A/N: Started writing this last night...sooo happy you guys wanted a sex pollen fic! Hope it lives up to everyone's expectations! This one is (obviously) inspired by "Liquid Smooth," by Mitski. ENJOY!
Summary: A simple mission deep in a forest alone with Logan quickly gets out of hand when you just have to go and pick a flower...
Warnings: 18+ EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT MINORS DNI! Dry humping, Oral (f!receiving), Fingering, Unprotected PIV (wrap it up!), Sex Pollen (so dub!con just to be safe, but not really), Multiple orgasms, Porn Without Plot...literally, implied!age gap, cursing, friends to lovers, fem!reader/afab!reader, probably some grammatical errors, I think that's it.
Word Count: 3,797 muahaha
“I don’t need a goddamn babysitter,” you murmur as Logan thumbs through the controls of the X-Jet. “Could’ve done this by myself.”
Logan scoffs. “I’m not your babysitter, princess.” You roll your eyes at the nickname Logan has specially reserved just for you. “Charles said we’d be safer going together. He knows you can handle yourself.”
The X-Jet cruises effortlessly through the clouds. The air is still today. Calm. You and Logan are on your way to get some sort of flower that Charles claims to have extensive healing properties. It’s an easy mission. No fighting. No violence. You’re unlikely to have to use your powers at all. And yet, you’ve been paired with Logan.
It wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t—admittedly—a little into him. Or rather, pining after him. There’s just something about the sarcasm that’s always thick in his voice; the way he squeezes himself into those thin beaters. How he’s always so self-assured, so thoroughly convinced he’s right. You just can’t help it. You want him. But he isn’t yours, and he probably never will be. He’s a little older—well, a lot, considering he’s been around forever. And you know it’s safer not to make attachments—not to fall in love.
Unfortunately, it’s a little too late for that.
But having him here with you now, alone, with no buffers…it’s overwhelming. You can smell him—that mix of tobacco and pine and musk and him. He’s suddenly everywhere, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You watch as his long fingers press different buttons, his hands gripping the steering wheel, adjusting thrusters. You stare at those fingers for far too long, your thoughts drifting to what else he can do with them. You think about him curling them deep inside you, stretching you open and—
“Everything okay?” You snap your head to face Logan, swallowing harshly as his voice pulls you back to reality.
You force a smile, nodding. “Yep!” You say, overcompensating just a bit. “All good,” you lie. You close your eyes, trying to push thoughts of Logan out of your head, denying the heat growing between your legs.
“Good, because we’re almost there,” Logan says, the X-Jet descending carefully. You look out the window to see the trees below. There’s a lake in the distance, but that’s it. No civilization, no houses—no one. It’s empty, peaceful.
“We’re really in the middle of nowhere, huh?” You say, glancing at Logan.
His eyes meet yours and he smiles. Warmth blooms in your heart at the sight. “My kind of place,” he says back. The X-Jet descends further as you approach a clear spread of grass to land on just ahead.
This is, in fact, not your kind of place. The humidity creeps up your back and settles under your skin. The forest is overgrown and impossible to navigate. You let Logan slice through the plant life with his claws, swiping back and forth whenever something gets in your way.
You haven’t been walking for long, but you’re already done. Perhaps Charles was right; a partner is not the worst idea on a mission like this.
You can see the flower just ahead—yellow petals and a long, green, viny stem. It glows brightly even under the dense forest canopy. “Semper in tenebris lux,” Charles had said; there is always light in darkness. And he was right. The flower illuminates everything in its path. Next to it, you can see a pretty, lavender-colored flower. You stop in your tracks, letting Logan wander ahead as you crouch down to stroke the purple petals.
“Charles didn’t say anything about not taking other flowers too, right?” You call out, watching as Logan swipes carefully at the stem of the yellow flower. He holds the dainty stem in his large hands as he walks back over to you.
“No, he didn’t. But you should be careful. It could be poisonous or—”
You ignore Logan, picking the flower anyway. You hold it up to your nose and breathe in. It’s sweet and fragrant. You twist the stem and realize the flower is sticky with sap and pollen. Your twist shakes some of the pollen up, and it lands all over your face.
“Shit,” you mutter, wiping it away. A gust of wind sweeps through the forest, knocking the flower out of your hand and spreading more of its pollen in the air. You can feel it in your nostrils, getting caught in your throat.
Logan furrows his brows as the pollen falls to the ground. “What the fuck did you do?”
You roll your eyes. “All I did was pick a flower!” You lift your hands, feigning innocence. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” You stand up, glancing once at the yellow flower in Logan’s hands and then back at Logan. “It’s pretty.”
He parts his lips, his stare focused on you. “Yeah, it is.” There’s something else in that stare, in those words. Like maybe he isn’t only talking about the flower. You shove those thoughts down as you turn around and walk back to the jet.
Your steps are suddenly very heavy. You scratch at your shoulder. Heat blooms in your chest, your stomach, across your face. You’re irritated and overheated and itchy. Your breath grows heavier and rougher with every step.
Logan notices immediately. He stops, grabbing your arm. You can’t control the way you lean into his touch, nor the way you’re craving more. “Hey,” he soothes, eyes searching your face. “Are you okay?” There’s a hint of panic in his voice.
You swallow harshly, nodding. Your throat feels thick, your skin tight and oppressive. “’M’fine,” you mumble.
“Quit lying. I can tell something’s wrong,” Logan demands. You open your mouth to persuade him otherwise, but he doesn’t give you the chance, his grip tightening around your arm. “Your skin is on fucking fire, princess. What did you do?” He cocks his head, sniffing as he furrows his brows. His voice is darker now, slower as his eyes widen. “What the fuck did you do?”
You take in a sharp breath. And that’s when you feel it, the ache between your thighs, the slick arousal soaking through your panties. The realization smacks you in the face. For a moment, you’re clear-headed, but still terrified. The pollen. That goddamn, fucking pollen. “Logan, look, I think that purple flower had some—"
He cuts you off as he yanks your arm, tugging you towards the ship. “We need to get you back to the jet, okay?”
“Oh, I am so fucked,” you cry. You know you only have a few seconds left before the effects really kick in. “L-Logan,” you stutter, almost moaning as your core burns stronger with need. “T-the pollen was everywhere. What if you got some too?”
He ignores you, handing you the yellow flower you came here for in the first place. He sweeps one hand under your legs and keeps the other at your back as he lifts you in his arms—bridal style. You can feel his heart beating in his chest. You lean into him again, searching for relief. Wetness pools between your legs. You have never felt this needy before. Your desire hurts, burns, scorches you. You rut your hips, clenching down around nothing.
“S-stop doing that,” Logan spits, restrained and quiet.
“C-can’t,” you whine. “It hurts, Logan. It hurts so fucking bad. How come you aren’t like this too?”
He pulls you tighter to his chest. “I feel a little something, but that might just…”
You tilt your head up to look at him. He works his jaw, that perfect jaw. You want to bite it, to bury your face in the crook of his neck. “Might just be what?” You ask, tentatively brushing your lips against the hollow of his throat.
“Nothing, just—fuck,” he groans as you press soft, open-mouthed kisses all around his neck now. “Don’t do that, princess. You don’t want this.”
“But I do, Logan,” you beg. The ramp to the jet lowers as you and Logan approach. “N-need you.” You bury your face into his shoulder, breathing him in. “Need y-you all the time.” The confession slips easily from your lips.
Logan’s eyes widen as he walks up the ramp and into the ship. It lifts and seals shut behind him. “You don’t mean that, sweetheart. Let’s just get you back to the mansion as quickly as possible, yeah?”
He places you down on the seat next to him, taking the flower from your hands and putting it in the jar Charles had given you. The leather cold at your back almost feels good, almost relieving—until you realize Logan is no longer holding you, touching you. You reach out towards him, grabbing his arms, pulling him back in. “Don’t go,” you plead, nails digging into his biceps. Your body is on fire. Everything is unbearably painful. “Please,” you whimper. “Need you so fucking bad, just you.”
“Fuck,” Logan curses. “I am not taking advantage of you. I am not doing this.” He stands, freeing himself from your grasp and walking over to the pilot’s chair. “I’m getting you back to the mansion and we’re going to fix this, okay?”
But that’s not good enough for you. You stand up and walk over to Logan. Your steps are shaky, your legs trembling. Your chest heaves, your heart beating rapidly. You climb into Logan’s lap, straddling him, one leg on either side. “Logan, I can’t fucking wait,” you cry, grinding down onto his lap. The pressure feels delicious.
He grabs your hips, stilling you, forcing you in place. And that’s when you feel it: his erection, hard underneath your core. “This isn’t you. You don’t really want this, don’t really want m—”
“It is me,” you protest, squirming against his hold. “Logan, I’ve wanted you for months. I-I was thinking about you t-touching me the whole way here.” You remember the way his fingers dexterously pushed all the right buttons. Need courses through you like a river, and as Logan’s hold on your hips softens, you grind down into his lap, against his erection. “S-so good,” you cry out.
His hands are still on your hips, but now he’s guiding you, rocking you against his cock. “J-just this though, okay?”
You hum, pressing your forehead to his, rolling your hips faster. The relief is like heaven. His arms wrap around your back, his fingers trailing up and down soothingly. Logan ruts into you, his erection straining against his jeans. You can feel yourself getting closer, but the pain, the need, it’s all still the same.
“Logan, it’s not gonna be enough,” you whisper, his lips ghosting yours. “N-need more. Hurts so bad.”
He presses a chaste kiss to your lips, like he’s scared to truly touch you. But he wants to consume your pain, to take it away, to feel it for you. You can see it written across his face, in the way his cock throbs against your swollen clit, how he snaps his hips into yours.
“I know, princess,” he coos, his hands like fire on your back. Your walls contract around nothing, begging for something to hold onto, to feel something sink deep inside. “Gonna take care of you.” He kisses you again, with more vigor this time, more passion. “I’ve got you, darlin’.”
You moan into his mouth. His composure is slipping, disintegrating with every roll, every rock of your hips against his. His cock notches against your clit, sending a jolt of pleasure up the base of your spine. He hikes your shirt up, the cold air hitting your overheated skin. “F-feels good,” you stammer. You’re almost there, almost hitting that peak. “S-so close.”
“I know, pretty girl,” he soothes. “Let go for me, know you can do it.”
You moan his name, your orgasm crashing into you like a crescendo. You know you’re soaking through your clothes, and probably onto Logan’s too. He’s still rutting against you, giving you more. He knows it’s not going to be enough, and he’s right. Need builds back up just as quickly as you found your release.
“Lo…” you trail off, looking up at him under lust-filled eyes. You swallow harshly, squirming in his lap helplessly. “G-gotta have you.”
He presses his forehead to yours. He works his jaw, parting his lips. “Y-you meant it when you said you wanted me before this?” But he already knows the answer. He knows you wouldn’t lie to him about that, not even now.
“Yes,” you whine, pulling him closer. He tugs your shirt all the way over your head and picks you up, hands firmly gripping your ass. “Still gonna want you after this, too.”
He curses under his breath as he places you down in the pilot’s chair. He’s frenzied and frantic as he hooks his thumbs into your pants and panties, yanking them down your legs and casting them to the side.
He spreads your legs with the palms of his hands, his thumbs brushing soft circles into your inner thighs. He’s kneeling, looking up at you. Your breath catches in your throat as his face settles between your legs.
“Could smell you before, pretty girl,” he husks, his breath fanning over your clit. “Wanted this so fucking bad.” He doesn’t keep you waiting, licking a long stripe through your folds and up to your clit. “Knew you’d taste perfect. Pretty fucking pussy.”
You throw your head back as his lips latch onto your clit, sucking harshly. He slips one hand across your back, keeping you close. His free hand climbs up your thigh, fingers exploring your folds as his tongue flits across your swollen bud. He spreads your arousal, prodding against your entrance before shoving two fingers deep inside you. “Logan!” You cry out, your walls clenching around him. He’s stretching you out, his fingers dragging inside you. He pulls out and plunges back in. He isn’t taking his time, isn’t teasing. He’s giving you what you need, pump after pump.
You look down at him, his face buried in your cunt, consuming you, swallowing you whole like a starving man. He’s lost inside you, lapping at you with unwavering hunger and desire. His tongue swirls around your clit, his teeth grazing ever so slightly. You moan his name again, and he hums against you, the vibrations of his bassy voice rocking through your body. He’s wrecking you, but it feels so goddamn good.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he goads you along. He’s adding a third finger now, and you suck him in. You’d take anything he gives you, anything at all. “Doing so good for me, taking it so well.”
He sucks roughly, your walls clenching around him at the feeling. “Yeah?” He grunts, sucking again. “You like that? Feels good?”
“Y-yes,” you stammer, stumbling over that one simple word. “S-so fucking good.”
“I know, beautiful,” he groans, nipping at your clit in between his rough sucks. “Gonna make that hurt go away, okay?” His voice is like honey, sugar; it’s sweet, addictive. “You just gotta come for me again, can you do that?” His tongue strokes your clit, his fingers pumping faster now.
You nod your head emphatically, pleasure surging as you near your peak. “Yeah, I-I can,” you huff.
Logan smiles against your cunt between rough laps. “I know you can, sweetheart.” His fingers scissor inside you, deeper than before. He takes your clit between his lips again, sucking hard.
And that’s all it takes—you’re screaming his name, coming undone, unraveling underneath him. The release is even better than the first, more full, more complete. Logan thrusts in and out a few more times before slowly pulling his fingers from your cunt. He licks one more long stripe through your folds and looks up into your eyes.
For a moment, the fire inside has been quenched. You feel clear, levelheaded. But it doesn’t last long. “Fuck,” you moan, your head hitting against the headrest of the chair. The fire is back, spreading across your stomach, your chest. “Logan,” you whimper. “I n-need more.”
“It’s okay, pretty girl,” he coos, taking you back up into his arms. He hoists you out of the seat, his hands finding your ass, squeezing softly. You wrap your legs around his waist as he carries you across the jet, setting you down on a storage container.
You bring your hands up to his biceps. “Need you this time, Lo,” you choke, stroking up and down his arms as the heat builds painfully between your thighs.
“Are you sure?” He asks, eyes searching yours.
“Always wanted you, always sure,” you whisper, wrapping your legs tighter around his waist.
His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Wanted you too,” he husks. “But I wanted it to be different, to—”
You cut him off. “Just want you. It’s okay like this. I promise.” You grind against him, his erection still straining inside the denim of his jeans.
He takes the hint, and quickly unbuckles his belt, casting the leather to the metal floor with a clunk. He’s unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans, shoving them down his legs, and lining himself up with your entrance. You push your hips forward, giving him better access. His other hand pushes your bra above your breasts, exposing you completely to him.
With one hand on his cock and one squeezing your tits gently, he thrusts himself into you. He’s so deep—down to the hilt—stretching you out and working you open. He groans, flicking your nipple with his thumb, his lips at the shell of your ear. “So fucking beautiful,” he whispers, sending a chill down your spine, quenching that fire inside. “So warm, so tight.” He pulls out and plunges back in again, filling you up.
“Lo,” you whine. “More.”
“I know,” he growls, his hips snapping into yours, bottoming out with every thrust. “Gonna take care of you, pretty girl.” He squeezes your tits once more before sliding his hand down your body and slipping between where the two of you connect. His fingers find your clit, drawing rough circles around the bud. “That feel good, beautiful?”
“Y-yes, Logan, so fucking good,” you cry out as he rocks into you. His other hand grips your hip tightly, holding you in place. You hope there’s a bruise there later—proof that he touched you, proof that he fucked into you like the world was ending.
His cock rubs against your walls, your muscles contracting around him, sucking him in deeper. “Squeezing me so good, sweetheart,” he praises, his lips crashing down onto yours, swallowing your moans. He’s taking all of you, hard and fast. You can feel him twitching inside you, throbbing with the same need you feel pulsing through your veins.
Logan kisses your jaw, and then just underneath, biting down on your pulse point. You arch your back, your chest meeting his. The contact is delicious, the friction a necessity. He thrusts into you faster now, doing his all to satiate your every need. He’s getting you there, pump after pump, hitting that sweet spot inside you every time.
It’s working. You can feel yourself slipping again, melting. “Logan,” you hum, too fucked out to say anything other than his name. That beautiful name, like a song in the air, a gentle prayer, a holy ghost. He’s all you need—all you’ve ever needed.
Your walls contract, squeezing him tightly. “Fuck,” he mutters. You know he’s close too. He strokes your clit, circling roughly. “Come on, pretty girl. You can do it, let me get you there again.”
“Lo,” you cry, your eyes fluttering open and shut as he fucks into you, rutting his hips, plunging deeper still. It’s all too much. You can feel the pleasure drumming inside you, coming to a head.
Logan loosens his grip on your hip and slides his hand behind your back, pulling you into his chest. You rest your forehead against his. “Come on my cock, princess, let go.” And you do. You’d do anything for him. You moan as your orgasm tears through you. It’s all blinding white heat, liquid smooth, pleasure wracking your body.
Logan curses under his breath, close behind. He pulses inside you once, and then he’s coming undone. Your arms wrap around his back, keeping him close, letting him know it’s okay to finish inside. He fills you up, whispering praises in your ear as you both come down from your high. Such a good fucking girl. Did so good for me. So fucking good. Perfect little pussy.
He’s still inside you, pumping slowly as you ride out your orgasm. His fingers let go of your clit, his hands running up your back and tugging you closer to him. He slowly pulls out, keeping you tight against his chest.
“Are you okay?” He whispers against the shell of your ear. You take a deep breath, waiting for the heat to build again, waiting for that need to surge every cell of your being. But there’s nothing. Your nerves are suddenly quiet—silent.
“I-I think it’s over,” you stutter, still nervous that maybe it’s not. He keeps you there, holding you tightly, ready to start again if necessary.
After a few minutes, you let yourself relax. It’s not coming back. It’s over.
Logan presses a chaste kiss to the side of your head. “I’ve still got you. Not going anywhere.” Your heart rate has finally slowed down. The heat is gone. You feel comfortable in your skin again. You take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper into Logan’s chest.
“Nothing to be sorry for, princess,” Logan reassures, his voice gentle and soft. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
You nod against him, but you still feel a sting in your heart. You need to make him know that you meant what you said—need him to know exactly how you feel. You swallow nervously, ready to bite the bullet.
“Logan,” you breathe. “I-I meant everything I said. It wasn’t just the pollen.” You pull yourself from his chest, looking up at him. “I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted you…” you trail off. “S-still need you now. Nothing’s changed.”
He smiles down at you, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. “I know, darlin’,” he husks. “I wanted you before, and I still do, too.”
“I know you wanted it to be different. I know it wasn’t—”
But he cuts you off, his lips capturing yours, quieting your anxious rambles. “We’ll have other chances. Other times to do it the way I want.” He smirks, running his hands up and down your back.
Other chances. Other times. More. More. More. “Yeah?” You ask.
LOGAN HOWLETT is the kind of guy that likes to fuck up into you during cowgirl. lend me your ears, so I can tell you how
[18+ fem!reader]
sorry I lied, I didn’t get him out my system. one more
The gentle, inconsistent rocks from your straddled position is far from what he needs – the slow motion of your hips winding over his cock, not nearly enough to satiate his current heaping want.
He’s held himself back for as long as he can, only spurring you along with his hands on your hips, his grip helping you with the irregular circles. He wanted to give you your time to shine, to let you give him something, but it was clear you were starting to reach your end. Though not in the way he wanted, your bent knees by his sides mere minutes away from giving in.
You looked quite spectacular from his laid position, a true sight. Your palms flat to his stomach, your tits caught between your upper arms – squeezing them together in that way he always likes. And those faces you make, boy does he love those. The ones filled with nothing but unadulterated bliss: knitted brows, soft eyes, bitten lips – all of it, all so perfect.
As much as he loves the lewd view and looking up at you while you attempt to ride him, he can’t help but notice that eager twitch in his cock, the one saying that he needed more. And when his gaze leaves your breasts and meets your face, he can see that same glimmer of desperation in your eyes, just like the one in his dick.
And so, when you nod, agreeing to the silent, optic communication – he takes the hint, moving his hands up to your mid back to bring you down to him. Your chest pressed to his, the patch of hair skimming at your skin.
You support your weight on your forearms beside his head, using all strength to keep yourself propped up, stability buckling as he begins to wind up into you. His knees bending at your sides as a way to further aid his fucking, keeping sturdy while he makes up for what you’ve both been missing.
He keeps his hands on you, large fingers pawing and digging into your hips – holding you there, just there to fuck into you from underneath. The sticky, incessant, slapping noise of him rutting in your cunt told you all you needed to know. He was desperate.
And with your face buried into the crook of his neck, you only push him further into the pits of that ever growing lust-filled desperation – the choked-out, strained moans and whines beside his ear that match his thrusts, only drive the eager force further and further.
But when you reach your end, worn out and can take no more, you’d both be sure to recuperate – sat by his side against the headboard, head resting on his shoulder, an unlit cigar waiting patiently between his lips. Your hatred of the smell, stalling his smoke break, while prolonging your post-coitial cuddle.
A/N: Okay, so this if my first fic in over a year, and it's also my first Wolverine fic...so please be kind. I'm just getting back into the groove. Expect it to possibly be a little rough. This is big time inspired by "I'm Not In Love" by 10cc. This fic is also thanks to a request I got from an anonymous user! Thanks for the idea, anon! Hope it's okay! Enjoy guys.
Summary: After harboring a crush on Logan for months, things finally come to a head while on an overnight mission.
Warnings: SMUT. 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. There's like no plot here just smut, Unprotected PIV sex (wrap it up), Oral (f!receiving), AFAB reader, Sizekink!(this was a specific size kink request, and so the reader is therefore described as being smaller than Logan/his shirt being big on her), cursing, praise kink, OOC!Logan (just putting this out there because I haven't seen the X-Men movies/read X-Men comics in forever and I'm probably giving him terms he doesn't use/having him act in ways he might not typically), feelings, cocky!Logan, softdom!Logan, one bed muahaha, probably grammar errors, think that's it?
Word Count: 3,162 I got carried away
He was driving you absolutely crazy. Logan. Logan fucking Howlett, with his cocksure attitude and self-satisfied smile. Maybe it’s the way he thinks he’s always right. Maybe it’s that stupid stubbornness, that prowl he does when he walks across a room to meet you. To mock you. His whole being towering over you—his musky, pine-scented cologne filling your lungs. He’s everywhere—and not just metaphorically—literally and physically. His giant frame shadows yours, and you can’t help but admit that there’s something about it…something about him.
You want him. Bad. And although you won’t admit it, you’ve wanted him for months. And so, as of lately, he’s not so much a nuisance as much as he’s a distraction.
You just had to be sent on this mission with Logan—this ridiculous two-day stake-out that you could have done on your own. You’re certainly strong enough; your telekinetic powers and regenerative abilities are enough to handle any situation. And yet, here you are, walking up to a motel with Logan fucking Howlett.
His frame practically consumes yours as he stands behind you on the sidewalk. You swear you can feel the ghost of his fingertips against your waist, impatient and ready to guide you forward. You silently wish he would—wish he would grab your hips and take you down that alleyway and—
“You okay, darlin’?” His voice is gruff against the shell of your ear. “You seem awfully distracted.”
You swallow your embarrassment and hope he won’t pick up on how fast your heart is beating. “I’m fine, just tired,” you mutter, lying straight through your teeth. You can feel his smirk against the side of your head. He has to know what he’s doing. He has to know how much you want him.
He chuckles and his chest vibrates against your back. “Too tired for the mission, bub? We’re almost at the motel, don’t worry.” The condescension in his voice is palpable. He knows exactly how to get under your skin. You’re putty in his hands.
He steps out from behind you, and before you can mourn the loss of the contact, he grabs your hand and leads the way through the doors of the motel. “This okay?” He whispers in your ear, his massive hand giving your smaller one a squeeze. All you can manage is a nod as you approach the front desk. You know it’s just to support your cover—you and Logan are posing as a married couple—but you can’t help but hope it means more. You need it to mean more.
God, you are so fucked.
You’re so distracted thinking about how close Logan is to you that you almost miss the moment when the worker at the front desk says the only room left has just one bed.
You crane your head to look up at Logan, who you find is already looking down at you.
“That’s perfect,” he says, his eyes still on you. His stare doesn’t budge as the man behind the front desk slides the key towards the two of you. Logan grabs the keys and finally breaks the moment. His hand is still holding yours as he navigates the two of you toward your motel room.
The room is…small. There’s one queen bed in the center, a bathroom on the other side of the room, and an old box television resting on an even older-looking oak dresser. On the bright side, the place appears to be clean.
“I should freshen up,” you say, taking off your shoes. Your hand slips out of Logan’s as you pad over to the bathroom with your bag.
The bathroom isn’t horrible either. Dated, but clean. You brush your teeth and wash your face before undressing and searching for your pajamas in your bag—which, naturally, you forgot to pack.
“Ah fuck,” You mutter louder than you meant to.
You hear Logan stirring in the other room, his footsteps quickly approaching the door. “You okay?” You can sense the concern in his voice, and you can’t help but smile.
“Yeah, just forgot to pack something to wear to bed.” There’s more shuffling on the other side of the door. You hear Logan’s bag zip.
“You want my shirt?” He asks, standing just outside the door now.
“I’d feel bad, then you—” Your protests are ignored as he opens the door just enough to toss his Calgary Flames t-shirt onto the bathroom sink, closing it tightly once the shirt lands. You smirk as you walk over to the shirt and put it on. The hem lands at the middle of your thighs. Logan really is massive, you think to yourself.
You take a deep breath, slowly twist the knob of the bathroom door, and head outside. Logan is lounging on the chair next to the dresser, his eyes on you as you place your bag down on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“Th-thanks for the…” You stutter, trailing off as you nod down to the shirt.
Logan smirks as he pushes himself out of the chair and makes his way toward you. You think you see him take you in, look you up and down, but that can’t possibly be.
He shakes his head as he stops at your side. You swear you hear him mutter a low fuck under his breath. “You look good.” But he doesn’t stop for long. He pushes forward and into the bathroom. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he mumbles as he shuts the door behind him.
“Let’s just share the bed,” you shout back, unsure of where the confidence to say that came from. But there’s no response, just the running of water from the sink.
You sit on the edge of the bed, waiting for what feels like forever, but Logan doesn’t take long at all. After a few minutes, you hear the sink shut off and the door creek open.
You shake your head as you stand from the bed to face him. “By the way, you’re not sleeping on the floor, don’t be ridic—” You’re too stunned to say another word. You’ve seen Logan shirtless before, sure, but not like this. Not in just his boxers. Not in a room with him, alone, for an entire night. You need to relax, to calm down, but there’s nowhere else to go, and nothing else to look at. You know he can your heart beating out of your chest now.
He steps toward you, engulfing you with his presence. You stare up at him. “Am I really that scary?” He closes the distance between the two of you.
You try to play dumb. “W-what are you talking about?”
“Every time I get close to you, that little heart of yours practically explodes.”
You swallow roughly. “I d-don’t know what you’re talking about, Logan.” But your shaky voice gives it away. You know exactly what he means.
His arms snake around your waist, resting on your lower back. “Yeah, you do, darlin’,” he says. “You afraid of me or something?” God he is so fucking cocky, you think to yourself.
“’M’not afraid of you,” you whisper. “Could never be afraid of you.”
He smiles and walks you to the edge of the bed, your knees threatening to buckle under the pressure. “What is it then, hm? You like how big I am? That it?” Your eyes frantically search his face for some sort of excuse, some sort of denial. But he can read you like a book. “Yeah, I think that’s it.” He’s towering over you, caging you in.
“It’s more than that,” you admit.
He cocks his head to the side. “Oh yeah? What?” He won’t let that be enough—you know he won’t. He’ll tease it out of you. His presence is dizzying and distracting. You’re not even sure you can form another complete sentence.
“I-it’s just you,” you finally choke out.
But it’s not enough for him. “What about me?”
Everything, you want to say. You want to tell him how you feel. “Logan, I…” But you can’t. I’m not in love, that’s what you’ve been trying to convince yourself of for months.
“Go on, say it. What’s got you going?” He tightens his grip around your waist, his thumbs rubbing gently along your back. He leans down, his lips brushing against your forehead. “Use your words, sweetheart.”
Your eyes flutter shut, and you take a deep breath. He’s everything and he’s everywhere. He’s in your head and in your hands. You can smell the musk and the pine and a hint of mint and that extra thing that is just distinctly him. He’s warm and his breath ever-so-lightly tickles your ear as his forehead rests against yours.
And then finally, it comes out.
“I want you, Lo.”
You open your eyes and immediately notice the change in his expression. That cocky grin is gone. He isn’t teasing anymore. This is something else. Want. No, stronger than that. Desire. Adoration. Longing. Like those four words undid something in him. Untangled some knot that had been there for far too long. Almost like he thought you maybe wouldn’t want this. That maybe someone wouldn’t want him.
So, you say it again. “I want you, Logan.”
He shuts his eyes. “Fuck.”
And then he’s pushing you down onto the mattress. His lips find their way to yours, crashing like the world is about to end. You can feel his hunger, his desperation. He rests one hand next to your head for balance and slips his free hand underneath the shirt he lent you. He’s exploring the curves of your body, the dips and turns, eventually pulling the shirt up and over your head.
He comes up for air as his fingers play with the clasp of your bra. You watch his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “This okay?” He asks, waiting for your approval. You nod and the hooks are immediately undone. You arch your back so he can slip the bra off. “Fuck, pretty girl,” he mumbles. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
His hands find their way to your chest, his thumbs brushing over your nipples, teasing you, pinching lightly.
“Lo, please. Need you,” is all you can say.
He trails a line of kisses down your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, the center of your chest, his mouth traveling achingly slowly until finally landing on one of your tits. He kisses your nipple before taking it into his mouth, biting lightly and licking the hurt away.
“Please,” you beg again.
He comes up for a moment. “Please what?” He asks before moving on to the other side.
“Need you so bad,” You whimper. But he doesn’t stop. “N-need you to touch me.”
He pauses again. “Think I’m already doing that, darlin’. Gonna have to be more specific.”
“Fuck me, please.”
He shakes his head. “Wanna make you feel good first, pretty girl.”
You sit up a bit, ready to protest. “But you are. You’re making me feel so—” You’re cut off by the sight of him staring up at you as he trails kisses down your stomach, stopping at the top of your panties. He grabs your hips and pushes you further into the center of the bed. His fingers slip under the hem of your panties, waiting for your approval. You nod, and he practically tears them right off you.
Logan kisses the inside of your thigh, slowly charting a path toward your core, his thumb tracing circles on the other thigh. You’re already squirming under his touch. “Lo,” You whimper. “Please—Fuck!” Without warning, his tongue licks a long stripe up your folds to your clit. His lips lock around it, sucking softly, his fingers suddenly teasing your entrance before slipping a finger inside.
“So tight darlin’. Gonna feel so good,” he mumbles against you, the vibrations of his deep voice sending a jolt up your spine.
He’s taking his time, tasting you, savoring you. His tongue laps at your cunt, licking slow circles as his finger pumps in and out. You need more.
“Lo,” You call out, your back arching in pleasure. But he doesn’t answer. He keeps going as if he’s gotten lost in you, as if there’s nothing that can possibly be said to bring him back. “Lo, please,” you moan again.
He chuckles against your core. “Please what, pretty girl?” He mumbles. You can feel his smirk against you.
“M-more,” you beg. You can feel his smirk grow wider as his motions stall. “No don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
He looks up at you, his finger buried deep inside your cunt, his lips just inches from your clit. “Wanna take my time with you, darlin’.”
“Y-you c-can,” You stutter. “W-whatever you want. Just need more.”
“More?” He repeats, arrogantly tilting his head. Your breath catches in your throat at the sight.
“Yes, please.” But you know by the look in his eyes that you’re getting more than you bargained for.
He adds another finger, pumping in and out faster than before. His lips latch onto your clit, sucking roughly. It’s overwhelming, and you know he isn’t going to let up. His tongue draws circles around your core, flicking harshly before ruthlessly sucking again. You can feel a third finger prodding your entrance before slipping in and stretching you out.
“This what you wanted?” He teases.
“Lo, I—” It’s too much, you can’t speak.
“I’ve got you darlin’. I’m right here. You’re doing so good for me.” His words by themselves practically send you over the edge.
“’M’so close Logan,” You whimper, spurring him on. His pace quickens; his circles become harder. You can feel your walls tightening around his fingers.
“I know, pretty girl. Wanna feel you come on my fingers. Can you do that for me?”
You can’t even speak anymore. All you can manage is a hum that passes for an affirmative. He pumps in and out of you, still alternating between sucking your clit and circling it with his tongue.
“Look so beautiful like this darlin’. So fucking beautiful,” He husks. And that’s all it takes to make that liquid heat, that tension building in the bottom of your stomach, cut like a knife, pouring out of you. Your vision blurs as you let yourself go. You chant his name like it’s a prayer, a spell, something otherworldly. He finally slows down, letting you ride out your orgasm.
He pulls out and away from you, crawling up your body so that he’s on top of you. He’s absolutely huge; his arms rest next to your head, caging you in. “You alright sweetheart?” He asks, one hand coming up to cup your cheek as he presses a chaste kiss against your forehead.
“Hm,” You hum. “Like you like this.”
There’s that cocky smirk again. “Like what?”
“O-on top of me,” You admit freely now. Your arms come up to wrap around his shoulders, but he quickly pins them above your head.
He smiles widely, his forehead coming down to rest on yours. You can feel his erection press against your core through his boxers. And—fuck—he’s big. “Gonna fuck you like this then, okay pretty girl?”
“P-please,” you stutter.
He sits up, pulling his boxers down, revealing just how big he is. You swallow harshly, sitting up and watching as he casts his boxers to the side. He doesn’t let you watch for long. He pins you down again, one hand keeping your hands above your head and supporting his weight, while the other guides his cock to your entrance. His slides against your folds before slowly sinking inside you. You can’t help but arch your back to meet his chest.
Everything is slow. He’s taking his time again, letting himself feel every inch of you, giving you the chance to adjust to the size of him. His free hand reaches in between your bodies and finds your clit, drawing slow, gentle circles.
His forehead rests against yours as he thrusts into you. “Wanted this for so long,” he confesses, his thrusts growing faster. “Always wanted you, darlin’.” You can feel your heart burst in your chest as his lips meet yours. You can feel his hunger, his desire.
“Wanted you too,” You whisper against his lips between kisses.
His cock rubs against your walls, hitting that sweet spot every single time. He’s massive, stretching you out with each pump. He builds speed, his thrusts growing rougher as his fingers circle your clit faster.
He whispers praises in your ear. “You feel so good, pretty girl. So fucking tight. Need you, darlin’. Always.”
Always.
It’s all too much. The words, the vulnerability, the feeling of him rutting into you with no end in sight. The promise of something else, something more.
“Logan, I’m gonna…” You trail off, your walls tightening around him. It’s all so overwhelming. But if you’re being honest, you never want it to end. This. This feeling. Him inside you. Him around you.
He curses under his breath, his thrusts becoming sloppier and faster as he chases his orgasm. “I know darlin’. Wanna feel you come on my cock.” He keeps his fingers steady on your clit, circling roughly, chasing your orgasm too.
“Lo,” You mumble. “It’s so good. Y-you’re so good, so b-beautiful.” You’re a bumbling mess, but you want him to feel good too, to know what he’s doing to you, to know that he deserves this. Deserves to be wanted.
You feel wetness on his cheeks as he buries his face into the crook of your neck. “Always wanted you,” he whispers again against the shell of your ear. “Always gonna want you.”
The tension snaps, and you feel blaring white heat ripple through your body. Logan somehow buries himself deeper inside you as you come, your walls squeezing him tighter.
“F-fuck,” he groans. “Where do you want—”
You cut him off this time. “Inside, please,” you pant. “Safe.” He curses under his breath and calls out your name as he fills you up.
“So perfect,” he whispers. “So fucking perfect.”
His thrusts slow down as he finishes, and he slowly pulls out of you. But he doesn’t pull away. He keeps you close, moving you both towards the headboard. It takes a minute, but he manages to keep you close to his chest as he undoes the covers and gets you both inside them.
Logan holds you tightly, peppering kisses against your temples every now and then.
He’s the first to speak. “When I said always…” He trails off. You brace yourself for the worst. It was just the heat of the moment, bub. ‘M’sorry I said it. This shouldn’t happen again. It was a one-time thing and I—
“I meant it.”
You look up at him, eyes wide. He smiles. But it’s not that cocky smile, not that self-satisfied shit-eating grin. It’s that other thing again. Longing.
18+ thoughts about LOGAN holding your hands above your head while you fuck
[fem!reader, mdni]
He rather likes the control of it, the ability to configure and move you in ways he pleases. The image of you below beautifully lewd: your wrists crossed over the other, a singular large hand securing their effortless bind – his weight from you above anchoring you in place.
Your knees loosely hugging at his waist, the contact minimal and desperate and clingy through your bound, busied hands. You’re handsy, urgent to feel him, though you can’t. All you can do is ball your fists and wiggle your hands, needy, extended fingers reaching down to skim the skin on the back of his hand.
He knew you were keen for contact, he could see it. Those knitted brows curling on your face every time he pulses around your hands, the act like he was teasing you with the temptation of letting go. The tiny microexpressions a window into every small yet overwhelming feeling you’re struggling to contain.
His hips rock into you in a fluid, easing motion – each stroke calculated and precise despite it all being so soft and gentle. His cock sinking into you ever so perfectly, every wind nicely hitting at that spot inside.
His hands are occupied with you while yours remain empty – one hand still gripped firmly around your wrists, the other clutched to your side. His palm warm and busy as he touches you, the hasty motion of his wandering hand feeling over your side and your hip and your breast.
Your knees tighten at his side as you adjust your hips, the new angle allowing him to slip in just that bit deeper.
“Fuck,” he utters into your rawly kissed neck. The fresh, flush feeling of you loosening and tightening makes him momentarily miss a breath. “Fuck,” he repeats, the word strained and breathless between a staggered thrust.
The grip he has around your wrists tightens, his hold straightening your arms above your head. He dips in to press a string of kisses along your upper, inner arm – littering the sensitive skin with gentle, loving pecks. And the hand he briefly has on your waist lowers, his palm moving to situate on the back of your knee.
The slight force prying your legs open, keeping them comfortably spread apart for him between. To fuck into you just that bit further.
contains: 18+ SMUT MDNI, drinking, swearing, motorcycle rides, p in v, unprotected sex, rough sex, fingering (fem!receiving), creampie, wolverine's hairy tits, the claws show up ofc, porn with plot, no use of y/n.
author’s note: watched deadpool & wolverine twice in theaters, started rewatching the x-men movies, pondered many different thoughts, sat down and wrote this. i need him to breed me. title from lady gaga's 'heavy metal lover' cause it's literally his song.
the wolverine is a regular at your bar…
You're shining glasses behind the bar when you hear it, the gruff sound of Logan’s voice turning away yet another girl that worked up the courage to come up to him. It’s his third rejection of the night, not that you were counting.
You were, you always do. You pay more attention to that side of the bar than you normally would when he’s here, which is nearly everyday for the past three weeks. He's not like any of your other regulars. He's almost always alone, and he never talks to you except when he calls for another drink.
The only reason you even know his real name at all is because Wade told you one of the nights he tagged along, leaning his elbows on the bar to whisper over the sugared rim of his "Piña Colada. Extra creamy please, you know how I like it..." like he was telling you a secret.
"Don't let him hurt your feels honey bunch. That's just classic Logan for you, a man of few words. Huge case of blue balls by the way."
You remember the way he let the obvious innuendo hang in the air, the knowing look he gave you as he spun the little paper umbrella floating in his drink. You didn’t think you were being that obvious, that someone as socially inept as Wade was able to pick up on the way your eyes would linger a little too long on the broad width of Logan’s shoulders, on the way his arms would strain against the fabric of his flannels.
You’d seen him on the news, thick corded muscles all wrapped in blue and yellow leather. It haunted you for days, playing in your mind on a constant loop of sweaty biceps until you finally gave in and pulled out your favorite vibrator.
Even with that, there’s just something about the jeans and flannels he wears outside of the suit that make you want to jump over the bar and drop down to your knees right in front of him. Your mouth open wide and waiting.
The dull ‘thunk’ of Logan placing his empty glass on the bartop grabs your attention, two quick raps of his knuckles against the wood ripping you from your thoughts. “Another,” he says briskly, not looking away from the peeling backsplash on the wall behind you.
You usually snapped at men who’d bark orders at you, but The Wolverine isn’t just any man. He's certainly the only man you'd ever take orders from willingly, happily.
You grin, tossing your towel over your shoulder as you grab the whiskey bottle off the shelf and slide over to him, tipping the amber colored bottle over to start refilling his glass. “That’s the third one tonight,” you say casually, casting your eyes over his shoulder to the girl from before retreating back to her friends. “I take it you don’t come here looking for company?”
Logan’s eyes flick to yours, it’s the first time he’s looked at you all night. You look back, lips pulled into a small smile as more whiskey than you’d usually pour splashes against the sides of his glass. The music playing from the speakers fades into a dull hum around you.
He holds your gaze for a second longer, a flash of something you can't quite read passing through his eyes before he’s looking away again. “Not the kind you’re thinking of,” he replies, his voice a low rumble that has something warm zinging up your spine.
You set the bottle down next to him, brow piqued in curiosity. “And what kind is that?”
He doesn't respond right away, just raises the now full glass to his lips to take a slow sip. You almost think he’s going to ignore you again, but then he speaks, “You ask everyone that comes in here personal questions, bub?”
There’s the barest hint of amusement lacing his words that has you biting your bottom lip to try and contain the absolute giddiness blooming in your chest. It’s not much, but it’s more than he’s ever given you before. Encouraged, you step in a little closer, hoping to draw him out further.
“Only the ones with their asses practically fused to my stools,” you shrug, a playful glint sparkling in your eyes. “So what is it, you got some poor wife you leave at home every time you come here? Because the ‘tall, dark, and kind of morally ambiguous’ thing is obviously working for you.”
Logan turns his eyes to you again, his brow raised in amusement. You’re close enough that you can see the way his lips turn up at the corners. He seems to consider your question, gaze slowly trailing along your face before flicking back to your eyes. "No wife," he replies, the words slow and deliberate. "No home to leave her at either.”
His response hangs in the air between you, heavier than you anticipated. You let out a soft breath, lips parting ever so slightly. You can practically feel the weight of his gaze settling over you, leaving your whole body warm and tingly. The heat swirling deep in your gut slipping down to pool wet and sticky in your panties. Logan’s eyes blink shut for just a second, the bridge of his nose twitching lightly.
You almost can’t believe this is really happening, that the angry guy at the end of your bar you’ve seen turn away pretty girl after pretty girl is flirting with you. It makes you feel dizzy with power, like you could do anything, but it’s also one of the most intimidating things you’ve ever experienced. You didn’t realize what it meant to be the center of Logan’s attention until now, but you refuse to back down.
He gives an inch, so you take a mile.
Your grin widens as you lean your elbows on the bar, resting your chin on the heels of your hands. Logan doesn’t react to you invading his space, just keeps his eyes on you with a passive look on his face, but you don’t miss the way his gaze darts down to the low cut of your top.
“So…” you say slowly, voice dipping into a softer more intimate tone, “that means you’re free later tonight?”
Logan’s eyes widen the tiniest bit, a surprised huff leaving his lips. He raises his glass, taking another long drink. Your eyes trace the sharp line of his jaw to where his adam’s apple bobs enticingly as he swallows. Your lips tingle with the need to mark up the tan column of his throat, to sink your teeth in the skin there, to taste.
The neckline of his undershirt dips low enough that you can see the dark hair scattered across his chest, dog tags dangling from a chain around his neck to sit in the center.
You drag your eyes back up to his face, flushing when you see that he's already looking at you over the rim of his drink. He sets his half drained glass down, a skeptical look on his face. “How old are you, kid?”
You shake your head with a soft laugh, dropping your palms to lay flat on the bartop. If that makes your top dip a little lower to flash more of your cleavage in Logan’s eyeline, then that’s just a bonus. “Old enough to be here,” you reply after a short pause, gazing up at him from under your lashes, “Old enough to know what I want.”
Logan’s eyes darken, the warm brown of them seeming deeper and even more intense than before. The dim overhead lights cast shadows across his rugged features, highlighting the scruff on his jaw. You can’t help but imagine the rough scratch of it brushing up against your inner thighs.
Logan pushes his glass away, leaning in with a soft grunt, his eyes drop to your lips. You suck in a shocked breath, your whole body lighting up at being so close to him. Your heart is racing in your chest, a quick ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum that echoes in your ears.
His lips turn up in a sly grin, the sharp canines of his teeth on display. “Is that so?” He asks, voice going all husky like gravel and honey. He meets your eyes and you swear you can see the sparks going off in the air between you, everything else in the bar completely fizzling out as his breath mingles with yours. “Careful what you wish for,” he says, his voice a low rumble that makes your knees weak. “You might just get it.”
Your lips curve into a mischievous smile, the heat between you palpable. “I’m counting on it,” you reply, your voice dripping with promise. It takes everything in you to straighten up and pull away from Logan, stepping back with the forgotten bottle in your hand. “My shift ends at eleven,” you say with a small shrug, jerking your head to a door across the room, “staff leaves through the alley door.”
It’s a clear invitation, one that Logan easily picks up on. His hungry gaze follows every move you make as you shelf the whiskey.
Before he can say anything, someone calls you from across the bar, shaking their empty glass impatiently. You throw him one last smile over your shoulder, mouthing ‘eleven‘ again with a quick nod of your head. You aren’t sure if it’s supposed to reassure you or him.
Logan smirks nonetheless, standing from the bar before draining the rest of his drink and throwing a few bills down. The air crackles as you watch him make his way towards the exit, eyes lingering on the way his jeans hug the thick muscles of his legs before someone is snapping their fingers at you to serve them.
The rest of your shift drags by, but the excitement and hope swirling in your stomach doesn’t fade. You’re practically thrumming with excitement by the time eleven rolls around, anticipation coursing through your veins as you clock out and grab your bag from your locker.
You pull the door to the alley open, the heavy metal creaking with the swing. The gravel crunches under your shoes as you step outside, eyes eagerly searching the space in search of Logan. The light mounted above the door shines around you, but you don’t see him anywhere.
Just as disappointment starts to settle in your chest, you hear a loud rumble coming from the down the street. A bright light shines across the road as it gets closer and closer until there’s a motorcycle pulled up against the alley’s opening.
Logan kicks the bike’s stand down, leaning over to hold out a helmet in offering. “You coming or not?” he calls out, voice deep and teasing, “I’m not known for my patience.”
You can’t help but laugh, a mix of exhilaration and nervousness bubbling up inside you. With a confident stride, you walk toward him, the loud growl of the bike reverberates through your body like thunder with every step. “You’re just full of surprises tonight, aren’t you?”
You take the helmet from his hand, but he doesn't let go right away, making your fingers brush against his in a way that sends a shiver up your arm. You meet his gaze, the smirk on his lips matching the dangerous glint in his eyes.
He drops his hand down to the bike’s handle, jerking his head back to the empty space behind him. “Hop on.”
You straddle the bike, the leather seat warm from the rumbling engine beneath you. You give Logan your address as you slip the helmet on. His body is warm and solid against your front, you can’t help but press a little closer, your hands falling to rest on his waist. The leather of his jacket is smooth under your fingertips.
Logan turns his head to the side, the street lights shine along the side of his face in a warm yellow glow. “Hang on,” he says, voice barely audible over the roar of the bike’s engine starting up.
The sudden rush of wind as he pulls off paired with the thrillingly intense vibration of the engine revving under you is exhilarating. You wrap your arms tight around his waist, fingers digging in slightly as you lean into the curve of his body.
The city blurs into a whirlwind of colorful lights as Logan navigates the streets with a confident ease. The cool night air whips past you, every turn and acceleration pumping more adrenaline through your veins. You cling to Logan’s waist like it’s a lifeline– there’s a sense of freedom and excitement that comes with being on the bike, but you think the real thrill is being pressed against him like this, feeling the power of his strength under you.
The ride seems like it takes both hours and seconds all at once when Logan pulls up to your house's gate. He kills the engine, the sudden silence a stark contrast from the roaring bike. Your heart pounds in your chest, pulse thumping as you slide the helmet off.
Logan takes it from your hands, eyes scanning over your house. “Nice place,” he comments casually, swinging his leg over the bike to stand next to you.
"Thanks," you say, your voice a tad breathless. You can’t help but feel a little self-conscious as you dig for your keys in your bag, nerves finally starting to set in. The air is cold against your flushed skin, and you’re hyper aware of Logan’s presence behind you as you unlock the gate and push it open.
He doesn’t touch you as the two of you walk up the steps to your house, infuriatingly keeping his distance with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans.
Your legs shake with every step, you can’t tell if it’s left over adrenaline from the ride or the building anticipation for the ride you know is waiting for you beyond your front door. Your hands tremble as you fumble with the lock, opening the door and stepping into the darkness of your living room.
You’re barely a foot inside before a pair of strong hands pull you backwards, getting whirled around by your waist until your back hits your closed front door mute thud. You don’t have any time to react before Logan’s crowding up against you, his body a solid wall of muscle pressing you hard against the door. His lips crash into yours in a hungry kiss, you can taste the whiskey from earlier sharp and smoky on his tongue.
You respond eagerly, leaning up to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him down even closer. Logan’s hands roam over your body rough and possessive, one sliding up to cup the back of your neck while the other grips your waist, pulling you even closer. His hands leave a trail of fire in their wake, your skin tingling with every brush of his fingers. You can feel the raw power in his touch, a barely there restrained strength that has your heart racing even faster.
“I could fucking smell you,” he growls agasint your neck, digging his sharp teeth into your collarbone meanly. You can't help but let out a soft moan, your head falling back against the door to give him better access. The rough stubble on his jaw scrapes deliciously against your sensitive skin, sending shivers down your spine. “Could smell how goddamn wet you got, back at the bar.”
His hand slips under the waistband of your jeans, sliding down the front of your panties to brush against your clit. Your mouth drops open with a soft moan, your slick lips still tingling. “Do you have any fuckin’ idea how hard it was not to bend you over, to not rip these things off and fuck you over the bar?” he asks roughly, lips brushing against your skin with every word. “Wanted to take you right, make everyone watch while I made you scream.”
Your breath hitches at his words, a wave of pleasure crashing through you. The rough skin of his fingertips press more firmly against your clit, drawing a broken moan from your lips. “Logan,” you gasp, your hips bucking involuntarily against his hand.Your hands claw at his shoulders, gripping the fabric of his shirt as you try to ground yourself.
His lips capture yours again in a bruising kiss, sliding two thick fingers into you with a rough thrust. “Atta girl,” he murmurs against your mouth, dragging his tongue across your bottom slip. “That’s it, say my name,” he growls, swallowing your moans as his fingers pump into you with an unrelenting pace. Your walls clench around him, a needy whine escaping your throat as he begins to fuck his fingers in and out of your wet cunt.
The coil of pleasure deep in your stomach tightens with every thrust of his fingers, your body trembling with the intensity of it all. You can feel the pressure start to build, like a dam threatening to burst, but this isn’t how you want to come. You break the kiss, a thin thread of saliva connecting your lips before it thins and breaks. “Wait,” you say breathlessly, hand slipping down to grip his forearm tightly, “I want to come with you inside me.”
Logan growls, a deep, primal sound that you can feel rumble deep in his chest where it’s pressed against yours. “Bedroom,” he demands, hands dropping to the back of your thighs and lifting.
You wrap your legs around his waist with a quiet squeal, attacking the skin of his neck with your teeth as he walks the two of you down the dark hallway. “First door on the right,” you whisper, dragging your tongue along the column of his throat. You can feel the thick length of his cock straining against his jeans press into your hip. He sucks in a sharp breath as you roll your hips down, sliding the damp fabric of your clothed cunt over him.
Logan kicks the door open with a force that has it slamming against the wall, the sound barely registering in your lust-addled brain. Logan dumps you on the bed, the force of it bouncing you on the mattress. He rips his white undershirt over his head and drops to his knees in front of you, big hands coming up to grip the waistband of your jeans.
The muscles in his arms don’t even flex as he rips your shorts down the middle, denim and along with lace panties tearing like tissue paper in his hands and falling to the floor in tattered pieces. You gasp at the cold air hitting your hot, aching cunt.
Logan’s hands run up and down the bare skin of your calves, eyes glued to the soaked skin of your inner thighs. Your thighs start to tremble under his gaze, your patience starting to wear thin. Logan drags his eyes back to you, taking in the pleading look on your face. He smirks, wordlessly rising to his feet to pop open the button of his jeans.
You watch with bated breath as he unzips his fly, eyes glued to the way he starts to push them down his legs just enough that they fall to pool around his ankles. Your mouth drops open, eyes going wide at the sight of him.
He’s so big, so thick and heavy that his cock hangs hard between his hairy thighs instead of slapping up against his stomach. There’s a thick drop of pre-cum leaking from the tip, dripping down a thick vein running along the side.
Your mouth waters with want, the want to bury your nose in the dark thatch of hair surrounding the base, the want to have him fuck your throat raw and red. You can almost feel the ache in your jaw.
As much as you want to get him in your mouth, you want him inside you even more.
“Get your ass over here,” you demand breathlessly, tearing your shirt off your head in one swift motion. Logan smirks, stepping out of his jeans and making his way across the room. His dog tags jingle with every step, your cunt clenches weakly.
He stalks up the mattress like a predator, eyes ablaze as a cocky smirk plays on his lips. Your legs fall open unconsciously, thighs spreading wide to make enough room for his hips to slot against yours.
You gasp at the thick head of his cock sliding through your wet folds, your body arching off the bed. The sensation is electric, shooting through you like a live wire. "Logan," you breathe, your voice barely more than a whimper. "Please..."
"Please what?" he asks, his lips curving into a smirk against your skin. "You gotta tell me what you want, sweetheart."
Your cheeks flush hot, but the need burning inside you is stronger than any embarrassment. "I want you," you admit, your voice trembling with desire. "I want you to fuck me, Logan."
His growl is low and feral, his fingers teasing you relentlessly as he presses his forehead to yours. "That's a good girl," he rumbles, his breath hot against your lips as he sinks into the tight heat of your cunt in a single thrust.
The pace he sets is unrelenting, one hand braced on the pillow next to your head while the other grips your bed’s frame for better leverage to fuck down into you. The sting of his cock splitting your cunt open has your nails digging into the flesh of his shoulders. His dog tags hang from his neck, swinging like a pendulum as he starts to thrust.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he grates out, brows furrowed in pleasure. His hips speed up, barely pulling out halfway before he plunges back into you. The bed squeaks under you, slamming up against the wall as Logan fucks you.
It’s like Logan surrounds every inch of you, strong arms caged around your head while his body covers yours, metal bonded bones pressing you down into the mattress so there’s nothing you can do but take it. You know that he’s ruined every other man in the world for you as the heavy snap of his hips pounds against the skin of your ass hard enough to bruise. The thick muscles of chest bounces as he moves, the coarse hair scraping against your sensitive nipples.
The head of his cock pounds the soft spot inside of you that has your eyes fluttering closed, mind going hazy as heat starts to pool at the base of your spine.
“Don’t fucking stop,” you beg brokenly, tears sting the corners of your eyes. “God! I’m gonna come, you’re gonna make me come–”
“Come on baby,” Logan goads, dropping down to his fore arm so he can bury his face in the crook of your neck, “Give it to me, come on this cock, show me how much you fucking love it,”
The stinging bite of his sharp canines scraping the fluttering pulse of your neck makes you wail, nails raking down his back hard enough to leave long red welts that heal as you go. Your cunt clenches around the pulsing length of his cock, greedily milking him as you come in a rush of wetness around his cock.
“Fuck,” Logan grits out, his hips faltering. It’s not by much, but just enough for you to notice. The rhythmic smack smack smack of skin stuttering as his breath comes out in fast pants against the sweaty skin of your neck. His cock jerks inside you fiercely, his heavy balls tightening as he gets closer to the edge. You can hear the metal frame of your bed creaking warningly under his grip.
“Come in me,” you beg breathlessly, tightening your ankles around his waist. “Please, Logan I need it–”
Logan lets out a feral growl as his hand drops from your headboard, the sharp metallic sound of his claws unsheathing rings out above you before he slams his fist into the mattress next to your head. He floods your insides, pumping you full of his come as he grunts like a beast on top of you. He gives a few more weak thrusts of his hips, letting the two of you ride out your highs before he finally stills.
You hear the quiet snikt of his claws retracting from your mattress and back into between his knuckles before Logan collapses on top of you, arms braced on either side of your head to take most of his weight. His breath puffs raggedly over the skin of your shoulder, his spent cock still snug in your sore cunt.
“You owe me a new mattress,” you say breathlessly, digging the heels of your feet into his lower back sharply.
Logan chuckles into your neck, tipping his head up to look at you with dark eyes. His lips curl into a smirk as he rolls his hips, his still hard cock dragging along the sensitive walls of your cunt makes you gasp. “Yeah?” he asks, low and velvety. His eyes flick to the three holes punched through your sheets.
“You can add it to my tab,” he says with another stronger roll of his hips, “We’re not done here.”
tags are now in the comments! if you want to get tagged for any of my works just fill out this form!
a/n! the actual biggest shout out to @ebodebo for beta reading and listening to my non-stop rambling and horny thoughts about this man. she's a true solider because i have been so annoying about this. mwah mwah mwah.
The idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw.
PART 1 ★ PART 2
Quick summary: After one too many drinks, you find yourself unable to think of anything but a certain smart-mouth detective who is in desperate need of a release.
Word count: 11K (I'm sorry)
Warnings: This is basically just SMUTT with a lil feelings (if you squint) sprinkled in there; kind of angsty at points (mentions of canon-typical death and violence (hellooo they're homicide detectives); gets a bit existential at points, watch out; pretentious.
A/N: YAY! I had this obsession with True Detective S1 all throughout October (watched it at my nan's house lmao), so enjoy the lovechild of that. This is just for fun, so, please, nobody be angry at me if they don't agree with Rust's characterisation, or any of the weird philosophical chat, lalallalal, OKAY ENJOY!!
***
The night air is sluggish and humid with the remnants of a warm summer’s rain, pressing down thickly, close, clogging, simmering just below the surface.
A few times, I’ve interviewed people who live in these sorts of places: motel-types, the “in-between”, where folks stay when they’ve either got no money, no choice or nobody. Other residents include passers-by who’re looking to save money on accommodation, skipping on the fancier places. Not that Louisiana really has any “fancier places”. Places without the paint peeling off walls like dead skin, I guess. A bed and breakfast in the nicer suburbia, with a view overlooking a subpar daydream of a ghost town centre.
I’ve leaned up against the crooked, metal railing, felt the influence of my weight almost sending it and myself crashing down onto the faded parking lot beneath. I’ve leaned up there—after knocking—and waited, waited for a grey face to peer through a crack in the cracked door. I’ve smiled and remarked about how the beat-up, brass numbers up there are hanging by a thread. Sometimes, people are real stingy – they slink out and close the door behind them, or they remain in that little slit, just an eye visible, or they plain shut it in my face. Most let me in right away, maybe a little intimidated by the shiny badge clipped up in my jacket – I’ve sat across from ‘em, felt that mud in the room’s air seep into my pores, inviting me under its still swamp.
Seems like the sort of place for him.
Too many a fuckin’ time, Marty’s come grumbling and muttering into the office kitchen, rolling his eyes, scoffing, huffing, the whole lot. And when I ask him why the strop?—“Ancient fuckin’ philosopher fuckin’ Rust Cohle on it again. Birthday’s comin’ up: get me earplugs and a generous bit o’ duct tape for my dear partner over there, would you?”
Or somethin’ along those lines.
For all his apparent talk about us silly, little “biological puppets”, this seems like Rust’s sort of place. Temporary existence, temporary living. Purgatory?
Whatever.
If you ask me, Rust Cohle’s head is so far up his own ass that it’s no wonder his outlook on life is so dark.
If I was more sober, maybe I’d be thinking about it—about him—less—but this night out has had me so drunk I was maybe even hallucinating at some point. Rust?—sure, he’s been in the back of my mind for some part of the last few months – I have to see him most days I go to work, don’t I? – but, sometime in the space between my third and fourth shot of straight vodka, he was suddenly at the very front of it. I’d seen a guy who smoked like him: cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger, a simple, deep drag. I’d thought it was him, but then I realised his face was shrouded in the smoke that he’d exhaled, and I recalled that Rust never seems to do that. Never seems to exhale. All the tar and shit stays in.
With a twist of my keys, the engine rumbles off into more-or-less silence. Fuck, it’s a bad idea, yes, just being here. If he likes to keep his distance, well—he’s entitled to that choice.
I glance over my shoulder, out the window, out at the complex which is all yellow and shining, illuminated by buzzing halogen light bars and, of course, the occasional bug zapper. It’s clean enough. The lines of this parking space were white enough. Apartment 11A, said Marty. Second floor.
“Are you drunk?” he’d asked – Marty, not Rust.
I’d replied, “No,” pressing closer to the phone box in attempts to remove myself from the swarm and bustle of the ladies’ bathroom. And it was an honest reply. Sort of. Despite his scepticism, by that time, I’d long stopped drinking, and all that remained from it was a sort of numb tingle in my fingertips—as far as I was concerned.
I don’t think I’d be in this parking lot, stepping out of my car, if I wasn’t still a little bit gone.
Marty’s sigh had crackled through the receiver. “Don’t bring any o’ tha’ party-this-party-that attitude to ‘im, alright? He’ll hate it.” I’d told him okay, my stomach spiking up with excitement. “Fact is, I don’t think you should go at all. ‘f you do, should be a work matter. This a work matter, detective?”
I’d lied, said yes, perhaps with a slur to my voice.
He clicked his tongue. “Okay, buck, whatever you say.” Then, he’d hung up.
There was something disapproving in the manner of the conversation. I got the feeling that he was talking to me in the same voice he used to lecture his daughters. The only reason I’d called him was to get something from him, sure, so that I could basically get something from Rust, his partner. I could see how that sort of thing might’ve upset someone. Not that Marty Hart should have any right to judge, not when he’s coming into work in the same clothes as the day before, stinking of sweat and God knows what. The unsaid agreement of everyone in the office is to turn a blind eye. I’ve met his wife. Someone should cut off his damn dick.
Quiet, now. Hell, who am I to talk? Marty’s fun to chat with, makes a slow day at the office a little brighter. ‘Course, there’s rarely a slow day at the office.
And I’m at the top of the stairs, now. And I knock—one, two, three—on the pilling, forest-green door. Dulled down 11A. Blinds are determinedly shut, slats flat. For a second, I think maybe I’ll be waking him.
Then I remember Rust doesn’t sleep.
A grey face appears as the door swings just a little ways open, grave and sunken-tired. His expression isn’t so pissed-off as it is just his usual expression.
“Rusty,” I say to him with a small nod, words scraping out dryly.
He doesn’t respond right away – ‘stead, he leans his body out partway, eyes absent like he’s searching for some hooligan criminal in the night.
“Marty told you my address?” he asks lowly. It’s more a statement than anything, but I amuse him with a nod anyways. There’s a cigarette flaring up between his fingers. His hand twitches a little like he’s wanting to take a drag, but his eyes are fixed on my shoes, now, like he’s still coming to terms with the fact I’m a foreign body in his domain.
My toes curl up tight in my shoes – there’s that prick of anticipation again. Ice-cold, you could easily mistake it as dread.
Rust doesn’t exactly subject me to an imploring look—not really his style—but he bows his head down just slightly – that’s sign enough for me. He wants to know why I’m here, and he no doubt wants to know the quickest way to be rid of me.
I sigh. I ask him.
My body trembles, and he notices it, records it, stores it away for later reference, for some other time he’ll find that it and me will contribute to his purpose.
Rust has a face of stone. I get to know it well as I search for a sign there that might let me know what lies beneath. But, of course, a statue is solid through and through. Sharp angles and smooth planes carved hollow. If he’s cold to the touch, I’d like to reach out and be sure. Is he cold where a man ought to be warm? Christ, it makes my pulse jump just to think about it.
There is no greater purpose or cruel intention underlying my words, as far as I’m concerned. Rust, however, lingers there, with his arm up on the door, barricading the entrance, while he peels back and flits over every layer of possible meaning, his attention fixed absently on my left ear.
He then looks at me—briefly—in the eyes, with a sort of paralysing intensity. Even the tingling in my fingers ceases to be.
It takes a moment, pregnant with the chorus of cicadas, crickets and other night-creatures, before he steps back neatly to allow me in.
The door clicks softly behind me as I enter into a room that’s bare as bare can be.
Rust grunts, coming up around me and into the kitchen area. “Want anything?” he mumbles around his cigarette, other hand shoved in his pocket. He’s still half-dressed in his work clothes, his tie strewn on the counter, his blazer slumped over a rickety picnic chair perched up in front of a wall of crime scenes and dead bodies. My eyes linger there—how can they not?
“A beer,” I tell him, still looking at those photographs, then at the stacks upon stacks of books. Philosophy, ethics, religion. Names I’d expect only those with PhDs to know.
“Don’t think you’ve had ‘nuff to drink already?”
I shoot him a look. “I think I can handle it, Rust.” He straightens up, raises his brow. I snort, reasoning, “I’ll only have one.”
“One,” he agrees, opening up the fridge and having a rummage around.
White walls and all of them empty, like some sort of psych ward. Half-sure Rust actually did do some time in that type of care, though, so—shouldn’t make any quips about that. I don’t want him thinking I think he’s crazy – he gets enough of that, I’m sure.
Back at my place, though, I’ve got posters or drawings or paintings up around every corner. My niece’s drawing of a mermaid sits on my dresser, and photographs of my family are displayed in the hallway. One up by the TV, I painted myself when I was in high school. About two years after I graduated, they asked if I wanted my portfolio back, and I’d obviously said yes. And I love my stuff! Some ‘cause it’s pretty, others because of memories and whatnot. Guess some people don’t have that creative trait, or they lose it. Or maybe they detest the sentiments, those strings that have been, are and will be attached to things. When my cousin broke up with her boyfriend, she cut her hair and burned his clothes. “I just want to forget him,” she’d snarled. I’d sputtered a laugh into my tea.
Rust plants a Corona down on the counter, already cracked open.
There’s no mirror in here either – I can’t check whether I look as desperate as I feel. When I focus back on him, Rust is taking a swig from his own beer, turning to glance at the crucifix pinned above the messy mattress on the floor. Huh. Didn’t peg him as a Christian.
His honey-blond hair doesn’t look cold to the touch, that’s for sure ‘n’ certain. Wonder if he just wakes up like that or what. Once, Marty had been teasing him at work, even cracking a smile out of the old guy. “Ain’t them just the prettiest curls y’ever seen, buck?” he’d remarked, nudging into me, cooing at him. Silently, in my head, even then, I’d agreed: prettiest curls I’d ever seen. Rust hadn’t looked up to chart my reaction, but, if he had, he’d maybe have seen my fidgeting fingers or hitch of breath. Or maybe he felt it, heard it.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” I offer pathetically through a nervous smile.
He blinks, takes another swig, leaning over the counter that separates us. “No, y’aint.”
Jesus, I have to turn my head and shut my eyes for a second. I don’t particularly believe in God, but I ask Him to please give me the strength to resist my urges and act like a normal damn person for at least a few more minutes. And then I apologise for only praying out of convenience. In the face of temptation. This is why people shouldn’t drink – still, doesn’t stop me from downing a good part of my beer.
I turn to the wall and try to turn myself off a little bit. It’s not hard – Rust still has Dora Lange (rest her soul) pinned up on his wall, naked, blue, stiff. I don’t want to know why, so I don’t ask him.
His eyes are adamant on the side of my head. Funny how he never seems to look at me at the same time I’m looking at him. Pisses me off a lot of the time – not just him, but in general. A lot of people share this same fear of not being heard, not being listened to and not being cared about. Men in particular, I’ve noticed, have a tendency to raise their voice over others’, to yell or shout or hit things or push ‘n’ shove. Marty’s that way – a lot of men at the precinct are, too. Women who are raised to be the listeners sometimes act out in the same way, frustrated at all the things they have to care about that men don’t, burdened with manners and politeness. I used to hate having to listen, to wait for the man who interrupted me to finish speaking. Rust always lets people finish their point, for better and for worse. Pisses me off in a different type of way. I can feel his judgement seeping out of him, so potent that’s it’s tangible, lapping at my feet.
He doesn’t push and shove – he’s a listener, too. Of course, he has that male privilege where his silence has a gravity, a magnetic pull, where mine is simply as is. At least he pays attention. Sure, on the surface, it might look like he doesn’t care at all, hunched over a case file at his desk, back turned to me and the rest of the lot, but proximity has its power – assigned workspaces put with his personality, and he knows what’s like and unlike me better than my sister. He’s reading into my refusal to talk, to face him – unlike me.
“So, you’ve given this some thought, then,” Rust says matter-of-factly, and my tummy bubbles up.
I snicker nervously, heart racing. God, I’d expected surprise, disbelief, outright refusal, maybe even a little disgust, but, when I manage to turn around and look at his face again, it just seems to me like a calmness. Stoicism found in the affirmation, maybe, of his expectations. It’s like I’m walking right into one of those little theories of his: a proved hypothesis.
I take another sip from my beer, feeling too shy for my liking. “Well, yeah,” I drawl, slumping over the kitchen counter and propping my chin up to look right back at him in a surge of liquid confidence. “I always think ‘fore I do anything that’s anything, Rust.”
Almost immediately, he retreats, standing up straight and resting the small of his back against the lip of the sink behind him. He hums, glances away. “We both know that’s a lie,” he combats, hands tucked into his pockets, chin tilted up, eyes down. A mouthful of beer numbs the sting of rejection. “What you mean is you think you can justify all your decisions. You think you can justify why you knocked on my door and said what you said—” he elaborates quietly, eliciting a snort from me, “—but, at the end o’ the day, all your decisions boil down to what you feel is right, not what is right.”
“‘n' you think you ‘n’ you alone know what’s right?”
Slate-grey eyes flit up and down my face, like I’m a specimen on a slide.
“I think that the girl who’s stumbled up on a fella’s door asking him to fuck her is less inclined to know, without bias, what’s right, yes.”
I swallow thickly, sucking the remaining flavour of beer off of my tongue before going in for another swig.
Christ.
Not a single bat of his eyes. Not a quiver of his mouth, not a twitch to his nose, not a morsel of natural, human hesitation. Does he have to be so crass? I did the courtesy of making it palatable, at least to my own ears, with a euphemism. But when have I ever known Rust Cohle to water anything down? No drink I’ve ever consumed will match his body’s preference of alcohol content. He’s nursing his beer close to his chest, but who knows what poisons lay dormant in these cabinets?
“Rusty,” I say lowly, maybe asking for a break – I close my eyes for just a second, part because I couldn’t bear it if I caught some sort of disapproval on his face, and part because it’s just past two o’clock in the morning.
Late nights have consumed my life recently, what with that sicko rapist connected to a Christian fertility cult. Children of God – “go forth and multiply”. His confession had turned my blood cold. Johansson had offered to sit in the box instead, but I did it anyway. I went home and cried over it, then came into work the next day to talk to some press and then receive my new assignment.
He hums, taking a drag from his cigarette, swallowing the smoke down. Rust knows how it is. To be honest, I’m probably the one who doesn’t know the half of it. One night at the office, he’d casually confessed to his insomnia, like he was just commenting on the state of the weather ‘n’ nothin’ else. So, I guess I won’t pretend to get it.
I gnaw on the inside of my cheek. “Are you into that whole abstinence thing?”
The weak light above flickers gently as he pauses, turns the question over in his mind. Anyone else would’ve surely laughed.
“I believe that man is susceptible to desire, yes—but he can resist it and its consequences should his willpower be stronger than the false promises posed by that temptation.
I snort again, because, now, I really am tipsy, and I can’t hold in my attitude any longer. It’s not that I think he’s lost it or whatever. It’s just—he’s so—objectively—absurd. Well—“objectively”. He’s got points, but those points lose all meaning in the spiralling darkness of overthought and deep contemplation wherein he’ll explain that everything really means nothing—and he’ll be right about that, sure, but also unintentionally prove a point about himself. I’d ask him what it means when, in a world where everything means nothing, a child will give their friend a flower found on the way to school, but I feel like his answer would be too morbid for my liking. Does that make me an unreliable source? The fact that I want to live?
He's absurd. He’s also a little bit awry in the head. Don’t know what he’s lost or what he’s lookin’ for, but it’s not a good look on him. He’s honest, yes – that’s a good trait. But honesty without kindness is cruelty. And he is kind – underneath, he’s kind, and I know that because of how hard he works to weed out evil people in this world, most times at his own risk. That’s kindness, albeit unconventional, whether he realises it or not.
The kindness almost cancels out his arrogance.
“So, what?” I challenge under the guise of a teasing grin. “You can go mouthin’ off for hours on end about how up themselves religious people and all’at are, but you can’t draw the similarities between their philosophy and your philosophy? How does that work, Rust?”
While I was working that Children of God nightmare of a case, he just couldn’t seem to restrain himself – every bullshit word that left him revealed to me his hubris. Now, I’m not angry, and he’s not stupid – we’re not arguing. In fact, he seems intrigued, lean body shifted toward me. He sets his beer down on the counter, crosses his arms over his chest after securing his cigarette between his lips, and lowers his head as if to listen to me better.
I sigh, continue. “D’you know what I think? I think you oversimplify humanity. You’re a great detective—‘nd I guess you know it—and, within the confines of your job, it serves you well, makes you good in the box. But your assumptions are too general. People are who they are, sure, but they also decide to be those people. By their environment and those who surround ‘em, people make the decisions that define ‘em. A lot of the time, their circumstances ain’t fair. People born into badness are trapped by the badness—either physically, or up in their heads—and they have a tough time escapin’ it.”
Rust inhales the smoke again, the only evidence of it happening being the soft whisp that curls away from his nose. I wonder to myself how his lungs are still standing.
“‘s that how you explain that—homicide case you’re workin’ on?” Three-year-old boy died of neglect, his siblings found locked in cabinets, one in a dog cage, by their mother and stepfather. Rust’s eyes flash silver. “Killer had a tough time?”
Asshole.
I narrow my eyes dangerously. “Don’t be mean, Rusty,” I scold, and he blinks in concession. “I think evil exists. I think it’s complicated. I think you summarise things that ought not to be summarised.”
He’s silent for a heartbeat. Then, his hand comes up to pinch away his cigarette, and he waves it in a small flourish, explaining, “When I say “people”, I mean society. Human culture.”
“Last I checked, Rust, you don’t know everybody on the planet. You don’t know their “culture”, or experiences.” That seems to shut him up. My eyes wander to his broad shoulders, trail along the meat of his arms beneath the cheap, polyester shirt that hugs close to the muscle, and they linger there like the quiet that settles between us.
He nods slowly, once. “Our decisions define us?”
I bob my head, unabashedly staring at the elegant column of his throat, his neck, and the stretch of tan skin that is settled beneath the white undershirt revealed by the first one, two, three buttons which have recently been undone.
He’s quieter when he asks me, “Well, how does this decision define you, then?” There’s nothing malicious about the way he says it, or even lustful – just a calm curiosity.
“Ain’t it obvious?” I grin again, laugh a little, blush hotly. “I’m horny!” I hide my face in my shoulder, trying to compose the hiccups of laughter in my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I snicker, wiping my palm over my brow, my eyes. “This probably isn’t very attractive to you.”
“You’re a very pretty girl,” he replies. He mutters my name solemnly, like we’re in a formal meeting or something.
I glance up, check whether he’ll offer me eye contact again, but he doesn’t – he’s staring at the wall, lost.
I scoff. “You’re a very pretty guy, Rust.”
God willing, none of the boys at the precinct will ever find out about this. If Marty lets it slip that I even asked for Rust’s address, then I’ll never hear the end of it. Worse, everyone’ll think I’m dead-gone over him. Guess I don’t really fit the standards expected of women around here: “wife”, or “whore”. Or “dead”. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously going about pretending I’m not interested in sex at all. Once sex comes into the equation, I’ll be reduced to that and nothing else.
Anxious, I start flicking up under my fingernails. Is Rust already starting to think those things, too? I’m a great detective, but that’s the only capacity in which he’s really known me.
I wring the neck of my bottle. “I should explain—”
He holds his hand up, stating, “I don’t need you to. Do you feel the need to?”
Curious, wary, I watch his face, a blank slate. Still waters run deep. My eyes drift down, to where his hands are together in front of him, one relaxed beside him the other curled around his wrist with two fingers resting on the pulse.
“No,” I reply.
“You thought it over,” he says, eyes tilting up at the ceiling, aloof, bored, maybe. His words are sort of monotone, like he’s reciting a passage from a book that he’s just recently read: “You chose me because you know me. You haven’t been sleeping well. You’re stressed, you’re scared, you’re frustrated.” He blinks. “You’re attracted to me due to some—unfortunate trigger beyond your control in the reptilian part of your brain.” Brief as the flicker of a candle in a still room, he looks over me, brow raised slightly as if daring me to tell him that he’s wrong. He pauses again, takes a short puff. “It makes you think I can take care o’ your needs.”
Look at the state of him: sallow and wilting on the inside. Reducing me down to a sentence or two, and being right about it.
“Well, can you?” I ask weakly, feeling small. He looks over me, blinks blankly. “How do you take care of your needs?” No reply. “You do have needs, don’t you?” I remark, tapping the rim of my bottle to my warm temple. “Programming ‘n’ whatnot.”
He tilts his head away in dismissal.
I smile, more to myself than to him. “Beat off in the shower, is it?”
For a second, Rust is still. My eyes grow heavy, admiring the strong profile of his nose. He then nods helplessly, like there’s no point in trying to lie.
I hum, a soft, self-satisfied smirk edging its way onto my face. “Must feel like a sin,” I snicker.
He squints slightly, like he disagrees with my logic, but does not interrupt to protest.
“I remember takin’ baths as a teenager and double-checkin’, triple-checkin’ I locked the door,” I confess. “Couldn’t take my time. ‘S that how it is for you, Rust?” I probe, tilting my head to the side, losing his eyes as quickly as I catch them. “You ever let yourself enjoy it? Let yourself want it—?”
“I don’t want it,” he snaps quietly.
“But your programmin’ says you do, right?” I point out, scrambling to hold onto the flaw in his argument. I search his face, my own bright, eager.
He quirks up a miraculous smile, and I myself burst into a wide grin. Still smiling—though, you’d have to admit, it’s such a strange sight, sort of gratifying, almost patronising—he shifts his weight between his feet, scratches at his nose with his pinkie, sniffs, takes a long drag of his dying cigarette. I know he must feel disjointed, though he doesn’t show it: he’s misstepped, and I’ve caught him. And how often does Rust Cohle misstep? I should’ve checked the news for a blue moon tonight.
Interested, now, is he? Breathing quietly, rolling his jaw – he’s entertaining the competition I have goin’ up in my head. From the looks of the gentle smirk on his face, he’s enjoying it, too.
“No,” he corrects with a dry husk to his voice. “No, I know what I want, and, when I think those things are necessary or useful, I know how to get them.”
In this type of context, I’d like to see him try. Though, he is an undeniably attractive man. Thick, solid all the way through, like a rich wood. But he’s got these brittle eyes: fraying.
He continues: “Most of the time, though, what we want is born out of dangerous feelings, like rage or lust. Ruminating on the consequences of those potential actions seems to me the more sensible thing to do than to just leave it and find out.” I sniff. “Desire is inescapable for most, including the sexual kind. I feel it—“ he eyes how I wriggle beneath my skin, “—you feel it. But it can be resisted. You’re lettin’ it dictate what you do ‘n’ say. If I do to you what you want me to, have you thought about how it might affect things down the line? Tomorrow, next week, next month—?”
“Yes,” I hiss, a little too emotionally, such that a gleam of satisfaction crosses his grey eyes at the strain and stretch of my voice. Christ. Desperate much?
I take several seconds to think before allowing myself to speak again, all while staring at him straight on and refusing to look away: I’d just die if I let him catch me out. “Well, how can you be sure of the fallout? How do you know the good won’t outweigh the bad? Not “you” specifically, but, also, yeah, “you” specifically. I can think about something morally ambiguous, and I can evaluate the potential consequences, and, just as you are satisfied to observe, I will decide to follow through with this somethin’ and deal with what I gotta deal.”
He sighs. “Because decisions define a person?”
I tuck my hair tight behind my ears. “Yes.”
And he hums – that beautiful noise resonates in my stomach before sinking down there, low, its weight a comfort. “I agree with you in that respect,” he admits.
A laugh erupts out of me like the sputter of an engine. Luckily, I’m easy to laughter – it’s like me, as is my genuine grin. “Rust Cohle’s agreein’ with me on somethin’?—Call the police!”
“We are the police,” he replies smartly, watching me snort and smile and grow flushed in the face. I feel very grateful to that beer – at least my giddiness can be blamed on the effects of alcohol and save me from embarrassment.
As I simmer down, he looks away, adds, “I agree to an extent. People all think that they’re one-of-a-kind. That they make these—amazing decisions. They speak and do and walk and play and work and fuck and eventually die – all of ‘em.”
“You’re part of the people,” I argue.
He hums, nodding in acceptance. “Yes.”
“If a person acts due to their instinct, whether it’s succumbing to it or fighting against it, then isn’t man simply his programming?” He lowers his head. “You can be aware of it, and you can be a part of it, too. Who are you to deny yourself the good parts?”
He fiddles with his cigarette, svelte fingers nimble and acute. I cross my legs, flex my hips; he notices.
“Because of the consequences,” he replies, a soft whisper.
I thought that everything meant fuck-all?
For someone who sees no meaning in life, he sure seems to spend a lot of time contemplating it. Here, I thought I’d have hot hands sliding all over me, gripping, spreading, pushing, but instead find myself defence in an unprecedented debate.
Rust is breathing slower, deeper, almost unable, now, to look me in the eyes, even look at me in general, whereas, before, it had been a choice, whether that choice be conscious or unconscious. His cigarette burns weakly in his fingers, forgotten. The muscle in his jaw flexes, his expression hollow.
My body buzzes with want, leaves me scrambling for breath like I’ve just run a race. I want. I want, I want, I want. The rough pads of his fingertips, the surest and most confident I’ll have ever known. Sharp tongue, quick and precise. Something about how he smells. All my compliments to pheromones – even in the heavy musk of the bar, I’d smelled him, ashy, warm, alive, and now it’s wreathing all around. Or maybe that’s just me – it’s like when you try to take someone’s pulse with your thumb, and all you’re feeling is your own heartbeat.
I want – my breath trembles with it.
“Rust,” I say softly. He shakes his head a little, looking away still, vulnerable like a wild animal. I sigh, gnawing at my lip. “I really want it. I—I’ve—it’s not just a rash decision,” I explain. “I’ve wanted it for a while, now.”
He shudders – I notice. “Since when?”
I huff out a sheepish laugh, fix my eyes on my restless hands. “You won’t remember it—”
“I will.”
His voice sounds clogged. It sobers me right up.
“A year back,” I tell him. “You were working at the office—late, in the dark. You called me, and I asked you why, and you said—it was because you were tired and thinkin’.” I glance up to check if he’s maybe looking, but he’s not – he’s turned his head even further away. The soft, gentle curls of his hair tempt me.
Blindly reaching for the bottle, securing it almost immediately, he finishes the rest of his beer, then sets it back down.
“I—” he begins, scratching his nose, “—I was—tired.” He pauses to re-thicken his voice. “And—thinking—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, but the both of us know what he said that night: Of you. Thinking of you—of me .
My stomach flips, leaving me almost nauseous, just like it did when I first heard those words. At first, I thought I’d misheard, that I was so tired my mind was playing tricks on me. Then, I thought he was being cruel, or maybe he was drunk. Those two instances weren’t—aren’t—unlike him, but he never, ever calls to be mean or to be stupid. He’d been quiet and warm through the phone after that, a presence so thick I could’ve sworn he had his arms around me right then. I hadn’t slept well for a time, then, of course, and that made it all the more vivid. His voice had made me shiver all the way through as he told me he had to get back to work.
When I saw him the next morning, I couldn’t look at him. It was the first time I couldn’t, not wouldn’t. It was also the first time I felt him paying attention to me.
I shift, ask the question I’d wondered since that call: “Why?”
A pause.
Then: “You brought me coffee that morning,” he explains softly, speaking to the wall opposite. “I was—looking at the mug on my desk – it was yours. Green one you like to use.” He sniffs. “And…” He teeters on the precipice of that word but does not finish the thought.
Hmm. That’s something to think about. Rust Cohle thinking about me and not picking apart why and why he shouldn’t be. It had been a mindless enough gesture – it’s not unheard of me to be makin’ coffee for other people in the office, not because I have to but because I like to. For the people I can stand, that is: Johansson always, and him for me; Cathleen; Marty, when I’m not pissed off at him; and Rust, from time to time. Everybody knows that green mug is mine, though – nobody touches it, not even the boss. Rust reads far too much into things. Most of the time, he’s dead-on. I should’ve known from the moment I placed that coffee on his desk, from the sharpening of his eyes (that did not spare me a glance) that lingered on my lingering hand on his table, that he knew. Figured out something I hadn’t even quite figured out myself. Not until later that night.
I wonder if he’s ever thought of me when fucking his own hand. I wonder if he thinks about me sometimes, when he can’t sleep, in between horror stories and brutal blows and uncovering the secret truths of the universe. I do, sometimes.
When I push myself back to my feet, stand up, Rust’s attention springs back, and he watches me, looks at me.
Quietly, I relish in the satisfaction of his stare, crossing on light feet to toss my empty beer bottle in the bin. He steps aside to let me open the cupboard under the sink, his hand curled in a loose fist by his side. I’m not trying to tease him – I grant him the space he so clearly needs, retreating about five paces back, leaning slightly myself against the counter.
I could say anything right now, no matter how insane, and he’d treat it with total and utter respect. I could reveal to him the reaction my body has to seeing his fingers fiddle like that with his cigarette, and he’d manage to identify the cogs and wheels in what, when you step back, actually turns out to be a hidden machine. Christ, I could probably remove all of my clothes, stand naked in front of him, and he’d look on as one would look on at a piece of evidence at work. Going over the details, once, twice, scribbling it all down in that big, leather ledger.
Here’s what I think: he needs it. For all his talk about how unoriginal, how predictable mammals are at the end of things, he probably knows that himself. The tension in his jaw, the perpetual tightness of breath. That clipped way of talking he has, wound so tight around himself, like a compressed spring fighting its natural urge to let go.
I could make him let go. Maybe. I wish he’d let me try. It’s nothing possessive, really: wanting to be the one to unravel his tightly coiled body. Just—the release of seeing him be. No thinking in particular – just being.
He is still, however, uncommonly mute, avoiding my eyes.
I sigh. I ask him tentatively, “You think I ought’a be ashamed o’ myself?” biting down on the fleshy inside of my cheek.
“No,” he contradicts.
“But—you think I should be findin’ my fun elsewhere, with—some other guy?”
He sort of pins his hands behind his back, pressing his weight against them there at the edge of the sink. He looks a lot taller from this angle. “I think there’s a lotta fellas stumblin’ over themselves to be with a girl like you.”
“Maybe,” I scoff, “but my reptilian brain don’t want none of ‘em.“ I blush warmly when I glance up and he’s there watching me, though there’s no bashfulness at all on his side of it.
I expect him to maybe dart his eyes away again, like he does, and then walk me to the door, maybe even to the car if I haven’t offended him too badly, and then call it a night. I could stuff it in; I can compartmentalise. Monday would carry on as it always does, except now without the wondering and the yearning and the delusion. Did he have to be so good-looking? His cheap, wrinkled shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows—like they are now—and those lean forearms braced up on the table, caging in the neatly set-out notes scrawled up in his ledger, like they have mind to escape. And he’s—beautiful. He’s tall. Out-of-place sort of tall, where he has this bend to his neck, sometimes, as to not draw attention to himself. Other times, though, he stands to full height, regal, elegant, authoritative, like when he comes out o’ the box.
He sees into people. He feels it all so deeply.
And he’s looking at me, seeing into me, deeply. His eyes are brittle like china pieced back together with store-bought glue. The low light casts long shadows down his neck and harsh face.
“Come here to me, Rust,” I say to him, beckoning him over with a tilt of my head. To my surprise, he does. He does immediately, peeling himself off the counter, eyes drifting somewhere just behind me as if disinterested.
He stubs his cigarette out on an old plate, abandons it there officially, before stepping slowly towards me, feet never dragging, dodging my searching eyes like the plague.
Hmm. Maybe I made a good argument “for” to his “against”. Or maybe he was never “against” to begin with. I’ll watch him carefully tomorrow and see if there was anything I missed.
I reach up and touch his face gently. I used to do this with my husband before he passed, and he’d close his eyes and whisper my name and lean into the touch, tender, loving – my fingers shake slightly with the memory. Rust Cohle does none of that, because he is nothing like my husband. He’s perfectly rigid against my fingertips; his stare flits briefly up right into my soul, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Everything about him is so sharp. The ridge of his cheekbones, the defiant slant of his nose. The lean muscle of his arms and shoulders, slightly sinewy just beneath the skin.
But when I brush my thumbs up along his eyebrows, easing the sharp line between them, he sighs and closes his eyes, neck bowing down, still as stiff as before, just—different. A small gap, an opening, to that locked room of his upstairs.
“Rust,” I whisper, nose brushing his. He hums again, lowly, eyes shut. “What do you think of us havin’ sex?”
“Sex,“ he replies softly, “is the illusion of connection constituted by the release of a mess of happy hormones, simply by touching all the right places—and nothin’ more.”
I hum and watch the look on his face grow brittle as our breaths mingle closely. God, he’s so near to me that my head swings in a bout of lightheadedness, heady, vision centring in on him and only him, such that I wouldn’t know if this place was burning down all around, even if the flames started eating us alive.
“I think you’re full o’ shit, Rusty. Know how I know that?”
He sighs shakily. “How?” It’s like the word is dragged right from the pit of his chest, barely a breath to show for the effort of it.
“I can feel you against my leg.”
He swallows thickly, but he does not blush, and he does not open his eyes. And, contrary to what he might seem, Rust is not cold like stone. When my fingers grow more confident, when they trace and drag lightly along the line of his cheeks, he is warm there. His pulse, when I find it, exists and is hot and slightly erratic, a fact that leaves my mouth dry and open. I can feel the inflexion of his throat as he swallows again, the shift of the skin and the rhythm of his heartbeat, the gentle influence of his breathing.
I wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t. So, I ask him, “Can I kiss you?” ever so gently.
Softer still, he replies, “Yes,” with that slight Southern whistle of his, barely moving.
Give me strength. Give me strength.
That look on his face is filling me with a delicious, vibrating power. As I stretch my neck up to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth, my eyes are open and watching him, charting him: Rust breathes strongly out of his nose, eyes still determinedly shut, like he’s absent and meditating. He is not tough as stone – parts of him are soft. He barely returns the kiss, but, as far as my brain processes, his lips are soft. Hesitant, maybe.
Then, these soft lips part, and he is sucking in a hot, shuddering breath, capturing me in a deep kiss, as if to breathe all of me in, a strong hand threading through my hair. It hurts a little at first – a small noise escapes my throat at the slight shoots of pain tugging at the roots – but Rust doesn’t seem to notice. Not at first. No, he’s still breathing me in. His lips are dry, rough, a push and tug, a twist, and he’s kissing like a punch, knocking the breath right out of my lungs. Whatever oxygen I manage to hold onto is sucked out of me promptly.
I whine, my body going all slack and tired as he smooths the hair out of my face, palms dragging clean back across my cheeks. Those hands cradle the back of my head, making it impossible to keep my eyes open.
Content, I sigh, eyes succumbing to the sensation and falling shut. The last thing I see is his own eyes slipping open to look at my face.
Boy, he’s a good kisser. Must be that lizard brain he has such a distaste for.
My fingers blindly reach and fumble at his belt, hooking into the waist, pulling him flush against me. Rust must forget what he’s doing for a moment, and he pauses where he is, in limbo, eyes far away. When I begin to unthread his belt from its quietly clinking buckle, he goes stiff again, blinks rapidly before perceiving me.
Holy shit, he’s gorgeous.
His hands hover over my shoulders, not quite committed to the contact.
He’s seeing me—really seeing me—as I unzip his trousers and spit crudely into my palm and curl around the length of him, warm, tight. I begin to understand the gentle throb and strain he feels, a delightful thrill running rapid all through my insides. He feels deliciously alive.
But then he turns his head away, neck straining up, breath choked back in his throat. His hands come away, raised, it looks like, as if trying to seem non-confrontational, trying to come away unscathed from a bad situation.
My stomach burns with desire. “Let yourself like it, Rust,” I mumble against his cheek. “Are you here with me?”
I can feel him swallow.
“Yes,” he responds. I guide his face to me, stroking his cock confidently once, twice, as encouragement, maybe. Temptation. Whatever you want to call it. My mouth waters, my head goes airy, when I feel his sex twitch in my embrace.
“Kiss me again, then.”
And he does. Brows furrowed as if in pain, he does, with the tip of his nose dragging and pressing into my cheek. He kisses me sweetly once, then again, and then pants down hotly into my mouth, hovering there before sliding his tongue deep inside, close, smooth.
I let myself love it. I let myself let go with every kiss he blesses me with, growing looser and easier and lighter each second.
The weight of him in my hand inspires a beautiful urge to have him lay down and let me feel every part of his body. Even though his hips stutter, he doesn’t buck up into my fist, doesn’t whine, doesn’t moan, doesn’t curse. Not yet. He just breathes and breathes, and kisses me and kisses me, like it’s all he was set on Earth to do. All he’s allowing himself to do.
Desperate, perhaps, my thighs are pressed against his, feeling unnaturally weak and warm. The throb between my legs coincides with my heart rushing in my ears, a steady ache, impatient. Part of me wants to drag this out as long as possible, because what if this never happens again?—and another part wants to push him inside me already, have him fill me up, fuck me stupid.
This thought stuffs me up to the brim, like cotton punched down into a pillowcase. I whine shallowly and try to slot his thigh between my own.
A switch in his brain must flick on.
It’s like he’s inside my head, like he’s in on my desperation, like he can see and feel every sinful image and thought circulating my alighted brain. He knows it all so well, such that he uses his hips to press us firmly against the counter, spreads my legs with the nudge of his foot between mine, and immediately pushes the rough pads of his fingers right where I need it, through the fabric of my skirt, letting me grind myself against him, hips and all. He circles there generously. I can feel my need dripping from me. He can too, no doubt.
I sigh, he breathes. I gasp, he breathes. My eyes flutter open and shut, but he looks on, eyes half-lidded but stare immovable.
He then lifts his knee to place against my cunt.
“That feels good, don’t it?” he says gently, rocking me over his knee up and down, back and forth, fingers digging into the soft skin of my hips.
My legs widen. When I gasp out weakly, he raises his brow and scans my face, like he had predicted the shaky, wordless nod that I offer to him too late in return.
“Did you want it like this, girl?” His voice is low, intimate, a hit of something just shy of addictive. “Or did you want somethin’ else, too?”
He kisses the hollow of my neck.
His other hand grips at my ass, up my skirt, kneading the flesh there, manipulating it, and his fingers ghost my slit, spreading me around his knee. He fucks up into my hand. I slide my fingers through his hair, which is soft and warm like butter.
Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid, pretty curls. I’ve proved my point: regardless of whatever act he may try to put on afterwards, we’ll both know that Rust isn’t as numb as he wants to be, that I made him feel good, that I made him want me, and that he’s hot-blooded and thrumming with life. I can feel how alive he is . I hope he thinks of this again some time, whether by himself or surrounded by people. I hope it drives him a bit mad, remembering this.
A hot, sharp breath fans out across my cheek, his mouth slotting back over mine, open, daring me.
I rut against his knee, my fingers teasing the wet head of his cock. I look down between us, at my hand on him, with half a mind to drop onto my knees and make him cum down my throat.
Rust lets out a grunt and swallows hard again.
Then, he gently grabs my wrist and pulls my hand out of his pants, leaving me dazed and confused. With nimble fingers, he unzips my skirt, pushing it over my hips and dragging his hands over my bare skin. He asks me, “You want the bed?”
I step out of the pool of fabric around my feet, slide my shoes off. “‘s not a bed.”
I slide my fingers beneath his sweaty, white undershirt, feeling the taut muscle there, feeling the steady breaths that contradict his racing pulse. He holds my eyes, dipping slightly when I dip, tilting when I tilt. “Seems like one to me.”
How unlike him.
A smile spreads over my face, and his pupils blow wide, dark, imploring. “You wait ‘n’ see what happens when the dust-mites turn up.”
His eyes on me alone are enough to leave me breathless, chest caving in on itself. Of course, when he kisses me softly, it only makes things worse – his long fingers curl around the base of my throat, watching me watching him, and his other hand slides up under the hem of my blouse, palm spread over my bellybutton.
I sigh, try not to squirm.
“You want the bed?” he repeats, heavy, rough. I bite back a needy whine that sits at the back of my mouth. His fingertips press down slightly into my pulse, tightening my breathing.
I nod. “Yeah.”
Think of all the times I’ve sulked over his lack of eye contact with me. Was I annoying? Uninteresting? That, obviously, was an immature way of looking at things, definitely not improved by my distinct femininity undergoing some kind of unspoken disapproval by most I met on the job. This is the most present he has ever been in a moment with me around.
As he pulls himself away, steps back, his eyes are darting over my face, less like he’s judging me and more like he’s trying to find and memorise every detail. I do that, sometimes: if I pay well enough attention, it feels like I’m re-living the moment when remembering.
His hands slot sensibly into his pockets as if his cock isn’t blushing and poking out of his fly right now, belt undone, hanging low about his narrow hips.
Legs don’t fail me now. I slink out of the glowing kitchen and carry on to where the mattress lies in a dim, blue corner, the strange crucifix watching over, a long shadow cast over the empty wall upon which it hangs. He follows shortly behind me, his warmth radiating out onto my back.
I pause and look out onto the darkness revealed behind the half-open slats of the floor-to-ceiling blinds that shield the room from the window to the outside world.
Rust’s presence is intoxicating behind me. He smells like cigarette smoke, still, enticing. I’m trying to quit, but he makes it damn hard. His nose is just shy of my hair, his body so close to enveloping me into him – the prospect of it makes me shiver in delight. I must hallucinate his fingertips along my spine.
I unbutton my blouse with slow fingers, then slide it off and undo my bra.
His breathing is level and grounding by my ear as he comes close, sliding his strong, wide hand up my stomach, along my ribs, and cups under my soft breast. He rubs over my nipple in gentle circles before squeezing over me warmly. He then comes around to pinch the creamy tissue gentle between his fingers and thumb, closing his hot mouth over, drawing along his feverish tongue. I sigh, stroke his hair, let him press soft pecks and kisses to the curve of the soft flesh and to my sternum.
My fingers, cupped around the nape of his neck, dip under the collar, cool. This touch, for some reason, causes him to make some sort of breathless, pathetic noise against me. His eyes are half-shut.
“Anything else philosophical y’wanna get out before we fuck?” I quip smartly (though, not feeling so smart altogether), hand placed innocently on his hip.
He lifts his head, removes his hands from my body – he looks so tragically beautiful in this light. “You want me inside you?” he asks genuinely, seemingly aloof to the fact I’m naked in front of him, open and wanton and pressing my thighs together, his eyes never drifting from mine.
“What do you want, Rust?” I whisper.
He seems to really think about it – he’s always thinking. Briefly, his eyes flit down to my mouth. Then, he looks away, scratches at his forehead.
After a moment longer, he swallows thickly and tips his head down over to the bed, tells me, “Lie down on the mattress,” in a gentle, decisive tone. He’s so soft-spoken – it makes my toes curl.
I do as told, transfixed by the dark shadow in his eyes, and sink down to sit and then recline back on his coarse mattress, coarse bedsheets, with my weight on my forearms and chin tilted up towards him. He watches me, tucking his thick cock back into his underwear.
Still fully dressed in his work attire, he takes a step forward, looming over me, powerful, assertive. Saliva pools in my mouth—again—as I play with the thought of him sitting heavy on my tongue with his stomach tight, shaking, hands in my hair, fucking down my throat. I would let him. Hell, I’d probably let him do anything he wanted to me at this point.
Does he know that? Maybe. I don’t know.
As he reaches his hand out too smooth the hair out of my face, I try to figure it out, but I can’t – he seems too wrapped up in his own desire to be thinking anything at the moment. I feel a flicker of satisfaction jump up in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that’s something else.
“Lie back, girl,” he tells me.
My cunt flexes.
I thump onto my back, breathless. “Take off your shirt, Rust.”
Without replying, he sinks down to his knees in front of me, my thighs. Instinctively, I prop myself up and watch him unbutton that wrinkled shirt all the way down, shrug it over his broad shoulders. I could fuck myself silly just over the thought of those shoulders, I remark inwardly. He tugs the wifebeater over his head, lean muscles catching the low light, strong, study, solid, and tosses the thing to the side thoughtlessly. My hands reach out to touch him, to feel him and know him. When my fingers press into his skin, glide up his neck and down over his chest, he sighs deeply. He then carefully removes my hands, urging me to sprawl down under him.
“Said lie back, didn’t I?”
Rust doesn’t say another word before placing his large hands on my knees and easing them apart, lowering himself to press pecks and slow, open-mouthed kisses to my thighs, closer, closer, stroking my sensitive skin gently. I almost flinch at his every touch, like it burns. His face is awful serious, like he’s concentrating. I wriggle in anticipation, eager.
“Rust,” I whisper purposelessly. He looks up, hums, searches my face for anything the matter.
I watch on desperately, on the brink of feral distress. A sob clogs my throat as he kisses my fluttering stomach, ducking his head down and curling his forearms, his hands, around my thighs. The dark stamp of his bone-bird tattoo curls over his arm. I realise he is waiting for my attention to return to him, his eyes patient but glazed over with something cardinal. Hungry.
“Can—?”
“Yes.”
He hums. And then he breathes hotly over my underwear before pressing his nose right there into the damp fabric, inhaling my scent there. I whimper at the pressure he applies with the strong bridge of his nose, at the wetness of his open mouth against me. He breathes heavily into me, groaning slightly beneath it all – I can’t tell past the thrumming of my heart in my ears.
“Rust,” I whisper again, my shoulder straining with the task of keeping me up and looking down at the sight of his sweet head buried between my glistening thighs.
“Lie back.”
He kisses me through my underwear, dutifully kneading the flesh of my hips, my inner thighs.
I thump back against the mattress, helpless, keening into his touch as this grey man roughly tugs my underwear down, down, all the way down, until they’re clean off my body, long gone, and then returns his nose to the cleft of my pussy, unseaming me with his tongue, opening me up, breathing me in. It’s enough to draw a shallow, hoarse cry from me. He doesn’t say anything, and I can’t say anything, biting down on my white knuckles.
Rust licks warm over my clit, sucking gently on the bud of nerves (then not so gently), before sliding down, down through my very centre.
Whining breathily, the twist in my stomach tightens and spasms as he presses my hips and thighs right down against the mattress, slow, strong, giving me time to notice it, realise it, give into it, deny the natural instinct to curl my limbs tight all over his face, his neck, his mouth.
Holy fuck. Rust Cohle has his face buried between my legs right now. I have Rust Cohle’s tongue pushing deep into my cunt – he sighs softly, a sound with its own powerful gravity a black hole to envelop me in, and grinds his hips against the edge of the mattress for a split second, just once. My mind pulses with the thought of making him cum. I wonder if he feels the same hunger.
Then, he’s sinking his long, elegant fingers into me, one, then two, and just the knowledge that those fingers belong to him makes my thighs quiver and shake, makes me sigh again. Thick, confident, they curl inside, slow like an experiment, right up to the knuckle. When he taps up against me, when I squeal and crimp up into his hold, he returns himself to mouth dutifully over my clit. My hand threads itself into his hair, holding him steady – I offer a breathless moan when his grip across my hips loosen, an invitation to begin rolling myself up over his pretty face. He pulls his fingers out of me, wet and hot, and encourages my thighs upon his beautiful shoulders, clinging onto them urgently. He shudders a little, I think, when I lock them firmly around his head and grind myself shamelessly against his mouth, his nose. He moves his jaw, his face, in tandem.
I cum after a while like that, because how can I not? The searing buzz reaches a roiling static.
I go loose, moaning softly, melted down flat, and stroke fuzzy fingers through Rust’s pretty hair as he sucks my clit still, as he inhales again and sighs again, reduced to something primitive and needy.
Thick, my heartbeat throbs and echoes like a drum in my skull, threatening. I feel so full that I could mistake the beat of pleasure for nausea pressing in my throat. It was silly to think that this could all be satisfied just from one time. My eyes closed, Rust’s light touch over my abdomen, up to my throat, is acute and heightened, like a million tiny, individual sparks. His fingers fumble over my jaw, then press lightly over my pulse.
He retreats just as I’m playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck, coming to stand to full height above me, unthreading his belt from his trousers with quiet, precise hands. I press my shaking thighs together, watching him breathe strongly through his nose, trying to remain somewhat respectable in the presence of the darkening look in his eyes that is locked down on my body.
He pauses, wipes some shine from his nose. Before he can continue with whatever, I find myself sitting up on my knees, grabbing his hips hard enough to bruise all pretty and purple, shoving the trousers down to his knees, and palming him through his boxers.
We don’t have to say anything. He just watches me passively, pushing my hair back again, behind my ears, my shoulders, rolling my earlobe softly between his fingertips.
I remove his underwear, take him into my mouth, thick and long and wanting; he sighs, holds my head with two steady hands.
When was the last time someone helped him like this? I honestly couldn’t have told you, even given a loose theory, prior to this moment: Rust is simultaneously the hottest and most non-sexual being I’ve ever come across in my life. He just happens to be beautiful; he just happens to inspire these sort of feelings choking up inside me. No overarching intention that he’ll ever admit to, no vanity, no preening. So strict to himself, so tight, like a piston, something that fights and pushes and hurts.
So, as I hold him firmly and suck at the head of his blushing cock, kissing him, I watch his face, savour the tart taste of him, and press my thighs together: he’s becoming warmer, looser.
Still, as much as I want him, I know he’s wanted me. However vague he tells it, he’s wanted me. Good Lord, he looks even more stressed now, somehow, than when we had just been talkin’. Hands gently cradling my skull, he tilts his head away, watches the cross on the wall, as he succumbs to it, maybe, and begins to gently, languidly fuck my face. I tuck a hand between my thighs, and I love him, my other with the fingers digging into his hip, his ass. If I’m lucky, maybe it’ll leave some sort of mark, just to remind him I was here, so that, when he’s being all indifferent again, with his eyes lowered to the floor as he shares a report with me at my prim, little desk, we’ll both know that we were once in this room together, here like this.
Rust breathes and breathes, almost mechanically, and slides his cock further into my mouth. The weight of him in there drives me half-insane. If I could consume him, envelop him, and we could be one and the same, I’d readily allow it. When he sinks deeper still down my throat, I sigh around him, rub myself the way I like.
His eyes are determinedly shut, like some part of him refuses to be here.
Before I can make him cum, he shakes his head and tugs my hair back a little bit, mumbling for me to stop and sit away.
For all his mouthiness just a half hour ago, would you look at him now?—Rust Cohle, plundered by the human sensation of speechlessness. I’ve never seen him out of his element before. When he comes down and cages me with his body, hot skin flush against hot skin, I don’t mean that in a bad sense. Shit, he’s far from it. But there’s nothing to say. Nothing of note, nothing to pick apart, no deeper meaning, no theory. Just an itch that has to be scratched. He wants, he is, and it’s heaven to see.
In the dark, he sinks in to me as he is, eliciting from me a soft moan that curls over the shell of his ear. I have to bite down on his shoulder when comes the push, the stretch, the sink, the comfort of him inside. I curl my legs around his waist and grab at his ass, willing him deeper still. He shudders silently over me, thick ripples of pleasure rolling through his lean body.
I curse, but I’m sure it barely registers with him.
His head lifts and his eyes clamp shut as he braces an arm against the wall, lifting one of my legs up over his hip and fucking into me deeper, slipping out and in, and again, and again. I know what I’d see if I took a look down, saw his cock pumping into me, but I can hardly do anything but buck my hips up to meet his effort, my stomach stuttering with that building pressure, hands gripping desperately around his neck and shoulders.
Though, I’m not even sure it is effort that’s driving him.
I mumble into his shoulder, dumb, focussing on the feel and press of him in my belly. I doubt he’s really aware of anything more than the sensation of it, evident from the small grunt that passes his lips as he fucks deep in me. His stomach presses heavier down onto mine, crushing a delicious pressure there, teasing out a long, breathy whimper. He snakes an arm around my hips, pushes his free hand to the back of my knee, tilting my legs back a little more, and then pulls me wider. Tight, he moves me how he wants me, my flesh dipping and carving, fucking himself raw with me, with my hot cunt. His mouth moves over mine, not kissing me, not speaking, just there, present, hot, panting. He doesn’t open his eyes, so I close mine, and I breathe.
Rust stutters and cums and spills over into me with a grunt. He pants sharply, harshly, rhythmically into my mouth, tense again, and then he collapses over my body, and he lays there. I lay there too, burning on the far inside.
I think he only really remembers I’m there when I shift under him.
His eyelashes brush against my cheek. “Sorry,” he murmurs, but the sound of his voice scrapes directly against my brain with the shock of a flesh-wound.
I assume he’s referring to the thick cum that I can feel leaking out of me now. He shifts his hips, adjusting himself in the grip of my cunt. My fingers wrap around his arms, squeeze as I feel him easing out.
“It’s okay,” I reply.
He glances down between us and guides himself out with a lewd noise, swallowing hard. I shiver.
Quiet, sedated, he shrugs his trousers, his underwear, off of his ankles, slipping the bedsheet over both our naked selves. His hand spreads and flattens warm over my abdomen, feeling the gentle swell and sink of the breaths I take and release.
Quick summary: It happens again, when the year festers into August again and leaves the two of you raw and vulnerable like open wounds.
Word count: 15K… 🤓
Warnings: canon-typical mentions of death, violence and injury (there is mention of like eating people but idk); grief; misogyny; Rust's personality; semi-public SMUTT T-T (MINORS DNI); same level of pretentiousness, maybe a little more, as the first part.
A/N: Holy fuck this sucked the soul out of me (wish Rust Cohle would suck the soul out of I MEAN WHAT), i am super proud of this though!! Went through many iterations and this was the least shit! 🎀🎀🎀 This is technically part two to The idler wheel but can be read by itself too. May or may not write other things for this guy but for the time being, I need a cleanse 😭 BUT please please enjoy and please please interact, i love reading comments and so many lovely people commented on the first part, im gonna do my best to respond to any/all this time 🤘MWAH MWAH
***
It’s difficult to differentiate between the thrill of being left alone here with him and the slow-sinking dread of the implications of that.
With the return of the musk of the summer, those three ruthless, windless, unrelenting months that would seem to drag on for several lifetimes when I was a kid, the memory of where I was last year—and the year before that, and the one before that—hangs brightly in my mind. Stale, not quite dead – so bright. Crawling with mildew.
Stepping into the bar had felt like entering another dimension. Maybe it was the suits that gave it away – every single God-haunted patron—the truckers, the farmers, even the old dog lying at a man’s feet—had turned, sensing foreigners as acutely as the immune system registers a bodily threat. I knew Johansson felt it: that dark pull over the back of the neck. But under Marty’s overconfident, swaggering lead, that winning smile, we soon assimilated. Skin swallowing a bullet.
God forbid you ever leave the town you grew up in. Shame on you if you don’t, though. How sanctimonious of me to change my mind and return after earning a spot amongst the lucky few escapees.
Something in this place still irks me.
At least, in Brooklyn, there was always noise: cries of a baby in the apartment over, the discord of traffic bursting through the streets below, the rush of a crowd, the overlap and slur of private conversations. At least the badness would stare you right in the face; at least people were evil to be evil. At least there were corners where things could hide, where it made sense for shadows to exist: all to explain the paranoia that stalked me.
But here?—it seems so open. Like, if a rare, hot wind would blow through a Louisiana town, it could do so in one straight path, through walls, through people, without ever getting disrupted. Everything is so light in the blazing sun, you can practically hear it: the hum of rays passing over every surface. Nothing should be able to hide. And, at night, with no sun, no rays, there is no noise. Maybe a dog. And ghosts. But perhaps it’s just the area in which I live.
When Marty started drinking, flirting with the twenty-one-year-old barkeep, Johansson’s face had stiffened. He himself had never even touched a bottle of beer – devil stuff. We shared a look once the blond detective started gabbin’ like an idiot.
“Know what Maggie thinks?” he had laughed, slumping over the sticky table of the booth, big, sweaty palm choking out his drink. “She thinks you might be pissed at me.”
Johansson blinked hard to keep his nose from wrinkling, but, even then, he couldn’t keep from physically cringing away. “Who?” he asked, confused by those hazy, unfocused eyes.
Marty cracked a toothy grin – there was that slight gap between those front two, which had been charming at first and only managed to thoroughly disgust me now in moments like these – and pointed his finger right at me, accusing. “You.”
My stomach churned dangerously at the sight of him.
“Marty,” his partner had drawled, a low warning.
Waved away like a fly.
“Naw, it’s like—you’re on your high fuckin’ horse or somethin’.”
The words were spoken through a laugh, but I knew there was meat behind that so-called good mood. He was one of those people that tended to overcompensate. A mistake, an ill feeling. He liked to point out how I was alone, and often, too, poorly disguised as a passing joke, complete with one of those shit-eating grins that seemed to come so easy to him.
Shouldn’t he have been happy? Not only had he gotten our case, by then, but we’d handed it over with smiles on our damn faces. Nice enough to walk them through the original crime scene, introduce them to the key witnesses. Complicated. We didn’t have to do shit for ‘em, but we did. Hell, even that beer he was clutching to his chest was paid for out of the goodness of my own fuckin’ heart. Who was he to moan about the situation? He was the one who insisted on staying in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, brushing off any and all pointed questions on whether his family would be missing him at dinner.
“You know, I’d rather you were pissed,” he continued, where, really, I should have just smothered him into silence.
Rust was staring into the side of his flushed face, iron-grey eyes like a drill, like he was thinking the same thing.
“Look, you’re smilin’ at me now, but I sure as hell don’t trust it, buck. You wanna bite my head off, don’t ye?”
Like I ever could have done that.
Though the familiar weight of rage curdled in my chest, I would never admit it to the likes of Martin Hart. When he got like this—jealous, insecure, whiny—I wondered whether it was just a temporary lapse, or if this him, this true him, just lay under the surface all the time.
It wasn’t that fucking hard to plaster on a smile and take what you fucking got – I did it all the time. He could dream of a different life, but this was the one we were dealt. Fact that his grown ass hadn’t accepted that by now twisted violently in my gut. Between the two of us, I was the one that knew this – so why did he get myfucking case?
In my head, I’d let Salter have it, too. How could I ever admit I had an ego? How could I ever admit I had a mind to wrench the teeth out of the sheriff’s fucking gums?
But I have plenty of practice acting like things don’t bother me, which is why it was so easy to plaster on my amiable smile and laugh, “C’mon, man, you know it’s only ‘cause o’ the workload.” Not that you could comprehend that, lazy fuck. To Marty, my kind’s natural state was amiable—anything otherwise would be a defect—so I’d expected to convince him. “You’ll do right by it, ‘m sure.”
If he were sober, I know he would’ve bought it – he could convince himself that the way of the world was right and I was only being sweet to be sweet, because he deserved it.
But Marty was drunk. Piss-drunk, loud drunk. His mind was clumsier than usual, unable to muster the energy to jump points, ignore the evidence, like he did daily. I hoped I had the power—if I had to let the case go, I wanted to at least retain an into its goings-on—but there was only one way to really have power over men like Marty when they were drunk, and I had had no interest in being one of his girls.
My partner twitched beside me, picking at some spongy, yellow fluff protruding from a thin split in the chocolate-brown fake leather of the booth. He was just as furious as I was beneath his fort of calm.
Marty took a swig of his beer. “She wants you over soon. Maggie. Barbecue or some shit.”
“Maybe you should go home,” Johansson interjected, sharper than intended. If I were him, with his body, with his life, I’d have hit the fucker—long time ago, too. I couldn’t, but Johansson wouldn’t. He didn’t lack the temperament for brutality—I’m not sure anybody does—but, rather, couldn’t justify it to a necessary degree in his head. “I’m going home,” he’d reasoned kindly – he made it sound so easy. “Just let me take you. It’s on my way.”
Itching to leave, to return to the comfort of his wife and his little daughter. Marty had always found Johansson’s fondness of them disingenuous, had disliked my partner as long as they’d worked in the same office. He complained to me once that none of his stories seemed complete. When I asked him what he meant by that, he couldn’t answer—but I knew.
Breath short in my chest, I had half-expected Marty to lunge over the table, scratch Johansson’s eyes out. Only, Rust leaned over, dipping his head down to mutter something quietly into his partner’s ear, which was all flushed red.
And then he went willingly into Johansson’s car, stumbling through the still, open night into the backseat.
My partner had squeezed my shoulder goodbye – I’m not sure why I didn’t leave with him. Now, I was doomed to leave with Rust.
There, he sits across from me, smearing the ashy tar of his half-smoked, flaking cigarette over the mottled glass ashtray dragged over to his side of the table, little circles, waves, absent-minded art. Has me transfixed, some hypnotist.
If I look down like this, if I sacrifice the opportunity to look at him, I earn his careful attention: this sits in the back of my idle mind. I’ve been taking advantage of it more and more since summer broke through the sweetness of spring, which has since curdled like milk, sour. His stare drags over my face like fingers – I can almost feel his touch pressing into the softness of my cheek, dragging over the ridge of the orbital bone.
“You’re okay?” he asks after a couple slowed heartbeats, pulling me out of the honey-pit of my thoughts.
I dart my eyes up, breaking the spell – his observation retreats, clouds, and drifts away to fix on the broken clock on the wall, the one that reads one forty-five at eleven o’ clock.
Primarily, his question irritates me. Nobody asks “are you alright?” imploringly, not unless it concerns themselves and their own wants. Salter had asked me that, right after telling me he was pulling me from my case, and, then, I had thought about crying, just to unsettle him. But what good would that have done? He’d only asked “are you alright?” to test the waters, to see if there was a future possibility of letting him pull the rug out from under me with zero consequences. Again. I couldn’t win.
But Rust doesn’t want much from me. He doesn’t even want the case, really, which just twists the knife even further.
“You—you know I’m good in there, right? In the box.” I carve a jagged thumbnail into this message in the table, twisting the characters wider, or taller, risking splinters.
Why should I have to give it up? And to a fucking idiot? Marty wasn’t the one who stayed all those late nights alone at the office, wasn’t the one scoured over heaps of files under low light, wasn’t the one who took the fucking beating when the suspect fought against arrest. Marty was not the one who conducted an interview like that.
My mouth thins into a hard line, but I know the words will come out whether I let them voluntarily or not. Around Rust, it’s that way. I should’ve left when I could.
“It’s just that—it was so weird,” I continue, my head pulsing with the unwanted memory of that cabin. Marty didn’t have to experience it, Rust didn’t have to experience it—but I did. “Not jus’ wrong, or sad. Makes me feel strange, thinking about it.”
Often, the suspects underestimate me. Johansson’s broad shoulders and tough-set jaw come off as offensive—nothing like my voice, low and gentle, and my eyes, sympathetic and warm. I’m the mother who will never judge, who is spilling over with unconditional love.
Beneath this, though, I am good at the maths of the job, the connections. Though all detectives technically develop the same constituent skills—close attention to body language tells and other biological betrayals—I ain’t sure most understand the sensitivity and strength required to confront shit like this head-on. To not avert your eyes at the mutilated woman on the bed. To inspect her eunuched boyfriend’s severed appendage, to have steady hands when photographing the scene—with flash, of course, to highlight every detail with sufficient clarity—for evidence, which must be returned to and examined again and again, each time with greater fervour still.
I could name a few who’d joke about a thing like that, to ease the burn of that image in their heads, to sleep better at night, to leave behind the uninvited, vicarious sensation of a knife teasing over the meat of their dick.
But the boyfriend’s corpse, we eventually located separately in a cabin in the woods, laid into the basement freezer, so peaceful, such a brutal image. Pretty parts of him preserved for mauling.
And Salter has the fucking audacity to take it away. He wasn’t the one to see something like that, to feel sick to his very stomach, to gag and have to turn away, to cringe and writhe like his skin suddenly wasn’t his, like he ought to pick himself out. I’ve been reeling with that image for weeks, living with motion sickness, and have been denied the relief of vomiting.
“So, you need me to get that confession.”
Rust comes back into focus, perfectly still.
I nod, the back of my neck prickling with mean goosebumps. “Campbell, his DNA was all over the bodies. He was proud of it, even.” My ribs still glow with the phantom-sensation of his brutal kick there when we located him. Stomach clenching, I struggle to remain level. “But there ain’t no way in hell she wasn’t involved. He denies it, but the house is registered under her name. Maiden name, Phelps.”
“I read,” he confirms.
I tremble in frustration – I almost wish he hadn’t.
“It’s just—this lady’s tough.”
Eyes darting over to the dim-lit bar, scouring the scuffed hardwood floor, I can feel my face growing hot with indignation. Christ, it sounds pathetic, like a whiny kid insisting on continuing a task all wrong in order to protect their damaged pride.
“You know Johansson: once she starts with the tears, he can’t see past ‘em. Southern manners ‘n’ all: a crying woman is a delicate thing not for a man to understand but to comfort. But, with me, it ain’t the same. She doesn’t respect me.”
“What d’you mean ‘respect ’? Don’t need respect in this game.”
I scoff, which would’ve been a dire mistake with anyone else. “Y’wouldn’t know what I’m on about,” I tease through an easy smile, though I’m not feeling so funny at the moment.
He inclines his head down to me, an invitation to elaborate.
My boot feverishly taps against the floor, thrumming light like a jackrabbit on the run.
I sigh, mouth twisting. “She keeps asking me if I’ve slept,” I confess. “Says I look like her daughter.”
For all my mothering, here comes a perp who’s desperate to play me at my own game.
I can see how intelligent she is: some hollow glint in her eyes with nothing behind; past that gleaming screen of kindness, something black, like a cherry pit.
Sitting across from her, it felt like looking into a mirror. Not just physically—though her skin is a similar shade to mine, her nails bitten and splitting like mine, and she looks close to what I imagine my own mother could’ve grown into. It was in the way that, when I smiled, she smiled. When I took a sip of my coffee, she would drink some tea. At times, it would even seem like she would speak in my voice: the pitch, the intonations, the phrasing all far too similar. I was reluctant to tell her my name. It reminded me of this folk tale, of these tall, dark creatures who only required your name to speak like you, to look like you, to replace you in your own life. Its victim would die—in some way or another. Wander the woods, eaten alive.
A harrowing feeling had crept over me, winter pressing against the two-way mirror – I was sure Johansson, on the other side, would pick up on it. Only, when I confessed my worries to him, he’d given me this doubtful look, and I really wasalone then.
“She’s playin’ you,” Rust states simply, tracing his fingers over his mouth like some pseudo-cigarette.
“Yeah.” I grind my teeth together. Under the table, where he cannot see, my fingers curl into a tight fist, trembling with my secret violence. “And now Salter wants Marty to have it? Bull.”
I should’ve socked him right in his dumb, slack fuckin’ jaw. One day, I will.
“He don’t want Marty to have it,” Rust retorts smartly, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are warm in the dark – I should’ve taken my chances, raced to meet ‘em, but I’m too late. “He wants me to have it.”
Yeah, well, I wish what was mine would stay mine.
Even if I’m inclined to be pissed off at Rust by proxy, I just can’t be. The difference between him and Marty is that he actually pays attention, real attention, not the selfish kind. Just by watching, I can tell he knows exactly what he could say, how he could act, in order to appeal to somebody—which is why I find it so odd that he chooses not to. I sacrifice my damn dignity to keep myself palatable. He does not. As a result, he is not well-liked at the office – people tend to feel caught out by him; they don’t like to feel observed, known.
When did being seen become a threat? I thought it was intimate. Though, I suppose, a piece of shit never wants to believe they’re a piece of shit.
Everyone’s the hero of their own story.
Rust slides Marty’s half-empty beer across the table to me, which I receive with a crooked smile and a quick hand.
“Sure I won’t catch whatever he had?”
He shrugs. “Y’ain’t as deadbeat as the rest of ’em. Oughta drag you down to their level.”
I snort. “What, you don’t think you’re deadbeat?”
He huffs. “I’m worse.”
Bitter, the beer washes over my tongue, leaves that funny aftertaste I never really liked, not the first time, not the last. I don’t suppose I’ll ever turn one down though, not if it was offered to me: I’d accept it if only to win points with whoever it was, points I could spend at a later date.
“Maybe,” I start, “if you were a little more deadbeat, you’d be popular. Go out with the boys.”
When he meets my eyes momentarily, smirking, I have to grip my hand over my knee, fingertips digging into bone, and consciously remind myself via mantra not to let my face freeze. He hums, voice smooth and low like liquor, “What, like youdo?”
I should be pissed off, really. Maybe I will be. Instead, though, I choke on the smart retort I had meticulously configured in my head, some quip that would’ve maybe interested him based on what caught him before.
I don’t know whether it would have been worse pretending like it never happened. That’s my strong point: pretending. It’s his, too, when he wants it to be. Maybe we could’ve outlasted it – all we needed was stamina.
But, instead, it’s this. Looking across at each other and knowing exactly what’s going on in the other’s head. I can see exactly how he thinks of me, what he wants to do. When he tilts his head ever so slightly, my neck glows with a promise, like the movement was mine in the first place. When I would bite at the pendant of my necklace, he used to narrow his eyes, like he ought to yank the chain off my neck. But now, he looks on softly, so unlike him, his own fingers at his own lips. I know what it feels like – I’ve kissed him there, too.
“Don’t give me that. At least Geraci would stop shit-talkin’ ye,” I manage, tearing myself away. “Swear he’s stuck at sixteen or somethin’. But—you don’t mind it, do you?”
He shakes his head. “‘f he was smarter, maybe I would. Jus’ likes the sound of his own voice.”
The clock has replaced me as his focal point – I can’t help but feel jealous.
“S’why I like you,” I mumble from behind my beer. “First time I met you, I thought you’d make me feel stupid.
That seems to get him.
He blinks, a barely noticeable twitch. “Do I? I don’t mean to.”
Can I spin this? I’m sure, if I were a little more awake, I’d be able to spin this.
Some evil part of me hopes to make him feel guilty, to trick him into feeling tenderness for me, though I know the pursuit of that would be in vain. The type of men I know how to work—creatures of habit that take the exact path you want them to, to believe that they’re the real seducers—Rust seems entirely separate from that. He can sniff out rehearsal and practice, that robotism, like a dog – he sees it enough in criminals, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s called in for favours across state police departments.
When I met him the first time, I shook his hand, smiled, friendly-like, only to be met with rigidity and stoicism. No trouble, of course: some people just are that way. Wild horses on the highway. But his quietness?—now, that had set alarm bells off in my head. Boys at the precinct were loud – you couldn’t pay ‘em to shut up about their weekends, their football, their college years, their fuckin’ yards. When I was first exposed to it, I thought I’d gain a lot of friends. But then I realised they weren’t so much talking with me as they were talking at me. It’s why they’re so easy to read: they just tell you everything you want to know right off the bat. Even their secrets are bursting at the seams of their fat mouths, begging to be released.
But Rust?—doesn’t talk until he finds it necessary. It’s impressive. Before that, though, the trait was enviable. I had—have—no comparable method. Even though, at first, it can seem blunt, even cold, his eloquence is refreshing. Never running in circles – only determinedly forward. So intimidating, almost like a freight train – I have to consciously keep myself from jerking back and out of the way.
How low he must really think of me then, to see me like this. And I know he does: he sees. Everything I might have done to prevent it perhaps even had the opposite effect. I hate, I burn, I curse: it’s ugly. I cry over cases I would’ve left behind in two months tops, anyways, onto the next. I obsess over just another woman in the box. I think about him almost constantly.
“You don’t,” I mumble, wondering if I ought to be wishing myself far away. “Make me feel dumb, that is. Not me. Others, I can’t speak for.”
We’ll have to leave soon – no doubt, this local bar is used to slow days and early nights, a blissful routine rudely disrupted by two outsiders who haven’t even really shown them good business. I glance over at the barkeep, slumped over the scuffed wooden counter and flatly watching the football up on the boxy TV set, and I recall my first job. Then, too, I’d let men twice my age buy me drinks, flirted with them. Was worth the tip money.
Rust hums, though I really wish he wouldn’t speak at all. “Don’t pay mind to what Marty said.”
My neck prickles.
He’s not trying to console me, is he? No, that’s not like him. Besides, it’s not like any amount of coddling could reverse the merciless truths I’m constantly reminded of in this line of work – if I’ve learned anything about sympathy, it’s that it doesn’t fix shit. If anything, it’s just another complication. It can seem beautiful, but, really, it isn’t. I can miss it, miss its warmth, miss the kind, sweet nothings my husband would whisper into my hair on the hardest nights, but it never changed the fact that I would have to get up in the morning and do it again. Rust knows this, has maybe lived this, so he’s not trying to console me.
Maybe he’s trying to defend Marty.
Sharp and sure, that anger comes lurching up in my throat, slashing and snarling.
The sensible part of me—what I hope is the larger part of me—knows this is not possible. Rust understands Marty’s faults better than anyone, even himself, even his wife.
“Thing is,” I mumble bitterly, “he really means it, don’t he? He just don’t show it.” I trace the warm, smooth rim of the bottle with a light finger, though my mind is currently toying with the idea of jamming it violently down the opening. “Maybe it means more that he does keep it hidden – at least some part of him knows it’s wrong.”
Placid in the periphery of my vision, Rust shrugs. “‘s what separates us from our killers. Feelin’ it ain’t the problem. Resistance is where strength is tested.”
“Ego,” I chuckle darkly.
He hums. “Fragile ego.”
Underneath my smile lies an uneasiness stirred by his criticism.
Rust is not gentle with his opinions – I don’t suppose that’ll ever change. Resistance is a losing game – not even he is immune to the impermanence of these things. I’m sure he said that to me once, on a night like this.
I’ve never been very good at refraining from things. Even from an early age, I just couldn’t say no. Teenage years: alcohol, drugs, sex. If it was tossed my way, I’d take it, anything I could get, hungry to experience something.
Ha!—maybe I actually am more like Marty Hart than I’d like to admit. He’s trying to be an adult, albeit really, really poorly. As long as he believes he’s a good, family man, then his reality is protected. But I know I’m rotten, really. One of the boys at the precinct will call me pretty—in that sick way somewhere between the unchecked lust of a man and his paternal right to claim—but, below, I know I’ve got sickness swimming through my veins. Not blood. Something accumulated over the years, maybe from pretending all the time.
I feel like I want to cut things, break them. Told myself to hang on until I retire, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ll break. What will Rust think of me then?
Maybe I was his low point: that fault in resistance.
Some awful, gnawing feeling collects at the pit of my stomach, like black tar. Must be all those cigarettes.
“Wha’s in that head?” he probes suddenly, stealing razor-sharp, fleeting glances.
I shrug, swallowing down a bout of nausea. “I dunno.” And I really don’t. Behind the surface tension, I don’t know what I feel, only that I do, and it’s so, so much. “It kinda—makes me happy to see him like that: jealous. ‘Cause he knows I’m good, and he’s wondering why he’s finishing what I started. He knows he don’t deserve it. Not like I do.”
My confession lingers in the air like smoke – I have mind to reach a hand up and wave it all away, or suck it down, deep, erasing reality. Fuck. I’ve always been a little off when reading into Rust’s quiet – with that tightrope he seems to have mastered, I know I should avoid any step at all—it could just as easily miss its mark—but I can never seem to help myself.
I stare at him—and I think it makes him uncomfortable, though there’s nothing there, not any normal human reaction, in his face for me to draw from. That’s fine. In my gut, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it down.
“You want to be seen as competent,” he finally says, a simple-enough statement.
I scrunch my nose up distastefully. “No, I want to be competent.”
“Well, what good is bein’ somethin’ if there’s no-one there to witness it?”
Unable to press down an exasperated sigh, I close my eyes, roll them with all the subtlety I can manage.
Foul words push under my tongue, like vomit.
I don’t know if I’m in the mood for this tonight: smart conversation. What feels like debate. Maybe if he hadn’t been given my case, I’d take him up on the challenge, but I’ve already lost.
I eye him, try to figure out his game.
“I dunno, Rust,” I tell him flatly. “I think that’s called having an identity issue.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Most people do.”
My chest burns. “This isn’t a go at me, is it?”
Slow, he draws the ashtray towards him from across the table, as if the grind of the glass against the wood is a noise that ought to be savoured.
I could be deaf, but reading his lips would be easy: “And how’d this be about you exactly?”
I’m able to fight off the initial instinct to wince, the way in which he delivers the words, calm and deliberate, stinging like a slap to the face. What’s worse is the growing impression that he’s as bored of me as I am.
With a furrowed brow, I watch him, heartbeat thrumming in my ears.
“I ain’t out to get you, s’you can quit lookin’ at me like I kicked you or somethin’.”
Frowning shallowly and trying to pretend like I’m not, I glance away and commit to rearranging my face—but at the glimpse of that twitch at the corner of his mouth in my periphery, I know I’m only digging a deeper grave for myself. The noticeable heat of my embarrassment must please him.
Playing with the food.
And I’ve got nothing to say to him—not a single word or phrase up to par, nothing to measure up to Rust’s clinical detachment, let alone destabilise him. He might’ve been reciting the coroner’s report. There’s nothing I can say to scathe him—and fuck, I want to leave a mark, prove to him that I can. I scan him for weakness, but either I’m still too stunned to see it or there is none. I have no plan of attack and no line of defence.
Rust seems to soften in the knowledge of this.
“I mean,” he begins, knowing now that I’m really listening, “identity ain’t fixed – it’s not permanent. I don’t scrutinise my appearance. I don’t mind my body, and my body don’t mind me. My personality hardly feels under my control – ‘s just somethin’ that is and will be—‘n’, I guess, will change, but only against my will, never because of it. Feels pointless to feel insecure about that.”
Is this supposed to be some fucked-up attempt at advice?
My priorities changed, but this place never has, never does, never will. So, it’s all dumb and the people are dumb and this bar is dumb and the boys at the precinct are dumb and, fuck, I wish Rust were dumb, too. I feel pathetic, and he does not alleviate that feeling at all. If he were dumb, I could laugh at him and make myself feel better. I could laugh at myself for sleeping with a dumb man. Instead, I think of him religiously and crave his approval. Afflicted with the knowledge that he needs to be corrupted to want me, that I’m awful enough to want it enough to corrupt him again. Tainted waters. It would be so much more comfortable if I could look down on him.
My skin writhes and ripples, and I know the only thing that would soothe it is if he touched me. Jesus and the sick man—or some polluted version of that.
My world swings under a bout of nausea as it begins to spiral – the beer does not help.
Maybe he’s waiting it out, like I’m trying to. Forgetting is the wisest decision anyone could make, the most fortunate outcome. Though, my efforts are paradoxical: I think so, so much about not thinking about it all.
“Sure seems like y’think about yourself a good deal, too, s’don’t you criticise me,” I mumble, clumsy. It’s a mistake to even open my mouth again – he’ll use it all against me eventually.
Rust hums again, low, some muscle twitching in his jaw, like his body has no clue what to do when not blindly occupied with a cigarette. “Never said I don’t think about myself,” he rectifies, staring at the sweaty palms I’m wringing together tightly against the lip of the table.
I allow my mouth to pool with saliva, trying to combat the increasing dryness of my mouth.
“Guess the thinkin’ part is where insecurity comes from in the first place,” I add after swallowing.
When my eyes dart up to look at him, his are on my throat.
Immediately, I look away.
Maybe this is the bad kind of intimacy.
The intensity of his attention is looming, sifting through my thoughts like sand.
Sometimes, I think he has me figured out but just couldn’t care less about what he’s found. He’s feeling the power of my burning desire for him – maybe it amuses him. Maybe he’s waiting to mechanise it, letting me sit idle while a use for me finds him (if ever). Maybe I know things. Maybe I can break things open. Maybe he can take my cases from me. Maybe I can tire him out, put him to sleep.
It’s almost worse that he hasn’t put me to work yet.
Maybe it really was just something in the water. Maybe all I need is to visit somebody close to me.
“Ever heard o’ that theory? ‘bout internal monologue?” Rust asks softly, leaning in and tipping his head down like only I’m worthy of hearing this here.
My leg jerks and I can’t place why. I nod, face hot.
“I think ‘s bullshit—‘bout some not having one. Think everybody’s got that voice in their heads.” He pauses, squints. “Mm, maybe that’s a little generous.”
I laugh – I hope it makes him feel good. In truth, I know he couldn’t care less.
“What d’you think it’d be like? No voice.”
The world seems so close right now, wrapping its fuzzy arms tight around us, buzzing in my ears, shadows fur-soft over my face. What does he want me to say? I wish he’d tell me, offer me respite.
I shrug, and it’s honest, my resignation. “No voice don’t mean no thought.”
“Alrigh’. Then, what about no thought?”
I shrug again. “I like thinking.”
He huffs, angling himself back away from me. Have I disappointed him? Somewhere deep in the pit of my tummy, there’s that fleck of worry, something that tastes an awful lot like vomit.
I expect him to finally stop talking.
But “I get tired of it,” is what he says instead. “In between cases, or these—moments where I feel like I could burn a hole through myself ‘f I spent ’nough thought on it. ‘s heavy, like they weigh me down.” He pushes the ashtray away, his fingers the only part of him moving.
Swept up in the rising tide of your own life, hurting around you in some never-ending circle or spiral of which you happen to be the centre. Swimming with black-eyed angels. I know how he feels – I used to feel that way. Maybe I still do, sometimes. Clinging on to the tenderness my husband used to have for me like it could save me from the guilt I would feel when I moved on. No-one would pull me out: that much was true enough. That memory of stability, of the good times, only depressed me, moving from Brooklyn back to Louisiana. Feeling small in my own life, like a piece on a chessboard, with no semblance of control, only duty, chasing this idea of who I used to be. Hunting down the bad men, wondering what upper hand is driving them across the squares, contemplating the carpenter that fashioned the pieces. Too big of a big picture can be detrimental. The fact that I know this to be true doesn’t make me an exception.
“I think you’re tired of the things you think about,” I muse, a headache beginning to expand between my temples – perhaps the heat has finally gotten to my head. “Space better occupied by other shit.”
I’m careful not to pay attention to Rust’s reaction, if there even is one, since the weight of his interest is pressing over my face where I really wish his lips would.
“Like what?” he challenges.
His eyes glint with curiosity, a blade’s sharp edge.
I bite my tongue.
“You think you know me?” It’s more a statement than a question.
I shrug. “You think you know me, don’t ye?”
Though, he kinda does. I think he’s proud that he can read me, but maybe that’s me overcomplicating things. Maybe I’m just another person to him. I wonder if he thinks I’m predictable. Boring, negligible, painfully average. Good for one thing, and that one thing was a mistake, anyway.
Look at him, now: his eyes have dropped to elsewhere, but there’s a soft smirk that curls up on his face, the hint of a pink tongue that traces lightly over his teeth.
Geraci always talks shit about that look whenever Rust closes yet another case, securing a tough confession. “So fuckin’ up ‘imself, ain’t he? Jesus.” Sure, he pisses me off—for different reasons. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that he’s worthy of admiration.
He smiles to himself – I don’t trust it. “You’re calling me arrogant.”
“Are you?” I press, gnawing at the inside of my cheek. I’m surprised at the tepidity of my voice, considering how I’m covered in boils and burns in my head.
He doesn’t have anything to say to that, only hums in response, seemingly amused.
“Doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I murmur. “People are scared of bein’ known, so nobody really tries no more.”
“I don’t observe people for intimacy purposes.”
Then why does he fucking look at me like that?
A year ago, I’d have put it down to my own desires warping my perception of reality. Really, he wasn’t interested; he was only paying me my due amount of scrutiny in order to keep his mental file of me up to date. Really, he didn’t want to touch me; really, he was just someone who fiddled with his own hands, maybe to remind himself that he could be his own from time to time. Lust is such a dangerous thing – any deeper than surface level, and it has the very strong potential to kill you. If you want something against your better judgement, do you really even want it? The haze of having Rust come so close to me is dampened by such doubts.
But at this point, he either wants me, or I’m crazy. Shit, maybe I’d rather be just that. I’ve seen his eyes like this—dark and bottomless—when hands were unzipping my skirt, or dragging over my skin. To deny intimacy? Now that’s arrogance. Anddelusion. Shit, and I thought he was so above all that stuff. Does he think I can’t figure him out?
Surely his opinion of me can’t be that poor.
My hand cramps up as I punch down the instinct to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Sure you do,” I press. And I’m right. I hope I’m right.
His stare thickens into something different, what I think might be a black, molten form of gratification. Then, it hardens, cools in a split second into these tough, jaw-breaker pellets. I’d say it was confrontational, but then his eyes flutter just as he happens to swallow thickly. Is that his pulse in his throat?
I rub at my puffy eyes with a stiff set of fingers.
Rust drops his eyes, brushes his hand over the side of his blazer where his cigarettes are sitting warm and ready beneath.
“What, you—lonely again or some shit?” he asks.
I almost recoil at the sudden bitterness of his tone.
I snort good-heartedly, but, really, the comment stings just right—he knows where to press—all the breath knocked out of my chest. “O-kay, Rust. That an accusation?”
“No. ’S an observation. Thought you jus’ loved those,” he combats flatly.
Chest burning, I have to save myself, jump ship, and look away. My mouth tastes like grainy bile.
“You were lonely last summer. That’s why you came to me.”
The dim light above us flickers, his face phasing in and out of shadow before me like a candle in the wind.
I roll my jaw.
Does he look back on it with disdain?
“No,” I snap instinctively, instantly burned by the satisfaction that crosses his eyes.
My breath hitches plaintively. Every fibre of my body trembles and burns to defend myself. There’s not a single word that could repair his opinion of me.
“Or—yeah.” Shut up.
I rub at my temple, desperate for relief – do they have pills for this shit? – which does not come. If he feels any pity for me, it certainly doesn’t show.
The harsh line of my mouth trembles. “I just thought you understood me. Or made an attempt to, at least, but maybe that part was self-projection. ‘Cause nobody ‘round here’s like you. I know you think that’s stupid and I was being naïve or—” I swallow though my throat is dry as ever, “—or dumb, or somethin’, but that’s what I felt. At the time.”
His gaze is fixed on my neck.
“At the time,” he echoes. It’s a question, I realise after a couple moments.
“Yeah. Fuck y'want me to say, asshole? 'm not—I’m not gonna embarrass myself with you, Rust. That what you want me to do? Show you just how dumb I can get—?”
“Sure like to speak for me, hm?” he bites back quietly, making it so damn easy to run right over him, to feverishly stamp out that insufferable fucking softness to his voice. Shit, I wish he’d just raise it and yell at me already.
“—Yeah, whatever. You like this shit, don’t you? Y’think you deserve a fight?—well, I’ll give you one. That what you want? ‘Cause what?—what, you get to ignore me, pretend I don’t exist, act like you’re above fuckin’ me—” his eyes flit away, bringing my roiling frustration to a crest, “—No, don’t you fuckin’ look away,” I scold, a bite, jutting a crooked finger into his space.
He obeys, but that look in his pale eyes is so hollow, it almost makes me feel bad for saying anything at all. Almost.
I try to press down my anger, but it’s spilling over, now, far beyond things so trivial as control. I clasp my hands together in a prayer that they will finally listen to me and not move again.
“Fact that you feel anything at all makes you feel like shit, huh?”
His expression has glazed over, cool and smooth.
Half-expecting him to walk out and rightfully abandon me here, I stare hard at him, like I might chip into that exterior. If I managed it, I’d slip it in my pockets as proof. Silently, I beg him to prove me right.
“Sorry,” I snap. No, I’m not. I hope it cuts at him. “You do what you want, I don’t fuckin’ care. But, please, do not patronise me like that again, Rust.”
God offers no help with the silent plea I send Him. He does not care, so I shouldn’t care, and that’s the end of things. I’ve survived worse natural disasters than him. He’s just a man, and this is just what happens with them. Still, the disappointment floods like poison under my skin. I’m a stupid girl, really.
“I understand if you regret things, but you don’t have to say it out loud. It’s mean. But, fuck, I dunno, maybe you mean to be.”
I take a moment to untangle the knot in my throat. He watches it all, quiet again, his eyeline sitting heavy over where the skin shifts and stretches over my neck.
I adjust the collar of my shirt, fiddle with the gold necklace that sits hot over the contour of bone. Rust stares as I wedge the small pendant tightly in the vice of my thumb and forefinger.
“Feels like you don’t even fuckin’ like me half the time. All the time.”
Christ, I should’ve left with Johansson.
My heart is racing like a wild mustang – it’s a surprise, really, that that old hunting dog lying over by the bar hasn’t noticed, singled me out as something to chase, to kill. My belly’s exposed, soft and ripe and asking for it. I forget, sometimes, that there are things out there that kill things that kill, too.
He doesn’t plan on giving me a break; I wouldn’t deserve it, anyway. “Wha's it matter to you if I like you or not?”
My cheeks burn furiously.
I stare at that bone-bird tattoo that fledges from the nest of his sleeve. With the way my head’s spinning, it almost looks like its skeleton wings are actually moving, unfurling and ready for pilgrimage.
“It don’t.” It’s a disgrace to myself to answer that god-awful question, but what’s more pathetic is the way I shrink into myself when Rust’s attention crowds in over my face. “I jus’ thought you knew me almost as well as I did.”
“And currently?” he asks.
The moment hangs.
“Just answer. I already know – just wanna see if you’ll lie again.”
I close my eyes a second—mistake—and breathe, breathe in and then breathe out, shaky but slow. It’s no use.
“Same.”
He nods. “Not better?”
I shake my head. “No, never better.”
Furrowing his brow, Rust tilts his head down slightly, a soft curl falling gentle over his tense forehead. “But you wanted intimacy.”
So it is intimacy to him?
Maybe this should count as a win for me, but it certainly don’t feel like it. This isn’t the slow slip and slide of last summer’s end – though the heat had swallowed whole everything from here to the other side of the Mississippi, there was something so clipped about the words that left me, left him. I’m sure I was more drunk then than now, but, even so, my mind had been so level, like I’d done it all in my sleep. Now, here, I have done it in my sleep. I’ve revisited him a hundred times in my daydreams, but all that practice has left me for dead. I would’ve killed for an opportunity like this a month ago – it’s like he’s taunting me. It should be easy.
Rust is smart enough to make me wonder if he wants me to feel this way.
Intimacy is planned and eventual, whether that’s due to his power or some cosmic fate. Everyone knows the decision they’re going to make, somewhere in their brains, deep inside. People only ask for advice to condone their decisions, to spread out the responsibility, which, at the end of the day, still remains solely with them. Shit, he’s rubbing off on me: I sound like a fuckin’ asshole.
No, all this thinking won’t save him from the sensation of human feeling, emotions. No amount of planning prepares you for skin-to-skin touch. No time spent evaluating can undo it either, and I’ve tried so hard. His way doesn’t work.
“Everyone wants intimacy,” I end up rambling, voice thin and dry and brittle. “Even folks that don’t want intimacy want intimacy. ’s not love or sex, really, I don’t think, though those are good, too. It’s not a way to find yourself. It’s jus’ trust. Or companionship—”
“And that’s what you want?”
Carefully, I rake my eyes over his face. Does he ever flush from the heat?
Hopeless and too muddled to bother with concealing it, I try to assess whether he’s displeased with me. I try to memorise this moment, so I’ll be able to turn it over in my head later, just another one of my crime scene photographs.
“Dunno yet,” I confess quietly. “I’ve had partners. And partners. When I was younger, I thought I’d have this life packed chock full of amazing relationships, and these—connections.”
The soft, disappointed eyes of my husband come to mind, which haunt all my relationships. I’m so hungry for another body, for connection. Why does it seem so easy for other people?
“Truth is, it don’t happen all that much. To me, at least. You?”
Surly and bone-tired, Rust shakes his head. “Didn’t have much hope for it growin’ up,” he admits.
“But you wanted it,” I press, clumsy and clinging to the sag of his voice. Of course, he’ll pick up on the trace of hopeful, aimless, false victory that undercuts my words; he’s the only one who ever could.
For a moment, though, I second-guess myself.
It’s pathetic, really: I’d give almost anything to walk as him for a day, though, even then, I’m not sure I’d understand him any better.
Sometimes, my imagination runs away from me: in my dreams, I do. I wake under the impression that we’re one and the same, that, just maybe, he, similarly, is dreaming as me. It’s a pulsing obsession, difficult to conceal. Whenever a moment becomes still, I think about it: at night, he is transported; in his dreams, he touches with my hands, sighs with my voice, tastes with my mouth. Then, at least, that would explain these funny sensations I get in the morning: so weathered and worn, a strange ache in my muscles, like I’ve been sleepwalking.
How else could he know me so well?
Or maybe I’ve really fucking lost it. Somewhere along the way – maybe after seeing that half-eaten body swaddled in thin cotton in its freezer cradle – I think something else took the wheel. Why that thing is racing towards him, I have no idea. It’s laughable, really.
Rust blinks calmly down at his hands. “Reckon the deniers are dumb?” he murmurs.
Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I do my best to press back against the foul memory of dismembered limbs. Whoever had eaten the man—who was now beyond recognition—did they feel satisfied? Comforted with how forever close he was to them now? When I was small, I used to think sex was crawling into another person's body, like a cave, and letting all of their insides warm you, love you, wrap you tight.
I swallow thickly.
“Your words, not mine,” I reply through a tight smile. “Reckon it’s easy to find a distraction.”
"Have you given up?" he asks. “Finding a distraction?”
I don’t entertain him with a proper answer to that – I merely shrug and scratch at my scalp, tucking loose strands of sweaty hair back into the loops of my braid. Rust must be frustrated with me. To want a companion, to want the good life. Rivalling Marty in my delusion.
He slides his hands into his lap, continuing: “Distraction is the way to peace?”
I shrug again – I think it’s starting to piss him off. “For a time, I guess.”
“So, ‘s that how you’re takin’ quittin’? Think about other stuff whenever you want a smoke? Occupy yourself?”
Once I realise my leg is going dead, fuzzy from sitting still so long in this dark booth, I flex my thigh, flex my hands under the table, wide-open and then tight-shut, processing the blank slate of his gaunt face. I press my fingers into the sticky vinyl, delight in the interrupted drag of them up, up, up as they curl to fists, my shoulders up to my ears.
When he says things like that, it makes it so hard to dislike him. I almost wish he’d ignore me, like he did the first couple weeks before it became clear to the both of us that it couldn’t be undone: his back constantly to me, sending messages only through Marty, refusing to look in my direction, like I might tempt him again into being a version of him he hated. At least, before, his coldness hadn’t been directed at me specifically. Then, it was a retaliation, a wall meant to keep me out. Where were his books on philosophy then?—to tell him that attachment leads to desire leads to suffering? That kind of suffering would be better than this kind.
This is worse. This is so much worse. I’d rather not have something at all than have it toy with me like this.
It takes a considerable amount of co-ordination to fabricate the apathy in my posture, my eyes, my expression, to compensate for the unease that pulses like a new artery in my throat – though, at the silvery glint that flickers in his eyes, I know it’s all for nothing. He’s already seen the hurt that, really, I can’t pin on anyone but myself. He’s raking his eyes slowly over my face. It’s fucking mean. Do me the favour of a mercy-killing, God.
I never even told him I was trying to quit.
“What,” I begin, concentrating very hard on keeping myself from stammering and from slurring, from crying and from grasping at his hand, “like that association thing?”
I’ve heard of it, obviously. I know every trick at this point: old wives’ tales to the latest research papers at the state university library. It’s psychological: whenever you want something, instead, think of awful, gross, repulsive things, and make yourself hate it. I’ve tried it before, but it doesn’t always work. How can you convince yourself that one thing is disgusting when it’s undeniable how good it really was?
Rust nods.
“I mean, I tried it,” I tell him lowly.
Overstatement: I tried it for approximately three days and two nights before I caved, unlocking the drawer in my study with shaky, desperate hands, hungry.
“But I’m always thinkin’ about it.”
Shit. He seems to have regained a nerve: Rust stares calmly ahead at me—not through me or just past me; at me. This is what I wanted, isn’t it?
He leans his weight over his forearms upon the table, on offence. Is this how he works his suspects? Well, shit, I’ve studied his methods from the privacy of the other side of the false mirror enough times to be able to answer that, actually: this is how he works his suspects. Initially, at least, to gauge their personality, their wants, their fears, what they need him to be.
Thing is, I can’t pin down his intention with me. Is it just the satisfaction of the kill? Or maybe revenge for what I did to him last August. I broke down his walls: an unforgivable sin. I condemned him to the effort of building them back up, of shoving me out—if I ever managed to intrude in the first place. Maybe I deserve this.
With his sleeves folded back, the dark lines of Rust’s tattoo jut out, growing along his tawny, leather-tan skin like lichen. I try not to stare.
His eyes complete a pre-emptive scan of my face, and, really, I know I should not let him see any change there in my expression, though my mouth twitches to frown. I try to gather my forces. I try to prepare myself for it, for that inevitable intrusion.
“‘f you’re so desperate for it, why’re you fightin’ back?” he asks, unblinking and cruel.
My mouth twists, and I let it fall into the frown it wants. “‘Cause I wanted to feel better.”
It sounds dumb because it is dumb, even though it’s true.
Low, he hums. He straightens, softens, and finally leans away. It’s like the vacuum around me leaves with him, and, there, now, it’s easier to breathe.
He must note the way my chest rises and falls so stiffly, like there’s a weight resting over my heart.
“Withdrawal’s a breeze, ain’t it?”
“You’re not fuckin’ funny,” I scoff, digging my nails punishingly into my palm. He smokes and drinks like he welcomes cancer, or hopes for it, so I don’t think we’re on a level playing field.
He quirks his head. “Well, do you?”
“Do I what, Rusty?”
Amused, he rolls his jaw. Good – I hope I’ve provoked him.
“Do you feel better?”
I run my tongue over my teeth. “Sometimes,” I reply truthfully. “Not right now.”
He searches my face.
“I can give you a ride home,” he offers.
Fuck, and what will that be like? Ten times worse than this. I’ll come away the husk of a woman, worn down by his disapproval. My own fault for wanting anything from him in the first place, really.
Teeth gritted together, I shake my head, ready to pull a muscle in my damn neck. “Didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Sorry.”
No, I’m not. I ought to slap him, and then run away, back home, or back to my house, or to a brand new city. Or he could finally cuss me out, save me the wondering. Then, I could lick my wounds and they would finally stop reopening.
I scratch at my scalp.
Rust eyes my hand like he’d like to rip the bad habit away from my body. For a moment, I think he will—the tendons in his hand flex and writhe under the skin—but, no, he only brushes a thumb against the valley between his nose and cheek, and he holds his tongue for once.
“Wasn’t offended,” he corrects firmly. “I’ll take you home.”
Flashing with annoyance, my eyes dart up viciously to penalise him. “And what?” I hiss.
He sits back, doesn’t answer the question.
Jaw clenched, I wait to see if he’ll look away, but he doesn’t.
My irritation soon fizzles through, condenses to a low, simmering understanding, steadily tended to by the intensity of his steadfast gaze.
Oh.
My eyes soften.
Oh – I have him, don’t I?
He shows no signs of the tentativeness he had displayed last time—if Rust could ever be tentative. His eyes do not shift and scuttle around me; they meet mine, challenging my comfort. He does not tuck himself into a corner; he remains leaned over the table, just like that. How could I have known?
I stare back, brow pinched in confusion.
In the heat of last August, I’d peeled away from him knowing exactly how I’d convinced him he wanted me. Maybe I was evil for it – a good person wouldn’t use somebody’s faults against them, would they? And maybe that’s what it was: selfish. If he hates me, he’d be right to.
Which is why I’m so puzzled that he doesn’t. Or rather, indifference was the baseline. Hell. And this? I don’t know.
Swelling dangerously with the well-loved memory of his delirious mouthings over my skin, I grow rigid.
My temples throb and ache, the threat of tears still very real.
“Mind?” he asks – I watch, wide-eyed, as he pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket.
Trembling slightly, I shake my head, though saliva is already pooling over the pit of my tongue, warm and soft, just like my desire. Luckily, he’s too preoccupied with his lighter to see it: how my body ripples at the scrape of his voice.
The promise of nicotine dances like a phantom in the mouth, just from watching him place a cigarette between his lips. When he flicks open his Zippo, the sharp, shuddering candle of it taunts me, and I finally understand what they say about moths and flames.
I watch him take a long drag.
That all-consuming hunger lurches up in me again, and I swallow the warm spit that’s steadily been filling my mouth.
Oh, Christ. This can’t be real. Desire shouldn’t be this bloody. Desire shouldn’t be the thing with teeth and claws, the ugly thing that tips into violence. Or obsession. With how often my thoughts return to us in the summer, I’ve wondered obsession as a possibility. The difference between myself and those who commit crimes of passion is control. Rust is dangerous for me. What is he thinking? What’s in his head? I ache to pry it open and explore, to swim close to him, for my skin to melt into his, to consume and be consumed. Not a moment’s peace, and that’s what I’m chasing, isn’t it? Peace and quiet?
I don’t have to say anything – he can read it all, mulling over the fine changes in my expression, the softening of my body, some pre-emptive instinct. Will he touch me tonight?
With a cautious hand, ready to jolt back if met with teeth, I reach out to him and remove the cigarette from his pinched fingers—which he allows—then bringing it to my mouth, taking a drag myself, nice and slow, good and deep, a sigh, like home.
He watches me.
“Don’t say anything.”
And he doesn’t. He just watches, watches, watches as I take another drag. He shivers, and I feel it reverberate through my bones.
“What are you thinkin’ about?” I ask him softly, pressing down a quivering breath, smoking his cigarette. I’ve never mustered the courage to ask before.
For once, though, I really don’t have to: I know exactly where his head is. Where else? He’s back in that room, infected by the drowse and drunken fever of August, with me, living it again. Where I’d coaxed him into the temptation, wicked as the snake in the garden. He should’ve pushed me to leave with Johansson and Marty – of course, I would’ve stayed. I’m a rotten thing, and my heart is a bloodhound. He’s the better of the two of us. I’ll take whatever of him I can get – anything.
He meets my eyes directly, so hopeless, so raw. Is he asking? He shouldn’t be.
But what will he have me do? I’m at his disposal, really.
“And?” I ask, throat dry.
When he moves to speak, the words that leave him are low and slow: “You did something to me,” he manages.
I scoff.
“S’that a good or bad thing?” I ask.
Rust huffs like what I said was funny. More likely, though, it’s the way my eyes are so wide, the way my hand is pressed between my thighs, that amuses him. “Can’t decide.”
My mouth trembles as my eyes scrape over his neck, which I know, I remember, to be hot and alive, thick with it over the pulse. I was so high off of it: his warmth, his weight, his press.
I indulge in one last drag, using the last scraps of my energy to conjure the pungent stench of rotting flesh in the cruel sunshine, the pick of eager flies and their cacophonous buzzing, the churn of vomit in the stomach. I look at Rust and try to do the same: the months of silence, his back decidedly turned to me, him accepting my case, and his arrogance and his apathy and his severity. He is a harrowing connection that I should rather not have made.
The technique doesn’t work. I don’t know why I thought, even for a minute, that this time would be different from the last.
With him staring calmly at me, like I deserve it—the trap, the squirming sensation over my spine, the hopeless, unavoidable heat that claims my face—it’s just another arrow pointing to the same conclusion. Maybe we should just let August have its way with us again. Twin plagues.
Trembling ever so slightly, blood so warm, so thick, I flick ashes out into the tray between us.
“I should put this out,” I mumble, though my hand yearns to return it to my mouth.
“’s my cigarette,” Rust mutters.
“Sorry.” I offer my hand to him. “Want it back?”
I know what I must look like to him, pupils dark, the size of the moon, like a plate. Here, in the darkest part of the dark bar, I open myself to him, warm, molten, inviting. And God, this must be a dream—because I know what he wants, and I know that he’ll accept me. How we got here doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe he’s thought about it for some time, and only now, in a moment of stillness with him, have I even noticed. Too caught up in the fine details of a painting to think of the artist’s intention, which is always more important.
Silent, stare inexorable, he accepts the cigarette, only touching my fingers quick, like I’d burn him. Maybe I will. Serves him right: he was always going to haunt me either way. I ought to get mine while I still can.
The hunger laps at me.
I want to coax him open-wide. I want to peel away his demeanour and wrap myself close to him. Body heat is the best way to keep warm, isn’t it? I’m sure I read about that somewhere. It’s still fresh in my mind, like a cut. I can’t manage a day without playing it over at least once. I want it again: I want to breathe him in and let him sit in my chest and seep into every cell and let him be part of me that way, at least until the next breath.
He can see it in my eyes: the freneticism of my thoughts, racing like a storm, desires like bullets like rain.
“You ever think about what you want?” I try asking him, voice strained tight over my heart in my throat.
“People only ever think about what they want,” he parries, batting away any trace of diffidence. He secures his cigarette between his lips, shifting. “Let’s leave.”
At his first movement, I slide out of the booth.
Sometime during our conversation, the place emptied out. It must have been around when I finished Marty’s leftover beer that the weight of the locals’ beady stares—which had already faded to the back of my mind, in the same way that a dark alleyway can still make you uneasy though you know nothing would ever happen to you there—finally left me. There are no witnesses left to see me following after Rust like a dog, my body thrumming like the lone bug zapper out on the porch, which cracks! just as we exit.
The broken clock reads three o’clock when we leave, but I know that, really, it’s only midnight.
Fortunately, the heat has cracked for once, like old, beat-up, splitting leather. Stepping out onto that night path, the breeze is warm and fragrant, dancing over my cheeks, playing gently with the loose threads of my hair. It’s a clear, blue, never-ending night – the dirt road which accompanies us is a long, winding, indigo river that spills unseen over the far, far horizon. The neighbouring fields—one a rolling stretch of grass; the other of wheat—are alive in the wind, flung one way on exhale, drawn the other upon inhale.
Thank God for the noise of it: their rustling whispers, in a language we can’t understand; the soft whistle of a passing gust of air; the firm, crisp crunch of dry mud and dust under my boots. Thank God for the sway of things: the cradle of humidity; the press of my arm to Rust’s, which he permits only for a second, with his face angled away. Then, he slows, coming to walk just behind me, still parallel.
Flickering strands of long-grass brush my knuckles – I grab onto one, pull the seeds off it in an easy swipe, and scatter them as we go, one by one.
Briefly, I glance over my shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes are fixed on me, on my every movement, like he’s making sure I’m actually real. The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile.
Rust’s cigarette flares between his lips.
I scratch gently at my wrist, reminded of the flowing of my blood just beneath the skin, hot and thick.
You get nowhere in life just hoping things will fall into your lap like this—and, anyway, what good is getting something that you didn’t work for? Where’s the gratification? It’s artificial, feeble as plastic. Christ, it was even a struggle to get my head around Johansson and his propensity to dole out favours. I understood a write-up – won’t pretend I’m above ass-kissing – but tidying up the office kitchen and keeping quiet about it? I thought it was stupid: letting people reap the rewards of your own effort, and for what?
So, the buzz of earning Rust’s touch that first time?—shit, nothing compared. No drug, no high; nothing. I really thought I did something. Satisfied some secret ambition I didn’t know I held. To have him like that. To be able to replay that night, swallow it like a pill. To look at him and know what was underneath his clothes and his skin, and perhaps further inside, too. Shit, I took so much from him, but the mental gymnastics of the effort justified it, right? And, now, he’s going to give it all up again. Wants it, even.
Haven’t I played this out a thousand times in my head? I’ve seen the future—a number of futures—where I’m able to argue for his affection. Fight for your love – that’s what my daddy used to tell me whenever he was feeling sentimental after yelling.
I’ve had endless conversations with him in my head, edited accordingly as time passed, as he changed, as I changed, as the air between us changed. Possible flirtation seemed silly, futile, after a week. Sex appeal would go unnoticed by him – wasn’t like he looked, anyway. Not the type to chase tail. I found myself longing for him to please linger uncomfortably in doorways to rooms I was in, to leave things near me and come and collect them just after I was gone so that, maybe, he’d still feel the warmth of my presence and understand it was only ever warm that way for him. The idea of genuine confession always sprung up during the quiet nights alone together in the bullpen, but I was always able to talk myself out of it when he wouldn’t so much as glance at me after two, three hours.
It must be a million threads of conversation up in my head, which is why I guess it’s so hard to untangle the great knot and retrieve just one, because, now, there are no words that come to mind when it matters. Or maybe it doesn’t matter: I don’t think he needs convincing at all.
“What you so quiet for?” he asks faintly.
When I look back, he’s stark against the brooding sky like some shadow-man. His outline hums like he’s pulling away into his own silhouette.
I can’t seem to smile. “Nothin’.”
He won’t push—at least, not on this—and I’m glad for it.
Rust’s beat-up semi is all lonely sat in a dip up in the road, waiting for us. Same semi he’d driven me home in from work this one week I was getting my car fixed up, in which a series of slow, mutual interrogations would take place along the light-streaked highway. In the office, you were lucky to drag a full sentence out of Rust, but, alone, it wasn’t so hard to get him to talk at all.
Maybe I had just wanted to be better than him, to learn how he worked, how he was such a good interrogator, and bleed him dry. That was why I couldn’t look away: every choice in his demeanour could help me surpass him.
Even then, I learned to be careful with my looks. I had the feeling he’d morph into something else if I stared long enough, the way the shadow in the corner of your bedroom changes shape when you’re bone-tired. Sometimes, he would. And on the Thursday night of that week, when he had pulled over and thrown up, shaking, into the dark thrush, I hadn’t uttered a word as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. But, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, I’d stared at him with the filmy eyes of a hungry nocturnal animal.
Then, at least, the curiosity wasn’t a burden. Not like it became when I drove myself home come that morning after.
I could tell it was different the moment I shifted awake, feigning a sleep for just a couple more minutes.
Dressed again and putting on a pot of coffee, his back was to me. I had shuffled up, pulled on my clothes, and I knew the stupor of the night had faded. So, really, when I stepped past him and he closed the door behind me without a word, I shouldn’t have been upset.
When I reach the pick-up first, I twist to look at him.
Rust has slowed to finish his cigarette at a safe distance, eyeing me warily.
He crushes the stub into the dirt, then glancing out into the long night.
“Straight home?” he asks.
I shake my head, and the rigid line of him gives just a little. It’s so dangerous to be seduced by your own influence, but the realisation that I’ve had any at all is fuel enough to the plea in my wide eyes.
Rust advances haltingly. If I move, I’m sure he’ll flinch and bolt. So, I test the theory: better to weed out what’s already decayed.
I angle myself towards him, open like a door. He tosses his jacket into the bed of his pickup, stepping through.
The heat seeps back between us, slow and thick like a flood of molasses, and it becomes very clear, suddenly, that we never should’ve tried to barricade ourselves. Pretty sure Rust’s known this a while, anyways: he’s the one who leans in for me, kisses me slow.
This time, his hands are quick to curl around my body, where the tension in that tight cord all down his spine has snapped. Or just eased up on him—but that’s unlikely. And unimportant. With his firm touch petting up my spine, climbing each rung, it’s all unimportant.
A pulse of arousal strikes me like an electric current as Rust pulls the blouse out of my skirt, his face close to me.
His tongue pushes into my mouth again, and I hum over the husk of nicotine. It’s a haze in the brain, one I’ve missed. My skin tingles and my thoughts warp in this leer, like a nic rush, only I haven’t had one of those in years and years.
I can’t exactly call what I’m feeling satisfaction. There’s no win to this. My teeth sunk into him so sweet last time, and the thrill of getting him, of tripping him up with his own desire, was almost as good as the actual feeling of him inside me. But it’s different now: so obvious, it’s funny. Though my first instinct is to doubt and pry apart, maybe want is the most trustworthy thing a person can feel. It’s animal and instinctive, and it’s inevitable, so it’s always true. Ugly, sometimes, but always there. There’s no room to question his want, because I can taste it on his tongue, I can feel it pressing over my stomach, I can hear it in the way he hums at the sear of my skin.
It must be a favour to me: the blatancy of it all. For however direct he may be, I’ve always felt that Rust has these plans within plans. Nothing is as it is on the surface: you have to dig to get to the good stuff. It’s disorienting, having it all laid out for me. And I’ll take anything he gives me.
I don’t want to leave any room for doubt in his mind either.
So, I clutch at him hungrily, so drunk on his warmth, and thump my back against the door he opens for me to close it again.
I don’t ask, and I’m glad that he doesn’t make me, only presses my body flush against the cool surface of his side-door, until the only part of me free to move are the fingers that curl over his arms, as if they could sink through the fabric and then the flesh underneath. There’s only dogs and ghosts out at this hour, anyway; eyes in the long-grass. No-one but them and him to see my hips jerk against the precise hand under my skirt.
He hadn’t looked at me this much before. Even when my eyes go glassy and I have to blink hard to try and regain my smarts, to not finish too quickly, I know he’s staring at me like a scientist.
When the next needy noise is drawn from me, I bury my face into his neck to save myself the embarrassment of being seen like this, even though it’s pointless. His fingers are dragging aside the damp fabric of my underwear anyway, sliding through my silky desire. When his knee shoves between my legs to keep apart, he changes the pressure of his hand, circles tightly over where shame does not apply. Restraint is a man-made practice that never prevails over biology. I should know this. Still, though, my face is hot as I whine into his shoulder.
Rust doesn’t ask me to look at him, not yet, and I’m so grateful for it. I bite into the meat of him at the push of one finger, then keen all the way to my toes at the hook of two, rocking against his palm thoughtlessly as he fucks the both of them in deep.
The clink of his belt buckle barely processes through the smoke of sticky eyes and open mouths and the press of his body. But the absence of his hand from my hip, of it working between us?—that’s what ushers normal sensation back into me. I recover from the limp slump against him, but not quickly enough to understand or resist him guiding my hand to wrap around his swollen cock, coated with spit.
He grunts as he tightens my grip around him, coaxes my hand how he wants it. In the back of my mind, though, of course I remember. Only, his fingers are so far inside that my head is spinning, teetering on the precipice of another thought I know I’ll lose, one that dissolves at the slight scrape of nail, one that would never matter as much as the soft then firm press of him against my cervix. My eyes water, and there licking at me is only a faint, abstract impression of embarrassment when Rust grips over my jaw, calloused heel of his palm heavy on my neck, and hauls me away from the hiding spaces of his body’s crevices.
“What, you fuckin’ shy now? You wanted it, so look,” he mumbles, digging his fingers into the soft parts of my face a little more, like there’s some hidden button beneath the surface that can make my droopy eyes fly back open. There must be because, somehow, it works. He angles my face by the scruff of my neck.
I can only stand to look between us for a few jumpy heartbeats before my eyes settle on the comfort of his even face, which he seems to accept readily, breath hitching. He does not blink. The intensity of his observations hounds me, lights me up like points on a star, even when my vision smears and melts at the dizzying curl of his fingers. Lucky for my weak knees he’s got his hand over the nape of my neck, his thighs pinning my own. I shake against him, some pathetic thing, and tremble when he keeps massaging there deep inside.
“Don’t go dumb on me, girl,” Rust scolds quietly when my hand loosens around him, his own having to leave the heat of my neck and come down to correct the pressure, the pull. My head lolls without the support of his hand. “Ain’t gon’ say nothin’?”
Words spill uselessly into a pool before me, slipping through my fingers. My pulse slams in my throat, lower, too, against his touch, each beat meeting him as he works me over again.
What I manage is a choked noise, all clogged up inside. I have little to do with it: just a body, a heartbeat and a compulsion to be near, nearer, nearest to him. Half a mind that’s lagging worse than the computers at work, that realises far too late that the body is curling into itself again, so tight, so wet, and fuck, fuck.
He removes his fingers, that slow drag, and tells me to turn. When I don’t—completely without, dull and aching—Rust twists and shoves me against the window, which goes cloudy at the breathy moan pushed up from my slack stomach.
Slow-like, a cold hand snakes under my shirt, smooths up my burning spine, all the way up, all the way down, hooking in the waistband of my skirt, knuckles burrowing into the soft dimples in my back. My whole body shivers as he slides his palm over the back of my neck—a comfort for which I’m desperate to become familiar—and squeezes gently. If I keep my eyes open, all I can see of him is that black silhouette in the window, a reflection. A homogenous mass, humming at the edges, devoid of the detail of things: can’t see the way he drags his thumb up along the line of my spine, traces where it meets the skull; nor the way he steps forward, teases the air out of my lungs, enjoys it, tugs my hips closer to him by the gusset of the underwear webbed between my thighs; nor the way the cool metal buckle presses red lines into flesh.
The sight of Rust doesn’t matter so much as the understanding that it’s him behind me, that it’s his truck my cheek is being pressed into, that it’s his—fuck—that it’s him sliding through the heat of me, so close. The tip notches and makes it all the easier for my eyes to flutter shut. It helps with the vertigo that follows the rough push of him inside.
My fingers grasp for the little ridges in the door. Best place for them ends up to be under my mouth, though, to keep my head on my shoulders, to muffle the noises I was sure only animals made. My knee jerks sharply against the truck at the first white-hot pulse of pleasure – I hiss, smearing the drool at the edge of my mouth with the back of my hand, so glad he isn’t in clear enough line of sight to chastise me with his tendency to notice and never forget.
But he knows—he must fucking know by now—because the heavy hand clasped over my scruff curls around my face, and Rust forces two fingers into my parted mouth, presses over my soft tongue.
He pulls himself out just to feel the total length of me taking him again, so painfully slow. Feel the initial resistance, the spongy give, the sweet slip, the drag, all of it. So full, I feel sick with it. Overindulgence. Knocks me weak, doesn’t mind it when I bite down on his fingers to take most of the weight out of my sob. What I take from him, he takes from me—we’re even that way—so Rust, already with his nose flirting with the crook of my sweaty neck, nips over my erratic pulse, pushes his tongue over where I’m sure he can see the skin throbbing with the violence of it. Vampire. He could draw blood and I wouldn’t mind: he knows I need bloodletting.
So fucking dumb to think for a second it could be sated by just one time. I needed it again before it even ended – I knew it in the split second he touched me. The grief of closure was as adamant as a shadow. Stupid. He must think it, too, because, shit, the snap of his hips is mean. Punishment: you should’ve known.
“We ought’a be in your bed. I should be fuckin’ you through your bed,” he complains gruffly, his mouth dragging over hinge of my jaw.
I moan around the fingers in my mouth, which hook together with his thumb to pinch the fleshy inside of my cheek, challenging my lost focus. No matter. There’s nothing we can do now.
The seize of my body doesn’t take him by surprise at all, not that I expected it to, and the words that follow are easy, like he’s been thinkin’ of them as loud and clear as day as it would be to speak ‘em: “Shit, that feels good, sweet girl, huh? Tha’s it, just take it. That’s good.” And he lets the warmth gush out before stuffing it back in. “You’ll take one more.”
I stare at the endless field to the side of us, melted over the curve of his door, shivering despite the humidity that always finds you around here. I choke more on my own tongue than his fingers as Rust fucks me slow, like I deserve it.
“Need it s’bad, huh?” he drawls into the shell of my ear. “Why you gone all quiet on me, baby?—thought y’wanted it.”
He drags his fingers out of my mouth, daring me to speak. He slides his hand between my stomach and the side-door, gliding down between the thighs, smearing my dripping arousal over the skin.
My toes curl tight again as he pushes deeper than before, sits there like he knows my mind will do the rest of the work. The grate of his zipper as he shifts draws a mangled sound from the pit of me, not hidden by the brace of my trembling arm.
He zeros in on my clit, all sticky, and circles tight. I shudder.
“Give in,” he says to me in a voice so low and soft that it barely reaches me above the high frequency splitting through my skull. He rolls that bright pearl between his finger and thumb. “You feel it?”
Mindless and eyes all milky, I still manage a nod, grateful for the mean pin of his knees against my shaking thighs.
He hums. “So give in.”
Fuck, this is absurd. The mind can just about string two and two together when Rust lends a forearm beside my head for me to rest on, to grip over: so he’s pictured this, wanted this, for how long? I knew the stagnancy was a front, swallowed something else, but—my mouth goes wet and slack over his forearm at the languid roll of his hips—but it wasn’t realistic to imagine it was this. Rust struck me as someone incapable of reconciling himself with his wants. Shame over acceptance because he thinks it’s atonement. Should’ve known better than to think Rust believed in redemption.
The silhouette in the window is looking over the empty road, scanning for cars that won’t ever come—but his hand is warm under the tent of my shirt, easing over my waist, slow, as everything clamps up, trembling, again. Body and a heartbeat, he tugs my hips back to him, again and again, until he’s a hot, shuddering line all through me, face in my neck, crushing the fight out of my lungs.
His nose presses over my cheek, and his breath is coarse there, too, panting, when he lifts his heavy head. My throat goes so loose and open, greedily drinking in the sweet-sticky scent of him.
“C’mon, now,” he says to me once he’s pulled my underwear back up, dragging the cool, damp gusset against the mess of me for good measure. He pinches my hip, then over my thigh, like that might get me to quit shuddering. “Time to go.”
When I don’t move, he smooths a hand gently over my hair. Tucks a loose chunk of it back into the mess of my braid before deciding it’s best if he lets it loose completely.
Rust winds down the window as he holds open the door for me to clamber onto the bench.
“Y’can sleep ‘f you want,” he mumbles once he’s got me curled up on the seat, leaning through the frame. He tilts his head – the shadows have always hidden his eyes, but I like how the pinch in his brow has melted away at least.
If I had half a mind, I’d use it to shove his face out my goddamn way. Instead, I settle for the narrowing of my eyes and a decided huff. “Won’t.”
Lie. I fall asleep like anything, mellowed by the sweet rush of wind over marshland, the spirit of it weaving inside, and the weight of Rust’s hand tucked in the tight bend of my knee.
Quick summary: Rust thinks about you late at night.
Word count: 279 words
Warnings: (male) masturbation PLEASE MINORS DNI; sexual references; Rust being himself.
A/N: I don't even remember writing this LMAOOOO WHAT POSESSESED ME HEE'S SO EMO anyway please go read my big fic Idler Wheel
***
One day, he simply cannot help it. There is no thought grave or serious enough to wake him from the complete carelessness of this decision, the one that has him gripping himself, swollen, red, straining, in his mean fist.
When he permits this, usually, it is routine maintenance. Rust knows the science, the studies: he hates that they are true, that lonely, stupid men use them as an excuse to act in disgusting, desperate, depraved ways. Even though the body is a temporary thing, walking worm food, he knows that it is the case in which he lives, which he is. He knows when a screw is loose, when the oil should be replaced. Touching himself isn’t for pleasure – pleasure is secondary, a side effect. What he’s most interested in, really, is how the tension in his body will melt away for a few moments, unfurling, soft. This is upkeep. This helps.
Rust thinks of how your pulse thrummed and rushed beneath his touch, and his whole body shivers.
Sex can be just as intense in the mind as on the body – sensation depends so much on the psyche. Understanding this does not absolve him from this phenomena, and Rust feels the shameful burn of betrayal by the philosophers he allowed to seduce him. They are all human – they cannot help it.
He cannot return to the constant drone of overthought – instead, everything is up and down, clear, moving forward instead of spiralling and spiralling. Rust’s head hurts with the vividness of it all – he’d love to hate you for making it that way. Your bright touch had seared through the thick, dull cast, and now everything is worse.
a request, if i may, of praising old man logan as he filfthly eats you out and it makes him combust the more you praise him? okay running away again
speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life
a/n: look at him taking off his glasses in absolute shock of this ask- no okay does old man logan have a praise kink? i would raise it higher and say every version of logan has a massive praise kink. this is a man who wants to know he's doing good in life. his love language is acts of service so he might get to hear a pretty thank you. also i'm not sorry for how feral this got. i have no explanation.
summary: he knew he loved you when your words begin to piece his heart back together. he knew he loved you when he flourishes at your praise. he knew he loved you when nothing in this world could matter but the sound of your voice telling him you love him too.
word count: 3k+
pairing: old man!logan x f!reader
warnings: EXPLICIT SO MINORS DNI, oral (f receiving), praise kink, logan is obsessed, dirty talk via reader, he is so pretty when he blushes, manhandling, cumplay, cumeating, overstimulation, crying, he's needy in this one, angst, tortured soul of an old man, reverence, religious trauma + greek mythology hints.
He can feel the strings of fate pull tight around his broken heart. In a failed attempt to draw him back together. To piece together an organ that barely beat for him anymore. He might have felt it once, before it broke. Before it gnarled itself like the branches of a dying tree, one half twisting away from the other in a desperate attempt of survival.
He deemed it a useless part of his body until you came along. You with your smile that held enough cloying sweetness to choke him as he stood helpless. Silently begging for you to say his name. To bring him back to life.
Whatever horrors that plagued his mind—endless nightmares that promised nothing but anguish—suddenly came crashing to a halt at the sight of you. So pretty in your denim jeans and velvet top. An angel seated in the center of a bar that held more filth than you deserved to be near. Logan couldn’t fathom that luck struck him this hard.
Not when death had already claimed his soul; notched yet another tally in the endless wall of people that came before.
He felt the dirt pack under his nails as he clawed his way out of the grave he put himself in. Years spent alone—a man lost to the ravages of time—had turned him bitter. With rough edges and biting words that stung far more than he intended. How could he believe he deserved to live after he contributed so much to the endless pool of blood that tainted his soul? How was he allowed such softness after biting off bits of brutality his whole life?
Logan was pretty sure he survived on borrowed time that had already run out. He could feel death breathe down his neck as the days went on. A reminder that what little of his life remained would be spent suffering. And he found that accepting it was easier than battling against the will of God, or whoever toyed with his lifeline.
It was far easier to die than find a reason to live.
Until you said his name.
Softly. Sweetly. Reverence wrapped in a tight grasp of need.
You brought him back from the edge—took his hand and refused to take no for an answer. You and the safety of your touch; the promise in your kiss. You dragged him into a life he didn’t earn; one that almost tasted too sweet—too sour.
After near a decade of being buried beneath the dirt, he felt himself collapse above ground and suck in his first real gasp of fresh air. Alive, once more. Hell spit him out with a vow of love and who was he to argue against it.
His fingers dug into your plush thighs, tugging them open to see what lay between. He marveled at their softness, eyes wide and awestruck at the sight of you spread beneath him. You practically glowed in the dim light of the bedside table. Yellow, musty, yet angelic when it caressed your body with its heavenly touch.
He wondered if this was real life; your nails digging sharply into his shoulders gave him the answer.
"Logan," you sighed, voice high with need.
The strings pulled taught. A vice like hold that drew him to you.
Maybe that's what this unutterable feeling was. The gnawing pit at the bottom of his heart. A greed he'd never indulged before—too afraid of what it might ask for next. He wasn't a man who asked for much. Rather someone that found himself far too content with nothing. But tonight he found his lips forming the words of a false prayer that his mother taught him as a child.
Hail the angel in his bed. Hail every good fucking thing you brought into his life.
His teeth sunk into your thigh, body jolting at your responding moan. Fingers dug into his hair, tugging at the mussed locks with a high pitched whine. You were a needy little thing, but Logan found he desperately wanted to be needed.
He smiled laving his tongue over the tender spot, working his way up to where you dripped for him.
So slick. So perfect.
Saliva filled his mouth. "What do ya want baby?"
Your chest heaved; he could feel the heat of your body under his palms. "Your m-mouth Logan."
His eyes trailed along your brow covered in a sheen of sweat. The room was thick with the humid air of the outside world. But that didn't deter him from craving your skin near his. The pressure of your thighs around his head a welcome weight. If he sunk his teeth in where the curve of your leg met your hip he knew he could draw out that soft choking noise he longed to hear on days spent driving alone.
If he had his way he'd crawl into you to seek your serenity straight from the source. He'd never divulge about the ache that chewed him up on the inside, but Logan wondered if you knew. Could you tell how much he craved you? How much he couldn't live without you.
When your glittering eyes met his, the resolve he spent years building cracked like glass. You peered into him as if he was a stained glass window. A god you were more than happy to worship.
"You want me to lick this pretty pussy?" Fuck, he sounded drunk off your taste already.
His mouth hovered over your throbbing clit, your scent now filling his senses. Overwhelming him with what he wanted most. But he needed to hear it. The lilt of your begging; the soft echo of your need that washed over him like soothing river water.
He couldn't live without it.
"Yes," you sobbed, thigh twitching.
The string sliced his heart open, blood pooling onto the white bed sheets. Oh what a sweet death your love made. Oh...what a bittersweet way to go.
He'd die right now if you asked him to. Hand over his heart on a silver platter if you so wished it. Maybe that made him far too gone for his own good, but Logan couldn't remember a time in his life where he got this. Safety. The hope of love burning far too bright and far too hot for him to fly near it.
Yet there he was. Icarus happily soaring in your sun like glow.
"I got ya honey," he murmured. "Gonna take care of what's mine."
You nodded frantically—tears welling up in your eyes. "You take care of me Logan."
The breath in his chest stuttered, eyes dark as the words fell past your swollen lips. He wanted to explain why his cock twitched against his stomach. Why he now leaked into the sheet with heavy panted breaths. But every time he came up short with the words needed to form an answer.
"Yeah I do sweetheart," he breathed. "Don't I?"
"Uh-huh."
"Take care of what belongs to me."
There was no warning when his hands dragged you closer with a rough tug, mouth closing over your clit with a desperate suck. A cry wrenched from your mouth, sparks sharply traveling down your spine. He licked through your slick with a growl. Hands an unbreakable press against your thighs.
The sight of your body bowed, mouth open for small gasped breaths that never came, snapped something in his mind. He was an old man. Well past his years. But the taste of your pussy along his tongue brought back a ferocity he often tamped down in his younger age. He felt the feral want claw at his chest, and answered it with a broken snarl.
Swallowing down every drop you gave him, he plunged his tongue into your entrance, thrusting messily until a smear of your shiny slick began to coat his mouth. It covered his cheeks and clung to the hair of his beard. He'd clean it out later, taste you on his tongue until he was aching for another go. But for now he was preoccupied with the way you cried for him.
"Oh fuck!" Your thighs trembled over his shoulders, hips canting down to drag yourself along his tongue. "So good."
He shuddered, eyes rolling back at the sound of your praise. You caught it within seconds, lips pulling into a breathless smile that left him gasping for air. His teeth nipped at your thigh briefly as his hips ground into the mattress below.
"You like that baby?" you breathed, thumb smearing your own slick against his cheek.
Something hot washed over his body. A needy sick and twisted ache that he'd never indulged in before. He wanted to be a good man to you; longed to be needed. And fuck if you didn't give him everything.
You were his walking wet dream. His future handed off and wrapped in a neat little bow.
"L-Love your tongue Logan-" A high gasp tore from your throat when he dived back in. Slurping at your clit with a heady moan as you dragged him closer. "Taking care of me so well."
His hips canted down into the bed, fucking his cock along the warmth of his stomach, as you gushed into his mouth again. Eyes zeroed in on your face, pupils dilated as he growled into your flesh. You no longer could see the man you loved, but the feral side he tamped down during the day. The animal he longed to release in your presence.
"Fuck I'm gonna cum."
His arms looped around your thighs and with a sharp yank, he had his face buried deep enough to suffocate himself. You sobbed an incoherent version of his name. Nails clawed at his shoulders, but Logan could feel the pulse of your clit under his tongue.
He sucked it into his mouth with a grunt, rolling it along his tongue as you trembled with the oncoming shocks of an orgasm that threatened to destroy you.
Tears dripped down your cheeks and Logan felt the satisfying part of his heart begin to stitch itself back together. The strings were tight enough to numb his pain. To quell the flare of agony.
That used to be all he knew, all he counted on most days. When there was nothing left and he'd propped the shovel in the dirt—his grave open and waiting—he stumbled right into your arms. He found his reason for living.
Heat curled around his spine as you shook with the impending orgasm—the stimulation on your clit practically debilitating. He grunted into your soaked flesh, eyes narrowed as he chased the release that pulled his stomach taut. But this wasn't for him to indulge in; this wasn't his pleasure.
So with a throaty moan you felt reverberate along your body, he scraped his teeth along your clit and watched as your body went stiff.
"Logan!" you cried, fingers scrambling for purchase on any part of him you could reach.
You gushed into his awaiting mouth, praises of it's so good, you're so good falling upon his ears like the whimpered prayers of a devout worshiper thanking your god.
"Taste so fuckin' good," he mumbled, drunk on what you gave him.
He didn't care that you were jolting with each pass of his tongue along your pussy. He didn't care that you were shocked with overstimulation, small broken cries of his name muffled by the press of your thighs against his ears. He licked at you until he couldn't breathe. Buried his tongue into your twitching entrance and sucked out your cum with a happy hum.
"P-Please." You tugged at his hair, pulling him off you with a sob. "I-I can't anymore Logan."
"'M not fuckin' finished," he said, eyes glazed and face coated in your slick.
You made a mess of his face. The light catching along where you spilled into his mouth and along his throat. And still he wanted more. He'd spend hours between your thighs, burning your skin with his beard, if it meant he could divulge in your sweetness.
"It hurts-"
A grunt rumbled in his chest, his arms tugging you back even as your feet kicked along his back. "Just one more honey. Yeah?"
You shook your head. "B-But-"
"Thought you said it was good."
"It is."
"Then lemme be good for you." He wanted to tell you that the world went quiet between your thighs. That all his grief, all his pain, lessened when you sobbed his name.
He wanted to show you the string that looped his heart to yours—the only thing keeping him alive—and thank you for bringing him back from the dead. But words weren't his forte. Violence had become the only tenderness he knew and you didn't deserve the rough edges of an old man. You should have more.
But when you let him touch you like this—caress your skin and lick between your folds—he felt as if he was a man who finally was worthy of someone as precious as you. He could pretend he didn't bear the brunt of a fucked up soul.
The weight on his chest lifted when your tear filled gaze met his and you nodded. Small, barely there, but it was enough for him to seal his mouth back over you with a ragged moan. Your body shook as his tongue slid through the seam of your pussy. The tip nudging against your clit—careful to draw the pleasure from your body slowly.
He didn't want to give you pain. His heart wouldn't survive that. But he was a broken man; someone who begged for more even as his teeth sunk into what was already given.
You were his meal. His sacrament in the midnight hours until dawn broke across the darkened sky. You were the other half of his soul.
How could he not indulge in your sweetened tang until his tongue went stiff?
"I love you," you sighed, eyes rolled back when he sucked at your pussy, a wet low moan echoing in the air. "My p-perfect husband."
The cold press of his wedding band against your thigh drove him over the edge. You weren't officially married. Didn't have the backyard wedding with a preacher to match. But Logan had placed a ring on your finger near a year ago, sliding one over his own with the vow of forever cemented in his words.
Even if that didn't mean much in the eyes of a god who abandoned him near a century ago.
"Oh-"
Your head tipped back, mouth dropping open as his fingers dipped into your wet heat. Thrusting lazily until he found the spongey patch along your walls—driving the pad of his middle finger into it with a needy moan.
He knew it wouldn't take long for you to fly off the edge of a second release. That didn't make watching you climb to that peak any less satisfying. The sight appeased his soul. It gave him a chance to breathe; let him know that after so much bad—after so much pain—he could do something good. He could bring you to the edge of pleasure and drag you over again and again.
He could finally be the man you believed he was.
Not the animal they created.
"C'mon," he muttered. Eyes fixed on the shape of your breasts as your body curved off the bed. Hips dragging along his face with a stunted cry.
A wail bounced off the walls, piercing his eardrums with the symphony of your cries. His fingers rapidly pumped into you with a squelch that had heat burning his cheeks—lips pulling your throbbing clit into his mouth as you broke. The climax slammed into you; battering your already swollen pussy.
Logan could feel his cock swell at the sight.
"Fuckin' perfect," he grunted, teeth bared as he clambered to his knees and wrapped his fist soaked in your slick around his leaking cock. "'M gonna cum sweetheart."
Your eyes fluttered open, fingers digging into his thigh. "Please. Wanna see it baby. Look so pretty when you cum Logan."
His chest tightened, body shaking while you watched in rapture as he fucked his fist rapidly. He wouldn't fucking last, could feel the burning consume his body, but something held him back. The string around his heart yanked him away from the edge, tearing a cry from his throat when his frustration peaked.
You could see it—the glimmer of need in his dark eyes. This wasn't the first time he longed for your words. It certainly wouldn't be the last.
So you spread your legs and sat up slowly—arms wrapping around his shoulders to bring his lips down to yours. A soft moan was muffled by your mouth; the peak of his release within reach. He could practically feel the tips of his fingers graze it.
"Cover my pussy baby," you mumbled into his mouth. "Be good for me and mark what's yours."
The growl came from the very bottom of his chest when he finally came. Your name was a bitten out snarl pressed to your mouth in an open mouth kiss as he spurted over his knuckles. He pumped his cock to milk every drop; eyes fixed on the way it covered the swollen lips of your pussy. Dripping down to your entrance that fluttered at the sight of his sweaty and crimson tinged face.
"I fuckin' love ya honey," he murmured, hand cupping your chin to drag your lips back to his. "Best thing that's happened in my life is you."
You smiled, thumbs pressing to his cheeks. "Love you too Logan."
Clutching you close, he felt the string go loose. The breath finally rushing back into his lungs at the sight of your eyes glowing with the kind of light that brought him back to the first day The night he met you in that shitty bar—alcohol the only thing on his mind until he saw you.
The night you spoke his name over his covered grave and dragged him back to life with a smile.
old man logan would murmur something around, “do you like it like this, darlin’?” when he fingers you :( his lips are pressed along your ear, and the scruff of his greying beard feels so ticklish on your skin. you’d whine out in high-pitched noise, hiccups slipping through your lips.
a particular thrust of his fingers makes you gasp and instinctively shut your thighs at the sudden ecstasy.
“shh,” logan coos as he rubs his hoarse thumb along your swollen button, circling it expertly, “open y’r legs again, princess. c’mon.“
logan coaxes you with his voice and soft kisses. when you shake your head in reply, too overwhelmed to barely speak, logan doubles his efforts. he has never done this before, he thinks.
being so soft, so patient, so tolerant.
he will prolong the foreplay even when you're shaking in his hold and begging him to fuck you, to "please, logan. wan’ it—," logan just nuzzles his nose on your tear-stained cheek and curls his fingers in your cunt again, “jus’ a little more, princess. y’can do that f’r your old man, can’t you?”
“fuck, look at her. y’re such a messy girl,” he talks down at your pussy, bringing the same two fingers to rub at your folds. he spread your wetness up and down, and you whimpered with the euphoria it produced. his tone turned to a whisper, “messy little pussy, huh?
“mhm..” you whispered back, brain all cloudy now.
“mhm?” logan adjusted his glasses to look at you, rubbing you gently, “all messy for y'r husband?”
gosh, logan loves to refer to himself like that–purposely intertwining your hands with his to see how the wedding rings complement each other.
tags: PiV, come play / eating / swapping, logan pov, multiple rounds, mating pressss, just pure filth
logan never leaves a job half-done.
His cock still throbs, when he finally eases out of you.
Hands still gripping your waist - claws half-punched through whitened knuckles, edged with red. Hips still rutting into the air, letting himself drip down against your swollen cunt.
Marking you, from the inside out.
As good as it feels to spill inside you, it’s this moment that Logan likes the best. Bliss still humming in his veins, as his hand wraps around.
Making sure every drop is spent where it should, making sure he gleams across your skin.
Parted lips that match yours, panting out a breath as you drift back down from your own high. Wrecked beneath him, a gasp pushed from you when his hands hook beneath your knees.
Pushing leaden legs up, then open. Shameless in the way his eyes drop, to see how you gape in his absence.
“Come on.” He rasps. “Lemme see.”
Logan’s name comes out hushed.
Cute, how embarrassed you are.
As if you weren’t begging for him a moment ago. Greedy for his touch. For his come, wanting it spent deep inside you.
He gave it all to you, and now you owe him.
A slight edge slipping into his voice.
“Show me, sweetheart.”
The rough and commanding sound makes you clench, but it’s what he wants. Pretty and empty and he think you must be aching to be filled again, with the way he watches himself bead up inside you.
Spilling over.
“Fuck.” It’s hissed out through gritted teeth.
He lowers. Head pressed against a thigh, hearing the way your pulse gallops beneath your skin.
Gathering himself up. Two fingers fitting inside you as he pushes his come back in - groaning at how wet and warm you are around him, gripping him from fingertip to knuckle.
It’s filthy, the sounds you make. The moan paired with the lewd pump of his fingers. Pitching high when he can’t resist the urge to taste the way you blend together.
The flat of his tongue tracing from filled hole to clit, then back again. A pleased hum when you clamp down around him, bucking into his mouth each time.
Another lazy lick before he’s moving, all thick muscle and sinew - fingers withdrawing as your thighs are pushed up towards you chest again.
Your slick and his release smeared across your skin, as his mouth presses to yours. Lips parting for the swipe of his tongue, a muffled moan when he passes himself to you. Deepening it, until he’s all you can taste.
“Again, yeah?” His nose ghosts across your cheek, when the kiss finally breaks. Nuzzling his face the hollow beneath your ear, inhaling.
Your body arches against his, “Yes.”
Always yes.
Always more, and something in his chest tightens at the thought of him being the one to give this to you.
A hand slips down in answer, wrapping around his cock. Guiding it back inside, a sharp snap of his hips as he drives himself home.
Even after everything, you still hiss as you make room for him. Toes curling as your legs flex - knees digging into his ribs.
“Shit,” He growls, low in your ear, “There we go. Atta girl.”
Reveling in the bite of your nails, as your arms wind around his neck. Scraping against his shoulders as he swallows your moan.
Bottoming out until he’s back where he belongs, crushing himself flush against the folded curve of your body.
The cold kiss of his dog tags against heated skin as he fucks down into you, again and again. The bed creaking with the force of his weight, as his spread knees digging into the mattress.
Close enough to hear each and every breath pushed from your lungs. The ragged gasps that pitch higher when his cock pounds against that spot inside you, again and again.
It send a rush of warmth through him. A tightening in his core with each sharp plunge of his hips - but tonight, he lets that feeling build.
Chasing it, even - a rough growl against your throat, when he feels you start to stiffen beneath him in anticipation.
The tell-tale whimper that tells him you’re close - nails piercing already-healing flesh. A permission to let himself follow, as soon as he feels you pulse around him, once more.
Because after all, if his girl wants to be filled-
There’s already a throb in his cock when his fist twists the doorknob. Some sort of conditioning. The unspoken way that he knows that you’re his.
Plucking at this deep, possessive streak that he never knew he had, until he started losing everything. Everyone.
Or maybe it just feels good to admit that he wants something. To allow himself to take something that’s offered so freely. To finally feel something, after months - years - of tamping everything down.
(Or - you and Logan have a certain, unspoken arrangement.)
There’s a certain sense of relief knowing that you’re waiting for him.
An outlet for the frustration that simmers inside. A prickle under his skin, teeth gritting a little too hard. Another night of playing nice. A chauffeur for dickheads that he would’ve threatened to stab through, a lifetime ago.
Back when things didn’t matter, the way they did now. Before the weight he carries. When a brawl at a bar would an inconvenience at best - that ache of pain that healed with a breath - instead of something that would have him down for days.
Never liked killing, deep down. Just never had to worry about it like this before.
Achingly aware of how he’s slowed. The groan of his joints, the pull of his muscles. Knuckles swollen, as he grips the steering wheel, pulling up in front of the smelting plant.
It’s still early. Still needing his headlights to navigate the backroads, eyes narrowed in the pale, rising sun.
The crunch of his steps against gravel is the only sound, as he heads inside.
There’s already a throb in his cock when his fist twists the doorknob. Some sort of conditioning. The unspoken way that he knows that you’re his.
Plucking at this deep, possessive streak that he never knew he had, until he started losing everything. Everyone.
Or maybe it just feels good to admit that he wants something. To allow himself to take something that’s offered so freely. To finally feel something, after months - years - of tamping everything down.
Putting Charles first. Grieving silently. Keeping secrets.
It’s familiar, how he finds you. Even as the days grow shorter, the desert heat lingers. The thin sheets twisted around your legs.
An invitation, in the way you’re already stripped bare - a glint of silver between your breasts.
He always looks for it.
That silent sign you’ve come up with. An encouragement to take what he wants, when he wants it.
Only once had you taken his dog tags off, since he gifted them to you. He can still remember your glare as you ripped them from your throat, slamming them down on the bedside table.
He had pissed you off. Said something shitty. Leaving you to fume.
But you had still come back to him, in the night. Letting him write out apologies between your thighs. Murmured in your ear, as he ground himself into you.
Forgetting by morning. You always were forgiving. Knows you deserve better, but he’s been an old dog for a long time now.
Hard to change, even though he tries.
He lingers now in the doorway, for just a second.
Should eat something, can’t remember the last time he did. Something packaged, taste secondary to the fuel that he needs more than ever, as he slowly knits himself back together.
Used to taking whatever he could find, before you.
There’s leftovers in the fridge, but all he can think about is how he bent you over the counter as you waited for the timer to wind down.
How you laughed and squirmed as his chest pressed to your back, when he surprised you. Slipping into stifled moans, as his fingers dipped beneath your waistband. His mouth against your throat, lips pressed against the flutter of your pulse.
The food tastes better when he remembers the way you had cried out his name, his cock hilted inside of you. Almost burnt dinner, with how distracted you were.
But that will have to wait, now that he’s seen you.
Would love to wake you up. Hear the morning-early rasp of his name. The scratch of your nails against his shoulders - ones that might linger for hours instead of seconds.
Finds that he doesn’t mind getting a little marked to, as long as it’s you that’s doing it.
But you look so sweet, sleeping on your side, and he loves the little moans you make as he tries not to wake you up. Tongue fitting between the cleft of your thigh as he hikes your leg a little higher. Bending himself down to the mattress - ignoring the dull ache in his back - so he can fit his mouth fully against you.
He’s become greedy, over time. Resource-guarding affection, teeth bared in a snarl.
Needing that proof that you want him. Still so focused on all your little signs, even if you’re his to take.
Another lick, feather-light. Resisting the urge to press himself flush. Work his tongue into your pussy, until he can taste himself from last night.
Knows he has your sleep schedule fucked up. Finding moments in the liminal space at dusk and dawn. His edges softened with sleep.
Heavy-limbed, as your ass pressed against his front, earlier. Squirming, teasing, until he had pulled you astride him. Looking every bit an angel with the way the setting sun haloed around you, his eyes half-lidded as his morning dawned.
“Go on, sweetheart,” He had rasped, voice low, “If you need it that bad, then ‘m sure you can put in a little work.”
His salvation glinting between your tits with each bounce - your moans pitching high as your nails bit into his chest.
It’s returned, now. Palms curving where your thigh meets your ass. Cupping and squeezing, angling you until he can taste your dampness against his mouth.
Always so fucking responsive. Your hips flexing in their sleep, when he dips down to tease at your clit.
Letting your dreams swirl in and out, winding with pleasure as the taste of you swells against his tongue. Skin turning slick beneath the spit that he lets drop from parted lips.
Making sure you can take him. You always can, always do. But his cock throbs at the thought of slipping so easily into you, the wet and warm heat that awaits him.
Another bitten-back groan as his mouth covers you again, and it’s then that you stir.
He meant to give you a little more time. Let you come from just his mouth, wake from your dreams with a shout as you pulse against his tongue.
Hands squeezing your thighs, keeping you in place for a little longer. The sleepy cadence of your breath turning short, sharp, as you’re brought back out.
His name mumbled out in your sleep, and it’s enough that he’s tugging at his belt, loosening the buttons.
Layers peeled off and kicked down at the edge of the bed, leaving them to them crumple on the floor.
Hand rough as he fists his cock, another drop of spit smeared across before his thighs nudge yours wider. You shift easily, belly-down, with the guidance of a rough palm against your hip.
And for a moment, he just looks.
Admires.
A hand coming down heavily against your ass. His palm molding to flesh, soft skin giving as he tugs you open.
Pretty little holes that he can’t get enough of stuffing full. A rough groan in his chest as his other hand works faster, squeezing at the leaking head. A thumb shifting down to press at your folds, until he can see you clench in your sleep.
Empty. He can fix that.
Angling himself down, until he’s nudging at your hole. Smearing himself against spit and slick, watching how the tip just eases inside you. How you clench instinctually around him.
A soft sound pulls from you then, as he sinks a little deeper. Watching how you stretch tight around him, as he disappears into your wet warmth.
Pulled from sleep by the time he’s pressed flush, your fingers digging into the sheets as your back arches.
Awoken from a pretty dream, only to find it true. Already you’re trying to take more. Eyes heavy-lidded as your head turns, trying to see him in the golden blush of dawn.
“Feel so fucking good, sweetheart.”
Fingers splay out against your waist. Dimpling your curves as he squeezes - a reminder that you are only flesh and bone, beneath him.
Heat and warmth and rushing blood in your veins, as he inches out, only to drive deep.
“Logan.” You squirm, each rock of his hips dragging you out of your haze.
Your ass sways, as he sets the pace. The syrupy-slowness gone, when you use your leverage to meet his thrusts. Face buried in a shared pillow as you muffle your sounds.
"Lemme hear ‘em." He husks, pitching forward - a low rumble as he keeps you pressed flat against the mattress, “Come on baby, wanna hear what I’m doing to you.”
Another rut of his hips, as his forearms settle on either side of your ribs. A hand slipping beneath, cupping a soft breast as his nose skims up the base of your neck.
Inhaling you, how his own scent clings to your skin. Melding with the sweet musk of your arousal - he’d bottle it up, if he could.
You moan, at the squeeze of his hand. At the heavy slap of his balls against your clit, sticky from the arousal that drips from you.
Calloused fingers pinching at your nipple, as the beast inside him growls, whines, then goes silent. That anger ebbing, with the way you clench down each time he slips from you, as if trying to keep him inside.
Another whine, when his elbow plants by your arm, his hand spanning loosely beneath your jaw. The ball chain cool against his skin, where the silver hooks around his thumb.
An urge to taste you again, and he does - a groan at the way your lips part so quickly for him as he angles your face to his.
The moan he swallows when his tongue brushes yours, how he knows you’re close with the way you string tight beneath him.
“Fuck, I missed you.” It’s breathed out against his lips, your fingers mapping his. Encouraging his hold to tighten around your throat, until you’re fully anchored in his grasp.
Almost an embrace. Could be, if he let himself soften. Instead, his hips snap harder against the soft flesh of your ass, and he hears the whine it pulls from you.
“Just like that. Don’t stop.” Your nails prick the back of his hand, your voice strained, “Oh my god, I’m so close-“
Doesn’t think there’s anything that could drag him away. Spearing himself again and again, the head of his cock grinding against a spot that makes your eyes roll.
A spot that has you panting, murmured pleas that turn into broken moans.
Doesn’t know when you got him so wrapped around your finger, but he’s curled firmly around each knuckle. A growl in his throat, his own release nipping at his heels.
Holds back just long enough to feel you tremble beneath him. The way you arch into his weight, loosening the moan you held back before. Brought over the edge by the rocking weight of his cock, the pinch of his fingers.
Pride washes over him, as you leak around his cock. The tight pulse thrumming as he fucks you through the waves of pleasure, soaking in your pitched-high cries. His life went to shit years ago, but even in the throes of exhaustion he’s never grown tired of pulling them from you.
He can do this, at least.
“Fuckin’ choking me, sweetheart.” He grunts, that tell-tale tightness in his belly. An urge to pin you down, hips pounding until he’s finally spilling inside you.
Letting the fire in his veins burn off the last of the thorns that sank into his skin throughout the day.
You let him.
He lets himself - face buried in your neck ask he finds that rough pace again. The slick slap of his hips as you pant beneath him.
“Please, Logan.” Your voice buzzes against his palm, “Wanna help you. Use me-”
Been using you a long time. Dependent now on the reassurance. On the way you look at him, touch him - so fucking soft. Soft beneath him now, as his groan pitches low.
“Gonna fucking come, baby.”
It’s gravel-rough, teeth gritting as you tighten around him, “Gonna keep it inside, yeah?”
“Yes.” You beg. Tugging at his palm until it loosens, until you press your lips to his skin. Across his knuckles, tongue dipping between - slipping against sensitive skin.
It’s dangerous, being that close.
It makes him come - hand wrenching away just as his claw threaten to prick through. Just able to hold them back, as his hips drive flush against yours.
A ragged moan muffled against your skin as Logan holds himself deep - letting your walls milk his orgasm from him. Fingers pinching into skin, as he keeps you in place, still enough that you can feel each throbbing pulse as he fills you.
He missed you too.
Always does.
The hours away are spent going over memories like snapshots. Ones that cling to him, his limo.
The echo of you on top of him, in the backseat. A payment you didn’t have to make - he’d take you anywhere - but you were all too willing to.
Eager to prove to him you could take it, as your nails bit into his suit. Still dripping out of you, pooling against soft fabric, when your face nuzzled into his lap as he drove you back home.
Knuckles pinched white around the steering wheel, as you kept him warm in your mouth.
Didn’t have time to take you a second time before he had to leave, but it didn’t stop him from fitting those fingers inside you - making you squeal as he fucked himself deeper, just before his evening began.
Stroking himself to the thought, each and every night he was away. Never could get enough.
It all leads back to this.
His arm bands around your stomach. Still nudged flush, as he eases you both onto your sides.
He’ll eat, later. Fingers drifting, as they dip. Not ready to go again just yet - he’s slowed, in his old years.
But his fingers can still fit against you. Swirling against slick skin as you moan, until he can feel you clenching down around him again.
Drifting off after, with his cock still buried deep. With his cheek cradled against the top of your head, an arm slung across to keep you close.
Never had enjoyed sleeping. A means to an end, everything he pushes down loosening - flashing vividly behind closed eyes.
Not until you. Not until this.
The nightmares going hazy, then quiet, when he wrapped in you the way exhaustion curls around him. A day, finally ending.
Summary: You're everything Joel never knew he needed.
Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI smut (D/s dynamics, masturbation, oral sex, face sitting, orgasm denial, coming untouched, pet names, Joel apologies a lot, and there's a little bit of crying sORRY), no outbreak au, reader is around the same age as Joel and very curvy/plus size. also, they love each other.
A/N: HIII this is a fic wholly dedicated to @ezrasbirdie. They said "how do we feel abt sub joel" and apparently, I had many feelings. This is only my second Joel fic ever and the other one I wrote before the show had even started and then I got scared but now here we are. I would say that this is a little OOC I suppose?? But I know I don't need to qualify myself so all I am going to say is this WAS super fun to explore and I hope at least a few people will get some enjoyment out of it too.
also, all my love and many smooches go to @lowlights for looking this over and just in general for being the sweetest sexy angel that she is<3
Joel's fingers drum on the steering wheel, off-beat to the radio as he waits for the driver who pulled up to the 4-way–just seconds–before him pass with a wave. Returning the gesture absently, his eyes flick between the time on his wrist and the bend of road that hides the turn onto your street. It's a quarter-mile ahead, and it's 5:37 when he rounds it.
He'd left the work site early today for a very specific reason, so the frustrated grumbles haven't stopped since he realized he was going to be late anyways.
As he pulls into your driveway it's 5:39, and there's a buzzing spark of hope when he finds your car missing from its usual spot in the driveway. He's not sure how the hell he beat you here, the way traffic was backed up. But he shakes the confusion from his head.
Doesn't matter.
It's 5:41 when Joel's hand freezes just before the key from under your mat slips into the lock, what clicks in his head deflating.
The garage.
The goddamn garage. The same place he'd spent the weekend with you, organizing and lifting all the heavy boxes so you would be able to park inside for the first time in years. You were so grateful and excited, and that is where your car is.
He didn't beat you here. Even though you'd asked him to. Asked him to be here, and ready; a request that had made his toes curl in his boots when you'd purred it over the phone on his lunch break. And he'd told you he would be–here and ready.
Joel knows you won't be mad, not really, but he still hates the thought of you waiting for him.
Letting his head hang for a moment, disappointment and a final groan of frustration gurgle in his throat before he shoves the key back where he found it and opens the door, already unlocked.
The sound of you humming in the kitchen eases the weight on his chest, marginally. But the melody that was in your throat stops when the door clicks shut behind him. The sound of his heart pounding against his sternum takes its place.
"Hey there," you chime out as he hastily kicks off his boots, "traffic bad?"
With clammy palms brushing harshly over his worn jeans, Joel practically gallops into the kitchen and begins his repentance before turning the corner.
"I-10 was a shitshow sweetheart, I'm sorry. I- I really meant to be here earlier, like y'asked, but I-"
He stops short at the sight of you, socks slipping slightly on the linoleum as he takes you in. You let him, but he doesn't miss the tiny jut of your bottom lip nor the teasing glint in your eye.
"You what, Joel?" you ask, doe-eyed as you let the refrigerator door swing shut behind you. Stepping forward to afford a better view, Joel flounders to remember the very few words he can.
"I- traffic," he manages, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth and gluing his eyes to where a delicate and near transparent blush-colored robe hangs loose around your shoulders. The thin fabric clings to the tops of your breasts, the darker peaks of your nipples visible and pulling against it as you move to meet him halfway.
The hem ends just below where your thighs meet, dark-gray silk panties stark against the soft pink fabric that barely covers them. There's no way the thing is long enough to reach the bottom of your plump ass, and Joel licks his lips at the knowledge that you certainly look just as enticing from behind.
Your eyes are warm, a small but understanding smile beneath them as you reach up to cup his jaw. Joel melts into your touch, his heart lighter but still racing and desperate to make it up to you.
–
"Reckon if anyone on the road knew what I was in a rush for, coulda got here sooner," he says, a sheepish smile tugging on one corner of his mouth as a knuckle ghosts down your arm.
You hold back a shiver under his touch, but only hum and nod. Running your fingers through his curls to muss them up, you lean in to place a soft kiss on his cheek. He smells like sawdust and outside, and you feel the breath leave his lungs when your lips touch the spattering of grays below his cheekbone.
"Really am sorry. I wanted to be here earlier."
Of course he did. If the last year of knowing Joel Miller has taught you anything, it's that he would do almost anything you asked. Anything to please you.
"I know, baby. I forgive you," you say, the relief in the drop of his shoulders warming your chest and settling low in your belly.
"Can I make it up to you?" he asks, voice dropping as his eyebrows raise earnestly, "You tell me how, sweetheart, and I'll do it. What can I do?"
You purse your lips, feigning contemplation as you step away from him.
"Well, Mr. Miller, since you kept me waiting, I think it's only fair that you wait juuust a little bit longer. Before making it up to me."
–
Joel can handle a lot. The antics of a teenage girl, the bullshit his brother still manages to find himself in as a grown man, difficult customers with labor-intensive demands. Joel is good at that, at keeping a cool head and taking care of what needs to be taken care of.
It's what he's always prided himself in. He likes it.
And before he met you, he thought that was just his whole thing–to be in control, to call the shots, to be the guy who knows what comes next. It was a trait that easily carried into the bedroom, and he'd never heard any complaints by it.
But from the first time he saw you, sitting so straight and pretty in a barstool and waving him over with a polite smile, his eyes and heart have been opened to the idea of surrendering that role for something more vulnerable.
"Can I help ya, miss?" he'd asked, a bit confused at how your innocent gesture had pulled him across the bar like a magnet. It didn't help that your face was wholly unreadable, but wildly intriguing.
"Hmm," you'd hummed through your lips, something knowing in the sound and your smile, "Maybe. But, I really just wanted to see if you'd come."
He didn't know then what his swift obedience meant to you, but he figured that out very soon after. And, to his and your delights, Joel was a quick study.
Handing over the reins and taking directives–your directives–instead of giving them had unlocked a piece of Joel's brain he never knew was there. There's safety and comfort in it, the way you so easily manage to get him to turn off every controlling instinct and just be present instead, to feel and know and receive the care behind what you ask of him, and the pleasure you receive in turn when he obeys–it's everything Joel never knew he wanted.
He needed.
Still, there are times when he's not so confident in his ability to hold back. Particularly, when you're just out of his reach.
Times like right now.
Sat on the small, cushy ottoman at the end of your bed in only his underwear and a sheen of sweat, Joel's jaw is clenched so tightly he wonders if it's possible he could snap his own teeth. Your shoulders are tight to the headboard, one hand grasping into the plush flesh of your tummy while the other is out of sight, buried behind the soaked fabric covering your pussy.
"Just watch, don't touch, okay?" you'd said after ushering him up the stairs, settling on your pillows and shrugging off that barely-there slip, "Not even that pretty cock. Not until I say."
11 minutes, you'd said. For as many minutes as he'd been late, he would watch as you stroked at the gorgeous mess between your thighs. And he wouldn't do anything but observe.
It's been 2 minutes and 20 seconds, according to the analog clock on your nightstand, and Joel is already clinging to his waning willpower.
What keeps him in place is the pride he knows he'll find in your eyes when the time is up, the way you'll praise him for being good and how he'll be able to pleasure you afterward–for much longer than 8 and a half measly minutes.
He can do this.
Even as your free hand trails slowly down, pulling your panties to the side to finally show him how wet you are. Even at the sight of your fingers, swimming through your folds before one slips inside so easily and you moan-
7 minutes.
He can do this.
"Joel," you call out, your voice breathy and seductive but strong, "doin' so well, honey, so good for me."
He can't hold back the choked noise that's been sitting in his throat since he sat down, the sound of your praise and the wet noises that reach his ears from between your legs punching the air out of his lungs. His hips jolt with it, and you smile.
"Keep being good so you can clean me up with that pretty mouth of yours, hm? You want that?"
Joel feels his jaw slacken, pleading to you with his eyes as he nods.
You huff a breathless laugh. "Use your words, honey."
"Yeah- fuck, yes. Please, wanna taste you so bad. Wan- want you all over my face, darlin'."
The sharp gasp you let out when you press a second finger in rattles Joel's ribcage, his thighs tensing as his cock starts to leak. God, he wants to touch you so bad. He wants to fit himself in there with your two fingers, for you to keep stroking yourself while he gives you his cock, to see the scrunch of your eyebrows as you tell him how full you feel-
5 minutes.
"Can I-" he rasps out, shifting his weight and gripping the cushion beneath him tighter before clearing his throat.
"Hmm?" you hum, but it comes out more like a whine–high pitched on the tail-end and followed by a sharp inhale as your fingers move back to your clit, sliding up and around it with increasing pressure.
"Can I sit closer? Please, sweetheart, I wanna see more, wanna-"
"Okay baby, just a lil bit, c'mere, watch me come."
Joel moves faster than a man his age should, finding the quickest route to get both his knees on the bed and closer to you. You move too, shimmying out of your underwear as he slides across the duvet. He stops halfway up the mattress to swing his legs off the side, and lets his gaze trail up your body.
Most of the time, he can't believe how goddamn perfect you are. Not only your body–which is so full and soft and fucking everything–but your confidence, and the deeply understanding and empathetic nature that finds its way into every decision you make.
Whether you're buttoning his shirt, brushing his hair or bending him over your couch, Joel's never felt anything but care and love from you.
It's like you were made for him, put together by whatever controls the universe when he wasn't paying attention, and after 50 years of waiting you're finally here. Here to give him the kind of love and safety he'd never expected needing.
With his throat tight and his sights locked on where they'd landed at the curve of your lips, his daze isn't broken until he realizes your foot is now near his face, panties hanging from your toe by their lacey trim. Another choked whine slips from his mouth as he moves to grab them, but you tut and pull just out of reach first.
"No touching, remember?"
"Yes ma'am."
Careful to avoid brushing your skin in the process, he uses the tips of his fingers to slip them off before closing his fist tightly around the silky material and drawing it into his bare chest. Just the sensation, damp but soft and tickling the dusting of hair there, has his toes digging into the carpet and his chest tightening.
A giggle falls from your lips as your knees fall open, and your attention returns to your clit. You coo, "Good boy."
Joel's cock twitches violently, but he manages to momentarily ignore the way it's screaming to be touched by raising the soaked garment to his face and inhaling deeply instead, eyes focusing intently on your own. Your jaw drops at the sight, the speed of your ministrations picking up as you nod in approval.
3 minutes.
Maybe getting closer wasn't the right idea. Your stuttered breathing is louder now, and the sweet smell of you floods the rest of his senses. He's so hard it hurts.
And when he sees the muscles in your thighs start to lock up, your back arching, hips bucking into your palm as you barely tease your entrance–Joel can barely catch his breath just watching.
Watching.
And from this closer vantage point, he can see the slick dripping out of you, every small quiver as you bring yourself closer and closer to the edge causing a ripple effect through your entire body and goddamn, are you beautiful.
Joel can't pry his eyes away to even check the clock again. Something desperate claws at his stomach, a brand of ache he's only ever felt in these moments with you–the kind where the release afterward is always so fucking good that he'll forget how hard it was when it was happening.
But he wants you so bad right now–hell, he could cry. His chest actually heaves at the wondered reminder that it's him who will be making you come for the rest of the night, making you whine and gasp and cry out in these same ways but on any part of him you'd like to use, instead of your fingers.
Even these few moments he has to wait feel like an eternity.
Biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to quell the intense emotion threatening his tear ducts, Joel sucks in a shaky gasp before leaning forward, and fuck, it's like he can taste you already. There's a strangled, high-pitched sound bubbling in his throat and when he shifts his weight to inch even closer, his still covered but achingly hard cock coming into contact with the bed, it filters off his tongue.
With it, your hips lift fully off the comforter. Joel watches your fingers make a few more clever strokes before you jolt and flutter around nothing, crying out his name.
It's the most beautiful sound he'll ever hear.
–
Joel's chest is heaving, staring directly into your cunt even as you move your hand away and settle back against the pillows. Biting your lip, you leave your legs spread but hold back a snort at the ever so subtle roll of his hips, grinding meekly against the mattress.
With wide eyes, he finally stops and averts his gaze from the soaked skin between your thighs. You only lift an eyebrow–a gentle accusation.
"Shit," he mumbles, sitting upright as quickly as he can while adjusting his waistband. You aren't surprised when the motion uncovers a generous wet spot on your duvet, the tip of his cock obviously angry and weeping beneath the matching stain on his briefs.
"Sorry, I- I wasn't fixin' to get off like that, I promise. Sorry."
Rising to your knees, you slide over the bedding towards him. The way his body reacts to you will never get old, and the goosebumps you observe rippling across his shoulder blades as you settle behind him stroke something deep and possessive inside you.
Planting a quick kiss below his ear before nuzzling into his neck, his shudder only exacerbates it. You can see the painfully restrained bob of his cock from over his shoulder, and pout against his skin.
"That bad, huh?"
Joel swallows hard and nods his head, leaning into you as much as he can.
"Words, love."
The thrum of his pulse is rapid. You can hear it in your ear, feel it on your cheek. When you snake your arms around to pull his back to your chest, he responds by lightly pinning your forearms to his front and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.
Shaking his head, he breathes out, "Shit, yes. Just- look what you do to me, sweetheart. I'm so fuckin' hard."
Joel's voice breaks and you squeeze him even tighter.
"I know, poor thing," you murmur into his neck, relishing in the way he continues to tremble under you, "Ready to come already, aren't you?"
"Can I? Please," he asks, pulling back just enough to put his face in front of yours, those big brown eyes never failing to conjure an intense and tender endearment in your heart.
You lean back in, letting your lips brush his earlobe and ask, "Think you can hold out a little bit longer? Make me come on your face and I'll let you paint me, wherever you want."
Another groan rumbles beneath your hands, reverberating through you.
"I- inside? Please. Please, darlin', I wanna feel you, fill you up."
You press an even wider smile into his jaw, having known where he'd choose before giving him the choice, and nod. Joel has always preferred to finish inside you, to coat your warm walls where you can squeeze his cock and hold him in your arms.
You are, always, more than happy to oblige.
"Take 'em off. And lay down, on your back," you order, pushing away to give him room to sprawl out. Hands shaking as he peels off his briefs, his cock smacks against his tummy as it springs free and he gets into position. Joel leaves just enough room between him and the headboard for your knees to slot over his shoulders.
Planting your palms on the upholstered bed frame, you hover over his face and wait patiently for his attention to turn from the soaked folds before him back to your eyes.
And fuck, the way he looks up at you–all disarming and compliant puppy eyes, plush parted lips and a heavy tongue peeking out, so willing and eager to be used–it isn't the first time he's managed to draw some wanton whine from you with just a look, and it certainly won't be the last.
A fleeting memory floats through your mind, the exact shade of red that crept up from his collar when you’d told him once how surprised you were that he’d never even been asked to submit before you.
“Never? With those baby browns?” you’d teased as he rubbed his neck and shrugged in the cutest way possible.
Thick fingers flex against your thighs, Joel’s silent way of communicating the restraint he’s exercising. You could make him wait a little longer, tell him to sit still while you sway your hips over his face, watch him squirm over the swell of your breasts, brush your swollen clit over his beautiful nose until he’s whining, begging–
But then Joel opens his mouth wider, a sharp inhale telling you he’s about to speak. You’d wager that it would have been something along the lines of “Please, sweetheart, lemme taste you, wanna make you feel good…” but you don’t wait to find out, lowering yourself onto his tongue and grinding back until the tip of it finds your clit.
“Shhh,” you needlessly shush, knowing all too well that Joel always will make the best use of his mouth once given the opportunity. Your eyes find the ceiling, the heat and perfect glide of his tongue unwavering as he drinks up every remnant of your previous orgasm.
“Oh, oh that’s it Joel, there you go, s’good,” you encourage from above, and your praise only doubles the enthusiasm he pours into your cunt.
You let your chin fall to your chest when he lifts his head from the mattress. Neck extending just enough to allow him to chase your movements, you watch his lips latch on as you feel his tongue draw quick, precise circles.
It isn’t long before you’re gripping the headboard so tightly, fucking his face in earnest, that your fingers slip over the velvety fabric and jostle you forward. You catch yourself, but Joel takes the opportunity to slip a finger into your heat, groaning loudly at the way you squeeze around it. It feels so good, a slight curve into your walls as his noises travel up and percolate low in your stomach. The rolls of your hips shorten, grinding faster and harder until you sense movement behind you.
Pushing off swiftly, your hand wraps around his forearm to keep his finger from following. You successfully hold back a whine as it leaves you, clenching hard over the loss.
Joel freezes when you twist your torso and glance back, abruptly ceasing the shallow thrusts his hips were doling into nothing. The sight of his cock–so ruddy and hard against a soft belly, absolutely coated in precum despite its lack of attention–confirms your suspicions, and shoots familiar sparks all over your skin.
When you shift back to find him between your thighs, understanding is already etched into the lines of his face. Still, you raise your brows and shake your head. Keeping your voice steady despite the way you're already throbbing for his tongue again, you say, “Just your mouth. Don’t come until I say you can.”
He's shaking beneath you, pinching his eyes shut and nodding emphatically over the heave of his chest in an attempt to control his breathing.
“I know, m’sorry baby,” Joel breathes out, a near whimper as the nods turn into head shakes, “just taste s'good, always feel so fuckin’ perfect…”
Not waiting for his eyes to open, you lower yourself back onto his face–tossing away any effort to not cry out when he picks back up in an instant. You can’t hold anything back now, not with the knowledge of how close he is and how badly you know he’d much rather empty himself inside you.
You just need to make it there first.
Joel seems to know it too, urging you to ride his face with his palms on your ass, assisting in the slippery glide as your clit nudges against his nose and his tongue plunges into your walls.
With the new pace comes a telltale weight in your chest, an inability to take in an entire lungful of air as your knees clamp over his ears and your jaw drops. Peering down just before you topple over the edge, you almost don't catch the shimmer on his lashes, or his flooded waterline and the solitary stream spilling over the border of his cheekbone and disappearing where his hairline meets his patchy beard.
Pleasure rushes through you, surely adding to the moisture on his face as you jolt and chant his name. Joel’s tongue works you through it, lapping at your release dutifully until it briefly stutters–a word murmured into your pussy before you feel something hot splash across your lower back.
“Sorry,” he gasps again, lips still brushing your oversensitive clit as you gather enough strength to look over your shoulder and find ropes of come shooting across his stomach. You can’t help but smile and whisper, “oh,” as you watch, the thrusts of his hips allowing most of it to reach the small of your back and the cleft of your ass.
“Fuuuuck, oh I’m sorry, I’m s- so sorry, goddamn it,” he continues, holding to your hips like his life depends on it and bending his neck to rest his nose on your mound until he finishes with a sob-like gasp.
Before Joel fully returns to Earth, you swing off him and settle on your side, uncaring of all that's dripping off you and onto the bed. His eyes lazily follow you, only pressing tightly shut again when you lean in to kiss and lick away the salty, warm water that still leaks slowly from their corners. You keep at it, his apologies for finishing early endless as your lips traverse his cheeks, until all the tears are gone.
When you finally pull back, Joel shifts his weight to the side. He wraps an arm around your middle, nuzzling into your chest, and you pull him in tighter. Pressing your lips to the crown of his head, he sighs as you card fingers through the sweat-slicked curls at the nape of his neck.
The way his palm journeys up and down your back is completely indifferent to the way it spreads his remaining release across your skin, the motion only soothing and steady and natural.
“It’s okay, love,” you eventually say, planting one last kiss in his hair before laying your cheek there instead, “Still were so good, so good to me.”
The hot huff of another sigh over your breast strikes a match in your stomach, and you tangle your fingers a bit tighter in his hair. Not hard, but with enough strength to guide his face far enough to press your lips to his. You let it drag, the push and pull of his mouth against yours somewhat chaste but languid and easy. Time drifts away, completely unimportant.
When his breathing starts to slow, the comfort of his weight against your body dragging you towards sleep as well, you smooth a hand over his hair one last time and whisper, “I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me.”
❤︎ Remmick (Sinners) x female reader
❤︎ Remmick lets you use him--lucky for you, he loves lying back time to time and watching his girl get greedy, but it's a win-win for both of you. Cause you're both freaks
❤︎ I <3 fucknasty short and sweet porn I need this man on his back sweaty and desperate moaning and acting like a whhhooorreee and I need it STAT ASAP
Remmick's head thumped back, and he smiled to himself, exhaling heavily while his eyes closed and one hand fell limp to his chest. Left only in his gold chain and one yellowed sock with a hole at the heel, his hair was damp and shiny with the sheen of sweat visible on his forehead and flushed cheeks. A chuckle erupted shortly after his last breath. He then glanced down at the sore sight of your mouth working itself over the blushed and agitated sight of his teased erection, your hands planted on his hips as his belly rose and fell gently. One knee splayed open, his lifted the opposite arm and slung his hand behind his head, groaning as your tongue circled and rolled around where he liked it best, causing a tightness in his chest that trickled deeper down into his pelvis, curling around his balls like the vice of a snake about to pump its venom. You could feel the thumping pulse along the bottom of his length, the silken skin tightening as blood gorged his girth and made it so when you released him with an obscene pop! that your favorite, shiny, strawberry red lolli bobbed toward his happy trail with a slight curve toward it that made you bite your lip again and stare down at with a wideness to your eyes that always told him you were about to start squirming.
He loved it when you squirmed, became fidgety, started edging him not out of malice or intention but out of fascination, awe, and your own greed. For a man of his nature, the longer you played with him and the more worked up you got him, the sounds that came out of his mouth became increasingly and surprisingly high-pitched. You'd called him pathetic once, earning a growl that faded into more huffing and puffing as his brows quirked upward and he gritted his teeth. You knew just how to work him right.
Remmick smirked down at you as these thoughts of his beautiful torture passed through your mind. He reached down with his free hand, turning an open palm so you pressed your cheek to it before his fingers curled around the nape of your neck and he yanked at a fistful of your hair, causing your spine to arch like a kitten's while you whimpered and crawled forward, up the length of his body.
"Now, now, I know how to work ya nice and good, too," Remmick murmured, dilated pupils darkening his gaze and his smirk widening, revealing the jaggedness of his teeth. They were hardly human, even when he hid behind the mask of a man. You merely whimpered at the warning, angling your hips over his cock and grinding them downward so your swollen lips pressed against the sides. You both gasped as the sensitive contact, each curve of your pelvis making his tip graze your clit gentle enough it sent your head spinning. Remmick squeezed his fist again, so you lowered your face toward his and met him in an eager kiss, leading him to cradle your skull--releasing your hair--and slip his tongue between your teeth.
Your hands planted above his shoulders and your knees pressing into his sides, the next time you curved your back and rubbed down into his erection, shivering at the way the mix of your saliva and the drool of your pussy's natural lubrication made his cock slip easily between your folds, you did so so that his head stretched the musculature of your entrance and your walls became filled with the first inch, then two, then three of him before you stopped, already panting.
Remmick had pulled his arm from behind his head. His thumb tracing your nipple, pinching it before squeezing one of your breasts and cupping the side of your rib cage, he kissed you rougher, muffling the beginnings of his more desperate noises, until your lungs burned and you opened your mouth to catch some air. You could feel the movement of him inside you with each flinch of his hips as he fought the urge to slam up into you, knowing you'd need a few more moments to adjust. But you wanted to feel that sweet ache, the sting of his intrusiveness. So you fell all the way down, sitting into his lap with a wince and the straightening of your spine. Remmick seemingly coughed, then lengthened his throat with a strained moan, his hands falling to your hips at the same time, a string of curses fell from his agape mouth. You kept them coming by rolling forward, planting your fingers splayed across his pecs and bouncing yourself on him with the squeeze of your thighs and pushing of your knees, clawing at his skin and causing red to bloom in the wake of your touch.
As soon as he was able to find a way to form words again, Remmick huffed, "mm-fuh-fuck, w-well, damn," his words choppy from the rythmn you fucked him. His hands only helped pull you back down as they kneaded the supple meat and he allowed you to not just fuck him but to fuck yourself on him, use his body to work out anything you needed to. Your face scrunched, your eyes rolling back, brows pulled together in concentration, he didn't have to read your mind or think too hard on it to know you had thoughts going on that needed distraction from. The only thing he corrected was, "look at me, darlin,' if you're gon' use me, look at me," all in his thick accent that swept over you and drew your eyes back to his. "That's it," he praised, "look at what y'do to me," smiling and moaning and giving you a convincing show--because nobody needed convincing. You felt it so deep inside you each time he knocked up into the cushion of your cervix that he was close, his ribs flaring and abdomen tensing, breath becoming more strained, his whimpers, whining, and moaning all becoming pitched higher and mixed together once he stopped trying to fight it. "You-gh-s'fuckin' pretty when y'using-me, all greedy, usin' me up, ah-fuck-fuck! that's, yeah, oh-yeah, that's good, that's so good--"
When he came, he shut his eyes and held you down on him, gritting his teeth and holding his breath, accidentally bucking you up with jagged kicks of his hips before a growl tore from the quivering tension in his body and his warmth leaked from you thick and sticky. His arms then slumped lax at his sides while he tried to catch his breath, all the while you carefully reached down between your legs where he slowly went soft inside you and scooped up a glob of his cum with your fingers.
Holding it out, a few drops dribbled onto his chest, causing Remmick to furrow his brows and look toward your hand. However, without question, once you muttered, "open," and turned your fingers to slip them to the knuckle onto the tender palette of his pink tongue, he wrapped his lips around them and suckled, locking eyes with you and cleaning you up. Not a single heartbeat later, you felt the twitch of him getting hard again, and knew it was your turn to lie on your back and let him work you.
Summary: lonesome Y/N is left alone again awaiting for sweet hardworking husband, so shes left to her own imagination, maybe a knock on the door can help her out
Warnings: language, sex, dom!remmick Sub! Reader if u squint, masturbation, cheating!
A/n: Wrote and posted on the same day- shoot me if theres typos or if it seems rushed🙄
It was a cold night, wrapped in your robe with water in the kettle. You awaited for your hard working husband to come home and cuddle you in these lonesome nights. It was just you up, your two kids sound asleep just upstairs with the calming vinyl playing in the background. You settled for a cup of wine on your coffee table, and a book in your hands. You read away, the words filling you in, the words getting spicer and spicer, your sister gifted you this book, she knew how your husband worked late at night and clowned you for it, wondered how you even had time to make two angels that resides upstairs-
Nevermind that
You felt your blood raise in the most subtlest way, your legs softly began to tingle, you looked at the stairs out of paranoia before you pulled your robe to the side, revealing your right leg as you laid on the couch, your hand slowly creeping down, skimming over your covered breast, then your stomach, then to where you desire most. You continue to read the heavily written smut and allow it to take you away, soft and sweet moans leaving your lips as you arched your back into your hand, but suddenly, you heard the kettle.
“Fuck” you said before you let out a sigh, throwing your book on the coffee table right beside the glass of wine. You quickly stood and wrapped yourself back up before walking over to your kitchen, you were annoyed but it wasn't like anything you couldn't get back to, you simply turned off your stove and grabbed a mug, “wine and coffee? No that doesn't seem-” you were cut off by a knock on the door, which was weird, your husband usually just strolled in.
Your thoughts were cut off again by a more hurried knock, which you furrowed your eyebrows at before setting down your mug, “one second!” you yelled out before walking to your sink and hunching down, grabbing your pistol and getting back up, you wish you could have seen the stranger through your window in the kitchen, but it was far from the front door, you could only see your swings on your porch and the moonlight. You sighed as you walked over to the front door, you looked at your stairs one more time for your kids, you heard the knock again and became annoyed now.
You opened the door to see a pale man, a pale….handsome man. Too handsome, especially for it to be midnight, it was almost as if he dressed for the night time. His brown curls were even on his head and he gave you a look as if he's worried about something. “H-hi ma’am, my name is-”
“Why are you here? Are you a Mormon or somethin?” you asked rudely, to which he laughed at. You only gave him a look of suspicion and hung your hand on your hip, in your eyes he seemed like a sad puppy, probably a virgin, if that mattered, but fully submissive. “Uhm, I'm traveling, I have a long, long journey to make. I'm just lookin for food and water…and possibly a place to stay for some warmth” he scratched the back of his neck, he almost looked desperate, but he gave you your space, never came close to the door or give any hint that he could possibly be dangerous.
Your eyebrows relaxed and you gave him a doubtful look. “Maybe you can take that up with my husband. My kids are asleep upstairs and frankly, i don't know you-""ma’am, please” he raised his hand, about to give another reason to get what he came for. “I've been out day and night, you're probably the first person i've talked to today … .tonight- sorry ha” he laughed. “Please, just an hour or two, i..i have a guitar i can play you a few songs i learned along the way” he raised his guitar with a promising smile. You tilt your head at him and his smile only raises more. “Can I come inside?”
“You don't seem very cold, and you never introduced yourself” you crossed your arms now, to which his mouth only became agape, “your right! I am so sorry, my name is Remmick, I like the guitar, and I'm freezing ""why did you pick my house?” you asked, he bit his lip as he made eye contact with you. “Just seemed safe..you said it yourself, your kids are upstairs, and not to be nosey but…the book, on your table. It just seemed like a cozy place to be…i can pay you, if that's worth anything” and that sold you, you gave him a saddened look.
“No-no i'm sorry. You're just lookin for some warmth, come in, I have a blanket and there's some hot water in the kettle, please come inside” you waved your hand and made space for him to come through the door. “Thank you ma’am” he smiled sweetly. “But leave the guitar at the door” you gave him a blank stare, he let out a throaty chuckle at that, he set it outside before raising his hands in an “okay” way. He rubbed his palms on his pants before sitting on the couch. “Coffee?” you asked, wrapping yourself up and walking to the kitchen.
“Please, and you never introduced yourself either” “my name is Y/N,” you said loudly as you poured the boiling water into the mug. He said nothing after that, and once you were done with his coffee, you entered back into your living room, and you almost choked as you watched him reading your book, you dropped the mug out of embarrassment, addressing yourself to the room. He only looked up at you from the couch, his eyes cut looking up at you with his legs parted. He set the book beside him before a smirk played on his face.
“Miss Y/N, is that how you like to play?” he said, that fucking smirk. You felt hot under your robe and you lowered to your knees, picking up the towel that was next to your fireplace and instead of scrubbing, you were scraping, you felt the wood under your nails and you didn't respond, you didn't even look at him. “Don't play all coy with me now” he slowly stood, walking in front of you and pulling up his pants slightly before squatting in front of you, watching as your tits spilled from your robe. “Remmick..this is…inappropriate, my kids are upset-” he laughed at your remark, tilted his head back even as he bellited you.
It was strange, the way the dynamic changed so quickly, just a minute ago, he was outside your door. Now he's towering over you, laughing at you, you feel insecure. Was he laughing at the fact you were so lonely you read porn books while you waited on your husband? Or was he laughing at how easy you are to give it up for him. You avoided eye contact but you could feel his energy over you, you could feel him inch closer and his breath on your ear, on your neck.
“Wanna know the truth, y/n?” he asked, looking at the side of your face. You could see him in your peripheral vision. “Th..truth?” you whispered before you let out a slight hiss, back slightly arched more than it already was as he put his singular finger on your lower back and trailed all the way up, smoothly, and calmly, to your chin. He forced you to look at him, his face serious and he looked deep into your eyes. “I came over because I could sense your wet pussy from a mile away, calling my name. Can you hear it too? Remmick” he restated his name once before he started taking matters into his own hands.
Remmick
It responded all throughout your body, you felt your pussy clutch on nothing and he watched you with pure satisfaction, aw, that name…Remmick…touch me…touch me there- you felt your hips bucking against him, your panties were already pushed to the side. He bit his lips and tilted his chin slightly up, watching as your eyes lost focus, it made him smile. “Fuck” you whimpered, “yeah? That's what you want?” he muttered, his two fingers now entering your slippery entrance. “Say it” he pressed harder against your spot. “Yes- yes it's what I want!” you rutted your hips against him and took it upon yourself to untie your robe, he watched you struggle before your breasts were finally exposed, you rolled your nipples between your fingertips and it left your mouth open.
“Gonna let me fuck you?” he asked as he pursed his lips together, focused on pressing harder and it left your body in shock, looking at him you could only nod. He removed his fingers from you and took hold of you by the nap of your neck, making you rise from the floor and over to the couch, he didn't care to take off the robe completely, he moved it to the side. You were breathing heavily into your couch pillows as you felt his hands trailing down your back to your ass before laying a firm slap, you arched your back and hissed in pleasured pain.
You looked back at him and watched him unbutton his shirt, revealing his chest and the chain shimmered off his body just right, he rubbed over his stomach and watched you watch him. “You like what you see?” he said lowly, you nodded and received another hard smack on yur ass and you hissed again before pushing yourself into his clothed cock, you felt his hard on and rubbed against it to which he let out a deep breath, hooking his hand to your hip to keep you moving on his boner, “fuck” he said with his head tilted back before he pushed your ass forward, taking his cock out. He pulled your panties off before spitting on your pussy. He said no words but looked into your soul and he pressed himself against your entrance, loving the way you whimpered and silently begged for it. “You look so beautiful” he spread your ass wide before sliding his cock inside your pussy.
You bit your lip and moaned so loud you were sure someone heard, and Remmick didn't mind at all. He began moving, watching as you hissed getting used to him deep inside you as well as the pleasure taking over, h watched the transition with pure admiration, he tilted his head as he leaned over, placing his knee on the edge of the couch to get in deeper, his eyebrows furrowed as he started to move faster, his chain bouncing off of his skin as he gained rhythm. “Ah! Mmm fuck!” “Yeah baby, let me take that pussy,” he groaned, sweatballs slowly starting to form on his forehead as he bit his lip in hunger, his lips parting as his hips moved. “Remmick! Yes, oh my go-” your eyes rolled back as you hid your face into the pillow. He grabbed the nape of your neck once again and fucked harder, using the back of his leg for his strength as you gripped the top of the couch, you could feel the couch moving as each thrust occurred, you swear you were gonna draw blood from how hard you were biting. “Say my name, Remmick” he reminded you as he pounded into your pussy. You put your hand to his chest, trying to fiddle with the necklace so you didnt cum so quickly, but he wasn't having it. “Fuck..remmick!” you forced out, “i love the way you say it” he whispered and rutted his hips, it was his turn to roll his eyes back, he gripped your neck harder before he let it go, now moving onto your hips to help you fuck him.
You cried in pleasure, opened your legs and felt your arousal crawling down your legs. He looked at you the entire time with seriousness and smirking only when you tried to moan, but it was so much you felt you could hardly breath, you let go of his necklace and let him make you fuck him. You bite on your pillow as he groaned, “stop being lazy” to which you only replied with a moan, throwing your pussy on him harder to which he drooled at, tilting his head up as his body subconsciously fucked you harder. “Im going to- fuck!” you pushed out. “Cum? Yeah, cum for me,” you brought him back to the present and now he went relentless, he grabbed the top of the couch, one hand ontop of yours on the couch as he fucked fiercer.
Your head slowly tilted back as your body jolted, “remmick! Fuck! Remmick!” you repeated his name like a prayer and he bit his lip again, pulsing into you. You watched as he did so, the saliva pooling at the edge of his lips as he watched your frame jolt taking all that dick, he fucked into you one more time before he came deep in your pussy, a howling tone as he moaned feeling your pussy clench on him.
He continued to milk the cum out of you as you couldn't do anything but whimper and mutter his name, eloping your hand in his. When both highs were rode out he slipped out of you and whispered a shit, shaking his head slightly to escape the cloud 9 your pussy brought to him. Your body was still shaky from being under him. He wiped his lips before leaning over to press a kiss to your lips, finally. But it was clearly a goodbye kiss, he simply zipped up his pants. “Your husband should really consider quitting” and with his shirt balled up in his hands, he left.
summary: He chooses to pay you a visit, knowing that since you allowed him inside on that fateful night, you've been longing to see him again.
warnings: blood, mentions of animal death, mentions of smut, slight religious trauma
word count: 3.4k
a/n: Hiyaaaaa its meee, so...idk if I would've ever guessed that apparently, the cure for my very severe writer's block is a super old Irish vampire loser, but you know what? Looking at my track record, it makes sense. Idk how good this is, idk if it's good at all, but i can not explain to you all how good it feels to have something written again, so i hope you'll enjoy it. This is a bit of an AU I guess where the vampires escape and separate, moving between different towns and regions, and the people who survived need to adapt, learn how to fight back, how to kill, and how to protect themselves. C: something like that
You stand in the doorway of your parent’s wooden house, the warm summer night surrounding the vast land of the family farm. An evening so calm and quiet it could bring comfort to some folk. Folk from different parts of the country, from a different city, a place different from your home. But not you, not your city, not the people of the community that knew what lurked in the depths of the night. The people watched the crimson plague flood this cursed soil.
Your eyes trace over the property’s edge, as far as you can see, up to the small dirt road right in front of the cornfield. The soft wind picks up, dancing with the wind chimes hanging at the edge of the porch, for what feels like seconds before the breeze disappears, taking the sound with it.
The night falls quiet, too quiet, silent almost, and you clutch onto the heavy shotgun in your hand. Your senses, forced by the silence and darkness, heighten, focusing on the quiet sounds beyond the silence. Not the trees nor the fields dare to interrupt the quiet distant melody of an old Irish song, and as you recognize the familiar tune your body trembles. Not in fear but anticipation. He decided to pay you a visit tonight.
The melody grows louder as a figure emerges from the treeline, the red eyes glow like embers in the darkness of the deep navy of the night. A good distance still between you and the man, and even then, there is no mistaking him for anyone else.
Focused on the two red points as he approaches the house, slowly you recognize the thrilling shiver that travels from the very top of your head, right through your center and down to the feet.
There is no fear in you, yet the pounding in your chest grows as the sound of his voice reached your ears.
He walks slowly, step after step, taking his time to assess the situation. He searches for lights in the house and then the barn, any signs that indicated trouble, any signs that would confirm you tonight, you stayed at the property alone. His eyes scan the buildings, the fields, the fence and trees as he makes his way over to the very edge of the porch. The soft sounds of the folk song pausing only as he finally lays his ruby red eyes directly on your figure.
You stand in the silence of this dreadful night, the feeling you learned to accept, one that intrigued you over time. A feeling that put you at risk, strengthening your want to understand the unknown, the mysterious, the forbidden. Those eyes, they pierce through your clothes, your skin and bones, awakening something deep within you, something only you and him knew.
“Told you not to come ‘round here.”
You choose to speak first, and the man smirks at the slightly threatening tone of your voice. The sharp pearly white teeth shine in the moonlight while he watches you look over him from behind the threshold of the old house.
“Now, Darlin.”
He starts softly, the sarcastic frown follows his words while he pulls on the string of the banjo, moving the instrument behind his back.
“That how you greet a guest?”
He teases, wide smile never leaving his face, sharp teeth almost as if on display for you to admire.
“You ain't a guest, and told you not to come here.”
You repeat, standing your ground, shotgun in hand, a heavy wooden spike fastened to the belt gathering your dress. His eyes drop to the weapons for merely a second before they meet yours once more.
“You told me I ain’t welcome. Never told me not to come round, sweet pea.”
He points out innocently, using your own words against you with complete ease, taking pleasure in every second of it.
“Two completely separate things.”
Bearing his teeth in a wide smile, once again the vampire stands in front of you, eyes shining crimson red, the hunger inside him so deep you can feel it in your own body.
Yet your hands don’t shake, your voice doesn't hitch uncertainly when you choose your words as you address him. Your palms don't sweat around the handle of the gun and your legs don’t bend under his piercing gaze.
There is no fear. Of the others, yes, but not of him.
Over time the town learned about the creatures, the people learned how to protect themselves, how to act, what was allowed and what wasn't. How the outside was no longer safe at night, how the only place where safety was certain was your own house, and even that wasn’t always true. The creatures had abilities, able to read into the memories of people once close to you, able to read thoughts of the souls they claimed. Survival was a challenge but some people chose to persist, not give up, live among the creatures and fight for what was theirs.
You knew what to do, took precautions, listed off the steps in your head: hung garlic around the house, spread salt and holy water around it, you owned weapons, had rules that had to be followed. However, in all that, your greatest advance proved to be the questionable feeling that grew between you and the vampire stood outside your porch. Advantage, that, twisted into your greeted weakness.
“Your Pa home?”
Remmick starts again, nodding toward the windows, staring into the darkness hiding the insides of your house.
“Now wouldn’t you wanna know.”
You answer dismissively and watch his face turn back to you. His cocky smirk as if permanently fixed onto his lips while he addresses you.
“I do know, Sweet thing. Been keeping an eye on you since sundown.”
You know he's not lying, it wouldn't be the first time he watched you through the night, keeping watch, almost as if to ready to defend his self-proclaimed property.
“Then why you askin'?”
You point out, eyebrows pulled together in a frown, hand on your hip as you look him up and down, knowing god-damn well why he came to you.
“Just tryin’ to make conversation. Pardon me, that not allowed, Miss?”
He teases, glancing down at the wooden steps of the porch right in front of him. Instinctively, you wrap your other hand on the barrel of the shotgun, pulling it up and closer to your chest.
“Now, now girl, there ain't no need for all that.”
“Or there ain't? A vampire on my porch ain't a reason for a gun?”
“Ahhh, you really gotta call me that, sweet thing? It's just me, you know me…probly’ bit more than you wanna admit, ain't that right?”
He toys with you, and the smile turns into a sinister grin, but you see through the games, the words, through all the ways he attempts to call you to him again. Standing up taller, you look down onto the man below you, not a sign of fear in your eyes, not a word falling through your mouth as you fight with the shame of the desire to know him better.
“That thing really loaded, Darlin?”
The question for an answer to the silence you throw upon him.
You cock the shotgun, and a deep, guttural laugh cuts through the warm air. He applauds you, impressed as shakes his head, tongue brushing over the long fangs. It feels almost like a challenge, as if he doesn't believe you, as if he's daring you to prove it.
“Pure silver.”
He nods, encouraging you to continue.
“Blessed by the preacher, too.”
You explain, knowing deep inside he's praising your widths, the ways you were always ready, more thorough, more prepared than a lot of people around the old town. Part of him was proud, proud of how you took notes of his instructions, his suggestions, the things he'd explain to you, the things he taught you over time, the things that have now proven to work not only on the others but on him as well. Blessing and a curse.
“You listen well, Sweetpea.”
He admits, nodding as he swallows hard as the hunger of the night grows inside him.
“Got a decent teacher, he's a pain tho.”
You point out and Remmick chuckles, staring up at you before glancing down at the stairs once again.
“You can come up. Not inside. Up on the porch.”
Making sure the instructions are clear and there is nothing that could be taken for something else, you let the man approach you. Still not allowed to enter your home, to touch you, not even to reach out to you over the threshold. He climbs up the tall, wooden stairs. The old wood boards creek under his steps, again then again, interrupting the silence of the night for a moment before he stands in front of you. You tilt your head up, staring right into the crimson of his pupils, not moving back an inch, understanding well what he can and can not do. What he could, but will not do. He stands only inches apart from you, so close you could feel his breath on your skin if his body still required it.
“Two words, my Darling.”
He whispers, picking up on the sound of your beating heart, of the blood, how it rushes down and between your legs as he speaks to you, addresses you with pet names, the same ones he whispered into your ear in the barn only days ago while your body clung to his.
His lips part, tongue licking over them as he pants, lustful, hungry, desperately almost. Desperate for you, your blood, your soul, your flesh.
“I know the damn rules.”
You state, firmly, trying to read through him as well as you know he's reading through you. He knows how you want him, how your body wants him, how you miss the forbidden sense of his touch, longing for his body, his lips. He feels how you fight the desire inside you, how you push back the urges, deny yourself the pleasures he offers you.
With his eyes never leaving you, you turn away towards the dark sky looming over the fields, allowing your hair to fall back, exposing your neck to him as it brushes over your skin ever so gently. A cruel payment for the way he toyed with you before.
“You’re hungry, ain't ya?”
Your voice gentle now, almost concerned, almost pitiful. And despite knowing your cruel inventions he gives in to the hunger.
“Starvin.”
He whispers, leaning forward, almost closing in on the space between you both. And he would, if you allowed him over the threshold. The scent of your blood, the memory of your body on top of his, your flesh around him spinning in his head, it feels like a curse. Like you've crushed him with this want, this need, this lust for you, that very night you first let him taste you as you nursed him back to health. When everyone else would've ended his existence in the very spot he was laying when you stumbled across his withering form.
Smart girl
He thought back to that very night, and many times after, same as tonight when he saw you ready, armed and waiting for him. Pretending not to long for him just as irresistibly as he longed for you.
The sound of your blood rushing through the veins of your neck, the scent of it, recognizable to him over any other. Your body, silently calling for him as your legs twitch slightly when you let your mind wander, he curses the power you wield over him, even now, as unaware of it as you are.
You watch how the thin string of drool drips down his chin and hold back, ignoring the intense warmth in your lower stomach, the tenderness between your legs, the throbbing of your body. You fight, not letting yourself reach up to his lips, not risking breaking the barrier, not risking the safety of your family.
“Will you help a starving man, Miss?”
He whispers again, words brushing over your ears, his voice desperate. For your blood or for you? He licks his lips, gaze dropping down your body, his hand hovering over the dress.
If only it wasn't tonight, if you were truly alone, if you didn't have anything to lose, if only you could fully trust him.
The ever present smirk drops as Remmick feels the cool steel of the shotgun barrel press against the center of his chest. With a confused, almost offended frown, he leans back, glaring down at the weapon you now threaten him with. With his hands raised up in an innocent gesture, he awaits your next move.
“One of the lambs in the barn is sick.”
You start, fighting against the lust filling your body as he laughs, loud into the night, understanding now that you made your decision. Tonight is not the night, he will not get to feel your warmth, he will not get to hold your body, he will not get to touch you, to fill that need that takes over his body and mind like a parasite—the lust for you, stronger than the hunger for your blood. Tonight, he will not be allowed inside.
“Deadly. Won't live till sunrise.”
You explain, and the man nods, slowly. Sighing loudly, defeated before clicking his tongue, looking back up with the same old smirk but unable to hide how his body starves because of you. The lack of you.
“Well damn.”
His head turns towards the old building in the depths of your father's property. The place when he had you last.
“Would be a shame if it went to waste.”
You nod, agreeing with his words, but he doesn't move an inch. Your bodies craving each other more, now that you denied yourself the sinful pleasure.
“It would.”
There's a moment of silence, a moment that feels like an eternity when you attempt to, but can not, read his thoughts but somewhere deep inside you're almost certain he knows yours.
“Now you sure your daddy won't mind you givin’ up what's his to a man like me, Sweet thing?”
His hand twitches by his side, knowing exactly how he'd hold you right now if you only allowed him to.
“Not everything here is his to give.”
You answer, and he bares his teeth one more time in a satisfied grin.
“Smart girl.”
The praise falls from his lips, and you hesitate for a moment. Your body aching for more with every single pet name and praise that cut through the menacing silence of the night. Your chest rises as you breathe in the cool air deep into your lungs, making up your mind with an exhalation that does not go unnoticed. He observes, moving his head slowly, flowing to your eyes, not wanting you to look away. If it was any of the others, you'd say he's watching his prey.
“Go on now.”
Pushing the gun harder against his chest, you make your decision clear.
You order, and he listens, lifting his arms up in a defensive gesture once again. That damn smile never leaves his face before he takes a step back, then another and one more. Slowly stepping down from the porch, onto the dirt path leading to your house, his eyes on yours the entire time.
“I ain't looking for trouble, Miss.”
He toys with you, and you fight yourself with all the will left within your body, trying not to give in.
“Get your ass out of here before I shoot.”
The threatening tone followed, with a gesture towards the barn with the barrel of the shotgun. Watching him turn to walk away, you feel a conflicting wave of disappointment as your body craves him. A part of your soul within you that claws to the surface, aching for him, a voice inside that yells at you to step outside and a much quieter one screaming at you to shut the door. Your body trembles with desperation, but your feet stand firmly on the wooden floor of the old house. You know better, you're smart. He told you you were.
“One of them.”
His voice again, it stops the train of thought as you focus solely on his words now.
“One of these damn gorgeous nights, I will get to hear the words from those pretty lips of yours.”
He proclaims, speaking louder than he should now, and you glance over your shoulder quickly inside the dark interior of the house, before he continues.
“One of those damn nights, you'll let me have you again, Darlin’... and that time, I might just wanna keep ya’.”
It takes every last bit of your will to hold yourself back, to not let him see, not let him feel the desperate cries of your body, exhausted from how you withhold the pleasure from it.
“In your dreams, boy.”
A firm answer, no trembling in your voice, no hesitation, and yet you feel like he saw through the act. He did, from the very beginning.
“No, no no. In yours, Sweet thing. Your dreams, I’ll be there, like any other night. As you beg of me to be.”
A rush runs through your body as the memories of the night flood your mind once again. The pounding of your heart picks up as your body remembers his cold touch on your skin. His hands, steady on your shaking hips, his eyes so fixed on yours, his tongue tracing over your skin worshiping the warmth of it. His arms that could hold you up for days, his legs pushing yours open, and the feeling, the feeling he spread inside of you when you offered yourself fully to the sinful pleasure, to him.
In his mind, you belonged to one another. He was yours and you were his. Nothing, except from you alone, could stand between that bond, that want, the need, that desperate desire that could never be truly fulfilled.
You wait till he steps outside the barn minutes later. The collar and sleeves of the white shirt, now covered in the blood of an innocent lamb. His chin and neck drip with the dark, crimson liquid. His hands completely still as the thick drops fall onto the grass, burned dry by the scorching sun. A hypnotizing sight, so terrifying to some, so intriguing to you. The vampire’s glare catches yours for another moment, the sharp teeth peaking from behind his lips, his figure slumps slightly, eyes shinning red in the light of the porch lamp like an animal.
He bows as if ending a performance he put on, just for you, and you watch as the figure slowly disappears into the dark.
Unable to see him now, you listen to the silence, waiting and as the usual sounds of the night slowly return onto the property, the trees, the fields, only then you step back into the house, shutting the door behind you.
Switching with your father once your shift finally ends, you make your way over to the small bedroom. Your eyes fall on the window above the bed, the darkness of the night looming behind the glass, calling your name so distinctly, so clearly you wonder if at this very moment someone stood by your side, could they be able to hear it?
While changing for bed you catch, just out of the corner of your eye, the two small red dots, somewhere outside. Never there when you turn back to look directly at them but back in your field of vision once you turn away. Once again, there’s no fear.
When you lay down in the big wooden bed, closing your eyes, you finally let yourself feel what you kept pushed so deep down in front of him. Your hand wanders down your body, slowly, as you strive to recreate the exact same way his hands touched you. The painfully disappointing attempt to make yourself feel the way he alone could make you feel.
And as the night drags on and your hands work over your anguished body, the small drops of sweat form at the surface of your skin and the quiet, desperate sounds of pleasure fall from your soft lips. You hope somewhere deep in the darkness he listens for you, hearing every little thing you whisper to him. Exhausted but unfulfilled, you curse the ray of sunshine that falls into your room in the early morning hours, forcing you to wait for dark, for him, yet again.
Love at First Bite [Beneath the Eternal Moonlight]
❤︎ Remmick (Sinners) x female reader
❤︎ NSFW 18+ for graphic smut/descriptions of sex, dubcon, vampirism/death
❤︎ When he goes "shhh, don't cry," in the movie, all bloody and vamped out, he's actually saying that to me when he shoves himself inside with no warning or preparation and expects me to take it all (and I do gladly). Anyway this was supposed to be straight porn but idk when to shut the hell up
Thick strings of drool hung from his open, puffy lips that peeled back to reveal a mouthful of jagged teeth. You stared at them from the corner of your widened eye, sipping tiny breaths that caught on the choked sobs raking through you. Despite this, no tears rolled down your cheeks as he pushed your face away and revealed your throat. His claws cupping your skull, you could feel their sharpness, crooked knuckles, and long nails keeping you from squirming too much while he grazed his nose down the side of your jaw and sniffed you like a true beast. The snarling growl that came from him was no different, pure animal--as animal and instinctual as the stiffness tightening the fabric of his high-waisted trousers. His own breath ragged, as he curled over you and trapped you beneath his weight, you felt his knee beneath your thigh, and the gentle rub of his hips to chase this friction.
"I bet you're just as sweet as nectar, darlin'," he purred. His voice was no longer the gentle baritone it had been, but gravelly and dark. "Yeah... Like summer wine, too..." Your eyes squeezed shut, and you flinched at the softness of his lips against your throat, awaiting the searing sting of his bite. Your hands twisted in his collar with this anticipation--yet, when another groan escaped him, this time you felt his hips jerk much more purposefully. You were shaking, teeth clattering with the motion, and he nuzzled you, closing his mouth this time to ask, "mmmm'y scared?"
Your fingers slipped down his torso at the same time you slowly, carefully turned your face, which prompted the moving of his fingers to clasp around your throat. Still keeping you pinned and subdued, you felt the cool dampness of the sweat against his temple, dripping from shiny black curls, and wriggled your hips up into his while following the tension of his abdomen downward until your palm cupped the bulge of an erection that made you nearly sob again. His voice strained, this time as he exhaled, "I promise, y'won't 'ven be able to tell the difference b'tween... the hurt--and ecstasy."
His clasp around your neck stopped the sound from coming out, tightening at the same time you began stroking him. His cheek to yours, when you caught his eye again, this time something more human burned in them, no less hungry. A side grin reminding you of the predator trapping you, your gut twisted with the familiarity of your own arousal, seemingly sparked by the fear that he caused to trickle down your spine. But maybe he could smell it perfuming you even before the chase had commenced. You couldn't have denied it; the sight of him lurking far enough away from you, although you hadn't been sure how long he'd been there, was close enough that your noticing of his shadow was imminent and intoxicating. You knew he was dangerous the second your heart had skipped a beat and your gaze had locked with his, a glint in it from the very beginning telling you he would taste you. Tonight. Of course, your thoughts had focused on a grainy picture of your fingers webbing through his hair, your legs thrown over the broad slope of his strong shoulders as his spine rolled like a cat and he buried his face in the tenderness of your cunt, but the desire which nestled in the pit of your stomach from the picture hadn't entirely ceased, even now. If anything, as your hands fumbled with the button of his pants and you began hurriedly trying to free him from the barriers of his clothing, it had grown fat, slimy and sick in you, as sick as he, who shivered and cursed under his breath with the whimpery, pathetic voice of a man victimized by the intensity of his own cravings.
When he sat back on his knees, your hands clung to the waist of his pants despite your shoulders thumping to the ground. Your eyes sweeping down his sturdy figure, his claws sliced into your skin as he pushed the skirt of your dress up to your hips, then shoved the fabric out of the way further once your hands traveled up his abdomen to his chest and he helped you sit up into his lap, using your arms before wrapping one arm around your middle and grunting once you were seated on top of him. It was as much of a fight as the one that had knocked you beneath him, his tongue following the trickling beads of blood where he'd accidently cut you while your hips lifted toward his stomach and you successfully yanked the stiffened silken flesh of his cock from his trousers. It was hot to the touch, leaking precum and blushed red from the friction of his previous dry humping. Agitated and sensitive, you pressed the delicate foreskin down to reveal more of his tip before pressing the heat to your swollen clit, both of you gasping from the contact.
Remmick--yes, that's his name, you recalled, shot one hand to pinch the nape of your neck and cradled the back of your head once more. This time, you let the weight of your skull crane your neck and winced from the protrusion of his girth stretching open your entrance. The muscles of your walls tightened with fluttering contractions that made your hips twinge and your thighs burn. You sniffled, for the first time a tear leaking from the corner of your eye as you rolled your hips slowly, leaning back into his forearm for stability.
"Shit, you're jus' as hungry as me," Remmick chuckled, his chest rising and falling heavy as his feet kicked out in front of him and he cleared his throat, his eyebrows turned upward before he licked his lips and felt your whole body press into his like a child's. His core tightened to keep him from falling back, and a fresh sheen of sweat dripped from his hairline. "Fuh-fuck-"
Your forehead resting in the crook of his shoulder, you turned your head to the side and mewled like a kitten when arching your lower back, keeping him deep inside with slow, heavy digging motions of your pelvis. Remmick nearly forgot about his need to feed, and his initial desire to drain you for the sole purpose of satisfying it. Now, the sweet ache of his gums throb of his canines matched the gooey, warm, heavy pulse of his cock, and with his other hand caressing the swell of your breast, when he finally sunk his teeth into the side of your throat and latched on like a child himself, gulping down the cherry red that filled his cheeks until you felt it gush down your chest just the same as your pussy melted over his length and could feel a mix of both of your pleasures leaking between your thighs and soaking the front of his pants, he shortly after unlatched and lapped at the wound, messily, groaning, while you kept on bouncing with your fists pressing into his stomach. You wouldn't have long, now, till your teeth came in. Your blood was already filled with secrets. He could see the flash of all the fantasies you had had upon first seeing him. His jaw craned open with a flex of his mandible and the strain of his neck as more images flooded him, all of your secrets, your memories coating his tongue. You were hungry, more so than he suspected by the look of you. Still, his raspy voice came out hushed, and he reached for your wrists to guide your touch to his throat. Your teeth were still flat and you were growing slower, more tired in your movements as your veins filled with his poison and your mind clouded from the transition before you fell asleep and would awake wholly his (during which he had no plans on leaving the warmth of your cunt), but he still wanted you to bite him, now.
"Bite me as hard as you can, darlin', go on," He could feel the nearing strength of his climax, the heat of your blood in his belly almost making him nauseous from the yanking tension. Both of his arms wrapping back around you, he found his claws gone, replaced by thick fingers massaging the roundness of your ass as you pressed the curve of it back into his palms. For a moment, he could feel himself as just a man. "Taste me, please-"
Your face hot, pleasure rippling through you faster than the pain, your limbs buzzing from the blood loss, you don't know what got stirred in you, but your tongue pressed to his pulse, and you bit down as hard as you could. When that didn't work, you began chewing--tearing at him, twisting his skin and feeling it start to squish and crunch before the black blood came. It was rotten blood, grave blood, but it tasted even more potent than he smelled of what had caught your attention even before you laid eyes on him. Both of you had smelled each other before finding the source of that scent. Remmick cried out as the pain burst and blistered through him, huffing, and fell back. You pushed his face away the same way he had done to you before, flaring your nostrils and biting at him again until the flesh came easier. You didn't just drink his blood, you swallowed the meat in your mouth and felt his hands squeezing your hips as you sped your thrusts up and claimed the beast as much as he had made you his own. And you wouldn't stop until after he'd popped like a hot yolk inside you twice and until you threw up viscous black and could remember the slightest, smallest detail of his life, and until you knew exactly how it felt to fuck you. Like the best damn thing he'd ever experienced. Like love at first bite.
