#I still have to work out the timelines for those
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A soulmate AU: Steve Harrington x fem!reader [3.7K]
THE TIMELINE
"There was something 'bout you that now I can't remember,
It's the same damn thing that made my heart surrender.
And I miss you on a train, I miss you in the morning,
I never know what to think about.
I think about you."
- About You By The 1975
V. HAWKINS, INDIANA: 1988
Two years had passed since the last gate had closed and despite the aftermath of the “earthquakes,” Vecna had yet to make any sort of reappearance.
Max’s bones healed, eventually, and she regained most of her sight, relying on thick lensed glasses when she grew tired or the words in her books turned blurry. Nancy went to college, Jonathan tried it for a year, Hopper took El on a month-long camping trip to see something other than the town repairing itself and Lucas went to therapy.
Soon, each kid followed suit, attending sessions that eventually helped them sleep a little better because even though they couldn’t tell the person on the other side of the coffee table about monsters and the world under their feet, there had been enough death and suffering to fill the hour with regardless.
Dustin told Steve he should go too and Robin agreed. After Eddie’s funeral, the one where they all stood with Wayne, a guy from the garage Eddie worked at on weekends and the remaining Hellfire members beside a small gravestone, they had another one.
A second ceremony near the woods behind Eddie’s trailer, close to where he died, to where Dustin had found him bleeding and proud. The kids cried and Joyce held on tight to Will while Jonathan hugged Nancy and Dustin punched a tree trunk. It felt better than the first one, easier somehow, when they didn’t have to lie and hide the guilt they had at knowing each and every one of them felt a little shame in having a hand in someone’s else’s death.
But it was closure.
The town healed, roads were repaired, houses rebuilt, new flowers planted in the park in memory of those who had been lost in the accident - the natural disaster that made headlines, the one that no one could have predicted.
Steve helped Dustin clean Eddie’s grave when the spray paint covered the dead boy’s name. Robin stopped crying when she looked in the mirror each morning. Jonathan left his room.
The kids got better. They smiled more, went to the new arcade on opening day, shared slushies and rode their bikes around town again. Joyce visited Wayne when she could, took him pies and meatloaf and eventually got him out of his armchair and into a coffee shop for a full hour. Hopper got his job back, had a ceremony that preceded the funeral he had years before and Robin managed to get her and Steve a sweet gig at the record store that replaced Family Video.
It felt fresh. New. Clean.
So why was Steve still dreaming about gates?
For the third night in a row, he woke up gasping. A yell stuck in his throat that tasted like metal, like blood, and he was drenched. Shirtless, his sheets stuck to his chest, the weight of them tangled around his legs in a sickly familiar way, vines tugging at his ankles. His room was dark, the house empty, too quiet. Quiet enough that his breath ripped from his lungs in harsh pants, his head pounding from the exertion of running in his dream, back in a place that he hadn’t seen in almost twenty one months.
At first, he dreamt of death.
Of Eddie and how they found him lifeless and in Dustin’s arms. How Max was barely conscious in the attic of the Creel House, her body broken in ways that no doctor could understand. He dreamt of how he had pulled Lucas away from her, the boy sobbing and yelling, fighting with more strength than he knew he had as Steve tried to restrain him just enough for the paramedics to get Max into the ambulance.
Then the dreams turned empty. He dreamt of losing everyone, Robin, Dustin, Hop. El was gone, Will too, Mike nowhere to be found. Nancy’s house was empty, Joyce and Jonathan didn’t exist and Steve sat alone in a town that turned grey, crumbling to dust until the vines came back and the clouds turned red.
He ran miles every night, searching for his friends, his family. Woke up to shaking breaths and sore legs like he’d really sprinted across a town that was no longer home and each morning when the sun rose, he sat with a coffee and his bare legs dipped in the pool in his backyard. He stared at the water until the ripples blurred and wondered how long it would take for Barb to come haunt him too, if she’d reappear in his dreams despite the years that had gone by, if she’d come crawling back out of his pool like she used to, dripping wet and with no eyes.
But Barb never came and he stopped dreaming of the kids, stopped hearing Lucas’ screams, stopped seeing Max in a hospital bed with blood coming from her eyes and eventually, one night, he dreamt of a gate that he’d never seen before.
It didn’t even really look like a gate.
Not the ones Steve knew. It wasn’t framed by dead vines, it didn’t pulsate, it didn’t have a red glow coming from its innards. This one didn’t look like rotting flesh, like a wound in the earth that couldn’t be healed. This one wasn’t at the bottom of a lake, lined with wet moss and cracked rocks, it wasn’t in the Munson trailer nor in the middle of the woods.
This one opened on a blank wall in Steve’s bedroom, replacing the shelves where his old basketball trophies sat, where he usually left his pile of clothes before falling into bed. In the dream, it started as a crack, a crumbling of plaster and blue plaid wallpaper and Steve watched it open, a yawning thing that split the room and bathed it in light. It was too bright at first, like blinking into a summer sun. And once the white-hot of it cleared from Steve’s eyes, he saw blue skies and he could smell the ocean.
There were trees he’d never seen before in real life, something out of a movie, tall and green and narrow as they swayed in a breeze he couldn’t really feel from his spot on his bedroom carpet. The buildings were a pinky-peach colour, like clay, with orange slate tiles and there were foundations and statues carved into the walls, water trickling from the mouths of gods and vases that stone faced women held in their marble arms.
It was like looking at a painting, a canvas between his bed and his old desk, framed with olive branches and large, red fruits that protruded from the gates mouth.
Pomegranates.
Steve could smell them, a sweetness that mixed with the ocean air, a kind of freshness that you couldn’t find between the fields and farms that surrounded Hawkins. In the dream, he wanted to move closer but found that he couldn’t, his eyes wide and his bare feet rooted to the spot as he stared at the scene. It felt like a memory the more he looked, the buildings becoming familiar, a baby blue door that looked like somewhere he’d once owned the keys to and the cobbled streets became a well walked way home.
Then, as if he weren’t supposed to really see it, he spotted something move in an upstairs window. Two houses from the front of the gate, with rusted shutters and white linen curtains, he saw a girl stand between them.
A pretty girl, with eyes he knew he’d seen before, in a white dress that he was sure he remembered the feeling of.
The sight of her made Steve’s heart hammer, the dream making him dizzy, the realisation that he knew that girl making the line between unconsciousness and reality a little blurry. He didn’t know her name, or where he knew her from. He didn’t even know where he was looking or why the gate was there.
But he stared and stared until the girls eyes met his and before he could lift his hand, or even try to speak, there was a crack that seemingly came from the sky - the one above Hawkins or the one inside the gate, he didn’t know - but something flashed, the gate went dark and the rip in his bedroom wall stitched itself back up.
He woke up feeling like he’d remembered and forgotten something all at once. Like a book he’d read back in middle school, a photo he’d once misplaced, a song he hadn’t heard in years but still remebered some of the words too.
He knew her. He knew her.
Steve thought about the girl so much, so often, that it didn’t take him long to think of her, to refer to her, as you. You were someone he’d once known, from a memory or another dream, he wasn't sure. It was the same feeling as watching a movie and seeing a pretty actress on screen, in a different outfit with different hair but knowing her face and wondering what show he’d seen her in before.
Except with this, there was an aching want that buried itself in his chest at the sight of you, an awful feeling that grew larger each night. And every time his wall cracked open again, it seemed like his ribs did too. A crushing feeling, a yawning expanse inside his body that made room for the way his heart seemed to grow and grow at the sight of you.
Yearning, that’s what he thought it was. A slow, burning build of it.
The second night, he dreamt of you in a garden. A sprawling, green lawn with a pond so green-blue it made his eyes hurt. There was an awning beside it, a pergola of sorts made of white stone and it had ivy growing between the pillars, covering the roof and reaching down to trail its flowers in the water below. You were closer than before, than you were in the window, and Steve could see the way your lashes hit your cheeks as you looked down, stitching something that you held in your lap.
There was a wicker basket beside you, a loaf of fresh bread wrapped in a cloth and he could still smell pomegranates, sweet and tart. There was a space beside you on the blanket, enough room for two but no one else came.
You were always alone.
Steve tried to talk to you, to reach out and see if this gate worked like the others, if he could walk through into this other world, this other dimension, but it didn’t work.
Not yet, anyway.
You seemed to notice him more on the fifth night, as he watched you walk along the edge of a lake. Your hair was shorter now and your clothes had changed. They look more modern, more like his, the cabins behind you reminiscent of a summer camp, a holiday lodge or something. He could hear music, a song he swore he heard on the radio not too long ago and that night, you watched him back.
It seemed like you were waiting for someone. And when Steve saw your face light up with a smile, his heart stumbled. You raised your arm, reaching out a hand to the edge of the gate, off to the side as if someone else was in Steve’s walls. He saw another hand reach for yours, larger, definitely male, with a freckle where the thumb joined the palm.
The jealousy he felt was unmatched, a burning thing that scorched his chest and his throat, hot needles at the back of his mouth. Before the man came into view, the crack in his wall trembled and the gate stitched itself closed once more, leaving plaster dust and flakes of paint on his carpet.
Apart from the small mess, no one would have ever guessed another world opened up inside of Steve Harrington’s bedroom each night.
It took him a week and half to notice his hand had a freckle in the same spot. A small beauty mark he’d never really paid attention to before, painted in the space that joined his thumb to his hand. He tried not to read too much into it, tried not to hold onto the hope that maybe it meant something - because none of this made sense, not really.
They were just dreams. Strange things, brain scrambling things. But it was a welcome reprieve from death and darkness and vines that held onto him too tight. He no longer woke up in a cold sweat, he no longer wished for morning to come, no matter how tired he felt when he opened his eyes.
Steve wondered if anyone else was experiencing these kinds of dreams. If the rest of the party were getting glimpses of other worlds, other timelines. He wasn’t sure what they were, too scared to ask, too afraid to make everyone else worry. The thought that these dreams could be a trick crossed his mind more than once, a new tactic from Vecna, an infiltration of his sleep that was meant to lull him into some kind of false sense of security.
Safety - an unknown feeling.
But everyone else spent their days talking about school and their new bosses, the fair that was coming to town to celebrate the town hall finally being rebuilt. No one mentioned Vecna or dreams or gates or girls they knew from somewhere they couldn’t place.
So Steve accepted the fact that whatever these dreams were - whatever they meant - they were just for him. Which meant that you were his too.
Weeks went by with Steve viewing you from the split in his wall, sometimes hearing music, sometimes hearing your muffled voice. Never real words, never loud enough to hear and it didn’t seem like you could hear him either. But Steve watched, enraptured, following you around different parts of the world, new countries and scenes that he could never really place but, oh my god, each one felt like home with you in it.
Then one night, he saw himself.
He felt the surge of panic flood him even in his sleep, his body jolting against his bed as he saw the familiar face, staring back at him, nonplussed. He looked a little different, maybe older. His hair was shorter at the back, cropped closer to the nape of his neck but the biggest difference was how happy he looked.
This Steve, the one in his dream, inside this gate - this Steve from another time, another life - he looked lighter. He didn’t have purple smudges under his eyes, no deep lines settling across his forehead from frowning so much. His clothes were different too, looser, less fitting, the colours more muted. He wore a pair of jeans that looked much more comfortable than his tight Levi’s, a soft burgundy sweater that had the sleeves rolled up.
Steve didn’t recognise where this dream took place, but he knew it wasn’t Hawkins. America, yeah, the street signs and licence plates on the cars in the street giving that detail away, but he wasn’t too sure where. The buildings were bigger, shinier, more glass than brick but the skies were still blue and it looked peaceful, warm.
Safe.
Dream Steve strolled down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, looking back over his shoulder every now and then as if to make sure the real Steve was following him. He walked past storefronts and stopped to pet a dog, a golden retriever who was waiting for his owner outside of a bakery. When he came to a bookstore, Steve could see a large building in the distance, a huge billboard atop it that looked like it was advertising a new movie, or a show maybe. It didn’t have much details on it, no actors nor dates to tell what year this was supposed to be.
Certainly not 1988.
It only had lettering across it, big and bold and red against a pristine white background: “ANOTHER LIFE.”
The bell to the bookstore jingled and then Steve saw you. As pretty as you had been in every other gate, every other world, every other lifetime. Like a figurine inside a snow globe, like something from a fairytale. Steve had never seen you this close before.
He watched your smile, the way it widened at the sight of his counterpart, this other version of him. You were so pretty that his breath got caught in his lungs, his sleeping body kicking out in shock when you lunged at the dream version of him, throwing your arms around his shoulders in greeting.
Steve watched the two figures embrace on the street, he watched how this luckier man got to bring his hand to your cheek and hold to there to kiss, how his lips - Steve’s own lips - met your own and parted them, mouths melting together in something that was so much more than a quick hello.
Steve didn’t have it in him to feel jealous then. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to. He watched the hand that held your jaw, the thumb that caressed your cheekbone as you grinned into him, your own hands clutching his waist now. There was a freckle, the same as the one he had on his own hand, in the matching spot on yours. This Steve took that hand and kissed that very mark, smacking kisses across your palm and up your wrist until you were laughing, head thrown back, eyes bright.
Steve hadn’t seen anything so happy.
He woke up before the dream finished, before the gate closed. Steve woke up with tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, his vision blurry in the navy gloom of his bedroom. It wasn’t yet morning. There was no gate on his bedroom fall, no new city between the plaid striped wallpaper.
He thought it could’ve been Chicago, maybe New York. Perhaps Philadelphia.
He wondered if he left and went looking for that bookstore, that street, that billboard, he’d find you too. If he was supposed to, if you were real, if this life was all he was supposed to get.
Something told him otherwise, that open crack inside his chest that made him ache for hours after he awoke. He never forgot about you during the day, each life he’d watched you live, how you had grown your hair out and then cut it, how you seemed to change your clothing depending on where you were, from old petticoats to jeans and shirts with logos on them he’d never seen before.
Steve felt like he’d lived a thousand lives with you.
He wasn’t sure what he had to do to get you in this one.
After two weeks of dreaming of this life with you, one that he was so sure would happen, he spoke to Joyce. He waited until the kids dragged Hopper out into the yard to help them with some sort of rocket they wanted to make and he found her in the kitchen. It was the closest kind of feeling he had to home - bar from the sight of you, but he wasn’t really sure if that counted when he was asleep.
So he tried to sound casual when he leaned over the Byers kitchen counter, elbows avoiding the jelly stains that Mike had left after making a sandwich, and asked, “hey, uh, do you believe in soulmates?”
Joyce blinked at him, flour and butter between her fingers as she tried to turn the page in her recipe book back to the instructions for apple pie. The book flopped shut when she let go, her hands reaching for a rag instead. Her eyes never left Steve’s.
“Uh, well. I guess so,” she paused, head tilted to the side as she watched the younger man, how his cheeks turned pink and his gaze fell to the floor. “I haven’t thought about it all that much. Why’d you ask?”
Steve didn’t know what to say then. So he floundered, flushed in the face and nose scrunched as he ran his fingers through his hair too harshly, hoping that no one else walked in. What was he supposed to say? That he was dreaming of gates in his bedroom walls? But it was okay? ‘Cause these ones didn’t have monsters or creatures set out to kill him, no, these gates held something that he thought he’d once had, that they held something he was so sure he was supposed ot have again?
Maybe, just not in this life.
Maybe, this time, something was broken. Wires were crossed, cut, unravelled. Maybe the upside down messed up a timeline, maybe it ripped apart whatever plan it had originally laid out for Steve Harrington.
He didn’t know. But he knew it sounded crazy, even in his head.
So he shrugged and said, “no reason.”
And then that night, after Joyce gave him funny looks over the dinner she served him and the rest of his friends, the kitchen table full, he went home and lay on his bed, hardly bothering to pull the sheets over his bare chest.
He counted his breaths, hoped for sleep and wished for you.
Like always, his room grew darker, his lids heavier and the crack in his bedroom wall crumbled and split until the dust settled and he saw your face. You were alone this time, pretty as ever and in the same looking city he’d last seen himself in. The skies were blue behind you, the buildings still tall and shiny looking, all glass window panes and metal framework. If he concentrated enough, he could smell summer.
Hot tarmac and sunscreen, fresh fruit from one of the stores behind you, tart lemons and freshly ground coffee.
You were looking right at him and even in his sleep, Steve smiled. Your eyes were pretty, too pretty, the colour bright and your gaze excited as you gazed at him. Like you’d been waiting. You held out a hand, coaxing, kind, soft, patient. And for the first time, when Steve reached out too, his hand slipped through the gate.
He was right, about the season, about it being summer. The air inside this world was warm on his skin, like the sun was on him despite being sprawled out in the blue gloom of his dark bedroom. It felt like a July morning, right before the heat hit.
He was almost touching your fingers when he woke up alone again.
#steve harrington#steve harrington x reader#steve harrington x you#steve harrington x y/n#steve harrington fic#steve harrington fluff#steve harrington imagine#steve harrington fanfic#steve harrington fanfiction#steve harrington oneshot#steve harrington au
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Din/Luke Pacific Rim AU pt.3
Pt.1 | Pt.2
Welcome to part 3 of my madness as I continue to take inspiration from scenes in the movie. This is when Din get's a full view of Luke's scars (and is caught looking) not long after the drift compatibility tryouts. He still doesn't know of their origins, but he might find out soon 👀👀👀 (More info under the cut if you're interested).
Anyways, hope my insanity entertains y'all! There's still plenty more to come and perhaps even more in the works.
P.S. All the love that this idea has been shown has been a great motivator for me to work on the fic. So thank you to everyone who's interacted with these posts and have shown their interest. Glad to know I'm not alone in being interested in a niche ship and a 10 year old movie crossover.
More info about Luke's Scars: It starts with part of the timeline I've formulated.
2027 - Luke becomes a pilot with Biggs.
January, 2028 - Death of Paz; Birth of Grogu; Din leaves the Jaeger program
August, 2028 - Death of Biggs; Luke is injured;
2029 - Leia becomes a pilot and is Luke's new partner
So, essentially Luke joined the program very young (17) while Leia was still studying politics with the Organas. Biggs was Luke's drift partner and they piloted together for a year.
The destruction of Razor Crest and the death of Paz/disappearance of Din marked the turning point for the Jaeger program. Not long after that incident the Jaegers were struggling to fight back against the onslaught of Kaiju. More frequent attacks along with higher category Kaiju started to wear them thin.
In a particularly dicey situation, Luke and Biggs were deployed on their own to deal with a CATIII Kaiju while backup was on the way. Despite how skilled the two were, the Kaiju overwhelmed them before backup could come and their Con Pod was ripped from their Jaeger. The damage caused an energy serge through the pilot suits causing Luke to get his scars. Those injuries, plus the ones from getting tossed onto shore, also resulted in Bigg's death.
After hearing about this, and while Luke was recovering. Leia decided to join the program and began her training. By the time Luke was recovered she was graduating cadet school and they were able to pilot together. It took some time for Luke to get used to piloting again after being connected to someone who died, but he trained himself to feel the serenity in the drift and keep those memories at bay. Luke's control while in the drift is next to no one except maybe Anakin, but he hasn't piloted in a long time, so it's hard to say.
Speaking of Anakin, he isn't supper happy about his children being pilots, but there wasn't much he could do to dissuade them. After Padme's death during a Kaiju attack, and Anakin subsequently blaming himself for it, he threw himself into the program. He wasn't able to raise the twins because he was on duty so they were raised by Owen and Beru as well as mentored by the Organas (mostly Leia).
Leia is resentful of Anakin for leaving them when they were so young and had just lost their mother. Luke mostly blames himself in an unreasonable way and thinks he wasn't worth enough for Anakin to stick around. The reason Anakin did leave was so he could try to stop the Kaiju and make the world safe for his kids. However, in the process, he may have lost the time he could have had with them.
#dinluke#star wars#luke skywalker#din djarin#art#fanfic#fanfiction#the mandalorian#dinluke fanart#dinluke au#pacific rim au#leia organa#tru's dinluke pacific rim au
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New au just dropped :)
#it's an oni Cole au in case that wasn't obvious#I have like 5 more aus rotating in my brain but they won't be posted until later#I still have to work out the timelines for those#ninjago#kai smith#zane julien#jay walker#cole brookstone#nya smith#lloyd garmadon#lego ninjago#ninjago memes#ninjago au#oni cole#ninjago hunted#ninjago oni trilogy#ninjago oni#full oni au#<- this name is subject to change once I think of something better
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The 'Enjoying watch you suffer' line in Broadcast has always been hard to pin down; Tim's leg getting broken is the biggest incident in Entry #35, so it's natural to want to tie the two together, but it seems to fit so indelicately into what we know about the timeline of totheark's internal relationship that it almost causes more problems than it resolves. However, even though it's very blink and miss it, Tim does actually manage to stab Alex in the arm before he gets knocked down -- we hear Alex cry out in pain, can see blood on the blade when Jay picks it up, and then in the recovered corrupted footage from that tape that Jay posts as Entry #36 Alex says "I did what I had to... he'd just stabbed me" -- and that injury being what totheark was trying to call attention to, to me, reads a lot more clear and consistent than anything else does
#N posts stuff#marble hornets#it's so hard to figure out lol bc Tim's leg is The Thing so it feels like they should be linked but like it just doesn't seem to flow#and the timeline of s2 is so mangled by the mix mash and retreading ground of all the tapes#ie; Present!Jay uploading Past!Jay's (and Past!Alex's) tapes and commenting on them while Present!TTA responds to both#that it's hard to figure out if TTA is still working together in that Present!Time or if it's Only in the old tapes and they fell out like#Immediately after Jay got the code for the safe from them - which is Possible? We do know that Tim and Brian separated#like Right after they'd managed to separate Jay and Jess but IDK if that separation would account for the kind of anger implied in#the sentiment 'enjoying watching you suffer' you know? And Jay doesn't get Tim's medical records until s3 - which we KNOW#is the Final Death Knell in TTA's relationship and i don't think Brian would have sat on those for so long so i feel like he hadn't#found them by this point in s2 - that must have come later. so That makes this line feel so out of place in their relationship#BUT if Brian is paying more attention to Alex than Tim at this point then it makes A Lot more sense if it's directed at him#and since the creators Specifically included that corrupted footage that makes Sure to get 'he stabbed me' clear in audio AND#in Jay's subtitles - I wonder if that's an attempt to draw attention to that injury and maybe clarify the TTA upload a little bit?#OR you know maybe I'm reading into it all too much but hey. with this series that's actually a pretty solid living so#mh lb#i'm rewatching bc i'm about to start giving the Bleed More fic another attempt at getting finished and finalized so. keep an eye out :3c
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instead of grinding for finals i lost hours to a one piece wiki spiral
#IT ALL STARTED...WITH CP9S INDEPENDENT REPORT#in the most predictable fashion. ive yet again fallen for the “dangerous murder bot villains are actually a found family and genuinely care#for one another“#PLSSS THE WAY THEY ALL WORKED SO HARD TO EARN THE MONEY TO TREAT LUCCI#thinking so hard about how they are one collecfive unit. they move together they work travel live thrive together#giggled so hard at kaku giraffe slide#SOEAKING OF WHICH I JUST LEARNED KAKU IS THE YOUNGEST OUT OF CP9#HE WAS 18 WHEN THEY PLANTED HIM AND THE OTHERS IN WATER 7#im not ok im ripping my pillow to shreds punchjng the wall screaming shaking good GOD DJFJ#KALIFAS DAD WAS IN THE PREV GEN OF CP9????? SO SHES RRALLY BEEN THERE THROUGH IT ALL#thinking about lucci and jabra and blueno trio...#yes i originally was devastated to discover my favourite shipwrifjts were actually undercover government assassins but like#the found family.....maybe not found family but FORGED FAMILY THEY MADE IT WORK#i still think it's so silly that. kaku is the youngest but hes second ij terms od power and he speaks like an old man#in my ideal world cp9 brutally murders spandam and they live their best lives after doijg whatever#attention span for stats and cs??? nonexistent#but yea sure i can spend 2 hours memorizing the key detaisl from the wiki entries of all cp9 agents and making a chart and timeline#maybe this is a sign...that i need to fix this before it causes bigger issues#rambling about stuff#wait omg no last thought is how when all the cp9 members reunite after 5 years and firsg thing they do is immediately check their doriki#and jabras upset by how both lucci ajd kakus are higher than his now but then u think about how hes the oldest in their group#heck five years ago when they were sent off to water 7 those two were 23 and FUCKIJG 18 YEARS OLD#OF COURSE HES UPSET THESE TWO FUCKING KIDS ARE STRONGEE THAN HIM#who holds seniority over them. im actually devastated and extremely entertained#the last time u see the youngest of your group hes some 18 year old kid you could best in a spar. maybe even leave some words of wisdom for#then he goes and leanrs how to build ships for 5 years and comes back stronger than u#they are a family to me... HE COULD HAVE ABANDONED TJEM?!?! THEM ALL HAD THE CHOICE OF LEAVING THE OTHERS BEHIND TO SAVE THEMSELVES#BUT THEY DIDNT. HE STILL GAVE KALIFA HIS SHIRT AND CARRIED KAKU ON HIS BACK ALL THE WAY TO ST POPLAR#biting my hands hitting the wall scratchijg the floors screaming shakijg not normal about these guys#THE WAY JABRA HAS A PET CHICKEN TO COUJTER HATTORI
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Fucked up little Meow Meow
#Fairy Tail#My opinion on him has not changed he's still tumblr's perfect little guy#He just keeps going huh.#They really said how fucked up can you fuck up a guy#What isolation will do to a mother fucker#I love a good isolation story I love a fucked up curse I love a Everything I Love Dies And It's All My Fault#I love a I Just Want To Start Again Try Again This Time I Will Make It Right#I'm making a Fairy Tail bad ending AU where Zeref does pull off the reset right now like as we speak#I have maybe 6 episodes left and my brain is running#AU where Mavis' curse activated when Makarov died killing half the guild and then Zeref's plan worked out#Guys August is really fucking me up where'd he come from how'd he happen I don't want to know but also#His existance is so messed up#Anyway he and Makarov should have grown up together fuck you Prett#AU where the dragon slayers grew up together as planned and Prett wasn't a bitch and raised August along side Makarov#and they were BROTHERS#I'm rewritting Fairy Tail there's so much I want to do#This is one of those worlds that just makes me want to mess with it#I want to twirl the timeline on my fork like spaghetti#AU where Laxus is a true Dragon slayer and was adopted after coming through the gate#AU where Erik is a true dragon slayer and was kidnapped after coming through the gate#Those two don't change anything other than Erik and Laxus also have dragon parents I think that's cool#Also Laxus being Makarov's ancestor thrown into the future is just. Very funny to think about#I want to make Fairy Tail AUs I'm done with canon I want to mess with it
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🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
#WAHOOI#I'm gods favorite princess. Levi&Shiva connection. Jill focus. ANCIENT BEEF#OR!!!!? ANCIENT ALLIES??? a mutually agreed upon thing??#also.... my secret T headcanon of 'minor nobility' meaning an assimilated one is not thrown out entirely. so....#frankly even possible as a political reality now#headcanon terence backstory babey we're still in the game#will b thinking about those evil empire murals forever now!!!!! Thanks!!!!#spoilers#'sacrifice a child' so either we got a kid locked out of time stuck as a levi companion/dominant#or that child was Jill??#And they're talking about a more recent peace???#is that giving more credit than is deserved. or am I getting implied timelines jumbled. mayb#BUT LIKE WEREN'T NORTHERN TERRITORIES DEALING W BLIGHT AND FORCED TO SURRENDER AND THATS WHY JILL WAS A WARD. SURE LOOKS NOT BLIGHTED#and they said not that it was her 'hometown' necessarily but the northern territories during the stream so ????#i have to listen to the trailer again closely when I'm not at work so I can. hear everything properly LOL
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does anybody remember when I accurately predicted how game of thrones tv show would end bc I had a basic understanding of how the Tudor dynasty ended. lol.
#like genuinely the parallels in the book aren’t even slick#<-although again let’s hope the book series doesn’t end same as the show LOL#Robert = Henry viii#Joffrey and tommen as Edward vi (boy prince who dies young)#dare I say stannis = Mary I bc religious extremism#Cersei as lady Jane grey probably#or if you want the whole ‘named someone their successor in their will and got killed very quickly’ you could say that she’s Ned#although then succession order would be wrong#that does leave us without an Elizabeth though. renly is my Elizabeth I though 😞#and THEN you get James I coming down from#Scotland to sort out everyone’s mess 🥴#<- and that’s why I guessed a stark. and an unimportant one at that who hadn’t been involved in the fighting I argued. it’s funny that I was#except he was gay and everyone hated him and he set in motion what led to the civil war so 🤷♀️#anyway as a girlie with a history degree nothing in those books is insanely#shocking to ME personally. although it’s interesting to see how my opinions have shifted in the last 4 years#early modern U.K. isn’t even rly my era and I still know this sndjdkfkf#also I know#in theory everyone says the books are based on war of the roses but imho robs rebellion works better in that sense than anything else#so then I use the Tudors as my framing for what goes on during the timeline#but again it’s all circular bc you have the war of the roses and not too much later you get the English civil war so#anyway dynasties I actually studied at uni are like. the Carolingians and Capetians and Hohenstaufen’s / Holy Roman Empire#and then tang song and Sui . which all give me a lot of perspective on how these processes work#election based succession no look at Holy Roman Empire#‘best amongst brothers’ succession yes look at dynastic China#my conclusion here is that renly was correct rip 🫡#<- although I would be remiss to not highlight that several Chinese dynasties did practise primogeniture. but many of the most successful#ones didn’t#like I still can’t believe so many fans still think renly was insane like blood tanistry literally was such a thing historically that it#even has a silly sounding name. it was widely practised#him wanting to call an older brother is also what dany did and no one shits on her for that 🥴
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Welcome back to tumblr! Hope you enjoyed your break
It was very stressful. Ended up failing the marking period for English, but not by as much as I was failing before. Could still pull up the overall grade by the end of the semester.
#started writing a fic a few days ago. been a while since ive done that.#so far felix is very out of character but he's only gonna be the focus for the first chapter. plus i might go back and rewrite him.#maybe i should wait until the new chapter comes out tho so it's relevant to updated canon#anyway echos started brainrotting about chris in a /pos way so yeah a lot of my break has been rethinking old analysis#started to notice that he's a lot more fun if i get in the mindset that he's not poorly written he's just literally isaac's antagonist#also my siblings have been hyperfixating on DC so i watched a batman series. i think they're very disappointed in me for choosing batwheels.#snowy best vehicle#. what else#oh ive been doodling a nightmare design#been liking the idea of him and dream not being skeletons but dont wanna draw/write them as their canon human designs#because (if i'm correct) they get those designs at some point later in the story. and i don't want to confuse the timeline like that.#so ive been working on concept sketches for a less human design for them. ive also noticed that them being humans in canon actually#makes a lot of sense because the other guardians don't really have any connection between their species and it can be assumed that#whatever they are exists in the universes/multiverse they're from. so it makes sense for the twins to be humans because the utmv has humans.#. but i also like how they couldn't be given the human forms at first because of the lack of holes.#so the design im working on has gill/stripe-looking vents for the energy to come out of.#also gonna try to add little fire wisps into the design because i love their true forms so much#anyway i dont think there's been more that ive done. other than schoolwork. and watching qsmp.#oh i started working on an animatic. but i do that all the time. it'll be a bigger occasion if i finish one lol.#think im gonna still keep interaction on tumblr to a smaller scale because i wanna keep getting stuff done
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🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊 >:^))))))
because i am currently working on templates for her, i'll do dani for this one ♡
during recovery from the back injury she sustained in raccoon city, dani started keeping a journal. originally, she would only note symptoms and whatever activity she had done each day to keep track of things, but it eventually became an outlet for her as well to vent or talk about what she was grateful for everyday
dani can't cook to save her life. she will literally follow a recipe exactly and so methodically, trying her best to do it right, and somehow it still won't turn out good. and she has started a fire once or twice on accident
she wasn't abducted at the terrasave company party in 2011 when claire and some of her other coworkers were because her chronic pain wouldn't exactly be preferrable for alex (having chronic health issues herself), despite her experience with biohazard outbreaks and how strong she was making her a solid candidate for the experiments otherwise. but she does go on the raid and pilots the helicopter claire snipes from
when she was in the u.b.c.s. she ended up training under nikolai for cqc, as well as for a bit of sniping, and he became something of a mentor to her outside of piloting. her "little bird" nickname may or may not have originated from what he'd call her at times, mostly in a mocking sort of way to annoy her
beth (belongs to @steelport) is her best friend and i will forever yell about that, so it deserves a dot point on its own ♡
#asks.#nuclearstorms#oc: dani#aaaaa thank youu bones!!! 💖💖#i need to finish doing dani's oc page and like actually put her timeline together cause it's like i have all these thoughts but just still#piecing together the like order of things post 3 cause like there's a lot going on there and some things too i am like torn between a few#different ways they could go you know? like in terms of some things with her past and then just her role in things afterwards?? being so#vague about this but like there's so much in my mind always and it's a time#but yeah so dani wasn't involved with the sejm island situation but she did ofc stay by claire's side when she was brought in and then for#those six months afterwards they worked to figure out where exactly the island was so the bsaa could lead the assault and rescue moira#having lots of dani thoughts again recently but just asking my brain to kindly figure out her timeline thank youuuuu
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there’s the fics you enjoy reading, and then there’s the fics that send you combing through your old quantum chemistry textbooks
#in other words: ad noc 8 dropped lol#cwr#.txt#it’s past 11 and I have Work tomorrow but I’d forgotten how much I loved this actually?#by far my fave chem topic we covered ever#I did suck at drawing the orbitals though I remember that much#perspective has never been my friend and that was esp true on a chalkboard much to the despair of my examiners#but I’m honestly surprised by how much I remember? or at least still understand#I haven’t touched any of those things in oooh 5 years? 6?#good to see my brain hasn’t Completely given up lol#Taka if you see this don’t you Dare call me out this is on the most valid end of the reaction spectrum for me on#at least I am not frantically adjusting whiteboarded timelines#………yet#anyhow. ad noc man. /ad noc./#that’s it that’s the post#unrelated I’m gonna go dig out all the physics material I still have on radiation#also /also/ am reading project Hail Mary rn and the lead gives me such volker vibes I love it#tumblr you gotta let us edit tags man what year is this#*ok not on
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is it just me or did Sasha tftbl’s characterization feel kinda weak, like, in the context of blands? am i right to be frustrated with the writers about this
#like i'm still working on my one fic and thinking 'god i need to get sasha in here somehow' but.#idk what i would even do with her like who is she. what is she even doing at the end of tales. her hair is different i guess#i feel like most of her lines either are about her relationship to other characters (primarily rhys and fiona) or. exposition.#like she has a few clearcut traits that set her apart but even those feel a little vague as she is primarily sidekick who doesn't develop#i am having trouble even knowing who she is or what she'd be doing in this alt timeline#like she's smart and competent and not particularly weird in anyway that fiona isn't#sometimes she's kinda silly? but again not in a particularly unique way? iirc?#like i can totally figure something out i just wish i had an easier jumping off point lol
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Adult romance novel
Second-chance romance between a composer and a Hollywood star who met in their high school chorus and then had a falling-out in college
When the two reunite for a benefit concert in their hometown years later, they find the spark between them hasn't dulled with time
Dual timeline between the past and the present
Gay, Filipino American main character; gay, biracial Japanese American/white love interest; M/M romance
#this would make a good movie i feel like#the author is very good at conveying music through prose which impressed me#i liked the musical aspects a lot those were probably my favorite#(the main character and his love interest have a lot of scenes doing music stuff together)#i think the dual timeline worked well for a second-chance romance#because you actually get to see their earlier interactions instead of just being told about them#the one thing that i'm not sure about is the Big Thing that ultimately drove them apart#i just. don't know if i liked the thing that was being used as a plot device?#still thinking it over tbh#will keep an eye out for the author's next book though!#there was an interview with him in the back of my copy#and it included a description of his next book and it sounds fun#2023 reads#lulu speaks#lulu reads all the right notes#dominic lim#all the right notes
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From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.
Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.
As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.
----
BURY YOUR GAYS cover has been released today and theres something TRULY INCREDIBLE about it, something that bends timelines and melts away the edges of the void and brings tears to my eyes. can you see it? let me explain in a thread as you PREORDER NOW...
for nearly ten years i have been publishing my stories despite pushback that they are too odd. us buckaroos are the outsiders, but this community has kicked open the door for art that is sincere and strange and beautifully unique. that is my trot and that is OUR trot as buds
we came out of nowhere and made CAMP DAMASCUS a usa today bestseller. every step of the way that book overperformed. buds were CONFUSED that a book from ‘silly meme erotica author’ could take flight. but us buckaroos knew it was inevitable because we know the power of love
i still recall the question ‘are you SURE you do not want a new horror pen name?’ HECK NO i am proud of the tingleverse. i am not ashamed of these queer erotic stories i drag up from bottom of my heart and spill with raw sincerity across irony poisoned timelines
i have been mocked my whole life as author that is ‘ridiculous no-content meme’ by those who have never read it. that my work is ‘not real’. i have been mocked for my autism and queerness and told THIS WOULD NEVER WORK. which brings me back to cover of my new book BURY YOUR GAYS
looks like the name chuck tingle is NOT a liability for the mainstream. all devils who doubted can gaze upon this cover and see bold CHUCK TINGLE staring back at them PROUDLY from the shelf in all its queer autistic glory... HOVERING ABOVE THE TITLE AND JUST AS BIG AND PROUD
thank you nightfire and chucks manager and chucks agent for believing in me. these buds have always had my back. thanks to BUCKAROO COMMUNITY who have always supported my way, this next step in our trot is not just about me IT IS ABOUT US. we kick open these doors together
so heres to making this world a little more unique and strange for those of us who are, ourselves, unique and strange. heres to bending timelines to us, instead of us bending to them. heres to name CHUCK TINGLE big and bold ABOVE the title on a big five traditional published book
and remember the best way to support an author, especially someone on outside pushing their way in, is to PREORDER THEIR BOOK. because of publishing business model it is SO IMPORTANT so if you would like to support chuck then PREORDER BURY YOUR GAYS NOW
#bury your gays#tingleverse#chuck tingle#love is real#queer#horror#lgbtqia#actually autistic#misha#buckaroo lifestyle#lets trot#queer horror
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snowbound | dbf!j.m. x f!reader
masterlist | updates blog | ao3 mirror
pairing: dbf!joel miller x f!reader
summary: [no outbreak] joel is the only guy you know with four wheel drive in the rarely-snowy state of texas, so it seems like a no-brainer to have him pick you up from work — until his truck breaks down, leaving you two to the classic 'huddle for warmth' solution.
warnings: (18+ mdni) dbf!joel, age gap (assumed 20s/40s), reader borrows joel's coat, but does not wear it and uses it as a blanket, self-indulgent humor & banter, joel has sarah and she's a 15y/o menace which means liberties are taken with the timeline, blink & miss it drug mention, close proximity, unprotected piv sex, vaginal fingering, (mocking) dirty talk & dirty talk alluding to anal but no actual anal, daddy kink, degradation, dom!joel, brat!reader, brat tamer!joel, mild bondage (with a scarf), rearview mirror sex, clit stim, riding, doggy, a few pussy spanks, 2 spanks, truck sex, sort of edging, getting caught after the act [no use of y/n]
word count: 12.3k
a/n: this fic was a labor of love from a request i received earlier this month. i didn't expect it to be this long but i really enjoyed these two! massive massive massive shoutout to talia, @lovesickonmybed, for putting up with me + advising. this fic was way too much to handle on my own. they're the reason i pulled it off. joel is latino here, but i think game!joel can be interpreted as latino too, so read who you'd like.
“Looking ahead for our chances at wintry precipitation tonight – measurable snow, freezing rain, or sleet. It’s hard to get snow here in central Texas – if only, huh? We’re seeing some strong flurries tonight, turning into snow showers in the early morning. Low chances of any significant build up, but you can expect hazardous driving conditions. Black ice and low visibility will make extensive travel dangerous–”
The radio in Keith’s Hardware is old fashioned, curving around the volume and tuning knobs. It’s one of the ones that still has a dial pointer, which is almost always aimed at 92.7 if Keith’s in the back (country); 96.7 (pop) if it’s just you and the only other girl that works in the carpenter’s wet dream of a store. Right now, though, it’s neither of those stations. The pointer is at 162.4, the weather station.
You’d known you were in for it on the drive into work. Watch the weather and it’s real nasty out there airing from your parents lips on your way out of the house for your eight hour shift. The drive had been a gunmetal sort of gray, clouds streaked through the sky and spitting bullets of sleet at your windshield.
For a little bit, the weather had almost cleared up. You’d sworn you’d seen a splotch of sun when you’d tried to step out for break, just to be driven back in by your too-thin jacket and the cold as balls temperature.
Now, though? It’s fucking freezing, and the flurries that the weatherman mentioned are starting to fall. And as much as you’d told Keith that your shitty two-wheel-drive couldn’t handle it, he’d insisted on scheduling you and Liz for close.
Which is where Mr. Miller comes in.
Joel Miller, your dad’s buddy. Joel Miller, the grumpiest secret-softie you’ve ever met. Joel Miller, a knight in shining armor with his 4x4 Ford F150 instead of a horse. Although, if your fantasies are correct – and you like to think they are – what’s between his thighs certainly makes up for the lack of a horse. But he isn’t bringing you for a ride on his cock. He just so happens to be the only man your dad knows with a four wheel drive vehicle, or at least the only one willing to spare you from spinning out by giving you a ride home. Just thinking about it has a knot pinching in the back of your throat. His hands, big and wide and stretching over the gear shift. One muscled arm dangling over the wheel. Looking over his goddamn shoulder to back out —
Liz hops up on the check-out counter where you’re counting up the last of the cash, a spread of Hamiltons, Grants, and Jacksons. You wouldn’t expect a girl like her to work at a hardware store, especially one in the backstreets of the seedy part of town. Some sort of family emergency had driven her back to Austin from NYU design school, which you’re thankful for. Mainly because you get out of cutting wood panels since she has the better eye for measurements, but also because after years of sulking in Keith’s, you finally have someone to talk shit with.
“Those heart eyes aren’t for fuckin’ Alexander Hamilton,” Liz says, tapping her acrylics on your ledger to get your attention. You cough, flipping her off with your pen still in-hand. Liz hums, pretending to think about it as you put down the last numbers. “Although I wouldn’t be too surprised. You do love a geriatric man.”
“Joel isn’t that old,” you scoff, arranging the bills into slim white envelopes and then licking them shut. “He’s just an… acquired taste.”
“Sure, his jizz probably tastes like prohibition-era booze–”
“What the fuck,” you wheeze, hands going out to brace yourself on the closest display case. Your head dips as your chest shakes with laughter.
Liz stays completely straight-faced as she continues, “You’ll have to have 911 on speed dial because if you clench, his heart’s giving out.”
“It is not,” you say, voice still strained with the laughs that won’t stop punching out of you.
She puts her hands up in defense and crosses her legs at the ankles. “Hey, it’s not my fault you like playing whac-a-mole with Great Depression dick.”
“Liz!” You playfully shove her off of the counter, thrusting the envelopes into her hands. “You’re nasty. Fucking nasty.”
She splays a wounded hand over her heart, fanning herself with the envelopes. “You know you love me.” She slips into the office behind the register. You hear the click of the safe before she calls over her shoulder, “Any particular reason you’re fantasizing on the clock?”
“Not fantasizing,” you refute. Liz pops out of the back with a uncertain look scrawled on her face. “My dad talked him into picking me up today so I don’t drive into a snowbank.”
“Sounds like the beginning of a shitty porno.”
“Don’t give me hope.”
“I’m just saying,” she grins. “You can still come to mine. Only a five minute walk with zero chance of rejection.”
“You have such little faith in me.”
She purses her lips. “Mkay…. Pro-tip: Keith probably has some Viagra sitting around in his desk drawers.”
“Liiiiiiiz,” you say. You’re about to tune her out completely when familiar headlights light up the wet asphalt, beaming through the windows. The engine idles, a soft rumble through the linoleum floors. The truck lights dim, leaving Joel in the buttery shine of the streetlamp. His thick arms stretch across the wheel, and he rakes one large hand through his hair. “Shit, speak of the Devil.” You clip off your nametag, tossing it into your half-open bag. “Can you finish closing tonight? I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
“No problem, no favors necessary.” She closes the register. You fumble to get your bag over your shoulder, not wanting to keep Joel waiting. “Use protection!” she calls after you, and you make sure to flip her off one more time as the door clangs shut behind you.
A wall of cold hits you like a blade of lightning. Wind unfurls, mauling telephone lines and frosted treetops, rippling your jacket. Not even the worn scarf around your neck seems to be doing its job. Suddenly, every one of your limbs feels like an icicle. Joints almost freezing up, you half-jog, half-penguin strut your way to Joel’s passenger side. You wipe the ice off of the door handle with your sleeve. A few stray flurries dust you as you tug the door open, exhaling in relief as you haul yourself onto the side steps and into the toasty warmth of the Ford F150.
You cozy up in the seat, too preoccupied by thawing your hands with long, winded breaths to notice the affronted look Joel is throwing your way. “Are you tryin’ to catch your fuckin’ death, girl?”
“No death to catch. It’s not that cold.” The way you’re shivering says otherwise. Joel pins you with the raise of his brow.
Before you know what he’s doing, he’s groaning as he reaches over the center console into the backseat. You see a flash of his trucker jacket before it lands in your lap, flannel-lined and heavy. You use it like a blanket, draping it across your torso and wrestling your hands into the inside pockets. The canvas smells like car exhaust and off-brand Dollar General deodorant, two things that are so inextricably Joel. As much as you hate to admit it, the warmth is already inking its way across your skin – or maybe it’s just being next to Joel that’s heating you up. “Thanks,” you grumble.
When you adjust in your seat, the inside of your foot catches an empty Dr. Pepper can on the floor. It rattles when you accidentally kick it forward. You lean down and pick it up, going to place it down in the cupholder, only to find it overpopulated with random Home Depot and Whataburger receipts.
“Tax deductions,” he shrugs. “Gotta eat on the job.”
“And a…” You pick up the receipt and squint at the faded typography. “$3.29 strawberry milkshake is part of that, I figure?”
Joel grunts, “Tommy’s order.”
You smirk. “Sure it is.”
“Quit shit stirrin’ and put on your fuckin’ seatbelt.”
You reach back, fingers snagging it and tugging it down. Groping for the belt between the seats and the center console, it goes on for at least five seconds too long before Joel grabs the buckle and shoves it into the slot. His fingers brush your thigh as he pulls away from you and settles his foot over the gas pedal. The singular touch shouldn’t make butterflies beat at the walls of your stomach, but it does. Everything about him does.
Now that you’re all settled in, everything about him is also settling in. The fact that he’s only wearing a tight-fitting white t-shirt now that his coat is off. His sleeves are constricting enough that his muscles bulge below the strip of fabric. Ample scruff dapples his jawline, and his hair is disheveled in the way that you’ve learned you like it. You trail your eyes down his body, his tummy, across the undone drawstrings of his dark gray sweatpants, and no, you move on quickly from there, because you refuse to get riled up in the passenger seat.
He’s slowly peeling out of Keith’s parking lot, arm thrown over the back of your seat. You’re starting to fail at your mission of not getting riled up when you see the flex of his bicep, the way his eyes meet yours as he turns to look through the back window. He turns out of the parking lot and onto the relatively barren, icy streets–
“What the hell are those?”
Joel side-eyes you, brows furrowed. He follows the line of your gaze to his feet, which you’re used to seeing in New Balances or steel-toed work boots, but are instead wearing… fur-lined crocs.
“These here? Yeah, got ‘em recently, good for my days off with all this nippy weather. Sarah told me they’re ‘all the rage’ with the youth–”
You can’t help it. You damn near double over with laughter, clutching at your stomach. Joel’s coat nearly slides off of you, but you hang onto it with your pinkie finger, quickly going dizzy from lack of air. “‘All the rage’? Oh my fucking God– Joel, she was pulling your leg. Those are fucking hideous.”
“Hey, now–” He sighs, pinching his nose bridge with the hand that isn’t dangling over the wheel. “Zip it, I don’t needa justify my shoe choices to ya.”
“Does she do anything other than give you shit these days?”
“You’re one to talk about givin’ shit, y’know,” Joel says. Unfailingly, he smiles. The smile that pulls at the edges of his lips. The smile that he only ever gets when talking about Sarah. It doesn’t matter where – loading up his plate with barbecue, your dad asking him while he’s picking up junk mail in the morning, or on the job. If someone asks him about his daughter, Joel fucking beams.
He sucks on his teeth for a second, and then, “She’s picked up soccer. Goalkeeper. Damn good at it, too, all them other kids on her team can’t match her collapse dive.”
“Of course they can’t,” you say. “She’s got better reflexes than a house fly.”
Joel hunches over the wheel, effectively ending the conversation as he concentrates on the road. The only noise is the rumbling engine and the wagging of the windshield wipers as he attempts to navigate the black ice polka-dotted roads. It shouldn’t be as arousing as it is, seeing him in such a state of focus, his thighs tensed as he manipulates the gas and brakes to stop early, start slow. His arms thickening when he makes a right turn. Thumbs drumming drumming drumming on the wheel and maybe they’d do the same between your legs—
“So how’s work?” you blurt out.
Joel mumbles something that you can’t quite make out.
“Huh?”
“Fuckin’ ‘big shot’ gringos up my ass all day. Goddamn shitshow.” He shakes his head, his lips thinned. “I tell ‘em terraforming is gonna make it look like a Flinstone-owned-and-operated putt-putt course. They say do it anyway. I tell ‘em that orderin’ custom windows is gonna put us months behind. They say do it anyway, then come up jibber-jabberin’ all ‘bout how long it’s takin’. And it’s fuckin’... window madness, not one window in that hellhole matches another. Ain’t had so much trouble buildin’ a house since Sarah had me build her one from Hobby Lobby when she was little. Their architect musta been doin’ lines.”
You think you’ve seen Sarah’s dollhouse before when visiting, just in passing when the guest bedroom door was left open a smidge. You remember stalling in the hallway to look at it, with a fleece of dust growing on the tediously placed shingles and the oakwood front door left open like it’d been waiting for someone to come home. But Sarah outgrew it, and although Joel would never admit it, you know he’s too sentimental to leave it on the curb.
“How bad can building a dollhouse from a kit be?”
“With a five year old yellin’ like a drill sergeant in your ear? Worse than you think. She even made me rig the damn thing with electric so she could have her pink chandelier.”
You pout at him, “Wah wah, I’ll bet you loved it.”
“Was a nuisance at the time. But, uh, she was fiddlin’ with some ‘a the dolls I’d gotten her. Don’t think she knew I was watchin’, had gone to put ‘er to bed ‘cause it was a school night. She was readin’ this book I always read to her. Something about… a stuffed bear with a missin’ button and a girl that was tryna to buy him. I don’t fuckin’ know–”
“Corduroy?”
“Yeah, that. Anyway, she was reading, usin’ the same tone I always used with her, tucked her dolls in for the night, and switched off the lights. I don’t think I loved it until then.” There’s a glistening in his eyes at the memory.
You smirk, “Sentimental bastard–”
The truck slides. Or maybe it coasts, skimming across the thin film of black ice. Joel eases down on the brakes, hauling to a stop next to a Minivan with its warning lights on. It’s a long stretch, and you can’t even see all the way down the highway with how thick the snow is. No two snowflakes are the same, but you find it difficult to believe when you’re looking at what must be millions of them. They pirouette, landing on window panes, rooftops, and wind-agonized tree branches. Everything is blotted with white. Red warning lights glare on the ice back at you.
“Shiiit,” Joel says as he squints at the road ahead of him. He scratches at his scruff.
“Tell me you’re not going to drive through that shit.”
“I’m not,” he says.
“Then how the fuck are we getting home?”
“Chill it–”
“That’s the last thing I need to do,” you huff.
“I’m takin’ the detour.”
With that, he jerks the wheel — a bit too recklessly considering the weather, in your opinion – and pulls off onto a slippery backroad. The snow seems to have clung to the trees more back here, a sort of incandescent saran wrap over the oaks. At a bend in the road, icicles hang from a yellow sign that says CURVE 30 MPH. Joel takes it at ten.
You’re not checking out his hands while he drives, no, of course not. You’re looking at the gazillion lights on his dashboard display. “You usually have that many lights on?”
“Ain’t your truck, ain’t your business.”
“I’m ridin’ in it, ain’t I?” you mock his accent.
Joel sighs heavily. “Drivin’ me up the fuckin’ wall.” His hands clench briefly around the wheel. “Auto repair shop’s been price gouging, I’m tryin’ to get Tommy to hook me up with his buddy in San Anton–”
“Won’t be able to drive to San Antonio if your bumper falls off halfway there.”
Joel’s voice is dry as bone. “Ha ha. You get off on bein’ a smartass?”
It’s three words – that’s all it is. Just a throwaway phrase that he probably doesn’t even realize he said. If it were anything more, you’d know. But Joel, saying those words in that order? Damn him, because it turns your blood effervescent. You stop yourself from rubbing your thighs together underneath his coat. You’re about to make another quip that’ll not only distract you, but also surely drive Joel up the wall, one of your favorite activities.
His truck putters from ten miles per hour to eight.
Eight to six.
Six to four.
“Motherfuckin’.... shit,” Joel says again, this time much more urgent as he wrests the wheel to the side. The truck skims over the frosted roads and onto the shoulder, rolls for two seconds, and then falls to a complete, utter stop. The windshield wipers pause while they’re still up. Heat no longer spits out of the dusty air vents.
It’s the loudest silence you’ve ever been in.
“...So do you get off on letting your truck break down or–”
Joel sighs in the way that dogs do. “Thin ice, missy.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and pulls out his phone. “I’ll give Tommy a call.” He stares at the screen for ten seconds. Taps it. Shakes it.
“No service?” you ask.
“No service.”
“Let me try mine,” you mumble, shifting in the car seat. Sure enough, zero bars. Even though you know it won’t work, you press your dad’s contact. It goes straight to voicemail. “Well, shit.”
“Shit,” Joel echoes.
It’s unspoken, but you both know the harsh reality of this harsh wintry night: no phone service, no operational truck, and… no heater.
“Hang tight,” Joel says, reaching over the center console and hijacking his coat from your lap. He wrestles his arms through the sleeves and zips it up. He shoves the door open against the hoarse wind that keeps the trees at a slant, hops out, then slams it shut hard enough for the vehicle to rock. From how hard the wind was blowing, stray flurries dust the truck’s interior.
You can’t really see what he’s doing – the snow’s too heavy, the hood popped wide open for him to investigate the truck’s viscera. You run your hands up and down your thighs, already feeling cold. Without the heater, it won’t be much longer before you turn to an icicle in the passenger seat. The hood bangs back down.
Joel climbs in from the backseat, slams the door as hard as humanly possible, and then scoots to the middle seat.
You crane your neck to see him as he shakes out his cold-reddened hands before puffing air into his cupped palms. “What’s wrong with it?” You ask.
He lets out a frigid breath. “Don’t fuckin’ know, snowin’ too damn hard to tell.”
“Ten bucks it was one of the lights on your dash,” you say.
Joel glares at you, still huffing into his hands. His fingertips are bright red to match his ruddy cheeks. Snow is sprinkled through his hair like soot, quickly melting to beads of water on his windblown curls.
“Got some… hand warmers up in that glovebox. Grab the whole pack.”
You lean forward, kneeing it open and rifling through all of his shit. Insurance papers, more receipts, Miller Contracting business cards, a folded pocket knife, lens wipes, and –
“When’s the last time these saw daylight?” you huff out a laugh as you hold up a battered box of condoms.
Turns out, snow isn’t the thing that makes Joel Miller redder than a tomato. It’s the fifteen year old, very expired condoms hiding in his glovebox.
He clears his throat and averts his eyes. “Jesus. Forgot those were in there.”
You shake the box around and pluck a condom out of it. Looking for the expiration date, you turn it over and over in your hand. “August 31st, 2004. Really that long since you got some, Miller?”
“Put ‘em back,” he grumbles. “Pain in my ass.”
You snicker, replacing the condom box with the box of hand warmers. They’re unopened, still sealed. You snatch Joel’s keys out of the ignition and swipe them across the tape. “Happy?” you toss them over your shoulder.
“No.” He tears open the pack and rubs his hands together around the warmer, sighing when it begins to heat.
“Dick,” you grumble.
More tearing. “Brat.” Another warmer lands in your lap.
“Oughta get comfortable. We’re gonna be here a while,” Joel says.
“And whose fault is that?” You ask as you weigh the warmer in your palms. The front seat already feels cramped, and you’re quick to unbuckle your seatbelt. Your legs and arms fold like pretzels as you climb into the backseat. The curse that leaves you when you hit your head on the roof has Joel rolling his eyes.
“Pipe down. First thing in the mornin’ I’ll make the walk out to that country club a mile out and use their phone. Just gotta ride out the night. You ain’t ever roughed it before?”
You fall on all fours on the backseat, finally pulling yourself upright next to him. “Never had a reason to. Like, what if I have to piss? What if I get hungry?”
Joel shrugs. “Tough.”
The cold is starting to settle into your bones. Even your tongue feels popsicle numb, and your fingers are stiff where they wrap around the warmer. It’s like you’ve been trapped in a snowglobe and shaken up by a handsy toddler with how the wind rattles the truck and the snow swishes outside. You suppress a shiver, leaning against the door. Condensation is already building on the windows. Absent-mindedly, you begin to trace a portrait of Joel in the moisture. Your fingertip squeaks against the glass. Your masterpiece wouldn’t be complete without his signature scowl, so you’re sure to paint a frown on his face and his forehead wrinkles on thick.
“Didn’t know you were an artist,” Joel comments from the opposite side of the back. “Looks nothin’ like me, by the way.”
You smirk, “But you knew it was you.”
Because there’s nothing better to do than burn time, you spend the next ten minutes filling up the window with whatever nonsense doodles come to mind — hearts, stars, trees, and of course, the only one that Joel seems to be fond of: Sarah, smiling and curly-haired.
Reality only settles in when you’re done with the ephemeral illustrations, their outlines starting to dissolve back to regular droplets that streak down the windows. You’re stuck, for God knows how long, on this shady backroad that the Zodiac Killer would’ve loved during his heyday. With your dad’s best friend that you’ve been harboring a dangerous crush on.
And it’d be impossible to forget that it’s freezing fucking balls.
“Joel?” you say into the dark truck.
“Hm?”
Always one to speak your mind, you say, “It’s freezing fucking balls.”
A sound that might be a laugh leaves him. “Here,” Joel says, unzipping his jacket. He tosses it over to you, and you snuggle back up with it, nose burrowing into one of the creases in the fabric. His coat smells like him – like cheap body wash, chewing gum, and gasoline.
You try putting your hands in the pockets, even going as far as to open up a new hand warmer for each one, but they’re full of loose change and, expectedly, more receipts. When you curl up against the corner between the door and the seat, the hard plastic bites into your oversensitive back. Sitting upright or cross-legged doesn’t work, and when you test drive sitting diagonally with your feet propped up on the console, Joel makes a disproving noise and swats gently at your shin. You prop your forehead up against the window, but it’s cold enough to give you a brain freeze.
“Jesus Christ,” Joel snorts. “Get over ‘ere, you wuss.” He hauls you over, big hand splayed over your waist, and drags you across the bench to his side. You yelp in surprise, but only for a second before you’re crushed against Joel’s side. “Can’t have ya gettin’ hypothermia,” he jests.
You don’t know where to put your hands, but eventually, you settle on cupping his neck. Touching Joel, hell, even just being near him, is like being by an open furnace. Or maybe the heat is just your stomach doing somersaults at being this close to Joel after years of frivolous pining. His nape emanates warmth, the kind that flows down your arms and wraps comfortingly around your chest.
Joel exhales, the tendrils of his breath curling from the frigidity. He grabs his coat from the side and flattens it over the both of you, a piss poor replacement for a blanket, but all you’ve got.
Still, cold seeps in through the cracks in the doors, spoiling whatever lukewarm air remains. It doesn’t help that Joel had hopped in and out of the truck to play eye spy under the hood. The truck struggles to hold onto heat properly, especially when it isn’t producing more of it.
Joel sort of… flickers against your back. You think nothing of it until it happens again, this time in short bursts, and then turns into full on shivering.
“Who’s the wuss now, old man?”
Joel tenses up behind you. “Funny,” he says. With your hands cushioned against his neck, you feel the grate of his voice in his throat. “This is the best you’re gonna get unless you wanna be butt ass naked to share heat.”
It should be a joke. But the way he says it… doesn’t sound like a joke.
You go still, lifeless, not even sure if you’re shaking anymore. Because now, the only thought in your head is being pressed against Joel, his soft cock hardening against you, his palms splayed and rubbing over your stomach to keep you warm. And if his cock needed to get somewhere warmer, too…. Your clit twitches at the thought.
You smother the initial shock in your voice with your usual solution: sass. “So what, we’re gonna fuckin’ huddle for warmth?”
As much as you enjoy the idea, you're already dripping — and that’s just from your body being pressed against his, breathing the same air as him, closer now than you’ve ever been before. With no panties in the way, it’s not a stretch to say you’d be dripping down his thighs. You’d hate to have that conversation.
“Would you rather freeze to death?” Joel asks. You look up at him from where you’re curled into his side and find no gleam in his eyes. This isn’t just some knee-slapper for him. Joel Miller is being completely, irreversibly serious.
“I’d rather something less like Naked and Afraid, Joel!”
“It works,” he says, nose flaring. “They do it in those fuckin’... action movies all ‘a the time.”
“I didn’t know Hollywood was writing survival manuals for pervs–”
“God, you’re a piece ‘a work, ya know that?” His eyes flick down to you, and maybe it’s just the fact that this road is damn near pitch black, but his pupils seem larger than before. “Listen, I ain’t tryna perv on ya. I also ain’t tryna send you back to your old man with four fingers missin’ from frostbite.”
There’s no way you’re actually seriously considering this. You’ve heard of cold temperatures impairing thinking, but not like this. Your dad’ll go chasing after Joel with a pitchfork and a shovel if he finds out the man who was supposed to get you home safe and sound was cuddling naked with you. Cuddling naked with you in the backseat, no less. You’re certain Joel won’t try anything – he’s not like that. No matter how flustered you get in his lap, he’d never take advantage of you. What you aren’t certain of is your ability to stop yourself from asking him t0 take advantage of you.
This is practical. It’s only supposed to be practical. He wouldn’t be suggesting something this drastic if you both weren’t shaking like a rattlesnake’s rattler.
“Fine,” you say, already unwinding your scarf from around your neck. Determined to keep some semblance of boundaries up, you add, “No peeping, Miller.”
Joel makes an exasperated sound as you once again scoot out from his coat and across the bench, working yourself out of your shoes, your cotton zip-up, and then the stiff Keith’s uniform – a blue polo and jeans. Joel’s eyes are respectfully trained on the truck’s floor mats, which you’re only just now noticing has a sun-bleached Lisa Frank sticker tacked onto it.
Down to your bra and panties, your heart rate picks up. Your fingers are so fucking cold that it’s hard to get your bra straps out of the way so you can unclasp the damned thing, and then it falls to the floor. Your nipples harden in the face of the cold. The only thing you keep is your scarf, which do you do your best to cover your tits with. Scooping up your discarded clothes and tossing them to the front seat, you let out a shaky breath.
Fuck it.
You shimmy out of your panties and get rid of them just as quickly. When you try telling Joel you’re decent, or rather indecent, nothing comes out. Instead, you have to clear your throat with a strained, “All good.”
“Alright,” Joel says, rustling around. You hear his crocs scrape against the mat, and then his shirt swishing over his head.
He doesn’t tell you to look away, but since it’s implied, you look out of the window. The snowy trees tremble in the wind, and you almost wince when you see a small sliver of his tanned skin reflected in the glass. His crocs clunk on the ground when he kicks them off, and you watch his criminally tight t-shirt go flying over the passenger seat. You casually grip the Jesus handle, hoping that Joel doesn’t notice your fist tightening around it when you hear him untying the drawstrings of his sweatpants. When his sweats and boxers follow the path of his shirt, breathing gets a lot harder than you remember it being.
Just an hour ago, you’d been certain that this would be nothing more than a ten minute drive. Maybe, if you were lucky, he’d call you a casual pet name that would fuel the wriggling of your hand between your thighs that night.
The tension in the air is thicker than molasses. Each breath you take is fragile.
“I’m ready when you are,” Joel says.
Since you’re already half-naked, and since chickening out is out of the question, you inch over to Joel’s side. The air tumbles out of your lungs in one fell swoop when your bicep meets his. With some fidgeting, you bring your legs up at an angle beneath you, wrapping around his side in a way that has you feeling a little bit like a koala. You talk yourself into keeping your eyes forward and then scrub your palms across your freezing arms.
Joel, more indifferent than you think anyone else in this situation could be, abruptly casts his coat back over the both of you.
And, fuck him, he’d been right. The engulfing canvas of his coat keeps warmth trapped where it can be passed easily between the two of you. Or maybe it’s just being confined and skin-to-skin with Joel that has you heating up.
The silence is cruel – it’s much harder to make conversation about work or dollhouses or whatever the hell else when you’re naked. Only the wind’s sibilance keeps you company.
You can get used to this, you think. Drift off into a somewhat sound sleep with your head on Joel’s shoulder and hope that you don’t drool all over him or moan his name in your sleep. More embarrassing things have happened to you.
But then, as if you’re the unluckiest person alive, the temperature drops even more, and suddenly, you’re shaking like a leaf all over again. Your teeth almost clack together as you try to stammer out to Joel, “C–cold, Jesus fucking… Christ that’s cold.”
Joel pouts down at you, but you don’t miss the way his lip quivers. “Should I call the wambulance?”
“Should I call the r–r–r–retirement home to pi…pick up a ru–runaway resident?” It sounded a lot better in your head than bouncing off of your frozen tongue, you have to admit.
“Drama queen,” Joel mutters into your ear. “Can’t do anythin’ more about it. Sorry–”
“Can I sit on your lap?” you blurt out so quickly that you don’t even have time to think about it. You grimace, partially covering your face with your hands. Shit.
Joel’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
You’re already half doomed. Why not go all the way? “Listen, it’s just fucking… fucking freezing, Joel. Holy shit.”
“That bad?” he chokes out.
“You’d be warmer than the seats,” you defend. “I’ll be careful, I promise. Best behavior.”
Joel seems to ponder it for a moment, brows stitched together while he looks down at you from where you’re furled up against his side. He gnaws on the inside of his cheek before giving you a slight nod. “Alright.” You nod in return, heart in your throat. “–But you better mean it when you say best behavior. Can’t have any ‘a this shit gettin’ back to your dad.”
Another nod. You hold your breath as you shinny your way onto Joel’s lap, mounting him from the front so his chest hits your back. In your attempt to get comfortable, you bracket your legs around his. His soft cock fits at the small of your back, and even though he’s as flaccid as can be, he’s big. Apparently your imagination isn’t too far off. Joel’s sharp intake of breath forms a pit in your stomach, and you know when you’re warming up for an entirely different reason than close proximity, you also know that you need to calm yourself down. Fast.
Think of something awful. Like that time that you had to dissect cow eyes in sophomore year biology. Think about mold. How many murderers you’ll walk by in your lifetime. Expired leftovers. Anything–
You adjust yourself in an attempt to get away from Joel’s cock. Instead, your hips move just so his cock slips between your thighs and bobs against your slit.
You whine.
Your body immediately locks up once you realize what you’ve done. Crawling out of the truck to die a hypothermia-induced death seems like a much kinder fate than facing Joel, but no matter how much you scream at yourself to reach out and unlock the door, your hands refuse to move. You hadn’t noticed how wet you’d gotten, and you have no idea how. It’s smeared across your thighs, and now pressed up against your back after Joel’s dick had dragged through it all.
Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit–
Chancing a look over your shoulder, you’re surprised to find the tips of Joel’s ears flushed, cheeks cherry ripe. His Adam’s apple bobs when you meet his eyes. Holy fuck.
You’ve flustered him.
For some reason, the thought makes your chest a lot lighter. You look away nonetheless, but this time, with a newfound gleam in your eye. There’s no such thing as a bad accident, right?
Maybe Liz was right about having to call 911, because when you ‘accidentally’ repeat the movement, Joel stops breathing all together. His cock, almost hard now, you’ve noticed, bumps against your clit. You almost swallow your tongue trying to keep your moan down.
“The fuck you think you’re doin’?” he asks, his gruff voice scratching at your ears.
“I didn’t mean to,” you lie straight through your teeth, a smug little grin spreading on your face. Something about his semi-hard cock between your bodies tells you he’s going to say no to your next suggestion. “Maybe you should put the coat between us, instea–”
“Are you outta your fuckin’ mind, girl?” Joel’s voice comes out raspy. He shakes his head, clears his throat. The vibrations rumble up your spine. “And take away the whole point of stayin’ warm? Now quit it. Ain’t that hard to sit still.”
You try your hand at listening – for all of two seconds.
You hike your hips up, fumbling with his coat as you slot his cock against your slit once more, pushing yourself forward. The coat slides right off of you, falling in a dark lump on the floor. Neither of you care — you’re both too heated for the lack of cover to make a damn difference. Joel hisses, a sound like water hitting an open flame. His hands fly down to your waist, anchoring you to his lap. A surprised noise squeaks out of you.
“What, you got rocks rattlin’ around in your brain?” Joel scowls. “You’re real impolite for a cocktease, sweetheart.”
Butterflies flap around in your stomach from his words. It’s enough to make your head tip against his chest so you can look up at him, lips shaped in a perfect pout. “I’m not,” you say.
“Not a cocktease, huh? Not even when you’re rubbin’ all over my lap?”
You gasp as your hands fly down to cover Joel’s, nails etching into where his fingers meet your bare skin. You tug at his wrist, trying desperately to guide him where you so desperately need him.
“Not happenin’,” Joel grunts, yanking your hands behind you and pinning them to your waist like you’re nothing more than a poseable doll. His large, work-worn hands make yours look damn near miniature as he holds you down. The sudden roughness douses your inner thighs with a new wave of wetness. “Jesus, girl. Poor thing, gettin’ all hot and bothered. Don’t blame ya for tryna get me to help out. Can feel ya dripping down my legs, gushin’ like a sprinkler.”
“S–sorry, fuck, ‘m sorry,” you whisper, words sticky with your arousal. Your clit twitches from his words, embarrassment and need doing all the work to keep you warm.
“Nahhh,” he says. “I don’t think you are, baby.” Maybe it’s the condescension he’s purring in your ear, maybe it’s the pet name; most likely, it’s a combination of both that has you convulsing in his lap. It’s like he’s found all of the right buttons to press to get you riled up, getting you back for all of your snide comments earlier.
His fingers find the fabric of your scarf, luring it off of your neck so he can cord it around your wrists. You squirm when you realize what he’s doing, and a breathless huff of his laughter brushes your cheek. “I’ll be damned if you ain’t gonna be, though.” He draws it tight, tight enough for you to feel your pulses bumping into each other. Joel leaves a fair amount of your unreasonably long scarf loose.
“Joel, what the fuck are you up to?”
“Teachin’ you some sweet southern belle etiquette, darlin’. Such a goddamn troublemaker, grindin’ on me like I’m some kinda… frat boy.” He shakes his head, disbelieving. “Pullin’ that shit with your pops’ friend. Real fuckin’ classy.”
“Like you’re so different. Who’s the one that’s tying me up? Huh, Mil–”
You hear the hit well before you feel it, a firm whack to your cunt that makes your vision blacken and electricity scurrying up your spine. It takes you a second to come back to yourself before a ragged cry pulls its way out of your lips. You jolt in his lap, bound arms bobbing in front of you as your body instinctively lurches for control. You damn near kick your feet, accidentally ricocheting yourself into Joel’s chest. His forearms hold you there.
“Guess I’ll make it crystal clear for ya, baby, since that dumb lil’ head ‘a yours is havin’ some trouble. My truck, my rules. You’re ridin’ in it, ain’t you?” You nod reluctantly as he turns your words from earlier in his favor. “That was a warnin’, you showoff. Think you can bat your slutty ‘fuck me’ eyes an’ get away with murder.” He fucking tsks at you.
He pulls his hand away from your pussy, and you’re both surprised and not surprised at all to see it covered in your arousal, webbed between his calloused fingers.
“Got a whole goddamn slip ‘n slide down here…” murmurs Joel. You whine, bucking your hips against him. “Oughta just…” he starts, nudging his cock towards your hole. The noise you make is pathetic. “Stop ya from ruinin’ my seats. Cork you right up.” You tense up, fully expecting the intrusion, but his dick passes your cunt right up, instead sliding up to meet your clit. It taps against your swollen nub, and if his goal was to stop you from ruining his seats, you’re certain he’s already failed with how quickly you gush all over the upholstery.
“But that’d be real nice, wouldn’t it? Givin’ ya what ya want so early on…” Instead of pulling away like you expect, Joel griiiinds the head of his cock against your clit. You moan helplessly, head falling back across his shoulder.
And then he does it again.
And again.
And agai–
“Joooooel,” you whine, knees jerking each time his tip meets your most sensitive spot. Heat spins in your stomach.
He backs his hips up “What? Thought you loved this with how much you were gettin’ at it earlier.”
You shake your head rapidly in the negative, chest rising and falling at a breakneck pace while he teases you.
“So you can deal, but you can’t play?”
“I think you’re just taking your sweet old time getting it up, old man,” you grit out, knowing damn well he’s stiffer than titanium behind you.
Joel hums. “Ah, she’s got jokes.” His cock slips back, quickly replaced by his hand engulfing your mound. Your clit twitches ever so slightly against his palm lines, and you’re almost convinced you could get off from that alone. His palm cracks against your cunt again, somehow even harder than the first time. You cry out, eyes burning from arousal and the slightest edge of pain.
With his thumbpad, he taps your clit like he’s just scrolling through the cable guide with a remote. Fleeting movements that have you wanting more more more. It heals the sting of his slap even if the echo of the hit still simmers in your stomach. Your cunt throbs so hard that it hurts, jumping up to meet Joel’s scarce ministrations.
When he retracts his hand, your hips chase the movement. “See this?” he taunts, fluttering his wet fingers in front of your face. You make a choked noise when his drenched middle finger breaches your lips. He doesn’t even need to tell you; you latch on and suck yourself off of his calloused skin. You’re mostly salty, but a little sweet, and tasting yourself on your own tongue by his insistence manages to make you even wetter.
Joel takes his spare fingers, just as soaked, and smears them all around your chin and lower cheeks. He presses down on your tongue as he does. You gag from the pressure, and you can’t hear his laugh over the roaring of your blood in your ears, but you feel it rattle his chest where it meets your spine. Your slick cools quickly against your burning skin, syrupy as it clings to your face. “Need a bib, baby?”
He pulls his finger from your mouth with a pop and your scarf-wrapped hands spring to wipe yourself from your lips, hoping to save yourself from the humiliation of having your own pussy juice anointing your face. You only scoop up a little before Joel lowers his forearm over yours, but for once, you’re faster than him. You swipe your wet hand over his mouth, smudging as much as you can along the scruff surrounding his mouth.
He wraps a burly hand in the scarf and yanks your hands back into place. All you can do in response is giggle, but the breath is swiftly knocked out of you when he drives his cock right into your clit. “Think you’re funny, don’t ya?” He asks, and finally grunts as he rolls his hip into you. A break in his resolve, a sign that he wants this, or at least the discipline of this, as badly as you do.
You almost weep from the pressure, that rope of pleasure in your stomach that he keeps knotting tighter and tighter and tighter with each stroke of his cock, his fingers. “Joel!” you cry out as he follows it up with another firm swat to your clit. His cock spreads your folds as he softens the bashing, nuzzling his tip against your spasming cunt.
“Really, oughta give standup a go one ‘a these days. Be a real hotshot.”
“Oh yeah?” you pant, light headed and woozy.
“Mhm. If the whole crowd’s drunk.” His cock nudges your nub with a new vigor.
“Assh–”
Right as you’re about to press down and follow the sensation, Joel senses it. His cock gives way through your cheeks, just in time for him to land a ruthless slap across your pussy. It’s harder than the others – makes your ears ring for a second, gives you a sort of visual snow that has you doubling over and gripping at the closest object for purchase, which just so happens to be the metal rods coming out of the headrest.
“Ain’t what you should be sayin’ if you’re plannin’ on gettin’ what you want, sugar,” Joel tuts. He shakes his head at you. “Don’t wanna hear no lip from ya, girl.”
You open your mouth, argument on the tip of your drool-loaded tongue, but your halfhearted attempt at defiance doesn’t last long. Joel’s hand clamps around your chin, denting your skin into your teeth. He jerks your head to face him, knocking you down a peg with scathing eye contact. “You’re pushin’ it.” He loosens his grip.
“As if, Miller. If those pre-Cold War condoms are anything to go by, you’ve been dying for a chance to get your dick wet. Doesn’t matter how much lip I give you, you aren’t gonna blue ball yourself for much longer.” Satisfied, you raise your brows at him.
Turns out, he is going to blue ball himself for much longer, because he lands six slaps in rapid succession across your sopping cunt. The skin smarts, and you cry out. Your grip tightens around the headrest rod to the point of strangling it. Your eyes water, and you can’t tell if you’re crying. Too consumed by Joel, everything has melted into him – the smell of sawdust perpetually sewn into his skin, his cock sealed against your body.
“How many times are ya gonna poke the bear before you learn your lesson, you cheeky little shit?” Joel’s palm cups the inside of your right thigh, just above the knee. He traces circles with his thumb, and heat trails after him with everywhere he touches. “See, the thing about havin’ ‘pre-Cold War condoms’ is that I’ve had a helluva lot more time to learn self control than you. Can wait as loooooong as it takes for you to get your head on right. Don’t matter if you’re waterfallin’ down my seats or not, pretty girl. I’m giving you exactly what ya deserve.”
You whimper, trying (and failing) to get your magma hot core closer to Joel’s unfairly large hand, still splayed out on your inner thigh. You can’t stop how you squirm in his lap, smearing your arousal everywhere with each movement you make.
At a snail’s pace, his hand begins to inch up your leg. Joel pauses to grope at you as his hand travels upward. Handfuls of your skin, rubbing at your scalding hot thighs. Your patience is wearing thin by the time he gets midway there. You need him to touch you. And that’s just the tip of this impossibly destructive iceberg.
You shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t have let him go down this shitty backroad, shouldn’t have agreed to your dad’s ridiculous idea of Joel picking you up, shouldn’t have asked to be naked on his lap, shouldn’t have gotten naked on his lap, shouldn’t be leaking like a twenty-year-old pipe in a building he’d been hired to renovate. If your dad ever finds out–
“Joel, please, please – plea…” you trail off, dissolving into incoherent whimpers as his hand hovers over your cunt. You’re running hotter than a radiator now, and if you both wanted to be warm, then you’ve got your wish. Although mostly gibberish, Joel has to understand what you want from him. It’s just that the bastard is unwilling to provide.
Joel reaches down to pinch your clit, and your body can’t even discern from pleasure and pain anymore. You react the same to it all, back arching as you try desperately to plant yourself on his cock. “Shhh, shhh, quit runnin’ your filthy mouth. Only gonna get yourself into more trouble.”
You swear you hear angels singing, swear you see the pearly gates when he gives your clit a merciful rub. Melting into him, you exhale shakily.
“See? All nice ‘n quiet when she’s gettin’ what she wants.” You wouldn’t even dream of mouthing off to him now.
“I want – I need…” you gasp out, putty in his hands. Moldable to his liking. Everything you’d pretended not to want.
“Go on,” he coos. “Tell daddy what you need.”
You don’t even hear him say that word. You’re too hooked on begging, begging, begging. “Please – Joel, oh god, please – I need… I need… please please please, fuck, it hurts–”
Joel clicks his tongue. “Nuh uh. Start over. Always such a chatterbox ‘cept for when I need ya to be.”
“Wha…?” you ask, admittedly dazed from the harsh treatment that you’ve come to crave more of.
“Tell daddy what you need,” he repeats, words molasses slow.
You clench, gushing even more all over him. Shit, your next paycheck might have to go to replacing the goddamn seats if you keep up like this.
“D–D… D-” you start stammering out, but you’ve lost autonomy over your body long ago, and apparently that goes for your tongue, too. “Da– Da… pl–”
“Any day now,” he scoffs.
“Daddy!” you spit out all at once. “Please, please, daddy, fuck – fuck me, daddy, please, I want your cock, daddy. Feels so fucking big. Need it daddy, it hurts… please, ngh– daddy!” Tears are burning the corners of your eyes, fueled almost entirely by arousal and partially by frustration. You squirm, cunt crying all over the place.
“M’kay, baby,” he says. Running a hand down your chest and squeezing your nipple on the way down. He slides his hand down your stomach to cup your mound, giving your clit slow, gentle circles. Your hips jump forward, and this time, he doesn’t stop you. “Daddy’s got ya.”
At the first intrusion of his middle finger in your cunt, you jump. It’s a lot compared to what he’s been giving you, but nowhere near enough. A second finger slips inside. He doesn’t have to do much work to stretch you out — you’ve been seeping out of you since you first got on his lap. He’s all too quick thrusting them in and out of you – the messy squelch of your pussy filling the backseat has you burying your chin against your chest, averting your eyes. The heel of his palm bumps persistently at your clit with each shift of his fingers inside of you.
“I know you ain’t a virgin, but you’re soakin’ like one. Too damn cocksure to ain’t have had a cock in ya before. Prancin’ around like a glorified dick trap.” You inhale sharply when his fingers scrape that spongy spot inside of you that you can never reach yourself. A moan rips out of you. The combination of him talking down to you and rubbing your g-spot has you dangerously close to cumming. Your moan is quickly swallowed up by more of Joel’s condescension.
He starts mumbling to himself then, obscenities that make you clench even tighter around his fingers. “Gonna get you all sore baby, make you regret beggin’ for this dick like a horny ‘lil bitch that ain’t ever been laid in her life. Fuck you so hard you’ll be cryin’ for daddy’s cock up your ass instead, turn you into an anal slut, too.” He’s too busy listening to himself talk, too absorbed in his own world to feel you balancing on that razor-thin edge.
The noise you make is inhuman. You pulse around him, doing your best to stave off your impending release. “Daddy–” you warn, but he cuts you off then, too. Joel grinds his cock between your ass cheeks, his precum dripping down your slit to meet your trembling cunt.
“Ever been fucked here before baby?” He swipes his tip along your asshole, and the way you shudder is answer enough for him. “Don’t get all jumpy, sweetheart. Ain’t gonna fuck ya there right now. Be cruisin’ for a bruisin’.” Still, he replaces his tip with his free hand’s thumb, simply rubbing at the ring of muscle. You fidget in his lap without an end-goal. You just want to be close to him, want to take everything he’s willing to give you. His fingers hook just right inside of you. “Would love to be the first to unlock this pretty backdoor. If this tight ‘lil pussy’s anything to go by… Christ. You’d look so pretty squirmin with my cock in your ass, baby–”
“Daddy!” You scream as your orgasm guts you. His fingers and his voice rip your climax right out of you and your cum streams down your inner thighs and Joel’s hand, still smacking against your clit with each thrust. Your cunt spasms around his flexing fingers. He has to fold an arm over your chest to keep you from sliding off his slippery lap entirely.
All the way through the aftershocks that make your limbs quake, Joel holds you upright against his body, still bumping his palm and fingertips against your clit and g-spot. You swear you can feel him smiling against your shoulder.
“Didn’t tell ya you could cum, darlin’,” Joel murmurs, flicking his cum covered finger across your clit. You wince in overstimulation, a whine catching in your throat.
“‘M sorry, daddy,” you pant. His hands go up to
“‘S okay, babygirl. Pretty pussy couldn’t help it when I was talkin’ ‘bout fuckin’ your ass, huh?” His hands rove up your stomach to play with your tits, palming and stroking, getting his hands all over every carnal part of you.
You hum into his bicep, “Mmmm.”
“That’s alright. Don’t mean you’re gettin’ away with a slap on the wrist though. C’mon, up,” he guides with a small slap to your thigh. You adjust, bringing yourself onto your knees so he can enter you from behind. You look down at his sturdy thighs, flexing as he adjusts himself between your legs. He gives you one more teasing thrust through your thighs, poking your oversensitive clit one more time before reaching down to spread your folds.
You moan as he presses against your entrance, and it’s not the best time to have a come to Jesus moment, but – Joel’s size was in no way over exaggerated between your legs. You stiffen in realization, and Joel, attentive as always, notices. He guides your chin to face him and nuzzles his nose up against yours, mouth tracing down to your lips. Your breath mingles, stagnant in the long-forgotten chill. A cushion of softness against all of his spiky edges that showed up tonight. “You’re on top, baby. Take it as slow or as fast as ya want.”
Nodding at the reminder, you find yourself that you don’t want to take it slow. You want to be as sore as he’d promised, want to feel him for days and be reminded of this every time you look at the winter morning’s frost on the shingles outside.
Sinking down over his throbbing length yanks the air out of your lungs as you seat yourself with him bottoming out and going balls deep in your cunt simultaneously. He grunts against you in surprise, softening the blow of your heady moan. “Attagirl,” he huffs into the crease between your neck and shoulder. It’s a stretch, searing up your thighs and to your lower back. You’re brought back to yourself when Joel rolls his hips into you, making the pain liquefy into mind-numbing pleasure. You spend thirty seconds waiting for him to fuck up into you in a way that changes your philosophy around the world, but instead, he’s still and solid inside of you.
“Go on,” Joel coaxes, placing a steady hand just shy of your mound. “Gotta prove you deserve to cum again.” He taps your thigh as if he’s telling you to giddy up, and the shame warms the back of your neck better than any heater ever could.
You whimper. His hands coast up your thighs, squeezing your hips tight before falling to grip the seats below. You’re still weak from your last orgasm, shaky legs struggling to hold yourself up as it is. “Daddy… I can’t…”
“Ain’t no different than fuckin’ y’self on that vibrator or dildo or whatever the fuck’s in your nightstand. Girl like you, gotta have a wimpy ‘lil fucktoy somewhere.” His words make you clench around him, and he groans into your neck. Joel looks up at the front window, now covered in snowflakes. He smirks when he spots the rearview mirror. “Oughta make you watch yourself. Show a pathetic, cockstarved slut what happens when she bites off more than she can chew.” At that, you mewl, grinding yourself down. The chuckle he lets out is lined with cruelty.
Joel pins you to his chest with one burly arm and leans forward with a hash of grunts from effort. He reaches out towards the rearview mirror, lowering it to face the middle seat that you’re both braced on. He sinks back quickly, and it almost gives you whiplash before you make eye contact with yourself. You can see everything. Tremors travel up your legs and into your arms. Your body is getting freezer burn from how cold and hot you are at the same time. Pleasured tears threaten to spill over your waterline. Joel’s smug fucking face as he murmurs endlessly at you.
Your mouth is parted as you take yourself in, truly a pathetic, pretty little picture as you pant. “C’mon,” Joel coaxes, squeezing your ass. “You can do it. Make daddy proud. I’ll even give you a boost.” Joel reaches to your tied hands and quickly undoes the scarf, letting it drop to the floor. You flex your fingers and then reach out for the chairs ahead to get a good grip.
You prop yourself up on your knees, anchoring yourself to the two chairs in front of you. Using a combination of your upper and lower body strength, you rise halfway off of Joel’s cock before your body gives out. His balls slap wetly against your clit. He laughs, still not touching you at all. Your head flops forward as you look down to where the two of you meet, and then at the mirror where his cock is buried deep inside of you. You whine in dismay.
He wasn’t lying when he said he was going to get you sore. You can only moan. It’s pleasure like you’ve never had it before – too much, not enough, painful, so good. “Please, Joel – I can’t… can’t handle it.”
“I’ll decide what you can handle,” he says.
“You’re– you’re so fucking mean,” you rasp.
“Gets you this soaked, baby. Don’t see your pussy complainin’. You love bein’ treated like a piece ‘a meat. Like a little fleshlight for men to fuck.”
You clench, tight. “Ah!” Joel fucking sniggers behind you, but a rush of confidence spills through you at the underlying moan in his throat.
Determined to get what you want, you tighten your grip on the front seats. Haul yourself up, almost so that the tip slips right out, and then collapse back onto Joel’s cock. And, shit, it’s a lot. You doubt you could handle his cock in missionary, but being made to ride him in such a compromising position, sprawled out across his shitty backseat? That’s an entirely different animal, one that you hadn’t expected to have to handle.
You focus on doing just enough to please him and just enough to keep yourself intact. You repeat your movements two or three times, rising and falling. Little moans and whimpers, some pained, some good when he nudges your g-spot just right, slip in and out of you.
“Mmmm, yeah, that’s it. Daddy’s ‘lil wannabe pocket pussy. Doin’ a ‘lil better baby. Keep doin’ that. Jus’ keep doin’ that.”
You’re shaking like a leaf on his cock as you somehow manage to lift yourself another time before fucking back on him. “Daaaddy.” Your lips quiver as you form the word. A single tear runs down your face from overexertion, and he’s quick to wipe it up with his thumb as if it was never there. You look truly whorish and pathetic, just like he’d wanted, bouncing on his cock with the last of the energy you have left in you.
His tip jabs against that goddamn spot again, and you double over on the center console. You take heaving breaths, making eye contact with yourself in the mirror, desperate to please as you attempt to keep humping him with the change in angle. You’re letting out strings of disoriented words, but barely can tell that you’re talking.
“I fuck you dumb already? Slutty little girl. Told ya you were in for it. Ain’t ever had much of a knack for listenin’. Gonna dick you down now, sweet girl.” He drags your legs into the crook of his elbows, holding you upright for him as he shifts to his knees between your legs. Braced on the center console with your pussy settled on his cock, the new angle makes you cry out. You hold yourself up on your elbows, giving shallow rolls of your hips in return as Joel gets settled inside of you.
The first thrust makes your eyes roll back so far that you see black. “Feel good?”
“So… so fu–fucking goo… good daddy,” you whimper into the console, gripping the sides of it just so you have something to hold onto.
“Swallowin’ daddy’s dick whole in this greedy cunt. Goddamn, drippin’ down my fuckin’ balls. Such a masochistic slut, all after a poundin’ from an old man. All up in a tizzy for this cock.”
You moan your agreement, completely submissive to Joel’s wills. You move like a ragdoll for him, letting him yank you back on his cock while he meets you there, thrust for thrust. He pulls out, a small mercy, but when he sheathes himself back inside of you in full, it’s the beginning of a punishing pace.
You don’t even notice yourself drooling all over the console until Joel says something about it. “Droolin’ from two places. Yeah, baby, you needed this. Daddy’s pretty cockslut.” You whine especially loudly when Joel drags you back across the console, damn near fast enough to give your stomach rugburn.
Hands framing your spread legs, Joel hooks them both around his torso, using the leverage to plow into you. You’re boneless beneath him, mouth frozen in silent moans. His hips meet your ass with each shove of his cock in your sloppy cunt, the obscene sound of slap after slap pealing out within the truck. “Damn lucky we’re in the middle of nowhere,” Joel growls on another thrust. “Someone woulda been knockin’ on the window long time ago with how loud you’re bein’.”
“Mmph,” you gasp when Joel tosses one of your legs up and over the passenger seat. You hold yourself there as he digs his fingers into your other thigh, shifting his spare hand to your mound.
“Daddy please please please plea–” you start panting like a broken record, desperate to feel his hand on your clit, which throbs with inattention on the console. You grind frantically on the edge just in case he denies you again.
Joel laughs above you, fully smudging two fingers across your clit in a blur of indescribable pleasure. “Ain’t gonna make ya beg this time. Can’t wait to feel ya creamin’ ‘round me… maybe I’ll make ya lick that up too. Nasty bitch.”
“Joooel, oh fuck, please…” you whine as he continues railing you, this time fiercely tweaking your clit in-time with his movements.
The new position has his thrusts meeting your cervix, and you scream, pleasure corkscrewing through your body. There’s nowhere for all of it to go with how viciously it burns in your stomach – all you can do is take it and whine for him. “Takin’ it real good. See what happens when ya behave? You get this fat cock splittin’ your whore cunt in two, jus’ like you were askin’ for.”
He grips your hip tight, clearly expecting an answer. You slur, “Mhm, daddy!”
Joel rubs faster circles around your clit, spouting filth while he drills your pussy. You can tell he’s chasing his own release, too, hips frantically fucking in and out of you, his cock twitching every single time you clench. You’re burning up as he jackhammers your pussy. Your second orgasm of the night brims low in your stomach, “Come on, baby, know you’re close. Feel this slutty pussy squeezin’ me. You gonna ask permission like a good girl this time, or are ya gonna go back to your defiant little slut self?”
“No, daddy,” you whimper, suspended in thin air over orgasmic bliss. He’s rubbing your clit erratically, doing everything he can to hold you in place. “P-please daddy, can I come?” You practically scream it out.
“Go ahead,” he says. “Come for daddy’s, come allll over daddy’s cock.”
The band snaps. Your back arches, and you feel time stop in the second before you fall slack on the console, spasming from the best orgasm of your fucking life. Your clit feels like there’s fucking pop rocks on it, something that not even your vibrator has ever achieved. “Thank you daddy!” you cry out, repeating it as you lose all feeling in your bones. You hardly have any control over your body anymore – it’s just Joel Joel Joel Joel. Sated and weary, you just lay there, letting Joel fuck into you.
And fuck into you he does – roughly, helping you ride out your orgasm as he pursues his. “That’s my girl,” he says, and you swear that alone could make you cum all over again. “Lettin’ your daddy use this juicy, well-fucked cunt to get his own.” He can’t hold back his moans, that’s how you know he’s close, grunting and gasping as he rocks his hips into yours. His hand lands on your ass in a sharp smack, and your pussy clenches in exactly the way that he expected. He lets out a particularly ragged noise, folding himself over you to nip at your neck and rest his forehead against your shoulder blade. “Daddy’s close, where do ya want me, baby?”
“Tits,” you whine. It’s a miracle you can even get that one word out, but somehow, you manage a few more. “Come on my tits, daddy.”
“Fuck!” Joel shouts, yanking himself over you. You help him roll yourself over and sit up on your elbows, and he jerks himself once, twice, before spraying his load all over your tits with the loudest groan yet. His brows fold together as he cums, eyes drooping and his mouth parted as he takes deep breaths.
You sit there for a handful of heavy minutes, listening to each other’s jagged breathing and the sawtoothed wind outside. You’re both so fucked. Literally, and figuratively. Stuck in the buttfuck middle of nowhere, you with your dad’s proclaimed bestie’s cum drying on your tits, and said bestie staring at you with post-coital puppy dog eyes and your cum all over his balls.
You’re the first to speak up, still winded. “That was… that was good.”
Joel nods mindlessly, tongue swiping out to lick his lips. He beckons you closer, and on trembling legs, you bring yourself to the backseat. You return to your previous position, huddled up and curled next to the door. Joel fumbles around under the back bench for a little until he comes up with a small, sunbleached pack of princess-themed pocket tissues that have to be as old as Sarah is. He dabs at your chest before stuffing them into the closest empty cupholder, and then brings you closer to his chest.
You don’t notice yourself falling asleep when all you can feel is Joel.
There’s better ways to wake up than a furious rapping on the window, but that isn’t the first thing you notice. You blink your eyes open groggily, only to face an egg yolk sun cracking wide open over the treeline and snowmelt bleeding out from every given surface. Joel’s behind you, nose in your neck, snoring softly with his arms wrapped around your middle. You take a moment to admire him – his sun kissed skin and his peaceful expression. It takes you a moment to remember you slept with him. You slept with Joel, and it was the best fuck of your life.
You’re stretching, on the verge of a yawn, when you see the familiar head of black hair over the window. “Shit!” you shout. Joel jerks to life behind you, mumbling something that sounds a lot like ‘what?’.
You scramble to pull the coat over the both of you from where it fell off of you in the middle of the night, covering your naked bodies. “Get dressed!” you hiss to Joel, searching for wherever the fuck your panties ended up last night.
“What the hell’s gotten into ya–” he starts, and you feel the exact moment that he realizes Tommy Miller is outside of the truck. “Motherfucker,” he curses, swaying towards the front seat to snag his clothes. You see him almost put his head through his T-shirt armhole three times before he gets it right. His sweatpants are next, which he tugs up his bare legs without even searching for his boxers.
“Joel?” Tommy shouts outside. “Wake up, sleepin’ beauty!” He knocks on the door again, the windows blurry from melting snow. You have that to thank, at least. It buys you enough time to tug your polo over your head, but not enough time to button it all the way up.
“Fuckin’... dumbass,” Joel huffs as he clips the lock on the door and kicks it open, looking at least somewhat composed. You take deep breaths, looking between the two of them. “How’d you find us?”
Tommy looks Joel up and down, scrutinizing him. “What happened to southern gentleman manners? I came out here to save ya from Mt. Everest, brother! Least you could say is ‘thank you’.”
“Thank you,” you fill in for Joel, even if the last thing you’re feeling is grateful.
“Her daddy threw a hissy fit, y’know? Told him you were fine and we’d go lookin’ for ya in the mornin’. We saw all that backup on the highway, I went this way, he went that way, turns out my gut was right. ‘Course my dumbass brother would take this route… hey, you’re truck’s a fuckin’ mess.” Tommy sinks his hand into the closest cupholder, pulling out a wad of tissues that have been soaked in his cum. You hiss as if you’ve been scalded with boiling hot water.
Joel starts, “Tommy–”
“What the fuck is this shit?” The realization seems to dawn on poor Tommy when he’s peeling apart the tissues, and he drops them like they’re a thousand pounds. You can’t even bring yourself to scold him for littering as the wind carries them away. “Joel. You dirty dog!” He says, eyes flitting between the two of you like it’s the most impossible thing in the world.
Your heart picks up to a speed that can rival most NASCAR drivers and your face burns like hot asphalt. You look pointedly down at the ground.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Joel seethes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Get outta here, you little shit.”
Tommy’s hands go up. “Hey now, I ain’t doin’ anything. That is not a conversation I wanna have with her daddy.” He clears his throat, effectively clearing the air along with it. “So, uh, truck break down?” Joel grunts in affirmation.
“Been tellin’ ya you need to make a stop at the auto shop… C’mon, I’ll get y'all home,” Tommy says, jingling the keys to his own truck. “Call a tow on the way.”
Joel drags his feet all the way to Tommy’s passenger side. You get your wallet and jacket together, winding the latter around your waist. The sun almost blinds you on your way out, and Tommy stops you.
“I hope you didn’t let ‘im stick it to ya with them prehistoric condoms. You’re smarter ‘n that.”
“God, no,” you huff out.
“I dunno what’s stupider, lettin’ my asshole brother hit it raw or gettin’ a UTI–”
“Okay!” you announce, hands going up as you round the back of Tommy’s truck. “Conversation over.” You’re still smiling playfully at Tommy as you clamber into the back of the truck, sighing when the air conditioner hits.
Just like that, back to the same old same old sunny, shithole state of Texas. Joel looks at you in the rearview mirror and winks at you. You guess not everything has to stay the same these days.
#vetty's words 𓇢𓆸#joel miller smut#joel miller x f!reader#joel miller x reader#joel miller fanfic#joel miller fic#joel miller/reader#joel miller/f! reader
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Careful - Chapter One
(Dad)Spencer Reid x (Mom)Fem!Reader
Chapter One: Over Yet
We can go farther, beyond the end.
Summary:
You and Spencer broke up more than four years ago. Since then, he has tried his best to forget about you. He has pushed all of his feelings down - locked them away into a little box that he never touches.
That is, until he sees your name on a list of potential victims being stalked and killed by a man who kills single mothers. (And he quickly realizes that your son could be his.)
Dad!Spencer Reid x Mom!Fem!Reader. Exes to Lovers. Angst.
Word Count: 5,900
Criminal Minds Masterlist | AO3 Link | Series Masterlist
Please keep in mind - I am not doing a taglist for this series, so please do not ask to be tagged in future parts. I do not do taglists. If you want to be notified when future parts of this fic are posted, you can follow this blog and turn on notifications here - I don't make personal posts on this blog, it is just pure posts of my fanfiction. Or you can subcribe on AO3 to get email notifications when this series is posted. You can also view the posting schedule on the series materlist and check @tenpintsof-sundrop for any information about possible changes to that schedule.
Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.
Warnings: general warnings for a Criminal Minds episode - mentions of murder/killing, somewhat graphic descriptions of killing, somewhat graphic descriptions of dead bodies, the underlying misogyny that comes with a man killing women, mentions of children being orphaned due to their mothers being killed (though there is no mentions of other living family members taking care of those children - you can imaging that they still have nice families to take care of them if you want, I didn’t fill in that detail), mentions of children being in proximity of a serial killer; exes to lovers - the reader and Spencer broke up and the reason why will be revealed later; mentions of pregnancy/mentions of the reader having a child; mentions of sex that resulted in a child/pregnancy (there is no detailed sex scenes/detailed smut in this chapter, but there will be in other chapters); mentions of JJ x Will; the reader’s looks are described as vaguely as possible; passing mention of incest (in the context of a historical figure); all statements that Spencer makes toward the end of this chapter were heavily researched and are factual; I think that’s about it?
A/N: The reader and Spencer originally dated around Season 1/Season 2 - I state at some point during the fic that they dated for 3 years before breaking up, so they started dating when he was very early Season 1 baby Spence (or even before Season 1) and they broke up around Season 2. So technically this fic takes place around Season 6 - but because I didn't want to distract from the plot, I didn't mention any of the stuff going on with Emily or any of those major canon plot points, and I am using pictures of later versions of Spencer just because that's who I was picturing in my head while writing this. But that's how the math works out. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic!! This chapter is more of an introduction before we really get into the meat of things, but I still hope that you guys like it.
...
The team had been in Portland for three days.
No leads, a confusing, inconsistent profile - huge pieces missing that would likely give them the real answers.
A patient killer with an extended timeline who likely wouldn’t kill again for months - leaving them chasing their tails, looking for answers.
“Okay, so, let’s take a step back.” Hotch sighed. “What do we know so far?”
He leaned against a nearby table, looking at everyone with the hope of reassessing the case from a different angle. The hope of talking it out to get some answers.
Another woman’s body had been found just before they arrived, and that would mean that the UnSub would be out hunting again soon. This was both good and bad.
Good, because the UnSub clearly had to spend a lot of time stalking his victims - he knew a lot of details of their lives, and he had spent a lot of time developing an intimate fantasy of being a part of their family in his mind. So he wouldn’t be killing again the next day. No woman was in immediate danger. It gave the team more time to find viable suspects.
Bad because they had no physical evidence, no good leads. And thus far, the profile was leading them nowhere. It felt incomplete.
They could find no real connections between the victims - their gyms, their banks, their childcare, their grocery stores. Somehow, the victims didn’t seem to have any crossover in their lives. There was no real way to say how the UnSub had met them. And someone like this - he would have interacted with them at least once in order to become obsessed and stalk them to this degree.
“Five women dead within the last three years.” Prentiss announced, starting to round up the facts that the team knew for certain. “All of them mothers, all with children under the age of five. All within the same ten square mile radius of Oregon, around Portland’s suburban neighborhoods.”
She slumped back into her chair with a tired huff, and then continued.
“The UnSub breaks into their homes through a backdoor or a back window, and somehow goes undetected in such an upscale neighborhood.” She sighed. “He kills the mothers, but he leaves their children alive. And then he calls 9-1-1 to report the death as a case of child neglect.”
“So he was likely neglected by his own mother in his childhood.” Morgan easily theorized.
“All of the victims upper-middle class, single mothers to one child with good jobs. All of them are of the same physical type.” Rossi added on. “They’re the same race, they have the hair color, they’re the same body type - all in their late twenties to early thirties. So the UnSub definitely has a type. He’s most definitely recreating a fantasy of some kind - perhaps taking out revenge on his own mother, but protecting himself. Which is why he never hurts the children.”
“Yeah, but the children are different.” Morgan replied. “Sometimes boys, sometimes girls. Some of them are biracial - he doesn’t look for a specific type in the father. He doesn’t necessarily need to see himself in the children.”
Then, as another thought occurred to him, Morgan continued on:
“Plus, the children’s ages vary from barely a year old all the way up to five - if he was looking to seek revenge on his mother, looking to protect a younger version of himself, then he would have locked in on a critical event that he needs to protect himself from. The age of the children would be more consistent, at least, because he would be looking to protect himself as he hits the age that he was most traumatized by a specific event.”
“That’s good.” Hotch nodded. “Then we know that it’s more about the mothers. He hates women at his core. Protecting the children is just a byproduct of his obsession over these women.”
“But we still have no clue how these women could be connected or how they met the UnSub.” Morgan replied, jaw stiff with frustration.
“Focus on what we do know.” Hotch reminded him.
“All of the women were killed via stabbing. They all had over a dozen stab wounds to their stomachs and genital areas.” Rossi replied. “So, he is an aggressive sexual sadist.”
“But if he hates women so much, why spend so much time in the house?” Morgan argued gently. “Every single one of these scenes has evidence that the UnSub spent hours - possibly up to a day in the house before he killed them. He cooked dinner, set the table, and made the women eat it before he killed them. Including a second place setting for a child. Some of the kids even said that ‘the scary man’ tucked them into bed and read them a story.”
He held up one of the crime scene photos that depicted the scene of the family’s place settings - a haunting scene of plates not cleaned up from dinner, with a flower vase sitting in the middle of the table with a few white flowers wilting inside of it.
“He’s right - why bother to show them the kindness of a last meal if he shows so much aggression toward them during the killing?” Prentiss added on.
“It’s a routine.” Hotch said, the thought suddenly occurring to him. “It’s likely that he chooses single mothers because he gets to play the role of the father. With the real father figure absent from the picture, it makes it easier for him to impose himself into that role. At least for a temporary amount of time.”
“It is strange.” Reid added on, clearly swimming in thought. “It’s almost like he’s courting them? Sending them gifts, showing what a good father he could be. Each of the women were sent white carnations sometime in the days before they were killed, and after the killing, he lays the flowers around their head in a halo-like fashion. It is said that carnations represent motherhood, and the white shade could depict an angelic innocence that he’s projecting onto these women.”
“So he views these women as angelic figures, yet he kills them so brutally?” Prentiss scoffed. “It just doesn’t add up.”
“Maybe he views the killing itself as a type of purification.” Reid theorized. “It’s not uncommon for killers to emotionally fetishize dead bodies and consider them more ‘pure’ than their living counterparts.”
Prentiss visibly cringed at this.
“Wait.” JJ said, looking at one of the crime scene photos with a sharp line pulling her brows together.
Everyone looked to her, waiting for her to finish this thought.
“I don’t think that the mothers were the only ones sent gifts.”
She held up the photo, showing a picture of a colorful child’s play mat in the living room. Everyone stared at the photo in confusion, and JJ sighed and began to explain.
“Look at this toy truck in the middle.” She said, pointing at something that almost blended into the background of the photo. The true focus was a large handprint - one that belonged to the killer, but he had worn gloves. “It’s wooden, it’s hand-carved, it’s old fashioned. All the other toys are plastic, brightly coloured. Remember what the UnSub said in the second 9-1-1 call?”
“‘She pretends to have her son’s best interests at heart, but she was going to let him get cancer from sucking on those cheap plastic toys.’” Reid said, repeating it word-for-word, using his impeccable memory.
“Exactly.” JJ confirmed with a nod. “Clearly the UnSub believes that he would be a good father because he can gift his child something hand-made instead of something mass produced.”
“Alright, get the crime scene techs back over there to pick up the truck, maybe he wasn’t wearing gloves when he made it and there is some slim chance he left a print on it.” Hotch said, and JJ left to call the crime scene unit.
This left the team sitting in silence for a few more moments until Reid spoke up again.
“What about preschools?” He said, suddenly coming out of a wave of thought to announce this to the room.
“What?” Prentiss prompted, wondering what on earth he was talking about.
“Preschools.” Spencer confirmed, looking across the table at her.
“We checked already, none of the victims’ children went to the same preschool.” Morgan reminded him. “Two of the kids didn’t even go to preschool.”
“Yeah, but preschools typically have large waitlists.” Spencer argued.
Naturally, all eyes in the room fell on him, waiting for him to explain.
“In the first 9-1-1 call, the UnSub said that the victim ‘shipped her son off to be cared for by strangers half the time’.” He explained, once again perfectly reciting this from memory. “What if the UnSub resents preschools and the schooling system for taking these children away from their mothers, so he’s choosing his victims off of a preschool waitlist? What if that’s where his obsession stems from because that’s where his rage stems from?”
Reid jumped up, pointing to the map he had been using to make a geographical profile.
“All of the victims live within the same school district.” He added on. “So they would be applying to the same group of preschools.”
“I’ll call Garcia.” Morgan announced.
A few minutes later, Morgan connected Garcia’s call to the comm on the center of the conference table they were working from.
“Hey, pumpkin pies.” She greeted them sweetly, as usual. “So it turns out, the preschool that Tommy Laird, and Emily Ashton, the third and the fourth victim had in common, does have a waitlist. But none of the other victims’ names were on it.”
“Come on, babygirl. I know you’re holding out on me.” Morgan said, giving a small smirk.
“Oh, my Adonis, if I don’t have your trembling anticipation, I have nothing.” Garcia giggled. “The school’s waitlist, and their applications, are handled by a firm called Gordon & Stanheight. And it turns out, they handle the applications and waitlisting for five other preschools in the area.”
“Which gives the UnSub a perfect way to pick his victims.” Morgan sighed. “The first interaction that gets him hooked might not even be in person-”
“Unless he’s picking them out of the line-up on paper and then waiting to meet them in person?” Prentiss replied. “With this type of guy, the smallest smile, a nod in his direction - that could be consent in his mind to play father to a household that’s missing one.”
“You said they handle forms for five different schools? That just widened the victim pool.” Rossi groaned.
“And the suspect pool.” Garcia added on. “The firm has thirty male employees. And I did a bit more digging - the preschool applications have ten ‘optional’ questions on the bottom that are definitely not marked as such. Questions directed at the parent filling out the form, rather than vital information about the child. Things such as: ‘what’s your favorite food?’, ‘when is your birthday?’, ‘what’s your favorite color?’, ‘do you plan on having more children?’ - typical survey schlock,”
“That would explain why the UnSub served Lisa Laird a birthday cake.” Reid sighed. “He knew it was her birthday two days before he killed her.”
“I have a feeling I’m not gonna like where this is going.” Emily sighed.
“Oh, sugar. You probably won’t.” Penelope easily agreed. “The ‘optional’ part of the forms is sold off to other companies as survey data. And those forms are seen and handled by over a thousand male employees of Gordon & Stanheight’s larger ‘data processing’ sector.”
“Well the UnSub has to be local to Portland. So narrow down the suspect list based on his last known address and go from there.” Hotch said. “Also, it would be someone who has a criminal record. Someone committing this level of violence wouldn’t be a first time offender.”
“Gotcha.” Penelope said. “Penny G, out.”
…
The team ended up raiding Gordon & Stanheight’s Portland based office.
After some pointless conversation, some threats of lawsuits, and some even larger threats of being detained for impeding an FBI investigation, the team was able to get their hands on the preschool applications. Over two-dozen boxes worth, that they would have to sort through.
So this left JJ, Reid, Hotch, Rossi, Morgan, and Prentiss knee deep in paper, looking for anyone who fit the UnSub’s victimology - praying that they would be able to pick out the next victim and get to her before the UnSub did.
“We’re never gonna get through these fast enough, are we?” Prentiss sighed, continuing to sift through the papers.
“We just have to go as fast as we can, and hope the UnSub sticks to his schedule.” Morgan replied. “He has to spend time stalking them, learning their routine. Even if he has chosen his victim by now, he won’t break into the house until he’s fully confident that he won’t be disrupted.”
“And the stalking helps build up the fantasy.” Reid added on. “He romanticizes them from afar, sends them gifts. It adds to his delusions of grandeur and forbidden love. The idea that he’s swooping in to become the perfect father figure for these ‘broken’ families.”
“So we’re hanging all our hopes on the idea that this psychopath needs time to ‘fall in love’ with his next victim before he kills her?” Prentiss groaned.
“Sadly, yes.” Rossi confirmed.
“It helps that most of these applications are from two-parent households.” JJ pointed out. “We can throw out anything with a second applicant on the form, because he’s only targeting single mothers.”
The rest of the conversation easily became quiet in Spencer’s ears when he saw it.
It should have been just another page among the sea of paper in his hands, but when he saw those words on the page - that name - it was like a punch to the gut. It pushed all the air out of him in seconds, it made him dizzy, made him struggle to breathe. Like a reel flashing through his mind, it brought back a flood of memories he thought he had locked away forever.
It was you.
What the hell were you doing applying for preschools?
Spencer rushed to tear this paper away from the others in order to read it more carefully.
Surely enough, the application was filled out in your handwriting. Something that had barely changed over the years. And it was all right there, laid out in front of his eyes, clear as day -
You had a son.
A son named Sebastian, who was three years old. Spencer checked the date on the form, eagerly looking for a birth date for your son. His birthday had just recently passed, actually, so he was four years old now.
And his birth date was… fuck.
He had been born eight and a half months, almost nine months exactly after the two of you had broken up. Your son had been born eight and a half months after the day you had left and Spencer had never seen you again.
One thousand, seven hundred and two days.
Four years, eight months, and two days.
It wasn’t difficult math.
Your son was the perfect age to be Spencer’s child. Was this Spencer’s child?
His hands began to shake at the very thought of it.
Is that why you had disappeared from his life with such haste? Because you knew that you were pregnant and you didn’t want Spencer to be a part of your child’s life?
Had you been keeping this from him intentionally?
He hadn’t thought about you in four long years, he had tried so hard not to. He had spent so long forcing himself not to miss you, and now he was struck with the realization that he might have a child out there with the woman he considered to be his regrettable lost love. A child he didn’t know - a child who he had missed four whole years with.
What the fuck was going on?
There were no pictures included with the application, and suddenly, Spencer found himself dying to see the boy. He wanted to know if there was any physical resemblance to himself, or if he was jumping to conclusions.
Maybe you had cheated on him. Maybe that was why you had left town and never contacted him again. Maybe the kid wasn’t his at all, maybe-
“Reid.” JJ called out gently, getting his attention.
Spencer suddenly realized that he was hyperventilating, staring down at the application with your name on it in his hand, wrinkling the paper as he squeezed it more frantically.
“Did you find something?”
…
All in all, the team found four different women who fit the victim pattern in the files - you being one of them.
So the team split up, ready to knock on each of the womens’ doors, preparing to warn them that if they received any gifts or saw any suspicious men lingering around them in the next few days, they should call. They had to hope that the UnSub wouldn’t move on from this victim pool if he saw the FBI around. But he was overly confident, he had contacted police before.
It could definitely work.
When Hotch found out that Spencer had known you, he said that Spencer should be the one to knock on your door. That you might find it comforting to hear that you and your child could possibly be in danger if it were coming from ‘an old friend’. Spencer stuttered over himself and didn’t have the words to explain that you weren’t just a good friend to him, but a romantic flame. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the team by telling everyone that the break-up had been messy, and sudden, and Spencer still wasn’t even completely sure what had caused it. He didn’t want to rip open his old wounds in front of everyone.
So he simply shut his mouth and got in the car with JJ, and they made their way toward your house.
…
“So…” JJ’s voice broke through the undulating silence of the car ride - filled by nothing but the sound of the car’s motor running and gears grinding inside Spencer’s mind as he tried to figure all of this out. “I do have to ask the obvious question,”
“What is that?” Spencer probed, slightly glad to be relieved of his own thoughts.
He wasn’t so glad when JJ pried those thoughts out of his mind and spilled them to the open air.
“Is the kid yours?” She wondered aloud. “I mean - when did you and Y/N break up?”
JJ had known you as Spencer’s girlfriend.
Come to think of it, she was probably the only person on the current field team who had some kind of a relationship with you back when you and Spencer dated.
Initially, it had been by accident. JJ had driven him home one night after a particularly long and sleepless case, and you had been coming to his apartment to drop off some books he had asked for (shortly after he had given you a key). When JJ saw you, her natural curiosity got the better of her - even more so when you stuck out your hand and introduced yourself as ‘Spencer’s girlfriend’ without hesitation.
The two of you got to talking, and JJ invited you to ‘girls night’. You met Elle and Penelope shortly after. You had become pretty good friends with the three of them before the break-up.
But Spencer had always felt secretive…. well, protective of you. He didn’t want Morgan teasing him about you, or him wanting to have ‘guy talk’ about things that occurred in the bedroom. Not when it might mean talking about intimate moments with you. Spencer had only introduced you to Gideon over coffee about three weeks before the break-up, and that felt like a lifetime ago.
Back then, having you, Elle, and Gideon leave his life all in a matter of a few months felt like hell on earth. It felt like being grabbed by his ankles and shaken for all he was worth. He really wasn’t sure that he was ready to see you again.
It had been four years.
JJ was someone he could lean on right now.
“Four years ago.” He told her, completely honest.
“And how old is the kid?” JJ asked.
“Four - four years old.” Spencer stuttered out, realizing that now as he was speaking about this very real possibility, he might be breathing more life into it.
“Oh my god.” JJ sighed. “Well… could it-? I mean…? Did the two of you?”
It took Spencer a moment to clue into what JJ was talking about. He gave her a sideways glance and she took her eyes off the road for a moment, raising her brows and giving him a pointed look.
“Please tell me you know what does and what doesn’t make a baby,” JJ groaned.
“Oh!” Spencer huffed, a small wave of embarrassment flooding him. “Yes! God, yes. I know.”
There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Spencer felt the need to clarify his answer.
“We - I mean. We…” He trailed off for a moment, clearing his throat. “We didn’t always use… protection. We were together for three years, at the time, it was on the table.”
“Kids were on the table for you back then?” JJ asked, clearly shocked by this. “I could not imagine little twenty-four year old Spence with a baby.”
“Well… it’s something I’ve always wanted.” He mumbled quietly in reply.
It was true. At the time, Spencer easily imagined himself getting married to you, having multiple kids with you. These days, seeing JJ with Henry and Will brought him the occasional underlying pang of jealousy - but since breaking up with you, there hadn’t been anyone else in Spencer’s life that he could have imagined having kids with. He thought that he was going to be alone and childless for the rest of his life. That the dream was long dead for him.
“Hey - then, maybe this is a blessing in disguise?” JJ posed. “If we hadn’t been looking through those forms because of this UnSub, you never would have found Y/N again. You wouldn’t even know this baby exists.”
There was another thing that JJ was dying to ask - something she held back because she felt like it was a touch too personal. (Even if ‘too personal’ was basically how the BAU team lived - knee deep in each other’s business, all the time).
She wanted to know why you had a baby, a baby that Spencer had very likely fathered, and you hadn’t contacted him about it. Spencer seemed entirely clueless about the child’s existence before now, and JJ knew that because of what his own father had been like, he wouldn’t just blow off a kid that was his if he knew that one was out there in the world.
So why hadn’t you told Spencer about the baby?
“What if the kid isn’t yours?” JJ wondered aloud.
Maybe that would unburden him. She knew that either way, Spencer would fight to protect you from the UnSub. But if the kid wasn’t his - he would walk away again, and he wouldn’t have to be hung up on the heartbreak of dealing with his ex just to parent a child together.
“Honestly… I think I’ll be more heartbroken if I find out that he’s not even mine.” Spencer told her, his voice quiet and already lulling with that disappointment.
That was not something JJ had considered. She frowned as she saw the sadness paint across Spencer’s face.
“One thing at a time, alright?”
…
When they pulled into your driveway, Spencer’s mind immediately began churning.
It was a nice house. It was a beautiful, quiet neighborhood. The front yard was clean and trimmed and there was a silver SUV in the driveway with a ‘baby on board’ sticker in the rear window. There was a rocking chair on the porch, but he didn’t see many children’s toys out front on the lawn. He guessed that was a good thing. Letting children play in the front where they could run into the street and potentially get hit by a car was too dangerous. He was glad to already see signs that you were a good mother.
Spencer felt like he was opening up a book halfway, desperately wanting to be filled in on the previous chapters while having missed so much. Still wanting to read ahead and see more.
He had already missed so much of your son’s life. He had missed you. That was something forming the biggest knot in his gut. He had truly missed you. The times he had allowed himself to think of you over these past few years - he had missed you so dearly.
And now the two of you likely had a child together.
Craning his neck to get a better look, desperately trying to take in more information, Spencer’s eyes were wide and hungry as JJ put the car in park by the curb in front of your house. As Spencer reached for the passenger side door handle, JJ’s phone rang.
“I have to take this.” She sighed. “You go ahead.”
She gave Spencer a distinct look that said ‘I know you need a minute alone with Y/N’, and he nodded, stepping out of the vehicle while she greeted whoever was on the other line. He smoothed down his tie - for once in his whole life, he was actually worried about how he looked. Only because he knew that he was going to see you. Perhaps he had only ever felt like this before going on his first date with you.
He had such a strange lashing of emotions going through him as he approached the door. Fear, anxiety, anticipation. Longing.
He truly had tried so hard to lock away his feelings for you when you had left. He had tried to move on. He had considered, briefly, in passing, dating other women. There had been times when someone else caught his eye, and he considered asking her out on a date. Morgan had offered to ‘set him up’. Penelope had offered too, telling him that he deserved to ‘get back out there’.
Whenever she asked about you, his heart freshly cracked open.
At one point, she had advised him to write a long, Shakespearian letter, pouring out his heart to you in an effort to get you back - one which she would mail. (Because of course, she could get your new address in a heartbeat.) But he didn’t want to experience the heartbreak all over again if you ignored him. He didn’t want to sit, waiting by the mailbox every single day like a lost dog, waiting for you to write him back in return.
You had disappeared from his life for a reason. Just like everyone else had. For a long time, Spencer convinced himself that he was simply meant to end up alone.
Perhaps if he had known about your son - a child that could very well be his - then he might have felt differently about getting Penelope to contact you.
But now he was standing at your front door, his fist shaking as he raised his hand to knock.
He let out a sharp breath and steadied himself, giving three swift, firm knocks against the door and then trying to wait patiently. His heart thumped inside of his throat, and it felt like forever.
“Sorry!” Your voice called out from behind the door, muffled. “Sorry, I almost didn’t hear you. I was-”
You cut off your own words as you opened the door - the moment you caught Spencer’s eye and recognized it was him, pure shock fell across your features, and you froze on the spot.
You were just as stunning as ever. You had barely aged at all - your hair was different than the last time he had seen you, of course. And you were dressed casually - wearing a simple hooded sweatshirt with a drawstring and a pair of jeans with some fuzzy slipper boots on. But pale blue looked so good on you.
So much like the pale blue dress you had worn on your first date with him.
You were breath-taking.
“Y/N.” He greeted you, his throat dry already.
You didn’t say anything, simply continuing to stare him down with wide-eyed shock.
Seeing you again, Spencer couldn’t help but to think back to that first date.
The first night that he knew he was in love with you.
…
He had taken you to see the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
It was Spencer’s idea of a good time - and it ended up being one of the most beautiful, most romantic, most unique first dates that you had ever been on.
It was difficult not to fall for him with the beautiful music in the air and his glossy eyes, so sickeningly thick with affection, staring you down all night.
Afterwards, the two of you stopped to get ice cream at a small shop that was a short walk down from the orchestra. And now you were both enjoying your ice cream as you walked along in the cool night air - enjoying the peace and quiet and the gentle breeze in the darkness.
It was a perfect night.
Spencer could think of no better way to spend it than with you. The yellow bulbs of the street lights practically cast a glow onto your skin, the mulberry lipstick now worn off your lips as you brought the pink spoon to your mouth and licked up your sweet treat.
His stomach was churning with nerves. Joyous nerves.
And as per usual, when he was nervous - he rambled.
“You know, Bach actually married his cousin.” He said, spouting off the first thing that came to mind.
You told him that Bach was one of your favorite composers - it’s why he had thought to bring you to the orchestra on a date in the first place.
“I did not know that.” You giggled. “So what? Was it like a ‘third cousin twice removed’ type situation?”
Spencer found himself grinning at the fact that you actually engaged him in the conversation, rather than staring at him with an odd look for bringing up such a strange topic.
“Not quite.” He replied. “They had the same surname before marriage.”
“Oh, ew.” You chuckled again, giving a shudder at the thought of this.
Spencer knew it was an odd topic to discuss on a date, and if he rambled on too much, it might freak you out - but he couldn’t stop himself. His mouth ran away with him, and he continued.
“He married Maria Barbara Bach, and they had seven children together.” He told you. “His sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel became composers and musicians much like their father, which was actually carrying on a legacy started by Bach’s father himself - who was a seventh generation musician. He was the one who taught Bach the organ from a very young age.”
“Why don’t people play the organ anymore?” You wondered aloud. “Except in churches, I guess. The organ rocks.”
Spencer’s brain began rocketing off at the fact that you had asked him a question. A question he could answer.
“The organ has actually long been associated with divinity.” He replied. “The instrument rose in popularity alongside Catholicism throughout the eighteenth century, and in a sense, that was part of what made Bach a sort of ‘rockstar’ of his time. The religious references in his work, and his mastery of the organ - all of it made him incredibly popular at the time because it caused him to be favored by the church and by royal figures associated with the church.”
Spencer gleamed a large smile, heavily enjoying that he could share these facts with you. He thought for certain that any moment, you would change the subject or imply that he should stop talking. But instead, you engaged the conversation more.
“Religious references?” You questioned, wondering what he meant by this.
“Yes!” Spencer grinned, suddenly very excited by the explanation behind this. “Even in his secular music, Bach would often incorporate the acronym ‘INJ’, a Latin abbreviation that means ‘In Nomine Jesu’, or ‘in the name of Jesus’. It was something he put on all of his manuscripts.”
You grinned back. You found it fascinating that being around Spencer for such short periods of time caused you to learn so many things. It easily made you want to be around him more.
“Interesting.” You replied.
“And his talent on the organ was seen as something that made him ‘divine’ at the time. Divine enough to be worthy of performing for royalty.” Spencer added on. “In 1708, Bach got a position as the court organist in Weimer for Duke Wilhelm. And later when he requested early release from this position, desiring to go work for Prince Leopold of Koethen, the Duke actually had him arrested and put in jail for several weeks in 1716.”
Spencer laughed at this mental image - the composer being put in jail.
“Ooh, harsh.” You sighed. “But I guess Dukes have too much power.”
Spencer let out another bright laugh at this.
“And see, the interesting thing is, Bach later became the conductor of the court orchestra, in which Prince Leopold played.”
“So he got his wish,” You replied with a smile.
“And see-”
Spencer set off on another rant again, and you couldn’t help yourself. You put your spoon into the cup of ice cream and then you used your now free hand to reach out and grab Spencer by his tie - you pulled him toward you before he could get anymore words out, and he let out a shocked, choked-off sound when you pressed your mouth into his.
He sighed gently against your lips, and unconsciously dropped his own melting chocolate cone on the ground by his feet as his limp hands drifted toward your waist. He was dizzy, and now every single fact he had ever known about any composer had vanished from his head. In that moment, standing under a random street lamp on a random sidewalk somewhere - all he knew was the soft, pillowy feeling of your lips and the cool night breeze against his skin.
It was perfect. You were perfect.
You found his intelligence and the enthusiasm with which he spoke to be so utterly irresistible. You had been on so many dates with men before where they had acted like talking about their interests was a chore. Where they had made it seem like the whole thing was simply a routine, waiting for the end of the night so they could get into your pants. And for them, that’s what it probably was.
But Spencer was nothing like that.
He spoke about everything with such intense passion - and you couldn’t resist the urge to try and suck that very passion off his lips.
When you were forced to pull back slightly, your lungs crying out for oxygen, Spencer let out a gentle moan and began puffing out sweet little pants across your chin as he tried to catch his breath. You kept a hold of his tie, wanting to keep him close, and he stayed there, gently pressing his forehead against yours.
“That was… wow.” He sighed.
“I didn’t think I would ever find you at a loss for words, Doctor Reid.” You replied with a giggle.
“Well, I - you - wow.”
It was all he could muster, causing you both to break down into laughter.
Back then - everything had been perfect.
He had no clue where it all went so wrong.
...
Continue reading: Chapter Two - Liar
#sundrop writes#spencer reid#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid x y/n#spencer reid x you#dad!spencer reid#spencer reid imagine#spencer reid smut#spencer reid fanfiction#criminal minds#criminal minds fanfiction#criminal minds x you#criminal minds x reader#criminal minds fic
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