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casicroaks · 5 months

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Tiffany Valentine has two things in her mind: love and murder. The origins of the brains behind the infamous Lakeshore Strangler and the string of broken hearts she left along her way to Chicago, interwoven with the development of the tempestuous relationship between her and a certain Charles Lee Ray.

CHAPTER 6

[ CHAPTER 1 // CHAPTER 2 // CHAPTER 3 // CHAPTER 4 // CHAPTER 5 // CHAPTER 6 // CHAPTER 7 // CHAPTER 8 // CHAPTER 9 // CHAPTER 10 // CHAPTER 11 // CHAPTER 12 // CHAPTER 13 // CHAPTER 14 // CHAPTER 15 // CHAPTER 16 ]

NEW JERSEY, 1985

“It’s a fact, Tiff,” Chucky said as he patted the armrests of the chair, hopping back to his feet. “It’s just more comfortable than that ugly steel chair you like so much. You can’t argue against that.”

“But that’s an armchair, not a dining chair!” I insisted. “And besides, it doesn’t fit with the table.”

“Then we get another table!” he shouted and gestured around him. “This is a goddamn furniture store!”

“We can’t fit a bigger table!”

“We can, if we move the couch!”

“I mean, it doesn’t fit in the car!”

For a moment, Chucky stopped screaming. Still frowning furiously, he put his hands on his hips, turned to the table and walked around it, examining it and considering it thoughtfully. And, finally, he looked back at me and gestured towards it. “It does fit!”

“Really? How do you know?” I asked as I put my hands on my hips as well.

“I… I just know –it’s obvious!”

It had been nine months since we had started dating. These sorts of stupid little squabbles had become commonplace, so I didn’t worry too much. He just had to chew on his anger for a while, and after a few minutes he’d be back to his old self.

Moving had been a slow process, mostly because Chucky had to first get used to the apartment layout and to the barely-held-together chaos I lived in. He began by staying over a few nights, up until he could navigate the place without stumbling onto some forgotten coin purse, or onto a doll collector’s magazine (I had them just for the pretty pictures), or onto an old greeting card, or onto my third portable sewing kit. He didn’t like the idea of new furniture at all, in the beginning, but he finally had to agree that the cheap dining chairs were damn uncomfortable, and that the couch would get even dirtier if we kept eating there. Finally, two weeks ago he had moved in with me, and he coming along finally gave me the motivation to empty those cardboard boxes I still had lying around. Chucky didn’t have much, it seemed, besides a small suitcase of clothes, two shelves worth of books, a few sketchpads, a Garfield mug, and some records. He did have a record player, which I didn’t have, which was the best addition my apartment was needing: it was great to be able to listen to whatever music we wanted, no radio required. And, lastly, he brought along a little weed plant potted in an old Maxwell House tin, which Chucky proudly told me he had begun caring for shortly after we had started dating. I was sorta impressed at the fact that he had managed to keep something alive for so long.

Soon after he moved in, though, I brought up the subject again of wanting to paint the walls purple. I was sick and tired of that pale dusty pink, painted in rough clumsy strokes, like the skin of an old woman about to croak. Chucky agreed with me, and after discussing the rising rent prices and the general cost of living, we decided to take matters into our own hands. One stormy night we went upstairs and knocked on the door, meaning to present my new boyfriend to the landlord. He didn’t want to let us in at first, but I had been smart and brought some homemade chocolate chip cookies as a bargaining thank-you gesture for forgiving my occasional late payments. Chucky vouched for my cooking, and I think that, when he turned the charm on, it was enough for the guy to agree to offer us some coffee. After that, it was just a matter of finding the knives drawer in the kitchen while Chucky chatted the guy up, and slicing his throat from behind him when Chucky gave me the sign with a little turn of the head. And, because this was a shared one, I had kindly brought Chucky a nice big knife, too. It was much better when we worked together anyways.

Boy, we had some fun, that night. The landlord lived alone, luckily, and since it was so late and the night was so loud, what with the thunder and the heavy rain, we not only managed to make a nice red mess in the top floor’s kitchen –we also got a good loot of a bunch of suits, cassette tapes, appliances (the coffee maker in particular was quite modern, much better than the old thing I had picked out at the dollar store) and, most importantly, a fuckton of cash all sorted by apartment number in boxes in a drawer in the bedroom, the money we tenants had been paying and he had been hoarding there. After taking all the stuff back to our apartment, Chucky and I had the still-warm cookies and a smoke, and decided to leave the body there with the key in the inside of the door. No chance of passing it as a suicide, that was for sure; but we hadn’t left any evidence, and there would be no reason to believe us, two lovebirds with no financial incentive, would ever do such a thing.

The next day we bought two big buckets of purple paint. We covered the furniture and floor with some sheets and newspaper, he lent me an old t-shirt he didn’t mind getting dirty and I helped him tie his hair, and we painted all the walls in our apartment. Admittedly, it was not the neatest work, but we were doing it together, and we listened to the dead guy’s tapes, and sang along to the songs we recognized, and had a couple smokes, and had a blast. After a few hours we were more or less done and our arms were plenty sore. We threw ourselves on top of the covered couch, his head on my lap, passing a joint from one purple-stained hand to another, and I stared at the ceiling that was still white, though now looking pale-ish lilac from the reflection of the last rays of sunlight through the window onto the freshly painted walls, and thought of the future. Maybe someday we could get a real house, instead of a tiny dingy apartment in boring old Hackensack. An honest-to-God house, with a porch and a yard, with a second floor, maybe even a nursery upstairs. A basement where we could store our own specialized knives, instead of using your everyday kitchen stuff. Perhaps an entire room for my dolls. And maybe, I though while taking a deep drag, a little greenhouse where Chucky could grow his own plants. He could use a hobby, after all… And I could have rose bushes, growing next to a white picket fence. I could have a window in front of the sink, from which to watch him come home every afternoon. And a dishwasher –my own dishwasher! Imagine that. And a proper fireplace, not the closed-up thing I used as a shelf in the living room of the apartment, but an actual fireplace around which we could snuggle during winters and talk about our day. Around which we could dance to his records. Where we could eat a wonderful homemade meal while watching a movie on TV. Where we could fall asleep, dozing off after the late-night news. I smiled, handing the joint back to him. That was the nicest daydream I had had in a while.

Now that we didn’t pay rent anymore, we could actually spend money in stuff we wanted. Once the apartment walls were looking just how I had wanted it to look for almost two years, I did the next thing I was looking forward to, and I went grocery shopping, and I got all the top-shelf stuff for once. Chucky and I had a feast that night. And, once I restyled the apartment and afforded the good stuff at the grocery store, the next thing the place was desperately needing was some new furniture to match.

So, we were at an ‘Ikea’, a new out-of-town store to buy all sorts of stuff for the home, that Molly had recommended me so we could get some furniture that wasn’t second-hand. We had seen the ad on TV and it sounded good enough to give it a try. Apparently, according to Molly, the catch was that we had to assemble the furniture ourselves, like a puzzle we would have to eventually sit on. Fair, we thought. We both liked a good challenge.

I hotwired a Dodge Caravan we found by Carver Park, since we would need something big to bring the boxes back to the apartment. We managed to avoid the rush hour and got to the store by around one in the afternoon. It was a cloudy Tuesday, and it was only us two and one middle-aged lady dragging her orthopedic shoes over the linoleum. Once we stepped in, we both glanced around in case there were any security cameras watching over us. There didn’t seem to be any. Still, we were more or less prepared to make it as hard as possible to be recognized: both of us wearing our sunglasses, me with my peach-colored hair (the red dye had been washing off, but it wasn’t ready for being fully bleached into blonde again just yet), and after some persuading Chucky had let me tie his hair in a ponytail again, so we could at least pretend to be a respectable couple simply perusing home goods.

We had hoped to simply peruse home goods, rob some chairs and be back on our way home soon. We were fools.

The place was goddamn enormous, and it was wall-to-wall covered with chairs, lamps, tables, beds, sofas, couches, desks, kitchen cabinets, bookshelves, drawers, and anything else you could fit under a roof. I was glad we had both brought our sunglasses, since after a while my eyes became pretty tired of being constantly bombarded by signs screaming incomprehensible Swedish gibberish in bright red words. There was some weird power to that place: I had worked long shifts at clubs, under flashing colorful lights and loud throbbing music, but it hadn’t stressed me half as much as that store. Maybe it was because there I could be focused on something –here, everything called my attention, everything had a million different options, to the point I had wasted easily fifteen to twenty minutes just looking at bathmats. And Chucky getting restless and annoyed didn’t help me in the least.

“We should have brought a measuring tape,” I said out loud to myself.

“We're lost, Tiff…” he groaned, rubbing his temples.

“No, we’re not,” I sighed, trying my best to keep whatever was left of my patience. “There’s these little arrows in the floor, they’re probably leading to the exit.”

“They go in circles!”

“Why on Earth would they go in circles?”

“So people stay in for longer and buy shit they don’t need!”

“You’re getting hysterical,” I said, raising my sunglasses. “Calm down—"

Big mistake. Worst thing you can say to someone to calm down, in my experience, is to tell them so.

“I am calm!” he shouted.

“Sure as hell you’re not!”

“I am!”

“Are not!”

“I am!”

“Are not!”

And so on, and so on. So much for trying to keep a low profile. I know, it was so stupid to argue about it, but I wasn’t going to let him win. Once he realized that I simply refused to back down, he huffed and puffed and just walked away, repeating I am, while I repeated are not, until he was out of sight, and then I growled and kept looking at the different pillow case swatches, after a quick pat to my bag to make sure I still had the gun. Chucky wasn’t gonna go anywhere without me. At most, he would stomp and sulk around till he calmed down, and then he’d come back, and find another thing to bitch and moan about.

“Hey, what about meatballs for dinner tonight?” he said chipperly, appearing out of a sudden, holding a bag for me to see. I frowned.

“Hm… You really think frozen food from a furniture store’s gonna be any good?”

“You don’t know, it might be good.”

I picked the bag and examined it. “… Doesn’t look good to me.”

“You said the same about goulash,” he argued. “And now all you wanna do is go to that Polack place.”

“Well, there’s a difference between a properly cooked meal at a restaurant and a bag you fish out of a freezer.”

“Well, you’re the one who always insists on trying new things!”

I took a deep breath. I could have gone on refusing, but giving it a second thought, it had been a while since I hadn’t had meatballs, and as long as I prepared it with a good sauce, it couldn’t be that bad. “Alright, alright. If that makes fixing dinner tonight any easier…”

Chucky grinned and tossed the bag into the cart.

“Now, what color dishtowels should we get?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I like these ones,” he pointed to one with yellow stripes. “You know, simple.”

“I think these are so cute, though,” I said, showing him one with a pattern of lovely pink and red flowers. “And they’d go nicely with the purple of the walls.”

He groaned. “If you already made up your mind, then why would you even ask me?”

“Because I want you to participate in the choosing!”

“Well, I prefer the yellow stripes.”

“But yellow doesn’t go very well with purple.”

“It’s not fully yellow! Just a few stripes!”

We ended up taking five dishtowels, a side table to replace the wobbly one I had in the hall, four vases to use as glasses (their average glasses were far too small; besides, I wanted color-tinted ones but couldn’t find any in a shade I liked, and Chucky wanted, of course, yellow ones that would make anything in it look like piss), the bag of frozen meatballs, and finally the two dining chairs, what we had actually came for. It had been around five in the afternoon when we finally reached the end of the store, the checkout line just in front of the wide automatic doors. Like we had expected when we came in, it was almost completely empty: just one guy by a cash register, reading a King novel, and one security guard, half asleep while leaning against the wall. Chucky shot me a glance behind his sunglasses, sucking on his teeth. I took out the gun from my bag and handed it to him, left the shopping cart by his side, and hurried along to the security guard with a bright smile.

“Hello there! Excuse me,” I said to the man, who blinked himself back into reality and gave me a dozed off little tilt of his cap as a greeting. “I was wondering if you could help me…?” I asked as I fumbled in my bag. “I think I might have lost something…”

“Sure, miss—”

Letting out a chuckle, I wrapped my fingers around the handle. “Oh –never mind.”

I pulled out my switchblade from my bag and shoved it straight into the guard’s guts before he could even realize what was going on. He gasped and looked down in surprise. I twisted the blade and sank it deeper inside him, and he squealed, his eyes open wide, as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. I giggled, pushing upwards, blood slipping between my knuckles, before throwing my arm back and pulling the switchblade away. The guard stumbled to the side, grabbing his belly, and tripped onto the now wet linoleum floor.

“I don’t think you’re very good at your job,” I snickered as I kneeled down beside him.

He blubbered something I couldn’t quite make out. It didn’t matter, really. Grabbing the switchblade with both hands, I stabbed his gut again, a bit higher, and dragged it down, and the man finally screamed in pain. His innards gleamed under the white light of the store, juicy and throbbing and bright, bright red. I licked my lips, tensing my arms, pushing myself to sink the blade a little deeper, putting my whole weight into it, before drawing it away from his body. A thin spurt of blood splattered the side of my face, most of it dotting my sunglasses. Good thing I had brought them; otherwise, I would have really messed up my eye makeup.

The guard kept screaming, trying to grab my arms to stop me, between too confused to know what to do and too panicked to stay still. He had a pretty strong grasp, when he finally managed to grip my wrist. He was gonna bleed out anyway, though, so it was a pretty useless attempt at doing something with his last few breaths.

“You’re doing great, babe!” Chucky yelled.

I changed the hand holding the switchblade and slashed his throat. That should keep him still and quiet. But, as much fun as I was having, I had to remember this wasn’t a butcher trip. The guard yelped and groaned, and I stabbed the side of his neck, just for good measure, to finish him off. Finally, the grip on my right wrist loosened as his body laid limp, and he sputtered a couple bloody coughs before kicking the bucket. I wiped the blade against his previously-blue shirt and stood up, taking care not to slip with my heeled boots on the puddle that had stained my knees, and walked back to Chucky, holding the clerk at gunpoint.

“You okay?” he asked me, pushing a strand of sticky hair off my face with his free hand.

“Never been better,” I said with a smile, dropping the switchblade back into my bag and rubbing my wrist. “Let’s get going, hm?”

I pushed the cart through the automatic doors and onto the parking lot, where the Dodge was standing all sad and alone. Walking behind me, Chucky dragged the clerk along by his collar, pressing the muzzle of the gun against his temple to make sure he wouldn’t try anything.

“Wait… You think it’s all gonna fit?” Chucky asked me after I opened the trunk.

“Sure! We didn’t pick that much stuff…”

“Alright… Let me see.”

I turned around. “Oh –you wanna do it?”

He shrugged. “I mean, you know you’re not the best at packing, Tiff.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Wasn’t that clear enough?” he scoffed. “Jesus, you’re just gonna toss it all in there without any sort of care of how it’s gonna arrive back at our place.”

“I am perfectly able to settle it all properly—”

“Oh, are you?” he asked, raising his voice. “Well, let’s see how you do it, then!”

“You know what?” I replied. “You do it, since you’re so good at it, apparently!”

The checkout guy took our little argument as his doomed chance to escape. He elbowed Chucky’s gut, ducking to dodge the stray shot, and stumbled away from us in a silly little run through the empty parking lot –but obviously he couldn’t get very far –and, even with Chucky’s pretty amateur aim, he did manage to shoot his ear off and get him to trip. Chucky and I exchanged a glance and a tired sigh, before he walked towards the whimpering idiot and dragged him back to where the car was parked.

“Is it really worth it, pal?” he asked him, now aiming straight between the eyes. “A bullet through your head for a couple chairs, a little table, some dishrags?”

“Dishtowels,” I corrected him, unloading the boxes from the shopping cart.

“Alright,” the clerk said in a stutter, raising his hands and moving back, turning paler by the second. “Alright, no need to go nuts…”

“That’s what I thought,” Chucky said, still staring right at him from behind the sunglasses. He handed me the gun back. “Don’t let him move a finger, babe.”

“Got it.”

While I kept an eye on the guy, Chucky got to unloading the boxes from the cart and stuffing them in the trunk of the car. At first there was just the sounds of him fumbling and turning them around, but after a while (and a while did pass) there were now grunts of frustration and cardboard knocking against the trunk’s door.

“Any problem, sweetface?” I asked him without looking away from the guy, who seemed to have some difficulty keeping his hands up. Maybe his arms were tired by now.

“Nah, I’m –just –peachy,” Chucky grumbled. Something fell to the ground with a loud thump! “Shit!”

I snickered. “You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

“Take the gun,” I said, looking over my shoulder for a second. “Let me try.”

“No, you –you keep an eye on him!”

I huffed. From the peek I had gotten of the Dodge, Chucky was setting the stuff all wrong, trying to pile up boxes horizontally that were obviously not gonna fit that way. Definitely, an example of how to pack correctly. “If you try to do it diagonally—”

“What?”

“I said, if you put the long box diagonally, then they’ll fit—”

“I know that!”

“So then do it!”

“I’m just –trying to save space for the chairs!”

“Then put them on top!”

“It’s too heavy for—” There was the noise of things being rearranged. A couple seconds passed. No noise of something hitting the ground. “… Well, let’s hope the table can hold that weight the whole trip back…”

“Be careful with the glasses,” I said, glancing back again.

“I know!”

He was putting the box of glasses just under the table. It was as if he was trying to get them to arrive home in pieces.

“Goddammit, Chucky,” I insisted, pointing at the boxes with the gun. “Let’s just put the glasses in the back seat, that way they’ll be safer.”

“I said –Tiff!”

I turned around. The clerk was running away again. What a dummy. I pulled the trigger –and the guy ran no more –and fell on his face, the top of his head blown off in a crimson cloud. The gunshot echoed throughout the parking lot. It just dawned on me I had never shot a firearm before. I smiled wide, amazed by the power that little thing had. I could see myself growing to like it.

“Hey!” Chucky called, already riding shotgun. “You coming?”

The trip back to the apartment was quite uneventful. For a while now, since we couldn’t really trust the music tastes of every single car we picked up, Chucky had been taking along a plastic bag in his coat pocket, full of tapes he had been collecting over time, so after rock-paper-scissors –the most impartial way we got to make any decisions –I got to choose the band (Van Halen), and he got to choose the album (Fair Warning). Once we got back home, though, things didn’t get any easier. It was a struggle to bring all the boxes up to the apartment, especially with Chucky’s denial to let me help him carry anything. Still, sweaty and sore, we got everything up and, after locking the door, we took a moment to catch our breaths –and we were startled by the phone ringing. He glanced at me, waiting for me to answer it, but I had a feeling I knew who it was. So I let it ring, and ring, and ring, till the answering machine beeped.

“Tiffany, I hope you’re happy with yourself,” my mother’s familiar voice came out of the loudspeaker, in a robotic, automatic tone. I let out a long deep groan. “Seven o’clock and no answer yet. Are you even there? Why are you ignoring me?”

Chucky barely stifled a laugh. I rolled my eyes, kicking my boots off and heading to the kitchen.

“Regardless of the reason, we have all been very disappointed to not have you at the funeral. Brittany was sure you would make it in time. I wasn’t, certainly, since you didn’t even call back when I dropped the news. Why would you come, anyway? It’s not like you actually give a damn about this family.”

I looked up from the telephone. What funeral? Chucky shot me an intrigued look.

“If you ever wish to pay your respects to your father, well, now you know where he’s staying for good,” She let out a deep sigh. “Consider at least apologizing. I think we’re entitled to that, your sister and I. After all, an apology can never come too late.”

There was another beeping as the machine saved the message. Standing by it, crossing my arms, I scoffed, but at least now I knew what she was talking about. It had been a while since I had been listening to any voicemails anyways. I had no idea my father had died. I wondered if it had been yesterday, or the week before. Mostly, though, I wondered what I should feel. Honestly, I felt nothing. Actually –I did feel some curiosity at the fact I did not feel anything changing. It had been my father, but I wasn’t even a bit concerned. He had been barely a presence in my life. Guess that meant I had never loved him.

“Well, shit. I guess... Sorry for your loss,” Chucky said, not very convincingly, and he lit a cigarette. “Was he, uh, sick, or something? Or just plain old?”

“I don’t know. Sick, I guess,” I barely had a memory of my mother mentioning cancer at some point in one of her hundreds of voicemails. Though it could be about one of her neighbors, or the star sign of a bridge friend. “And it’s alright, I’m not really upset about it,” I said with a quick hand gesture. “I didn’t even know he had died.”

He snickered. “Someday you’ll get an important message in that voicemail, Tiff, and you’ll have to sit through hours of automated ads.”

I chuckled along. “You get a lot of phone calls?”

He dropped the ashes on my favorite heart-shaped ashtray. “Got nobody to call me, really.”

“No parents?” I asked. “No family?”

“None,” he said, raising his chin up high. “On my own, since nineteen-sixty-five.”

Chucky was about my age. He would have been around seven, back then. Just a lonely little boy. “An accident?”

He shrugged and puffed some smoke. “Something like that.”

I leaned my head on my hand. “So where were you, then, since nineteen-sixty-five?”

He sighed and smiled at me. “We don’t talk about this sort of stuff, Tiff,” Chucky said. I plucked the cigarette from his hand. “Remember?”

“Yeah. It’s just... Since you brought up my family—”

“Your voicemail brought up your family,” he pointed out, going to the kitchen and turning on the coffee maker.

I couldn’t argue with that. Still, taking a drag, I watched him opening the purple-splattered cabinets, searching for the mugs, while I wondered what had happened in nineteen-sixty-five. I assumed he grew up with both a mom and a dad: so, the supposed accident had done away with both. Knowing Chucky, and what set him off, what could it have been? A car crash seemed unlikely but possible, if one were to judge on his non-existent driving skills. What else, then? House fire? Armed robbery? Murder-suicide?

“Dammit, Tiff, where’s the mugs?”

“If they’re not in the cabinet—”

He groaned. “You forgot about the dishes again, didn’t you?” he said, closing the cabinet door with a slam.

“You know you can wash them yourself, right?”

Chucky turned around and gave me a glare. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to say anything else. Neither of us moved for a few seconds.

Finally, he just huffed and walked away from the steaming coffee pot. “When’s dinner?”

I laughed, despite myself. Typical of him to change the subject when it came to him doing anything around the apartment, apart from lounging around. “This reminds me, there’s something my mother used to say. Something that she was pretty dead on about.”

“Yeah?” he asked in what sounded very close to sarcasm. “What’s that?”

“‘A woman spends all day slaving over a hot stove for a man,’” I repeated –I knew it by heart, like shifting gears or gutting a fish –and took another drag. “‘Least he could do is the dishes.’ Now, ain’t that just the truth?”

Chucky laughed, as I should have expected. “If you say so… Though I don’t see you slaving all day for anything.”

“I’m a working girl!” I claimed, digging my nails in the meatballs bag and ripping it open. “I got a job!”

“To which you bailed today!” he cackled.

“To go furniture-shopping with you!” I replied. “You know that, you idiot! And besides, I didn’t bail. Molly covered for me!”

He just smiled and shook his head. I struggled with the can opener, as loud as possible, so Chucky could hear how irritated I was. It was so easy for him to say that. As far as I knew, he didn’t have a job at all. If he did, he never told me what it was. With how random his schedule could be… I had the feeling he did nothing besides slacking all day.

“I don’t see you chipping in much, honey,” I said, chopping the slippery tomatoes and waving the knife around for emphasis, sprinkling tomato juice over the dirty dishes. “So you better be thankful for me and for Cut-N-Curl’s loyal customers!”

“I am thankful!”

I grumbled, dropping the peeled sliced tomatoes in the oiled pan, waiting till the loud sizzling got lower to reply. “Well, you don’t really show it.”

Two hands grabbed my hips and held onto them, and Chucky leaned against my back. Without my heels on he was a couple inches taller than me, just tall enough to rest his chin on my shoulder.

“Don’t I?” he asked, a smirk in his voice.

Ignoring him wasn’t too hard –until he began kissing my shoulders. “You’re sweaty,” I said.

“So are you.”

“You’d better keep it in your pants if you want dinner,” I said. His hair was tickling my neck.

“I can wait.”

“I cannot,” I said, trying my best to focus on the tiny words of the recipe on the back of the bag. It said to serve them with gravy; but I didn’t have gravy, and to hell with the Swedes if they thought I would do that instead of serving them with a nice, normal tomato sauce like God intended. “We didn’t have anything for lunch. I’m hungry!”

“You can probably wait, too.”

With a sigh, I turned around to face him, placing my hands on his shoulders. “You know better than to get between me and dinner, sweetface. Besides, I am armed,” I reminded him, softly tapping the purple scrunchie I had used to tie his hair with the tip of the knife. “You better be careful.”

Chucky frowned. “You better be careful—”

“Get on with the table, so we can have somewhere to eat these meatballs,” I smiled, and sent him off back into the living room with a gentle slap to the butt.

He grumbled something under his breath, pulling the scrunchie off his hair, but he did what he was told. Well –he tried. Whoever printed the instructions had forgotten to add words to it, and just by pictures alone you really can’t build a table, no matter how easy it may seem. Chucky refused my help once again, so I stayed by the stove, stirring the sauce, amusing myself by watching him struggle with the screwdriver and the hundreds of little parts he had to keep track of among the clutter. He managed to assemble the top of it, though the legs of the table were, we had to accept, a matter for another day; in the end, I served the meatballs on a couple dishes Chucky begrudgingly washed, and we ate sitting on the floor, reading and rereading the instructions, wondering where we had gone wrong.

“It can’t be that difficult, Chucky,” I said with my mouth full. “I mean, look –here it clearly says, the legs go with these screws, so you assemble the legs and then you put in the ends of it…”

“Don’t you think I tried that?” he replied, shoving forkfuls of meat and sauce in his mouth, pointing at the illustrations on the instructions. “I did that –and it’s not right! I think what it actually means is that you have to simply nail the legs to the top, and presto, you got yourself a damn table.”

“But we don’t have any nails.”

“We can probably find some, in this mess,” he said, giving the rest of the apartment a glance. “I swear I saw a jar of nails somewhere ‘round here—”

“But they didn’t come with the box.”

“Well, then we improvise!”

We spent a couple hours, more or less, discussing how to assemble that goddamn table, and that was without even getting started on the chairs. Still, we had a good meal, and after a while we decided we had enough furniture for a day and turned on the TV and watched some old cartoons. Chucky ended up loving those Swedish meatballs –even if really what he loved was the sauce I always made.

Still, I humored him. When he asked for Swedish meatballs again the next day (and we both knew that popping over by the Ikea wouldn’t be a good idea), I tried looking up a good recipe. I asked Molly and Annie, I leafed through the meals section in the old magazines at the beauty parlor, I even ventured into a couple bookstores on the way home and browsed some cookbooks. They all sounded so flavorless and insipid, though... So, I ended up cooking my mother’s old meatball recipe, and prepared that with the same sauce and some bargain-store rice. And Chucky couldn’t tell the difference. He wolfed it all down and left the dish spotless, barely short of licking it clean.

Life went on, between workdays and dinners and killings together. It was a good life. As time passed, a routine settled with us two. From Mondays to Wednesdays, Chucky was already home when I came back from work. We went out and watched a movie, or dined out, or simply wandered around the streets of Hackensack, talking and smoking and laughing, till we found someone we could eviscerate nice and quick. He tried to convince me to go back to his old MO, picking up girls at the club and going wild in a hotel room, Jack the Ripper-style; but I’m not stupid, and I know plenty well that, besides it being a completely unsustainable way of making a killing (what with the limited number of hotels in Hackensack, and the ever-present possibility that the staff get suspicious, clock you and rat you out to the police), allowing him to go back to that method was basically a way of begging to be replaced. Not that I actually thought Chucky would really end up leaving me. I knew he wouldn’t kill me; enough time had passed for me to be sure of that. But I still had this lingering feeling that something was missing. Like there was something unsaid between us, something that we were both waiting for. It’s hard to explain. From Mondays to Wednesdays, life was all sunshine and rainbows, but sometimes, in the haze of the early morning, after my alarm woke me up and before I had my first coffee and smoke of the day, I would watch him all sprawled on my bed, sleeping soundly, and wonder what it was that felt off.

From Thursdays to Saturday, though, he just stayed for breakfast, left when I left for work, and came back home around eleven or so, sometimes even later. At first, I couldn’t say I minded much. With my motivation renewed I got back into the hang of fixing my doll collection, and it gave me plenty of time to kill. Besides, I rediscovered my love for cooking, and as I got more money to spend on groceries, I could retry those old recipes my mother had taught me. Sometimes I spent all night cooking, for Chucky to come back to the apartment in the early morning to find me struggling to stuff piles of Tupperware into our tiny fridge. We were definitely well fed, that was for sure. And even with him arriving late, we managed to find the time to go out and have fun. I just wished it didn’t pass by so quickly.

Sundays, we were completely free for each other. However, that was also the only day Molly and Annie were also free. And, apart from the idea of having Chucky all for myself, I spent most of the week looking forward to going out with them.

One Saturday afternoon, home alone and bored out of my mind, I was zapping through TV channels, and my gaze turned to the books Chucky had brought along with him when he moved in. Now I’ve never been a big reader, nor have I ever been friends with bookworms, but I didn’t need to be one to know that his literary preferences weren’t exactly common. I got off the couch and approached his bookshelf, but thought it over before kneeling down and examining them.

I told myself it was a silly thing to do. After all, curiosity killed the cat… But then again –my house, my rules. And everything I had, I shared with him. It was only right for him to share everything with me too.

“‘The Color Out Of Space’, by H. P. Lovecraft… ‘Heaven And Hell’, by Aldous Huxley… ‘Sixth and Seventh Books Of Moses’…” I read out loud, running my finger through the cracked spines. It seemed I wasn’t too far off when assuming Chucky had a badly-hidden interest in religion.

Even the newer ones were all sorta old, worn, a few with their pages loose and barely held together by rubber bands. A bunch had all sorts of junk, like ripped papers, movie tickets, greasy napkins, shoelaces and candy wrappers, used as makeshift bookmarks. Chucky could really be quite resourceful when he put his mind to it.

“‘The Homunculus’, by Kenneth Rayner Johnson… ‘The Book Of Lies’, by Alesteir Crowley… ‘Possession And Exorcism’, by Traugott K. Oesterreich…”

Some, the thinner ones, sounded a lot like the type of weird esoteric books Molly used to read during her breaks. With these sorts of names it was hard to tell which were fiction and which were not. I took one out which I was almost certain Arlene had had in her own library, a novel called ‘The Cement Garden’, and leafed through it. Chucky seemed to like to scribble on the edges of his books, apparently stuff that had nothing to do with whatever the book was about. From what I could gather, that one particular story was about these four children who lived in a dull grey house and had been abandoned by their parents; but Chucky’s notes were less about sibling dynamics and more about random ideas that had popped into his head, like issues of body disposing and decomposition chemicals. Putting the book away I wondered if someone, like a decently-competent detective, could assume Chucky’s murderous interests from a glance at his bookshelf. In TV and movies, something as personal as someone’s tastes could always be read as a possible indication of a criminal. I wasn’t so sure if that did apply to real life, though.

Apart from the books, mixed up in his shelves, there were also his many notebooks and sketchbooks. From time to time, when he got comfortable enough around me, I could see Chucky filling some empty time (meaning, when there were no news nor cartoons on TV, or simply when he said he was ‘too busy’ to help me cook) absorbed in whatever he was drawing or writing in there, all curled up with the paper just a few inches from his nose, as if he was nervous someone would pop up and peek over his shoulder. I never asked him to show me what he scrawled in there, mostly because I could assume he would not let me see. Now, with Chucky away for the day, I found myself picking one of these notebooks, running my hands over the crumpled black cardboard cover, feeling the signs of wear, the coffee stains and the dents left by hard-pressed pen sketches.

I was burning to open it and take a look. There was a chance I wouldn’t find anything much different from the rambling notes I had read on the corners of the novel, but there was also the chance of seeing something new. Something exciting. Something he hadn’t told anyone else, something he would kill me for if he knew I knew. I was so close to doing it…

But in the end, I decided I didn’t want to invade his privacy like that. And, after all, he would eventually tell me anything he needed to. Even though Chucky had moved in with me already, we were still a pretty young couple, not even a year old. I knew more about him than I had known about any of my other partners by this point in the relationship, though, and I knew that was proof of how much he trusted me.

And, besides, I also had my own privacy to take care of. Just like neither of us talked about our families to each other, we didn’t really talk about our friends or jobs either –I wasn’t even sure Chucky had a job in the first place, let alone any friends. And that was just the way it was. There was the life I had outside our apartment and outside the cover of night during our hunts, the life of Tiffany Valentine, your average New Jersey manicurist. I can’t deny there was a thrill to it, to knowing the difference between how everyone saw me and who I really was…

“… But I guess it reminds me too much of my last relationship,” I admitted to Molly and Annie, that Sunday afternoon in which we were back at the mall. Unlike Annie, Molly did understand much better the sort of style I went for, and she was really good at finding matching pieces from different stores. “And… I don’t know. I don’t think it was that thing in particular that was why we broke up, but—”

“You’re afraid that’s gonna put a wedge in this relationship,” Annie said quietly (as quietly as you could while chewing gum, that is) and nodded sympathetically. “It’s just like when I was dating Steve, y’know? When he found out I was making more money than he was –hoo boy…”

“Well, sometimes you just gotta hide some things from the other,” Molly declared, picking a pair of glittery tights from a shelf. “It’s not wrong or anything, it’s just what we do to keep ourselves sane. You can’t expect to share everything. Otherwise, if we just lived in someone else’s head twenty-four-seven—”

“Yeah, you’d go batshit crazy,” Annie chuckled.

I smiled. They were really patient with me, all things considered. They accepted there were some things I couldn’t tell them, and they didn’t really pry. Granted, they probably thought it was something like me having some side job, or some weird family history… Not what I actually did.

“I think what I’m the most afraid of is of him getting bored of me,” I said with a sigh, taking another look at the tight assortment, searching for a pattern I liked.

“Someone getting bored of you?” Annie frowned. “You, of all people?”

I laughed. “Well, it’s happened before!”

“Well then, spice things up!” Molly shrugged, now checking out the underwear section. “Bet you know how to do that.”

“It’s just that –he’s restless, you know? In the good way,” I added, and smiled a little wider. “In the best way. And I can see why someone like him would get bored of me, or want something else eventually…”

“How long have you two been together, now?” Annie asked me.

“Six months, one week and three days,” I replied.

Annie and Molly exchanged a knowing look.

“Yeah, he’s not gonna get bored of you, Tiffany.”

“Sounds like he’s in for the long haul.”

That was exactly what I wanted to head. I let out a little excited squeak. Both Molly and Annie had a lot more casual dating experience than I had, and hearing them saying such a thing with such confidence really helped to ease my worries. After that, I could focus much better on helping Annie find something to wear to her sister’s birthday party.

“… You know, I’m digging this real voice of yours,” Molly said with a smile and a nod. I had been using my actual voice around Chucky ever since we first met, but it had taken me a bit longer to get used to using it constantly around the Cut-N-Curl staff. “It’s, like, a Melanie Griffith thing, you know?”

“Really? The blonde from ‘Fear City’?” I said brightly. She was super pretty, the type of pretty guys killed for. “So far people’ve only said I sound like a cartoon… A flesh-and-bone woman’s voice a nice change for once.”

Molly laughed, and Annie laughed along. It had been so long since I had friends laughing at something I said, not at me. I grinned. They really were my friends. We had been coworkers for a long while now, but only recently did I feel like they were actually people I felt close to enough to consider them friends.

They noticed the shift in the relationship, too: now they once again invited me to go out dancing, or out for drinks, or to come along shopping, and I was feeling good enough to accept their invitations. And, once I did, I wondered why I ever refused on the first place. I was so used to see clubs just as places to work thankless jobs in, or to be where I waited for someone to pick me up and have a one-night-stand, that I had almost forgotten that you could actually have a good time in them! Molly in particular knew places where the drinks were good and cheap and the music was top-notch. I was the only one of us three with a steady partner, but being a wingwoman was pretty fun in and of itself. With my experience I could quickly tell which guys that caught my friends’ eyes were sleazeballs, which were most likely to slip something in your drink, and which were just looking to cheat on their wives. From time to time I thought of Connie, poor Connie, and the dipshit she was tied to, Kenny the cheating asshole, and wondered why good women ended up with such awful fellas. Best I could do for my new friends was watch out for them.

“Are we ever gonna meet him, though?” Annie asked, slinging the heavy shopping bags over her shoulder.

The mere idea of my friends coming face to face with my boyfriend got a chuckle out of me. “Oh, I don’t know if you’d like him.”

“Why, is he that ugly?”

Molly let out a loud laugh, and Annie snickered along. I simply smiled. I knew Chucky wasn’t the sort of guy they would go after, but I didn’t care. To me, he was beautiful, and that was all I needed.

“I wouldn’t change Chucky for the world,” I declared. “I’m just saying that you two may not… Well, you may not appreciate his sense of humor.”

They frowned. “What’d you mean?”

“He likes to tease, mostly.”

“Huh… Does he like to tease you, most of all?”

I laughed. “He sure does.”

“And you’re okay with it?” Annie asked.

“It depends… I mean, I tease him back more often than not,” I said. It really wasn’t a big deal. It was just one way we showed the other we were in a good mood. It was our way of understanding the other. “But… Yeah, I guess it can get pretty damn annoying sometimes. When he’s in a bad mood, some teasing can end up in a full-blown fight.”

“Does he know how to deescalate?” Molly asked.

Now it was my turn to frown. “How to what now?”

“Yeah, you know, when you argue and stuff… Can he admit when he’s wrong?” The mere question made me laugh louder than ever. Hell would freeze before Chucky admitted he was wrong about something. “How do you solve your arguments, then?”

“Well… Usually, when we fight, we either end up forgetting about it, ignoring it, or changing the subject,” I said. Both of us were pretty stubborn. And neither one of us would budge an inch. “Sometimes one of us does end up being right –me, usually –and the other just tries to downplay it. He’s just that proud.”

“That sounds so annoying…”

“Doesn’t that drive you mad?”

I let out a deep sigh. I had to be honest. I loved the bastard. But Chucky could really get in my nerves. He knew that he could get an easy rise out of me with his teasing, and it seemed to entertain him a lot. Granted, I also liked to annoy him… But I was definitely not half as good at it as he was at bothering me.

“So, if he isn’t even good-looking, and he drives you mad… Why do you even stay?”

The question had me thinking for a minute. I couldn’t exactly tell them about the killing, obviously. What else was there? His sense of humor, when I wasn’t the target of it? The way we had so much in common, the music we liked, the movies we watched? How he felt like the closest thing to home I’ve had in ages?

“… Well, he’s really good with his tongue.”

Annie covered her face with her hands. “Ew, Tiffany!”

“It’s true!”

Molly burst out laughing.

“Oh –just the day before yesterday, you know, I realized was down with the monthly curse, and I was kinda nervous because I was… Well, you know how it is,” I giggled. “And, apparently, he had never done the deed with someone while on the rag… And he was curious. Very curious. Particularly, to know what it could taste like.”

Molly and Annie gawked at me in disbelief.

“So, like I said,” I shrugged, grinning at the memory. “He’s really good with his tongue.”

“Jesus, Tiffany!”

“That’s way too much information!”

Still grinning, I could almost feel a familiar blush creeping up to my cheeks. I could almost hear his gasping for breath, hear the smile in his voice when, licking his sticky reddened lips, he groaned 'god, that’s good' from between my legs. “He’s just a hungry boy—”

“That’s more than enough, thank you,” Annie said, turning bright red.

“Also, he has these really nice, long fingers that he—”

“Alright! Should we go in here next?”

And the week passed me by, between killings and nail polishing, and it was Sunday again. I spent the morning smoking with him and exchanging ideas of where to try to go hunting next, on a map of the city he kept in his never-ending coat pockets. Chucky kept insisting to stay in the general Hackensack area, where he felt comfortable, while I had to explain to him, over and over, that unless he wanted to get caught and spend the rest of his days rotting in jail, we needed to find other ways and places to have fun with our little pastime.

We didn’t get to an agreement. Most we could do was for him to agree that we wouldn’t be able to keep our carnage going through Hackensack without eventually slipping or putting our identities at risk, and for me to admit that moving somewhere else would bring a whole new set of problems we might not be prepared to deal with. None of us liked to discuss this, but it was necessary. As quickly as we could lose our temper, we both wanted to keep this going. And to do that, we both needed to stay alive and out of the slammer.

And, after that conversation, I was due to go out with Annie to the movies. She wanted to watch that Madonna flick that had come out, and I hadn’t gone with Annie to the cinema yet. I asked Chucky if he wanted to come along –out of sheer courtesy, since honestly, I was assuming the cinema would be packed and there would be no more tickets left for him to join in –but he just chuckled and said he would come next time. So, I left him home.

Before I met up with Annie, I finally allowed to ask myself what on Earth Chucky did while I was away.

“The movie was pretty boring, really,” I said with a sigh when I came back, as I locked the door. “Not enough romance, not enough drama, and certainly not enough Madonna to make the admission price worth it.”

“Well, ain’t that a shame,” he said, sprawled over the couch with a sketchbook resting on his chest, fidgeting with a pencil. “Hey, Tiff?”

“Yeah?”

“I read on the newspaper that there’s a drive-in by Schlegel Lake, past the Cedar Park cemetery,” Chucky said, trying very hard to sound casual. “They’re showing House Of Wax tonight.”

“Oh –the Vincent Price one!” I said excitedly. He smiled and nodded. “The one with him and Carolyn Jones!”

“Yeah, that one. So—”

“You say I make today a double feature?” I smiled, plopping by his side on the couch and playing with his hair. “Aw, were you too bored without me?”

He scoffed, but I knew he had been so. “I’m saying because I haven’t seen that one yet.”

“Oh, you’ll love it!” I said, going back to the subject. “It’s, you know, old, so no guts are gonna be spilled –but you can fill in the blanks with your imagination…”

“So, we’re going?”

I grinned wide. He grinned back. “Let’s see what we can find.”

It was eight o’clock when we got out of the apartment, and the showing was at a quarter past nine. Plenty of time to find a good ride, stop by some store on our way and get a few snacks. Wandering around a parking lot near a hotel I spotted a gorgeous black Pontiac 6000, spanking new, shiny and sleek. Chucky graciously smashed the side window for me and deactivated the alarm before it got too loud, and in a matter of seconds the engine was revving, my hands were gripping the steering wheel, and we were out into the open road.

“You know about those cross-country trips some couples do, Chucky?” I asked him, adjusting the rearview mirror.

“I’ve heard of those,” he said while fumbling in his coat pocket. “Now don’t miss the next exit, coming up in a while… Otherwise we’ll have to turn all the way around,” he continued, unfolding another map and searching where we were in it.

I gave it a quick glance and laughed. “Darling, I know where we’re going… We don’t need the map.”

He turned to me with a frown. “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Alright, then. Don’t get us lost,” he said, and lit a cigarette, though he kept the map open on his lap.

“As I was saying,” I said, turning a sharp left, and he hit his head against the doorframe and groaned. As always, Chucky refused to wear a seatbelt. He’d regret it someday. “I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere else, sometime? Travel around, see the world… Go to California, where that big Hollywood sign is… And I’ve always wanted to visit Niagara Falls, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess it could be fun,” he shrugged, squinting to read the words on the map. “Though I’m more of a set-your-roots type of guy…”

“Sure you are,” I chuckled and, after a while, I sighed. “Anyways… It doesn’t hurt to dream.”

He groaned. “Shit—”

“What?”

“I think I bumped my head real hard.”

I laughed again. He grabbed his head, and let out a little chuckle, too.

Right then we passed by a gas station-drugstore combination. Chucky looked out the window, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“Wait up—”

I stepped on the brakes, barely stifling a snicker when he hit his head again against the top of the roof. “I told you, you gotta buckle up, hun—”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he grumbled and opened his door. “I’m gonna get some snacks. Salt and vinegar?”

I nodded, drumming my nails on the steering wheel. We went out to the movies quite often, but this was the first time we went to a drive-in. That little novelty was enough to get me pretty excited. “Oh, and also cherry Pop-Rocks. And another pack of cigarettes.”

“Got it,” he said, putting on his sunglasses. He got out the car and, flicking the butt of the cigarette he had just finished, he walked to the convenience store.

“And if you’re gonna get beer, get it from the fridge!” I yelled out the window.

He turned around, gave me a thumbs up, and went in through the automatic doors.

I knew he would take some time and pick other stuff too, so I just sat back and retouched my makeup in the rearview mirror. Just in case, I checked how we were doing gas-wise. We wouldn’t have any problems going back to the apartment, but I figured that we might keep the car a little longer, giving how it was brand new and so comfortable. Maybe not now, but eventually Chucky would think about what I had said about travelling, and this kind of ride was just the best we could hope for.

Maybe just in another color, I thought, choosing a music tape from the plastic bag. A woman and her two kids were on a nearby car, waiting for a gas attendant. She shot me a tired smile, clearly fed up with her children. I smiled back at her. Shit, he was taking a lifetime to pick up the snacks. I got out of the car, glanced at Chucky wandering the aisles through the glass walls of the convenience store, already carrying the salt and vinegar chips, the Pop-Rocks and some SweeTarts and black licorice that he liked to stack up on; leaned against the driver’s door and got to filing my nails, since they were becoming a bit too long and not sharp enough for my taste.

A few more minutes passed. I huffed and looked up at the convenience store. I saw Chucky take out a couple crumpled bills from his pocket and drop them on the counter, meaning he was about to come out so we could finally get going to the drive-in, hopefully before the showing began. He was about to leave when the clerk said something. Chucky turned around and, with a shit-eating grin, replied with something probably not very pleasant, and flashed the edge of the knife he was carrying in his coat pocket. I smiled to myself, looking back down at my nails.

I almost broke one when a gunshot pierced through the glass door and shattered it to pieces. The store clerk had a rifle in his hands, gripping the weapon as if hanging on for dear life. Suddenly I felt my heart in my throat. For a second I held my breath, expecting a red puddle soaking the broken glass… But I managed to breathe again when I saw Chucky crawling on the floor, slinking back to the counter of the store without the clerk noticing. He stabbed him in the back, shoving him to the floor and going to town with him, stabbing him over and over until the teen’s white shirt became completely soaked with blood. I was growing restless –he was taking far too long. Chucky took a moment to pull himself together, give the body of the kid a kick, lit a new cigarette and peered over the counter to the open cash register… And there appeared to be a sound that I couldn’t hear, something that made him jump. And, now panicking, Chucky picked up the rifle before the half-dead clerk could drag himself to it, pushed the muzzle against the guy’s back, and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered upwards all over his face, like a geyser. I would have expected the gunshot to have sounded much more muffled that way –but it was barely any lower than the previous one.

It all happened so quickly. Only when he looked up back at me, eyes open wide, and heard the gasps and screams of the handful of people at the gas station, it dawned on me just in how much trouble we were.

“That son of a bitch,” I muttered, tossing the file in through the window. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!? Putting on a show!?”

“Start the car!” he screamed back.

“Tell me at least you got the Pop-Rocks—!”

“Start the fucking car!”

Just as he yelled this, we were startled by the sound of police sirens. They were coming at a distance, undoubtedly called by the gunshots. In the hurry he dropped the SweeTarts and the Pop-Rocks.

“There was an alarm in there,” Chucky said, hopping into the shotgun seat and slamming his door shut. “A fucking alarm! Now convenience stores have alarms!? How was I supposed to know—!?”

“Stop moaning over nothing—”

“C’mon, we gotta go!”

“D’you get the beers?” I asked him, closing my door and starting the engine.

“Yeah—!”

“From the fridge?”

“Goddammit, woman –step on it!”

I dug my heel and the wheels screeched as we zoomed away. I wanted to look at him and check that he was alright –but I was too pissed –and way too worried about the patrols blaring behind us.

“You fucking idiot –did it occur to you that you might’ve left any witnesses back at that little display you made?” I told him, just short of a yell. “Witnesses that could identify you?”

“I checked for cameras first thing when I came in, and there were none,” he replied. “Same with customers, I was the only one there.”

I thought of the woman with the two kids. I hadn’t my sunglasses on. If we were caught, she might very well identify me. “Well, isn’t that’s just fantastic.”

“I’m not fucking braindead—”

“Yeah, sure.”

There was the exit we had to take to the drive-in, but I knew that, even if the movie had already started, we couldn’t get there just yet. Chucky opened the glovebox and stuffed in the bills he had grabbed out of the cash register at the convenience store. Judging by the low numbers and how quick he was done, it was clearly not much.

“God, what a fucking idiot!” he yelled, kicking the glovebox shut. “Putting your life on the line for goddamn chump change!?”

“Maybe that was his livelihood…”

“Don’t give me that shit, Tiff, you know it wasn’t,” he said, holding onto the roof of the car while I swerved. “Y’know, if you’re a store clerk, you got one job. Sell people stuff. If someone shows up with a weapon –you don’t do shit! It’s not your place, it’s not your job… Why the fuck would you try to pull some stupid shit like that? Just to get your brains blown off!?”

“Why so fixated on that one little kill?” I asked him, growing annoyed. “Are you feeling guilty, or anything?”

“Of course I’m not,” Chucky frowned as he pushed his hair out of his face, all sticky with blood. “I just –the fucking balls of that kid! At my store I would never—!”

“Your store?”

I finally turned to stare at him. Chucky shut up out of a sudden. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“… Keep your eyes on the road, Tiff,” he said coldly.

“Your store, Chucky?” I insisted. He kept silent. “You own a store?”

“No, I…” He let out a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. ��… Ah, goddammit –I’m… I’m a clerk at a convenience store.”

“You’re a clerk?” I repeated, smiling wide, and laughed.

“Shut up!” he yelled, kicking my leg. I kept laughing. “I swear, stop laughing—!”

“I’m –I’m not laughing at you—!”

“Oh, really!”

“It’s just that… Shit, Chucky, you could have told me so before!” I said. “I thought you were just a slacker… But we’re the same, really. I’m a manicurist, you’re a clerk—”

He sighed and nodded. “We both make minimum wage—”

“I’m glad to know that now, honey,” I said, giving him a brief smile. “But why didn’t you just tell me, instead of trying to keep up this silly act?”

“I… I don’t know, I thought it was stupid…” he muttered. “Like, Tiff, what do you actually expect of a goddamn convenience store clerk? They’re not exactly known to be the sharpest or most respectable of individuals…”

“Well,” I said. “That’s how you keep me guessing.”

He chuckled. The nice revelation was cut short by the ever-louder racket of the police sirens, and some gibberish a cop yelled through a megaphone.

“Fuck—”

“Didn’t you bring your gun?” I asked, even though, realistically, I wasn’t sure he could do much with it in that situation.

“How the hell could I know we would end up like this!?”

“Alright, then,” I huffed. “Guess I gotta do everything here!”

I swerved again, this time to dodge the police cars that were already closing by. I finally got a good look at them through the mirror: only two, fortunately, though it was still two more than what I would have liked.

“Start the music.”

“What?”

I couldn’t think with those sirens ringing in my ears. “I put a tape in there –start the music!”

Chucky finally did as he was told and turned on the player. A loud guitar riff cut through the noise –and I grabbed tighter onto the steering wheel –pushing my shoulders back –letting out a deep shaky breath. The drumming, like an echo of the humming of the engine, grounded me on my seat, in my body –as I pressed down, tensing up, focusing fully on what I had to do.

“Buckle up, sweetface,” I said.

The patrol cars zoomed past us –one of them smashing the rearview mirror on Chucky’s side –and I went backwards on the road, turning around once more, giving the Pontiac a quick spin before heading forward again. Blue and red blazed on the bumper. My hands were cold and clammy. I dashed away, accelerating as much as the Pontiac could give, dodging the other cars going on the opposite direction. I tapped my nail quick to the drumming, needing some outlet to release some of the pent-up energy I was gathering before—

A semi-truck boomed and flashed bright white –I grit my teeth –and let a second more pass –before finally turning left –knowing the truck would turn right –just in time for the patrol car behind me to have no time to react –and crash directly onto the cargo.

“Shit!”

“Put on your seatbelt!” I yelled.

I got off the road –onto the grass –on a bumpy ride away from the bright lights, feeling the music louder, the machine vibrating and rattling my teeth –and shifted gears.

“Did we lose them?”

“There’s—”

He didn’t need to finish that thought. I could hear the sirens underneath the guitar solo, and soon I saw the red glow in my reflection on the rearview mirror. Fine. If they wanted to dance, then we would dance.

“Late at night, all systems go, you’ve come to see the show…” I mouthed along, nodding my head along. Once I turned around, I could start our way back to the drugstore-gas station combination.

The Pontiac was a beauty, that had to be said. Quick response, quick shift, good sound… And as fast as the patrols could go, I could always go faster. There was a long line of crashed cars and blinking lights along the road, once I got back on it. I took one of the exits knowing the patrol car would come along –and I skid at just the right time –another attempt at getting the cop to crash against some other poor sucker –but they had wised up –and they managed to turn quick enough to just get a little paint scratch –and they were soon speeding behind me again.

“They just don’t give up—”

Chucky then moved back suddenly –I turned to look at him for a second –but he turned around to face the windshield soon enough.

“We got another—”

“Shit.”

I pumped the brakes just as I turned the wheel –and one of the patrol cars barely missed us –going straight past us –and crashing headfirst against a civilian car of someone that had been smart enough to stop and leave –and the patrol driver who clearly wasn’t following the safety measures was sent flying through the windshield in a rain of shattered glass –crashing against the road –smashing his head wide open.

“Holy shit—!”

One left. Just one, and if I managed to get him to give me chase back to the gas station…

“Alright –I’m putting my seatbelt on—”

My heart was beating like crazy in my throat –in my head –and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning wide, gritting my teeth, knowing I had fucked up two whole cop cars –by myself –and that just as I did it before, I could do it again—

“Hold on tight—”

I accelerated –speeding faster than before, fast enough that I could get some real headway between me and the on-edge driver of the last remaining cop car –and I swerved –and I stared down at the cop car that had stopped just beside the busted and fucked up body of the dead officer. I revved the engine, loud enough to be heard over the guitar shredding. I stretched my neck, feeling taut as an arrow’s bow, ready to shoot, ready, ready –and the cop’s lights were faint now, as if the cop himself knew what was coming to him –though it might have been that it just looked less bright when beside the almost radioactive glow of the white and red lights of the gas station –whatever the case…

I revved again, staring down at the car on the other side of the road. The moment of stillness did little to bring me down. It was a particular type of high I hadn’t had in a long time –different from bloodlust –not that different –but different enough.

“Here we go!”

The cop car finally started –I grit my teeth –and started too –going full steam ahead towards them –as fast as the machine could –daring them to swerve –because I was not stopping –I was not stopping –and I wasn’t afraid to—

“Tiff—!”

The cop car swerved –like I knew they would –to the right –like I knew they would –and just by where they turned –and by how fast they were going –almost as fast as I was –they lost control –the car turned on its side –and slipped over the curb –over the bump –and right onto the gas station –and I could swear I heard a scream—

There was a big, loud, glorious explosion as the cop car slammed against the station, a burst of orange and yellow light, a wave of heat and noise. I stopped the car for a moment, just enough to take it all in, before realizing that I had braked just beside the little battered bags SweeTarts and Pop-Rocks. I opened the car door, picked them up, and drove away, taking the next exit to the drive-in.

“Jesus –fucking –Christ!” Chucky finally stammered, trembling with excitement, and let out a shaky laugh.

I laughed along, feeling my hands shaking too, as I led the car gently through the drive-in entrance, through the dark and quiet crowd, and parked in the first empty spot I could find. I felt as if I was burning alive, as if I had been the poor schmuck blown to pieces at the gas station. I could feel the heat coming off me, like a vibration, like radiation. It was like fury, like when I couldn’t hold back my anger anymore –but it wasn’t anger –it was something else –it was like back at the hotel room when we had first met –it was something else entirely. I stared at my hands, pale from gripping the steering wheel, and then at Chucky’s, stained red.

The movie had already started. We had arrived pretty late: the museum was on fire and the wax figures were melting, their paintjobs slipping off like masks, their eyes popping off their sockets, their skins liquefying and coming apart. Only then I finally turned to look at Chucky. He had taken his sunglasses off, and his big blue eyes were open wide, glassy and reflecting the glow of the drive-in screen. The rest of his face, unshielded by the glasses, was completely drenched in the blood of that kid he had killed with a rifle to the back. When his lips parted to take in a sharp breath, a thin drop of it refused to open up, like the first silky string in a spiderweb.

I kissed him before I could even think about it. He chuckled in surprise once I moved away, now with blood on his teeth like lipstick stains, and put his hand on my nape. His eyes went over my face, as if he couldn’t believe I was sitting right by him.

“Shit, Tiff, that was…” It sounded like he had something stuck in his throat. “That was…”

“Speechless? That’s a first,” I teased him, leaning forward, wanting to kiss him again.

He scoffed, but stroked my neck, and I felt the thick, wet, warm blood he smudged on my skin. I quivered. My heart was beating like mad.

With the biggest grin on his face, Chucky turned back to the screen, pushing his hair back off his face, and sighed. I kept my eyes fixed on him, on how his black hair was slick with blood now, just exactly like when we first met, when he kissed me for the first time –and I felt lightning in the tip of my fingers, a shiver up my spine, a shudder going from my toenails to the last hair on my head.

“Chucky…”

He looked back to glance at me, his eyes still shining, his chest still moving up and down, still breathless and thrilled after the chase. I smiled at him, moving closer, my knees sinking on the Pontiac seat, reaching his shoulder with one hand, the other slinking under his shirt.

“Kiss me.”

It took him a moment to focus on me fully. When he did, he smirked and leaned forward and kissed me –a nice, deep kiss –and I pulled him closer, the closest I could, opening my mouth and tasting his lips, the blood spreading to my face as he pressed his forehead against mine –as he cupped my face –as he leaned forward further –his arms wrapped around me and me kissing his neck, him gasping and holding onto my back –I could hear the crackling of the hellish fire on the movie screen –and if I closed my eyes and focused on his fingers undoing me, pressing tight and squeezing and pushing, I could feel the rising warmth on my cheeks and my chest and my thighs, the warmth of his own body, his hands slithering under my skirt as I leaned back and straddled his hips and opened my mouth wider and moaned, as everything was dark and black and endless, everything except his eyes and the red light of the blazing fire.

#childs play #chucky series #fanfiction

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bl6ckr0s3 · 1 year

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Back To My Roots

As soon as some bids came out, I put in 3 bids on tour 3. 2 are working at the dock, and one is working around the automation machine. Yes, I h8 automation, but hopefully this job won’t be as bad as coming in on graveyards working on the same shitty robot. I wish I was able to spend all evening separating and unsleeving the trays of 3 digit and 5 digit mail. Such an easy job and it keeps me busy in 1 spot. When Shea is my supervisor, he allows me to do that which is smart. Sadly, Tim and Jamie ain’t the same way. I remember when Jamie was asking him something about what he was or wasn’t aware of then I remember Tim was responding back to him like he thought he knew something, then he said he must’ve been tired. Lol. All I know is I just need to get back to my old tour, because 1 is definitely not working out for me since I got here. I rather be doing something different on my preferred schedule than what I am currently stuck doing right now.

I haven’t called back the court yet about being able to have a conference call during the hearing. I just haven’t made any time to do it because as much as I should be there present, I rather avoid dealing with my son’s father as much as possible. If I have to deal with the child support bullshit again with the father, then that will be handled next time the same way with a mediator.

I had been calling off work more than I should’ve since I been here. Hopefully, I will still have my job until I am able to bid out then hopefully I can do better with my attendance and fix it on my preferred shift. Tour 1 really has fucked up my sleep. I am honestly not really worried about being writtened up either because I got many other issues to deal with and I don’t have time for anybody’s bullshit whether they care or not.

Evertime me and Joshua are out doing runs on Uber deliveries, I miss the times I am able to eat out, go to shows, do all the things I was able to do and still had some money to myself. I really am sad that I had it better back in the older days when I was financially stable. I took a lot of those times for granted, but at the same time I know I had it better back then even when I had my own place in San Bernardino. Everything got all fucked up ever since Covid19 hit the world. As we are driving around thru all these nice neighborhoods with big beautiful homes and a lot of yard space, I feel sad that I may take a long ass time before we may possibly have anything like that in the future. Even just to have a small house will make me happy. No more renting apartments, being able to even rent a home would be a blessing to just have all the space we need for our things rather than to spend extra money on storage. My photography won’t be able to expand anytime soon. I been wanting to get a 2nd job, but Joshua wants us doing the Uber deliveries together which hasn’t been a consistent thing with our schedules, and the amount of rides that come thru the app ranges because if you are wanting to work in a certain nice rich area that’s clean and has no drug addicts and a lot of homeless roaming around, we are less likely to run into accidents.

We have witnessed a shooting at the front of some guy’s front yard with some psychotic chick in her big red pick up truck yelling at his ass when he was busy talking to another female outside his home. Next thing you know, we were hearing gun shots from that lady trying to shoot up the guy. We didn’t stick around to see what happens because we didn’t wanna get shot. We have witnessed a couple of bad accidents including a huge group of a motorcycle crew that we’re doing a bunch of stupid stunts on the road and riding on sidewalks then we saw a car got into a wreck with one of them. The car’s front end was pretty much done and there was so much leakage coming from the vehicle from the crash. We just choose to avoid the ghetto parts of Nashville. Doing deliveries around apartments is also a pain in the ass especially if you are having to hunt down their place instead of the person coming outside to meet you to get their order which makes the delivery a lot easy and less time consuming. With the nice areas, we just deliver to houses which are easier to locate and find.

Joshua has been having conversations with his friend William (who helped produce his “Peacemaker” song) of him joining Royalty Kult and possibly writing and recording music together. He lives in. N. Carolina. They have plans on just doing Skype or zoom meetings to write their material and when there is an opportunity to do mini tours next year, hopefully they will be able to get a full band together by then. All they need is a drummer and a 2nd guitarist. Mike from BIAS may be joining his project because things doesn’t seem to be working out with them in the long run. He also has plans to move to N. Carolina because his dad lives there.

From what I been hearing and seeing on social media, seems like more people are planning on leaving California.

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duuslindhardt43 · 2 years

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danielxricciardo · 3 years

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Cheater III

Summary: You found out Max cheated on you part 3.

Warnings: angst and fluff by the end

Word count: 2.5k

Part 1 and Part 2

Cheating in a relationship is the saddest thing. It can kill the personality from the inside. Bring changes a lot mentally. These situations turn into you to be good or bad. Some may be helpful to be stronger.

It feels bad when our loved one cheated, cause we are well connected to our partners. We had a lot of plans for that person to spend a most valuable time of ours. When it isn't going to happen then it feels unsuccessful or bad. Expecting something from another person is common in humans. When it turns down we feel such pain, like stabbing with words, The words have the power to kill or to give life to the opponent's mind. The reason why people say 'think before you talk'.

True love doesn't involve multiple people... You knew that.

When you are in love with someone, you don't cheat and you're not talking about just finding others attractive. You just don't desire to be sexually intimate with other people when you are truly "in love" with one person. You're not talking about caring for someone or loving in general.

You're talking about the head over heels, you're soulmates, the stars have aligned and nobody else has what you have, a type of love that consumes your whole being and makes you want to give that person the world. And that includes giving them the greatest physical pleasure that they can possibly experience. Cheating takes that away from you and that is why it hurts.

The person you are in love with and desire, who you thought felt the same way is revealing to you that intimacy with you is meaningless when you thought it was special. They do not desire you in the same way that you desire them. They are not "in love" with you in the way that you thought. All of your love is in vain.

“Why do we feel bad, even horrible, when our partner cheats on us?"

A trust, expectation, a promise was broken. This type of violation hits you closer to the heart because you have let that person through all your external defenses. Because you fear the loneliness that you are going to face. Nobody wants to end alone. When you put in so much for your relationship, you want it to last. But when your partner cheats you think that you would end alone, gradually realize this happens and life doesn't end here and someone else is going to come into your life.

Why do guys cheat on girls?

Both men and women cheat. In some cases, the reasons are simple: humans are animals with sex drives. We are biologically programmed to "spread our seeds." We have other instincts, such as loyalty, honesty, and guilt feelings. Those drives duke it out with lust in our brains. Sometimes, lust wins. It's more complicated than that because we tend to associate sex with so many other things: youth, freedom, adventure, personal attractiveness, you name it.

You know people make all sorts of excuses like, “I wasn’t happy in my relationship” or “I didn’t know what I was doing” or “I don’t find my partner attractive anymore” or “someone convinced me to do it.” You’ve heard these. But it’s funny to you.

A cheater can never have any excuse. They do not deserve to have that say after cheating on someone.

If you weren’t happy in the relationship, then why didn’t you break up first and had sex with someone else? Why didn’t you say that you needed a break and then had sex? Also, how can someone even convince you to cheat on your partner? It’s nonsense.

Some people will even go as far as to say that the other person made them feel loved, so they got swayed away. If you are not feeling loved by your partner and someone else is doing that job, then aren’t you supposed to figure out your feelings first, maybe break up with your partner and then be with someone else? That’s common sense.

Nobody deserves to be cheated on. The blame is ALWAYS on the cheater. Nowadays people even try to justify cheaters. It’s insane. To you, all the answers to “why” are simply just excuses trying to justify their unacceptable behavior. You know, how they always say that a person who cheats once will cheat again.

Since you found out that Max cheated on you and until this moment, so many months have passed that you have the impression that you have started to heal. You were with a man who made you feel fulfilled, happy, and loved. There were days in a row when you didn't think about Max, but even when you thought, you had in mind only the beautiful moments. Like when, for your first date, he rented your entire favorite restaurant and he cooked for both of you, even though he didn't know how to cook more than just one egg. Or when you first visited him at a Grand Prix for the first time and he won and came to you and kissed you in front of all the cameras, telling everyone that you are his lucky talisman. Or, your favorite memory, when you were at his house after you met his family and heard him talking to his father about you. Sure, you didn't understand a word they said, but Victoria translated to you what was most important about that conversation: Max loves you so much and if he doesn't get to marry you, he'll never marry anyone else.

As dear as your last memory may be, it is also painful because it is like a slap in the face to the fact that there was a time in your life when you were in love and now you were no longer together.

When you told your family that you started seeing another man, more than 6 months after you and Max broke up, your mother asked you how you could get into a relationship so quickly. relationship.

To be honest, you weren't ready yet. You were damn scared but Stephen, your boyfriend now, went after you a lot and you decided that if you don't give him a chance now it will be many years before you think about going on a date with someone else. You knew it wasn't going to be a long relationship. You didn't have much in common with Stephen, but he was a good, sweet boy, and you needed someone who wouldn't make you hate all the men in the world.

"Look, I'm not saying you didn't go through something traumatic, but it's been almost a year since then and I think it's time to come and show everyone that you're not afraid of anyone or anything," says Anthony who called you on facetime one Sunday night after the race.

"But I'm afraid."

"Just shut up, no one needs to know. You just come here, you smile, you laugh, you act friendly with everyone and you're going to look like you're better of without him."

You sigh and get out of bed, and go to the kitchen to get a pill for your headache.

"But he will be there..."

"Okay, so? Who cares about him? I'll always be by your side, I promise he won't talk to you."

"Can I come with Stephen?"

"You know I can't stand him, Y/N. Take him with you to the next Grand Prix, I don't feel like seeing him now, okay?"

"I'll think about it."

You have decided, however, to go to the last Grand Prix of the season, in Abu Dhabi. No one but Anthony knew you were coming to the race.

You forgot what a busy atmosphere it was on Sunday. However, everyone who saw you came to you to talk a little and to tell you that you missed them. You smiled and answered that you missed them as well.

The road to Red Bull Racing was long and short at the same time.

"Do my eyes see well? Y/F/N Y/L/N!" says Christian Horner, who comes to you and hugs you.

You first see Sergio Perez who waves at you, happy to see you, then you see Max who comes from somewhere in the back. Had he just heard your name?

"Hey, guys! I'm so glad to see you again. I missed you all."

"And we missed you, Y/N!" Christian answers on behalf of all Red Bull Racing employees. "Welcome home."

You giggle.

"Thank you."

In less than 10 minutes since you got there, Anthony broke his promise. He promised not to leave you alone so that Max could not come and talk to you.

"Hey," Max says softly, coming behind you.

You shivered at his voice, a voice you've dreamed of every night since you broke up. You turn to him and analyze his facial features. He was the way you remembered him, maybe even more handsome.

You look left and right for Anthony but you can't see him.

"Hey." You answer Max and your heart starts beating much harder.

"I'm so glad to see you... I missed you."

The desire to take him in your arms and kiss him was so strong that you felt dizzy. You couldn't focus on anything, not even a few words to say.

"Do you think that we... We could see each other after the race to... Talk?" he asks, moving his weight from one foot to the other.

"Okay," you say and regret it the next second.

"How stupid am I for wanting to get back together with Max after he cheated on me?" you asked Anthony.

"First of all, you're not stupid for wanting to get back with your boyfriend. Relationships are the most real things anyone can experience. We're growing while we're together. As we grow, we also go through many different behaviors in life. Behavior does not make that person. Behaviors come and go as we grow into who we are. No one is perfect. You cannot name one person you know to be 100% perfect, right?" you shake your head and he continues. "We all grow organically, and the best thing about being in a relationship is that you get to watch each other grow. You get to experience the person you care about to develop. Relationships are like walking through a door that you don't know what's on the other side. But you go through the door without any fear, doubt, or unbelief. Relationships are the livest-realest- life experience. He is a man. A man can only love once or twice. Just because Max has sex with a woman, doesn't mean he loves her. He just wanted to get his rocks off for a moment. When it is all said and done, he loves you. It may sound strange but just think of all the men you knew. Think about all the relationships you knew about. Think those who have been together for years on out. So, no you're not stupid for wanting to embrace your boyfriend's "only temporary behavior". You're smart for wanting to have the courage to walk through the next door. You're smart for being optimistic and knowing that things will get better with time. You realize the importance of maintaining a companion."

You blink several times.

"Why do I feel like you've practiced this speech in front of the mirror several times?"

He laughs and runs his arm over your shoulder.

"Maybe because that's what I did?"

You laugh and you hug him.

"Thank you for being my friend. So you're saying I should give Max another chance?"

"You don't have to give him a chance if you don't want to. But listen to your heart. Don't just do it because I'm saying so because you might regret it and you'll blame me. If you want to give him another chance, just do it. He's not the kind of man to cheat. I don't know what was on his mind when he did it with Kelly. But something tells me he regrets what he did and he will never cheat again."

"Hey, can we talk now?"

"Sure. Congrats on the win!"

"Yeah, thanks."

You both went to his room to talk. You were scared and your palms were sweating. You didn't want to start the conversation because you had different scenarios in mind, all different, depending on what Max would tell you the first time. You swallowed hard when you entered his room. The last time you were there, you two broke up.

“I’m truly sorry for hurting you.” he started saying after he closed the door behind you. "I care for you more than anything. I’m deeply sorry for hurting you… Hurting you is the most painful thing I have ever done. With a bruised heart and a deflated ego, with a sad soul and a head hung low, I apologize to you. An apology is nothing to what I’ve done; but still, I know you have a forgiving and understanding heart and won’t let resentment destroy our love. I have shown you what an idiot I can be by making that mistake. Now it is your turn to show me what a darling you can be by giving your anger a break. Without you I feel lonely, I never want to lose you in my life. I am sorry and I’ll work hard on changing my behavior. I know that I caused you a lot of pain. Whatever happens, remember that I am the guy, who will always be there for you in good and bad times. I know you’re angry now, but I want you to know that I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry for hurting you. I am ready to make amends. If I could, I would have wiped your memories about all the terrible things that I have caused you, but all I can do is to promise you that I’ll create only happy memories for you. I hope when you feel ready you can forgive me."

His words took you by surprise. You knew he would try to apologize, but in your mind, you weren't crying. You knew before you came to the room with him that you would forgive him.

"I forgive you. To be honest, I think I forgave you before we broke up but my ego was hurt and I couldn't forgive you so quickly. What you did was horrible and I hated you for so many months for making me feel so small and insignificant. But I love you. And I want to give ourselves another chance."

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lubdubsworld · 3 years

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Madeira. ( Taehyung x OC) Part 1/2

Genre : Angst, Sexually Explicit Content.

Kim Taehyung x OC

Cop Au!

Married Taehyung x Oc! ( Estranged )

Cop Taehyung! Bartender Oc !

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N : This is my spin on the brother’s best friend trope. I wrote this for @ladyartemesia Who made the amazing banner for the fic..

Because of one of her posts :D :D But I hope all of you enjoy it.

Also listen , i was supposed to write a simple brother’s best friend fic , maybe playful fluff and mild angst and some smut but this thing snowballed into a plot monster and now here we are.

This is part 1.

Part 2 soon :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So... that husband of yours is still missing, huh?" The man leaning against the bar smelled like sewage.

There really was no other word for it.

He smelled like he’d been drenched in the water that usually ran down the streets, whenever the heavens opened and poured a fucking deluge on us. Like he’d taken a soak in the disgusting broth of decaying produce, discarded animal entrails and everyday garbage. You know, the kind of stuff you find in the market street of a small town.

I ignored him, exhaling sharply and dragging the rag across the counter again, this time with a little more force behind it to make up for the urge to wrap my hands around the fucker’s neck.

Not the man leaning on the bar that is.

The man who had abandoned me.

Kim fucking Taehyung.

My breath shuddered out of me , a headache blooming inside my skull at the very thought of him. it was kind of unwarranted, I guess because it really wasn’t perfect Kim Taehyung’s fault that his wife of five years and seven months hadn’t seen him in ...well, five years and six months.

Fuck.

But see he wasn’t missing from my life by design.

He certainly hadn’t intended to leave me alone because , well for one, he loved me. and two, his best friend aka my big brother Park Jimin would skin him alive if he tried something like that.

They were best friends, bosom buddies since kinder garten and the only time they’d ever fought was when Jimin had walked in on me choking on Kim Taehyung’s dick in our coat closet at the age of seventeen ( 19 in Taehyung’s case) .

Taehyung had sported a black eye for two whole weeks.

So you see, Taehyung wouldn’t just leave me without reason, not unless he wanted to be castrated by my brother.

No.

The reason Kim Taehyung wasn’t around was because he had taken up an assignment, an undercover assignment a month after our wedding.

An assignment that was supposed to last two months. Except it hadn’t and now, it had been a whole five and a half years since I’d seen the man I loved.

Kim fucking Taehyung.

See, Taehyung was a detective.

A brilliant, A- class detective in Seoul PD’s Narcotics Division and he had a reputation.

A reputation as one of the most ruthless, merciless men on the force.

Taehyung had a mind that worked like no other, somehow able to predict exactly how drug dealers moved, how the shipments were going to be smuggled. He could tell where the deal was going to go down, what kind of security measures they would be up against and the most intriguing of all : just what drug a person had taken, simply from staring into their damn eyes .

It wasn’t uncommon for his cop buddies to comment how lucky the country was, that Kim Taehyung had chosen to be on this side of the law .

So Kim Taehyung’s reputation as a brilliant detective was well earned and that was why, when people heard his reputation and then met him, they were always stunned.

Because, for someone with such a terrifying aura , Taehyung looked deceptively.....well ethereal was the word. Beautiful was another. So fucking gorgeous he could make angels cry.

But Taehyung didn’t just look like a fucking angel. He acted like one. He acted like he had been sent on earth, simply to fight every bad guy in the city and while I had been proud and amazed and suitably enthralled with his prowess in the beginning, the fact that he had chosen to just leave me , really fucking hurt.

It hurt that the boy i had grown up with , the boy who had been my first everything hadn’t thought twice about leaving me behind. About leaving everything we had spent a whole decade building , behind just because he couldn’t control the urge to save the fucking world.

Every damn time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The water in my parents’ home was often murky and I had to let it run for a few minutes, before sticking the bucket underneath the tap. I watched the water turn clearer, cupping my palms underneath the flow watching it run clear. I nudged the bucket with my foot , under the tap and the sound of the water hitting the cheap plastic filled the cramped bathroom, loud and jarring.

I leaned against the chipped blue tiles, fingers shaking as I clenched them into fists. I had moved year about nine months after Taehyung had left, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to be coming back anytime soon and it became hard, paying the rent for our modest apartment in Itaewon.

Jimin had offered to help, offered to let me move in with him and his wife Irene, but he had been newly married as well, with a baby on the way. And i just couldn’t do that to him. I’d called my parents, explained that Taehyung and I were taking a break and could I move in for a while?

My parents had been stunned.

A break after ten months of marriage? what had happened?

I’d kept my mouth shut because everything was a security risk. I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t cry or complain or seek comfort in my mother’s gentle words. Instead i’d spent the days, locked up in my childhood bedroom, pouring over my journals, my keepsakes and photos, reliving the years I’d spent, loving and learning and cherishing Taehyung.

First kiss in his garage at the age of fifteen , laughing over a failed skateboard trick. How he’d grinned at me, watching me whine over the scrape on my knee, how he’d stared up at me through the sweat damp bangs on his forehead as he’d knelt on the floor, sticking a bandaid over the scrape and then instead of moving away as usual, he mad moved in, brushed his lips against mine, stole the breath out of my lung , the soul out of my body .

And Those first two years of denial....when he would practically run out of the door if i so much as breathed in his direction.

“You’re Jimin’s sister.. I can’t...”

God often he’d said that...over and over again until the words lost all meaning for me. I had wanted him so blindly. Had fought any girl who so much as looked at him and every one of my girlfriends knew to stay clear off Kim Taehyung.

The whispers, anytime someone showed an interest on the most handsome boy in school.

Yes, he is gorgeous, yes he is smart and amazing but he belongs to her. She’ll kill you if you come near him.

I’d enjoyed it. I enjoyed knowing that everyone could see that he belonged with me, even if Taehyung himself didn’t .

And me at seventeen, watching him talk about leaving .... How he was going to join the police academy and become a cop and that had been the final straw. I’d all but barrelled into his home and kissed him.

Told him in no uncertain terms that he was not going anywhere without telling me he loved me. And if he didn’t , I wanted him to swear he would never regret it. That when , years from now, he saw me walking down the aisle with some other guy, he would stand in the wedding party, next to my actual brother and not regret that he let me go.

Taehyung had kissed me back with fervor that still made my lips tingle.

And that last week before he left, when we had spent all our waking hours, either having sex or thinking about having sex. How we’d christened every surface of our parents’ house , our rooms and finally the coat closet after one particularly tense game of truth and dare.

That was a memorable one because my brother had walked in, just as Taehyung had gripped my hair hard enough to bruise and shoved his ‘ big by any standards’ dick straight down my throat.

Talk about embarrassing.

And it had taken a whole lot of begging and cajoling and promises to not have sex till we were married, for my brother to come around.

But he had.

And for five glorious years, I had been Kim Taehyung’s girlfriend. Watched him climb the ranks at seoul PD with a speed that was amazing. Watching him become the youngest detective on the force... watched him carve a reputation for himself in the Narcotic department.

And one evening, having dinner in a posh restaurant with our family and friends, I had watched him get down on his knees , a small velvet box in his hand eyes practically sparkling with love as he stared at me.

“The only one you’re walking down the aisle with is me, sweetheart.” He had rasped, over the raucous cheering of all the most important people in our lives.

But the joy had been short lived.

Just a month after our wedding Taehyung had taken up the assignment. Just two months, he had promised. I’ll be back in two months baby. I love you so damn much, you know that....

I had said it was okay. it wasn’t but i had said. Had promised to wait for him. To keep myself safe.

Two months had turned to two years. Two years had turned to three. Three to four and four to five.

Lonely. I was so lonely.

Even living with my parents, the solitude had been unbearable. The ache from not being touched by him . The ache from not being able to touch him. From not having that boxy smile to greet me in the morning. Not running my fingers through his hair as he left hickeys all over me. Not having him over me, staring down at me, eyes heavy and hard as he fucked into me.

I missed him so fiercely it was a physical ache. An intense , hollow ache filled with anxiety and longing.

And terror.

Oh god I was so terrified.

The fear was all encompassing somedays and I had to bite down on my pillows just to stop myself from giving in to hysteria. To start sobbing, uncontrollably because the thought would come out of nowhere, bowling me over in it’s intensity.

The burning fear that perhaps he was hurt.

That perhaps he was no longer of this world and i would never even know. That perhaps right this moment he was lying in some abandoned warehouse, bleeding out , thinking of me, wishing he could see me and he was just going to die alone . And I would never know.

I spoke to Jimin on the phone to Jimin every weekend. But sometimes, once every three or four weeks, Jimin called in the day.

We would exchange small talk.

And then he would say,

“Had a glass of madeira last night.” “ spoke to Taehyung’s handler last night.

I would grip the phone hard, brace myself for the good , the bad or the ugly that was to come.

“Tasted great. Was thinking of you.” He’s fine. He misses you. He loves you.

“Okay. Thank you Jimin.”

And that was that.

The sound of the water spilling over drew me to the present and i blinked, staring down at the water flooding the bathroom, the drainhole struggling to get rid of the excess water.

The house was deserted.

My parents had died a year ago. And now it was just me.

I swallowed , shaking my head before grabbing the hem of my dress and stripping.

Shower.

And then bed.

Alone.

Always so fucking alone.

The phone rang then and i groaned.

God, I hated having to leave the shower to attend calls but the reception here was terrible and I could only get calls if I left the phone on the small table by the bed.

Grabbing a towel and wrapping it around my torso, I stumbled out into the dimply lit bedroom, reaching for my phone.

I couldn’t recognize the number and I frowned, before accepting the call.

“Hello?”

“Yerin?”

Every hair on my body stood on end and my body curned hot and then went icy cold really really fast.

“T-T-Tae??” I whispered, gripping the phone so hard my fingers went number.

Five years later and his voice was so different. Deep and raspy and exhausted and I couldn’t make sense of it. Was this real? Was i having a fever dream? Had i fell in the shower and hit my head?

“Hey baby.” He chuckled.

“Is this real? Is it you?” I whispered, confused and my head spinning and my vision fading a little.

“Yeah. “ He coughed a bit and i panicked. “ I’m back. “

I froze.

“Wh-What?”

“I’m back. I’m home. I’m .... I’m back.”

I stared at the wall, too stunned to process what I was hearing.

I could hear his voice through the phone but I couldn’t respond.

Staring at the screen , I hung up.

And then, I finally gave in to the hysterics.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#taehyung fics #taehyung smut #taehyung fanfics #bts smut #ts fanfic #bts fics

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princecharmingwinks · 3 years

Text

Sterek Fic Rec - December 2020. We made it! It is the final month of this uber crazy year. And what better way to end the year except with....Sterek! Some are Christmas themed, some are not (since I know not everyone celebrates Christmas). I’m really excited to see all the new fics going through for Christmas this year that haven’t been posted yet so I’ll try to reblog as many as I can. Hope whatever you are doing to celebrate (or not) this December is perfect). Onto the list!

You put a Hallmark on my Heart by giantteenwolforgy (1/1 | 3,325 | Teen)

Stiles is funny and smart and kind and is also his daughter's teacher and his boss's son. On the list of people who are off-limits, Stiles has held the top spot for as long as Derek has known him.

Since Derek is Derek, Stiles also happens to rank number one on the list of people Derek is in love with. Seriously. His life is like a bad Hallmark movie.

What They Don't Have by Little_red_2000 (1/1 | 1,340 | General)

Stiles has to find a gift for Derek for Christmas. He chooses himself.

Hallmark Cliché by rieraclaelin (1/1 | 969 | General)

“Daddy, it’s snowing,” Lila said.

“Baby, it doesn’t snow here. You know that,” Stiles said as he looked back over to Lila.

“But it is, it really is! I asked Santa for snow yesterday, and look!” She pulled the curtains away from the window so Stiles could see outside, and what the hell? Those were definitely snow flurries.

Between Dogs and Wolves by artemis69 (1/1 | 25,934 | Teen)

"This is…not four million in cash,” remarks Stilinski.

“Isaac. Did you fail to get my money back and decided to pick up a stripper on the road to bribe me? Because let me make this perfectly clear: this would totally work. Well done.”

The mafia!AU where the Hales owe four million to the Stilinskis, Laura rents Derek (but not as a stripper), Stiles gets a new favorite, Derek gets a new boss, a new puppy and a new family.

Sometimes they break people, but mainly, they just snark at each other.

Ships in the Night by whenshewrites (4/4 | 12,677 | Mature)

Stiles was pretty sure he had a message on his forehead that read “Kidnap Me’ because shit like this kept happening. He was fully prepared to be thrown in cell, hitting the cement floor with a curse and a grunt. But he wasn’t prepared to hear a growl when the door slammed closed. Or feel calloused fingers tug at the blindfold around his eyes.

“Derek?”

People Are Dying, Derek! by nana_banana (1/1 | 1,762 | Teen)

Shit is going down in Beacon Hills, as usual. Our favorite dynamic duo is on the job, but Stiles thinks Derek should be more focused.

Take Another Little Pizza My Heart by distortedreality (1/1 | 3,224 | Teen)

Stiles decides the best way to woo his Dream Guy, aka Manager ‘resting bitch face’ Derek, is through insubordination and food puns. It goes as well as could be expected.

Alpha Mate by TheRealDanniX (1/1 | 8,224 | Mature)

Five times someone notices Stiles being Alpha Mate & Denmaker and one time Stiles notices it.

All I want for Christmas is to Bake Cookies with You by TuppingLiberty (2/2 | 4,830 | Explicit)

Stiles is upset when Scott can't uphold their Christmas tradition of baking cookies. Good thing Derek's to the rescue! Christmas fluff.

The Christmas Cabin by halcyon1993 (1/1 | 6,181 | Explicit)

For Christmas, Derek whisks his mate away to a remote cabin in the mountains. He has it all planned out: snow, hot chocolate, lovemaking in front of a roaring fire…but most importantly, he has a life-changing question to ask.

princecharmingwinks special mentions (I have waited forever to rec this! It is just a glorious piece of work <3 )

A Christmas Surprise by KatieComma (2/2 | 17,563 | Explicit)

Stiles comes home from Stanford for the holidays and shows up on the front step of the newly rebuilt Hale house.

Derek was not expecting him.

Stiles barges in and plans to deck Derek's halls because he's a grinch who doesn't plan to decorate.

Merry Christmas one and all ! Hope your final days of 2020 are filled with many loving memories. Please remember to leave kudos and comments for our fabulous writers. Happy reading!

#sterek #fanfiction #fic rec #teen wolf #stiles stilinski #derek hale #princecharminglists

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your-denki-kun · 3 years

Text

Issues

Katsuki x Denki x Eijirou x Reader

Warning: Mentioning of past abuse, Nightmares, Panic attack

Word count: 2.9K

A/N: If you have any requests they’re welcome. I hope you enjoy this shitty thing I wrote a bit back.

~3rd person pov.~

You don't know why you thought this was smart, but you're moving in with your three boyfriends. It's not like you don't love them or anything, you love them dearly. You just have a lot of issues and a bad past you didn't tell them about. Sure, they know you get anxious and jumpy from time to time, but not why or how bad it can get.

You don't want to tell them why you're like this and just how broken you are or why you live on your own. Well, until now. Truth be told you escaped the house you grew up in as soon as you turned eighteen. You started working at the flowershop you met them in to pay for rent and live was fine from there on.

Right now you're standing in front of their small mansion with two boxes in hand. The rest of your stuff is already here. Every time you came you would take some things and put it in their house. These boxes are filled with your last things and you're nervous. As soon as you walk in you'll be officially living with them.

Taking a deep breathe you open the door and are met with chaos. Denki is running around the living room, holding what seems to be the TV remote in his hands, laughing loudly as Katsuki is running after him, small explosions forming in his palm as he curses at Denki. Eijirou is just sitting on the couch and watching them with a smile.

You close the door and place your boxes down by the shoes and coats that are beside the door. As soon as you walk inside you walk into the living room, kitchen and dining area. There is a hall to the right with the bedrooms and bathrooms. Attached to the living room are big slider doors leading to the back yard.

You silently walk into the kitchen and grab a glass, filling it with water as you glance at your boyfriends antics. It brings a gentle smile to your face. You place your now empty glass on the counter of the island and rest your elbows on it, resting your head on your hands. Katsuki manages to take the remote from Denki, causing the later to whine.

''Hah!'' Katsuki smirks.

''Can we now finaly change the channel?'' Eijirou asks with a smile.

''Sure.'' Katsuki says as he flops onto the couch and starts surfing through the channels.

Denki gets up from the couch which he dramatically collapsed to when loosing the remote. His eyes widen when he sees you standing in the kitchen. Soon his face of shock gets replaced with a big, radiant smile as he walks over to you with fast, steady steps. Eijirou and Katsuki just ignore him as Eijirou commends on something on the TV.

''Pichu.'' Denki smiles as he reaches you and wraps his arms around your waist.

You lean back against him as you place your hands over his and close your eyes. Denki plants a kiss on the side of your head before burying his face in your neck, tickling your neck with his hot breaths. You giggle softly as you open your eyes and look down at your hands. You intertwine your fingers with his with a gentle smile.

''Hey Pikachu.'' You whisper.

''When did you get here?'' Denki whispers against your neck, his lips brushing over it.

''I walked in on Suki chasing you.''

''Hmm. I missed you.'' He mumbles, holding you closer.

''You saw me yesterday.'' You giggle.

''Still.'' He pouts, looking at you with puppy eyes and his bottom lip jutted out.

''I missed you too.'' You say sweetly as you kiss his cheek.

''I know. I'm irresistible.'' Denki smirks as he breaks his hug.

''Weeeell.....'' You say, dragging the word out and becoming silent.

''Oh come on. Why does no one love me today?'' He grumbles in a childish manner.

''I love you. Sorry, Pika.'' You say as you quickly wrap your arms around his torso and bury your face in his chest.

''Love you too, Pichu.'' He smiles as he hugs you back.

''Hey, De-Pebble!'' Eijirou's voice cheers.

You break your hug with Denki and look at the living room to see Eijirou and Katsuki getting up and walking over. Eijirou has a bright smile on his face as he walks over and wraps his strong arms around you and pulls you close. You wrap your arms around him and melt into his touch. Katsuki reaches the two of you and joins the hug, Denki doing the same.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lately you've been experiencing quite a lot of stress. You know this can trigger panic attacks, break downs and nightmares. Normally you would curl up in bed with your heated, weighted blanket and your stuffed animal, but Katsuki told you to get rid of them. You did it, you brought them to one of those thrift shops.

You really wish you didn't right now. You know that soon you'll have one of those three things and you're dreading that moment, which doesn't help at all. You're laying in bed, cuddled up to Eijirou's chest and Denki is spooning you. Katsuki is spooning Denki. You release a breath and close your eyes, letting sleep take over.

~Dream/flashback~

You walk into your house, old school uniform on and your backpack on your back. The house is silent as you close the door and take off your shoes. You walk up to your room and place down your bag. You don't have homework seeing you worked hard at school and walk back out of your room.

As soon as you round the corner to walk into the living room you feel someone punching your stomach, making you fall on your butt as your eyes widen. You look up to see your mother standing there with a menacing smirk on her face as she walks over. You can see the anger in her eyes and feel your body tremble.

''M-Mother.'' You stammer, scrambling back until your back hits the wall.

''What the fuck are you doing here?'' She asks as he keeps walking over to you.

''S-School finished and I don't have work t-today.'' You stammer.

''So you come here? I'm having people over and I don't want you anywhere near the fucking house. All you do is scare off my boyfriends.'' She smirks.

''D-Dad is coming back t-today.''

''I know. He can join. You, you need to leave however. Can't have them seeing my biggest mistake.'' She grins as she crouches down and harshly holds you chin in between her index finger and thumb.

Just as you're about to say something the door gets thrown open. Your mother gets up and walks over to the door. As you glance over you see your father and a feeling of dread takes over. You try to stand up, but your limbs are shaking to much, making you drop to the floor right away. Your mom starts making out with him as he squeezes her butt.

You look down at the floor as you hear them starting to pant as they make out and tear of each others clothes. As soon as your dad notices you he stops and walks over to you, hitting you hard before the both of them start beating the shit out of you as they laugh. You just lay down on the ground, curl into a ball and bring your arms up to your head to protect you head.

''No...Stop....No...No!...Stop! No!

~Dream/flashback end~

STOP!!''

You shoot up, panting heavily. You look around yourself as you bring one hand up to your chest and grip your shirt tightly. Once you notice you're in the room you share with your boyfriends you calm down a bit and pull your hands through your hair as you close your eyes and look down, trying to catch your breath.

''Pebble? You okay?'' Eijirou's voice asks.

You look up and see he's sitting beside you, looking at you worried. You feel something move and your head snaps to your right. You see Denki and Katsuki sitting up, confused sounds leaving them as they start waking up. Eijirou places his hand on your back, causing you to tens as your breathing gets even faster.

''Pebble, hey. Look at me, what's going on?'' He asks worried as he moves even closer.

You crawl away from them and to the foot end. You pull your legs up to your chest and hug them close as you start rocking your body back and forth as you breath heavily, trying to get some air into your burning lungs. Katsuki and Denki look at you shocked, sleep long forgoten when they see the state you're in.

''Teddy bear? Oi! What the fuck is wrong?'' Katsuki asks.

You don't respond, eyes darting around the room. Eijirou's eyes tear up as he look at Katsuki, Denki doing the same. Katsuki looks at Denki before looking at Eijirou. He looks back at you and wracks his brain for an explanation. As he takes you in completely and stares at you for a bit he realizes you're having a panic attack. He carefully moves closer and sits in front of you, not touching you.

''Teddy bear. Hey, look at me.'' Your glazed over eyes dart to him. ''Good, listen to me. I need you to take some deep breathes. Can you do that?'' You shake your head as tears start streaming down your face. ''Okay, follow my lead. In..1...2...3...4...5...6. Hold..1...2...3...4. Out. 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8. Good, now repeat.''

You shakily nod as you try your best to repeat what Katsuki told you to do. Eijirou and Denki want to crawl over as well, but Katsuki glares at them and shakes his head. Their eyes sadden, but they nod as they watch the two of you. Katsuki looks back at you to see your breathing slowly evens out as you start calming down.

''Good job. You're doing great. Can I touch you?'' You shake your head. ''Okay, then I won't. Just keep breathing.''

You close your eyes as you stop rocking yourself and hold yourself less tight. As your breathing finally evens out you open your eyes again and look up at Katsuki. He just smiles at you as he nods once. You glance to your left and see Eijirou and Denki smiling at you with sad smiles, tears brimming their eyes. You look down as your eyes tear up slightly.

''Oi, what's wrong?'' Katsuki asks surprisingly soft.

''Sorry.'' You whisper, voice a bit raspy from before.

''What are you sorry for, Pebble?'' Eijirou asks softly.

''Everything.''

''No need to be sorry. Did you have a nightmare, Pichu?'' Denki asks softly to which you nod.

''What about?'' Eijirou asks.

''N-Nothing.'' You stammer, pupils dilating.

''You just had a fucking panic attack. That nightmare was not about nothing.'' Katsuki grumbles.

''I-I'm fine now.''

''You're shaking, Pichu.''

''Denki's right. You're shaking. Are you sure you're okay? Do you need anything?'' Eijirou asks as he moves closer a bit.

You contemplate. You need your heated, weighted blanket and your stuffy. Your eyes tear up slightly as you look at the closet. You stumble off the bed and walk over to it, rummaging through it. You shove around the clothes and throw some things out, looking for the box you hid somewhere in the closet.

''Come on. Where is it? Shit. Where is it?'' You mumble softly as you walk over to the dresser and open the drawers, emptying them.

''Oi! What the fuck do you think you're doing?'' Katsuki growls.

You freeze on your spot, slowly standing up straight before looking over your shoulder at Katsuki, Eijirou and Denki. Katsuki looks annoyed while Denki and Eijirou look at you with a raised brow. You turn your body to them and look down at the ground, shifting your weight from one foot to another as you play with your finger tips.

''What are you looking for?'' Denki asks softly as he carefully walks over.

''M-My box.'' You whisper softly, not looking up from the ground.

''The (f/c) one?'' Denki asks softly as he walks over to the closet.

''Yeah.'' You whisper as you glance at him.

Denki nods and reaches into the closet, lifting up some clothes before grabbing your box. He walks over with a smile. You nod your head in thanks and take the box of him. You sit down on the ground, legs tugged underneath you. You carefully remove the lid from the box and place it on the floor like it's made of glass.

The three males look at you with wonder as Denki sits on the floor in front of you, legs crossed. Eijirou and Katsuki walk over as well and sit on either side of Denki as you reach into the box. In it are polaroid pictures and letters. You grab them and start skimming through them. Slowly a smile makes its way onto your face.

''What are those?'' Eijirou asks softly.

You tens up slightly and look up at them. You squirm slightly before handing over the stack of pictures and letters. Denki gently takes them from you as you place your hands on your lap and look down. Denki starts looking through the pictures to see they are pictures of you and them that you took over the three and a half years you've been dating.

Denki smiles at the pictures before going to the letters. They're the letters they send you before you all started dating. They had met you at a flowershop once when they went to buy flowers. They had been intrigued by you and started leaving letters at your work for you before they worked up the courage to give you their numbers.

After that they would send letters just for the sake of it and because they enjoyed it. As Denki looks through the letters he sees you kept all of the letters they gave you. They all look at you with surprised and loving eyes. Eijirou moves over to you and hugs you. At first you tens, but soon you relax into them.

''You kept them all.'' Katsuki states.

''Yeah.''

''Why?'' Katsuki asks, he genuinely doesn't understand.

''Because they are important to me. They always made me smile and they still do. When....When I feel bad I look at the pictures and letters and feel better. I'm sorry I woke you guys up and made you guys worry.'' You explain as Denki and Katsuki move closer.

''It's fine. Are you ready to explain the nightmare?'' Eijirou asks as he plays with your hair.

''It was about my past.'' You whisper as you break your hug with Eijirou and cuddle up to Katsuki, his heat grounding you.

''Oh?'' Eijirou and Denki ask.

''My parents...They aren't nice. I left as soon as I was eighteen. They...They would beat me whenever they found I did something wrong. When I get stressed I tend to get nightmares, panic attacks and break downs. I woke up from a bad nightmare and when you touched me it send me into a panic attack. Sorry I didn't tell you guys sooner.'' You whisper, holding Katsuki close.

He plays with your hair as the three of them stay silent. They don't know what to do or say. Katsuki slightly sways from side to side absentmindedly as he cradles you in his arms. It's oddly calming to you. You close your eyes as you slowly fall back asleep, a feeling of safety washing over you.

''It’s okay, Pichu.'' Denki whispers.

''We understand, Pebble.'' Eijirou says just before you fall asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Opening your eyes you're met with the sun peeking through the blinds. You groan as you turn your back to the window and close your eyes again, curling into the blanket and trying to fall back asleep. Chuckling prevents you from doing so however. You open your eyes and glance at the door to see Eijirou chuckling with a smile as he looks at you.

''Morning.'' You mumble, closing your eyes again.

''Morning Baby. Did you sleep okay?'' Eijirou asks as he walks over to you.

''Yeah.'' You mumble, reaching out to Eijirou.

He chuckles and takes your hand in his. You pull him onto the bed, causing a surprised yelp to escape the redhead. You cuddle up to him, mumbling about how he's warm and comfortable. Eijirou smiles and wraps his arms around you, planting a kiss on the top of your head as he holds you close.

''Oi, you were supposed to wake them up, not fall asleep with them.'' Katsuki sighs from the door.

''Comfy.'' you mumble as you cuddle up closer to Eijirou.

''Cut them some slack, Kat. They're still tired and it’s our day off.'' Eijirou whines.

''Exactly, I want to go on a fucking date with you extra's. At this rate me and Dunce face are the only ones going.'' Katsuki grumbles as he walks over.

''Mmm, love you Suki.'' You mumble, knowing it will calm him down.

''Yeah, yeah. Just get the fuck up and get ready for the date.'' Katsuki grumbles.

''Are they up yet?'' Denki's voice sounds from the door.

''Half. They’re still a bit tired.'' Eijirou hums.

''Aww, I want cuddles too.'' Denki whines as he lays down behind you and spoons you.

''Jesus fuck. We're going on a fucking date!'' Katsuki exclaims desperately.

''We still have a bit of time left, Kat. Just let them rest for a bit more. They had a rough night.'' Eijirou meddles as he pulls Katsuki onto the bed.

''Fine, we're cuddling, but as soon as it's time to leave we're leaving.'' He grumbles as he lays down comfortably.

''Mhm.'' You all hum back to him.

#bnha #bnha fanfiction #bnha fanfic #katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #katsuki x reader #Kirishima Eijirou #eijirou kirishima #kirishima x reader #eijirou x reader #Kaminari Denki #denki kaminari #kaminari x reader #denki x reader #kiribakukami #kiribakukami x reader #this is crappy

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sazc94 · 3 years

Text

Pietro and Bunny

Here is my second entry for the wonderful @msmarvelwrites 2k Challenge.

This a spin-off from my Bucky fic: The three times Bucky broke your heart. Part 1 linked Here.

It follows the same timeline and explores the relationship of Pietro and Reader (Bunny) More.

Words 4890 ish

Themes. Angst, Suggestions of smut. But mostly lots and lots of fluff. 18+ Because of the smut suggestions.

Part 2. (Part 1)

2015. Pietro and you stayed in touch. Both getting swept away in your busy year. Pietro had gone into Business with Wanda creating a fashion company. His dad was helping to fund the start-up costs, but Pietro was never one to take a handout so worked an extra job, he mostly did courier services. this allowed him to be flexible with his days.

Meaning he was able to pick up supplies and do whatever else it was his sister had him running around the city for. It also helped pay towards the rent of his apartment, his father covering half. One day in the summer when Pietro was rushing around he entered into the Baxter building and literally ran smack into a head of blonde hair.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I keep getting told I should slow down.” Pietro said bending offering a hand to the woman he had knocked over. “I’m just as much to blame, honestly I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and all though I may be nicknamed The Invisible woman, I need to remember that I’m not actually invisible” replied the blonde brushing herself down.

She was pretty in that conventional way but her piercing blue eyes drew Pietro in. “Pietro”, he said sticking out his hand. “Susan, but you can call me Sue”, she replied shaking his hand.

Pietro and Susan began dating in the autumn. All though you and Pietro still stayed in touch. The contact was dwindling. He also found it incredibly hard not to call you by your old pet name. “Hey sis, Vis”. Pietro said walking into the small office space they rented in downtown NYC. Wanda was hard at work behind her sewing machine.

“So you’re dating Susan Storm,” Vision said. It wasn’t a question but Wanda’s eyes shot up from her machine to look at Pietro with an acquisitional look. This was news to her. She knew you were dating someone but Susan Storm was practically a celebrity with her brain and looks, plus her high profile relationships with Reed Richards and Victor von Doom. Not to mention her dad was a renowned Scientist too.

“How did you know?” Pietro asked grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl in the middle of the space. “Your pictures from last nights date are all over the internet. Someone called Prez Hilton broke the story” Vision said shrugging. Wanda shot Vision a puzzled look, he may be great with technology and smart enough to work with Tony Stuck, but Vision didn’t usually follow much on the internet. “Ah yes, Pepper Potts showed me how to set up google alerts”. Vision said before heading out the door.

2016

Pietro knew you and Bucky had grown closer over recent months, but it still took him by surprise when he heard from you that you had gotten back together. He knew he had no right to be jealous as it had ultimately been his decision to break up, and he was dating the stunning Sue Storm. But it didn’t stop the small seed of jealousy he felt.

What didn’t help matters was that Sue had been working later and later at the Baxter Building, and getting closer with her ex, Reed. Pietro tried to shrug it off but ultimately after almost a year of dating, he could see that Sue’s heart belonged to another, and if he was being honest. Part of his heart still belonged to his Bunny. So, after a night out in NYC Pietro had kissed Sue Storm goodnight for the final time.

Pietro respected you too much to ruin your newfound happiness with Bucky and it seemed like he had finally turned a leaf over. That was until he got a text from your cousin explaining that Bucky had been unable to get the time off for your Grandma’s funeral.

Pietro didn’t even think twice about using his links to his dad to secure a flight out of NYC for the funeral in September. His heart shattered when he saw you at the airport, with tear-stained cheeks, a red nose, and puffy eyes. He didn’t hesitate to pull you into a huge hug.

“Shhh Bunny” – the old pet name slipping out. “It’s okay, I’m here. She was a wonderful woman. She wouldn’t want all these tears” he said releasing you from his grip. It had been two years since you’d last seen each other in person. Other than the brown in your hair having slightly grown out, no doubt due to your mind being on more pressing matters. You looked exactly the same. His Bunny.

After the funeral Pietro planned to catch the first flight out of Miami back to NYC. With the launch of Scarlett Witch fast approaching Pietro didn’t want to leave his sister to deal with all the pressure herself. At least that’s what Pietro told himself was the reasoning. Truthfully it was that he couldn’t bear to be around you and not be with you.

But when your family had insisted on putting him up for the night and feeding him, he couldn’t refuse.

After the wake when your Mum had insisted on Pietro leaving the dishes, he grabbed two beers from the fridge and went looking for you. He found you sat on the private beach your grandma’s house backed on too.

You sat with one of Bucky’s jumpers wrapped around you. It wasn’t cold but still, you felt cold, so you had grabbed his jumper as a source of comfort and warmth. Pietro stopped for a second before swallowing. This wasn’t about him; this wasn’t about Bucky. This was about you and being there for you whilst you waded through this grief. 7

“Hey Y/N. I thought I’d find you here. Your grandma used to tell me about how she found the sea hypnotising” Pietro said sitting down on the sand before offering you one of the beers he had grabbed.

That night Pietro sat with you in solidarity offering you nothing more than friendship and a pillar of support whilst you cried and then laughed, and then cried some more reminiscing about your cherished times with both your now deceased grandparents.

After Pietro returned to NYC, he put the thought of you out of his head, instead, he turned his efforts to focus on the upcoming December launch party. Thanks to their dad’s connections. Wanda’s hard work and a few strategic tweets and IG posts from a hard-working friend who did add campaign work for a living there was a real buzz around Scarlett Witch.

“Hey Brother, I was thinking of asking Y/N to attend the launch and to wear something from the evening collection for the launch, Jane is in town and already said yes, she’s bringing her Boyfriend Thor, I extended two further invitations to them encase Thor’s brother Loki is around. What do you think?” Wanda said throwing herself onto the grey sofa opposite Pietro. They were at Pietro’s apartment as he had the most amount of spare room.

“Excellent idea, she should bring Bucky too,” Pietro said sipping on his coffee. Pietro wanted to remain in your life and after the funeral, your conversations had been a bit more frequent. Most importantly Pietro wanted you to be happy.

Pietro brought a date along to the event; her name was Crystal and they had been on a few dates before. However, they both had an understanding that this was more of a casual thing and that neither of them were looking for a relationship with each other. Crystal had gone off to schmooze with some of the guests when you arrived. Pietro made a mental note to introduce you both later, he was sure you would both get along with your similar senses of humour. Pietro couldn’t take his eyes off you the moment you entered the event. You looked stunning, Wanda had asked for Pietro’s input when choosing the outfits that You, Wanda and Jane were going to wear. Pietro had chosen a silver two-piece skirt and top for Jane, a scarlet red ensemble for his sister and a Black strapless dress, the top was form-fitting made from chiffon fabric, the skirt cut out the front made of black tulle sparkled with the touches of glitter.

Pietro had chosen the ensembles for two reasons, one they were undoubtedly the showstoppers from Wanda’s evening collection and they all complimented each other well. He made a mental note to ensure Peter Parker got a photo of the three of the ladies together before the evening got away from everyone.

“Bunny! I agree absolutely amazing. Bucky, you don’t look too bad yourself” Pietro said kissing you on the cheek. Pietro was wearing a deep blue suit; it made his hair and ice-blue eyes pop. Wanda had insisted on the blue over a grey suit Pietro had originally planned on wearing. Pietro didn’t miss the smile on your face after they had complimented you, it was as big and bright as it had been that final summer. And you've got a smile That can light up this whole town

After photos and ensuring everyone’s, drinks were full, Wanda and Pietro left the small group of old school friends in the private area of the event and made their way around the guests. The press contained fashion bloggers, small fashion magazines, social media influencers and gossip columnist too. Pietro found his way back to Crystal after he’d finished making the rounds. He was on his way to introduce you when he spotted an unfamiliar red head amongst the group.

Thor introduced her as Natasha, Pietro tried not to give away the surprise in his eyes, but he could sense that there was some tension as you avoided making eye contact with both Pietro and Bucky. Pietro kept his nose out of it for the most part, but when the pair of you said your farewells for the evening, he couldn’t help but assure you that he was there if you wanted to talk.

“Was that Natasha Romanoff I saw hanging around Thor and Y/N’s group most of the evening?” Wanda asked when she and Pietro slipped into the back of the waiting car. “Yes it would appear so, did you know she was coming?” He asked loosening his tie. “Vis said Jane had asked to bring a friend along as Loki couldn’t make it, I told him to tell her it was fine as she technically had four invites. I didn’t realise it was going to be her”, Wanda explained, there was an emphasis on her.

Regardless of her brother's relationship status with yourself she genuinely liked you and always would, her loyalties lied with you and as far as Wanda was concerned, she didn’t even want to know Natasha, something about her didn’t sit right with her from the few interactions they’d had over the years.

“Will Crystal meet you at your apartment? I didn’t see her as we were clearing away”, Wanda said changing the subject. “Huh? Oh, no she’s meeting her friends downtown at the Voodoo Lounge, something about a magic night” Pietro said looking out the window as the streets of NYC blurred into one. He couldn’t help but worry about you, you could put on a bright smile and laugh all you liked, but Pietro knew when you were faking.

2017

The launch of Scarlet Witch had gone better than Pietro and Wanda had hoped. When the label opened up to online orders in February, they had sold out of everything in 30 minutes flat. Now they were looking at opening up an in-person store in the lower east side sometime early next year. Pietro was working late one night in the office when Vision turned up.

“Hey Vision, it's good to see you but Wanda’s not here,” Pietro said sitting back down behind his desk. It was late and the numbers had started to dance around the screen but Pietro was determined to get these figures finished before the weekend. It was the least he could do as Wanda had been working flat out, she insisted on sewing as many of the items herself as possible, and when she had hired two seamstresses, Wanda still checked all their work.

“Thank you, Pietro, but I know she is back at our apartment. It is actually you that I came to see” Vision said. James or Vision as everyone called him very rarely looked nervous, yes he sometimes missed social cues but he was never one to act nervous. Pietro sensing this was important saved his spreadsheets and shut down his computer.

“What’s going on Vis?” Pietro asked walking over to the sofa area where vision, stood awkwardly. “Traditionally, this question would be asked to your father, but as your father was not in your lives much until recent years, I felt it better to ask you” Vision babbled on. Pietro had a pretty good where this was going, but this was Visions plan and Pietro wasn’t about to jump the gun, besides if this was going where he thought it was, it was only right to make him suffer ever so slightly.

“Well Vision, I’m all ears. What is it you want to ask?” Pietro asked grinning. “Well you know how much I adore your sister Wanda, and we have been together a good many years now. So I would like to ask your permission for your sister's hand in Marriage” Vision asked. Vision’s heart was pounding so loud and fast he thought that he might collapse. Pietro’s eyes watered, he was happy for his sister and he was of course going to say yes, but he wanted to have a bit of fun first. He quickly stood and turned away from Vision, heading towards the small fridge of the small office kitchen.

“So you want to marry my sister, are you certain about this Vis? Because once that ring is on her finger, there is no backing down, even if you get cold feet.” Pietro remarked. “I assure you Mr Maximoff, I want this with my whole self” Vison responded. Pietro couldn’t continue with the charade anymore. “Of course you have my blessing Vision, I would be honoured to call you brother,” Pietro said handing Vision a beer.

Vision proposed to Wanda that summer on the fourth of July. The three of them attended Tony Stark’s exclusive fourth of July bash at Stark Tower. Vision had a good relationship with Stark and Pepper was a hopeless romantic at heart. Shortly before the fireworks, Vision and Wanda wandered off to a private balcony three floors above the outside decking where everyone else would watch. Tony introduced the display then the three of them slipped out of the crowd as the fireworks got underway.

Tony had his AI software J.A.R.V.I.S set to record the whole thing. As the firework display got underway. Vision got down on one knee and popped the question. Wanda of course squealed and said yes between tears. That’s when Pietro, Pepper and Tony appeared with glasses of champagne and toasted to the happy couple. “Congratulations Sis, also please let me be there when you call Y/N and tell her, I know she is absolutely going to flip her shit when she finds out,” Pietro said kissing his sister on the cheek.

Sure enough, Pietro was right, three days later when Wanda Facetimed you to show of the ring your excited screams were loud enough to be heard all through NYC. “Oh my god. He did it, he finally proposed! I was wondering if he was ever going to pull his finger out and propose. Oh Wands I am so happy for you, you deserve this” you said. Wanda was so elated she missed the small crack in your voice towards the end of the sentence, but Pietro didn’t.

“Here Pietro want’s to say hi. Go on tell her all about how you had known about this since March! I’m going to get ready Visions parent’s got into town today and we’re meeting them for dinner before they see a show tonight,” Wanda passed the phone to Pietro before heading off to her shower. Pietro had come round specifically to hear the call. Pietro waited for the door to close before he turned his attention back to your face on his sister's screen.

“Everything okay Y/N?” Pietro asked. You sighed before letting your hair out of its ponytail, You were avoiding the question. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m tired, going out later with Peggy Carter, she’s the girlfriend of Bucky’s teammate, Steve. We’re going to get some lunch and do a bit of shopping, Steve’s working on some projects and Bucky said he’s running some extra training drills at the stadium. Not that he needs to the season doesn’t start for another two months, oh I’m sorry. I’m wittering on, how are you? Had any good dates recently?” you asked forcing your voice to be light and carefree.

Pietro knew what you were doing but it wasn’t his place to call you out on lying. “Naa, not really. None that would ever go anywhere” Pietro said. The two of you stayed on facetime for a few more short minutes before Pietro reluctantly advised he had to get going to the office.

September 2017

“So Y/N I have a very important question, will you be one of my Bridesmaids?” Wanda asked. Pietro walked into Wanda’s office just in time to hear you scream your response. “OH MY GOD, ARE YOU KIDDING OF COURSE I WILL” Wanda moved the phone from her ears and looked up at her brother who just grinned. “You owe me 20 bucks I told you she would scream,” Pietro said making himself comfortable in the chair opposite his sister's desk.

“ I should be offended, but I’m in too much of a great mood to care” you chuckled. “Oh, is that so?” Wanda teased. Pietro felt sick, had Bucky proposed? Worse, were you pregnant? “I got offered this amazing job opportunity, it would be working for Stark Industries, Pepper Potts approached me directly about it the other week, I shot it down but she called me again today doubling the offer,” you squealed.

The weight that had threatened to crush Pietro lifted, not that his sister hadn’t noticed the change in his complexion a few moments ago.

“Oh my god Y/N, That’s amazing! Are you going to take it? I miss you and would love to have you nearby like old times. And I am not only saying that so you can do my wedding planning for me” Wanda sang. “I don’t know, I said I would think it over and get back to her after the weekend, I’m going to talk it through with Bucky tonight” you replied. “It sounds like a great opportunity Y/N” Pietro responded with earnest.

“Huh, that’s weird, I wonder what she’s doing here,” you said out loud “Who’s where?” asked Wanda. “Oh um nothing, look I got to go I just got to Buck’s and I’m cooking dinner, going to talk to him about Tony’s offer,” you said before hanging up. Wanda and Pietro just looked at each other. Pietro got up to leave but Wanda shot him a look as if to say she wasn’t finished with him.

“You still love her” she spoke plainly. “He doesn’t deserve her. He’s always posting pictures of him and that Natasha doing “Official” Lions events” Pietro replied simply. “You are right brother, he doesn’t deserve her, but like I told you all those years ago. If you had asked her she would have waited. You don’t get to complain that she moved on with someone who was a big part of her life for 13 or so years” replied Wanda.

She was right and Pietro knew it. He sighed before lifting his gaze to meet his sister's cold blue eyes. “You’re right.” He said simply before exiting the room.

Pietro awoke to his phone ringing at 2 am, he wasn’t going to answer it until he saw your name and the picture of the pair of you from Uni flash up on his phone. “Y/N? Is everything okay? It’s 2 am.” Pietro asked rubbing a hand along his face. You didn’t respond.#

“Y/N, are you safe? Should I call Bucky?” he asked urgency surging in his voice. “NO!” you practically shouted. “Sorry, no please don’t call Bucky,” you asked quietly.

Pietro shifted leaning over to turn on his bedside lamp. “Bunny, you’re scaring me, what’s going on?” Pietro pleaded. The comfort in his voice was enough to break you all over again. You started sobbing all over again. How you had any tears left was beyond you.

“I’ll fucking kill him” Pietro growled. Pietro knew, the pictures Bucky had been posting on IG, the tears now, the way you had withdrawn recently. You didn’t need to say it for him to know. “Please don’t, I don’t have enough money to bail you out of prison” you managed to squeak.

Pietro felt his heart shatter, all he had wanted since you two had started dating was to save you from the heartbreak you had experienced in the summer of 2010 and he had failed you. That night Pietro stayed on the phone with you until 4 am where you finally fell asleep exhausted from the day's turmoil.

May 2018

Pietro and Wanda had helped you apartment hunt. They helped decorate and furnish your apartment ready for your move to the Big Apple in January. Wanda had introduced you to her friends slash employees but to Wanda, they really were her friends: Doreen Green, Janet Van Dyne, Julia Carpenter and Laura Kinney. Including you on many girls nights.

Vision and Pietro always walked you home after nights out. Wanda made sure to invite you to brunch with her and Vision when Pietro was attending. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to give you and Pietro another shot, it’s just you weren’t certain he would want you, after all, Bucky had really done a number on you again.

Sighing you picked up your phone and decided to take a leap of faith and text him, the two of you hadn’t spent any time alone together since you had moved in January.

Pietro’s Pov

Pietro’s phone buzzed. You, me and that little cafe in times square tomorrow = date? – Y/N x Pietro was stunned, he was sure that the time for you guys to be a couple had long passed. “Brother, are you listening?” Wanda asked agitated at her brother's lack of respect, the two of them were going through the plans for the rest of the year. Plans for when they would drop certain collections, run certain in-store promos. When they would run online promo’s.

“Sorry, it’s just Y/N just text me, asking me on a date” Pietro’s voice came out dazed. All though Wanda was miffed, she couldn’t help but smile. Looks like Y/N had finally listened to the girls last night when they went out for Monday night happy hour. “You had best text her back then brother” She responded raising her eyebrows at Pietro. I thought you’d never ask. How does 5 pm work? Pietro shot back.

Perfect x Your response came through almost immediately.

Your Pov

You got to the café early, you were too nervous to focus on anything in the office. And as you were only scheduled to work until four, you decided it was just easier to go to the café and wait with a book or something, you had to deal with this nervous energy somehow. You walked in expecting he’d be late, but Pietro got there early and he stood and waved. You walked to him Pietro pulled your chair out and helped you in. Pietro sat down opposite you and shot you a small nervous grin.

“I ordered you a hot chocolate and a cookie, I know how much you like hot chocolate even if it’s warm out like today,” he said shyly. “Thank you,” you said, you felt yourself blush. For goodness sake Y/N this is Pietro, you dated him for three years get a grip you silently berated yourself.

As the date got underway you felt yourself relax and slip into a comfortable bubble, you told Pietro about a recent mishap where one of your colleagues Darcy Lewis had accidentally thrown toner waste all over you.

You couldn’t help but smile as Pietro threw his head back laughing like a little kid. He took your hand and rubbed small circles on the back of it, that familiar feeling made your stomach erupt in butterflies.

I've been spending the last eight months Thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end But on a Wednesday in a cafe I watched it begin again.

December 2017 Pietro’s Pov. The snow was falling, and the streets of New York City were quitter than usual, a sign that Christmas was just around the corner. You had finished for a nice long Christmas break earlier that week and last night Pietro had taken you out for drinks and dinner as a surprise. However, due to the snow the restaurant had been unable to open as staff couldn’t get in due to all the delays on the subway. Pietro had felt crestfallen.

Right up until you had suggested that the pair of you skipped dinner and went back to Pietro’s straight for dessert. Pietro had struggled to leave you this morning. As he only had a few things to deal with before Scarlett Witch shut down for three weeks for a well-earned extended Holiday break he hadn’t left until later that morning around 10:30.

You had once again found your way back to the bright bubbly person you and everyone else knew you to be. Pietro as always being that safe place for you to heal. The way you danced around the kitchen cooking pancakes had Pietro beside himself. You really were ultraviolet. That fire you ignited, Good, Bad and undecided, Burns when I stand beside it Your light is ultraviolet. Pietro thought to himself.

All though you had only been back together since May this time Pietro was never going to let you again.

Pietro was leaving the office for a late lunch when his phone pinned with a google alert. James “Bucky” Barnes announces engagement to Natasha Romanoff! Read the headline. Fuck. That piece of shit. Pietro felt rage on behalf of you. He knocked on Wanda’s door. “Hey, Wanda. I know were almost done here anyway, but I got to go early” Pietro shifted uncomfortably.

“Why?” Wanda asked simply. They were almost done but Pietro was meant to be shutting down the website whilst Wanda finalised everyone’s surprise Christmas bonuses. Pietro didn’t say anything simply handing his phone to his sister. Wanda scanned the headline and the article. Sucking in a deep breath. “Go. I’ve got this. Go check on Y/N” she said her eyes softening.

Pietro practically raced home. Just as he was coming out the subway his phone rang, caller ID showing Sam. “What the fuck is that dickhead playing at?!” Sam asked. Pretty much the entire friend group had cut ties with Bucky after they found out he had been cheating on you again.

“I have no idea, but he better hope to god I never see him, because I will not hesitate to rip him a new one, look I’m just letting myself into my apartment building, Y/N stayed here last night as she didn’t have work today and we’re meant to be going to Stark’s Christmas gala this evening. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Pietro said ringing off before Sam could respond. Pietro knew Sam would understand.

“Hey handsome how was your day?” you asked not taking your eyes away from the street below. Pietro breathed a sigh of relief, he was certain he would have come home to find you curled up in bed, or worse the floor crying. You were happy together but that didn’t make Bucky’s betrayal sting any less.

“It was good, busy” he replied taking off his coat and walking over to join you at the window seat. Wrapping his arms around you and pulling you close. He smiled to himself as he caught sight of the kids below. He could faintly see in the reflection of the window that your eyes were rimmed with red.

“How about you Bunny? I saw a news alert. I’m guessing you know about the engagement?” he asked. You hummed a response. Pietro knew you loved him; he also knew that you knew how much he loved you. But that didn’t make seeing you hurt any easier. Suddenly you shifted turning around to face him. His floppy silver-blonde hair covering those beautiful ice blue eyes, they looked at you with such love and endearment, they also spoke a silent promise. You kissed him gently on the lips before standing up.

“Come on Quicksilver let's shower before the Stark Christmas Gala,” you said pulling your boyfriend along behind you shooting him a knowing grin. God, he fucking loved you.

All this time how could you not know, baby? You belong with me

#pietro maximoff #pietro x reader #pietro x you #pietro fluff #bucky x natasha #wanda x vision #msmarvelwrites2k #marvel fanfiction #marvel au #avengers au #pietro x y/n #soft pietro

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forevfangirlwrites · 3 years

Note

I love your how to handle fame series and I totally get if you’re six of writing for this AU but if you aren’t I’d love one with them making the relationship official like Annabeth telling Percy he can post a picture of them for the first time or her telling him she wants to make it official and post on social media and Percy just being happy to tell the world that she’s his and vice versa

CONTINUATION OF: PART 9

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 , Part 7, Part 8

If Percy ever decides to pick up the memoir business again, the entire thing could be about the past two days, which have downright been the weirdest, most surreal days of his whole life.

On second thought, maybe he wouldn’t be able to write it because he’s spent all weekend trying to compartmentalize it and it still feels like a blur.

Like one really long day.

And you’d think, given the magnitude of the events that had occurred, he’d remember it better.

CHB had been the first to report the news, courtesy of that lady shoving a mic in his face, but the interview had really sealed the deal. Zoe Nightshade is acclaimed for reporting facts not fiction in the celeb news world, so going on her show to talk about it had been the best way to get the right version of the story out there.

All he remembers about the set are the hot lights, the white couch (that he was immediately worried about ruining) and Annabeth by his side, holding his hand.

Overall, it had been good. The entire thing had been premeditated by Annabeth, who had started off the interview explaining how they wanted to go public on their own terms instead of someone else leaking it, but that they still wished to keep their personal lives private.

Percy had also kept to his premeditated script, saying he’s a barista from New York, and shifting the dialogue (as Annabeth called it) to their meeting.

After the interview Annabeth had given him a big hug and told him it was a success.

But then…..oh then, came The Notifications™.

As if he didn’t already spend too much time on his phone, he’s been glued to it all weekend.

“It’s going to be rough,” Annabeth had said with the same worried face that she had when the talk about going public had come up a month ago.

And Percy knows, right, he’s been in the service industry and knows how people can be jerks. He knows there’s going to be backlash.

Maybe that’s why Annabeth had rented a beach house far down the coast and been by his side constantly the past two days.

He glances over at her, leaning back on her comfy wicker chair with her feet propped, reading a book. As if she can tell he’s looking at her, she puts down her book and turns to face him.

“What’s up?’

Her long legs look golden in the sunlight filtering through the light curtains and she’s practically glowing with the beach air wafting through the open window.

Long story short, she looks beautiful.

Focusing his brain from the detour it took to admire her, he shakes his head.

“Nothing…just wondering how I got here.”

She picks up her cup of tea from the table beside her. “What do you mean?”

Leaning back against the headboard of the bed, he stares at the high planked ceiling.

“I don’t know…just everything. I mean for one, I’ve never seen so many pictures of myself…even my mom’s albums would have a tough time competing…actually, they might still win now that I think about it.”

Annabeth chuckles at that. And while it’s true his mom has an absurd amount of pictures, him and Annabeth have been plastered a fair amount on various articles and social media. He’d kept his Instagram private, but his Twitter hadn’t stopped blowing up.

“And I’ve never had this many people talk or…speculate about me.” He drops his gaze from the ceiling to once again land on her. “Like, it’s the most hate I’ve ever gotten…”

The inevitable comments on him being a gold digger, though expected, had been hard to see. It stung a little to think people thought he was anything other than hopelessly in love with his girlfriend.

But no one had been more pissed than Annabeth and it had taken kisses from him to distract her.

He sees the same anger and worry start to flare up now, her eyebrows already creasing together, and rushes to complete his thought.

“But it’s also the most support I’d gotten.”

Luckily, an overwhelming majority of Annabeth’s fans had been super supportive of them. One picture in particular, one of them standing at the red carpet staring into each other’s eyes, had gone viral and “Percabeth” (as people were dubbing them) had been number one on trending for a whole day.

So many people not only calling them cute, but also describing him as hot. Percy had almost laughed out loud when he’d first read comments gushing about how attractive he was. (Take that, Nancy Bobofit, who called him ugly in middle school.)

“It’s just really crazy I guess, I never expected this from my life.”

He really should write a memoir. Other people need to know how almost comically absurd his life is now. (It would start with riding the subway to school every day.)

Annabeth sits up in her chair, still wearing the frown from earlier.

“Do you regret it?”

She asks calmly enough, but he can see the worry behind her eyes and the fear creep into her tone. He slides off the bed and walks to her, sitting on the footstool she’d been propping her feet on a second ago.

“Not at all.”

Reaching for her hand, he raises it to her lips, keeping eye contact. She needs to know that he’d take it all if it means he gets to be with her.

The day after the interview, Annabeth had told him to pick out a picture of them to post on her Instagram. And though it had immediately become her most liked picture, it wasn’t just fan service. The smile on her face when she posted it had made Percy’s heart melt even more.

Because the truth is, despite everything, it feels so good to call her his in front of the whole world.

Annabeth smiles, pulling their intertwined hands close to her and resting her cheek against them.

“Good.”

His phone vibrates and he can’t help but look over. Annabeth smiles, amusedly. “Who is it?”

He reaches for the device, unlocking it with a swipe. “My mom.”

“What’s she saying?”

He smiles as he reads the text. “That her friends are blowing up about this.”

Annabeth chuckles. “Don’t worry, it’ll blow over soon.”

Almost automatically, he opens up Twitter. It’s become a bad habit over the past two days. “Well, we have been trending for a while…”

His sentence veers off as he checks the trending tab. Number one this morning had been a kpop star whose birthday was today and “Percabeth” had been second.

But now number one was…Jogan Paul, who had apparently been caught in some money laundering scheme and become the center of all public outrage. Number two was still the kpop star and number three was #ultranatural.

“Percabeth” was nowhere to be found.

“You’re right…we’re not trending anymore, some other guy, Jogan did a—”

“Money laundering scheme?” Annabeth finishes and he looks up from his phone to see her smile over her tea.

“Yeah…everyone’s talking about him….and then it’s a k—”

“Kpop idol? Yeah, it’s P-Dawn’s birthday,” Annabeth finishes again.

Percy stares at her.

Annabeth, after posting the Instagram photo, hadn’t checked her phone almost all weekend, letting him look at everything going on.

So how could she know all this? He’s pretty sure she hasn’t checked her phone in hours, instead working her way though her book.

“Yeah…” he continues, still confused. “So we’re not trending anymore. This Jogan guy really messed stuff up…”

Annabeth shrugs, still smiling. “That’s how it goes, people move on from things quickly.”

He nods. He knows this. And personally he’s glad that they’re not the main topic of conversation now. It feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He puts down his phone with a smile.

“Yeah, it’s fortunate that this guy messed up, really took the eyes off of us.”

Of course, not all the eyes. Annabeth’s fans will still talk about it, but now the media has something juicer to report on.

“Yeah, fortunate,” Annabeth repeats, lifting her cup again to take a sip, but she can’t hide her smile.

Something about this feels…

“Did you know about this?”

Annabeth just takes a sip of her tea.

Peering over the cup, she replies sweetly, “Did you know the season finale of Ultranatural is on tonight?”

And that’s all the answer he needs.

(So he naturally responds by picking her up and tossing her in bed, letting her laughs bounce off the high ceilings as he wraps her in a hug, thinking that there needs to be a whole chapter in his memoir about just how smart his girlfriend is.)

A/N: As I said in the beginning, this is the continuation to the last chapter in the how to handle fame series. Thank you for sending in the prompt! It’s been a popular one and I had a whole storyline for it (though I did include the insta pic :)

When I came up with this plotline I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head that Annabeth would totally mastermind the entire thing and make sure that their relationship didn’t get too much heat.

Plus, let’s be real, news moves fast, and their relationship, while a big thing, isn’t the only thing going on the world for people to talk about. And stories that spark outrage blow up more than two people dating, so I tried to keep this as realistic as I could.

Part of the reason it’s taken so long for this is because I truly wasn’t sure the best way to tackle this whole thing while still staying true to reality as best I could. So when I thought of the Annabeth planning out this whole thing I thought it was fun and cute and went for it. I mean this entire series has taken off in a way I had truly never imagined.

A lot of people had requested the whole going public thing and how it would play out, so I really hope you guys liked this! (And thank you anon for sending in the prompt I used to post this :)

(Also a lot of references to things that have happened semi-recently so lmk if you’ve figured them out, not that they’re that hard lol)

#percy and annabeth #percabeth #percabeth fic #percabeth au #actress annabeth #barista percy

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hockeylvr59 · 4 years

Text

Secret Love Part 18 || Cale Makar

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no

Authors Note: Just need to reiterate that this man lives in my head rent free 24/7. I finished part 22 and I’m thinking that I have roughly 3 more parts to write. We’re definitely on the back half of this series now and I’m actually kind of sad because I love these two (hopefully you love them just as much).

Warnings: angst, cursing, cockwarming, smut (this one is really filthy…fair warning), oral sex, maybe a bit of breeding kink.

Word Count: 3,583

~~~~~~

You hadn’t realized you’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop until it went clattering to the floor. It could be worse...you tried to remind yourself. But that didn’t stop the ache in your chest or the tears that kept filling your eyes every time you thought you’d pulled yourself together.

Sleeping in Cale’s arms Friday night was everything you needed and more. You’d gotten up Saturday morning and made breakfast together before you’d rushed off to work, a day filled with client meetings and house tours ahead of you. You’d parted with a kiss and an ‘I love you’, promises of talking later following you.

With such a busy day, it wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that you finally had a spare minute to call your parents like you had promised Laura you would.

“Hey mom.” You greeted, settling onto your couch, your legs tucked up underneath you. “Is dad around?”

It took your mom a minute to fetch your dad but once they were both on the line you took a deep breath.

“So I have some news for you.” You stated, your tone bright hoping to signal that this was all good news. “Cale and I are together.”

Silence stretched on for an uncomfortably long time before your dad’s voice spoke up.

“That’s great dear. I have to head out for an evening round of golf but I’m happy for you.” The sound of footsteps and the door came through the phone as your mom took it off of the speaker.

“How long?” Your mom inquired, her voice seeming hesitant.

“Officially almost two months...but we realized there was something here back in March. I never thought that it would ever be a possibility. But everything about it is so right. I love him mom and he loves me. We just fit together...I’ve never felt a connection with anyone else the way I do with him.”

“Oh hunny…” Your mom mumbled, causing your back to stiffen.

“You don’t sound happy for me.” You whispered, shocked.

“I am happy for you...you know we love Cale...just maybe you should slow down before things get too serious.”

“This is serious mom.” You insisted.

“I just...I don’t want you to get hurt. Cale’s a good kid but there’s a significant age difference between the two of you. Plus he’s only there for the summer. What happens when he leaves?” Hearing your mom refer to Cale as a kid made the hair on the back of your neck bristle.

“He’s not a kid mom. Neither of us are kids anymore. I know there’s an age gap but we’ve talked about anything and everything important related to that and it’s not an issue. We’re on the same page.” Before you could continue your mom cut you off.

“Honey...the boy is a young NHL star. He’s not ready to be thinking about settling down. You may think you’re on the same page but I don’t think you realize what you’d be giving up for him.”

“You’re wrong.” You mumbled, your throat starting to tighten up. “I don’t know what happens when he leaves but we’ll figure it out when the time comes. Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Because I know how much you’ve always cared about Cale and I just don’t want you to find out down the road that this was all a waste of time because the two of you want different things. I don’t want you to let your good judgment be clouded by lust. You’re a smart woman...don’t give up the life you’ve worked so hard to build for a summer fling.”

Sobs wracked your body as you ended the call without another word. How could your mother say those things? It was like she didn’t know Cale at all...didn’t know you at all. She was wrong...you knew she was wrong. You and Cale were perfect for each other. This wasn’t some fantasy that would never manifest…this was real. The way Cale looked at you was real. His ‘I love you’s’ were real. And distance or time...that wouldn’t change anything.

You sobbed on your couch for almost an hour before finally pulling yourself together. Your mother’s support or lack thereof was not going to define your relationship or your life. Determined not to let this consume you, you threw yourself into all of the cleaning that you had been putting off. There was laundry to be done, dishes to be washed, floors to be swept, mopped, vacuumed.

And then when you finished all of those tasks, it was time to make yourself something to eat, before cleaning up those dishes as well. Of course, all of these tasks took twice as long when tears kept constantly springing up forcing you to put yourself together all over again.

After dinner you pulled the final load of laundry out to fold. As your fingers wrapped around the fabric of Cale’s stolen t-shirt you sunk to the floor of your laundry room. How could she think that you wouldn’t receive in return ten times the worth of anything you had to give up to be with Cale? Gary had joked the other night that you were out of Cale’s league but it was absolutely 100% the other way around.

Carrying the t-shirt back to your bedroom, you stripped out of your clothes, letting the soft fabric of the shirt wrap around you instead. Deciding it was late enough to go to bed, you locked up the house before crawling under the sheets, a scent that was so distinctly Cale wafting from the spare pillow as you pulled it against your chest.

Tossing and turning, unable to sleep, you watched as the clock eventually reached 1:30am. Reaching blindly for your phone which you hadn’t bothered to look at all day, you first acknowledged that there wasn’t a single message from your mother after the abrupt end to your call. There were however multiple messages from Cale.

Hey sweetheart, just checking in to see how your day is going. (Received 2:02pm)

Tell dad it’s unfair for him to kick my ass on the golf course every single time. (Received 5:27pm)

Haven’t heard from you today. You’re probably just enjoying your day off, you deserve it. (Received 8:16pm)

Something is wrong, I can feel it. I’m here if you want to talk and you know all you have to do is ask and I’ll come right over. I love you. If you want to handle it by yourself that’s okay too, just know you don’t have to. (Received 10:42pm)

It wasn’t unlike Cale to send multiple messages through the day, just to let you know he was thinking about you. Normally they just made you smile, but this time they caused another fresh set of tears to form in your eyes, wetting your pillow.

Without even fully realizing it, you were pressing on his contact information and then the phone was ringing. The second ring had barely started when you heard Cale’s voice come through the line. He must have heard you crying because suddenly you heard the rustle of fabric.

“Give me fifteen. I’ll be there.” His sleepy voice insisted and then the call dropped.

True to his word, almost fifteen minutes later on the nose you heard a key clicking in the lock of the front door. The sound of the door opening, closing, and being locked again followed before footsteps padded across the hardwood floors. When the bed finally dipped behind you, Cale’s warm body pressing firmly against your back, you let out a shaky breath in relief.

“I can’t sleep.” You whispered as Cale’s fingers flexed gently around your hip.

“Wanna talk about what’s wrong?” Cale prodded lightly, his warm breath fanning against the back of your neck as he spoke. And though you knew you should talk about it, you didn’t really know what there was to say. It sucked beyond belief that your mother wasn’t supportive but that only changed your relationship with her, not your relationship with Cale.

This was good, you knew this was good. Cale coming over in the middle of the night because you needed him was just further proof.

“No...I just...need you.” You rambled.

“I’m right here sweet girl.” Cale affirmed. Though you could feel the heat of his body along your back, his hand draping over your middle, it wasn’t enough and you couldn’t explain it.

“Closer.” You whispered. Within just a moment, Cale had turned you around, tugged you even closer, and tangled your legs together. Being pressed chest to chest was a little bit better, but it still wasn’t close enough to patch the holes of worry, doubt, and anger your mother had created. It would have to be good enough though, and you buried yourself into his body as much as you possibly could.

“Y/N…” Cale breathed a few minutes later, his thumb lifting your chin so that he could kiss you. “You’re still shaking sweetheart. Please...what can I do?” He begged softly. “How can I quiet whatever voices in your head are making you feel this way?”

“I don’t know.” You mumbled. “This...this will just have to be enough. This is already so much.” Still, your heart was pounding and echoes of your mother’s voice still lingered in your head.

“Do you still want me closer?” Cale questioned, his hands sliding up along your side under the t-shirt. A weak nod was all it took for Cale to slide you out of your clothes, his own quickly following, forming a pile on the floor as he pulled you back against him.

The skin to skin contact was better, you felt some of the weight come off of your chest. And though it might not be the most restful sleep, for the first time tonight you felt like you might actually be able to drift off.

“How could she call this lust...a summer fling…” Your words were practically unintelligible as you mumbled into Cale’s bare chest, but apparently they were enough for him to piece things together because you heard him curse softly. His fingers slid up to cup the back of your head, tilting your face up to his. At the same time, his other hand brushed away the tears from your cheeks, his eyes full of despair and frustration as he looked at you.

He seemed to acknowledge that this wasn’t something he could fix, that he needed to fix, but you could see how much he hated it all the same. Despite the late hour, the wheels in his head were spinning, searching for something that he could do to take away the pain you were feeling.

“Can we try something?” He asked quietly. Shrugging, you nodded, no idea what he had in mind. He shifted you back from his body just an inch as his hand dropped from your cheek to slip between your legs. “Just relax my sweet girl...I know you trust me. This isn’t sex...not really.” He explained, urging your body to give in just a little. Despite not being in the mood, your body grew pliant under his fingers.

“Cale…” You whimpered, confusion making your anxiety increase slightly.

“Shh love…” He soothed. “You’ve heard of cockwarming haven’t you? I’m just gonna rest inside you, give you the closeness you need.”

“Oh.” You gasped, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth.

“You okay with that?” He inquired, his fingers moving from your core to shift your body in line with his. “Just want to give you what you need.”

“Please.” You agreed, your fingers flexing against his bicep. Cale was still soft as he slid inside you, the rest of his body shifting to wrap around you now that you were joined together. This was absolutely as close as you could get to him and it was everything you didn’t know you needed.

“Good? Bad? In between?” Cale asked, his lips pressing against your forehead lightly.

“Good...so good.” You breathed, your body relaxing against him. “Thank you.”

Little by little, every worry and negative emotion slipped from your mind until you finally fell asleep tucked against Cale’s chest with him resting deep inside of you.

____

As the fog of sleep started to disappear, you groaned feeling worse than you usually did when you were hungover. Warm fingers brushing against your temple caused you to slowly blink your eyes open. The morning light revealed Cale’s bright blue eyes staring down at you and you let out a choked gasp as you felt him twitch inside of you.

Holy shit…

Cale was inside of you.

Every memory of last night flooded over you quickly at first before slowing down as you remembered how patient Cale had been, willing to try anything to help you sleep. Now, hours later, your bodies were locked in the same position. The only difference was where Cale had been soft inside of you last night, now he was hard, stretching and pressing against your vaginal walls.

“Sleep okay?” Cale’s deep gravely morning voice questioned.

“I slept...that alone is impressive.” You replied honestly. “Can’t believe you’re still inside me.” You admitted, voice awestruck.

“Didn’t want to wake you by pulling out.” Cale explained. “But I need to now...so I can take care of this.”

“How about you stay just a little longer…” You hinted. “Take care of your problem together. After all...your dick seems quite happy where he’s at.” A low grunt slipped from Cale’s throat in response to your words.

“My girl wants fucked huh?” Cale stated. “I think we can make the time for that this morning.”

The first few drags of his cock were rough, your body’s lubrication drying up overnight and the new lubrication from waking up to him inside of you this morning not having the chance to replace it until about the fourth stroke.

Once your body adjusted though, you realized that having him inside of you all night had made you incredibly sensitive. Each piston of his hips drew a moan from your throat and your nails dug into his shoulders, clinging to him and the pleasure he provided. Spending hours joined together had apparently made Cale sensitive as well because suddenly you felt the sticky heat of his cum spurting inside of you as he came, a gasp of your name spilling from his lips. He went soft quickly, groaning as he came down from his climax.

“That was embarrassingly fast.” Cale cursed, his lips pressing against your shoulder.

“It’s fine Cale...I understand.” You assured him, fingers playing with his hair. This was the first time he’d cum before you and while your body was still worked up, you were okay with it after last night.

“It’s not fine.” Cale stated adamantly. “I can’t leave my girl hanging.”

“Cale...I swear it’s okay.” You pressed, feeling him slip out of you, his cum leaking out of your used pussy. Before you could slip out of bed to clean up, Cale’s hands were grabbing your waist, rolling you onto your back as his body sunk beneath the sheets. Feeling his lips against your thigh, you whimpered softly, hands reaching down to expose his head from the blankets.

“Cale...your cum…” The flick of his tongue through your folds, collecting both your juices and his own semen stopped you in your tracks, your head falling back against the pillows.

“We taste good together.” He mused, a smirk on his face as he spoke before diving back into your core like a man starved.

“You cannot just say that.” You whined loudly, your hips jerking as he sucked your clit between his lips. “Fuck Cale…”

Feeling more of his semen start to drip out of you made you whimper and Cale quickly read the noise for what it was, dipping lower between your thighs where he lapped it out of you slowly. What he was doing was so dirty that even with his barely-there touches you were a shaking mess in the sheets.

“You gonna cum for me sweet girl?” Cale mumbled pulling back for air. “Gonna cum for me...give me the rest of my seed so I can fuck a fresh load into you?” One swipe of Cale’s tongue through your folds had you screaming as you fell apart, wave after wave of pleasure crashing over your body. You honestly weren’t sure whether that was one long orgasm or multiple short ones but by the time you came down, the gentle flicks of Cale’s tongue as he worked to clean you up were too much and you shoved his head away.

“I don’t know what you like more. Me cumming inside you or me eating my cum out of you.” Cale teased, crawling up the bed over you. Kissing him was dirty as hell but you couldn’t resist, eager to find out what your mixed fluids taste like. It really wasn’t that bad and you ran your fingers down his back, resting them just above his ass.

“As hot as that was...I’m still quite partial to you filling me up.” You breathed. “I’ll take as many loads as you can give me.”

“Fuck.” Cale mumbled, growing hard against your stomach once more.

“You got another one for me?” You murmured, reaching between your bodies to stroke his length gently. “Because you ate all of it out of me and now I feel empty. I need more.”

“Yeah sweetheart...I’ll give you more.” Cale grunted, pressing back inside of you. His thrusts were quick, the need between the two of you too strong for slow sex. Neither one of you was going to last all that long this round, your vaginal walls already starting to flutter around his length.

“God baby...your sweet pussy really wants my seed doesn’t it? Fluttering around me ready to milk every single drop possible from me.”

“Need it.” You whine, your body aching to feel that sticky heat again.

“Yeah sweetheart...I know you do.” Cale groaned. “Your body is so needy for it. One of these days I’m just going to keep you in bed, fucking you full over and over again, not letting a single drop slip out of you. You’d like that wouldn’t you? To be so full of me. Your hips tipped up to keep it all inside.”

Cale’s words had you feeling like you were about to explode and your vaginal walls fluttered around him again as his hips stuttered.

“You ready for it sweet girl? Ready to milk me dry?” Your nails dug crescent marks into his lower back as you clung to him, your chest heaving beneath him as your orgasm hovered just below the surface waiting for him to give you everything you needed.

“Yeah you’re ready.” Cale hissed. “My girl is so ready. Here it comes.” Cale’s orgasm was long and hard and rope after rope of semen spilled inside of you. The feeling of it tipped you off of the cliff and you clamped down around him ensuring that he did indeed give you every drop. Where your first orgasm had been like a tsunami, this one was magma bubbling up and rolling slowly down the hill before cooling.

You hadn’t even noticed Cale pull out, but when your eyes fluttered open he was standing at the edge of the bed just watching you.

“You don’t even know how sexy you look all blissed out.” He grinned. “And I know you like keeping my cum inside but you should probably go use the bathroom.” He declared reaching out a hand to help you up, his semen dripping down your thighs as you walked the three feet to your bathroom.

Having cleaned up, you found Cale sitting in his pajamas on the side of the bed. Stepping into his open arms you smiled down at him feeling his arms wrap around your waist.

“Thank you.” You murmured, pecking his lips. “For coming over last night. For the cockwarming. For this morning.”

“Are we good?” Cale asked, letting out a deep exhale of breath.

“We were never not good.” You assured him. “My mother’s reservations don’t change anything. She obviously doesn’t know either of us as well as she thinks she does and I’m not going to let her unfounded concerns get in the way of something that I know is good and right.” Ruffling up his hair a little bit, you shook your head. “I love you Cale. I’ve waited a long time to find something this good. So I’m all in.”

“You have to get to work don’t you?” Cale breathed. Glancing at the clock beside the bed you nodded.

“Yeah I do. But not until you know that everything is okay. That I want more nights sleeping next to you. Nights sleeping with you inside me. Mornings where we bring each other pleasure over and over again. I want it all with you and I’m sure my mom will come around eventually. She’s gonna have to because I’m not letting you go.”

“Not letting you go either.” Cale agreed. “Why don’t you go get ready for work and I’ll make breakfast.”

“Perfect.” You grinned placing a lingering kiss to his lips.

The other shoe may have dropped, but the floor was solid so there wasn’t even a scratch left behind.

#cale makar #cale makar imagine #colorado avalanche #colorado avalanche imagine #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #hockey imagines #hockey imagine #hockey smut #nhl smut #cale makar nws #nws #lemon #cavalanche #038

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hisunshiine · 3 years

Text

Money Heist | knj | Part 1

moodboard 1 | moodboard 2 | playlist | Netflix ReImagined BTS Masterlist

↳ #NetflixReImaginedBTS: Kim Namjoon x Reader starring in a bank robbery au

↳ M-18+, implied sexual content, major character deaths, bank robbery actions (violence, use of weapons, deciet)

The Professor’s Rules

Rule #1 - No real names Rule #2 - No falling in love Rule #3 - Absolute trust Rule #4 - No games Rule #5 - Follow the plan, throughout Rule #6 - No taking lives, no civils Rule #7 - Low profile Rule #8 - Memorize the plan Rule #9 - Codes, escape routes Rule #10 - Blend

Prologue: Dread was not the right word to use to express how I felt. Every waking moment was an uncertainty. Every passing day I had to look over my shoulder. Senses on high alert, heart-pounding fiercer, I had to stay sharp. All I had to rely on was my intuition, rationality, the rush of adrenaline as it pumped through my veins as it guided me to safety.

There was no room for fuckups. Rules were set in place before, during, and after the heist. The Professor made sure of it.

Everything was methodically thought out. There was zero tolerance for anything that steered from what already was part of the Professor’s plan. Every detail was thoroughly calculated, gone through numerous times until perfected, and every possible scenario or turn the heist could go, the Professor had already considered it.

When I met him, I guessed him to be someone who was reserved. That initial thought, however, remained throughout the months I spent and got to know him. Regardless of my attempts to loosen him up, he grew more inward. A timid and quiet man, one I could not quite figure out despite my intuitive bullshit radar. My instincts told me otherwise. The Professor was someone I could trust. Moreover, he was someone who had my back if the going ever got tough.

Even after I had broken one of his sacred rules, he kept me around.

He stated it was solely because of my natural blend-ability. In other words, I was the type of person who could go unnoticed and get away with things. Although originally offended, one of the Daegu brothers – during our first meetings – mockingly pointed out my pretty privilege, claiming it was a universal thing to bend the rules and show favoritism to people that society deemed as attractive.

It bothered me to my core but despite it – and as the only woman on the team – I had to admit, I could complete missions and do things the others were not able to. Because of this, I was an asset regardless of how many rules I broke.

I was aware of it being careless, stupid even. It was not something that was planned, it was merely something that happened beyond my control. It occurred and I did not regret it one bit.

Love always seemed to happen at the least likely places. It was not a foreign concept to me, neither were relationships. In fact, I cherished everything about love and my language of expression was forever limitless.

When I was introduced to the other members the Professor carefully handpicked for the heist, I was taken aback by their charms and charisma.

They were handsome, all six of them; each with their own styles and skills to assist the Professor and his master plan. Some of them knew each other from rumors or past jobs and others did not.

I worked alone, always had and always would.

The day the Professor recruited me, he had asked to meet him at Chateau de Foix, a castle in France. He had sneakily placed a note in my jacket as I was scouting a Chanel store intending to rob it days later. I was not sure what I was getting into but before even meeting him, he assured me with his note that he could make me wealthier than I could ever contemplate. So, I met him at Chateau de Foix.

I was interested. He caught my attention.

He did not disclose much until he was certain I was someone who he could trust. Honestly, I could not blame him. Partners were not my thing, especially partnering with a man. There was something about them that made my skin crawl. When it came to men and money, there was always one certain thing; they would fuck you over.

The Professor laid out pieces of his plan and as obscure and ambitious as it was, I kind of felt intrigued by his nerdy appearance, his hesitation to look me in the eye, how well-spoken he was and how greatly he sold his plan.

Again, he caught my attention.

Luckily, he had informed me where the next meeting would be and that I was the only woman on the team. He requested I thought it over and I did. I flew to South Korea. That was where the plan had to take place.

At first, I could not escape the futile catcalls or misogynistic remarks. The Professor was too much of a beta to control the dominant thieves who thought they knew better than most.

The worst one was the man with the effortless beauty and striking features. At first glance, he did not look Korean. GC as we called him, or Geochang County as the Professor had dubbed him. Younger brother to Daegu and quite frankly, a little too handsy for my liking and too excited to see a pair of tits on the team. So, I did what I had to ensure my survival and role as well as what I did not tolerate.

He did not appreciate the sass and the chokehold on his intimate part as I stood my ground.

Since then, no one had attempted to try my patience. In fact, all the teasing became just that, teasing … with zero malice or ill intentional comments. They were guys around me, sure, but they became mindful, more tolerable. Exactly how I preferred my men.

For months, I spent time with the six guys including the Professor as we prepared to rob the Bank of Korea. I got to know them individually and I had to admit they were starting to feel like family.

The Professor had set us up at Jindo, a remote island known for its parting sea during the spring season. He had rented a beach house and from there we listened as the Professor disclosed his plan, made the necessary preparations such as getting familiar with the bank, its routines, staff, and much more.

Busan, Seoul, and I would often get paired when a trip to the Bank of Korea was presented.

Busan was a mastermind in human behavior and expertly designed profiles of everyone that worked at the bank; from cleaners to CEOs. If you ever wondered or had questions about anyone going in and out of the bank, Busan was the man to call.

Despite his small size and soft features, he was a man who could not tolerate disadvantages. Knowledge was power he would often say especially during a heist and he would stride for perfection.

He was smart.

I did not think of making profiles for the law enforcement that would be called to deal with the hostage situation we would inevitably have to take to secure our survival. But Busan did. He knew exactly who the bank would call, their past, their marital status, the number of kids, he knew everything.

He was an asset.

Seoul, however, possessed something that completely went over my head. Technology. At first glance, I guessed him to be an assassin of some sort.

He was the quietest of the group and the hardest man to get close to. Despite his big eyes and tattoos, he was extremely fun to be around. Once he opened up, I realized my instincts about him were a tad off. Although a part of me questioned my abilities, I came to the realization that looks could be deceiving. Seoul was someone who did not open up as easily as the rest and had to assess his environment first.

I was much like him and because of this, he and I became the closest.

The technology was not my strongest suit but it was his. Every trip we made to the capital, he gained more knowledge about the bank and the software they used including hacking their system, so we could gain access to the security cameras.

The Professor was beside himself when he received the live footage of the bank. This meant we did not have to expose ourselves by making those trips to the capital but could spy on everyone from the comfort of our beach house.

I was relieved. Unlike Busan and Seoul, I had to be the one to risk everything and use my abilities and go inside the bank. The Professor had bought wigs and often I would rotate them with each trip but that did not stop my heart from beating faster than it ever had.

A thief afraid of getting caught, Busan would joke often in my earpiece but the Bank of Korea was something far greater than the high-end stores I used to steal from. It was a different level and the consequence of getting caught was larger than a meaningless brand shop.

Once the dust settled and we gathered some information, part two of the Professor’s plan could start. Breaking in the bank and taking hostages as leverage was the easiest part. Once inside, we had to establish some kind of order. The Professor would be on the outside helping the rest coordinate from within while being the voice of the heist.

I caught him blankly staring at the vision board he often used like a teacher standing in front of his class, deep in thought as his eyes wandered across the whiteboard, “Can I help?”

“No, I’m thinking.”

“Need help thinking?” I teasingly suggested the wine bottle I was drinking from.

“Once inside, what is your job?”

“The hostages with GC.”

“Why?”

I shrugged as I took a sip. The Professor ripped his gaze from the board and glared at me. He was not in the mood for my games. Something was bothering him. So, I sighed, “We both can handle a gun, GC isn’t afraid to use it. By having one of each gender there, the women will feel safer and the men won’t try anything.”

“And?”

“And we are the calm and order. Our job is to keep them quiet and put the fear of God in them.”

“And you?” he murmured as he placed his index finger on the bridge of his nose, keeping his glasses from falling, “I am sure there will be arguments and disagreements once you get inside. There’s no going around that fact. All of you have some kind of experience but most of you are hot-headed. Who will put the fear of God in you? As you eloquently said. Who?”

“Gwacheon is the oldest.” The Professor stood up after my answer. I watched him as he began to collect his things from the desk before he excused himself, “Where do you plan on going?” I asked as I followed him to the front door.

“I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” He reached for his jacket and told me to trust him and take a break until he returned before leaving for an unknown mission.

A couple of days turned into a week. The Professor was gone and some of the other guys grew agitated. Some questioned him and his plan while others, including myself, did as he had asked and took a break.

Gwacheon, the oldest and the most level-headed person on the team, was lounging by the bonfire created for the dinner he was preparing. Loyal to the Professor as I was, he went ahead and took his suggestion.

Everyone was desperate for a break. It had been months of planning and thinking of every detail. A break was welcomed, needed.

Gwacheon had planned a dinner for the team and was thrilled to have some downtime. With beers in the cooler, the sun setting beyond the horizon, and a cozy fire, he began to season the beef as he hollered for me to start the music. The Professor was on my mind. So, in honor of him, I played ‘Bella Ciao’ by Manu Pilas. He was far from home as was I and although he was not around at the moment to enjoy the festivities with us, I knew he was with us in spirit.

I tapped on Gwacheon’s broad shoulder and he shot an amused smile. The Latin vibes of the upbeat song made me dance with soju in my hand. Allowing the Spanish words to energize and elevate my mood as I poorly attempted to sing along. He laughed at my dance but could not help swing his hips along to the beat.

My eyes then caught Daegu’s as he was assembling a gun. He smiled and shot me a quick nod to sit by him.

I eyed him as he began to pick the L85 apart before placing it in front of me. I raised an eyebrow at him, he chuckled while gesturing I gave it a shot. Proclaiming it was better to be prepared for a situation rather than a situation unfolding and remaining oblivious.

From the moment I met him, I knew he was the real deal, even heard rumors about the great mastermind who stole the Hope Diamond. When questioning him in my drunken state, Daegu simply flashed me a gummy smile. I was not too sure what that meant but I was certain he was someone who was legit and that I could potentially learn a lot from. I did.

Daegu was the kind of man who kept to himself, quiet and reserved like the Professor but he did not shy away from passing down his experiences and knowledge. I often caught myself wondering how polar opposite he was from his brother, GC. Daegu struck me as someone methodical with his approach while GC was spontaneous. But as the Professor ensured, GC had something most in the team did not have; quick thinking, unique perspectives, and the kind of smarts that could never be taught.

“Go ahead,” Daegu said as GC came into view with Gwangju carrying bowls of rice, kimchi, and steamed vegetables.

I grabbed the disassembled parts and attempted to assemble them to my best capabilities. Daegu grinned and GC approached the table. He waited a moment and watched as I struggled with the parts until he groaned and grabbed the gun from me.

Swiftly, he assembled the gun while casually counting in his native tongue, “Samshipil,” he announced as he slid the gun back to me, “31 seconds.”

“That’s a record,” Daegu smiled at his brother.

“I don’t know what the Professor was on but I doubt you’ll get any hostage to take you seriously if you can’t even do that.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s a prick,” Daegu shot his brother a glare, “We have time,” he began to disassemble the gun once more, “Try again.”

I was grateful for Daegu’s patience. Although I had some knowledge of firearms, I tended not to use them during my ventures. A small pocket pistol was always in my bag and I could operate it. However, these types of guns were far from anything I had experienced, bigger too.

Luckily though, Daegu was a trained assassin and this was his specialty. He along with Gwacheon and Gwangju had pulled off heists before; together as well as separate. In other words, they were the experts on the team.

Daegu and Gwangju had a friendship like no other and had often saved each other from dire situations. They had worked multiple jobs together and relied on one another in admirable ways. For a moment, I was envious of their friendship and loyalty to each other.

Although Gwacheon had worked with them before, he often carried out small heists on his own. Much like myself, he preferred not to have a partner but made me realize that sometimes they could be useful, especially when it came to bigger jobs.

He was a lone wolf when he had to be. He told me to remember that. And I did.

I did not see the appeal. In fact, humans tend to be unreliable and oftentimes selfish. I could not trust it, anyone for that matter. It was one of the first things I learned from my father. His partner had sold him out, so he could reduce the sentence the authorities were threatening him with. Since then, I did not seek the help of others.

It was always me, myself, and I. However, the Professor managed to find a group of people whose company I actually enjoyed. Despite being thieves and some of them murderers, they were a group of men I had grown to like and trust.

Gwangju sat opposite me as I struggled with the L85. He clinked his soju bottle with mine and I grinned before giving up, “Look me in the eye as you take the first sip,” I ordered.

“Cheers,” he said and grinned, “Does that mean something where you’re from?”

“Means you’ll have bad sex if you don’t.”

“Well in that case,” he clinked his bottle with mine once more, “We don’t want that.”

He shot me a big and pearly smile before he began to assemble the gun. I studied his prominent features for a moment, admiring his natural beauty and olive skin before directing my gaze down at the heavy firearm as he explained which parts went where.

Fully focused on his words and his handle of the gun, I felt Busan’s presence behind me. He climbed between Daegu and me, “What’s up?” I asked when I caught his eyes.

“After dinner, we should get lit and go to the festival,” his suggestive demeanor forced a smile from me. Out of the six men, he was the one who actively sought my attention, persistent fucker.

He was interested in me, I could sense it. And although it would have been easy to spread my legs for him or any of the others, I was only interested in collecting my end of the robbery. Completing the heist unscathed was my sole concern and these little horny thieves were not going to stray me from my goal.

“Low profile,” Gwangju spat as my eyes were on Busan’s, “We can’t be seen together. Rule number seven.”

“Screw the Professor and his rules,” he responded without taking his eyes off mine. Busan studied my features as my gaze shifted from his plump lips to his dark eyes, “Besides, we deserve a little fun,” he directed his attention to Gwangju, “What the Professor doesn’t know won’t kill him.”

“He did say we were on a break until he got back.”

“Do not encourage him, London,” Gwangju warned after finishing the assembly of the gun.

“A little fun didn’t hurt anyone,” Busan voiced as his fingertips caressed my bare shoulder.

“Careful there, brother,” GC sat beside Gwangju with soju in hand, “You do not want her claws piercing your ballsack.”

“London wouldn’t be that mean to me,” Busan’s eyes wandered between mine and then my lips as he leaned closer, “Would you?”

I felt the hot air from his parted lip brush against mine and I could not help but meet him halfway. With a cocky smirk, I reached down for his clothed manhood, digging my sharp nails in the jean fabric he wore as a sudden groan escaped him, “Don’t get too comfortable, kiddo,” I whispered against his mouth as he hissed and cursed under his breath.

“Told you,” GC grinned, and soon after the rest began to laugh at Busan’s failed attempt.

➰

Busan convinced GC and Seoul to join him at the spring festival. Every year on the day of the parting sea, locals would celebrate the event by throwing a massive street party. The island was known for its festivities and attracted a lot of tourists. I could not visit South Korea and not experience what Jindo had to offer. So, I went, and as reluctant as Gwangju was, he joined us as well until Gwacheon decided to make it a family affair and convinced Daegu to join the outing too.

South Korea had always been a country I wanted to visit. It was known for its rich culture, delicious food, and its kind people. So far, I enjoyed everything I had experienced.

Despite the intention of the visit, I was grateful to be here and be amongst native men who could guide me and translate if needed. Sadly, one of the Professor’s rules was to blend as much as we could and not draw any attention to ourselves. Knowing him and the stick up his butt, he would not have been too pleased to know that we were lounging with the locals, getting drunk until late, and essentially making a mockery of his rule system.

Close to midnight, Daegu wanted to head back to the beach house and he did along with me and Seoul who had to prepare to monitor the bank in the morning. He was close to hacking into the internal security system, the one that allowed us to view everything on the inside.

Freshly out of the shower, the house was painfully quiet with most of the others still enjoying the festivities. I danced around with a pair of headsets blasting music in my ears, enjoying the alcohol that roamed in my system as I shimmied into my undergarments. ‘All That’ by Emotional Oranges came on and I sang along as I smeared lotion on my body. Soon the music captivated every inch of my body and I began to dance when suddenly I caught a glimpse of a man watching me by the door.

A loud gasp came out of me, but as startled as I was, my body knowingly eased, assessing the situation as I stared down the stranger without showcasing any fear. I had not seen him before and I wondered how he had gotten inside of the beach house.

Seoul had explicitly explained that the place was safely secured.

The man leaned against the doorframe as a small sigh evaded his plump lips while he unapologetically allowed his gaze to travel down my body, “The Professor didn’t say anything about a woman being on the team.”

“The Professor?”

He eyed me momentarily, “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m Ilsan. What’s your assigned city?”

“London.” I nodded as the realization came over me. He was what the Professor was searching for. He was the mission he had mentioned; the team’s leader and the one to instill the fear of God in us.

Just then did it occur to me that Ilsan had to be someone the Professor trusted completely. He was almost obsessively calculated with everything about the heist. For our safety and his own. Everything had to be planned. And he was right. We were hot-headed, argued, and disagreed many times. Everyone had their own styles but for the heist to be successful, it required that we all moved as a team. The Professor knew this, knew once we were inside, he was limited in terms of guidance. Although communication would be out of the question, he needed someone on the inside that would make sure the proper steps would be taken.

I eyed Ilsan and sensed why the Professor had chosen him. He had an authoritative aura. I was sure he was the kind of man who inserted his dominance well. The Professor was a beta but based on first impressions, Ilsan struck me as someone who did not mind and preferred - despite the pressure and responsibility - to be the top alpha of the team.

“London,” he sang, “That's a pretty name. I have been there. Wet country.” I attempted to hold back the appearing smile that the comment accurately described about my home city, “Did you choose it or did the Profess--”

“You got your sneak peek,” I hastily voiced, not interested in his small talk and especially with lack of clothes on, “Fuck off. I’m getting ready for bed.”

He chuckled into a low hum as he crossed his arms, resting his head against the doorframe, “You usually have a party before bed?” I caught a glance of his smirk and the dimples that came along with it. He was a flirt, much like Busan, and I was not having it. Ilsan did not know that I was someone not to be messed with. But he would soon. I walked over to the door and shoved him backward by his chest before slamming the door in his face.

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