12 Days of Goosemas

Annual Ryan Gosling-centric fandom event that takes place in the month of December.

[goosemas]

I know it's early to be asking, but will there be a Goosemas event this year?

There will be a Goosemas for 2026 given the renewed interest in Gosling's work. The prompt list for the event will be going up on November 1st. Some other goodies (icons, template blanks, dividers) will also be sprinkled in throughout November and December for some extra holiday fun. :)

[drivinmeinsane]

Snow : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Eight ❆ Driver / Ken

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: Driver can't sleep, not when the neighbors fighting next door dredges up memories he'd rather forget. ❆ Rating: No mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Angst, Comfort, PTSD, Driver POV, Some Reference to James Sallis's Drive Novel, Character Study, Established Relationship, Codependency, Driver has a Different Take on Barbieland ❆ Word Count: 1531

Moving out of the sunny sprawl of California to the grim skies of Washington hadn’t been a mistake. There had been too much baggage in the Golden State for either of them to feel comfortable. Driver knows that Ken would always feel the pull of Barbieland like an addiction he couldn’t shake—he’d have always found himself worrying the inside of his cheek raw over the nonsensical idea that Driver could possibly ever think he was not enough.

As for Driver himself… Well, he’s never belonged anywhere before. Not really. Not until Ken had come along and rolled right over the hood of his project Chevy to land on the pavement in the glow of the headlights. The dazed man had been miraculously unbroken physically if not mentally. It had been abundantly clear that he was the purpose Driver had spent his entire life waiting for.

While leaving for northern pastures hadn’t been a mistake, Driver was of the opinion that picking this damned apartment had been. The neighbors are fighting again with a vengeance.

A glass smashing against the wall sends him straight out of bed to cross the threadbare carpet to the window. He slips his fingers between the slats making up the blinds and sightlessly peers out into the night. The mechanic is desperately trying to keep from thinking of older fights—more personal ones.

The woman neighbor’s voice rises shrilly. She is accusing her male partner of some infraction or another. Despite his best efforts to keep himself in the moment, he is dunked under the surface. His lungs are caught in a cruel twist. He can’t breathe.

Splatters of blood on the dinner table. Gurgling. His father dropping face down into his plate, crushing the peanut butter and baloney sandwich he’d been provided. His mother sitting down in her customary seat as if nothing were taking place. And Driver sits there, small, trying to be smaller. Why had he had that growth spurt? Why hadn’t he stayed stunted enough to be useful. If he hadn’t grown, his father wouldn’t have had to die for not—

Behind him, he hears Ken roll over in their shared bed. He listens to the other man sleepily pawing through the bedding in the subconscious desire to find him. Even in his sleep, Ken always tries to reach out to Driver. Knowing that the slumbering man is there is a floating piece of debris in the ocean of his mind. Driver latches onto it like the drowning man that he is. He sucks in one breath, then another.

Driver hangs onto the thin comfort of Ken being in the same room, even after there is the distantly audible rattle of cutlery in the kitchen drawer. Bile creeps up his throat and threatens to forge an exit faster than he can swallow it down. He strains his eyes, staring into the parking lot. He can make out the sleek, silver-gray body of his Malibu. She’s waiting in the darkness, looking for all the world like a nurse shark resting in the sediment.

His fingers itch to feel the curve of her steering wheel through a barrier of skin-tight leather. He can’t slip into the driver’s seat. Not right now. He fears that if he does, he might never come back. He can’t do that to Ken.

Neither of them are worth much without the other.

Ken cannot survive without him and there’s a cruel part of Driver that likes it that way. He has had a persistent thought that, one day, the other man will become independent enough to leave him behind. A kinder part of Driver hopes that he will. The wheelman knows that he is nothing more than a poison. Too many have had their lives torn apart as a result of his feelings. He doesn’t want Ken to be another causality of his love.

He is so wrapped up in the ghosts haunting the folds of his gray matter that it takes him a long moment to comprehend anything other than the familiar shape of his vehicle. Tumbling, white flecks drift without purpose on their journey to the ground. More and more of them start falling, forcing him to look at the world through patches of white.

It’s snowing. The strangeness of it is enough to draw his attention away from the commotion on the other side of the wall. He hasn’t seen snow since he was a kid. His foster family had taken him with them on a trip out of state years ago, long before he had taken their car and disappeared from their lives.

He turns away from the window, nearly slipping out of his socks in his haste to get to the bed. His knee dips into the mattress. The pressure is just enough to tilt the man laying on the surface.

“Ken,” he says, hushed from the late hour. He clears his throat and tries again. “Ken, wake up.”

The other man stirs with a sleepy grunt, clenching his eyes closed. He tries to burrow down into the blanket away from Driver’s insistent form.

He gives him a little shake on the upper arm. “C’mon, man.”

“Whazzssut?”

“Got something to show you.”

“T… morrow?” Ken tries.

“Now.”

At that, the other man cracks open an eyelid. It’s truly a herculean effort on Ken’s part if the jaw-popping yawn he lets out is any indication. All the same, he lets Driver all but drag him out of their bed and onto his bare feet. He doesn’t even protest after the mechanic throws a wad of clothing at him, only begins to dress himself.

While Ken struggles to make sense of his shoelaces in his foggy state, Driver shrugs into his layers of jackets. He still hasn’t been able to commit to buying himself a winter coat. He’d made sure Ken had one at the first sight of him shivering from the chill. He’d been too worried to let it go. Ken is a Malibu man through and through. He’s still head-turningly tan despite the prolonged lack of sun.

“Is something wrong?” Ken asks, more alert. The last time Driver had bundled them out of the door, the wrong guy had gotten pissed off about a job. He’d been prepared to put bullets in Driver—somewhat acceptable to the wheelman but not ideal—and in Ken—completely unacceptable and unforgivable.

“No,” he says simply.

He finds his keys and pauses for a moment by the doorway. “’s something fun,” he tacks on belatedly.

At that, Ken perks up. “Cool. Cool. Is it a car? A horse? Did the neighbors finally move—No, wait, I still hear them. Did…”

Driver lets the other man’s speculating wash over him. He simply takes his partner’s hand in his and leads him out of the unit and down the communal hallway after locking the front door behind them. Even though the leather of Driver’s gloves and the fabric of Ken’s own, he can feel the warmth of every millimeter of contact.

The chilly air of Spokane had been enough of a novelty to them, but what Driver is about to show him is something else entirely. He doubts that the snow Ken claims to have seen during his time in Barbieland had been any less fabricated and artificial than the place Ken described as being home.

Every time the other man mentions anything about his past residence, Driver humors him despite how outlandish the whole thing seems. In the blonder man’s defense, communes in Southern California get weird. It’s good Ken got out when he did because Driver has no idea what the hell was all going on in a place named after a kids’ toy.

Ken’s stream of words comes to a sudden halt as Driver shoulders the door leading out of the apartment building open. The snow is just beginning to stick to the frigid ground. He steps out into the powder, towing the other man along with him. It crunches ever so slightly under the soles of their shoes with every step. It’s surreal.

Everything around them is muffled. Traffic sounds as though it’s happening a planet away. The sky is gray and drawn in close like a shroud, even in the dark. Driver feels gets the sensation that they are the only two people in the world, left to navigate an Earth abandoned by its former inhabitants for decades. The only disruptions in the growing sprawl of snow are theirs. They are leaving their marks on the world, even just for a fleeting moment.

Their fingers are still linked together—a lifeline.

Driver turns to look back at Ken when he feels resistance. The other man is standing still, head tipped back. There is an air of rapt wonder in his posture.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, meeting Driver’s eyes. A dazzling grin is stretched wide across his face. In this moment, he is carefree. The weight of his freedom in the reality of the “real world” has been lifted off his shoulders, even just for a moment.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “’s real pretty.”

He is not looking at the snow when the words leave his mouth.

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Tradition : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Seven ❆ Sierra Six / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: Six is coming home in time for Christmas, so why not give him an unexpected surprise for the occasion? ❆ Rating: 18+ for explicit mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Established Relationship, Smut, Oral Sex (AFAB!Reader Receiving), Six is a Service Top 👏, Corny Scenarios, Inappropriate Use of Tree Skirts (It's seen too much.), No use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 1847

“What did your family do for Christmas? Like… when you were a kid?”

Rather than a verbal response, a crackle of static emanates from the phone. It’s accompanied by breathing. If you had to make a guess at what the person on the other end of the line is doing, you’d say that Six is walking—nearly running.

He is coming home to you. Finally.

This is the confirmation phone call that you’ve been waiting for. You’ve answered so many spam calls over the past few weeks just hoping each unfamiliar number might be your guy. The relief you’d felt—and still feel—this morning at hearing his voice is enough to make you weaken at the knees.

You hate it when he goes on jobs. His career… It terrifies you. There’s an all too real chance that each sendoff you give him might be the last time you ever lay eyes on the man. As skilled at his line of work as he is, there’s always the risk his luck will run out at the worst possible time. The sickening part is that you would never know. There would be no one to tell you. You would just have to sit with his absence as the days turned into weeks into months, and, eventually, into years and decades without any answers on how close to home that he had died.

The fear only makes his return all the sweeter.

His silence at your inquiry draws on for too long, and you bite at your lips, suddenly concerned that you had pried too much. Six is never one to talk about his family. You’ve gotten the story surrounding his incarceration. He’d told you, too laden with forced joviality, about his father and his brother and how he’d felt as though he had been made to choose between them. He has been closed off about the rest. All you know beyond Six’s choice is that his little brother thinks that he died in prison.

“Oh, just the usual stuff,” he says, after a series of muffled voices and the beeping of some scanner. “Mom’d say we got to open a present on Christmas Eve. We’d do a big dinner with some relative of hers the next day… nothing too special.”

You nod over the phone, already mulling an idea over in your mind, but then catch yourself with the reminder that he can’t see you. “Gotcha.”

“Why’d you ask? Is there something...?”

“Mm-mm. I was just curious. I’m always interested in you,” you admit.

That gets a quiet laugh out of him. Through the static, you could almost swear he called you nosy. He’d be right for calling you that—you hoard your knowledge about him as if it were a precious treasure.

“About what time will you be home?”

“Around midnight give or take. You don’t need to wait up for me.”

“You know I will though.”

“Oh, darling,” he says, so soft it’s almost a wordless exhale over the line before it goes dead.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Upon reflection, this idea of yours might be too much.

Laying, barely clad in the facsimile of clothing, underneath Christmas tree had seemed like fun time following the excitement of the phone call, but you’re starting to have some doubts creep in. The edge of a comically large bow brushes against your arm as you shift. You’re certain this only works in crappy, bottom of the barrel porno tapes from the 80s.

You sigh. Even if all you and Six get out of this is a laugh when he gets back; just seeing him smile will be worth it. Until then, you’re resigned to keeping yourself entertained with the television across the room. It’s playing one of Hallmark’s endless holiday movies. This one is the same worn-out story of a rich woman meeting a grumpy man while she goes out to the country and everyone makes an ass out of themselves. Eventually, they fall and love and yadda yadda yadda. It only barely makes for tolerable watching while you wait for Six to come through the front door.

The woman and the man are dancing at a castle with all their friends in a sentimental push to redeem the tone-deaf main characters when you hear a distant scraping of metal in metal. You jolt out of your slight doze when you realize that it’s Six working the house key into the locks. He’s home.

While he rustles around in the foyer, you have enough time to straighten your attire—or lack thereof—and settle into a position that hopefully doesn’t look like a dead body someone had stuffed under the tree for Six to find. That would be a mood killer for sure.

Six steps into the living room, stripped of his outerwear and shoes. You have just a moment to catch the way he scans over the space—accessing, checking exits, doing the thing that has become second nature to him—before his eyes lock onto you. It’s as though you are a particularly vulnerable rabbit that has just been spotted by a predator and will shortly be devoured. You freeze in place so thoroughly, you hold your breath in the face of his intensity.

He crosses the room, not letting his focus waver, and he drops into a crouch at your side. The lights of the Christmas tree reflect off his face. They provide enough illumination to allow you to see the amused sparkle in the depths of his gaze. Your held breath finally escapes.

“I don’t think I’ve been very good this year,” he jokes, already entertaining the fantasy you’ve set up. You want to groan. This was a mistake. Absolutely.

Thoughts of laughing this off blow right out of your brain when he reaches a hand out and trails a light touch from your knee up to your exposed thigh. It travels higher and grows heavier until he comes to a standstill at the slope of your hip and grips. The flimsy fabric that’s barely covering you bunches underneath his palm. The mirth is gone from his eyes, snuffed out like the final candle at a dinner table. It’s been replaced by something darker, hungrier.

Six has clearly been a starved man in the absence of you.

You swallow. “Well, you can always do another good deed. Just to cover your bases and all that.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmmhm…” you trail off, biting back a noise at the way he tightens his grip expectantly. You won’t be going anywhere he doesn’t move you. You try to steady yourself and continue, face on fire, “You can start by unwrapping your Christmas Eve present.”

He takes you up on your proposal. With no more effort than moving a cushion, he flips you from your side onto your back. Your barely-there underwear gets tossed to the side after he slides them down and off. His fingers dig into the meat of your hips as he kisses his way down your stomach. You willingly part your legs for him.

“I missed you,” Six admits into the soft skin of your inner thighs. He soothes the burn of his facial hair with lingering presses of his mouth.

Crinkling the ribbon wrapped around your chest in a bow, you reach down and run a hand through his hair. The paler, bleached ends of it have taken on the rainbow hue of the twinkling lights strung on the branches overhead. He looks like a worshiper bathed in the light of a stained glass window. It’s hard to believe this man would be down on his knees for you, but the proof of his devotion is right under your palm.

“I missed you too. So much,” you respond. Your breath catches and you’re about to make a fool of yourself and beg him not to leave again, to not take another job that might be his last, but Six, once again saves you. He closes the gap between his mouth and the juncture of your body in one swift motion.

You gasp. Your fingers clench into the short strands of Six’s hair. You are desperately trying to find a way ground yourself as he licks a confident stripe between your lips. He groans as though he’s finally being served a meal that’s been a long time coming.

Every one of his movements feels magnified into a sensation that resonates through your body. You can’t help but rock upwards against his face as he withdraws for a quick breath before resuming the task he’s set himself to. The curve of his smile is a fleeting, self satisfied thing—then he’s solidly pinning you in place atop the tree skirt with a firm hand against the swell of your mons. His thumb neatly rests right above your slit. Any minute adjustment of his hand would have him spreading you wide open for his eager mouth. His fingers twitch as if considering the option.

His tongue finds your clit, swiping over it in a grotesquely indulgent motion before flicking under the hood in a languid spiral. Your body sings for him. You thrash against his hold, a whimper building in your throat before escaping in a long keen. In response, he sucks, drawing you between his lips.

It’s too much. Before you’re even fully aware of your own body’s reactions, your orgasm hits you as hard as a train might hit a brick wall. You writhe in place. He works you through it while you spasm and twitch against his tongue. With no effort at all, Six keeps your legs apart despite your efforts to clamp them closed from over-stimulation.

Finally, you frantically pat at his shoulder, wordlessly pleading for him to relent. Your legs feel no more solid than Jello. He pulls back at once. Your stomach swoops as you realize that his goatee is glistening with your fluids.

“Let’s get you in bed so I can unwrap you properly?” It comes out as a teasing question. Six’s voice is hoarse—rough with barely contained desire. With your consent, he won’t be letting you do more than catch your breath tonight, not until he’s had his fill of you.

You nod, still winded but willing atop the rumpled tree skirt, as he shifts up onto his haunches and eases one hand under your shoulders and the other under the backs of your knees. He picks you up without so much as an exhale in exertion. Six is so sure and confident as he carries you into the bedroom that it’s though you’re nothing at all in his arms, even as you feel his biceps flexing against the weight.

“Is this going to be our Christmas tradition?” you ask, finally able to speak while he navigates the two of you through the doorway. It’s a miracle you hadn’t accidentally kicked the entire tree over, but you’re more than willing to recreate the experience in the coming years.

He lets out a low laugh and presses a kiss to your mouth. You can taste yourself on his lips.

“Maybe.”

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Alone : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Six ❆ Colt Seavers / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: It doesn't take much for tensions to finally snap between you and your fellow stunt performer, Colt Seavers. ❆ Rating: 18+ for explicit mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Stunt Performer!Reader, Smut, Hooking up, Vaginal Fingering, Fluid Sampling/Cum Eating, Heavy implications that Colt is a service top when he's not bottoming (I have an agenda), No use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 2534 ❆ Author's note: Finally at the official halfway mark! It's so nice to actually be able to write again. We'll just ignore that I'm posting these in February rather than December.

The bright glare of the lights overhead burns through your closed eyelids with such intensity that you feel as though you’re an ant being tortured by a light and a magnifying glass. You’re seemingly just one corpse among the odd half-dozen strewn about the parking lot. It’s difficult to play dead in this kind of weather—especially when you’re resigned to holding your breath so that the mist rushing from your lungs doesn’t give away the secret that you’re still living.

A pebble digs persistently into your spine. The cratered asphalt reminds you of being inside a chest freezer. Cold is leaking through your jacket and tracing your skin with icy fingers. Your predicament is not made any better by the weight of the man draped over your body like a sack of produce. The bulk of him is pressing you into the unforgiving ground. Still, you can only be so frustrated. He is your only source of warmth, after all. You’re clinging to the heat of his abdomen draped over your torso with the mindless fervor of someone drowning, even if the edge of his belt buckle is biting into your hip.

Another one of his shallow breaths presses him further into you has his rib cage expands. You clench the hand shoved down the front of his shirt in response. The backs of your fingers slide over his sternum. The two of you are sweating where your bare skin touches. His breath hitches at the hidden movement—stifled in the material bundled around your shoulder. It was not enough to give him away.

It’s too much. You’re going to have to breathe and shatter the illusion of your death. Your teeth find the inside of your cheek. They grind down into the tender flesh, nearly drawing blood.

Your lungs are screaming to release. This is the kind of shit that makes you rethink a stunt career every so often. You can’t take this any—

“Cut! Scene’s over. Good job, everybody.”

You let out the breath with a pained groan. The sudden flow of air on the inhale is enough to make your head hurt. As soon as you’re sufficiently oxygenated, you start pushing at the man on top of you with your untrapped hand. Around you, the blinding glare of the lights is abruptly cut off and equipment is hurriedly packed away for shooting the next location on the roster. There’s never a second to waste.

The man stirs with a drawn-out moan of complaint. Much to your dismay, heat pools into your stomach at the low sound. You curse yourself for your inadvertent reaction.

“Colt, get up,” you complain. You need him off of you. Now. Immediately. Five minutes ago even.

Upon hearing your protest, he flops down even harder, pressing himself into your form in earnest with an exaggerated noise of a dying man. His ribs collide with yours. Ignoring your situation, crew members are scrabbling off the ground and clearing out. The mass of once-dead bodies is up and tossing themselves into the crew vans.

At this rate, you’re going to have a bum a ride with the man laying across your body like its his own personal bed and hope that Colt’s piece of shit truck doesn’t explode into fragments Looney Tunes style. You can picture it so clearly. Poof! And then Colt is still seated on the truck’s bench seat with his hands on the wheel going down the road while the rest of the GMC is in a pile yards behind him. He’d look down with an exaggerated expression of surprise and then gravity would take hold.

Your thoughts are dragged back to reality by Colt shifting on top of you again. His knee is dangerously close to the apex of your legs, nestled between them as it is. One wrong move and he’s going to be grinding up against you in a way that is highly inappropriate for two coworkers.

“Dude.”

“Fine. Fine,” he says placatingly, rising to his feet. Once upright, he offers you his hand. It’s the most natural thing in the world to take it and let it envelop yours. His grip is strong, steady—a stuntman’s hold.

His grip keeps you close, so close that you nearly brush against his broad chest. A gust of wind rips through the lot and Colt jumps. He wraps his arms around you.

“You big baby,” you mock, no real heat in it.

“Sorry,” he offers up before letting his arms fall back down to his sides.

The parking lot is completely deserted. Aside from a few splotches of fake blood marking the pavement, it’s as though a film crew had never visited the spot.

“Guess I’ll be hitching a ride with you.”

Colt perks up. A dazzling smile spreads across his face, so wide that it reveals the points of his canine teeth. He claps his hands together. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road.”

You follow along in his wake, buoyed by his tangible excitement, only to stop short once you reach his truck. It’s in worse shape than you had remembered. You circle around to the driver’s side and stand next to the blond man.

“Colt.”

“Yeah?” he asks. He is trying to wiggle his arm through the barely ajar driver’s side window to pop the lock. You already know it’s going to be colder than hell inside the vehicle. You’re holding onto an increasingly thinner tendril of hope that the heater will work.

“Your passenger door doesn't have a handle anymore.”

“Yeah,” he says again, “I just have to open it from the inside. No biggie.”

He catches the lock with triumphant fingers and wrestles the door open with a scream of metal hinges protesting their treatment. He tosses himself into the creaky, old truck to lean over the bench seat and wrestle with the latch for the other door. You stand, sheltered from the wind by the body of the truck and the open door, while you wait. Your breath is fogging in the air as you watch Colt cast a series of furtive glances in your direction. Each look is accompanied by an apologetic grimace.

“Colt…,” you try. He doesn't pay you any mind. “Colt!”

The stuntman stops and sits upright in his seat to look down at you. “What?”

“I’ll just crawl over,” you say, and, without allowing yourself to think too much about it, plant a foot on the running board and drop yourself unceremoniously into Colt’s lap.

You ignore his bitten-off sound of surprise. Instead, you grab the truck’s door by its worn grip. Despite your best efforts, you’re shamelessly pushing your ass into the cradle of Colt’s pelvis while the door resists the interference. You grit your teeth and pull harder, feeling yourself start to slide off of the stuntman’s lap.

“Whoa,” says a voice in your ear, too intimate.

His hands latch on around your waist. You find yourself being pulled firmly against the solid body underneath you as he tries to keep the truck from winning the tug-of-war you’ve decided to engage in. A flush heats your face and there’s a not insignificant part of you that hopes that what you’re feeling is not the renewed attempt of Colt’s belt buckle trying to irritate you.

Almost experimentally, high on sudden adrenaline and want, you grind back against him more than is strictly necessary as you finally win against the door. It slams shut with an explosion of metal on metal and the vehicle rocks with the force of it.

Yeah, that’s definitely not his belt making its presence known against your ass—not with the way he’s letting out a shaky noise with each shift of your weight. His carefree stunt guy shtick is out the window. You’re half sure he’s about to start trembling from nerves. His hold on you is almost white-knuckled as he tries to keep himself from… something.

Ahead of you are two possible paths. You can shove all his shit off the passenger side of the seat and slide off his lap in order calmly buckle yourself into place with the tattered, nylon strap serving as the only means of safety in this relic, or you can finally act on the weird tangle of feelings have been marinated in a rather wretched way between you and the man you’re currently using as a booster seat.

You decide to be contrary and do neither. You’ll leave it up to him. You’re curious to discover if he will hurtle the both of you over the edge. Instead of scrambling off his lap with a flurry of motion, you lean back against him and take in the heat radiating from his sizable body. You raise one hand to cover his significantly larger one still holding onto your side. His grip on you becomes less like that of a man struggling to live. His fingers part for yours, letting them slot into place between his. It feels right. Maybe you should have been holding hands long before now.

“I can’t even say that they’ll miss us,” he says suddenly.

“No,” you agree, “The body disposal team missed a coupla corpses.”

“Good thing they did. I’d hate to be out here alone,” he responds, all too sincere. And then he’s taking your chin in the hand not captured by your own and turning you just the right way to press his mouth against yours. It’s a real kiss—not some production put on for the sake of an audience that might only care enough about it to post a few angry tweets about two inconsequential extras locking lips at the order of the director.

He’s warm, he’s real, and he’s Colt. Your lives have been in each other’s hands more than you can count during your careers. Who else could you trust more?

There’s been no fresh-up of breath strips or the careful sterility of an intimacy coordinator. He tastes like hours old coffee and the spearmint gum that always inhabits a pocket of whatever pants he’s wearing. The frosted over windows give you privacy you’ve never had in a moment like this with him, even though the wind is still whistling through the arm-sized gap in the window next to you.

He pulls away. His eyes search yours for a hint of rejection.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, already kicking himself for a perceived fuck-up.

Unwilling to let him misguide himself, you barely give him a chance to sit with the worry until you’re grabbing at his face. You guide him back in for another kiss. It’s explosive as shutting the truck door had been. It’s wet, and messy, and you can feel his hand start to caress the length of your body as if he’s unable to resist the need to touch.

His hand skates down the front of your pants, lingering for a moment. His palm presses into the juncture of your thighs. You can’t help but moan into his mouth at the contact and involuntarily buck up into his hand. Colt smiles against your lips. He bears down, rocking his hand against you. He’s applying just enough pressure to frustrate you.

“Colt,” you gasp out upon breaking the kiss to helplessly mouth at the side of his neck.

The stuntman’s hair is flopping into his face, obscuring his eyes while he teases you. You push the fluffy mess back off his forehead and he nuzzles into your hand. He presses a kiss to your wrist. It’s tender, wholesome, in comparison to the way he deliberately trails his hand upward. His fingers skim the insides of your thighs before coming to rest on the button of your costume department issued jeans. The faux blood splatter and grime coating them is a reminder of how much time you spend together during every production you’ve worked on together. All those hours, and you’re still not tired of the man that is patiently waiting for your permission.

“Do you want…?” he asks.

“Yes.”

That’s all he needs. He undoes your jeans and works his hand into the confines of your underwear with the fumbling of someone who doesn’t get to do this very often. You think that his uncertainty is charming as he glides a finger between your folds, getting the lay of the land. His breathing is ragged in your ear. He sounds as though he’s panting his way through an award-winning sprinting scene. There’s no denying his own arousal, not with the way you can feel him all but pulsing against the cleft of your ass.

Colt’s fingers find your clit and circle it. Wetness gushes from you and he catches it with his fingertips and slicks you with it, using your own lubrication to better work at the throbbing nub of you. You writhe on his lap, breathless sounds emerging from your throat. You’ve slung an arm backwards to wrap around his neck, half hauling him forward over your body as you cling to him. Your knee keeps hitting the steering wheel.

The ambient air is so cold that you want to shiver, but Colt has you feeling as though you are burning up from the inside out.

A thick finger slips inside of you. Another joins it, stretching you to accommodate. You had never truly realized just how large Colt’s hands are until this moment—until he decided to make you accept what he’s offering. A crook of him inside of you and a press of his thumb against your clit are all it takes until you’re clenching around his fingers and cumming harder than you have in months. You’d be almost embarrassed if you weren’t seeing stars.

Twitching with aftershocks, you let your arm drop from its position around him and you go fully limp against the shelter of his body. You’re trying to catch your breath as he frees his hand from your damp underwear and, to your shock, slips his fingers into his mouth. You stare up at him, befuddled while he sucks them clean.

He makes a soft, thoughtful sound around his own digits before releasing them to rummage around in the crap on the bench seat for a napkin to dry his hand with. Finally, he speaks, nerves back in his voice, “If… uh, y’know… there’s a next time… can…”

“Dude, just say it,” you grumble. You zip up your pants, getting ready to finally get off of him.

“Can I eat you out? If we’re along like this again, is that—can I do that?”

You pause in the middle of pushing the junk beside you both onto the floorboard. Heat darts through you in a head-spinning surge at the thought of Colt’s face between your legs, of twisting your fingers into that fluffy mess of blond hair while his scruff leaves behind red marks on the insides of your thighs.

He’d be so eager, you think, with the way he’s always so desperate to please.

Taking your time, you settle into the passenger seat. Already, you miss the solid warmth of your coworker. You clear your throat and reach over to pat him on the leg. “Sure. I’d like that.”

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Joy : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Five ❆ Holland March / Jackson Healy

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: March and Healy are left alone for Christmas. ❆ Rating: 18+ for explicit mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Domesticity, Fluff, Smut, Anal Penetration, Instances of Alcohol Consumption, Healy's POV, Two middle-aged men being sappy ❆ Word Count: 1954 ❆ Author's note: Collaboration fic with my lovely girlfriend, @danime25.

Private moments between the two men in the March—and Healy, if Jackson can ever bring himself to face the truth head on—household are rare. But the hour is late. The curtains are shut tightly to thwart the prying eyes of the neighbors. Even Holly is away. She is visiting her deceased mother’s side of the family for Christmas.

Holland had blubbered like a baby when an aunt and uncle with sympathy filled eyes had arrived to pick her up this morning to host her at their home in wherever-the-fuck Fresno. “They have horses,” Holly had said with unconcealed excitement while Jackson had dumped another heaping spoonful of scrambled eggs on her plate. In his opinion, the damn kid is just like her father and never eats enough.

She’ll be back on Monday but for now the house is occupied only by two men desperately trying to not feel like empty-nesters. If he’s being honest, Healy still feels a little sour over the whole situation. He takes a swig of his drink to replace the arid taste in his mouth with the burn of whiskey and turns his attention from the general direction of the television set to focus on March.

The private investigator is fiddling with the radio, humming under his breath as he does so. Holland is already several drinks in for the night—they both are. He settles on something nondescript, jazzy. It’s something their kid would wrinkle her nose at. God. When did Jackson turn into such a disgustingly sentimental, old bastard? Next thing he knows, he’ll be one of those coupon clipping housewives

He feels the cushion decompress next to them and turns to face Holland only to find the other man already looking at him over the rim of his glass. There’s a smile stretched across his familiar face.

“What’s got you grinnin’ like that?” he grouses.

March’s smile only gets wider and, to Healy’s mounting trepidation, the PI has that sparkle in his eyes that he gets right before he does something half cocked and stupid.

“Can’t I just be happy?”

That pulls him up short. After a pause, he gives a shrug. “You’re never happy, March.”

Holland snorts, obnoxious. “I am happy, Jack. Business is good. I have Holly. I have you.”

Despite the heinous nickname that the other man has been trying to push onto him, affection rattles in his chest. Jackson takes a large gulp of his drink. He chooses to blame the head-to-toe flush he’s feeling on the liquor. He manages a grunt in response and it’s all the encouragement Holland needs.

The other man leans into him, slow and almost cautious. His head is tipped in the familiar way that signals the need for a kiss.

Why the hell not? The kid’s out of the house, Healy thinks and angles himself to happily oblige. He’s barely done more than get close enough to smell the bitter-sweet tang of alcohol on March’s breath when the PI leaps off the couch as if stricken by lightning.

The sudden urgency becomes apparent immediately. Holland’s favorite holiday song is playing over the airwaves and of course he has to dance to it—Jackson Healy be damned. Letting out a resigned sigh, Healy lets his head loll against the back of the couch as he watches March act a fool. The bruiser knows that it’s partially his own fault they don’t ever seem to get to the root of things, but it’s always easier to deflect and ignore. Too much rumination always fucks up a good thing so he downs his glass and sets it aside on the table, nearly bumping his arm against the lamp that had come from his own living quarters after a mishap with a pen and an ugly-ass necktie had broken Holland’s.

This will be the last Christmas they spend here. The new house—the rebuild—will be done by the end of the summer. There is a selfish part of him that wonders if he will be able to fit into Holland’s and Holly’s lives with the ghost of the late Missus March haunting the recreation of the home that is more accurately her final resting place than the headstone sitting atop her empty grave might suggest.

March is still dancing, clearly off his ass on the liquor they’ve been sipping since they were left alone hours prior. Jackson is doing his best to ignore the pointed looks the detective is shooting in his direction. The chorus of the song is in full swing and, unsatisfied, Holland grabs hold of Healy’s arm.

“C’mon. Dance with me.”

“You know I don’t dance, March,” he protests. It falls on uncaring ears—the other man only latches on tighter. Jackson gives in and grips onto the detective’s narrow hips as he gets pulled into a clumsy dance.

With a wink, Holland starts singing along. His voice purposely warbly and off-key, nothing at all like the singing he’s heard come from the shower. It’s enough to relax the rigid set of Healy’s shoulders and drag an unwilling smile from him. Jesus, he loves this idiot far more than he ever should have dared to.

A slower Christmas song starts playing, something they can sway along to. They’re halfway though the song. March is all but sprawled on top of him, draped like a contented cat over the broad frame of Healy’s own body. The heat of the other man’s hand burning into the small of his back makes him throw sensibility out of the window. Because, fuck it, it’s almost Christmas day, their kid is out of the house, and they don’t have a job on the docket to worry about. He presses his mouth against Holland’s in a too-eager collision.

The detective grunts against his lips, rough, and returns Healy’s kiss. It’s wet and sloppy. Spit strings between them as they pull apart for desperate breaths before rejoining with an urgent sense of need taking hold in Jackson’s chest. His stiff hands paw roughly at the narrow man’s side, feeling his way up the planes of his body to grip at the back of his neck. Holland won’t be going anywhere that he doesn’t want him to go.

Holland’s fingers are too flighty as they try to undo the buttons on his own shirt. The small, pearly things slip through his grasp and he looks down at Healy with pleading eyes. The bruiser is only too happy to oblige. He backs off just enough to make short work of the offensive garment and slips the cloth off March’s shoulders in order to toss it somewhere to the side. It’s only natural that the PI’s undershirt suffers the same fate.

The skin underneath Healy’s is fever-hot as he trails his knuckles tenderly down Holland’s bony sternum. He hooks his fingers behind the buckle of Holland’s belt and pulls the other man closer to him—closing the minimal distance that had been made between them. Just on the right side of tipsy, his mouth finds March’s jaw and he bites lightly at the skin just to be rewarded with a soft moan. The prickle of day old stubble against his lips has him thumbing for the tongue of the other man’s belt.

“Need ya, March,” Healy grits out.

He’s achingly hard, tight and throbbing against the zip of his jeans. His fingers are clumsy on Holland’s belt as he undoes the buckle and slides the leather free of the loops. It had been an early Christmas after they had lost his previous one in a parking lot the first time they had poor impulse control. They had never found it, or their sanity for that matter.

Healy makes short work of Holland’s slacks and then his underwear. He is desperate to get his hands on the other man’s bare ass. March whines—high-pitched—as he digs his fingers into the soft flesh. He yields to Holland’s efforts to guide them out of the living room and down the hall to the bedroom that’s slowly become theirs. The guest room has largely fallen into dusty disuse.

Once over the threshold, Jackson detaches himself from the PI just long enough to yank his shirt off over his head and toss it somewhere in the dimly lit room. He steps back into March’s space and crowds him against the side of the bed, easily moving him with his bulk.

“You’re so handsome,” March says, starry-eyed, from his position on top of the wrinkled bedspread.

“And you’re goddamn blind,” Jackson responds, allowing the PI to guide him down for another kiss. A slender leg hitched over his hip has him reaching down to free his cock.

“Maybe,” he laughs, trailing lips over the side of Healy’s jaw, “but how are we going to do this?” Even as he asks the question, the supine man is twisting away and reaching to grab the lube. It’s overtly clear what he’s wanting—what they’re both wanting.

Pushing down the knee-jerk reaction he gets every time they have sex, of wanting to falter and turn into the blushing bride on her wedding night, he grips onto a false sense of confidence with everything he has. Without speaking, the bruiser nudges Holland further up the bed and kneels between the other man’s spread legs before grabbing him by the hips and pulling him onto his lap. The dripping head of his exposed dick leaves a wet smear of pre-cum on the inside of the detective’s thigh.

He takes the bottle from Holland. “I think you can figure it out. You’re a world-class detective and all. Got your face on an advert and everything,” he says, an edge of teasing to his tone.

Predictably, March’s face flushes and his eyes dart away. There’s no mistaking the other man’s enjoyment at Healy’s ribbing, not when he can see the way that his cock jerks at the gentle mockery. His fingers are firm as they ease between Holland’s cheeks and press against his hole. Breaching him is an easy task. They’ve had practice at this since the first time. Lotion applied by nervous fingers feel like lifetime ago. Healy likes to think he has gotten good at this—at pleasuring his partner.

“Fuck,” Holland whines underneath him. “Get in me.”

The encouragement has Healy raising an eyebrow. This was awful quick, even for Holland “Notoriously Impatient and Reckless” March. “You sure?”

“Jesus, Jack! Yes!”

He doesn’t hold them up any longer, just shifts forward and takes himself in hand. He presses his tip against Holland’s entrance and slowly eases into the clutching heat of the other man’s body. Despite March’s eagerness, he still winces as he takes in the length of him. Healy holds steady, brushing a soothing hand over Holland’s flank while they wait for his body to adjust to the intrusion.

“Okay… keep going,” the PI says after a pause.

Healy obeys. A steady press of his hips has him slotting into place with ease. He groans at the sensation, dripping his head to press his forehead against Holland’s bony shoulder.

“March,” he grits out, nearly breathless, his voice colored with something almost… worshiping.

He forces himself to move. As he sets a consistent pace, he wraps a calloused hand around Holland’s cock and starts stroking him in time with each thrust. His palm is rough against the sensitive skin. The sensation causes his partner to keen and squirm again against him, the heel of one foot knocks against Healy’s calf. The other man digs his nails into the planes of his shoulders and there is a part of Jackson that relishes the knowledge that there will be marks on his skin after morning dawns.

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Lights : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Four ❆ Henry Letham / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: Something about Henry Letham makes you feel as though you are a traveler in a vivid dream. ❆ Rating: No mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Mention of suicidal ideation, Mention of self inflicted injury, Pre-relationship, Art student!Reader, No use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 1537

Henry carries a cloud with him—a strange, dream-like aura that warps your reality and twists your thoughts until you don’t know which way is up. It’s enough of a sensation to cause even the most mundane interactions with him to be a strange affair. He is a reoccurring figure in your life, often appearing up in places where you would expect to find an art student—be it in eclectic coffee shops, rarity bookstores, or the discount bins of Columbia’s nearest craft store undertaking the quest for something that can be used in a last minute assignment you’d all been given in one of your classes. More than once, you’ve caught sight of his lowered head in a subway car or spotted the cherry-red end of his lit cigarette while he sneaks a smoke in the dark alcove of a thrift store you chanced to visit.

He is not unlike a ghost. He haunts the chambers of your mind with a persistence that none of your other classmates could achieve. More and more, you’ve been catching yourself thinking of him.

It only makes sense that you see a flicker of a dark coat sleeve followed by the wafting scent of tobacco smoke as a lean figure darts past into an alleyway, all long limbs and dangerously delicate wrists. Your specter has manifested into your shaky reality.

“Henry?” you call, reflexively taking a step to follow after your presumed more-than-an-aquaintance-but-not-quite-close-enough-to-be-friends friend. Your camera is clutched in your hands. The bag that normally holds it is dangling empty over your shoulder. For now, your project is set aside in the pursuit of something you’re not sure is real.

The man in question materializes in front of you out of the growing gloom caused by the sun’s decent below the towering efforts of humanity to live and work among the clouds for an ever higher view. For a foolish moment, you feel as though you summoned him into being with your voice alone.

He looks tired—worn down to the bone in a way you can hardly comprehend.

Who died? you wonder in the deep recesses of your mind, though you would never dare to give it voice.

“I haven’t seen you in class for a while. How have you been?”

Blue eyes trail over your face, mapping it into shapes replicable by human hand. His fingers twitch on the strap of the satchel digging into one narrow shoulder. The other—unburdened—one rises in a halfhearted shrug. His gaze drifts and he lights a cigarette as if he were a sleepwalker, vacant and hollowed into a mere shell.

“Looking for anything in particular?” he asks, a question in return for yours.

Your mind stumbles, struggling to make sense of his meaning. It clicks. He is drawing your camera into the conversational focus.

“Oh,” you say, words tasting clumsy on your tongue, “I was going to take some shots of that old apartment building over on Empire.”

“Any special reason why?” He says it with a tone of someone who had been taught to express polite interest.

“Chanukah.”

Comprehension dawns on that pale face. With genuine interest softening the starved angles, he asks, “Matthewson’s lighting project?”

You flash him a smile, pleased that he’s caught on so quickly. At the start of your shared courses at Columbia, he had always been one of the first to raise a hand and enter the fray in a debate or to provide an insightful remark. As the semesters have passed by, though, he’s seemed to grow more subdued. His sleeves have grown longer and his layers more numerous even during the warm months as he became more hunched into himself. The Henry that you had met has all but disappeared all-together in these past few weeks.

It’s nice to see a glimpse of his old self, to pay witness to the young man that had had such a spark of life in him. Impulsively, you make a decision.

“Want to come with me?”

Henry stands silent, rolling his thoughts over in his mind. His expression is carefully blank until he surrenders with slight tilt of his head. “Sure.”

His answer surprises you. You had really expected him to find a reason to fade into the growing night. You can’t help but smile at him, honestly happy that he has chosen to accompany you.

“Alright,” you say, “Let’s get a move on then. They’re going to start lighting the candles soon.”

Without allowing yourself to think too deeply about what you’re about to do lest your nerves get the better of you., you slide your arm around Henry’s. The two of you are locked arm in arm. There’s an irrational part of you that worries he will fade away somewhere between here and your destination if you don’t touch him. He stiffens as though he might pull away, but in another surprise of the evening, he relaxes into the contact.

The artist feels cold as a corpse and too thin. Thinking back all those semesters ago, Henry hadn’t ever been anything but slender, but it’s all too clear that he has not been taken care of himself for quite some time now. You can’t bring yourself to remark on it. It’s not your place.

Silently, arms linked, the two of you make your way down the block and across the intersection that gives way into the borough that is home to the apartment building you’re seeking.

“There!” you say just as Henry utters a soft, “Is that…?”

The old structure is a small thing nestled among the much larger and newer buildings crowding in on either side. The sleek, modern surfaces of the fresher builds are doing their best to swallow up any semblance of individuality, to consume it into the sea of inoffensively bland architecture. How dare anyone have a non-sanitized vision in the modern age.

Art is dying , you think, distant , becoming too commercial and here, in brick and mortar and steel, it has suffered the most.

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Henry say s in a way that has you wondering if you had aired your pessimism over the steady roar of traffic and the sporadic honks of impatient drivers. All around, the sea of humanity floods on either side of you as if you were of no more consequence than two pebbles in a stream. In this moment, you feel so small. So insignificant.

“At least that’s still standing,” you reply and break the delicate connection between you and Henry. The space against your ribs where his arm had nestled feels empty now. It almost aches.

“Sometimes staying upright is the hardest thing in the world,” you hear him say, disjointed. It’s a dreamy statement, suitable for the night that has taken hold of the city.

There’s a part of you that expects to wake up any moment slumped over your battered desk, having stayed up too late in the effort to meet a deadline. Nothing about this experience feels real, not even the uneven concrete under your feet.

Humming in agreement, you raise your camera to your face and press your eye against the viewfinder. You adjust your stance on the pavement, unbothered by the bodies bumping against you. Even if you can’t see him, you can still feel Henry at your side. He is matching you step by step as you get into position. You might be insignificant in this world, but you are not alone, not in this brief moment.

In the dark, illuminated by thousands of lights, you work. You let the long exposure of the camera tick down after pressing the shutter button. It captures the flurry of the motion in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the windows, smearing into a blur representing mankind’s restless race to the end. But in the heart of the shot towers the steadfast visage of the apartments across the street in front of you. The gently flickering candles of the menorahs are set in crisp lines among the chaos. Despite the changes of the world, there are pockets of tradition that remain despite every attempt to wipe them away.

You lower the camera. Pleased with the images burned into the film, you turn to Henry with a grin. You’re startled to find him already looking at you with considering eyes. His lips are twisted into a thoughtful frown.

Before you can ask him what’s wrong, he beats you to the punch.

“I was going to kill myself,” he says, not any more concerned than if he were commenting about the color of paint he might like to use, “Tonight. At midnight.”

Your stomach swoops unpleasantly. You grasp at his sleeve in shocked silence. What is there to say? What should you say?

He slides out of your hold like sealant dripping off a canvas. There’s something almost tender—almost apologetic —in the way he brushes a thumb over your knuckles as he lowers your hand back down to your side.

“I’ll see in class Monday,” he adds, and then he’s gone as though he were no more substantial or tangible than the puff of your breath in the cold night air.

You will yourself to wake up.

You don’t.

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Family : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Three ❆ Sierra Six / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: Your tenant might be a mystery, but he's one you want to try to solve forever. ❆ Rating: No mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: Domesticity, Fluff, Pre-relationship, Confessions, Six is 100% Claire's adoptive father, Use of "Court" as an alias, Set sometime post-movie canon, No use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 1447

It’s too damn early for anyone to be functioning, but here you are—awake and making a beeline for the nearest source of easily obtainable caffeine. The faintest scuffle in the room barely lit by the first touches of dawn alert you to someone else’s presence. You are not alone.

“Good morning, Court,” you say reflexively. There is no one else it could be.

You stop to flick the light switch, flooding the room with artificial light. A yawn pulls itself from your jaws, keeping you cemented in place and prompting you to stretch your arms over your head in a spine-relieving pop. Content but still ready to sag to the floor in a crumpled heap as a sign of another sleepless night, you move the rest of the way into the kitchen to join the tall man at the coffee pot.

“’Morning,” he finally returns once you’re close enough to feel the warmth radiating from him.

His voice is still rough from a night of disuse. You’re forced to blink away the thought of hearing that near-growl pressed against your own throat after a night spent in bed together. Your thoughts about your tenant have become an inappropriate, tangled snare from all the months that he and his daughter have been staying in your spare bedrooms.

Cautioning yourself with the information that you barely know this man hasn’t put a damper on your growing feelings, even if getting a potentially real name out of him had been like pulling teeth after a weeks’ long oral surgery. He only ever pays in cash and dodges questions as though answering them would sink a bullet in him from an ever-watching sniper. Despite the red flags, you’re helplessly attracted to what you do know about him.

He’s unfathomably kind—the perfect gentleman in the way that he goodnaturedly accepts the potshots his daughter takes at him and assists you with tasks around the run-down bed and breakfast that you had inherited. He dotes on Claire without question and has seemingly expanded his orbit of care to include you. It all makes you want them to stay. Forever. The thought of the father-daughter duo moving out is enough to make you feel ill.

“What’s on the agenda today, boss?” he asks, breaking into your thoughts. He further scrambles them by leaning around you to take the sugar jar down from the cupboard. He feels scalding hot against your back. A thick arm brushes against your shoulder, the tendons in the backs of his wide hand flexing as he wraps his fingers around the container. You suppress the urge to lean back against his broad chest and instead clear your throat.

“Want to help me get the decorations out of storage? There’s some cookies in it for it if you do.”

“Deal.” His answer is abrupt. This man has a sweet tooth a mile long and an insatiable appetite for whatever has been put in front of him. Court always eats like he’s known starvation and might experience it again at any moment. It makes you wonder what kind of life he has led before winding up on your doorstep.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The task is far more of a hassle than you had thought it would be. You’re forced to stand to the side while Court squeezes himself into one of the many narrow gaps in the maze of junk that fills the attic. Your relative had been one hell of a hoarder. You’ve already made several trips. This is the final foray into the packrats’ nest.

An unintelligible grumble of words reaches your ears and you crane your neck. You catch a glimpse of your tenant. He is in the midst of crawling over a battered luggage trunk.

“You okay back there?” you call out.

“Sure,” he answers back. Then a pause, “Wait, how many cookies are we talking?”

“As many as you want.”

“Peanut butter?”

“If that’s what you want.”

In response, Court renews his efforts to get to the back of the attic. There’s clattering, a choked off yelp as he hits his elbow on some long-forgotten object, and then he’s emerging from the depths. The worn box containing the Christmas tree is propped onto one shoulder. Success.

You can’t resist teasing him once you’re out of the forlorn attic. You flutter one hand dramatically at your face and pretend to swoon after he hauls himself and the box down the rickety ladder. “Oh my, such a big, strong man out here saving Christmas,” you say, suitably breathy and awed.

You’re rewarded by Court flushing down to his chest. The pink of his skin only makes his blue eyes even more prominent. He gives a token groan at the theatrics, but still shyly averts his gaze. It’s always been easy for you to fluster the tall man.

In blushing silence, he carries the box down to the bed and breakfast’s sitting room where he sets it down with a low grunt. Something must be pulling at his side. You’ve seen him favor his left on occasion. You kneel down at his side to assist him. Together, the two of you pull the relic out of its cardboard casket and attempt to wrestle the wire branches into something nearing presentable. The two of you have just crammed it nicely in the corner when Claire’s footsteps hammer loudly on the stairs.

She busts into the room with a cheery, “Good morni—Wow, you guys have been busy and not in a fun way,” she adds with an exaggerated waggle of her eyebrows after taking in the boxes and tote bins scattered around the room.

A quick glance at Court reveals him fidgeting with a twisted artificial branch. He is gamely trying to ignore his daughter’s commentary. It makes you smile, even as something other than amusement flutters in your chest.

“Your dad helped drag it all out. Do you want to do me a favor and help decorate?”

Her eyes light up. “Yes, yes, absolutely.”

“Have at it,” you sat with a gesture at the waiting containers and Claire immediately leaps into action.

Court and you step back to give her room to work as she starts digging through the mess. You slip into the kitchen to retrieve your lukewarm mugs of coffee. You offer Court his and he takes it a murmured thanks. Neither of you make any effort to avoid the minute brush of your fingers.

“Will you being going to see family?”

He shrugs. “She’s all the family I got left,” he says with a gesture at the girl untangling a strand of lights. A fond smile teases the corner of his mouth before fading away. His focus shifts to you and he leans down, suddenly intimate. “How about you? Are you taking off to see your folks?”

You studiously avoid mapping the contours of his nose with your eyes and take a swig of coffee. “No… the relatives that are still around… Well, we’re not really close.”

The man at your side nods, silent. You get a peek behind his carefully amiable mask to see that there is the hardened edge grief set into his face. It’s still raw, still too fresh to acknowledge with any candor. For both of your sakes, you shake off your melancholy and reach over with your free hand. You slap Court playfully on his—frankly—massive bicep.

“Do you want to play house this Christmas?”

A long pause follows. Your fingers clench around your mug, knuckles bleaching under the pressure. It stretches on for so long that you feel your stomach drop.

Shit, you think, I shouldn’t have said that.

You’re on the verge of opening your mouth to beg forgiveness when he speaks.

“I might not be playing by the end of it.”

Oh… Oh. It’s your turn to feel your face flush.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” you confess. At his raised eyebrow, you continue, “It being for real.”

A heavy hand finds a home on the back of your neck as Court draws you in, forehead to forehead. His nose brushes against yours. For a dizzying moment, you think he’s going to kiss you.

“You want to to be a family with me?” he asks. His breath is hot against your lips.

You nod, nearly sick with longing. You feel like you’re burning up.

“Use your words,” he prompts, voice low.

“Yes. I want that. I want you to stay. I want us to be a family.”

He gives you a praising squeeze that makes you shiver. He withdraws from your space with a crooked smile, hand dropping back down to his side.

“Then let’s be one.”

<- previous day // next day ->

[drivinmeinsane]

Stranded : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day Two ❆ Driver / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: A little car trouble gives you and Driver a moment alone before you visit your family for the holidays. ❆ Rating: No mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: domesticity, holiday travel, fluff, no use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 1551 ❆ Author's Note: Pulling so much overtime at work kicked my ass in December and is still kicking it with no end of these 70+ hour weeks in sight, but I'm sure we can muster up a little seasonal coziness in January for some overdue Goosemas prompt fills. 🤞

Your eyes are like starlig-

“Nope,” you mutter under your breath and twist at the knob to change the station—abruptly cutting off yet another Christmas song crooning over the old speakers.

Much to your chagrin, the Malibu is too old for a CD player by about a decade, leaving you at the mercy of whatever radio stations Driver’s beloved ‘73 can pick up through its warped antenna. In a bid for sanity, you have made a game out of dodging all the holiday tunes that have floated across the airwaves. Working a shitty job during December is enough to make almost anyone want to leap out of a moving vehicle at the first jingle of bells.

Your dramatic reactions and desperate lunges at the dial have coaxed a few lopsided smiles out of Driver as he takes you up north for your annual family gathering for the season. The mechanic’s presence behind the wheel is a welcome comfort. Even more welcome is the hand resting on your thigh. Each movement of his thumb back and forth over your clothed skin softens the tense lines of your back until you’re tucked into your seat like it’s a comfortable armchair.

The peace is shattered when the car starts jerking—stuttering like an old woman in her death throes. Driver pulls his previously relaxed hand off your thigh and drops it onto the stick. You don’t have time to do more than let out a startled gasp at the sudden jostling. He ignores your surprise as he shifts down in gear, struggling to keep the wheel steady. The Chevy bucks against his efforts, fighting him with every rotation of her tires.

Driver takes to the shoulder. The action forces the vehicle’s momentum to slow as the wheels catch on the snow that has been pushed to the side of the road by the snowplows that have been working since before the rise of the sun to make the miles upon miles of pavement traversable.

You barely hear him let out a frustrated exhale of air while the car idles roughly in park before he kills the engine. The resulting silence is loud without the crackle of the old radio and the persistent hum of the engine. Driver leans down and fiddles with the loose wires hanging down underneath the steering column. He’s talked about getting a lower dash panel, but still hasn’t found one that will properly fit.

Eventually, the sound of the hood popping free from its latch reaches your ears through the solid body and glass of the car.

Without a word, Driver pushes the keys to the Malibu into your hand for safekeeping. The rabbit’s foot is soft in your palm. He’s giving you his luck.

The wind that darts into the car after he opens the door is cold enough to bite at you through your layers. Despite her state of constant repair and modification, the vehicle does have a good heater and you already miss it. You tug your coat tighter around yourself.

You wince in sympathy while you watch the mechanic round the front of his car. He always runs cold, layering up even in the heat of the West Coast. You’re surprised that you can’t see him shivering in his jackets through the rapidly fogging windshield.

While he works, you pull out your phone out of your pocket and flip it open with a satisfying click of the hinges. No bars. The signal doesn’t improve upon extending the antenna.

“Shit,” you groan, putting the phone away.

A faint sense of worry starts worming its way into your mind. If Driver can’t fix whatever problem has the old car acting up, it’s going to be a long wait until either someone else comes along or your family sends out the cavalry hours after the two of you were due to arrive.

In the effort to dispel your growing concern, you pop open the glove compartment and poke through the items. The space is mostly empty. There is the insurance information, an unopened air freshener, and a chipped screwdriver. Some takeout menus… a map and a pen. There is nothing of note to be found, nothing that screams personal value or sentimentality.

Would it kill this man to allow himself a little clutter?

Movement catches your eye and you startle into shutting the compartment as you see a flicker of your partner dropping to his knees in the snow in front of the vehicle. He falls completely out of sight. You unbuckle your seat belt and open the door with a creak that makes your jaw clench with the sheer volume of the sound in the snow-muffled quietness.

“How’s it going?”

Driver has worked himself underneath the front of the car, you realize as you move to stand by one of the headlights. You pass concerned eyes over him from the thighs down. Snow and asphalt salt are doing their best to soak into his clothes.

“Complicated.”

Dropping into a squat beside him, you wobble slightly on the uneven surface and steady yourself by grabbing his knee. He doesn’t startle at the unexpected touch. The two of you are long past any wariness.

“Want any help?”

“Toolbag, please,” comes the reply. You have to strain to hear him over the wind.

Easy enough, you decide and stand up to inch your way around the car. You lean against the cold metal to keep from slipping and making Driver drag you back up the embankment should you slide right off the road’s shoulder.

You twist the key in the lock of the trunk and pull out the heavy bag once the lid opens. It feels as though he has crammed the entire contents of a mechanic’s shop inside the confines of the bulging leather.

The bag lands with a thud when you complete the slightly perilous journey back to Driver’s side. It nudges against his leg. Before you can ask what he needs from it, his hand shoots out and he fishes out a tool by touch alone before withdrawing the appendage back out of sight. Clanking noises and the scraping of metal against metal ensue for just a moment.

He emerges from underneath the Malibu, holding onto a metal cylinder. His hair is mussed and your eyes drift and latch onto the band of his bare stomach from where his jackets have rucked up. The skin turns a pretty pink in the cold, triggering him to shove the thick material down with chilled hands. He rolls onto his knees and picks up the tool bag as he rises to his feet with a crunch of salt and snow.

“Go sit. Just need to clean this out,” he says, slightly raising the object he’s holding. It looks like something pulled out of a pile of scrap in junkyard,

“What’s that?,” you ask. You’re already opening the passenger side door, not needing to be told twice to get out of the air so frigid that your breath steams with every release of your lungs.

“Fuel cylinder.”

“Cool.” What he said means absolutely nothing to you. As you smile at the mechanic, you make a mental note to ask him for details. It’ll be worth it to see him get that soft sparkle in those blue eyes and actually talk.

The leather has cooled slightly in your brief absence. Settling into the seat is a process of suppressed hisses at the temperature and the relief of being out of the wind. It’s not long before Driver is throwing himself back behind the wheel and tossing a clean rag onto the dashboard followed by a less grimy looking part. It’s streaked with moisture from where it was hastily scrubbed with snow and wiped off.

‘’s cold,” he says, close to complaining as he ever gets. “How ‘bought your family moves somewhere warmer?”

You laugh. “They like it up here, besides, if they did, I would have less opportunities to do this…”

His questioning look turns into the widened eyes of mild outrage as you lean over the gear shift and put one cold hand under the hems of his layered clothing to press it against the warm expanse of his stomach. He exhales, sharp, catching your wrist in one large hand. He makes no effort to actually end the contact. His fingers are even icier than yours.

“Might as well get the other one over here,” he says, dry.

You take him up on his suggestion and proceed to work your left hand higher up on his body than your captured right. The winter sunlight is strong enough through the windows that the fine trail of hair on his abdomen lights up gold.

“You should probably warm yours up too,” you remark, leaning over even further.

Driver meets you in the middle with an eager kiss. His free hand skates over your coat, fingers seeking the edge of the garment to find your heat of your bare flesh. You hum appreciatively into his mouth at his efforts. You won’t be able to touch him as much as you’d like around your family without raising some eyebrows and being that couple. It would be a shame to not make the most out of your time while you wait for the cylinder to dry.

<- previous day // next day ->

[greenandsorrow]

Dreaming of neon snow.

➜ Officer K x Joi

!!! canon ship, sexual content, dirty talk, my take on futuristic holidays, made up replicant lore, fluff, smut, hurt & comfort all at once, romanticising domesticity !!!

This has been in my drafts for approximately 2 years. I usually write way more graphic & filthy/intense smut, but my goals this time were sensuality & intimacy.

Basically, I decided to change my first draft a bit & turn this into a Blade Runner Christmas special for @goosemas! I know it's a bit late for day 1, I'm so sorry! Hopefully, you'll enjoy it 🤍❄️🌨️

Goosemas by @drivinmeinsane.

Day 1 ➜ prompt 'miracle' 💝

No snow ever falls in Los Angeles. Not real snow, anyway.

What blanketed the streets wasn't soft or pure, but a grimy residue of overworked machines & endless chemicals. A gray substance that hardened under the pedestrians' feet, cracking like old bones as the crowds moved to & from. It clung to boots & wheels, turned slick beneath the artificial light & glittered faintly in the neon haze.

From a distance, it could almost pass for something beautiful.

K didn't fool himself into thinking it was. He stood at the edge of the crowded square, his shoulders hunched under his trusty coat & his eyes scanning the people moving past the stalls.

It was Christmas Eve & the city was buzzing. Merchants were everywhere, selling everything from holographic ornaments to prepackaged memories -& not a single thing in sight was legal. Strings of too bright LED lights hung between steel beams, flashing red & green in lazy patterns. Someone had set up a speaker in the corner, blaring a cover of 'Jingle Bells' through layers of static.

The irony wasn't lost on K.

Christmas had survived The Collapse, but like everything else, it had been stripped down & rebranded for mass consumption. There was no warmth here, no comfort. Just the cold transaction of buying & selling, an endless loop of empty traditions performed by people too tired to question them.

K watched it all with the detached indifference of someone who didn't belong.

He didn't know why he was still here, lingering in the shadows while others walked past him with their shiny bags & hollow laughter. The holiday spirit wasn't for people like him -replicants, built to obey & endure. It wasn't for Joi either, though she had tried to convince him otherwise once.

"Christmas is a miracle" she had said, her voice light, but with that undercurrent of sincerity she always seemed to have. "It's about giving people what they desire most."

He hadn't known what to say to that. Didn't know how to tell her that miracles weren't for them.

The air smelled metallic. Vendors lined the square, their stalls glowing with neon signs that seemed to pulse. K wandered past them with stiff steps, his gaze drifting over the merchandise without much interest.

However, one stall caught his eye -a display of miniature snow globes, each one containing a detailed, holographic scene. A family gathered around a table, children skating on an ice rink, a couple standing beneath a mistletoe & so on.

K stared at the globes for a while, his jaw clenching. The images felt too perfect, too curated & completely unapproachable to him.

"Pretty, aren't they?" the vendor said, his voice sharp. He was a man in his sixties, his face lined with wrinkles. "Guaranteed to brighten any home."

K shook his head & walked away.

By the time K returned to his unit, the buzz had died down a bit. The streets weren't as busy as before.

His apartment was just as he had left it -bare, stark & even colder than the world outside. K shrugged off his coat, tossing it onto the single chair by the window.

"Welcome home" Joi greeted, cutting through the silence.

She flickered into being. Tonight, she wore a slip dress in blue, her hair cascading in soft waves over her shoulders. She looked festive & he looked puzzled.

"It's Christmas Eve!" she said happily, noticing the confusion in his eyes.

"Didn't realize." Christmas wasn't something you could ignore -not in this city, where every ad screamed it in your face.

Joi kept smiling. "You didn't buy anything?"

"Why would I?"

"No presents? No tree? You're such a Scrooge."

Her database knew more about Christmas than he did... Who's Scrooge? Why should K know the guy?

He simply scoffed. Then, he kicked off his time-worn boots & sat on the edge of his bed, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. He didn't meet Joi's eyes, didn't want to right now, though he felt her gaze on him -gentle, curious & patient.

She walked, or better... She floated closer, her movements light, just like the shimmer of static that traced the outline of her frame.

"You've been quiet" she said softly & there was no accusation in her tone.

K sighed, running a hand through his dark blonde hair.

"Just tired."

He's not supposed to say that, let alone feel it. He wasn't made to experience fatigue. Maybe it's not even his body that's exhausted, but his mind.

"That's not it." Joi replied after a beat, her voice dipping lower.

She knelt in front of him, her knees sinking into nothing as she looked up at him. "You get like this sometimes. Like the whole world has its hands around your throat & you're just... letting it squeeze."

K's lips twitched into an almost smile. "That's poetic."

Joi shrugged in response. "You inspire me."

The words hit him harder than they should have. He looked at her then, really looked & it struck him how perfect she was. The curve of her cheek, her Cupid's bow & the way her eyes shone with a warmth no machine should be able to mimic. Joi wasn't real, not in the way he even was, but she was his & that had to be enough.

"Let me help" she said invitingly as her fingers ghosted over his knee in an imitation of a carress.

K swallowed hard. He didn't answer, but he didn't tell her off either & that was all Joi needed as permission.

She stood then & stepped back just far enough to let him see all of her. The soft lines of her body, the slope of her shoulders....

"Do you like this?" she asked, her tone dipping into something playful.

K's throat went dry. "You know I do."

She smiled but it wasn't just playful anymore -it was also knowing. She let her hands glide down her sides... slowly, sensually. It was a show meant only for him.

"Tell me'', she whispered, "Tell me what you want."

K didn't know how to answer that. There were things he wanted -things he would never have the courage to say out loud, not even to her. Still, with the way she looked at him & with the way she moved, it was like she already knew anyway.

It wasn't real. He reminded himself of the fact every time her form flickered, every time her voice carried a faint echo that felt off. She was a projection, a program built to adapt & to please, to become whatever he needed her to be. And yet, in moments like this, when their gazes locked & the air between them felt charged with tension, it was so easy to forget.

Joi stepped closer, form stabilizing as she leaned in. Her hands hovered just over his shoulders, as if he could feel them.

"Close your eyes" she murmured next.

He did just that, because when Joi asked him to do something, it never felt like a command.

She guided him, her voice soft & steady, painting pictures with her words that were so intoxicating to behold. She told him to imagine the warmth of her skin, the softness of her lips against his own, the weight of her breasts in his palms... She almost convinced him that she was the one that unzipped his pants and slipped a hand inside.

Just a day later, K was sitting at his desk, staring at the small device he had picked up in the marketplace.

'Dreamer's Companion', the label read, written in bold letters above a glowing logo. The vendor had been suspiciously enthusiastic, explaining how the program could interact with neural implants to create immersive dreamscapes. "Perfect for couples" she had said, winking in a way that had made K's skin crawl.

Joi materialized beside him, her expression as curious as ever. "You've been staring at that for a while."

"It's... complicated" K replied, his voice flat.

Joi tilted her head at that, hair moving. "Show me."

He hesitated, his finger hovering over the activation button. "It's for dreams. It lets you be inside them."

Joi's eyes lit up, a spark of something he could only describe as hope.

"You mean... I could be with you?"

"Sort of" he said. "It's closer to something real than anything else we've got."

The way she looked at him then was like he had handed her the stars. It made his chest ache.

"Try it" ...she almost sounded out of breath.

They tried it in the evening of Christmas Day.

K heard the soft buzz of the program integrating into his realistic-looking neurons, a tiny ripple of static flickering across his vision before fading into darkness. For a moment there was nothing, just the expanse of his subconscious, raw & unformed. Then, like the first glimmers of sunrise, the dream began to take shape.

It was subtle at first -muted colors bleeding into each other, the gentle hum of ambient noise filling the empty space.

K blinked & the world started to solidify around him. He was standing in a room that felt familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. The sparse furniture of the room felt familiar & so did the lamps above his head.

And then he saw her.

Joi stood by a big, square window with her back to him. She was actually solid, every curve & little detail 'physically' manifested with an aching precision. Her hair caught the light, her skin glowing in a way that made K's eyes glaze over.

"Joi" he said, his voice rough yet hesitant.

She turned at the sound of his voice. There was no flicker, no distortion whatsoever -just her, whole & real like never before.

"K" she breathed & wasted no time as she crossed the room & threw her arms around him.

The contact was electric. Her body was warm, soft & impossibly real against his own. He felt her fingers dig into his shoulders, her breath hot against his neck. The sensation was so overwhelming, so complete, that it made his knees weak.

"You are here" she whispered, her voice trembling between joy and disbelief.

"So are you" he managed to reply, big palms finding her waist, his grip tentative as if she might dissolve & vanish under his touch.

Joi pulled back to look at him, her hands cupping his face almost adoringly. Her thumbs brushed over his cheekbones & the tenderness in her gaze made his throat tighten.

"I've waited for this, waited to feel you. To really be with you.”

K didn't trust himself to speak, so he kissed her instead.

The kiss was slow & reverent -he was scared of breaking this fragile illusion. Joi's lips were heavenly, her movements hesitant at first & then more certain as she pressed closer to him. K allowed himself to get lost in the sensation... in the taste of her & he didn't suppress the gentle hum of approval that vibrated through his chest.

"This is real", she murmured against his lips, her hands exploring his scalp.

"It feels real" he replied, his voice rougher than before.

She smiled at that. It was a soft, secretive smile that made him melt inside.

"Let me show you how real it can be."

She led him to the bed, her movements graceful. The dream was wrapping around them like a cocoon as she guided him down. There was an intimacy in the way she looked at him, in the way her hands explored his muscular body -not with urgency, but with care, as though memorizing every inch of him.

For K, it was unlike anything he had ever experienced. She was real here -her weight pressing against him was real. The boundaries of his reality blurred & for the first time, he let himself believe.

Joi was moving with a confidence that made his chest tighten & his manhood throb, her lips tracing slow paths down his neck, her hands undressing him with ease. She worshipped him with everything she had, the words she spoke soft & breathless as she told him just how special he was.

"You're perfect", her voice was thick with emotion, "So perfect, K."

He closed his eyes, letting go of everything & focusing solely on this moment. The way she moved & felt around him, but also the pleasure he could make her feel -it was everything he had never allowed himself to hope for.

The dream ended too soon.

One moment she was there -whole & perfect- & the next, the world dissolved around them. The dreamy light faded, replaced by the sterile glow of his apartment.

K sat bolt upright, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. The effect of the dream lingered, the ghost of her touch still warm against his skin. He looked around, his eyes searching the empty room.

She was standing by the window, just like she had stood in the dream.

But she wasn't the same.

The flicker was back. She was a projection again, her body insubstantial & her presence a mere echo of what had been just a few moments ago.

"Joi?" he said, his voice breaking.

She turned to him with an unreadable expression.

"I'm sorry" she said softly.

"For what?"

"For not being enough."

Her words felt like a physical blow. He shook his head fiercely. "You are enough. You're more than enough."

Her smile was sad, resigned. "Not for this. Not for what you need."

K opened his mouth to argue, but the words didn't come. Because she was right. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, there was a part of him that would always long for something more -something she could never give him.

As the hours stretched into the restless night of LA, K stood in the living room, staring out at the city through his window. The neon lights flickered in the distance, casting fractured reflections on the wet pavement below.

Joi appeared beside him. Oddly enough, she didn't speak -but neither did he. They just sat there, side by side, wrapped in a heavy silence.

"Do you believe in miracles?" she asked finally.

K took his time to contemplate whether he did or didn't. He let the question linger in the air, turning it over in his mind.

"I don't know" he said at last. "Maybe."

She nodded, her gaze distant. "I think you are one."

K turned to look at her. "Why?"

"Because you keep trying. Even when it hurts you. Even when it feels like there's nothing left to hold onto."

Her words settled over him like a blanket, warm & soothing. For a moment, he let himself believe them.

Support a struggling uni student! Thank you so much!!! CLICK HERE (PayPal link)

➜ my Ryan Gosling masterlist

➜ This work is part of the nymph's daily gifts! 💝

➜ Resources; @cafekitsune & @saradika-graphics

Please, do not repost nor copy my work and do not use it on AI platforms either 💕

[drivinmeinsane]

Hello! ☺️

I'm very excited about goosemas and I want to participate 💓 It'd be an honour and a pleasure as well 😌

But I do have a little question...

Could you clarify if one needs to participate in all 12 days, or if one can just pick a few days?

I hope I made sense😅

Thank you!

I'm glad to hear that! (⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)

You're welcome to participate in as many or in as few days as you would like. There are no rules for how many prompts you need to write for.

[drivinmeinsane]

Miracle : 12 Days of Goosemas

Day One ❆ Officer K / Reader

{12 Days of Goosemas 2024 Masterlist} ※ {Regular Masterlist} ※ {ao3}

❆ Summary: Waking in the middle of the night isn't an uncommon occurrence for K, but you're always there to bring him back to his baseline. ❆ Rating: No mature content. ❆ Content/Tags: K survives, symptoms of PTSD, comfort, no use of Y/N ❆ Word Count: 1933 ❆ Author's Note: This is loosely connected to Somebody to You. Reading is not required, but might provide some additional context!

He opens his eyes in the subdued gloom only to be nearly blinded by the faint glow of his own irises as they take on the scant light from the curtain covered window and reflect it. They dart from side to side, desperately seeking the source of what woke him. His heart is hammering against the cathedral of his rib cage with such force he worries that it will manage to wake you.

The replicant lays paralyzed, fingers itching for a weapon he no longer carries. There had been a tracker in his old blaster. He’d left it behind with his badge when he defected all those months ago. There had also been a tracking device in him, sank deep between the knobs of his spine as if he were no better than an old world animal. The scar that its removal left behind is a small thing in appearance. Pressing a finger against it would reveal a gnarled twist of torn tissue underneath the surface of the skin. He seeks it out sometimes, bears down on it so hard with his fingers that he leaves mottled bruises in his wake of his touch. He needs to know that his freedom is not a dream he has made up in his own mind while looking down the barrel of the interviewer’s camera awaiting the moment that he finally will be found defective.

There’s a shuffle outside the front door followed by the light pitch of giggling. It’s only the next door neighbors passing by to get into their own unit.

They’re harmless.

K has shared many a cordial nod with them since you both moved into this run-down complex together. Your previous roommate, an unerringly patient replicant, had gotten tired of the way you were dancing around each other and had politely demanded that relationship developments happen in an entirely different building so that he wouldn’t have to bear witness to the awkward flirtation and love that poured out of K like an unstaunched wound. The Nexus 9 figured he owed Gradus that much and had shyly presented you with a list of apartments to choose from.

Clinging to the knowledge that the noise that had woken him was not from a threat, he tries to force himself to relax. It’s a futile endeavor, his shoulders remain tense. K’s body stubbornly refuses to settle. It is convinced that conflict is going to arrive in a messy tangle that means the death of everything he has come to care for.

He turns his head, considers the slumbering form of you at his side. The desire to take you in his arms and draw you tightly to the broad expanse of his chest is nearly overwhelming, but his conscious stops him. Your rest is far more important to him than his unsettled nerves. Both of you have been working long hours to afford the cost of living. He knows that you fall into bed each night weighed down by exhaustion.

Instead, K chooses to distance himself. He eases out of bed, taking pains to not shift the mattress too much. His feet make contact with the inhospitable surface of the laminate floor. He’s grateful for the thick socks that serve as a barrier between it and his skin. They had been a gift from an unlikely friend.

As he moves to the bedroom door, he realizes that the concept of having friendship with others beyond indifferent work relationships is still foreign to him. Companions were not something meant for his kind. His Madam had kindly reminded him of that fact time and time again during his servitude.

K had been cut free of his growth bag, devoid of contact starting on the day of his inception. He’d simply assumed that he would be retired the same way. Alone. Friendless. At best, accompanied only by the disinterested eyes of an impartial observer who was waiting to call in biohazard to hose his viscera down the floor drain hidden underneath one of the rubber mats padding the floor of the interviewing room.

He pushes the bedroom door open and shuts it silently behind him. The replicant keeps the hinges well oiled in preparation for nights like this one.

The living room is bathed in soft, multi-color hues. It’s familiar, almost soothing. He skirts around the furniture on his way to the kitchen. Once there, he pulls a glass down from the cabinet before filling it from a pitcher kept in the fridge. Tap water runs murky and rust orange here before clearing to a metallic tasting liquid. Filtration is all but a necessity in a world that has been poisoned by greed.

Turning, he puts his back against it and considered the living room while he takes a careful mouthful of water. It tastes like coins against his tongue. For a choking moment, K is taken back to the flavor of another replicant’s blood flecking against his teeth as he pleads for his struggling target’s submission while he cuts out the replicant’s eye.

He swallows hard around the sudden lump in his throat. He’s gripping onto the loose material of his pants, pulling the fabric taut over his thigh as he tries to return to baseline. His eyes lock onto the main source of light in the adjoining room as if were the lens of the interviewer’s camera.

The flickering string of rainbow lights wrapped around the tattered fake tree you’d brought home one evening after work sits proudly in the corner on their hand-me-down side table. You’d been so happy that night and the nights after. He tries to focus on the memories, pushing aside the afterimage of a future he’d never had. There are moments where he feels wrong—when the tissue gives a phantom snag at his unmarked side and he feels so cold and so tired. There is a nagging idea in his mind that he was meant for another fate, not the one he’d somehow received. It had to catch up with him eventually.

“K?” Your voice is thick with sleep.

He looks away from the tree to find you standing in the doorway to the bedroom. It takes him back to the times Joi would interrupt his downward spirals.

K has not activated her in a long time. Her emanator is kept wrapped in a thin piece of cloth and tucked away in his cigarette box. Real life holds appeal for him now. He doesn’t need to embrace a simulacrum for something he thought unattainable. There is no more pretend. He is K and you are you. And the both of you are happy despite the odds.

Not trusting himself to speak for fear that his voice will betray the inexplicable current of terror persistently pumping through his veins, he inclines his head in greeting.

The silence does little to deter you and you move to his side. Warm fingers work their way underneath his clenched hand. K allows you to gently pry his grip free from his pant leg, leaving creased fabric behind. The sensation of skin on skin is enough that he has to close his eyes.

“What’s got you up this late?” you prod. Your fingertips rub over his knuckles, lingering on the scars that have been pounded into them. He can only heal so much. At the end of the day, K is still made of flesh and bone. The replicant knows that his body is a faded ledger of brutality. Both given and received.

K shakes his head. He sets the glass of water on the water with a twist of his arm. “I heard a noise in the hall and I thought it was something it wasn’t.”

“Oh, honey…”

He risks a glance sideways at your face. Your expression is strangely sad. It’s still novel that someone real could feel an emotion other than disdain for him.

Lightly, you tug at his hand. He goes willingly, allowing you to guide him to the sagging couch where he takes a seat at your wordless prompting. He sits quietly as you take the handwoven blanket off the back of it and drape it over his lap. Before you withdraw, you brush a hand over his jaw, down the side of his neck, and finally stopping at his shoulder.

“I’ll be right back,” you say, giving the tense span of muscle and sinew a squeeze.

As he watches you return to the kitchen, K does his best to let himself go limp against the back of the couch. His spine is seemingly made of granite and refuses to bend. Seeking distraction, he turns his head to look at the ornaments decorating the faux branches at his side. Most of them were made by hand. Some are crocheted bits of fiber made into snowflakes and stars. Others are shaped twists of foil that have been painted.

His stomach unclenches as he remembers the way you’d encouraged him to join you and Gradus at the table. He’d given in and taken a place for himself only to be further surprised when you had pushed scraps at him and asked him to join the two of you in making decorations. Working with his hands to create rather than destroy had felt right.

Two replicants and an organic make up a ragtag bunch by any metric, but it is more family than he’d ever dreamed possible.

“Here you go.” Your voice cuts into his thoughts as you appear at his knees.

He looks away from the horse he’d clumsily made of foil and painted to look like the one he saw in his fake memories. You’d told him to put it near the top—in a place of honor.

You have two mugs of steaming tea clasped in one hand, and in the other, a battered book. Not his alcohol stained copy of Pale Fire, but something else. Something that doesn’t stalk the halls of his mind like Nabokov’s work does. There is no tall white fountain waiting for him in the novel you’re holding.

“Thank you,” he says as he takes one of the mugs—the one painted with an array of flowers he wonders the names of. “You don’t have to stay up with me,” he adds, worried.

“But I want to,” you counter and sit down next to him, resting your cheek against his shoulder.

The chipped ceramic is warm against his fingertips, but it feels chilly in comparison to the heat of your body tucked against the length of his side. You put the book on his covered lap before taking a corner of the blanket for yourself and pressing impossibly closer. His heart rate has slowed to something steady. The nervous muscles are relaxing under the attentive presence.

Automatically, his fingers trace over the cover, skimming through the pages until he finds the bookmark nestled along the spine. His mouth traces the shapes of the words, voice rising and falling with the careful intonation, and he allows himself to lose his worries in the story of another world. He accepts the miracle you’ve given him by loving him in return. Long after you set your empty mug aside at the base of the little fake tree as if it were a present and gone lax against him in your slumber, he reads. He reads until his eyes grow heavy and his voice hoarse. Until he has no choice but to place the book and the mug aside and draw you into his arms.

Morning will find you both stiff-backed and achy, but for now, you sleep interlinked.

[drivinmeinsane]

Here's the masterpost for my contribution to 2024's 12 Days of Goosemas. Due to my packed schedule and the truly horrifying amounts of overtime I've been putting in at work, this year's works going to be wildly self-indulgent. Only my absolute favorite RyGos characters have made the cut for the prompts.

I hope ya'll enjoy. I know I'm going to have fun!

Day One ❆ { Miracle } ❆ Officer K x Reader Day Two ❆ { Stranded } ❆ Driver x Reader Day Three ❆ { Family } ❆ Sierra Six x Reader Day Four ❆ { Lights } ❆ Henry Letham x Reader Day Five ❆ { Joy } ❆ Holland March x Jackson Healy (collab w/ @danime25) 18+ Day Six ❆ { Alone } ❆ Colt Seavers x Reader 18+ Day Seven ❆ { Tradition } ❆ Sierra Six x Reader 18+ Day Eight ❆ { Snow } ❆ Driver x Ken Day Nine ❆ { Mistletoe } ❆ Officer K x Reader Day Ten ❆ { Warmth } ❆ Driver x Reader 18+ Day Eleven ❆ { Meal } ❆ Colt Seavers x Reader 18+ Day Twelve ❆ { Gift } ❆ Officer K x Sierra Six * Day Thirteen ❆ { Free Space } ❆ Colt Seavers x Tom Ryder 18+

❆ NON-SEASONAL MASTERLIST ❆

[goosemas]

2024 Goosemas Collection - Officer K - 512 x 512 icons

[goosemas]

2024 Goosemas Collection - Henry Letham - 512 x 512 icons

[goosemas]

2024 Goosemas Collection - Ken - 512 x 512 icons

[goosemas]

2024 Goosemas Collection - Driver - 512 x 512 icons

[goosemas]

2024 Goosemas Collection - Lars Lindstrom - 512 x 512 icons