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#but I need to figure out a way to get my own car and move out of my parents place
rosicheeks · 6 months
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hi Princess
i hope you are doing well
please tell us a little about your new job with the doggies!
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#here are a few pictures from today 🥰🫶#I have SO many pictures now it’s crazy#I should probably go through them cause I’m sure a lot of them are blurry but some are gems I must say#my favorite parts are probably when my yard is quiet and calm for a little bit (usually at night) and I sit down#and usually a bunch of them come rushing over to sit next to me#I can’t tell you how much I love it when a puppy lays on me or sits on my lap#it’s the best 🥰#there are definitely a few challenges to the job but I’m sure I’ll be able to deal#the hard part is it doesn’t give me enough hours and I don’t think it’ll be enough $$ either#so I’m gonna have to find another job which really really sucks#I’m already so exhausted with this one idk how I’m gonna juggle another one on top of it#but I need to figure out a way to get my own car and move out of my parents place#I love my parents so much but why can’t they just let me be me?#my friend literally said it sounds like they’re putting me on a leash and that’s EXACTLY what it feels like#not gonna get into it but it’s been rough lately#life hasn’t been the best so I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet lately#haven’t replied to anyone in awhile#but thankfully work has been good and I’ve been able to meet some amazing angels 🫶🥰❤️❤️❤️❤️#I just wish it paid better#also gotta figure out a way to wear my headset so it doesn’t trigger my migraines cause that’s been a struggle#really really REALLY hope one day I’m able to get my own puppy but at least for now I get to take care of other dogs 🥰🥰🥰🥰#ask#thanks for asking 🫶
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plaidbees · 9 months
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really taking the fuck around and find out approach to learning to drive. do i know how to work this thing? no. do i know the rules of the road? no. do i have a license? also no but you best believe i can go back and forth in my driveway a few times
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applejarjar · 1 year
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By the way I got the job!!!
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highvern · 3 months
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Work Me Out
Pairing: Kim Mingyu x fem!reader
Genre: Smut, 18+
Warnings: working out, flirting, touching, almost car sex, making out, breast play, fingering, oral, face sitting, multiple sex positions, big dick mingyu, protected sex (gasp!), strength kink, dirty talk, choking, spanking :) lover boy gyu as always. let me know if i missed anything!
Length: ~5k
Note: y'all thought cheol rot was bad but the OG bias wrecker is back. dont come at me for gym terminology i go by vibes. replaced my gym crush with mingyu and this is what happened <3 i have a bonus/pt 2 in the drafts too but I'll wait to post it bc too much muscle pig mingyu is bad for the soul... and the [redacted]
to the anon that sent me a seok ask forever ago about his arms, im sorry i used it in this fic. but know i have a seok fic with exactly what you asked for in the works rn. everyone say thank you anon.
@bbychocolat do not hit my line about mingyu for at least 24 business hours i need to recover
Remember: Tumblr runs on reblogs and I run on validation in the tags and comments :)
read part II
read more here
This blog is intended for 18+ only! Minors/blank blogs will be blocked!
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Figuring out the ins and outs of a new gym isn’t easy but it isn’t impossible. Go too early and you’re surrounded by creepy men old enough to be your grandfather. Right after work is a sure way to experience hoards of gym bros crowding around machines like they own them. 
So you go as late as possible. 
Only a handful of people are dispersed through the large space. A few run on the treadmills lined on the catwalk of the second floor, several switch through different weights in front of the mirrors. You make your way through the maze of equipment towards the leg press; your final sets before you can go home and wash away the grime of the day.
Or you would if someone wasn’t occupying the one machine you need.
Peeping your head around, you notice a black backpack and matching water bottle on the ground. You glance around, unable to find a clear owner since the next closest person is halfway across the gym doing a different exercise.
Would it be that rude to take the machine out from under someone if they’re not even using it? You could probably get in all your sets before the person even came back if you moved quickly.
You wait a few minutes. How embarrassing would it be to have the mystery person walk back up the second you sat down? But after five minutes pass and no one emerges to claim the spot, you set about changing the weights out.
And just when you slip into the seat, you look up and find someone approaching.
He’s tall, he’s handsome, and he’s barely ten feet away. Your saving grace is that he hasn’t spotted you yet thanks to his phone. 
But that doesn’t last long.
“Oh! Sorry! Were you using this machine?” You ask, trying to sound cordial. 
“It’s okay!” He smiles at you. “Do you need it?”
Yes.
“No, I can find something else to do.” 
You rise to do just that when he stops you with a shrug.
“I don’t mind sharing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I take long breaks between my sets anyway so it’s no big deal.”
So that’s where he went.
“Okay, thanks.”
“No problem.”
He moves to lean against the wall, face buried in his phone once again as you work through your set. Honestly you think he forgot you were even there until you start standing up and he pushes off his perch. 
Exchanging polite smiles, you skirt around him and snag your water bottle before occupying the same spot against the painted bricks. You try not to be a creep but watching the way the muscles in his legs bulge and coil with each rep is impossible to look away from. Especially when there’s just so much to look at.
He racks up twelve reps with ease and switches back off with you before wandering out of sight.
You work through two of your sets before he comes teetering back. 
“I tried putting it back to your weight.” You laugh, sipping from your water bottle.
“Three forty? Ouch.”
“What? Should I have made it lighter?”
“Try heavier. Like four hundred.”
“My sincerest apologies.” You mock, placing your hand over your heart. “I’ll remember that next time.”
He laughs again before slipping back into the seat and working through the motions.
This time you don’t bother hiding the way you watch him over your phone. He looks good, it’d be a waste not to watch the swell of his chest or the stretch of his thighs. The gym shorts and snug black t-shirt only exacerbate how cut his physique is. 
And if he makes a comment you can always twist your not so subtle gawking into a compliment about his form.
When he finishes his set again, he snags his bag and water bottle off the ground before turning to you. “All yours. Have a good night.”
“Yeah, you too.”
And he’s gone.
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Over the next few weeks, you learn mystery man works out at the same time you. He’s there when you arrive and remains when you leave after an hour and a half of sweating and gasping like a dying fish, only absent on Wednesdays when you manage the most last luster workouts of your life. The disappointment the first time you realized you were looking for the backwards cap sticking out amongst the free weights would have been embarrassing but what's wrong with a little eye candy while breaking a sweat? 
And what a great view he makes. Your brief peeks into the mirrored walls are full of nothing straining muscles and glowing skin. The first day he did arms in a cutoff tee will go down in history as the worst day of your life. Only rivaled by all the other days he works his legs in shorts accentuating just how nice his ass is with every squat.
Your friends all ask when you’re going to talk to him again. As if you’ll just walk right up and interrupt the best part of your day. No, you’d rather watch him move across the gym floor from the corner of your eye, throw him a friendly nod, and go about your business than run the risk of making things awkward.
Unfortunately, doesn’t possess the same desire to remain a friendly nameless face like you do.
His name is Mingyu. Or that’s what the employee with glasses calls him while they joke around one night. You don’t mean to eavesdrop but they’re loud and the only exit takes you right past the U-shaped desk. Mingyu throws a grin as you pass by on your way out and the flash of teeth spikes your heart rate higher than any exercise you’ve done that night.
When he officially introduces himself at the water fountain the next night, you have to bite the urge to tell him ‘I know.’ Instead you snort at his extended hand, providing your own name over the firm shake like you won’t be haunted by the feeling of the calluses on his fingers or the heat of his palm for the next week. 
What’s worse is how he says your name back, rolling the sound across his tongue and past his quirked lips. 
And the final nail in the coffin is when you leave and you see the way he turns in the glass doors to watch, bidding you a goodnight with your name signed at the end.
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Mingyu might be the worst gym crush in the world. Mostly because your thoughts of him extend beyond the brick walls he should only exist in. And partially because he’s caught you staring more times than you care to admit. 
Not as many times as you’ve caught him, but the point stands.
No, the worst part, you find out, is Mingyu is an incorrigible flirt. And he knows it.
Tonight you’re off schedule, runny nearly half an hour later than usual.; work clothes sticking to your skin as you make your way towards the off shooting hall housing the entrance to the locker rooms. In a rush, you step around another body only to end up in front of one much more familiar.
“There's my girl.” Mingyu smiles. “Thought you were skipping out on me.”
My girl. My girl. My girl, my girl, my girl….
There isn’t a thought in your head beyond the bold casualness he drops that bomb on you with so you nod awkwardly and force yourself not to sprint the next twenty feet to hide.
Half an hour later, when you catch him watching you in the mirror over his own weights, the bastard smiles like the cat who caught the canary. 
But you end up on top when Mingyu offers to spot you while doing weighted squats. He’s at your back, an appropriate amount of space between your bodies you wish he’d close. You don’t need his help. Your form is better than his (you would know, his ass and thighs give you tunnel vision when its his leg day). And the weight on the bar isn’t even enough to make you strain but why pass up on the offer? Especially with how Mingyu meets your eyes over your shoulder in the mirror with each dip.
And then he cheers ‘that’s my girl’ again when you re-rack the equipment with ease and it's over.
“Shit,” you grunt. 
Mingyu pops up from his perch between your breasts under your shirt, hair a mess and eyes glazed. “Good?”
“No, your steering wheel is in my back.” You wince, attempting to wiggle away and ending up further up his lap.
“Sorry, let me just…”
The seat flies back under your combined weight, throwing your forehead right into Mingyu’s chin.
“Fuck!” 
“Oh my god!” You gasp. “Are you okay?”
Mingyu’s head falls back as he releases a massive sigh. Each second that ticks by has you both coming to the same conclusion.
“Yeah,” you breath, sitting up. “I think this was a bad idea.”
“Oh…”
“I just mean like your car is small and you’re too big and I—“
The guffaw Mingyu tries to hide slips free too easily. “That’s what she said.”
“God, you’re gross.” 
Your nose crinkles as you rise up, using his chest for leverage. It feels as nice as it looks and its the worst knowledge you’ve gained in you life.
“Sticks and stones,” he hums.
“Well this was fun. I’ll ugh… see you around?”
When you try to shift back into the passenger seat to exit, Mingyu’s hands flex over your thighs to keep you in his lap. His sweats do nothing to hide his semi. Something he doesn’t even seem to consider as a concern given the way he unconsciously curls into you.
“Or we can go back to mine.”
He’s trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Like he won’t go home and fuck his fist in the shower with the echoes of your sighs filling his ears if you turn him down. You can see it in his eyes. What hinges on his offer and how much you’ll both regret it if the tension fizzles and dies in his SUV.
From where you’re sitting, it’s incredibly difficult to think with your head and not your hormones. Mingyu is hot, he’s nice, he seems decent enough. His behavior doesn’t hint at him being a creep. If he’s normal enough to fuck in his car, is he not normal enough to fuck in the comfort of a bed?
The thumb stroking your thighs and the hopeful eyes staring you down make the decision for you.
“Yeah, okay.” 
With his address in your phone’s GPS, you trail after his SUV in your own car. The roads are familiar because they’re the same roads you drive when you return to your apartment that turns out to be only three blocks closer to the gym than Mingyu’s. 
All this time he’d been so close and you never even realized. Did he think about you the same way you thought about him when he drove home? If he did, you’re in for a night.
Rolling into a space only a few down from where he parks, you pause to hype yourself up. 
People have sex all the time. It’s no big deal. I can do this. 
A knock at the window interrupts your spiral, finding Mingyu smiling sheepishly through the glass. The muscles in your chest squeeze when he opens the door and holds it for you to exit; and threaten to explode when his hand finds the small of your back and guides you towards the stairwell.
Footsteps echo down to the hall, Mingyu only a fraction ahead to lead the way to a non-descript door with a seasonal doormat that's seen better days.
“Ugh, this is it.” 
His apartment is shockingly clean for a guy your age. Not clean in the ‘I don’t own enough shit to even be dirty’ way. No, Mingyu’s apartment is cozy. There’s throw pillows and blankets on the couch. He has a lamp and bookshelf in the corner and the walls are adorned with a collage of artwork thoughtfully pieced together. Several personal photos are littered throughout, some with an obviously younger Mingyu propped next to what must be a sister or a cousin, a few of him with friends. One of him and a familiar man with glasses, their faces blurry but the glee clear as they’re frozen in time. Your lips lift with a soft smile at the personal touches bleeding into every corner of his space.
Turning over your shoulder you ask, “You and the guy at the gym are friends?” 
Mingyu’s watching you with something unidentifiable in his eyes, stepping forward to figure out which frame you're looking at until he’s only a foot behind you.
“Yeah, we went to the same middle school.”
“And this one?” You say, fingers tracing the edge of the wooden frame.
“My little sister.” Mingyu follows, still only a step behind.
“And I’m assuming these are your parents?”
“Actually those are Wonwoo’s parents.” He chuckles. “These are my parents.”
Mingyu’s arm reaches around to point at the correct photo, his chest brushing against your back.
“Wanna give me the tour?”
Mingyu manages to show you everything in five minutes. The living room and connected kitchen you’re already standing in, the door of the hall bathroom, and finally his bedroom. You take a seat on the edge of the bed, discovering the new smattering of details that uncover more about the man waiting with baited breath in the threshold. 
“Why are you over there?” You ask.
With arms crossed and shoulders up to his ears, Mingyu resembles a kid waiting to be scolded rather than a man who tried to hook up with you in his car less than thirty minutes ago.
“I’m nervous.”
You can’t stop the satisfaction from spreading to your face. “I make you nervous?”
Mingyu pushes off the door jam, shuffling forward until he’s standing a foot in front of you. “Yeah. I don’t really do stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what? Try and fuck girls in your car?”
“Haha.” Mingyu mocks, face descending until he rubs his nose with yours.
Your eyes slip closed when his do, breathing each other's air. “Stuff like what, Gyu?”
Your hands find the material of his shirt stretched across his shoulder. Each brush of his lips across your cheek, down your jaw, until he finds your ear.
“I don’t sleep around with girls I’m not dating.”
Oh.
“We don’t hav—”
“Which is not the best way to ask you out.”
You press him out of your space, far enough that you can look him in the eyes and see if he’s serious. The tips of Mingyu’s ears burn red but he’s looking right at you despite how embarrassed he clearly feels.
“You’re asking me on a date?”
“Ugh, yeah. I think it’d be fun. But you don’t have to! If you just wanna do this that's fine t—”
Whatever words Mingyu was trying to say fizzle on the tip of his tongue as you pull him into a kiss. He curls over you, pressing you further into his bed with every fervent pass. Wedging one hand under the small of your back, Mingyu lifts you up and carries you while he crawls to the center.
Your mind wanders to all the other ways he can manhandle you into the mattress.
He settles flat against you, hips cradled between your own while delving into your mouth. You fill your hands with his ass, dragging Mingyu’s covered cock against your core. A groan backs apart your lips as Mingyu falls into the curve of your neck. 
“This is a yes to the date by the way.” You pant now that he’s taken over, hands scratching up his back in an effort to get rid of his shirt. “In case that wasn’t clear.”
Mingyu’s clothes disappear over his head and across the room, yours following shortly after. The heat of bare skin on bare skin is better than anything until he takes one of your breasts in his palm and the other in his mouth. 
Every curse you know flies through your lips as he sucks and pinches until you're sore between the legs.
He takes the squeeze of your thighs and the rock of your hips as a greenlight, hands leading where his lips follow until it’s nothing but your panty clad core an inch from his face.
“This okay?” Mingyu asks in the fat of your thigh, tongue trailing fire across the skin.
You nod with a sigh, “Mingyu, please.”
He doesn’t need much more than that, the fabric barrier gone in a blink and his nose traces your folds until he’s dying for a taste.
Mingyu eats pussy like he doesn’t need oxygen. The path of his pointed tongue around your clit is nothing short of precise, meticulously tracing every ridge and curve until the sheets stretch under your fingers. When he flattens it to pay broader attention, your legs squeeze and Mingyu’s hands force them wide around his shoulders.
Your feet flatten on the bed and thrust up his mouth, wet and crude with fingers in his hair and your whines in his ears. Every suck of Mingyu’s mouth forces the muscles in your neck to lerch until they hurt and your head falls back. He takes pride in the way you drip for him, making the best mess he’s ever had the privilege to clean up.
You reward him with an lavishing praise at the next twitch of your insides, “Fuck, just like that.” 
Taking advantage of the slight arch in your spine, Mingyu’s hand sneaks under your back, fingers unforgiving as they dig into your ass. He curls your hips up and buries a finger in your core with mortifying ease.
Between your legs, Mingyu catches your eyes. Pupils blown wide, mouths bruised around stuttered breath. A matching set of debauched expressions. He’s more familiar like this; skin glowing with sweat, and hair matted to his forehead. Next time you see him at the gym you know it's all you’ll think about. Next time you're alone in your room, or the shower, or the grocery store. Or anywhere you’ve day dreamed about him before.
He leans back to watch the digit disappear, only to reappear soaking. “Feels good?”
“Give me another and it will.”
You savor the rhythm he sets, thick fingers working to prep you for what you felt under his shorts. His tongue is hard and wet at your clit, fingers stretching and spreading until your stomach dips and you nearly buck him off as your clit swells from abuse.  
Your fingers pluck at your nipples and Mingyu apparently likes to watch because he manages more enthusiasm, forces his finger to crook just the right way, and continues to suck even after you start screaming.
“Oh fuck, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!” You chant, voice cracked.
Something sounding suspiciously like a ‘thank you’ drops into the mix but Mingyu’s the only one to hear it. In his opinion, he should be the one doing the thanking; you just gave him enough spank bank material for the next six months.
You don’t dislike the taste of yourself on his tongue, his lips, his chin, his cheeks, and even his chest when you flip Mingyu over and aim to return the favor. He blushes when you lap against the hollow of his throat; embarrassed from the way he goes boneless with such simple affection.
He sinks into the plush of the mattress, propped up by the mountain of pillows at the headboard. Mingyu’s stomach stiffens under your tongue and the twitch blooms a smile on your face. Predictable.
“Sensitive?”
Your nails raking up the shape of his thighs turn the denial falling from his lips into a whine, and it makes you wonder what other sounds Mingyu will make with his cock in your mouth.
The vein bulging along the underside of his length gives your tongue something to trace along as you lap from base to flared tip, sucking down until it shines from spit and pre-cum. You take all you can until the curve of your throat protests.
Mingyu’s big and he’s loud.
“Oh God, shit.” He babbles with abandon, hands fisted at his sides until his knuckles turn pale.
You focus on the cock in your mouth rather than how pretty Mingyu’s chest would look covered in bite marks. How a bruise on his hip would be just visible when he reaches over his head to do pull ups, and red streaks from your nails on his bicep would make a great accessory.
A hand lands on the base of your skull, gentle until it's not. His thumb dips to stroke the bulge of his dick through your throat as you take him deeper. And like some ridiculous porno theres still an inch you’ll never be able to take even if you do nothing but let him fucking your mouth until the only thing you taste is cum.
“Fuuuuck,” Mingyu groans from a harsh suck on the upstroke.
He distracts you with his tongue on yours, keeping you from diving back down and destroying his ego from how quick you almost made him cum. Your one solace is the lazy grip you have on the base of Mingyu’s length, fingers tightening around the head while he cants into the squeeze.
You think Mingyu is going to plant you on his cock and make you ride it until one of you is crying. But he keeps pushing and pulling until you’re kneeling over his face, knees cushioned in the pillows and hands against the wall to steady you while he dives in again.
His head shakes back and forth, tongue out to swipe messily at your clit as you grind into his face. The last grip of sanity you have gives you the mind to reach back, jerking Mingyu off while he eats it, a cycle of moans moving through you; him into your folds when you squeeze from a grating pass off his tongue that has you whining to the ceiling fan.
“Shit, need you to fuck me.” You whine but don’t stop curling against the latch of his lips, legs stiff with ache.
It’s Mingyu who brings things to a halt, raising you away from his mouth until you're left on your knees while he stands to rummage in the drawer for a condom. You listen while the paint of the wall cools your forehead.
The hand at the dip of your spine makes you melt when he checks in, “Still okay?”
Nodding, you find him over your shoulder with a thick swallow. Mingyu’s nose follows the slope of your muscles, lips untying all the knots he’s worked into them over the past few weeks.
“Want it like this?”
“Yeah.”
You drop until your chest meets the bed and arch until it hurts just to put on a good show. Mingyu shuffles behind you, knocking your knees wider with his own, palms molding to your ass and spreading it apart to take a good look like he wasn’t tongue deep inside your pussy already. The room is nothing more than the sounds of grounding breaths; Mingyu watching the way your torso moves around the air, releasing a long exhale before moving closer.
The feel of his chest against yours was great, but the hard muscle of it along your back, his chain caught between and leaving a definitive mark, is life ruining. It shreds the last bit of humanity you’ve been clinging to since you dragged Mingyu to the parking lot and tried to stick your hands down his pants while leant against the passenger door.
No matter how well Mingyu stretched you for his cock it was never going to be enough. Taking the first inch nearly splits you in half. But you're soaked and needy; nothing short of the end of the world is going to keep you from getting the satisfaction of feeling him in your guts. You take it with measured breaths and affirmations to relax. Slow arches of his hips work him in until he’s flat with your ass and whispering absolute depravity into your ears.
“Fuck, you’re tight.”
Arching your ass higher, you whimper, “You’re huge.”
Your ass stings under his punishing hand, thrown forward by an involuntary buck of his hips.
“Don’t say that.”
You turn until you can look over your shoulder again, meeting wild eyes. “You feels so good.” You moan, eyelids low and wrecked.
“Didn’t—shit, think you’d have such a dirty mouth.” He bites into the side of your neck, sucking a bruise like a depraved teenager. 
“I knew you’d have a fat cock.”
You get what you want so easily it's almost insulting; Mingyu’s hand forcing your face into the sheets and his hips rushing into you with pure need. Every prod into your cunt has you wailing. It’d destroy your self respect if you could think of anything beyond how he’s ruining you for anyone else.
Pillows topple off the edge of the bed as you scramble for a hold. Anything to ground you against the burn in your veins with every tight squeeze around Mingyu’s cock. His balls slap against your clit teasingly, more degrading than the way he has you bent in half. 
“Harder,” you beg.
Mingyu falls back on his haunches, pulling you with him until you're sitting up right. His arm comes into view, curling around neck until your throat sits in the crux of his elbow and his hand latches on your shoulder; a crude headlock he uses as leverage to keep fucking into you. You’ve been choked but this is infinitely better. Whatever Mingyu wants to take from you, he’s in a position to do so.
“Gonna cum?” He nips into your earlobe.
His hand shoves its way between your legs, swipe roughly against your clit before you can even hope to answer.
A pathetic nod is all you manage thanks to the muscles gathered under your chin limiting your mobility.
Mingyu let's go then and your hands prevent a crash into the headboard, putting you back in the same position as before but you have to work for it now; ass bouncing in his laps as you ride him. Finding your balance, you drop one hand to your clit as Mingyu’s pinch your nipples.
“Let me have it, let me make you come." Mingyu pants into your spine. "Fuck you look so good like this, shit.”
He keeps rambling, flying with you towards the edge hand in hand; both breathless from the slap of your thighs against his.
“Mingyu, feel so good. Oh my god, oh my g—”
The softness of the pillows greets you once again while everything flashes white. Mingyu scrambles behind, fucking you into the mattress while you soak his cock. Muscles twitching, teeth ground till they crack, you come and come and come while begging him to do the same.
Mingyu gives in without hesitation, all his weight behind his hips as he fills the condom; dragging you back with an arm around your waist. Every jerk of his cock against your walls from the force makes you vibrate until he’s slipping out, soiled and used against the back of your thigh.
The last thing you register is his lips finding your shoulder again, rubbing back and forth as he comes down.
You fall asleep under the heat of his body for who knows how long, content in the mind shattering numbness of what just happened. Mingyu seems to feel the same, dead weight hanging half off you so you can at least manage to breath.
When you wake, whether it's twenty minutes or two hours later, Mingyu is snoring into the pillow, still naked. His lips pout in his sleep and you swallow the urge to shower them with kisses thanks to the drool at the corner of his mouth.
Even without the covers, you're warm. The kind of heat that slips over your skin, sinks into your bones and keens for you to fall asleep and stay. But Mingyu asked you on a date, not to spend the night. And you’d hate to assume and ruin whatever this is before it as a chance to start.
“Where are you going?” He pouts.
You don't make it two inches out of his arms before he’s pulling you back, tangling them around you so there's no chance of unnoticed escape. Mingyu digs his nose into your cheek and waits for an answer like he has all the time in the world.
Something tells you if he knew you were attempting to head home, Mingyu would throw a fit. And what use is that when you want to see what a night sleep with a giant human furnace is like?
“Bathroom.”
Adding to the list of information you’ve learned, Mingyu is a stage five clinger. He latches on to your back, guiding you into the shower stall for a quick spray down that leaves half your face, part of your thigh, and almost none of him clean.
He falls asleep against the base of your skull while brushing your teeth, because of course he has a stash of extra toothbrushes under the sink just in case. 
And when you crawl under the fresh sheets, he pulls you into his chest, leaves a kiss against your forehead, and tells you he can’t wait for your breakfast date tomorrow.
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Taglist: @tomodachiii @cvpidyunho @miniseokminnies @ddaengpotate @arycutie @gaebestie @primoppang @gyuguys @mine-gyu @doremifasire @missminhoe @toplinehyunjin @crvs4vldtn @prettygyuuu
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cobrakaisb · 9 months
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ciao bella
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summary: you and theo spend a summer in italy, and some insecurities are revealed
word count: 849
author's note: the ending is lowkey shit, but i really liked the concept.
“theo,” you called, waiting for your boyfriend’s hum of acknowledgment before continuing. “can you rub some sunscreen on my back? i don’t want to burn.” he grumbled a response in that low tone of his, but you heard the sound of the lotion bottle, letting you know that he was fulfilling your request. 
you sighed in relief as theo rubbed the cool lotion on your back, arching ever so slightly as the feeling contrasted your sun kissed skin. he placed a gentle kiss on your shoulder, “relax love.” you sighed again, sinking further into the lounge chair set up on the balcony overlooking lake como. the stunning view, large villa, and established atmosphere reminded you just how rich your boyfriend was. 
when he approached you after the holiday break during fifth year with a letter and plane ticket to italy, you were shocked. it was a little unexpected, considering that your relationship was relatively new, so you found yourself hesitant to agree. it took pansy, millie, and daphne’s words of encouragement to convince you that this trip was a good idea. spending a month in italy didn’t scare you, in fact it was a bonus to get away from your own familial issues, and of course, some alone time with your boyfriend couldn’t hurt. it was the itinerary, rather, that made you question your sanity and willingness to go.
you were flying in from london to milan, via muggle transportation, where you were spending three days in a luxury hotel. from there you were going to his family’s villa at lake como, where you’d reside for two weeks, soaking up the sun and rich atmosphere. at the beginning of the third week, the two of you were taking a private car to spend the day in florence before heading to rome for another three days. the remainder of the trip would be spent between the amalfi coast and sorrento. 
the whole thing was a lot, and everything surrounding the trip exuded wealth. between the luxury hotels, first class tickets, private tours, designer outfits, and theo’s eagerness to take you on various shopping sprees, you felt like you were in over your head. granted, your family was well off, but not nearly as financially stable as theodore’s. maybe that’s why it was hard for you to truly relax; the worry about paying theo back was eating you away, slowly but surely. 
“you’re not relaxing,” he mumbled, drawing you from your racing thoughts to the serene environment. you huffed at his words. “i’m trying too,” you replied. theo could hear the worry in your voice; he could feel it emitting off you like the faint blue glow of a patronus. he set the bottle of lotion down, climbing off your back to sit in his own lounger. he turned to face you. “what are you so worried about, darling? tell me and i’ll fix it,” he begged. you knew his blue eyes were wide and pleading behind the dark frames of his sunglasses. 
“i don’t know how you’ll be able to fix it. it think i just need to figure it out on my own,” you explained softly, not wanting to hurt his feelings, or make him feel like you were withholding information from him. (even though you technically were.) by the end of your sentence, theo had moved from his chair back to yours, taking a hold of your hand. 
his olive skin was warm and a shade darker than usual, probably from all the sun you’d been getting these past couple of weeks. his thumb rubbed gently across the back of your hand, a habit that he developed as a way to soothe your nerves and anxiety. you sighed, a deep one at that, before opening your mouth to confess. before you could truly process what you were saying, filtering the things that you didn’t necessarily want him to know, you had told theo everything; how you felt like you’d never be able to pay him back, and how you wondered if splurging on you was really worth it.  
once you finished, you took another breath to calm yourself down. you risked a hesitant glance at theodore, who’s grip on your hand had tightened over the course of your rambling. it was silent between the two of you, and you were afraid to break it. finally, theo licked his lips before looking towards you. “fuck darling, don’t ever worry about that. you being here is all the payback i need,” he explained softly, his free hand tracing the bridge of your nose. 
“theo,” you trailed off, but he silenced you with a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “you’re wearing my ring, yeah?” he asked, gesturing to the silver ring that hung on a chain around your neck. “always,” you answered. “exactly. what’s mine is yours, and it forever will be,” he replied, kissing the back of your hand as you felt your cheeks heat up. 
“now sit back and relax.” maybe spending a month with theo, the boy you loved, in italy wasn’t such a bad idea.
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explorevenus · 5 months
Text
addicted ♡ re2r!leon kennedy x reader
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nsfw (18+) - minors dni or i will call the cops
word count - 2.9k
description - by the end of the summer, you're bound for college and your boyfriend leon is bound for his shiny new police officer job in raccoon city. knowing your relationship could be threatened by the distance, your need for each other has become insatiable.
tags/warnings - porn with plot, soft dom leon, car sex, cunnilingus (f receiving), fingering, p in v, creampie, breeding kink, mildly angsty, no use of (Y/N)
a/n - this was a request by my beautiful goth puppy wife chaos baby @nexysworld <333 special thanks to @dollfacefantasy for beta reading and believing in me and also being my momager <3
recommended listening - addicted by saving abel
my masterlist ♡
my ao3 ♡
thanks so much for reading and i hope u enjoy ;w; <3
-venus ♡
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Young adulthood felt so scary and new and weird.
You and Leon had been dating since high school and now you were fully legal adults, figuring out what to do with your lives and pretending you would both fit together seamlessly in each other’s plans. Just weeks ago he had graduated from the police academy and you had until the end of the summer to spend as much time together as possible before he would move into the city to become an officer, and you would be moving states away to attend college.
You told each other you would visit as often as possible, that you would call every day, that as soon as you finished school you would move back to Raccoon City to be with him, or he would find a hiring police station near you to settle into, and you would live happily ever after.
But there was a silent, knowing melancholy that hung over you all the while, and it intensified every day. Neither of you wanted to address it, for fear of spoiling what little time you had left, so it just hung there unspoken as you clung to each other for dear life.
Leon knocked quietly on your door, hoping not to wake your roommates. It was a crisp, clear summer evening and the forecast indicated a meteor shower would be visible, so as soon as he finished up at work, he took the top off of his Jeep, loaded the back with blankets and made his way to you.
His heart softened at the image of you wrapped in a blanket, ducking out of your apartment to follow him out to the car. It was nearing midnight and you were already in pajamas, but it felt right that way. Comfortable. 
Soon enough you were sipping slushies from the gas station, your sneakers kicked up on the dashboard and the wind rushing through your hair as Leon drove the two of you up the base of the Arklay Mountains. There was a little lookout tucked away less than five miles up, one you frequented together practically since you met. This lookout had seen numerous makeouts and unquantifiable hours of conversation, silly and stupid and serious and solemn.
The car slowed to a stop and Leon threw it in park, moving his seat back so he could get comfortable. His lips were stained pink with cherry slush as he looked over to you with a gentle smile.
“Pretty, huh?” He asked, watching as you stared up at the sky, awe-filled eyes searching every gap in the void for a shooting star. His warm, broad hand still rested on your thigh, thumb skimming over the soft fabric of your sweatpants in a gentle caress. 
Relaxing into his touch, you nodded, looking over at him now. Your own lips and tongue were tinted blue and what remained of your slushie was cold in the palm of your hand. It was funny, you thought, that you’d driven all the way out here to watch the meteor shower but still, you couldn’t help but watch each other. The breeze blew warm and the radio played lowly.
“You’re pretty,” You replied quietly, playing with his fingers. Even having been together for years, he still managed to make you shy.
Leon let out a soft laugh and shook his head, his other hand coming forward to tip your chin up. “You’re pretty too,” He began, and you were just beginning to blush when he added, “Pretty corny.”
You threw your head back and groaned dramatically, swatting at his chest. “You’re pretty annoying,” You griped, but before you could continue your playful rant, he guided you back toward him and pressed his lips against your own, and just like always, you melted almost instantaneously. 
At the start the kiss was quite tender, communicating a sense of longing and connection that you had only ever felt with him. His thumb traced your jaw while his grip tightened on your thigh in an affectionate little squeeze and you felt as though you could sit here with him forever, craning your neck over the center console of his Jeep just to kiss him beneath the stars, just to breathe him in, to be with him. Leon was your safe place and even the thought of being away from him sent you into withdrawals.
Your shaking hand came up to cradle the back of his neck, fingers curling into his golden hair as you took it upon yourself to deepen the kiss, wanting to get as much of him as you could. You wanted to horde him all to yourself, you wanted to sink into him and have him sink into you, to pause time and keep him there until you were sick of each other, though you knew no length of time together would ever feel like enough. Tongue swiping against his lower lip, you flattened your palm over the crotch of his jeans and massaged gently.
“F-Fuck, baby,” Leon grunted into your mouth, feeling all the blood rush to his cock in response to your touch and your languid kisses. “I’m gonna miss this…”
“Don’t,” You whispered, “I don’t wanna talk about it… Just wanna feel you…”
With a short nod of understanding he reconnected your lips, sliding his hand beneath the waistband of your sweatpants to dip a finger into your folds, delighted at the realization that you had gone without panties for the evening. He grinned into the kiss and slipped his tongue past you, the pads of his fingers quickly finding your clit with practiced ease.
Your lashes fluttered and your thighs shifted together, a quiet mewl of pleasure tumbling from you as you bucked up into his hand. With each passing second your heart was beating faster and you could feel the wetness collecting beneath his touch.
“Mm, my pretty baby,” He sighed out, the pad of his thumb flicking at your clit while his middle and index fingers petted at your hole. “Put your seat back. Let me taste you.”
There wasn’t a beat of hesitation as you reached down to recline your seat and push it back, and as you did so, Leon was making quick work of climbing over the center console to join you in the passenger seat. He gripped your thighs and pushed your legs up to rest on the dashboard as he yanked your sweatpants down in one swift motion, wasting no time smothering your plush inner thighs with kisses.
His pupils dilated by the scent of your cunt alone, and while he initially planned on taking his time with you, he just couldn’t help himself. Cramped down on the floor of his own passenger seat, Leon’s fingertips printed into your thighs as he dove forward to kiss and lap at your wetness, drinking you up with a deep, wanton need. 
You tensed at the feeling, glittery heat washing over you before you relaxed into his mouth and brought one hand down to tug at his hair, encouraging him further. Your hazy eyes blinked open to look straight up at the sky, the cool night air foreign on your most intimate parts, but not unwelcome. It was quiet out, serene, private, as though you and Leon were the last two people on Earth. A shooting star cast across the sky in a blur, and you quickly realized that your wish was for you and Leon to be the last two people on Earth. Maybe that would be nice. At least your time together wouldn’t be so limited.
Losing Leon felt like losing a limb, even if he was only moving a few hours away to the other side of the mountain. Another shooting star streaked across the night sky, and you barely even noticed you had said something until you already finished speaking, “I wish you could stay… I feel like I can’t breathe without you…”
He hummed into your slick pussy, tongue swirling over your bud before pulling back just far enough to respond, “Not talking about it, baby, remember?”
Your face scrunched up a little bit as you realized your mistake and nodded, returning your focus to the glittering stars above you while your boyfriend sucked and licked at your cunt like he was starving. Soon enough his middle and index fingers were prodding at your hole, tracing the shape of you before sinking deep into your sticky, wet heat, your needy walls sucking him in.
What you didn’t know was that Leon had been focusing so much pleasure on you over the summer because it felt like making up for what he wouldn’t be able to do from thousands of miles away in the fall. You were the only thing he could bring himself to think about since roughly halfway to graduation at the police academy, when he was beginning to pester Raccoon City Police Department with his exemplary test scores and ever-growing resume– by the end of the year you would have both gone so far in separate directions, and long distance wasn’t something you ever excelled at. He knew that the day he left for Raccoon City, he would be effectively nailing the coffin shut.
So he bided his time by fucking you senseless almost daily, eating you out, pinning you down and driving you to tears with your toys, feeling every inch of you beneath his hands just so he wouldn’t forget. Every moan, every mewl, every whimper and sob and plea from you was like music to his ears, like pure heroin directly to the vein. Just like a drug, the better it felt in the moment, the more he knew it would hurt you both later on.
He felt you bucking into his nose and whining quietly, and every twitch of your muscles made his cock throb in his jeans. Leon couldn’t take it anymore, he needed you now.
Pulling back from your core, Leon moved quickly to undo his belt and shove his jeans down his thighs, desperate for some relief from the pressure and intoxicating desire. He was already dribbling precum just from the taste of you, a distinct wet patch growing at the front of his soft blue boxers that soon joined his pants down his legs, and shortly thereafter he was clumsily crawling over you in the passenger seat of his Jeep.
Almost like muscle memory, your arm fell behind you in a blind search for your purse in the back seat. You quickly retrieved it, digging through its contents as Leon’s hands shoved their way up your shirt to paw at your breasts, devouring your throat with kisses, making it a little difficult to maintain your focus. Finally you found what you were looking for, fingers coming into contact with that trusty little box… only to find it empty.
“L-Leon… mm, babe, hey,” You panted in an attempt to gather his attention. He hummed a barely noticeable sound of acknowledgment, but otherwise didn’t budge. You let him continue for a lingering second before breaking the news in a near whisper, “Leon, we’re out of condoms…”
He paused, breaths short and hips rutting into your own with need, his woefully hard cock grinding against your slit. While his body acted on its own in search of any friction he could get, his mind was spinning. He knew you weren’t on birth control and he knew a risk like this could ruin everything you’d both worked so hard for… but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
In fact, it sort of spurred him on.
He buried his face into your neck again and sucked a harsh, dark mark into your skin, a feeling of possessiveness taking root in him. “Then we’re gonna risk it,” He said definitively, his voice low and almost growling in your ear. “Just think about it, sweetheart… Maybe if you let me knock you up, you can forget all about college… I could just whisk you away to the city with me and take care of you for the rest of our lives…”
A rush of heat struck you like a moving car and knocked the air out of your lungs. You knew it would be stupid to throw away your scholarships and every dream you’d had for yourself on a whim, but it was admittedly a nice fantasy at the very least. Arching into the palm of his hand, you relented.
“F-Fuck, fuck… Fuck me, Leon, please, just fuck me…”
And just as you anticipated, he took you up on that. A cool breeze rushed through the open vehicle as he lined himself up at your hole and drove into you, his vision going white for a second just at the intensity of the pleasure he felt, being engulfed by you again. Your body was heaven on Earth to him, you were heaven on Earth to him. 
He sheathed into you down to the hilt with a low groan, one hand clutching your hip and the other tangled in your hair. Leon tugged your head aside by your hair so he could speak directly into your ear, “You’re mine, you hear me? All mine. My girl, my wife, my pretty little baby mama…”
Each declaration was punctuated by a thrust of the hips, his swollen, leaking cock stuffed so deeply inside you that it was almost like you could feel him in your throat. Any and all concerns about your future, individually and as a couple, burned to ash in the far back of your mind as he fucked into with fervor. In this moment, Leon was all that mattered.
You quivered and writhed beneath him, your gummy insides pulsing and clenching around his length, and even with the top off the Jeep, the windows were beginning to accumulate a subtle fog on them. The two of you were hot and slick with sweat, drowning in the heat of each other and the late summer air.
“Leon,” You moaned, nails biting into his shoulders as you clung to him for dear life, for any shred of stability. “Make me yours…”
At this point, you couldn’t even tell if you were serious, and similarly to Leon, you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You were drunk on him and everything about him, the warmth of his skin, the pheromones that clung to his sweat, the strong grip of his hands and the sound of his breaths and the feeling of him railing into you like you were made for each other. 
“Plannin’ on it, baby,” He said in response, words breathy and a smug grin tugging at his lips. He let go of your hair to plant his hand against the window as he increased his pace, plunging into you with ardor, his balls heavy and aching for release. “Gonna keep you all to myself, give you everything you ever wanted.”
The hand of his that was holding your hip just a moment ago was now wedging itself down between you to rub steady circles into your clit. You jolted at the contact, an incoherent cry tumbling from you, molten heat pooling up in your stomach. His earlier ministrations left both him and you especially sensitive and nearing your climaxes.
He could feel your peak approaching through the way you were convulsing around him, your wet cunt tightening and pulling him deeper with each stroke until he couldn’t even think anymore. Every last one of his senses was clouded– no, drenched with you. His pace stuttered just a little bit as he decided he couldn’t possibly hold back any longer.
With a loud, pleasured groan of your name, Leon stilled inside you as a torrent of cum flooded your waiting womb, warming you from the inside. What finally pushed you over the edge into your own release was Leon’s sly fingers tugging and pinching at your bud with expertise.
“G-God, fuck,” You sobbed, breaking skin as your nails raked down his strong back and gripped him as close to you as you could manage. Tears were pricking at your eyes as you coated his cock with your release, leaving behind a creamy white ring of arousal at the base of his softening sex.
Silence fell over the car as you clung to each other, broken only by your gasping breaths for oxygen. Leon buried his face into your shoulder and kissed the sizable hickie he’d left you earlier, still fresh and stinging.
“Did so good for me,” He huffed into your ear, nibbling at your lobe. “I can’t get enough of you.”
Eventually he pulled out, a sticky mixture of your juices dribbling out of your spent hole and down to the leather seat below you. As Leon climbed less than gracefully out of the passenger seat with his pants around his knees, you were both startled by the unexpected sight of headlights traveling up the very same mountain road that led you here, and the vehicle was pulling into the lookout.
“Shit,” Leon grumbled, rushing to fix his pants and toss you a blanket from the back seat to cover up with, given your sweatpants were lost somewhere on the floor of the car.
The intruding vehicle pulled up right behind Leon’s Jeep, headlights shining into the cabin as a person got out of the driver’s side… with a flashlight. Of course it had to be a cop.
Leon took a deep breath before rolling his window down with a polite smile. “Evening, officer… Nice night, isn’t it?”
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wileys-russo · 2 months
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filling the void (4) II a.putellas x sister!reader
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prequel one two three
filling the void (4) II a.putellas x sister!reader
you looked up from your coffee as the front door opened, your sister walking through and pulling her headphones down around her neck clearly having gone for a run.
"bon dia hermana." she greeted as you only nodded, sipping on your coffee and breathing a small sigh of relief when alexia headed toward her bedroom.
when she returned a few minutes later her headphones were gone and she'd taken off her runners, padding her way into the kitchen to make herself a coffee and start breakfast.
as you sat at the bench drifting away into your own world alexia was stuck in her head just as much as you were, between worries for eli and worries for you her mind was a mess, only worsening after your confession last night.
a confession which you were praying to every and all god that alexia wouldn't bring up, already incredibly embarrassed about your outburst at the hospital you didn't think you'd handle having to confront anything else head on right now.
olga could sense the tension in the room before she even entered, needing to head off to madrid for a few days for work she'd spent most of this morning worrying about what might happen while she was away but alexia had been firm that it was important she still go.
"hola pequeña." the older girl greeted you as you sent her a smile, alexia glancing over her shoulder in surprise when you didn't make any comment on the use of the nickname, though really she should figure she'd lost the right to battle you about that anyway with her behavior lately.
"amor you called jona sí?" olga murmered, alexia nodding and stealing a kiss when you weren't looking as if you were still a child, the captain having taken the next two days off from training to make sure she was around with everything going on.
"two days, more if i need them." alexia murmured, olga smiling appreciatively knowing how hard it was for her girlfriend to take time off, her work ethic just as dangerous as it was admirable at times.
both girls turned their heads as you awkwardly cleared your throat, alexia wordlessly raising an eyebrow as your fingers drummed anxiously against the ceramic walls of the coffee mug clenched tightly in hand, the beverage itself now long gone luke warm.
"can you take me home please? i have work at nine." you asked quietly, alexia hesitating for a moment as if unsure of a response. "you don't want to come to the hospital?" your sister asked carefully, olgas hand moving to rest on top of hers on the counter.
"i have to work." you answered again, a little firmer this time. "hermana if you call your boss and explain i am sure that-" alexia tried again as you shook your head. "i have to work. i have my routine and i need to be home to follow it, all my things are there. alexia can you please take me home?" you stood abruptly, jaw clenched as you smoothed out the clothes you'd been wearing for the last near twelve hours.
as alexia opened her mouth her girlfriend gently tapped a finger against her knuckles in a silent warning. "i can take you on my way to the gym nena." olga stepped in with a smile as you nodded, alexia watching you hurry away to the bedroom to grab your phone and house keys.
"why does she not want to-" alexia frowned as her girlfriend shook her head, cutting her off. "leave it ale. you need what you need, and fresa needs what fresa needs." olga warned softly, hand tracing the catalan's sharp jawline which tensed but none the less the blonde nodded.
"do you want-" "i'll cook something when i get back before my flight mi vida, go see your mami." olga kissed her cheek, alexia sending her a small smile and pecking her lips a few times in silent appreciation before you returned.
"ready to go?"
~
"-no there's still no update, she's still not really awake yet and she's still on the ventilator." alexia explained with a sigh, on her way back to the car and on the phone for what felt like the hundredth time today, having swallowed the bullet and starting to reach out to close family members to let them know what happened.
"tía i promise as soon as she is awake and less high risk i will call you right away, for now she is not allowed many visitors. alba and i only saw her for a few minutes today and we were waiting for hours." alexia fished her keys out of her pocket and hummed, the rapid spanish on the other end of the line the same thing she'd heard all day.
"sí fresa is okay, alba and i are looking after her." alexia spoke on autopilot despite the way the words felt like ashes in her mouth, an incoming call having her rapidly finish up the conversation, abruptly hanging up and clicking accept.
"hola hermana." alexia sighed tiredly, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder as she paid for her parking and rolled her eyes at the high price but tapping her card none the less.
"were you picking fresa up from work?" alba asked, a slight worry to her tone as alexia frowned, stopping in her tracks. "no. she said you were picking her up, olga dropped her off this morning." alexia answered, hurrying to her car.
"well thats what i thought too. but i am here, the clinic is closed and she is not here, nobody is." alba replied, having left the hospital a couple of hours ago. "mierda. maybe she took the bus? i can go past mami's house now to check if she is there." alexia decided, promising to keep alba in the loop as she hurried out of the parking garage.
alexia wasn't sure to be relieved or annoyed when she pulled into the driveway and noticed the house lights were on, the blurred shadows of a figure moving behind the drawn curtains could be just faintly seen.
knocking on the front door a few times alexia tapped her foot, frowning when the door only opened a slight crack and your head poked out. "what?" you asked, a little bluntly as your sister seemed taken aback.
"alba went to pick you up from work and you were not there, we were worried." alexia started as you rolled your eyes, still refusing to open the door properly. "i finish early on mondays." you answered.
"oh, i didn't know." your sister frowned as you scoffed slightly. "why would you alexia? i'm surprised you both even know where i work." the older girls cheeks flushed a little with warmth.
"hermanita-" 'don't, please." you cut her off before she could speak, not in the mood for the conversation you knew she'd want to start right now.
"pack a bag then, you can stay with me again tonight." your sister forced a smile as you gave her an odd look as if she'd grown a second head. "why?" though when all you received in response was a knowing look, your eyes rolled once more.
"alexia, go home. i am fine here by myself, i have work tomorrow again and i already told you i have a routine." you sighed trying to close the door, frustration growing as the blondes foot wedged in the way.
"then i will stay here, i still have some things in my room." the girl persisted as you shook your head. "you don't need to, and i don't want you to." you replied sharply, though you winced as something thudded behind you.
"oh but you are fine by yourself? who is here with you." alexia's demeanor switched as you kicked at her foot and attempted to shove the door closed but to no avail as your sister easily overpowered your attempts and pushed it open, nearly sending you to the floor as she marched in like a mad woman.
"who is that!?"
you scrambled to your feet and quickly snatched up the four year old who went running toward your sister, sitting her on your hip as alexia stared at you wide eyed and in shock.
"whose niña is this?" alexia stammered out as you sighed and closed the front door. "this is sofía." you introduced, alexia's face softening a little at the shy gap toothed smile the small girl gave her.
"sof this is alexia, she's mi hermana." you introduced back, alexia giving a small wave and melting even further at the way sofía tucked her head into your neck. "since when are you shy pequeña?" you teased, a giggle sounding as you poked at her stomach.
"okay sof, how about you go watch your show while i finish dinner and talk to alexia. if you need anything you come get me or just yell out, vale?" you placed her back down as she immediately hid behind your leg, peeking out at alexia who gave her another wave.
"vale." the four year old chirped, tugging on the hem of your shorts as you bent down to her level, something whispered in your ear making you laugh and tickle her again as she giggled and raced back off to the living room.
"she's one of my friends daughters, her baby sitters sick so i offered to watch her." you explained to your sister who nodded, a little dumbfounded as she followed you back to the kitchen.
"have you been here alone with her all day?" alexia asked with an air of concern as you stirred whatever you were cooking, which your sister wouldn't deny smelt leagues better than anything she made herself these days.
"no, just a couple hours. elena does night school monday through wednesday to get her doctorate, whenever her baby sitter isn't free i watch sofía. normally i'd go to her house but with everyone going on she thought it might be better if i had sof here." you spoke quietly, glancing over your shoulder every couple of minutes to check in on the tiny brunette giggling away at a brightly coloured kids show on screen.
"you look after her by yourself?" alexia asked, shock hardly disguised as you rolled your eyes moving the sauce off the heat and huffing.
"yes alexia, believe it or not i can keep another human being alive for a few hours. i've had enough practice looking after myself!" you snapped, pausing to close your eyes and take a breath.
"i don't want to argue in front of her. i told you i'm fine, you've seen i'm okay, go home alexia, your home." you sighed, turning your back to her again after you'd peeked at the living room over the top of her head.
"fresa i also don't want to argue." your sister started a lot softer as you began to dish up dinner. "you know i want to fix this, alba and i want to fix things." alexia promised as you stayed silent, though before either one of you could speak a new voice piped up.
"you're really tall. way taller than my mami!" alexia jumped a little in surprise as sofía now stood next to her looking up in wonder. "is dinner nearly done?" she shot now next to you, tugging again on the hem of your shorts as you looked down with a soft smile.
"nearly. you hungry?" you questioned as the four year old nodded enthusiastically. "so hungry!" she groaned dramatically sagging against your leg as alexia smiled, suddenly slammed back into the memory of when she and alba would look after you at that age and you too would never leave her alone when she was trying to cook.
one memory in particular sat heavily with the captain as she watched you teasingly shove sofía away and take a test mouthful of the food, groaning loudly and happily as the girl hit your leg and huffed opening her mouth wanting to try for herself.
it was another night where both her parents were working night shifts and a sixteen year old alexia had been left to look after her sisters, alba hidden away in her room taking another one of her teenage angst my life is awful i hate everyone naps she so adored at that age.
alexia had been at training all afternoon, currently playing at Levante, and received the news from the coach that she wouldn't be starting this weekend which now made three weeks in a row.
it had put a dampen on the girls mood significantly, feeling quite lost as to what else she could do to prove herself. she already stayed back, arrived early, trained at home, worked on her skills in every way possible she could but still, nothing seemed to be good enough.
it hadn't helped that with eli only recently picking up night shifts you were still adjusting to the change in your routine, used to your papi not being around after dinner but missing your mami, which lead to you being even more clingier than usual.
"fresa!" alexia huffed as she turned and nearly stepped on you as you hovered by her feet after being sent away a few minutes ago, hugging her leg and refusing to let go no matter what.
"fresa please let go." alexia asked as nicely as she could manage, temper rapidly becoming shorter and shorter as you refused to listen to a single word she said.
first it had been refusing to take a bath, hiding under alexia's bed right against the wall where she couldn't reach you and even going as far as to bite the tip of her finger as she finally grabbed a fistful of your shirt and pulled you out.
next it was trying to drown her in a tidal wave of soapy water when she finally got you into a bath, soaking the clothes she'd not long changed into after her own shower.
but still alexia managed to hold her tongue, speaking to you softly and encouragingly as eventually you sat down and allowed her to wash your hair.
but then you'd ran around half dressed and still wet for half an hour, finding endless amusement in the way your older sister just couldn't catch you, giggling and screaming with delight as alexia resisted the urge to kick you like a football when she finally scooped you up and forced you into the rest of your pyjamas, towel drying and braiding your hair so it was out of your face.
well braiding it as best she could as you'd squirmed and wriggled and kicked, whining that alexia didn't do it right and that it was too tight and then it was too loose and that only your mami knew how to do your hair right.
a full blown tantrum over your hair which took alexia a good half an hour to calm you down again had seemingly tired you out as your sister left you on the sofa with your favourite movie on.
alexia now an hour later than planned started on dinner, stress building as it rapidly neared your bed time and the brunette feared any more disruptions would only worsen your behaviour.
she'd gotten halfway done with dinner before you grew bored of your movie, alexia's attempts to wake up alba to help only resulting in a shoe flung at her head and a door slammed in her face as she resisted the urge to strangle the younger girl.
it seemed the cure to your boredom was to latch yourself firmly to your eldest sisters leg, curling around her like a monkey as no amount of shaking or begging had you letting go.
with all of that happening alexia had almost burned dinner, patience now a thin veil as she firmly yanked you off her leg and placed you down, shooing you away and promising dinner was almost done.
though of course you hadn't listened and immediately returned to hover under her feet now bringing a toy crane your papi had gifted you. and it was the small piece of plastic alexia had stepped on with barefeet, causing her to trip and a hand to shoot out to stop herself from falling.
that hand falling on the stove had meant another wave of pain rocked her body as she hissed and saw red, nearly tripping over you once again as you made noises with your mouth and sat on the floor between her legs refusing to move.
"why do you have to be such a pain! why can't you listen! i said to leave me be and you hover under my feet and trip me and do not go away! go away fresa!" alexia had lost it at this point, flying entirely of a dangerously unbalanced handle as she yelled.
but all of that anger drained from her body in a millisecond like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head as she watched your eyes well up with tears, crane clattering to the floor.
"no no no hey pequeña-" alexia cooed softly immediately dropping to her knees and reaching for you but you were gone, sprinting away as fast as your small legs could take you as alexia's heart broke and she stood, quickly pulling the pot off the stove and running after you.
she checked your room first in all the usual hiding places but came up with nothing, calling out for you and begging you to come out, apologizing over and over but even in her own room she couldn't find you, worries growing with each passing second.
alba's door now locked she knew that was out of contention, and her body flooded with relief as she stepped into her parents bedroom and caught sight of your leg in the mirror where you'd wedged yourself under their bed.
"fresita." alexia called out softly, her chest aching at the sniffles which could be heard from your hiding spot, the older girl sitting cross legged on the floor and begging you to come out with no luck.
you refused to say a word bar the tiny sniffles and hiccups that left you, sounds of pain which were much too large for a body as tiny as yours as alexia's own flooded with guilt for her outburst.
"hey fresa ven aquí. nena i am so so so sorry for yelling, i didn't mean it promesa. please come out, lo siento mucho hermanita please." alexia continued to beg, leaning down to peer at you under the bed as you caught her eye with another sniffle, rolling over so you were facing the wall and tucking into yourself even tighter.
with a sigh alexia ran a hand through her hair, jumping as a hand landed on her shoulder, surprised to see alba now stood behind her. she frowned a little as the younger girl sat beside her, pulling something from her pocket and placing it just under the bed.
"fresita." alba cooed, voice thick with sleep as you turned under the bed, spotting your favorite chocolate bar sat a few feet away.
as alba noticed your tiny hand reach out for it she placed a finger on top, pulling the treat a little further away as you frowned and wiggled closer, though again it was tugged just out of reach.
this game of cat and mouse continued for a while until the chocolate bar sat on the floor between your sisters and eventually your head peeked out from under the bed cautiously, both older girls smiling down at you.
you watched them for a moment as neither of them made any move to reach for you, aware one sudden movement could be all it took for you to reatreat again.
when they didn't move you slowly wiggled the rest of your body out, reaching for the chocolate and snatching it, both your sisters holding their breath but sighing quietly as you sat up and didn't seem inclined to return under the bed.
"i'll go finish dinner." alba murmured as you struggled to open the chocolate, alexia sending her a grateful smile as she disapeared out of the room.
"do you want me to open it pequeña?" alexia asked softly as you nodded, shuffling a littler closer as your sister took it from your outstretched palm and opened it, handing it back.
as you took a bite this time alexia reached for you, relieved when you put up no fight as she sat you in her lap, arms protectively wound around you and her face buried in your hair.
"tickles!" you huffed as alexia exhaled tiredly, wriggling around as your sister smiled and turned you in her lap, grabbing under your arms and standing you up so you were both eye to eye.
"fresa. i am very very very sorry for yelling and for if i scared you, i am not mad at you." alexia promised as you nodded and her thumb swiped at the tear tracks under your eyes with a pained smile.
"sorry i tripped you." you whispered out, looking down guiltily as alexia's finger tilted your chin back up so your eyes locked with hers once again.
"its okay hermanita, i know you did not mean to. you just miss mami, sí?" you nodded at that as alexia tugged you into a tight hug, peppering kisses along the crown of your forehead.
"i miss her too fresa, but we will get better at this, we will." alexia promised, cradling your head as you nodded into her chest. "but sometimes when mami is not here and i ask you to do something, i need you to do it, vale?" alexia murmered as you pulled your head back.
"vale. sorry ale." your bottom lip wobbled again as alexia was quick to catch the rogue tear with her finger, kissing your cheek repeatedly and carefully standing still with you held tightly in her arms.
"the kitchen can be dangerous sometimes fresa, especially sat on the floor or attached to my leg like a little monkey." alexia warned tickling at your stomach as you giggled and a wave of relief washed over her seeing you smile again.
"you're just my best friend ale and i don't know what to do without you." you mumbled tiredly with a yawn as your head slumped on her shoulder, fatigue clawing at you as it was now past your normal bed time as alexia melted and almost cried, exhaustion hitting her as well.
"oh mi precioso fresa you are my best friend too. forever and ever and ever nena, promesa."
"my mami stabs people! what do you do?" sofía was now stood back next to alexia, smiling up at her clearly no longer as shy as the older girl was flung into reality, blinking a few times as she adjusted and tuned back in.
"elena works with me at the clinic." you quickly clarified with a small amount of amusement seeing the mild horror flicker through the older girls eyes as she registered what sofía had said.
"i play football. do you like football?" your sister dropped down to the girls level, the two of them chattering away and before you could blink suddenly sofía was tugging her away to the living room with her.
you glanced over a few minutes later to see the two of them sat cross legged on the floor, alexia trying to teach sofía some sort of clapping game as you sighed and dished up a third bowl of the meal.
"dinner is done." you called out, ensuring the stove was fully off as within a blink there was an eager four year old climbing up into her chair as you chuckled and handed her a fork.
"you may as well stay, i know olga is the cook anyway." you gave your sister a small smile as alexia did her best not to let a grin overtake her face as she sat down across from the two of you and you slid her a fork.
"gracias fresa." alexia smiled as sofía paused mid mouthful to give you a curious look. "she calls you strawberry." the brunette pointed out as you nodded. "she does, thats my favourite fruit." you poked at her nose as she huffed and smacked your hand away.
"when she was your age all she wanted to eat was strawberries, for every single meal." alexia added on pulling a stupid face at the girl who giggled. "you can't do that silly!" sofía shook her head at you.
"can too, and strawberry milk." you grabbed a napkin and sofía's chin in your hand, wiping the copious amount of food which missed her mouth away as she whined and tried to push you off.
again alexia was hit with a wave of nostalgia, vivid memories of when she sat in your chair and you sat in sofia's, the smile fading from her face as her stomach churned with guilt, somewhat grateful for the small four year olds constant chatter meaning neither you or alexia really had to interact much.
"alexia do you have a football? can we play?" sofía grabbed your sisters hand once she was done helping you clear the table, hitting the catalan with the best puppy dog eyes she could muster not unlike you did all those years ago when you were determined to get your own way.
you caught her eye and the slight raise of her eyebrow, pausing for a moment before sending the blonde a curt nod. "i'll wash up." you declared, dismissing her attempts to offer help as sofía pulled impatiently on your sisters hand.
"sí, i have lots of footballs nena. ven conmigo and you can choose one!"
~
you'd been keeping a close eye on the pair as they raced and chased one another around the backyard, the summer evening sun starting to fade fast as you dried and put away the last plate.
you'd like if you said it hadn't shocked you a little to see your at times quite awkward sister be so open and care free with sofía, you having caught her earlier chase the small girl around the backyard pretending to be a football eating monster.
you'd be lying to yourself if similarly to alexia watching their interactions didn't bring up any thoughts or feelings toward your own childhood but in no state of mind to unpack that just yet you squashed it deep deep down and refused to acknowledge it.
you were stood on the back steps just about to call the two of them in now the sun was near fully set when it happened.
all it took was a misplaced step and suddenly sofía was falling head over heels, skinning her knee on the brick retaining wall of the small vegetable patch in the corner.
alexia's sisterly instincts kicked in as she raced across to comfort the now crying girl but you beat her to it, quickly lifting sofía up and into your arms as you bounced her up and down.
"hey hey hey nena its okay! you're okay. just a little fall sof, you're okay." you repeated over and over, your sister watching on a little dumbfounded as you hurried inside, alexia grabbing the football and following.
"hey you're a big girl right? big girls get skinned knees! its all a part of growing up sof." you sat her down on the kitchen counter as her cries turned to hiccups and she nodded.
"its okay to cry though nena, its good to cry sometimes! never let anyone tell you you're not allowed to. sometimes tears can be happy as well!" you kept the girl engaged as you cleaned her knee, poking at her stomach and making jokes, her giggling distracting her from the alcohol swab wiping away at the small graze.
"now, i need someone really really special to help me make a very important decision. anyone?" you asked, holding something behind your back and making a silly face, sofía nodding eagerly as her hand shot into the air.
"anyone? does anyone want to help?" you pretended not to notice, looking around as the four year old huffed and alexia smiled softly hovering nearby watching the interaction. "me! me me me!" sofía chanted impatiently as you sighed.
"i guess nobody wants to help!" you threw your hands up and turned to go as a small hand grabbed a fistful of your t-shirt and tugged. "oh! do you want to help me sof? why didn't you tell me!" you teased, jabbing playfully at her sides as she squealed and kicked at you.
"i will help." the girl nodded as you did the same. "okay. mickey mouse, or goofy?" you held up two different plasters as sofía's face lit up and she instantly pointed to the goofy one.
asking her to sit still for a moment you carefully applied the plaster over the small graze, kissing the top of her knee and standing up straight away. "all fixed! i think we do not need to cut this off...yet." you grabbed her foot and inspected her leg with a frown.
"hey!" the brunette gasped as you pulled a shocked face and ruffled her hair, picking her back up again. "bath and bed." you pinched her nose as she groaned but made no move to fight, going limp in your arms as you smiled and kissed her cheek.
"i'm just gonna..." you jolted a little admittedly having forgotten alexia was still here as you noticed her, your sister nodding in understanding.
"don't go yet! i wanna say goodnight." sofía yelled to alexia over your shoulder as the girl promised she wouldn't and took a seat on the sofa, exhaling as she did so, head swamped with a tidal wave of memories, only worsened as she stared around at her childhood home.
alexia hadn't realised how long she'd been trapped in her own mind but what felt like mere seconds later a body was latched to her leg and you were waiting in the hallway, arms crossed and a large wet patch on your shirt where the four year old had gotten a little too enthusiastic with the plastic duck she always had with her.
"buenas noches alexia. it was fun playing with you!" sofía smiled a little more tiredly now, climbing onto the sofa and hugging the older girl tightly who perhaps clung on a second or so too long, flashes of when it was you hugging her goodnight still lingering at the back of her mind.
"it was very nice to meet you nena, remember drive through!" your sister pretended to kick a ball as sofía giggled and copied the action before waving and racing back to your side as the two of you disappeared again.
when you returned around fifteen minutes later now changed into dry clothes and the four year old sleeping peacefully in your bed it wasn't a surprise to see alexia curled up on the corner of the lounge watching something.
you didn't say anything at first as you settled at the opposite end, a somewhat uncomfortable unspoken tension filling the gap between the two of you.
"i assume you are staying the night then." you spoke up first, knowing alexia well enough that when she had her mind set on something it was near impossible to change it.
"sí." your sister confirmed as you gave a small nod. "you are very good with her." the blonde commented next, throwing you a small look as your own eyes stayed fixated on the tv.
"as kids go she's pretty easy." you gave a shrug, tucking your knees up to your chest. "everything you do with her, i used to do with you." and there it was.
"alexia-" you started with a small sigh. "no, fresa i know. we don't need to speak about it, i just wanted to say it. she reminds me a lot of you is all, and i miss it sometimes." alexia admitted, nervous that with one wrong word it might send you recoiling into yourself and off to your room, worsening things.
a beat of silence paused and alexia took that as a silent cue you were done, turning her head back toward the tv.
"sometimes i miss it too."
you'd spoken so quietly you weren't even sure if your sister had heard you, grateful that if she did she chose not to comment on it, the two of you sitting in silence that albeit awkward was a little less tense watching television.
alexia looked up from where she was getting some water in the kitchen at a soft knock at the door, watching you hurry over to pull it open, an unfamiliar girl just visible through the window as alexia leaned against the counter.
no words were exchanged as you lead the girl inside and the two of you returned a moment later, sofia back in her mothers arms as the girl who didn't look much older than twenty two or three loaded her into a carseat.
when she returned to speak with you alexia hadn't meant to eavesdrop and overhear, she really hadn't.
"thank you so so much for this chica, she adores you and i appreciate you." elena sighed pulling you into a hug as you assured it was no problem and you were always happy to help out if needed.
"please don't give me that look." you sighed after you told her you'd see her at work tomorrow. "mateo said you could have the whole week off and with pay! why are you working?" elena told you off firmly but not unkindly.
"i like working." you justified with a shrug, the older girl not buying it as she raised an eyebrow and you deflated a little. "i can't see her like that el, i can't." you whispered out, voice on the cusp of cracking as alexia's eyebrows furrowed from where she stood within earshot.
"she's your mami amiga she would want you there with your sisters, supporting each other through this. not stabbing grumpy old men with low iron!" elena teased with a soft smile as you barely cracked one of your own.
"your sisters are trying, sí? let them try, i am sure that they love you very much." elena promised as alexia was taken aback at her words, the jealousy which had been simmering at the surface of the comfort this stranger was providing you instead of her, easing a little.
"i know. but i can't see her like that, i can't." you repeated with a shake of your head. "why?" elena asked softly, a hand sat on your shoulder with a gentle squeeze as you shook your head.
"you can talk to me about anything chica, you know this. we all love you and are here for anything you need!" your friend encouraged gently, alexia's grip on her glass tightening as she heard the unmistakable sound of you choking back a slight sob before the next words you whispered shattered her heart completely.
"because the last time someone i loved when into hospital, he never came back."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
five
1K notes · View notes
greg-montgomery · 7 days
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I would love a fic about Reid’s friend coming to visit him at work and as soon as Hotch lays eyes on her it’s love at first sight. But she’s like really girlie and bubbly so the rest of the team is so confused as to why Hotch is so whipped for her :)
“She said that to you?”
“Yeah…I mean the audacity of some people,” you said shaking your head. “I’ve had enough of her. And I promise you, next time I’m telling our manager.” As if to prove the harshness of your words you dropped on his desk a stapler you had been playing with to occupy your hands.
Spencer smiled, entertained as always from your stories involving your least favorite coworker.
“Anyway, enough with her. We can go now, right?”
“Yeah, just let me get all my stuff.”
A deep voice coming from behind you right before you opened your mouth stopped you from complaining. “Reid, that last report needs-
The fact that you turned around to search for the owner of that voice seemed to stop him from speaking any further.
You blinked softly at him melting under the man’s gaze. He was tall, handsome, and looked like he could easily kill you: just your type.  
“Hotch?” you heard your friend’s voice.
That was Hotch?
“You’re Hotch?
“Yeah,” he breathed out a laugh. “And you are?”
“Y/N,” Spencer introduced you to him. “Sorry, she’s just picking me up.”
“That’s alright,” Hotch replied to him while still looking into your eyes. “So I take it you’ve heard about me.”
“Only the best,” you giggled.
“Yes, I’m sure Reid has never complained to you about paperwork or having to work on a weekend,” he rolled his eyes, not entirely convinced.
“I haven’t!” Spencer defended himself.
Hotch laughed and a beautiful smile stuck on his face. No way this was the same man Spencer had talked to you about that ‘never smiled’ and ‘never blinked’.
“Um…you wanted to tell me something about a report?” your friend awkwardly positioned himself next to you trying to get Hotch’s attention.
“Right,” he said. “It’s…it’s fine. It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay.”
--
“Do you see that?” Penelope whispered, grabbing Emily with one hand and JJ with the other.
“What is it?”
“Look,” she said pointing at you from afar.
“Who’s that?” Emily asked.
“And why is Hotch looking at her like he’s about to eat her?” JJ added.
“It’s Y/N, Reid’s best friend.”
“Oh…well good thing she’s not his girlfriend ‘cause…”
“Right?” Garcia said. “Oh my God, do you guys think they’re gonna fall in love? It would be so cute…they will start going on dates and we’re gonna get the weekends off!”
JJ tilted her head observing the pair of you. “You wouldn’t think that’s his type. She looks so…sunshine-y.”
“Well, I think that’s exactly what Hotch needs,” Emily said. “Some sunshine.”
--
“Why didn’t you tell me he was hot?” you asked when you were finally out of everyone’s sight.
“Who?”
“Hotch!”
“Ew…he’s like my dad!”
“To you!” you said opening your car door. “How am I supposed to drive now? My hands are shaking.”
“Because…of my boss?” Spencer asked, sounding confused.
You got into your seat and started giggling, covering your mouth with your hands. “Fuck,” you sighed moving your hands to cup your own cheeks feeling their heat. “This has never happened to me before. I think I just fell in love.”
Spencer gave you a side eye. “We’re still talking about Hotch, right?”
You bit your bottom lip and pulled a little card out of your pocket. “He gave me his number.”
“When did this even happen?”
“When you were putting your stuff in your bag.”
“So he likes you too?”
“I guess,” you smiled.
For a few moments the two of you stared at each other before bursting out in laughter.
“And I always thought Derek would be the one going after you.”
You let out a heavy sigh like a lovesick schoolgirl. “He’s really handsome, Spence.”
“He’s a good man too,” he said.
“So you approve?”
“I would never stand in the way between you and my father figure.”
“Shut up,” you laughed and started your car.
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dotster001 · 5 months
Text
When You Escape Him; Savannaclaw
Summary: Yandere Savannaclaw boys x gn!reader. He adopts a child that looks like the two of you. You run to give you both a chance at life. You never expected him to find you.
CW: yandere, dark content, you don't make it far in two out of three of these, murder (if you think about it for two seconds), no wait there's also actual murder, abuse of power, laugh with me, Ruggie 's cracked, emotional manipulation,
Heartslaybul Octavinelle Scarabia Pomefiore Ignihyde Diasomnia Non NRC Staff
Three years into your relationship, he had come home and placed a baby in your arms.
"They were left in a box, all alone. And, well, he looks like if the two of us had a child," he sheepishly stared at the ground. "I just, I just figured it must be a gift from the seven."
You knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to tie himself to you through this boy. He looked just like him, and you were disgusted and scared.
Until he opened his eyes for the first time, and you found yourself staring into your own.
And you knew. You had to give this child the opportunity for a better life. A life without him.
In the end, your son did the opposite of what he had intended. And the first moment you could, the two of you had escaped.
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Every day that took you farther away from the Sunset Savannah was a blessing.  Getting out of the palace had been a miracle. Not alerting a single guard to your exit was a marvel.
Your time in Twisted Wonderland had taught you one thing. You were running out of miracles.
But you only needed one more. Tomorrow, you would leave the hotel with your son before the sun rose. You would slip into the trunk of a car that you'd traded the last of your jewels chains for. The driver would take you over the border, and then you could slip away where the second prince couldn't touch for fear of war.
You were too nervous to sleep. You held your son in your arms, and paced, whispering about the life you could have once you were free from Leona. The child had only been your son for three weeks, but you were going to free you both. Give you both a loving home.
You should sleep. You couldn't guarantee the next time you'd have a bed. And your eyes were so heavy, your mind foggy, but the anxiety pulsing through your veins made you nauseous whenever you tried to lay down.
Your vision was starting to get as foggy as your mind. The walls seemed to be wavering. Perhaps you should sit down.
The first grain of sand that hit you, you snapped completely awake. The walls weren't wavering; they were shimmering and collapsing.
You were lucky you were on the first floor. As fast as you could, you grabbed one of the tshirts you had stolen from Leona, and covered your son's head, pressed him close to your chest, then ran straight into the shimmering sand….
….and straight into a solid mass.
"Gotcha."
You felt a hand grab you by the hair as you heard the now completely sand hotel collapse behind you. You were yanked to the side of the hard mass, as he shouted.
"Tell my brother that I have them. Prepare for cleanup."
"Yes, your highness!" The nervous soldier standing beside Leona stuttered. Now that you weren't pressed straight into Leona, you saw he was surrounded by an entire troupe of soldiers. You watched the one he'd addressed rush off to the crowd on the other side of the pile of sand. You didn't recognize that one. He must have been promoted once the old one was fired.
If Leona didn't kill them, that is.
As you stared at the other crowd of soldiers, you recognized Farena's regal silhouette, feeling nauseous as he nodded at Leona across the way, issuing orders to soldiers who moved to get rid of all evidence of the former hotel.
Leona brought your attention back to him, taking the baby from your arms, and pulling his shirt off the little one's head. He babbled happily, and Leona infinitesimally softened. A face that was usually reserved for you.
"I can't believe you made me do all this work," he muttered, his tone becoming hard again. "You're gonna have to try real hard to make it up to me."
"Why is Farena here?" You whispered. You didn't think poorly of Farena. In fact, a part of you believed that, if you had had the chance, he would have helped you. But here he was, cleaning up Leona's dirty work.
Leona growled, and you snapped your mouth shut.
"The kingdom likes me better when you're with me. Of course he'd make sure I wouldn't lose you."
It was patronizing, like he was explaining something simple to a small child. A child he hated. 
But Leona didn't hate you. Maybe it would be better if he did.
He snatched your wrist, and began walking the three of you towards a car you hadn't noticed before. He opened the car door, and shoved you inside, getting in behind you. Then he handed you your son.
You hesitated to take him, and he grinned.
"I'd hold him now. It's going to be an awfully long time before you can even look at him again."
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You knew Ruggie couldn't afford to come find you. Especially when you were hiding in the Queendom of Roses.
So you'd quietly raised your son there. You'd reunited with Ace, and rekindled the friendship you'd lost when Ruggie started to hoard you. You'd fallen in love. Gotten married. He'd adopted your son as his own.
You came home from work one day, and found him lying motionless at the bottom of the stairs.
"Ace!" You screamed, rolling him over and feeling for a pulse. Nothing. You looked for any marks, any sign of an intruder, but nothing. 
Your son. Where was he? He should be at home, he had a project that was due tomorrow. Where was he? 
You stood up and began to run up the stairs, but your body froze, before slowly turning around. And there he was.
"Leona already took our son home, shi hi hi."
Leona. You were so stupid. Of course he'd go to Leona. If anything, the fact it took so long to find you was a shock.
He shoved Ace's body with his foot, your foot moving in time to his, still being trapped in his spell. You used all your muscles to stay upright, nearly falling down the stairs with your lack of balance.
"I always hated him. Loud. Stupid. Couldn't mind his own business," he hummed, looking back up at you. "Did you leave me for him, or did he come later? Doesn't matter. Either way, you've really hurt my feelings."
He paused, his brow furrowing, actually looking angry for the first time. "We're going home, Y/N."
He turned and walked out the door, you following him, until he reached a black car. He turned, placed cuffs on you, then released you from the spell, pulling you into the car.
"I know you missed me, babe," he hummed, moving so he was sitting right next to you, resting his head on your shoulder. "And I would have come sooner, but Leona's an ass. Made me promise to calm down first so that I didn't accidentally hurt you or the boy."
He groaned. "He was probably right. I never thought I'd find a lover, or be a dad, and then both things were gone in a day. He didn't have to wait so long though. I calmed down in the first year."
You thought back to Ace's body at the bottom of the stairs. If that was calm….
"Where's my son?"
He laughed.
"He doesn't get to be your son. Not until you can be my partner again."
"That's not fair!"
"Life's not fair, baby! My entire life has been an unfair shit show. So now it's time to do something for me! It's my turn to get something I want."
His smile came back to his face, and he giggled. The years must not have been kind to his mind.
"Now, if you can prove that you can be a good little spouse, then I'll let you prove you can be a good parent. You also owe Leona. It's thanks to him I could come get you. How are you at secretary work?"
He continued to chat about all the things you had to do to make it up to him and Leona. You don't know when, but at some point silent tears started rolling down your face. 
And Ruggie laughed.
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It wasn't until the day he'd brought home your son that you'd even realized what kind of a life you lived now. He never hurt you, physically. But the terror of the outside world he'd instilled in you…
And his family hadn't helped. They'd gifted jack the second floor of their home so that you could start your family, but still remain close to “the pack”. 
His parents stayed with you everyday, while he went out to work with his brothers and sisters. They'd tell you all the stories of how happy they were, how wolf beast men mated for life, how you would also be so so so happy. 
You would always just smile and nod. Even if you thought you were happy, you couldn't hold back the uneasy feeling every time they spoke of "forever".
And as you held your son, and realized you hadn't left the house in three years, you had lost all your connections, and you had a crippling fear fill your stomach whenever Jack wasn't home. And with that realization, came the secondary realization that you'd only begun to live this way, when you moved in with Jack after graduation.
It was the one day you knew everyone, including his parents, would be gone.
So why was it that you were now hiding in an alley, praying that your son wouldn't wake up, and alert a pack of hunting wolves to your presence? You were grateful they weren't real wolves, or they would have smelled you by now. As it was, Jack always mentioned you had such a unique scent that he could find you anywhere. You hoped that was just something he liked to say.
You hadn't seen any of them pass your alley in a while, so you took a shuddering breath, and peaked out into the street. 
It was quiet. But they were nearby. You weighed your options. If you ran, you might get to a safe house, or find a cab, before they could catch you. But they'd definitely hear your steps, and Jack was an incredible runner.
Or you could walk quietly, and hide in alleys here and there. But that would take time. Time where they could find you. Time where a friend of the family could spot you, and call someone.
If you could get somewhere with a pay phone, you could call Vil and explain the situation. You were told he grew up in the area. But if he sided with Jack, he'd lead you on the wrong path, or worse, set his fans to detain you while you waited for Jack to get there.
If you knew Ace's phone number, you knew he'd get you out of there. Yes, you'd get an I told you so speech, but he wouldn't think twice about saving you.
Too bad Jack took your phone and contact book for “your health”.
You heard a soft sigh from the boy in your arms, and looked down in momentary fear. Just sighing. Not awake. Good.
You looked back up, mentally trying to figure out where a phone was, and were met with a pair of glowing gold eyes, staring from across the street.
You ran.
You never really stood a chance, even if you could anywhere compare to Jack's unparalleled abilities, holding a child in your arms made it impossible to win.
You felt his arms wrap around your body and hold you tight.
“It's okay, I've got you. You're safe now.”
You must have really scared him. He didn't usually say so many words at a time.
You let out a sob, and he gently rocked you side to side for a moment, whispering how it was okay, you were safe, he's sorry he wasn't there to protect you.
At some point, he must have gotten his dad's attention, because Mr. Howl was gently prying your son from your arms, so that Jack could scoop you up and carry you home.
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cevansbrat0007 · 8 months
Text
Risky Business
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Summary: Full Story! Ari doesn't like it when you take unnecessary risks. So tonight he's going to teach you a lesson you won't soon forget.
Warnings: Mature Themes, Ari Being A Menace, Smut, Brat!Reader, Punishments, Use of Restraints/Handcuffs, CMNF (Clothed Male Nude Female), Discussions of Safe Words, Light Degradation, Spanking (mentioned), Ass Slapping, Manhandling, Thigh Riding, Light Choking, Orgasm Denial, Cursing, Minors DNI.
A/N: Part of my Sweet Renegades Series. Semi-proofread, not beta'd. All mistakes are my own. Likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated. Thanks for reading!
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You stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror as you finish knotting the tie on your pink silk robe. Ari’s instructions about what he wanted you to wear had been very clear. And since he’d left your house in a rather sour mood, the last thing you wanted to do was disappoint him. 
Your teeth go to worry your bottom lip as you pick up your phone to reread your text exchange from earlier in the day.
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You could only hope that he had gone on to have a good day. Otherwise you had the feeling you’d be in for one hell of a lecture whatever he time he made it back to your place. With a sigh you turn off the light and decide to make your way downstairs. 
As much as you try not to, you find yourself replaying the events from this morning over and over again in your mind. Perhaps wishing that things could have gone down just a little differently. 
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Six Hours Earlier…
You knew you’d fucked up the moment you heard the slam of the car door. Freezing in place, you’d dared to look down, not the least bit surprised to see your boyfriend damn near sprinting across your lawn in the direction of your house.
“Hey, Beast! Be right there–oops!” You’d gone to give a little wave, only to let out a tiny screech when you’d nearly lost your footing. Which had only made you man move faster.
“Bird – hold on! Don’t move!” He bellowed as before skidding to a stop just at the base of the ladder propped against the side of your home. “Fuck!” 
“I’m okay!” You’d quickly tried to reassure him. “But I think my roof is missing a tile. Couldn’t quite tell by looking at it from there.” You’d vaguely gestured towards the ladder that Ari was clutching as if his life depended upon it. “So I figured I’d just come up to see whatever there was to see.”
“Right. But…” Ari’s fingers had gone to pinch the bridge of his nose as he worked to calm his breathing. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re up there.” His heart had seized in his chest as he watched you wobble for the second time in almost as many minutes. “C’mon and crawl back to me, sweet Bird. I’ll hold this steady, you just focus on not falling.”
‘Please.’ He’d sent a quick prayer up to his Lord in heaven. Just in case he’d found himself in need of a little divine intervention if things went south. 
“Uhh…” Slowly, you’d begun making your way over to the edge of the roof. Your pulse has kicked up when it finally dawned on you just how high off the ground you really were. “I think I might be a little stuck.” A nervous giggle bubbled its way out of your chest as you continued to creep along the slightly sloped surface. 
Ari had cleared his throat, wiping his increasingly damp palms on his jeans. “You’re not stuck, sweetheart. We’re gonna get you down the same way you got up there, okay? Just keep coming towards me.”
“And if–if I fall?” He just seemed so confident. Which let you know that you really should’ve thought this through a little better. Perhaps this was what you deserved for being so impatient.   
“Then I’ll just have to catch you then, won’t I?” Fat chance of that one happening.
“Or I’ll probably just end up crushing you.” You’d muttered aloud to no one in particular as you began to maneuver yourself backwards onto the ladder. 
“What was that, sweetheart?” Ari had squinted up at you, silently pleading with you to start making your descent.  
“Uh, nothing.” Sweat dotted your brow as you reached out your leg, your foot dangling awkwardly until it found the closest rung. “I–I think I’ve got it. I’m gonna come down now, okay?”
“That’s my brave girl.” He’d hummed encouragingly. “Careful. You’re so close. Just keep putting one foot after the other. Yep, just like that.”   
A minute later, you’d felt him grab hold of your shorts, effectively holding you steady until you’re firmly planted on the ground once more. And then you were in his arms, his nose buried in your curls while one of his large, warm hands gently caressed your back.
“You have impeccable timing.” You’d whispered shakily, your words coming out muffled as you snuggle deeper into his embrace. 
“I have what?” He pulled away from you, his hands moving to grip your biceps. “Better yet, what the fuck were you doing up there?” You could sense that your Bounty Hunter is doing his best to sound calm.
“Um…I was trying to clean my gutters.” You’d responded, confused as to why Ari seemed so angry.
“Coulda’ sworn I told you I’d take care of it.” He growled, his blue eyes darkening dangerously. “And that I didn’t want your ass anywhere near a ladder, let alone the goddamned roof.” 
“But that was like…” You’d trailed off, trying to recall when exactly your bounty hunter had made that promise.
“It’s barely been two days.” He’d hissed. “Just what the hell is wrong with you that you can’t wait more than two fucking days?”
“Nothing. I just-” You’d sniffed, not caring for the tone he was using. “What made you decide to drop by?”
“Left a couple files on your kitchen table. I need to pass ‘em on to the Sheriff, see if he’s got anything else that might be useful regarding Martin’s sister.” He continued to glare down at you, his ticking in annoyance. “But what do I find when I get here? You risking your life because you don’t know how to sit your pretty ass down for more than five seconds. Jesus fucking Christ!”
Ari must’ve known he needed a minute, because he’d turned away from you to make a beeline for the front of your house. Of course you’d been right on his heels, wincing as he shouldered his way through your unlocked door. 
“Are you mad at me or something?” You’d asked, frowning at the sound of his derisive snort.
“Or something.” He’d muttered as he scooped up the folders he’d left behind in the kitchen. You watched him drag his fingers through his hair before quickly sifting through each file to check the contents.
“I promise I’m okay.” You’d said, clasping your hands and resting them on your stomach.
“Don’t have time for this.” He’d mumbled, his eyes lighting up when he landed on the document he was searching for. “Found it.” Satisfied that everything was in order, he’d made his way back over to you.  
“Bird.” He’d rumbled, grabbing the front of your shirt to haul you close. “I’ll deal with you later. You can count on that. Now I gotta go. Please don’t make me regret leaving you here alone. And don’t do anything else dumb while I’m gone.” 
With that he’d pressed a hard kiss to your mouth and jogged back out the way he came. Leaving you by yourself to spend the rest of the afternoon replaying the day’s events while you waited for him to return.
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You perk up when you hear the front door open and shut, signaling that Ari had returned. Hopefully in a much better mood than the one he’d been in when he left. If you were lucky, that is.
“Welcome back, honey.” You breathe as a fresh wave of nervous energy hits you the moment he enters the room. “I took the liberty of ordering us some dinner from Holtman’s Diner. I, uh, remembered how much you said you liked their chicken pot pies.”
“Already ate.” His gruff response has you mentally kicking yourself all over again. 
“Oh. Well.” You turn to stare at the bag of food resting on the counter. “That’s not a problem. I’m sure it’ll keep just fine in the fridge until you decide you’re ready for it.” Offering him your sweetest smile, you hustle to put everything away. 
But he doesn’t return it. Instead he continues to glower at you, his piercing blue gaze following your every movement. And the silence is so uncomfortable it’s almost enough to make you want to scream. 
“There we go.” You chirp with a cheeriness you most definitely did not feel. “How did everything go with Sheriff Mitt? Was he able to give you anything on Martin’s sister or –”
“Did I ask you to touch the ladder?” His quietly snarled question takes you by surprise. 
“I mean…” You trail off, wincing at the uncertainty in your tone. Why did you get the feeling that you might’ve just fucked up again? “It’s not like you didn’t tell me to…not…touch it.” You shrug, instantly regretting how you’d chosen to structure that sentence. “In fact, I believe all you told me to do was keep my feet on the ground. Which I did the entire time I drug it back inside my garage.” 
You move to fish a glass out of a nearby cabinet. “Now, can I at least get you something to drink, baby? Pretty sure I’ve still got some of that whiskey you like.” You knew for a fact that you did. But only because you’d already checked.
“Afraid I’m not really the type to drink before handling business of this nature.” Your mouth suddenly goes dry when you notice the way his eyes darken as he lazily peruses your silkenly clad form.  
Heaving a small sigh you go about replacing the glass. “And exactly what kinda business are we handling here, Beast?” You ask, protectively wrapping your arms around your middle.
“The kind that occurs when a man needs to make a few things clear to his woman.” He gives a rueful shake of his head before running his hand through his chestnut locks. “Especially when she seems to possess more will than good sense on almost any given day.”
You wait for him to smile or wink, or do anything to indicate that he’s only joking. But it never comes. And while his cheeky remark chafes, albeit just a little, you decide to grit your teeth and let it slide. For now. 
So, instead you allow your hands to go to your hips before you force yourself to take a deep breath. Ari takes a step towards you then, the sound of his work boots is surprisingly quiet as he prowls closer to where you’re standing. Now ordinarily, this would be the part where you backed up so that you could put some distance between yourself and the surly bounty hunter.
But unfortunately, you just couldn’t seem to get your worthless jelly legs to move.  
Your man doesn’t stop until he’s directly in front of you – so close that you catch a whiff of his aftershave. The one you’d bought just for him. But that wasn’t the only thing you smelled. There was also a hint of something else.
Tobacco and cedar.
“You’ve been smoking again.” It’s a statement, not a question. 
“One. Maybe two.” Ari concedes, sucking on his teeth. “If anything, it was more of a stress smoke. Found it pretty hard to enjoy a single puff when all I saw when I closed my fucking eyes is you taking a tumble off that goddamned roof.”
“Dress it up however you want.” You sniff haughtily, your eyes rolling heavenwards. “It’s still a filthy habit, Ari Levinson. One that’s all but guaranteed to send you to an early grave.”     
Later, you would come to the conclusion that you must’ve struck a nerve. Because the next thing you know, one of Ari’s big hands is fisting its way into your curls, yanking your head back with just enough force to get your attention.
And turn you on at the same time.
“You’ve got alotta fuckin’ nerve, baby.” Against his better judgment, he slants his mouth over yours in a hard, unexpected kiss. “I’m sure you’re anxious for me to sort your shit out, but I promise tonight is gonna go a whole lot different if I catch you even thinking about rolling those pretty eyes at me again. One. More. Time.” The rough edge in his tone has you wanting to rub up against him in the best way possible. 
“Cat got your tongue?” Ari purrs when you choose to continue glaring at him instead of responding. “Or maybe…” He leans down to brush his soft, sensual lips over yours once more – albeit gently this time. “Maybe you think I’m bluffing. Is that it, little Bird?”
“N–no.” You stammer, your pulse flaring to life when his free hand comes out of nowhere to grab your ass hard enough to have you rising on your toes. 
“You sure?” He asks, sounding rather skeptical. “Because I’m more than willing to table this conversation if you think a quick trip over my knee might help you with that eye contact.”  
“I–I’m sure. Thanks.” You mumble, uncomfortable with the way your pussy flutters at the prospect of receiving a spanking from the burly man in front of you. 
Maybe you’d try your luck another time. Just to test it. See if he’d really be the type to follow through. But the real question was, just how disappointed would you be if he didn’t? Perhaps those kinds of scenarios were best left for the heroines in that stack of romance novels you kept hidden in the back of your bookcase. 
“Well, if you change your mind, you just be sure to let me know.” 
Flustered, all you can manage is a jerky nod once he finally releases you. All you can focus on is the erratic thrum of your pulse as you struggle to get your bearings. 
“I see it looks like you followed the directions I sent over earlier.” Ari muses, his nimble fingers brushing along the belt of your robe. “You’d better be naked and ready for me, sweetheart. Otherwise that spanking we just talked about is gonna be back on the table.” He grins at you, which is really more like a flash of teeth than anything else. 
“I am.” Comes your low, breathy response as your traitorous nipples pebble beneath the thin material of your lingerie. Wanting to please him, you decide to part the edges of your robe, giving him a glimpse of your calculated submission. 
“Good girl.” That’s all you hear before he gently takes hold of your arm and begins to lead you out of the kitchen. “Guess that proves you can listen if you think the stakes are high enough.” His lopsided smirk has you confused. “But tonight I’m gonna make sure you hear me.
“But wh–ooh!” Your poorly timed question ends in a squeal when he delivers a sharp blow to your ass. 
“Duchess.” Ari growls, his head dipping so that his lips dance along the shell of your ear. “I don’t wanna hear another fucking sound out of that sweet mouth unless it’s you choking on my cock. You with me?”
Stunned into silence, all you can do is nod. But thankfully it’s enough. This time when he lets you go, you scamper off into the safety of the living room without looking back. You find yourself grimacing as you attempt to rub the sting out of your butt. You’d do well to remember that your man had a hand like a flippin’ oak tree.
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Ten Minutes Later…
By the time Ari decides to join you in the living room you’re feeling beyond antsy. You gave up on sitting on the couch, preferring to hang out in the middle of the room. You perk up when he finally strolls in, only to wilt once you spy what he has clutched in his fist. They looked suspiciously like…
Handcuffs. 
Ari pauses by the doorway, allowing his hip to rest against the frame. He studies you, cocking his head to the side as reads the question written all over your face. 
“Go on and ask, baby. I know how much it’s killing you to hold it in.”
“And who are those for?” The words come tumbling out seconds after you receive permission.
“You.” He shrugs, holding the burgundy leather cuffs up to give you a better look at them. 
“Why?” Your hands fly to your hips as a fresh wave of defiance courses through your veins. “Because you found me on the roof earlier? Cuz’ I’ve gotta tell you, Beast, this is honestly starting to sound like some serious macho bullshit.” 
“Is that right?” He quirks a tawny brow as he waits for you to continue.
“Yep. I–I’m all for playing, but I honestly don’t see how I did anything wrong. In fact, I bet if I was a man you wouldn’t have had a problem with me inspecting my own roof.” Your eyes narrow as you jab a finger in his direction.
“Bird.” Your nickname comes on the heels of an impatient groan. “No offense, but if you were a man, you wouldn’t be in my bed. Just a statement of fact.”
“I just meant –” You start, only for him to cut you off.
“I know what you meant. And that was my answer.” He scrubs a weary hand over his bearded jaw. “But I also know you, baby. I know you're all riled up and ready to argue with me. So gimme what else you got, so we can go about getting you straightened out good and proper.” His dark tone is full of promise, making you shiver.
Fine. If that’s how he wanted to play this, then so be it. You had no problem calling out this kind of crap when you saw it.  
“Alright. But only because you asked.” You cross your arms over your chest as you raise your chin, meeting Ari’s stern gaze with an equally perturbed one of your own. “This is my house. That’s my roof, and those are my gutters. I’m responsible for their upkeep, otherwise I might not have a place to live.” 
You’re surprised to see him nod, almost as if he was agreeing with you. So you keep going, assuming you’re making at least some headway with this man.
“I would also like to point out that there are millions of women whose job it is everyday to–to climb ladders and patch roofs, they clean gutters. And, hell! Some of those women might even be the ones building the houses, and you’re upset with me for inspecting my own property?” You throw your arms up in the air for good measure. “Make it make sense!” 
“You done, baby?” He keeps his tone light, bordering on casual. 
“I…” And here you’d thought you were making some headway. “Yes, I’m done.” 
“Alright.” Ari slowly peels himself off the wall to stand at his height. “Now turn around and put your hands behind your back for me.” You immediately balk at that, although he’s quick to shush you. “Duchess, I let you speak your piece. And I am gonna respond, but tonight is all about making sure you hear me.” 
“You can’t–”
“Sweetheart.” He gives an amused shake of his head as he playfully twirls the cuffs around his index finger. “Tonight ain’t the night to try and tell me what I can and can’t do with you. From the moment I met you, I knew you needed a keeper. You just don’t know how to let yourself be kept. Something I aim to fix.” 
You feel your core spasm when he begins to advance, your empty walls clenching around nothing. It only gets worse when you notice the smug grin that flits across his handsome features once he stops in front of you, the tops of his boots nearly brushing your bare toes. 
“And lucky for you,” his hand cups your jaw, his thumb lightly stroking along the curve of your bottom lip. “I’m not afraid to get creative when it comes to dealing with stubborn little birds. Now turn the fuck around before I decide I’m better off bending you over the arm of that couch and teaching you a different lesson entirely.” 
Licking your dry lips, you finally do as you’re asked and turn away from him. You honestly weren’t sure if you could handle something like that tonight. Even though the simple threat alone was enough to have your slick practically dripping down your thighs. 
“Well, would ya look at that? Guess my pretty girl is still in the mood to listen.” The slightly mocking edge to his voice has you feeling just a touch unsteady. A soft gasp escapes when Ari reaches around to untie the front of your silken wrap as his mouth hovers just above your pulse. “Let’s see if you can keep it up.”
You shudder at the feel of his warm breath dancing along your skin, the heady thrum of anticipation causing you to break out in gooseflesh as you await his next instruction. 
“Take off the robe, Duchess.” Your eyes flutter closed even as sharp teeth nip at your throat. “Show me you understand that you’re not in charge right now, even if you haven’t fully grasped it yet.”
Gathering your courage, you allow the garment to slide down your body until it pools to the floor at your feet, leaving you naked and vulnerable.
“Hands next, please. There we go.” You hold still while Ari gently binds your wrists with the soft leather cuffs. “You’re doing so good for me. You really are.” He slowly tightens them, paying special attention to your body’s responses in case anything is too much.
“Are you wet for me, sweetheart? Huh?” He gives into the temptation to pinch your nipple, making you whimper. It’s a sound that goes straight to his cock. “Aww, it’s okay if you don’t wanna answer. You don’t have to.” A possessive hand moves to cup your drenched pussy at the same time as a deep purr rumbles in his chest. “I’m more than happy to see for myself.”  
You remain silent, content to focus on the erratic hum of your pulse crashing in your ears. However, it’s the next instruction that throws you for a loop. Simply because it’s not one you’re expecting. 
“I’m gonna need you to pick a safe word. One that you’re gonna remember to use if something we do – whatever we do – becomes too much. Now, for obvious reasons, it can’t be a word like “no” or “stop”. It needs to be something like –”
“Peppermint.” You whisper, catching yourself by surprise.
“Alright. Peppermint it is.” Ari agrees after briefly mulling it over. He drops a quick kiss on your shoulder before pulling away in favor of taking a seat on the couch, leaving you standing in the middle of the room.
Alone.
“Come here.” The command stirs something within you. Something that made you want to stop fighting and obey. “Come to me, Bird.”
So you do.
You don’t stop until you’re standing between his spread legs. Meanwhile, Ari makes a show of lounging on the sofa, his big body giving the appearance of being relaxed. But you knew better. 
This man was still every inch the predator. And right now he was in charge. A fact that you would do well to remember before it went and bit you in the ass.    
“Sit.” 
You move to crawl onto his lap, only to stop when he shakes his head “no”. You’re confused until he pats his thigh, letting you know what he really wants from you. Biting your lip you sink down you’re straddling his thickly muscled thigh, your bare pussy pressing flush against the coarse fabric of his jeans. 
Pleased with your submission thus far, Ari’s hands go rest on your hips so that he can gently knead and massage your curves.           
“But I don’t understand!” You whine when he pulls away after you lean in for a kiss. 
There was no way you could know just how hard it was for him to deny you like that. How much it hurt to tell you no, especially when you were pouting like you were now. But what good would it do to give you a reward when you hadn’t earned it? 
“Are you in charge right now?” He can tell his unexpected harshness startles you when he notices the way your bottom lip begins to quiver. Too bad he’s having none of it. “Aw, don’t you dare give me those crocodile tears, baby. Not when we’re only just getting started.” He gifts you with a loving smack to your ass. “Tonight you’re gonna have to earn my cock. And you can start by making yourself cum.” 
“Huh?” Your eyes go wide as your brain works overtime to process what he’s saying. You find it even harder to concentrate when one of his fingers begins tracing along the curve of your nipple.
“I see you’re still not hearing me.” His lightly calloused palms return to your hips so that he can begin slowly guiding you up and down his jean-covered thigh, creating the most delicious friction on your clit. “Which means tonight’s gonna wind up being a kind of punishment for us both.”
“But why–?”
“That’s enough outta you.” He grunts before politely jamming a pair of thick fingers into your mouth, gagging you. “You know it’s funny, I noticed you tend to listen better when this pretty hole is stuffed full. Now, how about we give this another try?” 
He waits to speak again until you give him a nod. 
“As I was saying, sweet Bird, you’re gonna have to work for this cock. Same goes for my fingers, for my tongue…” Ari chuckles at the sound of your pitiful little whimpers. “Since you wanna be so fucking stubborn all the time – so damned reckless – this is all you’re gonna get from me.” Your cunt pulses when you feel his thigh flex beneath you. “This right here.”   
“Mmpf!” You cry out, only to think better of it when he adjusts his grip on your chin, nearly choking you with his fingers in the process. It also didn’t help that you could feel your pussy was practically dripping, making a mess on his jeans. 
“Still ain’t your turn to talk, baby.” He reminds you, almost mockingly. “You gotta learn to be more patient. Otherwise we’ll be at this all night – not that I mind any.” He’s quick to tack on the last part when he notices the way your body stiffens in response. 
He suspected you weren’t a fan of being held captive like this. His suspicions are confirmed when you shimmy in his lap, calling attention to your bonds with the aid of an angry glare. 
“Oh, you wanna know about the cuffs.” He muses as he takes a moment to wipe away a bit of drool on your chin. “That’s to keep you from touching me the way you’ll want to when you’re busy grinding that needy little pussy on my thigh. I want you to understand what it’s like to have something you want be so close – I’m talkin’ right in front of you – and yet somehow so far at the same time. Kinda like how I felt when I saw you on that roof.”
This was about payback. You think as understanding finally dawns. You knew you’d pissed him off today, scared him even. But you’d had no idea that it would lead to this – you being naked and cuffed while perched on the bounty hunter’s lap.
“Earlier you accused me of being on some kinda macho bullshit. But that ain’t it at all.” His southern drawl grows more pronounced as a bold hand trails its way down the valley between your breasts. “Now it is true that there are women out there who build houses, clean gutters, climb scaffolding – so I’ll give you that point, sweetheart.” His hand is moving again, this time drifting lower until he reaches the softness of your belly. 
“However, the difference between those women and you is that they are trained for that. Whereas you are not. You got no clue what you’re doing up there or the danger you’re messing with.” Ari clears his throat, his sensual lips now set in a thin, firm line. “But even more importantly, those women ain’t mine.” For some reason, his words have your nerve endings buzzing with excitement.   
“You’re mine, baby. I’m not sure what it’s gonna take to make that penetrate, but it is what it is.” He shrugs before gently removing his fingers from your mouth. “I take care of what’s mine in this relationship. I already told you I would take care of those gutters, whether it was me doin’ it myself or finding you a professional, it was always gonna get done. If I was movin’ too slow then you shoulda said something instead of trying to tackle it yourself.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” You breathe as you lightly tug at your restraints. “I am. Now why don’t you uncuff me so I can show you how much?”
“I don’t think so.” Ari cocks his head to the side while he pretends to consider your offer. “Aw. Are we really back to pouting again just that fast, little Bird? Oh well. Guess it’s time you show me how you ride.”
“I can’t though.” You whine, feeling at turns both needy and frustrated.
“You haven’t even tried.” He fires back dismissively. “You manage to get yourself off using only my thigh, I’ll let you have as much of my cock as you can take. Now let’s get on with it. Time to give your man a show.”
With that he leans back, expectantly crossing his arms behind his head. And then he winks, signaling that he’s over any attempts to stall. 
You’re still glaring at him when you finally begin to move. Your toes dig into the plush carpet as you work to maintain your balance, but it’s not easy. You also learn that it’s damn near impossible to produce that same kind of amazing friction you’d tasted earlier without being able to bear down on his thigh.
You needed help. It was either that, or convince him to give you back the use of your hands.         
“Please.” You pant as you continue to grind against him, hating the way he chuckles when you fall forward against his chest. “It’s not working…” You struggle to sit back up, your breasts heaving as you wait to catch your breath before starting again. 
“You’re damn right it’s not working.” Ari agrees, running a hand through his already tousled locks. “Here I am being patient, waiting for you to make a mess on my thigh, and all I’m getting is complaining.”
The smug bastard then has the nerve to lightly jostle his leg, sending you sprawling face-first into his broad chest yet again with a muffled “oof”. And he offers no help when you go to sit up, instead he chooses to watch you struggle. Almost as if he finds it amusing.  
So you start over, this time determined to get yourself off. After that you’d make him uncuff you and then you’d kick his sexy ass out of your godforsaken house for the rest of the night.
“C’mon, baby.” He coos, leaning forward to lap up a single frustrated tear with his sinful tongue. “Don’t cry. We both know that greedy pussy of yours needs more than what you’re givin’ it right now.” 
“Ungh! Shut. Up.” You sob through clenched teeth as your head comes to rest on his shoulder. At least that seemed to make things a little easier. Sweet fuck that was starting to feel good! Now if you just moved a little to the left and – your movements are halted when Ari fists a hand in your hair before dragging you backwards. 
“Nooo…” You wail in protest as a thin sheen of perspiration covers your skin. 
“Tsk, tsk. No cheating.” Your bounty hunter chides.     
“But I can’t – it’s too hard.” You tell him, hating how small and whiny you sound. “I need…I need…”
“Help?” Ari finishes, pinning you with a knowing look. “Because if that’s the case – if that’s really what you need – then all you have to do is ask.” His warm, calloused hands find their way to your hips, holding you steady. “So…ask.”
“M–may I…” You blow out a breath as before starting over. “Will you please help me cum?” You feel your cheeks heat as the words come tumbling out.
“That depends, sweetheart.” He responds thoughtfully. “Are you gonna be my good girl and accept the help however I give it?”
“Yes, Sir.” You tell him. “I’ll be so good for you.”
That’s all Ari needs to hear, because this time when you move he stays with you. Helping guide your body as you work for your pleasure. He watches in awe as you ride him like the goddess you are, your tits bouncing as you writhe against him. 
“That’s right, greedy girl. Use me.” His dick grows harder with every breathless cry that spills from your lips as you follow his commands. “Fuck yeah.” He groans, capturing a pert nipple between his teeth before sucking as much of your ample breast into his mouth as he can manage.    
“S’good, baby!” You sob when he flexes his thigh. By now you’ve soaked your way through his jeans, not that he gives a damn. “YesYesYes!” 
If only because you were finally giving him exactly what he wanted.  
“That’s it, Bird.” One of his hands slides to your bottom, squeezing the tempting flesh before helping you adjust the angle of your ride. “Keep getting me nice and sloppy, otherwise I’m gonna have to tear this ass up. Is that what you want?” 
He delivers several sharp slaps, making you cry out even as you feel that invisible coil tighten in your belly. God, you were so fucking close. You’d never been made to orgasm like this before, but you knew you were only seconds from coming undone. 
“Nah.” He continues as he bites the underside of your breast, not missing the way it makes your pussy gush. “It might not be what you want, but it’s what you need. Right now my girl needs it rough.” He laves at the small hurt with his tongue. “And as your man, I always aim to give it however you need it.” 
“OhGod!Yes!” You keen as white hot pleasure threatens to consume you, your eyes rolling back in your head. “I–I’m gonna…oh fuck!” 
Sensing that you’re seconds from tumbling over the edge, Ari pauses to lift you off of his thigh in one fluid motion – effectively ruining your orgasm. Instantly you feel as if your entire body has been doused with cold water. 
“What’re you..?” Your eyes shoot open as he holds you suspended in the air, your abused cunt spasming in protest. “Why’d we stop?” You peer between your bodies, feeling both ashamed and proud of the sizable wet spot you managed to leave behind on his jeans.   
“Because I don’t think you’re ready to cum just yet.” He smiles when your mouth drops open to emit a strangled groan. “After all, they say a hard head makes for a soft behind. Or in your case I suppose, a tender pussy.” He surveys your poor, swollen clit peeking out from between your puffy lips.
“But I already said I was sorry.” You plead, wishing he would either set you down or at least touch you the way you needed. 
“And you’ll have the rest of the night to prove it to the both of us.” Ari muses, a small part of him taking pleasure in your obvious frustration. “In the meantime, I think it’s time you went for another ride.” He settles you back on his thigh once more before resting his arms behind his head.
“Now, show me what you learned.”
END   
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wooyoungiewritings · 6 months
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Fire and water - Seonghwa x Reader
Summary: When you walk into the mechanic, you don't expect to see Seonghwa, the most intimidating person you've ever laid your eyes on. He's the complete opposite of you. But he opens the idea of something you've never considered, and before you know it, the door he has opened for you is already locked behind you.
Word count: 6K
Genre: SMUT
Warnings: smut, fem reader (fem pronouns), reader is very innocent and hwa is very not (lol), nicknames such as kitten and princess, oral sex (f receiving), hwa smokes, semi public sexual activities, lmk if I missed anything!
This is all for fun and is not meant to represent Seonghwa in any way.
The intense smell of gasoline and oil fills your nose as you step into the unfamiliar space. Generic rock music plays from the radio and a few random posters hang on the walls. It doesn’t seem like the most professional place, but a car with an open hood in the middle of the room, assures you that you came to the right place. Your eyes scan the repair shop for someone to assist you, but the silence is enough of an answer for you. 
You knew you arrived at a late hour, having spent most of your day getting lost in the books at the library, but a part of you hoped you could make it before closing time. It was a simple Google search for the nearest mechanic that had you end up here, but you didn’t think twice to see the closing hours.
Your legs guide you further into the room, careful not to touch anything you shouldn’t. This is the first time you’ve been to the mechanic with your car that you bought a few months back. It was an already used car when you bought it, but you could get it cheap and desperately needed something to help you get to school. The feeling of being in here is intimidating in itself, having little to no knowledge of cars, but a lamp in your car display has been screaming for attention for way too long, you couldn’t ignore it anymore. 
“Are you lost?” The voice surprises you and you turn around to see a tall figure walking into the room. 
Seonghwa.
The tall, lean, beautiful man you’ve seen in the hallways of your university. He is always wearing an oversized old-school leather jacket, messy black hair, black nail polish, and has a cigarette in hand 24/7. He and his group are known on campus for being too intimidating to talk to, but somehow every time you see them, they each have a new girl wrapped around their finger. They party when everyone else is sleeping, don't care about what people are saying about them and they will fight if they have to. 
You’ve only spoken to him once when you accidentally walked in on him and a girl kissing in the library. You were searching for a specific book and made your way to the back rows of the library. As you were in your own head, you turned a corner and saw him with his tongue down her throat, her hands running through his (then) white hair. Your instant reaction was to freeze in your spot, panicking. This was the last thing you expected to see, especially at the library. 
As Seonghwa removed his gaze from the girl trapped between him and the shelves, and his eyes watched you carefully, you immediately woke up.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” You quickly said, turning around. Cheeks quickly blushed, and you felt the embarrassment rush over you. Not even for them, but for you.
You heard the girl mumble something to Seonghwa, and a second later, she passed you and walked out of your sight. Heart pounding fast against your chest, you slowly turned around before your eyes landed on Seonghwa. Relaxed, he was leaning up against the shelf with his arms crossed, staring you down.
“You can take what you came for.” His low voice spoke. 
Slowly you walked further down the row, trying your best not to look at Seonghwa. Focused on the note in your hand with the book name you were searching for, you scanned the rows for the book. It seemed like an easy task, but you felt Seonghwa’s eyes locked on you with every move you made, making this simple mission impossible. 
Your eyes kept going over the same place again and again, slowly getting frustrated that you couldn’t get your shit together. 
As you looked down on the note again, reading the same line for the 29th time, you suddenly felt something watching over your shoulder. The smell of gasoline and cigarettes surrounded you, and it was like everything froze again. Seonghwa’s presence was close to you, but he wasn’t even touching you. You slowly turned your head to the side, and Seonghwa was peeking over your shoulder, looking down at the note in your hand. 
Not a word was said when he lifted his arm, grabbed a book, and handed it down to you. Your breathing stopped as you saw the book you were so desperately looking for, resting in Seonghwa’s hand. Your hands slowly reached out for the book, and you couldn’t help but look up and see his eyes watching you with no expression. You couldn’t tell what was going on behind those eyes. 
“Thank you.” You whispered, not being able to get more words out. 
“You’re welcome.” He answered coldly, still watching your every move. 
Was he pissed at you for interrupting? Was he tired? Was he happy? Relieved? You had absolutely no idea.
So you quickly saw your opportunity to get away, sending him an awkward smile before you practically ran away.
And that was the first and only time you’ve spoken to Seonghwa. Until now. 
“No, I was looking for someone to help me.” You say, knowing he’s been waiting for an answer for a little too long. “I need an oil change.”
He takes a few steps further into the room, and you notice the white towel in his hands, filled with black oil stains. He’s wearing a black tank top and jeans, also filled with black stains.
You didn’t know much about him, and you had no idea that he worked here. Looking back though, it made sense for you. He was often seen with a “dirty” outfit, with black oil stains on his clothes and skin.
“Brave of you to walk in here in an all-white outfit,” His eyes travel down your body, and you suddenly feel small. You look down at yourself in your white cardigan, white skirt, and white knee socks. Of course, you didn’t think much of it when you put your outfit together this morning. “Give me five minutes, I just need to finish this,” He walks closer to the parked car in the room, throwing the white cloth over so it rests on his shoulder. 
Restless, not knowing what to do with yourself, you step closer to the wall, trying your best not to be in his way. “Careful standing too close to that, or you’ll get oil on your skirt. It stains. You can sit on the stool over there while you wait.” He points at a black stool in the corner and you quickly find your way over there so you can let him work in peace.
You take your time studying the place, not knowing if it’s normal to have a conversation at a place like this. How long will this take? Does he own this place? Should you leave him alone? You decide to focus on the rock music playing while you silently watch Seonghwa do his thing.
He’s leaning over the open hood of the car, screwing something and rubbing his hands in the white cloth after. You might not have any idea of how to repair cars, but he makes whatever he does look so easy. He knows exactly what to do and how to do it. 
He closes the hood of the car and walks to the other corner of the room. You can’t see what he’s pressing, but suddenly the metal wall behind you goes up, and you look behind you to see other cars parked outside. It rolls all the way up, and Seonghwa walks to the car, gets in, and drives it out of the room and to the parking lot. 
You silently watch him as he comes back and walks towards you. “Alright, can I have your keys?” He asks, reaching out his hand. You’re quick to hand him the key with a heart keyring attached, and there’s a tug on his lips as it’s placed in his hand. “Be right back.” 
A moment later, he arrives in your car, parks it in the middle of the room, and walks out to close the metallic garage door again. Once it’s closed, he grabs a few things from racks on the walls and walks to your car.
“You want me to do a routine maintenance check as well? I have the time.” He asks as he opens the hood.
“It’s fine, you don’t have to.” You say as confidently as possible. Truth be told, you just want to have your car fixed so you can go home. Seonghwa doesn’t respond, he just grabs a mechanic’s dolly, lays his back on top and suddenly his upper half is under your car. A few moments pass by in silence, the only thing filling the air is the music playing and the sounds of metal crashing as he works, and he rolls back out and goes to work in the front trunk. Leaning over your car, working and changing the oil, he once again looks professional and focused, and that makes you curious.
“You work here a lot?” You ask.
“Yeah, every day pretty much.” His back is turned to you, but you see him pull out a pack of cigarettes. He places one in his mouth, flicks the lighter, and a cloud of smoke escapes. His body turns towards you, the pack of cigarettes in hand. “Want one?”
“No, thank you.” You shake your head. He continues to work on your car, cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Is that safe?”
“What?” 
“Smoking. While doing that.” You point to the car. You’ve seen too many movies including fire and cars, so a quick concern washes over you, scared that a huge fire would suddenly occur. 
“Smoking is never safe. You’re always playing with death when turning one on. If you’re asking if it’s safe to smoke over an open hood, then it’s inconsequential. Your car won’t blow up if that’s what's worrying you.” He glances back at you. His black hair is pushed back, but a few strands have fallen down into his face.
“If it’s not safe then why do you do it?” You can’t help but ask, curious if he really doesn’t care or if it’s just an act.
“Helps me concentrate.” He simply answers, going back to work. “What about you?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“No, do you do anything that's bad for you?” Another cloud of smoke fills the space around him, and he rubs his hands in the white cloth, leaving black stains. The black oil on his hands blends in with his black nail polish, and somehow it looks good. 
Just like he was that one time in the library, he’s once again impossible to read. And his question leaves you silent for a moment, not knowing what to answer.
“Oh… Uhm, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” You shrug, and a light scoff comes from Seonghwa.
“Shocking.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Your brows come together in question.
His body turns to you, eyes going down to your outfit, hand gesturing to you. “You look like you’d be spending a week in church if you walked across a red light on the street.” There’s a small tug on his lips as he speaks. He’s entertained by you. You look like the complete opposite of him. In your white outfit, knee-high socks, and white little skirt you look like a saint next to him in his all dirty, messy black clothes. Like fire and water, you're the opposites.
“Well, I don’t.” You say.
“You don’t have to take it as a bad thing. Church girls can be full of surprises.” There's something hidden in the way he says it, and the smirk on his lips makes your cheeks blush. “I’ve seen you at school, you know. Often at the library, surrounded by academic books you probably read just for fun.”
“Well, I like the idea of knowledge. It gets you further in life.”
“It depends, doesn’t it? Don’t you think knowledge can hold you back from doing certain things too?”
“Maybe. But I also just like staying at the library. It’s fun.”
Another scoff leaves him, and you get the feeling that he’s mocking you. 
“What?”
“If your idea of ‘fun’ is reading at the library, then I’d love to see you on a Saturday night.” He sends you a smirk before going back to focusing on the car. His back muscles tense as he works over the open hood, and you can’t help but stare. The black tank top really does him justice as he moves his arms around, and you shake your head, trying to focus on something else.
“What do you study?” You ask, trying to change the subject.
“Business, language and culture.”
“So you don’t wanna be a mechanic?” 
“Still figuring it out.” He answers shortly. “You study what?”
"Psychology.”
"So, those biochemistry books I see you with at the library really are just for fun?" He raises an eyebrow and smirks, making you feel annoyed that he has you figured out so easily.
“As I said, I think knowledge gets you further in life.” You justify. He shakes his head in disbelief and you hear something close to a chuckle leave him. The sound is nice, especially since you’ve never heard or even seen this man smile. So this small chuckle is enough for you to continue this small banter you have going. “You don’t look like the type to go to the library.” 
“I don’t think we use the library for the same reasons.” He turns around toward you again and takes a long drag of his cigarette. He leans up against your car as your eyes lock on his figure, eyes piercing on you as he blows out the smoke. “Do you know about the library’s back room, princess?” His nickname for you makes your mind blank, and you shake your head no. “Proves my point.”
“What’s the back room?” You’re curious.
He’s studying you for a moment before answering. “A place to fuck.” 
Like a switch, your entire expression changes and you feel your cheeks heat up. Never have you heard of this ‘back room’ before. No, you probably (absolutely, most certainly) wouldn’t even use it if you had known about it, but it shocks you that it’s a thing. 
Seonghwa’s smirk grows on his lips as he studies your face. “Your expression says it all. You’re such a good girl you couldn’t even hide it if you wanted to.” 
You fall silent for a moment, not knowing what to say or how to move on from here. Until you’re reminded of the first time you spoke to Seonghwa.
“I saw you at the library once. With a girl.” You say shortly.
“Yeah, I remember. The back room was occupied so I took her down to the part of the library no one comes to. Well, except you.” The way his eyes are locked on you while talking about this is making your heart beat faster. 
“Is it even allowed?” 
“Would it ruin you to break the rules once in a while? Have you ever had sex in public before?”
“N-no!” Your cheeks are burning at this point.
“Don’t hate it till you try it. It's thrilling.” You’re not sure but you think you see him send you a wink as the smirk grows on his lips. A few more strands of hair have fallen down in his eyes, framing his face perfectly, before he runs his hand through his hair to push it back. It makes you fall under his trance for a moment, but you quickly flicker your eyes away, scared to fall for the beautiful brown eyes of his.
“So what, you only go to the library to sleep with someone? You don’t think there’s a better place to make love?”
“‘Make love’, how adorable.” Seonghwa is full-on smiling at this point, enjoying this conversation the more it escalates. The way your cheeks reddened, the slight shake in your voice, your flickering eyes. It’s clear to him that you’re not used to talking about these kinds of things, and he loves it. 
“I don’t see what’s funny.” You say.
“You make love on your honeymoon. You fuck everywhere else.” He says, as a matter of fact. 
“I don’t.” You disagree, fighting to keep your eyes on him and not back down from his piercing ones.
“No, I figured.” Another cloud of smoke leaves his lips and frames his face before continuing to fix the car, still looking back at you occasionally as you’re having this conversation. “You’re seeing anyone?”
“No.” You shake your head, wrapping your arms around yourself. His gaze on you seems so intimidating, even his presence itself. There’s a confidence, almost an arrogance to him that makes him so unnerving. But despite this, you can’t help but ask further. “Do you? Since you use the ‘back room’?”
“You only fuck-” He stops himself and holds his hands up. “Excuse me, make love, with people you date?” His questions make you fall silent for a few seconds.
You don’t know Seonghwa well, so this conversation is not exactly what you expected. This question could also open an entirely new topic of conversation that you weren’t sure would be comfortable for either of you.
The conversation about sex is not normal for you, especially since you’re not the most experienced. Despite having been in a relationship with the guy who took your virginity, it didn’t end the way you had dreamed of. 
You had always romanticized the thought of losing your virginity to the person you would spend the rest of your life with, but when you found out he had cheated on you during your relationship, your world crumbled. At the time, all of your insecurities came to life, and despite knowing you had done nothing wrong in the relationship to prevent this, you couldn’t help but feel like you had done something wrong when it came to sex.
With time, you promised yourself not to let your ex have an effect on you, so you did everything you could to gain back your confidence, and you did.
You clear your throat, taking your time to find the right answer. “Well... I’ve only made love to one person and that was my ex. So yes.”
“And you only stayed in the bedroom?” 
A moment of silence.
“Yes, we did. I just don’t understand why you would do it anywhere but in the bedroom. There’s literally a bed, I can’t imagine how uncomfortable everything else must be.
Seonghwa throws his head back before looking at you in disbelief. “I didn’t think you could get any more good. You must be first in line to heaven when doomsday comes.” He puts his smoke out in the ashtray on a working table next to the car. “Public sex is not about how comfortable it is. And just because it’s public, does not mean people are watching you. That’s a whole other kink.” Seonghwa is slowly making his way towards you on the stool. His large frame is closing in on you, speaking in a lower volume as he’s coming closer. “It’s the feeling of someone possibly being able to see. Having to keep quiet, being close, finding whatever excuse you have to leave and drag the other person into a random room. Comfortability is not a necessity at that point. Then you don’t care if you fuck in a bed, against a table, or the hood of a car.” 
He’s standing right in front of you. You try your best to control your breathing as he looks down at you, you have to look up at him through your eyelashes. The smell of cigarettes surrounds you as he is near, but there’s also an obvious pull of something dangerous yet addicting when being close to him. You don’t know where it comes from, but you can't help but want more. 
You’ve never caught yourself thinking of Seonghwa this way, but he’s awfully good at wrapping you around his finger and thinking of things you’ve never had before.
“So what, how does this ‘backroom’ work?” You suddenly ask, almost surprising yourself. What did you want with the information? You have no idea.
Seonghwa finds your questions endearing. The innocence in your voice has him smiling, letting you see his perfect teeth. You’ve never looked at him so closely, you find yourself so fascinated by him. The raw, scary persona he is, but yet his face is perfectly made like an angel. Soft and beautiful. You suddenly find yourself completely under his spell, studying his every feature.
“What, tempted to give it a try? I can show you if you’re interested.” There’s a hint of something in his voice, you can’t tell if he’s kidding, but even the thought of him taking you to the room, has you notice a certain heat between your legs.
“N-no, I’m just curious.” Your voice shakes from how close he is to you along with his words.
“Careful with that. Curiosity killed the cat, you know.” He then steps back and walks back to the car to continue working on it as if nothing happened. Seonghwa is working over the open hood, unaware of how he left you feeling inside. 
Your heart is beating fast against your chest as he casually works in front of you. Like he turned on something inside of you, you suddenly notice things about him you didn’t before. How his hand curls around the wrench, how his shirt lifts when leaning over the car, exposing the skin on his waist, and how his muscles tense when he works. His jeans hang low, just below his waist, revealing even more skin and you somehow can’t help but look.
“Getting awfully quiet over there, princess. Your mind running?” Seonghwa’s head turns to you, catching you looking at him. Your eyes go to his, and you both freeze. He studies your face for a few seconds before grabbing the hood of the car and closing it. You both look at each other, a certain tension between you.
“Come here,” Seonghwa says as he leans against the car. Your body hesitates to do as he says, but you eventually cave in and get down from the stool to slowly make your way towards him. 
Seonghwa throws the white cloth on the table before looking down at you. The smell of cigarettes and oil enhances again as you’re close to him, and Seonghwa taps the hood of the car with his hand. You look at the hood, suddenly unsure of everything you do, but push the thoughts away and jump up on the hood to sit. Your feet dangle, but you freeze when Seonghwa steps in front of you, resting his hands on either side of you. 
“You’re thinking of something special?” His low voice asks. He’s searching for your eyes, but your heart is pounding and your eyes struggle to stay in one place. The heat between your legs is driving you insane, never having felt like this before.
“No... Maybe.”
His eyes continue to study your face. His expression is still impossible to read, yet his actions make you feel a whole new type of way.
“Look... I’d gladly take you, right here right now, if you want. We don’t even have to fuck, I can just make you cum if that’s what you want.” His bluntness throws you off, yet you didn’t expect those words to have such a big impact on you.
“Won’t someone come in? Or hear?” You worry.
“No. They won’t.” He whispers, slowly leaning forward. 
You can’t tell what’s happening, even if you had a gun to your head. Seonghwa is not someone you should be spending time with. He’s the complete opposite of you, yet that draws you in like nothing else.
“Okay.” You cave in.
Not a second later, Seonghwa’s lips are on yours. Everything is happening so fast, that your brain isn’t even realizing who you’re kissing. The guy you’ve seen scare people away from their seats is having his hands on you, pulling you closer for a kiss. His tongue slips through your lips and you allow his every move. 
It’s a whole new experience to kiss someone like Seonghwa. The taste, the moves, the desire. He knows what he’s doing, and the confidence shines through, even just through the kiss.
He pulls back, leaving you thirsty for more, and a small tug on Seonghwa’s lips assures you that this is actually going to happen. “First… How do you usually like it, kitten? How do you like for someone to make you cum?” He whispers.
“I’m not.. no one has ever... I mean-”
“No one has made you cum before?”
You try analyzing his question in your mind before you shake your head no. 
“I thought you had a boyfriend a while back?”
“I did..”
There’s a short moment of silence where Seonghwa just reads your face and takes in what you just told him. “So let me get this straight... You only had mediocre, boring vanilla sex with this guy, he never made you cum and you still dated him?” He lifts an eyebrow, trying to understand the situation. You slowly nod, confirming his question. “Did he ever cum?”
“Every time.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding... Now that’s just selfish of him,” He removed a piece of hair from your face and leaned his face closer to your ear. You felt him slowly press his lips on the soft spot on your neck before gracing his lips over your ear. “Can I get the pleasure to be the one to make you cum, princess?”
“Y-yes.” You’re almost panting at this point, craving his touch more than you’d ever expect. Seonghwa holds your face in his hands as he presses his lips hard against yours again. The smell of cigarettes surrounds you as you get lost in him, yet you for some reason get addicted to the idea of him. Like he’s your kind of nicotine.
“I’ll try not to get oil all over you.” He assures as pulls away from you.
“That’s okay.” You tell him, suddenly not caring about the stains. This makes Seonghwa’s lips turn into a smirk, slightly amazed at the sudden change in you. His hands run up your thigh, leaving black stains from his fingerprints on your skin.
“You like the idea of my fingerprints on you? Looking in the mirror when you get home and seeing my hands on your thighs?” He goes to kiss your neck as his fingers dig into the flesh on your things. Unable to speak, you nod, wanting him to touch you even more. “Lean back for me, kitten.”
You scoop further back on the hood of your car, leaning back on your elbows to get a view of Seonghwa. His hands go to your hips to drag down your underwear till it completely leaves your body. The cold air hits your heat as Seonghwa parts your legs to lean over the hood and get a better view of your cunt. 
“Gosh, you’re glistening, princess. Are you that wet already? The idea of cumming in a public space is turning you on now?” 
You don’t get to react before his tongue suddenly slides between your folds, getting a long taste of you. The feeling makes you gasp, but you quickly cover your mouth with your hand, silencing yourself as much as possible.
“You taste so sweet, kitten.” He continues taking long strokes in between your folds, making sure to lick your clit as well. You look down to see his fingerprints on your thighs, turning you on even more. A moan escapes through your lips as he starts focusing on your clit, sucking and flicking his tongue on the sensitive nub. You can barely say anything as he takes his time, eating you like he craves you. 
“I can’t believe someone had the chance to make you cum, and he didn’t even do it right.” Seonghwa shakes his head with a smirk before taking a few more deep licks against your pussy. “How embarrassing of him.”
“Will you... do it right, then?” You asked, looking at him with doe eyes. Seonghwa stands up further to look down at you spread out on the hood in front of him. His fingers, still stained slightly with black oil, go to your chin, and tilts your head up slightly to get a better look at him. 
“Kitten, you’re gonna wish you came to me sooner when I’m done with you.” The look in his eyes almost works like a promise before he leans down to your pussy again. “Tell me how you like it, princess. Use your words.” 
Once again you have to fight yourself to get actual words out when he runs his tongue between your folds again. This time, he focuses on your hole, slipping his tongue in before licking up your pussy again. 
“Like that... That’s really g-good.” You manage to get out, already feeling the shocks through your body when he licks the right places. 
“Fuck, you taste so good.” He spits down on your pussy before going back and to lick it again. Your legs slowly give up, but Seonghwa holds them open, allowing him full view and access. He goes back to sucking your clit, making you moan through your hand once again. “Best cunt I’ve tasted, kitten. Sweeter than anything.”
His tongue works around, he knows what he’s doing. He occasionally looks up at you, making eye contact as he runs his tongue between your folds. This makes you go absolutely crazy, seeing him go down on you like this. Eating, slurping you up. The sounds from the repair shop are out of this world, filled with your moans and him slurping all the juices from your pussy.
“Please don’t stop.” You throw your head back in pleasure, slowly feeling your orgasm approach. 
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He grins. His mouth goes to your clit again, sucking and rolling his tongue over it. Restless with your hand, it goes to his hair and you grab a handful. The black locks in your hand look amazing as his face is against your cunt, eating and licking you up. Your abandonment starts to send shocks through your body, Seonghwa having to lock your legs down so he can continue. 
The feeling is overwhelming, you can barely hold back your moans anymore. His tongue is flat against your pussy as he flicks your clit with the tip, making sure to hit all the best spots. He works fast, barely letting you get used to one way before he moves next to the new. 
“Seonghwa, I’m gonna-” You moan his name as the feeling of your orgasm quickly starts to form. Lastly, his tongue goes to your clit, sending you over the edge. Your whole body is a shaking, moaning mess as he eats you out of your orgasm. He doesn’t miss a spot as he slurps up the juices from your pussy, licking you one last time, everywhere, before separating himself from you.
You look up to see his chin glistening from your orgasm. He has a smirk on his lips as he pulls you up to sit and presses his lips against yours. Quickly, a specific taste of something mixes as you kiss, his tongue added as well. 
“You taste yourself on my tongue?” He asks confidently, and you quickly realize what the taste is. You. “Amazing, don’t you think?” He smirks before giving you one last kiss before pulling slightly away. He stays between your legs as you scoop forward a bit, still on the hood but with your feet dangling now. 
“Should I.. with you?” You almost whisper.
“No need, princess. Eating your pretty pussy was enough for me.” He smirks as he places his hands on each side of you. You blush again, never having someone comment on your pussy before, but you can’t help but like how it sounds coming from him. “So.. first time having someone make you cum and it being in a public space. What do you think?”
“It was.. fun.” You admit, speaking the truth. The rush of doing it here, with Seonghwa, at his place of work was not something you ever expected to happen, but it had a thrill you never felt before.
“See, that we can agree is ‘fun’. You have school tomorrow?” The change of subject throws you off for a second, having to get your mind clear after just having the biggest orgasm of your life.
“Yeah,” You reply, remembering something important, “How much do I owe you?” Your words leave him with a wrinkle between his brows. 
“For eating you out?” 
“N-no! For the uhh.. the car.”
He looks somewhat relieved after you clarify, “Oh... I don’t know, it’s hard to say. I know you said you didn’t want a maintenance check but I couldn’t help but notice that your serpentine belt is filled with cracks.” 
You don’t even know what a serpentine belt is.
“What does that mean?” You ask.
“That means that it’ll break at some point and then you’ll risk getting stuck in the middle of the road because your car can’t drive.” He explains, and you suddenly understand the situation. You can't help but notice how quick he is to move on, talking about your car after he just had his tongue in between your folds.
You know he's not a stranger to sex, but that also intimidates you.
“Oh..”
He reads your expression for a second as you try to figure out what to do. You don’t want to be stuck in the middle of the road when driving, knowing that’s gonna be even more expensive. But it’s late, so leaving your car here would mean that you would have to order a cab or take the bus.
“I’m done here for the day. How about I give you a ride home? Then we’ll drive here together from school tomorrow, I’ll finish your car, and you’ll get to drive home in a car that doesn’t have the risk of crashing down at any moment?” 
You look up at him to see his expression back to its usual unreadable one, “I mean... If that’s okay with you?” You ask.
This makes him smile. He looks down on your thighs to see the stains he left on you, before meeting your eyes again.
“Of course, kitten. I’ll just grab my stuff.” 
He then disappears away and into another room, leaving you on the hood of your car. The fingerprints on your thighs are a raw indication of what has happened tonight, and you’re sure your clothes are stained with black oil as well. 
When he arrives again, he’s wearing his black leather jacket. You follow him to his car outside, and he drives you home. When you arrive at your apartment, you can’t help but look in the mirror immediately. Seonghwa’s fingerprints are all over your thighs and hips, almost marking you. Your cardigan, skirt, and socks all have stains on them, and there’s a slight embarrassment in your gut when thinking of what happened tonight. 
You can’t help but feel embarrassed at the thought of seeing Seonghwa in the hallways of the university, especially since he has to pick you up from school tomorrow and go back to the place where he just gave you your biggest orgasm. But even so, you’re even more tempted to walk through the door he just opened for you. The wilder side, the dangerous and unfamiliar. 
It makes you blush even thinking of him, and when your phone suddenly buzzes in your hand, you’re shocked to see a certain name on your screen.
Seonghwa made you save his contact when dropping you off, saying it was for future car problems. But you didn't expect a text already, and you know the door he has opened for you, is already locked behind you. 
Seonghwa See you tomorrow, kitten
Taglist: @canigotosleep--plz (comment if you wanna be added to my taglist!)
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flemingsfreckles · 2 months
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Physio’s Daughter
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Jessie Fleming x Physio!Reader
Preview: Reader is following in her mother’s footsteps in becoming a physiotherapist and gets the opportunity to spend the afternoon with the Canadian women’s soccer team.
Warnings: none
WC: 3.7k
A/N: this is going to be a few parts
You couldn’t believe you were attending ‘bring your kid to work day’ with your mom as a 22 year old but here you were, in the car on the way to her work.
“Are you sure I’m not too old to be coming with you?” You questioned your mom.
“It’ll be just like going to your clinical rotations. Plus you can put it on your resume, so it's really just helping you.” That’s how your mom had tried to convince you that you’d have fun coming to work with her. “Plus I talked with my boss, he said as of now we have an extra spot on the physio team to take someone to the Olympics, if you do well today, maybe it could be you.”
“Wouldn’t you want someone who's more qualified, not just a student?” You were in the process of obtaining your certification as a physiotherapist. You had finished your bachelor’s degree and were in the middle of your post graduate athletic therapy program.
“We have all the staff we need, they think bringing on someone young might be good. The players might like having someone closer to their age, not just all 40 and 50 year olds on their staff. Plus you’re plenty qualified, we have students in and out of the facility all the time.”
As a kid you always tagged along with your mom, you didn't have much of a choice, having a single mom who worked late hours in secondary schools meant your evenings were spent in her training room or on the sidelines of games. The older you got, the less you went with your mom, opting to stay home or spend time with friends instead of accompanying her at work. When you moved out to go to university you had chosen to follow in your Mom’s footsteps, intending to become a physiotherapist as well. At the same time you moved out, your Mom took on a new job, one that allowed her to travel more, a job with the Canada’s Women’s Soccer Team.
It wasn’t that you didn’t want to spend the day with your mom, you were interested in seeing her work, it was more that you knew you'd be the oldest “kid” who was at her work, a lot of her other staff had either young children or kids that had moved away and were on with their own lives.
The ride to the training facility was short, you got out of the car, and walked into the front door. You followed your mom around the facility, having no idea where to go. She walked you down and around various hallways, saying hello to the other staff who passed with their small children. You just would give a polite hello and a wave before continuing down the hall.
It was a weird feeling, walking into a room of players you recognized from TV, players who were well known across the country and the world, and yet they greeted your Mom with a hello and questions about her weekend, as if they were friends.
“That is my daughter, she thinks she's too old to be here but she's studying to be a physio too so I figured I'd bring her here and get some free labor.” You hear your mom joking with the two players standing in front of her, she's pointing at you over her shoulder and the two players who you recognized to be Janine Beckie and Ashley Lawrence were looking over at you. You politely wave and move over in their direction.
“Hi.” Not knowing what to say to them, you just keep it short.
They both introduce themselves to you, you assume just being polite of them, it would be hard to not know who they were. One of the other physios comes in, taking Ashley to get taped, your mom taking Janine to work on her knee. Not sure what to do with yourself you just stand back, as if you were back to being a shy 6 year old in a new environment hiding behind your mom. You watch your mom work, she moves effortlessly, doing tasks in seconds that would take you minutes. You always admired your Mom at her work but you had a new appreciation now that you had begun school and realized how much work and time it took to learn everything.
Players come and go, getting various treatments, keeping the staff busy. You watch around, seeing the rest of the staff, how they work with the players, how they all seemed so relaxed and at ease.
“Hi Jessie, how are you, what do you need today?” Your mom looks past you toward the door where Jessie Fleming had walked in. Obviously you knew who she was, her olympic heroics from many years ago making her a Canadian household name. On top of her soccer talent that drew your attention as a kid, her appearance definitely didn't hurt. You had always found her pretty, a silly little school girl crush when you were younger watching her on TV as she played as a teenager, something that you had forgotten about over the years but her standing in front of you brought it all back up.
“Hi, I’m doing well. Can I just get my calf worked out? I’ve been having some tightness.” She looked at your mom, a polite smile across her face, she pointed at the empty table as she asked.
“Can you handle that?” You realize your mom is looking at you, asking you to help with Jessie as the rest of the staff is held up with other players. She’s asking you to help
“Um, yeah, sure.” You weren’t going to say no, plus you could handle a simple massage.
“Jessie, this is my daughter, she’s a physio student and plenty qualified to massage your calf, I promise.” You roll your eyes at your mom’s comment, feeling embarrassed that she has to explain that you’re able to help. You wash your hands and walk over to the table Jessie had sat down on.
“Hi, I’m Jessie.” She introduces herself, her hand extended for a handshake, you can't help but let out a small laugh at the fact that she of all people is introducing herself.
“I know who you are.” Your hand meets hers taking her handshake and you quickly introduce yourself to her. Her hand is soft but her handshake is firm, it only lasts a second before you pull back, pointing to her legs.
“Which calf?” You look at her. She points to her left before taking off her sock and she rolls over onto her stomach shifting up the table so that just her foot is hanging off the edge. You grab lotion and rub it into your hands before placing your hands slowly onto Jessie’s leg. You take a few passes of your hands over her leg before starting to dig into the muscle. It doesn't take you long to find the knot that is resting in her leg, focusing on it. You feel Jessie clench her muscle and slightly pull her leg away. You quickly lighten the pressure you were putting on her and you look at the direction of her face. You see a small grimace across her face.
“Are you good?” The last thing you want is to hurt the captain of the team, that probably wouldn't go over well with anyone.
“Yeah it's just sore. I’ve had some previous injury with it.” You knew that, you knew about most of the players' previous injuries, they were publicly announced anyway and you liked to keep up with your mom on what she was doing at work.
“Sorry.” Not sure if it's appropriate to apologize, you do it anyway.
“Oh don’t be, it’s never been a huge injury so I’m lucky. Unless you were saying sorry about the soreness, but then don’t worry, it’s sort of a good hurt I guess.” She stumbles a bit with their words, looking back at you over her shoulder. With her confirmation that the pain wasn’t bad, you return your pressure to her leg, working your fingers deep into her skin.
“Is she doing alright Jessie?” The voice of your Mom comes from behind you, you turn to see her walking up toward you, finished with the other athletes.
“She might be better than you.” Jessie laughs joking with your mom. “No but seriously she's doing great.”
“I taught her well then.” Your mom gives you a pat on the shoulder before walking away and moving to a desk to do some paperwork.
You finish up with Jessie’s calf, letting her know she should be good to go, the knot being worked out. She stands up with a smile and thanks you for the help. She uses your name when she thanks you which causes a small blush to come across your cheeks. You can't keep your eyes off of her as she walks out to head to the field. When she turns the corner and out of your sight you shake your head, trying to clear your mind as you feel the small childhood crush come crawling back up.
You clean up the table you had been working on, putting the lotion away and wiping down the table with sanitizer. Moving over to where your mom was working, she was completing reports for each of the players who had come in for treatment, she passed them to you to file once she’s completed with them. When the paperwork is done you follow her out to the pitch. You find yourself sitting on the bench, watching as the players work through drills, your mom occasionally going to chat with the coaching staff or other physios.
You couldn't help but watch Jessie, watching how effortlessly she made moving the ball look, how much power and control she had on the ball, it was fascinating. On a couple of occasions you found yourself admiring her physique a little too much, watching as her muscles twitch with every movement. You also started to notice she was favoring her weight on her right leg the longer practice went on.
“Mom.” You get your mom’s attention, not wanting to make the call yourself on if Jessie’s movements were unusual. “Does Fleming usually favor her right leg?”
“What?” She moves over closer to you, looking out to the field in the direction of Jessie. You both watch as Jessie takes another pass, moving upfield with the ball. “Oh, no she doesn't, I mean she prefers her right foot, but not like that.”
At the next water break you see your mom sitting in front of Jessie, hand on her calf, you watch as they talk about your mom maneuvering her leg. When the team moves back to the field, the players and coaches bring out their kids, letting them join in on games. Jessie stays sitting, now talking with your mom and the coach. She then stands up, your mom following her in your direction.
“Can you take her inside? I want to be overcautious and treat her for a calf strain, heat pack, use the TENS unit, then have her roll out, ice and tape.” Your mom throws a laundry list of tasks at you.
“Of course.” You stand up, grabbing your water and phone from next to you before heading in the direction of the physio room.
“Sorry you're getting stuck with me again.” You apologize to Jessie, trying to make small talk with the girl and also hoping she doesn’t feel like she’s getting stuck with just the student again.
“Oh, I don't mind. I wasn't really joking earlier when I said you did a better job than your mom.” She gives you a smile, you feel the flutter in your stomach. Her praise is nice, but it's the smile that she's giving you that makes your stomach flip, it’s gentle and friendly. “Don't take that the wrong way, your mom is excellent, just it was different, you were more thorough maybe, I’m not sure, it was just different.” Jessie rambles.
“That's probably because I’m more nervous about messing up than they are.” You’re honest, you were doing everything to the exact standard, following the expectations you had been taught in class, yet to develop your own style.
“You’re nervous?” She seems surprised.
“I mean, wouldn’t you be, being brought into a professional sports team and being asked to help that team's captain while you're still a student? I mean I guess you’re usually level headed, penalty machine and all.” Thankfully you have half a brain to not throw in that the captain being attractive was definitely adding to your nerves.
“Oh believe me, I was nervous for those penalties but I’ve always thought nerves are good, they show you care. How much more school do you have?” She continues with the small talk.
“Just another semester. And then licensing tests, but just a semester of school.”
“That's exciting, do you know what you are going to do after that?” You make your way into the training room, holding the door open for Jessie to walk through.
“I don’t know, probably work at some secondary school to start, work my way up to bigger teams, I'll have to see what options I have. Go ahead and sit up on the table.” You point at the table at the end of the room as you move over to where the heat packs were stored. Jessie is sitting on the table, watching you when you turn around. You lift her foot, placing the heat pack on the table before placing her calf down on top of it.
“Is it still just sore or is it more sharp now?” Turning the conversation back to a more professional topic away from the small talk about yourself.
“Just sore, feels like a sore muscle.”
“You know, it's nice to actually meet you finally.” When you give her a confused look, she continues “I just mean your mom talks a lot about you.”
“Oh that's embarrassing.” You regret saying it as soon as it comes out of your mouth, you loved your mom, you know you shouldn’t be embarrassed about her talking about you.
“No, it's actually really sweet, I hope my parents talk about me even half as much as your mom talks about you. She’s so proud of you. You're her world.”
“Yeah, I know, it was always just the two of us. I know she misses me when I’m at school, I feel bad leaving her sometimes.” You look down, then realize youre probably giving way too much information to someone who likely doesn't care. “Sorry, I don't mean to talk about my personal stuff.”
“No problem, I don't mind, it's nice talking to you,” she quickly corrects her sentence “to someone closer to my age.”
You pull up a stool and sit with Jessie while she uses the heat pack. When the heat pack starts to cool off you slide over and start digging around for the TENS unit your mom recommended. When you’ve opened your third cabinet and had no luck finding it Jessie speaks up.
“They keep the TENS over there.” She points across the room to a different cabinet. You push up off the stool and move over to where she pointed, opening a drawer and finding it quickly.
“Sorry, I obviously don’t know where anything is, I didn't have time to really get acclimated this morning.” You feel embarrassed, already feeling inferior being the student but now being clueless and having to have Jessie tell you where everything is.
“That’s alright.” She reassures you. You move back and attach the pads onto her calf, turning the machine on low and handing her the controls and tell her to leave it on for 10 minutes. She messes with the controls of a second before setting down the remote and slightly leaning back, her arms propped behind her. Not knowing what to do with yourself you stand up and move over to the other tables where rolls of tape, bandaids, scissors, and various other tools used by the trainers are askew. You tidy up, finding where things belong through your own searching.
“So what do you do outside of school?” You had gotten used to the silence that Jessie’s voice breaks.
“Well school takes up most of my time, I wish I could travel more, I miss going to new places, seeing new things. But unfortunately school turns me into a pretty boring person.”
“Maybe you’ll get a travel experience this summer eh?” You turn at her, you’re assuming she’s implying going with your mom to Paris for the Olympics. “Your mom mentioned she wanted you to come with the team.”
“Yeah she said something about it to me, I mean I’d have to have her boss, Mark, pick me, I think there’s a few people they’re looking at for the trip. She thinks it’ll be a good experience for me for future jobs. I know it would look good on a resume and all but I also don’t want to get the opportunity just because my mom is here.”
“If it means anything you have my vote, the other people have been boring.” Jessie quickly says. “Sorry that’s not what I meant. I just meant, you’ve been the best one they’ve tried out. You care the most, at least it seems like you do. Plus you’re easy to talk to, the rest were too caught up on work, some of them stressed me out just being around them. And no one else was as observant. Your mom mentioned you were the one to see I was putting my weight off center, that’s why it’s important to have fresh eyes.”
“Yeah, I just happened to be watching, I get told I’m observant a lot.” You move your hands to take the TENS unit off of her gently peeling the pads from her skin. You move to grab her the foam ball across the room, tossing it in her direction. Jessie tried to catch it, it bounces off her hands, into her face and then onto the floor.
“Oh my god sorry, I didn’t mean to throw it that hard.” You throw your hands in her direction apologizing. Moving quickly across the room you pick up the ball where it had rolled before gently placing it in her hand.
“Nope, that was my fault. There’s a reason I play a foot sport.” She laughs. Her laugh is beautiful, it fills the room momentarily. It makes you feel light inside.
Just as she moves to the floor to begin rolling out her calf, the training room door opens and in comes the loud crowd of her teammates. They move in all directions across the room, some moving to the ice bath, some moving to grab heat packs. Some move to take off tape, tossing it in the trash. It’s loud, conversations in every direction and you’re quickly swept away, your arm being pulled by your mom as she moves you over to where the ice cooler was. You’re instructed to make ice bags for the players who want them and help them wrap the ice wherever they want it. It’s an easy task but it takes you away from Jessie, no longer having the quiet privacy of the training room.
You wrap arms and legs and shoulders and backs and feet with ice. You can’t help but keep glancing at Jessie, she was still rolling her calf, chatting with her teammates as they walked by. On a couple instances you caught her looking back at you, she’d give a quick smile before looking away. You finish the last player requesting ice and when you look up Jessie is now sitting on the table with Mark, he’s taping her calf. A small part of you feels jealous, which is insanely stupid you tell yourself, she’s his player not yours, he’s the head trainer, you’re not even one, it should be him doing the work.
Only a few minutes later, Jessie hops off the table, giving you a wave and a shout of thanks before leaving the room. Only staff remained, the rest of the players on their way home for the day. You finish cleaning up, asking your Mom a couple of times where everything belongs, making sure nothing gets put away in the wrong place.
It feels like time has flown by in the eight hours that you have been at the training center, before you know it you’re headed out to the car with your mom, the same way you came in this morning.
“Mark wanted to extend the offer for you to spend the rest of the summer here, and for the Olympics. He’s going to give you a call tomorrow, but he gave me a heads up. It can probably count as some clinical work for school, he said he’ll just have to get the paperwork sorted. Something about high praises from a certain team captain.” Your mom nudges you with her shoulder. You look at her and you can tell she’s being suggestive with her wording.
“What?” Your cheeks begin to flush slightly. “You’re the one who kept sticking her with me.”
“I know, I also know you had a little crush when you were younger.” She teases. You just roll your eyes, not wanting to give yourself away.
“Oh my god mom that was years ago, she’s not my type.” It was true, your dating history was littered with blonde preppy girls with terrible personalities, quite literally the opposite of Jessie. Hoping that fact would help your argument that you didn’t still have a crush on Jessie and it seemed to as your mom dropped the topic.
“I know honey, I’m only kidding you. You can drive, I’m tired.” She places the keys in your hand. You don’t mind driving, you turn back looking at the facility, realizing you could be spending your summer everyday here didn’t sound like too bad of an idea.
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heich0e · 9 months
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“Didn’t expect to see you out here.”
Your head pops up as the unexpected voice makes itself known, twisting your face towards the sound only to see a figure standing at the end of the alley. He’s silhouetted where he stands—a shape more than a person. You can tell he’s tall, broad, and has a knot of hair tied up loosely at his crown. 
Geto Suguru steps into the light where you can see him better, though it makes his sudden appearance no less surprising. 
“Did you drink too much?” he asks, treading a few steps closer as he eyes you worriedly. You pull yourself up from where you’d been crouching on the ground.
“No, no. Just getting some air,” you reply with a stiff smile, dipping in a bow and quickly adjusting your pencil skirt once you’re back upright.
He has his tie loosened over his shirt with the top button undone, and his suit jacket is nowhere to be seen. He considers you for a moment, and his attention makes you want to fidget but you fight the urge.
You watch as he pulls packet of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his shirt and offers it out to you. “Do you smoke?”
“No, thank you,” you say with a quick shake of your head, smoothing your hands along the front of your skirt and then moving to step past him back towards the entrance of the restaurant. “I should go.”
He angles his body in your way before you can.
“No need to leave on my account,” he says, peering down at you. His face is partially in shadow because of how he’s standing, angled between you and the mouth of the alleyway that leads back to the busy street, caught in a small dark patch between the streetlights and the light affixed to the grungy brick wall. He tips his face up and the light touches his features once more, catching in his brown eyes as he waits in anticipation of your response.
“I should get back inside.” It’s strangely difficult to meet his gaze, so instead you look past him towards the street as an unwelcome heat surges up your throat to flood your face. A car passes quickly by the alley, and you watch as the headlights come and go in a flash.
“Why?” the man before you asks, placing the cigarette he’d fished out of the pack to his lips. He uses his teeth to keep it there while he fumbles through his pockets for a lighter. “You’re clearly having a terrible time in there.”
Your eyes snap up to meet his in shock.
“No I’m not,” your reply is notably indignant, even though his accusation is valid.
How would he know anyway?
“The smiley, nice-girl bit’s gotta be getting old, isn’t it? Pouring everyones drinks. Cleaning up everyones messes.” He laughs, though it’s only to himself, before clicking his lighter to life and holding it to the tip of his cigarette until it catches. The cherry burns red and bright on an inhale, and smoke slips from his lips as he adds, “You don’t have to lie to me, I’m not your boss.”
“I’m not lying,” you insist, but your performance isn’t particularly convincing. 
Truthfully, the very last thing you wanted to do after a ten-hour work day—capping off a fifty-hour work week—was come out drinking with your colleagues. You’ve never really liked these kinds of gatherings, even if the company is the one footing the bill. They always get a bit too rowdy for your liking. Always drag on a bit too long. And you know that you’ll inevitably be the one stuck forcing your plastered boss into a taxi in the wee hours of the morning, while the rest of your equally-sloshed coworkers find their own ways home.
But the department chair, the very same one you’re sure will be singing karaoke with his tie around his forehead in only a few short hours, had been adamant that everyone in marketing attend the gathering since the sales section was joining in too. 
Hence the sales employee standing toe-to-toe with you, blocking your path.
You know Geto Suguru, but only indirectly. The sales and marketing departments are separated by a single floor in your company’s office building, and often work on projects together. Geto is a section lead in sales, with a long, illustrious history behind him before he worked his way up to that role. He’s made a lot of money for the company, and a lot of friends along the way—what with his easy charm, silver tongue, and undeniable good looks. His reputation precedes him—in both good ways and bad.
The fact that he’s here talking to you—a fresh-faced, relatively new-to-role nobody in comparison to his lengthy history with the business—is what you have a hard time wrapping your head around.
“Sure, sure.” Geto waves his hand dismissively, ash fluttering off in tiny specks from the end of his lit cigarette. “I’m sure you just love making all those copies, remembering coffee orders, and running that section lead of yours’s errands too. Oh, and don’t forget when he takes credit for your ideas.”
Your stomach drops. 
He keeps going.
“This upcoming brand collaboration is exciting,”—he takes a puff of his cigarette, his eyes sparkling as he looks at you—“too bad no one knows it was you who came up with it, huh?” 
Your fists clench tightly at your sides, your lips pressing together in a thin line.
Geto blows the last of the smoke in his lungs from the corner of his pursed lips, away from you.
“That’s the first honest expression I’ve seen on your face all night,” he says with a sly smile tugging at his lips.
Your hands are shaking.
“Why are you doing this?” you ask him weakly.
He tilts his head to the side, like your question confounds him.
“I’m not doing anything,” he says, and he sounds like he genuinely means it. “Have I said anything that isn’t true?”
You bite your lip, staring down at your pretty, professional pumps as you stand on the craggy pavement of the alley.
“You’re allowed to be angry, but don’t direct it at me for pointing out the people who keep screwing you over,” Geto says, and the way his voice sounds a bit nearer and the smell of his cigarette gets stronger tells you that he’s dipped down closer to you even though you don’t watch him do it. “No one’s gonna hand anything to you if you don’t fight for it.”
You glance up at him, your expression and your tone equally flat. “And what if I’m not a fighter?”
“Oh, I don’t believe that,” he says, chuckling a bit as he backs away from you.
You watch him as he watches you—contemplates you, like he’s sizing you up. He drops cigarette suddenly to the ground, still only half-burned, and crushes it with the toe of his shoe. You hold your breath as he takes another step towards you.
He leans forward.
“Hit me.”
“Pardon me?” The bewildered question rushes out of you all in one gasping breath, and you take a loping step back in shock.
“Come on, just one,” the man goads you further, rapping against his jaw with the knuckle of his index finger as a smile twists his lips up at the corners.
“You’re drunk,” you spit out incredulously, shaking your head and quickly moving to step past him.
“I’m not.” He sidles smoothly into your path once more before you get the chance to flee, like he’s half-a-step ahead of you at all times. 
It’s infuriating.
“Alright, then you’re just insane,” you offer instead.
You knew the sales department had a reputation for being a bit wild, but this is beyond all your expectations. This is nothing like the charming, easy going Geto that you’ve heard all your female colleague gossiping about in the break room.
His smile falls, and he crosses his arms over his chest. You try not to pay too much attention to the way his forearms look with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“I’m still your senior, y’know,” he says, and his voice is a little bit colder now. More admonishing.
You’re very acutely aware of that fact without him saying it.
You huff out a frustrated little breath through your nose, crossing your own arms over your chest in a mirror of his stance.
“I’m not hitting you.”
Geto’s brow quirks curiously.
“Why not?”
You can’t believe you’re having this conversation.
“Because that’s assault,” you counter his question shortly.
“It’s only assault if I press charges—which I won’t.” You know he’s telling the truth but it doesn’t make it any more convincing. He tilts his head to the side again, and a silky strand of his dark hair slips into his eyes. “Haven’t you ever hit anyone before? It’s cathartic.”
Your lips part in an expression of astonishment. “Of course I haven’t.”
The man in front of you looks mildly surprised at your answer.
“Do I look like someone who goes around fighting people?” you ask him incredulously.
“You look like you’ve got some repressed rage in you,” he says with a smirk, and the expression only worsens when he sees the way you react to it.
He taps his cheek again before tucking both his hands behind his back and leaning in close to you, like a man offering himself up to the executioner’s block. He shuts his eyes.
“C’mon, just a little one.”
“I won’t.”
“You should.”
“I won’t.”
“How come?”
You take his face in your hands suddenly, tilting it up to meet your gaze.
“Geto-san,” you say quietly, your tone bordering on desperate. “I’m not going to hit you, so please stop asking.”
He opens his eyes slowly, his dark lashes fluttering as he blinks up at you. After a moment he smiles, and his eyes curve into narrow crescents as he leans subtly into your touch.
It’s quiet in the alley, but your heartbeat is quick underneath your skin.
“Can you blame a guy for trying?” he asks you coyly.
You’re still cupping his cheeks in your hands. 
They’re warm.
“You really are crazy,” you reply softly to his question, though it’s not much of a reply at all.
He hums, turning his face so his nose drags across your wrist. His lips brush against your palm as he speaks once more. “I’ve been called worse.”
You don’t doubt he’s telling the truth.
Slowly, the dark haired man picks himself up to his usual height. He’s closer to you now than he’s ever been—and thanks to the little cat and mouse game that the two of you have been playing, you’re very nearly pressed against the alley wall. You can’t even see the street anymore beyond the expanse of his wide shoulders.
Everywhere you look, you only see him.
The realization sits hot and heavy in the pit of your stomach.
“I know you’re a good girl, but what are we gonna do about all that stuff you’ve got pent up in there?” Geto lifts his hand and presses a featherlight touch to your sternum over your diaphragm, his fingertips trailing delicately against the smooth plane where the arch of your ribs ends. Your breath hitches painfully as you stare up at him, a sticky knot at the back of your throat preventing you from forming any response—not that you can think of anything to say. 
Geto smiles down at you, his expression soft.
You see the faintest flash of sharp teeth behind his pink lips.
“Don’t you want me to help you let it out?”
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luv444bellingham · 2 months
Text
ONE OF YOUR GIRLS . // jude bellingham.
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PARING. poc!reader x situationship!jude.
IN WHICH. she tries to get him jealous, but he snaps harder than she predicted.
WARNING. unprotected sex, poc reader, dirty talk, hair pulling, praising, public bathroom sex, porn with a plot, and more. (my big debut yall,,)
WORDS. 1.4k
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heart racing, she picked up the drink the stranger offered her— taking quick side glances at the tall frame in the corner. Her and jude had gotten into an argument back in the car, and she couldn’t help but feel petty wanting to piss him off.
What really was pissing her off was that, currently, he wasn’t even looking their way. She took a sip of the alcoholic beverage and leaned in closer to the man. He looked to be around her age, but he wasn’t nearly as kept up and good looking as jude. He droned on and on about his car dealership and the amount of money he spent on his own vehicle, never bothering to ask anything about her.
no matter. she just wanted jude’s attention.
she rubbed her fingers up and down his bicep as he spoke with a smirk, casting another glance toward the corner about a minute later she bit the inside of her cheek catching the sly glance he took toward her, he was playing her game, she wasn’t finna loose.
still, watching him rub up on some white girl got her all riled up and irritated, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep playing.
“Why don’t we go back to your car?” She whispered softly, placing her glass down on the counter, “you sure?” nodding her head they both rose from their seats and began to pivot through the crowd when her eyes stopped on jude’s frame, feeling up on the girl’s ass as they locked lips.
She wanted to go over there and slap the bitch but decided against it, instead she shouted — “i have to use the bathroom,” over the loud music that was now playing. She just needed to find an excuse to break from the man and go gather herself privately. Perhaps stop herself from committing a murder.
entering the restroom she dug in her purse to retrieve her phone with an aggravated expression on her face, the door flew open making her phone fall from her hand which only added to her annoyance, “what the hell,”
“My bad, mama.” Rolling her eyes she bent over to grab her phone and face a smirking jude. His eyes roamed her figure and face, “what, you started it!”
"I don't care, let me out—" he grabbed her waist, pushing her back against the sink, "don't be like that." He whispered against her neck as he leaned into her. It was clear how drunk he was now, his sluggish speech and that subtle smell of vodka. She rolled her eyes, gripping his shoulders as she allowed herself to be placed against the edge of the sink.
he whispered the lyrics of the song playing as he brushed soft kisses against her skin, stopping to nibble against her shoulder and grip her thighs. Her skin flushed as she realized she was getting the attention she’d been after the whole night. Everything else went out the window, including the reason she was mad in the first place.
“You mad at me?” He chuckled to himself, moving down to her exposed cleavage. His lips parted as he pulled the front of her dress down flicking her nipple with his thumb eliciting a shiver from the other — “shut up,” she demanded and he smiled, “yes ma’am.”
His tongue drew a shape over her left boob as his continued to massage the other, eyes looking up as she leaned her head back against the mirror, swallowing thickly. His fingers rubbed up and down her leg teasingly, stopping just below the bottom of her dress. despite his seemingly unbothered expression, he wanted nothing more than to tear her out of it.
he would. Just not now.
“spread your legs fa’ me.” She obliged, parting her thighs rather quickly, moving gently against his fingers as they snaked up closer to her pussy. She couldn’t wait any more, and he could tell she was growing impatient with him, just like she’d been irritated with him just a few minutes ago. He would make it up to her.
Jude’s thumb circled her clit as his lips engulfed hers, tongues fighting for dominance. She arched off the sink as he pushed one finger into her wetness. She wanted to ask him for more, but wasn’t gonna make him think he was forgiven.
his finger entered in and out of her at a faster pace as her slick acted as a lubricant, she gripped the edges of the sink when he added one more finger, his thumb prodding her cunt to no end. She bit her lip as a wave of pleasure washed over her and she let out an accidental whimper.
“Hmm, get up.” Jude kissed her cheek as she hopped up, he turned her around so that she could see herself in the mirror, disheveled and needy— his hands went up to her boobs again as he began to knead them desperately.
Her boobs were one of his favorite things about her, how they seemed to spill out of any top she wore, how pretty they sat. He had a fixation on just playing with them any chance he got. Worshipping her.
he finally went back to rubbing her dripping pussy other hand holding her chin to make sure she didn’t stop watching herself.
“that feel good, hm?” she slowly nodded, whimpering at the sudden loss of his digits again— however as she heard the jingle of his belt, she was more than happy.
He bent her over the sink hearing her hum softly at the cold of the sink pressing up against her front side. She played with her hardened nipple as his fisted his dick for a few seconds, before teasing her entrance. “You can take it can’t you— this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Her lips parted as his tip pressed teasingly against her hole, “fuck,” he slowly entered her from behind, his hands on her hair moving her back against his cock.
“C’mon ma, help me out.” He grunted.
She arched her back, her breath quivering as she struggled to take him all despite initial confidence.
he lifted her head so she could watch herself as he pounded into her at a steady pace. Being with a football player continuously paid off. He could last quite a while, and wouldn’t stop until he knew she felt good.
“Watch yourself, baby, while you take me.” Her eyes fluttered open as she came close to finishing just at the sight of him watching himself disappear inside her.
Her moans found their place at the back of her throat, practically choking her as he slammed into her. It was bizarre; the groans and the peculiar sound of skin clashing mixed with the music playing in the party that was literally right outside the door . The world seemed to move around them, but time stood still every time he hit that particular spot, the one that made her toes curl and her eyes roll back. 
“Jude,” she whined and moaned, almost like a plea. He responded with a grunt of his own, manhandling her as he felt her cunt clench around him. He guided her hips back against him quicker, the steady sound of skin clapping growing louder as each got closer and closer to finish.
she pushed herself back against him as he stopped for a second to clench his jaw and reposition, jude clicked his tongue quietly and without even looking up at their reflection, she knew there was a half smirk tugging at his lips. “Dirty girl.”
“Yeah, that’s it, good girl, taking me so well.” She heard jude babbling further words of praise behind her, but her mind wasn’t focusing, too wrapped in the pleasure that was filling her body, threatening to spill. The noises jude was making only seemed to prolong the aftershocks of her orgasm, his soft whimpers and grunts only making her pussy ache even more despite how sensitive she was riding out her finish as her juices squirted out of her. She was certain this wasn’t a one round kind of night, and feared for when they actually got home.
He fucked his cock into her a few more times before his hips stilled, pressed flush to her ass as he came, painting her insides it filling her up so much it was already leaking from her. His forehead thudded heavily against her back, quiet whimpers filling the bathroom as his cock pulsed. He shifted his hips and she whined, clenching around him purposefully, wanting him to fill her.
“Better now?”
“Fuck you.”
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kamiversee · 2 months
Text
➶-͙˚ ༘✶ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁*𝘾𝙆 𝙇𝙄𝙎𝙏
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✧.* CHAPTER 30 || The Breakdown
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[ { SYPNOSIS } ] ➤ A tale in which Gojo Satoru blackmails you into seducing a list of people to clear his debt. Sounds easy enough, right?
[ { CHAPTER CONTENT } ] ➤ language, & semi-heavy angst.
[ { WORD COUNT } ] ➤ 3.7k
[ { PAIRINGS } ] ➤ jjk men x f!reader. gojo x f!reader. geto x f!reader. toji x f!reader. choso x f!reader. sukuna x f!reader. nanami x f!reader.
[ [ chapters mlist } ]
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——FREEZING COLD AIR slaps against the exposed skin of your body as the man carries you outside.
The exposure to such a sudden chill made your arms tighten around his neck, holding onto him so desperately even as you both continued to kiss.
Gojo's hands were warm against the underside of your thighs, holding you carefully whilst he walked with you. Your back soon made contact with the cold exterior of his car for a moment, the contact making you gasp and shiver within Gojo's grasp.
A hand left your leg for a moment and you felt your body shifting around in his arms. The man held you up with one arm, still kissing you fervently, as his other hand worked to open his car door.
You were inside the backseat of Gojo's car before you even realized it, letting out soft hums into his mouth as he made out with you.
You didn't even hear him shut the door behind you, so consumed with the way he kissed you like there was no tomorrow.
Groan after groan left his lips, the sound flowing right into your parted ones. His tongue was warm and wet over yours, both of your breaths shared in heavy pants against each other as the kissing progressed.
Gojo was on top of you, his sounds fading from groans to moans as he completely lost himself in the feel of you. And you took in every second of it, tasting the mint that's always on his tongue, savoring the soft moisture of his lips slipping over yours again and again.
When he finally breaks the kiss, it's only for a second, a heavy string of saliva hanging in between the two of your lips.
Gojo croaks out your name, his voice husked and lost with emotion, "I love you," He whines, his voice strained as he struggles to catch his breath, "Love' everything about you. Your face, your voice, your kisses, your touches, anything and everything that's you-- I love it, I love you."
You pant heavily, trying to figure out what to make of his confession. "S-Satoru, I-"
"If you're in love with my kisses," Gojo whispers, lowering himself to you once more. His lips brush over yours as he speaks, "Then I serve no other purpose than to do just that."
His lips, so wet and so damn soft, like pillows you'd love to lay your head on, they simply mold into yours yet again. You can feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest against your own, his body flush with yours in the back seat of his car.
You move your lips over his, slotting his lower lip in between your teeth and clasping it hard enough for him to whine completely unashamed.
With low-lidded eyes, "Satoru," You utter as you release his lip, "You can't just-"
"I need to," He whimpers, his voice cracking suddenly.
Air gets caught in your throat, "W-What?"
Your eyes fully open and you take in his expression completely.
Gojo's face was completely flushed, bright red and pink decorating his cheeks. His breaths came out so heavy, so shaky. You watch the way he inhales, hearing the sniffle that suddenly follows that last slip of oxygen into his lungs.
Your hands go to his face, cupping his cheeks in your palms, "Look at me," You whisper, your brows furrowed in reaction to the pure distress on his face.
He doesn't, he refuses to, keeping his gaze low and not wanting to lift them to yours. Gojo shakes his head and his voice is so small, "I c-can't..."
"What's wrong?" You whisper, "I don't understand, w-why are you so... emotional all of a sudden?"
"You said..." He takes a moment to get it out, trying to keep himself together, "Y-You said you loved the way I kiss you so, I just want to keep doing that."
"You can't kiss me forever just because I love that about you."
"Yeah I can," He argues, smiling just barely, "Til' you tell me to stop... I just... I liked the way that f-felt. To hear you say you love something about me, it makes me... you make me whole, sweetheart."
"Satoru I don't understand."
"We're the same, y'know..." He suddenly says, his voice breaking again, "We both want someone so terribly bad but our situations prohibit us from getting that person."
"You could've prevented all this though..."
Gojo sniffles and you feel a drop of wetness slide down his cheek and slip against your palm. The man was crying? Why?
"S-Satoru?"
He finally raises his sights up to your eyes, that beautiful blue gaze of his clouded with water as tears soak his eyelashes and slip from his waterline. "I'm sorry," Gojo chokes out, his voice shattering under your gaze, "I'm s-so fucking sorry."
God damn the way your eyes grow teary at the sight. "W-Why are you apologizing? Satoru what's wrong, just talk to me-"
He sniffles and his expression breaks, he breaks, "I'm sorry for loving you, f-for doing this to you, I just..."
You're biting back your own tears as best as you can. Seeing this man so sad in front of you is heartbreaking. And to make it worse, you're just confused. Is it regret he's experiencing? Or is there something else?
Tears are streaming down his face, wetting up your hands. You open your mouth to get something out to the poor man but he's leaning in toward you again.
His eyes shut and his lips press against yours so delicately that it's almost as though the connection was never made. You move your hands to his chest and carefully push him off just a little bit.
"Kissing me isn't going to fix or explain anything, Satoru," You whisper, your voice running so gently into his ears.
Gojo keeps his eyes shut and you tilt your head at the man.
"Tell me what's wrong," You hum, "Please? I'm just confused right now and I want to understand you. W-Why are you crying-"
"Run away with me," Gojo suddenly voices out.
You stop talking, completely thrown off by his sudden offer.
You scoff, just barely, "What? Run away with you? Where? Why-"
"Anywhere." He says, his eyes lift to yours and you're met with the gaze of a broken man. "Just leave this city with me."
You give him a comforting yet confused little smile, "Satoru why would we just leave together? What are we running from-, no, what are you trying to run away from?"
"Everything," Gojo claims, "J-Just leave with me. We can forget the l-list, forget my debt, forget all our troubles, and i-it'll just be me and you."
"I... That's insane... What about the life I have here, hm?" You ask softly, your voice alone bringing him comfort. "My friends? My family?" Choso, though you don't say his name aloud.
He's quiet for a second, a long second-- a moment even. Gojo just looks at you, eyes dull and tired.
His mouth eventually opens but his lips are quivering. You watch the way his eyes gloss up again and you can feel the stress exuding off the man.
Gojo shuts his eyes, allowing his tears to flow again before dropping his head down into your chest. Finally, he just allows himself to break down.
"I'm sorry, i-ignore me," Gojo sobs into you, his voice is so heavy with emotion, so thick and choked up with his crying.
You've never seen a man cry like this before and you don't know what to think or do for a moment. Your hands are a little shaky but they eventually wrap around him, one stroking the back of his head and the other rubbing his upper back.
You can't say anything other than a sweet, "Shh, it's okay," To the man, having no idea what's going on in his mind or why he's crying.
Gojo shakes his head and he mumbles something into you, something you don't hear and you don't ask him to repeat.
A thousand questions are running through your head. You have no idea why a simple phrase such as 'I love the way you kiss me' had driven this man to this point. Where is this hurt coming from? What's really going on?
You know there are a lot of questions he avoids answering but amid it all, it's so clear that Gojo is going through a lot more than he lets on. How deep does his debt really go? What about it has stressed him to this point where he's crying into your chest and holding onto your smaller frame like you're the only thing keeping him together?
You wish you could understand it all. All it'd take is for him to explain some things to you, that's all you want.
Part of you hates how soft and sympathetic seeing him like this makes you-- as if he's not the same man who's explicitly expressed that he'd expose video evidence of you toying with yourself to the school and even threatened to ruin your life with the exposure of your acts done with Mr. Fushiguro.
Even with all that he's put you through, none of it matters when he's crying into you. Gojo's fingers are curled into the fabric of your dress, his knuckles gone white with how hard he's gripping onto you. His breathing is ragged at he's just letting his tears flow down onto you, releasing all that he's held in for god knows how long.
Every now and then, the man would croak out another broken and distressed 'I'm sorry', repeating the phrase like it's the only thing he knows how to say. You're stuck in a state of wondering if you should believe his apology.
Sure, he's crying and being completely vulnerable but an 'I'm sorry' isn't the 'you don't have to finish the list'. You're not looking for apologies, you crave freedom, and Gojo's yet to give you that.
So above all, his emotional breakdown does nothing more than confuse you to a new degree.
.  . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆ .  . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
Gojo cried for maybe thirty minutes before he got a hold of himself. You felt awkward cooing soft words to him as he did so, saying things like 'it's okay' even though everything was far from okay.
When he stopped, your hand still rubbed the back of his head and you comforted him by running your nails through his white locks, weaving your fingers through it, and calming him down. His head had turned to the side, cheek pressed snuggly against your breast as his, now dull, blue eyes stared at the car seat.
He was resting on top of you but you didn't mind, his body felt warm against yours. Gojo's breathing took a while to calm down but when it finally did, the most you heard from him was a sniffle.
You didn't know what to say and neither did he so the two of you just lay there for quite some time.
Sounds of people walking by the car would be heard every now and then, muffled chatter and drunk laughter filling your ears.
Gojo's eyelids hung low after the crying he just did, his eyes puffy and red and his face flushed with emotion. He didn't want to look at you, he felt so ashamed of himself for breaking down in front of you, like he'd exposed a part of himself to you that he never intended to.
After some time of playing with his hair, you so sweetly called his name, "Satoru?"
The hum he lets out is low, tired, and beautifully deep, "Hmm?"
You lay your hand flat atop his head, "Are you okay?" You whisper.
Gojo swallows, "I'm jus' fine, sweetheart." He mumbles extremely low.
"You uh, you don't seem fine... at all," You point out.
Normally he'd smile at your concern but the man was so utterly drained that he couldn't even force one to his face. Gojo's expression remained void of anything, eyes almost lifeless, and the rest of his face completely drowned in sorrow.
"M'fine," He grumbles, "Ignore me."
Gojo then uncurls his fingers from your dress, his knuckles gone almost sore from how tightly he'd clung to you. His hands go to the seat of his car and lay flat against it, soon working to push his body up and off yours.
The movement allows a woosh of air to skim up along your body as you simply peer at Gojo with pure confusion and concern in your eyes.
He holds himself up but doesn't move away just yet, turning his head in the opposite direction and avoiding looking at you for even a second.
You stare up at Gojo's side profile, spotting the redness around his eyes, cheek, and nose and seeing the evidence of his cries. He looks so tired and lost above you, so much so that you instinctively reach a hand up to his cheek.
Gojo's dull eyes shut at the contact and he melts, no, dissolves into your touch, his cheek pressing into the palm of your hand and a heavy but shaky sigh leaving his lips.
"Satoru," You whisper, his eyes squeeze themselves closed even further as if that'll drown out your voice and he moves a hand over yours.
Gojo turns his face, finally facing you, but keeps his eyes shut. He tips to the side a little and kisses your palm softly, nearly desperate.
"You uh," His voice is husked, "You weren't ever supposed t'see me like this..." Gojo whispers, voice cracking slightly amid his words.
You frown, "Satoru-"
"Please," He begs, his eyes squeezing a bit more as his brows twist up almost in pain, "S-Stop saying my name like that..."
"Like what?" You ask.
He shakes his head, "I don't even know..."
Your thumb swipes under his eye, ridding his skin of the remnant tears, "What's going on inside that head of yours?" You whisper curiously, taking in his depressed appearance.
Gojo draws his lower lip into his mouth, biting back another breakdown. "A-A lot, sweets..." He murmurs, his eyes still shut.
Another one of your hands goes to his face and you pull him down to you slightly, completely cupping his moist face in your palms. "Talk to me," You requested in a sweet and comforting tone.
Gojo shakes his head to decline and your frowning furthers.
"Please? Or at least open your eyes and look at me." You hush out.
He swallows hard, "I can't..."
"Why?"
"M'ashamed, sweetheart." Gojo admits, "Never' wanted you to see me like this."
"There's no need to be ashamed, 'Toru," You nickname suddenly, the sound going straight to his heart, "You're human, it's okay to have feelings and be stressed."
He heaves out a shaky sigh, "I m-missed that-," He chokes, nearly breaking down all over again.
His eyes crack open but they don't meet your face, quickly glancing off to the side to avoid eye contact.
You grin, "Missed what? The nickname?"
"Mhm," He nods gently within your hold.
Your thumbs slide under his eyes and even up and slightly over his eyelashes, wiping all the wetness from his face with care.
"Don't get used to it 'Toru," You whisper teasingly.
For the first time in a while, he cracks a soft smile, "No promises, love."
His face gets closer to yours as you pull him down even more. Gojo has to shift himself so that he's propped up on his elbow but he still refuses to look at you.
You bring your lips up and kiss the tip of his nose, "Look at me."
He finally does, lazily dragging his dulled blue eyes over to meet your gaze. Gojo looks like he needs sleep more than anything, his eyes evident with sadness as redness coats the area that's typically white.
You give him a smile, "That's it," Your voice is low in a whisper, "Good boy."
Gojo sighs and he can't help the lazy smile that spreads across his face. A quiet weary sigh leaves his lips, "Did you just praise me?"
"I did." You say simply.
"Tryna' make me feel better?" Gojo asks with a raised brow.
You flash a sheepish smile, "Is it working?"
He shakes his head, "How am I not supposed to love you when you're like this?"
You furrow your brows and he goes on to explain.
"I'm treating you like shit and yet you go out of your way to make me smile jus' cause' I shed a few tears?" Gojo scoffs, "You're far too kind, y'know that?"
"Listen, I don't know why you cried like that or why you got so emotional and I have no hope of getting an explanation out of you but," You caress the side of his face and sigh, "I didn't like seeing you act so..." Your eyes narrow, "Distraught."
He swallows, "I'm sorry."
"I know you are." You hum, "Whenever you're ready to open up to me and tell me the truth about what's really going on, I'm all ears."
"I wish I could tell you," Gojo replies.
"Why can't you?"
"It'll make things worse."
"How?" You ask, so desperate for some kind of explanation.
He turns to kiss the palm of your hand, "You'd hate me a whole lot more."
You frown, "Satoru unless you've killed someone I love, I don't think anything could make me hate you any more than I already do."
He chuckles and rests his eyelids, "True but, I've already dug a hole for myself. I think it's about time I put the shovel down."
There he goes with explaining everything but what you need him to. What the hell are you supposed to make of his words?
"Right..." You sigh.
Gojo opens his eyes and then moves to sit up, resting on his heels as you too shift around.
"Can you forget this ever happened?" Gojo requests.
You chuckle, "Satoru, you just sobbed into my chest like a damn baby for half an hour, I can't just forget that."
He shrugs, almost playfully, "Sure you can-"
"You asked me to run away with you." You recall, "And you started breaking down from the moment I said I loved your kisses. I'm not gonna be able to stop thinking about that, let alone forget it."
Gojo swallows down the lump in his throat, "...I was just... I've been stressed lately and hearing you say that made me..." He shrugs, "I dunno, break?"
"No shit." You scoff, "But if you're not gonna open up to me and explain why you just broke down, then I'm not gonna forget this."
Gojo nods understandingly, silently agreeing with your words. It's only fair after all, he should be explaining himself right now but he can't.
With a long and heavy sigh, "When it's all over," Gojo begins, "Like, wayyy after it's all over, and I mean like years after, I... I'll tell you everything."
You blink, "I have to wait years for you to explain this to me??"
"I mean, only if you still care by then..." He mumbles.
You scoff lightly, "Whatever it is, it better be really important and mind-blowing."
Gojo shrugs, "It'll be up to you how you wanna interpret it."
Okay, whatever that means. You're unsure what to do with his claims. Years for an explanation? You have to wait years to understand why Gojo has tormented himself by blackmailing the woman he claims to love?
It sucks to be in this situation and you're simply dying to know what's truly going on. There are far too many questions and you idly wait for the day it'll all be revealed.
Until then, you guess you have to return your focus to the list. And then after that, you'll be off to Choso...
Right?
That's what you still want, right?
Surely the night you just spent with Gojo doesn't change anything... You're definitely not seeing Gojo any differently, right?
Okay well, maybe you can feel your hatred for him fading. Only a little bit though, he's still blackmailing you after all.
But, he does spoil you and his full confession has left a lasting impression on you. You're not sure if the bar is low or high at this point. If you don't hate Gojo anymore then what's become of your standards?
You tried to act like his tears and emotional breakdown don't change anything but it does-- there's no way someone who was so hellbent on exposing you just confessed his unwavering love for you and then sobbed in your arms after you told him you loved one thing about him.
You gave Gojo a glimpse of reciprocation and he became so utterly vulnerable, revealing to you just how weak you actually make him. That effect you have on him is dangerous, too dangerous. There is too much missing information to the situation for you to easily continue hating the man.
A true asshole would not act like how Gojo just did.
These thoughts pester you for the remainder of the list, questions swirling through your mind at any given moment.
So much so that you nearly forgot that you have to meet with Sukuna next week. Then, after him, you'll have to wait another week to meet Nanami. And who knows how long it'll take you to actually seduce Nanami...
But after all that's done, Gojo promised to get you with Choso. And that's exactly what you think you want but now you're conflicted.
Would knowing the truth about what's really going on with Gojo change your feelings for him-
Okay, what the hell is wrong with you?
Have you lost your mind?
Did you really forget who the hell you're dealing with??
Gojo Satoru has threatened you multiple times into doing things you wouldn't normally do. That man has made it very clear that you're nothing more than a tool for him to use, did you truly forget??
He probably just had that outburst to distract you...
Right?
...
Okay, you're conflicted beyond control.
Do you really hate Gojo? Is he just fucking with you? Were the tears fake?
There's too much to think about and none of it will be explained to you any time soon...
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GOJO SATORU ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮
GETO SUGURU ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮
TOJI FUSHIGURO ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙪𝙢
KAMO CHOSO ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙎𝙚𝙢𝙞-𝙈𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙪𝙢 / 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮
ZEN'IN NAOYA ✔︎ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮
ITADORI SUKUNA ☐ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: 𝙎𝙚𝙢𝙞-𝙀𝙖𝙨𝙮???
NANAMI KENTO ☐ 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘺: ???
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pinkrelish · 1 year
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𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.
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singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader
✶When Eddie gets a call at work telling him Adrie is sick, he rushes to pick her up from school, accidentally leaving his black notebook behind. Being you, you find the means to return it to him. But while at his trailer, you ask him the question he's been avoiding for months.
"Let's get down to those rumors, hm?"✶
NSFW — strong tw for a dark conversation surrounding eddie's past (accusations of murder, rape), heavy angst, comfort, drug/alcohol mention/use, slow burn, fluff, flirting, 18+ overall for eventual smut
chapter: 8/20 [wc: 14.1k]
↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 11 / 12
AO3
Chapter 8: The Munson Name
Leave it to Eddie to make your day special not two minutes into work.
Upon entering the garage, the back door was ajar as usual, but instead of phantom wisps of smoke swimming in the sunshaft, a shadow moved, and Eddie’s arm curled around to knock on the aluminum siding for your attention. His chain bracelet clinked from the motion, and his rings caught the light as he gestured for you to come over.
You peeked through the opening and saw him standing against the wall, but his morning smile wasn’t aimed at you, it was elsewhere, off to the side. You wrapped your fingers around the doorknob, and followed where he was looking.
A bright red cardinal sat perched on the round side mirror of Eddie’s car, chirping and hopping while fluttering its wings, spinning around in search of something, and after several twittering singsongs, it flew away.
“That was precious,” you whispered, breath fogging in awe.
“I’m glad you got to see him before he took off.” Eddie grabbed the door from you and pushed you both inside, shaking his arms in an intense shiver, and shrugging his jacket up around his neck while he hugged his hands around himself in his pockets. “Uhm..”
The goofy smile he wore was mutual, as was the dear silence. The energy between you had changed; it was charged with a new development in your relationship. One that did not need to be articulated in words. It was there, in his well-rested eyes owning a playful gleam when you looked at him, and his need to rock from foot to foot in a measured sway, like a subconscious impulse to recreate that beautiful night.
Then, he cleared his throat. You averted your gaze to the floor.
“You, uh, you said it was one gift,” he recalled with an audible wince squeezing the oxygen from his sentence.
Unsure on how best to approach you buying his daughter a generous amount of presents, and hearing the impassive edge to his voice, you shut one eye and opted for a joke, “It was one gift.. bag.”
“It was too much.”
Your demeanor sagged. “Oh.”
“No, no! Not in the bad way–No.”
You perked up. “Oh?”
A soft laugh poured from the snuggly place he had his chin tucked behind the tan canvas. He dropped his shoulders, and drove his weight forward into jaunty little steps towards you, closing the gap between your bodies. There were affectionate nuances to his fond expression when he corrected himself, “Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound that way. The gifts were great. Like, real home runs. Uhm, she loved them, and they were really thoughtful. Just.. really sweet of you.” Immersing himself in the steady eye contact you were both proud to uphold, he licked his lips, and raised his eyebrows. “You’re so sweet, in fact, it’s piling onto that thank you I owe you at a ridiculous rate.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I just like doing things for you and Adrie. Besides, I live rent free in a tiny town with an abysmal lack of nighttime entertainment for me to waste my money on, so I figured why not spoil my favorite four-year-old.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t owe you, but” –he moved his hand around in his pocket– “I’m gonna figure out a way to repay you. Do something nice for you. Something big. Until then, your favorite almost-five-year-old made you this.”
He presented his palm to you. Cradled in it was a bracelet made of plastic beads in an assortment of colors, some shaped as stars, some with glitter, and at the middle was a name arranged in white blocks with black lettering. M-O-U-S-E.
“I had to help her spell it,” he said, tugging up his sleeve, “but it matches mine.” D-A-D-D-Y.
There was no masking the effect the bracelet had on you; breath hitched on a raw noise, chest falling on the exhale, muscles tensed on the cusp of a bigger reaction–but you tamped down the wealth of feeling wanted, and spoke beyond the heaviness in your heart, through the strain in your throat, and behind the blurriness of tears, “A true Adrie Original. I love it, tell her thank you for me.”
You slid the elastic band over your trembling left hand. He wore his on his right.
Eddie leaned in to get a better look at you, and the amusement in his face was replaced by genuine surprise. “Are you crying?”
You crossed your arms over your chest and gripped your shoulders, laughing, smiling through the embarrassment of being caught. “Maybe! It’s–It’s really sweet.”
“I’m gonna tell her you cried!”
“Don’t!” you yelped, running away from his evil fingers advancing towards your ribs.
“But it’s cute!”
“Stop chasing me!”
Luckily for you, refuge was on the other side of the glass door you managed to lock before he could grab the handle. You guarded your safe space with a glare. He pouted, and said something. You cupped your ear. He grew more passionate, flapping his lips at a rapid rate and putting his hands up in a prayer, but you couldn’t hear what he was saying. You shouted you’d only let him in if he apologized for making fun of you. “I’m sorry.” The sincerity was lost on his smirk, but you gave in so you could make coffee and get to work, and so he could get said coffee and take your pen cup and put it just out of reach on the ledge of your desk while on his way out to the garage.
And unluckily for you, the first thing on your to-do list after the break was checking the flashing buttons on the phone. You picked up the receiver, pressed the playback for messages, and listened with a pen hovered over your new set of index cards.
The first one began with a startled, “U-uhm, right.”
The second one began with a confused laugh.
The third was a long pause before telling someone else in the room they’d try again later.
Dread pooled in your stomach. The recording button. The fucking recording button for an outgoing message taunted you. Faded yellow, and ugly.
With a clenched jaw, you prepared your racing heart, and pressed it. And oh God. You covered your eyes, more and more mortified as it played.
“We’re currently closed for the Holidays, and will open at 8AM, Mon–” Raspberry. “You! Why! That one was perfect. God, you are so–freaking–annoying. I swear. Obnoxious little..”
————
Standing at a respectable distance from where Eddie sat at the breakroom table with his notebook, you held up three calendars for the new year. “I’m replacing the one in the garage. Which do you want? Mythical Creatures drawn by Eric Carle, Coca Cola, or hot chicks posing on sports cars?”
He dropped his head back, and tipped his chair to balance on its rear legs. His bangs fell, showing his wrinkled forehead as he looked at you upside down. “Interesting options,” he commented.
“The mall didn’t have much left.” A lie. The calendar kiosk at the mall was stocked to the brim, you just had a hunch Eddie would go for one in particular.
“Does the mythical creature one have a dragon for a month?”
“Yes,” you said without checking.
“I’ll take that one, then.”
Predictable.
“Cool, I’ll give Mr. Moore the hot chicks, and I’ll take the Coke for me.” Speaking of–the front desk phone was ringing, and it was in your job description to answer it, you supposed.
You left him to get back to his writing, and put the receiver to your ear. The voice on the other end was politely stressed in the customer-friendly way. You left it in the cradle on hold, and called down the hallway, “Hey, Eddie, it’s Adrie’s school calling for you. I’m sure–” Stumbling out of his way, his jacket softened the blow of his shoulder knocking into you. He reached his hand back in an apologetic gesture, but his focus manifested in the flash of panic crossing his pale face. “I’m sure she’s fine,” you finished sympathetically.
He answered the woman on the line, and you waited along the wall, eyeing the scuff marks around the floorboards you should probably buff off at some point, and after his short conversation, he hung up.
“Adrie’s sick,” he said quickly, patting down his jacket. “Wayne’s not answering the phone, so I gotta go pick her up, and uh, I–” He pivoted in a circle, glancing around, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. “I–I’m sorry. She needs me.”
You drew your eyebrows in, and waved him off. “Yeah, it’s okay. You can leave. I’ll clock you out and let Carl know when he’s back from lunch.”
“Thank you,” he said in breathless earnest, leaving so quickly his boots left black streaks on the tile.
~~~
Lunch came and went. Carl came and went. The end of the hour posted under the CLOSED sign came and went. Eddie had yet to call the shop to update you, which was fine and dandy (aside from your anxiety over whether or not Adrie was okay), but in his rush, he left behind something important..
His black notebook with the devil-horned skull laid in the middle of the table like an ominous item from a horror movie.
And much like the horror movies, you as the final girl should leave it alone, right? Just.. walk away, and forget about it, and leave it for him to pick it up tomorrow, or whenever he’s able to come back to work..
But.
You were worried about Adrie, and when you went to the garage to replace the trash can liners, you saw his rings still on the black tray near the tool cabinet. Now, it’s not like he needed those either, however, what if you just.. returned them for him? And the notebook fell open while you were at it?
It was wrong. Everything about what you were doing was all so very, very wrong. Going inside Mr. Moore’s office and flipping the lightswitch, making your way to his desk in an innocent saunter, and–oops!–kneeling down to pick up a stray pen, and if the bottom drawer happened to be opened, and the plastic folder with the employee’s details from when he hired them was inside, who could blame you for taking the quickest, tiniest glance before closing it?
Yours was in there, of course, along with–
“Edward Munson,” you snorted. “Dorky name.” Duh his full name was Edward, but it was still funny to see.
You read over the top of the file where his address and phone number were. Thankfully, from your various car rides with Robin, you recognized the street name, placing it in your memories as the rusted sign next to the Forest Hills Trailer Park entrance.
The phone number you imprinted into your brain as a recreational activity, and put the folder away.
Closing the door behind you with a hefty jingle of heavy rings in your pocket, you approached the notebook, and gave it a pitied sigh. Having committed many sins in the past minute alone, you figured why not. You didn’t even feel shame opening the stupid thing after months of being teased by it. Besides, what’s the worst he could be hiding in it? It couldn’t be that embarrassing, right?
..Right?
“Okay, can honestly say I was not expecting a big tittied bird lady.” The drawing wasn’t overly detailed, but the artistry was above average. Small details etched the feathers covering her avian legs, and a gleam shone on her talons coming to a sharp point, posed to attack with milky white irises. Above her was Eddie’s stylized font: HARPY, with abbreviations and numbers in a column. His rushed handwriting filled the rest of the page. Reading it over, it appeared you opened to the middle of a story.
Thumbing through, you encountered your first dog-eared page.
IF CHEST IS CHOSEN, GO B
IF DOOR - ROLL FROM INDEX CHART POISON
Absolutely lost, you did see a box labeled B further down with a short bullet point list of what would happen, and more options to choose from on the next dog-eared section.
Flipping deeper towards the back, it was pages and pages of his handwriting. Names of characters fighting dragons. Fantasy towns housing creatures you’d never heard of. Countries with too many syllables and apostrophes. Whatever it was, you were more than happy to hop on your bike and ride it over to the trailer park, only second guessing your sense of direction three times, and releasing a grateful, “Thank God,” when you spotted it up ahead.
The place had an eeriness to it despite the slanted beams of afternoon sun gracing it in gold. Homes were tarnished with dents and algae staining the outside. Trailers slumped on their cinderblocks, buckling under the weight. RVs had permanent brush growing under their parking spots. A child’s scream echoed around the tree-less lot, but you couldn’t see them through the orderless blockade of dilapidated residences and abandoned cars. People watched you: glancing out their windows, or gathered around a charcoal barbeque. Curious eyes followed your trail down the main road. Bumping your bike around potholes, avoiding tetanus ridden nails and petrified clothes molded to the ground as if they’d been there for years.
Dogs walked their fences as you passed.
You were beginning to have some regrets when a beacon welcomed you. After a curve, an old van parked out front of a blue and white trailer came into view, but more importantly, dwarfed next to the Chevy behemoth, was a black car you’d recognize the red interior of anywhere.
The heat of parent’s concerned stares burned into the back of your neck as you rode up to the concrete stairs, leaned your bike against the metal handrail, and approached your fate.
Even though you were absolutely sure this was the correct address, you knocked with as much confidence as a dormouse. Any harder and the sound of your knuckles striking the aluminum would’ve been too loud in the creepy-quiet trailer park.
No answer.
You knocked again. Harder. Louder.
There was movement inside. Footsteps. A muffled voice. Your heart leapt. In your throat. Closer. Closer. This was so stupid. This was a mistake. This was a bad idea. The excuse in your mouth was weak, and you were about to embarrass yourself in front of your coworker by surprising him at his house, which you only knew where to find because you were snooping, and there was no amount of explaining that would help you out of your spot in hell–
Eddie swung open the door, and his heavy-browed, distrustful, annoyed, apprehensive, suspicious glare jumped to wide-eyed shock.
Your cheeks went hot.
“Nope!”
You winced at the slam, but nothing–no God’s will, no Devil’s agreement–would convince you to blink at the shuttered window where he once stood. No. No, no, no. No, never. Never would you want the searing glimpse at Eddie’s naked chest out of your sight before it was engraved into every second of every day of every night of every dream for the rest of your years.
In some part of your mind, you knew your gazes connected long enough to see the blood drain from his face, but your attention was soon urged downward, to the overwhelming amount of skin.
His hair was tied back, exposing a poetry of shadows. Hollow of his throat, to his clavicle, to the swell of his shoulders. Biceps twitching under a prominent vein when he caught himself on the trailer’s frame, and gripped the door handle. Muscles straining with fear, then soft with relief, then strong with fear again when he realized it was you who caught him in this shirtless state, discovering the beautiful line between his pecs when he flexed. Witnessing the fine wisps of softly auburn hair on his chest, juxtaposed to the wiry dark curls creating a blessed trail to the top of his sweatpants. Drooling over the eclectic collection of tattoos sporadically placed over his body. Too many to decipher in the brief encounter, aside from the dragon crawling up a sword etched into the subtle planes of his abs and curving around his slight stomach, with the blade ending at his waistband–a full picture of the tattoo you spied at the grocery store when he stretched his arms above his head.
The door creaked open again, and you’d yet to recover. But thinly obscured in the darkness of his home, he was visibly flustered as well.
Eddie hunched over, struggling to get the zipper of his tan jacket up, tugging it harshly, grinding the metal teeth in his anxious fight to cover his chest; and when it was snug to the splotchy kiss of pink on his neck, he squinted at you. “What’re you doing here?” he asked, voice gone hoarse from his dry mouth.
Knees locked, and oh so staring him directly in the eyes, you took the black notebook from under your arm (not remembering when you tucked it there), and showed it to him. “You left this at work.”
He took it from you slowly without a thanks.
“And, uh,” you continued, gathering the clinking jewelry in your jacket. “These too.” You dropped them into his cupped palm, brushing your pinky over a scratchy callus, experiencing the zing of intimacy of skin on skin.
And he felt it too, with how he curled his fingers in to seal the fleeting sensation.
Pocketing his rings, he stood meek in his doorway. The pain of expecting someone different to be knocking at his trailer had dwindled, but the tension was there in between his eyebrows, weighing on the slope of his gentle frown, painting brilliant highlights on the long line of his nose in the blazing dayglow threatening to invade his home.
The dull brown of his eyes glinted aside the honey as his mouth hung slightly open, tip of his tongue curled against the pearly dam of his teeth. The lined pages of the well worn notebook fanned out, flopping in his grip. “Did you read what was in here?”
Shifting your gaze to the sharp edge of the tin roof decorated in elaborate dangly fish hooks, you clasped your hands behind your back in a cute way, and delivered the answer he awaited with an inflection like it was a question, “No..?”
“For an actress, you’re bad at lying.”
“Or I’m being obvious on purpose so you tell me what it is.”
Working his jaw back and forth, he bided his time, each grind a consideration at his options in regards to how vulnerable he should be, and if this would be the final nail in the corroded coffin where you’d realize what a giant loser he was. “It’s..” You leaned towards him in interest, and he looked away. “It’s notes and stuff for Dungeons and Dragons,” he admitted in a mumble.
“Nerd! Nerd!” You jumped up and down, pointing, shouting, “I knew it! You’re a nerd!”
Twisting his mouth in a sarcastic sneer at your childishness, he snatched the side of the door and began shutting you out. “Okay, okay. I get it. See why I didn’t want to tell you?”
“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” you exhaled, switching on a dime from your teasing to a serious tone. You caught the door, and pleaded for him to stop being an idiot, “I knew you were a dweeb when you held me hostage for an entire thirteen minute lecture about your song lyrics. The Dungeons and Dragons shit is the third least surprising thing you’ve ever told me.” You clasped your hand over your heart. “Truly.”
“What’s the second?”
“Your music tastes.”
“And the first?” he asked, despite his better judgment.
“That you’re single.”
He announced his displeasure in a deadpan expression. “And I’m beginning to see why you are, too–” All of him went rigid, withdrawing slightly into the trailer with his head lowered, ear angled towards the right of him, listening as his gaze went unfocused.
After a few seconds, his lungs reawakened with a relieved breath. “Just coughing,” he said to himself. Dragging his attention back to you, he gestured weakly at his jacket to indicate his lack of clothing, still embarrassed at the situation. “Adrie, uh.. She puked on me earlier. That’s why I wasn’t–uhm–dressed.”
Worry edged its way into your question, “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. Kids get sick from daycare all the time. Basically just sentient germs running around, licking their hands after touching everything.”
Your eyebrows ticked up at the memory of the awful Dayquil hangovers following the weekends you worked as a clown for children’s birthday parties.
You asked, “And what about Wayne?”
“Hm? Oh.” Recognition, and the ease of a casual conversation overtook the near-permanent anticipatory hardness to his features, softening his bristly nature around you; finding you comforting when he was in the place where he was supposed to feel safest, but didn’t.
Home wasn’t home for Eddie Munson, and you felt that icy statement behind your ribs as you watched him pat his pocket as a way to check his rings were there for reassurance, acutely aware there was an hostile world at your back, and you chose to only see each other.
There was a tender innocence to his lip crooking up in a lopsided grin as he remembered you asked him a question. “Typical old man. Wayne was outside and didn’t hear the phone ring, that’s why he didn’t answer. He’s at work now, though.”
“Mm,” you hummed. “Do you have soup?”
“Soup?”
“For Adrie,” you clarified.
He glanced over his shoulder, assumingly at the kitchen, and after some mental deduction, he shrugged in vague nonchalance. “Yeah, there’s probably soup for her.” As if you didn’t know him well enough at this point to read past the nervous habits weaving their way into his fidgety unsureness.
You backed down the stairs as you spoke, “Okay. Well then, guess I’ll get going since you have everything on lock down here. Got your sick kid, got your soup, got your notebook, and your uncle’s at work. Sounds like everything’s in order.” Hopping off the last step, you swung around the handrail and guided your bike to the road, beaming. “See ya!”
“Yeah, see ya,” he replied, settling into his usual side-ways glance around the trailer park, challenging the gawkers who watched a girl willingly walk up to his home and leave it smiling. They did not dare to say anything, of course; returning to their lives with sealed lips, pretending to pay him no mind. Just how it should be.
He held his chin high.
————
And when Eddie next answered the door, it was in the low blue hue of a setted sun, and he did so in his black jeans and a white tank top. His unzipped work jacket swayed prettily around his torso, low bun at his nape loosened to a mess, short curls in a frizz over his ears, and cheeks flushed. “I figured you’d be back,” he forced out evenly, doing his best to disguise his panting breaths.
You hugged the brown paper grocery bags to your chin, and grinned.
He stuck his foot behind him in an awkward curtsy, and swept his arm for you to enter.
Walking into his place for the first time there were many things to comprehend, absorb, fawn over, and ask about until he was tired of explaining their origins–and since you were already crossing an entire notebook’s worth of lines today, you inquired about the most obvious. “You, uh, like collecting hats and mugs?”
“They’re Wayne’s,” he grunted, unplugging the vacuum he left in the middle of the living room by yanking the cord out of the wall, and dragging it on his way to the hallway closet where he kicked and shoved things aside to make room, rattling the thin door that definitely had been punched through at one point, patched and painted over, and was now a canvas for crayon squiggles along the bottom. “Before he worked at the power plant, he was a trucker. Collected them at every rest stop in every state, that sorta thing.”
“Ah.”
In a quick spin, he surveyed the rest of the trailer, and made a similar “ah” sound when he saw the cleaning products and balled up paper towels on the tiny table squeezed against the wall. He lunged for them, stuffing the evidence and other garbage into the overflowing trash can. “I still keep up the tradition by getting him a mug for Christmas.” Jerking his chin at the shelf above him, he specified the one on the end. “This year was Looney Tunes.”
“How cute.” The bags crinkled in your arms as you stood in the entryway, nodding expectantly.
“Shit–Sorry.”
You smiled. He finished clearing a space on the wrap-around kitchen counter for you to set the groceries down, scooting a candle out of the way, flickering the flame he may have burnt himself on while lighting, if the red mark on his thumb was anything to go by. And he was back to pivoting, scanning the area, desperate to latch onto the object which would jog his memory on where he was in his cleaning: dishes dripped in the drying rack, Wayne’s grilled cheese endeavor was out of sight, the bathroom radiated the nose-burning scent of bleach.
He snapped his fingers at the overflowing trash can, and almost slipped in his frenzy to tie up the bag and rush for his boots, saying he’ll be right back on his way out, leaping down the stairs.
“Alrighty..”
The steady rumble of a washing machine rattled every loose bit of metal in the museum of belongings.
You waged war with your tennis shoes, wiggling out of them with the laces still tied, and stepped off the carpet dividing the trailer in half. The bubbling vinyl kitchen floor stuck to your socks, still damp from being mopped, and heaved the groceries onto the pale blue countertop, sliding them across decades worth of scratches scarring the material. Once you were sure you could let them go without a toppling situation, you took the goods out one at a time, but your attention was nosy and undivided.
Acting as foreground to the walls of hats and mugs was the rest of Eddie’s life. Laundry baskets occupied a couch with flattened cushions. A coffee table supported stacks of his daughter’s playthings after picking them out of the vacuum’s path. There was a fold out bed in the corner, and a modest TV situated on top of a VCR. To compensate for the lack of overhead light was an abundance of mismatched lamps on each surface.
It was a hodge podge, and it was cramped, and it was incomprehensible, and it was his house.
Turning, you began to guess at which cabinets he would store a bag of rice when you spotted the artwork hanging on the fridge.
Pinned under a teddy bear magnet was a decoupaged version of your Thanksgiving turkeys, cut out and glued to a single piece of construction paper, complete with the castle in the background. And secured safely under a smiley face magnet was a stick figure drawing of two people–one in a pink dress, one in all black scribble–and dated in neat ink by someone with less messy handwriting: 5/7/92.
Eddie came back to your wide grin, and two cans of baked beans held up in a question.
“They go over here,” he said, nodding at the skinny door next to where he stood at the small green table set for three chairs, organizing today’s mail in his hand.
You opened the pantry next to the recessed oven, and stacked the rest of the cans inside. Towards the back there were two white cereal boxes with plain blue text and nothing else, leaving you to deduce no one in his family stooped to eating unsweetened cornflakes even if that’s all they had. Meanwhile, he arranged overdue bills into a ladder style letter holder hung on the wall beside the phone, periodically taking one out and placing it down a rung, ordering them from most to least important.
“I was supposed to go grocery shopping yesterday, but I had to buy and install a new hot water heater,” he told you suddenly. Whether he was saying this because he was coasting on the fumes of his Christmas bonus until December’s child support arrived, or because he was simply too busy to go shopping, neither of you addressed it more than necessary. He accepted your help, and you didn’t pry.
“Unexpected shit sucks, huh?” you added for his benefit.
“Yeah,” he huffed in a short laugh, playing the same game.
And it was him who rested his forearms on the edge of the pale blue wrap-around counter, watching you commit good deed after good deed, guessing where groceries went in the cabinets, acclimating to his kitchen’s set up, and making room for a bag of grapes and three apples between his six pack of Pabst and block of Government cheese.
“Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”
You brightened at his voice, teetering on the edge of a smile just from that alone. “Always.”
He drew absent-minded circles with his finger as he tried to find the best way to word something he wondered about since the week you met. “When you saw Adrie for the first time, you had this really, uh, surprised look on your face.. Why was that?”
Your tone was dismissive in the wake of something that appeared to haunt him, “Oh, that?” You folded down the empty paper bags, and placed them on top of the fridge after he said Adrie would use them for arts and crafts. “Well, it’s like, Mr. Moore has dozens of pictures of his family on his desk, and Carl told me–approximately–ten different stories about his sons an hour after meeting him, and Kevin carries pictures of his dogs in his wallet. It just seemed like if you had a daughter, you would’ve shown me a picture too, like most dads.” You waved your hands around, and contorted your mouth in a silly manner. “I mean, it was just weird you never mentioned her.”
He took your assessment to heart, and opened the drawer closest to him. Amongst the clutter of junk was his black wallet resting on a coiled chain with clips on either end. Taking out the cheap leather, he cradled the width in his palm, and wiggled out a picture kept sealed behind a plastic window. He said, “Actually, I do carry a picture of her,” and handed it to you.
On instinct, you pored over the image of him first, prizing the crown of his head sporting the same wild haircut. He had his face tipped down to the newborn wrapped in a pink blanket in his arms, crooking her in their safety as he held a bottle to her lips. His knees were on display behind his ripped black jeans. His shirt was sleeveless. She was tiny and precious. He was decidedly emotionless from what you could see, sat on a couch that was not the same as the one across the room from you.
“That was taken at Harrington’s place,” he answered your unstated question, keen to the recognition washing over your face as you placed it as Nancy’s ugly pink floral loveseat.
You gave it back to him.
He looked over the captured moment in time, bleak gaze set on his little girl when she was so fragile, and small, and when he was so weak, and teetering on a long overdue breakdown.
“It took me a long time to carry this around,” he said, tone heavy with disappointment, regret, and shame. “Wayne and I were fighting constantly. And I mean, I don’t blame him. He gave up his life to take care of me when I was twelve, and I put so many gray hairs on his head that he went bald from my bullshit, and then there I was, bringing home a screaming infant I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of. Y’know, just proving I was a fuck-up right when he thought I was smart enough to get my act together.“ Tracing the sharp edge of the photo trimmed to fit his wallet, he placed it in its windowed slot and tossed it back in the drawer, closing the past from his sight. “I don’t have a lot of good memories from that time. Shit fucking sucked.”
“I can imagine,” was all you could say.
“I love her,��� he said in the event you doubted him.
“I know you do,” you offered in return.
Steering the conversation in a different direction, you swung your index fingers at the extensive cabinetry, and asked, “Where’s a cutting board?” Right of the sink, he answered. “And a knife?” Top drawer next to your hip, he responded. But it took until you shook out the washed celery stalk, and snapped the ribs off, lining them up on the white plastic cutting board did he become suspicious.
He leaned more of his weight on his forearms, and kept his tone carefully neutral, “What’re you doing?”
Keeping your expression indifferent aside from your arched brows, you cut the celery into manageable sticks and began slicing them lengthways. “I believe I’m in Edward Munson’s trailer making him and his daughter soup.”
The crimson guitar pick at the end of his necklace swung forward, jostled from where it was stuck to the healthy sheen of sweat glistening along the top of his chest. “How do you know my full name?”
“A little birdie told me.”
He shifted his shoulders, head lowered, eyes narrowed, voice deep, “Better question. How do you know where I live?”
“A bigger birdie told me.”
“Someone told you about me?”
Rightfully confused, you pulled a face. “Huh? No. I was kidding. No one talks to me. Anyway, back to the soup.” You harnessed all your charm into impressing him by meeting his stare while you diced the celery, using your knuckles as guidance. “Are there any vegetables she won’t eat? Or stuff she’s allergic to?” Your flagrant insolence irked him: reading his notebook, inviting yourself to his residence, filling the voids in his kitchen with groceries, and now making him soup without ever asking if he wanted you to do those things.
Because of course he wanted you to do those things.
He surrendered to your kindness. “No allergies, and she’ll eat anything as long as it’s diced small–Yeah, like that–and cooked down to mush. It’s the one thing she’s always been good about.”
“And you?”
It took a few sad seconds for him to understand you were asking about his allergies and his preferences, not used to his needs being taken into consideration. “No, no, whatever you make is good. Uhm. Hey, you don’t have to do all of this. Don’t roll your eyes, I’m being serious. Adrie’s sick and I don’t want you to catch what she has.”
“Please,” you implored in thick sarcasm, “I’ve been coughed on by every disease known to man on the Q train. There’s not a cold or flu in existence I haven’t succumbed to. I’m immune at this point.”
You found a stock pot from the cabinet at the junction of the wrap-around counter and the sink, and set it on the cooktop to come to heat while you peeled and chopped an onion. Eddie dwelled in his observations; listening to you recount tales of working in kitchens because they were always hiring, collecting horror stories from being a dishwasher, a waitress, a morning food prepper; moving from title to title; birthday clown, bartender, craft store cashier. Flighty, flighty, flighty. He watched your hands move in quick chops and long sweeps down a carrot with skill he didn’t have the patience nor time to learn. He told you as much, how when he comes home he’s fucking tired, and doesn’t have the energy to make dinner.
“Now what’re you doing, sweetheart?” he asked in what he hoped was an exhausted tone, but he knew it was futile. The timidness was there, sneaking its way into his words when he made the leap to calling you an endearment in his own home. And how could he not when you pulled out a stack of tupperware, divided the piles of chopped vegetables between them, and wedged them into the freezer, still tending to the sweating mirepoix with a wooden spoon.
“It’s so next time you want soup they’re all ready to go. You don’t have to waste time cutting vegetables. Just dump a container in a pot and add broth and noodles, and call it a night.”
He made a fond noise in the back of his throat, looking at you through his lashes. “You’re really doing everything in your power to extort me for this ‘thank you’ I owe you, aren’t you?”
“You’re the one who promised me something good,” you reminded him.
Water splashed, sputtered in the pot, steaming into a cloud of savory humidity, filling the living space with earthy aromatics. You added bouillon cubes, and stirred the stock together while turning the dial on high to bring the soup to a boil.
“Yeah, guess I did,” he said, petering out into a mumble, straying further from the current topic. He wasn’t finished talking about the previous one yet, and he made it known.
Tracing his thumb along his plump bottom lip, he tested a boundary, tiptoeing into a realm he did his best to ignore. “So, uh, you employ the same strategy with jobs as you do dating, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” you grinned. “Having an endless well of stories about shitty customers to pull from is perfect for stand up. Everyone loves the perpetually single girl who works in service or retail, and just can’t seem to find the love of her life, despite going on an insane amount of first dates with New York’s most average. It’s funny, and relatable.”
“And now you’re stuck as a boring receptionist in a nowhere town in a nowhere state.”
You released a sugary, syrupy, sweet giggle. “And now I’m stuck as a boring receptionist in a nowhere town in a nowhere state, and it’s the longest job I’ve ever held.”
His eyelashes fluttered from the nerves–the strong ache in his chest pressing down on him, stealing his breath. “And what about the dates? Gone on any with Hawkins’ finest?”
“Just one.” Though your back was to him while you washed and dried the cutting board, your smile was outlined in your banter. “But it was awful,” you emphasized in a dramatic sigh. “Worst date ever. He drank my Icee, wouldn’t stop talking during the movie, and, get this! He didn’t even tell me I was pretty. Not once.”
“What a jerk,” he agreed fullheartedly, scrunching his nose and twisting a curl of his hair over his stupidly smitten grin. “Sounds like a real asshole.”
“Actually, he was my favorite,” you corrected him, turning down the dial to where the coils lost their fluorescent glow. “Huge, huge nerd. Like, the biggest dork ever, but he was definitely my favorite out of any of my dates.” On your way to the green table, you bent close to his ear, and begged him in a whisper, “But don’t tell him I said that. He’ll get a real big ego about it.”
He made a zipping motion over his mouth.
“Soups gotta simmer until the potatoes are done. Might as well sit.”
He unzipped his mouth. “When did you cut up potatoes?”
“When you were staring at me all dreamy-like,” you supplied, words dipped in coy and flirt.
Undecided on which way to balk at your claim, he did them all: rolled his eyes, clicked his tongue, muttered a small “was not,” and slung himself into his usual chair at the table. He expected you to do the same, to match his silly theatrics with your own impassioned eye roll and smirk, but you didn’t. You sat across from him, poised, hands clasped together with the black notebook beside you.
The mood of the evening dipped visibly in your serious gaze set on him.
You tapped your knuckle on the metal spirals binding the worn pages of his latest campaign together. “No more secrets,” you punctuated. Three short words let go on an exhale. Three little words standing taller than the final barrier he built to keep others out. Not an ask, but a necessity if you were going to continue your relationship–platonic or not.
Your posture and expression were stern, but gentled by patience. “Let’s get to those rumors, hm.”
It was time.
No going back.
Whatever happens, happens.
Eddie took a shaky breath, and invited you over to the vulnerable truth. “Has anyone ever told you anything about me? Not like Harrington’s stories, but actual rumors?”
You shook your head. Between spending most of your time at work, or at Robin’s place, you didn’t have much opportunity to speak to random people, apart from small talk. And chit chatting about the weather was nowhere near as grave as what rooted itself in the solemn slow blink wherein he closed his eyes, and dipped his head.
“I’ll tell you everything, but can I ask you not to say anything while I explain?” he hesitated, knowing how it sounded. “I don’t know how else to word that to make it less rude, but this shit is difficult for me to talk about, and I’ll probably ramble, and go on tangents, and jump around the timeline, but, please, don’t interrupt me or say anything until I’m finished, okay? I don’t want to forget any of the details, and have to discuss this again. Can we do that?”
Digging your thumbnails harder into the flesh of your fingers, you agreed to the terms with a solid nod.
He swallowed. And when his tongue remained too thick in his dry mouth, he swallowed again, and sat up straight, pressing his back into the chair. “Okay.”
Two anxious stomachs twisted at once.
He cast his vacant stare around the room; never allowing it to land on you. This conversation was with himself and the green table and the shelf of mugs and the soup bubbling away on the stove and the washing machine entering its spinning cycle and the containers of Play-Doh on the coffee table; speaking to the non-judgemental objects instead of the person across from him.
“I’ll start with my reputation in school,” he said. “Probably doesn’t take much of an imagination to picture me as I am now with the same hobbies and opinions, just a lot louder about them. Heavy metal was the only music I listened to, and people called me weird for it. And I thought ‘weird?’ Was that supposed to bother me? I loved being weird! I wore the title ‘weird’ with pride. I didn’t want to be like everyone else. And when they saw I played Dungeons and Dragons, they called me a Satanist. Satanist? Like Ozzy, and all the bands I looked up to? Hell yeah! I thought being called a Satanist was so cool I sewed a Leviathan Cross on my jacket.” The corner of his lip jumped at a memory, smiling at something from long ago. Then, it faded. “Goes without saying I didn’t make many friends until I found other outcasts who shared those same views as me. We started a band together, and after some convincing, we made a DND club with me as the Dungeon Master. Of course people called me a cult leader for it, but being a cult leader sounded fucking awesome, so I encouraged it. Antagonized it. Weird, Devil-worshiper, cultist, freak. I wore them all like armor.”
He paused to crack his knuckles, expression falling blank as suppressed scenes unfolded in his head. “I got bullied a lot. Not that surprising. I was so aggressively opinionated about everything and never shut up. But the worst of it stopped when I got held back enough grades that I made “grown-up friends” and started dealing to help pay for my guitars and stuff.” He shrugged a single shoulder in apathy, and the tan jacket slipped down his arm, revealing a faded stick-and-poke viper above his armpit. “Unless it was Steve or someone in that friend circle, I was never invited to parties except to bring drugs. Weed, pills, whatever low scale stuff, nothing that serious, but I wasn’t very popular outside of that context.” The washing machine buzzed at the end of its cycle. “And as much as I told myself I didn’t care, I did. I did care when my friends were out on dates with their girlfriends, and I was alone, stuck in front of a record player learning a song just to give myself something to do, and something to say I did over the weekend when they all talked about the movie they saw together.. Made me feel like I was the outcast even amongst the outcasts.”
Listening, but not responding, you smoothed your thumbs over the divots in your skin your nails left behind.
Swallowing again, he faltered, “Girls didn’t like me. Even if I was the cooler, older guy who was so confident in everything he did, I was still off-putting. Or just weird in the bad way, because I didn’t know how to act, and came on too strong, or too–I don’t know–fucking dorky, doing shit like opening doors and bowing for them, laughing too loud at my own jokes when they didn’t find them funny.” It took everything you had to not to break your promise–to stay silent, and indifferent, and not gather him into a hug and assure him all those goofy mannerisms were exactly why you liked him. “I dated, y’know.. Had girlfriends here and there, but they never lasted more than a month.”
To close one chapter of his life and open another, he rubbed at his eyes, and ran a hand down his face, scrubbing over his chin as he spoke to the ceiling, “Now onto my old man.”
The hand he used to wipe the loneliness from his somber visage came to a rest on the edge of the table, and he ran the side of his palm along it as a way to fidget.
“He was in and out of jail for a number of things my whole life, but when I was twelve, he murdered someone. She was a nice lady. Well known in town, and well liked. Popular. Prom Queen, cheerleader type. Everyone loved her.. And he murdered her.”
Silence, silence, you remained in white-hot, visceral, sweat dripping, jaw-clenching silence.
“According to my criminal record, I was following in his footsteps. I had a penchant for stirring up trouble. It was fun. Stealing dumb shit, hotwiring an old car to drive us to the woods to get drunk when we were teenagers, dealing, begging Steve to throw ragers every weekend so I had an excuse to get shitfaced and run from the cops.. Yeah, it really looked like I was following in his footsteps. Following the Munson name.”
Eddie sat forward. Sleeved forearms sliding across aged coffee rings staining the green collapsible tabletop, and rubbing the backs of his fingers along the other. He was close enough for you to reach, to hold, to comfort when this was over, and the ghosts were put to rest from clouding his softhearted brown eyes.
“There was a New Year’s Eve party I was invited to” –he jumped his fingers in quotations– “on the rich side of town. It wasn’t one of Harrington’s, and I was out of my supply anyway, so I skipped out and spent the night here with my friends playing DND, and setting off fireworks in the trailer park, just having a good time.” The next inhale quivered his bottom lip, “I woke up in my bed to three cop cars blaring their sirens, and someone telling me I was being arrested for-for murder. Ah..”
You steeled yourself from blinking away.
“A girl died at that party. Prom Queen, head cheerleader. The type everyone knew, and everyone liked. And.. A-and, Jesus, I-I just need to get through this, I’m so sorry–but stuff was done to her body.”
The frankness hung in the room.
He screwed his eyes shut, and let the ugly reality spill from his mouth, “A guy from out of state went to that party with way harder shit than I sold, and she wanted to try some. They went to the bathroom together, he gave her too much, drugged her, she overdosed, and h-h-he..” His eyelids twitched with movement, and the tendons in his neck strained. You weren’t sure if he could hear the small, involuntary noise you made, but he chose the same words to avoid what you could infer. What all women could infer. “He did stuff to her body.”
His voice continued to crawl up an octave as his muscles braced in a reflexive cringe. “H-He left her there, and when her body was discovered, and the police were called, it didn’t take long before someone said they thought they saw me there, and once one person said they saw me there, suddenly everyone saw me there.” Hard swallow, palms wiped on jeans. “I was arrested the next morning, and even though I had three alibis, I didn’t have any hard receipts or any of that shit they wanted to establish where I was and at what time. And when my alibis were a bunch of Satanic cultist shithead troublemakers like me, they were brushed off. And why wouldn’t they be? It’s my friend’s word against thirty people who swore the long haired guy they saw at the party was me. Cops thought they caught their man, booked me, and had me in interrogation in under an hour from kicking down my door.”
He licked his lips.
“January of ‘88,” he said with an unsteady cadence, shooting out the sentences as they came to him, lurching faster and faster towards the horrid scars he’d never heal from. “I was so fucking lucky, so fucking lucky. DNA testing had only become a thing the year before. Mhm. That’s what saved my ass. But even then, it wasn’t like it is now. That shit took weeks to process.” He lifted his hands–fingers loosely curled, trembling. “For weeks they made me look at the pictures of her. H-Her body. The b-bruises around her neck.” He gestured at his own, and his voice swung higher pitched, “Interrogated me over and over again. For days, and weeks. Trying to get me to confess. It took weeks to prove I was innocent, and clear my name. Weeks, and weeks. A-A-And in those weeks–”
The trembling escalated to uncontrollable shaking.
“–Fuck–I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, volume fluctuating.
The air was too thick to breathe.
The wrinkles between his brows deepened, as did the lines bracketing his mouth. Red flush overtook his shuddering chest, his strained throat, his scrunched face with his eyes closed in refusal to acknowledge you sat opposite him, your expression slackened by dread.
“In the weeks between waiting f-for the DNA results,” each word wobbled worse than the last, “I found out Adrie’s mom was four months pregnant. And if I knew, then all of Hawkins knew. Everyone knew I knocked someone up, and.. and more rumors started..” He lifted his eyebrows, and his hands developed a violent shiver, hovering over the table, palms open, afraid and begging. “Because of.. what happened to the body.. People thought that she was.. That I..” each pause was a short wheeze.
Your blood ran cold with the slow realization of what word he was avoiding.
Desperation influenced his stammer, “I swear to you, w-what happened between us was consensual,” he stressed the last word in a whimper delivered straight to your dropped stomach. “She doesn’t answer my calls–but I could try, if you need to hear it from her–I promise, I promise, as soon as the rumors started, as soon as they started, she denied them. She tried to stop them from spreading. She tried. She told everyone it-it-it wasn't–that we both chose to–” he sniffed back the croaky sob, and without the grace of respite, he coughed the rasp from his throat, and ushered you into another apology you didn’t know you were owed, “I should’ve told you before we went to Adrie’s school. You had a right to know why people were staring. I’m so fucking sorry.”
In the room at the end of the dark hallway, his daughter who he sacrificed everything for rolled over in her bed, bringing the covers with her. In the belly of the trailer belonging to his uncle, you kept your feet tucked under your chair, letting the information wash over you in worse and worse crashes. In the lousy home he hated, Eddie held his breath until the aches reached their peak, and released them in a cough; and another, and another, until the pain subsided.
Deep breath, deep breath.
Your chair creaked from your uncomfortable shifting.
With time, the tension in his body waned to where his composed words could be heard in all the clarity they deserved, “I know this has been a lot to hear, and process, and I’m so sorry for unloading all of this on you at once, but I wanted you to know the whole story so you could make an informed decision.”
You weren’t sure if you were supposed to speak yet, but your whisper broke through, “Informed decision?”
Cheeks hot, but dry, and lower lashes clumped together from the rescinded tears, he answered you indirectly at first, “It took months to find and arrest the guy, and by then Hawkins didn’t care. Babe, you can be anonymous in the city, but this is how small town mentality works. All it took was one person to say I was at that party, and like that, my life was ruined. My name was stained. No one cared if I was innocent. The culprit was some other guy they’d never heard of from another state whose picture they flashed on the 6 o’clock news once. He might as well not even exist.” A pause. A change. A regret. “I want to protect you.”
There was pressure building behind your eyes, and you moved your gaze to the shelves above you in an effort to stifle the well of tears from falling–for him, for the dead girl, for what he was about to say next.
Eddie alternated between weakly slapping his hands flat on the table, then turning over to show his palms, then slapping them down again; guilt and shame and loneliness and fear working its way into every part of his gentle nature. “My name carries a stigma, and if you’re going to be coming around to my place, or be seen with me in public, you need to know there are consequences. Assumptions are going to be made about you. People are going to speculate, warn you, judge you. You don’t deserve that shit, so please, tell me, and I’ll accept just being friends at work, and leave it at that. I won’t ask questions. I won’t bother you. I won’t ask for more.”
“What?”
“I’ll understand,” he said, eyes tightening in a flinch.
“Eddie–” It came out broken. His encouragement for you to end the burden of this relationship at coworkers for the sake of your image stung like the tender throb of rejection–except, it was worse. It was him giving you permission to break things off because he didn’t see himself as worth the hassle.
Your poise collapsed. “You’re right, it is a lot to process, and it’s all I’m gonna be thinking about for the next week, a-and yeah, I wish you told me sooner, but Eddie–” His knuckles made a harsh sound when you grasped for his hand, knocking them on the table with the force of your messy coordination through the blur of true friendship disrupting your vision. “This changes nothing between us.”
Graceless under the circumstances, you took his right hand and wrapped your fingers around his thumb, fitting the meat of your palm into the curve of his. You delved your other fingers under his sleeve cuff, stroking them down, then up, slotting them beneath the stretchy bracelet. D-A-D-D-Y. He cupped his free hand over top of yours, enveloping them both, and waded through the entanglement to caress the prominent callus at the tip of his middle finger over the white blocks with black lettering. M-O-U-S-E.
“I’m with you,” you said. “I’m here. And whenever you want me here, whenever Adrie wants me here, ask and I’ll be on my bike pedaling as fast as I can.”
His face pinched in sentimental yearn. “Baby..”
Instead of suffocating the intensity of his emotions as he normally would, he slid his chair back and buried his head in the hollow of his outstretched arms; and in the pocket of space where he felt safest, he allowed himself the relief of two hot tears streaking through the fine sweat overtaking his puffy face. They clung to the tip of his nose, and dripped to his jeans in a loud splat.
He snorted, but it came out as a muted huff due to his stopped up sinuses. “Can’t believe I made it all the way through that sober and without crying, and then you just–went ahead and said something like that.”
You smiled. He probably did, too. Then as yours ebbed, his probably did, too.
The intertwined pocket where you clasped each other ran hot with body temperature, humidity, and the loaded implications of his confession and your subsequent acceptance. Heavy with the context for why people stared at him. Their significant glances at you, and the new depths and meaning beyond people thinking he was weird, and you were weird by association.
But at the same time, their stares didn’t last long. They were glances by every definition. A look over, a judgment, and then away, back to their own little world and their own little lives.
You asked, “Are the rumors still as bad as they were?”
The short curls at the crown of his head waved back and forth with his slow head shake. “I don’t think so. I think they’ve gotten better in a weird, fucked up way.” He sniffled, and wiped his nose on the inside of his sleeve before returning to the darkened confines of his arms, refusing excess stimulation until he could handle it. “Ever since Home Alone came out, my friends joke that I’m like that old man, y’know, the one all the neighborhood kids target, and turn one rumor about him into this entire narrative where he’s slayed over a dozen people, and keeps the bodies in his basement.” He laughed, truly. A warm, muffled thing. “That’s the sorta rumors going around now, I think; that I’m some Boogieman that gets blamed for every bump in the night. Adults probably know the accusations, but, like I said, Adrie’s mom did try to stop the other ones, but I guess I don’t know for sure if–when people look at you and me–that’s what they’re thinking. Uhm, I don’t know if I’m making sense anymore.”
“You’re good,” you consoled him. Your thumbs whispered sentiments on his skin, smoothing over the rough terrain from his labor, and catching on the excess sweat, wicking it away and creating more with each hindered brush across his inner wrist, trapped under the weight of his heavy hand copying you; running his fingers over wherever he could, needy, grounding himself to your presence, and seeking closure. “Thank you for finally telling me.”
“Thanks for listening,” he responded quietly.
Eddie shrugged his shoulders to his cheeks, and dried his face on his jacket to the best of his ability. Together, you sat in silence for a while longer, holding each other. Thinking. Decompressing. Plunging into the ice water of yet another development in your relationship, and emerging to the surface in unison, breaking the surface tension latched together by the same lifesaver.
You squeezed.
He squeezed back.
“I think I need a minute,” Eddie said, throwing his head towards the bathroom and letting go of you to inelegantly wipe at his runny nose. He drew further away from the table, standing up and walking in his odd, awkward way; playing with his bangs, and taking his hair out of the ponytail. “I’ll see if Adrie’s awake and wants soup, too.” The edge of the bathroom door flooded with yellowed light and a faucet was turned on high.
There was a nice moment where you nodded at the homely kitchen, lost in thought, absorbing the sounds and smells of the thick bubbling brew, and tomatoey pungence. Until it dawned on you.
“Shit, the soup–!”
Thankfully, as you stirred, the potatoes stuck to the bottom of the pot dislodged themselves, and nothing appeared burnt. Because, honestly, you couldn’t take the wound to your pride if the first time you ever cooked for Eddie Munson resulted in you burning soup.
After searching, you discovered the cabinet above the dish rack housed the dinnerware. You grabbed two mismatched bowls and hesitated on the shallow Little Mermaid one, until hearing the click of the bathroom door swinging open, and a squeak from the adjacent bedroom.
Soft footsteps announced his excitement before you could turn and see Eddie’s silly hand wave.
Come here, he mouthed, peeking from around the wall.
You dropped the serving spoon on the–had to be homemade–ceramic ashtray masquerading as spoon rest, and followed, hungry for new discoveries; the first being the (offensively ugly) pirate ship wheel chandelier hanging above the washing machine you had to have been an idiot to miss earlier. Deeper into the carpeted hallway was the coat closet with crayon squiggles, a shelf of kitschy knick knacks, and a thrifted painting of a lake scene with the curled-edge price sticker still on the corner of the glass. Passing the bathroom, you got a glimpse of a dark green shower curtain, a wet rag on a packed sink of various spilled products, and a bucket of rubber ducks next to the tub.
Eddie slowed, and you were confronted with his back. Slim shoulders on display from his oversized jacket falling further down his arms, thick canvas folding over itself around his tapered waist. The white tank top was stretched to fit him, hem of the armholes digging into his flexed lats as he eased the bedroom door open, back muscles contouring in the heavy shadows as he hunched and held his breath at the creaky hinges broadcasting his entrance. Edges of tattoos taunted you while he blinked into the darkness. And when the one who usurped his bed nearly five years ago didn’t wake, he straightened up and shook his hair out of his face.
He angled to the side, opening himself to you with his arm outstretched; an unspoken suggestion in his fingertips finding the edge of your cable knit sweater. You understood the glossy shine of unfiltered love in his gaze, and fit yourself between him and the doorway, stealing the soft filtered light brushing Adrienne’s sleeping form in tender illumination–made sweeter by the curls falling over her closed eyes, and the pale blue unicorn hugged in her arms.
‘Oh,’ you sighed in surprise, and clasped your hands on either side of your cheeks, craning to look up at him.
Just like the time he helped you hang decorations in the breakroom, your head made contact with the stick-and-poke viper, and his grin was instant.
His inhale cradled you. “She loves that thing,” he said, chest rumbling against your nape, stomach pressing to your side with an amused grunt, filling the gaps between you and him with warmth.
It was as if nothing changed. Not really.
Eddie canted his forehead to you with an expression of mild jealousy over your plush toy wrapped in his little girl’s arms when his cold plasticy ones sat at a miniature table in a pink playhouse pretending to have a tea party. His eyebrows were the same–raised, hidden beneath the wet stringy pieces of his bangs skimming his wrinkled forehead. His damp cheeks, jaw, and neck were the same after his cold water wake up call, splashing himself over the bathroom sink. His full lips were the same, pink and pulled back to show his teeth. His strong chin was the same, peppered with a recent shave. His handsome nose was the same, albeit red. The crinkles at the corner of his eyes were the same, if not slightly fuller from his recent cry.
But everything had changed.
Before, you lacked the understanding of the fear in his eyes when Mr. Moore had walked into the shop. How he had risked a painful bruise on his hip from the chair he knocked over in his scramble to get away from you. The tremble in his hands when he ran them through his hair in an urgent act to appear composed, and not like he was doing something worse with you. To you.
Everything was different, but it was felt, not seen.
The leftover adrenaline from the confrontation at his kitchen table faded, and in its place, rising from the truest, barest, rawest vulnerabilities of himself, was trust. A candid expression of respect in his palm at your back, fingers curled in to stroke his nails along the knitted design of your turtleneck. He confessed his secrets, you knew him to be an innocent man, and despite his worry for your reputation becoming infected by his, you promised him the same loyalty you always had, because there was not a lie in existence that would break the bond you facilitated months ago, born from your sheer desire to annoy the one mechanic who wouldn’t speak to you.
Felt, not seen.
A promise, and an urge.
The tingly pleasure of his nails scratching over your sweater advanced to a divine expression of affection.
He wrapped his arm around you, settling his hand in the curve above your hip. It lasted all of two seconds, long enough for him to bring you into the crook of his body for the purpose of whispering something in your ear, but it was a phenomenal improvement over the usual nervous flittering his fingers performed when in your company.
His voice was candy sweet after watching your face break into a smile for his daughter, “Maybe we should let her sleep, hmm?”
You leaned into him. “Yeah,” you sighed, rolling your head along his shoulder, guiding your silly grin from him to Adrie. “She looks so peaceful.”
“And quiet,” he observed in the wise tone of a single father after long hours of soothing his child’s headache when her cries created one of his own, and juggling the duty of cleaning up her puke from the floor, her clothes, his clothes, and bathing her while wallowing in the misery of doing it all by himself.
Eddie persuaded you into the hallway, and closed the door behind him, letting his arm fall to his side, ending the cocoon of warmth he provided with the harsh drag of the metal zipper scratching across the back of your jeans. He followed you to the kitchen and opened the fridge, muttering a string of words about deserving something as he snapped a silver and blue can from the plastic ring holding them together. “Want a beer? I don’t think you can get a DUI on a bike.”
“You actually can in some states.” You didn’t elaborate, and continued spooning soup into the bowls in questionable silence. “But no, thank you.”
Crack, tss. He held your stare over the rim as he tipped back a long gulp, pressed his lips together, and swallowed with a satisfied ‘ah,’ giving you ample time to ignore him. Finally, he moved his hand about, and asked, “Not gonna tell me why you know that?”
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
Moving on, you located two spoons from the absolute chaos of the cutlery drawer, and brought the bowls to the table while he reached into the pantry for an open sleeve of saltines, tossing them between the both of you and falling into his chair with a soft grunt.
“This looks great,” he complimented in earnest, voice and face alight with appreciation as he thrashed his arms to get out of his jacket, and took another sip of beer before crowding his side of the table with elbows, forearms, and hands; always holding the Pabst, or the soup, or reaching; always in motion, dominating the space you shared between your bowls, and beneath, where your legs were slotted in tight between his wide-spread knees.
His manners were about what you would assume after eating lunch with him many times, but that’s not what had you breathless.
He just.. took off his jacket like it was a completely normal thing he did dozens of times in front of you, sometimes accompanied by a hand rolled cigarette hanging from his lips, or joined by a sneer at some bad joke you told.
But it wasn’t normal. Not this time.
Hungry, hungry, hungry, you devoured the sight of his bare skin.
While he stirred the finely diced carrots and potatoes, you were afforded the time to admire the art no longer hidden by coveralls. Guessing at the older blotchy etches on his inner arm, theorizing about the origins of the souvenirs done in various stages between professional and very not professional, probably by himself or a friend. He didn’t have many, but it was easy to get caught up in the collection of motifs spanning from the top of his shoulders, and crawling in disorder downwards, to a tiny dagger at the apex of his bicep, two dice above his elbow, and a classic twist of barbed wire. Very cool and tough, but your roving stopped at one tattoo in particular.
Rather, one cluster of tattoos making up a whole.
“The bats..”
He perked up at your whisper–”Hm?”–and looked down at his arm. “Oh, yeah. These were my fourth, I think? Somethin’ like that. You like ‘em?” he asked, mouth cutting into the same delighted place a smirk originated from, but with more fascination as he too realized this was your first (technically second) time seeing his exposed arms.
Sucking in your cheeks to curb your habit of smiling at everything he said, you nodded in response, falling into a rhythmic head dip as you thought back to your first time meeting Adrie, and the picture she drew for you, and her Halloween costume, and how she chose not to dress as a princess like all her friends, but as a bat instead, because her daddy liked bats. “Yeah.. Yeah, I like them.”
He removed the twist tie from around the crackers and counted out three, stacking them neatly between his palms and, without warning, crushing them into his soup, sending a fine powder into the air.
It was obvious you were watching him on account of your untouched food, but it was beyond your control. Winter created a barrier between you and his skin. You needed to reap the beauty now while you could. Learn what you could, like the scorpion above his collar bone opposite the viper, and the eyeball monster with tentacles twisting over the bulk of muscles laying dormant in his solid forearms, and whatever the hell else was peeking out from under his tank top.
He scraped his spoon along the bottom of his bowl, and determined he needed one more cracker to make his soup as thick as he liked, and collected it from the crinkly pack. Yet another simple movement he had executed hundreds of times in front of you, and yet..
You stared. And stared. And stared. And made a sound of disgust. Rising from your chair, you loomed an impressive shadow over Eddie’s face as he gazed up at you with an expression of open confusion.
His eyes were trained solely on the pretty glint in yours. 
Shiver. Goosebumps.
He jumped at your bold finger slipping under the strap of his tank top to move it aside. You pinched your brows, narrowed your eyes, and pressed your palm to his skin, enthralled by the sensation of him existing under you, aware of the full breath he took to fill out his chest as you introduced the touch.
Humming, you studied your hand cupped over the black widow spider inked onto his naked pec, and concluded, “That one’s smaller than my palm.”
The pale saltine cracker shattered in his grip.
Acting oblivious, you scooted your chair under you, sat, smoothed your hands over your lap as if a napkin existed there, and slurped your spoonful of soup as if you had done something as natural as point out the weather.
He released his surprise in a huff, and brushed the crumbs from his palms. “You are the lamest person I have ever met.”
“Have you met yourself?” At his weak glare, you slurped more of your soup. An amicable silence followed–the sort of camaraderie communicated through full bellies–but there’d been something on your mind since he willingly opened himself up to you and shared his past, expecting his name to become a forgotten word in your mouth and nothing more. “Hey, since we’re like, baring our souls and shit tonight, do you want to know why I created my ‘yes’ policy?”
Instead of a comically over-quirked eyebrow, he showed genuine interest in listening to your story. He set down his spoon, and turned his full attention to you. “I’m intrigued.”
“I’m tellin’ ya now, it’s not as riveting as yours, but uh,” you faltered on a pause, and fostered the same sort of nervous shrug he did. “Growing up, my parents were really.. negative, I guess is the best way to put it. Like, they wouldn’t let me hang out with friends, told me I’d never amount to anything, said I was a disappointment. Y’know, normal stuff. Uhm, I wasn’t allowed to do much, only really leaving the house to go to school or go to my job when I was old enough to have one. They said I’d never live up to their expectations, I was a failure, I’d never get a boyfriend, I’d be a bad wife, I’m going nowhere in life, and I’m an annoyance and take up too much of their time, and I was never wanted.” You swiped your tongue along your top teeth, and popped your lips after perhaps sharing too much. “Anyway, I made good grades in high school, so I took a lot of electives, and one of those happened to be Drama class. This may come as a surprise, but I was really shy at first, but after a while I got used to playing different roles, and fell in love with the freedom of becoming whoever I wanted on stage. And one day my teacher taught us a lesson in improv, and yeah.. the moment she explained the concept of ‘Yes, and..’ I was hooked. Just the mindset of nothing being rejected, and no idea was made fun of, or shot down was brand new to me. And as you can infer by now, I adopted that ideology for my own life, and, uh, yeah, I’ve been saying ‘yes’ to everything since then and never looked back. Literally, I’ve talked to my parents like, once since moving out, and that was about my insurance.
“Uh, anyway,” you said, still talking a mile a minute, “it did kinda create a people-pleasing complex for a while. I wanted to say ‘yes’ to everyone because it made them happy, since, y’know, I was always told ‘no’ and it did the opposite. But it’s whatever. And, uh, while we’re doing this, I wanted to apologize for always pointing out that you’re single.” You avoided eye contact. “Kinda harsh in hindsight.”
He broke into a laugh–a loud clap like thunder, and curling in on himself–finding the humor in your flustered state.
“Well, I’m glad you find it so funny,” you deadpanned.
“No, no, sorry–” He concealed his giggles behind his knuckle crooked to his lips. “I, yeah, I’m sorry for pointing out that you’re single too.”
“Appreciated.”
The brief teasing commenced to a slight frown between his eyebrows. His gaze drifted to his soup, worry twisting at his lips as the bubbles of oil sloshed across the surface of the reddened broth, trembling in ripples from his bouncing leg.
Eddie was emotionally fatigued. Words weren’t coming to him–none that carried the weight they needed–so he offered an alternative to hollow apologies.
He brought a shaky spoonful of soup to his lips, and dribbled some off the side as he overcorrected the angle he needed to slide it into his mouth. The next dive for a potato proved just as awkward, trepidatious, but the struggle of eating with his non-dominant side was worth it.
Your fingertips brushed over saltine dust as you accepted the proposal of his hand resting at the center of the table, palm open, and fingers coaxing you to reunite skin on skin.
“I like your policy,” he said, voice gone gruff with the exhaustion of the day.
“Really? On more than one occasion you’ve called it stupid, irresponsible, absurd, the dumbest thing you’d ever heard of, naive–”
He shut you up by curling his fingers over yours, setting your cheeks ablaze with his unashamed thumb pressed to your bracelet. “You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your policy.”
A powerful move, and you matched the intimacy.
You hooked your thumb around to the scars lining the backs of his fingers, and lost yourself in the warmth of his embrace, giving yourself to him with each circle you massaged over his knuckles and between the joints. He did the same. Touching, touching, touching. Trusting. Melting into each other's palms. Holding hands with a man accused of so much, and forgiven so little. Holding hands with someone, just months ago, he brushed off as flippantly as her parents did.
He was sorry for the way he treated you.
You were sorry for the way the world treated him.
He squeezed.
You squeezed back.
~~~
“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” you asked with a whine.
The pot of leftover soup still sat without a lid on the stovetop, and the serving spoon had a layer of scum dried to it. The dirty bowls and spoons were stacked in the sink, and Eddie hadn’t moved his wet laundry from the washing machine yet. Surely, you could help by wiping up the crumbs on the table, or cleaning up the spilled toothpaste on the bathroom sink, or–
He clapped his hands on your shoulders. “No,” he stressed slowly, “it’s late, and I’d prefer it if you got home before Buckley’s mom starts filing a missing persons report, and adding another rumor to my ass.” You cupped his elbows–barricaded from his body heat by his jacket–and opened your mouth, ready to argue. “And I swear if you don’t turn on your bike’s headlight, I’m gonna–”
You threw your head back, and groaned, “You’re so annoying.”
With the trailer’s door open, the quiet night penetrated the mix of air colliding from his warm kitchen and meeting the windless cold from the season, joining where your bodies connected on his cement steps. Your shoes dragged on the pebbly concrete in a woeful goodbye, making your effort to leave appear utmost arduous, tacking on a classic bottom lip pout when you both relinquished your holds on each other, and he shooed you off.
Not like you actually wanted to clean his house, it was just fun to annoy him into thinking you did.
Leaned against the doorway, he crossed his arms and tilted his head, mirroring your fondness in his gaze. “Yeah, yeah. Get out of here before people start gossiping about the pretty girl leaving my trailer, alive.”
The sudden belly laugh escaping you reverberated off the metal boneyard.
You slapped your hand over your mouth. “Sorry,” and after a thought, you asked gently while crouched to unchain your bike from the handrail, “Do you normally joke about what happened to you?”
His shadow shrugged over the hubcap hidden amongst the crunchy brittle grass. “Makes it easier, sometimes.”
“Noted.” You threw your leg over the seat, and made a big production of clicking on the headlight situated between your handlebars. “See you at work tomorrow, pretty boy.”
The scoff he was going for devolved into a snort. “Bye. Be safe. Please.”
Eddie locked the door behind him.
For minutes he stood at the center of his uncle’s trailer. It looked much the same as any other day when he came home from work, if not neater. But things had changed. As much as he liked eating across from Adrie, the two bowls in the sink were adult-sized, and it wasn’t the scent of stale smoke clinging to Wayne’s flannels that had Eddie throwing his arms over his head, locking his grip around his wrist, and twisting back and forth on the spot.
“Not exactly what I meant when I said I was gonna invite her over,” he informed no one but the darkness behind his closed eyes, remembering he promised Adrie that you’d come over soon.
Inhaling deep, he expelled a loud sigh and addressed the leftover soup. “But what a fucking night, huh?”
Inundated by the heaviness of feeling wanted, he opened the fridge and grabbed a tall boy stuffed behind the shelf of condiments. It wasn’t a drink of sadness as it usually was, but in celebration.
Afterall, he had much to celebrate. He held your hand. Twice.
And, not to mention, you know, how he showed you the gruesome details of the reality he lived in–his home, his reputation, his daughter sneezing into his open mouth when he was instructing her on how to take her temperature while you gagged from outside her bedroom. You knew it all, and you’d see him tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Morning smiles, afternoon laughter. Maybe he’d even ask that question he’d meant to before you left.
But for now..
He ran his fingers over the old tattoo on his shoulder, and pressed his palm over it, replicating the weight of your head resting there when you so lovingly witnessed Adrie being his best wingman, hugging her stuffed unicorn while she slept. It’s what gave him the bravery to wrap his arm around you. And what did you do in return? You leaned into him with a smile, utterly charmed by his forwardness, if his cynical eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.
A voice in the back of his head whispered a seed of doubt, but after a sip, he dismissed it.
“Still fucking got it, Munson,” he complimented himself, downing a long gulp.
————
See you at work tomorrow..
You definitely didn’t see him tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next.
“Here you go, my lovely,” Robin cooed. She entered your room on tiptoes, ever so quiet, and placed your requested bottle of Nyquil on the bedside table with a glass of water. “How’re you feeling, sweetheart?”
You broke from your nest of blankets for the lone reason of glaring at her saccharine voice; somehow sweating through yet another t-shirt, while still shivering as if you’d just emerged from an ice bath.
“Aw, don’t look so grumpy, baby,” she comforted you with a pinch to your cheek. “It’s what you get for locking lips with Eddie.”
“I did not–” You cut your own self off with a round of coughs, making your attempts at speaking scratchier, and scratchier. And by the time you’d recovered, Robin had escorted herself out of your vicinity.
Her giggles haunted you from downstairs.
“Yeah, she’s fine!” She yelled to her mom. “Just lovesick.”
You rolled over, and sighed.
Goodbye extra sick day.
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