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suzdin · 9 months

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Two For One

(Dave York x Max Phillips x f!reader)

Summary: You move from Texas to Boston to live with your boyfriend, but he dumps you soon after the move, and you’re forced to find your own place and get a job. You meet two men a few months later, Max Phillips, a regular at the coffee shop you work at, and Dave York, your neighbor. Things begin to heat up soon after.

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, pre-vampire Max, pre-Equalizer 2 Dave, small age gap (unspecified), no use of y/n, some angst, mention of self-unaliving, mention of divorce/familial trauma, mention of weapons, romance, no fluff, alcohol use, drug use, smut, graphic depictions of sex, rough sex, bondage, degradation, dubcon?, dom!Max, spanking, fingering, public masturbation, stalking, I’m not used to doing warnings I’m sorry if I missed anything, Max is an asshole and Dave is creepy, forgive me idk what I’m doing 🤷‍♀️

——

Dave York is an empty husk of a man ever since the divorce. Even more so since he had sunk all of his life savings—what little was left of it, after all was said and done—into some shitty, grossly overpriced apartment in Boston just so he could give Carol and the girls the space his ex-wife had specifically requested.

He wasn’t fool enough to believe he and Carol could somehow recuscite what once was there and now lost. That was a bridge that had been crossed and burnt to cinders years ago, little more than dust in the wind at present.

In spite of himself, the desire was still there on the longest, loneliest stretches of nights, lingering; hardly a flicker, but it was there.

Not to mention his girls. He missed Mollie and Alice so goddamn much. Twice a month visitations were not enough to diminish his need to be near them, protect them. It was even harder on his daughters, which was plain enough to see by their tear-streaked faces at the beginning and end of every weekend, with the middle being some kind of hazy, unsatisfactory torpor.

If not for them, he would have chosen somewhere cheaper to live. Mexico, maybe.

But he hadn’t. He’d chosen Boston, because it was just close enough to be within a day’s drive of the home they once shared in Virginia, but far enough for Carol to be satisfied that he wouldn’t randomly show up outside of scheduled visitations.

The reality of it all was enough to make him want to say fuck it and put a gun in his mouth. He’d do less damage to the girls that way, he thinks. A one and done.

That was until he met you.

He first noticed you at the bagel shop across the street, smiling pleasantly at the man handing you your everything bagel with extra cream cheese. Then again at the laundromat down the street, trying but failing to hide your lacy underthings from view; he was impervious to stop himself from stealing a glance at them when your back was turned.

It didn’t take him long to deduce that you lived in the building next to his. It was smaller, with only eight units, unlike his, which happened to be twelve. He’d learned that you lived on the top floor, in the smallest unit: a studio apartment at the end of the hall, which faced the street.

You were always so polite. Buttoned up, almost. You weren’t the typical, loud, crass Bostonian he was used to: you weren’t a local. The slight sweetness to your voice suggested maybe you were from somewhere in the south. It was faint, but it was there.

He would catch you carrying in groceries to your building sometimes. He always asked if you needed his help, but you never did, because you never had more than one or two bags worth. He never saw you with anyone, and the meager amount of groceries you had only cemented the idea that you lived alone.

He would occasionally find you bringing home liquor bottles, usually tequila or vodka, but even on those nights…it was only you.

In fact, in the weeks since he had first laid eyes on you, he hadn’t recalled ever seeing you with anyone.

It unsettled him to think of you up there, in your tiny studio apartment, drinking alone. Was there something—or someone—you were trying to forget?

He should be the one drinking with you.

There’s a small window in his bathroom where he has a scant view into your apartment, facing your front door. There isn’t much to see—fleeting glimpses if anything, a blue wall with pictures he can’t quite make out—but it’s enough for Dave. He likes to watch you leave for work, as he can often see your hand reaching for the keys you have hanging by your front door.

He’s gotten himself off a few times just seeing your soft, lovely hand, imagining how it would feel wrapped around his cock.

Dave doesn’t think he’s wanted anyone as much as he wants you.

——

You work at a coffee shop about three blocks from your home called The Beanery.

A dumb name, in your opinion.

You’ve only been working there about six months, but you’ve already been promoted to manager. It isn’t exactly the lifestyle you had envisioned when you made the trek from Fort Worth to Boston, but it pays your bills.

You’d been forced to get a job there when Jonathan—whom you’d moved to Boston for not even a year ago—had left you for another woman in upstate New York, leaving you to fend for yourself in an unfamiliar city.

You were only working there until you could make enough money to move back home. That’s what you kept telling yourself, anyway. It was hard to save when rent in this city was astronomical.

Dave is on one of his early morning runs past the coffee shop the day he finds you telling a man in a cheap looking business suit, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off.

Until now, he had never worked up the courage to go inside; to talk to you. He often saw you behind the counter, toiling away, a look of rumination gracing your features, as if you’d rather be somewhere else.

He’d always wanted to go in and order something overpriced that he didn’t even want…just to have the chance to talk to you more than a few mumbled words at a time.

But he never had, because he didn’t want to be a burden to you. Another faceless customer to make your day feel longer, harder.

That was until he saw you confronting a man who was easily twice your size. You were on the other side of the counter now, staring the man down, a fire blazing on your countenance that Dave couldn’t deny made him want to make the man disappear for good.

He’d made many men disappear. Men who were far more dangerous and terrifying than whoever this pathetic excuse for one was.

He’d never seen you this worked up before. You were always so quiet; so polite and unassuming.

You’re pointing at the door and telling the man to get the fuck out and never come back.

The man—whoever he is—squares up to you. Leans over you, trying to intimidate you as you stare each other down. His face is close to yours—too close.

It makes Dave sick. He wants to break the fucking man in half.

“What do you plan on doing about it, sweetheart?” the man asks you. Challenging you, with a crooked, shit eating grin on his face.

That alone is enough for Dave to do something about it. His need, his desire to protect something, someone—which he hasn’t been able to do in so long—now focused into a tight arc, right at you.

He swings open the coffee shop door, little bells chiming from somewhere above him, and closes the ground between himself and the other man faster than you think should be possible.

You see Dave before Max does. You recognize him from your neighborhood, and from all the times you’ve watched him jog past the coffee shop. You’d swear he had a crush on you, if you didn’t know any better.

He grabs a fistful of Max’s suit and yanks him back. It’s absolutely effortless for him—you’ve never paid much attention before now, but he’s tall. And broad.

It makes your breath catch in your throat.

He spins Max—who is now furious—to face him directly. Max looks as though he wants to throw a punch…until he gets a good look at Dave.

“Hey! What is your fucking problem, pal?” he fumes.

“I think the lady asked you to leave,” Dave states plainly. There’s an edge to it.

Max scoffs, inclining his head toward you now, smirking. “Is this white knight your boyfriend, or something?” he asks, his tone thick with consternation.

“No. Just…a friend,” you say, looking at Dave, who still has Max in his clutches. Dave stares back. You swear there’s something there.

“And if I don’t leave?” he asks, and you’re not sure if he’s asking you or Dave. You answer him anyway.

“I’ll call the cops,” you reply. Dave nods in silent approval.

Max rolls the edge of his tongue over his perfect white teeth, holding up both hands in defeat. “Alright, alright. Don’t have to ask me twice,” he says with a sardonic grin, turning to leave. “Coffee tastes like shit anyway.”

Dave releases his grip and Max turns toward the door. The two men shoulder each other as Max passes, and for a moment, you think there may be a fight. They stare at one another, sizing each other up; Dave’s face is stone while Max smirks, tauntingly.

It makes your skin prickle and your core flush with heat all at once, watching the two men posture like animals right in front of you.

Thankfully, they manage to restrain themselves and Max leaves without another word; you release the breath you realize you’ve been holding in all this time.

Dave’s face softens as he steps towards you, raising his hand to brush against your upper arm in consolation. He thinks nothing of it—an instinct from having maintained a protective role for so long—but the small touch causes you to flinch away.

“Sorry,” he says softly. He wishes he could touch you more; pull you into his arms. “I just— Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you answer. Physically, you’re okay. Mentally, however, you still want to murder someone.

You look over your shoulder in time to see Audrey—your new hire, and the reason you forbade Max from ever returning—push open the door to the back room, wiping her face as she does so.

Max had made her cry, and you couldn’t afford to lose another barista.

“I’m sorry, I need to handle this,” you tell Dave. You look to Vincent, who’d watched the whole thing unfold from behind the counter without so much as an offer to help, but you suppose he isn’t paid enough to care. Hell, you barely are.

“Let, um…” you look at Dave, gesturing at him with a flat, open palm, and you hope he understands what you’re insinuating.

“Dave,” he replies.

“Let Dave here order whatever he wants. On the house,” you tell Vincent, who nods.

“I’m sorry again, but it was nice to meet you, Dave,” you say, introducing yourself, as if he can’t read your name tag. “Thank you so much…for helping.”

You smile meekly and wave goodbye to Dave as you head to the back to hopefully calm Audrey down before she quits.

Your back is turned by the time Dave proffers his own weak smile and wave. He watches you go, mapping every delicate curve of your backside with his eyes.

He doesn’t take you up on your offer of a free item.

He has a man to track down.

——

You find Audrey in the back room, hunched forward on the edge of a metal folding chair, palms pushed into her eyes.

You really can’t lose another barista. You’re overworked as it is and Maurizio cut everyone’s hours a couple of months ago, causing several of your best workers to quit, bringing you back around to square one. If she goes, you’ll have to work doubles for the unforeseeable future and, well, that wasn’t exactly ideal, considering Maurizio was constantly bitching at you about overtime…as if you could even help it.

You’d quit yourself if that was in the cards right now.

“Hey…” you offer, softly. “You okay?”

Audrey has only been working for you for three days; Maurizio hired her. She wouldn’t have been your first choice, since she was a little slow to pick things up, the job itself seeming to overburden her—but you couldn’t afford not to give her a chance. You need to tread lightly to keep her from bolting.

“Hey,” she replies back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to lose it like that. It’s just—well, I’m going through a bad break up right now…” she admits, raking thin fingers through bright pink hair. “And him yelling at me about his drink being wrong was just…y’know. Last straw,” she laughs nervously.

You nod, feeling a little bad about passing judgment so quickly, knowing you know exactly how she’s feeling, since that was you only a few months ago. Still is, probably.

“I understand completely. I just got over one of those myself,” you confess, crossing your arms. “It’s fine if you need a minute. Vincent and I got the front,” you say, trying to articulate things in a way that will make it less likely she’ll walk—at least, that’s the hope.

You had been here since 4AM and your head was steadily pounding. You hadn’t had a cigarette in hours. And then Audrey had gotten the drinks mixed up—it happens—causing Max to lose his temper and call her a string of things you didn’t want to repeat, even in your mind.

Max had been a regular as long as you’d been employed, but he was also an asshole. A regular asshole. You wouldn’t miss him, his tacky suits, or his penchant for cutting in line anytime soon.

You had to admit it gave you a little thrill to finally stand up to him, the pull you felt between your legs an undeniable tell. You think he felt it, too. Not that it matters.

Audrey nods, rubbing at her eyes again. “Yeah. I’ll be up in a bit,” she says, and you try to hide your sigh of relief. “It’s just—is it okay if I um—take half an edible? To take the edge off?” she asks.

You could give two shits what people do in their free time, but at work? You almost say no—almost—but change your mind quickly when you see the grief still playing on her features.

Truth be told, that sounds nice right about now.

“Sure,” you tell her. “But only if you give me the other half.”

——

Blessedly, Audrey doesn’t quit. The edible elevates her mood—like, a lot—and yours, as well. You feel great the rest of your shift, finally getting off work at two, when Sarah relieves you of your managerial duties for the day.

She notes your change in attitude, which you have to admit has been pretty dour these past few weeks. You lie and tell her it had been an easy going day, purposely neglecting to mention Max. No need to bring your elation back down.

You gather your things to leave, exhaling a long, exasperated sigh as you go. You’re going to enjoy the fuck out of this.

As an added bonus, you have tomorrow off, which you’ll undoubtedly spend sleeping in. And tonight—drinking your weight in alcohol, most likely.

Whatever passes the time.

You’re almost all the way to your apartment, puffing on the cigarette perched between your lips, slipping into the breezeway that shoulders your building, when you hear a voice from behind you that you could discern out of a line up.

Dark, crooning, dripping with condescension.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

It’s Max.

You almost think you heard wrong, your mind still hazy from the cannabis in your system. Surely it isn’t him—that would mean he followed you here, which is just goddamn creepy.

Yet you’re not at all surprised when you turn and see him standing there with his hands in his pockets. He’s shed his jacket since you last saw him, now clad only in a crisp white dress shirt, gray slacks and yellow tie, the look finished off with some plain brown dress shoes.

You aren’t sure what Max does for a living and you’ve never cared enough to find out, but he has all the characteristics of a corporate vampire: nice pressed suits, pristine grooming, preternatural cunning and arrogance out the ass.

You find yourself palming the pepper spray you keep in your purse. You’d bought it after Jonathan had left. You had yet to use it, but today might be the day.

“Max, I’m sorry, my decision is final—“ you start to say.

“Is it?” Max asks you, cutting you off. “Because last I checked, the shop belongs to Maurizio, not you, darling,” he says, sauntering steadily closer.

“And I don’t care. I’m the manager, I have the right to ban you,” you respond, trying your damndest to cling to your convictions.

“Uh huh. We’ll see what Maurizio has to say about that,” he replies, grinning crookedly as he stares down at you with shimmering dark brown eyes. You aren’t sure when it happened, but somehow Max has gotten a lot closer, the wall of the building almost at your back.

He holds up his cell phone so you can see the screen: Maurizio Bernardi, saved as a contact, plain as day. You feel your face go slack with realization.

“You… how do you know Maury?” you ask, flabbergasted. Your head swims, and everything suddenly feels bright and fuzzy at the periphery of your mind; you must be coming down from the THC.

“We went to school together! Isn’t that wild?” Max responds with a snorting laugh, slipping his phone back into his pocket. You’re fully pinned against the wall now by his breadth alone, and he hasn’t even touched you.

You could end this easily in two seconds flat with a blast of pepper spray straight to his face. There might be some blowback with the light breeze whipping through, and you’d most definitely lose your job since he’s friends with Maury, but it would be worth it knowing you put Max in his place once and for all.

Right?

He’s so close that you smell the faint scent of cologne mingled with the underlying odor of sweat. You feel your heart beating at your temples. You hadn’t been with anyone since Jonathan left, and you couldn’t deny you were touch starved. You swallow and stare back, your eyes searing into him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says, softly gripping your arm to remove your hand from your purse, as if he’s reading your mind. Your fingers go slack around the can of pepper spray.

“Wasn’t gonna do anything,” you snip, yanking your arm out of his grasp. “Can I go home now?”

Max crowds into your space, pushing you into the wall, gentle enough not to hurt but forceful enough to press your back to the rough of the brick. He plucks the now neglected cigarette from your other hand, which is burnt nearly to the filter.

“Filthy fucking habit,” he chides, placing it to his lips and taking a drag before discarding it between the two of you, where he snuffs it out with the sole of his shoe. “Didn’t figure you for the type.”

“You know nothing about me,” you retort.

“I know you tried to humiliate me today,” he says quietly. “I don’t appreciate being humiliated.”

“I don’t appreciate you yelling at my workers,” you bite back. You aren’t going to give him the satisfaction of intimidating you. “Do you know how understaffed we are right now as it is? I’m exhausted!” You attempt to duck under an arm; he blocks you.

“You manage—what? Six, seven people?” Max asks.

“Four,” you correct. “Because we’re grossly understaffed.”

He smirks. “That’s cute. Try three hundred. Then we’ll talk.”

“Okay, I get it. Point made. Can I go?” you ask, attempting to duck him again. He grabs your wrist this time.

“Not until I humiliate you like you humiliated me,” he threatens, locking eyes with you. His other hand drifts to the curve of your waist, almost swallowing you with the size of it. Your breath catches. He takes that as invitation.

“And just how do you plan on doing th—“

Your words dissipate mid sentence when aforementioned hand untucks your shirt from your pants, creating just enough of a pocket for it to slide in between.

You take in a deep breath as his fingers slowly glide up the plane of your stomach and rib cage; he reaches the swell of your breast, not hesitating at all to grab you there, reveling at the soft depth of it against his wide palm.

It’s fucked. Utterly fucked. A small part of you wants to kick him in the balls and run, but you can’t help but go boneless and pliant like fresh clay under his touch.

If you’re being honest with yourself, as much as you loathe him, it isn’t like you hadn’t thought about Max before today. He always looks so nice and sharp in his business suits; not to mention it’s been so long since anyone has put their hands on you. Your toys just aren’t doing the trick anymore.

You whimper and arch involuntarily into him. Judging by the flash of triumph in his eyes, he liked that.

“By making you scream my name so loud right here in the street, the entire state will know who I am by the time I’m done with you,” he taunts, accentuating his point with a tug of your nipple through the fabric of your bra.

“M-Max, I…” you half protest, half moan.

You what? You can’t? You don’t want to? You can hardly remember to breathe at this point.

“Yeah. Just like that,” he laughs softly. “You’ll be reduced to a quivering puddle by the time I’m through.” His other hand toys dangerously close to the waistband of your pants.

Your eyes flit to the street, which isn’t even twenty paces from where you’re wedged between him and the wall. No one is currently paying either of you any mind, but you have no doubt that would change if what he’s saying is true. You have zero reason not to believe him.

“Max, we can’t do this,” you say, finally able to find your voice. “Not here,” you add, so that he understands that you do want it, regardless of how fucked it may be.

He pops the top button of your pants. You do nothing to stop him.

“Then say the word, sweetheart. Tell me I’m not banned,” he whispers into your ear. “You’ll do that for me, right?” His hand skims lower, undoing a second button.

“You s-said… Maury…”

“I need to hear you say it,” he responds pointedly, grinding his pelvis into yours; the firm press of his cock dividing you at your center, pushing against your clit.

“Jesus… fuck…” you babble, your head falling against the wall with a painful thud.

You don’t need Audrey, right? Or time off, like…ever? The extra pay from overtime is nice…and Maury can bitch about it all he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s his fault, anyway. Not yours.

Nothing matters right now aside from the man rutting deliciously into your lap.

You aren’t sure what’s come over you. It could be the THC still firmly rooted in your brain, or the stress of the job getting to you, or both. Whatever the reason, you’re impervious to resist him and his off kilter, douchey kind of appeal.

“Say it,” he whispers, tongue flicking out to taste the salt of your flesh.

“My apartment is up-s-stairs,” you reply. He snaps his hips aggressively into you in retaliation, and you squeak.

“Say it,” he growls.

“Shit, Max! Fine! You win, you— You aren’t banned.”

“Good,” he responds with a wry smirk, dark eyes sparkling with gratification. You only just realize that your hand is twisted up in his tie, and his gaze follows your grip, fingers brushing along the inner line of your wrist. You shiver.

“Take me to your apartment,” he says. You let the words hang in the air between the two of you, eyeing each other; silently scrutinizing which one will break first.

Of course it’s you.

You don’t worry about fixing your clothes as you make a beeline for the side door of the building, Max trailing closely behind. They won’t be a problem in just a few minutes, anyway; hopefully you won’t run into anyone in the hall on the way up.

His hands are on you again by the time you reach the elevator, pushing under your shirt, pants riding down your hips when they have nothing to cling to. He presses you against the far wall of the elevator, teeth raking over your pulse point and bearing down. You moan.

“Knew you were a dirty fucking girl,” he groans into the curve of your neck.

You reach for his tie again, the other hand absently dragging his thigh for purchase. His hands squeeze your breasts, rolling them under the flat of his palm. You can barely breathe, let alone speak; you’ve never let someone manhandle you so brazenly before. And you kind of like it.

Finally, the elevator dings for your floor; Max pulls his hands free of your shirt and grabs you by the wrists, yanking you into the short and narrow hallway. You fall into his chest and he steadies you, hands bracketing around your hips.

“This one is mine,” you say, pointing to the faded green door over his left shoulder. For a moment, he steps back, allotting you the space needed to access your apartment.

You can barely get the key to slide into the lock you’re shaking so fucking bad, but you eventually get it to work.

Your apartment isn’t exactly tidy. You’ve never had company over before in all the time you’ve lived here, much less unexpected—you suppose it doesn’t matter, as he probably won’t even notice, or care.

You flick on the light and the small space is illuminated in dull fluorescence, revealing the whole 322 square feet of it, save for the bathroom. You toss your purse onto the couch, turning to face Max.

You start to open your mouth to offer him a drink—an engrained habit leftover from your upbringing—but he stifles the words before they can even be borne on your lips, a hand coming up to loosely circle your throat as he walks you backwards to the bed, his eyes hued inky black with lust.

It’s not at all surprising that he isn’t a man of formalities if his presence at the coffee shop is anything to go by. You would wonder if he’s this ruthless at his job if you didn’t already have a good inkling about that.

You jolt when your legs make contact with the mattress. He doesn’t waste time in removing your clothes once he has you there, beginning with your shirt, relieving you of the burden. Your bra is next, and as his eyes hone in on the hardened peaks of your nipples, you think to yourself you’ve never seen him look this pensive before.

“Fucking — perfect,” he whispers, rolling his thumbs over the stiff buds, eliciting a moan from somewhere deep in your chest.

The rest is a blur up until the moment he’s almost pushing inside of you, so desperate in his need to remove any offending article of clothing he somehow manages to do so in the space of a few seconds, your mingled clothes a discarded pile of rubbish on the floor next to the bed.

He’s more fit than you expect, the bulbous cut of his arms leading into sharp lines of pectoral muscles. His stomach is defined enough, in your opinion—a man doesn’t need rock hard abs to get you off, after all—the lower half of his torso curtained in a swathe of dark pubic hair.

His cock hangs low amid his thighs, already fully engorged, the head an angry shade of pink and weeping for you. You try to tear your gaze away as you take in the sight of him, and are only vaguely aware that he’s asking you something.

“—I said, do you have any condoms?” you realize.

Odd time to worry about condoms, when he had plenty of time to stop at the store on the way to you. It’s fine, though — you have some left over from Jonathan.

“In the drawer behind you,” you tell Max. He reaches around behind him, pulling one out a moment later, breaking the wrapper open with his teeth and rolling it over himself with expert finesse.

You scoot back on the bed, every nerve ending in your body on fire, your head falling back into one of your pillows as Max mounts and straddles you, caging you in with his long limbs.

He peers down at you, eyes shining dark with desire, his mouth so close to yours you can inhale his breath if you were so inclined; you want him to kiss you, to bite your tongue and lips with those perfect white teeth, but he seems to be intentionally avoiding doing so.

Keep it business. Keep it casual.

“Roll over,” he says softly, moving off of you, and for a fleeting moment, you’re nonplussed. You note a faint flash of yellow at your peripheral, and it takes you a moment to register what’s happening; you crane your neck over your shoulder to confirm your notion, spying the pale yellow shine of his tie unraveling between both fists.

“Cross your wrists at your back,” he quietly commands, his voice low and even, leaving no room for debate. A man skilled in so few words in the art of persuasion—of seduction.

You’ve never been tied up or restrained before—much less by a man you have absolutely no sexual experience with, one you probably shouldn’t put any faith of your safety in at all—but you obediently lattice your wrists at the bend of your spine, taking in a prolonged breath as your core thrums in anticipation between your legs.

Although you can’t see him, you can practically feel Max grinning at your back. You hear the smooth slide of silk between his fingers. A moment later, he’s slipping the tie under your linked arms, spiraling it deftly around your wrists until you’re completely bound together and the grip holds true.

You flex your hands against the makeshift cuffs, testing them. You’re surprised at how comfortable it is and how you can still rotate your wrists; only your arms are immobile—which is exactly what he wanted.

“On your side now,” he commands coolly. You don’t dare dawdle, scooting to one side as best you can, albeit with some added effort without the aid of your hands to push you over.

He slides into the bed next to you, pushing himself as flush as he can against your back since your arms are now in the way, pulling your leg up and over his hip, butterflying you open.

He reaches around to cup your sex, middle finger riding your seam until he reaches your expectant opening, pushing himself in to the first knuckle. He slides in easily and you can’t hide the fact that you’re already soaked.

“Fuck,” he whispers raggedly, his voice thick against your ear. “Somebody wants this.”

His erection drags over the hill of your ass. You’re breathing hard and your heart is racing a million miles an hour. You feel as though you could combust at any moment.

His finger slips further into your depths, languidly pumping until your arousal coats all the way to the final knuckle. He adds a second finger then, breathing heavily into the shell of your ear.

“You ready to take me, sweetheart? Fair warning—I don’t do soft.”

As if you had any other expectations after he just finished binding you with his fucking necktie.

“Y-yes,” you whisper, hoarse and oh so needy. His hand snaps against your exposed ass, your body recoiling at the sudden lance of pain.

“Beg me for it.”

“Please, Max, I need it,” you plead, your voice feeling small in your throat. You writhe against him to accentuate your point, your wrists flexing against the binds.

“Good,” he says softly, spitting into his palm and coating himself with it, sliding the head along your folds and notching himself at your entrance.

Your breath stalls when you feel him. He isn’t even in and it already seems like too much.

“Breathe,” he tells you, giving you a moment to pull fresh oxygen into your lungs. When your response is sufficient enough for him, he’s suddenly pushing into you, cleaving you in two; there’s a dull sting from how much he stretches you apart, and you’ve already lost your ability to think, to power your lungs.

“Breathe,” he says again, a venomous edge to his tone. “Don’t need you passing out on me.”

Cue your surprise when unresponsive isn’t really his thing. You’d always figured him as a much bigger creep than this, despite the fact that he literally has you pinned like prey.

You suck in more air as Max buries himself all the way to the hilt, softly spurring his pelvis deep, deep into yours from behind. “So fucking tight,” he rumbles against the rim of your ear, teeth scraping along the ridge of your jaw.

And then the onslaught begins. He’s right—he doesn’t do soft.

The first few gyrations, he’s pulling almost all the way out, only to crack his hips back into you as hard as he can, the head of his cock bumping the sensitive flesh of your back wall with each ministration. The sound that resonates is louder than expected and more than a little obscene, strangled whimpers escaping with each snap of his pelvis, skin slapping skin.

Each time the room goes silent in those void spaces between utterances, you almost think you hear something—or someone—in the hall just beyond the thin barrier of your door. Your neighbor, Mrs. Tobin? Hopefully she hasn’t heard anything. She’s already reported you in the past for watching your movies too loud—

But just as swiftly as the thought occurs to you, it’s just as easily dissipated, Max’s fingers digging into your hip to hold you in place as he begins to rail you as hard and fast as any man reasonably can, his breath hot and wet against the nape of your neck, every rough smack of his hips into yours a thinly veiled threat to unravel every last fiber of your being.

The sounds that you make in return are not human.

His other hand comes up to cradle your chin, bowing your neck to a barrage of pearly whites, bearing down on the delicate crossroads of your neck and shoulder. The sting of incisors making purchase with your flesh causes you to yelp, your head misty from the feeling, toeing a line between pain and pleasure.

“Good girl, sweetheart. Taking me like a champ,” he growls breathlessly.

The hand riding your hip slithers around to where he’s currently splitting you open, gathering your natural lubrication on the pads of his fingers as he begins to slowly admonish attention to your sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Oh fuck!” you yelp, bucking involuntarily as you chase the feeling. That solicits a laugh from Max, who seems quite pleased with himself.

“You like that?” he asks you, all the while still pumping into you from behind with everything he can muster; you have to admit his stamina is admirable.

You make some kind of inhuman mewl in reverence. His touch stokes fire deep within you, your pleasure mounting to dizzying heights, and you can’t remember the last time a man made you feel so coveted.

You can’t believe you could have been doing this all these long and lonely months. You should bar him from your shop more often.

“Kiss me, please,” you whine, folding your head behind you to lounge against his shoulder. The grip on your chin tightens, fingertips digging in, almost painfully so; there might be bruises there later.

“You take what I give you,” he tuts, gnashing his incisors along the soft of your throat.

If it’s possible, his grueling, punishing speed increases to near paralyzing, and you’re close to seeing stars. His fingers swirl lazily around your clit by comparison.

And then, without preamble or warning, he stops, pulling himself free from you. You chirp in protest at the loss, your walls clenching around nothing.

“What? Max…”

“Face down,” he instructs. “Quickly, now.”

You shoulder the mattress for stability as you roll yourself over without use of your arms, hands straining against the necktie still spooled around your wrists.

He enters you from behind the moment you assume the position, pumping into you at a far more leisurely pace than only seconds ago.

The wide breadth of his palms splay across your ass cheeks, spreading you apart as he watches you swallow him from behind. He’s much deeper at this angle, the head of his cock kissing your g-spot with every slow thrust.

You flinch when you feel his thumb graze against the muscular ring of flesh between your cheeks. He chuckles darkly.

“Bet you’d let me fuck your tight little asshole, wouldn’t you? Such a supplicant little cock sleeve for me.” You moan at the derision. “Yeah, you are. Glad we agree.”

His hands bracket your hips with stupefying strength, which will most assuredly brand you with the lines of his fingers, but you’re sure that’s what he wants. He pulls you back into him, spearing you onto his length. The new angle makes you scream.

“That’s it. Take it all,” he rumbles, resuming the previous breakneck speed, railing you with such ferocity there’s no way in hell half the city isn’t aware of Max’s presence in your pussy right now.

“F-fuck, Max—“ you bite, the mention of his name only furthering him along.

He rewards you by moving his hand back to your swollen clit, fingers flicking over the sensitive nub until you’re gasping for air, a string of curses and otherwordly noises escaping your lips. You’re staggeringly close.

“That’s it. You gonna come for me? Come on me, sweetheart. I need to feel you.”

He impales you with uninhibited exuberance from behind, your bed shuddering from each impact, and you know you’ll be feeling him between your legs for a week.

A few more hard, rough administrations and the tether abruptly snaps, your orgasm washing over you, ripping through your entire being with a scream-strangled-moan that your neighbors will definitely hear if they happen to be home.

It doesn’t take Max much longer than you to come apart in your wake, his breath stuttering in his chest and a loud, guttural snarl bursting forth, and for several prolonged seconds as he milks the remaining traces of himself into the condom, you can hear just how easily he fell apart inside of you.

You press your face into the cool of the sheets beneath the pillow, breathing hard, waiting for Max to untie you as he pulls himself out of you with a grunt.

You think you hear a faint noise in the corridor again; it almost sounds like the squeak of sneakers on linoleum. And then it’s gone.

You really, really hope it wasn’t your neighbor.

——

Dave doesn’t have to track Max down; the contemptuous man practically delivers himself to your front stoop.

How convenient.

He first hears you in the small slice of courtyard that divides your buildings, his window always propped open at this time of day so he can watch for when you inevitably return home from work.

The sight of him instantly makes Dave bristle; moreso when Max crowds into your space, and it takes everything in him not to rush to your aid again, saving you from Max for the second time in the span of a day.

But it’s your receptiveness to Max’s attention that gives him pause before he has a chance to act brash. You were ready to string Max’s entrails from the streetlights this morning—and now here you were, moaning and arching into his touch. What changed?

Dave feels a lance of jealousy and in spite of the sweet sounds you’re making, his trigger finger twitches more than a few times.

He keeps his eyes trained on your face as he watches you, studying you from afar; the way your eyelids flutter shut, the small bite of your own lip. The image forever burned into his brain, going straight to Dave’s cock.

He should be the one making you feel good, making you make those pretty sounds; not some guy poorly portraying the role of a cheap car salesman.

He pulls his cock free from his pants while he keeps his eyes locked on you, stroking himself in semi-circular motions as you are subjected to being handled by another man, glimpsing a small flash of skin as Max lifts your shirt to fondle your breast.

Again, it should be him. Dave would treat you right. He would make you come so many times you would forget your own name by the time he was through.

And then you’re disappearing into the confines of your building with Max in tow before he can blink.

——

It isn’t difficult to get into the building. It’s actually alarming how simple it was for Dave to decipher, simultaneously compressing the pound and asterisks keys on the keypad next to the door until the light flashes green and he hears the click of a lock disengaging.

Too easy.

He finds your apartment just as readily, having memorized its location from watching you as frequently as he does. He takes the stairs rather than the elevator so that the sounds of the rickety old bucket don’t alert you to his presence, pausing at the top stoop of the stairs which just so happens to face your door.

Number 8. Your apartment is number 8.

He listens for any sign that he’s given his location away. When he’s convinced he’s safe from being discovered, he creeps closer to your apartment.

It isn’t what it seems like, he tells himself. He just wants to make sure you’re safe. That this guy doesn’t hurt you.

He wants to be there to protect you. At least, that’s what Dave tells himself.

He sits on the dirty linoleum floor next to your door, his back facing the wall. For the first several minutes, he’s able to contain himself, listening for any signs of distress.

That is, until he hears your sweet moans and whimpers, the sounds of rough sex drifting with very little left to the imagination into the corridor. Dave’s jaw clenches and he breaks into a sweat just from listening to your high, keening revelations of sex.

It should be him. It should be him.

He understands how wrong, how perverse and reductive it is, to be listening to you like this. To impede on your privacy for his own personal gratification. To be so fucking turned on by it. He knows this.

And yet he doesn’t give it a second thought when he slips his hand into his pants to fist himself, pressed up against your door, fucking into his clenched palm like a teenager with their first porno mag, at the lascivious sounds of you being fucked by another man—a man that should be him.

He has enough sense to check for cameras, at least. Doubtful they would even review the footage without cause, but a cursory sweep of the area doesn’t hurt.

There are none. Now it’s just a matter of not getting caught by one of the other residents.

Dave thinks of you. He pictures the face you were making in the courtyard, imagining himself in Max’s stead. He’s getting off to your beautiful noises, and god, are you good at making them. He wonders how high your whimpers could get if he were the one fucking you. How you would look sheathing his cock.

If you were his, there wouldn’t be a single day you didn’t know his touch.

It’s all too much. His head swims, his vision goes white. You make a particularly raucous moan and that’s all it takes, a sound escaping his lips before he realizes he’s making it, thick ropes of spend spurting onto his stomach beneath his shirt. Thankfully, you don’t seem to hear him, his own utterance of ecstasy drowned out by the cacophony of your own and Max’s as you each come mere seconds after Dave does.

He doesn’t have any way of cleaning himself up like this, and a heavy blanket of shame settles over him within moments of coming down from the high of his climax. He does what he can, rubbing the thick globs of semen into his skin until it disperses.

He registers a sound then—someone getting off the bed, he surmises—and quickly climbs to his feet, the sole of his sneaker betraying him in a rush of movement. Shit.

He makes a beeline for the stairs, hoping you didn’t hear. When no one says anything, he supposes you didn’t.

——

Dave finds you on the street later that night.

He can tell by looking at you that you’re freshly showered, your hair shimmering in the faint glow of the setting sun. You’re dressed comfortably in a plain black tank top that swoops down to reveal the barest hint of cleavage—lest you decide to lean over, that is—and bike shorts that are meant to replicate leopard spots, only in purple.

You have one of your reusable grocery bags slung over your shoulder, the large one with all the pictures of fresh produce printed on it, and Dave can tell by the heft of it that you’ve just come from the grocery store a few blocks down.

He can’t ignore you anymore. Not after rushing to your defense this morning, and especially not after hearing you getting fucked on the other side of the door while he came hard for you. He has to talk to you. He needs to talk to you.

He steps into your line of sight a moment later, apprehensively lifting his hand in a wave. You spot him right away.

“Oh. Hey,” you say. “Dave, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. His eyes rake over you. You swallow.

“I just wanted to check on you. You know, since this morning,” he continues. “I know we see each other around a lot.”

You nod and take him in; he’s massive this close, with broad, muscular shoulders. He’s wearing a Boston Celtics shirt and loose Nike shorts. Judging by the semicircle of perspiration flowering out from the V of his armpits, you deduce that he’s been jogging again. He does that a lot, you think.

And you would be right. His climax earlier wasn’t enough to quell his desire for you, to hamper the gnawing restlessness he constantly feels. He needed to expend his anxious energy somehow.

Jogging wasn’t working either.

And now that he’s this close, he wishes he could touch you. Pull you into his arms and kiss you—since Max hadn’t.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you for asking…and again for this morning,” you say.

He places his hands on his hips, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. “Yeah, of course. It isn’t—it’s not a problem,” he says. I always want to protect you, he wants to add.

An uncomfortable silence settles in the space between both of you. You think you should probably leave.

“Would you like to get dinner somewhere?” Dave suddenly blurts out, a desperate tinniness to his voice. He looks at the sad boxes of mac and cheese in your grocery bag—not even name brand, since you’re doing all you can to save money.

You almost say no. Truthfully, it weirds you out that you had sex with another man not even hours ago, and now your neighbor is asking you out to dinner when he’d barely spoken to you before today.

It’s not like the sex meant anything. Max had made that abundantly clear and besides, you still hated his guts. But two men in one day, while still struggling with a messy breakup? You aren’t sure if you can handle that.

You almost say no. Almost.

Dave offers to carry your groceries for you.

You let him.

Part Two

#fanfic #pedro pascal #max phillips #dave york #female reader #bloodsucking bastards #equalizer 2 #pedro fanfic #romance #writing #author

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 1 month

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Timeline: Part 9 - December 1-10 2017

For earlier timeline posts: click here or here.

December starts out strong with a daily bombardment of tons of stories about Meghan and/or Harry. Their PR backs off in the middle of the month, but only barely. Luckily for us, there is salvation: Meghan gets her first, second, third, and fourth dose of royal criticism.

Like I mentioned in the November 2017 timeline, this month sees Meghan pulling her support from Star Magazine, US Weekly, and E Online. People Magazine begins to earn her loyalty instead.

Ok, apparently I exceeded the limit of links that can be in a Tumblr post. the December edition is going to be split up into smaller segments. I've got a solution for how to fix this going forward, but it's going to take some time to figure out how to implement it.

12/1/2017: Fleet Street has a fever and the solution is more Harkle coverage.

Doria is papped at a laundromat in California.

Another story about Ninaki's photos of Meghan.

Can Kate cope with Meghan Mania?

Harry and Meghan make their first appearance together at a royal engagement.

Meghan and Pippa look alike.

Meghan and Harry's engagement is straight from Love Actually.

Meghan's old men's magazine photoshoot resurfaces.

Replica of Meghan's ring is an instant bestseller.

Meghan merches her outfit.

Meghan's 1993 Nick at Nite appearance reserfaces.

Meghan is Best Dressed of the Week.

Meghan's resume will seriously surprise us.

Anything Kate can do, Meghan can do better: First Royal Engagement edition.

Meghan's royal style vs her old Suits style.

Meghan leaks intent to visit US and Canada after the wedding in her first official foreign royal tour.

12/2/2017: Meghan's "draw your own box" essay goes viral again, as does her old Larry King Show interview. The Markles sell more pictures of Meghan, Meghan once tried to hook up with Ashley Cole but failed, and she makes a dig at William and Kate with a story about her and Harry holding hands.

12/3/2017: Meghan merches the Botswana camp again. The Times writes about Meghan's old instagram account and Bogart and leads speculation about bridesmaids and pageboys. Et tu, Times?!

Note: December 2 is a Saturday and December 3 is a Sunday. How nice Meghan's PR gave us a break for the weekend. But don't worry...the bombardment is back!

12/4/2017: Harkle Mania continues

About Meghan's ring

Meghan once auditioned for Shakira

All about Thomas Markle

Meghan leaks her expectations of marital bliss.

Meghan leaks that Harry has asked William to his best man. (Note, in Spare, Harry argues that this leak came from Kensington Palace but the source is US Weekly...Meghan's magazine.)

Wedding dress designer predictions

Meghan Markle Under Fire: Why is the Future Princess the Subject of So Much Scrutiny? (From E News, a Meghan affiliate)

Let the Misogynistic Public Shaming of Meghan Markle Now Commence (From Vogue, part of the CondeNast empire, to which People Magazine also belongs...Meghan affiliate)

Meghan Markle the garden influencer

Meghan's photoshoot charity work in Rwanda resurfaces.

What's with Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and Bananas? (I kid you not, that's the title of the article.)

Will Meghan's wedding be like Pippas?

Meghan and Harry love bananas some more - they merch a banana cake.

12/5/2017: New day, same shit. Senior royals attend the Diplomatic Reception at Buckingham Palace but Meghan and Harry skip it to attend the Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund carol concert (pssh...like they were even invited to the Diplomatic Reception in the first place).

Daily Mail promotes Suits

Meghan's style inspiration is Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

Meghan merches clothes from when she was a teenager.

Harry appears on Top Gear.

Meet Meghan's celebrity doppelganger.

Meghan wants to wear the Spencer tiara for the wedding.

Meghan merches her engagement ring again.

Meghan the beauty icon.

12/6/2017: (le sigh...)

Who does Meghan curtsey to?

Meghan manifests The Lover's Knots Tiara for the wedding.

Nobody told Meghan she was pretty as a kid. (But did they ask her if she was OK?)

Meghan leaks about Ninaki's betrayal.

Harry attends the London Fire Brigade Carol Service alone, and so does his ex, Cressida. Meghan is upset and leaks that she is in LA visiting her mother.

Meghan merches Strathberry.

Can Meghan rewrite the royal fairytale?

Meghan the fashion influencer

12/7/2017: Another story about Misha Nonoo being the royal matchmaker. Thomas Markle does a papwalk. Meghan merches a pilates workout and is "incredibly moved" by how much people love her.

12/8/2017: The Crown Season 2 is released on Netflix

Meghan's old home video of her driving around LA resurfaces.

How Meghan won over Harry's friends.

Doria gets papped in LA.

Meghan leaks that she and Harry are staying with William and Kate at Anmer Hall for Sandringham Christmas.

Meghan leaks that William is planning Harry's stag party.

Meghan manifests for Selena Gomez to play her on The Crown.

World Vision promotes Meghan's charity work again.

All about Nottingham Cottage and Meghan's interior design style

Kate takes style inspiration from Meghan

12/9/2017: Meghan merches her Toronto rental. Harry quits smoking.

12/10/2017:

Meghan's old Tig article waxing poetic on Ivanka Trump resurfaces.

Harry goes to Germany with friends for a hunting party.

Doria does a papwalk.

Kensington Palace announces that Meghan will attend Sandringham Christmas and that she is expected to attend the Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace.

Old photos from a 2009 TV appearance Meghan did resurface.

William and Harry choose a sculptor for Diana's Kensington Palace statue.

Meghan hailed as a royal fashion asset.

#brf #timeline #sussexes #pr shenanigans

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a30somethingslookatpopculture · 4 months

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Top 10 Holiday Themed Horror Movies

(In no particular order)

Any holiday goes! With the exception of one, I will be avoiding more than one film from a franchise. Because otherwise, I could just fill this list with Friday The 13th films and call it a day. But the one I am making an expectation for is self explanatory, as it's COMPLETELY different from the rest of the series.

Friday The 13th

Yes, it is holiday themed in name only, but hey, any excuse for me to watch slasher films every F13, i’m in! There’s nothing I can say about this film that I haven’t said a thousand times before. It is my favorite movie of all-time

My Bloody Valentine (OG)

Hearts ripped out & sent in heart shaped Valentines with fun poems…A killer who emerges on February 14th to kill those who have parties that day? Sign me up! This one required just a little bit of internal debate, because I thoroughly enjoy the remake as well. But I ultimately decided on the original. I am an 80s Slasher movie junkie! That being said, I love the look and feel of this film more. The spx are so fantastic that even the director threw up at the sight of one of them. That’s pretty awesome to me! I also love the authentic look of the mine (coal mining means a great deal to me). The laundromat scene is probably one of my top favorite horror movie scenes. And shoutout to “The Ballad of Harry Warden” that plays at the end, too! It’s a bop! (Gosh, am I old for using that term? lol)

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch

To me, this is the ultimate Halloween movie! It captures both the spooky, horror atmosphere as well as the commercialism of the holiday. And a bonus, the masks are modeled after classic Halloween figures.

Halloween

It’s Halloween, everyone’s entitled to one good scare! Halloween is the better movie, I just have a soft spot in my heart for III. Again, there’s nothing I could say about 1978’s Halloween that hasn’t been said before. It is probably THE holiday movie of all holiday movies.

Gremlins

As much as I love Christmas, most films I wait until December to watch. But Gremlins is one that I can watch at any time of the year, and I'm always down for it. I adore it! It captures the feel of Christmas so perfectly. Snowy landscapes, the decor, caroling Mogwai/Gremlins, kills using Christmas items, Gismo is even given as a Christmas present!

Black Christmas

This is one of the earliest Slasher movies, starring the great Margot Kidder. It takes the classic killer calling from inside the house trope and makes the most magical time of the year scary. There’s nothing I can say about this one that hasn’t been said before. It’s well worth the watch!

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Another Christmas one, because how could I not? This time, Santa is our killer. Sort of. It’s very festive and has some gory-good kills! Here’s looking at you, antler scene!

Leprechaun

The great Warrick Davis is a cunning and witty leprechaun in this one, who kills for his gold. It’s a fun St. Patrick’s Day watch each year that's full of laughs (any of the films really, but especially this one). And hey, we have to thank this movie for jumpstarting Jennifer Aniston’s career!

Trick 'r Treat

This one tells five separate but interconnected stories on Halloween night. Each spooky, and fun in their own way. But little “Sam”, a supernatural trick or treater, is the real star of the film. He‘s there to enforce the “rules of Halloween” with his candy themed weapons! He’s oddly adorable.

Happy Death Day

Groundhogs Day…but on your Birthday? What a wonderful idea! Add in being killed over and over again on your special day. What a wild concept.

Honorable Mention: My Bloody Valentine (Remake), Thankskilling, Valentine, Jack Frost, Krampus, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Jaws - those two totally count in my mind lol

#my blog #top 10 #horror movies #Friday The 13th #My Bloody Valentine #Leprechaun #Silent Night Deadly Night #Happy Death Day #Gremlins #Halloween #Halloween III Season Of The Witch #Trick R Treat #Black Christmas

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kennys-parka-jacket · 6 months

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Today is all about food so I made a few picrews about my headcanons for the mccormick siblings and the meals they like. Also their diets are tied to their jobs so career headcanons too

Karen

Homegirl loves her sweets. With savory food she's more of a picky eater, so when she gets burgers it's just meat and bread and cheese for her. Not as big of an appetite as her brothers. She mainly supported herself as a freelance artist, so what went into her body was never too important.

Kenny

He's honestly kinda sick of all the sugary meals Carol makes at home and by the time he moves out he'd rather stick his head in the oven than eat cold cereal for dinner again. Before his career as a humanitarian took off he did a lot of manual labor and needed to pack in some protein in order to do his job without getting seriously injured. Lover of potatoes in any form and he'd eat them for breakfast lunch and dinner if he could. (For a long time I headcanoned that he has a major sweet tooth because of the meals he grew up with, but in canon whenever he has the option to choose his own food he mostly gets savory stuff, so I think the poptarts and bread sandwiches are something he only eats because he has to).

Kevin

Appreciates his carbs and starches. Leans more towards the sweet side. If his food isn't loaded with sugar or a beautiful golden color then he doesn't want it. The only vegetables he'll eat are the onion rings that come with his burger dripping with extra cheese. As an adult his jobs were mostly stuff like collecting garbage or working the dayshift at a laundromat; stuff that allowed him to be independent and didn't require a degree, but it wasn't super crucial for him to maintain a ton of muscle.

Picrews I used

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princessmisery666 · 2 years

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PM666Reads - Fic Recs - July 2022

Please heed all the warnings on the individual fics. I am not responsible for what you choose to read.

To the authors - thank you for putting in the work 💕no one gets enough recognition so thank you for taking the time to write and being brave enough to share it with us 💟

📖Sam Winchester

Cuddling - @justagirlinafandomworld -

Bake My Breath Away - @writercole - Sam used to have the best bakery in town– until one day, his brother stops coming to him for pie.

📖Bradley Bradshaw

Lieutenant Bradshaw Pt 1-3 - @evansrogerskitten - Rooster was always an attentive, sweet, passionate lover who made sure you always got what you needed. But then one day you find out there was something the Lieutenant needed. And he wasn’t going to ask twice.

A Glimpse Of Them - @bradshawsbaby - Not sure if request are open so if not ignore me but have you considered an imagine of Maverick watching Rooster and his wife and it reminding him of Goose and Carole? Like maybe Mrs Bradshaw is sitting on Rooster’s lap as he plays piano and they’re being cute and Maverick gets nostalgic. Either way love love your blog!

Prank Wars - @mavswife - HC prank wars

Crash Landing - @writercole - Sometimes, it takes throwing yourself in imminent danger to realize your true feelings.

Hold My Hand - @w0nderw0mansw0rld - It’s rare that Bradley and you have a whole weekend to yourselves, so whenever that was the case you made the most of it.

A Very Dangerous Game - @a-reader-and-a-writer - no summary

Rise & Shine - @wildbornsiren - Waking up to Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw hogging your bed after a night of fooling around leads to some birthday morning celebration.

Push - @wildbornsiren - All you and Bradshaw really need is a push. Luckily the team is there to help you out.

📖Jake Seresin

Whispered Promise - @writercole - You don’t date Navy pilots. But you might make an exception when one wants to take you for a ride.

Soft - @bradshaw-fanclub - Unpopular opinion? I fully believe Hangman is a cocky SOB, ‼️BUT‼️ I also believe he has this soft side of him that comes out when he’s with the girl he falls like head over heals for. So I took that and absolutely ran with it, dudes

Liminal Space - @wildbornsiren - Of all the places you could have run into Jake “Hangman” Seresin, the laundromat wasn’t even on the list. Even more unusual, he’s claiming that you’re the one that got away after a night of drinking.

Worth The Wait - @a-reader-and-a-writer - no summary

Mercy - @writercole - A bet puts Jake at his girlfriend’s mercy. Until he can’t take anymore.

Again - @wildbornsiren - Just a drabble about Jake getting his face wet.

Face fucking - @lorecraft - no summary

Lazy Mornings - @seresinhangmanjake -

Gotta Be Quicker - @2fabul0us4 - you join your fellow pilots on the beach for a game of football with a side of flirting.

The Competition Never Ends - @justalonelyslytherin - Jake gets the best surprise his wife could give him before both of them get surprised with the gender of their little one. In true Hangman fashion, he organized something grand.

Night Owl - @youlightmeupfinn - One thing that Hangman never understood was how you functioned as a night owl. But it’s one of those things, he wouldn’t trade for anything in this world.

He Calls You 'My Girl' - @youlightmeupfinn - HC

Untitled flangst drabble - @wildbornsiren - no summary

Untitled fluff drabble - @winterscaptain - no summary

Untitled smut - @charnelhouse - no summary

Why Don't You Stay & Not The Wife - @writercole - Jake’s gotta leave. Phoenix has some wise words

Easy - @evansrogerskitten - Jake edges you all night at the annual Navy Ball

📖Robert Floyd

Call Me By My Name -@writercole - Bob’s girlfriend learns a very valuable lesson.

The Bet - @a-reader-and-a-writer - no summary

Fireworks - @writercole - Bob’s girlfriend gets a firework show of her own.

Magnetism - @wildbornsiren - They say if you love something, set it free. You walked away years ago and Bob let you go. But now you’re back, fate dealing him a hand he never thought he’d get.

📖Dean Winchester

Second Chances pt. 13 & 14 - @waywardbaby - He is a man starting new, seeking a second chance after everything he ever loved was lost. She is a woman running away from her past, trying to forget and make a new beginning. Their paths cross at “Second Chances”, a bar that may very well mean its name and help both of them find exactly what they’re looking for.

Sacrifice - @deanwinchesterswitch - sac’ri·fice’ v. 1 to give up something that is valuable to you in order to help another person 2 to give up something for something else considered more important (Cambridge Dictionary, 2020)

Reluctant Renegade prologue - @deangirl93 - After the night that saw his transformation into a vampire, resulting in the death of his wife, Dean spends his lifetime seeking revenge on the one that turned him. Reluctantly living outside the law because of what he is, he finds his niche as a bounty hunter, hired by families looking for someone, anyone to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. He doesn’t play by the rules, finding justice for the victims by any means necessary. But as dead bodies rack up and catch the attention of a young, naive but by-the-book detective, she won’t stop until she finds out who’s responsible for them. Dean knows he has to convince her of his innocence, but can he do that while maintaining his secret? And when the alpha that sired him finds him first, can he keep Y/N safe?

📖Bucky Barnes

Sunglasses and Orange Peels - @justagirlinafandomworld

Oh, Bucky - @justagirlinafandomworld - Just before your third date, Bucky takes a hit to the head during a mission which messes up some of his speech. But he wants to score with you, so he’s got to be clever to pass for normal.

📖Steve Rogers

Backstage Romance - @cockslutpadalecki - Being given the opportunity to host an award show alongside Steve Rogers is a dream come true, and when he propositions you as you’re about to go on stage, you find it hard to concentrate on anything other than your co-host’s filthy mouth.

Is It Too Late Now To Say Sorry - @cockslutpadalecki - mean!Steve washes your mouth out with soap when you curse in front of him 😈

Engaged - @cockslutpadalecki - Steve’s not happy he’s being replaced.

Diner Date - @justagirlinafandomworld - no summary

📖Soldier Boy

When Reality Is Worse than the Lies They Told Me - @kickingitwithkirk - The Boys have come to hide out with you

Untitled smut drabble - @charnelhouse - I can’t get the thought of soldier boy taking me from behind. Face forced down into the bed. Him calling me a desperate little slut and telling me if u want it so bad to fuck myself on his cock.

📖Henry Cavill

Risky - @littlefreya -What would cockwarming Henry be like?

📖Rhett Abbott

Look What You Made Me Do - @writercole -Rhett sends his girlfriend a little something while she’s on a business trip.

Sweet & Sugar - @wildbornsiren - Rhett Abbott drops by to help you repair some fences. He finds out exactly how sweet you are.

Riding Rhett - @hederasgarden - Rhett teaches you the proper way to ride a bull (and him).

I'm Jaded - @wildbornsiren - The morning after isn’t always a disappointment.

After Midnight - @wildbornsiren - It doesn’t matter if he’s won or lost, just that he’s home.

Declaration - @wildbornsiren - Rhett decides to take things public.

📖Lloyd Hansen

Under The Cover Of Darkness - @cockslutpadalecki - Managing to escape Lloyd is a feat in itself, but staying hidden? Impossible.

#Jake Seresin #Bradley Bradshaw #Robert Floyd #Henry Cavill #Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #Rhett Abbott #Soldier Boy #lloyd hansen #sam winchester #dean winchester

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the-firebird69 · 11 months

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This guy Mack Daddy and he took our son's visor and the other day at the laundromat he took a pillowcase. I was doing the stuff on purpose it's his asinine code he is doing it to Carol and Dave and they said give it back he said no I said you're going to penalize you in a sense is giving back or I'm going to kill you and stupid son of a b**** says no then you're going to die yes we're advisor I don't have anything if you're calling them advisors or something I don't care that's what I'm saying to say I'm going to kill you over advisor you're going to die over a 25 cent piece of plastic I don't care if it's for you... I don't care who you are I want my f****** visor back I don't care what you say you are you're nobody to me cuz you're a f****** retard

No he said that to Mac Daddy and he started listening to what you're saying I don't have anything if you take for me I'm going to get rid of you I can't be seen as someone taking stupid s*** for me and starts laughing saying that he's going to pay with his life for the stupid visor and he stopped laughing because other people are saying it we don't care about you you're the enemy and you're taking stuff from him and pissing us and you're telling him all sorts of stuff you're this f****** liar and it started hitting him so don't forget the event Arnold is riding on him and they're they're going like this you people are hurting his family they don't care you don't know anything about this stupid s*** you're a f****** dead man so he's running around afterwards trying to find you he said and he's not he's screwing around with you and he's running up the flag and he's telling all such stories finally just telling you I can't stand you anymore it comes over to where they are and he says this I didn't take those things from him and all sudden he says you're the only one at the washer when it was open. You left it in but then again the guys threatening you to do it so he goes like this so what does he want the thing for what if it's a bag for your head so he goes like this I suddenly see something you need to be straightened out on your language but you're probably right yeah so don't come advisor cuz he's going to take the visor please helmet he's going to try to rest you can you please help me probably electric light in blue and a police helmet. So he goes like this oh I'm going to check that and that's what he's looking at it's the guess.

So the idiots are taking the stuff and they're attacking Mac but things are taking from our son and they're not taking from us they're taking teeny things from him he doesn't have any money to lose now aren't this guy in jail and I told people to stop him and you didn't stop him and I ordered you to instead of trying they couldn't they had some situations it says it's too big they can really small the excuses cut the fat cut the barley cut the weeds cut everything out of there and try and cut them too at the same time so I can't tell so they went to town on they took everybody out they could and they're doing it now I said call me a huge Army tell him to stop building them motorcycles for a minute and everything else and they stopped and it went out there they went after this guy and we took everything they had and we're going after him with huge armies in the upper Midwest or decimating this areas and taking tons of his stuff Mac is doing it now too I've had enough of the stupid show or someone's privy to these f****** weirdos were half dead all the time and shoot him in the head and they come back in a few minutes asking for it again I've had it with this crap thier done

Thor Freya

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wildcatofgreen · 1 year

Note

A black hooded figure appears right behind Carol, and vanish again when the cat noticed 'it'.

"A ku on tu wa~♩.

"Shu o du vi se~♫." She's just kind of idly singing to herself, washing her clothes using the palace's little laundromat. Caught her at a very mundane time.

Though, the feeling of something behind her wasn't there at first, as time went on and she continued to sing, she felt it's presence more and more.

"Viamuru siasonnu oryugure etituw--" Ear twitch.

"Huh?"

She turned to look behind herself, but only caught a half second glimpse of the figure.

. . .

"Guess it's just my imagination...? Stones, that felt kinda weird."

#carol's cruisings #asks #anonymous #bonus points to anyone who could somehow guess the song she's singing #also the longest running plotline in this blog's history is this hooded figure just #being AROUND carol at random points #and then not doing anything significant enough to warrant anything but a ''huh?''#seriously ive looked back at the old blog and found bits and pieces of this that i had not realized were just a Consistent Thing.#this isnt me reprimanding this is me clapping #because if its the same person then thats dedication and i applaud #shit even if its not the same person I STILL APPLAUD #ive finally noticed you and i think the black hooded man is funny and deserves to be a main character

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oldsalempost-blog · 1 year

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The Old Salem Post

Contact: [email protected] Distributed to local businesses, town hall, library. Volume 7 Issue 2 Week of November 28, 2022 https://www.tumblr.com/settings/blog/oldsalempost-blog Lynne Martin Publishing

EDITOR: On Sunday afternoon Nov 27, a mule drawn wagon delivered a donated Christmas tree to downtown Salem for our first community Christmas Tree. Sweet events unite people. Staying local has been my mantra for years. Stay local and create memories right here at home. Salem has everything to offer you and our visitors this weekend as you see the list below. Come and join in on our wonderful, welcoming community. Come and make some new sweet memories. LRMartin

TOWN OF SALEM: *Downtown Market every Sat. 8am-12pm. Christmas Parade Dec 4 at 4pm. Line up at 3pm. Call the town to register, 944-2819 DROP OFF for TOYS for TOTS!

Monday-Friday– Make a memory ornament for your loved ones and place on the Town tree. Or, have Eagles Nest Art Center make one for you for $10. We can place ornaments for you all month.

Friday Night: Join the lighting of the First Community Christmas Tree in downtown Salem. 6pm Christmas Story. Prayer. Christmas Carols. Light a memory candle.

Saturday: 8am-12pm Shop the Downtown Open area Market. Saturday: 6pm: Doors open for the Christmas Holiday Show by Darin and Brook Aldridge at the Eagles Nest Art Center, the former T-S auditorium. Tickets $25 at Town Hall. Show starts at 7pm. Shop our treasure store and enjoy hot coffee, hot cocoa, drinks and homemade goodies. Sunday: 3pm Line up for the Christmas Parade at 4pm. Come see the best hometown parade!

2022 DRIVE THRU LIVING NATIVITY– Fri-DEC 9, Sat-DEC 10, Sun-DEC 11, 6PM-8PM, 4 Eagle Lane, Salem SC.

ASHTON RECALLS By Ashton Hester WHITEWATER FALLS ROAD ADVOCATED IN 1951 - (The following story was in the June 28, 1951 issue of the Keowee Courier). . .One of Oconee county's great scenic attractions--picturesque Whitewater falls--got a boost during the past week from a visitor from Chicago, Ill., after he accompanied Roy Littleton, a member of the Salem-Whitewater Club, to view the area. . .The Chicagoan is Jack Beall, an Eastern Airlines executive, who along with Dick Meeks of the Anderson Chamber of Commerce, came to Oconee to see the falls and surroundings. Mr. Beall told Mr. Littleton that he will be back in South Carolina again later in the summer, and he definitely intends to see the falls again. . ."Whitewater falls, I believe, is among the few rare sights still denied to the great American public," Mr. Beall declared, "and I am in full agreement with your idea that a good, permanent roadway should be provided so that such a view can be appreciated by many." . ."This road would also become of great value to the upper end of the state in making it possible for the people in this territory to get through to the other states without the long, hard drive that it takes today," he added. . .Mr. Beall said that, since visiting Whitewater falls, he has described their grandeur in many other places he has visited. . .(Footnote written in 2022: Jack Beall liked Oconee County so much that he and his wife, Betty, moved to Mountain Rest upon their retirement. They were very active in the Mountain Rest Community Club, and both lived into their 80s. Mr. Beall was in charge of publicity for Hillbilly Day for several years, and he would visit the Keowee Courier office each year prior to the event to bring us a press release. Mrs. Beall was an accomplished artist, and the Courier did a story featuring her artwork.

DIANE HEAD MEMORIAL STONE: The town of Salem recently placed a marker memorializing Salem’s first female mayor who served from 2007-2018. She served even while she fought the battle of cancer. Devoted to : Faith, Family, Friends and Serving Her Community. The marker is placed across Keowee Heating and Air on Main Street, which was Diane’s father’s laundromat that served our town years ago.

JOCASSEE VALLEY BREWING COMPANY,(JVBC)& COFFEE SHOP13412 N Hwy 11 Open Wed--Fri- Sat, 8am-9pm. Sunday 2pm-7pm. Wed: Blue Grass Jam 6:30pm Thurs: Old Time Jam 6:30pm Fri: Music: Matthew Phillips 6:30pm Food: Bring your own. Sat: Music: Angela Easterling 6:30pm Food: Bring your own. Sun. 2pm-7pm Call 864-873-0048

Thought and QUOTE this week from a Salem Old Timer, shared by my brother: “ The day is coming when we won’t be able to get a clean drink of water.”

JOTTINGS FROM JEANNIE: The BIG Commotion: Granny asked me to pick her up and bring her home with me so that she could help get ready for the Thanksgiving company. Since she is nearly blind, I don't allow her to cook, but bless her heart she wanted to help, so I set her up to wash the floor. Soon, Janet Green popped in to visit. Janet knows all about my water troubles! A big flood came down the hill, and inundated the entire first floor with three inches of water. But that was not the end of it! No! Then it started raining inside the house. The minerals in well water caused holes in the copper pipes. For an entire year, I dealt with repairmen and insurance adjusters and water everywhere. "Here it goes again! It's raining inside the house even on this sunny day!" declared Janet. We spent an hour trying to figure out the source of this scummy, nasty water. I was out in the yard when a jubilant Janet came skipping out the door shouting, "Granny kicked the bucket!" "Granny kicked the bucket!" Whoopee! Hooray! Janet and I danced an Irish jig and laughed until we cried. A neighbor, hearing the commotion, stuck her head out her door aghast that Janet and I were celebrating bleary-eyed Granny "kicking the bucket" over while mopping the floor!

EAGLES NEST ART CENTER , 501c3, 4 Eagle Lane, Salem I hope you get your tickets this week to support your local Event Center. Even if you cannot come, purchase a ticket and give it to a friend. We are volunteers who need your support to breathe life in the special buildings that helped educate and make us the successful people we are today. Dec 3, 2022, 7pm a Christmas Performance by Darin and Brooke Aldridge. Tickets available at the Town of Salem, Ticketleap or Call 864-280-1258. Doors open at 6pm for general seating. Enjoy concessions and our Treasure Room. Be a Sponsor this Special Christmas Show on all levels from $1000 to $100 for your name on the evening program. Christmas Gift Idea: Name a Seat in the Eagles Nest Auditorium is now open to the general public and community. Single person, $200, Family or couples, $250. Contact [email protected] or Darlene 864-710-8758. INTERESTED IN STRING LESSONS?: Do you or your children want to learn old time fiddle, banjo, or guitar in the new year? $10 each group class. Classes will be on Saturday mornings. 9am-10am at the Eagles Nest Art Center. Interested in piano lessons? Please contact [email protected] or 864-280-1258. Give a Gift of Music! ENAC regular meeting Monday, December 5 at 5pm.

"Jocassee Santa" at Devils Fork State Park Day Use Area (Eclectic Sun) on Sat, Dec 3 10:00-2:00. Friends of Jocassee is sponsoring this event for photographs with Santa. Hot chocolate, cookies, and making nature tree ornaments will add to the holiday fun. Bring your own camera or have our photographer snap a holiday picture of your kids or family with Santa with the beautiful Lake Jocassee as the backdrop! Free event. Park admission fees apply.

MISTER and MISSY’s- located 9695 SC-11, Tamassee, SC 29686 Missy is offering a free haircut for the elderly who cannot afford one. Call for an appointment. She is available most late afternoons and evenings since she also works in Seneca until her local business is built back from the effects of COVID. Missy also has a COAT MINISTRY for the needy. If you need a coat or have coats to donate. Call 864- 944-8732

Welcome the Advent Season! LRM

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notyourdayrdream · 3 years

Text

Summer’s Almost Over (So Come Spend it with Me)

Day Eleven, Side A: Vigilant

read it here on AO3

A/N: this update will so much more sense if you’ve read day three of this collection, which was the word ‘ubiquitous’!

Diner in the Sky is closing.

Their bosses, a middle aged couple, told them in tears before the morning shift, how the whole mayor thing had died down and customers had tanked with it. They would shut down the last week of summer.

Being dramatic theatre kids, the New Directions and Blaine worked after hours to try and save the restaurant. Finn and Puck brought the football players and The Unholy Trinity brought the cheerleaders, and that night became a whole party. While it was fun, nobody had really bought anything. Blaine’s idea to perform turned out much better. He and the Warblers became a group of singing quartets, cooing to customers instead of a jukebox. Kurt thought it was fantastic, not just because he got to watch his boyfriend sing and dance around in a striped shirt and tight jeans all night. And oh, was it so sweet to mess up his gelled quiff during makeout sessions in the backseat of his car.

But it wasn’t enough. The Walken’s were grateful, but they had already sold, and with a heavy heart let all of their teenage employees go. Their last day was a week before their place would be cleared out and devoid of any fifties charm Kurt had grown to love.

But once again, being dramatic theatre kids, Rachel and Mercedes asked if they could use the restaurant one last time. And the Walken’s agreed.

“Oh my God!” Santana cried, clicking a few photos with her phone. “I will never get over you guys in those costumes.” Her arm is stretched around the red leather booth, not enough to draw suspicion to why it’s draped around Brittany. But Kurt notices.

Mercedes, Rachel, and Blaine do the Charlie's Angels pose, cracking up their friends, who’ve shoved themselves into three booths, back to back.

“Look, I’m gonna miss this dress, okay?” Mercedes says, pushing her way into a seat, squishing next to Nick. She has a plate of chili cheese fries in her hands, even though they agreed they wouldn’t actually work tonight. They all ended up doing it anyway. “It makes me feel like Tiana, a real Disney Princess.”

“Oh please, you sing like one already,” Blaine interjects, barely sitting on the end of the seat. His bowtie is crooked. Mercedes swats his arm, but Kurt can see her blush.

At first Kurt was a bit nervous about introducing Blaine to everyone. His dad and Carole were no big deal, Blaine has enough charm to sweet talk a lion into not eating him. No, he had been nervous for him to meet the New Directions. They were known to be judgy. Before they went out to a Movie in the Park night, Kurt ran down every moment of drama since the group’s founding. Offending one member would seriously hurt Blaine’s chances of being accepted. But, of course, he didn’t need it at all. He was a natural, jumping back and forth conversations before and after the movie, making everybody feel special. When he hit it off with Sam, Kurt and Mercedes were ecstatic at the thought of their boyfriends becoming best friends like them.

“I’m actually really sad this place is closing,” Rachel says, picking the bacon bits off her cobb salad. Kurt already knows she’s gonna give one of the cooks an earful about that. “Yeah it was a job, but it was so much fun!” Everyone else nods.

“What’s it going to be turned into, anway?” David asks, twisting around from his seat at the booth behind them.

Kurt rolls his eyes. “A laundromat,” he groans. In the middle of downtown. Whoever was doing the layout for Lima’s recreational district needed to be fired. “So now you can wash your dirty clothes with the stench of hot dogs wafting through the air!”

His friends crack up, and soon he’s laughing too. He loves that feeling, when your joke lands really well and everyone laughs with you. It’s the closest Kurt gets to a standing ovation everyday.

“I love you,” Blaine gets out through laughs, probably not even processing what he just said. But Kurt does, and his heart stops like a chipped record.

Yeah, Kurt’s known about Blaine loving him since that night in July, but he’s never said it. And in his eyes those are two different things. So as Kurt’s mind races to process what he just said (“does he really mean that? what if he just said it to be funny?”), Blaine stops laughing, his face white as a sheet.

He won’t meet Kurt’s eyes. “Um.” The room’s gone deathly quiet, save for the jukebox, constant in its crackling. “I’m gonna start cleaning up now. In the kitchen.” Blaine grabs the plate that Puck was still picking at and rushes into the kitchen. Kurt can’t decide if it’s more sweet or sad.

“Was that the first time he said it?” Tina asked from behind him. The whole diner seems to waits on his every word. Kurt doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods. Every girl at the tables loses their collective minds, shrieking and telling stories all at the same time. Even though he can’t tell his heart to stop freaking out, he smiles to himself.

“I’ll be right back.” He stands up, knocking the table with his knees. His hands are clammy, when did that happen? Rachel and Wes push him forward when his feet feel planted. Eventually they back off and Kurt pushes through the double doors.

“Hey…” he starts, watching as his boyfriend vigilantly scrubs at a spotless looking bowl. “Are you okay? You kinda disappeared there.”

Blaine nods and keeps his eyes down. “Yep! I’m totally fine,” he grits his teeth in pretending to wipe off a dish. Kurt snorts despite himself, his boyfriend’s just a really awful actor.

“Stop laughing,” Blaine pouts. There’s dozens of reflections of him in the shiny silver pots and pans and refrigerators. “It’s not funny.” He flicks some soapy water at Kurt’s forehead, and it slides down his nose.

He watches the clump of soap run down his face and flop unceremoniously onto the floor. He’ll have to do his skincare routine twice. “Oh it is on.” Kurt comes closer and scoops up a handful of suds just to dump it onto Blaine’s hair.

Blaine gasps, wiping the rest off his head before it pops. He smirks and throws some more soap at Kurt’s chest. And so the war begins.

They attack each other like it’s a snowball fight, racing to grab armfuls of soap suds and throwing them, even if they float to the ground. They fling gray water back and forth at each other and run around the kitchen to dodge it. It’s absolutely gross and undignified, but Kurt finds that he could care less.

After they’ve soaked themselves and the floor, Blaine waives a towel in surrender. “Okay! Okay! You win!” he laughs. His face is slick with a mix of sweat at sink water, and his shirt clings to his chest.

Kurt grins and grabs a towel, linking up beside him to help dry. It’s still on his mind, the whole thing that happened outside, but he doesn’t press. They’re a unit, drying and stacking dishes together, humming a song Kurt can’t exactly recognize.

“I just wanted it to be special,” Blaine admits after a while. “I was gonna set up something really cute here one day, like a candlelit dinner, and get French food from that place across the street. Something big.”

Kurt sets his glass plate down and turns to see Blaine’s face. “As much as I love French food, you didn’t have to do something so grandiose.” He’s learned Blaine loves doing things big. When it was Lauren’s birthday, one of the chefs, he had the entire staff decorate the outside of the restaurant in a beach theme since she was from California. It was gorgeous, if not time consuming.

“But you deserve it,” Blaine replied, eyebrows knitting together. “You deserve the world, Kurt.” And the great goes back to washing dishes like he didn’t say the most romantic thing on the planet.

Kurt presses his against the stainless steel counter and kisses him when words fail. Blaine smells like soapy water and the familiarity of his pine scented cologne. Kurt kisses him softly, his favorite way to kiss (he never thought he’d have a favorite way to kiss, but life has just been full of surprises recently). Blaine absolutely falls apart like this, sighing into his mouth and pulling at the back of Kurt’s shirt.

And he hopes, absolutely prays to a god he doesn’t believe in, that a kiss can convey how he feels. How he’s felt since that night in the heat of July with Italian diners.

“I love you too.”

#tan lines and tan hands #spaceorphan’s sophisticated challenge: vigilant #glee #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #two shot #klaine fanfiction #i had no original ideas for today so this is the best i had #but i really liked the whole diner idea i kind of wish i saved it for a full story

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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 4 years

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Good Copy

“Oh, Shit!” Thor panted, skidding around the corner of the warehouse. He was way farther from his patrol car than he’d planned on being, and the woman he was chasing showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. He really wished he’d focused more on endurance during his physical training instead of just getting ripped because he had no way to catch her now.

She scaled fences like it was nothing, and now she was running across the top of illegal loft housing like it was nothing. “Fuck,” he wheezed, hands on his knees to catch his breath.

“Hey, Rookie!” The crunch of gravel under tires and a semi-familiar voice made him turn to see a redhead. One of the DEA agents they’d been assigned recently, smirking at him, “Don’t feel too bad. The Detectives knew you weren’t gonna catch her.”

“What the fuck,” he panted, “Then why are we chasing her?”

“Y/N’s an... odd duck. But mostly harmless. And she knows every crook, druggie, and hood rat ass kid in the city... She also likes giving rookies a rough time. 5 years and ain’t no one caught her yet.”

Thor scowled, “You mean they set me up?”

Natasha Romanoff smirked, “You shoulda seen Carol trying to catch her. Y/N had her chasing the wrong person for 4 blocks and met her back at the precinct with donuts... At least you were chasing the right person.”

Thor stood up straight again and wiped his forehead on the back of his hand. “Fuck me, she’s quick,” he said.

“Yeah, she is. Beat me for the state title in Track two years in a row. Her Sprint record is still unbroken,” Nat said, smiling a little.

“So how’d she wind up living in an illegal loft and doing cold reads for dummies on the sidewalk outside the subway?”

Nat smiled a little sadly, “That’s a long story, Odinson. And not mine to tell. Not really.”

Thor nodded, pondering that for a minute and thought back to how he’d first seem you. Your hair was a mess. Frizzing in the heat and kept up in a tight bun. And your clothes were clean but had clearly seen some better days. It didn’t take long for him to put you together with the description he’d been given earlier over the radio. So when he approached, and you ran, he followed. It had never occurred to him that you might be in on it. Or that Sam and Bucky from homicide had slipped out the alley after to pick up the bag you’d dropped with your tarot cards and crystals and shit.

He’d seen your rap sheet, and it was... to say the least, impressive. Petty crimes, mostly. But executed in exciting ways. Mainly crimes of necessity as far as he could tell. And he wondered how you got here. How you’d come down so hard from being top of your class with a track record to being a petty criminal with friends in high places.

He wanted to find you again. He wanted to know. But he figured a rookie cop wouldn’t be of any interest to a seasoned con artist. He wasn’t even sure he really wanted to know you that way or if he was just curious. If he wanted to know you because you were attractive or because you were a puzzle. He liked puzzles. It’s part of the reason he wanted to work his way into homicide. Part of the reason he got put on the team with Sam and Bucky and why he could count Carol and Natasha as friends now too. They also liked the puzzles. And helping people, though the four of them were all too seasoned to be that openly passionate about it. He could tell, and he liked them.

And he wanted to know why they liked you. They had to know what you’d done. Something to throw you in jail over. But you’d never served a sentence. Ever. Probation. Some community service. But your bail was always posted. And he wanted to know how. How did a girl like you, making petty steals for food and doing palm readings for rent, get bail money? The more he thought about it, the more he knew, and the more he thought he knew, the more confused he got because more questions popped up.

_______

You let yourself into your loft through the fire escape to avoid the front stairs, and for a minute, you sit on the floor looking around.

It’s not much. An aloe plant you rescued from a dumpster. A second-hand mattress on the floor and some blankets you scrounged up. A plastic milk crate with records in it and a record player you scored for $10 from a second-hand store. A few clothes.

It was a lot less than you had before. Before you’d been off the grid.

But it felt like freedom. Every thin t-shirt, record, and laundromat abused blanket was yours. It was all yours. And no one could take it from you.

At least as long as they couldn’t find you. The thought of being discovered was enough to make your heart sink to somewhere around your shoes, but you pushed it away quickly and exhale slowly.

You were fine. Just fine.

The nightmare was over, and you never had to go back. You didn’t have to go back, and no one would let that happen. Hela was never going to be able to make you work for her again. Not if you kept your head down.

Hela had been a Godsend for a moment but now? It was time to put that nightmare behind you. She could make you dance. She could make you do... anything she wanted. But only if she could find you. And hopefully, you could keep waiting out the clock. All you had to do was wait. 89 more days. 89 more days and you could be declared dead. Then you could go anywhere. Anywhere at all.

#thor x reader #Thor Odinson #cop!au #natasha romanoff #bucky barnes #sam wilson

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carolmunson · 7 months

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spin doctor | e.m. x reader

mini ficlet, eddie munson works at a record store. he’s a little snobby. sort of shy!reader if you squint? it’s the very late 90s.

tw: 18+ references to smut/virginity, all around meet-cute-ish.

The rain slaps off the top of your coffee cup and into your eyes while you take a sip, woefully regretting not bringing an umbrella because the weather man said it was only misting. This isn't mist, this is just under a downpour, the hood of your dad's old canvas jacket doing little to protect you from the rain while it darkens with each drop the green fabric absorbs. You stop at the corner, protecting yourself from the weather under the awning of a laundromat. Squinting up towards the overcast gray sky, you double check the cross streets, two more blocks and you'll make it there. There being the record store that you found in the yellow pages after you inherited your parent's record player in their latest attic clean out. Your dad was smart though, sold all of the records that were in mint condition to collecters -- which left you recordless and sort of at a loss of where to start now that they were only sold at specialty stores.

You hurry your way down the next two blocks, finally seeing the sign for VI Chord Records lit up across the street in buzzing red neon. You wait to cross, seeing the reflection of the light in the wet asphalt while the sky starts to darken. Winter easing in slow these days while the nights start to come quicker than expected.

The door jingles when you open it, two guys at the check out counter looking up breifly and then back to their conversation; the other patrons don't even look. You take a breath, happy that at least no one is paying attention. You've never been to a record store before -- bought music, sure; CDs and cassettes but never vinyl -- that was like an old people thing. But your dad couldn't stop going on and on about how music just sounds better when you listen to it like that; and to be fair a lot of your favorites from the 60s and 70s sounded flat on your Walkman. You were on the hunt for the authentic experience now, the real deal.

You start at the 'New Arrivals' bin, pulling down your hood and taking off your headphones to put in your nylon back pack while you search. You sip your coffee while your fingers flick, flick, flick through the sleeves, crunching on and over the plastic protective covering of each record. You don’t know who most of the artists are, names hidden in intricate artwork or vulgar close ups of tits and crotch. You laugh at a few under your breath.

You continue your search, going over to the K section to see if you can find Carole King’s Tapestry, only to be inundated with Kiss record after Kiss record. Kix, Krokus, Kick Axe — King nowhere in the bunch. You let out a soft sigh, eyes scanning the back wall over the guys heads at the check out counter. Guitars hang on the velvet wall paper, gleaming with a fresh sign with scribbles of signatures on them. You land over by the S section, fingers flick flick flicking again to run into Slayer, T’s taken over by Twisted Sister. You don’t even realize how much time has gone by until you take a sip of coffee and nothing is left.

“Can I help you find something?”

You jump, not expecting to head a disembodied voice by the back of your neck, “Huh?”

“You just seem like you’re not finding what you’re looking for, can I help?”

You turn while he asks, one of the guys from the counter who looks like he’s stuck somewhere in the 80s and his grunge phase. His hair is to his shoulders, wavy and cut into a shag that put your moms 70s hair do to shame. The slight stubble on his chin and cheeks stretches with his smile — customer service perfection, but only for pretty things like you.

His crosses his arms over his army green tee, matching your coat that’s nearly dry now. His tattooed arms bulge slightly in the stance, straining against the small sleeves. Your eyes focus on the guitar pick dangling in the center of his chest; suddenly embarrassed by the attention.

“Um,” you start, eyes flicking up to meet his brown ones — soft and eager, like he’s excited to talk to you. Your eyes scan down to the black and gray flannel tied around his narrow waist, falling limply over his dark wash worn jeans into combat boots.

“Uh,” you stutter for a second, trying to not to get caught up in this handsome stranger, “I’m sorta new to records. My dad just gave me his but he sold all his good stuff so um — starting from zero I guess.”

“Ooh, nice,” he grins, “So a virgin, huh?”

You sputter, “Well um — no but —”

“Vinyl virgin, sweetheart,” he winks, “Don’t worry. I don’t need to know the horny details.”

“So what were you trying to find today?” he asks, leaning against the stacked milk crates full to the brim at the center of the room, “We actually just got some solid rares in if you’re trying to start a good collection.”

“I just wanna listen to oldies,” you laugh.

He laughs too, it’s smoky and cool, “Nah, nah, I hear you. What kinda oldies like — early Black Sabbath or…?”

You bite your lower lip, “I was more thinking like um, Motown? The Temptations? Maybe some James Taylor. I was mostly trying to find The Flamingos single for —”

He laughs while you continue on but then realizes you aren’t joking, head coming back to center, “Oh you’re, you’re serious?”

You feel heat lick at your cheeks and chest, sweat slickly creeping on the top of your back, “Yeah I thought…it’s a record store so—”

“Not that kind, princess,” he shrugs, hands dropping to lean against the crates behind him, “We only sell hard rock and metal here for the most part. You could check the dollar bins for drop offs, we don’t really sort those.”

“Oh,” you nod, averting his gaze while you see the big bin in the corner labeled ‘Dollar Donations’.

“Yeah maybe you’ll find your doo-wop stuff in there or something,” his voice has a hint of teasing to it that makes your teeth grit.

“Are you like, shitting on me?” you ask shakily, kind of surprised this is actually happening to you. That this guys is legitimately being a jerk over wanting music that maybe he’s not into.

“No, no, no,” he urges, “No. I’m sorry, seriously. It’s just that we don’t really get people who come in here not looking for what we sell. We’re kinda well known for being a vintage metal store.”

“Yeah well, I didn’t know that so,” you shrug, defeated weighing down your shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he assures, sweet smile tugging his lips up to reveal deep dimples, “You’re a vinyl virgin, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” you roll your eyes, making your way to the bin while he follows behind you.

“Maybe if you tell me what kind of music you like now I can find a good one for you,” he offers, hand resting on his chest that’s covered in silver rings and chipped nail polish, “I’ve been told I make great recommendations.”

“I’ve been liking Blink-182 lately. Backstreet Boys on the other side of the coin,” you shrug, “And um, one of my friends has been trying to get me into Nine In Nails.”

“Now we’re talking,” he smiles, “There we go. Anything else? What’s the other older stuff you like?”

“Uh, um,” you shrug again, “Elton John? Eric Clapton?”

He nods again, “Okay, some of this stuff I can work with. What about uh, hmm, Fleetwood Mac? Sort of your vibe?”

You smile at him without meaning to, making him nearly stutter at the site, “Yeah, that’s sort of my vibe.”

“Alright,” he nods while he racks his brain for the perfect album to pick for you, “I think I got an idea of what to pull for you.”

“Okay,” you cross your arms with a smirk, “Fine. I hope it’s impressive.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he grins cockily, “Never had anyone complain about me popping their cherry.”

“At least take a girl for a drink first,” you joke back, “I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Eddie,” his hand extends out and you take it, his skin warm and slightly clammy at his never ending bumbling when talking to girls like you, “Happy to be taking your vinyl virginity today.”

You laugh, squeezing his hand slightly when you introduce yourself before letting go, “Be gentle, please. I’m new to this.”

“C’mon,” he cocks his head to the opposite wall by the ‘F’ section, “I got a lot to show you. We’ll go slow.”

He winks again; making you swallow hard. It might not have been where you meant go today, but it might have been exactly where you were meant to be.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie stranger things #stranger things fan fiction #stranger things au #eddie munson au

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tamedbyafox · 3 years

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why is it so wrong for property owners to take steps to ensure random strangers don't use their property to camp out? you typed up so much about the evils of hostile architecture, if that's what you believe then are you inviting homeless ppl to sleep in your backyard or living room instead? why not?? maybe because people you don't know have the potential to be destructive and dangerous????

this is the sort of very sad attitude that I think hostile architecture creates and encourages. I’m very sorry you live your life in so much fear. Can you really think your perception of your property’s relative safety is more important than someone else’s safety, and the thinnest smidgen of comfort?

Your ask only talks about houseless people, not those who are disabled, elderly, or have a house and simply want to socialize out in the public space. So it doesn’t address what I added to that post, but I’ll stake out my general thoughts on this nonetheless. Next time, you may want to try addressing the issues someone’s actually speaking on rather than raising the standard “Not-In-My-Backyard” defenses.

First, other people aren’t an existential threat. People existing in the general vicinity of you, or the general vicinity of your stuff, isn’t some huge threat. Most people are just people, wanting to go about their day and be left alone. People are generally ok, and they’re part of your community. To the extent that people (housed and unhoused, in public and in private) do cause harm, simply saying “you can’t sit here!” isn’t actually addressing the problem. And this also ignores that those who are unhoused are more often the harmed party than the one causing harm.

And, on the same point, if you’re going to say that unknown people are dangerous, you can’t even justify the existence of a shopping mall or a mega-store. Too many people, they might be dangerous. A laundromat? A school? A Church?!?! Theme parks??!!?!? Any sort of public space could be a threat, we should just abolish them all. The idea that people you don’t know are inherently dangerous is the deathknell of any hope of community.

Second, you’re making a false equivalency between public space and private space with your comment on living rooms. (the backyard, interestingly, is a reality for many people - there are several houseless people who stay in what I and my neighbors consider our “backyard”, and thats just fine. We’ve never had issues.) Those images in the post though, were of park benches, sidewalks, the buildings that abut a sidewalk, little trees and such. That’s a public space for people to be in! Those spaces are specifically designed for people to be in! Public spaces are for us to use! And that means all people - the houseless, the disabled, community members who just want to be outside. These park benches and trees and sidewalks were put there for the community. And to the extent that some corporation wants their storefront to take advantage of the traffic of the community, they should have to be welcoming of our community - all of it, housed, unhoused. And if the space can be used by someone to stay warm or dry, then they should do that.

Third, these people are forced to “camp out” in these spaces because we, their community, have failed them. There are systemic failures that prevent them from sleeping somewhere warmer than that. Somewhere safer than that. And I am absolutely working towards a world where everyone has the right to a warm, safe, stable housing situation. But until that day, I’m not going to deny them the panacea of a slightly warmer place, a slightly more sheltered place, a slightly safer place. Can you really look at someone huddling in a building’s indent to get out of the wind and kick them out? Why should I punish someone for a situation caused by a systemic failure of our society?

Fourth, these bits of sharp metal and wooden dividers don’t actually solve a single problem. The act of putting up some hostile architecture doesn’t address safety, or houselesness, or any other root issue. It simply pushes the problem onto someone else. All these achieve is forcing people you don’t want to see somewhere else. It doesn’t make them, or you, or the people in the space they’re going to fo to, more safe. It doesn’t end houselessness or bring about better social conditions or even make the community safe. It just means you don’t have to look at it. Hostile architecture is the ultimate NIMBY mentality of out of sight, out of mind.

Finally, I hope you take a second and think about what it means to hold the value of property above the value of another human being. I’d love to invite you to read, or watch, A Christmas Carol. It’s the season, after all. I’m going to include two passages below I think are rather pertinent.

Here, two gentlemen have come to Mr. Scrooge, before his visit by the spirits, to ask him to make some charitable donation:

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.”

“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

And the second portion that I think speaks well to the problems of hostile architecture, and the isolation and ignorance it reinforces, is when Christmas Present shows Scrooge the meager Christmas of a houseless London family, and Scrooge sees something truly horrifying:

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

#Anonymous

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dontdietwd · 4 years

Text

until day 308

So this motherfucking life tried to break me.

You bitch.

This fucking fate or destiny wanted me down. Kicking me down a deep well to find rock bottom and throwing shit on top of me to bury me down there.

Well guess what.

Jack’s mom wasn’t going to say down there. Jack’s mom might hurt and cry, because she’s human and would never not be, but she just wouldn’t fucking stop.

I’d rebuild using that fucking rock bottom as the bedrock of the castle I was going to build.

So every day I would wake up with the sun, wash my face, drink strong coffee and go out there. With the shaved head, with the non-extended belly and without a baby in my arms. But I went out there, head high, crossbow hanging from my back, and I worked my ass off. I ran the Village, I went outside, I killed walkers, I scavenged, I took my guard shifts, I made decisions, I oriented the others, heard their opinions and ideas, went back home, washed up and started it all over again next morning.

And I’d smoke a lot of cigarettes. And I’d constantly crave for a drink.

While I was gone, Michonne had stepped up as the leader and she’d done a wonderful job. Things kept on going as planned, the chicken coop Morales had planned was done, now all we needed was birds, and he had started building the wall inside the hedge. There was a huge pile of bricks at a corner of the Village, cement, sand, all he works. It would be slow because we didn’t have enough people, but it’d get done.

Michonne and Merle had gotten even closer and were great friends now. Andrea had been hanging out a lot with Will and she liked Ma’s company. Ma had been sick lately, nothing specific. She was simply ninety-eight. I spent days thinking about having a conversation with Will and Mikki about her. If she passed away on her sleep or something like that and nobody saw it… She was going to turn.

I’m not even sure how I knew this. I’d seen D dying from a stab and turning, I’d seen many walkers wandering without a visible bite mark, so I was pretty much sure anyone who died would turn.

Although Jack never did.

Thank the Gods I didn’t even really believe in.

But I thought there was a strong possibility Ma would turn when she passed and we’d all have to know how to act in this case. I needed to talk to them.

But I hadn’t yet. It was sensitive and I was running from it. I started going out there alone again, with the same old excuse of looking for signs of Daryl and the group. I did look for signs; I did… But I was lying. To everyone, to myself. There was a laundromat on a little town nearby and in there I had created myself a little hideaway. To myself, to be alone and mourn and hurt without anyone seeing it. And to drink. I had hidden bottles there and I controlled myself, never got too drunk, or so I thought. It’s the mentality of the addict, always thinking we’re in control, always believed it’s no harm, it’s just a little drink, no problem. I’d return home after a few hours and nobody noticed, so why should I have to stop? Everything was fine, I was in control.

What I didn’t see, couldn’t ready understand then, was that when I was drinking the thoughts in my mind were always terrible. It made me feel worse, it made the pain even more painful, instead of numbing me, it made me think terrible things, when I slept under the effect of the alcohol my dreams were disturbing, full of walkers, Daryl turned, Michonne and Merle turned, Jack in my arms trying to bite me. It was awful, but my addicted mind could not understand that taking another shot to forget those images did not work at all. So I kept on.

Merle knew something was up. He may not know exactly, but the way he’d been looking at me with suspicious eyes was clear. He knew something was wrong. I mean, still wrong. Or maybe he was just worried because it hadn’t been long since I lost my baby, so I was obviously not fine.

One day he told me now I knew how to shoot with the crossbow and was good at it, I could take a step further and learn how to hunt, maybe even track. He’d been the one responsible for going hunting once a week bringing us all any kind of animals he could find, and he said it would be good to have someone else able to do it in the group. He was right. As I leader I should have thought about it.

So we were on the woods, Honey tracking in front of us, smelling everything and very attentive. We were silent for a long time, tracking something he had detected but I hadn’t been able to see, and Merle, even still tracking, kept looking at me and starting to say something but stopping himself. It was so unlike him that I knew something was up, and feared he was going to talk about my continuing drinking. But it eventually got to my nerves and I had to ask.

“Alright, Merle, what is it?” I said as I stopped and lowered my crossbow to the ground.

He stopped too, fished a pack of Morley’s from his pocket, offered me one, lit his own and then reached with the lighter to light mine.

“Ya know I ain’t smart, right?” he started

“Why do you say that?”

“Things I just can’t wrap my head around…” he looked far into the woods as he spoke. “Like Mikki.”

Well, that I wasn’t expecting.

“Mikki?”

“Yeah… Says she’s a girl but ya can see she ain’t a girl. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Ya can’t understand that?”

“Nope. Knew my whole life that if ya got a dick, you a man, if ya got a pussy, you a girl. That is ya wanna be the other way ‘round, you a freak.”

“Yeah, you’ve known wrong then.”

“But how?” he asked turning to me, and I could see his question was genuine. “How can Mikki says she a girl if she got a dick down there?”

“Well… I don’t know how to explain it, maybe she’d be the best one to do it. But just think it like that: you know you’re a man. Right?” he nodded the obvious answer. “And you’ve always known you a man, nobody had to tell you, you knew it since you was a little boy. Never had a question ‘bout that. And you know that, like, inside, you don’t have to look down and see a dick to know you’re a man. Right?” he nodded again. “But now imagine being this sure ‘bout it, but looking in the mirror and seeing the body of a woman. But in your head you know you’re a man, but what you were born with is different from what you know, from what you’ve always known your whole life.”

He shook his head, confused, “Nah, can’t see that happening.”

“You can’t see, but tons of other people can. Don’t matter if you don’t see, Merle. Mikki is a girl and she knows she’s a girl since forever, but something went different and she was born with a boy’s body. It’s wrong for her, her body don’t match her head, her soul, ya know what I mean? She is a girl, no matter what the register said when she was born, no matter that they yelled ‘it’s a boy!” when she was born. It being there make no difference. You’d still feel like a man if you, god forbid, lost yours, wouldn’t’ you?”

“Don’t even say somethin’ like that!”

“You know what I mean, Merle. A dick or a pussy don’t make a person a man or a woman. It’s all in the head.”

“But… It’s there, ain’t it?”

“Yep. I don’t know, it’s probably there, I don’t think she had it removed before the apocalypse. I’ll never ask either, it’s too intimate,” he said nothing, was just thoughtful smoking his cigarette. “Merle?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like her?”

He threw to cigarette to the ground and turned to walk, “I ain’t no faggot.”

“Merle, stop,” he did and turned to me again. “You ain’t, I know that. She’s a girl. You’re just a man who likes a girl.”

He turned to walk again, saying nothing, thoughtful.

“Does she know? Something’s happening between you two?”

“Think she does. Think she likes me too.”

“Then it’s a good thing, Merle,” I said smiling I was happy for him. Merle was overcoming a lot from his past. His prejudices, his racism, his homophobia. He was changing for the better, had already all those months, but now it was more. He liked someone and this was huge for a man like Merle. “Just don’t go breaking her heart, alright?”

* * *

I made a mistake.

I should have never kept on drinking in the first place, but that goes without saying. It was obvious that I should have stopped it again, I’d done it once, I could do it again. I could and I should. And every day, even as I drank, I knew it was bad for me. I knew my thoughts got fuzzy and way too negative under the effect. My dreams were terrible nightmares of everyone in the Village turned, Merle, Michonne, Andrea, all trying to eat me. Daryl, Carol, Glenn, Lori, all dead and invading the Village and the constant cry of a baby in the background, and I looked for him as I tried to escape the dead and couldn’t find him. I’d wake up heavy hearted, which made me want to drink more, which made the dreams even worse, and the thoughts in my head even when I was sober were dark and hopeless. So drinking was bad for me, for my mind, for my body, bad for everyone and everything, but I just kept on.

But that day, my mistake was to bring the booze I’d gathered into the Village. I brought it home, hidden among my personal stuff, and I drank at a night I wouldn’t be on watch.

And I obviously lost control.

My house was still isolated from the others. I had moved from the one I’d given birth in, and chosen an even farther one. It was nearly on the back of the Village, still near the lake as the other one had been. It was a nice area, trees all around, birds, the water. The kind of place I had always wanted for me before it all happened, and now I had it. But the fact that it was away from the others’ made me too comfortable and I got drunk in there, sure nobody would notice.

But they did. Michonne came first to check on me because I apparently had turned on some loud music, and there was nothing wrong with listening to some music in the Village as long as it wasn’t loud enough it could he heard outside the walls. If it could be heard outside, walkers would come, people could come.

It was a huge mistake. I put them all in danger, our home, our Village, the safety of my people.

But somehow, I think it had to happen. I needed Michonne to find me drunk at the house. I needed her to call Andrea and Merle. I needed them to see me like this, I needed their help. I needed help and I didn’t even know it.

It just had to happen.

They cleared my house of any alcohol, put me under a cold shower, told me off, and kept careful watch over me for the next few weeks. I wasn’t allowed to go outside alone anymore and I hated it in the beginning. I craved a drink and couldn’t have it. I fought with them, told them to leave me alone, said they had nothing to do with it, that they had no right controlling me like this.

But they saved me.

Merle understood well. He’d been though it in the few months after the hand incident in Atlanta. He’d gone through withdrawal from alcohol and drugs and he knew how I felt. He was not a patient care provider, though. He was more of a tough love kind of guy. Andrea was sweeter, but Michonne… She’d been disappointed.

And that’s what hurt the most. My very best friend got disappointed at me and this hit me hard. This is what made me, after the first few terrible days, understand what I’d done and understand the need of what they were doing for me. I talked to her, apologized, made promises all over again. But she knew promises meant nothing, I’d broken them before.

Over a week into it, Merle came to my place. I’d been pacing, making even Honey distressed. I asked him to leave me alone because I was not a good company then, I was aching for a drink, but he didn’t leave, shaking a bit, heart pounding. Instead, he sat on my couch, took something from his pocket, and lit it.

A joint.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Lightin’ up a joint, what ya think?”

“Have you been smoking?”

“Found this stash a few days ago. Little country home with a dead plantation in the back. Lots of it, years’ worth if we don’t let’em dry.”

“Merle… What?”

“What?” he looked up at me. “You saying you’re against it? Can have all the booze and be addicted to it, not function right without alcohol, but weed is bad? Weed’s what will do ya harm?”

I had no answer. It had been years since I had a joint, but I knew it was never as bad as alcohol. Or any other drug, for that matter. I’d liked it once, but never even got addicted to it. Drinks and other drugs, yeah. They were the ones that nearly destroyed my life, but nothing bad had ever happened after smoking a joint.

“Ya an addict, Sam,” he told me in all seriousness. “Ya can’t go anywhere to get treated. Ya can’t make therapy. Can’t go to a meeting every time ya need some. Ya hear me out, if ya smoke a joint now, ya gonna relax. This think ya feeling now? Will get numbed and will go away with time.”

“Ain’t that just exchanging a drug for another?” I still rebated even as I sat down on the couch by his side.

“Ya damn right it is. But at least it won’t do you too much harm. Ya gonna smoke one at night after a long day, relax, laugh, eat a lot and fall asleep. If ya gotta have somethin’ because you’re too damn used to have some substance in your system, at least won’t be much of a bad one.”

Did it make sense or was it just my addicted mind wanting to believe it?

Merle took a long drag of it, holding it in for a moment and then started couching like crazy. I had to laugh. What a pro!

“Fuck you, it’s been a while!” he said when he could and saw me laugh at him.

“Are you sure about this, Merle?”

“Ya do what ya want. I ain’t saying it’s the best solution, is just the least worse, is all.”

“I can’t do this… Michonne –”

“Is the one who suggested it in the first place when we found it. She ain’t no dimwit, Darlin’. She knows this ain’t as bad for you or anybody as alcohol.”

And then he handed it to me. I hesitated for a moment, but I knew he was right. Weed had been smoked since the beginning of humanity’s ability to plant stuff, thousands of years. The prohibition of it was recent, but not it’s usage. If this made me stop craving for a drink, it would help me get clean. I mean, as clean as someone is when smoking weed.

So I took it. Probably not the best solution, but it was a solution.

It turned out that, that night, I didn’t crave a drink anymore. At least that night, I calmed down, wasn’t shaking anymore, and my thoughts got lighter. No negativity about never seeing Daryl again. No pain for Jack’s loss. Just good memories, just Daryl’s voice calming me down, just Jack’s cute little hand clutching my finger. Just the good parts of the little while I’d had with him. And when I fell asleep – after Merle and I drowned in a family size pack of Cheetos – I didn’t have a nightmare. No dreams at all, just slept long and deep and woke up still feeling sleepy, but simply fine.

And I hadn’t felt fine in a very, very long time.

* * *

Merle and I were hunting. I had finally been able to pick up an animal trail myself and we were following it. I wasn’t sure what it was and Merle refused to tell me, because he obviously knew what it was. Honey was with us, silent on her paws, sniffing and attentive to all around us all. I had had a lot of success in training her. She’d come to me and be silent at a short whistle, sit by my side and stay put at a hand gesture, look for threats at a low, long whistle and relax and be free to play around at a click of my tongue.

And it was her who warned us someone was around. She froze by my side, eyes fixed somewhere high up a tree, completely still, just one short low growl to get my attention. Looking up, our weapons ready without even knowing why, Merle and I saw the ruins of a hunting platform. We couldn’t see anyone, but Honey knew for sure there was someone. My crossbow pointed up, Merle with a loaded pistol, we exchanged a look. We couldn’t keep walking and pass under the tree to the risk of getting attacked.

“We know you’re up there!”, I said and my voice echoed in the woods. “We mean no harm, just passing my, hunting some food. Will you show yourself?”

There was silence. Whoever was up there had surely heard me, but was keeping hidden. This could either mean it was someone really scared of people who just wanted us to go away, or a threat, someone who’d attack and try to rob and kill us.

“We just want to pass by knowing you won’t attack us, alright?” I kept on. “Come on, show yourself.”

It took a few more seconds, long ones, but they did. A boy who looked barely eighteen poked his head out of the platform, a rifle in hand pointing down at us, looking repeatedly to Merle and I.

“Good, thank you,” I told him. “You alone up there?”

“Yes!” he answered really fast and I knew it was probably a lie. “I don’t have stuff, so please just leave us alone!”

See? He wasn’t alone.

“Us?”

“Me! Leave me alone!”

“Hey, it’s alright. We don’t wanna rob you. I told you, we’re just hunting out here.”

“Go on, then!”

“And how do we know you ain’t shooting and robing us? Not taking the chance, kid.”

“You say ya don’t got stuff?” Merle said by my side. “Mean ya hungry?”

Oh, so proud of Merle! The old Merle I knew from before would never ask anyone that. He just wouldn’t care, but this Merle did.

“Why you ask?”

“If you’re hungry we can get you something,” I told him. “But we won’t if you don’t put your gun down.”

“Why would you help us? Nobody helps anymore these days!”

“Not nobody, kid,” I told him, my arms hurting a bit from pointing the crossbow up and steady. “We been hungry. Been there, alright?”

“Why should we trust you?”

Merle was the one to answer “Alright, I can see you gone through some shit, kid. You’re right in not trustin’ people, good thing these days. But we both down here got ya on our aims and ya not even hiding right, coulda shot ya between the eyes three times by now. What’s that tell ya?”

He hesitated and didn’t lower his rifle. Quietly, I told Merle to keep his own pointed at him and lowered my weapon. The kid’s attention picked up at that, as I rested my crossbow to the ground, removed my backpack and crouched down to open it. I had water and a packed lunch I’d brought from home, some real cooked food. I got up and help it on his sight.

“We’re offering you food, real food. Now, please, lower your weapon for once and come down or you won’t have it, simple like that.”

He wanted to believe us but hesitated and I admired him for that. It was good not to trust people easily these days and I knew it quite well. After a moment he did lower his rifle and by my side Merle visibly relaxed. I patted honey’s head to calm her down a little but didn’t tell her it was fine to relax. He disappeared from our sight for a moment and them we saw him star to climb down the stairs, and he really wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him, just a child who kept hidden behind him all the time.

These were David and Emma, brother and sister who’d been on the road with their two uncles after their mother died on the first few days of the outbreak. They had been robbed of everything weeks before and, when the men tried to react, they were killed. David and Emma had to watch all of it when they hid on top of a tree, or they’d have been doomed as well. Emma didn’t say a word, too scared to speak even as Merle and I led hem both back to the Village with us.

Our family was slowly growing.

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littlev1234 · 5 years

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PopSocket

Fandom: Carole & Tuesday

Pairing: Carole/Tuesday

Words: 1,764

AO3 Version: PopSocket

Note: So at first I thought the present Carole gave Tuesday was a PopSocket, and I got a lot of cute ideas for that concept. Thus this fic was born.

~~~~~

“It’s way past your birthday, and, well, you can see the state it’s in, but…”

Despite the wrapping paper’s scuffs and tears, Carole’s fingers are gentle as she unwraps the little box. Tuesday’s heart thuds faster, and it is somehow louder in her ears than when she’d been sprinting to the train minutes ago.

Carole opens the box flaps and pulls out a tiny replica of Tuesday’s Gibson guitar. Its stunning details gleam in the light, and attached underneath is a circular piece of plastic.

Blue eyes shine with building tears. This gift had gone through so much. Carole had gone through so much, for her, for their friendship.

At her mother’s home, Tuesday had many pretty trinkets decorating the bedroom, but they were just that: decorations. Meant to fill the space, and devoid of meaning. The guitar PopSocket is the very opposite of that. Her guitar is an extension of herself, and music is how they met. Having a miniature version of it that the brunette had carried with her through thick and thin—it has infinitely more value than just its store price.

In the end, no water spills down her cheeks; instead, a smile blooms across her face. “Thank you.”

As they discuss what to sing for the competition, the blonde carefully sticks the PopSocket to the back of her phone. When she looks up, she catches Carole watching her before the keyboardist quickly glances out the window.

“Ugh, I could sleep forever,” Carole groans and plops onto the nearest bench. Legs weary, Tuesday sits down beside her and releases a long breath. Today was a busy day. Last-minute shopping, apartment chores (that they’d been neglecting for a tad too long), rehearsals.

They should head home soon, but having a breather is too tempting right now.

While the taller girl rests her head against the bench back, Tuesday pulls the tie out of her hair and shakes out the wavy tresses. Then she sits back too. Her body aches with exhaustion, but her mind remains active as she glances around.

The river slides quietly by in the distance. Among the bustle of city life, she hears snippets of conversations between people and obedient noises from AI. She tunes into the familiar background noise for a while. Eventually she looks at Carole again.

The other had fallen asleep. Eyes closed, she breathes deeply through her slightly parted mouth.

Considering Carole had to clean up half of Tuesday’s attempts to clean the apartment, it is no wonder she’s more tired. She deserves a few minutes of rest.

The blonde reaches into her purse and retrieves her phone. Ignoring the screen, she turns the device around and traces the mini Gibson’s edges with a calloused finger.

She starts opening and folding the accordion part of the PopSocket. Its mindless amusement entertains her until Carole shifts, and suddenly there is a hand lying on Tuesday’s thigh.

Emitting a soft squeak, Tuesday tenses. Her eyes shoot up to her friend’s face. The other is clearly still asleep, if the snoring is any indication. Thankfully, Carole moves again, and her hand ends up on the bench between them.

She waits until her warm face has cooled down to wake her companion.

Chest-rattling coughs wake Tuesday from her nap. Bundled under two blankets, she huddles further into her cocoon and grimaces at the drying sweat stuck to her skin. A wet rag slides off her forehead. She has to breath in through her mouth; God, the things she would do for a clear nose.

She strains her ears for signs of Carole. Finding none, she searches for her phone and finds it tangled between the sheets. She checks the time.

It’s mid-afternoon. Where is Carole? Her foggy brain takes a moment to remember the answer. Right, she said something about going to the laundromat.

It’s silly, and maybe childish, but she suddenly wishes her friend (crush?) would show up through the door right now. Her mother did always say she became clingy when sick. (“Just rest, Tuesday, and you’ll be fine by yourself. You’re not going to have someone to take care of you forever, so it’s best to get over it now. I won’t coddle you.”)

She could call for Ziggy, but the owl clock just doesn’t feel like enough.

Shame curls in her empty stomach. Her gaze strays to the PopSocket. She runs her thumb over and over the high-quality plastic, and she finds an odd comfort in its smooth texture.

Carole will be back soon, Tuesday reminds herself. She holds her phone against her chest and lets sleep overtake her once more.

Tuesday opens the PopSocket so she can lay the phone on its side. After going to the camera app and putting it in selfie mode, she scrutinizes her appearance. Is she wearing too much lip gloss? Is her blouse too fancy for this restaurant? Oh, there are some hairs out of place!

She hurriedly runs her fingers through golden locks. Despite her nervousness, she wears an excited smile that won’t leave. Any minute now Carole will walk through the doors, and their first official date could begin.

As she smooths down her bangs, her mind runs through various scenarios. Pulling out the chair for Carole, holding hands under the table, giggling over gossip, recalling fond memories, sharing a milkshake—

“Tuesday!”

The blonde startles out of her imagination and spots Carole approaching. Her mouth turns dry.

Carole is beautiful. Always is, but now Tuesday can finally say it without holding anything back.

The house feels bigger than she remembers. At first she stands by the doorway, as if she is merely a guest, and then she migrates to the dining room table. The security AI greet her; their metallic voices seem to echo in the quiet.

She hasn’t been back here in two years. After the elections, her mother hardly spoke to her. When they did speak, it was cordial, if strained. Valerie had at least acknowledged her independence and genuine drive for music.

However, there are still things unsaid, things Tuesday needs her mother to know. So she pushed herself into returning here. According to the AI, a meeting Valerie is in is going overtime, which means it will be a while before she arrives.

Antsy, she can handle sitting only for a few minutes before standing. She wanders through the first floor briefly and then heads to the second.

The door to her old bedroom opens without a sound. Everything looks just as she left it; someone had even been regularly dusting. The bed shows not a crease, and no smudges blur the dresser mirror’s surface. Stuffed toys rest on the bed. Her gaze lingers longest on her old, filled notebooks stuffed at the end of her bookshelf.

…she wants to look at what’s written inside them, but not today.

Sitting on the bed, she focuses on keeping her breaths even. She reaches into her purse and presses her fingers against the little guitar on her phone. Whatever happens today, she has a home to go back to.

Footsteps approach. Not clicking heels or sturdy flats, but the soft press of loafers.

“Spencer!” she greets as her brother enters the room.

“I have some things to talk to her about too, so I hope you don’t mind me waiting with you.” He crosses the room to sit in her desk chair, and they chat the minutes away. She reminds herself to invite Spencer over to her and Carole’s apartment sometime.

Roddy leans over the table to hand Tuesday’s phone back. “There you go. Some of your apps kept running even when they were closed, so I fixed some settings. Your phone’s battery should last longer now.”

“Thanks.” She makes sure to accept it with her right hand; her other fingers are still wet with pizza grease. Carole hands her a napkin, which she gratefully accepts. Meanwhile, Gus slouches further in his chair and rubs his full stomach.

“You’ve had that PopSocket for a while, haven’t you?” Roddy casually notes.

Tuesday nods. Regardless of how well she took care of it, it was inevitable that it would be nicked and lose its luster. “Carole gave it to me right before the Mars Brightest finale.”

Carole leans against her girlfriend’s shoulder to examine the little guitar. “I should get you a new one. It’s looking pretty beat up.”

The blond hums, neither agreeing or disagreeing. Logically she should get another one, and she doesn’t need it to feel connected to Carole anymore. But the sentiment behind it makes it hard to let go of.

Gus sighs with a nostalgic smile on his face. “To think, only a few years ago you two were nobodies. I did a pretty great job, if I do say so myself.”

“I helped. A lot, actually, considering I work for Ertegun too,” Roddy mutters.

“Girls, look behind you. That’s a nice sunset,” Gus abruptly remarks.

The young adults turn to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Between buildings, bold oranges and soft pinks saturate the sky.

“It’s pretty,” Tuesday comments.

“Yeah…it is a pretty sight,” Carole agrees.

When the guitarist turns, she notices the brunette is watching her instead of the sky. Warmth spreads through Tuesday’s chest.

Carole takes her phone and opens the PopSocket. “Let’s take a selfie, Tues.”

Thanks to the guitar attachment, it’s easier to hold the phone up without it slipping. The sunset beyond the restaurant’s windows makes a lovely backdrop to their smiling profiles.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Instead of taking the photo immediately, Carole turns her head and kisses her on the cheek. Tuesday’s mouth opens in surprise. Click.

“Carole!”

Her girlfriend wears a toothy grin as she shows the selfie to her. “It’s cute! You’re so adorable when you’re surprised.” She stands and heads over to the other side of the table, where Gus and Roddy had watched the proceedings with fond looks. “Don’t worry, we’re not leaving you guys out. Let’s all take a selfie together.”

“That’s all right, I’m terrible in pictures…” Roddy attempts to dismiss, but the phone is thrust in front of him anyway.

“I’m tallest, so I’ll take the picture,” Gus offers, and she hands it to him.

Tuesday glances at the PopSocket between his fingers. It has served her well throughout her journey, and even if she doesn’t have it for much longer, she will never forget that day on the train. She walks over to the others, squeezes herself between Roddy and Carole, and tries to stifle a laugh as Gus struggles to take a non-blurry selfie.

#carole & tuesday #carole x tuesday #tuesday simmons #carole stanley #my fics #fanfiction

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txladyj-blog · 5 years

Text

Chapter 3 - This Time Around

a Daryl Dixon x OFC collaboration written by @xmistressmistrustx

Rating: Explicit

Relationship: Daryl Dixon/Original Female Character

Tags: Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Awkwardness, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Crush, Fluff and Humor, Angst and Humor, Mild Smut, Strong Language, Eventual Sex, Eventual Romance, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence, Some Canon Scenes and Dialogue

Chapters 15/?

On her way down to the water, Jess blinked the sun from her eyes and slapped her baseball cap on. They still had many more weeks left of the relentless sun and heat, the only let up being the late afternoons and early evenings when there was a little respite from the heat. Only then, when night crept in did the temperature change drastically, becoming colder but not enough for Jess to wear a jacket or sweater. She never really seemed to feel the cold all that much, she put it down to having lived in so many different places with such differing weather. Sarah had quite loudly blamed the fact that she had more layers of fat than most. Jess grit her teeth and shoved the comment away, hoping that not too many people from the group had heard her.

Her sneakers flapped against the dusty surface of the slope as she neared the bottom. Carol was in the corner by the shore, Ed watching her closely as she washed his shirt. Sophia sat on a rock nearby playing with her doll. Her soft chatter like a delightful tune to Jess’s ears. On the opposite side, was Daryl, knee deep in the water and holding up a sopping wet shirt with a huge bloodstain right in the middle. She scuffed towards him and stopped by the waters edge.

“How you doing, Stinky?” She chirped.

Daryl glanced over his shoulder at her. He was wearing a simple, off-white vest that was turning transparent from the water.

“Fine.” He called back.

She tilted her head to one side as she observed him trying to remove the stubborn stain from the garment. Her knowledge of history and attendance at many, authentic renaissance fairs had led to a vast knowledge of life without washer dryers and laundromats. She kicked off her sneakers, rolled her jeans up and waded into the water.

“Give it here, you’re making a pigs ear of that.” She chuckled.

“Been washin’ my stuff in rivers all my life, you can’t teach me shit, girl” he shot back, although he didn’t sound angry, more intrigued than anything else. She stopped beside him, the water lapping at her thighs. In the blistering heat, it was a welcome respite. Her body temperate cooled and she really wanted to just dive in and submerge herself in the tantalizing freshness of the water.

“You’re so stubborn. Just humor me, c’mon.” She said, reaching out for the shirt.

He reluctantly dragged it up from the water. Once again, she couldn’t help but notice his strong arms and dragged her lower lip under her front teeth. When her eyes lifted to his face, she was alarmed to find him staring right at her.

“Jess?” He asked with one eyebrow raised.

“Um. Sorry. I wasn’t looking- I mean...” She pointed a finger at him “…give me the damn shirt” and snatched it from his grasp. “Uh…” She shook the image from her head and waded a couple of steps to her left, meeting a large rock protruding from the water. “You need to use a rock. Like this.”

Swirling the shirt around in the water, she kept her eyes firmly on what she was doing, knowing that if she risked a peek, he would be able to see straight through her and her inability to ignore his two best features. Gathering the shirt up, she began massaging it into the smooth rock. He silently looked on from behind her, craning his neck to see what she was doing. Then, she took hold of one end of the shirt and beat it against the surface with a loud slap that echoed across the quarry each time. Daryl thought it looked like she was taking some serious anger out on his one and only shirt and hoped it would still be in one piece when she was done. When she stepped back, dipped it in the water and held it up, the stain had visibly diminished

“That was a lot of blood.” She remarked with a small pant. The last thing she wanted was for him to know how out of breath she was from battering a rock with a large piece of fabric.

“Yeah” He agreed. “Aint mine.”

“I know.” She said quickly, meaning he was now staring at her again. “That’s what I-I was looking for” She stammered, motioning to his arm. “Injuries.”

He nodded, feigning agreement. “Yeah, sure.”

“Damn right. That’s me. Always checking folks for injuries.” She babbled as she wrung the shirt out and attempted to slosh past him.

“No ya aint.” He argued with a small smile.

She sighed and turned to him “Alright. No, I don’t. But I really was with you. Honestly.”

“Right” He grinned.

“Here.” She said, tossing the twisted ball of fabric at him “I’m going before I embarrass myself even more.”

“Sure” He grunted. “Oh, don’t forget to check Merle for injuries.”

She stopped and slowly looked over her shoulder, her lips pushed into a thin line before she released a bashful laugh and flapped her hands at her sides, tilting her head back and sighing at the sky.

“That’s for callin’ me Stinky.” He confirmed while wading back to the shore and passing her.

“OK. We’re even. I’ll leave checking Merle over to twisted sister number 2” she mentioned, her hands coming up and dramatically shielding her mouth as she gasped and giggled loudly, the sound bouncing from the cliffs around the water. Daryl let himself go and laughed along with her as they both paddled through the water and back to dry land.

Gives as good as she gets, this girl.

Carol looked up when she heard Daryl and Jess laughing with one another as she walked out of the water, her lips curled into a smile when she saw Daryl beaming from ear to ear, a sight she had never seen since she’d met him for the first time. She’d assumed he never displayed such an expression, but it was now clear that he just didn’t have anything to smile about before.

“I say you could stop?” Ed snapped from behind her. “I need that damn shirt.”

She resumed her task without argument, the happy scene she’d witnessed making it all a little easier.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

That night, Jess was taken off guard when she passed the RV. She held an empty, metal bowl after eating alone in her tent and was distracted by a whistle from the top of the vehicle. She looked up to see Daryl reclined in his seat, in his usual spot but a lot earlier than usual. He nudged his head up, beckoning for her to join him. It had been weeks since they’d first met and she felt a sense of pride when she thought of how far they’d come and how they'd managed to at least partially break down each others barriers. She wasn’t yet sure about saying they were friends, but she was certain they enjoyed each other’s company.

Returning her plastic cutlery and her camping bowl to the bucket in the food prep area, she passed Sarah and Jodie who were immersed in hushed whispers as usual. Also, around the campfire, was Glenn, Andrea, her sister Amy, Merle, Dale and T-dog. She offered them all a polite smile, receiving the same back. Carol and Rick retreated into their tents with their families and Shane was out checking the fences. Having never really seen Daryl and Jess on their regular perch, everyone exchanged glances when she climbed the ladder to the RV, their nightly routine now revealed to the group.

Appearing beside him, she sat down and caught his eye. Saying nothing, they sat side by side for a while until the chatter resumed below and both of them were certain the topic of conversation was not directed at them. Jess slumped down in her seat, rested her head on the backrest and closed her eyes while Daryl lit a cigarette. After a while, Jess found she’d drifted off into a light sleep and woke only when she heard Sarah wish Daryl a good night in her typical, flirtatious high school cheerleader voice. Daryl ignored her.

Jess sat up and rubbed at her face, clearing her throat and raising her eyebrows at the distance Daryl was able to flick his cigarette end out into the distance.

“What were you doing when the word ended?” She wanted to know. The sound of her voice seemed to slice through the atmosphere like a knife and she smarted at the sound. “Wow, never thought I’d say that sentence.” She added more quietly.

He flicked his lighter on and off over and over again as he struggled to decide if he should tell her the truth or not. Concluding that he had previously snapped at her and offended her and she was still sat with him, he guessed she would be able to handle it.

“Was workin’ my way through four lines of coke when I looked up and saw the TV had that national guard alert thing on it.” He disclosed.

“Yeah, we saw that on our phones. My friend and I. We were at a renaissance fair.” She said casually.

He briefly wondered why she didn’t seem bothered that he confessed so openly to being a cocaine user when it occurred to him that she simply took people as they were, flaws or not.

“A what?” He questioned.

“A Renaissance fair. It’s a recreation of a historical setting with costumes and role play and stuff, for a whole weekend.”

His expression was one of pure bafflement as he stared at her.

“So, you like… get all dressed up and run around in a field pretending to’ to fight or some shit?”

“Well, that’s the battle reenactment part. But it happens, Yeah.” She affirmed.

His brow furrowed. “You’re kinda weird, y’know that?”

“I think that’s what you like about me.” She grinned as she leaned towards him and nudged his elbow with hers. It was the first time she’d actually physically touched him aside from letting him help her up from the ground in the woods. He didn’t react which she could only take as a good sign.

“I don’t like nobody.” He scoffed.

Jess huffed and rolled her eyes, a bright smile on her face that he could see clearly enough due to light from a lantern between them.

“Yes, you do. Just accept that you’re as weird as me and that’s why we get along.” She grinned.

Part of him hated that she was able to draw smiles out of him like no one else he had ever known, but the other part of him liked the fact that when he was with her, things seemed that little bit easier.

“Whatever.” He dismissed.

She laughed to herself and got up, reaching her arms high above her head and stretching her muscles.

“Where ya goin?” He questioned.

“Back to my tent.” She yawned. “Tired”

“Ya ain’t got no more weird hobbies to tell me about?” He continued.

Jess was mildly shocked by the question, he wanted her to tell him about her hobbies? He wanted to talk to her at all? It no longer felt like she was forcing him to converse with her, he’d taken the lead this time and she was more than happy to let him have it.

“Wasn’t aware you were that interested.” She admitted.

“I ain’t. Just nothin better to do.” He shrugged.

Jess plonked herself back in the rickety chair again and shifted her body to face him, throwing one leg over the other.

“OK, so if my hobbies are weird, what are yours?” She challenged.

At the prospect of being asked more about himself and his life, his desire to talk lessened considerably in seconds.

“Ain’t talkin’ ‘bout me” He mumbled.

“I am.” She glared at him with a bold and entertained look.

Accepting that he wasn’t going to get out of answering her probing and he was partly to blame for encouraging her to stay, he nibbled his bottom lip and answered her question.

“Fine. Huntin’, drinkin’, gettin’ high”

"And spittin' chaw in a bucket?" She joked.

"Asshole" He grumbled as she covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a giggle.

Birds flew overhead, a now rare sight that meant there were still some species out there somewhere, flourishing away from all the decay. Jess swayed back and forth in her seat with her arms wrapped around herself.

“Maybe you can teach me how to hunt, drink and get high one day.” She suggested breezily.

“Nah, I ain’t wastin’ time with no lightweight.” He declined.

“Just makes me a cheap date.” She realized instantly that she’d just come out with something unintentionally flirtatious and panicked. “I mean, yeah…uh… probably a lightweight.” She laughed awkwardly as she played with the hem of her T-shirt.

“Ya ever been huntin’?” He wanted to know, ignoring her outward discomfort and wondering what it was that made her so fidgety sometimes.

“No. I’d like to.” She said.

He nodded, leaning forward and picking up a leaf from the roof of the RV. He fiddled with it, folded it in half and then in half again.

“Too dangerous to be out there without knowin’ whatcha doin’.” He expressed.

“Yeah. Guess you’re right. And I wouldn’t.” She agreed.

Believing she’d murdered the conversation with her careless chit chat, she stopped talking and resigned herself to sitting quietly and tapping her sneaker on the edge of the roof again. More time passed and Jess couldn’t think of a way to get up and leave without seeming embarrassed or strange. She knew she was overthinking everything but being in the presence of someone she was actually starting to find highly attractive was unsettling and she wasn’t used to it.

“So, what’s the difference?” She heard him utter out of nowhere.

“What?”

“Said ya ain’t shy, ya introverted. What’s the difference?”

Two enquiries into her personality and interests in one night meant that she may have been all over the place and afraid to do something wrong, but the night had still been a small triumph in itself.

“Shy means you’re anxious about talking to people. Nervous and timid. Introverts aren’t always like that; we just need to re-charge sometimes. We’re confident with people we’re comfortable around. I’ll talk to people but I usually find most folks just drain me. I guess I’m just quiet by nature, but I’m not shy.” She explained.

“Hm.” He grunted. “Some kind of head shrinker tell you that?”

“No. It’s kind of common knowledge. Or at least I thought it was.” She disclosed “I think maybe your introverted too, it’s something we have in common.”

“Nah. I just think most folks are assholes.” He countered quickly

Jess giggled at his stubborn streak and for the second time Daryl realized that he liked the fact that she thought him funny. His mouth quirked up into a half smile.

“I’ll leave you alone to recharge your introvert batteries.” She winked at him. “Goodnight.”

She didn’t hear him protest or call her back as she descended the ladder so when her feet hit the ground, she made straight for her tent, longing for her sleeping bag and wishing she had a pen so she could record the events of her time spent sat with someone she really would have liked to have called her friend.

“Hey.” A voice called out. She turned back and saw him smoking yet another cigarette and leaning forward in his seat. “Ya wanna learn how to track animals?” A thin line of smoke rose from where he sat, high up into the air before it vanished.

A rush of excitement thundered through her and she wrestled with the urge not to grin too widely.

“Yeah, that sounds good.” She squeaked, her voice emerging in higher pitch than she’d expected.

“Sunrise. Meet me at the tree line over there” he lifted his arm, pointing across the camp. “Make sure ya have somethin to eat first. Ya pass out on me i’ma leave ya ass out there.”

Jess knew it was a playful dig at her making him eat a bowl of berries before going hunting and liked the fact that he’d remembered and used it on her. Turning the tables and proving that their jibing at one another was enjoyed as much by him as it was by her.

“OK. I will.” She beamed. “See you at sunrise”

“One more thing” He rasped, standing up and driving a hand into his jeans pocket. Her eyes grew larger when she saw the plastic box clasped in his fingers as he tugged them out of his pocket. He threw it down to her, the box clattering in the dust at her feet. She looked down at it and wanted nothing more than to run back to the ladder and hug him. Five precious, black, ballpoint pens.

“Yours stopped workin’, right?” He checked.

“Yeah.” She responded as she gingerly bent down to pick them up.

“Saw ‘em when I was out on a run with Rick the other day.”

He thought of me when he was out on a run?

She opened her mouth to speak, but what was a simple gesture from Daryl was a huge deal to Jess. He had just given her back the ability to express her emotions and keep her sanity in check. Now, she would need no more dangerous walks in the woods alone and she could write until she fell asleep.

“This is um…you don’t know how grateful I am for this. Thank you, Daryl.” She said, swallowing hard and looking right at him.

“No problem.” He grunted, raising a hand at her in a small wave “Night.”

Before she succumbed to sleep, Jess sat cross legged on her sleeping bag with her torch in her mouth, shining down on the page and began to write.

It’s funny, I never thought someone throwing a box of pens at me would mean so much. Daryl knew I couldn’t write because my one and only pen stopped working, so he brought me back a box from a supply run. I must have looked at him like he had grown an extra head. I just couldn’t believe he thought of me while he was out there. I can write again, my mind feels clearer already and I’m happier. All because he got me some stupid pens.

OK, maybe it isn’t just the pens. He seems to be coming around to the idea of us being friends. Tonight, he didn’t actually say it but he wanted me to go sit with him on the RV and then tried to act as though he wasn’t interested in me at all while asking me questions about myself. He’s actually got a sense of humor and a personality that he’s slowly but surely letting me see and it’s awesome. He’s pretty awesome.

But he caught me looking at him today. It was mortifying and I’m so angry at myself. Yeah, the guy is hot. But I thought I was stronger than to get caught practically drooling at him. He knew too. He knew exactly what was going on and I feel like my life is officially over.

Hopefully, I’ll get eaten by a walker or he’ll get a bout of amnesia.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Her T-shirt was sticking to her back with sweat. She really wanted to know how Daryl did this every day in such heat and sometimes even with his leather vest on. She was sure she’d pass out and had consumed most of the water she brought with her before they’d even been out for an hour. Daryl crept along in front of her, examining the ground and snapped branches of foliage In the woods. Try as she might, she kept falling behind and her legs felt like they were made of cement.

I really should have used that gym membership.

“C’mon, keep up. Stay close to me.” Daryl instructed from in front of her. She could see that the back of his shirt was also dampened with sweat, but unlike her, he showed little to no signs of fatigue.

“It’s so damn hot out here” she complained “am I in hell?!”

“Purgatory at best.” He mumbled

She dragged the back of her hand through the perspiration on her top lip.

Great. A sweat moustache. Sexy.

“Looooord. I’m MEEELTING!” She cried.

“Shh!” He whirled around, bundling her against a tree with his fingers wrapped around the top of one of her arms. The movement was so quick and unexpected and her flesh stung but she didn’t flinch, his temper too short for her to react. She couldn’t deny that fear tickled her veins and she was rooted to the spot. “You stupid or somethin?! Ain’t just animals out here. Place is full of Walkers and ya gonna get us both bit if ya don’t keep ya god damn voice down.” He hissed at her through gritted teeth.

“OK. I’m sorry.” She whispered. “You’re hurting me”

In a split second, he was full of guilt for losing his temper at her as he examined her alarmed expression. He looked down at his hand clamped tightly around her arm. He quickly let go as if her skin was made from lava, seeing the red mark he’d left behind. An angry handprint. He shrank back and she noticed his eyes kept dropping and coming back to the burning patch around her bicep.

“I-I didn’t mean to-“ he mumbled.

“-It’s OK.” She interrupted “really, it’s OK.”

He dragged a hand over his face, his crossbow rattling against his legs as he held it loosely in his grasp with his other hand.

“Come on, let’s keep going.” She suggested, stepping away from the tree and motioning with her hand for him to pass her.

“Wait” he grunted. She stopped and stood still, witnessing what she could only describe as pure, genuine regret in the angry, aggressive redneck.

“I wouldn’t hurt ya. Not on purpose.” He told her

“Daryl, I know” Jess tried

“Naw, Naw” He dismissed, waving a hand at her. “I saw it. in your eyes. Ya scared of me.”

Jess exhaled slowly and tried to ground herself. This was a conversation she had definitely not anticipated and one with which she knew she needed to exercise extreme caution with.

“You just surprised me. I’m not scared of you. I wouldn’t spend half as much time with you if I was. I understand why you got mad at me, I’m kind of annoying and I don’t know how to handle this new world like you do.”

He paced about in the small space between the trees in front of her. Back to front, side to side, before he finally stopped and began to bite his thumbnail.

“Sorry.” He muttered from behind his hand.

Jess smiled at him. In that moment, she knew that Daryl was not good at apologies and had very likely, hardly ever, genuinely apologized for anything in his life.

“I told you. It’s OK”

He nodded once, raised his crossbow again and charged past her.

“Ya gotta keep up so I can keep an eye on ya.” He grumbled

She took a quick swig of water from the bottle that was fastened to a plastic strap on her belt and carried on after him, wishing that it was raining, or snowing, or that she was standing in the water of the quarry washing clothes. But the view made up for it and she couldn’t lie to herself, watching Daryl stalk about between the trees, concentration etched on his face, his crossbow at the ready and his strong physique shining in the light of the sun as he moved was almost enough to make her forget what she was doing there altogether. But while she thought Daryl nice to look at, she remained platonically interested in him and what he had to teach her there and then, knowing that someday, she might need to use the information presented to her.

“See this right here.” He stopped and pointed with his boot to a nibbled patch of grass “deer.”

Jess finally caught up, standing next to him and regarding the slightly disturbed area on the ground.

“How do you know that?!” She asked with surprise.

“They’re messy eaters. They press it against their top palette and yank it right outta the ground.”

Her face changed and she thought for a moment as her lips rose into a smile.

“Like a really cute lawn mower.” She commented.

He just looked at her as if she was crazy.

“What about Walkers? Can you track them?” She wanted to know as she peered down at the missing grass, noting the disturbed earth under it.

“Walkers and live humans are easiest to track. We leave footprints, stamped down grass, broken twigs and messed up foliage. That kinda shit.” He explained.

She began to back away with a glint in her eye that he didn’t like the look of.

“So if I ran off, you’d be able to track me?” She asked.

He followed her, walking with her as she stepped backwards. She was challenging him and he didn’t like it one bit. Not out there in the open. Not where she could get killed.

“I could, but runnin’ off would be a real dumb thing to do.” He warned.

“Look at me, it’s not like I’m going to get far.” She gestured to her torso with her hands.

“Stop.” He ordered firmly

“Maybe I should try, could use the exercise” she shrugged lightheartedly, aware she was once again prodding at his temper but caring very little. Angry Daryl wasn’t all that bad to look at either.

He was glaring at her, his blue eyes intense. For such a mysterious, introverted and antisocial person, she couldn’t figure out why it was that he seemed to manage and maintain eye contact with her on a number of occasions. Not that she was complaining.

“Ya stay with me, so I can keep ya safe.” He affirmed.

His switch in tone from relaxed to stern and protective stirred something in Jess. She liked the way his eyes locked with hers as he talked about keeping her safe. She hadn’t expected this level of care from him and could only hazard a guess that it was because he actually did like her enough to want her around. She nodded and gestured with her hand for him to continue leading the way.

“How did you learn this?” She queried.

“My ol’ man used to take me out into the woods. Blindfold me and bail. Had to track him.”

“Well, it worked.”

“Yeah. He’d tan my hide every time I got it wrong.”

Jess smiled at the ground as she walked but it soon dawned on her that he could be serious and that there was the possibility that Daryl didn’t have the best upbringing in the world.

“You taught anyone else how to do this?” She continued in her quest to find out more about him.

“Naw.”

“Don’t you and Merle usually hunt together?”

“Not no more. We split up. He’s more interested in getting’ laid. Stop askin’ questions, every animal in Georgia can hear ya.” He scolded.

“Sorry.” She muttered as she scanned the area around them. A darkened, bumpy patch around a tree stump caught her eye and she skirted away from Daryl, approaching it with some hesitation.

“Are those edible?” She questioned while leaning forwards over the gathering of mushrooms.

“Again with the damn questions” he complained as he stomped over to where she stood and followed her gaze.

“I have to ask questions to learn” she corrected, straightening up and raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, can eat those” He answered, ignoring her last statement.. “But don’t eat nothin’ like that without askin’ me or Merle or someone that knows what the hell they’re talkin’ ‘bout. The wrong ones could kill ya.”

“Or get me real high.” She suggested with a wink.

“You ever done shrooms?” His face was unimpressed, not taken in by her playful line of questioning.

She placed both hands on her hips and let out a small laugh “Do I look like I’ve done shrooms?”

“Right. No. Don’t touch any unless ya desperate.” He told her before resuming her lesson about different types of tracks. He explained how animals have certain ways of moving which leave footprints that signal what they are. Along with how to identify bird tracks and how to cover her own path if she ever need to escape Into the woods.

“Why would I run away from another live human?” She asked.

“Can’t trust people no more. Some of ‘em are worse than the Walkers.” He replied. “Ya see another person, keep ya distance and ya weapon ready. They could steal your shit or wanna eat ya with the way things are goin’.”

That’s food for thought.

“I’m a catch. I’d keep them fed for at least a fortnight.” She chirped.

He suddenly stopped and glared back at her. She couldn’t read his expression, somewhere between irritation and confusion. He said nothing and carried on walking.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The majority of the day was highly educational for Jess and she took a vested interest in being able to hunt her own food and escape without trace into the trees. She’d even been able to practice a few things. Daryl let her use his crossbow to shoot a squirrel and she shocked herself when she celebrated the animals demise instead of crying about it. That was her squirrel, he had told her. She was going to skin it and eat it because it was her first ever successful hunt. She felt a swelling sense of pride in her chest when he handed it to her and made sure she carried it back to camp.

As they neared the tree line that separated them from the clearing in which the fire was being started for the evening, Jess and Daryl slowly wandered along, neither of them really wanting to go back and sit among the others. Their time alone in the woods had been mutually enjoyable and peaceful and Daryl considered asking her if she wanted to do the same again the next day. Before he could speak, she beat him to it.

“I enjoyed today.” She confessed. “It was very educational.”

“Me too.” He replied quietly, keeping his vision on his path and hoisting the string of squirrels and various other small, dead animals further up his shoulder.

“Where’s your vest?” She enquired, using it as an excuse to catch a glimpse of his arms.

Screw it. I’ve earned this.

He looked up at her briefly, catching her eyes sweeping his upper arm and chose to ignore it as as he prepared for her reaction to what he was about to tell her.

“Washed it this mornin’. Was dryin’ when I left.” She began to giggle to herself and felt him shove her in the arm in jest. “Shut up.” He grunted.

“He actually listened to me. Oh my god.” She said to herself with a wide grin.

“It’s a one off. Don’t act so smug.” He grumbled as they both stepped out of the trees into the open area of the camp. Activity was at a minimum. Shane and Lori were talking in the corner, Carol sat with Sophia by the fire as Glenn fanned the initial flames. Andrea was atop of the RV while Dale was at the food station. Jess turned to Daryl with her squirrel gripped in her hand by its tail.

“Thank you. For taking me out.” She said sincerely.

“You’re welcome.” He said with a nod.

It was a clear and sincere acceptance and strangely polite for him. But she appreciated it all the same. He intended to follow it up with an invitation to do the same the next day, but something shattered his plan.

“Thank you for taking me out Daryl I love youuuuu!” A high-pitched voice mocked from behind them.

Daryl whirled around and locked his sights on Sarah.

“What’s up? You jealous or somethin?! Huh?” He raged as he stormed towards them. Jess managed to grab one of his arms to stop him but she shrugged her off and told her in no uncertain terms that she was going to let him say his piece.

”I should ram this squirrel down her throat” Jess said under her breath.

Daryl’s rage was evidently scaring Sarah into submission to an extent. When he stopped in front of her and loomed over as she perched on a tree stump, his eyes narrowed and Jodie, who was sat beside Sarah, instinctively moved away and stood nearby like the true coward she was.

“You deaf as well as stupid?” He seethed.

“N-no.” She said with an air of fake confidence..

“You wouldn’t wanna go out there anyways, I’d feed ya skinny ass to the Walkers before the heat melts that plastic shit in ya face.” He hissed. “You got a thing for Rednecks? That why ya jealous?”

“No”

“Funny. Ain’t what I’ve seen.”

“Don’t you dare.” Sarah warned

“C’mere. I gotta tell ya somethin.” He leaned closer, curling his index finger at her and gesturing for her to move forwards. She refused, so he defiantly positioned his face by her ear. “Threatenin’ me ain’t wise, bitch. Not with what I saw ya doin with my brother in the woods.”

“You didn’t see anything. I wasn’t doing anything.” She protested through gritted teeth.

He moved back slightly, looking right at her. His lip curling in disgust. He hated girls like Sarah and Jodie as much as Jess seemed to. He too had endured their persecution at high school.

“Harder, Merle. Harder.” He mocked quietly adapting his voice and making it higher-pitched.

Sarah’s face twisted into pure panic.

“Oh my god. Shut your mouth. You some kind of pervert?” She fumed, quickly looking over her shoulder at a petrified Jodie, stood hugging herself and biting her nails.

“Nah, that’s Merle. But ya know that already, don’t ya?” He leaned close to her again, hearing her draw in a jagged breath. “Maybe next time he’s balls deep in ya, you should keep it down. Just a suggestion.”

Jess was impressed at his ability to render them both silent and reasonably terrified in seconds and she only wished she could do the same. His comment regarding Sarah’s badly executed lip fillers had almost made her bellow with laughter. But she exercised some restraint and watched on with dignity. Then came his graphic ridicule of her sexual activity with Merle in the woods. She hadn’t seen this side to him. Spiteful and savage and she had felt a twinge of discomfort at his brash and crude references. However, she struggled to find a reason why it wasn’t justified and decided that it all boiled down to the fact that Sarah shouldn’t be dishing it out if she couldn't take it.

It was some time before Daryl finally backed down after an intense stare off between then, but when he did, Sarah sat motionless and humiliated in her spot, her hands clasped in her lap and her jaw pulled tight.

“C’mon” Daryl said to Jess as he passed “let’s cook this shit up.”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I think I have a crush on him. I’m so pissed at myself. Why do I always like guys that wouldn’t look at me twice?! Who am I trying to kid? No one looks at me twice anyway. Suppose I’ll just have to window shop, as usual. The world ended. Only a few survived and my brain thinks it’s an appropriate time to develop a crush on someone. It seems it’s been noticed by the twisted sisters too. No doubt I’ll have to endure more mockery at their hands. Or maybe What Daryl said to Sarah will make her think twice in the future. I don’t know. It was kind of…hot. Watching him shut her up like that. I can only hope it’s stays with her and she leaves us alone. Us. That’s strange. Me. Leave me alone.

Sometimes, I feel like they’re how I’m supposed to be. Maybe if I were more like them, things would be easier. Are they roses and I’m just a Dandelion? Roses may have thorns but if you breathe in instead of out at a Dandelion, it’ll choke you.

Choosing to sit with Rick and Carl after everyone had eaten, Jess jotted down words in her journal, tilting it to avoid Carl’s curious gaze. After weeks at the camp, Jess concluded that the cop next to her and his young son were actually quite nice company and decent conversation in the late evening hours when the sun would set and she’d start to look forward to retreating to the top of the RV with someone who had become her favorite individual to be around. Daryl.

Glenn and T-dog sat on the other side of Jess, with Andrea beside them, Dale on the RV and Merle next to Daryl, who was positioned square in her sightline when she looked up. He carved bolts and sharpened his hunting knife while Carl, Rick and Jess conversed quietly between themselves.

Merle nudged his brothers arm and Daryl’s hands stilled, his knife poised and still over a rock in case he sliced his hand off as a result of Merle’s careless action.

“Hey, Darlina. What ya say we head into the city at some point? Pick us up a little whiskey for these cold nights.”

“City’s full of walkers. Ain’t worth it.” Daryl replied with a shake of his head.

“Ahh, don’t be no sissy! Be in and out faster’n a bat outta hell.” Merle reasoned.

It was the worst idea Daryl had heard in a long time. In fact, the last bad idea he’d heard had also come from Merle and all the bad ideas before that. A pattern had formed and Daryl was no longer interested in being involved in any of his big brothers hairbrained and dangerous schemes.

“Yeah, maybe.” He mumbled in an attempt to quieten him.

Rick, who had overheard what was said, lifted his head from watching his son sitting on the floor next to Jess.

“It’s wise to keep a clear head right now. you both know Walkers are working their way up the mountains” He offered.

Merle stood up. A lit cigarette hung from his lips, the ash from the end flittering down from the orange end like confetti.

“Yo, Sherriff good boy? This don’t concern you” Merle snapped with a point of his finger. In a second, he was gone, vanished into the approaching darkness and not a single soul sat around the fire cared where.

Rick sighed and looked sideways at Jess, who was offering him a sympathetic smile as she turned a page in her journal and carried on scribbling.

“What are you writing?” He asked.

“Nothing exciting. Haikus.” She muttered. Making a mistake on the page, she scribbled it out, her tongue emerging from the corner of her mouth in concentration.

“Haikus” Rick repeated.

“Dad, a Haiku is a short, Japanese poem that has a 5-7-5 syllable rule.” Carl interrupted. Rick was more than aware of what a Haiku was, but decided to humor his son anyway and presented his best, faked surprised look.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Jess grinned at Carl.

“I see. Can we hear one?” Rick asked.

Jess never shared any of the fruits of her labor when she was writing, always finding it too personal and revealing to read out to anyone, let alone people she hadn’t known all that long. She was no Haiku expert, nor was she all that into them, but the short, direct nature of them was both an appealing hurdle for her to overcome and something that keep her mind sharp.

“Oh, I don’t know…” She mused.

“Yeah! Please?” Carl begged, shifting around so he could peer at her with inquisitive eyes.

Daryl looked up from across the fire and paused his task. He slid his knife back into its holster and leaned against the wooden box behind him, bending one leg and draping an arm over it.

“Uh… OK. sure.” Jess reluctantly agreed. She cleared her throat and tried to speak without her voice shaking. Suddenly feeling like she was stood up at the front of class at high school with a room full of judgement staring right back at her. But she wasn’t at high school, this was different and the young boy on tenterhooks in front of her was so enthusiastic, she felt too bad to decline.

“I stand taller to

Overcome the shadows

Of those who doubt me.”

Her cheeks reddened and she stared at her handwriting on the page, noticing one letter ‘a’ that wasn’t quite joined up enough. The silence around her was deafening.

“That’s… personal.” Rick remarked “but good. I mean, I don’t know what I’m talking about but-”

“-it is good. I think it’s good.” Carl affirms. “You should write more of those.”

His encouragement was endearing and she could only hope that his happy demeanor would continue, despite their dire situation.

“Thanks.” She muttered bashfully as she drew a star in the corner of the page.

“Should write a Haiku for everyone.” Glenn suggested from her other side. “Merle’s would be interesting, that’s for sure”

He was right. What could she say about Merle? With an out of the blue surge of confidence, she wrote down what was in her head, smirking at the words on the page and giving Glenn a quick wink. Before sharing her Haiku, she checked that Merle was well out of earshot or she would have some serious explaining to do.

“Bug zapper becomes

Merle’s entertainment after

TV repossessed.”

Nervous giggles filtered through the group around the fire as most of them also checked over their shoulders to make sure Merle wasn’t present. Jess scanned the laughing faces to see Daryl dip his head and smile into his lap. A rush of pride and self-satisfaction surged through her at the thought that she’d managed to make at least five people laugh, including the brother of the man she was making fun of and the person she had developed a crush on.

As the chuckling subsided, Daryl tilted his head back and rested a cigarette between his lips. Lighting it, his eyes never left hers and she began to wonder what he was doing and how strange it must have looked to everyone else. Luckily, no one was paying them any mind. Crickets chirped in the surrounding long grass in the tree line and the chilled, nightly breeze arrived, Andrea pulled her jacket closer around her and shivered.

“Bout me?” Daryl rasped.

The group fell silent, all exchanging intrigued glances. Jess stifled a huge grin, knowing it was quite something for him to pipe up in a social situation like this and put himself in the spotlight.

“OK.” She giggled “Daryl…. Lets see.” She began to write on the page again as the others grinned and waited for the most anticipated Haiku of what had become the nights entertainment. When Jess was ready, she flashed him a wide, perfectly white smile and the brightness and life in her eyes seemed to hit him like a lightning bolt.

“Daryl. Person who

Lacks class but enjoys a life

Without rich folks rules”

Rick couldn’t help but snort with laughter along with Carl. Jess joined them and had to build up the bravery to look back at Daryl. When she did, she saw him pick up a smell pebble and throw it at her. It bounced off her sneaker and skittered across the dirt. But his smile was missed with a blink, wanting to hide how amused he really was from those around him.

“Dunno whatcha talkin’ ‘bout. I got class”, He muttered.

“I have more class in my little finger” Andrea commented.

Instead of acknowledging Andrea, he continued to focus on the Haiku writing girl in the vintage Batgirl T-shirt that was able to make him feel more like himself than he ever did before. She was self-aware, able to make fun of herself, different and smart and she was as much of a mystery to him as he was to her. Neither one of them had experienced such an unconventional friendship with a person that under normal circumstances, they never would have crossed paths with anyway. But as she watched him with her unassuming, innocent and dark features, it dawned on him. Something he never thought about anyone. Ever. She was pretty.

For the first time in as far back as he could remember, he’d had a decent and enjoyable day. Not only was he able to do what he loved most and did most days, he was able to share it with someone that genuinely wanted to learn something from him and respected his ways of doing things. She wasn’t Merle, inpatient and arrogant. She was receptive, fascinated and soaked up information quicker than he’d expected. He was looking forward to sitting with her on the RV after dark.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

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