#everyone look at guste's also.
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So I’ve seen some posts going around about a ‘Bruce adopts Danny and everyone thinks they’ll finally have a normal family member—Danny is very not normal’ and here’s my late night take on it.
Or
Danny batfam au where they batfam tries really hard to keep their vigilante ass-kicking nightlife a secret from danny because he is ‘the only normal one in the family’ this becomes a problem however when danny gets kidnapped.
——-
The batfam all work together in a deeply serious family meeting to save their boy. After hours of combining their brains together they come up with a plan that will effectively save danny from joker, kick joker’s ass, and also make them look really cool while doing it.
So they bust in that warehouse, guns blazing, explosions fading in the background, a gust of dramatic dust covers the air
Batman steps infront of the rest of the team and demands to the blurry figure somewhere in the distance, “Where is Danny!”
The dust clears–they expect bad guys pointing weapons meancingly at them, they expect a cackle of a wicked clown amused at whatever plot he had planned coming to life, they expected a terrified boy perhaps tied somewhere likely siting in a chair that joker could present to the bats as a way of taunting them.
The dust settles–they observed their surroundings looking around and realize that, there are few new facts to be added into this ‘defeat the villain, get the bro, happy ending equation’
There is decidedly no weapons being pointed at them: In fact, all of the henchmen are already knocked out and tied up.
There is decidedly no evil laughs being echoed their way: In fact, the only noise that isnt coming from them is a light scritch scratch of a pencil
And there is decidedly no terrified little boy, there is a Danny however and he seems to be doing alright–actually scratch that.
Danny is doing wonders for the situation he’s in right now: In fact–
–Danny is sitting criss cross applesauce on-top a knocked out tied up Joker doing his algebra homework
The small blue eyed boy looks up at Batman's voice and visibly brightens, “Oh hey guys, I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Jason says with the utmost of comprehension, “...what.”
“So hi, I’m kinda new to gotham so sorry about beating these guys up, I think they’re villains? I dunno, anyways if you could take care of these guys while I call an uber home that’d be great.”
Danny sends them a blinding smile which would've been adorable if there weren’t a massive pile of bodies he were casually walking away from.
As Danny nears the exit he looks over his shoulder to the baffled group of vigilantes and blinks
“Oh yeah one last thing,” Danny rubs the back of his neck nervously, “Could you guys not tell the Waynes about this.”
Damian speaks up for the rest of his frozen family, albeit hesitantly, “I do think they have already been alerted of your kidnapping.”
“Oh no that's fine.” Danny starts nervously, “It's more about me being the… fighter… in this situation. I was just adopted by them and they seem really nice, I don’t want to scare them away being all grrrr im a scary monster boy and i love to hurt people argh.”
“I don’t think they’d think you're a monster.” Tim adds quietly
“Eh, tell that to my birth parents–they went psycho on me. Like evil scientist psycho, it was not as awesome as the movies make it sound, having scientists for parents.” Danny says bittersweet as he admits with a shrug
There is a moment of silence as the batfamily reevaluate the adoption file that states Danny’s family before they passed were very good people–albeit a bit excentric.
Dick blurts out, “Where did you learn to fight?”
Danny sends him an anxious chuckle, “I actually started when I was fourteen–my town always ran into some trouble so I had to step up. It’s part of the reason I moved here actually. I really don’t want anything to do with that hero vigilante life anymore…” The boy puts his hands together in a pleading motion, “So please don’t tell The Waynes!”
Bewildered at the situation as a whole they nod in a daze
The boys eyes widen at their easy agreement and he grins, “Thank you so so much! I’ve got to go now, it’s way past my curfew. but you’ll probably see me again next time I get kidnapped–I’ll make sure to put in a good word for you guys with my family bye!”
And just like that Danny slips off into the night leaving behind a family who were so sure they finally found a normal addition to their pack.
Jason sighs looking forlornly at the spot Danny had previously been standing, “You could just never pick the just semi-mentally healthy normal kids could you?”
Bruce groans pinching his the bridge of his nose
#dc x dp#dp x dc#fanfiction#danny phantom#batfam#danny fenton#dp x dc crossover#maybes a fic#this was fun to write so probs part 2 later#Batfam: hello normal son#Danny with practicing the knot he learned in home ed on 37 criminals: hey guys#batfam: fuck#danny is a little shit#it’s up to your interpretation whether or not he’s genuinely clueless about the Waynes being the Bats#or if he’s fucking with them#ohkay going to sleep bye bye#mwah#also we do not see the bad grammar haha gn#veerliwrites
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MOVED TO @seratopia
miguel o’hara x reader (fluff) - touchy touchy
modern ceo au!
thinking about how miguel touches you so often around the office that a random guy decides to do something about it
You and Miguel don’t share a workplace. He’d end up being your boss anyway, and as much as you love spending time with him, it’s not good to have a partner that also gives you your paycheck. (Plus, distance can equal longing.)
Miguel constantly insist that you stay at home, and that he’d provide you with everything you could ask for but... feminism???( /j ) You have your own job conveniently down the street from Miguel’s office; it’s more of a hobby than it really is a job, but it gets you money.
The whole building knows you as “Miguel’s Wife”; you visit often. Sometimes your visits are a surprise, others it’s when you have nothing to do so you just hang by Miguel all day. You’re blessed with free food from the cafeteria, plus the gym. It’s fun to watch Miguel work out.
Though, today was... funny.
Whenever Miguel thinks you guys are alone, he’s touchy. However, to Miguel, “alone” is just being in a room with less than 6 people in it. So, needless to say, his employees have seen things.
You’re just so pretty, so cute to him, he can’t help but just worm his way over to you whenever in sight.
Things along the lines of kisses, waist grabbing, thigh grabbing, hugs, back hugs, and even ass-slapping are a common sight to see when you’re around the office. Miguel truly, genuinely believes that he’s being sly, but that’s probably because everyone’s too scared/nice to say anything about it. Perks of being a CEO.
No one really tells the new recruits about it though, it’s just a you-see-it-and-get-used-to-it type of thing.
So imagine your surprise when someone in the office pulls you aside one day and asks if Miguel is sexually assaulting you.
Miguel’s been lingering his hands all over you today in particular, boldly sliding his big hand down towards your ass. You elbow him a little when he gets too close though, especially around a few people.
“¿Por favor, querida?“ He whines, slithering his hand back onto you.
“Oh my gosh, Miguel, no. Wait until we’re out of work.“
All is well, but Miguel has to tend to a few things, so you take it upon yourself to take a break at the cafeteria. Might as well bring him a drink while you’re at it.
Halfway through your walk there, some guy you’ve seen around taps on your shoulder and pulls you aside. He’s relatively young, has this assertive look to him. Among the quirky pins on his shirt pocket, you find an ID card labeled “INTERN.”
The worry on his own face makes you a little anxious.
“Ma’am, are you okay?“ He asks, meeting his eyes with yours. He looks serious, peering from left to right as if a secret was being exchanged.
“Uh- yeah, what do you mean?“
His voice is low, almost a whisper. “Girl, I’ve seen Miguel grope you... do you want me to call the police? I have a video right here as pr-“
A gust of relief washes over you, and you almost start to laugh. You watch as the guy starts to pull up his phone, before you stop him.
“Oh, no no no, it’s okay!“ You exclaim. “Miguel’s my husband, he’s just clingy!“
The man raises an eyebrow, concern lacing his voice. “You aren’t just saying that, right? Like, you’re really okay?”
“Yes, don’t worry. If he was actually bothering me, then I’d tell him.“ You chuckle, just to ease up the serious air a little bit.
“Ah, well if you say so... If anything happens, just let me know.“ He says.
“Yeah, thank you for the concern, though.“ You smile, and he smiles back, walking away around the corner where you assume he came from.
With a little laugh, you continue your walk towards the cafeteria, thinking deeply about the interaction. It might be time for you to tell Miguel to stop touching you often around the office, as much as you enjoy it. He’d hate despise it though.
If it weren’t for you being around so often, work life might not be as pleasant for his employees. You don’t think Miguel truly notices, but he starts getting huffy and puffy when you aren’t around to see him; people get a little more scared of him when he has this scowl on his face.
“Who was that?“
You violently flinch, yelping out loud. In one swift motion, you swerve around, your heartbeat only easing down when you realize it’s just Miguel.
“Miguel, honey, you gotta stop scaring me.“
“...Sorry. Who was that?“ He asks, obvious curiosity in his voice. Almost like it was muscle memory, he slips both hands onto your sides, reminding you of the topic at hand. (literally lmao)
“Just some guy... you know what he asked me, though?“
“If it was on a date he’s getting fired.“ Miguel promises darkly, squeezing at the fat of your sides.
“No, Miguel. He asked if you were assaulting me. Even asked me if he wanted me to call the police.“
“Assaulting?“
“Yeah, because you keep on doing things like this-“ You place your hands on his. “- to me every time I visit!“
Like a guilty puppy, Miguel pouts to the side, reluctantly slipping his hands away from you. It takes you everything not to laugh at him as he grumbles to himself, that signature scowl building onto his face.
“It’s fine, Miguel. You can still touch me. Just tone it down a bit when we’re around people, yeah?“
Miguel nods, slowly inching his fingers towards your hands. “Yeah. M’sorry.”
“Miguel, it’s fine. It’s not like I hate it, it might just be uncomfortable for your employees.“
Miguel sighs, dipping down his head to rest on your shoulder. He catches a whiff of your body wash, sweet and comforting. You giggle, a sound that Miguel would kill to hear for everyday of his life. You slide your own hands over onto his broad back, tracing your fingers against the muscle through his shirt.
“I just... I think I love you too much.“ He mumbles, and your ears almost strain to hear it.
“Awh, you know I love you too.“ You sweetly reply, squeezing him into a tight hug. He’s so darling, compressing you tight against him.
“Just let me have this, and I’ll leave you be for a bit, hm?“ Miguel mutters into your ear, indulgently smoothing his big hands over your little back. Chills run up your spine when he presses a smooch to your ear.
“Yeah, we’ll see how long that’ll last...“ You chuckle, letting him do what he wants for the time being.
It takes Miguel longer than he really should to let you go, adoration clearly written on his face as he detaches his arms from you.
“You wanna grab coffee with me before you have to go back?“ You ask, beaming at Miguel with a natural smile.
Miguel doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
You break off into a walk through the hallway, and Miguel has to remind himself every minute or so to keep his hands off.
. . .
It didn’t work.
Already in line for coffee, Miguel’s chin rests on top of your head, acting as if the previous conversation was entirely wiped clean from his memory.
You sigh, knowingly speaking to the barista as if you didn’t have a 6′9 CEO strapped to your back like a koala.
“Baby, what did we say?“
“Sorry...“
miguel is 6′9 because i said so and because of this tiktok
© 𝒄𝒐𝒔𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒔.
#miguel o'hara#miguel o'hara x reader#miguel o'hara x you#miguel o'hara x y/n#atsv miguel#atsv x reader#atsv#atsv miguel o'hara#spiderman#spiderverse#spiderman across the spiderverse#x reader#reader insert#fluff#romance#ceo au#cosmosis-writes ₍⑅ᐢ..ᐢ₎
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Tim came down the stairs with an empty mug in hand. As he entered the dinning room he found a kid happily eating pancakes. Ah this must be the new adoptee, he thought to himself as he recalled last night's group chat.
"This is not a new adoptee," Bruce said looking up from the boy. Man, Tim hated when the old man guessed their thoughts like that.
"Say whatever you need to convince yourself B," Tim replied with a shrug as he went into the kitchen.
Bruce shouted after him, "He already has a family!"
The boy immediately interjected, "She's not my family silly! She's my friend."
Tim chuckled to himself as he filled his mug and came back into the dining room. "Aw B," he said smugly, "he doesn't even have a family. You're not saying we're gonna leave him on the streets are you?"
Bruce for his part, glared halfheartedly at Tim before turning back to the little boy. Tim also took this time to observe the boy. He believed Oracle had said his name was Danny. Danny was currently happily kicking his legs as he stabbed at his pancakes. Tim couldn't help but note how the pancakes had already been cut into bite sized pieces. Other than that, he seemed perfectly fine. No apparent injuries or adverse reactions to sudden movements. His clothes were also nice and clean. Probably Alfred's doing. Speaking of the old butler, he came in and set a plate down in front of Tim.
"Oh I'm not-" One eyebrow raise was enough for the young man to shut his mouth. He looked down at his plate only to immediately turn back to Alfred with an eyebrow raise of his own. "Mister Danny claimed it was not fair he was the only one to receive such special pancakes. He was rather insistent that everyone experiences such happiness this fine morning," Alfred informed.
Ah, that explains why Tim had gotten star shaped pancakes. He looked over at Danny who was smiling giddily at him. As Tim took his first bite of pancake, he couldn't help but agree with that assessment.
Bruce cleared his throat. "Danny?" the boy looked up at him. "As you know our... mutual friend left you in my care. As such after you're finished with your pancakes, what do you say I take you back home?"
"Ok!" the boy replied before shoveling more pancakes into his mouth.
"I think I'll tag along too," Tim said. There was no way this little "drop off" was going to go as planned and he wanted to be there to see it. After all, someone had to keep the group chat updated. Besides, he took great joy in Bruce's half perplexed half annoyed expression.
"Don't you have some meetings to attend today?" Bruce asked through gritted teeth, guessing his son's angle. "Nope," Tim answered sweetly. "My schedule's all clear today."
"Fine," Bruce relented. "If you want to come along on this very quick drop off, I won't stop you."
Tim smiled into his mug. This was gonna be fun.
-----
"We're here!" Danny exclaimed as they pulled up to an abandoned looking apartment building.
"Are you sure this is your home?" Bruce asked cautiously. Tim couldn't blame him, this place was on the outskirts of the Bowery and looked like nobody had lived there in years.
Danny opened the door and hopped out. "Yep!" he said. "I know because I'm a big boy and big boys know how to get home." He puffed out his chest proudly.
"Right," Bruce muttered pensively as he examined the building.
They all entered the building and began ascending the questionable stairs with Danny taking them two steps at a time. As they climbed, both Bruce and Tim noted how rundown the building looked. Walls were peeling and there was rubble and trash all over the floors. The railing on the stairs looked so rusted that a gust of wind could probably knock them over. Most of the lights didn't work because of one thing or another which luckily wasn't a problem considering it was daytime. But none of that was even the most concerning part. No, the most concerning part was how silent it was.
As they walked down the hall, it was simply too silent. Even taking into account that most people would already be at work right now, it was still too quiet. There was no hint of people coming back from work the night shift. No sound of those staying home sick or someone with a day off. No dogs barked, no cats made any noise. It was an eerie silence that seemed to blanket the whole building. It was unnerving.
Danny stopped in front of a door and opened it with ease. There was no lock or anything. Once again adding to the list of concerning evidence. They entered after Danny to discover a shabby looking flat past the door. There was barely any furniture, and the furniture that was there looked like it should have been thrown out years ago. The floor boards seemed as if they would give way at any moment too. The windows to the far side allowed lighted in but that only served to illuminated the mountain of dust everywhere. The apartment didn't even look lived in. There were no clothes anywhere, no dishes, no sort of decorations, nothing.
Danny seemed undeterred by any of this and happily pranced into a room off to the right. Tim followed him as Bruce stayed behind to look around more.
As he entered, Tim was relieved to find that at least this space looked lived in albeit barely. The bed had Superman themed sheets on it and there was a backpack leaning against the closet. The bed also had a blanket laying on top of it which Danny ran to and grabbed. He came back over to show Tim.
"This is my most precious thing!" he explained excitedly. "My friend gave it to me. Feel it! It's super soft."
Tim knelt down and felt the blanket which was black and had stars all over it. "You're right," he said. "It really is soft." Danny beamed. "Told ya!"
Tim smiled at the boy's obvious excitement despite his less than stellar living arrangements. Just then, Bruce called for him. Tim returned to the main room with Danny in tow, still clutching onto his blanket.
Bruce turned to him and handed him a piece of paper with an unreadable expression. The paper had cursive scrall on it that simply read, Take care of him my knights.
Danny looked up at them both curiously and Tim just sighed. So much for this being a quick drop off.
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𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐔𝐓. + 𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐔
masterlist. / taglist. / any request?
synopsis. maybe you did have a skirt kink?
pairing. football player!gojo satoru x reader
word count. 3.4K
genre and warnings. +18 nsfw under the cut. minors dni, football player au, mutual pinning, pwp, don't squint at the plot too hard now, idk how sports work, secret relationship, hookups, commitment issues, skirt kink, jealousy, heated kissing, teasing, touchy gojo, pussy drunk, car sex, backseat sex, oral (f), fingering, slight bratty reader, mentions of praise kink, name calling, pet names, unprotected sex(wrap before you tap), leather against skin, NOT BETA'D | — feedback is always welcomed & don't forget to reblog 🤍
It was the night of Gojo’s homecoming game. Football players spread across the field as the crowd roared, cheering for their respective university teams.
In all honesty, you didn’t know little to anything about football, let alone sports, flinching out every time the students that sat on the bleachers next to you would scream out in excitement or shoot up from their seats to clap and cheer.
The word "bored" doesn't accurately convey how uninterested you were and how little you knew about college football. You didn't feel much better not understanding a single event that had unfolded while sitting in the brisk fall air.
Your ears and fingers were nearly numb from the absence of sufficient warming layers on your body, and you were shivering in the denim jacket you had stolen from Gojo's closet.
As the game entered the fourth quarter, you were trembling with each gust of wind and fidgeting with the gem-layered pendant that rested against your chest.
It was obvious from the scoreboard, which you had to squint your eyes to see from the stands, that Gojo's team would win. The final score resulting, 38-14, caused students to stand up and shout in unbridled joy as the rest of the football team ran towards the field to celebrate their victory.
You still felt out of place despite being surrounded by so much school spirit, chanting, and screaming. In an effort to blend in with the crowd as much as possible, you sat as far away from the field as you could.
Watching Gojo celebrate with his teammates, shouting out in excitement and playfully tackling them into hugs, his long arms slinging over players so effortlessly, you couldn't help but smile to yourself.
You found it strange to hear other women gossiping and giggling about Gojo, saying things that you would utterly concur with.
But the rumor that he was a sex god and was extremely strict about who he chose to hook up with was what you despised the most. How only the luckiest of pretty girls would he tempt back to his bedroom.
Even though you were hooking up with Gojo and had plans to return to his apartment tonight to give him some, you resisted the urge to lean in and let everyone know because you knew that doing so would make you appear crazy.
Realizing this would make you a colossal hypocrite since you were the ones who caused the difficulties in your relationship with Gojo.
Being overly protective of your own heart and unwilling to let the blue-eyed playboy with a long history of "sleeping around" have to close a relationship with you.
You managed to make out his trademark white hair, which is typically styled but was now pulled back over his eyes.
You also noticed his prince charming smile, the skin that peaked out from under his jersey, and the figure that shimmered from the sweat drips covering his entire body, making him look like a magazine model under the field lights.
His eyes scanned the sea of people until they finally met yours, sending a chill down your spine.
When he saw you so out of your element and knew you were doing it specifically for him, his Chester-like smile only got bigger.
He winked as he returned his focus to his coach, leaving you fiddling against the bitterly cold bleacher seats as well as the girls seated in front of you giggling as if the gesture was intended only for them to lean against each other in an out-of-control fit.
You reminded yourself that the only reason you had endured it all was because of the stupid deal Gojo had made with you as your hands clenched against your thighs in frustration.
“How about we make a little bet ___, if i win this game you have to give me a special reward.”
Any bet you placed with Gojo was akin to making a deal with the devil himself.
The winding game of cat and mouse with you resolutely giving in to his childish antics, beckoning your attention until you fall back into his trap with enough time to have you pressed against the cool tile of the guy's locker room way after practice hours.
Fucking you stupid until you gain back that tiny sense of commitment-related fear by ignoring him entirely the next day.
Gojo and you had been hooking up for long enough for him to understand that every time you pulled away, he would just snap back much harder despite your foul mood.
When you needed a quick reminder of how good he would make you feel or how well he already knew your body to turn you into a trembling mess unable to stand up by yourself, he was always there with open arms.
And each time you fall for it. The dick was simply too good to throw away entirely.
Because of this, you kept up your end of the bargain, swallowing the last of your pride, and stood in the parking lot's darkness to observe how the other students filed through the gates along the curb.
Around the time Gojo emerged from the locker room, the crowd had vanished quickly, going about their respective lives as they drove away in their cars.
Except for a few staff vehicles scattered about, the parking lot was deserted as you watched him approach closer while tossing his gym bag over his shoulder.
His phone initially caught his attention, not taking notice of you, swiping his thumb against the screen.
His head jerked up at the light ding notification from the phone in your pocket, and he followed it with his eyes, grinning to see you shivering by the curb for him.
He looked at your baggy outfit and lifted his brow, saying, "I'm going to be pretty disappointed if you aren't wearing my gift under that." He teases you by strolling past you with a yawn that seems uninterested, each long stride ending in the direction of his car as you simply followed his trail with a huff.
"Don't fucking worry. I've been freezing my ass the entire game wearing this stupid thing." Unbutton until the midsection of your torso to show a glimpse of the brightly colored cropped cheer uniform top you had tucked away under the fuzzy inside of his jacket, deciding there would be no harm in just giving him a peek.
The cut ending just under the curve of your ribs exposes the pudge of your stomach entirely. The uniform was very obviously designed for cookie-cutter, precisely shaped cheerleaders with pale skin, ponytails, and thin bodies who looked like they belonged in any stereotypical teen movie.
Gojo almost drooled at the material you had to squeeze yourself into, clinging to every curve and crevice of your body.
You pulled the hem down, but it still didn't cover much since you could see the skin of your torso next to the top's strangely clashing colors.
Gojo trapped you against the passenger side door, looming over you, and murmuring, "I think you've got to be the prettiest girl on the team ___." He spoke in a deep voice that made it difficult for you to look him in the eye, your thighs threatening to squeeze together as his hands crept under the jacket around your hips.
"Yeah, yeah, I know I look exactly like your basic ass type. Can you hurry and just unlock your car before someone fucking sees us already?" The Gojo was giving you all of his attention, but you were good at ignoring him to a point, pressing your palm flat against his muscular chest.
His fingers reached out to grab you by the jaw as he only leaned in closer, maintaining his smile the entire time. He did this to forcefully draw all of your attention to him.
"That’s not very school spirit of you, ___. Shouldn’t you be congratulating me on winning?" It was all an act to enrage you even more, but it was working due to the pout on his lips and the way he glared down at you.
You try to stop your heart from racing by pulling your face away from his hold and crossing your arms.
It appeared as though he had cornered you and was treating you like prey—just another bug that had gotten caught in his web. You could feel Gojo's words brushing against your skin as he hummed, "You know, you have such a fucking potty mouth," sending a shiver up your spine.
His long fingers caressed your hips as he purposefully wedged his leg between yours. His light touch now extended under the jacket with both of his hands.
He pressed against you until you could feel the print of his erection against your stomach as your back rested against the car window. "I’ll forgive you if you show me the skirt."
"Gojo." In a plea, you breathe out his name.
The last thing you wanted to do was to be caught flaunting some poor girl's stolen uniform when you were already feeling self-conscious about only showing the top.
"___." He rolled his eyes and moved away, saying, "That's too bad, I only give rides to pretty girls in skirts." In a bored tone, he told you. His normally innocent smile had been replaced by an uninterested glare as he cocked his head.
He was practically swinging bait in your face, and you knew that the only thing he seemed to enjoy more than playing football was teasing you.
As a result, you became the first to play along with his scheme.
As you reached down and untied your sweatpants, shimming to pull them down to your thighs, a matching skirt set was revealed from beneath the gray cotton, his eyes never leaving yours until you broke eye contact first.
He breathed out at the view of your thighs crammed into the snug cuffed ends of the skirt's safety shorts watching as his eyes take in the sight of your body.
You weren't sure why you were acting so shocked when Gojo chuckled and reached out to pinch the plush of your legs, but he quickly pulled back before he could become overly excited by touching you.
"Okay, you've persuaded both my dick and me. If you don't want me to fuck you in the open parking lot, get in the car, slut."
The journey to wherever he was taking you seemed a lot worse to you. Your exposed thigh is being squeezed by his hand, which seems to be rising steadily.
If you knew he was going to tease you for the next twenty minutes, you would much rather have him fuck you in the parking lot. Not enough of the music blaring from the radio could help you calm down as you writhed at the growing need from beneath your skirt.
Even with the sun gone and the roads seeming like a maze at night, you could tell from the turns and exits which spot he had turned into.
His fingers danced across the precarious line of fingering you in his car or not while his eyes were fixed firmly on the road.
You even spread your legs wide to get the perfect angle for his hand, but he moved quickly to step back just far enough to deny you what you were pleading for.
What a fucking tease.
"You're so fucking insufferable," you grumbled, causing him to laugh heartily.
"Oh, shut the fuck up," he quips. "You act like you're not eating this shit up."
"You think I like being dressed like this?"
"You agreed to it," he reminded you, his hand laying a teasing smack against your thigh. "Just admit that you fantasize about being folded like some cheap slut in a porno. I won't kink shame, angel."
"Don't call me that," you whined. "I’m not some fucking slut."
“Well yeah duh,” he grinned side eyeing you only for a second. “But you’ll sound like one when I'm done with you.”
He backed into a more private space further into the deserted parking lot, engaged the car in park, and turned the radio volume down until it was barely audible over the sound of the late night.
He slapped his hands against the steering wheel, leaned back against his seat, let out an exasperated sigh, and then grinned impishly in your direction.
“The stars look just as pretty as you, ___.”
"Oh yeah, and how many girls do you usually say that to?" Rolling your eyes, you tried to contain the warmth that accompanied the sincere compliment.
"Only to the cheap sluts that I really want to fuck." He responded dryly, watching with a gulp as his eyes glanced at your lips. "You’re driving me crazy, baby." He finally snapped, leaning over the dash to kiss you, only being able to hold the whole arrogant persona for so long before he needed you as much as you needed him.
You couldn't claim to have much prior experience having sex in a vehicle.
His room or yours would typically be where the two of you would spend time alone, but since your roommates were home and Gojo's fraternity was probably packed with people throwing a party in his honor, you had to make do with getting down in his car.
Holding yourself in place and pushing yourself closer so that you wouldn't completely topple forward, all you had to do was twist and strain.
You could just tell from the low grunts and small sighs that Gojo was getting a bit frustrated, his long limbs cramped into the small space. "Can’t you just sneak me into your place?"
"Oh yeah, you could just introduce yourself to my roommates while your balls are deep inside of me, maybe even shake my parent's hand and tell them about your skirt kink too."
"God, you're such a fucking bitch." Gojo sighed, nipping at your bottom lip, "you're lucky I'm into that." Gojo sighed, licking his lips before opening his door.
After he slammed the door shut, the overhead light flickered, and you puzzledly watched as he opened the back door rather than crawling into his seat before turning to you with an expectant look that beckoned you to join him.
You managed to crawl through the seats with a bit of a struggle, settling yourself against the other door as Gojo guided your legs apart to make room to slot himself in. "Best gift ever," he muttered as you changed into your full-fledged outfit, shedding the jacket and sweats that had covered you to the ground.
The moment that Gojo had ducked under the hem of your skirt, your fingers tangled a handful of his hair in a fist, shivering at his eagerness, feeling his teeth tease against the skin of your thigh. Finally, paying much attention to the eagerness between them, his fingers probed and nudged against your clit until he had hooked your underwear to the side.
Your body responded before you could even process what was happening. His tongue teased at your clit, his fingers dipped between your folds, and the sound of your breathy groans spurred him on to move swiftly.
With your needy whimpers, fingers clamping down firmly in the nest of his hair, grinding against his fingers, and the sensation of your legs twitching and quivering, just the taste of you on his tongue was like unwrapping another reward.
However, you weren't a fool.
You were aware of how pussy drunk Gojo became each time he would eat you out, usually wanting to have you stumble out his name with tears threatening to prickle your eyes. When it came to going down on you, he was the type to lick the plate clean.
This is why you were taken aback when Gojo suddenly stopped and raised the material on your skirt to look you in the eyes.
He continued to work his fingers in and out of you as if he weren't attempting to carry on a conversation while teasing, "Be honest, you so have a skirt kink."
As you attempted to comprehend the question, let alone provide a sarcastic response, your lashes fluttered and your head spun.
Any train of thought that tried to escape your mind as Gojo's fingers worked their magic "I-i'm." is the only thing you could stutter out.
"I-I, you what baby?" His laughter made you squint your eyes shut, and you covered your face with your hands as he mocked you in a flat tone.
Gojo leaned up and grabbed you by the wrist, pulling your hands away from your face to give you a more delicate kiss on the lips, muttering mostly to himself, "You're so cute."
Leaning into his touch, you suddenly felt his fingers pull away from you, making a humiliating wet sound that you ignored since Gojo had already diverted his attention to another part of your body. He was fondling your breast through the crop top as his fingers explored.
You could tell from the way Gojo smiled against your mouth that he was biting back on making some stupid joke the moment that his fingers made out the bud of your nipples.
As he pulls away, his other hand switches back to tracing the plush of your thighs before quickly removing your skirt.
He peeled it off of you without a bat of the eye, not wanting to struggle with the safety shorts that were sewn in under it like he had to do when he had blindly gone down on you.
Bumping his elbow and leg against leather seats as he sat up trying to strip his own shirt, a loud thump jortles you from your daze. Only then had you realized Gojo’s hiss of pain.
His normally pale face was now flushed pink, and he scrunched his brow, rubbing the back of his head. "This is the thanks I get for having such a big dick.”
He leaned back down, perfectly squeezing himself between your spread legs, and asked, "Wanna kiss it better?" while getting dangerously close to your lips. He didn't wait for a response simply because he could tell you were only glancing at his lips.
His head dove to hide in the crook of your neck with a grunt, as your fingers searched for the bulge that reacted with a twitch after you had grabbed him by the elastic of his shorts.
You didn't hesitate, never did, knowing what you both wanted as his fingers spread your pussy apart.
You couldn't help but feel intoxicated while listening to his shift in breathing as your hand guided his length to press against exactly where you wanted it.
Sharing a relieved gasp as he shifted his hips against yours, the feeling of him burying himself inside you completely, Gojo was too lost in the bliss to joke about how good it felt to have you clench around him.
Your hips move in unison, seemingly motivated by a primal urge to pursue the intense arousing sensation that had been building up.
Gojo, rubbing his thumb in circles against your clit while whimpering into your neck about how gorgeous you were.
As the intensity of his thrusts increased, steam built up on the car's windows, and the air became humid as the car's slight creak gave way to the weight shifting inside.
Few actual words were spoken because the two of you were too preoccupied with making each other feel good to even form sentences that had any proper finishes.
Gojo readjusted himself, finding the spot that caused your muscles to tighten and spasm. Hooking your leg over his shoulder, nearly causing it to hit the ceiling as he grunted at you while clenching around you continuing his pace until your orgasm unfurled.
Despite being athletic, Gojo went completely slack, falling with his entire weight against your chest, panting as if he were in practice running a mile.
He found calm in the thump of his heartbeat against your chest. "Hey, so about the roommate thing," Gojo spoke after he had eventually caught his breath, cuddling against your chest as his fingers played with your pendant. "I wouldn't mind meeting them, or your parents, or telling anyone honestly; I just would prefer to do it fully clothed if that's okay."
You blinked. "You mean you want this to be like an official thing?" you asked, finally working up enough energy to sit up against the side of the door.
Wincing at the uncomfortable feeling of your sweaty bare skin dragging against the leather material of the seats. "Like this, you no longer refer to me as a slut but as your girlfriend instead."
"Well, I still want you to be my slut, but calling you girlfriend doesn't sound too bad either, does it?" Gojo shrugged.
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#[ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ ★ — t.wrks. ]#gojo x reader#gojo satoru x reader#jjk x reader#jujust kaisen x reader#jjk smut#satoru gojo x reader#jujustu kaisen#gojo smut#gojo satoru smut#gojo x you#gojo fluff#jjk fluff#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen fluff#gojo satoru fluff#gojo satoru#jjk
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I could be a better boyfriend —
Vox x Reader ,, 1.1k Words
summary — Reader yells at Valentino for being an asshole to Vox, spiraling them into an argument that eventually causes feelings to come out.
warnings — angst-ish, Vox and Val being the worst, toxic relationships, mild sexual tension
a/n — I had a great time writing this, to be honest. Hope I didn’t make Vox seem to innocent. Just to clarify he’s also the worst and a manipulator, he’s just the worst and a manipulated who’s desperate for validation and deserves better.
“Um, what the fuck was that?” Vox spat at you, after leading you into a different room.
The two of you were in Val’s porn studio. You, only to see Vox, and Vox because, well, who knows why he would go to that god awful place unprompted.
You didn’t want to start a fight with Val, but it was so easy when you saw how he treated people. Especially Vox. It got under your skin, how they affected each other.
It was so embarrassingly apparent to everyone that they were dysfunctional, and all Val did was stress Vox out with his useless bitching and overall toxic attitude
“I know, he’s such a snobby dick. I can’t believe you hang around with that guy—“ You turn to face him and realize it wasn’t Val he was talking about.
Your chest swelled when a deep gust of anger overtook you. Not necessarily at Vox, but at his inability to understand how the situation escalated.
It started with normal flirting between the two, normal, obnoxious, terribly disgusting attempts at flirting. The word ‘attempt’ is used because calling it ‘flirting’ implies there were any undertones of romance.
However, unsurprisingly considering the current company, there was none. Val spoke only from his dick, and it was agonizing to watch.
Especially after the two inevitably started arguing because that’s what happens when they’re in each others company for too long.
“Oh, come on, Vox. I’m the problem here?” You scoff and nod to the other room.
“Well, you did try to start a fight with a powerful overlord who’s, oh yeah, right, also my boyfriend,” Vox shouted, screen glitching out slightly.
Still, you didn’t see error in your ways. You considered yourself a level-headed person, so when you lost your shit it really meant something.
And, oh, it really did this time.
It was almost impossible to remember what Val had been bitching about on this ever-so joyous occasion. Something about Vox being in his space and crowding his area. ‘Fucking up his concentration,’ or something.
Of course, Vox fired back, and then Valentino, and so on. You almost rolled your eyes and left when Valentino had rose from his directors chair and started yelling at Vox like he had just committed the worst form of betrayal ever.
This time though, you could tell some of Valentinos words had gotten to Vox because, just for a second, his anger flickered into despair. It wasn’t noticeable, you were sure no one else picked up on it. After all, Vox would rather die than show vulnerability in front of a room full of pornstars.
But before Vox had a chance to fire back, you had stepped in. Your face scrunched up recalling the moment.
“Vox, I was looking out for you, jesus christ. God forbid I help a friend stand up to his shitty, awful boyfriend,” your hands fly up in the air mockingly as you recount the events in your head.
You didn’t remember exactly what you said, just that you went off. You do, however remember leaving the studio speechless after your outburst.
And Vox having to drag you away, with you still yelling at Val, in order to prevent a physical fight. That’s how you ended up here; a break room in a porn studio, being reprimanded for attempting to be a good friend. How tragic.
“What makes you think you need to look out for me? I am well aware of Val’s—” he searched for the word, “—quirks. It’s nothing I can’t handle on my own, like I have been doing for the past decade, you asshole.”
“You shouldn’t have to deal with it on your own,” you reasoned, voice still harsh and cold, “Maybe, if you were dating someone better—“
“Oh? Like who? Who would possibly ever—“
“Me, you fucking dumbass,” You yelled in a moment of thoughtless impulse.
That shut him up fast. Whatever argument he was cooking up slowly faded away into a blank stare.
The silence lasted too long.
“What— what are you saying?” Vox inquired, quieter than before. His eyes searched yours, desperately wanting you to explain yourself.
“You deserve someone who would treat you better, Vox. Someone, well, preferably me.” You finish, stepping towards him.
“I could treat you better, so much better. And hell, if not me, please just choose anyone but Valentino. I can’t—“ You try to grab his hand but he steps back.
“How?” He looks at you, trying to stay composed but silently pleading with you for an answer.
“How, what?”
“How would you treat me better?”
You simply look at him. His performative walls were slowly coming down. Or at least they will, depending on how you answer.
Still, you stay quiet for too long.
“Well, I wouldn’t yell at you for just being around me,” You try, but continue after realizing it wasn’t enough, “I’d listen to you, actually listen. Not just complain and expect unconditional comfort or support.”
That sparked his interest so you keep going.
“I’d make you coffee when you work late, black, just how you like it. Oh, and I wouldn’t forget our anniversary, thats…fucked. I’d let you lean on my shoulder when you were tired and— and I’d take care of you when you bite off more than you could chew, work wise. I wouldn’t yell at you. Not too much, anyways. I’d compliment you and praise you, tell you how proud of you I am.”
You had inched closer and closer to him during this speech, until your bodies were practically pressed together.
His usual facade was almost completely gone, he looked needy, no desperate, miserably craving something from you. He didn’t know if he wanted to be fucked stupid, or hugged until he fell asleep.
“Well, I…” He tried, but unfortunately Vox’s charismatic demeanor wasn’t helping him here, “…I wasn’t aware you felt that way.”
Your hands fell on his cheeks, or more accurately where they would be, and caressed them gently.
His eyes fluttered shut out how gentle you were. His hands subconsciously flew to your hips to brace himself when he leaned in to kiss you.
You kissed back, harder, as if you’ve been waiting forever. Which, it felt like you had. His hands drifted up to pull you in by your shirt collar, deepening the kiss, as yours fell to rest on his chest. Eventually, they went you his back and pulled him closer to you than before.
The kiss was tender, sweet, but hungry and depraved. When you finally broke, neither of you spoke for a long time, still breathing heavily, foreheads almost pushed together.
“Why didn’t we—“ Vox panted, “—why didn’t we do that before?”
You laugh weakly. “So, what’s it gonna be?” You ask, “Me or Valentino?”
a/n — Probably gonna be the last fic of the night. I am SO tired. So sadly no railing Vox fic, like I hoped.
#hazbin hotel x reader#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel x you#hazbin hotel vox#hazbin hotel fluff#vox x reader#vox hazbin hotel#hazbin vox
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MASTERPOST OF ARGENTINEAN CREATIVES: COMMISSIONS OPEN
We called for argentinean artists, writers, animators, graphic designers and musicians to send us their work to boost them in the international market, and here we all are!
Because of our country's political decline in the hands of a fascist government we are in need of help.
We are in need of visibility and financial aid, so everyone that you see here is open for commissions, and the masterpieces you see are what you can look forward to.
We will update this post every month according to the entries we might get in the future, until the end of June. On the 15th of July there will be another masterpost, hopefully with more people!
Also, we will be reblogging their pieces so stick around and see what they'll do in the future, and please consider reblogging anything you like from us or from them directly, it goes a long way.
Lastly, we're trying to keep it bilingual, so if you see an image that has writing in just one language (or both!), check the ALT TEXT, it will have both spanish and english versions.
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Convocamos a artistas, escritores, animadores, diseñadores gráficos y músiques argentines a que nos envíen sus trabajos para potenciarlos en el mercado internacional, ¡y aquí estamos todos!
Debido al declive político de nuestro país en manos de un gobierno fascista necesitamos ayuda.
Necesitamos visibilidad y ayuda financiera, así que todes los que ven aquí estamos abiertes a encargos, y las obras maestras que ven son lo que pueden esperar de nosotres.
Actualizaremos esta publicación todos los meses de acuerdo con la cantidad de fichas que podamos recibir en el futuro, hasta finales de junio. El 15 de julio habrá otro masterpost, ¡esperamos que con más gente!
Además, rebloguearemos sus obras así que quedate por acá para ver qué hacen en el futuro, y por favor considerá rebloguear cualquier cosa que te guste de nosotres o de elles directamente.
Por último, estamos tratando de mantenerlo bilingüe, así que si ves una imagen que tiene la escritura en un solo idioma (¡o ambas!), fijate en el ALT TEXT, tendrá las versiones en español e inglés.
Without further ado, enjoy~
Escritores / Writers:
@fatheriimaginedyoutaller (they/he - elle/él)
Escritor/e de 21 años. Especializado en relatos cortos y cuentos.
Con pasión por el género realista y la fantasía.
Inspirado en el estilo de George R.R Martin, Suzanne Collins, Liliana Heker y Kafka.
Ofrezco servicios como ghostwriter y como escritor/e propiamente dicho.
También puedo desempeñarme como escritor de blog y columnista de opinión en revistas online.
Manejo bien el idioma inglés, con nivel bilingüe. Siendo capaz de traducir textos
Trabajo en remoto.
Mis tarifas oscilan entre $10 y $17 (EN PESOS) por palabra, dependiendo de la complejidad y longitud del texto comisionado.
Mi obra más reciente "Pueblo Crepúsculo" fue publicada en la antología Purapalabra 2023.
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21 year old writer. Specialized in short stories and tales.
With a passion for the realism and fantasy genres.
Inspired by the style of George R.R Martin, Suzanne Collins, Liliana Heker and Kafka.
I offer services as a ghostwriter and as a writer myself.
I can also work as a blog writer and opinion columnist in online magazines.
I am fluent in English, with a bilingual level. I am able to translate texts.
I work remotely.
My rates range from ARS$10 to $17 per word, depending on the complexity and length of the commissioned text.
My most recent work "Pueblo Crepúsculo" was published in the anthology Purapalabra 2023.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @fatheriimaginedyoutaller
Email: [email protected]
@mearpsdyke (she/her - ella)
Tengo 20 años, soy del NOA y me podés llamar Zee. Soy una escritora freelance, me especializo en narrativa aunque también incursiono en la poesía. Para proyectos pequeños (o sea: historias cortas) mi tarifa es de ARS$800 por cada mil (1000) palabras. Para proyectos grandes que involucren un conteo de palabras más alto, podemos charlar el precio por privado.
Me especializo en el género de romance: las imágenes visuales y descripciones de emociones son lo que mejor se me da, pero también puedo escribir otros géneros como el misterio o historias más introspectivas con respecto a la psicología de los personajes. Tengo un blog de escritura bastante nuevo que empezaré a usar como portafolio, el link está abajo.
Estoy dispuesta a escribir de todo por el precio justo.
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I'm 20 years old, I'm from NOA and you can call me Zee. I'm a freelance writer, I specialize in narrative although I also dabble in poetry. For small projects (i.e. short stories) my rate is ARS$800 per thousand (1000) words. For international clients, my rate is USD$1 per fifty (50) words. For larger projects involving a higher word count, we can discuss pricing privately in both cases.
I specialize in the romance genre: visual imagery and descriptions of emotions are what I'm best at, but I can also write other genres such as mystery or more introspective stories regarding character psychology. I have a fairly new writing blog that I will start using as a portfolio, the link is below.
I'm willing to write anything for the right price.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Blog: https://servilletaliteraria.blogspot.com/
Email: [email protected]
Discord: mearpsdyke
Artistas gráfiques / Graphic artists:
@denwenai
(they/them - elle)
Denwenai (elle) es une artista y diseñadore multimedia que realiza ilustraciones digitales de personajes y entornos con distintos niveles de detalle. Su estilo es fluctuante: según el objeto a retratar oscila entre las terminaciones definidas o bocetadas, un aspecto tradicional o plano, la reminiscencia con un cómic o un concept art.
En cuanto a diseño, se especializa en el armado de piezas editoriales y la creación de marca. Ofrece servicios de vectorizado (tanto piezas ya existentes como de diseño propio), edición de video y motion graphics.
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Denwenai (they/them) is a multimedia artist and designer who creates digital illustrations of characters and environments with different levels of detail. Their style is fluctuating: depending on the object to be portrayed, they oscillate between defined or sketched finishes, a traditional or flat look, reminiscent of a comic book or concept art.
In terms of design, they specialize in the creation of editorial pieces and branding. They offer vectorizing services (both existing pieces and their own design), video editing and motion graphics.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @denwenai
Instagram: @denwenai
Relevant links: https://linktr.ee/denwenai
@sunnysidesup1847
(any pronouns - cualquier pronombre)
Sunny es un artista cordobés, se especializa mayormente en la figura humana (retratos, fichas de personaje) o antropomórfica en general. Se destaca en entornos de fantasía y diseño de personaje.
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Sunny is an artist from Córdoba, they specialize mostly in human figures (portraits, character tokens) or anthropomorphic in general. They excel in fantasy environments and character design.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @sunnysideup1847
Relevant links: https://www.atom.bio/sunny_sides_up/
@aifastic
(they/she/he - elle/ella/él)
Aifas vive en La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dibuja en su mayoría fanart de franquicias que le gustan, ¡pero también le encanta hacer retratos de mascotas! Últimamente ha estado probando animación cuadro por cuadro y diseño con el OpenShot Video Editor e Inkscape, respectivamente. Se especializa en el arte pop.
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Aifas lives in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. They draw mostly fanart of franchises they like, but also love doing portraits of everyone's pets! Lately, they have been trying their hand at frame-by-frame animation and design with OpenShot Video Editor and Inkscape, respectively. They specialize in pop art.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @aifastic
Instagram: @aifastic
@localshoulderdevil
(he/him - él)
Dibujos en técnica tradicional desde lápices, marcadores o acuarelas. Con diferentes niveles de estilización y juego con las texturas. Hago dibujos e ilustraciones, diseño de personaje y mini cómics. Me inspira la gente, los detalles únicos y la versatilidad de lo morbo.
Hace un par de años ya que hago arte por encargo, me dedico principalmente al diseño de personaje. Trabajo con texturas, buscando una representación un poco más única de cada uno. Dentro de ello, puedo trabajar a detalle, puedo utilizar gore, puedo retratar con más realismo o mayor estilización; se adapta a la esencia de cada obra.
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Drawings in traditional technique, from pencil, markers or watercolors. With different levels of stylization and play with textures. I do drawings and illustrations, character design and mini comics. I'm inspired by people, unique details and the versatility of morbid things.
It's been a couple years since I've started doing commissioned art, I mainly do character design. I work with textures, seeking a more unique representation of each one. Within this, I can do detailed work, I can utilize gore, I can portray with more realism or more stylization; it adapts to the essence of every piece.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @localshoulderdevil
Discord: dm me for it
@orfeoarte
(he/they - él/elle)
Soy artista profesional, investigador y profesor. Me apasionan el horror y los mundos fantásticos.
Mis fortalezas son el diseño de criaturas y personajes, obras emotivas, y arte conceptual en diversos estilos; tanto digital como traditional. Me enorgullezco de mi educación en grabado y arte impreso: soy excelente iterando y experimentando.
Para mi trabajo digital utilizo Photoshop y Clip Studio Paint. En lo que respecta al arte tradicional, uso pinturas al óleo, gouache, acuarelas, lápices de colores y tintas de varios tipos. También hago grabado xilográfico y serigráfico.
Ilustré dos libros, uno de ellos también escrito por mi.
Trabajo en comunicación constante con mis clientes y permito pagos flexibles y en cuotas.
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I’m a professional artist, researcher and professor with a passion for horror, and fantasy worlds.
My strongest suits are creature and character design, emotional pieces, and concept art in diverse styles; both traditionally and digitally. My background as a printmaker is my pride: I excel at iteration and experimentation.
For my digital artwork I use Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint. When it comes to traditional work, I use oil paint, gouache, watercolors, colored pencils and various forms of ink, as well as block and silkscreen printing.
I’ve illustrated two books, one of which was written by me as well.
I work in close communication with my clients and allow for flexible payment plans.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @orfeoarte
Instagram: @orfeoarte
Twitter : @orfeoarte
Illustrated books: https://issuu.com/orfeoarte
@tomicaleto
(she/her - ella)
Soy una artista tanto tradicional como digital. Estoy estudiando Filosofía y Artes Visuales en la universidad.
En mis pinturas, amo usar colores vivos y disfruto dibujar animales y personas (principalmente personajes ficticios).
________________________
I’m both a traditional and digital artist. I’m studying philosophy and visual arts at university. For my paintings, I love using vibrant colours and I enjoy drawing animals and people (mostly fictional characters).
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @tomicaleto
Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tomicaleto?l=es
Discord user: @tomicaleto
@ramadejazmin
(they/he - elle/él)
Ilustrador argentino de 23 años.
Me gusta mucho el diseño de personajes y principalmente enfocarme en diseños de fantasía inspirados en D&D.
Mis inspiraciones principales son cosas inspiradas en sueños, música de Vocaloid, caricaturas, anime y arte de otros artistas.
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23-year-old Argentinian illustrator.
I love character design, mainly D&D-inspired fantasy designs.
My main inspirations are things like dreams, Vocaloid music, cartoons, anime, and other artist's pieces.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @ramadejazmin
BlueSky: momomottaro.bsky.social
Gmail: [email protected]
Toyhouse: https://toyhou.se/RamadeJazmin
@starrynightsoversunflowers
(she/her - ella)
Starrynightsoversunflowers es una artista argentina que se enfoca en los dibujos digitales, fanarts y retratos. Su estilo se basa en el uso de colores brillantes y en técnicas que emulan la pintura tradicional.
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Starrynightsoversunflowers is an argentinian artist that focuses on digital drawings, fanarts and portraits. Her style is based on the use of bright colours and techniques that emulated traditional painting.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Instagram: @starrynightsoversunflowers
Gmail: [email protected]
@bloodghoul
(they/he - él/elle)
Ilustrador argentino nacido en 1996. Trabajo principalmente mezclando los primeros pasos en tradicional para realizar y terminar en digital. Los programas que más uso son PT Sai, Photoshop y Krita. Aparte de hacer arte en digital también hago bordados y pintura en acuarela. Encuentro inspiración en dibujos y animaciones de los 90s y 00s. Aprendiendo a dibujar nsfw.
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Argentinian ilustrator born in 1996. I mainly work with mixed media, combining traditional sketching and inking with digital painting. My preferred programs are Paint Tool Sai, Photoshop and Krita. Besides doing digital works, my favorite mediums are embroidery and watercolors. I take inspiration from cartoons and animes fom the 90s and 00s, fashion, and cute stuff in general. Im learning how to draw nsfw to add to the repertoire.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Instagram: @twiginthecreek
@palluniskillas
(she/he - ella/él)
Palluniskillas (ella/él) es una artista de 20 años que se especializa en dibujo e ilustración digital de personajes y personas, en un estilo de dibujo estilizado. En su mayoría trabaja temas como el amor, el cariño, la moda y la naturaleza.
________________________
Palluniskillas (she/he) is a 20 year old artist who specializes in digital drawing and illustration of characters and people, in a stylized drawing style. She mostly works on themes such as love, affection, fashion and nature.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Instagram: @pallunis_killas
@nitadraws
(she/her - ella)
Nita es una artista argentina que se enfoca en dibujos digitales de animales en un estilo “chibi”.
________________________
Nita is an argentinean artist that focuses on digital animal art in a “chibi” style.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Tumblr: @nitadraws
Redbubble: NitaDraws.redbubble.com
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/nitadraws
@artzover
(he/it - él/eso)
Arián es un ilustrador del norte argentino que saca inspiración de videojuegos y medios de terror. Estudió diseño gráfico por 3-4 años y es un artista autodidacta desde su adolescencia.
El juego que lo envió a perseguir el sueño de convertirse en un artista conceptual para videojuegos es Journey, y los que lo impulsaron son Spiritfarer, la saga Uncharted y la trilogía de Dark Souls, especialmente su segunda instalación.
Sus inspiraciones actuales son DnD, Vocaloid y Bleach.
________________________
Arián is an illustrator from northern Argentina that takes inspiration from videogames and horror media. He studied graphic design for 3-4 years and has been a self taught artist since his teenage years.
The piece of media that sent him chasing the dream of becoming a concept artist for videogames is Journey, and the ones that pushed it further are Spiritfarer, the Uncharted saga and Dark Souls trilogy, especially the 2nd installment.
His main current inspirations are DnD, Vocaloid and Bleach.
Contacts and relevant links / Contactos y links relevantes:
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @arian.v.art
Relevant links: linktr.ee/azover
Patreon: patreon.com/Azover
Image ID for writers under the cut / ID de impagenes para escritores debajo del corte
@fatheriimaginedyoutaller (En discord y Tumblr)
They/he - Elle/él
ESPAÑOL:
Pueblo Crepúsculo
Resumen: Un hombre afroamericano se encuentra varado en las sienas cordobesas cuando su auto le falla. Allí el es plagado por
la visión fantasmagorica de su abuelo, quien fue asesinado por el Ku Klux Klan.
Devin no creía en las maldiciones, era un muchacho de
ciencia, de las sociales, pero de la ciencia al final del día.
Pero si, uno "podría" decir que todo había empezado con su abuelo. Si decidía darle crédito al poder de las coincidencias. A Devin JI lo habían colgado de un árbol miembros del Klan, y si, era porque se le había roto el auto en el pueblo equivocado.
Pero si creía en el miedo. Y no en cualquier miedo. Pero ese que viene de tus antepasados, que parece transmitirse por una mera gota de sangre en el mar que son los seres humanos. Como el temor a nadar en una pileta profunda, no por el agua en sí. Si no porque alguien podría venir y verter ácido en ella en cualquier momento."
Caballito de Mar
Resumen: Un hombre transgénero reflexiona sobre unas noticias inesperadas
"Cuando por fin te hayan atendido primero les preguntaras cómo estuvieron sus respectivos días, porque sí te quedó alguna de las cosas con las que te criaron seguro son esos modales católicos.
Luna te hablara de su madre, Sam de su padre. Trataras de contener tu entusiasmo mientras aprendes de las experiencias de tus novias. Esas cosas únicas de ellas. Sus relaciones, sus manías, sus
sueños … "
Diccionario
Resumen: Un hombre hace dedo hasta su casa luego de la marcha por la vuelta de Perón
"Má siempre decía que había dos mundos, el de Uno y el del Otro. Nunca supe que quería decir hasta que se me rompieron la suelas de los zapatos entre Avenida Rivadavia y Callao. La mayoría de la gente ese día estaba en El del Otro, donde lo importante era el movimiento y que no había ningún sacrificio demasiado grande; mientras yo estaba en el Mio, donde lo único que me preocupaba era mi Tana que estaba en casa sola con el pibe.
Cuando llegué a Balvanera ya se me había partido el alma en dos. Me paré en una esquina y extendí mi brazo con el pulgar arriba. No sabía para qué .La ciudad estaba vacía y no inspiraba confianza mi cara de indio. El simpático siempre fue Carlitas, mi medio hermano. Él sí parecía recién bajado de la parte de arriba del barco."
La Luna
Resumen: Un cacique de Puerto Iguazú, desprotica contra la luna por haberse llevado a su hijo.
"Hola ¿Cómo estás.? Perdóname que te deje este recado por medio del dueño del almacén. Vos sabes que nuncafuí muy bueno con lo emocional, los sentimientos _ Soy el hijo de mi padre en ese sentido.
Cuando ya hayamos llegado a la luna, será el momento de la verdad, sabremos por fin si un lobizón sobrevive allí en el espacio. Vos nunca entendiste porque me gustaba tanto la luna. Era una obsesión infantil, capaz todavía lo sea.
La verdad es que: Siento que tengo un propósito, de devolverle algo a la humanidad, porque la amo demasiado. La amo con sus defectos, sus manías, y si, con sus personas.
ENGLISH:
Twilight Town
Summary: A man finds himself stranded in the Cordovan siennas when his car breaks down. There he is plagued by the ghostly vision of his grandfather, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.
Devin did not believe in curses.
He was a man of science, the social kind, but science at the end of the day.
But yes, one "could" say it had all started with his grandfather. If he decided to give credence to the power of coincidences. Devin II had been hung from a tree by Klan members, and yes, he was Klan members, and yes, it was because his car had broken down in the wrong town.
in the wrong town.
But he did believe in fear. And not just any fear. But the kind that comes from your ancestors, that seems to be passed down through
a mere drop of blood in the sea that is human beings.
human beings . Like the fear of swimming in a deep pool, not because of the water itself. But because someone might come and pour acid into it at any moment."
Seahorse
Summary: A transgender man reflects on some unexpected news.
"When they've finally taken care of you first you'll ask them how their respective days were, because if you have any of the things left that they raised you with I'm sure it's those Catholic manners.
Luna will tell you about her mother, Sam about his father. You'll try to contain your enthusiasm as you learn about your girlfriends' experiences. Those unique things about them. Their relationships, their quirks, their
dreams…"
Dictionary
Summary: A man hitchhikes home after the march for Perón's return.
"Má always said there were two worlds, that of One and that of the Other. I never knew what he meant until the soles of my shoes broke between Avenida Rivadavia and Callao. Most people that day were in El del Otro, where the important thing was the movement and that there was no sacrifice too big; while I was in El Mio, where the only thing I was worried about was my Tana who was at home alone with the kid.
When I arrived at Balvanera, my soul was already broken in two. I stopped at a corner and extended my arm with my thumb up. I didn't know why, the city was empty and my Indian face didn't inspire confidence. The nice one was always Carlitos, my half-brother. He did look like he just got off the top part of the boat."
The Moon
Summary: A cacique of Puerto Iguazú, reproaches the moon for having taken his son.
"Hello, how are you? Forgive me for leaving you this message through the owner of the store. You know I was never very good with emotions, feelings _ I am my father's son in that sense.
When we have reached the moon, it will be the moment of truth, we will finally know if a werewolf survives out there in space. You never understood why I liked the moon so much. It was a childish obsession, maybe it still is.
The truth is: I feel I have a purpose, to give something back to humanity, because I love it too much. I love it with its flaws, its quirks, and yes, with its people.
@mearpsdyke
She/her - Ella
ESPAÑOL:
-La canción del mar
Le sostiene la mirada, preguntándose por las ciaturas que alberga, por los naufragios y cadáveres que reposan en el fondo de sus aguas. Se pregunta si, tal vez, el mar tiene consciencia y los humanos no lo saben, si la melodía de las olas que se estrellan contra las rocas son en realidad palabras que usa para llamar su nombre, diciéndole que se adentre en sus aguas, prometiendo unas rocas cómodas para que su cadáver pueda reposar.
Los peces se remueven, peleando por una libertad que no llegará. Pronto se quedarán sin oxígeno y morirán lenta y dolorosamente. A Kika a veces le gusta jugar a que es un Dios y los peces son su creación agonizante, quienes esperan el dulce alivio de la muerte. Ve cómo la vida abandona sus ojos y dice una oración antes de guiar el cuchillo por sus entrañas.
-Cliffs Edge
Cuando la luna está llena y es la hora donde las penas y arrepentimientos te sofocan, tiene el impulso de tomar su auto, manejar hasta la casa de Gina y pedirle que se den una segunda oportunidad, que hará bien las cosas esta vez.
Pero entonces recuerda el anillo que Gina porta en su dedo anular en cada partido, y se obliga a volver al presente y dejar el pasado en el pasado.
Le parece cruel que su familia la quiera más que al nuevo prometido de Gina, que aún la inviten a la casa donde tienen fotos de las dos jugando partidos juntas, en reuniones familiares, en fiestas y hasta en Navidad. Nunca encuentra el coraje para decirles que se olviden de ella para poder pasar página; la casa Zelarayán es su casa lejos de su verdadero hogar, allá en Jujuy.
-Fragmentario
Buscas en el recoveco más profundo de tu alma,
alguna pasión que salve tu gris existencia,
pero solo encuentras eco y telarañas sin moscas.
Y cuando entruentras algos a lo que aferrarte,
no es lo suficientemente serio para el resto,
¿y realmente importan los insultos ya?
¿Qué le hace una cicatriz más al guerrero,
un clavo más a Jesús en la cruz,
otro volcán a Pompeya?
Así que te envuelves en tu capa más roja,
pelas los dientes cual animal acorralado
y hieres a todo lo que oza cruzarte.
-La tierra del nunca
Persigo un atardecer que no existe,
espero un día que nunca fue
y escucho palabras que nunca pronunciarás
en cada mirada tuya.
Vivo el mismo día todos los días
esperando que alguien se apiade,
a que Te apiades,
y las palabras salgan como balas.
Porque es más piadoso morir
por obra y mano tuya
a que la incertidumbre me consuma.
ENGLISH:
-The Sea’s Song
She holds its gaze, wondering about the creatures it houses, about the shipwrecks and corpses that rest at the bottom of its waters. She wonders if, perhaps, the sea has consciousness and humans don't know it, if the melody of the waves crashing against the rocks are actually the words it uses to call her name, telling her to enter its waters, promising some comfortable rocks so that her corpse can rest.
The fish stir, fighting for a freedom that won’t come. They will soon run out of oxygen and die slowly and painfully. Kika sometimes likes to pretend that she’s a God and the fish are her dying creation, waiting for the sweet relief of death. She watches the life leave their eyes and says a prayer before guiding the knife into their insides.
-Cliffs Edge
When the moon is full and it’s the time when sorrows and regrets suffocate you, Nerea has the impulse to take her car, drive to Gina's house and ask her to give each other a second chance, promising to do things right this time.
But then she remembers the ring Gina wears on her ring finger to every game, and forces herself to return to the present and leave the past in the past.
She finds it cruel that Gina’s family loves her more than Gina's new fiancé, that they still invite her to their house where they have photos of the two of them playing games together, at family gatherings, at parties and even Christmas. She never finds the courage to tell them to forget about her so she can move on from her; the Zelarayán household is her house far from her real home, back in Jujuy.
-Fragmented
You search in the deepest corners of your soul
for some passion that saves your gray existence,
but you only find echo and cobwebs without flies.
And when you find something to hold on to,
it's not serious enough for the rest,
and do insults really matter anymore?
What does one more scar do to a warrior?
One more nail to Jesus on the cross?
another volcano to Pompeii?
So you wrap yourself in your reddest cloak,
you bare your teeth like a cornered animal
and you hurt everyone who dares to cross you.
-The land of Never Ever
I chase a sunset that doesn’t exist,
I wait for a day that never was
and I hear words that you’ll never say
in every look of yours.
I live the same day every day
waiting for someone to have mercy,
wait on you to take pity,
and let the words come out like bullets.
Because it is more pious to die
by your work and hand
before uncertainty consumes me.
#creatives argentines#masterpost#masterpost argento#artists on tumblr#writers on tumblr#writers and poets#writeblr#artblr#argentina#argie tag#argie tumblr#argieblr#argie posting#artistas argentines#escritores argentines#commissions open#open com#latam#latam artists#latam writers#art commisions#art commissions open#writing commissions open#writer community#writing commissions#art comms open#writing comms open#animation commissions#animation commissions open#animation comms open
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I think Vertin might be a tactile person.
Here are examples taken from the voice lines and context clues. This isn't an all conclusive list of touchy interactions, just what I could find. Someone stop her before she gets hurt. Update: I'm going to keep adding on as we find more interactions together because this is really fun.
Sotheby (hat and hair): Stop it! You can't just touch an adult's head! (She is 13. Vertin probably sees her as a baby and pat her head).
Bette (hands): Ha ha ... They might be a little rough. To tightly grab the eave does require abundant practice. (assuming Vertin is holding her hand. Don’t ask me how we got here.)
Rabies (clothing and torso): Straws ... be hugged. Rabies ... feels it. (she hugged him 🥹)
A Knight (hat and hair): One step further, and you will be in close contact with Someone's nose... As long as you can hit Someone's head. (how close is Vertin standing to the AK? Or maybe she was looking for an invisible head to pat.)
Mesmer Jr (Hands) :Compared to the incurable anxiety, these wounds are minor. Oh, watch your distance. (smh Vertin not everyone likes being touched.)
Melania (hat and hair): "Well done. Please keep on." ...Aren't you going to say that? (more headpats but Melania needs vocal praise too.)
Lilya
Clothing and torso: Feel awesome? Now it's my turn to pet you. (...what is Vertin petting? This is clothing and torso but I'm lost.)
Hat and hair: You should be grateful that I am too lazy to move now. Or you should know that the first-class pilot’s got a first-glass head-butt, too. (Vertin taking advantage of the moment to give headpats. I'm telling you, its a THING)
Leilani (Hands): Shaka brah! Ooh! Do you want a handshake or a high-five, my friend? I'm fine with either! (She’s so wholesome)
Cristallo
hat and hair: Are you patting my head? The doctor says, this is a reward for good children. Have I done something right?
Hands and sleeves: Would you like to hold my hands? I could be with you anytime. (Cristallo is weak and frail. The nurses say she could be blown away by a gust of wind. Despite this she says she’ll be with Vertin anytime. To me it reads as Vertin being worried Cristallo will disappear too. Cristallo notices so she offers to hold hands and says she will always be here as a way to comfort her.)
Darley Clatter
Hat and Hair: Oh ... I can't deny you are really good at patting.
Clothing and Torso: Take a look at my beautiful muscles! I don't need to explain how fabulous I am. Hey, watch out! Rub me in the direction my mane grows.
Bonus Intimacy : Adorable? Ahh? You don't even have a taste! (Vertin pets him and calls him adorable. Darley, don’t let the girlies know. They might end your noble bloodline.)
Pavia (Hat and Hair): Wanna know how many holes I've made on others' heads? No? Then stop it. (What possessed her to give Pavia headpats?)
Dikke (hat and hair): Thou art overstepping my boundaries, arcanist. (I’m guessing Vertin is at it again with the headpats. Dikke smiles when she says this so she isn’t offended. If anything, she seems amused. )
Eternity (hands and sleeves): Go on, try holding it, and feel its temperature rising in your hand… Easy, sweetheart… take it easy, heh heh… (more hand holding but Vertin wasn’t prepared this time)
An-an Lee (hands and sleeves): What? You want a palm reading? (Vertin, why are you like this? Are you randomly touching people's hands?)
I feel like I should have picked up on this sooner. Gift-giving, hand holding, and headpats. This is the Timekeeper way.
Regulus (hands and sleeves): What do you want? I don't have any spare scratch. (I'm sure she knows you're broke since she's your boss. Vertin's just being Vertin at this point.
Vertin leads Regulus by the hand into her Suitcase in the prologue
Blonney (hands): Interesting! It's been a while since I last met someone who would start with holding hands.
She also holds Blonney's hand as she calms her down during the green lake event.
#reverse 1999#vertin#reverse: 1999#reverse1999#blonney#an an lee#bette#a knight#regulus#Rabies#sotheby#melania#lilya#mesmer jr#cristallo#leilani#darley clatter#dikke#pavia#eternity
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The Tempest
Summary: Prince Aemond discovers his maid is frightened of storms.
Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Reader
Word Count: 3038
Warnings: MDNI, 18+, profanity, she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, p in v sex, unprotected sex and fingering.
Author's Note: This is not just my first Aemond fic, this is my first EVER fic. I am not a writer and this is my debut. Please be kind. I cannot thank @arcielee enough for beta reading and making suggestions.
Valyrian translation: sȳz riña - good girl
Hope you enjoy this! Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated.
Part two
You are happy to be Prince Aemond’s maid. In your sixth year of working in the Red Keep you have worked your way up from cleaning the common areas to becoming a maid for the royal family.
When you first learned that you would be assigned to Prince Aemond’s chambers you were uncertain how to feel. At first you were nervous, even a little scared, as you heard the gossip amongst the other servants. On one hand, you were glad you were not assigned to serve Prince Aegon; stories were plentiful regarding his drunkenness and lecherous behavior towards other maids.
But Prince Aemond was much more of a mystery to you. While you had rarely seen the tall and imposing prince, whispers about him said he was best avoided. The prince, who had been disfigured as a child, had grown to be an intimidating warrior. Everyone knew he spent hours training daily with the sword and shield, and that he rode Vhagar, the oldest and largest dragon in the world; the gossip in the servants quarters said he wore the eyepatch so as not to frighten the noble ladies.
Thankfully, he was not in his chambers most of the time while you were working. The first few times you had direct contact with the prince, you were shaking and were afraid to look at him, keeping your eyes downcast to the floor. Over the months you have served him you have become more relaxed in his presence, mainly because he ignores you for the most part. On the infrequent occasions you’ve had to interact with him you have found him to be distant, but polite and soft spoken. His demands are few and he has never made you feel unsafe in his presence.
Just like this evening, the prince is sitting in a chair facing a large, open window in his chambers. Dressed in a loose white shirt and loose fitting trousers, you notice that he seems to be feeling the summer heat just like everyone else in the Red Keep. He only said a quiet greeting when he returned to his chambers earlier than usual. After changing into cooler, more comfortable clothes, he simply poured himself a glass of wine and sat before the window, seemingly lost in his thoughts.
Wiping the sweat from your forehead as you finish your evening tasks, you realize it is very dark out for this early in the evening. You glance out the window and notice the darkened clouds almost upon the capital. You watch a strong gust of wind enter the chambers through the window, moving the heavy drapes, and you can see some of the prince’s pale hair moving with the breeze.
You complete the final check of his chambers to make sure everything is in order for the night. Once you are satisfied, you make your way towards the prince, who is now standing near the window.
“Is there anything else you require this evening, your grace?” you ask softly.
Just as Prince Aemond is about to reply, a bright flash of lightning streaks through the dark sky. You jump, slightly startled, and a few seconds later you wince as a loud rumble of thunder makes you shudder.
Prince Aemond turns to you with a slightly amused look on his face. “Does the storm frighten my pretty maid?” He asks with the hint of a smile.
“Apologies, your grace,” you say with embarrassment, also taken aback by the prince calling you pretty. “Yes, ever since I was a little girl, I have never liked storms. Especially at night. I cannot sleep during a storm.” you reply sheepishly.
“The storm cannot hurt you, especially within the safety of the Red Keep,” Aemond tells you. “Come and watch the storm here at the window.” Aemond raises his arm to you, beckoning you to come closer to him.
You are more than surprised by the prince’s behavior. He has hardly ever spoken to you before, except when necessary regarding your duties. You cannot help but notice his regal features. His white blond Targaryen hair is long and straight. You find his angular face quite attractive with his straight nose, sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. You do not believe that even the scar and eyepatch detract from his beauty.
Forcing your mind to quiet your thoughts regarding him, you tell the prince, “I should probably return to my quarters. I won’t be able to see the storm there and I do not wish to trouble you with my silly fears.”
“You are just as safe here with me as you would be in your quarters. Do you think I would let you be harmed, hmm?” asks Aemond. “Now come,” he repeats.
Hesitantly, you walk over to stand next to Aemond in front of the window. You immediately feel a strong breeze blow in and you can smell the rain in the air. Another flash of lightning startles you, causing you to gasp and move closer to Aemond. You can hear the first raindrops falling now and soon a downpour begins, as the thunder rumbles again.
Aemond chuckles softly at your fear. He leans closer to you and says, “I’ll tell you a secret. I was afraid of storms too when I was a young boy. Now I love them.”
You find it difficult to imagine the lithe and muscular warrior prince was ever afraid of anything. You look up at him and ask, “How did you overcome your fear?”
Aemond smiled, “One day when I was riding Vhagar, a squall rolled in much faster than I anticipated. I was careless. I should have returned sooner. I had to fly Vhagar through the storm to come home. At first I was worried, when the rain started beating down on me, the wind tearing at me and flashes of lightning in the sky. Then I realized that Vhagar was powerful enough to ride through it. Not even a storm could match the power of the largest dragon in the world. I felt invincible. That day I discovered there is no greater thrill than riding a dragon through a storm.”
You feel Aemond’s arm go around your waist, pulling you closer to him. You tremble slightly, but you are not sure if it is from the storm or Aemond’s touch. You have always thought the prince handsome and not disfigured, as some called him. But he is royalty and you are nothing but a maid.
“Tell me, have you been with a man before?” Aemond questions you suddenly.
You are stunned by his question and it sends your mind racing. You are not completely innocent about the intimate acts between a man and woman, but your experience is limited. Besides, you know this is something that you should not do. You could lose your position for a dalliance with the prince, but you also know that you would regret refusing him for the rest of your life.
“Yes, your grace. I have,” you answer in a shaky voice as anticipation begins to build within you.
Your breath hitches in your throat as you feel his lips against your skin. Despite the warmth of his body pressing against you from behind, you shiver as you feel the wind begin to blow rain in through the window. The next streak of lightning across the sky causes your body to shudder as now your senses are being overwhelmed by the closeness of the prince and your fear of the storm.
Aemond feels your body tremble as he pulls you in front of him. “ My pretty maid, watch the storm, feel the wind and the rain. If you wish I can show you that storms are not to be feared, but enjoyed,” he says as he leans his face closer, his lips brushing against your ear.
The rain is coming down in torrents. Wind is gusting and blowing raindrops on them. Another burst of lightning illuminates the sky, followed seconds later by a boom of thunder.
He is behind you, keeping you in place. You can feel his hard lean body against your back. You feel the hardness of his cock against your backside. The ache of desire begins to build inside you, causing your cheeks to flush.
“Do you want me to continue distracting you from your fear of the storm, pretty one?” he hums, his lips now kissing your skin, nipping and sucking. His arms wrap around you, both hands now moving up to gently squeeze your breasts through your dress. Sighing, you feel your nipples harden. You lean back against his body with a soft moan.
Aemond softly bites your neck, making you gasp. You can feel warm wetness beginning to pool between your thighs. You are no virgin, but you have not been with a man in quite some time; only a short dalliance with a steward that you thought you loved once.
“Answer your prince, pretty one. You must tell me if you wish me to continue. I do not take what is not given freely.”
As the tempest continues to rage outside in the darkness, you whine, “Please don’t stop, my prince.”
That is all Aemond needs to hear. You hear a low growl come from the prince’s throat and then he whispers, “Sȳz riña.” in you ear in High Valyrian. You do not know what that means, but the sound of him speaking in his other language sends shivers up your spine.
He quickly removes your apron and tosses it aside, his hands untying the laces on the back of your servant's dress. He tugs the dress off your shoulders, keeps pushing the garment down past your breasts and your hips, until it falls around your feet. Your thin chemise quickly begins to get wet from the rain blowing in and Aemond gathers the light material, bunching it in his fists to give him access to your small clothes. The feeling of his fingers sends arousal through your body. You shimmy your legs to help the fabric slide down, kicking off your worn slippers in the process.
The front of your chemise is becoming soaked with rain. The chill of the wind and rain causes your nipples to pebble even more, poking through the practically sheer garment. He glides his large hands over your belly and higher to your breasts, cupping them, rolling your hardened nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He continues to kiss and nip at your neck and shoulder, licking the raindrops off your skin.
One of your hands clings tightly to his arm while the other reaches around to hold onto his thigh as you brace yourself against his body.
You try to turn your head towards him, your lips seeking his skin.
“No, keep watching the storm,” he tells you.
Aemond slides a hand down over your belly, down to the place between your legs. Your legs instinctively part slightly to allow him access to your most intimate parts. You feel his fingertips part your folds, feeling the wetness that has begun to seep out of you.
“Hmmm, already getting wet, sȳz riña?" he growls in your ear. His finger finds that most sensitive nub and begins to circle around it, sending tendrils of pleasure through you. He continues to play with your breast, teasing your nipple, as he drags a finger though your wet cunt and pushes it into you as a crash of thunder roars in the sky.
You begin to pant as he works a finger in and out of your cunt. Aemond grinds himself against you and you can feel the hardness of his cock against your backside. Your body is now trembling with need. You gasp as he adds a second finger and rubs the palm of his hand over your sensitive nub over and over again.
“Do you like this? Does it feel good, pretty one?” Aemond asks in your ear. He sucks on your earlobe while he continues to pump his fingers in and out of your went cunt.
You can only whimper in response, biting your lip to keep from crying out. Your hips move to grind yourself against his hand, feeling his hard cock behind you.
Aemond moans against your neck, “So wet and tight around my fingers, sȳz riña. That’s it, cum all over my fingers. I can’t wait to make you come again around my cock.”
The coarseness of his language and desire to have him inside you sends pure lust through your body and that is enough to make you moan in ecstasy, your walls clench and flutter around his fingers. You are somewhat dismayed and embarrassed at how quickly he is able to unravel you to the point of being completely spent, with your legs shaking and trying to catch your breath. Aemond releases his grip on your breast and pulls you into his firm embrace, while sucking gently on your neck.
As the storm continues to pound the capital, Aemond pulls off the loose white shirt he wore and you feel him loosening the ties to his trousers. He turns you around to face him and brings you with him as he backs up to a nearby chair. Aemond sits and pulls you down to straddle his lap, pulling you into a desperate kiss, pushing his tongue past your lips.
“I will be your dragon through this storm. Ride me.” he says hungrily. A flash of lightning illuminates his face and you see the desire in his eye. Aemond grabs your soaking wet chemise and pulls it up and off of you, baring you completely to his hungry gaze.
He reaches down, lifts his hips to lower his trousers to free his cock, painfully hard and with a reddish tip leaking fluid. He grabs your ass lifting you enough to line his cock to your cunt. You move your hips to coat his cock with your wetness. When you feel his cock at your entrance and you begin to sink down on him, slowly taking his throbbing length inside you. Aemond groans with pleasure into your breast, his tongue lapping at your nipple.
You whimper as you feel the stretch of his engorged cock filling you as you brace yourself by grasping his shoulders. You pause for a moment to let your body adjust to his size. Slowly, you begin to move your hips back and forth feeling the rough palms of his large hands gripping your hips. You cry out softly when he thrusts up into you.
Aemond’s hands encourage you to work your hips against his. You ride him, bouncing your ass against his thighs, each movement sending bolts of intense pleasure through you. He grunts softly with each slam of your hips, fingers biting into your soft flesh.
“So tight,” he groans, licking the beads of moisture from your skin. “You’re taking my cock so well.”
Your fingers are digging into the pale skin of his shoulders. Panting rapidly, your thighs and his hands are working together pushing you up and down, up and down, each roll of your hips forcing the tip of his cock against that sensitive spot inside you. The sounds of skin hitting skin fill your ears; it's depraved and desperate, and you've never felt such intense pleasure.
As each new thrust reaches deep inside you, mewling whimpers escape your mouth between ragged breaths.
He watches you, entranced by the sight of your bouncing breasts. A hand slides from your ass to move between your legs, his thumb finding your sensitive bundle of nerves, teasing more pleasure from you. He lowers his gaze to watch his cock moving in and out of you, glistening with your wetness.
Aemond plants his feet on the floor, leveraging himself to buck his hips up against you. He pulls his head back to watch your face, flushed with pleasure. His one eye is darkened with lust and his skin glistening with rain and sweat.
“Say my name, pretty one. Who is your dragon,” he orders, voice raspy with arousal.
“Aemond… Aem…feels… so…” you whimper, your thighs are burning from the exertion, and he moves his hands to grip your ass, taking control and giving you a welcome relief. His pace is intense, almost brutal as he thrusts up into you repeatedly. He lets out a curse as your cunt clenches around him, drenching his cock in a gush of wetness.
“Fuck,” he curses, grunting with every thrust.
You lean in closer to him, placing hot open mouthed kisses on his cheek, before he leans up to take your lips into another desperate kiss, driving his length up into you with a rapid pace.
“Sȳz riña,” he groans against your lips, nipping at them gently. His thumb furiously massages your bud, pulling you quickly towards an intense peak.
“Yes…Aemond, “ you moan loudly as the first burst of ecstasy spreads through your body. You tremble with a wave of shattering pleasure that you can feel all the way down to your toes. The walls of your cunt spasm around his cock, squeezing him.
He continues to push up into you throughout your release, feeling your body shake against his. The clenching of your cunt starts to push him over the edge, making his thrusts more erratic until you can feel his cock twitching within you. As you feel the warmth of his seed begin spurting deep within you, Aemond buries his face in your neck, grunting and his breath hot against your skin.
You are both panting heavily. You can feel your heart pounding in your chest as you cling to Aemond as he wraps his arms around you. You rest your head against his, slowly coming down from your blissful state. Realization of what you have done begins to creep into your mind. A gentle kiss to your cheek and a sigh of contentment from Aemond calms you slightly.
“Look out the window, pretty one,” he whispers softly in your ear.
You raise your head and smile as you turn your gaze to the open window and see that the storm has passed, the rain is now just a gentle shower and the wind has faded into a light cooling breeze.
#aemond targaryen#house of the dragon#aemond smut#aemond fanfiction#aemond x reader#house of the dragon aemond#prince aemond targaryen#ewan mitchell
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SEA FEVER | Sailor!John Price x Reader
When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come-on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, after all, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night?
And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep.
But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger.
And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve.
tags: fluff, angst, unapologetic pining, obsession at first sight (but then love follows), blink and you'll miss it awful coping mechanisms (self-isolation, self-exile) and brief allusions to trauma (unresolved because this is about fucking the physical manifestation of the ocean, lads; it ain't about healing), egregious sea themes, a Newfie and his Newfie-isms, whirlwind romance; questionable sailing choices
warnings: 18+ | allusions to smut but everything is brief and vague and more about the Feelings™ than the act, explicit male solo though but also very brief and about the Pining™.
word count: 25k
notes: unconventional leading man (haggard sea boy) romances local travesty (ambiguous, wishy-washy bartender) in a love affair no one asked for. That's what this is. Enjoy.
*Suggestive themes are signified by a sailor's knot above the paragraph for those who want to read this, but don't care much for smut. SFW will begin with an anchor and wave divider above it.
NSFW & SFW shown below:
—PRICE
The storm off the coast of Newfoundland is stronger than he'd anticipated.
What starts as a bleak looking cloud on the horizon quickly churns the waters into a rough, sickly looking grey that rocks against his vessel without any respite. The cabin is in utter disarray within seconds of being battered by waves that seem to grow in size with each harrowing shade of charcoal blue the sky turns.
A few warnings from local trawlers in the area, ones quickly turning into the nearby harbour, and a firm reprimand by the Canadian Coast Guard when he radioed back and asked if anchoring was a feasible option (oh, sure, b'y, the man said, his thick Maritime twang hiding none of his derisive scorn. If ye wan'na meet y'r mak'r, it's a safe place to capsize, luh. We'll risk our arses in the morn' when y'need savin', we do. If there's anythin' left of ya that needs savin', anyhoo), he's quick to follow their example.
But, unfortunately, not quick enough.
The sudden squall tears through his hull with a vengeance, ripping the sails from their perch with a gust of wind that seems determined to play chicken with the efficiency of his ballast tanks (a pyrrhic victory for Captain and her unquenchable bloodlust for trying herself on just how far she can list before rocketing back upright). He knows with full certainty, and innate experience traversing through the Gulf Stream when he was younger and much more foolish, that the damage is nearly catastrophic. Nearly, of course, because while it clipped his sails, he has engines to bring him back, limping, to the coast the Guard directs him to.
"See there, y'er ten clicks away, b'y. Sending coordinates in a minute, now."
He's reminded of the warnings given by gnarled, old sailors who told him about the dangers of solo-sailing as he tries to be everything all at once to get his ship to the harbour they directed him to. Asking him, how can you be the captain, the navigator, and the watch all at the same time? When do you sleep? The answer, of course, is barely, but Price likes the freedom of being on his own. The isolation at sea isn't for everyone, but he takes to it with an ease that seems to defy all the gods of the ocean until he stands triumphant in his own domain, on his own ship.
Until now, that is.
Until he's battling with a handicap in the ocean.
But somehow—luck, maybe—he limps his way to the port where he finds fishermen helping latch the vessels to the marina in the harbour.
Shaded in a dreary grey, the port looks grimy and desolate from his cabin's porthole. A few wooden shacks on the beach are painted in faded primary colours and bear the quintessential marks of a seaside town—seashells, sailors knots (Carrick bend and Ashley stoppers), seahorses, and anchors. Without the dour grey of the downpour, he thinks it might be charming in a way. Quaint. There's a market to the west of him where stacks of lobster cages sit. Men in wellies and rubber dungarees shout orders amid the chaos of the storm, and he takes a moment to gather his things in a rucksack before he joins them on the deck.
This late at night, there isn't much anyone can do but hunker down and hope for the best. The men point him in the direction of the closest inn—the only one, another jokes—and he tries not to think about how badly damaged Captain will be in the morning. His own stupidity, of course; he knew there was a storm coming but he underestimated how vicious it would be.
With a nod of thanks, he sets off.
Brushing against the Eastern coast of Canada was meant to just be a simple drive-by back to Liverpool. Barely a stop, really. Just a scenic route so he could spend his thirty-ninth birthday over the sunken wreck of the Titanic before continuing on the nearly week-long journey across the Atlantic.
But instead, he celebrates it with a bottle of rum, and a ship on the verge of sinking—stuck, now, in Nova Scotia until he can find a mechanic to patch her up before he sets sail again.
He sends a quick text to Soap about the delay—stuck in Canada, fuckin' hurricanes—and tries not to dwell on the sudden ease in his guts at the prospect of not going home anytime soon.
(There are worse places he could be for his birthday, he thinks. Like Liverpool.)
The port he anchored his vessel to is a bottleneck between the last stretch of land for some hundreds of kilometres and the vast, ungiving ocean.
It isn't much to look at—just an empty boardwalk shaped like a horseshoe with most of the shops closed down for the season (or permanently, if the ramshackle state of them is anything to by), save for a grocer, an inn that takes up most of the middle section of the pier, a fisherman's village on the inlet with locals buying the wares from the lush waters filled to the brim with lobster and Atlantic salmon, a seafood restaurant, a cafe that moonlights as a pizza parlour in the evenings, and a pub—but it's enough for now. It's quaint, he thinks, even in its seasonal destitution.
The buildings are all painted in faded primary colours that are washed out in the heavy rain that falls from some coastal hurricane just touching down in Labrador.
It's one of those small seaside harbours that have seen better days. One with an economy wholly dependent on passing sailors just to survive, and he feels the despondency in the air like a thick, humid fog clinging to the skin of his neck. Fading signs. Peeling paint. There's damage to some of the buildings from a hurricane that must have swept through some several seasons ago, but the funds to repair are almost nonexistent, and so it sits. Festers. A broken reminder of how deadly the sea can be, even on land.
The herringbone pier creaks under his weight as he walks the sandy trek from the marina beside the village to the inn (no vacancy, it reads, with middle letters flickering ominously), and he grapples with the unease that fills him at being on solid land for the first time in months. A strange, unshaky gait, as if the cartilage in his aching knees turned to liquid while he was at sea.
It doesn't bother him too much—by the time he recalibrates to the weight of land pressing down on his soles, it'll be time to leave.
Maybe.
("It'll pass," the innkeeper sniffs when he asks about how long these things usually last. "Give 'er a week or so, and she'll blow right by. Might cause some floodin' in Halifax, but we're on the opposite end of 'er. Should be fine.")
It smells like rotten fish, blooming algae, and old frying oil—a typical thoroughfare for most of the harbours he's saddled up to in the years he's been traversing the open ocean. He breathes it in and finds himself already missing the potent loam that brims from the seawater at night. Salt, humus, brine, eelgrass; the ocean smells distinct in its rot. This, then, is a pale ersatz.
He's been here for a short, few hours already, and still can't seem to adjust to life on land. To the smells, the sounds, the people—not that there's too many of them around here. Price would be surprised if this town's population was higher than three hundred.
But it's stifling all the same.
And cold.
Being at the very tip of the Atlantic ocean, the weather is a near constant gloom. Grey, lacklustre skies smeared with thick, black clouds looming in the horizon like an omen. Salt-saturated air. It's a strange amalgamation between a chilling breeze from the sea and a dense wall of humidity even this late in September. It's uncomfortably thick under the veiled sun—a pale yellow hidden behind streaks of grey cloud cover.
The best description for this little place is dreary.
One he thinks might still be true even without the hurricane looming in the distance; a constant, inescapable chokehold within reach.
In the interior of the small fishing village, people chatter aimlessly about everything except the hurricane (but he supposes that with the frequency of them happening, there isn't much else to say about them except, ah, fuck, again?). He finds a modicum of comfort in their strange twang—a mangled bastardisation of Irish, Scottish, and something unique to the barren, eastern coast of Canada. It almost feels like home, strangely. Like someone dropped him in the Canadian version of Cork, Ireland.
The people he meets in passing as he drifts aimlessly between the shops, picking up something for dinner and a set of clean clothes, are friendly in an almost aggressive way.
Then, of course, there's you.
You weren't expected. A catastrophe in the making, one that he can see coming from a mile away. It's something he has a keen intuition for—being able to sense the kind of trouble that will make leaving harder than it has to be—and he knows better than to entertain this little fantasy, but there's something about you that makes him keep coming back.
Maybe it's the booze you ply him with; top of the shelf despite adding it to his tab under a bottom barrel price tag. Or the fact that no one has been able to replicate the perfect whisky sour he had down in Barbados, but—goddamn—you come very close.
Or maybe it's just exactly what it is:
Loneliness. Distraction.
He's a man always on the move. One who hasn't kissed land in months. And you're—
Well.
You're the prettiest thing he'd seen since a rainbow cast a glimmering ring on the horizon eighteen kilometres off the coast of the Philippines.
He isn't old. Not in the way that matters, but the sea has a way of chipping people apart; ageing them in ways that land just can't replicate. He's not yet forty, but sometimes he wakes up after barely missing a brutal storm in the middle of the ocean, and he feels like he's almost sixty. Battered body, bruised and broken; sunscorched. Salt-weathered.
You, though, make him feel his actual age. As if he's some young, dumb lad who ought to know better but doesn't care. Flippant in the way only the people in Liverpool can be. Young of heart. Dumb of mind.
And fuck—
Thinking about that place, those goddamn idiots in the pub who didn't know what quiet meant, makes him realise just how much he misses it. Not home. Never home. Home is the sea. The ocean. Home is this little place between land. A wild, untamed beast. The place where, when he was eighteen and smitten, he threw his heart down to the bottom of that unending chasm of midnight blue.
But you make him homesick, and he thinks he ought to resent you a little bit for it.
(He doesn't, of course; doesn't think he could ever hate you for making him feel even though he should because you make leaving harder than it's ever been, and he doesn't know what to do about that.)
It starts over a glass of whisky.
He's no stranger to being the foreigner, the tourist. Price is a tall man with broad shoulders and a permanent smear of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, no matter the season. With his unkempt beard of wry umber curls, his deep timbre that sounds more like the battered engine of a classic, American muscle car, a sea-weathered gaze, and his penchant for a stiff drink and an unfiltered cigar, he has a tendency to stand out.
(Or so he's been told.)
So, when you round the corner of the bar, brow ticking up in intrigue as he wanders in, sun-beaten and salt-slicked, he isn't surprised to hear you murmur:
"Not from around here, are you?"
Still. It makes him huff. "How'd you guess?"
Your other brow joins the first. "This town has a permanent population of maybe sixty people. I like to think I know every single one of them. You, however, I don't know."
"That so?"
You nod. "Yes, sir—"
And fuck. The way you speak, softly but with a rawness in your tone that's completely void of any false pleasantry, seems to notch somewhere in his ribcage, however dusted it is with barren white cobwebs.
"No. No sirs here," he finds himself saying, unprompted, and a little adrift from his usual character. He likes the importance that comes with being known as an authority figure; respected—the responsibility gives him something to do, and John has never really known how to be anything other than a leader, even when he shouldn't be.
(Especially when he shouldn't be.)
"Then what should I call you, stranger?"
He shrugs one shoulder in a lofty reply, but doesn't give you his name. Not right away, anyway—he also thinks he likes the mystery of being a stranger in a strange land—but you don't press. Your hands lift, palms facing him, in a mockery of surrender.
"Okay, stranger. What can I get for you?"
"Whisky," he says, a touch gruffer than he should be considering how nice you're being, but he's also never been the sort to care much about social niceties. "Neat. Bottle of spring water on the side."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you mouth the words back to yourself, a little smile clipping the corner of your lips. Bottle of water. It makes him huff again.
"Good business to mock your guests, is it?"
It's your turn to shrug. "Only when they don't give me their name."
You're quick in a way he doesn't expect. Snappy. Unpolished. But considering the way you walk around the bar, snatching up a bottle, and then a glass without even sparing a glance to see what's in your hands, it tells him you're familiar with this place. I know everyone, it screams.
It's an inference—but he's always been rather good at those as well—that you've been here a while. Maybe this place is home to you. Maybe it has always been.
Growing up in a dilapidated port town must have rubbed off on you in all the wrong ways. Waspish but still deferential to your elders. Quick with your words. Taking everything to the chin without a flinch.
You grew up around sailors. Around men who can't seem to stand still on land long enough to call any place home. And he almost pities you for it. Almost.
But he doesn't know you well enough to care.
So, he doesn't.
Motions, instead, to the cigar case he lays flat on the table after fishing it out of his front pocket with a small murmur to see if it's alright if he smokes inside. Places like these are so far behind on bylaws, he doubts anyone would blink if he smoked indoors, but it's better to be safe, he reasons, than to find himself on the curb nursing bloodied knuckles and a black eye.
(One too many nights down in Manila taught him well enough.)
You nod, then look around the empty pub. "Go ahead. I don't think anyone here will mind."
It makes bark out something that sounds too shorn around the edges, too frayed and unevenly cut, to be a laugh, but it still makes your lips quiver, pulling up in a smile.
"Glad you've got my back."
He leaves it open. An empty space for you to fill in, give him your name. A proper introduction.
Price isn't too surprised when you don't, and instead use two, well-practised fingers to slide his drink over to him, not spilling a drop. There's a flash of teeth. A mockery of a smile.
And then: "drink up. First one is on the house."
"Well, aren't you charming."
"It's just good business," you quip with a little more teeth. "Gotta stay above the competition."
It pulls another bark from his chest. The second in less than ten minutes. He can't remember the last time he laughed this much, however lumpish and unrefined it might be.
"It's working," he adds, tipping the glass in your direction. "Might come back for a round yet."
"Just don't be a stranger."
He should have been.
Living a large majority of his life floating aimlessly in the vast expanse of the open sea has given him several insights into who he is as a person, as a man, and what makes him tick. The situations he was forced into, almost all of them being life or death, make him acutely aware of himself in a way that only those who have trust pushed past the limits of their mettle know.
Price is good at spotting danger. Looming storms. Rogue waves. Reefs jutting out in the middle of the ocean.
And everything about you is dangerous.
He knows himself well enough to know that you're his kryptonite. His weakness. That those glossy eyes, your stubborn pride, your spitfire mouth, are all things pitted against him. All designed to make him suffer as much as possible.
You're more dangerous than running out of fuel near Australia. Almost getting capsized off the coast of Sri Lanka. Surviving a sudden hurricane in the waters around Mexico.
You—
You make him yearn. You make him want.
You make him think about things he swore off of when he was eighteen and set sail around the world all on his own.
For the first time since he left Liverpool in a boat he named Captain, Price thinks about home. Solid land beneath his feet.
Dangerous, indeed.
And despite everything warning him away, he goes back.
Blames it on a litany of things—all half-truths that are only marginally easy to swallow. Things like: it's been ages since he had a stiff drink, and this is the only pub in some ten kilometres, or so. The only licence he cared enough to renew is his boating permit, and he isn't even sure if his driver's licence from Hereford is valid anymore. Never bothered much to check.
He needs to get out, anyway. Has to find someone to fix the leak he'd sprung crossing the Labrador Strait. Needs to get more fuel. Enough to last him until he can get to Maine.
And where else is he going to find anyone in this town to do all of that if not at the pub?
It's practical. A necessity.
(And if he wears his nicest shirt that only barely smells sunbleached, then no one has to know.)
No one. Except you, that is.
You wave to him in what's quickly becoming known as your usual greeting. A slight widening of your eyes, as if you're surprised to see him. Then a small quirk of your lips that always accompanies the briefest flash of teeth. If you're not busy making a drink, you lift your hand up, fingers loosely curled over your palm. A lazy wave.
He echoes it all back with a sharp nod as he takes his seat at the bar. His usual, too, because despite having not been a marine since he was twenty-six, he still has the training he picked up ingrained in his marrow. Back to the corner. Exits in his periphery.
(Old habits die hard, he thinks, and feels his heart leap to the base of his throat when you grin at him from over the counter, wide and infectious—)
He needs a smoke. A stiff drink.
There's an ashtray laid out on the table in front of him, a coaster with an empty glass. You're quick to rectify that, sidling up to his spot with a bottle of whisky tucked between your palm and thumb, a bottle of water secured in your grasp by just your pinky looped around the nozzle.
"You should try my whisky sour," you murmur conversationally—like this is normal. Commonplace.
It is in a way, he notes. But there's something much too domestic about the way you take him in. Fluffing pillows. Resting a cool hand against a warm forehead. Sweetness bleeds into his teeth, makes them ache. He needs to rinse it away before he gets a cavity.
"Mm," he mumbles, fingers curling around the glass. The whisky is only slightly chilled—the way he mentioned he liked days ago—and he wonders if you took it out of the cool, let it sit on the shelf, waiting for him. He doesn't know how he feels about the idea of that. Of being waited for. Expected. "Not a fan of that nonsense."
Your head tilts to the side. Narrowed eyes reading him. Trying to sear through the layers that accumulated over the years, thick growths. Barnacles bunched around his body from stagnancy. He wonders what you think you see when you look at him.
Wonders, then, why he cares so much about what the answer might be.
John hides it all in a swallow. A gulp of whisky that never stops burning no matter how many times he washes his blues away with a swig of it. Lights a fire in his throat that catches and spreads through his chest, all the way down to his belly. Smoky. Ashes. He wheezes through the burn of it. Let it strip his insides, taking all the pollutants with it. The ones that build up whenever he catches sight of soft, coy smiles, and warm eyes.
Dangerous if left unchecked.
"You never know," you say, and he's already forgotten what you were talking about originally. Too many dips into the margins. Too much reading between the lines. "You might like it if you try."
And he knows, immediately, that he would. That he'd order whatever fancy drink you whipped up for him tonight with lemon and liquid cane sugar and a pinch of salt to cut the sweetness (your secret ingredient), and would do it for the rest of his life if he could. Would drink himself into cirrhosis just to see the way you smiled when you made it.
He swallows it. Chases it down with water. He's always been rather good at that—running. Avoiding the things that make his heart thud, and the back of his neck prickle.
So, he says: "nah, m'set in my ways."
And you smile, let him flee. "If you say so." Then, with eyes that drop to the three wrinkles in his collar, and the ambiguous stain on the breast pocket of his shirt, you add: "don't you look nice tonight. Who're you trying to impress?"
There's an itch under his skin. He paws at his pocket for his cigars. You meet him in the middle with a lighter in your hand, held out to him when he jabs the butt of one between his teeth. He needs the distraction. Needs nicotine to quell his nerves. Smoke-stained apathy. Just enough to soften the urge to do something ill-advised. To say something uncharacteristically flirty, like—
You. If you'll have me.
(And then desperately. With a quiver in his voice, and blood in his throat; if you'll let me. I'll be so good to you, so, so good—)
"Mechanic," he rumbles, words muffled and gruff from around the end of his cigar. The way the flames catch the softness around the ring of your irises makes him ache in all the wrong ways. "Boat mechanic, specifically. To help fix up Captain."
"Captain?" You echo, brows rising. He leans forward, pushes the tip into the fire; inhales to let it catch.
"M'ship," he rolls the word around a mouthful of smoke. "My first love."
"Ah," you say with a smile that tugs on the corners of your eyes. "She must be a thing of beauty, then."
His mouth is already forming the affirmation—yes, she is—and the question—why do you think that?—but you beat him to it with a softness that hints at more, that lays itself bare on the grimy, acetone bleached tabletop:
"To make a man like you so smitten."
And Jesus Christ.
What is he meant to say to that? How is supposed to respond with his heart in his throat, and pulse in his ears?
He's too old for this shite, he thinks. Then, not old enough. Not nearly old enough—
"Right," he grumbles, gruff and unfriendly, and everything that's meant to make you stay away for good, to look at him like the sorry sap of an empty man he is. But there's a tint in his words. A blood-drenched fluster.
You catch pieces of it, and smile behind the counter as you pour another drink.
"Anyway," he's grasping at anything with knotted hands, something to take the edge off of his nerves. To put distance between this, you and him, and all the things that will eventually come after it. "This mechanic. Know where I can find one?"
The derision that dances across your pretty face has heat blooming in his chest.
"Look around. This is basically a town hall meeting tonight."
He likes the way you ride sarcasm and sincerity so finely that he always seems to oscillate between believing your words or wondering if you're making a mockery of him. Most of the time, you seem to be—if only to get a rise out of him. To draw out his sense of humour, mordant and drier than a desert. One that pairs quite nicely with your own.
(Another tip to the scale he tries not to think about.)
So he doesn't. He huffs instead as he ashes his cigar, and reaches for the glass with his other hand.
"Well, ain't you funny."
You are, of course. Of course. He thinks about the things you say to him when he comes down for breakfast at noon and dinner well after the sun has set beyond the horizon, making a meal out of the lobster rolls you make for him in the kitchen, the tuna sandwiches. The garlic shrimp. The salmon and rice. Idle comments about the locals—or lack thereof—and their spotty reputation. The history of the town. Of your Province.
"You love it."
And God help him, he does. He does. He likes the way you drag snorts out from the depths of his chest, clearing out empty cobwebs, and filling the barren space with warmth. Or something like it. Everyone he's met so far always seems to want something from him, but you don't. You don't even make him pay for the extra heaping of lobster you pile on his plate even though he's heard you say it was an extra five dollars to a passing sailor.
He seems to be your exception, and he doesn't know why.
(Or maybe he does, but looking at it too closely fills him with dread. The kind he only feels when he finds out a storm cell is headed toward him. When he has to anchor down in a bay and settle the sickness in his guts as Captain is viciously thrown from side to side.
The morning after when he has to clean up the broken pieces and examine the extent of the damage, it's always filled with a sense of moroseness. Uncomfortable, in a way, like the aftermath of a vitriolic row, a devastating argument when he emerges with a sense of uncertainty, no longer quite sure he was justified in the things he said, the anger he felt. But too prideful to apologise. The awkwardness of navigating the ruins of calamity with a sense of regret that blooms alongside his lingering anger.)
So, he does what he does best:
"Not in your lifetime, love."
He runs.
Because lying has always come easier to him, hasn't it?
The mechanic is an old man with an accent thicker than his own.
He speaks entirely in regional colloquialisms that Price can't make sense of. Even when he makes it known that he has no idea what the fuck the man is on about, he just breathes out his nose, as if to say, what can't ye understand about me words? and continues in the same mishmash of something that might be English, but honestly—John doubts it very much.
Still. He's quick. He checks the hull, the mast. The engine. Checks off a list as he goes, muttering to himself (himself, because John stopped listening after the third, what? Come again? I can't understand you, mate that went entirely ignored save for a few, luh, buddy, I knows yer not stun but yer gettin' me right rotted, ye'are), and then slaps the side of Captain, nodding to himself.
Three weeks, he says, words stretched out and stressed, like he was speaking to a child. 'ave 'er all fix'd up in t'ree weeks, b'y.
Three weeks.
It's in line with the seasons, too. If he times it all just right, he could be eating jerk chicken, curry, and oxtail soup in Jamaica soon enough. It would be stupid to go against the Gulf Stream (something he knows from experience when he was younger and dumber and thought he knew better), but a short stint across the Atlantic to Bermuda would suffice. Then once he's finished, he could set sail to the Azores, and then to Gibraltar, or Portugal, back up to the UK.
Well, then.
It's set.
He hands the man a deposit, and tries not to think about the hourglass looming in the distance.
Or you.
(He always has to leave eventually. This, he knows, is no different.)
A routine forms. It's not terrible—not at first. Just an itch in the back of his head, talons raking across the inside of his skull, right behind his eyes.
It's fine, he reasons, taking his spot at the bar while you bat away grabbing hands reaching for free beer, more booze. In three weeks, this place will be a memory replayed in his mind when the stretch of ocean idles, and loneliness sets in. A soft comfort for him to break into pieces, into regrets and spots of unhinged laughter when the isolation in a wet, unfathomable desert sinks its maw into his psyche.
He'll resent himself, he's sure; curse the winds and the squalls that threaten to tear his boat into pieces. The idle sense of listlessness that comes with seafaring long distances.
He's done it enough times to know that between the inexorable sense of freedom and insignificance in the gaping maw of an untamable beast, he always hates himself a little bit for not taking someone with him.
Solo-sailing is ill-advised, but he's always been a stubborn bastard. Too prickly to be good company, too gruff to care.
Maybe he'll ring Gaz when gets close to Europe to see if he's up for a stint jaunting through the ocean to see the Caribbean with him. Or Soap if Gaz is still hunkering away with the military.
(You—
He doesn't think about that. Carves the thought out of his hand as quickly as it forms.)
But even so—
You're a constant on his mind. The first solid presence he's had in months, too.
Despite his cantankerous disposition—sometimes he finds himself snarling more than conversing; sometimes he has this urge in his blood to lash out, to push things away just to see how far they go—you navigate his mercurial temperament with ease. His shorn, gruff words bounce off of your skin and fall to the countertop where you pick them up between delicate fingers and throw them right back at him—all with a smile.
See, you seem to say. Nothing you can do will push me away so just shut up already and drink your fucking whisky, old man.
He doesn't know if he believes you. Or the phantom echo in his head.
"You're shedding," you murmur, drawing his attention back to you. At his raised brow, you lift your hand up in front of him, thumb and forefinger pinched together.
It's only when his vision steadies that he sees the single strand of hair wisping up from between the tips of your fingers. A coarse hair of dark brown with lightened tips.
His hand lifts to his beard, roaming over the wry curls peppered, unkempt, around the bottom half of his face. His moustache is overgrown, eclipsing the entirety of his lips. He feels the wetness from his whisky staining the ends.
You laugh when he pats along his cheek and jaw, as if he could find the missing follicle amid an unruly basin of knotting hair.
"Ah," he rasps. "Guess I'm in need of a shave."
It's not a priority anymore. Hasn't been since he left the Navy, or when he realised how troublesome it was to try and shave his face while crossing the Atlantic. It just stopped being something he cared much about.
But he feels the long ends catching on the rough patch of skin around his knuckles. Straggly and whitening at the tips.
"Maybe," you quip with a shrug, and he can't really place the note in your tone that tries to linger between feigned indifference, but misses the mark entirely.
You don't say anything else as you drop the fallen strand into the bin behind the counter, but as the night progresses, he catches your eyes straying toward him more often than usual, lingering on the expanse of his covered jaw. Something flashes in those depths—intrigue, maybe; curiosity—and John tries to convince himself it doesn't matter even as he pulls out money from his wallet at the crux of the evening when everyone has gone home, save for himself and you. The only two left in an empty pub.
It shakes him, somewhat. As if he's only realising just now how normal this has become. For him to wait for you. To walk you to the edge of the boardwalk, where a little cottage sits across a sandy embankment. Home, you told him once. The first night he kept pace with you just to keep the conversation going.
Never been anywhere else but here, you said, a touch wistful. Must be amazing, then. Going anywhere you like. Always at sea.
He swallows down something bitter at the memory. Something aching and acrid. Yeah, he murmured when the silence stretched on for too long and he saw the apology forming on your lips. Nice. It's—it's good, yeah.
The years have muted the resentment he felt toward his home. His father, in particular. He doesn't think he's ready to step back into Hereford—maybe not ever—but he might be ready to see the old bastard's grave. Drop a couple of flowers down.
The memories he has are embedded in thrown cast iron pots. Fist-sized holes in the wall. Sealed with bitterness, resentment.
He didn't know how to summarise all of that into something digestible for you. So, he didn't. Doesn't.
(Can't, maybe. Won't.)
You'd stopped aiming for personal and instead focused your attention on the things that made him snort. Made him laugh. He can't remember the last time he had a moment to breathe. Land makes him feel claustrophobic. Itches under his skin in a way that drums up the instinct to flee. Or fight.
But with you—
It's easy.
It awakens something in him, too. Something that has been there all along, maybe. Lingering on the periphery. One he tried hard to ignore as it raked down his skull, leaving false starts in his bones.
There's an attraction there, seeding in the gaps between your bodies. One that becomes harder to ignore as the days pass. And how could there not be, when you're pretty in a way that makes him flounder. That makes him want to bend you over the counter just to see what expressions he could pull out of you with a mere touch. The sounds—
Fuck. You'd sound so pretty, he thinks. Has thought. Many times in the sanctuary of his hotel room that stunk of algae and smoke. Images of you splayed out on the sheets, begging him for more—
His hand goes back to his jaw. Feeling the years of accumulated indifference beneath his fingers, and needing something—anything—to take the heat in his belly, the tremble of his hand, away. To keep the thoughts of you at bay, locked up tight for no one else to see. To know.
John doesn't walk you home that night, opting instead to duck into a drug mart beside the inn, hands burrowed in his pockets, eyes lidded. Narrowed, almost, as he takes in the rows of cheap plastic he'll inevitably find at sea.
He stands in the aisle for a moment, taking in the mix of English and French on the boxes, and trying to come up with reasons for why this is a good idea—outside of the way it felt to have you look at him with lowered lashes, flickering from his chin, to his jaw, to his cheek: imagining what might be under the bushel of thick, unruly hair.
It doesn't surprise him that he comes up empty. That his head is filled with nothing but the illicit image of you leaning over him—
Stupid.
He grabs the first box he sees, crumpling the cardboard from how tight he's clenching his fist.
It isn't the first time he's thought of you like that, but it is in your presence. With you staring at him, filling in the blanks his uninspired memory couldn't conjure up. Talking to him, too—bloody fucking hell.
All frayed whispers of: you alright, John? You sure? Well, if you say so.
There's anger writ across his brow, more so at himself for thinking these things, for feeling them in the first place, but as he stalks toward the counter, frown buried behind a mess of overgrown, unkempt hair, and eyes narrowed into pinched lines, he's sure he makes quite the sight. Must, if the little jump the skittish man behind the register gives when he drops the box with a growled how much? is to go by.
John's never been good at handling his anger. Trickle-down toxicity, maybe. He's sure some fancy therapist would be overjoyed to tell him all about it—about how he's never had a good role model when it comes to biting his tongue. Never had to, when his last name is enough to pass tests, climb ranks.
Mean and drunk, his dad was.
And Price—
Well. Sometimes he feels himself getting there, too.
But this. This. It feels different.
He's not nearly as angry as he is flustered, and like anything he isn't used to, he lashes out.
John is sure they don't tip at drug stores, but he conveniently forgets his change in place of an apology when he storms out of the shop, ignoring the hesitantly called, uh, sir…? as he goes.
It's fine, he thinks and tries not to let his mind wander into uncharted territory, musing about what you might have said. Might have done.
Swatted at him, undoubtedly. Said something scathing about him being a prick for no reason. Put him in his place, kept him there.
But he doesn't think about that at all.
John stands in front of the grimy mirror in his hotel room with a brand new razor in hand, staring at himself, and wonders if you'd shave it for him if he asked. If you'd keep him in line during the long stretch of the ocean where everything is an endless crawl of muted grey-green, and take him down to the bathroom in the boat, one that's barely big enough for himself to fit comfortably, and perch him on the toilet while you tended to the too-long wisps of curls growing over his cheeks.
The thought is an algae bloom in his chest. Ethereal, beautiful. But beneath the marvel of nature's potent splendour lurks a deadly danger—one toxic in its domesticity.
Still. He latches onto it. Curls his worn fingers around the edges, clinging to rotting driftwood.
He likes the way it fits in his chest. The shape of you moulding along the barren brackets of his ribs; slotting in like a puzzle piece. It's winsome. Dangerous. But he's always like a challenge.
Always liked the way some things were meant to hurt.
(And you—you look like you were made to ruin.)
Hair rains into the stained basin with each cut. Filling the chips in the porcelain, built up from years of carelessness and indelicate hands, until a light dust of burnt umber sits like a layer of snow across the surface, hiding the blemishes below.
Each inch shorn off seems to regress him in age until he's less an unkempt seafarer, a wild man who feasts on tuna and loses his mind in the middle of the sea, and more like the thirty-something-year-old who still has decades ahead of him to try and regain his footing.
The contrast is jarring.
He runs the back of his hand across clean skin and nearly startles at the feeling of something touching that part of his face that was hidden for so long.
He's reminded about something his dad used to say—nothing like a shave to make a man feel new again—and isn't sure how he likes the sour twist in his gut when he feels the truth in those words, however hollow and artificial they might be.
The face that stares back at him is different from the one who wore a military uniform all those years ago. Cheeks sunken in. Hollow. Thinner from months at sea. His complexion is darker, sunkissed and tinged slightly red. A permanent sunburn, maybe. He thinks about the woman from Ghana who warned him with a finger pressed softly against the apple of his full cheek about skin cancer. Melanoma.
Wear sunscreen, she stressed with a shake of her head that sent gorgeous locks of midnight black spilling over her bare shoulders. It reminded him of the deepest parts of the ocean that he crossed. Endless puddles that looked like little jars of ink across the vast expanse of the sea. You're too pale not to be wearing some every day.
(After he left—twinned hearts torn asunder—he found a bottle of sunscreen stuffed inside his rucksack. It was the only time he can remember crying in some twenty-odd years—)
That man feels almost as distant as the sea is to him now. A memory. A moment when he was willing to carve off the best parts of himself just to make room for the loneliness; the self-flagellation in the form of isolation. What he'd thought he deserved. Maybe still does.
He isn't sure what thoughts were rattling around inside his head at the time to make him leave the best pieces of himself with a woman who seemed too good to be true, but still wanted him, of all people, by her side. Those, too, feel far too distant to grasp.
His hand is worn down. Knuckles more scar tissue than skin. Welts lined the inside of his palms—thickened flesh made from grabbing the ends of rope too many times to count as it reeled out of his grasp, cutting deep and cauterising the wound all at the same time. He should have known better, maybe. But when his anchor was tumbling down into an abyss, unattached to its cleat in the middle of the ocean, time for thinking was negligible. Nonexistent, almost.
The accumulated scars—some from land, most from sea—discolour his skin until it's patches of ivory, pale pink, and mounted brown, all slightly hidden under a thin crop of wry topaz hair.
His nails are short and lined with boat oil. Dirt. The beds are yellowing from nicotine.
He scratches the rosy skin of his upper cheek where it meets the cut of patchwork mutton chops. His signature style when he was Captain. When he was responsible for more life than he knew what to do with or knew how to protect.
(The men he couldn't save always seem to stack higher than the ones he did.)
John sees fragments of his old self in the mirror. Pieces of an incomplete puzzle he thought he left scattered on the battlefield, and then tucked inside a box when he handed in his medals for a trawler (a trawler for a sailboat). The fit is tight. It sits uncomfortably over his new skin—scarred and sunkissed—and he gives himself a moment to wonder about where he'd be in life now had he stayed behind.
But a moment feels too long. Not long enough.
He brings the razor up to his cheek and cuts the rest of that man away.
He isn't him. Not anymore.
(Hasn't been for a long time.)
The skin of his cheeks sting from the bitter evening winds billowing off the icy Atlantic and he's reminded why he kept his beard overgrown and thick when he was out at sea.
November is a cruel month, he always found. Cold. Desolate. This close to the ocean, and he feels the chill deep in his bones, even though several layers of leather and fur. It's enough to make his teeth chatter.
The fur lining the collar of his Levi's jacket does little to stem the vicious onslaught, but he makes a point to bunch his shoulders closer to the bottom of his earlobes in an effort to salvage some heat. Not that there's much to spare.
But the walk from the inn to the pub is blessedly short, and the brief cold gives him enough time to clear his head. To think about turning back. Stopping whatever it is he thinks he's doing.
He isn't a young lad. Not anymore.
He knows this, of course. Knows it enough to feel the ache in his joints. In the raw scar tissue that is always a little tender in colder weather. Still. It wasn't enough to stop him from washing his clothes in the coin laundry of the inn. Buying fabric softener and forest-scented detergent from the grocer. A beanie (toque, he supposes, though he's never heard anyone out East use that word), some cologne—the expensive kind. Tom Ford, the lady at the cosmetic counter said. You look like you'd like this one best.
He didn't ask why. She didn't tell him.
It smells good, though. Like new leather, vanilla, and tobacco—a strange concept considering most of the time people couldn't stand the smell whenever he smoked, but maybe that's only in cigars and cigarettes.
There was a moment when he stood in the washroom, buttoning up his freshly laundered (and newly purchased) shirt when he felt like a fraud. A goddamn muppet.
This isn't him. He reeks of smoke, salt, and sun-dried sweat. He scrubs his clothes clean with extra shampoo inside the shower on his boat when they start to smell a little too pungent, even for him. He doesn't shave. Barely showers—
Who needs it when he can just anchor on a reef, or a distant, uninhabited island and take a dip in crystalline waters for a few hours?
He feels—
Stupid.
But he can't deny there's something a little invigorating about slipping a clean body inside clean clothes. Dressing up like some young lad taking his girl out to see a film, grab a burger to eat. Maybe bum around Liverpool until he had to go back to the barracks.
He bit his tongue until he tasted iron and slipped on his jacket. Pulled the beanie over his head. Sprayed some cologne on the sleeves. And then kept his head low to avoid anyone's eyes, even though no one in this town has really bothered to get to know him like you had.
John just feels a bit like a swindler. This isn't him.
Fancy shirts. Clean jeans. Boots. A new leather jacket. Cologne. Barefaced. It all feels like a hollow pastiche of some clichè role he's trying to fill. Leading man, or something stupid like that Soap might jostle him about.
Who're ye tryin'ta be, Cap? Tom Hardy, aye?
Fuck. Fuck. He should leave, just go back to his inn—
But the door is already opening. You're looking up, taking him in, and then—
Nothing. You offer a slight nod. No smile. No wave. And then you're looking away, eyes dropping back to the tabletop you're always cleaning despite the stains and the stickiness never going away.
He expected worse, maybe. His hand reaches up as he steps inside, feeling the uneven skin beneath his palm. Rugged craters. Knicks from the blade when he got too close to his skin. Scars, maybe. Patches of hair he missed.
He wonders what you thought when you saw it. Chiefly disappointed, perhaps, that whatever image you had in your head of him, all clean-shaven and dressed up, wasn't quite the same as reality. There's a sinking sense of disappointment in his guts, but it's almost minuscule compared to the relief of knowing that you don't care. Maybe it'll be enough to quash whatever has been rotting in the crevasse between you. Crush whatever idealistic notions of him you have in your head.
John would rather you were bitterly disappointed now than realise it after. Regret. A mistake. It's good. Fine.
It's only when he takes his usual seat does your head pops up again, eyes cutting across the counter to stare at him.
And—
Shit.
The way you look at him knocks the air from his lungs. The deep appraisal, the shock, the curiosity, and the—
"Wow," you whisper, eyes widening. He isn't sure what you think, but he knows that look in your eye; a keenness. Sees it sometime staring back at him in a cup of amber when you don't notice him looking. Shit. Shit.
He clears his throat, uncomfortable under the intensity of your stare, and tries to soothe his nerves as quickly as he can, patting down for his cigars left somewhere in his pocket. In one of his pockets. Fuck—
"Well," you breathe, and he dreads your words immediately, not quite ready to hear them without something in his veins to dull the pinballing emotions in his chest. "Don't you clean up nice. Didn't recognise you at first."
He grunts. "Yeah, yeah. Talkin' nonsense now, aren't you?"
"Nonsense?" You echo, tone subdued, now. Soft. Too soft. He hates the way it makes his chest feel like it's caving in. "What? A handsome man like you can't take a compliment? That's a surprise."
Handsome.
He feels his pulse in his throat. Heat under his collar. Something spreads across his skin at words, glueing itself down, uncomfortably tight—constricting, smothering—and he fights the urge to reach up to his neck, clawing at it until it's all gone. Peeled off in strips, taking with it jagged swaths of too-hot flesh.
Your words are painted with too much sincerity, and it drips over his skin—thick and oily—until he's stained in the offering they make. Drenched in the sudden realisation that this is far too much than he can handle.
That he needs.
The way you're looking at him—bare-faced honesty, scoured of anything other than a genuity that trickles into the gaps in his crumbling chest, sticky filament made of saccharine promises and a dizzying sense of open affection—makes him heave; chokes him on the embers of that tantalising what if you let echo in the recess of words.
It isn't grabbing, or taking what he wants. This is you lying flat on the table. His choice to reach for it. To curl his fingers around the bulk of it, feeling the heat in the palm of his hand.
And he wants. Oh, how he wants—
But it feels a little bit like a betrayal. Self-sabotage from within as his body turns against him. Feelings conspiring with his whims, the ones that force out their pleads between bloodied teeth; yearning as they rattle the cages of this forced prison. Lost in absentia.
He can't make sense of the tremors that follow, roaring through his chest in a deluge of innominated emotions that seem to shake the foundation he stands on. He reaches, but can't seem to grasp them. Temporal feelings without cause. Intangible. They slip through the gaps in his fingers. Slide off of his flesh as he was trying to catch mercury in the oil-slick palm of his hand.
John can't make sense of it. Why him? What's drawing you to him outside of carnal attraction? It's always been there—that magnetic pull: his marrow to yours.
But for the first time since he traded in medals for oars, he feels the pull back to shore. That unquenchable urge to dip his toes into the sand. To keep his feet firm on dry land.
The feeling of it itches in the palm of his hand.
And like most things, he doesn't understand, doesn't agree with, he feels the unrelenting urge to lash out against it. Push back. Carve out some semblance of distance between the thing he doesn't understand, and what it's making him feel.
And then he snaps. Bites back against the headiness admixing in the back of his head; noxious, dangerous. It's a discomfort. A slash of clarity that makes him all too aware of himself. Of you. This. Everything. It's too much.
So easily swayed by a pretty word. What a damn fool.
The snort he gives in response is a gnarled mess in his throat, all mangled up and shredded on the barbs of his sudden vexation. "Flatter all the poor sods like this, do you?"
It crackles in his chest. Smouldering embers. Dampened by the blood filling his lungs, choking him on what spills out of the shattered levee.
This isn't—
Isn't him. It isn't you.
He feels claws raking across the inside of his skull. Sharpened talons digging vengefully into the back of his sockets until it aches. Forcing him, maybe, to see the aftermath of his anger.
"No," you say, pulling back. Stepping away from him. Giving him space. Not enough, and entirely too much. A sad echo snakes through the crevasse. Glass breaking. Shattering. He thinks of self-sabotage. Tastes it in the back of his throat. "Just you."
It's mean, awful, when he huffs, asks: "yeah? Why bother?"
"Why not?" You volley back, and he can't quite place the look in your eye. Disappointment, maybe. Something tinged in regret. "Maybe I want to. Maybe I—"
You don't finish.
Good, he thinks. Good. Stay away. Far away.
And softer. Softer still—
It's for your own good. Better off this way. Don't turn around. You'll only end up hating what you see. Regretting what you find—
"Don't know what you're getting yourself into." His words are stagnant. Hollow. The consistency of ash between dry palms. He tries to swallow, but can't. Can't. Gives up instead, adds: "won't like what you find, either."
You hum and it hurts. "Maybe I might. Can't be all bad under there."
They're sharpened with an edge of sincerity he can't bring himself to acknowledge, not now; not yet, so he huffs instead, and brings a cigar to his lips just so he doesn't have to respond. Doesn't have to engage again. Can't, he thinks, with a cigar between his lips, stuffing his mouth full.
A pathetic escape. He's never been the type of man to retreat when it isn't the best option strategically. Or when he has no other choice, and too many men on the line.
But he can't—
(Knife to his chest, you walk away.
Blade against his tongue, he says nothing to call you back.)
A fissure sits at the zenith that once was a sense of ease, comfort. It leaks a coldness that shakes him to the core when it drifts over gaping wounds and milky-white bones.
(All of his own making, of course.)
In the midst of it all, he tries to convince himself that this is the right thing to do despite never being a man of altruism in his life, and the lie pools in his empty gut where it sloshes around in the shots of whisky you still pour for him even though he can he see the cruel lashes of his words striking over your expression when you look at him when you think he isn't watching you back.
Better this way, and he downs a shot just to ignore the merciless echo that asks, for who?
Both of you. Both.
Because despite what you might think, or whatever little fantasies you made up inside your head about him, he knows they aren't true. They aren't him.
A man who climbed ranks on the back of his last name. A borrowed legacy with no honour of his own. One who had no qualms about crossing lines that others couldn't until they blurred, until his morality was a sickly grey.
Until a prison cell in Siberia rewired the fibres in his head, and he was forced to reconcile the unignorable truth that stripped of his rank and the protection he offers there is barely any discernible difference between him and them. The enemy.
He thinks of Gaz, and the words he uttered become a portend for the calamity of a man who always seemed overly keen to take things too far.
It's them or us, he used to say. Them or us—even as he tossed an innocent man over the ledge to fall to his death. As he let a child watch him emasculate his father when he knew pride was all they had left, doing nothing in the end but creating another monster for him to hunt down at a later date. Threatened families. Threatened men. Women, children.
His punishment was nonexistent. Self-flagellation in the form of exile. He cast himself out to sea and pretended it was enough.
How is he supposed to pretend who is he isn't? How is he meant to touch you with blood writ in the lines of his palm?
Selfish. Mean. Cruel.
So, he lets it rot—just as he does with everything else.
There have been others, of course; but Price has always been attracted to older women. Laugh lines and crows feet; swatches of grey kissing their temples. A certain coldness to their touch. An unspoken understanding that everything that is, and will ever be, between them is temporal. Love was just a crutch. A fallacy uttered in the dark to soothe the rugged parts of themselves that worried they might never be enough.
He can handle women like that. Prefers them.
The youngest he's ever dated was a woman his own age, and he realised soon after that there was a disparity between he couldn't placate. One that left scars.
He's a mangled soul in a young man's body. Rough and callous and unwilling to compromise. He's more scar tissue than man, and what can he offer someone idealistic with inexperience and youth except a bitter tangle of hurt that cuts deep.
But you're an outlier, he finds. Only shades younger than himself, really, but it's not so much your age, but the way you carry yourself. Heart on your sleeve. Aching for love.
He can't give that to you.
The last time he tried, he ended up sneaking out on a woman in Ghana, leaving the pieces of him behind that dared to even try.
He can't offer you anything that isn't temporary.
And he thinks that might be fine. Maybe it's all you want from him, anyway—just a night. A moment. A memory to keep.
But John's always been greedy. The kind that wants, and wants. Once would never be enough, and he knows that if he sunk his teeth into you, a bite would never satiate his rapacious appetite, never quench the hunger.
And since he can't make a meal out of a morsel, he'd rather starve.
He thinks about leaving six times in three hours, but you carry on as if nothing has happened even though he catches weariness in your gaze whenever you look at him. His glass is filled but the conversations are bereft of their usual cheekiness. The gaps between are no longer filled with his scored laughter or your amused hums.
You spend more time away from him than you have since he first sat down. The deviation away from what quickly became a bruised touchstone, laden with clumsy fingerprints is jarring, but he can't claim to be upset by your distance when he was the one who caused the rift in the first place.
So, he drinks. He smokes his cigar. Tries to not think about why his hand itches in a way that he knows can only be sated by sliding his knuckles across the worn wood of the table, linking his fingers with yours. It's a stupid whim. He swallows it down with a shot of whisky that makes his stomach curdle. Seals it with an inhale of his cigar. Forgotten, now. Covered in ethanol and smoke.
But even with the crowbar in his hand, he can't stop himself from watching you. Eyes trailing along the paths you carve between old wooden chairs, and scowling men waving their hands at the staticky television set, upset by yet another bad call by the referee.
(He's always thought it was stereotypical to equate Canada with hockey, moose, bears, geese, and maple syrup but so far, he's seen nothing else play inside the pub—aside from a polar bear warning being issued out for northern Newfoundland—but sometimes, the shoe just fits.)
You sift through the throng carrying drinks in your hand and impish grin at the men you recognise. Words he can't hear, ones he isn't privy to, are spoken softly and reinforced with a small grin. Seeing it on your face, pointed away from him; meant only for another, is a white-hot dagger to guts, scraping across his delicate insides.
The flashes of anger are directed inward. Each stab is a reminder that they once were for him. That had he not gone and ruined a good thing, dangerous though it might be, you'd have been standing in front of him, curbing nonsensical requests over the bulk of his shoulder, unwilling to leave from your perch across from where he sat.
(Hindsight is a brutal, bitter mistress, but it has nothing at all on pride.)
He swallows it. Smokes. Pretends he's interested in the game that plays but it's just flashing colour on an oversaturated screen. A foreign language to his ears despite the words on the chyron flickering past in his mother tongue.
John thinks about packing it in for the night. Heading back to his empty hotel so he can think about you in peace—in vivid, fantastical images of equilibrium; comfort—and finds that might be for the best. For both of you. Some distance to soothe the ache he caused. To reacclimate back to strangers in a dilapidated pub. A sailor and bartender: ephemeral, the way it ought to be. The way it must.
With his dwindling pack of cigars slipped into his breast pocket beside the lighter he nicked from you ("people always seem to leave them behind in bars," you'd winked, handing him an ugly lighter in the shape of a bear with a pipe in his plastic mouth. "I picked out the one that made me think of you."), he finds himself at a loss for a reason to stay. All packed up. Ready to leave.
He raps his scarred knuckles on the table, a final farewell that he can feel heavily in his bones, filled with iron as they may be. Still. Still. It's for the best.
Whose, he still doesn't know. His own, undoubtedly, in that selfish sort of way that makes it feel selfless. Like it's the right thing to do even though he bloody well knows it isn't. Won't be. That he'll think about this moment in time when he's all alone at sea and cuss himself out as he readies for a squall.
John means to leave, but a man gets to you first.
The man makes a noise in the back of his throat. A complaint, maybe, but it's swallowed by the creak of the floorboards when he sways on his feet.
"Listen t'me, you—"
But you're not. You make a move to turn around, and he seems to realise you're not paying him any attention. Anger flickers over his slack face, and he's reaching for you with a clumsy paw before John has time to move. The moment he makes contact, fingers skating off the sleeve of your shirt, he's out of his chair, letting it clatter to the ground. The noise is swallowed by all the chaos. Murmurs, shouts. The music feels so out of place in this moment when he can feel his blood run hot, turning molten in his veins.
"Hey—!"
But your hand is gripping his wrist, pulling him off of you, before John can finish. Eyes narrowed, jaw set, you shake your head once before pointing to the door with your free hand.
"It's time for you to leave."
He pitches a fit. Petulant whinging that cuts through the noise. Vague insults hurtled at you, words of complaint that barely make you flinch.
John's rushing over before he can even think—thoughts all asunder, bouncing around his head in an unrefined mess of shorn noises and fervent anger—but you stop him with a jerk of your head. No, it says. I don't need you.
And you don't.
The swelling chaos dims and in the aftermath, he realises he's the only one standing. The only one hovering in your periphery as you shove a man twice your size away from the counter when he tries to swipe a bottle as he leaves.
Everyone is watching, wary, but there's an unspoken sense of understanding amongst them that makes him feel decidedly like an outsider, and wholly out of the loop.
Where he's from, if you see someone being harassed, you step in.
Things, apparently, are very different here.
He catches your eye when you turn back toward the interior after slamming the door shut, and there's a moment where he almost rushes to your side, checking you over for any marks that man might have left behind, but you're shaking your head before he can even lift his foot from the floorboards. As if you know. And maybe you do. Maybe you know him more than he knows himself. Maybe, maybe—
You give him another shake. No, it says, and the soft quirk of your lip echoes in his head, a soft: down boy that makes him bristle.
It's telling, of course, that he still heeds your wordless command. Hackles lowering, muscles unfurling from their rigid coil.
Your nod, then, is a soft purr that rolls through his guts like a marble. Good boy.
John feels leashed when he settles back into his chair. Anchored. All it takes is a nonverbal cue from you, and suddenly, he's tempered. Tamed.
As if to reinforce the thought, his hand strays to his chin, feeling the scarred, bare skin under his palm. All done because of a simple glance, a fleeting moment of curiosity from you.
He isn't sure how he likes the fit of it around his neck. Too tight, maybe. Dangerously claustrophobic. But it sits there, untouched. He has no desire to pull it off. To divorce the collar from his neck.
(Maybe, maybe, he thinks he could get used to the way it feels.)
As he settles in his chair, his eyes never stray from you, standing lax and unphased against the door, chatting idly to the patrons who murmur in tones too low for him to pick up over the rhythmic echo of the sea shanty and the slew of voices in the background, cheers from the hockey game that hasn't quite held his interest long enough for him to know the score. Nothing is amiss, it seems. As if bullying out men twice your size was a regular occurrence—not even newsworthy enough to pull gazes glued to the flashing television, or stop the minutiae of mindless conversations from happening in sparse passels around the pub.
But it changed something for him. He feels it in his chest, his guts. Something dislodged from the cornice, falling down inside of him in an endless spiral. A sudden freefall.
He comes to the startling realisation when you look up at him as you pat someone on the shoulder, smiling softly—all forgiven in an instant, the crevasse sealed over in a thick bed of cobwebs—that he wants. Has wanted since he first lumbered into the pub and was met with a raised brow, and a cheeky wink. Not from around here, are you? and he was gone.
Lost in the swell of you.
Your mouth moulds around the words, pleading with him over the heads of everyone else, wait for me.
But John had no plans to go anywhere else.
"I'm okay," you tell him hours later, hands buried in your pockets, eyes gazing up at the midnight blue sky. "Seriously."
There's a multitude of things he wants to say. All threads of lingering, unresolved anger brought on by that man who put his hands on you. Who thought he could.
Maybe a little bit of it is directed at you, too, for not letting him rip that man into pieces even though he knows it's not your fault. Leashed, he thinks, and rubs absently at his bare neck.
"Yeah?" He murmurs, voice raw. Eroded down to bare scraps, scorched and pulsing with the poison of anger. He tries to clear it. Swallows down the acrid tang that coats the back of his throat even still, hours later.
Your head rolls toward him slowly, chin still held loftily up to the sky, and when your eyes meet, he thinks of rogue waves. Capsizing in the middle of endless azure, exposed to elements and predators. To the murky depths below in burnt sapphire.
He swallows again, but it's hard to get anything down when his heart is in the way.
"Yeah, John. I'm good."
Your words take the shape of a breath, gently ghosting over a scraped knee. It's not meant to convince, but rather soothe, and something about that, about the softness in your eyes and way you speak tenderly, cautiously, as if he might startle, makes him feel hot beneath his collar. Flustered. Foolish. A litany of things he ought not to feel, but does because it's you.
(Because it's always been you.)
"Right," he grouses, and tries to find his way out of the canyons inside your eyes.
It's hard to escape when everything looks the same, when it all beckons him deeper. Stay, stay, it whispers over artfully crafted gorges and deep ravines, a stunning beauty that makes nature feel like a paltry imitation of the carvings in your irises.
In the sandy shores of a small inlet nearly eclipsed by the sea, you turn to him fully, eyes smouldering embers catching in the flush of the full moon, and say, thank you, John.
He scratches at the collar around his neck, and thinks about throwing away the key.
"What for?" He says instead, brows knitted together—a perfect pastiche of a fisherman's knot. It's rough: words scraped from the thick of his throat, raw and pulsing and dusted in smoke, but you don't baulk at the artificial ire that oozes between his nicotine-stained teeth. No. You lean into it with a smile.
"Defending me. Trying to, anyway," you tack on with a small huff at his expense, a finger poking at his inflated pride. In jest, of course, but it still makes him frown. "I guess I just got so used to sticking up for myself that I forgot how nice it was to know someone is looking out for me, you know?"
"Should be expected."
There's a heat simmering beneath his tone. An underlying sense of anger that hadn't abated entirely yet, just began slumbering. Dormant, but still burning. Still hot enough to hurt.
"Maybe," you hum, and the blitheness in your tone makes him bristle. Hackles raising. "But it's probably for the best."
"Tell me how none of those fuckin'—" There's a snarl in the back of his throat. He swallows. "None of them standin' up for you is for the best, 'cause it looked pretty fuckin' cowardly to me."
"If they defend me every time something like that happens, then it'll only be worse when they're not around. Most nights, it's just me working. I gotta know how to take care of myself just fine—"
"—shouldn't bloody 'ave to—!"
"—and I need them to know it, too. That if they try anything like that, I'll kick them out. I won't go screaming for help just because they're being rude. I'll handle it on my own because I have to."
It quiets him. Not enough to quell the anger burning in his chest, or the urge to tear them into pieces for sitting back, watching you get disrespected while they throw peanuts at the television screen, and jeer about something as arbitrary as a fucking game, but he finds something akin to understanding. Common ground.
It makes sense, suddenly, even though it sets his teeth on edge and makes his knuckles itch.
"No one else will do it for me, y'know?"
"I will."
The words tumble out before he can make sense of them in his head. A disconnect between his mouth and his thoughts, eroded by the smoke leaking into his throat. The fire in his chest.
A mistake, maybe, because they're futile. Pointless. More so a whim of pride, a flash of possessiveness just to stroke the smouldering embers of the ego you bruised earlier with the tip of your finger.
(Or maybe they're the afterbirth of his righteousness; that insatiable beast he conceived into the world he swore he'd save—no matter what—only to realise somewhere after leaking madness into the fibres that he was making more monsters than he was culling.
A lingering remnant of when he bore the burden of the world on his shoulders during a botched pantomime of Atlas.)
You know it, too. "You won't be around all the time, John."
He tastes salt in the back of his throat. It burns when he swallows. When the words that tore through the seam of his lips dissolve into ash, into smoke.
Your hand on his shoulder is meant to be placating but it feels like a dagger to his gut.
"I can take care of myself. Been doin' it all my life, anyway."
He can't make sense of it. Can't understand how your words fill the hollow crevasses inside of him until he feels more like a mortal man than an untouchable mountain.
You bring him back down to the solidness of land, of the earth. An anchor.
John touches his neck again. "Yeah," he rasps. "I get it. Now, let's get you home."
He thinks about you.
A lot would be an understatement considering how many times he's taken you to bed, pulled you down into the sheets with him. Tangled limbs. Rushed breath. He thinks of you now, too, with heavy eyes and a little smile, beckoning him forward.
His own illicit sanctuary. A place in his head where he ruins you over, and over, and over again until there's a permanent stain on the tips of his fingers, the back of his throat. A constant reminder of you—the way you smell, sound, taste—
It's been a while since he had a moment like this, when he could relax, feel himself—already half-hard when he palms himself through his boxers—and just—
Lose himself. Body melting into the sheets. Tension bleeding together into one mass that pools in his lower belly, coalescing into a tight knot in his groin. It spools, pulls taut, when he runs the flat of his palm down the length of himself until he meets the soft flesh of his perineum.
It's easy to tilt his chin up, eyes gazing at the seashell colouring of the popcorn ceiling, stroking himself in slow, unhurried rolls of his hand, and thinking of you. Your hand on him. Your breath tickling his ear, spurring him on.
"Come on, John," you'd say in that voice made to bring him to his knees. "You can go faster than that, can't you?"
He responds instantly to the faint echo in his head, grunting at the pleasure that races down his spine. Tugging on that tightly wound knot until it trembles.
His hand around the length of him is replaced with yours. Tentative, exploratory strokes from frenulum to his thickened base; up, up, a teasing swipe of your thumb across his weeping slit but only enough to make his hips arch off the bed, and then you pull away, down. Down. Over and over again. He thinks of the way your breath would feel ghosting over his temple. The press of your chest when you leave over his shoulder.
John rocks into it, hips undulating with each pass of the hand that is too gnarled, too scarred to be yours; lost in the fantasy of your presence around him, on him, in him.
Maybe your other arm would be tucked under the nape of his neck, bracketing him into your body. A safety net. A security blanket. You'd toy with his cheek—twee and gentle; a ginger touch to offset the illicit press of your thumb into his frenulum. Lean over, too, perhaps, and press those inviting lips to his. A soft kiss. Barely a whisper. A brush.
His tongue rolls over his bottom lip, chasing the phantom taste of you that isn't there. He imagines you'd taste like the sea. Briny, but mild. Salted winter melon. A sweetness, too, beneath the tart tang of iodine, but one that was metallic—copper. Iron.
Pleasure knots in his groin—tighter, tighter, tighter—and even with each stroke a pale imitation of your warm flesh on him, he finds the spooling coil building in a quick crescendo of bliss to be somehow more potent than it ever was. A feverish heat at the mere thought of you.
It builds. Builds. And breaks—
Your name is a broken snarl in the back of his throat as he spills over himself in thick, molten ropes. Each pulse of his heart floods more liquid heat onto his hand (hot enough, maybe, to burn), and he leans into the sudden deluge of a chemical frenzy ripping through his synopses—all liquid euphoria, static endorphins, and a heady rush of dopamine that makes the edges of his vision blur just a touch when he blinks his tired, heavy, eyes open, staring back up at the off-white ceiling.
The surge and plummet of adrenaline leaves him feeling fatigued. A bone-deep torpor that comes swiftly in the simmering aftershocks of his pleasure.
He could close his eyes now and sleep—even with the mess on his hand, come cooling against his heated flesh, growing tacky and uncomfortably wet as it sat there. The idea is more appealing than standing up and washing himself down, and in his sudden languor, he haphazardly lifts his hand away from his still-throbbing cock softening against his damp thigh, and pats the mess on his hand against the extra pillow he doesn't use. It's hardly the cleanup he needs, and he knows washing the dry come from the coarse hair on his thighs and groin is going be a nuisance in the morning, but he can't muster the energy to open his lids past half-mast let alone stand and hobble his way into the washroom.
(And maybe he doesn't want to see himself in the mirror right now. Doesn't want to contend with the same routine of thinking of you, getting off to the thought alone, and then slinking into the tub for a quick rinse of his regrets. Not tonight, anyway—)
So, he stays in bed, laying there in his own filth, and still thinks of you. With his eyes closed tight, he doesn't have to face the reality of your absence. Of his dirty whim that sullied you in his head (over and over and over again—). His loneliness.
And it's nice to bask in the glow. To imagine you beside him still.
John's never been as delusional as now when he can taste the Caribbean sun on his tongue. Feel the salt on his skin. He smells sand. Feels it under his back as he lays down with you curled over him, hand tucked against his chest where it belongs. Dosing under the shaded pyre. You'll catch fish in the morning. He'll take you out to places you'd never been, all of them. Every single one. Until the world is shaded with your fingerprints.
He's never been much into lyricism, but you make him contemplate the dividing line between prose and poetry, and where he fits between the two. The bridge, he thinks. The gaps between words, the space between letters: heart and soul (and the tangibility of them both).
He wants to go there with you.
The vision of you laying with him in sand embeds itself in the weakened link of his splintering resolve, eroding the chain away until it breaks, and the next night finds him sitting in the same spot, drinking the same whiskey, but his thoughts are subsumed by you.
Without it keeping him at bay, he makes a terrible decision—one he wishes he could blame on whisky, but he's sober in a way he hasn't been in years—but when he looks up at you, twenty minutes past closing after everyone has stumbled out of the pub, something blooms in his veins.
It's white-hot—hotter than the sensation of being shot in the thigh by a stray bullet when he was still figuring himself out in a battlefield—and dredges up dormant feelings he hasn't made room for since he was twenty-seven and fell in love in Ghana.
It's cacoëthes.
(But maybe it's been heading forward this all along. Ever since he saw you tug around a man twice your size, and wanted to bruise his knuckles on this stranger's enamel. The one who dared touch you. Disrespect you.)
John makes the awful choice to kiss you.
It starts with a look.
The night ends later than usual—a hockey game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Ottawa Senators draws a big, rowdy crowd of nearly fifteen people ("truly record-breaking numbers," you quip with a grin) that bemusingly celebrate the Senators' victory and mourn the Penguin's loss at the same time ("it's a cultural thing—Sydney Crosby plays for the Penguin's," you tell him as if it explains everything)—and when he finally pockets his cigars, the sky outside is already dusted with crops of mauve as the hazy sun tries to blink through the thick clouds of gunmetal and charcoal.
You wave to the fishermen on the boardwalk as they prepare their empty lobster cages for the morning haul, and he tries to think of every reason why he shouldn't be standing with you right now, puffing away on one of his last few cigars.
There are multitudes, of course, all of them eagerly buoying to the surface, and just as viable as the last. Just as concrete. But that's the thing about desire, isn't it? Reasoning is skewed. Malleable. For each con that is squashed by the claws of fatigue, a pro subsumes in its stead. They add up. The scales tip. And all at once, he's no longer oscillating between no and here's why, but how come.
How come he can't give in, if only just once?
But once will never be enough. He knows this. He knows it, and yet—
When John happens to glance at you from the corner of his eye, he finds you turned to him already. Watching him.
Despite what the furious stutter in his chest at this bare appraisal would lead him to believe, this isn't anything new.
(Neither is his reaction. The blood rushing in his ears. The hiccup of his heartbeat.)
You've always unabashedly worn your curiosity like this. Open, bare. Letting it moulder on the very ledge of a cornice for all to see when they looked into your eyes. Liquid gems, molten coins. They've always gleamed with a sense of misplaced curiosity whenever they rested on him; seemingly lost in the labyrinth of your thoughts as you tried to unravel the reef knot that is John Price.
He supposes it's the novelty of a man washing up on shore in the middle of what's meant to be the most boring season of the year—your words, naturally. Nothing ever happens during hurricane season, you mentioned to him once. The maritime is quickly forgotten about until summer when stupid tourists head to Halifax or Peggy's Cove in droves.
Until him, that is.
(Until you, as well.)
But the look you grace him with right now is somehow on the precipice of being both foreign and familiar at the same time. A muddled sense of jamais vu that seems to wrap itself around his throat, pressing taut to his pulse. Mocking him. Confusing him. It's all a muddled mess of known and unknown and—
Want to know. Need to.
He knows this look. Knows it as intimately as he knows the hand he used to stroke himself, pretending it was you. Your touch. It's want. It's—
Desire.
Intrigue.
You stare at him—unabashedly, as always; lost in your perplexing keenness for him, for the man he is (and the one he definitely isn't)—and John sees that same, misplaced rapaciousness in the shaded valleys and unfathomably deep ravines. It's an almost visceral hunger that seems to eclipse everything else; colouring the topography of your gaze in its wake. The glittering scales of a meandering coelacanth.
Getting caught looking at him in such a way does little to embarrass you. If anything, having his eyes meet yours seems to subsume want with need, merging the two until all that gazes back at him from that prismatic abyss is desire crushed into diamonds from the absolute pressure that leaks from the black holes in the centre.
He's been warned before about sirens and sea monsters, but standing in front of him with the raging ocean as your backdrop, he finds he cares very little for portends after all.
John gives you every chance to pull away, to tell him this is a mistake, that you don't feel the same way, that you couldn't possibly do this, but you ignore all of them. Every single one until his hand is around your waist, the other cupping your jaw, and your breath is on his tongue.
You make the first move. He doesn't know why that surprises him—you have this way about you that reminds him of rogue waves: an untameable suddenness, brash in everything you do; untempered by man and their flimsy metal cups in the ocean—but when you curl your fingers into the Sherpa lapels of his jacket, and wrench him into your sphere, tidally locked in your pull, he finds himself adrift. Lost. The only thing keeping him steady is you. Your touch.
Your lips are searing when they bite into his, bruising and all-consuming. He likes the burn of it.
It's a kiss just as much as it is a slap to the mouth. A reprimand. How dare you keep me waiting? And somewhere deep in his chest, something unfurls. Something comes loose. Wants to apologise, wants to beg forgiveness, but the words are stifled by your lips sliding against his, your fingers touching the parts of his cheeks that haven't known the feeling of another since he was twenty and grew it out as long as he could get away with it in the military. You hold him. Anchor him in place as you take, as you badger his body into yours, trying to syphon all of the air from his feeble lungs.
He lets you, rocking with your demands the same way he would a sudden squall, his body a ship in the vast clutch of your ocean.
The tip of your nose slots into the corner of his own when you tilt your head into the kiss, tongue sliding, liquid, molten, against the seam of his mouth. Humid breath paints the skin under his eye until it's tacky with condensation, and he wants to feel your breath on him everywhere. Wants to touch the places your breath ghosted over with bare fingers to feel the remnants of what you left behind.
(He wants it to stain him. Leave a permanent mark for all to see. A sailor claimed by the sea, by rogue waves, and the embodiment of a pelagic calamity in the shape of you.)
His lips part just enough to let the tip of your tongue slide in, to touch his in a gentle kiss. A perfunctory greeting for what will, hopefully, become routine because he knows what you taste like now—seagrass, fennel and yew arils—and doesn't think he has the strength to let it go. A new addiction forms somewhere in the catastrophe of his hindbrain, the same place that yearns for nicotine and alcohol to blur the rugged edges of a childhood he can't quite manage to let go of. One that bled putrid blood into his adolescence, his adulthood. That makes running his first thought in the face of anything that has the capacity to heal. Or sacrifice himself for some greater good he could never really bring himself to believe in, despite the words he preached like a scratched record—we dirty our hands so theirs stays clean. A fallacy, of course, like many things in his life. A broken, fractured homunculi trying to navigate a world it wasn't made for.
But you soothe those parts, don't you? Palliative comfort in the shape of something that has the measure to hurt, to ruin.
—and fuck, does he want to be ruined by you—
You pull away from him as if you can taste his debauchery, his need, on your tongue and want to skewer him through the heart with it. The distance feels vacant and endless: a devastating bergschrund.
You blink at him, eyes heavy and full of promises, of wants. The sight of your red tongue brushing over your wet bottom lip nearly makes him ascend to some spectral plane of existence where nothing but the alluring sight of you lives in his consciousness, and it's only your hushed words—raw and tempered—that reign him in.
"Come back to my house, John."
It's not a question. He knows it in his bones. Just like he knows it could never be one—never—because doesn't have the willpower to say no. And you know this, of course. Have known it from the beginning when you peeled back the rotting layers, flaying his walls from his skin just to learn his name.
("It's Price," he growled out, words masticating between clenched teeth. "John Price.")
He wears his want in cinder and ash. Feels the fever under his skin.
"Fuck—," he rasps, throat scorched. Brittle charcoal. The words taste like wood chips on his tongue. "What are we waitin' for then, love?"
The billowing sea breeze howls outside of your small house on the mouth of the inlet, an enchanting soundscape that seems to amplify the soft noises that spill from your lips at his touch.
You burn like the sun bearing down on the desert of the ocean, and he feels your scorching presence between the split of his shoulder blades, liquifying the knobs of his spine until it pools in the clefts of his back.
Boneless, broken, he loses all sense of himself as he ruts into you like a man who's never been touched before in his life—clumsy, selfish, and unpractised. Your pleasure is the equinox in the centre of his head, a reachable goal he strives for, but each shudder that leaves the column of your throat seems to shatter him into fragments. He wants, wants, wants: there's a war in his head, in his touch. Greedily, he learns your topography until it's ingrained in his marrow. Until he knows where each dip and fold, every scar and blemish, on your skin sits, waiting for the worship of his touch.
He yields to you. Offers himself up at your altar—yours for the taking—until his sacrifice is met in seasalt and bliss. It's by this flickering dawn that spills into your bedroom window, the one that faces parallel to the sea—always there, in the corner of his eye—where his resolve is laid to rest on a bier.
It burns on the pyre when your fingers thread through his hair, gripping tight as he falls into pieces in your arms, buried as deep inside of you as he can get. And it's here, safe in the bracket of your legs, spread wide to accommodate the staggering bulk of his body, he finds both nirvana and damnation—his own personal hell nestled in the crux of your thighs.
"Stay the night," you whisper to him, the command slurred on the tobacco that leaks from the burning tip of his cigar.
One down, he counts; two more to go. The sight of the dwindling pack seems to notch inside his aching ribs, bruised with the cuts you made into his marrow until a scar in the shape of your name formed, seems like a portend.
He stares at the brittle pieces of the tobacco leaves in the metal tin like they might divine the ancient wisdom of augers and the seers who gleaned hidden truths and hindsight in a teacup, but all he gets is the heady scent of nicotine for his search.
"Mm."
Your hands press against his naked back, feeling the taut muscles flex under your touch before they move around his midsection, fingers digging into the plush flesh of his belly—too much lobster rolls, he'd snarked when your teeth sunk into the softness put there by you; a fullness he hasn't felt since he was eighteen. You knead his skin, thumbing over the indents of your teeth, a perfect tattoo, before you hum in satisfaction, the sound of a cat eating its catch, that makes his spine thrum.
"Good," you husk into his shoulder blade, teeth peppering nips across his sun scorched skin. "'cause I'm not done with you yet, John."
He shudders. "Fuck, love—gonna send me into an early grave."
It draws a simmering chuckle from deep within your chest. Sparking embers. The heat thrills him.
"A lovely way to go," you murmur, hands drawing intricate webs over his torso, tangling through the coarse hair that gathers in dark swaths of brown across his body. "And I'll even give you a proper sea burial."
The thought alone strips his soul from this prison of bone and flesh. To be known so innately is a dangerous thing, he finds; so deceptively addicting, so achingly good, and he wants to run from it just as much as he wants to bask in the feeling.
His soul is hungering for something he's never tasted before—until now, until you—and that unquenchable devotion glues to the very essence of him; a tick burrowing into his skin until it rots.
He fucks you against the window running parallel to the sea instead. Unmaking himself in the clutch of you until your fingers thread him back into some semblance of a man with a soul made for the sea.
(A place he wants to go with you.)
The unread tobacco leaves in bone china end up spelling out the end in a red flash on his phone.
A voicemail is a cruel reminder of the looming deadline on the horizon.
Fixed 'er up fer ya, b'y. She'll be ready in a night or two. Right time for lobster, too, yeah? Anyhoo, call me when you get this.
What was once anticipatory now feels too much like being caught under a guillotine. He pretends his hands are not shaking when he calls the man back.
The man meets him by the harbour.
"Should take 'er out," he says, wiggling a tooth pick between his teeth. "You know 'er be'er than I do. Make sure she's good t'go, ya'know?"
He hums something that might sound like an assent to unpractised ears, but the false starts in his rib cage flares up, a deep ache that rattles through the scarred brackets and leaves the seam of his mouth in a muted snarl of discontent.
Ready to go, he thinks a touch cruelly in a shorn off form of self-harm. Just to make it hurt. Just to feel it agony ripping through the gaps between his bones.
Right. Right.
How is he supposed to leave when he left so much of himself inside of you?
"Come with me tomorrow. Want to show you something."
"Oh, yeah?" You murmur, brows bunching together in a way that makes his teeth ache. "And what's that?"
His thumb brushes your pulse. "Mm, 'bout time you met Captain."
Newfoundland lingers in the backdrop for most of the day, rising above the waters in a rocky formation of evergreen against dark blue.
You spend most of it leaning against the port, eyes wide in wonder at the absence of land, a mere pinprick in the vast sea, and he wonders if anyone has ever taken you out this far. Showed you something this haunting, this mesmerising.
(Selfishly, stupidly, he hopes he's the first.)
The sea is calm. Almost eerily so, but he basks in the gentle rolls of the waves, the serene waters. It's picturesque in a way, the sight of an old postcard with a basin of pure azure and molten yellow sun, haloed in soft rings of ocean.
As you fawn at the beauty around you, quiet in your musings, he grabs his fishing pole and sets out to catch dinner. John hasn't looked too deep into coastal fishing laws, but from your soft snort, he thinks it might just be on the side of illegal. Still. The coast guard isn't around, and he doesn't think you'll tell on him—at least not if he catches you a salmon and makes you an accomplice.
The day dwadles, sun fading into a stunning sunset.
He catches Atlantic Salmon, and spots a commercial lobster trawler in the distance. When he radios over, they offer a trade. Salmon for lobster. You laugh as the men toss over a cooler full of fat lobster for a wriggling salmon that nearly slips from his grasp.
It's in this exchange—and a day on the water—that he realises just how much he missed this. This. Being on the water. Dependant on no one but his own knowledge, his foresight. Always just on the side of illegal in coastal waters. Making trades, and bartering for dinner. It's peace. Or as close of an approximation a man like him might deserve.
A tried and true native of the land, raised on fish and crustaceans, you teach him the proper way to prepare lobster and Atlantic Salmon, sucking your teeth at his lack of spices in his threadbare cupboards. You make do, and he can't remember the last time he had something this good.
"Just wait," you huff. "When I have a full kitchen with proper seasonings, I'll make you something even better."
There's a tightness in his chest at the prospect of next time. "Can't wait."
It's a lie. Barefaced and ugly.
He offers beer instead. Brings out some of his hidden whisky.
"Not gonna be too drunk to get us back home, are you?"
Home. He is home. Has been since he kicked off from the marina, his hands curled around the leather steering wheel. The bumps of the waves against the hill.
He wonders what you think about all of this; his kingdom at sea is nothing special. Modest, in many ways. Sometimes the toilet in the washroom leaks. He only really has warm water on Tuesdays. Something with the tides, probably. Spiders have taken a permanent refuge in the closet adjacent to the kitchenette. He thinks he might have some exotic stowaway lurking somewhere, too. A mouse of some kind, maybe, from when he was in Madagascar for a brief interlude.
The boat is never still, always rolling with the waves. Rocking. He's grown used to the feeling of it. Much too accustomed to always moving, never being still, to ever feel any modicum of comfort on land.
Thinking about it, about returning back to the inn tonight when the water is this serene, and the moon is this sull, pitches something ugly in his chest. Reluctance. And maybe the urge to show off. To share.
"Want to spend the night?"
You make a comical picture with your fingers tugging desperately on the cork of a wine bottle you found under the sink, blinking at him owlishly as you process his request, and he smothers a laugh in his chest at the sight. He knows if he lets it out he'll never look at wine or owls without thinking about you, but maybe you're already ingrained in his head. Stuck there in places he can't reach, can't scrape out.
"What?" You ask, lightly. "Out here?"
"Why not? We're close to the Labrador Strait, too. Could drop anchor now. Head back in the morning."
"Is it—?" You stop yourself from finishing with a shake of your head, and a sheepish smile. "Nevermind. Yeah, um. Yeah, I'd—I'd really like that, actually."
Is it safe, he knows you were going to ask. The question would have made him roll his eyes, and bark out something that could have been a snort of derision or a condescending laugh. He was a bloody marine, he'd have griped. I know these waters better'n I know Liverpool.
But you didn't. You didn't ask.
The harshness of the nevermind sounded like a self-admonishment for even asking such a thing. It's possible he's reading too much between the lines, but he likes the implicit trust that bleeds through—a touch of hesitation stifled by the immediate certainty that John will keep you safe.
He likes the fit of it. The way it curls around his pride.
"C'mon," he murmurs. "I'll show you around."
"It's small," he grouses, a touch uncomfortable as you patter around the bedroom that's barely bigger than a linen closet. It smells like him, he reckons. All smoke, tobacco, and stale sweat. Nothing pretty—not like your sheets that smell of fresh pine resin, or your room the scent of cornflower.
The ship itself is considered a luxury on the ocean—old, but meticulously maintained—and its age bleeds through the panelled walls, and the clumsy decor. Built largely for dedicated seafarers, the cabin boasts two bedrooms (the captain's quarters being the largest, and the crewmates dorms still stained with rust from where the nails keeping the bunk beds in place during listing started to erode), a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a small space inside the helm that could be considered a small living room—squinting, of course, required. Still. It's home. It's—
The manifestation of his pride. His loneliness. His wants.
(The walls are drenched in his madness. Do you see his ghosts when you look around—)
"It's cosy," you volley back, barely paying him much attention as you prod at his bare-bones; his sanctuary. He pretends the words don't stroke his ego in the perfect way. "It must be quite the sight to wake up to a sunrise on the sea."
"Mm, it is."
It's unlike anything he'd ever seen before. A nearly endless roll of cerulean in all directions that almost blends seamlessly with the cyanic sky. Plumes of sea clouds. Birds swooping overhead.
Often, he finds curious sea creatures coming up from the depths to investigate his boat. Pods of playful dolphins arching through the waves. A mother whale and her calf, nearly the length of his sixty-foot sailer. Rays. The occasional shark when he's fishing, lured in by the struggles and the flash of blood in the water. The feeder fish congregate beneath his boat, picking at the barnacles growing or the smaller fish gathering there for safety. It becomes its own ecosystem after a while, drawing in Remoras, various sharks, tropical fish, and barracuda.
He mostly gets avian visitors resting on his hull. Great Albatrosses and Cormorants. The odd Pelican closer to shore. Mollymawks, Northern fulmar.
The open ocean is a vast desert. Sometimes he goes days without seeing any signs of life. It comes with a sense of peace that is indescribable—an awe deep-rooted in his bones, one tinged with fear of the yawning abyss that rolls out in all directions as he knows, without a doubt, that he is less than a mere pinprick in the sea. Humbling. Awe-inspiring. It all coalesces into an experience he can't put into words. One that he yearns for when he's on dry land.
One that he wants to show you. To share with you.
A silly whim, of course. Strangers don't traverse the pelagic zone together.
He shakes it off. Recalibrates. Tries to centre himself, and shuck the thoughts of waking up to a perpetual sunrise with you. The ochre crest of it illuminates a deep blue sea for miles and miles; bare from pollutants that seep into the aether near the coast. Lights that dim the coruscating beauty above.
But as much as he thinks sunrises and sunsets are a thing of beauty, he knows there's something else you'll like much more.
"C'mon," he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. "Wanna show you somethin'."
You don't hesitate this time. "Lead the way, captain."
(And oh, how the coy honorific rumbles through his marrow.)
That something is the reason he became so addicted to the sea. It's a darkness unlike anything else he'd ever experienced before—a complete absence of light that usually pollutes the sky in the cities, one that people often think is escapable in the countryside away from bustling metropolises.
That has nothing on the ocean after dusk.
To describe the sensation would be pitch blackness. A black hole. Everything is swallowed up by it—complete antimatter—until the horizon and ocean merge together in an unfathomable pit of tenebrousness. It looks like spilled ink across a page, everywhere the eye turns is shrouded. Indescribable.
When he's in an inlet, or off the coast of an inhabited island, he used to turn the floodlights of his ship off just to see what he couldn't see, and it was endless. A vacuum. Terror drenched over him in almost equal measure to the absolute awe that rolled through his chest like a tsunami.
It was the infinite darkness of space mirrored on earth. An uncanny image. Pure nothingness.
There was more light when he closed his eyes than when he had them wide open. Phosphenes brighter than the world around him.
A harrowing, everpresent experience that notched false starts into the parentheses of his ribs, and made him ache when he wasn't surrounded by water.
He keeps only the navigation lights on when he leads you to the deck, and the sharp gasp he hears makes him burn, knowing exactly what you must be seeing. Feeling.
Even at the very tip of the ocean, barely with your toes in the vast abyss, the absence of light pollution gives way to a stunning artefact in the ancient sky. Nebulae clouds. Gleaming stars. In the distance, he spots the coruscating light of Mars, visible to the naked eye.
The moon sits in the equinox, casting out a blanket of light over the rhythmic swell of the still-black water. It paints the surface lily white.
He stands beside you, eyes greedily taking in every flickering emotion across your awe-slacked face. Each expression categorised and filed away. A preview to the experience going inside you as you gaze up at the night sky.
"John…" it's a hushed whisper, drenched in a reverence so thick, so palpable, he thinks he can reach out and catch the ghosts of your wonder on the tips of his fingers. "It's…"
You trail off, but he knows. He knows.
His hand brushes yours. "Beautiful, ain't it?"
Wordless, and maybe a little bit speechless, you nod, eyes still fixed on the indistinguishable horizon as your hands slip into his.
The stars are still caught in your eyes even after he leads you to a small sitting area with steps leading into the water. He warns you about sea lamprey and cookie cutter sharks when you try to dip your feet into the basin, laughing at the small squeak you give when you wrench your toes out of the water, drawing your knees tight to your chest.
Sharks hunt at night, he reminds you with the same cadence as a conman.
The sideward glance you give in response to his mirth spumes a strange effervescent feeling in the pit of his chest. Humour for the sake of it. He can easily imagine many nights like this with you, basking in the bloom of the ocean, the splashes in the distance, the steady rock of waves licking against the boat, and it's something that seems to syphon the breath from his lungs, knocking him offkilter for a moment. Skewing his perspective.
It's odd, he finds, to be so attune with someone so fast. To connect on a level that feels deeper than what it is. It jars him as it shatters through that ironclad resolve he wore around his heart.
"Why the sea?" You ask after a moment, thumb skating through the pebbles of condensation that gathers around your bottle.
The sight of your wet finger shouldn't be as enticing as it is, but the way you stroke the nozzle makes his stomach burn with a heat he hasn't felt in a while. It's gentle. Soft. He wonders if you'd be that tender with him—
The thought is shattered when you glance at him, eyes searching for an answer hidden in blooming blue. There's muted curiosity eked into the divot between your brow—unconsciously done—and he forces himself to turn away lest he reach out and soothe the wrinkle for you.
(You never know how much you furrow your brow around him. Price isn't sure if that's a portend, some archaic warning of the inevitable frustration you'll feel toward when all of this is over. When the hurricane season passes, and the waters are once again chartable—
Another thing he doesn't want to think about.)
He chews on the question for a moment, making a show of reaching for the—nearly empty—carton of cigars from his breast pocket (another run to Cuba is imminent, he reasons, and tries to convince himself he's not stalling). Deft, practised fingers pull one out, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger as he measures just how much of himself he wants to give away to you.
(All of it. Every part—)
The paper absorbs the whisky staining his lips when he skewers it between his teeth, a futile effort to keep the hollowness between his lungs and ribs from aching. He thinks about blaming the curdling weight in his stomach on the thought of a ruined cigar—soaked tobacco won't draw as good as dry—but he knows himself better than that.
It's the suddenness of your query, maybe, but a part of him had been waiting for this very question from the onset of—this. You, him. Together. It seems to be one of those things that just comes up, doesn't it? An unavoidable collision into abject disappointment.
In all his past flings—calling any of them relationships feels juvenile for what it was: quick, ephemeral pleasure in a foreign land, always lasting just long enough to patch up his boat; he won't disrespect the partners he had by giving it more potency than it deserved—this had been the epoch. The moment when they realised he was never really in it. That his foot was already slipping over the ledge of his boat, head full of the places he'd go next. Always alone. Without company.
Some take it in stride. They know not to expect much in terms of commitment, or loyalty, from a man who reeks of the sea, and wobbles on land. They don't begrudge him the briefness of the affair, or the lack of a promise to write, or call, or see them again, some other time. When you pass through here next… always seems to be the sentiment at the cronis. The end of them. It never goes anywhere, but it's never finished, either—because it never really began, did it?
He rarely goes to the same place twice unless he needs to (Barbadian whisky, Cuban cigars, fish and chips in Liverpool for the holidays notwithstanding).
And despite how many times he's been asked this very same question, usually with less clothes on, he never really has an answer. Not one that's enough.
"Where else would I be?" He muses instead, blinking up at the indigo sky. It's an unforgiving nothingness up there, too, isn't it? "Workin' some job in an office? Military? Nah, would bore me too much. M'better off at sea."
"All alone?" You fill the gap he didn't realise he left empty. "Isn't that—"
He doesn't think he can bear to hear you say it—
"Yeah."
—so he doesn't let you.
His cigar tastes stale. Wet tobacco. Ashes. He draws in a deep hit on the next inhale but it curdles in his mouth, leaks poison into his bloodstream. He feels dizzy with it. Offkilter.
When he invited you to see his ship, half of it was—admittedly—a euphemism. A thinly veiled come on. A facsimile of romance. Who wouldn't, afterall, want to drift out to the open ocean, making love—or some sad version of it—under the stars on a clear night.
He'd take you to the spot where land was swallowed wholly by the horizon, until all you could see was the midnight blue ocean pressing down on all sides. Gentle waves rocking the ship. The stars coruscating in the indigo sky like glittering diamonds held up to the light. The murky haze of Juniper in the distance. A splash from a whale breaching the surface.
It would have been a nice evening. He'd have drinked whisky with you—smuggled out from his secret stash of the best kind you could find in the Caribbean—and taught you how to smoke a cigar.
You'd have laid down beneath the stars, head swimming with the buzz of alcohol. John would have leaned over you, charting the open awe in your gaze as you stared up at the heavens.
Maybe you would have tried to ask a question, or marvel at the wonders of the world that might have only ever been seen by you. The first person to take in this view in all of history. Considering the vastitude of the ocean, it would be a real possibility. The very first. He'd give that to you. The first, the last, the only. All yours.
In return, he'd steal a kiss. Swallowing the question from your lips with a slow, sensual roll of his tongue grazing yours. All coy and soft. Saccharine. You'd taste of whisky. He'd drink you down in several mouthfuls, unable to get enough, until you were keening into the night, begging for more. More, John, more.
It blankets his thoughts, and the regret he feels at the loss is potent. Fragments of a good night flash before him—your fingers curling around the quilt he laid out on the deck, digging those talons into the meat of his shoulder until it breaks skin: a permanent scar. A jagged, silver meteor across milky flesh; he'd catch a glimpse in the mirror and think of you. Whisper-soft kisses. Your body opening up for him, eager and needy, calling out in a siren's song for more.
(Who is he to deny you when you beg so prettily?)
Instead it metastasises inside of him. Malignant and pestiferous. Leaks rot into his bloodstream until all he can taste is the petrified residuum of regret, bitter and acrid.
Some selfish part wanted something nice for himself. A respite from the eventual end careening toward him at a speed he can't avoid.
The ruined tatters of it simmers in the air. A noxious miasma that seems to shake something inside of you loose. Maybe you see it, too. The loss. The end. The eventuality of a bitter, and quick, conclusion.
You're quiet even as realisation darkens across your brow. Flattens the awe in your eyes with the cold douse of water to a burning flame. Clumped ash piles around a damp campfire.
The flames were not smothered slowly, gently, like they should have been, like he wanted them to. No. No. They were snuffed out in a quick end. Brutal and unforgivable.
And you say: "oh."
As if you get it, but you don't. You don't because you think about forever when you look at him. It's not your fault, though—never. Because he hasn't said a word about leaving even though it stuck to his teeth, tarry and vile. A resinous stain he chews everyday, blackening his teeth until they rot.
But he's a coward. A fool. The taste of you is sweet enough to drown out the bitterness on his tongue, and maybe he's using your kindness a bit too much—no. No. Not maybe. Certainly. Definitely. He's using the cloying taste of you as a buffer to everything weeping from the cesspit inside of his chest.
Then: "oh."
It's almost prophetic in a way. Cyclical in its heartache.
He wants to apologise, but he isn't sure where to start. How does he say sorry for something of this magnitude?
He doesn't. He can't.
John lets it necrotise instead.
"Well," you say after a moment of silence. "When are you—?"
You don't finish. Can't, maybe, and he doesn't begrudge you the inability to utter that succinct finality. Not when he doesn't think he could, either.
So, he says, "soon."
But you ask: "how soon?"
And he's reminded, quite vividly, of packing his things in the back of his nineteen ninety-five forest green Tata Estate when he was just shy of eighteen. His dad fuming on the porch.
You're nothing without me, he'd spat.
He was right, of course. Despite everything he tried, the only place that ever gave him a chance was the military solely for the thinly concealed awe that leaked in whenever he uttered his last name.
But there was freedom in leaving. In skirting around the army for a place in the Royal British Navy—separate from the shadow of his father, his grandfather, but still riding on their coattails. John quickly found sanctuary at sea. At the unignorable distance put between himself and all the terrible memories in Hereford.
In the middle of the ocean, that bastard's shadow couldn't reach him.
And now—
Nothing does.
How soon, you ask, but the real question should be: how dare you.
"Mm, a day, maybe—if the weather holds."
And it will. He's checked the forecast meticulously. Radioed in and asked about that pesky hurricane that seemed to fizzle out without much fanfare afterall. All the answers he got were the same. Perfect window, they say, is between dawn and mid-morning. There's gonna be some heavy winds on the coast, but if you set sail early enough, you'll miss it entirely.
"Ah," you murmur, and there's just the faintest echo of your realisation at uncovering yet another one of his half-truths. You know he'll be gone the moment he drops you off on the harbour. "Okay."
John doesn't mean to put all of this on you so quickly. Everything just spiralled, spun, until it was a big, tangled mess beneath his feet. Time a mere whisper in the wind. His absence is a glaring black hole that you can't avoid.
It's all pithy excuses that do little to assuage the weight of everything he'd done, but you take it right on the chin like he knew you would. A sharp nod. The barest hint of a frown.
That is the only thing you can do, isn't it? Swallow it whole and try not to choke on it because no promises have ever been uttered between him or you. Nothing to substantiate this growing, cancerous lump of emotions that feel too fast and too slow, and too—
Dangerous. Perfect.
In his silence, a crater forms again, and he's reminded how much he prefers the sea to people; gyres to love. The brittle embrace of his cabin to the warm arms of a lover.
He was made for the ocean. Meant to sink into algae blooms, and discover reefs untouched. To battle waves bigger, more meaningful than himself, and find sustenance on crated bartletts and scored tuna.
But—
But.
His hands curl around your waist, pulling you back into the broad expanse of his sun warmed chest. The heat of him liquifies your spine, and you melt, readily, into him with what might be a sigh.
It's all so quick, isn't it? And yet, he can think of nothing else except the almost perfect torture of waking up beside you each morning. Of suffusing his atoms to yours.
"Come with me," he murmurs into your hairline, breathing in the scent of you. Loam. Pine resin. Soft and earthy. And that's what you are, aren't you? Made for the land. The earth. Gaia. Terra. Can he really take you from this place and expect you to live like him on the sea?
You don't answer. He feels the disappointment like a searing knife to his gut, but he understands. Gets it. This isn't the sort of proposal a sane person would make to someone they've known for only a few, short months.
He wonders if you think he's only saying it to get into your pants. He probably isn't the first—and definitely wouldn't be the last—to make a litany of false promises just to taste you on his tongue, but he means it. Means it with every fibre of his body. Captain is roomy. Has always been too big for one person—too lonely. But it's a heavy question. A big ask. One that he selfishly presses into your hands as he litters your neck with kisses sharpened with the edge of his teeth. Leaving his mark on your skin. A semi-permanent stain only he knows is there.
It's easy to pretend this won't be the last time when he lays you out on the sheets, fingers digging into your skin as if he was trying to crawl inside of you—and maybe he is. Maybe he wants to. Maybe he could stay suffused to your ribcage for the rest of his life, waking up and falling asleep to the sound of your beating heart, and die a happy man. For once in his life, something that belongs to him that isn't shadowed by ghosts or regret.
(Something he will never, could never, deserve.)
There's something heart achingly desperate about the way he clings to you. Folds himself over you, murmuring promises and pleas into the bruised skin of your neck. Soft murmurations easily swallowed by the sounds you make as he ruts into you at a maddening pace. All clumsy and unrefined because he refuses to let go of you. Refuses to unglue his skin from yours, his teeth from your neck.
He's never had it like this—drenched in sweat, pinned in place over top of you like a weighted blanket; sloppy, messy—but he feels the curl of addiction setting in when he feels the hiccups you make when he pushes in just so. When your flesh dents under the tips of his fingers, and he feels your bones in his grip. Each moan, every tremble and quiver somehow magnified in the small cabin that's much too big for one person.
John wants to take you to this reef he stumbled onto off the Azores. Wants to walk on the sandy atoll, and fuck you under the stars. The first—and only—people on earth to feel the white sand under their skin, to whisper into the inky black of night.
You'd like it there, he thinks. This lonely, isolated patch of land just barely rising out above the ocean. Filled to the brim with tropical fish, and hammerheads. Sea turtles. Orcas chasing seals in the distance.
He presses his lips to your hairline, and breathes life into this little picture of you on the shore, whispering promises wrapped in desperation, devotion, into your skin.
"John," you gasp, and he's not sure if it's a reprimand—please, please, please shut up, stop talking about that because you know I can't, I can't—or a plea—take me, bring me there, please—but he doesn't stop. Can't. He's too invested in this picturesque fantasy, the same one he dreamed about when he fucked his fist to the thought of you. "John, please—"
His veins are filled with blood-red wine. A sudden potent cocktail that makes him dizzy. Drunk on the wisps of ethanol that burrow deeper into his body until it floods his atrium.
John wants to lean into it. Relish in the white-hot heat of it all. Wants to drag you down into the sand, into the unending sea, and stay there forever, just at the cusp of where land meets water. Your own kingdom in the domain of Poseidon. Children of Phorcys. Pontus.
You grip him tight, and he thinks like this he could pretend it's not the last time. That when your body shudders beneath him, it's not out of sorrow or finality.
"John," you say, but he can't bear it. He kisses you instead. Drows in the taste of you until his head spins. Spins, spins—
He wakes up in a tangle of limbs. Your arm strewn across his broad chest, anchoring him to the bed below. Your head nestled in the crux of his armpit, nose pressed tight to the swell of his ribcage. Mouth open, he notes, drooling into wry curls that blanket his torso in swaths of dark umber.
With you very much cocooned to his side, thigh trapping his pelvis down, he feels the sharp sting of claustrophobia raking talons over the bone encasing his eyes. He's buried under you—your body the soft swell of tumulus—and for a moment he nearly forgets himself. Nearly bolts from the bed, your arms. The room. Running, running—it reminds him too much of being a captive. Tied down. Restrained. Unable to move of his own free will—
But you mumble something in your sleep, the words lost to the blood rushing in his ears, and he finds the pieces of himself he'd lost. Lulled, almost to the point of complacency, by your breaths ghosting across the thick, coarse hair on his chest. Rhythmic. Calming.
He leans into it. Buries himself deeper.
You smell of sweat, sex. Fennel. He burrows his nose into your crown, breathes in the scent of you until his lungs burn. He wants them to scar over with just the thick scent of you. To leave a mark so deep, so permanent, that each time he inhales, all he can taste in the back of his throat is the lingering residuum of you.
There's this earthiness to you that feels like digging his feet into sand, and he wants to slink deeper into the embrace, into you, but there's a lingering forethought in his head that he ought to get up. That this moment of brief comfort will come at a cost, with its teeth bared and wrapped around his bones, and it's a price he can't afford to pay.
There's an almost cognitive dissonance between what his body wants, and what he needs to do.
It takes most of his willpower to divorce himself from your clutch, but he does. Slowly. Reluctantly. With his fingers leadened with torpor.
Regret is the feeling of cold wood under his feet. His arms relieved from the weight of you. Fix it, something inside his chest screams, but he can't. Can't.
He doesn't look back when he leaves the small bedroom that smells of you. Not that it matters.
In the separation, he finds he cut a little too much off from himself, leaving more of himself with you than he intended.
John doesn't expect much. Hasn't, really, since he set sail with his compass pointed away from home, and threw each sorrowful piece of himself into the reefs he encountered along the way.
It's the same when he gathers everything together in the morning, running through a mental checklist of what needs to be done before he sets off into the mid-Atlantic, hopeful to reach Bermuda within four, maybe five days. From there, it would be nearly fifteen days before he reached the Azores, some nine thousand and twenty nautical miles between the destinations.
He expects the winds this time of year to be between zero to twenty three knots. Waves, at most, around four to nine metres. He can keep up with it all, he's sure, but he's feeling less inclined to make the trip solo, and thinks, as he trawls back to shore with you sleeping in the cabin still, if he might pick up a small crew in Carolina before setting off. Or maybe he'll take solitude until he heads into the Azores. He isn't sure. The only thing he is certain of is that, for the first time in years, he doesn't want to be alone at sea.
An oddity, of course. John always wants to be alone.
(Until you—)
The notion is tucked away into the space inside his head where all the things he doesn't want to think about go to moulder. To rot. The idea that he's more gangrenous parts than man sits idly behind his teeth, a fleeting whim, but that, too, is shoved aside. Buried.
—like the weight of you on him. His own personal grave, a tumulus—
Another limb severed at artery. Left to bleed. To rot. He considers leaving it out, making it hurt. Salt to the wound he has no intention of healing.
He cauterises it instead, and uses the flame to spark up his last cigar for the occasion.
(There's nothing worth celebrating, but he thinks he's due a belated birthday gift to himself.)
The brackish waters in the inlet are muddied with loess, and he considers taking the longer arc into the harbour to avoid the sudden swelling of waves lapping at the sides of his vessel. Pure pride, of course. He's not a captain of a dirty ship—an oxymoron at best and a idling thought that takes the shape of stalling for time—but he trudges forward in spite of the twitch in his knuckles, the urge to notch his wheel just everso slightly to the right.
It passes, and Newfoundland curves out of the waters in a splotch of green against dour grey. Another overcast morning. The inlet, he'd heard on the radio, is dense with fog trickling down from the rolling hills in the background of this rugged landscape.
Fog on the ocean isn't rare. With a simple flip of a switch, he changes his visualisation from naked sight to sonar, and leans back on the balls of his feet, blinking restlessly into the thick plumes of smokey-white.
The cabin door rattles when you open it—the only indicator that you're awake—and the sound sits heavy across his shoulders. A noise he thinks he could get used to hearing.
"Give'er a shake," he calls, voice ashen, thick from sleep. He hasn't spoken a word since he radioed in to let them know he was moving down the channel. That was nearly two hours ago.
You appear in his periphery, wrapped up in a shawl he keeps at the end of the bed. One he thinks he picked up when he was working on a shipping vessel in Pacific, just after he'd split from the navy, and was docked for a week in Taiwan because of bad weather.
It looks good on you. The colours accentuate your features in a way that makes it difficult to focus on the black screen of the sonar, but you make it easier for him when you pad closer to where he stands, yawning around a good morning as you fic yourself to his side, reaching for him.
You curl against him as he steers into the estuary, one arm tucked around the small of his back, and the other above his groin in a sideways hug. A small shiver wracks through your frame when the chill from the frigid waters sneaks in through the open companionway of the helm, and you burrow deeper into his side, nose nuzzling against his bicep to keep warm. The weight of you is comforting. Steady.
It's a clumsy dance to free his arm, but he does it somehow without dislodging you in the process, and lifts his arm, steering with one hand through the maw of the Labrador Strait, before he quickly loops it around your neck, keeping you tight to his side. You fall into him in a hurry—maybe from desperation to keep the bitter cold at bay or for some strained, final moments of closeness before he leaves the docks, and you.
The silence is heavy. A potent cocktail of shaky uncertainty admixing with all the regret he feels for not acting on his impulsive feelings sooner. It sits low, thick, in his guts, and vacillates between mocking him for what could have been weeks of satiating himself on the fill of you, and taunting him for starting this in the first place.
Especially when he knew exactly how it was always meant to end.
And in a rather vicious moment of cruelty, that particular ending bobs up from the brackish waters with its stark brown oak pillars cutting through the dense fog. He doesn't need sonar to see the pier in the distance. Three clicks to the west.
His throat pinches tight at the sight of it—rather irritatingly unassuming in its lacklustre beginnings, but a garish knife to chest all the same. It constricts. He tries to swallow but can't get the weight around his neck to receed.
He takes his hand off the wheel, scratching at the raw skin along the column of his neck.
His jostling seems to wake you from your sleepy stare out the window. You clear your throat. He tenses. Guts wringings themselves into a frenzied coil. Don't, he wants to say. Don't speak. Don't say anything—
"Listen, Price," you start clumsily, cautiously. And despite knowing where this is going—some apology for why you can't go with him, for why you're saying no—he makes a noise to dissuade you from continuing. He gets it. He does. It's a big ask to have someone give up several months of their life to traverse the open ocean with a stranger.
"I know. S'alright, love. I'll—" the words are bitten through when he realises where they're headed. The offer to call. Or write. Things he knows he won't ever get around to doing, but the loose attempt to placate is better than hearing whatever you might say. A selfish need to keep the silence.
"No, listen," you stress with a huff. He hears the eye roll in your tone, and fights back a scoff at the image. "You're stubborn, you know?"
It's nothing he's never heard before but it still makes him laugh—some broken, ugly thing in the base of his throat. Clawing up his oesophagus.
After a moment of silence, you nuzzle your cheek against his peck, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his heart.
"I'm not a sailor, and this is probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my whole life, but—" his heart leaps, banging against the cage of his ribs, still scarred with your name.
"—love—"
"—I don't want to just write you. Or—or wait for a phone call. I don't want to—"
He hears the click in your throat when you swallow. Feels the herringbone floor open up beneath his feet, plunging his aching heart into the empty maw of his stomach. Still. Through the blooming sense of hope tangling vines around his falling heart, he reaches for the water bottle on the console, wordlessly passing it to you to drink.
You sniff, and it's an ugly, wet noise that sends a shudder through his being. A sound he could hear, happily, for the rest of his life.
(Sappy, tragic fool—)
"How long do I have to pack?"
If he'd been a lesser man—or maybe a better one; a good one—he would have crumbled. But he's too grizzled to take his eyes off the shoreline, and maybe—just maybe—too fucking scared to. He doesn't want to look down and find this whole thing has been some horrific joke. Doesn't want to see the derision in your eyes as you ask him why you'd ever pick him, a stranger, over the sanctuary of land. Your home, even.
But he doesn't doubt you.
It's an odd juxtaposition, John finds, but he's always been the sort to work in strings of abstract hypocrisy, hadn't he? Implicit trust in the men around him, but not enough to ever let go of the urge so just do everything on his own. To shoulder the burdens a man like him was seemingly built to carry.
(And made to crack under the weight of them; a thousand fissures that were small enough to go unnoticed—until Gaz grabbed him by the lapels, shoving him against an iron door just to keep him from throwing an innocent man to his death for no other reason than his notched sense of safety—but big enough to leak a caustic ugliness into the word that threatened make the men around him bonesick.)
But he isn't thinking about that right now. Or, rather, he shouldn't be—
Because he believes you. He just believes in himself less.
So, he has to ask. Has to. "Are you sure? Hard to change your mind when you're in the middle of the bloody ocean, love."
The exasperated huff let out into his bicep seems to be the only answer he'll get from you on that particular topic, but it's not enough. Despite the miffed squeeze you give when he pulls his arm back, resting his hand against your cheek to pull your face back far enough to peer into your eyes, you go along with his demands, soft as they are. Maybe the way his thumb brushes along the curve of your cheekbone quells the stubbornness that brims at having your choice picked apart until it was nothing but bones. All just to satisfy his own internal dilemma.
Or a mockery of one, anyway.
"You gotta be sure," he says, and winces when it comes out rougher than he intended. "This is a big leap. It isn't go to fuckin' Tesco's on a Sunday—"
"First of all," you mumble, eyes narrowing up at him. "We don't even have Tesco's in Canada so that comparison is useless to me. Second of all—" and suddenly, all of that bravado falters. Shakes. You glance away from him—in askance, maybe, at your stutter, at his inability to take something someone tells him at face value.
"Love—"
There's a fire in your eyes when you turn back to him. A defiant tilt to your chin when it lifts. Sure, and firm, and a little bit proud—drenched in the same shade of stubbornness as himself—and the sight is an electrical shock to his system. A jolt to his chest. One that hangs, heavy, around the nape of his neck, the drape of his shoulders.
"I'm sure," is all you say.
And it's enough. Inexplicably, overwhelmingly—enough.
"Now, how long until we set off? I just need to get some stuff in order before we leave, but I can hurry it as much as—"
It goes against every rule in the book to take his eyes off the horizon and his hands off the wheel, especially this close to shore, but he needs—he needs to touch you. To know. To feel the commitment under your skin like an electric hum.
"However long you need, love, fuck—" his lips are on yours, stifling the rest of what he meant to say in the taste of you. "Whatever you want, whatever you need—" he makes promises he might not be able to keep, but he thinks if he could, he'd steal the stars and the moon, and let you wear them like pretty gems.
It'll never come to fruition because all he can really give you is a boat and a broken man who is only good at sailing the seas to escape everything that might get too close. None of it seems to matter. Not to you. Never to you. Every wall he's thrown up has been meticulously chipped down, and this, he finds, is no different.
You lean into him, heedless of the war in his mind, and breathe in deep. Inhaling the scent of stale tobacco, sex, and sour sweat. There's something facetious about the way you hum into the kiss, nails scratching along his crown, as if you're not committing nearly a year of your life to a man you watched crumble at the altar of your feet just for a sip of you.
"I've always wanted to go to Spain."
He groans a little into the kiss. Can't help the noises that spill out when you start mapping whimsical plans into something concrete. Something tangible.
(Permanent, if you'll let him.)
"We'll go. Spain, Portugal, Liverpool, Italy, Cuba, Jamaica, Fiji—" he names each place between a searing kiss and keeps one eye open, listed toward the horizon. He says it all in a hush, caught on the tendrils of desperation. Urgency. There's a quiver in his voice. Blood in his throat. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Just name it, love."
And you just smile like you know he will. That those words, caked in some amalgamation of earnestness and madness, are a promise. An oath.
"Anywhere," he swears again, brassbound in certainty, tangled in seagrass.
Your name scars the brackets of his breastbone. Notched into marrow. He feels it heavy in his ribs when he pulls you closer, wanting nothing more than to sink into you until your veins are filled with him.
Anywhere, he thinks, hushed in its reverence as the levee keeping everything he let rot cracks in your hands. Always.
YOU—
There's a certain dreariness that comes from living by the ocean, one that's often difficult to put into words or explain to someone who hasn't spent their entire youth being told, never turn your back on it. Never trust it.
(It, of course, because somewhere along the line, the sea stops being a place, a thing, an artefact, and becomes an entity all on its own. A living, breathing manifestation with its primordial history, its own mythology, all so distinct from anything someone on land could ever dream up.)
Because despite what you might wish, the sea will never be your friend. It's incapable of distinguishing the difference between affection and malice, and shows its love by dragging you to the darkest depths imaginable until your lungs fill with its briny breath and your drops to the floor, a human-sized whalefall.
The ocean loves you in the worst way.
It wants to make a tomb of you. A graveyard of algae covered bones. Bloated and unrecognisable. Picked apart until nothing remains but the ghost of you treading its pool.
In spite of this, the ocean doesn't scare you as much as it should. It's a constant in your life. Permanent. Careless guard your iron shackles.
(And maybe it's a little bit deeper than that because you never really understood the difference between obsession, devotion, and fear when they all make you feel the same.)
And being so far out from the rest of the people who live along the very same coast—well. That, too, is hard to simplify.
Life by an unpopular harbour isn't as busy as someone might assume. With its deadened boardwalks, gimmicky shops, and lack of personality to draw a crowd or any would-be tourists, it stagnantes. The place begins to look like a tchotchke. A painting on a faded, sunbleached postcard rather than a cohesive ecosystem. The cogs are rusted and broken, and the delineation between them and the people begins to blur.
And maybe that's because time feels slower in this liminal space perched between the sea and the swell of a bucolic dreamland, as if it's drenched in molasses. Bound with a ball and chain. Boring simplicity, perhaps.
Sloughing along is the most apt descriptor you think of to describe how your tarry-thick time is spent.
Work life balance loses its meaning when you feel the same at home as you do behind a counter. Listless. Lacklustre. It's hard to find inspiration when you've been to every nook and cranny in the valley. When all secrets have been exposed thrice over, and gossip is as stale as the bread Lucy always brings to the potluck each year.
It's fine, of course.
Work. Home. Work. Sometimes, you'll drive down to Halifax. Maybe stop at Shoppers Drug Mart and squint at the overpriced brands on the too-white walls. But something brand name at Marshalls for more than you can afford to placate that gnawing sense of unease that comes with realising your life can be summed up in three paragraphs or less.
Age does that, you find. Because when you're stuck in a place that never changes, when the ghost of your childhood runs along the same trails you take as an adult and feels more bitter than nostalgic, growing older starts to feel like a taunt. A jeer.
Burdened by the encompassing emptiness of time.
Somewhere along the line—or maybe from the very beginning—you start to stagnante, too. The overwhelming, unignorable feeling of growth weighing you down forms; barnacles clinging to your skin, softening your flesh as they burrow deep, deep, until striking bone.
You're fine, you think.
Until him.
Until a man shows up, hiding kindness behind a surly disposition, and offers you nothing but gruff company. Terrible jokes. Cloying sweetness drenched in nicotine and dusted in ash.
John Price makes you consider your love of the ocean in a new, tangible way.
There have been others, of course. People before John who have offered to pull you away from this anaemic corner of the world, making promises of taking you somewhere else. Or ones who offered to stay. To join you in this dreary town. An accumulation of hydrozoan floating aimlessly down this solitary stretch of ocean.
They've all come and gone, and your answer has remained unchanged. Fixed. No. And if you're being kind—no, thank you.
Because, really—
When you can't tell the difference between fear and devotion, how are you supposed to know if the ocean fills you with reverence or dread?
So, you stay.
This place might be drenched in tar, forgotten by the masses in favour of the bigger, prettier cities that share the same oceanic view, but it's home. And your roots run deep (but your shackles are even deeper).
It's odd, too, isn't it? That home feels less like a sanctuary and more like an obligation. A pact you have to keep. So, you do. And maybe you resent this place a little bit each year, but it's easy to forget all about that when John fits inside the spaces of your ribs that you didn't know were empty to begin with.
It's good. Good—
—but this is better:
You wake up to the sound of the naked ocean, unencumbered by the shore. It's quieter than you expected it to be, but you suppose without land to get in its way, there's little reason to roar.
The change in noise—and sometimes, the absolute absence of any at all—is the biggest shift you have to adjust to, but four days into your journey traversing the untamable Atlantic, the sea teaches you things you didn't know about yourself. That maybe there's a certain sort of madness that comes from being so far away from anything remotely resembling land. And a lethargy that's hard to tie down into something concrete. An abstract sense of disillusion, maybe. Bone-deep torpor.
Something, too, that feels a bit like an atavistic fear of the yawning abyss that never seems to end. It's one thing to stand on land, solid ground, and admire it from afar, or to hug the coast on a cruise ship. Seeing it like this, in all its pelagic glory, is somehow sickening in its terrifying splendour and incredible enough to snake existential dread along the curve of your fragile insides.
There's awe, as well, but in more muted shades of tyrrhenian.
Still. You take to the barren sea like a once captive orca who forgot what freedom tastes like beneath its curled dorsal fin. It's exhilarating. And in equal measures, a true shove against your mettle. Your resolve. There's no help so far out to sea. No one to depend on but yourself and this enigmatic man who brushes his lips across your forehead when he thinks you're asleep, and then snarls at the ocean in the morning about not having any cigars as if he knows nothing at all about tenderness.
It's a comfort you cling to. Embrace until your fingers ache.
John mutters something under his breath about needing sleep. Whisky. A cigar. A good fuck in a better goddamn bed—and in no particular order, he gripes when you poke his back with your index finger.
"Thank fuck," he rasps around a cigarette—a shitty fuckin' imitation—and pinches your side when he draws you close. Payback for the jab but it just makes you giggle. "Bermuda is only nine hours away."
"Nine hours," you breathe, surprised. Nine hours. It feels inconsequential. Brief. And maybe that's because time feels different out here. Inconsequential outside of where the sun sat. The only thing that matters about it is its position, and your internal clock begins to shift, turning into a sundial. To hear a length of time outside of morning, midday, noon, afternoon, evening, and night is strange.
John's gaze flickers over to you hiding something that feels a bit like an appraisal as those burning sapphires run over the length of your expression, catching every twitch.
His chest rumbles under your hand after a moment. "Excited for land, then?"
Land. You consider it—his question, and, of course, the weight of it. The way it feels. Tastes.
It's only been a sliver into your journey, barely anything at all in comparison to the kilometres left to go, but the sea feels as comforting as it does terrifying. The darker patches of blue signifying a depth so unfathomable that you feel breathless thinking about it. About the unquantifiable pressure, some metric tonnes of atmosphere pressing down on those pretty pools of navy.
In comparison, Captain feels fragile. Delicate. Brittle bones of wood and plastic and foam contending with the vastitude of the sea that sprawls out in every direction. On a map right now, you'd be invisible. The tip of a pen would be too wide to accurately pinpoint your exact location. That massive gap, bigger than the whole of your country, sometimes gives you nightmares. And some nights, the boat lists as it bobs with the rolling waves that never end, dipping down much too low for your mind to ever feel comfortable with.
The terror is almost equally as present as the awe. Both one-in-the same, almost. And it reminds you of your love for the sea. Where the lines between fear and devotion blur. It doesn't surprise you, then, that some mornings you wake up with something that curls around your head, and feels like divine euphoria, and others—
You can't stop thinking about every shipwreck movie you'd ever seen, especially when you know you'd passed over the same channel the Titanic sank in, that your bare feet stood right over top of a graveyard at a depth that hurts your head a little bit to even think about.
But—
Land.
John said you'd be missing it in due time the first hour into your trip, when you were still buzzing with the adrenaline of cacoëthes and watched the shoreline get swallowed whole by blue.
In fact, he'd expected it. Seemed to keep himself at a measurable distance, as if waiting for you to turn to him and command that he bring you back home.
A silly thought, in hindsight.
You're shackled to the sea just as much as you are to him—maybe with a bit more willingness added in. The sea feels like home in spite of the endless dreams of capsizing in the frigid waters.
And really.
You can't imagine being anywhere else but here. With him.
"I'm excited to see Bermuda," you confess, nuzzling your cheek into the warm Sherpa of his jacket. "But more so because I've never been anywhere outside of my own Country. But I like this better. I like being on Captain with you. It's—"
There's a weight in your chest. One that's almost equally composited into the ashen blue of his eyes when they flicker to you, clinging to each word. Each sentiment that spills from your sun chapped lips.
"It's home, y'know?"
John goes quiet for a moment. Far quieter than you ever expected a man like him to be capable of—someone who got road rage out in the middle of an empty sea, and screamed himself hoarse whenever he had to talk to the absolute fuckin' muppets of the coast guard or passing ships your eyes weren't good enough to see through Fata Morgana—and it almost humbles you in a strange way. Makes you consider the stunning realisation that you've only chipped the surface of his rough, wonderful, insufferable man. In that, a keen sense of wonder brims, bringing with it an insatiable curiosity. You want to strip him down to nothing but bones, and crack them open like the claws of Snow Crab, sipping from the nectar that is his marrow. His essence. You want to map him out in greater depths than you ever dream of doing to the sea.
His fingers spasm on your hip in a strange clench and release rhythm that makes you wonder if he's holding himself back for some reason you can't ascertain, but eventually, he breaks. His hand tightens, and pulls you closer to him. You feel his nose press against your hairline. Hear the sharp inhale as he breathes you in until his chest expands under your hand. Wide and broad, and filled with the scent of you.
"Yeah," he rasps, humid breath fluttering across your skin. "It is. For however long you want it—"
"Forever." You catch smouldering blue just before it's eclipsed by endless black. "If you'll let me."
"Fuckin'—Christ—"
With his words mangled in his throat, they sound more like an animalistic snarl than anything that resembles something human. The force of it seems to rattle through your flesh, dredging against bone like an anchor on the muddy sea floor until it catches.
"Forever it is, then." It's a promise. An oath. And maybe a little bit of a threat, too, in the way only John can make something so romantic sound so gruff, and when he speaks again, you smell cinder and taste the ash in the back of his throat. Sealed in charcoal and salt.
"I guess you're stuck with me, then," you tease, smiling when he huffs in a facsimile of exasperation, but you catch the softening in the corners of his eyes, and the low purr of happiness that rumbles out from his broad chest.
"Can think of worse places to be."
"Like London?" You quip, echoing his words, and there's something heavy in his eyes, something that blankets around the unease that never really goes away even as you acclimate to the sensation of being landless. Adrift. It's something deeper than devotion. A black hole you could fall into.
"Yeah, exactly." He murmurs. You taste salt on his tongue when he kisses you, and wonder how you could ever dream of being anywhere else that wasn't with him.
Home, you find, is where his heart beats next to yours.
#im so ready for bed after this#john price x reader#sailor price#kinda#like um ig hes retired#ish#captain john price x reader#price x reader#i set out to make this as unapolgetically maritimes as possible and failed#we have one (1) Newfie u can't understand and NO ONE at any point offers to go on a Timmies run for ice caps and double doubles#blasphemous#also ur from Nova Scotia (NOT HRM) but that really doesn't matter much tbh i just wanted the “this is supposed to be Lunenburg Lite” vibes#aka Chéticamp#but much more depressing
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AAAAH, I just saw you posting your prompts and your requests are open. I don’t know if you write them together or individually, but if you can (or if you can’t but you can write for one of them), could you do Fred and George with a Smutty prompt #3?
All writing will be #writing-wh0re-requests.
George Weasley x Reader x Fred Weasley
Word Count: 6,167 - I had so much fun writing this
Warnings: Smut18+, Unprotected Vaginal Intercourse, Female Performing Oral, Daddy Kink, Slight Choking Kink, Slight Slapping Kink (if you squint), Praise Kink, Slight Degration, Slight Breeding Kink, Spanking Kink. Slight cum kink. Use of pet names.
Basically its a very kinky smut and there's actually plot - look at me go.
A/n: Sorry I have been inactive, life am I right? But I'm getting a desk setup completed so I will be more fequent! I hope.
I apologise for this being long, but I truly had so much fun writing this request. My love for the twins is reigniting. I will be fixing up my taglist as well / making a library blog for posts. I have written this smut differently to how I have in the past, let me know if you'd like a part 2!
Merry Christmas x
| | | |
Hogwarts was quiet the closer it got to Christmas, snow was gently falling and the gusts of wind were freezing. Most students went home for Christmas but this year was different for you. Your parents had decided to take a trip to get away from the wizarding world for a few months with no real timeline of coming back, it was something that shocked you but also didn’t surprise you.
Fred and George had decided to not rush home right away, debating on whether or not to ask you to join them at the Weasley house for Christmas, not really sure of what your relationship was, if it was anything other than lust and desire.
“You can’t sit alone in the common room for weeks, it’s Christmas.” George grumbled slouching down on the couch beside you.
“I’ll be fine, honestly, I have so many books I can read.” You gestured to the pile of books on the table that you had acquired from the library. “You two should head home, I’m almost certain your mum has made your favourite foods.”
Fred smiles at the mention of his mum and her tradition of making something for everyone to enjoy.
“You can come with us, we have a spare room and I’m sure mum would be overjoyed to finally meet our best friend.”
Best friend
Although not untrue the word still seemed to pang your heart with disappointment. An on and off hook up to them doesn’t mean the same thing it does to you and that was something you were coming to terms with.
Fred and George sensed the hesitation on you after Fred had dropped the best friend title, it was something they were yet to discuss with you, were you just best friends who fooled around? Or were you also wanting something more that you could all figure out together over time.
“I don’t want to impose, you’ll have such a full house, isn’t Bill in the guest room this year?”
George smirks, you do listen to every word they say.
“What Freddie is saying is there will be a spare bed somewhere, we have two in our room and the couch downstairs, I’m sure something can be sorted.”
“Mum already thinks you’re coming so hurry up and pack your things.”
Your mouth falls open at Fred’s revelation, your eyes flick to George who smirks.
“Go on, we leave in fifteen minutes.”
“I feel like there wasn’t much of a choice in this matter.”
The twins chuckle as you pack your things up and run up to your dorm, searching your room for a bag to pack things into you.
You quickly rush out of your dorm, running into the twins as you look up at them. Their eyes wander your face, a blush creeping up your neck.
You look down at the floor, before George places his hand under your chin.
“Everything okay baby?”
Baby.
You weren't quite sure how a simple nickname could make your stomach flip and your body tingle, but it did, especially coming for George and Fred.
“Uh, um.” Your mind is foggy, unsure what you were originally rushing for. The twins smirk, sharing a quick look before your face lights up, having remembered what you wanted to ask.
“How long are we gone for?”
“We will be coming back the week before term starts.”
“But we can come back earlier if you’d like.”
“So three weeks?”
The twins nod as you spin and walk back into your dorm, them following behind you. You walk back and forth from your closet to your bed, where the twins have decided to lounge while you pack. Finding outfits is easy, finding lingerie works out to be a little harder under the gaze of the men on your bed.
You quickly open your dresser draw, looking over the various colours of lace and matching sets. Quickly you grab a hand full and shove it into your bag, closing your dresser and zipping the bag closed.
“Darling, you dropped something.” George whispers, moving past you and bending down to pick up your dark red G-string, blush creeps up your face, your stomach filling with butterflies as George passes the material to Fred who simply places it in your bag and rezips it.
Your mind continues to rush, a million thoughts racing through your brain as the twins share a smirk before grabbing your bag from the bed.
“C’mon love.” Fred holds your bag as he walks out of your dorm, George follows closely behind his eyes looking you up and down, sending a swift wink your way before holding his hand out, an invitation to take his. Which you do, almost embarrassingly fast.
George squeezes your hand and pulls you along with him to follow Fred.
| | | |
After a few days at the Weasley home, you started to feel settled and a part of the family. Harry had joined the household on the same day as you, making you feel not so alone in the imposing feeling. No one was surprised to see you, they were excited to have another friend along for the celebration. Molly had made you feel so at home, hugging you when you first arrived, a feeling of warmth and comfort washing over you within her embrace.
Over the past few days, Molly had shown you how to bake a few of her signature recipes, she had even gone as far as asking what your favourite food was, setting herself a goal of creating it for you come Christmas Eve.
Being one day out from Christmas, Molly didn’t want to be disturbed in the kitchen, she needed her space and stated that everyone should go outside to play a friendly game of Quidditch, she emphasised the word ‘friendly’ mainly at the twins.
So you sat on your broom beside Harry, waiting for everyone who was playing to fly into the air.
“Have you played before?” Harry asks curiously, not knowing much about you, himself being two years younger.
“Yeah, but I'm definitely not a pro.” You laugh as Harry smiles, looking out at the Weasley family.
“I think they’re going to kick our ass.”
“Oh without a doubt.”
You and Harry share a smile, your eyes wandering to the golden ball, clearly not the shiny golden snitch but definitely close. The quaffle and bludgers fly through the air with a woosh sound, everyone going into game mode. You and Harry nod at each other, both taking the role of seekers before rushing into the air in search of the ‘snitch’.
Within a matter of seconds the twins are behind you, chasing after you. You fly past the duo, diving down behind Harry who seems to have his eye on the golden ball. You quickly look over your shoulder, the twins hot on your ass. You notice the golden ball dancing between the twins. A smirk dances across your lips as you fly up higher just outside of the quidditch pitch, pulling up on your broom as the twins fly past you. They stop and look back at you as you flash them your bare tits. Both of them go wide eyed as you hold the golden ball between your hands, pulling your sweater back down.
“Later losers”
You turn your broom around, wiggling your ass as you dive down to the grass.
“We won!” You scream, Ginny, Bill and Ron rush down to you, pulling you into a hug and cheering for your team as the rest of the players come to the ground.
You make brief eye contact with the twins, a darkness in their eyes but clapping for your victory nonetheless.
“Lunch is ready! C’mon darlings before the storm comes.” Molly gestures for everyone to come inside as you opt to help clean the game up, the twins staying behind with you.
You bend down to pick up the spare brooms, your ass brushing against George’s crotch, your eyes locking onto Fred and sending him a wink.
Fred stands in front of you, shielding you from the view of the house, George holding your hips, pulling you against his chest. Fred caresses your cheek, his head shaking.
“Do that one more time and we’ll fuck you right here in front of everyone.”
Your breathing hitches, your eyes never leaving Fred as he hooks one finger into the collar of your sweater, looking down at your bare tits. George slips one hand up into your sweater, groping your boob as you whimper, a shiver runs over your body at his cold finger tips. The fear of getting caught creeps up, a slight wetness running to your core. Fred tilts your head to look up at him, his thumb brushing against your bottom lip, your lips parting slightly.
The twins smirk pulling away from you like nothing happened and begin grabbing the game equipment.
They walk towards the home, not once turning back to look at you. Thunder rumbles through the sky as you quickly rush inside, not wanting to be left out in the oncoming storm.
“There you are sweet girl, would you prefer peach or lemon tea?” Molly asks sweetly, smiling at you before worry washes over her. Molly places her hands on your cheeks and a slight frown on her face.
“Y/n, honey you look flushed, are you okay?”
You heart hammers in your chest, those fucking twins.
“I’m okay Molly, the wind just gets to me sometimes.” You smile, reassuring her as she pulls you into a warm embrace. You make eye contact with the twins, smug smirks on their face.
“You tell me if you need anything, now, lemon or peach?”
You nod at Molly, deciding on lemon tea before squeezing in between Fred and George at the table, conveniently the only spot left. You spin the pasta around the fork, thankful for a warm meal. Your body tenses slightly, feeling both Fred and George place a hand on your thighs. Both of them grab and squeeze the flesh, involuntarily rocking your hips at their touch. You quickly catch yourself, continuing to eat while the twins trace shapes and grip your skin.
| | | |
Not much continued to happen yesterday and today had mainly been taken up by Ginny and Molly asking for help with wrapping gifts, a cheeky idea coming into your mind as you pocketed a bit of red ribbon.
Tonight was the big Christmas Eve feast, Mr Weasley had finished work early and everyone was told, multiple times, that dinner would be served at 7pm, not a minute over. Molly hadn’t made lunch today, wanting everyone to wait with anticipation for her multitude of amazing dishes, a favourite created for everyone in the home, including yourself and Harry. You had simply asked for baked honey carrots, which judging by the smell of honey filling the home, Molly had delivered.
“Thank you girls, go get comfy while I finish up dinner.” Molly smiled, kissing Ginny’s head before ushering us away from the table so she could set it accordingly.
“I’m going for a quick shower.” Ginny states rushing up the stairs in front of you. You duck into the twins room, looking over George’s messy bed and Fred’s mattress on the floor, thankful that you could share a room with them but lucky enough to score Fred’s bed.
“Mum loves you.” I jump slightly at George's words not noticing him behind me. I smile, falling backwards on Fred’s bed.
“I love her, she feels like home when she hugs you.” I whisper as George hums in agreement.
Fred walks into the room, his hair dripping and a towel around his waist. I sit up slightly, resting on my elbows, my eyes shamelessly dragging over his toned body.
“My eyes are here baby.”
That fucking nickname.
“Oh I’m well aware.” I whisper, looking over at George quickly. “Remind me, do you look like that?”
George smirks, pulling his shirt over his head, his body just as toned as Fred’s.
I bite my lip, looking between the two shirtless twins.
“Noted.”
Fred locks the door behind him, resting against it. George stands from his bed, nodding at his brother before pulling me closer to the edge by my ankles.
“We’re sick of this game love.”
“We know you want us.”
“Fuck, we want you.”
“That shit you pulled during the game.”
“Dangerous.”
“Slutty.”
“Showing off what’s ours to the whole family.”
My breath hitches at their words, looking up at both of them towering over me on the bed.
“I’m yours?”
The twins smirk, George leans down, his thumb brushing against my lip.
“Should we remind you?”
“It’s been a long time, baby.”
“We forget what you feel like.”
“Sound like.”
They emphasise their words by groping at your body. Your body tingles, wetness pooling between your thighs.
Fred feels your pocket, pulling out the red ribbon with a smile. George smirks, tilting his head at me.
“Are you our Christmas gift?”
You open and close your mouth, simply nodding as they chuckle.
“Don’t be shy, baby.”
“Yes.” You whisper, watching their every move.
George smiles, leaning down and pulling you up from the bed, your chest against his, your back against Fred’s.
“How lucky are we Freddie.”
“Extremely.” Fred whispers, his hands gripping your ass.
George leans down to your lips, his lips hovering over mine, your breath mixing as my eyes flick from his to his lips.
“Please.” You whimper.
George closes the distance between you, your lips moulding against each other. Fred kisses along your neck and shoulder, sucking on your weak spot as you moan into George’s mouth, allowing for his tongue to twirl with yours.
“Be quiet baby.” George whispers as Fred captures your lips, his kiss just as soft as George, savouring every swipe of your tongue against each other. George’s hands slip under your sweater, a groan falling from his lips at your lack of bra, twisting your nipples.
“Fuck daddy.” You whisper, both of the twins stopping briefly, as George grabs your hair pulling your face to him.
“Say that again.”
“Daddy.” You whimper, your lips pouting, Fred moans, his hands spanking your ass.
“We’re going to ruin you.”
Before anything more can happen you hear Molly shout up the stairs, letting you know dinner is served.
“Fuck.” The three of you say in unison, the boys pull away from your body. Fred rushes around the room for clothing as George puts his sweater back on.
George smirks at you, tapping your ass and nodding towards your hair.
“Might want to fix that baby.”
“Don’t want everyone to know you’re our little slut.” Fred winks, both of them slipping out of the room, their footsteps bouncing down the stairs.
Your fingers brush against your lips, a slight tingle against the flesh from their kisses. A smirk forming on your face, thankful for the last few minutes, a step in the direction you crave.
After you fix your hair,you quickly bounce down the stairs, thankful you're not the last one as Harry and Ron rush in behind you.
“Sit, sit dear.” Molly gestures to the space across from the twins, next to Ginny and Harry. You quickly sit as Molly places the last dish on the table. The house smells amazing, a mix of spices and hints of firewood from the stove.
“Merry Christmas, I love all of you.” Molly smiles, kissing Arthur. “Including you two.” Molly gestures to Harry and yourself as you knock his shoulder, smiling at him. “Please, eat.”
No one waits for Molly to say it twice, everyone serving themselves. George serves you a pile of honey carrots and Fred places a few roasted potatoes on your plate before continuing to serve themselves. A soft smile falls on your lips, the simple domestic gesture filling your heart, maybe this could work.
Everyone is quiet while enjoying Molly’s food, the sound of knives and forks clicking together. You catch Molly’s eye as she enjoys watching her family sharing dinner together, only having this occur a few times within the year. Molly catches your eye and winks at you, scrunching her nose and smiling at you before taking a sip out of her wine glass. You smile back at Molly, a warmth washing over you at the small interaction. Your eyes flick to the twins in front of you, both of them almost finished with their meal. A cheeky thought pops into your mind as you shuffle on your seat slightly, dragging your foot up George’s leg. His eyes lock onto yours, he nudges Fred inconspicuously to get his attention before sitting back in his chair, his legs spreading wider as his older brother looks down at the chair quickly. You press your foot into George’s crotch softly noticing his body tense as Fred shakes his head, grabbing his cup and tipping the liquid into his mouth. You drop your foot from George and move it to Fred, not wanting him to feel left out. Fred grabs his napkin, wiping his mouth as he looks over at George and nods. A wordless conversation shared between the two as George smirks.
“So Y/n and Harry, what subjects are you looking forward to most next year?” Molly asks, butterflies flip in your stomach, feeling like Molly caught you. You quickly drop your foot from Fred causing him to chuckle slightly, George takes a sip from his glass hiding his smirk at your reaction.
“Defence against the dark arts, I’m sure I don’t have to explain why.” Harry states, causing a small chuckle to fill the air.
“And Y/n?” Molly smiles.
“Potions, I’m excited to create a few remedies for different conditions but also to help these two-” You quickly gesture to Fred and George who go wide eyed, you know Molly and Arthur don’t know about their ‘jokes’ yet but why not keep them on their toes. “With passing the subject. You know they don’t stir their cauldrons, they just expect it to work when you throw things into it.”
Molly and Arthur chuckle, a smug smirk on your face at the panic you just gave the twins.
“Oh that explains why their grades for positions are so high, we have you to thank.” Arthur chuckles as you nod, smiling at him. Little does he know, you have them to thank for your grades.
You pick up your glass, taking a sip of the cinnamon eggnog, freshly made as Molly questions her kids about what they’re most looking forward to. You only half listen, your mind occupied by the pair of redheads in front of you, your mind filled with ideas on what you want to do to them and them to you. Thankfully for such a great break.
| | | |
The night flew by, Molly handed out one gift to her kids, including yourself and Harry. Molly stated it was something to wear for Christmas day breakfast and to not fuss over opening one present early. She asked everyone to open them at the sametime, to which you did and found yourself with a handmade sweater with your first initial on the front, everyone had one. You held the fabric close to yourself, knowing you would hold onto this for the rest of your life.
Fred and George hadn’t spoken to you since dinner, opting to hangout with their brothers and Harry while you and Ginny gossiped on the couch. Ginny was confiding in you about her crush on Harry and how Dean had been sending her letters since he left for break. You hadn’t noticed when the room dwindled down to just yourself, Ginny and Harry. Upon noticing and remembering what Ginny had said, you excused yourself, leaving the two of them alone which caused Ginny’s cheeks to heat with a rosy blush.
You quickly went up the staircase, noticing how much quieter the house was the further you climbed. You slip into the twins room, hearing soft snores, noticing Fred’s asleep on the spare mattress on the floor. You look to George’s bed and see it's empty. You can hear the faint running of water, a small idea popping into your head. You walk over to the bathroom, your hand resting on the handle, hoping to god it’s George. You contemplate this gamble for a few seconds, bouncing on your heels slightly before the devil on your shoulder simply says ‘fuck it’ and you turn the handle to the bathroom.
“Hey, knock-” George pulls the shower curtain across, cutting himself off when he sees you leaning against the now closed bathroom door. A smirk forms on his face as pulls the shower curtain open a little for you, simply waiting. The steam flows outside of the curtain, the mirror foggy and walls wet. You quickly slip out of your clothes, untying your hair and letting it fall. A shiver runs over your body in the damp air and you hurry into the shower, wanting the warm water to cascade over your body.
George has his head tipped under the shower, leaving his body open to your eyes. You drink in his figure, his toned chest and arms, his semi hard cock and strong legs. The water streams down his skin, small sprinkles covering your body. Wetness slips past your folds, your heart beat picking up, this almost feels wrong without his counterpart. But you know they will talk and you know Fred will be jealous.
George faces you, dragging his hand down his face to wipe away the water, his eyes linger on your body, his tongue dragging along his bottom lip.
“What’s Freddie going to say?”
The mention of his name has butterflies erupting in your stomach.
“Why don’t you tell him and find out.”
George smirks at your response, stepping closer to you and pushing you against the side shower wall, the cold tiles resting against your skin as a hiss leaves your lips.
“You’re a cock hungry whore, aren’t you baby?”
Your lips part at his words, simply nodding and leaning up to capture his lips. George pulls away from you tutting as he holds your chin between his fingers.
“You answer daddy when he asks a question.”
“Only for you daddy.”
George chuckles, tilting your face up to his. Small droplets of water fall from his hair and onto your skin.
“Liar.” He whispers, licking along your bottom lip and taking it between his teeth and pulling the flesh. “You’re a slut for Freddie, and fuck it makes me hard, but tonight you’re mine.”
You nod your head, a whispered ‘Yes Daddy’ slipping from your lips, your eyes staring into his. His lips lock with yours, his wet hand moving from your chin and tangling in your hair, pulling on the strands. A moan falls into your kiss, your tongues swirling against each other, his free hand holding your hip, pulling your dry body against his.
“You’ve gotta be quiet baby.” George whispers, his lips kissing down your neck, tongue tracing a line to your boobs. You softly whimper as he takes your nipple into his mouth, his teeth grazing against the hardened bud. He pulls from your breast with a pop, alternating to the other side, your fingers tracing through his hair, pulling when he bites your nipple. The warm shower water sprinkling your body, the steam filling your lungs as your gasp.
“You’re so beautiful and these tits.” George whispers, grabbing your boobs in his large hands and jiggling the flesh. He sucks on the skin of your cleavage, leaving a red and purple hickey on each one, definitely something to rile up Fred.
George presses against you, your boobs slip against his wet chest. His lips brush against your ear as you feel his hard cock against you skin.
“This is all for you.”
Your moan in response, causing George to place a hand over your mouth. Tutting at you as he shakes his head. He drags his fingertips up and down your thighs, softly tapping against your folds before slipping one finger past. He sucks in a breath at your wetness, pressing his fingers against your clit and looking into your eyes.
“You’re so good for me, so wet and warm.”
You nod against his hand that’s still pressed against your lips. His finger starts to swirl around your clit in small circles. Your eyes roll back, a moan vibrating against his hand.
“I’ve missed this pussy baby.”
He picks up the pace of his finger on your clit, your legs tense at the feeling of pleasure flowing through you at his actions. George pulls his finger from your clit, placing the digit against his tongue and rubbing it side to side, before his lips encase it.
“So sweet.”
If he wasn’t covering your mouth, it would be open in shock.
“Please.” You beg, whispering against his hand, it is barely audible, he wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t feel your lips move against his skin.
“Are you begging for me to fuck you against the wall baby?”
His words cause more wetness to flow between your legs. He moves his hand from your lips allowing for you to answer.
“Please daddy, I’ve missed your cock.”
George smirks, placing his hand under your right knee and lifting your leg up, his other hand resting under your left arm.
“I bet you’d say the same fucking thing to Freddie.”
It’s your time to smirk at his words, nodding softly before you reach down and wrap your hand around his hard cock, tip red and beading with precum.
“I would, because I’m a whore for you and a slut for him.” You whisper, slowly pumping your hand up and down his dick. George bites his lip, looking down at your hand. You place his cock against your folds, the tip brushes your wet clit causing him to hiss at the contact. You guide him lower to your entrance, angling your hips to allow for him to slide into your velvet walls.
Both of you sigh in unison at the contact. George keeps his hips still, his lips capturing yours, savouring in the feeling of your walls around his cock. You rock your hips up slightly, a silent beg for movement as he smiles against your lips, pulling his cock from your pussy before plunging deep inside of you. Your nails dig into his shoulder as he finds his rhythm, his cock slips in and out of you, your wetness growing the deeper he thrusts inside of you. His lips are resting against your ear, his low whispered moans and groans echoing in your head.
“So tight and wet for me.”
“Such a good girl for daddy.”
Hearing him refer to himself as Daddy has your pussy tightening around him, his praise sending tingles through your body.
The water of the shower continues to run, it ever so slightly sprinkling you both with droplets. The steam continues to fill the room, the water pressure dropping from being on for so long.
“Touch your clit for me baby, I’m close and want you to cum first.”
You slip your hand between your bodies, a moan falling from your lips as you circle your clit, the wetness causing it to slip against your finger. You add another, two now circling your clit and fast to help you reach your high.
“Look at you, such a whore.”
You whimper at his words, your pussy tightening causing George to hiss, tilting his head back, his wet hair sticking to his skin as he continues to rock in and out of you.
“D-don’t stop.”
Your legs tense, your fingers rubbing your clit faster and George’s lips fall to your neck, kissing the skin and whispering for you to cum.
“Cover my cock baby.”
Your heart beat picks up, your breath hitching and your eyes squeezing shut as you cum. Your legs tingle and untense; George’s cock continues to slide in and out of you, his pace picking up as he moans in your ear. His mouth falls to your shoulder and bits skin to muffle his moan as his cum spurts, warmth pooling inside of you.
George pulls away from you, watching his cock pull in and out, covered in a mix of cum. He gently places your leg down, slipping out of your pussy with a hiss.
“C’mere.” George whispers, pulling you to his chest and kissing your hair. He spins you around, softly placing the warm running water against your cold back, his fingers tracing in your hair. He places a kiss on your forehead, his hands now holding your hips.
“Let’s get you ready for bed.”
| | | |
You wake up in the morning, a dull ache in your legs from last night. The memory of last night floods your mind, you lift your shirt looking at your boobs beautifully covered in hickeys.
“I hear you had fun last night.”
You look over at Fred leaning against the doorway. Your face fills with blush, your eyes quickly flicking to George’s bed as you hear Fred chuckle.
“George is out with everyone else, mum insisted they hand deliver Christmas cards to the neighbours.” Fred states, closing the door and moving closer to the bed. “And I insisted on letting you rest because you were up late last night and had to make sure you didn’t wake up alone.”
“Freddie.”
“Nuh-uh, what’s my name baby girl.”
Your stomach fills with butterflies, watching the eldest twin sit on the bed beside you, his fingers caressing your face.
“Daddy.”
Fred nods, his hand tilting your chin up, before settling around your throat. Bending down to your lips and whispering against them.
“That’s better, I bet you called George daddy and I bet you fucking loved it.”
“I did.”
You want Fred to be rough, you want him to compete against his brother, you want to be filled with his cum.
“I hear you’re a slut for me, is that correct?”
His hand tightens around your throat before releasing softly, dragging his hand down your body and resting it on your boob.
“Yes daddy, whatever you want me to be.”
Fred smirks, chuckling at your response.
“So submissive for me, you wanted to make me jealous didn't you baby?”
He grips your breast, pinching your nipple and dragging his hand down your body, cupping your pussy through your thin pyjama pants.
“You want me to fuck you better than George.”
“Please.” You whimper, your hips rocking up against his hand.
Fred slaps your pussy through your pants as your hips stop.
“He was right, you’re a slut for me.”
You simply nod in response. Fred leans down, his lips ghosting yours.
“Get on your knees and show me what you want.”
Within a second he’s pulled away for you, leaning back on the bed and resting against his elbows. You scramble off the bed, falling to your knees in front of him, the wooden floor hard and cold.
You loop your fingers into Fred’s pants, tugging them down his body along with his underwear. His cock springs free, hitting against his lower stomach. Your mind floods with comparison to George, the thickness and length comparable, a vein running from the base to the tip. You run your tongue along the vein, flattening your tongue against the head of his cock before slipping it past your lips.
“Fuck.” Fred moans, falling back on the bed, his hands dragging down his face.
You wrap your hand around the base of his dick, meeting your lips half way, your tongue flicking side to side around his cock. Fred’s fingers lace in your hair, assisting you with bobbing your head up and down, his hips thrusting into your throat. Your eyes water, a few gags filling the air and drool leaking from your mouth.
“Such a messy baby.”
Your eyes roll back, moaning around his cock.
“You didn’t- fuck- suck George’s dick, did you baby.” You shake your head, popping his cock from your lips.
“Just for you daddy.”
“Mm, just what I wanted to hear.” Fred grabs your face between his hands, kissing your lips sloppily, his tongue rubbing against yours. Your lips are puffy and glistening with spit, his teeth pull at your bottom lip pulling away from you.
“On the bed baby, ass up for daddy.”
Within an instant you’re standing in front of him, stripping your clothes. Fred stops you before you can lay across the bed, noticing the hickies covering your boobs.
“Cocky fucker.” Fred groans, spanking your ass in encouragement to get on the bed.
You lay with your ass in the air, feeling Fred kiss down your back. He reaches your ass, spanking the plump skin, soothing it with a soft kiss to your cheek. His teeth graze the skin, biting and sucking, leaving his mark on your ass. You squeak as he spanks you, his cock dragging up and down your slit, bumping against your clit, your moans filling the air.
“No one’s home baby, be loud for me.”
Fred slides deep inside of you, the angle allows for him to brush against your g-spot a moan pulling from your throat.
“Fuck, I should just stay inside of you, that would drive you crazy, wouldn’t it baby?”
“Yes daddy, please fuck me.”
“Mm, what would George say?”
“Fuck, please, fuck me.”
You push your hips back against his cock, a low groan falling from his lips.
“Fuck yourself on my cock baby.” Fred encourages, your hips rock back and forth on his cock, wiggling them against him. You pull forward just far enough to leave the tip inside of you before pushing back allowing for him to slip deep inside of you. This causes Fred to grip your hips, starting his own rhythm and thrusting in and out of you.
“This is exactly what you wanted, isn't it baby?”
You nod against the comforter, your hands gripping the material.
Fred spanks your ass, his fingers looping your hair around his palm and pulling you up.
“Answer me.”
“Yes daddy, wanted you to fuck me.”
“Wanted me to fuck you better than George.”
You moan at his words, his pace picking up. Both of your moans and heavy breathing fill the air, his grip still tight on your hair. Fred uses his grip to pull you up against his chest, his arm wrapping across your boobs as he bounces you on his cock.
His lips fall to your ear, using his free hand to rub your clit.
“Fuck, Freddie.”
Fred chuckles against your ear, his warm breath fanning your neck.
“Scream my name louder baby, I want George to hear.” He pinches your clit, your body jumping in response before he rubs fast circles around the bundle of nerves. You rest your head against his shoulder, lips parted with moans pouring from them. Your pussy tightens around his cock as his dick twitches.
“You can cum for me baby, I’ve got you.”
Fred’s grip on your body tightens, his hips rocking into you faster.
“Daddy, so good.”
He kisses the side of your head, his pace picking up on your clit. He feels you clamp around his cock and your body tense. Your toes curl and your body shivers, cumming around Fred.
“Good girl, good fucking girl.” Fred whispers, the sound of your wetness filling the air as he continues to pound into you. He pushes your torso back onto the bed, holding your ass in his hands and chasing his high. Fred curses and you feel his load shoot inside of you, a few more thrusts and Fred gingerly pulls out of you.
“Look at you baby.” He whispers, softly caressing your skin.
You gently roll over onto your back, attempting to catch your breath as Fred rushes around for clothing before disappearing. You hear the front door to the Weasley’s home open close and a chatter fill the air. You heart rate picks up slightly, your body aching and mind blissed out to cover yourself.
Fred reappears in the bedroom with a warm towel between his hands. Within a moment later George is sliding through the door. His eyes darkening when they land on you, legs spread and pussy dripping with his brother's cum. The twins share a look as Fred throws the towel to George who stalks over to you.
“Such a pretty baby, our little cum slut.” George whispers, his eyes fixated on your pussy. A gasp falls from your lips at the feeling of George slipping his fingers inside of you. George pulls his fingers from you, a mix of cum sticking to his flesh. You grab George’s wrist, pulling his hand to your mouth, dragging your tongue up his fingers, sucking the mix of cum, your moan vibrating around his fingers. Your eyes lock with the younger twin, a smile present on both of their faces.
“We’re so lucky Freddie.”
| | | |
Let me know if you'd like a part 2 with both of them.
#writing-wh0re-requests#fred weasley smut#george weasley smut#weasley twins smut#fred weasley x reader#george weasley x reader#dom!fred weasley#dom!george weasley#Daddy!fred weasley#daddy!george weasley#fred weasley imagine#george weasley imagine#fred weasley x you#george weasley x you#fred weasley x y/n#george weasley x y/n#fred weasley x fem!reader#george weasley x fem!reader#fred weasley blurb#george weasley blurb#fred weasley x gryffindor!reader#fred weasley x slytherin!reader#fred weasley x ravenclaw!reader#fred weasley x hufflepuff!reader#george weasley x gryffindor!reader#george weasley x slytherin!reader#george weasley x ravenclaw!reader#george weasley x hufflepuff!reader#smut#fanfiction
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i'm starvin, darlin - e.m.
Eddie Munson x Reader
ǁ summary: Since coming back from the Upside Down, Eddie has slowly been changing. Each week seems to bring something different and he finds himself doing things he never thought he would.
ǁ tags: gender neutral reader, no pronouns, no y/n. nickname used (sweetheart). mentions of season 4 final episode and what occurred. canon divergent (every one lived). it's not smut, but smut adjacent. it's sexy
ǁ word count: 2k
ǁ notes: i sat down and wrote an entire one shot in one sitting again. and i am also not going to edit this one. and i do not feel bad for lowercase hozier title, so don't even try me like that. if y'all really like it, i can add a part 2 with smut, but this is it for now
-
There are still a lot of things Eddie is having to come to terms with since the night his heart stopped.
That night in the Upside Down, laying in Dustin’s arms, he had died. Without a doubt. Dustin had felt his pulse and there was nothing there. And though he didn’t know CPR, had no idea what he was doing, Dustin had laid him down on the ground and started to beat against his chest. Like maybe if he hit hard enough and in the right place, his friend would come back to life.
Somehow it worked. No one bothered to ask why.
But they all knew something was wrong two days later. Eddie, barely breathing and with a weak heartbeat, had been dragged back to the surface and hidden away in the RV they had stolen. Someone watched him round the clock as they debated what to do. If they should try to get him to a hospital, how they’d be able to explain it. But then something miraculous began to happen:
Eddie started healing. All on his own. Way faster than any person should have been able to.
His skin stitched itself back together faster than should be possible, leaving less scar tissue than it should have behind. His chest began to rise and fall in more steady breaths, his heart beat getting stronger, bones resetting themselves with slow and quiet creaks as he laid in that RV bed and slept. He’d been asleep since they brought him back.
The day he woke up, his body had almost entirely healed itself. From the brink of death, having even stepped over to the other side, and now he was almost back to before it ever happened. It had only been a week.
Everyone rejoiced, refusing to question anything weird that may have happened in the Upside Down and just thinking they finally won for once. Max had casts on both her arms but was otherwise unharmed, Steve had recovered from his own injuries at the rate of a normal human and now sported a scar around his throat that he sometimes felt self conscious about. Dustin was on crutches with his broken leg for another month at least. Eddie was alive and whole and back to himself. They’d made it, everyone had made it.
He began to notice more and more things that were different as the days went on.
The first thing he caught on to was that he had the capability to be strong. Way stronger than someone who had recently been bed ridden should be. It was like in the comic books with the Hulk – if he wasn’t paying attention or if he got too emotional, he could easily break anything. A walkman destroyed, a ceramic bowl reduced to shards, a metal pipe bent beyond fixing, the wooden handle of a hammer shattered in his grip. The boys were all present for the hammer incident and sighted it as one of the coolest things they had ever seen. They swarmed him, asking him how he did it, what else he could do, how strong he really was.
Only the other teens, Steve, Nancy, Robin, you, started to look a little bit closer.
When the next few changes became apparent, it was clear something unnatural had happened to Eddie that night in the Upside Down. He could feel other people's feelings. They brushed against his consciousness like ghosts whenever he looked at someone. Happiness like warm rays of sunshine, fear like a shuddering gust of wind, anger like hot coals pressed to his skin. It wasn’t a conscious effort – in fact, there were a lot of times he wished he could turn it off. Whenever he looked too hard at someone, it’s like his brain adjusted to a different frequency and their emotions reached out to him, no matter what they were. And he didn’t struggle to make sense of the sensations like he thought he might, his brain completed the dots easily at first, but then he began to recognize them consciously. It was certainly useful sometimes, especially when it came to you, but it still felt a bit invasive. When he’d explained it to a few people, he assured he tried to ignore it whenever he could, but sometimes he couldn’t help but react. The icey spike of terror he felt when you woke up next to him from a nightmare. The velvet comfort that enveloped you and him when he held you after.
The first time he spoke into someone’s mind it was an accident. Steve had whipped toward him, breath catching in his chest, eyes wide and mouth open in a gasp. Eddie felt it like ice down his spine. “Did you… You did that?” He’d asked breathlessly. It had been so shocking, Eddie wasn’t even sure what’d he said, or projected, or whatever it was.
“I - I don’t know.”
Steve stepped closer, suddenly looking determined. “Try to do it again.”
It was a slithering feeling when he dipped back into Steve’s mind. Like sliding his way in between cracks to a place he didn’t belong, seeping into the forefront of his thoughts to plant one of his own. It made him feel dirty, uncomfortable, and wrong. But it worked. Steve explained it as having a thought like his own but it came out in Eddie’s voice instead. An intrusive thought but not an uncomfortable one.
As with all of the other discoveries, a meeting was called. Dustin, Mike, Lucas, Max, Will, El, Robin, Jonathan, Nancy, Steve, and you. Steve did most of the talking while Eddie sat and looked at his hands. These meetings, while he acknowledged were important for everyone to keep track of his progression into… something, it still made him feel a bit like a zoo animal in a cage. A magician with a magic trick. All the boys immediately begged him to do it to them, they wanted to see what it felt like, wanted to see how easy it was for him to do it.
Nancy and Jonathan had shooed them, catching on to how overwhelmed Eddie was, their excitement and curiosity battering against him like a whipping wind of too much. Once it was just the older people in the room, you crossed over to where he was, kneeled down in front of him, reached out to hold his hand.
Pity felt like someone was pissing in his pants.
“Are you okay?”
How could he say no? How could he admit that he was scared, confused, and feeling more and more like a monster with the passing days? “It’s just a lot. To deal with.”
Your smile was pained as you pushed yourself up onto your calves and wrapped your arms around his shoulders. His came around your waist on instinct, the breath feeling like a wheeze in his lungs as he held tight. Face pressed into your hair with his eyes squeezed shut, he inhaled deep in relief.
That was when the next thing changed.
It was a desire. A need. One he couldn’t place a name to. Like he was desperately missing something, desperately craving something and he didn’t know it was. It crawled under his skin like ants and sent him scratching for a feeling that couldn’t be satiated. No matter what he tried: eating, drinking, masturbating, exercising. The feeling wouldn’t go away. It got stronger day after day, his mind focusing more and more on the void it left behind until it was all he could think about.
Steve threw a little get together at his house once a month or so. Just time for everyone to get together, eat some food, listen to music, play board games, maybe watch a movie. This was the first get together since his hunger began.
He was sitting on the couch on his own, decompressing. While normally he was right in the middle of everything, today it was a lot to handle when he was hyperfocused on the crawling beneath his skin. He had his legs spread wide, hands resting on them, leaning deep into the cushions of the couch in Steve’s basement. While he had initially tried to close his eyes, hang his head back, maybe stare at the ceiling – he couldn’t stop his attention from drifting back to you.
You and Eddie had been friends for a long time. Understandably, you’d gotten much closer after the events in March. The two of you had helped each other through hard nights of nightmares, panic attacks in parking lots, flashbacks in public. You’d been a great comfort to him since he came back. But today your laugh sounded like music. The smell of your perfume hit him even across the room. Each emotion crashed over him in waves, pushing and receding like the tide as he tried to get off your frequency, unentangle himself from you before he did something he didn’t mean to do.
I’m starving.
Your back stiffened, the grip on your plastic cup getting just a bit tighter. A moment of fear quickly shifted to mellowed surprise, curiosity. He’d never spoken into your mind before, hadn’t meant to do so now. But you still shifted, your eyes slowly coasting across the room until you caught sight of him on the couch.
A shock of electricity shot down his spine as you made eye contact, his hands tightening over his thighs in reaction. Unsure exactly what to do, he settled for projecting again. Slithered his way into your ears and settled a respectful distance from the area he’d never been brave enough to venture. Sorry, he offered with a wince, didn’t mean to.
What he didn’t expect was the utter flood of feeling that hit him next. Like a drip of warm honey settling into the space between his hips, pooling there in a subtle swirl as the warmth from it started to diffuse outward. You realized you’d been staring and your eyes flit away, but the feeling didn’t cease. In fact, it only got stronger. Your lower lip caught on your teeth as you shifted between your feet. Things that would be completely normal to see, wouldn’t have anyone looking twice, but Eddie could. Your desire. The want that poured from you like water when your eyes first met his.
Was this the first time? Had something changed between you and him? Or had he just never caught on before?
The ants beneath his skin began to vibrate as he narrowed in on the feeling, on you. Like the part of him that had slithered into your thoughts was now bearing down, digging in for purchase, wanting to stay awhile and feed on this new feeling, what you were offering. It didn’t even occur to him what he was doing, how invasive it might be, how wrong he normally would have felt. All he knew is that it felt like licking at the thing he’d been craving for so long and he was helpless to chase after it.
Sweetheart. It came easy as breathing now, teeth sunk into your consciousness from where you stood across the room. You whirled on him again, another flood of warmth hitting him deep as you leaned your hip against the counter you were standing next to and focused on him. What’s got you so worked up?
He couldn’t even consider how bold he was suddenly being, the fear that he might ruin this friendship well out of his grasp. Especially when your embarrassment spiked along with the want, the pool of warmth now suddenly coming to life to have a heartbeat of its own. Your eyes widened, shifting on your feet again as you broke eye contact. It only took a few moments before you couldn’t help but look back at him again. The buzzing settled further, now like a purr beneath his skin. It was bearable as long as you kept your eyes on him.
You wanna do something about it?
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thanks for reading, please reblog and leave a comment if you liked it!
#eddie munson x you#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson smut#eddie munson fluff#eddie munson hurt/comfort#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson fanfiction#eddie munson imagine#eddie munson imagines#eddie munson blurb#eddie munson blurbs#stranger things fanfic#stranger things fanfiction#myos ideas#vampire!Eddie munson#kas!eddie munson#myo4munson
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Love Bites (But So Do I)
🎃 HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL MY SPOOKY, HORNY BITCHES 🎃
I'm finally participating in Kinktober, but it's literally the last day and it's whatever the fuck I wanted to write.
Pairing: Innocent!Vampire!Reader x Werewolf!Bucky
Plot: Reader is suffering from hunger pangs due to national blood shortage. Bucky offers a solution.
C/W: 18+ MDNI!!! (I am so for serious). Loss of virginity, age gap (Reader is late 20's), what’s the name for blood drinking?, fingering, praise kink, unprotected sex, slight dom/sub, knotting, cock-warming, fluff, resolution of mutual pining.
Vampirism is cool and all, but it also fucking sucks sometimes.
Like during a national blood shortage.
You’d been turned only a couple of years ago around the time of your 25th birthday. You can’t quite recall what happened, as everything around the event is distorted in your memories. All you know is that you were on a mission with some of the other Avengers one second, and then the next you were lying in the med bay with an intense craving for blood.
Everyone was surprisingly accepting of your new ‘condition’, with the exception of one person.
Bucky.
Bucky wasn’t on the mission where you were turned into a vampire, so he had no idea what he was walking in on when he stopped by to visit you in the med bay. You distinctly remember the look of worry and confusion on his face when he peered through the window and saw you strapped down onto the bed. You’d given him a forced, awkward smile and turned your head away, not able to look him in the eye.
You heard the door to your room click open and Bucky began to call your name, but then he inhaled sharply, unable to finish his question. You turned your head slightly and peeked back at him. You could tell immediately that Bucky’s werewolf senses had picked up on the change in your DNA, his instincts telling him that you were now his enemy.
You leaned your head back against the bed and closed your eyes, devastated that Bucky hated you before you could even have a proper conversation with him. You’d been on the team for a few months at that point, only really developing surface level friendships with everyone. They were all welcoming enough, but your anxieties prevented you from letting anyone in.
With your eyes closed, your other senses were able to accommodate for the loss of sight. The gust of wind from Bucky opening the door rushed up your nose, and a heady, intoxicating scent lit up your brain. Your eyes popped open and you stared at Bucky, noticing his heavy breathing and his pulse pounding against the arteries in his neck. Your mouth watered at the smell of him, divine and irresistible in a way that no one else had been up to that point.
A choked keening had erupted from your throat, your wrists and ankles straining against the bonds holding you down. You twisted and pulled, trying to break free and make a run for Bucky, but he’d immediately sensed your desire to drink his blood. A shutter fell into place over Bucky’s face, masking any expression that might have been there. He sucked in one final deep breath and slammed the door to your room, storming down the hallway and away from you.
As soon as you could no longer detect Bucky’s scent in the air, your mind cleared somewhat and you were able to realize just how out of control you had acted and how embarrassed you were at your actions. But you were also unable to stop imagining running after him and sinking your teeth deep into the flesh of his throat.
Slamming your head a few times onto the bed underneath you, you cursed yourself. Bucky barely even liked you before, but now he probably despised you – not just for what you were, but for how you acted, as well. You’d gotten off on the wrong foot with him to start, but then you’d stumbled hard and crossed a line by almost ripping your arms to pieces in order to get to him.
You’d never been able to look people in the face or hold eye contact for very long, but it’s especially true when it comes to Bucky. You’re not exactly sure why it is that your heart races and butterflies fill your stomach, but the feelings bubble up and prevent you from speaking and make you uncomfortable in your own skin. This happens every time you meet someone new or are with people you don’t really know, but the sensations that flood your body when Bucky is around are 100x worse than anything you’d felt for anyone before.
You’d realized in that hospital bed that whatever you’d felt for Bucky prior to becoming a vampire had changed, had become almost unbearable. His scent never left your thoughts and your mind always drifted off to think about Bucky: what he was doing, where he was, who he was with. Your eyes would darken and turn red, fangs lengthening when you imagined him with anyone other than you.
It’d taken you weeks to recover your sanity completely. You’d drained bag after bag after bag of blood, never feeling completely satiated, but unable to find out why. Some members of the team visited in those weeks to determine if you were safe to be around, and although the aroma of their blood wafted through the air and surrounded you, you never reacted to any of them the way you had to Bucky that first day. Dr. Cho had decided that you were no longer a threat after your successes, so she’d allowed you out of your restraints. You were finally able to walk the halls again and explore the compound.
Though the sunlight wouldn’t kill you (discovered during Dr. Cho’s studies), your skin would prickle and start to burn after prolonged exposure, so you tended to avoid the daylight. You’d wander the halls after everyone had turned in for the night, lamenting the fact that you could really only spend the evenings with them all before they needed to sleep.
You’d catch whiffs of Bucky as you stalked the night, your pulse racing and endorphins fizzing through your veins, but he never appeared. Bucky kept his distance from you for nearly a full year after you’d nearly attacked him. You couldn’t blame him. He’d been tortured enough in his life, he didn’t need the added stress of you trying to suck him dry every time he entered the same room as you.
It took some time, but you were finally able to cohabitate the same spaces with him again. Even though your mouth watered and your hands longed to reach out and grab him, you refrained. You kept yourself distant in order to make him more comfortable with your presence even though nature meant for your two species to hate each other.
You understood why Bucky had such a vehement reaction when he smelled you for the first time after your transition; walking the streets of New York, you’d catch of whiff of wet dog and dirty sock, immediately identifying werewolves as they prowled the streets, their stench clinging to your nostrils and turning your stomach. You’d grimace and walk away as fast as you could in search of clean air not polluted with the presence of werewolves. If grody socks and dirty mongrel was what you perceived werewolves to smell like, you can’t imagine what Bucky must smell emanating from you.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense is that you’d never found Bucky’s scent displeasing: in fact, the fresh, pine scent drove you crazy and had your body begging to be near him despite knowing that he’s a werewolf. You feel insatiable whenever he’s around, needing to consume blood soon after in order to calm the raging hunger within you.
Your mouth waters at the thought of the hot liquid filling your mouth and sliding down your throat, warming your insides and sending shivers all the way down to your toes. It’d been nearly a full day since you’d last tasted the savory red substance.
A nation-wide disaster the Avengers had handled yesterday required the hospitals to use up most of their stores of blood, leaving you feeling guilty for even thinking about taking the life-saving liquid for your own benefit. All the Avengers were out celebrating a job well-done and the prevention of more death and destruction that would have occurred had you all not been there to help.
The fight yesterday had taken everything out of you, and you were unable to drag yourself from the couch where you had collapsed earlier in the day. Your head is spinning and your muscles are weak from the lack of blood in your system. Some of the others had offered you their blood to help you feel better, but you’d declined and told them to go out and donate it to one of the blood banks that were in desperate need.
You’d never drank directly from a person in the years since you’d become a vampire, choosing instead to avoid the intimacy that must come along with the action. Holding someone’s wrist in your hands as you clamp down on their radial artery, nuzzling your face into the crook of their neck and sucking a mark around the two perfect puncture holes from your fangs – it just felt overwhelming.
And besides, the only person you could even imagine suckling from was Bucky and he’d never offer you his blood, regardless of whether it was in a bag or straight from the source.
You groan as your stomach contracts in on itself, the emptiness feeling as if there’s a black hole inside of you and you’re going to be consumed from the inside out. You feel foolish for turning your friends’ offers away, but there’s no way you’d have kept them from enjoying themselves after everything they went through yesterday. You can only hope that Dr. Cho is able to procure something for you in the morning or else create some alternative to the human blood that sustains your life force.
You’re curled in the fetal position on the couch, clutching your stomach and trying to think of anything else besides this nauseating hunger you feel. Your eyes squeeze tightly shut and your face scrunches in agony. You moan once more, unable to hold it in.
All of a sudden, your senses detect the presence of another person in the compound – a door in the residential wing swishing open and the pad, pad, pad of socked feet walking towards you. The sweet, fresh smell of a pine forest after a spring shower wraps around you, easing the pain enough for you to open your eyes and witness Bucky walk into the living room and find you lying there. His face contorts momentarily, but then smooths back out.
“Y/N?” he questions. You whine at the timbre of his voice, the rich sound penetrating your eardrums and burrowing into your veins. “What’s wrong?”
You wince as another hunger pang claws through your gut. “I’m –” you whisper hoarsely. “I’m hungry. So hungry.”
“Hungry?” he asks. “What about the blood you keep in stock?” Bucky walks over to the hospital-grade equipment in the kitchen behind you, looking for a blood bag you know isn’t there. You hear him open and close the door, quickly ascertaining that there is nothing to be found within. Bucky quickly walks back over to you and crouches a few feet from the couch. “Where did it all go?”
A red-tinted tear falls from your lower lashes, leaving a pink streak along your cheek. “The… the civilians,” you murmur quietly. Even with Bucky’s enhanced hearing, he has to lean closer to hear what you say. “They n-needed it more th-than me.”
“Shit,” Bucky mutters under his breath. A determined look comes over his face as he rolls up his sleeve. He holds his wrist in front of your mouth and barks out a command. “Drink.”
You barely find the strength to shake your head at him in refusal. “No,” you whine. “I’ve never… I can’t…”
“Yes,” he growls, “you can. And you will.” Bucky stretches his mouth wide and rolls his head on his neck, transforming his normal human teeth into the incisors of a wolf. He bites down onto the center of his wrist, tearing open his vein and shoving it back in your face. “Drink.”
Your bloodlust overtakes you at that moment. The warm, coppery blood seeps down his wrist and beads onto the sofa beside your head. Your hands move of their own accord, your mind fighting a losing battle with your instincts. You grasp Bucky’s wrist and wrap your parched lips around the gaping wound. You lick and suck where Bucky’s teeth had torn apart his own flesh. At the taste of Bucky’s blood hitting your tongue after years of craving it, a pleasured whimper crawls up your throat and forces its way between your parted lips against his flesh.
Buck’s metal arm reaches around and cups the back of your head, holding you in place as you continue to feed from him. “That’s right, doll,” he says. “Take as much as you need.” You feel the cold pressure of his hand as he strokes your hair away from your face. “Fuck. Been waiting for this. For you.”
The words send a shiver through you and you would have happily stayed right where you were for the rest of eternity, but the mouthfuls of blood have quickly turned into a trickle. You whine at the realization, running your tongue over Bucky’s wrist to confirm that his wound is healing too rapidly for you to continue drinking. You cry and raise your eyes up to Bucky’s, tasting his blood that had dribbled down your chin as you lick your lips.
“It’s –” you try. “You’re not…”
Bucky curses once again. “I heal too fast and the vein is too small for the amount of blood you need.”
He takes a hair tie from his pocket and quickly runs his fingers through his hair, gathering it all into a bun at the back of his head. Bucky rises swiftly and picks your body up into his arms. He cradles you against his chest as he settles quickly on the couch and places you in his lap. He circles one arm around your back to hold you upright and uses his other to guide your mouth to his throat.
“Bite,” he commands.
You whimper at the authority in his voice, but shake your head. “I’m okay,” you plead. “I – I don’t know how –”
“It’s instinct,” he replies harshly. “You do know how.” He takes your head and pushes your face further into his neck. “Bite me. Now, Y/N!”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” you cry, resting your forehead against his skin and struggling to maintain the hold you have on your sanity when Bucky’s pulse is thrumming just under his skin. It’s right there. So close you can hear the blood as it rushes through his veins. This is the closest you’ve ever been to Bucky and his scent is beginning to drive you insane. You pant heavily against his throat, exhausting yourself from the effort of holding back.
Bucky releases a sigh and a sliver of tension leaves his muscles. The hand against your back strokes up and down, settling your body as it shivers against his.
“You won’t hurt me,” he says. “If I use my claws, the cut will be too big and I'll bleed too fast. Your teeth are so small, I won’t even feel them,” he soothes.
You hesitate for a moment before saying, “... you promise?”
“I promise, baby,” he hums.
The softness of his words is all it takes to tear down your defenses. You suck in a breath and bare your fangs. They sink into the skin right above his jugular and you feel the slight pop as you pierce its wall. Blood gushes into your mouth and you feel something inside you pop open just like Bucky’s vein.
All of the sudden, you become acutely aware of everything Bucky.
The rhythm of his heart as it pumps blood through his body and into yours, his breaths as they leave his mouth, the sounds he makes as you suckle at his neck – as if he’s enjoying every second of having your lips at his throat and sucking the blood as it floods into your mouth in time to the pulse of his heart. You can feel your own heart race to match his, beat for beat.
You moan at the sensation and pull harder against Bucky’s neck. Needing to be closer, you swing a leg over his lap to straddle him, hooking one arm around his shoulder and the other around the back of his head. You feel Bucky’s hands grasp your hips as he holds you tight to his body.
Involuntarily you roll your hips against him, rubbing your covered core over the bulge in his jeans. The action elicits a groan from Bucky and the contact sends an electric current through your body, forcing your hips to seek more friction. You continue to grind against Bucky’s crotch, your panties becoming soaked and leaking through your shorts and onto his jeans.
You continue to draw from Bucky’s neck as he begins to thrust against you in response to your motions. You moan at the extra pressure against your mound and work harder to match his rhythm.
“Fuck yeah, baby,” Bucky groans. “Using me so well to work that sweet little clit.” You whimper against his neck and brace one arm on the back of the couch, gaining leverage and moving your hips faster against him. “You gonna cum like this, darlin’?” He pants into your ear. “Gonna cum when I haven’t even touched you yet?”
At his words, you release your fangs from his throat and take big, heaving breaths. You pull away and stare down into Bucky’s eyes, his pupils dilated and staring deep into your own. You lean down quickly, capturing his lips with your own like you’ve dreamed of doing for so long. Bucky returns the kiss feverishly, working his tongue between your lips and delving into your mouth. You continue to grind yourself against Bucky until you’re nearly delirious with lust and feel a tight knot forming between your legs.
Bucky’s fingers snake between your bodies and pull the fabric of your shorts and panties aside so that he can run his fingers along your soaking slit.
“What a good girl,” he growls. “Already so wet for me.”
He nudges one finger at your entrance and you keen at the pressure of his thick finger trying to enter you. You huff against his mouth, trying to relax and allow his finger entry.
“’s okay, sweetheart,” he breathes against your throat as he trails wet kisses from your lips down to your shoulders. “’m not gonna hurt ya.”
You nod your head feverishly and lean backwards, changing the angle of your hips so that his finger has more access. It slips inside and your pussy clenches hard around it, not used to anything filling you so full. You cry out in pleasure as he crooks his finger against your walls with what little room he has.
“Goddamn, you’re so tight,” he huffs. “Have you not done this before?” Bucky questions you, using his free hand to pull your face back towards his so that he can kiss you once before letting you respond.
You shake your head no and cry out again as he withdraws his finger and plunges it back into you. He continues to massage your walls while he pulls his finger in and out, in and out.
“Then is this okay, baby? Do you like this?”
“Yes! Yes, Bucky! I – I love this.”
He sucks your bottom lips between his teeth and holds it there for a second before letting go. “Let me see how much you love it, Y/N. Come on, cum for me.”
“Uh, ah, I’ve never –” you half confess before stopping yourself by biting your lip and throwing your head backwards.
“You tellin’ me you’ve never let yourself orgasm, pretty girl?” he asks you. “What a tragedy,” he growls against your neck, finger still working between your legs as he slowly tries to fit another one inside you.
“Unh,” you whine in time with his finger thrusts, feeling the stretch of your hole as the slick from your core coats his hand and allows his second finger entry. You gasp at the sensation of his two thick fingers inside of you and the heel of his hand against your clit. The knot in your stomach feels as if it’s stretching as tight as it can go, pulling and straining to be undone. You work your hips in time with Bucky’s hand, trying to get him deeper inside you where your body screams for more.
“But don’t worry,” he whispers against your ear. “I’ll take care of that right now.”
Bucky’s other hand comes up and pinches your erect nippled through your shirt. The sharp sizzle of pain morphs into pleasure as he surges through your nerves and rips the knot in your core apart. Your hips freeze and your knees lock tight against Bucky’s hips, every muscle in your abdomen clenching and your walls bearing down on Bucky’s fingers.
“That’s a good girl,” he breathes. “Look at you cumming all over my hand.” His words send another blade of pleasure to your core and you squeeze his fingers tighter. “You like when I talk to you, baby?” Bucky asks. “You like when I tell you you’re a good girl?” Bucky chuckles at the realization that his words cause your pussy to work his fingers harder.
“Does my sweet, pretty girl want to cum on my cock?” He wonders, tracing a finger down the side of your face and then slipping it into your mouth. You instinctively suck on his digit, lathing your tongue around the tip. Bucky sucks in a sharp breath when you nip at his finger with one of your fangs.
“Dirty girl,” he teases as he takes his finger from your mouth. He grabs your chin and looks into your eyes again. “Will you let me fuck that tight little pussy of yours?”
You moan and nod your head. “Yes! Yes, Bucky – please!” you cry out.
With a wolfish grin, Bucky grabs the back of your thighs and holds you up as he carries you out of the living room and towards his bedroom. You notice two little pinpricks of blood where your fangs had been earlier, the skin already healing over. You lower your mouth back to Bucky’s throat and lick his skin clean. Bucky bounces you in his arms and kisses your lips forcefully as he finally arrives at his room.
He crawls with you up the bed until your head is nestled on his pillows and his body covers yours completely. The warmth of him encompasses you and his scent surrounds you where it pours from his sheets and clothing scattered around the room. Bucky’s bedroom smells just like him, like being sheltered by a grove of pine trees as the sun rises in the sky after a long, dark night.
Bucky slides his hands under your shirt and pushes it up your chest, kissing your breasts as they’re exposed. You hum at the warm, wet kisses he places on your nipples before he pulls the shirt over your head and up your arms. Next, he kisses your lips and slowly makes his way down your body, leaving a trail of warmth in the wake of his lips as he reaches the waistband of your shorts.
His fingers curl around the elastic and tug them down, down, down, your legs. Bucky sits back on his haunches, your shorts and panties dangling from the end of his fingers. You reach to cover yourself with your hands, never having had anyone look at your naked body before.
His glacier blue eyes lock onto yours and freeze you in place. Bucky shakes his head once, telling you to stop hiding yourself from him. You slowly pull your hands away, not exactly sure what to do with them now that they don’t have a purpose.
Bucky hums in content at seeing your naked body lying on his bed, wet and ready for him. He slides backwards off the bed, keeping his eyes on you the entire time. Your face heats as he whips his shirt over his head, exposing his solid chest and torso. He reaches for the button of his jeans and slowly undoes the fastenings. He watches your eyes widen when his cock springs free, finally relieved of its confinement.
You can’t take your eyes away from Bucky’s dick as it stands at attention, the pink tip weeping liquid. You quickly glance up at Bucky’s face, and see amusement flicker in his eyes.
“I don’t th-think…” you stammer.
“Oh,” Bucky rumbles. “It’ll fit.”
Bucky positions himself on top of your body again, pulling your legs apart so that he can nestle his hips between yours. You feel as his warm, hard length rests between your lower lips and up onto your mound. He’s so big that you could wrap both hands around him and there would still be leftovers. You swallow hard and look up into Bucky’s eyes as he hovers over you.
“Are you sure?”
He leans down and presses a hard kiss to your lips. “I’m sure.”
Bucky guides his tip to your entrance, coating the head with your juices. He slides it up and down your slit, notching it against your clit and sending shocks to your core. You slowly bring your knees up and wrap your feet around the small of Bucky’s back, reaching your hands to grab onto Bucky’s metal wrist where he has it placed above your head. You look into his eyes as a smile graces his lips.
“Good girl,” he praises. Your body shivers at the compliment and you smile shyly back at him. Bucky takes the head of his cock and slowly notches it into you, pausing at your gasp of air. “Relax, doll,” he says as he leans down to kiss you. You melt into the kiss, allowing your legs to relax slightly and your walls to open enough for Bucky to slide in a couple of inches.
His cock is thicker and longer than his fingers and your body is unsure what to do with so much of it inside you. You whine against Bucky’s lips, the stretch and pressure unfamiliar.
“It’s okay, baby; you can take me.”
You nod and consciously relax your pelvic floor, imaging the muscles loosening up and allowing Bucky inside. You can feel the effects immediately, Bucky’s hips closing the gap and the tip of his cock lodging deep inside you, the notched head putting pressure against a point inside you that forces all the air to leave your lungs. You suck in a sharp breath as Bucky fully sheaths himself inside you, barely believing that his entire length rests within your walls.
“That’s it, doll,” Bucky commends your efforts. “Told you you could do it.”
You smile at him earnestly, proud of yourself for taking all of him inside of you at once. He brings his flesh hand up to your face and pulls your bottom lip down with his thumb. “I’m gonna move now, okay? You ready?”
“Yes,” you breathe. Your heart pounds in your chest as Bucky slowly slides from you until he’s almost completely out. Then, in one smooth motion, he presses back inside, the head rubbing against the spot that made you lose your breath when he entered the first time. You stare into each other’s eyes as Bucky continues to rock into you, his hips meeting yours with every press forward.
You can’t help but sigh at the sweet pleasure that builds from Bucky’s measured pace. You unwind one hand from Bucky’s metal wrist and reach for his face, closing your eyes and capturing his lips in an ardent kiss. The feeling of him moving inside you is nice, the coil from earlier returning to its place inside your core.
You cry out suddenly when Bucky’s next thrust enters you with more force than his previous ones. He opens his eyes and looks down at you, seeing the heat of your cheeks spread down your neck. He smirks and slams into you again, harder. Your eyes widen and your breath rushes out with the thrusts, your walls constricting around him with the repeated motion.
“You like that?” he questions, thrusting hard into you again. You gasp when he picks up speed and force, slamming into you over and over again. “I said: do you like that? Answer me.”
“Uh”-thrust-“huh”-thrust- you answer, your affirmation being knocked out of you as Bucky slams into your core. The rapid, harsh thrusts have the ridges and veins of Bucky’s cock sliding against your walls, and you can feel every single one of them tightening the coil inside of you until it is stretched tight once again. Bucky continues to thrust, taking you higher and higher and higher until there’s no room left inside of you that your emotions seep from your eyes, your pink-tinged tears from pleasure rather than pain this time.
You gasp for breath repeatedly, listening to the wet sounds of Bucky thrusting in and out of you, the moans and muttered praises falling from his lips.
“So good for me.”
“You take me so well.”
“Look at you, crying over my cock because it’s making a mess of your sweet little cunt.”
The praise sends you soaring, you can’t help but whimper and sob into Bucky’s mouth as he keeps his face close to yours, making sure that you like everything he does to your body, monitoring your cries of pleasure to make sure he’s doing the best he can.
The coil begins to fray and snap. You begin to tense up, the sensations becoming too much.
“I think,” you moan, “I’m gonna…!”
Before your body completely lets go, you feel Bucky snarl into your neck and bite down hard with his incisors. You feel a flood of endorphins rush from Bucky’s mouth and travel through your body, pooling in your core and lighting the coil on fire. You cum hard on Bucky’s cock, liquid gushing from you. Your mind goes completely blank as your body shudders and shakes against Bucky’s, your pussy sucking him in as if it will never let him go. Buck retracts his teeth from the mark on your neck, licking his tongue over the puncture wounds.
“Oh, fuck yes, baby girl. Look what I did to you – no one else will ever make you squirt like I do. No one will ever touch you. You’re mine, baby. No one else’s. I’m never letting you go.”
You stare down in enraptured surprise as you feel Bucky’s cock suddenly swelling inside you, locking him in place. He’s buried to the hilt and you feel a bulging just inside your entrance, preventing him from thrusting any more. Bucky groans loudly in your ear and you feel warmth and extra pressure against your walls, filling you to the brim with Bucky’s cum.
Bucky leans down and nuzzles into your neck, placing tired kisses against where he’d bitten you. “Mine,” he growls. “Say it. Tell me you’re mine,” he commands.
Your eyes drift closed as the after effects of your orgasms and Bucky’s mark leave you breathless and blissed out. “Yours,” you murmur. “Always.”
Bucky flips you both over, his knot keeping you firmly locked together, unable to separate even if you wanted to (which you don’t). He lays you gently on his chest and holds your face in both of his hands. He wants you to look at him, but your eyes are so heavy that you can barely lift them.
You hear Bucky’s low voice as you drift off to sleep, but the words don’t make any sense.
“My mate.”
***
Your eyes snap open at the feel of soft lips against your forehead, then your nose, then eyelids and cheeks, and finally against your own lips.
You pull away immediately, hands covering your mouth in absolute horror. The previous night comes rushing back to you when you sense the heaviness of a mark on your neck and the aching pulse between your legs. Bucky looks up from where he lays beneath you, his expression turning puzzled and then quickly alarmed at your words.
“I’m sorry,” you say. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I didn’t mean to. I can’t believe –” you gasp out, placing your hands over your entire face and scrambling away in embarrassment. “I don’t know what came over me. I told you. I’ve never done that before, I didn’t know that would happen. I – I must have hypnotized you or something!” you cry out. “I didn’t know that was something I could do! I'm so sorry. I never should have –”
“Hey, hey, hey,” he calls, rushing to sit up and pull your hands away from your face, tilting your chin up until you’re looking at him. There’s a tender look on his face that you’ve never seen before, as if he’s dropped all of his walls with you. Your heart shatters at the realization that you’ve made him do things he never wanted to.
His eyes soften, almost as if he could understand your thoughts just by looking into your eyes. He tries to get you to calm down, to regulate your breathing by taking in deep breaths of his own, but you’re too full of anxiety and self-loathing for it to work.
“It’s okay,” he consoles you. “We didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do.”
“How is that possible?” you sob helplessly, trying your best to divert your gaze from his. “You don’t even like me. You’ve never liked me and especially not after I became a vampire. I mean, you’re a werewolf! You hate me. You couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me for a year.”
“Shhh,” Bucky soothes. “When did I ever say I hated you?”
Your brows furrow in confusion, your breaths continuing to heave in and out of your chest, but your heart somehow calms of its own accord. You feel its beat echoing around you and you realize that Bucky’s heartbeat is working to calm yours, his eyes peering into your own while his hands rub up and down your arms in a soothing motion. “I – we’re enemies,” you say quietly. “Vampires and werewolves have always hated each other.”
“Do you hate me?” he questions, turning your face so that you’re looking at him once again.
You hesitate for a moment before shaking your head softly. “No.”
“And I don’t hate you,” he states, raising a hand and softly stroking your hair.
“But you…?” You try to make sense of what Bucky’s saying. “You can’t stand me. You avoided me after – after I…”
“Because I didn’t want to scare you,” Bucky murmurs. “I knew that if I was around you, I would do something I would regret.”
“...like kill me?” you wonder.
Bucky’s lip quirk into a small smile and he chuckles at your question. “No, Y/N. Not kill you.”
“Then what…?”
“After you were turned,” Bucky begins. He pulls his hand from you and clasps your hands within his, gently stroking your skin with his thumbs. You watch, entranced, as his fingers move over your skin. “I realized something as soon as I walked into your room in the med bay and scented you for the first time.” He tugs on your hands until you look up into his face. He smiles softly down at you with a look of pure adoration and love. “You’re my mate, Y/N.”
You stare at him in confusion. There’s no way – that’s not possible. “How… How is that possible? Are you sure I didn’t hypnotize you into thinking that?”
Bucky rolls his eyes and laughs. “You didn’t hypnotize me – that’s not real, and you know it.” He moves one hand to your throat, where he caresses his bite mark on your skin with his thumb. “I don’t know how it happened or why the universe saw fit to bind us together, but it did.” Bucky bends his head and smiles ruefully at you as he continues. “I knew you were going to be special to me the first time we ever met, but you were so quiet and you avoided me like the plague, so I thought you were afraid of me.”
You feel the anguish coming from Bucky as he thinks back on how you treated him these last couple of years. How your inability to meet his eyes or hold a conversation with him led him to believe that you were frightened to be near him, frightened of him.
You pull your knees to your chest and rest your chin on your folded arms. You glance away and say softly, “I’m… I’m not good with people. Sometimes it’s okay, but others… it’s like I forget how to talk to people.” You flicker your eyes to his quickly, but look away just as fast. You raise your fingers to your lips and rub back and forth, a nervous habit you’ve had for years. “If…if I… like someone. It makes it worse.”
“And that’s why you wouldn’t talk to me?” Bucky questions, pulling your hand from your mouth and placing a kiss on the center of your palm.Your face flushes and a small smile flits to your face. You nod your head while looking down at your knees.
“Well,” he says, “I like you,too.” You raise your eyes to see a smile lighting up his face and brightening his eyes. “I always have.”
“You do?” you ask, checking to be sure that Bucky isn’t just saying these things because you slept together after feeding from him. “It’s not because of what I did last night?”
“No, sugar,” he replies. “I’ve wanted to be with you this whole time.” You watch his eyes scan your face, watching your reactions and feeling your emotions through your new bond. “Do you want to be with me? I wasn’t going to mark you without asking first, but my instincts wouldn’t allow you to be so close without claiming you.”
You shyly pull your hair over your shoulder where Bucky’s mark resides. You worry a strand between your hands and look up into his eyes. “I… I like it,” you confess, feeling your heart beat faster in your chest at your bold words.
“Good,” Bucky states. He leans into you and brushes your hair back away from your shoulder, exposing your mark and placing a tender peck against the raised edges. “Because you’re mine.”
You nod and tilt your head to the side, allowing Bucky to trail his lips up and down your throat before he makes his way to your lips. He kisses you deeply, his tongue sliding into your mouth and meeting with yours. You hum and unfurl your body, climbing into his lap as his hands guide you into straddling his waist.
“I’m yours,” you agree.
“And I’m yours,” he echoes.
________________________________________
So I didn't have time to make the part 2 I was thinking about for this, but it was never a direct continuation anyway.
Hope you enjoyed! 🎃
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School Bus Graveyard incorrect quotes because I'm bored
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Taylor: Look how creepy it is looking down this hallway.
Ashlyn: I'm gonna get vertigo.
Aiden: I'm a Virgo!
Tyler, deadpan: No, you're a virgin.
...
Aiden: You lying, cheating, piece of shit!
Tyler: Oh yeah? You’re the idiot who thinks you can get away with everything you do. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD
Aiden: I’m leaving you, and I’M TAKING ASHLYN WITH ME
Logan, picking up the monopoly board: I think we’re gonna stop playing now.
...
Taylor: Why is Tyler so upset?
Logan: He took one of those “Which Character Are You?” quizzes
Taylor: And...?
Logan: He got Aiden.
...
Ashlyn: What did you do with the phantom's body?
Aiden: What didn’t I do with the body?
Everyone:
Aiden: Okay, that sounded more sexual than I intended. I disposed of the phantom respectfully.
...
Aiden: Here’s a fun Christmas idea. We hang mistletoe, but instead of kissing, you have to FIGHT whoever else is under it.
Logan: Aiden, no.
Ben, with text to speech: Mistlefoe.
Logan: Please stop encouraging him.
...
Taylor: Who thinks I can fit 15 marshmallows in my mouth?
Tyler: You’re a hazard to society
Aiden: And a coward. DO TWENTY.
...
Emma, trying to be nice to Ashlyn's new friends: Would you like to stay for dinner?
Mike, excited for his daughter: WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOREVER?
...
Logan: What's a word thats a mix between 'sad' and 'mad'?
Ben: Disgruntled, miserable, desolated-
Aiden: Smad.
...
Ashlyn: Why are you on the floor?
Aiden: I'm depressed.
Aiden: Also I was stabbed, can you get Ben, please.
...
Taylor: Aiden and I were crossing the street, and this dude drove by and honked at us
Ashlyn, sighing: What did he do?
Taylor: he chased him to the next red light, then reached into his window and...
Aiden: Who wants a steering wheel?
...
Aiden: If I accidentally sat on a voodoo doll of myself, would I be trapped forever in that position, doomed to starve to death?
Logan: How am I supposed to know?
Tyler: You say that as if we don’t use you as a source of knowledge of the occult.
Logan: ...You wouldn't be trapped.
...
Ashlyn: Tyler, keep an eye on Aiden today. He's going to say something to the wrong person and get punched.
Tyler: Sure, I’d love to see him get punched.
Ashlyn: Try again.
Tyler, sighing: I will stop Aiden from getting punched.
...
Aiden, holding a python: Guys I impulsively bought a snake, what do I name him
Tyler: You did WHAT–
Ben: William Snakespeare
...
Ashlyn: Dandelions symbolize everything I want to be in life
Taylor: Fluffy and dead with a gust of wind?
Ashlyn: Unapologetic. Hard to kill. Feral, filled with sunlight, bright, beautiful in a way that the conventional and controlling hate but cannot ever fully destroy. Stubborn. Happy. Bastardous. Friends with bees. Highly disapproving of lawns. Full of wishes that will be carried far after I die.
Aiden: edible
...
Taylor, whispering to Aiden, who’s on the phone with Ashlyn: Ask her something!
Aiden: How are you feeling?
Ashlyn: Fine.
Taylor: Something personal!
Aiden: At what age did you start hearing voices?
...
Aiden: If I die, my funeral is going to be the biggest party ever and you’re all invited
Logan: If?
Tyler: Great, the only party I’d actually go to and he might not even die.
...
Logan: We need a distraction.
Ashlyn: Is anyone here good at jumping up and down and making weird noises?
Aiden, whispering: My time has come
...
Tyler: Where are you going?
Taylor: To get ice cream or commit a felony, I’ll decide on the way there
Tyler: I'll come with
...
Mike, buying a whole bag of knives, guns and other weapons like he's going to war on a random Tuesday: I can explain
Jacob (shop owner): Can you?
Mike: If you give me thirty seconds to think of a lie.
...
Taylor: Heads up, if you try to make a candle with food colouring, it will just sink to the bottom of the glass, and when the flame eventually reaches the bottom all the food colouring will catch fire and become one giant tall flame that you cannot possibly blow out and the glass will start to crack and then you'll throw your tea on it in a panic and then the extremely hot food colouring will boil and sizzle horribly and then the glass will shatter.
Tyler, sighing: What did you do?
Taylor, wailing: A MISTAKE
...
Mr. Thomas: What are your goals?
Ashlyn: To pet all the dogs.
Mr. Thomas: No, I meant your goals for this trip.
Ashlyn: To pet all the dogs in Savannah.
...
Logan: Is letting someone win at chess sapiosexual bottoming?
Ashlyn: Does anyone in this godforsaken group ever think before they speak?
...
Taylor: Aiden isn’t answering their phone
Ashlyn: I’ll call
Taylor: Ben and I have both tried six times each, what makes you thi-
Aiden: Hello?
...
Aiden: I was arrested for being too cool.
Tyler: The charges were dropped due to a lack of supporting evidence.
...
Aiden: Jail is no fun. I’ll tell you that much
Taylor: You’ve been to jail?
Aiden: Once. In Monopoly.
...
Mike: You love me, right?
Emma: Normally, I’d say yes without hesitation, but I feel like this is going somewhere and I don’t like it.
...
Aiden: Let’s watch Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Ashlyn: Okay
Aiden: And make out during the scary parts.
Ashlyn: The-
Ashlyn: The scary parts?
Ashlyn: Of Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
...
Ashlyn: How petty can you get?
Tyler: I once edited a Wikipedia article to win an argument I was wrong about.
Taylor: I KNEW IT-
...
Aiden: I've already sent good vibes your way… they’re coming. There’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Logan: This is the most threatening way I’ve ever been cheered up.
...
Mike: So what’s for dinner?
Emma, staring at the food she just burnt: Regret.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
That's all for today!
#school bus graveyard#school bus graveyard webtoon#sbg#sbg (webtoon)#ashlyn banner#aiden clark#ben clark#taylor hernandez#tyler hernandez#logan fields#mike banner#emma banner#i love those two so much#incorrect quotes#sbg incorrect quotes#incorrect sbg quotes#aidlyn#ashden
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Scary Wife Privilages Tokyo Revengers
Featuring: Kokonoi Hajime, Ken Ryuguji (Draken), Rindou Haitani, Atsushi Sendo (Akkun)
Synopsis: They don't need you to stand up for them, but damn do they love when you get feisty.
It was crazy to you the extent of disrespect that Kokonoi would put up with while you were around. Everyone was aware of how ruthless the man could be, but they were also aware of how he hid it when you were around, and they took advantage of it. You lost count of how many people stopped in with random complaints about whatever Koko had done the previous week.
You lost count, sure, but not your temper.
Another poor soul walked in, anger evident on his face. Kokonoi wasn't any less pissed than you were, but he didn't like to explode when you happened to be with him. Of course, you knew this. You'd seen him strangle a man for information. You rolled your eyes thinking about it: how could he strangle a man in front of you with zero hesitation but he didn't want to get angry?
"Don't." You glared at the fancy suit and tie as he sat in the chair opposite the desk where Koko sat. "Don't say a word if it's negative." your voice was dark, heavy, almost dangerous, "Give your report and leave."
The man stared up at you as you leaned on Kokonoi's chair, "If there are problems then the boss needs to know."
Koko would be lying if he said he wasn't impressed with the way you leaned over his desk, grabbing the man by his tie and jerking him forward. He knew you had a temper but this...this was different. This made him wish he was on the receiving end of your death glare. "Say it then." Your words sent a chill up Koko's spine, "Tell me your complaint."
And for the first time, Koko seen one of his men speechless. You were scaring the hell out of him, even more so than any gun.
"No, ma'am, it's okay..." His underling whimpered. Koko had never heard any of his men whimper. But there it was, the fear in his eyes and a very pathetic whine that came out as he spoke.
Inui and Kenny had been busting their asses all day. They'd fixed bike after bike, crushed their fingers, bruised their legs, and Kenny slammed his head into the shelf holding parts, effectively bringing the whole thing down. Inui had laughed, stating, "You're too damn tall for this little shop!"
You smiled, and your smile could've made the devil himself kneel in terror, "Then give your report and go."
As they were replacing a whole gas tank for an old rusted up bike, (Kenny knew it would be more use to the customer as scrap, but the man was adamant about getting the poor heap of metal fixed) someone started hitting the bell on the front desk like it was an emergency. Kenny looked up, sharing a look of exhaustion with Inui before they both stood and slowly made their way out.
"Finally!" The woman yelled and slammed her hands on the counter, "You fixed my sons bike and charged him extra! Who do you think you are?"
Inui, who was busy pulling the books for the week, responded before Kenny could, "I'm Inui Seishu, he's Ken Ryuguji."
Inui's sarcasm made the woman angrier, and Kenny, for the very first time, hated that his friends kneejerk reaction to people was dry sarcasm. She started yelling louder, getting on Ken's nerves as he stood and took it. What was he going to do? Him and Inui charged fairly on their work, and this was a woman, Kenny couldn't exactly brawl with her.
"Would you just give me your sons name so I can find what we fixed and how much we charged?" Inui asked dryly, glancing up from the computer.
"No! You're supposed to know this stuff already! Unless you're scamming everyone that comes into this store!" The woman was becoming red in the face, "Scammers! Overpriced mechanics."
A sweet gust of wind carried over Kenny, he didn't have time to groan about someone else coming in before you had analyzed the situation. You'd heard the woman yelling from outside, a plan of action already made and ready to be executed. Inui smiled at you, "Good evening, Y/n."
"Evening, Inui." Both men paused at the calm air in your voice, "What's the problem here?"
You were here, meaning Kenny could relax and let you handle this problem on legs. He smiled and waved at his daughter who was holding your hand tightly, she waved back and giggled when your hand absently rested in her hair. God, how did his day get twenty times better with just a simple little sound?
The woman quickly tried to usher you out of the shop, stopping when you gently shoved her hand away, "You better get your little girl out of here, these scammers-"
"Enough." Your tone was cold, "These men are charging just right for their expertise and parts they replace. Do you understand how much money it costs to order half the parts for a motorcycle?''
Inui piped up quickly, "I don't think she does, Miss Ryuguji. Enlighten her."
Now Kenny was regretting how funny it was that his friend loved instigating you.
"In the last month this shop has spent over 6734610 yen in bike parts, three pieces of which went to your sons bike three days ago. Inui," You looked over at him, "search the name Kyoka. Broken clutch, broken break and an old spark plug."
Everyone waited silently as Inui looked it up. Your daughter pulled her hand free and ran to her dad, whispering to him as he picked her up, "Mommy is real scary right now." Kenny nodded, "Mommy doesn't take this type of shit, does she, baby girl?" The young child giggled, "She said she was gonna have to beat ass when we came in."
Kenny covered his daughters mouth, "Hey, we talked about the swearing, didn't we?"
He didn't have time to get an answer from your daughter because you started yelling back at the older lady, "I don't care if your son used his whole damn paycheck to get his bike fixed. He's in his thirties and doesn't need his mommy to come and bitch about price for him. Go on! Yell some more, because I promise you, I am much louder."
She tucked tail and hurried from the shop, leaving you alone with the two mechanics, "You charged twenty yen over..."
Rindou, while he loved his brother very much, didn't like the man coming over. Ran had a bad habit of flirting with you and Rindou had caught his brother setting his hands on your thighs too many times. He wasn't worried about you falling for the ridiculous antics, you'd always removed Ran's hands promptly but respectfully, he just hated that his brother was encroaching on his wife. Ran could have any woman he wanted, why did he have to go after you?
Inui grinned, "Agree with us in public, huh?"
"Rin?" You called to him from across your shared bedroom, "I can see the way your eyebrows are moving. What are you thinking?"
He snapped out of his thoughts quickly, looking at the beautiful outfit you were wearing, the way your arms stretched as you struggled with the clasp of your necklace. "Nothing." Rindou muttered, stepping up behind you to grab the ends of the silver chain.
"Have I ever told you that you suck at lying to me?" Your eyes pierced his through the mirror of your vanity. He couldn't hide the small smirk, "You have."
Rindou appreciated the way you called him out so openly, most people were too afraid of him to, but you didn't fear anyone, not even Mikey, and Mikey had held a gun to your throat. "I...Is it bad that I don't want Ran to come over? I love him, but-"
"I think it's a normal reaction when a man keeps trying to seduce your wife." You were nothing if not brutally honest, "I can't say I'm thrilled to have him over, either."
And yet, despite neither of you being excited to see him, you both greeted Ran with smiles and hugs. You, of course, had to peel the older man from your body, chuckling as you stated, "Boundaries, Ran."
Ran knew the extent he could go, and he exploited it. Placing his hands on your lower back, just above your ass where you couldn't protest your boundaries, or grabbing your hand and tugging you away from Rindou at the worst moments. It was getting on Rindou's nerves the more the night went on, to the point that Rin was hanging onto your back and refusing to let you do anything without him. He was acting like a koala, and as much as you loved him, it was getting aggravating having two grown men following you around.
"Enough!" You snapped, scaring the brothers, "Sit down!"
They did, Ran smiling as you finally lost your temper with them. Rindou glared at his brother, kicking him under the table, "This is your fault..."
"Quiet." You sounded like a mother scolding her children, "We're going to set some new rules, okay? Good."
Rindou knew that none of the rules were meant for him, but the tone in your voice was, at the very least, worrying to him. He knew you could strangle Ran, not with pure strength but because Ran would let you, and he didn't want you to get any more pissed.
It might as well have been a brothel. The second you walked in you were slammed with the smell of perfume and expensive fabrics. You'd learned to take headache relief before showing up, and it helped for the most part. The women, Hostess's as your husband called them, were lined up all day. Mostly they stood and watched men walk in and pick another woman to have their fun with before they walked out, half drunk and with their pants undone while the woman spent the next hour getting fixed up.
"And for the love of god, Ran, stop flirting with me! I don't like you!" You huffed, crossing your arms, "I have zero attraction to you, give up. Because if you don't, and I say this heavily, Ran, I will bring out every ounce of Haitani that I have picked up in the last three years and I will sink you to the bottom of the ocean."
The man who greeted you as you walked in was quick to remove a dark velvet rope, letting you go up the steps to where you knew Atsushi was sitting. But you were greeted with a sight that made you cackle.
Atsushi was sitting in his usual spot on one of the overpriced couches, legs spread wide and his arms resting over the back. He laid his head back to see you, smiling as you walked closer. You stared down at the woman who was crouched between his knees, "I can hear you begging from the doorway. It's pathetic."
Her poorly manicured nails slowly pulled off his knees, her wrongly glossed lips parting as she spoke, "Wh-who are you?"
You moved Atsuhsi's hand to show off his ring, "Take a guess. Tell me-Oh, no, don't get up!" You stopped her from moving from her position, "Tell me, how does it feel to beg for a married man?"
She was silent, staring up at you. You were like the boogey man for the girls who worked, as each one had tried to make themselves Atsushi's favorite.
"Good to see you, babe." Atsushi reached up and held your face, "Come just to see me?"
"Mhm, that was the initial goal." You walked around and sat beside him, grabbing the woman's hands and placing them on Atsushi's thighs, "Now, I want to see something."
The woman looked even more scared as you moved her around, "Did you think you would get away with this, sweetheart? I know these girls share stories of me, so there's no way you didn't hear about me."
"I swear, I didn't know the boss was married...I hadn't heard anything..." She was wide eyed, shaking a little. You laughed, "Come now, Atsu, are your girls hazing each other?"
He shrugged, "You know I don't pay that much attention."
You stood quickly, dragging the woman backwards and bending her painfully over the small table behind her. She gasped, eyes going wider if that was even possible. Atsushi had seen you do this before.
Both your faces were only inches apart, your wide smile would haunt her for days, "Does this hurt you? Can you take more?" She shook her head, muttering out a quiet "no" that made you giggle, "Then know that you can't handle what my husband could do to you. Even if you were just sucking cock, he's too brutal for you to stand. So, please, attempt this again. Do it, sweetheart, on the very, very slim chance he cheats on me, I'll know you won't be walking for a few days while I file divorce."
The doubled threat wasn't lost on Atsushi, who quickly moved to drag you into his lap, "Babe, c'mon, this place needs ladies who work." He sounded calm, but you could see the emotion hidden in his movements. Atsushi didn't want you to even mention divorce ever again, let alone after you threatened his employee.
The woman ran away fast when you waved her off, "Atsu, honey, my love. Don't let me find this again. I might just kill the next bitch."
#anime#manga#tokyo revengers#tokyo rev#fanfiction#tokyo revengers x reader#tokyo revengers x you#x you#kokonoi hajime#kokonoi hajime x yn#ken ryuguji#ken ryuguji x yn#draken#draken x yn#Rindou Haitani#Rindou haitani x yn#Atsushi sendo#atsushi sendo x yn#akkun#akkun x yn
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"Oh, so we DO love Steve..." | Part X
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ SERIES MASTERLIST ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
Steve Harrington x Bauman!fem!reader
enemies to lovers, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, upside down mayhem, S2-S4, post S4 universe hot-take, end-of-the-world / dystopian setting, ugly fights turned smut (...but with hella plot). 18+
CHAPTER X WARNINGS/NOTES: t.w.'s - strong language, more angst, mention of dr*g abuse during childhood trauma, mentions of death and injuries, Max in a coma, fearful tears, shared sadness, major end-of-the-world terror talk. 18+
AUTHOR'S NOTE: As we dive deeper into just how in love Steve and Bauman continue to fall...we also dive deeper into darkness.
We get a glimpse into the childhood past of Bauman Squared.
Steve finally gets to laugh again with his kids -- and with the girl he wants to have his own kids with one day.
Dr. Owens comes back, but it's not why they expected. Erica is given the hardest burden of all. Robin & Eddie are the whacky aunt and uncle that everyone needed and basically get shit back on track while being thrown hard news. Argyle is actually just a kind dude. Nancy is pulling away, while Jonathan finally feels the gut-punching gravity of what he is losing. Jopper is still carrying the weight of both worlds.
And surprise, b*tches: DIMITRI IS BACK AND BOY IS HE SOOO BACK.
Lastly: chicken nuggets. That is all.
WHILE THIS IS A FANFICTION STORY: IT IS STILL MY WRITING. PLEASE RIGHTFULLY CREDIT ME WHEN REPOSTING OR SHARING. I DO NOT GRANT YOU PERMISSION TO POST MY WRITING AS YOUR OWN.
- MISHA @sheisjoeschateau
PROOFREAD UNTIL MY EYES BLED.
IF THERE ARE STILL TYPOS, SORRY BOUT IT. 18+
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OH SO WE DO LOVE STEVE | Chapter X
“Why do I feel like this is some sort of twisted intervention?”
Erica Sinclair stood in the kitchen next to Murray as he cooked up something to share with a table of adults and teens — plus her.
“In a way, it is,” Murray responded to her as he stirred his ingredients.
“...okayyyy,” Erica sassed, suspiciously. “...then why do you want me here but not my brother or my other friends?”
Murray rolled his eyes. Erica’s attitude was truly the one thing that could bring Murray’s entire mental empire crumbling down like a tower of cards being blown over by a gust of wind. He pointed his spatula in her direction.
“Think of it this way, kiddo,” he said through a wry, condescending smirk. “It’s like getting invited to sit at the adults’ table instead of the kids’ table for thanksgiving. And you’re the only one we’re inviting before you get to go up there and hang out with your little friends. Alright?”
Erica narrowed her eyes. “What do I need to know that they don’t?”
Sauce dripped from the spatula as he stared at her. Christ, she was relentless. Then again…at least she seemed somewhat perturbed by the idea of knowing things before her brother and their friends. That was pretty damn selfless for Erica Sinclair. She cocked an eyebrow at Murray — who squinted back at her.
“Okay, why are you not as willing about this as I thought you’d be…”
“Look,” Erica said, crossing her arms. “If I’m going to be made to keep a secret? I need to know all the facts first. Especially if I have to keep it from my brother. And Steve. And Bauman.”
Murray sighed through his nose. She was right. Mature, and right.
“I don’t want you to keep it a secret for good,” Murray clarified, speaking slowly. “I just — we just need you to be made aware of some things before we bring it to everyone else’s attention. And truth be told? Harrington needs a break. So does my niece. And your friends? They need some time with mom and dad. You do, too. But right now? You’re the party member in charge of taking on some big information before we spread it to the rest of them. And quite frankly? I’m counting on you to help me — and the rest of us — help break it to them. Got it?”
Erica let all of that land, her guarded expression softening into one of civil understanding. She pursed her lips, considering this. Finally, she nodded.
“Alright. Deal.”
Murray shot her a thumbs up, resuming his cooking.
“That’s really lumpy,” Erica pointed to his saucepan with a soured expression.
“Ohforheaven'ssake —”
__________________________
Robin had taken on laundry duty on Steve’s behalf, knowing that Jonathan intended to talk with him. Which is why she’d asked Nancy to help her with it, and it has turned out to be a good thing.
Nancy was clearly fraying at the seams. There was a lot going through her mind, and it was all spiraling fast. She needed someone to talk to, but none of her options seemed safe.
She had no idea how or when to break everything she had been feeling to Steve.
Her relationship with Jonathan was so tense and strained, any conversation shared with him had just blown up.
And her mom would need to know everything about the upside down, in order to give her proper advice…and at this rate, that option seemed to have no place in this world.
She couldn’t go to Joyce, because that’s Jonathan’s mom.
Hopper and Murray were out of the question.
She wasn’t close enough with Eddie to even consider it.
And Argyle? Well, he’d said about as much as he could say. Far more than what she’d expected, if she was being honest.
Nancy’s only other option was Robin Buckley.
“God, I swear — the air’s a disease at this point.”
Robin had sat next to Nancy on the porch, carrying the laundry basket. Nancy quickly wiped a few stray tears, which Robin pretended not to notice – even when Nancy shot her a very forced, tight-lipped grin.
“Yeah,” Nancy chuckled wetly. “It’s uhh, yeah. Plagued at this point. Thanks, Vecna.”
Robin nodded with a smirk. “Yeah. Thanks a lot, Vecna. Fuck you, man.”
That made Nancy giggle, which Robin was grateful to see. She decided to start off slow, not wanting to force anything. After all, clearly Nancy was clearly going through it. And the way she and Robin had started off? Not great. Buckley was definitely not trying to push her luck. Sure, the two of them had gotten along super well as time passed, truly becoming friends while living in Steve’s house. But they weren’t exactly best friends. Friends for sure. But not like Nancy and Barb had been. Not even close.
“You know,” Robin mused. “Sometimes, I think back to high school and how…I never really had a best friend while I was there. Not like you did.”
That made Nancy turn to look at her, curiosity radiating for her bright blue eyes.
“You and Barb,” Robin explained. “You two were thick as thieves. She always made sure to take extra notes in Click’s class for you.”
Nancy’s eyes shone with melancholy fondness. “She did…?”
“Yeah,” Robin smiled. “Always. Saved them on little flashcards and everything. She was always like, ‘I gotta make sure I get this for Nance.’ Or whenever something crazy went down in the classroom, I could tell she was just itching to tell you about during lunch or after school.”
Nancy beamed at that. She shook her head, grinning widely. “God, I swear… Barb was like — like that little old lady who couldn’t help but wanna gossip. Even though she hated drama, she loved it at the same time. As long as it wasn’t hers or ours.”
“That totally tracks,” Robin snorted. “What an icon, really.”
“Schyeah,” Nancy giggled wholeheartedly. “Yeah, she…she was the best.”
Robin watched as Nancy gnawed at her lip, feeling the wave of sadness wash over her.
“I just wish…” Nancy murmured, voice shaky. “Just wish that I could…talk to her sometimes, you know? Not just to tell her how sorry I am. For everything that happened before she…”
Nancy’s voice trailed off. Robin dared to reach over and touch her shoulder, relieved when Nancy didn’t push her away or tense underneath her touch.
“I just wanna ask her questions,” Nancy’s voice shook. “So many questions, like…like the way we used to. As best friends. About — everything. Life, family, love…friends…the end of the fucking world…”
Robin nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
Because Robin did know. Whenever she had become best friends with Steve, it had made her world significantly brighter. Her heart was full, and her soul had been lifted out of its constant anxiety-ridden state. Robin had been so closed off to bonding with anyone, especially the likes of Steve Harrington. Little did she know, that guy would end up being her truest best friend and confidant. The one she could lean on, tell anything to and count on for the rest of her life. However short that might be, given the end of the world… But she had Steve by her side, trusting him with every secret she had and her literal life in his hands.
Barb had been that for Nancy. But she was gone.
“I don’t know what to do,” Nancy’s voice cracked. She looked over at Robin with tear rimmed eyes, fighting them from falling as she bit down on her trembling lip. “About…anything.”
Robin kept listening, wanting so badly to go on a rant but willing herself not to. Because right now, it’s Nancy who needs to rant. She needed to ramble until she couldn’t anymore.
“I’ve been so…God, I’ve been so in love with Jonathan since we met and…got through all of this together. It just…just...worked. Clicked, made sense. Way more sense than Steve, but — but Steve and I, we…what we had was…it was real. Really real. Even Barb saw it, she just — just didn’t want me getting hurt, or…losing myself for a guy. But I didn’t really. Steve never pushed me to do anything that I didn’t wanna do, or…wasn’t ready for. Ever. Not once. He was kind to me, and…and I feel like…like I just… I think I’m the one who did wrong by him. Not the other way around. All because I just felt so…lost, and conflicted, and scared, and unsure, and…and…”
Nancy curled in on herself, tears falling down her cheeks as she ducked her face out of sight. But Robin scooched closer to her, enveloping her into a comforting embrace as she wept. And Nancy let her, allowing herself to lean against her.
“I told him what we had was bullshit and it wasn’t,” Nancy cried bitterly. “It wasn’t, he's not -- I was just…so fucking mad that Barb was gone. And it was easier to blame Steve, all because he wasn’t hurting the way that I was. The way that I still am. But that’s — that’s n-not — b-because he d-doesn’t…c-care…”
Nancy’s shoulders convulsed, and Robin’s heart broke for her as she held her tighter.
“B-but Jonathan had lost Will, so h-he…he got it. H-he knew wh-what I was…going through… And I-I j-just felt...so r-right with him. Because l-looking at him didn’t remind me of…of…”
Nancy choked on a sob.
Robin knew she meant Barb. She didn’t have to say it.
“I’m angry. For me, for Barb, for Steve, for Jonathan…my mom, dad, Mike…everyone. All the time. And I just d-don’t know what to do, because…Jonathan shut me o-out, and w-wanted to b-break up with m-me all because he felt like…he was…holding me back, and wouldn’t just t-talk…to me…and then S-Steve… Steve, h-he wanted me back b-but now…h-he…he loves…he loves…”
Nancy ugly cried into her palms, muffling the noise so that it wouldn’t be heard from anyone inside. Robin clung to her, rocking them back and forth with some gentle, soothing shushes.
“He loves her, Robin,” Nancy cried, heartbreak and anguish lacing her voice. “He loves her, and s-she loves him back. S-so much…b-better than I d-did…and I…I should be…so h-happy for him. And h-her, but I just…I just…wonder if I…did I…did I m-mess up…? Did I lose the p-person I was s-supposed to b-be with? I just didn’t…think he’d…move on…and that’s so…fucking SELFISH of me…”
Robin squeezed her. “It’s not selfish. It’s human. Steve is amazing. But Nancy…it’s okay that you didn’t go back to him.”
“But you thought I should,” Nancy leaned back now. She looked at Robin dead in the eye with bloodshot, red rimmed eyes. They swam in regrets, sorrows and bitterness.
“You and Eddie both thought that we should,” she said, voice croaked and upset. “Y-you both…thought that we…shouldn’t have…broken up, or…”
“You’re right,” Robin admitted, feeling bad but deciding it was best to just own up to it. “You’re right, I did. We did. Me and Eddie. But Nancy…sometimes we’re just so distracted by what seems right…that we can’t see what’s actually right in front of us.”
Nancy looked at her quizzically. Robin sighed.
“Look, when you left Steve,” Robin explained, taking her hand into both of hers. “Back in senior year, and you got with Jonathan…you two had your own journey. You had each other. Steve? Steve had no one during his — except for the kids…and Bauman. Because back then, he didn’t know yet. He didn’t know about her and Murray intervening —”
“Yeah, I know,” Nancy said bitterly. “We all know that now.”
“Just hear me out,” Robin pleaded with her softly. “I promise, I’m with you, alright?”
Nancy stared at her for a moment, finally softening her tense jaw and nodding once. Robin picked back up, on cue.
“Steve still had a lot of growing up to do. On his own. Dustin was the first to reach out to him. Well, he basically forced himself on Steve. And Steve needed that. He’s an only child. He needed a little brother to give him grief, and boss him around and pick on him. You have Mike. Steve didn’t have that until Dustin wormed his way into his life." Robin added with a smile, " ...and his heart.”
Nany thought about that, expression pensive with realization.
“Then Bauman came along,” Robin continued. “She was Steve’s age… You and Jonathan were off with the adults. He got left behind to watch the kids with her. They went through…a lot of shit that night. You did, too. But so did they. They fought off Billy Hargrove. They protected the kids, fought off the demodogs in the tunnels. They survived the night together. You know what that feels like. You and Jonathan bonded that way. Right?”
Nancy hesitates but looks back at her, sniffing. Eventually, she nods again.
“Right," Robin exhales deeply, proceeding. "So Steve… Steve had someone his age to be around, along with the kids. And that was great. Because she’s independent and badass, but also really chill and down to earth. Like, some sort of femme tomboy. Which Steve lowkey kind of needed, she really was exactly what --"
“Robin, I get it,” Nancy snapped, not wanting to hear about you in a complimentary way. At least not at this moment.
“No, hear me out,” Robin insisted, giving her hands another squeeze. “You need to hear this, Nancy, alright? You know you’re beautiful. You know Steve has been helplessly in love with you for years. That’s not even a question.”
Robin paused, shifting gears again as she refused to let Nancy look away from her.
“...but Steve had to move on. Or…find ways to convince himself that he could. And Bauman? She was there for that. She was around, during all his growth. And trust me – it was ugly. You have nothing to envy there. God, the way that they argued? The way Steve talked to her, honestly? Honestly. You would’ve slapped him. I sure as hell did a few times. Mostly verbal slapping. But I hit him a few times, not gonna lie. You’ve seen the highlights of Steve’s growth. You have seen the best parts of him, but…but Bauman was there for all of it. She got to see it all happen in real time, from the second you and Jonathan met back up with them to right now. And she owned up to her shit, too. It wasn’t her fault, by no means was it her fault. But hey, she took the hits. Many times. And she still ended up falling in love with Steve, who she swore was the last person who would ever win her over. Those two knuckleheads were relentless whenever I came into the picture. Fighting like lovers in a quarrel with absolutely zero history of affection to show for it. But still, they got through shit together. They put their differences aside for the kids, and when it came to fighting off the Russians? She and Steve honestly kept me so sane. And they kept us safe, too. Me, Dustin and Erica. They didn’t get along in the real world, but in the upside down world? They did. They didn’t even think twice. Steve grew into a way better person because of her. And she opened up a lot more because of him, and the kids. She didn’t grow up with siblings either. That’s another thing they have in common.”
Nancy took all of that in with a solemn expression. Robin let that sink in before continuing.
“I know this is…a lot. But really, Nancy…so much happened while you were gone. Those two fell in love over time without even knowing it. Shit, we didn’t know it either. That was a plot twist for all of us — including Murray. Despite what he says, that guy does not know everything.”
Nancy scoffed. “I know that.”
“Of course you do. We all do. He does, too. Especially now. Now that his niece and Steve are clearly so head over heels in love with one another.”
Nancy’s heart sank at that. She knew that it was true.
“I’m not…” Nancy mumbled, eyes downcast. “I’m not mad at her for falling in love with him. Or him. I just…can’t help but wonder if I messed up. Missed out on someone that I loved more than I allowed myself to when we were together.”
“You couldn’t have loved him more back then, Nancy,” Robin corrected her. “Because who he was then, is not who he is now. And who he is now is someone that Bauman has played a huge role in him becoming.”
Nancy sniffed a few times, bringing her knees to her chest and lost in thought.
“Do you still love Jonathan?”
Nancy looked at her, surprised. “What?”
“Tell me what you’re feeling there,” Robin pressed gently. “Why is that going wrong again?”
Nancy got defensive. “Um, what’s wrong is that he clearly planned on leaving me while I was back here being loyal to him.”
“Right,” Robin mused. “But…what about after he got back? What happened then?”
Nancy opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t. She thought about that for a while.
“We just…” she started. “...we just…moved past it. We let it go.”
Robin nodded slowly. “After all you two have been through…knowing damn well that things need to be talked about…you both really thought that was best?”
“He doesn’t ever tell me how he actually feels,” Nancy snapped. “I’m so sick of it. I always have to push him to tell me things. He just — shuts me out. Clams up, retreats. He won’t even tell me when he’s upset about something unless I make him.”
“Well then,” Robin nods. “That’s definitely on him. But what about you?”
Nancy scrunches her face in confusion.
“Why didn’t you tell him how you felt either?” Robin asks, unblinking.
Nancy stares at her, not knowing how to answer that.
“I told him that I love him,” Nancy whispers. “And that I…that we’re fine.”
Robin’s expression softens. “Do you wanna be?”
Nancy’s face crumbles. “I…I want…”
Robin waits, not knowing what to expect but knowing that it’s getting somewhere.
“I want him to love me again,” Nancy cries in despair. “I want him to fight for me, and — and love me the way that I thought that he did. That he would. That he always would —”
Robin holds Nancy again as she convulses with sobs in her arms. They stay that way for a little while, allowing the dust to settle. Nancy has said enough for now. It would all unravel itself more over time.
Meanwhile, Eddie had told Jonathan to make his way upstairs and talk with Steve.
“You’re on, buddy boy,” Eddie told him with a hard pat on the back.
So while Jonathan made peace with Steve, Nancy had finally released some of her emotions and confided in Robin.
And now, all the adults were in the kitchen as Murray made some food for the older teens and Erica. They’d asked Robin and Eddie to make sure that Argyle, Jonathan and Nancy were all going to be present for it, along with Erica before she could go upstairs and join the kids.
So here they all were now: sitting at the dinner table while Murray and Erica served them up plates and bowls of random foods.
Jonathan had watched Nancy make her way into the kitchen with Robin, newly fresh faced and eyes puffy from crying. She wore her pajamas now, having taken a quick shower and washing off the anguish from her meltdown earlier. Jonathan’s heart cracked in two, and it did even more as Nancy went to sit next to Robin. He stood up, unable to help himself.
“I got you a seat here,” he said, voice shaky.
Nancy had looked over at him, eyes cold and expression blank.
“That’s alright,” she said, voice level and cool. “We share a room.”
Nancy sat next to Robin, demeanor cool and calm and collected. She was stiff, but there was a chilling resilience to her that Jonathan had not seen in a while. It terrified him, making his anxiety spike. Had he lost her? Was he too late?
He swallowed hard, accepting it — given everyone else at the table. Hopper had awkwardly reached for some pepper as this was happening, working in slow motion as he felt really uncomfortable. So Jonathan just nodded, and Joyce gave him a sympathetic look as she placed glasses of water and tea in front of everyone.
Eddie made concerned eye contact with Robin as he poured himself some water. Yikes.
“I’ll sit next to you, my dude,” Argyle said warmly, knowing he needed to step in. Jonathan was grateful for that, but still dying inside as he kept stealing glances at Nancy — who looked anywhere except his way.
Murray clicked his tongue loudly. “Alrighty then. Shall we?”
With a thud, he set down his plate. Joyce clenched her jaw but took a deep breath.
“Lay it on us,” Eddie said with a deep exhale, sitting down on the other side of Argyle.
“Yeah, what’s this pow-wow and why is it just this group who's on it?” Erica questioned as she stationed herself on the other side of Robin.
“Right,” Hopper sighed before shoveling a mouthful of mashed potatoes into his mouth and leaning back to chew, readying himself. Everyone waited patiently.
“Here’s the deal,” he began, leaning forward and eyeing everyone individually as he spoke. “No one here is being made to keep a secret. That’s not what’s going on.”
“So then why is it private?” Robin asked curiously.
“Because right now…we need to set some things straight. Set in stone. Before we dive into our group meeting tomorrow. Consider this…a board meeting of sorts.”
Jonathan furrowed his brow. “Don’t we want Bauman and Steve for that?”
Hopper sighed deeply, rubbing at his beard. “This affects them. And the kids.”
Eddie raised his eyebrows at that, feeling nervous. He looked over at Robin, who looked just as worried.
Erica scrunched her face up. “Then why am I here?…”
“Because I need one of you kids to be level headed and vouch for me,” Hopper explained. “And for Joyce and Murray. We’ve spent a lot of time figuring this out. Weighed out our options, talked to El about it.”
“Does she know?” Nancy asked.
“Some,” Hopper nodded. “Most… Not all.”
Erica leaned forward, truly listening and accepting that she was clearly going to need to stick with some sort of plan that her friends were not going to be keen on…
Hopper contemplated his next words carefully.
“Look. Tonight, I need those kids to rest. To laugh, play some card games. Eat too much candy, and just have a good night. Soak up all the fun they can get before this mandate goes into effect soon. And before we have to go forward with a plan.”
Hopper made sure that everyone was with him on that. Off their nods, he continued.
“There’s two groups. One that’ll stay here, in hiding. Down in the basement, where we’ve already started making up basecamp. They’ll have to stay hidden. Out of sight. Quiet. On high alert. It’s a gamble. Just because they’ll be home…it doesn’t guarantee them any safety.”
Hopper took a deep breath, eyes filled with dread. He rubbed at the gap between his pinched brows.
“…the other group will have to risk getting back out there. And we won’t be anywhere that’s not swarmed and completely surrounded by the government and — god-knows-who-else, before we can get ourselves back near the largest gate that’s torn itself open and is ready to swallow Hawkins.”
Everyone’s blood ran cold.
No one was safe. They weren’t before, but now? Nothing was off the table. Everything was high risk, no matter where anyone was stationed.
“If you’re sitting here,” Hopper continued slowly, voice grave, “at this table, listening to this conversation…minus Erica and Murray...you’re in Group 2. ”
Nancy and Jonathan both felt their chests constrict, but they understood. It didn’t surprise them per se. And at this point, nothing should scare them. But it did.
Joyce looked at her eldest son, torn but knowing it had to be done.
Erica looked over at Murray, who gave her a soft nod.
Robin and Eddie looked at each other, along with Argyle, shuddering.
“Dimitri is going with us,” Hopper added.
“Who’s he?” Jonathan asked.
“Russian soldier,” Joyce told him, holding up a hand to clarify. “He’s on our side.”
Jonathan hesitated but eventually gave her a small nod. He looked over at Nancy, who was staring down at the table with her teeth sunk into her bottom lip.
“He’s got insight,” Hopper continued. “Knows what we’re dealing with, and how to handle what we’re all up against. We’ll need as many of us as we can get out there. Those of us who know the risks, and know how to navigate this world.”
Robin processed that, thinking. “So that…where does that leave Steve and Bauman?”
Hopper was quiet. The way he gnawed his cheek made it clear that this was where it got messy.
“Steve is on the frontlines with us,” Hopper explained carefully. “…and Bauman is stationed back here with Murray and the kids, along with Dr. Owens.”
Robin’s heart sank, and so did Eddie’s. They both shared a sad, all-knowing look. They knew this wasn’t going to go well. At all. They knew that Steve was going to flip his shit at just the idea of leaving you out of his sight.
“Won’t Dr. Owens have a target on his back?” Eddie asked, concerned. “Won’t that — won’t that draw more danger here…?”
That made Robin look at Hopper, wide-eyed. The retired cop looked pale, eyes full of dread.
“He has to be here in case anything happens to Bauman or Max,” he explains solemnly. “Because if shit goes south here…they’ll need to run.”
Jonathan felt sick. This also meant leaving Will behind. “But…how? How can they run?”
“That’s where I come in,” Murray chimes in. “Between me and Erica and Dustin, we’ll be able to keep a close eye out for a signal — which Will can help us navigate.”
“Because he’s still connected to it all,” Joyce explains sadly. “He still…feels it. He senses when it’s near.”
“Which is why he’ll be able to give us a warning,” Murray nods, adding to Joyce’s input. “Since El has to be out there with you guys, we’ll still have a connected source that's here with us.”
“The kids can’t do this,” Hopper adds, tone firm. “Not this time. El doesn’t count, as much as I want her to stay back. She can’t. I know that.” He looks at Erica with parental eyes. “But as far as the rest of you kids go? No more. It’s already bad enough having to risk you all staying here. But if this is how it’s gotta go down? You’re staying where there’s a controlled space, with 2-3 solid abort mission plans — which Murray knows from top to bottom.”
Erica hangs her head, but she nods. She knows this makes sense.
“As for Bauman,” Hopper continues, eyes sad. “She’s not able to get back out there. Between her heart issues and her bad shoulder and ribs…she has to stay put.”
“No, I agree with that,” Robin says, voice full of gravel before she clears it. “But, umm…I’m just…really worried that…well it’s just — Steve, he’s um, he’s —”
“He’s going to have to do this,” Hopper interjects, but not unkindly. In fact, it’s full of empathy and remorse. “He knows the ways. You’ll all need him. His stamina, his strength. He’s strong, good with a bat and can outrun shit. He also knows what to keep an eye out for, whatever comes our way.”
Eddie gulps, partially because he’s terrified about facing the underworld again…but also because he knows that Steve will be a wreck the entire time he’s gone with them and not with you. And if Eddie’s being honest, the idea of leaving you and the kids behind is killing him too. He’s especially grown to love you and Dustin over the last year.
“This isn’t open for discussion,” Hopper says, voice firmer and tone low. “Tomorrow, when we have our living room meeting, I’ll be conveying this to everyone…along with Murray and Joyce. And I need to know I have each and every one of you on our side. Those kids are going to raise hell. All of them are. And this plan is not changing. It’s either this…or we all stay hunkered down until we rot. Am I making myself clear?”
Nancy and Jonathan nodded first, quickly followed by Robin and Eddie.
“Yes sir,” Argyle spoke first, and for the first time he genuinely looked aware of just how heavy all of this stuff really is. Jonathan gave his shoulder a quick squeeze.
“Erica,” Hopper was looking directly at the youngest person sitting across the table. “I’m counting on you. I know that’s not fair, but I am. You’re tough as nails. You’re gonna have to be that way with your brother, and his friends. Your friends. You'll have to be hard...but gentle enough to get it through to him. I don’t care what you gotta do, you do it. Whatever you have to say? Say it. And if anybody gives you shit for knowing this before they did…send them to me. Understood?”
Erica looked back at Hopper with the most somber expression. But she nodded.
“Understood,” she said, voice low.
Hopper gave her a curt nod before looking over at the older teens.
“As for you guys,” he said. “We all know the shit that just went down yesterday at the fence. Bauman’s always been at the frontlines with us. She can’t be now. And Steve cannot hang back. He’s got too much strength that we can’t afford to not have on our side of this battle. And I don’t care if Bauman insists she can do it. She can’t, and she won’t.”
“And if she gets stubborn,” Murray interjects, voice fierce. “Tell me. If she tries pulling a fast one? You tell me. Capiche?”
Eddie and Robin quickly nod up and down.
“I’ll talk to him if it gets bad,” Jonathan says in a weak voice.
Nancy narrows her eyes at him. Since when do he and Steve talk?
“Good,” Joyce says with a sad, tight-lipped grin and nod at her son. “He’ll need it.”
"I'll be there for him, too," Robin nodded at Jonathan.
“Will we be able to stay in contact with them at least?” Eddie asks pathetically. “Via the walkies?”
“When necessary...yes,” Hopper confirms. “We’ll have to be scarce about it. Selective. Nowhere is safe. It’ll have to be reserved for vital communication only.”
Eddie frowned, but nodded in understanding. Robin was currently biting her palm, consumed with dread and sickening anxiety. Leaving you behind? The kids? Even Murray, who everyone had come to appreciate in their own weird sort of way — mostly because of how much they all loved you. He was an extension of you. The whole situation just felt…fucked.
But wasn’t everything fucked? Wasn’t this entire world so catostrophically fucked in every single which way, seemingly irreparable?
Was there actually an end to this nightmare? A world in which the upside down would cease to exist…monsters would go back to their storybooks and dark, twisted fairy tales…the moon would only ever symbolize light within forgotten darkness...and the sun would never hide behind the ashy debris that currently clung to the air, just outside their windows?
Despite how everything looked grim, with seemingly no end in sight…you all persisted in choosing to believe. Yes. Yes, this was going to end.
The end of the world was nearing. It was inevitable.
But it wouldn’t be your world.
***
You never really put much thought into what having a family would feel like one day.
You’d wondered. Every little girl does. In young girlhood, there’s the beauty of innocence that protectively surrounds all grown-up dreams that fuel your wildest imagination. The dreams of never having to go to school, and being in charge of everything you want. The dreams of being able to eat whatever you want, whenever you want. The dreams of meeting your future husband, and getting to wear a big white, sparkly ballgown as you walk down the aisle to your happily ever after. The dreams of being a princess in a big castle, ruling the land and having cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and tea parties everyday with your friends.
Sure, you’d had those dreams as a little girl. How could you not? It was inevitable.
But as you grew older, you didn’t really have a chance to fantasize about much. You’d been made to grow up from a very young age. Your grandmother had been there for you enough. She kept a roof over your head. Food on the table. A very generous allowance, even though you never asked for one and you’d gotten yourself a job by the age of 13 painting peoples’ houses and doing yard work. You’d even gotten hired by your uncle to do data entry for him, along with a couple of his contacts who did intense investigative research and needed someone to work remotely. You earned your own living, and you did upkeep on your grandmother’s house — despite her never asking you to do so. She was gone a lot. She wasn’t very old. Just a smoker who liked casinos and taking trips with her “friend” from time to time. A woman, who she only ever referred to as her "assistant." You knew better than to believe that, but you never said anything about it. She was a closeted lesbian — which is why Robin coming out of the closet for you had been the easiest news to take, let alone support. Your grandmother was a tough, long-acrylic-nails-donning boss bitch who did whatever the hell she wanted. You’d gone with her many times to some casino resorts, mostly staying in the hotel room or just walking around the city. It felt like living with a Mafia Mobwife. It was cool, for the most part. But it definitely meant being able to hold your own. She’d raised herself when she was a kid — and in most ways, you did too.
It’s why you’d spent so much time with your uncle, who didn’t live very far. He was home a lot. Given his line of work, he didn’t go out much. He became even more of a hermit as the years went on, and you liked that. It meant consistency. His spare room basically became your room. It couldn’t exactly be considered a “guest room” when he never had guests over. You’re the only person he invited over for company, and he loved it. The two of you got along effortlessly. His dark humor rubbed off on you early on, which your grandmother shared in but she wasn’t nearly as quick-witted as Murray. That’s where you got it from. But your dry, snarky wit was much more selectively timed than his. He was all over the place. You had solid social cues, given that you went to school and were around people often. Your uncle was definitely an oddball. But you loved him to death, and you got him better than anyone else did.
You weren’t babied. You weren’t coddled, or sheltered, or given false hope about the world. It’s why you held your own, and it’s also why you never victimized yourself. It was to a fault, but you believed it was for the best.
So when Clark broke your heart into a million pieces, you told yourself it had been a risk from the start. A gamble, just like the poker tables at those casinos that your grandmother frequented all the time. Love was a dangerous game, and it spared no one. There were winners and losers — and you’d lost this one.
But right now, in this moment, you felt as though you had just won every single jackpot that there was to win.
Because right now, you were sitting in Steve’s lap on the floor of Max’s room in his big house, holding cards closely to your chest as Lucas screeched GO FISH at Dustin. Steve’s hand was in plain sight, and if you were a cheater you’d have him beat in seconds. But you didn’t need to win a stupid card game…because you had won the greatest game of all: life.
El and Mike were cuddled up close to each other, giggling and being young teens in love. In a normal world, you would assume it to be puppy love between them. But this world wasn’t normal, and the shit that they’d been through together wasn’t any different than what you and Steve had been through together. It was real love, and you let them be that way.
Lucas was seated next to Max in her bed, holding her hand and laughing like a kid again. Dustin was hoarding all of the candy from his backpack (so much for sharing) and laughing like a buffoon. He bickered with Steve and the kids as usual, but something about it was just so…bright. Hearty laughter bounced off the walls, and there were so many times that Steve had belly laughed — along with you and the other kids — that you’d all lost count.
Sometimes, you swore that you saw Max’s lips twitch. As if she could hear you all in her coma, wanting to laugh along with everybody. Lucas would talk to her as if she could hear you all just fine, squeezing her hand and kissing her forehead while showing her his hand in cards. Dustin even gave her a sleeve of her favorite candy — just for her. He might not have basic manners with the rest of you, but Max? Always.
Will was keeping score, seated next to you and Steve with the biggest smile you had ever seen him wear. He laughed hysterically the entire night, even going as far as verbally expressing adoration for you and Steve. Dustin would pretend to gag, but Will would just tell him he knew better than to think that the curly-haired smart alec wasn’t completely in love with the two of you being together. Dustin had grinned all dopey and wide, rolling his eyes but not arguing with him any further.
At some point, Mike suggested all swapping ghost stories.
Lucas had barked the loudest laugh. “How about the one we’re currently living??”
“Hey, hey,” Steve interjected. “I got a better idea. Tell your most embarrassing story. One you’re scared shitless to tell.”
You'd grinned in his arms, snickering. “Oh I got plenty of those.”
“I mean hey,” Dustin shrugged with a mouthful of candy. “If we’re gonna die, we might as well get real.”
“Okay chill, we’re not going to die,” Steve scoffed, hiding his internal worry.
“It’s possible,” Mike shrugged, grabbing another bag of M&M’s.
Steve huffed. “Dammit, Wheeler —”
Mike’s devilish grin was infuriating yet endearing at the same time.
“I wish Max could hear all of this,” El said with a tinkering laugh.
You gave her the warmest of smiles and a wink. “Trust me. She does.”
“Hell yeah,” Lucas smiled wide, squeezing Max’s hand. “I’ll even tell one of her stories, for her.”
“...dude, she’s gonna kill you,” Dustin warned him, but there was a smirk lifting at the corner of his lips.
“I’ll go first,” Will announced, laying on his stomach as he ate some popcorn. “One time? I was asleep in bed but I woke up because I heard Jonathan moaning so loudly — like, disturbingly loud —”
“Okay, maybe I needed to lay down some ground rules here —” Steve starts with a very tight voice as you snorted into your palm.
“Just hear me out,” Will laughs, holding a hand. “I thought it was with a girl —”
“William,” Steve scolded.
“But he was in the bathroom,” Will talked over him. “Shitting his brains out.”
Dustin cackled while Mike audibly expressed disgust while laughing at the same time. El looked shocked, giggling hysterically into her hand.
“Damn, that bad?!” Lucas roared.
“He lit every candle in the house,” Will cackled. “Mom went to use it shortly after him and came barreling into our rooms to ask us in a panic what had died up one of our butts!”
Steve collapsed into you laughing, and you couldn’t even breathe from laughing so hard. It was that sort of deep laughter that’s so painful because it’s quiet before you’re able to finally erupt with loud laughs that help you come down from a high. All the kids were a fit of cackles and giggles, too. Erica made her way into the room finally, jumping right into things and bringing cookies with milk. All of you exchanged stories, allowing yourselves to only cry tears of joy. It was exactly what you all needed, long overdue.
And for the first time in ages — none of you thought about the upside down, or the impending doom that awaited you just outside of the Harrington house throughout all of Hawkins.
That night, you and Steve tucked every single of your kids into their assigned sleeping bags and cots. Lucas stayed with Max in her bed, asking you sheepishly if that was alright. You’d nodded, along with Steve — more than approving. And given you both would be chaperoning that night in the same shared room, you also let Mike and El cuddle up together in a sleeping bag.
“Hands outside of the covers, Wheeler,” Steve warned him, but he gave him a wink — adding please at the end. Even Mike gave him a smile and nod, like a little kid who felt called out but also didn’t have any intention of disobeying.
Dustin and Will joked in high pitched voices about being bunkmates with their sleeping bags next to each other, given they were the two singles of the group. Technically, Erica was too. But even if she wasn’t, she would still demand her own space. She had situated herself on the floor beside Lucas’s side of the bed, not planning to give him a hard time for a good while given what was in store for everyone tomorrow.
As for you and Steve — the two of you had stationed yourselves in the center of the room, closest to the door. That way, you could see all your kids at any point during the night and also be the first to fight off any harm coming your way, should danger lurk on the other side of the locked bedroom door.
Steve ruffled Dustin’s hair as he dozed off, earning a sleepy little “hmph” from him. After he made sure all of them were comfortably settled in for the night, he crawled over to you. His nail bat was propped somewhere nearby — ready to be swung into action if need be. But the need for it that night never came.
You curled into Steve’s chest, breathing in his clean, masculine scent and allowing it to fill all of your senses. Sighing contentedly, you felt a rush of warmth wash over you as his lips pressed into the top of your head.
“I love you so much,” he whispered.
“I love you more,” you murmured in the softest of whispers.
You felt him chuckle against you. “Impossible,” he breathed into your hair, pulling you so close to him you might as well be the same body.
And had you not been so completely relaxed in his arms, you might have fought him on it. The whole "I love you more" thing. In fact you definitely would have. But you just hummed, dozing off in his strong arms and allowing sleep to find you.
***
Waking up had been beautiful. The sun was even more hidden than usual, plagued by the new world coming into fruition. But despite the lack of sunshine outdoors, you felt as though it shone through the entire room as all the kids woke up and whispered to each other. You pretended not to hear them when they talked about you and Steve. Because if you were being honest? You’d been dying to hear their uncensored thoughts. If they thought that you weren’t listening, they wouldn’t hold back from saying what was actually on their mind.
Turns out? All of them wanted this. The two of you together. They laughed about how some of them thought that Steve was going to end up with Robin at first.
“No way,” Lucas shook his head in a confident whisper. “Those two? They’re like brother and sister.”
“Yeah, but Bauman’s so out of his league,” Mike whispered back.
“She is not,” Will added in a defensive whisper.
“She so is,” Mike whispered indignantly.
“No way, Steve’s awesome,” Dustin defended in a whisper.
“Yeah but like,” Mike whispered, pondering with a sigh. “I mean yeah. He is. I like him. He’s cool. Way cooler than I thought he was at first. But Bauman’s literally a badass. She doesn't care what people think.”
“Steve doesn’t care anymore,” Erica chimes in, speaking softly. She’s actually pleading Steve’s case and it’s adorable. “He used to. But when we were down there with the Russians? And he had to wear that stupid sailor outfit for work?…”
“Oh my god,” Dustin snickered. “That shit was so funny.”
“He looked like Shirley Temple from the Good Ship Lollipop,” Lucas snickered back, and Will had to shush them so that they wouldn’t wake you up.
“My point is,” Erica continued with sass. “Steve doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of him now. I mean…he gave her hell the whole time I was around ‘em.”
“I still don’t get that,” Mike whispered.
“Me either,” El added quietly.
“What do you mean?” Dustin whispered in confusion. “I told you guys the whole story. That once upon a time ramble I had to sit through when Murray basically went on to give us an entire rundown on the two of them?”
“Well duh,” Mike whispered in annoyance. “I know that. But dude…she’s…like, she's...”
“Hot.”
Everyone went quiet, and you stiffened as you held back laughter. Because the person who had called you hot? It was El.
“Bauman is hot,” El repeated.
Eventually someone snorted. Then, they all did. You bit back laughter, blushing into Steve’s chest with your face kept hidden.
“You’re hot,” Mike added to her in a coy whisper.
“No, you are,” she whispered back sweetly.
“Enough,” Erica whispered definitively.
“Max thinks that Steve is hot,” Lucas scoffed.
“He is,” Erica and El said at the same time.
“Hey,” Mike whined, and they all shushed him.
“Face it, dude,” Dustin whispered flatly. “He is. I wish I looked like him.”
“You look great, man,” Will assured him. “You got a girl like Suzy. You gotta be a stud to catch someone like her.”
Dustin had blushed at that with a wide, dopey grin. “Think so?”
After listening to them chat some more, eventually Steve started to stir. He’d told them good morning, to which Dustin all too happily responded with a very loud good morning back —- making Steve audibly groan and bite back curse words. The kids all snickered.
Will started handing out drawings out to everyone. You all had been sketching and drawing together in your assigned room earlier the day before, while Steve had been getting Max’s room ready. Will had told you all to draw a picture of someone else in the party. He’d even chosen who was drawing who.
Will and Lucas drew each other.
Mike and Erica drew each other.
El and Dustin drew each other.
And you drew Steve, before he joined you all and eventually drew his original art piece of you while you all played a round of the Game of Life.
Here you were now: holding your drawing close to your chest, and wiggling your eyebrows at Steve. He gave you the most adorable smirk, his cocoa brown eyes still a bit sleepy and his perfect hair the sexiest case of bed head. He stretched, toned arms flexing and his white t-shirt clinging to his muscles in all the right places while being loose enough to wanna rip it off of him…
Not the time, Bauman, you mentally scolded yourself.
Steve had reached underneath his pillow to fetch his drawing of you, holding it to his chest and sitting across from you — crossed-legged and shooting you a wink. All the kids mirrored you both, sitting opposite their assigned art piece subject with throaty giggles and snorts.
Will looked at everyone excitedly, like a proud art professor, ready for his classroom to partake in show-and-tell.
“Alright,” he smiled. “Everyone ready?”
“Yeah, you go first, Byers,” Steve nodded at him with an encouraging grin.
Will blushed. “Oh…well…I mean…I should go last. You guys first. On the count of 3, everyone turn your photos around to your partner.”
Mike snorted as he stared down Erica. “Howdy, partner,” he drawled in a fake accent. El giggled, and so did Lucas.
Erica shot Mike a wry smirk. “Easy now, cowboy.”
“Bet you made me look like a total loser,” Mike snickered.
“I don’t have to draw you to make you look like that,” Eric’s said in the most sugary sweet, sarcastic voice.
“Okay snarkbutts, settle down,” Steve scolded lightly in a groggy voice, no heat behind it. “Will has the floor. William: proceed.”
Will saluted him. “Alright. Count of 3.”
“Please tell me you gave me teeth,” Dustin mumbled lowly to El.
“One…”
El shrugged. “I dunno.”
Dustin narrowed his eyes.
“Two…”
Steve gave you a coy look, asking in the lowest of mumbles, “How big’s my hair?”
You grinned like a devil, your voice lower. “Not as big as your other best trait.”
Steve lifted a very cocky eyebrow with a deepening grin.
“Three!”
Everyone turned their papers around, and a soft silence fell over you all minus a few little reactive intakes of breath.
Dustin had drawn El with a million eggo waffles in the sky around her. She looked like the most adorable cartoon character, with anime eyes and full cheeks. Her hair was shorter, the way she’d looked back in ‘83 whenever she’d returned. But it wasn’t slicked back. It was free, curly and a little wild. Her smile was innocent and childlike, and there was a policeman in the back waving. Hopper.
El had drawn Dustin with his signature cap and his big toothy grin — which made him beam, because she did give him teeth in the drawing after all. And in this drawing, there were bubble boxes above him that read all the quotes she associated with him, like Steve! and She’s our friend and she’s crazy! and Shit shit shit shit shit!
Mike had drawn Erica into a comic strip. He showed her as just a wee tike, then at Scoops Ahoy with an ice cream cone, then playing DND. The last image of the strip showed her with her arms crossed and a triumphant smile, with a banner behind her that read Welcome to the Party. (…as Erica looked at it, she felt the most unfamiliar warmth seep into her bones and the joyful sting behind her eyes sent her into pure shock.)
Erica had drawn Mike on his bike, riding through the neighbor with his backpack and a flashlight. His dark hair blew in the wind, and there was a thought bubble above him with little heads that resembled all of his best friends. Above him and the thought was a quote: “Mike Wheeler: nerd, snark machine and superhero to all.” (…Mike felt so emo, he didn’t know what to do with it.)
You had drawn Steve in a very chic sort of hot anime-like way. It honestly looked like an actual character that existed in an anime universe. In the drawing, Steve held his nail bat in one hand and a McDonald’s happy meal in the other. He didn’t quite understand that part at first — until he spotted behind him, there was a Winnebago. Six familiar faces, very stick-figure-esque, stood there waving. You also stood there, with a quote above your head: “six-piece nuggets, coming right up.” Steve breathed the fondest of chuckles as he took it all in, wanting to laugh and smile and cry and tackle you with his kids all at the same time.
Steve’s drawing of you was more adorable than you ever thought him capable of drawing. You were the cutest little cartoon, backpack over your shoulder with combat boots — but you were wearing the most beautiful dress. It was yellow, which complimented the happy blue sky behind you. Yours and Steve's favorite colors combined. There was a big house behind you, with seven other stick figures that looked an awful lot like Steve and your six nuggets. And right next to you, there was a dictionary-esque definition of you:
BAUMAN (Pronounced bow•men)
A professional love-life ruiner; cute but psycho; hardcore but soft; too smart for her own good; humor darker than the dark espresso she drinks straight, because she’s a sociopath; also hotter than said cup of coffee; terrifyingly beautiful from the inside out; my mortal enemy turned favorite person; the girl who makes everything make sense; someone I can’t fathom living without, and can’t believe I ever thought I could; the love of my life, in this one and the next and so on, so long as she’ll have me.
You had never felt so full in your entire life, and neither had Steve. The two of you just stared at each other’s drawings. Grinning, glassy-eyed, chuckling, aching, filled with every ounce of joy and every ounce dread — all at once. Neither of you could speak, but neither of you had to. Your eyes, along with his, spoke volumes. They said everything there was to say, just as much as your sketches did.
Lucas had drawn Will in a wizard’s outfit. He held a tall, majestic scepter — with a large hat on top of his head. Surrounding him was a large swirl of colors, whimsical and light, painting a galaxy of sorts. And in this galaxy, there were little floating stick figures with all his friends’ names above them. Will was smiling in the drawing, with his hands in the air and on top of the world. Literally, because in the picture he was standing on top of a globe.
As for Will...he had drawn Lucas at a basketball game. He was scoring the winning basket, and an entire crowd cheered behind him. All of you were there. Will was there, next to all his friends. You and Steve were next to each other, along with his mom, Jonathan, Nancy, Argyle, Eddie, Robin and Hopper. Even your Uncle Murray.
And Max…that’s where Will’s drawing got unique.
She was piggybacking Lucas, as he jumped and shot the winning score of the game, her laugh radiating through all the pens and crayons and markers that Will had used to sketch her. She was alive, as were the rest of you. Very much alive.
Just as you all were right now, inside one of Steve Harrington’s many bedrooms in his big house with no parents.
No matter what doom was swiftly approaching — no matter what monsters were looming underneath the surface, and already roaming the real world — you all were together. You had each other.
You always will.
***
Late morning upstairs has been kind to you. It's been light. Hopeful.
There’s something about walking downstairs that makes the energy shift. It sends an odd sort of chill up your spine, despite Steve’s arm draped securely over your shoulders as you wear one of his large gray hoodies with your bad arm in a sling. You feel a certain pang in your chest as the kids follow you all down into the kitchen…but this time, it’s not because of your heart arrhythmia.
As Hopper and Joyce smile at you all in the kitchen, greeting you warmly and having prepared a table full of pancakes that had smiley faces decorated with whipped cream and chocolate chips and strawberries on top — something about the scene frowns at you. A deep frown that you’ve seen on everyone’s faces whenever there is bad news waiting to be shared.
Your uncle is coming over to hand you a hot cup of decaf coffee, winking at you and Steve as he gives him a tight shoulder squeeze. He’s moving past you both towards the man named Dimitri, who is walking in from the living room. Murray brings him over to introduce you.
“Dimitri, this is my niece,” Murray grins.
You shake his hand firmly with your good arm, smiling gratefully. “Heard a lot about you.”
“You as well,” the man says with a genuine smile, kind vibrant eyes and a thick Russian accent. He’s definitely seen some shit.
“And this is Steve,” Murray gestures, a bit of a coy glint in his eye. “Her boyfriend.”
Steve blushes, a soft smile gracing his features and shining through his eyes. He wholeheartedly adores being called that out loud for the very first time: your boyfriend.
Your uneven heart skips several more beats, which typically would raise a lot of concern — but at the moment, you’re too fucking happy to care or pay it any mind. You watch Steve flash his signature charming smile and reach out to firmly shake hands with Dimitri, who is looking back at your handsome boy with the widest grin. The masculine exchange of lighthearted friendly words between the two men makes your stomach dance for some reason, especially as your uncle chuckles along with them.
This is completely uncharted territory for you. Nothing about this moment is familiar. But you could really get used to it. It’s new. And you adore it.
Dimitri meets the kids, who all take to him very well. Especially El, who seems to already be familiar with him. Likely because of Hopper. Jonathan and Argyle are being introduced to him by Joyce, while Eddie is rounding the corner with a big stretch and yawn. Steve shoots him a smirk as the metalhead makes his way over for a big ole bro hug, whispering something to him that makes Steve snort while Eddie grins like a devil. Steve swats at him playfully, successfully smacking him as Robin walks in with Nancy close behind. Steve’s quirky platonic soulmate makes her way over to you with a warm smile, swinging an arm over your shoulders so that she’s nearly headlocking you in a hug. She’s a bit taller than you, by just a couple inches, so it gives her some upper hand. You’re chuckling lightly, nose scrunched and tightly winding your good arm around Robin’s waist as you smile back at Nancy. Her eyes are still sad, a bit lost. But there’s no animosity there, at least not that you see. She looks at you shyly, timidly…but with utter kindness.
Unbeknownst to you — Robin had suggested to Nancy that she stay with her last night in Steve’s room. For Nancy, that had been…hard. Necessary, but hard. For multiple reasons. For one thing — the last time she’d slept in Steve’s room, she had been his girlfriend. Being asleep in there 2 years later without him, now as his ex, brought back a flood of memories — bittersweet and haunting. Being in his bed, twisted up in his sheets, felt wrong. But she just couldn’t bring herself to sleep next to Jonathan that night. Not yet. Not after everything that had unfolded. So Robin had stayed up talking with her, having a heavy heart to heart. But it turned out to be exactly what Nancy needed. Just what the doctor ordered. Robin Buckley had unintentionally become a nurse of sorts over the last several months, and maybe even somewhat of a therapist. Although — Argyle sort of had her beat in that department earlier that afternoon. But he was the much simpler kind. Whereas Robin got deep, given her innate gift at rambling until you were given no choice but to cut her off because your most honest thoughts were yanked out of you as you were made to listen to her ranting. Nancy had cried some more, but she’d also laughed. A comforting mixture of both smiles and frowns were shared between the two unlikely friends. Robin wasn’t Barb, nor would any other girl be that kind of friend to Nancy. Robin was very different from Barb. However, her heart was just as loving. She loved hard, and it showed. She let Nancy pour her heart out, pouring some of her own out in return. And somehow…somehow…it brought Nancy some newfound peace and understanding.
So as she looked at you now, having seen you come downstairs with Steve and the kids — now introducing yourselves to the new Russian house guest, and sharing a special connection with Eddie and Robin in a way that only settled couples so effortlessly did — Nancy could see something in the two of you that she’d not known Steve capable of being while she in a relationship with him. And while she selfishly ached for her younger self who’d missed out on having that with him (and sometimes still found herself pining after), she selflessly began to feel happy for Steve. And she even began to feel some happiness for you. Not completely. Not yet. She couldn’t quite commit to making full peace with it all, given that healing takes time. A very long time. But as time continued to pass, which Nancy hoped you all would still be granted given the circumstances of the crumbling world, she knew that she would eventually get there.
Murray and Dimitri were saying something funny, making Hopper and Joyce share a hearty laugh with the two of them while the kids were asking the new gentleman a million questions. Steve made his way over to you and Robin, hugging you both — and Eddie threw his arms around all of you, resulting in fond groans and grunts from you all along with big smiles.
Nancy and Jonathan made unintentional eye contact as this happened, but Dustin shouting GROUP HUG! snapped their focus away again. The boys all bear hugged you guys while El and Erica were already pouring syrup onto their pancakes.
Eventually, you all sat down to enjoy a feast. And while it tasted so deliciously sweet…the bitter aftertaste stemmed from looming doom that creeped just beneath the surface of your feet. The energy shift was still felt, and despite the warmth of homemade pancakes and Steve’s hand on your thigh…your blood ran cold.
***
It was the early afternoon that finally unveiled the darker energy shift you had all been sensing since that morning, after you left the comforting quarters of your little family sleepover.
Everyone was now seated in the living room now — the way you always were, when it was time for you all to have a group meeting and listen to Hopper go over a plan of sorts or give a rundown to the household. Except this time, Dimitri was here along with Dr. Owens. It wasn’t like all the other times. This was different. Very different.
This one scared you.
Maybe they all should’ve. All these talks that centered around the end of the world. All these household meetings about the impending doom that came with said end-of-the-world. But somehow, you’d grown accustomed to them. Comfortable. It meant you were all still alive and that you all had something worth fighting for. And it had always meant there would be another meeting.
But there was an unsettling sort of feeling of finality to this meeting that set it apart from all the others. And as Hopper stood with both Joyce and your uncle Murray…you felt goosebumps scatter up and down your arms and legs, regardless of Steve’s warm oversized hoodie and your leggings and socks. Their faces were somber, a bit grim. Murray kept his arms tightly crossed while Joyce fiddled nervously with her hands. Even Hopper, ever the strong and firm type, looked nervous. Maybe even afraid.
They spoke all slowly, taking their time with why everyone was there — why Dimitri was now in the picture along with Dr. Owens — and what all needed to be discussed. And the longer they spoke, the thicker the air got. Tension spread around the room. It was especially evident as none of the kids were making a sound. They hadn’t uttered a single word. Not one of them. The adults had the floor, and when they asked Dimitri to stand with them, you all knew this was going to go in a bad direction.
So when they all told you the plan, looping Dr. Owens into the picture and why he not only was here for this talk — but here to stay — the gravity of the current situation landed.
You all felt your souls plummet to the deepest depths of your stomachs with a hard thud, as Hopper revealed two large whiteboards. They both had entirely different detailed layouts…and beside each one, there were two separate lists of names.
One list of names would be at the frontlines. The people who would be diving head first into the upside down and all of its perils.
One list of names would be hiding out here. The people who would maintain home base, helping operate things from the other side in the real world, while risking the chance of being found, caught and killed.
Both sides were at risk. Both teams could die. Both groups might not ever live to see another day, or each other, ever again.
As Steve stares at your name, along with the names of all of his kids aside from El, on the opposite whiteboard from his own name…he feels bile rising in his throat. His stomach twists into knots, deeply tangled with unbearable anxiety and anguish. His mind races, but his lips don’t move. Fear paralyzes him, rendering him speechless as the adults keep talking and gesturing to the boards. The castle on a cloud that his dreams have just began to build for the two of you, walls high and protecting you both along with his kids — his family — was drifting away from him. And all he could do was watch it drifting further and further away, into the void, as he stared into space.
You felt his grasp on you instinctively tighten as his muscles stiffened. Steve was rigid against your back, and you were grateful that he couldn’t see your face right now. You were sitting between his legs on the longest part of his couch, facing the same direction as you took in the whiteboards while absorbing all the information that was being relayed to the group. With a harsh swallow, you risked peeking at everyone else’s reactions — quickly scanning the room with your eyes.
Mike’s usually sour expression looked far more sad than it usually did. He only ever looked like that when El was in danger, or things were spiraling out of control. He sat on top of the coffee table with his elbows in his lap, crouched forward and staring a hole into one of the whiteboards. Dustin’s mouth was agape, and his unusual silence was loud. He hadn’t said a word from where he sat on the couch next to Erica. Will sat on the other side of Jonathan, brow furrowed and heart blue. He knew the risks being taken, and it hurt his soul seeing that he would be apart from his mom and brother. He felt as though he always had been, ever since this all began, and it seemed to be a never ending circumstance. Lucas was taking it all in from his seat on the leg of the couch, hands wrung and expression reserved — but defeated. He’d really grown into a young man this past year, and he’d been taking so much in stride. But even so, he looked conflicted. Really conflicted.
After taking in the kids’ reactions, your eyes swept over to Robin and Eddie. She was seated in the giant loveseat, per usual, with Eddie perched on the arm of it. You narrowed your eyes as you caught sight of Robin fiddling her thumbs, eyes darting up and down from her fingers to the adults with the whiteboards. Eddie was bouncing his knee anxiously, nibbling at his fingernails — which were already bitten to stubs. While the two of them looked to be taking this hard, the way that the rest of you were…they also seemed to be absorbing it a bit differently. As if maybe they had a hunch about it already…
It wasn’t until Erica stood up to sit by Lucas with zero prompt that you felt slightly suspicious. Because as she did, Robin shot a very quick tight-lipped smile in Erica’s direction with eyes that radiated sympathy. Did they know this was coming? Is that why Erica had come upstairs with the cookies and milk later than the rest of the kids?
You sighed through your nose, focusing back on Hopper as he gestured for Dr. Owens to stand up with them. The older man made his way to the center of the tense room, hands dug deeply into his pockets and wearing a very sympathetic smile.
“I’m really grateful you all have put a lot of faith in me, despite everything,” he said humbly. “Truthfully, it’s not owed. I know that. Still…I promise you’re in good hands with me. Not those guys out there. Hence why I’m here. And I know you’d have already figured out by now if I was still working for that side of things. Between El and Will, and all of you crazy smart folks, I’m outnumbered.”
He added a light chuckle at the end that nobody returned. Dr. Owens sighed, taking no offense. He knew this was not going to be taken well.
“I’m in this fight with you,” he said, stronger than how he spoke before. There was conviction in his tone that he never really used, and it only heightened just how severe things currently were. “If it were up to me? None of you would be out there. I’d be out there on the frontlines. But…given Max’s comatose state, and Bauman’s heart condition, I know I’m needed here. Which is just as big a risk that’s being taken out on the battlefield, because we’re staying in Hawkins as the evacuation notice and mandate goes into effect. The city will be swarmed with government officials who are all behind this. We’ll be surrounded from all angles. No one is safe.”
You’re pretty sure that Steve had stopped breathing at this point, and the veins that prominently stuck out from his arms tightly wound around you made your throat close up.
“I’ll be here to monitor Max, along with Bauman. I’ve got plenty of medication to help steady the heart arrhythmia, and anything vital needed for a medical emergency — on anyone’s behalf, not just Bauman’s and Mayfield’s.”
“But…what happens if…”
A tight voice made everyone’s heads whip in its direction. It was Dustin speaking, eyes wide with fear. He wasn't being his usual cocky, overly confident self. He looked and sounded genuinely fearful.
“…what happens if we’re caught? What do we do? Where do we go?”
Murray sighs, stepping forward. “We’ve thought about that. Right now, there’s only 2 options. But they’re solid. The best we’ve got right now. One more than the other. See, look —”
Murray went into detail about an abort-mission plan, but it sounded distorted in your ears as the gravity of the situation weighed down on top of your shoulders: you were all splitting up. And this time might be the last time.
At some point, Mike had started to finally come to life. His snark was returning, but even he wavered and the fear in his voice wasn’t concealed. Hopper and El had to level with him, which only flustered Mike and caused him to stutter. They had him beat, and he knew it. He wanted to storm off, but Erica had told him to sit his ass down and listen. It was so unexpected that he did as she said. But your own brain was playing it all in slow motion. As Will began asking questions with Dustin, you could see how Lucas had looked like he wanted to ask Erica if she might have already known something — but he didn’t. Dr. Owens was saying something about Will being tied to the other side of things and being the assigned “El” of their group opposite of her, which fired up Mike as he demanded to know why the hell that required him to be out of the group heading to the frontlines alongside his girlfriend. Before Hopper could even respond, Eddie was jumping into action along with Jonathan — coming to the retired cop’s defense. That only bewildered Mike more, which fueled Dustin’s confusion into high gear as he made arguments alongside Mike. Lucas had thrown his voice into the mix, but when Erica’s was louder — telling them all to listen, for the love of god listen, and Lucas stared at her in silent bemusement. Will was weakly pleading with them all to please calm down, along with Joyce, who shot Argyle (of all people) a desperate look, and he made his way over to sit down next to Will and tell him it was going to be alright.
“NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS ALRIGHT,” Mike cried, angry and sad and scared in the way a child made to grow up too soon has every right to be.
“Mike, please,” Nancy’s voice trembled, her blue eyes glassy.
“Nancy, this isn’t okay!!!” Mike wailed.
“M-Mike,” Nancy stammered, her own emotions giving her a shake she couldn’t stop. “Just l-listen to me…”
“No, you never listen to me!!!” Mike bawled. “Never!!!”
“Hey hey, Wheeler, hey.”
Steve finally found his voice as he reluctantly made his way to stand up away from you and approach his kid that was having an absolute breakdown. Mike was still wailing, but as Steve approached with an unwavering look in his eye — baby Wheeler allowed for the group's assigned babysitter to actually place his hands on his shoulders and try to level with him. Mike’s face crumbled, his words not making any sense the more he stumbled over them. All that could be made out was something he was trying to say towards El — something about why and how could you and tell them I’m coming — which made Steve get a firm grip on his shoulders as he told him not to blame her for this. After all, Steve had all the experience in the world as far as wrongfully placing blame on someone else was concerned…and it made your entire body ache as you watched him soothe Mike, who just bawled and mumbled nonsense in his hold.
El began to cry, too, leaning into Hopper — whose bottom lip trembled. He bit down on it hard and willed it to stop, his eyes overwhelmed with everything that was unraveling before his eyes.
Dustin was going back and forth with Erica, but he sounded so pitiful it made your uneven heart crack. He kept looking over at Steve, begging him to understand. Please Steve, please, let me go with you. Eddie moved to immediately hold him, crushing him in more of a death grip than a hug. The metalhead mumbled into his curly hair — not this time, kiddo, not this time. Robin had a hand clamped over her mouth, emotions taking over as she barely managed to bite them back.
You stood up instantly, moving to hold Buckley. She didn’t hesitate to make room for you on the seat, letting you take her in your arms as she shook like a leaf. You gently swayed her side to side with you, murmuring quiet little words that were meant to be comforting — knowing they weren’t, but offering them anyway.
Your eyes met Jonathan’s across the room as he swayed with Will as well. His pupils were blown, consumed with dread and drowning in pure misery, and you knew that yours weren’t much different.
Mike had buried his face into Steve’s chest at this point, and it made Nancy cry into her own palms as she curled in on herself.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered, voice cracking at the end. She looked at Hopper and your uncle, eyes guilty and full of shame. “I - I’m sorry.”
Before you could even process what just happened, Nancy was barreling up the stairs. Jonathan watched her go, panicking. He looked at Will, then at you — eyes pleading. You didn’t even let a second pass before you’d squeezed Robin to signal her, standing up to bring her over to where Will was seated. You took Jonathan’s place as he went after Nancy, holding him tight as Robin leaned against you on your opposite side. Argyle kept a kind hand on Will’s shoulder, still sitting to the other of him.
“Steve, please, you die I die, remember?”
Dustin’s whimpered words had to have been the saddest plea you’d ever heard in your life. Steve almost broke but before he could he flung an arm to sweep Dustin into his hold, as baby Wheeler kept bawling into his chest. He held them both steady, letting them fall apart in his protective arms and doing everything in his power not to break down with them. He couldn’t. If he did, he’d failed them. But to Steve’s dismay…he did anyway. He ducked his head down, shaking against the two of his kids, letting himself silently weep with them. For them.
Lucas looked utterly heartbroken, which Erica noticed. The youngest Sinclair cast aside all her pride, looking at her older brother with the most sympathy and love she could have towards anyone in this world, and she threw her arms around him. He only let it shock him for a second before he held her back, a grateful silence falling over them both.
You felt tears of your own begin to brim your eyes, but before letting them fall you looked up towards the adults…seeing your uncle first. Murray looked back at you with every ounce of empathy and solace that could be found inside his dark soul.
You gave him a soft nod, silently communicating with him. I understand. I’m sorry you had to deliver this news, but I’m here and I understand.
And he returned the soft nod, lips pressed into a thin line but communicating back through eye contact and body language. I love you and I hate this. But I’ve got you.
Dimitri stood next to him, eyes somber and downcast. He was new to the picture, but having seen the other side of things and just how bad a toll this has clearly taken on you all — he mourned for everyone’s pain.
Dr. Owens had to sit down, unable to speak and wringing his hands.
Hopper and Joyce held each other, along with El. They looked at each other, devastated but steadfast.
This plan was not open for discussion.
This plan was not open for debate.
This plan was final.
And so you let the tears crawl over the edges of your eyes, feeling them skate down your cheeks as you clung to Will and Robin and felt the world sit on top of your shoulders.
***
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so as you can see, shit's getting intense. the gut-wrenching angst approaching has me overwhelmed but I'm so sickeningly happy about it. suffice it to say, Steve & Bauman are my Roman Empire and they are endgame. so if that gives you any sort of hope, given the inevitable doom that is in store for them and everyone else involved...then yay.
<3 this story forever lives on. forever and ever amen.
- misha
TAGLIST (ILYSM)
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#steve harrington#steve harrington x reader#steve harrington angst#mishas masterlists#steve harrington imagine#steve harrington x you#steve harrington fanfic#steve harrington stranger things#steve harrington smut#joe keery#oh so we do love steve#steve and bauman#murray bauman#jopper#jim hopper#jonathan byers#stancy#sorry stancy
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Sleeping Beauty-esque au where Dream wants to Stop Living but doesn’t want to go through making someone be his replacement (being Dream of the Endless is so hard, how cruel would it be to subject that role to someone else?) and it occurs to him that he is the Dreaming and the Dreaming is him so what if he just… took one of those out of the equation? As long as there is a Dreaming then technically there is a Dream even if he’s not human-shaped anymore and so one day he goes into one of the gardens and he lays down and closes his eyes and lets Dream the Person sink into Dream the Place.
Matthew comes looking for him and gets lost because his magic-raven-senses, which are supposed to always know where Dream is, are telling him he’s everywhere?? And finally he stumbles upon a body, still breathing but with moss and ivy and briars slowly growing around him, a living body being reclaimed by nature and Matther naturally freaks the fuck out, clawing at the plants and pecking at Dream’s hands and pulling his hair to try to wake him but all it does is make the ivy grow faster and he’s pushed back by a gust of wind that feels like a sigh.
Cursing as loud as a raven is capable of, he books it back to Lucienne, and it takes a few minutes for her to make sense of his panicked cawing but then she is dropping the book in her hands and rushing to call anyone she can think of, which includes both the rest of the Endless and also one particular immortal human because that’s how desperate she feels.
And then it’s a line of people taking turns sitting next to Dream the Body, gently pushing back the greenery around him, some of them sobbing when they see how the plants are starting to grow through him, and the body is still breathing but it’s decomposing, sinking deeper into the landscape, and it’s hard to tell but they think Fiddler’s Green is crying, pleading with the Dreaming itself to walk on two legs again.
I think eventually Hob, who has been coming and speaking every night in his sleep, trying to bribe and barter and goad his friend to come back to them, finally snaps when he comes and sees Dream’s body completely covered by moss and vines, looking for all the world like just an uneven patch of field, and he thrusts his hands into the earth and physically tears Dream out, standing and dragging him away from the plants that reach to take him back, and he starts sobbing and screaming about how Dream isn’t getting rid of him that easily, Hob is immortal by stubbornness alone, if Dream thinks he won’t fall in love with a goddamn patch of grass he’s got another thing coming, he wants Dream to walk with him and live with him, but if he has to marry Dream the Place then that’s what he’ll do, he will make the realm itself his husband and spend eternity nurturing it, give whole new meaning to the term “husbandry”. And the ivy is crawling up Dream’s body, trying to pull him out of Hob’s arms, but before it can cover Dream’s face Hob is kissing him for all he’s worth.
And then the ivy slows, and the wind seems to shudder, and the land is still but Hob thinks he feels a separating within it, like the red sea parting beneath a blessed hand, and it takes a moment, because so much of Dream has spread like roots throughout the Dreaming and it’s hard in so many different ways to pull it all back into himself, but Hob holds him through it, peppering his face with kisses as the earth falls away from his withered body and being a person again hurts, but Hob’s love soothes it like a balm.
And then he awakens, opening his eyes for the first time in months, cradled in Hob’s arms, with soft memories of everyone who had tried to bring him back because they wanted him back, and he is still so tired, but. But maybe, he thinks, being awake, being here, is not so bad if there is someone to hold him like this.
Hob kisses him again.
#what is this#the sandman#dream of the endless#hob gadling#dreamling#my writing#I have no idea why I did this#just#thinking about Dream and the Dreaming and how being a landscape has GOT to be easier than being a person#what am I doing with my life#I have actual fics to work on#yeet#Do I want to write a full fic of this?#vote now on your phones
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