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muwapsturniolo · 19 days

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✯CYBER SEX✯

THEE MUWAPGUCCI COLLAB PT 1

IN WHICH… Matt and Chris Sturniolo are just two inexperienced losers.

Lemme see you beat it, I'm feelin' just like Mike

Warnings: NSFW CONTENT AHEAD! NO ACTUAL SMUT BUT MENTION OF PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIAL AND BODY PARTS.

Humming is heard within the dark room, followed by the sound of typing and the clicking of a mouse. Matt's eyes dart across the screen, his glasses perched upon his nose. He was currently in his room, dressed in grey sweatpants and a long-sleeved crewneck. He was attempting to finish his paper that was due in a week, always eager to stay on top and ahead of the game when it came to his studies. However, he was distracted, his eyes periodically darting to the top of his screen.

9:00

9:30

10:00

10:30

He quickly saves his paper and goes to the website he has logged on to so many times.

Chaturbate.

A pornographic website providing live webcam performances.

He found the site a couple of months ago by accident. He was on his computer, looking up websites to help him write his paper when one of the sites opened up a separate tab with the erotic webpage. He was shocked to see multiple freeze frames of girls in lingerie or having sex.

Even though he lived alone, he felt like he was going to get caught. He quickly slammed his laptop shut. Now he wasn’t a prude, he didn’t care if people had sex,

But he himself has never done it, he hasn’t even touched himself.

Out of curiosity, he slowly opened the laptop again. He hesitated when scrolling through the pages, his eyes analyzing the multiple streams. Even though he could feel his pants tightening, none of the girls called out to him,

Until he found her.

It was a freeze frame of her in a baby blue lingerie set, smiling as she held a phone. He didn’t know what it was about her that caught his attention, but he found himself clicking on her stream.

That was the first night he had ever touched himself.

Since then, he has made it a tradition to touch himself every Thursday night when she goes live.

He logs in with ease, his password and username already being saved. His heart skips a beat as he sees the pink dot next to her name, signaling she's on and live. He clicks on the stream and watches as his favorite girl's smile greets him.

"Hi everyone." she's sitting on her bed, her body covered in a lavender lingerie set. "I know you guys will be mad at me, but this will be a very short stream, only 20 minutes." Matt's smile visibly deflates.

20 minutes? She’s only going to be live for 20 minutes?

He debates on just closing out of the stream, but he can’t find it in himself to do so.

“Aww guys, I promise I will make up for it! Maybe I’ll pull out the fucking machine in my next stream.” He can feel his pants tightening at the thought of her using the machine.

“But, I wanted to tell you guys that I have a surprise for you! Any guesses?” He watches as her eyes dart across the screen, reading the comments flooding in. “These are good guesses, but no one has gotten it yet. 2 more minutes and then I’ll tell you.”

Usually, Matt never comments, always preferring to be a silent viewer but, he wants to change that tonight.

Megamattsturn: does it involve us possibly meeting you?

He watches as her eyes light up and she giggles.

“Megamattsturn seems to have the right idea. You’re a smart boy aren’t you?” He sucks in a sharp breath at the praise, his pants tightening even more.

“I’m hosting a competition for you all! Before I describe what the competition is, it is-“ Matt gets distracted by the way her glossed lips catch in the light, the particles of glitter shining off the pink LED lights in her room. He could only imagine the glittery residue on his dick after she sucks him off.

“-So finally the competition! I know most of you have begged to meet me, even though all you want to do is have sex with me, so I thought I would extend the offer.” Matt perks up, his interest peaked.

“One of you will have the opportunity to take me on a date, and if I feel comfortable enough, maybe one of you will get lucky.”

Matt watches as the chat blows up with men and women already begging to be picked.

“So after I end the stream, a link will be available on my account that will take you all to the form. As I stated previously, it is $50 to enter. The form asks basic questions. Name, age, height, what your interests are sexually, if you have any STDs, and where you are located. At the end of the form, you do have to submit a video of yourself explaining why you think you should be the one to take me out on a date. And because I refuse to take anything small, I would like a video of your-.” She trails off with a smirk.

“Does anyone have any questions?” She waits a few moments and sees that everything is good, before giving the stream one last smile and logging off.

The page reloads and it takes him back to her account page. Sure enough a pink link is in her bio.

He hovers his mouse over it, getting ready to click it when he backs out. He shakes his head and clicks out of the tab, standing up and walking out of his room.

“Be serious Matt, she wouldn’t pick you anyway.” He mumbles as he grabs a water bottle out of the fridge. He walks back into his room and decides to try and finish his essay.

He struggles to stay on topic, the idea of the competition still lingering in his mind. He groans and saves his essay before shutting down his computer. He figures he will work on it tomorrow and just go to bed for now. He turns his lights off and lays down in his bed, his mind racing.

Matt sits in the campus library trying to do his homework, except his mind is clouded with the thoughts of the competition. It’s been a few days since the competition was announced and it’s all he could think about.

It’s pissing him off.

He wasn’t able to concentrate on his studies, he couldn’t pay attention in class, he couldn’t even listen to his music without thinking of this god-forsaken competition.

Deep down he wants to enter, he truly does.

He has the opportunity of a lifetime to take the girl in his dreams on a date, but there’s one problem,

He’s never been on a date, and he’s never even touched a girl.

He’s a virgin.

He just started masturbating a few months ago and now he might lose his virginity? There’s too much for him to think about.

He groans in aggravation and slams his book shut, snatching off his glasses and rubbing over his face. With a deep sigh, He leans back in his chair with crossed arms, staring down at the book in front of him.

He needs to get this sorted out before it really starts to affect his schoolwork.

Suddenly, a group of girls walk into the library and take a seat at a table next to him. He fights the urge to roll his eyes, the fact that they sat next to him when there were multiple empty seats all around pissing him off to no end.

He tries to shake off the frustration and opens his book again, grabbing his pencil and taking notes.

“Can you believe he sent me a picture of his dick?” This conversation took Matt by surprise, his note-taking stopping abruptly. “A picture?” One of the other girls responds. Matt tries to ignore them, but he can’t help but listen in.

“Yes! He sent the typical ugly-ass dick pic just holding it! Like bro, send a video from a good angle and let me hear you moan!” The girl exclaims rolling her eyes. The other girls laugh before switching to another topic, but Matt is still stuck on the previous one.

He knows he shouldn’t have listened in on the conversation, but they were telling him good information.

Girls don’t like awkward dick pics, they prefer videos of the guy jerking off and moaning. His cheeks begin to warm at the thought of sending a risqué video like that.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts by one of the girls turning to him, “hey you?”

Matt turns and look at them awkwardly, he can barley hold eye contact with them, his eyes looking everywhere but theirs. “Y-yeah?” His stutter makes one of the girls giggle. “You’re a guy right?”

“I-I would hope so…” He mumbles setting his pencil down.

She moves closer to him, her phone in hand. “Good, because maybe you could help me with this.” She unlocks the phone before shoving it in his face. Matt’s eyes widen seeing the picture of the dick, he quickly turns his head.

“Why do guys send pictures like this? Like it’s so ugly and does nothing to turn us on!”

Matt shrugs not really knowing what to say, “I-I don’t kn-Have you ever sent a picture of your dick? What angle did you take it from?” She cuts him off mid-sentence, taking a seat next to him.

Matt can’t belive how open this girl is asking him these questions. He couldn’t even sit through health class but she’s bold enough to ask him about his dick pic experience?

“I’ve n-never sent a picture like that…” He trails off, finally looking at the girl. She was pretty tall and had all the right curves in all the right places. “Really? You have never taken a dick pic?”

He shakes his head, nervously adjusting his glasses, “I have the opportunity to send one though….I-I just don’t know what to do.” He finds himself awkwardly admitting to his situation. All the girls stare at him with wide eyes.

He’s never sent a dick pic? He's a 21-year-old guy in college and he never took or sent a dick pic?

Their studies are quickly forgotten as they help educate Matt on taking the best picture and video. He thought the girls would judge him on his lack of experience, but they were all helpful and open-minded, claiming that if he is going to send one, he needs to make sure it’s actually pleasing.

Matt’s listening to everything they are saying, taking mental notes as well as real ones, so he won’t forget when it comes time. The girls find it adorable how actively he’s paying attention, asking questions that are questionable, but somehow still remaining polite.

"Aww, guys! We are like his older sisters teaching him how to get a girl!" One of the girls gushed. They all fall out into laughter, finding the statement true. They decide to pack up and leave since it's getting late out. They walk out of the library, holding arms with one another, Matt included.

The girls don’t care about him being a boy, they could tell in the short time frame they knew him, he was truly a nice guy. He was just shy and a bit awkward, but he was genuinely sweet.

They say their goodbyes and Matt begins to drive to his apartment. He catches a red light and leans back in the seat, a smile on his face. his phone buzzes making him look down.

Chaturbate message from lovely/n: Hey everyone! Just wanted to remind you that the link expires in one day! Make sure you enter! I’m excited to see the faces of my viewers!!

A new-found confidence surges through Matt,

He's going to enter the competition.

With his adrenaline pumping, he rushes through the door of his home, throwing his bag down on the counter and making his way to his bedroom. he plops down in front of his monitor and turns it on, quickly going to the taboo site and opening up her page.

Once again he hovers over the link, the little voice in his head telling him not to do it, telling him he wouldn't even get picked.

He shakes his head and clicks on the link. The screen reloads and a pink page pops up, a bright message is displayed, enticing everyone to submit their entry.

Matt scrolls down and clicks on the hot pink enter button.

Trying not to second guess himself, he begins to fill out the form

Name: Matt Sturniolo

Username on Chaturbate: megamattsturn

Age: 21

Height: 5'8

Location: LA

Hobbies:

Matt sighs in frustration. He was never good at telling people what his hobbies are, his mind always drawing a blank at the question. He goes through the list of things he likes doing and chooses a few that seem more appealing.

Hobbies: I really love writing, I'm actually majoring in film because I love to journal and I would love to turn my thoughts and feelings into movies, or even music videos. I also like to play video games... I know it's a bit cringy but it brings me a sense of nostalgia since I would play with my brothers all the time. I also really love the Lego sets you can build and keep, my favorite was the bonsai tree.

Tell me about yourself: I'm a triplet, the middle one to be exact. One of my brothers goes to college in NYC, while my other brother goes to college in Chicago. I'm originally from Boston MA and I have a dog named Trevor back in Boston.

Sexual interests:

He hesitates, he's not sure what he's into sexually. He's never experimented but he believes he would be open to it.

Sexual interests: I'm not too sure. I do believe I would be open to almost anything within reason.

What would our date look like?:

This form has to be mocking him, constantly reminding him that he is the least experienced person there is. It might as well call him a loser. He wants to back out so bad, but he's almost done so he keeps going.

What would our date look like?: I'm not a fancy person, so I wouldn't take you to some fancy dinner unless that's what you would like. I would most likely take you to some type of fair or arcade so I could win you something. Then we would sit somewhere with food and just talk. it's not the greatest date but I think it would be fun.

Submit your video here:

He stares at the pink words, his heart beating in his ears.

"Ok, you can do this Matt! come on!" He hypes himself up. He quickly sets up his phone and presses record.

He smiles at the camera shyly, not making eye contact.

"Umm, hi Y/n... I'm going to try and keep this short because god knows I'll ramble due to me being nervous-" he takes a deep breath before continuing.

"The reason for this video is to answer the question 'why I should be the one to take you on a date.' And my answer is that I don't really know. If I'm being completely honest, none of us, the viewers, deserve to be in your presence. I mean we watch you take your clothes off and play-" he cuts himself off, looking away from the camera with flushed cheeks.

"Not that it's wrong that you do any of that, but in retrospect, we all seem like perverts for watching you do so... umm if I'm being completely honest I've never been on a date before and that's probably a huge turn-off but yeah." He trails off. He doesn't know what else to say so he ends the video. He watches it back and internally cringes at how awkward he looks.

He deletes the video and decides to try again

and again

"Take 5," he mumbles to himself, pushing his chair back.

"Ok, hi Y/n-" he runs a hand through his hair and fixes his glasses. "-this is like my fifth time making this video and honestly, I don't know. There's honestly no reason you should even be giving us a chance at all to go on a date with you. I've never deen on a date before, so I can't tell you why I should be the one to win. I just know you're really pretty, and I would love to treat you out to a fun night, even with no sexual favors involved." He finally looks back at the camera.

"And yeah, that's all I have to say." He ends the video, watching it over before deciding this is the one he wants to use. He sends it to his desktop and adds it to the form.

submit special video <3 :

"don't panic it's just a video... of you touching yourself." He slams his hand down on his desk in frustration. All his previous confidence whisked away as quick as it came.

"You're such a fucking loser Matt! Why can't you just send the fucking video?" He hits himself on the forehead a couple of times, attempting to knock some type of confidence into himself. he needs to calm down, if he keeps getting this worked up he's eventually going to back out completely.

He gets an idea.

He stands up and rushes out of his apartment, knocking on his neighbor's door. His neighbor was some older guy who always had some type of alcohol in his hand.

Now, Matt has never had a drink of alcohol, but he's heard of liquid courage and he needs any type of courage he can get at this point.

The neighbor answers, looking at Matt in confusion. "What's good bro?"

"I need alcohol," Matt states bluntly. The neighbor raises a brow and takes a sip from his beer. "Aren't you 21?"

"Y-yeah but I need some now and I-I know you always h-have some." The neighbor shrugs, not really caring.

All Matt remembers is stepping foot in the apartment and taking a shot. Next thing he knows, he's clumsily setting up his phone and crashing back onto his bed, pulling his laptop with one of her previous streams loaded closer to him.

He starts recording and presses play on the stream, his hand wrapping around the base of dick.

He whimpers softly as he begins to jerk himself off, the alcohol in his system making him even more sensitive than he already is.

“F-fuck Y/n”

AHHHH MY FIRST COLLAB WITH MY POOKIE @guccifrog!!!!!! GO READ HER PART RN IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY! THIS IS A THREE PART COLLAB SO TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR PT 2!!!!

MWUAH, PEACHES 🍑

TAGLIST🍑

@bernardsgf @bernardsleftbootycheek @blahbel668 @mattfrfr @gdsvhtwa @sturniolo-aali @lily-loves-struniolos @kynda-avery @causeidontlikeagoldrush

@st7rnioioss @carolinalikesthings @mattslolita @suyqa @xxloveralways14 @pepsiimaxx @judespoision

@ivonchetooo1239 @imaslut4kehlani @that-general-simp @m4stermindd @itzdarling @gigisworldsstuff @adoreindie @braindead4l @pettydollie @chrissgirlsstuff @alexis007 @ratatioulle @yamamasjumpercables @luv4kozume @sturnioloslurps @kqyslyho3 @j3tblackt3ars @ilovestarz @lustfulslxt @soimightlikeoldmen69 @tastesousweet @slut4sebastiansallow @whicked-hazlatwhore @stasiesturn @loljackwasfat @nicksmainbitch @ninacutebee16 @mayhem-72 @sturniolosmind @breeloveschris @mattslolita @mattsivy @guccifrog @hysteria-things @mrssturnioloo @teenagetrash00 @koris_009 @patscorner @mayhem-72 @worldlxvlys @nickuniversity @luverboychris @thenickgirl

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emotionoitme · 10 months

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under the moon

carmy berzatto x reader

final part of about a girl

masterlist

warnings: drinking & drug use (marijuana), carmy being mean, clubbing, jealousy, so much dirty talk, bdsm dom/sub undertones, oral sex (f receiving), spanking, fingering, unprotected vaginal sex, choking, lots of cursing as usual

wc: 9.2k

a/n: i am so excited for you all to read this. & sorry for the slight delay, it took me a bit longer than expected to finish! thank you so so much for your continued support on this series! i genuinely never thought people would like it so much🥺 enjoy!

foster the people - under the moon

she had begrudgingly awoken the following morning, head feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton, eyes swollen and sore. the bright morning light streams through her open blinds, soaking the room in warm sun. she groans, throwing the duvet over her completely, praying her bed would open up into a sinkhole and swallow her completely. she snakes her arm out, reaching around the nightstand for her phone, pulling it back in. she had overslept about an hour, meaning she would have to heavily compromise on her morning routine and practically sprint to work if she wanted to make it on time. she considered it shortly, but ultimately pulled up her contacts app on her phone, opting to call in sick. she scrolls, the first option being carmy. she wanted so badly to hear his voice, yet her stomach drops at the thought of him, so she quickly scrolls past the contact to find sydney’s number instead. the girl hesitates for a moment, before dialing, a point of deliberation deep within her. she wanted to be as far as away from the man as she could possibly be, the thought of his mere face bringing her a feeling of anguish. on the other hand, she wanted to bear witness to his demeanor— reassure herself that he’s as affected as she is over last night’s encounter.

he’s probably fine, she thinks to herself, lips twisted into a frown, he’s the one who didn’t want to keep it going. she tries to push the thought away, a hot pang of regret seeping through her body. she burrows deeper into the safety of her bed, tapping the icon next to syd’s contact, bringing the phone to her ear. the line rings, once, twice, three times, then a click.

“hello?” she hears at the other end.

“hey, syd,” she greets, groggily, “um, i'm sorry to do this to you guys, but i can’t come in today,” she explains, clarifying, “im sick, my stomach really hurts.” it was a white lie, told out of self preservation, knowing if she saw carmy’s face she surely would feel sick. she hears sydney take a breath.

“uhh, yeah, that’s fine. we should be fine,” she assures, continuing to ask, “are you still gonna come out with us tomorrow night?” syd pushes a piece of silverware neatly into place, finishing the last table as she watches her business partner come out from the kitchen, walking towards her.

“tomorrow night?” the girl questions, flipping her duvet off her head for oxygen.

sydney chides her name, “tomorrow night, tina’s birthday? drinks, dancing, i’ve been telling you about it since last thursday?” glancing at her coworker, curious about who she’s talking to. sydney mouths the girl’s name to him, carmen then gesturing to ask for the phone.

“yes, syd, thank you! i will be there. i’m sorry i’ve been so scattered this week,” she replies, sitting up out of bed.

“you’re fine, we can unwind tomorrow,” sydney replies, mouthing “okay, okay,” to the persistently gesturing man, “here, let me put you on with carmy,” she replies, going to hand the phone to the man.

“no!” the other line interrupts, more frantic than she meant to sound, met with silence. “i mean,” she tries to backtrack, “i don’t want him to worry about me. don’t put me on,” the girl stumbles out.

“welll, he’s saying that he wants to talk to you… so, i don’t really have much of a choice, okay, bye!” the chipper girl quickly tells her.

fuck, she mentally exclaims, i should’ve just gone in if i was gonna have to talk to him anyways.

she hears her name through the line, tone questioning, as carmy takes the phone from syd.

“hi,” she responds to his beckon, quietly.

“you’re calling in?” he asks, holding a finger up to syd, walking towards the back office for some privacy. she tightly closes her eyes, finding her words.

“i, uh, don’t feel good,” she responds, tone shakier than she had anticipated. the line goes silent for a minute, the girl mindlessly fiddling with a loose thread on her comforter.

“are you avoiding me?” comes his question, catching her slightly off guard.

“no, carmy” she quickly defends, “i don’t feel well.”

“what’s wrong?” he asks, taking a seat in his office chair.

“my, um,” she hesitates, “my stomach hurts.”

he’s not sure he believes her, leaning back in the chair and running a hand over his face.

“okay,” he concedes, letting out a sigh, “just, uh, take it easy today then.” he hears her hum in agreement, pausing before continuing.

“are you going to that club tomorrow?” carmy asks her, “for tina’s birthday?”

she dangles her legs over the edge of the bed, mindlessly kicking back and forth.

“are you?” she asks, eager to skip out on anything besides shutting herself safely inside and maybe putting her fingers to good use to prove carmen nonessential, the memories of his touch flooding her mind incessantly.

“i think i have to,” he responds, “i already told syd i would,” his eyes glancing back towards the open office door. she softly smiles, knowing she was in the same boat.

“okay,” standing and walking to her closet, looking for a club-suitable dress, “i’ll go too, then,” a small smirk in her tone. he can’t fight the smile that breaks his face, eyebrows raising slightly.

“carmy, my phone?” he hears from the hallway, a reminder of his surroundings, his time talking with the girl running short.

“yeah!” he yells back to the hallway, “hey, uh, feel better today, okay? i’ll see you tomorrow night,” carmy tells the girl, watching sydney walk into the office.

“thanks, carm. bye,” she responds, the call ending shortly thereafter. she had felt slightly guilty abandoning her shift, all for the purpose of not having to be tortured with his presence, a reminder of what had transpired the previous night. their casual encounters had quickly morphed into something else within her brain, feeling a deep sense of affection towards the man, chastising herself because she had worried about this and continued anyways.

she makes her way to the bathroom, splashing cold water over her face, the morning chill seeping through her bones. would it be so wrong for them to keep seeing each other? they were consenting adults—albeit boss and employee— both previously oblivious to the profound magnetism of their natural connection. she wanted to pursue things with him further, increasingly affected by his caring words and gestures, no longer being able to deny the twinge in her chest she gets when picturing his face.

but she knew he didn’t want the same.

why would he? she thought, it isn’t what he signed up for. he seemed focused on his work, like he would have limited time for a relationship.

she opted to get a few chores done around the house, taking advantage of the day off, sticking on the thought of him, though, finding herself looking through her closet for a dress with him in mind.

—

the space is hot, crowded, alive with movement. tickets pour from the printer one by one.

“it goes to four cousin, for the third time,” carmy scolds, “stop fucking with the tickets already,” hands busied with removing a large pot from the burner.

“hold on, i’m fixing them,” richie argues back, clutching a mess of paper.

carmy paces to the walk in refrigerator, grabbing a large container and making his way through the sea of bustling employees, checking on stations. he was running on fumes, only getting a solid three hours of sleep the previous night, plagued by a swarming head and uneasy stomach.

it’s best this way, he tells himself over again, easiest, hoping that if he repeats it enough times it will start to feel true.

“alright send these out to six, please,” he hears from the front of the kitchen, glancing over at the expo, seeing the recently plated entrees.

“fuck, richie, four!” carmen snaps, his hand flying out.

“jesus, alright, four!” richie yells, widening his eyes, shaking his head, continuing. “calm down, carm, she’ll be back thursday,” a snicker on his face

carmen freezes in his spot, skin beginning to burn. his eyes dart to richie, jaw twitching.

“shut the fuck up,” he bites, venom in his tone, trying to push himself further into his work to outlet the growing frustration. he hears the other man chuckle knowingly, glancing at carmen.

“okay, sore spot!” richie pokes, organizing the last few tickets, smile on his face. the chef doesn’t reply, beginning to quickly chop vegetables, unsure of what would slip off his tongue if he opened his mouth.

it was unclear to him why he was unable to regulate himself when it came to someone even mentioning her, figuring it was temporary, and would slowly dissipate once they had some distance from each other. carmy deeply exhales, glancing at the clock, counting down the hours until he would be able to see her again.

—

it was incredible how fast days would slip by when she didn’t have to go to the restaurant, taking care of domestic matters and recharging from the strenuous week so far, not thinking of carmen.

she goes to sleep that night wearing his clothes, arms wrapped around herself as if the sensation could ever come close to his touch, waking the next morning to eagerly check a phone empty of notifications. on her second day off she works on assignments for her classes, calls an old friend and grabs herself lunch from a bagel shop nearby. upon returning home she grabs a pair of earbuds and spends a few hours outside in the sunlight, mending the cracks in her heart, falling asleep on her balcony sofa and letting the sun kiss her better. the light of the afternoon seeps into the evening, painting the city in a soft yellow blanket, the girl slowly blinking awake. she watches a few cars drive by, a warm breeze shifting the trees, slowly sitting up and stretching, checking the time on her phone. she has a few hours to get ready before meeting everyone for drinks, her body relaxing at the confirmation. her eyes glance down past the time, seeing two new messages on her screen.

carmy: 416 s clark street

carmy: do you need a ride?

she unlocks her phone, staring at the gray bubbles for what seems like an eternity, fingers hovering over the keys. she begins to type a response, “no. gonna walk,” then quickly deletes it, knowing he would insist on driving her.

why is he trying to be so nice still?

she feels a twinge of irritation, quickly shutting off the phone, opting to not reply to his message. he was a hard man to understand, his actions contradicting his words more often than not—declaring the two finished, then continuing to pursue contact, referring to them as a “no strings” relationship and then calling her baby and sweetheart. it was confusing more than anything, beginning to take an emotional toll on the young woman. she felt incredibly tense the past few days, mind prickling with anxieties and insecurities, desperate to feel some type of release.

fuck him, she thinks, standing and opening her sliding glass door, going inside, i’m gonna forget about it tonight. she stalks to her closet, i’m gonna find a hot stranger and just dance, pulling out a short, skin tight club dress and holding it in front of herself, facing the mirror. she wanted him out of mind completely, settling with trying to replace his touch with someone else’s tonight no matter how much her heart objected. she puts music on, setting the dress on her bed and undresses, studying herself in the mirror for a moment before making her way to the bathroom and turning on the shower. she takes a long while to let the hot water to melt onto her skin, cherishing the white silence of the shower head. the young woman takes her time getting ready, piecing herself back together with an extensive routine. once she’s in a robe with her hair wrapped up she walks to the fridge, grabbing a seltzer with alcohol to ease the slight oncoming nerves. she meticulously does her makeup and styles her hair, shamefully wondering if carmy would like how she’s dressed up, checking her phone to see it’s time to head over. dropping her robe and zipping into the dress she had picked out for the night, the girl examines her reflection, admiring the work she had put in. she looked hot, turning to the side and checking out her profile, curves accentuated by the tight fabric. satisfied, she mists herself with perfume and grabs her heels and purse, walking to the door. she swings the heavy metal barrier open to reveal a tepid july night, air thick with moisture. she balances against the frame, slipping into her heels and sliding her purse strap over her shoulder, stepping into the dusk of the evening and letting the door lock behind her. she glances at her phone for walking directions, head slightly fuzzy from the seltzer she had drank on an empty stomach. her short walk to the club garners many gawking stares from passerby’s, surprisingly not making her feel as small as they usually seem to, the goal was to catch eyes tonight, right?

she squints, identifying bright flickering lights in the distance, the border of the club’s sign. there were a few people dispersed outside, all either smoking or talking on the phone, or both. she brushes her hair back, walking towards the entrance when she hears her name called from behind her.

“- yo!” turning to see marcus and angel leaning against the brick wall of the establishment. she smiles, turning and walking towards them, the distinct odor of marijuana arising from the cigarette marcus clutched in between his thumb and pointer.

“hi,” she grins, tilling her head slightly.

“hey,” the two respond, almost in synchronicity. marcus holds the rolled paper to her, “want some?”

she smiles, plucking it from his fingertips and bringing it to her lips, deeply inhaling to soften the inevitable drop her stomach would endure at the sight of carmen. the ember burns quickly, and she’s surprised at the harshness.

she hands it back with a slow exhale, thanking marcus.

“nervous?” angel chimes in, trying to hide a smile. the girl pauses for a moment, is it so obvious?

“i haven’t been to a club in a while,” she responds, crossing her arms. it was partially true, but she knew the real reason for the relentless fluttering in her chest.

the man stubs the filter onto a nearby trash can, dusting his hands off on his pants. “you guys ready to go in?”

the other man affirms, pushing himself off the wall and turning to walk to the front. the girl stays behind, hesitating.

“you two go ahead. i’m gonna air out,” she responds, leaning back, basking in the slight breeze. the men both crack a smile before walking together to the entrance, leaving the girl in her solitude. she closes her eyes for a moment, deeply inhaling the night air, listening to the reverberation of bass through the walls of the club. she feels a cloud of haze overwhelm her, the mixture of substances seeping through her in a warm glow. she hears footsteps approach.

“hey.”

her eyes snap open, breath escaping her at the sight of carmy. he looked polished, buttoned up into a dress shirt, hair fluffy and face cleanly shaved. she nearly salivated at his presentation, the buzz she felt complicating her decision to ignore him.

“hi,” she shortly responds, lip slightly pouted, watching as his eyes examine her, floating down her form. he snaps his eyes away, clearing his throat.

“you, uh, get my text?”

she nods, looking up to him, meeting his eyes with unwavering contact. he walks closer to the girl, slightly shaking his head and furrowing his brow in confusion, an unspoken gesture to elaborate.

she looks away, arms wrapping around herself.

“i didn’t need a ride,” she answers, “i walked.”

carmen’s jaw visibly tightens, feeling a twinge of irritation.

“yeah. uh, i asked because i didn’t want you walking here alone,” he explains in a slightly frustrated tone.

“yeah, well i made it,” she retorts, aggravation bubbling beneath the surface, “so you don’t need to worry about it.”

she didn’t know why he was getting under her skin so easily tonight, her throat suddenly feeling hot and tight, raking her eyes over the top of his chest exposed by an open button.

“well i do,” the man argues, “i don’t want you walking by yourself. anywhere,” he solidifies in a stern tone. the girl lets out a scoff.

“you’re acting like you’re my boyfriend,” she spits, fed up with the sense of entitlement he felt over her.

“i’m not your fuckin’ boyfriend,” he quickly asserts, tone ringing out much harsher than he intended.

she knows this to be a fact, but still can’t help the drop she feels in her chest when he says it aloud like that. she opens her mouth to say something, then quickly closes it, biting her lip, eyes darting to the ground. he instantly regrets saying it, brushing his fingers through his hair, grabbing it, studying the girl’s dejection with a pit in his stomach.

“whatever, carmen,” she dismisses, shoving past him. her lungs felt tight, eyes burned, mentally cursing herself, rushing to the club entrance to distance herself from the man. she shoves the door open, immediately being engulfed by sound and swarming bodies. she blinks back a few tears, deeply inhaling and exhaling, zoning into the environment. spotting the group of her coworkers at a corner table, she shufflles through the crowd to approach them. syd immediately spots the girl, calling out to her and waving. she plasters on a smile as the rest turn to watch her, all unanimously greeting the new arrival. she makes her way over to tina, hugging her and giving her a kiss on the cheek, wishing her happy birthday. she squeezes into her seat in between sydney and richie, turning to the tall man to ask, “so where’s my drink?”

richie lets out a boisterous laugh, throwing an arm around the girl.

“i don’t think you’re gonna have much of a problem getting drinks tonight, sweetheart,” he teases, as carmy approaches the table, receiving welcomes and pulling out a chair to sit. she flickers her eyes over to carmen to find he’s staring at her, quickly tearing them back away and leaning over to syd.

“come get a drink with me. i really need it,” she pleads, placing her hand on sydney’s forearm. the other girl agrees, the two sliding out from under the table and making their way to the bar, arms linked.

—

why did i say that?

he watches her rush to the front entrance, his body frozen, processing the conversation.

why did i say that?

he begins to go after her, reaching his arm out before she swiftly maneuvers the door open, slipping inside.

why the fuck did i say that?

it wasn’t completely untrue— he wasn’t her boyfriend— something he had failed to make entirely made clear before that point. he wasn’t oblivious to the way they had grown closer, either, the thought of her nestled deeply within a sweet spot in his heart. yet he had done nothing to prevent it from happening, and once thinking of it, he finds he’s only ever done the opposite, his behavior towards the girl falling far closer to a boyfriend than a hookup. he begins following in her footsteps, opening the club door and immediately becoming overwhelmed with the number of people crowding the floor. carmy cranes his neck, watching her figure weave through the crowd and towards a corner table. he pushes through the wall of people, seeing her take her seat, approaching the table to receive greetings from his coworkers. his eyes are trained on her, wrapped into richie’s arm, smiling until she locks eyes with him. then it drops, slightly. it makes him feel sick. he turns to fak at his right and engages in conversation as he watches her rise from the table alongside sydney. she looks like a model of some type, he thinks, with dark makeup defining her striking eyes and hair tousled over her shoulder, tight black dress riding up over the skin of her thighs. he trails down her face to her neck. when she moves her hair behind her ear he can see a small purple mark left from his teeth, eyes fully fixated on the spot. the bass of the music thumps, reverberating through the club, floorboards shaking. he tries to keep up in the table’s conversation whilst simultaneously keeping a close eye on the girl, shifting to see her order at the bar through the moving bodies. she throws a shot back, grimacing at the taste, laughing while saying something to syd (he was never very good at reading lips) and raising her hand to flag the bartender once more. the table bursts into laughter, carmen’s eyes drawing back to his coworkers, watching as tina shoves richie’s hand with a smile on her face, rolling her eyes. he feels an inclination to step outside for a smoke, head buzzing with stimulation from the lively environment, wondering how long he should stay before it would be acceptable to leave.

“oh my gosh, thank you baby,” he hears tina say, glancing over to see the girl having returned from the bar, placing a fruity drink in front of the woman.

she smiles, returning to her seat as the current song ends, fading into the next. sydney and the girl gasp in tandem at the distinctive opening, locking eyes with each other and grinning.

“we’re gonna go dance!” the girl excitedly calls, taking syd by the hand and navigating towards the dance floor, crowded with moving bodies. it’s hot, but fluid, the two girls beginning to move together, grinning. carmen watches her, eyes cutting through the crowd. she moves her hips, bringing her hands up her body, flashing lights illuminating her in colors. the sight was hypnotic almost, eyes trained on her, tense in his seat. she throws her hair back, circling her body, closing her eyes.

richie leans over to him, “you, uh, sure she did just bartending over at ricky’s?” elbowing him slightly.

carmen doesn’t respond, eyes fixated on her gyrating movements, jaw tensing, painfully aware of all the eyes she’s gathered around the club. she continues dancing after the first two songs, even when sydney makes her way back to the table in need of rest. carmy tried to not make it so obvious he was watching the girl, grateful some of his other coworkers had joined the crowd on the dancefloor, completely entranced by her movement. he tears his gaze away, standing up find the bar, eager to ease the incredible tension he felt pent up within him. she seemed to be having fun dancing, and in a way it felt refreshing to watch the girl so loose and carefree. carmy couldn’t help the sense of possessiveness he felt, though, watching her move like that, seeing the way other men looked at her, like meat. it made him sick.

he orders a beer once the bartender makes their way over, song fading into the next. he turns to lean against the counter, eyes searching for her as he brings the bottle to his lips with a long swig. he feels a pang in his chest, as he finds her, hand on another man’s arm, leaning to whisper something in his ear. he closely watches as the man smiles, nods, placing his hands on her hips and getting closer to her. carmen’s skin immediately becomes hot, teeth clenching, taking a deep breath through his nose to try and calm himself.

what the fuck is she doing?

his eyebrows furrow, watching as she dances, bringing her arms up, turning, moving against the stranger. he feels physically sick, stomach churning at the way this man was touching her navel, hips, pressing himself to the back of her. carmy tightly grips the bottle, unable to rip his eyes away, the girl glistening in the light. she throws her head back against the man’s shoulder, hair draping over him, grinding to the music. her eyes find carmen’s quickly, intentionally locking gazes as she brings the strangers hands higher, up her waist, ribs, her mouth falling opening. carmen stands, knocking the barstool off balance with the force of his movement, shoving through the crowd, disregarding the dirty looks, quickly making his way to the dance floor. he grabs the girl’s wrist, pulling her from the stranger’s grasp, tightly gripping her as he walks towards the back door, dragging her behind him, feeling the struggle of her arm as she tries to pull away. he turns, putting a hand on her lower back, ushering her through the club, shoving the heavy metal door open and bringing her outside, finally letting go when the two are far from the door. he brings a hand to his hair, grabbing, turning to face the girl.

“what the fuck, carmen?” she yells, ripping her hand away from him, “what’s your issue?” her words slightly under-enunciated.

he bites down on his lip, meeting her eyes, hand coming to his hip. he hardly had an explanation for the girl, driven by a redhot primal jealousy, blood boiling at the sight of someone else’s hands on her, grabbing, feeling her like that.

“what’s my issue?” he scoffs, “why the fuck were you dancing like that?” his face reddening, pulse quickening. she lets out a laugh, leaning back against the wall, gazing up at him.

“why?” she asks, “are you jealous?”

he shakes his head, unconsciously stepping closer to her.

“i’m not jealous,” he argues, jaw set firmly, eyes casting down onto her.

“yeah?” she leans forward, further closing the distance between them. he nods, fixated on the droop of her eyes, the part of her lips, the way she looked up at him through her dark lashes.

“so what if i fuck him?” she asks softly, a smirk playing on her lips, “will you be jealous then?”

he lets out a breath, fire growing at her words.

he shakes his head, “you’re not gonna fuck him,” asserting with confidence. she tilts her head, alcohol emboldening her.

“how do you know?” she challenges, well aware of how affected she was by his tone, his demeanor, the look in his eyes. carmy gets closer to her face.

“because he’s not gonna fuck you like i do,” his voice deep, low, eyes boring into hers with an intensity that lights her core ablaze. the girl finds her breath hitches, mouth going dry, gaze flickering to his lips. he rests his hand on the brick behind her, leaning closer, “hear all those pretty sounds you make.”

she shuts her eyes tightly, trying to shake her senses of the overwhelming lust she felt. she was supposed to stay angry at him, he was being an asshole. maybe it was the alcohol or the drugs, or the way he towered over her, but she felt no anger, only replaced by want, a slick ache growing at the way he seems to claim her for himself. she takes a deep breath, body feeling as if it were buzzing, head cloudy.

“you are so fucking confusing,” she whispers, bringing her forehead to lightly touch his. he rests his hand on her lower back, relishing in the warmth of the contact, breathing in her scent. she was completely right about him, he thinks, never saying what he really means to her. if he could have what he really wanted, she would be his, only his. a girlfriend.

“yeah,” he takes a shaky breath, “yeah. i know,” reply coming, hesitantly. “i’m sorry, -” he breathes out, her name sounding sweet on his tongue. she blinks away the tears that want to form, grabbing the fabric of his shirt, a small tremble of the lip. she opens her mouth to say something, eyes tearfully meeting his.

the metal door creeks open, momentarily releasing the booming music out into the alleyway, breaking the trance as a few smokers congregate by the back. the girl changes her mind, mouth shutting. she releases his shirt, pulling away, stepping around the man and smoothing her appearance, pads of her fingers coming to dry a few escaped tears. he watches her try and compose herself, shivering in her small dress. his heart clenches, feeling the overwhelming need to take care of her— wrap his arm around her, lead her back to his home, dress her in more of his clothes and watch her fall asleep. he shrugs off his light jacket, walking over to her and draping it over her shoulders without saying anything. she glances up at the man, engulfed by his warmth and the smell of him, ache in her chest.

“i’m gonna go home,” she whispers, swaying slightly.

“let me walk you,” he offers, hand coming to her upper back. she quickly shakes her head, taking a step away from him.

he sighs at her stubbornness, says her name.

“you’re drunk,” he observes, “let me make sure you get there okay.”

she hiccups, crossing her arms.

“ ‘m not drunk,” she slurs unconvincingly. he nods, letting out a breath, hand coming to rub his face.

“okay,” he concedes, “then, just… go back in with me for a sec. say bye to everyone.”

she meets his eyes, consideration running over her features, then nodding slowly. he puts his hand on the small of her back, steadying her as they walk back towards the large metal door. there’s a noticeable change in temperature difference as the two enter the club again, weaving through a sea of moving bodies, carmy holding tightly onto her, ushering her forward towards the corner table. he doesn’t miss the glances from his workers at the sight of the girl wearing his jacket, a few smiles cracked, looks exchanged. he ignores it, picks his beer back up as the girl excuses herself from the event, claiming to not feel good and chalking it up to drinking too much when she usually doesn’t partake. richie, surprisingly, says nothing, eyes trained on carmen, smirk plastered over his face.

“i’m gonna head out too,” carmy announces, “take her home.”

richie begins loudly laughing, clapping his hands together.

“jesus christ, i am right about everything!” he shouts, slamming his glass down onto the table. carmen’s skin begins to prickle with embarrassment.

“hey richie,” he chimes, “shut the fuck up.” he felt unbearably tense tonight between the day’s grueling shift, the girl dancing on another man, the newfound teasing, as if he were about to implode. he was in desperate need of some sort of release. carmy watches her, tightly clad fabric stretching over her ass as she leans down to give tina a hug. he felt guilty, almost, the way he had been shamelessly gawking at her throughout the night, the act doing nothing but intensify the burning he felt bottled up within him.

“i’m sorry i’m leaving so early, t,” he hears from her mouth, “i don’t feel very well.”

the older woman brushes the apology away, placing a kiss on the girl’s cheek.

“feel better, baby,” she coos, looking to carmen, “jeff, you make sure she gets into bed okay,” the command motherly in tone. he nods, coming to give tina a side hug, “ ‘night, t. happy birthday.”

—

the sidewalk pavement was in dire need of repair, cracks and bumps literally the surface, worsening the walk for people who weren’t drunk. she stumbles over a divot, instinctively grabbing onto carmy’s arm for balance, heels catching on every small crevice. she lets out a cry of frustration, stopping in her tracks.

“this is impossible,” she exclaims, reaching down to adjust the strap of her heel, “why don’t they fix this stupid street?”

he can’t help the way the corners of his lips twitch upwards. she was cute, even in her frustration. he crouched, slightly, leaning over, arms out.

“c’mere,” he tells her, “jump up.”

she falters, trying to retain independence in her drunken stubbornness, but ultimately accepts, the other option being continually tripping over herself for another mile. she puts her hands up on his shoulders, using him as leverage to boost herself up, his arms coming to wrap around the backs of her thighs. he hears her squeal, slightly, feeling as she pulls the short dress down to cover the curve of her ass. the man grits his teeth, shaking the mental image of it as he tightly grips the supple skin of her upper thighs. she’s easy to carry, surprisingly so, as he continues walking in the direction of her apartment building. a silence settles between the two of them, breaths falling in line with the gentle rhythm of his steps. she wraps her arms around him further, bringing her head to rest on his shoulder, exhale tickling his neck. he clears his throat, glancing back at the girl, seeing her closed eyes.

“i, uh,” he hesitates, gathering his thoughts, “i fuckin’ hated seeing that guy touch you,” the confession slipping off of his tongue. he feels her smile slightly against his neck.

“i knew you would,” her reply comes softly. he lets out a small scoff, humored by what she admits.

“you’re a brat,” he asserts lowly, pressing his fingers into her skin. she splays her arms out, pushing her chest against his back, hand coming to rest on his bare collarbones.

“you were being a dick,” her words ringing truthfully, resounding throughout the man, feeling a pang of guilt.

“yeah. i know,” he agrees, eyes fixed forward, “i’m sorry.” carmen lets a cloud of silence engulf the two before vocalizing again.

“you know, i… really do wanna be with you,” he admits gently, soul bared. she pauses, soaking in his words, feeling almost as if a puzzle piece had been pushed into place.

“why not?” her question comes soft, sweet. he lets out a deep breath.

“you know why,” he quietly replies, the street lamps casting their two shadows as one. she does know why, aware of the sly glances the two received, apparent judgment surrounding a relationship with the power imbalance of theirs.

“well, i quit then,” she pouts, lips brushing against his skin, erupting him in goosebumps. he shakes his head.

“you can’t,” comes his rejection, “we need you,” expressing the fact with utmost sincerity. she hugs her arms around him tighter, smelling his cologne, his soap, a faint trace of cigarette smoke.

“i don’t care,” she protests in all of her stubborn glory, “i wanna be yours, carm.”

he feels himself surrender at her words, pulling her even closer.

“you’re mine,” he assures her, glancing back to meet her eyes, nodding, feeling warmth as if a bright light glowed from his chest. they can figure out the details later— he genuinely didn’t want her to quit, trying to remind himself it was the only way their relationship would be ethical. the man slows in pace as they approach the front of her building, letting the girl hop down, holding his hand out to steady her once her feet make contact with the ground. she gives a small smile, intertwining her arm with his, hand coming to rest on the mass of muscle as the two make their way to her building. she clutches onto him in her inebriated state as they scale the tall stairs leading up to her door. she fumbles with her keys, eventually unlocking the deadbolt and pushing the door open. she turns to face him, giving him sort of a puppy dog look, hoping he’ll want to follow her in. a smile breaks his face, studying her expression.

“i, uh, gotta make sure you get in bed okay,” he reminds her, gesturing inside. she grins, taking his hand, pulling him inside and shutting the door. the space was illuminated with strung lights, warm in hue, mystifying the room. he takes a deep breath, wrapped in her intoxicating scent, eyes scanning the room. he primarily notices how pristine it is, cozy, fragments of her soul framed over the walls and resting on shelves. it felt like a home, more than his ever has. she sets her keys and purse on a side table, kicking off her heels and sighing in relief, trudging to the kitchen to retrieve two glasses of water. when she hands it to him he can’t help but stare, focusing on her face, the ache for her insurmountable to anything he’s ever wanted before. he sets the glass down, hand coming to her lower back, deeply looking into her, past her beauty and towards her essence. he watches as her eyes flicker down to his lips, quickly coming back to meet his gaze. he’s in awe of her, almost, bringing both hands to the small of her back, squeezing her slightly, pulling her to him with ease. she lets out a breath at the action, hand coming to his forearm, feeling the flex of his tendons. he wants her all to himself, he thinks, leaning in towards her, raising his hand to cup the side of her face. she leans into the touch, turning, pressing a kiss to the base of his thumb, bringing her other hand to rest on his, biting the skin. he grasps her face at this, shoving his thumb into her mouth.

“suck,” he commands, voice low, watching in anticipation as she brings her lips around the digit, tongue circling eagerly, trying to take more of it into her mouth. he nearly falls apart at the sight, twitching, pulling her flush against him, dragging his thumb out of her mouth and over her bottom lip. he drops his hand to touch her neck, watching her lips, hearing his heart pound in his ears. she brings her grip to clutch onto his shirt, heavily breathing. he cherishes her expression, cheeks flushed and lips parted, glistening. carmen tightens his hand around her throat very slightly, leaning in to taste her, his lips gently pressing against hers, hearing her moan at the unexpected contact. she’s sweet, soft, eager, the slightest trace of alcohol on her lips. he hadn't realized how much he had been craving her taste until it graced his tongue, feeling almost as if a tension in him had alleviated. he wants more, tattooed fingers wrapping around her neck, pulling her into him, deepening the kiss. she melts into him, trying to keep up with the ferocity of his kiss, pushing her tongue into his mouth. he groans, bringing his hand from her back to the curve of her ass, feeling, squeezing, pulling her in. he takes his hand off her throat, her leg slightly lifts, and he takes the opportunity to hoist it up over his hip, turning and pressing her into the counter, weight of his body against hers. it feels as if something had snapped within him, wanting to claim her all to himself, grabbing whatever he can of her, getting as close as possible, lips, tongues dancing in tandem. he presses a few slow kisses to her mouth, pulling away, forehead coming against hers, eyes shut. he listens to the sound of their breath, hand on her ass, fingers teasing the hem of her panties. she arches into his touch, body tingling, hot with desire. his hand comes up, then flies back down to smack her ass, the girl takes a sharp breath, firmly gripping it again after the impact.

“fuck,” she breathes, a hot swell in her lower stomach. he creeps his hand up the skin of her thigh, slipping under her dress, hooking his fingers into the waistband of her panties, dragging them down her legs. her face grows hot at the way he takes command, shoving at the fabric until it slides down her calves and hits the floor. she steps out of them, breath shaky, drenched in anticipation, insides of her thighs growing wet. carmy gives her a final kiss before dropping to his knees in front of her, placing a few gentle kisses around her skin. she instinctively clamps her thighs at the sensation, the man bringing his hand to shove her leg to the side, exposing her glistening heat. he lets out a soft moan at the sight, closer than he’s ever been to her core, leaning forward to softly kiss her clit. the girl lets out a cry of surprise, hand flying to his head, the simple act sending a shock throughout her body. he brings his thumb and pointer finger to part her both of her lips, taking her image in, salivating slightly in anticipation. he casts his eyes up towards her face, flushed, mouth open. he leans forward, licking a long stripe up her wetness to her clit, swirling his tongue around the bud, pulling away. she pants, fingers tangled in his hair, arching towards him, wordlessly asking for more. he groans at the taste of her, a rush to his head, his cock, immediately diving in for more, lapping at her as if she’s the finest thing he’s had in his mouth. her knees begin to go weak, trembling slightly, trying to hold onto him for support.

“carmy,” she whimpers, “i can’t stand.”

this breaks his focus, bringing his eyes up to her with a glint.

“yeah?” he asks, “feel too good, baby?” a smirk growing on his face. she refuses to respond, tightly shutting her eyes and throwing her head back when he brings his thumb to slowly circle her clit, watching, gauging her reaction. he pulls his hand away, placing a small smack on the inside of her thigh, the girl gasping.

“answer me” he growls, breath tickling her mound, leaning to press a few more kisses to her swollen heat. she lets out a whine, grabbing his hair.

“it feels- fuck it feels so good carm,” she shakily admits, knees nearly buckling. satisfied with her answer he brings both hands to the base of her ass, lifting her with ease and setting her on the countertop. she hastily grabs his shirt and pulls him in, locking lips and tasting herself on his tongue, letting a sweet sound into his mouth. he breaks away, desperate to feel her wetness on his mouth again. he kisses the inside of her thigh, then leans in, flattening his tongue against her clit, gently lapping, a finger coming to tease her pooling entrance. she unintentionally bucks her hips at the sensation, prompting carmen to bring the length of his forearm to her inner thigh, shoving it open, holding her down. she brings her eyes to his tattooed arm splaying her open, heart pounding, trying to straighten herself, awaiting his touch. he continues his gentle licks, circling his finger around her wetness, then pushing the digit into her slowly, eyes darting up to watch her mouth fall open. he swirls his tongue around her engorged clit, then gently sucks, curling his finger deeply inside of her, beginning to establish a rhythmic motion. her pants turn to cries, pulling the man in by his curls. his hand grips the skin of her thigh, spreading her open, devouring her, pushing a second finger into her. her teeth clamp down onto her lip at the sensation, gripping around his digits, trying hard to keep her composure in front of the man. carmy, aware of this, increases the pace of his movement, pulling his mouth away from her, beginning to tease her clit with a feather-like touch of his tongue. her head falls back, smacking against the cabinet, a loud moan slipping through her lips.

“please,” she pleads, not sure for what, arching into carmen’s motion, hands grabbing whatever she can of him, the knot inside her stomach growing impossibly tight. he wants to feel her cum— clench around his fingers, see how long he can keep fucking into her until it’s too much— but he refrains, pulling his fingers out, soaked with her juices, standing up. her head jerks up to meet his eyes, panting, flushed, frustrated.

“whyy?” she whines, trying to pull the man back to her. he lets out a scoff, smirk creeping at the edges of his lips, hands on the tops her thighs, gripping.

“you think i’m gonna let you cum?” he asks, voice low, coming close to her face, “after that shit you pulled in the club?”

her lip pouts, face heating at his words, held down by his weight, trying to catch her breath. the girl opens her mouth to argue back, but decides against it, just wanting to feel him— leaning forward to kiss him softly, hungrily, hands coming to feel the muscles of his chest. he melts into the kiss, hands wrapping around her back.

“you don’t care, huh?” carmy teases between kisses, “just want me to keep touchin’ you,” pressing himself between her thighs, deepening their contact. she nods into the kiss, greedily reaching her hands down to pull his shirt up. he pulls away from her, taking it off completely, groaning as the girl runs her hands up his bare abdomen, then gently rakes her nails down, admiring the way his muscles flex under her touch. he grows a bit impatient, decides to pick her up, her legs coming to wrap around his back, carrying her to the bedroom. she grins at the way he holds her, hands gripping both of her ass cheeks, leaning down to kiss his neck in the short walk. when he drops her onto the plush duvet of her bed he leans over her, fingers grasping the side zipper of her dress, slowly pulling it down to reveal the skin of her ribcage, waist, stopping right above her hip. they lock eyes and he searches her face for any signs of hesitation, finding only blown pupils and flushed cheeks. he grabs the hem of the dress, slowly pulling it down her body to expose her breasts, waist, stomach, pelvis, letting the fabric fall over her ankles to the floor. his eyes drink her in, sparks firing in his brain, bringing his hands to grasp her waist, thumbs resting over her stomach. carmy leans in, deeply kissing her, savoring her warmth, then rises, unbuckling his belt. she props herself up onto her elbows, watching the man slowly unbutton his pants, pull the zipper down. she lets out a heavy breath at the sight of the large bulge behind his briefs, straining against the cotton, curved upwards to the right. she sits up, inching towards the edge of the bed, seated in front of the man, gazing up at him in adoration.

“can i take these off?” she asks softly, fingers coming to hook into his briefs, pulling them slightly to reveal the deep v-line in his hips, light brown hair leading down to his covered pubic bone. her mouth was almost watering, looking up at him in anticipation. he grins at her eagerness, raising his eyebrows slightly, nodding his head, giving her permission to slip the waistband down over his hips, cock slapping against his stomach when she does so. she immediately grabs the length of his dick, heavy in her hand, giving it a few slow strokes, watching as he closes his eyes, breathing out heavily. her head feels fuzzy, wanting nothing more than for him to shove her back onto the bed and fill her completely, continuing to marvel at his thickness. he brings his hand to stroke the side of her face, fingers coming over her ear and threading through her hair, watching intently as she slowly jerks him off. she clenches her thighs together in an attempt to alleviate the growing ache, running out of patience.

“carm,” she whines, gripping his cock, gazing up at him, handsome face framed by a few messy curls, “i want it already.”

he lets a small smirk grace his face, rubbing his thumb against her cheek.

“yeah?” he asks, watching the girl quickly nod, bringing his face closer to his, lowering his voice, “you know i’m gonna fuckin’ wreck you tonight, right?”

she heats at his words, eyes widening, an expectant shiver making it’s way through her body and settling throughout her core. he doesn’t let her respond, grabbing her thighs and pulling her, back coming to the mattress, pelvis flush with his. he bends her legs into her chest, leaning over her, the tip of his cock briefly gracing her wetness before he brings his hand down to grip himself, running the tip through her slick folds, sliding up to nudge her clit. she tightly shuts her eyes, lets out a quiet moan at the sensation— almost enough to satisfy, but not quite. he continues thrusting through her folds, listening to the wet sounds, coating himself in her juices. she tries to resist the urge but she can’t, reaching down, grabbing his cock and sticking it inside of her, legs coming to wrap around his back to pull him in.

“fuckk,” he exclaims loudly, not expecting her desperation, suddenly engulfed in her warmth. he groans, trying to compose himself, bringing his hand to her throat, leaning in, pushing his hips forward to the hilt. she whimpers, cherishing the slight burn of fullness as he tightens his grip around her throat.

“this what you wanted?” he asks, voice gruff, fully draped over her, nuzzling a kiss under her ear. the way he speaks to her ignites a flame, emboldening her slightly. her eyes gleam.

“no,” she breathes, “i want you to fuckin’ move,” words laced with a tone. he lets out a short laugh, straightening, grabbing both her calves and propping them up over his shoulders, drawing out of her and then quickly snapping his hips forward. she gasps, hand flying up to her mouth. she feels the ridge of his head drag against her walls as he graciously begins to thrust into her, hands wrapped around her legs, eyes coming to watch her breasts bounce in time with his rhythm. her hand falls away from her mouth, a loud cry pouring from her lips. carmen revels in the sound as he continuously drives his hips forward, skin slapping against hers, gripping her left calf, turning to press a kiss into her ankle. his pace begins to satiate the relentless burn within her core, trying to take his length as deeply as possible.

“so good,” she whimpers, bringing her hands to her breasts, squeezing. carmy groans, slapping her outer thigh.

“where’d that attitude go?” he asks, pelvis flush against her, pulling closer, “huh?”

her brows furrow, opening her mouth to argue but falling short, a breathy moan replacing her words at the sensation of him deeply fucking into her. her body feels incredibly hot, nipples perked beneath her fingers, feeling herself approaching an edge. he grins, moving his hand to grip at her thigh, eyes scanning over the sight in front of him.

“so fuckin’ pretty,” he tells her, hips stuttering, trying to push away his quickly approaching orgasm. he pulls out of her, the girl’s eyes shooting open to object. carmy takes hold of her forearms, pulling her to stand, grabbing her hips and turning her around, pushing her forward. her knee comes to the bed, balanced on her other leg as he wraps his arm around her waist, hand on her ribcage and inserts himself back into her tightness.

“yes,” she cries, arching back against him and bringing her hand onto his arm, feeling the head of his cock thrust deeply upwards. the tingling in her core grows stronger; her head falls back onto his shoulder. carmen grunts, his free hand coming to find her clit, rubbing small, soft circles, feeling himself unravel at the intense pulse of her walls. he kisses her cheek, relentlessly pounding into her, the crescendo of her moans driving him higher and higher. his lips come right next to her ear, breath ragged.

“you my girl?” he asks, another kiss on the side of her face, bringing his hand from her ribs to her breast, gently squeezing.

she nods quickly, arm coming behind her to grab his hip, feeling him, tangible beneath her fingers.

“all yours,” she pants, “i’m all yours, carm.”

he groans at the sentiment, bottoming out inside of her, quickly circling her clit as her arousal grows slick on his fingers. she feels herself tumbling towards her edge, trying to physically hold onto him so as to not climax, fingers gripping into his skin.

“i’m-,” a cry falls from her mouth. he pulls the two even closer, wetness pouring from her at the continual thrusts, feeling the cues of her body approaching climax.

“let it go, baby,” he coos, lips pressed against her ear. with his simple command she feels an intense heat envelop her body, orgasm crashing against her like a wave. she goes limp in his arms so he grabs her tighter, bending her over the bed. her thighs begin to shake as carmen relentlessly snaps his hips, watching her intently, feeling a white hot pleasure seep through him. he’s ferociously grabbing at her, pulling her in as he approaches his edge, stutter of his hips as he bottoms out and releases himself into her with a loud groan. she feels the pressure of his cum against her walls, intense heat diffusing as she rides out the shocks of her orgasm. he collapses over her, hand coming to the bed, trying not to put his full weight upon her. their labored breaths harmonize, hearts pounding. carmy runs a hand over her lower back, soothingly rubbing the limp girl. he pushes himself up, straining to grab a tissue off her nightstand to clean with, the act of pulling out of her releasing a constant pressure, the girl whimpering. he soaks up the mess of cum dripping down her legs, drinking in the sight, then rises to throw the tissues away. she’s able to muster the energy to push herself up and stumble behind him, walking into the bathroom to turn on the shower, steadying her shaky legs by holding onto the wall. she turns to see the man, naked in all his glory, approach her, placing his hands on her hips and leaning in to kiss her deeply. she seeps into his touch, hand coming to graze his lower stomach, exhaling slowly. he lets a peace wash over the two before speaking.

“so, uh, i’ll take this as your two weeks notice, then?” he teases, hand falling to her low back. she tilts her head to the side.

“what? you mean i don’t get a promotion after that?” she asks, smiling, trying to feign disappointment, “fuck.”

he grins, adoringly gazing down at the young woman, bathing in the light of her smile.

he knew it was never supposed to go so far. it was never supposed to end up in this position, with her leaning in for another kiss, him greedily accepting. she was his completely now, the man making a vow to never let anything or anyone hurt her, cherishing the feeling of her warmth under his fingertips.

it was never supposed to go so far, but it did. and he was so fucking glad it did.

—

eeeek i hope you liked it!! i genuinely enjoyed writing this story so much. an epilogue to wrap up some loose ends is possible in the future- in the meantime i'll be posting some steamy carmy headcannons.

please leave me a comment and let me know what you think! thank you SO MUCH to everyone for the continued support on this series <3

#carmen berzatto x reader #carmy x reader #carmy berzatto #carmy berzatto x reader #carmy berzatto smut #carmy berzatto imagine #the bear imagine

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fairyofshampgyu · 1 year

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Now live! Stream: 1

Genre: smut, camboy au, college au

Pairing: camboy! Beomgyu x gn reader (afab when smut)

Warnings: camboy, sub! beomgyu, dom! reader, solo beomgyu, anal

Synopsis: Every Thursday night at 8pm, you tune into your favourite camboy: Angel313. What you don’t know is he even goes to the same uni as you, is in the same class as you and is Choi Beomgyu, the campus fuckboy but will you keep his secret?

Word count: 1.3k ?

Fucking finally.

You were now snug, comfy, and at home so you could watch your favourite thing every Thursday night, Angel313’s streams.

Some people had a weekly favourite drama, YouTuber, or whatever and you had your favourite camboy you loved to watch.

It started off about more than a year ago, you were horny and the porn you were trying to watch was just not to your liking at all (some of them you can’t believe would be to anyone’s liking), and so you stumbled across a site and that’s where you found Angel. He was much less popular back then and you were one of the very first viewers, you must brag. But ever since then, no matter how busy you are, you’ve always made sure to never miss his streams.

He’s just so good and exactly what you like and he never fails to get you turned on. He’s just so hot even though you’ve never seen his face since he covers it with a mask but his pretty body, his moans, when he cums, the different things he does to jerk himself off every week, it’s so perfect and mesmerising to watch him. You’ve never wanted to fuck someone so badly in your entire life.

But also the cute little conversations he has with his viewers before and after and him rambling about his day and what not. You know it’s really weird but you’re so attracted to him.

And here Angel was today, asking the viewers how their day has been and that he’s got a little surprise for them whilst he waits for more people to join.

When a fair amount of people have joined and he’s done with the initial small chat, he brings out a clear dildo you haven’t seen before, positioning it on the floor.

He’s wearing his pink and white thigh highs that he’s notorious for wearing and you can see his small waist and his stomach where his cute, pink belly button piercing is and then he slowly sinks down on the dildo and ever so slowly begins to fuck himself with it, little moans escaping and he gently begins to bounce on it. God, he’s so pretty.

His hand moves to his nipple and his other hand moves to lazily jerk the tip of his dick which only makes him moan further, brows furrowing and head throwing back as he fucks himself on the dildo at a more fast and steady pace.

You could see the many layers of lube lathered on the dildo as it came in and out of him whilst he moved up and down on it at a relentless speed, the sound it was making clear from even your headphones. Sight and sounds he’s making so lewd and filthy yet he still looks angelic, contrary to his name.

“Gonna come for you…Can I cum?” He looks towards the screen for a second and his inbox floods in with a series of Yes and so he strokes his dick and rides the dildo deeper, letting out one ultimate, gorgeous moan and a yelp before his cock squirts out all white, cum covering his tummy and his piercing and he’s a mess, panting.

Once he’s gotten over his high, he looks at the screen again. “Ooh yayy we made so much today! Thank you so much guys!” He exclaims, still dazed and exhausted.

You quickly type a response in the bar -

@seggsysax: You did so good today, Angel! Thanks for always doing the best streams ever!

He reads your comment aloud saying thank you as well as many other people who had tuned in today. He stays for a little while to chat and to ask what sort of stuff they want to see next time and then ends the stream for the week.

You log out and close you’re laptop, sighing. You’re pretty tired and you have a lecture in the morning.

You did in fact get some good sleep last night, waking up to the sound of your alarm that will forever be jarring and you get ready for the day, pulling on some clothes and grabbing breakfast.

It’s late autumn and so it’s pouring down with rain, soggy leaves scattering the street from the trees below everywhere, but luckily you have your umbrella and you play your favourite songs through your headphones, romanticising your walk to the uni which made it pretty pleasant.

Upon arriving in your lecture room, you take a seat, waiting for others to join. There’s a fair amount of people in your class considering it’s an arts based uni and is especially known to be the best place to go for Music. Once everyone’s settled down, your professor begins to teach his lesson about music theory and counterpoints which isn’t that fun.

Once the lesson ends, you pack up your laptop and notes but before you can leave, you hear your professor call out your name, “Y/n and Beomgyu, Could you guys stay behind for a second?”

You knit your brows, thinking of what your professor could possibly say to you. As far as you know, you haven’t been doing anything wrong. Could it be that one time when he set a jazz composition to be for 4 minutes and 30 seconds but yours was only 4 minutes and 25? Or maybe the time when you half-assed that essay on the shift towards the classical and romantic period?

“I have an opportunity for both of you if you’re willing. Since all performing arts do an annual Christmas performance, I selected you both to organise the music department’s for this year. As you know, I don’t just give it to anyone. I choose the best two in the department every year. It would be great experience and look great. You’ll be working together, bring together a bunch of people from music, pick and arrange a few Christmas songs, lighting, stage, sound. You’ll be the two heads. Of course there’ll be many other people organising but you will both be the heads and coordinate meetings with other members. You know the Christmas performances are highly anticipated from all and I expect it will be a fantastic one from you both this year as well, if you guys would like to?

You definitely did not expect that. Your professor chose you? You? To organise the music department’s Christmas performance? You can’t believe it. He always only ever gave it to his best students and to think it was you! How on earth? It was of such high prestige to organise that as well and the extra credit. Plus, it’d look good on your cv. You weren’t going to let your professor down.

“Of course we will!” The guy next to you says before you can. He’s just as ecstatic as you presume you look too.

You in fact know said guy - Choi Beomgyu. And you weren’t particularly fond of him. Whilst you didn’t know much about him, you heard enough to know that he was the campus fuckboy. Extremely cocky and a complete douche. You thought he’d be doing one of the sports based subjects. To find out he was in your music, you were beyond shocked. Even to this day you wonder how the hell he was in your class. He probably thought it would be easy or just doesn’t take it seriously.

And to think you were partnered up with him to organise this! Choi Beomgyu? You hardly doubt you’ll get anywhere with him or that he’d be of much help. Why would your professor pick him? You’re not looking forward to working with Choi Beomgyu at all.

Next Chapter

PLS REBLOG !! AND COMMENT !! ITS REALLY APPRECIATED & ENCOURAGING TYY 🙏😭<333

Taglist: @pogigyu @denleave1088 @mashimarshmello

A/n: first chap 💪💪 🤔 honestly don’t know what’s gonna happen with this series at all

Comment to be added to the taglist !!

#beomgyu smut #txt smut #Choi Beomgyu smut #sub! beomgyu #sub! idol #sub!idol #sub!beomgyu #dom!reader #beomgyu x reader #camboy

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natlacentral · 2 months

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Avatar: The Last Airbender reveals live-action Mai and Ty Lee — watch a sneak peek

Princess Azula's closest allies make an early arrival in the live-action adaptation.

Two more characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender are making the jump from animation to live action.

With one more day until the new Netflix series arrives on the streaming platform, EW can exclusively unveil Thalia Tran as Mai and Momona Tamada as Ty Lee. With Mai described as "an unflappable and deadpan teen" and Ty Lee as "energetic and upbeat," the two are the closest allies of Princess Azula (Elizabeth Yu) in the Fire Nation.

These two characters didn't show up until season 2 of the original Nickelodeon animated series, but they arrive early in the context of the latest live-action adaptation. A clip from the first season (shown above) reveals Azula venting to them about her brother, Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), and the praise heaped on him by their father, Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim).

Yu previously signaled to EW that there would be multiple moments like this; in other words, scenes we didn't get to see in the original show. “A lot of the O.G. series was through the eyes of Zuko,” she said. “I feel like our show lets [Azula and Ozai] have their own start to their story before all the stuff that we know them to do later on.… We get to see her origin story, which is really cool."

Set in a world of benders, those with the ability to manipulate one of the four natural elements, Avatar: The Last Airbender tells the story of Aang (Gordon Cormier), a young airbender who learns he's the next Avatar, a reincarnated entity who can control all four elements in order to maintain balance in the world. But Aang has been missing for 100 years, allowing the Fire Nation to wage a war for global domination. When he finally returns, Aang must lean on his new allies, waterbender Katara (Kiawentiio) and her brother Sokka (Ian Ousley), if he has any hope of honing his abilities and stopping the war.

"We don't start the show the way the animated series starts. That was a conscious decision to show people this is not the animated series," showrunner Albert Kim told EW. "We had to sometimes unravel storylines and remix them in a new way to make sense for a serialized drama," he added. "So I'm very curious to see what'll happen in terms of reaction to that."

Watch EW's exclusive clip above, and see all the other characters in live action compared to the animated original.

Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres Thursday, Feb. 22, on Netflix.

#natla #atla #netflix #netflix avatar #avatar the last airbender #netflix atla #elizabeth yu #momona tamada #thalia tran #azula #ty lee #mai #entertainment weekly #clips & trailers

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lcvejoy · 10 months

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this body is yours

wilbur soot x gn!reader

tw: none! pure pure fluff. not proofread tho

word count: 404 - just a quick one.

a/n: i’m kinda shocked that anyone even read my first fic, let alone liked it? thank you?? that’s rlly cool! hope y’all like this lil thing too.

wilbur and you had a silent vow of love that began in a cafe.

he stood in line as you searched for a seat in the busy cafe. he knew your order by heart and you knew he liked to sit at a table by a window because the tables situated in the middle of any restaurant or cafe made him feel claustrophobic.

you found a spot in the corner of the cafe next to a window overlooking the busy street. you sit down with a wide smile, feeling almost proud that you managed to find a spot in the cafe that’s far too busy for a thursday afternoon. you look over to wilbur, giving him a thumbs up and your proud smile. he’s third in line, having watched you walk around the whole cafe with a small smile.

his smile widens at your action. and in response, his hand comes up to point slightly to the left of the middle of his chest, directly where his heart sits. it hovers there for a moment before his pointer finger slowly moves from pointing at his chest to pointing at you. his smile gets wider as he studies your reaction - a deep shade of pink across your cheeks, your eyes wide, and your mouth in the shape of an O.

somehow, you know exactly what he means when he does this. i love you, he’s commanding, my heart is yours. it beats for you. take it. it’s for you only.

and just before he gets called by the woman behind the counter, you repeat his actions back to him - i love you more, you vow silently. you hear him chuckle slightly through the noise of the bustling cafe filled with people chatting, cheeks turning a soft shade of red, before turning his attention to the woman behind the register and placing his order for you both.

since then, your shared silent vow of devotion was displayed during any moment when words were unable to be heard.

wilbur often did it on stage while you watched from the crowd, and you always returned the gesture.

you’d often do it from across the room when he streamed, and he’d always return the gesture.

and, sometimes, you’d do it while you lay together, face to face, because words didn’t seem to be able to hold the weight of the adoration you both had for one another.

#wilbur soot x reader #wilbur x reader #wilbur soot #wilbur soot fic #dsmp x reader #i still dont know how to tag

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youwouldntdownloadapizza · 3 months

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The Gates of Jackson | Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter 2

masterlist | ao3 | follow @youwouldntdownloadapizza and turn on notifications for updates

You showed up at the gates of Jackson with hands covered in blood and no memory of how you got there. That was two years ago. Since then, you've become Maria's right-hand woman and the person in charge of Jackson's logistical backend. Patrol schedules, inventory—all your purview. When a patrol gone wrong forces you to get to know Joel, memories of your past begin resurfacing—along with their consequences.

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pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+, minors DNI

word count: 1.0k

tags: no use of y/n, eventual smut, no beta we die like sarah, jackson era, other additional tags to be added, slow burn, ellie needs a hug, joel lives, good parent joel, reader-insert, reader insert, forced proximity, only one bed trope, nightmares, childbirth, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, soft joel, cuddling & snuggling, fluff, masturbation, pining, joel falls first, possibly demisexual reader (tbd), ptsd, ptsd flashbacks, panic attacks, amnesia

chapter warnings: childbirth (mentioned)

chapter summary: A detour finds you and Joel lost in the woods and in need of shelter for the night.

Chapter 2

It was foggy today. Cold and foggy. You resented the low visibility, but Joel didn’t seem to mind. He followed behind you on Chestnut, an older mare named for her lovely, dark coat. While you focused on the trail, he watched the trees. Even if infected were rare out here, he wasn’t about to be caught off guard.

You made it about four miles before dust began to mix with the fog, making you cough until you pulled your shirt over your mouth and nose to block out the debris.

“Rockslide,” you called back to Joel, the sound of pebbles still clattering to the ground confirming your assessment. “We need to find an alternate route. I usually send patrols up this way three times a week, but no one’s come up this way since last Thursday. It’s overdue for a checkup.”

Joel was unfazed. “The river narrows to a stream about a mile back. We can cross over, loop around.”

You nodded, “Lead the way, Miller.”

Letting Joel lead was a mistake. Between the detour and the fog, you were hopelessly, utterly lost.

“If we die out here, I’m gonna kill you,” you told him, your annoyance beginning to slip towards downright anger.

“We’re not gonna die out here, Doe. Calm down.”

“We need to find high ground—figure out where we are, get above all this fog,” you said.

Luckily, you were headed uphill. But uphill didn’t last. Just as the fog began to thin, you reached a lake. Beside it stood a cabin, one you hadn’t seen on your patrols before.

The siding had once been painted a bright, cheery yellow, but time and the elements had stripped away much of the color. There were no signs of life, no broken windows. It had probably been abandoned long before the outbreak. Either that, or occupied by people who knew how to keep a low profile.

You eyed Joel, and with a sharp nod, he dismounted. You tied the horses just inside the treeline and approached, slowly and quietly climbing the stairs to the enclosed porch.

You squatted down to pull out your lock pick, but before you could even retrieve it, Joel was winding up to kick the door down. You stopped him with a gentle hand on his thigh. He looked down at you, eyes wide, and you answered his unspoken question by raising your lock pick.

You made quick work of the lock, standing to push the door open. You motioned for Joel to head inside, but he opted to hold the door for you instead. “After you, ma’am.”

You were tempted to roll your eyes at that, but honestly, you kind of liked it. You led the way, clicking on your flashlight to investigate.

It wasn’t untouched, like you had initially suspected. There were signs of past occupants between the outbreak and now, but whoever it was hadn’t stayed long. The cabinets were still mostly stocked, though none of the cans were of your preferred variety. The curtains were drawn and dusty, having been left that way for some time. You opened them, letting in a dull beam of late-afternoon light. It glinted off liquor bottles strewn across the carpet by the couch.

“Looks like somebody hunkered down here for a bender,” Joel said, toeing a half-empty bottle with his boot.

“You got all that from liquor bottles and a carpet covered in dried vomit? Very observant, Miller,” you teased, taking a seat on an old barstool.

“I’m surprised they didn’t start breaking shit.”

“Not every drunk’s a violent one, Joel. Some of them just get sad. Or horny.”

“Or both.”

You huffed at that. He wasn’t wrong. You were stretching your neck when Joel made the call.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “We should settle in here for the night.”

“That’s not–” you started, before realizing he was probably right. If you kept going, you’d likely end up going in circles, just getting more lost than you already were. And even with all the floor vomit, that couch looked comfy. “Fine,” you sighed. “Get a fire going, figure out some food. I’m gonna head up to the roof, see if I can get a radio signal.”

Joel nodded, setting his pack down by the fireplace. You climbed the ladder up to the small loft space, looking for roof access. There was a small skylight, and with luck, it pushed open.

You crawled out onto the roof, leaning back against a weathered gable. You could just barely get a signal on your long-range radio.

“Doe to base camp, come in,” you spoke into the mouthpiece.

“Copy, Doe. This is Mike at the main gate. Over,” a voice crackled through the speaker.

“Joel and I hit a rockslide along the Mountain View lodge trail earlier. We took a detour and got lost in all the fog. We’re at a cabin near some lake up here. Looks like we’re gonna be stuck here for the night. Over.”

“But you’re alright otherwise? No injuries or anything? Over.”

“Fine, Mike. We’re fine. Should probably get a group out this way soon, though. The place is well-stocked, practically untouched. We’ll probably be back sometime tomorrow afternoon, assuming this fog clears and we can get our bearings. Over.”

“Copy that, Doe. All good over here.”

“Copy. Over and out.”

“Over and out.”

You scrubbed a hand over your face, your bones heavy with exhaustion. It had been a very long day.

“Soup’s on!” Joel called up from the living room.

“Be right there!”

You gathered your things, starting your haphazard slide back toward the skylight when a thought hit you.

“Hey, Mike?” you asked into the radio.

“Yeah?”

“How’s Maria?”

You waited anxiously for his reply. Childbirth had never been without its risks, but in the apocalypse, it was easy for things to go wrong.

“She’s good,” Mike said, “Delivery went smoothly.”

Good, you thought, letting out a sigh of relief. That’s good.

The radio crackled back on, and Mike added one last detail to his report.

“It’s a girl.”

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller smut #joel miller fluff #joel miller angst #joel miller series #joel miller fic #the last of us #tlou #joel x reader #joel x you #no use of y/n #joel miller x f!reader #jackson era #joel lives #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction

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colsonlin · 2 years

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“Cape Cod”: a good old-fashioned short story (a 45-minute read)

“Cape Cod” is an analysis of our society’s tendency to produce narcissism, sociopathy, and casual dehumanization. It felt so good to get all of this off my chest! —Nina

A lot of how we talk about middle school in America is something I take issue with—like, for instance, that it’s somehow not the most formative experience of our lives. (It is.) A lot of people say “college,” but I had already cycled into an idea of who I was going to be as an adult by then—an A student, a talker, a birdwatcher, a take-no-prisoners observer of human social life. I studied sociology at the University of Maryland. At my retail job now—I work at a Nordstrom in Connecticut—I interact with a dying breed: old rich white women who still buy their cashmeres at the mall. At my old retail job in Farmington I was a cashier. At Nordstrom I’m more of a saleswoman—I don’t hand my customers their purchases after I’m done folding their clothes into the bag, I walk around the counter to deliver their parcels to them personally. I work six nights a week until the mall closes at 11 and on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays I drive to my second job at a call center in Southington. I earn enough money to pay for my Hyundai and an apartment above the laundromat, have coffee on the weekends, keep up with my student loans, and map out what the next step will be.

College feels like a million years ago.

Middle school still feels like yesterday.

“Brenda” (not her real name), my supervisor at my old department store in Farmington, was the portrait of managerial incompetence. She was fat and unmarried and all of the associates who weren’t actively helping a customer used to crowd into the stock room whenever she came out of her office, usually to berate one of us for misplacing a store key. We all know a Brenda from middle school. Everything you say is wrong, and everything she says can’t be improved upon. Three of us quit within the first ten months of Brenda’s arrival, and at least one of us later wrote an anonymous email to the district manager about her obvious drinking problem.

My old department store—I don’t want to get into any trouble here so let’s just call them “Not-Quite Sephora”—was in a strip mall. I never knew who to feel more sorry for during the day, myself or the customers who came in. I once explained to my boyfriend that we were kind of like Wal-Mart’s “more youthful older sister”—a high school varsity cheerleader perhaps, but still stuck in the past all the same.

There were ten of us on the first floor—the second floor, “Men’s,” might as well have been a different planet entirely. Brenda acted like she was better than all of us, because she has a master’s degree in “Global Business Administration,” whatever the fuck that was. Brenda didn’t seem to understand that all her master’s degree did was make her look both underqualified and overqualified for her job at the same time. (Her main role, from what I could tell, was assigning holiday bonuses and amplifying customer complaints.)

Not-Quite Sephora has a dying business model, but we were kept artificially alive by a steady stream of suburban glum as the principal anchor of a once-iconic strip mall. The first floor was perpetually understaffed—our Google reviews under Brenda’s mismanagement decayed from 4.2 to 2.8 stars (and this coming from a woman who tends to take “American public opinion” with a grain of salt). The turnover rate among everyone except me, Ashley, and Gabby seemed to be such that a new Chris, Brian, or Andy was being fired every three months. Good riddance, I always thought.

Men don’t understand how to take orders from a woman, and the ones who say they do are liars from the black lagoon.

I understand Brenda.

I really do.

Brenda’s most direct feature was that you couldn’t get a direct answer out of her, ever—it was either caustic sarcasm or happy-peppy self-deprecation. Everything she said was either designed to suppress or to charm. She was intelligent, which was the problem—quick-witted even—she prized competence, prided herself on being everything everywhere all at once (with self-pity), once complained to me in the break room that she was an ex-spelling-bee champion. Appearance-wise, what once made me jolt awake at night was that she tries, she actually tries. Not doing anything to set Brenda off had become something of an obsession of mine by her third month there. I applied to other jobs, but only in non-retail.

Trying to go non-retail—my life in a nutshell.

Brenda took over at a precarious time. Inflation was rising. Covid was either over or about to be over, but either way, brick-and-mortar seemed to be one of its death tolls. Brenda had mousy blond hair, wore black trousers to work, and used to tramp around the store carrying an inventory clipboard whenever she was upset about something. I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to take fashion-merchandising so seriously. Her first day at Not-Quite Sephora, Brenda compared our fitting rooms favorably to the fitting rooms at her old Kohl’s in Florida, now shuttered (“So coming back up here was kind of like coming home for me, y’know?”). Brenda grew up in a trailer park in New Jersey and you can tell.

You can guess what her politics are.

I think what appealed to me most about the Cape Cod trip, if I were to be honest, was the right to tell Brenda that I’d have to take a few days off in mid-September because my boyfriend had invited me on a trip to “the Cape.”

Here was a woman in her late forties or early fifties who had located the profundity of her self-esteem in “competence”—and yet it never finally occurred to her that the only way to be “competent” in your everyday life is to command the trust of those around you. Trust is earned, Brenda, and it’s lost with unreliability. I could never really trust that woman not to not trap me inside a rule without being able to explain to me the reasons—not to not be imperious and self-certain and in self-protection mode at all times—and not to not explode all of her emotional wreckage on me, drenching me in the black mist of her self-absorption. Brenda was always right. Brenda is never to be questioned. (Brenda’s real name is “Karen,” which is why I didn’t want to say it at the time.)

It felt so good to able to tell Brenda that—all of her anxieties about the back-to-school rush aside—I’m going to have to take three days off in mid-September because my boyfriend has invited me on a trip with his three friends to the Cape. (I met my boyfriend a year ago on Opal.) It pained me to be so petty—no, not the reference to Cape Cod, which was just a kiss on the lips, but the reference to having a boyfriend, which was my primary poison. I wore more eyeliner to work, not less, the longer the weeks went by trying to circumnavigate Brenda’s imperialism. I enjoyed looking like a magazine cover while supplicating to her at the makeup counter.

We worked at a department store.

(“—so that’s my life, okay?”)

I could see it already. I love how Brenda, with her master’s degree in Global Business Studies or whatever the fuck she majored in, has to flinch every time who I really was blinked in front of her. I bet you flinched every time you saw me shrug into your office, Brenda, no matter what you called me into your office for, because I know about the Us Weeklies you stole from the front stands—I told Accounting about them!—I know how responsive you are to young women with movie-star looks who had won the genetic lottery. I smile at you, Brenda, precisely because I know how my angelic dimples make you feel. It makes you feel like you want to protect me.

It makes you feel you need to defend your true queen.

Beauty was my one and only power over Brenda, but I can assure you I only used it sparingly (all it took was sparingly with a woman so obsessed with appearances). We don’t talk about being pretty enough, which is another way of saying we don’t talk about seeing only the appearances enough. Seeing only the appearances was how I, prior to this weekend, once saw Cape Cod. What do you know about Cape Cod anyway? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you mentally google it? I want to leave you now with an image of seagulls.

I matched with my boyfriend last September on Opal.

Now I know what you might be thinking—this whole story basically amounts to one long humblebrag about how I have an account on Opal, lol. No. First of all, I deleted that account six months ago. My boyfriend and I both did, on the same day—that was how we agreed to be serious.

Opal’s cornered the market on young attractive people who like to paraglide to remote destinations—the one and only trick it has up its sleeves is “exclusivity,” which in America is a royal flush. I’ll tell you real quick how I landed an account on Opal. A hedge-fund apparatchik I had gone on two dates with wrote me a recommendation letter after I told him I didn’t think it was going to work out between us, but did he still want to be friends? (And what do friends do?) It was his fault. He was the one who’d bragged to me about having an account on Opal in the first place. He even helped me pick out my profile pictures.

I left the Alma Mater field blank.

Opal’s about what you’d expect—videos of narcissist after narcissist who summer in Thailand. I swiped past all of the alpha males, which took days. Men who were earnest or men who were silly were the only men I could take seriously.

My boyfriend’s in that five percent of men just below the top ten percent that most women don’t know to circle the ocean for. You know the type. He’d be unstoppable if just one or two more things had gone right for him, but as it were, the wrong job, the wrong company, the wrong alma mater, had kept a handsome face trapped beneath a monthly gym membership. You’ll recognize these five-percenters from their personality—pure souls who’d lucked out facially, two sevens on the slot machine, but whose unambiguous victory had been stunted by some existential lemon. Some of them have eating disorders. Some google “male plastic surgery” in the dead of night. In my boyfriend’s case, he’s pansexual. Open-minded women have rejected him, which gives him a chip on his shoulder, and now he thinks he understands what it’s like being a minority. My boyfriend’s the type to care a lot about social issues. I’m not sure he even knows we’re interracial.

His parents have a house in Cape Cod.

His dad’s a federal judge and his mom’s an immigration attorney. Until we met and he started showing me pictures on his phone of his childhood vacation home, I had never really thought a lot about Cape Cod. I only knew it as the brand of a potato chip one step up the class ladder from Lay’s, and as a cultural metonym for white-sand beaches, old stone lighthouses, and the Kennedys. Brenda grew up in a trailer park in New Jersey, but I’m sure she must have learned at her master’s program what Cape Cod was.

Cape Cod was where she wanted to be.

And as it so happens, Brenda?

Cape Cod is me.

I wanted so desperately to tell her but I couldn’t.

I wanted so badly to inform Brenda that I had more important things to worry about than making sure the lipsticks were alphabetized, or that the powders were arranged in alternating shades of rouge and beige: namely, that a splitting image of one of the stars you read about in Us Weekly had a life to live, and she was going to enjoy the fruits of her beauty—fruits that Brenda could only live vicariously through (I tallied six missing issues of Us Weekly over the course of a year; no other magazine had gone unaccounted for during the same period except for a single issue of Better Homes & Gardens, which I found one night crumpled on top of Brenda’s desk).

The way Brenda’s eyes lit up whenever she talked about Mackenzie Davis—I just needed Brenda to recognize my own beauty in the same way! It flipped around, you see, like a head trip—sometimes Brenda bowed to her true queen, and sometimes she said mean things to me. I wasn’t thought of as “intelligent” by Brenda, and I could never tell if it was because of my race or my beauty—the two possibilities flickered around in my head like a dueling candlelight until one night I decided, “It’s both,” and just let it die.

Resentment was brewing between me and Brenda.

Ever since I realized I would have to lie to her about my Cape Cod trip, because September would be the back-to-school rush, and there was no way Brenda was okaying me those vacation days. At Not-Quite Sephora, Brenda’s first rule was: “Just be honest. I want to know everything.”

But do you, Brenda?

Do you want to know how I plan to get out of work during the back-to-school rush, because I’ll be with my boyfriend and his three Yale Law classmates traipsing across Cape Cod? Do you really want to read about a beautiful woman’s life in Us Weekly? (Just steal my diary.) I’ll call in sick. I’ll lie and cough right to your face over the phone, Brenda, and I’m telling you it’s corona. I don’t have to be honest with you about anything because you rule by fear, not trust, and in a world of fear without trust anything goes.

Fear without trust is the animal kingdom.

And Not-Quite Sephora is the animal world.

The night before my last day at Not-Quite Sephora, Brenda humiliated Ashley in the stock room. (Ashley had made the mistake of asking her for paid time off for a wedding in December.) I didn’t overhear it, but I heard about it, which was enough. I have always had a way with words, and I gave Brenda some direct evidence of it by way of a resignation letter I wrote to the district manager—only it wasn’t really a resignation letter, it was more like a record of how Karen McHiggins was a terrible supervisor, sent to Corporate and cc-ed to the entire floor. (What mattered wasn’t that I had cc-ed the entire floor, but that the next morning, every single person on the floor congratulated me.) The group chat I’m in with Ashley and Gabby pops off more than ever now ever since I quit, only I didn’t mean to quit.

I only wanted to take a truthful temperature.

Brenda showed all of her cards when I showed up to my shift the next day. “Nina? My office. Now.”

I made eye contact with Ashley, who was already in her uniform, and we both smiled.

She kind of gave me an eye hug.

I wore nude lipstick that day.

The email I had sent Corporate was subject-lined “Management’s Mismanagement,” and it listed six bullet points about Brenda’s bad behavior (one involved throwing a purse at a mannequin; the last five were instances of emotional abuse). It ended with a paragraph about Brenda’s encounter with Ashley in the stock room (Brenda had called Ashley “unlikable,” “self-absorbed,” “a fucking dipshit”).

I laid out the case like the lawyer I couldn’t afford to be (I had other interests, hobbies, and pursuits in middle school, like not killing myself). Brenda was probably shocked I could write. She was probably shocked I could read, but I wield words as weapons—that’s the only thing you ever have to know about me. (In third grade, I won the spelling bee too.)

How did I dress for work the day after I wrote “Management’s Mismanagement” (and really I should say the morning after, because I sent the email at 4 a.m. and had to wake up three hours to let an exterminator in)?

I looked like a star.

I had even spent the last six months of my life casually coaxing Brenda toward the mixed-race celebrities I wanted her to subliminally see me as. Cape Cod would smile. I’d fit in well there, because in my late forties or early fifties I’d have the sort of personality that everybody at Beach Road would know to be impressed by—I could lift my life up to heights that the bourgeois rabble couldn’t even see. Not a single one of my applications to a white-collar job had ended in a palatable offer. Not-Quite Sephora, founded in Vermont, has a labor-friendly CEO. My benefits were good—I even had vision and dental. “One way or another, I’m bringing up my Cape Cod trip,” was the last clear thought I had before knocking on Brenda’s door.

“Come in,” a harsh voice gruffed.

I opened the door.

“Close that please,” was the first thing I heard Brenda say before she and I even made eye contact.

I closed the door dutifully.

Karen McHiggins was standing next to her desk in red pants and a black blazer. She had tied her hair into pigtails that day for some reason, although her hair was so short that they ended up looking more like ringlets, and her eyes behind her glasses were blue and pixel-like. Brenda made a quick gesture at the floor with her hands, almost like she was trying to say “Enough!”, and then said: “What is going on, Nina—what is going on, because I do not understand you.”

Her voice was hoarse.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her red pants—but your blazer is black?—so I just said, “I—” while panning my gaze to her desk, waiting for her to continue.

Brenda’s desk was a mess.

Just like her thought processes.

“If you have ever had a problem with me, you could have come to me directly. What have I always told you, Nina—” Brenda was now screaming.

Brenda thinks screaming has an effect on me.

She’s right—loud noises do have an effect on me. Elevated decibels have an effect on every animal that evolves through nature. How much do I hate Brenda right now? My eyes are staring into hers—but I don’t see a human.

I see an animal.

The power of volume is that it throbs the ear—and ears desire music. Ears desire harmony. Wild animals make me forget poetry as I bolt into the jungle—how much do I hate the woman screaming into my ears right now? Well, there’s a simple formula for that, and all of us are making it, even if we don’t know that we’re making it. We take how much anxiety we experience from being around a person, and then we multiply it by a factor.

My factor is 1 when that person is equal to me.

My factor is a fraction of 1 when that person is homeless.

My factor is greater than 1 when that person is greater than me.

And for Brenda my factor was 42,137—that’s 1 for every dollar that the winds of Brenda’s turbulence lorded over me, granting me vision and dental.

The ensuing number is a hatred.

How much anxiety was Brenda creating in me? Well, for starters—how much did I distrust Brenda? (And how much did I secretly want Brenda to like me?) All the eyeliner I wore to work every day—it wasn’t for mall patrol, it wasn’t for Ashley, and Lord knows it wasn’t for Gabby.

It was for me.

But maybe a little bit of it was for Brenda.

And how much taller does Brenda tower over me right now?

And how much taller does Brenda tower over me right now? Well, let’s see—I submitted 42 job applications, all non-retail. Interviewed at 11. Final-rounded at 7. Received an offer at two—both in New York, which I couldn’t afford. A young white boy at a social media marketing firm told me during the interview that I was “obviously brilliant” before offering me an internship. By July, Brenda towered over me like a god. I fell asleep at night fantasizing about her supervillain origin story. Brenda complained so much about Americans who weren’t vaccinated that I once asked her if she was a childhood polio survivor. “Where in the world did you get that idea?” Brenda laughed, and I laughed too. “Oh, I was just curious.”“How many times have I told you, Nina…”

My expenses have been going up, thanks to my new boyfriend. (As a matter of fact, I am the type of girl to go Dutch!) Taking over Brenda’s position would mean a four-percent raise. To my surprise, Brenda took off her glasses, put them on top of a crinkled magazine on her desk, and started crying. Like, actually crying.

Two actual teardrops leaked out of her eyes.

Self-pity makes me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable when the powerless do it, because now I have to do something, and it makes me uncomfortable when the powerful do it, because now I have to eat them. When somebody more powerful than me expresses self-pity, I can’t help it: I want to guillotine them. I want to take away their right to exist, but I want to watch them suffer first. If I were God, I’d invent Hell just for Brenda. It satisfied me that Brenda would most likely die without children or a partner. I want all capitalists in the First World to die without children or a partner, but to have afterlives that go on forever.

It still doesn’t seem enough though.

Brenda’s office has a desk, no windows, and a door that leads to the loading dock. A poster on the wall behind her desk, and I was just noticing this about her office now for the first time, was of a lighthouse in Cape Cod. “—the back-to-school rush—” Brenda was saying, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

The ceiling light was fluorescent, and the walls were built of the same beige bricks that made up my elementary school. I once applied to a master’s program in sociology at Johns Hopkins University.

I got in, too.

I hate it here in America—doesn’t anybody else? Is this really that much better than the Soviet Union?

Sympathy for Brenda?

Brenda who lorded over my vision and dental like a bureaucratic algorithm—my boss Brenda?

I did good work.

I was Brenda’s star employee! (I left that part out because I’m not the bragging type.) The only work I couldn’t charge for was the work I didn’t want to do—navigating around the runes and mysteries of Brenda’s uncharted sensitivities like Leif Erikson. The truth was, I hated Brenda for not being able to see me as a beautiful woman just because I wasn’t a beautiful white woman like the pin-up girls she’d gone to school with in New Jersey. Brenda bleeds white guilt, but she rarely ever let me massage any of it toward my favor, except superficially (and you can guess by now how I feel about superficiality). Brenda’s insincerity dehumanized her to me. We humanize each other first as leaps of faith, and then through trust—and nothing about Brenda’s way of existing suggested she could be trusted by me. Not her white guilt. Not her New Jersey liberalism.

Not even her tears.

In fact the longer Brenda cried, the more intensely I wanted to punish her—the phrase “white bitch tears” comes to mind. I wondered if Brenda sincerely didn’t understand that if I could push a button to keep her trapped inside a hole for the rest of her life, I would, and her tears only made me want to push harder. Still, it gave me a start to see—this woman who could take away my ability to not go into debt like checking “Buy Now” on Amazon—reduced before me into a person now trying to trick me into believing she has a soul.

Don’t the workers of the world understand?

Powerful people don’t have souls.

Brenda having a soul would have meant taking my ideas about the BOPUS orders seriously, and not dismissing them out of hand because how could any good ideas come from Nina, the pretty one, if Brenda’s even not-racist enough to see me as pretty (BOPUS is industry slang for “buy online, pick up in store,” and it’s basically brought Not-Quite Sephora to its knees—that and Brenda’s mismanagement). I could divide my hatred of Brenda by a factor to account for the fact that she was fat and unmarried—but whose fault was that, Krispy Kreme? Do you think I actually like exercising?

Are you ready for some real talk now?

I can tell you about the runner’s high until I’m blue in the face, but I’m not built inside like a runner—I’m built inside like a girl who understands that nothing tastes as good as being pretty feels. I don’t know how American society decayed to this point—my Ph.D. dissertation in sociology at Johns Hopkins would have been about the link between an artificial society and the importance placed on appearances, but I couldn’t afford to go, I had actual work to do in middle school (like not killing myself) so I never bothered thinking very long and hard about anything. “Quitting would mean losing my gym membership,” I suddenly remembered.

A new recognition suddenly dawned over me—no gym membership would mean no Cape Cod. It takes a couple hundred months and a couple thousands steps to get there, but trust me, I’ve worked out the odds.

(I make my brain work for me.)

I looked at the lighthouse poster behind Brenda’s desk and said: “Brenda, it’s just—how you treated Ashley last night in the stock room…”

“You weren’t even there!” was what a clear-headed Brenda would’ve said, but Brenda the Tender said nothing.

“I heard about it from Gabby,” I continued. “You know, we’ve talked about this so many times.”

“I know, I know,” Brenda whispered.

“You don’t know how to create a functional work environment sometimes. Groups are held together by trust, not fear.”

I wasn’t quitting.

I was saving everyone at Not-Quite Sephora from Brenda’s bad temper. Brenda’s boss Charles would understand—he’d say, Nina made some good points in this email, but it sounds like you guys have everything worked out, so get back to work—and everyone would move on.

Only Brenda would now be moving into the light.

She would see how her anxieties about Not-Quite Sephora’s declining sales figures were spilling into her paranoias about job security (“And what will I do with all of my competence now that I can’t find a job because I’m old, fat, and ugly?”) and have been spilling into us as sarcasm and curt dismissals ever since her second day on the job. (Her first day was lovely—I was obsessed with Brenda! I even nicknamed her “cool Mom” to Gabby and Ashley.)

How Brenda appeared to me that first day was how Cape Cod once appeared to me too, before this weekend—white-sand beaches, old stone lighthouses, the Kennedys.

Cape Cod had told me a story—and so had Brenda when she first took over Kristi’s post at Not-Quite Sephora (Kristi got pregnant and never came back). Cape Cod’s story was Yale Law, benevolence, intellectualism. Brenda’s story was that she was loud and earthy and understood how to make an entrance—if she’d been honest, she would’ve just said: “I can use my power to make you feel however I want you to feel about yourself. I’m an emotional abuser.”

But the story I heard, because I’m a gullible sweetheart, was “Fun Mom.”

I laughed along amiably to “stressed-out Mom,” bopped along bewilderedly to “not everything is functional upstairs Mom,” and—how do I put this?

I didn’t like the mother who had a master’s degree.

Self-protection was Brenda’s middle name, and nothing I said using the tools of reason or logic could penetrate the fortress of Brenda’s first impressions—that’s the definition of “closed-minded,” by the way (Brenda has a lot to say about closed-minded people—that’s the crazy part).

How we look is the first story we tell each other about who we are. It’s our audiovisual accompaniment to the words that make up the second half of our story—the “spoken half”—and everyone understands that this isn’t fair, everyone understands and then does nothing. Brenda isn’t the only person who learned how to survive in America by going to an American middle school. She’s only lost her temper at me a couple of times, but I’ve been tracking all of them.

I’ve been watching you like a falcon, Brenda.

I’ve been watching you like a true A student.

True A students are out of favor in America for a reason. We’re only mortal, but we’re a little bit supermortal too. Because what I really didn’t like about Brenda was her insincerity—“When have I ever said no to you, Nina?” Brenda was now drying her eyes with a tissue and screaming.

It was a change in the air—a subtle bit of misdirection that she probably thought I was too stupid to catch (I’m not).

I was the powerful one now.

And Brenda McHiggins was now “the victim.”

“You threatened to fire me right after Easter for being late on a BOPUS order,” I treaded carefully.

“Nina, ninety-nine percent of our Google ratings come down to the BOPUS orders—”

“Which is why I said you needed a better system for assigning roles for when people aren’t .”

“Which is why I said you needed a better system for assigning roles for when people aren’t here.”

“But I never threatened to fire you.”

“You told me you’d have my name forwarded to Charles!"

“Exactly!”

“Which is the same as getting fired!”

“That isn’t true, Nina—I would have protected you.”

This statement was so stupid that it almost broke my brain. “Wha—protected me: do you not understand how Charles operates?” Brenda turned her back to me, waved her hand in the air, and said: “I’m not going to go into this with you again” as she looked for her glasses.

“It’s right there,” I said. “On top of Better Homes & Gardens.”

“Oh,” Brenda said without acknowledging me.

Brenda put on her glasses and then sat down into the chair, which made a sound like it was about to snap in half.

This was how she always liked to berate us—from her chair. I had seen that painting of the lighthouse behind Brenda’s desk so many times—it just never occurred to me that it was Cape Cod. Sometimes, I’d overhear Brenda berating Gabby on my way to the restroom and I’d think, “Well, she isn’t wrong—Gabby is kind of stupid—but that’s still not the way you talk to her. You have to incentivize her to trust you first.” (Gabby was the one who first changed Brenda’s nickname from “Fun Mom” to that cunt with a stick up her ass.) Ashley and I burst out laughing. (What else is there to do inside a dying country?)

“Everyone here is so short-tempered with each other because you set the tone. I’ve been too afraid to ask you for three days off in September to go on a trip with my boyfriend for our one-year anniversary because I knew you weren’t going to say yes, so I was just going to take them off as sick days—and that’s not a functional work environment if people are constantly doing things like that all the time, because what you really need to do is go to Charles and ask for more staff.”

“This September—oh, Nina, you got to be kidding me!”

It was the first honest thing I ever heard Brenda say.

I thought about my naïve dream from earlier—how I thought I was going to turn Brenda around.

How I thought I was going to save the store. “The problem is we’re under_staffed_” was what I should’ve said—I get that now, I do, and I don’t know why I couldn’t wear it in my mouth even as it was trying to form in my subconscious. Because other forms were rising in me now too, forms like: “Brenda is a world-class manipulator. She butters you up just to brine you.” (I couldn’t even trust her tears, and if you can’t trust someone’s tears, you can’t trust them to ever find help.) I don’t know how I’d fare if it were just me and Brenda on a deserted island—I could see her killing a cougar for us with her own bare hands, but I could also see her killing me. “I never said that, I just told you I’d have to forward your name to Charles”—Brenda the liar. Brenda who could probably play dead about as well as she could play stupid—any falcon worth its weight in bird could see through it.

“I’ve been having issues with my boyfriend,” I suddenly blurted out.

Where had I learned this from?

Middle school.

“The anniversary trip means a lot to him, and I can’t even say yes or say no—it just hangs there over us, because he knows about the back-to-school rush. And he’s not even someone I—even feel fully comfortable with in some ways. But I’m also scared to lose him, I’m scared every time I come into work on Tuesday because I don’t know how you’re going to change my hours. Everything we do revolves around my not having enough time—I’d have issues building a perfect relationship with him if we had the rest of our lives to ourselves on a deserted island, but every weekend until closing? He works a normal job! He’s tired all the time too, but he makes time to see me and I can’t—I can’t come to you about anything.”

I didn’t cry.

But I did smile in my head:

“Wanna play victim, bitch?”

I could see Cape Cod now—I could see its lighthouse drawing my boyfriend and I closer and closer, I could see us dancing now to The Strokes at midnight like we were back in middle school because I didn’t want this to be the rest of my life, I don’t want retail, I don’t want resumes and cover letters and I don’t want to meet any more Brendas—what I want is for the Brendas of the world to collapse at my feet, but all I can see are the Brendas of the world closing in on me until death and so I need a release, I need to go back to middle school (I was popular in middle school, I can admit that now, I had bee-stung lips, and a bee-stinger too)—I need The Strokes (haven’t you ever made out with a boy in a hot tub while stroking your nails across his abs, parting the hair where his lower back begins?)—“Is this it? … Is this it?”—(my boyfriend and I swimming in the stars of our liberation, and I’ll give him all the vision and dental that he likes)—prey: always just a one-click order away (and we’ll eat lobster, because lobsters hold harms forever)—I the warm body and he the warm arms, holding me in his lanky-panky forever (and if Connor ever got a gym membership I would die—I don’t need a perfect 10, I can settle for an 8.9)—my captors: do they know? Do they understanding I’m not living my one true life? Wearing Ray-Bans while gazing out at the Atlantic from a yacht, because Comfort is my one true God—I’m ready, Mr. DeMille, for my one true closeup to begin. How am I still in Brenda’s office? I’m twenty-seven years old—how am I twenty-seven years old and still smoldering in Brenda’s office? In middle school I listened to The Strokes while everyone else listened to pop hip-hop—another Universe has been calling to me all my life. And all it would take was just a few more thousand steps to get there.

I’ve been running every day since I was thirteen. I don’t even eat my desserts correctly—I just spit and chew.

Ashley and Gabby remind me of who I was back in middle school. I had power over everyone back then except Abercrombie Couture (not her real name). Abercrombie was the class favorite—it’s hard to explain, but among the very-outgoing girls, Abercrombie was Frivolity Personified. And when only the people who needed to see it could see it, Abercrombie was the cruelest human you’ve ever met—she’d ignore you so subtly you’d drive yourself crazy for days asking the other girls if she was mad at you. Back then I had already begun telling myself I was too cool to care—but I still have nightmares about Abercrombie sometimes, about the way she’d say hi to everybody else at the party except me. “I just can’t deal with your emotional up and downs anymore, Brenda! Like I’m sorry—I’ve defended you to Ashley and Gabby so many times! I’m sick of having these conversations with them.”

Abercrombie, I later realized during college, must have been unsettled by how candidly I could talk about her behind her back. That was my little power over her, and I’d like to think I wielded it gracefully. (Abercrombie was dethroned by a lurid sex scandal involving a used condom in eighth grade, and I’d like to believe I led our class to a more open and inclusive place after her dismissal.)

“Three days—where you trying to go, Wuhan?”

“No. The Cod.”

“The what?”

“The Cod.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Massachusetts.”

“You mean Cape Cod?”

That was how quickly I realized I had fumbled the ball—that was the speed at which I realized I had fumbled the fuck-you—the one thing I needed to do correctly and I had fumbled the ball trying to cross the finish line. “It’s the Cape, not the Cod sweetie,” Brenda was already huffing to me by the time I realized my mistake, with a smile on her face. She’ll deny it to this day, and in absolute candor I can’t really say it was a “physical” smile—I don’t remember what it looked like, I don’t remember if Brenda actually huffed or if she even moved her mouth all that much at all, it was more in the eyes, but that bitch smiled.

I grew up in Nevada.

My boyfriend graduated from Yale Law and with him I can see a way out of my life—and I really don’t understand why that’s such a terrible thing to say. And I’m about to lose him—it’s in between the lines, but I can just feel it, I have him wrapped around my little finger because that’s the only way I’d ever have any man who loomed so tall over me, with him it’d be Cape Cod until the end of my days and nobody would ever laugh at me for calling it the Cod again—I’ll just rename it.

My hatred of Brenda in that moment was rivaled only by my childhood hatred of Abercrombie Couture.

But I knew I had to proceed gingerly.

I began to feel like Leif Erikson again—what other uncharted sensitivities do you have, Brenda?

Do white people really have white guilt?

Verbalizing the subconscious is like navigating by stars—Pequod knows where it’s trying to go, it just needs the conscious mind to plot out the steps to get there first—only I couldn’t verbalize any of this, all I could do was feel the mind for throbs like the twitches of a rat’s tail inside the forest below—and I was throbbing for a release, I was throbbing all my middle-school embarrassments, I was throbbing Cape Cod. A woman who understood nothing but appearances stood in front of me, utterly preoccupied with her own self-preservation—neither wise, open-minded, nor beautiful—but who could mean the difference between me and my income, between me and my livelihood, between me and my boyfriend breaking up (which would mean the difference between me and Cape Cod)—and I couldn’t even get anyone on the second floor to take her magazine theft seriously. How do I even begin to tabulate all her subtle knife-wounds to the psyche?

My favorite song by The Strokes?

“Hard to Explain.”

“You can correct the way I say things all you’d like, but it doesn’t change the fact that I live in fear of you—okay? I go home every night and cry. You bully Ashley and Gabby every day but I’m not Ashley or Gabby—okay? You have not created an emotionally safe environment in the workplace and it’s affecting my life—okay? I’m sorry you take yourself so seriously, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with your fear that all the girls who thought you’d never amount to anything in middle school might be right, but if you have to terrorize other people just to feel better about yourself, that’s not how I roll—okay? That’s not me. The way you talk to Ashley, Gabby, Mike, Chris—it’s un-ac-cep-ta-ble, Brenda.”

And this is where my ship was trying to go:

“I don’t think you belong in your position. So that’s what I told Charles.”

I’d set fire to Cape Cod if I could.

I’d set fire to my boyfriend’s lake house, I’d set fire to Brenda’s Us Weeklies, and I’d certainly set fire to the poster of the lighthouse with seagulls behind Brenda’s desk.

“I don’t work here anymore. Not until you apologize to Ashley,” I added quickly.

My speech was now outpacing my life decisions.

“And I’m not going to be manipulated by you anymore, okay? Because you know how hard I work, you know how much I give to this store every day but Wannabe-Nordstrom isn’t my life, okay? I am not living the life I want to live every single day—so that’s my life, okay?”

Were ordinary people in the Soviet Union this unhappy? Has anyone ever bothered to ask them?

The only thing I ever knew how to do around Brenda was say whatever I needed to say to make her feel comfortable.

Like seagulls exploding out of a cove, that was the only thing Brenda ever seemed to value: her personal comfort. I don’t remember how Brenda looked in that moment. She kept darting her eyes between Better Homes & Gardens and the floor, and her glasses were foggy. I gazed at Brenda with a falcon’s stare and said:

“Think of last night as my last straw.”

It’d be worth it, you know.

It’d be worth it to suspend my gym membership for a few months to see Brenda have to swallow the fruits of her own disorder. I hadn’t coaxed Brenda into reacting the way she did to Ashley’s request—I had only coaxed Ashley into talking to her, and that was a sincere act of friendship: “You have to stand up for yourself with people like that, Ashley.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Brenda and you are like best friends.”

“We are not.”

“You have her wrapped around your little finger, Nina.”

“No I don’t,” I said, and then I hit Ashley’s face with a big fat pillow until feathers fell out, which of course never happened because Ashley and I don’t have open and honest conversations about anything. All Ashley said was “You’re probably right,” and I could sense in Ashley’s eyes that she was perceptive enough to understand I was probably wrong—but even I couldn’t pick that up, at least not consciously, so in a way, Ashley doomed herself by failing to correct me.

I was Brenda’s star employee and everybody knew it.

I’ve been an A student all my life.

I’m the picture of good anger management.

Management hates it when you quit. That’s the one thing you can still lord over them, even during a recession (and July 2022 in America was anything but)—replacing an employee costs time, and time is money. Every store manager knows that—even Brenda (her management woes don’t source back to her inability to optimize).

And then Brenda said something so stupid that for a second I almost thought she was parodying Gabby.

“I thought you and I could speak openly to each other.”

Brenda.

Girl.

Just because you tell me about the medications you take for your back problems doesn’t mean we’re friends.

Was this really happening right now?

“I don’t know what you expect me to say,” I told Brenda. “I did speak openly in the email.”

Was Brenda really buying into Ashley’s delusion that management and workers can be just friends?

Or was she just calculating that I—because I’m pretty—was stupid enough to buy into it too?

“Actually, no—the way you engage with others doesn’t seem intended to provide a pathway for sincere and open conversations. You have a ‘No Assholes’ policy that seems intended to make other people suppress their true feelings around you at all times, because anybody who contradicts you is automatically an asshole.”

I didn’t say that.

I just said: “It can be intimidating to speak to you sometimes.”

Even when you try to laugh with me about your muscle relaxants, I laugh back, but what I really want to say is “Brenda, a certain percentage of the population is going to have back problems, and you have given me no particular reason to care about yours.” I think again now about if Brenda and I were stuck on a deserted island. I’d probably have to save her life from the elements from time to time, and that’d build trust between us. “What we’d need to do is charter a plane somewhere, and have the plane crash. That’s the only way to resuscitate this relationship.”

“How many times have I told you, Nina, you can come to me about anything…” and before I could even respond, Brenda began comparing our dynamics to a mother-daughter relationship and I was one second away from saying, “Bitch, that’s your problem,” but I caught myself and said calmly:

“Brenda, that’s the problem.”

Brenda looked at me earnestly.

“Just, that right there—the word you used. I don’t think you really understand other people’s boundaries? I tell you obligatory anecdotes from my personal life because you specifically ask to hear them, not because I want to volunteer them—again, that’s how afraid I am of you, Brenda, because I don’t even feel like I have the right to tell you that my dating history is, actually, now that I think about it, none of your business. And then you lecture me about how I talk to my boyfriend? Again, because you asked to hear the details, and you actually make it so that now I’m thinking about my boyfriend at work instead of focusing on my job, which you then get mad at me for? I don’t think you really understand, Brenda, how your friendliness comes off when it’s mixed with so much—neediness, I don’t know, this need to control everything all the time—to make everything perfect.”

The first time I ever met Brenda, we got along so well that after our shift we went to a Red Lobster on the other side of the strip mall, where she bought me three milkshakes. I told her about growing up with my mom in a trailer park in Nevada and she told me about growing up with her mom in a trailer park in New Jersey—we laughed a lot that night. I don’t even remember what we laughed about, but we were both talkers, Brenda and I, we were both tellers, and we were both showers. I could tell after my first milkshake that Brenda must have floated in the margins of the sub-popular crowd in middle school, and she all but confirmed it on the second (she just had one of those I’ve seen it all energies).

“So how does it feel being back in the Northeast?”

“Honestly?” Brenda said, grabbing a French fry. “I’m ready.”

You couldn’t hear the ocean from where we were sitting, but you could hear a highway.

I understand Brenda.

I really do.

Sometimes at night, while I fantasized about quitting a company whose Corporate was famous for giving their employees vision and dental (and anyway, what else would I do besides marketing or retail? In what other way might I be called upon to serve the good people of America?), I’d climax with an image of Brenda sitting alone at home on a Thursday night (that was Brenda’s day off), crocheting to Fleetwood Mac, with a cat rubbing up against her ankle. The only mystery was how many paintings of beaches dotted her apartment.

I know Brenda doesn’t talk to her mother anymore (“Neither do I!” was probably one of our first laughs), and I’d fantasize about how much she probably secretly admired me—because I was pretty—because I could always talk my way into classes and parties she could only stare through the curtains of (I once helped Brenda create an account on Plenty of Fish), and now it was too late for her because she was already in her late forties or early fifties—and I?

I was bound for Cape Cod.

“What are the locals there like,” all summer long I used to wonder. I work at a Nordstrom now.

And I no longer wonder.

“Oh, sweetie—it’s called the Cape, not the Cod.”

Wasn’t that how she had said it?

Even in her most helpless moment, she was still so condescending—she was still just so frivolously condescending—I mean think about the stakes here, girl, you’re about to lose your star employee right before the back-to-school rush—was the poison dart worth it?

Was the poison tip worth it, Brenda?

“I don’t think it’s healthy for me to work here anymore,” I suddenly blurted out. “You’re not a good influence on me.”

“What can I say to make you stay just through September?”

It was so quick and direct that it snapped me instantly out of my sympathy spell.

Brenda.

There’s the Brenda I knew—Brenda, you’re back!

And you’re still holding onto threads in the air.

This store will dissipate, Brenda. Your job will dissipate, and then you’ll have to go right back out there again and sell your competence at another round on the roulette wheel. (Just don’t end up at another store that sells beauty supplies, Brenda—I don’t think you quite understand what they’re really telling the world.) “I don’t think there’s anything you can say, Brenda. I know how hard the last few months have been for you, and I thought very long and hard about doing this to you. But I have to prioritize my own mental health.”

“You know Charles is only giving me a year.”

Brenda said this with a vulnerability I had never heard from her before.

Her voice was like a child’s.

Guilt—it’s impossible to summon it for a person you’ve already dehumanized. Cockroaches die every day.

My subconscious was churning again—I would have a child with my boyfriend someday, and I would protect her from people like you, Karen McHiggins. “Brenda, you have the mental age of a child,” was what I really wanted to say to her. “When I fuck up at work, who do you think I go to? Nobody—do you understand that, Brenda, because adults take responsibility for their shit.”

But I would have to sugarcoat it, because someone with the mental age of an Abercrombie would be unable to understand that the powerful can’t be friends with the powerless, no matter how hard they tried—and someone with the mental age of an Abercrombie would also need everything sugarcoated for them.

“Brenda, I don’t know how to break this to you but there isn’t going to be any back-to-school rush! It’s not 2019 anymore—Covid killed retail. We don’t know whether we want to be bargain basement or high-end and the middle class is dead, everyone wants either a bargain or an experience! What did they teach you in that master’s program?”

Only I couldn’t say that either, because Brenda would somehow spin it into me losing my cool, which is the one thing I never do—I’ve been one thing and one thing only all my life, and that’s an A student.

“You’ve given your life to a dinosaur, Brenda—move on. Department stores are dead—this isn’t the ’80s anymore. Your image of America—it’s a façade, and I can prove it. It’s that picture of the lighthouse you keep behind your desk that you pilfered from returned merchandise, and I can prove that too. We’re like explorers in an uncharted land. Things are going to fall apart for us in ways we have no templates for, just like they did for all of the generations before us—only they weren’t as trapped inside the façade of returned merchandise as we are! Settled mores are changing. This century could still look like anything—it’s all up for grabs, and more and more people are just beginning to wake up to this new dawn. Maybe what you really need to do is start a YouTube channel. You have the voice for it, you have the charisma, and you have the storytelling abilities—we could all profit from hearing from your perspective, only nobody will because you’re not young, thin, or beautiful, but hey—it’s worth a shot! You’ll have a better chance there at the lighthouse than you do in retail.”

Only I didn’t say any of this either, because I knew Brenda couldn’t hear a word I was saying. Brenda was dead between the eyes—her soul died in middle school, and she’s been dragging the corpses of would-be lives ever since.

“You’re not a particularly smart or competent person, Brenda, and what’s happening right now speaks for itself. You didn’t just get unlucky, Brenda.”

Brenda once whistled to me when she saw me change into a sundress as I was leaving my afternoon shift—“Whose heart are you breaking tonight, Nina?”

“None of your business!” was what I wanted to tell her, but I wanted to let Brenda live vicariously through me—it was the only gentleness I could ever offer her.

“You know Charles is only giving me the year,” Brenda had said, and she was staring into the void now. I could feel her back pain. She had given her whole entire life to Not-Quite-Sephora, six days a week, and on most nights on my way to the restroom I could hear “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac playing from a small Bluetooth speaker. I looked at Brenda and said: “I have no idea what you want from me. It’s not my job to make you look any better than you are at your job. And I don’t know what your agreement with Charlie has to do with anything—in fact, I had lunch with him the other day.”

Brenda lifted her eyes.

“What?” she said stupidly.

“Oh, I’m sorry—I was trying to get a vacation approved. No, Brenda. I needed to talk to him about a few things.”

“What things?”

And then, before I could offer an answer, “What are you trying to say, Nina? Just spit it out!”

“You have a problem, okay? I’ve seen the way you’ve unraveled in the last few months—Gabby and Ashley are afraid of you, Chris is about to quit, literally nobody can handle your emotional volatility anymore. Everybody’s so short-tempered with each other all the time and coming to me for help, and it’s not my job to help them—that’s your job! You’ve created a situation where nobody can even talk to you. We just smile at you out of fear. You don’t command anybody’s respect—you know that, right? So we basically have to operate without a supervisor—you understand that, don’t you?”

It feels good to eat.

I no longer have a gym membership anymore. Instead, I jog every Tuesday and Friday at the public park.

“So yeah—so I guess I just thought it was about time Charlie heard all of this. He’s actually very reasonable if you talk to him in a reasonable way. He said he’d look into opening one or two more positions for us to cover the weekends. But you probably won’t be there to oversee it.”

Not-Quite Sephora was founded as a regional competitor to J.C. Penney in 1991. It never expanded beyond the Northeast, Minnesota, and California, and it’s about to die—it’s only a matter of time. Unless if maybe Corporate in Burlington saw the light and hired someone like me and actually listened to her ideas for turning all of their stores into “experiences,” which is what I’ve been trying to tell Brenda every time she questioned one of my lipstick arrangements. A lot of what I miss about middle school is the taste-test of freedoms I enjoy every day now as an adult: you build a friendship with the highest person who’ll take you in.

That’s how you climb a hierarchy.

Brenda looked at me like a wounded animal.

There really isn’t ambiguity, is there, about which one of us would survive if it were just you and me on a deserted island. A new recognition was forming inside of Brenda, and I didn’t want to be there to watch it settle in—you can’t treat people like you treated Ashley the other night in the stock room, this isn’t the ’80s anymore. Of course, Brenda was too obtuse to work out that I was only bluffing. The truth was, I had talked to Charlie briefly on the second floor, but he just told me to “put it all in an email,” and I knew he was never going to speak to Brenda long enough to ever contradict anything I had just said—Charlie’s not exactly the open type. Besides, Charlie did agree to look into hiring more part-timers, the way Charlie ever agrees to anything—by pretending it was his idea all along. “It’s the unreliability of when customers come in, that’s the problem,” Charlie had explained to me. (“Yes, that’s true. Unreliability is always the problem,” I told Charlie.)

You can’t rely on other people’s testimony when you ask them about Abercrombie Couture.

You have to come to me.

I’ve seen sides of Abercrombie that nobody else has.

“So what’s the dating scene like out here?” Brenda had asked me that first night at Red Lobster, while popping a French fry. I remember trying not to look at Brenda like she was serious. “It’s just men!” I remember laughing to Brenda in front of two tall glasses of milkshake. “It’s just a bunch of men—that’s the only way I know how to put it!”

And then Brenda in her black blazer and black pants laughed too.

Like we were girlfriends.

“I would’ve given you those vacation days, Nina,” Brenda finally said in a whisper. “If I had just understood that you knew what you were doing when you took them—what you were doing to the store—I would’ve given them to you.”

A new sincerity is trying to grow in the air all around us—I can hear its infant-screams, can’t you? (Couldn’t Brenda?) “Oh my God, Brenda. This is about so much more than whether or not I can go on one trip to Cape Cod.”

“That is all this is about to you, Nina, and don’t you pretend otherwise—”

“No, it isn’t.”

“—because you have a fancy boyfriend now.”

“Leave Connor out of this.”

I don’t really know where my life’s going to go after Cape Cod. Colson’s mental health—it causes collateral damage to people (Colson was one of Connor’s three friends that had stayed with us at the lake house). I don’t really think he understands that his actions have consequences on other people. He thinks I’m one of the popular kids who terrorized him in middle school, but the truth is—I’m just a little bit higher or lower on the pecking order than he is. All of us are—all of us down here. I can’t really bring myself to fully hate him for what he did, but then I remember what his life is and I do—I hate him by several orders of magnitude more than I ever hated Brenda. And what Colson and Brenda both have in common, of course, is their dripping self-pity: they’re both absolutely lacquered in it (what is it about competitive social environments that produces so much self-pity anyway, dripping like honey?). I didn’t have too much compassion for Colson when he asked me to feed some of his honey back to him with my fingers. “Money,” I wanted to tell him.

“How much money you have is an easy way to tabulate what your self-pity is worth to me.”

But to be honest, I couldn’t even lift a finger to care.

Cape Cod was only four days ago, but it’s already just another memory now—that’s how all of our weekends are bound to end. Several hundred more of these and then it’s lights out. Connor and I listened to the first season of Serial on the way up, and as we walked through Martha’s Vineyard later that afternoon, we saw fifty migrants from South America file onto a bus bound for a military installation.

There were cameras and cake everywhere.

We’re all participants in this gladiatorial contest to see who ends up in Cape Cod as the sun sets over our lives.

Colson recently wrote a book called A Stick of Dynamite in the American Elite.

I wish him luck.

I have plans for him, you know.

No matter what his next chess move is—I have a plan to stop him. I left Brenda alone in her office that day. I never learned where she went after she was dismissed from Not-Quite Sephora, all I remember is Ashley and Gabby coming over to hug me as I grabbed my purse from the break room, and they both quit two days later. It was because there’s something in my soul that doesn’t like to see other people are in pain—even people without souls like Brenda (Colson doesn’t count because he’s not really a human in my eyes, he’s more like a bad anecdote you shake off)—that I found myself hugging Brenda right before I said goodbye, holding her as she kept saying to me that I’d been like a daughter to her: “Brenda—Brenda, listen to me. My boyfriend has an ex-boyfriend whose stepmom also has a drinking problem, okay? Brenda—are you listening to me? They live in Westport…”

Cape Cod will die.

It’s only a matter of time before it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. I sail America’s values like Leif Erikson now—other people have built their homes and comforts here, but I don’t mind. I wonder sometimes what Abercrombie Couture anesthetizes her listlessness to these days—HBO? Unsubtle affairs with younger men? “How long before mundane dehumanization bears fruit?” I smile to myself every day at Nordstrom, as I walk around the counter to deliver my customer’s parcels to them personally.

I see Abercrombie sometimes in the eyes of the women I help at Nordstrom. They’re all moms, and if that’s the final meaning of our lives—then yes, I agree.

Let’s all be moms.

You don’t know the Hell I’ll reign over America’s guilty class in the twenty-first century, but you will soon: I will mother the destruction of America’s guilded gilts into existence. I broke up with Connor this morning. Something about his reaction to Colson’s breakdown in Cape Cod just didn’t sit well with me—he couldn’t see through Colson’s insincerity, and that makes me think he might not have what it takes in this life to go where I’m trying to go. At my new job at the mall, I nibble on old memories like a woman who hasn’t eaten now in years. The last person I ate was my narcissistic mother in Nevada—she ruined my childhood—she was the Leif Erikson of my formative years—but then again?

So was my middle school.

College feels like a million years ago. My sorority sisters are all married with kids now. Mothers will do anything to protect their young.

#MeToo.

2022

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ivettel · 10 months

Text

getting that good wood - info post!

hullo! so this info is all from goodwood's site, but i thought i'd consolidate a couple relevant events/times for seb fans to watch out for—y'know, the whole where and when shtick!

<< WHERE >>

if you do not have tickets to attend in person: the 2023 goodwood festival of speed will be streamed live on their youtube channel! you can find their channel HERE.

the livestream schedule is as follows:

Thursday - 09:20 BST

Friday - 08:30 BST

Saturday - 08:30 BST

Sunday -08:30 BST

with the exception of thursday (which is just an hour later), 8:30 BST translates to...

eastern time - 3:30

central time (US) - 9:30

central european time - 2:30

pacific time - 12:30

philippines - 15:30 (3:30 PM)

australian eastern standard - 17:30 (5:30 PM)

if you have access to ITV1: the festival will be shown on saturday at 11:15 BST and sunday at 13:30 BST, with highlights available on itv4 the week after.

<< WHEN >>

goodwood is next weekend, from thursday (july 13) to sunday (july 16). seb has been confirmed for appearances on both saturday and sunday, but he might be there thursday and friday as well to check out the festivities!

you can find the full timetable HERE.* more details under the cut!

*please note that this information is NOT final and may be subject to last-minute changes, but for the most part (a week out from the event, when this post is being written) should be accurate

saturday, july 15

seb has an interview scheduled for 14:45 (2:45 PM) BST!

eastern time - 9:45

central time (US) - 8:45

central european time - 15:45 (3:45 PM)

pacific time - 6:45

philippines - 21:45 (9:45 PM)

australian eastern standard - 23:45 (11:45 PM)

goodwood only says he's slated to drive from his collection, including nigel mansell’s williams fw14b and ayrton senna’s 1993 mclaren mp4/8. so a POTENTIAL event he might drive in is goodwood 75 at 14:05 (2:05 PM) BST

description: experience the rich history and unparalleled excitement of motorsport at goodwood, re-living the most exciting and iconic moments from the past 75 years.

eastern time - 9:05

central time (US) - 8:05

central european time - 15:05 (3:05 PM)

pacific time - 6:05

philippines - 21:05 (9:05 PM)

australian eastern standard - 23:05 (11:05 PM)

sunday, july 16

again, these are only potential events he might drive in!

there's another showing of goodwood 75 at 8:30 BST.

eastern time - 3:30

central time (US) - 2:30

central european time - 9:30

pacific time - 12:30

philippines - 15:30 (3:30 PM)

australian eastern standard - 17:30 (5:30 PM)

and the famous goodwood shootout at 14:00 (2:00 PM) BST

description: the weekend reaches its thrilling climax as motorsport greats fight for the top spot in the timed shootout.

eastern time - 9:00

central time (US) - 8:00

central european time - 15:00 (3:00 PM)

pacific time - 6:00

philippines - 21:00 (9:00 PM)

australian eastern standard - 23:00 (11:00 PM)

and finally, yet another goodwood 75 at 16:30 (4:30 PM) BST.

eastern time - 11:30

central time (US) - 10:30

central european time - 17:30 (5:30 PM)

pacific time - 8:30

philippines - 23:30 (11:30 PM)

australian eastern standard - 1:30 (MONDAY JUL. 17)

no idea what exactly he's going to participate in (save for the interview), so if you have the time to watch all weekend, u might catch him elsewhere in the official stream! but these are the most likely events i could think of, for those who might be busy or only want to pay attention to what he might be doing.

that all said, i encourage people to watch other events at goodwood if possible! it's a fun event and there's lots of cool people scheduled to make an appearance :)

if i missed anything, do feel free to let me know!

#sebastian vettel #goodwood festival of speed #goodwood 2023 #edit like 20 min later fixed a typo about the thurs stream it should say an hour later than the other days srry!

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sugurusdiscordmoderator · 5 months

Text

Gamer Girly - part 2

link to part one • link to master list

cw: alcohol, bisexualness, idk me being half gay

MDNI 18+

not proof read, literally wrote this bc of my insomnia and not being able to sleep tonight

You and Geto texted to plan a FaceTime call in a few days as it worked for his schedule and you were beyond nervous. Even going as far as using your whitening strips and getting your eyebrows done. You planned it for Thursday evening, a time after Geto’s stream was over, before you, Utahime, and Haibara were about to go out to bars for Thirsty Thursday with your fake ID’s. You did your makeup and hair while listening to the squads stream rehearsing in your head what you think Geto would say. You picked out a black crop top and a short denim skirt to wear paired with your vans. As they wrapped up their stream you started feeling anxious and took a shot of a vodka mini bottle you had lying around your apartment to calm some nerves. As you swallow some orange juice as a chaser your phone buzzes from your desk.

‘hey just wrapped up, let me know when you’re free and I’ll shoot you a call. :)’

god texting him felt like you were flirting in high school all over again like a giddy innocent girl.

you set your macbook up on your desk so you could have a better view of him for the FaceTime.

‘sure, ready whenever you are!’ You respond.

Your anticipation leads to sweaty palms and sipping a white claw that was left in your fridge at some point as you pace around your bedroom, making sure everything in the background is okay.

your ringtone from your laptop goes off rather loud and you quickly sit at your desk but don’t press the answer button too soon. The 10 seconds it takes the call to load seems like years as you bounce your leg under your desk.

“hey!” You both speak at the same exact time, as you nervously giggle.

“How are you?” Comes out of both your mouths at the same time again.

“I’m sorry, you first,” you say as he chuckles with his eyes squinted close in the most precious way.

“I’m great, happy to be done streaming for the night and getting ready to go out with some friends, how about you?”

“I’m also going out with some friends for once! We don’t go to bars a whole lot but wanted to try one tonight. Other than that great now that I actually get to speak with you,” you admit, blushing.

“Yeah about that, this moderator thing is pretty easy, mainly the thing you have to watch out for on my discord is people sexualizing Shoko. She’s started to get butthurt about how she’s ‘more than a pretty face’” he rolls his eyes sarcastically.

“Oh yeah of course…” you pause, “are you guys like dating or…?” You close your eyes not believing you just fucking asked that.

“Oh no no, she’s been Satoru and I’s best friend all through high school. We taught her to play and she has pretty much gotten better than us.”

“Satoru?”

“Oh sorry yes that is Gojo’s first name, we all go by our last names on the stream.”

“Oh yeah okay, makes sense,” you glance over at the notepad sitting next to your laptop wondering if you should be taking notes.

“I have to admit there’s not really a whole lot that goes into it, I just wanted to see you over FaceTime.” He grins, lighting up a blunt and casually looking at his screen to see your reaction.

He can’t be flirting with you…right? You decide to take the ball in your court, “well what can I say, I’m only one of your most devoted fans,” winking at him and hoping you don’t seem too lame.

He chuckles, taking a long puff of his blunt and passing it to someone off the screen.

You dare to ask, “also sorry if this is too personal to ask so soon, but I saw your area code is close to where I go to college, can I ask where you’re from?”

He looks like his brain is trying to fit pieces together for a moment, looking up at the person he passed the blunt to. “Uh, yeah I’m from Shibuya and I go to university here.”

Your jaw drops, “like University of Shibuya?”

“Yeah, are you familiar with it?” He asks.

“I’m a junior here! I had no idea you guys were from around here or went to the same school!”

You hear Gojo in the back whisper “oh my fucking god”

Suguru shoots daggers at Gojo, still off screen, and doesn’t know what to say.

“We don’t have to meet up or anything if you’re uncomfortable with it! We can just pretend like we didn’t talk about this,” you blush nervously thinking he was put off by something you said.

“No, no, I mean it would be great either way. Just was a little surprising that’s all.” He responds, no longer looking around for Gojo, just focusing on you on his screen.

“Yeah well I’ll promote you to a moderator tonight and have the other mod text you to kinda explain the situation.” The dark haired mystery man smiles awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. “Oh and the pay, uh how does $20 per hour sound?”

“Yeah sure whatever you’re willing to pay I’ll take it!” you say almost too eagerly. You knew mods got paid kind of well but you didn’t know it was this good. If he streams 7 days a week for 2 hours, that’s already $280 a week. Plus the time you spend in discord on the chats.

“Okay well I’ll be in touch…” he trails off and you can’t tell if he’s either high or just uninterested in your conversation. (In reality Gojo had a girl sitting on his lap sucking his face off and Suguru was trying to decide if he was disgusted or turned on)

“Yeah, thank you for picking me! Look forward to talking with you,” you say hoping he’s not regretting his choices noting that he got a little awkward after the talk about being local arose.

“Yeah, see ya,” he says too casually with hardly a hint of a smile on his face. You click the ‘end call’ button and sigh. It seems like this unobtainable crush you had on suguru for the past 9 months was still just that. Why had you never seen him around town or campus? Granted, it was a really big school and everything but never once had you seen him, by god you would remember that face.

You snap out of your trance back to your white claw and scroll to find your texts with Utahime while you down the can

‘your place in 10?’ you text her.

‘Yes, sorry kinda last minute but some of haibara and i’s other friends are going to come too’ she texts back and you groan, not in the mood to meet new people.

The thought of having to be social enough to go to the bar was anxiety inducing, but now having to actually meet people before you’re drunk? You grab two more of the mini bottles of vodka you have in your freezer downing one and shoving the other in your pocket for when you get to Utahime’s apartment.

You walk into her unlocked flat without knocking, being too in your head from the FaceTime call and what it meant. Utahime is sitting on the counter, Haibara between her legs as they are making out passionately. Her arms wrapped around his neck, legs spread in her skirt so Haibara (and you) can see her turquoise panties.

“Oh I’m sorry,” you giggle staring at the scene in front of you. “I thought you were expecting me.”

Utahime, obviously embarrassed jumps down from the counter acting like nothing happened and walks over to give you a hug. Wearing a blue skirt, white shirt, and red bow in her hair she looks as cutely innocent as ever. You looked about as opposite as her as possible with your ripped denim skirt, black crop top revealing your cleavage just perfectly, and black and white checkered vans.

“How did the call go?” She asks as Haibara excuses himself to the bathroom trying, but failing, to hide his boner from their make out session.

“Great but I have news about like the four of them -“ you’re cut off by a knock at the apartment door.

In walks a girl with white hair, a black button up black mini skirt, with knee high socks. She was accompanied by two average looking men, obviously whipped by her aura.

“Mei Mei!” Utahime runs over to her and gives her a hug. You’re a little taken aback by the warm welcome this new girl received versus your very awkward one. Well I guess that’s what you get for not knocking.

Haibara comes out of the bathroom looking like he just splashed cold water on his face and neck, “Bayer, Kokun, good to see you.” Walking up to them to dab them up.

You take this opportunity to down the mini bottle in your pocket and take a sip of Utahime’s sprite she left sitting on the counter. Sheeeeesh, three mini bottles and a white claw in before you even leave for the bar? You’re feeling pretty good and confident. Walking in on the couple’s make out session made you realize how long it had been since you got any action. Besides your vibrator working over time, usually after Geto’s streams.

You force yourself out of your thoughts and walk up to the trio chit chatting with the couple and introduce yourself. “Hey I’m y/n” and extend your hand to shake.

“Nice to meet you, y/n, Utahime has told me a lot about you.” Mei Mei says in her naturally sultry voice. Your eyes nervously look at Utahime, consider she had never mentioned this attractive white haired woman to you before.

“We’re new friends, she just moved in down the hallway and these two guys helped her move in.” Utahime says reading your mind.

“Ah nice to meet you, I’m just a few floors up if you ever need anything.” You respond.

“All we’re missing is Yuki right?” Mei Mei asks as she directs her attention to Utahime.

“Yeah but who knows if she’ll show up. I’ll text her to just meet us at the bar.”

With that, the group heads out to go to one of the dive bars in the city, a little place with karaoke on Thursdays. Supposedly Mei Mei knows the bouncer quite well, walking up first in the crowd to whisper something in his ear, finger trailing down his chest. You’re not sure what she said to him, only that his cheeks turned red and he let the 5 of you in without checking your IDs at all. From what you heard this place didn’t let fakes in very easily so you wonder what could have bribed that man. You grab a high top table in the back near the pool tables with Utahime and Mei Mei as the 3 boys go to grab you drinks.

“Can we sing a girls song together?” You propose to the two.

“Y/n are you drunk already? You’d never suggest that sober.” Utahime raises her eyebrows at you.

“How about the spice girls?” You ask ignoring her question. Mei Mei nods with a slight smirk. As you go up to put your name on a slip of paper the boys come back with the drinks. The DJ winks at you and you immediately regret your decision.

A few songs later and it seems your drink is gone, listening to the boys talk about sports and video games, as the two girls chat about their one annoying neighbor on their floor that has the loudest sex imaginable.

You walk up to the bar and stand patiently next to a tall beautiful blonde woman.. you try not to stare as the bartender comes over to her and asks her order. “I’ll take a whiskey and ginger ale, and whatever this girl is having.” She smirks pointing her thumb over to you. “Vodka cran please,” you squeak out to the bartender, nervously smiling at her.

The man goes to make the drinks as she sticks out her hand, “Hi pretty, I’m Yuki.”

“Oh you’re Yuki! Friends with Mei Mei and Utahime?” You stumble out the words remembering her name from earlier.

“Sorry, I’m y/n. I’m here with them tonight, I can take you to them if you’d like?”

Yuki leaves her card with the bartender and hands you your drink. “After you,” she smiles taking the first sip of her drink looking you up and down smugly. You grab her free hand with her vape in it and weave from the bar back to the table you all had claimed.

“I found someone you guys may know?” You shyly interject trying to be funny. The whole group erupts into various versions of “Yuki! Oh my god so good to see you!” She props herself up on the last open barstool at the table. Baggy red cargo pants and a black crop top, no bra with nipple piercings pretty obvious. She catches you staring and nods her head in a “come here” kind of way.

“So what’s your type?” She asks.

“Uh what?” You question back.

“What’s your type of woman?…or man I guess.” She eyes you up and down as if trying to determine your sexuality.

“Uh… I like long hair? And someone who can have a good time?” You’ve never had to answer that question on the spot so you think your answer was decent enough.

She lets out a chuckle and takes another sip of her drink. “So you’re not playing for a single side I’m hearing.” She smirks and puts her arm around your shoulder.

“Yeah I guess not” you smile back realizing how close your faces are.

Just then the DJ announces the next karaoke names, “y/n, Utahime and Mei Mei are going to sing us Wannabe by the Spice Girls!”

“y/nnnn” a tipsy Utahime grabs your hand and starts rushing you three to the stage. One thing you forgot about this place is you have to take a shot before singing. You three take your shots of what tastes like battery acid, stinging going down and trying not to think about it as the music starts.

The 90s classic song gets ever girl in the bar singing and dancing at the edge of the stage and you see Haibara behind the crowd video taping your performance.

Your words are starting to slur slightly and you are just having a great time feeling like a pop star. You swear up in the balcony of the bar you see a white head of hair jamming out and screaming the words but hey everyone’s having a good time!

The song comes to a close and the three of you get escorted off stage. You split from the two and say “I’m going to step outside to smoke for a second,” as you do when you drink.

You walk up to the back door of the bar and as you go to push, you feel someone else pull. With the alcohol in your system, your reaction time is a little delayed. Before you know it you are falling forward towards the gravel with your arms out.

“Oh Jesus Christ” you mumble out assessing the damage while you sit up so you are on your knees. Only a few scrapes as the person on the other side of the door comes up to you and puts a hand on your back.

“Oh my god are you okay I’m sorry,” you hear a familiar voice. Too familiar.

You turn around to meet amber eyes inches from your face.

“Geto?” Your jaw drops.

—

A/N I had to go through my archives to see what someone would wear to a bar in 2018 😭 and look up a discord mods hourly pay on google 😭 also had a bi panic moment w Yuki and Utahime and MeiMei as usual if you can’t tell

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friendshiptothemax · 1 year

Text

Hey all! I just wanted to say that I’ve been getting a lot of questions in my inbox about how to support the WGA strike.

To answer the main question I’ve been getting, no one at the WGA has called for a boycott of watching/using television or streaming services. If that happens, I will let you know.

The main thing you can do right now, if you’re able, is to donate to the Entertainment Community Fund, which is a reputable and long-established hardship fund for people working in the entertainment industry. This is important because this fund is not just for writers, it benefits people at all levels who are going to be hurt by this. I was an assistant the last time the WGA almost struck and I was existentially terrified. Please look out for ways to support not just writers but everyone who works in the film and television industry. I will be keeping my eyes out -- if I see any assistant or crew funds popping up I will be signal boosting them.

If you want to give to something a little more whimsical, DSA-Los Angeles is raising money for food to send to the picket lines (and any that goes unused will go towards supporting future organized labor actions in Los Angeles): The Snacklist.

My other piece of advice is to just be very aware of where you’re getting your news from. Sites like Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety depend heavily on the studio and network system for their business model, and are very conservative when it comes to criticizing industry power structures. Before you link or signal boost an article from one of these sites, take a beat to consider what biases might be at play. Information sources I prefer (admitting that I have my own biases) are places like the official WGA Twitter or statements from the WGA Negotiating Committee or Board of Directors. You can find information about all of this at the official WGA Strike Hub.

You can also think about how you’re talking about the strike. Yes, the writers are the ones striking, but if you look at the rundown of what happened at the negotiations I think it’s pretty clear that we are at this point because the studios refused to even open negotiations with us on most of our demands. This is just one gal’s take -- but we are NOT in this position because of the writers, we are in this position because of the studios, so be aware of the language that’s being used.

I have gained a lot of followers in the last few weeks as my strike posts have gone viral, and I want to honor that by continuing to be a good source of information. In particular, in the next few days I plan on writing up a detailed explanation of what everything in the WGA list of demands that was released entails and why we were asking for it. (I’m having an outpatient medical procedure on Thursday and will be on take-it-easy orders through the weekend, so that’s how I plan on contributing in the absence of being able to be at the picket lines)

Solidarity forever!

#wga #wga strike #actual WGA member

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thecapricunt1616 · 6 days

Text

Sunflower 🌻

Syd x Carmy one-shot

♡ Summary: A/U where after graduating from the CIA at the top of her class, Syd goes on a food tour in NYC & ends up hooking up with the most talented CDC, at the best restaurant in the world.

♡ W/C: 3,434

♡ Posted Date: 04/12/2024

♡ A/N: This is pure filth I tried adding some plot- I hope it turned out the way I saw it in my head. As always requests are open - for SydCarmy, CarmyxReader as usual! I hope you enjoy :)

♡ Warnings for BTC: Smutsmutsmut nsfw 18+ - Oral (m receiving) , Barely edited bc we die like men.

➵ 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 ♡

Sydney Adamu had just graduated top of her class at the Culinary Institute of America. She’d been hunkering down with her dad, for a long four years, she was desperate to get out of there. She already had a plan all set up.

She’d take the last bit of money her grandfather had given her for college, and make a catering business of her very own. It would be dedicated to her parents, (of course) Syd’s hopeless romanticism was thanks to their perfect, beautiful love story of course. She’d known since sophomore year of culinary school - Sheridan Road would be her baby.

She’d settled on this idea - with any possible odd’s and ends money she’d made during her CIA training - she’d go out for as long as it would last her. She’d learn, study, and observe, then- create her catering business, with the confidence she’d gotten a taste of the very goal she had, a star. Well - three would be absolutely fucking insanity to her- but one? One she felt like if she had it? Her father would believe she was in a real line of work, instead of just happy she was perusing her own happiness.

It was the perfect plan in her mind. She’d already set aside the amount of money, with extra safety net, for all of the licensures, and documentation she’d need- as well as her commercial kitchen rental she’d make the food out of. Then - with the extra 5k she had left over, she booked a full food tour of the most prestigious, luxurious restaurants in NYC.

She’d planned the tour 6 months before she graduated, since the 3 restaurants wouldn’t even accept a reservation if it wasn’t made out any later then that, and when she walked the stage, 3 days later she was on the train into the city.

She’d be staying at a decent hotel for 12 days. Each day, she’d be having one large meal including an app, two main courses, 2 cocktails, and 1 dessert from a Michelin starred restaurant. She would be staying 4 days for 1 star, 4 for 2 stars, and 4 for 3 stars.

The schedule was as followed;

Monday - Hirohisa *

Tuesday - Dirt Candy *

Wednesday - The Musket Room *

Thursday - The Red Paper Clip *

Friday - Atera **

Saturday - Jungsik **

Monday - Saga **

Tuesday - Daniel **

Wednesday - Per Se ***

Thursday - Le Bernadin ***

Friday - Masa ***

Saturday - 11 Madison Park ***

When she’d got off at Penn station- she was nearly vibrating with excitement - she quickly brushed passed people grabbing their obnoxious suitcases in the overhead compartments.

“Sorry! ‘Scuse me! Fuck- shit sorry- exscuse me!!!- whoops! Sorry- scuse me- aah! Ugh- I Didn’t mean to- oop- oh- Jesus!! Excuse me!!” She rambled, frustration building in her chest. Getting off The L wasn’t this hard- why did Amtrak feel worse?!

She took a deep breath, her nose scrunching.

Mm. So instead of cow shit - smog, I feel at home already.

She’d thought to herself as she briskly walks with the crowd towards the exit she meant to take onto fifth.

She slipped her wired headphones into her ears, texting her father

‘made it!! Love you daddy!!’

Before opening her Spotify, hitting one of her comfort albums, Broken Clocks, as she walked briskly outside - the crisp city air hitting her like a ton of bricks.

She leaned against the brick of the McDonald’s next door, avoiding the streams of people going down and up the sidewalk, taking a deep breath. She’d not been to New York before, she’d grown up in Chicago- been to the city more times then she can count, but the suburbs were her home. Being in the city- and let alone- a city like Manhattan versus Chicago- she was looking around, trying to gather her wits - and quickly. She clicked the maps application on her iPhone 7, tugging her umbrella out of the water bottle pocket of her backpack and tucking it under her arm as she typed the address to her hotel and clicking for the walking directions.

It honestly kind of pissed her off that each day’s food was better than the last. She’d wanted to not give a shit about stars and just focus on giving people an experience to remember - but it was cut & dry that now that she’d tasted this kind of food - she was going to do whatever she could to become as talented as the chefs that made it.

But - she hadn’t even tried the best yet.

The best, the best, THE best.

She honestly couldn’t believe she was going to be trying the food from Eleven Madison Park - but she couldn’t help but be so nervous. Every other Michelin starred restaurant she’d been to - the dress code was Formal attire. But this one? THE best restaurant in the fucking world? Oh- they just say on their website ‘many of our guests dress up for the occasion, but we do not have a dress code’

Her entire trip, She’d been cycling through 2 very different floor length gowns. One of which she wore to her graduation, and the other she’d found at Windsor on sale but it did the job. She didn’t wear luxury attire often, okay? She was too busy being Culinary school for Christ sakes! And tonight she couldn’t for the life of her choose which one she’d wear.

This being because she was attending a main dining room tasting, which was ten courses. Easy, luxury dining courses were stupidly small. But- she was also trying their bar tasting menu which was an extra four courses. Sitting at a bar in that stupid fluffy dress for two hours would not be comfortable. But- again- best. restaurant. in. the. WORLD!!!

She knew for a fact that she would be mad at herself if she got there and everyone around was dressed to the nines, but - for comfortability sake she went with the simple silken red gown.

The front of house service was literally perfect. She was glad she’d brought a new notebook, because she’d never have had enough space to take all the notes she was taking tonight in the one she’d been using the majority of the trip. Their staff was very casually mannered, and they made it very easy to order. Everything was very calm and comfortable, the furniture felt very luxurious in the sense of comfortability.

After she just had the best meal of her entire life, she knew she had to speak with the person who made it. Her mind was blown for lack of a better word. The food was fucking incredible. She had a rule to keep herself able to taste as much as possible: she was only allowed one bite of each dish, but here- she couldn’t just limit herself to one. Each dish she was taking 2 even 3 bites- but when she got to the sunflower dish? It was brilliant. She finished every bite, she couldn’t not. It would be sinful to waste it. And the only thing on her mind was that she had to talk to the chef who’d made it.

Her waiter comes back to her table, giving her back her card and receipt.

“Thank you for dining with us this evening, have a wonderful night” he told her

“Thank you- Um- may I speak with the chef who made the sunflower plate please? I’d like to pay my compliments in person if possible.” She asked hopefully.

“Of course, that would be Chef Carmen- give me just a moment I’ll go get him for you” he nodded and headed back to the kitchen. She looked over her notes, remembering the questions she’d wanted to ask about the dish.

Carmen, she wondered if he’d been named after the saint. His talent was surely straight from the hands of the Mother of Christ.

Shes interrupted from writing in her notebook by a husky, silvery voice

“Excuse me- I was told you’d like to speak to me, I’m Chef Carmen, I made your sunflower dish this evening.”

“Hey- I’m Sydney - that dish was- ” she stood up to face him- and when she realized who was in front of her, her heart began to race. Of course, she’d thought, of course - only a JBA contestant could come up with a dish so ingenious.

“Oh- um…Hi.. Hello- you’re like -” she blinked a few times, in utter shock. “You’re Carmen Berzatto“ She swallowed thickly.

Sydney was obsessed with this industry- she stalked the JBA website every year to see who would be nominated, dreaming that some day she’d be on that list. Being even nominated would allow her to die happily feeling as if she’d won a fucking Nobel Prize. That was how much she respected those damn awards.

“I am” he said and cleared his throat nervously.

“Well- firstly congratulations on your nomination- you like- if it was up to me you’d win because that sunflower dish was-” they’re interrupted by one of the food runners coming over

“Chef Carmen- Chef Daemon requests you in back of house now.” she said urgently, the girl looked like she was on the brink of tears as she continued taking the tray of food over to the table it was meant for.

“So sorry, i’d love to hear what you have to say but uh…” he trailed off.

“Yeah- yeah- sorry, sorry I wont keep you-” she said and he shook his head a bit

“No- no- um… I mean -” he wouldnt usually be so bold, but his ass was going to literally be kicked if he didnt get back there in the next 5 seconds. “I’m gonna go out for a smoke at 11:15. If you wanted to keep talkin’ ill be there” he said before heading back to the kitchen.

Sydney was nearly shaking - there were so so many things she wanted to ask him. She also realized he was much - infinitely hotter in person - how that was even possible? She remained unsure. She had reapplied her lipgloss and her perfume, nervously pacing back and forth along the sidewalk.

She hears the back door open and she looked over, out emerging the greek god incarnate she somehow got so lucky as to run in to tonight. “Hey!” she said with her famous warm smile.

He didnt return it, actually- he looked pissed. She swallowed thickly, rubbing her lips together nervously “Hey - sorry again I uh- fuckin’ boss” he muttered, fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket.

“No- don’t apologize please, I totally get it. I mean, you're the CDC at literally the best restaurant in the world. I wouldn’t have bugged you if I knew, I mean- my table, like- I’m not a critic..I guess I should have clarified cause of the notebook thing but they usually are more…low key? I thought? Do they usually just come and whip out a notebook? That would make it easier I think… But nonetheless I’m so so grateful to have been able to eat a meal that-“ she rambled on anxiously but he stops her.

“You talk when y’nervous” he said with a small smirk, lighting the cigarette between his lips and inhaling, leaning against the brick.

“Uh-” she stuttered, her face feeling hot suddenly. “Sorry- I’ve uh… i’ve been told” she chuckled a bit, taking a few steps towards him and leaning on the brick only 2 feet or so between them.

“It’s charming, y’smoke?” he offered her the pack with a red top, she looked down at it.

“I don’t- not- not yet anyways” she joked, crossing a slim arm over her waist. He couldn't help but realize how the action made her breasts more prominent.

“You’re a chef?” he asked, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“Yes! Yes- well.. Just graduated, not working anywhere yet- I’m going home soon to try and start my own catering thing…” she explained and he nodded.

“Where’d y’graduate from?” he asked, exhaling the smoke away from her direction.

“CIA - 2 weeks ago, Valedictorian actually, y’not the only chef around here with street cred” she joked and he chuckled.

“Really? Word. Thats sick, good job. Y’said y’re headed home? Where’s that?” he asked, taking another drag of his cigarette.

“Chicago! Can’t wait to get back, Hudson life is… not for me- I forgot how convenient public transportation was” she said.

He raised his brows in surprise, “Chicago huh? Thats my old home base.” he said

“I know! You’re actually… really famous did you know that? Like- they talk all about you during lectures, you’re the new golden child of the culinary world” she teased and he rolled his eyes playfully.

They’d been inching closer and closer without realizing throughout the whole conversation, she was now so close that she could see the barely there scar on his cheek, her focus locked on it. His gaze was locked on her plump lips and he was imagining how they’d feel around his cock.

“I do unfortunately - you’ll learn soon enough that praise means being a target in this industry.” He said

She bit her lip, meeting his striking blue eyes once again. “I really meant to tell you earlier was that sunflower dish was the best meal i’ve ever had. And i’m not just…sucking your dick because you’re you - I knew that before I knew you made it” she laughed a bit.

He followed suit, “Well if you want to- i’m not gonna say no.” he said and her eyes widened a bit, feeling her core pooling with heat at the idea. Of course he was half joking. It was so sudden and out there he would have never expected her to indulge him.

“I mean- here? What if your boss comes out?” she asked, a bit quieter as if she was trying to assure they’d not be caught.

He nodded towards the row of 12-wheeler trucks parked 50 or so feet away. “Haven’t moved in 6 weeks” he shrugged casually “Lead the way Chef” she motioned with her hand, a frisky smirk on her lips.

“Holy fuuuck” Carmy groaned, pushing his cock deeper into her tight hot mouth. “Y’like takin cock like this mmm? Y’like bein’ my little fuckin slut?” he muttered, thumbing away the warm tear that was gathering in the corner of her right eye. “So fuckin’ good f’me-” he growled, moaning at the wet gurgling noises emitting from her.

She swallowed around him, looking up at him with tear-filled dark lustful brown eyes, widening her jaw further and tonguing over the pulsing vein on the underside of his length, gently squeezing his thighs to urge him further.

“Y’want me t’fuck y’throat? Mmm? Dirty fuckin girl” he gathered her braids into his fist, wrapping them around his palm and roughly tugging her off.

She whined hotly, the sensation of his rough hand sending waves of pleasure through her being. “Please” she said wantingly, tonguing over his slit before wrapping her lips around the tip of his head in a sensual kiss.

He took his thumb, pulling her jaw open wide and thrusting into her mouth with a satisfied grunt. “Y’know-shhhit y’know what? I think this is the only way t’shut y’ass up? Mmm?” he inhales sharply as she pushed his foreskin back and spit on his exposed sensitive tip.

“Jesus fuckin-” he sharply inhaled through his teeth as she gently grazed her teeth over the sensitive head, his abs clenching in pleasure and hips quivering from the overstimulation “fuckin-h-aaaa-ahhh-mm-shhhhit-jesus fuckin christ” he whimpered, his head falling back against the metal with a sharp bang as she took the flesh into her mouth, flicking her tongue sharply over the weeping tip before smoothly sucking over the buzzing stimulation. He knew if she kept up the act he’d be filling her mouth with his seed within seconds.

“S-sooo fuckin filthy - y’want my cum in y’throat? Mmm? Little fuckin whore- h-holy-oh god- i-” he nearly suffocated her as he buried his cock further down her throat. He reached down, his fingers rubbing along his thick length buried in her warm tight throat.

“F-fuuuuuck- ah- oh shhh- mmm- thats it- thaaaaaat’s it- good fuckin girl” he grumbled, roughly and sloppily guiding her head in such a way that the noises being made if it weren’t her he would think theyre overdramatic and disgusting. He also didn’t know where the hell all of this talking was coming from.

Normally in the bedroom, he was quiet. Very quiet. The only way the women he was with knew he’d enjoyed himself was if he even came at all. Sex usually wasn’t about his own pleasure since in the presence of another he found it so hard to get off - it was more about giving him imagery that would help him later in regards to finishing.

“You are so fuckin good at that huh? You take my cock so well such a good fuckin girl” his jaw goes slack as she put her hands on his hips to steady him and slowly sinks her mouth all the way down to the hilt, her eyes shut in focus.

She gently rubbed her thumbs over his hips, swallowing around his length in a way that made whimpers fall past his lips he didn’t know he could make himself. “Holy shit y’fuckin- oh- ohhh fuck” he grunts as she takes one of her hands and begins massaging his balls and looking directly into his eyes, pulling off his length to breathe and gently pushing the foreskin back, kissing over the sensitive flesh with her plump lips.

“You can fuck my face- but deepthroating after a meal like that is pretty hard, id love if I can keep it down” she said, even with spit running down her chin, teary eyes, and swollen lips - she still looked adorable to him.

“Sorry- sorry” he muttered, loosening his grip on her hair “keep doin’ that fuck yesss” he breathed out as she swirled her tongue around his head. He thrust in and out of her mouth, gradually moving faster but being careful as to not slam into the back of her throat.

She stroked the bottom half of his length with her other hand, eyes closing and doing her best to swallow around him all the excess saliva that was dripping down her throat. She hollowed out her cheeks, looking up at him as she slowly and carefully sunk down once again, keeping her eyes locked on his.

“Mmm-shhhit-I’m fuckin-“ he groaned, his knees nearly going weak and head falling back with a thud. Blood roared in his ears, his hands shook slightly from the tension rolling off him in waves.

She nearly choked at the amount rolling down her throat. She pulled off slightly, swallowing - more like gulping, assuring to hollow her cheeks and swirl her tongue as she pulled off with a pop as to not waste any of the sweet salty mess.

“You- you- you are fuckin crazy” he breathed, looking down at her.

She wiped off her mouth, chin, and neck with a tissue she’d kept in her purse before saying “I’d say you’re crazy, “ she got off her knees, picking up the chefs coat he had thrown down for her to kneel on, to which she insided it out before she did so it wouldn’t show any dirt. “If I had that coat? It would never touch the floor” she shook it off carefully.

He quickly fixed his pants “he’s a friend it doesn’t matter I can always get a new one” he countered, putting the coat back on and buttoning it.

Her eyes widened “friends?! How the hell did you run into him?!” She asked.

“You- y’re into fashion ‘n shit?” He asked and she nodded enthusiastically

“Are you fucking kidding me?! Thom Browne is insane all his shit Is absolute fire. I wish I could afford one of his jackets like- it’s totally a dream wishlist kinda thing” she took some gum out of her purse.

“When do you uh…go back?” He asked.

“Tomorrow. Headed to Chicago on Wednesday” she said and he nods.

“Oh- yeah okay..It was uh…it was nice t’meet you” he said awkwardly “I should probably um..” he trailed off, clearing his throat nervously.

“Totally- yeah great to um…great to meet you too chef.” She nodded

“Could I um…” he rubs the back of his neck anxiously “could I maybe get y’r…” he trails off, cheeks pink with embarrassment.

“My number?” She asked, grabbing her phone out of her purse.

He nodded, cheeks bright red with embarrassment “yeah sorry-“ he mumbled

“Yeah- if I can get yours” she teased, clicking open the blank contact screen

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