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takingtea-and-tellingtales · 6 years

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thoughts while re-watching ep. 2x12 of Gotham

*ice puns intensify*

wow harvey, interrogating jim gordon at this trial is a little two-faced of you (i will never stop)

drink for “someone tries to say ‘oswald cobblepot’ and with gravitas”

(and then drink like nine more times for the rest of the scene)

i watched a crack-vid that played “love crime” from the finale of Hannibal over Jim and Oswald killing Galavan and now I can’t unhear it???? i also can’t find it again to leave a link here????

“detective, did you have anything to do with the murder of theo galavan?” “what? no. what? who’s galavan. never heard of him. is it hot in here? maybe you killed him, didja ever think of that???” BE A BETTER LIAR, JAMES

prosecutor voice: “jim gordon, is there perhaps a small shaky mobster being tortured in arkham for a crime YOU committed?” (yeah, yeah, oswald has committed upwards of 50 murders at this point i’m AWARE but he didn’t do this one)

okay, friends, let’s TALK about SOME THINGS:

(1) I SEE YOU, JOKER-CULT SPRAY PAINT

CALLED. OUT.

(2) This:

i should clarify. i know i’m generally very excited about pretty much everything oswald wears because he is STYLISH AF at all times. but this is different. everyone get out your shipper goggles and strap in, this is going to be a ride...

these are not oswald’s clothes.

i know this for a few reasons

(1) oswald is a much better dresser than this

(2) oswald is a much less practical dresser than this

(3) that coat is too big for him

(i know this because @tigerinkangel and i spent way way way too long looking at the few shots of oswald in this coat in the episode and we determined that the coat is made for someone taller and with broader shoulders... gee. who was oswald just staying with who is taller and has broader shoulders? i wonder.)

these are ed’s clothes

ed has given oswald not just a coat but THREE LAYERS OF CLOTHES so he DOESN’T GET COLD including a little checked scarf (that surely would match ed’s fab red coat from later this season) and a knitted toque (a hat for all you non-Canadians)

this is PRECIOUS

i want you all to image how this went down:

“i have to go, ed, they’ll find me and you’ll get into trouble too”

“where will you go?”

“just lay low for a while”

“where?”

“around”

“you’re going to be cold and, frankly, recognizable in that getup”

“i can’t exactly go back home and change now, can i?”

“well then you’ll take some of my clothes”

“your clothes?”

“yes. i think i have some sweaters...”

*cut of ed forcing ugly knit sweaters over oswald’s head as the grumpy little murder-bird complains the whole damn time*

*cut to ed making sure he has a walking stick because the umbrella is a dead giveaway but he needs something for his leg*

*smash-cut to me being trash. oh wait. that’s all the time.”

alright. rant kind of over for now.

i am HERE FOR the moment in the lab where Ed has the police scanner running and he hears news of Oswald and drops the thing (tooth?) he is holding in his tweezers and stares at the radio. I AM HERE FOR IT.

i’m slightly less here for butch’s drill-bit arm though it does give him a nice bond-villain vibe

otp: strangely enough i am kind of fond of you

(Tabitha is me trying to flirt: “you don’t suck i guess whatever”)

come on, Mr. Fries, be cool

chill out, Mr. Fries, no need for such a... frosty reception

Harvey Bullock saying “you don’t deserve these lips” is now my preferred method of rejection

“froze her?” “told you it was weird” - oh my sweet summer child you don’t even KNOW how weird this is going to get

(when will there be live penguins wearing tiny rockets you cowards?????)

okay there’s a ton to unpack in this ed-explains-the-roses-and-liquid-nitrogen scene but i’m not going to unpack any of it because i spend a whole chapter doing that in my very long fanfic and i don’t want to spoil it for y’all... i promise it’s super extra, though, and very shippy. you’re welcome.

i will, however, take a tiny moment to FREAK OUT about ed shattering the rose and saying “i don’t like being called names, detective” through gritted teeth because DAMN that’s a good moment

also harvey looking at ed in this scene is harvey staring into the void and the void staring back - i like to think he saw the riddler in that moment. i just really love it it’s super powerful okay???

jim: “what is your relationship with oswald cobblepot?” ed: “i believe the kids today refer to it as “endgame”? i admit the terminology is a little fuzzy...”

(i’m not sorry)

“saying the word ‘Cobblepot’ with gravitas: Ed Nygma edition”

penguin looks so tiny being dragged through the GCPD bullpen in a coat that’s too big for him.

also ed watching oswald get thrown in the holding cell #hearteyes

i LOVE this interrogation scene. oswald is beat up, cold, arrested, wearing borrowed clothes and he still has all the power in the scene.

HOWEVER - why does he cover for jim, here? honest question. is he still kinda infatuated with jim? his he hoping this will pay off in the long run? what’s his game here?

victor, your research is cold comfort in this hard time of illness (#i’llneverstop)

dear victor, being able to freeze someone without bringing them back is just murdering them more slowly. delayed-murder.

hey it’s me, shipper trash, back again to talk about the scene where ed and oswald chat through the bars of the holding cell.

first - the overhead shot of ed pretending to look through files and oswald sitting in the cell is awesome. just... awesome

“you doing okay? you look kind of funky” - ED STAHP he’s the head of the gotham mob - ugh he’s too cute i mean, normal things. i’m fine

sub-point: oswald’s tiny smile and laugh tell me that my above freakout is also his internal monologue

ed just wants to helpppppp they LOVE EACH OTHER (i’m FINE)

i wish we had a scene of ed leaving flowers on Gertrud’s grave that would have been nice i think

gee, i wish ed had gone to visit ed in Arkham so i didn’t have to write 100k of fanfic fixing that (jokes, i loved writing it)

Lucius Fox explaining cryogenics to Harvey is the epitome of patience. he is a better soul than any in Arkham

oh this scene in Arkham is so cringey i feel so bad for oswald (yes i know he killed lots of people just let me be sad about this)

“my name is oswald cobblepot” is gotham’s “harriet jones, prime minister”

*dalek voice* “we. know. who. you. are.”

Victor’s a cool customer in this tense lab experiment. #i’mhilarious

i’m having Fringe flashbacks watching this body melt and not in a good way

any fellow Fringe fans out there? yes? no?

why the hell isn’t there a refill order on Nora’s medication? how did that happen?

Alright let’s take a moment to appreciate the hell out of BD Wong as Hugo Strange because holy shit he knocks it out of the park.

remember how i said earlier that oswald still has all the power in the scene with barnes? yeah this scene where he shakes hands with strange you can just see all the power gather around strange like - i was immediately genuinely afraid for oswald’s safety

he’s got to stand toe-to-toe with the worst of the worst in gotham and still have the upper hand and his presence on screen makes that happen from moment 1

those pink glasses are awesome and i love them

i really like Mr. Freeze’s homemade outfit it’s adorable

why is Freeze bothering to hide the bodies at this point? like he really should just run - he has the meds and doesn’t need the bodies

back to BD Wong because i love him

he’s so creepy i love the way he chuckles through the word “yes”

he’s just got this low, rumbling voice - never yelling, never talking faster - that you absolutely have to listen to whenever he talks. such a great contrast to ozzie’s scream-crying

oswald’s freckles are very cute in this scene which is a weird thing to focus on i realize but we don’t really see them much in other scenes and they are cute

the little power-play with the tea cup - i love it. oswald pouring tea for himself, hugo taking it away. so. much. intensity. and. passive. aggression. i. love. it.

now, after all this time, nora finds the murder-basement - freaks out, then just sits there staring at the body.

harvey and jim arguing over the name is pure though i love them they are absolute disasters.

while conceptually i’m aware i’m supposed to be invested in victor fries as a character i’m just not - it was a good call to push him mostly to the background after this.

jfc the guy in arkham gouging out his own eyes i forgot about that. did i mention i LOVE all the arkham plots it is my favourite setting in gotham

ed doing a little crouch to check for the missing dead body under the table then just going “huh” is like... peak gotham. ed’s got the hang of this city

“also seems to have had a rather unhealthy relationship with his deceased mother” - hugo strange, not afraid to tell the truth we all try not to talk about

everytime the newspapers give someone a nickname i headcanon it’s valerie vale, living her best life, naming literally every batman villain

... alright folks i know it’s been a year since i finished one of these but i’m back at it on the regular now so, stay tuned if you enjoy this sort of nonsense.

#gotham #gotham ramblings #gotham spoilers #gotham 2x12 #gotham 2x12 ramblings #mr. freeze

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cryptoriawebb · 6 years

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Monster high cuz I dunno

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*I don’t entirely understand Rochelle/Venus? Or Lagoona/Venus, actually. They don’t bother me I just don’t understand where they came from?

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?*Abbey/Frankie, Frankie/Draculaura and to a different extent Clawdeen/Draculaura (in that I definitely thin Clawdeen has a crush on Lala but she doesn’t feel the same)

Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?About MH? Nope!

Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?*Um…sort of? I don’t care for Frankie/Neighthan Rot at all. To my knowledge it isn’t popular?

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*No, thankfully XD; The MH fandom, at least in my experience, is pretty chill in that regard.

Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*Uh…you know what? I’m not sure. I think I’ve grown to appreciate more ships in this fandom through art and doll photos, though I may not ship them myself.

Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?*I don’t think so? Nothing’s coming to mind.

Have you received anon hate? What about?*Not hate, per say but I did receive what seemed like a ‘scolding’ anon about Isi Dawndancer shipping. That was it though.

Most disliked character(s)? Why?I still don’t like Toralei. She’s annoying. So are her friends. Also, I don’t like Gory. However, I’d rather them than some of the sillier reboot monsters. I just cringe when I see them, they feel so out of place and sometimes disrespectful to the franchise as I knew it.

Most disliked arc? Why?Uh…there really aren’t any big arcs in Monster High. I think the closest I’ve seen is the Gloom Beach/Fearleading one from way back. After that, the writing team stuck to smaller (and sometimes rushed) narratives. I will say I was sick to death of Gil/Lagoona by the end of gen1 and I’m really not big on Boo York either…but that’s a movie.

Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?I don’t think so? I mean…C.A. Cupid is like my third fave MH character but I don’t think people dislike her so much as she’s not quite as popular as EAH Cupid? Purely because she was barely in Monster High.

Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?I don’t know, actually.

Unpopular opinion about XXX character?I…can’t think of one. Most of my unpopular opinions involve shipping ^^;

Unpopular opinion about your fandom?I think some of my sexuality headcanons differ from the fandom’s but that’s neither here nor there. I like the MH fandom a lot, they’ve been nothing but nice to me; I don’t have any real complaints!

Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?I wish there was a manga! The anime art style was super cute.As for the animated media…there’s so much now. I’m not sure what the general consensus about each one is. I do know some fans don’t realize there was a brief anime short series, one whose set up I’ve praised time and again (though still not big on the characterizations.)I guess my extreme dislike of the ghoul squad might seem unpopular to me, especially when I see a lot of folks drawing the reboot designs? I don’t know XD;

If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?I’d have nixed the reboot and focused on better story and world building for the franchise. Gone ahead with the crossover movie but given it way more thought beforehand. After that, I’d develop a side-series revolving around younger monster siblings and market that to kids instead of ruining what already existed.See here for details.

Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen…*points to above* Also, I would’ve loved to see Andy Beast receive more development. I really liked him as a character and his potential with Frankie.

Does not shipping something ‘popular’ mean you’re in denial and/or biased?No, it just means you don’t ship it. Simple as that.

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?I don’t really hate anything about this fandom. It’s a lot of fun!

What is the purest ship in the fandom?Uh…I don’t know! All my ships are weird and I have no idea what the general consensus about popular ones is. Maybe Cleo/Deuce? That’s what a lot of people say, I think, although I don’t entirely agree? (I really like the ship but I think ‘pure’ may be an exaggeration)

What are your thoughts on crack ships?Go for it! Shipping is for fun and that includes crackships!

Popular character you hate?Toralei…? Maybe…? Is she considered popular?

Unpopular character you love?Again, I’m not sure so I’m going to say either Batsy Claro and/or C.A. Cupid.

Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?Monster High? Only if I knew that sort of thing might appeal. I think half the fun of loving MH is appreciating gothic fashion and monsters. Definitely not the only reasons but it’s certainly a draw!

How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?Gen1 didn’t end conclusively. It just kind of stopped with a brief and half-arsed wrap-up episode. If it had to end I would’ve done so with the crossover movie since fans have been waiting for years.

Most shippable character?Draculaura

Least shippable character?It depends on who you ask! I think Elissabat is kind of hard to ship and Meowlody&Purrsephone too.

#monster high #meme #memes

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killian-whump · 6 years

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Me personally? I didn't find it offensive. I do when Regina comments, but that's because her comments have always seemed to actually be intended as snide. But what Emma said? It's a pretty common phrase for most people. Honestly I took it as her saying a common phrase, probably not even thinking about it because she *was* rushed and maybe flustered a bit, and Killian joked about it, because he knows it is a common phrase and knows Emma doesn't mean any harm by it. But I also totally (pt1)

understand why others would be upset about it. I'm just not sure why it needs to be a big debate that everyone is angry about. But then, I rarely understand why all the fandom wank happens, because it literally all boils down to "everyone has a different opinion and brings different life experiences to a scene/situation, so just agree to disagree and live and let live" because most of the things that fandoms argue about are so minor in the grand scheme of all things fandom. Also, (pt2)

everyone I followed (in the OUAT fandom) is someone I followed because I consider them a CS shipper. Lots of them multi ship, and I don't care, even though I can't do it when it comes to my OTPs (WHook doesn't count, since he isn't Emma's Killian) because I get too invested into them to imagine them with other people too. I just ignore the ship content on their blogs that isn't the ship we have in common. Like, plenty of blogs I followed for a specific ship in one show, have (pt3)

different OTPs than me in other fandoms, and all it takes is being mature enough to ignore that and acknowledge that we like some different things and move on to squeeing about the stuff we have in common. But yeah, I still consider you part of the CS fandom. (But then, I'm the girl who went over 3 months in high school being friends with all the other 12 girls in my grade, not realizing until the Dean of Girls essentially had a group intervention, that there were essentially 3 different (pt4)

cliques that DID NOT GET ALONG. They actually told the Dean I didn't need to be there, because I was like their Switzerland and they were all cool with me lol.) I must have good luck though, because somehow I manage to about most of the drama and wank in multiple fandoms, even though I've been almost exclusively on Tumblr Mobile without use of any sort of blacklist or Tumblr savior for over a year. I hope everyone stops bothering everyone else with the askbox dramas soon. (pt5/end)

Yeah, I’m with you. I don’t understand why everything has to turn into a debate. I mean, I see a post on my dash that I agree with or have thoughts about... and I respond to it. Next thing I know, there’s folks attacking me in my inbox for my opinions, which were expressed on MY blog in response to MY friends and... I dunno. I don’t get it. There are a LOT of folks in this fandom who have some wild ideas about things that I don’t agree with and... I mean, I feel absolutely NO need to go charging into their ask boxes to tell them how “wrong” they are. Especially when it’s not even something that HAS a “wrong” or a “right” interpretation. I literally do not give a fuck, you know?

Not to mention that what fandom opinions someone has makes absolutely no difference to the kind of person they are. I don’t care if they LOATHE Killian Jones and think whump is a waste of screen time... If they're nice to me, I’m gonna be nice to them. That’s just how I do things, and it’s served me well for nearly 40 years now, so... *shrug*

Anyway, I like your approach. We should all Be Switzerland :D

...and I hope the ask box drama ends soon, too - but unfortunately, I suspect it’ll remain a mainstay of the Once fandom (well, let’s be real, ALL fandoms) for a long time to come. Best we can do is laugh it off :)

#fandom #fandom drama #off topic #trueromantic1 #kw ask box

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rockthistowninsideout · 7 years

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16.08. Fantasy AU - Twilight AU

Digimon OTP Week part 3

Rating: General Audiences Pairing: Taichi/Sora Words: 2284

In which Sora is a witch and makes a trip to Seattle with Taichi.

Evelyn Hewett was on her way to the airport to pick up her sisters. Well, directly related to her by blood was only one of them, but who cared about that? The others were her witch sisters; if you wanted to strain a relation, then it was that created by magic, spanning the continents and connecting them in a distant yet also close way. It was rather hard to explain, actually. But she didn’t need explanations, to her it all made sense and that was all that mattered.

She reached the airport just on time, fecking traffic keeping her up. Eve cursed under her breath; she always preferred to be earlier. Pushing people a little rudely out of her way, she reached the arrival gate where a cluster of tourists clogged the gates. Another curse escaped her lips. Slow humans were not the group of people she liked to surround herself with, to put it mildly. She shoved a few more folks to the side, when she suddenly collided with someone in her hurry. Before she could utter yet another swear word, she was embraced in a strong hug. You wouldn’t assume that the red-haired girl who held Eve so tightly bore so much strength. Eve gasped a little, then wriggled out of the enfold and smiled widely.

“Sora! I finally found you! Or well, you found me. Anyway, welcome to Washington! You know that I’m not thinking too highly of national states, so I leave it at that.”

Eve looked Sora up and down, then something behind her guest caught her attention. A rather towering boy stood there, his most prominent feature was a mane of brown hair that looked as if he had just reached for the socket. His gleaming smile was almost blinding her, but she was immune against such approaches. She eyed him suspiciously.

“Do you want to introduce me to your companion?” she asked Sora, glancing between her and the boy.

“Yes, of course! Sorry that I forgot. This is Taichi.” She didn’t give any more explanations but Eve had been around enough couples by now that she could tell that both of them were hopelessly in love with each other. Finally, she gave up her defensive behaviour and extended her hand. She didn’t flinch when Taichi shook it with ferocity.

“It is very nice to meet you, Taichi. But one question is bothering me. Can you speak?” The question seemed legitimate as he hadn’t said a single word up to now. It nearly appeared as if he was solely communicating by his broad smile and the mass of his hair. Eve even suspected, grabbed by one of her silly moods, that it might also lead a life of its own.

He burst into a boisterous laugh as if he had read her ridiculous thoughts. “I like you, Eve. Yeah, I can talk but I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Ha!” Sora exclaimed and pointed at him. “You and not interrupting people! You’re the first to do and once you started talking you can hardly stop.”

He made a fake-frown, then smiled his 1000-Watt-smile again and said “Should we get going? I’m pretty hungry to be honest.”

Sora’s lips curled into a smile again and she leaned into Eve. “It’s not like he hadn’t something to eat only an hour ago. But bear with him, that’s just his nature.”

Eve smiled in return. “Never mind, I know this one. Embry’s just the same.” She stood upright and looked apologetically to Taichi. “I’m sorry, but we have to wait for another sister of ours and one of myself. They’re both on a plane from Boston that is supposed to land-“ she glanced over to the arrival table “-in twenty minutes and it looks as if they’re even making it earlier than planned. So if you can keep your hunger at bay just a little longer, I will take you all for lunch. You okay with that?”

He nodded. “That sounds like a plan. But what I can’t keep at bay is my bladder.”

Sora giggled and Eve rolled her eyes. “The toilets are this way” she said and indicated the direction. He bowed and rushed off. Sora couldn’t stop giggling.

“He seems like a good-natured lad to me. I’d say you made an agreeable choice.” Eve remarked.

Sora nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’m really lucky to have him. He’s sometimes hell-bent on getting his way but usually the plans he makes work out in his favour.”

Eve nodded solemnly, but before she could respond, an announcement resounded through the hall, pronouncing the arrival of the flight from Boston.

“Oh! Here we go! I can’t wait for you to meet Brittany. She’s just as weird as I am, but in a totally different way.”

Sora raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure if she could deal with two Evelyns at the same time. But thankfully there was also Constanze to help her out if things went really frantic.

They both turned expectantly towards the gates, where slowly new travellers trickled in, many of them looking confused and disorientated around. Only two people seemed to be perfectly familiar with the surroundings at the Seattle airport; they walked briskly through the crowd, both having a cheery smile on their faces.

“ConCon!” Eve cried out and fell around the neck of a dark-haired, average-heighted curvy girl. She winced when she was addressed like that, and Sora made a sympathetic face. This was truly a cringy nickname. As soon as Eve had unstuck herself from her German witch sister, she approached the young woman behind Constanze with a little more calm, but was delighted nonetheless.

“I’m very thankful that you don’t try to strangle me like you did with Constanze” Brittany remarked, her hair a jolly bubble-gum pink and her clothing a wild mix of every possible style.

“You’re just my sister-in-blood, not in magic, you know. I’m still very happy to see you, though.”

Eve turned to Constanze. “Please excuse my outburst. I can never fully restrain myself when I see you.”

She chuckled, then looked around their little club. “We appear to be complete. Why don’t we go and get some lunch? I’m starving, there was just a light ‘snack’ on this flight, consisting of two crackers and some crumbly cheese.” She furrowed her brows when Eve and Sora shook their heads in unison.

“We’re not complete yet” Sora explained. “We’re still missing my boyfriend. He just wanted to go to the toilet but he seems to be lost. He went there like twenty minutes ago.”

Just then a familiar energetic laughter rang over to them.

“Well, I think we found him” Eve said with an unmoved face whereas Sora dissolved into hearty laughter. The two newcomers were nearly startled to death as they were pushed to the sides when someone shoved between them and laid his arms around them.

“You’re the two laggards, I suppose? Nice to meet you, I’m Taichi.” They craned their necks up to his lofty height and were not really sure what to make of him.

Brittany was the first to regain her composure. As the oldest of the group, she wouldn’t be intimidated by someone who was still a teenager. She ducked out from under his arm and extended a hand instead. “The pleasure is all mine, I’m Brittany, Eve’s ‘real’ sister.”

“And I’m Constanze, another witch sister. Just one thing: don’t you dare call me ConCon! If you keep that in mind, we can become good friends.”

Taichi nodded, the smile still glued on his face. “Now, I’d say: Off for lunch!”

Eve raised her arm pretending to hold a flag used to lead tourist groups around, and marched off to the exit.

Eve drove on and on, first leaving the inner city and then its suburbs behind. Taichi’s glare grew gloomier and gloomier, his stomach rattled impatiently. Sora took his hand and stroked it, trying to calm him. Constanze radiated unease and irritation as well. Brittany sensed the general tense atmosphere. She turned to her sister.

“Hermione, where are you going? People are hungry, you know.”

Eve’s face stayed unmoved. “Just a few more minutes.”

Taichi groaned in response and was about to say something agitated, but a tiny nod from Sora stopped him. But she really hoped that they would reach their destination soon, wherever this was going to be. Just then, Eve took a sudden right turn at the next junction and plunged into the woods. Constanze jumped at the sudden change of surroundings. Eve just smiled. After another mile, she stopped at a gate that forbade the entrance but for pedestrians. She cut the engine and got out of the car, walking to the back. Confused, her guests followed her to the now open trunk.

“Ta-da!” She spread her arms wide and presented them several baskets and coolers full of food. “We’re going to have a picnic!”

Taichi let out a relieved laughter and Constanze sighed thankfully.

“Eve, don’t do this ever again. Food is serious business” she accused her semi-seriously while taking one of the baskets.

Eve smirked and grabbed the last cooler, then shut the trunk door. She led the way to a small clearing where wild flowers stood in full bloom.

It was one of those days when the sun had hidden behind big-bellied clouds that threatened rain, but it was never obvious when this was going to happen.

“Now, blankets are in your basket, Sora, and cups, cutlery and tableware in yours, ConCon. The sausages and pickled vegetables along with dips and sauces are in yours, Taichi, and-“ she frowned and gave Britanny’s cooler a thorough look, “-ah, yes, of course, the drinks are in yours. And I have the cake. Boy, therefore that vampires don’t eat human food, they are excellent bakers. Honestly, I could kill for one of Esme’s marble cakes” Eve explained.

Sora put down the blankets and knelt on them, helping Constanze laying out the dishes and cutlery. Taichi stood a little forlorn at the side, looking confused at the contents of his cooler.

“Erm, Eve?”

“Yes?”

“These are raw sausages.”

“I know. And?”

“Well, we need fire to fry them, don’t we?”

“Yes, I know. It’s not the first time I’m preparing a barbecue.”

“But...where is the brazier?”

Eve’s face lit up. “How long have you and Sora been together now? You don’t seem to be very familiar with witches. Sora, would you be so kind and gather some firewood?”

Instead of getting up and walking over to the edge of the clearing, as Taichi expected, Sora just fixed her gaze on a couple of trees. Low clattering could be heard, then a bundle of twigs rose out of the bushes and levitated lazily over to them. It landed right at Taichi’s feet who was too startled to say something. Sora, however, was not done yet. First she set some sticks aside, then added to his bewilderment when she conjured a small flame around her right hand and held it against the twigs, setting them ablaze instantaneously despite them being quite moist.

“See, no need for a brazier or some such rubbish. Saves us extra weight and waste. Now, Sora, have you never practised around him?” Eve wanted to know as this seemed rather odd to her.

“ I actually do, but only really small things. He’s probably just never noticed before.”

Eve shot Taichi an indecipherable look, then handed him a little bowl with a yoghurt dip and a baguette. “The sausages and vegetables will take a while over the fire. So here you have something to satisfy your hunger.” She turned to ConCon and gave her some, too. When she offered Sora and Brittany pieces of bread, they politely declined.

After a few bites, ConCon started skewering up sausages and vegetable pieces on the remaining twigs and stuck them around the fire.

A heavy drop of rain splattered right into one of the dip bowls, leaving a crater in the yoghurt. Soon more followed.

Taichi grunted. “And I have not even had my lunch yet.”

ConCon chuckled. “You are really not acquainted with magic, are you?” With a simple flip of her fingers, the rain immediately stopped.

Taichi’s eyes went as large as saucers. “You can even control the weather? Sora, why did you never tell me? That is so cool!”

Sora smiled. “Well, I’ll try to remember that for the future. But we’re not controlling the weather. Constanze has merely erected a shield dome above us.”

Taichi nodded appreciatively. Then he pulled Sora in his lap and nuzzled his face in the bend of her neck. She giggled but soon a breathy moan slipped from her lips. He kissed a line from her collarbone up to her earlobe. Her moans grew louder.

ConCon and Brittany exchanged amused glances, but Eve looked a little annoyed. She coughed. “Ehem, I’m sorry to interrupt your couple time but you’re going to have much more time, and privacy I may say, when we are back home. The Cullens were so kind to offer you accommodation. Brit and ConCon will stay in our house, but there is just not enough space for all of you.”

Taichi and Sora looked at each other, then it dawned to her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot that you are asexual.”

Eve sighed. “That doesn’t mean I’m a killjoy to all things sexual. I just don’t understand it, so if you wouldn’t mind delaying your affection for each other, you’ll later have the opportunity to fool around as long as you like. The beds in the Cullens’s mansion are exquisite for such activities, or so people say.”

She winked, Sora blushed and Taichi chuckled.

@digiotpweek

#digiOTPweek #digimon #taichi yagami #sora takenouchi #taiora #my oc #evelyn hewett #constanze schumann #brittany hewett

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thelillykane · 7 years

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uggggh i cbf looking @ the questions so! 1-10 for veronica mars and 10-20 for btvs!

Veronica Mars:

What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

People who ship Veronica with Piz like….what gives!!! Sure Piz is “nice” – a total throwaway word/phrase, mind you – and he has decent taste in music (he skipped a Yo La Tenga concert to see Veronica for like six seconds that’s dedication I always gotta give him props for that I would never miss a Yo La Tenga concert for anyone) and he knows what he wants to be when he gets older and has like The Plan or whatever and all of those are objectively admirable qualities. Veronica before Lilly died & the whole town of Neptune + the world + her two remaining best friends + her mom proceeded to fuck her over would’ve really enjoyed that I think and they would’ve been compatible. He would’ve been a “nice” run-of-the-mill, generic college boyfriend.

Fact is, they don’t meet under those circumstances. That version of Veronica – softer, less jaded – doesn’t exist anymore, especially not for somebody who didn’t even know her then. Fundamentally, Veronica needs to be with somebody who will let her tape people to telephone poles and black mail them and break the law when necessary because that’s what Veronica needs right now. She’s angry and she wants to make people pay and she doesn’t need to be with the guy who listens to her get cat called in the Cafeteria and tells her to “let it go” and that “karma will get him eventually.” This is Neptune, California and Veronica’s lived there her whole life and she’s seen practically every shitty thing the place has to offer and eventualities and letting shit go doesn’t work for her. She needs to be with someone who gets her ruthlessness and her grudges and that permanent taste of copper in her mouth. Piz isn’t that person.

Also, Veronica and Piz have two conversations that stick in my mind the first is during 3x01 and they’re watching Logan fight some guy in the cafeteria (re: taser him) and Piz doesn’t know that’s Veronica’s boyfriend so he comments, “I’m a lover, not a fighter” and Veronica gives him this sort of indulgent, I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about smile because they’re watching Logan fight and that is Veronica’s boyfriend and Veronica’s the one who gave Logan the taser to use in the first place and because Veronica knows that if the roles were reversed and she was stepping in to stop a friend of hers from getting their ass kicked she’d be doing the exact same thing as Logan. Then, Logan walks over and gives Veronica her taser back and they kiss and Piz gets this look like “Oh” because Veronica’s dating the ~fighter~ in this scenario (even though Logan Echolls is both, but) and exchanging chaste, tender kisses with him afterwards and that means that Piz, right away, is not in her equation anywhere. Because Piz would never do that. The series goes on to show us that Piz would never do that.

The second is their infamous conversation in 3x10:

PIZ: I figure, you know, I mean, I know what I like. Why waste my time?

VERONICA: Like, why bother with something not good just because it’s something?

PIZ: Especially when you know the difference, which not many people do. I mean, do you?

VERONICA: I…I think I do.

PIZ: You see, I think that’s like ninety percent of life, just knowing the difference.

And Veronica knows the difference and she’s thinking of Logan and immediately following this conversation with Piz she drives to Logan’s and kisses him with that lovesick, yearning look on her face and they get back together and Piz see’s them together the next morning in cafeteria and he’s hurt because during that conversation he thought he and Veronica were maybe talking about one another or whatever and then he realizes that Veronica was talking about Logan because Veronica loves Logan and she wants to be with Logan and Logan is her “knowing the difference” and I just don’t get how people can watch these scenes and think that who Piz is as a person aligns with who Veronica is as a person

anyway that gotta hella long but i feel strongly about this!

Have you received anon hate? What about?

I haven’t! I’ve sort-of received anon hate by proxy, which means that I wrote this and my best friend reblogged it and then received this ask, even though she herself hadn’t actually said anything on the topic and had merely reblogged my heated I-can’t-believe-we’ve-been-having-this-fight-for-years post.

Most disliked arc? Why?

I have a lot ranging from “this makes no sense plot wise” (everything that happened in My Mother, The Fiend for example) and “I will stab whichever writer did this” (the feminists-fake-a-rape storyline comes to mind for that category).

Ultimately, or at least for right now, it’s gotta be them making Meg Manning get pregnant with Duncan Kane’s child ffs, putting her in a coma, revealing that surprise! she’d been abused her whole life, killing her off, and then having the only thing left for Duncan to do to get custody of this kid be kidnapping the child and relocating to Australia. First off, Meg Manning didn’t deserve to die and Second off, Duncan Kane is from a wealthy, prominent family, had documentation that Meg’s parents were abusive, and had written documentation from Meg expressing intent to have the child raised by a distant relative. All of that means that Duncan could have easily obtained custody of the child. I get writing his character off, I don’t mind that, but seriously? They couldn’t think of fucking….any other way to accomplish it. Almost anything else would’ve been better. Killing Meg off was cheap and the storyline was cheap and it just…I’m not a fan.

There’s tons of other storylines I despise as well. For a show I love it sure did a lot of shit I could do without in my life, but this one always sticks with me because it made no sense and cost a great female character her life. Ugh.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Is there an unpopular arc that you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I’m a sucker for season six. And by “a sucker for” I mean that I’m pretty sure season six is my favorite season (i’ve only watched the show all the way through once, which amazes me, but I’m fairly certain folks). I live for episodes like “Once More With Feeling”, “Tabula Rasa”, “Older and Faraway” and I think I’ve watched season six episodes more than any other season.

I know a lot of people don’t like the season – including SMG – and there are a lot of valid reasons not to, but I think the show ending up in this place was inevitable, especially for Buffy’s character. She’d been visibly suffering from depression and PTSD in season one and in every season on, but she’d always managed to bounce back or to hide her from her friends or to keep going and not get sort of broken down by it, and in season six she loses her ability to do those things, which I find to be very human and relatable and raw. And for other characters as well, like Willow, her magic abuse and her control issues and such were shown again as early as season one, so I think her really manipulating people and using her magic in such a negative way was also an eventuality. The season made a lot of decisions that I think were unnecessary, but I think it also really cemented that the characters were human and that all the trauma they faced and dealt with built up until it was it’s own kind of monster.

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

Getting called a rape apologist for shipping Sp*ke x Buffy is not my favorite. This has died down thankfully, and I haven’t been called this (or alluded to this) in a long while, but for a solid year I think this was inescapable and highly unpleasant. As a sexual assault survivor like…yikes. Hard pass.

Additionally, while Sp*ke x Buffy is no picnic in this arena, Sp*ke isn’t the only love interest** of Buffy’s to violate and disrespect her consent and her agency, which nobody ever wants to talk about. Faith rapes Buffy in season four when she has sex with someone in Buffy’s body, someone iirc Buffy had previously sexually rejected and then Angel is kind of super yikes in that regard as well – for starters he’s 26 and she’s a minor and then there’s that whole Angel plot line where they sleep together a lot when Angel’s human and then Angel erases her memories and shit of the day (erases the day altogether), which is the same type of rape shit Willow pulls on Tara in season six.

Now, admittedly I ship all three, but I don’t like it when people won’t acknowledge that these things happened or that these are issues? Like, none of the above behavior is “okay” or “excusable” and it makes me tired. And a lot of fans act like the shows’ issues with consent and rape culture are limited solely to Seeing Red when in actuality they’re infused in almost every arena of the show from season one on (this doesn’t make Seeing Red okay at all. I’m not saying that and I don’t believe I have ever said that nor will I fucking ever. What I am saying is that it needs to be a broader conversation but)

** listen like almost every character I think violates and disrespects Buffy’s agency/consent in some manner. But I gotta limit it to just this category

#bisexualcordelia #jennie interacts with people #sorry i didn't answer all the questions! but my responses got long af so

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adelaidedrubman · 1 month

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— JOLENE, YOU CAN HAVE THEM

absolute legend @derelictheretic was kind and brilliant enough to surprise me today with this truly inspired piece of john and jestiny in matching dolly parton fashion! the flop couple has never looked more stylish, and dean is an absolute visionary i am in awe and so thankful<3

#DEAN HOW YOU FOUND THE PERFECT WAY TO CHEER ME UP ON THIS OF ALL DAYS I AM SO GRATEFUL #the dolly fits work for them they are for once truly serving #i treasure this so much #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #jestiny images #arts and commissies

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adelaidedrubman · 2 months

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—LOCAL CRINGEFAIL MASS MURDERERS WALK INTO SEX THERAPY. (template found here. | credit to @derelictheretic for both oc portraits used!)

was alerted to the existence of this incredible meme by dearest @henbased and obviously had to do it for the flop couples and try starting off a game. below cut is blank template (+ full res johnjess version for easier reading because tumblr decided to be difficult with me on preserving transparency) and tags to play if you have any failsex couples to share!

tagging: @florbelles @henbased @derelictheretic @nightbloodbix @mccarthycormac @corvosattano @shellibisshe @socially-awkward-skeleton @voidika @fourlittleseedlings @blissfulalchemist @clicheantagonist @cassietrn @firstaidspray @josephseedismyfather @cloudofbutterflies92 @stacispratt @strangefable @nonfunctioning-queer @nowandthane @risingsh0t @direwombat @ladyoriza @g0dspeeed @inafieldofdaisies @deputyash @afarcry5fromstraight @orionlancasterr @wrathfulrook + nsfw games opt in here!

#praying tumblr doesn’t do the ‘‘ignore format and throw images in post body at random’’ thing it definitely did when i saved to drafts #anyways. ignore the johnjess complaints being mixed from multiple verses. they would cross time and space to have bad sex.#i was going to say the only thing referenced in theirs that hasn’t happened on screen in canon at some point is john unsexy crying but.#ig he did cry just *before* their second fuck in wildfire so maybe that counts.#also with the private vs. loudmouth thing i wasn’t 100% sure if that meant to the general pop (brags about sex life) or with partner.#so sorta split down the middle for answering for everyone.#also clarification for faith leaning conservative slider did not mean conservative like. prudish.#she’s not taking the risks herself because she’s Just Laying There #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #oc: jenna swann #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #otp: a neurochemical con job #nsft

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adelaidedrubman · 8 months

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— HE’S AN OPOSSUM. NOT RAT.

two mass murderers and an opossum? that’s a family! and one i had the privilege the honor the absolute dream of getting to commission the fantastic @schoute to bring to life in this absolutely stunning and delightful piece of jestiny, john, and specialest little guy hank. not only did scouty produce this absolutely beautiful scene, she was a blast to work with every step. if you ever have the opportunity to commission scouty, i highly recommend — no, demand — that you take it!

#HAD TO PHYSICALLY RESTRAIN MYSELF FROM GUSHING SPECIFICS IN THE POST BODY BECAUSE IT ENDED UP BEING AN ENTIRE WALL OF TEXT BUT UM.#the way every single little hair is expertly placed with flawless detail?? (i am including the pit hair in that tHANk YOU again)#the way each expression is more perfect and priceless than the last?? (seriously i cannot stop looking back and forth between the three)#the gorgeous lighting and detail on the background??#in AWE. absolute awe.#THANK YOU SCOUTY I TREASURE THIS SO MUCH #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #oc: hank the opossum #ch: john seed #jestiny images #arts and commissies

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adelaidedrubman · 3 months

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What if the strap could prematurely ejaculate? (Or, Jestiny gets knocked down a peg.) read on ao3.

notes: if i ever accidentally posted something good enough to trick you into following this account, i truly apologize. anyways here’s part two of the john/jestiny failstrap series. set hl&s adjacent and spiritual sequel to mine’s bigger. also new year’s eve themed, i meant to get it posted then but ironically didn’t finish in time. wordcount: 3.8k warnings: explicit sexual content, toxic relationships, emotional manipulation. (neg ’em and peg ’em, the jestiny rook method.) i feel like secondhand embarrassment and cringe dialogue is something of an implicit blanket warning for all my stuff, but. i feel the need to explicitly flag it in this one. that should tell you something. (please also see ao3 end notes or post tags for disclaimers.)

As with all holidays, Jestiny would ideally prefer to spend her New Year’s Eve outdoors.

She would gladly take her midnight kisses whilst guzzling craft beer and watching fish leap from the water over sipping champagne and watching pixelated footage of a ball dropping — if only the temperatures of December bleeding into January in Montana would agree with her preferences.

And sure, a sharp chisel and thick jacket could guarantee she would still be taking home her share of trout from a frozen solid pond. A good set of crampons strapped to her favorite hiking boots was all she needed to scale the highest mountain peaks, even covered in ice. A durable tent and well-insulated sleeping bag meant she could still feel wind-nipped cheeks warmed by the flames of a real campfire no matter the season, instead of settling for the store-bought logs currently crackling in the hearth behind her.

But even a rugged outdoorswoman the likes of Jestiny had to admit the blistering, unforgiving cold of Big Sky Country winter required some activities be strictly indoor-only until the first wildflowers of spring poked up from the hard, frozen earth.

And even with all the proper equipment packed, when it came to the activities that required removing clothing…

“God, I’ve needed this so fucking bad,” John whined against her jaw, pulling her along by the arm as his other hand impatiently finished her work of centering her strap-on properly in its harness. “I want you to fuck me all night long, right into the New Year. I want you to fuck me in every room of this house, until I can’t look anywhere without thinking of you.”

What Jessie didn’t have to admit — at least not out loud — was that the spacious yet cozy faux rustic interior of Seed Ranch, with its pervasive scent of leather, pine, and woodsmoke wafting from the fireplace; the vista of sprawling snow covered mountains offered up by its grand far-stretching windows; the lurking presence of hoards of taxidermy animals around every corner, made it the best substitute she could imagine for the thrill of fucking outdoors.

Yes, it was all blatantly, dreadfully fake — but fake was better than nothing.

“I want you to take me right here on my dining room table,” John continued to lustfully monologue to himself as his thighs hit the edge of the table on his path backward with Jessie in tow, turning from their embrace just long enough to sweep an arm along its length and knock all the stray clutter atop it to the floor. “Don’t hold back. Be rough enough to break it. Just give it to me and don’t stop.” He hopped atop the table to sit, then wrapped legs around Jestiny’s waist to pull her into place. “Then I want you to lay me down in front of the fireplace. Hold me close and take your time with me, give it to me slow until I’m fucking begging. Then drag me upstairs and bend me over the railing. Pound me until I can’t stand, until I cry. Then I want you to carry me into the model plane room and…”

“Yeah, yeah,” she shushed as she pushed him back to his elbows, popping the top off of the bottle of lube clenched in her fist. “I’ll fuck you on every tacky ass piece of furniture in this ugly fucking house.” She forced an extra grumble of irritation to hide the tremor of desire threatening to slip into her words from the sight of him laid back for her with legs spread, brow slick with sweat and the dew of melting snowflakes still clinging to his eyelashes. “I assume you want me to lube it up first, though…”

“Let me,” he cooed, grabbing the bottle from her just as it had begun to drip onto sleek silicone. “I want to do it…”

She shrugged in disinterested agreement, placing her hands behind her head and jutting her hips forward as he poured along the length, palm cradling its underside and sliding along to catch the excess.

“Fuck,” he cursed, biting down on his lip as he began to pump his hand faster along the attachment. “Already so fucking hard for me.”

She crinkled her nose and cocked her head to the side. “What the fuck are you talking about?” she questioned. “It’s a fucking dildo, John — it’s always hard.”

“It’s — It’s a turn of phrase,” he huffed, tightening his grip and jerking towards him so that she near-stumbled into him. “Are you not familiar with the concept of dirty talk? Not everything has to be so damn literal. Use some imagina —”

“And why the hell are you jerking it off?” she demanded, thrusting a hand against his collarbone. “You know I can’t feel that, right?”

“Well, I’ll try to be more realistic, then,” he snapped as he leaned forward and shoved a hand between her legs.

Fingers spring-loaded with lingering fury moved to roughly pull her harness to the side, barely stilling or softening their touch before sliding inside her. His other hand remained stubbornly wrapped around silicone to pump it at a now comically harsh pace, as if to prove just how aware he was there was no delicate flesh and blood to be concerned with suffering beneath his vice grip — beginning the spectacle with a rough shove forward of its base to press against her with a pressure that did incidentally send a rewarding flicker of pleasure through hungry nerve endings.

“Fuck,” he ground out in repetitive correction, his tone wilting midway from a sarcastic hiss to a reverent whimper as he curled his fingers. “Already so fucking wet for me.”

Well, it wasn’t her fault he looked so good flushed and panting, even through the ridiculous theatrics.

“Like you got room to fuckin’ talk,” she scoffed as she reached to quickly coat her fingers with lube, sliding inside him and finding right where they needed to be with a practiced ease that made her cheeks warm with satisfied pride at her own expertise. Her thumb traced a line up his cock to find and leisurely smear the precum dewing at his tip. “Fuckin’ dripping the second I get my fingers in you.”

The surrender in his next whimper was complete, paired with a bucking of his hips to beg for more as he mirrored her steady pumping in the pace of his own fingers, thumb tucking itself beneath her harness to find and stroke her clit properly — all while still uselessly jerking off the dildo resting atop it, of course.

Well. Maybe it was useless, but she had to admit — privately — his hands did look nice doing that.

Even if the curve of his spine restyled itself into a distinctly unnatural, exaggerated arch as he regrettably regained the faculty for words. “God, yes, do you — ah, do you like how it feels inside me?”

Another stupid question. Reaching past the contrived, polished exterior to find the depths at which he was all warm silk fluttering to the touch? Delving inside him to feel the promise of all the power to reduce him to a stuttering, pleading mess pulse beneath a single fingertip?

How could she not be positively intoxicated by it? How could the rush of adrenaline it stirred be contained to anything less than electricity prickling along every inch of skin until the air itself felt charged with the intensity of her desire?

“It feels like an asshole, John,” she deadpanned, dragging her finger to tease shallowly. “Felt one, you’ve pretty much felt them all — and until science finds a way to implant a g-spot in the human finger, I’ll be getting just as little out of it every time.”

She gave a swift upward thrust for one last prod of his prostate in punctuation before she slipped fingers out entirely in the same fluid motion of her shoulders shrugging. “I’m more interested in finally getting to fuck you so good you can’t even talk to ask dumbass questions like that.”

She used the hand sticky with lube to smear a last glob onto the head of her strap as the other cradled his face, smoothing a thumb over his pouting lip as she added, “Just as soon as you ask nice.”

His pout deepened. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t play dumb now, baby. You know the drill.” She pushed him to lay with back flat on the table. “Beg me for it.”

“No,” he said testily, lifting his chin to give her a look of pure defiance. “You beg me.”

Her breath caught, for a moment — as if his words sank to snag in her chest before her mind even processed them, lunging back up as sharp barks of laughter the moment it did.

“Alright,” she sighed, breathless, as she dropped her head to rest against his collarbone and reached down to line up her attachment. “That was funny enough I’ll let you get by without the begging, this time.”

Her hips barely canted a single centimeter forward before they were stopped by a rough fist grabbing at the base of her dildo to hold her in place.

“It wasn’t a joke,” John hissed, eyes icing cold with determination, like a pond freezing over. “You’re going to beg to fuck me, or you won’t fuck me at all.”

She allowed her confused blinks to pick up pace into a sarcastic batting of her eyelashes paired with a sweet, dimple framed smile. “John, darling. My most cherished love. Light of my life, fire of my silicone sporting loins. Could you, kindly —” she scrunched her face into a scowl, “tell me what the fuck it is you’re talking about?”

“You’ve done nothing all night but mock and belittle me, and act as if you’re somehow begrudgingly doing me a favor,” he snapped. “Now you’re going to admit you want it as badly as I do,” he said, allowing his tone to melt and soften as he circled a finger around delicate, rosy skin. “If you want this, you have to beg for it.”

Oh, he was serious.

Heat flared in the pit of her stomach at how serious he was.

All the better. She loved a challenge.

“Now is not the fucking time to be a brat, John,” she growled, threading fingers in his hair and tugging in the way that pulled a needy moan to the surface to tremble in his adam’s apple. “Now is the time to be a good boy and spread your legs.”

“Oh, and I will,” he moaned, craning his neck so the pull of his hair was tautened — a dare, a meet and raise of a bet. “I’ll be so good for you, as soon as I hear that magic word.”

This time, the hand around her strap stayed still as he reached down to wrap one around his own cock.

“Say ‘please’ for me, Jessie,” John begged with wide eyes as he began to stroke himself. “I’m already so close — don’t make me cum from touching myself alone. I want you to fuck it from me. I need your strap.”

That bastard. But two could play that game.

“Are you begging me to beg you?” she scoffed as she began rolling her hips in steady rhythm, the tip of her strap just barely bumping against him as she fucked the grip of his hand in a promise of what she could do. “Why would I beg for something I won’t even feel?”

“Because you want to take me, don’t you, Jessie? Don’t you want this ass to be yours?” Fuck, he did not play fair — spreading his legs wider and pushing forward to rub the head against slickened, puckered skin, make it look so easy to slide home and fuck the attitude out of him. The sight alone made the friction of grinding against a held still strap-on swell to an unexpected thrum of ecstasy trickling through her veins. “God, I want it. I want to feel the way you move inside me. I want to belong to you, every part of me. I want to cum for you, only for my Jessie.”

Christ, when did the cheesy, unnatural porn lines start working on her?

“Must not want it t-too bad,” she grunted with a particularly harsh snap of her hips. The electricity in the air had heavied, absolutely saturated it. It fizzled with that strange feeling of being up high during a thunderstorm, everything so strongly charged that hair stood on end. “Since you won’t just let me —”

“Oh, I will, Jessie,” he panted, training his eyes on her impotent thrusts as he stroked himself faster. “I’ll let you do anything you want, as soon as you’re ready to —”

“Just —” She glared, thrust harder as if she could break right through his grip and end the standoff, only managing to increase pressure. “Move your fucking hand, and I’ll —”

“You’ll what?” he teased, squeezing the thighs wrapped around her waist. “Please tell me, won’t you? At least talk me off the way I like, since you’re not going to —”

“You’re not going to get off at all, until I —” Fuck, how was this happening? How could she feel every fiber of authority she possessed suddenly unraveling to slip from her fingers? “Say you’re fucking allowed —”

“I’m so close,” he gasped, tossing his head back and arching towards her — the tip of her strap just barely disappearing as he did. “But feel so empty. Oh, Jessie, won’t you —”

“Can you just —” Her cheeks were scalding as she fumbled to grab his hips and grumbled, “For the — the fucking love of god, could you please just —”

She found herself falling forward before she’d even realized the damned word had fallen from her lips, his hand pulling away the second it was spoken and his legs flexing to pull her in, sliding inside him as her knees smacked against the table.

And every volt of electricity hanging overhead came suddenly crashing down with her as she buried to the hilt as the coaxing of his eager rocking hips — as if lightning finally crackled through the air to ripple down her spine and spread through her body. Spread so forcefully she could taste it in her mouth, feel it tingle along her tongue and shoot down her jaw as the current seemed to hone on the place the base of the strap pressed just right against her clit — suddenly overloading from the sensation, short-circuiting into blissful oblivion.

And it felt as if she really had been struck by lightning — the way her flesh crawled with searing heat, the way her insides turned and convulsed, the way every muscle twitched and trembled in pure surrender to its force.

“Did you, um —” he shifted beneath her, pausing and clearing his throat as if for once in his life he realized what a ridiculous thing he was about to say and managed to think twice before saying it, “did you finish?”

“Did I —” she coughed weakly against his collarbone, wishing it had come out closer to a scoff than it did. “I’m genuinely fuckin’ curious — do you even bother to try to make the shit that comes out of your mouth make sense? Or do you just start flapping your jaws and see what happens?”

She did not wait for an answer before summoning her remaining wisps of strength to wind her hips back, forcing wobbly legs pleading to collapse beneath her to instead power a proper thrust forward.

She yelped, a jolt of pain shooting up through sensitive, overstimulated nerves as the base of the strap pressed against her clit at the full extension of her stroke.

John craned his neck, eyes scanning far too knowingly along the flush of pink sprawling along her cheeks and chest. “We can stop, if it’s —”

“I’m fuckin’ fine!” she barked. “I just —” She coughed, reaching down to slip a thumb beneath rubber ring and wedge under the dildo to put space between its base and her sore clit. “Gotta adjust a bit — you put this thing in at the wrong fuckin’ angle, fucked everything up.” She wriggled her hips back with a final grumble of, “Why you should never trust a man to do a woman’s job.”

She began rocking forward with hand still in place to lighten pressure against nerves pleading for rest — she could do this, she just needed to fake it through a few minutes of recovery period. She just needed to —

“Shit!” she cursed, jittery thumb pressing too hard against the base to push it free from the ring with a taunting pop, staying lodged stubbornly inside her lover as she reeled back. She lurched forward, hurrying to retake her place, looking down to gauge position and hopefully reattach herself before he noticed. “Goddamn…”

“Seriously, are you alright?” John questioned as he pushed himself up to his elbows. “Would you like ten minutes and a glass of orange —”

He was interrupted by a thud as he rose to sit fully upright and meet her face to face, Jestiny’s eyes barely catching to follow the shiny black blur that shot from between his legs to land heavy at her feet.

“Fuck.”

Her clumsy rush (since when was she clumsy? first saying ‘please’ and now this?) to turn and reach for the fallen dildo (was her sleight of hand good enough to reattach it without him noticing? what skills did she still have?) resulted in her kicking it with the heft of her combat boot (was it not a good idea to wear them during sex? who even was she?) before she’d even managed to bend down.

She whipped around, finding hardwood bare save for a slight glistening streak. When she lifted her head to follow the snail trail of lube, she found the strap-on had rolled itself across the greater length of floor — losing little momentum as wood broke into granite.

The slight rise of the granite platform barely impeded it at all, in fact, as it rolled right past the wrought-iron guard that had been haphazardly left ajar by Jestiny as she built the fire, tenderly welcomed into the roaring inferno of the fireplace.

The dead lump of a scream in her throat seemed to creep down to spread its decay, making her insides shrivel into brittle rot. As the stench of burning plastic filled the air, her eyes began to water from the sting of chemical smoke. She wondered if she might actually cry for the first time in her adult life.

“Wha — ! Aah,” A confused, devastated noise caught in the back of Jestiny’s throat, withering there to die at the first crackle of silicone as her prized strap-on went up in flames before her eyes.

The world swirled around her, buffeting at her senses like the cruelest of snowstorms.

Past the whistle and crackle of flame devouring silicone and the whoosh of her own pulse in her ears, Jestiny heard the muffled garble of a television set she hadn’t realized was on blare suddenly loud from the recesses of the ranch, cheers of ‘Happy New Year!‘ over discordant symphony of paper horns blown in celebration conjuring images of ceremonial ball reaching the denouement of its annual journey to the base of its pole into her mind unbidden.

On cue, somewhere in the background, a grandfather clock solemnly chimed to announce the turn of the hour.

And there stood teary-eyed, gaping mouthed Jestiny — some bizarre sex toy Cinderella whose impressive phallus turned back into a puddle of cheap plastic polymer at the stroke of midnight.

“Well,” John’s bemused hum pierced through the cacophony rattling around inside Jessie’s brain as he peered past her to the spectacle of silicone bubbling down to black ooze in his fireplace. “I guess it isn’t always hard.”

“Fuck!” Her shout crumpled back into a weak whimper as plain splintered through her knuckles before she even realized she’d swung to strike the table.

She kept fist loosely clenched and eyes glued to the grain of the table as John turned back towards her.

She caught in her periphery the falling of his sly smile. His brow pinched inward as he looked back and forth between Jessie’s flushed, scrunched face and the empty rubber ring at the front of her crotch, his eyes softening with the most genuine look of sympathy she thought she’d ever seen him wear, a level of earnest compassion she would have thought him incapable of even faking properly.

The kind of condescending pity that made her stomach curdle, made her blood boil hot as a melting strap-on. That she would normally lash out to reject, were she not already so thoroughly defeated and stripped of pride.

“It’s alright,” John whispered softly, reaching over to give a few comforting pats to Jessie’s curled fist before bringing his hand up to cup her jaw and lift her chin, guiding her to look into gentle blue eyes. “It happens to everyone, sometimes.”

“That —” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder in gesture to the strap-on cremation still blazing strong behind her, drawing in a ragged breath, “has literally never happened to anyone before.”

“Well, it was... innovative,” John innovated the world’s first performatively horny purr that doubled as bland diplomacy to reply in, throwing his arms around her neck in embrace.

“We —” Her voice sounded so uncharacteristically small to her own ears as she stumbled over her words. “We can do other stuff. I can still finish you —”

“That’s alright. It was enough just to feel close to you,” John shushed, nuzzling against her neck. “All I want now is for you to carry me to the fireside and hold me.”

God, it was such obvious, manipulative fawning; such a poorly disguised consolation prize. She should storm out in offense.

In no position to refuse consolation prizes, Jessie slid an arm beneath the bend of his knees, wrapping the other around his middle. She gave a slight grunt as she hoisted his weight, at this point truly just grateful she managed not to drop him on the short walk over to the bearskin rug she lowered him to sprawl atop.

“You —” The impulse to counter with a comment that the firelight made him look much older from the shadows cast into the creases of his face extinguished itself as quickly as it sparked. “You would look even prettier by the light of a real campfire,” she muttered as she fell limp, allowing John to tangle their limbs as he saw fit. “That’s what we should do next New Year’s Eve. I hate being cooped up inside.”

“You always look so beautiful, bathed in firelight,” John sighed, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

“And do you envision our rugged adventures would begin with a first-class flight to the southern hemisphere?” he asked with a soft laugh, a hand smoothing along her sides. “I don’t have your outdoorsy expertise, of course, but I’d say it’s hardly pleasant camping weather around here.”

“It’s not so bad, actually,” she sighed pleasantly. “Pitching a tent in the dead of winter,” she continued, absentmindedly threading fingers through his hair. “So long as you —”

She coughed, clearing her throat and hiding her face and its burning cheeks against his chest as she finished the statement. “So long as you have the right equipment.”

She definitely should have just gone fishing.

#nsft #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #writies and wordies #hey at least i did manage to post it before january ended. still kinda the new year #i think maybe. they are good for each other #plot twist: SHE gets brat tamed. mostly by her own hubris but still. john dom moments they said i couldn’t do it.#also: jenna would reprimand me if i did not mention pure silicone will not melt like that.#assume jestiny is wearing a cheap blend regardless of how she refers to it #i also took some liberties with ranchsion redesign for this #in the actual game the platform of the hearth is raised and the guard does not have doors so this could not have happened #these are the only unrealistic parts of the fic.

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adelaidedrubman · 8 months

Text

John and Jestiny put on a show for Skylar and Sherri. read here on ao3.

notes: just in time for labor day, the sound of the summer is back! it’s hook, line, and sinker chapter 3 babey. wordcount: 7.3k warnings: per usual, unhealthy relationships out the wazoo. stalking and harassment of past romantic partners (dealt with in a lighthearted manner but called for what it is in text), physical violence and semi graphic threats between present love interests (pre-relationship, but ft. john trying to pretend he’s not turned on about it), general deceit and manipulation, albeit mostly unsuccessful. humane animal death (it’s a fishing fic), weird sexual tension over fish gutting, littering, catchall johnjess warning. catchall my minimal proofreading warning.

“You got the plan down, right?” Jestiny hissed at the man fumbling uselessly with the task of baiting his hook, leaning into the motion of casting her line to inconspicuously shove in front of him and hopefully block the embarrassing display from Sherri and Skylar’s view. “Don’t need me to fuckin’ rehearse it with you again?”

By the time they’d parked the skiff just under the bridge connecting the road nearest Can of Worms Fishing Store with the island directly across from it where her ex-girlfriends were presently fishing, Jessie was beginning to think this entire thing had been a massive, undeniable mistake.

“Yes,” John replied in a whistle through his own gritted teeth style into a grin, harmonized with a twang of his fishing line snapping. “You shouted it in my ear approximately ten times on the drive over.”

He shuffled to her side, batting his eyelashes at her as he cocked his rod clasping hand back. “Dear,” he tacked on, with all the uncanny artificially synthesized saccharinity of a splenda packet.

“Not your line,” she smiled in reply, letting go of the crank of the reel just long enough to reach over and bop the tip of his nose. There was no way she was going to let him actually cast in front of Skylar and Sherri.

A well timed tug on her rod confirmed that luckily she wouldn’t have to — she was able to effectively knock his right arm down as she staggered back to oppose the force pulling against the line.

She briefly darted her eyes to John to ensure was looking back with appropriately visible impressed enthusiasm — and not set to reach for his own rod — before settling her gaze on Skylar and Sherri as she wrangled her catch.

The irritation at their stubborn refusal to look back was mildly assuaged by the sight of big, beautiful golden trout dangling at the end of her line as she yanked it from the water.

“Oh, Jessie dear!”

She resisted shooting another glare at the exclamation — Sherri and Skylar would know damn well she wouldn’t like being called that.

This was definitely a mistake.

“That might be the most impressive catch yet!” At least he was back on script now. “Please, let me have the honor of doing the work of gutting it for you.”

“John,” she chimed bright with gratitude, dropping the fish into his outstretched arms. “That’s such a considerate thing to do for someone!”

She gave a pointed look to Skylar and Sherri.

“Anything for you, my dear.”

She tried not to let tension settle too deeply into her jaw as she forced a grin. “I’ll cast your line for you while you do!”

She made the barest of eye contact with her rod as she threw it out, the vast power of her stare settled on the tattooed hand bringing a knife down to pierce through the fish’s brain with expert precision.

It was a genuine marvel to her how he managed to handle the task with such a natural grace that he seemed a completely different man from the one she’d watched flounder with the simple task of baiting a hook.

If the fingers sliding down the clean, straight, perfectly placed incision along the fish’s underside weren’t branded with the same distinctive black ink, she would have thought they belonged to someone else entirely.

She could almost imagine that he was someone different — someone she respected, even — as she watched his hand disappear into the cavern of the fish’s belly.

The way he found the red knot rooting its spinal cord without delay, squeezing it tightly between his fingers. The way the delicate placement of his grip retained every bit of its exacting care even as his forearm flexed with powerful force to yank the long tether of nerves from the body. The way he remained completely unphased by blood dripping down to splatter atop those stupid, hideously expensive looking loafers. The way his arm flourished with a smooth, dramatic flair he threw the plucked out rope of organs into the water.

“You’re good at that,” she murmured aloud before she even processed her mouth was moving. “I love watching you work,” she added with a deflecting chuckle and wink, forcing herself back into character. “Babe.”

He blinked twice, a hint of genuine surprise seeming to spark through his eyes as he looked up to flash her a satisfied grin.

“You might want to watch your line instead,” he replied with a nod towards her hands. “It looks like you have a bite.”

Jestiny turned forward to see her pole bent to the point of being practically folded in half.

“Fuck!” she screamed as she buckled her knees and yanked her arms back to oppose the fish.

Jesus, this was embarrassing — how the hell had she missed the fish tugging? Had his shitty angling skills somehow infected her? She’d never had a fuck up like that when she was fishing with Sherri and Skylar.

And now, thanks to him, she was making a fool out of herself right in front of them.

Fuck.

So embarrassing.

Her cheeks flushed hot with fresh shame, only swelling as she successfully yanked up a massive largemouth bass.

Fuck. She’d almost let a good one get away.

This wasn’t like her.

This was his fault, somehow.

She should have never agreed to his stupid plan.

This was a mistake.

“What a catch!” the mistake in question cried with equal parts drama and vagueness, clearly lacking the know-how to comment on the specifics of the fish beyond the acknowledgement that it was one. “Would you like me to gut that one, too?”

“She can wait,” Jessie replied, holding the fish up proudly. “Gonna wanna get a picture with her fully intact first. Sure beats that ten pound rainbow trout you caught earlier.”

Listen to her. Even giving false credit for one of her catches. How far had she fallen?

“Just pop open the cooler for me, then grab me some more bait.”

She glanced forward again — Skylar and Sherri were looking now, at least, and she would tell herself they only started once the fish was pulled from the water.

“Of course,” he offered pleasantly, to his credit tipping the cooler up so that the fish crowding it would be visible to her ex-girlfriends across the water. He was better at empty theater than he was at fishing. “All yours.”

She swore she saw Sherri roll her eyes before turning to whisper something to Skylar.

Those bitches. How dare they whisper secrets about her.

Whatever. Moving on.

She swiped the cup bearing a proud ‘Drubman Marina’ logo perhaps a bit too hard from the cupholder, making a show of looking inside it.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed, this time in feigned surprise. “Looks like we fished through all our bait!”

“Fish biting a little too well, today.”

“For some of us,” she replied, looking directly at Skylar and Sherri and the arrow-straight, undisturbed poles of their fishing rods. “But speakin’ of, I do believe that’s the proprietor of Cans of Worms Fishing Store over there with a full cup of bait. Let’s drive this baby over there to give their small business a little economic stimulus, at least.”

“Jessie, do not fucking come over —”

Jestiny cut off Skylar’s shouting with a rev of the motor rumbling to life, idling there as John pulled up the anchor.

She could not so effectively drown out him whispering directly into her ear. “I didn’t say you could drive the boat,” he hissed. “The agreement was you would pretend to drive as we pulled up.”

“I know,” she rasped back with a smile she didn’t have to fake. “I was pretending when I agreed to that. I deceived you. I’m good at that. You need work,” she said with a raise of her eyebrows. “You’re overselling. Make it subtle, don’t ham it up so much.”

“Acting note taken,” he replied, scooching into the seat next to her. “Now give me the —”

She jerked the wheel and slammed her foot on the accelerator — giving it enough gas in the single pump that they were able to coast the distance to Skylar and Sherri’s place on the bank, the bow landing gently in the mud.

“Expert docking, dear,” he commented syrupy sweet as he hurried to swipe the key from the ignition, slipping it onto his wrist.

Possessive, paranoid, materialistic, overdramatic diva.

Guess that explained the key she’d noticed hanging over his heart — must be to an even nearer and dearer expensive toy.

God, she couldn’t wait to fake end their fake relationship.

The sentiment only grew stronger as she watched him carefully tiptoe through the mud with sudden apparent concern over dirtying his already bloodied shoes.

“Ms. Woodhouse,” John held out a hand towards the brunette that was met with nothing but a scowl in return.

He made an apologetic ‘ah’ noise and wiped the hand on his shirt, but Jessie knew it was not the fish guts Sherri was repulsed by.

“My apologies.” He bowed. “I haven’t yet had the privilege of patronizing your little store.” Jessie smiled. Patronizing was right. And Sherri deserved it. She had to admit she could revel in his condescension, when it wasn’t directed at her. “It’s so difficult when I have my own boat ramp right in the backyard to remember to get out there and support the small business owners in the community.”

“Support?” Skylar cut in, scowling even harder than Sherri did. “When have you ever supported any business around here? You call trying to shut everyone down and take their property from ’em support?”

Huh. That’s weird — Skylar seemed to have history with this guy. And it was bad enough he was a lawyer at all, did she fuck up and start pretending to date a fucking foreclosure attorney or something?

John waved the accusation off. “Please, I hate discussing business matters during my recreation time.” He reached into his back pocket to take out his wallet, pulling another hundred dollar bill from it. “I would love to support Can of Worms now.”

He turned to Sherri, gauchely waving the bill in front of her. “I’m afraid my lovely date and I have fished through all of our bait. But it seems you have plenty left. He nodded towards the unopened can at Sherri’s feet. “I’d like to purchase it.”

Sherri met him with a dead-eyed stare. “Store’s closed.”

John turned, looking across the water at the Can of Worms storefront. “Your hours say open until 9.”

“Well, I’m not on the clock.”

“Oh, don’t be unreasonable. I’m paying well above market rate for something I could just waste time going over and buying from you, for much cheaper, in the store.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Skylar said. “Store’s closed.”

He pointed behind him. “I see it open.”

“Store’s always closed to you.”

Jestiny gave up on pretending not to notice the conversation, setting aside her beer to slam her hands down on the side of the boat. “Well, fuckin’ sell it to me, then!”

“God, Jessie,” Sherri groaned, leaning down to hold her head in her hands. “Can’t you just fucking leave us alone? Following us, harassing us while we’re trying to fish? We broke up with you. We don’t want you around.”

“Shit’s sad,” Skylar agreed. “Just stop. Don’t make us get a fuckin’ restraining order or something.”

Jestiny kicked the side of the boat, hard. “They’re called Orders of Protection, in fucking Montana!”

“You learn that from your slimebag lawyer boyfriend?” Skylar asked. Jessie frowned. That was hitting below the belt, she thought. “And did he learn it from law school, or ’cause half the fucking County wants to take one out on his creepy ass?”

Sherri brought a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh at Skylar’s joke. “They really are perfect for each other, huh?” she giggled against Skylar’s shoulder, setting her chin atop it and looking up at her adoringly.

Jessie felt flames crawl up in her belly. Of all the infuriating insults.

“Yeah, we fucking are! I finally have someone who can keep up with me behind the rod and on an intellectual fuckin’ level!” she forced herself to flash an adoring smile of her own at the man she shouted over. “And he’s got an actual sense of humor! Just look at his outfit!”

John turned to shoot Jessie a glare.

“Yeah,” Skylar laughed, turning to nudge the flyaway hairs clinging to Sherri’s dewy brown skin away with her nose so that she could finally whisper her teasing directly into the brunette’s ear. “Looks like you and I were the only ones that didn’t think to come dressed for the circus.”

“I fucking heard that!” she leaned over the side of the boat to screech, crumpling the styrofoam of the bait cup in her fist and attempting to fling the trash across the distance to Skylar and Sherri — the bits floating down to scatter impotently along the surface of the water instead.

“Jesus, Jessie, a fish is gonna fucking choke on that,” Skylar cried, pushing herself up from her lounge chair.

“And maybe I can’t stop you from driving a boat on public waters, but you can’t litter on my damn property,” Sherri agreed, reaching behind her to pull a net from the pouch on the back of her own chair and toss to Skylar. “That shit drifts to shore.”

Jessie crossed her arms over her chest with a huff, rolling eyes dismissively to duck Skylar and Sherri’s judgmental glares with an earnest wave of shame — she didn’t mean to endanger any poor fish, obviously, she was just angry — instead finding John’s gaze, oddly comforted by the quiet, embarrassed fury she saw simmering back at her, as if the bright blue glitter of his eyes was a temperate pool to reflect her own angry humiliation, unfiltered and undiluted in their vibrant heat.

Then something in his stare sharpened, an almost imperceptible narrowing of the pinpoints of his pupils into focus, gaining all the ice-cold clarity of a glacial pond as he darted his eyes back to where Skylar reached forward to dip the hoop of her net into the water to scoop up the ripped up bits of styrofoam.

“Hi,” John hummed pleasantly as he stepped up to Skylar, placing a hand atop the handle of her net. “John Seed. Do you remember me?”

“The fuck you —”

He slid his hand down the pole of the net, pulling it closer until his fist was circled just beneath the base of its mesh. “I tried to buy bait from you a few moments ago. You refused to sell to me.”

“...Yeah?”

“Big mistake,” he barked with a tug of the net to cause Skylar to stumble slightly, barely catching herself to remain upright. “Big. Huge!” He forced a manic laugh, snatching the net from her hands. “Because perhaps had I been occupied with my own fishing, I wouldn’t have time now to ask if you have a proper permit to fish with a net.”

Sherri stood, moving to stand between John and Skylar, defensively.

“I do my business selling fishing licenses, dumbass,” Sherri grumbled, pulling two crumpled pieces of paper from her back pocket to flash. “You really think I’d come out here without one?”

“Ah.” John clicked his tongue against his teeth twice, wagging his finger and tapping it against the paper Sherri held out. “But I’d like to see your netting license,” he said in sing-song. “A Class A resident fishing license only allows fishing with a hook and line. Netting requires its own permit.”

Sherri and Skylar exchanged confused looks.

“Ha!” Jestiny let out a single, choppy laugh as she hopped over the side of the boat, splashing mud as she landed. “It does.”

It did, when it came to hoop nets. But of course even if he knew the law he wouldn’t know the difference between —

He waved a hand in front of his face, then rested it atop his chest. “Oh, I’m only joking, of course,” he said with a smile, bowing his head. “Montana Code Title 87, Chapter 6, Part 5 Fishing Offenses includes an exception in paragraph (1)(a)(iv) for landing nets.”

Jestiny felt a giddy heat blossom along her cheeks — that was unexpected. He knew the difference between a hoop net and a landing net. He’d actually studied up.

He cocked an eyebrow, smile widening. “For after the fish has been hooked as specified in subsection (1)(a).” He nodded down towards their rods. “And your hooks appear to be bare.”

Skylar placed a hand atop her hip. “We weren’t even fishing with that net,” she said matter-of-factly. “We were just cleaning up the trash your girlfriend threw in the water.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Jessie chirped, throwing her arm around John’s waist and pulling him to her. “And I think the word of two officers of the court is gonna outweigh what y’all say.” Jessie leaned forward, snarling. “I think it certainly gives me probable fucking cause to seize all this shit as fuckin’ evidence of a crime, including the fucking bait,” she snapped. “I think it could mean both y’all forfeiting your fucking fishing licenses as penalty, if this shit gets charged.”

“And I have a feeling it would be,” John purred, turning to the side to beam at Jessie with a thoroughly convincing mimicry of proud adoration as he raked his fingers through her hair. His smile sharpened into a smirk as he turned back to their fellow fishers, hand still stroking up and down the side of Jessie’s neck. “I’m on quite good terms with the County Attorney.” Former prosecutor? Jessie worried in the back of her mind, not letting it distract her from their victory. “I think she’ll be quite concerned with such a flagrant fishing violation committed by a prominent player in the local fishing scene.”

“Good fucking God, Jessie,” Sherri huffed, swiping the can of worms from off the ground and shoving it in Jessie’s hands. “Here. Take the damn bait, since it means that fucking much to you. You win. We’re leaving.”

“Hell yeah you are!” Jessie cheered triumphantly at the pair throwing their tackle boxes into their truck bed. “Don’t let the trout bite you on the way out!” she called after them with a hand cupped at the side of her mouth. “Not that it’s been something you’ve had to worry about so far!”

John threw his head back to laugh on cue at the jab, and Jessie had to admit as truck doors slammed to drown it out that he had something of a theatrical acumen.

She turned to the side and clasped his face between her hands tightly as she grinned up at him in spite of herself.

“That was amazing!” she said in a hushed roar. “I mean, I gotta fuckin’ hand it to ya, that was great, you —”

She bit her lip as she watched him stand taller, a preening lift of his jaw as he basked in the praise. And for some reason she couldn’t summon the appropriate irritation at the vanity.

But as the engine of Skylar’s truck rumbled to life behind her, she nonetheless used the interruption to avoid inflating his ego further whilst keeping up the ruse by pulling him down to press her lips against his and kiss the smug smile away.

He’s good, she thought as he melted against her obligingly with a swift but tender unwinding that felt shockingly natural, draping an arm over her shoulder to reach a hand around to thread in her short crop of hair as he kissed her back.

His other hand rested gently atop one of hers still cupping his cheek, stroking along the leathery ridges of her knuckles as he dropped his jaw to deepen the kiss.

It was so odd, the feeling of kissing him when they were playing at gentleness — the slow drag of the slick underside of his lip shifting up to expose the slight hairline cracks of chapping along its wetted surface, the surprising softness to the tickle of the whiskers of his beard that made her realize how meticulously oiled and groomed it must be, the careful way he mirrored her incremental movements as she finally parted, soft, panting breaths tingling against her skin as he dipped his head to stay leaned into her while allowing her the separation.

“You, uh —” She drew in a sharp breath as she dragged her fingers through his beard, bringing their tips to rest just above his chin. “You knew the difference between a hoop net and a landing net.”

He laughed, warm puffs of breath falling against kiss chafed skin. “It’s defined in the Fish and Wildlife Commission Regulations,” he said, his whisper further softened by the airiness of the deflection. “Keeping up with them actually comes quite in handy, in my line of work.”

Jessie sighed pleasantly, then stiffened just as quickly.

His line of work?

She’d already been concerned about him being a bootlicking landlord lackey or overeducated cop of some kind, could the situation be even worse?

Could he be —

She gulped, dropping her arms and taking a full step away from him this time.

Could he be some kind of in-house counsel for one of the commercial fisheries around here? One of the goddamn slimy corporate lobbyists for those corrupt, greedy bastards?

No, she shook the thought from her mind — she couldn’t entertain such horrible possibilities, and the sudden blare of Skylar laying on the horn as she coasted by would have drowned them out anyways.

“Jessie,” Skylar poked her head out from the driver’s side window to call out. “Can we have a quick, civil word with you?” she asked, punctuated with a pointed look towards John. “Alone?”

All her catastrophizing about her pretend boyfriend’s professional life vanished with the giddy soar of accomplishment — this was it. Clearly Skylar and Sherri had talked about it, and after her impressive showing here today they had accepted what a horrible mistake it had been to ever break up with her in the first place, and were about to beg her to come back.

“Sure.” She drew out the syllable with a nasally whistle, eyebrows raising with expectant understanding. “‘Quick and civil’ is my middle name.”

Jestiny smacked the man beside her on the rear end to dismiss him, shaping her wince at the harsh impact of his uncushioned tailbone against her palm into a playful wink. “Give us a few minutes for girl talk, would’ya?”

He pushed out his bottom lip, giving her a flutter of his eyelashes as he turned to head back towards his boat. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

She wouldn’t — assuming the women were contrite enough, she was sure it would be five minutes flat before she was waving goodbye to him from the back of their truck bed as they all drove away together.

Since he did know how to gut and clean them, she thought she’d let him keep the fish she caught as compensation for his efforts.

“So, what’s on your mind?” she asked once John was sufficiently out of earshot, folding her arms along the window frame and resting her chin atop them to poke her head into the truck. “Need fishing tips?”

“Look, Jessie, I…” Skylar gave her a pained look, drawing in a deep breath. “We talked about it, and… We really don’t want this to be any harder than it has to be, okay?”

Jessie pursed her lips together, crinkling her nose and tensing her cheeks with a pressure she knew would cause dimples to sink endearingly into their rounds. She tried to not to savor the pained expression on Skylar’s face too much, but it was difficult not to indulge in the satisfaction from their begging with tail between their legs for her to take them back.

Sherri nodded in agreement, leaning forward in the passenger’s seat to peer through the window. “We want to work this out.”

Jestiny cocked her head further to the side, cheek resting against her arm. “I’m listening.”

Perhaps she wouldn’t really make them beg, but at least a tearful apology was in order.

“So, even though it’s right by my store, we’re willing to make a deal on this fishing spot.”

Jestiny blinked up at them.

“You can have it Saturday evenings through noon Sunday, and we agree to not come around,” Sherri explained. “Then we’ll take Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you get Tuesday and Thursday.”

“W-What?”

“It’s more than fair, I think,” Skylar tacked on, giving her a stern look. “Most of all, we don’t want it to be a big fight, anymore.”

“We want to handle everything peacefully,” Sherri said, expression pleading. “And we’re glad you found a new fishing partner, even if it is, well…” She shook her head, flashing a forced smile. “We’re just happy to see you moving on.”

Jessie clicked her teeth together, neck stiffening as she raised her head.

This made no fucking sense.

“Yeah, I mean…” Skylar shrugged, eyes darting over Jestiny’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, y’all do seem really good together. Right for each other. Better than we ever were for you.”

No fucking sense.

Jessie slapped a hand against the side of the truck, pushing herself off its frame. “Are you fucking kidding me!?”

“Seriously, Jessie?” Skylar deadpanned in reply. “It’s a really fair deal. We’re being nice, after —”

“Nice!” she croaked in mocking tone at piercing volume, throwing a too stiffly splayed hand up to swing through the air in the arc of a goodbye wave before clenching it back into a fist at her side as she stormed away from the truck. “Real fucking nice!”

The tension locked into her shoulders as she stomped through the mud, pinching tight enough it wrapped around to squeeze the cavern of her chest, push stinging bile up to catch and smolder in her throat in a heavy lump.

“How was girl talk, my —”

The arm that tried to reach comfortingly towards her was quickly pushed away — fingers curling the soft leather cord of his key chain as she yanked it from his wrist.

The polite clearing of his throat rumbled in synch with the motor roaring to life as she jabbed the key into the ignition and cranked it to the right.

“My dear, how was —”

“We’re leaving!” she shouted over the harsh rattle of gas pumping through the motor to spin its blades, shoving the gear shift into reverse as she slammed her foot on the accelerator.

“H-Hang on, let’s —”

“We’re leaving now!”

She jerked the wheel sharply to the left once she’d put space between the bow and the riverbank, leaving John flailing over the side to hurry to hoist the anchor.

“Very well,” he ground out, loud enough to pierce over the racket. “But I’m driving the —”

She shoved the gearshift forward and stomped down on the gas again, sending them lurching forward with a bounce of the bow towards the sky.

She barely even noticed the sudden, heavy pressure of something falling in her lap, the man at her side losing his balance and stumbling to land with chest atop her thighs.

She rolled eyes that had begun to water from the wind cutting against them as the boat zipped along.

“Those assholes,” she cursed, tightening the grip of her fingers around the wheel until they grew numb. “How dare they. How —”

How dare they do what, exactly? her brain struggled to piece together as wind whistled in her ears harsher as the boat quickly gained speed, gliding over waves growing steeper from the force of her wake. “How dare they think they can just buy me off like that! Do they think — think this is just about a fishing spot?”

“Well,” John spat, heel of his hand smashing against her thigh as he tried to push himself up in the brief of lull of the boat’s course evening out as Jestiny weaved them between jutting mudbanks to an open stretch of water, slamming the gas down harder upon clearing them. “Isn’t it?!”

“Oh, fuck you, too!” she shouted down at him, jabbing her elbow at his collarbone to shove him away, off her lap and onto the floor. “This is about the fucking principle of the matter,” she hissed, wagging a finger at him on beat with the forceful up and down bobs of the boat along choppier waters.

“This is about fuckin’ fairness, and justice, and getting what’s owed to me for the months I put up with their shit!” She briefly glanced up as she continued talking, distant greenish brown blurs of oncoming land fading from her line of sight as quickly as it popped up over the horizon, another jerk of the steering wheel bringing her to a wide expanse of clear, glittering lake.

Good, she needed to do nothing but sail fast and directionless enough to outrun her thoughts for a while.

“After all that they’re treating this like a fucking scheduling issue, when they should be —”

Should be what? She choked on a particularly strong gust of wind, stinging her chapped and sunbaked cheeks as it whipped against her face, a matching burn rising in her throat. Apologizing? Begging? Taking it all back?

She gritted her teeth tightly to steel against the wind as she continued. “They have the fuckin’ gall to act like they’re the ones being nice about this, when they can’t even —” She clenched and ground her jaw. “It’s a public shore! Sherri doesn’t own it, just because her store is nearby and it’s fucking convenient for them! They never even had a right to —”

“You need to slow down!”

She pushed away the arm reaching for the steering wheel. “I’m fucking talkin’ at a perfectly fuckin’ measured and goddamn coherent pace! If you can’t keep up, that’s —”

“The boat!” he screamed, fingers clawing and pulling at her arm without managing to get it to budge. “You need to slow down the —”

Sudden warmth slung itself along the tops of her thighs — a glistening mix of blood and saliva spurting from his mouth as his jaw crashed against the glossy wood of the dash.

And the air filling her lungs to feed the complaining shout building in her chest was knocked from her just as quickly by the heavy impact of his torso crashing against her as he was flung back — landing in her lap for the briefest heartbeat before they were both sent flying over the captain’s seat and tumbling along the length of the boat as its bow tipped upward and the smooth coast of water along its hull was replaced by a harsh, violent scraping.

The pressure of his body weight only intensified, now fully pressed against her to pin her down back flat against the backrest of the row of seats at the stern — which now ran almost parallel to the ground from the angle the boat had landed.

She grunted, trying to wriggle out from under his weight at least enough to free her arms and push him off entirely — the effort proving unsuccessful, his body staying pressed flush against her even as the vast expanse of tangerine marbled sky stretching out above her became blocked by his head, lifted so the scowl twisting onto his face could show.

She shoved the heel of her hand against his chest, gripping his shirt and pulling when he failed to budge. “Get the fuck off me!”

The angry curl of his upper lip deepened, head jutting forward until their noses were pressed together. A droplet of blood fell from his mouth to land with sudden heat on her chin. “You crashed my boat.”

“No shit!” she spat back, butting her forehead against his. “You shouldn’t have been fucking distracting me!”

His brow twitched, his body tensing further. “You crashed. My. Boat!”

“And did you get some kinda fuckin’ head injury during it or something?!” she barked. “The boat crashed —”

“You crashed —”

“— you have sufficiently fuckin’ established that.” She shoved her hand harder against his collarbone, digging her nails into the mass of his shoulder. “So how about instead of sitting around goin’ off like a broken record you get the fuck off me and help me shove this thing back into the water? I’ll even give you the honor of driving the piece of junk back to the marina, since you have such a minnow up your ass about me doing it.”

“Oh, and wouldn’t I love to,” he hissed out through tightly gritted teeth, lips twisting into a smile leagues removed in its exaggerated pleasantry from the bitterness of his tone and the rage in his eyes.

His smile dropped — a swift movement of his arm breaking her grip on him as he pulled it towards his chest, then shot the hand forward to bury in short strands of copper and grab a fistful. His palm settled cradling the side of her skull as he jerked her head towards him by the grip on her hair, then slammed it back down against the seat cushion at an angle that caused her neck to twist so her head was turned towards the side and at the edge of the backrest as she landed, forcing her to look over the back side of the boat to the motor.

“Had you not certainly managed to damage it beyond the point of being able to cross a puddle!”

She paused only briefly to take in through narrowed eyelids the sight of mangled propeller he’d directed her gaze towards, a sleek black and silver blossom of twisted and dented metal, one of its petals bent so far back by the force it looked plucked clean from the stem. The second outboard was absent from the boat entirely, just barely peeking up past the waterline at the base of the short cliffs they’d landed atop.

She flicked her glare towards the hand buried in her hair, then back up to his face so she could savor the wince of pain in his eyes as her boot made contact with the side of his stomach to kick him off.

She scrambled to her knees to grab him by the shoulders and slam his back against the ledge of the stern, climbing atop his chest and pushing him back further until his head hung off the side, neck nestled between the shiny metal blades of the propeller.

She replicated the force he’d exerted against her, pulling gel-stiffened locks from their place plastered against his skull to shove his head back and sideways until the edge of the twisted propeller blade dug into the delicate skin of his neck. “I bet it still runs good enough I could start up the engine and lob your head clean off your fucking body right now!”

She watched pink crawl up the stretched column of his neck and settle deep into his cheeks, blood rushing to his head from the angle. She felt his chest tense beneath her as his hands reached out to grip her hips, heard the rustling of his adjusting his legs behind her — certain he was readying himself to push her off and retaliate.

She elbowed away the arm reaching towards her hip before he had the chance, settling for the sufficiency of her threat and hopping up before he could strike.

She jumped down from the boat to stand atop the rocks and survey the landscape, scanning along the rocky coastline, the peaks of mountains and the sharp points of pine trees standing in backdrop past the vast expanse of sunset sparkling water. Her eyes traced the outline of the suspension bridge running roughly parallel to the shore, which Skylar and Sherri would likely be zipping across on their drive from Can of Worms back to Skylar’s trailer up in the mountains right about now. It was too vast and treacherous a distance of lake to attempt to swim across, especially in the creeping darkness, and the only other land in reach were the smaller, even less likely to be inhabited islands.

“We landed at that big ass fucking island that blocks off the lake from the West,” she announced, dragging a knuckle along her chin as she thought, smearing away the droplet of blood she’d forgotten had settled there. “About three-quarters north ways into it, I’d say.”

She spared a glance to the man still in the upturned boat behind her, fidgeting and pulling down at the hem of his now thoroughly dirtied shirt as he rose to stand.

She sighed, briefly reaching into her pocket to check with a sense of predetermined defeat the display screen of her cellphone, confirming a thick circle around a diagonal line greeted her positioned at the service strength icon.

“We can keep hiking north, along the coastline,” she said resolutely. “We’ll hit the main road eventually, and we can hitchhike along it. Worst case scenario if no one picks us up, there’s a little general store on the other side of the water. If we get started now, we might make it before they close up shop.”

“Hitchhiking?” he repeated, weighed heavy with incredulity. “No, absolutely not. This isn’t exactly the place for —”

“Jesus,” she interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Look, I know you just lost one of your favorite toys, but we don’t have time for you to be a spoiled fuckin’ brat about how we’re getting out of here, too. It ain’t exactly my favorite pastime neither, but those of us born with mouths empty of silver fucking spoons know that sometimes you gotta do things that are —”

“If you could stop talking down to me long enough to listen, perhaps you’d understand that I’m not protesting because I think it’s beneath me. I’m… familiar with this island, actually.”

Jestiny rolled her eyes. Was there a thing on earth he wouldn’t find a way to brag about?

“And I can tell you, there isn’t going to be enough traffic along the road for hitchhiking to be a reliable bet.”

“Great!” she barked, pushing past him to reach for her now well dented tackle box. “All the more reason to haul ass towards Old Sun Outfitters before closing time.”

“They’re closed already,” he deadpanned in reply. “Permanently. The owner and his family of si —” John cleared his throat, with a quick, hard blink, as if needing to abruptly shift his train of thought. “They shut down. I doubt there’s even a working payphone around there, anymore.”

Jessie paused to study his expression, to scrutinize the strange, sudden dodginess behind the unnaturally soft smile and relaxed eyes.

He was clearly hiding something. Had Old Sun really shut down? She’d only stopped by there a couple of times to pick up bait, and she couldn’t say she went recently enough to know, or often enough to keep track of their business.

And how would he know, anyways? Was he —

Her breath hitched, that same chilling, nauseating prospect bubbling back to the surface.

Was he a foreclosure attorney?

“But if we keep going west and cross the main road, there’s actually a —” he paused, the fluid wave of his hand continuing on beat as he stared on silent and searching for words. “...residential area, on the other side of the island. Closer than the rundown general store, and actually occupied. I know a place there we can shelter for the night. And some of my associates will be stopping by anyways tomorrow morning, and can drive us back to the Marina first thing.”

Knowing the zoning for a place he didn’t live? Having associates in the area?

Jessie gulped. This did not bode well.

“No fucking way am I gonna go wandering into the woods at sundown with a fucking creep like you. And I’m sure as hell not joining you for a fucking sleepover.”

“Oh, please,” he scoffed, throwing arms up into the air. “I could just as easily drown you under the cover of darkness during the little moonlit stroll along the coast you’ve proposed, were homicide my goal.”

“Yeah?” she goaded with a raise of her brows. “And I could avoid the fuckin’ risk altogether by bashing your head open against these rocks, and selling whatever good samaritan I finally flag down a sob story about how my poor boyfriend just died in a boating accident.”

“Oh, and how delicious and satisfying it would be to spend my final breaths watching you stumble helplessly lost through the woods, not finding another soul, until you finally collapsed from exhaustion and joined me in death.”

“I would fuckin’ carve out your eyes and throw them in the lake first, so that the only thing you’d ever see of me again is my fishing hook when I came back here to catch whatever trout had the bad luck of eating you.”

“Would you?” he gasped, with an unbothered, wild smile and a hand drawn to his chest. He pushed out his bottom lip so that his smile fell, clicking his tongue against his teeth and pinching his brow with feigned pity as he patted his pocket and added in taunting sing-song, “Because I still have your fishing knife.”

She felt her jaw tense and her eyes bulge angrily, waving her arm as she stomped away to preserve whatever image she could of being unbothered by the revelation.

“Keep it!” she shouted as she turned on her heels, beginning to stomp her way north in as steady of a march as she could keep atop the uneven rock. “I’ll walk my way back to the mainland alone, and you can fuck off into the woods!”

“Oh, don’t be foolish!” John called after her. “It’s better that we stick together, you can at least be reasonable enough to see that.”

“Sure fuckin’ can’t!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’m following the road, whether you’re with me or not!”

He huffed, impatient and petulant, stomping forward a few paces without properly committing to following after. “Would you just listen? You’re not going to find anyone to help, it’s —”

Still, it was enough to let her know it was a bluff, and he’d be following along whatever path she chose. “At least I’ll be alone!”

“Which is dangerous!” he bellowed after. “Jessie, will you please just follow me into the occupied part of the island? For fuck’s sake, do you even have bear spray?”

“Nope,” she chirped pleasantly, pausing a beat at the word ‘please.’ “I’ll take my chances!”

“For the love of —” She picked her pace back up. “Wait!” His footsteps thudded more quickly behind her, and the arm swinging back with her upbeat gait was caught at the wrist by his hand. He let out a long, exasperated sigh.

“There’s a very secluded little stream on this island, out by the abandoned mill,” he explained with a renewed slow, measured calmness. “Not many people know about it, and hardly anyone is ever there. But I have it on good authority it’s an excellent place to catch rainbow trout.” He released his grip on her wrist, as if testing her willingness to stay in place without the force. “I could show you where it is — and see to it the few other people who know about it make themselves scarce from here on, if you’ll follow me to make camp for the night.”

Jestiny clenched her jaw tightly enough she thought her teeth might crack as she paused there, considering.

She knew bait when she saw it.

He was a devious, manipulative, conniving bastard trying to lure her in with cheap tricks she was too smart to fall for.

Biting now would be yet another huge mistake, and she was above that.

She drew in a deep breath.

“Lead the way.”

#and everyone ignore the wrong chapter number on the banner when i first posted. that didn't happen you're crazy.#fic: hook‚ line‚ and sinker #writies and wordies #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #ch: john seed

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adelaidedrubman · 3 months

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COMFORT MY CHARACTER. (from this prompt list) + jestiny +☀️ - a nice day outside (requested by @simplegenius042) + 🧸 - a soft plushie (requested by @blissfulalchemist) + ✋ - a hand carding gently through their hair (requested by both!)

notes: hello hello, look who is coming in three months later to finally answer these. i am sorry for the delay and ofc no pressure to read, but i decided this would be good to pivot and post for valentine’s day. also, avoiding spoilers but if you want a visualization on 🧸 you can find it here. this is set in hook, line, and sinker verse, but the only context from it you really need is that john and jestiny are fake dating. wordcount: 2.3k warnings: animal death, fleeting detailed fantasies of violence against humans, and threats to do violence to humans. pretty tame all things considered.

A gentle breeze kicks up to ease the heat settling into Jestiny’s cheeks and tickle her jaw with the feathery ends of her hair, and as she draws in a deep inhale of the scent of pine carried on the air it dawns on her that this truly is her definition of a perfect day.

The sun beats down on the back of her neck to bake the skin and draw a pleasant coating of sweat that flushes cool with the wind. The glittering waters of Snowshoe Lake lap gently at the thick heels of her boots stuck into mud.

Three trout float defeated and bled dry in the cooler she pulls a fresh beer from, a fourth cutting ripples into the water as it moves to flirt with her hook. The glass on her bottle of Two Hearted Ale kisses her inner thigh with its crisp coating of frost as she props it against her leg.

Hank is tucked away in the bib pocket of her overalls and firmly in the grips of a food coma courtesy of the extra scoop of bait Adelaide threw in for him, pointy pink fingers still curled around the batch of crickets he grew too full to finish.

And any threat of tranquility stagnating to tedium is kept at bay by the sudden plop of her bobber to sink into the water, causing Jestiny to perk up and brace herself just in time for the satisfying tension of weight pulling against her rod.

Jestiny licks her lower lip as she begins to reel, muscles of her arms tensing and tugging on instinct with the perfect amount of pressure to meet the force of the fish in a smooth, elegant dance — a back and forth quickly rewarded as her catch leaps from the water. An opportunity she gladly seizes, reeling it to its doom.

She feels Hank begin to slowly stir against her chest as she pierces her knife through the fish’s brain, his head poking from her pocket for his whiskers to brush against her chin as she drops the trout into her cooler.

A somehow still surviving cricket leaps from Hank’s clutches as he unfurls his fist in a waking stretch, landing at the top of Jessie’s head as the rest of the insects fall lifelessly into the depths of her pocket.

“Hank,” she chides without malice, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she grins down at the opossum. “What did I tell you about goin’ and wastin’ bait?”

Hank claws his way up Jestiny’s chest as she rewards herself with a hearty gulp of beer, climbing over her shoulder to cling to the back of her head and reach to pluck the cricket from her hair and plop it into his mouth.

And to Jessie’s relief he doesn’t scramble back down to grab for the bait she slides onto her hook, instead remaining perched on her shoulder as she casts her line, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Hank combs the fingers through short locks as Jestiny leans back to settle in and watch the water, his snout nudging against her as he sniffs for more bugs, licking to groom out anything he finds.

His sharp little claws send a relaxing tingle along Jestiny’s scalp as they rake along the skin, gliding down her spine to ease the tension from her shoulders.

Yes, in Jestiny’s mind it is truly a perfect day. And with the bright blue of the sky stretching out without a cloud in sight, she felt certain that nothing could happen to ruin —

The low rumble of an engine tears Jestiny from her thoughts, followed by the thud of a car door slamming that tells her the driver is close.

“The fuck,” Jessie mutters under her breath as she glances to her phone. “Shouldn’t be a fuckin’ soul around here but —”

“Ah, there’s the fisherwoman I’ve been looking for!” a devastating familiar voice calls, the surface of the water suddenly busy with the ripples of fish swimming away.

“No,” Jestiny says before she’s even turned around. She jumps to her feet to face the man strolling towards her and shout louder, “No. Absolutely not!”

“You certainly know how to give a lover a warm welcome,” John replies as he plants himself in front of Jessie.

“Never fuckin’ call yourself that,” she says with a grimace, taking suspicious note of the giant, glossy gift bag slung over his shoulder. “Never call anyone that,” she tacks on, a disgusted shudder texturing the words. “And never fuckin’ bother me when I’m fishing,” she snaps. “How did —” she runs a frustrated hand through her hair, pushing it back into the face of the opossum still clinging there. “How did you even find my spot?! You stalkin’ me now?”

A sharp grin carves itself into his face to push back the modest rounds of his cheeks and deepen the sag of his laugh lines, his eyes lighting up with an irritatingly proud twinkle.

He slides a hand beneath his vest, pulling out a sleek smartphone with a cross insignia on its case. “Scathing negative reviews of Snowshoe Lake suddenly popped up last night on Fishbrain, FishHub, ANGLR — even AllTrails and 27 Crags mentioned the nearby mountain pass being subpar.”

“You saw somewhere with shitty reviews and figured you belonged there?”

“I figured it was the work of my clever, reclusive little angler slyly marking her territory.” A slow, dramatic bat-batting of his eyelashes punctuates the statement. “And lo and behold, here you are.”

The hinge of her jaw; her nose twitches. “I like my privacy,” she drawls slowly, so that he may understand. “Now that we’ve gone over the how, maybe we can move on to why the fuck you’re here? And when you’ll be fucking leaving?”

If it’s within the next ninety seconds, perhaps she can still salvage her perfect day.

“Why, you haven’t been keeping track?” His tongue clicks against his teeth with a furrow of his brow in a contrived display of woundedness. “We’re celebrating our one month anniversary today!”

She snarls and bugs her eyes. “Great! Our fake relationship reached a fake milestone I wouldn’t even celebrate if it was real!”

“Do you think that attitude could have been a contributing factor to the death of your real relationship?”

She thinks how beautiful her fishing knife would look lovingly buried to the hilt in his jugular, the sweet glug glug glug he would make choking on his own blood. She thinks about how pretty he would look with that sharp grin sliced to gape and droop like a catfish’s mouth.

“I think interrupting my fishin’ time is about to be a contributing factor in your death,” she settles on. “The only way you’re gonna be any good to me around here is if I chop you up into little bits and use you as bait for my fucking hook.”

“Well, for all that empty posturing you’d think you would better understand the importance of keeping up appearances,” he muses as he rifles through the bag at his side. “We’re pretending to be a happy couple — the kind that would spend their anniversary together.”

“Well, nobody’s here! So how ’bout we don’t and say we —”

Jestiny is interrupted by a hand shoving a bundle of red roses against her chest, full enough to block her vision so that she must snatch them by the tissue paper and ribbon wrapped stems to lower enough for her to glare at the man stepping back to gaze at her with a self-assured smile.

“Aw, John,” she coos with a sweet flutter of her eyelashes and beaming smile. “You shouldn’t have,” she fusses as she leans in to stick her nose in the petals and inhale. “You really shouldn’t have. Because anyone who’d actually been dating me for a month would know —” she hurls the bouquet to the ground, stomping a foot down atop it. “That I! Fucking! Hate! Getting! Flowers!” she screams as she grinds the blossoms into the dirt beneath her boot.

“Ah, well,” his unaffected sigh draws her attention to the repetitive shuttering sound filling the background. “Luckily, I don’t think anyone would suspect as much from looking at you.”

She looks up from crushed petals to see John holding up his phone with screen pointed towards her, her own sarcastically smiling face as she clasps a bouquet greeting her.

“And image is what matters,” he purrs, stepping back and tucking his phone into his vest pocket just as she swings for it.

“Then how about you get the fuck out of here before I wreck that phone and that pretty face of yours?”

He positively glows at the threat. “Come now, you didn’t really think I’d call it quits at a puny dozen roses, do you?”

“I’ll shove the next bouquet so far up your ass your mouth is gonna win an award for best rose garden!”

“Not roses,” he replies, holding out a bright red heart-shaped box.

“Great,” she grumbles, snatching the box. “Another thing I don’t fucking wa —”

He catches her hand as it moves to throw the box to the ground. “Just open it.”

“I don’t fucking like chocolates,” she replies, holding no particular distaste for chocolates. “Especially this stupid fucking February 15th drugstore clearance aisle —”

He lifts the lid himself with a huff.

She sees there are in fact no chocolates in the container. Instead, its five sections are filled with a menagerie of bait — a tangled ball of earthworms in the left round at the top, a school of dried minnows in the right, one pile of crickets and one of grasshoppers in the center, and a cluster of doughballs at the pointed bottom.

“Mm,” she grunts in begrudging appreciation. She pinches the leg of a grasshopper between her fingers, lifting it above her head to offer up to Hank before she grabs the lid from John to place back atop the box.

“Doesn’t make no goddamn sense to have doughballs and insects in the same damn container — where am I finding catfish and trout together outside of a stocked pond?” She snorts with laughter at the ridiculous thought of fishing at a stocked pond before clearing her throat and setting the heart-shaped box down by her cooler. “Still, I guess it keeps me from using you to bait my hook.”

That proud glow of his brightens until he’s absolutely luminous at her walking back of the death threat.

“Don’t oversell the proclamations of love, Jessie dearest — it has only been a month,” he says with a dreamy sigh, leaning into her as if blooming towards the sun itself.

“You wanna quit while you’re ahead?” she offers with a tilt of her head towards his car.

“Rule of threes, my love,” John answers breathily. “What would flowers and chocolates be without a cute stuffed animal?”

Her eyebrow twitches. “Should have quit while you’re ahead,” she snaps. “I am a twenty-eight year old woman, not a schoolgirl looking for a teddy bear to hug at —”

Another flourish of his hand cuts her off, palm outstretched to display a soft plush of pink and gray.

“Not a teddy bear,” he purrs.

It’s not a teddy bear. Its round little ears are bare felt and marbled pink and black, the beads of its eyes pinpoint tiny beads, bubblegum pink tail curling around its body. It’s —

“An opossum,” she mutters to herself, a small, giddy huff of a laugh passing through her lips against her will. She brushes her fingers against its soft faux fur before she can stop herself, and John’s free hand reaches out to cover hers and wrap it around the plush to hold it on her own before retracting his.

She coughs and shoots him an obligatory glare before looking back to the opossum plush, eyes drawn to take notice of the opening in its middle — finding a second tiny opossum head peeking out.

Her eyes widen, and in spite of herself she laughs out under her breath, “It’s got a baby in its little pouch…”

She pulls the smaller stuffed opossum from its place nestled inside the larger plush, holding both up in proud display to no one in particular.

She feels the scraping of claws and a the tickle of tiny, sniffing exhales against her cheek as Hank climbs down to perch atop her shoulder and inspect.

His clawed little hand reaches out to grasp the smaller opossum, holding it to himself in ownership, then tucking it into the pocket of Jestiny’s overalls before climbing down her chest to curl up beside it.

“Ha!” Another laugh bursts out before she can stop it, looking up with a delighted grin on damnable reflex to check that her company saw the precious sight she did.

Blue eyes sparkling bright with pride meet her. Jessie’s cheeks sear under their unbearable heat.

She clears her throat.

“Well, Hank likes it,” she mumbles, spinning on her heels to turn her back to him as she tucks the larger plush into her overalls. “Gotta keep it, I guess.”

“Is that all it takes?” John asks, his breath falling hot along the back of her neck as he crowds behind her with every step she takes back towards the shore, like a trout chasing a lure. “Perhaps Hank can put in a good word for me, then?”

“Opossums can’t talk, dumbass,” she scoffs in reply as she reaches into the heart-shaped box to pull out an earthworm to slip onto her hook. “And people who expect to be allowed to hang around while I fish shouldn’t either.”

Another dreamy sigh and a rustle of clothing against grass as weight sinks beside her in the mud.

She focuses herself on the pleasant plop of her bobber landing in water, breathing in the crisp mountain air and ignoring the encroaching warmth of a knee casually pressing against her own as she spreads her legs to shore up her fishing stance.

Perhaps her perfect day would have to be chalked up as another one that got away.

An arm stretches out behind her to press its palm onto the ground on the opposite side, its owner’s head indiscreetly turned to the side to stare at her rather than the water, and this time she chooses to blame the heat crawling along her cheeks on the afternoon sun rather than the scrutiny of his adoring gaze.

But a bad day of fishing beats a perfect day of anything else, after all.

#also was my excuse to force myself into playing around in present tense more thinking ‘‘oh this will be quick and easy so’’#three months later……#oc: hank the opossum #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #praying to the valentine’s gods this queues correctly

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