings of the fever, it’s tendrils wrapping themselves around you, making you a little confused, a lot needy, and he’s so fucking stupid, he should’ve never left you alone. But he hadn’t thought it’d come on this fast, that you’d affect each other so. 
“I wanna go down there,” you call over the small hill of your shoulder, turning back to peer down at the beach. You point down at the shoreline with your other hand, wagging your finger as to emphasize what it is you want.
Jesus fucking Christ, he’s going to have a goddamn heart attack. “Alright, baby. Come back here, I’ll take you down. Let’s go together.” You mumble something, arm flopping out, waving him away. “Please, sweetheart, come back here with me,” he begs, and there must be something in his tone, he’s sure, because you turn full back at that, looking at him suspiciously like you remember his earlier words of rejection and no longer trust him now. 
“I’m glowing, sir. I need to feel the sea and the cold.” Your voice sounds not your own, like it comes surfing off the wind to his ears. 
“Not, sir. Joel. Only Joel, remember?”
You push yourself up, moving to sit back on your knees, but still right at the edge, still too close. Sweat slides slick and frigid down his spine, the complete opposite of what you must be feeling right now. Only Joel. Only Joel, he hears you mutter at the sea. “There isn’t anything only about you. Leave me alone. Go away–”
“Please, baby. Come back here. Let’s go inside, I’ll give you the sea, I promise. Just come over here – with me.” You turn back at that, shifting on your knees to face him. If you lose your balance, stumble, you’ll topple back over the edge. He just needs to be good enough for you to want to come to him, convincing enough. He puts his palm out towards you, all supplication now. “Come here, sweet thing. I’ll show you the sea, I promise I will.” You start your slow spider crawl back towards him and his scar burns, a sharp pain through his brain, piercing behind his eye, heart beat to death between his ribs. As soon as he gets his hands on you, he’s going to fucking throttle you, he promises. But he’s almost got you, and he dares not move, barely even breathes, his hand is shaking so badly it interrupts his view of you on every other painful heartbeat, and he realizes his eyes are blurry with terrified tears, and suddenly, that anger doesn’t matter even half an ounce as much anymore because then you’re here and crawling into his arms, up into his lap so that he’s falling back onto his ass on the cold, hard ground. He pulls you into himself, clumsy little spider legs wrapping around his waist, your arms going around his neck so that you’re clinging to him. 
One of his boots lies lost and discarded back by the edge of the cliff.
“Please, don’t ever fucking do that to me again.”
“I’m glowing,” you sigh into his neck.
“I know you are, baby. It’s okay, we’ll fix it.” He feels you nuzzle at his collarbone, his neck, the gland, already sensitive and swollen behind his ear, already, already, already, God help me, and his heart feels like it’s beating so hard he can feel it move through your chest cavity and reverberate against his hand on your back. Christ, it wasn't supposed to happen this quickly, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was supposed to have more time, more choices, more control. The wet of your lips mouthing at his skin, and then the peek of your tongue tasting his gland, and he rumbles deep in his chest, his mind going loose and slacken like an old rubber band, and then snapping back to clarity at your surroundings. Cold wind and now the beginning sprinkling of needle freezing rain, your shivers jittering into his chest.
“We gotta go inside – let’s get up,” he murmurs into your ear, unable to resist nosing at your hair, the small, freezing cold seashell hidden within. 
Wait, wait– and then the scrape of small, blunt edged teeth just there at the vulnerable patch of skin. He swallows a scream, and the caged thing rattles and howls inside his chest, his arms going iron and binding around your back, pressing you to him, chest melded to chest. “Wait, please,” again, and now a tiny kiss. “If you don’t want me,” and he never should’ve even insinuated it, it’s the worst thing he’s ever done in his entire miserable fucking life. “Then will you please–” another soft press of lips to his jaw, the corner of his mouth. His hand slides down your spine, he can’t help himself, presses down on the base of your vertebrae, the heat of your cunt along the pulse of his cock, through cotton and denim and cold, just there, just there, he’s so fucking close. “Will you at least kiss me–” but you’re not waiting for another rejection, you’re just licking clean across the slash of his mouth, taking his bottom lip between both of yours for a shy little suck, unsure and inexperienced with desperation. And then there’s nothing caged about any of it, no more white box, no more perch at the end of the world, he squeezes you to himself so that it hurts, and he kisses you.  
Hand twisted too tightly in your dampening hair, he pulls your head back, and with a rumbling grunt sends you deep and languid into easy submission, the steady deep timber of the sound wringing the desired effect on you. You twitch once, as if he’d tugged on your strings, his pretty puppet, and then go soft and open and easily penetrated, jaw hinging open so that he can lick inside of you, tasting all you have to offer which he refuses to accept he’s actually taking and which you’re all too desperately eager to give. 
He takes it all regardless. 
Slick mouth against slick mouth, out there in the cold rain and wind, rolling around in the dirt, he tastes you the way the two of you were made for. Pulling your hips closer, rolling his up to meet all the heat you have to offer which will only get hotter and hotter the more he continues down this path. You claw at his hair, the gland at your wrist rubbing against the one at his ear, marking him with your scent and pheromones, marking him as yours. And he swears he can almost feel that glow in your belly too, a little wriggling comet in his hands, set to burst. The crescendo of your whining climbs higher, your mouth hungrier, and Joel feels insane for a second, entirely outside of himself, lost to his senses. All he is, is what you need him to be, something hard and strong and solid for you to mold yourself around, and it’s so right it’s wrong. Not what he’d planned, not what he’d decided. 
He rips his mouth away from yours, panting, forgetting his name and his sense and everything else he is besides a hard cock and a now equally smoldering belly. “Wait– wait,” he begs, burning comet, too willful to tame without teeth, surging in his arms. You rub yourself against his face, your hair sluicing through his, your soft tits against his chest, his neck, bumping his chin while you try to climb him perched in his lap like you are. “Wait, please–” he tries to sooth over your huffing whines, and then a sharp stinging little bite to his jaw line. 
No, no. 
“Stop. We have to stop, please. This isn't what’s supposed to happen. This isn’t what I want.” And you hear that. 
The comet burns out, you go still in his arms, and it feels worse than anything. He wishes he could swallow the words back immediately because then you’re pushing back and away from him. Scrambling out of his lap, escaping his arms as fast as you can. 
“You’re horrible! Get away–” He dodges a small, kicking foot – the bootless one.  And you’re stumbling to your feet, tripping over the too big shoe wrapped around your too small foot. He pushes to stand, as well, gripping you about the elbow, avoiding a weakly punching little fist now. This is truly getting too ridiculous. The two of you need to come to terms with each other, meet in the middle, forgo the theatrics you seem all too desperate for. He ducks away from another ineffectual punch, grips you by the scruff of the neck, unruly kitten that you are, and pushing you forward, hooks you under his arm, lifting you clear off the ground and rendering you entirely captured, bent in half, a wilted flower over the strong of his forearm. 
You squawk indignantly, kicking your feet against the back of his leg as he stomps over to his abandoned boot, slowly filling with rain now, fuck this shit, and trudges through the mud back to the house, ice cold droplets dripping off the tip of his nose. The two of you are well on your way to soaked, but he thinks it might not be such a bad thing, considering the ball of heat radiating from your belly, the one in his own mimicking you. It seems to pool in the palm of his hand, where he’s got you hooked and caught over his arm, honey collection of magma.
Let me go! You’re screeching. “Leave me alone! You don’t even care about me and I hate you and I want to see the water!” More kicking and clawing.
When he finally dumps you back onto your rumpled bed, undignified yelps and pathetic little growls, he’s at his wits end. Taking you firmly in hand, heavy hand back at the nape of your neck, thickly calloused palm scraping against the quickly swelling gland there, other pushing at your hip to drape you over the edge of the bed like a rag doll, he folds himself over you, smothering you with his weight and heat, forcing you into calm. You go shocked frozen, wracked with shivers and then finally, blessedly still and quiet. This was all you needed, for Joel to follow his instincts. 
He presses you into the bed with his too heavy weight, thick arms caged around your head, pert little ass tucked up against his pelvis, and he breathes you in, lets you settle. 
“You need to behave,” he rumbles, and all you do is sigh bleary eyed and exhausted by your own willfulness. “You’re not to go outside all alone at night like that again, do you understand me? And you are especially, never, ever, to go that close to the cliff edge again.”
“But the sea–” you whine and shift, rubbing your little cunt against his now fully hard cock, perfect position that he’s got you in, presented to him like this. He presses tighter against you, growling deep in his chest to shut you up. 
“Promise me.” But you whine, shifting, starting to cry a little, too far gone to the start of the fever he’s done nothing to really sate. There’s still time yet, for your full heat, but these beginning symptoms, they need to be soothed just as well, tempered just as diligently as the full blown heat would be. If for nothing else, than for the sake of the omegas' comfort and happiness. He bends his knees, shoving the thick of his erection up against the apex of your thighs, pressing you further up onto the bed and tighter beneath him, and nosing through the mantle of your hair, he finds the gland at the back of your neck beneath the collar of his sweater and bites down gently. Not breaking skin, only giving you teeth to feel, to be soothed by, that blunt clasp that’ll dull your own sharp edges for now. 
He laves his tongue along the scorching patch of skin, the texture different to the rest of you, different, even, to his own glands, like silk, like water, something liquid about the feel of you here beneath his tongue and teeth. You let out a terrible little sound that has the threads of his control snapping, providing cause for concern, and he growls softly, pleased, in response. It’s a sound of submission and acceptance and praise, from the both of you equally, all at the same time. He lets you settle like this, petting at you with his tongue, giving you the scraping edge of his teeth like a threat, every so often. Grinding, because honestly he can’t even fucking help it, against that scorching little cunt he knows would already, even now, be so soft for him. Perhaps, not soft enough yet, not ripe enough yet, to take his knot and everything else he wants to force on it, but soft enough for him to teach you how to take a good fucking. 
A virgin, never even had a heat before, and trapped here between his teeth and beneath his cock. It would all be so easy, it would all feel so right. 
But that is, Joel thinks, just the thing of it. It would feel right – but would it be right? He can’t yet tell. 
You cloud his judgment, seduce his nature into wanting to give you everything and anything you could ever even think to ask for, and he can’t yet tell if it’s just you, that sparkle and that light and that heat like a comet that lives inside of you that he’s coming to suspect is wholly yours, nothing to do with biology or designations or markers that tell of what you should and should not be, that’s got him so desperate to please you. Or if it’s only nature, trying to force him into another choice he’s not made for himself. 
-
You wake slowly, disturbed out of your sleep the way one feels when they’re being spied on by something too large and too scary to look at right in the eye. 
You shift in the blue bed, cool and calm now, all that glowing heat from before that’d forced you out into the cold and the wind, hungry to throw yourself through space and time out into the sea, reckless and free, gone away now. All you feel as your eyes blink open slowly, is a shivery, damp cold rattling down the line of your spine. The room around you is dark, the glow of the slumbering fire out in the living room peeking in through the slightly left ajar door of your bedroom. 
He’d stayed until you’d gone boneless and calm, trapped beneath his weight and between his thick strong arms, letting you suck on the gland inside his wrist as you’d pleased. And when finally, you’d been just on this side of awake, he’d changed your clothes and slid you beneath the soft sheets and weighted duvet, and sat in the cozy sofa chair by the window until you’d been too exhausted by the embers in your tummy and the tight want between your legs to fight sleep any longer. 
The chair sits cold and empty now, and above it, the wide window, the pitch black of the world beyond is bright with unknown terrors, and you huddle into your nest of pillows and blankets, hiding beneath the edge of the duvet. 
You’d never had a window in your bunk, had not experienced the night in years and years, and looking at it now, put on display as it is through the clear pane of glass separating you from all of that unknown, you feel suddenly terrified, nothing but little. It feels as if you were to look away from it, it’d reach through the glass and pluck you out of your bed, whisk you far enough away that he’d never be able to find you, come for you again, and also, like if you don’t stop looking, it’ll eventually begin to look back. You wiggle backwards, bum finding the edge of the bed, and then sliding out, feet first, gaze still peeled on the window and the night, walking backwards out of your room and pulling the door shut on your way. At the very last moment, you peek through the sliver of the door edge and frame, nothing but your nose remaining in the blue room, and you swear the night stares back now. 
You shut the door with a snick, and turn to rush on tipped toes in search of his room. 
He’s sleeping on his back, one thick arm thrown over his head, the other laying across his belly, and you peer over the edge of the bed, hands clasped beneath your chin, watching the up and down of his breathing, the flicker of his eyes beneath his lids. He has long eyelashes and funny whiskers and hair everywhere. Under his arms, and across his chest and his belly, leading down below the sheet covering him, to the thick lump there, that place you don’t know yet, but do understand. He’s hairy, and he’s big, and the aching place you want to show him comes awake in response to all this man you have before you. And although the house is warm, the fires stoked diligently to keep you as toasty as you need, another shiver runs its way down your back. So taking hold of one of his thighs, you hoist yourself up onto his too tall bed, knobby knee stabbing him in the side as you climb on top of him, planting yourself right in the middle of his broad expanse. He gives a rough grunt, shocked awake by the little creature climbing its way all over him, hands shooting out to steady you by the hips as he jerks startled. 
“What in the Sam Hell–” You ignore his spluttering, rubbing your bottom against his stomach, finding a comfortable position to drape yourself over him, wilting like a felled weed snuggled up against his chest, tucked just below his chin, giving an entirely contented sigh when you settle. “What the fuck’re you doin’?” He has such a nasty mouth. Someone should wash it with soap for him. 
He tries to roll over, but you cling, bearing your sharp little teeth to latch at his collarbone, holding tight, refusing to be shoved away again. “M’cold–” you fuss, chewing and slobbering all over him as you pull yourself closer, hitching a knee over his hip, burrowing your foot between the bed and his back. 
“You have t’go back to your bed. You can’t sleep here.”
You whine, chewing harder, and he grumbles, but his hands slide from your hips to your back in a soothing pass and you slick your tongue against the flavors of his skin. He tastes so good, and he smells so good, and in a tiny voice you know will get you what you want, you say, “The window is too big and it’s so dark. I’m scared, alpha.”
He groans, grip going tight and strangling around you, fists bunching in the oversized clothes he’d swaddled you in after he’d dried the rain and outdoor chill off of you before putting you to bed. “Can’t I just stay here? I promise I’ll be good like you told me to,” and you nuzzle against him, making sure to thoroughly cover him in the headiness of your scent. Everything is so warm and right, and he’s so thick and comfortable and strong everywhere, perfect for laying on top of like this. The hair on his chest is prickly, tickling your face where you rub yourself against it, and he rumbles low, a deep sort of purring sound that you feel vibrate in your tummy, big wolfish man that he is, but his grip goes loose and soft after a while, stroking and soothing and petting along your slopes and planes. Convinced. Ha. 
You hold very still, breathe very slow, make sure not to spook the beast while he accepts the fact of you here atop him until he finally says, already sleepy and relaxed again, “Alright… but you’ll behave like I said.” And eventually he rolls the two of you over, little omega barnacle that you’ve turned yourself into, and tucks you into his warm side. 
The third time you wake to him, there’s fire everywhere. And an ache in your womb so sharp it sends shivers through your whole body. You cling and grind and tremble; forget your name, where you are, nothing more than that sticky throb in that place that you want to give to him so, so badly. 
He’s draped atop you, heavy arm caging you in, thick chest covering your back, smothering you between incredible strength and, soft, Joel smelling sheets. You cup the ball of his bicep, it’s big and hard and hot, and drag your palm along the thick slope. He’s so strong, he could crush you, hurt you, make you into anything he wanted, and you want all those things, you think. You want him to do whatever he wants if only he’ll make the ache go away. Fire and glowing bright heat everywhere, most of all your belly, your heart, somewhere so deep inside you’d never known it existed until he’d come and made you aware of it. 
Your fingers slide along his wide forearm, hairy here too, thick wrist, hard, strong bone beneath, and then the soft spot on the inside that belongs to you now. You stick your tongue out, tasting the spongy patch, scraping your teeth along it. If you bite him, you’ll be able to keep him forever, he won’t be able to send you away, but there still remains – even if just for a little bit longer, before the heat you’ve been waiting your whole life and a year for to finally take you – a part of you that’s still rational, head only halfway gone to the clouds. That part which reminds you that more than anything, you want him to choose you. Without the bite as a deal breaker, bond sealer, only because he wants you, only because he likes you. 
But you can taste him, it doesn’t mean you have to bite him, and you the tip of run your tongue along the inside of his wrist, gently suckling at his gland, the flavor of him so much stronger here, as if his essence is more concentrated at this small place. And the ache between your legs, in your tummy, deepens, spreads and blooms and ravages. The inside of you feels sensitive and swollen and big and little all at once, and you shift your bottom, trying to rub yourself back up against him, your sucking mouth pulling sharper, a whine bubbling in your throat because you need something, something more, and you think you know, and you know you understand, but you’re not sure, and if he could just wake up and show you it would all be so much better.
You press back harder, arching so that the aching place feels the heat of him behind you, that hard ridge there that makes your heart pound all through your body. You’d shucked off your leggings and the sweater he’d put you in through the night, too hot and sweaty with the big beast smothering you as he’d been, so now you’re left in nothing but one of his too big t-shirts and the soft, cotton white panties all the omegas always wore. You whine again, gnawing on his wrist for real now, and a big paw of a hand comes up to wrap around your hip, stilling your wriggling. You feel him lean closer, burying his face in the back of your hair, groaning, hot bullish breath fanning across your nape. He rumbles deep and it only makes you feel worse, more desperate, more hungry for that thing you don’t know how to ask for. You want to cry his name, beg him, but your tongue feels fat and swollen inside your mouth, too full of blazing heat to form actual words. He just has to know, he just has to be able to tell. 
“I know,” he mumbles against your nape, nosing around to your ear where he presses his mouth. “I know, it’s alright.” You gurgle again, pulling his wide palm to cover your face completely, nuzzling against his rough palm, muffling your pathetic animal sounds of supplication. It’s okay, it’s okay, you can hear him murmuring and you’re not sure who the words are for, but you feel certain they’re not for you. He’s scared, you know this. Between all the things you’re so uncertain of, this you’re sure of. He’s afraid, and it’s your job to reassure him, to show him how well it will all be once the two of you come together. 
You push your face harder into his palm, and you feel him hook his fingers into the elastic of your panties, tugging the soft fabric wide, tugging them down your legs, and there’s that same need, yes, that comet bright glowing heat, but also, and something you can recognize as more your usual self, a desperate sort of shyness. Something coming unraveled and unspooled for the whole world, him, to see. You can feel the slick uncoveredness at the apex of your thighs, running down your legs, a blossom of heat and vulnerability there at that place, the core of you, and it doesn’t feel shameful, necessarily, but painfully exposed. Your softest place bared for him to see. And yet, alongside that, the knowledge that this soft place is only for him, that you only ever want it to be for him, and so this can, again, be nothing but right. 
“Look at all this slick you’ve made for me, what a sweet girl you are.” There’s such reassurance in the timber of his voice, it makes the heat change, something swirling but steady, constant. You spread your own palm against the back of his hand covering your face, line your fingers along the backs of his, little and big, matched alongside each other, and you press his fingers against your forehead, squishing your nose against his palm, Hiding there in the cup of his hand from the whole world and him, waiting for this truth of yourself to finally be revealed to you. 
His palm strokes along your bare thigh, I know, I know, he keeps saying, and they’d told you all that your alphas would know, that they’d show you, and there’s reassurance in this, that some part of what’s happening is unfolding as they said it would. It makes you feel not so small, not so untried and naive. You try and lay as still as possible, willing the flames into patience, breathing in your own hot breath from the cup of his palm. I know it hurts, we’ll make it better, I promise. He shifts behind you, the rustling of fabric, and then his hand on your bottom again, moving in a slow circular motion, steady and reassuring. He moves to your leg again, lifts it and then something hot and hard and big, coming to rest on your inner thigh, and he lets your leg down, starts the soothing rub of your bottom again. 
“We’re gonna go so slow, alright. Only a little at a time and not the whole thing today. We gotta wait for your heat to settle in all the way, time it all right so that my rut doesn’t start before you’re ready to take me. How does that sound, sweetheart?” But your tongue is still fat, your words still jumbled and missing, and all you really want to ask is if he’s changed his mind now, if he’s finally decided he wants you, and you think you’re crying, sipping salt water from the palm of his hand. “I know I wasn’t how you needed me yesterday, and I’m sorry for that.” He presses his forehead against the back of your shoulder, hand sliding up your hip to your waist, dragging his shirt along as he goes, uncovering you for himself. And you feel so intensely, that you belong to him, and you can’t understand how he could have ever not felt the same way. 
You hitch an agonized little sob, muffled by his hand, and he rolls slightly so you’re half draped atop his chest, his palm rubbing soothing circles low on your belly now. And forcing you out of your hiding place, he pulls your face back to look at him, gripped around your jaw. His face is very serene, and this settles you, makes the words he’s saying clearer, more meaningful. “Can you hear me silly thing, or can all you think about is taking a cock right now?” You scrunch your nose at him, you know that word, it’s his hard thing between your legs. 
“It’s so heavy, alpha,” you sniffle, feeling the weight of it pressing against you there. 
He nods, warm look in his eyes that crease at the edges. “That’s how it’s going to feel inside you, baby.”
“The knot?” A seedling blooms again, this one very different now, full of hope once more. You realize you’ve found your missing words. 
He shakes his head, not yet, and drags his palm up the inside of your thigh, squeezing and kneading as he goes, and you want to complain that he moves so slow, that he needs to do something else, you don’t know what, but something. You want to click your teeth at him, bite him again, anything to make him go. 
And then: “Drippy little girl,” and he’s finally there and a moan that’s almost a scream because he’s cupping a place that is so unbearably sensitive and raw and full of heat and wet like you’d never known was possible. 
Oh, oh, ah, ah, ah. “It’s alright,” he says, rubbing gently back and forth, a slick sound that is loud and embarrassing coming from between your legs. “It’s alright. This’ll help for now. We won’t go inside.” And he grips the heavy thing, his cock, in his own palm that’s all slick from your leaking and presses it against you. He rolls over completely now, shifting higher in the bed so that you’re sitting full on top of him, back to chest, bum to belly, and he spreads your thighs wide with his other hand, pulling your shirt up to bare all your nakedness for him to see. You wonder if he can also see all that burning shyness you’re suddenly so chock full of. 
“Look at these pretty little tits,” he murmurs, cupping one small morsel in his palm, squeezing so that you’re arching against him, mouth agape like a fish, trying to find sounds that seem to have suddenly gone missing once again. “That’s right, I know.” He moves to the other one, squeezes and pinches and shakes it so that it jiggles in the cup of his hand. All the while he strokes his cock between your legs, pulling his hips back every so often so that it slides against you, coating it in all that wet slick you’re spilling for him. 
You look down at the place where it juts out between your thighs, and it’s so big. Dark and angry looking at the end, thick and covered in veins that make it look even angrier and about to burst. You ask him if it hurts him, and he laughs a little and says it isn’t anything you can’t fix which makes you seven different shades of pleased. 
The hand at your breasts moves up to your face again, and he turns your head, searching for your eyes. “We started off badly yesterday, yes? But we’re gonna do better today. I promise.” He slides his hips back again and this time he presses harder against you, his hand flat against the underside of his cock so that the top is slicking all along you. Sensitive little cunt, he says when you tremble and shiver and keen, and that’s when you know that’s what it's called. Your cunt. That place that belongs to him, that you want to give him so badly, that you want him to want so badly but that you barely even know yourself. No more experience than the greedy, frantic digging at the soft, hot flesh beneath your hand in moments when everything had felt too tight and needy to do anything else. 
“Gonna break you in so well, baby. Gonna teach you how to come, how to fuck, how to take a knot.” And now the wide head presses against you, against a place that is so, so incredibly sensitive it almost hurts. You suck in a sharp gasp, trying to jerk away from the hurt, but he holds you in place against him, presses again, yeah, I know, yeah I know, like he’s trying to put it inside you, and yes, you think that’s what it is, that’s what you need, even if it might hurt. “You’re gonna get everything you need jus’ from me,” and his words are slurred and dripping slacken from his tongue. 
He starts to move faster, you think he’s swallowed the same stone of desperation you did, rough grunts and huffing pants, and “So fucking small, it’ll never fit.” Jesus fucking Christ. And on every slick slide forward that wide angry head of it, his cock, bumps the crest of your sex, catches at your hole. You watch it in shock as it presses in just a little, and it hurts and feels like you’re full of bubbles and everything is sticky and your tummy glows with heat. 
“Your little cunt needs this,” he grunts, the head catches, he presses, presses, pulls away, you want to bite and scratch and demand he go all the way, and you’re nothing but a pounding heart and a clenching cunt and you want more, and when he slides again it notches full on at the tiny opening, he pauses, lets it rest there before he presses not even half a centimeter further, only giving you the wide stretch of it, letting your cunt flutter and grip around the very head. 
“Look at that–” And he peers over your shoulder to look at what he’s doing to you. “Look at your tiny cunt stretching for me.”
You cry, trying to pull away, trying to shove yourself deeper, to take the whole of it like the greedy thing you are, but he holds you in place and lets you flutter and flutter and cry until something in your womb pulls tight, and with his fingers swirling at the apex of your sex, the little nub that is so sensitive it pulls a warbled, baying moan from your tongue, an ah, ah, ah, he gives you your first orgasm with him. A desperate thing, too much and not enough, and with his other hand he’s squeezing, shoving his fist along the rest of the length of his cock, pressing it hard where you meet, and then he’s feeding you a blazing heat, filling you with it, stirring your insides to flutter and shiver harder. Forcing you to cry and beg for more, “Please, please, please,” more.
“You’re not ready yet.”
And although you’re not entirely certain for what, you promise, “I am, I am, I can take it.” You know he’s supposed to put it all the way inside, that then, the knot will come. And although you’re unsure what it will specifically be like, what will become of you during or after, you know you’re ready to discover it all. 
“Not yet.” And he’s grunting it through clenched teeth, his hips churning, spitting tip grinding at your hole, something hot and thick sliding wetly all over and between the two of you. “You’ll do as I say. Your little cunt needs this, needs me to be patient with her.”
He lets the slick weight of himself fall away from you, leaving you feeling stretched and bruised and all shivery on the inside, yet still hungry for more. And he pulls his hands along the slopes of you, leaving trails of sticky wet along your skin. The proof of all you are, invisible but tangible, with a taste and a smell and a feel. 
You lay your head back on his shoulder, the heat swirls and simmers for now, and your cunt, your cunt, your cunt, you want to give it to him in full, it throbs and trembles against his slick cock. “I’ve never had a heat before,” you tell him although you know he knows. He probably knows everything there is to know about you, which, admittedly, is not much. 
“That's alright.”
“It will come soon, yes?” You peer over your shoulder to look up at him, and he nods down at you, that warm, eye creased look on his face again. You like the sight of it so much. 
“Will I go away from myself?”
“No,” he says gentle, “I won’t let you. I’ll keep you here with me. You have nothing to be anxious about.”
He rolls the two of you over, keeping you in the comfort of his embrace, and he’s huge and steaming and naked behind you. His hairy chest, his hairy legs all along the smooth and sensitive curves of you. And his thing, it’s still trapped between your thighs, heavy and sticky with your wet, and still kind of hard but not as much as before. You reach between your legs to touch it, and he jerks and hisses but lets you do as you please. Curious fingertips gently along the thick round end of it, down the long length to find two heavy and hot weights hanging lower. 
“Where is the knot?” You ask uncertainly, shy with all the things you don’t know. 
“Here,” and he grabs your hand, moving your fingers to the base of it where there’s an area of skin, of a different sort of texture, rougher, thicker, around the circumference of it. You prod gently at it, not understanding. “See, it’ll swell when it’s inside of you, and then we’ll stay connected for a time, and I’ll fill you, and that’ll help your heat. And after a while it’ll go down, until you need it again. Did they explain to you how it’ll happen?” His cock is thick between your thighs again, beneath your exploring fingers. A little harder and bigger than it was before. His body, something like a wonderful miracle you need to know everything there is to know about it.
“Yes, but not– not all the way, I don’t think. They said you’d show me.” You turn back to look at him, searching for confirmation, reassurance, but instead ask: “Why did you change your mind?” And finally, of his own choosing, he grips you by the throat, and presses a small kiss to your mouth. The greatest victory of the day, and it’s only just begun. 
“It’s exhausting, not letting yourself have what you need.” Need, not want. He shifts over you, coming up on his elbow and rolling you so that you’re on your back and looking up at him. You bring your fingers up to explore along his face: the hooked nose, soft mouth, heart brandished beard. He sighs that bull sigh, and you giggle as it tickles your throat and cheeks. Need, not want. That stings. “Fighting against what you are constantly– and you reminded me that we still have control in what we are. That there’s still choice in this, decidin’ to be what we are without resenting it. And we need each other, after all.” Need, not want. 
“I don’t think you need me.”
“No?”
“No.” The truth that you very much feel like you need him, you keep to yourself. And anyways, he knows. You know he knows. 
“M’thinkin’ I didn’t know I did. Or couldn’t say it out loud.” And he mimics your exploring fingers: thumb against the fan of your lashes, up the slope of your cheekbone, prying your mouth open to catch the edge of your bottom teeth and look inside. There’s a warm look in his eyes, like he’s pleased with you, like you’ve done a good job. “Think I’m realizin’ how wrong I was. How I want this all too.” 
Want, not need. 
He bends his head and kisses your mouth, kisses your breast, shows you how much he wants it.  
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