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awritesthings1 · 4 months

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All The Things We Don't Say

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Female Reader

Summary: An anthology of your life with Tommy, from friends to strangers to lovers, and all the little moments in between.

Warnings: 18+, implied DV, substance abuse, childhood trauma, ptsd, overprotective tommy, swearing, brief smut, longfic oneshot, feminist themes (motherhood & being a wife in the 1920s).

ao3 link

Smash!

“Pick it up!”

Your daddy was a drunk. You remembered the fact since you could walk. He stayed home while the working men left for the factories, then disappeared in the late hours of the morning until his eventual return when the slam of the front door woke the household up. Mother used to hold you at night as she curled up in your bed. She was sick a lot. Always sniffing into the back of your neck when you were asleep. Sometimes the sleeve of your nightgown would get soaked while she muffled her hiccups.

She looked sad, too. In the morning, she kept the curtains drawn and stayed away from the outside world. She told you it was to keep nosey Mrs. Gretel away from her family affairs. But Mrs. Gretel had left Birmingham two months prior.

By seven years old, you were the 'man' of the house. You had gone to sleep one night, and when you awoke, your mother had vaporized into the air like a rabbit in a hat.

“She left because of you,” your father slurred at you.

You hated him.

She left behind her long-sleeve dresses, scarves, and wicker hats that covered nearly every inch of her skin. They were far too big for you then, but when your father came home at the end of the week with a stack of cash, you ran to your mother’s closet, which had remained untouched until then, to find only cobwebs. Gone. Every single one of her dresses. You looked out at the moon in those early hours of the morning and swore to it that when you were bigger, you would get him back so much worse.

And so you were left to clean up his smashed glass bottles and scrub the alcohol out of the gritty carpet. Your little hands struggled to pluck the glass from the floorboards. In a year’s time, they were covered in little scars.

On your tenth birthday, you decided you were grown enough to take matters into your own hands. When he was passed out on the floor from whatever he managed to fill his pipe with, you grabbed the small bottles he hid under a loose floorboard and poured them into the gutter at the back of your house.

You turned to run back to the door when the contents of the bottle were empty, but a ball almost tripped you over. You gripped your tattered skirt before you could lose your footing and snapped your head around with a fierce pout.

“That’s my ball,” pointed a young Thomas Shelby.

You put your small hands on your smaller hips. “You kicked it my way on purpose!”

You weren’t entirely sure, but you suspected it.

“Maybe I thought you were pretty,” he grinned.

You noticed his two front teeth were missing.

“Ewwww! I would never go out with you!” You squawked.

At ten years old, you knew better than that.

Seemingly unaffected by your distaste, he continued. “Do you live there?” He nodded to the house whose roof was falling apart.

“What’s it to you?” You frowned stubbornly, not wanting to admit that, yes, that was your house.

“The curtains are always drawn,” he answered, walking over to pick up his ball from your feet. He was the same height as you were at the time. “My brother Arthur said it’s haunted. He saw a ghost in the window once. He said it was a woman and that she starved to death.”

Your nose scrunched up. "Well, he’s a phony!”

You ran inside said house and slammed the door shut.

He kissed you down by the docks that winter. It was your first kiss, and a clumsy one at that, so you didn’t remember much of it.

By thirteen, you had given in and sold the rest of your mother’s belongings to support yourself. You hated yourself for it, and that nagging voice inside your head told you that you were no better than your father. Oh, and your father? Your father lost vision in his left eye from a bar fight. Too bad it wasn’t both.

Sometime later, a boy two years older than you saw your wandering hand in someone’s bag at the fair and threatened to teach you some manners ‘the hard way’. You bit anxiously on your nails and pleaded with him because he was bigger than most boys his age, when Tommy’s brother Arthur (who you’d seen hanging around the Garrison) came passing by and threatened to ‘toss him about’. The other boy, not all believing in Arthur’s temper, rushed forward, and the two ended up rolling in the dirt, but by then you were gone with a stolen pocket watch in your fist. Nearly two legs and an arm deep in poverty, some quick cash, or a hero complex? You’d take the penny.

At fourteen, a lady knocked on your door. It was a lady of the night who had come to inform your father that he had fathered a son with her. You were glad it was a boy. A girl wouldn’t have stood a chance in the slums of Birmingham. Life was hard, but Birmingham was harder. Your father had refused to listen to the young woman and shooed her off. You never saw her teary-eyed face again.

At fifteen, your father attempted to wash his hands of you by marrying you off to the highest bidder. There was no real auction, but just about anyone who suggested a handsome sum of money did the trick.

“His name is William,” you exhaled, kicking your legs over the edge of the dock.

Tommy laughed. “You won’t marry him.”

“What choice do I have, Tom?”

Your finances were getting tight, and the gloomy pressure to take up working at night like many young ladies was beginning to loom closer and closer. You hated being a woman. Boys would never have to worry about selling themselves to survive.

“I’ll put a gypsy curse on him,” he decided, squinting his eyes from the bright reflection dancing across the water.

You hit his shoulder.

“No, you won't, because then you’ll be cursing me.”

The severity of your situation began to dawn on Tommy. No amount of pestering Polly for change to spare would relieve you of your burden any longer.

“That’s it, then?” He gulped, shifting his glassy eyes to the harbor.

You sighed and followed his gaze.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’ll never have to see dad again, and William promised to take care of me.”

Tommy scoffed.

You frowned at him. “What?”

He shook his head.

“What! Tom—”

“Don’t marry him.”

You rolled your eyes. “Oh, here we go, why?”

“You know why.”

You were engaged to William on the eve of your seventeenth birthday. He was a very proper man and never dared to go any further than hooking an arm around yours on formal occasions. You were never attracted to his thin mustache nor the thick lenses he wore. In fact, he was incredibly awkward at social occasions, always checking his pocket watch and avoiding eye contact with whichever circle he stood in.

Tommy began to fade out of your life around that time. Margaret—a lady who had taken you on to help with the sewing of her family’s tailoring business—told you that Tommy was spotted arm in arm with another girl that week. You expected to feel jealous, but you felt nothing. You knew love would never be your right. Love was for the more fortunate.

You spent that year learning how to be a wife. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too different from what you did as a child—cooking and cleaning up like you did when your father came home, that is. It was comforting to have a routine in place. It meant finality—no one walking in and out of your life as they pleased, and certainly no more growling stomachs. Perhaps being a wife was a skill your mother never learned. You were grateful for William’s mother, who seemed to be more than enthusiastic to show you the reigns.

After a year-long engagement, you caught your fiancé, William, locked in a compromising position with another man.

“Oh,” was all you got out before leaving his house.

You lacked the special ingredient that marriages needed: love.

You sat down at the fountain across the street. William and his lover’s silhouette were visible behind the blinds he had drawn on the second floor, which peered over the sidewalk. You watched their shadows fluster their feathers around the room like headless geese, and for a moment your head surfaced above water and laughter frothed out between your sealed lips. Perhaps Birmingham made you a little mad.

You didn’t go through with the marriage. You suspected William was relieved.

That week, your father left. You never knew whether he left on his own accord or just never made it home one night. Either way, you never really cared to find out.

With nothing left to lose, you knocked on the Shelby family’s door at Watery Lane. Finn appeared around the other side of the door a moment later.

“Is Tommy home?”

Finn nodded, spinning on his heel to alert his brother. When Tommy did appear, his shoulders were tensed. Disheveled hair never looked so stylish on him. When you saw his suspenders (which were hastily thrown on), you wanted to ask who he expected to be at the door that he planned to answer dressed in such fashion but then thought better of it. He peered down at you, then checked over his shoulder before ushering you inside and up to his bedroom.

“It’s… smaller than I thought,” you landed on, taking in his room.

After all these years, you had never stepped foot into the Shelby home. You weren’t the type of person to come door-knocking.

You turned around to face Tommy after hearing him click the lock on his door.

“Are you hurt?" were the first words he had spoken to you in a year.

“No.” You pressed your lips together, eyeing everything from the bed to the view out the window.

Silence followed closely after.

“Then why are you here?” Tommy sighed.

Your vision began to blur then. “I don’t know,” you said honestly, trying to stop your bottom lip from trembling.

Desperately, you pushed your hair back and straightened up, attempting to hold yourself together. You must have looked like a puppet being held together by a string, given how poor you looked.

Tommy’s boots pad across the wooden floor. “You love me?”

Did that word truly exist? How could you answer if you never knew what it meant to love?

You don’t meet his eyes. He licked his lips, pushing your head up to meet his with his thumb. His eyebrows rose expectantly.

“I don’t know what to do, Tom,” you breathed, avoiding his question. “I’m all alone now. No William, no father…”

His lips parted, and you watched with fascination as the cogs turned in his head. “Yes… that is a problem." His breath fanned over your face.

You gagged, a reaction you yourself had not expected, before rushing to his door, only to remember that, yes, he had locked it, before turning to the nearest silver bucket in the corner to empty your guts.

The first thing you heard when you caught your breath was, “are you pregnant?”

No, but when you stand so close to me and I can smell the cigarettes you smoke and your freshly washed skin, I can imagine a future where we are married, and I see your face growing more disappointed as we age together because you married a woman who never knew how to be a mother to your children nor a wife who knew to tend to you with affection by your bedside when you’re ill.

“No,” you choked, spitting out the vile taste in your mouth. “We never did anything.”

You wanted him to know that. You wanted him to think that you never let William touch you because you never loved him, not because William wasn’t interested in girls.

A moment later, Tommy sat beside you on the floor and quietly combed your hair away from your wobbling lips.

“So, if you’re not pregnant and you don’t love me, why are you here?”

You wiped your mouth with the back of your hand. How were you supposed to answer that? After letting your guts loose in his room, you thought he would surely have booted you out the door.

A knock came on the door: “Tommy?”

“A minute, Finn!” Tommy growled at the door, refusing to back away from your trembling frame.

You were so hungry. Margaret had to cut back your hours ever since her husband fell ill. She spent more time by his bedside than keeping the store open, which meant you were making less than usual. The imminent closing of the store hung over your head like a taunting crow, gouging your insides like you were Prometheus. Birmingham your chains, a woman your fate, and the bird your punishment for thinking you deserved more.

“I should go.” You shivered at the draft inching towards your skin from the open window.

Tommy’s intense gaze stuttered, falling to your lap, where you picked at the dead skin around your nails. He cleared his throat, fishing out the key from his pocket. Although it was dull and muted from the years, it gleaned brightly in your eyes as if it were the reward you came for. Flushed, you grabbed it out of his hands without sparing a glance. Electricity sparked in those precious seconds, igniting a deadly fire in your belly.

“You’re cold." Tommy flinched at your touch.

You retreated as soon as the key slid into the hole and unlocked with a click. In your haste, you left the most valuable thing you owned there in his room.

Your heart.

The months went by, and summer arrived. The stories your mother told you left you expecting a bright gleam of air that would wash over the streets and paint each tree and every patch of grass a frighteningly bright green that would even encourage grumpy Mrs. Gretel to come out to preen her stubborn roses that would just not grow. Birmingham left less to be desired. The summer days never came, and that persisting bitter bog thickened, albeit with slightly less rain. There were gray clouds, smoke from the factories, and a shivering north westerly, which pushed said clouds at breakneck speed as if they had somewhere to be. You looked to the sky one day and said a prayer for blue breezes and sweltering sun, but the sky was empty.

Sometime later, men marched the streets armed with guns in their ‘dashing’ uniforms. A war, they said, a great one. Queues lined the street for the post offices and grocers. Rain rivaled the bustle of the city. What did it feel like to love someone so much as to stand in the pouring rain next to the gutter? You wanted that kind of love. Not the love you could only give yourself because even you didn’t want your own love.

One of the soldiers decorated in medals stood on a crate at the port, yelling something supposedly inspiring that captured the attention of many young men. The words honorable and patriotic were tossed in there like a delectable salad, enticing them in the way farmers held a carrot to a pig’s snout.

You pitied their mothers. Their daughters were married off, and then their sons were swooning over the idea of dying. Birmingham was filthy, rotting, and disgusting. You needed to leave.

You kissed Margaret goodbye on the cheek one Tuesday morning. Ever since your pockets turned out empty, you had been working as a bedside nurse for her ill-stricken husband. They were good to you, and they were probably the only people you could consider family.

She patted your cheek and said, "you're doing good to serve this country.”

You hadn’t had the heart to tell her you were leaving because the city was marring your flesh, so you slipped her the sugarcoated lie of wanting to join the war effort so that you might help others who were bedridden, just like her husband.

At the train station, you stood with your suitcases held tightly in both arms. You had to set one down to hold onto your hat as a train full of men waving their caps out the window pulled into the station. Some children weaved between the crowd, wagging a newspaper above their heads, hoping to make a quick penny. To your side, women wept for their brothers, husbands, and lovers.

“Who are you wishing off?” asked an elderly woman who was clutching her cane.

“Oh, I’m not. I’m boarding the next train.”

She laughed, and you wondered how old your mother would be now. Would she have grown wrinkles and settled into a deeper laugh like this woman?

“My dear, you have a bright imagination if you think they will let a woman on any of these trains.”

A sudden anger filled your blood. “Why not?”

“These men are heading straight for London, where they will be shipped away to France to fight,” the woman explained as if it were any other day.

“I’ll catch the next train then.”

She shook her head, and her frail hand curled tighter around her cane. “They’ve stopped the trains so they can transport soldiers to London.”

You frowned. “Then how will I leave Birmingham?”

You’ll never forget her dismissive laughter.

“My dear, you won’t.”

Men boarded the train, clapping each other on the back with a wink and a laugh. When a line of men on the platform thinned, the train whistled, and you looked over just in time to see Polly, Ada, and little Finn standing with their hands crossed over their hearts as they waved to the train.

No. It wasn’t possible.

But it was because you caught the gleam of the razors sewn into their peaky caps. Tommy, Arthur, and John all stood aboard the train, sticking their heads out and waving to Polly and Ada with a grin that wrung your stomach like a wet cloth.

Those countless daydreams you spun, the intricate webs you wove, began breaking down to thin fibers. In one pathway, you stayed there in his room and told him the truth you always denied yourself. You loved him. In another, you stood next to Polly, close to tears, as you begged him to come home safely. There was a resounding click in that moment as your breath stuttered. You had been the person who wiped away those futures, thinking it was nothing but an annoying spiderweb. Oh, how wrong you were!

“Tommy!” You left your suitcases behind and stepped around the old woman as you ducked under hugs and tearful goodbyes.

“Tommy!” You cried again with the gusto of someone who certainly shouldn’t be as concerned as they were considering you left him in his room that day.

Thankfully, his eyes eventually found yours as you pushed through the last line of people. You stood there and stomached all your regrets head-on. It was funny how, up until that moment, you managed to squash every seed of doubt. Why was it that you only realized what you had when it was slipping out of reach?

He never called your name back. He just stared at you blankly as the train pulled away, unlike you, who clung to the image of his frame even as the train disappeared from sight and the crowd began to disperse. You stood there unblinking, hoping to soak up the last of him before you forgot the intensity of his eyes or the humming rumble of his voice. Because the idea of something you held dearly becoming a memory meant that it could as easily be forgotten, and that terrified you. Your eyes were watering now, against your best wishes.

You overheard Polly ushering Finn and Ada off. Finn rushed home without protest, but Ada stopped in her tracks when she saw you hunched over your knees in tears. She smiled weakly before chasing Finn home. It was then that Polly’s shadow approached your huddled frame. She didn’t say anything, and for a moment, you weren’t sure if she expected you to stand and apologize for being such a mess. That’s when a penny clattered to the ground beside you. She squeezed your shoulder once before disappearing.

You kissed that penny as if Tommy would feel the power of it across the country, then ran back to Margaret’s, having forgotten your suitcases.

“Oh…” She exclaimed, slapping her tea towel on the counter when you walked into the kitchen. “You missed your train?”

Dread made your stomach tender and your breath short.

“I’m enrolling in the Red Cross.”

Throughout the war, you thought of Tommy every day until your stomach lurched. Would it have worked if you had stayed? Would you both have grown old together instead of subjecting yourself to the spray of dirt when a bomb went off nearby?

A day ago, your supply rations never came. It wasn’t like hunger was anything new, but when your mind was too focused on surviving the perilous weather, it was hard to save other lives. You made work with what little supplies you had left. The morphine went stint within hours of its arrival, and the cries of pained soldiers filled the medical tent all night. You did what you could, wiped sweat from their foreheads, and wrote letters to their mothers and lovers with what supplies you could scavenge. Some were written on cardboard from shell packaging, others on torn pages from the bibles they kept over their hearts. Pens were useless—the ink ran in the rain—so you scribbled everything down in pencil.

Before you left for France, you were warned of the bullets. No one ever warned you about the shrapnel, nor the bombs or grenades. They shattered soldiers’ bones beyond repair and left bodies unrecognizable. There wasn’t much you could do when most of their flesh was missing.

Keeping faith became an impossible task. Supplies were depleted, and nurses were dejected. Sally, who had been writing home for news of her brother, recently had her letters returned with the black stamp. Death—return to sender. She spent only an hour sitting on a trunk, letting her tears fall, before she got back to work. Grief privileged those with time, something no one could afford in these conditions.

Then it came—the day Arthur Shelby was carried in on a stretcher. You were making your rounds around the beds when a truckload of yelling men pooled through the entrance of the tent.

“Nurse!” They all yelled, some limping, others setting down stretchers of men on the dirt between the filled beds.

You and two other nurses dropped everything and ran over to attend to the wounded. They were all covered head to toe in dirt, groaning and clutching limbs that were twisted the wrong way. One in particular coughed and huffed while he fought against hands, which were fruitlessly pushing him back down on the stretcher.

“Let me go!” He yelled, wrestling against an older nurse.

“It’s alright, Mary. I’ll handle this one,” you patted her shoulder as you swapped places.

You dunked a washcloth into a bucket of water to wipe away the dirt in his eyes. “Calm down; you're safe here,” you said, starting your usual script of reassurances.

When the striking blue eyes squinted up at you, your blood ran cold. You froze before taking his head in both your hands, despite his protests. “Arthur? Arthur, it’s me!”

He loosened his grip on your wrist. “Huh?”

“It’s me! Where’s Tommy and John?”

He spat blood and gritted his teeth. “Fucking hell, where’s the whiskey?”

You laughed despite the smell of blood encompassing the tent. You quickly fetched the alcohol you had been using to clean wounds and pressed it to his lips. You weren’t sure if it was whiskey or not, but you reasoned he was in too much pain to be able to tell. He drank it with a groan of pleasure. You didn’t try to snatch the bottle away as he emptied it down his palette; you just sat and grinned at the way he suckled it like a newborn baby while you cleaned away his cuts.

“I’ve never been happier to see you, Arthur.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, his lips still wrapped around the bottle.

You tried to stay by his side for as long as you could before the second wave of patients came tumbling through the flaps of the tent. One of them lost their grip on the stretcher, and the patient went sliding into the dirt headfirst.

“Fuck!” They all swore, abandoning the stretcher to drag the limp man further into the makeshift hospital.

You rushed to help when a hand gripped the back of your neck. You yelped in pain as your hair got caught in a fingernail when they turned you to face them.

And there he was: Tommy Shelby, covered in a thick layer of dirt, heaving for air.

“Nurse! Nurse!” Voices cried for you, but between the ringing in your ears and the wrath in Tommy’s blue eyes, you were frozen in place.

“The fuck are you doing here, eh?” He yelled over the anguished men.

You suddenly felt stupid standing there in your Red Cross uniform.

“I was looking for you, I—”

His dirty hands cupped your cheeks—something you were painfully aware of from the uncomfortable itch from the mud on your flushed skin—and pulled your forehead to his.

“You think this is some fantasy?” He squinted. “You think there’s any fucking moonlight to kiss under here, eh?” He spat.

His eyes held that haunted look you had seen on many soldiers that passed through the medical tent. Your eyes watered. Perhaps it was from the humidity and dirt being kicked up as nurses and patients scuffled around, not because you could hardly recognize the man in front of you. The blood smeared above his eyebrow worried you, so you reasoned that he was mad because it had been leaking into his eyes. Dutifully, you reached to wipe it with the back of your hand. He grabbed your wrist harshly, bringing it down to your side. He was in shock; you scolded yourself.

“Where’s John and Arthur?” Tommy swallowed, flexing his hands.

You led him to Arthur, who had been left in his corner while the nurses attended to more serious cases. It hurt watching the brothers reunite after their ordeal, so you left them alone no matter how much you feared them being discharged before your return. After all, everything you ever wanted sat in that corner, but it would be selfish to coddle Tommy all to yourself. Still, you couldn’t help sparing a glance when you walked up and down the tent, attending to patients.

Later that night, he came to you under the candlelight of your tent. He cleared his throat upon entry. You were lying face-up on your cot when he cleared his throat and peeled back the entrance to enter. The candlelight painted the mountain peaks of his face in a dull amber and the valleys in a frightening shadow. You sat up, pulling the thick cover over your shift.

Tommy kneeled next to you, resting on the heels of his boots. He licked his chapped lips and itched his nose. “You don’t belong here.”

Your grip on the cover loosened. “Huh?”

Nothing prepared you for when he swung his brooding stare towards you. He exhaled loudly before running a hand over his face.

“You should have stayed in Birmingham.” He said it like a warning.

“And done what?”

Vulnerability never looked good on Tommy. His head hung and his fingers itched at the back of his head—a tick you used to love; now you weren’t so sure. Because your Tommy was never afraid, but this man in front of you was alarmingly tense despite the clear efforts to mask it.

What have they done to you, Tom?

Under the dim light of your tent, you barely recognized him. A stranger’s eyes were blown wide in a frightening state of shock, something most soldiers mirrored. War washed out the sweet blue pair you knew, refitting them for a steely weapon. You hated seeing him like this, so still, so unsteady, cocooned into the corner as if afraid to take up space.

You feared you looked no better. Having worked till the point of exhaustion, you usually found yourself awakening against a wooden crate or trunk to the cries of patients who demanded your attention despite your body not having the strength to stand. Today you had been lucky and found yourself crawling distance to your private tent when your knees started wobbling and your head lulling.

The wooden reinforcing of your private tent fought in vain to shelter your bodies from the elements; it still flapped and whipped about, sometimes rocking your cot. Yet Tommy remained still like those life-size stone statues you’d find outside an important building, brooding at the dirt and locked in an internal battle. You shifted to the edge of your makeshift bed and leaned close enough that you saw how the top buttons of his dirtied uniform were missing and most of his clothes were torn.

His arm, which was breaking out in goosebumps, lay heavily across his knee so that he could rest his forehead there limply. He looked in a bad enough condition that you feared the possibility of him succumbing to the wasteland threatening him outside your tent. You wrapped your arms around the scruff of his hair and pulled his face into your stomach, where he could hide from the terrible world. On instinct, his arms wound around your waist, and you felt his warm exhale against your skin through the thin fabric of your slip.

His tin water bottle clanged against the satchel he wore, which made you wonder if he had any time to rest at all if he still had all his equipment tied to his uniform.

“I didn’t…” His voice was muffled by your slip. He cleared his throat again, shaking his head.

When he dropped the thought, you spoke up. “Have you eaten?”

He slapped your thigh haphazardly. “No, do you have a cigarette?”

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, instead gently pushing him away so you could kneel beneath your bed and fish a cigarette from your satchel. You pinched one from its tin case, then thought better of it and tossed it on Tommy’s lap. Gratefully, he collected one from the case and lit it with a nearby candle. You watched his chest rise and fall as he took an especially deep drag. His eyes shut as the nicotine rushed to his head.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he muttered under his breath.

“How are you here, Tommy? One of the night nurses should’ve been on watch.”

“Oh,” smoke puffed out of his mouth, and he raised his eyebrows, “there is.”

“Then how—”

“I had to see you.”

The butterflies in your stomach dove. The blue in his eyes appeared translucent as they hazed over like a ghost. His shoulders were slumped dejectedly, and he had a hand pushing through his greasy, unwashed hair to relieve his neck from the weight of his thoughts.

He pointed to you then, with the cigarette nursed between his fingers. “I need to know why you changed your mind.”

“About what, Thomas?”

His voice slurred and slipped into a deeper register from the lack of sleep. "Why you came back. Why you came to France.” Tommy shook his head lazily. “You expect me to believe you had a sudden change of heart? What? You a patriot now?” An amused exhale curled out while he took another drag. “Well I don’t believe it.”

You began shivering despite the way your body flushed.

“How’s Arthur?” You tried to avert the conversation.

“Bloody drunk off his ass.”

“And you?”

Tommy held your stare and swallowed dryly. “Trying.”

“You can go join him if you wish.”

He looked at the entrance of your tent as if he were weighing his options, then shook his head and took another drag before clearing his throat. “It’s different now.”

Naïvely, you sank to the ground beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be.”

He sighed.

“I wish that were true.”

The next time you saw Tommy, you were working a shift at the hospital. After the war, you received a medal for your efforts, which easily got you a job in Birmingham. You pleaded with them to send you to any other hospital—London, Manchester, Liverpool—you didn’t care. Anywhere but Birmingham.

“You should be honored to work for me!” Exclaimed the head nurse at Birmingham Hospital, who didn’t seem too pleased with your distaste for the city.

You thought the job would be the final nail in the coffin, but you surprisingly got along well with the head nurse once you had put your animosity aside. So much so, she offered to lease you a room upstairs from hers.

Then came that dreaded night where you were finishing the filing of some documents when a patient was being rushed in. Your ears perked up, and you looked through the blinds of the office to see a man being rushed by. Something small and round had fallen off the stretcher while the nurses paid no attention, pushing him around the corner and down towards the operating theater. Curious, you exited the office.

And there on the ground was one of those peaky caps Tommy and his brothers used to wear. You knew this because you picked it up and nearly cut yourself on the blade that was sewn into the seam. You spent the next hour gnawing on your nails. Your imagination sparked ideas about the beaten man who was lying in an operating room two doors down in surgery. Was it Tommy? Arthur? John? The shadows under your eyes darkened at the thought. No, it was probably some other Peaky Blinder. The Shelby brothers were too careful. Still, you knocked over your coffee in a mad dash to the bathroom, where you heaved up your dinner.

You volunteered to stay until the morning, but the head nurse on duty for the night refused and sent you home. You didn’t sleep at all that night.

The next morning, you arrived early and made a beeline for the emergency ward. You grabbed the admission form and scanned the patient list. There were only two emergency patients who were listed under the final hour of your shift, a woman and a man, which made it easier to narrow it down to the man who was admitted at quarter to midnight in ward four, room seven.

When you peaked through the crack in the door, you knew you had been worried for a reason. Tommy lay under the covers, battered and bruised, with a swollen eye and a nasty scar where he had reportedly received surgery for trauma to the head.

You slipped inside quietly and closed the door. Tommy’s eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open, stealing miniscule amounts of air into his lungs. He looked as good as a ghost.

“Tommy…” You clutched his peaky cap (which you meant to return) between your fingers.

He didn’t move an inch, so you set the cap down by his bedside table, carefully watching the rise and fall of his chest.

What have they done to you, Tom?

On the second week, he woke up while you were cleaning the windowsill. He coughed, and you whipped around in shock.

“Nurse?” He asked hoarsely, blinking away the blinding light.

You rushed to his side, tears bursting like the fountain you passed on your way to work.

“Don’t move,” you urged when he tried to sit up.

“I have to get to London,” he slurred, only half awake.

You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you. You weren’t upset that he didn’t recognize you.

“Tommy… it’s me.”

He shrugged your hand off his shoulder with a hiss. “Fucking hell.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

“Please don’t move; I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” You couldn’t hide the way your voice broke.

He looked up at you, then, through bloodshot blue eyes. You wished you knew what was going through his head. Happy or sad?

“Am I dead?”

“No,” you smiled weakly as a tear fell.

“Can I have a smoke then?”

“I don’t know how to love, Tommy!”

“Yeah? Yeah? That’s bullshit! Why do you keep coming back then?” He pinched your chin, glaring furiously into your eyes. “Eh?”

He stood so close that he blocked the light from the chandelier, which mournfully hung from the ceiling. You shivered in his shadow.

“I shouldn’t have come tonight.”

“But you did!” He accused, pointing in your face.

“It was a mista—”

“You fucking did!”

“Tommy!”

“I’ve had it! If you want to leave, then fucking leave; otherwise, don’t stand there all righteous waving empty threats over my head because I know you won’t leave.” He shook his head with a wild look in his eye. “No… You won’t leave. You won’t leave because you love me. You keep coming back,” he pointed matter-of-factly.

Tommy’s eyebrows danced between being terribly furrowed and alarmingly raised during his passionate monologue. It was rare for him to emit so much emotion these days. The war changed men, and Tommy was no exception. A chilling stillness framed his presence, which even you weren’t excused from. No more laughter, no more dreams of working with horses, because he was above all that now, wasn’t he? It was ambition that ground his teeth together and hollowed his eyes. Still, you couldn’t forget that the anger came from vulnerability, because it took a lot for someone to get under Thomas Shelby’s skin.

You moved to grab your purse, to make good on his word, but he halted your movement by grabbing your shoulders, roughly at first, before loosening his grip. You softened at his frantic demeanor. He was scared—oh, so afraid of you walking out that door again. But how could you ever explain it to him? You were never born for love. You would never know how to love him properly the way wives were supposed to because what you felt for Tommy was sickeningly deep. So much so that the mere impression of him sealed off your ribcage and ruined any chance of your heart beating for any other soul, so much so that you carried the weight of him in your bones because you could never shake him off.

When you looked back at life, all you saw was the absence of love. You used to imagine yourself growing up and falling in love with a handsome stranger, then getting married in a proper white dress to go live in your proper house. But when you looked in the mirror, you saw a ghost. The pathway of your life was laid out before your eyes once, and what you saw didn’t match the reflection. The man you were supposed to marry couldn’t even look at you, even if you cleaned and cleaned and cleaned until your fingerprints turned white and pasty.

Because what it all came down to was simple. You never got to become the person you envisioned. Instead, you were cursed to live as a blank slate and be consistently reminded of what you were supposed to be and of who you were: no one.

Tommy exhaled in a quick huff, pressing his forehead to yours so that he saw you clearer, without all the tension and bullshit in the way.

“Here it comes, Tommy.” You took a shaky breath. “I love you, but I could never be the perfect wife to you, and I would be a terrible mother.”

There, in all its ugly colors and shades, you hung yourself with the truth.

He shook his head as if he too couldn’t believe your words.

“Fuck’s sake! Forget about all that." His eyes watered out of frustration, but he was still puffing in anger. “I need you. You. Not some whore.”

You bit your lip to muffle the god-forsaken cry ready to erupt from the volcanoes you suddenly found roaring in your stomach. An earthquake overtook your hands the more you fought the inevitable eruption. You grabbed both his hands to stop yours from shaking.

“I have to be cursed; there’s no other way!”

“No!”

“My life slips through my fingers like grains of sand—”

“You’re not cursed!”

“And I can’t stop it, Tommy!”

“You’re not fucking cursed, and I’ll tell you why." Tommy cut you off. He leaned in, licking his lips, which had turned dry from all the shouting, and squeezed your hands. “Because my ancestors charmed dogs with their magic, they didn’t scare little girls with curses,” he paused. “But you… You waved a hand over my head, and now I’m no better than a dog.”

He closed the space between you, pressing his forehead against yours, and stroked both your cheeks, wiping at your tears. You held him there in a meek attempt at reciprocation.

You wished the world were ending so then you could grab Tommy’s hand and say, ‘I’m ready, Tom. The world is ending, so let’s kiss and love each other under the flames without any fear because the world is ending.’

But you were never good at expressing yourself with words, so you sealed it with a kiss, hoping he could taste the unspoken words on your lips the same way you tasted the tears. He responded in earnest, gripping you roughly by the scruff of your neck to seal the promise laden between your lips; no more running.

It was just your luck that you would bump into your ex-fiancé, William, while visiting a bar in London with Ada. You were buzzing from the warmth of three sweet liquors and whatever else Ada insisted you try, and everything was starting to seem a little funny by the time he approached you.

He engaged in pleasantries, swishing his wine around the glass and sniffing it occasionally, like many pompous older men tended to do. There was only so much smiling you could afford before you caught your reflection in the freshly wiped bar and realized how poorly your acting skills were. Ada was no help, muttering something about finding a phonebooth and then slipping into the belated and boozed crowd. It was then that the supposed nectar in your glass began to taste like the cleaning products—that nose-scrunching stench. Thankfully, William was too involved in some tangent to notice you muffle a gag into your palm.

The dazzling hum in your ears muffled out all his words. In your drunken state, William appeared to be more confident than what you remembered, but you were unable to decipher whether it was from a change of heart or if he was trying to fall back in your good graces. Otherwise, you were blinded by the roaring bustle of the bar and the delicious swell of music that seemed to reverberate across your being.

Growing a little bored with William’s story, your attention wandered over his shoulder, still being sure to nod every now and then as if you were deeply pondering his words. Not far away from his side, a man seemed to linger—a man who was careful not to reach your eye. You must have laughed a little harder than usual because William turned sharply to the man at his side, gave him a quick once-over, then returned his attention to you, but by then it was too late, and you knew exactly what William’s relationship was with this man and where William’s confidence had come from.

“You’ll make a fine wife and a finer mother someday,” William quickly added.

You cursed the witch inside you, who laughed from her stomach and used his shoulder to steady herself. Once upon a time, that was all you longed to hear, but now, with a half-spilt martini in hand, you couldn’t care less. Both of you had found happiness despite your unconventional circumstances, and there was no more to it. You could close that chapter without any loose threads.

A little drunk, you thanked him, disappeared, and never thought of him again.

“I can’t do it, Ada,” you stressed, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the baby in your arms.

Motherhood came rumbling into your life like a rusty engine spitting out oil. ‘Instinctual’, the mothers down the lane from Arrow House had said, ‘it’s like your body has been preparing for it your whole life.’ How awful, you thought, and by the time one of them finished speaking about their experience with their first, your nose was so scrunched in disgust that you would need an iron to flatten out the wrinkles. It wasn’t until now that you longed to be in their shoes, because nothing came naturally to you.

“He’ll latch eventually; he’s just a little fussy,” Ada reassured.

“Is it supposed to hurt?”

“It’s perfectly normal.”

Then, after an hour of rubbing your sons back on the verge of tears, he finally began feeding from you. Ada soothed your back the whole time and cooed softly to calm both you and your unruly boy. Sometimes she brought Karl. He would obediently sit on her lap, playing with his wooden horse, while your little Charles fussed.

One time in the early morning, when you were up attempting to feed Charles, Tommy rushed in alert with disheveled hair and sunken eyes.

“Sorry,” you mouthed, deflated your hardworking husband had been disturbed from his sleep.

He ran his hands over his face and sighed. You mistook his action for frustration and desperately tried to hush your baby. Tommy moved over to the rocking chair where you sat, trying to feed little Charles in your arms.

“Don’t be sorry,” he whispered into the crook of your neck. “How is he?”

You flushed under the moonlight, suddenly embarrassed that your husband had caught you in this vulnerable position with the top of your slip peeled down. Your exposed skin hissed when he pressed a kiss against your pulse.

“I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Tommy inhaled sharply against your neck before resting his chin on your shoulder to peer down at Charles. Charles had settled since Tommy walked into the room, acutely aware of his father as his little hands made a grabbing motion for him. Diligently, Tommy relieved your arms of Charles and cradled him close to his chest. Within minutes, the little baby was gurgling happily and blinking in a way that suggested sleep was on the horizon after all.

Your husband didn’t dare make any sudden noise as he gently set Charles in his cradle. Once he was surely asleep, Tommy guided you up from the rocking chair and into your shared bedroom.

“See?” you hissed, still maintaining a soft voice, “he only wants you.”

Tommy wouldn’t hear any of it, pulling you into his arms as he sat on the edge of the mattress. Your slip was still pooled around your hips, so he took the opportunity to plant a kiss above your breasts, where your heart was.

“He loves you,” he drawled in that husky voice of his. “I know he does because I do.”

Your head ached, but you couldn’t help the way your body reacted to his words and touch. Tommy’s wandering hands teased the silk fabric that clung to your hips as you felt his nose trail down to your breast, where he kissed one of your aching nipples delicately. Suddenly hot, you hummed in delight, the back of his shorn scalp pleasant beneath your nails. A grunt, bathed in that musk of his devours your senses. Inhaling sharply, he took the bud between his full lips, sucking, licking, and nibbling gently while his hands explored further down. Your head lulled back from the pleasure, gasping and withering under his skilled tongue.

The next thing you knew, Tommy was tugging the rest of your silk slip off and reminding you of just how much he loved you.

“Charles! Come here!” Tommy called.

Your little boy loved to play in the backyard of Arrow House. Much like his father, Charles adored horses. Big ones, small ones, black ones, white ones—but most of all, he favored his Shetland pony. Tommy had brought it for Charles before he could even walk. He said something about it being important for his son to be raised around horses from a young age. And while you didn’t necessarily disagree, it still stressed you out to hold your baby so close to such a large, muscular animal. You knew the Arabian breeds spooked easily, so you steered clear of them and were able to keep Tommy and Charles happy.

But now he had grown up so fast and was able to run around on his own two legs, climb trees, and bruise his knees on the way down. The sun beat lovingly on the apples of his cheeks as he dirtied his trousers, kneeling by the fence to feed his Shetland (affectionately named Biscuit) hand-picked grass through the gaps.

“Charles! We’re leaving!” You called when he ignored his father.

Stubbornly, Charles spun around to pout his lip and cross his arms. He glared at you as threateningly as a five-year-old could. You bit your lip to hide your smile because he really did look like a little Tommy with those big blue eyes. It would only be a matter of time before he perfected his father’s stare. With a sigh, you shifted your daughter into Tommy’s arms before approaching Charles, who was picking angrily at the grass.

You reached a hand out toward him, "let's go.”

“No!”

“All right,” you said decisively, spinning around, “Ruby will have all the fun then.”

“No!” cried your little boy.

You stuck a hand up in surrender and started walking back to Tommy. “No, it’s all right.”

“No, no no no!” Came his protest, chasing behind you as the gravel crunched beneath his boots.

You paid no attention to him, keeping your eyes trained ahead, silently relieved that your ploy worked. Tommy watched on in amusement while Ruby suckled on her thumb, curiously watching her brother storm closer.

“You hear that, Ruby? We’re going to spoil you,” a short smile played on Tommy’s face as he adjusted her so that she sat comfortably on his hip.

“And me!” Charles added and gave his best pout.

“No, Charles, you said you didn’t want to go,” you reminded him, raising your eyebrows.

“I do! I do!”

“Hmm,” you thought aloud, and held a finger to your chin while looking to the sky in exaggerated contemplation. “Very well, but only if you get in daddy’s car right this instant.”

He climbed into the backseat of the Bentley without further fuss.

When all the bags were neatly packed in the back for the day’s festivities, Tommy came around your side to sit Ruby on your lap. Quickly, he leaned in to kiss you and pinch your cheek, which swelled into a glowing grin.

He smiled back and whispered low enough for only you to hear, “got him wrapped around your finger, eh?”

You laughed. “Him and a few other Shelby’s I know of.”

The thundering sound of music could be heard from outside the theater on the corner of Old Pauls. Inside, patrons mused between champagne, dancing, and making a display of their wealth by bidding on little trinkets. It was one of the many charity galas Tommy had to attend because of his new move into politics. Usually, you enjoyed dressing for those sorts of things, but tonight you simply weren’t feeling up to it. Maybe it was the drape of your dress not sitting right or the new leather shoes that still needed breaking in.

Your shimmering smile faded into the crowd as you snuck through the back door in your satin bordeaux dress. Old Pauls sat perched above the cemetery it was named after. Conveniently across the street from the buzz of the theater, it was airily quiet and stuck out from the rest of industrial Birmingham. Your heels clacked across the pavement as you wandered up and down the garden, glimpsing at stone angels and silver plaques. All you had to light your path were the streetlights and the moon.

Your diamond wedding ring twinkled under the stars as you stopped to trace a name. It was the same as your mother's, but with a different last name. Still, you always wondered what happened to her. Had she gotten married to another man and taken his name? You expected to shiver at the idea, but you found that thinking of her no longer unnerved you. She packed up the title of mother when she left you all alone in that cramped house.

Light spilled out onto the pavement across the street when the entrance to the theater swung open. A few men flew down the steps and split off in different directions. Thinking it odd, you remained crouched until they disappeared around their respective corners. That’s when you saw Tommy exit through the same doors, throwing a cigarette and wiping at his brow while he looked up and down the street. Quickly, you stood and waved your arm to get his attention. When he noticed, he stormed down the steps and stalked across the street and through the gates of Old Pauls over to you.

“I needed some air,” you spoke up before he could get a word in.

His eyes wildly flickered back and forth from yours in a frenzy. Under the moonlight, they looked almost translucent, and, save for a ghost of blue, his pupils were wide.

“Why the bloody hell are you out here, eh?” He demanded, gently shaking your head between his hands for emphasis while his eyebrows rose expectantly.

“It’s quieter.”

When he tilted his head to the sky and exhaled, your stomach dropped at the sight of blood. Your ears, which had been tuning out the music, flinched when a shrill cry from a woman rang out the theater doors. The music was gone, now replaced with screams as all the patrons rushed out, tripping over each other like it were a race. You turned back to Tommy, now as worried as the others.

“What the hell happened? Are you hurt?” You urged, gripping his white collar, now red, to inspect where the blood was coming from.

“Not mine,” he cleared his throat, grabbing the hand on his collar to tug you down the street.

The frame of your world stretched a little wider, like light pouring in through open shutters. Car doors slammed, and drivers honked at the agitated crowd who ran this way and that across the road.

“Where’s the fucking ambulance?” Shouted a man who took no care to avoid bumping into you.

You stumbled back, your hand slipping from Tommy’s on impact. Rage flickered across his features briefly, having noticed the man push through you, but he reconnected your hands and continued walking fast. When he reached the Bentley, he urged you inside, holding your hand the whole way until you were seated in the passenger seat.

“What the hell happened, Tommy?” You repeated as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“Someone got shot.”

Your eyes widened. “Are Polly and—”

“They’re fine.”

You sank back into your seat as the engine roared to life. Peaky Blinder’s followed the frenzied crowd, moving together like a pack of wolves onto the streets. They only parted to let Tommy’s Bentley through. Out the window, people were fighting and throwing fists as they all tried to escape the mayhem.

“Why aren’t they letting people through?” You asked after witnessing a Peaky Blinder block the road and refuse to let a car pass.

“Doesn’t matter.”

He never told you anything when it came to business. And although you suspected this was much more than the doing of the Shelby brothers, Tommy’s face never betrayed him. Simply put, if he didn’t want you to know, you wouldn’t.

“Would anyone want to follow us?”

“No.” He exhaled deeply, cleared his throat, and then reached to give your thigh a squeeze.

You knew it was a lie when his eyebrows rose. He only did that when he was worried. Your tongue remained pressed to the back of your teeth the entire ride home.

The howl of the wind whistled down into the valley of the gypsy camp Tommy had brought you and the children to.

“Pack your things,” he had said one night after storming through the front door of Arrow House, “we’re going on a trip.”

Charles and Ruby cheered, but you suspected something sinister beneath his intentions.

So, there you were, picking at the grass by your feet while you perched on the bottom step of the gypsy wagon Tommy parked beneath a tree for shade. He kept quiet for most of the ride, absorbed in leading the horse around loose gravel and stones, or rather, he led you to believe he was lost in concentration. Because, when it came down to it, you knew Tommy better than to assume nothing was wrong.

The past week, he had been acting different, jumpy even. He ran into the nursery during the early hours of the morning on edge, as if expecting something to be amiss. You tried interrogating him, but he brushed it off, insisting things were fine. Fine—you began detesting that word. Fine this, fine that, but if things were really fine, then why was he on edge?

Then came the bloodshot eyes and the slamming of his desk drawer when you entered the office. Only this time he couldn’t deny the unmistakable jingle of a bullet, which rattled in the wooden compartment like some sort of airy death chime.

A black hand. One for each Shelby. And since you were now one too, that meant neither you nor the children were subjected to any special treatment. A week, he said, a week for his family to clear up the business while he stayed here watching over you like a shepherd to his flock.

And watched he did, standing next to where you sat, he found peace observing Charles and Ruby as they chased each other around the overgrown field. There he remained for an hour or so, frighteningly still, the only motion being his sharp jaw chewing on a mint leaf, somewhat reminiscent of the soldier in your tent all those years ago. Next to him, tied to the tree, the black steed filled the silence with snorts and grazed favorably on the loose roots and grass patches.

“Ruby was crying this morning. She’s scared, Tom." You sighed.

Tommy hadn’t been there when you woke up that morning in the caravan. He returned shortly after, ominous as ever, just as Ruby had begun to settle.

He tossed the stalk of his mint leaf into the grass and offered you his hand. You looked up at him in question for a moment, slightly suspicious of his intentions. Nevertheless, you slid your hand into his, and he stood you up, sat down on the higher step, and pulled you between his legs to sit on the lower step. He hugged you from behind as he slouched to rest his head on your shoulder, then exhaled deeply.

“We will be home soon,” he whispered in your ear, brushing your knuckles tenderly.

“For how long? Until we get another bullet in the post?”

Tommy’s throbbing forehead found solace in the warmth of your neck.

“You’ve never been one to run,” you continued, “what’s bothering you? We took a vow that we would share everything.”

He nuzzled his nose deeper into your pulse.

Frustrated, you tried to get up, but he held you firmly against his chest.

“Italians.”

“Italians?”

“Italians sent the black hands.”

You waited in silence for more information, but more did not come.

“Speak to me, Thomas.”

“I don’t want you any more involved than you are.”

“They’ve sent death knocking on our door; how more involved could I be?”

Tommy moved methodically, licking his lips and clearing his throat. He squinted his eyes up at the glaring sun.

“It’s nothing you should be concerned about. I’ll keep us safe.”

“Nothing I should be concerned over, Thomas? Just how many people are we at war with?”

He didn’t answer, so you turned your head away from him. Charles and Ruby had since settled by a patch of flowers. Charles was crouched over, helping his sister gather all the yellow flowers for her yellow dress.

The tension broke the surface then.

“Why are you still fighting, Tom? Is this,” you nod to your children and breathe in the fresh air, “not enough?”

You pictured Arrow House and its lavish garden, one to compete with all the wealthy families down the lane. You thought of Arthur, John, Polly, Ada, and all his family that lived to see his success. Everything, from the thoroughbreds in the stable to the fancy cars. The money itself was a testimony to his drive. What more could the gangster of Birmingham want when he already had everything?

You had gone and worked yourself up now because the world seemed blurrier than before.

Tommy, still on his guard, guided your chin to your shoulder so he could kiss the tears away. “It is enough.”

“Then make it enough. You’re respectable now, so stop the fighting.” Your voice broke at the end.

He hung his forehead on your shoulder. Like a flower sheltered away from the sun, Tommy wilted when he was away from his business. Usually, you were a strong enough light to keep him going, but whatever business he had gotten himself into was poisoning him, and ever the addicted flower, he kept running out to the fields, continuing to drink in the sunlight until it was too much and turned his leaves brow. Because business was what occupied his mind day and night, he was unable to turn the cogs of the engine off and let the air out of the tires.

A hand brushes your hair away to kiss the spot beneath your ear, airing out the destructive thoughts.

God, you loved him anyway. An overpowering feeling that ruled over calculating minds like Tommy’s and faint hearts like yours. You were no better than him—both addicted to a little sunlight.

The framed photographs on the wall shook as your third-eldest slammed the door to her room closed.

“I hate you!” She cried from the other side.

Your husband, Tommy, sighed to the ceiling, then stalked past you to his study, no longer interested in anything your daughter had to say. They had been at it for the last ten minutes arguing over some boy she was seeing, and your ears were just about ringing having witnessed it from the sidelines. You were left there in the hallway, an unwilling participant in the unspoken feud between father and daughter, and you understood that whoever you went to console would take it that you were siding with them, even though you just wanted to keep your family together.

Going to your daughter was the instinctive answer, but you knew she needed time to cool off. Tommy was the only reasonable choice.

You knocked on the door to his office before letting yourself in.

“Come to lick my wounds, eh?” He mused while smoking a cigarette.

Your lips wormed into a thin line. “This needs to stop, Tom.”

“Yeah,” he said, tapping the ash into his tray, “it will fucking stop.” He points with his cigarette, “I’ll make it fucking stop.”

You sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

The chair screeched as he stood. “I’m her father, and if I say she can’t see that boy, she can’t. It’s only a childish fling; she’ll get over it.”

He poured a whiskey and downed it by the time you walked around his desk so that you were face-to-face with him.

“They’re in love, Tommy.”

“Yeah?” He scoffed. “Well, that can be undone.”

You held his glare, a challenge lighting in your own. “So easily, you think?”

He paused mid-drag, catching onto the underlying meaning in your words. “No,” he said, setting the cigarette down in the ash tray and grabbing your shoulders. “Don’t act like that.”

“Act like what?”

“Like you’re threatening our love over some fucking boy that’s charmed our daughter. They’re too young.”

“He’s sweet.”

“Oh, sweet and nice, I’m sure. But he’ll have no place in this house.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I fucking said so!” He spat.

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Or what? You’ll leave me?” He huffed in amusement. “You won't; you love me too much.”

“You’re so certain?”

He paused for a moment and stared at you as if he couldn’t believe what you had said.

“Yeah, because we still fuck like two people who love each other, eh? And you’ve not told me no before, so if the day comes and your body no longer wants mine, then I’ll be worried. But until then, don’t test me with empty threats." His face hardened.

He knew you like the back of his hand. All bark, no bite. You loved him inexplicably, even after all these years, gray hairs and all. His face, body, and soul nourished you until you were satiated and full. And even if his eyebrows furrowed at times, you were willing to bet that it was for aesthetic, a shapely shadow gathered over the years from being the stoic leader the Peaky Blinders and Shelby family needed. How could you fault him for it?

Because, at the end of the day, you were a team. Even if he played the role of an overprotective father a bit too convincingly, he only ever wanted what was good for your daughter. Everything he worked for, ultimately, was for his family. A family man. And that came with its virtues and vices because, despite what Tommy thought, he wasn’t perfect; no one was.

Shrinking under his hands, you breathed a sigh and appeased him. “End this feud, Tom. Find peace with her. I don’t care what you do, but by the end of it, I expect to be able to sit down at the dinner table without having to beg my husband and daughter to look up from their plates.” You stroked his hands, which held your shoulders, and finally blinked up at him.

A haze of softness swept across his glare and melted the glaciers to a thin sheen of blue. The seams of exhaustion frayed one by one through his muscles. He nodded, licked his lips, and leaned down for a kiss of absolution. Not entirely prepared to surrender, you tilted your head so that he found the corner of your mouth instead.

“It will be done, love.” He brushed the apples of your cheeks tenderly. “And by tonight,” his voice lowered, “I promise you’ll forget all about it.”

Only then did you accept his kiss, eager to put the grievance to rest. Tommy, on the other hand, had other plans and stepped forward so that you were pinned between his desk and hips. He quickly began to gather your skirts above your waist, but you pulled away just as fast at the hiss of air against your exposed skin. An unsolicited gasp escaped his mouth when your knee brushed him there, and you sucked your bottom lip between your teeth, looking deep into his eyes.

“Promise me you won’t break her heart. She might not be old enough now, but I don’t want you to put her off love forever,” you caressed his jaw.

“No,” he agreed, breathier than usual, flexing the hands that were still caught up in the fabric of your skirt.

“And our Daisy may never say it, but I know she loves you dearly. So please, Tom, be gentle with her. I don’t want her to grow up despising you. Tell her you love her, kiss her forehead, hug her.”

He deflated, and you watched him swallow his pride. Cogs turned against the sweltering lust, threatening to deplete the clever thoughts in that powerful head of his in favor of your careful touch. Please, please, please, you begged without uttering a word; agree with me on this, Tom.

Tommy leaned back down to rest his forehead on yours; his face gave nothing away. You were sure he had found something to say, which would make you feel like a fool for asking. However, when you embraced those faint subtleties of emotion flickering across his face like candlelight, so miniscule you might blink and miss it, you found nothing of the sort to suggest any hostile nature. Because Tommy loved you.

“I will.”

A/N: Tried doing a long one shot, what does everyone think? Yay or nay? Comment to be added to the tag list!

Taglist: @maliceofwonderland , @fairytale07 , @goblinjnr , @ilovepeoplesdads , @multidimensionalslut

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f1version · 7 months

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26 BIRTHDAY KISSES ★ CL16

pairing: charles leclerc x gf!reader ( she/her )

summary: 26th birthday, 26 pictures of you and Charles kissing. A kiss for each year.

notes: i’m back from my birthday trip!! i wrote this birthday special in like 30 minutes and it’s still charles’ birthday in a couple of places so… i’m not exactly late! enjoy <3

26 KISSES: A GALLERY

By your beautiful girlfriend, in collaboration with a lot of people but mainly Joris and ourselves.

1. DRUNK DANCING: A month after we got together, we were at Arthur’s 18th birthday. We got drunk, singing and dancing to the worst playlist in existence (Lorenzo’s) and, somehow, Arthur got to capture this moment I barely even remember.

Taken by Arthur Leclerc, 2018

2. AUGUST 2019: Summer break, so sweet so loving. You made me promise that if you jumped off first, I would jump too. It took me fifteen minutes to follow after you. Also your kisses were incredibly salty.

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2019

3. THE MONZA INCIDENT: I had red lipstick the night you won in Monza, you told me it looked pretty, I asked you to kiss me, you did. Fast forward 8 minutes it was all smudged over your lips, you were 10 minutes late to the post-race conference, and Sylvia almost banned me that night. (I’m still kind of banned from your driver’s room)

Taken by Charles Leclerc, 2019

4. UNDER THE COVERS: 2020, what a crazy year. This one was taken the day we decided to finish moving in together. You were so excited, wanted everything to be perfect. Today I can say it is.

Taken by Me, 2020

5. WORDS: We were spending Christmas by ourselves, we face-timed our families, had dinner and watched movies. You gifted me three beautiful words I, of course, said back… and we also got a puppy!

Taken by Charles’ phone timer, 2020

6. OCEAN BREZEE: Just a small escapade to take a breath. You were so cuddly that day, Joris was so done with you (he still took the pic though)

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2021

7. CUTE OR HOT: I just wanted a cute morning selfie but, because of you, we ended up in a…promising mood. It was intense that’s all I have to say!

Taken by Me, 2021

8. KISS KISS KISS: 24th birthday, 24 kisses. This kind of became a tradition, let me know if you still want them this year!

Taken by Me, 2021

9. DRUNK AF: How did we got so drunk? Ask Pierre, he was the one hosting. Either way we got another amazing photo of us drunk-kissing!!!

Taken by Pierre Gasly, 2021

10. UNDER THE SEA: I’m just going to say that you and your ‘photo ideas 📸’ folder are attached by the hip. I personally love this one (even if it took half an hour to take)

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2021

11. NEW YORK: Thought you could scape this one? Never! Arthur and I didn’t spend a week listening to your complaining for nothing, babe. You must admit that this kiss was magical, everything was so pretty that day. And then it started snowing!

Taken by Arthur Leclerc, 2021

12. EXPOSED: Remember how our amazing soft launch got ruined by our trip to Ibiza? Well, here it is, the image we couldn’t stop laughing at when it came out, we really thought we were sneaky.

Taken by unknown, 2022

13. HARD LAUNCH: A week later we were kissing on live TV. It’s one of my favorite memories, I couldn’t stop smiling.

Taken by F1 TV, 2022

14. BACK KISSES: Just a picture of the morning after I learned that you can convince anyone, even the CEO of Ferrari, to allow you to leave sponsor events early. I really don’t know if you knew those kisses were there, but I woke up to this, took a picture and then left you with them until we took a shower.

Taken by Me, 2022

15. SPONSORED BY AIRMAX: That time your team forgot to book us a flight and you had to ask Lando to ask Daniel to ask Max if we could go back to Monaco with them. I’ve never seen Max talk so much, Daniel laugh so loud or Lando taking so many pictures. He even asked to take one of us, here it is:

Taken by Lando Norris, 2022

16. SIXTEEN: I bet you thought this one would have something to do with racing. Number 16. Sorry to disappoint but it’s our beautiful puppy…Sixteen! I’m not gonna lie, I still hate you for persuading me into that name. Anyways if you kiss the dog you kiss the mom!!

Taken by Me, 2022

17. 25 KISSES: Again, tell me if you want those 26 kisses this year. Look at us last year!

Taken by Me, 2022

18. NEW YEAR, SAME LOVE: Sometimes the world feels unreal when I’m with you, this was one of those days. I felt in another reality, the world slowed down, it was just you and me. I remember thinking “I fell in love with the right person” and then you kissed me.

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2022

19. BLACK SUIT: Remember when your fans thanked me for your “new” outfits? They repeated it was the girlfriend effect, you couldn’t stop talking about how stylish you are with or without me!

Taken by Me, 2023

20. PHOTOSHOOT: You got Joris to take these shots just because you wanted a new wallpaper. I thought it was silly, until one day all of them were hanging around our home. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Charlie.

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2023

21. FIVE STAR CHEFS: Not much to say, just sorry for being so distracting and thank you for the amazing (stolen from Ferrari) dinner babe!

Taken by Charles’ phone timer, 2023

22. RED LIGHTS: This year’s addition to our drunk-kissing collection. I remember you drowning shots with Carlos and Pierre, asking me to dance with you, absolutely failing at that, and then kissing me. After that there’s blurry ferrari red, giggles and a hot bath.

Taken by Andrea Ferrari, 2023

23. LAZY IN BED: Wonderful lazy days by the ocean, that’s how we spent the summer break. That morning in particular you didn’t want to get up, basically gluing me to bed. We got up at 1pm.

Taken by Me, 2023

24. JUST ONE QUESTION: Can I drive the purosangue now? Please please please

Taken by Me, 2023

20. LOVER: This day I woke up thinking about those dreams we talk about all the time, you even remembered me a couple of them throughout the day. Charlie, I do want to do this for the rest of our lives, never forget it <3

Taken by Arthur Leclerc, 2023

26. TWENTY-SIX: We are just 26 but I hope our story keeps on writing itself. I love you, these have been the happiest 6 years of my life. Happy birthday bébé ❤️

Taken by Joris Trouche, 2023

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spencereidluver · 5 months

Text

E is for Even Guys Like Me?

summary: you tell spencer about the conversation you'd overheard with his mother. he gets embarrassed, and even a little angry.

word count: 1.9k

warnings: the slightest teensiest bit of angst. mostly just a lot of spencer crushing for reader

It had been a little over two weeks since you overheard Spencer’s phone call with his mother. You’d been making it your mission to drop little hints at him about your feelings being the same, but they all seemed to just go over his head. You decided it’d be best to find a moment and tell him directly before it’s too late.

You were on a case right now, you and Spencer once again staying back in the PD to work on the intellectual side of things. Though a lot of time was spent together, this was not a time for deep conversations. You’d wait on the case before you said anything. You didn’t want to distract the genius. Because, despite what he had told Hotch in your meeting last month, Spencer did most of the work. You were just there on the off chance that he didn’t know something, which was pretty much never.

Three days went by, you had to try your best to not be too flirtatious with Spencer. He got flustered fast. And you weren’t sure how experienced he was, you didn’t want to move too quickly. Though your guys’ carpooling and coffee sharing was normal, it felt different for you now. More meaningful. You caught yourself blushing sometimes when the tall boy would bring in two cups of coffee, one with his name and one with yours. He’d even begun leaving sticky notes on them sometimes, ever since you did the morning of the phone call. You’ve saved them all in your desk, his handwritten script being some of the most effortlessly beautiful things you’ve ever had the pleasure of laying your eyes on. _____

You’re seated on the jet on the way home from the case. Directly to your left, is Spencer, who is deeply entranced in a book, “A Study in Scarlet,” by Arthur Conan Doyle, the book that he received in last year’s white elephant gift exchange, which took place before you began working at the BAU. Across from you is Emily and Derek, and Hotch and Rossi are at the booth behind her. JJ stayed home for this case as she is pregnant. She is in charge of files until she gives birth and returns from maternity leave.

The silence in the jet is broken by a head turn from Hotch who clears his throat. “Are you three up for dinner tonight?” He says.

“My treat,” Rossi adds.

“Well, if Papa Dave is paying, then of course I’ll be there,” Emily says.

“Sure, I’ll go,” you said, glancing over at Spencer who hadn’t even looked up from his book. “I’m sure Spence will come too.” Derek kicked you under the table and gave you a wink. His teasings were the main reason you haven't made any moves on Spencer prior to hearing him speak to his mother about you.

Almost on beat, Spencer looks up, “Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll just need a ride if that’s alright,” he said. His eyes met yours.

“I’ll give you a ride, Spence.” Another kick from Derek, this time, you kick him back. Emily catches on to the teasing game of footsies going on under the table and gives you and Derek a cheeky grin. You roll your eyes at the two of them and pull your feet into your lap. Sitting criss-cross now, you pull out your book of crossword puzzles and begin scribbling answers.

______

You weren’t quite sure how much time had passed. Emily and Derek had fallen asleep, and not a peep had been heard from Rossi or Hotch either. Spencer was still awake and was coming up on the final few pages of his book. He was curled into a small ball against the wall in the corner of the seat, his knees to his chest and feet pointed toward you. His mismatched socks peeked out from beneath his khakis, one pink and one yellow. The shoestring of his left converse was coming untied. Untied! That was the answer to the last line of your puzzle! You subconsciously thank Spencer for his accidental aid to your old woman games, and it’s almost as if he heard it. He looks at his watch, then up at you.

“Hmm, we should be back in Quantico in 17 minutes. Taking to account the wind speed, maybe even 16,” he says. He crinkles his nose and returns to the last pages of his book. You scribble in the final word of your crossword puzzle and begin to pack up. You slide your puzzle book into your small carry on backpack, and begin to clear off the rest of the table. You pick up yours and Emily’s empty coffee mugs and reach around Spencer’s elbows which were rested against the table to grab his. You stack the three mugs together and grab Derek’s plate. Derek was the only person you knew who would eat four pork chops at 3pm, then agree to go to dinner only two hours later.

Spencer sees you take his mug and looks up at you. He gives you a smile and whispers a soft “thank you.”

______

Spencer was seated on the passenger side of your car. His eyes were following the flashing lights as you drove down the city streets in the darkness. It was 7:30pm. A little late for dinner, but it’s when the jet got back. Plus, you were hungry.

The light was hitting Spencer’s face in a way that made him look ethereal. Maybe you shouldn’t have said anything, but you couldn’t help yourself.

“Hey, Spence,” you say, alluding a hum in response. Can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” he looked at you. Somehow, from the repositioning of his head, the lighting somehow hit his face even better. The yellow luminescence shining through the windows made the honey brown of his eyes almost 3-dimensional. It felt as if he was looking inside of you. He was truly breathtaking.

“Okay,” you sigh, “please don’t hate me, but I kind of overheard you and your mom’s conversation…”

“What?”

“Well, just your side. I know I shouldn’t have, but I just couldn’t… I just… I need to-”

Spencer interrupts you. It was dark, but you could tell his cheeks were red. “So you were eavesdropping?”

“Spencer, I’m sorry. I just…”

“How much did you hear?”

“It was only the end. If you would’ve been talking about something personal I would’ve left but-”

“How is me opening up about my feelings for someone not personal?” He seemed a little angry.

“No, it is, and I know I shouldn’t have, but…”

“Yeah, you really shouldn’t have, y/n.”

“Spencer, I…” You looked at the man in the seat beside you. You didn’t want this conversation to upset him. You really wished you hadn’t spoken. You could see the betrayal in his eyes. You felt truly awful.

“You what?” He broke the silence, eyes meeting yours. He stared at you intently.

You took a moment, trying to find the words to say. You didn’t want to break his trust even more. “Spencer, I like you too.”

His eyes were blown huge. “Huh?” “I like you too. I’ve liked you since I first started working here. I didn’t want to try anything because I didn’t know if you felt the same, or if you even date because I know some people with this job don’t. And-”

You were rambling. You were trying your best to defend yourself. Spencer’s eyes were searching your face. He was profiling you. You were telling the truth.

“I, wow. I didn’t know you felt that way, y/n…”

You reached for his hand. It was cold and shaky. You ran your thumb over the back of it, letting it raise and drop with the veins it crossed. He began shaking even more, so you let go. He snaps his hand to his thigh, and with his other hand, traces the tracks you’d left. He smiles to himself and lets out a large sigh.

____

“You guys have a good night,” Rossi says as he climbs into his luxury sedan. The team had just finished a large dinner and were beginning to head their separate ways.

“Don’t worry, Papa Dave, I’ll get the kid home safe,” Derek says, giving Spencer a playful noogie.

Spencer agreed to a ride home from Derek at dinner. Maybe it was because their houses were only a few streets away from each others’, or maybe, he still felt a little awkward from your previous conversation with him. You didn’t mind all that much though, after all, you’d finally openly expressed your feelings for him. That was enough for one night.

Rossi carefully backs out of the parking lot, leaving you, Spencer, and Derek still remaining. You stuff your hands in your coat pocket; it’s chilly. You want this night to last forever, yet simultaneously, you hoped it’d end right now. You tilted your head toward your car. Spencer understood.

“Derek,” he says, “are you about ready?”

“Yeah, we can head out whenever you want.”

Spencer ran his hand through his hair before turning around to look at you. He gave you a smile. “I’ll see you Monday, y/n.”

“Bye, Spence,” you say, returning the smile.

_____

“Hey, Derek,” Spencer says as he rubs his fingers over his knuckles.

“What’s up, kid?” Derek responds. He looks over to meet eyes with him quickly.

“Can I, um… can I ask you a question?” Spencer looks at Derek like a lost puppy.

“Woah, the boy genius asking me a question? What has this world come to?”

“It’s about girls.”

“Oh. I see.” Derek knew of Spencer’s trouble with girls. Despite the darkness, he could see the light in the skinny man’s eyes. “Come at me, big guy.” He gave Spencer a pat on the back.

“How do I like… ask one on a date?”

“Oooh, who’s the special lady? Hmmm?”

“Derek, I’m being serious. Please.”

Derek could hear Spencer’s plea in his voice. He understood that Spencer was confiding something foreign to him and truly needed the help of an experienced man.

“Well, what does she like? Don’t take her somewhere too extravagant. Maybe a nice dinner or a breakfast date. Start simple and see how it goes.”

“Okay, but like, how?”

“Step one is speaking to her.”

“I have spoken to her… a lot.”

“The main thing, kid, is just to sound confident. Even if you’re not.”

“But what if she says no? Like how do I turn away from that?”

“There’s no reason for her to say no.”

“Yeah, but like… what if she does? What if she thinks I’m weird? Maybe this is a bad idea…”

Spencer was spiraling. Derek reaches over and puts his arm on Spencer’s shoulder. He turns to him, meeting his eyes.

“Even guys like you are capable of love, kid. Any girl would be lucky to have such a kind and caring man like you, okay? Just go with your gut.”

Derek rounded the turn to Spencer’s road.

“Thank you, Derek, really. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Have a good night, lover boy.”

“You too, Derek.”

next chapter: F is for First Date

a/n: i've spent the most time on this out of any post i have in a while. kinda hit writer's block pretty bad the other day. i'm really hoping i can get the next part out by Sunday, but i work all day tomorrow and idk how much time i'll have time to work on it saturday, but i'm trying my best, i promise.

taglist: @universallyblizzardlove @ms-ks-world @justlivinginadaydream @dij-ology @lotus-ignis @sammy-4103 @ktssstuff @ada--44 @moongirl27 @monfleurr @shycreationdreamland @cultish-corner @ariianelle @iiheartbowie @spencerreidismybitch @traderjoesmints @ivyflowers13

#spencer reid #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x bau!reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fic #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x reader

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taasgirl · 2 days

Text

sparks fly - charles leclerc

summary: everyone thinks y/n and lando are a couple, but when she begins to soft launch another driver, people start to catch on.

a/n: no face claim, the order and outcomes of races are fictional,

liked by charles_leclerc, lilyzneimer, and 39, 376 others ynusername and it's all too much for little lando norris

francisca.cgomes Ahhh so gorgeous

ynusername kikaaa

user52763 y/n and lando karting maybe 🫣

user19822 I don't think that looks like lando tbh

landonorris Catching them z's 😴😴 liked by ynusername

user92738 my fave wag!

liked by landonorris, maxfewtrell, and 711, 029 others quadrant Our new video 'Reaction Test' is out now!! Featuring special guest @ ynusername, who do you think wins?

ynusername thanks for having me guys!! liked by quadrant

user82739 okay did anyone else see the way lando looked at y/n during the vid... like excuse me

user25382 YES LIKE CONFIRM UR RELATIONSHIP ALREADY

charles_leclerc I'll just assume that y/n lost

ynusername charles i've never felt more betrayed... landonorris @ charles_leclerc Correct!

liked by ynusername, pierregasly, and 6, 227, 276 others charles_leclerc New addition to our little family 🩷

landonorris Bet you're gonna start calling yourself a dad now

ynusernme oh he already has

ynusername baby leoooo

charles_leclerc Great name 😉 user52763 @ charles_leclerc what's the wink for huh??

user92837 ohmygod he's become a dad

user92736 wdym 'OUR little family'...

user28622 SOFT CHARLES CONTENT OMFG

maxverstappen1 Very cute Charles liked by charles_leclerc

liked by charles_leclerc, maxfewtrell, and 48, 928 others ynusername monaco is awesomeeeee! thanks for being my personal chauffeur @ arthur_leclerc when my bf is too busy 😇

arthur_leclerc Well I am the better driver

charles_leclerc No.

user82738 BOYFRIEND???

user15273 who lives in monaco... LANDOOOOO

user90192 Leo??? Why is y/n hanging out with his dog

ynusername beacause he's cute

user16372 not y/n hanging out with the leclerc brothers minus charles 😭

ynusername i spend too much time with charles user52763 @ ynusername wdym by that??

liked by ynusername, lorenzotl, and 7, 811, 287 others charles_leclerc Much needed family time before the big race 🩷

landonorris Ooooh Charles the romantic

user82736 WHO IS SHE LET US IN

ynusername leo is adorable liked by charles_leclerc

user92831 oh i'm so ready for this gp

user18127 Y/N?

arthur_leclerc You're girlfriend is very pretty

charles_leclerc Stop. user63762 Girlfriend, Charles???

liked by user82732, user98272, and 365 others user98276 y/n l/n in the ferrari garage... are u thinking what i'm thinking

user52873 i'm actually so confused like I was convinced that y/n and lando were a thing but now charles likeeee

user82766 REAL

user62873 Idc I'll believe in y/n and lando forever.

user52983 so is this confirming her wag era

liked by luisinhaoliveira99, oscarpiastri, and 3, 627, 229 others landonorris Onto qualifying 💪 Absolutely buzzing to have my girlfriend with me this week too 🥰

luisinhaoliveira99 🧡🤍 liked by landonorris

ynusername open ur eyes mate

luisinhaoliveira99 I specifically told him not to blink too!!

user92647 Yeah what the fuck is going on

user42873 I KNOW LIKE HUH

user52846 she's so beautiful

user83552 How long have you been together for?

landonorris Almost a year haha. She told me I could finally 'hard launch'

liked by charles_leclerc, maxfewtrell, and 56, 833 others ynusername omg arthur's brother won in monaco!

charles_leclerc Arthur's brother, really?!

ynusername my bad, arthur and lorenzo's brother!

user67299 Yeah this had GOT to be a hard launch...

user72924 holding hands in a ferrari like come on

scuderiaferrari ❤️🏎️ liked by ynusername

luisinhaoliveira99 Our guys on the podium together 💞

user63849 OUR GUYS WHATWHATWHAT

liked by scuderiaferrari, ynusername, and 12, 782, 918 others charles_leclerc Wow my feelings cannot be described right now. Thank you to everyone single person who has made this possible for me. It has been a dream of mine since I was a boy to win in Monaco, and to finally achieve it with all the people I love the most is such a pleasure. Thank you thank you thank you ❤️🤍

ynusername sosososo proud of u

charles_leclerc Thank you Y/N 💗

landonorris Congrats big brother liked by charles_leclerc

user82374 Give him the title 'Prince of Monaco' already

user21938 awww charles and y/n on the last slide

user67245 My fav couple already

user72354 Charles is on fire this season 🔥🔥

liked by charles_leclerc, maxfewtrell, and 1, 238, 276 others lando.jpg Good thing I bring a camera on night outs. Celebrating the big guy @ charles_leclerc's home win 🎉🥳🥂

user82287 HAHA FERNANDO

user52763 y/n and charles hehe

ynusername send the photos!!

lando.jpg Which one? The ones of u and Charles sucking face user62537 @ lando.jpg oh thank u for outing them

user55283 they all love charles so much omf

user82631 LANDO JUST CONFIRMING CHARLES AND Y/N LIKE IT'S NOTHING???

view charles_leclerc's story

liked by arthur_leclerc, lilyzneimer, and 62, 336 others ynusername happy birthday boyf!! i wish u loved me as much as you love leo 😔

landonorris BOYFRIEND???

ynusername you're acting as if u didn't introduce us and basically force us to date user52973 @ ynusername okay lando u little matchmaker

arthur_leclerc It only took a year and a bit to be instagram official

user62536 A YEAR? AND A BIT? WHAT THE FUCK

user52839 this is too much wow i'm still recovering from finding out that lando's been in a long term relationship and now you

charles_leclerc I love you and Leo equally

ynusername no i'm getting replaced by a dog

liked by landonorris, ynusername, and 3, 265, 267 others charles_leclerc The only way I want to spend my birthday, love you mon belle 🩵

ynusername i mean we still have some other activities to do 😏

arthur_leclerc Oh my god ew

maxverstappen1 Happy Birthday mate :) liked by charles_leclerc

user82889 YES YES YES I LOVE CHARLES AND Y/N

user92893 this is the only couple i care about

landonorris Everyone say 'thank you lando'

ynusername thank 😒 you 😒 charles_leclerc I say thank you all the time.

let me know if you enjoyed this, i love seeing your comments and messages!! and as always, my inbox is open so feel free to drop a req!

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shanastoryteller · 1 month

Note

ROSES ARE RED, AND THIS IS BEDONKS CAN I PRETTY PLEASE HAVE SOME PERCY AND TONKS 🌹💖

“What’s going on with Percy?”

Kingsley looks ups from his paperwork to find Amelia looming over him. Not exactly a common occurrence, since he’s well over a foot taller than her. “Brooks?”

“Merlin, don’t speak to me about Percy Brooks,” she says, pulling a face. She’s the one who brought him up! “Weasley.”

He blinks several times, rolling through Arthur’s children until he lands on the appropriate redhead. A bit uptight, considering his parentage, but Molly can fret with the best of them up until she gets fed up and settles matters with her wand. “I could get Tonks in here, if you want.”

“Do they know each other?” she asks in interest. “They were in different houses, and a couple years apart.”

How does she know that? He knew that, but it was against his will. “Tonks is dating him. Or trying? I’m not totally clear on the specifics despite her best efforts.”

He hadn’t anticipated how much work it would take for him to dodge a trainee determined to complain to him about her love life. It speaks well of her future in the field, at least. Or poorly of his own abilities, but he’s fairly confident in those, so he’s comfortable giving her the credit here.

“Great, a harassment case waiting to happen for our department,” she says dryly.

He rolls his eyes. “The only person he’s complaining about it to is Tonks. Who takes it as encouragement. Which, considering the cause and effect, it very well might be.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Amelia says. “What’s what this kid?”

Kingsley is lost again. “Can you get a little more specific?”

“Crouch’s department has become efficient, and dare I saw, effective over the last couple months. It’s certainly got nothing to do to with Crouch, since he’s been useless for nearly a decade. The only thing that’s changed is Percy. Who attends every meeting, claiming Crouch sent him to take notes, and then memos and policy get signed and sent out of Crouch’s office when I know for a fact Crouch is too busy harassing me to do his damn job.”

He tries to avoid the obvious answer because it’s the most ridiculous. “You think it’s him?”

“Who else?” she returns.

Well. “Do you… want me to arrest him?”

“What good would that do?” she demands. “The department is operating smoothly for once. I want to know what his deal is. Is he loyal to Crouch? Plotting against us? Just really passionate about bottom thickness?”

Not according to Tonks.

Uhg.

If he was alone, he’d bang his head on his desk until he’s unable to remember what Tonks’s voice sounded like and then maybe he’d know peace.

“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” he says. “You’re noticing. Maybe that’s what he’s after.”

“I’m noticing because I notice everything. He’s taking significant steps to ensure people don’t notice. How’s he supposed to get promoted that way? Or transferred?” She shakes her head. “He’s doing it for a reason. Do me a favor and find out.”

Why can’t she ask him something simple, like hiding a body or burying evidence?

Now he has to spend his lunch break listening to Tonks talk about her not-boyfriend.

#hii!#prompt answers #prompts are closed #asks #lance-with-a-chance-of-anxiety #harry potter #siat #last valentines day prompt!!#DAYS before the end of the month too!!#which is so good for me

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verstappen-cult · 12 days

Text

SWEET LIKE VANILLA, M. VERSTAPPEN.

PAIRING. female reader x max verstappen.

SUMMARY — You send Max some ice cream from your brother’s company.

GWEN’S RADIO MESSAGE. i saw a lot of people talking on tw about charles sending max some of LEC ice cream for him to try and i thought. . . why not write that with reader? so here we are. hope you like this silly little thing. comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

“Hey,” You say, scrolling through your phone as your brother flops down next to you. “Could you give me a box of the Vanillove ice cream?”

Charles looks at you for a minute without saying anything, until he shrugs and focuses on the TV. “I thought you hated vanilla.”

“Well, yours is pretty good so,” You shrug, turning to look at him with a pout on your lips and puppy eyes. “Would you do that for your favorite sister?”

“You’re my only sister.” He says, rolling his eyes. “And you’re annoying, but you also know I can’t say no to you.”

“Say no to what?” Arthur pops up from behind the kitchen counter. What is he doing? You don’t know.

“To give me a box of ice cream.”

“You say you couldn’t do that!”

“Of course I can, I just didn’t want to do it for you.” Charles laughs, dodging the water bottle your younger brother throws at him. “Are you two going to the masters this Sunday, right?”

“Yes!” Arthur shouts before disappearing into his room.

“Who is going to the masters again?” Leo wakes up from his nap next to you and climbs on your lap, demanding attention.

“Well, I think Enzo and Charlotte. Lando, Arthur.” He says, checking something on his phone before saying, “And Max.”

Your heart skips a beat at the mention of Max Verstappen.

The thing is, ever since you decided to partner with Joris and help with whatever thing he and Charles needed and, of course, his social media, you’ve been traveling with them since Las Vegas last year. Which means that you’re a constant presence on the paddock these days. And, thanks to that, you’ve become very close with some of the drivers, especially with one more than the others.

You weren’t looking for it, it kind of just happened when you bumped into him at a nightclub in Las Vegas after your own brother ditched you to make out with some random guy in the bathrooms. Max was kind enough to keep you company and then, when your brother stumbled out of the bathroom too drunk to remember his own name, he drove you both back to your hotel. He even made sure you were in your room before saying goodbye and going to his own hotel.

From then on you couldn’t stop bumping into him literally everywhere, so, it was only natural that you’d start making conversation, then following each other on Instagram was just as natural as moving the conversation to text messages (it was easier).

Your friendship has developed so much that you’ve been running together around Monaco lately, after you bumped into him at seven in the morning, surprised to see him running the same path as you.

And if you had a crush on the Red Bull driver before you started to be friendly with each other, well, nobody needs to know that — especially not your brothers or you’ll never hear the end of it. It was hard to act normal around him at first. You were just a girl with a crush, after all. But things have become a lot easier with time to the point of forgetting about the big, fat crush you have on the Dutchman. Well, that is until he does or says something that has you blushing and stuttering and acting like a complete fool in front of him.

Knowing that Max is going to be there this Sunday is equally mortifying, and exciting.

“Oh, okay.” You smile, scratching behind Leo’s ears while your brother has his eyes on you. “I’m coming, by the way.”

Charles hums, “The box is going to be here tomorrow.”

Your belly erupts with butterflies at the thought of what you’re about to do with that box of ice cream.

It’s Sunday, sunny and everyone is wearing their best clothes while waiting for the match to start.

You’re standing next to Lando, who is talking to Charles about the next race, when you see Max Verstappen coming in.

He’s wearing some blue navy linen pants with a white button down of the same material, a pair of dark sunglasses and his singular smirk.

Max is greeted by your older brother, who is quick to engage in conversation about some random thing you can’t hear from where you are standing.

But then he’s excusing himself and walking over to you.

You don’t know if he’s actually looking at you thanks to the sunglasses covering his eyes, but you feel small and shy nonetheless.

“Hey, mate.” Lando claps his shoulder, making space for Max to stand between you and him.

“Hey,” This time you know he’s looking at you because his entire body is turned in your direction.

“Hey, Maxie.” You say, the corners of your mouth curling up. “Nice clothes.” You cringe the second the words leave your lips. Nice clothes, really?

Max just chuckles before looking over to your brother. “Hey, Charlie. Thanks for the ice cream.”

Oh. My. God.

Shit.

Fuck.

You had forgotten about that.

Well, no. You hadn’t forgotten about it because, in fact, you've been thinking about the box of LEC ice cream that you sent Max all week.

You didn’t think he was going to bring it up, because you were sure he was going to think that Charles was nice enough to send his friend some of his ice cream. Or even that it was some PR move from his part.

However, he brings it up in front of you. And Lando. And the owner of the ice cream who doesn’t know anything about it. All he knows is that you wanted some vanilla ice cream because you said you liked it.

“What are you talking about?” Charles asks, confused. “It’s not being sold in Monaco yet.”

It’s Max’s turn to look confused. “What?” He takes off his sunglasses. And you’re not at all ready to see his deep blue eyes, so you avoid looking up at him. “You sent me a box of… Vanillove is it called? I didn’t know you knew I only liked vanilla.”

You want to die. You want for the earth to swallow you right now.

“Max,” Charles says at the same time you look at him, eyes pleading not to say anything. “What?” He asks you, eyebrows raised in question.

And then you have two more pairs of eyes on you.

You decide, right at that moment, that you’re not going to talk to Charles ever again. Why does everyone talk about that silent connection between siblings where they know what is going on with just a look? Because you, certainly, don’t have it with Charles.

Lando snorts, hands immediately covering his mouth. He looks at you, amusement on his face.

Oh, that is just great. Lando knows.

And your brother still has no clue, “What happens?” He asks again, this time grabbing your arm softly to make you look at him, but your sandals are more interesting.

“The match is about to start.”

Thank God for Lorenzo. You could kiss him just because he came at the right moment to save you from embarrassing yourself even more without even knowing.

Everybody talks and moves at the same time, making their ways over the seats.

“Hey,” Max touches your shoulder, making you turn around. “Are you okay?” Max touches your forehead with the back of his hand and you pray to all the gods above that he doesn’t notice you shivering because of it.

“Oh, yeah, it’s just the sun. It is a little hot.” You smile, dismissing the topic with a wave of your hand.

“I’ll get you some water,” He drops his hand and you immediately miss his warmth. “save me a seat?”

You feel your heart hammering in your ears as you nod, walking away with his question and the little smile that came with it replaying in your head.

You find your seats behind Arthur and his girlfriend, in the rows next to yours separated by the stairs is Charles and Lando, yapping like their lives depend on it, next to them is Lorenzo and Charlotte.

You’re thinking about what to say to Charles because he is, eventually, going to ask you about what is going on and you know he will not rest until you give him an answer. You are a shitty liar, so you need to practice.

Max calls your name, drawing your attention back to the present.

“You have your head in the clouds today.” He hands you a water bottle and you take a long sip, trying to gain some control over yourself.

“I’m sorry.”

“Will you tell me what is going on?” Max looks intently at you, a small smile still on his lips.

You sigh. Well, he needs to know, right? You owe him that.

But then, Max is leaning closer and pushing a strand of hair out of your face, resting his hand in the back of your neck and stroking ever so softly.

“You smell,” He says, closing his eyes for a second and inhaling. “sweet like vanilla.”

His words send a thrill down your spine, words stuck in your throat. Max expression softens, mixed with something you can’t describe.

He rubs his thumb gently over the sensitive skin of your neck.

“You sent the ice cream, didn’t you?”

You take a sharp intake of breath.

The closeness and the warmth emanating from his body along with his touch are making your brain go fuzzy at the edges.

“Y/N?” He smiles at you when you make eye contact, his blue eyes deep as the ocean. “It was you?”

You nod, blood rushing to your cheeks. “Yes.” You breathe, embarrassed and shy and feeling like an idiot.

“I knew it.” He says, chucking. You tilt your head to the side in a silent question. “I told you about my favorite ice cream flavor just a few weeks ago. And suddenly I have a box full of vanilla ice cream from LEC?” Max pulls his hand away, but is still close to you. “I mean, Charles and I are friends but we’re not that close.”

“Oh, God.” You hide your face behind your hands. “I was going to tell you. Eventually.”

“Why didn’t you?”

You look at him from between your fingers. “I don’t know.”

Max sighs, lopsided grin plastered on his face. “Now you have to come to my apartment and help me with them. It’s a lot for one person.” He shrugs, trying to look nonchalant but you see the blush quickly spreading over his cheeks.

“I would love to.”

Max flops his head on your shoulder and gazes up at you with those big blue eyes of his. “It is a date.”

Max definitely doesn’t need to know that you hate vanilla ice cream.

#꒰꒰ 📁 ─ verstappen cult files ꒱꒱#max verstappen x reader #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen x you

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norris55s · 18 days

Text

the summer i turned pretty - charles leclerc & arthur leclerc

a reader x charles leclerc/arthur leclerc love triangle

warnings: intoxicated (but consensual) kissing

a/n: trying out a written piece/smau/texts weird hybrid but it was all i could come up with to get this idea across! i hope you all like it <3 (there will be a part 2)

also this was requested!! i'm so sorry anon i lost the ask but i hope u see it and like it anyways

Day 1

France is a place that isn’t easy to forget, but having lived there your whole life made it seem ordinary. The country that saw me grow up, and that I was glad to call home, failed to impress me every day because I was used to it. The beautiful architecture, history, and tourist attractions weren’t as beautiful to me anymore; it was my day-to-day life.

That wasn’t true for the beach house in Nice. It wasn’t mine, or my family’s, but that place never failed to impress me, even if it was my day-to-day life every summer. The Leclerc summer home was my favorite place on Earth. From its blue and white facade, the soft beige interiors, the pool and beach view, the big dining room, and the incredible company, there’s no place I’d rather be in right now.

“Y/N L/N, you have arrived!” Charles Leclerc, the ultimate reason for this place’s beauty, yelled out to me.

“Charles Leclerc, I have arrived!” I replied blushing, and opening my arms into an embrace. As every time I hugged him, my body relaxed and tensed somehow at the same time, safe and nervous, loved and not loved back. But aren’t all childhood crushes like that?

“I’ve also arrived, pote. If you even care,” my wonderfully annoying older brother, Alexandre, interjected. Charles let me go to greet my brother, and I turned to find the youngest Leclerc, Arthur, on his way to hug me hello.

“Hi, chérie,” he said with a smile on his face, ruffling my hair affectionately.

“Hi, Arthur. Up to no good once again?”

“I’m always up to all good!”

Pascale Leclerc, the boys’ mother, greeted me with cheeks kisses and pinches. Everyone then swarmed my mom, Alice. Sometimes I think my friends love her more than they love me, but that was deserved.

As every year before, everyone finally felt at home. And as every year before, the inaugural pool party started.

“Y/N L/N, will you do me the honor of joining me at the pool?” Charles exaggeratedly held out his hand, as if we were Royals in a ball. Antics that I was happy to oblige with. Too happy for my dignity to recover.

As we made our way inside, and swam a couple laps playing around on who is faster, we wound up floating peacefully on a corner with the sun beginning to set.

“I missed you,” Charles said out of nowhere, making my heart do a somersault.

“I miss you too,” I managed to reply, feeling the blush on my cheeks.

“I want to hear from you more often. I know I’m busy with racing, but I always can make time for you Y/N.”

The thing about unrequited love is any show of affection feels like a marriage proposal. But of course I could not deny his request. He was, above all else, one of my best friends and one that I needed to be there for.

Hervé Leclerc passed away the year before, a couple months after the summer vacation. We didn’t know it would be the last time we spent with him, and I was worried about what this year’s vacation would be like with the boys’ father missing.

“I’m always here for you,” I vowed and he gave me a quick, chaste kiss on my forehead. To make sure I wouldn’t forget my promise.

As I looked at Charles’ glistening face against the darkening sun, I realized we would be okay.

y/ninstagram added to her stories

charles_leclerc added to his stories

Day 2

“Chérie,” was the first voice I heard as I woke up, with Arthur knocking on my door for show and letting himself in.

“Too early,” I whined back and hid under the covers, to have them ripped from me by the guy in my room.

“It’s time for the sunrise beach walk,” he replied and I knew he was right, so I let myself be dragged outside the house. I couldn’t say no, since the sunrise walk at least once during the vacation is also a tradition between Arthur and I.

It was also worth it; we silently agreed for that to be time to catch up, be honest, and be vulnerable ever since we began taking the walks. This one would be particularly hard too.

“I really, really miss my dad,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders to walk side by side.

I didn’t know how to handle Hervé’s death with the boys.

Enzo was older than me, even beyond his years, and there was nothing I could say that would be wiser, or better than what he had to say.

Arthur was quiet and reasonable, way more accepting of inevitables than me, more useful to himself than me.

Charles was passionate but closed, a master at compartmentalization, never letting me in even if I’d like to.

But Arthur, ever my closest friend, still needed my support.

“I know you do,” I replied softly and squeezed his hand. “It’s only normal, and I’m sorry you’ve been dealt these cards.”

Grief is a strange thing, but on the beach I hoped I let Arthur know that I would always be by his side, and that the sun will always rise again for him. With his steady breathing while leaning on me as we sat on the sand, I knew he understood.

arthur_leclerc added to his stories

y/ninstagram added to her stories

Day 3

y/ninstagram added to her stories

ameliedeveraux20 added to her stories

This was the third year Arthur and I were invited to parties that Alexandre and Charles went to. The promotion from little siblings to cool siblings opened up a new world in Nice. Especially one where I could ignore my schoolgirl crush on Charles through alcohol.

So I happily got ready, into a pink summer dress and into the car that would drive us all to an even bigger house filled with a bunch of privileged European kids ready to drink the night away.

The first drink came from Antoine, who sadly had a beautiful girl around his arms that indicated he wouldn’t be a good distraction. The second one came from Amelie, my Nice girlfriend, who was happy as ever to see me and catch up with me before she also found an arm candy and promptly left. The third one was on me, as I was forced to stare at Charles making out with a girl I learned was named Charlotte.

After that, I stopped counting and kept drinking, joining the dance floor to enjoy the numb feeling in my face, the new found careless attitude, and the music blasting in my ears.

Before I could process it, Arthur was in front of me, the blush on his face indicating he was also intoxicated. What started as a normal jumping around like one does at a party, progressed to a point where his hands were on my waist and my hands were on his neck.

I couldn’t even recognize the song anymore, too entranced on the way his eyes were on mine. There were no words, as was usual between him and I. We just knew.

I wouldn’t take the first step, but he would. Arthur’s lips met mine in a strong, messy kiss. I didn’t pull away. I did want it. And it wasn’t scary.

When we stopped to take a breath, I realized I wanted to kiss him again. As I was leaning in, taking the initiative myself now, another force pulled me away.

I walked by inertia, trying not to fall down in following who was leading me away from the crowd. When I looked up, I recognized it to be Charles.

I couldn’t breathe from the adrenaline of the kiss I just shared, but also from the touch of Charles’ hand on mine, even if it was to take me out of the party.

My reaction was all too slow, finally starting to protest.

“What are you doing? Let me go,” I defensively said, snatching my hand away from his. The butterflies didn’t leave anyways.

“You’re drunk, let’s go home,” Charles coldly replied and held my hand again on his way to the car.

“Why would I want to go home? I’m having fun,” I continued to protest and he continued to pay me no mind.

As he put me inside the vehicle, despite my clumsy attempts to fight it, and slammed the door, I continued to think about what this could possibly be about. Where was Charlotte? Where was Arthur? What was happening?

My head spun and he got in the driver’s seat, turning the ignition on.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re drunk. You don’t kiss people when you’re drunk.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You don’t kiss people you haven’t kissed sober.”

“Its Arthur!”

“Exactly!”

The back and forth continued all the way to the house, my thoughts sobering up with every passing moment.

“If you don’t want me to be with your brother because you don’t think I’m good enough, that’s really not your choice,” I told him decisively, crossing my arms and pouting like a child throwing a tantrum.

That was the only explanation for what Charles just did. He didn’t think a Leclerc should be with someone like me, and was doing everything he could to prevent it.

When he started laughing, I wasn’t so convinced anymore.

“What’s so funny?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. I just made the biggest scene out of jealousy, and you’re saying I don’t think you’re good enough.”

Time froze and my mouth went dry. The confession made its way through my entire bloodstream, replacing the alcohol effects with pure shock. My head was spinning for entirely different reasons, and my brain couldn’t bring the words out. What would I even say?

I opened my mouth but nothing came out, and Charles put his face on his hands in frustration, before leaving the car. I still could only think what is happening?

#f1 #f1 au #f1 fanfic #f1 x reader #formula 1 #f1 smau #f1 social media au #f1 fake texts #charles leclerc texts #charles leclerc smau #charles leclerc au #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc fanfic #arthur leclerc #arthur leclerc x reader #arthur leclerc fanfic #arthur leclerc au #arthur leclerc smau

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dilemmaontwolegs · 17 days

Text

The Perfect Life || CL16 {5}

Summary: It’s Charles first real introduction to his new employee. Warnings: angst, swearing, sarcasm, underground fighting, injuries. WC: 2.7k F1 Masterlist || One || Two || Three || Four || Five || Six Taglist: RETIRED Head over to my dedicated library blog @dilemmaslibrary and opt to get notifications from there.

The black leather pants and hoodie hid your presence well as you crept through the backyard just before midnight. After years of sneaking in and out of the property you knew exactly where to step to avoid activating the motion sensor lights and Charles followed each step carefully. He had tried to get you to stay at home but finally relented to your stubbornness and changed into more inconspicuous clothes too.

Eventually you reached the small gate that the gardeners used for supply deliveries and found Franco had left it unlocked. The gentle giant had worked security for the last 20 years and aided your escapes more than he liked to admit.

“I hope you know how to ride,” you commented as you opened the caretaker’s shed and tossed him your helmet.

Charles looked at the helmet and turned it so the moonlight caught the almost imperceptible writing on the black carbon - What doesn’t kill me makes me angry. “Fitting,” he chuckled before handing it back. “You wear it.”

“You’re the one with the career, you should wear it.” You swung your heel back and knocked the kickstand up before wheeling the motorcycle out of the shed. It wasn’t the quickest way out but you couldn’t risk waking anyone up with the engine so you always walked it down the street before climbing on.

“It’s actually in my contract that I should avoid dangerous activities and I’m pretty sure this would count as one,” he said as he hung the helmet back on the handlebars and helped push the heavy bike along.

“You’re welcome to stay here in that case, or walk.”

Charles scoffed and shook his head. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

You deemed it far enough from the house and swung your leg over the seat, patting the space behind you. “Get on.”

Charles’ arms wrapped around your middle as he took the seat and kicked the riding pegs out with his boots.

“I’m not sure if you are brave or stupid,” you commented. “You do realise your life is in my hands now.”

“Ma said the two usually go hand in hand but I trust you.”

You were acutely aware of every inch of Charles that touched you for the 15 minute ride to the latest address you had received. His chest rested against your back and his hands that lay on your thighs, only shifting to hold your waist through the corners he leaned into. It was clear he had ridden before but it was probably his first time being the backpack.

“This used to be a nightclub,” Charles said with a frown as you parked in an alleyway and killed the engine.

The old staff entrance was propped open with a brick and you ushered Charles inside where the noise grew with each step.

“Phones,” Rex said as he held his hand out in front of the door that led to the club. You handed yours over first, taking the tab with a number so you could claim it after but the rules were strict, no phones, no cameras. Charles had a harder time parting with his but eventually handed it over with a frown and the doors opened.

The old three storey nightclub had an empty core surrounded by a spiralling staircase that descended two storeys into the basement and one that rose up. The biggest punters would be in the VIP area above and the spectators would line the rails to get the best view of the pit that sat central on the lowest level.

Charles looked over the rail and blanched as two regulars went face to face, blood dripping from the gashes that had been opened by the bare knuckles they fought with.

“Hey,” Arthur greeted with a beer in his hand. “I thought maybe he talked you out of coming.”

“As if, but I was hoping he would stay behind” you said, stealing his beer to take a sip. “Who’s going to bail us out if this place gets raided?”

“We’ll be fine,” Arthur joked. “He’s a runner so we can still call him.”

“Except they took my phone,” Charles grumbled.

Arthur looked at his brother’s hand that almost always held the device and laughed until he noticed the dark sweatpants and hoodie he wore. “You stole my clothes.”

“You left them in my girlfriend's room.” Charles paused and stole the beer next, finishing it off with a cringe. “That is not a sentence I ever thought I would say.”

“While you ponder what your life has become, I am going to go get ready.” You turned and kissed Arthur’s cheek in farewell. “See you down there.”

“Where’s my kiss?” Charles asked, his brow arched in a challenge.

You were already two steps away when you looked over your shoulder. “You can kiss my ass.” It unintentionally drew his eyes down your body to the leather that looked like it had been poured onto your skin and those eyes lingered on your ass until you descended the stairs and disappeared from sight.

“You do realise you are fake dating, right?”

Charles rolled his eyes and lightly shoved his younger brother. “I can still appreciate a good looking woman when I see one.”

“Well, keep those thoughts to yourself. She’s been hurt enough.”

Charles dragged a hand through his hair and nodded. “I know, she told me. I really fucked up, but I thought you were happy about the arrangement?”

“I don’t exactly have a genie lying around, so you're the next best hope she has of getting out of that hellhole.” Arthur shrugged. “I don’t have to tell you that if you fuck this up for her I will never forgive you.”

In the bathrooms of the basement you opened the duffle bag and changed into your usual sports bra and shorts before uncapping the Vaseline and smearing the gel over your cheeks. The familiar scent calmed your mind as you wiped the excess off and grabbed the tape to wrap your knuckles. The monotonous routine was your focus, the sounds outside the room fading as you stared at your reflection in the mirror. Evidence of your tears still remained in your puffy eyes but you felt better having finally told him what had weighed you down for a decade. You didn’t want to read too much into that thought as you tied your hair back into a bun so no one could pull it in the ring.

The bell for the end of the last fight rang out and you shook your head to clear it before kicking your bag under the sink and leaving. Arthur was waiting outside with Charles a few steps away and he checked your fists before walking to the ring. Blood splatters littered the vinyl floor that had been rolled out and two of the helpers were dragging an unconscious man out of the way.

“Bathroom is there if you’re gonna vomit,” you said to Charles as he swallowed nervously. From the other side of the ring Kaine was grinning at you, his mouth guard the colour of blood he was looking to spill, and you blew him a kiss.

“You’re fighting a guy!?” Charles exclaimed as he realised that was your competitor.

“There’s not exactly many female fighters to choose from.”

“You could get hurt, that man is huge.”

You rolled your shoulders out and bounced on the balls of your feet as you warmed up. “You’re really great at instilling confidence, you should have your own Ted Talk.”

“If you’re not going to help then go away,” Arthur growled before turning to face you. “Remember, he favours his right leg and Javier broke his collarbone last month. What doesn’t kill you?”

“Makes me angry.” You opened your mouth and Arthur put your mouthguard in before opening the cage door for the octagonal ring. On the floors above cash was trading hands as the bookies took the bets but you paid them no mind as you circled the floor with Kaine.

“She’s going to get killed,” Charles choked as he laced his fingers in the chain link fence. “He’s massive.”

“She’s agile. What she lacks in size she makes up for with speed. Just don’t be shocked by what you see.”

“What do you mean? I'm already shocked.”

Arthur snorted a laugh. “Just wait, I didn’t even recognise her the first time. It’s like watching a completely different person take over her body.”

All the anger and hate that lay dormant in your body awoke when the bell rang and the ref stepped out from between you and Kaine. All the emotions that you kept bottled inside were released and your eyes narrowed on the man who was going to be at the receiving end.

Kaine rushed across the mat with all the grace of a baby elephant charging on rollerskates. The very floor vibrated with each stomp of his size 14 feet and his fist reeled back and he poured his entire strength into the first punch. Unfortunately it was his bulk that slowed the punch down and you easily avoided the attack that could have probably crushed your skull. You ducked under his arm and used your spinning momentum to land a kick on his left knee. The joint twisted unnaturally and he cried out as with pain and anger.

Arthur was right, he did favour his right leg and you had just re-injured the old ailment. Off balance, he tried to follow your quick movements but you were already back in front of him, jabbing a quick one-two combo to his core. Heat flared in your fists as they connected with the hard muscle of his abs but you welcomed the rush of adrenaline that followed the pain. Kaine threw a punch of his own and you skirted away but not quick enough and his knuckles more than caressed your cheek. You had dodged the knockout blow but there would still be a bruise to show for your slow reaction.

“Nice work,” you said with a grin as you circled around each other. “You almost got me, big boy. C’mon, take another shot.”

You probably shouldn’t have taunted him because there was no avoiding the roundhouse kick that rattled your rib cage and knocked the breath out of you with a gasp. It was a mistake to look at Charles through the fence but you saw the worry in his eyes and the white-knuckled grip he had on the chain.

“Watch out,” he shouted as the concern turned to panic for what was coming behind you.

On instinct you dropped low and raised your arms to protect your head, barely missing the right hook that would have rendered you unconscious. Rage took over as he leapt forward on his good leg to attack again and you waited for him to overextend into the punch before stepping closer. It was impossible for him to defend in such a confined space and he was surprised by the sudden change. You planted your feet and drove the power of your punch up from your legs, twisting your hips as you rolled your shoulder and crashed your left fist into the softer skin protecting his kidney. A deep grunt expelled from him as he hunched over and you followed through with a right hook of your own. Right into his weak spot.

His piercing cry was almost as sharp as the snap of bone under your knuckles and he stumbled back clutching his collar that was freshly rebroken. The roar of the crowd was deafening as the bell rang for the round’s end and you threw your swollen fists into the air while your ribs protested.

Kaine limped back to his corner and shook his head to the ref, ending the fight after only one round. You tugged your mouthguard out and shook your head disappointingly. “Pussy.”

He spat his guard to the ground and winced as he cradled his arm over his chest. “Crazy bitch.”

You smiled at the insult and curled a finger. “Wanna come over here and say that?”

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t attempt to re-enter the ring so you turned and made your own exit. Arthur was waiting with a grin on his face and his arms open but before you could step into his embrace Charles was there. The shock barely registered when his arms curled around you and for a moment you felt something, but then the pain in your ribs reared its ugly head.

“Fuck,” you groaned as you shoved him away and looked down at the bruise already blooming along your side. “I think he might’ve broken one.”

“Shit, we need to get you to the hospital.”

It annoyed you how easy it was to read Charles' face. Concern, regret, anger. It was like reading a book and you wanted to tell him to relax but it was quite nice to have another person around who actually showed their feelings.

“Great idea, and what do you think we should tell them?” you asked as you started to make your way back to the bathroom. “I don’t think ‘it was an accident’ is going to satisfy them.”

“Fine,” Charles sighed, “where do you normally go when you get hurt?”

You stared at Arthur and he stared back before his lips twitched and you both laughed. An irritated growl rumbled from Charles before Arthur pointed to the messenger bag hanging from his shoulder.

“He makes a cute doctor,” you said with a wink before he followed you into the bathroom. Charles tried to follow too but you blocked the doorway. “Sorry, patient/doctor confidentiality.”

You cut off his protests with the door and leaned back against the cold wood. “Do you think he will still be there?”

Arthur nodded and opened the bag to pull out a few bandages and a bottle of arnica. “I don’t think you are getting rid of him anytime soon.”

“Great.”

“Is it really that bad?” Arthur asked as he gently dabbed the arnica over the bruises.

“Kind of hard to erase a decade of hate, even if he is hot.”

Arthur grinned and you rolled your eyes. “You think he’s hot.”

“Shut up. I’m not blind.” You unravelled the tape from your knuckles before waving a hand over him. “You’re hot too but it doesn’t mean I want to date you.”

“Thanks? I guess?”

“You know what I mean. Would you date me?”

“Are you asking me out? It’s a bit awkward since you are dating my brother.”

You huffed and glared at his amused grin. “Fake.”

“Potayto, potahto. But, no, if you really need to know, I wouldn’t date you. You’re my best friend, you know me way too well.”

“Exactly, I could never be with someone who brushes their teeth in the shower.”

“Once, for fucksake, I did that once when I was running late.”

You screwed your face up and shook your head with disgust. “There’s no excuse, Tur. We will just have to be friends.”

“Carve my heart out now,” he mocked before patting your side. “All done. Ready to go?”

You thought about the man waiting on the other side of the door and sighed at the thought of having to sleep in the same room as him. “Do you want to stay the night?”

“Oh, no, no, I am not going to be your buffer. You gotta figure out whatever is going on between you and Charles on your own.” He kissed your cheek and grinned at the sour look on your face. “Love you.”

“Ugh, I hate you,” you groaned and his smile only grew wider at the lie.

“Tell Cha to call me in the morning, so I know he is alive.”

Click here for the next part.

#charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc fanfic #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #formula one imagine #formula 1 fanfic #formula one fanfiction #f1 x reader #f1 x y/n #f1 x you

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vivwritesfics · 2 months

Note

Hey you were looking for a polyfic so here you go!

LanOscar or Lando x Max

(Idk if you write smut but the if you do you can encourparate it into this plot)

Plot: The reader becomes pregnant after a wild night (shall we say) and between the two boys they are convinced that it's their child. But when the baby is born it is one of the drivers from the ship above (I don't mind which one either driver of any ship is fine) and they are proud of it, and the other driver is slightly jealous that it isn't his. But he grows to love the child as the months pass and the reader says how the next child that is put in her is his.

I really don't know if this makes sense upon which I do apologise.

Hope your Well <3

Gonna do norstappen bc I got a landoscar one coming

It was meant to be a threesome, a one night experience, not a throuple. But they worked together, so it was pretty hard to stay away

Whether it was lingering gazes and touches, or moments spent too long in each others presence without much explanation.

But this only lasted a few weeks, a month at most, before came the dreaded pregnancy test.

It was bought in a moment of anxiety. Her period was only late by a day and she had no other symptoms of pregnancy, but she was so worried that she ran to the store and bought one that afternoon.

She didn't tell the boys. Why should she when she's definitely not pregnant? But she wasn't definitely not pregnant.

The two lines stared back at her. Fuck, she really was pregnant. Holy fuck she was going to throw up.

As soon as she was done throwing up, she grabbed her phone and sent a picture of the pregnancy test to the groupchat she had with Max and Lando.

They rushed straight over. Thank god they all resided in Monaco. It was just one of the perks of being drivers, she supposed. Well, not that she'd be driving at the minute.

Her thoughts started spiralling down the path of who would be driving the Ferrari alongside Charles Leclerc in her place. She would have loved to see Arthur Leclerc drive alongside his brother, bit Ollie Bearman was an incredibly talented candidate, too.

It was only when Max and Lando knocked on her door that she snapped out of it. They wore grins on their faces as she pulled the door open. "So," Lando began, his boyish smile playing on his lips. "Who's is it?"

She rolled her eyes and let them into her apartment. "Does it matter?" She asked and Max shook his head, but Lando nodded.

Of course he did. There was nothing simple about Lando Norris. "Yeah, because whoever isn't the dad gets the next go, right?"

Her eyes went wide at that suggestion. "Jeez Lando, we haven't even had the first yet," she said as she sat on the sofa beside Max.

He instantly pulled her into his body and kissed the top of her head. "We'll be with you every step of the way," he said and she turned to kiss him properly.

And they were with her every step of the way. They were with her when she told her team principl and they were there when her absence was announced on social media (along with the announcement of the promising young F2 driver that would be her stand in). Of course, the media weren't told why she was missing the races for the year, just that it was medical.

They were there when her bump started to show, there to buy her maternity clothes. They were there for the late night cravings and for the emotional breakdowns over things she later thought to be insignificant.

They were there to set up a room for the baby, decorated with race cars, of course. "Project Hamilton," she had jokes as they painted a track onto the wall.

When the baby was born, they got a paternity test. Just to find out if the baby would be predisposed to any conditions of any kid. The only condition he was predisposed to was being part Dutch.

As soon as the results came that he was Max's son, Lando was pouty as all hell. He didn't want it to affect the way he loved this child, tried so hard not to let it, but he couldn't help it.

Max constantly reminded Lando that he was just his son, he was Lando's son, too. The four of them were one big family, didn't matter who was really the father.

It took some time, and some forced bonding from her and Max, but Lando came to love their son as if they were blood.

But he was still convinced it was his job to knock her up next. He was a man obsessed. As soon as he could he had her on the bed with her ankles in the air.

Max hadn't touched her pussy in weeks. He wasn't allowed to, not unless he wanted to get jumped by Lando.

But, sure enough, another positive pregnancy test sat on the bathroom sink. Lando Norris was a smug little shit, because this one was definitely his.

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messrmoonyy · 1 month

Text

- The gilded cage

Arthur Morgan x Fem!reader

Request- how about some of the girls going along to the mayors party in Saint Denis. Have you seen the cut content of Molly when she was meant to be at the party? So Dutch takes Molly along, Arthur takes reader? And what if Arthur gets a a little jealous of reader mingling and then they sneak away for some smutty time together…

A/N- this is my first Arthur fic so he may be a lil out of character whilst I get to grips with writing him. I also have not written straight smut in like 2 years. But we vibe. Enjoy

Also shoutout to @devnmon for supporting and enabling my rdr2 brainrot. You’re a real one

Warnings- 18+ | smut: unprotected p in v, semi public sex ( wc - 7.7k )

Masterlist / AO3

Saint Denis was a little too rich for your blood. You’d only ventured into the city a handful of times, but the times you had you’d decided you didn’t really like it. You felt too… common. You never had liked the wealthy, flaunting their security and safety that was wrapped up in dollars and gold.

But. You loved money. God did you love money. And as much as you hated the residents of the city, you sure loved robbing them blind. You always had had a knack for making the rich mysteriously lose their dollars and their watches, it had been the sole reason you’d ended up in Dutch’s gang in the first place.

You’d even tried picking his pockets at first.

But you were on best behaviour tonight. Under Dutch’s orders. And you figured as boring as that sounded, you’d oblige. Simply because the men rarely let the girls get involved with any of the interesting stuff in camp. There was only so much laundry you could do before your brain truly went numb from boredom. Only so much listening to Miss Grimshaw nagging at you to do some work or Micah antagonising someone over something stupid.

So even with Dutch’s strict orders to behave and your dislike of the city, you had jumped at the chance to come along to the party.

“ i can practically smell the money “ you sighed as you took Arthur’s hand to step down from the coach, already hearing the bustle of the party happening somewhere out the back of the mansion in front of you “ you sure I can’t go pickin? Just a lil “ you were half joking, half not. On the times you had wandered into the city, the stuff you’d gathered picking your way around the saloons and back alleys had been a decent haul. The stuff some of these people carried around on the average day was enough to fund the food for the whole of camp for a couple days or more.

Who knew what kind of goodies they’d have on them in their finery.

“ no miss “ Dutch’s stern voice sounded, but he was sporting a small look of amusement “ keep those talented hands of yours to yourself. This is about business. We steal nothing. That goes for all of you. Steal. Nothing. Unless it’s information “

“ don’t worry. I’ll keep her in check “ Arthur spoke with a small chuckle, placing a hand lightly to your back.

“ this is why we shouldn’t have brought the women. They always cause trouble “ Bill complained, as he stepped out of the second coach with Hosea, making you scowl.

“ I hope you aren’t grouping me into that Mr Williamson “ Molly piped up with a disapproving scowl of her own as she stepped out of the coach, seemingly more mad at Dutch for not helping her out more than at Bill though. Arthur offered her his hand instead, helping her step onto the path without breaking her neck in her extravagant dress.

Always the gentleman.

She looked wonderful and you had begun to wonder if she had owned that dress all along or had gone out and got it special. Maybe Dutch had picked it up for her. It wouldn’t surprise you if she had been lugging it around from place to place, waiting for some perfect moment to pull it out. She always did look more put together than the majority of camp. Though you really didn’t understand how she could walk in the dress she was currently wearing, skirts full and you guessed pretty heavy too.

“ no need to bring you “ Bill continued.

“ I ain’t even causin’ trouble “ you piped in, throwing your own scowl Bills way again “ When did you last contribute to the box anyways huh Bill? I don’t see you doin’ nothin’ but sit around all damn day. No need to bring you I say. Jus’ cause you ain’t got no lady on your arm you’re complainin’ bout me and Molly “

“ what? A lady like you? I should be damn lucky I ain’t “

“ why you- “

“ Bill I suggest you leave it “ Arthur murmured lowly, planting himself between you and Bill before you did in fact cause some trouble. Bill grumbled something, spitting on the floor with a look of disgust and turning away from you.

Dutch sighed heavily, looking increasingly pissed off at the group in front of him and held his arm out to Molly.

“ Miss O’Shea “ It pained you a little to know he was probably only being nice to her tonight for appearances sake. He’d been practically ignoring her recently. And wasn’t doing Molly any good. You hoped a night out of camp would do her well “ now would you all just calm. Down. We, are simple distinguished gentleman, here for business. So start damn acting like it “ you scoffed at that, making a pointed look in Bills direction as you did

“ distinguished my ass “

“ play nice now “ Arthur said quietly, but you heard the smile in his tone as he did. He then offered you his arm as Dutch had done to Molly. But unlike Dutch the act didn’t feel performative, a way to blend in and appear far higher class than they actually were. Arthur actually was a gentleman. For the most part anyways.

“ why thank you mister “ you said in a cheery tone, throwing him a coy smile and slipping your gloved hands into the crook of his elbow.

It did feel a little funny to be walking beside him like that. All dressed up and in clothes that weren’t smeared with gun oil, dust or god knows what else. It made your mind drift a little to what life could’ve been like.

Your group crossed the street, promptly being stopped at the gates

“ gentleman “ the guard greeted, taking the invitation from Dutch’s hands “ the mayor doesn’t allow guns at official functions “ the way he looked at Dutch and the others was almost demeaning. Like he knew you were all riff raff and of course would be the sort to attend such an event armed “ Not after last years incident “ none of the boys seemed particularly thrilled to be handing over their firearms. Arthur in particular sighed heavily beside you as he handed his pistol over.

He didn’t like being unarmed. Especially when he was out with you. You usually also had your gun belt permanently fixed at your waist. But it wasn’t exactly fitting with your current attire.

Though you did note the guards didn’t even spare a glance to you or Molly, which in turn made you all the more smug knowing you had your knife tucked into your boot. Just in case of course.

“ Luca here will take you gentleman to Mr Bronte. I believe he is expecting you “

“ I know you got that knife in yer boot “ Arthur said lowly so that no one else would hear.

“ he ain’t said anythin’ about knifes. Only guns “ Arthur smiled and shook his head slightly, placing his hand over yours for a moment.

“ that’s my girl “

You walked up the neat cobbled path to the mayors house then, unable to do anything but look in awe at the huge house in front of you. You’d thought Shady Belle was something spectacular, had walked around every room imagining what it had looked like in all its glory. Amazed at the vastness of the place and all the rooms it had.

And yet it was nothing compared to this place. This was real money.

“ I look okay? “ you asked, suddenly feeling ever so slightly nervous, smoothing your hand over your skirts. Even in your attempts to look as clean and put together as you did, some part of you felt like everyone would see you were a walking sham.

All in all you knew you probably did look fine. The dress was the most lavish thing you’d ever owned, you didn’t even want to guess how much it had cost Arthur. It was still on the simpler side, skirts not quite as full as Mollys and not as detailed. But it was beautiful. Pale pink and ruffled shoulders and details on your skirts, gloves up to your elbows in a material so soft you’d sighed when you’d first pulled them on.

It all made a nice change from the usual simple clothes you wore, hips weighted by skirts rather than your gun belt. And skirts that didn’t have a million holes darned over.

And Arthur had picked it all out. Had picked it himself especially for you.

It did make you smile to imagine him in the tailors, completely out of his depth when it came to women’s fashion but determined to find you something nice. Your big, tough cowboy staring blankly at fabric swatches and fancy hats.

“ gonna be the prettiest girl here “ you smiled warmly at his words, hand smoothing over your dress again.

He’d turned up that morning into your shared room of shady Belle, finding you hiding away from Miss Grimshaw on the balcony, the dress draped over his arm along with some fancy suit and tie get up for himself. He’d looked almost sheepish as he’d shown you it, promising to go get you something else if you hated it. Which of course you hadn’t.

You’d practically jumped with joy at being able to go out on a job. The boys so rarely let the girls do anything meaningful other than tend to camp. Though this particular outing you knew Dutch had only brought you and Molly along because it would make your group seem a little more agreeable. Something about women making them look a little less intimidating. And of course Dutch and Arthur’s partners were the most obvious of choices.

Much to Mary-Beth and Karen’s dismay. Though they had very quickly changed their mind at the idea of having to hang off Bills arm all night.

It wasn’t exactly the reason you wanted to be brought along. But you took it.

The inside of the mansion was as glorious as the outside, it almost made you angry that people had such wealth. That these people could sleep in a new room each night of the week if they felt like it, when people were starving outside of their gates.

“ Hosea, Bill. Take the ladies out and enjoy the party. We’ll join you after we pay our respects to signor Bronte. Arthur, with me “ Arthur gave a curt nod

“ I won’t be long “ he assured, hand slipping down around your back and leaning down to your ear “ hands to yourself “ you scoffed as he said it, looking up at him as he stepped away from you.

“ I can’t promise “ you caught his smile as he walked over to Dutch and the staff. Disappearing up the stairs.

“ it’s just this way “ one of members of Lemieux’s staff spoke, gesturing the four of you in the direction of some doors leading out into the party.

“ let’s go ladies. You fancy a drink? “ Hosea said cheerfully, following closely behind you and Molly as you headed outside. You were ushered out into gardens, a mass of the rich and wealthy of Saint Denis all crowded around. Drinking and laughing at things you were sure were not as remotely funny as they were making it out to be.

Bill quickly made himself scarce, disappearing into the crowds to do lord knows what, much to your joy.

“ right. Champagne? “ Hosea excused himself to collect some drinks and you stood on the back porch looking down at the groups of people.

So far removed from what you were used to. You wondered how they’d react knowing you and your little group were currently sleeping in a barely standing plantation home, half of you out under the stars. That you were frauds. Not glamorous and wealthy like them.

In your experience the rich liked to pretend the poor didn’t exist. Unless they were hiring them as help.

“ oh I missed this “ Molly said beside you, almost dreamily in tone. And seemingly more to herself than to you. It was quite possibly the happiest you’d seen her look in days.

She fit right in. Her gorgeous dress rivalling that of some of the other woman down in the courtyard, her hair piled up on her head and her fancy jewellery that was actually hers. Not something stolen from an unsuspecting lady in town. This was Molly. Money and wealth. It still baffled you how she had ended up with Dutch, how she could leave that all behind for a life wandering.

“ you go to party’s like this a lot? Before Dutch I mean “ she gave a small shrug, searching in her small purse for a moment before placing a cigarette between her lips. You could imagine an even younger Molly, a bright eyed teenager done up all fancy and weaving her way through a party just like this one.

“ sometimes “ her eyes were scanning the crowds, practically sparkling at being surrounded by the upper class again “ wonder what kind of people are here “ she seemed to be talking more to herself than you again and very promptly dismissed herself, heading down the stairs and gliding between the guests. Like some true social butterfly, decked out in her finest.

Hosea returned with three glasses of champagne and a slightly confused look noticing Molly had vanished.

“ eh more for me “ he said with a smile, handing you your glass before promptly finishing his own and moving onto what would’ve been Mollys “ I’m going to do some snooping. You’ll be alright? “

“ I’ll be jus’ fine Hosea “ you said with a smile and watched him too disappear down into the crowds.

It was interesting to watch them, to see them behave as if this entire event was a normal evenings activity. Maybe for them it was. But it all felt so… false. People who appeared to be friends but didn’t seem to even really like each other, some silent competition between everyone to have the better dress. The better hat. The biggest house.

You’d take your creaky cot under the stars with Arthur any day, would much rather sit around the campfire getting tipsy and singing. Surrounded by real family. Real friends. Relationships built on loyalty and protection. Not on trying to out do each other.

You walked between the small crowds, eavesdropping on conversations in hopes to find something useful. Something to take back to Dutch to prove bringing you along wasn’t a useless endeavour. But it was mostly women discussing their elaborate hats, sharing stories of the terrible jobs their maids did, or complaining about their husbands poker habits. Or gossiping about how they had heard one of their friends was in delicate condition.

You heard mentions of Leviticus Cornwall, but nothing concrete enough to warrant telling anyone about.

You tried hunting down Molly, simply to have a friend to stand beside and not feel so…out of place. But she had vanished into the crowds somewhere. So you planted yourself on the side of an ornate water fountain, simply hoping Arthur would return soon. Maybe he’d dance with you, or take you walking around the vast garden laid out ahead of you.

You two never really got the chance to do things like that. Romantic things. Arthur had his ways, of course. He’d take you out riding or sit with you on his lap by the fire, telling you about whatever interesting thing he’d discovered that day. He’d bring you flowers he’d pick from time to time, find you interesting things when he went wandering, let you read aloud to him with the excuse he wanted you to get better at it. When in reality you had seen him confess to his journal that he simply just liked to listen to your voice.

He was far softer than he appeared. With you anyway. And as much as you didn’t like the kinds of people in attendance, you thought it might be nice to pretend for the night. To be two wealthy young oil tycoons, dancing and drinking champagne together, gushing about your money and your jewels.

You made your way through another flute of champagne before he returned, interrupting your frivolous daydreaming.

“ there she is “ you turned your head with a beaming smile at his voice, relief at a familiar face “ been lookin for ya “ he sat down beside you, looping an arm around your waist “ you behavin’? “

“ course I am. Ain’t took as much as a pearl “ you said quite proudly, though decided not to mention that the temptation had truly been hard to deny. Not only were these people rich, they were getting drunker by the second. They were practically begging to be robbed.

“ good girl “

“ it go okay with ugh.. what’s his name? “ you asked, turning to face him. He looked just as uncomfortable with the entire situation as you did. This wasn’t his scene. It never had been. He’d grown up just as poor as you had.

Arthur robbed the rich, he didn’t fraternise with them.

“ Bronte. Yeah. Fine. Dutch he’s tryna find the mayor or somethin “ he ran a finger between his neck and collar of his shirt, clearly growing uncomfortable with it. It made you laugh a little.

“ you ain’t cut out for the finer life “

“ no. I ain’t “ he was looking around at the guests in a similar way to you. With a mild sense of disgust “ saw some woman back there, hat so big she were topplin over “ you smiled and leant your head against his shoulder, he tucked you in closer to his side and dropped a kiss to the top of your head.

“ was daydreamin whilst you were with Dutch “ you mused.

“ yeah? About what? “

“ playin’ pretend. Bein’ fancy for the night. Y’know dancin’ and pretendin’ we got buckets of money “ the small sigh Arthur let out made you wonder if he thought that was a life you pined for. It wasn’t. Not really. Yeah, you liked money but.. you just wanted to be comfortable. Little ranch or a cabin some place quiet. Not poor. Not rich. Just. Existing happily “ ain’t us though “

“ you and me we… we ain’t like these people. We ain’t ever gonna be like these people “

“ we don’t gotta be. Me, you. Some pokey lil farm someplace out west? Now that’s the dream cowboy “ he chuckled and nodded, dropping another kiss to your head

“ that’s the dream darlin’ “ you both sat quietly for a short while longer, watching the rich get drunker and more foolish. The odd person acknowledged your presence, greeting you as they passed or tipping their hat. But mostly they left you alone. It was at the point that one man drunkenly stumbled into a bush a few feet away that made you speak up again.

“ never thought I’d miss that damn swamp. But lord above… these people “ Arthur scoffed as he too watched the fool try and right himself again, leaves sticking to the pomade in his hair

“ yeah. I think I need a drink “ he patted your side lightly so you’d stop leaning on him and stood up “ champagne? “

“ oh well ain’t you just so kind sir “ you said in your best attempt a dramatic upper class drawl “ and you gonna dance with me after mister? “ you asked with a teasing smile and he rubbed a hand at the back of his neck for a moment looking almost sheepish. But he was smiling, the sweet genuine kind he only really seemed to show around you.

“ sure darlin’. But I’m definitely gonna need that drink for that “ he ventured back into the crowds then and you stayed put, continuing to watch the guests laugh and talk about how incredible their lives were.

“ I don’t recognise you “ an inquisitive voice spoke, tinged with that accent that the wealthy had started latching on to in some attempts to make themselves sound more superior. Smarter. Whatever. You thought it was quite ridiculous. You turned your head to look at the man, seeing if he was in fact talking to you.

“ talkin’ to me mister? “ he was eyeing you up and down like he was somewhat intrigued but amused by you at the same time. A stupid top hat on his head adored with plumes and the chain of a pocket watch hanging from his pocket. It almost made you laugh at how your brain immediately began thinking about how you could steal it and how much it was worth.

“ I am indeed miss “ he stepped closer, puffing on his cigar and not taking his eyes off of you for a second “ I have frequented many of the mayors parties but you… I do not remember you “ a small wave of panic flushed your skin but you remained calm. Not recognising you was far easier to work your way out of than if he had recognised your face.

“ I’m new in town. My… uncle. He’s friends with Mr Bronte “ the man hummed, sitting himself down beside you.

“ so you’re here with your uncle? “ you shifted slightly at his closeness but remembered you needed to keep up appearances so forced a smile onto your face

“ yeah. And my husband. He’s around here someplace “ the man’s eyes immediately darted down to your gloved hands, probably noting the lack of a ring on your finger. You and Arthur weren’t married. But you may as well have been. He often referred to you as his wife, and he as your husband.

He’d ask you one day.

“ a lucky man “ the man said, blowing smoke in your direction and still looking you up and down. You decided at that moment you very much wanted to steal his watch. Dutch be damned. Having to put up with the likes of slimy rich men for more than ten seconds… well you figured that warranted you at least getting something shiny in return.

“ oh well ain’t you just a charmer “ you said with a smile, placing a hand to his arm “ you here with your wife mister? “ the man laughed and shook his head, scooting a little closer to you.

“ I’m more of a… free spirit “ you gave a small laugh, trying not to crinkle your nose at the smoke blowing in your face again.

Arthur often smelt of fresh smoke, both cigarette and fire, and that fresh air smell that clung to your clothes after being out in the open air for hours. And you loved it on him, because it was well… him. The smoke from this man was far from appealing. But that watch…

“ ohh I see. You ain’t one to be tied down huh? “ your fingers inched closer to the man’s pocket, wrapping lightly around the chain.

“ everythin’ okay here? “ Arthur appeared behind you, a glass in each of his hands.

“ ah is this the fine man that brought you along? Well aren’t you lucky sir “ the man spoke and you noted he didn’t even glance in Arthur’s direction as he spoke, you were now looping the chain of his watch around your wrist. Just one small tug…

“ Mr Callahan “ Arthur murmured, handing you a glass and standing behind you with a hand to your shoulder

“ wonderful to meet you sir. Me and your wife were having a delightful conversation weren’t we dear? "The pressure of Arthur’s fingers increased as he spoke the sweet name, though you weren’t entirely sure it wasn’t because he’d noticed the man’s watch was now safely hidden in the fabric of your skirt.

“ oh yes. Wonderful mister “ the watch discreetly made its way into your boot and you were ready to get away

“ where’d you find a beautiful thing like this sir? I may need to frequent the place myself “ he placed a hand onto your arm and finally looked up at Arthur rather than at you. He made your skin crawl. You didn’t hold a single ounce of remorse for the stolen watch

“ oh no where you’d like “ his tone was a little snippy, the kind when someone was starting to piss him off but he was trying to keep his cool. And Arthur kicking off in the middle of the mayors party wasn’t exactly a part of Dutch’s plan.

“ now I am so sorry but i believe my husband did promise me a dance “ you rose to your feet, sipping your champagne before placing the glass down and taking Arthur’s from his hands “ ain’t that right my love? “

“ yeah… need ya to come with me “ he said lowly, offering you his arm. His face had gone slightly dark, not entirely able to read him, you frowned slightly. But let him lead you away from the man, completely bypassing the area with couples twirling to the music.

“ where we goin? “ you asked with a small laugh, latching onto his arm again and having to take quick steps to keep up with his purposeful strides “ Arthur?”

He didn’t answer immediately, simply led you away from the crowds and around the side of the mayor's house.

“ You mad cause I took that watch? Look he deserved it- “

“ ain’t mad “ he mumbled, still leading you along.

“ okay… so we stealin’ somethin’ else? “ you asked with excitement filtering into your words, already trying to figure out what it could be “ need me to act like a maid? I can do that real good y’know. Is it money? Papers? Oh, is it jewellery? Gold? “ Arthur chuckled at your excitement and shook his head, bringing you to a halt between some elaborately trimmed bushes and trees in planters.

“ we ain’t stealin’ a thing “ you pouted with a mild disappointment and he chuckled again, advancing on you and backing you up against the wall behind you “ don’t gimme that look “ he tucked his fingers under your chin, nudging your face upwards to look at him. He was a god few inches taller than you, but he always made you feel ten times smaller when he looked down at you like that.

“ what’s gotten into you? “ you asked with a giggle, hands slipping under his jacket to slide over his waist.

“ just wanted some time alone with you is all “

“ behind some trees? You are a strange man sometimes Arthur Morgan y’know that? “ he gave a heavy sigh and brushed his thumb across your cheek softly, watching you intently. He always looked at you like you like you were the only woman on the planet “ you sure you ain’t mad about the watch? “

“ no. I ain’t mad. Feller flirtin’ with my woman and only loses his watch sounds like a good deal to me “ he grumbled, leaning forward to press a kiss to your lips.

And a light bulb suddenly pinged on in your head.

“ are you jealous? “ you asked, unable to hide your complete utter joy and amusement as the realisation hit you. He grumbled some kind of an answer and tried to kiss you again but you turned your head to the side, so he settled for your neck instead “ why Arthur Morgan. You are jealous “

He didn’t answer you again, simply tilted your head so he could get at your neck more, his other hand splaying over your lower back to tug you close against him. A mischievous streak ran through you and you chewed on your lip for a moment deciding whether or not to push his buttons.

“ he was kinda nice to me y’know. He seemed a nice feller “ Arthur’s teeth grazed your skin at your words and your smile grew bigger “ kept me from bein’ so lonely with you gone “

“ he wanted to do more than keep you company “ your fingers ran through the long strands of his hair, sighing softly as he continued to kiss your neck

“ you think? You gonna keep me company now? “

“ oh I’ll keep you company “ you had said it only really to tease. Thinking that actually, a sordid little moment with your lover behind the bushes would be an incredible improvement on the evening.

But it was hard to simply just kiss Arthur. He had wandering hands, had lips as addictive as whiskey. Even when you assumed he wasn’t particularly trying to work you up, he did. But the way he was tugging at your body to keep you pressed against him, the way his lips were burning a trail along your neck and across your jaw…

“ Arthur… y’know anyone could come round here “

“ stay quiet then and they ain’t gonna be none the wiser “ your skin prickled with heat at his words and your hips involuntarily rolled against him. Maybe it was the thrill. Maybe it was the fact that he was so… needy. Desperate to remind himself that you were his and not some stupid rich man in an equally as stupid hat.

He groaned against your hot skin as you pressed against him, the sound igniting something deep in your bones. Flaring up through your veins and cursing like lava through your veins.

Your hands found themselves back under his jacket, fingers tugging at his shirt to free it from where it has been neatly tucked into his pants. You knew you couldn’t get it off of him but you still wanted to feel.

You hummed softly when your fingertips met his skin, as hot as you knew yours must be. He loved to feel you touch him, loved when dragged your nails across his back, sunk your teeth into his shoulder to quiet your moans when you were dangerously close to other members of camp.

You wished you could do it in that moment. Wished you were back in your room, truly the only good thing to come out of Shady Belle was the fact that you had a room.

But Arthur didn’t seem keen on waiting. Seemingly having some point to prove to himself. And you were more than happy to let him.

His hands drifted down to the floaty material of your skirt, reluctantly pulling himself away from your neck to frown at the material in front of him.

“ why you gotta have so many damn skirts? “ he grumbled, fumbling with the layers of fabric hanging from your waist.

“ you picked the dress “ you reminded him with a smile, chasing after his lips again. Desperate to kiss him properly now that he had stopped his assault on your neck. He kissed you with a energy that demanded your attention, that drew you in and locked you in place. Hot. Wet. Addictive “ least it ain’t as big as Mollys “ you said when you let yourself pull away.

“ yeah well I weren’t plannin’ on keepin’ you in it when we- god damn there’s enough fabric here to dress the entire camp “ you couldn’t help the giggle that fell past your lips, watching him try to figure out how he was going to play out whatever sordid thoughts were running through his head.

Your own mind had quite ungracefully fallen into the gutter itself, realising exactly what Arthur wanted. And your constant desperation for the man in front of you overruling all your concerns at the location.

He seemed to be getting a little agitated with your dress and you held back the urge to giggle at him. Instead opting to try sooth the frown lines worrying at his forehead, reaching forward to palm at him through the material of his pants. In hopes it would be some kind of incentive for him to hurry up as well.

As much as you needed him as badly as you needed air, you were also still aware of exactly where you were. And how long it would take until Dutch came looking.

“ c’mon Arthur “ you whispered, desperation beginning to fill your words “ ‘fore they notice we’re gone “ it had been his idea to take you away, and yet you were seemingly the more desperate of the two of you now. But how could he or anyone else blame you? When he was all gussied up like he was. In truth you liked his normal attire a little more. Liked him a little more… rugged. But lord did he look handsome in his suit, his hair and beard all neat and tidy.

Arthur’s breath audibly caught in his throat from your touch and it seemed to effectively spur him on.

“ yes ma’am “ He spun you around with strong hands to your waist, your own hands bracing yourself against the wall. The next moments were a flurry of his hands hitching your skirts over your hips, grabbing at your undergarments before a strong arm looped around your waist to pull you back against him.

His hand disappeared under your bunched up skirts making you gasp softly as his fingers dipped into the warmth between your thighs.

“ this all for me darlin? “ you could hear the smirk in his words, feel it as he brushed his nose against your cheek. The short stands of his beard tickled at your skin, sending a shiver snaking along your spine.

“ course it is “ the sound of a lady drunkenly laughing a little too close by made you freeze, hand reaching around to grab at Arthur’s arm.

He didn’t seem discouraged by the idea of someone stumbling upon you both, simply moved his hand up to grasp gently at your jaw, turning your face towards his to kiss you. His other hand was still between your thighs, and you sighed softly against his lips as he drew a thick finger between the wetness of your folds “ oh Arthur…“

Your cunt clenched around nothing. As if silently begging for his fingers to just push inside of you, take you in a way you had always found so much more personal than just sitting on his cock. His fingers that held his guns, that he used to beat people to death more times than either of you could care to count. Those same fingers working you open, covered in the slick evidence of your desire for him instead of gun oil. Fingers that cause pain and damage, but also sent you spiralling into mind blowing pits of pleasure.

And paired with the current location? It just felt… dirty. Erotic. You felt no better than a common whore loitering in a saloon for custom. You wanted him so desperately, needed him.

“ Arthur “ you sighed, pushing your self against his hand as he toyed with your swollen clit.

“ tell me what y’need pretty girl “ he said softly, tickling your skin with his beard and dragging his tongue across your neck before sinking his teeth into the flesh, making you whimper.

“ you- Arthur. You. Please “ his hand continued its gentle movements as he worked at your neck. You pushed your hips back against him, grinding against the hardness still trapped by his pants in a way that couldn’t be comfortable. His breath shuddered against your skin as you did, holding you flush against him to let you wiggle your hips in a silent invitation to just take you already.

A smashing glass drew your attention briefly away from him again. And as much as you could let him do that all evening, you were still hyper aware of your surroundings.

You silently wished he’d just waited until you were back at camp, could take his time with you on that shitty little bed in the privacy of your room at Shady Belle.

But there you were. And there were hundreds of others only a few feet away too.

“ stop teasin we ain’t got the time “ at any other time he’d have worked you into a mess with his fingers, even dropped to his knees and disappeared under your skirts, have you coming on his tongue over and over again just because he wanted to. But he hadn’t planned the situation well at all, and you weren’t exactly in the best of locations. If anyone so much as peaked around the corner of the building a little too far you were certain you’d be spotted.

And wouldn’t that be a tale.

“ ain’t you bossy “ you opened your mouth to snip back at him, but your words evaporated into nothing but a soft whimper as Arthur followed your demands, pushing past his desires to take his time with you. Truly it was his own fault that he couldn’t though, as he withdrew his fingers and fumbled with the buttons on his pants.

“ Arthur “ you whimpered softly, breath stuttering at the feel of his swollen tip brushing between the wet folds of your cunt.

“ quiet now darlin’ “ He pushed in slowly, in the way he so often did. Making sure you felt every single devastating inch, your back arching against his chest as your body flushed with warmth. Even after so many times the stretch was still a lot, a deep burning ache that eventually melted away into a blinding hot pleasure that burnt its way through your veins.

He pressed on until he was flush against you, the material of his opened pants scratching against your soft skin as he held you there a moment. He exhaled slowly, his breath warm against your skin.

It was never fucking with Arthur. Not very often anyways. It was love making. Soft. And slow. And a brutal pace that made sure you remembered he’d been there the next morning, but oh so drawn out. He was gentle. Tender. It had always shocked you how violent he could be and yet become so careful and soft with you. And even there, concealed by a few perfectly trimmed bushes and planters, he was taking his time. Reminding you that you were his. And maybe reminding himself of the fact too.

Reminding himself that maybe there were men only a few feet away that wanted you. That would pay for the pleasure of your company. But only Arthur could have it, that he was the only one you would ever offer it too.

That this deep rooted instinct to protect what was his wasn’t entirely necessary but god was it wanted. That his desire made your blood boil with lust, skin burn under his touch.

“ That’s my girl “ he whispered, tone low and steady as he set himself into a bruising pace, still tightly holding onto you as he did. His face had fallen to your neck again, lips latching onto every inch of exposed skin they could.

You were certain you were going to walk back into the party looking like you’d taken a dip with some leeches.

You tried your best to be quiet, teeth sinking into your bottom lip in some hopes that mixed with the sounds of the party happening only a few feet away you wouldn’t be heard. But it was so hard to be silent when he was fucking you like that. So determined, so strong, pulling out almost completely before pushing back in hard.

Your hand was still gripping at his arm, blunt fingernails digging at his skin through his jacket. His pace increased a little, settling into a steady rhythm that carved a devastating stretch inside of you.

“ y’know I think that feller- that feller back there. He wanted you like this “ you couldn’t help the smile that pulled its way onto your face, still flushing with joy at his jealousy. You knew Arthur desired you carnally. Always had done and always would. But a reminder like the present one was always nice.

“ y’think so? “

“ I know “ he grumbled, his pace increasing a little more, clearly attempting to take out his frustrations with the handsy man. But also maybe simply trying to assure himself in the process too.

Arthur didn’t like to admit it but he was a little self conscious. You’d heard him talk down to himself in the mirror countless times, had seen the way he spoke about himself when you peaked over his shoulder at his journal. Had an almost crippling fear of abandonment that sometimes he did need to be reminded that you wanted him.

“ poor feller “ you said with a small sigh before pushing lightly at Arthur’s arm so he’d let you go. You winced slightly as he pulled out, immediately missing the heavy feel of him there, and spun around tugging him back towards you by the lapels of his jacket “ ain’t got nothin on you “ you hitched your skirts up in your arm and wrapped your spare hand around the now slick length of his cock making him stutter a breath.

His face was flushed, bottom lip shiny from kissing you. You wanted to absolutely devour him, strip him of his fancy clothes and remind him just how much you wanted every part of him.

The look in his eyes was almost primal. Desire and lust burning so brightly it made your chest ache, to feel so wanted. To feel so desired.

To have a man so usually controlled and put together, be reduced to not being able to even wait until you got home. That he had to have you there. Right there in that moment. He couldn’t wait.

You needed him to pull you apart. To worship every inch of you in the way he so often did.

But the side of the mayor's house was truly not the place for such a thing.

“ no one could make me feel the way you do “ you whispered, stroking him softly in your hand as you tried to stoke the fire under his ego. Make him realise he truly had no reason to be jealous “ and him back there? He thought he could huh? Poor feller “

“ poor feller “ he echoed, sliding a hand over your leg and hitching it over his hip, sliding back into you with a welcome ease that made your head fall back against the wall.

“ Thinks he could fuck me better than this? Man must be damn crazy “ you said with a smile, breathless as he fucked into you. You were practically dripping around him, the lewd sounds between you enough to make your skin flush.

“ you’re mine darlin “ you nodded immediately. Not a single doubt in your mind on the matter. You were his. And he yours. That was how it would always be “ all mine, you hear? “

“ all yours Arthur. Ain’t no man in this whole damn country could replace you”

He moved with more determination, thrusting into you harder in a way you knew was going to bruise your back from rubbing against the wall. His all too familiar deep, hard pace. You pulled him down by the back of his neck, muffling your whimpers with his mouth cautious again that you were getting a little reckless.

“ that good? Makin me feel so good darlin’ such a good girl “ the entire thing felt almost animalistic. Desires so strong they couldn’t be withheld. Dirty. Filthy. Perfect.

“ God Arthur “ the look on his face alone made you clench around him, never wanting him to leave, needing to feel the heavy bruising sensation as he split you apart for the rest of your life. He hitched your leg higher, hitting some new devastating part inside of you that made you see stars. Eyes rolling to the back of your head and unable to contain the sounds escaping your throat any longer.

“ There she is, jus’ like that darlin I got ya” his grip on your leg grew restless, fingers dancing over your skin and trying to pull you as close to him as he could get you. He always wanted you close. Always wanted to feel your skin against his own. A moment later his thrusts became sloppier and you knew he wasn’t far off. Though quite frankly neither were you “ so pretty for me like this ain’t ya? My girl “ his words only pulled you closer to the edge, knot twisting tighter.

“ Arthur I- “

“ I know. I know darlin, can feel it “ he almost cooed, lifting a hand to cup your face gently “ that’s it look right at me. That’s a girl right at me “ with his gaze so intense you couldn’t hold it any longer, biting down on your lip as you attempted to conceal your sounds of ecstasy as you came over his cock.

He was barely a second behind you, a stuttered groan of a sound leaving him as he dropped his forehead against yours, painting your slick walls with rope after rope of come as you clenched around him. Holding him in place so that not a single drop of him would go to waste. It was a risky business letting him finish inside of you, truly it was. But in your sex drunk haze you didn’t care, couldn’t give a damn because it simply felt too good to give up.

He nudged his nose against yours, brushing his lips against your own and kissed you softly. So tender and gentle, his hand carefully lowering your leg back down, slipping his softening length out of you making you wince. He kissed the crinkles it caused to show at the corners of your eyes, whispering a gentle sorry. He soothed his hands over your waist with a care very few men had for women those days.

“ my girl “ he murmured, littering kisses across your cheeks and nose.

When he pulled back you couldn’t help but smile. The dopey, soft kind. He was looking far less put together than he had done when you’d arrived, the pomade in his hair no longer serving its purpose after your fingers had gotten to it. He’d broken a sweat too, his forehead shiny. His skin flushed.

The smugness was overwhelming though, could see it in his eyes. In the small smirk pulling at his lips. He seemed incredibly proud of himself.

“ you are somethin’ else “ he mumbled as he finished readjusting his clothes, reaching forward to slip the ruffled strap of your dress back up your shoulder from where it had slipped. Pressing a kiss to the skin there for good measure.

“ I ain’t the jealous one “ you teased as you combed your fingers through his hair in some attempt to tidy it.

“ ain’t jealous. No idea what you talkin about girl “ he said with a small clear of his throat in some attempt to hide the obvious lie, you simply smiled again and pressed a kiss to his cheek

“ mhm sure “

There was something about having to go back out into the party with the light ache between your legs, with the evidence of Arthur’s jealousy slowly dripping down your thighs. And Arthur seemed to think so too

“ now. I believe you wanted to dance? “

#Amy in the kindest possible way. keep scrolling #I know I’m posting late but I want i didn’t wanna wait until tomorrow sooo #ANYWAYS. FIRST ARTHUR UPLOAD WHOO #crippling fear or writing for a new character and fandom starts now!#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #Arthur Morgan smut #x you #Dutch van der linde #van der linde gang

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ravengards-rogue · 1 month

Text

the evening stretch | warm-up series.

ft. the prompts, nsfw / "dinner" / arthur morgan.

✧ tags : afab!reader + fem!reader outdoors sex, oral (f!recieving), reader is an outlaw, established relationship, desperate arthur morgan, 18+

✧ wc : 2.7k

✧ a/n : hello! this is part of a little warm-up series i do on my other blog where i pick three prompts and try to come up with something. i normally do them in a rut. im working on a commission and im super stuck so.

this actually landed on javier four times in a row but im being kind and sparing a friend so. here's mr. morgan.

✧ synopsis : arthur thinks the place between your legs would suit him quite nicely.

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Honest to God, Arthur's never been like this before.

He ain't all that pious to start, so perhaps the sentiment doesn't stretch as far as he would like it too. But it's true, all the same - that in all the lives he's lived, he's never experienced this much bone-deep desire for another human being.

Which is outright ridiculous, since right now you're just making supper. Dinner, you always clarify with that yankee accent. You're going to have dinner together, 'cause Arthur needs to eat. He works hard, according to you.

It's not much, but you're a better cook than Pearson. Even if that's not saying a whole lot. And you're insistent on making the man eat, always on his case about how it's hardly enough for a man his size.

Arthur can chalk it up to being that you love him, as you have told him foolishly many times. He's sure you're not gonna be happy with him in a minute since again - all you're doing is making dinner.

It's just... something. Something about you today. Dammit, he doesn't understand it neither. You've got a job together, and you and Arthur play convincing husband and wife since you practically are anyway. Arthur's been watching you today closely. You lie pretty. Smile with all your teeth, clever with a careful finesse and an honest knack for debauchery and indecency.

You love calling yourself an awful woman. Joking about dying an unweddable spinster given your crudity.

But Arthur likes it in you. Of you. Likes it so much he's done nothing but readjust his pants watching you squirm your way out of every difficult situation and sling the revolver on your hip like a tried-and-true gunslinger.

You're a fine woman to him. A fine one.

The fire crackles as you place a pot over the little flame of the faux stove. You've made a real dinner somehow - with some vegetables and creeping thyme and carefully butchery of meat. It smells good and you seem proud of it, stirring the thing with the sharp end of your knife. Careful not to scrape the pot.

Arthur watches the light glow orange on your face, carefully observing the way it shines on you. You don't look up at all when you speak.

"Gonna stare a hole into me, Morgan."

He feels something warm crawl up his cheeks. He scratches his beard instinctively, tucking his hat over his eyes.

"'m sorry," He says, unsure of how to cover for himself. "Been thinking about some things."

"Don't hurt yourself," You reply, sardonic and dry. Arthur adores you. He laughs to himself and feels warmed by the pleasant smile that seems to give you.

"I'll try. Ain't much used to thinking,"

"Penny for your thoughts, then Mr. Morgan." You reply, carefully moving the pot around so nothing burns. "Might help you clear your mind if you get some of it off your chest."

He's backed himself into a wall. Goddamn him and his big mouth. He hesitates, taking it off this time. Fidgety.

"Yanno, there ain't a lot women like you. Not that I've met at least."

You give him a look. Your lips pressed into a flat line, unimpressed by him.

"Is that so?"

He laughs to himself. "It is indeed. You're a real piece of work. 'Specially going around batting your lashes, making yourself out to be a housewife."

"Aw what, did you like seeing me all doe eyed?" You smile to yourself, teasing but not entirely insincere. "If it helps, since you're the fake husband, I'm only half-acting."

That makes him grin. Though you say it with confidence, the sincerity it makes you flush.

"It ain't that," Arthur says again, looking at your face for the second time in a few minutes. "Just that you're a fine woman to be around. What do they call it...resourceful. That's what I'm thinking of."

"Who taught you such a big word, Morgan?"

"Trelawny, I'd guess."

You laugh, loud and beautiful and Arthur smiles. You look at him from across the fire. "Well, I'm glad you like my company, Mr. Morgan."

"I do more than like it," He hums, offering a reprieve. He nods at you carefully, head tilted. "Come 'ere,"

Your eyes widen at him, but you don't deny him of what he's asking. For that he is awfully grateful. You're more than capable and much less than needy. There's victory in your deliberate desire for him, Arthur thinks. You want him enough to let him chase you.

You come sit by Arthur. You're a little awkward with him still but he don't mind. It adds to whatever he feels for you, sugar-sweet affection and all. You sit on your knees and Arthur turns his head looking at you.

Beautiful. Beautiful thing you are, really. He has a hard time finding the words to tell you.

He reaches up, hand cupping your face. You lean into the touch, palm resting on calloused hand. He adores you.

"And quit with the Mister Morgan nonsense. Drives me crazy."

"Arthur," You say, slow and deliberate. "You know you're looking at me like you wanna eat me."

'"Read my mind, then."

"Arthur," You repeat, scandalized. He would smile if he wasn't so serious. "We're supposed to be eatin' dinner. You got into a whole spat with them Leymone Riders just today. You need to recover,"

His smile widens.

"Lettin' me go down on ya will heal me just fine,"

You look at him exasperated. Arthur leans into your neck, placing chaste kisses down the line of your jaw. He kisses you just there - underneath your earlobe, knows it drives you crazy.

"Lay down, sugar. Help a poor, injured man heal."

You pull away from him with faux exasperation, fond smiling breaking your face.

"You can be such a dog some times, do you know that?"

"I'm afraid I do,"

You give him another unimpressed look, but you listen anyways. Arthur moves so you can lay down on the bedroll - his bedroll. He takes off his coat just before you lay your head, playing it underneath you to get you more comfortable.

"Dinner's gonna burn," You tell him, almost reflexively. He laughs as he looks at you, your hands folded over your stomach and flat. He laughs at you.

"Burn? You feeling warm?"

"Arthur!"

And he laughs again, catching your boot in his hand as you go to kick his chest lightly. He sets it back down as he stares at you. You're quite the sight. Adoration bubbles up into his throat, blooms out into a hum. The sound of crickets and owls and all sorts of night wanderers sound - but none are distracting enough to pry his gaze away.

"You're looking too much," You say, your voice a half tremble. He nods.

"Got too," Arthur hums, leaning forward into your space. You always smell good to him, some cross between soft earth, and sweet liquor and clothes left in the sun. Skin and salt and sweet. "Who knows how long I'll be around."

He presses his lips to yours gentle and you kiss him - but only once before pulling away. Your eyes suddenly serious, warm palm on his cheek.

"Don't say something so morbid. If you go, I go,"

"Sweetheart—"

"No buts." You affirm, pressing your thumb to his lip all serious. Your eyes meet and for a moment - just one minute, all he wants to do is stop time from moving. From stealing him from you in life at all. Even a few seconds, intolerable. "Don't feel to good to hear, does it? So don't say it."

"Alright, alright," He huffs, laughing against your neck. He kisses it again, right against your pulse - quickening under his teeth as he bites and scrapes. He mulls over how much he wants you, and how little time there is to do everything. "Jus' lemme...I dunno."

Now you're cheeky, smiling up at him. Lord above, you do something so terrible to him. "Now that's just not true, baby."

He laughs deep and raspy. It's not true, because he knows exactly what he's after.

Arthur lets his hands plane over your clothed body. He doesn't bother with the ritual of undressing you entirely - since the act doesn't deserve the intimacy. You do, maybe - but Arthur's head feels too foggy to do anything civilized. He has to settle for letting his hands grip the fabric of your skirt and push it until it bunches around your waist.

There's no real delicacy in it, save for the way your breath hitches as Arthur gives himself better access. He moves to lay on his stomach between your thighs. He wishes it were brighter to give him better view. He's seen it plenty but looking at your pretty pussy alone gets him harder than steel.

His hands go underneath every layer of fabric to undo the little tie of your undergarments. You squirm when Arthur takes them off, but you don't pull away.

It's pretty. Even with the dim light of just the moon and fire to let Arthur see it. What entices him mostly though is the scent, after a long day of riding out alone - there's something about the way you smell - sweat and all that makes the back of his mouth ache with want. Makes his teeth hurt just dreaming about it.

He doesn't let his animalistic urges take him yet. He knows you need the build up. His hand is soft as he grips onto your waist. He pulls your legs further apart and lets his lips brush the inside of your thigh. Starts at your knee and works his way up, his mouth burning hot - open kisses. You giggle at the sensation of his beard, but it's tamped down with lust Arthur knows like the back of his hand.

Slow, deliberate, sinful. He knows the way you liked to be touched so exactly, but the pace is set more by his desperation. It grows ten sizes listening to you sigh and huff, feeling your hands come down to touch his hair and play with it.

"Arthur," Your voice calls. Pleading. Wanting him. You're so good at making Arthur loose his composure with so little. It's hard to tease you as your voice clips off into a whine. "Arthur,"

"I've got you," He says, assured. He means it as much as he means anything he's ever said. He ain't a decent man, but this much he can say full ways. "I've got you, sugar. Ease up. Let me take care of you,"

And so you again, breathless - boneless and eager. You let Arthur into your space, and something about that. Something about you. His heart races, blood pumping through his body. It pulses in his ears, head swimming with nothing but praise for you.

You're a fine woman. You're a good girl. The best he knows.

Arthur can feel the way your clit pulses with want before he ever puts his mouth on you. Makes him chuckle, gloved hand resting on your navel. He uses his thumb to pull it back, before using both hands to spread you open. Then, in an act less then gentlemanly, spits on it hard. He watches it land, lewd as it drips between your fold. He laughs to himself.

Another pitchy call of his name and Arthur decides he's had enough fun to get him through the evening.

He kisses your clit first, thinks it's only gentlemanly. When your hips buck up trying to chase the feeling of his mouth - he laughs. His hands dig into your hips. You're soft, skin dimpling from just how tight he holds onto you.

When he finally gets what he wants, his own body lurches forward from want. He nearly slumps into the ground - half-way between relieved and utterly addicted. It's a sense of euphoria unmatched by the finest liquor or cigars money can be.

The taste of you fills his mouth as Arthur eats.

Arthur is not used to playing predator. Not interested in the act of devouring. You often compare him to some sort of herbivore. But there's something too hungry, too visceral, too primal for him to be anything but a coyote. A teethed thing, all screwed up from hunger.

He lets his tongue slip against the seam of your cunt, all the arousal collecting in his mouth. His senses flood with something heady, sweet but bitter and he groans shamelessly as a result. Spoiled by the taste and utterly debauched.

"Oh, god - Arthur, you're—"

Arthur is pleased by the way your words are cut off by your own moan. He slides his tongue back up, wet muscle firm as it lays flat against your clit. There's a slight twitch like it's asking for more attention.

Arthur is all to eager vtoo provide, closing his lips around the twitching bundle of nerves. He knows what you like. Learned over time just the amount of pressure he needs to suck with and the speed he needs to draw his tongue over your clit to get you right at the very edge of your orgasm.

He teases you to that pace. Slow increases in either or, until it's just at that perfect medium. Once he hits that spot, you always moan so pretty.

You shudder, your body lurching up as your hands get tighter in his hair. "Aah, fuck. Ngh, Arthur. Don't do this t'me."

You begging him not too makes him want to do it more. If Arthur were any less aroused, he would. But his brain can barely think up enough to stamina to do that. His own cock is strained against his work pants - hips instinctively rutting into the bedroll just beneath him. Silently seeking friction all while hoping he doesn't get enough to distract him.

It'd be a damn shame, he thinks - letting anything pull him from the taste of your pussy. From the smell of it, from the sight of it, from the feeling of you. Sticky, pulsing strings of arousal coating his tongue and turning all his thoughts to dust.

His cock throbs again as you rut against his mouth. Arthur pins you in place.

"Please," You say. A magic word he ain't much stronger than. "Please make me cum,"

You really are a good girl, the way you know exactly what makes him tick. Arthur moans into your cunt as he sucks and licks and eats. He'd die over it, and he does not mean it lightly. It's the only thing in the world he wants to do in the moment. He laser focuses on finding that sweet spot again.

And he knows he does when you start whimpering. Squirming and holding onto his soft brown locks and pleading for something you don't know about. He can feel how wet your getting - dripping along down his beard and face. Thick strings of your arousal stick and slide down his neck.

He's never been a messy eater, but you've been disproving many of his prior understandings of himself. He supposes it's only natural.

"Oh, baby," You say, not even his name. Arthur knows it's a warning that you're gonna cum. All he can do is encourage you. He hums into your soft, wet cunt and you groan again. "Fuck, Arthur. I'm gonna cum."

Arthur knows better. He doesn't do a thing but keep going. Lets you move and thrash and pull away but keeps you firm in his place and eats your pussy until you can barely think.

He knows the knot is untying before you do because of how much you squirm. When you cum, you cum hard. Your back arches up into a picture perfect curve, toes curling and hands tugging at his roots for purchase.

He can feel every pulse of desire as you finally do let go. You cry out, loud enough to startle any nearby critters. Your fingers grip tight at the base of his hair as the orgasm washes over you. It's just as magnetic as it was the first time.

He's sure that will always be true.

When Arthur pulls away from your pulsing, wet core - he can feel just how much of his lower face is sticky. He's sure you also know, if the way you laugh is anything to go by.

And he's not long to follow after. Not even a few seconds and he can feel something in pants tighten - a mess of white staining the front of the denim in an onset of lust damn near shameful. Is he a teenager again? Lord above.

Breathlessly, you look down at him after you've ridden your high out.

Pulling up Arthur by the collar, you look at him slowly and frown. You look impassioned and a little frustrated.

You kiss him tender after you've come too. Once, then twice, then a another time with your hand still drawn into a fist. Arthur grabs it closed, opening your palms before kissing the palm of your hands until you're no longer mad.

"Hate how good you are at that," You admit, a little drunk of the euphoria of all of it. "Make me feel so crazy."

Arthur beams at you unapologetic.

"It's good to be that with me, sweetheart." Arthur says, kissing the corner of your mouth. "Now how about you go and give me one more?"

You laugh breathlessly but don't go to stop him at all.

"Insatiable man."

"Only for you, my girl."

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#arthur morgan x reader #rdr2 x reader #arthur morgan smut #rdr2 smut #rogues love letters #zero.arthur #this is OUTRAGEOUS. I WAS WARMING UP???#i need to sleep its nearly 8. jesus christ.

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